Author: Michael K. Donovan
Title: Divergent Paths
Reader: A. Aaronson


A couple of us have read it now and the general
feeling is that 'Divergent Paths' is very good. I was
particularly impressed by the high quality of the
writing throughout. A few fics have been submitted to
the site and I can safely say that this one is the
best. The few problems, where there are any, tend to
be either in the characterisation of a couple of
characters or the plotting.


Writing style
As I say, this is excellent. You have a good eye for
detail and for painting a scene, just to bring out a
couple of examples: the fight in the river, our
introduction to Buffy and the gang falling asleep in
class. It's all evidence that you can 'see' the scene
(so to speak), how the characters move and so on. You
occasionally slip into melodrama "[eyes] filled with
both danger and mystery" for example is perhaps just a
little over the top. 

One scene sticks out in my mind, where Faith is
pummelling Gabriel, the story says that Faith carried
on with her taunts and insults and Gabriel just had to
take it. When I read that I wished to hear some more
of what Faith was saying. It is a scene which, in my
opinion, is most symbolic of what Gabriel has been
reduced to though I realise it's difficult to write
what is effectively a monologue, the spoken words
would be far more effective than describing what was
said.

One good method (and one that is used both in Buffy
and by yourself) is when a scene threatens to get too
cliched to puncture it with a flippant remark or a
pratfall. In particular I was cringing when I read
Gabriel's rescue of Willow and Xander outside the
Bronze and then Xander piped up with his Batman line
and it went a long way to making it okay. A mysterious
stranger saving the temporarily hamstrung hero is a
scenario which has been well-trod and so, if it is to
be used, a writer has to find either a new angle to
approach it, put a twist in the tail or (as you did)
acknowledge it's self-referentiality.

The entrances and exits of the individual scenes are
well-timed, e.g. when a vampire has the drop on Buffy
and the reader is left hanging. There was one occasion
were the usually effective method of introducing a
scene with action was confusing was where Faith
attacked Giles and escaped with the Sword of Seals.
We'd just had a scene where Giles and others were
talking, then to have him suddenly in the middle of
unexpected action was a little jarring. Ideally there
should either have been another scene in between or
the first scene with Giles in should have run on.


The plot
Overall this was good, a lot of fanfiction ignores the
fact that situations have to be pushed to their limits
to be dramatically effective (take 'Becoming' as one
of my favourite examples where I think Joss must have
sat down and said "Okay, Buffy, she's a nice girl, how
do we manipulate circumstances so that we can utterly
destroy her?"). This is especially difficult in
fanfiction where the author doesn't have the same
freedom with the characters as he would do if they
were original. It was gratifying to see that the
situation set up was effectively exploited. However,
in order to get the characters into the right places,
the story very occasionally relies on artificial
means: Buffy not phoning into Giles to tell her she
was alright after running after Faith, Giles
concealing Gabriel's arrival, it simply never coming
up that Giles had six brothers and seven nephews,
Gabriel's inability to recognise Faith when he has
been briefed on the Sunnydale situation and has the
sight and then Faith being able to drug his coffee
while seemingly not going near it and Giles' sudden
decision to attack the Mayor in a full frontal
daylight assault.. I can see exactly why these things
were included and what they achieved but ultimately,
if used repeatedly, they begin to undermine the
characterisation.

Your scenes almost all have a point to them which
drives the story forward. It seems an obvious thing
that each scene has to progress the story but it can
be easily forgotten. In thinking around a problem it's
very easy to get caught up in secondary matters which
are insignificant. It's something I think the Buffy
writers do very well, and I'm sure trying to cram the
story into three-quarters of an hour is good
discipline for them. I say 'almost all' because there
was one scene that I just couldn't figure out what it
was trying to convey, I have it labelled as scene 5
(where Willow and Xander are talking about Gabriel).
My closest guess was that I was meant to infer that,
because they were following Gabriel and were in
school, that Gabriel was in school as well.

Characterisation
First off, the 'voices' of the all but a couple of the
characters were spot-on. They all spoke like they
actually do speak, and, almost as importantly, they
all talk as people do talk in the ebb and flow of
banter (another fic I'm reader at the moment uses an
awful lot of exposition in its dialogue which is quite
boring to read). Willow's fine, Xander's perhaps is
not as funny as he usually is, Giles once or twice
uses American phrasing, Angel's maybe a little too
forward and chummy with Gabriel the first time he
meets him, but these are minor points. Your portrayal
of Faith as the sadistic bully is perfectly valid (I
say that because I happen to like Faith and I wouldn't
characterise her that way, but that's my own
interpretation of her character, your interpretation
is as equally justified from the show itself). 

In my opinion, your characterisation of the
established characters was only ever really off when
it came to the Mayor (who I think is usually referred
to as the Mayor by the Scooby Gang rather than Mayor
Wilkins). The mannerisms he displayed were all
carbon-copied from episodes, which makes them accurate
but uninspired (with the notable exception of the
orange tongue depressor which was a very nice touch).
There are moments where the Mayor sounds exactly like
he should do, one example stands out in my mind in
particular "It never failed to amaze him how heroism
was invariably coupled with stupidity, " which is
something I can really imagine him saying on the show.
A lot of his other lines just don't sound like him,
especially in his conversations with Faith where he
seems to have lost his quiet but implacable hold upon
her. Peter Giles, as the other principal villain of
the piece, didn't really impress me. He's a character
that appears to have no redeeming features whatsoever
and, as such, he's not very interesting. Perhaps if
the conflict between father and son had been brought
to the forefront a little more and if he could display
a glimmer of paternal feeling or even perhaps if
Gabriel could have had a chance to display why he has
an attachment to him, Gabriel's decision to allow him
to be taken by the tentacle monster at the end might
have been more poignant. As it was, however, the
reader's not really left feeling the emotional punch
that Gabriel takes in losing his father.

As Buffy is one of the two protagonists of the story
her characterisation is crucial and, once again, her
voice is dead on. This is _her_ talking. The one issue
I will quibble about is her relationship with Gabriel,
it moves entirely too fast. Before she even knows who
he is, she's putting her head on his chest while
dancing, when he appears with Faith she's stunned into
silence before weeping. It's good that she turns him
down on the hill-top, but she's even stronger than
that. This is a girl that at the end of season 2 had
been put through the emotional wringer and yet, when
it came to the chrunch, she had the strength to send
her immortal love to hell. In season 3 she's gradually
rebuilt her life, only to have it shattered by Angel's
return and her friends discovery of him. She coped
with Angel trying to kill himself, with being betrayed
by Giles and then by Faith. No matter how much Buffy
and Gabriel might been drawn together by their similar
callings and problems, I don't think his betrayal
would ever make her freeze in a combat situation.
Later, later, she would feel upset but in the second
half of season 3 Buffy most definitely has a harder
edge. I think this was all part of pushing the
Buffy/Gabriel relationship but it unfortunately has
the effect of weakening her own position, which leads
to into the difficulties of introducing a new main
character which I'll go into further just below. Aside
from that, as I say, Buffy's very good.

Gabriel is really the central character of the story
and this is something of a double-edged sword. On the
one hand you get complete freedom in what the
character can be and what can happen to them (unlike
the pre-established characters) on the other hand
there is always the temptation of allowing your
personal character to eclipse the regulars who are,
when you get down to it, the reason people are reading
the story. Any author will always have an uphill
struggle in getting their characters to be accepted by
the reader to the same extent as the ones they see on
the tv screen. Especially when they begin to upstage
them the reader might lose interest or feel resentful
that their favourite character is falling by the
wayside. Gabriel, as someone who fights just as well
as Buffy, who has psychic powers, a constant smirk and
auburn eyebrows, runs that risk, but I think he
improves with further reading. I found it a bit hard
to get a grip on him, he goes from being suave and
cool in the Bronze, to bookish with Giles (I loved
that line which Giles and Gabriel said in unison) to
hot-headed and proud the very first time he meets the
Scooby Gang to truculent immediately afterwards when
he opens up to Buffy to wallowing in self-loathing
later on in the story, brilliantly incisive at one
moment (courtesy of the sight) and quite limited at
others. It is probably because he is going through
such incredible emotional upheaval all through the
story that I find it hard to pin down a consistent
character. Thankfully, you don't make him too
infallible or able to beat Buffy in a fair fight,
however I feel the dramatic impact of his
indoctrination by the Mayor could have been more
shocking if the story had focused a little less on
what he was undergoing in the Mayor's hands. This
would have allowed Buffy (and perhaps Giles, who
obviously has a stake in the young man) to enjoy a
little more of the lime-light. Having said that, I
know this is an origin story which typically have to
cover quite a lot of details in order to flesh out the
character, and this is something you do quite well,
not force-feeding the reader the information but
allowing it to emerge in small pieces as it becomes
relevant to the story. 

Overall I think this is an impressive piece of
fanfiction, I don't know how this feedback will read
as I haven't been able to put in all the things I
liked about it (because there are very few different
ways of saying 'this bit is good' 'that bit is good').
The sheer amount of feedback I've written (over ten
times the last piece I wrote and most of that was me
pontificating on why I don't like songfics)
demonstrates how interesting I've found it. Believe
me, if it had bored me I would have never have written
so much. Your writing style and your reproduction of
the existing characters are very, very good and I'm
sure Gabriel will improve as both you and the reader
become more familiar with him. The first story of a
series (just like the pilot of a tv show) might appear
to be quite easy (as you have so many things to cover)
but in fact they're very difficult to make engaging as
well as being informative. Setting up a new character
and keeping it interesting is hard work and I'm
greatly looking forward to seeing what fate (i.e. you)
has in store for Gabriel now he's established.