“Voices in the Dark”, End notes
[ Endnotes posted 18 Nov 2014 ]
Where did the idea for the story come from?
This was only the fourth story I’d ever done, so we’re still talking about way back in 2000, when the majority of my reading still came from SlayerFanfic.com (now sadly defunct). I’d seen a story wherein Spike took some kind of mystical mind-expanding substance that allowed him supernatural insight into each of the Scoobies - so that he could eventually kill them all, of course - and detailing the analysis he made of them. That was the closest thing I can name to a thematic progenitor to what VID wound up being.
Is there any particular significance to the title?
Nope. It worked, so I kept it, but it was one of the more generic ones I ever turned out, and I’m fairly sure others in BtVS (and elsewhere) have also used it, both before and after I did.
What is the thing I like most about this story? the thing I like least, or about which I feel most doubtful?
Overall, I think it was thematically successful in doing what it set out to do. I was still developing the idea of a consolidated repository of linked stories, and this was the first one to vary from that, so that I eventually developed a separate category for “Independent” stories and this was the first one I put there. As it stands, though, the Joyce POV section is one of my favorite pieces of writing, the first serious attempt to capture ‘normal Joyce’ (I’d already done Joyce the Slayer for “ Point of Focus”), and I do like the way it came out.
With that out of the way …
Liked most? I already mentioned the Joyce section; adding to that, the contrast between it and the Giles section (as in, their complementary but conflicting perspectives on the band candy incident and each other), and the framework and resolution of the “She’s out there” theme.
Liked least? I have to say the Highlander tie-in, which struck me as quite clever at the time; what I did was well-done, but I’ve since come to feel that if you’re going to introduce elements of a separate fandom, you should either do it slyly in passing (as with “ Come to My Window”), or make it an actual crossover that equally honors both fandoms (as I did in “… Than Meets the Eye” and “ Seeking the Woman”).
Is there anything I think I could have done better, or might do differently if I had it to do over?
I keep coming back to the Joe Dawson segment. What I did was, in my opinion, done well as a thing in itself, but ultimately shouldn’t have been done as a part of the story. It worked (I would say), but it’s just not the way I would so such a thing now.
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 potential variation would have been to write it in third person, rather than a shifting roster of first-person POVs; one can do a lot more ‘tell’ in such an approach, and in ways that first-person doesn’t really accommodate. Or, an intriguing alternative would be to have made Mayor Richard Wilkins the fifth perspective; that would have put a very different flavor to the resolution … and then I could have included it as a Backstage story after all.
Any observations to add at the end?
A few, yes.
First, this was a minor story, but fun to do and a development of my fanfic muscles at a time when I was still working out just how I’d tackle this new world. Second, I deliberately used something resembling the same approach when I wrote “ Objects in the Mirror”. I believe I was doing better writing in OIM, but still feel that VID was more successful as a story. Sometimes things just turn out that way. Third, even though I regretted the Highlander crossover, there was another hidden cross (of the type I came to call ‘leakovers’) that nobody has ever indicated that they caught: the mention of Hiro (in Snyder’s segment) is a reference to the Dr Hiro character in the “Where’s Quincy?” episode of Quincy, M.E.