Short Version:
TV shows come to an end. Sometimes, their time has come, their story told, their characters all grown up and wielding scythes and motivational speeches. But sometimes, a story seems to be only just beginning. Angel ended abruptly, only a year after a new lease of life, which, in these authors' opinion, gave the show its strongest year by a mile, and a wealth of new stories to tell. We therefore decided to revive the show, beginning with a sixth season. This isn't slash, and we aren't writing novels – the aim of the project is to produce a season (and maybe more to follow) of written 'episodes' approximating a brand new and hopefully entertaining year of Angel. Much like the televised series, our episodes will not contain individualised content warnings.
When the axe fell on Angel, the Powers That Be decided to end the show in a big way, and the Circle of the Black Thorn plot thoroughly killed, cremated and scattered the premise of the show. For obvious reasons therefore, we are assuming that had cancellation not occurred, season 5 would have ended rather differently. As a result, Angel: Still Falling departs from the on-screen canon with the penultimate scene of Time Bomb. In our universe, The Girl in Question, Power Play and Not Fade Away didn't occur. No Black Thorn, no return for Lindsey, and no destruction of Wolfram & Hart, or, more importantly, Spike's coat. Angel and Nina went on that romantic vacation together, leaving the rest of the gang in charge of the business, and this is where our story kicks off...
Eternally Yours,
Out For Bloody Summer & Monotone
Long Version:
TV shows come to an end. Sometimes, their time has come, their story told, their characters all grown up and wielding scythes and motivational speeches. But sometimes, a story seems to be only just beginning. Angel ended abruptly, only a year after a new lease of life, which, in these authors' opinion, gave the show its strongest year by a mile, and a wealth of new stories to tell. We therefore decided to revive the show, beginning with a sixth season.
This is intended as an effectively canonical continuation – if you prefer Joss' version, that LA went to Hell, Spike is Lord of Beverly Hills, every character ever seen on the show has shown up at some point, and Dawn is a giant because she lost her virginity, then fair enough, but we think he lost the plot a bit, and that we can do better, or at least give it a shot.
As a result, we are aiming to maintain the same tone as the previous five seasons, but obviously slightly adapted to the new medium. This means the language, sex and violence content will be about the same as the TV show, probably rated 15 (or PG-13 in the US). In keeping with this tone, Still Falling is not slash. Relationships will be portrayed just as before, the season will not end with all the characters miraculously paired up, and any romantic liaisons that do occur are unlikely to be the focus of the story.
If any die-hard shippers out there (admittedly, the category I usually fit into) still insist on looking at Still Falling in this way, then all hope is not quite lost, for what it's worth, this promises to be the most complex Sparmony fic ever written.
As for the format, as with seasons 1-5, our season(s) will be divided up into 22 episodes, some stand-alone and some more arc-centric, with each episode likely to be 7-10 thousand words. We will post a new episode every two weeks, working in blocks of 5 or 6 – Once episodes 1-5 have been written, we will release one a fortnight, but not post 6 until 6-10 are all completed.
All comments on both individual episodes and the series as a whole are, of course, more than welcome and would make us very happy, be they critical or complimentary. However, as we want future episodes to remain spoiler-free, and leaving certain leading questions (like "Will Numfar be coming back?" or "How on Earth will Angel be able to get his soul back this time?") unanswered might look rather suspicious, we will not be answering any plot-based questions until the end of the season. Please by all means still leave comments like this, as we like to know what people are thinking, but bear in mind that we will only respond to them once the season has all been posted.
For the same reasons, we will not be posting individual episode warnings – if A Hole In The World carried a label saying 'Warning: Major Character Death Follows!' then it would have ruined the episode completely. So bear in mind that just as with the TV show, no characters are invincible – Buffy died twice in spite of being the title character – and the subject matter certainly has its dark moments, after all, Angel Season 5 opens with a man planting a viral weapon inside his own son, so it won't be all shiny happy people and Gunn singing Gilbert & Sullivan.
We have also taken to casting actors that we imagine would suit the roles of the new characters we create – this is to make it easier for people to visualise. Obviously, no such aids would be provided with a novel, we considered this the most effective transfer from screen to print. After all, everyone imagines Angel being played by the same actor, it would seem consistent for this trend to be continued with new additions. And yes, we know most of the actors would be far too expensive to ever actually consider appearing in the TV show, but that's one of the nice limits not placed on fanfic, and hey, our special effects budget has gone up too.
It is our firm belief that the Black Thorn mini-arc was placed on the end of Season 5 purely for the purposes of wrapping up the show, and that had the show not been cancelled, the Illyria storyline would have been dragged out for a few more episodes, making 'Time Bomb' the season finale. This is therefore the idea that we have taken as canon, however instead of reworking existing material that audiences are already familiar with, we assume that Season 5 ended with 'Time Bomb' exactly as seen on the show, without additional episodes preceding it.
Our one change to this will be to cut the final scene from 'Time Bomb,' with Angel instructing Gunn to give the baby to the Fell Brethren, as this is clearly the start of the Black Thorn storyline. The episode, and series, therefore ended with Angel telling Wesley that Illyria 'might just make the team yet.'
As a result of disallowing the Black Thorn plot (no 'The Girl In Question,' 'Power Play' or 'Not Fade Away'), a number of things have changed for the start of Season 6. To begin with, Wesley, Hamilton, Drogyn and Lindsey are not dead. Neither are Archduke Sebasis, who we've only met once (in 'The Life Of The Party'), Cyrus Vail, Senator Bruckner or any of the other Black Thorn members. Not only that, but we don't know that they are members of the Circle Of The Black Thorn. In fact, we don't even know it exists.
Furthermore, Spike did not give the line about 'well, except that one time,' Fred's parents do not know about her death, Andrew's sexuality was never confirmed either way, and Buffy, who is in Rome, may or may not be dating The Immortal, who may or may not exist. Hamilton never beat Illyria to a bloody pulp or kidnapped Drogyn. Angel never spent his last day helping Connor fill out a resumé, and Spike never recited his effulgent poem. Unless, of course, he did that sometime since and didn't tell anyone. The important character points are that Illyria never imitated Fred, and therefore never fell out with Wesley, nor did they get their moment of closure before she showed up at the Hyperion alley. Also, crucially, Harmony never betrayed anyone, nor was there any suggestion that she is going to. Angel and Nina are still together, Drogyn is still in his cave in England, and the Wolfram & Hart building is still intact. Most importantly of all, Spike's coat is just fine.
Out For Bloody Summer & Monotone
Retrospective Version:
The above was written sometime in 2008 or 2009, by myself and my best friend. Not much has been written since then. Five episodes were completed, totalling about 44,000 words, along with another 10,000 words of partially-completed episodes and a ridiculous amount of notes. All 22 episodes were plotted out, some in more detail than others, containing both episodic storylines and series arcs we thought were interesting. I'd love to get the whole thing finished one day, but that's very unlikely to ever happen.
Unfortunately, despite the hundreds of hours poured into it, the project buckled under its own weight. We had decided to publish the episodes in batches of five, so that the audience would not be left hanging indefinitely, but finishing the fifth episode of the first block turned out to be such a slog. It wasn't that we disliked it or went off the show (though we did slowly grow more distant from it), it was just a struggle to find time to do any of it, when its time requirement was obviously so huge. We both remain very proud of the episodes that we did complete, though it is a bit obvious that episodes two, three and four were written after one and five, and the quality jumps accordingly. I would be very interested to hear what others think of our work.
Also, all of this was previously published on Livejournal, which now seems to be a bit of a graveyard for internet traffic. I'm now uploading them here in case any Whedonites online in 2015 are interested in reading them. However, doesn't allow embedding, as far as I can see, which makes the layout much cleaner, but does mean that readers miss out on the painstakingly-created title card for each episode, as well as the video title sequence (which is different for each episode). So to see Still Falling as it was originally intended, even just to see each episode's image and video and then return here, try .com
