Epiphany: Behind the Music
Apr. 17th, 2002 12:18 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
thebratqueenOkay, remember a while back when I said I was going to try a sort of online diary for the Epiphany series? Well I finally have time to do the first entry. Basically what this is going to be is sort of like those comment tracks you get with DVDs where they talk about what went into the making of the movie. I figure maybe it'll be interesting for people who like the series, and also might be interesting for people who want to read about how someone puts together fanfic. So we'll have stuff like scenes that didn't make it, plotlines that didn't pan out, my own opinions on the good and bad stuff in the series, etc.
That being said, let's get started with Everybody Fell
Here's a link to Everybody Fell if you want to refresh your memory before reading.
The backstory
I suppose I should give a little backstory of my history with AtS. Basically I wasn't much of a fan of the show until season 2. I watched season 1 intermittently, but it was the beige!Angel arc and the work of one Tim Minear that really drew me in.
However I had absolutely no desire to write fanfic for the series. Reason being I thought the show was doing fine on its own. Yeah I saw all the lovely slash potential in as much as I wasn't blind, but I was content with what was onscreen. I didn't think I had anything to add to it.
Then came Epiphany, the episode which literally had me on the phone to Mer during the commercial breaks screaming "Would Angel and Wesley JUST FUCK??"
Okay, this I had to fix.
Everybody Fell was supposed to be a one-off. My one foray into the Angel fandom where I wrote down what I felt was so clearly happening offscreen, got the bunny out of my head, and moved on with my life.
Ha!
Anyway, point being that at the time this was just a one time only deal, but even so I did my homework. My first lesson for all you fanfic people out there is know your canon. I tracked down the shooting scripts, transcripts (because often there are things in the ss that don't make it to the screen), episode guides, screencaps and so on to make sure I was getting my facts right. I actually have an ongoing file of all the details I might need for stories - how many rooms are in the Hyperion, what's the number for Wes's apt, what year did Angel die, etc.
One thing that I didn't do, funnily enough, was read any fanfic. I wrote Everybody Fell more or less cold, so I had no idea what were the norms for the fandom. I don't know if that's a pro or a con, but there it is for what it's worth.
The story
The title Everybody Fell came from a Sting song (not, as some have guessed, a takeoff of REM - Hi![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
zortified!). You can read the lyrics here if you're interested. The song itself is actually called "Everybody Laughed But You" which sort of sums up some of my views of the A/W relationship at the time I was writing it. Not to sound overly pretentious about it because I really cannot emphasize enough how much I suck at picking titles, but basically I picked the end lyrics there because I thought it jived with the emotions I was picking up from both the show and what I was continuing in the story - everything had collapsed for Angel and Wes, except each other, which was what they were about to find out.
One of the things I was told after the fact was that people were surprised by my interpretation of Wesley - which goes back to me not having read any of the fanfic. I actually had to pull one of my net-friends aside and ask what the "norm" was that people thought I'd deviated from. But apparently people weren't used to stories where Wes didn't come into the whole thing knowing that he was gay.
That was actually kind of interesting to me because to me that was the obvious choice, esp if you're trying to keep your story close to the canon. I'm not saying you can't write a fanfic with an already gay Wes, I'm just saying I don't understand why more people don't take the opposite route too.
But basically my feeling on Wes was that - as you see in the story - he'd been in denial about being gay until Angel being a jerk forced him to realize it. Particularly the part where Angel was out of his life for good and Wes finds himself longing for him - all canon, gotta love it (stage directions from the shooting scripts are your friend).
The first scene of EF was basically to establish Angel being back with the gang and nobody really putting up with him. He's still doing the overeager puppy thing to try to gain forgiveness and nobody gives a shit, esp. Wes who has reason to hate him just a little more.
The Host scene is one that makes me giggle now that I've read more fanfic and know how often people have done things like the "you're thinking of Mary Had a Little Lamb" thing - kinda funny that I ended up writing some fanon without knowing it was fanon. ;)
People have told me that they think I give good Host, and I don't know if I've managed to keep that up in the later stories but I'm glad he rang true for everyone in the first story if nothing else. Funnily enough, he ends up setting some of the groundwork for the rest of the series, which is basically that pesky question of destined love and perfect happiness, and where is Wes's place in all that? When I wrote it I intended it just for the purposes of explaining it in the one-off, but it's been nice to have it there now that I'm up to 31 stories.
The Host scene also covers some of the explanation of the Wes/Gunn dynamic. W/A shipper that I am, you can't deny the chemistry between W/G, so I included a little explanation of why that had happened - Wes had a crush on Gunn. If things had gone just a little bit differently, Wes would have ended up with him. Of course as the Host points out, that's not necessarily the right answer ;)
Scene three is when our boys finally get together. Dork!Angel is in full force, because I actually like Dork!Angel in limited doses and for the right reasons. Having the conversation that he's about to have - or at least trying to have - with Wes is definitely the right reason.
We get a little movement in Wes's apt here as Wes goes to make coffee and Angel wanders around the living room. I'll honestly make no claims as to how accurately I portrayed things. Wes's apt. didn't get much screen time in season 2 and I rewatched Reprise and Epiphany as often as I could to try to get a feel for the layout and could only come up with "fuck knows" beyond the order of the furniture in his living room. So watch TBQ try to fuzzy tiger her way around that whenever she can ;)
I think the bulk of Wes and Angel's conversation speaks for itself. Angel tells Wes his interpretation of events, which is therefore my own from his POV. A small bit of trivia for Wes's end of things - when Wes is telling Angel to get out and he's thinking he'll never see Angel again, he's actually thinking of packing it all up and going back to England.
Stuff like that goes back to something one of my writing teachers taught me, which is that writing is a lot like making soup stock - you start out with big chunks of things but your final product is the liquid which only has the subtle flavors. Ditto your characters - you should know all of their thoughts and motivations, even if the details of those motivations never make it to the page.
I've been asked about Wes saying that he broke up with Virginia. I know that on the show the words actually spoken are Wes saying that Virgina is breaking up with him, but I interpreted that as being a seriously mutual thing. I honestly think Virginia would have been happy to try to hang in for a few weeks more just to see if they could still have a fun relationship out of it, but Wes felt she needed to be gently nudged out of the door. I don't claim that this is the only interpretation, just that it's an interpretation.
Wes's comments about Gunn in scene three cover the rest of my exposition on that end - basically Wes has the crush but has no idea of Gunn's feelings. He doesn't even know if Gunn is gay (for the record - Epiphany Gunn is not), but the fact that he is gay is so new to Wes that he doesn't know how to interpret anything. Is Gunn flirting with him? Wes doesn't know.
Then we get to the "I love you." I read a review of EF where someone said they liked the story but felt the "I love you" was too abrupt. First off - never let it be said I don't like negative comments. I love hearing all opinions of my stuff (assuming it's based on an actual read, of course, and isn't the weird "Why did you make Angel a fag?"feedback that I still get from time to time).
Second - I think it's a fair comment. In 20/20 hindsight, knowing that this is now a series, I might have rethought the "I love you". I also might have rethought the sex scene. If I'd been doing it as a series deliberately I could easily see myself playing that out over the course of three to four stories, where the characters and the reader get to see the fun of Angel and Wes doing the first kiss, first date, first I love you, first time having sex, etc.
But again keyword there is "might". The flip side of this is that the "I love you" was purposefully abrupt. Wes has his blinders on, he's refusing to hear what Angel is saying, the big A decides he has to go for broke and reveals something he probably wouldn't have if he'd had any other option in front of him. And I think you can see that when his very next line is to immediately start backtracking and change the "love you" to "care about you".
So our boys get together and once again I write fanon without being aware of it with the whole "I invite you in" thing. The soul gets its cursory mention, and I'll talk more about the soul and the perfect happiness clause in future entries, most likely when I write about "Returning".
Another point of trivia interest is that at the end of the story, the narrative (which is from Wes's limited POV) refers to Angel as "the vampire". It was a deliberate choice on my part that in future stories that was not used again, b/c it reflected Wes's viewpoint of Angel. I'll talk about that more in future installments as well.
So... I think that covers it. There's not much in terms of "What did I leave out?" because as a one-off I tended to throw as much in as I could to cover all of the bases. Cut scenes and lost plotlines will get mentioned in future installments.
Next up (when I have time) - Liberty Rules.
That being said, let's get started with Everybody Fell
Here's a link to Everybody Fell if you want to refresh your memory before reading.
The backstory
I suppose I should give a little backstory of my history with AtS. Basically I wasn't much of a fan of the show until season 2. I watched season 1 intermittently, but it was the beige!Angel arc and the work of one Tim Minear that really drew me in.
However I had absolutely no desire to write fanfic for the series. Reason being I thought the show was doing fine on its own. Yeah I saw all the lovely slash potential in as much as I wasn't blind, but I was content with what was onscreen. I didn't think I had anything to add to it.
Then came Epiphany, the episode which literally had me on the phone to Mer during the commercial breaks screaming "Would Angel and Wesley JUST FUCK??"
Okay, this I had to fix.
Everybody Fell was supposed to be a one-off. My one foray into the Angel fandom where I wrote down what I felt was so clearly happening offscreen, got the bunny out of my head, and moved on with my life.
Ha!
Anyway, point being that at the time this was just a one time only deal, but even so I did my homework. My first lesson for all you fanfic people out there is know your canon. I tracked down the shooting scripts, transcripts (because often there are things in the ss that don't make it to the screen), episode guides, screencaps and so on to make sure I was getting my facts right. I actually have an ongoing file of all the details I might need for stories - how many rooms are in the Hyperion, what's the number for Wes's apt, what year did Angel die, etc.
One thing that I didn't do, funnily enough, was read any fanfic. I wrote Everybody Fell more or less cold, so I had no idea what were the norms for the fandom. I don't know if that's a pro or a con, but there it is for what it's worth.
The story
The title Everybody Fell came from a Sting song (not, as some have guessed, a takeoff of REM - Hi
zortified!). You can read the lyrics here if you're interested. The song itself is actually called "Everybody Laughed But You" which sort of sums up some of my views of the A/W relationship at the time I was writing it. Not to sound overly pretentious about it because I really cannot emphasize enough how much I suck at picking titles, but basically I picked the end lyrics there because I thought it jived with the emotions I was picking up from both the show and what I was continuing in the story - everything had collapsed for Angel and Wes, except each other, which was what they were about to find out.One of the things I was told after the fact was that people were surprised by my interpretation of Wesley - which goes back to me not having read any of the fanfic. I actually had to pull one of my net-friends aside and ask what the "norm" was that people thought I'd deviated from. But apparently people weren't used to stories where Wes didn't come into the whole thing knowing that he was gay.
That was actually kind of interesting to me because to me that was the obvious choice, esp if you're trying to keep your story close to the canon. I'm not saying you can't write a fanfic with an already gay Wes, I'm just saying I don't understand why more people don't take the opposite route too.
But basically my feeling on Wes was that - as you see in the story - he'd been in denial about being gay until Angel being a jerk forced him to realize it. Particularly the part where Angel was out of his life for good and Wes finds himself longing for him - all canon, gotta love it (stage directions from the shooting scripts are your friend).
The first scene of EF was basically to establish Angel being back with the gang and nobody really putting up with him. He's still doing the overeager puppy thing to try to gain forgiveness and nobody gives a shit, esp. Wes who has reason to hate him just a little more.
The Host scene is one that makes me giggle now that I've read more fanfic and know how often people have done things like the "you're thinking of Mary Had a Little Lamb" thing - kinda funny that I ended up writing some fanon without knowing it was fanon. ;)
People have told me that they think I give good Host, and I don't know if I've managed to keep that up in the later stories but I'm glad he rang true for everyone in the first story if nothing else. Funnily enough, he ends up setting some of the groundwork for the rest of the series, which is basically that pesky question of destined love and perfect happiness, and where is Wes's place in all that? When I wrote it I intended it just for the purposes of explaining it in the one-off, but it's been nice to have it there now that I'm up to 31 stories.
The Host scene also covers some of the explanation of the Wes/Gunn dynamic. W/A shipper that I am, you can't deny the chemistry between W/G, so I included a little explanation of why that had happened - Wes had a crush on Gunn. If things had gone just a little bit differently, Wes would have ended up with him. Of course as the Host points out, that's not necessarily the right answer ;)
Scene three is when our boys finally get together. Dork!Angel is in full force, because I actually like Dork!Angel in limited doses and for the right reasons. Having the conversation that he's about to have - or at least trying to have - with Wes is definitely the right reason.
We get a little movement in Wes's apt here as Wes goes to make coffee and Angel wanders around the living room. I'll honestly make no claims as to how accurately I portrayed things. Wes's apt. didn't get much screen time in season 2 and I rewatched Reprise and Epiphany as often as I could to try to get a feel for the layout and could only come up with "fuck knows" beyond the order of the furniture in his living room. So watch TBQ try to fuzzy tiger her way around that whenever she can ;)
I think the bulk of Wes and Angel's conversation speaks for itself. Angel tells Wes his interpretation of events, which is therefore my own from his POV. A small bit of trivia for Wes's end of things - when Wes is telling Angel to get out and he's thinking he'll never see Angel again, he's actually thinking of packing it all up and going back to England.
Stuff like that goes back to something one of my writing teachers taught me, which is that writing is a lot like making soup stock - you start out with big chunks of things but your final product is the liquid which only has the subtle flavors. Ditto your characters - you should know all of their thoughts and motivations, even if the details of those motivations never make it to the page.
I've been asked about Wes saying that he broke up with Virginia. I know that on the show the words actually spoken are Wes saying that Virgina is breaking up with him, but I interpreted that as being a seriously mutual thing. I honestly think Virginia would have been happy to try to hang in for a few weeks more just to see if they could still have a fun relationship out of it, but Wes felt she needed to be gently nudged out of the door. I don't claim that this is the only interpretation, just that it's an interpretation.
Wes's comments about Gunn in scene three cover the rest of my exposition on that end - basically Wes has the crush but has no idea of Gunn's feelings. He doesn't even know if Gunn is gay (for the record - Epiphany Gunn is not), but the fact that he is gay is so new to Wes that he doesn't know how to interpret anything. Is Gunn flirting with him? Wes doesn't know.
Then we get to the "I love you." I read a review of EF where someone said they liked the story but felt the "I love you" was too abrupt. First off - never let it be said I don't like negative comments. I love hearing all opinions of my stuff (assuming it's based on an actual read, of course, and isn't the weird "Why did you make Angel a fag?"feedback that I still get from time to time).
Second - I think it's a fair comment. In 20/20 hindsight, knowing that this is now a series, I might have rethought the "I love you". I also might have rethought the sex scene. If I'd been doing it as a series deliberately I could easily see myself playing that out over the course of three to four stories, where the characters and the reader get to see the fun of Angel and Wes doing the first kiss, first date, first I love you, first time having sex, etc.
But again keyword there is "might". The flip side of this is that the "I love you" was purposefully abrupt. Wes has his blinders on, he's refusing to hear what Angel is saying, the big A decides he has to go for broke and reveals something he probably wouldn't have if he'd had any other option in front of him. And I think you can see that when his very next line is to immediately start backtracking and change the "love you" to "care about you".
So our boys get together and once again I write fanon without being aware of it with the whole "I invite you in" thing. The soul gets its cursory mention, and I'll talk more about the soul and the perfect happiness clause in future entries, most likely when I write about "Returning".
Another point of trivia interest is that at the end of the story, the narrative (which is from Wes's limited POV) refers to Angel as "the vampire". It was a deliberate choice on my part that in future stories that was not used again, b/c it reflected Wes's viewpoint of Angel. I'll talk about that more in future installments as well.
So... I think that covers it. There's not much in terms of "What did I leave out?" because as a one-off I tended to throw as much in as I could to cover all of the bases. Cut scenes and lost plotlines will get mentioned in future installments.
Next up (when I have time) - Liberty Rules.
