(IMPORTANT ANNOUNCEMENT: I just discovered that I miscalculated the total post count of the Gathering, because it turns out that for whatever reason, Thread 2 (eight pages) is duplicated under a different URL set in my archive. That hacks 320 posts off the total post count. Once believed to be 1800-1900, the post count of the Gathering is now known to be in the 1500-1600 range. That means we're around 30% done in post count, perhaps 20% done in word count.)
Post #451, by SirMontyG
"Well, we just picked up this little number" Sir showed Osman the Sound Stone "And now we're off to Sanctuary #8, hopefully geting two of the melodies before Falc and EBPoo can get their hands on them."
Your premise lacks tension because I don't know why it matters whether Falcon24 and EBPoo get their hands on two melodies or six melodies or eight melodies."What's wrong with those two?" Psiosman asked
It would be funny if someone posted, 'hey, who cares? Let them have all the melodies! Let's go do something more interesting, and if we need the damn melodies we'll figure something out later!' That would make interactive fiction interesting.
"Didn't hear that part, all we got was a quick telepathic message telling us to collect the sounds before they do. Meby they're trying to take over the world or something.."
Doesn't sound like that big a deal to me. I mean, Falcon24 did take over starmen.net eventually, and it's still doing OK."Take over the world with music? That's pretty unoriginal, especialy the way pop music is going these days..."
Major Asshole fancies himself a musical critic. At like age 14.
Post #452, by loid
Hooray, a loid post! Hold on while I go grab my loid totals...(Noone wants to join/help me soooooo...)
That's because you're obviously ten years old, and rather boring. 'No one' is his first misspelling.Kiyo just reilized he was stuck in the quicksand, after a minute of thrashing and screaming, all went black....
'reilized' is two misspellings. The lack of a conjunction after 'quicksand,' and the four dots instead of three for an ellipsis are two additional errors."Woof!"
Kiyo got up, woken up by the dog's woof.
"Snowmist, is that you boy?" said Kiyo after noticing his familiar Alaskan Husky
I'm being lenient and forgiving the comma that should be between 'you' and 'boy'. The lack of a period at the end makes five grammatical errors."(Yup! I found you in the desert, you almost died!)" said Snowmist which Kiyo dechiphered telepathicly.
The quotes should be inside the parens technically, but since it's a reference to the way animals talking in EarthBound was denoted with parens (because Ness was actually reading their minds, not listening to them speak), I'll overlook that, too."Woah, that happens alot, where are we now?"
But the comma inside there should be a semicolon or period/new sentence. Not overlooking that, or the comma that should be there after Snowmist, or the butchering of 'deciphered' and 'telepathically'. (Hey, give him credit: he's not afraid to hang it out there and take a shot at the tough stuff. He may well have become a good writer when he grew up.) So that's four misspellings, nine total errors.
'a lot' is two words, and that should be a semicolon/period, not a comma. That's 5 and 11, respectively."(On a helecopter that'll take you to fourside hospital, and guess what, I was on the news! Dogs save kid from quicksand! You see I had a little help from King)"
Helicopter... Fourside... comma after 'You see'... period at the end. That's 6 and 15."Wait whats this?" Kiyo saw a small stone with a note tied to it:
Comma and apostrophe inside the quotes. 6 and 17.____________________________________________
____________________________________________
To Kiyo and Snowmist, I found out a while ago that we need to get to the sanctuary locations to save the world, I'll explain later but since I know your a good fighter, I'm entrusting this Sound Stone peice to you.
Run-on sentence (should be a sentence break at the second comma)... missing comma after 'later'... 'piece'. 8 and 20.I hope your dog gets you this message.
~Pikachu3186
3184, actually. That's 9/21.P.S. Thanks for saving me from those poke bashers.
__________________________________________
_________________________________________
"We have to go to the sanctuary there, mangnet hall or hill or hole or whatever. But wait, we cant go alone, we'll need help...."
'Magnet', not 'mangnet', and it should be capitalized. I'll be lenient, AGAIN, and only count that as one error even though it's really two. 'Cant' needs an apostrophe. An ellipsis consists of three periods, not four.
loid's final tally for this post is an amazing 10 misspellings and 24 grammatical errors; I believe both are loid records so far. Updated totals: 7 posts; 99 grammatical errors (14.1 per post); 30 misspellings (4.3 per post). Let's give him a big hand, ladies and gentlemen!
Post #453, by pogopunk
The posts are starting to get long. Not nearly as long as they're going to get, but they're slowly moving in that direction.[i suppose i'm on my own to fight thunder and storm. i gues someone could help me later on or something.]
As the posts get longer, the annotations are going to get a little sparser. I've been in the habit of annotating pretty much every paragraph (frequently creating paragraph breaks that aren't in the original text for the sake of annotating mid-paragraph), but with the page-long posts I'll just annotate every couple paragraphs, probably with generally longer annotations. In other words, the absolute amount of annotations will probably stay about the same, but since the posts are getting longer, there will be relatively fewer annotations. Got it? T-O-O BAD!
Look, no offense, kid, but no one knows you, no one cares about you, and you've done nothing to distinguish yourself from the hordes of J. Random 12 Year Old Posters. If you want to change that, you're basically just going to have to write on your own for a while, and eventually people will get used to you and start including you more.pogopunk had spent the last couple of hours exploring dalaam. after speaking to the girls, he was beginning to understand why poo ignored them. not much different from valley girls, they were ditsy and carefree.
Probability pogopunk in reality drooled over the cheerleaders at his school and quietly seethed in jealousy of the football players: 87.8%.he had stopped to talk to some, and they gave him presents to take on his way.
Heh. Make that 91.1%. Very much wish fulfillment! Thank you!thanking them, pogopunk moved to the bottom of dalaam. talking to a man near a lone hill, he asked the man what was on that mountain.
"why, the place of moo of course."
"um, isnt that place of mu?"
May I ask how exactly those two words are pronounced sufficiently differently that you can easily tell the difference? Or am I making a bother of myself again?"eh, whatever, anyway, go up there if you dare, you will gain powers, but at a price.."
always up for a challenge, pogopunk began to scale the mountain.
I like to think it's metaphorical for his effort at getting people on the IF board to notice his existence."thank goodness for these ropes" he thought as he began to climb. after climbing for a long time, he finally reached the top. admiring the view, he sat down and began to meditate. he heard a shout that startled him.
"poo's master beckons you, come traveler" shouted a girl from across the mountain. ignoring her, pogopunk went into a deep meditation. soon, he felt like he was in a dream-like state, and a forlorn figure melted before him.
"hello you, i am a spirit of poo's ancient lineage. i dont know who you are, but its always fun to test fools..mwehehe" it said. "first, i'll take away your arms and limbs, is that ok with you?"
Oh god, are you really going to re-enact that entire goddamn scene that we all already have read/seen many times? You fail IF forever.noting that he hardly used them, pogopunk agreed, thinking to himself "still got my pogo stick"
Good luck operating that with no arms. I'd pay to see you try."next i will take away your eyes, ears, and brain. so basically, i'm killing you. do you wwant that?"
Coming Soon: I Have No Arms And I Must Pogo Stick, by pogopunk.
"WHAT?! you juss take away my entire body and expect me to be happy about that? well T-O-O bad 'cuz no mu training is worth that. pssh, pssh, i'm assertive, i'm cool, i'm RECKLESS, i'm YOUNG!!!
I'm ANGSTY and LONELY and ANGRY!!!!now if you have nothing else to do with me, i'll be on my way. good day!" pogopunk exploded in a fit of rage.
taken back, the spirit seemed to shrink down "wow, the ancestors never told us about anything like this. they usually just respond with a yes or no or something. this one is strange and different..hmm, i should bless this one, it could prove useful," it murmured to itself. speaking aloud, the spirt regained confidence and spoke "the ancestors have foretold that you should be blessed with powers. i shall grant you better powers, but use it wisely. plus ya still gotta learn psychic powers yourself..hhehe" laughing more goofily than evilly, pogopunk felt a surge of power, more than he'd ever felt. "oh yeah, and have this new pogostick." out of nowhere a shiny gold stick fell and hit his head..
Whatever. Operating various Deus Ex Machinae to jack up your AC God Mode powers is not going to make you popular. Nobody will ever care. I am, I am confident, the very first living soul to read every word of this post, and I am confident I will always be the only living soul to have done so. Don't pretend you did. I know you didn't. And even now you're not going to, because it's boring as hell. You may try, but you'll get three lines deep and say the hell with it."owwww..stupid ghost," pogopunk grumbled and began to make his way back to pink cloud...
Post #454, by SuperSpeedy/Mankey Boy
I was just thinking, 'you know, the Gathering could use some more Hyperactive 8 Year Oldosity.'(Just to note, I'm with Pikachu!)
(Just to note, the reason nobody has mentioned you in a hundred posts is because nobody cares!)"Yo, Pi-kahuna!" said Dave. "Wuzzup?!"
[I'm no Surfing Pikachu!] exlaimed Pikachu. [Nor am I a Flying/Balloon Pikachu!]
"Sorry!" said Poryhedron, in his electronic voice. "We heard you call. I'm following you wherever you go!" Then he privatly, and psychiccly, added, [And Dave will follow me wherever I go.]
Pikachu started laughing out loud, in a laugh only a Pikachu could use.
To an 8 year old, this is awesome.[Listen,] said Pikachu, [Let Poryhedron read this note!]
Poryhedron used his Psychic Pokémon powers to grabbed the note and read it word for word. It read:
(The following is inside [quote] tags, which is why it's indented the way my annotations usually are.)"Okay!" said Poryhedron. "Let's stock up on supplies and move out! I have the supplies Dave says he has in IFs, which includes:
To Pikachu and Poryhedron:
Although we have never met, we could be considered family. I am Mewtwo, most powerful of all Pokémon. I was created by Team Rocket, too, from a fossil of Mew. Eagleland is in grave danger. 2 villians are out to absorb
the power of the Your Sanctuaries. If they ever manage to absorb the power, the Earth will be doomed. You must go out and absorb the full power of at least one of these sanctuaries. By doing this, the 2 villians will be stopped. To do this, I have attached a Sound Stone to my note. Now go save the world!
Mewtwo
This is the dumbest s--- I have ever heard of.
P.S. I can't help you because if even one more AC is added to this story, things will get even more confusing. Plus, there's the 1 AC a user rule set by PSI.
There will be many more AC's added to this story yet. And your bitching about the one AC per character rule is going to fall on deaf ears. Come to think of it... that's what happens to everything you write, so I suppose I have no point.
- Picnic Lunches
- Brain Food Lunches
- Jars of Delisauce
- Piggy Jelly
- his weapon, the Lazer Sword
- his Palmpilot to keep a journal on his adventure
- batteries for Palmpilot
- a keyboard add-on for the PalmPilot
- and the Comm. Antenna which he uses to have silent conversations with robotic ACs and send, but not recieve, telepathic messages to non-robotic ACs.
Yeah, sure, whatever. Yet another chunk of text I am now the only person alive to have wasted his time reading. Everyone else understands that they can Deus Ex Machina into their ACs' hands whatever equipment they need whenever they need it; there's no need to bother making a list of crap you may or may not use, when, if you encounter a situation requiring something not on the list later, you're going to Deus Ex Machina it into your AC's hands anyway.Piggy Jelly is, like Peanut Cheese Bars, are a Saturn Valley Delicasey! Much tasier, though, so it replenishes more of your strength."
Holy s---. loid just called. He's embarrassed by that sentence.Poryhedron equipped the Comm. Antenna.
Pikachu smacked his lips.
Pikachu said, [Well…]
Post #455, by Chris
"Okay, now, we've beaten Electro Specter, but there are still several more sanctuaries. I've got an idea.
Let me guess let me guess let me guess! Your idea involves... you and Juliana going off in some different direction, just the two of you! Am I right, am I right?Sir, Anthadd, and PSIOman, you guys go see what you can do about Plague Rat of Doom. Juliana and I will go take care of Trillongage Sprout. We'll then see if we need to go help anyone else out at another Sanctuary." Chris said.
You're not gonna believe this, but I swear I didn't read ahead before I wrote the previous annotation."Okay, sounds good." Sir replied.
No way in hell Chris is going to give Major Asshole a chance to refuse."Let's go!" Anthadd added.
This is such bad writing. 'Okay, sounds good.' 'Let's go!' Yuck. And this is one of the best writers in the Gathering.And so, Sir led the way to Fourside, while Chris and Juliana stepped out of the Tenda Cave.
"So, how exactly do you plan to reach Saturn Valley, Chris?" Juliana asked.
"I'm not sure. Let's go back to the teleporting monkies and see if one of them can take us there." he replied.
'Teleporting Monkies' would make a good name for a rock band, especially if you spell it that way. Although I suppose you'd get accused of ripping off the Monkees, but whatever. The Monkees sucked.Once again, the two made their way through Deep Darkness (which was now becoming familiar territory). Soon, they found the patch of land that formed the northen-most part of Deep Darkness, and found the teleporting monkey.
"Kikeiyokia! (Sure, I'll teleport you to Saturn Valley!" one of the monkeys said. Within seconds, Chris and Juliana found themselves standing right in the middle of place they had only dreamed of until now.
They were standing in front of the pond in Saturn Valley...
You know... this is one of the problems with IF that I don't really know what to do about. The previous three paragraphs were boring, and you wish you hadn't wasted your time reading them, right? They're basically filler to make Chris's post look long without accomplishing too much (because he wants PSI322 to follow up on it, and because you can't write too much plot in a single IF post without starting to railroad other characters. You know, like what Chris just did by banishing Major Asshole and Anthadd without their input.)
Ideally, if he didn't intend for anything interesting to happen during their recrossing of that god-forsaken swamp, he would have simply written, 'They recrossed the Deep Darkness and enlisted the help of the friendly monkey.' Done. But then... that makes for a short and equally uninteresting post, so whatever.
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