REVIEW: Re: Bride of C'thulhu #666 -- A Chaotic Add-On Story

[Arspitzer]

Subject: REVIEW: Re: Bride of C'thulhu #666 -- A Chaotic Add-On Story
From: "Alaric" <A
HREF="mailto:alaricmc at btinternet.com">alaricmc at btinternet.com</A> 
Date: Mon, Jun 7, 2004 3:16 AM
Message-id: <c9r4ms$db6$1 at sparta.btinternet.com>


The Grammar Police!  I knew they'd eventually catch up to me!

>I'm a mythical creature, according to the FAQ.

>Pleasant enough.

>Occasionally blunt.

>"Arspitzer" <arspitzer at aol.com> wrote in message
>news:20040603021543.24904.00000223 at mb-m21.aol.com...
>> Multi-Colored Lights

>Why the capital L?

Well, since I capitalized the M and C I figured I might as
well do the L too.

>> Smoke lazily swirled

>To boldly go...

>> around the room.  A record player scratchily played

>To boldly go...

Is this one of those split infinitive things?  I never learned
about those myself.

I wrote it that way because I liked the rhythm of it.  Given a
choice between grammar and style I'll always pick style.

>> He
>> chanted various unpronounceable vowels.

>Five vowels. All pronounceable <g>. Sorry.

He's not speaking English, or any known language.  Of course it's a
joke.  Everything you can pronounce is pronounceable.  I do these
things to irritate literalists.

>> Or at least he did.

>Once did, maybe. Otherwise the did doesn't gel with the had.

I think it reads okay.  He's been retconned.  He should be ruler of
Net.ropolis, but he never was.

>> Now something more powerful
>> controlled the strings.  Something from the future.
>>
>> He chanted some more.  The 666 in the center of his forehead started to
>> blaze red.  A crack in reality started to grow.  The shell of a man
>> gazed into the crack.  He saw something.

>Who he?

I think you mean 'Who's he'.

>> 'Hey, Hell Vine, Daddy-O!  What's shaking!?'

>Who says this? 666 guy or the chipmunk?
>>
>> ::there is nothing shaking.  i assume that you're bothering me for a
>> good reason.  is the harvest of net.ropolis going according to
>> schedule?:: responded a cute high pitched voice that sounded like a
>> record being played very fast.

>Queer layout here.

I prefer to think of it as funky layout myself.

>>
>> 'Hey, now!  Let's just take chill pill.

>a chill pill

I'm pretty sure the 'a' was there.  The article gnomes must have stolen
it.

>> popular Dark Lord ever than me.  I get tons of fan mail.  Teen-age girls

>No dash.

But they look cuter with a dash.

>> A frown worked it's way into the face of the hero known as Anti-Christ
>> Lad.  Never make a deal with a chipmunk.

>Nuts.
>>
>> 'My Cyg.net.a!  It was Nixon who killed the dinosaurs?' gasped Flower
>> Child.

>Work the sentence around the tag. 'My Cyg.net.a," gasped Flower Child. "It
>was Nixon who killed the dinosaurs?"

You're right.  I should have done that.

>Also, said avoidance is bad bad bad for
>the reader. No gasped, no murmured, no spat. Said, replied, or no tag at
>all. As few replieds as possible.

It gets boring writing said over and over again.  If this had been a
more serious story I probably wouldn't have done that, but since it
was more of a tongue in cheek type tale I wrote it in a tongue in
cheek manner.

Spat!  I'll have to remember that one if I do anymore Slobbering Grue!
stories.

>>
>> 'I knew this guy was bad news.  I told you people we shouldn't vote for
>> him.  But did you listen to me?'  McGovern Supporter Lad said shaking
>> his head.

>Again, work the tag. I won't pick this up again.
>>
>> 'Well it's a good thing you don't run the Legion of Net.Hippies, Anti-
>> Christ Lad.  If Cyg.net.a wishes us to go back in time and stop Nixon
>> then that is what we shall do!' blasted Calls-Respectable-People-
>> Fascists Lad defiantly.

>Blasted? Aaaaaaarrrrggggghhhh. And cut the adverbs. ALWAYS cut the adverbs.

Now that I think about it I probably should have used raged.

>>
>> 'But how are we going to get to the past?' questioned Peace Lass.

>Last said avoidance reference for the story. Asked is okay.
>>
>> 'I think I've solved that problem,' said a voice entering the room.

>The voice entered the room?

Ah, you know those sound waves are constantly entering rooms and
causing havoc.

>> 'Are you on some kind of drug Dr. TO-TI-DO?'

>Said who?

That would be Never-Gets-Credit-for-His-Dialogue Lad.  His is the power
to baffle the reader.

>>
>> 'I did it!  I'm in the past!  I'm a freaking genius!  God, the past.
>> There's something cooler about it.  Something more free about it.  I
>> finally feel unrestrained like some oppressive chains have finally been
>> lifted off me.  My god the feeling.  I can't quite...'

>Funny.
>>
>> 'Okay.  I guess that settles it.  While I think this whole thing is a
>> horrible idea if we're going to do this we should send one team to the
>> past and keep the rest here in case it's some kind of trick.

>New sentence at if.

>> Electricity started to shoot out of the Electric Kool-Aid
>> Flight.thingee.  A rainbow of fruit flavors started to bleed out of the
>> vehicle.  And then an amazing flash of light.  Every single molecule
>> slipped from the 1970's past into the time of the dinosaurs.

>Makes sense to me.
>>
>> Still maybe they'd remember it and come back.

>Comma after still.

>> He looked at his arms that had become very slender talons.

>arms, which
>>

>In general, I have a disadvantage - I don't know how old these characters
>are and whether they've been individualised in previous stories. 

Yeah, that's a big problem with a lot of LNH stories.  I probably should
have done a better job at explaining who these people are, but I wrote
this story very quickly.

>To a new
>reader, they're indistinct - ciphers. I can't attach to any of them with any
>confidence.

Yeah, they're pretty much all ciphers.  The Legion of Net.Hippies have only
appeared a couple of times in flashbacks.  They first appeared in JONG #4.

Ole Scratch/Anti-Christ Lad appeared in JONG #4 and the Saviors of the Net
series.

I wrote this story in about three hours and didn't bother editing it.  If I
had it probably would have read a lot better.  Chaotic Add-on stories are
pretty much like that.  Silliness for silliness sake.  And eventually some
one gets sick of the whole thing and writes the conclusion.



>The storyline carries its weight, and the dialogue and set pieces are pretty
>well judged.

>You want this sort of crit or you don't, folks. I work with structure, plot,
>grammar as much as concept. I'm happy to bugger off.

Oh we love any type of feedback on this newsgroup.  You might want to layoff
pointing out missing articles or punctuation.  It makes you look pedantic.

It's probably best to avoid pointing out grammar mistakes unless they're so
bad that they make the story unreadable.

I like feedback myself, but it's probably useless for me since I'm so stubborn
and arrogant.  I write stories the way I think they should be written, not the
way others think they should be written.

Anyways, thanks for the feedback.

Arthur "Blasted" Spitzer