Lucki Middling

[farla]

About a year back I was trying to figure out what to write for the newest chapter of Unoriginality OT. I knew exactly what I wanted to write it about - a middling sue.

I'd been reading some of the longer works of fiction in the Pokemon category, and found a lot of them horribly mary sueish, but well enough written that reviewers praised them as "original" and "totally not a sue!" They never did any one thing that was obviously over the line, or at least they managed to justify it after the fact, meaning direct concrit was hard to do. They also tended to have infuriating levels of luck.

And so I decided to write an entire story to demonstrate my point. Lucki, an apparently straight original trainer story, posted over on Serebii under a different name. It chronicles the life of Lucki Middling - a middling sue by virtue of luck - as she gets a starter (shiny), adopts a pokemon (eeveelution), wins battles, and so on.

And then, well...

Lucki stops being lucky, and things stop happening because she wants them to.

Edited to add: It's up on FFN! I managed to surmount their screwy upload and I now have a story with the start date of 4/13/07. Could life be better?

Comments

[negrek.livejournal.com]

That that 'fic is considered at all well-written annoys me (not so much as the Serebii "We are the best pokémon fanfiction place on the internet because we have extremely minimal standards!" attitude, though). Just reading your excerpts made me cringe a lot of the time, especially the dialogue, but even just some gratuitous typos and consistently bad phrasing (the wingull wrapping paper, the pendant getting "caught on a sunbeam", etc.) Dunno if I would even call it just middling Sue, either. But then, Sue report excerpts aren't exactly supposed to be the work at its finest and I dislike icemew considerably just as a person, so perhaps I'm slightly biased in that regard. Your report on the 'fic was made of win, by the way. The comments you added to the text excerpts were actually amusing, which is something I don't see often in Sue reports, for some reason.

[farla.livejournal.com]

Well, yes. But that was really the point.

One of the absolutely most annoying things about Serebii is the blathering about detail, which only stops once you put in enough that it's humanly impossible to read. (There are some horrible typos hidden in the prose nobody mentioned...why, it's almost like they weren't reading it, isn't it?)

[negrek.livejournal.com]

Yes, that would explain the popularity of some of the 'fics there. I can vouch for the fact that they are much more enjoyable when not actually read.

[negrek.livejournal.com]

Oh my gosh, I totally misssed the part of the sentence where you said you wrote that entire thing as a parody (and then also failed to look at the thread and your post there). I am being especially dense today.

That was... amazing. I can't believe you actually went through with all of that, and you did an amazing job with it, too. Everybody played right into your hands, myself included, although as I'm rather gullible and not very perceptive that's unsurprising. So I salute you for being amazing, although you've demonstrated that many times already.

...and I was kind of just wandering around, wondering to myself, "Didn't Farla say she was going to post something today?" Geeze.

[farla.livejournal.com]

I was wondering why you seemed to just be talking about the report. ^^

Everybody played right into your hands, myself included, although as I'm rather gullible and not very perceptive that's unsurprising.
Well, it's a straight OT fic up until the thirteen chapter, when it all starts to go to hell.

Although I am somewhat bothered that no one seemed to pick up on it past that point. I may have to revise it before it's reposted.

[negrek.livejournal.com]

Yeah, I thought you were just providing a link to the story to show where it had come from for the report.

Dang, now I'm actually going to have to read the story. The prose will make me unhappy at some points, but in the context of it being a sort of ultra-parody, I think I will nevertheless find it amusing. And reading the reviews is going to be priceless.

You did a good job with your icemew character outside the 'fic, too. Managed to fit right in with the Serebii population. Although I admit that that "statistics" thing that you put in her signature managed to perplex me a little. I couldn't figure out if it was put in there because icemew recognized the joke or because she was one of those people who put that sort of stuff in their signature without really understanding. I have to admit, I never knew quite what to make of her.

(...you named the absol Fara. omg XD)

[farla.livejournal.com]

Reading the story, just remember two things.

1)The whole thing is solely from Lucki's POV. Even apparently neutral narration.
2)Lucki is a self-centered bitch.

Well, my little brother, who was all of ten, was doing some of my posts for a while. That helped. (And I recently edited the statistic bit to involve the infamous 98%. I don't think any of them will get it, even still.)

[wintersheir]

Oh man. Oh man. I love you. Let's run away together. xD

[antialiasis.livejournal.com]

Hehe, that was ingenious. icemew really did fool everyone. I should probably attempt to read it and see if I can learn something. *kicks the everlasting badness of her fic*

Although damn, didn't anybody comment on some of the ridiculous replacements for "said" I saw in those excerpts? o_O How is it even possible not to burst out laughing at "voiced delightedly"?

[farla.livejournal.com]

Although damn, didn't anybody comment on some of the ridiculous replacements for "said" I saw in those excerpts? o_O How is it even possible not to burst out laughing at "voiced delightedly"?

The same way people kept complementing how great my description was for stuff like:

The pokemon that appeared was vaguely hatchet-shaped and looked almost like its whole body was its head, somewhat reminiscent of the Nosepass Lucki had fought back in Rustboro in Roxanne's gym. It had a massive yellow beak that took up easily half its size including its wings, taking up the area where its stomach should have been and and running all the way to its tail. The small amount of its body that wasn't beak was white, with a small raise for its forehead where its large black eyes were placed. The front of that area was covered in a blue streak, but the sides were white as well. It had two odd wings that looked almost like arms or flippers, narrow things that ended in a set of thick, clearly defined blue feathers that gave it the optical illusion of having fingers at first glance.

Which is to say, I have absolutely no idea.