“Twilight’s Last Gleaming”, End notes

[aadler]

[ Endnotes posted 29 Nov 2014 ]

Where did the idea for the story come from?

The germ-of-an-idea for this one goes back to before I started doing fanfic at all. Decades ago I read some work of horror fiction in which, toward the end, the people who had been working their way through all sorts of trials discovered that some of them (a couple of young women) had been made into vampires. The horror and helplessness they felt at learning this made a mark on me where none of the other narrative had, and I just kept thinking, It’s a shame there was no way the lost ones could be helped. So, years after that, I started thinking of ways in which vampirism might be ‘cured’, absent explicit hand-waving magic. That notion, over a long period of time and several evolutions, eventually turned into this story.

Is there any particular significance to the title?

Mostly I liked how it sounded, but it was in fact part of the story that Loryn’s ‘twilight’ status — accidentally and temporarily stuck between dark and daylight — allowed an opportunity for her rescue that wouldn’t be available in normal circumstances.

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

Like most: the depiction of Jack’s personality. I was already fairly well practiced in showing characters who aren’t perfect (that’s just a function of making a character realistic), but this was the first time I had put real work into showing someone as flawed. Jack has a number of virtues, but he’s loaded with limitations as well. Self-conscious machismo (even if he isn’t overt about it) is probably the foundation for most of the rest; he operates with a lot of assurance — some of which even he knows is pretense — that isn’t really justified by his capabilities, and takes charge basically because he can get away with it. If you assess the narrative, you can see that he’s automatically dominant whenever Loryn is in her human stage, but very cautious and deferential when she’s in her night-form. The only time he tries to assert himself on night-Loryn … well, that doesn’t go too well for him, does it?

Like least/feel most doubtful:

First: I had set out from the beginning to do non-standard Buffy: not only to avoid telling the same stories other people were doing, but to go in various directions in my own writing. Part of that involved the behind-the-scenes approach I’ve used to a great extent, inspired by “Not Even Jimmy Olsen” and “One Morning in Sunnydale”, but also conceptually influenced by the Star Trek: TNG “below decks” idea, which I’d heard about but not actually encountered/read. I had already followed this approach in several stories, and liked it and intended to continue it. With “Twilight’s Last Gleaming”, however, I don’t think I really hit the target. I put some time and development into this story, and what I did I think I did quite well, but I honestly believe now that it would have worked better as a standalone. For some reason, however, I chose to place it within my Backstage Stories. It doesn’t contradict canon (except potentially in one area, addressed below), but it isn’t really a part of it, either; it can exist there, but doesn’t quite feel native. Basically, I shoehorned this idea into Buffy because I wanted to, and it’s not a comfortable fit.

Second: Loryn’s vampirism, as described, is clearly different from that seen in the principal Buffyverse vampires. As I said, this doesn’t violate canon per se (Dracula and his ‘brides’, in the Season 5.1 episode “Buffy vs. Dracula”, show that this ‘type’ does exist in the Buffyverse), but it clashes, and did even more when the story was first written (the Dracula episode appeared months after this story was first placed online). The conflict inherent in two unexplained types of vampire was unnecessary and at least potentially troublesome, and I waved it away and drove on just because I liked this particular story. I wouldn’t do it again.

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

You mean, aside from NOT doing all the things I cited as problems above? The conflicts I named weren’t demanded by the story; I could have left things a lot neater if I had 1) made Loryn the same type of vampire as already seen in the Buffyverse, 2) not set the story in 1980, and 3) drawn some more direct connections to the fictional world in which I was operating. As I said, the things I did weren’t bad, but they were cumbersome where they didn’t need to be, and I could have avoided the whole thing if I hadn’t been so stubborn.

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

No, I don’t. Set in the Backstage series or not, these characters did all they were intended to do. There was a reference (“In Ev’ry Angle Greet”, final segment) to someone named Loryn, but that’s the most I’ve ever done or planned to do.

Any observations to add at the end?

Two things. To begin with, this was a learning experience, though what I learned was subconscious for a long time. I don’t feel I did anything wrong in the story itself, but I really shouldn’t have tried to place it where I did. I wanted to write this story, and I was doing Buffyfic at the time, so why not fit it into Buffy’s world? I should have either gone the whole way — shaped it so it really would fit — or posted it as an unrelated story. This was a self-indulgence that I’ve tried to avoid repeating.

Finally, some years after the fact, I found that someone had tried to copy the story (renaming it, simply, “Vamp”) and claim it as their own. The amateurishness of the attempt can be found in the fact that the cut-and-paste was so perfunctory that it included the Fanfiction.net heading “Author: Aadler” on one page heading. I was stunned by such blatant and clumsy plagiarism, and sent a rather stiff message that the offending entity needed to be taken down immediately. It was, which was good, because I would have had no way of forcing compliance. Even if it’s true that imitation is the sincerest form of flattery, this wasn’t even imitation, but direct — and inept — theft. People are weird.