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Post by Dante on Oct 10, 2014 13:55:32 GMT -5
A great start all-round, Bandit and Terry Craig. You have the style nailed; it feels witty to read, right before it feels morose to read, too. I've no idea how multidimensional portals or space-time slipstreams are going to come into it at this point, which makes it all the better a first chapter as it's not completely off the rails yet. Very nice work. Terry, I think you've done a particularly good job on Cleo Knight; very original.
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Post by Hermes on Oct 10, 2014 15:24:51 GMT -5
Oo, very interesting. A multidimensional portal to another universe, eh? I wonder where that idea came from? Concerning Qwerty, I have indeed begun to wonder whether he is totally innocent, considering the effects of the sprinkler system; though I think it would be very much a departure from Snicket's normal method if he were not. The picture is very impressive, though I'm still finding it difficult to adjust to Moxie without her hat.
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Post by gliquey on Oct 10, 2014 15:52:15 GMT -5
Qwerty in Black Cat Coffee reminded me of Olaf in TE, although it took me a while to put my finger on it. It's because both are talking to the protagonist(s) in vague terms, not denying or confirming anything. In TE, I agree with Olaf going "Is that what you think?" and "You don't know anything" (p. 314) - whether or not Olaf did burn down the Baudelaire mansion, the orphans jump to conclusions and assume he did with no evidence. We have the mirror in ?3, where Snicket assumes that Qwerty is innocent without even thinking about it; Qwerty is right to say "you know no such thing" (p. 83) because it's true.
Regardless of what Qwerty and Olaf did or didn't do, both conversations serve to illustrate the naivety of the characters; they assume that a bad event is linked to a bad person or that a good person couldn't have committed a bad act. The conversation between Olaf and the Baudelaires is shorter, but Qwerty says less to Snicket. I think both Olaf and Qwerty may or may not have committed the arsons they are accused of, but we might get somewhere with Qwerty as there's still a book to go in ATWQ. In any case, I think both conversations are highlights of the respective books. EDIT: Anyway, sorry to go off-topic. The first chapter of the fanfic is great, and I'll be interested to see how any sci-fi things pan out.
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Post by Teleram on Oct 10, 2014 17:27:54 GMT -5
That was a good first chapter
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Post by Poe's Coats Host Toast on Oct 10, 2014 20:00:16 GMT -5
The picture is very impressive, though I'm still finding it difficult to adjust to Moxie without her hat. Thanks. I took the ?2 full page illustration where they hang out at Hungry's as a reference, and she has her hat off there as well. Makes sense, too, as it's rather impolite to wear hats indoors. I guess Lemony Snicket is a technical exception since his face has to be concealed.
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Post by bandit on Oct 17, 2014 11:03:26 GMT -5
Can I double post here for the sole purpose of having the following image be black on the black background? Shut up, it's perfectly justified.
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Post by bandit on Oct 17, 2014 11:03:37 GMT -5
CHAPTER TWO “I was cleaning the mechanisms early this morning when I found the body,” explained Raymond Black, a man who claimed to be the owner of Black Cat Coffee. I didn’t believe it for a second. You shouldn’t either. “The button that triggers the coffee machine wasn’t connecting properly, so I got down under the counter and there it was,” he continued, gesturing wildly at a row of three neat buttons labeled A, B, and C that were built into the countertop. Theodora was either listening intently to the impostor or listening intently to her own thoughts. Her eyes bulged out and flickered around, looking for clues that she apparently thought would expose themselves on the floor. Raymond Black confided that he had been too squeamish to relocate the nearby body or otherwise examine it to see who it was and how it had been killed. “Aren’t you worried about a possible murderer coming near your business again?” I asked, trying to stall the moment when I would have to look under the counter. The shiny chrome of the coffee and bread machines curling out in front of me was a distraction from the obvious spot in which my eyes wanted to investigate, but only just. Most of the pipes were now wrapped in a strange black cloth, and someone had stuck a tawdry gum ball machine in front of the window. “Did you check around at any hiding places, like the attic?” Black looked down at me like he was just now noticing my existence. He said, “I don’t have the faintest idea what you mean, little boy.” “The attic,” I said indignantly, pointing to the location in the ceiling where a secret staircase was known to descend for any person who pressed the counter’s first button. Deciding to exemplify myself as one of these people, I strode over to the letters and tapped A for attic, but no attic came. Hardly anything came but a horrible screeching sound from the corner of the room, where a player piano generally sat playing strange and enjoyable music. Instead, it now went silent for a few seconds before switching over to a repetitive and jarring piece that I was eager to turn off. “A is for Albéniz,” Black told me with a frown. “He’s one of my favorite composers.” I didn’t know what to say. The impostor, with a disapproving glance back at me, now addressed Theodora, who hadn’t known what to say for a while. “Now that your sidekick has had his fun, I’d appreciate it if you dealt with this quickly and efficiently. It’s hurting business.” A good question to ask would have been, “How is anything hurting business if your services are free to begin with?” Or maybe not. In any case, I didn’t ask it; I was too busy getting confused about what had happened to Black Cat Coffee, and I was too busy hearing Theodora gasp in horror. If my eyes had been first to make the trip down to the shadowy ground, I surely would have gasped as well, but maybe not for the same reasons. Theodora was shocked to see the foggy, sock puppet eyes of a corpse, and I was shocked to see the question marks resting above them. I wasn’t exactly used to seeing this face at all, but from what I did see of it during the last few months in Stain’d-by-the-Sea, it was lively with mischief and it wore a smile that could have meant anything. Perhaps this girl had just heard a questionable joke that she was ashamed to be laughing at. Perhaps she had just been reunited with an old friend, and refreshed memories of the two were now running through her head for the first time in years. Perhaps she was simply dead. Deceased, departed, passed away, gone. No more, expired, lifeless, fallen, perished. I can’t help but start thinking of synonyms when I get nervous, and I was very, very nervous. The sight of this slumped over shell of what once was made the hair on the back of my neck stand on end, and all of the hair on the rest of me too. Her name rattled through my head like that dreadful song spat out by the piano. Ell - Ell - Ell - Ell - Ellington Feint. Feint Feint Feint Feint. Ellington Feint. Ell - Ell - Ell - Ell - Ellington Feint. Feint Feint Feint Feint. Ellington Feint.
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Post by Teleram on Oct 17, 2014 17:42:57 GMT -5
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Post by Dante on Oct 20, 2014 15:11:13 GMT -5
A bold choice of victim, and one I applaud. If you're writing fanfiction like this, you may as well explore possibilities that aren't likely to occur in canon. Though the impression I get is that this may not necessarily be a final end... I'm looking forward to exploring the weird world you're establishing.
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Post by Teleram on Oct 26, 2014 13:11:11 GMT -5
I thought this was supposed to be updated this week.
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Post by Dante on Oct 26, 2014 17:24:21 GMT -5
It was updated in another timeline, but not in this one.
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Post by Tryina Denouement on Oct 28, 2014 11:09:41 GMT -5
omg why did you even pick ellington feint
btw i liked your answer dante
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Post by bandit on Oct 31, 2014 8:45:14 GMT -5
CHAPTER THREE While sneaking out of the Lost Arms’ Far East Suite’s bathroom’s window late at night, I noticed a word etched into the grout by some previous visitor. In fat capital letters, it said “RUN.” I’m sure at some point in everyone’s life, everyone has felt the uncontrollable urge to run, whether towards something they are excited about or away from something they are afraid of. However, on that particular night, I was one of the unlucky oddballs; my circumstances obligated me to both run away from many things and run towards many things I was afraid of at the same time. Some may consider abandoning one location to investigate another a necessary evil, but unfortunately, my circumstances at the time also called for all evil to be necessary. What else is one supposed to do when a girl like Ellington Feint is murdered? What else, what else, what else? I could only think of nothing as I slithered through the darkened streets of Stain’d-by-the-Sea towards Black Cat Coffee, which was open twenty four hours, so why on earth was this door locked? Shivering in the cold, I looked up and down the sidewalk whence I came and tried to remember how to pick a lock. This was a strange one, thin and round and not too deep, and believe it or not, I had never had this kind of practice. I looked up at the sign for the business, swinging in the breeze above me, and saw the faint etching of a cuddly black kitten licking its lips happily. What happened, what happened, what happened? My mind played ping pong with paranoia as my hands took a hairpin out of a pocket and set to work. Five slow motion minutes later I was in, and thirty seconds after that I was watching a set of secret stairs lower themselves from the ceiling. Unfortunately, I did not understand the mechanisms surrounding me, but I did understand trickery in the general sense, and in this case there was no one more understandable than Raymond Black. Ellington Feint’s body had been removed, but not in my imagination, and the attic was truly even worse. I imagined the shelves to be full of mysterious packages and the packages to be full of mysterious statuettes, but this attic was deserted in reality. The hardwood floor lamented its loneliness with creaks and groans as I slowly circled the room, but I was disappointed to know that it wasn’t about to go into detail any time soon. Instead, my eyes cooked up a thousand twisted recipes for deceit and conspiracies, twitching from one empty wall to the identical other. Get scared later, I thought, but if I wasn’t going to get scared now, why else would I have bothered running here? Theodora may have gone to bed early, Theodora may have tried to remember only the amount of Ellington’s frigid expression that was necessary for a case file, but I had learned from wiser people that heinous acts like these were a call to arms. The only problem was that I just had two of them, and with that accepted I sneaked back out of Black Cat Coffee and headed in the direction of the Mallahan lighthouse. Moxie Mallahan wore pajamas and I couldn’t tell if her eyes were open or not. “It’s good to see you, Snicket,” she mumbled, “but I can’t imagine why it had to be at this hour.” “I should hope I didn’t wake up your father too,” I replied, avoiding an apology. “Oh no, Mr. Mallahan is even harder to waken in the night then he is in the day,” said Moxie, closing the door and stepping out onto the step with me as a way of getting to business. She prompted, “So what is this all about?” “Well,” I sighed. No one could be pleased about the death of someone honorable, despite mixed conclusions about Ellington Feint, but I still wasn’t sure how to break the news. Nevertheless, it had to be broken, to a reporter like Moxie if no one else. “Recently, Ellington Feint was murdered in Black Cat Coffee.” The color in Moxie’s face drained almost as fast as Ellington’s surely did, and she was silent for a moment. “How could you not tell…” “No,” I shook my head. “Too risky. It had to be now.” The course of action did not need to be said; Moxie was quickly at the door again with her typewriter, and we were both quickly at the scene of the crime. The typewriter was new and electric, a gift shipped from the city, and it was easier on her injured arm, if not quieter in effect. The clack rang out louder than usual due to the vibrations of the attic floor. Moxie sat hunched over it, her fingers swiftly describing her barren surroundings, and I continued to circle the room and point out extra nothings that I noticed. A window was gone and a floorboard was loose. A shelf had a stain and another was crooked. Then suddenly the clacking cut short. “Moxie?” She stared, she pointed at the wall behind me, where a familiar window had appeared again. I stepped back in astonishment, or I might have stayed rooted to the spot. The window began to grow and the wall began to crunch. Maybe I muttered an oath or two. All I remember is that blinding, blinding light.
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Post by Dante on Oct 31, 2014 9:59:57 GMT -5
One of the advantages of concise chapters is that it's a lot easier to pull off the written style in a condensed area. There are some really convincing lines in this (and a nice allusion to ?1's title). It looks like things are about to get weird. Good luck writing - and illustrating, Terry Craig - the next chapter.
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Post by Teleram on Nov 1, 2014 17:11:08 GMT -5
This is great!
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