First impressions are hard to make. · 7:09am Jun 2nd, 2012
As I've gotten more and more people to read "The Glowmelon Mystery", I've heard a lot of interesting reactions. Most have been positive, but that's not interesting to talk about. The most interesting things I've heard have come from my good friend Gordo Freeman, who initially only read the first 20 lines or so of the story before setting it aside as not worth his time.
Well that's certainly not the reaction I want people to have! What were his issues? He complained that the story sounded depressing, and therefor he expected the whole story to be depressing. For now at least, I'll consider that an error on his part, because I don't think I could have laid the intentional melodrama on any thicker even if I had a bucket full of the stuff and the world's biggest paintbrush. And the tags for the story... the tags ARE there, you know, in case you really don't get it. I mean, I'm just sayin'... I'm just SAYIN'!
More important was his reaction to the first 'joke' of the story, which was a "uhhh, huh." The original joke that I lead off with was a joke that came to my head in a flash while writing, and I tend to write those flashes down when that happens. Usually something pretty good comes out. Other times I'll just think that something good came out, and I'll later look back at it and notice just which end it actually came out of. Hah, scat humor. See, this is the type of immature stuff I wanted to excise from the fic.
So I got rid of the out-of-place boner joke that was my leading right hook, and replaced it with a much funnier mental image. Bada-boom! Story is now 20% cooler. While some crude humor does still exist in the story, it's the type of crude humor that I can be proud of... if that makes any sense. It serves a purpose, and isn't from completely out of left field. And that's good. I like it.
The tone for the fic is now closer to what I always intended it to be, and I consider that an improvement. But for those of you who read and appreciated the lame original joke, it will be preserved her for integrity's sake:
Text deleted by The Good Taste Group
Or not. Sorry about that!
