Talk:Ebgerd: The Rock n' Roll Troll With Soul/@comment-7706473-20140903121003

Just so you know, exhausted as I am, I definitely wanted to review this story - because it's fantastic, a masterpiece of your familiar style and multiple twists and turns that play with the reader's expectations. First and foremost - the nostalgia present to a certain person who has fond memories of the past is overwhelming. Highlights! I nearly laughed my lungs out! Despite my fast typing speed on the monolithic QWERTY, I type with a great deal more force then necessary. It doesn't feel right otherwise, does it?

Although I preferred BBS to MU*'s, that was another thing that stood out. If I weren't so dead for time, I'd almost look around to see if any of them were still around - the ones I frequented, that is. Though Interactive Fiction is and has always been more my thing - no meddlesome people and time-zones to worry about, I suppose. But enough waxing nostalgic- let's talk the pasta as it is.

Though I can't help but find Ebgerd charming as a character that's one of the reasons this story is so effective. I remember oodles of touch-typing software, and though that was hardly unique to the time, a lot of it seems incredibly dated today; especially given the presence of multiple-programs on one disk. I remember a later-era touch-typing software that had Mario teaching you typing, maths, and... Go fish. All on one set of disks! A real value pack, though the version I found might not have been legitimate...

Gugger Soft made me think of the Gug of the Dreamlands, although it also sounds like it should mean something... Is there any significance to it? Regardless, Ebgerd seems entirely like a harmless music-mnemonyc based edutainment piece; the sort of wonderful chaff that was all too present back in the day. And that's where things get disturbing. The psychotic episodes the narrator relates are believably uncontrollable, very surreal - and very frightening. It's clear that the narrator is worried about them as anyone else, and not just because they effect his life - but his own health, and the health of those around them.

I think the most loving part of the story is the beautiful way the episodes are recorded - just straddling the line between gore and recollection, related confidentially to the reader like the reader might relate their own fears and creepy story. This has a conspiratorial feeling that keeps the reader on edge until the conclusion - and when the conclusion is reached, well...

[http://youtu.be/eFFgbc5Vcbw Ooooh, baby. Havin' me some fun tonight.]