The evil continues . . .

To change the subject from the abhorrent M&M, here's a more fun topic: We've already been discussing the worst fanfic that's been posted to the web. What, in your opinion, is the worst professionally published fictional story or novel in either book form, magazine, or as text filler you've ever read? Remember, we're not just talking garden variety bad here. We want something that can compete on a level with Ratliff, Mosley, Gonterman, Barringer, Hernandez and the other authors discussed. Fanzine publications don't count.

A lot of the Trek profic these days is pretty dreadful. Diane Carey's work has some unintentionally hilarious moments, like this gem from the Dominion War novelization:

He watched as asteroid-sized cauliflowers of flame and energy bounced from the shields of station Terok Nor as ships fired over and over. There was something satisfying about that, about the invading Jem Hadar vanguard finally feeling the sting of repellent force, giving Gul Dukat a surge of pleasure even as his own weapon fire sheeted ineffectually out into open space.

That's icky in so many ways...

But here's my personal favorite Careyism, from the same chapter of the same book:

"As cryptic as his words may have been, Dukat enjoyed lathering Weyoun with the sheer experience of a fighting past."

ROTFL! I'm not sure what's scarier -- the thought that Carey didn't pick up on the implications of that sentence, or the thought that she did...

The publishing industry today is a lot different than it was in the era which ran from the thirties to the fifties. The paperback industry was just starting to boom at that time and several publishing houses sprang up devoted to churning out as many cheap romances and mysteries as could possibly be written. And, of course, the pulp magazines were also flourishing during this time, and in fact most magazines carried short stories and serial fiction as their primary material. In addition, the postal laws stated that in order to earn second class mailing privelleges, all publications had to carry a certain number of pages of text material. This meant that comic books and other such publications usually had to carry some short print fiction in addition to their graphic material. In short, it was a much easier time for a prospective author to get legitimately published. And, of course, as a result, it was a much more fertile field for truly classic bad BAD fiction. (Of course, today we have the internet . . .)

Malibu Graphics Publishing Group in 1991 published an anthology of sorts called Die Monster, Die!: The World's Worst Horror Fiction. This collection contains some real gems of badness published in the forties and fifties pulp magazines and comic fillers. These exercises display the usual traits one might expect: cliched storylines, horrendous dialogue, over-melodramatic prose, and an inevitable tagline which is supposed to provoke horror on the part of the reader but provokes belly laughter instead. And each of the stories in this volume is a riot. However, one of them ("The Great Illusion", originally published in the August '53 issue of Witches Tales magazine) stands out to me personally as one of the most unintentionally hilarious sci-fi stories I have ever read. The author of this camp classic is unfortunately uncredited, it is doubtful if he or she was ever credited even in the story's original publication. However, the story itself is brief enough that I can reproduce it in its unabridged and unexpurgated entirity:

"I can do it, Chester! I can do it!" Dr. Morton's eyes laughed with the thrill of conquest.
"Y-y-you don't mean . . ." His assistant couldn't believe it.
"Yes, Chester, I do mean that I can magnify an animal's strength ten-fold! I can make them into supermen . . . animals into great prehistoric monsters!"
"But, Dr. Morton," said Chester, "what do you intend to do with this? If it falls into the wrong hands, sir . . ."
"Ha!" the scientist's laugh interrupted the flow of ethics. "What do you mean by that remark? It will fall into no one's hands but my own! And I will use it as I please! You can either join me, Chester . . . or leave now!"
"I shall stay, Dr. Morton," was the answer.
"Good!" smiled Dr. Morton. "Then I can tell you why I've spent these many days buying and buying cows. Now I can tell you why I've taken such an interest in ranches!"
Dr. Morton rushed on, filled with frantic excitement.
"You see, Chester," he said, "the cow is the mother of the world! And this mother shall make me the master! Hah! I can tell you understand!"
"Perfectly," said Chester. "You mean to inject the formula into your cows and then send them to terrorize the countryside. You meant to conquer, loot and become powerful on the threat of annihilation of your monster-cows!"
"Excellent, Chester, excellent. Your mind moves almost as quickly as mine."
"Perhaps faster," mumbled Chester, but the scientist didn't hear him.
The next days were frantic ones. The two men worked without stopping. They enclosed a hundred cows in an iron-walled enclosure. They starved them for days. The animals were limp from hunger. And then came the injections. A slow process . . . a hard process . . . but finally it was completed!
"I've notified the townspeople," said Chester, "and just as you said, they laughed! They laughed and they dared you to try!"
"Then they shall see what we can do . . . tonight!
And that night, Dr. Morton showed the results of his experiments. The townspeople gathered near the enclosure. They were still laughing, still mocking the entire thing.
Then Dr. Morton forced the doors open, the monster-cows rushed out, and the scientist was ready to gain his revenge.
But he couldn't believe what he saw . . . He couldn't understand what was happening. And then he heard Chester's laugh.
"You fool! Even the townspeople realized it! You wonder why your starving cows don't attack them! Why instead they eat your grass! Hah! Remember, Dr. Morton, a cow is herbivorous! It doesn't eat meat!"

***

No further comment . . . I'll let that one stand on its own merits . . .

Ugh.

I haven't personally read any of these, nor do I wish to, but there is a website out there about Naomi Wildman from Voyager, and there is a fanfic section. Like I said, I never read any of it, but any fanfic about Naomi has got to be dreadful. Thankfully Ratliff hasn't written anything like that.

Here's the address of the web page http://scarlettpomers.com/

Has Web Site Number 9 disappeared off the face of the ether, does anyone know? I've been trying to access it for about a week but can't get a connection. I'd be heartbroken if it's gone for good, as I was having enormous fun pulling up the Ratliff MiSTings in particular, and had just started looking at other MiSTed fanfic as well.

Yeah, I was wondering that too. I was really disappointed when the Professional MiSTings disappeared from that site earlier this year. Any one know why this happened?

Beats me. I just clicked the link and it came up alright.

Hey, it's back! Good news - thanks Tom.

The absolute worst published Trek I've ever read is John Vornholt's NextGen medical thriller 'Contagion', which reads like a rough draft of itself...written in the grip of a severe adolescent crush on Counselor Troi. Vornholt's improved some since, but in the early years the man never met a sentence he couldn't twist awkwardly.
The next worst (speaking of awkward) is Howard Weinstein's 'Power Hungry', also NextGen - a beyond-clunky environmental parable in which the Enterprise-D arrives at a planet that's polluting itself to death, make a few tsk-tsk noises, and...that's it. Tasha Yar's 'Just Say No' speech from 'Symbiosis' is a model of sublety by comparison.
There's also L.A. Graf's Classic thriller 'Ice Trap', which lost me right around 'McCoy looked up [at Kirk] and wondered just when it was he had decided he would die for this man...' Actually, I'm not a huge fan of Graf's stuff as a whole - what I've read of it seems to substitute pointless (and intensely graphic) violence for plot.
And while I'm at it, honourable mention to Gene DeWeese and his awesomely dull 'mystery machine' tales - 'Chain of Attack', 'The Peacekeepers', etc - in which the characters spend endless amounts of time pondering alien artifacts...never actually arriving at an explanation for them, mind you, just pondering (or sometimes - for a change of pace - pontificating on) them. Guaranteed insomnia cure.
And finally...while they aren't really THAT lousy in and of themselves...I need to vent a little about Michael Jan Friedman's 'Reunion' (NextGen) and 'Saratoga' (DS9), which are THE EXACT SAME BOOK with ONLY A FEW NAMES CHANGED!! Ahem. Sorry. But I still don't understand how Pocket let Friedman get away with it.

Apparently his books sell. I don't really get it either. Thankfully, Del Rey doesn't fall for the act. (They cancelled a Star Wars trilogy that he was supposed to write.)

Obviously, though, you've never read TNG #50, Dyson Sphere.I bought it because the cover looked really cool and the last page mentioned the Borg. Big mistake. The characters were all exactly the same. (I mean, exactly. Worf's dialogue differed not a whit from Guinan's.) The plot was dull as dirt. The Borg don't even show up except for two passing references, and are never involved in the action. May anvils fall onto the authors' computers.

Also, Masks,by John Vornholt, wasn't written terribly well, but I liked the mask concept itself.

And I've got to say, while Peter David's "Strike Zone" wasn't really memorable for anything, the running gags were great. ("It was Guinan's idea!" "Oh, well okay then." "Remarkably stup¡d weapon. Do not use.") I don't think it was supposed to be all that funny, but I liked what I read.

JOY OF JOYS! HAPPY DAYS ARE HERE AGAIN! EVERYTHING IS GOOD IN THE WORLD, FOR RATLIFF'S WEBSITE IS GONE!

That's right, M&M no longer EXISTS ON THE INTERNET, except in the leprous memories of those unfortunates who stumbled onto Ratliff's site. Rest in Peace, M&M.

Maybe the Radford University computers finally won their valiant struggle?

Although it's kind of like the ending of a 50's sci-fi monster movie . . . the evil menace appears to be destroyed, but you'll always wonder if it will resurface in an even more malevolent form.

As it was so eloquently stated in "The Blob"....

Or, closer to the subject, as it was stated at the end of "Hail To The Queen" . . .
"The End (Or is it?)"

Oh, you guys are in for a big letdown.

Oh man. Only Ratliff could advertise his Marrissa/Wesley stories alongside a picture of Marrissa aged about 10 ...

AHHHHHH! (starts to jump headfirst out the window, then remembers he has a ground floor condo)

Not only is it back . . . but with a NEW PART OF THAT WESLEY-MARISSA STORY!!! AHHHHHHHHHHHHHH!

Yeah, the worst is when he edits those photos of ten-year old Marissa so she's in a bathing suit. Try getting THAT image out of your head.

Anyone wanna bet actress Erika Flores has a whole slew of restraining orders on old Steve-o?

AND he's got theme music for characters!?!?!
I mean..
THEME MUSIC!?!?!

Rarely do I get a book and not finish it. ("Maybe it will get better on the next page.") That used to be never until I got Shatner's book. A Borg and renegade Romulan alliance? The biological eye of a drone crying? PLEASE - MAKE HIM - STOP - WRITING.

But sirrrrrrrr!
Ye cannae change the laws of physics!

This is something that scares me a little . . . in his challenge-fic "Marissa's Revenge Part II" Steve-O states that all the parents in his neighborhood entrust him to watch their small children. Someone ought to have those parents read some of his M and M or related stories . . . do you think they'd have second thoughts then?

So I'm deliberately subjecting myself to these Marissa stories for the first time ever (I always did wonder why they were so hated, and could never find one).

Right off the bat, one paragraph (?) in: Alien Language? What constitutes an Alien Language and wouldn't the Aliens be insulted?

Okay. Done with that Field Trip thing. I think.

Ingoring (yes that was deliberate) the spelling errors, here's what I came up with:

*Alien Language (I mentioned)
*Random Capitalisation
*"Batwing" vessel?
*"Angle of decent"
*Dead bodies in body bags in the forest. What about predators that like slightly cooked meat?
*"Half-a-hour"
*Redundancy abounds
*Statement of obvious - They splashed down into a stream, so they discovered there was a stream. Yeah.
*"A half a mile"
*A detailed survey of the planet was completed in "half-a-hour" with what I presume was one tricorder. Uh huh.
*[Add description of Cave] (and other notes coming up periodically)
*"The leader ordered his men (or maybe women)..."? After the author already identified the soldiers as "he, he & pilot"?
*"Tried & sick leader" | "Tried & scared"
*The enemy was afraid of music coming from nowhere? And so they don't go off to go find the source? AND THEY ATTACKED AND DISABLED A SHUTTLECRAFT?
*"Mr Data analyst" (James Bond, 007)
*Do I even need to mention the conceivability of Picard letting kids pilot a shuttle, not only off planet...but INTO HIS SHUTTLE BAY? After the damage they did to the shuttle itself? He needs to quit zooming his ships into the Huge Asteroid that is his head.
*So...grades are still based on A's and B's and C's.
*Finally: at the beginniing: "Revision status: Complete. Prologue, Ch 1-2" (and yet, it went to either 4 or 5)...how complete is it if it cuts out halfway into a paragraph?

JayDee suggests I read Enterprized. I guess I'm off to do that.

Thank the gods for scrap paper.

Argh! DS9/Season One/The Storyteller

I hope it's only a joke from "Add a Message".

Machiko, is JayDee a friend of yours or what?

You really haven't experienced Ratliff until you've read a sentence that you literally cannot comprehend. I think Enterprized has at least of one of those. (A favorite line from Enterprized: "... Marrissa said and sensing that he wanted interductions ..." Ahh, the beginning of the introduction phenomenon).

By the way, are you reading the MiSTied versions?

Actually, it's me.

And yes, she is reading the MiSTings. Go EmmyJ!

I'm going to be really ignorant and ask - what's a MiSTing? I lurk on these boards all the time, and now my curiosity is piqued enough for me to ask.

A MiSTing is a work derived from the show Mystery Science Theater 3000. Basically what it is is an original story, fanfic, piece of spam or article, which is then subjected to the MST treatment: 'riffed' (made jokes about) to within an inch of it's life. Usually only very bad, low-quality works are used for this, ergo the wonderful range of Ratliff MiSTings we have.

More information is at these links:

A huge MiStings archive, as well as more information about them:
Web Site Number 9

And a very good archive of Ratliff MiSTings:
Ratliff MiSTings

Hi, JD. I didn't recognize you with vowels.

Last night I skim-read "Field Trip" at WS9. It was a different version from what I had read before (which I think came from the other site JD listed). I know Steve has been revising his older stories. He seems to be doing this so he can:

Rewrite sections to make them more plausible (he usually fails),

Add sections so he ret-con elements introduced in later stories,

Run spell-check (which, "of coarse," doesn't catch homonym errors).

In the more recent MiSTings, you can tell there's a friendly adversarial (pardon the oxymoron) relationship between the MiSTiers and Ratliff. The MiSTiers love to get the chance to riff Ratliff. He knows it and puts at least one obvious error into his stories for them.

All that said, his rewrites are hardly better than the original and he never fails to introduce a point just as ludicrous as one he removed. In "Field Trip," there was one thing Ratliff did that had me doubled over in laughter when I read it, then laughing again and again the following days. Ratliff didn't even change it for the rewrite.

He didn't rename Ensign Throwaway.

I wonder what the Throwaway family coat of arms is?

A trash can?

Ensign throwaway has to be the silliest appros name for a character since Charles Finney named the newspaper typesetter "Mr. Etaion" for his "Circus Of Dr. Lao".

Make it stop!

The uniforms of the command crew had changed as well. Captain Picard was wearing purple robes and a gold crown with a large ruby at the front. Riker sported black armour with a red loin emblazed on it.

A red "loin"? How very... appropriate.

Whoa...

I've spent lots of time chuckling at the comments here but somehow never got around to actually reading any of the Ratcliff saga.
Until I promised a fansite-owner friend coping with surreally bad NYPD Blue fics (Dennis Franz & co. in the Old West, anyone?) to hunt up the Web Site #9 link, by way of making her feel better...and decided to check out a MiSTing myself.

Well. My reaction won't come as much of a shock to anyone here...but I do need to vent:

Man, these stories are bad. Jaw-droppingly bad. Bad like a person who figures they're pretty good at this-here karaoke thingee, so why not book Carnegie Hall next week?
I mean, brain-damaged bad - no offense meant to the many brain-damaged individuals currently leading happy, productive lives...but this stuff is just so hideously sad and disturbing on so many levels, the best explanation I could come up with was that Ratliff had been dropped on his head as a child. I can't even imagine anyone reading it un-MiSTed.

Because it's not even 'fun' bad. The really scary part, in the end, that having conjured up a universe in which the most implausible is no big deal, Ratliff can't even think of anything interesting to do with it. Other than, of course, insisting that Everyone Worship Marrissa. Everybody. Right now.

I mean, I used to think you guys were exaggerating her goddess-hood to comic effect...but then, early into the MiSTed stuff, I found myself following a long, pointless scene of 'Beverly Picard' interviewing a babysitter (since there's a war on, the same doc who once flew the Enterprise into a sun's corona has of course fled the scene for Earth).
There I sat, stupefied, yet utterly fascinated to see where on earth it could be going...which turned out to be an excuse for 'little sister Jackie' to berate her babysitter 'cause he's not Marrissa, Princess of Everything.

...I think it's safe to say that that's when I started formulating the 'dropped on his head' theory.

Oh, and I nearly forgot my new favourite fanfic exchange of all time (italics mine):

"Captain Evisserga since you chose to violate article 2 section 3 subsection 3 of the tready by opening fire on a Starfleet vessel, firing toward the Troac...," Marrissa began.
"We didn't hit them," the Commander of the Miloslovac said.

Y'know, maybe a round or two of this stuff has its uses after all. By now, 'Justice' and 'Shades of Gray' are starting to seem like Shakespeare...

Welcome to the Coalition of Permanently Damaged Ratliff Readers, Kerrie. Coincidentally, "CoPDRR" is roughly equivalent to the sound most of us make after reading a Ratliff story ...

If it's any comfort, you should stop constantly waking up sobbing in the middle of the night in around three years' time. ;-)

Twice, I've read "Enterprized" and I remember one line that left me in tears both times. I'm not going to look it up, but it's easy to paraphrase:

Tasha turned into a cave.

I gotta admit. That's a neat trick.

Thanks, Callie. I think. You don't say how long it'll take before I can stop eyeing my former favourite strawberry-kiwi smoothies with deep dark suspicion?

I've read a few more MiSTings since my last post - A Royal Wedding, oh my very dear lord. We need to find those kids Ratliff claims to babysit for and get them away from him PDQ.
In fact, after reading this and Away From Home 3:Chasing Marrissa (featuring that oh-so-charming sequence wherein randy Starfleet officers dare each other to go put the moves on thirteen-year-old Marrissa) I'm thinking of getting a restraining order on ol'Steve myself. He has no idea who I am, mind you, but I still want an order in place on the off chance he ever finds out...

One question: In the opening segment of one MiSTing, Mike claims that 'some of [Ratliff's] latest stuff is actually pretty good.'
What? When did this happen? The first story I read, The Seventh Fleet, is apparently fairly recent, and it's beyond dreadful.

The "pretty good" remark is indefensible, I think. By his later stories, Ratliff learned how to run spell check and proof his stories. That used to be the source of some of the biggest laughs. But what we were left with was alternately unbelievable (sometimes hilariously unbelievable) and just plain disturbing.

"indefensible"? "indefensible!?" The "pretty good" remark is a crime against humanity! It encourages people to read the blasted things, thereby damaging humanity's collective psyche!

Reading Marissa stories, I thought at first the author was a disguise: a young teenage girl, with english a foreign language, posting through a brother or relative at college. I mean, a college student with this many spelling errors, bad grammar and general non-realistic ideas seemed hard to believe. A young girl would have explained the style of writing and many details like dedication to teachers, poor character development, black-white thinking and so on.

But now that I've read more of the marissa stories, I believe that ratliff is for real, and I must say that this scares me: a grownup man, who goes to college but has such a simplistic worldview, who fantasizes about young girls, doesn't have an idea of what reality is like - thats kind of frighenting. If parents really let him babysit their kids - *shudder*!

What's the problem? He sounds normal to me.

I know this is way off...or at least, doesn't follow from what is directly above, but I noticed someone mentioning incredulty at the idea that anyone would write Transformers fanfic.

Well...they do, and they do it seriously. Who says a children's cartoon/30 minute toy ad can't have characters in it with depth? Or if it doesn't, who says that fanfic writers can't give them depth that is only hinted at in the show? Taking it as a serious show alows someone to burn off a lot of the dross and leaves a person with some important issues to contemplate. There's war, slavery, freedom fighters, moral dilemas, maturity, villains with understandable motives, messages of many stripes... There's a lot of room to write serious fiction there, and plenty of topics to chose from.

So why not? Of course there's going to be gray matter melting fic also, but there's a lot that's really well done.

As for Ratliff-fic...I've blocked it all out of my mind. I could only force myself to read one or two MSTed fics. Just the name Marissa Picard sends shivers down my spine. I invoke her name to punish my friend when ever he finds something horrible and tells me about it.

On pro Trek writers...I hate to say it, but... Well, I like Peter David's work as long as he leaves Data the heck alone. I don't like cringing when reading a book I otherwise like because the author is character assassinating my favorite. And it should be illegal for Diane Carey to write Data. Um, sorta showing my bias there, but hey.

I think that was me. But I think that was mainly to make the joke about slash Transformers fanfic.

I did wonder in the same post if there was any series that didn't have fanfic written about it.

Well, having discovered the existence of not only Goof Troop and Masters of the Universe but Sonic the Hedgehog MiSTings on Website #9...offhand, I'd say the answer is no.

I do remember your post re: Transformers fic, KAM, and it was indeed in the context of a (funnie!) slashfic gag.

But Princess...uh, do I call you Your Majesty, or will just 'Artemis' do? makes a real good point nevertheless.
As someone once pointed out in an ER forum - for which show there is an entire alt-fanverse out there - dismissing fanfic as wholly silly and shallow overlooks quite a lot of well-written, thoughtful pieces.

I thought it might have been the person posting above the joke about Megatron and Starscream actually : ) I mean, the person who brought it up in the first place. But I could be getting my posts mixed up.

Anyway, kerriem., I prefer to be called Princess (it's a name, not a title), but PA is perfectly all right : )

I've seen Minesweeper fic. Y'know, the little timewaster Windows game? There is no subject safe!

Ratbat brought up the subject, but just to point out that WARenfeld was to Transformers fic what Ratliff is to Trekfic. Ratbat later mentioned that she actually writes Transformers fic.

Fanfic about Minesweeper. Amazing how creative some people can get. What's next Checkers fanific? (Now Chess fanfic I can see since you've already got vaguely defined characters: King; Queen; Bishops; Knights & Pawns & the whole war context.)

Several online comic strips actually have fanfics. College Roomies From Hell!!! has fans who post fanfics in the forum. They even have Participation Fanfics where, as I understand it, interested Boardies (forum goers) can have their online personas appear in the story.

There’s a new Ratliff Marrissa MSTing on Web Site Number 9. It’s called Royal and Prime Directives and it’s as hilarious as any Ratliff. You’d think that he’d be old enough by now to have got some idea – but naah! In this story a Starfleet ship crashlands on a planet, conveniently landing on top of every single claimant to the throne, and the captain persuades all the local dukes that he should be king on the grounds that they don’t want the job because it’d be too much like hard work!

Steve has his usual bizarre ideas, like a Starfleet ship called The Custer, and characters called “Harlan, Lord Ellison” and “Lieutenant Dorian Gray” (if these came from anyone else you could assume they were meant to be a joke but with Steve it’s far more likely he thought they were cool!). He also continues giving us all too many insights into his disturbing attitude towards under-age sex, including a 13 year old who sleeps with a man twice her age. Luckily this is not described in detail (!) but the following morning her father can tell what she’s been up to by the way she’s walking ... arrrrrggggghhhh!

As usual, Ratliff forgets the names of his own characters, varying between Harlan and Harland, and giving Lt Calgary the first name ‘Ferguson’ at the beginning of the story but then having him introduce himself (oh, yes, the introductions are of course long, rambling and all-too-frequent!) as ‘Kendrick’.

And finally and inevitably, there are the delightful misspellings:
“An hour latter, Prince Avery wandered into the place garden.”
(The King announces his son’s engagement: ) “We hereby summon all the ruling Lords of Ellosia to Odyssey for this most scared union.”
“Fortunately I was able to get a ride with Lady Hayley and her finance, Prince Avery.”

Ratliff’s back – and he hasn’t changed a bit!!

(Note: because of the sexual innuendo made both by Steve himself and by the riffers, this is a MSTing for over-18s only.)

Ew. Ew ew ew ew ew ew. Another line for my collection of Reasons To Cringe At Ratliff-fic:
Prince Avery, discussing his thirteen-year-old sister's relationship with a sailor(!) twice her age: Well, if he does have a girl in every port we're going to make sure you're the legal one!

Callie's dead right - this is vintage Ratliff. There's actually the material for fun, funny, thoughtful story buried somewhere in his original concept (for proof check out John Peel's NextGen novel Here There Be Dragons, which I'm not altogether sure our auteur here hasn't memorised, either).
But true to his 'muse', Stephen manages to render it inane, boring, overlong, boring, excruciatingly pointless and did I mention boring?
Among my personal lowlights:

--Repeated introductory references to that muse. Steve, buddy, trust me...you don't have a muse. Or if you did, she's long since curled up in a corner, hands over ears and a vacant look in her eyes, rocking gently while muttering to herself.

--I could also go off on a long rant here about Ratliff referring to himself as a 'writer', when 'stringer-together of random sentences' would be so much more appropriate, but...

--An earnest attempt is made here to present a fallible, or at least introspective, Marrissa. Trouble is, it's basically the same attempt as was made in Winning Love By Daylight (and if you've not read that one yet, don't) - the Princess of Everything wanders 'round asking herself if there's anything to her but her career and her titles.
The really hilarious part is, her questions never do get answered, because a)The correct answer is 'no' and b)Ratliff doesn't have the first clue how to change that. If you've ever wondered how one goes about soul-searching when there's no soul to search, this would be it.

--I do love the level of emotional detachment in these stories. Young Prince Avery goes to visit his desperately ill mother, she tells him she's dying, hints that his father has a secret that might provide a cure...and not a moment after leaving her room Avery's back to obsessing over the 'cute' princess he's hoping to be given as bride. The effect is literally, as Servo riffs, "Gee, it's sad that Mom's dying and stuff...boy, I hope they hook me up with a hottie!"

Then we get the scene where the Dukes arrive for a conference, see the crashed starship sitting where their capital city once was, and react with openmouthed shock, horror, and fervent, awestruck appeals to any and all of their gods...or, no, wait, they don't. I think one Duke goes 'hm, guess that mus' be magic, or something', and that's it.

And of course there's the above-noted bit with the King noticing his daughter's lost her virginity. Immediately before this, mind you, His Majesty has been liberated from a lengthy siege of the palace; is facing a Starfleet court-martial; and is currently watching his beloved consort's enshrouded body be carried from the palace, she having died alone during said siege. But no...in RatliffWorld, the question of a thirteen-year-old's virginity is all. (Besides which she's posing as a male squire, so of course her 'breast bindings' get mentioned at least once per chapter. Ew ew EW.)

--Speaking of virginity...or the lack thereof...See, Stephen, first we have to care for the characters, really get to know them as people, and then we'll care if they make love or not. Or, alternatively, we'll care as long as the union itself is described with some artistry and/or affection.
Contrary to what your high-school buddies apparently told you in gym class, merely telling us that characters had sex (or whatever that is yours are having) is not exciting...at least, not to the audience I think you're hoping to attract.

--This introduction business. Really, the man's twigged - sorta - to the fact that his heroine's impossibly gifted, he can't be made to realise how mind-numbing these 'OK, state your name and rank' scenes are? Especially in a mediaeval adventure where everyone has about fifty titles plus is related somehow to every other character?

--Of course, your run-of-the-mill Ratliffian inanities are scattered freely throughout the story. Most of them Callie caught above, but...

There's also the bit where the old sailor captain tells what he thinks is fellow captain Picard the story of the starship crash - carefully including every little detail, exactly as if he were speaking to an off-worlder (actually, the scary part is Picard tells a story right afterwards, and the voices are identical);

The court-martial, where the King is speedily acquitted of any and all Prime Directive violations. Likely because prosecutor Riker - hey, at least it wasn't the Strawberry Goddess of the Universe defending - failed to make the point in three days of trial proceedings that Mike does in one riff: "So you can see how committing a simple act of mass homicide led him to make his compassionate decision to grab power with both fists.";

Finally, the absolute crowning glory, what just might be the best and brightest logical absurdity of our Stephen's long and infamous career...they're just about to warp away from the planet when Marrissa realises she forgot Lieutenant Calgary on the surface. Really.
And no, Picard's first words on hearing this news aren't "Mon Dieu, the doubters were so right, what have I done! Young lady, consider yourself stripped of all rank and priviledge right now! Go to your room!"

And for a delightfully written rebuttal to the whole Marrissa premise, 'Spoof Trek' should more than fit the average Ratliffphobe's needs.

http://home.netcom.com/~mblackwl/spoof1.txt

Why, thank you, Gruber, that was cathartic.

(Actually, the author does a fine and witty job of articulating a lot of my problems with NextGen especially and Trek in general. If only Riker had really spoken in this voice for an ep or two...)

I was recently re-reading the classic "Time Speeder". One of the most hilarious scenes I had forgotten about occurs near the end, where members of the cast of Voyager suddenly double as members of the media for the White House press conference. One of the other maxims of the Ratliffverse: being trained as an actor also qualifies you to be a broadcast journalist!

whats also sad about "royal and prime directives" - besides all the horribles mentioned already by callie and kerriem - is that obviously, ratboy read one or more Hornblower books, and of these quite well written books, with introspective characters, real plots, no loopholes ... all steve picked up were funny expressions for prolonged sea-battles. Sigh. Seems there is no way to help this guy, other than to put him down mercifully. Just kidding!

I’ve been so non-busy and bored at work that I’ve had to resort to reading Stargate SG-1 fanfiction. Unfortunately there’s only one MSTed one so I’ve had the dubious pleasure of reading the stories ‘straight’. Today I came across a line that competes with the “Tasha turned into a cave” line from Enterprized. In the run-up to it, Daniel Jackson is recounting how Jack O’Neill has had an argument with Samantha Carter and so, when Daniel talks about her, Jack gets despondent. Jack’s misery is summed up by the classic line:

“The moment I mentioned her name his head dropped to the floor.”

Do you have any idea how hard it is to cry with laughter while not letting your colleague across the desk see you?!

'Do you have any idea how hard it is to cry with laughter while not letting your colleague across the desk see you?!'

Almost as bad as telling them what you're laughing at, and have them sit there straight faced. Makes me laugh all the harder...

“The moment I mentioned her name his head dropped to the floor.”

The obvious MiSTing, of course, is that every time after this line when Daniel says Sam's name is...

"And Jack's head dropped to the floor!"

With various little add-ons such as

[as Jack] Ow!

or

"and bounced like a basketball"

or something like that.

My favorite laugh-out loud line, from the immortal "Slipping Into Death's Embrace" by Daniel Hernandez:
"The Terminator grabbed a bazooka and fired at Juanito. He ducked out of the way, but the villians didn't know that."

I've got a new one, from Candidate Goof by Max_Goof:

He stopped in front of her house, and stopped the car.

The “Tasha turned into a cave” line popped into my head recently when reading this line.
"This is the street," said he, as he turned into a short thoroughfare lined with plain, two-storied brick houses-
Wow! That's an even better trick!

The story was The Crooked Man by Arthur Conan Doyle and the character was Sherlock Holmes. (A right master of disguise, he is.)

I debated about whether or not to post this here or not. It's not really a fanfic, although Tom Paris of Voyager does show up in a surprising role on page 3. It started off with a person posting a pic about a tentacle monster that had recently appeared in the online comic College Roomies From Hell!!!, but it took on a warped life of it's own.
WARNING! PG-13, at least.
Also it's on a phpbb board so you may need to switch off javascript to see everything (assuming you're actually foolish enough to click the link).

I'm currently reading this bad story where the author brings together all these characters from other stories. The alledged heroes are rapists, thieves & murderers. He doesn't bother to explain the backstory, refers to characters by different names without warning, and when introducing some character he is about to kill off he either goes into a long-winded description of all their famous relatives or has the character list all their famous relatives.
The author goes by a single name, Homer, and the story is called The Iliad. (W.H.D. Rouse translation)

Does this mean that Stephen Ratliff is the reincarnation of Homer? Ye Godz!

Well, at least now we know what was studied in those 'writing courses' Ratcliff admits to taking.

As ludicrous as the speech Bill Clinton gives at the end of "Time Speeder", what's scary is that it's the kind of speech one can easily imagine Al Gore giving.

Oddly enough, Agamemnon struck me as coming off like a politician & the modern politician I thought he most resembled was Al Gore. (Compare & contrast Agamemnon's action after losing Criseis to Al Gore's actions after losing Florida. ;-) )

Alabama Woman Wins Worst Writing Award

SAN JOSE, Calif. - A lizard lover from Alabama won an annual contest celebrating bad writing with a ghastly simile comparing doomed romance to processed cheese.

"They had but one last remaining night together, so they embraced each other as tightly as that two-flavor entwined string cheese that is orange and yellowish-white, the orange probably being a bland Cheddar and the white ... Mozzarella, although it could possibly be Provolone or just plain American, as it really doesn't taste distinctly dissimilar from the orange, yet they would have you believe it does by coloring it differently," Simms wrote.

Yet still it's more interesting than a Ratliff battle scene! ;-)

The Bulwer-Lytton Fiction Contest is the one alluded to by Kerriem in "The Royale" board. ("It was a dark and stormy night . . .")

I've entered that contest a few times, but *sniff* *sniff* they didn't think my writing was bad enough. *boohoo*

Thanks, TJ. Here's the complete version of the quote that started it all:

"It was a dark and stormy night; the rain fell in torrents--except at occasional intervals, when it was checked by a violent gust of wind which swept up the streets (for it is in London that our scene lies), rattling along the housetops, and fiercely agitating the scanty flame of the lamps that struggled against the darkness."

--Edward George Bulwer-Lytton, Paul Clifford (1830)

Oh, and KAM, don't fret. We all know you can write as horribly as anybody out there.

*blushes* Oh, you're just saying that.

Do you really think so?

"that".

After a 3-year hiatus, I am now back on the "Marrissa stories" board (look way up at the top and you'll find someone named Tom Kun, that's me) and I'm doing something I haven't done in a while: reading a Ratliff MSTing. Specifically, I'm right now at the beginning of "Royal and Prime Directives." You're all right, this is vintage Ratliff. I tried reading a MSTing of "I Regret to Inform You" a year or so ago but I just couldn't get too many laughs out of it. Now, it's good to see the old Ratliff we all know and love is back in form. I am quickly getting the impression that everything Ratliff knows about royal families he learned from "King's Quest" computer games from the 80s.

And the reason I'm using an alias now is because I can't stand the thought of someone, somewhere, mispronoucing my last name. "Kun" is correctly pronounced like "coon." I got Tom Vane from that "Pirate Name" site (see Kitchen Sink-2003 Topics).

What I like about these MSTings is all the subtle references that I get and I know are going over everyone else's heads.

CROW: ["Impossible Mission" villain] Stay awhile. Stay FOREVER!

WOW!! I thought I was the only person on the planet that even remembers that game!

Does anybody know what happened to the mistings website ? I keep getting "object not found" errors, and the pinky.wtower.com site just shows "testing". The special ratliff mistings page is still on, but I'd like to read other mistings, too.

Web Site Number 9 has been down for some time now, and I fear that this time it's gone for good as we never used to get that particular message in the past when it was only shut down temporarily.

I'm just glad I hauled a whole lot of stories off and saved them before the site died (if it is indeed dead - we can still hope that it'll resurrect some time in the not too distant future)!

(From "Royal and Prime Directives" misting)

CROW: [Springy] NOOOOOOOO SPRINGS! *cuckoo*

Nit: that should be "Coily" not "Springy." Still, any reminder of the Spring Fever short never fails to crack me up.

May I also add that this fanfic has long sections that are pointless and mind-numbingly boring? For instance, the part where the king has that meeting with his advisors. Or this part I'm reading now, a really detailed discussion about a canal near Lake Galilee.

TOM: [irritated] Look, I appreciate a good canal/guard post/real estate
confrontation as much as the next bot, but *is there a frickin'
point to all this*?!?

My thoughts exactly.

Mind if I keep posting more random thoughts on this thing? Here's a real lame plot contrivance if I ever saw one:

>"A Prime Directive investigation team must include of the Chief of
>Security, the Chief Engineer, and the First Officer, and be lead by
>the Captain.

I see Crow and Mike noticed this too.

Well, Ratliff does know his nautical terms, like "mizzen mast top gallant." I think he's using these naval battle scenes to show off.

...

How about that, another Marrissa-swimming-naked scene. Does anyone have any idea how hard it is to hold in laughter when reading stuff like this at a public-access terminal in a college computer lab, which is what I'm doing right now? For a minute I thought I was going to explode holding this all in. Speaking of college, I have a class in 5 minutes.

Does anyone have any idea how hard it is to hold in laughter when reading stuff like this at a public-access terminal in a college computer lab, which is what I'm doing right now?

Hmm, maybe I should try that.

On to Part 3!