Why write?
I've been reading so many discussions of why people write at all, and why they write in particular fandoms, und so weiter. Personally, I write so my head won't explode, and I write in particular fandoms because they're good, but not quite as good as they could be. This is putting it very briefly.
But I got curious, and decided to go into self-analysis a bit here. My latest serious fic, still in the hands of my beta reader, was Guess Who's Coming to Manchester, a sequel to my earlier Wes/Doyle romance Unwilling Eurydice. Why did I write it?
The first and obvious reason is that I didn't feel finished with the pairing. I'm still not sure I'm finished with the pairing. It's a very interesting pairing, but for the natural causes known as death not particularly explored in fandom. On top of this, those who like resurrecting Doyle tend to dislike Wesley, taking that dislike into the story. And I don't quite buy that. I think the two of them would have liked each other. Sure, they're very different in many ways, but I think they could relate to each other. They both put up an air of self confidence that isn't quite genuine, and neither is quite ready for the fight - only that Wesley keeps trying while Doyle ran in the other direction until he pulled a 180 and acted in a heroism that must have surprised himself. There's also the fact that Wesley comes from a bad place in life while Doyle started out fine as far as we can tell and then fell hard. Which means that in a way Wesley will always try to get away from his past while Doyle will want to return to it - both failing, both looking for security, an perhaps able to find it in each other.
Which brings me to the next point: family. Not a new one for me. Joss Whedon tends to go with the bad daddy complex and ignoring everyone else, except for soccer mommy Joyce who is really too sugarcoated for me to take serious. Okay. The more for me to explore. Leaving Doyle's demon father out of the equation we have his mother, whom fanfiction writers admittedly have already discovered from time to time - Tara's White Lies is the most adorable example. Without a doubt a very strong woman. But Doyle is no child, and it's unlikely that she'd been living alone all this time. Thus in an earlier story I entered his adoptive father, Frank. "Good daddy" to balance "bad daddy" - but neither one of them is actually present. Since Frank is dead and Maureen - the mother - not very talkative, they both have people speaking for them: aunt Judy to with an openness Maureen doesn't have, and Frank's father with the criticism his son lacked. Again, counterbalance.
I hadn't really explored Wesley's family before, which made that one very interesting. His father is fanonically described as an ogre, and whether this is true or not there's no doubt from canon that to Wesley he is the ogre, the punishing God if you will. I didn't feel that I could milden that without betraying Wesley's perspective, but I couldn't really work with it either. So I again brought in the mother. It's clear from canon that Wesley is more at ease with her than with his father, but also that she was a lot less than supportive. That meant I could let Wesley in part work out his issues with her, rather than his father, whom I don't think he's ready for. In a way, I think she's the heart of the story, no matter how small her part is. And then there's Bess, the sister, who has the highest number of lines and the actual plot, but is actually in a way Wesley's "aunt Judy", the person who says what he won't.
And then there's the third theme, the study of demons. I've heard people on TWoP and elsewhere say they don't want the shows to turn into Men in Black. Well, personally I would encourage that. Not only is it an elitist and religiously shady approach to claim that in a world that has supernatural beings all of them are evil, but it's also immensely boring. "Oh look, here's a thing with three eyes. I wonder why it has that? Oh never mind, just kill it." I'm too curious for that. Like I said in my entry about differences, I want to see what it means. And if there are evil Others, there must also be good Others, and indifferent Others. Most mythologies would agree.
I realise that all this is of no interest to anyone but me, particularly since the story isn't even out there yet. But this ain't really Reader's Choice. Maybe next time. (Make your wishes.)
But I got curious, and decided to go into self-analysis a bit here. My latest serious fic, still in the hands of my beta reader, was Guess Who's Coming to Manchester, a sequel to my earlier Wes/Doyle romance Unwilling Eurydice. Why did I write it?
The first and obvious reason is that I didn't feel finished with the pairing. I'm still not sure I'm finished with the pairing. It's a very interesting pairing, but for the natural causes known as death not particularly explored in fandom. On top of this, those who like resurrecting Doyle tend to dislike Wesley, taking that dislike into the story. And I don't quite buy that. I think the two of them would have liked each other. Sure, they're very different in many ways, but I think they could relate to each other. They both put up an air of self confidence that isn't quite genuine, and neither is quite ready for the fight - only that Wesley keeps trying while Doyle ran in the other direction until he pulled a 180 and acted in a heroism that must have surprised himself. There's also the fact that Wesley comes from a bad place in life while Doyle started out fine as far as we can tell and then fell hard. Which means that in a way Wesley will always try to get away from his past while Doyle will want to return to it - both failing, both looking for security, an perhaps able to find it in each other.
Which brings me to the next point: family. Not a new one for me. Joss Whedon tends to go with the bad daddy complex and ignoring everyone else, except for soccer mommy Joyce who is really too sugarcoated for me to take serious. Okay. The more for me to explore. Leaving Doyle's demon father out of the equation we have his mother, whom fanfiction writers admittedly have already discovered from time to time - Tara's White Lies is the most adorable example. Without a doubt a very strong woman. But Doyle is no child, and it's unlikely that she'd been living alone all this time. Thus in an earlier story I entered his adoptive father, Frank. "Good daddy" to balance "bad daddy" - but neither one of them is actually present. Since Frank is dead and Maureen - the mother - not very talkative, they both have people speaking for them: aunt Judy to with an openness Maureen doesn't have, and Frank's father with the criticism his son lacked. Again, counterbalance.
I hadn't really explored Wesley's family before, which made that one very interesting. His father is fanonically described as an ogre, and whether this is true or not there's no doubt from canon that to Wesley he is the ogre, the punishing God if you will. I didn't feel that I could milden that without betraying Wesley's perspective, but I couldn't really work with it either. So I again brought in the mother. It's clear from canon that Wesley is more at ease with her than with his father, but also that she was a lot less than supportive. That meant I could let Wesley in part work out his issues with her, rather than his father, whom I don't think he's ready for. In a way, I think she's the heart of the story, no matter how small her part is. And then there's Bess, the sister, who has the highest number of lines and the actual plot, but is actually in a way Wesley's "aunt Judy", the person who says what he won't.
And then there's the third theme, the study of demons. I've heard people on TWoP and elsewhere say they don't want the shows to turn into Men in Black. Well, personally I would encourage that. Not only is it an elitist and religiously shady approach to claim that in a world that has supernatural beings all of them are evil, but it's also immensely boring. "Oh look, here's a thing with three eyes. I wonder why it has that? Oh never mind, just kill it." I'm too curious for that. Like I said in my entry about differences, I want to see what it means. And if there are evil Others, there must also be good Others, and indifferent Others. Most mythologies would agree.
I realise that all this is of no interest to anyone but me, particularly since the story isn't even out there yet. But this ain't really Reader's Choice. Maybe next time. (Make your wishes.)