Spikeid Index Post
I'm not quite sure what to do with index posts, but it seemed like a good way of collecting all my random Spikeid content together, so here I am creating one! Please find everything ripe for your delectation, and feel free to comment on anything and everything wherever you like. ;)
The Spikeid is approximately 50,000 words long, in twelve 4000-ish-word books of blank verse. It's rated PG-13/R, generally for for the rather liberal smatterings of gore to be found on various occasions. Also swearing. It's Spuffy, otherwise generally gen, and takes place a short while after Not Fade Away. It contains the following potentially problematic content (highlight to view):
- Major character death (but not for our romantic leads)
- Forced denial of agency (for non-sexual purposes)
- Graphic violence
- Maleficient gods
- Depictions of the afterlife
If you would like to read without seeing any reference to warnings, I would recommend the ebook PDF (where the warnings are in the afterword) or the AO3 version (where I believe warnings are hidden by default).
So, an introduction. Basically, nearly four-and-a-half years ago, I got it into my head that there should be a Buffyverse epic. Buffy and Angel are shows about heroes, right? With gods and fighting and all that jazz? Surely that’s what epics are made of! Obviously, writing an epic would be a lot of work, but no one else had done it and I love epics, so how hard could it be…??
Other than wilful naïveté, however, I didn’t have much idea about where I was going to start and where I was going to go. I started writing, but I wasn’t actually intending to create the Spikeid, so much as the Buffiad, inspired by my (at that time blossoming) love affair with the Aeneid and my long-since-nuanced belief that Buffy Is Aeneas. This rather quickly changed, however, as I started book I from Spike's Dido-ish POV, without book II or any of the rest of the story much apparent, causing gillo to comment ‘this seems more like a Spikeid to me, Quin...’. This comment, completely offhand though it was, set me off thinking about a dozen other things, namely where the plot could go and how my intended homage/pastiche of the Aeneid could develop into something new and different. Hence fic.
Of course, having my head in the second, more independent half of the story for quite a while now, I tend to think a more appropriate (and pleasingly punny) title would have been the LAad. But that just looks silly. And I do like what I hope is cognitive dissonance in the first half between Spike getting the classical-style title (invented from the spurious Greek genitive ‘Spikeidos’ in the same manner as ‘Aeneid’ comes from ‘Aeneidos’) and Buffy, Angel and everyone falling into the more obvious classical roles. I’d like to think it carries all the way through, so maybe I’m sticking with that as my reasoning? Who knows.
Certainly calling the epic Spikeid encouraged me to play around with elements of the genre that I hadn’t known I was going to think about. Book I had some attempts at epithets, but I got rid of them fairly early on, simply because they weren’t doing anything and I found them more alienating than anything else. On the other hand, I had already begun with my modernised version of a poet’s invocation of the muse and, though I had only half-heartedly got into the somewhat traditional idea that all epicists try to outdo each other, I found myself thinking about the poet’s persona a bit more and the relationship the Spikeid would have not only with the Aeneid (in particular), but also with my other faves like Paradise Lost (whose metre I'd been nicking anyway), Dante, my dear mate Homer etc. I knew I was going to deviate from exactly following the Aeneid’s plot (though it was really useful in the beginning as a structural aid - cheers, Virgie), but it was now that I started thinking that that deviation had to be more emphatically pointed, if not, in fact, an outright rejection.
I think the most important way that this came out was in my decisions on how the heroes were going to deal with the epic’s gods and, indeed, how my narrator would interact with the muse herself. Now that I’ve mentioned it, it’s probably going to be anvil-obvious (if it wasn’t already), but I think exploring that dynamic is really what the story gets at, from the more obvious chess pieces of the plot to the way that my heavenly and hell dimensions are constructed and interpreted by the characters. In pretty much all the epic I think about there’s a very defined hierarchy between mortals, heroes and gods, where generally the gods dictate what happens and the heroes go about doing it (or failing to do it and getting punished): in the Aeneid (for example!), Aeneas is constantly frustrated by how his desires conflict with divine plans, but the gods basically get their way. The Buffyverse, on the other hand, has heroes, but what defines them is more fluid and I don’t think you can say that any ‘hierarchy’ works in the same manner. What the Spikeid tries to do then, I hope, is fling the Buffyverse system of heroes and gods against the more rigid system of epic in order to see what settles comfortably and what doesn’t work, to ask the question of how the Buffyverse differs in its use of heroes and other epic norms, like destiny.
Of course, what I’m really hoping is that this exercise is still interesting, even without much (if any) familiarity with epic as a genre. Like a lot of epics, I think it’s still possible to just see the Spikeid asking the question ‘what is a hero?’ on its own terms, not even taking any of its compatriots into consideration. Even more basically than that, it’s an action adventure story in the end, filled with all the things I like in stories: Spike, Buffy, Illyria, Gunn, slayers, humans, gods, demons, dragons, spells, flashbacks, dreams, myths, arguments, discussions, action and thinking. The medium, to me, is definitely associated with the message and I don’t think I could have written the same thing in prose, but I’m really hoping the verse is also accessible, even to people who’ve never read a long poem before.
On that practical point, I’ve had some people comment that they aren’t sure how to go about reading epic, and I think it’s fair to say that it’s something of a different discipline from reading a novel, if only because you’ve got far fewer words and yet are still possibly looking at the same level of time commitment (I was surprised as anyone to find out that Paradise Lost is only ~80,000 words long), so I’m hoping I might be able to offer some facilitating ways of thinking about a block of text that is apparently 50,000 words of poetry. Feel free to ignore the following and do your own thing, of course; these are just my reflections.
Because, the first thing I think about when it comes to destructuring epic is that books aren’t chapters. Super-traditionally, books were reasonably arbitrary breaks in the narrative created for archiving purposes: Homeric books were created several centuries after the poems started knocking around and the tablets which structure Gilgamesh definitely postdate the development of the poem, unless I'm very much mistaken. Naturally, the moment written composition comes in, ‘books’ can be seen as more consciously constructed division, but to me at least (possibly because I’m always two millennia behind the times) they retain their sense of being fairly regular units which are superimposed on the story, rather than clearly indicating the story’s structure. The actual puzzle pieces of epic, in my opinion, are the episodes which make it up: the set pieces which are stitched together to form the narrative, which may take up a whole book, part of one or more than one and consist of a single scene or a multiple-scened mini-narrative. These are begging to be separated as far as I’m concerned, and should have enough individual coherence to survive a reader going away and coming back after a break from the episode before. They are, to a certain extent, separate poems, and there shouldn't be any reason to fear reading X number of lines one evening and then Y the next, not really paying much attention to book markings other than to find your place. You don’t have to commit to the whole thing in one go (she reassures).
And that idea of dipping in and out, I think, ties into what else I would say about reading long poetry, which is to give it time! Long poetry shouldn’t be any more difficult to understand than prose, and I’m sure this sounds like a cry for attention, but when I read poetry quickly at least, I find it very hard to distinguish the sense breaks and the meaning all blurs into a mess. It shouldn’t be necessary, perversely, to really notice the poetry aspect of what's going on - thinkng ‘da-DUM, da-DUM, da-DUM, da-DUM, da-DUM’ as you're reading, noticing how the lines break or whatever - because the poetry should do its work on its own, but what’s more important is to follow the punctuation, which can be difficult when a sentence is spread over three or four (or more) lines. Reading slowly around the punctuation (as in hearing each word in your head, but not labouring over every syllable) should generally make everything more immediately comprehensible, as well as allowing the poetry to Do Its Thing and (cross-fingers!) amplify the imagery and sense of what’s going on, without you having to work at it too hard.
To be honest, though, I’m not the best poet in the world, and I can only beg you to come at the Spikeid with some patience for the odd dodgy line, though I’ve tried to catch as many as I could along the way. I think there’s a story worth reading in there, and I think you might enjoy it once you’re into the rhythm. My betas and cheerleaders have really got everything working quite well, I think, and I have to thank them for helping me create something I’m actually quite proud of. So, hats off to Brutti ma Buoni, Gill O, verity, fulselden and Stultiloquentia - you’re all exceptionally fab!
Otherwise, all I can end with is a general recommendation for epic as a genre, because I do think it’s under-read and doesn’t need to sit on the shelf collecting dust for being too posh. So go, read! Or maybe read mine first...
.
To read everything together, you can either go to
[The complete version at AO3]
or
[Download the shiny, shiny ebook version from Box.net, which includes the introduction as a foreword]
Alternatively, individual books are on LJ and DW:
I - The situation in LA unfolds.
[ LJ | DW ]
II - Buffy begins the tale of how she came to LA.
[ LJ | DW ]
III - Buffy concludes her tale.
[ LJ | DW ]
IV - The Slayers meet another group of people who are fighting in LA.
[ LJ | DW ]
V - The three groups unite and a scouting party is formed.
[ LJ | DW ]
VI - Spike and Buffy deal with where they've landed; Illyria is tempted.
[ LJ | DW ]
VII - The group return to the shelter, where someone unexpected is waiting.
[ LJ | DW ]
VIII - Willow tells her tale; Illyria is challenged.
[ LJ | DW ]
IX - Illyria shares a memory and other preparations are made.
[ LJ | DW ]
X - Spike and the others return to the upper world.
[ LJ | DW ]
XI - Gunn and Illyria deal with their counterparts.
[ LJ | DW ]
XII - The party returns home.
[ LJ | DW ]
And the soundtrack's here! (And on LJ.)
Thats all, folks. :)
[There are
comments on Dreamwidth!]
The Spikeid is approximately 50,000 words long, in twelve 4000-ish-word books of blank verse. It's rated PG-13/R, generally for for the rather liberal smatterings of gore to be found on various occasions. Also swearing. It's Spuffy, otherwise generally gen, and takes place a short while after Not Fade Away. It contains the following potentially problematic content (highlight to view):
- Major character death (but not for our romantic leads)
- Forced denial of agency (for non-sexual purposes)
- Graphic violence
- Maleficient gods
- Depictions of the afterlife
If you would like to read without seeing any reference to warnings, I would recommend the ebook PDF (where the warnings are in the afterword) or the AO3 version (where I believe warnings are hidden by default).
So, an introduction. Basically, nearly four-and-a-half years ago, I got it into my head that there should be a Buffyverse epic. Buffy and Angel are shows about heroes, right? With gods and fighting and all that jazz? Surely that’s what epics are made of! Obviously, writing an epic would be a lot of work, but no one else had done it and I love epics, so how hard could it be…??
Other than wilful naïveté, however, I didn’t have much idea about where I was going to start and where I was going to go. I started writing, but I wasn’t actually intending to create the Spikeid, so much as the Buffiad, inspired by my (at that time blossoming) love affair with the Aeneid and my long-since-nuanced belief that Buffy Is Aeneas. This rather quickly changed, however, as I started book I from Spike's Dido-ish POV, without book II or any of the rest of the story much apparent, causing gillo to comment ‘this seems more like a Spikeid to me, Quin...’. This comment, completely offhand though it was, set me off thinking about a dozen other things, namely where the plot could go and how my intended homage/pastiche of the Aeneid could develop into something new and different. Hence fic.
Of course, having my head in the second, more independent half of the story for quite a while now, I tend to think a more appropriate (and pleasingly punny) title would have been the LAad. But that just looks silly. And I do like what I hope is cognitive dissonance in the first half between Spike getting the classical-style title (invented from the spurious Greek genitive ‘Spikeidos’ in the same manner as ‘Aeneid’ comes from ‘Aeneidos’) and Buffy, Angel and everyone falling into the more obvious classical roles. I’d like to think it carries all the way through, so maybe I’m sticking with that as my reasoning? Who knows.
Certainly calling the epic Spikeid encouraged me to play around with elements of the genre that I hadn’t known I was going to think about. Book I had some attempts at epithets, but I got rid of them fairly early on, simply because they weren’t doing anything and I found them more alienating than anything else. On the other hand, I had already begun with my modernised version of a poet’s invocation of the muse and, though I had only half-heartedly got into the somewhat traditional idea that all epicists try to outdo each other, I found myself thinking about the poet’s persona a bit more and the relationship the Spikeid would have not only with the Aeneid (in particular), but also with my other faves like Paradise Lost (whose metre I'd been nicking anyway), Dante, my dear mate Homer etc. I knew I was going to deviate from exactly following the Aeneid’s plot (though it was really useful in the beginning as a structural aid - cheers, Virgie), but it was now that I started thinking that that deviation had to be more emphatically pointed, if not, in fact, an outright rejection.
I think the most important way that this came out was in my decisions on how the heroes were going to deal with the epic’s gods and, indeed, how my narrator would interact with the muse herself. Now that I’ve mentioned it, it’s probably going to be anvil-obvious (if it wasn’t already), but I think exploring that dynamic is really what the story gets at, from the more obvious chess pieces of the plot to the way that my heavenly and hell dimensions are constructed and interpreted by the characters. In pretty much all the epic I think about there’s a very defined hierarchy between mortals, heroes and gods, where generally the gods dictate what happens and the heroes go about doing it (or failing to do it and getting punished): in the Aeneid (for example!), Aeneas is constantly frustrated by how his desires conflict with divine plans, but the gods basically get their way. The Buffyverse, on the other hand, has heroes, but what defines them is more fluid and I don’t think you can say that any ‘hierarchy’ works in the same manner. What the Spikeid tries to do then, I hope, is fling the Buffyverse system of heroes and gods against the more rigid system of epic in order to see what settles comfortably and what doesn’t work, to ask the question of how the Buffyverse differs in its use of heroes and other epic norms, like destiny.
Of course, what I’m really hoping is that this exercise is still interesting, even without much (if any) familiarity with epic as a genre. Like a lot of epics, I think it’s still possible to just see the Spikeid asking the question ‘what is a hero?’ on its own terms, not even taking any of its compatriots into consideration. Even more basically than that, it’s an action adventure story in the end, filled with all the things I like in stories: Spike, Buffy, Illyria, Gunn, slayers, humans, gods, demons, dragons, spells, flashbacks, dreams, myths, arguments, discussions, action and thinking. The medium, to me, is definitely associated with the message and I don’t think I could have written the same thing in prose, but I’m really hoping the verse is also accessible, even to people who’ve never read a long poem before.
On that practical point, I’ve had some people comment that they aren’t sure how to go about reading epic, and I think it’s fair to say that it’s something of a different discipline from reading a novel, if only because you’ve got far fewer words and yet are still possibly looking at the same level of time commitment (I was surprised as anyone to find out that Paradise Lost is only ~80,000 words long), so I’m hoping I might be able to offer some facilitating ways of thinking about a block of text that is apparently 50,000 words of poetry. Feel free to ignore the following and do your own thing, of course; these are just my reflections.
Because, the first thing I think about when it comes to destructuring epic is that books aren’t chapters. Super-traditionally, books were reasonably arbitrary breaks in the narrative created for archiving purposes: Homeric books were created several centuries after the poems started knocking around and the tablets which structure Gilgamesh definitely postdate the development of the poem, unless I'm very much mistaken. Naturally, the moment written composition comes in, ‘books’ can be seen as more consciously constructed division, but to me at least (possibly because I’m always two millennia behind the times) they retain their sense of being fairly regular units which are superimposed on the story, rather than clearly indicating the story’s structure. The actual puzzle pieces of epic, in my opinion, are the episodes which make it up: the set pieces which are stitched together to form the narrative, which may take up a whole book, part of one or more than one and consist of a single scene or a multiple-scened mini-narrative. These are begging to be separated as far as I’m concerned, and should have enough individual coherence to survive a reader going away and coming back after a break from the episode before. They are, to a certain extent, separate poems, and there shouldn't be any reason to fear reading X number of lines one evening and then Y the next, not really paying much attention to book markings other than to find your place. You don’t have to commit to the whole thing in one go (she reassures).
And that idea of dipping in and out, I think, ties into what else I would say about reading long poetry, which is to give it time! Long poetry shouldn’t be any more difficult to understand than prose, and I’m sure this sounds like a cry for attention, but when I read poetry quickly at least, I find it very hard to distinguish the sense breaks and the meaning all blurs into a mess. It shouldn’t be necessary, perversely, to really notice the poetry aspect of what's going on - thinkng ‘da-DUM, da-DUM, da-DUM, da-DUM, da-DUM’ as you're reading, noticing how the lines break or whatever - because the poetry should do its work on its own, but what’s more important is to follow the punctuation, which can be difficult when a sentence is spread over three or four (or more) lines. Reading slowly around the punctuation (as in hearing each word in your head, but not labouring over every syllable) should generally make everything more immediately comprehensible, as well as allowing the poetry to Do Its Thing and (cross-fingers!) amplify the imagery and sense of what’s going on, without you having to work at it too hard.
To be honest, though, I’m not the best poet in the world, and I can only beg you to come at the Spikeid with some patience for the odd dodgy line, though I’ve tried to catch as many as I could along the way. I think there’s a story worth reading in there, and I think you might enjoy it once you’re into the rhythm. My betas and cheerleaders have really got everything working quite well, I think, and I have to thank them for helping me create something I’m actually quite proud of. So, hats off to Brutti ma Buoni, Gill O, verity, fulselden and Stultiloquentia - you’re all exceptionally fab!
Otherwise, all I can end with is a general recommendation for epic as a genre, because I do think it’s under-read and doesn’t need to sit on the shelf collecting dust for being too posh. So go, read! Or maybe read mine first...
.
To read everything together, you can either go to
[The complete version at AO3]
or
[Download the shiny, shiny ebook version from Box.net, which includes the introduction as a foreword]
Alternatively, individual books are on LJ and DW:
I - The situation in LA unfolds.
[ LJ | DW ]
II - Buffy begins the tale of how she came to LA.
[ LJ | DW ]
III - Buffy concludes her tale.
[ LJ | DW ]
IV - The Slayers meet another group of people who are fighting in LA.
[ LJ | DW ]
V - The three groups unite and a scouting party is formed.
[ LJ | DW ]
VI - Spike and Buffy deal with where they've landed; Illyria is tempted.
[ LJ | DW ]
VII - The group return to the shelter, where someone unexpected is waiting.
[ LJ | DW ]
VIII - Willow tells her tale; Illyria is challenged.
[ LJ | DW ]
IX - Illyria shares a memory and other preparations are made.
[ LJ | DW ]
X - Spike and the others return to the upper world.
[ LJ | DW ]
XI - Gunn and Illyria deal with their counterparts.
[ LJ | DW ]
XII - The party returns home.
[ LJ | DW ]
And the soundtrack's here! (And on LJ.)
Thats all, folks. :)
[There are
comments on Dreamwidth!]