Eh, more introspection.

[farla]

I was just looking over my last bunch of one-shots and realized that for a lot of them, some or all of the reviewers totally missed the point. Okay, I can actually see the (stupid) reasoning for Hatred, that's just militant shipping in action. But there's also Knowledge, where even the couple people who figured out the pokemon was dead either thought the girl had made a mistake (totally not the point) or tried her best, or something; Strife of Mere Immortals, where I don't think anyone got it and about half of them seemed to think one of the two was good, plus they seemed to miss the bit about twins, as in, same-species; and Absolution, where people actually argued against the point as if I believed it, and I don't know if anyone got that the absol was talking about a causal, karmic sense of suffering, which was why there was no point in saying sorry. And then there's the whole thing with The One Who Moved with most of the reviewers thinking it's a metapod for some reason, despite the poochyena.

So...are my stories too hard to follow? Are my reviewers just not paying attention? Do I really need ending author notes explaining the situation?

Comments

[negrek.livejournal.com]

I think I understand them pretty well. A lot of people just don't seem to get things, though. Like that person who reviewed "The Last Word" with "THAT BETTER NOT HAVE BEEN ASH!" In general, people seemed convinced that the person in the story was supposed to represent someone in particular, when in fact the whole idea was that it could have been anybody.

[farla.livejournal.com]

Yeah, you're one of my saner reviewers. And agreed, there is a weird fixation with figuring out which canon character it involves. Maybe it's a holdover from the earlier days when all unnamed character fics were supposed to be someone in particular.

Sometimes I wonder why so many readers seem adverse to the concept of looking for clues, and just assume that their first assumption is correct.

[negrek.livejournal.com]

I think looking for clues is the fun part. I got one review that was like, "Arrgh, this made me think! I hate it when things make me think!"

And I was like, "But isn't that the whole point...?"

[farla.livejournal.com]

Well, when one lacks a brain to start with...

[(Anonymous)]

Well, reading this, I see my review of Knowledge got it ridiculously wrong. ('Girl made a mistake.') Heh. It wasn't my first interpretation of it, though, just the one I settled on. I liked the way there were other ways of looking at it - I did feel I was going for a bit of a risky interpretation (the risk being that of getting it wrong and feeling rather stupid), but it wasn't exactly worrying. It was fun to take a guess. I say this in the hope that it might help you feel a little better. People can miss the point after having given the way you might have meant it a bit of thought. (I guess that's not much comfort unless they at least pass by the point somewhere along the way, though...)

[farla.livejournal.com]

Oh, it's understandable. I figured that most of the readers viewed the last lines as Joy saying it was nothing, rather than the rubbing-salt-into-a-wound closing as I meant it, or else they thought of pokemon centers as being like veterinarians rather than instant-cure facilities. It just bothers me because it's a viewpoint that's pretty much nonexistent in the fandom, and I was trying to put it out there for contemplation.

[ember-reignited.livejournal.com]

I didn't have any trouble at all with "Knowledge" or "Hatred."

I still haven't entirely figured out "Strife," but it was clear enough to me that we're not talking Zoroastrianism here – or Taosim, for that matter. But if you aren't surprised at the reaction you got for "Hatred," you really shouldn't be surprised at the reaction you got for this one. AAML is like a religious doctrine. Dualism actually is one.

"Absolution" went right over my head and, for once, your explainations didn't help. Maybe I just have no frame of referrence? It's hard for me to fully comprehend abstract ideas when I don't have something more solid I can base them on.

For "The One Who Moved," it doesn't really matter whether people think it's a metapod or a silcoon. The essential point is the same. I can see how that would still be somewhat frustrating, though.

[farla.livejournal.com]

Well, Strife of Mere Immortals is one of my heavily trivia influenced stories that worked a lot better when there were fewer games and the anime series was still in Orange Islands. It requires that you know that mew could learn transform, for example. The reference to kabuto will only make sense if you watched a throw-away episode that mentioned kabuto have some sort of elixir of life making them immortal. So the characters in question are a pair of mew who both managed to figure out a way of getting that substance out of kabuto in sufficient quantities to make themselves immortal, and are now trying to kill each other. They outlived the rest of their species, and ended up claiming to be gods - the first instance of legendary pokemon/pokegods - to try to get enough followers to break the stalemate. When that didn't work, they learned to transform into new forms, based on fantasy stories they'd been told as children, and repeated their claim of being gods. All the legendary pokemon are based on these different attempts to kill each other.

Absolution is based on the idea of absolution, being forgiven for your sins by doing something else, mixed with karma's inevitability. The key bit there is that the action precedes forgiveness. Slightly extended, you could say the action is forgiveness, or being forgiven. Suffering is forgiveness.

The absol, therefore, is the earthly agent of this, bringing down disasters to absolve them of previous sins. From this perspective, there's no point in "sorry". You're going to be sorry (feel regret) inevitably when those disasters hit. Just saying you're sorry, therefore, is a bizarre action, because you're only forgiven after suffering and it's inevitable that you're going to be sorry, so what's the point of saying it?

With The One Who Moved, it doesn't at all matter which particular pokemon. However, it's annoying when readers decide it's referring to a particular cocoon pokemon, then somehow decide it's a metapod despite the poochyena having a pretty prominent mention.