“Otherwise a Perfect Sky”, End notes
[ Endnotes posted 18 Jan 2018 ]
Since this is a remix, what prompted the direction this story took in differing from the original?
I honestly don’t know of any prompts. This story was simply there for me, I don’t recall any sense of planning. (Except for trying to keep the style from being instantly recognizable, so people wouldn’t automatically identify me as the author before time for the official reveal. I even went so far as to not use a single semicolon.) It wasn’t absolutely the easiest story I ever wrote - that would be “ Bitter From the Sweet”, which took me barely an hour - but it was certainly up there in the listings.
Is there any particular significance to the title?
As I’ve noted before, I make an effort to use song titles or lyrics to title remixes. This one obviously owes something to Natalie Imbruglia’s “Torn” (“- and I can see the perfect sky is torn -!”); also, I was at that time consciously trying to cover each letter of the alphabets in my story titles, so “Underneath a Perfect Sky” became “Otherwise a Perfect Sky” so I could check the O off my list.
What is the thing I like most about this story? the thing I like least, or about which I feel most doubtful?
Like most? Too many things to name; this one just worked for me. What initially gave the greatest pause was something that wound up being (in my opinion) one of the strong parts of the story: the sexual relationship between Tara and Xander, why it happened and how it worked and what it eventually meant. I knew that the Willow/Tara relationship, and what it represented, were deeply cherished by many people, and I anticipated a strong possibility that putting her with Xander - for whatever reasons, and however temporarily - would not be well received. Like pretty much everything else I did in this one, however, it demanded to be included, so I just did the best job I could and waited to see the reaction. In fairness to fandom, there was NO negative reaction, maybe because Tara was the POV character here and the exploration of her character was not at all unflattering.
Is there anything I think I could have done better, or might do differently if I had it to do over?
If there was anything I could have done better, my imagination doesn’t stretch that far. (This was, and is, the best thing I’ve ever written.) If I had it to do over … well, that’s a scary thought, because I can’t imagine doing it as well on another try.
Do I have any plans to follow up on this story, or to use the character(s) or situation in a subsequent fic?
As with most of my Backstage Stories now, there are internal links to other stories, some preceding OPS and others coming afterward. The Guzman twins had been referenced in “ Beg to Differ”; the Hakklusch demon that killed Jacie Li was mentioned in “ An Eye to the Future” and “ Maxima Culpa” (and Mary Claire, mentioned here, was the main character in “Maxima Culpa”); and Altcchon was the species of Juwara, Spike’s demon opponent in “ Rough Trade”. (And, though I didn’t make it explicit, the nameless young woman who drove an armored car into the compound before dying of fever? that was Dina, from “ Whisper of a Moment”.)
Any observations to add at the end?
I wish everything I wrote could come to me as organically as this one did. I had to put work into it, but there was never a time when it felt like the story itself was fighting me. (This is rare.) If it was my high-water mark, as appears to be the case, I could do worse.
(And, as I have noted on several other occasions, it didn’t hurt at all to have a really, really good story from which to do a remix in the first place.)