On the fan-fiction balcony

Greetings all! My intent here is to essentially make this a fan-fiction review column, where I would post my own reviews of stories posted online and invite anyone else to weigh in with their own and with rebuttals to mine. The usual bylaws would apply, of course, with regard to common courtesy and all that.

In the “Old but new…” topic in the Introductions sections, I mentioned that I’d been doing my own f-f since 1986, and I thought this would be a good place to expand upon that. I saw “TSoN” upon its theatrical release, while I was stationed in Charleston, SC with the Navy. I may have seen it a second time at the base theater—I’m not entirely clear on this—but it took another couple of years to have a real impact on me. This was after I’d become stationed at a base in the Bahamas, where we had great satellite TV including the major premium channels. In the middle of 1984 most or all of them—HBO, Cinemax, Showtime and The Movie Channel—were showing “TSoN” repeatedly, so I started checking it out again.

Now, my entertainment tastes in those days, and since then, have always been pretty varied. I’d long admired quality animation, of course, including Disney, both classic and contemporary, and the WB and MGM classic shorts, though I’ve always considered myself more an admirer than a student. Newspaper comic strips longtime fan of Peanuts, Doonesbury, B.C., Wizard of Id, etc. In prose fantasy and SF, a big fan of, among others, Michael Moorcock, especially the Eternal Champion cycle; and Robert E. Howard’s Conan, both in prose and as chronicled in Marvel Comics, especially under the helm of Roy Thomas. Marvel Comics in general, especially during the ‘70s and ‘80s. In live-action films, comedy and SF/Fantasy were my mainstays, though there were some real turkeys out during that period. My favorite TV series at the time included Cheers, Newhart, Hill St. Blues and St. Elsewhere. Music is a whole other area, worthy of a separate (and nearly endless) discussion.

For all the aforementioned, none of it had the impact “TSoN” had on me. Once I’d given it one cable viewing, I felt compelled to see it again and again; with a growing sense each time of a rich, detailed backstory and the possibilities of further adventures of these characters that cried out to be told, and that I could be the one to tell them. This eventually led to writing my first f-f and having it published in Timothy Fay’s The NIMH File in 1986. To this day I can’t quite explain it all why it took this one animated movie to inspire me to the degree of writing my own fiction, of any kind, the first I’d done so since high school Lit courses. But there you have it. And I’ve been at it continuously ever since, sometimes more slowly, but never completely giving it up.

If there’s anything to add at this point, it’s that I don’t consider my writings to be in competition with those of anyone else, or the “correct” or “definitive” version compared to others, at least as applies to those of us who are serious and dedicated to doing this well; “Timmy to the Rescue” being emphatically excluded. I will confess to having something of a proprietary interest in these characters, including the ones I didn’t create, just from having written about them so long; but I’m still interested in seeing what others have done, even if it differs radically from my version, which is why I decided to do this. We’re all playing in the same sandbox here, and I’m always interested in seeing what others can bring to the table. (How’s that for a mixed metaphor?)

So, I should have my first review ready pretty soon. Till then, my ironic signature line

The first fan-fiction I’m reviewing is “The Secret of the Stone” by Procyon, mostly because it’s the first long-form NIMH fan-fic story I’d actually read outside of my own, and it left quite an impression. As everyone no doubt knows by now, it’s housed here at thorn valley, specifically

http//www.thornvalley.com/library/stories/sots/

So, now the necessary SPOILER WARNING. If you haven’t already read it, you may want to stop here and check it out first, as I will be bringing up major plot points. You have been warned!

First of all, great character development. The author did an outstanding job of capturing the personalities of Auntie Shrew, Jeremy, Mrs. Brisby and her children in the early chapters. Some character bits that got my attention in Ch. 1, Mrs. B’s slight anxiety over how different her children are from “ordinary” mice, since the story opens only a month or so after the movie, and all she’d learned is still so new to her. Martin’s persuading his sibs in Ch. 4 to sneak out from under Jeremy’s beak and strike out for Thorn Valley on their own was very nicely done. The interplay between him and Teresa was spot-on as he brought out one point after another in favor of making the trip; it had me laughing out loud in places. A point of the movie I’d always admired was that the kids were depicted more like real kids and not overly cloying or cute, and this was carried over well. One point I found questionable, though, was if this is only a month or so later, why do the Brisby children seem so much more mature in their words and mannerisms than in the movie? Cynthia especially is the most changed, though it’s a definite improvement over the “scatterbrained” description in the O’Brien book. Another “timely” problem Teresa tells Gary the sparrow that their father had died only a month before. At that point, it would have to be more like 7-8 months.

Throughout most of the story, there is a good balance between dramatic and lighter scenes, though the author wastes little time in bringing in elements of suspense and genuine danger, as in the movie, with the entrance of the hostile mice. How they’d get so P.O.’d, I asked, to the point of attacking everyone connected to the name Brisby, even trying to kill our sweet Mrs. B, who never hurt anyone in her life? Great cliffhanger at the end of Ch. 3, after she’s attacked again, this time wounded and possibly dying. The children’s attempted journey to T.V. was believably carried out, with them starting out thinking it easy but with their confidence eroding after the mink attack, the loss of Tim’s medicine, and the moment Teresa realizes they’re very likely lost.

Great sense of wonder brought in with the reunion of the children with Mrs. B and the intro of the mysterious Seer, and her tale of the Old Ones and the Owl’s tale of Jonathan’s harnessing the ancient power within the amulet; and the Seer’s stone chamber, especially the way the one stone reacted to Timothy. The revelation that the green pendant the Seer gave him actually being a placebo obviously plays off the description of Tim in the book as a hypochondriac.

I have to confess that after they arrive in T.V. and receive an initially chilly reception, it had me going for a bit. They, and the reader, wouldn’t have expected the Brisbys to be met with a practical joke. “Big meanie” indeed; I felt like stomping on Leander’s foot myself! When the hostile mice turn out to have preceded our heroes to T.V., things take a darker turn, with their presence giving the rest of the story an air of lurking menace that would remain in check only so long, though there are still plenty of light moments. It’s obvious that the author wasn’t exactly bending over backwards keeping their origins at NIMH a secret. One could hardly blame Mrs. B for being petrified of telling the Council about the attempt on her life. Since this was so shortly after Justin’s promotion to leader, he was bound to experience some growing pains, and this was well handled, with Jocelyn chewing him out for breaking protocol and others like Augustus openly challenging him. I’d expected Mrs. B to tell him right away about Spiro’s attempt on her life, but it was fitting that Martin be the one to spill it. One could sympathize with both Martin and Justin in this scene while understandable that Justin couldn’t treat the NIMH mice as other than guests, it’s equally understandable that Martin would be fighting mad and want Justin to take some kind of action right away. Putting names to the two lookalike guard rats from the movie was a nice touch. The tour of the school facilities, the Guard barracks and the library was all very absorbing. I caught the “Redwall” injoke in Ch. 10 with Connie and the other kids being told a story about a castle that’s green…no, red…and not a castle; an abbey, perhaps? I was a bit disappointed that this version of Isabella had such a limited role; apparently she never had a crush on Justin. I like how each of the Brisby children were allowed to go off on their own and keep busy with other things…except for Teresa, at least at first. And we meet Jenner’s family; understandable that Mrs. B would find them intimidating. Mrs. Avery, a “feral” rat, was a welcome addition, but why don’t we see more of her after the one brief scene, since she and Mrs. B got on so well? And finally Brutus appears! The description of the machine house really puts one right there. The author must have an engineering background; I know I could never be as descriptive with a sequence like this. The nature and source of the lantern fuel is never really specified, but that’s okay; some things can be left mysterious. Chloe was a great character, liked her right away.

Finally, the titular “character” appears. I liked how it was unanimously agreed that Tim be the one to inherit the Stone. The dinner scene was alternately tense and hilarious, with Jenner’s family and the NIMH mice seated where both groups had a chance to see the amulet around Tim’s neck; and Cynthia’s prodigious appetite. It took a while, but I caught the “NIMH 2” injoke, that if she continues to put away this much food, she’s liable to end up the crème-colored little butterball we saw in that wretched “sequel.” And her partaking of the “valley ale” this is what we’re resorting to for a laugh? A child getting drunk? No, actually, it was very funny, and an entirely innocent mistake. But things definitely turn dark after this, with the intruder in the dark that turned out to be Hugo. At least his regret and shame seems genuine following Christine’s tongue-lashing.

One of my favorite aspects of the story is how each of the Brisby children have a specific, even pivotal role Cynthia makes friends among the Rat children, Martin sits in on Guard training sessions, Timothy throws himself into sorting through Jonathan’s belongings and helps Avery get the Augur working, and Cynthia has a role in the latter as well. And Teresa? She’d had little to do except tour the colony exterior, but in Ch. 12 her role becomes at least as pivotal as Tim’s, where she quietly tries pumping Warren for information, and finding herself genuinely feeling for him, his caution over saying too much obvious to her. Finally we have a scene where everyone’s able to kick back and relax a bit, though it’s unfortunately short-lived with the weasel’s attack. Specifically, would that be a fisher or a pine marten, perhaps? I’d expected one of the Guard to rescue Cynthia, but instead Spiro? Brilliant! It was very believable to have her family continue to be suspicious despite his actions. The second meeting of Teresa and Warren was done equally well, with feelings between the two obviously deepening, though it’s not stated explicitly, to the point where he’s able to admit out loud that Fraus had been feeding him lies and propaganda. His emotional conflict was very believable, as was Martin’s distrust of him, though one couldn’t blame Teresa for slapping him. Timothy’s discovery of Jonathan’s “special” glasses and secret message—very intriguing, leading to more of his father’s backstory.

Ch. 14 was the one I was really looking forward to. (“Now it can be told…”) Given what had been established thus far, a believable process for the amulet’s creation, and Ages had a hand in it along with Jonathan. Some burning questions remain how and why did he have to use the amulet to save Cynthia? How did Nicodemus become crippled by his attempt to tap into the “dream ether”? Great concept, by the way, very Tolkienesque. And of course, the revelation that it was Jenner who was ultimately responsible for Jonathan’s death. Ironic that, for all his genius and accomplishments, he should meet his end in such an age-old fashion. I admit I was hoping for a last-minute out for Jonathan’s possible survival, but the final death-scream and the “little wet noises” seemed to confirm his demise. Sigh. Then again, Jenner didn’t directly witness it…

There are aspects to this chapter I have to take exception with. We’re reminded time and again how much the family misses him, but not one scene of Jonathan with his family, not even on his last night? Not long after I’d finished my first reading of this, I read an interview with Prof. Stephen Hawking, who, when asked what his children and grandchildren have taught him, answered, “That science is not enough. I need the warmth of family life.” Right away I thought of this version of Jonathan, and this one-sided depiction of him that we’re left with, as if his research were more important than his family. At least once, I'd think Jonathan would express regret over his time on his projects taking away from time with his family. And after Timothy awakens, it’s as if he barely remembers the dream; it isn’t referred to again at all. Otherwise it would have had to have a more profound effect, even traumatic; he did witness his father’s death, after all.

Much darker turn taken with Ch. 15 on (though there was time for another, more obvious “NIMH 2” injoke), a breakneck pace which doesn’t let up, with Ages discovered tortured and barely alive but able to confirm Fraus’s plan, which is finally put into action. Spiro’s reason for saving Cynthia is made clear as well. What follows I didn’t find excessively violent (with one exception), though perhaps a bit more than I expected, but appropriate given what we’d already learned of the NIMH mice. The author did warn the reader in his Introduction that “things can get out of hand.” Thankfully Warren was able to conquer his fears enough to put a plan into action to save Justin and the Brisbys. Hated to see Chloe bite the dust, but at least it was in putting up a heroic defense for the machine house. I had thought that Fraus may have known about the amulet’s power earlier, but only after discovering Jonathan’s secret message does he learn of it and ultimately finding he couldn’t control it. A grisly but fitting end for him, though I’m glad Spiro didn’t let him suffer. Almost thought Justin would buy the farm in closing off the flooding machine house, but in the end Hugo ends up saving the day. Glad he was able to redeem himself to a degree. With Fraus’s plan ruined, not surprising that Spiro would want to make a desperate bid for freedom, but I shudder to think what he might have had in mind for Teresa had he succeeded. Great final battle sequence, with Spiro even able to hold his own against Brutus. Glad to see Warren redeem himself further, and a fitting end (?) for Spiro. And finally, Timothy uses the amulet, receiving an intriguing allegorical vision in the process.

Now the aforementioned exception after all that had been established about Jenner’s widow Christine—fighting to maintain credibility for herself and her family after being stigmatized by Jenner’s actions, giving Hugo a sound tongue-lashing for his attempt at the amulet—she didn’t deserve what was done to her, completely freaking out, refusing to listen even when told that her son’s actions helped to save the entire colony, and mortally wounding Bracken. This was a total non sequitur, unnecessary and gratuitous.

Why was the epilogue so super-rushed? “NIMH” has been criticized for having an ending that’s too unsatisfying, leaving too much up in the air, and this story matches it, to just as much a degree, if not more. There should have been at least one more full chapter to tie things up. We got more of Fraus’s backstory, which allows us to see there was plenty of tragedy in his life, though not enough to excuse his actions. But what about Spiro? What happened to make him so cold-hearted and scarred, physically and psychologically? It seems odd that the Brisby family, minus Teresa, would want to just simply return home instead of staying on in T.V., at least short-term or even permanently, after all everyone had been through. There at least should have been a farewell scene. It was downright heartbreaking to hear about Martin continuing to be so boneheaded about Warren, after all he’d done to redeem himself. Even after respecting Teresa’s feelings when Warren was dying, he still couldn’t accept that he was, at best, a reluctant participant in Fraus’s plan. And back home, Cynthia and Timothy behave as if they’d just returned from a picnic as they prepare to tell their friends their latest “story,” not as ones who’d been through something so harrowing, even traumatizing. Then again, it could be a testament to their resiliency that they could carry on as before. But what about the amulet? Does Timothy still have it?

Overall, the story could have benefited from a few more scenes of personal interaction of the quieter type, including romantic scenes, to further offset the more tense and dramatic ones. The closest we come are the ones with Teresa and Warren, as well as those were handled. As noted, one with Jonathan and Mrs. B during the dream sequence would have helped. What can I tell you? I’m a romantic slob, I can’t help it.

If I used a grading system like, say, with five stars, I would give this four out of five.

SPECIAL ANNOUNCEMENT!!!
My first posted fan-fiction, the first half of "The Brisby Beginning," is now up at Robin's Fan-Fiction Archive

http//robin.thornvalley.com/node/513

I've just sent to Simon the second half, so it should follow shortly.
Feedback is welcomed, so feel free to post comments in this space.

The second half of "The Brisby Beginning" is now posted at Robin's.

The next fan-fiction I’m reviewing is “Rat Race A Trilogy of Trouble” by Dawn Griffiths, which can be viewed at

http//robin.thornvalley.com/node/328

I approached this with a lot of curiosity, because the author and I had a regular correspondence as fellow “NIMH” fans years before, from 1987 to around 1994. During that time, we’d exchange ideas about “TSoN” and I’d send her copies of all my fan-fics. She had some original ideas, most notably the Aurora Griffin character she worked into her story; though honestly, she seemed to put more energy into ideas for my original characters rather than develop her own characters and concepts. I hadn’t heard from her since then, so of course when I saw she had a story up at Robin’s I had to give it a look-see.

Well…to say it wasn’t what I expected is a massive understatement. It opens promisingly, with a reinterpretation of the film’s closing scene. It’s told in script form, a unique touch. The buildup to the revelation of a “resurrected” Jenner as the main villain, with his use of a hawk as an ally, was nicely done. I wasn’t surprised at his inclusion, since the author had told me she’d had a fascination for Jenner. But making him just simply evil for evil’s sake, with no motivation other than being an Idi Amin-style conqueror and dictator, just didn’t ring true to me. When he returns after his first battle with Justin, now with ensorcelled allies, almost all the remainder of the story reads like an extended torture scene. Again and again we have Jenner gloating over the absolute power he holds over Justin, and Justin pleading—make that blubbering—that he doesn’t want to die. This is hard enough to take in one scene, but we’re treated to it over and over and over. The whole story becomes a chore to read, not only because of that, but also due to an apparent software flaw that resulted in punctuation being replaced by squares—obviously not the author’s fault. But did I mention the stuttering? In the words of “Get Fuzzy”’s Rob Wilco, oh my head. Put all the Porky Pig shorts together in a string, and I swear it wouldn’t surpass what we have here. As for the specifics of what Jenner does to Justin, I’d sooner not go into it. I’m sure I’m not the only one left with a bad taste in his mouth.

In the last chapter, the amulet again comes into play to save the day, but it literally comes out of nowhere when commanded by Mrs. Brisby, and—unforgivably, in my view—she uses it to kill Jenner and all but one of his allies. This is not the Mrs. B I know, especially not with the way she largely dismisses her own actions with little more than “whatever, at least he’s gone.”

Aside from these points, the character interplay was for the most part well done. I liked the aforementioned Aurora Griffin, but she’s retroactively dropped into the storyline, described as Nicodemus’s apprentice, as if she’d been there all along, with no explanation of precisely who she is or where she came from. I liked this version of Isabella, but it’s disclosed that Jenner had raped her while they still lived at the Rosebush—and she never told anyone? Of course, it would have changed the outcome of the film considerably, with Jenner in custody. But still… And speaking of characters out of nowhere, suddenly Justin has a family—father, mother and brother—and a surname, Wilson. Auntie Shrew suddenly had an actual name as well—Curlew Galdone—and all the rats apparently have family names as well. I could buy that, but Jenner Genre? Huh?

As I said at the beginning, I really had high hopes for this story, because I knew from long ago how much the author loved these characters. Despite my misgivings with some aspects of it, I would give it a respectable 2 ½ stars out of 5.

The whole story becomes a chore to read, not only because of that, but also due to an apparent software flaw that resulted in punctuation being replaced by squares—obviously not the author’s fault.

Huh. Looks like the encoding got messed up. It's fixed now.

Beautifully reviewed david! Looking forward to see more of your reviews.

I’ve just had Simon put up revised chapters of my story “The Brisby Beginning” at Robin’s. I made the changes as a result of alterations I decided to make in the time-line, mainly regarding how much time Johnathan spent living with the Rats, how long he and the missus were together before his supposed death, etc. Specifically, Chapters 1, 5, 8 and 9 were altered. There may even be an unexpected surprise or two in there. As always, feedback is welcomed in this space. As I told Simon already, thanks again and I hope I won’t “have to” do this again!

I also want to acknowledge his fixing the encoding on “Rat Race”; it’s much more readable now. I should have another review ready pretty soon as well.

Ah, The Brisby Beginning, I liked that one a lot, guess I'm going to have to reread.

For my third review, I decided to do a shorter piece before tackling another long-form work, so I picked this one because it was one of the first online fan-fics I’d read.

“The Secret of NIMH—Another Story” by Nala5 can be found at

http//robin.thornvalley.com/node/393

As usual, a SPOILER WARNING for those who haven’t read it yet.

For the first quarter of the story, the author basically takes the movie and adds “missing scenes” Mrs. Brisby—named Phoebe in this story—reacting to Jonathan’s non-return, her decision to ask Jeremy to take her to the Great Owl, preparing the children for the house-moving, etc.; while speeding the reader past many of the movie scenes which we all know. After this, it veers off into more original territory first with Mrs. B’s capture by Billy, putting her in a cage which he installs in his bedroom instead of the kitchen; and then with details of her origin, with a charming domestic scene that gives way to the horror of young Phoebe Mayberry suddenly being orphaned after a vicious cat attack; and finally with how she met and eventually married Jonathan.

The idea of Mrs. Brisby being orphaned before meeting Jonathan seems almost universal; I used it myself, in my first story back in 1986. I think it likely stems from the impression we’re given of her in the early part of the movie that she’s suddenly thrust out into the world and has to learn to do so much on her own, whereas before she had someone to take care of her and do those things for her, so it’s fitting that she would have lost her parents as suddenly as she lost Jonathan. (end of digression.)

The point where her cage is put in Billy’s room marks the beginning of “alternative” territory—a what-if version of the movie. She effects her own escape from the cage, as in the movie, but awakens Billy and his brother Jimmy in the process. In evading them she makes a shocking discovery Jonathan—sharing her shock and ultimately joy—is alive after having been captured and kept as a caged pet by Jimmy. Phoebe frees him and together they overhear the fateful phone conversation, which leads to a climactic finale that doesn’t diverge significantly from the more familiar one, except for Jonathan engaging Jenner in battle instead of Justin, and a final and plausible resolution to his and Phoebe’s aging difference.

The idea that Jonathan had been captured instead of killed got me to wondering could that have “actually” happened within the context of the film, not just in an alternate version? Could he have been behind the scenes, oblivious to the pivotal events occurring just outside the confines of the farmhouse, “so close and yet so far away?” Over at Robin’s Archive I posted a comment that it was a “staggeringly simple” idea that I wished I’d thought of. Could it have worked?

For all that Nicodemus’s abilities are pretty undefined, here as in the movie version, it seems to me he still could use them to investigate Jonathan’s true fate, but instead he just assumes he’s dead.

The author could have gone into more depth in places, but he/she obviously intended the story to be a “quick read,” and in that context it succeeds admirably. I’d give it 3 ½ stars out of 5.

Again and again we have Jenner gloating over the absolute power he holds over Justin, and Justin pleading—make that blubbering—that he doesn’t want to die. This is hard enough to take in one scene, but we’re treated to it over and over and over. The whole story becomes a chore to read, not only because of that, but also due to an apparent software flaw that resulted in punctuation being replaced by squares—obviously not the author’s fault. But did I mention the stuttering? In the words of “Get Fuzzy”’s Rob Wilco, oh my head. Put all the Porky Pig shorts together in a string, and I swear it wouldn’t surpass what we have here. As for the specifics of what Jenner does to Justin, I’d sooner not go into it. I’m sure I’m not the only one left with a bad taste in his mouth.

No kidding, reading those chapters hurt me mentally. God, no, please, don't, God, no, die, please, don't, squealed, cry, don't, no, please, cry, die, no, please, please, please... I need to lay down.

If Justin was real I think he'd sue for character defamation.

Thanks guys for your comments. ) So much fan-fiction, so little time!

I said I’d tackle a long form story for my next review, so I’ve picked Paul S. Gibbs’ first story “The Rats of Thorn Valley.” I’m sure everyone’s read it already, but for those who may haven’t, the usual SPOILER WARNING is in place; read it and enjoy it at

http//robin.thornvalley.com/node/1

It wasn’t until last November that I got around to reading it myself, after high recommendations from Whiskers57 and others. From the opening paragraphs of Mrs. Brisby (here named Elizabeth) in her “secret spot,” I was hooked. If I’d been able I’m sure I’d have read it all in one sitting. The opening scene very much sets the tone for what follows, which is of course a full-fledged sequel, set three months later. The Brisby family accepts an invitation to visit the Rats, which of course turns out to be much more than a social call for everyone involved. Along the way, there’s great character development; the author was very adept at getting into the character’s heads and explaining what makes them tick, with equal skill in handling male and female characters. Mrs. B in particular has a very strong character arc, being much different by story’s end but still recognizable. The four Brisby children are well developed, though Timothy and Cynthia seemed to have received the greater emphasis. Timothy’s personality is heavily influenced by the O’Brien version, with his intelligence and close bond with Cynthia. Likewise Justin is beautifully handled, the growth of his relationship with Elizabeth especially engaging.

At this point I’d like to mention that I was never one of those who saw these two as a couple. I never once saw that scene in the Rosebush lobby, with the colored lights, as involving flirting, especially considering there really aren’t any further scenes which would advance the idea. And I definitely never saw there being a “lost scene” in which the two lock lips. Now, having said all that, the way their mutual feelings are dealt with here is magnificent, due in large part to the added complication that she’s not available to him, because her husband, unbeknownst to her but not to Justin, is still alive and kicking, off on a secret mission. Justin has to hold back his own feelings for her because of the hope that Jonathan and his four rat associates will return successfully, and his loyalty to his old friend is absolute and unswerving. He does have a telling, all-too-“human” moment, though, in which he ponders the possibility that Jonathan might not return and he’d have Elizabeth to himself. She has begun to reciprocate his feelings, and even tells him she loves him at a vulnerable moment, but he tells her it’s impossible though he can’t elaborate on why right then.

Elizabeth’s gradual realization, from the very first scene on, that her children would be better off among the rats was nicely done, as was her reluctance to completely give in to it. Her being spurred on by Cynthia being the target of “dumb” remarks was great.

The secret mission Jonathan and the four guard rats are on is at the same NIMH lab where he and the other “Original 22” were experimented upon, their goal to ferret out all the information they can about those experiments. The ultimate purpose is to give Elizabeth the option of the NIMH treatment, so that she and Jonathan can grow old together, but the irony isn’t lost on Jonathan that though he did this all for her and their children, his actions hurt them all terribly. He’d made Nicodemus, Justin, Mr. Ages, and Arthur (the chief engineer, borrowed from the O’Brien novel) promise to keep the mission secret, the story of his death by Dragon a lie; and as the mission drags on longer than expected, he finds it increasingly difficult to continue, sinking into depression repeatedly but helped out of it each time by his friends, especially Eileen (probably my favorite of Gibbs’ original characters; what, not Clyde the rubber plant?). But he finds reason to continue as they discover that Dr. Schultz, who’d headed up the since-discontinued project, has made a private obsession of finding his former charges. He’s tracked them to Thorn Valley, his ultimate goal to destroy them, believing them a threat to humanity. Jonathan and his friends can do next to nothing to stop him, but ultimately they make their way to Thorn Valley by stowing away on board the helicopter Schultz has hired.

In spite of Jonathan deceiving and essentially abandoning his family, which would arguably make him seem cowardly, one can’t help feeling for him, with the emotional wringer he gets put through. In his worst moments he believes that when he sees them again, they’d never forgive him, even shut him out of their lives completely, because he’d brought on the situation himself by not leveling with them about the truth about himself. Especially affecting was his realization that his absence may have led to Timothy’s near-death. And when they are finally together again, in Ch. 6, it’s no happy reunion, at least not for everyone; nearly the whole chapter is as emotionally wrenching for the reader as it is for the Brisby family. The old cliché about the story that writes itself really comes into play here, as subsequent events are driven by the characters’ personalities Jonathan’s initial fear at showing himself to them, his realization and dread of how different things will be, Timothy being the first one to accept him, Elizabeth’s shock giving way to anger before she accepts him, her uncertainty about trusting him again—all very believable. The final scene was letter-perfect, poignant and funny; I had to laugh out loud at Elizabeth’s "Oh, for heaven's sake, get in.” The closing line couldn’t be more satisfying.

The author really did his homework in a lot of areas agriculture, engineering, architecture; it all helps to draw the reader into this world. Arguably, he went into more detail than was necessary in places; for instance, Timothy’s eye exam.

Some fun and interesting bits
• The first scene with Jeremy, and his and the family’s flight into Thorn Valley, which would be quite a visual treat in classic animated fashion.
• Justin’s initial bearhug greeting for Elizabeth. Awwww….
• The scene by the swimming hole, with Justin almost telling Elizabeth the truth, giving way to both of them joining the kids.
• Julian’s concert. Glad to see there are musically-inclined rats among them.
• Sullivan’s appearance, and Elizabeth’s horror at his imprisonment shattering the rats’ “paradise” giving way to her pleading for his release.
• Martin and Teresa’s mud-sluice adventure providing “revenge” for Timothy and Cynthia.
• Jonathan allowing a little vicarious pleasure in Philip and Eileen’s growing closeness, and his shooting down of Eileen’s proposal that they bump off Dr. Schultz. He made a great point about Nicodemus’s knowing that the rats would inevitably make contact with humans again at some point.
• The “criminal exchangery” of Elizabeth’s cloak, and Justin’s reaction when she tells him the old one was a gift from Jonathan. I half-expected Justin to do a Homer-style “D’oh!”
• The jumping-back-and-forth in time when the helicopter first arrives first with Judith and Elizabeth, then Tim and Robert, and finally Justin while he’s beating himself up over his feelings for Elizabeth.
• That would have been an interesting discussion in Chapter 5, after Cynthia asks Judith, “Are all humans bad?” and Timothy says he wished they had a few “good” ones on their side.
• Jonathan’s announcement of his plan to stow away on board the copter, which I’d guessed they’d do.
• The Stone again coming into play in a more substantial fashion than in the film, though admittedly again in a deus ex machina fashion.
• Justin’s open admission to Jonathan that he loves Elizabeth, with no obvious sign of tension or jealousy between them, perfectly illustrating their level of mutual trust and the depth of their friendship.
• Jonathan’s declaration “I never want to see another bag of nacho cheese tortilla chips as long as I live”; and his “don’t go there” advice to Justin, firmly placing the story in the particular time it was originally written.

Okay, now for the inevitable nitpicky section
• I have to take exception to Elizabeth being embarrassed by Mr. Ages’ explanation of genetics, specifically the “mating” part. Maybe it’s just me, but I see no reason for these creatures to be embarrassed about matters relating to sex.
• There’s a narrative tendency that comes up a few times, which I found a little distracting interruption of a conversation to describe, often for several paragraphs, something that had happened earlier that leads up to that conversation. For instance, in Chapter 1, where Timothy confesses he’d asked Jeremy to find Thorn Valley.
• The illustrations, though sparse, were nicely done, especially Saul Moran’s first one with Tim reading Justin’s letter. In the one with Tim and Robert, though, the two don’t appear too different from each other in size.
• Why is Brutus mute? Or does he simply not choose to speak? He was way under-utilized here.
• A minor discrepancy at the beginning of Chapter 5 Justin asks Elizabeth if she was at the meeting, but the two did actually make eye contact there.
• Real mice and especially rats can take a drop or make jumps of several feet, so why would a drop of two feet, as when Jonathan and Eileen are leaving NIMH, be a big deal? Likewise, would the header Eileen took while leaving the helicopter really have been enough to break her wrist? Boarding the copter would have been easier as well.
• It’s never clear why, if Nicodemus knew of the secret mission, he would enter a false record—Jonathan killed by Dragon—in his journal, which is supposedly the official record of his people’s history. Could it have been solely because he expected Jonathan’s “widow” would read it eventually?
• The Stone’s origins, as well as Nicodemus’s abilities, are still largely unexplained except as little more than assumptions by Jonathan. My impression was that the author would rather not have made use of it at all, though I could be wrong. And why would Nicodemus tell Elizabeth that Jonathan meant it for her, when he had nothing to do with it?
• Did Elizabeth remember the specifics of her experience with the Stone? It’s not especially clear but I’d guess probably not, since communicating with Nicodemus, as she seemed to be doing, is something she wouldn’t keep to herself.
• Why are Auntie Shrew and the Great Owl completely left out, and not even mentioned? Mr. Ages is conspicuously absent, too, but of course there’s a very specific reason for that.
• Teresa and Martin, especially Martin, got short shrift in Chapter 6. We’re told that he’d reacted to Jonathan’s return with outright hostility, but there are no actual scenes that illustrate that point. He barely has any speaking lines, and in the scenes with the two of them together, he’s with his siblings and Jonathan, seeming to actually listen to and defer to his father, showing no outward signs of hostility. It’s a baffling oversight. There certainly should have been a payoff to that earlier scene where Tim asks him if he’d be glad to see Jonathan if he were there now.

None of these points, of course, dampened my enjoyment of the story, which is as good as fan-fiction gets. I would give it the full five stars out of five.

Finally, a shout-out to the author’s family for allowing his work to remain posted at Robin’s for all to enjoy. I definitely wish I’d become aware of his work and communicated with him while he was still with us. I will most likely cover his other works for my next few reviews.

ANNOUNCEMENT TIME!

The first eight chapters of my fan-fiction “Mrs. Brisby and the Search for Johnathan” are now posted at Robin’s. Find it at

http//robin.thornvalley.com/node/527

Further chapters should follow shortly.

Here’s a fan-fiction that had passed under my radar until a few days ago “Thorn Valley” by shadymissionary, which can be found at
http//shadymissionary.deviantart.com/gallery/11947424#

As a warning to those who are going to read that work of fiction, I think it has a very good idea but is executed badly. In my reading, the work is littered with Mary Sues and other such literary nasties. Nonetheless, it is an interesting concept that tries to deviate from the established pseudo-fantasy style of the film, and for a large part does so imaginatively. Whether this is successful or not is entirely up to the reader.

Thanks Hera Ledro for your assessment of the aforementioned f-f, and thanks for not giving too much away, since I’ve only had the opportunity to skim the early chapters so far. Now, I’m probably opening myself up to enormous embarrassment, but what exactly is a Mary Sue? I’ve come across the term but I’m still unclear about the exact meaning.

A Mary Sue is the unofficial bane of authors everywhere. There are lots of different types, but most generally have the result of drawing 99.999999...9999% of all reader attention to a specific character. Most often this is done through giving that character improbable or unrealistic traits/skills, but it also seems to spawn when a person deliberately does their level best to -avoid- focusing attention on the character in question (creating what is known as an "Anti-Sue").

Mary Sues are unrealistic, cliched, two-dimensional, and shallow. While I can't find it, my friend ElvenAngel wrote a rather lengthy article on identifying a Mary Sue and their traits. TV Tropes also has a nice little section devoted to them, that actually stays rather accurate:

http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/MarySue

Read at will, but I warn you: once TV Tropes has you hooked, there's no going back ;D It's very addicting with its subject matters.

Thanks for the info and warning! I’ll try to read up more on the subject though my online time is rather limited.
P.S. to Simon is the upgrade almost done?

An example of a Mary Sue in film is the character Alice in the horrible Resident Evil movies, which are nothing like the video games that they take their names from but more like The Matrix with zombies.
I personally haven't seen these movies but I have watched video reviews of them. Thankfully, because they saved me from a great deal of pain.

The character Alice is the only character in the story that does anything while all the other characters are useless and only serve to get killed off. And by everything I mean EVERYTHING. She kills the most zombies, she thinks of all the plans, she does all the "cool" action stuff and she's always right. No character flaws at all. A no character at all. Throughout the films she is unfeeling and cold. And in the later films there are clones of her and she has super powers like telekinesis.
This huge focus on Alice can be attributed to the director P.W. Anderson being married to the actress who plays Alice, Milla Jovovich.
What's annoyed fans of these movies, besides not following the plot of the games which would've easily translated to film, is that Alice gets special preference over more important, well-established characters.
In fact the character of Alice wasn't in the games. The main characters of the games like Chris Redfield, Claire Redfield, and Jill Valentine are reduced to sidekick characters who never do anything.
An example of Alice getting special preference over everybody else is a scene where Jill is surrounded by monsters and before she kill them Alice smashes through the window of the building on a motorcycle and kills them all. Throughout the rest of the movie its Alice doing all the work.
In the recent movie Afterlife, Claire is actually allowed to kill a monster while Alice is knocked out. She thinks its dead but it gets up and Alice of course has to deliver the final blow.

So that's an big example of a Mary Sue.

Thanks for the clarification. I guess this is the sort of thing that's better explained by example. I've never seen the Resident Evil movies nor am I much of a videogamer, but this does make the definition clearer.

Firstly, this section is a brief series of notes from my first read-through. Little things; naming, characterization, etc.

-Prologue
---Name: Gwinthrayle. This name seems out of place, but as nothing has been revealed about the story yet I'll put this on the figurative back-burner.

-Chapter 1
---Interesting inconsistency: the title spells the name as "Jonathan", yet the spelling of the character's name in the story is "Johnathan". Speaking strictly in terms of canon (for both movie and the original novel), the correct spelling is "Jonathan", as spelled in the title. Inconsequential in nature; just a little nitpick.
---Use of "God". I cannot seem to recall religious vernacular used in the film. Hopefully this is an isolated incident.
---Braggadocio. Love it. Might fly over the heads of the younger audience, though.

-Chapter 2
---"But these matters were not on Mrs. Brisby's mind now..." Then why bring it up "now"? Why not wait for a later point where the relevance is not so easily dismissed by a younger audience?

-Chapter 3
---Several successful instances where the film is tied into the plot from the book.

-Chapter 4
---

-Chapter 5
---Melvin's silent addition, "More than certain actual fathers" seems out of place in the narrative, which has been established as a third person limited, as opposed to a TP omniscient.
---Some emphasis seems to be placed on paranoic tendencies which were not previously established in either the story or the preceding movie, one example of which is Mrs Brisby's trepidation at Melvin's use of "We're your humble servants". This seems very out of place and simply tacked on for emotional appeal without an appropriate set-up. It's true that many of these things happened in the past, but they were never established as causing her lasting distress.

My reading is incomplete, if only because my time on the library computer is up. I'm looking forward to finishing the story!

I do believe the word "God" is used by Mrs. Brisby in the beginning of the film, don't really remember though.

Really appreciate your feedback, guys. Looks like a few things need clarifying

First, the discrepancy in the name. You won’t believe this, but until you pointed it out, I wasn’t aware that Simon had keyed the title in as “Jonathan” when I meant it to be with the extra H, even though he posted it over two months ago. I had alerted him to the misspelling of “Remembrances” but somehow the one in the actual story title got by me. Duhhh-uh! BTW, the next time you see “TSoN” watch Nicodemus’s journal entries closely. That’s how he spelled the name, so that’s what I ran with, even though it differs from the book.

Use of “God?” After Ages tells Mrs. B Timothy has pneumonia and that he could die from it, she says, “Oh please, dear God, no…” I figured she would have a belief in a creator, probably impressed upon her by Johnathan, though minus any formal religious doctrine.

“Braggadocio” Thanks, I thought it fit. As for concerns of a younger audience, well, anyone can use a dictionary. I’ve never really approached writing NIMH fan-fiction as writing to a particular age group, though if there was one I guess it would be “older fellow NIMH fans.”

I brought up that matter in chapter 2 at that point simply because it seemed an appropriate place for it, as it regarded the differences between the Brisbys and other mice.

Melvin’s comment is admittedly out of place there, but anyone who’d already read “The Brisby Beginning” knows who his father is, but of course Mrs B doesn’t know yet. I’m a little unclear as to the “paranoiac tendencies” you saw. If you mean Mrs. B’s slight anxiety prior to and just after their arrival in T.V., I was trying to convey her uncertainty over exactly what awaited them, given her previous experience at the rosebush and that they’d essentially come to T.V. blind. If you saw this as distress, I definitely didn’t mean it to look that extreme.

You and I are definitely like-minded as far as continuity goes, and for keeping things consistent. Looking forward to more feedback.

I also agree that the quote "more-so than some fathers" was out of place. I thought he was referring to Jonathan the first time I read it. Keep in mind that I didn't read your prequel beforehand.

lililililiANNOUNCEMENT TIME!lilililili

Chapters 9 through 14 of “Mrs. Brisby and the Search for Johnathan” are now posted at Robin’s.

lililililiANNOUNCEMENT TIME!lilililili

Chapters 9 through 14 of “Mrs. Brisby and the Search for Johnathan” are now posted at Robin’s.

I read through most of it, here are my thoughts:

I really, really, liked the fact that you chose an alien planet as the setting. I thought I was going to read about some woodland critter witch cult, which wouldn't be interesting to me. Having it set on an alien planet gives the NIMH universe more dimensions. I'm sure some will hate you for doing this, but I find it refreshing. I especially liked how you described the setting and the wildlife. If you decided to make it a horror/sci-fi setting, you would've scored big with me, but as it stands what you've done is commendable.

You reference the Gibbs fanfictions (whether intentionally or not): the Justin and Mrs. Brisby bearhug and the whole shanghaied joke. Interesting...I guess.

You seem to have too many sub-plots going on at once and it's kinda hard for an 18 year old ADHD-fueled American metal-head kid to care about one thing or another. We jump from Thornvalley, to Mrs Brisby, to Jonathan, and to the antagonist at a rapid pace with hardly any room to breathe, and by the looks of things, there seems to be more plot threads coming.

I look forward to reading more. I'm hoping there's a tragic ending. What can I say, I like horror and tragedy. I'm quite the cynical bastard.

Having Johnathan sent to another dimension was one of the first elements I’d definitively decided upon, circa 1985—glad you approve. I’ll admit a certain amount of influence from other fan-fic writers, including Gibbs, mainly in specifying some characters’ line of work and the matter of the children's education. I thought the bearhug was in keeping with Justin’s character and that they’d very naturally greet each other that way, though I knew the resemblance to the Gibbs version would be unavoidable.
I couldn’t resist throwing in a “NIMH II” in-joke or two. Can you spot them? Actually it's just one so far, but the second comes up later.
Sorry to disappoint you about the non-tragic ending coming up. Honestly, after such emotional scenes as Johnathan seeing Madeline close to death and then their happy reunion, did you honestly expect one? Maybe I can take the edge off your cynicism just a bit…
Hope to have the next batch of chapters up before long.

I've been thinking of writing NIMH fan fic. I've written one or two for other films that I like. I don't know about writing an actual full length story mainly due to the excellent job writers like Paul Gibbs did. I like "The Rats of Thorn Valley" and "Second In Command" very much along with his unfinished stories and its very sad of his passing since I would to have seen where he would've taken the characters after "Second"

Anyway, my idea is short "What if..." stories. The inspiration of this comes from an audio play production company called Big Finish. They do a variety of plays for series like Sherlock Holmes and Sapphire & Steel, but their most important property is Doctor Who. "Classic Doctors, New Adventures" is their tagline and fits very well. Basically you have Doctors 5-8 along with their companions in brilliantly written stories that sometimes exceed the stories they did for television.
Besides the full length Doctor stories you also have Short Trips, Companion Chronicles and Unbound. Unbound is where I get this NIMH idea from. In Unbound stories are presented as "What if...", taking looks at alternate versions of the Doctor and events surrounding the series.
Examples include: "What if The Doctor believed the ends justify the means?" "What if The Doctor never left his home planet to explore the universe?" "What if the Doctor stopped time traveling and settled down on Earth?", etc.
In these stories other actors play The Doctor like David Warner, David Collings, Geoffrey Bayldon, and a certain Sir Derek Jacobi :D

So my intention is to write short "What if..." NIMH stories
I have a few stories in mind. But if you have an idea for a "What if..." story post it here, should make for an interesting discussion :D

Marvel Comics also used the “what-if” concept in their title “What If” (what else?) , sometimes to great effect, sometimes not so great, in which familiar characters would be killed off or have their lives irrevocably changed. In the “NIMH” arena, I’ve toyed with the idea myself, especially playing off my story “The Brisby Beginning,” specifically the scene where Johnathan, the morning after his first night with Madeline, almost spills the truth about himself. In the what-if version he doesn’t back down, which of course would lead to a considerable alteration of future events. I haven’t worked it through to a great degree yet, but this fear of Johnathan’s, and his overcoming it, seems to me to be the best fodder for a what-if storyline.

Hey! I actually got the time to read more! HOORAY!

-Chapter 6
---I like that you've decided to place a character with a photographic memory in this fiction. Whether anything will come out of it or not has yet to be revealed, but I always like it when people aren't afraid to put in extraordinary characters that are not the main character(s) nor any of their relations.

-Chapter 7
---The history of the amulet. Perhaps more will be revealed in time, but this seems a bit too much like the excuse "it's magic" to me. Jonathan comes to the realization that the amulet acted upon his courage far too easily, in my opinion and as an example. In this case, I wonder if more ignorance and less exposition would be advantageous.
---While Mrs Brisby's acceptance of the amulet's 'vision' pertaining Jonathan's survival is no surprise, I find it hard to believe that Justin would so easily accept this on nothing but a non-descriptive exclamation. I know he's a chivalrous clown, but his character doesn't seem -that- out-of-tune with the world of logic. Given that you are alluding to the events of the book rather often, and given that Justin was one of the masterminds of their escape, he seems to be a much more superficial thinker (not to mention creative) than spiritual. Perhaps he would trust Mrs Brisby, but I don't think he'd really ever believe it until he saw it. Mr Ages' reaction was perfect, though: Preposterous! Yes!

-Chapter 8
---Justin relaying the 'impressions' - bad move for a leader, and I'm not sure that the crowd's reception is entirely plausible. They accept that FAR too easily, and let's face it: these are supposed to be a group of highly intelligent rats that have set up a self-sufficient colony outside of the reach of human influence (for the most part). In my opinion, skepticism would have been the right move here. Justin, as an effective leader, should have recognized this possibility as well - something as far-fetched as Mrs Brisby's 'impressions' could cast doubt on him as a leader. Simply leaving it at "We have reason to believe" would have been sufficient, and much more effective. Skepticals would probably ask "How do you know?", to which Justin would likely reply that "I can't explain that", perhaps because it would violate some of Mrs Brisby's privacy. This just seems out of character and highly improbable for a group of intelligent rats.
---Almost converse to the 'accepting too easily', with Melvin you seem intent to over-explain, or over-justify, the potential powers of the amulet, and hint too strongly that the amulet has hidden depths. Both of these things have been established: we have reason to believe, both from this story and its source material, that the Stone has hidden potential. It has also been established that explaining this is simply beating the corpse, so trying to do it with Melvin is just too much. It's been explained already; readers are not (converse to the trope Viewers are Morons) idiots, so give them a bit more credit with their memory.
---Rollercoaster? How would Mrs Brisby know exactly what that is, or even conceive the idea?

-Chapter 9
---Hmm...Justin/Isabella? Intriguing, and though I'm not sure I totally agree (he always struck me as more of the 'good big brother' type with Izzy), I would like to see how this pans out.
---NIMH injections creating magic changes which potentially influence creatures around the NIMH-enhanced specimen? Even if it were only a 'bond' influence, I'm really having trouble believing it.
---I'm glad you've started to expand into different perspectives, but this was rather sudden. Not only did you allot a rather lengthy piece of text to Sithpa and Ghormfisk, and Gwinthrayle and Aphonjal (Jonathan?), but these came right out of the blue with no transition, both in the long run and immediate sense: you did not ease the readers into this (or, you did not maintain this from the beginning), nor was there really any transition beyond the line break. Good idea, but the execution is lacking.

-Chapter 10
---Insect repellent? Really? With a group of rats who are effectively functioning with colonial age technology? Somehow I think that repellents are a bit unlikely.
---Guileless, hah! Well okay, perhaps he's only got some skills in deceit because of Ghormfisk, but I do like the dramatic irony set up here.

-Chapter 11
---Justin's rage is very out of character here, at least compared to what we know of him. He didn't even lose it like this when he found out that Nicodemus, who was hinted by Mr Ages to have had a very close relationship with Justin, was killed by Jenner. Sithpa was simply a pawn, and even Justin would be able to realize that. Justin may be a man of action, but he's no hothead.
---And then he emos?

Wow...I sound like a jerk here D: Sorry if you take any of this the wrong way, your work is a fun read. These are just some issues that made me twitch...in places I never thought could twitch...STOP IT LEFT BUTTOCKS!

One of the things that has me extremely skeptical is the sci-fi route you're taking this. I would never state that SoN is exclusively fantasy, since to me the movie and its source material were very strong examples of that rare gem that incorporates both genres into itself successfully, but this whole 'alien world' thing has me...well, more than just skeptical actually; I would even say hesitant or retiscent. It just doesn't mesh well with the established NIMH canon.

Another issue is less pressing for now, as I've yet to finish the story, but I notice that there are a lot of things in previous chapters that you fail to connect throughout the story. I wouldn't really call them MacGuffins, but even still there's a definite lack of connection in this story. Have you created established outlines and looked back at previous chapters during the writing process? Have you completed the work as a whole and looked it over as its own entity? Are your chapters islands of the story or is the entire work an archipelago, each piece of land connected by a hard-to-see yet still present bridge? These are not necessities in and of themselves, merely tips for looking at story construction.

This all being said, I am glad that I know about Melvin's father now. It makes the aforementioned "More than certain actual fathers" quote make sense, though my comment on its out-of-placeness stills stands.

Again, I apologize for sounding like a royal jerk with this post. The beginning of my reading set me up with high hopes - I was really expecting this to be a fantastic story; some minor things here and there, but otherwise a wonderful read. Now, however, I've started to be let down. I didn't know what to expect - that was the beauty of it, since that meant that whatever would come would be a surprise - but I expected it to be fun. There are some gripping moments, but I find it very difficult to truly get into the story with these more major issues. This could be because I have not read the entirety of this work or the works preceding, but a strong work can connect itself to other works of its canon without -needing- those connections to establish itself as a strong text: it can stand with or without its brethren.

Do not misunderstand; I plan on reading more, and am looking forward to finishing the reading. Again, sorry if I sound like a royal pain in the...DAGNABBIT STOP IT YOU STUPID BUTT!

One of the things that has me extremely skeptical is the sci-fi route you're taking this. I would never state that SoN is exclusively fantasy, since to me the movie and its source material were very strong examples of that rare gem that incorporates both genres into itself successfully, but this whole 'alien world' thing has me...well, more than just skeptical actually; I would even say hesitant or retiscent. It just doesn't mesh well with the established NIMH canon.

Oh I disagree and here's why.....

As I stated numerous times around these boards, I'm a big Silent Hill 2 fan. The game is a very serious story about a man's sense of guilt and sexual frustration. It's a horror game about monsters and a town encased in fog. He created the world he's in because he is in because of his guilt over killing his wife (it's a long story, needless to say he had a good reason to do it......depending on how you look at it).

Here's the main suicide ending: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vA6rAU5DAoo

There are two other endings you can get however, depending on your actions. You wanna know the second ending? A dog created the world the protagonist is in and is just screwing with him.....no I'm serious: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GUDcSeUvkOw

There's another ending you can get as well..it's called the UFO ending. You wouldn't get the joke unless you played the first two Silent Hill games, but regardless, here it is: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GEJf9bOWr0Y UFOs in a game that raises serious ethical and moral questions? A game that's supposed to be about a man's suffering and guilt, reduced to a B-movie ending? A game that's supposed to be about the supernatural now shifting gears into sci-fi? Yes!

As a good friend of mine said: "Mind as flililiing well!" It's one of the many reasons I'm attracted to Silent Hill, it isn't worried about being politically correct, if I may use an overused phrase.

Think about it, if we can live in a world where demons and monsters can roam free, why not aliens? Why can't a dog have the ability to conduct an elaborate trap?

Same thing with NIMH, if rats and mice can have the intelligence of humans and wear clothes and wear glasses like them, if a rat can use telekinesis and other magical powers, why can't there be aliens?

...But I do agree on your criticisms of his work. However, I'm willing to let all of the convenient little plot holes slip by because I've just accepted the fact fanfiction writers want to tell their stories even if they have to take liberties with themselves and the source material.

The idea of Jonathan being alive after the events of SoN will always be silly to me. It's impossible to write a sequel with him being alive without it sounding completely contrived and farfetched. It's also utterly impossible that someone like Nicodemus would declare him dead without hard proof and "two pools of dried blood" is not hard proof. Pardon my French, but having him alive is just a lame ass way to make an interesting sequel...but hey, I'm always willing to play along. That's how I was able to enjoy NIMH 2. I didn't take it as a true sequel, but had fun with the cheesiness of it all.

I'm not opposed to boosting sci-fi levels in NIMH, just as I'm not opposed to boosting fantasy levels. My criticism here is not that the sci-fi element is out of place, but that it has been taken to an extreme level. Aliens and stuff aren't bad, but an entirely different world that was never mentioned in the source material? Perhaps I could be a little more lenient if the other creatures were products of NIMH experimentation, and maybe they will be revealed to be such in future chapters, but at the moment there is no evidence in anything but the prologue to this story (and, apparently, its fanon predecessors) that there is a significantly large sci-fi element to the story.

In the SoN movie, the powers were there for visual aesthetics: they were just there to look cool. Alternatively, we may think that seeing Nicodemus levitating his staff and such was simply a preparation for seeing Mrs Brisby levitate her house to safety. Was this a good move? I don't think so, simply because I thought it was a bit extreme, but I will admit that it looked awesome, so it served its main purpose (a purpose that was also served by the Brisby house being levitated to safety).

My basic rebuttal here is that it's not implausible to inject more sci-fi into the story, but rather that it seems as though there was too much too quickly (actually, it was almost instantaneous; aside from the terrain and the odd creatures, there was virtually no preparation for the audience to be thrust into this sci-fi world, which could have been done by maintaining multiple perspectives throughout the story). Doing it slowly, in small doses, is a much more effective strategy as opposed to simply laying it all out.

...But I do agree on your criticisms of his work. However, I'm willing to let all of the convenient little plot holes slip by because I've just accepted the fact fanfiction writers want to tell their stories even if they have to take liberties with themselves and the source material.

I prefer to treat all fan-fiction as possible real-world fiction before actually reading it. That way I can give appropriate criticism and advice when discussing the work as...well, as a work. I don't like to see lazy writers, and I don't like to see people take too many liberties without at least warning their audience through the work itself. Liberties taken are wonderful; I have read my fair share of bad AUs, but I have also read AU fictions which are among my favourite stories to read. But they should be reasonable, or the author should provide a sort of warning that says, "You should be willing to suspend your disbelief for this work". Suspension of disbelief grants a wonderful tool set that can help to create a truly masterful piece of work, but the audience should not be expected to suspend disbelief immediately. I've been reading my whole life, and have effectively been reading internet fan-fiction for more than ten years, so I often find myself tempted to do as you and simply accept that people wish to tell a story. Then I remind myself that they have placed their work in the public eye, and that as a reader it is my job to give them an opinion on what parts did not work for me. If they're minor, I don't really care; I'll mention them in passing but not nag on it. If they're major, however, and I feel that these might affect other peoples' readings, I really have to give them an opinion.

Apparently I'm an opinionated little git.

But now I'm rambling, so I'll leave it by saying that I understand your point, but I'm not sure if it applies properly to this particular work due to lack of reference in its source material.

Hmm...I'm not sure I understand your point of "easing the reader into it." I mean I guess I do, it came all of a sudden and you weren't expecting it, but I kinda feel that that's the whole charm of it. It's the same thing with those Silent Hill 2 endings, unless you purposely sought them out, they took you by surprise and they are VERY out of place for the source material.

I also think it's great that fanfiction writers like to expand the worlds made by the source material, just like Bluth did with NIMH's mythical element. While you say the purpose was to show visual flair (which I agree with), the purpose of an alien world is so that the author can describe and help us visualize a world outside our own. I think he did a great job (given the circumstances) in describing this new world and giving the reader a sense of mystery. Now his screwy convoluted all-over-the-place plot, inappropriate character motivations, and many plot holes do put a damper on the experience, but they don't ruin it. If he can somehow manage to make this all make sense in the end it's something I'll applaud him greatly for.

Yowtch! Well, I had to ask for feedback…Maybe I should have gone with shivermetimbers’ critter witch cult idea.

Seriously, I’ll try to address the concerns of you whippersnappers. (creak!) For brevity, I’ll refer to you as HL (Hera Ledro) and SMT (shivermetimbers).

I think some of HL’s criticisms stem from impatience more than anything. Yes, there’s much more to the history of the amulet, and the reasons for its interacting as it did with Johnathan and Madeline, and only them.

As far as Justin accepting the Stone’s “vision” I think that after witnessing it in action thru both Mr. and Mrs. B, and his lack of success in getting it to work thru him, he’d have little trouble taking her at her word. I do emphasize that the Stone is still a largely unknown quantity to him and everyone else. I get your point though…his acceptance might be more believable if he’d been looking over her shoulder. As for his relaying the impressions to the crowd again I see your point about skeptics, but there’d likely be a few disclaimers like “I know this sounds hard to believe”; keep in mind that not only Mrs. B, but also Ages and Justin experienced those impressions. Granted, they could be dismissed by some as just stemming from their missing Johnathan, but when they successfully carry out the procedure with the amulet, and Orson and Brutus brief the others on the results, there would definitely be no more skeptics.

Your point about Melvin and his views on the amulet is a bit of a head-scratcher. I honestly don’t see where I over-explained anything.

Re “Rollercoaster” you may be overthinking this one. She could easily have picked it up from Johnathan, who might have made the reference literally or, as she used it, as a simile.

As to exactly how John influenced his wife through their being mates it could have been the NIMH treatments, or something else entirely. Keep in mind I’ve been working on these stories for 25 years, and I’ve got quite a lot mapped out beyond this one story and its relation to the source material, though I’ve made major changes to “Search” for the version you’re reading now. Be warned there may be a few things left unresolved by the end, to be picked up in further stories.

I don’t think I could have handled the shift to the “new world” any more smoothly; I did have the realization come upon them slowly, before they emerged into daylight, that they were a long ways from home. Same goes for scene shifts, i.e. the first scene with Sithpha and Uhrstegg. I did open the scene with a “not all that far away…” Too vague, maybe? I’ve read many novels in which new characters or settings are introduced out of the blue, and it’s never bothered me. It just makes the story more interesting for me.

Re insect repellent It’s not all that far-fetched that they’d develop one derived entirely from organically-based compounds, like that found in the rinds of citrus fruit.

As for Justin losing it after their entrapment You’re right, he’s no hothead, but I think his rage is valid, after harboring smoldering frustration over being fooled by Jenner, whom he’d dismissed as dangerous, and now after a similar misjudgment about Uhrstegg. Out of character? I do leave it somewhat open as to whether or not he’d have actually done harm to Sithpha had the circumstances been different, i.e. if they weren’t in total darkness. But still, it was the type of moment where most people would have trouble keeping coolheaded or exercising their best judgment; otherwise, yes, Justin wouldn’t have aimed his ire at the most convenient target and he would have realized that Sithpha was only a pawn.

I’ve never really seen this story as going the SF route, not back in 1986 and not now. I’m reminded of how, after the release of “Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull”, there were plenty of howls of “aliens don’t belong in an I.J. movie!!!” But it didn’t bother me at all, given all the well-documented archeological evidence of advanced or at least unknown technology both before and after the beginning of recorded history. And if you check my initial post on this topic, I mentioned that I was heavily into Michael Moorcock’s work, and I was well aware at the time that it was influencing the direction I took this story. His stories deal heavily with multiple dimensional realms—in fact, he was the first to coin the word “multiverse”—and it was all in the context of pure fantasy, though he’s done SF novels as well, and some that freely mix the two. I think I made it clear from the outset that the world the Stone brings them to is “a different version of our own world.”

To HL No, I don’t think you’re sounding like too big a jerk; at least no more than I have in my own reviews, where I’ve done my share of nitpicking. No need to apologize for constructive criticism carried out in a civil manner. Just keep your extremities under control! If I may take a page from my own playbook, how about including a section devoted to things you found to be fun or interesting or even funny, as I did in my first Gibbs review?

As for your criticisms about how it’s been constructed so far, well, I think I’ve tied things together pretty well to make the story a cohesive whole; though again, I think you may be a little impatient. Of course, whether you think the final result is terrific or a dud, interesting or boring, that’s entirely up to you and there’s not a whole lot I can do about that. And, as I said, not everything will be tied up thoroughly in the end, though I hope you’ll be able to make some sense of it.

As for SMT regarding bringing back Johnathan to be a bad idea he has a definite point about Nicodemus not declaring him dead without hard proof. I maintain that it could possibly be valid even given nothing but blood evidence. There might even have been traces of his scent still lingering, but without any other physical signs, what else could the Guard rats think, especially when there’s absolutely no sign of Johnathan after that night? I’ll admit that Nicodemus might not have been so quick to officially declare him deceased, but suppose there was something else going on, that may have affected his judgment?

Plot holes? Moi? Seriously, perhaps what you’re perceiving as plot holes might seem as such now, but at later points in the story, they might become clearer. Examples, s’il vous plait? Though I suspect the aforementioned point you raised about Nicodemus is one of them.

Finally, I think it’s been stated plenty that with so much in TSoN left ambiguous and unexplained, it leaves the would-be fan-fic writer plenty of room for speculation to fill in the blanks, so any number of directions can result. Look at Chris Silva, with his plot device of Dr. Schultz continuing his father’s Nazi research in the NIMH experiments. So an interdimensional alien world is far-fetched? You may still think so, but it just goes to show the variety of possible directions and treatments. In any case, as I once told someone else, I have no illusions about any of this being great literature; my main goal is to try to have fun with it.

Looking forward to further posts from you guys.

My main problem with your story is that you have too many sub-plots being introduced and put on hold. 9 times out of 10 that results in a disappointing ending because you have to tie it all together carefully.

To throw yet another example at your faces.....I have watched all 7 Saw movies (don't do this, by the way, you'll regret it) and they CONSTANTLY throw in characters with their own agendas and subplots into the mix. There's absolutely no main focus, just introducing characters with their own plots and agendas. By the time it was all finished, I stopped caring.

I have a hard time believing that Nicodemus wouldn't send out a search party if there were two pools of blood on the ground and nothing else and since in his narration he states that he was killed today, it's clear that he simply accepted the two pools of blood as sufficient evidence of his death. As far as the whole Jonathan being alive after SoN set up plot-thingie, your set up is as credible as it can get (certainly more credible than Gibbs set up) without being more graphic. I would've put a limb or two along with the blood, but I can tell your a sophisticated and respected man in society and wouldn't stoop down to the level of a 19 year old immature kid with too much free time.

No plans to see any of the "Saw" series; there's more I could add on the subject but this isn't the place for it. "Sophisticated and respected man in society"...Thanks, that's the best compliment I've had in a while.

Now let's see, what else...

Oh yeah. lilililiANNOUNCEMENT TIME!lililili

Chapters 15 through 20 of Mrs. Brisby and the Search for Johnathan are now posted for your perusal.

No plans to see any of the "Saw" series; there's more I could add on the subject but this isn't the place for it. "Sophisticated and respected man in society"...Thanks, that's the best compliment I've had in a while.

Now let's see, what else...

Oh yeah. lilililiANNOUNCEMENT TIME!lililili

Chapters 15 through 20 of Mrs. Brisby and the Search for Johnathan are now posted for your perusal.

Oh, you don't need to elaborate on Saw. I despise all of the movies. Seeing people die in creative ways is only fun if the movie itself knows it's terrible. Saw tries to shove it's philosophy that torture is better than any sort of counseling in your face that it takes away any sense of enjoyment you might get from the films (which is very little to begin with). I was forced to see all 7 of those craptaculor films in the theater by my uncle, who loves them.

Anyway, I can write a novel on why Saw sucks, but back on topic....

I see you've started to have more focus and that you've stopped jumping around. I'm also happy to report that you've done a superb job at combining elements from the novel and the film into this world of yours and that you satisfactory answered many of the questions that have popped up in my head. I can also see the fantasy elements at work here. When people think other world, they think sci-fi, but now I can see the fantasy come out.

You're very good at writing romance. The Brisby Beginning showed that and this takes it to a whole new level. Romance is really hard to write without sounding cheesy and you've seemed to manage not to make it that way.

You've liked you're praise don't you? Well you're about to bashed on...hard.

Why in the holy mother of God, Jesus, Mary, and Joesph did you put that Jenner subplot in with your story? It's terrible.

Look, I love the idea of misunderstood antagonist. There more interesting than one dimensional antagonists that are evil just because it's fun. You've missed a very good opportunity with the antagonist being mentally ill. I wish you explored his mental illness more than you did. Instead, we get a subplot involving Jenner being "possessed by Pazuzu" and that's what caused him to turn evil.

Sorry, I don't buy it and I'm sure I won't be the only one. Jenner had a motivation, he was already a 3 dimensional villain in that regard. You were kinda building up to it, but still, it caught me by surprise and not in a good way. It seems...well fruity. It's almost like you don't like the idea of a Rat of NIMH turned evil, so you made this whole thing up. It sounds like something a Scientologist makes up after taking too much NyQuil.

I must admit I like the idea of the antagonist coming from a war-torn land and you've described this aspect well, but you didn't need the Jenner subplot. Gah, it's just bad.

Overall, I'm very impressed with your work. It's damn good and it shows you're willing to take risks, which I admire.

Good job.

You also got to stop these little aside italics comments. I counted 3, but I can only remember 1 off the top of my head. I think there's one when Johnathan says "You have no clue." They are unnecessary and out of place. It's nice to get in a characters head in a particular moment to see how they react to certain situations, but doing it like this just aggravates your reader.

Stupid question, but is this the end of your story? Not a satisfactory conclusion and a weird choice if you decided to make the reunion with the children another story, but I doubt that it is.

Also I've mentioned this already, but how come the rats declare him dead after seeing the pools of blood on the floor and having no other evidence or sign of his death? Especially now knowing that it was Dragon's blood, which they should be able to smell the scent and decipher that it wasn't Johnathan's. It seems pretty silly, but it ties in with my main point that having Johnathan alive after SoN is just silly.

Oh, and another question I have.....are you planning to do a sequel to this story? Maybe a scenario where Johnathan dies for real? Or even better, Mrs. Brisby dying in front of Johnathan. You hint at this in a paragraph in chapter 20 and I'm interested to see if you follow through with it. I also wished that Paul Gibbs did this as well, it would've been interesting to see how the family reacted to his real death, especially considering the fact that his 'death' did more good than harm, and that he suffered so much to help his family. Interesting to see a Thorn Valley funeral.

I just love tragedy, especially dealing with the death of a loved one. Makes me emotionally satisfied. Call me heartless.

So, SMT...what's REALLY bothering you about the story?

(Pause to duck hurled blunt object.)

Well, I knew the Jenner subplot would raise some hackles. But that's the way I originally wrote it, way back when, and I thought it would still work now. I did leave it somewhat open over what would have happened if Jenner hadn't been influenced by Uhrstegg he may have simply departed the colony, as in the book, or things may have worked out mostly the same, with or without him resorting to murder. Actually, in my original stories written back in the 80s, I only hinted at an outside influence on Jenner at first, but in the original followup story—"The Hidden Conflict", which isn't part of this new continuity—I confirmed it. BTW, how do you know I'm not a Scientologist? I'm not, but I could have been, and that would have put you in a pretty awkward position.

I should have made it more clear, but yes, there is more to come three more chapters and an epilogue, to be exact. They should be up within a month or so.

If you check my Aug. 2 post on this topic, you'll see where I said I have a lot mapped out past this story. So yes, there will be a followup and hopefully more following "Search," all of which I hope to have posted eventually; though there may not be as much tragedy in it/them as some would like...

I really don't see where I've used italicized thoughts to any excess, in fact I used fewer of them in recent chapters, and I intend to keep using them where they seem necessary. It seems odd that you'd wait this far into the story before complaining about it.

Oh, I have no gripes against Scientology. You want to believe what you believe. They are no more evil than a regular atheist (or anyone else). Just the idea of people from another planet influencing others is kinda silly to me and reminds me of Scientology. I'm just used to hanging around people that kinda accept my sense of humor and my use of similes.

That comment was out of place and I do apologize, it's just the first thing that came to mind after I read it.

The italicized comments complaint stems from the fact that that one Johnathan made annoyed me because it came out of nowhere, I might had exaggerated it a bit.

If it's any consolidation, if it was about Jenner being reincarnated into an antagonist, I would've made a Buddhist joke (I'm a Buddhist btw). So don't take my similes seriously. I don't think in black in white most of the time, so when I make little comments like that, sometimes I don't really think about the consequences.

Due to my harsh words to you, I'll be a bit more constructive on how you could've pulled this off better:

Jenner and the antagonist could've been secretly working together this entire time and Jenner would've been bribed into stopping the Thorn Valley plan at any cost, including murder. He would then have better knowledge of what the stone is capable of. To me that's better than outright being experimented on.

You can ignore my tragedy comments, but to me romance is always better with a little tragedy/conflict. There seems to be very little conflict between Johnathan and Mrs. Brisby, they seem all happy go lucky. Yeah you got the whole aging process deal, which is no longer a problem, but still. So in a way I'm hoping for something/some conflict that would really test their relationship.

I'm also anxious to see how you pull this whole thing off. It's going to be weird.

"Hey kids! I wasn't dead! I was just sucked into another dimension away from Earth where everybody has a name that sounds like some fanfiction writer rolled their face on a keyboard. Also mommy isn't going to grow old and die because I just loved her sooo much. What do you mean 'I must be on LSD'?"

"Oh, and Matilda, your husband was actually being experimented on. You see this crazy man thought it would be funny to flilili with the rats, so he turned your husband into a dlilik that murdered Nicodemus. I'm so sorry--Hey! Why do you have a tranquilizer in your hand?"





Okay, okay, it's just a joke....relax. I am seriously looking forward to how you explain this.

To quote Auntie Shrew, "Patience, my pet!"
The remaining chapters should be up soon, I've already sent them to Simon (gotta rattle his cage again).
Don't worry, I'm relaxed. Just a joke. (You featherhead! Get your hands off me!) lol

liEDITEDli

Amazing.

.....and yeah, I could go on.

DON'T

lieditedli

I dare you, please I dare you, to watch this scene without factoring in my little game: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oN6jCxZ7qUA

It is funny. I like that movie.
But rape and perversity in NIMH..... No comment

.....and yeah, I could go on.

DON'T

Agreed.

Believe it or not, it was my father who made up that game to entertain himself when he watched children's films. He passed it on to me.

Alrighty, alrighty, no more talk about it. I stated my point on comedy.

Since this is "my" topic I thought I should put in my 2 cents. I'd have done it sooner, but...(blahblah).

SMT...I'm honestly at a loss for what you may have been thinking. ? How anyone can believe that sexual assault in any context is funny is beyond me. And what does it have to do with TSoN, let alone this topic?

Not that I'm not judging you or your dad, it's just beyond my understanding. But you're right about one thing, it's infinitely better than applying it into action.

And BTW, I like to think that I know very well how to take a joke.

Okay, NOW no more talk about it.

Since this is "my" topic I thought I should put in my 2 cents. I'd have done it sooner, but...(blahblah).

SMT...I'm honestly at a loss for what you may have been thinking. :? How anyone can believe that sexual assault in any context is funny is beyond me. And what does it have to do with TSoN, let alone this topic?

Not that I'm not judging you or your dad, it's just beyond my understanding. But you're right about one thing, it's infinitely better than applying it into action.

And BTW, I like to think that I know very well how to take a joke.

Okay, NOW no more talk about it.

lisighsli
Before I begin, I would just like you to know that I posted a non-joke oriented complaint on your work in the "[OFF TOPIC]" topic.

litakes deep breathli
I love tasteless humor and shock-value/offensive content. I've laughed at many jokes related to tragedies, such as the Holocaust ("Holocaust jokes aren't funny Anne Frankly I won't stand for it anymore"). Again, as I've stated if you think outside the box ANYTHING can be funny.

I'm also somewhat surprised that you think someone can't find the concept of rape funny. Same thing with racism, genocide, sexism, etc. etc. Lots of people laugh at their audacity.

Again, as a concepts, they're harmless and it's when they are concepts that we can see and explore the sheer absurdity of these topics and laugh at them. We can take these concepts, add a bit of ironic twist to them and turn them into comedy.

I can go on and on and on and on for days arguing my point. I have MANY times in the past. I've just barely scratched the surface and I don't feel like going into much detail defending myself when I have a migraine headache and you probably wouldn't care to hear it anyway.

You can judge me, I don't care. I don't have an ego to defend.

I'll give you an example of black comedy. It's from the fantastic video game Deadly Premonition: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IUO0uuk5-QY

You probably won't watch it, but it shows how we can turn things such as rape and murder into comedy.

Since this is "my" topic I thought I should put in my 2 cents. I'd have done it sooner, but...(blahblah).

SMT...I'm honestly at a loss for what you may have been thinking. :? How anyone can believe that sexual assault in any context is funny is beyond me. And what does it have to do with TSoN, let alone this topic?

Not that I'm not judging you or your dad, it's just beyond my understanding. But you're right about one thing, it's infinitely better than applying it into action.

And BTW, I like to think that I know very well how to take a joke.

Okay, NOW no more talk about it.

lisighsli
Before I begin, I would just like you to know that I posted a non-joke oriented complaint on your work in the "[OFF TOPIC]" topic.

litakes deep breathli
I love tasteless humor and shock-value/offensive content. I've laughed at many jokes related to tragedies, such as the Holocaust ("Holocaust jokes aren't funny Anne Frankly I won't stand for it anymore"). Again, as I've stated if you think outside the box ANYTHING can be funny.

I'm also somewhat surprised that you think someone can't find the concept of rape funny. Same thing with racism, genocide, sexism, etc. etc. Lots of people laugh at their audacity.

Again, as a concepts, they're harmless and it's when they are concepts that we can see and explore the sheer absurdity of these topics and laugh at them. We can take these concepts, add a bit of ironic twist to them and turn them into comedy.

I can go on and on and on and on for days arguing my point. I have MANY times in the past. I've just barely scratched the surface and I don't feel like going into much detail defending myself when I have a migraine headache and you probably wouldn't care to hear it anyway.

You can judge me, I don't care. I don't have an ego to defend.

I'll give you an example of black comedy. It's from the fantastic video game Deadly Premonition: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IUO0uuk5-QY

You probably won't watch it, but it shows how we can turn things such as rape and murder into comedy.

All right, I think I'd better weigh in before things get out of hand. As a note, I haven't watched the video. First off, I think that context is everything when you're talking about humor. A joke that glorifies rape (or rapists) or diminishes the victim is an entirely different thing than one that mocks or denigrates rapists. I think it is a more healthy reaction to make fun of the things we fear rather than to allow them to consume us. Granted, this doesn't account for taste--I would say that any joke that relies on rape as the punchline is almost certainly in poor taste.

Part of treating people with respect is acknowledging their differing opinions, and not looking down at them for the opinions they hold. If any of you don't feel you can continue this thread respectfully, I will lock it.

Apologies, I didn't mean to sound bitter, I just wasn't feeling well at the time and didn't feel like creating an elaborate response to defend myself. So I made it simple and showed an example. I'm certainly not mad at him and of course I hang around people that don't like said type of humor and respect their said opinion. Again, I've defended myself many times in the past and created an elaborate argument on why I think it's okay.

Let's steer this ship back to port.....I've started reading NIMH the Final Experiment.....good stuff. Also NIMH the Iambic Play is very good.

I certainly don't think I sounded disrespectful, but I'm okay to leave it at that.

Hey, what do you know, NTFE is finally getting completed! I'll have to read it thru when I have the time (the online kind is limited for me of late). Glad you brought it up!

I must advertise this because it's simply genius: http://robin.thornvalley.com/node/327#comment-136

Well made doesn't even begin to describe it. If you like Shakespeare, it's a must read...It's a must read regardless....

I wanted to concentrate on wrapping up "Search for Johnathan" before tackling another review, and as promised I'm continuing with the remaining Paul Gibbs stories, beginning with the next two chronologically the unfinished "Such Devoted Sisters" (SDS) and his only other full-length story, "Second in Command" (SIC).

The usual SPOILER WARNINGS are in place, of course...

SDS opens a week after "The Rats of Thorn Valley" (TROTV) and retains the same tone and flavor; and, like all the ensuing Gibbs stories, is narrated first-person, in this case by the original character Eileen (aka Hacker), one of the titular sisters, the other being her twin Judith, both of which were introduced in TROTV. There were only two chapters completed, but what we have concerns Eileen's adjustment to life in Thorn Valley following the NIMH expedition. She's at loose ends, unsure of what to do with her life, finding herself in strange surroundings but the only place she can call home. Her erstwhile commander, Jonathan, gives her direction, offering her the job of tutoring his children. But she's found that her absence had affected her relationship with her family in not the best way, and she feels almost like a stranger to them and they to her; especially Judith, who is inexplicably cold toward her, even going so far as to say she wishes Eileen had stayed "dead."

In SIC the relationship between the two seems to be largely healed, though it's not made clear why Judith was so cold before. It's possible the author had re-examined the characters and decided against there being such a big rift between them, but he didn't want to completely abandon what he'd already written. In the absence of further information one can only assume. At any rate, Gibbs' flair for characterization and dialogue is top-notch as always.

Now on to SIC...(and I'll try to make this less wordy)

Four main plot elements comprise this story

1. Justin, in spite of taking on Jonathan as his executive assistant, is overworking himself as leader, complicating his friendship with Jonathan and threatening his new love affair.

2. Elizabeth Brisby has received the NIMH treatments and, though still basically the same, is getting smarter every day, and is surprising her family and friends at every turn.

3. The four Brisby children, eager to take their places in the community, are finishing school and have to pick career paths, a more difficult task for some of them.

4. The community faces challenges from Mother Nature herself, not only in preparing for its first winter in Thorn Valley but also in maintaining the structural integrity of the fourth level, where chief engineer Arthur and his crew are battling a major seepage problem.

With these elements established, the story flows pretty naturally, with the author's flair for characterization and putting the reader "right there" intact. There is, though, a tendency to go into more detail than necessary in places, even greater than in TROTV; for instance, do we really need to know what a character is wearing in every scene? But events do proceed in a logical fashion, though not without a few surprises. Who'd a'-thunk it (to quote Eileen) that Cynthia, out of all the Brisby kids, would choose the most difficult career path, that of medicine? And that the object of Justin's affection turns out to be the famously irritable and abrasive Judith? And that Elizabeth, once described as timid, is now involving herself in T.V. politics, even running for the newly-proposed position of vice-leader--which she proposed?

There's been a bit of discussion about this story lately (on the "NIMH soap opera" topic) and it's almost like my punchline got appropriated, because the first impression I had was that it was very soap-opera-like, mainly due to Justin and Judith's affair and its repercussions. They aren't keeping it secret, but it results in a possible pregnancy which turns out to be false, though not before the possibility of abortion is brought up. Jonathan and Elizabeth inevitably get involved, as does Judith's twin Eileen (who is now married to Philip, now Captain of the Guard, and is herself pregnant), but their attempts to help backfire, leading to greater rifts, even to where Justin suspends Jonathan as his assistant. Elizabeth is prompted to propose before the people the vice-leader position largely in reaction to how badly Justin is treating her husband, and she and Jonathan end up running against each other. The relationships are smoothed over eventually, just in time for the "seepage crisis" to reach its peak; and Jonathan, with hardly a second thought, gets involved, saving a life almost at the cost of his own.

The author succeeds admirably in crafting a story that doesn't have a clear-cut antagonist and doesn't need one it's the personalities of the characters, with their inevitable squabbles, that are the source of the crises and conflicts that arise, with help from Ma Nature. The only real "action" sequence was Ch. 11's collapse and rescue operation. The author must have done his homework in the fields of geology and rock-climbing, though I found myself wishing there were diagrams accompanying the rescue operation, showing how the 4th level had collapsed and how the operation progressed. Beautifully done, with Jonathan and Arthur rescuing each other, Ages and Cynthia treating Jonathan's injury, Justin bringing "Jonnymouse" home, and Elizabeth's reaction. The first-person narration by Jonathan is a great asset, giving insight into his personality, as in Chapter 7 where, following his suspension, he dreads what his family and friends will think, but it turns out not a big deal to them. His being prone to depression is confirmed, though it was made pretty obvious in TROTV. There are some nice insights into their old life before his "death", as in Ch. 11 where Elizabeth muses on her own ignorance of what he did for the Rats compared to his latest act of heroism.

I was a little surprised at first but pleased that Gibbs didn't shy away from addressing the sexuality of these characters, though he didn't go far beyond Justin and Judith. As it is, I thought he treaded a little too carefully in places, but that's okay. It was a little amusing how, in Justin's discussion with Jonathan about his problem, they avoided the "V-word" in regard to Justin's inexperience in "that area." On the other hand, the subject was largely avoided in regard to Jonathan and Elizabeth; the author seemed oddly reluctant to "go there," funny when you consider how many scenes there are of the two of them snuggled up on the sofa or in bed together, discussing the day's events. The closest he came was when Johnathan remembered the starry nights that had a romantic effect on him and Elizabeth, and the "suggestive" scene at the beginning of Ch. 9 ("I'll show you how impossible I am."). It was a little surprising how quickly she dismissed the idea of their having another child, considering that they're back together after a long separation and they're still very much in love, so I would have half-expected them to experience an "oops" pregnancy by that time. Presumably they haven't come up with an effective birth-control method in Thorn Valley.

Some fun and interesting bits

1. Jonathan recalling Justin "looking remarkably silly in a banana-tree shirt and a floppy straw hat" at their luau.

2. Mr. Ages declaring his stay to be temporary, admitting reluctantly that he had no choice but to make it permanent.

3. I honestly wasn't aware that "quirk" (as in "quirked an eyebrow") was a verb before reading the Gibbs stories.

4. In Ch. 5 there are hints at details of Ages' backstory known only to Jonathan, but not touched upon again.

5. The use of the Rats' cobbled-together radio influencing the musical tastes of Guard rats Mark and David.

6. In Ch. 8, Jonathan musing over his becoming a "character."

7. Having "female troubles" be the main source of Judith's mood swings was believable, if a bit anticlimactic. Jonathan's discomfort over this discussion was priceless.

8. Jonathan's amusement at seeing Elizabeth in her workout outfit.

9. Some turns of phrase that made me chuckle "My right ear was practically smoking by then." "[Cynthia's] whiskers bristled pugnaciously." "The bed bucked like a wild horse as [Elizabeth] suddenly sat up." "If any of them had objected [Elizabeth] would have ripped their livers out." Jonathan left "standing there like the Catch of the Day."

Any nitpicks?

1. Martin's distancing himself from Jonathan is barely mentioned here, nor how they were able to at least partially reconcile, since they seem to get along well now.

2. It was well established that Elizabeth got along with and knew Judith quite well, so it didn't follow that, during the dining hall scene where Judith is almost ready to punch Jonathan, she just sits there petrified, not even saying a word, instead of trying to calm Judith down.

3. LordDirk's illustrations were nice, though he had the wrong arm on Jonathan be injured in two of them.

Overall, both stories were high-quality continuations of the "GibbsNIMHverse." Four and a half stars for each.

I'm surprised you failed to mention the scene between him and Arthur in the hospital. I loved that scene primarily because it reminded me of a real life scenario I was in. My friend was guilt ridden to the point of giving up and I cheered him up in a similar manner that Jonathan did with him. Gibbs really made it believable.

I don't find the scene with Elizabeth not wanting another child to be bad. I found it quite hilarious actually, especially considering the scene before she was teasing Hacker about her and Jonathan's child birth experience. Though I assumed had Gibbs lived and continued his work, they would have another child eventually. Something tells me your sequel to "Search" will have them make 50 more children....they pretty much already mated in chapter 20 and they love each other more than an obese man loves pie and cake...so that seems obvious.

I liked Second in Command better than Rats of Thorn Valley. It's certainly not as suspenseful, interesting, or as emotional as the latter, but I found it to be much more funny and lighthearted and the fact that it's in first person makes it much more interesting than if God was telling the story.

You're right about the Martin relationship, though I'm sure he's glad that his mother is happy and that he now has a new life in Thorn Valley, so I couldn't imagine him being too mad at his father. Afterall, things did turn out good for everyone at the end.

He also had two other unfinished stories, arguably not as interesting or fleshed out, but worth reading to see what he could've done.

One more thing I forgot to mention about Gibbs' stories...why no Auntie Shrew? Okay, I see why he did it, he wanted to make it so Elizabeth didn't always have a mother figure to help her so that when she gets reunited with Jonathan, she would have more reason to be mad at him, it makes it more emotional....but still. She's my favorite character, she should get the NIMH treatment as well. Maybe live in the same bedroom as Elizabeth and Jonathan. That would be fun.

I didn't intentionally neglect the hospital scene with Jonathan and Arthur; I guess I was in a bit of a hurry to post my review, and it just escaped. It was beautifully done, with Jonathan able to offer encouragement better than anyone else because he could relate the best to Arthur's depression.

Also, the Stone was conspicuously absent; I believe it was mentioned only twice, including Justin's recalling that Elizabeth used it to save him. Since it had played such a major role in TROTV, I'm surprised it wasn't even considered for, say, helping with rescue operations.

It's left open whether or not Judith would be able to have children, but good old Justin makes plans to marry her either way. What a guy!

And finally, though it may not be necessary at this point, here are the links to both stories

SDS
http//robin.thornvalley.com/node/217

SIC
http//robin.thornvalley.com/node/134

Oh yes...I'm preparing a review for the two remaining unfinished stories as well.

I'm actually more surprised that Nicodemus didn't get any praise for getting rid of Schultz and the helicopter pilot, it's all Elizabeth. Nicodemus was the one who helped probe their minds and gave her the stone to begin with...so why isn't he ever mentioned as a savior? As I mentioned numerous times, Gibbs' stories are all well written and contains some of the best characterization I've ever seen in a fanfic..... and I can see why he did what he did, but it's still kinda sloppy in execution. Though he does try his best to mask that fact.

I'm sure Gibbs would've liked it better if he hadn't had to use the stone as a deus ex machina, or any mysticism at all, so bringing it up as little as possible was probably a priority for him..... so I can't fault him too much. He would much rather center the story around the characters and their life situations than going in depth about a plot device, which I can totally respect.

..Don't forget to read and review NIMH the Iambic Pentameter Play....please.

In my review of TROTV I brought up the point about the Stone's use; apparently Elizabeth didn't mention Nicodemus's (apparent) part in it to anybody, so it's possible she didn't remember. I agree with your other points about the storytelling.

Now, as promised...

This is my review of the last two fan-fics by Paul Gibbs, and I'll definitely be brief (or briefer) this time; because, alas, they're both unfinished. "Survivor's Guilt" (SG) is set in the late spring following SIC and is narrated by Timothy.

Out of the three unfinished Gibbs stories this one, to me, showed the most promise. There was plenty of groundwork laid in the single surviving chapter

1. Arthur's proposed metal-collecting expedition would certainly have been approved and go on to be at the center of the plot. Tim's discussion of it with his parents brought up some great points about the Rats' emulation of human ways and whether or not such an expedition would be considered stealing. In "NIMH II," there was a similar expedition that was a source of complaints for that same reason, and I have to say I didn't have a problem with either it's not stealing, it's salvage.

2. Tim and his BFF Robert still toil as draftsmen in Arthur's workshop. Tim's discussions with him and Martin about finding a mate certainly would have had a payoff later; and the tail-end of his dream, in which he'd "heard" someone crying, whom he could only identify as female, had to foreshadow events to come. But why would there not be any mice of Tim's species in Thorn Valley? It's hinted at in SIC but actually spelled out here, and it's a puzzler. Also, Martin is back to having a more distant relationship with his dad.

The second story fragment is untitled but ought to be called "Doctor Cynthia." It's set an indefinite number of years in the future when Cynthia Brisby has become a highly accomplished physician and surgeon, the Rats still live in T.V. but have electricity and other modern technology, and--though there's only one brief reference--apparently have diplomatic relations with humankind. The plot consists of a discussion Cynthia has with Justin (still the leader) and Jonathan about her most recent case concerning a "normal" mouse named Jessica who was attacked by a weasel and rescued by the rats. Her badly injured leg posed a dilemma for Cynthia either she'll have to amputate, or give Jessica the NIMH treatment, which gives its beneficiaries and their offspring an accelerated healing factor, even repairing major nerve damage. The matter is complicated by the fact that her nephew Christopher knows and apparently is in love with Jessica and became aware by accident that she was being treated. They ultimately agree that they'd have to allow Jessica to decide if she wants the treatment, once it and its effects are fully explained and she's had time to consider; and that Christopher shouldn't be told of this option right away, since he probably wouldn't keep quiet about it.

It's an interesting slice-of-life read, and may even answer some of the questions posed by SG's incompleteness. Tim's mate Janet is mentioned as having received the NIMH treatment years earlier; could she have been the one who had seemed to touch Tim’s subconscious? Was she the titular survivor, since she was said to have lost her family? Could their deaths have some connection to the plane crash which inspired the proposed metal-collecting expedition? It’s unclear whose children Christopher and his sister Helen are; Tim’s would be my guess, though it’s implied they could also be Martin’s. Apparently the issue of no mice of their species in T.V. was resolved in some way.

All this, of course, will have to be left up in the air, in the absence of any further chapters or story notes from the late author. It's a shame Paul began so many projects and then left them incomplete; I personally wouldn't want to work on any more than one story at a time. Of course, if someone wanted to tackle completing either story...

Anyway, four out of five stars for each.

SG can be found at
http//robin.thornvalley.com/node/226

"Dr. Cynthia" can be found at
http//robin.thornvalley.com/node/191

I think she does remember because before she opens her eyes and meets Jonathan in ROTV, she recalls her conversation with Nicodemus. Maybe, she's not as humble as we thought and took all the credit for saving the rats. She also says that using the stone was a learning experience...implying that she would remember her experiences with it.

....I have a feeling that there's something about Jonathan that we're missing and that Gibbs intended to give him more of a backstory. I find it hard to believe that he would willingly leave his family and that his friends would accept an oath to pretend that he's dead. Maybe there's a crucial part of his life that we're missing...a life that he was forced to forget about and that he was somehow forced to leave his family. Perhaps Nicodemus really thought him dead. Why else would he write it in the history of the rats book? Did they tear that page out after he returned? Why would he narrate an obituary about Jonathan to himself in the opening?

...I'm sorry it's just a lot of suspension of disbelief is required and perhaps I lack the willpower to swallow all of it. Of the three unfinished stories I would've much preferred he went for the one taking place in the far future when they've come into contact with humans....that would've been really interesting.

Oh goodie! The rest of your story got uploaded. I randomly clicked on it after reading through the rest of Final Experiment. It's sadly going to have to wait to be insulted by me until tomorrow because I have a paper to finish.

:cry:

Alrighty, I read though it...wasn't very long.

First off in chapter 21, one of the sentences is missing a "to." I'm too lazy to find it again, but if you care enough, you might want to check it out.

This is going to be as nit-picky as I'm going to get....You probably shouldn't take this as a criticism, it's more of a personal taste thing: some of your dialog sounds like it belongs in a family T.V. sitcom than a fantasy fanfiction. It's full of one liners and puns that it kinda distracts from the experience. Again, it's personal taste more than anything.

....You have a character named Lol......lol?

The rats and the children seem to be a little too accepting of the fact that their friend/father has returned from another world. I know your defense is going to be: "Well they saw that the stone took them somewhere and uh the impressions and uh stuff and uh yeah." Still, it's a little hard to believe that not even a little skepticism was shown...Martin being the sole exception.

I liked the Justin/Izzy scenes and the scene with Mrs. B and Mr. B in bed was cute as was the scene when Mr. Ages spilled his tea :P . I also liked how you made it so the rats can keep in touch with the Rusay, maybe they can form an alliance and start trading or maybe even go to war. You've opened yourself up to many possibilities.

I don't like putting numbers onto reviews because I don't think value can be expressed numerically. However, I'll throw you a bone here and give you 4/5 just because you tried something different. There's certain aspects of the story that I didn't like and I could probably go into more detail about them, but I won't.

Daggone it, you beat me to the punch again! wink But here goes anyway...(ahem)

lilililiANNOUNCEMENT TIMElililili

The concluding chapters of "Mrs. Brisby and the Search for Johnathan" are now posted at Robin's.

Daggone it, you beat me to the punch again! :wink: But here goes anyway...(ahem)

lilililiANNOUNCEMENT TIMElililili

The concluding chapters of "Mrs. Brisby and the Search for Johnathan" are now posted at Robin's.

I'll read it when I'm done with Secret of the Stone. I've ignored all spoilers so far.

Steven

You know when I said I wasn't going to go more in depth on the things in your story that bugged me....well I lied. Now that I have energy I'm going to try and lay it out for you. It might be hard for you to understand, but try and hear me out.

I said this in another topic:

One thing about David's story is that it's extremely Mary Sueish. Things happen to the characters VERY conveniently. Mrs. Brisby doesn't have to worry about growing old and die anymore, Matilda's husband was evil against his own will, and so on. Nothing permanently bad happens to the characters, everything seems happy go lucky. It kinda bothers me.

I'm probably the only one who's read his entire story so far, but I would like to see others input on this. It seems like every conflict these characters run into has some sort of happy-go-lucky explanation for what's going on. Nothing can be bad just because, it has to have some contrived and convenient explanation for what's going on.

I'm sure what I've said confuses you, but try and understand it anyway, because I do believe it's a good point.

Edit: He has a strength in writing romance and he wants to make it so that Mrs. Brisby and Johnathan can be together indefinitely. He's doing this so that he can make more sequels with the family together and write even more romance. So, yes, I can see why he did it. Hopefully we can have conflict with out as much of the yuppyness in the sequel

When ever there's a conflict in your story, there's always a convenient happy go-lucky fruity little explanation as to why the characters who start said conflicts act the way they do. This along with the aforementioned corny sitcom dialogue (I feel like steamed broccoli!) take away the dark edge of NIMH and turning into more of a happy fairy tale. The antagonist experimented on Jenner and the antagonist had a poor life and a mental illness and has a split personality....blah blah. You shouldn't have to force your reader to sympathize with the antagonist, you should write it in a fashion so that the reader can decide for themselves whether or not the antagonist is worth sympathizing over. I like misunderstood antagonists, but you have to let your characters have flaws without resorting to fruity little explanations.

This may be hard for you to understand, but it's what really bothered me about your otherwise ambitious story. Maybe I just like things better with a darker edge without all of the sitcom fruittyness, in which case this is more of a personal taste issue, but I think others will agree as well.

..and yes I know I use the word "fruity" a lot to compensate for my piss poor vocabulary and lack of a better way to describe it.

edit: Have you finished your sequel yet?

Now that all of “Search for Johnathan” has been posted I thought I’d say a few words about the changes I’d made to it before bringing it to its present form. A subject I thought might be worth sharing, in spite of the fact that a relative handful of people have read my original stories, which I'll hereafter refer to as "First-Tier."

The biggest difference is that the new version is loooong, much more than the first or second versions. I expanded greatly on many scenes, especially the family's tour of the community following their arrival up to Mrs. B's private meeting with Justin. Some scenes that were referred to briefly, like Madeline's recovery before she awakens from her ordeal and Justin's private meeting with Isabella, were told in greater detail.

Originally I had it set an entire year after TSoN, and this new version started out that way as well. I got a ways into it before it occurred to me that it would be better set a shorter length of time later. With the Brisby kids knowing more about their father and their own heritage, would they tolerate waiting a whole year before going to see the Rats? Didn’t think so. Of course, this meant shifting the season from spring to summer, and one scene that I was quite fond of had to be altered a snow fight between Martin and Teresa outside the winter cinderblock home which inadvertently involves Auntie Shrew. This became the water fight by the creek outside the summer home which…well, you know. This meant no scenes at the cinderblock, though I included plenty of other info about it. A couple references did slip through indicating the wrong season or year. (blush)

Before the Rats had electricity in Thorn Valley, though I made next to no effort to explain how, just that they had a power plant.

The search party originally consisted of Mrs. B, Justin, Willis and Arthur (i/o Melvin). Mel was the one who first greeted the family, then as now, but that was his only scene. Arthur was still the chief engineer, but was also in the search party, and neither he nor Willis was a Guard rat. I realized it made a lot more sense to have at least two of the Guard along on such a journey, so I replaced Arthur with Melvin and made Willis one of the Guard.

Originally the search party made their departure from Justin's office. I changed it for the reason stated, to make it look more like a conventional departure. Another almost last-minute change.

There was no back-and-forth between Lahaikshe and Earth; from the search party's departure to their return, all scenes were set on Lahaikshe originally. I realized that I'd want to show how Mrs. B's absence was affecting her kids.

Ghormfisk/Uhrstegg's physical form was changed; he was mostly the same velvety green fur, tusks, but originally he sported four arms instead of two, and he didn't have a tail. I thought he looked too much like the Green Martians of Edgar Rice Burroughs' John Carter novels, hence the change.

Their imprisonment by Uhrstegg was originally one day longer! I thought that might be too much for them to be expected to survive, plus it seemed logical that they'd be discovered and rescued sooner than that.
Sithpha's family was only referred to originally and didn't play an active part until later First-Tier stories.

In the First-Tier version, Mrs. Brisby's name was kept under wraps until the moment Johnathan first sees her in Ghormfisk's prison. As this new version progressed I realized it would be natural for Justin to be curious about it much sooner.

The character of Birantha was created for this version, as I was putting together the new backstory for how Ghormfisk purloined the stone.

There were extensive changes made to Ghormfisk's backstory overall, made necessary by my decision to ax the First-Tier story "The Hidden Conflict". He had the same name but I essentially combined his character with the antagonist of "THC", who was named Uhrvstiev. (How's that for random letters?) I came up with the split-personality angle and changed the name to Uhrstegg. The original Ghormfisk also never came to Earth.

Speaking of "THC"...The origin of the Stone was taken directly from there, with very little changed except that the two brothers were named Svarsthiel and Hharvasa and they were from yet another dimension. In the new version I made them Rusay and gave them more Rusay-style names. (Humor me on this one.) Likewise the scene with Pharsal's spirit rising from the Stone and his own revelations. Johnathan's "sink or swim" scenario in Ch. 23 was also from "THC."

Other details that came from later First-Tier stories Many characters like Matilda, Bryant, George, Melinda, Tallus, Alcina, Simone, Graham, Lambert, Eric and Sarah, Quincy, Judith, Philip. I'd long ago set up a chart with all the familial relationships and for the most part I'm still following that. Johnathan's explanations of how he'd decided to conduct a regular Moving Day for the family, and of how he'd used the Stone to alter the cinderblock for their use were from the short story "The Last Moving Day"--which, by the way, is the next story I'm preparing for posting, since it's the next chronologically.

I'd also like to point out some details which can be chalked up to coincidence of course there will be some of the same character names that popped up in other fan-fics, such as Philip, who is a Guard rat in my stories, as was his namesake in the Gibbs stories. But the one that may raise the most eyebrows is Timothy's declaration to Johnathan that he "always knew" he'd come back. That's the way I wrote it in the First-Tier, so I couldn't help cringing when I first read the equivalent scene in Gibbs' first story. I think it's clear, though, that both versions of Timothy arrived at their respective conclusions through much different means. So I had no qualms about keeping my version the same as before.

Now, to answer some of SMT's recent comments

The Guard rat Lol, along with his musical partner Kevin, were named after Kevin Godley and Lol Creme, two favorite musicians of mine who were original members of 10CC and later made several albums as a duo and in the 80s became best known as music-video directors.

Sitcom lines? Moi? Okay, enough of the French pretentions. I'm not clear about which lines they'd be, though I suspect they'd be in Ch. 23, with Johnathan's aforementioned "sink or swim" monologue, or maybe Jeremy and Beatrice's lines.

I do appreciate your criticisms even though you had problems with some aspects of the story, and I do understand where you're coming from, especially with the Jenner subplot. But hey, that's my story and I'm sticking to it. I saw no reason to alter that aspect of it though I knew, as I stated in my intro to it, that some may find it confounding. Or too fruity or happy-go-lucky... wink

Anyway, on to "The Last Moving Day"...

(EDIT) P.S. Another difference Originally I hadn't come up with any names on the other world except for Gwinthrayle and Sithpha. I didn't give names to any of the native plant and animal life, or even to its people or the world itself. I saved all that for later First-Tier stories.

Ah...heard of 10CC, not seen much of their stuff. Haven't they been around since the 60's? I just thought the name of Lol was funny and that you were actually inspired by the internet abbreviation.

Also don't be afraid of "stealing" from other peoples work. This is fanfiction; we are already stealing characters and such from a main source material. It's not like your work or Gibbs' is canon. It's just for fun, it's what fanfiction is all about. It's not like your writing a grand novel. You both created well done what-if scenarios stemming from a similar idea. I would never ever consider your work or his canon. In fact SoN2 has more of a right to be canon than your story or his.

I'm currently "stealing" things from many sources in my story. I'm certainly not trying to make a canonized sequel and really, neither should any fanfiction writer.

...oh and as for the sitcom lines stuff like: "He owes me my chisel back!" "I feel like overcooked broccoli!" There are others as well. Again, it's all personal taste. I would never write dialog like that, but that's just me. Though I must admit it makes me cringe, it's something I'll let slide.

How many more stories do you plan to make? You talked about a Redwall crossover and the stone taking them to that universe.....how are you going to write that? They only think the stone takes them to Lakishe(sp.)

As for "Last Moving Day"....I was willing to buy the fact that the rats and his children were able to accept his return without much (or really any) skepticism or questioning. However, I cannot say the same about Auntie Shrew. In chapter 23 you mentioned that they would tell her that he was taken away due to circumstances beyond his control and if she asked more questions, they would change the subject.

Sorry, if you do plan to go about that way and it does work on Auntie Shrew, I can't be as accepting. It was already too convenient with the rats and children, but Auntie Shrew is a different beast.

Your story was already predictable. It doesn't take a brain surgeon to figure out that it would be a happy ending with everyone and everything being happy. There's very little suspense because of this very reason. What really would've made your story memorable is if you did something unpredictable. I'm not saying to kill off a character (though that would be fine by me). What I'm saying is have a conflict that would have the reader doubt said predicable ending. Like have Johnathan actually want to stay in Lakshiere(sp). Make it so they would actually have to repair their relationship to an extent. Or at the very least create a conflict that doesn't have so many strings attached (yes I'm repeating myself).

Yes, I know it's not my story and it's really all about personal taste in storytelling and these aren't really criticisms as much as suggestions, but hear me out anyway. You can argue and I would agree that having Jonathan and Maddie back together is enough motivation for the reader to be invested, but it's like grilling a frozen hamburger without any spices. It get's the job done well enough and it's satisfying enough, but it really could've used some salt.

To address SMT's most recent points

How many stories do I plan to make? Well, I've already stated that I wrote a lot of stories beginning in 1986, which I'm calling First-Tier, and that cycle pretty much ended only a few years ago. I'm still planning on posting them all, though as with "Search" some rewriting will be inevitable.

As for Auntie Shrew's reaction don't underestimate their ability to stand up to her, as I'd already depicted with Madeline. I do address the matter in "The Last Moving Day," and more about that story I won't say now, except that it's short and it should be posted soon.

I get your point about predictability, and that the happy ending of "Search" was pretty much inevitable. What, John being whisked off to another dimension was predictable? Seriously, there are events in upcoming stories, especially the one that will follow "TLMD", that I think the reader will find unexpected.

I was referring to your conflict/story structure being predicable. What you did with the other dimension stuff was very creative and unique, it's just that everything relating to the conflicts these characters go through is predictable.

I knew that once they got into the world, they would get themselves into a situation and that they would obviously get themselves out of in a timely fashion. I knew that Mrs. Brisby would be incapacitated/knocked out to make her reunion with John more emotionally thrilling. I knew that the stone would likely go missing or be taken from them by the antagonist.

.....You get the idea.

You're very good at writing romance (as I've stated numerous times), but how about a larger conflict between Mrs. Brisby and John...like some sort of argument or something to test their relationship? Every relationship has some sort of drama. I would like to see you tackle something like that.

Since I neglected to directly answer the question of "how many stories," here goes

Short answer six. More specifically, the first one, "The Last Moving Day," is a short story; the second is long-form; three thru five are short stories that address loose ends from the previous story, and these I may consolidate into one; and finally one more long-form, which at present is definitely long.

As for some conflict in the Brisby relationship well, something like that happens in the next long story, though it may not involve John and Maddie, but it still may be more to your liking.

Since I neglected to directly answer the question of "how many stories," here goes:

Short answer: six. More specifically, the first one, "The Last Moving Day," is a short story; the second is long-form; three thru five are short stories that address loose ends from the previous story, and these I may consolidate into one; and finally one more long-form, which at present is definitely long.

As for some conflict in the Brisby relationship: well, something like that happens in the next long story, though it may not involve John and Maddie, but it still may be more to your liking.

Six seems like a good number, especially considering you've been writing these stories since 1986...way before I was even a twinkle in my daddy's eye. Does it scare you that someone who wasn't even born when you wrote your work is now being your main critic? It would scare me.

This maybe asking too much, but are we going to get any Rusay centered stories? Id like to spend more time in their world. Is NIMH going to play a role in your stories?

Don't answer these questions if you don't want to, it's best to leave your "fanbase" guessing.....








...or not...

A few nagging questions have arisen over your work that I couldn't bring myself to ask you until now (mostly because their irrelevant to the plot, but nonetheless):

--Why did you choose twin births to be the norm? I ask because in the book they make it clear that single births were the norm...

--What most inspired you to make this story? Was it the song "Flying Dreams?"..something else?

--Have you written fan fiction for anything else besides NIMH, or any sort of romantic work, for that matter?

--Do you consider writing a hobby, you seem to have very good analysis in your critiques, which is why I ask.

Are you asking me or “Grandpa Leemy”? :wink:

Seriously, all very good questions, and ones I actually have answers for:

1. I don’t remember single births being specifically mentioned in the O’Brien novel, but I guess I decided on twin births as a compromise of sorts. I knew that large litters weren’t likely, or else the Rosebush colony would have quickly become an overcrowded madhouse. And I figured, single births? These are rodents,after all. But as far as I’ve written, single births do occur in maybe one in four cases.

2. Inspiration…”Flying Dreams” definitely played a part. As I mentioned on another post, it bugged me that the lyrics seemed to describe two lovers anticipating their impending reunion, and therefore had nothing to do with the plot. Any further inspiration just stemmed from frustration that the movie left so much unanswered and wanting to see more, so I made more. And as I’ve also stated, I’m a romantic slob at heart. The other-dimension angle wasn’t my first choice, but the idea of Johnathan being whisked away somewhere by the amulet came to me pretty quickly.

3. I did have the germ of an idea for a “Dark Crystal” f-f, but no more than that; in spite of my being a fan of any number of movies/books/TV shows, somehow “TSoN” was the only one that inspired me to this degree. Nothing else outright romantic outside of my f-f’s, so don’t expect to see anything of mine carrying the Harlequin banner.

4. Yes.

I dunno, I got the impression that Teresa was born first, then Martin, then Timothy, and then Cynthia, the book seems to make a point of this, but whatever. Interesting little twist you made there.

"Flying Dreams" would've been better off being about courage, or finding ones courage within...it does seem odd that it's more a romantic tune than anything else.

NIMH's intrigue, mystery, and balance of science fiction and fantasy make it a fanfiction haven, which is why I went on a fanfiction hunt after watching it with my ex-girlfriend a few months back. I wanted more out of the plot and I am satisfied with the amount of twists people have spun with it. My last fanfiction hunt was Silent Hill a few years back after loving "Silent Hill 2." I forgot the name of the author, but I remember that she would create different characters with unique personalities and situations and place them in their own version of "Silent Hill." This showed me how powerful fanfiction can get. The character in my fanfiction, a cynical snarky sarcastic depressive, is based off one of her characters. My fanfiction was inspired mostly off "The Cobra Event" I figured NIMH could use a psychological thriller to go along with its mystery and intrigue.

Two last questions, both cliche questions, but I'll ask them nonetheless. What advice would you give to those starting fanfiction writing? If there's one thing you could change about NIMH, what would it be?

I dunno, I got the impression that Teresa was born first, then Martin, then Timothy, and then Cynthia.

Yup, that's what it says in the book. Ironically enough, it's the same order as the order my siblings and I were born; I line up with Martin. (Which would explain why I'm obsessed with Breta) :P

Steven

Hmmm, cliché questions maybe, but I’ll try to avoid cliché answers.

I had another forum poster ask me for writing advice last year via PM, so I’ll basically pass along to you what I told him

• First, if your own writing skills are at least as good as others who have written f-f’s, then you should do okay. As we’ve both observed, none of us are out to write the Great American Novel, we’re just having fun with the concepts and characters.
• Try to avoid clichés. Just ask yourself, is this line of dialogue or this situation, etc., something that’s been done or said before, not once, but any number of times? This can be tricky, because I’ve always considered what is and isn’t a cliché to be largely subjective, and therefore next to impossible to avoid altogether.
• Try to keep your characters in character as much as possible. Keep asking yourself, is this what he or she would do or say? What’s this person’s motivation? As an example, in my review of Procyon’s “The Secret of the Stone” I stated my disappointment when a character who’s struggling to reestablish credibility for herself and her family completely freaks out and violently attacks someone, effectively throwing out everything that had been previously established about her.
• Nothing wrong with an occasional deus ex machina, since our favorite animated film uses one at its climax. But I generally try to avoid it, and have events unfold and flow logically, driven by the actions and personalities of the cast.
• If you’re not the best speller in the world, don’t hesitate to look up a word, not only to get the spelling right but also to make sure you’re not confusing soundalike words, i.e. its and it’s (a particular pet peeve of mine). Don’t rely on spellcheck alone. I do pretty well but I’m no stranger to repeated misspellings apparant for apparent, inadverdant for inadvertent, and (not making this up) intellegent for intelligent. Argh!
• Try to avoid getting too bogged down in details that slow down the story flow.
• Don’t be reluctant to make major changes if you find it’s going slowly or you’re starting to feel bored with the way the story’s unfolding.
• Do research on a particular subject where you think you need to, to give it a ring of authenticity, something I’ll admit I’ve been deficient in at times.
• See also my criticism of “TSOTS” having an unsatisfactory conclusion. Don’t wind things up too fast.
• And it bears repeating have fun with it, even though there’ll be times where it’ll seem more like work.

Now, what’s the one thing I would change? Hard to pinpoint just one; in another post, I said that more female rats, or maybe just one, like Isabella, should have been introduced; that the rats’ post-NIMH journey could have been told in more detail; and that we should have gotten more Jonathan, in at least one flashback, maybe just before he left on his last mission, to give us a taste of his domestic life. I would lean most toward the third.

We should have gotten more Jonathan, in at least one flashback, maybe just before he left on his last mission, to give us a taste of his domestic life.

Thing is...how would that be relevant to the plot? I know you have a love of the character and I agree that he is probably the most important character, but I think the ambiguity about him gives him charm. It's partly what inspired your fanfiction I'm sure. We don't know if he's magical, like Nicodemus, or more charming, like Justin. It's left up in the air.

On my 10/26 post, I alluded to an early idea for my first fan-fic, before I came up with the other-dimension angle I ended up using in “Search for Johnathan.” So I thought I’d go into detail on it now, for those who might be interested. It was very rough, nowhere near even a first draft, but it went something like this

The Brisby family journeys to Thorn Valley to visit the Rats for the first time after the movie’s events, but when they get there they find the Rats in a state of near-siege following a series of guerilla-style attacks and acts of sabotage. Eventually they learn a group of mice is responsible, and further, that they’re from NIMH, or at least led by the ones believed dead. They blame the Rats for abandoning them, or were led to believe that by one or more of their number. Things are close to reaching a real crisis point, when suddenly it’s deus ex machina time again who should show up, but Johnathan Brisby! It seems the Stone, which he’d had on him when Dragon attacked, sent him to the other side of the world without staying with him—I even had a remote part of Yemen in mind for a specific location—and he’d been fighting to make his way home again ever since. Of course he’s surprised to find his family there, as they’re shocked to see him; but his entrance proves timely, and before long he’s able to broker a truce between the two sides, and his family and friends have him back.

I nixed the idea mainly because at the time I thought it was too much of a downer, having the mice being that angry with the rats. Of course, after getting into online fandom last year, I discovered that Procyon used the same basic idea in “Secret of the Stone,” and did it better than I probably would have.

Of course, I retained the idea of the Stone sending him away; and as for the “mice of NIMH” idea, I thought that might still be viable…

I would've liked the story better if you nixed the Johnathan subplot and stuck with the war between the mice and rats. Sending him to Yemen....lol....Would he speak Arabic?

http:/" alt=""/img510.imageshack.us/img="510/8339/arabic.png[" alt=""/img]

LOL

Okay...translation please? :?

While I'm at it, I expect to have "The Last Moving Day" ready for posting before the end of the month.

Oh, that's "You can unlock any door, if you only have the key" in Arabic. In reference to SMT post. I did it for the lulz.

While I'm at it, I expect to have "The Last Moving Day" ready for posting before the end of the month.

Yay!!!!! I can't wait!!!

"Auntie Shrew I'm alive! Oh about that whole 'death' thing....uh.....I was forced away by circumstances beyond my control......Oh you want an explanat--Say! That's a nice hat you're wearing!"

Thanks for your continued enthusiasm, SMT. I can actually picture Johnathan grasping at straws like that, but keep in mind that I established that the shrew, though she brought the bad news to his family, was only repeating what she’d heard. I’ve left it ambiguous about how the rumor (or non-rumor) actually got started.

Embarrassment time Azathoth, what is a lulz?

Embarrassment time: Azathoth, what is a lulz?

http://www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=lulz


That means he did it for amusement factor or laughs, just like me changing my avatar. I did it for the lulz.

Finally had time to whack out another review, so here’s my opinion of the first of three stories by Chris Silva: “The Children of NIMH.” It can be viewed at:

http://robin.thornvalley.com/node/35

The usual SPOILER WARNING applies, of course.

In comparing the story to, say, Paul Gibbs’s first story, the two have elements in common:mainly, Jonathan Brisby is alive, and Dr. Schultz plays a major role. But in some ways the two are polar opposites: whereas Gibbs played down the mystical aspects, bringing in the Stone and Nicodemus almost at the last minute, Silva goes full-tilt with the magic, integrating it with the origins of the Rats and Mice of NIMH. There isn’t one villain they have to worry about here, but two: Dr. Schultz and Jenner. The author took advantage of the fact Schultz has a German name by giving him a Nazi connection: his father was a Third Reich scientist who used his son in brain experiments, and he carried on the legacy with the NIMH experiments, attempting through scientific means to tap into a powerful supernatural force, “The Power,” performing brain surgery on not only the rats and mice they’d captured but also his own son Dante. The other threat is from Jenner, who had survived and spent the past few years preparing his rogue rat colony, which he’d begun in secret during their time at the rosebush, for a full-scale invasion of Thorn Valley.

The first chapter reads like a horror/suspense film as Dante, following his father’s funeral, gets very disturbing information from Dr. Schultz’s fellow scientists from NIMH, Drs. George Yardley (whom Dante thinks of as an uncle) and Julie Kemmerer, both of whom Schultz continued to work with after the NIMH experiment (“Project Titan”) ended. George tells him the truth about Project Titan and directs Dante to his father’s private lab, where he encounters mutated rodent monstrosities and a metal box that he feels compelled to bring with him. The box contains a mouse that was one of the experimental animals: Jonathan Brisby. Shock follows shock for Dante as he learns more about his father, his experiments and himself in a single day than he ever had. The experimental rats and mice from NIMH had all been able, following Schulz’s procedures, to tap into “The Power” in different ways and degrees, giving them boosted intelligence and lifespans, to the highest degree with Nicodemus and Jonathan. Jonathan, who had been kept in stasis by Schulz, shows Dante how his father’s surgery on him connected him mentally with the experimental animals, Jonathan in particular, and that was the source of the visions and nightmares that had plagued him for years. He convinces Dante to help him defend Thorn Valley against their enemies, even using his own considerable command over The Power to change Dante into a mouse. They reach Thorn Valley, where Jonathan has a very emotional reunion with his family and friends, but there is a traitor in their midst: Owen, no less than the current Captain of the Guard, and he and his followers attempt to kill Justin and the entire Brisby family. Their would-be victims learn that Jenner is behind the attempt; and in short order a fierce three-way battle ensues, as Jenner’s forces attack, with his own command of The Power on their side, followed closely by the arrival of Schultz, who had faked his death. He wants to destroy them all whereas Jenner wants to conquer Thorn Valley for himself. But T.V. has the Stone on their side: Nicodemus had created it to help Jonathan control the Power; and Mrs. Brisby (here named Rose) takes control of it now. There’s not much in the way of explanation as to how she’d been able to control the Stone to begin with (unless I missed something; it is a pretty complex plot) but she makes great use of it now as she enters the minds of their enemies, accompanied by Dante and Killian (Jenner’s son, who is staunchly loyal to T.V. and has been trying to live down his own legacy for years).

Did I mention that Silva incorporated elements from “NIMH 2” in this story and its sequels? Say it ain’t so! :wink: Actually, he pulled it off rather well, mainly keeping those elements limited to the basic plot—the survival of the NIMH mice, with them all brought to Thorn Valley, and Timothy journeying to NIMH to rescue them and Martin, who had been transformed into an evil version of himself. And of course there’s Jenny, who’s now married to Timothy, now Justin’s vice-president, and both parents-to-be.

I think the author may have succeeded better than most fan-fic writers (including myself) in creating memorable original characters the reader could relate to and empathize with. In my own stories I’d been trying to come up with a good way to bring in a human character to live among the rats for a time, to give a human perspective on the lives of these creatures who are on an equal par with humans in many ways; and though I hadn’t quite gotten to that point, Silva did a more than adequate job with Dante, starting with the almost traumatizing effect of his initial transformation, to his adjustments to the physical differences, to his realization that he’s developing feelings for Cynthia (“What am I saying, she’s a rodent!”) :shock: and that if he intends to be part of their community, then he’s in all the way. His feeling of being utterly alone in the world being slowly supplanted by his realization that he has a new home and “family” was very believable.

Killian, of course, also has considerable “daddy issues.” Though he doesn’t need to prove his loyalty to his fellow rats (which could be an issue given his legacy), he’s never known true happiness. And what daddy issues! Jenner, blaming him for no less than killing his mother, who died in childbirth, almost killed him by slitting his throat. Even given that, Killian has never let his dissatisfaction with his life turn him bitter or sway him from being a loyal and valued member of the Guard and citizen of Thorn Valley, and in the end he does find happiness through some unexpected means.

And then there’s Mercy…oh, Mercy, indeed! :) Easily my favorite of Silva’s original characters, she’s the daughter of two of the NIMH mice and has quite a complex history, being specially trained by Dr. Schultz, following further treatments, to track down the NIMH escapees, something he’d been obsessed with long after Project Titan had ended. She’s the one who’d led Schultz to them at the Fitzgibbons farm and was behind the scenes during the events of the film, after which she’s captured by Jenner, who forces her to work for him. She’s taken as a prisoner of war following the battle but, like Dante and Killian, still manages to find happiness in the end.

Silva had much the same view of Jonathan that others of us, like Gibbs and myself, have had: as one who, as Gibbs put it, “will always wear his emotions on his sleeve” when it comes to family, as evidenced by the scenes he has when he first meets Cynthia, the daughter he’s never met, and reunites with everyone else. And as with Gibbs, Silva’s strength is definitely in the interpersonal relationships of the characters.

The relationship between Justin and Mrs. Brisby is addressed, too, and the story refers to "The Kiss" but the two aren't head-over-heels for each other, with Mrs. Brisby choosing long ago to stay single, believing deep down that she and Jonathan would be together again somehow, and Justin eventually marrying Isabella (yay) and having twins with her. He had, however, maintained a fatherly relationship to the Brisby kids, especially Cynthia.

Some favorite scenes:
1. Dante and Cynthia’s conversation in Ch. 5, where she shocks him by telling him she’s five years old and describes how she was thought of as slow and dumb until she grew to maturity; and Dante conveys his difficulty in getting used to having a tail, whiskers and a muzzle.
2. The whole of Ch. 1, with its unabashed bizarreness and surreal quality, especially the fanged squirrels.
3. In Ch. 6, where Rose and Killian are in Jenner’s mind, and she chews Jenner out royally for his selfishness, blaming others for his misfortunes and not even trying to be a true father to Killian; and her compassion in carrying out what she thought to be her dying act, redemption for Jenner.
4. Mercy’s complete and unabashed surprise at the outcome of her hearing, which she fully expects to result with her head on the chopping block, right up to the moment Justin pronounces final judgment on her.
5. The “aww” scene in Ch. 8, where “little angel” Cynthia climbs onto “Daddy” Justin’s lap, and how it contrasts with the earlier scene where she’s kicking butt, holding her own during the assassination attempt; and this followed by her and Dante’s dance, and the emergence of their mutual feelings.

There are some continuity issues which might be questionable:
1. It’s stated that Cynthia was born shortly after Jonathan disappeared, and she tells Dante she’s five years old, setting this story around four years after the events of TSoN. Jonathan and Rose were said to have been together for only a year, so they had their first three kids during that time. I think I can buy all that, but poor Rose must have been popping them out one after another, especially since a gestation period of 3-4 months was established in Silva’s follow-up story.
2. Regarding Dante: Dr. Schultz operated on him when he was five, and Dante says he had visions going back that far about the rats and Jonathan. The scene in Chapter 6, with Schultz’s memory of operating on Dante while our heroes were at NIMH, seems to confirm this. But now he’s of college age, some 15 years older. Apparently the Rats’ Wandering Days period lasted for a whole decade or so.
3. Jenner is described as being unstable and a sociopath, going all the way back to pre-NIMH days; “darkness and evil,” in Justin’s own words. So how is it that, in TSoN, Justin could so easily brush off Jenner’s opposition to Nicodemus, believing “nothing will come of it”? Knowing how he was, how could the others allow him to gain the degree of influence we saw in the film?

Overall, a well-thought-out, involving plot. The only thing that really interfered with the story flow was the author’s problem with punctuation, i.e. periods at the end of quotes where there should be commas, and with split quotations; I’m not sure there’s even one in the entire story. The story still gets four stars.

I haven't read Silva's story all the way through, but thanks for bringing it to my attention. I also have a problem with quotations and periods as you can tell by reading my fanfiction; it's a habit I'm trying to fix.

In my own stories I’d been trying to come up with a good way to bring in a human character to live among the rats for a time, to give a human perspective on the lives of these creatures who are on an equal par with humans in many ways; and though I hadn’t quite gotten to that point, Silva did a more than adequate job with Dante, starting with the almost traumatizing effect of his initial transformation, to his adjustments to the physical differences, to his realization that he’s developing feelings for Cynthia (“What am I saying, she’s a rodent!”) :shock: and that if he intends to be part of their community, then he’s in all the way. His feeling of being utterly alone in the world being slowly supplanted by his realization that he has a new home and “family” was very believable.

Very good observation, sir. In the fanfiction that I'm writing, the rats pre-escape thought that humans were perfect beings and were godlike creatures. When they finally escape, they see that humans are not much different from themselves and that they are flawed in many ways. When they observe humans, they see that they are dependent on one another and that they harm themselves and others. I think a more personal relationship with humans is a great fanfiction material and I'm willing to see how Silva does it here.

“Love…and Mr. Ages?” is the second Chris Silva story, a short one but memorable. It can be found at:

http://robin.thornvalley.com/node/32

Again, the usual SPOILER WARNING applies.

The title gives no doubt as to the plot, as our favorite curmudgeon, after having taken on Mercy as his assistant in “The Children of NIMH,” (TCON) finds himself coming down with a strange malady which he experiences whenever he’s in her presence and which he tries to deny is love; and even after he realizes the truth—that she’s been in love with him almost from day one just as he loves her—he still tries to deny it and pushes her away. He’s quickly steered in the right direction by Jonathan and his associates Drs. Luke and Laura, themselves a couple (and a mixed one, mouse and rat respectively), and all ends happily, with the new couple married.

The use of a recurring dream, in which Ages is dressed in armor in a dark, gloomy fortress was an effective device in conveying visually his gradual realization of the truth, which on the whole was very believably handled, with his denial giving way to complete and wholehearted acceptance of his and Mercy’s mutual feelings.

It was a stroke of genius and one of those wish-I’d-thought-of-it-first character bits, having a fear of rats be at the center of Ages’s lack of sociability. There’s also a very simple explanation for his disuse of his first name: to avoid confusion with another prominent member of the community.

Great version of Brutus here: not the completely mute Gibbs version, nor the more verbose version of Procyon and myself, but one who speaks strictly in single-word sentences.

And of course, Mercy…How could one not love a character who’s able to draw out the lovable side of the old grouch? By the time we get to the wedding, I wanted to marry Mercy myself! :lol: Still my favorite original character of Silva’s.

In my own stories I also had Mr. Ages eventually find a mate, though I haven’t written an entire story around it, at least not yet.

The absence of certain characters is puzzling. Martin and Teresa are totally absent, as they were largely in TCON. Cynthia is mentioned briefly. And where are Dante and Killian, who played such major parts in TCON? Yes, it's Ages and Mercy's story, but at the very least there should have been one scene to show how Dante and Cynthia’s relationship was progressing. And we never actually get to meet the latest member of the Brisby clan, Violet, who Rose was pregnant with at the end of TCON; she’s only referred to twice.

Ages’s final thought at the end (“Ages, you old fool…”) seemed kind of negative; I think it should be traded for the one he had in an earlier scene, where he and Mercy are strolling by the lake (“And to think you almost threw this away…”). A minor quibble, maybe, but I think the latter line would have concluded the story on a more upbeat note.

Again the troubles with punctuation and lack of split quotations, and again the only thing that marred an otherwise fine tale. All in all, a story which can give hope to anyone who hasn’t had the best of luck with the opposite gender. Four stars out of five.

Oh, you don't need to elaborate on Saw. I despise all of the movies. Seeing people die in creative ways is only fun if the movie itself knows it's terrible. Saw tries to shove it's philosophy that torture is better than any sort of counseling in your face that it takes away any sense of enjoyment you might get from the films (which is very little to begin with). I was forced to see all 7 of those craptaculor films in the theater by my uncle, who loves them.

Anyway, I can write a novel on why Saw sucks, but back on topic....

After watching the first three movies again (yay winter break boredom!), I have to take back my point somewhat and conclude that the first two movies are good, while the rest of the series lost focus and became so convoluted that it became hard to care. Jigsaw, the most interesting character, is too much of a hypocrite to be taken seriously. He says that everybody deserves a chance to redeem themselves, but then goes on ahead and makes traps in which people must die in order for another to survive. I wouldn't mind so much if the films didn't try so hard to make us empathize with him.

The films method of storytelling makes it hard to figure out what's going on. There are too many flashbacks and too many stupid plot twists. New characters are constantly being introduced, each with their own agenda, that it makes it hard to care or root for them. The crappy script and acting doesn't help either.

Anyways, enough about Saw......Have you submitted "Last Moving Day" to Robin's yet, Grandpa Leemy?

Submitted it last week, Li’l Dude, 12/12 to be exact. Just sent Simon another reminder about it.

P.S. Not to embarrass Simon or anyone else by that statement, but sometimes he and his editor are otherwise occupied and don't have a lot of time for T.V. stuff.

I was going to review the third Silva story next, but I figured, given the season…

So, I’m reviewing Tod’s “A Brisby Christmas” first. It can be found at

http//robin.thornvalley.com/node/415

As noted in the intro, the story alternates between two Christmases celebrated by the Brisby family the first one Jonathan and Mrs. Brisby (here again named Elizabeth) spent together and the first one after he was gone. It has a flavor very similar to the Gibbs stories and shares some of the background details, e.g. Jenner’s disdain for Jonathan being married to an ordinary mouse, the red cape being a gift from him to her (on that first Christmas), Timothy being the one to most take to the books he’d left them, and the idea that his absence contributed to Timothy’s illness.

Great opening sequence with Jonathan’s close shave in the farmhouse kitchen and his enormous luck in avoiding the cat and the family’s attention. It seems odd, though, that he would he have almost forgotten his wife at home until Ages reminded him, even if they hadn’t been together very long. Overall, he was depicted as one who’d describe himself as “a lover, not a fighter,” as I’ve always seen him, one whose first priority is his family (even with his needing a reminder).

Auntie Shrew was well depicted as well. Jonathan’s amusement at her having the appearance of a “walking pile of old rags,” and his having “no desire to end up like Huckleberry Finn” were worth a chuckle.

Nice attention given to some of the other background details, such as the Brisby winter home, in the earlier sequence, being located in an abandoned stone wall.

Elizabeth’s speech patterns are a little out of character in places; I can’t imagine her using a phrase like “conspiracy theorist.”

Here Ages’s first name is Henry; one of these days I may compile a list of all the first names he’s gotten.

I think I could buy Ages’s playing Santa as, say, a favor to Justin; but his relationship to the family as depicted here was pretty inconsistent with the film, with the kids regarding him as an uncle and his genuine compassion and sympathy over their losing Jonathan. It just doesn’t mesh with Mrs. B telling him “I don’t suppose you would remember me” and his blunt and dismissive treatment of her when she came to him for help. Also, just to get picky his declaration “most wild animals steer clear of the farm.” Really? As one who lives in an area known to have problems with “urban wildlife,” I can tell you that the mere presence of a farm, out in the countryside, wouldn’t present any kind of barrier.

Aside from these points, a poignant and humorous little tale. Four stars out of five.

Since Grandpa Leemy is going a great thing for the community by reviewing these fanfictions and bringing them to people's attention, I'll do him a favor and review his first story "The Brisby Beginning"

The SPOILER WARNING tag applies here.

The story begins in Mr. Ages' house, his first name being Cyril. I like how you didn't choose traditional names such as Christopher, Thomas, and David (har har) to name these characters. Instead, you chose to be creative with your name making by using names like Tallus and Madeline. Anyway, Mr. Ages, being his grouchy old self tells Johnathan to help him out or take his thoughts elsewhere. Johnathan does the latter.

The story then turns into damsel in distress mode, which is cliche', but it's done well here, so it gets a pass. Johnathan sees that a mouse is being chased by dragon and decides to give chase. He distracts Dragon long enough until Mrs. F saves the day.

The mouse introduces herself as Madeline, soon to be Mrs. Brisby. They hug and chat for awhile. Then Johnathan offers to walk Madeline home, where he gets a not-so-welcome greeting from Auntie Shrew. I do have a question, though: why is she wearing a shawl? Do feral animals in your world wear clothes? She really shouldn't be wearing clothes until she meets Johnathan, who would be the one to provide them. A small quibble, yes, but still....

After saying their goodbyes, Madeline and Johnathan agree to meet mid-afternoon tomorrow. He goes home to Mr. Ages, who continues to be a grouchy Grinch. Here lies my second small quibble with your story: "I just can't stop thinking about her!"---Try to avoid the temptation when writing romance to use this cliche'. You should try and be more creative here.

Eventually, Johnathan proposes to her and she says yes. Auntie Shrew slowly accepts Johnathan now that he's a father. And they live happily ever after, until he "dies."

Couple things I liked about your story:
li The constant anxiety Johnathan has over the aging difference and how you compare it to Nicodemus' own aging problem.
li The mating scene was pitch perfect and heartwarming. I like how you weren't afraid to add in the emotional impact of mating thanks largely to Johnathan being a mice of NIMH.
li I really liked how you describe the NIMH treatments increasing the emotional range of Madeline, with her mourning her parents' death with great intensity.
li You did a great job keeping characters in-character here. You portray their personalities well.

Anymore nitpicks?....well:
li It seems too convenient for Johnathan to mention that he was captured by humans to Madeline and her not pressing for details. This is a reoccurring problem I have in "Search" as well...things happen too conveniently for these characters. Janice and Kory just blindly accept Johnathan's return as if returning from the "dead" is an everyday occurrence.

4.5 stars out of 5

Thanks for your eval, Li’l Dude. In my first post to this topic I did invite others to post their own reviews, so it’s good to see yours, even though you’ve already offered plenty of criticism on “Search.” As long as it’s 4C (Constructive Criticism Conducted Civilly). (Did I just coin that?)

I’ve tried from the beginning to be creative with character names. And no, I haven’t used my own yet, though I have named some characters after people I’ve known.

Actually, the line was “I just can’t get her out of my mind,” but that’s okay. Point taken about it being cliché, but I think it best summed up John’s feelings at that point.

On the mating scene thanks, that’s exactly what I wanted to get across. It may interest you to know that I pitched that scene to Simon ahead of time, to make sure it wasn’t too “explicit.”

On Auntie Shrew’s shawl on one hand, you may be overthinking this one,since it is a minor point; on the other, I’ll admit I didn’t put much thought into what anyone would be doing for clothing at that point. On the OTHER other hand, maybe there’s more to be told about Auntie Shrew? In the meantime, ponder this in the film, how did she know how to shut the tractor down? Where would she have gotten knowledge like that?

I’ve long held that one fundamental difference between the advanced and feral mice and rats is that the ferals, or naturals, tend to be more accepting of things that are beyond their understanding. It’s actually based on passages in the O’Brien book, especially in the chapter “In the Library,” where Mrs. F recalls how Jonathan had known about many things she didn’t, and she’d accepted this as a matter of course.

Looking forward to more 4C, nitpicks and all. As for my own reviews, I’ll tackle Silva’s “George” next, then maybe one or two housed outside of Robin’s.

On the mating scene: thanks, that’s exactly what I wanted to get across. It may interest you to know that I pitched that scene to Simon ahead of time, to make sure it wasn’t too “explicit.”

In a society that leans towards physical/pleasurable aspect of sex rather the emotional/love aspect of sex, actually reading something like what you wrote is a welcome treat. That scene got me emotionally satisfied and you should be proud of it. I probably could never write sex without over-sensualizing it, but you were tame in this case.

On Auntie Shrew’s shawl: on one hand, you may be overthinking this one,since it is a minor point; on the other, I’ll admit I didn’t put much thought into what anyone would be doing for clothing at that point. On the OTHER other hand, maybe there’s more to be told about Auntie Shrew? In the meantime, ponder this: in the film, how did she know how to shut the tractor down? Where would she have gotten knowledge like that?

You're right, this is fiction and if we were to apply logic to SoN, there wouldn't be any fun in it. It's a fantasy story about anthropomorphic characters. However, I did admit that it was a very small quibble.

Also apologies about my past criticisms; namely the "Scientologist taking too much NyQuil" among other rude comments. It's just that I didn't feel that the Jenner subplot contributed anything meaningful to the story. It feels like it was put in there just to satisfy your wishes to make everything happy in the end. I have no problems with Scientology, BTW, or any religion for that matter. I would've made a similar joke about Buddhism if you made a reincarnation subplot, and I love Buddhism. I sometimes just say the first thing that comes to my mind without thinking about the consequences and it's a habit I'm hoping to fix. I'll be 4C from now on.

Looking forward to more stuff from you.

As promised, here is my review of the third Chris Silva story, “George,” which can be viewed at

http//robin.thornvalley.com/node/28

SPOILER WARNING applies, of course.

According to one forum post from the author, he’d intended it to be just one part of a longer work. Whether he’ll ever return to it is an open question (How ‘bout it, dude? You listening?) but in the meantime we have this.

As established in TCON, Jonathan Brisby is able to use his command of “The Power” to communicate with others through dreams; and so here he, Dante and Justin do so in answer to an email from Dr. George Yardley. Believing that his life as it is now is without meaning or direction, he tells them “I surrender. I am sick of all this the fear, the despair, the nightmares. Sick of looking over my shoulder every time I hear a noise in a quiet room. I wish to join you.” He tells them this even knowing he may end up as their prisoner. Jonathan and Dante come to him in person (in human form!) and Jonathan magically transmutes George to a rat and they make the journey to Thorn Valley. The rest of the story is concerned with his adjustment to his new life, where he has to reevaluate just about everything he’d believed and taken for granted in his old one. He especially has a problem with his “nephew” Dante being engaged to Cynthia Brisby, one of those creatures he still considers vermin. He continues to consider them as such well after joining the community and working alongside them and getting to know them as individuals. His arrogance during a meeting in which he shares details of the NIMH experiment almost gets him killed, after which he’s quite chastened and more cooperative after Mr. Ages heals him, and he even agrees to share the details of the specific procedure that created them, which he’d secretly stolen from Dr. Schultz. He further agrees to help recreate the procedure to prolong the lives of those “naturals” who’d married into the community; and, through Jonathan, help reverse the actions of the “evil” Martin against Dr. Valentine and his people. Even after all this, plus receiving counsel from a ghostly(?) Nicodemus and hearing the details of the rats’ own post-NIMH experiences, he still can’t completely accept being one of them, and isn’t over considering them vermin (still using the word), leading to a rift with Dante. He’s filled with self-pity and believes he’s become no more than their lackey, even as he’s excited over the advances in the research he and Ages are conducting. But the major turning point for him comes after a real-seeming but bizarre dream in which he’s visited by (possible?) future versions of himself and others he knows (or will know?), including a young girl-rat who identifies herself as his daughter. He emerges from this with a clear direction for the rest of his life, even believing he could find someone among the rats to share his life with. Overall, George’s gradual acceptance of his new life was handled believably.

George’s tell-all scene before the populace (in reduced-in-size human form, no less) was well-thought out, nicely filling in the details of the experiment, including the idea that altered human DNA was part of the experimental compound used in Project Titan, and that this is why these creatures have adopted so many humanlike characteristics in their behavior and appearance.

As in TCON, elements from “NIMH 2” are incorporated, including Dr. Valentine and how he came to be involved, and Martin Brisby’s actions in his “evil” mode and their consequences. (Later there’s even a brief reemergence of Evil Martin.) Many in the crowd express anger when he tells them they should be grateful for what was done to them, but his argument is compelling and really cuts right to the heart of the matter none of them want to go back to living like their ordinary counterparts, they like being what they are now, and they know this as well as he does. He doesn’t help himself, though, when he effects a too-smug tone, especially when one of the NIMH mice, Anja, tries to kill him. I liked how the incident has a chilling effect on the populace though many wanted his head before, everyone is shocked afterward; showing that their propensity for violence is much less than George had assumed, given their humanness in so many other ways.

Nicodemus pops up a couple of times, oddly enough only to give counsel and advice to George and others; rather than appear to Justin or Jonathan? The author had very much the same idea about him that Gibbs did that he’s still with them but has moved on, Obi-Wan style, to a different plane of existence that still enables him to interact with his fellows at times of his choosing.

The scene where George reacts to Dante’s sweet and tender moment with Cynthia upon their arrival in Thorn Valley was priceless. It had to be the moment when he first realized just how difficult this new life would be to adjust to, compounded when Dante suggests that George could “meet a nice lady rat and settle down” and he reacts in a purely knee-jerk fashion that he instantly regrets. In the end he accepts their relationship, and by the time of their wedding has accepted his new lot in life wholeheartedly.

A few nitpicks what about George’s colleague Julie? He tells Dante she seems to have disappeared completely; I was hoping they could track her down and maybe convince her to join them as George did, or at the very least not leave her final fate hanging. Also, some characters are brought into the story with little or no info about who and what they are; Mercy, for instance, pops up in the first meeting with no mention that she’s one of the second-gen NIMH mice or that she’s married to Ages. Also, there’s no mention of Cynthia’s skills and accomplishments as a member of the Guard.

As with TCON, the author has a flair for details that would make for a pretty visually-stunning movie if the powers-that-be were interested. Especially striking would be George’s dream in Part 3.

Again, four stars out of five.

(Later there’s even a brief reemergence of Evil Martin.)

Complete with Monty Python voice? :D

If you like. :)

BTW, I know that Chris Silva is registered in the forum as Chris S., not to be confused with ChrisS. (yourself). But is that you in the art gallery as Chris S., or is HE Chris Silva? :?

If you like. :)

BTW, I know that Chris Silva is registered in the forum as Chris S., not to be confused with ChrisS. (yourself). But is that you in the art gallery as Chris S., or is HE Chris Silva? :?

Don't worry Timmy. You know what they say...
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WlBiLNN1NhQ

In the art gallery I'm Chris S. and when I registered here Chris S. was taken therefore I went with ChrisS.

On the subject of fan fictions, I wrote one months ago as sorta of a pilot for a collection of stories to be called "NIMH Unbound" that I haven't finished. Further cause of the delay is I'm trying to make covers for each story. Hopefully I'll be able to post a least one story before college semester begins.

Love Monty Python, thanks for clearing up the name confusion, and looking forward to seeing more of your work. Cheers!

Submitted it last week, Li’l Dude, 12/12 to be exact. Just sent Simon another reminder about it.

P.S.: Not to embarrass Simon or anyone else by that statement, but sometimes he and his editor are otherwise occupied and don't have a lot of time for T.V. stuff.

You know, you could always post the story here...or better yet, email me the story.....

Mwhahahahahahahahahahahahahaha! :twisted:

Of course you don't have to.....but just in case......you can email= it to my alternate email: email=shivermetimbers92@yahoo.comshivermetimbers92@yahoo.com it to my alternate email: email=shivermetimbers92@yahoo.comshivermetimbers92@yahoo.com/email

Of course, I'm also not insulting Simon or his editor. They can take as much time as they please. I'm just suggesting something....

Hate to have to say it, but those are options that are starting to look pretty attractive... :cry:

Hate to have to say it, but those are options that are starting to look pretty attractive... :cry:

You know you wanna! I'll give it the best 4C review I possibly can. Pretty please! PRETTY PLEASE! XD

Just to put things in perspective......I sent my story to Robin's on October 17th. I got a confirmation email saying it was received and sent to the editor. Since then, I've heard nothing about it. I'm not insulting the service; I don't really care. They can take as much time as they want...It's their free time they're sacrificing and they can decide when to post it and if they want to post it. If they do post it, I'm going to finish it though.....

You've already waited a month, and you have a fanboy drooling at the mouth for more of the adventures of John and Maddie. A fanboy who's ready and willing to review the work that you worked so hard to bring to life. I sincerely doubt that Simon or his editor would get offended if you decided to email me the story or post it here. All this would do is make your fanbase happy; there's no loss to doing it.

Of course you still don't have to. However, if you do I'll give you the biggest virtual bearhug I can give you. And I'll never call you 'Grandpa Leemy' again, unless you want me to. I'll also address you as sir.
So, what shall it be sir David?

PRETTY PLEASE!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! XD

Just to put things in perspective......I sent my story to Robin's on October 17th. I got a confirmation email saying it was received and sent to the editor. Since then, I've heard nothing about it. I'm not insulting the service; I don't really care. They can take as much time as they want...It's their free time they're sacrificing and they can decide when to post it and if they want to post it. If they do post it, I'm going to finish it though.....

You've already waited a month, and you have a fanboy drooling at the mouth for more of the adventures of John and Maddie. A fanboy who's ready and willing to review the work that you worked so hard to bring to life. I sincerely doubt that Simon or his editor would get offended if you decided to email me the story or post it here. All this would do is make your fanbase happy; there's no loss to doing it.

Of course you still don't have to. However, if you do I'll give you the biggest virtual bearhug I can give you. And I'll never call you 'Grandpa Leemy' again, unless you want me to. I'll also address you as sir.
So, what shall it be sir David?

PRETTY PLEASE!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! XD

Yeah, my editor seems to have disappeared. Unfortunately, there's also a lot of deadline pressure at work at the moment, so I've been working late and the last thing on my mind is dealing with the website when I get home. I've got a few ideas floating around my head for improving this situation, but it won't be until later, after I'm done with deadlines.

In the meantime, please feel free to post your drafts to the forum, if you want feedback. Or post them somewhere you can post to and link them. Or email them, as Timbers is suggesting. I won't be hurt if you try to work around my slowness.

Okay…first of all, SMT, that’s news to me that you already had a fan-fic loaded up and ready. I was considering a show-me-yours-I’ll-show-you-mine :shock: email swap, but you did say it’s not finished yet, so I’ll tell you what…

Simon, I’ll give you until this weekend to get my story posted, and if it’s not up by Monday night, THEN I’ll post it to the forum. No pressure, right? I’ll email you another reminder on Friday like I’ve been doing. In the meantime, it’s cool. If I had your kind of work hassles, I’d probably consider a site devoted to a fairly obscure cult animated film to be not my highest priority either. And if your editor is having hassles of his own, that can’t be helped.

And by the way, Li’l Dude, “Sir” isn’t necessary, and you can call me what you like as long as you’re otherwise respectful. As for your story, give me an idea of how much you have left to finish and we’ll go on from there.

I probably have six chapters left. Mostly what I've been doing as of late is reading others fanfiction, yours included, to help me with my ideas. I'm on winter break until near the end of the month, so I have too much free time. I can't wait to go back to school.....XD

I was just teasing you with the "sir" nonsense, Grandpa Leemy, as well as the whole "pretty please" nonsense. It's just me acting like a child for the sake of it.

The trouble with writing fan fiction is that you get discourage reading other fan fiction. I read stories by Gibbs and Procyon marvel at much detail they provide. Now by detail I mean their descriptions on how the Thorn Valley community operates (how they produce electricity, heat, etc.). If I ever publish a story on here it probably won't be in that amount detail. Its like Star Wars and Star Trek. In Star Trek that's a LOT of information on things work and its very technical. Star Wars doesn't bother with the technical and focuses more on the story. It doesn't matter how it works, it works.
The question is by not having those details or technical explanations does that downgrade the quality of the story?

The trouble with writing fan fiction is that you get discourage reading other fan fiction. I read stories by Gibbs and Procyon marvel at much detail they provide. Now by detail I mean their descriptions on how the Thorn Valley community operates (how they produce electricity, heat, etc.). If I ever publish a story on here it probably won't be in that amount detail. Its like Star Wars and Star Trek. In Star Trek that's a LOT of information on things work and its very technical. Star Wars doesn't bother with the technical and focuses more on the story. It doesn't matter how it works, it works.
The question is by not having those details or technical explanations does that downgrade the quality of the story?

A great story will always be paramount. It's nice to go into detail, but people aren't going to care as long as they're sucked in to the story. Sometimes it's actually best to be vague because it keeps the reader guessing. There are times in the Gibbs stories, Grandpa Leemy pointed this out as well, where he goes into more detail than really necessary. A lot of what he writes is irrelevant to the story. So in a way, having too much detail is actually what downgrades the story.

Star Wars doesn't bother with the technical and focuses more on the story.

Right. And then the story gets changed by George Lucas. And then it gets changed again. And again. And again. Until it eventually becomes nothing but a parody of itself. ;)

Steven

I’ll admit that I was inspired, after reading the fan-fics of Procyon, Gibbs and Silva to go into more detail than I had in my first-tier (original) stories, especially in the area of the characters’ occupations and other details of their everyday lives. So I can say I definitely wasn’t discouraged, I was encouraged to get what I’d written “out there.”

You’re welcome. :wink:

It can be a tricky balancing act when it comes to detail; it comes down to a judgment call whether or not it’s too much or too little.

It is very impressive the imagination that writers such as Gibbs and Procyon put into their stories. Having read their stories I like Gibbs' interpretations of the characters and gave them development while Procyon did a good job of building up suspense and a climax. I do however like Procyon's Brutus who speaks in "The Secret of the Stone." I prefer this Brutus over the one in Gibbs' stories, who barely makes an appearance, and in Marcus' story "NIMH: The Final Experiment." Actually in Marcus' original version of the story (http://ntfe.thornvalley.com/main.php) Brutus speaks. But in his new version at Robin's, Brutus is again mute and communicates via a chalkboard.

Anyway, back to the matter of detail. The specific detail I'm worried about is not how the community works but a certain item that a Thorn Valley rat or mouse might be handling. A walkie talkie, a gun, a telephone, etc. One might nitpick and say, "How did they get that? You need ... to make ... How did they get the materials?" I've decided that if I can explain it, I will. If I can't explain or the explanation will be a long and complicated one then I won't bother. "Why does that rat have a ...?" Because he does.

Anyway, back to the matter of detail. The specific detail I'm worried about is not how the community works but a certain item that a Thorn Valley rat or mouse might be handling. A walkie talkie, a gun, a telephone, etc. One might nitpick and say, "How did they get that? You need ... to make ... How did they get the materials?" I've decided that if I can explain it, I will. If I can't explain or the explanation will be a long and complicated one then I won't bother. "Why does that rat have a ...?" Because he does.

Character development, plot structure, and a sense of setting is more important than going into detail on how a certain item exists. Did Bluth go into detail on where the stone came from? Nope. I initially nitpicked about Auntie Shrew's shawl in Grandpa Leemy's story. But then I realized that there's a LOT of things about SoN that don't make sense when viewed from a logical angle.

So if you must use a plot device to move your story forward, go for it I say...

Yes, it's one more...

|||||||||||||| ANNOUNCEMENT TIME! ||||||||||||||

My latest fan-fic, The Last Moving Day, is now up. Find it at

http//www.thornvalley.com/commons/forum/viewtopic.php?t=1056

EDIT That last link is now outdated, as the story is now posted at its more appropriate place at Robin’s

http//robin.thornvalley.com/node/574

The previous link is still good, but that topic is now for my own commentary on the story.

Yes, it's one more...

|||||||||||||| ANNOUNCEMENT TIME! ||||||||||||||

My latest fan-fic, The Last Moving Day, is now up. Find it at:

http://www.thornvalley.com/commons/forum/viewtopic.php?t=1056

My review will be coming soon, but let me ask you this: Can you just post your stories here from now on? It's actually a lot easier for me to read the forum text and you can post your stories right when you're finished with them. You can also edit your story at any time....PRETTY PLEASE XD

As promised, here's my review of "Last Moving Day."

liSPOILER ALERTli

It starts with The Brisby family doing their chores as 'Deadline Day,' the day they decide whether or not to move to Thorn Valley, approaches. Madeline is somewhat resentful of the idea, which at first I must admit didn't make sense to me due to the fact that she was more than willing to leave the old life behind in "Search," but I realized that anyone would be sad at leaving behind a place where they had good memories. I had to go through it a couple times in my life. Nice "Summertime" reference, BTW. I know Sam Cooke and Louie Armstrong did covers of the song, but I don't really know the origins of the song..It's something to Wikipedia I guess.

They all agree that it's best for them at Thorn Valley. They also agree that it's best that Arthur and his crew build them a home so that they can have enough time to say their final goodbyes. They proceed to say goodbye to Jeremy and the Shrew. I must admit to being disappointed that the Johnathan and Shrew reunion was reduced to background information. I would've much preferred that that situation be acted out with dialogue. Though it did go about like I expected with her thinking that Johnathan willingly abandoned his family. Martin also apologizes for his rudeness to the Shrew, as foretold he would do so in "Search."

That whole Janice situation was handled poorly. You missed a perfectly good opportunity, like you did with the Shrew, to show some real drama and conflict. Instead you use this ordeal to announce that you will use Janice and Kory in your future stories......This completely takes me out of the story. It's like watching a trailer during the middle of a movie. All we get is some anger and an apology, nothing substantial in terms of conflict.

After that, they move to Thorn Valley, where Justin wants a formal marriage with Isabella. It does bring up a good point about formal matrimony between the rats, what with them having more in common with humans than rats and all. Anyway, he wants Johnathan or Madeline to do the honors, but they decide that it be best put to a vote first. There's also a nice conversation between John and Maddie on showing themselves to humans, which is something I hope you touch upon in your future stories. It's something Gibbs sadly wasn't able to write about, but hopefully you can fill it in yourself.

The Brisby family gets the good news that they will be receiving new arrival(s) (as I predicted) and they live happily ever after...again.....

Overall it was a short tale with nothing really exciting about it. It did its job to fill us in on the Brisby's domestic life and such, but it lacked the creative spark that was present in "Search." It's also very low on romance, which is shocking considering it's a strong point of your writing talent; only a few references to their mating were made. It's a decent little tale that did its job.

3/5 stars.

It also gets the shivermetimbers seal of approval:

http://i306.photobucket.com/albums/nn242/JohnDagger/francis.jpg[" alt=""/img]

You can also edit your story at any time

Ah, but is that neccessarily a good thing?

http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/3/32/Greedo_shoots_first.jpg[" alt=""/img]

;)

Steven

You can also edit your story at any time

Ah, but is that neccessarily a good thing?

http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/3/32/Greedo_shoots_first.jpg[" alt=""/img]

;)

Steven[/quote]

[img="]http://media.giantbomb.com/uploads/7/78444/1732508-yorky_kong_screen_large.png[" alt=""/img]

Now we’re back to “pretty please,” huh? :)

Actually it would be kind of nice to post all my fan-fics on the forum; I do agree it’s easier to read and it'd be nice to do all my own edits. About the only disadvantage is that formatting, like bolds, italics and underlines, doesn’t come thru, just like I can’t get the quote box to work. Must be my server. I’ve noticed I’m not the only one with that problem.

As to your criticisms, glad you liked it. I feel I should point out that I intended the story to be mostly a linking piece between more major works, to tie up loose ends and lay groundwork for events to follow, and not intended to have a whole lot of drama. So yes, it did do its job. Although, if you read it again, I think you’ll see where I never said Madeline was resentful of the idea of moving, only that she was just the most reluctant. But of course, most people can relate, and I’m no exception. I’m not sure what kind of conflict you were expecting with Janice, though I will admit I could have been more subtle in foreshadowing that they’ll meet again. As for the Johnathan-Auntie Shrew reunion: that took place in the days after John’s return, and this story is set weeks later, so I didn’t see a great need to tell it in detail. Though I could throw it out there as a “lost scene”…

I’m a little surprised that you didn’t comment on some scenes that I thought you might, but that’s okay.

You’ve probably already looked it up by now, but “Summertime” is from the George Gershwin-Dubose Heyward opera “Porgy and Bess” and probably the most-covered tune from it. In my music collection I have covers by Peter Gabriel, Courtney Pine, Billy Stewart, Love Sculpture, Ekseption (spelt that way), and Rick Wakeman. Another great version is by Big Brother and the Holding Co.

Low on romance? Looks to me like it was present where the scene called for it.

I’m currently putting together my next story for posting, and I should have the opening chapters up in maybe a month or so. All else I’ll say about it at this point is that it’s set two years after TLMD.

Say, Pennsy…got kind of a one-track mind, eh? :wink:

Your problem probably is that you have disabled BBCode and smilies in your posts. That's why your smilies and quote boxes don't work. See those checkboxes before the submit button? Just uncheck disable BBCode and smilies and you're all set.

You're welcome....XD

When people move away, friends can get angry, and I was expecting more of a showdown between Janice and the Brisby family about her disapproval of their move. What you wrote is certainly plausible, I was just hoping for something more substantial than her just getting a little angry and apologizing later. I was mostly just disappointed that you used this little subplot to say: "Hey! I'm not done with these characters yet!" That's really what I meant when I said that this whole situation was handled poorly. I wouldn't really have minded if you kept the Janice subplot in, I just would've been somewhat disappointed. It's just that you used it in a way I don't approve of, if you get what I'm saying.

Here you go Jones: http://www.escapistmagazine.com/news/view/115323-George-Lucas-is-Retiring-From-Film

Your prayers have been answered....kinda.

Your problem probably is that you have disabled BBCode and smilies in your posts. That's why your smilies and quote boxes don't work. See those checkboxes before the submit button? Just uncheck disable BBCode and smilies and you're all set.

You're welcome....XD

:oops: :oops: :oops: :oops: :oops: :oops: :oops:

Well, I think I've got it now. Thank you from the bottom of Grandpa Leemy's ancient heart.

:lol: :lol: :lol: :lol: :lol: :lol:

Okay, so now how would I put in, for instance, "shivermetimbers said:" instead of "quote:"?

Your problem probably is that you have disabled BBCode and smilies in your posts. That's why your smilies and quote boxes don't work. See those checkboxes before the submit button? Just uncheck disable BBCode and smilies and you're all set.

You're welcome....XD

:oops: :oops: :oops: :oops: :oops: :oops: :oops:

Well, I think I've got it now. Thank you from the bottom of Grandpa Leemy's ancient heart.

:lol: :lol: :lol: :lol: :lol: :lol:

Okay, so now how would I put in, for instance, "shivermetimbers said:" instead of "quote:"?

You see the 'quote' icon in the upper right hand corner of this post? Click on that...

Or you can type [qoute="shivermetimbers"] [/qoute]...spell 'quote' correctly though.

Congrats on learning how to turn on your BBCode, Grandpa Leemy! ;)

Here you go Jones: http://www.escapistmagazine.com/news/view/115323-George-Lucas-is-Retiring-From-Film

Your prayers have been answered....kinda.

http://www.filmweb.no/bilder/multimedia/archive/00098/Yoda_i_Star_Wars__Ep_98787o.jpg[" alt=""/img]

Victory, you say? No, Master Timbers, not victory. The OOT is still unrestored. Continue, the Fan War will.[/quote]

Steven

Congrats on learning how to turn on your BBCode, Grandpa Leemy! ;)

Here you go Jones: http://www.escapistmagazine.com/news/view/115323-George-Lucas-is-Retiring-From-Film

Your prayers have been answered....kinda.

http://www.filmweb.no/bilder/multimedia/archive/00098/Yoda_i_Star_Wars__Ep_98787o.jpg[" alt=""/img]

Victory, you say? No, Master Timbers, not victory. The OOT is still unrestored. Continue, the Fan War will.[/quote]

Steven[/quote]
[quote="Jar Jar Binks"][img="]http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/thumb/4/4b/Jjportrait.jpg/220px-Jjportrait.jpg[" alt=""/img]

Me-sa no think the OOT will be restored. Better chance me-sa not be annoying methinks. [/quote]

You see the 'quote' icon in the upper right hand corner of this post? Click on that...

Or you can type [qoute="shivermetimbers"] [/qoute]...spell 'quote' correctly though.

Thanks, Li'l Dude, I'll try it next chance I get. Oh wait, this is it.

I also successfully restored the italics and underlines in The Last Moving Day because I had nothing better to do. :lol:

Congrats on learning how to turn on your BBCode, Grandpa Leemy! ;)

Here you go Jones: http://www.escapistmagazine.com/news/view/115323-George-Lucas-is-Retiring-From-Film

Your prayers have been answered....kinda.

http://www.filmweb.no/bilder/multimedia/archive/00098/Yoda_i_Star_Wars__Ep_98787o.jpg[" alt=""/img]

Victory, you say? No, Master Timbers, not victory. The OOT is still unrestored. Continue, the Fan War will.[/quote]

Steven[/quote]
[quote="Jar Jar Binks"][img="]http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/thumb/4/4b/Jjportrait.jpg/220px-Jjportrait.jpg[" alt=""/img]

Me-sa no think the OOT will be restored. Better chance me-sa not be annoying methinks. [/quote][/quote]

[quote="Ric Olié"][img="]http://content6.flixster.com/question/56/25/60/5625600_std.jpg[" alt=""/img]

Look! Timbers knew what Pennsy meant by the OOT! He catches on pretty quick![/quote]

You catch on pretty quick, too, Ric. ;)

[quote="Nute Gunray"][img="]http://images-mediawiki-sites.thefullwiki.org/11/1/3/2/78733552603012424.jpg[" alt=""/img]

[quote="Ric Olié"]He catches on pretty quick![/quote]

[quote="Pennsylvania Jones"]You catch on pretty quick[/quote]

Now there are two of them![/quote]

Sorry, couldn't resist. :lol: Thread derailment ends here.

Steven

Back on topic of "TLMD," I think Johnathan calling his wife "babe" is out of place for his character. It's something that kinda made me cringe while reading it. "Babe" is something an adolescent or wannabe hipster uses when they want to hit on woman. It's not something a respectable person, like Johnathan, uses to flirt with his wife. It's just my opinion, though.

Well, in Johnathan’s case, I see “babe” as one more term of endearment, one among several, that he uses, and I thought it fit in well in context. The use you describe, I think, is just a case where the word evolved into it over time, influenced at least partially by pop culture. In any case, that’s how I originally wrote it and I saw no need to change it.

As far as it being out of character, keep in mind that as far as the film is concerned, Johnathan is largely a blank slate.

What's your next story going to be called?

Crossed Paths, Crossed Lives was the original title, and I’ll probably keep it for this version. The whole thing should take less time to key in than “Search for Johnathan” because I don’t expect to make as many changes and revisions. As for whose lives and paths are crossing…you’ll just hafta wait! I think you’ll like it though; it’s the one that I’m the most satisfied with overall.

Thank you David for the kind words about my stories. Wow, what a ride writing all that was. All that came about in three months of marathon writing. I had even gotten 60 pages into part 4 before I ran out of steam.

Given how bad the grammar is in that mess, I've at times almost wanted to ask Simon to remove them they're so sloppy, the first two at least. The third had proper editing by some friends.

About the sloppiness of the first two, back then I had a friend promise to edit it for me, but he never got around to it and back when Robin's original site was active, they had people that would edit stories. So I submitted it under the assumtion it would get fixed up, but then the site when on hitaus for years and I thought it was dead, only to have it come back to life unexpectedly years later, and there was my story in its original sloppy state. I've gotten a lot better, but I still have a different friend who does the real editing for my on my text projects.


Children of NIMH---

On the first chapter, I think that was my favorite part of the whole thing. I didn't realize it at the time, but I hadn't realized how big an influence H.P. Lovecraft has had on my writing style. A part of feels the story lost something as soon as Dante opened the box and Jonathan spoke. I think it would have been neat to keep Dante on the outside the whole time and show the whole NIMH thing as a weird and alien thing.

I had never written fanfiction before that story and was really just writing by the seat of my pants. I had no idea about storytelling and character development and continuity, so all your continuity issues are valid, I just didn't think it out fully at the time. I literally had no idea what was going to happen next when I'd sit down and start writing. It was wild and glorious. :) Only rarely since have I written with such passion since then. I'd even take time off from work just so I could write.

I didn't know what a Mary Sue was at the time and looking back, I would have changed some things about Dante, but I think I balanced him out okay. He's not perfect and gets his tail handed to him at least once in the story by a more powerful foe.


"There’s not much in the way of explanation as to how she’d been able to control the Stone to begin with (unless I missed something; it is a pretty complex plot)"

It's not explained, like in the movie, she just has an instinctive understanding of it and its powers.



Love... And Mr. Ages---

I wrote it in part as an homage to the recently deceased father of a friend of mine. My friend's parents were a May/December marriage with almost thirty years difference between their ages, (He 59 and she around 30 when they married) but they had 26 happy years together.

Mercy was just such a warm and loving character in the first story that I started writing this before I had even finished Children of NIMH. It only seemed natural that she'd bond with Mr. Ages, a lonely heart like herself.
The Doctors Luke and Laura are a reference to the Luke and Laura couple from General Hospital. Anyone else out there remember the song "Think of Laura?"

The reason Dante and the others don't appear much is that I had done so much with the rest of the cast in the first story that I didn't want to overdo with the others here. This just felt like an Ages story and he kept a very small circle of friends, thus he had few people he could go to for help in this very peculiar situation.

After having the first story full of death and destruction, I wanted a simpler, happier story that didn't involve evil or danger.

The absence of certain characters is puzzling. Martin and Teresa are totally absent, as they were largely in TCON.

For me, Martin and Teresa just never came to life. Cynthia and Timothy leaped off the page as I wrote them, but their siblings were never more than just fictional characters to me. I just couldn't find anything to do with them in the story.


George---

This story stared out as a longer story, like the first where everyone in the cast shared the spotlight, but it quickly became clear that the the most interesting thread in the whole story was George's, so I cut everything else out. This story sat for a long time until Simon reopened Robin's archive. I dug up my one copy of the story and found it had become corrupted and wouldn't open. I somehow mustered the will to rewrite more than half of it from memory to get it completed. That's why it had the luxury of proper editing from wiser minds.

In the first story George had become one of my favorite characters, and I was glad to finally have the chance to revisit him. I liked the idea of exploring the effect the rats escape had on their human counterparts at the lab.

what about George’s colleague Julie? He tells Dante she seems to have disappeared completely; I was hoping they could track her down and maybe convince her to join them as George did, or at the very least not leave her final fate hanging.

As for Julie, she was going to be the villain in part 4 of the story. My original idea for the series was much bigger than it turned out. In part one they mention that they were going to go to Jenner's colony and deal with that threat. They were going to find Julie there preparing Jenner's remaining forces. She'd gotten a taste of The Power and she wanted more. I'm not sure what her ultimate fate would have been. When I realized that "George" was going to be the end of the series, I went back and altered the ending of it to remove references to the impending trip to the colony and had it resolved uneventfully between the events of "Love and Mr. Ages" and "George". That worked out better than I expected and allowed for the introduction of Dixie and the future events that George witnesses.

My original plans for the series were so ambitions that the reason so many characters are having kids is that I had already been planning on stories for the children of the original cast!

I had gotten about 60 pages into part four before my enthusiasm ran out of steam. The story ties in the one other part of the NIMH world, the book sequels. In my story, Jenner's other son Racso sets out on foot from Jenner's colony to Thorn Valley to visit this strange place he's heard his late father ranting about so often.

On the way there he meets Timothy Brisby, who saves his life and then meets the brother he didn't know he had. The narrative then switches between the brothers as Racso adjusts to a non-dictatorship and meets the fearsome Brisby clan that the survivors of the assult on Thorn Valley brought back terrifying tales of. He struggles to find a place there, as his outsider status, bad attitude and lack of education causes friction in the community and Killian struggles with the impending assault on the rogue colony and finding himself having be more a father to Racso than just a brother. Sixty pages into that story I realized that nothing had really happened yet and wouldn't be happening for a quite a while.


I think one of the things that caused me to lose interest in NIMH fanfiction is the limitations the movie imposed. You were stuck in a very limited number of locations, a tiny population of rats to deal with and also very limited opportunities for humor. I threw humor where I could, but NIMH just doesn't lend itself to comedy. Eventually I migrated to Chip and Dale's Rescue Rangers fandom and found the creative outlet I was looking for, I found a writing mentor and together we co-wrote quite a few stories that allowed us to mix heavy drama with slapstick comedy.

http://www.indyranger.com/fanfics.html[]http://www.indyranger.com/fanfics.html


Thank you for reviewing my work and for your kind words. :) Its nice that people can still enjoy them, as sloppily written as they are. Sorry it's taken so long to respond.

Oh Wow! It’s Chris S.! You’ve been absent from this forum too long, bro! Great to hear from you! :D

I’ve had a ball poring over all these fan-fics, yours and others, and comparing the differing story approaches and how characters are further developed, etc., and I found yours to be pretty darn engaging.

All three stories in as many months? Including those 60 unpublished pages? Given that, they didn’t come out half bad. I whacked out my first fan-fic (The original version of “Search for Johnathan”) in about two months and I cringe when I look at parts of it now. I definitely had my own continuity issues, but I was in a hurry; see my intro to “Search” on Robin’s.

Looking back, I can see how some might regard Dante as Mary Sue-ish, but I agree that you kept him from dominating the story too much. Honestly I’ve never really gotten deep into Lovecraft but I’m well aware of his work and can see the influence on TCoN’s first chapter.

As I mentioned, I’ve also had Mr. Ages find a mate in my stories, and I might tell the story in detail; of course, I’ll have to try to avoid having it resemble yours too much, and so far the way I’ve imagined it is different enough.

I never really followed “General Hospital” but I do remember all the attention over the Luke and Laura characters, so, yes, I did pick up on the name similarity. So now I’m picturing your Luke with a “Caucasian Afro”… :lol:

About those 60 unpublished pages…if you get the notion, feel free to do something with them…like posting them? On the other hand, I know what you mean about getting so far into a story and finding that it’s going slow because there’s not much going on, and even growing bored with it. The last long-form story I wrote dragged for that reason until I threw in some elements that I was going to save for the next story, and that punched it up a bit.

Julie returning as a villain? Interesting!

I know what you mean about “NIMH” not lending itself to humor; as someone else just pointed out, the scenes with Jeremy are a little out of place in an otherwise serious story. In my case, though, I’m not the best at writing humorous dialogue so it worked out okay for me. As for the “limited number of locations,” I’ve found ways around that too. :wink:

I’ve checked out some of your Rescue Rangers stories though haven’t read any all the way thru yet. Honestly I was never a big R.R. fan; I was more into DuckTales, TaleSpin and Gummi Bears, and I was in my thirties at the time!

Don’t worry about a slow response, Chris; I was surprised to get one at all, though I know you were also referring to the PM I sent you last year. In any case, don’t be a stranger around here, hear? Feel free to evaluate my work too; hope that doesn’t sound too needy. :)

Thanks for the Reply. Its been so long since I even looked at my files it would probably take quite a while to even track down the remnants of part 4, but I really did enjoy Racso's character, his personality just stood out so much from the resevered orderly way of Thorn Valley.

I wasn't really a fan of Rescue Rangers, but I found their world to have such incredible potential for fanfiction that it took several years to get it out of my system. We wrote piles of story and crossed them over with anything we could think of. They meet Pinkie and Brain, The cats from Cats Don't Dance too.

Check out the non-Ranger story section, we wrote some Tailspin stories too.

Fanfiction has been an incredible boon to me as a writer, I probably learned more by writing with my friend that I would have learned from an overworked, underpaid teacher just there to get a paycheck and I certainly had a lot more fun doing it this way.

Our work has progressed to the point where we've moved on to oringial works that we're preparing to submit to publishers.

Our work has progressed to the point where we've moved on to oringial works that we're preparing to submit to publishers.

I'm a big fan of "TCoN," especially the aforementioned first chapter. You have a talent for creating atmosphere, which is something I really appreciate. I'm assuming you named Dante after Dante Alighieri; nice "Dante's Inferno" reference, BTW. I stated elsewhere, that I didn't care for magic in "SoN," but you handled that aspect very well.

I haven't got around to reading the rest of your stories yet, though I'm looking forward to it. Mercy is my favorite character as well.

I hope you and your friends are having fun with it and best of luck getting your work published. :D And like David said, post here more often... 8)

Best Wishes,

SMT

P.S. What's your avatar picture? I'm curious...

Thanks! I'm glad you enjoy my stories.

About Dante's name, it actually wasn't a Dante's Inferno reference, I just liked the name. Long after I'd written it I realized I could have made a very good reference to it, with Jonathan being "Virgil" and leading Dante into the underworld of the rats.

I didn't realize how much people enjoyed Mercy. She was fun to write.

Edit: The guy in the picture is Kaiser Wilhelm II, I believe. The WWI "Kaiser". I just love that funky helmet and cool 'stache. :)

I never gave Grandpa Leemy's "Mrs. Brisby and the search for Johnathan." a proper review, so here goes...

I'm not going to go into much detail about the plot because I want people to read it themselves without being spoiled. This review is just going to contain what I liked and disliked about the story. I'm mostly doing this because I feel that past criticisms of Grandpa Leemy's work weren't fair, and I've "grown up" a bit since then. You should also note that I'm not a critic; if I like/dislike something, I find it hard to explain why. I like it because I like it or dislike it because I dislike it. That's it.

We have a good set up from the get-go. As I already mentioned in Hera Ledro's topic, it's a nice hook to keep us sucked in. It's a story about a lovesick widow wanting desperately to have her husband back. There's a clear beginning, middle, and end to the story.

This cannot be said enough; the romance between Johnathan and Mrs. Brisby and Justin and Isabella is simply stunning. Having said this, relationships aren't this picture perfect. We hear a lot about how the Brisby's enjoy an idyllic lifestyle, but there's very little in terms of conflict between the couple. You can argue, and I would agree that mice don't have nearly as many temptations/emotional problems that humans do. But that doesn't mean anthropomorphic mice relationships don't have conflict. Having a picture perfect couple, like Grandpa Leemy presented is, dare I say, cheesy and unrealistic. I can see them being happy together, but I can't see them having an almost worshipful relationship with each other.

Back to that infamous Jenner subplot....Like I said, I’ve grown up a little since the last time I’ve touched on this. And now that I’m over my pissy fit, I’m inclined to be much nicer to it. Jenner had to become as evil as he is somehow, and since his role in the film is to be the stereotypical animated movie villain, writing fanfiction around his character without making him out to be just purely evil is tough. So I accept the Jenner subplot.

Some of the italic comments are out of place and occasionally interrupt the story.

I don’t much care for Willis. Making a character whose only job is to spew cringe worthy one liners for some comic relief is not so much a character as he is an annoyance. Again, it’s personal taste. I don’t mind one liners if the story wants you to laugh at them and not with them. Grandpa Leemy wrote it in such a way that he expected us to laugh with them. I like cringe worthy one liners if they are done ironically.

Thanks for your commentary, Li'l Dude. :) I agree I may have depicted the Brisby relationship as a little too picture-perfect, but in the context of this story that's mostly due to their being reunited after a long, involuntary separation. I think I made it clear that they did have hardships in the past, though I admit I probably underemphasized the point.

I knew from the beginning that I wasn't going to be comfortable with depicting Jenner as being evil and ruthless and nasty for the sake of being evil and ruthless and nasty, as at least two authors did in an extreme fashion. Likewise I knew the explanation I came up with might not sit well with everyone. Although, as you may have noticed by now, I wasn't the only one that had the idea of an outside influence turning him bad.

I get what you're saying about Willis; it was entirely my intent to make him something of a cornball, and as you said it's a matter of personal taste whether one laughs or groans at his lines. You'll notice I did put in that bit in Chapter 9, during the tunnel scene, where Justin and Melvin react with a groan to one of his jokes. At any rate, I think I indicated (arguably, less than I could have) that there are other sides to his character. And BTW, I did mention in my Jan. 31 post here that I'm not the best at writing humorous dialogue... :roll:

A slightly less urgent...

||||||ANNOUNCEMENT TIME!||||||

"The Last Moving Day" is now belately posted at Robin's, at

http//robin.thornvalley.com/node/574

The story was previously, and still is, posted to the T.V. forum, so I'll need to decide whether to leave it there or delete it, since having it posted in two different locations seems a bit excessive to me.

A slightly less urgent...

||||||ANNOUNCEMENT TIME!||||||

"The Last Moving Day" is now belately posted at Robin's, at:

http://robin.thornvalley.com/node/574

The story was previously, and still is, posted to the T.V. forum, so I'll need to decide whether to leave it there or delete it, since having it posted in two different locations seems a bit excessive to me.

Robin's = Original Edition
Forum = Special Edition

Have the forum version be the one to edit at will, while the Robin's version is the story in its original form. ;)

Steven

The next couple chapters of "NIMH: The Final Experiment" should be up later this afternoon/evening. I know a couple of people have been waiting awhile for this. Also, if you want to post comments to Robin's they must be approved beforehand because of the recent spam situation. If you posted a comment somewhere on the site, let me know via PM or email and I'll approve it for you.

Have a nice day,

Thomas DeCaro

Ah, so you do have a name! :D Pleased to meet you, Tom! ;)

Steven

Ah, so you do have a name! :D Pleased to meet you, Tom! ;)

Steven

Most of my friends just call me DeCaro. It's pronounced (Dee-Care-Oh), but is often mispronounced as (Dee-Car-Oh) because of how it's spelled. Tom is often my second preferred name. I just can't stand being called "Thomas." The reason for this is because I've heard it screamed in my ears so many times over the past 19 years.

Anyways, "NIMH: The Final Experiment" chapter 8 is now on Robin's, and I'm hoping to get chapters 9 and 10 up tonight as well.

Chapters 9 and 10 of NIMH: The Final Experiment are now on Robin's. Just as a little warning, there are some spelling and grammatical errors in the story (pointed out by Robin's other editor). It was supposed to be my job to fix them, but because people have been waiting a LONG time for these chapters, I decided it was better to post them rather than spending more time to read through and fix it up. I skimmed through it, and it's not unreadable....Though I did see some grammatical and spelling errors myself. As you guys can probably tell by my posts (which I don't proofread), I'm not the best at grammar myself. In fact, I'm 100% sure that there are going to be grammatical errors in this post. I'm going to get in touch with the author and see whether or not this is fine by him, and if not, I'll fix it.

Anyways, the story is a LONG read, but it's turning out great so far. I'd highly recommend that you start reading it if you haven't. Also, rewrites of chapters 2 and 3 are coming soon for those who are interested.

Peace out.

Enjoying The Final Experiment but I do some nitpicks (don't know whether I've posted them before or not). One thing that was in the original version (http://ntfe.thornvalley.com/main.php) Brutus talked, now again he is mute and uses a calkboard. I've always preferred Brutus in stories where he was given voice (The Secret of Stone) over when he was mute and/or barely featured (Gibbs' work).
Another complaint is Cynthia and Timothy. They're young, I get it, but at times they can be bratty and Timmy's know-it-all attitude is at times grating, particularly in the last chapter.
"I would know if its dangerous."
The stone releases a numbing effect.
YOU FOOL!

Maybe we should've brought along Martin instead :D
Although funny enough where I thought Procyon handled Tim and Cynthia well in Secret of the Stone, Martin was annoying and stubborn. I have to applaud Mal for making Martin more grown up in Final Experiment than he is in other stories.

I like how this topic has developed lately. I first got the idea for it after going through the existing topics and finding none that were dedicated to discussing fan-fiction specifically or at any real length. I even got to wondering if this was something that was actually discouraged, so I ran the idea past Simon first and he thought it was a great idea. It took a while, but we actually have some lively discussions going now. Way to go, guys ‘n gals. (Actually we could use a few more of the latter. How about it? We know you’re out there!) :D

Yesterday I “fixed” the duplicate of “TLMD” on the Forum, leaving just the one on Robin’s, having decided it was unnecessary to have both. I changed the one on the Forum to just commentary.

Eventually I’ll get to reading the new version of “NTFE”, probably when it’s complete. I definitely prefer any non-mute version of Brutus, and I liked the version of him in the first version.

Way to go, guys ‘n gals. (Actually we could use a few more of the latter. How about it? We know you’re out there!) :D

Don't worry, my sex change operation is next Tuesday.

I kid, I kid...I think...XD

Anyways, since I've talked about them a lot, I'm going to give a basic overview about what I really think about the Gibbs fanfictions. Keep in mind, I've grown up a bit these past couple of months, and my opinions have sorta changed about them.

First off, they are well written, much better than any other fanfiction I've read so far. I do have one complaint about them, though. The transitions between scenes irritate me. Instead of the usual (lilili), we get a short sentence and then the scene changes. This ruins the flow of the story for me; and it gets confusing, especially if the scene prior had a lot of action going on.

Rats of Thorn Valley- This is my least favorite of the Gibbs fanfictions, and I can't accurately explain why. I did get into kinda a "pissy fit" over the fact that Jonathan's friends accepted his proposition to pretend him dead...It just comes from a personal experience, which I won't talk about here. Let's just say I was in a similar position to Jonathan in a way... Other than that, it's a thrilling and exciting read. It's much more thrilling and exciting than Second in Command. It's got a good set up, a thrilling climax with the stone, and an excellent conclusion. Part of the reason is that's it's told in third person, which compared to his other stories isn't as interesting. It needed to be told in third person, I know....but still. Part of why I hate "resurrecting" characters in fanfictions is because you have to cover up a lot of the canonical source material for it to work. We have to pretend that the intro to "Secret of Nimh" never happened in order for it to work. It does provide a thrilling twist on things, but it kinda ruins it for me in a way.

Second in Command-This is my favorite of Gibbs' fanfictions. I always have a smile on my face while reading it. There's a certain kind of subtle sense of humor in Jonathan's character that makes me smile. He reminds me a lot of myself in a lot of ways. The soap opera nature of the story only adds to the cheesy fun. It's hilarious to see him react to all the drama around him. I get that this is mostly "Jonathan's redemption story" for all the bad crap he did in RoTV. He gets to be a hero again, and we see him become a successful father/husband. We root for him despite all the bad crap he did in his past, which is me in a nutshell. That hospital scene reminded me of a situation I had two years ago with a friend of mine.

Unfinished stories- They're nice setups, but nothing more. I wish there were more to them...A pity Paul died before they could be finished. :/

Peace out.

First off, they are well written, much better than any other fanfiction I've read so far. I do have one complaint about them, though. The transitions between scenes irritate me. Instead of the usual (lilili), we get a short sentence and then the scene changes. This ruins the flow of the story for me; and it gets confusing, especially if the scene prior had a lot of action going on.

That's probably a loss of formatting issue. The original HTML from the old Robin site had ### separating the scene changes. Probably what happened is I replaced them with <hr>s and something messed them up.

I suspected that Paul may have used something to mark scene changes, and they may not have survived the transition of uploading. I used extra spaces for that purpose in The Brisby Beginning and they got lost in the ether, which is why I made a point of using asterisks in subsequent stories.

Back on the subject of Brutus....I view him as more of a big and powerful grouch, with a big heart somewhere inside. The Leemhuis and NIMH 2 versions of Brutus paint him as too friendly. Leemhuis even put in a scene of him apologizing to Mrs. Brisby. To me, that isn't how you handle Brutus. He's more of a "stay out of my way" kinda guy. You have to actually work to find his more sensitive side; he isn't going to go out of his way just to apologize. Gibbs and Silva came closest to how I imagined him, but nobody has really nailed it. Gibbs gave him very little personality and Silva painted him as too dopey for my taste.

I also prefer any non-mute Brutus, but I wouldn't call him talkative. He's shy and keeps to himself most of the time, like Mr. Ages. You have to force a conversation out of him.

Peace out.

As with Johnathan and Timothy, for my version of Brutus I was mainly keying off the original O’Brien version, in which his youth and inexperience made him take to his duties in an overzealous fashion, and I thought that could apply to the film version as well. I had no problem picturing a “lost scene” where, when Mrs. B approaches him again with Mr. Ages at her side, he gives Brutus a scolding and Brutus apologizes to her, quite possibly without being asked to.

||||||||||ANNOUNCEMENT TIME!||||||||||

The first five chapters of my next fan-fiction, "Crossed Paths, Crossed Lives," are now up at Robins's

http//robin.thornvalley.com/node/582

||||||||||ANNOUNCEMENT TIME!||||||||||

The first five chapters of my next fan-fiction, "Crossed Paths, Crossed Lives," are now up at Robins's:

http://robin.thornvalley.com/node/582

Gee, you're good at keeping the suspense high. I want to know what happens next!

Eight Brisby children?! Mr. Ages a father of five children?! I like that one of the Brisby children is named Kirk. Hopefully he can become captain of the guard and rename Thorn Valley "The Enterprise."

But I digress....Any complaints would be nitpicking, and you'd probably come up with a decent defense against anything I can come up with. But nonetheless...........

It's hard for me to get sucked into this world you've created. There are constant reminders that I'm reading fanfiction written by someone who was living in the 1980's. Some of the remarks and stuff that come out of mouths of these characters sound like something someone in their twenties in 1989 would say while flirting with their cronies. This isn't necessarily a bad thing, and it's one of those issues that's more my fault than yours, but it's something I want to bring up. It's a relic of its time. It's also hard to differentiate characters because they all seem to have the same personality: nice, quirky, and outgoing. This wasn't the case in "The Brisby Beginning" because you had fewer characters to deal with, but all of your original characters seem to be all identical personality-wise. Even Martin, the character that's supposed to be grumpy, doesn't really show it. I do like the scene with the muskrat with the southern dialect. XD

Those are just nitpicks, though. While I might not be sucked in to the story (as mentioned, this is more my fault), I'm still very much interested to see what happens next. And if you can succeed at doing that, you've done a great job.

Edit: I should probably mention that "sucking me in" is a VERY hard thing to do. The fact that I'm even mentioning the fact that your story didn't "suck me in" should be considered a compliment because it means you came close. I just got dragged away by certain mechanical aspects. And yes, I have found a small number of TV references. I have two older siblings that grew up in the 80s (three actually, but one passed away), so I get that sorta stuff. Also, sorry if any part of this post sounds insulting to you. It's not my intent to offend or hurt your feelings.

I like that one of the Brisby children is named Kirk. Hopefully he can become captain of the guard and rename Thorn Valley "The Enterprise."

Kirk and Vanessa were named after people I've known, Lyndon I named after President Johnson, and Shawna was pretty much out of a hat, as were the names of the Ages kids.

There are constant reminders that I'm reading fanfiction written by someone who was living in the 1980's. Some of the remarks and stuff that come out of mouths of these characters sound like something someone in their twenties in 1989 would say while flirting with their cronies.

Yes, I make no bones about the fact that it was originally written in the 80's, and that there are unabashed pop-culture references from the era and I saw no particular reason to drop them. Actually I thought it was pretty funny that you're annoyed about 80's references when you were born in 1992! (Right?) I'm assuming you were mainly referring to the "Let's be careful out there!" line. :) At the time I couldn't resist it, and it still makes me chuckle.

It's also hard to differentiate characters because they all seem to have the same personality: nice, quirky, and outgoing. This wasn't the case in "The Brisby Beginning" because you had fewer characters to deal with, but all of your original characters seem to be all identical personality-wise. Even Martin, the character that's supposed to be grumpy, doesn't really show it.

Patience, my pet! We're only five chapters in, and there are more characters yet to be introduced. As for Martin, check the first chapter title. I think I conveyed his discontent pretty well, and his and Lambert's little excursion was supposed to lift his spirits. But look for him to definitely be put through the wringer.

Also, sorry if any part of this post sounds insulting to you. It's not my intent to offend or hurt your feelings.

Hey, it's cool. At this point I'd be surprised if you didn't find something to nitpick.

I would've made pop culture references as well, I don't blame you for that. I did say it was more my fault that I couldn't allow myself to get sucked in the story. I guess my problem is that you've done a great job creating a set up for a story and created a world worth caring about, so when the pop culture references do peak their head, I'm reminded that I'm reading a story that's artificially created by a human instead of a story that could exist on its own without having the feel of "having its parts shown" if you get what I'm saying.

Again, the very fact that I really care about such a thing should be considered a compliment. I should learn to accept and not allow myself to be taken out of the story because of some pop culture reference. It's really a matter of trying to find something to complain about your story. Hopefully I won't turn into Kathy Bates from "Misery" anytime soon. XD

And yes, I was born in 1992.

|||||||||ANNOUNCEMENT TIME||||||||

Chapters six thru eleven of "Crossed Paths, Crossed Lives" are now posted at Robin's.

I'd love to read it but I have so much damn work.

There seems to be a lot of that going around lately; overall postings hereabouts have been few and far between lately. :(

There seems to be a lot of that going around lately; overall postings hereabouts have been few and far between lately. :(

And I guess I'm mostly to blame for that. http://i38.photobucket.com/albums/e132/jcg60625/duh.gif[" alt=""/img] :lol:

Steven

There seems to be a lot of that going around lately; overall postings hereabouts have been few and far between lately. :(

Hello, is it me you're looking for?[=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=62XB9IbMnxQ] Hello, is it me you're looking for?

I actually haven't read through all of your story yet. Over Easter I probably will though. You probably didn't know, but Vincent is the name of a mouse character on NIMHmuck. He's played by the author of NIMH: The Final Experiment. Where did the name Kimball Davis come from? Anyone you know?

Anyway, I haven't forgot about you guys. :p I just want to keep my grades up and such.

There seems to be a lot of that going around lately; overall postings hereabouts have been few and far between lately. :(

I just want to keep my grades up and such.

Same here

Hello, is it me you're looking for?

Real cute, Lionel. :)

I actually haven't read through all of your story yet. Over Easter I probably will though. You probably didn't know, but Vincent is the name of a mouse character on NIMHmuck. He's played by the author of NIMH: The Final Experiment. Where did the name Kimball Davis come from? Anyone you know?

I am still only peripherally familiar with NIMHmuck, but I've seen references to the "other" Vincent in the Art Gallery. When I named mine, I primarily had in mind the one from the "Beauty and the Beast" series from the '80s, played by Ron Perlman. Kimball was another name pretty much out of a hat, and in the original version I didn't even give his family a surname, just as I didn't give Ages a first name until the new version of Brisby Beginning. I wanted to pick a fairly common surname to contrast with the uncommon first name.

Anyway, I haven't forgot about you guys. :p I just want to keep my grades up and such.

Same here

Hey, do what you need to. I've had a few other things pulling my attention too. That's reality for you. :) :(

BTW, it's cool, Pennsy.

BTW, it's cool, Pennsy.

Maybe it is, and maybe it isn't.

Steven

BTW, it's cool, Pennsy.

Maybe it is, and maybe it isn't.

Steven

Heh?

...Anyways, I read over your story, Grandpa Leemy, but I won't be posting any comments until I've read through the entire thing, that way any questions or concerns I have can be answered by further chapters. Consider this motivation to finish it faster.


MORE CHAPTERS PRETTY PLEASE! XD

Sounds like a plan. )

I still expect to have the next set ready by next weekend at the latest, hopefully.

Sounds like a plan. :)

I still expect to have the next set ready by next weekend at the latest, hopefully.

I need more chapters! I need to see more outdated pop culture references and one liners that compensate for witty dialogue!

Hehe, just teasing....XD

MORE CHAPTERS PRETTY PLEASE! XD

Alright people, NIMH: The Final Experiment Chapter 12 is now on Robin's. This is the chapter you've been waiting for, so go read it. Trust me, it's really crazy.

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Chapters 12 to14 of “Crossed Paths, Crossed Lives” are now posted to Robin’s.

This is probably a stupid question, but here goes: Why didn't Johnathan think to use the stone to save Kimball's leg?

Probably because my version of the Stone doesn't have a healing capability like the versions by Gibbs and others. Or if it does, Johnathan hasn't discovered it yet at this point.

For my next review I’m tackling one not housed at the more familiar venues.

“Darkest Days” by J. C. Foster can be found at

http//www.fanfiction.net/s/6822303/1/Darkest_Days

In addition to the usual SPOILER WARNING, a word of warning about content. The story is rated M for sexual content, language and violence, though these aren’t specified.

In poring over old forum topics I’d occasionally run across posts that made reference to this story, and that it had raised some controversy, and that it had gone away. Last year shivermetimbers alerted us to the fact that it’s now on fanfiction.net, so of course I had to check it out for myself.

True to the title, the story is darker in overall tone, maybe a bit excessively for my taste. It opens just after the climactic house-moving scene, where the rats discover that Mrs. B’s use of the Stone did far more than raise her home and save her children; it also resurrected those who had died recently Nicodemus, Sullivan, and possibly the Brisby children (it’s implied that they’d died in the sinking) and—unfortunately for all except his followers—Jenner, though he manages to stay hidden for the time being, plotting his next move which, of course, drives the remainder of the story.

I guess it’s inevitable to bring comparisons to the Gibbs stories, they having proven to be something of a yardstick against which other fan-fics are measured. The author does just as good a job in describing the rats’ new home in Thorn Valley and in detailing their initial difficulties with heating and plumbing. Nicodemus’s explanation to Justin about how and why Jenner turned against him was well-thought out, as is the overall narrative throughout the story, even though I don’t quite agree with some of the details. The idea that every rat in the community does his or her fair share of the physical labor, including the dirty jobs, is one I’ve always agreed with. The way Sullivan is treated, including his sincere apology to Elizabeth, is much the same. The nature of the Stone’s power is roughly the same as in the Gibbs stories, as is the way it’s used at story’s end. The aforementioned, BTW, is not really a negative criticism; some details are bound to overlap, and it would be a waste of time to try to determine which came first and who may have been copying from whom.

Again Dr. Schultz is one of the main threats, the other being the aforementioned Jenner, which brings the story more in line with the first Silva story. These have to be the most ruthless, not to mention foulmouthed, versions of both characters Schultz actually resorts to having the Fitzgibbons family killed after Mr. F orders him and his men off his property before they’re finished tearing up the place in their search for evidence. Before that happens, Mrs. B (once again named Elizabeth) sees them leave and, believing the threat from NIMH over, composes a note for Jeremy to take to Justin telling them this. But then she witnesses the arrival of men who invade the farmhouse to murder the family, and in the morning she and the kids are fleeing for their lives to avoid capture by Schultz and his men. The Brisbys all make their way to Jeremy, who takes them to Thorn Valley, where Elizabeth fills the rats in on what little she knows. A team is assembled, with Justin at the helm, to return to the farm to rescue Mr. Ages (who stayed behind) and find out NIMH’s plans and how much they do know, and then do whatever is necessary to neutralize their threat. Unbeknownst to the general population, Jenner has already arrived in T.V., and his erstwhile followers, existing as a sleeper cell awaiting his return, rally behind him in secret; and some of them are put on Justin’s team, ready to deal with him after dealing with Schultz. After the team leaves, Jenner and his followers waste little time in trying to take over.

Among the more notable original characters are Orion, the new Captain of the Guard, and Sarah, who had been married to Jenner but began an affair with Orion after her relationship with Jenner went sour. She’s still prone to bouts of depression, understandable given her past, but in one scene where Orion is feeling affectionate and Sarah’s not in the mood, he could have shown a lot more sympathy and patience, but instead walks out. At least he acknowledges his jerkitude later.

Other characters are introduced, like Max, Mason, Castor, Pollux, Cameron, Sasha, Brenda, Dr. Ash. They are given distinct personalities that help drive the story.

Along the way, we learn that Jenner was responsible for Jonathan’s death, while making it look like Dragon had killed him.

Of course, there’s one aspect of the story—probably the most controversial one because of the way it plays out—that I’ve avoided mentioning, because I wanted to address it all at once the Justin/Brisby pairing. I’ve stated before that I never believed there should be one, having not seen any reason for it shown in the film, in spite of the long-running circulation of “The Kiss” drawing; but here, as in the first Gibbs story, their mutual feelings are handled believably enough. There’s a version of the alleged “lost” library scene in which Justin expresses great admiration for Elizabeth, but it’s when they meet in Thorn Valley that he tells her he’d fallen in love with her from afar before they’d met—all but stalking her, no less. It’s a little hard to believe that he could have gotten that physically close to her without her being aware. As for the issue of species difference, I think it’s possible for a rat and mouse (in this context, of course) to fall in love, since they are equal in intelligence and emotion. Unlike the Gibbs story, the author goes much deeper into their mutual feelings and doesn’t shy away from the physical as well as the emotional aspects, quite a ways further than I have in my own stories, a major factor in its being housed at fanfiction.net instead of a more family-friendly site. I don’t disapprove of the sexuality of these characters being addressed, and while some may find it off-putting as applied to Elizabeth, I can see her as being both a devoted mother and one who could have fantasies about not just having sex with Justin but enjoying it as well. I have to say, though, I do find it a little difficult to believe that Justin and Elizabeth could make love as comfortably as depicted here.

Some favorite or interesting bits

Elizabeth’s coolness under fire in getting her family out and away from Schultz’s men.

I liked how well the children adjusted after their arrival in Thorn Valley and how well they and Elizabeth took to their caregivers Orion and Sarah; and Elizabeth’s explanation of how Justin was like their new “daddy” but not entirely replacing their father. Timothy’s reasoning of why they should stay in T.V. was nicely done.

The implication that the children perished in the house sinking and then were resurrected by the Stone’s power (barely touched upon) brings to mind the first time I saw TSoN, at the conclusion of the climactic “miracle” scene. I was left wondering, wait a minute, what about the kids? Did they survive or not? Of course, the next scene provided the answer, but with the previous scene leaving that loose end dangling (among many others), however temporary, one had to wonder.

Though the threat from Schulz’s group is dealt with very decisively, there’s plenty of groundwork laid for further stories, with Schultz’s reference to other groups of experimental animals besides Nicodemus and company.

Speaking of which, the way they’re dealt with some may find objectionable, but under the circumstances there wasn’t much choice, given that Schultz had pinpointed the Rats’ location and was prepared to kill or capture any number of them. Justin’s distaste for what needed to be done was well handled, as well as Max’s heroic sacrifice.

There were some great action sequences that would be great in animated form Justin and Pollux’s swordfight on the train, the battle against Jenner’s forces in the lair, his final battle with Justin, etc.

Nitpicks and more than nitpicks

In Ch. 3, Elizabeth practically obsesses over being with Justin intimately, but why doesn’t she reminisce about Jonathan in the same way?

How could the rats have been so woefully unprepared for Jenner’s appearance, considering they knew he was alive and out there somewhere, and that he had to be planning another takeover attempt? And yet here’s Orion, genuinely surprised at discovering Sarah tied up by him. I think I can buy that it wasn’t generally known who Jenner’s old sympathizers were, but wouldn’t some of them, at least, be under suspicion, considering they’re such a small and insular community where everyone knows everyone?

Maybe it’s just me, but I’ve always seen these rats as having a high degree of sexual equality, so I really have to take exception with the depiction of the female rats who were described as no more than Jenner’s concubines; not to mention the contention that any number of the females were willingly “fooling around” with him in the past.

I’ve said before that I didn’t care for depictions of Jenner being evil and nasty for the sake of being evil and nasty. Nicodemus’s explanation to Justin in Chapter 2 about the source of Jenner’s anger and hatred and why he wanted the Stone does offer some insight into what makes him tick, but I still found this version of Jenner a bit over-the-top for my taste ready to kill and rape at a moment’s notice, reveling in describing the gory details of Jonathan’s death, etc.

I really, really doubt that Schultz would go so far as to bring in black-ops or mercenaries or whatever they were to eliminate the entire Fitzgibbons family. Just how far up the chain of command would such a thing be approved? I mean, really!?! And how would that and everything else that happened afterwards on the farm be explained to the locals?

In Ch. 6, Justin tells Elizabeth that Mr. Ages was working on duplicating the original NIMH formula, to be eventually used on her, at the time she came to him for medicine for Timothy. Given that, would he really have treated her as shabbily as he did, since the “very important” matter he was engaged in was all for her?

In the notorious love scene in Ch. 6, the author seems reluctant to use the names of certain body parts; and yet, look at some of the language he has Jenner using in the scene where he threatens to rape Elizabeth. While I’m not personally offended at some of the language used throughout, included numerous f-bombs, it just seemed unnecessary and weak, especially where it had to do with sexual matters. It just didn’t seem appropriate to me.

There were seven rats on Justin’s team, flown to the farm by Jeremy and his mate in…Easter baskets? Aside from that bit of absurdity, could two crows carry three or four rats each, plus their equipment? (Actually, I thought Jeremy being able to carry five mice by himself in Gibbs’s story was a bit of a stretch.)

In Ch. 7, Justin could have been more respectful to Ages instead of calling him “old man” in a decidedly non-affectionate way, considering he’d been working on the NIMH formula which would enable Justin and Elizabeth to be together indefinitely.

The way the story is housed at the site is a head-scratcher. It’s included in an album by one cherryvixen416, who claims to be 8 years old; and in one comment, she admits it’s not her story, adding she “found it and put it here so those who've wanted to read it would have the chance to.” Can we assume it was with the author’s permission? Can anyone explain this?

The story has supposedly been updated since it was posted, but apparently those updates didn’t include correcting the occasional misspelling. Despite the problems I have with some of the finer details, overall the story was well written and I would still give it a respectable three and a half stars out of five.

The beginning of the first part of my new fanfic, Wandering Days, is now posted to Robin's. I plan to finish the story before summer is over. It probably won't be a great read, but my job is to be at least somewhat entertaining. I like to offer a bit of mystery to my stories and keep my audience guessing, so expect some of that.

Also, any feedback, and I mean ANY, would be much appreciated. Nitpick away!

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The next 5 chapters (15 to 19) of Crossed Paths, Crossed Lives are now up at Robin's. Here's the link again

http//robin.thornvalley.com/node/582

I finally got a chance to read through Leemhuis' story up to chapter 19. I'm Loving it so far. I'm hoping that the Rats of NIMH and Jonathan will be able to solve their problems with the humans by diplomacy rather than magic. The amulet and this whole magic business I feel has been too much of a 'get out of jail free card' for big conflicts like this. Of course without knowing what happens next, I can only speculate.


Oh yeah....



MORE CHAPTERS PRETTY PLEASE! XD

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Chapters 20 thru 25 of Crossed Paths, Crossed Lives are now posted at Robin's.

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Chapters 20 thru 25 of Crossed Paths, Crossed Lives are now posted at Robin's.

liShakes fists at Grandpa Leemyli

You sent me chapter 29 and got my suspense kicking for when humans show up, but you accidentally didn't send me the proceeding chapters. Now I have to wait until you do send me the proceeding chapters, which isn't likely until tomorrow when there's going to be another hurricane thingie coming in to knock out my power again.

...Wait...as I wrote this you sent me the chapters, that was sweet of you.

..Uh... well this is kinda awkward...yes.....

That was still a total of 5 minutes I was without the proceeding chapters. Arrrggggggg!! 5 minutes of disappointment that I'll never get back.

I hope your happy that your accident caused me a very minor inconvenience!

I hope your happy that your accident caused me a very minor inconvenience!

:D I'm glad I could liven up your Saturday night. :D

Anyhow, Chapters 26 through 29 of Crossed Paths, Crossed Lives are now posted at Robin's.

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Chapters 30 thru 33 of Crossed Paths, Crossed Lives are now posted at Robin's. Four more chapters and an epilogue to go!

Very nice! If only Marcus could write NTFE that fast :lol:.

Very nice! If only Marcus could write NTFE that fast :lol:.

He actually wrote chapter 13, but I've been too lazy/keep forgetting to put it up. It's actually been in my inbox for over a month now. He's taking a vacation from NIMH until August. So unless something happens, he'll continue his work next month.

Very nice! If only Marcus could write NTFE that fast :lol: .

Thanks! But keep in mind that I originally wrote CPCL in 1989 and have been working on keying it in and revising it since just after last Christmas. Actual revisions haven't been as extensive as on Search for Johnathan, but all the same, it's felt like a molasses-like pace at times.

Sorry for being absent for a while. Been working a lot lately. I really have to get around reading your work David.

No problemo. Check them out when you have the time. Meanwhile...

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The final chapters (34 to 37 and an epilogue) of Crossed Paths, Crossed Lives are now posted at Robin's.

No problemo. Check them out when you have the time. Meanwhile...

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The final chapters (34 to 37 and an epilogue) of Crossed Paths, Crossed Lives are now posted at Robin's.

I know I've asked this before, but I'm too lazy to find out where I asked it. Anyway, how many more stories do you have left, and are you planning to continue your writing after you're finished restoring the stories you do have?

I would need to reread your story before I give a full review because I skimmed over a good amount of it. I'm still kinda iffy on how it concludes and thought the whole aspect of the stone floating Martin and Kimball's family back to Thorn Valley was inane, but overall I would say I'm pleased.

I want morrrrreee!

I enjoyed all your works so far. My favorite aspect was how you pulled off Mrs. Brisby's intelligence. Maybe because I was doing the same thing in my fanfiction :lol: . Anyway, I really liked Crossed Paths, Crossed Lives. But my favorite of yours remains Mrs. Brisby and the Search for Jonathan.

I want morrrrreee!

I enjoyed all your works so far. My favorite aspect was how you pulled off Mrs. Brisby's intelligence. Maybe because I was doing the same thing in my fanfiction . Anyway, I really liked Crossed Paths, Crossed Lives. But my favorite of yours remains Mrs. Brisby and the Search for Jonathan.

And morrrrreee you will get! :D Hopefully by the end of August if not sooner. Thanks for your input. There will inevitably be overlaps in different writers’ ideas, like Jonathan being killed by Jenner instead of Dragon, or Mrs. Brisby using the Stone to save Justin’s life, or, of course, “Johnathan Lives!”

I know I've asked this before, but I'm too lazy to find out where I asked it. Anyway, how many more stories do you have left, and are you planning to continue your writing after you're finished restoring the stories you do have?

I would need to reread your story before I give a full review because I skimmed over a good amount of it. I'm still kinda iffy on how it concludes and thought the whole aspect of the stone floating Martin and Kimball's family back to Thorn Valley was inane, but overall I would say I'm pleased.

Looking forward to your review! Now, how many more…okay, there are three short stories that follow up events in CPCL, and I’m consolidating those into one story and expanding on events referred to in those stories and the one that is set later. That one is a long sprawling affair that I may condense a bit when I prepare it for posting, and BTW, hints of what happens therein have already been planted.

And beyond that? Nothing definite yet, though I've kicked around a few ideas.

I'm afraid of drawing conclusions too soon and there are still questions I want answered. So I'll tell you what....I'll review the entire Leemhuis fanfictions as an entire whole. From the Brisby Beginning all the way until the end and give my star rating there. Consider this motivation to finish your work faster.


MORE STORIES PRETTY PLEASE!!!!1111!! XD

All right, be that way…

Seriously, you needn’t be worried about premature conclusions. In the process you might point out some detail or make some observation that may not have occurred to me, and in fact I think you and others like Hera Ledro (where be ye?) have done that already. But if that’s how you want to do it that’s fine, though as I said at the beginning I’m open to all criticism. Actually I like it when one’s opinions grow and evolve and change over time. I’m no stranger to that myself.

I don’t think you’d want me to get in too big a rush, though. :wink:

I'd like to see some of Teresa and Eric's adventures, starting a family, running from(or fighting off?) predators, avoiding discovery, and life in general.

Maybe some from Howard's point of view?

lililililiANNOUNCEMENT TIMElilililili

The first chapter of my next fan-fic, Freethorn, is now posted to Robin's. Here's the link

http//robin.thornvalley.com/node/627

I liked it, and am looking foreward to Chapter 2, where I hope some things will be explained.

Psst... there's a typo about 2/3 of the way down!

A short little piece written quite a while ago by myself and recently pulled out of the junk drawer =)

NIMH Unbound: Storm
http://www.thornvalley.com/commons/forum/viewtopic.php?t=1106

Bumping this thread a bit.
Just read Chapter 13 of NIMH: The Final Experiment
I felt that it barely covered any ground and only served to show off the science fictional elements of the story (the computer Alis and the robotic mouse). Clearly a plot regarding Alis is going to occur in future chapters telling by the last paragraph. All I can say is, "Open the pod bay doors please Hal."
And again I wish Martin or Theresa was brought along on this journey rather than Cynthia and Timothy. I understand the reasons why they weren't, Theresa is a mother and Martin is a doctor. I find Cynthia and Tim pretty annoying in this story. I actually like Martin's portrayal in this story as he wasn't grumpy or hotheaded like his film counterpart or in other stories (particularly Secret of the Stone).

Since I’ve finished posting “Crossed Paths, Crossed Lives” I thought I’d say a few words about the making of it, both the first-tier (original) version I wrote in 1989 and the new one.

I first conceived it with three basic plot elements: (1) It’s two years later, and a restless and discontented Martin Brisby decides to see NIMH for himself; (2) NIMH, or someone acting on their behalf, suspects their former charges are in Thorn Valley and are on their way; and (3) some more of the mice survived and one of them gets wind of NIMH’s plans and sets out for Thorn Valley to warn them. I thought the basic idea was viable but it needed something to add dramatic tension. Then it occurred to me, right in the middle of a 40-mile highway drive: have Martin surreptitiously make off with the Stone to keep his parents from tracking him down, and then its absence will create unforeseen complications. I think that did the trick.

As already noted, I couldn’t resist putting in several in-jokes or homages to 1970s-1980s pop culture. The Guard rat Philip telling Martin and Lambert “Let’s be careful out there!” was inspired by Hill Street Blues’ Sgt. Phil Esterhaus (Michael Conrad) passing on that admonition to the troops at the beginning of every episode.

HSB also inspired Martin’s reaction to having his contemplation spot chopped down. I had Dennis Franz’s character Norman Buntz in mind for the line “Hey…hey! What’s the story here? What do you think you’re doing?”

Lambert’s name was largely inspired by a Monty Python sketch about a just-married couple buying a bed. (“I’m sorry, you have to say dog kennel to Mr. Lambert, because if you say mattress, he puts a bucket over his head.”)

In picking some other character names, I also drew on M.P. for Eric (Idle), Michael (Palin) and Graham (Chapman).

In the Ch. 3 scene with Lambert catching and eating a grasshopper, and his remark about some humans eating insects, I was trying for a “The Far Side” kind of feel, switching things up in the fashion of the classic Gary Larson strip.

If the plot element of Martin and Lambert leaving Thorn Valley without being entirely truthful about their destination seems familiar, then first note the actor (Wil Wheaton) who voiced Martin in TSoN, and then recall his first starring live-action movie role (Stand By Me). Not a dead body they were seeking, but still something that would affect their lives greatly.

Another bit with Martin was more subtle. His feeling, from Ch. 19 on, that so much depended on him and how soon he could get the Stone back to T.V. was inspired by the first season of “Star Trek: the Next Generation” in which it seemed as if the plot of every episode could be summed up as “Wesley saves the Enterprise—Again!”

I did a similar thing with Teresa. Before “90210,” Shannen Doherty was a cast member of “Our House” with Wilford Brimley and Deidre Hall. Her character, Kris Witherspoon, loved flying and aspired to be an Air Force pilot. So I parlayed that into Teresa’s love of flying with Jeremy and Beatrice.

As I noted already in another topic, Patricia’s line in Ch. 19, “Well…I guess this is just a case where the needs of the many outweigh the needs of the few,” was inspired by Spock’s famous line from “Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan.” At the time, I guess it wasn’t famous enough with me, because I’d completely forgotten that’s where I’d heard it before. But I decided to keep it for the new version anyway.

In Ch. 27, another Guard rat, Walter, informs Brutus, “They’re coming! Choppers!” almost before he could see or hear them. Yes, I had Walter “Radar” O’Reilly from “MliAliSliH” in mind for that one.

Vincent’s name was largely inspired by the “Beauty and the Beast” character, mostly because both characters are reclusive. When I first mapped out the story, I originally had Martin, Karen and Patricia track him down inside one of the labs at NIMH after he’d been recaptured and undergone further experimentation. He’s in pretty bad condition but is able to direct them to his hideaway, where they discover his notes that precipitate their mad flight back to T.V. Before I got to that part I had the idea to treat Vincent as an offstage character throughout the entire story, only appearing in flashbacks and his own writings. It would add to the air of mystery about him, and I think it worked out well.

Anyway, back to the matter of detail. The specific detail I'm worried about is not how the community works but a certain item that a Thorn Valley rat or mouse might be handling. A walkie talkie, a gun, a telephone, etc. One might nitpick and say, "How did they get that? You need ... to make ... How did they get the materials?" I've decided that if I can explain it, I will. If I can't explain or the explanation will be a long and complicated one then I won't bother. "Why does that rat have a ...?" Because he does.

This is what I had in mind when I first wrote it and gave them such equipment as walkie-talkies and intravenous tubes and needles, without any real explanation about how they arrived at the technology for it.

The meadow Martin and Lambert passed through in ch. 4, where they encountered the bobcat, was largely inspired by an area in a local state park that I still make regular day-trips to. There’s another spot in the same park that inspired the “picnic spot” in “Search.” Often I would bring along a clipboard, paper and pen and get some actual writing done there. Very inspirational.

In ch. 13, the hidden trapdoor in the antique shop, which was unknown to the present tenants, I thought might have been used by the previous tenant to hide some kind of contraband. I thought I’d leave it vague, with no real backstory, since it wasn’t really relevant anyway.

I probably had the most fun writing the sequences that introduced Boonger’s gang, and where Martin & co. try rescuing Lambert from them (chs. 11 & 14). Boonger, as well as the two rats that Martin and Lambert first met were such easy characters to write; just think of every mouth-breathing, knuckle-dragging Neanderthal bully that ever evolved from a shower-room floor. In the bit with the screaming woman foiling the gang-rats’ pursuit of our heroes, I wanted to avoid the cliché of the person, usually a woman, who sees something frightening and drops whatever she’s carrying. I figured her for someone who isn’t especially well off and would be unwilling to let go of her purchases that easily, even when having an assortment of rodents heading her way.

I decided to get creative and a little silly with the gang-rats’ names.

Re Martin’s “I hate sneezing!”: so do I! That was me all the way.

During the chapters where everyone in T.V. is anxious over having to prepare for the humans’ arrival and not knowing when, I considered slipping in a line that would compare their situation to human fears about nuclear war or terrorism. I decided against it, figuring it would be hitting the reader over the head with an obvious point.

The reference in ch. 19 to the Brisbys’ “interdimensional friends” Tugrelho and Kalfomenda was a holdover from the first version, but the characters originally figured prominently in the first-tier story “The Hidden Conflict” which is not part of this continuity, though I wanted to keep the characters. After I come up with a new backstory for them, I’ll probably put them in a story to come.

In ch. 22, Kevin’s “gizmo” was a reference to an early guitar-synthesizer invented by Kevin Godley and Lol Creme of 10cc, for whom those characters were named.

Ch. 29 was completely from Howard Travis’s POV, and I wanted to give it a sense of mystery and suspense, and I knew that not revealing the plans for the Stone beforehand would be a great help. Howard was named after a friend and coworker from the Navy.

I not only wrote the original over about a 9-month period, but I managed to work on it every day, even if it was just a paragraph or two. I didn’t plan it, but it worked out that I finished it on New Year’s Eve.

Changes for the new version: I hadn’t really established careers for the Brisby children before, but I knew I couldn’t avoid it here.

One for the what-was-I-thinking file: In the first-tiers, I didn’t give Ages a first name, and I had Alma call him “Gessie.” Yeesh!

Originally I had Kimball and Patricia go all the way inside NIMH for their first meeting with Vincent, and all of K & V’s subsequent meetings were also inside. I decided it’d be more appropriate for Patricia to have a fear of returning there keep both of them out, and so all of the meetings were outside. Also it would add a bit more mystery to Vincent: how did he know when they were in the neighborhood, if he made his home inside the building and rarely left it?

That was a completely new scene in ch. 21, where Cynthia and Tim visit Kimball and he tells them more about his family.

I also added the last scene with Teresa and Eric in ch. 35, after they leave Howard, with the description of their new home from a later first-tier story.

In ch. 37, the scene with Boonger’s comeuppance, I originally had just a couple of the gang there, but I thought it’d be better to have most or all of them witness their leader’s humiliation. Had a lot of fun with that scene too, obviously.

Bertha was originally intro’d in a first-tier story set later, in which I described the scene in which she gives Lambert a “private welcome.” I described this scene in greater detail in the epilogue.

There are other scenes that were expanded upon, too many to list here.

Final note: yes, there are plot similarities to NIMH II. Tough titmice! I wrote this first! :P

Do you still have the first tier stories? I'd like to read them. Don't be embarrassed, we all start somewhere. I'm just curious is all. :D

I think it's more the language you used, rather than the actual pop culture references that made me think that this was something made in the 80s. It just felt like this was a made for TV movie from that era. Nothing wrong with that, really. I also thought I saw a "21 Jump Street" reference in there (not the crappy 2012 movie, but the 80s-90s T.V. show) perhaps I confused it with the "Hill Street Blues" reference. Dunno if you watched the show, but Peter DeLuise, son of Dom DeLuise, was in it and it felt like something you'd sneak in there.

You seem to watch a lot of TV, I'm just pointing that out, nothing wrong with it.

One for the what-was-I-thinking file: In the first-tiers, I didn’t give Ages a first name, and I had Alma call him “Gessie.” Yeesh!

Where did that name come from? :shock:

Of course I still have the first-tier stories; I had to have something to work from, eh? Since you’re curious about them, what I may do one of these days is put together and post a synopsis of “The Hidden Conflict”, which isn’t part of the new ones.

Never actually watched 21 Jump St. I suppose I have watched a lot of TV over the years, but I’m more selective and discerning than a lot of people, I think. There are definitely a lot of hit shows over the years that I never watched.

As for “Gessie” though I didn’t have a detailed backstory of Ages and Alma’s courtship, I figured that she decided the name sounded odd and so altered it so that it’s pronounced like “Jesse.”

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Chapters 2 & 3 of “Freethorn” are now posted to Robin’s.

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Chapters 4 & 5 of “Freethorn” are now posted to Robin’s.

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Chapters 6 & 7 of “Freethorn” are now posted to Robin’s.

Sorry for the lack of feedback, I've been busy lately.

Really cute story so far :3

But what's going to be the main conflict? Or is this going to be a bit of a respite before more interesting stuff happens? Not that I have a problem with all the cute couples.

I didn’t think I was necessarily going for cute, but I suppose it worked out that way. ) Thanks for the feedback. You pretty much nailed what I’m doing with it, a lot like “The Last Moving Day” a series of events in which loose ends are tied up and new situations are being set up. A bit of conflict does come in later, and a bit of mystery (I hope).

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Chapters 8 & 9 of “Freethorn” are now posted to Robin’s.

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Chapters 8 & 9 of “Freethorn” are now posted to Robin’s.

My boy Dave Leemy is still writing that romance. I haven't read this far yet, but the mutual affection between Martin and Karen was great. Keep up the good work.

Thanks, SMT, I'll do my reasonably-best. D Meanwhile...

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Chapter 10 of “Freethorn” is now posted to Robin’s.

Thanks, SMT, I'll do my reasonably-best. :D

If you're having story problems I feel bad for ya, son! I got 99 problems, but exposition aint one!

Hehehehehehehe, I'mma finish my fanfic before the end of the year. I'll post it when it's done. Needless to say, it's terrible, but I hope you'll enjoy it. XD

Anyway, I don't really care looking at Jonathan's creepy smile in your avatar. It gives me nightmares. The fact that his eyes lack any sort of iris and look kinda soulless doesn't help. I'm not asking you to change it, I just wanted to point it out. It doesn't really bother me.

While we're on the subject of Jonathan...I must admit, I don't like the Jo'h'nathan in your story. He has an idyllic life with his wife and children, and he can't bring himself to tell his wife, who couldn't love him more, that he's going to live longer than she is. It makes him seem ungrateful, and he's lucky that stone sent him to the land of Oz (or carried away by Usgtarg) otherwise he wouldn't have found out that his intuition was (conveniently) incorrect. He doesn't suffer from any sort of conflictions; he just can't bring himself to tell the love of his life that he's going to live longer.

I like the Gibbs version of him a lot better. He's very conflicted and much more relatable. He loves his wife and his wife loves him, but they don't live a "idyllic" life. They suffer through hardships. You get more of a sense that he's a confused character who has problems rather than a Jesus figure who can't decide when or how to tell his perfect wife about an aging difference. He suffers from depression and we see it evolve. He needed help and guidance, it just wasn't available for him. We also see that he's a loveable character who earns his peace in the end by being a good father, friend, and husband and earns redemption from his past.

I guess I'm being too harsh, you did describe Johnathan as having some confusion, though it doesn't really add up in my opinion. It seems like it was just there because it had to. Gibbs actually spells out his conflicted side more clearly, and thus we get a more fleshed out character as a result. Though again, you two had different visions and paths you decided to take the story into and I'm very grateful for it. I guess I really shouldn't be comparing the two, but if forced to choose, I have to go with Gibbs' interpretation of the character. I kinda wished, and I've said this before, that he would stay dead because I feel resurrecting him is kinda hokey.

I don't mean to be an asshole, I'm just bored....and also an asshole. D:

Speaking of "confused characters"... ?

Mmmmmkay...I think I see what this is. Any comment on it I'll reserve for later.

Speaking of "confused characters"... :?

Mmmmmkay...I think I see what this is. Any comment on it I'll reserve for later.

Nah, I was just bored and wanted to make a comparison between Gibbs' Jonathan and your version. Considering my fanfic has a lot of character development, especially in regards to Nicodemus and Jonathan...well I was just bored. Don't take offense. I made a comment about your avatar and then went on a tangent. I was just teasing about the avatar too.

Also I should mention that when I go in a tangent in writing, I tend not to make much sense. As I mentioned before, It takes almost 4 times the brain power for me to actually transfer thoughts into writing, so if I say something stupid or something that doesn't make sense, chances are I didn't mean for it to sound that way. I usually have to proofread things multiple times before I can write something coherent. When you see me actually live com something I tend to be much more composed than when I'm actually writing something, unless it's a tweet.

Well, this is precisely why I reserved comment, because I’m well aware of your tangents. Still…if you want to make a comparison between my and Gibbs’ versions, okay, but…wasn’t Robert O’Brien the one who came up with the idea of Johnathan not bringing himself to tell his wife he’ll live longer? And didn’t both Gibbs and myself resolve that matter in our stories?

I can’t tell you how to write your posts, Li’l Dude, but maybe a lilittleli more proofreading is in order? wink

Well, I did have a laugh over “Usgtarg.”

I have admitted that some writers’ treatments of some characters, and stories overall, are arguably better than mine. But let’s remember 4C (Constructive Criticism Conducted Civilly). Who knows, that might even catch on. )

Well, this is precisely why I reserved comment, because I’m well aware of your tangents. Still…if you want to make a comparison between my and Gibbs’ versions, okay, but…wasn’t Robert O’Brien the one who came up with the idea of Johnathan not bringing himself to tell his wife he’ll live longer? And didn’t both Gibbs and myself resolve that matter in our stories?

It's all about starting conversation; there's not much to talk about NIMH related, so if it appears I say something that appears stupid, I'm just saying something for the hell of it to try and spark life here. The point is I like how Gibbs resolved the matter better. I might've be wayyy too long winded for you when describing it, but it happens. Was there a point in comparing the two characters? Maybe not. But like I said, I wrote it for the hell of it. I spent probably 5 minutes in total thinking and writing the comparison. If I really cared and wanted better structure, grammar, and word choice, I would've spent 3 hours on it. I might come off as an ignorant asshole to some here (I'm not saying you imply that), but I can assure you, my intent is never to harm anyone. I don't talk about NIMH fandom outside this little circle we have here, so it's not something I really think about. My little juxtaposition with the two different versions of the character was just for fun; it was not meant to be something to offend or to be taken as high criticism, it was just something to say. Again, if I spent more time, I could've came up with a better analysis. Sorry if it wasn't up to your standards and sorry if you felt offended in anyway.

And, BTW, I know that you guys had to work with the same scenario that O'Brien made up. My point was that I preferred how Gibbs handled the /development/ of Jonathan. You just made him out to be some guy who was afraid to tell his wife about the fact that he'd live longer. Gibbs fleshed out his reasoning about how he couldn't bring himself to tell his wife....Maybe not the best comparison in the world, but yet again it was something I wrote when I was bored and yet again not something I intended to be taken as high criticism.

I can’t tell you how to write your posts, Li’l Dude, but maybe a lilittleli more proofreading is in order? :wink:

This is precisely why I didn't review CP;CL yet. I wanted to respect the effort you did by creating a good critique. I'll go into detail about plot characters, etc. and actually give honest effort. I plan to review your entire fanfiction chronicle from beginning to end, noting that it was made for fun. Unless you don't want me to. XD

I have admitted that some writers’ treatments of some characters, and stories overall, are arguably better than mine. But let’s remember 4C (Constructive Criticism Conducted Civilly). Who knows, that might even catch on. :)

What I consider constructive criticism conducted civilly may be different than what you consider 4C. I may be more harsh than most people in my word choice. I have a sardonic tone with my writing (and speaking) that may not be appropriate for you. I'll do my best to avoid such tone next time I open my mouth about your work. I mean no disrespect and I mean no harm.

But anyway, yeah, I went on another tangent, but hopefully this clarified the situation. You seem like a great guy, I don't wish to hurt you.

Peace out.

http://images.wikia.com/littlebigplanet/images/2/2d/Tupac-santa-1-.png[" alt=""/img]

Don’t worry, SMT, no offense taken. As I said, I’ve gotten to know your posting style and what to expect. And, yes, I’m still looking forward to your long-form critique.

And now, another…

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Chapter 12 of “Freethorn” is now posted to Robin’s.

So where’s Ch. 11? After some retooling of Chapter 6, brought about by the inclusion of a sequence that I realized logically belonged at an earlier point in the story, that chapter is now split in two and subsequent chapters are renumbered accordingly. Edits were made to chs. 4 and up as well. So if you’ve read the earlier chapters, you may want to reread, especially Ch. 6, which has been retitled as well.

Thanks again to Li’l Dude for convincing Simon to give me moderator status at Robin’s. It makes things a whole lot easier for an operation like this where a bit (or more) of revising is called for.

Hey guys, I'm back. Sorry to have been gone for so long.
Here's the first part of a short story
http://www.thornvalley.com/commons/forum/viewtopic.php?p=10498#10498
Enjoy

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Chapter 13 of “Freethorn” is now posted to Robin’s.

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Chapter 14 of “Freethorn” is now posted to Robin’s.

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Chapter 15 of “Freethorn” is now posted to Robin’s.

I should have the rest (3 chapters and an epilogue) ready for posting in the next week or so.

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The concluding chapters of “Freethorn”—16 thru 18 and an epilogue—are now posted to Robin’s.

I'm going to say this because I'm biased, it doesn't mean I think your story is bad, it doesn't mean that I think your a bad person, it just means that I have a personal grudge against a certain element in your story. I know I haven't been fair or rational when talking about your work in the past, and I apologize for that. But here, I'm going to be less reckless and try to be as civil as possible. This is nothing but a personal opinion...I'm not claiming that I'm correct here and I know there are different ways to look at this.

With that out of the way...

I think plot twists are a great tool. It allows us to rethink the situation and it's a fun way to lead the audience to rethink what they just saw. Some people think that jump scares and plot twists are nothing but cheap thrills. I disagree; a good plot twist takes careful planning and care to make. The same goes with jump scares.

I do have two personal rules regarding plot twists: it can't be all your story has to offer. Meaning that if you start your story with a plot twist without giving care to other details such as characterization, plot, setting, etc. I can all but guarantee that your story is going to fail. My second rule regarding plot twists is that YOU DON'T use them in the following circumstances: sidekick character/friend of the protagonist was evil all along, evil villain wants to be captured all along, protagonist was dreaming/hallucinating the event, AND character that was once "killed off" during the story is still alive.

You didn't break rule one, but you broke rule two.

Why do I say this? Because it's old, sterile, overdone, lazy, tired out, unfulfilling, etc. etc.

I might be willing to accept the first three scenarios and forgive them: "The Dark Knight" comes to mind. I just can never see myself forgiving the last one. This is a personal bias thing, I know, but I can't be the only one to have these feelings....

First off, I can predict it so easily it's not even funny. Second off....

You know what? Forget it. I'll tackle this more in depth after I finish reading the all of the stories. But I will say this: I think death should be something that's permanent in stories. I think once you've established that a character is gone for good (meaning that the get killed off DURING the story, not before or after), they should stay that way. Once you've had characters grieve over their loss, it should be the end of it. What you could've done is after the scene with the hawk, you shift over to Eric's perspective and go from there. Just don't leave it as a big reveal at the end.

Yes, this is a personal bias thing. Sorry if I came out a little too callous for your taste.

I read the last couple of chapters again and as per usual I was jumping around the issue I brought up last night...

Why was Teresa and company quick to come to the conclusion that Eric was dead? That's the big problem I have with it. He was taken by a hawk, but that doesn't automatically mean that he couldn't have survived....

Anyway, just know that this is just a nit-pick that I glorified. I actually think your story is awesome. Not great literature, but awesome for something that was made for fun.

SPOILER WARNING IN EFFECT FOR ANYONE WHO HASN’T READ THE LAST FEW RECENTLY-POSTED CHAPTERS OF “FREETHORN”.

I think once you've established that a character is gone for good (meaning that the get killed off DURING the story, not before or after), they should stay that way. Once you've had characters grieve over their loss, it should be the end of it. What you could've done is after the scene with the hawk, you shift over to Eric's perspective and go from there. Just don't leave it as a big reveal at the end.

I’m actually not surprised that you picked up on that particular development to pick on. But was that actually Eric in the Epilogue? Was that Teresa he was looking for? I didn’t mention either by name, so it could be that…

Okay, I won’t try to con you. By no means was I bending over backwards to conceal anyone’s identity. But let me remind you again that I’ve got plenty of story mapped out, and not everything may be as it initially appears. And there may be a good reason NOT to shift to Eric’s perspective. :?

Why was Teresa and company quick to come to the conclusion that Eric was dead? That's the big problem I have with it. He was taken by a hawk, but that doesn't automatically mean that he couldn't have survived....

There may even be an explanation for the lack of further inquiries into the matter, especially on Johnathan’s part. Indeed, couldn’t he have just used the Stone to confirm it? And if not, why not? And couldn’t someone else suggest it to him?

Stay tuned…

Yes, I know there's a contrived narrative reason for Eric's separation. That's why I kinda stopped dead in my tracks in my ramblings on and said that I'd go more in depth later. Your boy shivermetimbers can also be mischievous in his ways you know. Perhaps what I was about to say might in fact take into account the foreshadowing of events of the next story. But since I can't just go on clairvoyance alone, I've decided to wait until you post the next story to confirm my beliefs.

Stay tuned...

“Contrived narrative reason,” huh? That’s okay, all this stuff is contrived.

So!...With the completion of “Freethorn” it’s once again time to explore its origins and the changes made for its posting on Robin’s.

As stated in the intro, there were three first-tier short stories that were the basis for “Freethorn,” and they approximate the following chapters

1. “Family Reunions” became chs. 1-3.
2. “Return to Orland” became ch. 8, retaining the original title.
3. “Teresa’s Homecoming” became chs. 17 & 18.

Most of the rest of the story consists of events which were referred to after they happened, which I wanted to flesh out in more detail. These events were previously related in the original Teresa’s Homecoming (mainly the gathering of Vincent’s children, the Stone’s use in reinforcing the colony and tapping the aquifer in ch. 6, Teresa and Eric’s first, unsuccessful return) and in the next story, “Out of the Mist” (the Rusay visitors dropping by in ch. 5, the exchange program’s beginnings, adopting the name Freethorn, Bertie tripping Tara into the lake; and the scene in the Epilogue, more of which I cannot speak of at this time).

Two scenes were originally flashback sequences in the next story, and were imported largely intact Lilia & Reuben’s arrival in Freethorn in ch. 11, and Lula being brought into the fold in ch. 15.

In the gathering of the Davis children, I probably had the most fun writing the segment with Bertie, Ellis and Lucy. Sibling bickering…most of us have been there, right? Ellis’s remark about small, yappy-type dogs I thought might be funny; even mice find them annoying, just as a lot of people do. Having Lucy join Johnathan and the others in mid-mission was a spontaneous thing; it seemed to naturally follow.

With Marie, I had the idea of having at least one of them turn up someplace far, far away without coming up with a real backstory as to how she got there precisely, leaving the matter to lipossiblyli be addressed at a future date. So now, over 20 years later, I still have only a basic idea, mainly involving Marie fleeing from danger and concealing herself in what turns out to be a load of cargo which then gets loaded onto a merchant ship bound for Korea, with Newell either being on the same load, or already living on the ship.

I thought it logical that at least one of them would end up dead, just as their parents had allowed for the possibility, and so Desmond ended up the unlucky one. In Orland’s case, I wanted at least one of them to have a good reason to decline coming to Freethorn, at least initially.

I figured the oldest two, Norman and Jessica, would have to be well along in raising their own families, and that there would be a strong possibility that their mates might have passed on naturally.

The tragic events of ch. 16 were originally related by Teresa to her parents, and so I fleshed out that scene and made it into a new chapter.

Some more, perhaps inevitable references to 1970s-80s pop culture mostly because of Norman’s name, I took some names from “Cheers” characters for his and Jessica’s children Diane, Carla, and Clifford. Norman’s late wife Vera was named after Norm Peterson’s never-cIearly seen wife Vera. For Lisa and Todd, I drew upon the classic “SNL” characters played by Gilda Radner and Bill Murray (“That’s so funny I forgot to laugh!” “Noogie patrol!”)

A few name changes

• Marie’s family husband Newell was originally Nool (don’t ask!) and son Tony was originally Tuni.
• Orland’s lady Lana was originally named Lara. I gave the name Lana to one of Janice and Kory’s children in “Search,” forgetting that I already had a first-tier character named Lara who was also part of that clan; and after some consideration I decided to make Orland’s love interest Janice’s daughter instead of granddaughter.

Some other changes/additions

• Arthur was the original “rep” for the Rats on the mission to seek out the Davis children, but just like I replaced him with Melvin in “Search,” again I thought bringing a Guard Rat along would be logical, and I ended up picking Mel for this one as well. Poor Art can’t catch a break!
• Actually, he got one or two his line at the beginning of ch. 4 (“Your dad had a head full of ideas…”) was inspired by a line in “Maggie’s Farm” by Bob Dylan. And of course Arthur directed Johnathan in that and subsequent construction projects.
• I decided to have a little accident become the impetus for the Reinforcement, and Darwin turned out to be the unlucky one (though not as badly as Desmond) in ch. 5.
• I added Bertie’s little impulsive act in ch. 6 mainly as a precedent for some of his later actions, especially his later altercation with Tara.
• In ch. 8, I had Nicko, Orland’s rival for Lana, make an actual appearance, whereas he was just mentioned in the original. I wrote him as one of those people that I’m sure we all know, who’s way too quick to label someone who has the smallest eccentricity as “weird” or “crazy.” The kind that never seems to “get” anything. I almost wished I could have done a longer scene with him.
• I fleshed out the backstories of Vincent’s younger children and their moms; Amelia I’d already written as being the only one who’d developed feelings for Vincent.
• I was well into the rewrite before I had the idea to bring Sarah into the story. Originally Teresa was alone when her parents come to take her home.

Overall, the end product proved longer than I’d expected. So, after this, on to “Out of the Mist.”

Welp, been busy. I should have expected it, but I had a "HOLY CRAP!" moment when I got some free time and looked at Robin's. Lo and behold, the story was done. First and foremost: LOVED the cryptic epilouge.

Biggest nitpick: "Oh, we've talked for 5 minutes, let's get married!" Not that it's badly written, but I'm personally not one of the biggest believers of true love, so I'm kinda biased :?

Second biggest nitpick: Why didn't Jonathan confirm Eric's death with the Stone?/Why was everyone so quick to assume that he's dead?

Otherwise, it was good. I stand by my much earlier statement(at least I think I posted somthing about it): This is probably the 'break' some authors take in their series. I've seen it in the Gone series by Michael Grant, First Gone, a pretty good book, Hunger, an AMAZING book, then Lies, a 'meh' book, and then Plague, a REALLY AMAZING book. Since The Brisby Beginning was a really good fanfiction, Mrs. Brisby and the Search for Jonathan was a REALLY AMAZING fanfiction, and CPCL and Freethorn were pretty good, I have high hopes for Out of the Mist. And Out of the Mist is one of the coolest titles I've ever hear of.

Thanks for your input and kind words. ) To address your nitpicks I assume you’re referring to Martin and Karen’s rush into marriage. It’s not without precedent, as I had them acknowledge, since John & Maddie committed to each other even more quickly. I think this sort of thing is part of their makeup, a holdover from their “ordinary” heritage, in which life was too short for long courtships. It may be over-idealizing, but I’m a romantic slob at heart, so there you have it.

For the 2nd biggest see my answer to SMT above. Most, if not all, still-lingering questions will be addressed, hopefully to your satisfaction, in “Out of the Mist.” Kinda like that title myself. 8) “OOTM,” BTW, should take less time to post, since it’s the only first-tier story I already have as a Word document, so it’s just a matter of making the necessary revisions.

I must admit, that I actually really like how Dave Leemy writes his courtships. I don't want to read something that drags on with the building up their relationship, especially when it's crystal clear that they both love each other. Having characters try and hide their love from each other or displaying it in unsubtle ways isn't my ideal way of handling it.

As for Martin and Karen, at least they had somewhat of a build up before meeting each other so it's not like their love came out of nowhere; at the same time it didn't drag on to the point of being annoying.

Very accurate observations, sir. I’ve long seen these characters, on the whole and as a people, as being more open and honest than most humans when it comes to love and interpersonal relationships in general, without playing hard to get or stringing someone along or otherwise toying with one another’s emotions. Again, it’s probably over-idealizing, but if they’re going to be superior to the human race in some way, that’s a pretty good place to start.

Very accurate observations, sir. I’ve long seen these characters, on the whole and as a people, as being more open and honest than most humans when it comes to love and interpersonal relationships in general, without playing hard to get or stringing someone along or otherwise toying with one another’s emotions. Again, it’s probably over-idealizing, but if they’re going to be superior to the human race in some way, that’s a pretty good place to start.

The mice/rats don't have Willem Dafoe though, so they already can never be superior to the human race.

SMT, are you going to stick with this avatar a little longer than usual? Just wondering. This one’s a hoot, but I kind of preferred the “flowery” one.

And now, another…

||||||||||ANNOUNCEMENT TIME||||||||||

The first chapters of my next fan-fiction, “Out of the Mist”—Prologue and Chapters 1 thru 4—are now posted to Robin’s.

SMT, are you going to stick with this avatar a little longer than usual? Just wondering. This one’s a hoot, but I kind of preferred the “flowery” one.

Try hanging this one on your wall on top of your bed. That way, it will be the first thing you see when you wake up and the last thing you'll see when you go to sleep. You'll have a pleasant nights sleep and a good morning guaranteed.

As for your story, I've been checking in occasionally and was actually thinking about quitting this place if you didn't post it soon. It's pretty much the only thing I come here for.

I'm not feeling the love triangle you're setting up with Norman and Teresa. Their "love" was very spontaneous and came out of left field. A bit too much wish-fulfillment, I think.

You have no idea how much that "Announcement Time!" brightened my day :D

For various reasons, it took me 7 hours to read all 4 chapters :lol:

It also reminds me that I have a fanfiction sitting on the back burner...

And you're about to have 300 posts :)

Try hanging this one on your wall on top of your bed. That way, it will be the first thing you see when you wake up and the last thing you'll see when you go to sleep. You'll have a pleasant nights sleep and a good morning guaranteed.

:lol: :lol: :lol: I’ve had few genuine belly laughs lately, so thanks for one of the bigger ones. A suggestion: it occurs to me that you’ve used so many different avatars that you could post a collection of the complete set. You could put it on your intro thread in the Introductions section.

You have no idea how much that "Announcement Time!" brightened my day

As for your story, I've been checking in occasionally and was actually thinking about quitting this place if you didn't post it soon. It's pretty much the only thing I come here for.

High praise indeed, thanx oodles guys.

I'm not feeling the love triangle you're setting up with Norman and Teresa. Their "love" was very spontaneous and came out of left field. A bit too much wish-fulfillment, I think.

Actually, it’s possible that Teresa’s not feeling it either. Stay tuned?

Hey! 300th post! :D

A suggestion: it occurs to me that you’ve used so many different avatars that you could post a collection of the complete set. You could put it on your intro thread in the Introductions section.

Heh, I have a good collection of photoshopped Willem Dafoe pictures, so I'm well prepared for the foreseeable future. I no longer have that picture of me and Wiseau from 4-5 years ago, and I don't remember each and every avatar I've used over the years I've been here. Therefore, I probably won't do it.

How about a suggestion for you: change your avatar. Do something different; staring at Jonathan's grin as he opens the locked door for the rats gets stale looking at for 300 posts. Or at least make Jonathan more gangsta: give him some bling-bling, a Tupac t-shirt, and have him hold a bunch of Benjamens in front of him. Oh, and replace that creepy grin with a gangsta look.

Well, there's only one possible reply to that:

Do the Boris Dance, baby! :lol:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cRysHHzLAmM

Well, there's only one possible reply to that:

Do the Boris Dance, baby! :lol:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cRysHHzLAmM

Heh, I prefer this dance: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tPkmJ0j1EDc

Ho-kay, enough silliness, let's bring this ship back into port...

http//www.youtube.com/watch?v=lqKLhKjt6yU

||||||||||ANNOUNCEMENT TIME||||||||||

Chapters 5 & 6 of “Out of the Mist” are now posted to Robin’s.

Since I forgot it last time, here’s the link

http//robin.thornvalley.com/node/652

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(Sorry, thought I might use that)

Part 2 of the second story in a series of "Unbound" tales.
I made a couple changes to Part 1 including giving it a title and changing the name of NIMH project to something more appropriate: Zachariah

Project Zachariah
Part II
http://www.thornvalley.com/commons/forum/viewtopic.php?p=10569#10569

liAnd see how many references you can spot :D

EDIT: I just realized this and I can't believe I made this mistake. Dr. Schultz is the scientist in SON. Valentine is from the sequel. I can't believe I made that mistake. Going to go in and edit the story so that its Robert Schultz, not Robert Valentine. No matter how much you try to ignore NIMH II, it always finds a way into your subconscious.