Dragon Quill

Most authors are weirdly deferential today.

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Someone not only goes to the capitalization thread but actually ends up agreeing with it!

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So remember that pokemon whisperer story?

“[Elves and dwarves] are humanlike. They look like people. Pokemon don’t. They are considered monsters (i.e., “Pocket Monsters”) and typically act more like animals, with the same kind of instincts to go along with it — particularly their fighting instincts. Also, elves and dwarves aren’t broken down into light and stored away in Poke Balls. The vast majority of Pokemon are not ‘talking creatures’ and only on rare occasions can they speak in a way that humans understand – either because the human and Pokemon have a very strong bond (i.e., Ash and Pikachu) or because they can use telepathy.”

How appropriate for October.

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“I know from reading a bit of the thread that you look down on this and believe that SYOCs should be handled in a way where the author specifically tells his/her readers what he/she wants but then what’s the point in accepting OCs in the first place?”

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The dyslexic author from before informs me I’m terrible and tells me to do the exact same things people have told us a hundred times before that don’t work. They helpfully demonstrate why they don’t work by simultaneously complaining that I nitpick too much and also that I only nitpicked one thing on their story.

I’m tempted to make some sort of resource post I can point these people to, but FFN’s link stripper probably means it won’t be worth the effort.

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Another PhD devalues their degree, but in a twist, it’s an engineer this time! Also, some discussion about the evolution of hate groups and bigotry.

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Someone discovers the SYOC Shadow War and gets pissy. Otherwise, nothing of note.

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“In the future, however, I would ask that you please refrain from leaving reviews that barely touch on the content, whether for my stories or for others. Your review here was 9:1 critique to content, with only that little bit at the end, which itself was even half about the writing itself rather than content. I’m open to critique (and it’s helpful when readers point out typos, plot inconsistencies, thematic problems, or whatever else since I’m only human and I make mistakes), though I may not agree with the concrit the way I respectfully disagree with almost all of yours. But I also think there’s an unspoken etiquette we should all try our best to follow on these sites regardless of whether concrit is sound or not. Reviews are great to receive and so is concrit, but when authors put in the work to produce stories, whether excellent or clearly novice and in need of improvement, it’s kind of nice to hear feedback about the actual content of the story. Everyone from professional writers to amateurs wants this when they share their work with the world. Even though this is just the first chapter and not much yet has happened, as you correctly pointed out, it’s still polite to try to follow that unspoken guideline as much as possible. As it stands, I have only the faintest idea of whether or not you even liked the chapter, if you are interested in where it could be going, thoughts on characterization, or any other number of content-related issues that are important for me to hear about as a writer. Whether or not you accept my suggestion is entirely up to you, of course. But just to be clear, if I get more reviews or PMs from you that are similar to this one, I probably won’t reply. To do so would waste even more time than I already have on this response.”

Another author makes a similar argument in this very batch. Were authors always this entitled, or is this a new thing?

We do get an author who’s genuinely interested in portraying pokemon as people, though, so that’s a plus.

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“Capital letters are only at the start of names of people/pets, or names of places like ‘Paris’ or ‘London’, or even words to describe something. A title that could contain 7 words wouldn’t have capitalized letters at the start of every word if they weren’t names of people, pets, of places. For example, ‘Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows’. Harry and Potter have capitalized letters at the start because they are names. ‘Deathly’ and ‘Hallows’ have capitalized letters because they are important items so they’re in the title and their name has a capital D because it is part of the name and it describes something.”

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I attempt to explain the moral pitfalls of Nuzlocke to an author.

“And, news flash, people kill people all the time. It’s a part of life.”

It is like water off a duck’s back.

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“Last thing is that this is a fanfic. The writer has the power to change or manipulate things from the story. For example I cold make it so Guzma never joined team skull. This is what a fanfic is. So if you don’t like mine, then you may find another one.”

Also, I get an anti-revenge review!

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Someone has a new argument for using SYOCs, but in the process seems to have misunderstood how SYOCs typically work. Otherwise, nothing much.

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Yesterday, I posted the PM chain of communication failure. I ended on agreeing to review the author’s story if he agreed to read and review Lucki, with the hope that my story would get something across where my regular words had failed me. I wanted him to get to chapter twelve – it’s not the final denouement, but it would cover the issue of showing a pokemon’s wishes conflicting with that of their trainer, which was the point that stood out as the worst element – or at least, the thing that most bothered me – in what I’d been told about the story. And at the very least, I was hoping that seeing how he talked about Lucki might help me understand him well enough that I could communicate any of my own thoughts on his story successfully.

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Alright. I’ve been busy, mostly with life but partly with my own brain-eating fanfic (two chapters and twenty thousand words in!). Back months ago when I wasn’t half so busy, someone appeared to ask me to beta read their boy’s-first-power-fantasy-with-trophy-girlfriend fanfic. I attempted to direct them to someone else who might actually enjoy that. They attempted to tell me that actually I should totally read their story, with each PM making it clear it was even worse than I’d previously pictured, until ultimately it wrapped around to such loathing I agreed just to see how much worse it could be. (more…)