Make Coloured Copies, Burn Chapter 5.
Jul. 19th, 2020 07:33 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
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antishurtugal_rebornI nearly posted this without an opening paragraph. That wouldn’t do. Let’s see… opening paragraph. I, uh, I got nothing. Imagine the Hatter and Hare as train conductors because.
Chapter 5?
Madness!
Section 1. Kira wakes up, looks around, goes back to sleep.
Section 2. Kira wakes up, acknowledges that even a basic med check should have found the alien thing, then has a quick pity party.
Section 3. She meets a major in fleet intelligence, I will come back to this later, she makes a comment about keeping quarantine being very important to xenology. The conversations in this book are enough to summon every grinch in the galaxy. Noise NOISE NOISE NOISE!
Section 4. Oh apparently them not finding it is a plot point mystery not gross incompetence. I’m going to do a quick check on the status of my bridge of disbelief: suspension cables have snapped, droning noise resonated, concrete shattered, and it’s in the river. Yep towers have collapsed, it’s wet now. Alrighty. Time to have a quick check with the build team… and that’s a roomba with a screwdriver taped to it. How is that supposed to rebuild a bridge? Forget it, I’ll do it myself. The book sure isn’t going to help.
And while the line doesn’t happen the event does. So it’s chapter 5. Chapter 5 is when:
"Nanomachines, son. They harden in response to physical trauma."
Happens
Then “that’s classified” happens. Audible gasp.
Oh, there’s an Ensign Kaminski. That’s nifty.
Right, this chapter, like all the others, is made out of 100% pure undiluted fail, doused in fail sauce served on a plate of kiln dried bull crap. I could slam the details. Here’s a few.
Fleet Intelligence does not get a unique uniform, nor are fleet INT officers spies. They create and give presentations on things like: local culture and laws so that crew members can go ashore without embarrassing themselves or the fleet or getting in trouble for no reason. The only information they are ever looking for are ways to minimize danger to the ships and crew of the Fleet. So everything the officer does is nonsensical and wrong.
The doctor is weird.
Ensigns do not serve aboard ships. Ensigns are still in training and are professional students. Sub-lieutenants or second lieutenants depending on the service are the lowest rank to be on a working ship and they will not serve as medical assistance. That job is for enlisted people, most of them are referred to as baby docs on a ship and are either corporals, master corporals, or maybe sergeants, they might have navy ranks instead depending on the service. But, this one has a Major in Intelligence, although there is a Captain running the ship? That’s not really supposed to happen. If they are using army or air force ranks then it should be a Colonel running the ship not a Captain. Anyway all the military stuff is just wrong.
But, that’s not the important part. The important part is that this chapter must not exist. It functions to introduce Kira and the reader to the capabilities and nature of the alien mechanism while maintaining a base level of mystery in an effort to keep some level of interest until the plot can finally kick in some 100,000 words later.
This is stupid.
When telling a story the story should be large enough to contain itself. This one is not. This one starts way way way before the beginning. It tells the tale of an epic quest from the couch to the fridge to grab a can of pop. But, instead of starting on the couch it starts at a bottling plant. You get an unending description of… nothing because it is trying to keep the flavour of pop a secret until after the fridge is opened.
Yes, I am going to run with this.
That makes this chapter a detailed description of a can of is this pepsi or coke? Who knows? Making its way downtown walking fast, faces passed and home bound. Soon to be in the fridge. When it gets there. A thousand miles later, if it could just see you tonight… It won’t though.
The result is that things have been written into a corner. In a non crap book these last two chapters wouldn’t exist. Instead Kira should have woken up to find that she’d accidentally caused something to activate on one of the other moons of that gas giant and now the moon they are on is being attacked by piano riding cybird persons with hyper-pressurized soda cannons and she has to use her new found superpowers and alien Grinch suit to survive and go save her friends.
If you really want to rock it, give Neghar an identical suit and have her get killed by the baddies. That’ll crank the tension up a notch. At that point humanity has discovered it just accidentally chose sides in some sort of massive space war. And now stuff is happening. We’ve started the story.
Unrelated:
have a new song.
Chapter 5?
Madness!
Section 1. Kira wakes up, looks around, goes back to sleep.
Section 2. Kira wakes up, acknowledges that even a basic med check should have found the alien thing, then has a quick pity party.
Section 3. She meets a major in fleet intelligence, I will come back to this later, she makes a comment about keeping quarantine being very important to xenology. The conversations in this book are enough to summon every grinch in the galaxy. Noise NOISE NOISE NOISE!
Section 4. Oh apparently them not finding it is a plot point mystery not gross incompetence. I’m going to do a quick check on the status of my bridge of disbelief: suspension cables have snapped, droning noise resonated, concrete shattered, and it’s in the river. Yep towers have collapsed, it’s wet now. Alrighty. Time to have a quick check with the build team… and that’s a roomba with a screwdriver taped to it. How is that supposed to rebuild a bridge? Forget it, I’ll do it myself. The book sure isn’t going to help.
And while the line doesn’t happen the event does. So it’s chapter 5. Chapter 5 is when:
"Nanomachines, son. They harden in response to physical trauma."
Happens
Then “that’s classified” happens. Audible gasp.
Oh, there’s an Ensign Kaminski. That’s nifty.
Right, this chapter, like all the others, is made out of 100% pure undiluted fail, doused in fail sauce served on a plate of kiln dried bull crap. I could slam the details. Here’s a few.
Fleet Intelligence does not get a unique uniform, nor are fleet INT officers spies. They create and give presentations on things like: local culture and laws so that crew members can go ashore without embarrassing themselves or the fleet or getting in trouble for no reason. The only information they are ever looking for are ways to minimize danger to the ships and crew of the Fleet. So everything the officer does is nonsensical and wrong.
The doctor is weird.
Ensigns do not serve aboard ships. Ensigns are still in training and are professional students. Sub-lieutenants or second lieutenants depending on the service are the lowest rank to be on a working ship and they will not serve as medical assistance. That job is for enlisted people, most of them are referred to as baby docs on a ship and are either corporals, master corporals, or maybe sergeants, they might have navy ranks instead depending on the service. But, this one has a Major in Intelligence, although there is a Captain running the ship? That’s not really supposed to happen. If they are using army or air force ranks then it should be a Colonel running the ship not a Captain. Anyway all the military stuff is just wrong.
But, that’s not the important part. The important part is that this chapter must not exist. It functions to introduce Kira and the reader to the capabilities and nature of the alien mechanism while maintaining a base level of mystery in an effort to keep some level of interest until the plot can finally kick in some 100,000 words later.
This is stupid.
When telling a story the story should be large enough to contain itself. This one is not. This one starts way way way before the beginning. It tells the tale of an epic quest from the couch to the fridge to grab a can of pop. But, instead of starting on the couch it starts at a bottling plant. You get an unending description of… nothing because it is trying to keep the flavour of pop a secret until after the fridge is opened.
Yes, I am going to run with this.
That makes this chapter a detailed description of a can of is this pepsi or coke? Who knows? Making its way downtown walking fast, faces passed and home bound. Soon to be in the fridge. When it gets there. A thousand miles later, if it could just see you tonight… It won’t though.
The result is that things have been written into a corner. In a non crap book these last two chapters wouldn’t exist. Instead Kira should have woken up to find that she’d accidentally caused something to activate on one of the other moons of that gas giant and now the moon they are on is being attacked by piano riding cybird persons with hyper-pressurized soda cannons and she has to use her new found superpowers and alien Grinch suit to survive and go save her friends.
If you really want to rock it, give Neghar an identical suit and have her get killed by the baddies. That’ll crank the tension up a notch. At that point humanity has discovered it just accidentally chose sides in some sort of massive space war. And now stuff is happening. We’ve started the story.
Unrelated:
have a new song.
no subject
Date: 2020-07-21 02:38 am (UTC)