I will make an effort! My horror background is not so much.
Exactly! I often start my fics with some short epigram, but I couldn't think of one that fit this fic - until just yesterday, so here it is:
Humans need fantasy to be human, to be the place where the fallen angel meets the rising ape. - Terry Pratchett
That's very nice, and very much along the lines of where I've been thinking lately. You know, it occurs to me that "magic" in the Buffyverse is, in part, about this very imagination: the idea of being able to remake the world and yourself through ideas and knowledge, fantasy incarnate. Which -- what do you do when you get a computer hacker to narrate her own story and the world around her? You get first disaster, and then, with help from more Earth-bound Buffy, a (hopefully) better world. "Something Blue" is maybe the clearest instance of Willow as (unintentional) narrator (though you can see it, too, with Anya[nka] in The Wish/Doppelgangland). Apes are physical beings who can't control their environment (much); angels are ethereal beings who could in principle control everything. Humans in between, accepting the limits of the world around and modifying them. Which, a narrower version of apes/angels is cavemen/astronauts (or to continue in Whedonverse, actives/dumbshows, River/reavers). Cavemen do eventually win, if you take away astronauts' weapons (physical world eventually overwhelms the abstract, maybe), but what happens if the astronauts keep their weapons? I am just riffing now. But somehow the image of Willow and Illyria at the top of the tower really does fit the cavemen/astronaut imagery very well, Illyria in a caveman body, Willow reaching for the stars.
Also, off-topic and probably just a coincidence, but I just found this out the other day, re: Willow's identity. Of course, the story beind a lot of Jewish surnames is empress Maria Theresa decided to "integrate" them by giving them German-sounding names. (It didn't really work.) What I didn't know was that one of the people hired to come up with credible names was... ETA Hoffmann, of The Nutcracker fame. One of the names he came up with was "Rosenberg." Willow's name was made up by the father of the horror genre. (And Fred had her first sexual dream about the Mouse King.)
That's really interesting. So -- well, Fred's sexual dream about the Mouse King reminds me, too, of Willow's disdainful description of herself as "mousy," and of course the Mouse King is the ruler of the mice, and Willow's in charge of keeping Amy in her cage? (Xander also described Warren, in Seeing Red, as "Mighty Mouse, emphasis on the might," which I think adds to the list of Willow/Warren parallels.) But no, I guess these are all not quite connecty, except that the reference to the Mouse King means that the Nutcracker is in Whedon lore.
I can definitely see, re: Britt Ekland (whom I mostly know as "one of Peter Sellers' wives"), Willow living on Lord Summersisle, or Sunnydale, which is Buffy's town where she will always be in the shadow of Buffy, unless she fights her way out (becoming evil in the process, because you can only even potentially defeat Buffy if you're the Big Bad), but then chooses to live back in Summers' isle/town. Of course, willows (probably) blossom in summers and Willow also blossoms being near Miss Summers....
![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
no subject
Date: 2012-07-06 09:57 pm (UTC)Exactly! I often start my fics with some short epigram, but I couldn't think of one that fit this fic - until just yesterday, so here it is:
Humans need fantasy to be human, to be the place where the fallen angel meets the rising ape.
- Terry Pratchett
That's very nice, and very much along the lines of where I've been thinking lately. You know, it occurs to me that "magic" in the Buffyverse is, in part, about this very imagination: the idea of being able to remake the world and yourself through ideas and knowledge, fantasy incarnate. Which -- what do you do when you get a computer hacker to narrate her own story and the world around her? You get first disaster, and then, with help from more Earth-bound Buffy, a (hopefully) better world. "Something Blue" is maybe the clearest instance of Willow as (unintentional) narrator (though you can see it, too, with Anya[nka] in The Wish/Doppelgangland). Apes are physical beings who can't control their environment (much); angels are ethereal beings who could in principle control everything. Humans in between, accepting the limits of the world around and modifying them. Which, a narrower version of apes/angels is cavemen/astronauts (or to continue in Whedonverse, actives/dumbshows, River/reavers). Cavemen do eventually win, if you take away astronauts' weapons (physical world eventually overwhelms the abstract, maybe), but what happens if the astronauts keep their weapons? I am just riffing now. But somehow the image of Willow and Illyria at the top of the tower really does fit the cavemen/astronaut imagery very well, Illyria in a caveman body, Willow reaching for the stars.
Also, off-topic and probably just a coincidence, but I just found this out the other day, re: Willow's identity. Of course, the story beind a lot of Jewish surnames is empress Maria Theresa decided to "integrate" them by giving them German-sounding names. (It didn't really work.) What I didn't know was that one of the people hired to come up with credible names was... ETA Hoffmann, of The Nutcracker fame. One of the names he came up with was "Rosenberg." Willow's name was made up by the father of the horror genre. (And Fred had her first sexual dream about the Mouse King.)
That's really interesting. So -- well, Fred's sexual dream about the Mouse King reminds me, too, of Willow's disdainful description of herself as "mousy," and of course the Mouse King is the ruler of the mice, and Willow's in charge of keeping Amy in her cage? (Xander also described Warren, in Seeing Red, as "Mighty Mouse, emphasis on the might," which I think adds to the list of Willow/Warren parallels.) But no, I guess these are all not quite connecty, except that the reference to the Mouse King means that the Nutcracker is in Whedon lore.
I can definitely see, re: Britt Ekland (whom I mostly know as "one of Peter Sellers' wives"), Willow living on Lord Summersisle, or Sunnydale, which is Buffy's town where she will always be in the shadow of Buffy, unless she fights her way out (becoming evil in the process, because you can only even potentially defeat Buffy if you're the Big Bad), but then chooses to live back in Summers' isle/town. Of course, willows (probably) blossom in summers and Willow also blossoms being near Miss Summers....