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hboff
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Joined: 25 Jul 2004
Posts: 4351
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 Posted: Fri Dec 15, 2006 1:11 pm Post subject: Le Sofa: An Interstellar Tale of Sex, Murder, and Cocktails |
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This topic is for posting comments to:
Le Sofa: An Interstellar Tale of Sex, Murder, and Cocktails on Couches
Posted by SeverianofUrth (severn117@gmail.com)
12 December 2006, 10:43 pm
http://halosn.bungie.org/fanfic/?story=SeverianofUr1212062243181.html |
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Azrael
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Joined: 10 Aug 2004
Posts: 504
Location: Boston
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| Posted: Fri Dec 15, 2006 3:53 pm Post subject: |
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This is creepy, but very, very original. I really liked the concept of seeing the world and deaths from one unmoving viewpoint.
You had a few GPS errors at the end, but it was a brief stumble and doesn't really affect the story.
The only bone of contention I had was that you might have tried a little too hard with the geopolitical parallels in the future. I may have missed a time stamp, but if you're putting this in or around the Halo time, it's at least around the 2400's at the earliest, right? Hillary Duff would be 400 years old, though I willilingly suspend my disbelief and imagine some anti-aging mechanism that you haven't told us about.
But the bombings of Qatar, Palestinians on Mars, (Israel as a crater?), I was wondering whether you're talking about Earth or new cities on Mars. It was unclear to me and it wrested the focus off your dark protagonist.
But your approach to the story and explanation at the end was great. This is an eyebrow-raiser of a story and deserves a read-through. Well done.
-Az
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...now that's some gritty shizzle.
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SeverianofUrth
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Joined: 09 Aug 2004
Posts: 483
Location: Dumb posts & crap stories
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| Posted: Fri Dec 15, 2006 5:23 pm Post subject: |
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As always, thanks.
| Quote: | You had a few GPS errors at the end, but it was a brief stumble and doesn't really affect the story.
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Are you talking about the use of muter instead of mother? If so, that was on purpose. If not, then I f***ed up. 
| Quote: | The only bone of contention I had was that you might have tried a little too hard with the geopolitical parallels in the future. I may have missed a time stamp, but if you're putting this in or around the Halo time, it's at least around the 2400's at the earliest, right? Hillary Duff would be 400 years old, though I willilingly suspend my disbelief and imagine some anti-aging mechanism that you haven't told us about.
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Well, the listen that Le Sofa points out Hilary Duff's picture as being odd was that she had been dead for several hundred years, already, and here was his 'mother' cataloguing her as one of her recent kills. I was trying to allude to the fact that AI's go nuts, and his 'mother' was doing that very same thing.
| Quote: | | But the bombings of Qatar, Palestinians on Mars, (Israel as a crater?), I was wondering whether you're talking about Earth or new cities on Mars. It was unclear to me and it wrested the focus off your dark protagonist. |
I always figured that interstellar travel would expand, rather then dissipate, hostilities. I ripped the idea of Palestinian settlements on Mars from Dan Simmons' Hyperion, by the way, and I always thought it a logical place for them to go--not exactly habitable, cheap, pretty near--pretty much an extension of their fate right now.
I didn't want to go into long rambling explanations in the story, so I didn't explain how Israel (not the nation on Earth, but rather a city on Bama, a planet they colonized soon after the development of slipspace travel) was nuked, or how that led to the sanctions on Palestinia-Mars. Maybe politics really isn't my strong suit (I ended up with a C-... and that was a introductory course).
As always, thanks, man. Now to go read Chuckles's work (and how the hell is my story going to compete with that?). |
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CoLd BlooDed
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Joined: 09 Aug 2004
Posts: 706
Location: Noit acol.
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| Posted: Fri Dec 15, 2006 11:53 pm Post subject: |
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Wonderful. Whenever I take the time to read your stuff, I always know that I'm about to embark upon something completely original and thought-provoking. A good author makes his own settings, plots, characters, etc., but a great author manipulates this futuristic world of ours to do absolutely anything - but make it plausible as well. For instance, who thinks of an assasinating couch who can think/talk? After reading this, I keep thinking of a house that is filled to the brim with death-furniture. Or furnibots (brilliant! reminds me of Futurama). That brings up another thing I like about your style - you create words that could definately be possible in however many years. You create new references and terms that have yet to be invented.
I loved the subtle, dark humour in this, too. I didn't know if it was intentional, but I still got a rise out of these two bits.
| Quote: | I am a normal couch...
He sat on me that last night. |
I'm curious to know who this mother is, and what role Keyes would play. Of course there's the question, What happened to Israel? but I like how you pass it off as something that everyone should know, something that's already happened and is not to be elaborated upon.
A couple errors in there, mostly when you forgot to have 'an' before the next word, but nothing major. Really good job. Missed your stuff.
And hey, you still haven't read the Records of Brian Waite, Part 2! It was pretty recent, I suggest you check it out.  |
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Chuckles
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Joined: 29 Jul 2004
Posts: 1000
Location: Grand Rapids MI
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| Posted: Sun Dec 17, 2006 7:12 am Post subject: |
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Loved it. You are without a doubt the most free and imaginative writer on here.
| Quote: | | Revolution: Couch Assasin |
Got a kick out of that. You spelled 'assassin' wrong (was that on purpose?), but I still loved it.
| Quote: | The Prime Minister's name is John Smith. A American-born scholar dedicated to a life of pornographic studies, he had been, due to his half-Arabic heritage, expelled out of the country in the early 2090's. I don't think he's a bad guy, and every time he sat on me, for he favored sitting on the roof at nights to watch the stars and smoke a cigar, he would talk to himself. Long, meandering solioquoys on life, death, cigars, food, women, books, and America. On games, movies, guns, wars, long-distant battles and America. On America. He would talk of the suburbs of Costa Rica, the new GMC factory recently built in the Mexican Protectorate, the subjugation of Cuba and the death of Fidel Castro, who'd been more then two hundred years old... America obsessed. America lit his face with hope. He so badly wanted to go back, and he would talk of the park behind what had been his house, a grassy meadow with a playground, where joggers ran and dogs shat and the dolphins danced, belly-up, washed in from the Gulf.
Too bad, Mr. Smith. |
This was pitch perfect. A furniture assassin reminiscing sympathetically about his target, and ending it with "Poor Mr. Smith." Where does this stuff come from? That whole paragraph is really about next to nothing, and by all rights should be redundant and boring ... but it isn't. Nicely done.
Something different, to say the least, and utterly enjoyable. Hope to see more from you soon.
C.T. Clown |
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Arthur Wellesley
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Joined: 30 Jun 2006
Posts: 306
Location: Canada
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| Posted: Sun Dec 17, 2006 5:39 pm Post subject: |
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You've got a great style, Sev. One that is truly your own. You throw off typical conventions and write the most unique stories on this site.
The eccentric couch assassin killing an American Palestinian Martian Prime Minister - I'm sorry, that's just brilliant. Great use of language, too. It's as unique as your concepts:
| Quote: | | He would talk of the suburbs of Costa Rica, the new GMC factory recently built in the Mexican Protectorate, the subjugation of Cuba and the death of Fidel Castro, who'd been more then two hundred years old... America obsessed. America lit his face with hope. He so badly wanted to go back, and he would talk of the park behind what had been his house, a grassy meadow with a playground, where joggers ran and dogs shat and the dolphins danced, belly-up, washed in from the Gulf. |
Your sentence structure, choice of words, and implementation of bizarre ideas are all top notch. The blunt style of delivery of crazy bits of information always puts a smile on my face as I read.
Keep writing, and I'll keep reading. Great job!
- Arthur
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Glory is fleeting, but obscurity is forever. - Napoleon
Current Project: Vestal Flame. Current Word Count: 27,017
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Azathoth
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Joined: 22 Nov 2005
Posts: 578
Location: South Africa. Fooken creatshas.
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| Posted: Sun Dec 17, 2006 7:41 pm Post subject: |
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You know, the couch reminds me slightly of HK-47 from Knights of the Old Republic. Except the couch doesn't say "Statement" before everything.
Congratulations, Sev...thanks to you, I'm now afraid to fall asleep on my sofa. |
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me
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Joined: 17 Feb 2005
Posts: 155
Location: you dont really want to know
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| Posted: Mon Dec 18, 2006 4:50 am Post subject: |
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I'll never pass gas on my sofa again....
I only noticed one mistake... | Quote: | | A American-born scholar |
Um to all the Sev lovers out there I am joining you so please don't assasinate me like you are trying to assasinate Mech...
Still I loved it. It was hecka funny and I never saw it coming. |
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SeverianofUrth
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Joined: 09 Aug 2004
Posts: 483
Location: Dumb posts & crap stories
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| Posted: Mon Dec 18, 2006 5:07 pm Post subject: |
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| Quote: | | I'm curious to know who this mother is, and what role Keyes would play. Of course there's the question, What happened to Israel? but I like how you pass it off as something that everyone should know, something that's already happened and is not to be elaborated upon. |
Exactly. Since this was a first-person story, a sudden explanation of an event that everyone already knows of would have been odd. But I did put just a passing reference in there, I think--charred crater or something or the other--implying that, you know, it was bombed or something. As for mother, she is too an AI, a director of the furnibot assasins. The disturbing thing is that she's going rampant, and thus, we're (supposed to be, anyways) not really sure of whether or not the assasination of John Smith was sanctioned by the upper-ups.
Brian Waite is on my list, my friend.
| Quote: | | Got a kick out of that. You spelled 'assassin' wrong (was that on purpose?), but I still loved it. |
Oops.  That's one of the 'benefits' when writing on the Wordpad. I wish I can say it was on purpose, though.
| Quote: | This was pitch perfect. A furniture assassin reminiscing sympathetically about his target, and ending it with "Poor Mr. Smith." Where does this stuff come from? That whole paragraph is really about next to nothing, and by all rights should be redundant and boring ... but it isn't. Nicely done.
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I wrote this thing before my Statistics final, and I needed some extra words to go beyond the 750-word count. I'm glad it was fun, though I have to admit, just as you might have suspected it really was about nothing.
| Quote: | Your sentence structure, choice of words, and implementation of bizarre ideas are all top notch. The blunt style of delivery of crazy bits of information always puts a smile on my face as I read.
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And I bet I missed a couple of your stories through my long hiatus. My apologies, and as always, thanks--though that picture of Sharapova isn't really seasonal.
| Quote: | | You know, the couch reminds me slightly of HK-47 from Knights of the Old Republic. Except the couch doesn't say "Statement" before everything |
Damn! A great oppurtunity was missed.
| Quote: | I'll never pass gas on my sofa again....
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A lesson always well-learned . |
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russ687
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Joined: 06 Aug 2004
Posts: 720
Location: Daytona Beach, FL
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| Posted: Fri Dec 29, 2006 6:08 pm Post subject: |
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That title... I just don't know what to say. 
| You wrote: | | I've been stationed up here for three years now--a long time to wait for a simple kill. |
Gasp, em-dashes! If you use MS Word (and probably any other word processor), they can appear automatically when you type two dashes together. My suggestion is to move up from Wordpad.
| You wrote: | | and the death of Fidel Castro, who'd been more then two hundred years old... |
All these little details are awesome. While I think it's kind of creepy for funiture to be "alive," I find myself chuckling at the little facts here and there that your throw in. Not to mention, the very idea of "Le Sofa" is no less humorous.
Oh man, this was definitely unique. I would never have thought to delve into the world of furniture with such tenacity. You did this quite well, and aside from a couple GPS mistakes, I found this very enjoyable. I would almost classify this as a comedy, just from the sheer humour of the subject matter and the accompanying details, but the eeriness of now having to stare at the couch I am sitting on in suspicion puts this on the boarderline of horror story. Either way, loved it.
-R |
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Johny117
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Joined: 22 Feb 2006
Posts: 118
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| Posted: Sat Jan 20, 2007 8:08 am Post subject: |
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Definately enjoyable, and now you've got me interested. I could only spy two errors. Other than that, nice job proof-reading.
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Never interrupt your enemy when he is making a mistake.
-Napoleon |
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