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thebratqueenFinally have time to do another installment for this (and give it a new, slightly more obvious title). The last one, as you may recall, was about Everybody Fell.
Here's a link to Liberty Rules if you want to refresh your memory before reading.
Okay, pop quiz - which story was written second in the series?
If you answered Liberty Rules, you obviously came into this later on.
The second story that I wrote for the series was actually By the Way which I'll talk about in the next BtF. The sixpense summary of BTW, though, is that Angel and Wes go to England, and TBQ starts to realize that this is becoming a series.
Well then there's a problem. Because in BTW Angel and Wes are obviously a schmoopy couple and at no time have I explained how Cordy and Gunn found out. Whoops. That's got to be an onstage moment, it's too significant to the ongoing story.
So I had a decision on my hand, and I decided that Cordy and Gunn would have to know before Angel and Wes took any trips together. So I had to bite the bullet and post this story third, with a note of explanation/apology in the author notes to let people know when it took place chronologically.
This wouldn't be the last time I'd have timeline problems with the series. ;)
The time problem solved, I then had to figure out how Cordy and Gunn would find out. This was a difficult decision. For starters I'd already settled on one decision that would guide me for the rest of the series, which is that while it was slash (with the occasional foray into NC17) I wanted it to be as true to canon as it could. So, as for example, this wasn't going to be the magical slash world where two guys fucking never raises an eyebrow. Wes was gay, he was realizing he was gay, and he was going to deal with that - and with the repercussions in his professional and social life.
Add to that the quirk of Angel and the curse and I had a challenge on my hands.
I started plotting out Liberty Rules in its larval format when I was in England. I've got a little notebook that I brought with me for planning out both BTW and this story. At the time of me writing those notes all that I knew was that the story would deal with Cordy and Gunn finding out. My first thought was that Wes and Angel would tell the two of them. Here's some lines that never made it to the final version (in their original, and painfully bad, form):
"Cordelia, I'm sleeping with Angel."
C: [blinks] Why? What's wrong with your apartment?
W frowned. "No. Not that way. I mean sleeping as in seeing. Romantically."
[dialogue of C putting 2 and 2 together, scene of A talking to G]
C: [strides into outer office] Check him for a soul!
G: [Huh?] How exactly am I supposed to do that? We already know he can't dance.
C: [looking for #] How could you? How could you possibly - damn it! What's Buffy's number?
A: Cor -
C: [turns, pissed] No. Don't you even! I know what it was like! I remember (when nobody knew who you'd killed kind of comment) I am not going through that again!
A: [helpless] Cordy, if I was Angelus I wouldn't be here - not like this.
W: If he were Angelus you'd probably already be dead.
G: [not amused, to A] This Angelus sounds like a real fun guy
C: Yeah, he's a real barrel of laughs. Especially with the pet torture. (hits Wes? "What were you thinking?)
W: [putting phone down?] Cordelia, please listen. There is no way I would have taken such a risk (Esp. after all we've been through? Not only for myself but for you and G as well?)
C: And how would you know? What, the last time he gets a little all Hell, literally, breaks loose but somehow you're special?
A: Actually it didn't happen with Darla either. So it's not really a matter of -
All: You slept with Darla?
A: [blinks] Yeah, didn't I -
G: No (I think we'd remember a little detail like that)
A: [to W] Didn't I -
W: No.
A: Wes, I am so sorry, I thought -
W: There's no need to apologize
A: [relief]
W: At least not for what you were attempting to apologize for. Angel, what were you thinking? Sleeping with Darla is possibly the worst kind of danger -
A: I wasn't thinking! I know it was bad! I knew it was bad! But, damnit, everything hurt and I just couldn't fight it anymore (I had nothing left. What did it matter if I lost that too?)
C: [arms folded] See, this is where the friends thing would have come in handy.
A: [arms out, helpless] I sent you away -
G: Still one of your dumbest moves.
A: How could I beg you for help at my worst?
W: [gentle] Angel, that is precisely when you should have come.
A: [sits] I - I don't know. I couldn't [low subtle] Didn't deserve to (too much?)
G: So (that's when?) you hook up with Darla, do things I still don't think makes any sense, wake up and find you still got your soul intact -
A: [finishes] Realize how bad I just screwed up and, yeah, here I am. Was.
C: [mulling this over] Okay, but how did you know you'd be safe this time?
W: (Asked at Caritas, got no indication of problems)
This is A's first time finding out about Caritas. Will assume later Wes went w/ Destiny in picking him, not choice. Host will set A straight.
A&W have not yet told each other they're going to sleep together again.
And therein ends the painful notes. You can (I assume) see some of the problems. First off the dialogue sucked ;) But beyond that I was digging myself into a serious hole. Cordy was too pissed and rightfully so, and by letting her stay pissed there was no way to refute her argument and let Angel and Wes continue. The guys were painted into a corner which would have put a real cramp on the series.
Also it was bringing up issues I didn't want to deal with yet (such as Angel talking about being alone) and others which don't even make sense to me now (Angel assumes destiny, not choice? Huh?)
So, back to the drawing board.
One of the best bits of writing advice I ever saw (and credit goes to Roger Ebert for it although I've no idea if he got it elsewhere) is the concept of taking your original idea and reversing it and finding out if that makes a better story.
I did a lot of reversals to figure out the right combinations for "The Cordy and Gunn find out" story. Two of them stuck. The first was that Cordy would have had no idea that Wes was gay. The second was that Gunn already knew - and moreover he was going to tell Angel (a very obvious reversal on Angel or Wes telling him, and one which made a better story idea in my opinion).
I picked the gym setting because now that I knew this was going to be a series I liked the idea of filling in the day to day details of the AI gang's life that we never get to see on the show. As you all know by now I don't tend to go for Monsters of the Week or Wolfram & Hart stories unless the plot demands it. I figure if you want MotW or W&H you'd stick with the show. Fanfic gives you the chance to see things we don't normally see in canon, so that's part of why you'll get more of the gang hanging out in my series than you might see elsewhere.
The gym setting also gave me an excuse to break the gang up - Wes and Cordy use the weight machines, Gunn challenges Angel to a symbolic game of basketball.
The title of the story comes from the basketball game. It also comes from the fact that I'm a native New Yorker. The WNBA team for New York is the Liberty. You can get a T-shirt with their logo on the front and the Liberty Rules (1. Shake hands 2. Kick Butt) on the back. You can actually get any WNBA team logo on the front for this shirt but A) Did I mention I'm a native New Yorker? and B) I thought "Liberty" would be a nice little shout-out to the QAF fans in the crowd. Plus C) I'm a native New Yorker.
So Liberty Rules is actually Gunn's perspective here. He knows Angel and Wes are screwing around, he knows Angel's dicked Wes over in the past, he wants to make sure Angel knows that hurting Wes again will be a bad idea.
On the flip side we've got Cordy, who was totally clueless about Wes's sexuality but is trying to be a good friend and do her best to support Wesley. Can I just say that when Disharmony aired weeks later and Cordy reacted in a similar manner to finding out Willow was gay that I did a little dance of smugness? I did a little dance of smugness. (I would repeat that dance later regarding a scene in Returning).
Of course when she finds out Cordy still has the same problem of the danger to Wes's life, but Wes's admission to her of loving Angel is enough to calm her - a little. It'll be a few stories before she starts getting comfortable with it. But as she says in later installments she figures at least by being with Wesley Angel will stay calm and not run off and do another let-them-eat-lawyer moment.
One thing I want to be sure to mention is the beauty of beta-readers.![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
lucifrix and catscradle kept the story from going into the land of David Furyism, and also pointed out obvious errors (Cordy's line of not having any gay friends that she was close to was originally just not having any gay friends. Which she immediately follows up with by offering to set Wes up on a date - whoops).
And I think that about covers it. Next up - God Help me - By The Way.
Here's a link to Liberty Rules if you want to refresh your memory before reading.
Okay, pop quiz - which story was written second in the series?
If you answered Liberty Rules, you obviously came into this later on.
The second story that I wrote for the series was actually By the Way which I'll talk about in the next BtF. The sixpense summary of BTW, though, is that Angel and Wes go to England, and TBQ starts to realize that this is becoming a series.
Well then there's a problem. Because in BTW Angel and Wes are obviously a schmoopy couple and at no time have I explained how Cordy and Gunn found out. Whoops. That's got to be an onstage moment, it's too significant to the ongoing story.
So I had a decision on my hand, and I decided that Cordy and Gunn would have to know before Angel and Wes took any trips together. So I had to bite the bullet and post this story third, with a note of explanation/apology in the author notes to let people know when it took place chronologically.
This wouldn't be the last time I'd have timeline problems with the series. ;)
The time problem solved, I then had to figure out how Cordy and Gunn would find out. This was a difficult decision. For starters I'd already settled on one decision that would guide me for the rest of the series, which is that while it was slash (with the occasional foray into NC17) I wanted it to be as true to canon as it could. So, as for example, this wasn't going to be the magical slash world where two guys fucking never raises an eyebrow. Wes was gay, he was realizing he was gay, and he was going to deal with that - and with the repercussions in his professional and social life.
Add to that the quirk of Angel and the curse and I had a challenge on my hands.
I started plotting out Liberty Rules in its larval format when I was in England. I've got a little notebook that I brought with me for planning out both BTW and this story. At the time of me writing those notes all that I knew was that the story would deal with Cordy and Gunn finding out. My first thought was that Wes and Angel would tell the two of them. Here's some lines that never made it to the final version (in their original, and painfully bad, form):
"Cordelia, I'm sleeping with Angel."
C: [blinks] Why? What's wrong with your apartment?
W frowned. "No. Not that way. I mean sleeping as in seeing. Romantically."
[dialogue of C putting 2 and 2 together, scene of A talking to G]
C: [strides into outer office] Check him for a soul!
G: [Huh?] How exactly am I supposed to do that? We already know he can't dance.
C: [looking for #] How could you? How could you possibly - damn it! What's Buffy's number?
A: Cor -
C: [turns, pissed] No. Don't you even! I know what it was like! I remember (when nobody knew who you'd killed kind of comment) I am not going through that again!
A: [helpless] Cordy, if I was Angelus I wouldn't be here - not like this.
W: If he were Angelus you'd probably already be dead.
G: [not amused, to A] This Angelus sounds like a real fun guy
C: Yeah, he's a real barrel of laughs. Especially with the pet torture. (hits Wes? "What were you thinking?)
W: [putting phone down?] Cordelia, please listen. There is no way I would have taken such a risk (Esp. after all we've been through? Not only for myself but for you and G as well?)
C: And how would you know? What, the last time he gets a little all Hell, literally, breaks loose but somehow you're special?
A: Actually it didn't happen with Darla either. So it's not really a matter of -
All: You slept with Darla?
A: [blinks] Yeah, didn't I -
G: No (I think we'd remember a little detail like that)
A: [to W] Didn't I -
W: No.
A: Wes, I am so sorry, I thought -
W: There's no need to apologize
A: [relief]
W: At least not for what you were attempting to apologize for. Angel, what were you thinking? Sleeping with Darla is possibly the worst kind of danger -
A: I wasn't thinking! I know it was bad! I knew it was bad! But, damnit, everything hurt and I just couldn't fight it anymore (I had nothing left. What did it matter if I lost that too?)
C: [arms folded] See, this is where the friends thing would have come in handy.
A: [arms out, helpless] I sent you away -
G: Still one of your dumbest moves.
A: How could I beg you for help at my worst?
W: [gentle] Angel, that is precisely when you should have come.
A: [sits] I - I don't know. I couldn't [low subtle] Didn't deserve to (too much?)
G: So (that's when?) you hook up with Darla, do things I still don't think makes any sense, wake up and find you still got your soul intact -
A: [finishes] Realize how bad I just screwed up and, yeah, here I am. Was.
C: [mulling this over] Okay, but how did you know you'd be safe this time?
W: (Asked at Caritas, got no indication of problems)
This is A's first time finding out about Caritas. Will assume later Wes went w/ Destiny in picking him, not choice. Host will set A straight.
A&W have not yet told each other they're going to sleep together again.
And therein ends the painful notes. You can (I assume) see some of the problems. First off the dialogue sucked ;) But beyond that I was digging myself into a serious hole. Cordy was too pissed and rightfully so, and by letting her stay pissed there was no way to refute her argument and let Angel and Wes continue. The guys were painted into a corner which would have put a real cramp on the series.
Also it was bringing up issues I didn't want to deal with yet (such as Angel talking about being alone) and others which don't even make sense to me now (Angel assumes destiny, not choice? Huh?)
So, back to the drawing board.
One of the best bits of writing advice I ever saw (and credit goes to Roger Ebert for it although I've no idea if he got it elsewhere) is the concept of taking your original idea and reversing it and finding out if that makes a better story.
I did a lot of reversals to figure out the right combinations for "The Cordy and Gunn find out" story. Two of them stuck. The first was that Cordy would have had no idea that Wes was gay. The second was that Gunn already knew - and moreover he was going to tell Angel (a very obvious reversal on Angel or Wes telling him, and one which made a better story idea in my opinion).
I picked the gym setting because now that I knew this was going to be a series I liked the idea of filling in the day to day details of the AI gang's life that we never get to see on the show. As you all know by now I don't tend to go for Monsters of the Week or Wolfram & Hart stories unless the plot demands it. I figure if you want MotW or W&H you'd stick with the show. Fanfic gives you the chance to see things we don't normally see in canon, so that's part of why you'll get more of the gang hanging out in my series than you might see elsewhere.
The gym setting also gave me an excuse to break the gang up - Wes and Cordy use the weight machines, Gunn challenges Angel to a symbolic game of basketball.
The title of the story comes from the basketball game. It also comes from the fact that I'm a native New Yorker. The WNBA team for New York is the Liberty. You can get a T-shirt with their logo on the front and the Liberty Rules (1. Shake hands 2. Kick Butt) on the back. You can actually get any WNBA team logo on the front for this shirt but A) Did I mention I'm a native New Yorker? and B) I thought "Liberty" would be a nice little shout-out to the QAF fans in the crowd. Plus C) I'm a native New Yorker.
So Liberty Rules is actually Gunn's perspective here. He knows Angel and Wes are screwing around, he knows Angel's dicked Wes over in the past, he wants to make sure Angel knows that hurting Wes again will be a bad idea.
On the flip side we've got Cordy, who was totally clueless about Wes's sexuality but is trying to be a good friend and do her best to support Wesley. Can I just say that when Disharmony aired weeks later and Cordy reacted in a similar manner to finding out Willow was gay that I did a little dance of smugness? I did a little dance of smugness. (I would repeat that dance later regarding a scene in Returning).
Of course when she finds out Cordy still has the same problem of the danger to Wes's life, but Wes's admission to her of loving Angel is enough to calm her - a little. It'll be a few stories before she starts getting comfortable with it. But as she says in later installments she figures at least by being with Wesley Angel will stay calm and not run off and do another let-them-eat-lawyer moment.
One thing I want to be sure to mention is the beauty of beta-readers.
lucifrix and catscradle kept the story from going into the land of David Furyism, and also pointed out obvious errors (Cordy's line of not having any gay friends that she was close to was originally just not having any gay friends. Which she immediately follows up with by offering to set Wes up on a date - whoops).And I think that about covers it. Next up - God Help me - By The Way.
