I
asked and you guys delivered, so here's the first of the characters I was given.
give me a character and i will answer:
Dawn Schafer why I like Dawn: I think original!Dawn is fantastic. She's not perfect but she's
thirteen so expecting her to be flawless is insane. She loves ghost stories (so do I!) and is open to the idea that there's more to the universe than can easily be explained. For all the crap she gets from fandom, early!Dawn is actually true to herself and accepts that sometimes other people are going to look at her like she's insane but y'know, screw that noise. She's got more important things to worry about than whether or not someone she barely knows gives a flying fig if she brings her lunch to school.
I like her friendship with Mary Anne and her odd friendship with Kristy. Her relationship with Jeff is actually one of the best sibling relationships in the entire series, no matter where you are in terms of Ann vs Ghosties.
Younger!me probably coveted her long hair like crazy and older me appreciates that Dawn is one of those characters who seems to be unusual looking. Sometimes this means you get Kristy telling you she's gorgeous and model worthy and sometimes you get someone else telling you that Dawn is pretty but... Which is oddly realistic. Some people in your life are going to think you look one way and other people who see you at the exact same time/place will think "meh."
Before the ghosties sunk her battleship, Dawn came across as that friend who would stop you before you walked out the door with a piece of something stuck in your teeth and, if you asked, would tell you that she personally thinks that dressing all in red leather is a bad idea but hey, let your freak flag fly if that's your thing, though possibly in the future could you do so without killing an animal only to dye its hide an unnatural color. She'd also be up for sitting around on a rainy day reading ghost stories aloud and then she'd be the one person who wouldn't laugh when you told her that you saw this apparition out by your garage and hey, why doesn't she come look, too?
Also loves The Parent Trap. DAWN. We would be such good friends! Except at meal time!
why I don’t: Dawn got hosed by the ghostwriters. While it was very, very big in the late 80's/early 90's to recycle and learn more about saving the earth, Dawn got cranked up to such painful levels they actually mocked her in the series. Seriously, if you get that bad that canon says "nope" your ghosties should be forced to dial that back before you go so far off the reservation there's no coming back.
Which didn't happen and away she went. I also don't like how whiny Dawn was in the California Diaries, though maybe a re-read would alter my perception of it. But at the time I hated her books because it was just painful to read what had become of my favorite BSC character.
Also, Dawn really had it lucky when you consider her parents divorce. While Jack and Sharon obviously had issues (she did move across the country, after all) they did a remarkable job of not putting the kids in the middle and allowing both Dawn and Jeff an insane amount of freedom to float back and forth between them. And Dawn never really seems to acknowledge this even though she's got plenty of friends who showcase just how unfun divorce can be.
favorite episode (scene if movie) book: I have two. I am really fond of Little Miss Stoneybrook... and Dawn simply because it was the first BSC book I ever read and I liked that moment when Dawn gets a little (lot) jealous that Mal and Jessi got this whole production and she got a pizza toast and a "hey, wanna join?"
I also adore The Ghost at Dawn's House. Because what ghost story loving kid wouldn't want to find a secret passage complete with possible ghost story? Plus I dig the Nicky subplot.
favorite season/movie: I'm gonna tweak this one and still not properly answer it. Book Dawn trumps TV or Movie Dawn, though I think I prefer movie!Dawn. Hair color aside, she actually comes across as closer to the Dawn I have living in my head. TV!Dawn (and I'm one of those people who does like her) is definitely a bit more on the bitchy side of the fence which works in some cases, but when compared with her movie counterpart? Yeah. I'm siding with Larissa on this one.
(But crappy wig moments aside, TV!Dawn is shockingly similar to how I would have pictured Dawn as a person who didn't just step off one of the many "wait, is that Stacey or Dawn?" book covers.)
Meet Dawn meet Mary Anne. They meet cute. favorite line: Aside from Dawn's "To me!" during their pizza toast, I don't really have a Dawn quote. I do really, really, really love the BSC graphic novel scene where she and Kristy bond in the barn. It tends to make me a little weepy on the right days because it's sweet and funny.
favorite outfit: Dawn and the color war where she's all "look, my socks are yellow, right?" :P Actually, um, no idea. She looks really pretty (bored, but pretty) on the cover of Dawn's Big Date.
otp: Dawn + Dawn. Which is to say I don't have a pairing for Dawn. Occasionally I 'ship the good ship Kristy/Dawn but not actively or anything more than "I could totally see that working for awhile." Mostly though, I like that Dawn shows some interest in finding someone, but also realizes that she's
thirteen and isn't ready for it. It's one of my favorite things about her.
So she's content to mail letters to Lewis and just do her own thing.
brotp: So, MA and Dawn fight a fair bit, right? But anytime I venture into fic where Dawn and MA aren't friends as well as step-siblings, my heart breaks. I actually have to take a minute, each and every time, and just talk myself up to this reality because no. Just no. My little nine year old heart can't take that kind of rejection, okay?
Also, somewhere in an AU, Jeff and Dawn are hero support for each other.
head canon: I tend to ignore the environmental zealot of later Dawn because I'm one of those people who can still read the books but then dismiss certain aspects as the work of a madman/woman. Obviously Cokie Mason got ahold of part of the manuscripts and did some work that was never corrected when she was kicked out of the office, again.
I'm not really sure how to answer this one. Some people I have found I do have extensive head canon for and others I go with the flow. Dawn's in the middle, I guess.
I tend to think that for high school she splits her time, doing two years in CA and two years in Stoneybrook, though I can't quite figure out whether it's an intentional division of her time or if something happens to send her back to Stoneybrook for the last two years (because that's how I see it going down). I think she mellowed back out with age and that maybe her environmental nuttiness was directly tied to the way she was unraveling as she realized that much as she loved her mother, her heart was back in California.
Only she realizes when she returns home to California that things change and so do people, and maybe the stress of Mrs. Winslow dying and the birth of Grace (and what little else I do remember about Dawn's arc in CD) force Dawn to mature but also knock out her idealization of her childhood home state.
I'm thinking sometime during one of her stints in California, she'll cross paths with Jessica Wakefield and that's what sets Jessica on her Green way for the weirdness that is SVC. Otherwise it makes even less sense. :P
unpopular opinion Other than the fact that I like Dawn and kind of dismiss a good chunk of her crazy eco-terrorism as the work of madmen and women and thus not worth my time to recall? Uh, no. I think that does it. Admitting you like Dawn Schafer in BSC fandom has been, at times, the same as committing social suicide.
The irony of having to be secure enough in my own awesomeness to admit such a thing for a character known for being an ~individual~ is not lost on me. Nor, I imagine, is it lost on you.
a wish Aside from wishing other people loved Dawn? I wish the ghostwriters had been less harsh with her. I'm not even sure I could pretend that they didn't realize what they were doing because after a certain point it becomes increasingly difficult see her exit as anything less than "dude, we screwed this up. Get rid of her!" So I wish she'd been allowed to be more like her original self and not the 2-D mockery she (and the others) became over time. Maybe actually retained some of her individuality and not been so militant in forcing her views on other people since she originally didn't do that and it made no sense for that shift to occur.
How can you not love this face? an oh-god-please-don’t-ever-happen Um... I'm pretty sure the good 'ship BSC has sailed into the sunset, but I do pray that if AMM and company decide to pull a SVC and look into the future for Dawn and company that Dawn didn't end up being an extreme activists and instead, I dunno, chilled out while still remaining dedicated to certain causes. She needs some balance.
But mostly she already got her "please no" in the form of canon. :P
5 words to best describe them Blond sprout-loving California girl.
my nickname for them Sunshine, in that same way I am called Sunshine. (I'm a little ray of sunshine and my parents meant that in the most Wednesday Addams like way possible.)
This is harder than I thought it would be. Who knew? Working on the others just as slowly, I'm sure, but they will be done!
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