Purimgifts Reveal!
Feb. 26th, 2013 10:47 pmI wrote three stories for ![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
elrhiarhodan for Purimgifts.
For a while, I worried that my purimgifts stories were insufficiently ambitious, or even lazy. In past years I've had to create whole new swaths of canon by worldbuilding, for my pirate rabbi stories, and for my bible space station AU. This year, I just did very simple, straightforward remixes of three scenes from the West Wing. In two of them, even, I only changed one line of dialogue from the original scene. Eventually, I decided that I had in fact done enough to change the substance, that despite the small number of changes, these were significant and meaningful remixes.
My reasoning was that there were two things I did that were significant. The first was casting these scenes in Toby's perspective perspective. The show never shows you what characters are thinking, in fact can't show you what they're thinking. I consistently gave Toby perspective, which also meant that the three scenes taken from three seasons were being positioned as structurally relevant to each other. The other thing is the substance of the remix. In each case, the changed lines of dialogue try to fix the same thing- my periodic frustration with the way the West Wing, a show which I will always love for positioning Jewish ideals and values front and center, failed to accurately represent those values. Simple, factual failures that are easily ascribed to writer fowl-up, but feel like betrayals because they're missteps that I can't believe Toby or Josh would ever make.
So in the Pilot, when Toby identifies the wrong commandment, I had to fix it. In The Day Before, when Toby explains that Erev Yom Kippur is something special when we all know it's the whole Ten Days of Awe. In 20 Hours in America, when Toby throws a cheap, nonsensical joke at Josh when he ought to be standing in unity with his fellow Jew. I had to fix these moments, share my own headcanon for these moments with everyone. Maybe the changes really are insubstantial, maybe I was being lazy. But when I read these remixed stories, I cheer, because I feel the sense of rightness restored to them.
Pilot [The Getting the Commandments Right Remix]
The Day Before [The Am Yisrael Remix]
20 Hours in America [The Acheinu Kol Beit Yisrael Remix]
Three West Wing Toby-centric ficlets centered around a theme. I am, on the whole, pleased with them. And I hope everyone enjoys them.
elrhiarhodan for Purimgifts.For a while, I worried that my purimgifts stories were insufficiently ambitious, or even lazy. In past years I've had to create whole new swaths of canon by worldbuilding, for my pirate rabbi stories, and for my bible space station AU. This year, I just did very simple, straightforward remixes of three scenes from the West Wing. In two of them, even, I only changed one line of dialogue from the original scene. Eventually, I decided that I had in fact done enough to change the substance, that despite the small number of changes, these were significant and meaningful remixes.
My reasoning was that there were two things I did that were significant. The first was casting these scenes in Toby's perspective perspective. The show never shows you what characters are thinking, in fact can't show you what they're thinking. I consistently gave Toby perspective, which also meant that the three scenes taken from three seasons were being positioned as structurally relevant to each other. The other thing is the substance of the remix. In each case, the changed lines of dialogue try to fix the same thing- my periodic frustration with the way the West Wing, a show which I will always love for positioning Jewish ideals and values front and center, failed to accurately represent those values. Simple, factual failures that are easily ascribed to writer fowl-up, but feel like betrayals because they're missteps that I can't believe Toby or Josh would ever make.
So in the Pilot, when Toby identifies the wrong commandment, I had to fix it. In The Day Before, when Toby explains that Erev Yom Kippur is something special when we all know it's the whole Ten Days of Awe. In 20 Hours in America, when Toby throws a cheap, nonsensical joke at Josh when he ought to be standing in unity with his fellow Jew. I had to fix these moments, share my own headcanon for these moments with everyone. Maybe the changes really are insubstantial, maybe I was being lazy. But when I read these remixed stories, I cheer, because I feel the sense of rightness restored to them.
Pilot [The Getting the Commandments Right Remix]
The Day Before [The Am Yisrael Remix]
20 Hours in America [The Acheinu Kol Beit Yisrael Remix]
Three West Wing Toby-centric ficlets centered around a theme. I am, on the whole, pleased with them. And I hope everyone enjoys them.