Postmortem: Two Thousand Years Later - Page 4

Centauri18 · January 18, 2003, 20:45

Ksim3000 · January 18, 2003, 20:48

Nice!

ChrisiusMaximus · January 18, 2003, 20:48

Dont think Im going to be able to sleep tonight now

vovan · January 18, 2003, 21:13

Thanks, everybody. I think my new avatar got more positive responses than some stories here.

Centauri18 · January 19, 2003, 00:24

Boris Karloff... he was the guy who played Dracula and Frankenstein and such in thoise old movies, right? (For the benefit of those for whom the real Karloff was before their time - like me.)

vovan · January 19, 2003, 14:04

Yes, that's the man. He actually acted in over 100 films, but the best known ones are Frankenstein, Dracula, The Mummy, The Mask of Fu Manchu, The Raven, etc..

Centauri18 · January 19, 2003, 18:01

Thought so. That many movies, huh? Wow.

Jeremy 2.0 · January 25, 2003, 12:37

It's good to see someone use Civ as a springboard for a broader range of stories. I don't have a problem at all with "And then we fought these other guys" stories. It's just nice to see where your mind can take you, with Civ serving as a pinch of spice in an otherwise unrelated stew.

Since Dmitry began the story as a personal document ("The reason I decided to write this..."), do we assume he does so after the last set of events? Or is this all in his mind?

I try to stay away from mental illness as a plot device. It's more satisfying for a reader to develop motivation other than "He's crazy." Fortunately you spend so much time in the mind of the protagonist that the mental illness angle doesn't cheapen the payoff.

Horror stories can be very fun. This one reminds me of earlier works like Lovecraft and Poe. I drew outlines for four very short Civ stories I wanted to put out last Halloween. They're all horror stories in their own fashion. I guess I'll wait until this coming Halloween to post them here.

Is the sequel on its way?

vovan · January 26, 2003, 13:53

Thanks for the feedback, Jeremy.

Quote:

Originally posted by Jeremy 2.0
Since Dmitry began the story as a personal document ("The reason I decided to write this..."), do we assume he does so after the last set of events? Or is this all in his mind?

Well, it is all in his mind. I didn't quite develop the whole mental illness thing, because I found it kind of cheapening the plot, like you said. But we have reason to believe that Dmitry cannot fully evaluate the situation and actually grasp the fact that he is located in a mental hospital. The session with the psychiatrist, in which he relates the story, shapes up in his mind as a sort of report paper to Moscow. However, the formal tone assumed in the first section or two devolves into an emotional account of the events, and in the final chapters into a more obvious story of a man with a psychological disorder - just count how much more he mentiones the voices in his head as opposed to the initial chapters.

Quote:

I try to stay away from mental illness as a plot device. It's more satisfying for a reader to develop motivation other than "He's crazy." Fortunately you spend so much time in the mind of the protagonist that the mental illness angle doesn't cheapen the payoff.

Well, I generally think that mental illness stories tend to be "cheap," like you said, but I just wanted to try something different from the classical "we beat the bad guys" plot and see what I can make of this.

Quote:

Horror stories can be very fun. This one reminds me of earlier works like Lovecraft and Poe.

Why, thank you, this is the first time I am compared to Poe, even though I used to read my own stories to my real-life friends in Russia, and they used to compare me to the Strugatsky brothers, for there used to be a lot of humour in them.

Quote:

Is the sequel on its way?

Well, the sequel is going to be a classic civ3 story. I already have the outline, and the first couple of chapters ready, but like you, I think it would be better if I wait till it is finished before posting it, and that might be a ways off.

ChrisiusMaximus · January 26, 2003, 19:33

I just want to say once again what a fantastic piece of writing this is, I know that my approach does not analyse like Jeremy 2.0, the cotext etc but nonetheless I offer my praise and thanks for your sterling effort

vovan · January 26, 2003, 21:01

Thanks again for your support, Chris. All of the good words just make me write the next story so much faster.

Centauri18 · January 26, 2003, 23:52

Damn. You're ahead by one.

vovan · February 21, 2003, 16:40

I thought I'd give this baby a bump, since it's been a long time since the finals, and people might start forgetting the plot before the runoff.

(Yeah, you got it - shameless bump.

)

ChrisiusMaximus · February 21, 2003, 19:16

No shame in it from where Im standing vovan

ChrisiusMaximus · February 6, 2004, 22:09

About time this was brought back to life err I mean to the top

BUMP

SKILORD · February 8, 2004, 01:13

I must confess I never read it before.

Magnificent.

vovan · February 8, 2004, 21:57

Thanks Chris for bumping, and SKI for reading.

It's been a while, and have yet to produce the prequel I had promised.

KuriousK724 · February 20, 2004, 15:44

well when are you going to produce the sequal?

vovan · February 20, 2004, 18:32

Well, the thing is that I had written a rather big portion of the next story related to this one, while I was still finishing postmortem. But I had lost interest to it rather quickly and have been struggling with restarting for a while, and still can't get over the "I'll just reread what I got one more time to perfect it a bit more and then get going with the next chapter" syndrome.

I am really stuck on this one battle-scene... I suck at writing those, and it never comes out the way I want it to. But it is really important to the story that it reads a special way... Maybe I'll try my hand at a couple really short one-battle stories and see if I can get better at it. I'll also watch some battle scenes from the Lord of the Rings, and some other movies - these always help.

What I had in mind for that other story is completely different from this one, though, in genre and style, so I wasn't sure how much interest it would generate... Additionally, I have been struggling to make enough time to even relax from school-work, not to speak of actually using my brain for something extra-curricular, like writing (continuing) a story would entail. In a couple of weeks, there should be a bit less work though so I will try once again to continue what I had started a year ago... Maybe...

Paddy · February 20, 2004, 18:39

Vovan,

You do present a good case here...

May I ask what are you studying?

vovan · February 20, 2004, 18:47

Computer Science.

Say, Paddy, I notice there are no comments from you about the story. I'd much appreciate it if you read it and told me what you think about it.

DarkCloud · July 12, 2005, 14:38

So, this person injured himself?

And there were no other dead people at the mine?

And what about Claw...

I can understand that much of this is imagined and agree with your treatement of Svetlana at the end... But-

Is there any chance that you could make at least some things more obvious in the tale's ending... because otherwise a good deal of information is left hanging- I mean, you can still make everything obscure, but to not address the mine-deaths, or wolves, or exactly how the mortician was injured leaves too much hanging.

The writing is good- but the ending sort of 'floats' with too many loose ends.