[C&C] [Original][Final?] Edgepoint Chapter 1

Copy-Pasted Disclaimer: I reserve the right to be totally wrong, to misquote
facts and to make errors in judgment. I also C&C as I read, so what I said at
one point can easily be retracted on the next, depending on how the story
progresses. I don't claim to be the authority on fanfiction writing... Hell, I
see C&Cing as a learning experience. Agree? Disagree? Corrections on my
corrections? I'll thank you for it. Ignore all my comments in applying to your
fic? You have the right to do so. Take it with a grain of salt, use what you
can use and ignore the rest. ^_^

It also occurs to me that my lexicon may not be at par with yours, so any
unfamiliar word I ask about isn't necessarily a correction but just general
ignorance on my part (as pointed out by a certain Thomas Michael Edwards). As
such, it'd be appreciated if you'd have the patience to clear up some of my
questions on those particular instances. Thanks.

And my next victim is... you again.

On 10/3/05, StudioPC <studiopc@sbcglobal.net> wrote:

Note: This is an original idea of mine, some of you may remember it,
some not. Anyways, I've been tinkering with it, and this seems to be
about as close to perfect as it can get unless someone out there
spots some major problems, I'm marking this chapter as finished. All
C&C is welcome.

W-ell, you asked for it. I love it when people ask for it. (cackles)

Monorail trains roared along their tracks. Schools, parks,  and even

Extra space in between 'parks,' and the word 'and'.
 

Away from the towers, the buildings got less grandiose, smaller and
at the edges, the homes, warehouses and suburbia reigned.

Methinks you're using two thoughts at the same time. Suggest separating each
into two clauses with a semicolon, i.e.:

Away from the towers, the buildings got less grandiose, smaller; and at the
edges, the homes, warehouses and suburbia reigned.

Cronikle City was just such a city. It sat at the edge of a huge
lake, and one side of it's tallest tower was a huge TV, broadcasting

it's --> its

the news from Channel seventy-five, which also happened to be in the
building. The newcaster 

...As opposed to oldcaster?

Revise: newscaster

was literally, a talking head, a computer

No need for the comma after 'literally'

generated person crafted to visually appeal to as many people as
possible as it read off the news in crisp, brisk tones, fitting the
ever decreasing attention span of the average viewer.

Max Headroom: Someone actually _remembers_ me! Oh, the joy of nostalgia! 

    "And in national news today, clean-up 

cleanup (dictionary-verifiable word, no need for the hyphen)

had threatened the destrucution 

destruction

...Because we wouldn't want to be like the Ultimate Warrior, who invents his
own words ('destrucity', anyone?).

of the Eastern Coast with a massive

tidal wave and reportedly commiteded 

committed

The prose is stuttering. Must be because of the Jovian steroids.
 

    The Legion also announced that Jagged Edge, a former partner of
Legion leader and founder Golden Gaurdian 

I believe it's supposed to be Golden _Guardian_, unless of course in the
future, grammar has indeed become looser such that your misspellings are
actually intentional (which I doubt).

and current protector of

Cronikle City, was killed in the battle. Jagged Edge was a founding
member of Team Sentinel and considered one of the Legion's most
powerful members. In a statement at Legion headqaurters

headquarters

achievements are legendary and we will miss him. His sacrfice 

sacrifice
 

    The head came back. 

Max Headroom: Okay, so my best gig is a hastily-written piece of internet...
literature, but boy is it good to be baaaack~ (singies) ~Iiii'm baaaack.....
and better than ever...~

"Despite Cassandra's words, rumors continue

that Jagged Edge was not killed but instead led away in chains. There
are also claims that staff from meta-prision 

Suggest: meta-prison (though I could be wrong, and you have a Sci-fi word there
that isn't found in my dictionary.

S.L.A.B. was summoned to

the Legion's moon base to implant a supression 

suppression

chip. S.L.A.B.

declined comment, but observers say that this confirms whispers from
unidentified civilan 

civilian

    Astrofly, one of several protectors of Neo Atlantis, made
several public appearances in Cronikle, and in a brief interview with
News seventy-five, indicated that he has taken over protection of the
city.

Suggest: adding a double quotation mark before the noun 'Astrofly' to indicate
that the Max Headroom-ish character is still narrating the news.
 

meta population. Legion member Doctor Flash is assisting in the
excavation and it's expected that the Legion will take posession of

possession of

the fragment.

    We turn now to Tom for sports. Tom?"

Tom: (Wayne Brady as a sportscaster who's being sucked into a black hole in the
camera... 'nuff said) 

******

Aeon City, five years later...

Eyng? Woooow, what a nice segue, seeing that it was Cronikle City that was
being discussed above in 'The Daily Show with Max Headroom.'

    It wasn't the first time that James Clancy had had a knife held
to his throat, but it was the first time he had woken up to it. The
knife was being held by a muscular young woman whose completely black
eyes marked her as a Jove, a user of Jovian Steroids.

James Clancy: Chyna? Chyna, is that you?

This fic has more has-been celebrities in it than a Michael Jackson wedding.
(zing!)

    Without even blinking, James snatched her wrist and poked her in
the neck with two fingers. Her knife fell from her suddenly useless
hand. Poking her in the neck again, he shoved her off the bed.
Sitting up, he felt around but found no blood. He tossed the knife
away and looked down at his attacker as memory 

You're missing the article 'a' or 'the' in between 'his attack as' and 'memory'

of the night before

came back. Not attacker, 

You're missing the pronoun 'his' or the article 'the' before 'attacker'

the prostitute he had picked up last night.

She was easily six six, 

Suggest: six feet, six inches,

with large, firm breasts. Her hair shimmered

like white gold as it flowed down her back. Her skin was a golden
brown and her arms were smooth, flawless muscle. 

Wow. It's Trish Stratus! Either her or any other blonde, bimbo-ish Diva found
in RAW who just got a tan.

She was hardly a

bodybuilder, 

Or else she'd look like a sex-changed Wayne Gretzky

but no soft and curvy example of femminity 

femininity
 

    Jovian Steroids. Most potent steroid known to man. Disease
immunity, the body of dreams, enhanced intellegence, 

intelligence

strength, and

reflexes. Meta-powers in a bottle, so to speak.

Vince McMahon: ...And that's why you now have a lowball contract, Christian. 

Christian: Why? So you could keep the 'top draws' juiced up?

    Of course, the human body was never meant to be altered like
that. Cut off the supply, and the user did a biological implosion,
wasting away into a puddle of goo. Used carefully and rationally,
however, and the user could live a long life of fifty years or so
beyond normal life expentantcy.

expectancy

...Or so wrestlers and baseball players keep telling themselves.

peeling, the battered climate control system was slowly dying, and
the decor was spartan. 

Not sure, so I merely suggest: spartan --> Spartan (this uncertainty roots from
my confusion on whether 'Spartan', when used as a descriptor, should be
capitalized or not)

In one corner, neatly stacked, was his only

vice, the one luxury he allowed himself. 

James Clancy: The mighty UNO!

Puzzle discs. Each one full

of word games, logic puzzles, and the like. Then he looked out the
window and caught sight of his reflection. It showed a lean, athletic
young man in his early twenties with dark hair and a tattoo on his
left shoulder. 

Er, _this_ from a guy whose hobbies consists of puzzles and word games? Well
now, looks like it's about time I flexed my pecks! Let's play boggle! 

What it was was hard to tell anymore, the subtle lines

having long ago been blurred by a bullet wound. He frowned. Not to

to --> too

long ago, that image would have been covered with a full black
bodysuit. A single jagged silver slash across his chest from shoulder
to hip would be his symbol.

Hmmm. Y'know, this meta-protagonist of yours strangely reminds me of a typical
Mary Sue/Self Insert, but this time there's no fanfic for him to get into. Or,
heck, any other generic man's-man sci-fi protagonist with a myriad of symbolic
and mysterious markings and scars on his underwear-model-type body. Oh, and
look! He also must be really intelligent, 'coz he's into playing scrabble too!

...He's got nothing on Ash from Evil Dead, though. 

    Five Years ago, James Clancy would have sooner shot himself then

then --> than

Shot himself with what?

James Clancy: Aren't you paying attention to the story? JOVIAN STEROIDS, that's
what!

screw a prostitute.

James Clancy: I need the shot of juice before screwing. Y'know, so I could...
last longer. (coughs)

    With a snarl of fustration, 

frustration,

James Clancy: DAMMIT, I am NOT the one-minute WONDER! (snarls in frustration)

Dan Akroyd: (the doctor from Fifty First Dates) Dammit, James... Get off the
juice!

he hurled his coffee cup at the

window, but it only bounced off and smashed on the floor.

(sound of muted trumpet) Mwa-wa-wa-WAH.

    "Something wrong?" Marla asked as she emerged from the shower.

James Clancy: You enjoyed last night, didn't you?

Marla: I sure did, Speedy Gonzales. (zing!)

    "Bad memory," James said. He handed her the bag and a small cred
note. "A tip. Go buy yourself something nice."

Marla: Hmmm. Vaguely misogynistic comment from big, buff man... check.

James Clancy: Honestly, when you want to do something nice... Now go get me a
beer!

    Marla tucked the steroids and the note into her small cloth
purse, which was decorated with a small butterfly brooch, dressed,
and walked to the door. "You know something," she said, "you're the
first mark who's gotten me off in two years. 

Marla: (as Trish Stratus) And don't even ask me about the smarks! Whine, whine,
whine... So why the hell do they still keep on watching?

Hmmm... since Marla's quite smitten with James, how much are you going to bet
that she's going to get kidnapped soon?

Marla: Fifty credits!

Hey, you can't bet on yourself!

    James smiled at that and stepped into the shower. He'd have to
leave for work soon . . . such as it was.

James Clancy: I still have other hunky plumbing jobs to do.

    James sighed as he unwrapped the soy dog and bit into it. Only
the best imitation food for the chronically poor. Which was what he
would be if he couldn't sell some of the stuff. 

Suggest: revision of the above sentence. It's a fragment, it is... and not a
particularly good, stylistic one at that, IMO.

was actually the size of Aeon City. That eye used to be his home. The
Hero Legion's main headqaurters, 

headquarters

a watchful eye watching over us all,

or so the saying went.

    He stuck out his tounge 

tongue

    As he walked, he whistled what sounded like a meaningless ditty,
but was actually a signal to anyone listening who might be interested
in some of his wares, hell, he might even give 'em a discount, he
just needed to make rent, who needed food as long as he had a home,
right?

Who needs paragraphs if you can make run-on sentences?

Suggest: splitting that run-on into cohesive, tight, and one-thought sentences
with proper separation of clauses by virtue of savvy punctuation.

    When his foot kicked something, he glanced down and saw a
butterfly brooch lying on the walk. Crouching, he picked it up. This
looked an awful lot like Marla's brooch. 

Ah. So the rather detailed look that the narrative prose did was actually of
some significance. If anything, that's worthy of praise. Congrats on the use of
the foreshadowing device, fic.

She must have dropped it. He

turned the brooch over in his hands and frowned, the pin was stuck
through a small swatch of fabric. 

Replace the comma after 'frowned' with a semicolon to separate the run-on-ish
part of the sentence into an independent clause that's somehow related to the
rest of the sentence. Either that or replace the comma with a period and
capitalize 'the' into 'The' so as to separate the clause into a standalone
sentence.

    'You're not in the game anymore,' his inner voice insisted.

Triple H: Hell, you're not even a player anymore... Are you, James?

'Besides, even if the brooch is hers, she probably just got a frisky
mark. 

frisky mark: I'm part of the Chain Gang! Oooohh... Boobies! Baby hungry! (gets
frisky)

    James stood, but for some reason, gazed at the nearby
warehouses. The chip may have turned him into a human, but the Golden
Gaurdian 

Gaurdian --> Guardian

Either you did the misspelling of 'Guardian' on purpose, or something else
entirely. I admittedly am impressed by the consistency of your errors. 

had taught his young partners to be observant. 

'partners'? So other than him, there's another, um, partner to the Golden
'Gaurdian'?
 

    But James' feet were already carrying him across the yard.

James's feet were

Even with the 's' letter ending, the apostrophe-no-'s' rule applies only to
plural words that end with 's'. Since 'James' is a singular noun, to show
possession to feet you must tag 'James' with an apostrophe-s.

It had taken some looking around and the chance finding of a crowbar,
but James found an open window that he could pull himself through.

'found', eh?

James: (shrugs) I already found the open window. The crowbar was for, er,
protection.
 

    The warehouse appeared to have been a printing plant at some
point. There was massive amounts of machinery 

There were massive amounts of machinery

Grammar Rule #1: Verbs HAS to agree with their subjects.

    The source of the glow turned out to be a bank of monitors and a

Extra line space in between the paragraph/sentence of 'The faint glow...' and
'The source of the glow...'

steel circle around a circle of glowing blue light. A ramp led up
into the light and strapped to a chair at it's foot was Marla. 

I want to say that I didn't see this coming, but I don't have a particular need
to lie.

She

wore a blue coverall and her expression was terrified. 

...As opposed to existentialist meaninglessness?

    Without even changing expression, the two men stood and walked
off into the shadows, in the opposite direction of the noise, pulling
hand lasers from under their coats. No dummies, these, 

Suggest: They certainly weren't dummies,

and they were

Lab assitants 

assistants

and hired muscle in one. How economical.

James Clancy: Smart and muscular? They must be self-inserts from Dreammakers
Travel! Shit, I need to call Carver and Haley in here, NOW!

surprise, James vaulted over the edge of the montiors 

monitors

    "Lonley again?" she asked him with a small smile.

Lonley --> Lonely

    "Neither was my current profession," James said bitterly as he
went to work on the strap around her waist. There was a flash of
golden light and James' ribs 

James's ribs

...If you were paying attention to my corrections, you'd know why.

felt like they'd been hit with a

sledgehammer. 

Triple H: Come're, you piece of crap! Don't you know who I am? I'm the
GAME-MAH!

He collapsed on Marla's lap. The toes of his boots

dragged along the ramp and then he was falling.

Grammar Comments: Spell-check this bad boy. I've mentioned in previous C&Cs
that formatting errors kills more fics than Self Insert content. Well, the
third place for the category of "Best Fic Killer" goes to fics that have not
been spellchecked. This fic is worse spelling and grammar-wise than your other
fic, 'The Three Senshi.; The latter fic is light years ahead of this one by
virtue of spelling alone. 

Missing Words: You miss putting in words like articles in your fic. Again, a
good proofread (and not just a good spell-check) will fix this problem in a
jiffy.

The Apostrophe-S rule: Let me repeat. Even when a singular word ends with an
's' letter ending, the apostrophe-no-'s' rule applies only to _plural_ words
that end with 's'. A singular noun ending in 's' should have an apostrophe-s
added to it instead of just an apostrophe.

Verbs agreeing with their subjects: I think you missed correcting these
mistakes because you weren't really paying attention with what you're writing.
Therefore, all I can really suggest is...

Proofread: It's a very powerful tool, more powerful than a spellchecker. It
also gets rid of brain-fart mistakes (like assitants --> assistants). To ensure
the best type of proofreading, I'd suggest you read your dialogue out loud.
This is the best indication you'll ever have of if it sounds right, makes
sense, and flows properly. If it feels weird to say it, chances are that it'll
feel very weird to read it. Make use of a thesaurus instead of a computer
spellchecker to check the proper spelling of words. Also, let your fic
percolate. If you have time, let it sit for a few weeks, then read it over.
Without what you think you wrote in fresh in your mind, you'll have a much
better chance of catching strange misspellings, nonsensical sentences, and
other problems. If you've just written the story, it's very difficult to edit
it yourself because you know exactly what it should say; so you read what you
think you wrote, rather than what you actually wrote. (Paraphrased from Katsu
no Miko's Guide to Life... j/k, her Guide to Writing Better Fanfics)

Oh, and believe it or not, I may have missed a grammar error here and there. As
such, I'm leaving the rest of the editing to you... just because I firmly
believe that authors should be the best editors of their fics. Besides, aside
from the errors mentioned above, you have a decent handle of the English
language. I'm sure you can handle further edits by yourself.

General Comments: In other avenues of discussion... Sorry to say, but I think
this originalish fic sucks. Or blows. Either of the two or both. Here's why.

No. 1: Does this really belong in the FFML? It's as anime-ish/Japanesey as a
Dan Brown novel.

No. 2: On regards to the plot... to be frank, I could care less about it. It's
too Sci-Fi-hackneyed-ish for my tastes, truth be told. Actually, it seemed more
like a mishmash of Sci-Fi/Action-Flick-seen-on-Cinemax themes and cliches that
people are most likely sick and tired of by now. Max Headroom-ish newscaster,
check. Banging up prostitute-assassins, check. Finally, the use of these myriad
cliches, coupled with the rather ridiculous amount of spelling errors, makes it
hard for the reader (i.e. me) to take this fic seriously.

No. 3: The fic is amateurish, laughable in its presentation, barely has a plot,
ambiguous (in the 'Huh? Whudahellappun?' way), and the sci-fi references were
mostly stitched together that you'd think the Farelly/Wayan brothers wrote
this. It's not even very unique in its premise since this kind of script (the
dystopian future wasteland) is a dime a dozen on the indy film circuit.
Furthermore, its presentation was so bland that reading it reminded me of
watching Yokohama Quiet Country Cafe/paint dry. It's not the most grammatically
correct story I've ever seen either. Nevertheless, I've seen worse fics get the
most praise, so maybe yours ain't so bad. Find you niche... though, for good or
for ill, I ain't your niche.

But don't feel bad. There's still some good news! The good news is that the
'mysterious' formatting problems of before found in The Three Senshi has
'miraculously' disappeared in this fic. Kudos to you on that regard. Also,
despite my distaste with the rather generic setting, the generic anti-hero, the
generic prostitute/token woman/fanservice fodder and the generic evil
scientists doing... God-knows-what, the generic cliffhanger still has me
generically curious as to what's going to happen next. Granted, I still found
this fic rather boring to the point of hate, but the cliffhanger (at least) did
have some promise. Call it a simple case of the Zeigarnik Effect in action.
 
In any case, ignore my caustic comments if you'd like. Just because I don't
like your fic doesn't necessarily mean every single reader who chances upon
your fic won't like it. I'm only "keeping it real" and telling you straight out
what I found wrong in the fic. If you want to keep your fic as is (not
literally, since this fic is essentially still in draft form), good for you. If
you found my comments helpful in some level, even better.  The best advice I
could give you that you needn't take with a grain of salt is to keep on
writing. Make use of whatever corrections suits your fancy and ignore the
rest... It's your fic. I also apologize for any spelling and grammar mistake my
C&C has made. It'd be ironic for a correction to need a correction, but we're
all only human, after all.

Ja!
Abdiel

__________________________________________________
Do You Yahoo!?
Tired of spam?  Yahoo! Mail has the best spam protection around 
http://mail.yahoo.com 

             .---Anime/Manga Fanfiction Mailing List----.
             | Administrators - ffml-admins@anifics.com |
             | Unsubscribing - ffml-request@anifics.com |
             |     Put 'unsubscribe' in the subject     |
             `---- http://ffml.anifics.com/faq.txt -----'