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[personal profile] farla
http://www.fanfiction.net/s/5550939/1/A_Sneaking_Suspiscion

Your title is misspelled. It's not "suspiscion" it's "suspicion".

"Ash and the gang had come home again after beating the Johto Elite Four, so he decided to head back home to relax a bit"

He came back home so he decided to come back home?

People generally don't repeat the exact same phrase twice. If she thinks they didn't hear her, she might say something along the same lines, but it'd be different and likely simpler, say, "Kids! Lunch!"

"Brock and he were playing Pokemon Stadium 2"

I get it. You're a fan of the games. Shocking in a pokemon fanfic writer. That doesn't change the fact it makes no sense to suppose they have the exact same games in their world, let alone that kids with actual pokemon that can actually battle and who actually want to become actual skilled trainers with actual powerful real pokemon would instead sit around playing a horribly stripped down fake version instead.

You wouldn't capitalize animal or mouse, so you shouldn't capitalize words like pokemon or pikachu. The only time you should capitalize it is if you're using it as the pokemon's name, ie, Ash's pikachu is called Pikachu.

"Delia barked"

No, she didn't. You don't bark long sentences, nor do you bark a "well okay" sort of response. If she's barking anything, it's the bit about lunch. Or you could just use said like a normal person. Wait, is that why you had her repeat her exact line? So you could use "repeated" and avoid said? Dammit.

...and now she's blathering exposition. Admittedly in line with her robotic inability to vary her sentences.

"The admittedly handsome man"

Nothing in her sentence indicated anything one way or another, unless you're trying to refer to the name here. Which you shouldn't. I mean, if someone was named Mr. Gross, you wouldn't say the admittedly disgusting man. He's not admittedly anything, it's just his name.

"I must wonder whom Ash's father was..."

So she is a robot, because there's no other reason for a human being in the room with her to be talking musingly like she isn't there. I mean, would you say "I wonder what his name/age/birthday/favorite food is" standing right next to the kid's mother, or would you just say "Hey, person standing next to me, what's his whatever?"

But hey, she's a housewife. Same difference, right?

God I hate people.

And now everyone knows the precise time they stopped seeing Pikachu. So is Ash a robot with an internal clock and perfect electronic memory too? Because I'm pretty sure that we fleshy humans generally have trouble figuring out when we stopped seeing something we assumed was there. Kinda a fundamental of how our wet, organic brains function. Moreover, due to subtle internal differences arising from our unstandardized hardware and software, we generally don't all give the same conclusion.

If you're too young to write out swears, you're too young to write characters that swear.

http://www.fanfiction.net/s/5551168/1/Legends_are_Real

Jesus, people are capitalizing ranger now? They're damn rangers! They exist in real life! How can you not know the word "ranger" is not supposed to be capitalized?

You wouldn't capitalize animal or mouse, so you shouldn't capitalize words like pokemon or pikachu. The only time you should capitalize it is if you're using it as the pokemon's name, ie, Ash's pikachu is called Pikachu.

Oh, and you get points for at least using said, but you can use it by itself, you know. You don't need to add some adverb in every time.

Also, this is way too short for a chapter, far too rushed, and devoid of anything at all interesting happening.

http://www.fanfiction.net/s/5551196/1/Home_by_Ten

Okay, so that was basically pointless and original fiction rather than fanfic. On the plus side you did hit a pretty good medium between too bland and vague or purple prose.

http://www.fanfiction.net/s/5551227/1/Pokemon_Mysterious_Comet

"It was a bit abnormal to be a butterfly since the size and eyes, the woman went into her lab"

This makes no sense. None of the sentences do, honestly, but this is the worst one. It's like you're taking sentence fragments and just slapping them together at random.

Dialogue is written as "Hello," he said or "Hello!" he said, never "Hello." He said or "Hello." he said or "Hello," He said. The only exception to this is if the next sentence doesn't contain a speech verb, in which case it's written as "Hello." He grinned, never "Hello," he grinned or "Hello," He grinned.

Also, use said. Seriously, won't bite, lovely word, generally more appropriate for the sentence than whatever word you're using in its place.

Look, you really, really shouldn't ask for characters. Doesn't work right. You get people doing all sorts of characters, and they may each be fine but they don't fit together properly. It's like trying to complete a hundred-piece puzzle by taking fifty of the pieces from fifty other puzzles. They may all be good puzzles, and you may pick only the prettiest pieces, but you're going to end up with a mess.

http://www.fanfiction.net/s/5551264/1/Total_Drama_Pokemon

Dialogue is written as "Hello," he said or "Hello!" he said, never "Hello." He said or "Hello." he said or "Hello," He said. The only exception to this is if the next sentence doesn't contain a speech verb, in which case it's written as "Hello." He grinned, never "Hello," he grinned or "Hello," He grinned.

How exactly is it too many words to say "made pokemon"?

Also entirety of the actual story segment makes me want to strangle everyone involved, including you. If you can't write annoying characters without annoying the reader too, don't.

Look, you really, really shouldn't ask for characters. Doesn't work right. You get people doing all sorts of characters, and they may each be fine but they don't fit together properly. It's like trying to complete a hundred-piece puzzle by taking fifty of the pieces from fifty other puzzles. They may all be good puzzles, and you may pick only the prettiest pieces, but you're going to end up with a mess.

http://www.fanfiction.net/s/5551366/1/Pokemon_Getaway

Dialogue is written as "Hello," he said or "Hello!" he said, never "Hello." He said or "Hello." he said or "Hello," He said. The only exception to this is if the next sentence doesn't contain a speech verb, in which case it's written as "Hello." He grinned, never "Hello," he grinned or "Hello," He grinned.

"Polly was extra excited about it. Polly was a science freak. A building nut who gets overly excited. She was really smart, though. She made a machine that could manipulate the normal GBA format and turn it into a into a virtual reality. If it was low on electricity, it would take energy from it's surroundings and use that instead. She was proud of it. The hard part was lugging it to the house. "

Look, if you not only don't know much about science, but actively hate knowing stuff about science, don't try to write a character that supposedly knows about science doing supposedly sciency things. It produces terrible, cringe-inducing results.

http://www.fanfiction.net/s/5551467/1/The_Strongest_Pokemon_Trainer

"My character’s name is Kierano, his rival’s name is Ak, (I know, stupid)"

If you know it's stupid then fix it. Also, if your character is meant to be compatible with game and anime names, he shouldn't have a ridiculous syllable blob of faux Japanese in place of a name.

Don't use ' for thoughts, because it's too close to " and makes it seem like your character is talking aloud.

You wouldn't capitalize animal or mouse, so you shouldn't capitalize words like pokemon or pikachu. The only time you should capitalize it is if you're using it as the pokemon's name, ie, Ash's pikachu is called Pikachu.

Okay, you know how, in the anime, there are whole episodes just about battles? This is because the anime is a bunch of colored pictures that move around, and therefore you can "watch" the battle. Reading about a random, boring kid going through the exact same motions is just very boring. Also, the reason they cut to the cheerleaders is for padding the episode out. I thought this was understood.

http://www.fanfiction.net/s/5551624/1/Pokemon_in_Space_Beyond_the_Stars

Because the future will be exactly like the past, except IN SPACE! What is this democracy you speak of? Also galaxies are tots interchangeable with small towns when you scale up. Boy does it make sense to talk about galaxies in one area being warmer and colder or different entire fucking galaxies having the exact same landscape per area like they're exactly the same as small patches of land distributed around a single planet. And those massive areas of the entire universe would definitely mirror existing north/south concepts on earth that come from the distance we are from our single sun. (and north/south/east/west designations would totally exist in space, because not only is there a magic universal true north, but also space exists on a 2-D plane). And of course the only relevant life on said worlds will be four nearly identical humanoid sapient races with the good grace to distribute themselves exactly one homeworld to each quadrant, with none of that filthy "mixing" or "plausibility". No, these are good, pure races to the point that they all got together and decided which pokemon types each race would prefer and what stereotypical trait each would display.

In conclusion I hate you so much right now.

http://www.fanfiction.net/s/5550687/1/Pokemon_Mystery_Dungeon_Dreaded_Desire

Not using paragraphs makes me not read your story.

http://www.fanfiction.net/s/5550796/1/Battle_in_the_Forest

"Hey everyone, I’m back. The idea for this story just popped in my head after a PM from another author on this site, who sometimes goes in the guise of a Gardevoir: 741852BCE."
So I guess I should blame them too, because it's partially their fault you posted one more story with "One final thing, Jesus Christ is Lord, He DID die and He DID Rise again on the third day, and he is alive in Heaven with His father Jehovah. " People like you are why I call myself an atheist rather than an agnostic.

You wouldn't capitalize animal or mouse, so you shouldn't capitalize words like pokemon or pikachu. The only time you should capitalize it is if you're using it as the pokemon's name, ie, Ash's pikachu is called Pikachu. Similar reasoning should be applied to terms like trainer and types like electric.

Do not write out a bit of nonsense pokemon name fragments and then write a translation. Just write the damn translation. Or, maybe, if you're writing a story focused on the pokemon, you could maybe treat their language as default or something. Just a thought.

"before using Close Combat"

If this is your idea of writing battles, you shouldn't be writing battles.

Goddammit. This whole story is a long pointless battle, isn't it? So you took what would be an utterly boring concept, and then you failed to write it.

I hate this category.

http://www.fanfiction.net/s/5551441/1/Parody_Academy

The fact other people are writing shitty stories doesn't mean you should write shitty stories. Also this breaks the site rules and also your characters make me hate you as a person.

"Laurie is the stereotypical girl who dresses extremely light, but hates it when guys stare at her and is always losing her temper. Despite this, she doesn't bother to put on extra clothing even when it is freezing outside."

I'm not kidding. I hope you get punched in the face.

http://www.fanfiction.net/s/5552123/1/A_White_Christmas

"It was supposed to be a nice day!"

Exclamation marks in narration should be used sparingly, if at all.

"They were all wearing warm jackets, but he looked really cold. She could see his shoulders shaking slightly from up ahead, so he was shivering"

You know, I know snow is all dramatic and shit, but really, it's generally colder on the days it isn't snowing. See you can have "clear turning blizzard warning" and "nice out turning to deadly cold" but to the degree that a blizzard makes it more likely it's warmer. See, in order to have a storm you need to have a certain amount of water currently in the air, and air holds more water when it's warm, so generally rain and snow happen when warm air cools. In the case of snow, the water crystallizing releases stored heat, which also helps improve the temperature. And also a clear sky radiates heat back out while cloudcover can help hold it in. And look, maybe you didn't get that far in science yet or weren't paying attention because who cares about the way the world works, but if you live anywhere that actually gets snow you should have just noticed the fact that it got bitterly cold when not snowing, and was rarely bitterly cold when snowing. Because it happens basically every single time it ever snows. Similarly it tends to get horribly cold when you have clear skies, both because of the basic radiation issue and that it means the air is too cold to absorb water and form clouds, and no warm wet air is coming up to warm the area.

Oh, and if people are wearing "warm jackets" you're going to have trouble making out shoulders or anything other than full-body shuddering, because "warm jackets" are "heavy jackets". See they use air pockets and why am I even bothering.

http://www.fanfiction.net/s/5552146/1/Sound_Of_Goodbye

"many terrible mistake which I have now fixed"

Many terrible mistake indeed.

"by the way I have NO EXPERIENCE with medical stuff so SHUT UP if I do something wrong ! Jeez only 14!"

I have a better idea, how about you SHUT UP about stuff you're too lazy to do research about?

You wouldn't capitalize animal or mouse, so you shouldn't capitalize words like pokemon or pikachu. The only time you should capitalize it is if you're using it as the pokemon's name, ie, Ash's pikachu is called Pikachu.

"Digging their nails into my bare skin, leaving their marks on me, I wasn’t interested in my pain at the moment. I looked to the Pokémon, suffering, being what the Galactics say ‘punished’. What were they being punished for? What had they done to deserve such cruelty?"

I'm thinking you didn't mean for me to laugh at this, so there's something wrong.

Seriously, there's a fine line between "drama" and "ridiculously over the top melodrama".

"it’s tragic really, not feeling love for his Pokemon"

Also tragic: that other stuff actually happening at the time. But I'm sure your point won't be totally undercut by pausing to talk about the real tragedy: the failure to properly follow shonen morals.

God, two paragraphs of Dawn blathering on in exospeak. I'm surprised she didn't throw in an "As you know".

An ellipsis is three periods, not two or four.

Dialogue is written as "Hello," he said or "Hello!" he said, never "Hello." He said or "Hello." he said or "Hello," He said. The only exception to this is if the next sentence doesn't contain a speech verb, in which case it's written as "Hello." He grinned, never "Hello," he grinned or "Hello," He grinned.

And blah blah yelling, blah blah posturing, blah blah Dawn being a useless girl while the men talk, blah blah yelling, blah blah Dawn sacrificing herself because all she's good for is a meatshield, ah, here we go, the promised medical bullshit.

And YES we have bullshit.

"“Well, when that poison was inserted, it weakened and poisoned the blood and it’s flow, the paralyzing liquid didn’t help either… So we were taking some of the blood out so you had less poison in your body,” I felt like I was going to be sick, “However , the blood, well the red blood cells, carry oxygen, so when we took the blood, your oxygen level went down. We had to put you on the life support if you wanted to live. We also need to find a suitable blood donor if you want to live. However, we haven’t got the right match.”"

a) Poisoned the flow? The hell?
b)They can separate red blood cells out. Kinda inherent in the idea they're red blood cells, as if they are some sort of distinct cell that can be removed from the liquid solution they sit in. Incidentally, it's also how your kidneys work. Just thought I'd mention.
c)On top of that, your liver actually holds a store of extra red blood cells specifically so it can release them if you're low on red blood cells.
d) Which is ignoring the real problem, namely that you need a certain amount of blood plasma for your body to circulate those cells and also said blood plasma carries other important things other than just the cells.
e) "Life support" is not an oxygen mask, nor is actual life support going to do someone that good if they don't have blood.
f) YES THEY DO HAVE A SUITABLE BLOOD DONOR THAT IS WHY WE HAVE BLOODBANKS IT IS NOT DEEP MAGIC OR SOMETHING THERE ARE ONLY A COUPLE KINDS AND ONE OF THEM CAN BE GIVEN TO ABSOLUTELY ANYONE AND ALSO WE HAVE FUCKING ARTIFICIAL PLASMA THEY CAN JUST DUMP HER RED BLOOD CELLS IN THERE AND THEY'RE FINE. AND WHY IT'S LIKE YOU SHOULD HAVE SAID THE POISON ACTUALLY DID MADE HER SICK OR SOMETHING INSTEAD OF SAYING SHE'S SICK FROM NO BLOOD BECAUSE THE HOSPITAL IS FULL OF INCOMPETENT IDIOTS.

In conclusion, you are not stupid because you're fourteen, you're stupid because you're you and you need to stop insulting other fourteen year olds to cover for it.

"our friend will only have two days on the life support, then we will have to disconnect it"
"other people need this support system too, their lives are at threat as well"
"the maximum time on life support was 4 days"

Haha, it's funny because Nurse Joy is lying so she can kill Dawn.

Blah blah stupid boring flashbacks.

And she screams. So I'm guessing "disconnect" here is a euphemism for "stabbed repeatedly", because come on, like someone so fragile they spontaneously die once disconnected from vague and technically nonexistent machines would be screaming so loud everyone can hear, so clearly, May and Ash are just being all unreliable narrator about this. I'm just hoping Nurse Joy gets Ash next.

...No, stupid narmish letter instead. You could have at least make people commit suicide or something to atone.

http://www.fanfiction.net/s/5552238/1/Misunderstanding

Mildly amusing, but it goes on far too long. Basically the second half is unneeded. You could probably stand to loose the fainting as well, as aside from it being pretty ridiculous, for a minute there I thought it was supposed to mean the first bit was a dream sequence or something.

Also, just...look, these things are such cliches that you can't get much mileage out of them, but titling it "Misunderstanding" is just making it worse. In a short fanfic, it's still quite possible to go the other way at first, while this tells you from the start that what Misty overhears must be a confession of love to her, destroying what little tension you can wrest from the subject.

http://www.fanfiction.net/s/5552453/1/Gold_Castillo_Private_Eye

Look, by this point you're parodying a parody of a parody of a private eye story. We get it, they have a formula, you have seen said formula or more likely an aforementioned parody of a parody of the formula, and you are capable of regurgitating an even more stripped down and disjointed version. Take your black hardboiled star and let's all move on.

Also, original fiction doesn't stop being original fiction if you find and replace drug with pokemon.

"Kris. Or sometimes Crys. But you can stick with Kris"

Don't do that. Please.

http://www.fanfiction.net/s/5552499/1/Gravestones

Eh, well written in the technical sense and with good details, but the story itself is decidedly meh.

http://www.fanfiction.net/s/5552662/1/The_Same_Difference

Different setup, I'll grant you.

You really need to shift a bit further onto showing rather than telling. Your writing is relatively detailed, but it's mostly summarizing, or else it's excessive to the point where it's unclear what you're saying. Take your opening:

"The moments before he opened his eyelids were strange ones. He drifted between sinking and floating in a gunk sea of sleep. His mind urged him to leave, but the warmth he felt was too pleasurable, so he sank once again, but his mind forced him back to the surface a few moments later. This continued for an unbearably long time, but finally sunlight scratched at his eyelids, begging to be let in."

This is very much a "use a word, not its second cousin" situation. It's all very stilted, and a lot of the word choices are flat out wrong - since when does sunlight scratch?

"He would have shot her a glare, but his eyelids were closing again and the sticky sea was calling him back. The next few days were blurred by sleep and food. His chatty host fed him in the few moments he was awake and applied a cold rag to his head injury. Gradually, he found his surroundings become more stable and soon he was able to walk. He talked to her several times, but she avoided all questions about his past. She would just stare at the doorway to the little wooden hut, then go back to whatever she was doing.
He often found himself wanting to touch and investigate the treasures. The caterpie, who later introduced herself as Rose, scolded him for touching the knickknacks and she tackled him to the ground when he touched the peculiar red bag attached to the ceiling."

This all would really have worked better if it was a succession of scenes, rather than their summaries. You could also have avoided the awkward construction of "who later introduced herself as Rose" by just having her introduce herself as Rose during one of those scenes.

(Also, really, the sea metaphor is a poor enough choice for a fire type without you reusing it. Why not lava or something?)

"Gradually, he began to relearn everything he’d known in his life before the accident."

The one story where we actually don't know the setting that well, and you skip over it.

"“Rose, I didn’t do it,” he said, staring at her in panic"

Uh, he doesn't know that if he's got amnesia and doesn't remember anything about what happened, and the fact his first impulse is to deny responsibility instead of feeling worried he did it makes him look like a selfish jackass.

"Since you’re so determined, I’ll help you. The quickest way to find a person is to have them find you. Here in Pokemon Square, the easiest way to become famous is to start a rescue team. Once word gets out, everyone will know you’re name, even across the ocean"

Aside from the fact it should be "your" name, as "you're" means "you are", you're already falling down on your promise of a different sort of fic. Different opening, yes. But there's surely a better way of handling this that saying that instead of, say, trying to get in contact with people, you try to become super famous as a popular rescue team in the hopes they'll hear about you like that.

I mean, why not have him do it because he wants to help out, or because she's already part of a rescue team but had to take time off to take care of him, so he goes along with her, or anything that treats the whole rescue team idea as an organic part of their world and not an arbitrary gameplay mechanic stapled on because you want to jump to the rescue team part now.

"We can start a rescue team and you’ll be the leader"

Continuing the actually-this-is-basically-what-all-PMD-fanfic-looks-like bit. Why is he in charge when he's just recovered from brain damage and still knows nothing more about the world than what she told him? By definition, she knows more than him.

...and now it's evil prison time. You know, if they want the prisoners to die, you'd think they could just execute them, and if they couldn't just execute them you'd think obviously designing the place to kill them would cause trouble.

Also, so all you have to do is dump some sleep powder and the guards are out? The poison/flying type guards? All of them? Really?

http://www.fanfiction.net/s/5552723/1/From_The_Heart

The pokemon world has videophones that let you see the person you're talking to.

Seriously, I know you wanted to write some inane thing about meeting an internet boyfriend and all the generic internet boyfriend stuff, but the pokemon world has videophones that let you see the person you're talking to.

Also, dialogue is written as "Hello," he said or "Hello!" he said, never "Hello." He said or "Hello." he said or "Hello," He said. The only exception to this is if the next sentence doesn't contain a speech verb, in which case it's written as "Hello." He grinned, never "Hello," he grinned or "Hello," He grinned.

Also also, seriously. Video. Phone. Just go write original fiction if that's what you want.

http://www.fanfiction.net/s/5552755/1/Her_Christmas_Elf

You wouldn't capitalize animal or mouse, so you shouldn't capitalize words like pokemon or pikachu. The only time you should capitalize it is if you're using it as the pokemon's name, ie, Ash's pikachu is called Pikachu.

An ellipsis is three dots. Not two, not four. Three.

...and it's just another generic "hey look two people are interacting and also there is some sort of Christmas and/or snow reference". Ugh.

http://www.fanfiction.net/s/5552782/1/Shades_Of_Blue

You know, I sort of tried to read this but the style is so irritating I could barely even make out the grammar errors.

http://www.fanfiction.net/s/5552843/1/The_Benefit_of_Mistletoe

It's "Veilstone". Like "veil".

Don't capitalize random words.

Anyway, another generic character names + some sort of holiday and/or seasonal reference...well, I'm not sure what to actually call them, since god knows story isn't it.

Oh, and don't put author's notes in the middle of your story. Especially not ones as stupid as "A/N: Wonder who it could be....? "


In conclusion:
Photobucket

Date: 2009-12-03 07:31 am (UTC)
From: [identity profile] ember-reignited.livejournal.com
That doesn't change the fact it makes no sense to suppose they have the exact same games in their world, let alone that kids with actual pokemon that can actually battle and who actually want to become actual skilled trainers with actual powerful real pokemon would instead sit around playing a horribly stripped down fake version instead.

My brother is a guitarist. Quite a good one, actually. He practices daily, plays in a band, dresses like Slash, and dreams of striking out in LA to seek his fortune.

He also plays Guitar Hero.

I'm not saying it isn't completely ridiculous. I'm just saying it happens.

So is Ash a robot with an internal clock and perfect electronic memory too?

Either that or an Andalite.

Also galaxies are tots interchangeable with small towns when you scale up. Boy does it make sense to talk about galaxies in one area being warmer and colder or different entire fucking galaxies having the exact same landscape per area like they're exactly the same as small patches of land distributed around a single planet. And those massive areas of the entire universe would definitely mirror existing north/south concepts on earth that come from the distance we are from our single sun. (and north/south/east/west designations would totally exist in space, because not only is there a magic universal true north, but also space exists on a 2-D plane).

You, Author. You are going for a ride in the Total Perspective Vortex now.

People like you are why I call myself an atheist rather than an agnostic.

I recently had this conversation with a guy who uses the word "God" as a synonym for "love" and "creativity" and "the universe," and talks about the deep underlying wisdom of all world religions that has sadly been corrupted by a few pockets of extremists. You know That Guy. I used to be That Guy. People like the author are why I call myself an atheist rather than a pantheist.

And I approve of Fluffles.

Date: 2009-12-03 01:20 pm (UTC)
From: [identity profile] farla.livejournal.com
I wouldn't so much mind the idea they're playing a game - I mean, we have tennis/football/etc video games - as the idea they're playing exactly the same game as us, especially when anime battles function so differently. You wouldn't think Ash would have all that much fun playing a game that's basically just matching up types. (In fact, there were videogames in that one early episode at the Poketech place, and Ash was deeply unimpressed and went off about friendship and pokemon aren't numbers and all that.) And especially since unlike in our world, their pokemon are leveling when they do normal battles. (And unlike in our world, their pokemon are supposed to be friends/companions/otherwise more interactive, not pixels.)

Either that or an Andalite

You know in retrospect, the whole two hour thing was *really* stupid, because if you have a team member designed to let everyone know the exact amount of time that's elapsed, you can afford to have an irregular unit of time rather than saying it perfectly matches up with our completely arbitrary units of time because the universe revolves around us.

In fact you could even backfix this by having the first guy say it's two hours, and then when the other one joins the party he could have been all "Well actually it is more like two hours and thirteen minutes and fifty one seconds". Because when you're talking to the race without exact perfect timekeeping you'd probably want to give them a slightly shorter duration and something easier to remember, and also he might not have quite remembered the exact time length in their units and he wouldn't want to risk getting it wrong and telling them it's two hours and sixteen minutes, now would he?

And I approve of Fluffles.

Fluffles does not approve of you.

Fluffles does not approve of anyone.

Fluffles is hate personified.

...Feed Fluffles? Fluffles wants tomatoes.

Date: 2009-12-03 06:26 pm (UTC)
From: [identity profile] ember-reignited.livejournal.com
You know in retrospect, the whole two hour thing was *really* stupid, because if you have a team member designed to let everyone know the exact amount of time that's elapsed, you can afford to have an irregular unit of time rather than saying it perfectly matches up with our completely arbitrary units of time because the universe revolves around us.

Yeah, that occurred to me when one of the humans (I think it was Marco. It was always Marco.) started bickering with Ax over the phrase "your minutes" and Ax pointed out that different planets have different patterns of day and night use different measurements of time. Way to hang a lampshade on it, Applegate.

*feeds Fluffles a tomato*

Date: 2009-12-04 01:22 am (UTC)
From: [identity profile] farla.livejournal.com
What always annoyed me about that was that it'd be like me going "two of your centimeters". As opposed to who's centimeters? Days refer to a common unit that varies by planet. But a centimeter is a word for X length, and a minute is a word for X time. So it's not "our minutes" anything, it's just minutes.

(Plus, the fact the limit is a factor of the technology rather than a choice makes the idea it would come out as a round number in any time system irritating. We've found universal constants and without fail they are awkward and fiddly numbers.)

Date: 2009-12-03 06:40 pm (UTC)
From: [identity profile] ember-reignited.livejournal.com
Oh, and the other thing that bugged me was the inclusion of Andalite words when later books made it clear that Andalite thoughtspeak isn't so much a language as it is a way of beaming thoughts directly from one brain to another in whatever form will be most coherent to the recipient. Sure, they would almost certainly have a written language, but it wouldn't be phonetic. If the word was something there's no translation for it might make sense to have it come out as some sort of alien arrangement of syllables, but Applegate was pulling bullshit like saying "schwarm" instead of "best friend."

In conclusion: thoughtspeak is pretty cool, but XKCD comics may be the most efficient form of communication ever invented.

Date: 2009-12-04 01:44 am (UTC)
From: [identity profile] farla.livejournal.com
Thanks to reading a lot of short scifi stories I'm functionally immune to made up words (much as I'm immune to the dub openings of kid's anime...Digimon! Digital Monsters! DIGIMON ARE THE CHAMPIONS!) and that still annoyed me. I didn't even get that far in my hatred, it was just FUCKING CALL IT FRIEND. Like, it's one thing to change random words, and another thing for the guy speaking to people to randomly use his native word half the time.

(The animorph's series is a whole fridge logic page, isn't it?)

It'd actually be an awesome idea, though. The alien species can communicate telepathically on a verbal level, but the concepts it expresses don't always have existing words in our language, which get represented as nonsense. Possibly this is just a disjoint between herd animal and monkey, and we have words that don't translate either, or you could say the telepath has a wider mental vocabulary because telepath.

Oh, and they shouldn't be able to translate it by going "by which I mean X" because if you'd meant X you'd have said X.

(Wait, how the hell did he understand them, anyway? Because telepathic speech wouldn't make you understand other races' speech. I don't even remember if this was handwaved or what.)

(Oh and also that stupid thing where they wouldn't shut up about how we walk on two legs. Look, if humanity can stop itself from asking how you can keep track of four legs every minute, you should be able to get over this fixation too.)

...In conclusion, David Brin is awesome.

Date: 2009-12-04 03:21 am (UTC)
From: [identity profile] ember-reignited.livejournal.com
Wait, how the hell did he understand them, anyway? Because telepathic speech wouldn't make you understand other races' speech. I don't even remember if this was handwaved or what.

I know that was explained — most likely with handwaving — at some point, but I can't remember how, exactly. I want to say they all had babblefish chips of some description implanted in their heads, but that wouldn't make any sense since one of the books quite clearly demonstrated that brain chips don't morph very well and can actually make your head explode if you try to turn into something smaller than they are. Then again, that wouldn't be the first scifi lore inconsistency in the series, or the last. And also I just got hit by another bit of frigde logic regarding that time early on in the series Jake morphed fly with a frickin' yeerk in his head. Yeerks do stretch themselves at least as thin as skin-tight clothing and therefore could theoretically be morphed, but that would involve them chilling their slug-heels in Z-space while their host spends two hours deciding whether they'd rather be stuck as an animal or as an alien mind-slave.

Oh and also that stupid thing where they wouldn't shut up about how we walk on two legs. Look, if humanity can stop itself from asking how you can keep track of four legs every minute, you should be able to get over this fixation too.

I was all right with that when it was just Ax doing it, because he's basically the super-advanced extra-terrestrial equivalent of That Kid who wears his hat sideways and brings his skateboard everywhere and just wants to know whether black guys can get sunburned, man, don't look at him like he's some racist or something. But when other Andalites showed up and failed to be properly embarrassed by his behavior, I lost a bit of respect for them as a species.

In conclusion, David Brin is awesome

In all seriousness, or are you being sarcastic? Because the explanations Uplift series I've seen make it sound like it just radiates Humans Are Special, and that rather makes me want to steer clear of it.



Date: 2009-12-04 05:07 am (UTC)
From: [identity profile] farla.livejournal.com
Wait, if clothes on you morph, and thin brain chips don't, then internal anything doesn't, and therefore yeerks don't, and also the contents of your stomach and intestines and oh god now I'm applying logic kill me now.

Because the explanations Uplift series I've seen make it sound like it just radiates Humans Are Special, and that rather makes me want to steer clear of it.

It's just about the only justified humans-are-special ever, and it's not so much "special" as "anomalous freaks".

It's basically like a writer going, hey, you know how we think it'd be cool to try to make other animals smart? What if there were aliens and they thought that too and so all sentient aliens ever were all uplifted by other aliens because if there are aliens in the galaxy and they're not being cattle-tipping antisocial assholes you'd think they'd spread out across the planets and stuff and - wait, but if so humans would have run into them already, and also they'd have to have been uplifting us from the start and no, screw explaining people, the important part is I want aliens everywhere actually doing things and humans can just suck it.

The idea we may have somehow uplifted ourselves is referenced, but it's not a sign we're awesome. Honestly, throughout the series I got the impression that he was handling it at one step above handwaving - here are a couple options, let's move on because the point is interventionist aliens look at them being all interventionist and possibly genocidal.

The first couple books do verge into humans showing skill in particular things (or, well, Earth-guys, because the chimps and dolphins are treated about exactly the same), but it's mostly the understandable issue of them being the viewpoint characters and viewpoint characters getting to show everyone up. And we're still nothing compared to any of the elder races, which are so freaky they can barely communicate with the younger ones.

It's really the second half that's awesome, though. Like, there's this race of noble awesome pretty warrior kinda andalite guys, and they hate us because they don't like how we smell and we hate them right back. And then there are the hideous giant monster crabs who are our BFFs. And the disgusting chemical oozing conical nightmare aliens with completely different brains who are the only ones everyone likes because they are just so nice and helpful.

Date: 2009-12-03 01:52 pm (UTC)
From: [identity profile] actonthat.livejournal.com
That is very high on my list of favorite macros ever.

Date: 2009-12-04 01:45 am (UTC)
From: [identity profile] farla.livejournal.com
Fluffles disdains you and your approval!

Date: 2009-12-04 04:35 am (UTC)
From: [identity profile] farla.livejournal.com
Fluffles disdains your pathetic attempt at OMG TOMATO GIMMIE!

Date: 2009-12-03 02:28 pm (UTC)
From: [identity profile] purplekitte.livejournal.com
That is the cutest chicken ever and makes up for everything.

Also, lols on the planets in space are the size of one town. If you're not going to embrace your space Western with cows like Firefly, you are not allowed to have it.

Date: 2009-12-04 01:46 am (UTC)
From: [identity profile] farla.livejournal.com
Fluffles is not cute. Fluffles is hate. Soft, huggable hate.

If you're not going to embrace your space Western with cows like Firefly, you are not allowed to have it.

Firefly was the best worst idea ever.

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