“Unbidden the Day”, End notes

[aadler]

[ Endnotes posted 06 Aug 2018 ]

Where did the idea for the story come from?

From three different directions, actually. The first was the simplest: just the mental picture of Buffy (as seen in Part 3) as a warrior goddess, rushing to the attack with the troll hammer raised to strike. Turning that into my own version of “Groundhog Day” came rather later, and the final twist — framing the earlier part of the narrative in a series of deliberate Mary Sues — came from a challenge I idly posed to sroni about evoking all the most horrendous Mary Sue tropes while still turning out an effective story. Making Nancy Doyle the protagonist was simply a framing touch, not really an inspiration per se.

Is there any particular significance to the title?

Well, it’s original, which is a departure for me, as I usually go for familiar turns of phrase. Part of it was a hazy memory of the Gospel aphorism, “Sufficient unto the day is the evil thereof”. The ‘unto’ felt clunky to me, though, and I needed a “U” to fill in my alphabetical list of titles (still running then, though I was nearing the completion of the process), so it turned into ‘Unbidden the Day’. Of such trifles is history made.

What is the thing I like most about this story? the thing I like least, or about which I feel most doubtful?

Honestly, my biggest kick came from playing the Mary Sue angle like a banjo. I actually researched the classical signs of Sue-ism, and did my best to crowd in as many as I could … and then explain just how such a horrible thing had come about.

Doubtful? The biggest issue, of course, is the one of which the narrator herself is aware: when you’ve glamoured your partners so thoroughly, just how ‘consensual’ is any sex you have with them? Her own scruples in the matter served mainly to highlight the very serious questions such a situation raises.

Is there anything I think I could have done better, or might do differently if I had it to do over?

If I were doing it again, I might have an extra Sue, a vampire-with-a-soul sired by Angelus back in the Bad Old Days. That would fill in an unchecked slot … but, honestly, I’d say this story came out about as well as I’d be capable of doing even years later.

Do I have any plans to follow up on this story, or to use the character(s) or situation in a subsequent fic?

No further plans regarding SuperNancy herself, but there are links indeed. Dodson’s Beach, where Nancy took Jonathan after Hawaii, had been mentioned clear back in “Twilight’s Last Gleaming”; Madame Tiphaine, mentioned in this story, was also referenced in TLG and had likewise been mentioned in “Hell Hath No Fury”, and would later be referenced in “Shock to the System” and appear as the central character in “An Eye to the Future”. Nancy mentions the Han Solo/Indiana Jones pair who shot up the Bronze during Halloween ’97, which occurred in “the Human Touch”; she says something about a mist dagger, which Fr Nolan had mentioned in “the Still, Small Voice”; and, finally, the Mahou no Kage-shi, part of the backstory of one of Nancy’s aliases, had been referenced (in connection to a Potential named Kinue) back in “Precious Cargo”. Nor is that the end of it; at the very least, Madame Tiphaine has a role to play in a story long-planned but not yet written.

Any observations to add at the end?

Though doing less of it in the last several years, I spent a lot of time in the beginning working with minor characters from BtVS, making them — rather than the canon stars — the focus of various stories, or at least using the lessers for alternative perspectives toward the majors. It  surprises me a bit to realize that I used Nancy Doyle as much as I did: background contribution in “Yet to Be Seen”, central character in this story, and not-actually-appearing-but-described-in-retrospect in “God Save the Queen”. What can I say? she made an impression, and I discovered that she was sorta fun to work with.