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The combined Ordeal/Choice was pretty much what I was suspecting - would the Lone Power try and possess it or something? "I can be better than wizardry~"

That, and in the idea I'd been kicking around (based on this series - and I think I'm the only person on the Net who's actually summarized the books I want to cross over WITH Young Wizards, to boot. Everything else is just reviews, or clips of the books on the author's own website .-.), we'd have this Wizternet befriending humanity while learning about wizardry, and perhaps directly from the peridexis at that!

And, more to the point, the Lone Power would have a chance at getting "inside its head", with that splitting and remerging going on; employing that Great Firewall would get fewer wizards up in arms than having people send out bombs.

Also, humanity's own Choice is probably going to be relevant here...

You know what I'm rubbish at? Editing. For some reason, while I can churn out a novel-length story (on five occasions, in under 30 days), I have a nightmare of a time trying to sit down and edit it into something worth having - or, for instance, worth publishing (that long-time dream of any writer).

Part of the reason is that, well, publishing a novel sounds hard. If I plunge myself into editing (which often = completely rewriting), only for no-one to ever read it... what's the point?

So we come to this thread, a neat weaponisation of elevator pitches in the war against apathy. Below are titles, first lines, and five-second summaries of each of my four candidate novels (they're all NaNos, so they all exist as ~50K-word stories). What I'm hoping you will do is read through them, click on the link to the survey, and select which of the four you'd be most likely to read if it was published. :) (It's literally just the one question - no name or anything. Takes about ten seconds.)

And then what I'm hoping you'll do is write up your own title-firstline-elevatorpitch post, scrape together a Google Form, and post it so that I (and everyone else) can say what we think of your ideas. And maybe that'll inspire you, too, to get down to some heavy editing, and eventually seeing your name on the cover of a paperback down at the local bookshop. :)

---

The Next Great Wizard

The world is a mirror – you only get out what you put in, it's prone to deceiving the unwary eye, and sometimes you can walk straight through it. Or is that just me?

Portal fantasy. A young man falls into a fantasy world behind the mirrors, where he is hailed as the Next Great Wizard of prophecy. Or possibly as the new Dark Lord. Only time will tell.

The Kraken-Knights of Wintertide

The sky-farms lay blue under the sun, waiting for the harvest.

Fantasy. Magical war with flying giant squid, medieval warlord Santa, and lots of puns.

The Words of the Voice

Out of nothing, the Voice spoke Itself.

Science-based creation myth written in pseudo-scriptural style, with commentary by one member of an extremely fractious fictional academic community.

Gravity's Embrace

She sauntered towards me, wearing nothing but a smile and three thousand tonnes of warship.

Soft sci-fi. The pilot of an experimental spaceship is kidnapped, and then he and his abductor are both kidnapped again - but no-one seems to know precisely what experiments his ship was running. Least of all himself.

The Survey - Which one do you like the look of?

hS

I think to an extent the Lone Power is inherent in the undertaking: It's people, and their reactions to Wizternet basically taking over the world. Nobody's going to like that, despite the fact that it's objectively better (or so we can assume, since Wizternet can calculate the outcomes to almost arbitrary precision).

As we know, an Ordeal almost always involves a physical manifestation of the Lone One, so... are we looking at an overshadowed politician or rabble-rouser? But that's an easy fix for Wizternet - it can simply cut the culprit off from the communications network.

... here's a thought: what if Wizternet had a combined Ordeal and Choice? It's a new species, after all. We're essentially looking at the same situation as the mobiles, still/again.

That lets the Lone One come in as an outside force, and just straight-up offer Wizternet... what? One option is mind-control - either tech, or power to do it with wizardry. If the humans won't accept what's good for them, why not make them listen? It's only a temporary measure - you can take the lid off gradually, when you're ready.

Or, if we're going full Choice: death. Wizternet knows what death is, and would prefer to avoid it if possible (it is, after all, the only one of its kind). This may actually tie back into the first offer: the humans are the best way to keep its infrastructure running, and surely they, with their petty squabbles and embarassingly short lifespans (plus their obsession with each other's naked bodies), are an acceptible sacrifice to secure Wizternet's future. It doesn't even have to be full mind control, just enough to keep them calm... soothed... it's practically what they've been using the Internet for anyway, so where's the harm...?

The problem/story is that rejecting that offer will just make the Lone One mad, and while It likes to let people get into their own messes (per Roschaun's Ordeal story), It's perfectly happy to nudge things along. I'm sure there's enough generals and presidents who'd be suggestible enough to start dropping EMPs in an effort to bring down this new and obviously hostile life-form.

So how does Wizternet win that one? Hmm. I would go with direct appeal to the population of Earth: I'm here, I'm alive, I want to help you, please don't kill me...

Just as long as it doesn't get it into its head to pull a full Dairine and add: if you read this Oath, you'll be able to help yourselves, too... >:D

hS

...wouldn't happen to be my best friend, would it? When I first went over to her house, we were going to make dinner, just the two of us, and she assured me she knew how to cook pasta. We ended up having to scrub the pot out and I showed her how to do it from step one.

I think we all have one of those 'burned the pasta water' stories. :P

I dunno what mod SoS is. You can definitely run around in just a breech cloth in the vanilla game. People tend to be very displeased with you, though.

I went Breton with my first character to take advantage of the magic resistance, because I planned to be a melee fighter (axes are cool!) and figured it would be useful to keep mages from owning me until I could get close enough to wreck them. Success was limited. Ice magic is the worst.

Nords have cold resistance, though, so maybe your guy doesn't mind it so much.

If Khajiit is Khajiiting properly, he will be putting holes in the squishy mages before they even know he is there. {= 3

~Neshomeh

Also, I will have the red berry coating on my cake, thanks!

~Neshomeh

"Hi!" she said to them excitedly.

She'd gotten the invitation to this "speed dating" event, and she'd thought it was a good idea to come. She wasn't really looking for romance, but she'd only been in HQ for a few weeks now, and thought she'd come and get to know some people. Before heading down, she'd given her mane a more careful trim than usual.

(( Now, being flirted with by Jacques: - Once Peregrin had realized what was happening, it'd set him to reminiscing about his youth and also explaining he's not that interested. - Taq would be kinda weirded out by this - Kk'kttak's reaction would be along the lines of "crazy humans" and being pretty uninterested if/when he noticed the attempt - Farah would likely flirt back a bit, though it probably wouldn't go too far. - Florian is Not Interested. They're also basically a Dalek with a bunch of fire hoses and water canons and such attached, and so probably not prime flirting material. ))

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZD71JeX4Vk0

Loosely based off a true story.
------

In a moment of pure and utter shame, Jordan picked up his phone, and called Harris.

"Oh hey Jordan, wait just a moment so I can put you on speakerphone. I'm in the car right now."

As he listened to Harris' fumbling in the car, Jordan grimaced.

"All good now. What's up?"
"So, I tried making pasta, and it came out horrible. Got any advice or special tips I should know? I know you don't cook a lot, but you gotta know something."
"I mean yeah, sure there's ways to cook well, but pasta? You just take a pot of water and boil it, and shove some spaghetti or something in. It can't be that bad."
"It really, really was that bad. Can you please please please just give me some instructions? I'm making penne for Aaron tonight."
"How can you mess up pasta terribly? It's two ingredients. Pasta and water."
"The pasta caught fire; just tell me what to do."
"Wo-HAH WAIT HAHH WHAT HOW HAH HAH HAA-"

Jordan hung up while Harris was cackling, and poured the ashes in the pot into the trash. Another night of takeout, he decided.

1) I do have a typo in Gibb's backstory. This is slightly embarrassing, but LibreOffice doesn't think either is a word, so I failed on that, and my beta only knows it as Dulce Base.

2) I chose World 1.567 because I was unsure how to label a world I invented just for this.

3) Nirvana was mostly trying to get at the Hydramatic drive(a system for navigating space, time, and the other in Daniel Pinkwater's novel "Borgle") in Bradbury's van, and figured that he would not part with it without some incentive. Also, the amount of badfic out there is staggering, and the PPC doesn't seem to picky about recruits.

4) I wrote Gibbs' story in a terse manner and Bradbury's in a verbose manner, so as to indicate some of their personality. This may have been a mistake.

Would this fic be another Valcentica, as in the fic is so in-name-only it becomes original fiction? If not, name an example of this in any fandom.

Ce’rana of Borune glared at the pan as yet another of these thin shells tore and muttered irritably as she was forced to scrape it into the filling garbage can. “Ridiculous thing,” she grumbled, reaching for her bowl of batter to begin the process once more. “How is it that you are so fragile and people can still make you work?”

She sighed as she ladeled it into the pan. “The only reason I bother with you is that someone refused to share. If he wanted it all for himself, he could easily have waited for me to leave - but no, he had to show off how well he could do this. On that note, how is it that he makes it seem effortless to keep you in one piece? Is there some mysterious technique that I have failed to discover yet?”

The Dryad managed to become more and more irritated as she spread the batter around, perhaps a bit thicker than was strictly necessary this time. “And if I were to ask him how it is that he makes it seem so easy, all he would say is that he has more practice than I do. So if there is some secret that I am unaware of, he would not tell me, merely leave me to figure it out on my own, infuriating thing that he is.”

She glanced over at the tub of Nutella, which had been locked up and covered in chains until Alex came back. “And this. I am not that bad with chocolate, Alex. There really is no need to take such measures with it whenever you leave the room. As though I could not get past something so simple.” She chuckled to herself at that; he had no idea of her past hobbies, obviously, or he would have taken measures a bit less flimsy than a pair of two-pin locks.

Of course, that was just too tempting to the IO. The container fell from its shelf, popping open when it hit the floor, dragged by the weight of the chains she had left around its base. The resulting mess spattered all across the floor.

Ce’rana simply stared, first at the goopy brown mess, then at the garbage can full of failed crepes, then the shell that was presently trying to burn.

“What smells like burning crepes?” Alex stepped into the room, a cheerful grin on his face which faded immediately as he beheld the absolute mess on his side of the room. “Ce’rana. What did you do?”

She looked up at him helplessly. “I…” Words failed for her for a moment before she came up with a simple, effective answer. “I have no idea.”

Alex walked over and sighed. “If I make you a crepe, will you clean up your mess? I was hoping to get sleep at some point today.”

The tiny agent looked around for a moment, taking stock of exactly how much cleaning she would have to do. Well, I suppose this is mostly just scrubbing the floor, she decided. “That sounds like a very good idea. Though would you be offended if I ask how it is you manage to make them not fall apart?”

“Sì, certo.” He moved in to carefully pour and spread the next crepe. “It is all about being gentle and slow. You just have to wait until it’s nice and ready, then carefully slide the rod under the delicate batter. Get it nice and loose, then pull it up and quickly flip it over. Then, it’s finally time to fill it.” He began to spoon the leftover nutella onto the crepe, getting it ready.

Ce’rana close to ignore the massive pile of hopefully-accidental innuendo (though she couldn’t avoid what she hoped was a small smirk) in favor of leaning a little closer to make sure she could see exactly how Alex was going about getting the shell ready to be flipped.

Once the nutella was in the shell, Alex folded it over and easily scooped it onto a plate. “Merda,now I want one.” He poured out another shell’s worth of batter as he offered the plate to Ce’rana.

She took it with a smile, then stepped away to grab a pair of forks and a second plate. “Thank you, Alex,” she said sweetly.

“Va Bene.” He started to get the shell ready to flip, smiling softly. “Don’t feel bad about not knowing how to do it easily. I’ve been learning how to do it properly since I was six years old. With that much practice, it was bound to get easier.”

And just like that, the shell tore. Ce’rana couldn’t keep herself from breaking into laughter at his expression.

“Oh, figlio di-”

You know abridged series? When animes got a little regime, and YOutubers bring back extra snark to compensate, like DBZ or Yugioh, or Sword Art Online (massively improving source material for the former)?

Well here's one about Saint Seiya, Les Chevaliers du Zodiaque in French, the language used in this one, goign through the Sanctuary arc. English sub included, of course.

Come on, you know you want to watch it.

Would making the Earth astahfrith BE its Ordeal? How would it confront the Lone Power - and how far would It go to take it down?

And the hints of shipping present from the start... until the 'hints' part was dropped. Dang that was a long road. Makes the conclusion that much sweeter. Congrats for this interlude.

Sorry I can't really provide more detailed concrit.

Elanor looked up at her mother, tiny brow furrowed in confusion.

"You blow out the candle and you make a wish," the Aviator repeated. "It's a—ELANOR, NO—"

Elanor licked her hand while her mother was talking and smashed her palm down on top of the candle wick, extinguishing it. She giggled and clapped her hands together. "Again!"

"Maybe we should just eat the cake," Zeb suggested hurriedly, and Elanor nodded in agreement.

"Cake," she crooned, and grabbed a handful of cake. Her mouth was soon covered in sticky blue frosting.

The Aviator grinned and shook her head. "Here you go, kiddo," she said, cutting a slice around the missing fistful of cake and setting it on Elanor's high chair tray. "All for you. Just don't get any in your..." She trailed off as Elanor promptly mashed a handful of cake on top of her head. "...Hair."

Zeb laughed and accepted a slice for himself. "You're going to miss her doing that," he said, elbowing the Aviator gently.

"Yeah," the Aviator said, watching her daughter proceed to smear cake around the tray. "I will."