Oolite Bulletins

I'm pleased to announce Chapter Three of Mutabilis.

I have to say, this chapter contains what is probably the most 'fun' part of the story and had me grinning many times whilst writing.

It features the beleaguered crew of a decrepit Python class cruiser, captained by a somewhat foppish feline life-form and his pair of disreputable sidekicks - characters that may be familiar to some of you who tread the BB frequently...

Well, you wanted a cameo...

Cheers,

Drew.

p.s. If anyone else wants to be infamously immortalized, just drop me a pm... Some have already been selected...

Liked a lot! The Cap'n as the comic turn, balanced by the dark inner psyche of Rebecca in the latter section. Bravo.

As usual, typo's, comments and suggestions.


Page One:

"...ship kitted out as an 'iron-ass'"

"...ship kitted out WITH an 'iron-ass'"

Page Two:

"He now was the, almost legal, owner"

"He was now the (almost) legal owner"

Page Three:

"a honour"

"an honour" [the joy of the English language! ]

Page Four:

"...which was literally rather questionable."

"...which was missing only the prefix 'in' to have been an accurate reflection of his ability rather than his rating" [this is only a suggestion!]

Page Five:

"...a ship torus ­driving into range. The scanner confirmed it wasn’t a police ship"

If it's on the scanner - surely mass-locked?

"...came the imperious voice once more."

"..came the, really annoying, imperious voice once more."

Page Nine:

"...You weren’t flying worth a frag."




Keep up the good work - looking forward to the next chapter.

DH

Hilarious!!!

Great chapter.

DaddyHoggy wrote:

Liked a lot! The Cap'n as the comic turn, balanced by the dark inner psyche of Rebecca in the latter section. Bravo.

As usual, typo's, comments and suggestions....

DH

Cheers for those - done!

Cheers,

Drew.

drew wrote:

DaddyHoggy wrote:

Liked a lot! The Cap'n as the comic turn, balanced by the dark inner psyche of Rebecca in the latter section. Bravo.

As usual, typo's, comments and suggestions....

DH

Cheers for those - done!

Cheers,

Drew.

* bows with deep respect *

Thank you for the near-perfect representation of life aboard the 'Profit'. I am so proud. And yes, the whole chapter was fantastically written.

Captain Hesperus
P.S. The whole 'eating humans' thing was blown entirely out of proportion during the trial by the GalCop Prosecution Service suit. I can categorically state it was one foot in a stew. I did not know it was there, until I found the sock in the bottom of the pot.
However, should any humans be looking for a career aboard the 'Dubious Profit', we have a vacancy in the canteen.....

Superb. You have surpassed yourself. Beautifully executed. I enjoyed it too much to notice any grammatical errors or typos!

However, should any humans be looking for a career aboard the 'Dubious Profit', we have a vacancy in the canteen.....

I hope the canteen is not infested with Trumbles then

Hello Drew "Infodump" Wagar

I don't want to sound like a broken record, but once again I struggled with your usage of infodumps. Lecture follows:

First up, you give the reader a discourse on how politics affect trading. As a reader who knows Elite, I think. " Big Woop, the author has played Elite. What does this have to do with the story? I know all this already!"

As a non-elite reader, I could read this and think "Hmmm politics are going to be very important to this story. why else would he go on about it for a page?"

Of course politics isn't important to the story, you are just trying to flesh out the stories universe and make it more 'real'. Thats cool, you should do that, but you really should try and do it in a nicer way. For me, It would have been good to just flag that info dump altogether, as later, Hesperus talks about being the dumbas for going to the anarchy system and he should have had an iron ass etc. So effectively we are told the relevant information twice: In the action where it belongs and at the beginning in the info dump.

If you are going to do the infodumps, please _separate_ them from the rest of the dialogue. Maybe have hashes in between them and the action or in italics or something. It makes it easer to realise that what I am reading is not part of the tale, but just added on stuff, that the reader could skip without missing anything important.

My next gripe was the constant character detailing during the big space fight. The fight was good (Though there was one point that the baddies went from disorganised to all firing at once, but we'll let that slide) but as a reader we are focusing on Hepserus and what he is going through. By reading the story, Hesperus obviously wasn't too concerned for his life because while the shit was hitting the fan, he had time to think about his crew and what they looked like and what they lked to eat and funny stories about them. From the readers point of view, it jolts us right out of the exciting action and reminds us that there is an author behind the words trying to tell us too much information.

An action scene is not the place for superflous detail! Do it later when their lives aren't in danger. Action scenes are fast, panicky jilted scenes where the heart is pounding and you're running from one problem to the next, trying to stay alive, not fondly remembering that your pilots ' dangerous' ranking applies to his claws and not his gunnery.

Do you get what I mean? If you were about to die, would you have time to think about random things from last week? Or would you be too busy praying to god not to die?

Anyway I'm not trying to sound too negative. I did enjoy the chapter. When Rebecca crushes her PAPER cup in frustration I laughed at her as the image of crushing a paper cup is a bit of joke, though I don't think that was what you were aiming for.

Anyway bring on the next installment.

Jack_H wrote:

Hello Drew "Infodump" Wagar

I don't want to sound like a broken record, but once again I struggled with your usage of infodumps. Lecture follows...

Hey, no problem, Jack. All the critique is useful. Thanks to the good Captain, Star Gazer and Mr. Groove!

I do take the point about 'infodumps', but in my defence, I would mention the following:

- Personally I quite like a short info-dump from an author writing within a known genre, it gives me a level of comfort that they know what they are about. Arthur C. Clarke and Isaac Asimov both do this quite a bit.

- This is not a fully fledged story, so there is scant time for exposition of necessary background details without plot dumping in the conversations, which looks far worse.

Eg. "We're in trouble. This is an anarchy. There won't be many police around because of all the pirates, it's worse than a feudal system."

or...

"Fire the military laser! They're around twice as powerful as the beam laser so it should break down the shields..."
No 'real elite' character would say something like that.

- The good Cap'n is in and out of the story rather quickly. By the time the action is over, readers will have formed opinions on the appearance and habits of the characters without the benefit of any description. Maybe this is a moot point, but I'd rather people got at least some of 'my' image of the motley crew's appearance. Could do better, agreed.

- Hesperus (well, my Hesperus!) is clearly rather self obssessed. I modelled him on my own Cat Tibbles, who shows very little regard for anything outside of his immediate needs. I tried to get this across with the "I can't die with my fur out of place" line. I don't think he gives a fig about his crew other than what they can do for him. (have you seen 'the cat' from 'Red Dwarf'? Admittedly a comic character, but he'd rather die than be seen wearing A-line flares with pockets in the knees - I wanted an element of that for the good Cap'n)

and it was a PLASTIC cup - they make a lovely sound when you crush them, and can 'break' unexpectedly into sharp shards if you squeeze them, spraying liquid all over the place. Give the girl some credit

Cheers,

Drew.

Meh, I found nothing disjointed about it's execution. I found the gentle asides, natural. Warming, even. To the collective memory, so to speak.

Maybe Drew's work is a little too highbrow for most "mediocure critics".

ClymAngus wrote:

Meh, I found nothing disjointed about it's execution. I found the gentle asides, natural. Warming to the collective mind, so to speak.

Maybe Drew work is a little too highbrow for a "mediocure critic".

Thanks for that - glad you enjoyed! First time I've ever been described as highbrow though! Next chapter on schedule, and infact, having had a quick look at lunchtime - I believe it may be 'infodump' free!

Cheers,

Drew.

Info dump indeed.

We're talking about a game that is kept alive by a very talented 30 something IT geeks. Of which I'm proud to be a part, I might add. You can't "info dump" a venerable tech dude, it's logistically impossible and only the unknowing would think other wise. We wallow in, in jokes and complexity. Any critic worth their salt, should recognise and account for the targeted audience as well as their own personal tastes.

It's not a bug mate, it's a feature.

I'm not being nasty, it is supposed to be 'constructive critisism'.

All I am doing is telling Drew what would make it more reabable from my point of view as a reader. I'm not a 'critic' I am a guy reading a story I like but stumbling over bits of it.

Drew can handle the crit. Its his choice to utilise what I have said or not. But you are correct. If nine people say it is awesome and one person says they can't handle it, then you are making your target audience happy. I have mentioned that previously as well.

I'm going to keep critting you Drew. And you can keep listening to or ignoring me.

Jack_H wrote:

I'm not being nasty, it is supposed to be 'constructive critisism'.

To quote the honorable gentleman;

"Hello Drew "Infodump" Wagar". and "Lecture follows". That's the problem with a text based medium, we try to be a bit tongue in cheek, and it sometimes just comes across as light arrogance. I utilise smilies.

That said, I personally find your constructive critisisms generally to be a touch baseless. Who's to say what will go through a creatures head moments before death? They say "my life flashed before my eyes" well that's (in word form anyway) a pretty big autobiography right there. Couple of paragraphs here and there, pft! Nothing.

As for character detailing, well you try and get 4-5 new characters fleshed out in the same number of pages, enough so the reading audience actually gives a **** if they're about to get fried or not. Tricky at the best of times, and for my money adequately done.

Also, comedy chapter. Vector out of the story, and whimble back by the end. All bets are off.

Sure the bar scene for my money has some film noir baggage, but that's ok. Everybody's on familiar ground. Tall dark strangers, deals you can't refuse, dramatic pauses, all the old hooks.

Jack_H wrote:

All I am doing is telling Drew what would make it more reabable from my point of view as a reader. I'm not a 'critic' I am a guy reading a story I like but stumbling over bits of it.

A cornucopia of potential advice that can be taken or left. Your stumbling over bits, other people are not, and it would be remiss of me not to point this fact out, with equal force and fortitude.

Jack_H wrote:

Drew can handle the crit.

Never said he couldn't. To stop a writer writing usually requires a baseball bat, a harsh review just doesn't cut it these days.

Jack_H wrote:

Its his choice to utilise what I have said or not. But you are correct. If nine people say it is awesome and one person says they can't handle it, then you are making your target audience happy. I have mentioned that previously as well.

All well and good. As always if you are challenged by a piece of work then let it inspire you to further form your own modus operandi and sence of self. It would be such a boring world if everyone agreed after all.

Jack_H wrote:

I'm going to keep critting you Drew. And you can keep listening to or ignoring me.

A man's got to do what a man's got to do.


PS very few captains in any galaxy can pull off a 2 tone spandex pink ship. GO Girl! GO! XX

Hi Angus.

I have the right to critique Drew. He has the right to ignore me. I'm not sure how you fit into the equation, but points for trying.