C James

I still say you use EEEvil cliffhangers. There is,, er, was, a delay. I was going to post Monday night but couldn't. There are still problems on the site but the new chapter was posted a few minutes ago. CJ

Dayum, Mike, you are FAST! I think he posted about 30 seconds after it went online! I'll go post the announcement. Sorry for the delay, and this posting occurred only with some special help from Myr. Thanks Myr!! Enjoy the chapter! :nuke:

Not so!!! Well, okay, there was no poll for LiS 26 at the time. I blame myself for not thinking of that... There should have been! HOWEVER, you deviously twist the circumstances! Of course there was no question as to whether or not something of great import had occurred; of course it had! There was a question of whether he would live or die (I'm being vauge regarding whom here to avoid giving spoilers) and those terrifying words, "One last and final time" certainly made it appear that Death was imminent. Now, in LTMP 19, no one was ever in any real danger.. Just a slightly broken ankle. So, no, sorry, LiS 26 is, was, and shall always be, the masterful Mother of All Cliffhangers! All a shaddow really means is an absence of light? Why, thank you for proving my point! As you refer to physics, might I mention what any absence of light is? Why, by definition, it is a region of darkness where light is blocked. Therefor, the area of shadow is darkness. Therefor, shadowgod=god of darkness. Ahh, but look a little deeper into Apep. "The same fate awaits Apep's confederates and everything which formed parts of him, them, and all their offspring (their shadows, souls, doubles, and spirits)." Why oh why must you always blame sweet, innocent me? Ahh, but the band doesn't know that, so, they have no worries. I disagree! Eric is integral to the plot of LTMP! Cody could leave DnCW, and you could focus it on Joe and Julie. Ummm, whom are you referring to as the megalomaniac?

Well, ummm, hmmmm, LiS 26 lives in infamy, what can I say? As for LTMP 19, that wasn't a cliffhanger. That was posted on Christmas eve, after all! Ahhem... Shadowgod can mean little other than Lord of Darkness; Shadow=darkness, after all. Agreed, I was wrong about Ra, and Amon does indeed fit. However, I'll stand by my claim of Apep's relavance; He's the god of evil and darkness. As such, one could say he's a god of shadows. Aww, I don't know about that, your ancientness. Okay, Hrmmm, I'd say that, as the manifestation of Evil, you can be in more than one place at once; the nether regions, and the malevolent precipices. ACK! Now, now.. OK, I'll fess up on one point. In actuallity, His Shadowyness wanted Cody and Eric to go further than they did. However, I must take issue with your statements.. How was your offer the more practical of the two? The storylines would have been combined no matter id Eric stayed in SF, or Cody hit the road with Instinct. I also felt that Eric would be safer LTMP, becuase Cody's mother is not in the LTMP storyline. (and she's evil). I do, in the interest of fairness, admit that the live nuclear warheads in Instinct's equipment container do represent a but of a worry, or rather, they did. Now that the bombs are safely planted, they are no longer in Instinct's gear, so no worries. And, ummm, Let the Meglomaniac Play?!?!!?

Sorry, I gave the wrong impression. I was referring to Dimiti promising Vladimer a Roast Goat, and as a goat, I was worried it might be me he has in mind for roasting. You're right about Dimitri's mixed feelings though.

Have I ever known you to do anything evil? YES! EEEvil cliffhangers! I do note that His Shadowyness has not objected to my claims that he's to blame for Eric and Cody not going further. Nor, in fact, has he disagreed with the proof I offered that hi is, indeed, the incarnation of Evil and Darkness (and thus, Satan himself). I hereby declare those points carried. As for any evil characters I have created.. Ahhem, Blackheart? Nope, sorry, I cannot claim credit for his creation. He's lifted from life, as they say... Actually, The Scar doesn't enjoy killing, he just has no scruples about it. Dimitri, on the other hand, enjoys it. If you want pure evil, I'd have to say: HAve a look at Cody's mother in Dreams & Cliffed Wings. now she's pure evil!!! CJ

Benji!! Aww, I'm not an antagonist! Everything is all sweetness and light in my stories! Take Instinct for example... They know of no real threats or difficulties, so no stress! They are happy! Innocent? You?!?!? <cough>.... Well, I blame His Shadowyness for not letting Cody and Eric go further... He's evil like that, you know... Also, I did, I think, prove my case regarding his avatar and him bieng Apep or Satan... Aww, but, I shall say again; LTMP is set in the very near future, so I'm sticking to my story that it's real, and being relayed to me from the future... Therefor, not my fault. Besides, how could I conceive of or create an evil character? I'm far to nice.. I'm just a quiet and shy lurker, who has an abiding love of Irony.

ROFL! Beware of Canadians, i always say! Ahha! You've deduced Mario and Dimitri's plan! They aim to kill Instinct via high cholesterol! BTW, there might be a change in what I promised regarding larger chapters for 36 and 37. The total size will stay the same (the equivalent of almost four standard chapters) BUT, due to some good advice from Emoe and Shadowgod, either some of 36 will be moved to 37, or visa versa. If it's the former, and it likly will be, ch 36 will still be a little larger than normal, while 37 will be almost the equivalent of three chapters in length. Of course, I'm a little worried about my safety.... Dimitri did promise Vladimer a Roast Goat when the job was done....

Awww, Sacha! But, but, but... ummm, LTMP is set in the future... So therefor, I'm merely channeling future, and real events! How could I possibly conceive of anything as evil as that? I'm just a sweet, quiet and shy lurker! Why, I've even said that only one character is based partially on me... Though no one has yet guessed who. (Hint... it's not a member of Instinct). Now, now, We all know that His Shadowyness is Evil... And I can prove it beyond all doubt merely by mentioning LiS 26! Bondwriter was the first to point out that Shadowgod is the Lord of Darkness. And the Lord of Darkness is one of Satan's names. Look, too, towards the clues he leaves... Remember his short story Prelude to Destiny? About Egyptioan Mythos? IMHO, that was a first-hand autobiographical account. I had him mistakenly pegged as Ra at first, but no, Apep, the god of evil and darkness. is a far, far better fit. Take a look at his avatar; an Ankh... An egyptian symbol, bracketed by two griffens! BUT, it's a heiroglyph... The Ankh is the symbol of life, but, when combined with other symbology it becomes part of the heiroglyph. The Ankh in Shadowgod's sigil is bracketed by two Griffins, and Grifins in the ancient times were the symbol of divine power. Look closely, the avatar heavily features shadows, the realm of Apohis (Apop), lord of darkness. In other words, this avatar is no less than a heirogliph, proclaiming its bearer as the god of evil and darkness, whom we would call Satan. There are a plethora of other subtle cluyes as well. For example, he has the nickname of "Fossil" that denotes his antiquity. He dwells in the nether regions, and he has an abiding love of the malevolent precipices. But, but, but... LTMP is set in the very near future, so all I may be doing is providing a recount of future events... Goats do have links to fortune-telling and predicting the future, you know... Granted, it's usually via entrail reading, but who knows my own gut better than me? We don't even know that Dimitri and The Scar are the antagonists of the story! I've never said that they are.

ACK! I am most certainly NOT the spawn of Shadowgod, so your statement is manifestly false The Shadowy one, of course! He's evil incanrante, the lord of Darkness! ACK! Benji!!! That's not fair! It was Dimitri be brought down that airliner early in the story, not me! And in FTL, only a few of the bad guys died! And in LTMP, well, Jerry and Dimitri do tend to get a little, errrm, protective. But they just want to be left to their own devices. Besides, what about all the blood and death in His Shadowynesses stories? In "Almost Home" and certainly in "Prelude to Destiny" he had deaths!! He's evil, I tell ya, EEEvil!

Uhoh... I was worried that SPiCE might object to the bit about Eric kicking a live nuke... But it was quite safe, really! The anti-tamper device is a net of wires inside the outer skin of the bomb case. He couldn't break them without putting his foot through steel plate! And, Helen was only trying to do the right thing. Eric did try and squirt her! And he was on tequila... As for Jerry, he was only being neighborly: He thinks about garroting most anyone who comes near that shipping container. Now, now, we don't KNOW that Blackheart hasn't done that or worse! Remember, we are talking about he of many names: Shadowgod, Blackheart, Apophis, Apep, Mephistopheles, etc. Apophis (also called Apep), in Egyptian mythos, is the ancient spirit of evil and destruction, a demon that is determined to plunge the world into eternal darkness (Shadows). He is also the god of Shadows and other manifestiations of evil and destruction. A western concept would be to call him Satan. So how can you say he isn't evil?

I can't actually comment on your questions, but I can propose several scenarios. Mario wants to hire the goose to subcontract out the hit. Picture this; The goose, winging his way through the skies, wearing a bomb belt and an MP3 player, listening to the resounding refrains of "Ride of the Valkyries" as he swoops down upon his intended victim's hotel. The goose, disguised as a bellhop, gains admission to Instinct's suite and guns them all down. Or perhaps Mario wants the goose to drive the getaway car?

In order to head off any objections from SPiCE, I'd like to point out that Eric kicking a live nuclear warhead put him in no danger from the bomb! The anti-tamper mechanism is a net of wires inside the case. Therefor, unless he can kick through plate steel, he was in no danger of triggering it.

Welcome, Rob!!! Thank you for joining us, and wow, that's one heck of a great analysis! I really can't comment on any of it yet without giving spoilers, but that's a great post, THANK YOU! Mike mentioned the bit about Mario and The Goose in his above post (thanks Mike!). It was just one small bit in Ch 35. Hi Steve! I think I can answer a little of that as the answer is fact-based rather than in the text. Gunter works for Instinct, but like much of the permanent staff (as opposed to the road crew) his contract does not end with the tour. That's standard in the industry for a head of security. They do often hare additional staff for a tour, but the core remains throughout. And yep, Gunter was talking to Jim about Telluride. Oh, and BTW, before any shadowy entity says otherwise (he's evil, so he just might...) I need to remind everyone that Ch 35 was not in any way a cliffhanger. The slight bit of tension over Mario's orders is nowhere near the end of the chapter. CJ

I just thought "Tri-sexual" was a good moniker for someone who likes 3-ways. LOL ROFL!!! I love it! I kind of presented it piecemeal all along, sorry if that was confusing... Let me see what I can find... OK, I found this in Ch 32:

My sincere thanks to all who acknowledged that this chapter was cliffhanger-free! Writing Eric's conversation with Chase was fun. Honestly, *I* wasn't quite sure what his sexuality was when that began. It basically revealed itself during the conversation. I was wondering if anyone noticed this bit? That isn't a goof on my part. That sets the year that LTMP is taking place as 2010 or later. And yes, Mario is consulting the phone book in search of a goose. However, that's totally logicial IMHO: he's new in town, and as such where else would he go looking for a goose? All the background info on Penn station is, to the best of my knowledge (and per some considerable research) true. Even the staircase structure under which the bomb is planted is real. The natural radioactivity of granite is also very true. Well, now we know for sure who Mario's targets are. As for chapter posting days; I try and post on Tuesday, but, I was expecting to be busy today, so I figured I'd post Monday afternoon instead. I often post late monday. Oh, I have a little surprise coming... I was fairly far ahead when writing the next two chapters, and also I didn't want to break them at normal length. As a result, chapter 36 is about 50% larger than normal. Chapter 37, however, is over twice normal size. I can't speed up the posting rate, but at least this way they are far larger chapters. BTW, FrenchCanadian, I can assure everyone that the band survives the tour! I can do this without fear of the Echidna's anti-spoiler spines, becuase it's in the posted text. The tour ended at the end of 35, and they were all alive, so therefor they survived the tour! Okay, there are, per the text; three bombs. They are identical. What we know so far is that they were desighed to have a shelf-life of about ten years, unmaintained. That means the two in the US can sit where they are for years if need be. We don't know, for certain, all the details of The Scar's plan yet. However, there have been references and clues all along. We know he's expecting to have unlimited funding for his Paraguay takeover. For those who are curious to know exactly what the plans are, in detail, you don't have long to wait. Oh... It's a bit early to mention this, but the next chapter is entitled "Prometheus". Seeing as The Echidna is on holiday and thus unlikely to read this, I'll even give tidbit of info about it ; we find out the meaning of the story's title, and it is not what you think. I'll come back to the thread soon; I'm also always happy to answer any questions, though in some cases I can't if the answers would be spoilers. Ok, a question...

Well, Jerry is a complicated character. He's got his bad points, true, but he did push Brandon and Chase together (his "seize the Day" motto.) The Scar isn't quite as evil as Blackheart... Nobody can be as evil as Blackheart! But, 'tis true, The Scar is unlikly to win any humanitarian awards.

Awww, but Your Shadowyness, I didn't try and blame you! In fact, i exonerated you! I have no idea why you could possibly object to my post. Ahhh, see? And y'all doubted me when I said that His Shadowyness was the ultimate source for any perceived cliffhangers that might appear in the posted versions of my stories!

OK, it's all back, and fixed. I had some problems this morning and tried to fix them, which caused the index to vanish for a few minutes. However, Shadowgod was not involved, so there was no evil at all,.

It's up.

I can't say exactly when it will be up, but it will be up within the hour. I've just got a few minor things to fix.

Y'all caught me in the middle of a bug fix, sorry!! It's all back, except the LTMP 35 (the chapter that's due) as I'm still waiting for one small detail to be verified. That will be up sometime today at the latest though. Sorry for the confusion!

Tiger uses eevil cliffies. Thanks Kevin!! I was wondering how Cody would come across to anyone not familiar with DnCW. I had no idea if I'd made him a passable free-standing character (which is what I needed to do). I had a far easier time writing Adam Creston, the old road boss. BTW, seeing as the Echidna is away, I'll give a little spoiler; Adam Creston will no longer have an active role in the story. Ummm, although, Shadowgod might not have appreciated it had Cody shared Adam's fate. Hi Conner! ROFL, yes, Goat-themed bagelrys! Shadowgod might have started the latest trend! Heck, if Starbucks coffee shops could become a hit, anything is possible! Awww!!! But surely I am more sweet and innocent than even a lamb? My quiet and shy nature, and my cheerful love of irony.... But I never write cliffhangers! ROFL! Actually, I did say, earlier in the thread, that I might try writing a cliffie one of these days.

Well, true, no one twisted Eric's arm; that's true of both Jerry and Cody. All Jerry offered was a friendly drink, too. And why are you comparing Cody, who I think is very nice, to Stalin? Surly you don't mean Jerry? Well, Ok, Dimitri's nickname for Jerry, "Vohzd", means "boss" and is how Stalin himself was often addressed (and that's why Dimitri, who adores Stalin, honors Jerry with it...) but, um, well, err, ok, maybe I better quit this argument while I'm behind. What makes you think The Scar is Evil? I've never actually said he's an antagonist, let alone evil. Eric does indeed have an extreem weakness for Tequila, but he doesn't use it often. LoL. ROFL! Well, I admit I love tequila too, and yes, it affects me a little like it does Eric (though nowhere near as much... usually). Eric, though, isn't the only LTMP character who shares one of my traits. One of the other characters is based, in part, on me, in one or two ways. Any guesses as to who? I'll give one hint; the main similarity is a kind of humor that we both very much enjoy. CJ

Steve! I do agree, the cliffhanger was between Cody and Joe, AS FAR AS WE KNOW. I don't know how it could involve any of my characters, but, given His Shadowynesses deviousness, who knows? (Only The Shadow knows...) But, as for my chapter, a squirt bottle and Helen do not make for a cliffhanger! Nobody thought it was a cliffhanger when Eric was drinking with Jerry, so how could this be one? Eric, well, what harm could he cause if he gets out of that utility closet on tequila? Thank you Lissa!!! :worship: CJ