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23 May 2012

Posts #1031-1035: 16 May 2000

Post #1031, by guruzeth

"Ugh," said guruzeth, squirming, "I can do without this suit, it's choking me. Now that I'm at a hotel, I can withdraw from my ATM card, so I'll be back soon." He took his leave, leaving the others to chat amongst themselves for about 15 minutes, before he returned, clad in khakis and a polo shirt, and handed Chris his suit. "So what do we want to do?"
The odd thing here is that I am now very fond of suits, or at least dress shirts and dress slacks. And 2000 was about the time I had started getting fond of them. The khakis/polo thing is true to what I wore virtually every day at the time, but still, I don't think this was about the choice of clothing. It was about guruzeth refusing to allow Chris to make any decisions for him.
"Well," said Juliana, "We've been pretty much everywhere, Chris and I."

"Ah, really, PSI?" said guru. "Well..."

"Please, you can call me Juliana."

"Right."
I like guruzeth's one-sentence notation that yes, he is aware of Chris's great PSI322-chasing adventures. The 'call me Juliana' thing is also an understated slap at Chris. That's right, we're on a first name basis already. In your face.
"I'm beat," said Tracy. "Maybe we should just kinda chill for a day or two on the beach or in a restaurant or something."

"I'd be up for that," said guru. "We can figure out what else we want to do in the meantime."
I'm somewhat surprised that guruzeth also punted on picking something specific to do, but I guess it comes back to what I noted in the last episode: he doesn't want anything to do with fighting for great justice right now.
"I'm hungry," said Poo. "Let's go have some breakfast."

"Excuse me!" guruzeth called to the ludicrously young assistant manager of the hotel. "Do you know any good places to eat breakfast?"
So guruzeth offers the hook to diospadre to join in. If he takes it, group guruzeth will swell to six members, which if it holds together would be the largest running group in the Gathering so far. This is what usually happens over the course of a long IF; you start with disparate small groups, and they condense over time into a few larger groups.




Post #1032, by loid

"NO! Paralyzed! Cant, seem, to, move, or, talk, at, normal, rate, cant, stop, using, commas,"
I laughed. I'm a dork.
[Now lets do this my way, I can either leave you here to die, or you give my my sound stone back!]

"No, Lavos would torture me for all eternity if I gave you a sound stone."
[Your nothing but Lavos's slave, come on! with those melodies your stronger then Lavos! Together we can kill Lavos!]
Ah, the Darth Vader ploy--"together we can kill the Evil Overlord and reign over the universe"--which is named after its most famous example, but George Lucas certainly didn't invent it. It's been around pretty much as long as evil has. Which means pretty much forever.
"You mean, I and my people would be free of his control? No, we would die."
[Dont you understand? Lavos itself told you that you had to kill those with melodies beacuse the melodies can destroy him!]
"Destroy Lavos? I have secretly wanted to do that for 5 thousand years."
He then let go of Pikachu
That's how it ends. No punctuation. He burned it all up in that third sentence.
The '5 thousand years' thing is a DUN DUN DUN moment for sure, but it's not quite well written enough to make the small amount of sense required to hook your reader. We are left thoroughly confused about who Kiyo's People are or why we should care about them.





Post #1033, by Anthadd

Anthadd noticed this golf club was unnaturallly hardy, and was withstanding essentially anything Carbon Dog could do.
Remembering what had happened previously, he became more prudent, jabbing with the golf club, throwing golf balls at high speeds.
I'm scratching my head pondering how jabbing with a golf club causes golf balls to be thrown. That is one far out golf club, is all I can figure. It actually sounds like something a random boss in Monster Party would do.
A flash of light blinded he and Sir, and the silhouette of Carbon Dog crystallised.
"Oh no..." Anth muttered. "Diamond Dog."
This is a specific f--- you to Tengu Man and I love it. Even if I am horrendously bored by this third iteration of a boss fight that was boring the first time it happened.




Post #1034, by Mog116

(Dang, I'm confused. I feal like barfing up a new story. Is anyone as confused as I?)
You may well be confused, but I think your complaint has more to do with being bored. And yes, some folks, such as myself, are bored.
Mog walked past Kiyo/Randites room, not knowing what was going on. The he somehow found himself back at the Hotel. [Weird. Man, I'm confused.] He thought aloud. He walked along the beach awhile, pondering why he was here. Then he stopped. [Wait. We can't just wait here. We need to fight Lavos.] Mog sat off to fight Lavos' robot form. But, he decided not to go by himself. He stood on the beach, waiting for someone who was tired of this being an "Adventure" IF, instead of a vacational IF.

(Any takers? I wanna kill Lavos and get back to my vacation.)
A noble quest. Impossible, but noble. Here are some windmills, why don't you joust with them until you feel better?

Mog116 might be the first of the Kiddie Klub to openly state his boredom, but he probably won't be the last. It's not really because the Lavos thing is stupid, I don't think. It's more because it's now stretched out over many hundreds of posts and nothing--nothing--important has happened. It's a lesson in How Not to Write a Story. At the very least, if you must write an IF thread involving saving the world from a Chrono Trigger villain, give us some action. That's the big problem with the middle part of the Gathering (which we are nearing the end of).





Post #1035, by Pikachu3164

((I wish this would just return to being a vacation IF... If there was a way to one hit K-O Lavos, can you guess who would take it in an instance?))
The thing is, these guys were around when it was a vacation IF, and the reason we got to the Chrono Trigger crossover/Save the World silliness is that they--these same guys--got bored with the vacation and decided saving the world would be more exciting. Now they're bored with that and want the vacation back.
The other thing is, they badly miss the point here, behaving as though so long as Lavos is alive they have no choice but to fight. It seems to have never occurred to them that they could simply ignore Lavos and do whatever they want. If they did that, before too long the Lavos thing would be Tengu Man's exclusive plotline, and everyone else, even Falcon24, would have left it behind.
**********
Pikach jumped of of Randite. [Okay. I'm going to go get Tim. You stay here, understand!?]

Randite eyeballed Pikachu. "It's, not, like, I, can, move. You, par, a, lyzed, me, re, mem, ber? I, can, har, dly, talk. "
3164 seems as amused by loid's commas as I was.
[Yea, whatever.] Pikachu started to search through Randite's whatever he keeps his stuff in. He found what he was lookinf for. [I thought you gave the Sound Stone to Lavos!]

"I, was, going, too, but, La, vos, could, n't, take, the, pos, i, tive, en, er, gy. He, gave, it, to, me, to, keep, for, now."

[Sure...] Pikachu ran out, and started towards Tim's room. He thought that if he could get the final melody, Rainy Circle, maybe, just maybe, he could beat Lavos and finally relax. Pikachu noticed that the sun was rising.
Again. Let's hope no one arbitrarily decides it's not morning after all and we revert, Groundhog Day style, to the previous night.
[Tim! Wake up!]

"What?" Tim was not too happy that Pikachu had waken him up.

Pikachu told Tim what had happened during the night.[First, I got the Sound Stone back. Second, Randite is still controllin Kiyo. He's paralyzed in my room. Third, get us to Winters.]

Tim, still half asleep, managed to mutter a "Now?"

[Yes. Now.]

"Fine, whatever."
Everyone who has doubts Liyoshi is so easily going to agree to be bossed around like this, raise your hands. I thought so.
You have to give 3164 some credit, though. He's trying his damnedest to get something to happen. Unfortunately for him, if your goal is for something to happen then Liyoshi is the worst person in the entire world to have in your plotline.

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