Giles and Jenny Musings
Apr. 20th, 2007 06:48 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
hobgoblinnSo, I signed up for ![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
summerofgiles. I know it's a ways away, and also that if I Really can't come up with a fic, I can always drop back and punt with some meta. One needs only peruse my journal and comments to see that self expression, of the analytical kind, is not one of my problems. But I'm trying to continue writing fiction, and that leads me to the reason for this post.
I'm trying to come up with an idea. What about Giles do I want to explore? Why?
I started going over in my mind the various relationships he has-- not sexual, because I can't write that. Too busy giggling, for one thing. I've read lots of it, and I applaud those who can do it. But for a variety of reasons that have no bearing on this discussion, that's not somewhere I'm able or willing to go. And really, it seems to me the fandom is if anything over-represented in the romance/ sexual relationship department. Real life has lots of other moments, and other kinds of relationships. What do they tell us about Giles, and about things in our lives that matter?
As I reflect on Giles and his relationships, I keep coming back to the realization that Jenny is the first and last time we see him interacting with another adult in a meaningful, connected kind of way. And I'm struck with how she really is unusual as a character in the Jossverse. I Like Jenny. She's in some ways the antithesis of the rest of the group-- a straight shooter who tells you what she's feeling and thinking. She has her secrets, of course, and she suffers a heavy price for keeping them. But she doesn't spend inordinate amounts of time avoiding reality, as the kids and Giles tend to. I get the feeling that Buffy and the Scoobies often don't know what they're really feeling. Jenny, for all her secrets, does. She even knows she's doing wrong, keeping her secrets. But she consciously chooses her actions, and when confronted, she doesn't flinch away from the magnitude of what she's done. I hear her explaining, but not excusing, her actions. And I really respect that. It certainly sets her apart from everyone else in that regard. How would the events of the next 5 years have been shaped, if she'd continued in their midst as a colleague, a fellow fighter, even a lover?
By the time I discovered internet fandom, Jenny was long dead, so I didn't read many fics including her as a character. Oddly, though, one of the first fics I read was Et in Arcadia Ego, by Tweed Empress. Beautifully done, and I highly recommend it, though I blush to admit the, er, adult content put me off a bit at first. I don't have a huge track record to go on, but so far, it seems that my muse leans toward filling in the blanks-- the liminal moments we didn't see, but might have. My Nano novel is future fic, but even that is in my mind filling in and extrapolating a situation I see logically following from the end of the show, and that I've seen in other future fic. But Jenny hasn't called out to me, mostly because , well, she's dead. (Yeah, so was Snyder, but that's a special case.) We Know what happens to her in canon, and frankly, it's depressing at best, and wrenchingly painful at worst. All of which makes it ever Less likely someone's going to write something filling in the blanks, staying true to the achingly beautiful potential of her life.
And that's a shame because I think the Giles/ Jenny dynamic might have things to say. Unfortunately, when they are characters paired in fic, there's a tendency for a good bit of it to not be about anything but getting them together. In every sense. And there's plenty of canon support for this. And plenty of impetus to erase the frustration and sadness of what might have been.
In addition to all this baggage, I think one of the things that makes Jenny hard to write is that the show itself didn't give us much in the way of healthy adult relationships/ examples. It's hard, for me, anyway, to find an angle that somehow reflects canon. That keeps you enough in canon that you're not just hijacking bodies of the actors to play out what would otherwise be original fic. For me, at this stage, fan fiction is about exploring an idea prompted by canon, whether that be the consequences of some known action, or explaining some event intelligibly (always fun in the Jossverse), or taking a closer look at a character or relationship. And if we try to do a what if Jenny had lived story, the temptation I see all too often is to make some kind of happily ever after alternate reality that doesn't seem to capture, for me, the essential unpredictable wild energy of the woman, much less Giles' attraction to it.
Forgive me for rambling on here. I was hoping some of this might kindle some idea I could run with. Not so much. But maybe the comments will be more help. What do you folks think? About anything?
summerofgiles. I know it's a ways away, and also that if I Really can't come up with a fic, I can always drop back and punt with some meta. One needs only peruse my journal and comments to see that self expression, of the analytical kind, is not one of my problems. But I'm trying to continue writing fiction, and that leads me to the reason for this post.I'm trying to come up with an idea. What about Giles do I want to explore? Why?
I started going over in my mind the various relationships he has-- not sexual, because I can't write that. Too busy giggling, for one thing. I've read lots of it, and I applaud those who can do it. But for a variety of reasons that have no bearing on this discussion, that's not somewhere I'm able or willing to go. And really, it seems to me the fandom is if anything over-represented in the romance/ sexual relationship department. Real life has lots of other moments, and other kinds of relationships. What do they tell us about Giles, and about things in our lives that matter?
As I reflect on Giles and his relationships, I keep coming back to the realization that Jenny is the first and last time we see him interacting with another adult in a meaningful, connected kind of way. And I'm struck with how she really is unusual as a character in the Jossverse. I Like Jenny. She's in some ways the antithesis of the rest of the group-- a straight shooter who tells you what she's feeling and thinking. She has her secrets, of course, and she suffers a heavy price for keeping them. But she doesn't spend inordinate amounts of time avoiding reality, as the kids and Giles tend to. I get the feeling that Buffy and the Scoobies often don't know what they're really feeling. Jenny, for all her secrets, does. She even knows she's doing wrong, keeping her secrets. But she consciously chooses her actions, and when confronted, she doesn't flinch away from the magnitude of what she's done. I hear her explaining, but not excusing, her actions. And I really respect that. It certainly sets her apart from everyone else in that regard. How would the events of the next 5 years have been shaped, if she'd continued in their midst as a colleague, a fellow fighter, even a lover?
By the time I discovered internet fandom, Jenny was long dead, so I didn't read many fics including her as a character. Oddly, though, one of the first fics I read was Et in Arcadia Ego, by Tweed Empress. Beautifully done, and I highly recommend it, though I blush to admit the, er, adult content put me off a bit at first. I don't have a huge track record to go on, but so far, it seems that my muse leans toward filling in the blanks-- the liminal moments we didn't see, but might have. My Nano novel is future fic, but even that is in my mind filling in and extrapolating a situation I see logically following from the end of the show, and that I've seen in other future fic. But Jenny hasn't called out to me, mostly because , well, she's dead. (Yeah, so was Snyder, but that's a special case.) We Know what happens to her in canon, and frankly, it's depressing at best, and wrenchingly painful at worst. All of which makes it ever Less likely someone's going to write something filling in the blanks, staying true to the achingly beautiful potential of her life.
And that's a shame because I think the Giles/ Jenny dynamic might have things to say. Unfortunately, when they are characters paired in fic, there's a tendency for a good bit of it to not be about anything but getting them together. In every sense. And there's plenty of canon support for this. And plenty of impetus to erase the frustration and sadness of what might have been.
In addition to all this baggage, I think one of the things that makes Jenny hard to write is that the show itself didn't give us much in the way of healthy adult relationships/ examples. It's hard, for me, anyway, to find an angle that somehow reflects canon. That keeps you enough in canon that you're not just hijacking bodies of the actors to play out what would otherwise be original fic. For me, at this stage, fan fiction is about exploring an idea prompted by canon, whether that be the consequences of some known action, or explaining some event intelligibly (always fun in the Jossverse), or taking a closer look at a character or relationship. And if we try to do a what if Jenny had lived story, the temptation I see all too often is to make some kind of happily ever after alternate reality that doesn't seem to capture, for me, the essential unpredictable wild energy of the woman, much less Giles' attraction to it.
Forgive me for rambling on here. I was hoping some of this might kindle some idea I could run with. Not so much. But maybe the comments will be more help. What do you folks think? About anything?
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(no subject)
Date: 2007-04-21 12:33 am (UTC)If Jenny had lived, I could see things being good for while, but Giles and Jenny both had baggage already, between her omissions and his past coming back to bite them, literally. They'd have to work on those things once the getting together excitement wore off. I would love to see how Jenny dealt with the Gentlemen, though that's a HUGE order. I wonder whether she'd notice Willow heading for the deep end sooner. How would Angelus be resouled if Jenny lives?
Sorry. Enough babble.
(no subject)
Date: 2007-04-21 01:33 am (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2007-04-21 02:14 am (UTC)My view of Giles (which I think comes from being older) (I hate fics that treat him as over the hill) is that he's in that place in life--late thirties, early forties--where people start to Take Stock again, and start wondering whether they've achieved their goals, become the person they wanted to be, or wonder whether their goals even matter, any more. I saw him as being undercover on several levels (the bumbling librarian seems as much of a cover as him pretending to know nothing much of spells) in the early BtVS seasons, and it seems that between Jenny's youth and honesty that he'd find himself having to blow his cover a lot sooner. I also think much of his hesitation in earlier seasons was that he knows nothing about American teenagers, and it never dawned on him that he'd have to deal with them in the way he ends up doing. He does, eventually, make a fine father figure for Buffy, but it's not without a lot of stumbling, denial, and refusal. Jenny has enthusiasm for so many things that Giles doesn't trust, and it would be fun to see the conflicts, but also where they come to share. And how they come to trust, because that's a long, long walk. Would she have educated more than just the core Scoobies about the supernatural? She was so open...
Boy, did you push the chatter-chatter button! :-)
(no subject)
Date: 2007-04-21 01:48 am (UTC)Jenny is such a fun, strong, smart, unpredictable, independent character. I would think there'd be many stories to tell about her, even if you wanted to color within the lines of canon:
Early dates.
The time over the summer when they ran into each other and got coffee though that didn't count as a date, at least not in Giles' mind.
Jenny takes him to the hospital after shooting him in the butt with a crossbow.
Varying from canon: the adventures of Giles and Jenny over the summer, when some plot-heavy problem must be solved. Maybe they're not romantically involved, but we see Giles moving to the point he was at in the season 2 opened, when he grins at her. (This could be a fun one! Lots of scope!)
Suppose she lives.
What happens with the end of season two? Does Angelus get resouled immediately? Does conflict with Spike & Dru ensue?
Suppose they break up over an issue like Giles' devotion to his work?
Suppose Buffy acts up? (She's capable of being massively selfish.)
(no subject)
Date: 2007-04-21 02:54 am (UTC)These are great ideas, too. I'd love to see you run with a couple of them, yourself....
haven't found much
Date: 2007-04-21 04:02 am (UTC)Hmm. I think maybe I'm going to have to do something. After I finish one of my WIPs.
(no subject)
Date: 2007-04-21 02:48 am (UTC)I have a whole alternate timeline where Jenny lives planned out, which I wrote about here (http://blueanddollsome.livejournal.com/16293.html), and wrote fics about: Five Things That Never Happened To J. (http://www.fanfiction.net/s/2932224/1/), Four Things That Never Happened To Giles In A Kitchen And One That Might've (http://www.livejournal.com/tools/memories.bml?user=blueanddollsome&keyword=4+things+that+never+happened&filter=all), and Nuclear Fission (http://www.livejournal.com/tools/memories.bml?user=blueanddollsome&keyword=Nuclear+Fission&filter=all).
Of course, what changes most for Giles is that he gets to have a personal life, and to define himself as something other than a Watcher. The reason why I thought Giles and Jenny should have a kid in the alternate timeline is that it would accentuate any tensions between Giles' personal life and his being a Watcher that might arise. It's also fun because it would influence the father-daughter dynamic between Giles and Buffy.
I'd kinda like to see how Jenny would deal with all the tension of season 7. Would Giles be as pod-like if he had Jenny to confide in? Or would he push her away? What would her opinion of Spike be, and would she side with Giles over his actions in "Lies My Parents Told Me?" What would Jenny's take be on the infamous "Empty Places" scene? Of course Giles and Jenny would have to have a love scene in "Touched" like everybody else, and it's unfortunate that you're not able to write such a scene, but what would happen in the lead-up?
(no subject)
Date: 2007-04-21 03:07 am (UTC)I'm not sure a lot of things would have gone according to canon had Jenny lived. She provided a much needed dose of common sense and insight, and much as Spike does in some later seasons, she's an outside observer who makes them take a fresh look at their world and assumptions. Giles' season 4 drift would not have been allowed without a fight. And his betrayal of Buffy in S3 "Helpless" would have been handled in a whole different light had Jenny been there, for the comparison of betrayals if nothing else.
(no subject)
Date: 2007-04-21 04:48 am (UTC)I think you can stick reletively close to canon if you want, at least in terms of themes and major arcs. Or not. The first thing to do would be to decide which season you want to write about, and then figure out what the major points would have been in her character development and in her relationship with Giles up until that point. ... How do you see "Helpless" transpiring with Jenny around? That's something to write about.