The Shiny Assassin
Aug. 14th, 2004 11:56 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
farlaA little…I don't know, musing, on The Shiny Assassin by Zanna Taru.
Be forewarned. This is long, simply because the story is simply so perfect for this. It is the quintessential fanfiction story – plain, full of mistakes, yet lacking the raw offensiveness of so many sue fics.
Let's start with what might easily be considered the last part, the reviews. The reviews are how I first noticed this story. I've gotten into the habit of looking at reviews simply to see what other people are saying.
I noticed many interesting things in the early reviews alone. The first eight are hyperbolic (Zanna Taru is called a "genious" by Wert34 twice, and Katana Midori-Fading Shadow highly praises it as well.) And then the ninth – joyous, if uncertain, constructive criticism from Moonlit Shadow, who said:
Eh... this is a cute story, and as much as I like Zara, she's kind of a MarySue... I mean, she's compassionate, nice, always does the right thing, and can even talk to her Pokemon. o_O; I mean, come on, that's a bit unrealistic... She has no noticable flaws, and always wins...
Eh.. yeah, cute story, but I doubt I'll be reading any more...
A little latter (five reviews, specifically) Katana Midori-Fading Shadow decides to defend. She reviews the next chapter with:
Another great chapter!
FYI:
A Mary-Sue is supposed to be a female OC that is perfect in every way.(the male version is a Gary-Stu, I think, but you don't see too many of those) Moonlit really had no right to call Zara a Mary-Sue because this story doesn't get that indepth that you know precicely what the characters are thinking. This style of writing seems to leave open gaps in the story that are filled later, even if the author doesn't realize it.
Sorry about the ranting! Update soon as usual!
I really hate it when people perpetrate misinformation or try to explain away complaints. Almost all negative reviews have value, even if you have to read between the lines. Even if Zara wasn't a sue, the fact someone complains still holds value. It needs to be seriously considered by the author before rejection, and having reviewers say things like this makes it easier for the author to ignore it.
Other authors ultimately enter (Keleri and Shinzon.) who also mention how the main character is too perfect, and some of the older reviewers begin offering suggestions.
All the reviews, even the semi-critical, have praise for the story. Why? Is the story that good? Are my dear peers simply being kind? Are they coddling her because they see potential?
Let's look.
The story opens with her author note, which contains the line "Don’t flame the names of the pokemon because I used pokemon names I made my self on one of my pokemon games." This is the line of thought that says if it's in the real world (in one manner or another) you can't flame. I see variants of this on other stories, saying not to flame the character because they're the author, or not to flame the character's name because it's the author's name/nickname/desired name or not to criticize how the character dresses because it's what the author wears or not to criticize the music the character mentions because that's what the author likes.
If I think the name is bad, I can say so. Personally? I'd really like to see other characters think 'What the?' when they hear some of the weirder pokemon nicknames in fanfiction. Everyone's naming preferences are different. If the names are simple, maybe people think they're boring or that the person is unimaginative. If the names are obscure, maybe people think they're pretentious or don't get them or think they thought too much about it.
By ordering the reviewers not to complain, Zanna Taru is telling us she doesn't have this level of detachment. All of the supporting characters are not going to think anything bad about the names. Odds are, they won't think at all.
The story hasn't even started and there are sue alarm bells going off in my head.
It opens with Zara, our protagonist, thinking ‘Whoa, that’s a weird looking Gyarados’ . Using ' to indicate thoughts is a pet peeve of mine. I find it hard to read, especially since I've read a number of older books that use ' for speech. ' also just looks too similar. I skim over the symbols, so I wind up reading it a speech until we get to the 'she thought' at the end. Anything else (*, italics, [], bold or just plain) is better.
Is the author's prose particularly good? Not really. ‘Whoa, that’s a weird looking Gyarados’ thought Zara as she faced the incredibly annoyed creature with her only Pokemon, Sunflash the Charizard(Flash for short), standing before her. The Gyarados rearing out of the lake was a beautiful red color, which sparkled in the sun. She snapped back to her senses as she saw that the red Gyarados was about to attack with a powerful Dragon Rage. is the complete paragraph. To me, this looks like the author is definitely trying, but just not practiced yet. I notice the hyperbole (incredibly annoyed) tendency to describe everything in as grand terms as possible. I did it myself when I started writing. From this, I'd assume Zanna Taru is a younger author. There's also the in-text note about the charizard's name, which further speaks of youth. Many authors will give two-word nicknames and then shorten it again (And again, yes, I did it too), and they also rarely realize readers will pick up on it themselves if done properly, so there's no need to tell us. And, of course, there is the Capitalization of the word Pokemon, Pokemon Attack Names, and Pokemon Species Names, which drives me insane just because it's not how English is supposed to work, and because I mentally hear those words as having slight emphasis. However, there's no current standard on this in the pokemon category, so it can't be considered an actual mistake on her part.
Having only one pokemon when she must have been a trainer for a while could be praised, but since she immediately gets another, it actually looks bad. I wonder why she doesn't have other pokemon by this point, especially since she seems to capture them without much thought. I'd be willing to bet a great deal of money it will never be explained satisfactorily.
Praise should be given, however, to her not opening this with Zara getting her first pokemon and starting out. Zanna Taru is starting the story when the story starts, a simple idea many writers don't understand, instead of following a strictly linear format.
Now, is the upcoming battle good? Let's look at the next two paragraphs.
“Flash, dodge it and use Slam!” She yelled.
The Charizard nodded and sprang from the ground, leaving the rampaging Gyarados disorientated and confused when it found that there was nothing to attack. Sunflash slammed into it from behind, sending it flying out of the water. The Gyarados struggled upright and prepared to use an attack, but was surprised to find that its foe was nowhere to be seen.
Nope. The gyarados is completely disoriented by the charizard dodging, despite the fact it should have seen Sunflash getting out of the way (since it's presumably staring at him). And although gyarados are snakelike and usually at least half-submerged, Sunflash has no trouble knocking it out of the water.
However, the author, again, is trying. She describes how this is happening, although it could have used a bit more thought. (For those of you wondering, snakes tend to bend when struck, unlike more rigid creatures. If this was a different pokemon, her idea might work. But it's a gyarados.) She does have the other pokemon as far, far stronger than the gyarados (and it's a fire type -_-;) but she doesn't take the easy way out and say Sunflash used (attack). The gyarados was defeated, something far too common in fanfiction.
Also, note the author capitalizes the first word after dialogue. This is a common grammatical error. (She also refers to the plural of shiny as "shiny's". I don't know why people need to change the normal plural. I dislike it when people use this on copyrighted words, and it's just infuriating when it's on a perfectly normal word. Unless there's a vowel before the y, (day, days), you turn y into ies. (Cry, cries). And never use a possessive apostrophe for plurals.)
At this point, Zara captures the gyarados. What's next?
Dialogue. Lots and lots of very unneeded dialogue. Zara, you see, can talk to pokemon. Interestingly, this skill is mentioned as if it wasn't hard to do (she was taught by her charizard) yet one can pick up from the narrative slant that it's not a common ability and we may not see any other trainer with it. If a trainer can speak to pokemon, I'd prefer them to show some effort rather than just having it announced. If they know it at the start of the story, it should be considered that they probably only understand their own pokemon, or else only pokemon of species they're familiar with – on the show, Ash used Squirtle to translate what an excited wartortle was saying. Or they might understand but it would be hard.
The pokemon come across as sappy and one-dimensional. Zanna Taru also uses " for pokemon speech, even though they aren't speaking the same language as humans, which I personally dislike. I prefer that other symbols are used to represent speech that only some of the characters hear, and also, " is generally used as the literal speech and sounds.
“Well, as long as you don’t pay more attention to it than me, I’ll be fine with it.” said Flash, smiling slyly.
“Oh, Flash, how could I not pay attention to you? You’re my best friend!”
“I was just making sure.”
“We’re going to have to give him a name, and then train him.”
“You take care of the name, and I’ll help with the training.”
“Well, he’s a bright, shining red, so how about... Rubino?” asked Zara thoughtfully.
“You’ve done it again! Perfect name, just like mine.” smirked the Charizard, his blue eyes dancing with hidden laughter.
“Come on, Flash, what do you really think?”
“I think it’s creative, and it fits.”
Then there's when they meet the gyarados.
“Oh, great, I’m caught.” The Gyarados moaned, “What will my friends think?! I hope my new trainer is nicer than that Charizard.”
“Being caught isn’t so bad, and if you hadn’t tried to attack me, Sunflash wouldn’t have had to fight you. He’s actually really nice, and so am I. I gave you a name, would you like to hear it?”
The Gyarados looked at Zara in surprise, gaping its huge mouth even farther.
“You can understand me?” He asked in awe.
All the pokemon seem 'young', for lack of a better term. They both seem to exist as sub-characters for Zara. The pokemon being unable to have their own personalities tends to be a common problem in fanfics, one authors often try to avoid with the same thing Zanna Taru is doing: long, back and forth banter that really doesn't need to be there.
What really needs to be done is for the pokemon characters to be fleshed out, but since Zara isn't, it's doubtful the author is able to do that yet.
What do the human characters think of Zara?
“Wow!” said a boy walking past, “Is that the Pokemon you’re going to be battling with?”
“No,” said Zara, smiling “I’m training a different one, he’s just coming for the show.”
“Cool! I’ll be sure to watch that battle!” said the boy as he waved goodbye.
So now we know that not only does Zara have pokemon that seem impressive to the reader, they're special to the pokemon world inhabitants as well.
When Zara goes to battle with her new gyarados, the spectators repeat the performance.
“Hey! It’s a Shiny!”
“Wow!”
“I didn’t think those existed!”
Going a little overboard here – people should at least know that shiny pokemon exist, and no one feels the need to rant every time Ash's noctowl comes out, so canonically it's not that big of a deal.
Zara then wins the battle (against a squirtle five levels higher) without the gyarados taking a single hit. Despite the fact the gyarados must be at least level twenty, and so five levels difference isn't such a big deal, the narration says it is, thus making her win even more spectacular.
And then:
“Great job!” she praised, “You kept your head against a much stronger opponent, I’m proud of you.”
“Thanks, but if it wasn’t for your plan, I never would have won.”
“You give me too much credit.”
“No he doesn’t,” said Flash, coming up behind them “your quick thinking has won me countless battles that I otherwise would have lost.”
They certainly think highly of Zara, and this won't be improving.
The boy Zara fought is of course impressed by her ability to talk to pokemon while simultaneously not considering it odd. This is par for course in a sue-fic – I've seen half cat, half demon, half angels listing their abilities to another character and having it met with unsurprised acceptance.
It's a case of trying to eat your cake and have it to. The author wants their character to be special, but they also won't acknowledge the 'what the hell?' response such specialness would gain. Also, they may simply not be practiced enough to think about how someone else would respond.
If a character does have extreme abilities, and they do tell this to another character, it would be very important for the other character to respond realistically. Jealousy, disbelief, or even the other character thinking that they have more abilities than anyone they'd ever met or heard of. Just something beyond being a foil for the main character.
The chapter ends with the pokemon going out for ice cream. A charizard (who, in the pokedex, are usually five feet seven inches tall, weigh two hundred pounds, and are also quite wide, to say nothing of being a fire type) and a gyarados (a pokemon usually twenty-one feet and four inches long, weighing five hundred and eighteen pounds, and who is a water type who probably cannot move well over paved streets) go out for ice cream.
Zanna Taru ends her first chapter by making one of the most common mistakes in pokemon fanfiction – turning the pokemon into miniature humans and forgetting all about any differences once the battles end.
Perhaps I shall do the second chapter tomorrow. And yet, perhaps not.
Be forewarned. This is long, simply because the story is simply so perfect for this. It is the quintessential fanfiction story – plain, full of mistakes, yet lacking the raw offensiveness of so many sue fics.
Let's start with what might easily be considered the last part, the reviews. The reviews are how I first noticed this story. I've gotten into the habit of looking at reviews simply to see what other people are saying.
I noticed many interesting things in the early reviews alone. The first eight are hyperbolic (Zanna Taru is called a "genious" by Wert34 twice, and Katana Midori-Fading Shadow highly praises it as well.) And then the ninth – joyous, if uncertain, constructive criticism from Moonlit Shadow, who said:
Eh... this is a cute story, and as much as I like Zara, she's kind of a MarySue... I mean, she's compassionate, nice, always does the right thing, and can even talk to her Pokemon. o_O; I mean, come on, that's a bit unrealistic... She has no noticable flaws, and always wins...
Eh.. yeah, cute story, but I doubt I'll be reading any more...
A little latter (five reviews, specifically) Katana Midori-Fading Shadow decides to defend. She reviews the next chapter with:
Another great chapter!
FYI:
A Mary-Sue is supposed to be a female OC that is perfect in every way.(the male version is a Gary-Stu, I think, but you don't see too many of those) Moonlit really had no right to call Zara a Mary-Sue because this story doesn't get that indepth that you know precicely what the characters are thinking. This style of writing seems to leave open gaps in the story that are filled later, even if the author doesn't realize it.
Sorry about the ranting! Update soon as usual!
I really hate it when people perpetrate misinformation or try to explain away complaints. Almost all negative reviews have value, even if you have to read between the lines. Even if Zara wasn't a sue, the fact someone complains still holds value. It needs to be seriously considered by the author before rejection, and having reviewers say things like this makes it easier for the author to ignore it.
Other authors ultimately enter (Keleri and Shinzon.) who also mention how the main character is too perfect, and some of the older reviewers begin offering suggestions.
All the reviews, even the semi-critical, have praise for the story. Why? Is the story that good? Are my dear peers simply being kind? Are they coddling her because they see potential?
Let's look.
The story opens with her author note, which contains the line "Don’t flame the names of the pokemon because I used pokemon names I made my self on one of my pokemon games." This is the line of thought that says if it's in the real world (in one manner or another) you can't flame. I see variants of this on other stories, saying not to flame the character because they're the author, or not to flame the character's name because it's the author's name/nickname/desired name or not to criticize how the character dresses because it's what the author wears or not to criticize the music the character mentions because that's what the author likes.
If I think the name is bad, I can say so. Personally? I'd really like to see other characters think 'What the?' when they hear some of the weirder pokemon nicknames in fanfiction. Everyone's naming preferences are different. If the names are simple, maybe people think they're boring or that the person is unimaginative. If the names are obscure, maybe people think they're pretentious or don't get them or think they thought too much about it.
By ordering the reviewers not to complain, Zanna Taru is telling us she doesn't have this level of detachment. All of the supporting characters are not going to think anything bad about the names. Odds are, they won't think at all.
The story hasn't even started and there are sue alarm bells going off in my head.
It opens with Zara, our protagonist, thinking ‘Whoa, that’s a weird looking Gyarados’ . Using ' to indicate thoughts is a pet peeve of mine. I find it hard to read, especially since I've read a number of older books that use ' for speech. ' also just looks too similar. I skim over the symbols, so I wind up reading it a speech until we get to the 'she thought' at the end. Anything else (*, italics, [], bold or just plain) is better.
Is the author's prose particularly good? Not really. ‘Whoa, that’s a weird looking Gyarados’ thought Zara as she faced the incredibly annoyed creature with her only Pokemon, Sunflash the Charizard(Flash for short), standing before her. The Gyarados rearing out of the lake was a beautiful red color, which sparkled in the sun. She snapped back to her senses as she saw that the red Gyarados was about to attack with a powerful Dragon Rage. is the complete paragraph. To me, this looks like the author is definitely trying, but just not practiced yet. I notice the hyperbole (incredibly annoyed) tendency to describe everything in as grand terms as possible. I did it myself when I started writing. From this, I'd assume Zanna Taru is a younger author. There's also the in-text note about the charizard's name, which further speaks of youth. Many authors will give two-word nicknames and then shorten it again (And again, yes, I did it too), and they also rarely realize readers will pick up on it themselves if done properly, so there's no need to tell us. And, of course, there is the Capitalization of the word Pokemon, Pokemon Attack Names, and Pokemon Species Names, which drives me insane just because it's not how English is supposed to work, and because I mentally hear those words as having slight emphasis. However, there's no current standard on this in the pokemon category, so it can't be considered an actual mistake on her part.
Having only one pokemon when she must have been a trainer for a while could be praised, but since she immediately gets another, it actually looks bad. I wonder why she doesn't have other pokemon by this point, especially since she seems to capture them without much thought. I'd be willing to bet a great deal of money it will never be explained satisfactorily.
Praise should be given, however, to her not opening this with Zara getting her first pokemon and starting out. Zanna Taru is starting the story when the story starts, a simple idea many writers don't understand, instead of following a strictly linear format.
Now, is the upcoming battle good? Let's look at the next two paragraphs.
“Flash, dodge it and use Slam!” She yelled.
The Charizard nodded and sprang from the ground, leaving the rampaging Gyarados disorientated and confused when it found that there was nothing to attack. Sunflash slammed into it from behind, sending it flying out of the water. The Gyarados struggled upright and prepared to use an attack, but was surprised to find that its foe was nowhere to be seen.
Nope. The gyarados is completely disoriented by the charizard dodging, despite the fact it should have seen Sunflash getting out of the way (since it's presumably staring at him). And although gyarados are snakelike and usually at least half-submerged, Sunflash has no trouble knocking it out of the water.
However, the author, again, is trying. She describes how this is happening, although it could have used a bit more thought. (For those of you wondering, snakes tend to bend when struck, unlike more rigid creatures. If this was a different pokemon, her idea might work. But it's a gyarados.) She does have the other pokemon as far, far stronger than the gyarados (and it's a fire type -_-;) but she doesn't take the easy way out and say Sunflash used (attack). The gyarados was defeated, something far too common in fanfiction.
Also, note the author capitalizes the first word after dialogue. This is a common grammatical error. (She also refers to the plural of shiny as "shiny's". I don't know why people need to change the normal plural. I dislike it when people use this on copyrighted words, and it's just infuriating when it's on a perfectly normal word. Unless there's a vowel before the y, (day, days), you turn y into ies. (Cry, cries). And never use a possessive apostrophe for plurals.)
At this point, Zara captures the gyarados. What's next?
Dialogue. Lots and lots of very unneeded dialogue. Zara, you see, can talk to pokemon. Interestingly, this skill is mentioned as if it wasn't hard to do (she was taught by her charizard) yet one can pick up from the narrative slant that it's not a common ability and we may not see any other trainer with it. If a trainer can speak to pokemon, I'd prefer them to show some effort rather than just having it announced. If they know it at the start of the story, it should be considered that they probably only understand their own pokemon, or else only pokemon of species they're familiar with – on the show, Ash used Squirtle to translate what an excited wartortle was saying. Or they might understand but it would be hard.
The pokemon come across as sappy and one-dimensional. Zanna Taru also uses " for pokemon speech, even though they aren't speaking the same language as humans, which I personally dislike. I prefer that other symbols are used to represent speech that only some of the characters hear, and also, " is generally used as the literal speech and sounds.
“Well, as long as you don’t pay more attention to it than me, I’ll be fine with it.” said Flash, smiling slyly.
“Oh, Flash, how could I not pay attention to you? You’re my best friend!”
“I was just making sure.”
“We’re going to have to give him a name, and then train him.”
“You take care of the name, and I’ll help with the training.”
“Well, he’s a bright, shining red, so how about... Rubino?” asked Zara thoughtfully.
“You’ve done it again! Perfect name, just like mine.” smirked the Charizard, his blue eyes dancing with hidden laughter.
“Come on, Flash, what do you really think?”
“I think it’s creative, and it fits.”
Then there's when they meet the gyarados.
“Oh, great, I’m caught.” The Gyarados moaned, “What will my friends think?! I hope my new trainer is nicer than that Charizard.”
“Being caught isn’t so bad, and if you hadn’t tried to attack me, Sunflash wouldn’t have had to fight you. He’s actually really nice, and so am I. I gave you a name, would you like to hear it?”
The Gyarados looked at Zara in surprise, gaping its huge mouth even farther.
“You can understand me?” He asked in awe.
All the pokemon seem 'young', for lack of a better term. They both seem to exist as sub-characters for Zara. The pokemon being unable to have their own personalities tends to be a common problem in fanfics, one authors often try to avoid with the same thing Zanna Taru is doing: long, back and forth banter that really doesn't need to be there.
What really needs to be done is for the pokemon characters to be fleshed out, but since Zara isn't, it's doubtful the author is able to do that yet.
What do the human characters think of Zara?
“Wow!” said a boy walking past, “Is that the Pokemon you’re going to be battling with?”
“No,” said Zara, smiling “I’m training a different one, he’s just coming for the show.”
“Cool! I’ll be sure to watch that battle!” said the boy as he waved goodbye.
So now we know that not only does Zara have pokemon that seem impressive to the reader, they're special to the pokemon world inhabitants as well.
When Zara goes to battle with her new gyarados, the spectators repeat the performance.
“Hey! It’s a Shiny!”
“Wow!”
“I didn’t think those existed!”
Going a little overboard here – people should at least know that shiny pokemon exist, and no one feels the need to rant every time Ash's noctowl comes out, so canonically it's not that big of a deal.
Zara then wins the battle (against a squirtle five levels higher) without the gyarados taking a single hit. Despite the fact the gyarados must be at least level twenty, and so five levels difference isn't such a big deal, the narration says it is, thus making her win even more spectacular.
And then:
“Great job!” she praised, “You kept your head against a much stronger opponent, I’m proud of you.”
“Thanks, but if it wasn’t for your plan, I never would have won.”
“You give me too much credit.”
“No he doesn’t,” said Flash, coming up behind them “your quick thinking has won me countless battles that I otherwise would have lost.”
They certainly think highly of Zara, and this won't be improving.
The boy Zara fought is of course impressed by her ability to talk to pokemon while simultaneously not considering it odd. This is par for course in a sue-fic – I've seen half cat, half demon, half angels listing their abilities to another character and having it met with unsurprised acceptance.
It's a case of trying to eat your cake and have it to. The author wants their character to be special, but they also won't acknowledge the 'what the hell?' response such specialness would gain. Also, they may simply not be practiced enough to think about how someone else would respond.
If a character does have extreme abilities, and they do tell this to another character, it would be very important for the other character to respond realistically. Jealousy, disbelief, or even the other character thinking that they have more abilities than anyone they'd ever met or heard of. Just something beyond being a foil for the main character.
The chapter ends with the pokemon going out for ice cream. A charizard (who, in the pokedex, are usually five feet seven inches tall, weigh two hundred pounds, and are also quite wide, to say nothing of being a fire type) and a gyarados (a pokemon usually twenty-one feet and four inches long, weighing five hundred and eighteen pounds, and who is a water type who probably cannot move well over paved streets) go out for ice cream.
Zanna Taru ends her first chapter by making one of the most common mistakes in pokemon fanfiction – turning the pokemon into miniature humans and forgetting all about any differences once the battles end.
Perhaps I shall do the second chapter tomorrow. And yet, perhaps not.
![[identity profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/openid.png){kind=small}
no subject
Date: 2004-08-15 11:49 pm (UTC)what they *didn't* do wrong, however. It's true that this story could be worse. x.x
no subject
Date: 2004-08-16 02:37 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2004-08-17 08:46 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2004-08-17 08:45 pm (UTC)::gags::
will check out story out of morbid curiosity ^_^
no subject
Date: 2004-08-22 03:07 am (UTC)The second and the third one, to some extent, in my case. It's a bad habit. x__________x