Fic: Walking After Midnight: the Music of Pain Remix [Buffy the Vampire Slayer; Angel, Xander; PG]

[addison-rock.livejournal.com]

Title: Walking After Midnight: the Music of Pain Remix
Author: aadler_
Summary: Sometimes the enemy you can count on is exactly the friend you need.
Fandom: Buffy the Vampire Slayer
Characters: Angel, Xander Harris
Rating: PG (language)
Disclaimer: All characters are the property of others more creative than myself. I don’t own them, I don’t profit from them. Angel and Xander belong to Joss Whedon, with rights also going to those companies and individuals who licensed them from him, of whom I am not one.
Original story: “Getting It” by bastardsnow
Notes: As with the original story, this takes place in Season 2, shortly after the events of “Amends”.

( Walking After Midnight — Part 3 )

Comments

[bastardsnow.livejournal.com]

Wow. That's... wow. I don't quite know what I was expecting. I saw you'd be rewriting "Getting It" and, I don't know, I wasn't sure how it'd go. But this is excellent. It's really fantastic. Thank you for this, it's really wonderful.

[aadler]

You’ve done a number of stories that I probably liked better (“Thirteen Days” comes to mind), but somehow “Getting It” started speaking to me the first time I read it. If the remix is based on the concept of, Now, if I’d written that story, I’d have done such-and-such with it …, then this one fit that requirement perfectly, at least for me.

It was a pleasure to write this, and I’m glad you find it to have been an acceptable effort.

[mkcrl120.livejournal.com]

Really impressed by this story, wasn't sure what I was expecting by Angel's side of it but liked this version.

Mike C

[aadler]

Thanks. It was a lot of fun to do.

[ludditerobot.livejournal.com]

That's the good stuff.

[aadler]

And I much appreciate your saying so.

[(Anonymous)]

Great remix:D
Liked the way you wrote the story...

[aadler]

I’m happy you enjoyed it.

[liz-marcs.livejournal.com]

I enjoyed the story. Well-plotted, well-constructed and an excellent twist on bastardsnow's original.

I thought you captured the dislike-hate relationship between Xander and Angel very well. It's hard for a lot of people to play on Xander's ass-y side without going over the top, but I think you struck a good balance here between Xander the jealous twerp, Xander the reasonably good-on-his-feet fighter, and Xander the immature teenager.

I especially liked the switch in PoV to Angel and his own feelings of ambiguity about his situation and position, not to mention his (mistaken) assumptions about people around him. Then again, that's pretty much Angel to a T.

Good story, fantastic spin on the original. I enjoyed this quite a lot.

[aadler]

After the author himself, there’s probably no one whose praise would carry more meaning for me. I’ve read and enjoyed your work for some time now, and I know you both as a sympathetic and effective Xander writer in your own right, and as a precise and discerning critic.

Because I like Xander so much, I’m always concerned about capturing him accurately or at least convincingly. You reassure me that I did a decent job of it this time out. Sincere thanks for that.

Fic: Walking After Midnight part three

[secondsilk.livejournal.com]

Go Xander!

“I’d do it all over again,” he told Angel flatly. “In a heartbeat.” Oh, sharp.
And his buddy speech.

Excellent Angel, too, fading back into the musing that was the start and recognising Xander's strength, because he does have age and experience and wisdom that Xander does not.

Re: Fic: Walking After Midnight part three

[aadler]

This was the first time I ever wrote Angel as a character (though I’d used Angelus in the past). Tackling the dynamic between him and Xander wasn’t something I would have thought of doing on my own, but bastardsnow’s original story just got my imagination going.

Thanks for your feedback and approval.

[ffutures.livejournal.com]

That's the authentic Xander voice all right, and Angel too - most of the time in BtVS and early Angel episodes he seemed to accept that there may one day be good reasons to kill him, and makes plans on that basis. Shame he pretty much lost that in later episodes.

[aadler]

Angel’s “you may have to kill me someday” attitude was, I think, the kind of thing that would have lost its impact if they’d emphasized it too often. When they did, though, it certainly was effective.

Happy you agree with the Xander voice. Always my main concern when I use him in a story, but so far the feedback has been favorable.

[texanfan.livejournal.com]

Climbing inside Angel's head is always tricky. At first I was a bit put off by the wordy, overly dramatic style of the first few paragraphs. Then I realized that was exactly what the inside of Angel's head is like and slid into the rest of the story. Neither Angel nor Angelus have a clearly defined sense of porportion, always seeing themselves as more central players than they are. Viewing Xander, at least outwardly, as an annoying yippy dog. Positively startled when he's effective in a fight.

That gave a lot of punch to the Xander as Buffy's ace in the hole thoughts at the end. That the return resentment is based on a wierd type of respect really sells his perspective. Xander holding onto his animosity with the certainty of youth was dead on for Xander at that point.

Excellent read.

[aadler]

The main thing I focused on as soon as I decided to write this story was the contrast between Xander and Angel. I think I originally intended to compare them directly, but instead it came out as being all from Angel’s perspective. It would have been only too easy to bash Angel (or come across as if that was what I was trying to do); having Angel painfully conscious of his own perceived flaws just seemed like a better approach.

I was also doing my best to consider the characters as they were then. This was Xander not long after he had aimed Faith at Angel like a guided missile (during “Revelations”); it was Angel not long after his lowest low point on Buffy (the crashdown during “Amends”). Xander was most bitter and hateful during the reign of Angelus (his kill-pussycat-kill speech in “Passion”), but he never, ever lost his thorough disapproval of Angel. Done before Angelus’ return in Season 2, or after Angel had relocated to L.A. and removed himself as a source of distraction/peril in Buffy’s life, the dynamic between the two of them would have been very different.

I never really thought about Angel/Angelus sharing a disproportionate sense of themselves as the center of whatever story they happened to occupy. That’s a good thing to keep in mind. But overdramatic, yes, that was something I deliberately aimed for with Angel. I’m glad you liked it.

[texanfan.livejournal.com]

This really is the point at which the animosity between Angel and Xander was at it's height. Xander softened a tad in Amends but not by much.

I get the impression of Angel/Angelus' overdeveloped sense of their own importance mainly from Angel the series so it may not fit in the timeline of this story. Then again, Angelus believed it was his destiny to end the world by waking Acathla. How grandiose can you get? :)