aadler | “Jokers to the Right”, End notes

[ Endnotes posted 09 Apr 2023 ]

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

The original story was just a matter of perspective and observations; there really wasn’t a great deal there past that, so coming up with something else wasn’t just called for by the structure of a remix, it was necessary to have anything. Filling it out with some of the Y-chromsome carriers ‘on the sidelines’ in the Buffyverse? wasn’t a huge leap.

Is there any particular meaning in the title?

If there was at the time, I don’t remember it now. I think it was just something I put in there.

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

I believe I did decently well at offering insights in and from the male sidekicks, some of which insights may even have been original. Most doubtful? the truth is that I had intended to do a substantially longer story, with at least one action sequence, and truncated it to the current form because I ran out of time on the remix schedule.

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

Like I said, more story. As with the original, there just isn’t a whole lot there.

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

Yes, there was, and I always meant to go back eventually and do the story as originally intended. Five years later, still haven’t got around to it … but then, I’ve done plenty of planned stories after long delays, so it not only could still happen, it probably will.

Any observations to add at the end?

As a story, this had considerably less substance than most of the others I’ve done. As a remix, I expanded quite a bit from what was there in the original, and I’ve seen plenty of remixes (and had some done for me) that offered much less. All the same, I’m probably less satisfied with it than with anything else in my Buffyfic library. Someday, something will have to be done about that.