Farewell Project Paranormal

[cornerofmadness]

Four years ago scribesds asked me if I'd like to be part of a team of writers doing an AR virtual series that would have a B/A theme and set in England. I was both flattered and intriqued by Project Paranormal. Enjoying a challenge, I agreed.

I knew most of the writers from B/A boards among other forums and knew most of them would have a better handle on the Buffy and Angel relationship than I would. While that was and still is my favorite pairing for both of them, I didn't write it all that often and usually to meet requests from ficathons.

Instead, I chose to highlight another member of the team, one that I felt a great affinity for, Rupert Giles. I loved him and found him fairly easy to write. Also, using him for this project I got to research lots of folklore of the United Kingdom, especially power spots and ley lines (even found a few tours that go only to these places in the process. Someday i need to BOOK one of them). I relied on Scribes and the others to help me with the details since I've never been to England and they're natives.

It was more of a challenge than I first thought to write as part of a group. Not all the decisions were in my hands (something that a control freak like myself had troubles adjusting to) and wow, the effort it had to take to juggle something like this for four years is pretty stunning. Whether I loved this detail and didn't like that one, in the long run the series told its story in a myriad of voices and I think it was a superlative effort.

I wasn't part of PP for it's entire run. New fandoms and original projects and a new job with a multitude of new classes to create from scratch forced me to relunctantly give up being part of the team. I didn't always get back there to give feedback as much as I wanted to either. However, over the years I did try to point the curious over to see PP as much as I could.

I can't pick out one or two authors to praise. They're all wonderful in their own rights. Go and check out the series. Like all series, it's best to start at the beginning. It's something the various Buffy scholars might like to peek at just to see what a group of fanfic writers can do together and individually. scribesds does a great job of giving props to all the writers involved, doing a much better job than I ever could so go and have a look.

Farewell Project Paranormal. You were a fun experiment that taught me a lot about the writing process and still are a wealth of wonderful Buffyverse stories.

Comments

[scribesds.livejournal.com]

Thank you for your invaluable contributions to the series, Dana. Several of our writers wanted to cover the B/A side of the dynamic but the series was never intended to focus solely on them, so your Giles stories were particularly important. I think we all learnt an awful lot from writing in a manner that wasn’t natural to us. I probably learnt not to start such an ambitious venture again! All in all it was fun, and I shall miss it terribly. Thank you for being part of the process and helping to make it possible.

[mulzrule.livejournal.com]

Sounds like fun. I'm with you, Giles (and Xander) was the main reason I watched the show to begin with.

[cornerofmadness.livejournal.com]

I liked Giles a lot. Xander less so. I did like early Willow a lot

[cornerofmadness.livejournal.com]

You're welcome. Thanks for inviting me along for the ride

And I figure it's okay that Buffy was the focus. it is her story after all.

I did learn I'm not cut out to write with that many people. One co-author, maybe, more than that and I start getting antsy. But it was a good thing for me to handle. I like challenging myself

and I wouldn't have wanted your job.

[mulzrule.livejournal.com]

Same here. After maybe two seasons Willow really had me thinking WTF?