(Don't I wish I could give individual replies to these).
Serris:
No, thanks. I'll reread through it and correct them as I go.
Thanks, Darkhyooman. I apologize for the inconvenience, but a light critique from Caustizer gave me an idea to modify my "author's note" in that story, so I had to repost it. Speaking of which:
Caustizer:
Sorry my reply to your review was lost. IIRC, I basically said that I apologized for the confusion that the name changes I've done to some of the characters caused you. It stems from my belief that they would eventually decide that their childlike names should be dropped in favour of more appropriate grown up names; which was why Little Foot, Ducky and Chomper "changed" their names prior to this adventure. While in the case of Petrie, he decided his name was appropriate for him as a grown up, as it's a common last name... often spelled "Petry". And Cera could often be misconstrued as "Sarah", a very common name for a girl.
In fact, that was how I thought her name was spelled at first, until I saw the "correct" spelling on a website devoted to the cartoon.
So although they're "officially" carrying grown up names, amongst themselves, they still call themselves my their old youngling names. In fact, there's a paragraph in that story where I made it clear why they changed their names.
You also spoke about how you thought the government systems for both the sharpteeth and The Great Valley was a little bit too advanced for that universe. Well, you may be right; but my intention here was to establish a way of running things for both the sharpteeth and the leaf eaters that were similar, thus giving a hint that they both originated from one common ancestor; or that they were once a part of one gigantic tribe. Some archaeologists have theorized this as a real possibility for the actual dinosaurs that once roamed the Earth.
But I wanted to set this up as a Council of "Elders" similar to a Municipal Gov't where you have the Mayor and a whole bunch of City/Town Councilors running things. Towards the end, I wrote a paragraph where the grown up Little Foot was thinking about changing the way their "voting" structure was done by moving from their current ways where it takes a unanimous decision from all of the Councilors in order to get something done to a voting system where a simple majority... like 6 agreements out of the 10 Councilors... to get the same approval to do something. This is probably about as close to a democracy as they can get without actually being a DEMOCRACY.
Finally, you said you gave me an 8 out of 10 score for this story. Well, I knew from the beginning that it wasn't perfect; but I was glad that you didn't think it totally sucked.
And I think that's it.
Now, CT(who may very well be my no. 1 fan right now).
:
It really is sad. The entire scene seems to play out like that of a human funeral service.
Well, they ARE anthropomorphic characters, after all.
As for Cera's episode? That was exactly what I intended to convey in that scene! That all of the noise and confusion would eventually get to her, and that she would collapse mentally like that. It was also my intention to have Chomper see her through this breakdown as a way to bring them closer together as friends. I'm sure you know full well how Cera has never viewed Chomper as being fully part of the gang. That to her, he would always be the one who would never really fit in, simply because he was a sharptooth. In this way, she would finally realize that Chomper has no intentions of ever hurting her; and that this would, in turn, increase their bond of friendship between them. I could've had any other of the leaf eaters help her, or maybe one of the sharptooth healers or volunteers; but I really wanted Chomper to play this part. I wanted him to be like the hero's "faithful sidekick". I don't care what anyone else thinks, though. For me, Cera's the real hero of this story for many reasons.
In case you're curious, I imagined the lullabye Chomper sang to her to ease her suffering in this scene was something similar to "Let It Be" by The Beatles. I didn't want to put it into words in the story, because that would've meant rewording the song to make it more appropriate for this environment... as a kind of... I think the term is "filk"... or maybe "parody", I don't know. *shrugs* And I don't like doing that to songs I love.
And you say your granfather suffered from PTSD? You just gave me an idea for a sequel to this story! Which would also tie in to her and Wendyk getting "married"!! You can definately expect THAT in the not so distant future!!
I may call it something like "Cera's Mysterious Sickness". I may even have them do their own version of The Rolling Stones' "19th Nervous Breakdown".
As a side note, looks like I've got my work cut out for me! I've got these ideas for other stories floating around inside my head right now. And last night, I put up another story on fanfiction.net. It's a non LBT fanfic I wrote a few years ago, but never thought of putting it up on a site like this, until now; and already, my inbox is literally INUNDATED with notifications of readers adding it to their favourites and people posting reviews for it. Which is really surprising, because I didn't think the story was that good to begin with! I haven't gotten around to reading what they're wrote about my story. For all I know, they could've simply wrote: Man! This story SUCKS!! But I'll read the reviews eventually.
WHEW! Ok! Now to go read what people have posted in my other thread.
