148 Degrees Recap · 3:55am Sep 2nd, 2014
It has been a while, but now its time to do a recap of one of my lowest received works.
So, on a personal note, 148 was probably my favorite stories to write so far. I thought it was fun to do as well as I thought that people would enjoy this take on cowboy legends and stories... but sadly that wasn't so. For such a small amount of words, I probably took too much time in writing it and I feel like all of Twilight Crow's effort was to waste. but oh well.
Although it may not seem like it, I actually love Spaghetti Western movies, and Clint Eastwood's Man with No Name is my favorite series and character. If I had a choice of how my own Blaze of Glory would be, I would undoubtedly choose an epic ghosttown sixshooter showdown.
Anyway, moving on, if you read closely into the story, you can find quite a bit of tropes from westerns and pop culture that I really had a bunch of fun with. Grandpa's craziness was a direct lift from Hey Arnold!'s character Grandpa, in which he actually says at one point "Don't eat Raspberries."
The idea of Grandpa's family not fleeing and eventually witnessing the fight is the stupid "dutifully manning my post regardless of the circumstance" bullshit. While the idea that Grandpa is the only surviving witness allows him to really distort the tale to whatever he wants. Also, Grandpa does carry a lot of Indian Stereotypes, like his liberal use of Peyote, that he's ancient and knows some bullshit lore of the town.
The Rowdy Colts were the most basic 4 archtypes of villains in a western,
Cholo Joe was the ex soldier turned outlaw.
Green Eyes was the creepy dark thief type.
Deadwood Dixon was the native and ritualistic badass type that nobody could understand.
and Rowdy Red Pepper was the type of "Chosen evil" mixed with a bit of vanity over things like his bounty and image as a badass outlaw and lady's man.
"The Yellow Rose" or just the Stranger was a direct rip on Clint Eastwood as the soft spoken and quiet badass antihero. While it is obvious that its a character from my other works, this is mainly done as a blank slate for continuity as well as not having to make a new OC. (If you are confused with how he can survive after all these years, let me clarify that I never mentioned when this story happened.) Also, while I say that Peace is heavily inspired by Clint Eastwood, in this work he was more based on the idea of Mark Calloway WWE Character, The Undertaker, especially in his wardrobe and that Grandpa says that he is taking Rowdy Red Pepper's soul to hell.
And my favorite part of the story, the showdown in the town, had so many references and elements in it that I can't name them all. The 12 bells, the high noon showdown, standing on opposite sides of a single street town, the unwinnable duel, walking into town in the sunrise and walking out in the sunset, etc.
Now, enough of that, now for a few things that happen behind the scenes:
Now, counter to what you may be thinking, the inclusion of boyscouts listening to Grandpa's tale and their wimpy reactions to it was actually an insult. Just... don't ask.
Coffin Valley was a direct analog of Death Valley. Much of the reason why Death Valley is the hottest place in the world was rewritten for Coffin Valley.
Originally, this story was going to be a bland shootemup fic where a human or anthro man walks into a oppressed town and kills the gang harassing the townspeople. In the original, he was disguised as a priest and surprises the gangsters when he pulls out two semiautomatic handguns from his bible and is actually wearing Kevlar beneath his robes.
The entire intro, from the first line up until Grandpa speaks for the first time, was completely rewritten by Twilight Crow because the original intro fucking sucked.
The narrative style was directly influenced by the Joseph Konrad book, The Heart of Darkness, which... was pretty fucking boring, What I did like about it was its interesting narrative style, about a narrator telling you a story he heard firsthand.
The Yellow Rose was actually going to be "The Undertaker" or "The Spirit of Death", but as I thought about it, there were too many similarities to the Backwater Gospel and The Undertaker, so instead I took a piece of Texas history and decided to name her The Yellow Rose of Texas, Emily West.
I tried to limit the amount of breaks in the narrative to what actually happened as much as I could, because I thought they were too distracting. At one point I was going to write all of Grandpa's story as one chapter, and then publish a second chapter with what actually happened... but not much happened and it would just be OC's killing each other. At the same time, not having the actual interjections just made the story not make sense, especially with how unreliable Grandpa was as a narrator. I managed to cut it down to why the impersonation worked on Deadwood Dixon as well as why the stranger came after the Rowdy Colts.
Now, the last segment flashback was added much later, because the original story ended with Grandpa and Grandson at the ominous hat at the gravemarker, but I felt a little more closure was needed to make it feel more like a folklore tale.
Obviously Grandpa is definitely drunk and possibly high when he starts telling the boys about what happened, but as the story continues Grandpa starts to experience PTSD, up until the Stranger enters the town, where he starts reliving the experience.
Grandpa's mom was originally going to be raped by Rowdy Red Pepper, but at Twilight Crow's Request I gladly removed it as well as the Dark Tag.
I never wanted to say it, but the Phoenix was Philomeena, and I tried to use the word "Mistress" to show that Celestia orchestrated the plan to draw out the Rowdy Colts in order to stop them from stealing Smallpox vaccines intended for the mustangs.
And last but not least, I read through this story so many times trying to make sure that Grandpa's drawl and accent is consistent through out the story that I seriously feel like I can recite his dialogue by heart. Seriously, it was a bitch.
So, that was everything behind the scenes of 148 Degrees, I loved this story and unfortunately it didn't get nearly as much press as I thought it deserved. If you liked the story, then I just want to say thank you for your time and I am glad that my effort was worth it.
Thank you for your time.
I really enjoyed reading 148 Degrees and it's sad that it didn't get the attention it deserved. Thanks for going into more detail about some of the story's concepts as I found it interesting.
Dude, I don't think this was a waste of my or your time at all. if you like it, then that is the only reason you needed to write it and post it. You know I loved the story, and it was a pleasure to help.
Interesting, thanks for all this extra info.