h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

Entry: Splat - A53173857
Author: Tibley Bobley - U170471

Here's my something written from a male perspective for The Stretcher.

Ms GB

I like it. What a pleasant surprise to find that all the red in the story was...well, I won't spoil it for the reader.

I'm on the side of your narrator, of course...

We anarchists have to get organised one of these days.

I like it. What a great idea.

You built the tension very well, it kept me reading and distracted me from my own writing.

It's good. I like how easily you play with the readers' perception of the narrator. You really can't read this twice. I feel a bit manipulated by the end of it, but since it's a light enough ending I don't mind much. I disagree a bit with B'El, I think some of the tension which is beautifully built in the first section is lost in the escapades of the second section. It's still there, it's just not as menacing.

Thanks for the good read. Keep on truckin'.

What a tremendously enjoyable read

Of course, I was reading it very particularly to see how it worked from the male perspective, and if this is any indication of how successful you were, I could almost hear John Malkovich narrating it.

Some high points for me were: "Day two I disgrace myself" which is a great opening and after which I was not disappointed, and "She's quite nice really... when she's not bossing." which is just what a guy would say. Also, "you can get them almost point blank when they're not expecting it" is so much in character that I just had to laugh.

This could use a little work, imo:
"The office always stank of stewing coffee. I developed a dread of telephones."
Stank of stewing is nice alliteration, but it just doesn't bring up the right picture for me - "burnt" is a reliable substitute. Same with "developed a dread" - nice alliteration, but it's just a little passive and un-guy-like - "began to hate" or "developed a hatred of" or something like it would be more direct.

From what little I know of prison life (not personal knowledge) this seems highly unlikely:
"I keep my head down and no-one notices me."

I think you're copping out a little, and I wonder if you couldn't go in the "Group W bench" direction and have him become a minor prison celebrity for what he's done. Or something. It'd strengthen the ending a little.

Great work!

Don't have much information on British prisons, but the (second-hand! I swear!) info I have on American ones suggests that this comment is on the money.

I like this. I think the character is well developed and I think the tension builds nicely.

The description of the team building exercise sounds so authentic, and excrutiating, I wondered if you'd done one!

I did wonder about the prison and the mental hospital alternative. (Do they keep people in mental hospitals these days? I rather thought they filled you up with drugs and chucked you out but then, I haven't got any personal experience...honest.)

Wouldn't it be ironic if he was sentenced to do some pointless-seeming community task instead!

Like...

...spray paint a bridge to remove graffitti?

Thank you dmitri, Bel, Jordan, pailaway and mVpoet

I'll make some adjustments in line with your suggestions and let you know when I'm done

I've made changes in the second and last paragraphs. Hope it's an improvement. I think it is.

It's the 'Alice's Restaurant' scenario (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=b8DtpdXZi0M supplied by dmitri on another thread), where Arlo gets done for littering (and they all move away from him on the bench) and causing a nuisance (and they all move back again)

I didn't read it before the changes, but I thought the new paragraphs (and all the bits in between) read very well!

Thanks Danny

I like the new ending better.

And I'm sure your character is right. Despite democracy and all that, the individual is pretty powerless now. It's harder to argue with a big corporation than a corner shop; it's harder to talk to an anonymous government department than a local mayor.

I hoped you'd think it was better

You're right. That's where this character is coming from. The world must be full of people who scratch their heads and wonder whether democracy's just a great big con, because they don't feel as though they, personally, have any control over anything at all - whatever the politicians try to tell them. And some people get angry and frustrated trying to deal with big government and big business, knowing all the time that they can't win - until, one day the worm turns

And people look at fertiliser catalogs.

Do they? To make their garden grow or to find bomb making materials

The latter, I'm afraid.

I remember a demonstration by the chemistry department once...blew up a little dam the engineers had made, very impressive...

It reminded me of "Steal This Book", a sort of hippy manual, which included instructions for paint-bombing places of business that were too capitalist, but included the wonderfully naive line that of course, nobody would ever use the explosives against *people*...

Hit the opposite gender perspective target right, bang, between the eyes .

_And_ a great read to boot.