Illyria and Fred and things

[snick_backup]

Did anyone ever notice how Wesley's father and Fred's father are both named Roger?

Grr. You know the big rallying "Save our Fred!" scene in A Hole in the World? The one where Spike says, "No. Not this girl. Not this day," and you want to ask him who he is and why's he's channeling Aragorn?

I hated that scene when I saw it. Hated it. 'Cuz Fred's a sweetie and a person, but no more a person than any of those other people we good guys are supposed to be saving. You see, boys, this is what happens when the feminine contingent of your team is reduced to one (plus a vampire of questionable loyalties). You lose all perspective. She isn't just another person, a valued team member, for Lo! she is Woman! and Must Be Saved!

(In fact, I think I'd have been much less annoyed with Fred in S5 had she not been the only woman in S5. I mean, I'll always like Cordelia more than Fred, but if Cordelia were there at least it'd take some of the pressure off of being the lone representative of female kind.)

In related news, writing from Illyria's POV is hard. Part of my problem, I think, is that I tend to write a very tight third person POV, which means if the character doesn't know/notice/realize such-and-such, neither does the reader. But Illyria isn't particularly observant and her frame of reference is so alien that it makes conveying a narrative a bit difficult. Plus, there's the whole dual identity issue. I think I'm going to have to change tactics somehow.

Comments

[silverusagi]

Yeah...season 5 has some problems because they get down to just one girl on the team. Though it wouldn't have been such a problem if they had given her a storyline where she wasn't there just to be saved (and then killed). Of course, if they took things like that into consideration, they wouldn't have gotten rid of Cordy to begin with.

[penny-lane-42.livejournal.com]

YES YES YES.

I love you so hard for this post. That's exactly what the dynamic is in S5 and it's one of the reasons that while there's lots of stuff I love about S5, it's S2 that's my favorite. And also it exemplifies why I'll never love AtS as much as BtVS.

I've written like 300 words from Illyria's point of view and I enjoyed it, but the limited nature of the story made it much easier to do. I can't imagine writing an entire fic from her point of view. I'm gonna be ridiculously impressed to see how you pull it off.

[penny-lane-42.livejournal.com]

Yup. Fred has no arc in S5 except to be there for Wes to angst over and then to be turned into Illyria. And the show lost a lot when it lost Cordy. And Lilah.

[eilowyn.livejournal.com]

Very much agreed. Yeah, I'm not feeling to wordy today, but I had to chime in.

[snickfic]

Are you an S2 girl, too? I had forgotten!

I'm gonna be ridiculously impressed to see how you pull it off.

Yeah. Me, too. :p

[snickfic]

Well, and she's a boring girl! I have the same problem with her that I have with Kaylee on Firefly: she's just so sweet 'n' innocent 'n' adorable, isn't she now?

Ahem.

Of course, if they took things like that into consideration, they wouldn't have gotten rid of Cordy to begin with.

Well, yes.

[snickfic]

Chime noted. :)

[silverusagi]

I did like Fred more back when she was literally a crazy genius suffering from a hell dimension. She's much less interesting once she's stable, because she's so perfect.

Though I have yet to figure out Joss' obsession with genius girls who are also mentally unbalanced.

[snickfic]

Yes! Exactly. I like crazy!Fred, and Illyria is great fun. It's everything in between that loses my interest.

Yeah, I'm not sure about the obsession, but I apparently have a thing for them, too, so I can't say I mind.

[penny-lane-42.livejournal.com]

I don't talk about it much, but yeah: the more I think about it, the more I think that S2 was the best. S5 is the one I rewatch the most (well, I don't actually rewatch the whole season, just parts of it) because it has a few of my favorite episodes and some awesome stuff with Spike and Gunn actually has a bit to do. Sort of like I rewatch parts of S7 of BtVS the most, even though I would never say it's the best season. But yeah, S2 is the best season of AtS, methinks.

Hee! I'm positive you can do it.

ironically using this icon

[penny-lane-42.livejournal.com]

I like crazy!Fred, and Illyria is great fun. It's everything in between that loses my interest.

This is exactly how I feel. And I agree with you about Fred and Kaylee, totally. Which is not to say that I can't love characters who are sweet--Annie from Being Human is ridiculously sweet and I love her to death, and I think there aren't enough sweet female characters who are also interesting and have their own personalities that aren't just there for the benefit of men. But Kaylee and Fred-in-between are pretty much only sweet.

[next_to_normal]

I hated that scene when I saw it. Hated it. 'Cuz Fred's a sweetie and a person, but no more a person than any of those other people we good guys are supposed to be saving.

GAH! I agree with this so hard, I think I broke something. The thing that drove me crazy about Fred's death is that it felt like they were trying to make her more important, just so it'd be a harder blow when she died. And I resent being manipulated like that.

(It also doesn't help that I feel like we were being manipulated into liking Fred - instead of being given an awesome character we could like without coercion - the entire time she was on the show.)

[next_to_normal]

Heh. I am the same way. I love S5 (for Spike and the Spike/Angel stuff, mainly) but on sheer story quality, you can't beat S2.

[penny-lane-42.livejournal.com]

Yup. That's pretty much how I feel. Plus, S2 was the last season in which Cordy was actually Cordy, all the way through. S3 was when they started systematically destroying her. *weeps*

On the other hand, I watched the "I never much cared for you, Liam. Even when we were evil" scene from "Hellbound," the other night, as well as the big fight scene from "Destiny." And went all flaily with joy. Why do I love that stuff so much?

[snickfic]

Yes to all this. Manipulation, start to finish. And it's too bad, because she's one of the folks that'd actually be bearable to hang out with in real life. She's just not much as a character.

Re: ironically using this icon

[snickfic]

But Kaylee and Fred-in-between are pretty much only sweet.

Exactly.

It's like they got rid of Cordy because she was just more woman than the show could handle.

(Yikes, my views on Ats are definitely getting harsher with time...)

Re: ironically using this icon

[penny-lane-42.livejournal.com]

It's like they got rid of Cordy because she was just more woman than the show could handle.

Yeah. That makes me wince, but I think it's not far from the truth.

(Mine, too. Mine. Too. I've now reached the point where I wish I hadn't bought it on DVD. I coulda spent that money on something else!)

[snickfic]

Yanno, I want to like Spike in S5 because: moar Spike! Hooray! But it seems all the wrong venue for him somehow, plus, like in BtVS S4, he has no one to ping against for most of the season. I must be weird, because I don't find Angel being petty any more entertaining than Angel being anything else, and he's always petty with Spike.

So I like Damage, basically. That's the Spike ep (maybe even the BtVS ep) of the season, as far as I'm concerned, and I'd happily toss most of the rest of it out the window (although I do like Illyria quite a lot).

[penny-lane-42.livejournal.com]

I don't like Spike as Spike in S5 (except for "Damage," as you say, which I agree with you about and which I think is the other bookend to "Lies My Parents Told Me"), but I do like Spike-and-Angel. I do think, like Gabs, that S5 ruins the arc of Spike's arc and he's acting like a S4 version of himself, only not evil, and S4 Spike is my least favorite Spike. So I'm totally with you on its weaknesses.

However, I do find petty Angel entertaining. Not likable--but entertaining.

[snickfic]

If I think of it as The Spike and Angel Show, and not as actually being about characters I care about, then yeah, mildly entertaining. I think I don't get nearly as much out of it as a lot of folks, though.

OTOH, S4 Spike has become inextricable in my mind from Seraph!Spike, so I've become rather fond of him (even though, like you, I originally didn't care for him either).

[penny-lane-42.livejournal.com]

Yup. That's pretty much how I approach it. Also, I like the kind of relationship it sets up between them that can then be explored in fic--where they're very much brothers, with sibling rivalry and a lot of resentment but some love they can't get away from, either. That's not something you can see a lot of in other places in canon, and it's important to me in my perception of who they are. I like that dynamic a lot.

Aw! Well, I'll say this: I love Seraph!Spike a whole lot more than S4!Spike, but he's still noticeably the same character. Which is a testament to your skills. :D

[snickfic]

Ah. So all this slashiness I hear tell of in S5, you don't see? (Personally, what slash vibe I get from them is all in BtVS S2. But soulless!Spike-n-Angel is a whole different dynamic from soulled!Spike-n-Angel.)

[penny-lane-42.livejournal.com]

I can see where other people are getting it (unlike, say, Spike and Xander which I will never, ever, ever, ever understand), but that's definitely not how I read it. I think they have a very deep and complicated connection, and I think Angel is pretty much the one guy in Spike's life who he does connect to: he's pretty much The Man in Spike's history, a history otherwise dominated by women (his mother, Cecily, Dru, the Slayers he killed, Buffy, and to a lesser extent Dawn and perhaps even Fred). Plus, JM and DB have fantastic chemistry (much better than DB's with SMG, though not as good, I'd say, as JM's and SMG's). So I can see how people get to the slashy place. But yeah, it's not sexual/romantic at all in my mind.

(Though I can see the slashy stuff in S2, yeah. Probably evil!S&A had sex of some sort, whether it was used by Angelus in order to dominate the younger vamp or whether it was just what vamps do. But I think once they're all souled up, it's completely different, and no, I don't see it as slashy at all.)

Re: ironically using this icon

[next_to_normal]

It's like they got rid of Cordy because she was just more woman than the show could handle.

Heh. Well, since the actual reason they got rid of Cordy is that Charisma was punished for daring to use her uterus without Joss' permission, that's not far from the truth...

Re: ironically using this icon

[snickfic]

*sigh*

[next_to_normal]

*sigh* Oh awesome!Cordy. How I miss you.

Why do I love that stuff so much?

Because it's Spike. And Angel. And Spike and Angel together, and when that happens, THERE IS NO WRONG. (Or it's all wrong, but it feels so right.)

[zanthinegirl.livejournal.com]

I was always sort of "meh" on Fred. I mean I didn't hate her, but I really only ever found her interesting in supersemetry. Mostly I was mildly irritated at her for breaking up Wes and Gunn. And I'm not sure I ever really forgave her for the way she treated Wes after the Connor kidnapping.

Spike's comments make sense to me though-- she seemed to genuinely care about him. She was really his only supporter in the ghost days. And she tried to unghostify him. Plus she didn't take any of his crap-- he was always a sucker for that!

[mabus101.livejournal.com]

Fred, like Tara, is one of those characters I love to love and hate to write. Because, once certain things are resolved, there's just no tension in her backstory. I've done some interesting things with her (like turn her into a vampire), but mostly I write Illyria--though partly that's because I'm writing a post-season continuation.

Speaking of which, I wrote a substantial chapter from Illyria's point of view: Strange Aeons (http://mabus101.livejournal.com/93802.html). but a lot depends on my idiosyncratic view of Illyria's perception of time.

[snickfic]

I think "meh" is a good description of my feelings about Fred, right up to S5. Oh, and I also really disliked the love triangle thing in S3, but then I hate love triangles in general.

[snickfic]

I shall have to read that chapter! This Illyriafic adventure has me going back and reading all sorts of things I hadn't tried before. She certainly offers a lot of scope for complexity, even though she was very little explored in the show.

[mabus101.livejournal.com]

After some thought, it occurs to me that Angel's reaction has a lot to do with being called out by Cordelia a couple of episodes ago. He's realized that joining W&H was a big mistake, but he's not sure how to get out of it without getting the whole team killed--and before he can work it out, suddenly Fred's dying anyway. (Gunn, Wesley, and Spike are all immediately "in" because they're all attracted to Fred--which, as I see it, is explicable for precisely the reason she doesn't work well as a character; she has very few issues, so there's not going to be a lot of drama in a relationship with her. And she's hot. Lorne...well, he's just Lorne.)

I went through a lot of different possible ways of writing "Strange Aeons", which depends on Illyria experiencing past, present, and multiple possible futures more or less simultaneously--a remaining legacy of her power over time. I actually considered making a hypertext of it, with several posts that link to each other, but it was just too complicated. Several of the changes Illyria's going through are a result of her unawareness of any timeline in which she doesn't die in fire in the near future.

[merytankh.livejournal.com]

it's been a long time since i wrote fanfiction of any kind, so i'm not sure how i would have handled illyria or for that matter anyone else from the jossverse, but i think it might help to imagine that you're writing from the POV of someone who is autistic. or, possibly, someone who is suffering from depression so severe they seem to feel nothing at all - yet this experience of having been hollowed out, as it were, of turning into a stone that walks, becomes intense and overwhelming in itself. (been there, bought the t-shirt. or two).

when i was watching the final episodes of ats, especially for the second time, the impression i got was that illyria was trying to communicate something it felt. yes, it was doing this in its own way (i'm at a loss which pronoun to use here - i've never been able to force myself to see illyria as female, or any definite gender we are familiar with) and the instruments it tried to use, its body language and other nonverbal signals, were so foreign that others didn't even to try to make sense of them. but the creature definitely had emotions. it may have been out of touch with some of them, or it didn't experience them the way we do, or it wouldn't use the words we would normally use to describe them - perhaps it was altogether unaware that words could be used to this end - but flat affect was the one thing it didn't suffer from. the creature's journey, to me, was not so much about gaining emotion as about sorting out the confusing mess that its inner world obviously was, learning to identify its feelings and to express them better (or maybe not necessarily better, but, at any rate, in a way that would be more understandable to humans).

it might help to try and use metaphoric expressions and other figures of speech when it comes to emotions, rather than conventional direct descriptions. e.g., 'there was a stirring, a churning inside' for excitement, 'an icy crust creeping over one' for impending depression etc. i personally have found this very useful and so do some other people with alexithymia, so why not? this might make it easier to step into the shoes of a being that feels strongly but does not always know this - or one that does not see its own feelings in the same terms as we do. it might also be useful to focus more on the surroundings, in an impressionistic sort of way, and let them say more about the character's inner state than the character's own words do.

just my two cents' worth. :)

[snickfic]

Very interesting thoughts! I'm a big fan of letting what the character notices imply things about what the character feels, without ever stating it explicitly. Possibly I just don't have enough of a handle on Illyria's character. Or possibly I need to commit myself to one possible interpretation of her character and stick to it for the duration of the fic.

Thanks for the thoughts. :)

[merytankh.livejournal.com]

not at all. you're most welcome. :)

just wondering as a fellow fan - what possible interpretations would you suggest for the character? i tend to see illyria in a specific light only, as its/her character has some personal significance and i have to keep to a certain perspective to make sure its/her story remains catharthic, but then, for someone else, it might well mean something completely different. and opinions are bound to differ vastly when it comes to a character that complex and promising.