I love this story!

I love pepsi as you describe her and stuff.

I can't wait for the rest!

Great story!

I love Johnny so...yeah.

Man it's been God only knows how long since this has been updated! If only I'd have realized that before I wasted my time reading it. I was actually liking it. :[

Re: The girl bunking in with the guys

We all know because we've read the book, that the Curtises are nice guys and wouldn't hurt this girl. BUT the girl doesn't know that. She's in a strange place, and she doesn't have any idea why they jumped in the fight - maybe they want to take her home for themselves, and they're just as bad as the people that attacked her. She has NO idea about them.

I think almost any girl in that situation would be terribly apprehensive of what comes next. Sleeping on the couch would bring only a little relief to the situation. You're still in someone else's house, you're dealing with the emotional stress of being attacked, being in a strange place, having no place to go, and now you're in a house with 3 strange guys who could obviously kill or hurt you at any turn since they took out the guys that were beating you up.

Even if they were the nicest guys on the planet, there would still be a lot of fear and apprehension. I'd love to see her be afraid of these guys instead of instantly trusting them and feeling like she belongs with them. It would bring a lot more conflict in if she has no trust in them at first - it would frustrate them as well, being the nice guys they are that are just trying to help. It would also allow for a bigger pay off - when she finally does trust them, we'll have an emotional investment in it.

Hi,

I happened to notice this on the first page of the Outsiders fic list.

Anyway, I have some concerns with the fic the way it seems to be evolving -

1. It wasn't culturally accepted (as it is now, although still unevenly) for a guy to hit a girl and I think this would tend to restrain Socs from attacking a girl, especially one dressed a bit funny and not obviously a greaser. It would be far more in character for a Soc to assume he could bribe a greaser girl with some money, clothes or alcohol (yeah, it makes the guy a total jerk, but let's face it, guys do that even now and it's not right) in order to get some make-out time.

2. The nick-name chosen for your character is too deliberate to be coincidental. The only reason that you seem to have picked it is to overlap it with Sodapop, for some reason.

3. A strange girl sleeping in bed with two guys? No matter how you slice it, a fourteen and a sixteen year old will not have wholly platonic feelings about the situation purely due to hormones. I wouldn't be surprised if Ponyboy gave in to temptation and felt her up while she was sleeping. I've read books where exactly this sort of thing happens, and although this is not directly related I've known guys who've felt up girls when said girls were heavily drunk. Note that this does not make Ponyboy evil or depraved, but it does make him a human being who sometimes makes bad decisions. Something like this would have moved your fic along in an interesting direction, with your OC and Ponyboy dealing with the lack of trust that this kind of incident creates.

4. You've lifted a fair bit of stuff in chapter 3 straight from the book, so it's redundant.

5. You've given your OC the "tragic past", which is supposed to artificially create sympathy for your OC instead of organically allowing the reader to sympathize with her plight and root for her.

While I'm aware that the board in my own eye does exist (my own fic utilizes some cliche plot elements, sad to say, in retrospect), I am in the middle of restructuring it to make it far more realistic and believable than it currently is. Your fic would benefit from some of the same, and I wish you best of luck in that endeavor. :)

I clicked on this with much trepidation - time travel and girl-living-with-the-guys usually scream "bad writing and Mary Sue". But I was pleasantly surprised to find that your story is a lot better than I was expecting.

I liked the first chapter a lot, despite the lack of Outsiders characters. You have a very original set up for her going back in time, which is hard to do. I've only liked one (Unplanned Journey) back in time story.

The second chapter is where I have the most trouble - the "Socs attack girl, gang rescues her and asks her to live with them" is one of the most overdone plots on the site. I just can't see the Socs risking their reputations, their family's reputations, their standing in society, their money, their chances at college etc etc to attack a random girl. It's 1966, so even if there was a Soc/greaser war, I believe it would have been more amongst the guys than the girls. I think the guys would maybe verbally harass a girl, but I have a very hard time believing they would physical go after her.

Continuing with that, I don't think Darry, who is barely making ends meet with 2 boys and himself, would allow a girl to live with them or stay with them for an extended period. Maybe for a day or two - please consider having her go stay at Buck's or something, just so it doesn't sail off into cliched waters. Another thing that sort of irked me was that the entire gang was there to rescue her - I don't think they travel in a pack so much - in the book, the entire gang is only together once.

My last correction is the formatting of your dialogue.

INCORRECT "Wow. That's one of Soda's nicknames." I said.

CORRECT "Wow. That's one of Soda's nicknames," I said.

INCORRECT "Hey, Pepsi, you ok?" He asked ...

CORRECT "Hey, Pepsi, you okay?" he asked ...

There should be a comma instead of a period, since the sentence doesn't end at "nicknames" and the pronoun (unless it's I of course) doesn't need capitalization. Word auto capitalizes if you use a period, which is a clue it's not correct. However, it's a clue that took me 6 years to discover lol.

Check my profile - there's a link to an Outsiders message board where we discuss writing, and there's a lot of threads devoted to grammar and punctuation that explains things a lot better than I can (and in less space lol). It's a really fun place and I think you'd really benefit from it.

Also, I think some of your section breaks go missing. This site is notorious for that - if you're using stars in a row as line breaks, it erases them. It doesn't, however, erase three or four X's in a row or the line feature in Documents. There were a few sections that ran together and it was confusing, but I suspect it's a fan fiction dot net problem rather than you not separating them.

In your chapter 3, I find the character introduction and the intro of the gang too telling and not showing. Your first chapter did such a good job of introducing the character to us, even though you didn't really say much about her. When she's talking directly to the reader and telling us "I'm this, this and that" it's not very interesting. You definitely have the skills to let us slowly get to know her and what she looks like instead of dumping it all into a big speech she makes. We also already know the gang and who they are, so describing them isn't necessary.

God, you've probably fallen asleep by now, I swear I'll shut up in a minute. You have good writing skills, but there are a few things you need to work on. I think you could really do a good job with this story if you try and avoid as much as you can cliched plots and ideas. Please consider coming by the message board and hanging out.

Good luck with the rest of your story.

It's good!

no! evil, evil i tell u! thats wat cliffhangers r. pure evil. u cant leave me hangin like this. i think i might cry. this is an awsome story. pls, i beg u, update soon :) lol. keep up the good work xoxoxxo

great developin' story!

Oh, OH!

WAI! About time you updated! _ If you stop writing this I just might go postal. *snickers* And with that said I really enjoyed the fic and hope to see more of it soon! *hint hint* Characters aren't OOC at all...*shutters as she remembers some BAD OOC stories* Anyway keep up the good work! *smiles*

I really like it. Keep up the good work. Thanx!

please update! im beggin u!

Hey hon! Wow, this story kicks ass! I love the Outsiders, and this is defintely the best Outsiders fic. Please go read my new story! My pen name is Charlie Ramone.

Love ya babes,

Charlie

Hi bestest junior ever! Hmm, interesting story. I liked the original book a lot, and this is a really cool twist on it. Write more!

And no, I'm not Mr. Feeny. How'd you hear about me, if ya don't mind me askin'? I'd like to think I'm so universally loved everyone on FF.N knows me name, but I somewhat doubt that. Hey.. this couldn't have something to do with the mysterious person whose favorites list I'm on, could it? I wanna know who that is.. tell me! Teeeeeell meeeee!