SlickRiptide

I'd pegged Flower Knight as a fellow heroic troubleshooter rather than a Mender, but there IS something amusing about the idea that Mender Silos has his hand in the story of every hero who ever enters Paragon City.

The City of Heroes Writers Guild

Tropic makes regular postings to this forum about what's new there, so if you post something there, the folks here will hear about it and can read it there if they choose to.

[u]May 23, 2002[u]

The red lights winked into existence around the globe at 4:00pm EDT. At 7:30pm, Death strode the Earth at the head of an army of monsters. People the world over ran, screamed, burned, and died by the hundreds of thousands. Clark never made it to Lake Salamanca. Like so many other anonymous victims of the Rikti invasion, he simply vanished from the face of the Earth.

It was nearly three years before the lights in the workshop came on again.

"Fate is nothing but the deeds committed in a prior state of existence." -- Ralph Waldo Emerson

"I don't believe in fate or destiny. I believe in various degrees of hatred, paranoia, and abandonment. However much of that gets heaped upon you doesn't matter - it's only a matter of how much you can take and what it does to you." -- Henry Rollins

"A person often meets his destiny on the road he took to avoid it" -- Jean de La Fontaine

"I don't understand how a woman can leave the house without fixing herself up a little - if only out of politeness. And then, you never know, maybe that's the day she has a date with destiny. And it's best to be as pretty as possible for destiny.” -- Coco Chanel

[u]May 20, 2002[u]

The clock's hands pointed to 10:40. It hung on a pegboard that was setup behind a make-shift workbench. Tools of all sorts littered the workspace, strewn haphazardly; at least, it appeared that way at first glance. The man sitting in front of the workbench would, no doubt, have had a different opinion on the matter.

He was 32-years old; a prodigy, or so he was often told. Time Magazine had dubbed him "A new Einstein". While the attention embarrassed him, it also pleased him. A copy of the Time cover was pinned to the wall, its prominence belied somewhat by the five darts sticking into it in various places.

The man in the photo was as striking as the intellect that drove him - Tightly curled, brilliantly red hair and freckles, the unlikely legacy of some unknown Irish ancestor, topped a handsome face with a broad nose and an auburn complexion bequeathed upon him from an ancient African bloodline.

His college friends had dubbed him "Ron Howard and Denzel Washington's Love Child" and he had laughed along with them. He’d had more dates in college than any three of his frat brothers. He could afford to laugh.

Professor Jonas Clark, BS, MS, PhD, PJF, et al. was busying himself in the back of a bronze-colored metal drum. The drum was, roughly speaking, the shape of an oil drum though only about one-half the size. A large door set into the back of it hung open. It was this opening in which Clark’s arms were currently buried up to the elbows.

He hummed tunelessly as he worked. Appendages attached to the drum would occasionally twitch and Clark would nod in a satisfied manner. "MMM,hmmm. That's looking good. This upgrade should make you feel like a new man, Eddi."

An electronically-synthesized voice spoke from the 2-foot-wide dome attached to the "shoulders" area of the bronze drum. "Thank you, Professor", replied robotic unit 3DDI, more colloquially known as 'Eddi'. Lights inside of its "eye" lenses flashed as it spoke, with an overall effect that was simultaneously comical and slightly menacing. "I am able to access the new diagnostic routines and I have determined that my reaction speed has improved by 34% already."

"Just a couple more connections to make", Clark said. He stretched and reached for a Blasto-Cola, as a portable black and white television at the end of the workbench announced:

"WSPR now returns to... Stephen King's, ‘The Dead Zone’".

On the small screen, John Smith asked Dr. Sam Wiezak, "If you could go back in time to Germany, before Hitler came to power, knowing what you know now, would you kill him?"

Wiezak asked, in turn, "Is that why you sent for me, to ask me this, uh... this question?"

Clark smacked his lips and sighed in satisfaction. "What do you say, Eddi? Is Christopher Walken the greatest actor that ever lived or what?"

He took a swig of Blasto as Eddi answered, "I did enjoy his performance in the cowbell sketch we saw last week." Clark convulsed, and the Blasto lived up to its name as cola sprayed from his nose, covering a significant portion of the workbench.

"Are you well, Professor?" Eddi asked in concern.

"I'm... I'm okay, really!" Clark gasped, laughing uproariously while simultaneously attempting to cough his lungs out. He spluttered noisily until the laughter won the battle. His face flushed, he chortled; "Eddi, every time I think I understand you completely, you surprise me in some new way."

"I am pleased to have been a source of entertainment for you, Professor."

Clark slapped the bronze drum affectionately. "You have no idea, Eddi!" He looked up at the television and waved with the hand holding the soda. "Ooo! Ooo! This is the best part!"

With an exaggerated bass voice, Clark intoned along with Dr. Wiezak, "All right... All right. I'll give you an answer. I'm a man of medicine. I'm expected to save lives and ease suffering. I love people. Therefore... I would have no choice but to kill the son of a b----."

Clark laughed. "You tell him, Doc!"

Johnny Smith said, "You'd never get away alive."

"It doesn't matter", replied Wiezak. "I would kill him. Nasdro via. Skol."

"Skol!" Clark agreed, as he lifted the can in salute. He snapped off the television. "Enough distractions!” he declared. “Let's get this done and call it a night."

"What is fate, Professor?"

Clark peered into the metal body, then reached for a circuit board wrapped in an anti-static bag. "That's a philosophical question, Eddi. I was never much good at philosophy." As he unwrapped and installed it, he asked "Why? Are you thinking about the movie?”

"Yes", Eddi answered. "If I understand correctly, Johnny Smith was trying to fight fate."

Clark leaned back and brushed imaginary dust from his hands. "You could look at it that way. If he took no action, the future would occur according to his visions." He picked up the soldering iron and resumed his work. "The premise of the movie is that fate is not set in stone. The future is malleable, to a certain degree. Thanks to his unique vision, Johnny had the opportunity to bend fate in a different direction."

"So, fate is what happens when the universe is left to its own devices?"

Clark paused; brow furrowed. He chuckled and shrugged. "I suppose so. I'll have to try that one on Professor Reese next week and see what he says." He set down the soldering iron and examined his handiwork. Satisfied, he fastened the access door, and stood. "I would have said that 'fate is the sum total of a man's actions'."

"Here, let's get you up." He hooked an arm under Eddi's shoulder and heaved as Eddi pushed. In a moment, he was on his feet. Clark examined his robot and smiled. It looked like something out of a 1960's science fiction movie and that pleased him inordinately for reasons he didn't fully understand. An echo of childhood nostalgia, he supposed.

Eddi walked over to the docking station and sat down. As Clark hooked up the various computer interfaces, Eddi asked "Was Johnny able to change his fate, Professor?"

Clark looked at a nearby monitor, harumphed, and made some adjustments. Satisfied now, he picked up the keyboard and began scheduling a suite of diagnostics for the newly installed hardware and software. "Only indirectly", he replied. "He was able to alter another man's destiny. A consequence of that was a change in the destiny of the entire world."

He switched off the monitor and set aside the keyboard. "I'd say, rather, that Johnny fulfilled his destiny. If we assume that the future and past can be seen in some fashion, that means that all of a man's decisions have already been made, on some meta-level. He can't change his own fate. Only an outside agency can change it by offering him new decisions or changing the outcome of his existing decisions. That's why the ancients invented Oracles, I suppose."

He double-checked that all was in order, then flipped a switch marked 'Sleep Mode'. "Maggie and the girls are going to Lake Salamanca this weekend. I'll be joining them on Tuesday for a few days of vacation. It may be a week or so before I stop by again. Is that alright? Your batteries will recharge in the meantime and we'll have a good set of diagnostic results by then."

"That is quite alright, Professor. Enjoy your vacation."

Clark took a last look around the workshop. "Sleep well, Eddi."

"Sleep mode initiated" replied the diagnostic program. The door closed and the lights went out.

(( The serial format normally doesn't appeal to me for publishing one of my stories. My Inner Editor insists that the story be completed, edited, spell-checked, and revised a dozen times before making it public.

With NaNoWriMo coming, my Inner Editor is going to need to take a vacation for awhile. *heh* This story has been sitting around half-finished for a while now. I've decided to post it here serially as an exercise in writing on the fly instead of revising, revising, revising.

Should you, gentle reader, feel inclined to comment then feel free to comment here in the story thread.))

Love Korith's Natural Origin rationale!

I am under the impression that there is a red-side mission that takes you to Boomtown to interfere with some recovery/rebuilding effort that is underway there. Kinda weird that you first hear about it from the villain-side, but there it is.

My thoughts re: bodies in the rubble - There's likely to be a few (decayed to skeletons or mummified by now) but most of them would have been cleared out as it was possible to do so. Disease would be a major fear, and then after the war, you'd have people trying to recover and identify their loved ones.

Something to remember is that the War Walls didn't just go up overnight. (Well, probably not...) The fact that someone was working in the no-man's land between Baumton and Steel Canyon (and its other neighbors) to build the war walls is an indication that someone would probably have been working within the zone to recover bodies and important information.

Certainly, the Freedom Phalanx would have been in there checking on their destroyed headquarters at some point. I can't imagine them leaving thousands of rotting bodies if they could do something about it. Baumton is a burnt-out shell today, but that doesn't mean that nobody ever set foot in it during or just after the war.

In fact, most of the gangs in there probably got started as scavengers who found hidey holes and connections to the sewer network during the early days when it was basically open for anyone to go in and out if they were brave enough.

In short, there are probably still some undiscovered bodies in there but the majority would have been removed and cremated or otherwise dealt with.

Huh. Didn't see that coming.

Wowzers! I had really underestimated how frustrating it would be to be reading the forum for week without being able to reply!

Big kudos to everyone who's giving it a try! Hopefully, we can all cheer each other on and offer advice and encouragment when the going gets tough!

If you're looking for an idea, then just think about anything you ever wished someone would write a book about, and make that YOUR book! Seriously, you'd be surprised how many published novels get started just that way.

Especially when you're talking about Young Adult authors like J.K.Rowling (Harry Potter if you've been living under a rock for the last eight years), Christopher Paolini (Eragon and sequels), or Stephenie Meyer (Twilight and sequels).

Here's an interesting quote from an interview with Stephenie Meyer - "I wrote Twilight over the summer of 2003. I didn't think about publishing at all until it was entirely done--I was just telling myself a story. Writing just for the sake of writing, just for my own pleasure, was certainly the greatest highlight of the whole experience. "

Think of NaNoWriMo as your chance to tell yourself the story that you've been dying to hear. Then you can clean it up and see if maybe the rest of the world would want to hear it to!

National Novel Writing Month, more colloquially known as NaNoWriMo is around the corner.

I've watched it from the sidelines for a couple of years, but never thought seriously about participating because "I'm not a writer".

Well, this year, it seems I AM a writer. The jury is out on how good, but that's another story.

NaNoWriMo is a movement of sorts. It's sole goal is to encourage people to write. Specifically, write a novel. The website explains better than I can and in more detail. I bet that many of the folks here are familiar with it already.

In a nutshell - You make a commitment to spend the month of November writing a 50,000 word (or more) novel. You "win" if you succeed in doing it. That's it. There are no prizes, no contests, and in fact nobody will even read your novel unless you post it publicly someplace (or get it published!). The whole event is about letting go of your inhibitions and excuses and writing. Not about editing or judging quality - That's for afterwards.

Anyway, I've decided that this year I'm going to give it a shot. Since there's a lot of creative talent in this forum, I figured I'd do a shout-out and see if anyone else has considered it and encourage those of you who haven't yet signed up!

It's pretty clear that one of the main functions of the NaNoWriMo organization is to act as a support group to keep their participants motivated and inspired. If you've ever considered writing a novel (any novel, not just a CoH story) then consider this your opportunity to actually do it, instead of 'one of these days'.

This thread is your cheer squad and your support group. One of 'em, anyway.

Come November first, I'll be launching the story of Valentina Rodriguez, a woman who, through a series of improbable events, finds herself over her head in intrigue and danger in the best tradition of the "an ordinary person finds themselves inexplicably in the position of fighting a covert organization bent on world domination and finds romance and self-esteem along the way" genre. *heh*

Yeah, I know. You don't have time. You don't have the skill (so you say). You don't have the drive. You don't have the ambition.

Do it anyway.

The worst that'll happen is that you'll run out of time, ideas, or ambition and you'll get to smugly say "See, Slickriptide? I was right! You're an idiot!"

On the other hand, you might just get to the end of November with a novel in one hand and your NaNoWriMo winner's certificate in the other, able to proudly tell your family and friends, "I am a novelist!"

Very few people post completed stuff as far as I can tell. I'd say that if you're hungry for feedback, that the serial format is going to generate more of it. Just my experience, given that people read it multiple times when it's serialized.

Keep in mind that the forum has a limited time window on editing, so you won't be able to come back a month later and "fix" something.

That was a satisfying conclusion. Good work, and congratulations on finishing a story.

Considering that hospitals will be an obvious candidate for day jobs, you may get your wish in I-13. In any case, a posting in Jay's costume suggestions thread over in the dev's section would be appropriate.

If your niece recognizes what a surgeon looks like, you can make that look pretty easily. Maybe Doctor Smurf would acceptable to her.

Nice to hear about the Cyborg auras being available at level 1. When you pay extra for something, you really want to use it from the beginning of your character's lifespan.

"Skittered, scurried, and hopped" is a pretty good description of the fashion in which the Horedlings move, IMO. The CoT is also mentioned specifically by name, so I'd say that's a pretty fair guess for the origins of The Horde.

The Horde is not neccessarily a bunch of bugs just because they're described as moving in a fashion similar to the way bugs are described. Bugs don't suck the life force out of their prey and add it to their own.

I'm not convinced it really matters. All you need to know about the Horde is that they're ravenous and they've eaten the world.

Here's the thing - This story isn't just Hope's story. It's also the backstory of the Psychic Clockwork King. We've always assumed that he rules his insane, devastated clockwork world because he was the one that devastated it. Bluebattler, in his typical spin it another direction way, is suggesting that maybe there's a different explanation for what we find in that dimension.

The Horde is a plot device; nothing more. Spending a lot of energy on them is sort of missing the point.

Interesting story idea. Too early to judge it much other than to say that it looks original.

As far as managing the story, when folks want to separate story and comments, they generally start two threads with appropriate labeling and a request that commentary go in one and story in the other.

Alternatively, you could post it to the City of Heroes Writer's Guild, where they setup a review forum board for every story.


There is no paragraph formatting available in this forum's software, unfortunately. For fairly obvious reasons, they don't allow HTML, and UBB is extremely limited in its capabilities.

We definitely need a chocolate chip cookie chest emblem...

That second piece is amazing. At that price, it's practically a give-away!

Considering what's in Issue 13, I think that crying "Mini-expansion packs that cost real money? Doooooom!" is putting the cart before the horse.

Even Everquest, the penultimate purveyor of paid expansion packs, has always had free expansion content in addition to the paid content. If you're suggesting that the booster packs are somehow the first step towards eliminating Issues, then I'd say you're over-reacting.

[ QUOTE ]

I remember a time not too long ago when even selling costume parts would have been thought way beyond the line.

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Since when? Sure, some people probably felt that way. Others of us have told them repeatedly from the beginning that we'd be willing to buy expansion packs, especially if they included lots of new costumes and new zones or new archetypes.

The booster packs are an attempt to tread the middle ground between an EQ style of expansion box that would cost you a lot more than $10 and that would divide the player-base into the haves and have-nots, and generating no extra revenue at all, with the end result that all new content is free but less content is developed and it's released a lot more infrequently.

Nothing in either of the two booster packs is a "gotta have it" item. You can play your game perfectly fine without ever wearing a tuxedo or blowing yourself up. It's not like they made a Boomtown revamp and then said "You can only experience the new Boomtown if you buy the Boomtown Booster for $30."

There are a ton of tech robot/armored costume bits already. Anybody who wants to can make a perfectly servicable robot/cyborg without buying the cyborg pack. It's truly just more frosting on the cake.

Nobody ever guaranteed that you would get every possible enhancement for free. You want the JumpJet? You gotta buy GvE or shell out ten bucks for the upgrade. You want Power Slide, a cool cape, and a meangless badge? Shell out for the upgrade. You want vet rewards? Keep your subscription current.

You don't need the Cyborg pack. It's a luxury. If you don't have ten bucks for a luxury, or you're philosophically opposed to luxuries, so be it. You can live without it - that's what makes it a luxury instead of a neccesity. You need seats in your automobile, but there's no good reason why they need to be leather seats. Crying that your neighbor was able to pay an extra $100 and get leather when you couldn't afford it (or chose not too) is spitting into the wind. Complaining about the booster packs amounts to the same thing. It's not the end of the world. It's just another way for players to acquire options that they wouldn't have otherwise.

It's a mistake to assume that a "no paid expansions" policy would somehow result in you getting the booster pack content for free. The most likely outcome of such a policy would be that you would never get that content, period. The devs would be too busy working on the content development that already takes up all of their time - the Issues.

Given the choice between more costume options for $10 or no new costume options at all beyond what's in the issues, I'd say "bring on the booster packs".

[ QUOTE ]
I'm surprised that no one knows what she looks like.


[/ QUOTE ]

Well, if you examine the story, you'll see that the only description you've provided is a girl with no hair who appears to be a robot. That leaves a lot to the imagination.

Hey, that's the best kind of story. I've got one I'm working on right now that I find myself asking "Who besides me is going to want to read this?" and every time the answer is "Who cares? I want to read it!"

*Edited for diplomacy reasons*

I have some advice for you that would make your story more accessible. I can't tell from your posting what your original composition was like, but when it arrived in the forum it became what we readers refer to as "a wall of text". Especially the chapters in the second post.

Without any kind of breaks between paragraphs, it becomes really difficult for the reader to follow the story. There's no way to tell where logical breaks occur or where timing changes. There's no place to "take a breath", so to speak, or to rest your eyes and gather your thoughts.

I, personally, gave up trying to read it after the first couple of chapters. That's not a reflection on the quality of the story; it's a reflection on the presentation of the story.

If you could edit your story and break it up into real paragraphs and even consider indenting them, it would make it much easier to read and enjoy it.

It's the little things that matter the most in life.