“X-Factorial”, End notes

[aadler]

[ Endnotes posted 16 March 2017 ]

Since this is a remix, what prompted the direction this story took in differing from the original?

No big revelations here. I’d had a good time in my first RemixRedux, so I signed up for gen_remix. At the end of it there were only two people who hadn’t received remixes: me, and the person running the event (kerravonsen). There was a call for pinch-hitters, I responded that I couldn’t see myself meeting any such deadline … and then did it anyway, apparently just because I felt like it. This story wasn’t a major effort, simply my attempt to do a decent job of providing an alternative viewpoint to the original story from which this is a variation.

Is there any particular significance to the title?

No more than is laid out in the story itself: that Xander was the ‘x-factor’ that kept overturning plans in which all the variables should have been already known. (Honestly, it came mostly from the fact that I had recently begun trying to get a story title from each letter of the alphabet, and ‘X’ was one that I needed to fill in.)

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

I felt I did a pretty good job in depicting the comprehensive non-humanness of the kuruse members. It was also amusing to see the ways in which Giles’s post-battle understanding of the situation, while close enough to the full truth to have proven effective, wasn’t quite entirely accurate.

I’m less completely satisfied with the fact that all the action was described after-the-fact and in passing. The story didn’t actually need any more than that, but let’s face it, off-stage violence has traditionally been a way of dodging the responsibility of properly showing action. If this wasn’t that, it was close enough to be legitimately mistaken for it.

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

Having taken the preceding (off-stage combat) into account, I’d have to say no. The structure of the story was what it was; to have done differently would have made it a different story. This one arrived where I aimed it, and it’s up to the reader to decide if that was the right target to hit.

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

Not directly, no. As has been the case before, however, there are links to other stories, albeit minor. The ‘Tyristhes cabal’ mentioned in this story was also referenced in “Ex Post Facto”, which in turn connects to a mention of ‘Tyristhean rites’ in “Into the Abyss”; additionally, the kuruse itself is mentioned in “Glass Ceiling” as a ‘Kuruse demon’.

Any observations to add at the end?

Two.

First, I named the specific links, but there was another that was indirect, tenuous, and sly: the demon’s description of Xander as “weaver of shrouds, builder of tombs” was deliberate shout-out to the ‘Carpenter’ role (“first he builds you a coffin, then he puts you in it”) that Xander so passionately denied in “Learning Curve”.

Second, I didn’t remain indefinitely neglected in the remix that prompted this story; eventually, sroni became unwilling to see me thus forsaken, and turned out a remix of her own just for me: “Twisted Road (the Bad Intentions Remix)”. It helps to have built your own number-one fan from grade school up.