“Critical Review”, End notes

[aadler]

[ Endnotes posted 22 Apr 2015 ]

Where did the idea for the story come from?

I couldn’t say. The story is over a dozen years old by now, and it was never a huge idea to begin with. It might — just barely might — have drawn some subconscious inspiration from the 2000 Just Shoot Me ‘mockumentary’ episode, “A&E Biography: Nina Van Horn”. I can remember wishing someone could do an A&E Biography of Xander — thinking how surreal it would turn out to be, and how much I would enjoy it — but I had no video skills, and I still wasn’t acquainted with that many people in the fanfic world, so I let the idea drop. If “Critical Review” turned out to be a lesser incarnation of that general thought (which I would still love to see!), it would at least be plausible.

Is there any particular significance to the title?

It was a generic, workable label, and since the story itself was so small, I saw no need to exercise much imagination coming up with something better. It served well enough, and still does, but no, there is no deeper significance.

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

What I like most is the underlying theme, which is that Xander Harris is a guy who made a huge difference in the world, but his achievements and significance were destined to remain (as they had been in his lifetime) unknown to any except a small, informed minority. The fastidious annoyance of the reviewer (“Andrew Iverson”, doubtless a descendant of Freddy Iverson) with the ridiculous claims made by Xander’s own descendant (“F.W. Pryce”: certain amount of intermarriage among the Scoobies and former Scoobies, perhaps?) was fun to write. After that, the sheer audacious scope of the different events and personalities that the Zeppo everyman found himself involved in was enough to make for a good laugh.

Like least … well, there really wasn’t enough there to dislike, was there? It was a small idea, I followed it out in a small way, and that was that.

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

The opening sentence of the final paragraph: Not every writer can skim the crescent out of the park on the first try. That was part of the whole “this is being written in the future” vibe, so there was a reason for it, but however valid it may have been, it comes across feeling artificial. If this was a bigger story, that might nag at me enough to make me change it. As it is … well, that sentence remains as a small doubtful element.

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?

One comes to mind, yes. What if the ‘reviewer’ had taken a different stance from the beginning? not condemning the obvious fictitiousness of Xander’s interpolated exploits, but following out tantalizing threads of known history that might point to some underlying truth? A lot of the fun in this story came from the things that ‘we’ know but the narrator couldn’t, but that would have been a different (and potentially richer) means of mining that same vein of fun.

Any observations to add at the end?

About a year after I posted “Critical Review”, Marcus Rowland (ffutures) did a story that had a lot of similarities. There were enough differences — and I was still at that time sitting in such a small, limited corner of fanficdom — that there’s no particular reason to believe he’d ever seen my story, but his “Legend” incorporated the same kind of tongue-in-cheek oh-so-rational-but-still-wrong ‘objectivity’. Anyone who actually enjoyed “Critical Review” would get a HUGE kick out of “Legend”, simply because it’s longer, more varied and … well … much better.

On that note, in 2014, as part of that year’s Circle of Friends Remix (cof_remix), dragonyphoenix remixed my story as “The Man” (Part One and Part Two) in a freewheeling blast that still leaves me slack-jawed in amazement. If my own story was a small chuckle, dragonyphoenix’s was a major hoot.

So, basically, I’m using these endnotes to recommend (highly recommend) stories by two other authors. Why not? “Critical Review” was never that big to me to begin with, and the others are better. That’s just how it is.