DVD Commentary to My Remix
Title: Best Friends Forever (Devon Days Remix) [DVD Commentary]
Fandom: Buffy the Vampire Slayer
Rating: PG
Pairing: Willow/Xander
Timeline/Spoilers: Takes between in an AU summer between seasons 6 and 7. Spoilers up to "Grave."
Summary: There is a wisdom hidden in the innocence of the young.
A/N: Remix of "Brick by Brick" by Sarafu (obsessivemuch). Part of the Remix Redux IV. This is the DVD commentary. You can find the original remix here.
Obviously, no one has asked for a commentary in the short time since the reveal of authors. However, I did find that writing a remix was such a fascinating and different process that I wanted to write a little bit on how I did it and what my remix philosophy was, and this seemed like the best format in which to do so.
Best Friends Forever (Devon Days Remix)I was pretty sure I was going to remix Serafu's "Brick by Brick" the first time I read it. It spans a summer in a strange location (the Devonshire coven), and introduces a cast of original characters. This made it fairly easy for me to switch the emphasis so that I was telling a dramatically different story using many of the same events.
They had all felt it: a dark force, fueled by grief, more powerful than anything they had ever sensed before. They had sent the only person who could stop it, entrusting him with their power. And then the Devonshire coven simply had waited, and prayed, and allowed fate to take its course. The gods' will would be done, as always.Serafu's fic starts with Willow waking up after a nightmare in which she was reliving the death of Tara. Since I was switching the POV away from Willow and Xander, I had to pick somewhere (somewhen?) else to begin my story, but I knew I didn't want to begin when Willow and Xander first met my POV character. We know Willow and Xander's whole life story (mostly) leading up to Serafu, but I wanted to introduce Alicia starting at the point when the Devonshire coven first becomes involved in canon, i.e. "Grave."
Also, a note on the phrase "Devonshire coven": I've been informed that the actual place name is Devon, and I take care to use that whenever I make a specific reference to the location. But Giles modifies, for whatever reason, the word "coven" with "Devonshire" in "Grave"--so I do too. It's canon, even if it doesn't make sense.
Except it's not canon, when I went back and actually watched the ep instead of relying on transcripts. Mea culpa.
Alicia lacked the wisdom and patience of her elders.The original story was written in an omniscient-ish 3rd, with the focus being on Willow and Xander--we never get into anybody's thoughts but Willow and Xander, although we do get to see some things they don't see. The switch to a limited 3rd was mainly because I'm most comfortable writing in it, but the switch away from Willow and Xander was absolutely crucial if I was going to open up the fic to tell a different story, with a different arc, than the original.
She envied them their serenity, able to accept that which they could not change, but she could not sit still while the fate of the world hung in such serious jeopardy.Yes I just referenced the AA prayer. I needed to give Alicia an arc in this fic, so I made her not as wise as the elders, so that she'd still be struggling to achieve wisdom herself even as she guided Willow and Xander.
And here's another place where Jossverse canon and the actual world don't exactly line up: the depiction of Wicca. As a canon whore, it's most important to me to keep true to the Jossverse version, both in detail and in "feel," which has the convenient result of allowing me to make things up whenever I feel like it.
She made her way out of the coven house and watched the children playing in the twilight. As in the serenity of the elders, there was a wisdom hidden within their innocence. Life for them was the moment, the now, a simple game of fox and geese. "Got you!" Bethany called as she grabbed Sophia."Fox and Geese" is the result of googling "british children's games tag it" or something along those lines. It's a game I've actually played before (I think we called it "Octupos" when I played) and it's basically a variation on Tag.
I put the children here because I wanted to convey the sense that life in the coven was a vibrant one, with many generations living together and working together. Plus of course, they provide a counterpoint to the elders (all but one of whom we never see) as Alicia ponders. When I wrote this scene, I had no idea that I would return to the children later to structure my fic.
And then that furious anger which threatened to destroy everything Alicia held dear was gone, and there was . . . silence, of a sort. Stillness. Alicia made her way back into the coven house. "Is it true, Grandmother?" she asked once she had entered. "Is it over?"Wiccans are fun to write because one can just have them intuit everything they need to know.
The elderly woman raised her eyes and let her gaze fall on Alicia. "The world is safe for now, my child," she said. "But no. It is not over; it is just beginning."
* * *
When Alicia first saw the children, her first thought was how young they looked.This was me struggling to come up with some response for Alicia to have to Willow and Xander's arrival. Of course, in the fic as it now stands it serves to establish the parallel between Willow/Xander and Bethany/Sophia.
"Welcome to our coven," Alicia said to the young witch, Willow Rosenberg. This was the woman who had come within a hair's breadth of destroying the world, standing next to her just as young companion.Note that Xander isn't young for any particular reason; it's just that Willow's awfully young to end the world, and he's the same age, so he's young too. She of course doesn't know about his involvement in "Grave" yet, but even so I think this still show signs of the initial awkwardness with which I approached this transition.
"I'm Willow," the girl said, "and this is Xander. Giles said you could help."Almost all of the dialogue in this scene was in the orignal fic, but I trimmed a lot of it down on the assumption that the less the characters said, the more emphasis it would carry. Also, I felt weird copy-and-pasting huge paragraphs of somebody else's work.
"We can help only if you are willing to help yourself first. The rules here are fairly simple, the basic tenets of Wicca that Mr. Giles assures me you already know even if you do not follow them," Alicia said, sitting on the edge of an armchair and gesturing for the pair to sit on a nearby settee.
The girl blanched at Alicia's reproving stare, but to her credit she kept her gaze steady. "I want . . . I want to change. That's why I'm here."
Alicia nodded. The girl would need to face many cold and uncomfortable truths this summer if she was to learn what she needed to know. "I can see that you believe it to be so, but actions often speak louder than words. You will have to prove yourself, Willow, prove that you want to harness your power for good as much as we want you to. But you must be aware that the first sign of using magic for a selfish purpose or to do harm will result in the expulsion of you from this sanctuary." Although what they would do in that circumstance, Alicia truly did not know. Willow Rosenberg possessed too much sheer power to let her go untrained. She had already proven to be a danger.
Willow nodded and her voice was steady as she spoke. "I understand." Perhaps she would be able to learn what she needed to after all.
"Excellent," Alicia said, allowing warmth to creep into her voice. "We have a room prepared for you already. Your friend will have to find another place to stay, however. This is sacred ground, and only those versed in its customs are allowed to tread it."
"I know," the boy spoke up, quickly and politely. "Giles set me up with a place to stay nearby."
It was then that Grandmother spoke for the first time. She had been there the entire time, silently watching the exchange, still as a statue. "Let us not be so hasty, Alicia," she said.
"Grandmother?"
"Look at them, my child. He is the one."
"The one?" Alicia looked at the boy for the first time. The girl's power was obvious to anyone with trained eyes, and Alicia had looked to her first and more or less completely ignored her companion, but as she peered more deeply, her grandmother's words became clear. "You're the one who saved the world."
The boy didn't quite meet her gaze. "I just wanted to be with Willow when the world ended."
"You're modest," Grandmother said. "But most of all, you are unselfish, a lesson that Miss Rosenberg needs to learn while she is here. You've come to share your friend's burden, an admirable trait, and one that we cannot ignore."
"Grandmother?" Alicia asked, not understanding.
"We owe him a great debt for returning one who was lost, and we will not deny him the thing he will not ask for."
"But. . . ." What her grandmother wanted to do was completely without precedent.
"Hush," Grandmother said, and Alicia knew better than to argue further. "The boy may not have the same gifts we do, but he will respect our ways. He may prove to be able to help her in ways that we cannot. The room next to hers is empty, is it not?" She turned and left the room, in her way which was so quick and graceful one might have thought she had never been there to begin with.
The boy and girl shot dumbfounded looks at each other, but Alicia rose and spoke. "Come with me and I will show you your rooms."
"What about sacred traditions?" asked Willow.
"If Grandmother says that the rules can be bent, then the rules will be bent," Alicia answered.
Willow nodded and the three walked to the pair the rest of the way of rooms in silence. What was it that her grandmother saw, Alicia wondered, and what other surprises would the summer hold in store?Pretty much all of the above was just a simple, straightfoward POV switch. Alicia is given a few thoughts which add a new perspective to the original fic, but not much.
The original fic spans the entire summer between "Grave" and Willow and Xander's return in what would be an AU Season 7, focusing on just a couple of scenes. I do the same here, but this is the only scene which appears in both the original and this remix. Of course, it's an important scene in both fics, but I don't have a lot to say about it since I didn't really write it.
* * * This scene, then, is a case of my using Serafu's exposition and fashioning a scene out of it, teasing some vivid images out of something Serafu skims over. I wanted to wanted to show Willow and Xander starting their lives in Devon rather than just tell about it, and also to show Alicia beginning to be transformed by witnessing the strength of Willow and Xander's friendship.
The next morning Willow and Xander came down to breakfast, and Alicia began to see immediately the wisdom of her grandmother's decision. Xander's presence helped to put Willow at ease in her new and strange surroundings, and as they joked over their breakfast Alicia couldn't help but smile herself.I don't know what it is they are joking about, and I suppose it doesn't matter. The important thing is there isn't anything Xander can't crack a joke about, and when he does so even foreign soil is rendered that much less alien to Willow.
I sort of like to think he was making fun of British cooking, though. I wonder if they were served beans for breakfast.
They stayed together through meditation, and then had to separate as Celeste took away Willow for training.I think Celeste and Grandmother were supposed to be the same person in the original fic, but I wasn't sure, so I kept the distinction here. I think it helps to create the impression that the coven does contain more people than just Alicia and her grandmother.
"There isn't much really to keep you interested while she is away," Alicia told Xander. "We live simple lives here."
"Well, simple is good," Xander had said. "Our lives have gotten too complicated anyway. Is there something I can do to help? I'm pretty handy with a hammer."
Alicia smiled. "I'm sure we can find something for you to do," she said, and of course she was right.Originally, I was going to go on more about how Xander put his carpentry skills to work in helping out the coven, but every way I tried to tell it came out "Community of women needs the man to arrive and do the manly work." Making the coven dependent on Xander's help underscored his usefulness and the wisdom of letting him stay, but the sexual politics of it just weren't something with which I was comfortable.
Although to think about it, Xander's rôle in the Scoobies isn't all that different.
* * *
"Do you think she is getting better?" Xander asked her one day, about a month past midsummer. It wasn't quite the right question to ask, but she knew what he meant.I spent a bit of time figuring out where the various scenes would have fallen in the timeline of Serafu's story, and then using Wikipedia to place them within a neopagan annual cycle. I think the conversation that this scene is supposed to preface takes place sometime in August, which means that a couple weeks pass between this scene (which would be in late July) and that one.
She had nodded, looking out to the horizon. "Willow's a quick learner," she answered. "There were simply a few things which she had to be made to see."
"Do you . . . do you think she'll be able to go back?"
Alicia turned and looked the boy in the eyes. "She will have to, Xander. She is going to be needed in Sunnydale." No one was completely certain what was going to happen, but Celeste had foreseen some things pretty clearly, and there was no doubt that whatever was going down in Sunnydale the next year, the forces of good would need every weapon at that disposal.
Is that what this girl is? Alicia asked herself. A weapon?
"Will she be ready?" Xander asked. "She hasn't even been off the coven's lands in over a month."
"She will have to be ready," Alicia said. She could see the despair in the boy's eyes, and the desire to help as well. "Perhaps it would be best if you began to take her elsewhere for brief periods of time, help her to readjust to the outside world."
Xander nodded, taking the burden on himself without a word. "Should I tell her about . . . about Sunnydale?"
"No," said Alicia, deciding for herself the same moment the words left her lips. "Grandmother and I will when the time is right." No reason to burden the girl with news of the apocalypse when she was doing so well.In "Brick by Brick," one of the important scenes is when Xander tells Willow all this stuff that Alicia is now telling Xander. So here I'm setting up the backstory for that scene while I am also telling the reader what they need to know to understand this story.
Xander nodded somberly and turned away. "Xander?" Alicia said, and the boy turned back. "You're good for her, you know. I'm glad you're here for her."Alicia's slow appreciation of the bond between Willow and Xander is, of course, a crucial part of her arc for this story. The point of a remix, IMHO, is to tell a different story using the same events, and this is Alicia's story.
* * *
She phoned Rupert shortly after that, to provide him the benefit of Celeste's foresight and to inform him of Willow's progress. "I'm glad to know that she is improving, of course," he had said. "We'll be able to use her skills, research and otherwise. But are you sure she is ready?"
"If Celeste is right-and we both know what the chances of her being wrong are-then it simply doesn't matter one way or the other, Rupert. You are going to need her."This short scene does many things, but perhaps the most important of them is introducing a character who can call Giles "Rupert." To me, it really drives home the fact that we're in a completely different sphere of influence; here, Giles is just one of the players, not the big important mentor.
"Yes, of course. I trust Celeste's vision completely, and I'm sure you're doing everything that can be done. I simply worry, as you must understand."
"I do," Alicia assured him. "You care for the girl. But don't watch out; that young man you sent over with her will make sure that nothing harms her."
"Yes," said Rupert. "I know. They love each other."In "Brick by Brick" Giles and Anya are having their own romance at this time, and I thought about finding a way to allude to it, but I couldn't think of any reason why it would realistically come up in a conversation about Willow. Serafu did seem happy that I managed to include Giles, though, so that is of the good.
* * *
Lunasdal came and went, and they finally told Willow about the coming apocalypse in mid-August, and that night she left the sanctuary of the reserve for the first time since she had arrived at the beginning of the summer.Lunasdal, or Lughnasadh, is the first day of August. This is merely another case of trying to get into the mindset of Jossverse Wicca.
This is the climax of the original fic, when Willow and Xander finally come together as a romantic couple. I wasn't comfortable writing Willow/Xander for a variety of reasons, so Alicia's POV (and really, the choice of "Brick by Brick" itself to remix) was chosen so I get out of writing that scene. In terms of Alicia's character arc, it really isn't important how Willow and Xander come together romantically, only that they do so.
They did not return until late at night. When they did, they were uncharacteristically quiet, and they both retired to Willow's room together.
Xander's bed was not slept in for the remainder of the summer.I debated whether this was appropriate behavior on sacred ground, and thought about aproaching the issue in the fic, but couldn't think of anyway to do so effectively from Alicia's POV.
I also tried to get some smut in here, because while I wasn't comfortable writing the relationship per se I had no problem with the hot sex. But again, there really wasn't any way to effectively write a Willow/Xander sex scene from Alicia's POV.
In "Brick by Brick" there's no sex at all, or even the implication of it, but since I took out the entire romantic climax I needed something to justify the Willow/Xander pairing.
* * *
September came, and Willow and Xander both returned to Sunnydale to face whatever apocalypse the Hellmouth had in store for them."Brick by Brick" ends with Willow and Xander returning to Sunnydale and facing the other Scoobies as a couple.
Now there was nothing for Alicia to do but wait, and pray, and allow fate to take its course. The gods' will would be done, as always.This of course connects to the beginning of the story, when Alicia finds herself in the same state, but it also underscores the rôle of the coven in the fight against evil, which is fundamentally passive. (I think we have something gender-coded going on again, but this time it's at a deeper more archetypal level--and already present in Joss' text.) It's the Scoobies are active, fighting on the front lines in Sunnydale, and this is the rôle that Willow and Xander must share.
She watched the children playing fox and geese, giggling as they ran across the field pursued by Sophia, who apparently was the fox at that moment. Sophia caught up with Bethany and grabbed the older girl by the arm, disrupting Bethany's balance and causing her to go spilling to the ground. Bethany clutched her knee, crying, and Alicia could see that it was skinned.When I was first plotting this story, I knew that Alicia would watch Willow and Xander and be changed by what she saw, but I didn't know precisely what her arc would be. But I also knew that was okay, and that if I took care of the plot the themes would probably take care of themselves. So I started writing.
At some point I went back up to create the header and as I did I looked for a sentence from the first scene I could use as my summary. "There is a wisdom hidden in the innocence of the young" caught my eye, and the Willow/Xander and Bethany/Sophia parallels instantly fell into place. I reallized the best place to end the story was precisely where I began it--with Alicia watching the children. Only this time, she would be in a better situation to see the wisdom hidden in their innocence because of the example of Willow and Xander.
"Oh, I'm so sorry, Beth'ny," Sophia said as she took Bethany into a tight embrace, the game forgotten. The other children watched from a distance. "Can you forgive me?"
"Of course I forgive you," Sophia said. "You're my best friend, forever!"The innocence of Sophia's claim of "BFF" status is really reflected in Xander. There's no "ifs" or "buts" or provisions for the future. There's simply the naive belief they'll be together forever--only in Xander's case it's not so naive anymore.
Alicia nodded. Yes, she reminded herself, there is a wisdom hidden in the innocence of the young.And so Alicia's arc ends, and so does the fic, because it is her story.
Fandom: Buffy the Vampire Slayer
Rating: PG
Pairing: Willow/Xander
Timeline/Spoilers: Takes between in an AU summer between seasons 6 and 7. Spoilers up to "Grave."
Summary: There is a wisdom hidden in the innocence of the young.
A/N: Remix of "Brick by Brick" by Sarafu (obsessivemuch). Part of the Remix Redux IV. This is the DVD commentary. You can find the original remix here.
Obviously, no one has asked for a commentary in the short time since the reveal of authors. However, I did find that writing a remix was such a fascinating and different process that I wanted to write a little bit on how I did it and what my remix philosophy was, and this seemed like the best format in which to do so.
Best Friends Forever (Devon Days Remix)I was pretty sure I was going to remix Serafu's "Brick by Brick" the first time I read it. It spans a summer in a strange location (the Devonshire coven), and introduces a cast of original characters. This made it fairly easy for me to switch the emphasis so that I was telling a dramatically different story using many of the same events.
They had all felt it: a dark force, fueled by grief, more powerful than anything they had ever sensed before. They had sent the only person who could stop it, entrusting him with their power. And then the Devonshire coven simply had waited, and prayed, and allowed fate to take its course. The gods' will would be done, as always.Serafu's fic starts with Willow waking up after a nightmare in which she was reliving the death of Tara. Since I was switching the POV away from Willow and Xander, I had to pick somewhere (somewhen?) else to begin my story, but I knew I didn't want to begin when Willow and Xander first met my POV character. We know Willow and Xander's whole life story (mostly) leading up to Serafu, but I wanted to introduce Alicia starting at the point when the Devonshire coven first becomes involved in canon, i.e. "Grave."
Also, a note on the phrase "Devonshire coven": I've been informed that the actual place name is Devon, and I take care to use that whenever I make a specific reference to the location. But Giles modifies, for whatever reason, the word "coven" with "Devonshire" in "Grave"--so I do too. It's canon, even if it doesn't make sense.
Except it's not canon, when I went back and actually watched the ep instead of relying on transcripts. Mea culpa.
Alicia lacked the wisdom and patience of her elders.The original story was written in an omniscient-ish 3rd, with the focus being on Willow and Xander--we never get into anybody's thoughts but Willow and Xander, although we do get to see some things they don't see. The switch to a limited 3rd was mainly because I'm most comfortable writing in it, but the switch away from Willow and Xander was absolutely crucial if I was going to open up the fic to tell a different story, with a different arc, than the original.
She envied them their serenity, able to accept that which they could not change, but she could not sit still while the fate of the world hung in such serious jeopardy.Yes I just referenced the AA prayer. I needed to give Alicia an arc in this fic, so I made her not as wise as the elders, so that she'd still be struggling to achieve wisdom herself even as she guided Willow and Xander.
And here's another place where Jossverse canon and the actual world don't exactly line up: the depiction of Wicca. As a canon whore, it's most important to me to keep true to the Jossverse version, both in detail and in "feel," which has the convenient result of allowing me to make things up whenever I feel like it.
She made her way out of the coven house and watched the children playing in the twilight. As in the serenity of the elders, there was a wisdom hidden within their innocence. Life for them was the moment, the now, a simple game of fox and geese. "Got you!" Bethany called as she grabbed Sophia."Fox and Geese" is the result of googling "british children's games tag it" or something along those lines. It's a game I've actually played before (I think we called it "Octupos" when I played) and it's basically a variation on Tag.
I put the children here because I wanted to convey the sense that life in the coven was a vibrant one, with many generations living together and working together. Plus of course, they provide a counterpoint to the elders (all but one of whom we never see) as Alicia ponders. When I wrote this scene, I had no idea that I would return to the children later to structure my fic.
And then that furious anger which threatened to destroy everything Alicia held dear was gone, and there was . . . silence, of a sort. Stillness. Alicia made her way back into the coven house. "Is it true, Grandmother?" she asked once she had entered. "Is it over?"Wiccans are fun to write because one can just have them intuit everything they need to know.
The elderly woman raised her eyes and let her gaze fall on Alicia. "The world is safe for now, my child," she said. "But no. It is not over; it is just beginning."
* * *
When Alicia first saw the children, her first thought was how young they looked.This was me struggling to come up with some response for Alicia to have to Willow and Xander's arrival. Of course, in the fic as it now stands it serves to establish the parallel between Willow/Xander and Bethany/Sophia.
"Welcome to our coven," Alicia said to the young witch, Willow Rosenberg. This was the woman who had come within a hair's breadth of destroying the world, standing next to her just as young companion.Note that Xander isn't young for any particular reason; it's just that Willow's awfully young to end the world, and he's the same age, so he's young too. She of course doesn't know about his involvement in "Grave" yet, but even so I think this still show signs of the initial awkwardness with which I approached this transition.
"I'm Willow," the girl said, "and this is Xander. Giles said you could help."Almost all of the dialogue in this scene was in the orignal fic, but I trimmed a lot of it down on the assumption that the less the characters said, the more emphasis it would carry. Also, I felt weird copy-and-pasting huge paragraphs of somebody else's work.
"We can help only if you are willing to help yourself first. The rules here are fairly simple, the basic tenets of Wicca that Mr. Giles assures me you already know even if you do not follow them," Alicia said, sitting on the edge of an armchair and gesturing for the pair to sit on a nearby settee.
The girl blanched at Alicia's reproving stare, but to her credit she kept her gaze steady. "I want . . . I want to change. That's why I'm here."
Alicia nodded. The girl would need to face many cold and uncomfortable truths this summer if she was to learn what she needed to know. "I can see that you believe it to be so, but actions often speak louder than words. You will have to prove yourself, Willow, prove that you want to harness your power for good as much as we want you to. But you must be aware that the first sign of using magic for a selfish purpose or to do harm will result in the expulsion of you from this sanctuary." Although what they would do in that circumstance, Alicia truly did not know. Willow Rosenberg possessed too much sheer power to let her go untrained. She had already proven to be a danger.
Willow nodded and her voice was steady as she spoke. "I understand." Perhaps she would be able to learn what she needed to after all.
"Excellent," Alicia said, allowing warmth to creep into her voice. "We have a room prepared for you already. Your friend will have to find another place to stay, however. This is sacred ground, and only those versed in its customs are allowed to tread it."
"I know," the boy spoke up, quickly and politely. "Giles set me up with a place to stay nearby."
It was then that Grandmother spoke for the first time. She had been there the entire time, silently watching the exchange, still as a statue. "Let us not be so hasty, Alicia," she said.
"Grandmother?"
"Look at them, my child. He is the one."
"The one?" Alicia looked at the boy for the first time. The girl's power was obvious to anyone with trained eyes, and Alicia had looked to her first and more or less completely ignored her companion, but as she peered more deeply, her grandmother's words became clear. "You're the one who saved the world."
The boy didn't quite meet her gaze. "I just wanted to be with Willow when the world ended."
"You're modest," Grandmother said. "But most of all, you are unselfish, a lesson that Miss Rosenberg needs to learn while she is here. You've come to share your friend's burden, an admirable trait, and one that we cannot ignore."
"Grandmother?" Alicia asked, not understanding.
"We owe him a great debt for returning one who was lost, and we will not deny him the thing he will not ask for."
"But. . . ." What her grandmother wanted to do was completely without precedent.
"Hush," Grandmother said, and Alicia knew better than to argue further. "The boy may not have the same gifts we do, but he will respect our ways. He may prove to be able to help her in ways that we cannot. The room next to hers is empty, is it not?" She turned and left the room, in her way which was so quick and graceful one might have thought she had never been there to begin with.
The boy and girl shot dumbfounded looks at each other, but Alicia rose and spoke. "Come with me and I will show you your rooms."
"What about sacred traditions?" asked Willow.
"If Grandmother says that the rules can be bent, then the rules will be bent," Alicia answered.
Willow nodded and the three walked to the pair the rest of the way of rooms in silence. What was it that her grandmother saw, Alicia wondered, and what other surprises would the summer hold in store?Pretty much all of the above was just a simple, straightfoward POV switch. Alicia is given a few thoughts which add a new perspective to the original fic, but not much.
The original fic spans the entire summer between "Grave" and Willow and Xander's return in what would be an AU Season 7, focusing on just a couple of scenes. I do the same here, but this is the only scene which appears in both the original and this remix. Of course, it's an important scene in both fics, but I don't have a lot to say about it since I didn't really write it.
* * * This scene, then, is a case of my using Serafu's exposition and fashioning a scene out of it, teasing some vivid images out of something Serafu skims over. I wanted to wanted to show Willow and Xander starting their lives in Devon rather than just tell about it, and also to show Alicia beginning to be transformed by witnessing the strength of Willow and Xander's friendship.
The next morning Willow and Xander came down to breakfast, and Alicia began to see immediately the wisdom of her grandmother's decision. Xander's presence helped to put Willow at ease in her new and strange surroundings, and as they joked over their breakfast Alicia couldn't help but smile herself.I don't know what it is they are joking about, and I suppose it doesn't matter. The important thing is there isn't anything Xander can't crack a joke about, and when he does so even foreign soil is rendered that much less alien to Willow.
I sort of like to think he was making fun of British cooking, though. I wonder if they were served beans for breakfast.
They stayed together through meditation, and then had to separate as Celeste took away Willow for training.I think Celeste and Grandmother were supposed to be the same person in the original fic, but I wasn't sure, so I kept the distinction here. I think it helps to create the impression that the coven does contain more people than just Alicia and her grandmother.
"There isn't much really to keep you interested while she is away," Alicia told Xander. "We live simple lives here."
"Well, simple is good," Xander had said. "Our lives have gotten too complicated anyway. Is there something I can do to help? I'm pretty handy with a hammer."
Alicia smiled. "I'm sure we can find something for you to do," she said, and of course she was right.Originally, I was going to go on more about how Xander put his carpentry skills to work in helping out the coven, but every way I tried to tell it came out "Community of women needs the man to arrive and do the manly work." Making the coven dependent on Xander's help underscored his usefulness and the wisdom of letting him stay, but the sexual politics of it just weren't something with which I was comfortable.
Although to think about it, Xander's rôle in the Scoobies isn't all that different.
* * *
"Do you think she is getting better?" Xander asked her one day, about a month past midsummer. It wasn't quite the right question to ask, but she knew what he meant.I spent a bit of time figuring out where the various scenes would have fallen in the timeline of Serafu's story, and then using Wikipedia to place them within a neopagan annual cycle. I think the conversation that this scene is supposed to preface takes place sometime in August, which means that a couple weeks pass between this scene (which would be in late July) and that one.
She had nodded, looking out to the horizon. "Willow's a quick learner," she answered. "There were simply a few things which she had to be made to see."
"Do you . . . do you think she'll be able to go back?"
Alicia turned and looked the boy in the eyes. "She will have to, Xander. She is going to be needed in Sunnydale." No one was completely certain what was going to happen, but Celeste had foreseen some things pretty clearly, and there was no doubt that whatever was going down in Sunnydale the next year, the forces of good would need every weapon at that disposal.
Is that what this girl is? Alicia asked herself. A weapon?
"Will she be ready?" Xander asked. "She hasn't even been off the coven's lands in over a month."
"She will have to be ready," Alicia said. She could see the despair in the boy's eyes, and the desire to help as well. "Perhaps it would be best if you began to take her elsewhere for brief periods of time, help her to readjust to the outside world."
Xander nodded, taking the burden on himself without a word. "Should I tell her about . . . about Sunnydale?"
"No," said Alicia, deciding for herself the same moment the words left her lips. "Grandmother and I will when the time is right." No reason to burden the girl with news of the apocalypse when she was doing so well.In "Brick by Brick," one of the important scenes is when Xander tells Willow all this stuff that Alicia is now telling Xander. So here I'm setting up the backstory for that scene while I am also telling the reader what they need to know to understand this story.
Xander nodded somberly and turned away. "Xander?" Alicia said, and the boy turned back. "You're good for her, you know. I'm glad you're here for her."Alicia's slow appreciation of the bond between Willow and Xander is, of course, a crucial part of her arc for this story. The point of a remix, IMHO, is to tell a different story using the same events, and this is Alicia's story.
* * *
She phoned Rupert shortly after that, to provide him the benefit of Celeste's foresight and to inform him of Willow's progress. "I'm glad to know that she is improving, of course," he had said. "We'll be able to use her skills, research and otherwise. But are you sure she is ready?"
"If Celeste is right-and we both know what the chances of her being wrong are-then it simply doesn't matter one way or the other, Rupert. You are going to need her."This short scene does many things, but perhaps the most important of them is introducing a character who can call Giles "Rupert." To me, it really drives home the fact that we're in a completely different sphere of influence; here, Giles is just one of the players, not the big important mentor.
"Yes, of course. I trust Celeste's vision completely, and I'm sure you're doing everything that can be done. I simply worry, as you must understand."
"I do," Alicia assured him. "You care for the girl. But don't watch out; that young man you sent over with her will make sure that nothing harms her."
"Yes," said Rupert. "I know. They love each other."In "Brick by Brick" Giles and Anya are having their own romance at this time, and I thought about finding a way to allude to it, but I couldn't think of any reason why it would realistically come up in a conversation about Willow. Serafu did seem happy that I managed to include Giles, though, so that is of the good.
* * *
Lunasdal came and went, and they finally told Willow about the coming apocalypse in mid-August, and that night she left the sanctuary of the reserve for the first time since she had arrived at the beginning of the summer.Lunasdal, or Lughnasadh, is the first day of August. This is merely another case of trying to get into the mindset of Jossverse Wicca.
This is the climax of the original fic, when Willow and Xander finally come together as a romantic couple. I wasn't comfortable writing Willow/Xander for a variety of reasons, so Alicia's POV (and really, the choice of "Brick by Brick" itself to remix) was chosen so I get out of writing that scene. In terms of Alicia's character arc, it really isn't important how Willow and Xander come together romantically, only that they do so.
They did not return until late at night. When they did, they were uncharacteristically quiet, and they both retired to Willow's room together.
Xander's bed was not slept in for the remainder of the summer.I debated whether this was appropriate behavior on sacred ground, and thought about aproaching the issue in the fic, but couldn't think of anyway to do so effectively from Alicia's POV.
I also tried to get some smut in here, because while I wasn't comfortable writing the relationship per se I had no problem with the hot sex. But again, there really wasn't any way to effectively write a Willow/Xander sex scene from Alicia's POV.
In "Brick by Brick" there's no sex at all, or even the implication of it, but since I took out the entire romantic climax I needed something to justify the Willow/Xander pairing.
* * *
September came, and Willow and Xander both returned to Sunnydale to face whatever apocalypse the Hellmouth had in store for them."Brick by Brick" ends with Willow and Xander returning to Sunnydale and facing the other Scoobies as a couple.
Now there was nothing for Alicia to do but wait, and pray, and allow fate to take its course. The gods' will would be done, as always.This of course connects to the beginning of the story, when Alicia finds herself in the same state, but it also underscores the rôle of the coven in the fight against evil, which is fundamentally passive. (I think we have something gender-coded going on again, but this time it's at a deeper more archetypal level--and already present in Joss' text.) It's the Scoobies are active, fighting on the front lines in Sunnydale, and this is the rôle that Willow and Xander must share.
She watched the children playing fox and geese, giggling as they ran across the field pursued by Sophia, who apparently was the fox at that moment. Sophia caught up with Bethany and grabbed the older girl by the arm, disrupting Bethany's balance and causing her to go spilling to the ground. Bethany clutched her knee, crying, and Alicia could see that it was skinned.When I was first plotting this story, I knew that Alicia would watch Willow and Xander and be changed by what she saw, but I didn't know precisely what her arc would be. But I also knew that was okay, and that if I took care of the plot the themes would probably take care of themselves. So I started writing.
At some point I went back up to create the header and as I did I looked for a sentence from the first scene I could use as my summary. "There is a wisdom hidden in the innocence of the young" caught my eye, and the Willow/Xander and Bethany/Sophia parallels instantly fell into place. I reallized the best place to end the story was precisely where I began it--with Alicia watching the children. Only this time, she would be in a better situation to see the wisdom hidden in their innocence because of the example of Willow and Xander.
"Oh, I'm so sorry, Beth'ny," Sophia said as she took Bethany into a tight embrace, the game forgotten. The other children watched from a distance. "Can you forgive me?"
"Of course I forgive you," Sophia said. "You're my best friend, forever!"The innocence of Sophia's claim of "BFF" status is really reflected in Xander. There's no "ifs" or "buts" or provisions for the future. There's simply the naive belief they'll be together forever--only in Xander's case it's not so naive anymore.
Alicia nodded. Yes, she reminded herself, there is a wisdom hidden in the innocence of the young.And so Alicia's arc ends, and so does the fic, because it is her story.