*Le Gasp*! It's the 6LCF Two/Bi-Monthiversary!

Happy two/bi-monthiversary, guys! Howzit goin' (I do hope you're all doing well and haven't been, oh, trampled by enraged hippogriffs or anything in the past day)?
I have the pleasure of announcing that today, June 29, 2010, officially marks the end of the second month that the Six Little Curly Fries blog has been in existence (and it's spelled with an "e," not an "a." Another one of my fanfiction pet peeves... But you don't need to hear about that)! It's been a great two months; I hope the blog'll keep going strong.
I've got a little pic for you that doesn't really have anything to do with two-monthiversaries, but it does pertain to blogs and I think it refers to a problem that, unfortunately, the 6LCF do seem to have. I'll just let the picture do the talking, 'kay?

Sorry about the usage of bad language; however, I think we're all mature enough to take it, aren't we?
Oh, and I think it's interesting to mention that I found this picture on another Blgospot blog that's been going on for years now, and apparently they celebrated their two-monthiversary as well. Woot, kindred spirit (of course, their blog had readers from practically the beginning, and ours totally doesn't; oh, well)!
Anyway.
What else is there to talk about?

Have any of you ever read The Tough Guide to Fantasyland, by Diana Wynne Jones? It basically parodies "regular" fantasy by listing a whole bunch of tropes (go visit TVTropes.com to learn what a trope is; but don't blame me if you end up on that website the entire day--the place is quite addicting)--or cliches, but "tropes" is a cooler term--in alphabetical order, then treating them as if the book was a guidebook for a tour through "Fantasyland" (aka your generic fantasy, well, land).
Everything from "apostrophes" (how do you pronounce things like "Ga'orad"?) to the "reek of wrongness" is there, and the book is hilarious. Especially the reek of wrongness. So go read it if you haven't. 


So... I've been writing ("been writing" in this case meaning spending forever thinking of a good plot idea and then writing one chapter in a frenzy of inspiration) this one, erm, story (it's not a novel yet), and I was wondering if you nice people could read what I've written (heh, all less-than-one-thousand-words of it)? Pwetty pwease? 
Yeah, Virgil's the legit writer, but I do like to exercise my writing muscle once in a while. Not that anything good really comes out of it... -.-
I'm a better editor anyway (you should hear me when I'm reading fanfiction! There's only been a few where the grammar's really good; the story can be wonderful, but the authors always forget commas and semicolons and they don't know that if you're writing "[dialogue]," [person] said, you must put a COMMA after whatever the dialogue is and not a period!! ARGH.
For example:
"I don't like this." Bob said.
Even though it's supposed to be:
"I don't like this," Bob said.
See? A COMMA, not a period! 
But anyway, moving on...).
So, yeah. After my questions, I shall show you my great opus (ha!).


1) Have you read The Tough Guide to Fantasyland?
2) (After you read my excerpt) Do you think it's okay? Any suggestions?
3) (After you read my excerpt) Do you think I should continue this?
4) Does fanfiction grammar make you cry? Do you read fanfiction?
5) Are you happy that 6LCF has reached two months old?
6) Do you think we'll make it to a year? Two years?


All right, here's the excerpt (*hides*)

Inside their citadel-structure in another world, the gods were squabbling amongst themselves. This was predictable, given the fact that they couldn’t do much besides mess around with the lives of mortals or bicker. Since they were a bored with their meddling at the moment—they’d just finished several famines, along with some so-called “natural” disasters, and a few bouts of plague here and there—the only course left was to fight.

                This fight did, however, pertain somewhat to the aforementioned divine meddling. Right now, a few of the younger—though, since they were gods, “younger” is only a relative term—gods were comparing the aftermaths of various disasters they had caused among the mortals, all the while sitting comfortably in an assortment of squashy armchairs.

                “See, now that takes some skill right there. My eruption wasn’t just a few flashy bangs and a big cloud of smoke; that thing really hurt those mortals. It wiped out an entire city!”

                “Yeah, but yours happened ages ago. At least my tidal wave was recent.”

                “What are you two talking about? Plague is actually subtle, right. Sickness totally beats either of your bitty disasters. What I caused can wipe out whole countries of mortals.”

                The debates went on for some time in this vein.

                To the gods, mortals were just things to play with. Their deaths did not directly affect the gods—though the humans certainly thought they did; it was funny just what the human imagination could cook up from a few chance encounters and a lot of large-scale rumbling—and they seemed to reproduce quickly enough. Therefore, the gods’ reasoning went something along the lines of, “Well, we can’t really feel guilty for them, since they’re not our kind, and they’ll die anyway soon enough; why not stir up a bit of fun and make the deaths a little jazzier?”

                It was a good thing, really, that the mortals had no idea what the gods really did. Otherwise there may have been mass abandonment of religion, and then civilization might’ve crashed.

                Meanwhile, the arguments were still going on, with a few of the older, slightly-more-sophisticated-in-their-meddling-methods gods joining in. Their comments were of the same variety as the previous examples—just replace “volcano” with “earthquake,” and so on.

                Then, inevitably, perhaps, the conversation turned into a discussion of how to mess with mortals’ lives in new and more interesting ways. Said conversation went something like this:

                “All of you just keep mentioning the same kinds of ways. I mean, there’s only so many ways you can kill those mortals, right? It’s getting really tiresome hearing the same things over and over—volcano, plague, war, famine. Why don’t we think of some different ways to stir up some excitement? We’ve certainly got the time.”

                There was a slight pause after this comment.

                “I do like making earthquakes, though…”

                “Oh, no, I don’t mean we completely stop doing what we’re doing. No, it’s way too much fun to quit. I was just thinking, maybe we could do a, well, separate project, if you will. Think up a really good way to make it interesting for the mortals. After that, we can go back to the tidal waves and such. And if we can’t think of a good one, we can also go back. Some originality couldn’t hurt, could it? Either way, it’s pretty much a win-win situation.”

                “Okay. Sounds like a good plan.”

                “The problem is, what are we going to do?”

                “Something big. Exciting.”

                “Yeah, obviously.”

                “Um… Make one of the mortals get a brainwave and invent something cool?”

                “No. Too tame.”

                There was another, longer pause. The gods were thinking deeply, all enthralled with the idea of making even more trouble for the poor, unsuspecting mortals.

                “You know…”

                “What?”

                “Tell us!”

                “I was thinking, what if we messed with their minds a bit? Set them up—not quite a war, exactly. I was reading some of their literature the other day—”

                “What’s so interesting about that stuff? Though, I am curious, what do mortals write about?”

                “As I was saying, I was reading some of their—what do they call the things? ‘Legends’?—I was reading their writing, and there was lots of stuff about ‘heroes’ and ‘fighting evil’ and so on. Most of it was fake, obviously—I mean, real, pure evil very rarely exists anywhere; at least, I don’t think it does—but what if we fiddled with a few minds and made ourselves a ‘hero’ to fight off the ‘evil’?”

                “The hero’s on the good side? Or something?”

                “Yeah.”

                “So… It’s like a war, but with clearly defined sides.”

                “Uh-huh. In fact, some of the literature involves big armies too.”

                “Oh, you read mortal writing too?”

                “When I’m bored, yeah.”

                “Oooh, I’ve always thought mind-meddling was fun.”

                “Sounds like a plan to me.”

                “I second that.”

                “When do we start?”

                And so the gods started to outline their master plan to recreate one of the various cheap fantasy novels that one of their number had enjoyed reading so much.

                You really had to pity the poor unsuspecting sods that the gods chose to play the parts.