"Gunpowder Tea" commentary (Buffy/Wesley, all audiences)

[antennapedia]

As requested by snickfic.

“Gunpowder Tea”, Buffy/Wesley
general, no warnings
tags: angst, author’s favorite, buffy, guns, merrick, season 3, tea, wesley, wishverse
This one was written for the Buffy round of hetfic_minis, to noelia_g’s prompt: “wishverse, tea, lines: ‘I expected you to be taller’ ‘Well, I expected you to be dead’”, no character death wanted.

Comments

[demonbrat_98]

I loved this story - Buffy/Wes is one of the ships we don't see enough of. And I really enjoyed your commentary. I always find interesting to see inside the writer's mind.

[antennapedia]

Thank you! And yeah, there's not a lot of Buffy/Wesley out there that I've read. He was on BtVS for such a short time, I guess.

[snickfic]

I went back and reread the story first, before reading your commentary, and was reminded again how much I like it. It is, to borrow a word, very elegant. :) Although I feel fairly silly that I didn't cotton onto the significance of the shotguns earlier. Wesley makes the Buffy/shotgun connection explicit there at the end, but I didn't work backward from that to the full metaphor, at least not consciously. Subconsciously, maybe? Can metaphors work subconsciously even if we don't notice them?

Anyway, thank you for the commentary! This is indeed a lovely story.

Giles now has a Slayer on the Hellmouth. I wonder if they’ll get along. That would be an interesting story.

I... had never even thought of this until I read your comment. Oh heavens. I would love to read that story.

[antennapedia]

If I were remixing this story, I'd be so tempted to write that. Wishverse!Faith! Fighting the Master ascended! Kicking his ass, too. With scruffy, war-weary Giles helping her.

Or I'd write the bits that went before this with Buffy and Merrick. I am unsure which interests me more.

And in re: metaphors working subconsciously: I sure hope so! I think a lot of writing does its work in the subconscious when the reader does the work of imagining things, closing the gap from prose to dream. Readers are always active participants in a story. Our minds are deep places where a lot goes on. So yeah, I think all this stuff cooks around inside your mind as you read. It does when we write, as well. Sometimes you just blurt and look at it later and say, oh look at that! this pattern is latent here, I'll just help it along in the next draft.

Writing is too difficult to be trusted to the conscious mind.

[snickfic]

So yeah, I think all this stuff cooks around inside your mind as you read. I

I'm so used to works being analyzed and picked apart so that the individual pieces - this metaphor, that foreshadowing - can be appreciated, but I think that means the net effect gets neglected a lot of the time. The idea that you can enjoy what an author put into a story without consciously noticing some of it is awfully freeing.

[yseultdb]

Here courtesy of margotlefaye because I wanted some Buffy/Wesley. This was perfect. Understated and still passionate. just what I wanted -- except I didn't know that when I started to read this. THank you.