7/25/12-7/30/12
In Which Spades Slick Ruins Dinner (Slick, Droog)
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 like the idea of this and Slick’s line about not criticizing him in a room full of knives is a good one, but they’re both too sensitive and kind in this. Droog shouldn’t be gently teasing Slick about his inedible meals and lying to comfort him, and Slick is more likely to get fed up and throw away the resulting mess than offer it to Droog hopefully like he’s a newlywed wife in some sitcom.
Also, Droog would probably go to a proper restaurant instead of McDonalds, especially after days of this.
A Useless Crew Member (FOC (MOC))
[day 1]
Write out numbers with letters.
[Like father, like daughter. It certainly rang true for the Boxcars duo. Although he was larger than life and she was tiny or petite in nearly every aspect, it was obvious just by glancing at the two that they were family. They had the same fiery red hair, golden brown eyes, and similar freckles brushed across their cheeks.]
So, they’re nothing like each other except for the non-canon traits you’ve added in?
Look, it’s really, really unlikely any kid Boxcars has will be tiny. She might be tall but thinner, or she might share his build but not be as tall, but not a tiny doll. And if she was, the fact they share no major features would mean that just having the same hair and eyes likely wouldn’t make people think they were related at a glance. I don’t assume every redhead is related when they otherwise look completely different.
Also, how has the crew managed to have their tiny replacements with no sign of any mothers for the kids? If you weren’t going on and on about family resemblance I’d be guessing they adopted the kids or something.
[ Despite being a part of one of the most dangerous, bloodthirsty gangs in all of San Francisco, Kitty didn’t have the heart to carry out her ‘Missions’. Blood made her dizzy and the thought of hurting someone made her sick to the stomach.]
First, missions doesn’t need to be capitalized. Second, people don’t just pop out with their sense of morality in place. Unless Boxcars deliberately tried to shelter her, she should have gotten used to the blood and maiming from exposure.
[Her only weapon, an iron wrench, was in pristine condition. She always promised herself it would only be used for self-defense, but she couldn’t even manage that.]
So it never occurred to the rest of the crew to just start beating her until she fought back? Because that’s really obvious.
[ the Crew had decided she would make excellent bait. No one remembered how many times she had been forced into a humiliating and revealing outfit and sent into rival gang territory. ]
Yeah, after the tenth time she’s sent off to be rape bait I think she’d get over her nonviolence kick, and if she didn’t, her father evidently cares enough to take care of her so why wouldn’t he make sure she could defend herself if she’s going to be bait?
[He introduced himself as Snowman’s son]
No really, where the hell are these kids coming from? You’ve gone out of your way to make them human, so this can’t even be written off as carapaces just being weird.
[Every time the Felt and the Crew met up or clashed, the two snuck off to hang and talk. Falling in love was inevitable. A romance as pitiful as Romeo and Juliet.]
Romeo meets Juliet when he meets her during the party he goes to to take his mind off his previous unrequited love, which, immediately before, he’s wailing about never getting over. They get married the day after they meet. The entire play is just a couple days long. They don’t so much fall in love as sprint off a cliff.
[The two star-crossed lovers had evolved over centuries, and so had their situations. ]
You’re acting like this is some sort of specific thing. The idea of people being in love when they’re not supposed to is far broader than Romeo and Juliet.
[Quarreling families had turned into gang wars across California, yet the lovers were supposed to hate each other just as much as when the tragedy was written.]
Actually the sociopolitical setup at the time was a lot more complex than that. Much of the problem was really that you had gangs of idiot teenage boys running around getting into fights with each other. See, what really screws everything up is Romeo’s friend gets stabbed by Juliet’s cousin in a stupid pointless fight (that Romeo only refuses in the first place because he’s in love with Juliet), and then Romeo goes and kills her cousin in equally stupid revenge, instead of just letting the actual people in charge kill the cousin for committing murder, and then gets banished for murder himself with the result that both families blame the other one for what happens.
[Naturally, her knight in shining armor suggested they run away. Not quite as stunning as a suicide pact, but just as dramatic and with a much happier ending.]
They did not have a suicide pact. See, Juliet faked her death planning to run away with Romeo, then Romeo shows up and sees she’s dead so he kills himself, then Juliet wakes up, sees his corpse, and kills herself.
What I’m getting at here is
1) Romeo and Juliet is the story of two morons being morons
2) For god’s sake, if you’re going to try to talk about this, at least read a damn summary.
[Every week they agreed on a place to meet up so they could leave and never look back. Every time, she only made it as far as the edge of the property before she got cold toes and snuck back into her room and returned to bed, defeated.]
And apparently he never mentions this, let alone complains?
[Two taps on the glass had the man awake with a gun pointed at her through the window. Her looked her over twice and unlocked the car.]
So he’s not anti-violence like she is. Considering what a point she makes about violence being abhorrent, what does she see in him? Also, she’s lucky he showed up the one time she finally decided to go through with this.
We were both young when I first saw you
I close my eyes and the flashback starts
I’m standing there on a balcony in summer air
See the lights, see the party, the ball gowns
See you make your way through the crowd
And say hello
Little did I know
That you were Romeo, you were throwing pebbles
And my daddy said, “Stay away from Juliet”
And I was crying on the staircase
Begging you, please, don’t go
And I said,
“Romeo, take me somewhere we can be alone
I’ll be waiting, all that’s left to do is run
You’ll be the prince and I’ll be the princess
It’s a love story, baby just say yes
So I sneak out to the garden to see you
We keep quiet ’cause we’re dead if they knew
So close your eyes, escape this town for a little while
‘Cause you were Romeo, I was a scarlet letter
And my daddy said “Stay away from Juliet”
But you were everything to me, I was begging you, please, don’t go
And I said Romeo take me somewhere we can be alone
I’ll be waiting, all there’s left to do is run
You’ll be the prince and I’ll be the princess
It’s a love story baby just say yes
Romeo save me, they’re trying to tell me how to feel
This love is difficult, but it’s real
Don’t be afraid, we’ll make it out of this mess
It’s a love story, baby just say “Yes”
Oh, oh
I got tired of waiting
Wondering if you were ever coming around
My faith in you was fading
When I met you on the outskirts of town
And I said
“Romeo save me, I’ve been feeling so alone
I keep waiting for you but you never come
Is this in my head? I don’t know what to think”
He knelt to the ground and pulled out a ring and said
“Marry me, Juliet, you’ll never have to be alone
I love you and that’s all I really know
I talked to your dad, go pick out a white dress
It’s a love story, baby just say yes”
Oh, oh,
Oh, oh
‘Cause we were both young when I first saw you.
A Useless Crew Member Ch2 (FOC (MC))
Ah, so the other girl’s adopted and it’s just the rest aren’t? I dunno, I can more easily see Deuce ending up with an accidental kid and no contact with the mother than Boxcars.
[ She hadn’t left a note, but there hadn’t been a bloodstain. There was no sign of struggle, but you couldn’t believe she would just walk out and leave you all behind without telling someone. ]
Yeah, why didn’t she leave a note? It seems quite obvious this would upset them, especially when she’s been put in risky situations a lot and already kidnapped once.
[On the other hand, Droog was upset with Kitty for leaving, and he was pissed at the entire crew for how easily they fell apart over one little girl. “In this business, people die every day. They run away; they get kidnapped; they just go missing. She was just a weak kid who couldn’t shoot a damn gun, so why shed even a single tear for her expense?”]
Especially a selfish brat who doesn’t even leave a note! Droog speaks truth.
[Even so, no matter whose toes you stepped on or which rival gang member you mutilated, no one would tell you where she went. ]
How does her torture spree miss the Felt? Since that’s where she disappeared last time, it should have been the first guess, and from there she’d have learned they were missing someone as well.
[Tonight, you are going to find a member of the felt and cut them until the tell you where Kitty is or one of you bleeds to death]
Felt, being a gang name, needs to be capitalized, “the tell” should be “they tell”, it shouldn’t have taken her a year to do this.
[“You didn’t call, didn’t write… not anything! For all we know, you could have been dead.” A face so much like his father’s, down to the scar marring the left eye, glowered down at her. Obsidian eyes stared into her light brown ones.
She straightened and chuckled darkly. “You really think I’d be so stupid as to let myself get killed? Honestly, think about what you said. If I got murdered, wouldn’t they have done a story on the news about it? ‘Unidentified Teenager Brutally Bludgeoned on Route 87’, not hard to miss in the headlines.”
All of the men were taken back by her outburst. The Kitty they knew was soft spoken, a pushover, as weak as any normal girl. ]
Being a selfish idiot is more than just not being a pushover. The first chapter established that Kitty wouldn’t fight back against attackers and was easily kidnapped. There was nothing stopping the Felt from killing her then, and no reason they couldn’t have hidden the body. If she’s supposed to be able to take care of herself, maybe you shouldn’t have spent all that time establishing her as pathetic.
And now for some reason they’re arguing about her boyfriend being a member of the Felt tricking her? Look, if the point is they hate the Felt enough they don’t care he’s not doing anything and just living quietly with her, then they have no reason to justify shooting him by the fact he’s doing stuff. They can just skip straight to the shooting. If this is meant to be concern for her, then you really need for this to happen sometime sooner than after two years of her living with him.
A Useless Crew Member Ch7 (Snowman)
[ The devilish spawn that had forsaken her child worked as a waitress while her own precious boy was forced to stock shelves at a grocery store.]
That’s not what forsaken means.
You have yet to explain why the Midnight Crew actually cares so much here. The two of them have been living safely for two years, so they know that Cue isn’t just plotting to kill her. And you’ve failed to portray them as having any grudge against the Felt except for concern about her in the first place, so the whole thing’s circular.
[At that moment a figure darted out from the house, sprinting toward the road. Boxcars quickly aimed the pistol and shot it three times. The figure fell to the ground and remained still.]
So knowing that there’s two people in the house, both of whom have every reason to try to get away and one person they value highly, they decide it’s a good idea to fire blindly at the first thing that moves. Yet apparently they couldn’t just shoot her boyfriend when she was standing there arguing about it?
Anyway, I don’t know why you bothered with this cliffhanger ending, it’s obvious it’ll be the “twist” that actually it’s suegirl he shot and would be even without the combination of hamhanded Romeo and Juliet mentions and the fact you clearly don’t have any understanding of how that story went.
[He grabbed onto the shoulders and flipped the corpse over, gasping as he caught sight of the face. It was one that he had known all of his life, from the wild red curls to the freckles scattered across her nose. ]
Yes yes obvious let’s get a move on here.
Arg, now they’re just going to sit and be sad. So they can believe that Cue’s living with her for years as some evil plot, but not that he sent her out intending her to get shot? And Cue is just going to quietly come out and sit with her killers instead of shooting them?
[Cue couldn’t remain emotionless like his own twin Steal or his biological father, Spades Slick.]
Ah, I was wondering.
But that just raises further questions, like why did Snowman decide Slick deserved 50% of their offspring? Also, presumably the two of them knew who both parents were, which then means Cue should have gone the saner route of just telling his mom he was going out with girl from the Crew and pointing out that hey, she did it so why can’t he? Slick and Snowman arguing with the two kids about how sex and pregnancy is one thing but by god they’d better not even THINK of marrying what do you mean you went to see a movie together that’s completely inappropriate would have been a lot more fun than stupid people being stupid and whiny.
[As much as he wanted to blame Cue for everything that had happened, he couldn’t, for he too was as much at fault. ]
Cue isn’t at fault at all, and if Boxcars is going to ignore that, I see no reason he can’t just assume it was all deliberate and eat the guy’s head.
So how many people did they have to bribe before the funeral to cover up the fact they’re the ones who murdered her? Also, Cue needs to grow a spine and report this to the police.
Ah, so her mother died of protagonist’s mother syndrome. A pointlessly cliche addition to an already floundering story. This was OOC, full of people acting like idiots for the sake of drama, and with an annoying attempt at deeper meaning stapled on top.
Broken Wings (Dirk, Jake, Dave (Rose))
Stop capitalizing random words. Also, your grammar is generally terrible. Proofread better and get a beta reader.
[ King Kaiser ]
Why is he named King Emperor?
[Rumour once had it that the Queen had a crush on King Strider, but when he chose her sister, she became bitter and swore revenge. Her bitterness extended to nearly all men, and she often treated the men of her country poorly, requiring them all to enlist in the army.]
It’s generally a good idea not to make a female character whose personality is just that she’s bitter a guy turned her down. Also, men enlisting is not inherently a sign of hatred.
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.
[Ever since he was given as a slave to the Crown Prince on his thirteenth birthday all those years ago, his eyes had only ever been on his job – to make Dirk happy. And he tried everything to fulfil that job. His quest to be the best servant possible made him expand from a regular servant, to eventually a friend, and now a lover]
Do you have any idea how fucked up this is.
But back to the damn queen thing. You almost never see a guy motivated by a woman turning him down causing him to hate all women, and when it does happen, it’s always about how tragic it is this happened to him.
Wall of Ships (Jadesprite (Bec Noir))
[Jadesprite was shaking, she wasn’t sure if she could die, but if she could, it would be today. He stared at her for a long time; she was too scared to look at him and continued her pitiful whimpering. ]
Jadesprite’s constant crying was more about being miserable from getting yanked out of the afterlife.
[Maybe he came to the realization that she was also him and maybe he thought that in killing her, he would be killing himself. ]
Canonically, Bec isn’t nice to Bec-type things, he’s nice to Jade-type things.
But yes, this is cute and makes sense, if somewhat heavy on telling rather than showing.
Wall of Ships (Slick (Snowman))
[Slick slams his cane]
You mean his cast iron horse hitcher?
[Snowman. It had been over a year since he had heard from her; he was almost convinced she was dead.]
Even if you’re removing the bit about her being dead meaning everyone’s dead, why would her just not being visible for a while be enough for anyone to actually assume she died?
[He knew better than to believe in happy endings though.]
A Slick who’d be happy she just died while he didn’t know about it isn’t one who cares much about the relationship in the first place. A pretty weird choice for a fic that’s supposed to be about the two of them.
[Behind the desk is a very young member of The Felt, perhaps not even twenty yet. Slick grits his teeth again, and remains calm; he’s not here for that kid.]
Why would that stop him? Slick is all about senseless violence.
[She left him years ago for The Felt, saying he was a distraction.]
This is a weird decision as well – it makes the whole thing rather one-sided, just a matter of her doing something to him.
…and now he’s shot her. It’s all rather anticlimatic. The very ending of him just wanting to know he’s the one who killed her even if he dies right after seems fitting, though.
Slick, Droog
FOC, MOC, Boxcars, Snowman (MC, Clover)
Dirk, Jake, Dave (Rose)
Jadesprite (Bec Noir)
Slick (Snowman)
Two of five.
Page 79
Wordcount: 25979