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quinaraI'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![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
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. :)
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. :)
(no subject)
Date: 09/10/2011 00:32 (UTC)Illyria, whoa. She was amazing. Everybody was amazing in their individual moments. What I'm having trouble with, initially, is knowing where—on which character—to hang my hat. It's called Spikeid, and starts with him, and then we get a big Buffy vs. Osiris moment, but then it's Illyria who finally defeats the god. So—every individual section is amazing, IMO, but I didn't feel like I got to go on one epic journey with any single character, and maybe I love it less hard because of that. But I don't really know how epics work, except for PL. Which I guess works the same way, with the multiple spotlight characters. Hm. Thoughts?
I will have more. Gimme a minute. God, I love having something this chewy to...chew on. Bless.
The hivemind explanation is pretty awesome. You don't make a bigger deal of it than necessary, it's just this neat, "Aha!" and then moving along.
Hah. Yes.
"A half-erased enigma" is such a striking, fascinating description of Angel. So much of Angel's arc is about his struggle to deny and discard parts of himself, while keeping others, and he never quite seems to understand (except when he understands all too well) that his people are part of him, and in discarding and pushing them away, he discards himself, too. I'm having one of those, "never thought of him like that, but now you've said it, the description's inevitable" moments. Thanks.
This bit is so damned Joss. The contrast, the pull-you-up-short. And all your imagery, the way you describe Fred, is just perfect.
Oh my god, this verb. Following the math textbook bit. Oh my god, that is so hot.
*shout-whoops* Okay, I may have to steal this line and use it for, like, journal headers or icons or something. I think this is tied for my favourite line in the entire poem, and possibly my favourite line all year.
(no subject)
Date: 09/10/2011 08:48 (UTC)So—every individual section is amazing, IMO, but I didn't feel like I got to go on one epic journey with any single character, and maybe I love it less hard because of that. But I don't really know how epics work, except for PL. Which I guess works the same way, with the multiple spotlight characters. Hm. Thoughts?
This was actually part of my cunning plan, although I hope it doesn't completely backfire and you will learn to love it all the same, because what I really wanted to do was break down the idea that a 'hero' has to be the bloke with the biggest willy who gets to hog all the best moments and generally has the story revolve around him. This is a mild comment on Aeneas, whom I love but whose manpain pretty much swamps the whole narrative, and the hope with calling it the Spikeid was (eventually) that it would feel kind of jarring, definitely by the end when Spike concludes his story by ultimately rejecting he has one, but basically because he spends most of his time in this subordinate, feminine if you want to get gender studies about it, Dido-ish role, but is nevertheless awarded top billing.
Why I say above that I wouldn't have minded calling it the LAad, though (if I could have made that pun work), is that it's an interesting quirk about the Iliad that it's very easy to think of it as an Achilleid (of which there are others), because Achilles is mentioned in the proem and generally seems to be the hero - but it isn't actually called that, so the title (not Homeric, but whatever) is weirdly pushing you to see beyond him and look at the other characters, especially people like Hector, who's fighting for the Trojans and whose death/funeral ends up being the big climax and close of the poem (Achilles kills him, but he's not the focus by the end, mourning Ilium ie. Troy and Hector's family is).
So, really, I was trying to make life hard for you. :D If you want to hang your hat on a specific hero, I think my point is, then you will most definitely have to decide which of the other people you're choosing to relegate. (One of the interesting things about heroism in the Iliad, actually, is that it's essentially set up as a zero-sum game like this - you gain kleos, fame and glory, by killing other people who have it and being renowned for killing them. It's very Highlander. I like to think that model falls down here, as does also the model of vendetta chain killings (Y kills Z so X kills Y so W kills X etc.) which tend to hound epic warfare, but if it doesn't then it's certainly meant to be made tricky!)
Anyway, moving on, I'm glad you liked the hive mind! I spent ages working out the politics and point and function of my heavenly dimension, if only because I really had to (I constantly kept getting stuck on what exactly would make it heavenly rather than just 1984, but I decided on this whole metaphysics of heavenly vs. middle vs. hell dimensions that felt like it worked out) - but of course there wasn't room for it, apart from the random comment Spike thinks about how demons consume more energy than they use/produce (heavenly demons do the opposite, was my decision, which has a big impact on competition for resources, the aims of society, the understanding of life and death, things like that). If I'd done twenty-four books there would have been a story from the other side, most probably, but I was already weighing down my fic with more than a polite number of OCs/cameo characters, so I never thought about that seriously.
Credit in the next two instances must go to Gunn being observant (and generally excellent *squeezes Gunn*) and Fred canonically being vaguely into using drugs to make friends. Also the universal truth, which I nearly always forget until I edit, that unceasing piled-up angst is melodrama, whereas angst with a banal contrast really sticks the knife in. (And banal generally does work better than gloriously happy, because you can really only get away with that once, Joss Whedon take note.)
And I love the verb 'solve'. Possibly because it makes me think of sugar solution. /random
Finally, extra double super yay!!!!!!!!! You like my last power chord! :D Although, naturally you've made me dead curious about what your other favourite line is, because I can't remember.
(no subject)
Date: 11/10/2011 17:36 (UTC)Yeah? Because you just worked your tail off and completed something really, really amazing, and now I'm about to dive in and question a bunch of your choices. Which is not the same as poo-pooing your choices; I really am in inquisitive devil's advocate mode, but still! I just find it all really interesting to think about.
Hah, well, when you put it that way...
Too me, Spikeid is jarring right from the get-go, because Spike is so blatantly not Aeneas material. His role in the Jossverse is crucial, but it has never been "protagonist" (one of the fundamental ways in which I disagree with the lovely folks at Tea at the Ford), and casting him as Mr. Top Billing feels like an in-joke, precisely because it's a role he has already, over the course of the shows, desired, struggled with, and ultimately rejected.
If you took this entire poem and swapped Spike for Angel, starting with the lonely, rain-drenched battle in Book I and ending with, "I'm not the story, I'm just standing here," it would have been fucking revelatory.
Or, if you'd started with Spike's rejection of the hero role, and then, over the course of the poem, noticing the multiplicity of heroes in this tale, and ending with, "Okay, fine. We are all of us Aeneas," and accepting that mantle. Solving into protagonism. ;)
Oh, that is interesting. LAad would have worked better for me, I think, despite its odd look on the page. Then I would have automatically hung my hat on Spike, but more casually, with different expectations. More Scout Finch or Nick Carraway, guide and buddy and wry commentator, crossing back and forth across the line between actor to observer, as we all do in our lives. Ha, here's a thought for you: LAad: what happens to your epic when you plunk it down on American soil, home of the Great American Novel -- where Scout is the protagonist, but Atticus is the hero; where all the clear, gleaming-gold roles in The Great Gatsby are revealed as so much cheap paint?
Ahh, I loved that twist! When you revealed that the orcs and all the monsters who crossed through the portal were all scared out of their minds! And the alienness of the aliens, and the time and effort and discomfort it took to understand them.
(It was interesting in contrast that Osiris was so relatively easy to understand and slay. O Death, I have met you before. I was sure there, for a minute, that Buffy and Illyria were going to rip him limb from limb, which would have been suitable, but I liked the blood draining, too -- Illyria using the tools and memories of very lowly creatures she despised to accomplish her victory.)
It is all true.
No, I was thinking of that, too. It's such a neat word.
Heh, accurate description.
They're all in my end-of-year awesome lines round-up.
(no subject)
Date: 11/10/2011 19:48 (UTC)Oh yeah, dive right in! Bland agreement is boring; I'm too much in love with the idea that you actually read the thing and I can talk to you about it, and you've more than balmed my ego enough that I can take it. Tell me how you really feel! :D
To me, Spikeid is jarring right from the get-go, because Spike is so blatantly not Aeneas material. His role in the Jossverse is crucial, but it has never been "protagonist" ... it's a role he has already, over the course of the shows, desired, struggled with, and ultimately rejected.
If you took this entire poem and swapped Spike for Angel, starting with the lonely, rain-drenched battle in Book I and ending with, "I'm not the story, I'm just standing here," it would have been fucking revelatory.
I think the first thing I would say here would annoyingly include another classical reference, because I think my views on character (thinking about what I always end up writing) are irritatingly Tacitean, in that I'm not sure I think character (in fiction at least) can actually really change - it can only be better revealed than it was before, and that sort of revelation is what you're trying to get at by writing. I think I'm much more likely to meditate on a character than try to change them, or make circumstances change and throw them around a bit to see what shakes loose (maybe this is also reflected in how I view vidding; I don't know). Doing Spike's not!story with Angel, I feel, wouldn't have said anything about his character, vindicating though it would have been, because I think Angel's sense of his own protagonism is rather fundamental (he narrates voiceovers!!! Nobody else ever does). To make him declare he wasn't the story would to me have felt like I was trying to obfuscate his character, I think, and it wouldn't have felt right. I could have proved, maybe, that there were other stories out there (which I think I do with Buffy quite a bit), but I don't think I could have made him say it.
Having said that, if the idea that Spike isn't a protagonist was done to death in the TV shows then I've probably just completed a pointless exercise - but to me it was still interesting to see what would happen if he was thrust, openly and artifically, into the limelight, with his name on the credits and Angel+Buffy out of the picture at least initially. This may well have been more of interest to me than a reader simply because I was going through the process of writing it, but all the structural elements were laid down in his favour, and Buffy in book VI even explicitly redefines what a hero is so that he can take on the definition, but he still wiggles out of it - he neutralises his role in the fighting, doesn't have much inner conflict and he's even already stopped being the host-homemaker. When he rejects the idea he has a story, to me it's not only the idea of protagonism that Hamilton is talking about, of the Angel and Buffy type that jarred with who Spike was already from the beginning, its an idea of protagonism that has been repeatedly adjusted and refigured in an attempt to fit his role. For better or worse it has been 'his' epic, after all, but he's still trying to kick off those shackles, and kind of wins as he finally gets author!me to shut up with the bloody pentameter. I quite like that, and maybe I shouldn't have framed it with him rejecting prophecy, but that seemed the most symbolically obvious way to go about it. If anything's changed by the end of the epic, I suppose, then, I'd like to think it was the parameters of heroism, more so than the show allowed - but Spike's still rejecting them, which is something worth saying.
Moving on, I would love to read the epic where the Great American Novel gets broken down, but I have a feeling I would have needed to know more about Great American Novels to get anywhere with it personally. :D Having rambled the ramble I just did, though, I'm not sure I would have really wanted Spike to be in his comfortable position of side-kick-we-all-love, if only because I'm not sure how much meat would have been there to sit beside Illyria's more obvious story. Although, other people's perception of meat probably defines how much there actually was, so maybe that's not a relevant comment...
It was interesting in contrast that Osiris was so relatively easy to understand and slay. O Death, I have met you before. I was sure there, for a minute, that Buffy and Illyria were going to rip him limb from limb, which would have been suitable, but I liked the blood draining, too -- Illyria using the tools and memories of very lowly creatures she despised to accomplish her victory.
The thing is about Illyria, of course, is that it wasn't just the techniques she had learnt from lowly creatures, but the techniques she'd learnt from Spike, her pet vampire. ;) The Slayer was pretty damn important, of course, but Spike was crucial for the way she worked with the knowledge she was given - something which surprises him in XI and which I'm not sure he likes the idea of. He shapes far more of the plot than he'd have you believe...
They're all in my end-of-year awesome lines round-up.
I look forward to it muchly! (Have been remiss with my own list. :( No one seemed that interested last year and it was such a hassle - but now, of course, I've come to appreciate my list from last time and wish I'd kept one.)
PS. Thank you for talking to me about my baby!!!!!! Please don't take my stubborn arguing as an attempt to shut down your thinking, because really I just want to hear more about how events clicked together for you, even if they aren't the way they clicked together more me.
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Date: 19/10/2011 23:39 (UTC)Oh, gosh, that's an interesting premise to start with. I don't know if my fiction actually backs this up at all, but I like to think of my characters as exactly the opposite: endlessly becoming. I can tell I'm going to get hopelessly tangled as soon as I try to sort out fundamental vs. mutable, though.... How much can a character learn, grow, change opinions, change allegiances, etc. before you have to say, "Right, that's too far; Spike is now a fundamentally different person"?
I think yours is probably a more successful way to write, because it's more disciplined, accepts fewer excuses ("He's not OOC, dammit! What, a person can't change? Eff you!").
That's a very good insight.
Dammit, I'm going to have to reread the entire poem. Your explanation is really brilliant. I can't decide if it actually came across in the poem the way you wanted it too, and I just missed it because I wasn't thinking hard enough about the meta as I went along (a downside of picking it up and putting it down over many months), or if you're too telescopic for your own good. Fuckit, I wish this thing had more readers, so I could compare reactions them. Whatever; the idea is very cool as you've explained it, and I can definitely see where it comes through in certain scenes. Let me reread, okay? Might take a while, but I'm so intrigued by what you're doing.
Oh-ho! The accidental/unanticipated agent. That's a role he's played well all throughout the series, isn't it?
I find mine useful as a record of what I was reading and connecting with that year. I use them as reference docs all the time. This'll be year four -- I wish I'd started earlier in my career! This year's is really funny: it starts off with some Inception, a little HP, some Buffy and Stargate, and then all of a sudden, GLEE GLEE GLEE GLEE. Oh, Stulti. The current question: Usually I shuffle the quotes around, to make interesting or amusing pairings and sequences, but then I lose that rather hilarious indicator of what I was obsessed with when. So: chronological or suave?
Oh goodness, no. I guess at this point we really should start believing each other when we claim we're tough cookies with more curiosity than ego.
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Date: 22/10/2011 10:24 (UTC)I don't know if my fiction actually backs this up at all, but I like to think of my characters as exactly the opposite: endlessly becoming. I can tell I'm going to get hopelessly tangled as soon as I try to sort out fundamental vs. mutable, though...
Yeah, I think it's probably hard to tell the difference between the two ideas, when it comes down to it, because pushing both of them can basically get you to anywhere you want to be. My Spike or Buffy, after all, is almost certainly fundamentally different to your characters or, probably more starkly, a lot of established fanon on characters, so I wouldn't be surprised if my revelation was another person's unforeseeable change. I do wonder if more comes across in the way I (or you?) might structure things, though, because I definitely believe in endings a reader can see coming - I'm resistant to big flourishes in favour of the gentle 'and this is where we've got to, now that everything's been sorted out'.
Dammit, I'm going to have to reread the entire poem.
Haha, my plan has worked! Although, actually, I should probably do the same, at some point when I have the time (I've re-read many chunks along the way, but haven't done the whole thing in one
- I wonder if anyone has). Rhetoric aside, I should really point out that most of these thoughts only started crystallising by the end, so it isn't like I set out with the one narrative goal in mind, but I think/hope my thoughts developed from how the story established itself, rather than completely arbitrary retrojection, so maybe it will hold up?Oh-ho! The accidental/unanticipated agent. That's a role he's played well all throughout the series, isn't it?
:D Poor old Spike; he just likes saying stuff, and then people randomly take it to heart. What's a vamp to do?
The current question: Usually I shuffle the quotes around, to make interesting or amusing pairings and sequences, but then I lose that rather hilarious indicator of what I was obsessed with when. So: chronological or suave?
Half the fun of mine, last year, was making everything link together somehow, and therefore seeing themes and making a weird is-this-another-story collage. (There were lots of rivers in mine for some reason, but that was interesting.) People will see the obsession pretty clearly whatever you do, I'm sure; I don't think you have to worry about that! ;)
I guess at this point we really should start believing each other when we claim we're tough cookies with more curiosity than ego.
!! Perish the thought...