A Cautionary Tale

[Pretty Useless]

Hi. Thought some of you friendly folks might enjoy a short story I wrote called Pretty Useless Says'. I sold it to an online magazine called www.dredtales.com where it is now live.

What's this got to do with HL2? Well, it's based on a personal experience of Half Life 2: Deathmatch. I was the victim of a spawn-killer, who added insult to injury by sending an obscene message. This story was my revenge.

Dion, if you're out there, this one's for you.

 

[Shodan]

Forgive me for being stupid, but is your site meant to be pretty useless?

I can't navigate it for shit.

 

[CrazyJeepDriver]

Pretty good story, nice read once I managed to find it.

 

[Pretty Useless]

Forgive me for being stupid, but is your site meant to be pretty useless?

I can't navigate it for shit.

I take it you don't mean www.dredtales.com, but my personal site at mylefteye.net. The latter is currently undergoing some serious surgery. The menu bar is inactive while a load of crap takes place under the bonnet (or hood, if you're on the other side of the Atlantic to me).

 

[Pretty Useless]

Pretty good story, nice read once I managed to find it.

Why, thank you, Crazy Jeep Driver!

 

[Shodan]

NO UNDERSTAND

 

[Pretty Useless]

WTF? Is this some weird joke? What's with the red text, cos I ain't seeing that on my comp. Go to www.dredtales.com, click on the image (Eduard Munch's 'Madonna' for the culture fiends among you) to enter the site and my HL2: Deathmatch story, for anybody still interested, is down there. It's called 'Pretty Useless Says'.

 

[AJ Rimmer]

Okay story, horrible horrible horrible website.

 

[ríomhaire]

Terribel story, weak premise.

 

[Rizzo]

What the hell?

 

[AJ Rimmer]

Terribel story, weak premise.

Well, the narration and writing style was good, but the premise was horrible. For one thing Dion was far too mature to be believable.

 

[Rizzo]

Also, you dont type so much between killing someone, typing takes longer than speaking does.
Btw its pretty mean to hurt him like that just becouse he was being an asshole in a game

 

[Pretty Useless]

Aw sucks. Found out why some folks are complaining of a shitty website. It's fine (well, kind of) in IE or AOL, but Firefox users are seeing just a plain white screen. There are some errors in the coding like the word color missing in background:#000200. IE will interpret that, but Firefox (and maybe others) flatly refuses to try. The editor is highly thought of in his own field, having edited a print magazine for many years, but perhaps web coding isn't his major strength. He's better than me though (c:

As for negative comments about my story, well, thanks for reading it anyway. I guess it probably works better on people that aren't immersed in the online gaming arena: you people can see the cracks. It's only meant to be a tea-break fantasy, not Poe or Hawthorne.

 

[Pretty Useless]

"Btw its pretty mean to hurt him like that just becouse he was being an asshole in a game "

It is. That's the whole point really. It's about who you're rooting for.