Let the Long Night End (Complete)

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SpartanAltego
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Re: Let the Long Night End

Post by SpartanAltego » Wed Oct 10, 2018 8:26 pm

gkmoberg1 wrote:
Wed Oct 10, 2018 6:46 pm
Spartan! You provide us yet again with a solid and very impressive chapter. This must have been hard for you to write as you have put so much thought and work into the story and these characters. I had to sit and chill out a bit after making it through to the end. As you say, the shoe dropped. And suddenly. Kudos on a spectacular tale. I'll be waiting for the follow-thru but will enjoy going back through this until then.
You won’t have to wait long, GK. The finale of LtLNE is about half completed at this juncture. It’s gonna be a wild one.

A question to my faithful readers: as we’ve come to the near-end of this tale, what’s something you wish had happened in the course of the story? It can be anything from a scene to a line to whatever you fancy - I’m curious what expectations were had as we went on this year-long journey together. What would’ve been your version of LtLNE? :O
"The dark is patient, and it always wins. But its weakness lies in its strength: a single candle is enough to hold it at bay. Love is more than a candle. Love can ignite the stars." - Matthew Stover

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Re: Let the Long Night End

Post by gkmoberg1 » Thu Oct 11, 2018 8:22 pm

I'm not sure I should list some of my thoughts just yet and should wait until we get to end. There's time yet where you might fill in some gaps on character backstories that have me curious and wanting to know more.

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Re: Let the Long Night End

Post by SpartanAltego » Tue Oct 23, 2018 7:14 am

All good things...must end.

The final chapter of Let the Long Night End has been approved. After this 11 month journey, it’s humbling to be here at the end with you all. We did it. As I mentioned before, please do share any questions, comments, anything that comes to mind regarding your feelings about the story. In the end it belongs to everyone who followed as much as it does to me. :D

It’s tough saying goodbye to Oskar, to Elias and Milton and Levi and all the rest. But the difference between love and obsession is respecting when the time comes to let someone go free. I like to think that I’ve come to love these characters, so now I must let them go - to the futures that have been written for them by the choices they’ve made and the souls they carry. Nothing lasts forever, but the people and stories we care for can live beyond their endings - as long as someone is there to remember them.
"The dark is patient, and it always wins. But its weakness lies in its strength: a single candle is enough to hold it at bay. Love is more than a candle. Love can ignite the stars." - Matthew Stover

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Re: Let the Long Night End (Complete)

Post by gkmoberg1 » Tue Oct 23, 2018 2:12 pm

I am about 1/2 through this and have to stop because my work day has begun. But this is very hard to put down. Spartan, you weave magic through all the gloom.

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Re: Let the Long Night End

Post by dongregg » Tue Oct 23, 2018 5:45 pm

SpartanAltego wrote:
Tue Oct 23, 2018 7:14 am
All good things...must end.

The final chapter of Let the Long Night End has been approved. After this 11 month journey, it’s humbling to be here at the end with you all. We did it. As I mentioned before, please do share any questions, comments, anything that comes to mind regarding your feelings about the story. In the end it belongs to everyone who followed as much as it does to me. :D

It’s tough saying goodbye to Oskar, to Elias and Milton and Levi and all the rest. But the difference between love and obsession is respecting when the time comes to let someone go free. I like to think that I’ve come to love these characters, so now I must let them go - to the futures that have been written for them by the choices they’ve made and the souls they carry. Nothing lasts forever, but the people and stories we care for can live beyond their endings - as long as someone is there to remember them.
Dante, this is an important story. Thanks for bringing us along with you at every step!
“For drama to deepen, we must see the loneliness of the monster and the cunning of the innocent.”

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Re: Let the Long Night End (Complete)

Post by gkmoberg1 » Thu Oct 25, 2018 2:43 am

Spartan! This literally tears itself up, as well as us, by the end. This is story telling that burns down the house across its final scenes. We're talking Keith Moon trashing his drum set at the end of the gig, or Paul Simonon of The Clash destroying his prized Fender P Bass onstage at the Palladium - utter involvement of the event plus all its well-woven themes rising to the point where destruction of the work is part of the work's achievement.

I finished this two days back and have been sloughing it off. It takes me a while to put the pieces together after living through a great story and coming out the far end. Nothing like being destroyed and reflecting on it; nothing like falling off the abyss and into free fall; nothing like being able to close the back cover and put it down, but then having to go on suffer breathing and enduring the hours as the tiny gray cells to continue turning it all over.

How did you do this? How dare do you do this?! Do you understand what these characters came to mean to us (okay, well 'me' in this case. Others, chime in if you like) ? We lived, felt, rejoiced, reasoned, worried along with them and then struggled with all that was moving them along. - And then, like them, cast through through their hell as the action played out.

I don't want to put any spoilers here, not even the kind where you clicky so as to see what's underneath. For now, only a suffocated scream and desire to rewind.

You work in magic; you do have a talent that is laid out plain here. There is little like those moments of seeing the wall, the wave, the nightmare coming, having it crash through everything through-and-through and send every bit - us and all that moments ago were the foundation of where we stood - either to a catastrophic terminus or to simply another place where we are left to roil ourselves in the aftermath. :twisted: Respect. Bravo. Torn to shreds.

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Re: Let the Long Night End

Post by SpartanAltego » Sun Oct 28, 2018 2:30 pm

gkmoberg1 wrote:
Thu Oct 11, 2018 8:22 pm
I'm not sure I should list some of my thoughts just yet and should wait until we get to end. There's time yet where you might fill in some gaps on character backstories that have me curious and wanting to know more.
Now that we’ve finished, I’m eager to hear your thoughts!

And perhaps I ought to offer a few of my own...for anyone who hasn’t yet read the final chapter, I would suggest not reading further yet. Fair warning!

..........

..........

Writing this ending was difficult for me, on several different levels. There was the melancholy of saying farewell to a tale I’d dedicated significant parts of a year to, the characters and ideas to which I’d grown so attached. And of course the anxiety that in the final lap I would trip and land on my face, invalidating all the efforts that had come before. But the hardest thing was letting events proceed as they would, to their truest conclusion. Many of the untimely deaths that occurred, I didn’t want. But in writing a story it often becomes less about what is wanted as a writer (or even a reader) and instead about listening to what the narrative is telling you.

Still, it was hard outlining and filling in the details of such a bittersweet (some might see it as only bitter) conclusion to a tale built on hope, trust, and the idea that it’s okay to want something more. Something better. The reason I can live with it is because, to my eye, this is the happiest end that could be found without straying into wish fulfillment or sacrificing the dignity of the characters. We all knew that the blood drive was never going to be sustainable long term. Levi’s monthly curse was never going to be cured. All families are eventually parted. In the end, the joy and hope of the story was temporary - but that doesn’t make it meaningless. Far from it, I feel. Life is defined by finding happiness and recalling it even after it has gone, and those moments drive us forward to search for that feeling again and again. The pursuit of happiness and hope is the only reason any of us are alive.

But because of their pain and sacrifice, many lives were saved. A monster was slain. And something happened that even years of happiness and peace would never have brought: Levi discovered what it felt like to feel alive again, in the moments before his death. He died full of peace and purpose, finally freed from the pain and turmoil that had consumed nearly half his life. And he left behind two friends who will carry his memory into the future with him.

In a way, Oskar and Elias are left where we last saw them: on a path set toward an uncertain future with nothing but each other. But things have changed now - Elias has grown closer to humanity thanks to his time as part of the Matthews family, reclaiming once and for all his identity as Elias rather than Eli. Oskar has grown darker, embracing the parts of himself he feared and redefining his morality to suit a new life as a vampire - he’s taken several steps toward becoming the Oskar we glimpse in LtODD. In a way they have switched roles. Their experiences have changed them.

A goal when I was writing LtLNE was to furnish a story that I could feel better justified a future in which Oskar became a vampire, something I think the original novel didn’t quite reach given LtODD’s reveal. So I went with the idea that the blood mixing didn’t actually work out, and that Oskar had second thoughts afterward about giving up mortal (and moral) life. I wanted to have him grow a bit more, experience more through his relationships with Levi and Milton, and ultimately come to a point where his decision is somewhat more understandable and less condemning of his character than LtODD: he is turned unwillingly, as Eli was, and chooses life (and friendship) over death, in doing so provoking an internal shift where he becomes comfortable with killing to survive as long as he and his loved ones persist. It was an inevitable sacrifice if he didn’t want his time with Elias to end. Sacrificing for love is a persistent character motivation throughout the story.

In hindsight, I made some missteps that I may correct someday with a second draft rewrite. I introduced the characters of Damien, Carmen, Abraham, and Abby at about the halfway point when I might’ve been better served giving them at least a smaller appearance earlier in the story. Abby I feel I never quite gave the same level of purpose and characterization I did to the others, and her exit from the story is rather abrupt. And there are some narrative false leads leftover from changes in the plot; the absence of the blood moon being one of them, which was originally going to play a role in Levi’s ability to (barely) direct himself in his hybrid wolf-man state for the climax. I had more scenes planned for all the characters that sadly never made it off the cutting room floor for pacing purposes, as the narrative rapidly raced past my expectations to a sooner than anticipated end (yet somehow ended up longer than expected).

And who knows? Maybe that rewrite will conclude with a slightly “happier” ending for my readers. But in the meantime...we must let the curtains fall.
"The dark is patient, and it always wins. But its weakness lies in its strength: a single candle is enough to hold it at bay. Love is more than a candle. Love can ignite the stars." - Matthew Stover

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Re: Let the Long Night End (Complete)

Post by gkmoberg1 » Tue Nov 06, 2018 3:30 am

My curiousity going into the final chapter was about Levi's lycanthropy, how he came to be with Milton and how that relationship got set up. Indeed all was answered in Ch11. As well, I was curious to understand the profiler's curiosity in wanting to know what was going on at the Matthews household yet willing to take it off the FBI's radar and proceed by himself. A very curious ending on that thread, btw!

About the story overall, I agree you carried the characters you developed through to their respective endings without faltering. Each, whether they survive or not, has been developed so that we know not just their characteristics but their in-depth character. We see who bends or not under severe pressure - and all remain true to the character we had learned. Yes, Abby is the quiet one who disappears short of the end; yet we could agree this is consistent with who she is. Her story is set up to segue with LMI and then even LeeKyle's LMI2. Similarly, the boys are set to segue into LTODD and from there even into metoo's epilogue of an epilogue, if such was your thinking.

The story is a success for many reasons. Your creation builds a home for E & O, and indeed an odd one given the nature of Levi and Milton. A sense of family develops across the later chapters. This is what allows them to succeed in the end. The trust and binding relationships they have created give them what is needed to persevere when the bogeyman arriveth.

As for Milton's well intended blood drive. It was doomed from the start. We knew it as Readers and Milton knew it himself. Yet it was the card he was able to play while looking or awaiting another path forward. He knew it would in time lead to discovery or peter out. And he knew the ending would leave himself and his family of adopted wayward children looking for a new means of looking after both his flock at the church and his most difficult of wards at home. It was unfair to both sides yet it was a jig that allowed deathless, bloodless (well okay) days and weeks to pass and for live and go after that "pursuit of happiness" you mentioned. Yet, as Milton knew it was doomed to fail, it's another example of the 'sacrificing for love' theme you wound into the story in so many angles; he was throwing away the trust his flock had him him - but interestingly for both the love he had for them and for the child at home.

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Re: Let the Long Night End (Complete)

Post by gkmoberg1 » Fri Nov 09, 2018 2:29 am

SpartanAltego wrote:
Sun Oct 28, 2018 2:30 pm
A goal when I was writing LtLNE was to furnish a story that I could feel better justified a future in which Oskar became a vampire
You did well with this, really well. As you have it, he too enters as did Elias: his turning is not voluntary. Even so, Oskar is note quite as innocent as was Elias, given that Oskar voluntarily ran off with Eli and was with him for approx a year. That carries much guilt-by-association. Yet, this is a great touch and a helpful addition ahead of LTODD. JAL might drop you a note of thanks ;)
SpartanAltego wrote:
Sun Oct 28, 2018 2:30 pm
I introduced the characters of Damien, Carmen, Abraham, and Abby at about the halfway point when I might’ve been better served giving them at least a smaller appearance earlier in the story.
Not sure. They have their roles; they played them well. You'd have to explain why introducing them earlier would help the overall story.
SpartanAltego wrote:
Sun Oct 28, 2018 2:30 pm
Abby I feel I never quite gave the same level of purpose and characterization I did to the others, and her exit from the story is rather abrupt.
Yet you were consistent in displaying her with a high degree of timidity. So - seems fitting you had her exit quietly.
SpartanAltego wrote:
Sun Oct 28, 2018 2:30 pm
I had more scenes planned for all the characters that sadly never made it...
If you ever get the chance, find & play the DVD of Disney's Snow White. The Director's audio overlay track emphasises how much Walt urged to keep the story to the point - cut cut cut. Lee Kyle was the same in his chats somewhere with me: either a piece advances the story it does not; if it does not, then leave it out.

Of course if you want to add more parts, well, please do! :)
SpartanAltego wrote:
Sun Oct 28, 2018 2:30 pm
And who knows? Maybe that rewrite will conclude with a slightly “happier” ending for my readers. But in the meantime...we must let the curtains fall.
A variant ending? I'd like to see you try that, but without breaking the nature of the characters you worked so hard and did so well giving us.

Cheers on an excellent tale.

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Re: Let the Long Night End (Complete)

Post by Siggdalos » Sun Jul 17, 2022 10:34 pm

[Bump] I've long been meaning to read this story and finally got around to doing so over the last week. And, well... what a ride! I'm bummed that, other than gk's posts, there wasn't any response to the rather explosive finale at the time it was posted, so methinks it's only fair that I bring it back into the spotlight for a bit and add some of my own thoughts.

Above all, I think this is simply a very well-constructed tale, and I'm impressed by the level of thought that went into each character, the themes, and how they all interlace with each other. I think SpartanAltego did achieve most of what they set out to do as described in the discussions throughout this thread. I agree that some elements feel underdeveloped (like Levi's feelings for Oskar and the inclusion of Abby), but ultimately nothing feels too out-of-place and it all builds toward the climax in a logical way.

I can't say I'm a fan of the writing style—to me, it strays too much into overwritten, purple prose and I never got entirely comfortable with it, but I realize that that's a matter of taste. I also have to mention the various errors regarding Swedish language and culture, which did distract me from the narrative somewhat (in an unintentionally funny way), but they aren't something that impact how I judge the story as a whole.

Once I'd finished the last chapter, it did leave me feeling... something. I'm not sure I can put my finger on the emotion, but I don't think "melancholy" is off the mark. I realize, looking back on the early chapters, that despite how much time I as a reader spent with Levi and Milton, it still somehow feels too short in retrospect. I'm sad that I'm never going to see them again—unless I reread the tale at some point, of course. Which, I guess, is a sign of a good story.

Spartan, if you ever come back to this thread and read this: kudos.
De höll om varandra i tystnad. Oskar blundade och visste: detta var det största. Ljuset från lyktan i portvalvet trängde svagt in genom hans slutna ögonlock, la en hinna av rött för hans ögon. Det största.

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