Firstly - thank you so very, very much for the lovely feedback. I'm beyond delighted that you liked it! I was, honestly, a little nervous doing it to begin with, as the unfamiliar narrator and the mechanics of working with it, and how to end it, seemed a little daunting. But it came out well, I thought, and I'm thrilled that it worked for you! I loved the original, so I'm glad you feel I did it some kind of justice! And I'm very glad you didn't mark it as a safe story!
I love the fact that for both Mary and Dean, it’s about the joy and love of driving, and for Sam and John it’s about getting from A to B as fast and as uneventfully as possible. The irony of the fact that John takes up the road-trip life, even though he doesn’t have the love of driving. It breaks my heart that after John died, the Impala is the one with the clearest memories of Mary, who knew her best. John has always struck me as very utilitarian. He does what needs to be done, after the fire at least. And we saw in the groundhog day episode (which was after the fic was set, granted) how very deeply JOHN Sam became after he lost Dean, so the parallel between the two of them just made sense to me. They were destination people. Dean was a journey person. And I've always liked the idea of Mary and Dean lining up that way. And to me, it just makes sense for a car to love the people best who just loved to drive, not to get somewhere. One of the reasons the original hits so hard is that the Impala is, to me, the last of the thing they're left, excepting the journal, and the last thing that could have had Mary a part of it too, so them walking away from her is them walking away from their own histories and pasts, and I wanted to build that into her.
And...and, after all that, you give her Death to drive her off into her own epilogue, Heh. I was . . . really not sure of where the end was going to go. I knew HOW it ended - same as the original - but I wasn't sure how I was going to do it until I got there. I had some vague ideas, but the end was sort of the sticking point, and I told myself if I couldn't make it work, then I'd scrap it and start over with something new. But I got there - and Death showed up all on her own, and it pretty much wrote itself. I kept it vague in the first draft, so that it could have been the Death we've seen in the SPN universe . . . but that felt like a cop out, because I was WRITING her as Gaiman's death, so in the end I strengthened it and let it be obvious and then the story felt done to me. So I'm really glad that worked for you!
Again, thank you so much! I loved having a chance to remix your work, so thank you for the original!
![[community profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/community.png){kind=small}
(no subject)
Date: 2008-04-26 11:31 pm (UTC)I love the fact that for both Mary and Dean, it’s about the joy and love of driving, and for Sam and John it’s about getting from A to B as fast and as uneventfully as possible. The irony of the fact that John takes up the road-trip life, even though he doesn’t have the love of driving. It breaks my heart that after John died, the Impala is the one with the clearest memories of Mary, who knew her best.
John has always struck me as very utilitarian. He does what needs to be done, after the fire at least. And we saw in the groundhog day episode (which was after the fic was set, granted) how very deeply JOHN Sam became after he lost Dean, so the parallel between the two of them just made sense to me. They were destination people. Dean was a journey person. And I've always liked the idea of Mary and Dean lining up that way. And to me, it just makes sense for a car to love the people best who just loved to drive, not to get somewhere. One of the reasons the original hits so hard is that the Impala is, to me, the last of the thing they're left, excepting the journal, and the last thing that could have had Mary a part of it too, so them walking away from her is them walking away from their own histories and pasts, and I wanted to build that into her.
And...and, after all that, you give her Death to drive her off into her own epilogue,
Heh. I was . . . really not sure of where the end was going to go. I knew HOW it ended - same as the original - but I wasn't sure how I was going to do it until I got there. I had some vague ideas, but the end was sort of the sticking point, and I told myself if I couldn't make it work, then I'd scrap it and start over with something new. But I got there - and Death showed up all on her own, and it pretty much wrote itself. I kept it vague in the first draft, so that it could have been the Death we've seen in the SPN universe . . . but that felt like a cop out, because I was WRITING her as Gaiman's death, so in the end I strengthened it and let it be obvious and then the story felt done to me. So I'm really glad that worked for you!
Again, thank you so much! I loved having a chance to remix your work, so thank you for the original!