“Under the Gun”, End notes
[ Endnotes posted 11 Feb 2020 ]
Since this is a remix, what prompted the direction this story took in differing from the original?
Most of that I already covered in replies to story comments: I was coming up on summer-of-giles, and had just finished Buffy_Remix, and one of the participants in the latter (slashmarks) hadn’t received a remix, so I set out to do double duty; as in, I took the basic situation from the original story, plugged Giles into it, and saw where the difference took me.
Is there any particular significance to the title?
Nope. It just worked for the overall situation.
What is the thing I like most about this story? the thing I like least, or about which I feel most doubtful?
What I liked most was how desperately Giles had to fight to keep from being killed by Buffy (‘a ninety-five-pound teen-aged girl’) before she caught the Slayer activation.
What I feel most doubtful about … well, at the time I serious concerns as to whether I properly balanced the depiction of Giles’s mental state to raise the possibility that he was crazy, without making him appear unquestionably crazy. The commentary I received at the time made it appear I had struck the right balance, but it remains an area of less-than-total confidence for me.
Is there anything I think I could have done better, or might do differently if I had it to do over?
The shorter a story is, the more likely I am to reply, “Nope, this came out the way I meant it to.” This one is fairly short, so yeah, what I said.
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?
Nothing comes to mind. Sorry.
Any observations to add at the end?
Another things already covered in answer to comments: it was a kick to see Faith as the voice of reason/restraint, just this once. How often does that happen?