5/10/12-5/24/12

On The River (Slick (Snowman, Droog))

[Rating: M Heed the rating kiddies. THAR BE PORNS IN THIS HERE FIC.]

M isn’t actually the porn rating, it’s equivalent to R. You should consider posting this to archiveofourown or adultfanfiction because sooner or later someone’s going to go through trying to get stuff deleted.

But anyway, I really like how you write everyone here. I love how you describe Snowman and I love the way Slick’s narration quickly spirals into obsession and stops paying attention to anything else, and Droog there to help with the mess afterward but unable to actually stop Slick. It’s exactly what I want out of this pairing.

Knot (PM, Jack)

[A black male dog, and a white female one as well.]

That’s really not an accurate description. They’re bipedal chess people covered in shell with swords and occasional tentacles that happen to have dog heads.

[Both demigods in a sense that they have the powers of a god, but only that.]

…or in short, “Both demigods.”, the rest of the sentence really isn’t adding anything.

[barley ever hitting back]

Barely.

[“You seem awfully eager to know me.” The female chirped coldly.]

Why would she be chirping?

Also, dialogue is written as “Hello,” she said or “Hello!” she said, never “Hello.” She said or “Hello.” she said or “Hello,” She said or “Hello” she said. The only exception to this is if the next sentence doesn’t contain a speech verb, which is a verb describing how the dialogue is said. In that case it’s written as “Hello.” She grinned, never “Hello,” she grinned or “Hello,” She grinned or “Hello.” she grinned. Note that something isn’t a speech verb just because it’s a sound you make with your mouth, so generally stuff like laughed or giggled is in the second category. Furthermore, if you’re breaking up two complete sentences it’s “Hi,” she said. “This is it.” not “Hi,” she said, “this is it.” or “Hi,” she said “this is it.” And if you’re breaking up a sentence in the middle, it’s “Hi. This,” she said, “is it.” The same punctuation and capitalization rules apply to thoughts, except you don’t use quotation marks with thoughts.

And why doesn’t PM mention that they’ve already been introduced? Even if Jack forgot about her/doesn’t recognize her – and honestly, it’s not like it’s been that long from his POV, and beheading a colleague and handing over the crowns seems memorable – I can’t imagine she’d forget him.

[To make matters worse, they had both faced a similar pain. The death of a loved one was a painful thing to experience, no matter who it hit.]

…what the hell? I’m going to take a stab and assume you mean Jade because she’s the only one Jack’s even reacted to, and Jade died because Jack’s caring about her was just the prototyping and he was trying to get around that by ordering someone else to do it, and then he resurrected her as a god on his way out. PM saw him destroy her whole planet then saw him reappear to slaughter her new friends. So. No. It’s not really the same thing.

[Jack flew over to PM, hoping to make conversation but had not expected what was about to happen. She whipped around and held him by his arm, and wrapped his jaw shut with the tentacles that had so suddenly appeared. She unsheathed her sword and growled at him.
“You leave me alone Slayer. I have no interest in talking to you, and will not stand for you meddling with me. Got it?” ]

Why isn’t she just killing him now that she’s finally managed to grab him?

[She drew her sword higher, gently moving it along his lower jaw, drawing blood]

No but really why isn’t she just killing him now that she’s finally managed to grab him?

I mean if you want to take that spades to mean she’s interested in stuff in addition to killing him, okay, but even then she wouldn’t be threatening him to leave her alone. If she wanted him to leave her alone she wouldn’t be chasing him down to kill him.

[What PM didn’t know was that it was more like a moan, and that Jack could really stop her if he wanted to.]

No, he couldn’t. He might be able to fight back, but that’s not the same thing as definitely able to stop her – they’re evenly matched, it’s why Jack is running away so desperately.

[ This was a break time, and it would be unfair to kill him here and now.]

PM isn’t doing this because she likes fighting and has some bullshit code. Jack is the one who cares about deals rather than morality. She’s trying to kill Jack because Jack is a mass murderer. Why would she care about fairness? It’s not like everything else that’s happened to her was particularly fair.

…and then this just suddenly ends in the middle of the sex scene. Ookay.

So like I said, if you want PM to decide that she wants to fuck and kill him instead of just killing him, fine, but having her decide to fuck instead of kill him doesn’t work. PM is a good person, and given the stakes involved, choosing not to stop him when she has the chance is wrong.

Also, your grammar is really weird throughout, you should probably get a beta reader.

Is it weird this story didn’t involve knotting given the title or is it weird I think it’s weird it didn’t involve knotting? I don’t even know anymore.

Living on Dreams (Itchy (Doze))

[I’m not very good at comforting people.

But I think I did it right that night.]

Eeeh, well, I guess it depends. He made Doze feel better, but the problem I have here is it’s not clear why Itchy wants to keep his own feelings a secret so badly. Doze’s problem doesn’t seem to be that he’s keeping his feelings secret but that she just doesn’t feel the same way. Itchy seems to have nothing but good intentions here, but it doesn’t really explain why he has to lie about how he feels. Is he keeping his feelings a secret because he knows Doze would never feel the same and doesn’t want his friend to feel bad? Or because if Doze knew Doze wouldn’t feel comfortable with the whole hugging and falling asleep together thing? When it isn’t clear how keeping something secret helps, it opens up the idea it’s being done for selfish reasons.

I feel like this would probably be better if it was part of an ongoing story where all this relationship drama had more room to develop. As a single scene, you’re introducing relationships that the plot hinges on without those having enough grounding in the existing characters to already know quite how they work and without enough development to explain it, so the rest doesn’t follow so neatly.

Or I guess really this kind of thing likely boils down to a headcanon issue? When people look at canon and see this kind of thing as just how it is, writing a story using that as your jumping-off point feels natural.

Sorting this out (Jade (Jack, Nannasprite, John))

[Jack was a notorious murderer, and a complete psychopath. She had gotten to know the real him a bit more. Sure, he was an asshole, but he also had a sweet side.]

First, being a murdering psychopath is more than being an asshole. Second, no, the murdering psychopath is the real him. The only reason Jack was nice to Jade is because he’s prototyped with Bec, and he did his best to get someone else to eliminate her so that wouldn’t be a problem.

[ Anyone who got to experience that before would have been one lucky person.]

No seriously, Jack does not have a secret heart of gold. His good side did not exist “before” because it’s entirely based on her dog and she knows it’s just Bec.

[Jade thought that the idea that she was “Bff’s” with his Father’s and Rose’s Mother’s murderer probably didn’t help him. ]

Yes. Yes, that might be a problem. Also, stop capitalizing random words. If it’s not a name, it’s not capitalized.

[[GG] well after my journey is done i can come see you again! :)
you would really want that
[GG] are you serious? of course!
thats nice gives me some hope its going to be a shame to kill that friend of yours]

So Jade is just delusional. Okay, that…maybe makes sense? She really seemed more stable than this.

[He obviously cared for her, but that was Bec speaking, or maybe through their meeting through the prototyping had he begun to like the her, and see her through himself, and not Bec?]

Considering he just explicitly said he wants to kill her but the Bec half of him disagrees, it’s pretty obvious that no, it’s just Bec, and why doesn’t Jade have enough self-preservation left to notice that?

[“BOO!” He yelled, making her jump.]

Dialogue is written as “Hello,” she said or “Hello!” she said, never “Hello.” She said or “Hello.” she said or “Hello,” She said or “Hello” she said. The only exception to this is if the next sentence doesn’t contain a speech verb, which is a verb describing how the dialogue is said. In that case it’s written as “Hello.” She grinned, never “Hello,” she grinned or “Hello,” She grinned or “Hello.” she grinned. Note that something isn’t a speech verb just because it’s a sound you make with your mouth, so generally stuff like laughed or giggled is in the second category. Furthermore, if you’re breaking up two complete sentences it’s “Hi,” she said. “This is it.” not “Hi,” she said, “this is it.” or “Hi,” she said “this is it.” And if you’re breaking up a sentence in the middle, it’s “Hi. This,” she said, “is it.” The same punctuation and capitalization rules apply to thoughts, except you don’t use quotation marks with thoughts.

[ I just don’t know what to think right now. He’s such a jerk, yet he says he does like me, and then he says he wants to kill me, and then he says that he never would!”
“He’s probably just as confused as you are dear!”
“It seemed like it. He actually opened up to me too.”
“That’s a good sign! It means that he trusts you more and is willing to talk to you about personal matters!”]

…and now Nanna seems to be under the same delusion as Jade? It means he wants to kill her but can’t get around the prototyping. It’s pretty simple.

[At least she didn’t run into any of the refugees or consorts. They never left her alone and it was annoying. She tried to talk to them, but after awhile it was just too much!]

Jade grew up with the Prospitians the only people she knew other than John, Rose and Dave. I don’t think she’d be dismissing them like this.

And now she’s blowing up at John for being the only halfway sane one.

[He’s going to hurt you one day Jade. He doesn’t really like you, only the dog in him does. The rest wants you dead. D-E-A-D!”
“Just stay out of this John! This is between me and him, not you too! If we are having problems we can solve it ourselves!”]

Except it isn’t, because Jack is going to kill him and also everyone else alive if he gets half a chance, so he does have a perfectly valid stake in this.

And so Jade’s issues are because she doesn’t want to let go of Bec? She’s the one who willingly overwrote him by throwing her dreamself into the sprite. She shouldn’t be driven crazy over this.

The Lamp (PI, DD, PS (SS))

Spellcheck is not optional. Also, proofread better.

Indignant Illumination (DD (SS, HB))

Names are always capitalized, not just when you feel like it. When a different character speaks, you start a new paragraph.

[to which slick replied x2, “admirable.”]

x2? What is that even supposed to mean?

Dialogue is written as “Hello,” she said or “Hello!” she said, never “Hello.” She said or “Hello.” she said or “Hello,” She said or “Hello” she said. The only exception to this is if the next sentence doesn’t contain a speech verb, which is a verb describing how the dialogue is said. In that case it’s written as “Hello.” She grinned, never “Hello,” she grinned or “Hello,” She grinned or “Hello.” she grinned. Note that something isn’t a speech verb just because it’s a sound you make with your mouth, so generally stuff like laughed or giggled is in the second category. Furthermore, if you’re breaking up two complete sentences it’s “Hi,” she said. “This is it.” not “Hi,” she said, “this is it.” or “Hi,” she said “this is it.” And if you’re breaking up a sentence in the middle, it’s “Hi. This,” she said, “is it.” The same punctuation and capitalization rules apply to thoughts, except you don’t use quotation marks with thoughts.

Also, “said” is a perfectly good speech tag and generally a better fit then whatever else you’re trying to force into its place.

Anyway that seemed completely pointless. They’re standing somewhere waiting for the rest of the crew to get there, Slick observes the fact lights flicker, they resume waiting.

Somnium (John (Dad, Jade))

[“I’m going to bed early tonight, dad.”]

When used in place of a name, “dad” is capitalized the same way you would any name.

[14th step]

Write out numbers with letters.

[ There were the odd chess-like people wandering the moon, but they were about as far as human as one could possibly get.]

First, “as far as human” makes no sense. “As far from human” is probably what you mean, not that that works much better – they’re humanoids who speak the same language and live in a society that’s close enough to ours to make intuitive sense, with a king and queen in charge.

Five chapters in and John has yet to interact with a single carapace.

Untitled Homestuck Intermission fic (DD, SS)

I love all the details of this and you do a great job of characterizing them throughout. I particularly liked Slick’s furious raging at Boxcars daring to be hurt and how he’s planning out threatening nightclub owners and considering the pros and cons of killing one right before he crawls into Droog’s bed to cuddle up with him.

You should really consider posting this on archiveofourown, though – FFN banned porn and sooner or later someone will go though trying to get stuff deleted.

Make Him a Member of The Midnight Crew (DD (SS, CD, HB, Condesce))

[The condesce]

That needs to be capitalized. Also, it’s really more of a nickname than something she’d be called under the circumstances.

Anyway, this mostly seems to be repeating what we saw in canon, complete with a lot of reusing the exact same lines from canon, rather than telling a contained story of its own.

Slick (Snowman, Droog)
PM, Jack
Itchy (Doze)
Jade (Jack, Nannasprite, John)
PI, DD, PS (SS)
DD (SS, HB)
John (Dad, Jade)
DD, SS
DD (SS, CD, HB, Condesce)

Two of nine.

Page 110

Wordcount: 19308