Sumiyoshi here. I felt that I just HAD to say something, but didn't want to spoil the whole thing by throwing this in a review on FF.net- apologies for spam.
And a spoiler alert for those who haven't finished reading.
When I saw the '^_^'s you kept replying to me with (and this particular LJ post, yes)... well, you have no idea how worried I was that you found my baffled and wary reviews so amusing. It just confirmed that my suspicion that somewhere down the line, something horrible was going to happen to our vanilla-flavored heroine (protagonist? Middling Sue? Anti-heroine? Villainess?) and her team, which would hammer home whatever pointed commentary you were undoubtedly making with the whole 'fic.
Then I saw the link in your profile and read up on the whole story.
Near the start? Okay, my eyes glossed over a bit, just as it had with the first two chapters- something was off, something that I couldn't quite place my finger on. Descriptive (and perhaps overly so), but "meh"; somewhat unlikely and high-class 'mons joining her team; the whole 'one girl versus Team Magma' bit... the story was acceptable, just enough to pass under the radar of reviewers willing to look on the bright side of things.
Saurius. That was when I sat up and actually started taking notice- he joined ludicrously fast, Lucki'd nicknamed him without consultation on his part, and his otherwise awesome personality became (more) muffled the second he was caught. One or two of the other points cleared up, too, like how Lucki ended battles with barely a word to her monsters, or how she really didn't account for their varying circumstances...
Then Fara was caught, a good number of points clicked together in my mind, and (pardon my French) I promptly shat bricks. THAT was the shoe- that perfectly-fitting, antithesis-screaming shoe- that I had been waiting for, and it was only a matter of time now. As to the rest of the 'fic...
I have to say, this is the first time that I've seen all of ye olde (semi-)SI-fic plot discrepancies neatly resolved by the end, ESPECIALLY those little SI-centric points that you'd normally take for granted. That this resolution could only end in doom... I laughed long and hard. Regardless of species, each character got his or her due- and in the end, some of them (you know who I'm talking about) regained the freedom to make their own choices.
Taken all together, this is probably one of the best stories I've read in a long time. It made me cringe, it made me worry, it made me stare, it made me cackle with glee, it made me gape, and then, perhaps most importantly, it made me think long and hard.
Ooh, one or two more replies like this and I may well have empirical proof FFN readers are smarter then Serebii ones.
(And I'm actually not sure what Lucki is. Whatever the opposite of "anti-hero" is, I guess. Anti-villain?)
Anyway, I'm glad you saw and understood the transitions, as well as the eventual denouncement - I was wondering if I'd been too subtle with a lot of it, but didn't want to go into unrealistic parody territory to get it across. Responses like this make the whole long setup worth it.
Well, to be honest, I had the distinct advantage of being familiar with your work (mostly the Unoriginalities, the various species-centric one-shots, and the meta(?)-fics, like Emerald Perspectives and Waiting), so I knew at least to expect something. XD; Had you posted this under a pseudonym on FF.net (as impossible as that would have been), I might not have had the patience to work through the first chapter.
Too subtle? Maybe in the first half (but then again, I didn't exactly take my time when reading the first few chapters, and missed out on some very key details early on), but the latter half was spot-on. I loved how everything eventually comes back to hit the reader upside the head- those were the type of revelations to make the reader double-take and re-read the first few chapters, and to show everything that happened before in a new, startlingly unpleasant light ("Why did you choose me?!").
That's... not an effect that's easy to pull off, OR to pull off well. At all.
On another note, 'anti-villain' reminds me of Jessie and James-caliber characters, those bumbling, sorta-good-at-heart crooks that you can't help but cheer for. XD; Lucki was... certainly clueless, but frighteningly effective at what horrific deeds she DID manage to pull off under a cold-blooded veneer of hate.
^^ Massive planning. I'm glad it paid off. The endings of the story were worked out in advance, so the setup is written afterward, in a way. For all icemew babbled and pretended to ask for advice, it was pretty much a complete story that happened to be posted serially. (Although there were problems I'm cleaning up on the repost.) Which is weirdly fitting, considering regular OT fic is about as far from planned as possible.
Hm. Perhaps the best word is "antagonist", for all that's impossible. She's the technical main character, yet in terms of both the overarching plot and the individual characters, she's the negative force. And since she is her own destruction, protagonist-antagonist isn't such a contradiction. Really a new word needs to be created, though.
In a way, she's frighteningly effective the entire time. She doesn't care, even when she does realize. Early on she seems like she's just unaware, but by the end of the story when she knows, her behavior hasn't changed at all. She's pretty sociopathic - the kind of person who's clueless about hurting others, then you tell her and she says, "So what?"
Really, maybe a new word shouldn't be created. I don't think this is a character type that should be popular enough to be a fiction mainstay.
Finished reading it on Serebii the other day, and it'd be spoilery to review on ff.net right now - guess I'll reply here too - oh, in two parts, it seems it's too long for one post. [Rozzlynn/Kiii, and I'm not sure if I've used this account here before but I think I'll be sticking with it from now on.] I saw some of the posts about Lucki here before I read it, so I knew from the start that it was a metaparody and that a flareon called Flare would be abused, but I still didn't pick up on quite everything.
The fic was pretty boring most of the way through (if filled with disturbing little things that weren't meant the way Sue-authors would have meant them); it got slowly, gradually more interesting in the latter half, until everything kicked off. And then it was worth it. <3 That 'destroyed the world to get back at a boy who saved her life, and a pokemon who would have died for her' sentence really is... I'm not even sure of the word, but even though the 'Training' chapter was the most mind-numbingly boring and pointless thing that I'd read for a long while, it'd have been worth it a great many times over for that.
I didn't get that Silver was unsuited for battle until she started openly freaking out about it (the 'trapped', terrified stare and the 'it may seem really, really scary...' talk). Before that, she seemed to fight well enough that the 'shinies are not bred to be fighters' thing didn't look like a problem in her case. Her meekness was a bit hard to tell apart from 'finding that things are unexpectedly hard but not wanting to give up yet' at the start, as opposed to 'trying to cope with a situation she's been thrown into'; realistically, the in-story characters should have been able to tell the difference better than the readers, from actually seeing her body language, right? (Not that I think the start should be any less subtle - it's realistic as it is, and readers don't need to get it right away.)
When Trike was caught, he did strike me as someone too young to be making that sort of decision. That was probably the creepiest of the early bits - seeing an easily confused tyke talked into leaving with a stranger with such an "it's a good thing!" vibe going on, and the trainer hoping that future captures wouldn't be as 'difficult'. o.0 When Lucky renamed him, I did wonder how Flare could go as far as to say 'a better name?' without her remembering that she'd promised him one too - I guess he just couldn't do anything as dramatic as evolve to make her think more highly of him, make her think anew that he needed a more impressive/fitting title, when he couldn't even impress her by winning tough battles. And when she basically ordered him to run laps until he collapsed from exhaustion? (And he got up and did so, and she promptly ignored him?) Ouch. T.T If only he'd had a little more time with his new Team Magma trainer before the apocalypse.
I probably noticed those parts more than I would have if I hadn't seen the comments about Flare in the LJ, but still, that's how it seemed. Saurius didn't stand out as much to me; we never really knew much about him. The Absol... heh. It's a story with a Sue and a SI, but they're not the same - kinda weird. When you ranted about Lucki in the Mary Sue report, you seemed glad to get off your chest all the annoying stuff about her that other people might not notice (almost as if it would be painful for people not to get just how thoroughly badly-written all the Sueishness is), but the 'rant' about Fara definitely seemed more of a fake-rant about things that you wanted people to get curious about so that they'd read the story and see how she really is - after all, the 'truth' about that Absol is pretty inextricable from the point of the story. And yet you changed tracks without breaking your stride - a minor '*blink* huh?' moment.
Sorry for the early boredom - I may well revise it if I can ever figure out a way that won't sacrifice the basic trainerficness. ^^ Although I made my family read it, I only forced the post-thirteen chapters on them. I'm glad the end was enough to make up for it.
When Lucky renamed him, I did wonder how Flare could go as far as to say 'a better name?' without her remembering that she'd promised him one too The same way my kind, wonderful readers could. My ending bit about how they're the same as Lucki was probably taken as a bit hyperbolic, but I did mean it. Since icemew was following their advice, if they'd brought it up it would have been changed.
I didn't get that Silver was unsuited for battle until she started openly freaking out about it It's kind of a Schroedinger's cat situation. Silver isn't unsuited for battle until Ch14 and on. Before that, two conflicting realities both exist, and they're both true as long as they aren't forced into contradiction. She's both objectively small, frail, and of a weaker bred line, and a perfectly decent battler. It can be justified in-story, as the battles are getting harder and she's not capable of improving to the same degree, but it's really one of the more parodic elements. Lucki's version of the story could have continued if she just hadn't kept the absol.
And yes, Fara...I'm actually thinking of changing the absol's name when she appears, since for one thing, it's a lot more obvious now, and since I don't really want her coming off as a real self-insert - gets too close to one of those parodies where an author stand-in shows up to tear the story down. Irin, maybe. Or Er. (I'd use something like Yan or Ying, but that'd violate the idea of her being something that stands on its own rather than being tied to humans.)
Link to the Mary Sue report? I'm fangirling this story with all of my little fangirl heart, and now that I've finished it, there really isn't much more to do besides reread it as it's posted on FF.net. That's frustrating. I want more goodies. If you ever want someone to ramble almost incoherently about it at, use me. I'd be THRILLED.
(Also, I caught Flare's reasoning behind the comment about Tryke's new name! There were a lot of things that I DIDN'T catcth, but I'd like to think that I still passed the test...)
Well, the mary sue report can be found here (http://community.livejournal.com/marysues/2554298.html), but it's not really much beyond the weirdness of me attacking myself for my writing.
My ending bit about how they're the same as Lucki was probably taken as a bit hyperbolic, but I did mean it. I wouldn't call it the same for Lucki to forget about Flare's promised re-naming and for the readers to do so; from her perspective, it had only been three days, her pokemon were at the center of her life, and Flare's reminder was about something she'd actively said and thought herself. Lucki would have had to have been incredibly self-absorbed not to notice (which she was, of course), while readers just had to be people who didn't re-read or remember enough about something they read online a few weeks/months ago. (I'd check the dates but the page isn't loading.)
It's kind of a Schroedinger's cat situation. Nice analysis - and Schroedinger's turtle is a cute image, for some reason. ^.^ (Not counting the nature of the thought experiment.) Could you put a Schroedinger training a squirtle into Reality? (Or would non-SI real person fic be too crossover-y?)
Yeah, Irin does work better for the ff.net one. It's curious, though; pokemon speech doesn't seem like it'd be easily transliterated. Do names that pokemon recieve in the absence of human culture exist as things exactly compatible with the Roman alphabet? Irin seems like she might have had a lot of contact with humans before, if she can speak English fluently; was there only one way to say her name in English, or did she adapt it to the closest word...?
I wouldn't call it the same for Lucki to forget about Flare's promised re-naming and for the readers to do so; from her perspective, it had only been three days, her pokemon were at the center of her life, and Flare's reminder was about something she'd actively said and thought herself.
Well, in a story, you're being presented with a limited amount of information, and dialogue is supposed to have meaning, as are scenes in general. It's somewhat apples and oranges, I suppose. But of the readers ever mentioned Flare's name, not in the long leadup to that scene, not when Lucki is trying to figure out what to call Tryke, not even when I asked them for a name for the evolved manectric.
Could you put a Schroedinger training a squirtle into Reality? (Or would non-SI real person fic be too crossover-y?) Clever but yes, too self-referential. (Also, the underlying workings of Reality often verge on Shroedinger states)
It's curious, though; pokemon speech doesn't seem like it'd be easily transliterated. Do names that pokemon recieve in the absence of human culture exist as things exactly compatible with the Roman alphabet? Irin seems like she might have had a lot of contact with humans before, if she can speak English fluently; was there only one way to say her name in English, or did she adapt it to the closest word...?
Artistic liberty, I'm afraid. The absol is supposed to be a counterpoint to the rest of the team, so she has a name while they don't and she can express herself without it being translated. She's meant as more or less of a demigod, so she lacks certain restrictions. Her speech is an expression of this, not a sign of earlier experience with humans, although she might have run into them before.
Pokemon names are an especially thorny issue. I've never heard a good way of resolving it. Like most people, I normally prefer to dodge by not naming, using nicknames, or using names assembled from words, where they could be translated. (I avoided mentioning what Saurius' actual name was for similar reasons.) Sometimes authors go with transliterated names, but that seems pretty unwieldy. I remember Dragonfree jumped through hoops to avoid the problem entirely in her story.
I didn't think it proof that she didn't care, exactly, when she sent Silver out to fight after her breakdown; Lucki's immediate situation seemed pretty dangerous. I mean, while it does seem in-character that Lucki didn't care (she really did come across as completely apathetic to anyone else's needs or wants), it seemed like even someone who had decided to find Silver a friendly family to stay with at the soonest opportunity would have sent her out as a last resort. Seeing as Lucki's only resort after _that_ was to plain run for her life. In one of the most awesome fic endings ever.
While most things were made clear by the end, I'm a bit curious about that Shellgon (it was really just trying to evolve?) and that injured creature she carried back in her arms (are you hoping people who haven't read your work before will find the closure for that part in Unoriginality?) - she didn't even bother find out if it had survived, did she? I wondered whether those two would come back by the end, in a more realistic way, but they didn't seem to. And while Team Magma probably stole the meteorite for a similar reason to the 'bad' team in the games, they weren't the ones trying to catastrophically change the climate here (and I can't entirely remember what the game reason was), so I'm still curious about what exactly they wanted it for here - and why it was reacting to pokemon in a way that the researcher hadn't been able to explain yet. Oh, and it really was annoying to see that the thing had been put somewhere 'safe' and useless after it had been recovered - it's bizarre how Lucki could have thought bringing an end to that line of research a perfectly good resolution when the loss of a useful research specimen was the main aspect of the problem. #.# At the end, when Team Magma stole the blue orb, I did vaguely wonder why they wanted that one when they weren't the ones who wanted to raise Kyogre, but I didn't really stop to think about it - the story was moving fast & dramatically enough by then that I just read to the end.
I didn't think it proof that she didn't care, exactly, when she sent Silver out to fight after her breakdown; Lucki's immediate situation seemed pretty dangerous. That's true, but basically, she didn't send out Silver because of that. She's not even aware that the battle has overflowed being between pokemon until Keegan tackles her, and even then, she initially plans to get the battle between her and Keegan, returning things to the status quo. She's not scared at the time.
In one of the most awesome fic endings ever. ^^ Thanks!
While most things were made clear by the end, I'm a bit curious about that Shellgon (it was really just trying to evolve?) and that injured creature she carried back in her arms Pretty much throwaway bits. The bagon/shellgon was to set the stage for Flare's increasingly futile attempts to make Lucki like him and because I didn't like the convention of having wild pokemon vary in strength based on trainer level. The taillow was fine, and was just there as a reference to general, Unoriginality-mocked trainer stupidity, as well as an allusion to an OT fic with a similar bait and switch (Lucki asks if the taillow is okay, the nurse joy offers her a different cool pokemon because she's so awesome).
The meteorite is connected to Groudon and/or Kyogre somehow. That might be why it reacted to Flare oddly (it's really reacting to all of Lucki's pokemon because they are Important and Special in the coming events, and the guy just doesn't realize because he has no similar benchmark for squirtle) or it might be giving random results because it only really reacts to Groudon and/or Kyogre (The game is impressively vague about this). Team Magma had no grand goals beyond "not dying because those nutcases destroy the world". I'm not really sure what they were planning, but it was preventative.
The Blue Orb bit is actually canon - each group steals the opposite color orb, meaning it's quite plausible that the group's plans might have worked if they hadn't been utter idiots who somehow thought the red orb controls Kyogre and the blue orb controls Groudon. Although for anyone that dumb, it's unlikely the rest of their plan would have gone any better. Seriously, they're color coded. Getting that wrong means you're terminally incompetent and the rest of your plan is probably riddled with similar mistakes.
The Blue Orb bit is actually canon - each group steals the opposite color orb, meaning it's quite plausible that the group's plans might have worked if they hadn't been utter idiots who somehow thought the red orb controls Kyogre and the blue orb controls Groudon. Although for anyone that dumb, it's unlikely the rest of their plan would have gone any better. Seriously, they're color coded. Getting that wrong means you're terminally incompetent and the rest of your plan is probably riddled with similar mistakes.
Have I told you that I adore you? I despise Team Aqua and Team Magma, and that's a hilariously succint way of describing them. As one of my friends put it, "There's no real menace there. If they're too stupid to notice the OBVIOUS flaws in their plans, they're too stupid to act on them competently." Of course, I think that friend was probably grossly underestimating the destructive power of stupidity...
I tend to see them as a doomsday cult. And not the sciency doomsday cult they're pretending to be, but one of the weird ones that's following some ancient half-translated book and stifles free thought among the cult members.
I mean, Team Magma, the guys hanging out around volcanoes and intending to bake the world into submission, wear heavy sweaters. You've got to be pretty weird to willingly choose that as your dress code. And Aqua is made up of pirate cosplayers or else run by someone with a pirate fetish, I'm not sure. (...and I've just figured out their real reason for wanting to expand the oceans.)
Once again, your interpretation is way more interesting and appropriate than the canon one. I mean, ecoterrorists can be stupid, but not that stupid. And I can't say I've ever heard of them favoring one sort of animal over another, except for the humans < all other animals bit, and that's getting more into Manga!EliteFour territory.
I think that they're actually supposed to be pro-human, although they might be pro-everything (I should replay the games). Magma wanted to expand the land so there'd be more places for people to live, and Aqua wanted to expand the ocean because the ocean can support more life and that would help people, I think. (From a technical standpoint, humans generally do quite well on small islands surrounded by fish, so it's less completely insane than it first appears.)
Yeah, they are pro-human, but they do play favoritism with pokémon, as they talk about wanting to help them, too. Either that, or they're just too stupid to realize that any sort of global environmental change will inevitably hurt some species, even it does help others.
Yeah, that's what I was just thinking. "Never ascribe to malice what can be attributed to ignorance" is pretty much Team Aqua and Team Magma's tagline.
She's not even aware that the battle has overflowed being between pokemon until Keegan tackles her, and even then, she initially plans to get the battle between her and Keegan, returning things to the status quo. She's not scared at the time. Uh-huh, she was out to get him, no doubt about that. (I was just saying that even someone who hadn't been would have done the same thing for different reasons.) After Keegan knocks her down, she looks and sees that she can't get the battle between them again, and then she runs; if it had been pre-Irin I'd have expected her to stand her ground and judo-flip him despite a couple of scrapes, but as it is, she doesn't seem to think she can beat him, or want to try even though she's mad at him. She does seem scared of fighting and risking worse injury when she runs instead. (And she may not have realised that climbing the rubble would hurt her that badly, but to be that desperate to abandon her revenge and her property does suggest 'panicked caution' of some sort by that point - though that's probably after the point you're referring to as 'at the time'.)
it's quite plausible that the group's plans might have worked if they hadn't been utter idiots who somehow thought the red orb controls Kyogre and the blue orb controls Groudon Well, that's... bizarre canon... But if the game's Aqua couldn't control Kyogre because they had the wrong orb, and that was why the downpoar was unrestrained and potentially apocalyptic, then wouldn't the Aqua that did have the right orb actually be able to control it enough to keep from all getting killed? Or else what would the correct orb do? (The orb must have drastically reduced the legendary's power in the game to have made it catchable only by the orb's bearer...)
(...and I've just figured out their real reason for wanting to expand the oceans.) For pirate cosplaying? o.o?
I'd have expected her to stand her ground and judo-flip him despite a couple of scrapes, but as it is, she doesn't seem to think she can beat him, or want to try even though she's mad at him. She does seem scared of fighting and risking worse injury when she runs instead.
I hadn't even considered that. But Lucki's not much of a twink sue, so even before the absol, she wouldn't have fighting ability. Someone would have to show up and help her.
Lucki's running because she doesn't think she could take Keegan in an actual fight, but does think she could outrun him. (He's two years older, male, and probably actually trained in fighting) In a fight, he'd pin her pretty fast, as he does when he finally does get her. She's not going to surrender if she doesn't have to. She's also running, in part, because he's chasing her and she's doing anything that Team Magma/he doesn't want. She's getting injured doing so, but it's more spite than fear.
then wouldn't the Aqua that did have the right orb actually be able to control it enough to keep from all getting killed?
Yes, but game Team Aqua's stated goals amount to "unrestrained and potentially apocalyptic downpour whee!" anyway, with the idea this is somehow helpful tacked on. In Lucki, they just aren't trying to make the world a better place. They're well aware of the fact that meddling with the existing balance is going to cause cataclysms, and that's why they're doing it.
It would be an interesting fanfic where the regular game team got the correct orb, though. GAH PLOTBUNNY.
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farla
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Date: 2007-05-05 07:24 am (UTC)Sumiyoshi here. I felt that I just HAD to say something, but didn't want to spoil the whole thing by throwing this in a review on FF.net- apologies for spam.
And a spoiler alert for those who haven't finished reading.
When I saw the '^_^'s you kept replying to me with (and this particular LJ post, yes)... well, you have no idea how worried I was that you found my baffled and wary reviews so amusing. It just confirmed that my suspicion that somewhere down the line, something horrible was going to happen to our vanilla-flavored heroine (protagonist? Middling Sue? Anti-heroine? Villainess?) and her team, which would hammer home whatever pointed commentary you were undoubtedly making with the whole 'fic.
Then I saw the link in your profile and read up on the whole story.
Near the start? Okay, my eyes glossed over a bit, just as it had with the first two chapters- something was off, something that I couldn't quite place my finger on. Descriptive (and perhaps overly so), but "meh"; somewhat unlikely and high-class 'mons joining her team; the whole 'one girl versus Team Magma' bit... the story was acceptable, just enough to pass under the radar of reviewers willing to look on the bright side of things.
Saurius. That was when I sat up and actually started taking notice- he joined ludicrously fast, Lucki'd nicknamed him without consultation on his part, and his otherwise awesome personality became (more) muffled the second he was caught. One or two of the other points cleared up, too, like how Lucki ended battles with barely a word to her monsters, or how she really didn't account for their varying circumstances...
Then Fara was caught, a good number of points clicked together in my mind, and (pardon my French) I promptly shat bricks. THAT was the shoe- that perfectly-fitting, antithesis-screaming shoe- that I had been waiting for, and it was only a matter of time now. As to the rest of the 'fic...
I have to say, this is the first time that I've seen all of ye olde (semi-)SI-fic plot discrepancies neatly resolved by the end, ESPECIALLY those little SI-centric points that you'd normally take for granted. That this resolution could only end in doom... I laughed long and hard. Regardless of species, each character got his or her due- and in the end, some of them (you know who I'm talking about) regained the freedom to make their own choices.
Taken all together, this is probably one of the best stories I've read in a long time. It made me cringe, it made me worry, it made me stare, it made me cackle with glee, it made me gape, and then, perhaps most importantly, it made me think long and hard.
I salute you.
no subject
Date: 2007-05-05 07:13 pm (UTC)(And I'm actually not sure what Lucki is. Whatever the opposite of "anti-hero" is, I guess. Anti-villain?)
Anyway, I'm glad you saw and understood the transitions, as well as the eventual denouncement - I was wondering if I'd been too subtle with a lot of it, but didn't want to go into unrealistic parody territory to get it across. Responses like this make the whole long setup worth it.
no subject
Date: 2007-05-06 02:25 am (UTC)Too subtle? Maybe in the first half (but then again, I didn't exactly take my time when reading the first few chapters, and missed out on some very key details early on), but the latter half was spot-on. I loved how everything eventually comes back to hit the reader upside the head- those were the type of revelations to make the reader double-take and re-read the first few chapters, and to show everything that happened before in a new, startlingly unpleasant light ("Why did you choose me?!").
That's... not an effect that's easy to pull off, OR to pull off well. At all.
On another note, 'anti-villain' reminds me of Jessie and James-caliber characters, those bumbling, sorta-good-at-heart crooks that you can't help but cheer for. XD; Lucki was... certainly clueless, but frighteningly effective at what horrific deeds she DID manage to pull off under a cold-blooded veneer of hate.
... yeah, I still don't know what to call her.
no subject
Date: 2007-05-07 10:50 pm (UTC)Hm. Perhaps the best word is "antagonist", for all that's impossible. She's the technical main character, yet in terms of both the overarching plot and the individual characters, she's the negative force. And since she is her own destruction, protagonist-antagonist isn't such a contradiction. Really a new word needs to be created, though.
In a way, she's frighteningly effective the entire time. She doesn't care, even when she does realize. Early on she seems like she's just unaware, but by the end of the story when she knows, her behavior hasn't changed at all. She's pretty sociopathic - the kind of person who's clueless about hurting others, then you tell her and she says, "So what?"
Really, maybe a new word shouldn't be created. I don't think this is a character type that should be popular enough to be a fiction mainstay.
no subject
Date: 2007-05-08 11:53 pm (UTC)The fic was pretty boring most of the way through (if filled with disturbing little things that weren't meant the way Sue-authors would have meant them); it got slowly, gradually more interesting in the latter half, until everything kicked off. And then it was worth it. <3 That 'destroyed the world to get back at a boy who saved her life, and a pokemon who would have died for her' sentence really is... I'm not even sure of the word, but even though the 'Training' chapter was the most mind-numbingly boring and pointless thing that I'd read for a long while, it'd have been worth it a great many times over for that.
I didn't get that Silver was unsuited for battle until she started openly freaking out about it (the 'trapped', terrified stare and the 'it may seem really, really scary...' talk). Before that, she seemed to fight well enough that the 'shinies are not bred to be fighters' thing didn't look like a problem in her case. Her meekness was a bit hard to tell apart from 'finding that things are unexpectedly hard but not wanting to give up yet' at the start, as opposed to 'trying to cope with a situation she's been thrown into'; realistically, the in-story characters should have been able to tell the difference better than the readers, from actually seeing her body language, right? (Not that I think the start should be any less subtle - it's realistic as it is, and readers don't need to get it right away.)
When Trike was caught, he did strike me as someone too young to be making that sort of decision. That was probably the creepiest of the early bits - seeing an easily confused tyke talked into leaving with a stranger with such an "it's a good thing!" vibe going on, and the trainer hoping that future captures wouldn't be as 'difficult'. o.0 When Lucky renamed him, I did wonder how Flare could go as far as to say 'a better name?' without her remembering that she'd promised him one too - I guess he just couldn't do anything as dramatic as evolve to make her think more highly of him, make her think anew that he needed a more impressive/fitting title, when he couldn't even impress her by winning tough battles. And when she basically ordered him to run laps until he collapsed from exhaustion? (And he got up and did so, and she promptly ignored him?) Ouch. T.T If only he'd had a little more time with his new Team Magma trainer before the apocalypse.
I probably noticed those parts more than I would have if I hadn't seen the comments about Flare in the LJ, but still, that's how it seemed. Saurius didn't stand out as much to me; we never really knew much about him. The Absol... heh. It's a story with a Sue and a SI, but they're not the same - kinda weird. When you ranted about Lucki in the Mary Sue report, you seemed glad to get off your chest all the annoying stuff about her that other people might not notice (almost as if it would be painful for people not to get just how thoroughly badly-written all the Sueishness is), but the 'rant' about Fara definitely seemed more of a fake-rant about things that you wanted people to get curious about so that they'd read the story and see how she really is - after all, the 'truth' about that Absol is pretty inextricable from the point of the story. And yet you changed tracks without breaking your stride - a minor '*blink* huh?' moment.
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Date: 2007-05-09 01:33 am (UTC)When Lucky renamed him, I did wonder how Flare could go as far as to say 'a better name?' without her remembering that she'd promised him one too
The same way my kind, wonderful readers could. My ending bit about how they're the same as Lucki was probably taken as a bit hyperbolic, but I did mean it. Since icemew was following their advice, if they'd brought it up it would have been changed.
I didn't get that Silver was unsuited for battle until she started openly freaking out about it
It's kind of a Schroedinger's cat situation. Silver isn't unsuited for battle until Ch14 and on. Before that, two conflicting realities both exist, and they're both true as long as they aren't forced into contradiction. She's both objectively small, frail, and of a weaker bred line, and a perfectly decent battler. It can be justified in-story, as the battles are getting harder and she's not capable of improving to the same degree, but it's really one of the more parodic elements. Lucki's version of the story could have continued if she just hadn't kept the absol.
And yes, Fara...I'm actually thinking of changing the absol's name when she appears, since for one thing, it's a lot more obvious now, and since I don't really want her coming off as a real self-insert - gets too close to one of those parodies where an author stand-in shows up to tear the story down. Irin, maybe. Or Er. (I'd use something like Yan or Ying, but that'd violate the idea of her being something that stands on its own rather than being tied to humans.)
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Date: 2007-05-25 01:28 am (UTC)(Also, I caught Flare's reasoning behind the comment about Tryke's new name! There were a lot of things that I DIDN'T catcth, but I'd like to think that I still passed the test...)
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Date: 2007-05-25 08:51 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2007-06-18 01:20 am (UTC)I wouldn't call it the same for Lucki to forget about Flare's promised re-naming and for the readers to do so; from her perspective, it had only been three days, her pokemon were at the center of her life, and Flare's reminder was about something she'd actively said and thought herself. Lucki would have had to have been incredibly self-absorbed not to notice (which she was, of course), while readers just had to be people who didn't re-read or remember enough about something they read online a few weeks/months ago. (I'd check the dates but the page isn't loading.)
It's kind of a Schroedinger's cat situation.
Nice analysis - and Schroedinger's turtle is a cute image, for some reason. ^.^ (Not counting the nature of the thought experiment.) Could you put a Schroedinger training a squirtle into Reality? (Or would non-SI real person fic be too crossover-y?)
Yeah, Irin does work better for the ff.net one. It's curious, though; pokemon speech doesn't seem like it'd be easily transliterated. Do names that pokemon recieve in the absence of human culture exist as things exactly compatible with the Roman alphabet? Irin seems like she might have had a lot of contact with humans before, if she can speak English fluently; was there only one way to say her name in English, or did she adapt it to the closest word...?
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Date: 2007-06-18 03:52 am (UTC)Well, in a story, you're being presented with a limited amount of information, and dialogue is supposed to have meaning, as are scenes in general. It's somewhat apples and oranges, I suppose. But of the readers ever mentioned Flare's name, not in the long leadup to that scene, not when Lucki is trying to figure out what to call Tryke, not even when I asked them for a name for the evolved manectric.
Could you put a Schroedinger training a squirtle into Reality? (Or would non-SI real person fic be too crossover-y?)
Clever but yes, too self-referential. (Also, the underlying workings of Reality often verge on Shroedinger states)
It's curious, though; pokemon speech doesn't seem like it'd be easily transliterated. Do names that pokemon recieve in the absence of human culture exist as things exactly compatible with the Roman alphabet? Irin seems like she might have had a lot of contact with humans before, if she can speak English fluently; was there only one way to say her name in English, or did she adapt it to the closest word...?
Artistic liberty, I'm afraid. The absol is supposed to be a counterpoint to the rest of the team, so she has a name while they don't and she can express herself without it being translated. She's meant as more or less of a demigod, so she lacks certain restrictions. Her speech is an expression of this, not a sign of earlier experience with humans, although she might have run into them before.
Pokemon names are an especially thorny issue. I've never heard a good way of resolving it. Like most people, I normally prefer to dodge by not naming, using nicknames, or using names assembled from words, where they could be translated. (I avoided mentioning what Saurius' actual name was for similar reasons.) Sometimes authors go with transliterated names, but that seems pretty unwieldy. I remember Dragonfree jumped through hoops to avoid the problem entirely in her story.
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Date: 2007-05-08 11:53 pm (UTC)While most things were made clear by the end, I'm a bit curious about that Shellgon (it was really just trying to evolve?) and that injured creature she carried back in her arms (are you hoping people who haven't read your work before will find the closure for that part in Unoriginality?) - she didn't even bother find out if it had survived, did she? I wondered whether those two would come back by the end, in a more realistic way, but they didn't seem to. And while Team Magma probably stole the meteorite for a similar reason to the 'bad' team in the games, they weren't the ones trying to catastrophically change the climate here (and I can't entirely remember what the game reason was), so I'm still curious about what exactly they wanted it for here - and why it was reacting to pokemon in a way that the researcher hadn't been able to explain yet. Oh, and it really was annoying to see that the thing had been put somewhere 'safe' and useless after it had been recovered - it's bizarre how Lucki could have thought bringing an end to that line of research a perfectly good resolution when the loss of a useful research specimen was the main aspect of the problem. #.# At the end, when Team Magma stole the blue orb, I did vaguely wonder why they wanted that one when they weren't the ones who wanted to raise Kyogre, but I didn't really stop to think about it - the story was moving fast & dramatically enough by then that I just read to the end.
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Date: 2007-05-09 02:45 am (UTC)That's true, but basically, she didn't send out Silver because of that. She's not even aware that the battle has overflowed being between pokemon until Keegan tackles her, and even then, she initially plans to get the battle between her and Keegan, returning things to the status quo. She's not scared at the time.
In one of the most awesome fic endings ever.
^^ Thanks!
While most things were made clear by the end, I'm a bit curious about that Shellgon (it was really just trying to evolve?) and that injured creature she carried back in her arms
Pretty much throwaway bits. The bagon/shellgon was to set the stage for Flare's increasingly futile attempts to make Lucki like him and because I didn't like the convention of having wild pokemon vary in strength based on trainer level. The taillow was fine, and was just there as a reference to general, Unoriginality-mocked trainer stupidity, as well as an allusion to an OT fic with a similar bait and switch (Lucki asks if the taillow is okay, the nurse joy offers her a different cool pokemon because she's so awesome).
The meteorite is connected to Groudon and/or Kyogre somehow. That might be why it reacted to Flare oddly (it's really reacting to all of Lucki's pokemon because they are Important and Special in the coming events, and the guy just doesn't realize because he has no similar benchmark for squirtle) or it might be giving random results because it only really reacts to Groudon and/or Kyogre (The game is impressively vague about this). Team Magma had no grand goals beyond "not dying because those nutcases destroy the world". I'm not really sure what they were planning, but it was preventative.
The Blue Orb bit is actually canon - each group steals the opposite color orb, meaning it's quite plausible that the group's plans might have worked if they hadn't been utter idiots who somehow thought the red orb controls Kyogre and the blue orb controls Groudon. Although for anyone that dumb, it's unlikely the rest of their plan would have gone any better. Seriously, they're color coded. Getting that wrong means you're terminally incompetent and the rest of your plan is probably riddled with similar mistakes.
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Date: 2007-05-25 01:36 am (UTC)Have I told you that I adore you? I despise Team Aqua and Team Magma, and that's a hilariously succint way of describing them. As one of my friends put it, "There's no real menace there. If they're too stupid to notice the OBVIOUS flaws in their plans, they're too stupid to act on them competently." Of course, I think that friend was probably grossly underestimating the destructive power of stupidity...
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Date: 2007-05-25 09:00 pm (UTC)I mean, Team Magma, the guys hanging out around volcanoes and intending to bake the world into submission, wear heavy sweaters. You've got to be pretty weird to willingly choose that as your dress code. And Aqua is made up of pirate cosplayers or else run by someone with a pirate fetish, I'm not sure. (...and I've just figured out their real reason for wanting to expand the oceans.)
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Date: 2007-05-25 09:16 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2007-05-29 02:23 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2007-05-29 08:02 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2007-05-30 02:17 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2007-05-30 03:13 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2007-06-18 02:41 am (UTC)Uh-huh, she was out to get him, no doubt about that. (I was just saying that even someone who hadn't been would have done the same thing for different reasons.) After Keegan knocks her down, she looks and sees that she can't get the battle between them again, and then she runs; if it had been pre-Irin I'd have expected her to stand her ground and judo-flip him despite a couple of scrapes, but as it is, she doesn't seem to think she can beat him, or want to try even though she's mad at him. She does seem scared of fighting and risking worse injury when she runs instead. (And she may not have realised that climbing the rubble would hurt her that badly, but to be that desperate to abandon her revenge and her property does suggest 'panicked caution' of some sort by that point - though that's probably after the point you're referring to as 'at the time'.)
it's quite plausible that the group's plans might have worked if they hadn't been utter idiots who somehow thought the red orb controls Kyogre and the blue orb controls Groudon
Well, that's... bizarre canon... But if the game's Aqua couldn't control Kyogre because they had the wrong orb, and that was why the downpoar was unrestrained and potentially apocalyptic, then wouldn't the Aqua that did have the right orb actually be able to control it enough to keep from all getting killed? Or else what would the correct orb do? (The orb must have drastically reduced the legendary's power in the game to have made it catchable only by the orb's bearer...)
(...and I've just figured out their real reason for wanting to expand the oceans.)
For pirate cosplaying? o.o?
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Date: 2007-06-18 04:09 am (UTC)I hadn't even considered that. But Lucki's not much of a twink sue, so even before the absol, she wouldn't have fighting ability. Someone would have to show up and help her.
Lucki's running because she doesn't think she could take Keegan in an actual fight, but does think she could outrun him. (He's two years older, male, and probably actually trained in fighting) In a fight, he'd pin her pretty fast, as he does when he finally does get her. She's not going to surrender if she doesn't have to. She's also running, in part, because he's chasing her and she's doing anything that Team Magma/he doesn't want. She's getting injured doing so, but it's more spite than fear.
then wouldn't the Aqua that did have the right orb actually be able to control it enough to keep from all getting killed?
Yes, but game Team Aqua's stated goals amount to "unrestrained and potentially apocalyptic downpour whee!" anyway, with the idea this is somehow helpful tacked on. In Lucki, they just aren't trying to make the world a better place. They're well aware of the fact that meddling with the existing balance is going to cause cataclysms, and that's why they're doing it.
It would be an interesting fanfic where the regular game team got the correct orb, though. GAH PLOTBUNNY.
For pirate cosplaying? o.o?
It makes more sense than anything else!