“Better Left Unspoken”, End notes
[ Endnotes posted 15 Sep 2019 ]
Where did the idea for the story come from?
Since this was done for
summer_of_giles, I’d been reading through other stories, even some from previous years. One somewhere - I don’t even remember which one now - was based on an affiliation between Giles and Cordelia, and I’m not sure it even explained how such a thing had come about. That got me to thinking, though, and somehow the band candy incident worked its way into my head as a precipitating event, and things just kept going from there.
Is there any particular significance to the title?
Nope. I just wanted something workable.
What is the thing I like most about this story? the thing I like least, or about which I feel most doubtful?
There are a number of things I like about the story; individually, the segments for Revelations, Helpless, Earshot, and the Freshman. Overall, I was most pleased by the basic structure of the story: small differences creeping in, then becoming larger differences, then (with the Graduation segment) an explanation that gave any re-readings an entirely different cast to the individual episodes. I also believe I made a successful effort to approach ‘relationship’-type stuff with a more delicate touch that I had previously used.
As for dislikes … none, really, just an awareness that this story can only work as fanfic, and even there it requires people to not just be familiar with the history of the show but to have a lot of details fairly solid in memory. (Which was never truly guaranteed, but is even more a potential problem now that the show has been off the air for more than fifteen years.)
Is there anything I think I could have done better, or might do differently if I had it to do over?
For the approach I chose to take, I think I carried it off as well as I’m capable of doing. If I had it to do over - without the memory of how I did it the first time - I might not do as well. This particular approach, I believe, simply worked.
Was there a different direction I might have wanted to take the story, and what would have been some of the advantages of the not-taken path?
As already noted in reply to a comment on the story, my first idea had actually been for Ripper and Cordelia to leave Sunnydale together after the band candy night, with the rest of the group having to track them down and bring them back. I think that could have been a lot of fun, and I’d love to see it done by someone with the necessary rollicking style. Pretty sure it won’t be me, though; I’ve already told the story I intended to.
Any observations to add at the end?
Only that I really, really enjoyed substituting Cordelia for Olivia in the ‘love nest’ scene from the Freshman, and watching how much more it freaked Buffy out than we saw in the original. That was fun.