Friday, March 11, 2005

I've got two more Combat! fanfic stories posted! One of them, "Far From the Reason", is new, and intercuts lyrics from the Hoobastank song "The Reason" with internal dialogue during the first-season episode "Far From the Brave". The other story, "Shepherds Watch", is a Christmas story that I wrote in December, but didn't get posted until now. It's dedicated to my mom.

Also, check and see if those quotation marks in "Searching" are working better now for you, Housekarl.

4 comments:

  1. "Searching" and "Shepherds Watch" are fine, "Far from the Reason" is broken. Go figure.

    The modern lyrics are kind of jarring in the Combat verse. I assume you're supposed to take it like the song is playing over a montage of Saunders thinking? It's kind of like splicing Metallica music over combat footage; cool effect, but making a modern statement rather than a historical one. And Combat's pretty firmly set in history.

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  2. Well, I have no idea why one story doesn't work and the other two do, because I sent them all at the same time.

    As to the story with the lyrics ("Far From the Reason"), I wrote it as a response to a challenge to combine lyrics from a modern song with a "Combat!" story. I believe the only other entry so far can be found at http://www.storynook.net/Stairway.html if you want to compare. Anyway, I used the lyrics as sort of summaries of Saunders' thoughts.

    And yes, it's a pretty modern statement. I think it speaks to the universality and timelessness of "Combat!"s themes and stories.

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  3. Ok, the challenge aspect makes it totally different. Like the rhythm of a poem becomes much less important when you find out it's an acrostic. I don't know how I'd approach that puzzle, it's quite difficult. If you had vidding powers that would be a much easier blend (sorry, if you've never seen a Buffy/Angel vid I don't have any examples to show you).

    I think it speaks to the universality and timelessness of "Combat!"s themes and stories. 
    Maybe it speaks to the traditionality and retro appeal of Hoobastank lyrics instead.

    I'm glad you didn't take the criticism too hard, my feeling is that comments about the premise of a story are all just matters of taste, like "You're putting the Muppet Babies in Mordor? Why?" It's nothing personal.

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  4. I'm glad you didn't take the criticism too hard, my feeling is that comments about the premise of a story are all just matters of taste

    No worries! I've been sharing my work with people for quite a few years now, and publishing fanfic online for about 5. When I put something out there for others to read, I automatically assume some people won't like it, or at least parts of it. And I welcome valid criticisms, like yours. Then I can dialogue with my critics like we've done here (and via email in the past), and sometimes they give me some really good advice or ideas of how to make my stuff even better.

    Personal criticisms are harder to deal with, but I just try to remember what Kurt Vonnegut said: "Any reviewer who expresses rage and loathing for a novel is preposterous. He or she is like a person who has put on full armor and attacked a hot fudge sundae."

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