“Perish the Thought”, End notes

[aadler]

[ Endnotes posted 14 May 2015 ]

Where did the idea for the story come from?

In the FAST FORWARD section of Mediancat’s “Dancing in the Dark” is a glimpse of an AU Cordelia being imbued with the Slayer essence when 1) Buffy is drowned by the Master and 2) Cordelia and the others are being attacked in the library by vampires. That’s the closest I can come to finding an inspirational moment … though, of course, this story is clearly not about Cordelia.

Is there any particular significance to the title?

Only what’s there to be seen. It fit this story perfectly (IMHO), but there’s really not anything to explain there.

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 view inside the thoughts and personality of the central (never named to be Willow, but who else could it be?) character, her unassailable conviction that the Slayer will save her, and the recognition that her life being saved — in the way it was — was, from her perspective, the worst thing that possibly could have happened to her.

Like least: Thematically, nothing. I like this story.

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

I kept seeing instances of passive voice in the story. I did what I could to rework and remove as much as possible, but it’s still there and I wish I could have figured out a way to banish it far enough that it wouldn’t bother me.

Was there a different direction I might have wanted to take the story, and what would have been some of the advantages of the not-taken path?

I wouldn’t really want to change what’s already there. One alternative approach, however, might have been make it one of a series of sketches — five, at least — wherein different females found themselves to be the unexpected recipient of the dead Slayer’s legacy. Five, hmm … of a prospective four more, the ones that naturally come to mind are Cordelia, Dawn, Joyce, and Anya or Tara (clearly these would have to take place at varying times). I’ve already done Slayer-versions of everyone except Anya and Tara, but this would be under different circumstances and with different reactions …

Yeah. I have no intention of ever following out on anything like that, but it would make an interesting option.

Any observations to add at the end?

With the exception of “Bitter From the Sweet”, ten years later, this story was the easiest-to-write that I’ve ever done. I turned it out in one day, longhand, in a bombed-out Republican Guard fort somewhere in Iraq. There was a lot of wind there, and somehow I had most of the story blow away from the clipboard I was using without my noticing till the next day; I managed to retrieve some of the pages, but had to reconstruct about half of it from memory. Even so, it attracted some fair notice — most of it second-hand, people mentioning it approvingly in other venues after I read it aloud at the first WriterCon in Las Vegas — and so remains one of my small favorites.

More than that, its presence, clearly non-canon, led me to solidify the concept of an Independent Stories section, to which I added the already-written “Voices in the Dark” and “Critical Review”. Despite garnering little recognition in following years, it helped to lay a foundation for the type of work aadler would make a habit of doing thereafter.