HOME | DD

penguin-commando In reply to kelayans [2009-07-08 09:56:11 +0000 UTC]

Hey, welcome back! Yeah, reestablishing services and utilities is the about biggest inconvenience involved in moving, and internet (especially broadband) always seems to take the longest to hook up.

While we haven't seen these two in action yet, you can kind of get an idea from the description and the discussion above (or below, depending on how you're set up) of their personalities and how they'd work together. When Miyuki has anything to do with the police she'll always try to evade, rather than confront them, as confrontation would mean an escalation of force and increased persistence.

Wow, 22 pages is much longer than I originally had expected, I look forward to reading it when it's ready.

👍: 0 ⏩: 1

kelayans In reply to penguin-commando [2009-07-10 22:00:09 +0000 UTC]

Well, now that I found an internet cafe relatively near by, I may be able to respond a little quicker. Still probably going to be a couple days between, but hey, it's something.

Yeah, 22 pages is a little unexpected for me too. I knew it was going to be longer than the story I wrote for OddPixels, but even I wasn't expecting this. Near as I can figure, there are a couple more plot points to hit, and then I'll be at the closing moment of the story.

As it stands in my mind at least, this may add another 10 pages, but hopefully not more than that. With this in mind, I will probably have to submit it piece by piece, or at least by chapter.

Thanks again for giving me this wonderful opportunity, I am loving the story more and more as I write on it.

👍: 0 ⏩: 1

penguin-commando In reply to kelayans [2009-07-13 08:30:55 +0000 UTC]

Public internet access is always welcome, especially if it's fast, cheap, and consistent (if you can find as much, around here there are tons of wi-fi hotspots and every last one is password protected).

You could always start uploading the first part before you get to the end; I suspect it'll have to be broken up into sections anyway. And also because I want to see it.

Incidentally, did you have any other questions about characters, background info, and so on? I'd figure everything's probably decided by now, but you never know.

👍: 0 ⏩: 1

kelayans In reply to penguin-commando [2009-07-15 00:11:51 +0000 UTC]

Uploading the story's first chapter might be a good idea at this point. I was on just yesterday and confirmed that it is currently at 24 pages. I still have a bit of work to do, a couple more plot points and tension moments to work on.

I am having a problem however, that I hope you can help with. I cannot figure out how to maintain the formatting style that I use in my Word documents when I post them here. the primary concern honestly is just keeping with my indentation. I can probably tweak the rest to look okay, but not being able to indent makes it a little difficult to read.

There are only have two questions that I can think of at this moment. The first is in about Lyta. I am currently referring to her boss as 'her C.O' I don't know if this is correct in regards to her position, if you could clear that up for me that would be wonderful. The second is about your images of Miyuki. They seem to switch between her having only one sword or having two odd black looking swords. Are they actual swords that are merely in their sheath, or are they a different ninja weapon all together?

I think that's about it, like you mentioned, the rest does seem to be fairly nailed down at the moment. I'll check back with you as soon as I am able. Thanks again P.C

👍: 0 ⏩: 1

penguin-commando In reply to kelayans [2009-07-15 06:36:14 +0000 UTC]

Wow, 24 pages is about caught up with the content of my BA thesis (the bibliography added quite a bit, on purpose). It'd probably be best to upload it in sections since you're limited to 65535 characters per deviation, which is about 13 pages of 12 pt type.

For indentation I'm not sure, it depends what you want to do - deviantart recognizes the blockquote tag for HTML, so indenting entire paragraphs is possible that way, indenting the first line of each paragraph is a display option when you view literature deviations, for some reason. If your version of Word has selectable Tab characters (which the recent ones do not, sadly) you can use the ctrl H function to replace them with four-five spaces, but that may cause other problems with line breaks and the like.

It's not terribly clear what Lyta's responsibilities are, since she doesn't live on or near an Air Force Base, and apparently doesn't have to show up every day. I figure she's attached tangentially to the agency that the Black Ops guys come from as a liason, spends part of her time at a government building in town and part of it in the field testing new equipment for suitability and joining operations in the field and so on. This is really far too much for one person to normally do, but it lets me put her in any situation she needs to be in.

That said, her squadron commander would be a Lt. Colonel, addressed as "Col. So&so" when spoken to, referred to as "Col. So&so", "the CO" or colloquially "the Old Man" when spoken of. His official address in documents would be something on the order of COMSOPS49, I suppose. A squadron is made up of Flights, although a Flight is a curious organizational unit that can be different things at different times, so it's best to avoid mentioning it; it's safe to say there's probably a major or captain in direct charge of her at least some of the time.

Miyuki has two short swords that she normally wears crossed through the back of her obi, as seen here. Each is normally carried in a scabbard, but they tend to have blackened blades to reduce visibility. You can see them here, compare to the blades of the Katana and the other knives. She might be carrying only one at any given time for any number of reasons; they are not antiques as they are meant to be replaceable in an emergency. Incidentally, my original drawings from way back when at the turn of the century have them connected by a chain running from a ring on the pommel so they could be used as an improvised kusari-gama as well, I dropped the idea in part because it was silly, but mostly because it was a pain to draw.

Hope that answers all for you, I look forward to seeing the finished work.

👍: 0 ⏩: 1

kelayans In reply to penguin-commando [2009-07-18 20:12:35 +0000 UTC]

It does and then some. I will probably save this information in my notes folder for the Miyuki story I'm writing. It will be useful if I write another, and will be good to refer to before I submit just to make sure everything is clear.

I'll see what I can do about the story's potential problem during submission. If nothing else I can try to submit random things until I get it worked out.

Thank you again for all of your help. *See tag*

👍: 0 ⏩: 0

penguin-commando In reply to Valiant188 [2009-06-15 06:28:23 +0000 UTC]

I'm not sure how I decided on the name originally, probably because there's an Avila St. here in town somewhere. If it makes you feel any better, he's actually Filipino-American so he probably speaks Spanish about as well as I do...

I'm thinking I may do another one of these things for the other characters at some point, more for fun than any practical reason.

👍: 0 ⏩: 1

Valiant188 In reply to penguin-commando [2009-06-15 20:17:11 +0000 UTC]

Avila's origin does make me feel better. My teacher was high-and-mighty because he was from Spain. Big deal.

Actually, I drew him here: [link] .

I think another bio shot would be cool. I'm working on some OCs, and that helped me figure out how to introduce them. Thanks!

👍: 0 ⏩: 1

penguin-commando In reply to Valiant188 [2009-06-16 06:05:27 +0000 UTC]

Ha, he talks just like every teacher I had until college. It's funny too, since Officer Avila is the laid back one, who can't believe they pay him to drive around all day and park in bus stops, while Officer Wu is the stickler who wants to catch that damn ninja grrrr. Or at least that's how I envisioned them.

I'd think that speaking Castilian Spanish wouldn't be all too useful in the US, since Mexicans and other Latin Americans (who are the people you'd be talking to) sound completely different.

Having the character sheet is a great way to keep things consistent; I like to introduce the characters organically within a comic first, just because it seems more natural, also there aren't any spoilers that way (although there hasn't been much continuity so far either...)

👍: 0 ⏩: 1

Valiant188 In reply to penguin-commando [2009-06-16 07:10:19 +0000 UTC]

That comic was intended to be my supposed Spanish class last semester, but I transferred to another college. Officer Avila's physique suggests that he's laid-back. It's a nice visual contrast to his and Officer Wu's personalities.

I had 4 years of Spanish in high school. Year 1 was taught by a woman born in New York City to Peruvian parents whom insisted that she was also 100% Peruvian in all respects even though she only lived there from ages 6-18. She also served in our Navy. (??) Year 2 was taught by a much less crazy lady from Puerto Rico. When her husband got a job in Singapore, we were handed over to Avila's special brand of insanity for years 3 and 4. The point: because we were not forced to use the formal, plural "you", (which is only used in Spain), we dodged the bullet and were allowed to NOT use it.

I think I'll make private character sheets until my OCs can get integrated. Then I can throw in public versions when I need a distraction.

Thanks for the tips!

👍: 0 ⏩: 0