Snyder Backstory Poll

[hobgoblinn]

I've decided would be a good night to play with the poll creation thing in live journal. So, tell me, friends, what do you think on these burning questions?



[Poll #940771]

And, for extra credit, is there anything about Snyder that interests/ puzzles you? Share! I've got my own ideas, but I thought it'd be fun to see what other people noticed that I might have missed. (Not to mention, it distracts me from my own work.)

Icon, if it works, is from blueanddollsome. I'm not sure I copied it right.

Good night, all.

Hob

Comments

Synder's name, among other things

[theblackmare.livejournal.com]

Rudolph. Also spelled Rudolf or Rudalph, etc.
Imagine, for a delicious moment, the teasing. [okay, very squick-worthy, and no, I wouldn't wish that on anyone except a fictional snivel like him.]

I think he taught civics because it is usually the MOST boring required class for high school graduation. He gets all hot about city managers, town council proceedings, planning boards, and anguished cases of eminent domain where the town must tear down houses of elderly ladies who have lived there since childhood to make way for the new parking garage built in the hope that they can attract a bus line or other major transit vendor. That's why he was so hyped up about the fact that the major shook his hand -- twice! -- and felt he could get help from the real Movers and Shakers in the community's power base to keep Buffy out of school. [Ha. Little did he know what kind of movement, and how peculiar the shaking.]

Snyder's dad was a "pillar of the community" kind of man, sold used cars or vacuum cleaners at his own little business and was a member of a lodge named after a large mammal. Yet somehow the business never really grew, and the district around it never prospered, and thank goodness he didn't outlive his savings. When he was eleven, Snyder's mother ran off with a minister who ran a fire-and-brimstone tent revival program; very charismatic fellow who was making money hand over fist.

Synder's paternal grandmother, a German immigrant, had a heavy hand in his raising even before that. She was a neat freak of the first order and a member of one of those churches where the Flower Guild is the scariest group of snippy women you'd never want to meet. No red flowers on the alter: too provocative. Pinks were okay, but nothing wild orange. The year they had to replace the old, decrepit Advent wreath candle holder had almost caused a schism in the fold because they couldn't agree on the size or shape. When she was outvoted, Snyder's grandmother left the church and never went back, preferring instead to spend Sunday mornings in private meditation with the gorier passages of Scripture; Snyder was expected to memorize quite a few of these, and was expected to be otherwise silent the entire Sunday. Sunday dinner was always an overdone roast, dry potatoes, khaki colored peas, and iced tea. No alcohol was ever allowed in that house.

No pets. Snyder was never a scout ["too dirty"] but was allowed to be on the yearbook committee. In seventh grade, he was injured trying out for the badmitten team when he tripped and fell over one of the cables holding up the net poles and broke his nose and right wrist. After that, he was not allowed to participate in any sport. He did not make the first cut for the debate team because he got too worked up and his face turned red and he would fling spittle on the front row of spectators. Plus, they could barely see him over the podium. He had a secret, intense crush on the home economics teacher that lasted from his freshman through his senior years, although he never so much as said hello to her and would never have considered taking her class. But he thought about her all the time, to the point of staking out her car to watch her get in and drive away. One day, he'd prove himself worthy of her, and she'd recognize his potential when no one else did. She married a lawyer from Delaware and moved away the summer before his senior year and he never got over it.

I could keep going....it's procrastination because I'm supposed to be writing my own story...naughty me.

Re: Synder's name, among other things

[a2zmom.livejournal.com]

I was going to suggest Rudolph also! Rudolph Synder. The man had demon parents.

Re: Synder's name, among other things

[hobgoblinn.livejournal.com]

This is great! You should condense it down a little and post it to "still grr" a new community (check my friends list in my profile for the link.) They're doing a minor character month, and quite few very cool Snyder drabbles have come out of it.

I see him more as a New York City Catholic Schoolboy who got his early moral training in order from the nuns. I actually got a piece of this in church on Sunday. (Not like I'd actually be listening or anything. Musician, remember?) How they succeeded in instilling the important values of discipline, responsibility, punctuality in him, but somehow couldn't get through on the idea of caritas.

I just realized-- that's also the name of Lorne's place in AtS. Hmm....

Thanks for commenting. I can't make him Rudolph, though. I just can't.

[blueanddollsome.livejournal.com]

The icon isn't working. Try uploading it from here: http://pics.livejournal.com/blueanddollsome/pic/00153cg4

I think Snyder's first name is Rodney.

[hobgoblinn.livejournal.com]

Thanks for the link. But darn it! It's too big. Probably because I don't have a paid account. Ah well. It's still a great icon. I hope somebody else picks it up.

Rodney's not bad-- I hadn't thought of that one....

Must ponder...

[willowgreen.livejournal.com]

He was definitely a Social Studies teacher.

[hobgoblinn.livejournal.com]

Weird Icon! Is there a story behind it?

I don't know-- Most of the social studies teachers I had were really good-- interested in ideas and how people really are. I see him as more of a math guy-- a place where everything is orderly and predictable. As a young guy just starting to get his degree, I mean. I can't imagine someone as unimaginative as he is going for a history/ social studies major. Even as an education major (And I was one for a while, so I feel justified in dissing them a little. No offense to the many good teachers out there who became such in spite of University Education departments....)

Thanks for the comment.

Hob

[willowgreen.livejournal.com]

Weird Icon! Is there a story behind it?

Some time back, rahirah joked about Willow/Snyder being someone's OTP. So of course, I had to make some creepy Willow/Snyder icons. Later she said something about Giles/Lunch Lady, but I haven't gotten around to making those yet.

I don't know-- Most of the social studies teachers I had were really good-- interested in ideas and how people really are. I see him as more of a math guy-- a place where everything is orderly and predictable. As a young guy just starting to get his degree, I mean. I can't imagine someone as unimaginative as he is going for a history/ social studies major.

Interesting, because my experiences were the exact opposite. Most of my social studies teachers in junior high and high school were either nuts (they were the good ones) or idiots. My mother still hasn't gotten over the junior high SS teacher who said something at parents' night about Swahili being the "national language" of Africa! But I think my feeling that Snyder must have been in social studies is based on my 12th-grade American History teacher. He'd been an assistant principal (read: guy in charge of discipline) for several years and, for some reason, decided to go back to teaching the year I had him. He may well have been the most boring teacher I ever had. His particular hobbyhorse was William Jennings Bryan and the gold standard, in particular the quote "Thou shalt not crucify mankind on a cross of gold," and that's literally the only thing I remember from that class. Then there was the chair of my high school social studies department. He was a John Birch Society member who warned us not to take 12th-grade AP History unless we were going to give up all our other activities, which resulted directly in my going into that "regular" American History class. Basically, in my experience, Social Studies teachers tend to be wedded to their theories abut life to the point of ignoring reality. Very Snyder.

My math teachers, on the other hand, were mostly very cool, interesting people. In general I find that math people are creative and open-minded. Most of them love music and all of them love games. One of my high school math teachers was a former world tiddlywinks champion! Bach was a math guy. My father-in-law, who loves jazz and poetry, is a mathematician. The math people I know see rules and structure as pieces of a game that they can play endlessly, not as a way to keep people locked into one spot.

Therefore, IMO, Snyder could not possibly have had a math background (though I suppose he could have been pressed into service as a math teacher after the eighth-grade algebra teacher drank himself to death). He certainly could also have been a civics teacher, but as far as I know, most high schools don't have civics classes anymore--mine didn't, and that was 30 years ago. So I'm sticking with Social Studies!

[hobgoblinn.livejournal.com]

I'll have to think on this some more. I kinda want Snyder to have that Math background because I want him to have some undiscovered depths, much as you describe. Someone who used to be playful and like puzzles-- real ones, not gathering pieces to figure out how a bad situation is all Summers' fault (S2 "I only have eyes for you" I think.) Some redeeming quality that got lost somewhere.

But all this is getting me no closer to finishing the fic, so-- back to work. I have 15 minutes of lunch left, right?

[rainkatt.livejournal.com]

He was soooo a civics teacher--he sort of reminds me of one of mine, actually. I think his first name is Remus. :p

He's divorced. When he was in college, he let go and had fun. Like many short, odd-looking men, he was an attentive lover, and he charmed a pretty, earnest redhead named Lillian. She was in his math class, and he went to a couple of protests (the Vietnam war (is he old enough for that?)) with her. She was charmed by his brilliance and his love for her. They married after graduation, but she was disillusioned when he kept coming home angry from his high school teaching job. He hated the students, and he became obsessed with the rules. She divorced him when he accepted the principal job in Sunnydale, after years of quite misery. She taught writing and poetry in high school, and quit when she published a novel. She wanted to have a baby, and when she wasn't writing, she tutored illiterate adults and wrote articles about ecology and feminism. She started her second novel, and when she began to teach that reading class at the daycare, he couldn't stand it any more, and took the Sunnydale job. They parted, bitter, resigned (him), hopeful (her).

[hobgoblinn.livejournal.com]

Oh man-- everybody wants him to be a civics teacher!! Arrgh!

I can see it though. Not sure I can write it, but I sure see it.

Thanks for this great backstory for him, too. I see him more as divorced, too, and bitter about it. Armin Shimmerman is such a fantastic actor, that I picked up a lot of layers with the character. He's not just a cardboard villain-- and there's more emotion than just tingle moments at the thought of getting rid of troublemakers like Summers.

[rainkatt.livejournal.com]

I always figured that it was more than just being the high school geek that had scarred him. Things went wrong somewhere, and he found comfort in following a rigid set of rules, and trying to force others to, as well. That never goes well.

The flip side: maybe he was the imaginative math teacher, good at getting his students to think, friendly with them, until something happened; maybe he had a party at his house, someone got into trouble for drinking... ;-)

Also, I can't BELIEVE I typo-ed "quiet." Grrrrr.