BtVS Quadruple Drabble - Rejected

[bk_forever]

Title: Rejected
Fandom: BtVS
Author: badly_knitted
Characters: Principal Snyder.
Rating: PG
Spoilers: Set after Band Candy.
Summary: Snyder has spent his life on the outside.
Written For: Challenge 315: Amnesty at fan_flashworks, using Challenge 143: On The Outside.
Disclaimer: I don’t own BtVS, or the characters.
A/N: Quadruple drabble.




Snyder had been young once, many years ago, in what felt like another lifetime. That damned band candy incident had brought it all back in excruciating detail; his high school years when he’d been a socially awkward teen, desperately wanting to hang out with the cool kids but always rejected, on the outside looking in.


He hates kids, and teenagers are the worst, especially the popular and pretty ones. He’d never been either, a borderline geek with no athletic ability whatsoever and looks not even his own mother could love, ears that stuck out and a hairline that had already begun to recede. The other boys had mocked and taunted him, the girls had laughed at him, and no matter how hard he’d tried to fit in he’d been treated like dirt, bullied and pushed around.


The ache inside has never gone away, turning him bitter and resentful, but that’s okay because he isn’t a kid anymore.


Now he has all the power, he can put kids like the ones who belittled him in their places and make sure they stay there. He’s the school Principal, he makes all the rules, he gets to say who belongs and who doesn’t, and he has the authority to make it stick. Nobody gets to tell him what to do, not now. Well, there’s the school board, and the mayor, but they respect him because of the way he runs his little empire. They need him.


It’s a heady experience, being able to make kids suffer the way he once did, to threaten them with detention, even expulsion, to hold their futures in his hands. He can make them or break them, and he knows which he prefers. It makes him feel tingly, almost happy, to think of withholding the right to an education from those who don’t deserve it.


So what if he still doesn’t have any friends? He has something better than that: influence. The mayor listens to him, and so does the chief of police. It’s a good position to be in. He got this job because of who he knows; he doesn’t need for them to like him.


But still, deep down in the depths of his shrivelled soul, he wishes he knew how it felt to be popular, to be liked and accepted by his peers, to maybe even be loved.


All he’s ever wanted is to belong.



The End

Comments

[itsnotmymind.livejournal.com]

Aw, poor guy.

[bk_forever]

Snyder is one of those chaaracters we love to hate, but Band Candy showed us a different side of him and I ended up feeling sorry for him.

Thank you!

[cynthia2015.livejournal.com]

He was carrying emotional baggage.

[bk_forever]

Yeah, poor Snyder. But it turned him into a nasty little weasel.

Thank you!

[cynthia2015.livejournal.com]

I'm surprise that he got to become a principal. He wasn't exactly a people person.

[bk_forever]

He's a bully, but he knows how to suck up to the people who can help him get ahead.

[cynthia2015.livejournal.com]

Stereotypical but plausible.

[bk_forever]

Well, we do see him sucking up to the mayor and making nice with the chief of police.

[cynthia2015.livejournal.com]

Yes. Along with keeping up appearances.

High School Cecil Snyder.

[vantiri.livejournal.com]

Snyder is an interesting character; and he also shows up in the novel "One Thing or Your Mother", if I recall correctly. If I am right, he begins to regale Buffy about his victories in spelling bees as a young boy.
He also has a lot of interesting takes in this story and series, and you have turned out a very good analysis of his personality; including deducing that he thinks of the Scooby Gang as the "Cool Kids"; but Faith's little "conversation" with her "daddy", Mayor Wilkins at one point when she thinks she's been permanently rejected by them shows that she too thinks of them as the "cool kids" and wants to be part and parcel of their crowd. Her bond with Buffy is akin to herself as "B's" kid stepsister: wanting to be around her at about all times, as she nicknamed her that, including how she wants to hang out with her and her buddies.

[trepkos.livejournal.com]

Poor Snyder - he's such a great character.

[bk_forever]

Played by such a great actor! He's a character I sort of love to hate, and yet I sympathise with him too. He's so deeply unloved, and probably always has been. It's made him want to hit out at those who have all the things he's never had, the friendship and the sense of belonging.

Thank you!

[trepkos.livejournal.com]

Armin Shimmerman is so cool. Did you know he was a union rep? Actors get very low royalties from repeats, apparently, and he fought to get them increased. Also, he was playing Quark at the same time as Snyder, and he and the other Ferengi cast on DS9 used to rehearse their scenes at his home, to get them perfect.