6/24/12-7/20/12
Tragedystuck (OCs)
[Though it was seventeen years ago she was given life, it is only today that she will be given a name!
What will the name of this young woman be?
Enter name.
Alas, your attempt to name her is in vain. Her name plaque is already engraved!]
…then she was already given a name, now wasn’t she?
[ifinditveryfuntotypelikethis, sinceicanbelazythisway.]
[h4ng 0n, my br0 1s b0th3r1ng m3 4b0ut s03th1n. Brb]
I have seen worse quirks, but this is still pretty bad, especially given you have extensive pesterlog conversations, and on top of that, they’re not particularly engaging ones but just casual chats recounting things that’ve happened on subjects everyone’s already familiar with because it’s so close to the comic.
Act 1 of the actual comic gets a lot of complaints for being slow and boring, and that had funny pictures. You’re doing a pretty good job of emulating it, but you aren’t getting around the underlying slow/boring problem.
Oh hey, Prospit!
[The locals of the city are white carapaces, strangely resembling that of chess figures.]
Your wording can be pretty awkward. “that of” shouldn’t be there.
[ That there is Skaia. A giant blue atmosphere where the Kings reside]
Atmosphere is just the breathy outer part of a planet, not the whole thing.
Tragedystuck Ch2 (OCs)
Hm. Well, it’s all competently done but it’s a competent retreading of the same old ground. There’s really no suspense, you’re just having the characters hit the same points as in the comic. With them finally entered, I guess things could go somewhere interesting from here, but that’s after two very long chapters that didn’t say anything new.
Out of Her Shell (WQ, WK (FOCs, BQ or something?))
[But then again, he was her husband. Was she not allowed to think inappropriately about him sometimes?]
I don’t think it’s inappropriate in the first place to think about having sex with her husband.
[Her muscles began to burn underneath her white metal carapace]
Why would it be made of metal? Metal’s extremely heavy and not actually that great for something like this – biological structures can be stronger, lighter and more durable.
[It was quickly forgotten about, as for the rest of that morning she wrestled with that Tax Bill from Hell. It was such a convoluted, poorly-worded mess, and no one knew what to do about it.]
Why not scrap it, then? You seem to be trying to emulate more modern government, but the reason those get messy bills is because there’s no one person who just gets annoyed and throws the whole thing away. If you want some frustrating bill for her to be annoyed at, it should be something that’s complex for a reason and with them still hashing out the finer points – plenty of laws are.
[Indeed, all over her body, her carapace was splitting and easing open the let the muscles underneath grow. Countless eons ago, the three-lobed, grey-shelled ancestors of all Carapaces would temporarily turn into gigantic monsters when they were ready to mate.]
This is all really not making much sense. Your carapace society seems closer to some sort of troll related thing – carapaces are a manufactured species created by the game, giving them extensive evolutionary history is kind of missing the point.
Anyway. If the issue is that she’s nervous about losing control and accidentally harming the king, then it really shouldn’t be presented as her mostly embarrassed about feeling sexual interest.
[One of the odd things about the Guileful Maid besides her unidentifiable accent is that she always seemed to know what was going on over on Derse, even if the media didn’t know. ]
[ Bein’ a queen’s a thankless job, y’know?” the Maid rambled. “Gotta take care of the whole planet, plus a moon. Gotta settle conflicts between cities and make sure them aristocrats ain’t up to something shady. And then ya gotta watch out for assassins either from the other side, or hired by people from your side, ’cause you just signed a bill that officially made their ‘legitimate’ business illegal.”
The Secretary gasped. “When did that happen?”
“Uh…theoretically speakin’, I mean!” the Maid assured her. “But the point I’m tryin’ to make is that the Queen’s got a hard job. You try makin’ people happy, but they ain’t satisfied with nothin’. They just blame you every time somethin’ goes wrong, even if it ain’t your fault.”
A pause.
“…Not that I know anything about bein’ a queen, mind you!” the Maid added hastily.]
[That was another odd thing about the Maid; she really did highly resemble the Queen. It was probably just a coincidence, though.]
…but then this doesn’t seem to go anywhere, and I can’t really figure out why the Black Queen would be slumming on Prospit anyway.
The conflict here seems weird as well – she keeps avoiding him instead of saying she’s worried about hurting him, and he keeps insisting he’s willing to take the risk instead of saying that his own shell is tough enough she won’t accidentally hurt him. It’s not like you’d lack any conflict without that – if the king said he’d be safe now and she didn’t believe him, the whole thing would play out similarly but they’d look somewhat more mature for initially trying to talk it out.
[She gave him a content squeeze, and he tried not to flinch. In reality, he had gotten pretty battered and bruised from the whole ordeal, but that was to be expected when mating with a queen. His stomach was also sore from that nasty punch she had given him earlier from his demonstration. It took everything he had to keep the wind from being knocked out of him. Not that he’d tell her about any of that. ]
Also, it seems he’d be better off being honest about things – that he’s not totally invulnerable and she should still be careful to not be too rough, but that she doesn’t need to worry about accidentally breaking him in half without realizing it.
Sometimes you wonder about what people think appropriate behavior with a spouse looks like.
Wishful Thinking (BK, BQ (Jack))
[Jack made no secret that he had originally wanted to be king. Well, if he wanted the job so badly, he could have it! That’s what the King would say if it was possible. Sadly, the Black Scepter chose him and not Jack. ]
The staff doesn’t work that way. If you want him to be the king by chance, say they do it by lottery, or according to the murmuring of the horroterrors, or because BQ picks and she has her own reasons.
[ This was incredibly silly; him and the Queen were best friends for decades, so why was he getting so nervous?]
Like that. That’s a perfectly good reason for her to decide he gets the staff, especially when one of the other options is the powerhungry murdercrazy guy she enjoys pissing off.
[Incisisphere]
Incipisphere. Ridiculous made up words are the most important to spell properly.
[It wasn’t because Jack pissed her off and now she wanted to make him jealous, would it? No, if she wanted to do that, she be making out with him in front of the archagent.]
“she’d be”. Also, yes, she totally would.
[The Black Queen cackled to herself as she watched her King roll his eyes up into his head and lose consciousness. Just like Jack was so adorable when he was whipped into a frothing rage, the King was adorable when he was nervous.]
Ah, that explains why she was being circumspect about things.
Well, that was amusing. BQ trolls well.
I wonder if Jack actually wants to have sex with her in this universe – he does seem to have some concept of self-preservation.
Jane: Solve Mysteries (Jane)
Use paragraphs.
Archagent (Jack)
Hey, an actual drabble! I haven’t seen one of those on here for ages.
Anyway, this feels somewhat too introspective for Jack – it might work better if it were in third person rather than first.
Rebel Seed (Jack)
Don’t center all your text, it’s really annoying to read. And definitely don’t hit enter in the middle of your sentences, that’s even worse.
[A bleak and ruinous world stood at s standstill.]
You mean “a”, not “s”. Proofread.
[ It did turn on an axis, nor did it turn at all.]
First, you mean “didn’t”, and second, if it’s turning it’s on an axis, so you don’t need to state this twice.
[it’s ruler ]
“It’s” is short for “it is”. “Its” is the possessive.
[First of all this story is set in an alternate timeline in which Jack hollowed out the green sun, made it a planet, and filled it with Prospitians, Dersites, and the Trolls.]
An alternate timeline means a timeline where people chose to do things differently. Different decisions don’t have anything to do with the fact a sun is a sun and cannot be hollowed into a planet. Even if Jack was powerful enough to transform things, which he isn’t even close to being, he can’t mess with the Green Sun in particular due to it being the source of that power.
If you want this to be a completely different setting with the same cast, it’s an AU in a different setting, where Jack’s set up shop on an inhospitable planet called the Green Sun. If you want it to be an alternate timeline where Jack decides to rule over people instead of just flying around murdering, say it’s Skaia or something.
Rebel Seed Ch2 (Karkat)
[Karkat’s sharp tongue had been nulled after three years of this. His overly outspoken opinions, that far too often included curses of every sort, brought about punishment. And after the first fourteen punishments Karkat had learned to swallow his words.]
Eh, then what’s the point of it being Karkat? If he’s learned to hold his tongue, and if you’re not even bringing up that he hero-worshipped another version of Jack, then why bother putting him into this story in the first place? AUs are about seeing how the same character would work in a different setting, not just saying they’ve already been beaten down into a blander form.
Also, I think you mean “dulled”, not “nulled”.
Rebel Seed Ch3 (Karkat)
[It was Nepeta, arriving from another hunt no doubt. Monsters had lived inside Detstro core before Jack arrived, and was Nepeta’s job to hunt and kill them since Jack was too busy(or lazy) to do it himself.]
If the monsters are strong enough to bother Jack, no one else would be able to do anything about them and Jack would enjoy killing them. If the monsters aren’t, then why would he care enough to assign someone the job? Nepeta might be running around killing monsters because it needs to be done, but not in any particularly official capacity.
If he’s been working for Jack for three years, and at least one of his friends knows because he sacrificed himself to protect them, then how on earth could he have hidden the fact he’s there from Nepeta?
Rebel Seed Ch4 (Gamzee (FOC))
[“It’s, um well, time for your m-medication.” she held her clipboard close to her chest]
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.
[He had gained a bit of a reputation here at this hospital. She couldn’t not feel fear being that she was his twenty third nurse]
Why is he still alive?
[He had heard the whispers of the nurses and doctors. His trial was coming up soon. And he was inevitably going to be executed for his murderous actions. ]
That doesn’t actually fix the problem that they should have already killed him. Someone who injured or possibly killed almost two dozen nurses on top of whatever he did to land there isn’t someone people would protect. When he flips out and attacks a nurse, they should just immediately go for lethal force to stop him. Especially when this is some crapsack resource-poor place with ravening monsters, why are they wasting time, supplies and people on some murderous nutjob?
The Dersite Horror (Jake (PM?, WV?, Dirk))
I’m not really sure what’s going on. The “Void Glitch” makes it sound like the idea is that the carapaces are infected by zombieism because their session is messed up, but Jake’s saying that their pre-Sburb life was just some dream.
[ The Pailfilling Maniac]
[ the Wasted Ventriloquist]
As these don’t seem like they’re meant to be the canon PM and WV, why are the OCs sharing the initials? That just makes things confusing.
[ They knew that there were three zombies in the warehouse. Five of the Livers – Jake, Dirk, Roxy, Jack Noir, and the Wasted Ventriloquist – would come into the warehouse through different entrances, and kill the zombies. But somehow their intel was wrong. There were no less than a dozen in there! ]
First off, how did they know this in the first place? Where are they getting that intel *from*? Second, why the hell do they care about clearing a random warehouse? Third, what possible benefit would they get from splitting up and finding five different entrances to attack?
I can’t tell what on earth they’re trying to accomplish, or what’s up with the setting, or why they’re even bothering to fight in these places instead of immediately trying to escape. Do their own lands even exist in this? Your story doesn’t really have anything to it beyond that for some reason, zombies.
OCs
WQ, WK (FOCs, BQ or something?)
BK, BQ (Jack)
Jane
Jack
Jack, Karkat, Gamzee (FOC))
Jake (PM?, WV, Dirk))
Four of eight.
Page 86 – there was very little carapace fic.
Wordcount: 22776