Last chapter notes from me tonight! Now I’m only six behind! (until you post the next one tomorrow morning...)
they had rarely lost sight of some coast or other
Well, there goes my theory about losing altitude away from land. Maybe they’re just sufficiently far not to be seen? After all their airship isn’t that big …
easily fixed by shutting them down and restarting after a few minutes
Um … is this possible with a steam engine? Don’t you have to wait for the furnace to burn off and cool down, and then stoke it up again? Maybe Jack could have designed a mechanism that breaks off the connection between the engine and the propellers – I don’t know if such a device is feasible but I imagine it would be something like putting it in neutral (have I mentioned I know nothing about cars?). I just know for sure that stopping and restarting a steam engine is no small potatoes. (Thank you, Terra Nova...)
a large sailing ship was adrift and all but unmasted in the storm, battered by the waves, and bearing down on it --
I had to read this three or four times before I realised you weren’t trying to say the stricken ship was bearing down on something ambiguous. Perhaps throw a ‘was’ at the end just to leave the reader hanging and make it look like you’re interrupting yourself?
the pirate ship flew a black flag with a skull on it, crossed by vivid green swords.
How low are they flying, that they can see this amount of detail? Maybe this is something you can move later when they do drop? Or maybe they have a spyglass? That would be a useful thing to have for navigation and, you know, spying …
I believe the Union Jack is actually known as the Union Jack when it is at sea; at least this is what I have been lead to believe by the pedants on Radio 4 who complain whenever a Union Flag on native soil is referred to as a Jack.
With a man'o'war nearby,
I … think … you may have cut the man-o-war mention from the establishing bit and forgotten you had done so? I missed it, then, if you didn’t … this is the first time I’ve seen the man-o-war mentioned. (incidentally, my spellchecker prefers man-o-war to man’o’war; I’m sure there are accepted variants of it, but for what it’s worth …)
Oui, je parle
Okay, my French is FAR from serviceable, so take this with a grain of salt, but I believe this should be ‘je le parle’ (I speak it) rather than ‘je parle’ (I speak). Obviously Graveworthy speaks. You probably know a real French speaker who would be much better at sorting this out, though.
You sound like quite the native already.
Did I miss the part where they decided they were all going to speak in Australian all the time? I got the dialect lessons but not the full immersion. That seems like kind of an important thing; I’d assumed it’d come later but now I think I missed it.
Certain death was far more motivation than certain lack of sausage.
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Date: 2012-05-08 05:32 am (UTC)they had rarely lost sight of some coast or other
Well, there goes my theory about losing altitude away from land. Maybe they’re just sufficiently far not to be seen? After all their airship isn’t that big …
easily fixed by shutting them down and restarting after a few minutes
Um … is this possible with a steam engine? Don’t you have to wait for the furnace to burn off and cool down, and then stoke it up again? Maybe Jack could have designed a mechanism that breaks off the connection between the engine and the propellers – I don’t know if such a device is feasible but I imagine it would be something like putting it in neutral (have I mentioned I know nothing about cars?). I just know for sure that stopping and restarting a steam engine is no small potatoes. (Thank you, Terra Nova...)
a large sailing ship was adrift and all but unmasted in the storm, battered by the waves, and bearing down on it --
I had to read this three or four times before I realised you weren’t trying to say the stricken ship was bearing down on something ambiguous. Perhaps throw a ‘was’ at the end just to leave the reader hanging and make it look like you’re interrupting yourself?
the pirate ship flew a black flag with a skull on it, crossed by vivid green swords.
How low are they flying, that they can see this amount of detail? Maybe this is something you can move later when they do drop? Or maybe they have a spyglass? That would be a useful thing to have for navigation and, you know, spying …
I believe the Union Jack is actually known as the Union Jack when it is at sea; at least this is what I have been lead to believe by the pedants on Radio 4 who complain whenever a Union Flag on native soil is referred to as a Jack.
With a man'o'war nearby,
I … think … you may have cut the man-o-war mention from the establishing bit and forgotten you had done so? I missed it, then, if you didn’t … this is the first time I’ve seen the man-o-war mentioned. (incidentally, my spellchecker prefers man-o-war to man’o’war; I’m sure there are accepted variants of it, but for what it’s worth …)
Oui, je parle
Okay, my French is FAR from serviceable, so take this with a grain of salt, but I believe this should be ‘je le parle’ (I speak it) rather than ‘je parle’ (I speak). Obviously Graveworthy speaks. You probably know a real French speaker who would be much better at sorting this out, though.
You sound like quite the native already.
Did I miss the part where they decided they were all going to speak in Australian all the time? I got the dialect lessons but not the full immersion. That seems like kind of an important thing; I’d assumed it’d come later but now I think I missed it.
Certain death was far more motivation than certain lack of sausage.
This needs to … go on a t-shirt or something.