How Summer came to be
Sep. 18th, 2006 09:37 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
hobgoblinnOnce upon a time, I started to read fanfic. I had gotten into BtVS by borrowing DVDs from the library, and after I had run through what they had (end of Season 5), I went to a newly discovered resource, Ye Olde Internet, hungry for more.
And Lo, I found some of the most appalling writing on some of the bigger Fic sites. Somehow, I stumbled across a story about Giles and Jenny which was quite beautiful and touching-- though at the time the sexual content was much too high for my innocent tastes. I found Of Demons and Destiny, and found that Giles centric fic, especially Buffy/ Giles, tended to be higher quality than other types of tale.
You can probably guess why. Giles as a character, at least in earlier seasons, is so multifaceted and rich with possibilities. And the connection (Bond is a little too overused in current parlance) between Watcher and Slayer bespeaks an equality in relationship that I don't believe either one of them could achieve with anyone else. They have a common calling and a heavy burden, and the earliest episodes make it clear that they are on this earth for each other-- not necessarily romantically, but certainly emotionally in addition to the roles fate has forced upon them.
One of the other things I ran across was Watchers, a season 8 BtVS spinoff, and at the time, not having seen anything like it before, I was quite impressed. I've seen other continuations of the series that did it much better, but on the whole, I'm still impressed with the concept and quality of what Watchers tried to do.
At the time, I was impressed enough to e-mail CN Winters and offer my congratulations on work well done, and my services as a Beta reader. The misuses of my native tongue in Fanfic are legion, and here was no exception. I spent about 4 months I think, reading and making not only corrections, but offering suggestions and feedback to the story authors.
One of the things I found while I was doing this work, was that I was thinking more deeply about the craft of writing, about characterization and plot, than I had since I gave up writing years ago. I started thinking about how the characters got to then season 9 of Watchers, and how the past had shaped them into who they were. And that led me to take up my pen and try my hand at some original stuff myself, under the guise of "character sketches". Yes, I was a young and foolish child in those days.
What led me to choose probably the most difficult section of canon, where the title character is Dead, for cryin' out loud? Well. One thing was that I was intrigued by a similar story, by CN Winters, about the between season 6 and 7 events which led directly into her season 8 fanon. The relationship between Giles and Willow and how they put the events of Grave behind them, and became able to trust each other and go on, is pivotal for understanding later character development.
The other thing was that I had been emotionally devastated by The Gift, at a time when I was suffering some real life trauma and aftermath of my own. I had been fighting to regain custody of my children, and at the time I was getting into this stage of my fic reading addiction, I was convinced that it was only a matter of time before I lost. A lot of my coping with the legal system, the social service system, and the business of bureaucracy, involved quite healthy escapism. There was a time when I really thought that a lot of my problems could be solved, if only I could stake a few richly deserving individuals. I retain doubts to this day about the humanity of some of them. A world with horrors laughably easy to deal with, by comparison, and where the good guys often won, was a great place to spend lonely hours in an otherwise empty apartment. And the numbing shock and horror of loss, in the early installments of Summer, were not that different from what I was going through in real life. For the first time in my life, I finally got what it took to be a writer. It's trite to call it "experience", and I wouldn't have wished this kind of experience on my worst enemy. But It gave my writing an emotional honesty and depth it hadn't really had before-- because, before, I was writing about things I didn't really understand.
This is getting way too long, and I haven't quite figured out the LJ cut mechanism yet. So I'll leave this as "to be continued." And explain why the story stayed stalled for so long-- a real life miracle, and seeing the latter seasons of BtVS and wondering, "How can I explain This?" I don't think I'm alone there.
Hob
And Lo, I found some of the most appalling writing on some of the bigger Fic sites. Somehow, I stumbled across a story about Giles and Jenny which was quite beautiful and touching-- though at the time the sexual content was much too high for my innocent tastes. I found Of Demons and Destiny, and found that Giles centric fic, especially Buffy/ Giles, tended to be higher quality than other types of tale.
You can probably guess why. Giles as a character, at least in earlier seasons, is so multifaceted and rich with possibilities. And the connection (Bond is a little too overused in current parlance) between Watcher and Slayer bespeaks an equality in relationship that I don't believe either one of them could achieve with anyone else. They have a common calling and a heavy burden, and the earliest episodes make it clear that they are on this earth for each other-- not necessarily romantically, but certainly emotionally in addition to the roles fate has forced upon them.
One of the other things I ran across was Watchers, a season 8 BtVS spinoff, and at the time, not having seen anything like it before, I was quite impressed. I've seen other continuations of the series that did it much better, but on the whole, I'm still impressed with the concept and quality of what Watchers tried to do.
At the time, I was impressed enough to e-mail CN Winters and offer my congratulations on work well done, and my services as a Beta reader. The misuses of my native tongue in Fanfic are legion, and here was no exception. I spent about 4 months I think, reading and making not only corrections, but offering suggestions and feedback to the story authors.
One of the things I found while I was doing this work, was that I was thinking more deeply about the craft of writing, about characterization and plot, than I had since I gave up writing years ago. I started thinking about how the characters got to then season 9 of Watchers, and how the past had shaped them into who they were. And that led me to take up my pen and try my hand at some original stuff myself, under the guise of "character sketches". Yes, I was a young and foolish child in those days.
What led me to choose probably the most difficult section of canon, where the title character is Dead, for cryin' out loud? Well. One thing was that I was intrigued by a similar story, by CN Winters, about the between season 6 and 7 events which led directly into her season 8 fanon. The relationship between Giles and Willow and how they put the events of Grave behind them, and became able to trust each other and go on, is pivotal for understanding later character development.
The other thing was that I had been emotionally devastated by The Gift, at a time when I was suffering some real life trauma and aftermath of my own. I had been fighting to regain custody of my children, and at the time I was getting into this stage of my fic reading addiction, I was convinced that it was only a matter of time before I lost. A lot of my coping with the legal system, the social service system, and the business of bureaucracy, involved quite healthy escapism. There was a time when I really thought that a lot of my problems could be solved, if only I could stake a few richly deserving individuals. I retain doubts to this day about the humanity of some of them. A world with horrors laughably easy to deal with, by comparison, and where the good guys often won, was a great place to spend lonely hours in an otherwise empty apartment. And the numbing shock and horror of loss, in the early installments of Summer, were not that different from what I was going through in real life. For the first time in my life, I finally got what it took to be a writer. It's trite to call it "experience", and I wouldn't have wished this kind of experience on my worst enemy. But It gave my writing an emotional honesty and depth it hadn't really had before-- because, before, I was writing about things I didn't really understand.
This is getting way too long, and I haven't quite figured out the LJ cut mechanism yet. So I'll leave this as "to be continued." And explain why the story stayed stalled for so long-- a real life miracle, and seeing the latter seasons of BtVS and wondering, "How can I explain This?" I don't think I'm alone there.
Hob
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Date: 2006-09-19 02:53 am (UTC)I have kept an online journal for a decade. Ten years. All ten years of that writing is considerably less self-exposure than a single short story published here, I believe. I find it frankly terrifying to publish fiction for other people to read.
And the connection (Bond is a little too overused in current parlance) between Watcher and Slayer bespeaks an equality in relationship that I don't believe either one of them could achieve with anyone else. They have a common calling and a heavy burden, and the earliest episodes make it clear that they are on this earth for each other-- not necessarily romantically, but certainly emotionally in addition to the roles fate has forced upon them.
Yes yes yes yes yes! This is exactly what got me into fanfiction as well.
1) Giles is utterly fascinating. I'm sure it helps that he's played by a distintively handsome actor with a lovely voice, but the character itself has so much possibility, mostly unrealized in the series.
2) The series also sets up and then does nothing with the connection those two have. In the unaired pilot, it's even more clear: Giles tells Buffy bluntly that it is his destiny to be her Watcher, as it is hers to be the Slayer. The two are given the job together, and she does in fact need him to survive.
My fictional obsession in this fandom (the only fandom I've been involved with in any serious way) is exploring that connection & relationship from various angles. Sometimes romantically, sometimes not.
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