Okay, before I’m completely cowed by the volume of responses I have to do, because, you know, I like to talk (ssh, don't tell anyone), and it usually takes me a while to get everything out. I know I was grousing earlier about needing the PING!s but to be honest, I’m feeling a little overwhelmed at the response to this story. I won’t pull a Sally Field on you, because, really, no one should. Ever. But… shoot. [sniffle]
DelWhicker – Re the first time and the second chance – I’d said in the past that I didn’t think there was any point in writing their first time since in my mind it only happened one way. I was wrong. This worked out really well. Thank you, you’re very kind. And you made perfect sense to me.
Thianne – I’m happy it affected you so powerfully. I normally try to hold back on the language a bit, I’m not one for sentimentality, but I wasn’t so self-conscious with this one. It seemed to have the desired effect. Thanks.
WillowRulez – I’m glad you enjoyed it. There’s a little bit of one of the coffee dates (I always thought they had two, but I might be wrong about that) in the last chapter of the series, called Coming Home. It’s set from Tara’s point of view and is meant to wrap up everything. Check it out, if you have a spare moment.
db – ah, you’re spoiling me. But I’m glad I wrote something that brought out your talkative side. I quite agree with your summarizations of both characters. I was nodding my head as I read your post. That pretty much jibes with how I think of each. This:
Quote:
Scared, hurt, angry, hopeful. realizing the enormity of what she had lost...
could be the blurb of this chapter.
Quote:
the most believable first time scenario I have read
I'm kind of curious about that, actually. The timing after NMR, the how it happened, if in fact Tara was a virgin, all stuff people like to debate about. I'm glad you found it credible. I know my details would strike some as kind of conservative, but this is how it made the most sense to me.
You seem to have many interesting points to share, db. I hope you keep doing so with the other fabulous stories on the board. There are so many talented writers on this board, and feedback is like water on Arrakis to a writer (sorry for the geek reference there).
Hm. And that’s three in a row who I’ve made verklempt with Endgame. I hope everyone had their hankies ready.
DarkWiccan – Hi!
Quote:
I'm jealous in that fabulous way that makes me wonder if you're single and in my neck of the woods.
[deep voice] Well, hey there.
Quote:
But seriously now
[pout] You weren’t serious before?
Quote:
I am very, very rarely moved to say such things. I can only think of one other writer on this board to whom I can (and have given) similar praise of this magnitude.
Okay, before I go into stalker mode on you, thanks. I’m trying to not let all this praise go to my head, but you're being so generous with it, I'm a bit dizzy. Thanks very much
Caz – I’m making everyone cry. This hasn’t happened before where it was a good thing. Thank you.
Amy – Hi, bud!
What can one say about season six?
The season was just as tough on the fans as it was on the characters. You’re right, it definitely stirred things up and complicated everything—the characters, but also one’s fandom. In the past when Buffy was on constant loop on my DVD player, some cycles I’d skip 6 & 7 altogether. Still, they comprise 30% of the official story so it’s hard to ignore, and part of that OCD thing I mentioned I have is to acknowledge all the unpleasantness. I knew when I started doing these I’d have to deal with my season six issues. It was pretty easy the first set, I stayed away from the badness. The ones I did were both from Tara’s POV. When I started up again in January, I knew I’d have to deal with Willow. That’s why the last two I wrote are mostly from her POV. Breathe would’ve been another light-hearted chapter balancing between the two of them, if I’d gone through with it.
The funny thing is, the month and a half this chapter was sitting on my hard drive while I worked on the comic, I really have grown fond of it as a writer, plus Coming Home is still my favorite chapter, so the season I disliked the most as a fan is the one that I feel I made the most of as a writer. Maybe it was the whole “leaving it on the field” thing about wrapping up the project, but I didn’t feel self-conscious about the sentimental stuff the way I did in something like Cups.
I often felt sorry for all the good guys in season six, with the sole exception of Spike. Everyone got to play the asshole. The one exception to me was Tara, and you know, no good deed... The overall feel of the season seemed to be tear these characters, who had really been built up through 5 seasons to be heroic and admirable, down to their lowest and see who or what survives into the next season. I don’t think anyone really did. By season 7, they all seemed like imitations of the characters they’d been before Bargaining. It felt like a completely different show. A show I’d still watch, just not the same one I adored and thought on so many occasions was pure genius. It became a mediocre sci-fi action show, like Voyager. But it certainly shook up things.
Strictly as a fan whose favorite characters are WT, I personally would’ve been happy if the show ended with a bang—i.e., The Gift. Then again, I’m sure there are plenty of viewers who thought 6 and 7 were the best seasons because of all the angst and the darkness. But for me, Tara was the only character I consistently liked that season, and she was missing from half the shows. I do think Willow’s offense was pretty awful, so I don’t take issue with Tara leaving. The writing of the whole magic-addition-withdrawal was pretty lame, and Tara looks pretty silly at times, like telling Willow to stop using magic (Huh? Aren’t you two witches? Isn’t that how you met? Wasn’t that how you had pseudo-intimacy before you hooked up?). But, it is a serious thing, even if it wasn’t handled well on the show. Taking away someone’s autonomy is serious, especially if you’re having sex with them. I just find that disturbing. [puts on critic’s hat] It’s another reason why the lack of on-screen resolution on that before the makeup in Entropy is so bad from an artistic point of view. They made it sound like Willow’s offense was she abused magic. Not that she abused Tara. Wrong message, IMO.
And now, about sex. LOL. I like to think you’re spot on and they had a very healthy sex life. An UberSmut kind of sex life, in fact. Darn network decency standards. Always cutting in too late or too early.
Anne – Thank you very much.
Quote:
The regret and longing for the broken relationship; her anger at her friends, herself, and even at Tara; along with the conflict and guilt of loving and needing Tara so badly while feeling angry with her, and being angry at herself all over again, for failing. Failing to master the magic and resist the temptations of its power. Failing to be and do everything she wanted to for Tara.
Wow. This pretty much sums up very eloquently what I was trying to do. Really gratifying. Thanks.
I feel really good about leaving the project like this. I still have some residual anxiety that I didn’t do 5 scenes for season 6 but maybe I’ll work on it occasionally as my Holy Grail—Breathe, the lost chapter, but never with the intention of actually finishing it. But I’m feeling good, thanks.
As for what’s next, I’m going to catch up some more on reading right now. I’ll probably redo the comic by properly inking and coloring it and adapting it to the web this month, then think about the next fiction project as something to keep me busy for the summer. Actually, I’ve already started mapping a longer uber story that’s WT-centric. I’m going to try to take my own advice and not post anything until it’s half-written, though. It looks like the story pitch/intro chapter will be workable as a standalone short, so maybe I’ll post it just to see if there’s any interest in the whole kit-n-caboodle. Unfortunately it doesn’t start as a W/T fiction in the pitch/intro, so I might have to start it on a different venue until I have enough of the main body to start posting on Pens. I have to check the Pens FAQ more closely.
Anyway, thanks much, Anne. I’ve really enjoyed your feedback. I hope there’ll be opportunity for me to read it again in the context of something else I wrote. in the future (something weird going on with the verb tenses in that?).
badkitty – Well, thank you for reading! Love the nick, BTW.
watty – hey, you.
Re. Willow – I have to say, I hadn’t really thought about not liking or liking Willow as an individual character because in my mind, soon after they introduced Tara as Willow’s love interest, the most striking thing about their pairing is that they really seemed to be made for each other, so the challenges they were made to face were very different than the ones an individual character like Buffy or Faith would face. It was a very unique dynamic. And it looked so naturally done. That’s probably due to good on-screen chemistry between the actresses—a credit to them—but it meant the separation to advance Willow as an individual character seemed artificial and clumsy. And it was. I think that’s where my ambivalence is coming from. I guess tearing her down had the desired effect the show’s writers were looking for, giving her character more depth. I’m just not sure it was their intention to make her less appealing as a character after, ‘cause season 7 wishy-washy Willow—a dime a dozen character in my mind. Then it seemed the show’s creators panicked and threw her into another relationship, and it just didn’t work. But I shouldn’t say any more about that here.
Anyway, it makes me curious as to how other people look at the two as separate characters. I’m reading more fics that are pretty different from canon—where Tara is aggressive (WTTV Loveboat Tara - rrrowr, more, please), or they start out on different ends from each other and have to work at hooking up. Looking at it from the other end of the Uber-AU-canon spectrum, I have to say Tara’s character has more appeal in my mind.
Quote:
Looking forward to the next season.
You’re kidding, right?
Hi,
Sally.
LOL. Actually, I didn’t mean to make it sound like Buffy had her chained to the Whirlpool to wash everyone else’s socks and underwear as punishment. Wait, wait… Okay, it passed. Interesting visual there, for a second. Anyway, I have four siblings separated by about 7 years, and growing up in a middle-class home, doing laundry for the entire household is second nature to me. But Willow was an only child, so maybe she did take it as an insult on top of injury. It would’ve been in keeping with the context. But to be honest, my only reason behind that was, Buffy’s at the Doublemeat, Dawn’s in school, Willow’s home alone, she can do the laundry. She’ll come across an article of Tara’s clothing Tara left behind, and away we go!
Re. “the conversation” – Yeah, I kinda cringed myself at some of Willow’s lines, but I think Tara’s balanced them out as only Tara could, or else either or both of them would’ve died of mortification. They both had to put themselves on the line.
I’ve said it before, I find sexy bits very hard to do. Funny thing is, not in this one. The really hard parts to write were the stuff leading up to and immediately after the sex—i.e., Willow being in a very dark place emotionally. The stop-starting. The ugly thoughts. But the sexy stuff, it was part of the story so much that it was kind of natural writing it. Plus, I had thought up how that night happened well in advance of writing it—actually, I think because of something you said in your feedback to the “other” last chapter last August—about writing their “firsts.” So I already had a general idea about how it unfolded so that it had become part of my take on the canon story as a whole (for example, that it was at the end of NMR, that Tara was a virgin and Willow had to lead, etc.). I just had to work out the details for the execution of this chapter.
Smutty sweet stuff – I get what you mean. The lustiness was just as important as the sweetness. For some reason or another I can imagine Willow being quite at home with the occasional four letter word. Maybe it came from the Vamp Willow episodes. Anyway, I wasn’t trying to titillate or anything. But it was really important to make the physical desire and gratification as evident and raw as possible because desire was, in my mind at least, very much wrapped up in how naturally and quickly they bonded as a couple. So if people find the scene sexy as well as sweet, that’s really nice. It’s very gratifying.
daiailun – Hi. One of the more difficult things for me in writing this chapter technically was precisely the Willow POV, juggling her memories with the present as well as the random out-of-left-field thoughts that are a signature of her character, so your comments are extremely heartening. Thank you.
As I recall, this one more than any of the others I wrote as fragments that I literally patched together. I mean, I’d write a couple of paragraphs, write a one-line summary in a different font color, then go back a few days later and flesh out the place-holder sentence. I’m normally pretty linear, so it was something different for me as well. Then at the very end, I ordered and pared down and tightened and redid the looser, more tangential stuff with the help from my betas, Trom and Amy. So it didn’t start out very tightly structured at all. It has that effect now, as you pointed out, and I’m pretty happy with the final version.
The other difficulty was of course the content. It being the lowest point of Willow’s character to that point in their story arc, it was admittedly a bit depressing to write ‘cause I really do like her character. I got hooked on this show almost from the very first episode because of Willow, and watty’s right. There is an emotional investment and an irrational urge to re-write their story to a Happily-Ever-After. Or at least get to the reunion as quickly as possible, even without preamble or context as the show seemed to do. That was more or less my thematic goal—I wanted the reunion to make more sense, show that they weren’t “just skipping” all the important stuff as Tara’s speech in Entropy implied. Willow messed up. Badly. This chapter was meant as a meditation of sorts, an expiation of the guilt and self-pity. She had to realize just how bad she screwed stuff up in order to get back to rebuilding herself to the point she could start moving again, in whatever direction. So depressing, yeah.
I get what you mean about the intimacy, and maybe that’s why so much of their story took place off-camera. Television isn’t the best media for something this private. But with fiction, anything is possible. I’m convinced we’ll never do away with literature because of this, no matter how visual we become as a culture.
Safuega – Thank you very much. It will be different not working under the strictures of a tightly ordered project like this, but hopefully will still be productive. I’ve become addicted to all the lovely feedback. This is a natural segue into…
Final tally: 60,000 words! Yee-hah! Okay, so it’s not epic Sidestep proportions we’re talking about here, but… Yee-hah!
Thanks again to everyone who read the stories in this series, and in particular those who left feedback. It’s often mentioned but I don’t think it really sinks in and I’m as guilty as anyone about letting RL get in the way of taking a moment or two to do it, but fanfic writers don’t get any external reward for their efforts other than reader feedback. Yeah, there’s personal gain in becoming a better writer, but no one writes in a vacuum. These aren’t diaries that just happened to get posted to the Internet. So again, much thanks for the feedback.
A great big thank you to Trom and Amy for betaing for me the last few months. If you’re a writer, especially one just starting out and you don’t have a beta, I’d definitely recommend you get one.
I hope to be contributing here as a writer again in the future, and of course, I’ll still be lurking and de-cloaking to FB as a reader, cause that's important too. So see you around.
binky
Login
Register
FAQ
Search
But hey, I know miles and even Fahrenheit too 
of course. A couple of other people have also commented on my change of nick, which was done in a moment of ... I don't know why, I wanted a change. Though time will tell whether it's for the better. But call me anything you want, including "hey you!"
