At the darkened tunnel entrance, they disengaged their cloaking devices and Morrrn signaled for a halt. Using their silent hand code, he sent two expert infiltrators to scout ahead and behind. They reported back that their ingress point was not yet discovered, but they could not count on their luck holding out. The other scout reported that a dark-matter elemental guarded the far end of the tunnel. Dark elementals were of the highest order of elementals, nine-foot tall brutes capable of decimating an entire army.
Scene, characters, bullshit. Use either vague descriptions, or keep everything equally detailed, but don't fucking mix-n-match.
There's a pile of detail at the start... then suddenly the one scout can notice an army-killing monster... and nothing is explained as to how this is possible without the scout not being insta-gibbed and being turned into a pile of long-pig chunklets.
Also, silent hand code... in the dark. I'm not buying it. Are there night-goggles on these people? If so, say so.
Also, infiltration does not ever mean "we are going to send someone back and check where we entered", there's no fucking
time to do that. It's
IN and then
OUT. Not dicking around and making sure that no one saw where you entered.
If your entry point is so important to not be noticed, you would have just resealed or camouflaged your entry point.
The "elemental"
What the fuck man? I mean, seriously, what the fuck? You put army-killers (and... 10% of an army killer) as guards?! That's fucking retarded and unbelievable.
“That is not good,” signed Morrrn, “I don’t think that we have the firepower to deal with a dark elemental.”
No shit sherlock, you already said that these fuckers wipe out armies. Unless these black-ops dudes have serious firepower, I hope to see them die like mooks.
Gerrross started to walk forward; ignoring the others who were consternately demanding to know what he thought he was doing. Simple, he thought, plasma is the counter of dark-matter. Out loud he said, “Vash ma tua,” as he made the sign of the Winged Serpent with his right hand. The plasma bolt formed and flew down the tunnel with silent fury, striking the dark elemental squarely in the chest, causing it to melt back into the nothingness that spawned it. The other members of the team simply stared at him with a look of shock on their faces.
fuck, you had to bring out "science", didn't you?
Well, I'll tell you something asswipe, do you know what is the "anti" to "dark matter"?
Everything.
Anti-matter (aka Dark Matter) is destroyed by any type of matter contacting it. Really. Read anything about particle physics, or just google dark-matter or anti-matter. This should have taken you a few minutes.
Plasma is merely a 'state' that matter can be in.
Your complete inability to do basic research in what you are writing about makes me want to yell at you and tell you to play Russian roulette with an automatic pistol, not to pass Go, go directly to Fial.
Then you follow up with... magical powers. That's a big fucking no-no. If you do this, it's either there from the start, or it's led up to. You can surprise the other characters, but don't surprise the readers.
The self-insert mary-sue bullshit magical character in a non-magical setting is a failure in any writing.
Congratulations, in one paragraph you not only failed at science, but you also failed at writing.
“I am sorry I was forced to hide it from you, but I am a Disciple of Agwyn. The others continued to stare unblinkingly, and he realized with dawning comprehension that they weren’t looking at him, they were looking past him.
Wow, so they don't flip out and shoot him, they don't ask him any questions, and he obviously cut them off by 'explaining' what he is.
Really believable. Oh wait, this is a mary-sue story, the main character only has conflicts when they want to, not when it's believable. Carry the fuck on.
He whipped his head around in time to see something that would haunt his every waking moment for the rest of his life; the dark elemental had not been destroyed. It was so horribly disfigured that it was not possible that it could still move, but it was shambling slowly towards him. It was just five feet away when Gerrross had turned around. Reacting purely on instinct, he used his hands to create the equivalent of a mime wall while chanting “Vanta Veros Xaling, Vanta Veros Xaling.” The elemental struck an invisible wall that held it for seven seconds. Gerrross did not waste this time. He cast two more plasma bolts at the creature before it finally succumbed to the guardian magic. They made it to the base of the ladder and began to climb.
For something that will haunt him forever.... he seems to well, deal with it pretty handily. It's not like it just killed his entire team and is playing marbles with their eyes, or using their bodies as dolls, or being otherwise beastly with his fellow black-ops dudes.
We never got a description of what the elemental looked like, so "disfiguring" it is only going to happen in the reader's imagination.
Five feet away from an army killing creature, and he's not even lunged at, punched, striked, hit, thrown or otherwise injured. His "armour of plot" is in fine form in this scene. Mr. RRR's (Gerrrrrrrrrr...rrross..ssssss; you don't want people to make fun of this name? Seriously? hahahaha!) special powers seem... boring, and we're not past the first page!
Which brings us to the.... mime wall. Uh, what? A mime wall? The mary-sue's biggest ability here is a ... mime wall? No shout that shatters the tunnels? no plasma fist to the face of the elemental? I guess making a mary sue really is for the unoriginal.
Also, "guardian magic" being an offensive ability =/= compute. The description of what it does, is not in line with what it is called.
It would be like me owning a Barret's Light-Fifty, and calling it a "varmit shooter."
Sure it can shoot a varmit, however it only qualifies as a varmit shooter if the particular varmits you are shooting at are humans in super-heavy body armour (aka, Bomb Squad guys) or things like a Humvee or a Jeep.
Gotta keep those pesky jeeps out of your carrot patch, you know?
Ah well, time for these assclowns to climb the ladder. Next scene.
No internal coflict, no qestions, no anwers as to where the fuck these speshul oylmpi- ... powers came from, just cut to the next scene. Way to go and ignore a chance to introduce other characters. Ohhh, mary-sue, wait, i fucking forgot that it's a mary-sue, other characters are merely a backdrop for the main author self-insert charcter. The only time a non mary-sue character is detailed is when the mary-sue is either fucking, or fighting, the character that has real details written about them.
Adams first opponent was a man named Bob Harrison. He won the coin toss and drew first. “Ha,” said Bob, “I will play Mind’s Eye, let me see your hand.” Adam revealed his hand to Bob, who forced him to suffer a card loss of three. With his hand decreased in size, he took his turn. This continued, eventually resulting in the victory of Adam.
.... "this continued" = I'm a lazy shit and can't make even a fictional bullshit card game interesting.
I'd potentially recommend reading books where poker is played, or perhaps even a star wars book where the "card game" of Sabacc is played, but really, you're looking at Yu-Gi-Oh as inspiration, and that series is about _games_, not card games. The manga had it right, the anime fails to capture the fact that their world is about competition, not cards.
That spirit of competition needs to be captured in order for the reader to even begin to give at shit about your made up card game.
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A little harsh, maybe.
