Hard Light Productions Forums
Off-Topic Discussion => Arts & Talents => Topic started by: Unknown Target on January 18, 2004, 10:03:45 pm
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Thoughts?
"Break left!"
Tracers whizzed past the window of the small, speeding fighter. Inside, a frantic pilot desperatly scrambles to evade the relentless enemy behind him.
"He's still on you! Break right!"
Again, a narrow escape. Only this time, the pilot didn't get away quite fast enough. Huge 20 MM cannon slugs slapped into the fragile fighter, blowing holes in it the size of soup cans. Dodging desperately back and forth, the rookie pilot was unable to shake the more experienced fighter pilot behind him. Left and right, up and down, he's growing desperate. In a last-ditch effort to evade, he flips his fighter upside down, and flies backwards, spraying bullets in the direction of his pursuer. Only his adversary is too fast for him. Jetting straight up, he flies over his prey and, nosing his fighter down, rips the bottom of his craft to shreds. The tiny, already wounded space craft shudders violently with each impact. Good luck charms, notes, pictures, anything that wasn’t bolted down flew around the cockpit, slapping against the pilot, the controls, everything inside the cockpit. Suddenly, a gut-wrenching lurch, and small explosion, and the bullets rip through the craft, and out the other side. Now, both top and bottom of the fighter spouted long columns of white-hot lead.
“Johnson! Burners! HIT YOUR BURNERS!”
A flash. A moment of recognition…’that’s Roy’….and the command gets through. Slamming his foot down, the craft rockets forward. The gunfire still does not cease, and it etches a long line of destruction down the belly of Johnson’s fighter. Small explosions rocked the tiny vessel.
“Oh my God, Johnson!”
Roy’s mind raced. He had no ammo left…his engines were still working, though. This engagement was beginning to take a tole. If he didn’t do something quick, Johnson wouldn’t be making it home.
Suddenly, he had it. There was a chance…it was suicide, but there was a chance he could save Johnson. He had to take it, he wasn’t going to send another letter home to some poor man’s family. Not again. There had already been too many.
His foot pushed down on the pedal hard. Everything seemed to be going slower than normal…only a few seconds…the other pilot was still too occupied with his target than to notice him. There!
Only a few meters away, Roy was closing in on his target in speeds faster than Mach 2. At the last second, the enemy pilot looked up to behold the powerful sight of a 20 ton space fighter barreling down on him. Instinctively, he jerked the stick backwards, but to no avail. The fighter plowed into him with full speed. Metal screeched, ammo exploded, and a scream echoed as the enemy pilot was exposed to the vacuum of space, sans suit. Explosive decompression quickly ended his suffering, however gruesome it was to see.
Meanwhile, Roy was barely breathing in his own fighter. A last ditch effort to save himself by reversing his fighter at the last minute, slamming into the enemy with his rear, worked, but only barely, leaving him clinging to life with what little strength he had left. Slowly, as the world faded to black, he thought he saw the distant red and green beacons of a ship…
But he couldn’t be sure…
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Nice :)
Roy, heh? :D
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nice, moves fast, only i got a bit confused as to who roy and johnson were. i thought the italics were johnson... and then you said they were roy... oh yeah, and stop changing tense. you go from present to past, that's really annoying.
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Lol, thought a Robotechie might catch that :D It was the best I could do, hehe.
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eh? robotechie? please explain?
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Fan of the Robotech series. You know, Macross/Mospedia/Southern Cross. Roy was one of the lead characters early in the Macross Saga ;)
EDIT: This fiction has nothing to do with Robotech or Macross, BTW :)
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Nice:) :yes:
Posted comments after i read both
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nice, really. one thing though, afterburners are not controlled by the pedals in real fighters, pedals are for the aft rudder.
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I second icespeed's comments.
kasperl, you are assuming that these 'fighters' (universe?) are very similar to Earth's air planes of the last 100 years.
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Chronologically, Roy Fokker was the Ace of the first half of the first Robotech War. He was followed by his "little brother" Rick Hunter and Rick's squadmate Maximillian Sterling. Rick later became Supreme Military commander of the REF, an effort to make peace with the Robotech Masters before the start of the Robotech War.
The series are good, but they suffer from the same "dumbing down" that many other animes of the 80's suffered.
The books by Jack McKinney are much better, espcecially Roy's death sequence in book 3. Read it with Queen's "Who wants to live forever" going in the background, you'll weep like a newborn.
http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/tg/detail/-/0345391845/qid=1074578628/sr=1-1/ref=sr_1_1/102-5732176-1226517?v=glance&s=books
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kasperl: It's in space ;)
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Is Robotech the same one that combined footage from 3 different japanese series to make a completely different storyline?
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Yes and no.
IIRC, Macross/Mospedia/Southern Cross were different shows in Japan, but when the time came to release them in America, they were combined as one show.
BTW, it's a good action scene, just a little short.
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Good story; I wanted to read more of it and find out what happened to Johnson and Roy. Did Roy regain consciousness? Was he picked up by a friendly or the enemy? What about Johnson? What does the rookie pilot feel after his engagement with an experienced enemy? If you've left questions to your ready, it's a good indication that you've got them hooked :)
But you've over exagerated on the comma use. Like the sentence describing all the items that weren't bolted down. I understand the effect you're trying to do. But you have to at least put an "and" before "anything that wasn't bolted..." You don't need the comma after "cockpit" as it just delays the reader in getting the desired effect (I know you want the reader to pause before "slamming" but a good reader would know to do it anyway and putting it there slows down the fast pace of the action happening). Also, it's already established that the items that weren't bolted down were flying around the cockpit, so you don't have to put it again at the end of the sentence. You could have written it as:
Good luck charms, notes, pictures, and anything that wasn’t bolted down flew around the cockpit slapping against the pilot and the controls.
You could leave the comma after cockpit if you want that pause, but I personally feel like it's just overboard.
The same could be said about the next sentence. The sentence takes a while to really make sense of it. You may want to write it as:
With a gut-wrenching lurch and a small explosion, the bullets rip through the craft and out the other side.
It makes the sentence cleaner and more understandable.
Again in the sentence at the bottom of the story beginning, "A last ditch effort to save himself..." It has too many commas that takes away from what you're trying to express. Try this:
A last ditch effort to save himself by reversing his fighter at the last minute, slamming into the enemy with his rear, worked but only barely. It left him clinging to life with what little strength he had left.
It's a great story and would like to read more of it! Besides my recommendations, I think the only other thing I would work on is to keep everything in the same tense like Icespeed said. Either keep it in present tense or in past tense (usually the best one to go with).
But it's your story, you dont have to listen to anyone :)
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Originally posted by Liberator
Yes and no.
IIRC, Macross/Mospedia/Southern Cross were different shows in Japan, but when the time came to release them in America, they were combined as one show.
BTW, it's a good action scene, just a little short.
Originally, it was just Macross that was planed. Pb is, it wasn't long enough for a full year long run, so I don't remember what channel asked Karl Macek from Harmony Gold to make it longer. They picked up Southern Cross ( a minor anime, w/o much success in Japan ) for the second part, and Mospaeda ( much more successfull, thanks to cool mechas, mostly ) as the third part. Then they mixed the three ( the end of one overlaps with the begining of the second ), changed the names, the plots ( in robotech, there's no war between the ... zentrans and meltrans, I think the name was, bah, the male and female zentradis ), stuff like that. That gives you robotech, a strange hybrid made of 3 animes that have absolutly no links excepted the fact they all use transformable mechas.
On some points, Robotech does improve on the original Macross, I think ( the universe seems more rich, with the invids, the robotech masters stuff, etc ), but on the other hand, robotech is so riddled with inconsistencies that it sometimes is very annoying.
And Robotech also suffers from an awful singer acting Minmei :p
I prefer not to compare the two, honestly. I like Robotech, but I suppose I prefer Macross.
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You're mostly right, venom, except there WAS a war between the Zentraidi and Meltraidi (Different names, the Melraidi (women) were Meltran, and the Zentraidi had a j right next to the Z, and i can't even spell it, let alone pronounce it :)).
Anyway, I'll try to continue it, but I'm sort of reluctant to, as I'm quite satisfied with the ending as-is :) But I'll try to post later with the continuation.
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When I said it was too short, I meant that you might use it for a jumping off point to write a longer, more in-depth story.