“Phantom 309”, End notes

[aadler]

[ Endnotes posted 31 Jul 2018 ]

Since this is a remix, what prompted the direction this story took in differing from the original?

The original was bitter, striking, made a powerful impression … but my own impression of Xander was that, if he ever did reach the point where he no longer cared about the people who had once mattered to him or the fight he had once fought, I wouldn’t be able to recognize that person as Xander. So, strongly as that story affected me, this was my denial of it as well as my own take on it.

Is there any particular meaning in the title?

It was the title of a 1967 country music minor hit by Red Sovine. I really have tried to use song titles or lyrics as the titles of my remixes (since fanfic remixes were an adaptation of the idea of song remixes), but have managed it only about half the time. I selected it specifically to fit the theme of Phantom Xander.

What is the thing I like most about this story? the thing I like least, or about which I feel most doubtful?

I like the prickliness of the relationship between Xander and Marcie, complicated by the fact that ‘my’ Xander genuinely can’t make himself abandon the fight; at the end, he’s about to leave her, doesn’t want to leave her, and doesn’t really expect her to come with him even though he nerves himself to go on and ask anyhow.

Dislike, or feel uneasy … well, it made sense to me when I did it, but did the business with the right-hand-drive car really contribute anything to the story? Also, Xander’s discovering that the mystical sword actually did allow him to fight, finally … the story needed that, but there’s no denying that it was a little too slickly convenient.

Is there anything I think I could have done better, or might do differently if I had it to do over?

Except for the minor quibbles noted directly above, no, this story had a shape that I could see and I followed it about as well as my own ability could manage. sunnyd_lite’s story was about a Xander who’d left his old life so far behind him, he wasn’t even really the same person anymore (he said it himself); mine was about one who found that he couldn’t do that, and how he reached the point where he had to admit it.

Was there a different direction I could have taken the story, and what would have been some of the advantages of the not-taken path?

Almost exactly the same story could have been told from Marcie’s POV rather than Xander’s; we’d have eventually got to the same point, but the journey would have felt — and been — different. As it happens, I have something similar in mind for an entirely different story, so you might actually see it someday … but it won’t be Xander, and it won’t be Marcie.

Any observations to add at the end?

I did this story because I’d been unable to previously; I’d drawn a name in a remix — deird1’s, I think — already knew which of her stories I wanted to adapt, went to find it (because I couldn’t actually remember the title) … and discovered that it was by sunnyd_lite instead. So I did something else, kept watching for SunnyD’s name in subsequent remixes with the idea that I could choose her in Remix Madness, and never did see her again. I shaped the fourth iteration of the Circle of Friends Remix specifically so I could go ahead and do the story I’d wanted to do years before, and even sought and received sunnyd_lite’s permission. I also let her know when I was finally done, but didn’t get a response. I hope that was just from the vagaries of Real Life, not any dissatisfaction with my handling of her idea.