Edward’s Comments (group member since Oct 11, 2015)

Edward’s comments from the NaNo WriMos group.

Hundreds of shades, indistinct creatures that seemed to be formed out of tangible shadows flowing as liquid, each with a pair of distant stars as eyes, crawled, flopped, and clung to the walls of skyscrapers as Septimus Hart faced the impossible challenge of crossing a busy city street for the first time in his life.

Not that I really participated in NaNo, but that's the start.

Al's is short and intriguing at the same time. Edward, I want to know why long hair matters, so you've effectively set the hook.

No where at NaNo standards, but I've written about thirty pages, and apparently have good characters.

Congratulations to everyone for doing as well as y'all did.

Cap, of course.

Hiking or urban exploration?

There are so many accents in America that it would be virtually impossible to place anyone except for Brooklyn, New Orleans, and Boston, by sheer virtue of not knowing what accent you're listening to. That's the average person anyway; for those that take an interest, there are at least two basic North Carolina accents, another South Carolina accent, basically a minimum of one for each Southern state, several for New York City, and a noticable fading spectrum from Midwest to West, with a different subset for the North West area.

I haven't done any NaNo, really. Too distracted.

Just keep doubling your word count from there and you will far overshoot your target.

Hm? I'm ... updating on the NaNo website and on my Blood Oath thread here, that's about it.

Hm. You could finish in a week.

That's no excuse.

Great start, everyone. Ryan, where are you at?

My first five hunderd forty-seven words. I won't be posting the whole thing, just little excerpts, but the start seemed appropriate.


In the predawn hours, in spite of the soothing rumble of the Greyhound bus and the relative comfort of stretching out across two seats to rest his head against the cool window pane, Septimus Hart remained awake, staring at the shadows that stared back. In truth, he found little comfort in the rattling of a death machine careening down a two-lane country road, and the smell of the years-long collection of germs and dust in the thick fabric of the seats tickled his nose until he felt the urge to sneeze out the entire contents of his skull. Until he moved away from home at seventeen, Septimus had experienced little beyond the Wyoming highland countryside. The year since had done little to improve his opinion of urban and suburban world.

Yet it was the shadow that kept him awake. As the bus approached a town that was little more than a gas station and a few nondescript stores haphazardly constructed along the poorly maintained road that wound through a maze of tall crops, a few working street lamps peered through the windows. The orange light eased across Septimus’s vision until it flooded the seats opposite him. The shadow stood out in brief, stark relief, a three-dimensional blob of nothingness, before the light slipped away again only to be replaced by the next street lamp. In the darkness, the only thing Septimus could see of the impossible specter were tiny pinpricks of light, as piercing as distant stars. During its moment in the light, he could discern a hole where the mouth would be, through which he could see the ugly print of the seat it lounged on, shaped like a cartoon smile.

The bus left the spat of civilization behind, returning the creature to little more than two tiny, immortal sparks.

Septimus considered himself rather logical. He knew that the shadows could not harm them, that they could be dismissed as a hallucination inherited from his mother. It was unlikely that something seen by every descendant of his revered great-grandfather was merely a hallucination, but a century of experience seemed to confirmed that they could not interact with the physical world. Beyond that, they only had theories upon hypotheses to explain the phenomenon.

Septimus’s least favorite theory – and the one with the most evidence to support it – is that these things seek out dark intention in humans. Some family members believe they are created by evil, others think they feed off of it, but few doubt the correlation. This has led many members of his extended family and Septimus himself on the right path in dealing with dangerous people, but it didn’t bode well for humanity, as this one shadow hanging on a bus with less than ten people on board was far from uncommon.

A logical-minded person, having spent the better part of eight years observing these shadows, knowing one alone on a bus didn’t portend some impending catastrophe, and aware that the shade itself was incapable of harming him, should be able to ignore it with little effort and find that ever-important sleep. Yet that night Septimus found contemplating the meaning of an omen of evil more comforting than the matters he would contemplate if he allowed his thoughts to wander in search of dreams.

sold

I'll look through your channel tonight.

Elephants

One Piece or Naruto?

Expanding on Sarah, she learned of biovis in the past year or so, honing her innate powers under the guidance of Father Morrie, a priest that went missing a month prior to events of Blood Oaths. It is she that brings to the attention of Septimus the possibility of a serial killer, which the missing priest had mentioned to her. When Septimus proves too cautious in his investigation, she insists on pushing forward with the thinnest lead.

At first, she shrugs off the danger that she ends up in during the course of the investigation, openly mocking Septimus's attempts to protect her, but her aggression during the final skirmish nearly leads her to kill a man unnecessarily, forcing her to admit that Septimus has a point - especially as he knows about crossing that line.

I just discovered my late-start class has more work than my other two classes combined, so that's going to be a trial.

toe

Sarah Berquist, 15. Sarcastic, curious, stubborn, will throw herself against a problem until she collapses from emotional exhaustion, if not physical. All of this would be an experience to deal with even if she weren't mute. Her peculiar disability made her something of an outcast, as even the deaf community were often unnerved by her. She developed a bit of a temper, though it's a slow-burn, pressurizing under a tough exterior until it erupts. Luckily, her passion is usually directed towards something good.

World Premieres

Renegade for Life or Paragon 'Till Death?

I ... pretty much kill insects thoughtlessly. Not out of sadism, but because they usually cause more trouble by hanging around than they are worth. Besides, they are evolutionarily developed to survive as a species by breeding in absurd numbers, so it fits their natural life expectancy.

We're not allowed to bite now? I don't recall that in the rules.