Saving Grace - part 3 (521 hits)
Category: NoneLabels: Kaote
Rating: 2 on 15 reviews (Rate this item) (V)
Submitted by kaos-king (View user info) at 2005-09-19 21:03:33 EDT
Last Chapter - http://www.ubersite.com/m/75438
Here, let me grab a cigarette...
We spend a lot of time at the bar. We probably shouldn't, considering the group of mismatched rejects that we are, but we do. It's something about the atmosphere - the dim lights, the slight sheen of beer everywhere, the constant thumping music. I love the fact that the Zephyr gives out free peanuts to the customers. Do you have any idea how many peanuts I can consume? Lots. I chew on every lemon wedge that comes with every vodka and ginger ale I order, too. Keeps the scurvy away.
We had been talking about movies tonight. The "Big Lebowski" came up, so everybody ordered White Russians. There's just something about milk and vodka together. It should be foul, but it's so right. I had already drank a Hollow Point and a Red Bull Bomb, but I didn't care about mixing so many different kinds of liquor. As long as I didn't touch any beer tonight I would be fine. That, and Tequila. I had to stay the fuck away from the tequila.
We had actually started at Ray's Place for some reason. It's a preppy bar, but we wanted to eat first and they have some great food. When we had left, the bible beaters were out front handing out tracks and screaming the word of god. I thought about assaulting one of them, but Vasquez grabbed me and pulled me away. As we walked off, Lucinda whispered something to the lead guy with the megaphone. He turned and began to vomit into the street. You don't want to fuck with Lucinda.
So we made it to the Zephyr, right? Anyhow, this is where the true drinking began. I hate anything black licorice flavored, so I opted out of the Jager shot. I did an Irish Car Bomb, followed up by a nice Scotch an Sour. While I was nursing this little tummy rumbler, I noticed Hadrian at the jukebox. He had great taste in tunes, so hopefully we would get some stuff on here that didn't suck. Shortly the Rolling Stones, "Sympathy For The Devil" came blasting across the speakers. I got quite a laugh out of his first choice, considering the circumstances.
Grace was pissed that they were out of orange juice. All she wanted, she said, was a Screwdriver. She ordered a Rum and Coke instead. Slightly different. I had to point out to Vasquez that you were suppose to unshell the peanuts before you ate them. The bartender was giving him some strange looks. He was the youngest of all of us, only been on Earth for a few months. Bloody Christ, he's a trip, though. Looks like a young punk rock Elvis.
I lit up a cigarette and surveyed my crew. The Royal Princess of Hell, a Newly Fallen Angel, The Majetrix of the Uhmbra, an Exiled Warlord of the Heavenly Host, and me. Lucinda had left the Uhmbra in the capable hands of her sister to take an extended holiday here on Earth, and Hadrian had been booted for refusing to commit genocide in the lord's name. Vasquez was an interesting mix of ancient and infant. Regardless, he could drink like a fish, and I think Grace had the hots for him.
Lucinda and I had hooked up for a little while when she had first come to this plane on her vacation. I can't say it was a bad thing. It only lasted a short time. Being the queen of an entire dimension leads you to go with your whims. I was a whim. That's fine. As far as I knew, Hadrian was gay. He spoke often of some guy he was shacked up with in the Far Worlds, but he never brought him around. Whatever. I wasn't one to judge him, or how his relationship worked.
Maximillian came out with us sometimes. He was the King of the Culling. Older dude, but pretty laid back. He had been too busy training some new kid recently to go drinking with us. I don't know how he did it all day, all that mass murder. I would get tired. Chaos was such a much more simple operation. I suppose there would be those who disagreed with me on that, however...
Yeah, that's pretty much all I did last night. I've spent too many nights like that recently. I roll out of bed around two o'clock and check my e-mail, eat a little something, type a bit, then get ready to go out for the night. Grace always shows up at my place first. We've become really close in the last few months. I think she's finally over everything that happened with Thadin.
Yeah? Yeah. I don't know? What do you think?
Grace? No, nothing is going on with me and Grace! I told you that. Her and Vasquez are hooking up, I'm pretty sure about that. Yeah, I'm cool with that, I really dig Vasquez. Listen, I gotta go, I'm meeting everybody over at this little dive bar in the Florida Keys. I'll talk to you later, okay?
User Reviews
Submitted by Axolotl (user info) at 2006-10-26 13:48:30 EDT (#)
Ranking: 2
Different format.
Submitted by munkeypants (user info) at 2006-10-01 09:52:01 EDT (#)
Ranking: 2
No Comment
Submitted by RyuFu (user info) at 2005-09-28 12:17:20 EDT (#)
Ranking: 2
Change in style...I was worried you got drunk and gave up on the series...but if that's a change of pace, then so be it. Ah, the power of being the author.
I hope you realize all the time I'm taking to read your stuff is keeping me from continuing Neurotic Noir, right? Heh, heh....good thing, too. That's starting to get complicated. I have to actually think about what I'm writing now.
Submitted by Nellypaal (user info) at 2005-09-21 05:40:05 EDT (#)
Ranking: 2
Not a bad thing to say, barring the occasional typo...
Submitted by Crystle (user info) at 2005-09-20 18:31:20 EDT (#)
Ranking: 2
No Comment
Submitted by Brdn_Nkd (user info) at 2005-09-20 13:46:40 EDT (#)
Ranking: 2
No Comment
Submitted by Average_Dan (user info) at 2005-09-20 08:10:22 EDT (#)
Ranking: 2
Where would I like to start.
Lady Plural and Benny seem to not think that these series would work well in a book because
of length. I think that a book could be wrapped up in 320-350 pages, which is by modern
novel standards, pretty average. I think that with that length, you could wrap up all the
history you could ever want with any chracter, or even have a chapter devoted entirely to
inner thoughts, especially those of the main character, like you are doing here it would seem.
I like all of the stories that you write, and this style works as well as any of them, because
it IS forum writing, and at this point, all of your readers feel close enough to Ed to have
him ask them a thing or two or even give him advice on a subject.
Those are my lame-ass thoughts
Submitted by iradney (user info) at 2005-09-20 06:44:33 EDT (#)
Ranking: 2
brilliant, as usual
Submitted by Barnymeinhoff (user info) at 2005-09-20 05:15:29 EDT (#)
Ranking: 2
fuggin ay!
Submitted by Saxon (user info) at 2005-09-20 03:12:11 EDT (#)
Ranking: 2
This is my last rating for the day and i wont go into what i thought as the others covered my thoughts pretty much. I enjoyed this though. would like to see a little more.
Submitted by thecaes (user info) at 2005-09-20 00:21:42 EDT (#)
Ranking: 2
I get what you're saying with Ed being a little older. But it seems like a regression to me -- now that he's OUT of college, wouldn't he be kind of past the whole drink-your-face-off stage? He seemed more mature to me in the kaote series.
For example, he almost starts a fight outside of Ray's. And a heavenly exiled Spaniard holds him back? The Ed from your kaote series wouldn't care enough about a mouthy human to want to attack him. Maybe fuck around with him wish some chaos magic, sure...like turn his pubes into fire ants or something.
Submitted by thecaes (user info) at 2005-09-20 00:14:42 EDT (#)
Ranking: 2
Benny has a point with the art...though sometimes it's better to let the reader imagine what the characters look like. Sometimes your interpretation doesn't live up to the expectation.
I have the same gripe as before. Just doesn't sound like Ed. And I didn't realize that Ed was talking to someone until the end of the segment -- I assumed he was talking to the reader.
Submitted by Benny (user info) at 2005-09-19 22:39:39 EDT (#)
Ranking: 2
This left me wondering who he was talking to. It all worked well for me up until this:
"Yeah? Yeah. I don't know? What do you think?"
It's difficult to follow because we can't read/hear the question being asked nor the answers given to it.
I personally don't have anything against episodic writing styles. It sets you apart from other writers here on Uber. I doubt it would work well if you tried to write a book with that style but on something like Uber it does very well.
If I could make a suggestion it would be that you put more of your artwork at the bottom of these. You have a real talent as an artist and it's kind of cool to be able to see your impression of what the characters look like.
Submitted by LadyPlural (user info) at 2005-09-19 21:26:43 EDT (#)
Ranking: 2
Dude, if you write in more episodic posts, that's just dandy. If that's just your writing style, you might as well flow with it. I have no idea whatsoever how to make a story into a part of a whole, rather than anything else.
I think that part of the issue is that the things that you post don't actually connect with each other, chronologically speaking. I mean, usually in a book or something, you get a bit of an intro as to how the characters ended up in a bar in LA, say, when they were in another bar in NYC in the previous chapter. There's kind of a sense of continuity, whereas you tend to skip around in time so much that it would be just about impossible for you to connect it all without ending up with something the size of 'War And Peace'. And that's really ok- you just need to make sure that the plot of each of your stories is interesting enough to warrant reading as a stand-alone piece, if you go that route.
Submitted by kaos-king (user info) at 2005-09-19 21:08:38 EDT (#)
Ranking: 0
I little different writing style for me. How do you think it went? Anyhow, this established some of the other players in Ed's world. Some of them are VERY important later on, some not. It's been said that I write too "Episodic" and that these don't flow together very well. Once again, I used to post these sometime a week apart and I always wanted it easily accessible to new readers. It isn't until the later series that things start getting really complicated. Or maybe it's because I read too many comic books as a kid... I don't know.