20h agoWyrdfaythA response to your review at https://www.fanfiction.net/r/10943033/

To reply to all your reviews in one:

First of all, I’d like to apologize for the wall of text here. Verbosity, as you already noticed, is a problem of mine. ‘^^;

Secondly, I’d like to say that even if some of these explanations or counterpoints come off as otherwise, I really am grateful for you taking the time to read and offer feedback! I hope that at least some things will prove to have been misunderstandings and others simple differences in style opinion. That said, I understand that even some of those can help me improve, and while I might seem to counter something it does not mean I won’t end up in a compromising position in the long run! Debating and talking over things is largely how I process information.

… That said… Pokemon name capitalization won’t be one of those compromised things. ‘^.^; Every official source of canon wherein names have ever been written out in sentences makes it clear that species names are proper nouns in the Pokemon world. If you prefer to apply real-world logic in your own writing, that’s a valid choice, but I prefer to stick to canon standards in that regard myself.

A few other things I capitalize when it’s a specific person or thing versus a general thing. Like I talk about various professors, but will always refer to Birch as the Professor in order to make it clearer that I am referring to him, etc. …DID I capitalize “telephone” somewhere, though? o-o I don’t recall that being intentional if I did, although I could just be forgetting. I’ll look through that chapter and fix that one if it was an accident.

Regarding magic, I promise that aspect has a purpose. (:P Although just as a side note, it wasn’t my idea, because Morgan is not my character. I know that doesn’t remove blame from me as I did choose to keep that aspect. But hey. If it’s any consolation, I did change her from being a half-elf pulled through a planar rift from world without technology. So you know.. Just-magic isn’t so bad by comparison, lol. :P And I have plans for this.)

It’s also already in play in your final note, actually. You say it seems strange that she’s been trained for combat yet doesn’t seem very tough. …Exactly! She’s a mage. She’s used to fighting with words and energy beams. Give her a gun, even, and she might be okay, because at least that’s ranged combat. She’s not used to commanding other intelligent creatures, but using words to yield results still comes more naturally to her than physical combat. She’s also decent at dealing with harsh conditions due to battlefield experience, but yeah. Ironically, I actually debated explaining this in-story but figured THAT much would be redundant, heh.

Regarding Persey, she actually wasn’t like a Pokemon. Technically, she was a wizard’s familiar (although I didn’t want to get into that specifically since she only exists in this story as a memory): her power was more an extension of Morgan’s than from within herself. And 99% of animals back home were just animals. I might touch on that more very briefly in-story to make it clearer, though. Thanks for calling my attention to that. :3

I feel like “really horrible writing” is unnecessarily harsh, but allow me to explain the thought process involved:

The point of including the reference wasn’t “look, it’s a reference”; it was to comment on it and the difference between RSE and ORAS. In RSE, Brendan says he “expected” May would be a guy, which is just… horribly sexist, what?? Especially because in the inverse scenario, all May says to Brendan is that she hopes they’ll be really great friends. They don’t really really fix it in ORAS, but at least they do change “expected” to “hoped”, which is arguably still sexist, but shifts it more to Brendan’s personal expectations than a reflection of society as a whole.

So that was all. I fully intend to continue slipping in small quotes, not as easter eggs, but as a way to subsequently slip in commentary ON those quotes. If you don’t like that sort of thing, of course that’s fully within your right. But I do, and there are 77,000 other Pokemon fics on this site, so with all due respect, I’m more concerned with writing this in the way that is most fun to me than I am pleasing everyone who might see mine among the masses, heh.

“Also, the constant is getting really annoying. Try to indicate how people are speaking in other ways rather than relying on that so much.”

… o-o I think you missed a word there. The constant WHAT is getting annoying?

Regarding the length, FIRST THE GOOD NEWS! :’3 Which is that HOPEFULLY from this point onward I can progress MUCH faster. Like, yes we spent six chapters in Littleroot laying the groundwork, but only one on 101– and I’m hoping the next will see us all the way to Petalburg, etc.

Regarding it up to this point, however: it’s been partially building suspense, partially setting up plot points and characterization that will come back into play later (like, the entire “Morgan and Sera out shopping” bit was for characterization), and partially just because…. Yeah. As I said, verbosity is a HUGE constant struggle for me. :( I literally do not know how to present my thoughts more concisely. I edited the first six chapters (which were written in late Nov/early Dec) before posting them, and in doing so took out very little and added quite a bit. It actually causes me more stress than you can likely imagine. I have literally cried, sometimes for hours, over people responding to my thoughts with “TL;DR”. Only about a week ago I got banned from a thing I really liked and accused of being on drugs because someone made a distasteful comment and I tried to politely inform them of why it was distasteful; it came off as ranting, of course, because how does concise??? What is short and sweet??? I don’t know I can’t even??? Yeah.. :( There’s not a whole lot that I can do about it. Aside from occasionally making jabs at myself in the hope that will deter others from doing so instead and let them know that yes I’m aware of the problem, heh. ‘^.^;;

(That said, your synopsis surprises me a little? I won’t say how but it brings to my attention another thing I apparently haven’t made clear enough, heh.)

The lack of clear direction is entirely intentional. There’s one pretty big hint for those who catch it, but even that would only tell a thing I’m using as rather loose inspiration. To make a long story very short and very vague, though, the idea is that it’s going to steadily get darker. If Morgan learns right away the full scope or consequences, the ability to do that greatly diminishes. This way, however, it starts off as suspicious but tolerable, and only as she encounters each new obstacle or consequence will she and the audience start piecing together exactly what she’s managed to get caught up in. There are in-story reasons as well.

If that doesn’t sound like your thing, then of course I thank you again for reading what you have thus far and taking the time to comment. If, however, you retain at least a mild interest, then I can only hope that it will become more apparent why I’m writing it this way as the story progresses. :3

Some of my absolute favorite works are ones that leave loads of questions unanswered early on, but when you go back after getting far enough in– omg EVERYTHING was significant; double or triple-meanings were EVERYWHERE; EVERYTHING foreshadowed, and it often led you AWAY from the truth right up until the reveal, at which point in retrospect it was beyond obvious. Naturally, Iiiiii do not expect to be able to manage anything even half to that degree, lol. But this is the farthest-ahead I’ve ever been able to plan anything due to the nature of the work, so if I can get even a little of that type of vibe once it’s far enough in to be noticeable, then I’ll feel like I’ve accomplished a lot. :3

I’ve run out of space so I hope I covered everything and didn’t come off as too a

20h ago(…..as too abrasive.* :T Message system you told me I had 30-some characters left why did you cut off only exactly my last word.)

31m agoI’d like to agree to disagree on your interpretation of the games. While it is true that many video games have issues, recent generations of Pokemon have been very consistent about only capitalizing particular things, and it is my preference to stay in-line with that. Official translations of the manga would also support it with the same consistency, from what I recall– which I didn’t see you address, but which you can feel free to add to your thread if you have a counterpoint to it, I suppose.On your “Human” note… many universes with multiple humanoid races do use that, yes. Tolkien did not, but some worlds do refer to Humans, Elves, Dwarves, etc. I fully understand your reasons for disliking it and I can respect them. I just don’t personally see it as a problem.

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Anyone who has never played as May, or who hasn’t played or doesn’t remember RSE, or who has recently played or just strongly remembers RSE but hasn’t gotten ORAS yet may not know or remember the line. I find it a little condescending to assume everyone shares your personal experience, honestly. But that aside, like I said, I do it mainly because it’s only a few tiny lines in the long run and I personally find it fun to comment upon them. In the end, writing fanfiction is a hobby: something to do for fun. Of course overall quality is a thing to consider, but I’m the sort of person who’s more likely to enjoy a crack fic with well-executed humor than a fic that takes itself too seriously. So given the choice between fun and a very slight debatably-improvement stylistically, I’m generally going to favor fun. :P

Again, if that bothers you, I’d hate to lose a potential reader, but I know that in a fandom of this size there will never be a way to please everyone. So if it’s a deal-breaker to you, it’s unfortunate but that’s your right to feel that way.

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Oh the tildes! You know I… honestly forgot for a moment that anyone even sees them as unusual punctuation. xD; I can uh… try to tone them down a little, but Sera at least is likely always to have quite a few of them. In the same manner that I’ll often use a .. to indicate less of a full stop than a period yet less trail-off than an ellipsis- for instance, to indicate mild hesitation- tildes have become pretty ingrained in my head as a punctuation to indicate a chiming or sing-song tone.

I understand that it isn’t entirely proper English. Just like this sentence isn’t. Or this one. But just as children are taught from a young age not to begin sentences with conjunctions only to do so anyway, typing in this manner creates a more “conversational” tone. Were I writing an essay or another formal work, naturally I would disregard this tone in favor of adhering more strictly to hard grammatical rules. However, in this sort of work, I find that I personally enjoy a more casual tone both as a reader and as a writer; in the latter case, it provides a means of narrating off and on through a third-person-limited perspective of ‘indirect’ thoughts. While I also include some direct ones in italics, much of the narration is presented from the character’s- in this case Morgan’s- perspective with her attitude toward the things happening around her.

Of course, that’s only partially relevant to the dialogue, which was the initial cause for complaint. I just see from this message and the thread that you linked that you seem to prefer very strictly-correct grammar at all times, and while that’s fine, I wanted to explain why I opt to bend those rules in general. With that in mind, I don’t see any reason not to bend them a few inches further to throw in an additional type of punctuation. At any rate, if an exclamation point exists solely to convey tone, why couldn’t the language theoretically evolve over time to include other punctuation for different tones? I’m not necessarily saying that would include the tilde and/or the sing-song tone, of course. It’s just a thought to entertain.

While I can agree that some shifts represent more of a decline in language than a mere shift, keeping in mind that languages worldwide, as an invention, have been constantly evolving since their creation, causes me to feel as though the “rules” are more like “very strong guidelines”. They are vital to know and understand, but once you do so, overstepping boundaries a little here and a little there, not due to ignorance but as a conscious choice, isn’t really going to hurt anything and can even provide some fun ‘playing with’ things. :P … Naturally, this is also much the same reason that I use emoticons, although I do have a sense of distinguishment between story writing and actual conversation, and do tend to be slightly stricter as well as omit emoticons in the prior, heh. I can also admit that I’m guilty of pronouncing “lawl”, “rawfulmao”, and the like aloud in real-life conversation, but I wouldn’t use such acronyms in a fic unless it was a very specific character affectation or the like.

(I don’t really expect to sway you on the matter either, honestly. I’m sort of just hoping that you’ll begrudgingly take a mild amount of consolation in the fact that at least my argument is thoughtfully presented rather than a matter of ignorance or a dismissive ‘lol who cares, I do what I want’, heh. Also, if it’s any additional consolation, I may bend some rules but I don’t do so when I don’t feel like it adds anything. :B Like I’m sure I miss some, but I do try not to end sentences with prepositions unless every other way I can think to word a thing sounds incredibly awkward, to give one example.)

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Do you really think I’ve never sought outside help for the verbosity issue…? I’ve been struggling with this for something like 15 years. The really shocking part, though, is that I’ve actually gotten BETTER in some regards. You should have seen me in high school. …. *shudders* e__e

Technically I could…. prooooobably, usually… also go through and condense things…. at least a bit. It would probably only take out somewhere between a few hundred to a thousand of the currently 14 thousand words, optimistically. For instance, the story about “no really, Flash being Shiny was actually luck” was originally probably about 50% longer, but I was extra self-conscious about it, being an OOC aside. So I spent an inordinate amount of time condensing it down.

But that’s kind of the issue. It takes an absolutely inordinate amount of time for the results that it yields. So I suppose when I say there’s “not a whole lot” I can do, what i mean is “there’s one thing, but it’s entirely unrealistic to try to do so for every single thing I write”. (Also, it doesn’t ALWAYS work. Sometimes I try and just…. Wow nope. ALL of this is important? Also, I’d rather over-explain than under-explain. Err on the side of caution and all.)

If I’m writing for, say, a project or contest which has a small upper limit, I might spend an hour writing followed by three just figuring out how to condense it, and only barely manage to do so. It’s stressful and feels like a massive waste of time for no more than it affects it in the long run. I can spend hours more trying to run through something that was supposed to be done just for fun with a fine-tooth comb, or readers can spend a few extra minutes… you know? I know those minutes add up (though the hours would as well), and perhaps if I had a sizeable readership I would find it worth the effort. (… Although, that would present the flip side that the more people who were reading, the more people the longer wait time between chapters would effect. So… Hm. I don’t know.)

But yeah… So as things currently stand, I simply don’t have that kind of time or energy to devote to fanfiction. I know I should practice, and I do. Like I said, when I revised the first six chapters, I did take out a little. But yeah…

I’m…. not helping my case by nearly running out of room again, though, am I… 8’T