Posts #381-385: 21 April 2000

Post #381, by Traceh

After stumbling around in the wet sand for most of the day, Tracy realized noone was going to find her. They were all probobly off exploring the island and having all the great adventures.

Oh yeah, I almost forgot: Traceh has so far been completely ignored. Now, that's normal for any new poster that just shows up, stands around by himself and posts something like '(name) waited for someone to find him...'. But then again, note my intentional use of the male pronoun.

Traceh was new and unimportant at this particular time, but it's still pretty odd for none of the boys to take notice. Makes me wonder if her post wasn't simply missed by most of them amid all the excitement. A lot of people scroll over the usernames and only read certain people's posts; 'Traceh' had never posted in IF before, and the handle is gender-neutral. So most of them probably never read the post and realized this is a... a... girl.

"Herumph." Tracy sighed. "What will I do!?" Just then she spotted a tall building over the top of a sand dune and off in the distance a bit. Picking up all her stuff (which she was foolish enough to haul all the way to Eagleland),

Should've used a Bag of Holding. Don't worry, every n00b makes such mistakes. Find Tim the Monkey. He'll teach you how AC's do things around here.

she trecked

Believe it or not, the correct spelling is actually 'trekked'.

up the hill and towards the building which somewhat resembled the hotel from Twoson...or was it Fourside...she couldnt even think anymore. She was so exaughsted.

It's like a line out of an Agatha Christie knockoff: She was so exAUGH

Tracy walked up to the front counter and checked in. A sighn on the bullatin board read 'Park CLOSED until further notice'.

OK, OK, I admit: I'm playing favorites. Traceh is still my friend, so I'm taking it easy on her many, many comical spelling mistakes. But I'm laughing on the inside. :)

I've never spoken to loid in my life, so I will continue to mercilessly make fun of his hopelessly bad gramers.

"I hope Im not too late!" she exclaimed as she trampled up the stairs and into the decked out room. "I think this will do just fine, my outfit aint too formal for the ammusement park!" She set out to see if the park had re-opened.

There's no such thing as too formal for an amusement park.

---

Post #382, by Mani Mani

Meanwhile, Mani was slightly hesitant.
"Umm...they look like they're having such a good time...you really think we ought to disturb them?"

Aww, she's shy! That's so cute.

"Oh, come on. It'll be fun!" Reluctantly she followed behind, feeling very shy.

^_^

How would these three awesome teens, who had saved the world, react to her and the ref, normal people?
Those are two different questions, aren't they? You and The Ref is an entirely different proposition from normal people.
"Ness, Paula, Jeff, I presume?" asked the ref. The three looked up.
"Yeah, that's us," said Ness.

Get him, Ness! He's after your girl! GET HIM!

"Well, we're big fans of yours."
"Really. We've heard that enough times," laughed Paula.

They're like the Beatles, only more badass.

"Really! Right, Mani?" Mani nodded.
"Yeah, really! I'm Mani, and this guy is...umm..."
"I'll tell you all later."
"Nice to meet you two," smiled Ness, shaking hands.

Remember, this is Tengu/Mani's fantasy we're talking about here, so you shouldn't expect them to react in a reasonable manner, such as by threatening to call the police and/or personally beat the tar out of The Ref.

Paula and Jeff shook hands with them too. When Jeff got to Mani, he smiled at her, and she found herself blushing furiously.

Characterization fail. Jeff would never do such a thing.

"Uh...hi..." she murmured shyly, managing a smile. Paula, who was standing next to Jeff, nudged him.
"Someone has a crush on Jeffie," she whispered to him teasingly. Jeff turned red.

We can all agree that nothing remotely resembling this scene--and I'm not referring to the presence of the EarthBound heroes here, but rather just talking in the abstract--has ever happened in the history of mankind, right? As long as we're on the same page here, we're cool.

"Well, why don't you guys join us?" asked Ness.
"We'd love to," said the ref, so they all sat down, he next to Jeff on one side of the table, and Mani on the end of the other side next to Paula and Ness, way too shy to try and sit next to Jeff.

Also: Have you ever heard of a group of 14 year old kids having a picnic? Me neither. Hell, no. Setup and cleanup are way too much work.

---

Post #383, by loid

"Great, I'll bet theres another big thing happening noone told me about agian."

Two misspellings ('no one' and 'again') and one missing apostrophe.

said Kiyo after reilizing Foppy King was gone.

Realizing.

"I guess I'll go back to the island and see what the fuss is about..."

He nailed that last sentence. Also, he's trying to artificially drive down his averages by posting only 25 words at a time.

Only 4 grammatical errors this time out, in his 5th post. That brings his total to 57 errors (average of 11.4 per post). He did, however, hit his typical quota of three misspellings, bringing him to 16 of those (3.2 per post).

---

Post #384, by Pikachu3164

(Man, I haven't posted in sooo long, I'v eforgotten where Pikachu, Mog, Jenny, and whoever else I was with was... I'm think we were in Twoson...)

Welcome back, Emo Boy! We missed you. Like we miss a canker sore.

[So, are we going to go anywhere, or what? I say Burglin Park. I only have 20 Peanut Cheese Bars left.]
"Sure. Beats standing here."

3164 exhibits bad IF form almost every post, it seems. Making up some completely unrelated reason to go to wherever the interesting action's going down is just lazy writing. Make up your own interesting action! But for 3164, that would involve Nirvana music and razor blades, so maybe we should just live with what he have.

Also: He didn't even come up with a sensical ostensible reason to go to Burglin Park, which does not sell Peanut cheese bars, which are sold only in Saturn Valley (and, apparently, manufactured by the Syndicate). Also: blogger's spell checker claims that, yes, nonsensical is a word, but sensical is not. So why isn't 'nonsensible' a word? ('Insensible' is, though.) I keep telling you, English is a f---ed up language.

So Pikachu, Mog, Jenny, and whoever all started walking to Burglin Park after standing in front of Twoson Hotel for an hour.

LOL @ 'and whoever'. I think he should have shortened that even more and just said, 'So Pikachu and whoever all started walking...'

[Ohh! Ohh! The Bike Shop! I've never ridden a bike before! can we go there first?]
"Pikachu..."
[Pleaaaaase?]
"We can't afford bikes!"
[But they rent them for free!]
"Grr... Fine."

So anyways, Pikachu has gotten his way

Only because Pikachu is writing this post. If it had been anybody else, he'd have been told to shut up and go write some bad poetry or something.

But that's actually good IF form: Don't leave a choice to the next poster if one of the options is distinctly bad for you. Just force it on them and make them deal with the consequences.

and is now riding in the basket of a bike that someone else (Mog? Jenny? Some other person that's with them?) is driving, off towards Burglin Park, where Pikachu will look for Peanut Cheese Bars, and probably meet up with Mani, Mystery Man, Ness, Jeff, and Paula.

What annoys me about posts like these is that the last sentence is the only important sentence. The rest is just fluff. A post that simply says, '3164 decided he wanted in on the Paula action too, so he came up with an excuse to go to Burglin Park' would have done the job just as well, while wasting fewer precious Internet bits. But then it would have failed to afford me the opportunity to make fun of 3164, so all in all, the precious Internet bits were well used.

---

Post #385, by loid

Kiyo got back to the island only to discover 2 things: #1, Fobpy king didn't go to the island for some event, 2# absoulutly noone was there.

'Fobpy', '2#' 'absoulutly', 'noone'. Only one line and he's already above his misspellings average!

"Great, now theres noone here, and I just remembered, I tied my dog to a tree 10 miles back, it's getting dark, none of my friends are here, and now I'm talking to myself."

I want you guys to know I'm being very lenient while tallying up his grammatical mistakes. For instance, 'Great, now there's...' is horrible form, but I'm not dinging him for it just out of kindness. It should be 'Great. Now, there's...'

Anyway. 'theres', 'noone' again, but the rest of it is clean. That may be the longest sustained stretch of error-free writing he's produced so far. I am sad.

Kiyo walked around alone and... well uh alone until he reilized...
"no people, no lines!"

Two missing commas, 'realized', and the first 'no' should be capitalized.

OK, so in this his 6th post, we have 10 grammatical mistakes and 6 misspellings. That brings his totals up to 67 grammatical mistakes (11.2 per post) and 22 misspellings (3.7 per post).

Posts #376-380: 21 April 2000

Post #376, by Luna

Luna had just pulled Tim out of the lake where he had come up from the water and was shoving a cup of lifenoodles in his mouth that she had found while hiking.
"Uuuh... Jellyfish are mean..." Tim mumbled, coming back to life.
"Whew! He's all right!" Luna sighed, turning to Tony, AKA Poo, who looked incredibly suspicious. He was never this nice. She turned to Tim and Nathan and stated her plan.

I think she means she regarded EBPoo as suspicious. The way she wrote it sounds like he looked like he was suspicious of somebody else.

"As I see it, we should head over to the Tenda cave. It's a safe haven, and is far away from water. Plus, I think almost everyone else is somewhere in that area. Do you guys agree with me?" I mean, we'll be far away from jellyfish, and we can rest up."

I like how she says 'hey, let's head over to the Tenda cave!' as though it were just over the next hill, as opposed to on pretty much the diametrically opposite side of the planet.

Also, +1 for pointless unnecessary quotation mark.

"Great plan!" Tim said "But how are we going to get to the tenda cave?"
"Well, I've been working on this @, and I figure it can teleport us there in a..."

Damn, she's still got that thing. I've got to get it back from her.

**ZAP**
"...Flash" she finished, landing on Tim and Nathan who had been teleported by the device before her.
"It worked! Now could you PLEASE get off of me!?" Nathan grumbled.

Hahaha... I'm actually pretty sure Nathan would be in no hurry at all for Luna to get off of him.

---

Post #377, by Little Yoshi

Sorry, Luna, but I need to make this Kraken reppelent, even if I risk my own life! The island is still in danger. I'm going...alone, probably. Um, I don't know teleport, so, please?

Wow, he's going out of his way to move away from Luna. Either (a) he deserves some kind of medal for resisting the usual teenage male impulses, (b) he's nervous about the competition, or (c) he's deploying a very cunning gambit indeed. Maybe some combination of (b) and (c).

---

Post #378, by Dr. Andonuts

"I would rather visit with Jeff than with the Tenda tribe," said Nathan. "But that doesn't mean that we have to go back to Winters. Maybe some other SMnetters already found him." He spoke into his radio, "Hi, this is Nathan, has anyone located Jeff yet?.......oh yeah, over."
The ref's voice came back over the radio, "Yeah, we found Ness, Paula and Jeff in Twoson. over."
Nathan replied, "Thanks. over and out."
He then asked Tim, Luna, and Tony, "So, who wants to go to Twoson and who wants to stay in Tenda Village?"

Wow. He wants to ditch Luna and go hang out with Tengu instead? I have no recollection of this guy being a Tenguling. This has officially turned weird.

(Alternatively, maybe he's making a desperate effort to prevent Tengu from seizing control of three of the EarthBound characters at once, most importantly the Holy Grail.)

[This message has been edited by Dr. Andonuts (edited 04-21-2000).]

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Post #379, by Little Yoshi

"Luna, I think it would be best to stay at this 'save haven', but I'm going to Twoson. It is, inland, though, so you should be fi- No, teleport me to my boat! what was I thinking?! That is, if you would, please?

Wait. What? I thought you said it was totally vital that you make this Kraken repellent, so you were going back to Winters. Seriously, you said that two posts ago. I'm almost positive.

---

Post #380, by Luna

"I'll come to Twoson. I've always wanted to go there. Only reason I came here is because I wanted to get away from water..." Said Luna. "So who else is coming? And exactly where IS your boat, Tim?"

Score one for the guys! Luna shrugs and follows along, rather than be abandoned to SirMontyG's thrilling exploits at Tenda Village.

Things are looking interesting; Tengu Man is about to mobilize.

[This message has been edited by Luna (edited 04-21-2000).]

Posts #371-375: 21 April 2000

Post #371, by loid

"WeLcOmE tO sAtUrN vAlLeY bOiNg!"
"Wow! it really exists!" Kiyo said

That sentence will lack a period for all eternity. That's one.

A few hours later Kiyo walked out of the valley with a Mr. Saturn hat, peanut cheese bars, a saturn valley lei, a T-Shirt covered in words like "BoInG" and "zOOm" in saturn valley font, a postcard he was going to send to his family, a stuffed life size Mr. Saturn doll, a book written by Dr. Saturn, uzzy slippers with litle Mr. Saturn faces on them and much other Saturn valley merchedise.

OK... let's see... didn't capitalize 'Saturn Valley', so that's two and three... 'uzzy' where he meant 'fuzzy'... 'litle'... missing comma after 'them' at the end there... didn't capitalize 'Valley'... misspelled 'merchandise'. That's eight errors so far, three of which are misspellings. It's actually not bad work by his standards.

"ZoOm! hE bIg sUcKeR bOiNg!"

"YeS yEs! StArMeN.NeT pEoPlE lOvE sAtUrN vAlLeY tHiNg! z0oM!"

loid shrewdly bails himself out of capitalization scrutiny by typing like an adolescent girl. Humorously, his grammar is much better when he does it this way.

Kiyo went back to the waterfall wearing all sorts of saturn valley things only to find that foppy king was missing.....

Two missing commas, didn't capitalize Saturn Valley or Foppy King, so that's six more errors. loid and his shift key are not good friends.

Final tally for this post: 14 grammatical errors, but only 3 misspellings, which is awesome by loid standards. I hope he didn't start paying attention in spelling class all of a sudden.

loid's overall totals so far: 4 posts; 53 grammatical errors (13.25 per post; he's been remarkably consistent at right around 13 per post); 13 misspellings (3.25 per post).

---

Post #372, by Tengu Man/Makron

The referee and Mani entered Twoson, looking around for Ness and Paula.

Especially Paula. Did we mention Paula?

They headed over to Burglin Park, where Ness' mother had said he gone.

Tengu tries his hand at 'Hoodspeak. He gone!

When they got there, they were greeted by quite a sight. Ness, Paula and Jeff were gathered around a picnic basket, laughing at things they were talking about and having a good time.

Poo was always kind of an outcast.

The referee and Mani decided to go up and talk to them...

Golly, but I wish I'd been paying attention to Gathering at this point and had the gumption to post next, taking control of Paula and writing something like:

Paula suddenly leaped to her feet. 'What is it? What's wrong?' Ness started, reaching instinctively for his bat.

Paula pointed toward the mysterious referee. 'It's that creepy kid that keeps following me around! Only he has weird paint on his face now!'

---

Post #373, by Chris

"Looks like I'm going nowhere for a little while." Chris muttered.

He walked out of the captian's tent and looked around. He was at the extreme north of Deep Darkness; indeed, he could see the tip of Scaraba in the distance. A little ways away were the teleportation monkeys, as well as the business man.

This isn't an error. The guy Chris is talking about refers to himself as 'the tough business man'. Though, come to think of it, he also refers to himself as a 'tough businessman'. I think 'tough business man' is what he regards as his formal title.

In the marshes, he could see the Bottle Rocket Man,

That's actually Ahmet the black market arms dealer.

and in the other direction, he saw the famous Monkey Inn of Deep Darkness,

Famous in the sense of 'famous among the eight people that have been to Deep Darkness and returned.'

and beyond that, the boat. The boat that could take him out of here. The boat to adventure, to freedom.

Suddenly, Chris had an idea. Surely, it wasn't that hard to steer a boat, he knew the basics of sailing already.

It's not hard at all, as long as you have a crew of, at minimum, six. If you try to steer it by yourself, you're screwed. Unless you happen to be an AC. ...oh, really? You are?

All he had to do was make it to Scaraba, and he'd do well. He decided he'd grab the boat, and get out off here soon. He wouldn't have any trouble; the captian spent all his time reading it seemed, and he wasn't going to let a little group of jellyfish stop him.

And this was years before Johnny Depp made it cool to be a pirate. Arrr!

First, he went and bought some equipment from the travelling business man. Then, he looked around, and headed down in the direction of the boat. Quietly, he undid the moors, and hopped on. The last sound he heard from Deep Darkness was the captian running out and yelling at the sound of the motor...

Chris thinks it's spelled 'captian'. It's not. It's spelled 'captain'. I figured I might want to make sure you knew that, before you went and failed your spelling quiz, all because of Chris.

---

Post #374, by EBPoo

Oh boy! Now we get to see EBPoo's retort to Monkey Boy Tim's interference. The heavy favorite in the betting is 'pretending Monkey Boy Tim was just playing right into his master plan', which is the go-to technique for AC vs. AC pissing matches.

As Poo surfaces from beneath the water, he sees a familiar face. This place must be Winters, Poo thinks. "Hi Luna! I'm Tony, better known to you as Poo. Wow, you're even prettier in person," says Poo. That's right, grovel, brown-nose, and suck up. The one she least expects will be the end of her, Poo thinks.

So far, not a bad way to carry out a plan. Puts the offending AC(s) in an awkward spot. Of course everyone involved correctly understands that EBPoo isn't kidding at all with his compliments to Luna.

"What are you thinking about???" asks Luna impatiently. "Huh? Oh, nothing. Nothing at all..." Poo says.

In the distance...a spy jellyfish is talking into a walkie talkie.

Yes, these jellyfish are able to use their tentacles, where normal jellyfish tentacles fall apart pretty much whenever they touch anything solid, to handle walkie-talkies. Waterproof walkie-talkies.

"The eagle has landed. I repeat, the eagle has landed. GRRR. I mean Poo has joined Luna! Geez, this is military talk." Suddenly, a person resembling a bird drops down from nowhere.

"Hey! Jellyfish! 1 h4X y0u! Mwehehehe. I'm Falcon24. Poo ordered me to come here and help eliminate Luna. Mwehehehehe. This will be as cool as Project: Black Line. Hold on, Poo. The Falcon has landed! Mwehehehehehe! I'm so evil..."

I can't decide whether he's making fun of Falcon24 or helping him along, since he and Falcon24 are actually buddies. Actually, I can decide, since I happen to know the latter is true. It's just more fun if I pretend maybe he's making fun of him. It sounds like he could be.

[This message has been edited by EBPoo (edited 04-21-2000).]

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Post #375, by PSI322

The sound of the noisy boat, combined with that of the captain's intense screaming, disturbed Juliana as she read "Languages of the Wild" in her tent. Frustrated, she slammed her book shut and poked her head out of the tent to look around. "Hey, Captain, what's the matter?" she yelled, standing up and walking towards him. "Why are you yelling like that?"

"That little pirate stole my boat, missy!" he shouted at her, continuing to run around in circles.

Juliana was confused and angry. "Little pirate?" she repeated, perplexed. "What little pirate?"

"That boy who was waiting to go to Scaraba with me!" the captain explained. "He just took my boat and sailed off without me!"

I wouldn't worry about it so much. He'll just get himself killed in his vain attempt to steer it by himself, unless he's... oh.

Guess you're screwed, then.

"Oh, I see," Juliana said calmly, understanding the captain's frustration. "I didn't know. You have every right to be angry." She paused for a moment. Was it a Starmen.Netter who had committed this crime? She certainly hoped not.

Hahahaha! He gave PSI322 an opening to lay the smack down, and she took it. Tension, baby.

Juliana didn't like to see anyone doing anything that might discredit the fine website that she loved so dearly, and frankly, theft was one of those things. "Could you describe this pirate to me, Captain?" Juliana said softly.

Oh, yeah. PSI322 knows how to pour it the hell on. Chris is in trouble now. Though if I know her, after he finally gives his bumbling explanation she'll go 'oh, don't worry about it Chris, it's OK!' And then he'll think, 'hey, maybe she does want me!' And the cycle will begin anew. I keep telling you, PSI322 is too nice for her own good. It's not a good idea to be nice if you're going to try to be a girl on the internet.

And yes, I know she's being just a touch uptight in a story she herself said should be fun. It's just something she does, OK?

The captain nodded sharply. In too many words, he described a Starmen.Netter all right...the description fit Chris perfectly.

Juliana sighed loudly. "Thank you, Captain," she said, wondering what had caused her friend to become involved in such mischief. "Did you say he was going to Scaraba?"

Chris is getting torn in two inside, you just know. She's ripping me a new one for being a thief... but she called me her friend! Her friend!!!

"Aye, I believe so, missy," the captain replied.

"I'm awfully sorry about your boat, but I have to go now." Juliana returned to her tent, where she put all of her belongings back into her knapsack and thanked the monkeys for their kindness. She said farewell to them, as she did to the captain, and then walked over to stand by the water's edge. Juliana pulled from her knapsack an inflatable life raft and a tiny air pump, which she used to inflate it.

That's right. Never mind what Chris is doing; Juliana's going to sail across a river expressly described in EarthBound as completely impassable without a submarine in an inflatable liferaft. But what you have to realize before you make fun of her is: It's an incredible liferaft.

Hoping that her voyage would be a safe one, Juliana set sail in her inflatable life raft for the desert south of Scaraba...

Wait... wait a minute. Wait.

Holy crap! PSI fell into Chris's trap! She's following him!

[This message has been edited by PSI322 (edited 04-21-2000).]

Posts #366-370: 21 April 2000

Post #366, by Anthadd

"Oof!" Anthadd went flying into the wall. "And I thought this was going to be a simple vacation..."

You did? Ha ha!

"How can we defeat him, then?" Sir cried.
"If only..." A nerve pained him, and Anthadd worried something had been broken. "...we could use PSI..." And he collapsed.

If only... you could... just attack the damn thing... because... it can't... attack you.

Chris awoke from his deep slumber.
Walking to the ship, he found no one else was there.
"Maybe whoever it was the captain referred to isn't coming."
The captain came up to Chris.
"Sorry, buddy," he replied. "We've got a jellyfish crisis, so you won't be able to get to Scaraba just now. Unless we can get people to exterminate them, we're stranded."

Sort of bad form by Anthadd here, actually, railroading Chris's solo plot for no good reason while his own AC is nowhere near it.

---

Post #367, by Falcon24

(Sorry, I haven't really heard about this 'til now, but I figures this would be a good time to make an IF appearance )

Welcome aboard, Falcon24! This is the first appearance of a guy who will end up as one of the heavyweights of the Gathering's Angst Club. Nowadays he rules the SM.Net forums with an iron fist and is a remarkably accurate reproduction of 2000's guruzeth, only with an added level in Up With Memes.

A rumble in the distance. A flash of light. A rather large fireball blasts into the sky above Eagleland, and slowly dissipates. Falcon24 stands there, his arms folded. He arcs his wings slightly so he can levitate casually. His long brown hair waves in the ocean breeze.

"It seems the party has started without me..."

No one has ever accused Falcon24 of having any self-esteem issues. I might refer to him as Cap'n Narcissism from time to time, at least before he starts getting angsty.

A smirk appears on his face. What gathering would this be without Falcon? At the very least...he needed a relaxing break from everyday life.

"What interesting landscape, I've never seen the like before. I suppose anything is possible, though."

He slowly scans the island from his aerial view, taking in what he sees. A few villages, a swamp, etc.

"Seems there is some commotion down there as well. Oh well, we'll see what there is to see."

Falcon arcs his wings upward, allowing the wind to flow through them. He levitates himself to the ground, and finally lands on the beach below.

"Word...seems like the guys at starmen.net really went all out for this."

Word up.

Falcon makes his way to the beachfront hotel. "I wonder if there's a welcoming party...well, enough talking to myself." He pushes the door aside and walks in.

I don't see why he shouldn't talk to himself. I mean, he's far more fascinating than anyone else.

[This message has been edited by Falcon24 (edited 04-21-2000).]

Post #368, by loid

"Grapepfruit Falls, Grapepfruit Falls... hey thats near saturn valley isn't it? Uh I gotta go." Kiyo said to the Foppy King.

Let's see... that's two misspellings since he actually typed 'Grapepfruit' twice in a row... two missing commas, a missing apostrophe, lack of capitalization on Saturn Valley, missing comma after 'Uh'... tally it up... two misspellings plus six other grammatical mistakes. In two lines.

"Yeah and for saving your life, you welcome!"

One missing comma, 'you're' is mispelled.

The foppy king just sat there, staring at the waterfall.....

Missed capitalizing Foppy King; that's two more.

"Say password"
...
...
...

Final tally for this four line post: 3 misspellings, 12 grammatical mistakes.
Total: 3 posts; 39 grammatical mistakes (13 per post); 10 misspellings (3.3 per post).

---

Post #369, by PSI322

Up ahead of her, Juliana could see a patch of relatively dry land, a welcome change to the dull, watery landscape that she'd been encountering.

Wait, what happened to the adventure of it all? Guess that wore off fast.

She could just barely make out a couple of little tents in the distance, and from within them, she could hear the barely audible sounds of voices chattering. Juliana couldn't make out any words in the conversation, however, which perplexed her a bit. Still, she was excited as she pressed on until she set foot upon dry land.

Be careful! It could be a tribe of cannibals. Or..... Chris.

Looking around, Juliana soon discovered the source of the noise. She had discovered the settlement of the monkeys who resided in the Deep Darkness!

Kind of on the far outskirt of the Deep Darkness, really.

A kind monkey greeted Juliana in its funny sort of chatter, and she could tell that it was welcoming her and insisting that she stay awhile at the Monkeys' Inn to rest after her journey. Juliana complied and entered one of the little tents willingly. She sat down and pulled a book out of her knapsack. "Languages of the Wild," read the title. Juliana dove into the book headfirst and began reading up on how to communicate with the monkeys who had befriended her...

Damn, it's too bad you don't have Tim around. Not only is he a monkey, but he can also telepathically communicate with anything, even dinner plates.

---

Post #370, by Little Yoshi

Speak of the devil!

Tim's head popped out of the water, and he shouted" You don't have to follow me, and I know Tessie has psychic powers, but I doubt it can handle these jellyfish!"

Well, then, Tessie is a sissy. Leave him to natural selection, if you ask this annotator.

He then submerged again, and went looking for the jellyfish base. He found a swarm of jellyfish surround him all of a sudden.
He quickly hid his weapon.

Quick thinking is just another of Tim's many monkey talents.

"Gee, guess you're gonna kidnap me and take me to your base, huh?" Tim said.
"This kid certainly knows how it works, therefore, we'll let you meet our leader first," One of them said, binding him.

I already mentioned once that jellyfish aren't very bright, so you can't accuse Tim of Mary Sueing here. Maybe he should seek out competition more worthy of his cunning.

Tim was escorted to the base, and was shown to the emperor's room.
It was a huge jellyfish, at least 4 ft. tall!

Tim is a busy man. He just did not have time to type out 'feet'. Plus, it's wll known that the 'e' ky on any kyboard has only so many kyprsss in it bfor you'll hav to buy a nw kyboard, so it's important to sav it som strss as oftn as you can.

The aquatic chamber had too bubbly things next to the throne(like torches),

[Rovin_Gangsta] I JUST ONE A SCOOTER!
[Rovin_Gangsta] SWEET!
[dokutake] I JUST TWO A SCOOTER!
[Rovin_Gangsta] *WON
[Rovin_Gangsta] No, I really did
[dokutake] *TOO

and there was a cage with Tessie in it in the corner! He also, saw EBPoo(your AC is Poo, right? I don't remember, so i'll call you EBPoo, ok desu ka?)!

Whoa, whoa, a little too hyper there, monkey boy. You're leaving your commas and caps dangling all over the place.

As if it had known what Tim was going to do instants before it happened, the emperor said,"Do ont even think of freeing the purple dinosaur." Tim's jaw dropped, taking in some water.
"Guess I won't..."Tim started.
"Good, escort him out of here!" the emperor said, not worrying with his psychic powers for a moment.

Good will always triumph, because evil is dumb.

Tim drew out the Masamune and slashed at the binding surrounding him. He flew over to Tessie's cage in a flash, and sliced open the bars, then quickly slashed a whole in the roof, and let Tessie escape.

Man, LY is a tenured professor in the School of Using the Wrong Words.

Before Tessie escaped, howerver,

With a certification in Typos.

Tim put the Kraken blood attached with a letter on it's back. Tessie escaped, but Tim didn't. The emperor grabbed him and EBPOO slashed at him. He lifelessly floated up through the hole, guessing that's what he got for stealing the spotlight.

At least Tim as some awareness that it's impolite and ill-advised to attempt to invoke AC God Mode to kick the ass of someone else's AC. That's what random encounters and imaginary boss enemies are for.

Posts #361-365: 21 April 2000

Post #361, by Traceh

[Please dont hurt me, its my first IF post! Here I go...]

One thing the IF board has in common with the real world: It could always use more people like Traceh.

Tracy rose from her bed that morning, having just recovered from a mild case of the flue.

I'm almost positive a flue is something having to do with a chimney. I'm unclear as to what 'a case of the flue' would constitute. Maybe Santa Claus, in a hurry, left a bag of popcorn balls wedged in there, and she was working on getting it out.

As soon as the molecules in her brain began to function once again, there was a *click* and she remebered the SM.Net get together. "Holey monkey Im like four days late!" she exlaimed.

I could have sworn she usually spelled it 'munky', as in, 'what the munky?'

Hoping to her feet, she grabbed the nearest bag that could fit all her junk and started throwing things in, unaware she was just wasting more time. "Only the bear nessesities," she thought as she glanced out the window.

Bear necessities include such things as jars of honey, claw sharpeners, and ketchup to put on whatever tourists they happen to catch.

(Traceh, you've noticed by now, had a wonderful talent for not merely misspelling things, but mixing words up with other, similar words. Comedy ensues.)

There on the grass sat Saphire, her black dragon.

You know what's funny? This was a good three years before one Chris Paolini's publishing-company-owning-parents published his badly written Lord of the Rings/Star Wars crossover fanfic Eragon. So Traceh can now take her place alongside J.R.R. Tolkien and George Lucas as people Paolini ripped off.

"Ya think you could give me a quick ride, Saph?" she called at the top of her lungs.

Paolini's hero just uses telepathy to talk with his dragon. He must have ripped that idea off from Little Yoshi.

"Im ever so late! Here are the coordinates of the island." Tracy held up the syndicate card/invitation to the get together. "Do they really want me to come? Well, Im comming anyways."

Insert double-entendre here.

"Wow, mabye I should have packed a wind breaker or something, that air is cold! And I can only handle so much!" Tracy said, clinging to the warm scales of Saphire.

I'm pretty sure dragons, despite having scales and otherwise looking like giant lizards, are warmblooded somehow, right?

"Look, there it is! Drop me off over there by that crispy tree." She slid to the ground, "Hey, where is everyone? And where IS the hotel?"
She set off walking through the crashing waves on shore, hoping to run into someone or have someone find her. Did she miss all the excitement?

Good god. She has about 15 seconds to find a bunker to crawl into before the Nerd Rush gets there.

[This message has been edited by Traceh (edited 04-21-2000).]

---

Post #362, by PSI322

Meanwhile, Juliana was still venturing through the heart of the Deep Darkness, letting her heartbeat quicken with every step she took.

That's right: Juliana can control her heart rate. She doesn't have to let it accelerate. She could drop it all the way to 40 beats per minute while she trudges through this swamp from hell, if she wanted to.

You have to admit, PSI has a talent for manifesting AC God Mode in unique ways.

As the minutes passed by, Juliana wondered what she would find here, and what sort of adventures she might encounter. Suddenly, she felt something hit her foot under the water. Curious, Juliana stooped down and pulled up a Magic Truffle. "Sweet! These things really exist!" she accidentally exclaimed out loud. Looking around, she shoved the truffle in her pocket and ventured on, slowly but surely...

It's only a matter of time before violence comes to her. She has to know that, right?

You know, it should be pointed out that there's an interesting dynamic to the Pursuit of PSI322. Unlike most internet girls, PSI322 is the forum administrator (in guruzeth's extended absence, at this particular point in time she rules the forum), so of course you have to be careful not to incur her wrath, which keeps some boys at arm's length. That only makes her more desirable, of course, but it's interesting the way it makes people careful with her (despite her relentlessly nice and cheery attitude). With Luna, well, someone's going to be a step behind her, usually bringing violence along, no matter what she does. It's more nuanced with PSI.

---

Post #363, by Chris

Inside, Chris found only one person, dressed in a naval outfit, reading a book. He looked up from his book, and saw Chris. Almost automatically, he spoke:

"Ship leaves tomorrow. Gonna wait and sees if anymore peoples is gonna go to Scaraba with me. Go to the other tents and find yourself a place to sleeps for the night."

Wait, so he's still on the Deep Darkness side? Guess I missed that in his last post.

Chris searched the other tents, but found no others. Apparently, he was the only one who was going. Thus, he sat down and puzzled over who else the captian could mean might come.

Inviting someone else to tag along. Continuing in the vein I discussed above, Chris also has a tricky vibe going on, because he's also a (newly minted) forum admin. That makes everyone else stand a bit off from him, generally. Plus he's just been giving off (a) super-serious and (b) somewhat creepy vibes throughout the Gathering. He's the one guy that may have a hard time getting even the lonely emo kids to tag along with him.

It does look like he's giving up on his PSI322 pursuit for the time being.

---

Post #364, by pogopunk

after running to the lobby to warn anybody of the jellyfish,

Nobody's been there for quite some time now, so that must not have taken long.

pogopunk became disheartened when nobody believed him.

That's because nobody's there. You might need professional help.

scoffing at this ridiculous story, pogopunk was left alone in the middle of the lobby, feeling worse than he did before he got to eagleland.

Hey, how's it our fault if your own hallucinations don't believe you?

stepping back outside, he stood in the middle of the beach, not knowing what to do. he hadnt met anybody he really knew, and wished there was something interesting. leaving the safety of the beach, he ventured into the inner island, hoping for adventure..

Did he copy/paste an earlier post by PSI322, or just paraphrase it?

several hours later, he was still trudging through the undergrowth, not knowing where he was headed, or how he could get back. right when he was about to give up and turn around, he met a sight that left hiim speechless, pink cloud!

Um... Pink Cloud is way the hell up in the mountains. And you got there by trudging through undergrowth?

This whole thread is starting to turn into a real mindf---. And I'm almost positive I haven't ingested any chemicals in the past few hours.

picking up his second wind, he ran to it, but was stopped by what felt like an invisible wall. a deep voice rang through him..

"this is your sanctuary. not mine, but yours. take it from me, if you dare."

*rolls eyes*
Ness KILLED all these guys, you dimwits!

startled, he looked around, but didnt see anything. suddenly, a strike of lightning hit him, and before he zonked out, he saw the figure of thunder and storm descending on him, approaching closer and closer. with his last ounce of strength, he sent out a psychic call,

In EarthBound IF, everyone has telepathy.

"please, someone help me, i'm at pink cloud and the guardian is attaaa..." unable to finish, he fell to the floor, defeated.

But not really. He is an AC, after all. His actual state is more like suspended animation until someone shows up to 'help' him; it's a common ploy to get someone to 'voluntarily' join up with you for some plotlining. Of course it's embarrassing (since your AC is dead and you'll have to retcon him back to life, lonely) if no one bothers to help, but the gambit depends on most IFers' inability to resist (a) violence and (b) hero'ing. Its success rate is very high.

---

Post #365, by SirMontyG

[Anyone, quick help me, please! This is Pogopunk, help!!]

after a slight pause, Pogopunk though he heard something:

[Love to help ya, pogo, but we're having a real blast fighting off Electro Specter!]

"hmm, I didn't know you could telepath sarcasm.." Punk thought to himself..

LOL! Funniest post I've read in ages. SirMontyG disses for the win! Sir is not out to make friends. At least not with pogopunk.

[Try Chris or the Dr. or Tim, and ask them to pray for us too! I'm Anthadd and I'm with Sir...] and the voice cut off..

What's funniest about this post is its total unnecessity. SirMontyG didn't even bother to post anything about his impending fight with Electro Specter (which, again, is like picking a fight with a toddler). He went out of his way to post this just to rub it in pogopunk's face. In case you haven't already realized SirMontyG is an asshole... there you are.

---

Posts #356-360: 20-21 April 2000

Post #356, by pogopunk

[please dont hurt me if i ruin the aura of this if..i had to skim through all 9 pages of it, and now i'm just gonna drop in.. you can use me in your post if you want, just dont degrade me)

Nice work opening with a bracket but closing with a parenthesis.

You can't really expect anyone to read all 350 posts of this before jumping in for their first post. If I actually finish annotating the Gathering, I'm almost certain I will become the first person that has ever read the entire thread. Just for some perspective: Right now I'm around 20% complete, or a little less. And that's by post count; the posts in the last half of the Gathering are much longer than the posts in the first half. Twice as long on average, probably. So by word count I'm probably around 10-12% through.

sitting in the family room of his quaint suburban home, pogopunk logged on to sm.net and checked out the forums. to his dismay, less and less posts were being added each day.

In point of fact, I don't think the posts-per-day rate at the SM.Net forums declined at all (beyond normal time-of-year fluctuations) until, I don't know, 2005 or 2006. It was pretty much all the way up.

wondering what happened to everybody, he went outside to check the mail. after sifting through the junk mail and bills, he came across a ragged, faded envelope. rushing inside, he took a knife and opened it up with anxiety.

'Anxiously' is the word you want.

after examining the "escargo express neglected class" seal, he opened the letter inside to find an invitation to the sm.net gathering at eagleland. growing evermore excited, he scribbled out a note to his mom telling him where he had gone, and stowed away from lax to eagleland...

'Hi, Mom! I went to Africa! Don't hold up dinner for me! Be back later!'

after jumping out of the plane over eagleland, pogopunk stood in awe over the festivities on the beach. after grabbing a peanut cheese bar and a royal iced tea, he sat down on the warm sand to watch the sunset..to his surprise, he saw a swarm of jellyfish approach eagleland from the west [separate from the ones luna, nathan, and tim are fighting] squinting at the wave of tentacles, pogopunk thought he saw the silhoutte of poo against the sun. he quickly ran off to warn everybody of the impending doom.

I have to admit I'm still somewhat in the dark as to how these jellyfish move around on land.

Also, this post is basically a quick recap of everything that happened in posts 1-250, right? So pogopunk is mostly trying to establish he generally knows what's going on, and hoping to jump into someone's ongoing plotline from here. For someone jumping into a gigantic IF that continues to move at a breakneck pace, he actually did a fairly good job.

---

Post #357, by Foppy King

"Where am I?" asked Kiyo.
"Behind Grapefruit Falls," the Foppy King replied.
"Wow! This place exists?"
"Yep."
"Wow."

Wow! This is supposed to be a complete post?
Yep.
Wow.

---

Post #358, by SirMontyG

"Hey Anthadd, I just realized something."
"What's that, Sir?"
"All this time the only thing between Tenda Vilage and Electro Specter is a small rock."

That's because Electro Specter, like all the other Sanctuary bosses, is interested only in protecting its Sanctuary. It could not possibly care less that a bunch of Tenda live a little ways off, so long as they leave Lumine Hall the hell alone. You don't see Shrooom! getting up one morning and deciding to go attack the Andonuts lab, do you? No. Because that would mean abandoning the Sanctuary, and protecting the Sanctuary is its job. So what you no doubt are about to read is total crap.

(It's also total crap because Electro Specter is dead.)

"Hmmm..."

*A loud rumbling sound is heard*

"Hey, you can't move that! I'm the strong tenda and I'm the only one who cannnyyelp!!"

Sir readys his slugger, "Hey, Ant, care to have a little fun?"

Anthadd probably won't appreciate being called 'Ant'. He tolerates 'Anth', but that's about it. They found what was left of the last guy to try to call him 'Thadd' on a few spots along the Colorado River.

---

Post #359, by Dr. Andonuts

(hey, finally another GoS member posted here)

GoS ('Ghosts of Starmen') was some kind of club some of the uncool kids formed so they could pretend to be cool kids. It might have had something to do with some online game or another. I don't really remember who was in it or know what became of it.

Nathan suddenly vanished from the shore of Lake Tess, appeared next to pogopunk, said, "Welcome to the first annual SM.net gathering, pogopunk," and popped back in next to Lake Tess.

Brothas gotta pimp each other, you dig?

He shouted into the water towards Tim, "Don't you think that Tessie can protect itself well enough? Doesn't Tessie have PSI powers, anyway?"

Quick, Nathan! Now's your chance to abscond with Luna!

---

Post #360, by Luna

Luna sighed. "That guy's NUTS.

Nuts for you!

It's like -10 degree water, cold enough to make iceburgs, and he decides to go for a swim. Couldn't we just ask them nicely to let tessie go!?"
"Somehow I don't think they're going to buy that" Nathan mumbled. "So how about it? Can I come with you guys??"
"Yeah, feel free to join in our nutso expedition to rescue the critter that made winters famous!" Luna said, gesturing towards the bubbles where Tim had just dived in. "My idea of a vacation is NOT getting terrorized by jellyfish. What a day... Well, we might as well follow him..." pulling 2 complete sets of underwater gear from her backpack.

Tim the Monkey left her his device that instantly creates equipment. (Should I call him Bubble Tim? What do you guys think?)

Nathan looked at her, clearly in suprise, but she just smiled.
"If Ness can fit a bike in his backpack, why can't I fit in a scuba set?" she grinned, pulling on the dry suit and assembling the aqualung.

Bag of Holding, baby. Accept no substitutes, and don't be fooled by imitations.

Posts #351-355: 20 April 2000

Post #351, by EBPoo

"Those idiotic humans will never be able to aprehend the fact that we're attacking. Once if by land. Twice if by sea," reports the spy jellyfish. "But that Luna girl, she is more difficult to capture than we predicted. She is a powerful one, I must say," replies another jellyfish. "I have it! Know how she uses the anti-jellyfish powder stuff? We'll just find a way to rid that stuff," says Poo.

It's too bad no one hit on the idea of using anti-human powder.

"First, what do we do with this purple dinosaur-like creature we have captured?" asks a jellyfish. Poo replies "We keep it. For now. It will be an ally in our next mission...the end of a certain girl..."

If you want my opinion, any reference to Barney the Hell Demon should be met with an immediate and permanent ban.

---

Post #352, by Chris

"Shoot! I left something behind! I've got to go back and get it. Sirs, stay here, I'm going to go get it, then, I may head on for Scaraba. It's possible there's a boat at the northern mose point of the jungle. I'll see you in another time, another place."

I guess you can't completely rule out the possibility that Chris and Sir are operating some type of Xanatos Gambit, but I doubt it. Looks like Chris has had enough of Sir's calling him out on his PSI-crush and is getting away. Whether it's to get away from Sir, or to flee to indicate 'see, PSI, I'm leaving you alone! I'm not a stalker!', who knows?

And with that, Chris left Sirs, about the time that Anthadd came up from underground.

Or maybe he just doesn't want to share PSI with anyone, and doesn't want to hang around with anyone but PSI (after all, they're not administrators, the sorry losers), so he's running away to think about his next plan.

Some time later, Chris had made his way to his original camp. Sure enough, the blade he had picked up earlier was to be found there. Chris took it, and set off in the direction of northward. As he sliced and waded his way through the swamp, he discovered incredible animals, plants, and environments. "If it weren't so bad trying to survive here, this would be an interesting place to live."

That's my feeling about Philadelphia.

Finally, Chris heard the sound of running water again, and realized he was close to the river that divided Southern Scaraba and Deep Darkness.

That reminds me: I checked, and Chris is right and I was wrong. It's a river. The Noble Warrior hanging around at the edge of Scaraba says so.

As he emerged from the swamp and onto dry land, he found a tiny outpost stationed on the edge.

Outpost? What kind of outpost?

There was no boat, but, Chris ventured inside anyways, to see if he could find anyone who could be of use.

You'd better be careful. You might have just given, say, Foppy King an opening to spring a trap on you.

---

Post #353, by SirMontyG

"ugg..I hate staying.."

So don't. Ain't no rule says you have to do what Chris's AC tells you to do. Plus, it says here you shouldn't exactly bet the farm on seeing him again anytime soon.

Sir bounced a rock on his Louiesville Slugger, waiting for Chris's return.

Louisville.

"So, Anthadd, what brings you to the charming Tenda Village?"

"Little choice, I'm afraid" Anthadd stated. "It was either this or Electro Specter, and that talking rock advised against that.."

That's what you get when you listen to talking rocks: You end up running away like a little girl from a piece of jagged scrap metal that would probably get its ass handed to it by a Guardian Digger. Amp up the medication dosage until the rocks stop talking to you, and we'll all be better off.

"Probably a good choice, even Ness needed help on that one.

No. No, he didn't. Any one of the Chosen Four could have easily stood down Electro Specter at level 20, by him/herself. If they had the Franklin Badge, then they could have stood down Electro Specter at level 1, because the only way it is capable of dealing damage (aside from the percentage-based Hungry HP-Sucker) is an electrical shock attack.

Talking about a pathetically weak boss like it scares you is a poor way to provide a cheap sense of danger, especially in IF where all AC's are known to be invincible.

Well, I wonder what now.."

---

Post #354, by Dr. Andonuts

Nathan again asks Luna, "Well, how about it, can i come with you and Tim?"
(only for Luna to answer)

Luna had better get to posting more often, or she's going to wind up with quite the backlog of requests.

---

Post #355, by Little Yoshi

"I think it would be best if we moved on, away from the waters," Nathan suggested.
"Well, go on ahead, but I'm following that jellyfish," Tim said stubornly, getting his underwater equipment ready.

Tim is so far the easy favorite for the God Mode AC award, what with his portable debug menu that allows him to equip +7/+7 Invincible Equipment of Perfect for the Situation whenever he pleases. That's a neat trick, for a monkey.

But don't worry, Tim's not going to lap the field here. Tengu hasn't gotten rolling yet.

"WHY?!" Luna asked,"If they're going to get me, they'll have to come near me, and if we're all together, we'll be fine."

Because Tim isn't done impressing you with his masculinity yet, silly.

"No way I'm going to leave Tessie in their hands," Tim said, and with that, leapt in to the water.

Flagrant play on Luna's love of animals. He figures she'll be impressed because he lays it all on the line to save Tessie. It happens to not be so, but it wasn't a bad effort. At least he's not asleep at the switch.

Posts #346-350: 20 April 2000

Post #346, by Earth Bound Ranger

(This is insane, I leave for another 2 days and you pull 3 more pages on me!!

Apparently, it is now SM.Net law that every poster has to call the rate of posting 'insane' in a parenthetical comment at least once.

By and by, Queen Cathrine, did you say that you live in maryland? I am going to be coming up there this june to attend a wedding.)

Uh-oh, PP/QC is in danger of having his cover blown!

Also: Misuse of 'by and by' there. That antiquated expression means something along the lines of 'eventually'. It's not a fancier-sounding stand-in for 'by the way'.

Mark was limping terribly, even using his sword as a crutch at times.

In the Did Not Do the Research file, most swords are not useful for this purpose, as they would bend easily under such weight and be damaged. One can presume this is a special AC Sword of the sort you see in all sorts of video games.

He was extremely glad that there were no zombies to attack him, as he probably wouldn't be able to stand up to them like this.

Lies.

None the less, he carried on to threed. His only wish was to see two things before it was time to go back to his house (hey, there is always next summer), The floating city of philosiphers and martial artists named Dalaam, and the famous preschool of the even more famous psychic girl,

Polestar.
Again: There is no mention whatsoever that Dalaam floats. It's way up in the mountains. That's all. Sorry to disappoint you.

However, his only thought at this point was getting to the threed hospittol.

Wow. That might be the grisliest butchering of 'hospital' ever recorded.

By the way, why is he limping again?

The mr. saturns were kind, but they knew little about how to heal leg bones (it only stands to reason, just look at their legs).

False. Mr. Saturn can heal anything.

On his way there, he traveled through the underground path to threed and then as fast as he could limp to the Threed hospittle.

Another, different, but still impressive, butchering of 'hospital'. What's next? Hospatel?

There, he found the nurse, docter, and healer in exactly the same place they always were in the game. There was no time, however, to worry about that. Mark went to the doctor and had him examine his leg. The doc said that his left leg was broken

You sure as hell wouldn't be walking that distance on a broken leg, son. This post has achieved Critical Research Failure.

and that he would need to be in the hospitle for a few days to get it fully healed (Earthbound medicine, gotta love it).

Ah. He just went with the previous butchering, less one T.

When he asked for payment, however, there was another shocking story. Mark took out a twenty dollar bill and gave it to him. The doc looked at it in suprise and then told Mark that he couldn't take it because that type of money was priceless (as in worth a WHOLE lot).

Reference to the insane monetary system of EarthBound, where the currency was U.S. dollars, but, for instance, a banana cost $5. An egg? $12. But don't worry: the egg is a bargain, since these are magical eggs, and if you wait three minutes, it will hatch and then grow into a full-sized chicken, which any store in the world will happily purchase for $110.

He then settled on a quarter for the treatment. As Mark lay in the bed, he wondered about all the weird things he had seen that day. This was truly starting out to be a very fun filled day...

I'm bored. What would be fun... I know! I'll go downstairs and break my leg, and then limp five miles to the nearest hospital! Whew! So much fun to be had, so little time.

---

Post #347, by loid

"hey, are you ok?" a voice said.

Two grammatical errors. I missed counting his last post, but I'm not going to go back for it now.

Kiyo opened his eyes and saw that in fact, he wasn't in polestar preschool anymore, it was just a dream.

Three. That last comma should be a semicolon, or a period and new sentence. I'm letting the fact that 'Polestar Preschool' should be capitalized slide, even though I shouldn't.

"Who are you?" he asked.
"Uh I'm the Foppy King, I found you in scrabia, you almost died you know."

That's one spelling error, lack of capitalization on Scaraba, and one... two... three... four comma mistakes. There should be a comma after 'Uh', and the two commas he did put in there should both be new sentences.

(You said ANYBODY right?)

Another missing comma. Final tally: 9 grammatical mistakes, 1 misspelling. (Impressive, that, for him.) Grand total so far: 2 posts; 21 grammatical errors (10.5 per post); 7 misspellings (3.5 per post). And this was a short post.

---

Post #348, SirMontyG

In a hollowed out tree, Chris had desided he would either get some rest or collapse from exaustion. In the middle of the night..

*krrriiiCCKKKCRACK!!!* *SmmmmmaaaAASSSHHH!*

"Uh oh, another zap eel?" Chris tried to get his wits together after sleeping

"Naw, it's me!"

"Juliana?!" Chris said with excitement

Clearly, this guy does not believe in periods.

"Heh, just havn some trouble with the manly fish! And i..wait, what did you call me?"

Sir was a few years ahead of his time, what with the lack of punctuation, aversion to capitalizing anything, and typing 'havn' to mean 'having''. He was applying an early precursor to txtspk. Well, it's 'hvn', not 'havn', but you get the idea.

A head popped through the hole in the tree, it was Sir

"Oh, sorry about that.."

LOL. Well played.

"That's okay," he stated with a laugh "it sounds like you could just use a little more sleep. We can trade off guard watch for the night."

"Sir, why are you here, anyways?"

He's hoping to take advantage of your incompetence and make a play for Juliana, of course. Smart dude, if you ask me.

"Heck, I came here for adventure, right? Besides, the improv play won't start till you get back and I've been meaning to get back out into the wilderness.."

Chris and Sir alternated sleeping and guarding until daybreak, when they both had some provisions Sir brought and headed out for adventure.

[This message has been edited by Chris (edited 04-20-2000).]

Haha. I wish I had access to Sir's original post that Chris apparently took exception to and edited.

---

Post #349, by Luna

"You think i'll just GIVE myself up!?" Luna yelled at the jellyfish, sticking 5 multibottle rockets filled with anti-jellyfish powder in the ground, lighting them, and pulling out her gaia beam again

For f---'s sake, has everyone forgotten how to use periods all of a sudden?

"NEVER! Eat energy bolts!" She finished, rapid-firing at the jellyfish while the bottle rockets fired off at the jellyfish, felling all but one, who swam off, pressumably to tell his leader or somthing.

I know I'm being a broken record here, but jellyfish don't swim so much as they just kind of drift. But I suppose we can agree these are somewhat above-standard jellyfish.

"I don't think thats the end of our troubles..." Tim muttered, but they continued on anyways.

Post #350, by Anthadd

"Odd..." Anthadd wrinkled his nose. "What's that smell? Smells like...honey?"
Following the smell, lugging his rather light backpack, compared to the beginning of the gathering, he slipped on a rock and fell into a rather mysterious hole.
The buzzing of electricity was all around him, and a faced rock looked at him.
"First, I was smelling things, now I'm hearing and seeing things. Is this...Lumine Hole?"

No, it is not, because there is no such place as 'Lumine Hole'. The seventh sanctuary is called Lumine Hall. 'Lumine Hole' was a typo. 'Lumine Hole' would make no sense, since the essence of the sanctuary is the magical wall that reads your mind, not the hole in the ground. I expect better of you, Anthadd, honestly.

A voice invaded his mind. (Hurry! Escape! You're not safe!)

I like 'invaded his mind'. Good imagery there.

"The rock...spoke to me?"
(You're not safe! The Electro Specter senses your presence! The rope behind me leads to the way out! Go! Now!)

This rock is clearly cracked, because Electro Specter (a) has been dead for some time now, and (b) was completely harmless when it was alive, posing no threat to much of anything. It would eventually outlast a team of six Fobbies just on its high HP, but it would take quite a while.

Tentative at first, the increasing volume of the buzzing caused Anthadd to panic, and run behind the rock and climb up the rope.
After a few minutes of running, which left him exhausted, he found himself trapped below the Tenda Village, which had been isolated from the Lumine Hole again, or maybe had never been. The rock there had nothing to offer.
"No! I can't die like this!" he cried.

Of course you can't. You're an AC! And you're being threatened by the puniest excuse for a 'boss' in EarthBound, or maybe just imagining that you are, since, again, it is dead.

Meanwhile...
Chris and Sir decided that, since Deep Darkness was bridged by a deep river to Scaraba,

More of an ocean, really.

the safest place to adventure to would be the Tenda Village.
Even in their combined group, they were barely a match for the enemies they met along the way to the Tenda Village.

Note how everyone is following PSI322 into Deep Darkness. Ah, the price of celebrity.

When they emerged into the village, the Tenda quivered and hid in the nooks and crannys of their little cave.
"Perhaps the shyness book wore off?" Sir proposed.
"Maybe they never read it in the first place..." Chris trailed off.

Or maybe they've already had a few incidents where some AC that's played too much Quake wanders in and starts opening fire on everything that moves.

Posts #341-345: 20 April 2000

Post #341, by Foppy King

After trying everything possible, even threatenting to destroy the island, the Foppy King was sad.

THEN CUT YOURSELF AND DIE IN A POOL OF YOUR OWN BLOOD EMO BOY

"Woe is me," he said. He knew he had to do something to avoid losing his sanity. He decided to go find someone to talk to. Maybe that Siris guy he helped. Maybe that electric rodent with extroardenary powers.

Note how he picks out the other notably self-loathing emo kids to pick on. At least they flock together for the most part.

Heck he was willing to talk to ANYBODY.

But nobody was willing to talk to him. :[

---

Post #342, by PSI322

It wasn't long before Juliana reached the base of the hill and found herself in a heavily-forested valley. She looked all around her; all she could see were trees, so many that she was sure it would have been impossible to count them all.

Probably true. Not because the number is so high--it's in the thousands, no higher--but because the human capacities to both pick out each individual tree and remember which ones have already been counted are nowhere near large enough for such a task.

Juliana began to walk along, looking at the majestic trees and reaching for patches of pale blue sky between the think forest canopy with her steady gaze.

Protip: Walking through a dense forest with your eyes focused on the sky above you is not recommended. Average expectancy of how many steps you'll take before you trip on something and faceplant: 1.5.

Good thing she has incredible perseverance, because her once-pretty face is going to be awfully sore, swollen, and bloody by Step 15. Then again, maybe that's part of her plan to shoo Chris.

Suddenly, she felt herself beginning to sink into the ground. Juliana gasped as she felt something wet on her ankles, and when she looked down, she came to the realization that she had ended up in a swamp of some sort. All around her, all there was to see was swampy, marshy land and tall trees...Juliana, without knowing it, had walked in quite far.

Just then, it all became so clear to her. "I'm in the heart of the Deep Darkness," she whispered aloud, taking a deep breath.

Hold on a second there, chief. The heart of the Deep Darkness? You just now are starting to walk through the swamp, or at least just now are starting to sink into it, yet you're in the heart of this massive swamp? How do you figure that?

I guess she's been walking on water for the past couple hours. That, or she went with 'the heart of the Deep Darkness' because it sounds more dramatic than 'the Deep Darkness'.

Her fear became happiness almost instantly when she realized that she was in a situation that would lead to true adventure.

Yeah, the adventure of fighting off Big Piles of Puke. And you thought fighting off Chris was a drag.

"Just think! I can search for Magic Truffles to my heart's content! I can make my way through the marsh and see if the Hawk Eye really exists, and if it's here!

Um... the Hawk Eye vanished when Ness used it. He didn't just leave it there for the hell of it.

I can even try to see if those monkeys still live around here, or search for the Tenda Village!" She beamed as she began to wade through the swamp. "Adventure at last!"

"Dinner at last!" beamed the group of Hard Crocodiles just around the next bend.

(Not really, of course. This is an AC we're talking about here. I'm just commenting on the slight absurdity of being excited to find yourself neck-deep in a god-forsaken swamp, were you not an AC. I'm going to go out on a limb and bet PSI322 has never been in a swamp before.)

---

Post #343, by Gauntlet Wizard

The Bookas were gone. Even with only the very minimal help Siris received from the Foppy King, they still managed to defeat the monsters.

Left-handed.

Siris went back to his hotel room and sat down on his bed for a while.
"This is more boring than I thought it would be," he said to himself. "There's gotta be something else interesting I can do..."

There are only so many mooks you can kill before it starts to feel old hat.

---

Post #344, by Chris

Chris cut away another bush with the blade he had managed to acquire before leaving civilization. For several hours now, he had been working his way through a dense forest. He figured that the best way to get to Summers would be to reach Scaraba and hire a boat northward. It was a good enough plan, but the execution was failing miserably.

You could be trying to get to Summers via Valhalla and that would be an equally flawed plan because you don't know where that is either.

Before he saw or even heard it, he smelt it. A horrible odor was starting to envelope him. Soon, Chris noticed that the ground and air were getting damper, and he began to hear the sound of running water. When he sliced through that bush, he suddenly realized what the smell was: swamp gas. He had found himself on the edge of Deep Darkness.

You didn't honestly think he was going to 'randomly' wind up anywhere else, did you? If you did, this is clearly your first Chris post, so: welcome to the Annotated Gathering!

This has almost turned into a Lifetime Movie of the Week. Desperate woman flees stalker through dark swamp! And now for a message from our sponsors.

Realizing that he was ill-equiped to venture through the swamp, Chris considered trying to walk along the outside of the swamp.

Plus: That would be the best way to find your way to Scaraba.

Minus: That will lead you away from Juliana.

So what's your goal really? Let's find out!

"On the other hand, the odds are that I'll find myself a boat of some sort if I get to the northern part of the swamp, or at least that salesman and the monkeys."

You could get there by walking around the outside, too. Except not; Chris should have pointed out that there is no outside edge of the swamp that's safe for walking, except at the far northern end, which is where the only quasi-civilization is. That would make a fair justification for continuing chasing after his girl.

Thus, Chris started making his way through the swamp, at times submerged so deep that he could hardly breathe. Soon, he was deep in the heart of Deep Darkness,

He quoted her on this.

and he realized that the sun was starting to set. He had to quickly find a place to sleep, preferably on an island, and with someone else to keep watch.

Perhaps someone who is already in the heart of the Deep Darkness. That would be nice. Actually, it's probably so dangerous that it would be best if they both stay up...

Already he had run into several Zap Eel's and the like,

I'll take unnecessary apostrophes for $200, Alex.

and he figured that he needed to have traveled in a group of greater than one. Unfortunately, that was a little difficult to do now, unless someone willing to help him could find him.

Man, this guy really has issues, for reals, kids. He's timid enough to avoid overtly stalking PSI322's AC, but he just... can't... stop... with the very thinly veiled pleas for her to, I don't know, be his e-girlfriend or whatever. Just when I start thinking, okay, he's finally relaxing... BOOM! He writes a post like this one.

It's quite clear that PSI322's options at this point are: (a) Allow Chris to remain within five feet of Juliana at all times, or (b) quit posting in the Gathering. Since I know she was around until the end, I therefore deduce that she went ahead with option (a). Hey, the attention is kind of fun, in a weird way.

---

Post #345, by Warrior of the Eye

Meanwhile... over the beach...
Chris (henseforth referred to as Chris S.)

It's shorter than 'Not the Stalker Chris.'

had given the first mate the instruction to keep a constant lookout for any "Enemies of SM.net" and then prepared to head for the island.
As Chris S. jumped, he shouted, "Like an eagle, to the sun!!"
Unfortunatly, a slight gust of wind blew is frail 85lb. body a good mile as he fell, as well as shifing his body's position to be parrallel to the ground.
"OHHHHHHHHH, CRUDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDD!!!!!!" Chris S. shouted as he hurtled towards the sand...

In a few minutes, Chris S. found himself awkened by __________ who had happened to be nearby and heard Chris S. shouting. Chris S. quickly go to his feet and began explaining his story to ___________ (same person) which went something like this...

This is such bad, bad IF form. The problem is that WotE wants to invite anyone to join his plotline, but doesn't want to stop writing (like all Tengulings, he was longwinded). He tried to have his cake and eat it too here. It doesn't work very well.

I am a bit of an amuter inventer.

Out of two words so far in this paragraph that were longer than five letters, that's two misspellings.

A few weeks ago, I had finished a divice that would make video games real.

'Divice' makes him 3 for 4.

Well, my first thought was to test this out on EarthBound. I had origionally

Setting 'EarthBound' aside, that makes him 4 for 6.

intended for Eagleland and its fellow lands to show up in the Saharra.

'Saharra' makes him 5 for 9.

The climate and topography would have been changed there thus making the Saharra more pleasent.

Yet he nails 'topography'. I'll never understand. He whiffed on 'Saharra' and 'pleasent', though, so that makes him 6 for 15.

Well, I guess I made a slight mistake and generated the island here. So when I heard of this gathering, I figured they had found my island. I then spent a few weeks researching and making sure that this island had never been seen before... and it hadn't.

Suddenly his inability to spell anything longer than five letters vanishes. I'm as stumped as you are. I seriously wonder if two different people didn't write this post.

So, when I heard that the FBI was coming to attack, I put together a small army, built an airship, and as soon as I was in international waters, I defected from the U.S. and swore to become a citizen of Eagleland. Which brings me here...

Did you guys get all that? I distracted you by counting his spelling errors, I know. To recap: WotE is claiming creatorship of the entire island. Probability nearly all the other authors will simply pretend this post doesn't exist: 94%.

Chris S. stopped here because someone else had just shown up...
(Someone fill in the blanks. Also, when using Chris S., just remember that he doesn't curse or use slang, except for some Southeastern slang {i.e. ain't} and that he is as smart and strong as Jeff.)

Yeah, but he's not incredibly strong.

Posts #336-340: 19-20 April 2000

Post #336, by loid

(AAAAACCCCCKKK! I JUST GOT FROM PIANO AND THERE ARE LIKE 10 MORE!)

We continue to stand in awe of how fast the posts are coming.

Kiyo had just became aware of what was going on: he somehow got knocked out, Paula found him and took him back to th... wait a sec, PAULA FOUND HIM? It didn't make sense, was this real or a dream?

loid had to be tripping on God knows what kinds of hallucinogens.

---

Post #337, by SirMontyG

(Whoa, this is fast...)

"Thanks for the lift, guys!" Said Sir, walking out of the black bus.

"Well, it ain't like this was for free! You owe us some more time doubling on sax." One of the five men remaining on the bus stated.

It's funny the myriad ways IF posters come up with to try to one-up each other in Cool.

"For you, lucky, anything.

'Lucky' should be capitalized. It's the name of the Runaway Five's vaguely official leader (the fat guy in red, played by Not John Goodman.)

Tell Venus I said goodbye!" Sir waved to the band as it rode back into the interior of the island. Sir, after traversing the Dusty Dunes Desert alone,

Because he's just that awesome.

came across the Runaway Five making a return engagement to Toppola Theater in Fourside. After the quick adventures Sir had with the group, he asked to be let off by the ocean, by Chris's infamous rock in fact. Walking towards the place, he saw Chris right where he thought he'd find him.

Wait, Chris hasn't struck out after PSI322 yet? ...huh. I guess he hasn't. Good call on where to find him, then.

Odd that Sir would come looking for Chris, isn't it? Odd until you realize everyone knows where Chris is going to be headed. Sir is making sure to tag along. Chris: You now officially have competition.

"Beautiful, isn't it? The ocean, I mean. It's things like this that make you think there really IS a programmer.."

LOL @ creationism parody.

"What did you say, Sir?"

"heh, nevermind..anyways, I came to talk to you about you and PSI..."

Hahahahahaha! This is awesome.

"Um, is that really any of your busness?"

Sure it is! Chris has been posting this stuff to a public forum. It's everyone's business.

"Probably not, but I just wanted to say that I think there's something more to you two than what first seems.

Really? What did you see at first? I saw a guy so smitten he's dancing around the line that marks off stalker territory.

You two just seem right for each other, I dunno. All I heard is that she's now off on her own and traveling deep into unknown territory and I think a well-timed hero may be what she needs. Experience your lives together! You'll have much more to live for." And then Sir walked away.

Did Chris hire this guy?

The best I can come up with is they must have been buddies, chatting on AIM, and Chris has been going on about his PSI-crush for weeks now and never doing anything about it; and Sir finally got tired of that crap and decided to give him a public kick in the ass to get him moving. It could be simply a setup, but I don't think so. Chris doesn't really gain many PSI points from Sir's post here, as it just underscores how timid he is, so I can't see that Chris would have put Sir up to this.

It's also possible Sir has never talked to Chris in his life, and simply got as astounded as I am at how ridiculously timid the guy is, and said, hey, man, quit pissing around and go for it, you know?

---

Post #338, by Little Yoshi

"It's okay with me as long as it's okay with Luna," Tim replied.

There wasn't really much he could do. Trying to isolate Luna would be a bit creepy and would obviously backfire.

Suddenly, a group of bubbles appeared.
"Tessie, we don't need to be ferried across right now," Tim said to the bubbles.
[I know you don't, these jellyfish are holding me captive] Tessie Mind-stated(my invented word for speakin' wid da mind)

I would love to know why exactly the hell Tim decided switching to gangstaspeak for that last prepositional phrase was necessary.

"Jellyfish!?"Tim exclaimed.
"We have come for the girl, put down your weapons and the girl is all we will take!" one of them exclaimed.
"Not on your life!" Tim exclaimed, Leap Slashing the jellyfish.

LOL. Tim subscribes to the spam-one-attack philosophy of RPG-style fighting.

"Sure you won't change your mind?" a few dozen asked.
"Errrm," Nathan said.
"No way!" Tim shouted, Leap Slashing the next one, while Luna and Nathan thought of him as an insane idiot to battle all of those jellyfish(not saying Nathan has joined us if Luna doesn't want him too, just that he has been nearby)

Well, 'insane idiot' isn't necessarily wrong, but all parties involved understand that 'knight in shining honor on the off chance Luna is impressed' was what you were shooting for.

---

Post #339, by Chris

"Is it that obvious?" Chris wondered as Sir left.

Your PSI-crush, you mean? Heh... yeah. It totally is.

Remember, though, that Sir said 'something more to you two', rather than 'you clearly have a thing for PSI'. Important difference there, what with the implication that PSI is a willing party to said thing. If that's what you mean, then no, that is not obvious.

After Sir had left, Chris sat on the rock and thought some more. A chance for adventure. Isn't that what he had always wanted?

No, you've established pretty solidly that a chance for PSI is what you always wanted. But proceed with your exposition on how this is totally not all about you, PSI, so please don't think I'm creepy and try to avoid me please?

To go and live the life of an RPG, and more so, of Earthbound? But, with the fun comes the risk. It's possible he could be seriously injured or even killed undertaking a quest like this.

Yeah, but you can always just choose 'Continue' instead of 'End' and all you lose is half the money in your wallet, which, let's be honest, likely isn't much.

"I've got it! I'll go to Summers! Hardly any danger in a place like that. But,...there's hardly any danger. No adventure. It wouldn't be much different from being here.

I was under the impression that where the party took place was Summers, more or less.

"Instead, I think I'll go to Summers, get some equipment for a real journey, and then leave. I'll plan to come back to the hotel in a week or two. In the meantime, I'll have plenty of fun."

So your plan is to go to the one place in EarthBound where everything is totally bats--- insane expensive, and buy equipment there.

And with that, Chris set off for Summers, figuring that it would be near an inland body of water.

ROFL. Just to help you understand why that's such a funny statement, consider something like:

"Chris was tired of hanging out in Utah, so he set off for Portland, Oregon, figuring that it would be near an inland body of water."

Or:

"Chris was tired of hanging out in Switzerland, so he set off for Venice, Italy, figuring that it would be near an inland body of water."

Hey, all we have to do is keep searching inland bodies of water until it turns up!

---

Post #340, by PSI322

With every step she took, Juliana found herself becoming more and more glad that she'd ventured out on her own.

LOL. I don't know whether or not what she really means is 'with every Chris post, Juliana found herself becoming more and more glad that she'd ventured out on her own'--probably not--but it's damn funny to think that she does.

Slowly but surely, with incredible strength and perseverence, Juliana ascended the hill ahead of her, and she began to appreciate the art of hiking as she pressed on.

Did you get that? Juliana's strength is incredible. As is her perseverance. Her spelling isn't Anthadd level (note the ULTRA-rare PSI322 spelling error on 'perseverance'), but it also easily qualifies as incredible.

One thing's for sure: When she reaches Tenda village, that rock-moving guy is in for one hell of an arm wrestling contest. Because her strength is incredible.*
*Note: This is not actually a terrible stretch, as PSI322 once defeated this annotator in an arm wrestling contest.

As she reached the summit of this new hill, Juliana looked down around her, trying to see her surroundings a little better. All she saw ahead of her were more trees, and some water was present, although it was too far away to be able to tell much else about it. Anxious to discover this new territory, Juliana ran down the hill, being careful to avoid the trees and brush that were all around her...

Aww. Trees are our friends! Except the ones that explode.