Important questions about Ethan Rayne

[beccaelizabeth]

So for the last fic I did much research and decided what, exactly, Rupert Giles would drink.
Several exactlies actually, of different age and price.
One in a little sort of coffin box.


now I need to figure out about Ethan
but right up front I find the question needs to be a little broader:

what chemistry would Ethan Rayne ingest recreationally?

Including drink and smoke, yes, but not limited to that available in the off licence.



And would it make a difference if he were technically dead?




... yes, fic requires the *fun* questions.

Alcohol never been my thing. Smoking not my habit. Recreational chemistry in general quite avoided. Prescription chemistry not as much fun as it sounds. So my relevant knowledge? Absent.



I'm finding that adding Andrew to my fic bunny made it all go kind of bigger. Is interesting. I know Andrew's kind of theatrical, but that don't mean he needs the cinema size plot. And yet...



Hmmm, cultural data to acquire, add to list, what do people give for offerings in whichever country I decide her to be from? Or consume for fun? Or to go with celebration meal?
All known options rather depend on there being a local Tescos.


I'm thinking India, because it's one of those places stories come from. And also people.
This is an everso fuzzy reason to write about anywhere.

Comments

[julia-here.livejournal.com]

Thing is, I tend to think of Ethan as being more interested in lowering other people's resistance to his manipulations, rather than, or at least more often than, losing his edge by ingesting consciousness-altering drugs, and certainly rather than getting drunk.

He might take cocaine recreationally, because it's notorious for making people sharper and meaner if they don't take it to get manic and then run with the mania. But the more you do that stuff, the more likely you are to be slow and depressed when you come down- and it's costly. I can see him having friends who use it, and showing up whenever it's on offer, though.

He might also use any number of things in combination with ritual cleansing and magical meditations- notably peyote, mescaline, mushrooms, and LSD, all of which either have long ethnobotanical history as conciousness expanders, or, in the case of LSD, is a benign modern equivalent of a historic shaman's drug (ergot, which is truly evil for your body). He might also use cannabis, probably in the form of hashish (unless his partner was young and American, when it would be unprocessed marijuana) as an enhancer of sexual feeling; the kind of magic it's used for isn't likely to be what a chaos magician be involved in.

We see him drinking with Giles, and more importantly getting Giles drunk which I take as evidence that he uses alcohol in its role as the most common date rape drug.

Julia, hey, I went to college in the seventies, and am an ethnobotanist, of course I know these things

[pinkdormouse.livejournal.com]

Hmm, I can see Ethan being snobby about coke. Either because it's an American drug and speed is British (I remember those discussions with various punk types in the 90's) or because it's a yuppie drug. Hash would almost certainly be solid and usually referred to by type (red label, black label, squishy, etc), unless he's growing it, or has a friend who is in which case it'll be leaf.

Agreed on mushrooms and other biologicals, plus opium, of course, which again was certainly available to the hash smoking crowd in the 90's at least (personally I associate it with the Glasgow crowd, but I'm sure other cities had their opium suppliers as well). I know a couple of people currently studying shamanic rituals, who may just know what's available in the UK.