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kirbyboy102 · Posted: Sat Apr 26, 2008 7:40 pm Post subject: Star

I made this for english class, and am currently changing some of it up to make it into a one-shot manga.
I'll lighten it up a bit and change it a bit to make it a shoujo manga.

WARNING! CONTAINS HEAVY AND DARK MATERIAL! READ AT YOUR OWN RISK!!!!

[the story has been edited and posted later in the topic.]

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kirbyboy102 · Posted: Tue Apr 29, 2008 12:42 am Post subject:

c'mon ya'll! at least tell me if it's decent!!!!
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Vye Brante · Administrator Joined: 26 Mar 2007 Posts: 1223

Sorry, haven't had a chance to read it yet!
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kirbyboy102 · Posted: Fri May 02, 2008 11:50 pm Post subject:

That's okay, I just want someone to read it. I'm actually currently fixing it a bit, so I'll update with my edits.
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Georgia · Posted: Mon May 05, 2008 7:06 am Post subject:

Sorry, it's very nice and everything. But it's not my type. I dunno, I mean, it looks really nice and all, but...I'm sorry. It Isn't my kind of story. =\
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Back in my day, we didn't have no fancy shmancy running shoes. We had to WALK.
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kirbyboy102 · Posted: Mon May 05, 2008 11:19 pm Post subject:

That's okay! It's kind of an aquired taste.
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Ghost · Posted: Mon May 05, 2008 11:28 pm Post subject:

I don't have much time (or will..too drained) to crit at the moment but...

I like it. I find this kind of story fascinating... I like the setting you have established and though I found the ending predictible (a hunch, I guess), it was a pretty good story. Some of the wording confused me, however. I could probably pinpoint them later for you if you'd like; if not, I'll keep it to myself. After all, my misunderstanding is probably due to being overtired...

Other than that, I felt that the ending was rather... abrupt, but it's a murder, and murder is abrupt.... so it's all good, I think. ^^ Good story.
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kirbyboy102 · Posted: Tue May 06, 2008 12:29 am Post subject:

Ghost · Posted: Thu May 08, 2008 2:55 am Post subject:

Sure thing, I'd love to look through it. ^^
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Latias is Love <3 : D

kirbyboy102 · Posted: Thu May 08, 2008 8:13 pm Post subject:

Here it is! I fixed some of the awkward wording and choppy scenes:

I had always figured I would die, just like every other living thing. The thousand-story buildings will stay, the robots will continue to function. The machina pets will still be waiting for love, but living things will die. The gears are eternal; the heart will rot into the ground.

I was walking down the grey, metal-covered streets, looking at the robots walking by. The robots were lucky; they weren’t human. They didn’t have to die. I know I was being all abysmal, but still. The robots had no emotions. They looked toward you and waved their metal hands. The buildings were made of metals left over from the last of the metal supplies. I looked down the sidewalk and saw a sign. It read The Death Determiner: guaranteed to tell when where why and how you shall die. I was Intrigued. Very much so.

I looked both ways. I saw nobody else had noticed this sign or the building. I figured it was just a hallucination from the life-lengthening drugs, but it wasn‘t.

“What the heck?” I wondered out loud, and the robots looked toward me. I guess I did stand out. In a world where humans are the secondary species (after robots, of course), I did stand out. Not to mention I was a teenager who dressed in black and various shades of red. My hair was brown, but it had red streaks running down to the tips, which then touched my chest.

I stepped inside the door. I felt the ground shake. The building floated above the tall buildings.

“Welcome to the death prediction agency. May I help you?” A small girl asked. She was human, like I.

“Yes, is this the place where you tell when you die?” She had on a small red lacy dress on with black, shimmering shoes.

“Yes, it is, it is! May I help you?”

“I guess I want to find out when I’ll die,” I shrugged. What would be the consequences?

The small girl, Anju, as she told me, also told me what the machine did. Apparently it touched you and it felt into your lifeline. This would give it the ability to tell the details of your death. Nice. She also said that I may be depressed if I would die young, and that I could commit suicide in the conveniently located suicide parlor. My question was why was there a need for suicide?

“Okay, so do I just walk in the room?” I asked Anju.

“Yes, you do! Are you to reconsider?” She sounded too happy to be near death and suicide.

“I actually have a question.”

“yes, what is this question you must feel the need to ask?” She sounded a little impatient, now. Wow, the eternal lollipop girl was something other than happy.

“How can you be so happy? I mean, you’re near death and suicide!” I was angry because she wasn’t sad. What was that?

“You see, when you are near death, all you can do is look forward to the happiness in life! If you were near happiness all of the time, you’d be depressed due to the sadness you’d be near!”

That made sense. I bowed to her and walked into the room. I heard her wish me luck. But what for? I mean, all I was doing was seeing the future!

The machine seemed to be missing from the small, dark room. It looked like a old-time motion picture theater; dark with a touch-wall computer flashing. I touched the ‘touch here’ button on the wall. The floor started to light up in bright blues and purples. I walked back. The screen said to take off my footwear and pad in my name and age by touching the letters on the floor twice. I proceeded to type in my name, one letter at a time. H…O…S…H…I…K…O. My feet were tapping quickly. 1...7.

The machine thanked me. Two small hands popped out of the flooring. I wondered what they were for. Then I realized; they were the ‘touching’ part that Anju had told me about. I gritted my teeth. What was this? Was this even legal? But I figured that the shop would be closed if it was illegal. I cleared my mind to focus on the hands creeping toward me.

The two hands touched my legs and continued up. They touched all of me; I felt dirtied. As the hands creeped up my body, I felt a twinge of pain. The hands stabbed me in the neck and a small nano-chip went into my ‘lifeline’. It came out and I grabbed my neck, throbbing with pain.

The machine had a small determining death. Please put on all footwear and wait on the pink tile upon the screen. I did as the touch-wall said. I did as the screen said and felt a throbbing on my neck. It must be the wound from the needle that went into me. The machine by then had my results, as they were.

Date of death: Sola the 34th. How: Murder. Why: Grudge.

I felt my heart fall. That was a week from now! Who would hold a grudge against me? I walked out of the wall solemnly and directly to the suicide parlor. A young man was there; he must’ve been 20 at most. He had short brown hair and some facial hair outlining his face. He looked up at me with doe eyes. He then sighed, a knife in hand, near his wrist.

“Whoa! Don‘t do that! Don‘t you value your life?” I asked, intrigued at the black-clad man.

“Not particularly. Would you, if you were to die in a year of a zoo accident?” the man said, somewhat smiling, though it seemed sad and kind of forced.

“Well, I would wait a bit before I commited suicide.”

“Oh. Then I would assume you are to die soon?”

“But of course. In a week, to be exact.” I looked downward. I picked the knife out of The man’s somewhat large, hairy hand. He looked a bit worried and took the knife and promptly cut himself. Served him right for picking it up on the cutting end…

“Are you okay?” I asked.

“Yes, I’m fine. I have Sand-aids. But I want to know; what’s your name?” He misspoke; I hate when people speak with incorrect grammar.

“I’m Star. Who are you?” he said. He put down the knife. He stood up to reveal his height to be above mine. I looked up at him.

“I’m Hoshiko. Our names are the same!”

“How so?” He said. He cracked a grin on one side of his mouth.

“Our names both mean star!” I smiled. He grinned again, this time with a tooth showing.

“How about we get out of here and go to a coffee house?” I agreed quickly.

It was about a month later. I still hadn’t heard from my murderer nor Star, who promised to meet me here at this novel store. I ran my hand down the science fiction section and stopped at a book called Fahrenheit 451. It was by a man named Ray Bradbury, who, by the description of the novel, must be insane. It was about novels being banned. Yeah, right. Like that would ever happen. I rolled my eyes as I continued to the young adults section after relocating the novel. And there he was; both my Murderer and my date, Star.

“Sorry, dearest, but you must die.” He said, grinning from ear to ear.

“Why, Star? What do you have to hold against me?” I was shocked. I looked at him in the eyes. The robots didn’t come in here; they could’ve helped me.

“You see, my dear. I was to kill myself a month ago. But you see, You stopped me. I guess you wouldn’t know, but I was also being abused at my job. I just wanted… to get away.” He looked off sheepishly.

“So, you’re using me as a stress relief object? How dare you!? I thought YOU LOVED ME!” I was shouting at the top of my lungs, hoping someone would overhear and look aver at me and Star’s gun pointed perfectly at my heart.

“Please, Hoshiko, don’t make me regret this.” he said.

“No matter what I say or don’t, you’ll regret it nevertheless.”

“I said don’t let me REGRET this!”

The last sound I heard was a gunshot. I said a curse word and the bullet full of acids went into my heart instantly killing me. I thought to my newly spirit-like self, what a jerk. Sometimes life wasn’t fair. But I didn’t mind.

I floated over to a bright life. And there stood Anju, this time in a pale yellow, short dress. This time she had small wings on her back.

“Are you an angel?” I asked, bewildered.

“Of course. I shall guide you to your destined home. This is one of the perks of not being a robot; you get to live on, even after your body stops functioning.”

I followed Anju, and she showed me the way to the light. I was finally glad to be human; I get to go to somewhere better than the robots. I smiled and followed suit, giggling.
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Ghost · Posted: Sat May 10, 2008 1:36 am Post subject:

A few parts confused me...

kirbyboy102 · Posted: Sun May 11, 2008 2:09 am Post subject:

Go as in-depth as you can/want. I want it ALL, so I can fix my story as much as possible.

Thank you for the three lines you picked out, I'm fixing them in the original. ^-^
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BeetheDragontrainer · User Joined: 10 May 2008 Posts: 29 Location: Rotterdam

There were things that could've used better wording.
For example, at some point you used "I felt dirtied", which makes it sound quite childish, and doesn't strike me as something that a seventeen year old would say. A better way to say it would've been something like "I felt violated".
In general, the sentences needed to be better structured. Overall it felt as if I was reading a "and then~, and then~, and then~" story, due to the way the sentences followed each other. Going by the first example :"They touched all of me; I felt dirtied" would've been better as "I felt violated as they all touched me".
And even then, some things could've used a little more discription to better display the emotions a character is going trough. Going by the previous example again, you could've also written "I felt somewhat violated as the cold mechanic arms started to touch me all over, working their way up from my legs". Either "cold" or "mechanic" could also be replaced with "lifeless" I guess, but the point I'm trying to make is that this sentence both captures how she feels at the moment and why (she feels violated because the machine is touching her), plus it goes back to her distaste for the robots (cold/machenic/lifeless).
I just know I either misspelled mechanic or that it means something else then what I'm thinking off...
And a last point-- built up. There is nothing wrong with the ending in itself (though predictable), but it just happens to abruptly. Which in essence is due to the above points though.

Overall it was a nice story, and not nearly as badly written as I might've made it out to be (believe me, I've seen a lot worse), but it definitely needs a good amount of improvement.

kirbyboy102 · Posted: Thu May 15, 2008 9:03 pm Post subject: