Hooray!! Feedback!!!! Thank you! You know I love hearing your readings, so I don't quite know how to squee at you in an exciting and new way, but I am definitely squeeing! And now I shall launch into my reply...
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.
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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.