(Disclaimer: any opinions are strictly my own, to do with as you will. Keep what you find helpful, toss the rest with yesterday's paper)
(Super Disclaimer: this review is going to suffer from a serious case of review bloat. Blame it on having a 10,000 character challenge  )
As I progress through your port, I am amazed at how equal-oppoprtunity your talent is. You have a free-for-all plethora of poetry, short and long fiction, essays, opinions, and probably countless other items that I have missed in my over-enthused ramblings. You are clearly intelligent, educated, and well written; and from one piece to the next I have jumped from strippers to bank robbers, to love, to kidnapping, to the sea, and now onward to.... (drumroll please..)
SUPERVILLIANS!
This is one of the shortest non-poetry works I have stumbled across as I have been exploring your port over the past significant chunk of time. The following is going to be a much more in-depth than line-by-line teardown of everything you have written in the piece (and a good deal that you haven't, but that is in some way, shape, or form remotely related to the same subject.)
As far as the very limited word count goes, you're chosen genres leave the reader guessing: Was this piece a contest entry? Or were you merely attempting to pare it down to its base work, the bare essentials? At ninety-nine words, this is an extremely concise work, yet another piece in your port that has been edited and refined to deliver maximum impact-per-character. It truly takes a love of the craft to be able to polish a story down so successfully without losing any of the necessary details. It takes a wise hand with an editor's pen to keep the plot clear and compelling, to properly develop scene and characters, and to keep it interesting enough for a reader to *want* to continue reading. This is one of many such finely honed works present in your port. (My attention span being that of a goldfish, I have not had the opportunity to read or enjoy your longer works, which I assume to be just as worthwhile and well written as the many short gems I have perused.)
The title on this piece is a strong one. It's short, cute, appropriate, and just a little tongue-in-cheek. The title doesn't read as an afterthought, but rather, something you put a good deal of consideration and active effort into perfecting. I myself am horrible with titles, so I do much appreciate when someone has obviously put thought and time into crating something that is fitting and interesting, as opposed to opting for the easy way out and going with the first three words that fit.
Re-reading this a second time, it made me smile to see how you had used the title to further your super-short story.
I would have liked to have seen an elipses used at the end of the title as well as in the intro though. It would just add a little... something to this piece, and would serve to tie the two together.
The intro to the story works well too, both as a stand-alone, and in combination with the title. It adds that little *extra* bit of commentary that would not have worked well had you attempted to weave it into this short piece. I do not believe you can use Writing ML in the intro line (correct me if I'm wrong) but if you could, it could be cool to see your intro done all lowercase, in italics, with elipses fore and aft, to highlight your Supervillian's thoughts on the subject. (...no wonder it was such a bargain...)
As far as the actions of the lava, ''slowly winding'' seems a little... off to me. I realize that viscous liquids can be referred to as 'winding' but it does not seem appropriate for the ''lava flow'' you refer to. ''inching'', ''worming'', ''creeping'', or ''eating'', or some equally slow yet distructive descriptor may work better for this piece. ''winding'' just does not, for me, fit the tone of the rest of the work. It is peaceful and relaxed without having a propensity for destruction that I believe your remaining diction truly calls for.
I am curious as to why your supervillian needs a conference room... My supervillian references and knowledge are, admittedly, sadly limited. At the same time, I don't recall a huge number of the ''bad guys'' having conference rooms. It seems like being a supervillian is more of a solitary pursuit, more of a hidden activity, with the possible exception of Gary Oldman's ''Jean-Baptiste Emanuel Zorg'' from ''The Fifth Element''
The ''conference room'' line just raised more questions and curiosity on my part. Who is your supervillian meeting with in the conference room? Does it make sense to have a conference room inside a ''super-secret compound''? How would the supervillian invite people (aliens? mutants?) to sed conference room when there were, indeed, conferences to be had? ''Come to the place that doesn't exist, in the center of a volcano, surrounded by mindless peons and minions who seek only to please me and cater to my every whim, so we can talk about a couple of things that have been on my mind lately. P.S. - I did not like that crude comment you made about my mother at the last ''friendly get-together'' we had. Please do not forget to bring your highest S.P.F magma-block: you may find yourself needing it''?
All told, the mention of the conference room, the observation deck (nice detail there) and his bed all within the course of two sentences throws me through a loop. Are they all visible within one great room? What is the physical relationship between the three of them? What is the supervillian's bed *made* out of that it is sinking as opposed to instantly incinerating? My scientific knowledge is sadly lacking, but magma is *hot* and it seems like a typical bed would be gone in a flash at the temeratures that magma must reach.
On the ''bed'' note: It is very rarely supervillians are treated as three-dimensional and human enough as to be deserving of having a bed. Does your protagonist only get to admit to this possibly too-human weakness as they are a newbie supervillian? (How long is one considered a ''newbie'' when it comes to being a supervillian? Surely there is a longer learning curve than say, WDC, but how long until you pass out of ''novice'' stage? Do you have to have an apprenticeship, maybe kill your teacher/master and take over their evil empire as the culminating test of readiness to move on the the next level? I would think that there are all kinds of ''special situation'' knowledge that would take *years* to amass.)
Is it difficult to install an observation deck on your newly-purchased volcano without having it become too apparent that maybe something not-quite-kosher is going on there? I imagine having a huge glass bay-window must be just a little out of the question, but I can appreciate the need for some way of seeing a possible threat as it is headed on its way to your massively expensive hideaway fortress. I imagine even a supervillian must have some appreciation for the finer things in life, hence the ''beautiful, intricate stonework''
I adore the simple, matter-of-fact tone to your protagonist (? can a supervillian be a protagonist, or is he automatically relegated to being an antagonist by default?) uses in stating ''I'm going to have our realtor tortured and killed''. ''told'' in this same paragraph seems like a slightly weak word choice to me, however. There are so many other, more descriptive synonyms or closely related words. ''cursed at'' may work better, or '''muttered'' or another word choice to that effect, just to pain the scene as vividly as possible while retaining the original word count.
When the supervillian refers to their ''Number Two'', however, I can't help but think of a few *other* kinds of dirty references to this particular designation (courtesy of Austin Powers, lol). Would you consider a different word choice here? Perhaps something along the lines of ''my own personal Igor'' or ''my Number One Minion'' (for some reason this does not seem as vulgar) or ''my most trusted slave'' (''my heavy-breathing, hunchbacked second-in-command ?).
I'm not sure if a supervillain would actually order the evacuation of his compound, or just let his unlucky minions fend for themselves. In this same paragraph, I feel the phrase 'I shook my head and sadly ordered' does not flow as well as it could, possibly. Would you consider ''I shook my head sadly and ordered'' ?
My biggest point of contention in this piece stems from the use of both ''lava'' and ''magma'', as lava is by definition magma that has come to the surface. If you chose to consider his secret lair inside the volcano as being a false surface, then both instances would be ''lava''. If you chose to consider his ''recently completed super-secret compound'' as still being within the volcano, then ''magma'' would be appropriate for both instances. It's a rather piddling and scientifically-minded difference, much as that between comet/meteor/meteoroid. As precise as your writing tends to be, it surprised me that you opted for both ''lava'' and ''magma''. It seems rather akin to using a mixed metaphor, and something I just don't picture a writer of your calibre doing.
Was ''dormant'' underlined as being a part of the prompt, or to stress its pronunciation in the line of dialogue? I think it would be mroe effective with a {i} tag as opposed to {u}, but, once again, this is just my personal opinion.
This piece does not have the same degree of imagery as is present in many of your other works I have read. I understand the lack if this was written with a word cap, but if not, there are a few places I would love to see an extra word or two tossed to the reader to further paint the scene.
In the final paragraph, I think ''specify'' would better replace ''ask for''. Unless he (she?) is really, truly a beginner of a supervillian, I picture him (her?) as being far above merely ''asking''
Thankyou for sharing this great bit. I'm going to get right on to writign up that beginners' advice book. Or maybe not-can't let all the trade secrets go Write On!
(I do apologize for the seriously bloated review, although I did try to keep it mildly entertaining As far as I know, no one has claimed the 10,000 character review yet, so I thought it would be cool to attempt to make it that far on one of the shortest peices in your port.)
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 My review has been submitted for consideration in "Good Deeds Get CASH!"  .
 You responded to this review 02/16/2013 @ 1:19am EST |
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Review #3825660
