Dawn in Seraph
Jan. 17th, 2010 08:18 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
snick_backupIt looks like it's going to take more than one post to say all I want to say about Seraph. So, here's the first part of the commentary:
Pretty much everything to do with Dawn in this fic came as a surprise.![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
2maggie2 asked how much I’d worked out the real, pre-Dawn (heh) timeline, and the answer is that when I started writing this fic, I was writing in the pre-Dawn timeline. That first scene with Spike and Dawn, where I signal off-handedly that we’re working in the be-Dawned version of the universe? I wrote that entire scene with Anya instead of Dawn.
I had this misbegotten idea that I’d drop Dawn into the narrative at the end just like she was dropped in in canon, which would have been metafictionally amusing but nothing but disruptive to the story. I really liked the late-story Dawn&Spike bits that I’d written, though, around 20k into the story it occurred to me that a Spike&Dawn friendship arc could be the extra scaffolding to hold the story together.
Besides, reorienting the Spike&Dawn friendship sounded like fun. It was different this time; there’s no Buffy-infatuation to motivate him; he actually likes Dawn on her own terms, and also because she likes him, a novel concept that becomes crucial at this time when his own life is in so much upheaval.
In my storytelling story, it’s sort of a feature (a bug?) that I tend to leave the things most important to the story, the key emotional elements that inform the entire thing, left almost totally unsaid. Like, in Seraph I put a lot of the weight behind this Spike/Dawn friendship on the basic idea that Spike is miserably lonely. He’d never admit it, he may not have ever put it to himself in so many words, but I gravely doubt that if Dru were still around he’d have any inclination at all to hang about with a thirteen-year-old human girl.
So, the emphasis of Spike and Dawn’s relationship is reversed from that in canon: to a large extent, it’s Spike who’s going through drastic life changes, and Dawn who kind of helps him along with them. Meanwhile, she’s just a that little bit younger, a bit less blasé about this whole vampire thing, especially since she gets bitten at the beginning of the story.
But then Dawn surprised me there, too, with her vamp-attack PTSD. I planned on a standard almost-sibling relationship seasoned with a pinch of one-sided crush, but as I started writing the chapter in which Spike gives Dawn knife-throwing lessons, all this trauma came bubbling to the surface. It completely shifted their friendship arc in the story, because now instead of instead of just a rogueish older brother figure, Dawn has to deal with Spike being one of the same creatures that attacked her early on in the story. And I didn’t really plan any of that in advance, except for their final scene at the hospital, in which I got to draw all sorts of fun parallels with the first time they battled those same vamps.
Also, it seems to me that Dawn’s uncertain relationship with Spike is a sort of counterbalance to all the mpreg schmoop. When I’m writing from his POV, he’s almost bound to come off as sympathetic, but Dawn’s questions and investigations give him some of his bite back, which I think is crucial to a rounded portrayal of him as a character.
Plus, Dawn serves as a sort of parallel to the baby: someone young and relatively helpless that Spike comes to care for despite himself. I had the idea that palling around with Dawn in those early chapters softened him up a little for falling in love with his baby, although I don’t think that really came across very well.
And besides all that, you know, Spike and Dawn are just fun together. They’re my favorite Buffyverse ‘ship, bar none, and I just don’t ever get tired of them.
As for what really happened, in the pre-Dawn reality: I don’t know.gabriellabelle made the very interesting point a while back that in order to fit Dawn into the world's memories as easily as possible, the monks probably made her a wallflower, a background figure, someone mostly unnoticed. Simple is best, right?
Seraph pretty much walks all over that very sound theory, because if Dawn didn’t throw the knife and save Spike there at the end, then who did? If she didn’t tell Buffy where Spike kept his car, then how did Buffy catch him before he left town? If Spike hadn’t wanted her for company on his doctor’s visits, then why would Buffy have gone with him – and what would have happened if she hadn’t? In this ficverse, even pre-existence Dawn is an active player, and beyond the first few chapters I really can’t imagine what it all looked like without her.
I wouldn’t mind trying, though. I’ve long wanted to write a story in which Dawn uses magic to explore what the world looked like without her; with all its inherent structural funnery, it’s a story I’d love to have seen them do on the show. But I think this ficverse might be the best place to do it, because here, the Dawn’s memories are the audience’s memories; her existential angst would be real to us in a way it couldn’t be in canon.
So there you have it: Dawn the surprise character who just kept surprising me.
Pretty much everything to do with Dawn in this fic came as a surprise.
2maggie2 asked how much I’d worked out the real, pre-Dawn (heh) timeline, and the answer is that when I started writing this fic, I was writing in the pre-Dawn timeline. That first scene with Spike and Dawn, where I signal off-handedly that we’re working in the be-Dawned version of the universe? I wrote that entire scene with Anya instead of Dawn. I had this misbegotten idea that I’d drop Dawn into the narrative at the end just like she was dropped in in canon, which would have been metafictionally amusing but nothing but disruptive to the story. I really liked the late-story Dawn&Spike bits that I’d written, though, around 20k into the story it occurred to me that a Spike&Dawn friendship arc could be the extra scaffolding to hold the story together.
Besides, reorienting the Spike&Dawn friendship sounded like fun. It was different this time; there’s no Buffy-infatuation to motivate him; he actually likes Dawn on her own terms, and also because she likes him, a novel concept that becomes crucial at this time when his own life is in so much upheaval.
In my storytelling story, it’s sort of a feature (a bug?) that I tend to leave the things most important to the story, the key emotional elements that inform the entire thing, left almost totally unsaid. Like, in Seraph I put a lot of the weight behind this Spike/Dawn friendship on the basic idea that Spike is miserably lonely. He’d never admit it, he may not have ever put it to himself in so many words, but I gravely doubt that if Dru were still around he’d have any inclination at all to hang about with a thirteen-year-old human girl.
So, the emphasis of Spike and Dawn’s relationship is reversed from that in canon: to a large extent, it’s Spike who’s going through drastic life changes, and Dawn who kind of helps him along with them. Meanwhile, she’s just a that little bit younger, a bit less blasé about this whole vampire thing, especially since she gets bitten at the beginning of the story.
But then Dawn surprised me there, too, with her vamp-attack PTSD. I planned on a standard almost-sibling relationship seasoned with a pinch of one-sided crush, but as I started writing the chapter in which Spike gives Dawn knife-throwing lessons, all this trauma came bubbling to the surface. It completely shifted their friendship arc in the story, because now instead of instead of just a rogueish older brother figure, Dawn has to deal with Spike being one of the same creatures that attacked her early on in the story. And I didn’t really plan any of that in advance, except for their final scene at the hospital, in which I got to draw all sorts of fun parallels with the first time they battled those same vamps.
Also, it seems to me that Dawn’s uncertain relationship with Spike is a sort of counterbalance to all the mpreg schmoop. When I’m writing from his POV, he’s almost bound to come off as sympathetic, but Dawn’s questions and investigations give him some of his bite back, which I think is crucial to a rounded portrayal of him as a character.
Plus, Dawn serves as a sort of parallel to the baby: someone young and relatively helpless that Spike comes to care for despite himself. I had the idea that palling around with Dawn in those early chapters softened him up a little for falling in love with his baby, although I don’t think that really came across very well.
And besides all that, you know, Spike and Dawn are just fun together. They’re my favorite Buffyverse ‘ship, bar none, and I just don’t ever get tired of them.
As for what really happened, in the pre-Dawn reality: I don’t know.
gabriellabelle made the very interesting point a while back that in order to fit Dawn into the world's memories as easily as possible, the monks probably made her a wallflower, a background figure, someone mostly unnoticed. Simple is best, right?Seraph pretty much walks all over that very sound theory, because if Dawn didn’t throw the knife and save Spike there at the end, then who did? If she didn’t tell Buffy where Spike kept his car, then how did Buffy catch him before he left town? If Spike hadn’t wanted her for company on his doctor’s visits, then why would Buffy have gone with him – and what would have happened if she hadn’t? In this ficverse, even pre-existence Dawn is an active player, and beyond the first few chapters I really can’t imagine what it all looked like without her.
I wouldn’t mind trying, though. I’ve long wanted to write a story in which Dawn uses magic to explore what the world looked like without her; with all its inherent structural funnery, it’s a story I’d love to have seen them do on the show. But I think this ficverse might be the best place to do it, because here, the Dawn’s memories are the audience’s memories; her existential angst would be real to us in a way it couldn’t be in canon.
So there you have it: Dawn the surprise character who just kept surprising me.
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no subject
Date: 2010-01-18 03:17 am (UTC)And besides all that, you know, Spike and Dawn are just fun together. They’re my favorite Buffyverse ‘ship, bar none, and I just don’t ever get tired of them.
Also, that too!
no subject
Date: 2010-01-18 03:46 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2010-01-18 03:31 pm (UTC)Buffy is definitely hard to write, as she couldn't possibly be less like me (big sister-ness aside), and yeah, Spike can be a challenge at moments (I have trouble really embracing the fullness of what you can do with his dialogue; I think I'm just not as clever as he is). But Dawn is just such a normal girl that she's sometimes a relief to write, you know?
no subject
Date: 2010-01-18 10:53 pm (UTC)Yeah, I find Buffy really hard to write. What started to make it easier in Seraph was when I started to identify ways she and I *are* alike, and play up those, while still trying to be aware of all the ways we aren't.
As for Spike, yeah, I'm not as clever as a half-dozen of Whedon's handpicked writers, either - which is where Spike gets all his dialoge, after all. *g*
no subject
Date: 2010-01-18 03:19 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2010-01-18 03:42 am (UTC)And the Spike/Dawn friendship really did give the story some backbone that it needed. From my perspective, the very heart of the story is the basically one-sided relationship between Spike and his unborn daughter, but certainly the Spike&Dawn ship was crucial as well. Pretty funny, considering she wasn't even in the first drafts...
no subject
Date: 2010-01-18 03:44 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2010-01-18 03:48 am (UTC)Yay! I was kind of aiming for that, but then wasn't sure it actually came across.
The same, yet also equals in the way that Spike is just as immature as Dawn and just as wise depending on the circumstances.
Exactly! They function at basically the same (im)maturity level, and on any given day it's a toss-up which of them will be the drama queen and which one will be the wise strength. That equality is one of the things I love about them together.
no subject
Date: 2010-01-18 03:28 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2010-01-18 03:36 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2010-01-18 03:43 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2010-01-18 04:33 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2010-01-18 10:54 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2011-02-28 08:24 am (UTC)Bwahaha. Okay, I'm sorry. I just had to.
Also: palling around with Dawn in those early chapters softened him up a little for falling in love with his baby, although I don’t think that really came across very well.
It came across great :) I was right there with you.
I’ve long wanted to write a story in which Dawn uses magic to explore what the world looked like without her; with all its inherent structural funnery, it’s a story I’d love to have seen them do on the show.
Please let me know if that ever happens. It sounds fantastic.
I love the points you made here. Very insightful and awesome :) You did a great job with the two of them.
no subject
Date: 2011-03-01 02:07 am (UTC)*swats you*
Please let me know if that ever happens. It sounds fantastic.
I've been some thought to sequel-type stuff here lately; I may actually get something written eventually. No promises yet, though.