Giles in canon

[beccaelizabeth]

[Poll #770309]

Poll #770309 Canon and character background
Open to: All, detailed results viewable to: All. Participants: 30

Giles - do we know everything important about him?
View Answers
Yes
5(16.7%)
NO
25(83.3%)

Little clicky poll to start with.

I was wondering, do you think that we already know, from canon, everything important about Giles? We got a reveal in The Dark Age, we got bits about his background. We got to find out what kind of donuts he likes. Do we know all the major things?

If we're writing fanfic, and we make something up, have we got big stretches of blank or really obvious necessary things that need filling in? Or are we fiddling with the details?

If we add bits to the making of him, will they be like table legs, or just more twiddly carvings?


We know about his Duty. We know about a Horrible Trauma. Is there more, somewhere in those years before canon?

Is there more in the bit after canon, when he went back to England? Was what happened to him then particularly significant?

What do you think are the key moments in Giles canon anyway?

Comments

[antennapedia.livejournal.com]

Oh, we so don't know everything important about him, and that's one of the reasons why he's so fun to write. We have just enough to know he's complex. We have a couple of pushpins stuck in the map of his life, but how he traveled from one to the next we get to decide.

[beccaelizabeth]

we get enough to guess at the extremes, I think. If the Eyghon thing was the worst part of his life, and with it being so totally opposite to tweedy!Giles.
But we know so very little about the Eyghon thing even, a few lines, and we don't know anything about how he got here from there. So yeah, tons to figure out.

[alixtii.livejournal.com]

We're not missing anything in canon, but that's because ambiguity makes a much more effective story than telling us everything. Certainly there are incredibly important things we don't know, but for the sake of the story Joss was telling we didn't need to. For the sake of the stories fanfic writers might tell, we probably do need to know thos things.

Do we know everything we need to know about Lady Macbeth? (How many children did she have, anyway?)

[beccaelizabeth]

*nods*

especially since the show was about Buffy, there was a lot we didn't need to know about Giles.
trying to write Ripper, different needs.

[sparklebutch.livejournal.com]

There are big things we very probably don't get, but besides that, there is everyday eralistic bits that we don't know. What he eats [aside from "he likes sweets"], and I hate to bring it up, but we know next to nothing about his sex life. Lots of little details that make up a life that we're not aware of.

[beccaelizabeth]

(Isn't bringing it up what most fic is about?)
We know he has a sex life. Which is more than we know for sure about the Doctor after 28 seasons.

Lots of details, yes.

[thirdblindmouse.livejournal.com]

28 seasons? Whew! Is there any other series that rivals that?

[beccaelizabeth]

I think it depends if you add up all the Treks.
Doctor Who has 28 seasons, 723 episodes, but all the Treks together are around 726 episodes according to Wiki. But even then, next year, Doctor Who is ahead by the numbers, and the Treks weren't continuous like DW.

[thirdblindmouse.livejournal.com]

I think it depends if you add up all the Treks.

Well, those were different crews, so I think depends on whether all the doctors are really one entity. *knows nothing about Dr. Who*

[beccaelizabeth]

Basically yes, with a little bit of no.
Different actors, different personalities, same Time Lord.

[beccaelizabeth]

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lengths_of_science_fiction_series

Trek is still ahead on the amount of time though, because DW episodes are short.