GeorgeGlass

If it makes you feel any better, a counterpoint story: My dad has those "Former Prisoner of War" license plates on his car. Two or three times since he got them, he's reached the drive-through window at McDonald's or Starbucks and been told that his order has already been paid for by the customer ahead of him in line.

Except that this site doesn't have underage character restrictions (except regarding stories about real people)--it just requires tags if you have underage characters having sex. (Which is why AFF shall have my eternal allegiance. ) So no "dodge attempts" are necessary. I'd never heard of the Harkness test. Good to know. And Kes is a good example of a character who is "underage" by our chronological standards but who is clearly physically and mentally mature. If I wrote a story about her that involved sex, I would definitely not be inclined to use the Minor1 tag, and I can't imagine anyone feeling deceived because I didn't.

As one who frequently (and shamelessly) posts stories in which underage characters have sex, I'd say it's best to err on the side of caution. If you're describing the sex scenes well enough for readers to visualize them, then they're going to "see" an adolescent having sex, regardless of the character's chronological age. So IMO, tag that mother. BTW, I would say the same thing if the character had a child's mind and an adult's body instead of the other way around. Because presumably, the character's dialogue would be like that of a child rather than an adult, and that would be enough to justify the tag in at least some readers' minds. The warning at the beginning is a good idea too, of course. I'd probably do both. (And I often do.)

IMO, one thing that can make villains especially hateable is having some kind of justification for their heinous actions that their followers or supporters accept. It could a racist ideology, some kind of moral relativism, some argument that they are serving the greater good--something that sounds reasonable enough (from some point of view) that others will grab onto it, either as a reason to follow the villain or as an excuse to do the awful things the villain wants. A good real-life example is Ross William Ulbricht, who used the username "Dread Pirate Roberts" (a character beloved by many) and spouted libertarian ideology to make himself look like some sort of Internet freedom fighter while using the darknet to make tens of millions of dollars selling illegal drugs and, allegedly, arranging contract killings.

[spoilers below] Remember that Elsa is recovering from being poisoned--she's not quite back to her full strength yet. Nonetheless, things are about to get interesting. I told a friend recently that I think of Anna as the Batman to Elsa's Superman. Elsa has her powers, but Anna has to rely on--and develop--what wits and talents she has. Glad you are continuing to enjoy this story. We're in the home stretch now, so there's plenty of excitement to come!

I generally prefer to reserve that way of writing dialogue for stories in which I want to emphasize that some characters speak differently from others. Otherwise, I get concerned that it will get old for the reader.

Re: "Comfort and Joy" Thank you! I hope you'll like the rest. Shoot--I didn't even think about that. I suppose I could remove those tags and then restore them when I post the chapter(s) to which they apply, but the summary is so long that I'm willing to bet I couldn't get the tags back in (because tags are initially "free" but, if you edit them, they count toward the character limit).

Exactly. Like the saying goes, "It doesn't matter what they're saying as long as they're talking about you." Seriously though, provoking a visceral response--and the fact that the person kept reading up to and even beyond that point--is the mark of a good writer, IMO.

FYI, the only reason I'm not participating is that I'm already working on a Christmas story (which doesn't qualify because it's not a one-shot) that I probably won't finish by Christmas. But all the best in your holiday-themed endeavors!

Thanks! I'm not planning any sequels to this story, but I have more Phineas and Ferb stories in the works.

So...better late than never, right? Tricky Treats - DirtyAngel I kind of felt like this was a series of inside jokes that I didn't have enough background to get. But I still liked "It looks like a baby’s arm holding an apple!" and the hilariously non-sequituriffic "back at the ranch" bit. And is "I’m your number one fan!" a Misery reference? (Good on you if it is.)

Are any of you familiar with a podcast series called Friday Night Fanfiction? Basically, they find bad fanfic and read it aloud as a sort of drinking game. Anyone who trips on a word, laughs, or otherwise interrupts their reading has to drink. So imagine my surprise to hear total strangers reading my story “Rated F: A Phineas and Ferb Sex Comedy” aloud! They did a lot of goofily inappropriate voices and accents and such (although I liked hearing Buford’s lines in the voice of Carl from Aqua Teen Hunger Force), but I actually found a lot of it really funny. And it was gratifying that even though they all had a problem with the notion of an explicit sex story about preteen cartoon characters--which was the reason they chose it to read on the show--a lot of them liked the story anyway. (As one of them said, “I want to stay mad at this, but I just can’t.”) Ultimately, I think my reaction to their reading was the same as their reaction to my story: I kept thinking that I should be offended by it, but it was so funny that I didn’t care. In fact, I felt kind of flattered by it, kind of the way some musicians do when they find out that Weird Al Yankovic has parodied one of their songs. And what was especially flattering is that they picked one of my stories instead of something from JayDee.

1. Thank you. 2. *sigh* Did I mention *sigh*? But don't lose hope. Joy can't be contained forever...

It's been a year now since the plot bunnies pinned me down with my own bedsheets, jumped all over my face, and demanded that I write an epic Frozen story. Rather than suffer the Death of a Thousand Hops, I relented and started writing. Now, 372 days and 15 chapters later, the end is in sight. So far, I've given the bunnies everything they want: action, romance, mystery, comedy, drama, drinking songs, sexual innuendo, sexual not-so-innuendo, the works. All they demand now is a spectacular grand finale, the tying up of loose ends, a bit more gettin'-it-on, and some laughter and tears, and then they'll let me go. I will accede to their demands. But I know the truth: that they are almost certainly lying their floppy little ears off. I don't think they have any intention of letting me go--I think they are going to make me write a SEQUEL. Oh, God, I think one of them just hopped by and saw me posting this message instead of writing chapter 16. Gotta go!

Thanks! I almost didn't end the story that way; my original plan was to end it with the breakup and then Stacy and Candace resuming their friendship the way it had been before. But the fact that Phineas and Ferb itself is now over made me decide not to just restore the status quo, or to keep the three-way romance alive, but to end with the characters taking things in a new direction all together.

Wow. That's quite the compliment! I do make an effort to try to keep the action moving forward and not to get bogged down in excessive description. I know this approach doesn't please everyone--Charles Dickens and Ann Rice have plenty of fans. But, maybe because I write a lot of fanfiction, I tend to try to pace stories as though they were movies or TV shows. So glad you liked it. If only I could remember where I got that idea...

Thank you! I was a little concerned that some readers might consider the anal thing a tease, and it seems I was right. My main point in including it was to show that Candace and her friends still have territory to explore; they're once again trying a new kind of relationship, and, along with it, new ways of enjoying it. In any case, I don't see myself adding to this story in the near future. I've got too many others to write! Thanks for the review.

That's the whole idea. Sort of inspired by the episode of Seinfeld in which George decides to start doing the opposite of everything he usually does. Yup. Well, she is kind of a slu...um, slumber-party enthusiast. In more ways than one! Glad you're enjoying the story so far. More to come!

Right Like Rain -- KoKoa_B I’ve always liked the idea of a Halloween party at which not everyone in attendance needs a costume. The use of punctuation and some of the sentence constructions were somehwat confusing; for example, where Tabitha says, “Lightning, ass,” I had to stop reading for a few seconds to figure out that “ass” meant “you ass.” Also, there are a few sentences of dialogue in which it isn't obvious who is speaking. As for the ending: [spoilerS] Wow, when you use that MCD tag, you don't fool around. But I liked the ending, because even though it was heartrending, it made sense in the context of the story and yet was a complete surprise. Generally, when a writer introduces you to an ensemble like this one, you assume that this is the first of a whole series of stories, because that's how it usually goes with TV shows, book series, comics, etc. Killing virtually all of the characters off at the end of the story is a great way to subvert that trope.

I now do the "find paragraph marks and replace them with manual line breaks" thing so often that I decided to make a macro for it. In case any folks here would like to have it, here's the code: Sub ParaToLineBr() ' ' ParaToLineBr Macro ' ' Selection.Find.ClearFormatting Selection.Find.Replacement.ClearFormatting With Selection.Find .Text = "^p" .Replacement.Text = "^l" .Forward = True .Wrap = wdFindContinue .Format = False .MatchCase = False .MatchWholeWord = False .MatchWildcards = False .MatchSoundsLike = False .MatchAllWordForms = False End With Selection.Find.Execute Replace:=wdReplaceAll End Sub And here's a webpage with instructions for installing macros: http://www.gmayor.com/installing_macro.htm

Death has an Ugly Face -- Tahn In horror movies, you always wonder why the dumb teenager runs for the basement. So I like the fact that this second-person scenario provides some logic to support that move. But I'm left with two questions: 1. Why is the story called “Death has an Ugly Face” when we never see the creatures’ faces? and 2. What WILL I do? All Hallow’s Eve -- ThinLizzie It's hard enough to write rhyming poetry that's cute or funny; it's even harder to write rhyming poetry that (successfully) evokes more serious images or feelings. So good job.

If scuba diving is something he's actually into, that could explain it right there: Maybe he got the bends at some point, and a nitrogen bubble caused a stroke somewhere in his frontal lobes.

Yeah, I kind of thought I was done with the Phinbella stories (at least for a while), but then I saw that Isabella-as-werewolf pic and realized that this seemed like a fresh way of getting them together. Thanks for the comment!

From the Ashes -- Tahn This is solid work. It's hard to capture a whole lifetime in a short story, so I'm impressed that you managed it without the story either seeming rushed or becoming bloated. Nice descriptive details; the fire scene in particular really sticks in my mind because you included details that others might not think of (eg, flames dripping from the crosstimbers, the way the stairs smoke before they catch fire). Also, [spoilerS] I'm a sucker for a happy ending, and yours was tearfully happy. Thanks for a good read. Nightmare’s Dream -- Perverted Pages Makes the interesting point that a modern vampire might be very much like a serial killer. This one chooses victims of a specific type, and he has a prepared location to which he takes them, a ritualistic way of killing them, and a preferred means of disposing of the bodies. The story has some language issues, mainly run-on sentences and a few confusing constructions (eg, “She heard her name whispered and gasped”). But I liked the bit at the end about the good old days, which gives the reader a valuable bit of perspective on how different a modern vampire’s circumstances would be.