Thank you jeannine. i did have a redemptive and slightly more happy ending in the balance... but the darkness is what i always crave. every time i check it i find more punctuation wrong too!
its not TOO horrible is it? i was worrying that it had gone from somewhat tongue in cheek gothic pastiche to very bleak psychological horror...
I'm a depressive optimist, so I wouldn't go by my judgement if I were you. I think making everything all sweetness and light at the end would have ruined the story. The bleakness makes it memorable. And Reverend Speighthart finally gets the punishment he so richly deserves.
I decided that he would end up the "good guy" in that hebwould not stoop to murder...and that the boy would end up even more evil as a result of his influence... and that being his legacy. hopefully it does hang on its bones...and thank you for staying the distance to read it all 😁
I think it came out quite well. I feel badly about what he's done to Steven's mind, but having a murderer as his final descendant seems like the worst punishment Rev. S could have imagined... Thank you for writing it! Has the Reverend stopped haunting you at last?
I don’t think that was letting yourself down at all. Using that earlier language in the modern setting might have been a little incongruous and offputting, and people would’ve thought you were just taking the piss.
I liked how the language changed. It certainly worked for me.
I'm with Evelyn on this one. The changing language is a great device for showing the passage of time. If little Steven had come out with something like, "Forsooth, pater mine, the fruits of your evil will soon be fulfilled, and your festering corpus doomed to worms and corruption," it would have sounded just plain silly ( and I can see how exhausting it would have been - that short pale parody of an example made my head hurt!) . The old Lovecraftian verbiage works in the older settings, but would definitely have seemed forced coming out of Steven's mouth... and as Evelyn pointed out, people definitely would have thought you were taking the piss! 😂
Oh how this breaks my heart, but you were right to end it this way. An excellent story that will follow me for a long time. I'm glad you didn't finish this at Christmas, though... 🥺
Thank you jeannine. i did have a redemptive and slightly more happy ending in the balance... but the darkness is what i always crave. every time i check it i find more punctuation wrong too!
its not TOO horrible is it? i was worrying that it had gone from somewhat tongue in cheek gothic pastiche to very bleak psychological horror...
I'm a depressive optimist, so I wouldn't go by my judgement if I were you. I think making everything all sweetness and light at the end would have ruined the story. The bleakness makes it memorable. And Reverend Speighthart finally gets the punishment he so richly deserves.
I decided that he would end up the "good guy" in that hebwould not stoop to murder...and that the boy would end up even more evil as a result of his influence... and that being his legacy. hopefully it does hang on its bones...and thank you for staying the distance to read it all 😁
I think it came out quite well. I feel badly about what he's done to Steven's mind, but having a murderer as his final descendant seems like the worst punishment Rev. S could have imagined... Thank you for writing it! Has the Reverend stopped haunting you at last?
yes... with his bones no longer in the ground his curse has been lifted and his power gone...
Little Steven might make a good serial killer in a future work...
although he has actually not killed anyone ... not directly
I'm with Jeannine on this one - in terms of the story that was an immensely satisfying ending, even if it was terribly sad.
And really quite amazing how the language of the end is totally unlike that of the beginning. It's seems a very long time ago now, that beginning.
All in all, this has been a very fine piece of work indeed.
thank you evelyn
i did feel like I had let myself down a bit because i couldnt keep it in the same vein... as soon as it was modern day, everything changed.
I don’t think that was letting yourself down at all. Using that earlier language in the modern setting might have been a little incongruous and offputting, and people would’ve thought you were just taking the piss.
I liked how the language changed. It certainly worked for me.
I'm with Evelyn on this one. The changing language is a great device for showing the passage of time. If little Steven had come out with something like, "Forsooth, pater mine, the fruits of your evil will soon be fulfilled, and your festering corpus doomed to worms and corruption," it would have sounded just plain silly ( and I can see how exhausting it would have been - that short pale parody of an example made my head hurt!) . The old Lovecraftian verbiage works in the older settings, but would definitely have seemed forced coming out of Steven's mouth... and as Evelyn pointed out, people definitely would have thought you were taking the piss! 😂
Oh how this breaks my heart, but you were right to end it this way. An excellent story that will follow me for a long time. I'm glad you didn't finish this at Christmas, though... 🥺
Probably the first time a revenant wasn’t really the villain in a story of this type lol
but he created something worse than his own image...