Urgh I put this in the wrong place before, so sorry about that. I would be grateful to receive advice on improvement. - Seven hours have passed since the end of the mission. A stalemate. Not unheard of, but certainly not frequent. It’s an occurrence that often leaves many of them uncertain of how to feel. Mission outcomes are irrelevant to Medic. He does his job, and his performance in that job is the only thing that matters to him. Whether they win or lose the mission… He shrugs slightly to himself in the golden light thrown by the desk lamp, inking precise, angular lines on the page in front of him: the day’s report. Such records have never been requested of him, but he uses them as a way to log his actions, to chronicle the treatments he imparts, to study the procedures he invents. Every piece of information he feels relevant is catalogued here. Months and months of it, written in fastidious columns, partnered with finicky diagrams on pages with no creases or smudges or errors. Medic does not make mistakes. The silver tip of his pen marks a perfect, black circle and the page is placed carefully to one side to dry before it can join its brothers. Briefly, the polished lacquer of the pen’s lid steals his fingerprints, but the folded linen of a pristine, white handkerchief corrects the theft, and the pen is laid carefully above the blotter, parallel to the edge. Precise. Medic unhooks his round, wire-frame spectacles from behind his ears, folds them carefully, and sets them down with a faint click on the polished wood, above the fountain pen. Exact. Shifting his chair back smoothly, the doctor rests his forehead on the desk, forearms running along his thighs so that his hands hang just over his knees. He sighs. The others have learned to leave him alone after missions. The only exception to this is a brief clinic window for triage, to treat wounds that were carried by the living from the battlefield to the base. Cuts and ruptures that must be debrided of gravel and dirt and shrapnel. Occasionally, an evisceration that has failed to pull the victim through respawn, so coils and loops must be untangled and tucked back inside tissue and protective bone. Such incidents Medic can stretch out to satisfy his curiosity whilst the patient twitches and curses on the cold, steel operating table and under the scarlet, scourging breath of the Medi-gun. He gets them out of his surgery with his heartless bedside manner and ungentle handling of ravaged flesh. He needs them gone so he can be alone. They assume he isolates himself in order to conceal the savage frustration from a day spent knee deep in blood and dismemberment. In that thought, they are somewhat correct, but perhaps not quite in the way they expect. The missions leave him… incomplete. He will stride from the killing grounds in red-splattered, stiff exactitude, and it is only through a Herculean force of will that he can hide the shaking of his hands. He knows what he needs to do to cure him of this pent-up, strangulated sensation, but it must wait. His body will do whatever it can to force him to bend to its need, but Medic has learned to deny himself instantaneous assuagement. If he were to give in, it would mark him as weak, and he cannot afford to be such a thing. Besides, the doctor knows that a pleasure delayed is a pleasure sweetened. His hands trail slowly up the inside of his thighs, fingertips sensitised to the weave of the fabric and the stitching of the seams, until they reach his groin. They linger there for a few accelerating heartbeats. Then one hand travels up to his belt whilst the other strokes the hungry flesh taking shape beneath its teasing, experienced embrace. He is a battle Medic, through and through. He goes willingly into a maelstrom that tears bodies to shreds, and does not flinch. His team-mates label him sadistic. A healer who can kill and laugh whilst doing it. They consider him mad. The doctor who uses bone-saw and syringe to murder. They speak of him as blood-thirsty, for he will not shy from pulling his assailant down into a severing, heart-bursting chasm even if it costs him his own life. The tongue of his belt slips through the metal buckle with a hiss of leather. Button and zip yield under his fingers in a manner that the turgid flesh underneath refuses to. Muscles in his legs tense and relax in an inerrant rhythm that his hips have yet to take up. A moisture-laden breath curls from between his lips to fog the sliver of wood left exposed below the edge of the blotter that his forehead is cushioned against. His eyes are closed, seeing only within. His outer blindness permits him to lose himself in the motions of his hands, in the bitter-sweet meeting of flesh and crooning siren song of stimulated nerve. The long, questing fingers of his left hand delve over fabric and under ripe gland, his thumb stroking and squeezing with a torturous patience and certainty. His right hand curls around his length, the embossment of thickening veins a delicious ripple against his palm which grows slicker and slicker with the crystalline droplets his fingertips discover and spread. The soft moan that slips from his mouth is released willingly as his hips surrender to a gentle rocking motion, burgeoning length sliding back and forth in the almost peristaltic clasp of his hand. Medic can feel the blood vessels in his face dilate and flood his cheeks with a flush that spreads down his throat like a lover’s suckling mouth, diffusing down into his chest until the engorged flesh of his nipples chafes almost painfully with the material of his starched white shirt, trapped under the smooth stricture of his waistcoat. The tightness of his collar, held fastidiously in place by his tie, presses insistently against vein and artery, making him gasp and squeeze his closed eyes even more. The others do not realise that it is not death that spins him into the maniacal insanity that glitters in his eyes. It is his vendetta against death. Cheating the Grim Reaper is his fervid psychosis. It is the scalding drug that has broken him and reforged him more times than he cares to remember. He has dragged back those so close to the edge of the horrific darkness that they have begged him in their terror to let them die. But to do that is to let the Grim Reaper win, and Medic has vowed that he will wring that merciless bastard’s neck until he feels the implosion of cartilage and bone under his latex-skinned fingers. The joints of his chair begin to shift and creak as his hips scoop and grind more insistently, right hand twisting and sliding back and forth so that not one inch of his lust escapes this expert, digital attention. His voice echoes the strain of wood with an animalistic growl low in his throat, his left hand scooping under and back to press and stroke and cajole. The tide of arousal sweeps back and up into his spine, sinks down and along his legs. Shoulders tighten, toes curl. The silken tip of his tongue tastes the moisture of his breath condensed on the desk’s wooden surface, a hesitant lap that will soon fall into step with the plunge of his hips and the milking of his hand. Thighs squeeze inwards and the heavenly sound of boot leather shifting harmonises effortlessly with the chair’s ligneous cries. Every dodge and feint from an attack in battle is a jolt of satisfaction along his nerves, each regeneration of mangled flesh and aching sinew is a carnal caress across his flushed skin. The invulnerability of an Über heaves him toward the boundary between ecstasy and oblivion where death cannot even hope to touch him. He will fight and shriek and save until the grenades rip him apart, until the knife slices through his spine, until the bullets puncture the life from him. And he will return, again, and again, and again—a feedback loop of pulsating, velveteen highs that spirals him into a wide-eyed frenzy that swells until it overcomes him. Until he becomes something so much greater. Until the blood roaring in his ears becomes the ragged whisper that repeats the same word over and over with every muscular surge of his heart: Übermensch. The demi-god whose jackboot grinds death’s throat into a ruined, ragged hell. Übermensch. The one who stands in defiance against Charon’s blood-drenched tyranny. Übermensch. The one who comes for the Grim Reaper. One sucking breath and he knows that what his body has implored relentlessly for hours is finally here. His tongue finds the thin, sharp edges of the paper on the blotting pad and slithers along them until they slice the quivering flesh apart, blood seeping into his mouth and the pain of the cut a delicious accent to the suffocating crush of orgasm. The doctor swings his left foot up to his right knee, freeing his hand from between his legs so that he can deflect the hot, pearly gushes of his climax onto the calf of his jackboot as they rip forth from flesh so engorged it is almost priapic. Hips thrust in time with the luxuriant spurts that splatter against his palm and trickle down on black leather, a confused slew of guttural sounds straining through clenched teeth and flared nostrils. One hand slathers the salty fluent eagerly along and down his calf, feeding the leather swaddling it. The other hand continues to stroke in a slowing cadence to calm the muscular swaying of his body in the chair, gasps of breath kissing against the table-top and the tang of blood in his mouth. So much more succulent for the wait. Medic stays slumped in his chair until the tremors through his body cease. The handkerchief is pressed into service again, drinking up sweat, sucking up ejaculate. Then, with steady, deliberate strokes, to polish black leather to an immaculate shine. The doctor cannot suppress the smile that forms when he recalls the Soldier’s outrage at Medic’s refusal to tell him the secret of such a lustrous sheen to his footwear. The American would probably chew his tongue out in apoplexy if he knew. Clothing is straightened, creases smoothed, hair preened back into perfection. Spectacles settled back onto the bridge of his nose. The handkerchief is abandoned to the waste-paper basket. He has plenty more. The desk lamp is switched off with a sharp click. His work here is done. He has completed everything he needed to. And besides, someone is waiting for him. Someone who taught him that a pleasure delayed was a pleasure sweetened, and Medic has learned that he has a very, very sweet tooth.
I love how fucking gothic and also German Expressionist this is. I'd be giddy if I wasn't so damned Teutonic myself (I kid). I was left hanging in the balance waiting for the Medic to dab, disassemble, and wipe his nib and stylus, but then realized it's 1968 (dearies) and it's just as likely he's using a ballpoint. Maybe a fountain pen? That seems more in keeping with his fastidious proclivities, and you did say it had a lid... Don't bother responding to this; it really isn't worth your time. But yes. I hesitate to ask if there will be more, as it stands well on its own, but that bit at the end there seemed to be a hint. If it is to be a one-shot, that is fine also. Seriously though, this thing is fabulous down to its elements.
You asked for advice on how to improve, so here is mine: 1. Mind the purple prose. You obviously have an excellent grasp of English, but you don’t need to show us in every single line. Don’t be afraid of ‘underwriting’ – your narrative will flow more smoothly if you dare to let your character’s thoughts and actions speak for themselves. My beta-reader once told me to cut 20% off a story. ‘But you haven’t even read my fic!’ I exclaimed. ‘Doesn’t matter,’ she told me, ‘cut it 20%’. And I did, and it was a much better story for it. In my opinion, you need to do the same – prune that wild vocabularial growth back a bit to let the story take its proper shape. 2. Watch out for adverbs, especially those ending in –ly: He shrugs slightly the page is placed carefully Briefly, the polished lacquer of the pen’s lid the pen is laid carefully folds them carefully Shifting his chair back smoothly Etc., etc. These adverbs are not necessary for reading comprehension and they slow down your narrative. ‘Briefly’ is particularly heinous; your sentence is not brief with ‘briefly’ inserted, just as using ‘surprisingly’ will make something not a surprise to the reader. If you want to indicate a faster pace of actions, use shorter sentences instead. “Briefly, the polished lacquer of the pen’s lid steals his fingerprints, but the folded linen of a pristine, white handkerchief corrects the theft, and the pen is laid carefully above the blotter, parallel to the edge†could be changed to “The polished lacquer of the pen’s lid steals his fingerprints. He corrects the theft with the folded linen of a pristine, white handkerchief. Then he lays the pen above the blotter, parallel to the edge.†(Not perfect, but you get my point.) These sentences are shorter, easier to read, and speed up the narrative significantly. Notice also that I changed your verbs from passive forms to active – the rule of thumb is never to use passive verbs outside of a science paper. You want your characters and their actions in focus – that the pen is laid is not as important as who’s doing the laying. 3. Show, don’t tell. This is a classic point of critique and I’m sorry for throwing it at you. I’m not even sure myself how to do this consistently, but I can tell as a reader when I’m being told and not shown. You have a lot of ‘non-action’ in your story; not even Medic musing to himself but the narrator (who is not Medic) telling us about things outside of the scene. In fact, the whole first paragraph is telling, not showing, which makes for a bad introduction. (You also commit an unintentional change of POV by starting off with an omniscient narrator – “It’s an occurrence that often leaves many of them uncertain of how to feel†– then keeping the rest of the story in a limited third-person POV; we can’t even tell for sure who the main character is until the second paragraph.) There’s a risk this will prevent people from reading your story; one solution is to remove the first paragraph entirely and starting in media res. Similarly, a line such as “The others have learned to leave him alone after missions.†is telling. Showing would be something like “It is quiet outside his office. No one will disturb him, just as they did not disturb him yesterday. The red spatters on the floor where Scout bled out after barging in on him one evening have almost faded away.†To avoid telling, consider your basics – what does the reader need to know? – and stick to them. Do we need to know that seven hours have passed since the end of the mission? That it was a stalemate? That it’s not unheard of, but certainly not frequent? We don’t, because it has no effect on anything in the story. The Chekhov’s Gun principle of narrative tidiness instructs us that facts should only be presented in a story if they are significant to the plot – if we’re told there’s a gun hanging over the mantelpiece, it better be used to shoot someone! If the outcome of the day’s match doesn’t change what will happen in your story, leave it out. That’s what I have to say for now; I hope it will be helpful to you. For additional advice on writing that you might find interesting, check out this *insert sound effect of blatant self-promotion* post on tumblr too: http://writingcyan.tumblr.com/post/48142887453/cyans-writing-tips-with-awesome-tf2-fanfic And finally, I just want to mention that I actually liked your story a lot! Don’t let my critique get to you. You show a lot of potential as a writer, so I hope you’ll keep at it. :)
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Argh, total hell I messed up my response post, hence the !Deleted @Req - I'd only seen this as a one-shot but it takes place in a larger head-canon TF2 universe, so perhaps that's where the impression that it's part of a larger story is coming from. I have an idea for a longer form story, but whether I actually get to write it... It seems very much like a mammoth task! @Cyan - Thank you! I really appreciate your feedback, and they're all very valid points that you've made. 1. Mind the purple prose - Yes. I think it's too easy for me to jam a lot of excess in there. A bad habit that I must unlearn. 2. Watch out for adverbs, especially those ending in –ly: Again, another common transgression of mine, and coupled with point 1 will probably red-pen a lot of unnecessary word filler. That's probably what I should do: print it out and strike out a lot of stuff. 3. Show, don’t tell - My difficulty with this one is probably an over-reaction to having once been told, many years ago, that I was leaving too much vague and unclarified. Consequently, I do struggle in knowing where the balance is. As mentioned already, this is a stand alone piece on a greater (as yet unwritten) story, so that's likely where a lot of extraneous detail has snuck in. As you say, if it has no function in the story, then it shouldn't be there. Verb tense confusion is something I've been dimly aware of in my own writing. I rely on the crutch of what sounds right to the ear, and that's not necessarily correct! That and I've gotten used to doing it so I don't spot it in order to correct it. What's the usual procedure in a case like this where I want to take another pass at the piece, taking into account the feedback? Is that something that's kept for writers and their betas, or does it occur in the story threads here? I'm a bit unschooled with the protocol as I'm not a lurker so this is pretty much my first go here. Thank you both very much - I really appreciate it.