2/27-3/4
PS: Investigate Accidental Death Ch7
Midnight City was still buzzing three days later: everyone’s attention was focused on the fact that Crowbar was actually in prison, that the cops had finally managed to put him away. The papers ran column after column about what this meant for the city, and for the police. And people read the columns and they talked and laughed and speculated about the future for the Felt and the gangs in the city. ‘You know someone else is just going to take control of that gang, though,’ they all said. ‘There’s 14 more, surely one of them will step up to the plate.’
Terezi wondered if the people saying those sorts of things really knew very much about how the Felt worked. Obviously not, because the assumption that anyone could or would want to fill Crowbar’s shoes was patently insane.
I think this whole setup really needed time spent on why neither of the mobs is actually that bad, rather than saying they kill people all the time but just not usually this many in such a short time. Or failing that, avoiding any mention of the regular people at all. The way it is now, talking about how without Crowbar the Felt fall apart has the elephant in the room that the Felt falling apart is a good thing.
The characterization of the Felt themselves is also just… Die’s yet to actually use any of his canon powers or show what little personality he had in the Intermission, it’s all fanon French superpowered voodoo and the there-just-because ship with Crowbar. The rest of them similarly have definite character, but it seems to just be thrown up at random. And Snowman’s teleporting and unkillability doesn’t seem to factor into anything, she’s just snarkily there to be mean to people. They’re certainly not flat, but it really seems like they’re not the actual cast either.
Also, blinding someone rather than just killing them seems needlessly sadistic, and both gang’s behavior is just further highlighting that PS helping them is unethical and the city’s better off with as many of them in jail as possible.
PS: Investigate Accidental Death Ch8
“You three have an interest in proving your people innocent, and it’s not gonna help your cases at all if your method of finding the murderer is just whacking all the other options.”
I don’t see why. I mean, generally the reason why cops ignore certain classes of murder is it’s intergang fighting, and it certainly seems like part of why they’re sitting up and noticing is that so many of the murders are hitting people outside it. Wiping out the other gangs for messing with them seems business as usual. If nothing else, it’ll mean their enemy can’t just waltz in and expect lesser gangs to help him out the way it was described last chapter if they know the two biggest gangs will slaughter them if they find out.
Plus, they could always just use a crowbar on any bodies they don’t have time to get rid of, which would only help prove Crowbar’s being framed.
This really only makes sense if the police don’t ignore murders normally. In that case, they couldn’t expect their own murders to just be forgotten about once the main guy is dealt with.
And…why is she exploding her wrecked car? How does that help anything? The standard is dumping it in a body of water for a reason, it doesn’t attract even more attention and leave most of it behind to deal with anyway. How did she even set it off?
“So how’re you planning on getting her out of the house without Diamonds Cuestick realizing what’s going on?”
While I guess I can understand not expecting much from PS, this much planning means she’s also avoiding possibly the most competent adult in the cast.
PS: Investigate Accidental Death Ch9
And since in Crowbar’s absence he is the de facto leader of the Felt
Why? He’s not exactly a team player and he’s impossible to get a hold of if he doesn’t want to deal with you at the moment. In the Intermission there’s various characters who seem to do an okay job of working together, while Die’s defined by holding grudges against other members to the point it gets him killed.
“A court can’t convict on common sense and intuition. Pictures though, they can convict on, even if the pictures are lies.”
That makes no sense. They all agree the person in the photos doesn’t look like the person being convicted. The pictures are in their favor.
Really, this seems to be two similar stories kind of jumbled together. You have the plucky child detectives solving the case in a world where the police are good and on their side, and you have the darker noir where the police are only doing it because they have to and the detective’s got to solve the issue before he gets killed himself by angry mobsters. The tones mesh terribly, the plot elements overlap, and the police force comes off as schizophrenic.
PS: Investigate Accidental Death Ch10
Bob in charge of Maximum while we got the two of them,” he decided. Teddie had
The inconsistency of the names is getting more jarring by the chapter.
Nice to see things finally coming together, though.
She liked the gang power in the city exactly where it was: with the Midnight Crew, who loved the city too much to hurt it, and with the Felt, who were too incompetent to do much actual damage, and she was motivated to keep that particular status quo.
Also this is a nice description of the state of things. It’d have been nice to see it more in the previous chapters, though.
PS: Investigate Accidental Death Ch11
“No: we’re immortal and technically invincible”
This really does not seem to be true.
“You know, Die,” he said, before exhaling a long stream of smoke, “it was just the other night that I watched Snowman take a man’s eyes out, for no particular reason that I could discern.
Uh, attacking the Felt, ruining her car in the process, then confessing to helping frame Crowbar presumably as part of a larger plot to destroy the whole of the Felt. She likely wasn’t really happy they’re messing with the MC either, given she’s possessive about Slick.
If he doesn’t want to risk more people getting hurt, he might have an ethical reason not to involve her, but she’s hardly a loose cannon. And Die is, given he’s the one who fired a gun for no reason because he’s so upset over Crowbar.
PS: Investigate Accidental Death Ch12
We didn’t find any trails, not specific to the murder. They’re too old.”
Huh, that is a plot hole, isn’t it? Snowman could have just gone to get them and brought them to where the guy was pretending to be Droog. His past trail should lead them right to him. There was no reason to wait until now for them to try to investigate.
but there was some sand.
So the vacuuming last chapter was plot relevant. You should really throw in more details that are just there for setting, otherwise that kind of thing stands out too much.
Bob, while certainly creepy, seems really out of place.
PS: Investigate Accidental Death Ch13
black sand is what you get when you summon a horrorterror.
So there’s horrorterrors next door and all she notices is the vacuuming afterward? Guess that explains the face thing.
Handcuffs were in evidence, although it was a testament to the character of CV and his men that not one of them drew a weapon.
Not really, they’re behaving like thugs by threatening him and they don’t need more than handcuffs to arrest an unarmed guy who’s not fighting back, unless you’re praising them for not declaring he’s resisting arrest and beating him bloody for the sake of it.
“P-problem Sleuth, even I don’t h-handle horrorterrors. I very much d-doubt anyone in the city could, besides Snowman and p-perhaps the former Q-queen of Prospit.”
…then shouldn’t they get the two involved?
I like the way the regular guards treat Droog and Aradia.
PS: Investigate Accidental Death Ch14
The redundancy of the two investigations is getting really annoying.
Die and, Sleuth winced, Snowman.
He’s already hanging out with Slick. Why would Snowman be a big deal? And so far she’s been the only one to rein any of the others in, while Slick might just decide to stab Die, Sleuth or both to death if anything goes wrong.
The whole serious voodoo ethics thing really makes less sense by the minute. Die’s a mobster. He’s presumably killed at least some people, and the guy he’s fucking and currently trying to get out of prison has definitely killed people. Digging up a body is not really that big a deal compared to murdering multiple people.
It’d make a lot more sense for Die to be bitching about disrespect if he can’t force the dead the way Slick does, so it’s a matter of his plans being screwed up and not that he just doesn’t want to. It’d also help with how generally overpowered the whole voodoo business is being treated here, where the only limit appears to be what Die’s willing to do. He’s already got time powers, he really shouldn’t have a second skillset that’s even better on top of it.
Slick messing with the body is more interesting, and generally works better because it’s got obvious limits and drawbacks to his using it. I’m surprised he didn’t think to cut the guy’s mouth open, though, instead of the whole charades thing.
“I can’t believe you did that!” Die repeated, indignant. He hauled himself fully out of the grave, and stormed over, waving his arms. “The level of a-audacity to d-do something like that! The b-blatant disrespect for the g-guardians of the afterlife and the souls
Seriously though, I haven’t personally chatted with dead people about their feelings but I’m pretty sure causing people to be dead, for your own personal gain, is considered somewhat of a bigger deal. Also looked down on is trying to help someone who kills people get loose so he can go back to the killing people thing.
Plus, really, we’ve seen the afterlife in both versions of canon and neither one of them is particularly big on the noble sanctity of the dead.
Well anyway. This really seems like it wasn’t planned out too well. Like I said earlier, it seems like it’s two different stories mixed together. The fanon and references to other fiction is also pretty jarring and inconsistently integrated, and the Felt in particular are annoying for how their canon abilities are pretty much missing while you have Die working off fanon powers he really shouldn’t have. The plot is really intriguing, though. I think it’d have been a lot better with the kids more sidelined and contributing somewhat to the main adult storyline rather than doing their own stuff in parallel, and a firmer grasp of the stakes and consistency in how the city’s set up and works were really needed.
God, I really hate voodoo Die. If nothing else, it’s obvious the doll isn’t actually a voodoo doll! It just superficially resembles one! His connection to voodoo should be a few of the trappings mixed up in a weird way, not that he speaks French while doing standard rituals!
Got this already.
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, in which 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.” And the same punctuation and capitalization applies to thoughts.
Also, a new speaker means a new paragraph.
This is very simply written and comes off as exaggerated and melodramatic as a result. Also, you don’t need to say Karkat blushed over and over and over. Have more going on than characters overreacting to things.
I can’t make any sense of when this is taking place or why they’d be on Skaia. Or why Jack isn’t just killing them.
John would survive this, the chances of the derp dying heroicly were small.
Constantly calling him “derp” is not only jarring under the circumstances, but doesn’t sound at all like Karkat in the first place. Also, the whole sentiment is idiotic because he’s currently in a situation that fits the heroic death criteria just fine.
Also, use spellcheck.
Finally, you’ve tagged this with a lot of characters who don’t appear. That’s really annoying.
Not with A Bang (Slick, Snowman)
I really love how you did this, with it jumping back and forth mid-sentence between the two POVs while still keeping them both distinct enough to not be confusing.
⇒ Peccant Scofflaw: Rescue Deadeye Detective (DD, PS (FOC))
Amusing but really could do with someone going over it once more for cleanup edits. Like what’s up with the mob being more consistent, for example.
Darkened (Karkat-Slick (Sollux))
Intriguing. There’s something really fitting about having Karkat be the center of such a complex time loop, and interesting and eerie to imagine someone changing so much they no longer recognize or remember themselves. It’s nice to read this, it gives a look into another way things could have developed than in canon.
The really early fanfic sure was something, wasn’t it?
A Lack of Color (Terezi-BQ (Karkat-Jack))
Ah, this is a weird one. It’s surprising how well the Terezi/BQ thing works here, you did a good job of building the connections.
ROANBONE.jpg (Dirk (Caliborn, Roxy))
Hm. Caliborn seems pretty IC and Roxy’s trolling is great, but Dirk seems way too easily flustered and upset by this, and, since he objected so strongly, ending having him end up going along with it feels forced.
I think I need to readjust my criteria yet again now. FFN was less into shipping. I think I’ll only be dealing with the ones where his cherub/Lord Englishness is a factor.
Same with the ancestors.
coin’s edge (Terezi (Karkat, Vriska))
Drabble is the word for a writing exercise that’s precisely one hundred words.
“I’m sorry, Vriska,” Terezi whispers. “But I can’t let him die. Not like that.”
I really don’t think it does Terezi a service to reduce what she’s doing down to picking Karkat’s life over Vriska. Killing Vriska means saving everyone else left on the meteor, Terezi included, and that should really be playing into this as well. I like the rest of it, and writing out exactly what Terezi knows and feels will happen if she doesn’t kill Vriska works really well, but the final two sentences make it seem like Karkat is the only other person who matters, and I can’t see Terezi thinking like that.
Draw with me (Dave, John)
This is bizarre. The Draw With Me video was a metaphor for internet relationships already – that’s why they’re able to talk and see each other but never touch and the wall is impossible to break or cross. Communicating by writing to each other isn’t anything new to Dave and John and if they want to see each other they can just get a webcam. And having the resolution just be that all either of them had to do was go up and get over the wall and the problem’s solved makes them look like idiots for angsting about it in the first place.
Another payoff for doing FFN!
Slick, Snowman
DD, PS (FOC)
Karkat-Slick (Sollux)
Terezi-BQ (Karkat-Jack)
Dirk (Caliborn, Roxy)
Terezi (Karkat, Vriska)
Dave, John
Three of seven.
Page 530 FUCK MY LIFE