Коммент Шметцера к Крестному Отцу

[DeJaVu]

This one coalesced out of a couple separete desires:

1. A House Marik story (for the fans)
2. A Rifleman story (because I hate it so much I wanted to see if I could)
3. A pure character story

From the response, I think I managed pretty well. Although I'm still waiting for all the "finally, a Marik story!" posts to show up.

The first part, a Marik story, was easy. Anton's Civil War is woefully underrepresented in CBT fiction, and even the addition of Historical: Brush Wars did little to alleviate that. I also knew the unit I would use, and at least one of the characters, because I've always remembered the descriptions of the Fifteenth Marik Militia and Colonel Jake Hawkins from Bill Keith's The Price of Glory.

The Rifleman part, well... that was a little harder. I've hated the Rifleman since the first time I ever played a game of CBT, when I overheated it and failed the ammo-explosion roll and that was the end of it. It was interesting putting my protagonist into one and making it do well and not get killed or blown up. That paper-thin armor makes it difficult, which is why you'll notice lots of other 'Mechs getting shot at in the story instead of Nathan's.

The most fun part for me was the character part. I was writing this story during somewhat of a watershed period in my writing, when I was just (finally) starting to understand how one of my stories works. Yes, for all you writers out there--it is possible to write a story and not understand how it works. I had a great deal of fun bringing Nathan and Ramirez and even the supporting jocks off the page, giving them feelings and emotions, and then making them act in accordance of those feelings. Godfather is probably my favorite story to-date as far as craft is concerned--I don't know that I've yet written a "better" story than that one.

The crux of the story, for me, was Nathan's interactions with Ramirez. Mil-SF is dirty with new-recruit-paired-with-old-veteran dynamics, and a lot of the tropes are necessary when using it, but I think I chose a point-of-view (the recruit, rather than the veteran) that isn't often used too well. Nathan looks at Ramirez in a fatherly light... and Ramirez is just trying to keep him alive, teach how to survive in the field. That they're learning this in the middle of a rebellion is just extra.