Pokemon Fanfiction Academy, Chapter Five!
Dec. 6th, 2004 09:22 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
farlaWell, I was going to write more about words today, but then I realized that Pokemon Fanfiction Academy had just been updated, and as you may have noticed, I love abusing the little thing.
The fifth chapter is a lovely addition to the train wreak that is this fic. It starts off with a simply beautiful author note.
Notes: I recognize that last chapter left several people dissatisfied I apologize for not making it clear that it was supposed to look silly, to show how Kayla and several other people can think up illogical pokemon that will be gone into in later chapters when the essays are taken up, this chapter contain a guest lecture by topaz . Next chapter will bring you yamato san as a guest speaker/student of sorts and look at the muse class again. Weekend war part two
The stickler in me feels the desperate need to mention her grammar here is painful. Moving on, does everyone notice LadyUmbra's decision to redefine the issue? I think (or I'd hope) that all the reviewers understood that Kayla was being stupid by her idea of the two mating. I'd similarly hope, though, that this means the incredulous tone generated in the reviews was from 1)having another character support this as if it wasn't so ludicrous and 2)having an author note at the end that showed she didn't have a clue.
Also, notice how she does not address complaints of her grammar. Three people mentioned the platypus thing, two of whom sound like they was just answering the author's question, and a fourth person complains about rapidash and Ho-oh mating. The single person mentioning the rapidash/Ho-oh thing might need things clarified by the author (and in all fairness, the way LadyUmbra wrote it, it's not especially clear how she meant it and she does seem to imply it's not an utterly idiotic idea, which is probably what the reviewer is complaining about) Four people also complained about her actual writing, and none of them sounded like they were answering a question. Yet the author's note deals solely with the rapidoh issue. Why? Because she can't explain away her mistakes or the stupid way she dealt with the platypus issue, so she's heading for the one thing she can justify.
This does not bode well.
The story opens with a new character, Clowsui. Clowsui does not exist on FFN, but a quick google finds him as a member of Serebii.Net. Seeing as FFN gets a regular influx of them, I probably should have remember the site exists and checked there earlier. (Another quick google search shows the story has only been posted there and FFN.) There are a lot of characters showing up in this one, and there's no real need to identify them except if there is any reference to their 'charges', so I won't bother so much.
Those of you who want a giggle or two can check out the thread where the stories were posted – apparently she knew the story was filled with grammatical errors (at least for the first two chapters) and posted anyway. She also makes a reference to a 'disability' causing her to make so many mistakes. Yeah, sure. I'm going to guess dyslexia as her excuse, but people will pull up the stupidest reasons, so I can't be sure.
Like the majority of the students, Clowsui was awoken by a loud unidentified noise, followed swiftly by the entire school sprinkler system going off and drenching many sleeping students.
As his covers began to soak, Sui tossed them off and hurried out into hall only to freeze his feet in the cold water that was rapidly building up on the floor.
The story, happily, does not open with more mistakes, only with some mildly tortured sentences. (Or, tying back into what I was trying to explain yesterday, just because there aren't grammar errors doesn't mean there isn't a better way to word things)
Of course, in the next line she talks about ash, and I'm left to wonder if there should be grammar minis. You know, like a forest full of ash trees, oaks, elms and birches, covered in ivy? That can move like womping willows? Hm, I'll have someone I know suggest that.
Anyway, LadyUmbra creates yet another mini by the typical manner as well.
Sui rounded a corner, heading towards the auditorium, when he ran literally into Saya and her Poocheyena.
It's pooch+hyena. Where the extra 'e' comes in I don't know. You know, at this rate our OFU may generate more misspellings than the fandom itself. If that's not ironic I don't know what is.
Saya just sighed, her blue eyes reminiscent of a stormy sea.
::sigh:: You know, some OFUs punish authors for flowery and inappropriate descriptions of eyes. Here, the author writes it herself. (Note also that 'stormy sea' is also totally irrelevant to the situation) C'mon, it's an OFU! If she's got eyes like a stormy sea, I want sloshings and spray! Maybe some thunder and gale-force wind, too. I remember in another OFU writing 'raven black' on the application gave the character black hair with bits of raven mixed in.
About now we enter the main problem in this month's chapter – ignored or abused apostrophes. First they're dropped, then they're tacked on to random words, then they're put in the wrong place, then they're dropped again…I feel truly sorry for the apostrophes in this chapter. Or apostrophe's, as LadyUmbra might put it. There are also a great many missing or misplaced commas and several s are missing as well.
May I add that by no means should you think this means the writing is coherent…
However, if a student had gone to the auditorium, they were to be sadly disappointed as no non-student was there. Also, due to the slight slant that the school building was on, once someone arrived and opened the pressure lock door a small wave had rushed out at the students, sweeping them down the hall within it’s crest.
I think the main issue here is tense, but it's just so warped I can't be sure what the basic problem started as. The sad thing is, people, this is beta'd. This is what passes for proofread in the fandom.
Yeah. I think that sums up a lot about what's wrong with the fandom right there.
Anyway…LadyUmbra continues to 'teach by example'. This chapter contains the joy that is in-text author notes.
The person responsible for the sprinklers had been apprehended by an avalanche (yes a group of Regice is an avalanche) and had not been heard from since.
Gah. The worst part of this is she does not even know how to use collective nouns. If you're using a collective noun (a business of ferrets, an exaltation of larks, a conspiracy of lawyers, a gaggle of geese…) you don't write part of it. You just DON'T. You write "apprehended by an avalanche of regice" if your collective noun is avalanche (and you leave the reader to work it out themselves from context rather than with a damn author note). And if you don't have a clue how collective nouns work or even what they are, you do not use them, let alone make them up. I love collective nouns. Do not abuse them like this.
Continuing on, we witness a subtler problem with characterization, one I noticed earlier, back in chapter two, when Kayla acted shocked and horrified at the idea of people being too lazy to check their spelling of names.
"…[they also] broke a cardinal rule of Pokemon training; settling a personal issue with a Pokemon battle.”
There was amassed grumbling. They’d been woken up on a weekend over shipping? People had used Pokemon for personal issues?
Now, I give credit to LadyUmbra for remembering this. It's canon, it's from the early episodes (Charmander, the Lost Pokemon), it's a single scene…the problem here is the reaction. Read fanfic sometime. How many authors see no problem settling personal issues with pokemon battles? (For that matter, how many pokemon episodes? Though show canon inconsistency is a whole rant in itself…) Basically, authors are supposed to be at the OFU because they don't know this kind of stuff, and believe me, a lot of people don't. So why do these authors, who are presumably the same sort of people who write stories like the ones I've seen, react this way?
Why do the characters keep agreeing with everything? If they know not to misspell names, why are they there? If they know canon, why are they there?
Why aren't some of the authors thinking, Hey, wait, what's the big deal about settling a personal issue with a pokemon battle? I had my character, John Ketchum, challenge his evil rival Mark Oak to a pokemon battle when Mark insulted him, and I had him challenge another trainer who was abusing his pokemon, and a girl who thought the only pokemon anyone should train were cute ones, and…
The characters are supposed to be there to learn. They shouldn't be agreeing. They shouldn't already know this stuff. Character growth. They're supposed to start out one way and change.
For those guilty for causing trouble, it was a death sentence.
Remember, kiddies, never accurately describe something when you can use a cliché hyperbole instead! Overused, inexact phrases are, like, totally the absolute, utter BEST for describing things. They're, like, literally, the greatest ever, and you should totally use them every time you can. The next time your, like, evil Fascist parents tell you to do something, you should, like, tell them it's like, literally, a DEATH SENTENCE to do that, and then run up to your room and slam the door, and they'll be like, totally STUNNED by your awesome verbal abilities that they'll practically drop dead.
I enjoy this far too much, don't I?
Oh, and bonus points if you can find the grammatical error in the first clause.
The story goes on to say about the punished 'shippers: "It was a hard lesson in lusting", which I can't quite figure out since, as I recall, the whole thing about 'shippings is they're not about your personal lust. Because if they were, no one would care if Ash ended up with Misty or May. The problems with 'ships are rabid, insane delusions that two characters absolutely must be together. I don't see where lust factors in.
The majority of students finished up assignments and went to extracurricular actives such as Poke-chow cooking or anime video making (plus learning how to remain canon while picking songs and clips).
I'd question how tough the school really is if the students have time for extracurricular activities, but these are 'actives', so I guess that makes all the difference. Anyway, for some reason I find the parenthetical note there exceedingly funny. I don't really know why, I guess I just tend not to worry about anime (music?) videos being canon, seeing as they're arranged from clips of the show. I mean, certainly you can suggest one thing or another, but ignoring canon with them would be a pretty neat trick. Maybe she's talking about how the videos should only suggest established stuff and shouldn't be a selection of clips designed to suggest that Ash/Random girl in episode 342 is a valid pairing…but then I still feel that if you're good enough to get clips and a song to fit that, go for it. That's wherer a lot of what the fun about them comes from. Otherwise, you're just watching an episode of the anime.
For those of you wondering, we're about halfway though the story at this point. Yes, I am verbose, thank you for noticing.
Now comes the guest lecture promised up in the author note. It's called 'The Power of What If', and it's by Topaz. I think I've mentioned before how I feel about TopazSoahire's site andgushings of praise reviews, but I really have nothing against her personally. Take what I say here with a grain of salt if you must, but nothing's personally motivated.
That said…
I don't know for certain if Topaz wrote this herself or not, but it's a guest lecture, so I'll just assume so.
Therefore let my comments about her poor grammar be taken separately from my above complaints about LadyUmbra's poor grammar.
Topaz, talking, says, "Yep, you read correctly" and this alone I consider pretty much inexcusable. That's not a typo, that's someone just not thinking. She is putting this in quotation marks as she types and yet she writes the dialogue as if they're reading it off a page. Hear that shattering sound? It's the fourth wall. There's a distinction between the people in the fanfic and the people outside it, please, let's respect that.
Anyway, she goes on to misspell an innocent author's name ("Tolkein knew them"…anyone else remember 'I before E except after C' or did I just hallucinate the several hundred times I was taught that over the years?) and make minor grammatical errors ("Geez! I bet your thinking. Stupid kid, wasting my time!" while getting to her point, namely, that the two most important words in writing are 'what if'?
Now, that's fine to talk about, all very inspiring and such. Possibly such an upbeat, positive lecture might be seen as mildly out of place at the Academy, but she's guest lecturer, and besides, LadyUmbra seems to keep changing her mind about whether or not the Academy is meant to beat down authors or not.
The only problem is she actually doesn't talk about that. Her lecture is actually on description – being sure to describe the setting, take your time, slow down and talk about everything rather than skipping through it.
Her lecture starts off about how 'what if' can help you get a story idea. Then she describes her first story idea, which came from a 'what if', and then narrates a deliberately boring and senseless tale. She goes on to describe an alternative to this.
Which is all good and well, except, well, remember the title of the lecture? "The Power of What-If"? And all the ranting she did about how the phase 'what if' contains the two most important words in writing? Yet her lecture is not at all on 'what if'. In fact, if someone (say, me, as I tend to feel editing urges when reading poorly organized stuff) cut out the top of her lecture and just had her jump in to describing the first poor story and then the better story, the lecture would make a lot more sense.
Another problem is that, like her own OT stories…well…
This lecture would be fine if she had made it clear she's just talking about putting more narration into people's stories, describing their surroundings, thoughts, actions, etc. But she doesn't.
And while TopazSoarhire is certainly good at description…she's not so hot at other things. Her storylines are somewhat jumbled. For example, she talks about how her character's mother has a strict rule about no pokemon as pets, and then, in an admittedly fine bit of characterization, says that the girl's brother, who likes to bring home bug-types and has to return them, always whines about "How come Ceres gets to use your Bellsprout’s for school then?" Unfortunately, there's no explanation for why her mother keeps bellsprout but has a rule about no pokemon pets. Now, if her mother said the children weren't allowed to keep pokemon themselves, or that she didn't like bugs, or that they couldn't bring wild pokemon home…all those could be explanations, but as it is, it's just a dangling plot hole. A little later her family complains that a journey from Viridian to Cerulean is too expensive, even though they've just gone to Goldenrod AND Prof. Elm has gone from Goldenrod to New Bark with no better reason than to tell their daughter something and give her a special pokemon. Why Goldenrod to New Bark is easy enough to do on a whim but going from Viridian to Cerulean is expensive is never explained. Still later, in another again perfectly good bit of characterization, her brother says Ceres can't use his scyther (which he caught the day before) for a pokemon journey, and there is, again, no explanation. Why does he have a pokemon if he couldn't before?
Another more severe problem TopazSoarhire has is her tendency towards the sueish. In her story, she outlines two possibilities for her character getting a pokemon besides the standard 'wake up and head towards the lab'. Both made me cringe.
The first one involves Ceres meeting Prof. Elm one day. She talks to him about a project she's doing on leaf stones and the next day he meets them at the train station in New Bark and, well, I think this is quote-worthy.
[Elm] explains that he would like to help her daughter with her school project and that he has a friend in Cerulean city that is an expert on induced evolution, Professor Bill Emery, and he would be happy to give her a Leaf Stone. Her parents decline, saying that a trip over Mt. Moon is too expensive and they’ve already spent their holiday fund. He tells them that money is not a problem, and have they ever considered letting their daughter Journey? No, she hasn’t a Pokemon or a license. Her brother chips in, ‘she can’t have my Scyther!’. He caught it yesterday at the bug contest. Elm continues, saying if they were willing to put off leaving till tomorrow, Ceres could take her Pokemon License exam in an hour or two and he would put them up for the night. She does so, passing reasonably well, and he winks, giving her a green Pokèball engraved with a Leafstone. Inside is a wonderful Pokemon, but don’t open it till she gets home, so its just her and it. Inside can be any Pokemon you desire and can follow a journey from there.
Because it isn't like Elm has better things to do. Note that she gets a 'wonderful pokemon' (translation: nonstandard starter, likely 'special' in some way, possibly rare). Note that it's obvious she's going to actually journey and be a trainer rather than just going quickly from Viridian to Cerulean. (For the record, if someone actually wrote a story where the character stuck to their established goal, that might actually be interesting) Note that if Elm actually was trying to help her on her project, he could just have easily have given her a leaf stone himself, or paid for the travel.
The second way is even worse. There's an attack by Team Rocket, a pokeball rolls away and she grabs it. Inside is a terrified breloom covered in scars and bruises, who is, it turns out, a stolen pokemon. She comforts it and so it refuses to leave her to go with the authorities. Instead, she promises to try to find its trainer herself.
Again, this is quote-worthy.
Her heart breaks as she watches, and tries to assure it that once the man over there is done taking notes, he’ll find Max and the trainer and Pokemon can be together again. It cries out and grabs protectively at her ankles and shakes its head with tears glistening in its eyes. It’s too scared. She then without thinking promises she’ll help find its trainer. She goes back to her parents and Officer Jenny with Breloom dogging her heels as close as it could. She explains the situation and that it doesn’t want to leave her. Jenny thinks its just a Rocket’s Pokemon by the scars and agrees to let her keep it. Her parents allow her to keep it, and they go back to Viridian. Over the weeks it grows stronger and more trusting, is given him the nickname Boxer, and refuses to leave Ceres except for school, and even then he doesn’t’ leave the doormat until she returns. But he always has the look of homesickness about him. Finally she tells her parents that she wants to look for Boxer’s trainer.
She had to apply for a Trainer license with Professor Oak in able to keep him so she’s can leave. Her parents have grown close to Boxer and they notice his depression and let her go. So, in her room that night, she spreads maps of various Regions in front of Breloom and asks how long ago he was stolen. He raps out five with his tail. Five months. Where was he traveling? He points to the map of Hoenn. She figures Max would still be traveling, so after a week’s preparation she flies to Little Root Town and registers with the League, on a mission to find Max. Apparently he’s quite famous, so she chases him all over Hoenn, which is coincidently the regular track across the Region, always just one step behind him. She earns badges so she can control Breloom’s growing power and catches her own, but at the same time that Rocket who she took the Breloom off from is tracking her, trying to get Boxer back.
Ceres, named after the goddess of agriculture and nature, who takes care of plants, just happens to get a grass type. That's certainly a shock, isn't it? And look, she's so nice and the poor abused pokemon…wah. And rather than be focused on catching up with the guy, she apparently pauses all the time to raise the breloom, catch new pokemon, and earn badges. It never occurs to her to just call the guy, apparently -_-; And notice that for no discernable reason, the rocket is chasing her. Because a rocket losing one pokemon they weren't even that fond of it is certainly enough to make them drop everything to tail some random kid. It's not like they regularly steal new pokemon, or belong to an organization that actually, you know, gives them orders, no, they just run around doing whatever they feel like and retrieving any pokemon they lose.
Now, it's definitely got more details than the usual OT story…but what TopazSoarhire apparently doesn't understand yet is that detail doesn't decide if it's a sue or not. She confuses the issue. Was this a lecture on detail, it would be good, but she's also lecturing on plot, and, basically, TopazSoarhire is not particularly qualified to do that.
And then TopazSoarhire wraps up with: "There you go, quite a good journey. That, my aspiring writers, is the power of What If."
What? No, wait. It was detailed and thought out. Your advice was that people should give detail and try not to repeat the first episode of the anime. What does this have to do with 'what if'? I don't get it. Either I'm missing something really major here, or TopazSoarhire sandwiched one lecture inside another topic.
::sigh:: But then, it just wouldn't be Pokemon Fanfiction Academy if an otherwise decent bit of advice was presented in an incoherent manner.
The story ends with:
There was moment of silence before the assembled student body rose as one to applaud the creative young women before them. Although the lecture had taught them that they still had far to go, it had also inspired many, and for the first time since the school term began the students of the Pokemon Fanfiction academy began to see the light.
I'll give TopazSoarhire the benefit of a doubt here. I'm reasonably sure the last paragraph was written by LadyUmbra and so she isn't praising herself. That said, 'creative young woman'? Dammit. You shouldn't say people have stunning eyes and shining tresses, so don't tell the reader someone's creative. If they are, we should see it ourselves. If they aren't, you're just making it worse.
The fifth chapter is a lovely addition to the train wreak that is this fic. It starts off with a simply beautiful author note.
Notes: I recognize that last chapter left several people dissatisfied I apologize for not making it clear that it was supposed to look silly, to show how Kayla and several other people can think up illogical pokemon that will be gone into in later chapters when the essays are taken up, this chapter contain a guest lecture by topaz . Next chapter will bring you yamato san as a guest speaker/student of sorts and look at the muse class again. Weekend war part two
The stickler in me feels the desperate need to mention her grammar here is painful. Moving on, does everyone notice LadyUmbra's decision to redefine the issue? I think (or I'd hope) that all the reviewers understood that Kayla was being stupid by her idea of the two mating. I'd similarly hope, though, that this means the incredulous tone generated in the reviews was from 1)having another character support this as if it wasn't so ludicrous and 2)having an author note at the end that showed she didn't have a clue.
Also, notice how she does not address complaints of her grammar. Three people mentioned the platypus thing, two of whom sound like they was just answering the author's question, and a fourth person complains about rapidash and Ho-oh mating. The single person mentioning the rapidash/Ho-oh thing might need things clarified by the author (and in all fairness, the way LadyUmbra wrote it, it's not especially clear how she meant it and she does seem to imply it's not an utterly idiotic idea, which is probably what the reviewer is complaining about) Four people also complained about her actual writing, and none of them sounded like they were answering a question. Yet the author's note deals solely with the rapidoh issue. Why? Because she can't explain away her mistakes or the stupid way she dealt with the platypus issue, so she's heading for the one thing she can justify.
This does not bode well.
The story opens with a new character, Clowsui. Clowsui does not exist on FFN, but a quick google finds him as a member of Serebii.Net. Seeing as FFN gets a regular influx of them, I probably should have remember the site exists and checked there earlier. (Another quick google search shows the story has only been posted there and FFN.) There are a lot of characters showing up in this one, and there's no real need to identify them except if there is any reference to their 'charges', so I won't bother so much.
Those of you who want a giggle or two can check out the thread where the stories were posted – apparently she knew the story was filled with grammatical errors (at least for the first two chapters) and posted anyway. She also makes a reference to a 'disability' causing her to make so many mistakes. Yeah, sure. I'm going to guess dyslexia as her excuse, but people will pull up the stupidest reasons, so I can't be sure.
Like the majority of the students, Clowsui was awoken by a loud unidentified noise, followed swiftly by the entire school sprinkler system going off and drenching many sleeping students.
As his covers began to soak, Sui tossed them off and hurried out into hall only to freeze his feet in the cold water that was rapidly building up on the floor.
The story, happily, does not open with more mistakes, only with some mildly tortured sentences. (Or, tying back into what I was trying to explain yesterday, just because there aren't grammar errors doesn't mean there isn't a better way to word things)
Of course, in the next line she talks about ash, and I'm left to wonder if there should be grammar minis. You know, like a forest full of ash trees, oaks, elms and birches, covered in ivy? That can move like womping willows? Hm, I'll have someone I know suggest that.
Anyway, LadyUmbra creates yet another mini by the typical manner as well.
Sui rounded a corner, heading towards the auditorium, when he ran literally into Saya and her Poocheyena.
It's pooch+hyena. Where the extra 'e' comes in I don't know. You know, at this rate our OFU may generate more misspellings than the fandom itself. If that's not ironic I don't know what is.
Saya just sighed, her blue eyes reminiscent of a stormy sea.
::sigh:: You know, some OFUs punish authors for flowery and inappropriate descriptions of eyes. Here, the author writes it herself. (Note also that 'stormy sea' is also totally irrelevant to the situation) C'mon, it's an OFU! If she's got eyes like a stormy sea, I want sloshings and spray! Maybe some thunder and gale-force wind, too. I remember in another OFU writing 'raven black' on the application gave the character black hair with bits of raven mixed in.
About now we enter the main problem in this month's chapter – ignored or abused apostrophes. First they're dropped, then they're tacked on to random words, then they're put in the wrong place, then they're dropped again…I feel truly sorry for the apostrophes in this chapter. Or apostrophe's, as LadyUmbra might put it. There are also a great many missing or misplaced commas and several s are missing as well.
May I add that by no means should you think this means the writing is coherent…
However, if a student had gone to the auditorium, they were to be sadly disappointed as no non-student was there. Also, due to the slight slant that the school building was on, once someone arrived and opened the pressure lock door a small wave had rushed out at the students, sweeping them down the hall within it’s crest.
I think the main issue here is tense, but it's just so warped I can't be sure what the basic problem started as. The sad thing is, people, this is beta'd. This is what passes for proofread in the fandom.
Yeah. I think that sums up a lot about what's wrong with the fandom right there.
Anyway…LadyUmbra continues to 'teach by example'. This chapter contains the joy that is in-text author notes.
The person responsible for the sprinklers had been apprehended by an avalanche (yes a group of Regice is an avalanche) and had not been heard from since.
Gah. The worst part of this is she does not even know how to use collective nouns. If you're using a collective noun (a business of ferrets, an exaltation of larks, a conspiracy of lawyers, a gaggle of geese…) you don't write part of it. You just DON'T. You write "apprehended by an avalanche of regice" if your collective noun is avalanche (and you leave the reader to work it out themselves from context rather than with a damn author note). And if you don't have a clue how collective nouns work or even what they are, you do not use them, let alone make them up. I love collective nouns. Do not abuse them like this.
Continuing on, we witness a subtler problem with characterization, one I noticed earlier, back in chapter two, when Kayla acted shocked and horrified at the idea of people being too lazy to check their spelling of names.
"…[they also] broke a cardinal rule of Pokemon training; settling a personal issue with a Pokemon battle.”
There was amassed grumbling. They’d been woken up on a weekend over shipping? People had used Pokemon for personal issues?
Now, I give credit to LadyUmbra for remembering this. It's canon, it's from the early episodes (Charmander, the Lost Pokemon), it's a single scene…the problem here is the reaction. Read fanfic sometime. How many authors see no problem settling personal issues with pokemon battles? (For that matter, how many pokemon episodes? Though show canon inconsistency is a whole rant in itself…) Basically, authors are supposed to be at the OFU because they don't know this kind of stuff, and believe me, a lot of people don't. So why do these authors, who are presumably the same sort of people who write stories like the ones I've seen, react this way?
Why do the characters keep agreeing with everything? If they know not to misspell names, why are they there? If they know canon, why are they there?
Why aren't some of the authors thinking, Hey, wait, what's the big deal about settling a personal issue with a pokemon battle? I had my character, John Ketchum, challenge his evil rival Mark Oak to a pokemon battle when Mark insulted him, and I had him challenge another trainer who was abusing his pokemon, and a girl who thought the only pokemon anyone should train were cute ones, and…
The characters are supposed to be there to learn. They shouldn't be agreeing. They shouldn't already know this stuff. Character growth. They're supposed to start out one way and change.
For those guilty for causing trouble, it was a death sentence.
Remember, kiddies, never accurately describe something when you can use a cliché hyperbole instead! Overused, inexact phrases are, like, totally the absolute, utter BEST for describing things. They're, like, literally, the greatest ever, and you should totally use them every time you can. The next time your, like, evil Fascist parents tell you to do something, you should, like, tell them it's like, literally, a DEATH SENTENCE to do that, and then run up to your room and slam the door, and they'll be like, totally STUNNED by your awesome verbal abilities that they'll practically drop dead.
I enjoy this far too much, don't I?
Oh, and bonus points if you can find the grammatical error in the first clause.
The story goes on to say about the punished 'shippers: "It was a hard lesson in lusting", which I can't quite figure out since, as I recall, the whole thing about 'shippings is they're not about your personal lust. Because if they were, no one would care if Ash ended up with Misty or May. The problems with 'ships are rabid, insane delusions that two characters absolutely must be together. I don't see where lust factors in.
The majority of students finished up assignments and went to extracurricular actives such as Poke-chow cooking or anime video making (plus learning how to remain canon while picking songs and clips).
I'd question how tough the school really is if the students have time for extracurricular activities, but these are 'actives', so I guess that makes all the difference. Anyway, for some reason I find the parenthetical note there exceedingly funny. I don't really know why, I guess I just tend not to worry about anime (music?) videos being canon, seeing as they're arranged from clips of the show. I mean, certainly you can suggest one thing or another, but ignoring canon with them would be a pretty neat trick. Maybe she's talking about how the videos should only suggest established stuff and shouldn't be a selection of clips designed to suggest that Ash/Random girl in episode 342 is a valid pairing…but then I still feel that if you're good enough to get clips and a song to fit that, go for it. That's wherer a lot of what the fun about them comes from. Otherwise, you're just watching an episode of the anime.
For those of you wondering, we're about halfway though the story at this point. Yes, I am verbose, thank you for noticing.
Now comes the guest lecture promised up in the author note. It's called 'The Power of What If', and it's by Topaz. I think I've mentioned before how I feel about TopazSoahire's site and
That said…
I don't know for certain if Topaz wrote this herself or not, but it's a guest lecture, so I'll just assume so.
Therefore let my comments about her poor grammar be taken separately from my above complaints about LadyUmbra's poor grammar.
Topaz, talking, says, "Yep, you read correctly" and this alone I consider pretty much inexcusable. That's not a typo, that's someone just not thinking. She is putting this in quotation marks as she types and yet she writes the dialogue as if they're reading it off a page. Hear that shattering sound? It's the fourth wall. There's a distinction between the people in the fanfic and the people outside it, please, let's respect that.
Anyway, she goes on to misspell an innocent author's name ("Tolkein knew them"…anyone else remember 'I before E except after C' or did I just hallucinate the several hundred times I was taught that over the years?) and make minor grammatical errors ("Geez! I bet your thinking. Stupid kid, wasting my time!" while getting to her point, namely, that the two most important words in writing are 'what if'?
Now, that's fine to talk about, all very inspiring and such. Possibly such an upbeat, positive lecture might be seen as mildly out of place at the Academy, but she's guest lecturer, and besides, LadyUmbra seems to keep changing her mind about whether or not the Academy is meant to beat down authors or not.
The only problem is she actually doesn't talk about that. Her lecture is actually on description – being sure to describe the setting, take your time, slow down and talk about everything rather than skipping through it.
Her lecture starts off about how 'what if' can help you get a story idea. Then she describes her first story idea, which came from a 'what if', and then narrates a deliberately boring and senseless tale. She goes on to describe an alternative to this.
Which is all good and well, except, well, remember the title of the lecture? "The Power of What-If"? And all the ranting she did about how the phase 'what if' contains the two most important words in writing? Yet her lecture is not at all on 'what if'. In fact, if someone (say, me, as I tend to feel editing urges when reading poorly organized stuff) cut out the top of her lecture and just had her jump in to describing the first poor story and then the better story, the lecture would make a lot more sense.
Another problem is that, like her own OT stories…well…
This lecture would be fine if she had made it clear she's just talking about putting more narration into people's stories, describing their surroundings, thoughts, actions, etc. But she doesn't.
And while TopazSoarhire is certainly good at description…she's not so hot at other things. Her storylines are somewhat jumbled. For example, she talks about how her character's mother has a strict rule about no pokemon as pets, and then, in an admittedly fine bit of characterization, says that the girl's brother, who likes to bring home bug-types and has to return them, always whines about "How come Ceres gets to use your Bellsprout’s for school then?" Unfortunately, there's no explanation for why her mother keeps bellsprout but has a rule about no pokemon pets. Now, if her mother said the children weren't allowed to keep pokemon themselves, or that she didn't like bugs, or that they couldn't bring wild pokemon home…all those could be explanations, but as it is, it's just a dangling plot hole. A little later her family complains that a journey from Viridian to Cerulean is too expensive, even though they've just gone to Goldenrod AND Prof. Elm has gone from Goldenrod to New Bark with no better reason than to tell their daughter something and give her a special pokemon. Why Goldenrod to New Bark is easy enough to do on a whim but going from Viridian to Cerulean is expensive is never explained. Still later, in another again perfectly good bit of characterization, her brother says Ceres can't use his scyther (which he caught the day before) for a pokemon journey, and there is, again, no explanation. Why does he have a pokemon if he couldn't before?
Another more severe problem TopazSoarhire has is her tendency towards the sueish. In her story, she outlines two possibilities for her character getting a pokemon besides the standard 'wake up and head towards the lab'. Both made me cringe.
The first one involves Ceres meeting Prof. Elm one day. She talks to him about a project she's doing on leaf stones and the next day he meets them at the train station in New Bark and, well, I think this is quote-worthy.
[Elm] explains that he would like to help her daughter with her school project and that he has a friend in Cerulean city that is an expert on induced evolution, Professor Bill Emery, and he would be happy to give her a Leaf Stone. Her parents decline, saying that a trip over Mt. Moon is too expensive and they’ve already spent their holiday fund. He tells them that money is not a problem, and have they ever considered letting their daughter Journey? No, she hasn’t a Pokemon or a license. Her brother chips in, ‘she can’t have my Scyther!’. He caught it yesterday at the bug contest. Elm continues, saying if they were willing to put off leaving till tomorrow, Ceres could take her Pokemon License exam in an hour or two and he would put them up for the night. She does so, passing reasonably well, and he winks, giving her a green Pokèball engraved with a Leafstone. Inside is a wonderful Pokemon, but don’t open it till she gets home, so its just her and it. Inside can be any Pokemon you desire and can follow a journey from there.
Because it isn't like Elm has better things to do. Note that she gets a 'wonderful pokemon' (translation: nonstandard starter, likely 'special' in some way, possibly rare). Note that it's obvious she's going to actually journey and be a trainer rather than just going quickly from Viridian to Cerulean. (For the record, if someone actually wrote a story where the character stuck to their established goal, that might actually be interesting) Note that if Elm actually was trying to help her on her project, he could just have easily have given her a leaf stone himself, or paid for the travel.
The second way is even worse. There's an attack by Team Rocket, a pokeball rolls away and she grabs it. Inside is a terrified breloom covered in scars and bruises, who is, it turns out, a stolen pokemon. She comforts it and so it refuses to leave her to go with the authorities. Instead, she promises to try to find its trainer herself.
Again, this is quote-worthy.
Her heart breaks as she watches, and tries to assure it that once the man over there is done taking notes, he’ll find Max and the trainer and Pokemon can be together again. It cries out and grabs protectively at her ankles and shakes its head with tears glistening in its eyes. It’s too scared. She then without thinking promises she’ll help find its trainer. She goes back to her parents and Officer Jenny with Breloom dogging her heels as close as it could. She explains the situation and that it doesn’t want to leave her. Jenny thinks its just a Rocket’s Pokemon by the scars and agrees to let her keep it. Her parents allow her to keep it, and they go back to Viridian. Over the weeks it grows stronger and more trusting, is given him the nickname Boxer, and refuses to leave Ceres except for school, and even then he doesn’t’ leave the doormat until she returns. But he always has the look of homesickness about him. Finally she tells her parents that she wants to look for Boxer’s trainer.
She had to apply for a Trainer license with Professor Oak in able to keep him so she’s can leave. Her parents have grown close to Boxer and they notice his depression and let her go. So, in her room that night, she spreads maps of various Regions in front of Breloom and asks how long ago he was stolen. He raps out five with his tail. Five months. Where was he traveling? He points to the map of Hoenn. She figures Max would still be traveling, so after a week’s preparation she flies to Little Root Town and registers with the League, on a mission to find Max. Apparently he’s quite famous, so she chases him all over Hoenn, which is coincidently the regular track across the Region, always just one step behind him. She earns badges so she can control Breloom’s growing power and catches her own, but at the same time that Rocket who she took the Breloom off from is tracking her, trying to get Boxer back.
Ceres, named after the goddess of agriculture and nature, who takes care of plants, just happens to get a grass type. That's certainly a shock, isn't it? And look, she's so nice and the poor abused pokemon…wah. And rather than be focused on catching up with the guy, she apparently pauses all the time to raise the breloom, catch new pokemon, and earn badges. It never occurs to her to just call the guy, apparently -_-; And notice that for no discernable reason, the rocket is chasing her. Because a rocket losing one pokemon they weren't even that fond of it is certainly enough to make them drop everything to tail some random kid. It's not like they regularly steal new pokemon, or belong to an organization that actually, you know, gives them orders, no, they just run around doing whatever they feel like and retrieving any pokemon they lose.
Now, it's definitely got more details than the usual OT story…but what TopazSoarhire apparently doesn't understand yet is that detail doesn't decide if it's a sue or not. She confuses the issue. Was this a lecture on detail, it would be good, but she's also lecturing on plot, and, basically, TopazSoarhire is not particularly qualified to do that.
And then TopazSoarhire wraps up with: "There you go, quite a good journey. That, my aspiring writers, is the power of What If."
What? No, wait. It was detailed and thought out. Your advice was that people should give detail and try not to repeat the first episode of the anime. What does this have to do with 'what if'? I don't get it. Either I'm missing something really major here, or TopazSoarhire sandwiched one lecture inside another topic.
::sigh:: But then, it just wouldn't be Pokemon Fanfiction Academy if an otherwise decent bit of advice was presented in an incoherent manner.
The story ends with:
There was moment of silence before the assembled student body rose as one to applaud the creative young women before them. Although the lecture had taught them that they still had far to go, it had also inspired many, and for the first time since the school term began the students of the Pokemon Fanfiction academy began to see the light.
I'll give TopazSoarhire the benefit of a doubt here. I'm reasonably sure the last paragraph was written by LadyUmbra and so she isn't praising herself. That said, 'creative young woman'? Dammit. You shouldn't say people have stunning eyes and shining tresses, so don't tell the reader someone's creative. If they are, we should see it ourselves. If they aren't, you're just making it worse.
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no subject
Date: 2004-12-08 10:16 pm (UTC)I'm glad you enjoted yourself. I certainly shared in that.
It's really not worth reviewing at this point, ne? Ah well. If I was thinking properly I would be more ellaborate... but either way, I concur.
no subject
Date: 2004-12-13 11:52 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2004-12-14 12:21 am (UTC)As for beta'ing? Feh. Firstly, a quick check of the forums shows you were aware that the first and second chapter had mistakes when you posted them. Secondly, if your beta misses this many errors on this regular of a basis, they're not much of a beta. Go get one that can actually do the job. There are plenty of places you could ask. Thirdly, if you can't write decently, I don't know where you got the idea it'd be a good idea to complain about other people's writing. If I had no grasp of how to use words, I wouldn't have complained about another author misusing them. If I was writing a mary sue trainer, I wouldn't have any right to complain about another author doing so. If I failed to capitalize the first letter of my sentences, I wouldn't complain about yours. If you make worse mistakes than the people you're supposed to be teaching, why are you qualified to tell them what to do?
A learning disability? What is it and how does it explain the mistakes you've been making?
OFU
Date: 2006-09-19 09:41 pm (UTC)Now doesn't that sound neat? I love acronyms. I love your comments.