As an experiment, I used a variation of Enki’s disclaimer paragraph in these reviews to see if it had any effect. During this period, some trolls also reviewed (nearly) every story telling everyone to block me, so I’ve noted stories I was blocked on to gauge their success.
Story content was unfortunately unremarkable. There is a decent novelization of the RSE opening, and a multi-trainer intrigue thing that might turn out interesting but I don’t know because it spent the first several thousand words on pointless backstory.
Anime count: 2
https://www.fanfiction.net/s/12894862/1/The-Theory-of-Grey
Blocked, possibly at the advice of my heckler.
https://www.fanfiction.net/s/12894986/1/Pok%C3%A9mon-Dimension-Pastel-Ink-Chapter-1
Hi! I’m doing a round of reviews around the site, hoping to help give people constructive criticism instead of just vague appreciation or flames. This review is totally honest – if I say I didn’t like something, it’s because I think it could be improved, and if I say I like something, I really did! If I don’t mention something at all, it wasn’t that I hated it but couldn’t think of a positive to bring up. Feel free to disagree with my interpretations and don’t be afraid to let me know why.
It’s not allowed on this site to post chapters as separate stories. Unless you mean “chapter” like a book in a trilogy, you should just use this file to host the whole story.
You wouldn’t capitalize animal or mouse or dragon, so you shouldn’t capitalize words like pokemon or pikachu or charizard. 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. This is because you only capitalize when it’s a proper noun, which are the names of places or things. Similar reasoning should be applied to any other words you’re thinking of capitalizing, like telephone or trainer. Or champion. If you want to argue about this, take it to fanfiction (d o t) net/topic/11834/55376155/1/Capitalization-Thread
[Hostbush town]
However, all parts of a name are capitalized, so this should be “Hostbush Town”.
[a blond-haired girl]
You want “blonde”. “Blond” is the masculine form.
[“Dude we’re here,” Ink notified.]
Notifying doesn’t really work that way. You’re overusing uncommon speech verbs. Don’t be afraid to use said; lovely word, won’t bite, usually more fitting than whatever fancy verb you’re using in its place. You may have heard to avoid said because it’s so bland and boring, but that’s actually its greatest strength. Nonstandard speech verbs stick out; they’re used for emphasis, when how something is said is important to the story and you want the reader to stop and take notice. If you use that emphasis for every single line, the reader will become oversaturated, lessening the impact when you actually do want emphasis on a speech tag.
[Ink figured he should go find him before he ended up in a hidden grotto with a Hydreigon.]
I’m not entirely sure what he means here?
[Oscar turned around quickly, “Well, let’s go grab some food!”]
When narration doesn’t describe how something is said, it’s a separate sentence from dialogue and is punctuated accordingly. So this should be [Oscar turned around quickly. “Well, let’s go grab some food!”]
[The Versum region was different in many ways from other Pokémon regions. Aside from being much more mountainous and snowy, it also gave the option of choosing from twenty-one starters, from the Kanto, Johto, Hoenn, Sinnoh, Unova, Kalos, and Alola regions.]
It always feels odd to me when people Flanderize the nature of the starters in this way. If you look at how the starts are obtained, there’s not actually anything to suggest this is the norm for trainers, especially not on a country-wide scale – I mean, we see plenty of trainers without one, and in the manga at least, it’s established that most kids get their first pokemon through lucky catches while adventuring outside of town. Elm is said to give out starters regularly, but New Bark is a small town, not a massive city like you describe here. Everywhere else, you get starters by accidents or special favors because the professor knows you personally. Given how rare the starters are said to be, it seems unlikely to me that they would be able to breed enough to meet the demand here.
[it’s future Spiky Shield move]
You want “its”. “It’s” always means “it is”.
[A few Drifloons flew above]
Don’t drifloons abduct children? This seems like a safety hazard.
[“I think”]
Missing punctuation here.
[The lab seemed to have overlook everything]
That should be “overlooked”, I believe.
[Inside you could even see things like the more exotic Tropius.]
The general you sounds awkward in third-person. I’d recommend rephrasing this to be about Ink’s perspective – “he could even see…” etc.
[Oscar said refocusing on Ink.]
This needs a comma after “said”.
[Anyway’s I’m thinking hotel food tonight?]
The apostrophe isn’t needed here.
Your description throughout this is quite nice. You’re good at painting a picture of the city, and I get a strong sense of how bustling it is. However, I feel like there isn’t much in the way of a hook here. Remember that your first chapter is your opportunity to hook your reader – you don’t need to put all your cards on the table, but you need to have something to show. What is this story going to be about – the stakes, the conflict, the interest? The protagonists haven’t even gotten their starter pokemon here yet. You should start where your plot starts; you’re not obligated to cover every mundane detail leading up to the inciting event. See here for more information: fanfiction (d o t) net/topic/11834/142411850/1/First-Chapters
https://www.fanfiction.net/s/12895198/1/Hero-in-the-Making
Hi! I’m doing a round of reviews around the site, hoping to help give people constructive criticism instead of just vague appreciation or flames. This review is totally honest – if I say I didn’t like something, it’s because I think it could be improved, and if I say I like something, I really did! If I don’t mention something at all, it wasn’t that I hated it but that I couldn’t think of a positive to bring up. Feel free to disagree with my interpretations and don’t be afraid to let me know why.
Titling chapters in the story itself looks kinda weird; the dropdown menu should suffice.
[to a small crappy Littleroot Town]
The general article here sounds strange because you call the town by name. It would make more sense to construct this as “to small crappy Littleroot Town” or “to a small crappy town called Littleroot”.
[boxes were sliding around and hitting me or falling off of their stacks onto me, I was getting slung around with each and every turn.]
This is a comma splice. You need to split this sentence in two or use a different transition.
[He offered to let me ride up front, but I honestly just wanted to avoid conversation.]
Okay, so he had the choice to not have to sit in the cargo bay, but he’s still complaining about it anyway? Does he really feel like making small talk is worse than getting crushed by boxes?
In general, I feel like people make too much of this aspect of the RSE opening. None of the NPCs make note of it or seem to think it’s strange and the mother isn’t otherwise portrayed as abusive, which makes me feel like we’re not supposed to use it to discern characterization. Maybe the PC just chose to sit there for the last leg of the journey, or they fell into it somewhere along the way? There are other potential options here than to open the story by having the mom be horribly abusive and then never addressing it again.
You wouldn’t capitalize animal or mouse or dragon, so you shouldn’t capitalize words like pokemon or pikachu or charizard. 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. This is because you only capitalize when it’s a proper noun, which are the names of places or things. Similar reasoning should be applied to any other words you’re thinking of capitalizing, like telephone or trainer or gym. If you want to argue about this, take it to fanfiction (d o t) net/topic/11834/55376155/1/Capitalization-Thread
[that little bit of hell]
When referring to the singular place, “Hell” is capitalized.
[“That was probably the longest and least exciting…” I glanced down at my watch and did a little math in my head, “…fifty-five and a half hours of my life.]
When narration doesn’t describe how dialogue is said, it’s not punctuated with commas. For a sentence like this, you can think of the dialogue and narration as being on separate “tracks”, with the dialogue stopping to start a new sentence of narration that then ends as the dialogue resumes. So this would be [“That was probably the longest and least exciting…” I glanced down at my watch and did a little math in my head. “…fifty-five and a half hours of my life.]
[I honestly thought I was gonna die of boredom. Then of heat exhaustion. Then from drowning in my own sweat.”
Mom’s smile faded, but only for a second. “Oh well! You’ll find some other ways to have fun now that we’re in Littleroot Town! There’s so many great things to do here!”]
This is honestly a little horrifying. Either the mom is purposefully ignoring his feelings and being outright abusive, or she genuinely doesn’t notice there’s any problem, in which case she is criminally incompetent as a parent. I suppose you are trying to make this lighthearted, but the fact that he seems so genuinely upset makes this kinda sad.
[She then immediately began decorating my room for.]
Something went wrong with this sentence.
[I looked over at her.”Can]
Missing space.
[A whole like bigger and better than that crummy old apartment]
I think you meant “like” here? I’ll stop pointing out these errors, but know that they are distracting. You should proofread more thoroughly.
[“Oh, that reminds me, Mrs. Birch is expecting you sometime day. I told her you’d stop by.”]
Ah, I like that you’re mentioning the professor’s wife. It helps make them feel more well-rounded (and less patriarchal).
[The man let go of the branch, dropping to the ground. And just in the nick of time, too. The flames were following the moss on the tree, and landed on the branch just a few seconds later. The whole tree was almost completely engulfed in flames.]
Does it really make sense for the fire to spread that fast? Dead plants burn fast, sure, but live plants require a sustained fire to burn out all the water in them first. Unless this was a dead tree, in which case it shouldn’t have been able to hold Birch’s weight at all, it doesn’t make sense for it to burn this quickly.
I like that you make Trevor’s narration and complaints feel genuine without making them feel too self-important. Too often I’ve seen those protagonists act arrogant and snobbish, so it’s nice to see one who doesn’t have any illusions about his actual abilities. He feels like a real teenager, rather than a teenager’s power fantasy, if that makes sense.
You’ve done a very good job of spicing up the game’s opening and fleshing out all the scenes and details. However, I feel like there’s something missing from the narration. You tend to describe things in very simple, matter-of-fact statements with little emotion behind them, which makes Trevor feel a bit dull as a protagonist. I’d honestly go so far as to say he sounds depressed, though his actions don’t match up with that. Also, if you intend for his crush on May to be a major component, I would request you add “Romance” to the genre listing, as there is an awful lot of it here.
My concern about this story going forward would be that I’m not sure if you can keep up this level of detail as the game progresses. The games honestly don’t have much in the way of plot, and while the minutiae of every catch and battle are exciting in a game, they can quickly get repetitive in a prose story. If you want to novelize the game in full, you’ll have an uphill battle ahead of you to maintain the reader’s interest and your own. This thread has some helpful tips in that regard: fanfiction (d o t) net/topic/11834/143106745/1/Things-to-Consider-in-OT-Fic
https://www.fanfiction.net/s/12895615/1/A-Day-in-the-Life-of-a-Rocket
Blocked.
https://www.fanfiction.net/s/12895783/1/Ash-and-Gary
This belongs in the Anime world. Find your story under “Manage Stories” and select it from the dropdown menu that says “World: Any” in the “Category” section. If you have difficulties or objections, take it to this thread: fanfiction (d o t) net/topic/11834/165132256/1/World-Tags
[A little Ash and Gary slash, from Gary’s POV]
Summaries should tell us more than just the genre. What’s the particular situation here? Why might someone browsing for Ash/Gary fic be interested in this one in particular?
You should separate your author notes with a horizontal line; otherwise, they look like part of the story.
You’re formatting dialogue incorrectly. Dialogue is written as [“Hello,” she said] or [“Hello!” she said], never [“Hello.” She said] or [“Hello”, she said] or [“Hello” she said]. This is because dialogue and speech tags are considered to be part of the same sentence, so they have to flow together. The only exception to this is if the next sentence doesn’t contain a speech verb. In that case, the second part IS considered a separate sentence, so it’s written as [“Hello.” She grinned], never [“Hello,” she grinned]. Note that something isn’t a speech verb just because it’s a sound you make with your mouth, so generally stuff like “laughed” or “giggled” is in the second category. (“Speak” is also not a speech verb.) Furthermore, if you’re breaking up two complete sentences it’s [“Hi,” she said. “This is it.”] not [“Hi,” she said, “this is it.”] or [“Hi,” she said “this is it.”] And if you’re breaking up a sentence in the middle, it’s [“Hi. This,” she said, “is it.”] The same punctuation and capitalization rules apply to thoughts, except you don’t use quotation marks (or single quotes) with thoughts. This is because quotation marks for thoughts make it look like your characters are talking out loud, which is confusing to the reader.
This is full of tense errors and mispellings. You need a beta reader. Start looking here: fanfiction (d o t) net/topic/11834/42724996/1/Beta-Signup
https://www.fanfiction.net/s/12895908/1/Falling-Leaves
Blocked, though this author blocked me a while back.
https://www.fanfiction.net/s/12895983/1/Pokemon-Geo-Quest
Titling chapters in the story itself looks kinda weird; the dropdown menu should suffice.
[(Shows a short 10 year old boy with short blue hair wearing a blue sweat jacket with a pokeball sign on the back. He has blue pants on)]
This is a story, not a screenwriting. You need to describe these things in prose.
This is a mess. You need a beta reader. Start looking here: fanfiction (d o t) net/topic/11834/42724996/1/Beta-Signup
https://www.fanfiction.net/s/12896054/1/A-Burning-Chill
Hi! I’m doing a round of reviews around the site, hoping to help give people constructive criticism instead of just vague appreciation or flames. This review is totally honest – if I say I didn’t like something, it’s because I think it could be improved, and if I say I like something, I really did! If I don’t mention something at all, it wasn’t that I hated it but that I couldn’t think of a positive to bring up. Feel free to disagree with my interpretations and don’t be afraid to let me know why.
I appreciate that you’re not capitalizing pokemon.
[The time before his kind’s arrival on the mountain was lost to all those he knew; the few dozen who resided on the slopes were a generation removed from the storytellers who could convey the danger of ocean travel and the excitement of exploring new territory, all for the purpose of… well, nobody could remember why their recently deceased ancestors would bother with such a journey.]
This is interesting. I always assumed Alolan pokemon crossed over from a land bridge in prehistory, but now that I think about it, they should have evolved into a completely different species by now if that were the case. This does raise the question of how they crossed the ocean, though – were they brought here by trainers?
And ah, you point out the oddness of them being hurt by the heat, I was wondering that myself. This raises the question of how the adaptation started, though. If mainland vulpixes have no problem in the heat, what drove them up to the mountain in the first place?
While using “the male” and “the female” for the vulpixes is acceptable, it’s really weird to apply that terminology to humans, as only animals researchers describe subjects that way.
https://www.fanfiction.net/s/12896268/1/Rebuilding-a-Champion
Blocked, but has no reviews by my heckler. Possibly they blocked me earlier, or were contacted through PM.
https://www.fanfiction.net/s/12896418/1/Misery-Loves-Company-Sequel
[Here is the original: /s/8794890/1/Misery]
Unfortunately, as you can see, FFN does weird things when you try to use links. There is another fanfiction site called “Archive of Our Own” that allows you to use more HTML, including hyperlinks, if you’d like to crosspost this.
You should separate your author notes with a horizontal line; otherwise, they look like part of the story.
You wouldn’t capitalize animal or mouse or dragon, so you shouldn’t capitalize words like pokemon or pikachu or charizard. 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. This is because you only capitalize when it’s a proper noun, which are the names of places or things. Similar reasoning should be applied to any other words you’re thinking of capitalizing, like trainer or gym. Or champion. If you want to argue about this, take it to fanfiction (d o t) net/topic/11834/55376155/1/Capitalization-Thread
You’re formatting dialogue incorrectly. Dialogue is written as [“Hello,” she said] or [“Hello!” she said], never [“Hello.” She said] or [“Hello”, she said] or [“Hello” she said]. This is because dialogue and speech tags are considered to be part of the same sentence, so they have to flow together. The only exception to this is if the next sentence doesn’t contain a speech verb. In that case, the second part IS considered a separate sentence, so it’s written as [“Hello.” She grinned], never [“Hello,” she grinned]. Note that something isn’t a speech verb just because it’s a sound you make with your mouth, so generally stuff like “laughed” or “giggled” is in the second category. (“Speak” is also not a speech verb.) Furthermore, if you’re breaking up two complete sentences it’s [“Hi,” she said. “This is it.”] not [“Hi,” she said, “this is it.”] or [“Hi,” she said “this is it.”] And if you’re breaking up a sentence in the middle, it’s [“Hi. This,” she said, “is it.”] The same punctuation and capitalization rules apply to thoughts, except you don’t use quotation marks (or single quotes) with thoughts. This is because quotation marks for thoughts make it look like your characters are talking out loud, which is confusing to the reader.
https://www.fanfiction.net/s/12896508/1/From-Guardian-to-Gimp
This author blocked me ages ago.
https://www.fanfiction.net/s/12896680/1/Fun-Laundry-At-Home
Sadly, this one didn’t.
This belongs in the Anime world. Find your story under “Manage Stories” and select it from the dropdown menu that says “World: Any” in the “Category” section. If you have difficulties or objections, take it to this thread: fanfiction (d o t) net/topic/11834/165132256/1/World-Tags
You wouldn’t capitalize animal or mouse or dragon, so you shouldn’t capitalize words like pokemon or pikachu or charizard. 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. This is because you only capitalize when it’s a proper noun, which are the names of places or things. Similar reasoning should be applied to any other words you’re thinking of capitalizing, like trainer or gym. Or champion. If you want to argue about this, take it to fanfiction (d o t) net/topic/11834/55376155/1/Capitalization-Thread
[Ash was 5’10” tall, about 183 pounds]
Giving exact measurements for height and weight is actually counter-productive, as most people don’t immediately know what exactly this looks like. It’s better to use more general descriptors, like “he was a little on the tall side, and of average weight…” Weight alone also does not actually tell us much about how someone looks; how much of that is fat, how much is muscle, and how is it distributed?
https://www.fanfiction.net/s/12897381/1/Beyond-Reality
Hi! I’m doing a round of reviews around the site, hoping to help give people constructive criticism instead of just vague appreciation or flames. This review is totally honest – if I say I didn’t like something, it’s because I think it could be improved, and if I say I like something, I really did! If I don’t mention something at all, it wasn’t that I hated it but that I couldn’t think of a positive to bring up. Feel free to disagree with my interpretations and don’t be afraid to let me know why.
Second-person fic is sometimes flagged as interactive, which can get it deleted without warning. You should make a backup to be safe.
You wouldn’t capitalize animal or mouse or dragon, so you shouldn’t capitalize words like pokemon or pikachu or charizard. 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. This is because you only capitalize when it’s a proper noun, which are the names of places or things. Similar reasoning should be applied to any other words you’re thinking of capitalizing, like trainer or professor or gym. If you want to argue about this, please take it to fanfiction (d o t) net/topic/11834/55376155/1/Capitalization-Thread
[The smell of cinnamon was normal for your bedsheets but not rain or cinnamon.]
Something seems to have gone wrong with this sentence.
[It hasn’t rained in your city]
The rest of the story is in past tense, so this should be as well. This slip happens a lot throughout this story. It generally feels more natural to write and read second-person in present tense, so I’d recommend switching the story to that.
[You shook your head.Pft. Yeah right.Taking]
Missing spaces here. This error occurs a few other times throughout the story. You should proofread more thoroughly.
[it’s eyes glowing]
You want “its”. “It’s” always means “it is”.
[#UltraMoon#BestVersion#Fightme]
Including author’s notes in the middle of a story is not a good idea. Stories run on immersion and suspension of disbelief; interrupting the story and pointing to the wires shatters that, much like an actor breaking character in a theater production.
[Blinking, you turned around slowly and you were met with ruby iris.]
It doesn’t make sense for You to be focusing on the iris unless they’re standing so close their noses are touching. “Iris” isn’t a synonym for “eye”.
[One of the Meowth’s]
Apostrophes are for possessives, not plurals.
[Nanu scratched his chin, eyes dropped down as he watched that girl run away from the police station.]
So we’re in Nanu’s POV now? It’s really jarring to do that without any kind of transition. I strongly recommend against using multiple POVs in the same chapter, besides. The story will be stronger if you can structure it so that we learn everything we need to from one perspective.
[he was a fucking God]
When using it as a general term, “god” isn’t capitalized.
This gets really disjointed and confusing towards the end. I strongly recommend getting a beta reader to help you. Start looking here: fanfiction (d o t) net/topic/11834/42724996/1/Beta-Signup
I don’t see the purpose of second-person here, as the protagonist is clearly a defined character in her own right. This would probably be clearer in third-person.
https://www.fanfiction.net/s/12897496/1/Azelf-The-Being-of-Willpower
Author blocked me some time ago. Oddly, it’s this point that my heckler stopped giving out the warning at all and started giving real reviews. This points to them getting negative feedback for the spamming.
https://www.fanfiction.net/s/12897519/1/Will-Of-The-Hearts
Hi! I’m doing a round of reviews around the site, hoping to help give people constructive criticism instead of just vague appreciation or flames. This review is totally honest – if I say I didn’t like something, it’s because I think it could be improved, and if I say I like something, I really did! If I don’t mention something at all, it wasn’t that I hated it but that I couldn’t think of a positive to bring up. Feel free to disagree with my interpretations and don’t be afraid to let me know why.
I appreciate that you’re not capitalizing the word “pokemon” itself. However, species names shouldn’t be capitalized either, for the same reasons.
There are a lot of strange errors throughout this – verb misconjugation, sentence fragments, missing words and apostrophes. They’re very distracting, and I really recommend you get a beta reader to help you with them. Start looking here: fanfiction (d o t) net/topic/11834/42724996/1/Beta-Signup
[feeling the misty breeze as the waves gently slapped against the boat creating a calming atmosphere to ease his nerves.]
This needs a comma after “boat”. You have similar punctuation errors throughout. I’d recommend reading up on sentence structure and comma usage.
[On top of that all that all that had happened to him there.]
Something went wrong with this sentence.
[She had evolved into a Leafeon on one of the many family trips him and his parents had been on for work. It happen during a hopeless looking trainer battle with a Squirtle in which his dear eevee was getting a barrage of attacks that were coming closer and closer to putting her out of the fight. Then just as the stubborn eevee had had enough she was enveloped in blue light in which she upgraded to a beautiful leaf type Leafeon.]
That’s… not how leafeon evolution works. She’d need access to a moss stone. With a normal pokemon this would be reasonable, but eevee are very explicitly stated to work differently and require external factors. If you want to do this, it would be better to give him a regular grass-type – eevee are overused anyway.
[Jack was positive the original trainer was abusive because Luna quickly came to trust Jack almost as if see could feel his caring attitude.]
That’s pretty much the opposite of how abused animals act. They require a much longer time to build up trust and often lash out seemingly randomly for a long time. Abuse is also an odd theory to have for a friendship evolution – it’s not impossible that something weird was going on there, but you should explain it if so.
Opening the story with a backstory infodump is off-putting. You have to cover so many events so quickly that there’s no time to get emotionally invested in any of it, and the end result is that it just makes me impatient to get to the story itself. You should try to incorporate relevant backstory information organically throughout the story, like talking about the pokemon when he first sends them out, or talking about his childhood during a conversation with his parents. That will also entice readers by starting with a degree of mystery that is slowly revealed over the course of the story.
[I just have to know what it is beacause daddy’s gonna be there]
When a title (such as “mom” or “dad”) is used in place of a name, it’s capitalized like one.
[“Honey, are you ok?”]
It’s written “okay”, four letters. It is not an abbreviation for something else, nor is it pronounced “ock”, therefore it should never be written as OK, Ok, O.K. or ok.
You’re formatting dialogue incorrectly. Dialogue is written as [“Hello,” she said] or [“Hello!” she said], never [“Hello.” She said] or [“Hello”, she said] or [“Hello” she said]. This is because dialogue and speech tags are considered to be part of the same sentence, so they have to flow together. The only exception to this is if the next sentence doesn’t contain a speech verb. In that case, the second part IS considered a separate sentence, so it’s written as [“Hello.” She grinned], never [“Hello,” she grinned]. Note that something isn’t a speech verb just because it’s a sound you make with your mouth, so generally stuff like “laughed” or “giggled” is in the second category. (“Speak” is also not a speech verb.) Furthermore, if you’re breaking up two complete sentences it’s [“Hi,” she said. “This is it.”] not [“Hi,” she said, “this is it.”] or [“Hi,” she said “this is it.”] And if you’re breaking up a sentence in the middle, it’s [“Hi. This,” she said, “is it.”] The same punctuation and capitalization rules apply to thoughts, except you don’t use quotation marks (or single quotes) with thoughts. This is because quotation marks for thoughts make it look like your characters are talking out loud, which is confusing to the reader.
Also, a new speaker means a new paragraph. Not doing this makes following your dialogue too much work for me to continue reading.
https://www.fanfiction.net/s/12897872/1/Ash-and-serena-amourshiping-Music-friends-and-love
Your title needs to be fully capitalized.
Your summary needs to say what the story is actually about.
You should separate your author notes with a horizontal line; otherwise, they look like part of the story.
[THIS IS MY FIRST FANFIC SO PLEASE DONT JUDGE ME
IF THE ENGLISH IS A BIT BAD:’IM FROM THE NETHERLANDS’]
Then why are you writing in English?
Script format is banned on this site, and as such this story is at risk for deletion. You should switch to prose format. Even aside from that, this is indeed a complete mess. You should stick to writing in your native language for now.
[And if you see some thing like this: ” ã I©cÑ# ©-{~½Ã)óe’®» d”ÚFpÇv`÷! ¸Ú W؈*. t ” Its becouse im hiding this fanfic in one of the unused crash files from a game using notepad++.]
I also don’t understand why you need to do this.
https://www.fanfiction.net/s/12897905/1/Pok%C3%A9mon-Colosseum-The-Shadows
Hi! I’m doing a round of reviews around the site, hoping to help give people constructive criticism instead of just vague appreciation or flames. This review is totally honest – if I say I didn’t like something, it’s because I think it could be improved, and if I say I like something, I really did! If I don’t mention something at all, it wasn’t that I hated it but that I couldn’t think of a positive to bring up. Feel free to disagree with my interpretations and don’t be afraid to let me know why.
You wouldn’t capitalize animal or mouse or dragon, so you shouldn’t capitalize words like pokemon or pikachu or charizard. 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. This is because you only capitalize when it’s a proper noun, which are the names of places or things. Similar reasoning should be applied to any other words you’re thinking of capitalizing, like trainer or professor or gym. If you want to argue about this, please take it to fanfiction (d o t) net/topic/11834/55376155/1/Capitalization-Thread
You’re formatting dialogue incorrectly. Dialogue is written as [“Hello,” she said] or [“Hello!” she said], never [“Hello.” She said] or [“Hello”, she said] or [“Hello” she said]. This is because dialogue and speech tags are considered to be part of the same sentence, so they have to flow together. The only exception to this is if the next sentence doesn’t contain a speech verb. In that case, the second part IS considered a separate sentence, so it’s written as [“Hello.” She grinned], never [“Hello,” she grinned]. Note that something isn’t a speech verb just because it’s a sound you make with your mouth, so generally stuff like “laughed” or “giggled” is in the second category. (“Speak” is also not a speech verb.) Furthermore, if you’re breaking up two complete sentences it’s [“Hi,” she said. “This is it.”] not [“Hi,” she said, “this is it.”] or [“Hi,” she said “this is it.”] And if you’re breaking up a sentence in the middle, it’s [“Hi. This,” she said, “is it.”] The same punctuation and capitalization rules apply to thoughts, except you don’t use quotation marks (or single quotes) with thoughts. This is because quotation marks for thoughts make it look like your characters are talking out loud, which is confusing to the reader.
It’s written “okay”, four letters. It is not an abbreviation for something else, nor is it pronounced “ock”, therefore it should never be written as OK, Ok, O.K. or ok.
[45 minutes later…]
This isn’t a video game. You should establish time and place through context or narration. Non-general scene transitions are jarring.
You should separate your author notes with a horizontal line; otherwise, they look like part of the story.
This ends very abruptly.
https://www.fanfiction.net/s/12898250/1/Pokemon-Rainbow-Book-1-Red
Hi! I’m doing a round of reviews around the site, hoping to help give people constructive criticism instead of just vague appreciation or flames. This review is totally honest – if I say I didn’t like something, it’s because I think it could be improved, and if I say I like something, I really did! If I don’t mention something at all, it wasn’t that I hated it but that I couldn’t think of a positive to bring up. Feel free to disagree with my interpretations and don’t be afraid to let me know why.
You wouldn’t capitalize animal or mouse or dragon, so you shouldn’t capitalize words like pokemon or pikachu or charizard. 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. This is because you only capitalize when it’s a proper noun, which are the names of places or things. Similar reasoning should be applied to any other words you’re thinking of capitalizing, like trainer or professor or gym. Or running shoes. If you want to argue about this, please take it to fanfiction (d o t) net/topic/11834/55376155/1/Capitalization-Thread
[Four trainers are travelling to a new region full of excitement and adventure for all of them. However, they’d better watch their step as a duo of evildoers is hot on their trail. Four dreams, one journey, and hundreds of brand new Pokemon.]
This is a bit vague as a summary; I could assume most of this information just from the genre listing. Is there some specific plot idea you have that will set this story apart from the many others like it? If so, it’s wise to lead with that to draw readers’ attention.
You’re formatting dialogue incorrectly. Dialogue is written as [“Hello,” she said] or [“Hello!” she said], never [“Hello.” She said] or [“Hello”, she said] or [“Hello” she said]. This is because dialogue and speech tags are considered to be part of the same sentence, so they have to flow together. The only exception to this is if the next sentence doesn’t contain a speech verb. In that case, the second part IS considered a separate sentence, so it’s written as [“Hello.” She grinned], never [“Hello,” she grinned]. Note that something isn’t a speech verb just because it’s a sound you make with your mouth, so generally stuff like “laughed” or “giggled” is in the second category. (“Speak” is also not a speech verb.) Furthermore, if you’re breaking up two complete sentences it’s [“Hi,” she said. “This is it.”] not [“Hi,” she said, “this is it.”] or [“Hi,” she said “this is it.”] And if you’re breaking up a sentence in the middle, it’s [“Hi. This,” she said, “is it.”] The same punctuation and capitalization rules apply to thoughts, except you don’t use quotation marks (or single quotes) with thoughts. This is because quotation marks for thoughts make it look like your characters are talking out loud, which is confusing to the reader.
[Thank Arceus]
Using Arceus in place of God sounds ridiculous and has no basis in canon. It’s fine to just use “God”. See here for more information: fanfiction (d o t) net/topic/11834/162324520/1/Pokeworld-Religion
[“My research partner told me you said you wanted to become the strongest trainer in all of Kanto. That’s why I decided to give you what I think is the strongest Pokemon in all of Kanto. Eevee, come on out!”]
Eevee are also extremely overused, to the point where they honestly feel less special than a rattata when it comes to original trainer pokemon. They’re not actually that strong, either; though you have Gary offer to evolve it immediately, even the evolved forms are only of moderate strength. A fully-evolved starter wipes the floor with eeveelutions.
[Thanks, daddy!]
When a title (such as “mom” or “dad”) is used in place of a name, it’s capitalized like one.
It’s nice to see first pokemon methods that aren’t professor handouts, though it does make the first professor handout look stranger in context. Is the idea that the first child is receiving the starter as a personal favor, as Red and Blue did in the games?
[there isn’t any sight in the world as beautiful as an Alolan sunset.]
Tense has to stay consistent even in general statements such as these, so this should be in past tense.
[“Yes, but the sheer amount of Pokémon is taking up too much space here at home. Grandpa has to share his room with your Yanmega and Kricketune now, and you know how much he hates Bug types.”]
Why can’t they use the PC?
[The easiest way to become a Gym Leader is to have a Gym handed down to you, but neither me nor grandpa is just going to give you one of our Gyms.]
Ah, nepotism. It’s always interesting to get into League politics and speculate on how people got their gyms. I do wonder how many other gyms are inherited – the internet probably has a list somewhere.
[Five years later…]
Non-general scene transitions are jarring. You already mention the time jump in the narration here, so this isn’t necessary.
[A 21-year old girl entered.]
At 21 years old, wouldn’t it be more accurate to call her a woman?
[a man with long, blonde hair]
You want “blond”. “Blonde” is the feminine form.
While I am intrigued that you’re setting up something different than the usual trainerfic by having established trainers in the middle of their careers, I still feel like you take too long to set it up. You don’t actually have to start a story at the beginning. I actually think it’d be perfectly reasonable, and more efficient, to have started at the final scenes with everyone getting their ticket, maybe with a bit more elaboration to cover their goals. Everything before that is rather rote information that can be assumed or mentioned quickly by the characters without disrupting things too much. As a consequence of this, you haven’t even gotten to the main plot this chapter, despite it being quite long; this is a problem, because the first chapter is where you want to hook your reader. If the opening is too slow, they’ll never continue to see the rest. See here for more information: fanfiction (d o t) net/topic/11834/142411850/1/First-Chapters
In addition, the narration here feels oddly simplistic and lacking in emotion. I feel like everything is being described by a dispassionate, outside observer, rather than the characters themselves. This makes it hard to get emotionally invested in what’s happening.
Got blocked after this, though my hecklers were in contact with the author, so how much of that was them is unknown.
https://www.fanfiction.net/s/12902046/1/Atlas-Academy-Adventures
You should separate your author notes with a horizontal line; otherwise, they look like part of the story.
Titling chapters in the story itself looks kinda weird; the dropdown menu should suffice.
Script format is banned on this site, and as such this story is at risk for deletion.
Not using paragraphs makes me not want to read any further.
Well, it’s disappointing to see that my disclaimer preface of sorts didn’t have quite the intended effect that I had hoped it would have. I’m not sure how much of that is the trolls urging people to block you or if some other factors are at play. You mentioned that a good number of them had once blocked you before, for example. I’m almost finished with some stuff on my end that I want to take care of, so after that, I’ll do a round of reviews and see what people do then. Did anyone at all react positively?
The authors post will be tomorrow. In general I have received far fewer responses than usual; perhaps people don’t want to take sides.
It’s not so much that they are trolls so much that what they say is pretty much true. Plus you were just publicly outesed as being apart of the group so I wouldn’t try going for another round of reviews.
“Truther”? Really? Have a little dignity, please.
Hey now! I bet they have very important opinions on connection between ffn reviews and JFK assassination!
Admit it, Elmo, your Illuminati masters just want to destroy Pokemon fandom because it came too close to recreating the language of angels and reunifying mankind.
For god’s sake, Dragon’s Blaze, either interact with us or don’t, make up your mind.
I never intended on denying such a thing, Truther, but I came into this group with the intention of making reviews in a different style, one that I think addresses some of the complaints of the people claiming that they are trolls. We have the same goal, but different ways of going about it. They aren’t trolls and neither am I.
The people making up lies about us on the other hand, might fit the bill. We all give constructive criticism; we don’t flame, nor do we wish ill upon the people we are reviewing. Far from it, we want this to help them improve as writers. People just don’t like being told that there is something wrong with their stories. It’s not like we’re using the review section to attack them personally; we might say something if there is something seriously morally screwy, like sexism, racism, etc. — but again, that’s well within what constitutes as a review, isn’t it? Our opinion of a story is always placed under a specific section designated for such things, submitted with a neat button called “submit review.”
How is it a lie when you actually do complain about capitalization, dialogue, authors notes, using Arceus, and complain about how people should do thing?
That’ not so much lying so much as telling the truth. The problem is the truth makes you out to be jerks. You may complain it’ to help writers but your actions do not equal help.
Do you have any idea of what constructive criticism is or what it looks like?
Yes, but there us a difference between criticism and nitpicking.
Look, even I agree about the Arceus thing. I think that it’s a purely stylistic thing, but dialogue and grammar issues are a core part of writing and as such, in order for a review to be very helpful, they need to go over such things. In every review I make, I do a rewrite, which takes up a considerable amount of my personal time, I might add, so that people see what I’m talking about.
If you don’t like hearing that someone didn’t like an aspect of your story, don’t complain too much when someone exercises their right to review and lets their opinion as such known. Grammar is not, however, subjective. There are rules for it and those rules exist for a reason. All we’re doing here is trying to help. People going around saying that we’re demon-spawn are the ones who are actually trying to hurt, not us. People are a lot more likely to think that they’re being trolled and then not accept valid advice if they are (ironically) trolled and told that our words lack credibility. We do know what we’re talking about, you know.I would argue that Farla and St Elmo’s Fire know more about all the tiny nuances of grammar than I do, even, but I do have a sufficient mastery of it to be able to give people constructive criticism.
Yeah they don’t really show any sign of it. They more domain about extremely useless or just real in context within the series.
While you like to claim they are harming stories be honest which does better. The Twitter who you defend or the writer who keeps pushing agnaist them. Those that ignore their advice tend to do better because of it. Plus given they do spend all their time looking for nearly published stories and expected your review to unblock them really does paint them as dempnspawn as you so like to call them the correct term are jerks.
I’ll be honest here, I have absolutely no idea what you mean when you said: “While you like to claim they are harming stories be honest which does better. The Twitter who you defend or the writer who keeps pushing agnaist them. Those that ignore their advice tend to do better because of it.” Where was Twitter ever mentioned?
As for the newly published stories bit, it’s a hell of a lot easier to make changes when you only have one chapter and from the beginning than to edit a massive 100k novel’s worth of words. We do that to be considerate and to be more effective.
It’ the writer and I’m not even going to ask how you didn’t get that.
Secondly no it makes you come off as a jerk who only judges works based on the first chapter alone. You wonder why Elmo keeps getting ignored or block? Because no matter how much you want to believe that they are helpful their actions are not.
You can claim I’m wrong all you want be be honest you shouldn’t have a vocal hatedom or people dismmising if you didn’t earn it.
No, I wonder why you’re so incapable of looking at evidence. Even during the heights of your hate campaign, most people did not block me, and most of the ones who did blocked me a long time ago — rather punches a hole in your theory that people I review are RUINED FOREVERRR, doesn’t it.
What hole? If they ignore your advice it only proves that they didn’t care for you. In fact my theory was that those that don’t have your review, block you, or ignore you tend to do better on the whole then with your advice.
So far all you done is try to dismiss my words. It’ like you don’t want civil debate.
do better on the whole then with your advice.
I see you’ve gotten longitudinal.
I’ve already told people to block you through PMs “St. Elmo’s Fire,” let alone, I have personally already added you to my block list whch is everyone that is in connection to this site. It’s rather nice because I did it before anyone here could infect and of my stories and without them, I still recive reviews but I don’t have to deal with the toxiscity of this community.
Yeah, we all believe that you are him/her… or whatever they want to identify as. Even more so that the account of “St. Elmo’s Fire” is now using your style of reviews, it is now looking like a multiple personality syndrome where sometimes you look like you forgot to switch accounts.
Honestly, if you left all connection to this cult, created your own review group completely seperate from this one, then people would have been much more welcoming of your reviews. However, while your connection is still here and not severed, your reviews will be seen as toxic as Farla’s and St. Elmo’s Fire, infact, you’re better off creating a new account since this one has already been tainted.
So you do know that Enki was trying to prove us wrong, right? All you’re doing with your tantrums is proving Farla right that you don’t deserve the effort of nice reviews.
And wow, you’re a dick.
The problem is not that we don’t deseerve “nice” reviews, the problem is you and Farla especially being linked to a forum that basically insults people’s education if they do something different, or the way that real, educated editors of the official books do it. And the moment Enki’s connection was here, people no longer took him/her seriously, even more so when you begin to mimick the reviews. Personally, if there was no connect to here, Enki would never have touched my block list, nor would I have any negative opinions towards his/hers reviews.
So you admit that this has absolutely nothing to do with the actual quality of the reviews and everything to do with a personal grudge. Okay then.
Jesus Christ, Enki give his preferred pronouns in the very post talking about this. Why do you expect everyone to bow to your very important feelings when you’re not even willing to go to such a bare minimum of decency?
“So you admit that this has absolutely nothing to do with the actual quality of the reviews and everything to do with a personal grudge. Okay then.”
Yes, I will admit to this, the quality of the review is actually really good, the problem is the connection to this community. This is how bad the reputation of this place is. As I said before, Enki would never have touched my block list if it wasn’t for the connection to here and the mimicking you did of his reviews.
“Jesus Christ, Enki give his preferred pronouns in the very post talking about this. “
While true, I still have a hard time seeing Enki as someone different than you because honestly, you seem like the type of person that would go through the effort to create an alt and I honestly have no idea if you’re a male, female, trans, or whatever. I know Farla identifies as female, you, not really.
One more thing to add,
In the case of Enki’s reviews, if this community went in more the style of his reviews, your reputation, over time would definitly improve though some, they’ll never forget the douchebag style of reviews that you guys do, let alone, you’d need to fix up your forum. Insulting people people they want to do something the way hired, educated editors do it, is not a good way to get people to like you.
Hey so here’s a fun question: If that’s the case, what exactly do you think will stop us from just making another alt?
And yet now that I’ve done that you’ve decided to ruin his reputation too because it proves he’s devilspawn by association. What exactly is your long game here?
“Hey so here’s a fun question: If that’s the case, what exactly do you think will stop us from just making another alt?”
Nothing. The difference will be if people see it connected to here or not.
“And yet now that I’ve done that you’ve decided to ruin his reputation too because it proves he’s devilspawn by association. What exactly is your long game here?”
The point is the protect people from you. The thing is, both you and Enki (If truly are two seperate people) made yourselves look to be the same person or a person working with you. Enki makes the reviews and then you, not him, you post the review responces from the authors. That automatically makes people assume he is in cahoots with you. So really, it wasn’t me that ruined his reputation, it was working with you.
Really, if this was an experiment to see if his style of reviews would fare better than yours, then you would have dropped the name and used an alt account for this.
By disincentivizing me from being nicer to them? I’m sure they really appreciate that, hero.
Obviously Enki gave us the responses, how in the world do you think we planned to judge effectiveness with no results?
given that the farlas have basically said that all this goes away the minute people actually start giving reviews to stories, maybe a more constructive way of solving this problem is to, in fact, review stories rather than whining and stomping your feet.
trust me, despite what the broken calculus of your brain is saying, it is, in fact, much healthier to change yourself than it is to change other people
Drop the whole Pokemon as capitalize or not stick.
Also that’ funny as you already had the means to gauge that being a douchebag didn’t work. You literally ignored it for years. Literally years.
One there is already a lot of people that do this. Two the whole “It stops when people give reviews” is nonsense based on Tumblr and Livejournal members Farla meet. Given they tend to review stories mare minutes after the upload, of course, they believe this. Three, most reviewers are writers with lives outside this, sorry but people have jobs, school and what not. We can’t all spend every single hour on fanfiction.
The reality is reviews are not everything writers want views, and reliable followers not pointless nitpicking reviews. The only thing they are doing is turning people off because of how bad their reputation has gotten!
Yeah at this point their reputation is kinda beyond repair so to speak. I can find so many people complaining about them on so many sites, forums, and media plateforms. It says something with websites about magic horses have a thread or five that criticizes them.
And yet you don’t seem to ever return to a story after you use it to rebut my reviews, and you rarely touch stories I haven’t reviewed in the first place. Wow, it’s almost like this has nothing at all to do with actually supporting authors and everything to do with pettiness.
Oh Elmo I follow and read them. You never really read any of them either. In fact I just found reddit, deviant at, and literally several Pokemon forums all dismiss you. Even Twitter has that warning posted registered 26 times.
Seriously who do you think forms the one of the favs land follows of a story you annoying prick? Me and the others who dismiss you.
Oh and your missing pms? Yeah I probably got them.
Everyone of your attempts to dismiss me is actually disprove by a simple look at mine and the other that oppose you profile pages. You’ll find the stories you so arrogantly think we aren’t gollowing. Your need for reviews is false as Reddit itself has pointed out this would be impossible. Finally your whole actions have pissed off enough people. You don’t do anything more but complain. You been doing this for a decade Elmo it’ getting time for you to stop and give up because you are at best being an asshole and at worse you lack empathy.
I meant it when I said your name is getting plastered all over.
You really need to put better effort into your lies. Anyone can go back in the archive and see you’ve never reviewed a story more than once. Really, for all you claim that I look down on authors, you sure seem to think authors are too stupid to notice when a follow is disgenuine.
And yet you keep being unable to provide links and evidence when asked.
So what you think that because I don’treview all the tumeI’m ungeniue in my likes?Not every reader does that, hell I’ve gone throough it several dozen timmes. The fact your posting your review, our pms, and complaining to us alll on your own blog kinda renders your whole point poointless.
You mean our profiles? One of which you should naturally have the link too given its you?
This is just sad.
Redendent on my end
I could tally them which I already did. Your reviews combined is 147, 92 favs, 44 ffollows.
You know I feel like an ass for doing mine as well. *sigh* well I best comment before you dismiss it. 571 review, 387 favs, and 401 folllows
Keep in mind this is all our stories toogether… and you have MORE then me! Seriously I feel like an asshole for being considered better… but you wanted me to put my money to my mouth so here.
Yes.
You can’t say I’m terrible for never reading past the first chapter (which by the way, not true) and then do the exact same thing yourself.
As I said before.
Keep in mind like a lot of normal people I have, a job, my own stories, and to top it on I’ve taken being the counter to you… seriously what free time do you think I’ll have? Also your attempts at dismissing me as a heartless ass kinda ruins into a problem.
You’re doing it yourself and your not even trying to hide this. I don’t have to paint you as a villain you do that well enough yourself. I literally only have to give them a second opinion and that’s it. You’re really not helping yourself.
I get your self-centered but you have to have lost touch with reality to dismiss all of this. You have a decade worth of prove on this blog along.
A logical fallacy on your part. Reviews do not equal a person not reading a story. Their’s a view counter for that. Al lot of your justifications it seems are based on logical fallacies. Its sad but I think your legitimately crazy.
Oh and nice… now what about the hundreds of others? Or do you not actually follow stories? Because…
Keep in mind I updated it in less then a day. It should have been noticable in the publish tab and I have continued to do so biweekly at longest. Face it you only read the stories you like.
“I could tally them which I already did. Your reviews combined is 147, 92 favs, 44 ffollows.
You know I feel like an ass for doing mine as well. *sigh* well I best comment before you dismiss it. 571 review, 387 favs, and 401 folllows”
Review counts are useless. If they just consist of “good” or some boring copypasted praise by that one guest they mean nothing. Sad that you have to use review count as a measure to make you feel better than someone else.
By that standard “My Immortal” would be the best piece of work to ever grace the site.
You do realize I added the fav and follows for that reason. Plus it was St who wanted me to show “proof” of my words right?
His question was how many stories you had favourited and/or followed. Not how many had favourited/followed/reviewed yours. You’re twisting the subject.
And I have more than you, and someone somewhere has more than that, and someone else has more than them, and… It’s rather like it doesn’t actually prove anything.
If someone cares only about views and follows, then they wouldn’t be upset about his review in the first place because you don’t get upset about things you don’t care about. Him clicking the fic is another tick on the view count, him posting the review here is a chance for more people to click and view and maybe follow.
Do you think he’s wrong because other people have said they like your fic? Then as he’s said, you can judge his review as wrong and continue with your life. If you truly thought what he said was so empty, you wouldn’t be accusing his words of making you unable to write.
You don’t even listen or read do you? I pointed it out not because of me but because of others. All those links? They complain about you and I have much more. Of course you don’t give a danm about that because you treat me like a child.
You want to know why I don’t stop? Because I had to ask you… that’s bullshit you should have stopped when it was clear I hated you you.
So hey, your IP address is the same as that person who kept talking about how he was going to marry me. What a hilarious coincidence.
Glad you remember me.
Though they don’t seem to be as common nowadays, I really don’t think the world needs more Emerald opening novelizations.
The question isn’t inherently if the same thing is done 10 million times over or not, but whether that thing that is probably done way too many times is done well. We’re all copying the same source material here; there’s bound to be an overlap.
That’s true for general ideas, character archetypes, basic plot outlines, tropes, whatever you want to call it. I’m less sure it holds for adaptations of particular things. For example, I would rather dunk my head in acid than watch another film about Spiderman’s backstory, no matter how well done it was.
Then the creators of that way over-done movie would have to suffer the consequences, whatever they may be. To translate that to fics, the author might get a hell of a lot less in lieu of views or traction, but that was their choice to put the effort into something done so many times. If it’s done *well,* though, I might still enjoy it and just watch that as opposed to some more poorly done Spiderman movie. I enjoyed the most recent Spiderman, even though we have like ten variations of that aspect of the Marvel franchise by now. Point being, constructive criticism should go over what is wrong with the story, not with factors that might color your view outside of what is purely its own quality.
To translate that to fics, the author might get a hell of a lot less in lieu of views or traction
You’re assuming they understand that’s the tradeoff they make, though. The point of saying this is an awful opening is to establish that it’s an opening that gets less traction because people are sick of it.
A movie studio has a lot of people who’ll be discussing this issue in advance, a lot of authors aren’t talking to anyone and just start off with, say, the Emerald opening with no idea it’s been overdone – often with no idea of the concept of being overdone. Then they’re sad when their fic gets ignored and assume it’s because they’re a bad writer, as opposed to that they wrote something identical to what other people did. Imagine twenty people transcribed the opening of the same movie, are you going to want to read that twenty times?
There isn’t a clear line between objective and subjective. Someone isn’t a bad writer for happening to go over the same ground as several thousand other people, but they’re still producing a bad opening, and being told that hey, you don’t need to transcribe the game’s opening and can skip ahead to a divergence point because your readers won’t get confused is helpful to the goal of making an enjoyable story.
If, upon being told that this is a bad tactical choice, they still want to do it, then sure, then that’s a choice they’re making, and sure. But most new authors didn’t think that out.
@ Farla: That is a fair point. I would argue that letting them know that they have options in and around the use of eevee in fanfics, should they decide to use it, is more effective than just saying that is overdone though. Someone down further in this thread mentioned there being a potential disparity in privilege in accordance to what pokemon they have access to, such as a trainer starting off with an eevee likely coming from a different socio-economic background than Joey with his rattata, which could mean interesting character or plot developments. Just telling someone that it’s overdone is ineffective compared to telling them about alternative routes to using a pokemon that is supposedly rare. But yes, I do see where you’re coming from; a new writer might not know that there are ten thousand stories starring an eevee in it.
Honestly, this is one of many cases in writing where you just have to go with the negative, because in theory anything can be done well under some specific circumstance. Saying, “Eevee is overdone and will turn off a lot of readers, so you likely shouldn’t use it,” is about a thousand times more useful, simple, and easy to remember than some elaborate, equivocating speech about how well, if they really want, maybe it can work if… That’s not useful. There’s no connections to be made or rules they can use to generalize for next time.
Or to put it another way, the point isn’t really that they should never use Eevee. The point is that they should consider context and audience when making writing decisions, with the Eevee as case-in-point.
Yeah, to build off what Act said, there’s also the fact those things should only be there if the point is to tell a story focusing on those elements. At the point where we’re reviewing a fic where the main character trips over an abandoned eevee, the fix is to sub out the eevee for a pokemon it makes sense to trip over.
When discussing ideas and fic planning, we talk about stuff like “well, you can do something where a popular pokemon is popular in-universe, and then…” But for an existing story, redoing the character/setting/plot around justifying an eevee is probably not going to work well.
(My personal favorite idea is eevee are crazy invasive. They were discovered on some isolated, extremely harsh islands where their diversity of evolutions allowed them to colonize every available niche. People thought they were adorable and brought them back. That’s why there’s just the one in the first game but they get more common as time goes on. They’re initially rare, but as time goes on people start releasing them into the wild. Anyway long story short by the time of the current fic they’re about as common as rattata, who, like most pokemon, are now significantly rarer thanks to eevee and their evolutions doing their best to monopolize every resource in the environment. The main character has an eevee. The rival has an eevee. Pretty much every trainer has an eevee.)
“Eevee are also extremely overused, to the point where they honestly feel less special than a rattata when it comes to original trainer pokemon. They’re not actually that strong, either; though you have Gary offer to evolve it immediately, even the evolved forms are only of moderate strength. A fully-evolved starter wipes the floor with eeveelutions.”
I agree that Eevee are definitely used way too much, but I’m not sure why you think the final starter forms are that much more powerful than the eeveelutions. All of the ‘lutions have a base stat total of 525, while all the fully evolved starters have base stat totals ranging from 525 to 535 (averaging 530 exactly), not counting mega forms. To get an idea of how well they do in competitive usage, we can look at their tier rankings by Smogon (explained here: https://www.smogon.com/ingame/battle/tiering-faq). The eveelutions have the following gen 7 tier rankings:
PU: Leafeon, Glaceon, Flareon
NU: Vaporeon
RU: Jolteon, Espeon, Umbreon
UU: Sylveon
I didn’t bother to record exactly which starters were in each tier, but here’s how many of them are in each tier (not counting mega forms):
PU: 2
BL4: 3
NU: 5
RU: 4
UU: 5
OU: 1
Ubers: 1
If we give the tiers numeric scores, PU being 1, BL4 being 1.5, NU being 2, RU being 3, up to Ubers at 6, the eveelutions have an average score of 2.25, while the starters have an average score of 2.83 – so both of them average somewhere between NU and RU.
Of course, combat would be very different in a ‘real-life’ scenario than in the video games. One thing to note is that the fully evolved starters are considerably larger than the eveelutions, which might be significant depending on how strong you consider moves and pokemon’s special powers to be relative to more mundane forms of attack, or whether you consider those powers’ strength to correlate with physical size. Then you have to consider how much stock you put in the pokedex descriptions- some of the eveelutions can do impressive things in dex-world (3000 F fire breath for flareon, turning to water for Vaporeon, precognition that can predict opponent’s moves for espeon), but I think a larger portion of the starter’s entries seem to describe them as having significant combat prowess. These descriptions don’t decisively establish one group as superior to the other to me, though. Is umbreon’s ability to ‘strik[e] fear in the hearts of anyone nearby’ more or less impressive than serperior’s ability to ‘stop its opponents’ movements with just a glare’, considering that there are ‘strong opponents who are not fazed by the glare’? Charizard’s description mentions fire ‘hot enough to melt boulders’. Does this mean the fire can instantly melt down rocks, or does it just mean the fire’s above the melting point of rocks- in which case it’s not necessarily more impressive than flareon’s 3000F breath which is also hot enough to melt almost any rock? There’s a lot of room for authorial interpretation.
Overall, I’d say the starters have somewhat of an advantage over eveelutions on average, but I’d say that each group has too much variance between its members to accurately say that starters, in general, stomp eveelutions.
Hm, really? I’ve always found them lacking when I’ve used them. Their movesets tend to be more limited, I think. There is still the issue that they’re not set up well as starter pokemon, though — starters naturally grow in strength as you progress, eevee require special triggers to evolve that trainers are not guaranteed to get.
Actually whhat counts as a “starter” is vague in universe Pokemon Yellow had it as a starter for your rival and Pikachu is seen as one for this reason.
And thus actually playing yellow with Pikachu as your main was so horrible, that no remake was made.
The biggest issue is definitely the terrible movepool (I used an all-eeveelution team for a run through Silver once and god, it was awful), but they also have a good number of glass cannons, which isn’t good for a starter pokemon whose job it is to battle repeatedly and protect a newbie trainer when things go wrong. Starters are supposed to be durable and well-rounded.
I look at Smogon rankings to get ideas for the sort of pokemon a particularly strong competitive trainer might have, but they’re not much use general fanfic because they’re based around very rigid counters and counter-counters and counter-counter-counters, as well working off a bunch of rules of engagement to make Pokemon’s base battle system slightly less broken but which wouldn’t be in play in any other pokemon battle.
Personally, I think that using smogon as a source for what a competitive trainer might use is a bad idea. It’s good advice for a turn-based battle system, but with writing, we can do so much more than wait for the opponent to finish their turn before making another move. Smogon was created to answer a very specific meta, but that meta was based around a kind of battle system that does not work very well with writing. Waiting for your opponent to finish their attack before making one yourself is kind of boring to read compared to using attacks in tandem, chaining attacks that would otherwise be less effective if used just by themselves.
Smogon happens to be THE site for competitive battlers. Not only is it the biggest but the tournments hosted by nitedoni and VGC are all there. Itsalso the mmost vocal and its complaints are used by Game Freak to balance the game wiith the next generation.
You really are dismmising the whole comptitive scene buy dismissing Smogon players. Even then Pauls battling style was based LARGELY by the battling style of Smogon players (excpet the wholeturned based methods and cruality) So using smogon is actually a rather save beat.
You don’t really address anything they actually said, aside from one single sentence – that Smogon has apparently had some influence on a character in the anime. I’m not sure if you actually have any reason to believe this, but whatever, let’s take it as read.
As a counterpoint, I subnmit the entire rest of the anime. Moveset doesn’t mean much because anime pokemon frequently use moves they can’t in the games, and the moves do different things. It’s unclear if stat-up moves work at all in the anime, agility is used primarily to dodge other moves etc. As for the stat arrays, Pikachu is one of the most powerful pokemon in the anime, but it’s impossible to raise one that isn’t awful in the games.
You really are dismmising the whole comptitive scene
Yes, we sure are. In the same way the whole competitive scene “dismisses” the anime by not letting electric moves hit ground or pokemon have more than four moves and “dismisses” the games by adding in tiers, banned pokemon, and stuff like sleep clause.
Man, can you imagine some incredible asshole bursting onto Smogon threatening people because how DARE you say only one pokemon may be asleep at one time THAT ISN’T HOW IT WORKS IN THE GAMES FUCK YOU FUCK YOU FUCK YOU I’M GOING TO HACK YOUR ACCOUNTS YOU EVIL TROLLS I HOPE YOU DIE PAINFULLY!!!
Is Eevee being overused really that much of an issue that you need to bring it up in a review? Honestly, it shouldn’t matter if the person wants to use Eevee or not, maybe one of the Eeveelutions are their favourite Pokemon. Really, the Pokemon chosen shouldn’t matter but the story itself and using an over used Pokemon isn’t a fallacy.
Honestly, if the fact that Eevee was used is a problem for you, then the story is not for you
I’m going to agree with you here. I don’t think that purely stylistic choices should be commented on in a review critically. As I’ve said in some other post, we all share the same source material, so there’s bound to be an overlap. Most of what St Elmo’s Fire goes over is quite legitimately a good criticism, but I don’t believe that purely stylistic choices should matter in a review. In essence, it doesn’t matter, I think, if something is done 100,000,000 times, so long as it’s done *well.* It might get a little dull after a while seeing the same thing, but that’s up to the author to deal with. And again, we’re all using the same source material.
I think that this, as well as a number of other things Elmo comments on in his reviews, is less about criticising personal choice and more about encouraging authors to think about the choices that they made and why they made them. With pokémon like eevee, riolu and pikachu in particular, I think there’s a tendency to have them as a starter simply because the author thinks they’re cool or for gameplay-specific reasons rather than for reasons relevant to the narrative.
For instance, I recently received a review on my first story questioning why the first pokémon my protagonist caught was a pikachu. It made me think about why I’d made that choice and whether I could have done things differently (I started with charmander in Firered, so pikachu was an excellent choice to beat down my rival’s squirtle). With hindsight, I could have handled that particular part of the story better and either replaced the pikachu with a different pokémon or delayed its capture until my protagonist was a more capable trainer etc.
Since eevee are supposed to be extremely rare pokémon, a story where they just fall into the protagonist’s lap with a poor explanation, or no explanation at all, comes over as a bit flaky – it looks like the author is just adding in things they think are cool instead of thinking about how it will affect the narrative. If, on the other hand, the protagonist has an eevee as their starter and this means that they have to deal with people constantly trying to steal it from them because it’s a rare and highly-prized pokémon, or something like that, then that’s a choice that actually improves the narrative since it creates a problem that the protagonist has to then overcome.
I suppose what I’m trying to say is that there’s nothing wrong with having an eevee as a starter, but the poor writing that often (but not always) stems from it is a problem and bears mentioning in a review.
So I do think that it’s right for reviewers to comment on the stylistic choices made by the author, especially since it works both ways (I’ve also been praised for my use of more underused pokémon such as mankey and paras). And there’s no harm in getting authors to think more about their writing – that’s the gateway to improvement after all.
That’s npever was the point Talarc. In fact they ADMIT the orihginal point was because no one REVIEWS but guess what
https://www.reddit.com/r/FanFiction/comments/8e7iwa/some_regular_trolls_in_the_pokemon_community/
You are evil. You don’t think your a drone
*you’re a drone.
And you’re right – I don’t think that I’m a drone. I started doing this of my own free will and because the reasoning behind Farla and Elmo’s arguments is sound.
Its not sound Talarc… Hell its been disproen by reddit god danm it!
That you’re a reddit kidbro actually explains so much.
Its not sound Talarc… Hell its been disproen by reddit god danm it!
What? Really, what? I really can’t understand what you’re saying here. English isn’t my first language. Are you sure you’re in your 20’s, Blaze? And besides, looking at your profile and that cute little list proves you’re not really positive to how other people write their stories.
lol
Since eevee are supposed to be extremely rare pokémon, a story where they just fall into the protagonist’s lap with a poor explanation, or no explanation at all, comes over as a bit flaky – it looks like the author is just adding in things they think are cool instead of thinking about how it will affect the narrative.
+1
The starter your character gets can say a lot about them; arguably the kids getting a lab starter are somewhat privileged over the route 1 squad making do with rattata and weedle.
Similarly, maybe being gifted a bred eevee is a very common starter for kids of your character’s social class– if you can stand making your MC less special for a moment, heh ;)– and that creates tension between them and poorer trainers.
It’s fine to do something because it’s cool, but it’s also a big opportunity to inform character and a lot of novice writers squander that chance.
What Talarc said, but also, the very point of a review is to express an opinion, on stylistic choices and otherwise. There’s no such thing as an objective review.
Elmo thats bullcrap you pick people apart in hopes they follow your style of writing. That’s it your just an asshole control freak.
Your not helpful. Also STOP WITH THE STUPID REVIEWS!
maybe one of the Eeveelutions are their favourite Pokemon.
No, that’s actually a really bad reason.
Of course people pick based on their favorite pokemon. There are nearly a thousand now and when you ask someone to think of a random pokemon, they’re going to think of the same handful, often based on their favorites and whatever pokemon show up a lot around them, which results in fic that could have nearly a thousand different pokemon all writing about the same handful over and over and over.
To bring us full circle, I go more into detail over on the forum.
If, at the end of all that reasoning, eevee still seems like the best way to go, then fine. But the problem is most people aren’t thinking about this in terms of what makes for a good story in the first place.
“If, at the end of all that reasoning, Eevee still seems like the best way to go, then fine. (Yay, IP Change!) But the problem is most people aren’t thinking about this in terms of what makes for a good story in the first place.”
Of course people are not thinking in terms of what makes a good story. We’re dealing with a fan fiction here, you’re going to see people talk about their favourite things and not care about “Oh, maybe this Pokemon is used too much.” Why? Because when people write fan fiction, they write about what they like the best, which Pokemon, which characters, which love story they want to see or in a lot of cases, especially with OC, people more imagine how they themselves would be part of the world and story.
Most people are not going to sit down and brainstorm a list of Pokemon or characters, they will have their favourites and they will use them because that is what they like the most. Most people know there are nearly a thousand Pokemon but if you don’t like Gastly or Gengar, you’re not going to want to write about them (or you’ll write about beating the snot out of them).
Really, this is one of the main points to fan fiction, you write what you love, how you wished/imagined/wanted something within that world. It’s not about trying to be like the script writers for the show with the mind set of “Okay crew, we need a story about Bergmite getting lost in the ice caps.” That’s just not what the majority of people who write fanfiction are writing for.
Certainly no one is required to care what we think of a story. However, the majority of writers I encounter do seem to care. They might disagree about how overused eevee is or whether being overused matters or if they have enough of a twist to make what they’re doing not overused, but it’s incredibly rare someone is posting fanfic but actually doesn’t care at all what anyone else thinks of it. The very fact people are invested in arguing if our thoughts about a story are correct means they agree with the basic premise that what someone thinks about a story matters.
Most people are not going to sit down and brainstorm a list of Pokemon or characters, they will have their favourites and they will use them because that is what they like the most.
The idea here is that a lot of them didn’t think of and then discard the idea of brainstorming, they just didn’t think to brainstorm in the first place, in the same way a lot of them are not actually super attached to the idea of starting a story with a character waking up in the morning but did it because it was the first thing they thought of and they’re not experienced enough to think any further than that.
To be clear, the main thing we coordinate is trying to avoid reviewing the same person twice. If someone was told once that eevee is overused, the rest of us will try to avoid posting that comment as well, and unlike the people currently shouting that we’re bullies, we definitely do not each make five different accounts each and post over and over YOU’RE NOT ALLOWED TO USE EEVEE I’M GOING TO GET YOUR ACCOUNT BANNED every time they post a new chapter.
The point of a review is to say what you think of the story. If a particular author posting on FFN doesn’t care about what readers think of their story, then fine, but I don’t see the need to completely redo our reviews around writing to people who by definition do not care what’s said in reviews.
The position of “write what you love, don’t worry if it makes for a poor story” can only be defended if you encourage authors to write into table. Like, sure, if you never actually show your work to anyone except maybe a couple of personal friends who you know would appreciate it, it doesn’t matter if your work is horribly cliche. So long as you’re having fun writing it, that’s all that matters.
If you publish it on a public site, however, the basic assumption is that you want your story to be appreciated by a broad category of people, and to that end you do actually need to think about what makes for a good story and whether any individual element harms or helps the narrative.
Now, if you absolutely have to indulge in public, there isn’t anything reviewers can do about it, but you really shouldn’t be surprised that the criticism exists.
Of course people are not thinking in terms of what makes a good story. We’re dealing with a fan fiction here
I think many, many fanfic writers, if not most, would be hugely insulted if you commented on their fic, “Well, obviously you didn’t really put thought into this…” I know I would.
https://www.reddit.com/r/FanFiction/comments/8e7iwa/some_regular_trolls_in_the_pokemon_community/
I love this. Your once again being called out!
It’s just one of you guys, it’s extremely unlikely someone else would be doing it during this one particular flashpoint. In fact, it’s probably you. Their English is broken in the same way that yours is.
Listen, I know it feels like you’re making a big difference here, but you’re not– at the end of the day St. Elmo will still review in the style that he pleases and most writers in the pokemon section still won’t be getting any feedback (besides his review). What reviews are you leaving kids to help them and not just advance your beef?