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.
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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.