#chapter ramblings

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Re: Iron Coin Chronicles Episode 1x15 "Death of a Boring Man."

It is entirely possible that at least one of you, the readers of ICC, are thinking Faith was somewhat out of character in this episode, vis-a-vis how she was in the real Episodes covered in this chapter (The latter part of Bad Girls and Consequences, 3x14 and 3x15 respectively).  My reasoning for Faith's divergent behavior stems from the fact that in Bad Girls, we do actually see Faith showing some remorse, I think, such as the moment when she goes back to the body, or even right then, stunned into silence at what she's done. There's even a moment right there in Consequences when she's holding the picture in Finch's office, that momentary pause, when at least I think she was still dealing with the ramifications of exactly what it was that she'd done.

For reasons I'll explain below, Faith is showing remorse even more fully, and not hiding from it like she did in the show, not denying it. For her actual behavior as fully remorseful, I drew on Angel episode 1x19 for inspiration ("Sanctuary"), given that she's showing remorse there as well, we really get an angle at how Faith would behave when she's really trying to deal with all the shit she did. So why is Faith not going into denial mode in ICC? Well, I suppose first I need to explain my headcanon/theory/etc as to why Faith did go "off the rails" as it were, and why she was in such denial. Its not a partciularly bold or innovtative theory, I'll grant you. Faith, initially, grasped that she'd killed someone, and that what she had done wasn't just some 'shrug' and move on kind of thing. She'd done something terrible. But what Faith had a problem with was the idea that she was now a terrible person herself - Faith, in my mind, couldn't deal with that, refused to accept that she was now some murdering, monster, evil person. And she wasn't. She screwed up. But she...killed someone, and couldn't deal with the ramifications of what she'd done, she ran. She'd run before. She tossed the body and dove head first into Denial. What pushed her off the rails, in my mind, was being forced to acknowledge that she had done this terrible thing - that she was indeed, a murderer - by Angel and then...Angel not being able to finish the job. If Angel had had the time in the show, I do think he would have been able to get past the denial and make her truly face what happened - but also realize that it didn't have to define her. Angel never got the chance, and lost, confused, friendless (because really, barring Buffy, she wasn't close to anyone in the show, and there was even some distance between her and Buffy, especially right then) and knowing that she was a murderer...she didn't have to end up working for the Mayor, after all that. It wasn't some pre-determined pattern or something. But she did.  In Iron Coin, many of the ingredients of Faith's denial/etc just aren't there. For one, she's a little bit less distant from Buffy and the rest of the Scoobies, (she was told about Angel up front, she was included more in general, etc) and for another, she has Amy. She's friends with Amy, and just a bit after they really met, Amy saves her life...by killing someone. Faith defended Amy there...as she said, Amy wasn't a murderer, she'd killed in self-defense, and to save everyone else. Besides, so far as Faith knows, it was an accident. (And in truth it...sort of...kind of...was.) So she has someone she can go to. She has someone who can help, she has a model for 'killing someone doesn't mean I'm evil'. Plus, she doesn't have the chance to just dump the body, she doesn't get the chance to just run away from it. 

Xander and Cordelia saw it, the cops had already gotten there, she got caught up in helping get Giles and kill Balthazar and all that. She never gets a chance in that immediate period to start really diving into denial - she's isn't going to be seeing the Pyramids anytime soon, as it were. Your mileage is obviously going to vary with this explanation. You may still think I wrote Faith OOC. Everyone's got their own headcanon, and everyone has their own ideas of how a character develops, why they behave, etc. I've been trying to lay groundwork for Faith not going evil since she showed up, because I knew from the start that that was one of the big things the Coin was going to change, in BtVS Season 3 - Cordelia and Xander breaking up and Faith going evil were the two biggest things I wanted to change with the coin, and so everything I wrote up to when they happened in canon was in an effort to make the changes from canon, the big divergences, make sense. Here and there, and at other points in the fic. If you have any questions about the explanation, or you want to argue with it (politely), feel free to do so, here or over FFN or whatever other Website I've posted ICC or what have you.

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Re: Iron Coin Chronicles - Skipping Past Canon Scenes

As anyone who has spent any time reading Iron Coin Chronicles (and to as lesser extent, some of my other stories, such as Dead Man Walking), will know, I do not always rewrite scenes as they happen in the show. Sometimes, I do - though usually getting into characters' heads in ways that TV shows just can't do, and often with small changes here and there. But at the same time, even when a scene might be particularly different, I'm not going to write it when, largely, the end result is actually the same (such as the fight to get the Amulet, or the attack on the nest in 1x14). even if the specifics may or may not be different, its just not practical to rewrite it. When I include wholesale scene importation, its either because the changes are critical to the larger story I'm building (such as the scene where Buffy meets Wesley for the first time) and I want to demonstrate those, or when it lets me get into a characters' head into the context of the world of the story - such as the scene at the chem test, which hapened almost identically as to the show (with the addition of Cordelia and the removal of any sort of 'Xander eye-twitch') and without any meaningful end-result changes. When something is different from the canon because of the changes I've made (this character in, this character out, this that or the other thing didn't happen, etc), but I don't talk about it in the chapters, its because either the difference is nearly irrelevant and I don't go into any thought of it now. Or it is because I summarize what actually happened later. Or because I am deliberately leaving things up to you, the reader, to intepret. Things are impossible to leave without some interpretation, even in a sort of meta-level as fanfiction.

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In His Mind, Ulfric Had To Attack Whiterun

It always stuck in me a little that Balgruuf ends up joining the Imperials, and there's nothing you can do about it - I'd always expected that basically which side you'd pick would determine his side, rather than him being pre-determined Imperial. It seemed fitting, given that he starts neutral and supports your character so much early on. Ah well. *shrug* Just seemed a missed opportunity. I also kind of expected him to die, and thus the Battle-Borns (if you sided with the Imperials) or the Grey-Manes (If you were a Stormcloak) would take over in Dragonsreach. That's neither here nor there. But its also bothered me why Ulfric decided to force Balgruuf's hand the way he did - giving someone an ultimatum like that is a great way to piss them off. It wasn't until the battle of Fort Neugrad, when I was playing on a Stormcloak playthrough, that it occurred to me. The Empire doesn't just have the resources of its loyal holds to draw on. It has Cyrodiil and High Rock. Pale Pass is closed during the war, but if Ulfric waits too long, will it open again? Will the Empire bring in troops from High Rock, or take them to Solitude by sea? Ulfric might be able to stand to be outnumbered, to a point, but there is a point where someone is going to be too outnumbered. Ulfric cannot wait for that. Plus, he knows as well as Tullius - the longer the war lasts, the weaker Skyrim becomes.  So he feels a need to force Balgruuf's hand, even if it means the man declares for the Empire. He cannot afford to wait, whereas the Empire, which doesn't attack Whiterun, can wait. It would rather not, but it can.  People do things for reasons - you can disagree with their motives or goals, but unless they're wholly given to Sheogorath, From his perspective, Ulfric had a very good reason to force Balgruuf's hand, PR damage or not. He couldn't afford to wait. Condemn him or not, understand his motivations. The great thing about Elder Scrolls is the depth of the world, and the complexity of characters, and Skyrim does that best of them all, I'd argue. Bethesda puts a lot of work into making these characters so multifaceted. It is rewarding, I think, to think from the positions of these characters, and thus develop a deeper appreciation for the world. Skyrim has a lot of gray, and I think the game is made better for it.

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Re: Iron Coin Chronicles Episode 1x13 "Consequential Sisterhood"

I'm sure some of my readers are wondering why I breezed over so much of the original episode (Episode 3x13 "The Zeppo", for those keeping track), even allowing for some bits that logically couldn't happen in this new version, given that, for example, Xander and Cordelia are still together.  The thing is, with the way the story has gone, Xander's entire role in this episode would have to be different - he's taken a few steps to be slightly more useful in a fight, he wasn't there at that initial scene in the Sisterhood nest that got Buffy all protective-y in the first place, and because he's still with Cordelia, and has the Iron Coin, he wouldn't have the same identity/self-confidence crisis anyway and wouldn't have ended up on his little adventure with Jack O'Toole anyway, even if he had been sidelined by Buffy. All that combined means I'm axing a huge part of the episode - and while I could have gone into more detail about the actual fight against the Sisterhood and the Hellmouth Beast, the small glimpses we see in The Zeppo (in amongst Xander's story, which was the main point of the episode) are confusing a best, designed to give us just enough information to guess, but not to know. In part this is, I feel, part of the effect by Joss and the other writers - by not letting us see the whole thing (such as the 'horrifying' real face of the Hellmouth Beast), we can allow our imaginations to fill in the gaps better than the show itself could - a concept often used in writing, especially in the horror genre - and that fight itself probably qualifies as horror. As for why I didn't include that much Xander (comparatively) in the chapter, its primarily because of what I wanted to get across in the chapter, and the very nature of the story. While Xander is the central character, and in many ways is who the story is about, at the end of the day, the Iron Coin Chronicles are really about the Iron Coin itself, and the effect the Coin has on the world. As such, sometimes, in order to fully explore those effects, I need to depart from just following Xander around and more and more follow other characters, as it were. This will continue to happen, probably more and more, as the series goes on, but Xander will certainly remain the main character, and he will get the most screen time overall, but sometimes there will be only a little Xander, or he'll be there, but mostly on the sidelines of the main action of the 'Episode'. Its a complex beast we're considering here, with the Iron Coin Chronicles, and handling it in a way that works for the story I'm trying to tell isn't the easiest, which is in many ways why I'm trying to tell this story, because it is such a complex one.