Abdiel wrote:

Copy-Pasted Disclaimer: I reserve the right to be totally wrong, to misquote
facts and to make errors in judgment. I also C&C as I read, so what I said at
one point can easily be retracted on the next, depending on how the story
progresses. I don't claim to be the authority on fanfiction writing... Hell, I
see C&Cing as a learning experience. Agree? Disagree? Corrections on my
corrections? I'll thank you for it. Ignore all my comments in applying to your
fic? You have the right to do so. Take it with a grain of salt, use what you
can use and ignore the rest. ^_^

It also occurs to me that my lexicon may not be at par with yours, so any
unfamiliar word I ask about isn't necessarily a correction but just general
ignorance on my part (as pointed out by a certain Thomas Michael Edwards). As
such, it'd be appreciated if you'd have the patience to clear up some of my
questions on those particular instances. Thanks.

And my next victim is... Wow. It's Mr. David 'Rgorman' Johnston himself, one of
the most active members of the FFML. Though everybody certainly deserves C&C, I
especially feel that you deserve it just a wee bit more for your constant
efforts at giving out many a C&C and joining in on many a thread as much as
possible. Such dedication! As such, here it is: C&C. And will you look at that?
You didn't even ask for it in the whole message. Now that's something.

On 7/17/06, David Johnston <rgorman@telusplanet.net> wrote:

In a Manhattan back alley:

It hurt to breathe.  Not surprising when his own glider had driven
itself through his lungs.  

Ouch.

Damn that Parker.  So hard to take him by

surprise.  It was like he had some kind of sixth sense  Parker was gone

Extra space between 'sense' and 'Parker'.

Actually that's a missing period.

now.  Hadn't checked to make sure his opponent was entirely dead.  That
was something the two of them had in common.  Sloppiness.  Their dance
would have been finished a long time ago if either of them had just made
sure of their defeated opponent. 

It's kind of hard to defeat an opponent when the 'gods above' don't quite know
for sure if the title character really is your opponent or just the clone of
your opponent. 

If they had, dear sweet Gwen would

still be alive.  Laughter was unimaginable agony.

Ah... So this is Green Goblin? That is, if Marvel's retroactive use of GG's
affair with Gwen Stacy was to be believed...

Er...just because the Goblin refers to Gwen as dear and sweet doesn't 
mean he ever slept with her.  The situation is complicated enough 
without that ill-conceived twist.

"Yes, Mr. Serdar, I heard every word."  His glasses glinted at he looked
at his assistant.  "We've succeeded in cloning a mammal.  Obviously

(wince) Excuse me for the wince. Just... seeing 'clone' in a Spiderman fic,
albeit a crossover, sends shivers down my spine and goose bumps on the back of
my neck.

Can't get around it.  That's what was happening at that moment.  However 
  because this is a fusion Professor Tomoe's experiment will not go the 
way Professor Warren's did.

When he pulled the sheet away from her face the medical examiner caught
his breath.  

Suggest: face, the (methinks the comma should add a natural pause to the flow
of the sentence)

Quite correct.

The dead rarely retained anything a normal person would

describe as beauty by the time he saw them.  The injuries or sickness
that had claimed them would leave their mark and postmortem lividity

Suggest: lividity --> lividness 

Nope.  Lividity is the correct medical examiner jargon.

But this girl brought thoughts of Snow White and Sleeping Beauty to
mind.  Not a mark on her on her betrayed whatever had taken her life,
and her face hadn't taken on that ghastly pallor. 

Nice and simple descriptive prose over here. I like.

"Impossible!  Rigor hasn't set in!  There's no lividity!  She can't have
been dead more than half an hour and she's never been in the water.  You
must have mixed Ms Stacey up with a more recent intake."

Suggest: Ms. Stacey up 

Hunh.  I dunno.  I'll have to look it in my style book.  I was thinking 
that since "Ms" isn't an abbreviation for anything, it doesn't call for 
a period.

"Go check again.  This one must have been delivered while you were
taking a smoke break by someone who didn't want to wait around.  Now,
Mr. Fielding!"

The young lout shrugged and left.

I get the feeling that the prose doesn't like the 'young lout' very much.

Written from the M.E.s point of view.  After this prologue pretty much 
everything will be from Gwen's point of view but she's a bit too dead to 
have one at the moment.

The M.E. relaxed a little as he detected no signs of a pulse.  He wasn't
comfortable with living patients.  Or women for that matter.  But why
weren't there any of the marks of death on her?

Because she suffered a Marvel Death.

The examiner jerked uncontrollably.  He didn't regard himself as an
easily rattled man, 

(shrugs) Correct me if I'm wrong... Suggest: easily-rattled (compound
descriptors should be hyphenated)

Ah yes.  Hyphens.  I'm weak when it comes to hyphenation.

"You're...a talking cat--"  The M.E. shook his head.  He lived in a
world where women claimed to be gods of thunder and spidermen fought
goblins.  It wasn't that impossible.  

(shrugs) We live in a world where cockroaches stay alive after having their
heads cut off and it's illegal to throw knives at men wearing striped suits in
Kansas. I'd still probably react violently to a talking cat, and IMO so should
he.

"No."  The cat's uncanny [colour?] eyes caught his.  "You have to forget

Hmm? What's with the 'colour?' aside? Are you asking for the color of Luna's
eyes? 

Actually Felicia Hardy's eyes.  Blue aren't they?


If memory serves me correctly, it's either pink or red. Within those two

hues. But I could be wrong. Just google/wiki/image-search it.

about the cat and just start writing up your autopsy results.  She died
when the vertebrae in her neck separated as a result of sudden
deceleration.  

Oh yeah. The oh-so-dark accidental strangulation death that Marvel wanted to
censor for fear of reader and Comic Code Authority backlash.

Technically a broken neck.  Which incidentally says that Spiderman's 
webbing isn't very stretchy.  Movie Spider-Man's webbing would have just 
bungee'd her.

"What?"  The examiner looked up from the autopsy report he was writing,
saw what Fielding held in his hand, and shook his head.  "I don't have
time for all that.  Just get the next one."

Fielding looked confused and retreated once again.

What a (Marvel) World-weary examiner that strangely seems to reflect the
author's usually deadpan tone and demeanor in his C&C replies.

I may even name him.

Down in the sub-basement there was a very unusual statue.  It had been

sub-basement --> subbasement (surprisingly, it's dictionary-verifiable, so no
need for the hyphen)

Suggest: Down in the subbasement, there was a very unusual statue.

recovered in an Egyptian dig at a temple to an Egyptian moon-god but the

Geez, what was I doing there?  I've got to fix that.

style of the statue was nothing like anything Egyptian sculptors had
carved.  It seemed more Greek than anything else but the dating of the
temple conflicted with that.  It had been destroyed long before the
Greeks adopted any similar style.  So it remained the Jeffersonian's
little secret, kept in a dark storage space where it couldn't stir up
any awkward questions about the authenticity of the rest of the
artifacts who were one of the Institute's most prized exhibits.

What a strange thing for the Jeffersonian Institute to do, seeing that the
'controversy' that could be sparked from the little anomaly can actually help
the museum. It would make more sense for enigmas such as that to be featured
rather prominently in the museum for admirers and detractors alike to ogle at
and puzzle over instead of being hidden in some forgotten storage space. Then
again, there's something to be said about credibility and negative publicity.

Comic book universe.  People keep all kinds of irrational secrets.

"That's it," the cat gasped, weaving unsteadily as she continued to
trace her circle around the body.  "I've done all the heavy lifting I
intend to do today.  The rest is up to you, Khonshu."  She thumped over
on her side, and began to lightly snore.

First off, lemme just say that the first thing that came to my mind when I
finished reading this fic _aside_ from "it's too short" is "How ambiguous can
you get?" 

Thank you very much for your help.


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