ActiveNet was defenseless. A moment ago, the green lion had incessantly struck out with tendrils of ivy, deleting incoming virii before they could penetrate the firewall and strike the city beneath its belly. Vine was an expert software system, specialized in system security, not a genetically altered lion with green fur. Its appearance was merely the avatar, the graphical placeholder in cyberspace, chosen for it by its creator. But Vine’s avatar, directories, files, and logs, were all missing. Aidan summoned a series of control panels and displays with panicked speed. He scoured screen after screen of directories. He launched numerous search agents to all regions of the network. “Vine?” Aidan looked at the vacant space where Vine had
Posted by Pyraxis (Member # 7990) on :
I like the concept, but the analogy was confusing. I misread the second sentence as "A moment ago, the green lion had been incessantly struck out with tendrils of ivy" and from there I was lost, because I thought the lion and the ivy were two separate things attacking each other. It also took too long to work out that there weren't literal ivy fronds snaking out via a some kind of magic spell.
If there isn't a particular reason to call it a green lion, I might pick something more compatible with plants/growth than a lion, so the image doesn't clash with itself. And since, unlike Aidan, we've never seen the desktop icon, or however its avatar is represented in your world, referencing that as an explanation for the analogy doesn't make things any clearer for the reader.
Not sure if others would pick up on this nuance, but ivy is known for growing wildly out of control and eating through anything as it grows. I would have thought computer malware would be better represented by ivy than the firewall software protecting against it.
Posted by Christian (Member # 7825) on :
Hey John, I liked the concept, but I found this a little confusing as well. I can see the lion having tentacles maybe, but not vines. Another thing that threw me off was the 'sudden' switch to Aiden. If the lion is busy zapping viruses (the correct plural of virus--unless you mean something else) then as I reader (and techie) I'm assuming that we're actually in cyberspace; once we switched to Aiden I was like "where the &#*# did he come from?" I just couldn't buy into a virus protection software that actually showed a vine-infected lion on the screen.
quote: ...appearance was merely the avatar, the graphical placeholder in cyberspace, chosen for it by its creator.
I would change this to "...the graphical placeholder, in cyberspace, chosen by its creator." I liked the concept, but maybe consider starting with Aiden so the change isn't so abrupt??? My two cents.
Posted by JohnMac (Member # 8472) on :
Thanks for the input so far. I see the points being made now.
1) I too am a techie, and actively use "viruses" at work. I had always been under the impression that "viri" or "virii" were correct until I actually looked this one up. Blame it on the catcus, octopus, and platypus as far as I am concerned. Who woulda thunk a latin based word that end in "us" adding "es?"
2) The vines on Vine - in short his general appearance. Too heady to squeeze in in the first 13. In fact, that is probably in need of being changed.
3)I can hope it's the fomatting that threw you off a bit about Aidan's location because he IS in cyberspace. That would become readily appearant only a few lines later.
I see I have some work to do. Thanks for all of it so far - if there's more it could only make it better.
[This message has been edited by JohnMac (edited February 14, 2009).]