An Author's Thanks

From: Dan Drazen <drazen_at_andrews.edu>
Date: Tue, 28 Mar 1995 16:16:30 -0500 (EST)

To all those who have commented on Bloodlines:

Thanks for your support. A few things to get off the top of my desk:

[Note: if you haven't read the story yet, we're talking major spoilers
coming up here]

     In all honesty, I had no idea that Bunnie and Sandy's relationship
     would take the turn it did when I started writing. I had no
     intention of outing Bunnie or anyone else. But at one point when I
     was struggling with the final scene, in which Sonic and Sally were
     to be featured as well, the image of Bunnie and Sandy kissing
     popped into my head and wouldn't let go. *I* was shocked at first,
     but then in looking back at the story I could sort of determine how
     other incidents (the initial meeting in Ch. 1, the dialogue in Ch.
     6, the combat against the SWATbots in Ch. 10) could have been said
     to be leading up to that moment. Obviously I wrote this before
     reading "The Power of Love," and before Netscape was installed on
     my machine so I could discover how large a part Bunnie plays in the
     Mature [or should that be "IMmature"?] Fan Art section of Rotor's
     homepage. I was sort of afraid that some of her drooling fanboys
     would take umbrage.

     Hope nobody got too bummed by my allowing Queen Alicia to die. I
     suppose that I was inspired by the death of Julayla in Sonic #18
     ("In The Still Of The Night"). It certainly gave me a chance to
     (re)construct Mobian burial customs. While I was writing this, I
     was rehearsing Faure's "Requiem" for a performance (I was in the
     chorus) so I guess the subject was on my mind. I also viewed the
     burial of Queen Alicia in Chapter 8 almost as the flip side of the
     "Circle of Life" sequence from _The Lion King_. I even went so far
     as to try to come up with an appropriate stanza to be sprinkled
     throughout the passage, passing it off as a "half-remembered cradle
     song" that was part of the Mobian collective consciousness. It's
     just as well; I don't know that I could have pulled it off without
     being too heavyhanded. Besides, I was only able to write the back
     half of the stanza:

          And when the dust has received us
          And the sons of our daughters are gone
          In the hearts and the minds/Of those left behind
          The love and the memories live on
          In the circle of life....

    I'm beginning to think that, as Shawn seems to be specializing in
    introducing bits and pieces of "Treknology" into the Sonic corpus, I
    seem to prefer delving into the social history of Mobius: its
    history and customs. One short story I'm working on touches briefly
    on what can only be called a religious cult, and another longer
    story that's started to come together (and which will represent the
    final battle for the fate of Mobius) is shot through with mythology
    -- but first I need to research the Chaos Emeralds, their origin and
    properties. Based on Brad's description of their role in the
    original Sonic comic miniseries, there's some good potential
    material there.

    I also began the story back in December/January, so I wasn't up on
    the impending Sally miniseries with its "evil twin" plot twist. It
    wasn't much of a surprise -- dummy covers for issue #3 in just about
    any ad showed her doing battle with herself, so the only question
    was: what was the source of the evil twin? It's a subject close to
    my heart in that I'm a twin myself. In the case of Sandy, I hoped
    to create a character that would seen to be related to Sally yet
    distinct. Not "evil" by any means but definitely different. And
    one of the comments I still hear whenever I have visited my brother
    for the odd holiday is how much we sound alike! So Bunnie's
    mistaking Sandy for Sally on the basis of voice is plausible as far
    as I'm concerned.

Thanks for putting up with my ramblings. I believe that the entire
story will show up on Rotor's home page at some point. If you missed a
chapter or two, let me know and I can email it out to you -- I haven't
got around to deleting it from my hard drive yet.

We now return you to your regularly scheduled rodent.
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|| |\__-- /\ _- || Daniel J. Drazen
|| | / __ _ || drazen_at_andrews.edu
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Received on Tue Mar 28 1995 - 16:06:57 PST