Meta: remixredux09 and Unsalvageable

[sevendeadlyfun]

So, the remix authors have been revealed and I wrote Unsalvageable (The Hell in a Handbasket Remix). A great big thank you to liz_marcs for being so gracious in her Dear Remixer letter. She basically opened her archive and said "Have at it!". I don't think I can say enough positive things about her for promising not to be mad. That said, I'm thrilled at what a positive response my remix received. liz_marcs' comment was thoughtful, gracious and incredibly supportive. I couldn't have asked for a better author to remix.



I have to confess I was incredibly nervous about remixing liz_marcs. She's a well-known author with a strong preference for characters I seldom write: namely, Faith and Xander. Now, I do write Xander. But I rarely write Xander as the centerpiece of a story. And I just don't write Faith. Unsalvageable is only the third time I've ever written Faith and the only time I've felt okay about my portrayal of her. Above and beyond that, I know that she doesn't follow comics canon and that's pretty much what I write these days.

So, I definitely took my first stroll through her archives trepidatiously. I'd like to say I hemmed and hawed over what story I wanted to remix (if only to make this meta more dramatic), but I zeroed in on Ishmael right away.

For a couple of reasons, actually. liz_marks gives excellent summaries and the summary alone sounded very comics canon friendly. Also, I'm actually more comfortable writing in the Angel series than I am Buffy. It sounds really OMG DRAMATIC, but Angel was designed to be a more adult show and to address more adult themes. That's pretty much where I live. Ishmael fit all my criteria: amenable to a comics rewrite, in a series I'm comfortable writing in, and with themes I felt I could speak to.

Hell in a Handbasket: How do we get there from here?

It wasn't until I started reading the story that I realized it was epic. In her notes, she puts the word count at 26,000 words. YIKES. I will not lie: I seriously had another run through her archives to see if I could find something short. I am emphatically not an epic writer. But Ishmael kept dragging me back. It's an incredibly compelling story.

After reading every single linked meta on *how* to do a remix, hyperventilating, and convincing myself I'd be publicly humiliated if I did it WRONG, I read and re-read Ishmael. Seriously. I think the only person who has read it more than me is probably liz_marcs herself.

I admit that I discarded several plot elements right away. The OCs from the third part went almost immediately. First, because I don't enjoy OCs in a fanfic and second, I was in no way comfortable writing someone else's original characters (yeah and yet I write fanfic. Whatevs. It's that kind of dissonance that makes me interesting). I actually toyed with replacing the OCs with canon characters. Faith would go join up with Connor and have the whole revelatory bit with him and Gwen and Nina. I even started to write those scenes, but ended up deleting them almost immediately. The whole bit seemed very forced and almost superfluous. The story was about Faith and her journey, not how they end up getting out of Hell and that's what those scenes amounted to.

I also almost immediately decided that I would not write the story as a pairing story. In Ishmael, Faith and Angel have a sexual relationship. I don't object to that in principle. I'm an equal opportunity pairing slut. I've written quite a few rare pairings, including Oz/Angel and Darla/Buffy. That said, the sexual relationship didn't seem to fit the story I wanted to tell. In Ishmael, which was written pre-comics but post-NFA, Angel is in L.A., not Hell-A. The change in location radically changes the relationship dynamic, at least for me. But I wanted to keep the tension between them, because it plays such an integral part in the plotline. So, it became an unrealized desire rather than a full-blown relationship.


Another change was that in Ishmael, Ghost!Wes is visible only to Faith. In After the Fall, he's visible to everyone and he's the Senior Partner's liaison. That's another radical shift in the dynamic. Suddenly, Faith isn't having to be the binding arc between the two other characters. They can all interact. That is not necessarily a good thing. I have hard time corralling multiple characters. However, while the story revolves around him, Angel doesn't make too many appearances in Ishmael and honestly, it works well that way. It showcases how central he is to Faith and Wes and what they give up to be in his orbit. So I kept that, even with the change in dynamic.

End of Days: All Stripped Down and Places to Go

Most remixes, I'm reliably informed, end up being simple POV or narrator changes (Instead of seeing the scene from Buffy's perspective, we see it from Faith's or we find out what Giles was doing during all of this). I'm not that damn smart. I could have just switched the POVs and told the whole damn thing from Angel's perspective. In retrospect, it probably would have been hella easier. Or maybe not: It is a long story.

I decided to retell the entire story in a different time and place with the same main themes of obsession and determination. But beyond my snap decisions of no OCs and no hot steaminess, I agonized over what to leave and what to cut. Eventually, I got rid of quite a bit of the fight scenes. I don't enjoy writing them and while in the original story they are a beautiful illustration of Faith's battles for and with Angel, in my story they would have been filer. I tried to stick to the emotional themes and the general overview, rather than bogging myself down with replicating liz_marc word for word or even scene by scene.

By the time I sent the first half to anxiety_junkie for a read through, I was half-convinced I'd mangled the story. Also, I really really compacted the story. My final version ended up being just shy of 5,000 words. Built from a 26,000 word story. Whoo boy.

If I had to redo it, I would probably try to expand the story. I think I shorted the original story in some ways, and maybe even Faith, by having her show up and then leave so quickly. Reading the story, it feels rushed to me, almost like my own franticness and nervousness is imbued in the writing.

But I enjoyed remixing. I'll definitely do it again. Even the OMG parts. Maybe even especially the OMG parts.