Review of chapter "Chaos and Disorder" from
Shieldage1. If I had to guess, there might be Common Law about monster-slaying. I'd have to reread "Extraordinary Popular Delusions and the Madness of Crowds" for such stories. Some of the Norse sagas—Njal's Saga, for example—have strong legal components. The more important consideration for Arthur Branch and Jack McCoy would be that their prosecuting a Slayer for the killing of a vampire would be much harder to arrange than the prosecution they just went through. Just imagine what the New York Post would do with the story; Arthur would lose his next election. Now, the Judge might issue a contempt citation, but even judges aren't immune to public furor. Consider the fictional court case the arraignment judge mentioned, In Re Kringle. You must have seen "Miracle on 42nd Street." Oh, now I remember Arthur's line; it was just an acknowledgment that humans and vampires are always at war.
2. I really should have broken up the story into chapters, and included a link to the "doink-doink" sound effect at appropriate places. I think TtH formatting doesn't allow that sort of CSS aural styles. (
http://blog.rickbreslin.com/extras/doink-doink.mp3)
3. I don't think I gave Lennie enough wisecracks. I just tried to obey the rules of L&O. Everybody can hold his own with an insult or a snarky comment. Somebody commented that the characters took their introduction to the supernatural suspiciously well, but then these are New Yorkers. There's only one sort of event that panics them. If I say any more, I might get death threats from some of the readers again.
4. Can you imagine this case going to a jury? I dare say that if Jack couldn't get Helene to take the plea, he might have had someone stake her despite his misgivings. Yes, they might have been able to use Harmony as an example, but Kate has no reason to know her. Yes, I did give the story a "Patty Duke" vibe—"Identical Cousins", but I tried to add as few coincidences as I could get away with.
5. The "Alloy chain" is a joke that appears in a few of my stories. Any family-friendly nightclub named after an alloy will end up vampire-infested.
6. Well, the only address that could actually exist is "666 1st Ave." Jones St. and Great Jones St. are each only one block long. Bleecker Street would have to extend into Brooklyn to have a five-digit number. I faked those address for the same reason that all TV phone numbers are in the 555 exchange. I used 666 twice for its sinister connotations. I grew up in New York, a mile from the Fountain Avenue landfill; in the summers, when the wind came from the wrong direction, Canarsie suffered from it. I think I know the city pretty well. Part of the reason L&O has lasted for 20 years is that New York is almost a character in the story. One thing I feel a little guilty about is that I named the school the Jane Jacobs Montessori School, and I only realized later that at the time I wrote the story Jane Jacobs was still alive. It's a good name for a school, but you shouldn't name schools or airports or other places after the living.
7. Yes, I screwed up the formatting. I took my original USENET post and copied it to TtH. I should have done a better job at posting. And my home site's HTML version uses CSS1 tricks for formatting; these wouldn't transfer. <hr class="scenechange" /> wouldn't work here. I could almost hope there would be a standard fanfic.css file available at this site. I think I'd better reformat these. I just do C-u 9999 C-x f in Emacs...
Review By [
Shieldage] • Date [4 May 09] • Rating [10 out of 10]
