Random Late Night Blog Post #1 · 10:10am Jan 4th, 2019
I couldn't sleep tonight, and I was bored, so I thought I'd come on here and write a long blog post. Fair warning, I'll be using a fuck load of equipment jargon in this post. If you don't know what I'm talking about, click here for an Imgur album I made explaining what everything is.
I wanted to talk about WW2 equipment and, more specifically, reenacting. This'll be a more of a stream of consciousness thing, so bear with me.
So, in case you haven't noticed, I write a story about a WW2 soldier. Pretty much everything about James stems from my experiences in reenacting. I've reenacted the 36th Infantry Division, and I found their story to be pretty interesting. They've been pretty much all over Europe. And they're the Texas division, so I'm a bit biased.
Anyway.
As I've written Textbook soldier, I've realized I've fucked up his stuff a bit. Nothing major, but I've just underequipped him for where he is in the war. Which is really annoying, but whatever. My original plan for this story was to write it essentially from start to finish BEFORE I published to the website. That way if I find any mistakes as I have, then I could just retcon it and rewrite it. No problem.
Problem was, I got really disheartened writing this story. I kept thinking no one would even enjoy it, like Blue Moon. So I polished the first chapter as much as I could and threw it up on the website. And it got featured! I was ecstatic! And then I got an awesome editor who helps me immensely with this story. More so than grammar.
Diverging tangent here. I have no friends who are into MLP. None. Never have, either. So I've never had anyone to talk to about ideas for stories. Not truly, at least. I have a great friend who watched one or two episodes when he was with his Ex-Girlfriend, but he never got into it. He's polite enough to smile and nod when I talk about this stuff, but I know he doesn't care. So when Rhawkas became my editor, I sort of started dumping all my rants about where I wanted to go with this story on him. And, to his credit, he's been a real trooper about it. Honestly, a lot of where this story is going is based on his suggestions.
Anyway.
Yeah, so I under-equipped James hardcore. I totally blanched that he left Earth in November of 1944. In France. The French Alps. In late fall. If you don't spot the problem yet, you're not alone. He only has a thin jacket on. This:
That's not very warm. He should be wearing something like this:
Props to this reenactor, those coats are expensive. Not so expensive that I wouldn't get one, but I won't because I promise you it won't serve me well here in Texas. Note, he's also wearing an M41 jacket beneath the overcoat. So James would definitely not be wearing just an M41.
There are more things, obviously, and there are still ways I can put those in the story, but it just bothers me that I didn't think of this when I started writing. There's a lot of that, too.
I also saw a blog post recently in some group where someone was talking about writing strong female lead characters that aren't subordinate to all the males. And I realized I fell victim to this in Textbook Soldier. James is supposed to be lost and confused, but instead, I made all the girls crying messes, even though they should be his rock while he breaks down. And then when I saw that, it really started bothering me. Another reason why I wish I had pre-written more. Ah well. Still can change things. The story is still young! And there is much suffering to be had still!
I'm gonna wrap this up here, but I definitely still have more to talk about. Regardless of how many of you actually see this, I think I'm gonna keep doing this. Lets me vent to the open void of the internet. Bye.
If you want to rewrite what you’ve posted so far to make it more realistic/how you want it, then that’s completely up to you as it’s your story. It won’t bother me much as it’s still a pretty good story as far as I’m concerned, but if you want to change it, it will only make it better. It’s your story so the choice is yours.
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My problem is that I'd rather not force people to reread the whole thing for a few minor details. Besides, like I said I haven't hit anything yet that I can't fix in later chapters. If I do, I might have to. I appreciate it, though! It's good to know that if I miss anything huge that I can fix it.