A writing Whinge (because I haven't done one of those for, oh, at least a week and a half)

[shapinglight]

to misquote Joyce from School Hard, and with further mention of various thoughts I've had during my BtVS rewatch.

And I would've put all of that in the title of my post, but LJ wouldn't let me.

Anyway, yes. I'm supposed to be writing something for seasonal_spuffy at the beginning of May, but have no ideas whatsoever. I suppose I should ask for prompts. Prompts, anyone?



I'm wondering when it was I became primarily a Spuffy writer (which has sort of happened by default, must admit, because even before the Buffy comics stomped all over the very idea, I didn't think Buffy meant the ILY in Chosen - not that she has to have meant it for people to be able to write Spuffy, but still...).

I think it must be down to sb_fag_ends as much as anything. I try (though I failed miserably last year) to produce at least one drabble or ficlet for the comm every month, and my fic ideas are so thin on the ground now that I don't have any left over for seasonal_spuffy.

:Gloom:

It's not just something for seasonal_spuffy I'm struggling with writing either. I had every intention of getting on with my abandoned Spangel story while S was away last weekend, but ended up writing a measly 1500 words that didn't advance the plot much at all.

I started the story in 2007 (I think). The part I'd already written had some bits and pieces of slashy stuff in it. I think I'm probably going to have to remove them wholesale.

This is because I'm finding it very difficult to even entertain the idea of Spangel these days, thanks to the comics showing the relationship between Spike and Angel as nine parts raging hatred and one part gay panic (on both their parts, but especially Spike's), not to mention when re-watching the Spike/Angel interaction in BtVS season 2 I couldn't for the life of me see where the dynamic between them, as so often written in old slash fics, ever came from in the first place.

There aren't many of the old slash writers around these days, and the ones that are're probably not on my flist, but if anyone has an opinion on the subject I would be quite interested to know what they think that dynamic was based on back in the day (you know, the sire/childe stuff, which I freely admit to enjoying a lot at one time, not to mention writing it myself). Was it based solely on the fact that Spike originally said Angel was his sire and people just took that and ran with it, and then people read their stories and a huge body of fanon developed which lots of people confused with canon, or what?

Returning to the subject of me not being able to write anything, sadly, much though I'd like to put it down to disillusionment with fanon tropes, I'm afraid it's far more down to me just being out of ideas. I can't work out how the plot of this Spangel fic should go forward to the end I envisaged for it (at least I do have an end envisaged), and generally writing is just all hard and stuff and makes my brain hurt. :(

:More gloom:

Comments

[ex_peasant441]

It's all a long time ago so it is of course hard to remember, but I know I read very little fanfic before I started writing, and I knew nothing about the conventions, or even much of what slash was, while I knew the show very well indeed, so the subtext must have been sufficiently strong to me it made sense.

The sire/child(e) stuff comes from BTVS S2 and the few interactions we got in S3, AtS1 and S4 - which was all I had seen when I started writing - when of course Angelus as Spike's sire was canon. I know some people claim they could always tell it was supposed to be Dru, but I seriously doubt they could do that without the benefit of hindsight. Certainly there was not a single fic written pre-FFL that had Dru as Spike's sire. The closest anyone came to pre-guessing FFL was Sabershadowkat, who wrote a grand total of one fic (and remember how large her output was) in which human William was a nice lower-middle class boy rather than a thug. For everyone else, and for SSK the rest of the time, Angelus was Spike's sire and human William was a working class rough.

Ha, I remember back in the day when these arguments mattered SO MUCH :D

Another thing you have to remember is that slash subtext is much more overt these days than it was back then. We live in a post-Torchwood, post-Merlin, post-Supernatural world, where the subtext is damn near text. We worked harder for our crumbs back in the day ;)

As for why you became a Spuffy writer, I think it was partly that you ran out of new things to say about Angel/Spike first simply because you started writing them first. Also you always wrote them in a very violent way and you no longer write such violent fics.

[rahirah]

I seem to remember some fics (I think SSK wrote one, but there were others) where William was the debauched and licentious son of a duke or something...

[ex_peasant441]

I remember some where he behaved like a cliche romantic historical novel hero once he was turned - riding off into the sunset before returning to reclaim Dru etc, but I don't recall any that gave him a matching human past. But I'm sure they were out there. The main lesson of fanfic is someone somewhere will write it.

[shapinglight]

I know some people claim they could always tell it was supposed to be Dru, but I seriously doubt they could do that without the benefit of hindsight.

Quite probably. Have to say, though, it's absolutely plain as anything to me now, while rewatching, that FFL wasn't really a retcon. Who sired Spike had changed (if Spike's 'you were my sire' comment was ever meant to be more than acknowleging Angel as a kind of mentor) by the time of Lie To Me only a few episodes after School Hard.

In that episode, Buffy challenges Angel about Drusilla, after seeing them together. Angel is then forced to explain who Drusilla is and what he did to her. I can't help thinking that given Spike and Dru come as a pair, as it were, that Angel should have mentioned at the same time that he'd also sired Spike. Also, he tells Dru to take Spike and leave Sunnydale, which suggests to me that he sees Spike as more Dru's responsibility than his own.

Not that it really matters (or I don't think it does). They're still family in a twisted sort of way, whether Angel likes it (which he doesn't at all, right up to the end of his own show) or not.

Another thing you have to remember is that slash subtext is much more overt these days than it was back then. We live in a post-Torchwood, post-Merlin, post-Supernatural world, where the subtext is damn near text. We worked harder for our crumbs back in the day ;)

This is true. There really is very little to go on.

I think it was partly that you ran out of new things to say about Angel/Spike first simply because you started writing them first. Also you always wrote them in a very violent way and you no longer write such violent fics

Hmm, I don't think I agree with that. I didn't actually write that much Spangel early on, I don't think. There was some Spike/Angelus stuff (most of it pretty nasty, admittedly, even then I had trouble seeing any affection between them), but I also wrote a lot of Spike/Wesley, as I recall. And not all my Spangel was nasty. I've written some quite un-nasty Spangel fics fairly recently. Well, maybe about four years ago.

[shapinglight]

For everyone else, and for SSK the rest of the time, Angelus was Spike's sire and human William was a working class rough.

This never, ever made sense to me. I still wince when someone (invariably an American) refers to Spike's accent as 'Cockney.'