“Pokemon species names are canonically capitalized no matter the context. They are proper nouns, not common nouns.
My author’s notes are clearly distinguished from the rest of the story and nitpicking the formatting is not constructive criticism.
Enjoy your block.”
Deutschland1871A response to your review at https://www.fanfiction.net/r/13013162/
I don’t watch the anime, so I’m not going to be able to review this story on content. Please tag your story as anime fic to avoid this problem. Find your story under “Manage Stories” and select it from the dropdown menu that says “World: Any” in the “Category” section.
Apologizes for that actually, I thought it actually was set under the anime section. I’ll fix that.
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.
Personally I find it easier to read whent he Pokemon names are capitalized. Just personal opinion here.
[This is the world of Pokemon. This world is much different from our own in many ways. One of these difference is the existence of creatures called Pokemon. These Pokemon roam the waves, the skies, and the land. Some wield great power while others rely on tactics. These creatures are simply extraordinary. However, these Pokemon who could easily overpower humans, live in peace with humans, and they work together as friends, partners, or companions. However, this partnership is not where our story begins.]
…Then why did you spend a paragraph talking about it? Everyone here is already familiar with Pokemon. The cool thing about fanfiction is that you don’t have to explain the setting.
I did it because I do want to have some elements from the anime here. Skip it if you please, but I find that it adds to the atmosphere.
[Normally she’d be up by at least midnight.”Ross sighed]
Missing space here.
Kinda small, but noted.
[“Alright, let’s get this right…” He stated]
You’re formatting dialogue inconsistently. If you don’t know, the full rules are: Dialogue is written as [“Hello,” she said] or [“Hello!” she said], never [“Hello.” She said] or [“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.
Reading that was confusing. To much text pressed together. I can’t figure anything out from it.
[I actually used Grammarly to help me proofread this chapter]
That’s not a good idea. Grammarly is for formal papers and makes a lot of mistakes if you use it for prose. It’s best if you understand the underlying logic of grammar so it becomes intuitive to you.
You assume that I don’t have any knowledge on grammar. I do, and I know how to write. I just use it to help me pick up a few mistakes that I didn’t see. There were a few “mistakes” that Grammarly picked up and I didn’t fix them because they were wrong. I just used it to help me proofread it. Not rely on it.
Anyway, I will say that you criticism did bring some mistakes to light. So I’ll thank you for that.
Better dialogue explanation is here: https://www.fanfiction.net/topic/11834/21887406/1/Writing-Guide-Part-One-Grammar
Impassive PurpleA response to your review at https://www.fanfiction.net/r/13015063/
First of all, what the fuck is up with the plague that is seemingly infiltrating my review section and PM box that appears to be hell bent on countering you and your… uh… group? Aside from that, concerning your review itself…
The story was not tagged as anime simply for the reason that it will (probably) follow the games more closely than the anime. I happen not to know too-too much about the anime myself having never followed it closely, and thus if I won’t be regularly making solid connections to it, it would be slightly misleading. As well, although they are considered by the community at large to be seperate universes with seperate canon, I don’t see much of a reason that for the sake of my story building I can’t take, morph, or build upon whatever I want from any of them. I’m perfectly fine leaving it as is.
Second. I do appreciate your formatting tips, and will take them into consideration, but I do believe that this appears to be an extra step into the realm of “I’m submitting to http://www.fanfiction.net”, thus, how much do I actually care about proper capitalization in these more minimal cases, that a majority of people don’t actually give any (fewer) fucks about? I’m more concerned with if my story actually sucks, and how it sucks. That said, I COULD probably take the time to do a once or twice over just to correct. I see the logic in them.
Third. On “It’s”; that’s not actually on purpose. Definitely a hardcore grammar mistake that I would like to avoid. Thank you for pointing it out. Much like “Your” and “You’re”, sometimes I just fuck up mentally. I would consider something like that much more glaring than the last point (the formatting), though maybe it’s because I just haven’t dedicated enough time into learning and internalizing those formatting mistakes.
Thank you for the tips, good day.
[First of all, what the fuck is up with the plague that is seemingly infiltrating my review section and PM box that appears to be hell bent on countering you and your… uh… group?]
https://www.fanfiction.net/topic/11834/171837508/1/Dragon-s-Blaze-sockpuppets-and-friends explains. tl;dr Ignore them.
[The story was not tagged as anime simply for the reason that it will (probably) follow the games more closely than the anime. I happen not to know too-too much about the anime myself having never followed it closely, and thus if I won’t be regularly making solid connections to it, it would be slightly misleading.]
But… why are you using Ash and Delia, though? It’d be fine to use Red or even an OC if the focus is meant to be on game canon.
Ash and Delia are characters that are easy to use, and they have history that I don’t readily need to explain to those that read as most (I acknowledge, not all, but most) probably know that “Ash grew up in Pallet Town, he wants to be the very best like no one ever was, friends and then rivals with Gary.” So on, so forth, you get the picture. This is much unlike a pure OC, who I would need to explain. Red in the games is also bland af character-wise, as far as I remember, but you’re right in assuming that I could have used him and not much would really change. This is honestly just a shortcut.
[The story was not tagged as anime simply for the reason that it will (probably) follow the games more closely than the anime. I happen not to know too-too much about the anime myself having never followed it closely, and thus if I won’t be regularly making solid connections to it, it would be slightly misleading.]
You’ll notice that I did not expressly state that there would be ABSOLUTELY NO anime interaction whatsoever. In fact, there’s a far smaller chance that there will be any Manga interaction, given that I have literally read none of the Manga whatsoever (Though I have heard it’s pretty good). For the sake of my sanity, there probably won’t be any “Episode 3XX subplot, single episode character” callbacks or the like. If it’s that much of a problem for you, I could add the World: Anime tag, I would just like to state my thoughts on it.
You could say Anime with “Game Elements”, or Game with “Characters from the Anime”, and both would probably be correct to some extent.Eh, if you really want to blend elements that’s fine. It’s just that I haven’t seen the anime, so I DON’T get that established history with Ash. The banette element is neat, but he may as well be an OC to me. Any time you make a crossover, you limit your audience not only to people who know both mediums but who will also enjoy the specific elements you’re choosing to focus on from each. You might get a better audience pool if you commit to one world. But maybe not, I don’t know how much blend there is among the fanbase to begin with.
TheUnbelievableGarySewickA response to your review at https://www.fanfiction.net/r/13014192/
Thx cutie
St Elmo’s Fire,
A new guest review has been posted to your story. Please login to moderate this review.
Story: Blood is Thicker than Water
Chapter: 1. Chapter 1
From: Betrayed666 (Guest)
——————-
Betrayed666:Hey elmo, I like your fanfic. Now I know that it may say guest review, but I am posting from my phones me so I am not an my account. Anyway, what would you say to doing a fanfic about ash and dawn as a couple?
——————-
They have PMs disabled so I can’t respond. I am guessing they genuinely do not understand how the site works.
WinterComet777A response to your review at https://www.fanfiction.net/r/13015476/
Hello! I appreciate your feedback, especially on grammatical and formatting issues that I haven’t caught. Even though I try to be attentive, I unfortunately recognize that even after two or three re-reads I can still miss errors while editing. I will probably edit the description of where Ciel and Pryce were battling throughout the chapter, as it was intended to be the patch of ground in front of the Gym’s doors without any special battle accommodations, though I may not have made that completely clear.
As for some of your other points of criticism, I will be retaining the capitalization of both the general term Pokémon, as well as individual species names, as they are regularly capitalized even in dialogue in official media. Granted, there is definite possibility that I will be editing other conventions within the context of the games’ canon, so I won’t claim that my intention is to be entirely accurate to sources I’m drawing from. This is supposed to be an alternate universe and I won’t be afraid to change what I deem necessary to make it more “realistic”.
Aside from writing style, I’m sad that you didn’t enjoy the content as well as you could have, though I’ll at least claim that I do wholly plan to delve into the regular moral issues that are referenced throughout the Pokemon franchise. Topics such as the bond between Pokemon and Trainer and the aspect of not only teamwork but bidirectional positive treatment and communication are essential to Pokemon Training. I believe that’s why gameplay options such as Pokemon-Amie and Refresh have been made important recently. Between Ciel and Raven, though they are implied to start to have been partners for some time, are still not necessarily “friends”, which I plan to develop as the story unfolds and have Ciel learn to be more aware of his team’s thoughts and feelings in addition to their physical well-being.
I’m still not entirely certain how I will go about solidifying the unifying concepts of the story from a writing standpoint. I personally don’t think it’s in my best interest to regularly return to edit previous chapters, but rather accept the challenge of considering all previous points of decision and characterization. After all, this is being presented as a serial rather than me writing a full manuscript and going through a rigorous full editing process before publishing, so I’m regularly going to have to juggle working with and towards multiple parts of a story. This is all subject to change, of course, but it would seem counter-intuitive to drastically change earlier characterization and risk newer viewers having a different experience derived from something besides their own interpretation.
Speaking of serialization, I will be continuing this story on a hopefully regular basis if you wish to drop by again to see if it grows on you. I am planning to try to complete a chapter a week, though my progress on the second chapter is already making that somewhat dubious, and I’m notoriously bad at self-motivation and tend to work in sporadic periods, something I’ve been working against and hoping to correct with time and experience. This story by itself will be 35 chapters (unless I decide to add or remove content during its run), and is actually part of a extended alternate universe game canon series I’ve been planning for some time now. Continuation stories will break away from the simple novelization style that Anew is running off of, which I was hoping would help ease in readers more apprehensive about radically original content.
Otherwise, I’m glad you generally enjoyed my style of writing, as one of my largest worries in starting this was that my basic writing ability was not up to par with what I was trying to accomplish. Even if you don’t plan to continue reading, your concerns are no less valid and I appreciate you taking time from your day to send me a message.
~WC
As an addendum, if only to save face for myself, I will point out that I regularly switch between writing on a physical computer and writing on my phone due to being in different places and one being more or less convenient. As such, some of my errors, such as one you pointed out regarding capitalization in a dialogue tag [“Yeah!” His sister shouted.] is due to the word “his” being capitalized automatically since I had previously used punctuation meant to end a sentence. I’ll try to remain consistent as possible, but as I stated before, I’m under no illusion that I’ll catch every mistake I make,[I will be retaining the capitalization of both the general term Pokémon, as well as individual species names, as they are regularly capitalized even in dialogue in official media]
That’s because it’s a registered trademark in our world, so official media is legally required to capitalize it. You’ll notice (TM) marks next to every mention of a pokemon on official posters and such. It’s discussed more here: https://www.fanfiction.net/topic/11834/55376155/1/Capitalization-Thread
[though I’ll at least claim that I do wholly plan to delve into the regular moral issues that are referenced throughout the Pokemon franchise.]
That’s good to hear, but you should really telegraph that better if that’s your intention. Far too many fics (and let’s not forget the official canon itself) can’t seem to even conceive that these things are moral issues, and there was nothing in the story to make me think anything different was going on here. The main thing that stuck out to me was Pryce goading him into getting his pokemon hideously injured and then affirming that that was the right choice. You could reasonably let the reader assume that the protagonist isn’t right about everything, but when a wise older mentor figure displays the same behavior, that affirms that the world as a whole agrees with it. If you do intend to get into the moral issues here, I really strongly recommend not having Pryce totally gloss over the fact that he used an innocent pokemon as a disposable prop just to give a kid a pep talk.
And on top of that, the context of the battle makes Ciel totally ignoring Raven’s refusal look absolutely monstrous. I mean, how would you see that if it were two humans? Let’s say someone orders you to do something that gets you horribly injured, then they say they want that to be your new life, with the additional possibility of getting you permanently crippled if they don’t get you to the magic healing machine fast enough. When you say no, they laugh about how they don’t care and you’re doing it anyway. That’s not an aloof partnership, that’s slavery. What is the pokemon getting out of this that makes it an equal relationship?
Basically, I can understand a character arc of a trainer learning to better empathize with their pokemon, but I don’t think you realize just how awful he’s started at, and reading about awful people isn’t fun even if they might possibly become not awful somewhere down the line.
When I refer to official media, I refer to the games themselves. Trademarks are nowhere to be found within text in each game, yet names are still capitalized. Since I’m trying to emulate the world (mostly) as it would be in the context of the main series, I will be sticking with the convention used there. While I recognize that there is a “correct” way to represent certain things by English’s rules, I chose to represent words as I have because I believe they will be the most familiar to most readers due to the way they are presented in the franchise now.
Otherwise, I’m not particularly sure what I can say to assuage your worries. There are a number of concepts I have already laid out that will be revealed naturally (such as regular audits and evaluations by the Pokémon League to display that trainers are not abusing their Pokemon through battle or in a home setting, the explanation that battles are roughly supposed to be analogous to fighting that occurs in the wild either for species dominance or for territory among different species, the presence of referees during official matches [much like in the anime, and was referenced by Pryce already in the first chapter] to prevent unnecessary harm, etc) and elaborate on how training and battling are such widely prevalent and accepted concepts. To directly answer one of your questions, what a Pokémon receives from the Pokémon-Trainer relationship is a sense of safety, comparable companionship and affection to wild socialization, and guaranteed health, food, and shelter that they would otherwise compete for in the wild. However, the story is supposed to primarily focus on human characters, so I can’t say for certain that you’ll find all of the answers you are looking for since there is only so much content space to cover the certain kinds of ideas you personally like to read. This may just not be the story for you, but as I said before, I will consider every point you’ve brought up, in addition to any grammar/spelling/punctuation mistakes, the latter of which I have mostly fixed already.
~WC
I didn’t keep pushing, but the go-to justification that trainer battles are no worse than what pokemon have to go through in the wild is really ooky to me. If someone’s natural state is that awful, it’s a moral imperative to improve it, not to manipulate it for your own ends and pat yourself on the back for it because technically it could be so much worse. The Nirvana Fallacy is strong with this fandom.
You have received a message from:
WyldClaw
https://www.fanfiction.net/u/384859/
Reply link: https://www.fanfiction.net/pm2/post.php?rid=240919468#new
——————–
Subject: re: Your review to An Ode To Pokemon The Movie 2000
A response to your review at https://www.fanfiction.net/r/13018985/
i have fixed that up
——————–
They actually did, though they also blocked me. They blocked me once before a while ago; not sure why they unblocked me in the first place.
Lamia of the DarkA response to your review at https://www.fanfiction.net/r/13016045/
Pokemon species names are canonically capitalized no matter the context. They are proper nouns, not common nouns.
My author’s notes are clearly distinguished from the rest of the story and nitpicking the formatting is not constructive criticism.
Enjoy your block.
[My author’s notes are clearly distinguished from the rest of the story and nitpicking the formatting is not constructive criticism.]
I see people continue to choose the weirdest hills to die on.
They took like half an hour to block me for some reason. They also deleted and reposted the fic, because anything touched by HORIZONTAL LINES, THE GREAT EVIL must be purged with fire, apparently.
Someone also thanked me for grammar corrections and expressed frustration at Blaze’s counter-reviews, including saying that it was turning them off from fandom and making them consider leaving the site. I showed them the sockpuppet list, and won’t be posting the message for their protection.
Nova999A response to your review at https://www.fanfiction.net/r/13017043/
Yep, yep!
Thank you for leaving a review!
Though I have always capitalized Pokemon, your reasoning makes sense, and it might actually help the story later. I will be sure to keep Pokémon species lowercase in the future!
I usually start a new paragraph when people or Pokemon speak, but I guess I must have been tired or something.
The double quotes inside speach quotes was a mistake! Thank you for pointing it out and giving your valuable time to write a review!
I’ve heard a lot of bad things about you, which seems to come from one source.
*cough cough* Dragonblaze *cough cough*
I believe you are actually helpful!
Again, thank you for writing a review!
KuraiFriendkuA response to your review at https://www.fanfiction.net/r/13011282/
The last one kind of bothers me? It’s not meant to be sexual at all. The boob part I could see being interpreted that way, but how the heck does the rest of it even come remotely close?
Making god characters turn into hot women, calling them “girls”, giving them huge boobs, dressing them in bikinis to show off the huge boobs, and spending pages upon pages on how childishly naive they are that they don’t understand the most basic things about the world or operating a body, are all fetishes. Like, textbook. The fandom is inundated with fetish fic that goes through this exact checklist.
If you didn’t know this, then, sorry, but fetishists have poisoned the well, and this is going to read like fetish fic unless you change some stuff. You could start with, I dunno, not having her spend multiple paragraphs groping her boobs in a way that totally isn’t sexual you swear. Just a thought.
Dude, first of all, calm your tits. You’re getting more upset over this than I am.
I never called her hot. I never called her pretty, or beautiful, or anything of the sort. I described her in a very objective manner that you decided to interpret that way. And the “multiple paragraphs” is pretty easy to hit when it’s a few sentences at the end of one, a line of dialogue and a few sentences at the start of one.
And, since you’re so insistent that your interpretation of her is the right one, I never mentioned her having a whole bikini. She’s dressed in stereotypical hula girl clothes, meaning a bikini top and a grass skirt (which I do go into in the chapter I’m typing up now).
I refer to her as a girl because:
A. I want the reader to infer themselves that this is Tapu Lele. I don’t even mention her name until the end.
B. I want to hammer in the point that she acts like a spoiled child.
The joke itself I really don’t care if you take to be sexual. Like, it’s a boob joke. Take it however you want. The rest of the fic isn’t one big boob joke, so if you wanna interpret it as a fetish fic then that’s on you.
[I described her in a very objective manner that you decided to interpret that way.]
Your “very objective manner” includes describing her huge squishy boobs in detail and dressing her in revealing clothes. This isn’t a real person who just happens to look this way; you made a choice to make her look this way when she’s not even human (or a woman, for that matter) in canon. That is absolutely on you.
[I refer to her as a girl because:
A. I want the reader to infer themselves that this is Tapu Lele. I don’t even mention her name until the end.
B. I want to hammer in the point that she acts like a spoiled child.]
Tapu Lele is genderless; making her female isn’t a hint. The fact that you are choosing to portray her as a spoiled little girl is, again, on you. It would be way more effective to draw attention to the disconnect between her age and her childish behavior by calling her a “woman”.
Yes, I made the choice to give her big boobs and a bikini top, because people never have those in real life. Which IS in fact objective, unless you want to argue that calling them big/small is subjective (which it could be, but I also never outright said that they were big- I inferred this by calling them jugs, because that is how I feel about my own breasts).
As for the whole cannon thing… the tapus have no cannon sex. But considering that humans do, essentially what you’re saying is that I just shouldn’t make this fanfiction at all.
[Yes, I made the choice to give her big boobs and a bikini top, because people never have those in real life.]
Again, this isn’t a real person who just happens to have those things. Saying “well technically some people in real life choose to wear sexualized outfits!” is totally irrelevant to your choice to dress a character that way, especially when this doesn’t even appear to be her choice given how confused she is about her own body.
Given your followup to this, I presume you’re using Tapu Lele to represent your own experiences in some way, which is more reasonable. But you have to understand that the audience can’t know what your intentions are, and if they don’t get the right reading, it may be because you failed to convey it properly. That’s a valid thing to criticize, and something you should take into consideration. You didn’t intend for this to be fetishized, but it came across that way. You should reflect on that and think about how you could convey your intentions more effectively in the future.
[As for the whole cannon thing… the tapus have no cannon sex. But considering that humans do, essentially what you’re saying is that I just shouldn’t make this fanfiction at all.]
No, I’m saying that you didn’t have to make her a woman. It’s valid to give Tapu Lele a sex as part of becoming human, but female isn’t the only option.
Dude, that boob joke was made for a boob joke that I didn’t touch for the rest of the chapter (pun not intended). I was describing her appearance the way she was seeing herself.
I’m not using her to represent my experiences; I’m pulling from my experiences to write a character. My “intentions” are just to describe a character and her mindset. And to make an entertaining book. I don’t really have anything going into it. Which you’re gonna say is a bad way to write a book, and I really don’t care. The point was just to get me to write something, and I did.
I’ve asked a couple people to read the fic, and so far you’re the only one who’s seen the entire thing as sexual. Half of the chapter was spent with her yelling at a wingull. So kinky.
And even if some people saw her as hot, they probably won’t now with her broken face smashing into the floor.
Yes, female isn’t the only option. I could have made her a man as well, but that’s now how I envision her. Or really most of the fandom to be honest.
As for the thing you mentioned in an earlier message (about referring to her as a woman instead of a girl), I don’t really agree, but I guess that’s obvious.
[Yes, female isn’t the only option. I could have made her a man as well, but that’s now how I envision her.]
Sure, but she doesn’t HAVE to be a woman. I was objecting to your implication there was no other possibility when you said “I want the reader to infer themselves that this is Tapu Lele.”
Ohhhhh! No, that was a misunderstanding. I didn’t mean that I wanted the reader to infer she was Tapu Lele from the fact that she’s a girl; there’s billions of girls in Pokemon. I referred to her as ‘a girl’ instead of using her name to keep it vague so I wouldn’t give her character away right at the start. The reader is meant to infer that she is Tapu Lele by picturing the Ruins from the setting descriptions, picture a pile of berries under her altar as a gift to the goddess, etc. The other clues were supposed to point to her being Tapu Lele. The fact that she’s a girl and that I continuously use that is just to keep it generic.
I can’t use ‘our protagonist’ like I did with my other fic since there really isn’t one set protagonist.
Oh, I see. What I meant was that it’s a very common and creepy thing for people to infantalize adult women by calling them “girls”.Right, I get that. But that’s not what I was getting at, and quite frankly, if someone wants to interpret it that way, it doesn’t really bother me. I’m writing for the sake of writing. As long as I don’t get a string full of comments sounding like they came from Pornhub, I’m good.
I also suppose I should include this as part of The Saga™:
St Elmo’s Fire,
A new guest review has been posted to your story. Please login to moderate this review.
Story: The Boulevard of Broken Hearts
Chapter: 1. Chapter 1
From: Blaze (Guest)
——————-
Blaze:The momemt I leave you begin attacking users?
Lright you know after a long list of people telling me not too I’ve decided to stay.
St Elmo’s Fire. I hereby declear war against you and your trolls. And this time I will make sure that everyone who hates you joins in.
——————-
Oh Blaze, child, not everything is about you.
Sometimes I have to wonder what kind of anime Blaze thinks they’re the protagonist in if they say stuff like this….
Anime ja nai, unfortunately. At least it explains why she went as crazy as she has.
Maybe her declaring war on us is why I’ve not being getting responses to my reviews. She’s spamming so many people no one wants to respond to anyone fixing stories in case it’s an Farla troll.
Wait, I thought Blaze declared war on you guys ages ago. Why are they acting like this is new?
She was leaving because an admin finally paid attention to the shitshow. When they didn’t do anything immediately and her attempt to incite her viewers into attacking us resulted in one misguided soul attacking us, she came back.
That was before. I left because of the weight of the battle got to me. I stayed because people kept demanding it.
Wouldn’t be no battle if you just shrugged it off, bro. You insisted on fighting when all you do is annoy everyone and scare off reviewers who genuinely wish to help but don’t want you on their backs. All you do is make things worse.
“the weight of battle”
This isn’t Lord of the Rings, buddy. You’re just going around complaining in the review section of a fanfic website.
You’re going to feel a lot better when you get back to writing your stories, Blaze.
WyldClaw is a bit of a funny character, they’ve been leaving me anonymous and non-anonymous reviews on and off since the OG Gods and Demons was being posted or earlier.
Oh… her.
Isn’t she the one who has a nasty habit of constantly reposting her stories over and over for cheap views? I recall some of the stories having been reposted over 10 times over many years.
Maybe? It looks like all their stuff hasn’t gotten much notice, anyway, so if that’s the case it isn’t working out.
It’s either that or it’s a “pseudo update” in which a chapter is removed and then added to make it look like it’s updated. Considering she tends to do this with a lot of her stories some times (I’ve seen up to seven of her stories “update” at the same time) I consider it a cheap way of getting attention and also knocking actual new stories off the first page.
It’s aggravating to me since those stories actually used to have reviews way back but I suppose those views, faves and reviews weren’t worth much to her and it seems that most readers are catching on anyway. Called her out on reposting a story years ago and got no response, story deleted and promptly reposted it so my review was gone. Met with a block too.
But at least her behaviour is just that. No crusade or anything.
That Tapu Lele story . . . I had read it earlier, but noped out when I saw the ‘OMG I have boobs’ lines. It was too bad, because I had been appreciating the more competent than the norm scene setting. But a line like that took me totally out of the story. Why would a legendary pokemon know or care anything about human breasts? It just doesn’t make sense.
That line actually caused me to rant in a Discord server I frequent because it was legitimately a good story up until that line, then I just lost it and went on a rant about how male authors had to sexualize everything when writing a female character.
It wasn’t a male author after all :(
I’d even written up a review explaining that the line totally turned me off the story, and then — I just didn’t have the energy. To post the review, to get yelled at in the comments, to deal with the author potentially being upset.
And now from the author’s response to St Elmo’s review, I see that I probably would have been doing them a service by showing that other potential readers were also turned off by their “boob joke”.
This is the reason I really admire what St Elmo, Reeds, Talarc (and of course Farla) are doing with their reviews. It takes time, energy, and a thick skin to deal out this kind of criticism. And it’s absolutely something authors need to hear. If you don’t know the problem, how can you fix it? But Pokemon’s “if you don’t have anything nice to say” culture means that very few people are prepared to speak up about problems they see in stories. Rather than pointing out the problem, we just move on from the story. So it becomes a vicious circle of authors not getting the feedback they need.
Oof. To be fair, if you’re a young female nerd, the mainstream media properties you’ve been exposed to have likely been super bad for weird and unfunny Joaks™ about boobs and sexual harrassment. I myself parroted a lot of stuff that was never funny but It Is The Joke That People Want, Right? Also the man-author Woman Character Checks Out Own Ass In Mirror because this is how you write women right
I’m actively trying to avoid writing like that in my story. So far, I’ve not found a reason to have a character check out their butt, but that might be due to my writing style :/
Another sad explanation is internalized self-hatred. When I was in Eating Disorder Mind as a teen, I definitely talked like that, even though I knew it was awful and degrading, as a kind of externalized self-harm. The shit we do to young women is tragic.
Also the man-author Woman Character Checks Out Own Ass In Mirror because this is how you write women right
My brother was recently describing what the various channels of his discord server were for, and one of them was literally “so they can post pictures of their butts and argue over who has the nicest one”. This was apparently a containment channel that actually needed creating.
why
why do folks wanna fuck pokemon
just why
Fetishes and kinks. Gardevoir’s particularly popular because of how similar it is to human females.
Not a fan of human x Pokémon myself. I don’t like writing humans kissing, let alone humans with Pokémon.
Xenophiliaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaa
Not that I’m here for pokemon fandom’s Baby’s First Kink master/slave bullshit, but I get it
But what’s frustrating is that they can’t even do xenophilia right, as I complained in the dragonair story. They can’t stop going on about how the freaky monster they want to screw thinks their self-insert’s standard human beauty ideal is so hot followed by zero logistical issues with making out with muzzles. Like, if you’re gonna be writing freaky stuff, put some effort into it, you know?
I guess it kinda comes back to what I say about those serial-numbers-embossed-on fics — if you’re choosing to write about fantasy elements, you need to actually engage with them.
You’d have to do an extreme amount of research to be able to write a accurate xenophilia story. Most can’t be bothered with that and just want to write a quick fuck, so they just go “they make out lol”.
And as I say to the people writing pokemon as ordinary high schoolers, you have other options if that’s what you want to do! Other pokemon, even, as awful as the gardevoir stuff is. I just don’t understand why people look at the wealth of options they have and actively choose the one that doesn’t align with what they want to write.
Oh, I’ve seen a few stories where I think the only reason a particular fandom is chosen is cause that’s where the author’s friends are.
Why else would it be written when using nothing unique about the fandom and marketed as an AU.
I don’t appreciate animals turning to humans wholesale as the basis of the premise. That’s just stupid and a lack of imagination.
I’m pretty sure similar premises made their way into the Pokemon fandom.
As for xenophilia, I think most stories forget the concept of size.
Theoretically, a high school AU featuring Pokémon could be done but again, a ton of research and background lore would be required for it to work that people just handwave.
A highschool AU featuring pokemon focusing on the differences between individual species can be interesting I guess.
When I wanted to write a story about two high schoolers, that’s what I did. I didn’t even give them the names of a fandom-popular couple to entice people to read it!
Which is probably why it’s gotten only 31 hits since I posted it in late October, but hey. I have my principles.
@CrazyEd I’m pretty sure if my story involved Ash and Misty/Serena I’d be sitting af 11,000 hits… Instead I’m at 1,700 hits wth a pairing I actually wanted to write.
@Venompaw Have the Weaviles be tje edgy kids, Machamp as jocks and Metangs as geeks. You’ve got yourself a high school AU where the Metangs are trying to study for the finals but keep getting interrupted by the Weaviles’ antics, causing them to turn to the Machamps to deal with them.
A nice one-shot subverting the common theme of jocks vs geeks.
Kinda wish I could’ve seen the original review. Lamia did block for the two most subjective points, but deleting that story and reposting it is hilarious and lowers my opinion of the author significantly. I can see why they’re annoyed though.
Well, the review is still on the corresponding review post (and will be foreverrrr). The story was “Bat Attitude”.
https://www.fanfiction.net/topic/11834/171837508/29/#173244120
Yeah I keep telling g you the reason but you guess keep making up shot as we go along.
Your website id hosted on Siteground and just two days ago it was reported for breaking both their terms of service and Fanfiction.net’.
Stop lying about me.
Yo, Blaze. So you are indeed confirming you’re KingPyle and the person claiming to be a B. Pyle, then? Do you want me to switch pronouns?
Pyle is a last name. Not a first name. That’s my cousin you just talked about not stop spreading lies.
“Stop lying about me.”
KingPyle was not mentioned in that post, only Blaze. You gotta watch out for who’s saying what when you’re sockpuppetting, Blaze.
Oh hey, I haven’t heard that before! Could you show me these “several novelizations” that made it to completion?
oh lordy, game novelizations
if a game novelization is anything approaching good/finished, it’s because of the skill/doggedness of the author, not because of the barebones the game gave them
Drive by lurker, I’m gonna take this as a compliment, haha. (Recently finished a Pokemon Y novelisation.)
But you’re right, the games don’t give you a ton to work with, XY even moreso than the others imo. I had to make fundamental changes to the lore, the focus of the story, the roles of several characters, think about about how pokemon battling and so on would work in the real world, etc. You can even argue I didn’t properly “novelise” the game because I totally skipped the Championship/Elite Four battles and came up with my own ending, lol.
I don’t read that much in the Pokemon fandom anymore, are incomplete/overambitious game novelisations pretty common? I seem to remember that there were a ton of “original trainer’s journey” fics back in the day that normally got stuck after 2-3 chapters because they felt like they had to cover every route in detail and didn’t plan any serious plot ahead of time. I guess that’s the same problem as a Pokemon game novelisation, though, thinking that something you find engaging in an interactive game format (trawling routes, catching pokemon, half a dozen trainer battles) will be just as engaging in prose?
As someome working on a novelization, I have to admit, I’m working on a lot more original content in it than I thought I would be, even coming up with my own lore for some parts. The games really don’t give us much to work with, even in story driven one’s like Sun and Moon
Ooh, feel free to link your completed story!
I will do in like a year when it’s done :p
Sure!
https://www.fanfiction.net/s/12864466/1/The-Two-Constants
(Sorry if this accidentally double-posts or something, my first attempt didn’t work for some reason.)
Looks like the spam filter got confused. In its defense, it has been a strange few months for the poor thing.
I think the website won’t let me post a link for some reason, I tried twice and both times it just said ‘Posting…’ for like five minutes. But it’s called “The Two Constants”, and you can find it under my pen name QuoteMyFoot on FFN and AO3.
Yeah sorry when the spam filter gets overwhelmed it just cans anything with links that’s not from a registered user.