Caliban
Trying to change my life, brb~
- 339
- Posts
- 15
- Years
- New Zealand
- Seen Oct 3, 2015
Hi, I'm Pich_u.
Sparkling Dragon and I were at school one lunchtime, and we were discussing the merits of excessive cameos. (I was trying to persuade SD to include a certain scarred Absol in Shattered).
I was later that day sitting in a lecture at Waikato Uni (on mediation) when I suddenly had an idea for a story.
This story would:
a) Have excessive cameos from authors whose work is much better than mine
b) Be just as strange as I am
c) Contain numerous Red Herrings
and
d) be called some variant of the name Red Herring.
I started writing there and then, and sent it to Sparkles when I had a couple of sentences. His remarks at the time were that it was too jumpy and very confusing. I intended it to be rather confusing, so that you have to think about what is happening, but not to be jumpy.
Other people reading it have not had those problems (at least until the falling up the stairs part).
What my questions are:
Is it too jumpy?
Would anyone read it?
What is a "crack fic"?
and
Should I introduce Pokemon earlier?
The story so far:
Prologue
The sun went down fast that night. Helios' bright glow had disappeared, to be replaced by strange brown and yellow smog, which was of the kind that would have Al Gore frothing uncontrollably at the mouth. Only a faint glow remained in the city. It was enough to silhouette the dark fog against the night sky, but no more. The buildings here were tall and solid.
A solitary car floated slowly through the fog, its headlights turned down to avoid detection. Had anyone been able to see it, they might have noticed its unique green and black colour scheme. Maybe they would have commented on its sleek, curved hood as well. It is by far more likely that they would have commented on the fact that the driver had a not dissimilar black and orange colour scheme, and that the entity driving happened to be a robot.
But no-one saw it, and it was able to speed through the town to its destination. The parking lot where it stopped was outside a large concrete building with many windows. One other car was there: a taxi.
The robot "bzzzted" impatiently and phoned the company.
"Hello, this is the City Taxi service, I'm Sally. Is there anything I can help you with tonight?"
Sally must have been surprised to hear a metallic voice announce "RECOGNITION COMPLETE" and that may be why she hung up on the "prank caller".
The aerial on the side of the robot's head extended. Its powerful eyes searched the dash board of the taxi for the obligatory business card. It soon found it, recording the name in its database. Tim Smithells.
Tim was waiting in his taxi, watching the meter go up and hoping that the old man had enough money to pay for keeping him waiting and the thirty kilometre trip back to his apartment. He'd been doing this for weeks now and his clothing looked more threadbare by the day. He didn't seem to have a change.
Just as he was extrapolating all this, a major accomplishment, Sally called.
"Hey Tim, just making sure you know that the Prof decided to bus home for a change. No need to wait."
Tim didn't stop to think about why Sally had phoned him instead of using the radio, but turned the car and sped off into the mist, radio blaring music loudly.
As he left, the other car pulled out of the shadowed recesses of the lot and parked where his had been. Then it seemed to flash out of existence and out of the space where it had been was Tim's car, him in it.
"Tim" resumed his vigil, drumming his fingers on the dashboard.
The real Tim was on his way home. Picking up the Professor had been his last job for the day. He drove into the large parking lot under the building that his apartment was situated in, flashing his ID at the scanner as he passed it. Tim grew angry as he eyed a large black delivery van. It was in his park. He surveyed the smoke coming out of the exhaust and concluded that a) there was someone in it, and b) that this mysterious entity was in his park!
He had already concluded "b)" previously, but as is evident, Tim was a bit slow.
So he did something utterly mad. Something that he would regret for years after. He actually THOUGHT.
I'll kick this guy out o' my park an' then I'll go up and get dinner, he thought. He didn't consider the idea that the entity driving might be drunk, dead, or even slime-covered. He certainly didn't realise that it was Dirk Gently of his Holistic Detective Agency on the run from Douglas Adams' imagination in a stolen van filled with a lot of rather grumpy Ekans.
A couple of minutes later Professor Arrolpastez was walking down the stairs, when suddenly there came a loud beeping noise from upstairs. This so surprised the poor professor that he managed to fall up the stairs.
Falling up the stairs, as most people know, is a very uncommon practice, and Arrolpastez had never done it before. Most people have, at some stage, fallen down some sort of stairs, but not up. Falling up is comparable to throwing oneself at the ground and missing.
The Professor was in fact so shocked at this that he fell down the stairs, in a slightly more conventional manner. At this point in many cheap cartoons, the character in question would have had multiple stars or tweeting birds burst out of thin air around his head, the kind of phenomena that has always led the author to believe that someone has indeed invented a rudimentary temporal-spatial-dimensional teleportation device.
Conclusion
I am utterly random and wrote this on a whim, so feel free to ignore it.
No, scratch that. Please help this random noobish personwhom Sparkling Dragon finds wretched and annoying! If you find any errors in spelling or grammar... Feel free to screw them up and shove them up my rear end. Which is probably where they came from.
[EDIT] Or fire them at me, preferably by Trebuchet. (But be warned! Mine has a range of twenty metres!)
Thanks,
Pich_u
P.S. I shall now indulge in the advertising of Sparkling Dragon's cool-ass fic, Shattered.
Sparkling Dragon and I were at school one lunchtime, and we were discussing the merits of excessive cameos. (I was trying to persuade SD to include a certain scarred Absol in Shattered).
I was later that day sitting in a lecture at Waikato Uni (on mediation) when I suddenly had an idea for a story.
This story would:
a) Have excessive cameos from authors whose work is much better than mine
b) Be just as strange as I am
c) Contain numerous Red Herrings
and
d) be called some variant of the name Red Herring.
I started writing there and then, and sent it to Sparkles when I had a couple of sentences. His remarks at the time were that it was too jumpy and very confusing. I intended it to be rather confusing, so that you have to think about what is happening, but not to be jumpy.
Other people reading it have not had those problems (at least until the falling up the stairs part).
What my questions are:
Is it too jumpy?
Would anyone read it?
What is a "crack fic"?
and
Should I introduce Pokemon earlier?
The story so far:
Prologue
The sun went down fast that night. Helios' bright glow had disappeared, to be replaced by strange brown and yellow smog, which was of the kind that would have Al Gore frothing uncontrollably at the mouth. Only a faint glow remained in the city. It was enough to silhouette the dark fog against the night sky, but no more. The buildings here were tall and solid.
A solitary car floated slowly through the fog, its headlights turned down to avoid detection. Had anyone been able to see it, they might have noticed its unique green and black colour scheme. Maybe they would have commented on its sleek, curved hood as well. It is by far more likely that they would have commented on the fact that the driver had a not dissimilar black and orange colour scheme, and that the entity driving happened to be a robot.
But no-one saw it, and it was able to speed through the town to its destination. The parking lot where it stopped was outside a large concrete building with many windows. One other car was there: a taxi.
The robot "bzzzted" impatiently and phoned the company.
"Hello, this is the City Taxi service, I'm Sally. Is there anything I can help you with tonight?"
Sally must have been surprised to hear a metallic voice announce "RECOGNITION COMPLETE" and that may be why she hung up on the "prank caller".
The aerial on the side of the robot's head extended. Its powerful eyes searched the dash board of the taxi for the obligatory business card. It soon found it, recording the name in its database. Tim Smithells.
Tim was waiting in his taxi, watching the meter go up and hoping that the old man had enough money to pay for keeping him waiting and the thirty kilometre trip back to his apartment. He'd been doing this for weeks now and his clothing looked more threadbare by the day. He didn't seem to have a change.
Just as he was extrapolating all this, a major accomplishment, Sally called.
"Hey Tim, just making sure you know that the Prof decided to bus home for a change. No need to wait."
Tim didn't stop to think about why Sally had phoned him instead of using the radio, but turned the car and sped off into the mist, radio blaring music loudly.
As he left, the other car pulled out of the shadowed recesses of the lot and parked where his had been. Then it seemed to flash out of existence and out of the space where it had been was Tim's car, him in it.
"Tim" resumed his vigil, drumming his fingers on the dashboard.
The real Tim was on his way home. Picking up the Professor had been his last job for the day. He drove into the large parking lot under the building that his apartment was situated in, flashing his ID at the scanner as he passed it. Tim grew angry as he eyed a large black delivery van. It was in his park. He surveyed the smoke coming out of the exhaust and concluded that a) there was someone in it, and b) that this mysterious entity was in his park!
He had already concluded "b)" previously, but as is evident, Tim was a bit slow.
So he did something utterly mad. Something that he would regret for years after. He actually THOUGHT.
I'll kick this guy out o' my park an' then I'll go up and get dinner, he thought. He didn't consider the idea that the entity driving might be drunk, dead, or even slime-covered. He certainly didn't realise that it was Dirk Gently of his Holistic Detective Agency on the run from Douglas Adams' imagination in a stolen van filled with a lot of rather grumpy Ekans.
A couple of minutes later Professor Arrolpastez was walking down the stairs, when suddenly there came a loud beeping noise from upstairs. This so surprised the poor professor that he managed to fall up the stairs.
Falling up the stairs, as most people know, is a very uncommon practice, and Arrolpastez had never done it before. Most people have, at some stage, fallen down some sort of stairs, but not up. Falling up is comparable to throwing oneself at the ground and missing.
The Professor was in fact so shocked at this that he fell down the stairs, in a slightly more conventional manner. At this point in many cheap cartoons, the character in question would have had multiple stars or tweeting birds burst out of thin air around his head, the kind of phenomena that has always led the author to believe that someone has indeed invented a rudimentary temporal-spatial-dimensional teleportation device.
Conclusion
No, scratch that. Please help this random noobish person
[EDIT] Or fire them at me, preferably by Trebuchet. (But be warned! Mine has a range of twenty metres!)
Thanks,
Pich_u
P.S. I shall now indulge in the advertising of Sparkling Dragon's cool-ass fic, Shattered.
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