At 09:57 PM 5/15/99 +1200, Angus MacSpon wrote:

   If he was able to, Folken would cry, but a side effect of what
Dornkirk did to him rendered tears impossible.

This would read better shifted back a step further in tense:
   If he had been able to, Folken would have cried; but a side-effect
   of what Dornkirk had done to him rendered tears impossible.

That does look a lot better

   Afterwards, walking through the battlefield-- a small town near
Zaibach's borders and now a ruined hulk, Folken was still in the same
contemplative mood, walking slowly down the street with his cloak drawn
tight, keeping the aftermath of the battle at bay.

The dash in the first line needs a corresponding second dash after
"ruined hulk".

I thought so at first too, then decided to try and cut down on the use of
emdashes and semi-colons... sometimes it seems that my stuff is riddled
with them. I should have went with my initial inclination and put it in....
(damned second guessing!) ^_^

   The was a child, on the street; a child standing there outside an
hollowed out burning wreck of a house. A child standing there with a
blank, uncomprehending look covering his young face, not more than four
or five the boy could be, and watching Folken with a strange intensity.
The emptiness of the child's face was (thankfully) marred by a constant
stream of tears the child seemed not to notice, until, as if on its own
volition, the boy's right arm came up and wiped the tears, smearing
them towards his ears.

There was a
a hollowed-out

The second sentence in this paragraph is extremely clumsy.  The phrase
"not more that four or five the boy could be" doesn't belohg there; it would
be better shifted out into a separate sentence ("He could not have been
more than four or five.").

Sometimes such clumsiness can be warranted-- it attracts attention and gives
a particular feel-- clipped and terse. However, you do raise a point, and I
think that it is not perhaps warranted here.
(damned not-second guessing!) ^_^

   That was how Folken got the first two of his tattoos to remind
himself of what they were fighting for: purple for the colour of
royalty, the majesty of the dream, and tears wiped away in
determination to see it through.

A fine self-delusion.  Oh, it might have been a majestic dream, if
doomed from the start (the ends can _never_ justify the means);

I don't know-- depends on which means and which ends. A little
pain for a lot of pleasure? A little bad for a lot of good? I find
that can be acceptable. Survival? all costs.

but what he saw shocked him and moved him, and now he's trying to
rewrite the event to give himself a measure of justification...

It's spurring him on further and further right now. He's just seeing
what's going on around him as more proof that it needs to be stopped,
and that they are right to do so; a closed system worldview in which
anything can be worked into it and rationalised.

   Another war. There was always another war. Now that they had
committed themselves totally to their plan to rid the world of war and
usher in a Golden Age, where all desires and all fortunes would come
true all they did was war.

Needs another comma after "would come true".
And:  Life's full of little ironies, isn't it...?  :)

I'm a big fan of irony-- I find it absolutely delicious. Perhaps that's
why I'm such a happy guy since I find it nearly everywhere (and you
thought you'd never hear of a happy cynic, eh?). :)

   "Why, may I ask, do you want this one?"

   "So I don't forget what we have lost trying to achieve our goal."

   A single tear, shed for the price their vision was incurring.

And so, perhaps he's finally understood after all.


A nice vignette, offering some insight into how Folken could bear to
do what he did.  Bravo.

Thanks! Maybe one day I'll have something more than a vignette for
Escaflowne... that'd be nice, actually. Hrm, maybe something about
Balgus and his wanderings before returning to Fanelia, or Allen's
life up until meeting Balgus, and/or afterwards... then again,
maybe I should work on some of my more outstanding projects, eh? ^_^
(damned not-finishing-things!) 

Matthew Lewis is:
	Matt on IRC
	Sojiro_Seta on Kawaiimuck
	maybeso@ican.net
	a casualty of causality
	experimenting with a webpage at:
http://www.geocities.com/Tokyo/Flats/9345/index.html
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My mind is like a vacuum-- nature abhors it.
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