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May. 9th, 2009 12:49 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
shapinglightMy rather jaded post about the latest Buffy comic yesterday neglected to mention that there is currently a Buffyverse comics series which is a pretty good read. This is John Byrne's 4 parter for IDW, Angel: Blood & Trenches, set in WW1, in which Angel encounters not only a notorious vampire from the show (not Spike) but a recent ancestor of Wesley's (his grandfather, maybe). Excellent art, an interesting story, and the latest issue, which suddenly turns everything on its head and shows us the story so far from Colonel Wyndam-Pryce's POV, a minor revelation. Also, though there are a few small mistakes with the setting (at one point Colonel Wyndam-Pryce refers to 'Queen and country') for the most part, Byrne has obviously done his research. Recommended.
:uses nearest appropriate icon, which isn't very near, but never mind:
Some thoughts within about research for fics and about the 'canon' question, which has been exercising people this past week (and well aware I've contributed nothing useful in that discussion).
I had a nasty moment yesterday when thinking about my![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-community.gif)
plot_wout_porn story, to do with the logistics of the plot. Without giving anything away, I'm afraid I've set my protagonists an impossible task and may have to refer to the standard Buffyverse get-yourself-out-of-difficulties ploy of waving an (almost) figurative magic wand to help them to accomplish it. I feel bad about this and hope that when I edit I can extricate the characters from that situation somehow by setting things up better nearer the beginning. This may mean writing extra scenes, or just peppering what I've already written with a little more exposition, while trying to ignore the dreaded info-dump. We'll see. One thing I do know is that, when starting the story, I was relying far too much on my memory (which I should know better than to do these days) and hadn't done nearly enough research.
As they say, bummer.
Finally, re: the question of canon. There have been a lot of posts about it this last week, from![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
gabrielleabelle, rahirah and slaymesoftly. I've read their posts, thought, 'how true' when reading each of them, although they don't all say the same thing, and failed to leave a comment on any, though I really should have, because I've been feeling brain-dead and stupid most of the week (post-James-viewing stress disorder or something). In actual fact, I'm not sure I feel qualified to comment, given that an awful lot of my stories veer wildly off from canon both in terms of what happens in them and in terms of characterisation. I started off writing horrible, abuser Giles, for f**ks sake! and have since written a not inconsiderable number of the characters as, let's say, not quite right in the head. Plus, I've quite happily written Fairy!Spike, and you can't get any less canon than that. I like to kid myself that even in the most out-there situation I've written, the characters remained in some way recognisable as their canon selves and that the way I'd skewed their personalities would explain their OOC behaviour, but YMMV, obviously.
On the other hand, this doesn't mean I don't accept as canon what I saw on screen. I do. For me, the fun of fic writing is taking that canon as a starting point in some fashion or other, either event-wise or character-wise, and veering off at a tangent. It's also a challenge to try and do it well. If I've written something that changes the events of canon for fic purposes - ie. Buffy's dead or Xander's gay (never written that, but you never know) - I'm not going to explain that beforehand. I'm hoping that this change will be so natural to the story that I don't have to explain it.
Hmm. Anyway, lots to think about. One thing I do believe, though, is that while the facts of canon may be indisputable, the interpretation of them is not. People see what they want to see, or what suits their own prejudices. I could go into a long list here of what I consider bizarre interpretations of canon (starting with the hoary old Angel-and-Angelus-are-two-totally-different-people chestnut), but it would be a very long list, and some of the people who hold those views would no doubt find my interpretation of canon bizarre in turn.
Finally, finally, this isn't really apropos of any of those other posts. As I said, at the time I read them, I was feeling far too stupid to make a sensible comment, and this post probably shows that situation isn't much improved.
:uses nearest appropriate icon, which isn't very near, but never mind:
Some thoughts within about research for fics and about the 'canon' question, which has been exercising people this past week (and well aware I've contributed nothing useful in that discussion).
I had a nasty moment yesterday when thinking about my
plot_wout_porn story, to do with the logistics of the plot. Without giving anything away, I'm afraid I've set my protagonists an impossible task and may have to refer to the standard Buffyverse get-yourself-out-of-difficulties ploy of waving an (almost) figurative magic wand to help them to accomplish it. I feel bad about this and hope that when I edit I can extricate the characters from that situation somehow by setting things up better nearer the beginning. This may mean writing extra scenes, or just peppering what I've already written with a little more exposition, while trying to ignore the dreaded info-dump. We'll see. One thing I do know is that, when starting the story, I was relying far too much on my memory (which I should know better than to do these days) and hadn't done nearly enough research.As they say, bummer.
Finally, re: the question of canon. There have been a lot of posts about it this last week, from
gabrielleabelle, rahirah and slaymesoftly. I've read their posts, thought, 'how true' when reading each of them, although they don't all say the same thing, and failed to leave a comment on any, though I really should have, because I've been feeling brain-dead and stupid most of the week (post-James-viewing stress disorder or something). In actual fact, I'm not sure I feel qualified to comment, given that an awful lot of my stories veer wildly off from canon both in terms of what happens in them and in terms of characterisation. I started off writing horrible, abuser Giles, for f**ks sake! and have since written a not inconsiderable number of the characters as, let's say, not quite right in the head. Plus, I've quite happily written Fairy!Spike, and you can't get any less canon than that. I like to kid myself that even in the most out-there situation I've written, the characters remained in some way recognisable as their canon selves and that the way I'd skewed their personalities would explain their OOC behaviour, but YMMV, obviously. On the other hand, this doesn't mean I don't accept as canon what I saw on screen. I do. For me, the fun of fic writing is taking that canon as a starting point in some fashion or other, either event-wise or character-wise, and veering off at a tangent. It's also a challenge to try and do it well. If I've written something that changes the events of canon for fic purposes - ie. Buffy's dead or Xander's gay (never written that, but you never know) - I'm not going to explain that beforehand. I'm hoping that this change will be so natural to the story that I don't have to explain it.
Hmm. Anyway, lots to think about. One thing I do believe, though, is that while the facts of canon may be indisputable, the interpretation of them is not. People see what they want to see, or what suits their own prejudices. I could go into a long list here of what I consider bizarre interpretations of canon (starting with the hoary old Angel-and-Angelus-are-two-totally-different-people chestnut), but it would be a very long list, and some of the people who hold those views would no doubt find my interpretation of canon bizarre in turn.
Finally, finally, this isn't really apropos of any of those other posts. As I said, at the time I read them, I was feeling far too stupid to make a sensible comment, and this post probably shows that situation isn't much improved.