“Ex Post Facto”, End notes

[aadler]

[ Endnotes posted 31 Aug 2015 ]

Where did the idea for the story come from?

No big inspiration or big deal; the entire story came from an idle musing about how differently we would feel about Faith’s Season 3 killing of Professor Wirth if he was, in fact, not the harmless, blameless man shown in canon. At the time, it seemed like a major possibility, but even by the time I finished the story I knew it had fallen well short of that.

Is there any particular significance to the title?

The obvious — reassessing something after the fact — and a mild pun in that the story came in the form of a letter to be posted (or not) to Faith in prison.

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

I most enjoyed Wesley’s bitter intellectualism; this was not a man seeking to shift blame to someone else, but one so steeped in self-blame that his observations were shot through with acid, scorching honesty. Liked least … well, the story was told well enough, but there wasn’t a lot to it, was there? That was less a flaw than an aspect of its fundamental nature, but it would have been nice if there had been a bit more meat to the narrative.

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

I don’t see how I could have done better without telling an entirely different story. Sufficient or not, this was the idea that was there for me, and I did with it what I could.

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

If anything, this story itself was the follow-up; Wesley’s mention of the ‘strange, intense young woman in Oxnard’ — and to his becoming a demon-hunter in imitation of her — show this story to have come after “Whisper of a Moment”. The reference to a Tyristhes cabal/Tyristhean rites would later be repeated in “X-Factorial” and “Into the Abyss”, however, so there’s that.

Any observations to add at the end?

Nothing really worth saying, except to note — as already listed on the story intro page — that brutti_ma_buoni did a fairly effective remix of this story as “Post Hoc Ergo Propter Hoc”. Worth a read and a comment, I’d say.