Green With Envy: Crab Helmet's Foe Fiction! {Rise of the Dragon Lords}

[Yankee]

Err...what I meant was...it's a BAD version of the Hunger Games.

In the real book, a post-apocalyptic America hosts a contest every year, called the Hunger Games. Every year, one boy, and one girl (between the ages of 12 - 18) from every district (Remains of what used to be states (only 12 remain, after the 13th was destroyed by the controlling government for inciting a rebellion)) go to a place and fight to the death. There can only be one winner, and that winner will live with all the food, money, and everything else they want for the rest of their lives.

Much like this story, things didn't turn out right in this years games, and the winners "won", but...had to pay a cost.

 

Basically, it's a bad copy and past of the story.

[Phantom Roxas]

So is every season going to be seven reviews long?

 

The blanks were obviously meant to build tension, but it only added to the laziness of the story. The author was too busy trying to make the story mysterious that he forgot to make it interesting.

 

I recall an earlier review where you had hoped that someone would use Sparks in their duel. It says a lot when a review series has a more interesting storyline than the actual stories being reviewed.

[CrabHelmet]

So is every season going to be seven reviews long?

Every season is going to be whatever-number-I-feel-like reviews long. >_>

 

The blanks were obviously meant to build tension, but it only added to the laziness of the story. The author was too busy trying to make the story mysterious that he forgot to make it interesting.

Oh, you think the blanks were a deliberate decision? I assumed they were just placeholders until the author came up with a name that the author forgot to actually fill in before posting.

[Phantom Roxas]

Last season was the days of the week. This season is based on the seven deadly sins. Seven just seems to be the number now.

 

I honestly don't think they were placeholders. Besides, do you honestly think he would go back and fill in every blank he left? The idea is that you're not supposed to know what was there, and the names are to be revealed later. The blanks were his way of showing that. I can understand with keeping some names a secret for a while, but that's a stupid method of doing so.

[Yankee]

Last season was the days of the week. This season is based on the seven deadly sins. Seven just seems to be the number now.

You honestly think Crabby won't just make a new sin? It's pretty sinful to not use the MS Word spellcheck...

[Ghoulish]

Nice job with the last review, keep up the good work.

[Catterjune]

So, only one child survives each year's Championship?

I thought the story was just saying death was one of the ways out, not the only way out. I assume there's other technical fouls like bringing a knife to a herb fight or something.

 

Then again, it's pretty damn obvious that being dead would take you out of the game. I dunno if they'd do an "honorary" Dragon Whatever thing for a kid who played well and made it to the end but fell off the stage and shattered his skull.

 

But yeah. I'm thinking that plants and stuff aren't the only things the 10 year old needs to do to survive out there. He most likely needs other basic skills, like... I assume physical training at least? Running, lifting, hunting/gathering, etc etc.

 

So either his dad is a terrible trainer and the kid is a lazy student, or they do a lot of other stuff too, but we only saw "plants" 'cause it was the only thing close to relevant to the story.

[Dr. Cakey]

He's being taught about plants so he can use a Plant Deck. Otherwise he might think Naturia Cherries is edible - but Sage already knows it's not, because everything with berries is inedible.

[CrabHelmet]

I thought the story was just saying death was one of the ways out, not the only way out. I assume there's other technical fouls like bringing a knife to a herb fight or something.

True, but the Council could very well have you executed for it, since apparently that's what they often do in response to technical fouls. And it seems unlikely that they'd let you live, since otherwise, anyone could survive just by breaking a rule as soon as the game started, removing the whole YOU MUST TRAIN OR YOU WILL DIE thing. And since this is apparently rare (nobody else survived the father's game), it would be odd for there to be a tiny underclass of adult non-riders who survived the game but lost (as opposed to the father, who is unique and so doesn't create an odd entire class of people).

 

But yeah. I'm thinking that plants and stuff aren't the only things the 10 year old needs to do to survive out there. He most likely needs other basic skills, like... I assume physical training at least? Running, lifting, hunting/gathering, etc etc.

 

So either his dad is a terrible trainer and the kid is a lazy student, or they do a lot of other stuff too, but we only saw "plants" 'cause it was the only thing close to relevant to the story.

There was probably other training, but the kid's comments never hint at any physical component, and he's never been outside, so whatever the rest of the training consist of, it isn't enough. The dad seems to be a terrible trainer, but I'm pretty sure the kid is a lazy student anyhow.

[Mew 2.0]

...Right...this "Championship" thing...

This is a copy and paste of the Hunger Games.

Yeah, yeah, I suppose.

[DL]

I would say Hunger Games meets Eragon, but...eh.

 

Nontherless, I lol at how I finally find a fic to review, and Crab posts it a day before mine xD

 

 

This is great tho, had me loling, despite the fact I already had the displeasure of knowing what happens in this story.

 

 

SPARKS :'D

[Catterjune]

The blanks were obviously meant to build tension, but it only added to the laziness of the story. The author was too busy trying to make the story mysterious that he forgot to make it interesting.

The blanks didn't exist in the original story (assuming you mean the underscore).

 

The actual story literally says:

 

---

 

Just as desided he would keep the blade, the other got up and charged at him. Hearing the previously life-less body get up, turned around and stabbed him.

 

---

 

Besides, there's nothing tense or exciting about describing the scene. If he wanted to be exciting he could have written something like "a fight, then blood on the ground, but who's blood?" or something equally as terrible. Or even put the word "he" where the spaces are and the story would still kind of make sense, but be sloppy. Here it doesn't make sense and is sloppy - perhaps moreso, since it's missing two words.

[Grunt Issun]

At least say something like "The beast" or "The figure"

[Mew 2.0]

Ok i will as soon as they unlock the post. Lol

[DL]

Just tell the mod who locked it you'll mix chapters 1, 2, and 3

 

And write longer chapters

 

 

Also I'd almost have something like a blank than an actual blank space >.>

[CrabHelmet]

Nontherless, I lol at how I finally find a fic to review, and Crab posts it a day before mine xD

Oh, that's easily the most annoying part of this forum. We seem to have almost as many reviewers as writers, so it's hard to find something new to review.

 

The blanks didn't exist in the original story (assuming you mean the underscore).

Well, technically a blank space was left there in the form of several spaces in a row. But you can't see that unless you're quoting the post, since, like the paragraph indents, the spaces collapse when the post actually displays them.

[DL]

Ino

Oh, that's easily the most annoying part of this forum. We seem to have almost as many reviewers as writers, so it's hard to find something new to review.

 

 

Inorite?

 

Though it's not hard to find a bad-quality fic, it IS hard to find one that's relatively new that no one has reviewed yet xD

[Mew 2.0]

Ino

 

 

 

Inorite?

 

Though it's not hard to find a bad-quality fic, it IS hard to find one that's relatively new that no one has reviewed yet xD

So I should put up my OTHER stories?

[DL]

So I should put up my OTHER stories?

...I am tempted to say yes to have stuff to review

 

...but it might be painful again ; - ;

 

Eh, I say, go for it if the chapters are long enough >>

[Mew 2.0]

...I am tempted to say yes to have stuff to review

 

...but it might be painful again ; - ;

 

Eh, I say, go for it if the chapters are long enough >>

It shall be done!

[legendhiro]

I wrote a review, and it was quite cathartic. Thought I'd make a series.

 

[spoiler=The Wrath of Khan - {Yu-Gi-Oh! DFR: Book One, the Neo Duel Force}]You may know that five thousand years ago, mystical games were played in Egypt. But you may not know that those games actually originated ninety-five billion years ago in what is now Burma, where a tribe called the Peoples Ancientos lived. They were a peaceful state built upon art and culture, inventing all manner of artistic and entertaining media - including card games. Their ruler, the kind and benevolent Queen Whiny von Nitpick, ensured the quality of their culture by criticizing those works that did not measure up to standard, and by having any dissenters executed or brainwashed to ensure that the golden age of peace and prosperity would last for all eternity.

 

Unfortunately, even such a glorious reign could not last forever, as a villain known as Darkemperor Sinisterdoom unleashed dark magical monsters upon the world that destroyed the entire civilization, burying the Peoples Ancientos too deep in history to ever be discovered.

 

BZZZRT BZZZRT BZZZRT

 

I awoke with a start and looked at my clock. 9:00 AM. "Oh, no!" I exclaimed out loud. "The Duel Academy entrance exams start at 8:30 AM! I'm going to be late for the most important first day of the rest of my life!" I jumped out of bed, grabbed my deck, got into my regular clothes, ate a healthy balanced breakfast, brushed my teeth, combed my hair, updated my blog, mowed the lawn, did the laundry, and ran out the door as fast as I could. "Bye, mom!"

 

"Where are you going, Crab?"

 

"I need to make it to the Duel Academy entrance exams! They started at 8:30 AM on the 28th!"

 

"Er, Crab? It's the 29th."

 

"Blast, I must have really overslept!" I shouted. I ran to hail a taxi, and when one pulled over, hopped inside. "Quick, take me to Kaiba Corp. They might have extended the July 28th Duel Academy acceptance exams to a second day, and I really need to get in!"

 

The taxi started moving, but as we arrived, the driver said, "I'm afraid you're probably out of luck; it's August 29th."

 

"Blast, I must have seriously really overslept!" I cried. I jumped out of the taxi and ran up to the entrance to the building, where two KC guards in suits barred the entrance. "Look, I know I'm way too late for the 2010 entrance exams, but I really need to qualify for Duel Academy, so please let me-"

 

"It's 2011, kid. What did you oversl-"

 

"Please, just give me a chance! I'll duel you. I'll duel you both! Just-"

 

He scowled. "Admissions closed a month ago, kid. Go away."

 

Anyhow, to make a long story short, I was sent home, but because that guard was such a jerk, I have decided to make him my enemy, and I must punish this foe of mine. Anyhow, I did a little non-stalkerish research and found that he had written some fiction online under the name "legendhiro", so I thought I'd review one of my foe's works of fiction. All I need is a name for this review of the fictions of my foe. How about... Atop the Fourth Wall? Oh, that's already taken. Fine, let's just go with Foe Fiction.

 

 

Naturally, "Yu-Gi-Oh! DFR", despite being in text format, needs to have a logo drawn in MSPaint designed to look like a hybrid of the Offiical Duel Monsters Network chanel Yu-Gi-Oh! and some sort of zero-budget anime series. Apparently, our author fancies himself a screenwriter. It's almost cute.

 

Now, apparently this story is set in the same universe as some other stories this person has written, but this uses different characters and the others are only recommended, not required, and it's not a direct continuation, so I'm going to come in with no knowledge of the previous volumes, as would most new readers who haven't spent years following this person.

 

Turn One

 

Kira, the Laid-Back Duelist

 

Oh, joy, we're already characterizing what I assume to be our protagonist by stating traits.

 

I stared intently at the table in front of me, at the placement of mine and my opponent’s cards. I was playing the Duel Monsters TCG against a tall, spindly Goth kid named Mark. We were in school, so we weren’t using our Duel Disks (obviously). Also, because we were at lunch and we were short on time, we were playing a short game with only four thousand starting Life Points. Most other parts of the world only play with four thousand starting Life Points. That’s how we are in the U.S. We’re stubborn. It’s the same thing with the Standard System vs. the Metric System.

 

I know this isn't about the story itself, but I just want to interject here to say that the U.S. are really a bunch of cheaters this way. I swear they only chose 8000 as the standard so that they would have a massive advantage at Worlds. I was so happy when Yugi beat their champion despite the massive LP disparity.

 

Anyway, I was staring at the impromptu board (which was just a lunch table).

 

We've established that already. Parenthetical inserts (which are awkward enough at the best of times) should only be used to say things that we don't already know (since they're awkward enough even at the best of times). In fact, repeating trivial details like that should be avoided in general (but especially by awkward parenthetical inserts).

 

I was completely overwhelmed. My ‘Amazoness Paladin’ (ATK: 1800) was facing off against my opponent’s two ‘Red-Eyes Black Dragon’ cards (ATK: 2400 (each)) with only a single face-down card to aid her (Me: 2100/Mark: 3000).

 

Oh, no, Our hero is completely overwhelmed, with only one monster and any card the author decides to declare at a later time at her disposal! How will she ever survive?

 

Even if we had any investment in this duel (we don't), it's hard to build suspense when your opponent has unknown - and thus, as far as we're concerned, limitless - resources.

 

“I place a card face-down and pass,” I said casually. Anyone watching would think I was being a cocky b**** (which I am ;) ),

 

There's an emoticon in this story? Seriously?

 

but truth is I wasn’t really paying much attention to the game.

 

See, if even the hero doesn't care about this game, why should we? Oh, and now she has two face-down cards, so she has twice as many resources that could turn out to be anything the author finds convenient. There really isn't any tension here.

 

“You’re still doing fine, Kira,” said my tall, white-haired, gray-eyed best friend Jack from his place at my right. Out of the two dozen or so spectators, he was the only one (openly) routing for me. Everyone else was tired of seeing me win.

 

Wow. Most stories take a while to establish the protagonist as being completely invincible and effortlessly winning every duel, but this one just plain throws the fact that we're dealing with a Boring Invincible Hero at us in the very second paragraph.

 

“I had a feeling that you couldn’t stand up to my rare dragons,” said Mark. “I didn’t want to take my title as school’s best back from you, but I got tired of everyone bugging me to. Of course now, once I beat you, I’ll have people challenging me every day.”

 

He's just saying this now? This dialogue really doesn't flow naturally.

 

He sighed heavily, “Oh well. I play the Field card ‘Zombie World’, turning every monster in play and in each Grave into a Zombie. I tribute one of the two black dragons to summon ‘Red-Eyes Zombie Dragon’ with twenty-four hundred Attack points, equipped with the Spell card 'Violet Crystal' (ATK: 2400+300=2700). I also play ‘Book of Life’ to remove the ‘Twilight Rose Knight’ in your Graveyard from play and revive the tributed ‘Red-Eyes Black Dragon’.”

 

Wait, does he mean rare DRAGONS or rare ZOMBIES? And no matter how many Red-Eyes this guy has (because apparently in the world of fiction everyone has ridiculous numbers of rare cards), I'm still not worried because, first, we've been told that Kira wins all the time, and second, Kira still has a face-down card that the author can declare to be anything at any time to save Kira. We can't be intimidated by Mark's superior resources when Kira's hidden resources prevent us from being sure that Mark's resources are actually superior.

 

I'm also confused about exactly how rich Mark is supposed to be. On the one hand, he has two Red-Eyes and a zombie Red-Eyes; on the other hand, he uses Violet Crystal, which is pretty much only used by people too poor to afford anything more than a starter deck.

 

“Damn,” I said unconvincingly.

 

See, the author's flat-out telling us that Kira's faking and knows she's fine. There is no attempt at all to make us care.

 

“My ‘Zombie Dragon’ attacks first,” Mark announced.

 

“Then I reveal ‘Amazoness Archers’,” I countered, flipping over the Trap card bearing an illustration of a group bow-and-arrow-wielding warrior women. “This Trap lowers the Attack of all of your monsters by five hundred (ATK: 2400-500=1900/ATK: 2700-500=2200).

 

“It also forces all of my monsters to attack you one after another,” my opponent remarked. “If I had wanted to show you mercy, I can’t now.”

 

I couldn’t help a confident smile, though it disappeared quickly and became the half-smirk that I’m known for, “But I also reveal ‘Mirror Wall’, halving the Attack of those attacking monsters (ATK: 1900/2=950/ATK: 2200/2=1050).

 

“Oh come on!” I heard grumbled among members of the crowd (along with various similar useless remarks).

 

That wasn't the crowd talking; that was your readers. They were dismayed that you took the easy way out by giving Kira a useful combo in her hidden resources that totally wipes out her opponent's field full of rares, subverting absolutely nobody's expectations and leading to the conclusion everbody knew was coming. Behold the predictable excitement!

 

“Yes, Kira!” remarked Jack, always my biggest fan.

 

This story has a rather interesting on the Show, Don't Tell rule; it seems like it enjoys showing, but then also telling repeatedly in case we were thick and didn't get the message the first time.

 

It's nice that, unlike most protagonist with consistent win backstories, we actually get to see a standard schoolyard victory instead of just being told that they always happen (though the feeble attempts to build tension during it seem misguided), but then we also need to be told repeatedly that Kira always wins anyhow. We can see that Jack is the only one supporting Kira here, so do we need to be told multiple times that he's her biggest fan?

 

Kira's epithet from the chapter title - the "Laid-Back Duelist" - is particularly odd in that it actually contradicts what we're seeing here. When I think of a laid-back duelist, I think of someone treating the sport in a casual, nonchalant manner, but all we see of Kira here is her deliberately disguising her expression, putting on a poker face to trick the opponent. Certainly, that's what a competent duelist ought to do, but it does make her title rather inaccurate.

 

“Your monsters run into mine and get destroyed,” I explained, “and you lose all but five fifty of your Life.”

 

Mark sighed again, “at least I won’t have kids buggin’ me all the time now.”

 

I drew a card and declared, “‘Cuz I can, I play ‘Dimension Fusion’ (2100-2000=100) to re-summon the ‘Twilight Rose Knight’ that you removed from play.”

 

Wow. You get your hands on a card rare and powerful enough that even the great Seto Kaiba uses it, and you're only able to use it at all because of something your opponent did rather than anything you set up yourself? Without that Book of Life, you wouldn't have anything removed from play, and that would have been a dead draw. "Kira, the Contrived Duelist" seems like a better title for our hero.

 

I heard the disappointed whispers of the crowd cease, and I felt all eyes, even Jack’s, back on the game. Even Mark (who had moments before been in even less interested in the duel than I was) showed renewed interest.

 

Um, why? Even though you've forgotten to post Twilight Rose Knight's ATK, we know you have more than enough points to win the duel in one attack. The game's over; there's nothing to be interested in. Yes, we'll get an explanation in a few paragraphs, but even then you'll see that it still doesn't make sense.

 

See, unlike many Duelists nowadays, I don’t ever summon Synchro monsters. There are a couple reasons for this, but only one matters. Everyone knows that my mom is a production manager for Industrial Illusion (I2), the company that makes Duel Monsters. When I was younger I used to buy booster packs all the time, and I’d get gifts of rare cards from my mom. Now, naturally, people didn’t think this was fair.

 

The three greatest duelists in the world are Pegasus, who owns I2 and created the game and all its cards; Kaiba, who owns KaibaCorp (inventor of all the Duel Monsters peripherals like the Duel Disks and a major distributor, and with billions of dollars at his personal disposal); and Yugi, whose grandfather owns a game shop. Despite this, they are universally loved and hailed as heroes without objection to their obvious advantages. Why is this much more mild nepotism suddenly considered a problem?

 

And besides, who's complaining about it, the guy with at least 3 Red-Eyes? He doesn't have much grounds to object to the opponent's cards being too rare; I'd kill to get my hands on a set of those.

 

So to shut them up and to prove my abilities, I threw out all of my old cards

 

...instead of selling them, because apparently simply having money is also cheating now.

 

and started over with cards given to me by, or won from, people I know. I eventually built myself a respectable deck once again, but no one with one of the illusive and illustrious Synchro monsters wanted to part with them (they’ve only been around a few years after all). Everyone knew my situation, and they just assumed that I didn’t have any Synchro monsters.

 

Then three years back, in the sixth grade, some douche bag started forcing kids to ante their cards against his after school.

 

How?

 

No, seriously, how do you force people to ante cards? And if you can do that by brute force, why not just skip the duel entirely and just take their cards without dueling for them?

 

He was stacking his deck, but I couldn’t prove it, so being the upstanding human being that I am,

 

Great, our protagonist is invincible, wins all the time despite massive self-imposed handicaps, literally throws money away, is a champion defender of the weak and downtrodden, and is incredibly full of herself. As far as we've seen, her only flaw is that she's so awesome that her inferiors get annoyed by how much more awesome she is than they are.

 

I made him promise in front of a whole crowd of people that he’d give back all the cards he won, if I could beat him in a duel. To win I’d had to use my secret weapon, a Synchro monster given to me by my mom. It was one of the last two cards I still had that she’d given me. Its supposed to be one of the last copies of one of the earlier Synchros, a second prototype copy of a card that was supposed to be one of a kind.

 

Because apparently production managers have those and are free to give them to their kids?

 

But even then, Pegasus has actually printed cards explicitly for the purpose of only being used by himself, and nobody seems to hold that against him.

 

Also, that mention of it being one of the last "two" cards Kira received? Really, really obvious Chekhov's Gun; the second card will doubtlessly show up out of nowhere to be a Deus Ex Machina in some future duel. Come on, make your setups a little bit more subtle.

 

I’d summoned it in the duel with that kid, while everyone watched me, using these same two monsters in fact.

 

How convenient that, even though our hero doesn't usually run Synchros, her regular deck still runs Tuners.

 

But even before the hologram of my monster had fully appeared, it disappeared again, taking a field full of my opponent’s powerful monsters with it. No one had seen it. All they knew was that it was a Level Seven monster, and it was very powerful.

 

Every one of the school’s Duelist’s were curious. They wanted to see card that was powerful enough to so completely devastate the forces of a strong Duelist who was also cheating. I thought about summoning it, just to settle things once and for all and get everyone off my back, but I didn’t. I’d made a promise to myself. I couldn’t use that monster in such a simple match, or that would be the first step to becoming the spoiled gamer that I used to be. No, that card was for emergency use only.

 

And, you know, it would be impossible to just show them the card without summoning it, or to summon it in a duel where you've already won and so it isn't actually helping you at all.

 

Also, keeping it around in duels against non-cheaters seems like it ought to break your code of ethics. Sure, you're saving it "for emergencies", but the fact that's available means that you would use it in a fair duel if things were going badly. In other words, you feel free to use it whenever you need it, and have only avoided using it thus far by being Suetiful enough to prevent that being necessary. You're still going to win just as much as if you used it all the time; you're only avoiding using it for PR reasons, not to be "fair" or to avoid being "spoiled".

 

It's as if you started each game with twice as many Life Points as your opponent, but said it was okay because they didn't have any real effect except in those emergency situations where you lost the first half of your Life Points.

 

So instead of tuning my monsters, I simply announced, “I attack for the win and retain my title.”

 

The disappointed crowd scattered,

 

"Awwww, she didn't out of nowhere for no reason summon the monster she never summons." Yeah, I can really feel the disappointment.

 

If she's even capable of considering summoning it, she must have it in her Extra Deck, right? Why doesn't one of you just play a card that lets you peek at her Extra Deck and take a look?

 

and Mark and I went to work cleaning up our cards. Mark finished first and headed off without a word.

 

“Awesome match once again, Kira the Great,” said Jack, plopping down in the seat beside me.

 

“Don’t call me that, Jack,” I said, but I was far from serious. No matter how many times I told Jack to abandon his little pet name for me, he never would, so I lived with it.

 

As with her choice of only using cards she considers unfair when she would lose otherwise (i.e. every time they would actually be useful), Kira knows she's great and enjoys being great, but puts up some token protest to look better to her peers.

 

I mean, I appreciate that our protagonist is flawed, but the fact that she's portrayed as perfect in many other ways and the fact that it's unclear whether the author is aware of some of these inconsistencies detracts from things.

 

“It was a stupid match. I thought someone like Goth Mark would come up with a better deck than that. No Synchros and the strategy was really straightforward. It was too standard to be a real challenge. And everyone wonders why I’m so laid-back about this game.”

 

See? She said she was laid-back, so that must be the case! Because there's nothing more laid-back than swearing in order to create a facade.

 

“Mark beat you once, last time he got the title.”

 

“That was a fluke,” I insisted. “Every gamer gets a bad hand from time to time.”

 

A good point. Which really makes one wonder how she has only ever lost once, especially since they don't seem to be playing best-of-three matches.

 

“Hey,” said Jack, raising his hands defensively, “whatever you say.” But he wasn’t done prodding me, “There’s also He Who Must Not Be Named.”

 

I growled, “Damien Johnson. That emo prick. He treated me like crap. I’ve never been happier than the day he moved away, as sucky as the circumstances were.”

 

“He always beat you,” said Jack in jest.

 

EXPOSITION

 

I mean, I've seen worse, but does this dialogue look at all natural to you? People at my school never went around recapping their circumstances for the benefit of any readers who might have just started hearing them. It's the same thing as with Mark's comments during the duel: it's nice that you tried to work it into the story, but the implementation is just awkward.

 

I pushed him out of his chair just as the bell rang, signaling the end of the lunch period. I got up from my seat and started toward my first afternoon class. Jack hastily picked himself up from the floor and followed. “Oh come on,” he said, “I was only kidding.”

 

“Kid about something else,” I fumed.

 

Kira becomes furious whenever anyone mentions that she might have lost ever in the past, but she thinks she is successfully avoiding being a "spoiled duelist" (and I see no indication that the author disagrees).

 

Also, note how quick to anger she is when loss is even mentioned. Yeah, it's easy to be laid-back when you win effortlessly every time, but put Kira under the slightest stress, and this happens.

 

We walked quietly after that, and it wasn’t long before Jack had to break off and head to his class upstairs. I was on my way to the basement floor, where science classes were held. But first I ducked into the first floor restroom, as I usually did, to steal a few seconds with my friends Samantha and Jenny.

 

Jenny was leaning against the counter. Sam was perched on the counter on the opposite end, facing her. There was a game going on between them.

 

“Bell, ladies,” I said.

 

“Five more minutes, Mom,” Sam mocked, running a hand through her messy, short blond hair.

 

“Nuh uh,” I said, picking up their respective cards and handing them to their owners.

 

Of course! I totally remember going to the bathroom to play Duel Monsters with my friends. Don't you?

 

Yeah, it should not surprise anyone that this story was written by a guy. Is this really what boys think the girls' bathroom is used for?

 

“Awww!” Sam whined.

 

“Kira!” Jenny sang cheerfully, putting her long, curly, light brown hair up into a ponytail. “Did you win today’s game?”

 

Yeah, the physical description of every character in this story boils down to hair color.

 

“Do you need to ask?” Sam asked, jumping down from the counter with a showy flourish of her hands. “Who was it this time?” she asked.

 

Wow, there is really no attempt made to create the slightest tension here. We're told that Kira maybe loses offscreen to someone we've never seen, but all the evidence we see firsthand shows that Kira is basically the second coming of Duel Monster Jesus.

 

“Mark,” I answered.

 

“Goth Mark?” Sam asked, turning toward the exit, Jenny and I following.

 

“Yeah,” I answered. “He used another Zombie variation. This one was almost less creative than the Zombie Swarm deck he usually uses.”

 

I dunno, putting a bunch of rare Dragons into a Zombie deck seems like an unusual combination to me. A stupid one, sure, but an unusual one.

 

“Sounds like the idea of fighting you really got to him,” said Jenny. “You know, Mark is kinda cute.”

 

“Ugh!”

 

“Oh, come on,” said Jenny, dancing up ahead of me and beginning to walk backwards so she could look right at me, “you gotta start dating. You gotta learn the ways of life and love before your youth passes you by!”

 

Yeah, because they had such great chemistry. I would have guessed that Jack was the cardboard love interest - not because he had any better chemistry with Kira but because his entire personality is "worships Kira".

 

“Thank you Love Guru,” I replied, “but I’m perfectly fine with my current relationship status.”

 

“Leave her alone,” said Sam, coming to my defense. “Just ‘cuz you’ve gotten real into reading fortune cookies lately doesn’t mean we wanna hear what you read.”

 

Jenny began to mock-pout, “How rude!”

 

I branched off from my only two female friends,

 

Kira only has two female friends? I can't imagine why. I mean, she has such an agreeable and humble and laid-back personality!

 

a smile on my face, and slipped into my biology class just ahead of the bell. My teacher, the erratic Mr. Winton, was busy scribbling the period’s notes onto the white board. Based on his level of completion we had a good ten minutes before the lecture would actually start.

 

I looked casually around the windowless room cluttered with diagrams and models of the human body and basic anatomy, and so on, before finally making my way to the back of the room to sit in my usual spot next to a bored-looking boy with long red hair.

 

“Hey, Thay,”

 

IT RHYMES

 

*APPLAUSE*

 

As for the setting description, I'm in two minds. One one hand, it's good to see some actual effort made to describe the setting as something other than a featureless blank white room. On the other hand, the description here is so vague that we're just going to picture it as a generic science classroom, and nothing has really been done to spark our interest so far.

 

I said to the boy, Thaylaan. Of course Thaylaan isn’t his real name (and if you thought it was then I have some bad news; you might be an idiot).

 

How appropriate! You fight like a cow!

 

Also, that's rich coming from you; maybe that's a more common name over in America, but when I think Kira, I think Light Yagami.

 

This overly-serious member of my little group was the weirdest of all. He was a genius who refused to be moved up to classes at the college level. Don’t ask me why.

 

I think I know why: Plot convenience.

 

All his refusal did was serve to alienate Thay from his classmates, far more than changing classes would, and more than his typical behavior tended to do anyway.

 

Thay is a game master, a puzzle master, he has an eidetic memory, and he’s a self-taught expert at dead languages. In fact he made national headlines a couple years back when he discovered a unique, underlying syntax that was similar between the written languages of various ancient civilizations, including Egypt and the Mayans, that he claimed proved the existence of Atlantis. He even worked out a basic word bank of words from what could be the Atlantean language. His work succeeded in convincing several experts that the ancient super civilization did actually exist.

 

Screw taking college classes; make this guy a professor. And yet, instead of researching historical linguistics with the other most renowned minds of our day like a super-genius like him ought to, he just wastes time sitting in grade school anatomy classes.

 

Plot contrivance is a wonderful thing.

 

According to Thay, the word “thaylaan” is the phonetical translation of the Atlantean word from “spiritual one” or “spiritualist”. Thaylaan claims that he uses a nickname because he believes, like many ancient civilizations, that if people know your real name, it gives them power over you.

 

I'm sure the school has records that anyone could look up. What, did he think this feeblest of all defenses would be enough? Or did he delete all records of his birth name, and everyone was for some reason okay with that?

 

On most days, if you asked me if I considered Thay a good friend, I might say no. After all, he only really started hanging out with me and my friends because of his (not so) secret crush on Sam. But if I actually took the time to think about it, I’d remember how, even though Thay’s a little arrogant,

 

Thay's the arrogant one here? POT. KETTLE.

 

Besides, Thay's arrogant because he's done incredible historical research and is an exaggeratedly brilliant genius, whereas you're arrogant because you can consistently do well at high school Duel Monsters. One of you actually has reasonable justification for his arrogance.

 

and he sometimes doesn’t know when to keep his opinions to himself, I’ve known him since before he started using a nickname.

 

Wow, the "nickname" is even more pointless than it initially seemed. If you grew up in this area and your classmates already know your birth name, what's the point? And how did you get them all to start calling you "Theylordoftheringsfaan", anyhow?

 

Before his parents moved overseas and left him to live alone, living on bi-monthly bank deposits. I’d remember that ever since I’ve known him, Thay’s been nothing but a genuinely good and altogether reliable person, always willing to stand up for people in need.

 

“Did you beat Mark?” Thay asked without even looking up from his notebook.

 

“How do you always know who I fought when you have an earlier lunch period than I do?” I asked, not for the first time, and not for the first time Thay ignored me.

 

You had a crowd of twenty spectators and have shown that there's loads of time to chat between classes. If this is supposed to make Thay look smart, all it's doing is making Kira look dumb.

 

“How are Sam, Jenny, and your fan boy, Jack?” He asked.

 

“Sam and Jenny are fine,” I answered. “I know you don’t actually care how Jack is.”

 

Jack and Thay had a huge rivalry. One that Jack never seemed to be able to get a leg up on. And Thay delighted in reminding him of that fact.

 

How can they be rivals? Thay has the power of being a ridiculous exaggerated random unrealistic super-genius, while Jack's only distinguishing trait is cheering for Kira. It's as if this had said that Mark's rival was Seto Kaiba himself; there's too great a disparity for this to make any sense.

 

His usual questions asked and answered, Thay quieted down and said nothing else. He simply rested his head on his hand and began scribbling symbols in his notebook, like he did every class. Whenever I asked Thay about the symbols he answered that he was close to another breakthrough, like the last one, but I think he was just trying to sound serious about something he does for fun. That’s how serious guys are.

 

Yeah, it's not like DISCOVERING PREVIOUSLY UNKNOWN LINGUISTIC SIMILARITIES BETWEEN DISTANT ANCIENT LANGUAGES, CONVINCING THE WORLD'S EXPERTS OF THE EXISTENCE OF ATLANTIS (somehow, since apparently Atlantis is the only possible explanation for such linguistic similarities for some reason) AND DEDUCING SOME OF THE ANCIENT ATLANTEAN VOCABULARY is at all serious or anything, and it couldn't possibly involve any breakthroughs. Thay's just being arrogant again.

 

Of course, this does raise the question in my mind of why Thay considers a high school anatomy classroom to be the ideal location for conducting this research, but I guess that's why I'm not the super-genius. Maybe human anatomy is central to the structure of the Atlantean language.

 

So, anyway, my life was pretty good then. It was simple. I had great friends, and my mom was always around, which almost made up for my dad being off being a pro Duelist and never being home. I was content to drift through school and play games.

 

"My life was pretty good, simple, and generally not really worth reading about. Please do not continue reading this."

 

I never really thought about my future. It just seemed so far off. I wish I’d known then how quickly my future would find me. Maybe if I’d known I had a destiny, I’d have been ready for it.

 

"Oh, but I swear something interesting happens later, so please keep reading despite the mix of Suetiful and flat characters and the total lack of any interesting events or setup."

 

So that's the end of the first chapter, and what do I think of it? Well, the typing is less illiterate than one might expect of the internet, but the story was bland, the characters other than Kira and Thay had no interesting features, Kira and Thay were Suetiful, and nothing happened to make me want to come back - all that happened was the utterly tensionless duel and the introduction of the cardboard cast, without even much foreshadowing to speak of - and what little foreshadowing was present was too vague to be captivating.

 

Maybe people who read your previous stories will press on purely through faith that you won't keep being this dull, but as a new reader looking for something interesting to follow, this isn't going to cut it.

 

Normally, I'd stop there, but since I'm still mad that this jerk turned me away from the Duel Academy entrance exams, I'm going to skim further in the topic and see what else this legendhiro has to say.

 

First, apparently Violet Crystal was in Mark's deck because the author thought Red-Eyes Zombie Dragon had 2700 ATK and, when corrected, decided to toss that lousy card into his deck for no reason instead of, you know, changing the numbers a little bit to fix it. That's really lazy.

 

Second, when asked about who the last of the sixth important characters would be, this is what the author had to say:

 

ah, senron, surely you have better insight than that! I am a lover of mysteries, so you can be sure that there is a clue to the sixth character's identity somewhere. Think. Was anyone mentioned who might create interesting character conflicts?

 

Anything interesting? No. Any real character conflicts? No, nobody has enough characterization for that. But the name Damien got a reaction, so I'm assuming he's the one being referred to, and if Damien's importance is really considered a "mystery" or in any way subtle, we're in real trouble here. I can't be interested in Damien now because we've been given no reason to be interested in him; he's just a name that we're told belongs to a strong duelist. That's all. Wow, a strong duelist? What innovation! What suspense! (And yes, the author confirmed that Damien is the one he was referring to. It says something about the few readers of this pathetic excuse for a story that someone had to actually ask about that.)

 

In a poll asking for opinions about the story, eight people voted that it was awesome and they would totally read it, while mine was the only vote saying that it sucked. Maybe people's standards are really low here and they'll read anything with half-decent spelling and grammar, but I don't personally consider "It didn't make my brain bleed quite as much as it could have" to be high praise.

 

Now, here's something else interesting: this first chapter was posted almost a year ago, and the second chapter still hasn't shown up. The author hasn't abandoned the story, either (though I would forgive him for doing so, since I would be much too bored to continue this nonsense myself); it's been periodically bumped with promises that it will continue eventually, and the author has even spent the last couple of weeks promising each day that the second chapter will totally be posted the next day. It's not so much a dead fic as an undead fic; it gives the appearance of activity, but its lifespan expired long ago, along with all real signs of actual life.

 

Hah. That'll teach you to keep me out of Duel Academy. You jerk.

 

Bah.

 

 

Shortly, the other guard met with a Shadowy Cloaked Figure to report:

 

"Yes, sir, that's right. It's definitely her. She posted it on the internet. No. Yes. Yes, a false alarm is still possible. No. That's right. We'll bring her in for observation immediately. Melody will be most pleased."

 

Oh, and since nobody seems to object to me continuing the storyline (responses range from "I like it" to "I don't care and can just skip it", but nobody seems to think it actively hurts), I'll be continuing it. And I'll try to make it interrupt the actual reviews less (instead of interjecting one-two-four-four-two into every fifth line) to make it easier to skip for those who don't care for it.

thanks for the review. it is a real honor. i'm sorry about duel academy. i assume you are referring to my failed club. it was something i did a long time ago, and i honestly don't remember what you're talking about. i did everything i could to include as many people as i could before i was forced to abandon it, or rather hand it over to another user. if you were to specify, i might be able to provide further explanation of my reasons.

 

you have noticed several points which could be considered flaws in the story at this point, and i have taken them to heart, but this is only the first chapter. all i can do is assure you that the majority of those concerns will be addressed relatively soon, as more information is revealed about the characters and the situation. i hope that despite your disappointment you might stop back in at some point in the future to see where everything is heading.

 

i want to thank you for the review for another reason. i honestly didn't know that you had started these again (i've been out of the loop for awhile, I guess), and i look forward to reading the ones that i've missed.

[Grunt Issun]

You're not a smart fellow are you? She's joking bro, it's part of her plot.

[Catterjune]

i'm sorry about duel academy. i assume you are referring to my failed club.

Crab is joking. It's a story comprised of a bunch of the common tropes YCM-ers used in previous fics. The protagonist being late from oversleeping and being kept out of duel academy for ridiculous and contrived reasons is one of those tropes.

[legendhiro]

 

Crab is joking. It's a story comprised of a bunch of the common tropes YCM-ers used in previous fics. The protagonist being late from oversleeping and being kept out of duel academy for ridiculous and contrived reasons is one of those tropes.

you know, i completely passed over the bit before the review. now i really do feel like a fool O_o

 

...whoops.

 

anyway, caught up with the new stuff now (without skipping anything this time), and its as good as ever.

[Womi]

YCM changed a lot.

 

But Foe Fiction kept its quality.

Keep 'em coming, Sir.