I yet live!
Many apologies -- my job keeps me very busy now, but I want to try and
C&C some while I can. First up on the chopping block-- err....
Jonathan Rosebaugh wrote:
Fiat Justitia Ruat Caelum
"Let there be justice though Heaven be destroyed"
by Jonathan Rosebaugh
And then he said, "let there be C&C," and it was good.
Feel free to ignore my comments if you feel -- I'm a bit light headed
from a cold/fever/Captain Tripps/the bubonic plague/etc.
Beryl paced. The new Queen of Earth was, for the first time in years,
unsure of her path. What, after all, would she do with the power, once
she had taken it? Her counselors must have sensed her uncertainty.
Cain stepped forward, speaking softly. "Remember the plan, your
majesty."
Good hook, but I feel it might work better if you cut this into two
paragraphs -- the part about the counselors seems like a good follow up,
but could use a slight pause. Try this, read the passage aloud, and
allow yourself a slightly greater paise between the question, and the
comment about the counselors. It might not for you, but to me, that
enhances the story flow.
Nero flanked her, matching his partner's movements. He was about to
speak when a courier entered the room. The woman took no notice of
Cain or Nero. "Some vital information from the intelligence service,
my lady." She ignored Nero's outstretched hand to give the packet
directly to Beryl.
Waah.... Okay, now who's speaking? This segment is a bit unclear to me. I
could be light headed, but speech indicators are my friends.
Beryl opened the package and briefly scanned the papers. "A thousand
damnations." She glared at Cain. "Why didn't you tell me that the
planets would create a countermeasure against Adam?"
This falls a little flat. Some emotion in her delivery (more than a
glare, at least) would help. If she's not supposed to have an emotional
reaction, show us that, then. Just saying what happens....
The courier looked pained. "Your majesty, if you will permit me..."
Upon seeing Beryl's nod, she continued. "I've often noticed that your
'advisors' seem constrained by what you yourself know."
Aaaaah... voices in her head. NICE touch. Took me a minute to pick up on
that (and I probably got it wrong).
Also:
permit me..." -- permit me...." (Use four periods in an elipses when it
terminates a sentence, as it does here.)
The Queen considered this for a moment. It was true, her advisors were
true, her -- true; her (I think)
rather strange. They had shown up not long after she first opened the
channel and stole a infinitismal portion of the demon's power and it
power and -- power, and
was they who had invented Beryl's grand plan. But she trusted them
If it was their plan, maybe Beryl's name should be in quotation marks?
Unsure about that.
like she trusted herself, and in the end, that was what mattered. Her
only gripe was that, her advisors weren't as useful as they could have
that, her -- that her (the main culprit for comma overuse suggests the
dropping of a comma. What's our wold coming to!?)
been, since everyone else refused to acknowledge their presence.
I might be right!
She turned back to her courier. "Tell my generals to move Adam to the
South Pole. His weapons will cover half the globe from there, and our
fortifications here will make up the difference." She paused, using a
tiny bit of the power she'd drained from Metallia to conjure up a
slowly spinning globe.
This could work.
Beryl examined the globe for a moment, then waved it to a stop and put
her finger on one of the islands. "Here, where she will be protected by
both Adam and our fortress. Place Lillith here. Have them place a
garrison there to build the containment." The courier nodded and
backed quickly out of the room.
Ah, I would suggest more detail on the sphere -- I imagine it's some sort
of globe (er... function, not shape). Is it a full color model of the
Earth, or is it a scinitlating sphere of purest white tainted by the
deepest pitch in its core, and Beryl seems to see things in it that the
courtier herself could never fathom? Maybe it's just blue. And you don't
_really_ need to describe it better, even though I'm spending a lot of
time on this point -- I'm just telling you what I'd like to see. Which
is great if you want to write something I'll like, maybe not so great if
it's not what _you_ want to write. ;)
Cain smiled. "We must wait until we can control the creature. Don't
you remember what we told you? We'll be putting the power of a
demon-goddess into that construct. It has no control of its own. If
you cannot control Lillith, you'd be better off releasing Metallia
herself. And who knows what atrocities you'd be forced to commit
then?" Consoled, Beryl let the papers drop to the floor. They'd be
picked up by one of her staff and filed away in their proper
place. The Queen, the Empress, even, walked off to play her flute,
still clad in her delusions. The rot continued its subtle work,
destroying the already-tenuous pathways of her thoughts. And far away,
the thing known as Metallia continued working her delicate spell.
NICE.
The smallish woman looked sharply at her colleague before adjusting her
glasses. "I know you're upset about the secrecy, Mars, but you and I
both know that Serenity would never have approved this solution. But
it needed to be done."
Repetition of 'but' in Mercury's speech. This actually happens (spend a
day paying attention to the way you talk to people -- you'd be
surprised), but it still looks a tad awkward in prose.
"Of course, of course. Neutralize Adam and place the Prince back on
his throne. That weapons platform has to be taken out if we're to
strike at Beryl. Even once we've taken her out, the only way to
eliminate the taint of Beryl is to rewrite reality. But I wish there
were a better way. I wish we didn't have to construct these beasts you
call Angels. I wish Serenity was right in believing that the
negotiations would work out. I just wish... I wish we didn't have to
worry about these things, that the kingdom would last forever without
such problems. And then I wake up." She stood. "Come on. We must tell
the Queen at once. They'll be attacking soon."
Hm. 'And then I wake up.' Wishes, not dreams. The delivery there could
use a little work -- maybe something more along the lines of 'if wishes
were horses' or whatnot.
As she followed Mars out of the chamber, Mercury looked back for a
moment at the Angels, the future saviors of humanity. Already the
spell was slowly weakening, though it would last for millennia yet,
until the Angels were released. Mercury turned her back upon the
Angels and strode out, face firm, as the fourteenth of her creations
began its thunderous attack upon the barrier.
If they aren't going to be released for millennia, then why is one of
them attacking already?
Lightning crashed through the atmosphere of the Moon. Serenity knelt
over the fallen bodies of Mars and Mercury. They had been hit by one
of Beryl's attacks at precisely the instant they teleported in. She
placed a hand on each forehead, seeking the fading life within. She
found it, long enough for the women to deliver their final report to
the Queen they'd misled. Serenity watched their lives spiral downward
and then, suddenly, pulled out of their bodies, caught by her spell,
saved to live again. She stood, crying slightly, and set about her
final preparations. Beryl was coming. Serenity would lose, but not
without a battle.
Lightning, Serenity, They She She Serenity she Beryl Serenity -- not
every sentence needs to start with a subject. Sometimes verbs are good
-- they let you avoid repetition, they break up the repeating sentence
patterns you stumble across, and they could probably give you a way to
avoid having four commas in a sentence with twenty two words. English is
a tool, but it doesn't always have to be a hammer. ;)
The battle raged across the barren, inhospitable land. The casual
viewer would be forgiven for his initial assumptions. What chance
would a lone girl in a white dress have against the slavering humanoid
monster she faced? But the girl was Princess Serenity, reborn heir of
the Moon Kingdom, and she had just come into her power. And with that
power came memories, memories of a warning that came too late and a
last desperate plan that was never put into action. She poured her
mind into the Crystal, floating before her. Energies clawed and bit at
the stuff of reality, separating the power out of the creature before
her, refining it, and storing it away in the container prepared for
it. A beam of focused light, somehow carrying something more than
photons, emerged from the crystal and penetrated to the core of the
beast, turning it to dust.
Very nice!
"Come, Serenity, let us go to the moon." She turned to see her reborn
love, Endymion, holding out his hand.
She shook her head. "No. This isn't over, and will not be for many
years. We must wait." And turning to the crystal, she whispered
something. Slowly, ever so slowly, she, and Endymion, and the bodies
of her fallen friends faded out and vanished from view.
Excellent.
In faraway Japan, eight families mourned. Their children were gone. It
was Anno Domini 1990.
Aaaah.... The last bit of information doesn't flow. You have all these
emotional impacts and then toss out a bit of information... it's jarring
to me.
I would suggest saying something along the lines of 'vanished from the
Earth in the year...' etc. That allows the impact to remain on the
emotional important stuff that's going on, and still impart that
important bit of data to the reader.
Ikari Gendou pushed his glasses up his nose and gazed across the
horizon, looking for the resting place of Adam. He would be the first
Angel.
Which they would then call the second impact....
The year was Anno Domini 2015. Fifteen years before, mortal man had
tampered with something that he ought not to have known about. Adam
had awoken and cataclysm had shaken the Earth. Old men in possession
of documents older still had turned a nation on its side for one
purpose: Evangelion.
This works better -- the data you're presenting is all in a nice flow.
Ikari Shinji was a pilot. That is to say, he voluntarily locked
himself inside a soulless creature constructed from a being designed
to destroy humanity and lent his meager willpower to the task of
slaying Angels. This he did mainly because his father saw no other use
for him.
In his estimation, at least.
He was also a human, though this was of considerably less importance
to his father, and like most humans, he dreamt. On this night, his
first night in a human body for over a month, he dreamed the same
dream he had had thirteen times before.
Ah, yes. I remember this episode.
He did not understand why she spoke in his dreams, nor why she only
came on the nights after he had killed with Evangelion. He did not
care. For the moment, at least, he was away from the merciless world
and she, at least, seemed superhuman in her love, compassion, and
hope. That last was what made him welcome these dreams. Hope was in
short supply, out there in the waking world.
Usagi, Ami, and Setsuna: Would you like to be with me? It could be very,
very, nice....
Hehehe.... Ignore me. ^_^
Rei. He listened harder then. The lady told him about NERV and other
cryptic names, SEELE and GEHERIN. She told him about the awakening of
Adam and the plans to control humanity's future. She told him about
the soul of an ancient madwoman and the genes of his obsessed mother,
joined together in a blue-haired girl who was already learning to open
the doors of her heart and who would someday soon be a part of ancient
Archimedes' lever. She would help to move the world. And she would not
forget. And she would -- the lady's voice grew louder in obvious
anticipation -- be either the very last human or else the very first
in such a long, long time.
Hmm....
And again, he remembered nothing. Nothing of importance, anyway. It
didn't matter. It was not as if he could prevent the end of the world.
Beautiful.
He nodded. He had a head to nod with, and a neck to move the head
with, and a body against which to nod. He had surroundings and light
in which the nod could be seen. He opened his eyes. He was outside, in
a field of green, with a blue sky overhead. Buildings of purest
crystal stood in the distance, on the site of the first Tokyo, somehow
freed from the ocean. Rei and Asuka were there. Misato, Ritsuko.
Pen-pen. Kaji. His father. His mother. And the lady. The Princess. He
knew that now. She stood before him, she and her consort, she and her
company. He bowed himself before her.
Spacing conventions -- a few of those are trailed by two spaces instead
of one.
"Thank you, Shinji."
Good, good... very good.
This... was lots of fun. Thanks to my semi-prereaders whose names I
have forgotten, and thanks to the Refuge.
Fear the collective might of the Refuge, for it is, uh, mighty!
Oh, and EoE isn't canon, here, though I use a few ideas from it. I
don't like EoE, so I use TV canon
Always a good thing.
Okay.
Overall: I wasn't exactly thrilled with the concept when I set out to C&C
this fic -- I've read almost all your previous writings -- and I have to
say, you've improved exponentially. I wish I could improve my writing
skill as well as you could. And you have the beginings of a real
champion for a personal writing style -- not all of it works perfectly
for me, but probably nothing evil will (except for you, Matt. You da
MAN.) In other words, I didn't like it at the begining, but I think I
really love what you made out of it.
So, if you'll permit the mild parody:
"CONGRATULATIONS!"