Well, that's another ten thousand words needs to be rebuilt
Mucked up some stuff about how long a person stays in a trench, got the military organization kind of muddied and it needs to be clarified, well, it'll still be muddy but in the ways that I mean for it to be muddy instead of ways that I don't that might get in the way of a reader accepting the scenes, didn't deal with a thing I wanted to have dealt with before now -- the feudal-remnants aspect of military organization, think I need to better foreshadow this bad thing that's about to happen and also make it more unacceptable by making the guy it's happening to more of a presence, missed an opportunity to foreshadow something that happens a lot later, and I think some stuff seems to happen by magic and it ought to happen by normal processes? and I really just need to make some decisions, really, about what these trenches really look like because the waffling might be showing in the staging.
Other than that, it'll do until I'm ready to go rewrite that stuff. Right now, trying to set up, astage, and pace the very bad thing, along with another very bad thing, and figure out what kind of retreat the army is in at the moment -- a rout, or an organized one. The problem with not using actual history is that you have to make these decisions yourself instead of having a nice constrained timeline of what really happened.
I was always anti-war. Not the kind that admits of no time when people need to or ought to fight. But the kind that hits the streets and carries the signs. But right now, because I have no boundaries about the little fake people I write about:right now I'm for taking every general there ever was, and most statesmen, and putting them all on trial, with the burden of proof on them. People who always read this stuff will not be surprised that the major source of my rage is the Eastern Front of World War One. Where the official strategy is to send men into the front lines with no equipment and the instructions to pick up stuff from the corpses around them. And "trench" means "trench," not "cement-lined bunker with cots and tables."
The thing is, there are times and places where men have to undergo this kind of experience because the alternative is unimaginably bad. And then there's World War One, which was a game played by incestuous cousins on the outs with each other.
And there's also miners, even to this day, who in many places live just like that, minus the artillery, also to further enrich people who already have too much.
(but this book isn't about this, it's not an anti-war book, the war is just there because it is, but once there's a war, how can you skip over it and just write the fun stuff? Oy, I wish Bertolt Brecht was alive and would write me a poem to make fun of me and help me figure out what the hell I'm doing*)
*From To Posterity
Indeed I live in the dark ages!
A guileless word is an absurdity. A smooth forehead betokens
A hard heart. He who laughs
Has not yet heard
The terrible tidings.
Ah, what an age it is
When to speak of trees is almost a crime
For it is a kind of silence about injustice!
And he who walks calmly across the street,
Is he not out of reach of his friends
In trouble?
Other than that, it'll do until I'm ready to go rewrite that stuff. Right now, trying to set up, astage, and pace the very bad thing, along with another very bad thing, and figure out what kind of retreat the army is in at the moment -- a rout, or an organized one. The problem with not using actual history is that you have to make these decisions yourself instead of having a nice constrained timeline of what really happened.
I was always anti-war. Not the kind that admits of no time when people need to or ought to fight. But the kind that hits the streets and carries the signs. But right now, because I have no boundaries about the little fake people I write about:right now I'm for taking every general there ever was, and most statesmen, and putting them all on trial, with the burden of proof on them. People who always read this stuff will not be surprised that the major source of my rage is the Eastern Front of World War One. Where the official strategy is to send men into the front lines with no equipment and the instructions to pick up stuff from the corpses around them. And "trench" means "trench," not "cement-lined bunker with cots and tables."
The thing is, there are times and places where men have to undergo this kind of experience because the alternative is unimaginably bad. And then there's World War One, which was a game played by incestuous cousins on the outs with each other.
And there's also miners, even to this day, who in many places live just like that, minus the artillery, also to further enrich people who already have too much.
(but this book isn't about this, it's not an anti-war book, the war is just there because it is, but once there's a war, how can you skip over it and just write the fun stuff? Oy, I wish Bertolt Brecht was alive and would write me a poem to make fun of me and help me figure out what the hell I'm doing*)
*From To Posterity
Indeed I live in the dark ages!
A guileless word is an absurdity. A smooth forehead betokens
A hard heart. He who laughs
Has not yet heard
The terrible tidings.
Ah, what an age it is
When to speak of trees is almost a crime
For it is a kind of silence about injustice!
And he who walks calmly across the street,
Is he not out of reach of his friends
In trouble?