“Phase Shift”, End notes
[ Endnotes posted 20 Sep 2015 ]
Where did the idea for the story come from?
As noted on the title page, the original idea came from sroni. She had discussed it with me, and we had gone over some possibilities and I had offered suggestions and observations; this was in the months before my deployment to Afghanistan, and then after I’d been in-theater awhile I found the concept really taking root in me, and with sroni’s kind permission I went on and wrote the story myself.
Is there any particular significance to the title?
I wanted something that would represent Gwen’s transition from her chosen occupation (thief) to the one Doyle had chosen for her (champion), and wanted also for it to have some reference to her own nature. ‘Phase shift’ is a term that most commonly refers to the changing of a solid to a liquid, or of a liquid to a gas, but it also operates as a term describing changes in electrical current under certain circumstances. That seemed apt, so I went that way.
What is the thing I like most about this story? the thing I like least, or about which I feel most doubtful?
What I liked most about the story was Doyle’s craftiness in using an appeal to one part of Gwen’s nature as a means of pushing her to choose against another part of her nature. (I also thoroughly enjoyed doing - and then reading, and then re-reading - the fight scene with Boone.)
One possible source of doubt was in my representation of Doyle. Trying to put across the sense of an accent or dialect in written conversation is a delicate business, and it’s easy for it to come across as annoying or even grotesque. I believe I successfully avoided the latter; did I use a light enough touch to also escape the former? Judgment call.
Is there anything I think I could have done better, or might do differently if I had it to do over?
Not really. The story came more or less naturally to me, so that the result likewise seems natural. One possible variation is something I actually chose not to use; in my original discussion with sroni, I proposed that when Gwen - resisting her forced enlistment as champion - told Doyle to do the job himself, he would show her that he had handcuffed himself to something solid in the restaurant so that he couldn’t intervene, putting it purely on her. I still think that was a pretty cool idea, but I didn’t even attempt it in the actual telling, it just seemed cumbersome as well as unnecessary.
Do I have any plans to follow up on this story, or to use the character(s) or situation in a subsequent fic?
This story’s links to other Backstage tales are fewer than you might find elsewhere. Doyle’s description of Cordelia (who he never met in this AU, only having seen her in a vision) accords with the reference in “ In Ev’ry Angle Greet” to her having vanished while in New York, which was then itself subsequently explained in “ Glass Ceiling”. (His mention of a bewildering warning about ‘the Mighty Catherine and the Herald of Chaos’ also referred to Ethan Rayne’s initially unwilling team-up with Catherine Madison at the end of “In Ev’ry Angle Greet”.) As far as it goes, though, those three stories are all I’ve ever done or plan to do in the ‘Angle’verse.
Any observations to add at the end?
Though I didn’t use any of the situation or background, I probably drew some general inspiration from the ‘shared universe’ of Doyle Investigations. Positing an AU of its own - what kind of life Doyle would have wound up living in the Wishverse - that one played wild and woolly with history and character directions. Definitely worth a look (and a comment to the authors, although - since the last of the stories was posted more than ten years ago - the e-mail addresses may no longer hold).