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Post by Nixie on Feb 11, 2009 15:23:28 GMT -5
My Dear Supervillain Latest chapter: 6NOTICE: My Dear Supervillain is going offline and updates will now be available ONLY to beta readers. If you wish to become a beta reader, PM me. Plot Summary: After an epically horrible week, the supervillain Ladrona finds herself homeless, and the former sidekick of her nemesis is abandoned. With Leo desperate for company and Ron desperate for a home, they move in together- each of them unaware that their housemate by day is their mortal enemy by night!
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Post by Tenjen on Feb 12, 2009 3:51:00 GMT -5
f**king around with terminal ill siblings who've suffered pain for so long they've become hateful of everything [which happens pretty much all the time to them] seems like loads of fun.
***
Great work Kiwi! You've created morally complex charectors.
[goes on reading]
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Post by Nixie on Feb 12, 2009 4:35:03 GMT -5
Edit? Did you edit out something nasty and sarcastic? XP
Yeah, Valerie's gotten bitter about her illness, but the worst part for her is that she's got about two months left to live. That's not a lot of time. She's making decisions she normally wouldn't make, more concerned with her short term goal of staying alive than anything else- even her brother. That's only causing more problems with him. Revealing information about a superhero to a villain would probably get her killed if Wailing Wonder wasn't her brother, and even then, she's really stretching the limits of his tolerance. It's a bad situation all around.
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Post by Tenjen on Feb 12, 2009 5:00:03 GMT -5
Empathy would make the world a better place. He reminds me of the fellow from silent whose loins sprung pyramid head.
oh ya. the edit.
I called him an awful brother.
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Post by Nixie on Feb 12, 2009 5:19:48 GMT -5
In some ways, he is an awful brother, but she's not a great sister either. He's obviously sacrificed a lot for her, but it's not enough and now she's intentionally causing him pain. He's already doing everything he can for her, and she rewards him by endangering him. Now that Val knows both Ron and Leo's super identities, she's gonna go screwing everything up even more, doing anything she can possibly do that might save her.
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Post by Kristal Rose on Feb 12, 2009 6:45:24 GMT -5
Alas, one review max per night. I'll be back.
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Post by Kristal Rose on Mar 2, 2009 2:14:11 GMT -5
Yay. Read/reviewed half the chapter last week, and just finished the other half.
Narwhals not withstanding:
"Was she an enraged fan of Green Sparkle-chan? That would explain a lot." - Interesting useful style, combo of 3rd person narrator and 1st person thinking out loud, which works.
t - "and she a feeling Leo"
"...except, of course, to kill them." - Something new for us to be concerned about.
"They weren't there." - Great section.
~
Shadows happening already.
"If the shadows acted on their own accord, it would mean Ron was innocent." Of course the shadows could just be pretending to be at her will, in fear of discovery.
t - "that she didn't mind him wander around the house"
"the living room, dark from lack of use." - ??
"giant squid and the robot plesiosaur" - Yay for B horror movies.
"After a couple more minutes of shifting themselves around (they missed the start of the movie) Ron ended up sitting like a normal human being while Leo tucked his legs behind her and used George as a pillow." - Style is not working here. The parentheses are bringing too much attention to a narrator who shouldn't exist.
Well that was a well paced underwear and couch scene.
"THE PAIN! MAKE IT STOP!" - Funny. A trick you might only use once per novel, but still good to have in the arsenal.
"He still hadn't washed his super suit" - I love these sorts of issues... The hilarious humble truthfulness of a career as a super hero. Douglas Adams is the only one I know doing this (not with super heros though), and his is more fantasy absurd, less the humor of how life actually works (which I find mch more poignant).
"yelp of surprise (only knocking over three people)" - parentheses not bothering me this time. I don't know if it's because I'm used to style now, or it seems less like the musings of a narrator this time.
"corner of 63084756th and Arbor." - Perhaps something more plausable but still humorous here, like "corner of 4756th and Arbor."?
"There were Green Sparkle-chans EVERYWHERE." - What a riot.
"There were even a few men in skirts among the crowd." - ..and it gets funnier. I think one of the strengths of this story is the telling it with a straight face.
"I wanted to audition.” - I like how you add to the humor while conveying more plot.
GREEN SPARKLE-CHAN 1st AUDITIONS TODAY AT 5 PM
You have a bit of a bipolar thing going with her recent bank job self-confidence.
But of course WW shows up, as of course he should. Fortunately I had enough immersion in her scene to forget about him for a moment.
Um gee, severe damage this encounter.
T - flurry of leaves slapping him the face
Of course, the cat.
Yay. Success. He’s rescued a cat. Immensely beat up in the process, but rescued a cat.
“She'd gotten to know this ceiling too well.” – That clearly gets across her situation.
T – “Ron couldn't supremes the shudder that ran through her body.” – Yeah, that blasting Motown music will get you every time.
Yay, a fangirl.
T – “stopped by the bank and Nightshadedecided to rob it.”
T – “dumb thing to do!She silently”
T – “I meant what I said. I 't let anybody hurt”
T – “the bigger picture?Seeing them”
T – “loves him,Val realized”
“Nah, I still would've done it.” – Yep, still evil.
T – “my advantage.Val” – Do you not have any spell check?
““You woman-folk are all cryptic and mysterious, or evil, or both!”” - Apparently.
Oh yay, I was hoping mid chapter we’d hear from Ranvir again.
T – “knows about May?Ron saw”
T – “another therapy session,Ron realized”
I kinda like this Mystic taking up the 800-psychologist role. He makes for a rather stuffy harsh one though. Seems- he should be figuring out before them too.
~ ~
Enjoyable reading yet again.
It’s losing a touch of it’s light comedy, as it gets grimmer.
You’re ending all your scenes with tentative verbs. Since they don’t even happen, they might impart a brief sense of upcoming cliff-hanger excitement, but aren’t durable. It would be better to leave more of those scenes with lasting mysterious images, peril, that sort of thing. For instance you could have intermittently left the tree scene with Leo in pain looking into the face of a surly wet cat.
Alas, this story seems doomed to be somewhat short (which is fine. Folks like Steven King started with short stories). The clock is ticking for them to discover each other, and it would have to be like book/part two in which they could go on with another main plot without lingering after the current main plot impetus. Until then, the story is somewhat about who they become to themselves and to each other before that moment. There are still tons of options of how it all bangs though. They could both rescue Ranvir who came down to battle the Sparkle-Chans. Ronnie and Leo could both get side jobs as Sparkle-Chans.
The formula here, minus the ingenious key plot, could serve you for many more stories to come. Now and then your grammatical pace gets a bit ackward (words get in the way of quickly and smoothly delivering), but that will improve.
A forum friend of mine summed up your work as ‘Youth has so much youth to offer’. I suppose that’s somewhat true. It hadn’t occurred to me that that may be some of what I was enjoying, but I suppose it shows in just what sort of issues your characters are working on solving. That doesn’t make it less enjoyable though, possibly more so. Even as a comic drama, you don’t want to engage your reader so heavily in philosophical quandary that they can’t have fun. I would suggest that that’s yet another experiment you could try out, but P. K. Dick and Vonnegut have already covered that turf.
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Post by Nixie on Mar 2, 2009 14:35:51 GMT -5
"the living room, dark from lack of use." --- All the lights in the house are motion activated.
"corner of 63084756th and Arbor." --- I think I've already stated that the city of Antiopolis is larger than the state of Utah. It's got a LOT of streets.
I have a spell check, but it doesn't notice errors in regards to lack of spaces around certain punctuation. It doesn't notice if I forget to add a space at the beginning of a sentance, and it doesn't notice if there's nothing before an apostrophe... That's kind of what I sacrifice by using an open source alternative to Word, called Open Office.
The story is indeed getting a bit grimmer. This is probably the gimmest chapter since the first one. Sure, the home life of Ron and Leo is getting more mushy and comfortable, but Valerie's instigating more and more violence between Nightshade and Wailing Wonder. Things should soon improve, though...
I originally divided this story into three MANGAS of only 180 pages in length each. When I decided to make it a story instead, I had to fill in the plot just a little bit. I still intend to separate it into three parts, but it'll still probably be part of one book...
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Post by Kristal Rose on Mar 2, 2009 16:58:12 GMT -5
Well, I'm glad you're sticking with it. You're probably a bit busy for rewrites with G-M visiting. Has she read your story, seen MM, take you to see places?
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Post by Nixie on Mar 2, 2009 17:25:08 GMT -5
I don't know what MM is... Oh, Mirror/Mirror? I don't know if she's seen that, and I told her I'd written new chapters of this story, but she didn't get around to reading them. I haven't had time for any editing while she's been here; in fact, I haven't had much time for being on the computer at all.
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Post by Nixie on Jul 8, 2009 22:21:19 GMT -5
NOTICE: My Dear Supervillain has undergone some major back editing. You might as well re-read it from the beginning so you won't be confused when the next chapter (eventually) comes out.
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Post by Kristal Rose on Jul 11, 2009 17:35:16 GMT -5
Which chapters have been edited. Do I need to download all of them?
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Post by Nixie on Jul 11, 2009 22:11:40 GMT -5
I edited EVERY chapter.
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Post by Kristal Rose on Jul 12, 2009 19:33:50 GMT -5
If figured as much and downloaded every chapter. I have chapter one as a start-up tab now.
Tricky lame Firefox turns out to cache pages these days when you 'save and quit' tabs. I was suspicious when you hadn't replied lately, but the real clue about caching was still being logged in long after 6 hours had passed.
I think you can still start tabs uncached if you bookmark a folder of them as your home page. I haven't done that in years. Hmm, that may have been Netscape even.
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Post by Nixie on Sept 8, 2009 1:47:00 GMT -5
To those who read My Dear Supervillain:
I've decided that, once I finish this story, I want to get it published. Which means no more posting new chapters all over the internet. But I still want a little bit of critique on it while it's still a work in progress, because I tend to form gaping plot holes.
I'm seeking a few trustworthy souls who wish to read and critique My Dear Supervillain WITHOUT reposting it or discussing it with other people. In other words, I'm looking for a few beta readers.
If you want to be a beta reader, PM me or email me.
If you don't, you won't get to read past chapter six of My Dear Supervillain until you BUY IT! MWAHAHA-er... yeah.
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