second bit.

[lo0o0ony_lauren]

First bit.


It’s easier to fall into step beside them than to fight it, really. Sam can survive this newest and most difficult lie because, underneath everything he says to any of them and every task he attempts to pick up without admitting that he doesn’t know how to be a soldier, is his unfaltering belief that sooner or later he will be able to go

Comments

[sciosophia]

So, I'm reading this again because my dissertation is on fanfiction and right now I'm writing about AUs and it reminded me of just how much I love this story (and there are way too many ands in that sentence). I never quite finished my WWI fic, it got eaten up by university, but it doesn't matter because this is quite wonderful enough to more than fill this fandom's quota.

Gene is necessarily softer, it seems, as an officer - it comes across as his care for his men, because he can shout and rant at everybody as much as he likes in 1973 but in 1918 that fierce camaraderie, it's totally different. He doesn't have to be the sheriff, here he's a Captain trying to keep his men alive.

Sam too, I love the way that you relate this situation so wonderfully back to Life on Mars, especially Maya and all of the other things he worries about mentioning. It's a much more restricted time than 1973, I think, and it comes across so well here. There's a constant tension that builds up to that explosion, and Sam waking up and us not knowing is just the most disappointing thing. It hurts, and in a very good way.

Basically, I LOVE IT OMG.

[lo0o0ony_lauren]

Hello! Gosh gosh gosh, well, I must say I'd pretty much forgotten about this mad piece of writing. I had a bit of a reread when I got your comment and what really struck me was the fact that I deliberately wrote this, as you say, this deeply disappointing and quite abrupt ending, which is the kind of thing I so wouldn't have the nuts to do these days. I was a ballsier writer when I was sixteen, what a disappointment! Though it did take me for-fucking-ever to write this fic, if I recall correctly, because it took me forever to write everything then.

Anyway - thank you so much for your kind & unexpected words of loveliness! I FEAR rereading things I wrote so many years ago, but it's lovely to know that people still get something out of them & just, yeah. sweet.

How's the dissertation going, by the by? frankly, I'd love to read it when you're done.