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Posted by: Bob Schroeck - 07-18-2006, 06:58 PM - Forum: Other People's Fanfiction
- Replies (25)
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During the past few weeks I've been thinking about all the "pet peeves" and "stupid author tricks" threads we've had in here over the years, and I finally decided to try to consolidate them and turn them into some kind of guide document for fic authors. I'm far from finished, but I've got a big chunk of the first section done, and I thought I might post it here for commentary and suggestions. So please take a look at this and let me know what you think. Thanks!
-- Bob
Over the decade or more that I've been part of the fanfic community -- initially anime fanfiction with a brief sideline into Trekfic, but of late branching out to Harry Potter, Buffy the Vampire Slayer and a few other fandoms -- I've read a godawful lot of fics. And among that godawful lot of fics were a lot of godawful fics.This document is an ambitious attempt to help reduce the number of putrid fics by some small but noticeable amount. It started off as a series of threads in the "Other People's Fanfiction" area of my discussion forums on ezBoard. I've extracted the useful information from those threads and expanded upon it, supplementing it with practical advice and guidelines garnered during my three years in the Creative Writing program at Princeton University, 2 years as a newspaper stringer, and seventeen years as a professional freelance writer and member of SFWA, not to mention my eight years of writing fanfiction. (Yes, that *does* mean I started fan writing *after* I was a pro.) I've broken down this document into three main sections:I. General guidelines -- Broad rules that can help improve yourwriting overall.II. Stupid Writer Tricks -- Dumb and dumber mistakes to avoid.III. Crafting Fiction -- Advice on how to construct a story sothat your audience is engaged and entertained.I hope this proves useful to you. Good luck, and good writing.-- Robert M. SchroeckI. GENERAL GUIDELINES1. Learn, and write in, proper English. This means spelling and grammar (more about both later), and on a larger scale, writing proper sentences, paragraphs and chapters. I've seen authors claim that they don't need to do any of this because they're writing "for fun". Well, bunky, let me tell you that I'm *reading* for fun, and if trying to puzzle out what you're saying is too much work, it gets deleted. Quickly. Look at it this way: words are your tools. You *must* learn to use them properly if you are ever going to craft something worthwhile. Imagine two furnituremakers -- who will make the better chair? The one who chips away at the wood with a dull screwdriver and bangs nails in with a pair of pliers? Or the one with a router, lathe and woodcarver's blades, and the knowledge of how to use them properly? Mind you, I know that some of the FFML's authors are writing in a second language when they work in English. But you know something? Unless they say so, I usually can't tell. That's because they often write English better than native speakers do. It's a rare case that one of them makes an error. I only wish the native speakers were as well-educated. Related to this rule is the next:2. Buy a style guide, and consult it regularly. I recommend Strunk and White's "The Elements of Style", which you can get at any bookstore (and, of course, on Amazon.com). There are others, like the Associated Press stylebook, but they tend to be primarily for journalists, while Strunk and White's is focused on more general use. A style guide will help you avoid some of the more common but harder-to-detect errors a writer can make. (And you *will* make them, and continue to make them, no matter how good you get.) It will also guide you in crafting sentences that mean exactly what you want them to mean, instead of just coming close (or worse, looking like they do while missing the mark entirely). If you're weak on English usage and grammar, supplement the style guide with a good guide to structure and writing. I can't recommend Karen Elizabeth Gordon's books highly enough -- get "The Deluxe Transitive Vampire" and "The New Well- Tempered Sentence" (again, available just about everywhere). Not only are they spot-on guides to grammar and punctuation, respectively, they're a whole hell of a lot of fun to read.3. Proofread and preread. Do it yourself, or recruit a friend. If you're lucky or determined, you might assemble a small circle of prereaders. For god's sake, don't trust spellchecker programs. They are notoriously *stupid*. Unlike a human reader, they have no sense of context, and will blithely miscorrect a bad spelling into the wrong word if you carelessly tell them "fix all" or the equivalent. They also *never* have every English word in them, and lacking them, can end up flagging and "fixing" a perfectly good and proper word that they don't recognize. A case in point: the built-in spellcheckers in a number of popular word-processors do not know the word "genteel" (meaning "refined, well-bred, ladylike, gentlemanly") and will insist on turning it into either "gentle" ("delicate of touch") or "gentile" ("not Jewish"). Not exactly the kind of thing which helps the meaning of a well-crafted sentence, that. Make no mistake -- most spellcheckers are designed for *business* writing, and the words they know are biased in that direction. Don't let them get their hands on your work. Similarly, grammar checkers are not the be-all and end-all. They *are* somewhat better tools for the fiction writer than the spellchecker, but again, they tend to be business-oriented. Worse, they have no real way to allow for the less-stringent structure and flow that is necessary for fiction. Use a grammar checker if you want, but be prepared to wade through more false positives than you'd like. The only real solution for both is to manually eyeball your work. This is something that's problematic for most authors, as they have a tendency to read what they know they meant, and not what they actually wrote. Other eyes without preconceived notions about the content are the best way to go about this, although if you have the luxury to let a written piece lie fallow until you forget its contents, you can manage by yourself.4. Pick prereaders carefully. Once you have a chapter or a story out, it's easy to get (more) prereaders. If you're any good, almost everybody who liked your work will clamor to preread simply to get an advance look at your newest stuff. Be aware that these folks do not always make the best prereaders. While this is not a hard and fast rule, self- nominated prereaders run the risk of being (or turning into) "yes men" who always respond "it's great!" to any new material. This can make it hard for an author to grow in his skills, or to evaluate his growth. No pool of prereaders should be made up entirely of self- nominees. When assembling prereaders, *always* make sure you ask some folks who have given you more than just praise. Anyone who's ever told you something was broken (and better, how to fix it) will make a good prereader. If you can actually recruit someone who is uninterested in your subject matter, story, or fandom entirely, even better -- they won't be biased by their own enthusiasm when trying to evaluate your writing. Finally, when selecting prereaders make sure they know that you want more feedback from them than just spelling and grammar errors. You'll profit from it in the long run. 5. Pay attention to what your prereaders say. Especially if they say things like, "why does this happen?" or "this doesn't make sense". Ideally, your prereaders are representative of your greater audience, and if they're more frustrated or confused by a story than entertained and intrigued, that's indicative of problems with your approach. Listen to them, and fix as needed.6. Don't be wedded to your text. Nothing you've written is graven in stone. Nothing is so perfect that it can't be revised or even thrown out. Do not get so attached to a passage that you cannot ruthlessly cut it out of the story if needed. And be prepared to rip your entire story down to the foundations and start it over if that's what the prereaders suggest. It'll be painful, and you won't want to do it, but nine times out of ten, it'll be the right thing to do.7. But don't throw away your deletions. Nothing says you can't save those scraps and recycle them, though. For each of my writing projects, I have a "discards" file. Anything more than a sentence long that gets cut goes in that file for potential reuse elsewhere -- and I *have* found ways to reuse things. This is the best way to preserve that turn of phrase or clever scene that you're so proud of, but which just didn't fit in the place where you first wrote it. Plus, if you know the material won't be lost forever, it's easier to make drastic cuts when they're needed. 8. When in doubt, look it up. In the era of the Internet, there is no reason to make a dumb mistake of fact. Between Google and Wikipedia alone, there is absolutely no excuse for errors born out of ignorance. Series canon for virtually everything is thoroughly documented online these days, unlike the Dark Ages in the middle 1990s and earlier. Web-based language dictionaries are reasonably good and mostly easy to use. It will take maybe five minutes to confirm or correct most details about which you are unsure. Take that time. Newbie readers will thank you, and old hands will respect you. And every once in a while you'll find something utterly cool that no one has ever used before.9. Avoid fanon. As a corollary, resist the urge to fall back on fanon, even (or especially!) when it fills a known hole in your fictional setting of choice. Fanon is never unavoidable -- and making up your own detail from scratch will sometimes lead you into profitable new areas of exploration.10. Write for yourself as well as your readers. Or, to put it differently, you are one of your readers -- don't forget you're writing for your own enjoyment.11. Write for your readers as well as yourself. However, don't get so wrapped up in writing for yourself that you forget you have other people in your audience. This is what causes the worst Self Insertion fics -- when the author gets so caught up in his self-indulgent ego trip that he forgets that other people are going to read this, and want to see more than chapter 135 of "L33TWr1T3R Conquerz Teh Wurld"!12. Don't blackmail your readers. Don't *demand* reviews, or C&C, or whatever your outlet of choice calls reader response, and by the gods do not threaten to stop writing if you don't get any. If you're not getting reviews, or not getting *positive* reviews, there's a *reason*, and a puerile threat to stop writing won't do much good. It might even *reward* some of the people who give you bad reviews. Just write. Yes, you want people to enjoy your work, but nothing is enjoyed by *everybody*. Besides, the work itself should be as much reward as the response. If it's not, you're doing something wrong.13. Grow a thick skin. Related to the above point is how you respond to criticism. Every writer gets bad reviews. I've had them, Stephen King gets them, Hemingway got them, hell, even Shakespeare got heckled in print and in person. There's always somebody who's going to hate your work, no matter how good it is. DON'T LET HIM CHASE YOU AWAY FROM WRITING, BECAUSE THAT WAY HE WINS. Remember that you are writing as much to please yourself as your readers, so don't let someone's abuse make you stop doing something you enjoy. We've already lost a couple fair-to-good writers who had the potential to be truly great because they let negative comments get too deeply under their skins; we don't need to lose more.
-- Bob
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...The President is on the line
As ninety-nine crab rangoons go by...
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| An Obsolete GGG Snippet |
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Posted by: Bob Schroeck - 07-18-2006, 01:50 PM - Forum: Future Steps
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I wrote this bit a year or two back, as one of the "flavor" pieces to help me visualize how all the characters in "Girls Girls Girls" might interact. However, once I finalized the structure of the Walk, it became obsolete, as many of the worlds they come from are either relegated to the "Drunkard's Vacation" series, or have been abandoned entirely. And in at least one case, I changed my mind about who was going to represent her world.
So I figured, what the hell, might as well share this, because even though it's now "apocryphal", it might still be entertaining. It has been edited, though, to remove some material that is spoilericious for as-yet unwritten Steps.
Enjoy.
As the other members of the Parigumi dashed down the hall toward
the staging room, Ohgami barked, "You stay here in the theatre
where you'll be safe!" At his side, Erica gave a worried nod
before the two of them rushed to join their companions.
The great wooden doors at the end of the hallway slammed shut,
and the sound of bolts and latches being thrown by the theatre's
automatic systems echoed back along the wood-panelled passage. A
moment later, the alarm bells cut out, and a faint, almost
audible vibration shook the floor under their feet.
Lisa looked around at her compatriots and raised an eyebrow.
"Demon attack?" Minako repeated with a slightly manic grin.
"Stay *here*?" Peggy sounded more than a little insulted.
"Where it's *safe*?" Skuld ground out, already throttling the
grip of her hammer.
"You know what Doug would say in this situation?" Lisa asked, a
sly smile playing across her lips. "'He don' know me vewy well,
do he?'" She whirled. "Dee -- we need a scout and forward
observer."
The Herald saluted, grinning. "On it!" She turned and ran for
the front door. *Sylvath!* The telepathic call for her
Companion rang in the minds of the psi-sensitives among the other
girls.
Lisa shifted targets. "Mirai!"
The big-eyed brunette nodded crisply. "Right. I'll get a fix on
them with my sensors and coordinate with Dee so we can lead you
to them. Just give me a moment to change!" She ran back down
the hall to the first unoccupied office.
"Right." Lisa turned and swept her gaze over the rest of their
number. "Everyone else -- front steps, ready for action, now!"
As they streamed through the lobby and outside, Minako nudged her
with an elbow. "You make a good leader, Lisa-chan," she
chuckled.
Suddenly embarrassed at her audacity, Lisa cringed. "Sorry..."
Behind them, a shrill cry of "Metamorforce!" could be faintly
heard. A flood of green light briefly washed through the
hallway, accompanied by a roar of unleashed energy. A moment
later, a glowing pink streak shot harmlessly through the roof of
the Chattes Noires and into the sky over Paris.
Minako clapped her on the back. "Why apologize? Do you see
anyone complaining? C'mon, let's get this shoe on the toad!"
Lisa rolled her eyes. "You do that on purpose, don't you?"
The beribboned blonde was pure innocence as they burst out into
the sunlight. "Do what?"
"Never mind," Lisa growled. One of these days she'd catch Minako
out. Raising one hand to shield her eyes from the bright light,
she looked around at most of her remaining companions. Towering
over them at the rear was the bulky, tanklike form of Mecha-
RinRin. "Ready?"
A chorus of confirmations and a rippling wave of nods answered
her.
"Okay," she said, steeling herself. "Let's do it!" She thrust
her right hand into the air. "SAILOR POWER..."
Beside her, Minako posed and swept her hands through a series of
complicated gestures. "VENUS LUMINA POWER..."
"...MAKE UP!" they chorused together, and light exploded from
them both. A moment later, Sailor Loon and the glowing form of
Sailor Venus stood back-to-back in mirroring poses of combat
readiness.
"What was with all the funky hand movements?" Lisa muttered out
of the side of her mouth.
"Something I saw on TV that I thought was cool," Venus replied
airily.
"Riiiight," Lisa replied.
A burst of wind and a yellow blur resolved itself into Sana in
her golden bodysuit, jittering in place on the steps before the
two senshi. With a crack of displaced air, she saluted Lisa (who
winced when she momentarily imagined the supersonic gesture *not*
stopping mere millimeters in front of the younger girl's
forehead). "The beautiful and talented Sana Kurata, Codename
Hikari no Hayasa, present and ready to go!" the auburn-haired
girl piped breathlessly.
"MechaRinRin Transform! Battlesuit mode!" shouted RinRin. "Go!"
The great, blocky robot unfolded along previously-invisible
seams, opening up like a flower. RinRin pulled her goggles down
over her eyes, leapt into the pilot's seat thus revealed, and
belted herself in as the robot reformed itself around her.
Skuld and Rei looked at each other, and nodded. With a sound
like canvas flapping in a heavy wind, great feathered wings burst
from their shoulders. Rei's were a pale silver-blue that matched
her hair; Skuld's were a brilliant, pure white.
As Rei drew forth from nowhere the spiraling ribbon-like shape of
the Spear of Destiny, diamond fire raced across her form, seemingly
burning off her clothes and leaving behind white samite and
gleaming plate armor chased in gold filigree. Skuld knelt and
slammed the butt of her hammer against the ground. There was a
crack of thunder, and red gauntlets appeared on her hands.
Scales of white metal emerged from their cuffs to race up her
arms and across her body, jingling like a basket of coins poured
down a stairwell. She rose, completely covered in red and white
mail save for head and wings.
Slinging her hammer onto her shoulder, Skuld turned to face Lisa.
"The Goddess of the Future awaits your command," she declared
with a jaunty grin.
"As does the Angel of Heroes," added Rei in her softer voice, the
Spear in her hands held at parade rest.
"Show-offs," muttered Lina grumpily, and next to her, Willow
giggled.
"It's not like we're not showy ourselves," Phoebe pointed out,
swirling her rich blue cape with its thread-of-gold embroidery
around herself.
The alien rumble of its gasoline engine echoing off the buildings
around them, Peggy pulled up to the steps of the Imperial Theater
on her motorcycle. The brilliant sunshine glinted off the golden
back-to-back "BB" emblems that emblazoned the bike's fuel tank
and fenders. She wore her leather jacket with her katana slung
on her back over it, and her twin automatic pistols rode low on
her gunbelt. Behind her on the cycle sat Chalotte; a web of
belts and bandoliers encased the blonde Borrible, placing dozens
of knives at her fingertips. Strapped across her back in exactly
the same manner as Peggy's katana was her Rumblestick, its steel
point glittering in the sun.
Peggy turned a dead ringer for her father's famous "business
face" to the others. "Are we ready to rock?"
"Almost!" Suu replied, leaping to the curb. "I just have to do
this!" She held her left wrist up to her mouth; strapped there
was a heavy black and silver watch she hadn't had a few moments
before. "Big T!" she bellowed into it. "It's *showtime!*"
Underfoot, the earth began to shake. As Suu stood on the curb
and laughed maniacally, several of the girls took to the air
while others staggered to find some solid object to hold on to.
As the vibrations grew in intensity, the street before them
cracked and then began to fall away, revealing a broad, deep hole
out of which a hulking form of metal lifted itself.
It was a monstrous robotic turtle, standing on its hind legs and
easily a hundred meters tall.
"Yes! Yes! Yes!" shrieked Suu, capering wildly at the edge of
the hole. "Mecha-Tama Mark *Forty*!"
"Suu!" Lisa called from her telekinetic hover ten yards above the
ground. "I *know* you didn't have that... that... *thing* when
we came through the gate. How the hell -- *when* the hell -- did
you build it?"
Kaolla Suu stopped stock still in surprise. "Build it? I didn't
build it. I *made* it... just now!"
Lisa blinked at the response, and briefly pondered its
implications. "Well," she muttered, "*that* certainly answers a
lot of questions."
(ETA: Fixed Yuku-spawned lack of linewrap after browsing into this topic months later.)
-- Bob
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...The President is on the line
As ninety-nine crab rangoons go by...
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| HP thoughts |
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Posted by: Wolff - 07-18-2006, 07:07 AM - Forum: Other People's Fanfiction
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I was reading some HP fanfic tonight, and Winamp decided to throw up Pink Floyd's "Another Brick in the Wall". This got me to thinking, isn't Snape just a poster-child for this song? This further got me wondering if JKR is a Floyd fan, because pretty much the whole Harry Potter saga could be set to "The Wall". So, without further ado, I give you:
Harry Potter: The Wall
a rock opera
Starring
Harry Potter as Pink
Vernon and Petunia Dursley as Mother
Snape as the child-hating teacher
Cho Chang as the little tart who flashes her tits to get in for free
Ginny as Pink's cheating wife
Hermione and Ron as the backup band
and guest starring Voldemort as Hammer
Now, I really don't have the dedication to follow through with this idea, so if anyone thinks they can do justice to it, by all means, run with it. The only things I ask are 1) idea credit and 2) linkage.
"Ah, great. More androids." "We're not androids, we're the Knight Sabers!" "Huh. Frederick's of Hollywood has a line of power armor out. Who knew?"Falling out of aeroplanes and hiding out in holes
Waiting for the sunset to come, people going home
Jump out from behind them and shoot them in the head
Now everybody dancing the dance of the dead
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| ATN Drogn Re: Bubblegum Disaster |
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Posted by: Valles - 07-17-2006, 03:15 AM - Forum: Other People's Fanfiction
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I don't recall offhand how far you'd gotten in actually writing the Griffin arc, but I do remember having a discussion with you about which version of the Batmobile Sylia ended up using.
I still say, BTW, that an extreme enough variation on all-wheel steering would be able to get adequate performance out of the Animated Series version, though granted the thing is always going to be a rocket first and foremost.
Anyway, the question is now solved.
Ja, -n
===============================================
"Puripuri puripuri... Bang!"
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| I just got back from the book store... |
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Posted by: firvulag - 07-16-2006, 12:06 AM - Forum: Other People's Fanfiction
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and after finishing my latest purchase and reading some of the Naruto threads here, I had a horrible idea.
---
I am a warrior, or at least I was supposed to be. I had not finished my training when the Enemy attacked. It was not a surprise, they had been spotted long before they could reach striking distance.
The problem, in the end was as always the sheer numbers of Enemy that we faced. No matter how many we killed there were always more. We is perhaps the wrong word, for I never saw them myself. I had been awakened early when the attack began, and was moving out of the training area when the weapon struck the facility.
I do not know what kind of weapon it was, only that when I regained conciousness I was no longer in the facility. I was no longer anywhere I recognized. No matter when I looked I could find no trace of the Enemy, or of my people.
I came back here, to where I had first arrived and contemplated. It was possible, probably, that I was halucinating, despite the safe guards. However, every check I ran came back clean. So here I wait, sleeping, hoping that my people will come that I might be rescued, or the Enemy, that I might truly become a warrior. It does not seem likely though. The war was savage, no quarter would have been given or asked.
I have computed the probabilities and it is 91.76% likely that all but a few scattered pockets of either side still exist. Also, knowing the doctrine employed by both the Enemy and my own people, it is 95.32% likely that
hunter-killer squadrons were sent to ravage every part of our respective realms.
So I wait, for a very long time. One day I hear the sounds of foot steps approaching my resting place. Bipedal foot steps, a number of people are coming near. This is impossible, there is no trace of a high tech civilization anywhere, I have looked. As subtly as I can, I try for a better look.
***
Naruto ran easily up the path beside Jirya. The frog-hermit was not watching the trail they were following too closely. Rather he was searching for traps, or signs that some of their prey had left the path.
The main trail wasn't hard to follow, there was only one ninja ahead of them, along with a group of bandits and the surviving women of the small village that had lain at the foot of the mountains.
Naruto figured that he knew why they were taking this path. Jirya had been telling him about it the night before they had spotted the smoke rising from the villiage. A few narrow paths wound their way into the foothills around here. Several of them lead to some kind of ruined fortress.
No one knew who had built it or when, but it was of a style unlike anything found on the continent. The local people were afraid of it, and no one else cared enough to explore. The bandits could be fairly certain that they wouldn't run into anyone.
"Oi, Ero-sennin! we're catching up aren't we?"
Jirya didn't bother to glare at his student. It would have been wasted anyway.
"Hmph, yes, they're maybe twenty minutes ahead of us. If they haven't left any more surprises."
"Hey I beat those guys all on my own. They were horrible." Naruto growled back.
"Yes, but we don't know what that ninja might have done."
A little less than twenty minutes later they rounded a rocky outcropping and found their quarry. A loose semi-circle of ragged bandits stood between them and a group of hopeless looking women.
Behind both rose the bulk of the strange ruins. Short and broad compared to the castles and forts Naruto was familiar with, it was almost completely covered by short stunted trees and other plants.
The ninja was standing on a large piece of rubble, off to one side. He had a kunai ready in one hand, the other hidden behind his back. His forehead protector was heavily scratched, obliterating any trace of his home village. A missing nin then.
Naruto yelled at his opponents. "Hey, let them go!"
The other ninja laughed. "Why would I want to do that? They'll bring me a good price at a brothel I know. You aren't going to beat me little brat, nor are you old man."
"Huh, you can't be much of a ninja if you've got to use thugs like these to fight for you! A ninja is supposed to protect people!"
"Protect people! You've got to be the dumbest kid I've ever met. Tell you what, I'll leave you alive so you can watch what we do with these tonight." The missing nin sneered down at Naruto. "Now, let's settle this."
Everyone was surprised by the clear feminine voice that spoke next.
"Yes. Let us."
***
I watch the group of people gather about. They seem agitated about persuit, a group of refugees perhaps. They are armed strangely though, with primitive melee weapons. There are no needlers or man portable energy weapons in evidence. Perhaps that is why I was not able to find them. I was looking for the wrong sort of civilization.
I do not know their language, but I recognize bits and pieces. It does not take me long to realize it is a decendent of Japanese. They do not speak much, but I am capable of extrapolating much of the vocabulary from what they do say.
Eighteen minutes after the first group arrives, two more people round the corner of the trail. Judging by the postures and reactions of both groups, these are the chasers. They pause for a moment, and begin to
speak. I follow the conversation as best I can, revising my vocabulary and come to an unpleasant conclusion. I check the condition of the women with the first group.
Their body language indicates fear and pain. They are afraid of both those with them and those who are chasing them. It is obvious, their protectors have failed, and they have been captured by their enemy. It also seems obvious that the youngest of the two persuers, a blond boy is intent of rescuing them.
I reach my conclusions quickly, and as the fight is about to start, speak.
***
Everyone froze for an instant, trying to find the speaker. The voice seemed to be coming from the ruins, but that didn't necissarily mean much.
"In the absense of specific, lawful orders, I must act of my own volition and follow the precepts of my service as best as possible. As such I cannot allow you to further harm these people." The voice was firm and unyeilding.
The missing nin was splitting his attention between his two visable opponets, and trying to track down the source of the voice.
"I'm not going to be intimidated by a voice. Show yourself!"
"I am two zero point five four meters behind you. I am not hiding, nor am I attempting to intimidate you I merely wanted you to move slightly farther away from your victims."
The trail errupted into violence in that moment. Great roars of thunder overlapped one another as something tore through the bandits and the missing nin, ripping them to small, bloody rags and shreding the ground beneath them.
Jirya leavered him self up off of the ground to peer over the
rock he had found cover behind. He was completely focused on the ruins, which were moving. Tearing free of the plants that had buried them.
Naruto was still standing where he had been, his arms raised reflexively to protect his face. The boy looked wide eyed at the remains of the bandits. "Wow! How did you do that? That was so cool! Who are you?"
***
I consider them both, the old man and the younger. The younger who was determined to protect people he hardly knew. I come to my decission. It is in the end the only decission I can make. I focus on him, and speak.
"Unit Niner-One-Seven-Three-HNT of the Line reporting for duty Commander."
---
I realize HNT isn't speaking with the precision she ought to, but I was worried it might give away too much too early.
F
--
#4 "Many people tend to have a nasty tendency to carry grudges to the
grave. Specifically, yours. And they'll come back yearly just to do
the Meposian Dance of Joy on it. Besides, nothing bad ever happens to
Kasumi or Mihoshi, does it?" - the Guide to living in an Anime Universe
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| short - QtR: A Nest for Ravens |
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Posted by: Rieverre - 07-15-2006, 08:29 PM - Forum: Other People's Fanfiction
- Replies (6)
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Needed to de-stress, and this seemed like such a wonderful bad pun to pull ...
---
A Nest for Ravens.
---
"... obviously alright, since the Heliopaths haven't come around to pick him up," was the first thing he heard when he regained consciousness.
His eyes took a while to adjust to the light, finally pinning its level at 'dim' after the initial stinging pain of adjustment.
"Aw hell, not _again_," he blurted out even as his torso went from horizontal to vertical ... then back again as he was reminded just why one oughtn't do that sort of thing too fast after waking from a state of unconsciousness.
Still, he'd managed to take in the room with the few glances he'd been afforded before becoming light headed.
An ovoid chamber of around ten meters across, stone walls and floor - though he'd not needed to ascertain the latter since his back told him enough about that particular bit of the decor - plain and gray. No obvious door. The ceiling ... his eyes strayed across and up the wall ...
... and up ...
... and up ...
... well, damn.
And then there were the people, he remarked to himself as he sat up - much more carefully this time around.
"Took your damn time, didn't you?" came from a redhead to his left, leaning against the wall there and giving out equal measures of glare-oh-vision towards himself and the others around the chamber.
Redhead ... well, that was one way to describe her, if only because the other distinctive thing about the woman jumped out at him so much he wonedered whether he wasn't still suffering from the aftereffects of ... whatever had happened to him to bring him here.
You'd excuse him for not seeing a great many people with blue skin before. Arguably, he could say that he'd seen weirder before. There was the time with the Nuwisha and the 'ceremonial tobacco' ... eheh. Not quite this sort of weird, though.
And she wore ... tweed? Alright, no, he hadn't seen anything quite this odd lately.
"What're you making eyes at?" she turned up the glare. He raised his hands in protest.
"Peace, Lady Darkholme," said what he could tell was the only other man in the room.
Another oddity. Wore only a pair of boots and leather breeches, though not any sort of leather he'd seen before, and when he focused he could tell that there was a scent of Taint floating about the man. Though that was it, _about_. Much like the sort of signature he remembered reading from warriors who'd fought the Wyrmspawn for most of their life.
Then add to that the fact that the guy had pointed ears ...
'Oh, please don't let this be some sort of Fey prank. I really hate those.'
"Relax, darling," the woman who spoke now stood almost completely opposite this 'Darkholme' character. Short bleached blond hair, tight fitting leathers, a glint in her eyes that reminded him oddly of a magpie spirit he'd passed by in the Umbra a few years ago. "You'll never get out of here if you go and have a stroke, now will you?"
"Err ... where exactly is 'here', if I may be so bold as to ask?" he finally found his tongue.
"Well, it could be the feeding grounds for the Minister's Heliopath army, or the fortress the goblins are trying to deny they have on the dark side of the moon, or maybe ..." a blond girl who looked to be in her mid to late teens rambled, nodding to herself as she went on.
"You wouldn't know somebody by the name of Malkav or any of his Childer, would you?" he questioned. The last person he'd seen going off on that sort of tangent had been one of his Malkavian contacts.
"No, but they sound like terribly interesting people, I'm certain," the girl inclined her head and ...
... there was an odd sort of look to those eyes. An almost frightening sort of lucidity entirely at odds with her demanor.
"Yes, she's like that all the time," the last person in the room said, not looking up from where she sat, cloak wrapped around her and head bowed in what he assumed was meditation.
Now _there_ he could feel ... a lot of information from. The shadow of a Taint, the resonance of power that he didn't even need a ritual to pick up.
"... any idea what the hell is going on?" he asked, not directing it to anybody in particular. 'One could hope ...'
"Bah!" the blue skinned woman threw up her hands in frustration. "If we knew that, we wouldn't still be _in_ whatever this damnable place is!"
"Might I suggest decaf?"
"De-what?" she glanced in momentary confusion. The leather clad blonde at the other side of the room chuckled.
"So," the bleached blond woman started conversationally. "When are you from?"
'_When_ am I from?'
She noticed the puzzled expression, and inclined her head towards the still fuming Darkholme. "Note the clothes on miss high-strung? Last she checked it was the 1800s."
"Well, that's a bit of a long story," he hemmed.
"Aren't they _all_, darling?"
He sighed in long-suffering surrender. "2004, 2033, and 1995 ... or so I remember. But, err, different ones. If that make sense?"
"Alternate realities?" the cloak-wearing woman/girl's head snapped up.
'Creepy stare,' he stopped himself from wincing. "Well, my own was going bye-bye, so I figured I'd jump ship before it managed to go all the way, and somehow ended up more or less three decades in another future. Then I died. Or close enough for government work. Then I ... well, I think I got into something that was just a tad too much to handle with just excessive amounts of firepower, and got buried under a lot of ice before I woke up here. Name's Liam, by the way. Liam Crowley, but I go by Nevermore as much as I do by that. Corax shaman."
Suddenly, they were all looking at him.
"Corvus, the Sidhe," the Fey looking man stated.
"Raven Darkholme," Ms. Blue didn't _quite_ snip out.
"Raven," the cloaked one offered.
"Amanda Darrieux ... though some did call me The Raven as well, on occasion," the bottle blond nodded.
"Luna Lovegood," the one with the terribly sane eyes said, then added: "Ravenclaw House."
"I'm beginning to see a pattern here," Liam snarked darkly, a moment before _something_ sounded from way, way up, and sunlight started leaking down upon them ...
And no, not another project. No idea what to do with this, or where to go with it. Just seemed like a fun diversion.
-Griever
When tact is required, use brute force. When force is required, use greater force.
When the greatest force is required, use your head. Surprise is everything. - The Book of Cataclysm
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| Not sure how useful these are... |
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Posted by: Bluemage - 07-15-2006, 06:33 PM - Forum: The Game Everyone Loves To Play
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Nightwish is hard to interpret, and most of their stuff sounds too depressing for the Loon, but I think this one might mean something, if not as a power song, then as sort of an anthem. It speaks of a long journey, love and leaving (all of which looks to fit), with the occasional religious overtone (and we all know what that means). Beyond that, I don't know: I leave it to you to interpret, and find the truths I missed.
*/ Nightwish, "Bless The Child", 6:12 /*
I was born amidst the purple waterfalls.
I was weak, yet not unblessed.
Dead to the world. Alive for the journey.
One night I dreamt a white rose withering,
a newborn drowning a lifetime loneliness.
I dreamt all my future. Relived my past.
I witnessed the beauty of the beast"
Where have all the feelings gone?
Why has all the laughter ceased?
Why am I loved only when I'm gone?
Gone back in time to bless the child
Think of me long enough to make a memory
Come bless the child one more time
How can I ever feel again?
Given the chance would I return?
I've never felt so alone in my life
As I drank from a cup which was counting my time
There's a poison drop in this cup of Man
To drink it is to follow the left hand path
"Where have all the feelings gone?
Why is the deadliest sin - to love as I loved you?
Now unblessed, homesick in time,
soon to be freed from care, from human pain.
My tale is the most bitter truth:
Time pays us but with earth & dust, and a dark, silent grave.
Remember, my child: Without innocence the cross is only iron,
hope is only an illusion & Ocean Soul's nothing but a name...
The Child bless thee & keep thee forever"
My Unitarian Jihad Name is: Brother Atom Bomb of Courteous Debate. Get yours.
I've been writing a bit.
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| a couple of possible gate songs |
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Posted by: Norgarth - 07-14-2006, 03:37 PM - Forum: The Game Everyone Loves To Play
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Talking Heads - "Road to Nowhere"
Well we know where we're goin
But we don't know where we've been
And we know what were knowin
But we can't say what we've seen
And were not little children
And we know what we want
And the future is certain
Give us time to work it out
We're on a road to nowhere
Come on inside
Takin' that ride to nowhere
We'll take that ride
I'm feelin' okay this mornin'
And you know,
We're on the road to paradise
Here we go, here we go
Chorus
Maybe you wonder where you are
I don't care
Here is where time is on our side
Take you there...take you there
We're on a road to nowhere
We're on a road to nowhere
We're on a road to nowhere
There's a city in my mind
Come along and take that ride
And it's all right, baby, it's all right
And it's very far away
But it's growing day by day
And it's all right, baby, it's all right
They can tell you what to do
But they'll make a fool of you
And its all right, baby, its all right
We're on a road to nowhere
*********************
Ozzy Osbourne - "Road to Nowhere"
I was looking back on my life
And all the things I've done to me
I'm still looking for the answers
I'm still searching for the key
Chorus
The wreckage of my past keeps haunting me
It just won't leave me alone
I still find it all a mystery
Could it be a dream?
The road to nowhere leads to me
Through all the happiness and sorrow
I guess I'd do it all again
Live for today and not tomorrow
It's still the road that never ends
Chorus
Ah ah
The road to nowhere's gonna pass me by
Ah ah
I hope we never have to say goodbye
I never want to live without you
Chorus
**************
A pair of possible gate songs, although I suspect Doug would be wary about a world that Ozzie's version brings him to. The talking Heads version is more upbeat.__________________
I feel like I'm diagonally parked in a parallel universe.
___________________________
"I've always wanted to be somebody, but I should have been more specific." - George Carlin
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| Looking For A Fic... |
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Posted by: Bob Schroeck - 07-14-2006, 02:34 PM - Forum: Other People's Fanfiction
- Replies (8)
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Or more precisely, trying to remember a particular fic so I can find out if it were ever completed. Hopefully someone here can clue me in.
Details: "Magic Knight Rayearth" story. Hikaru returns to Earth from Cephiro -- except it's the wrong Earth. She doesn't have a dog named Hikari, she has a twin sister. She and the other Knights were friends, but one's dead now. And she's just come out of a long period of hospitalization, and as time goes on, it seems more and more likely that her time in Cephiro was a bizarre delusion/dream, and she begins to settle in to her "real" life again.
Until, of course, Bad Things start happening, her powers reawaken, and the other Magic Knights come after her -- with the one who was dead spontaneously resurrecting to house the spirit of her off-world counterpart.
Can anyone recognize this fic and point me at it? Thanks.
-- Bob
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...The President is on the line
As ninety-nine crab rangoons go by...
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