[Angel/BtvS]: The Tossing Sea (Which Cannot Rest)

[minviendha]

Title: The Tossing Sea (Which Cannot Rest)
Fandom: Angel/Buffy the Vampire Slayer
Summary: Angel, resouled. From Gypsies to Whistler. Angst, crazy, and a fuckton of biblical references.
Notes: If you want to look up some of the references, feel free. I had a lot of fun with them. And this. Though it took me way too long.

Comments

Long TL;DR concrit, part the Once

[tomboy_typist]

Soooooooo, here's my TL;DR. I'm sorry that it's so long AND that it took so long. I've been having focus issues of late, and I wanted to give you something thorough and thought out. So here it is.

So, a disclaimer first! As mentioned before, I'm not all confident that I can give educated feedback because I'm not very good with TV voice etc. And of course any concrit that's below is entirely optional and if you disregard it, I really won't be miffed, because again, I don't really know what I'm doing. And please please please don't think I didn't like this fic! I really did, it's wonderfully written and I'm jealous of your mad writing skillz, always. But, er, asked for feedback, I always try to go as deep as I can into stuff, so... er. Yeah. Here's some teal deer. Erhm.

On we go! From what I remember of Angel the Series (and I did the marathon 5 years ago, so bear with me), it works and is consistent with the angsty feedbacks you get in the series. :) For what it's worth, I like your Angel voice quite a bit. The only thing I can suggest as far as improvements in this respect would have been to dig a little more in his mortal life, maybe show us Gaelic, farming Ireland, etc. And if there was use of Celtic language somehow, I'd probably swoon. >.>

Regarding the structure, I do have a comment that I'm having a hard time expressing properly, so I hope you'll bear with me >.< Although I realize that this is essentially a character study, because of its length, maybe it would have been dynamized by exploring further the way the curse affected the coterie dynamics. Mostly, I felt like we were a lot in his head, and while it was both interesting and deep, it was a bit circular, with the last part (where he re-names himself) feeling a bit rushed, particularly compared to the rest of the piece. I do like, however, the recurring motifs of rats, the exploration of survival, his move to the New World, the reflections on the effects of naming and the way in which his dynamics with the rest of the coterie changes. The latter is something I think I would have really liked to see more of (yes, I know, being redundant here), because it was very interesting to see how things change with Spike and Drusilla particularly.

By the way, the BDSM dream was incredibly hot and well written but I wasn't so sure about it. I don't know. I always saw Darla more as a psychological gamer than as a dominatrix. But that's just me, so don't take my word for it.

And I like the use of biblical passages, particularly the Hebrew (?) bit. ^^

I'm also very much reminded of the Vampire Chronicles when reading this fic. Maybe you should consider reading The Vampire Lestat or (specifically because it really, really, really reminded me of some passages in it) Interview with the Vampire.