Oh yes, and I specifically wanted to say I loved the demon turning out to be an angel. Great!

Great ideas here! You did A LOT of development in this. I think you were rushed, but I love the plot twists you threw in here.

I'll say this- the first part didn't seem quite up to your usual standards. I think you were (consciously or otherwise) trying to hard to mimick others' writing styles. By about midway through, you were yourself again, and from then on it was awesome.

It's not bad to try to experiment with different writing styles. The thing that detracted from the first part of this chapter was the constant use of adjective/noun combos.

You're usually really good about not doing that.

You use images instead, which is what writing teachers would tell you to do. It's also more enjoyable to read. Brief example: instead of saying "he was a tall man" you might say "he had to duck to get through the doorway". (The second being the good example.)

At any rate, once you got in your groove with this chapter, you did a lot of great work! I'm voting a 4.

It means "glee at another's misfortune". I find it odd that there's no English word for such an emotion, as it's the most common one there is :)

Sure, that sounds intriguing. That's a great premise, and a perfect project for this site.

Thanks! I loved the title "Nuns on Motorcycles"... when I read the chapter, I didn't see much potential, with such an awful protagonist. (Not awful writing, just an unsympathetic character.) I decided to make a satire of it... glad someone enjoyed it :) I had fun, but not exactly a comment magnet.

Sounds like a good timeline! In the other storyline I contributed to, Halloween came and went, which makes the rest kind of anticlimactic, doesn't allow for building on the whole "this will be a sinister Halloween" hint. Still a good storyline, but I like the buildup here.

Amen- existentialists rock! Kirkegaard, Nietzsche, Doestevsky... Warren Buffet (he may be a stock investor, but he's still pretty darn existential).

Now, Psycho, if you're reading... keep in mind that the preacher may be an evil entity not tied to any real religion, modern or ancient. He could well be using folklore and scripture and misconceptions to create chaos... You can definitely take this story in a direction that doesn't paint any religion in a negative light. In fact, you could use this chapter as a springboard to introduce more historical facts on Druids, if you wanted to! You could have the main character use some sort of Druid magic to fight the preacher and send him back to whatever Plutonian fantasy world he came from :) Just tossing out ideas! I'm sure you'll think of something great!

Keep in mind, the following excerpt refers to the Bible, not the Druid history:

"“So,” I thought, “God makes certain people; people who are sinners and unless they repent their sins, he has them programmed for destruction!” I knew there was a reason I could never get behind faith and religion. What kind of crap was this?"

As far as the religion debate goes, I want to add that WWB did something very well here; note that while he did rely in Pagan stereotypes, he also pointed out issues with the Old Testament. In fact, he interpreted the passages he cites in a very sinister way. The "preacher" character is, at this point, looking like the antagonist in this story, and yet he is a supposed "Christian".

It's true that there are people even today who call themselves Pagan and don't need any bad PR. But WWB made it pretty clear that he isn't singling out Pagans any more than he is Jews or Christians.