03/17/12
Mansionstuck (Terezi (Troll kids, Doc Scratch))
[ Karkat is no longer banging his head against the wall and instead standing over the remains of a smashed clock. The crowd titters and offers a few glib remarks regarding the troll’s mental stability, which Karkat ignores as he proceeds to smash every clock in the room.]
Fitting.
[Such a lovely door could not possibly harbor anything dangerous behind it, although you will admit that this logic is slightly flawed. ]
I like what you’re trying to do here, but your wording is often awkward – a lot would read better if you split them into separate sentences, I think.
[GC: MR V4N1LL4 M1LKSH4KE!
GC: 4R3 YOU ST1LL 4L1V3?
There is no answer, obviously, since corpses rather lack the ability to hear, followed shortly by their ability to speak. And here is a corpse that you never expected to see, that of your white-texted friend who was cheerfully vague about the future at the best of times.]
How does she know it’s him?
[CG: I DON’T SEE WHY YOU WOULD THINK IT WAS VRISKA, THOUGH.
CG: I MEAN, SHE’S A HUGE BITCH BUT I DON’T THINK SHE KILLS PEOPLE WITHOUT A REASON.
GC: TH3N 1 W1LL F1ND TH1S R34SON.
GC: 1 W1LL F1ND 4LL OF THE 3V1D3NC3 4ND BR1NG H3R TO JUST1C3.
CG: YOU ALREADY KILLED HER ONCE. ISN’T TWICE KIND OF OVERKILL?
GC: NO.]
Terezi is really not that crazy about getting an excuse to kill Vriska. Remember that she originally set out after Vriska over Vriska’s murder of Tavros, she was just manipulated into thinking Vriska was also behind everything else. And even then she really didn’t want to do it.
[GA: May I Remind You That She Was Responsible For Only One Of The Deaths In Our Session
GA: Which Is One Less Than Some Others Who Have Avoided Suspicion Entirely
GC: Y3S BUT WH4T 4BOUT TH3 TH1NGS SH3 D1D B3FOR3 TH4T?
GC: B3FOR3 W3 ST4RT3D PL4Y1NG?]
While I like Kanaya’s reason here, Terezi still seems off. A lot of the things Vriska did before while playing where things Terezi was part of. It’s only when Vriska started attacking completely innocent people who were also Terezi’s friends that Terezi finally drew the line.
…and now Eridan is also back and everyone’s fine with him? I mean, I get that it’s a bit hard to grab all the trolls and get them to focus on your murder mystery, but I really don’t think Terezi, willing to kill Vriska because she would accidentally lead Jack back to the rest, would be fine with Eridan’s plan of deliberately leading Jack back.
It’d make a lot more sense to just set this all pre-murderstuck but post-Aradiasplosion. That would also probably help on why Terezi cares so much about investigating the murder of a malicious stranger who manipulated all of them for his own gain – currently, you’re presenting her as very similar to when she first went after Vriska, where it was clear she meant to kill the culprit. It’d make more sense for this to be more of a game to Terezi, or something where she’s motivated by curiosity or caution (since, admittedly, any mysterious death could be a danger to everyone else.)
[GC: 1 DON’T G3T HOW SOM3TH1NG L1K3 TH1S COULD H4PP3N.
GC: BUT 1T 4LSO 1S V3RY 1MPORT4NT.
GC: B3C4US3 1T M34NS TH4T NON3 OF US COULD H4V3 MURDUR3D MR V4N1LL4 M1LKSH4K3.]
Not quite. A number of them can kill without their strife specibi. Sollux uses his telekinetic powers, for example, and Vriska’s luck powers can kill things as well.
Mansionstuck Ch2 (Karkat (Kanaya, Gamzee, Terezi))
[ Grandfather clock]
Doesn’t need to be capitalized.
[Now, what does your sociopathic friend have to say? ]
While Karkat does describe her as various types of crazy, sociopath is the wrong word. Terezi is motivated by justice, sociopaths are amoral killers.
And hm. Things are developing nicely and you write the kids very well, but they’re still entirely in pre-murderstuck characterization, which doesn’t work well with saying this is meant to be after they’ve won the game with the humans.
And huh. So Sollux is killed by a misfire from Eridan’s gun? I mean, I know it’s powerful, but he did win the actual fight with Eridan and quite decisively at that. I guess the idea is it took him too much by surprise? It just doesn’t seem he should have frozen up originally.
Mansionstuck Ch4 (Sollux, Eridan)
[ Instead, you are merely annoyed, because the explosion was undoubtedly caused by your beloved Crosshairs, the only weapon in this mansion that could have caused such tremors. ]
Sollux’s powers and Vriska’s dice outclass it. It’s a powerful weapon, but it’s not the only one.
[You still have some of your psychic powers, but not many.]
Why would death nerf Sollux’s powers when the one ghost we’ve seen so far got a huge upgrade in her powers?
Also, the trolls who don’t like Eridan don’t really hang around to banter with him, they can’t stand to be around him. It’s hard to see Sollux sitting around watching him be an idiot, then voluntarily getting into an extended conversation.
Please god let this not be going erisol. Why does even popular Eridan pairing have to be with the people who specifically refused the idea of a relationship?
Mansionstuck Ch5 (Terezi
[CC: i mean i guess i was kind of mad at him for culling me and ot)(er people but we were friends you know?]
Not really.
The longer this goes on the more baffled I am that you’ve set it well in the future when you seem stuck on using pre-murderstuck characterization. I could see Feferi regretting Eridan’s death despite how annoying he’d been during the game and on the meteor, since she had been close to him once. I can’t really see her brushing off Eridan’s plan to kill them all and him personally murdering her.
The plot of this is quite intriguing, though.
Mansionstuck Ch6 (Vriska
[Mr Vanilla Milkshake, as Terezi calls him, was an annoyance that you are glad to be rid of, and it’s his fault that you no longer have seven of your eyes and one of your arms.]
Uh, but he didn’t mean to blow it up at that particular point. Vriska’s maiming was Terezi’s fault. Unless Vriska’s realizing that the guy manipulated all of them into that whole chain of events, in which case I think she’d hold more of a grudge than just calling him an annoyance, and she’d presumably have told Terezi about it as well so Terezi wouldn’t care about the guy’s death.
[You were really just trying to me dramatic]
You keep writing “be” as “me”. You need to proofread better.
[== Equip pool cue to strife specibus.
There is no reaction. The wooden rod remains obstinately on the floor in front of you. Looks like your specibus isn’t just broken, it’s gone completely.]
Isn’t the specibus set? Unless she has a blank one on her, she shouldn’t be able to equip a non-dicekind weapon anyway.
[You hold it up to your eye, ready to have all revealed to you, when you remember.
The cue ball falls to the floor as you reach up and touch your wounded eye. You no longer have the vision eightfold. Just because you ascended to god tier and won the game doesn’t mean it has returned to you. ]
Uh…why wouldn’t it? If you don’t want her to skip ahead on the plot, just said it’s a regular one when Vriska tries.
[AT: i DON’T REALLY WANT, tO TALK TO YOU EITHER,
AT: yOU KILLED ME, aND I AM STILL KIND OF SORE ABOUT THAT,]
So Feferi’s forgiven Eridan for murdering her for no reason, but Tavros still holds a grudge Vriska killed him when he came to kill her?
aaaand wow that got creepy.
But now she’s able to read the cue ball? Look, just pick one, it’s not really necessary she hear it’s the Felt because she won’t know what that means and the reader already knows they’re there.
Mansionstuck Ch7 (Tavros)
[you wish that Tinkerbull could be here with you as well. You miss him enormously, even though you did not care too much after you first ran him over in your wheelchair]
Uh, he definitely did care. He just didn’t notice immediately.
[You deign to mention any of this to Vriska. She would only laugh.]
Deign would mean he did mention it. It means to do something that you think is kind of beneath you.
They’re really dropping like flies. Considering they did manage to get through Sgrub with their only casualty from a fight between players and no maimings at all, it’d kind of stretching things for them to keep getting blindsided like this. I don’t mean that no one else should be able to attack them, but so far it seems like they’re just stumbling into injury and death as much by chance as anything.
Mansionstuck Ch8 (Clover, Cans, Snowman)
Hm, this just seems unnecessarily confusing, and possibly like the second she is the author saying not to give stuff away, and it all seems really contrived given Clover likes being annoying and riddly all by himself, so you could easily justify narrator-Clover not telling the reader what they want to know without all the stuff about She and Her and orders.
Anyway! I find your setup here really intriguing and you do really well at having a lot of different narrators who all sound IC barring the murderstuck issue I mentioned. But it might be a good idea to think more about what’s getting the trolls killed (or injured) – it seems like they’re supposed to be getting caught in the crossfire of the two gangs, and the bomb was a good move, but the accidental shot that killed Eridan and the random knife that didn’t actually kill Tavros have more of a slapstick quality. Also, you should think more about what Terezi’s motive here is for caring about the death of someone she didn’t really know and didn’t like what little she did know – it’d make a lot more sense to frame her investigation as being concerned about the rest of the group because they don’t know who/what killed Scratch and why, so the rest could also be in danger.
Very tried and going to bed now. I’ll clean up the POV count and stuff tomorrow.
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Wordcount: 12484