“There’s a game opening up the “Cane and Crutch!”
No.. Doesn’t stand on its own unless we know something that’s been stated earlier in the story. Which there hasn’t been.
It stands on its own because we can derive from the story that it's a location, perhaps of ill-repute. Writers
frequently refer to someplace readers are unaware of with the intent of introducing to you that there is such a place, and then giving you more details later.
The people in the fiction are
already playing a game. So the game is already in context. The location is
clearly somewhere that they are going to play the game that is not presently open.
The rest of the story only has them going somewhere (not necessarily to a tavern, since the principle characters don’t follow the crowd) and doesn’t shed any further light on the sentence in question. While it may be a place (tavern, gaming parlor, etc.), that is only conjecture. It could have been fixed with one word for clarification. The word ‘at’ is required for it to be a valid sentence referring to a place.
No, the word "at" is not required for it to be a valid sentence referring to a place. It
can be used, but it
not required.
I am opening the door. I am opening the bar. I am opening the cellar. I am opening the bottle. They Might Be Giants are opening for Green Day. They Might Be Giants are opening the festival. They Might Be Giants are opening MusicFest. They Might Be Giants are opening Tiny Dave's.
ALL of those are valid sentences.
“There’s a game opening up at the “Cane and Crutch!”
Without ‘at,’ the sentence doesn’t hold up. You can’t have an implied ‘at.’
The game itself could be called “Crane and Crutch.” Chances are we will never know.
Yes, you can have an implied "at." People do it all the time. You're also not supposed to start a sentence with a state of being, or a prepositional phrase, or any number of other things, but people do them all the time too. At least the writer(s) haven't said that something should "of" been done. That happens, and I might have to storm the castle.
Sometimes it's a colloquialism. Sometimes it's local speech patterns. Sometimes it's artistic license.
An ‘end’ to a story doesn’t mean an end to the tale. It simply means the story isn’t left dangling without hope of continuance. So far, these stories have been pretty self-contained, barely even referencing each other directly. The arc in general is meandering slowly…somewhere… without any obvious direction - from a story point of view. We know where it’s headed because we’ve been told. If someone came into this now, they’d be lost.
Anyone familiar with an MMORPG knows that tales often begin outside of the game and are continued inside of the game. The only reason someone would be lost is because of a failure to pick up the fiction somewhere inside the game.
As far as stories not connecting directly to each other, again, that's the nature of the beast. You cannot realistically expect them to do prequel fiction, have in-game event stuff, write about the stuff that goes on inside the game as some sort of parallel story continuance mechanism (particularly when, with EM involvement, that story could take anyone of eighteen or so different turns), and then pick up the next piece of fiction up right from where the parallel story continuance mechanism leaves off.
You're not -- to be frank -- reading a book. The fiction should be properly used to get you enticed into checking out what's going on in-game at the moment.
Now, I agree, they need to time fiction and stuff going on in-game together a bit more tightly, but honestly, they've been doing a hell of a lot better than they were before people complained about Lieutenant Crag and Minax's Maybellene Makeover.
That is a fair assumption, but we shouldn’t have to make it. A simple word would have removed all doubt and made it clear. Whether or not the place does (or will) exist is irrelevant. We want the writing to be better, not repeat the ‘though mascara’ days.
I do think the writing is better. You're tackling a complete non-issue.
Now, if you were saying "There’s a game opening up the "Cane and Crutch!" is a badly punctuated sentence, I'd agree. The correct sentence should read:
"There's a game opening up the 'Cane and Crutch!'"
But, as for the presence of the word "at," well, again, it's unnecessary.
