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

CrabHelmet

By CrabHelmet
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And now for #15.

 

[spoiler=Four, Eight, 15, Sixteen, Twenty-Three, Forty-Two - {The Dark Side of His Heart}]We turn now to Knight's Title Book 2~ The Dark Side of His Heart by ~MT~.

 

It seems like this story is the second in a series, if the "Book Two" in the title is any indication, and it is itself already 22 chapters long. I am thus coming in right in the middle, and I'm not even familiar with Kingdom Hearts canon. As you can tell, I have all the necessary background information and am well-qualified to review this story. Let's begin the first chapter.

 

There is a place where time stops, where no one exists. Where everywhere you look is oblivion.

 

This looks familiar. A previous Foe Fic called Kingdom Hearts: A Forgotten Tale began with this opening line:

 

A long time ago, in a world that never was.

 

This sort of thing seems to be a common opening. It also sounds incredibly stupid. I'm sure it's intended to be epic and awesome or something like that, but in practice it just comes across as being idiotic and pretentious. At least, that's how it comes across to me; I'm sure some of you out there reading these stories will be screaming about how cool it is.

 

If my secondhand understanding of the Kingdom Hearts mythos is correct, these refer to the same place, a canon location called the World That Never Was. That explains the similarity, but in a way it also makes things worse: if this is a real, canon setting that everyone who has played the games (and thus everyone actually reading the fanfic, myself notwithstanding) is already familiar with, then dressing this up as something mysterious and epic is bizarre.

 

Imagine a Super Mario 64 fanfic whose opening line is something like "Legend speaks of a mysterious castle. In that castle, say the legends, are mysterious portals to other realms, cunningly disguised by a figure as paintings. What lies beyond those portals? It is a mysterious mystery." It's not mysterious and epic if we're already familiar with it.

 

Anyhow, back to the story.

 

In this place is a city.

 

Since no one exists in this place and the city is in this place, I can only conclude that this city is empty. That makes it a rather pathetic city.

 

A city that you would probably not find on the map.

 

I don't know about you, but my map shows the exact location of both the Timeless Void of Oblivion and of the city contained within it. (It's several miles north of Toronto.)

 

This city is illuminated with neon colored lights dancing in the streets and on the buildings. In this city is a skyscraper. A skyscraper so high, it has been legend to touch the very heavens.

 

"Legend"? I'm guessing the author started with "rumour" used frequently, then changed his mind and did a Ctrl+H to turn all instances of "rumour" into "legend", and then decided to finish up by Not Proofreading.

 

Incidentally, how relevant is height in a limitless empty void? And if the heavens touch the skyscraper and the skyscraper's in the city in the void and no one is in the void, does that mean that no one goes to heaven?

 

The skyscraper is said to contain all the lost memories of the world. Good and bad. No wonder this place is located in a void.

 

I don't quote follow the logic here. "It contains all lost memories, therefore it obviously must be in a void"? Maybe this is one of those weird things that I'd need to play the Kingdom Hearts games to understand.

 

Below the skyscraper is a little town square. No one knows what it is called,

 

In that case, no one calls it what it is called because doing so would require them to know what it is called, so obviously it isn't called anything at all. But even ignoring the paradox there, who cares what the name of this little town square is? There's a reason Lost's mysteries tended to be more along the lines of "Why is there a polar bear on this island?" and less "What was the name of Jack's hospital?" - mysteries aren't intriguing if the answer is of no interest to anyone. Sure, maybe it's relevant in the Kingdom Heartsverse, but any story that hinges on a town square's name is probably terrible.

 

but it has been known to be very silent in the area. So quiet, that it would drive any calm person into madness. Where is this city? No one knows. . . . . . . .

 

Let's recap: This city is in a place containing no one that is listed on no maps that no one drew and has a town square whose name is known to no one but is so silent from the lack of people that anyone there (if anyone was there) would be driven mad (but wouldn't they themselves be able to make sound and avert the madness?), and no one knows where this city is because no one is there or has ever been there or will ever be there.

 

This sounds like the second-most boring city ever, just behind Charlotte.

 

In the town square, something was actually happening.

 

I'd like to complain about the nonsensical use of the progressive aspect here. As previously highlighted in my The Forbidden Seal review (my goal for this Foe Fic is to include callbacks to all fourteen that preceded it), it sounds bad to say that something "was happening" rather than that something "happened" when it happens suddenly and we have no other concurrent event occurring with which to compare the time of its occurrence. It's either awkward or wrong or both; in any case, it's terrible.

 

However, in this case it's worse than that because we've previously been told that all of this takes place in a place where time stops. Have fun figuring out how chronological events work in a world where time doesn't exist.

 

A black portal was opening out of thin air in the town square around the skyscraper. Nothing really exciting happened really.

 

Really? The really empty city's really quiet and boring really town square had really something really happen in it really with a black really portal appearing out of really thin air around the really tall skyscraper really full of really lost memories, and despite really this nothing really exciting happened really? Really?

 

But then out of the portal walked a person shrouded in a black shrouded hood. Silver chains hung from its black garb.

 

It's a black-cloaked mysterious shadowy figure! Foe Fic flashback montage time!

 

A dark figure in a black cloak announced

"we must complete the goal that they could not finish".

Two more dark figures slowly walked out of dark shadows

 

I literally whipped around, doing a full one-eighty spin, and saw a tall figure standing about twenty feet away from me. He was intimidating, that much I could tell, but he was surrounded by a veil of shadows,

 

"When are we gonna finish them off, boss?" Said the werewolf to a shadowy figure "Later," Said the mysterious strager.

 

A tall person was grabbing him, his face couldn't be seen because he wore a large straw hat, and a blue and white cloak, the flesh of his hand was a pale blue like a body left out in the rain and cold for too long.

 

Please, YCM, stop with all the mysterious shadowy cloaked figures. And I didn't even count figures who were obscured for reasons other than being cloaked and shadowy, like that Western duelist whose shadow was MANSHADOW.

 

“Where are you?” It was a man’s voice. It sounded patient, but irritated at the same time. He seemed to be waiting for someone.

 

"Then he let out a scream of pain. It sounded like he was in pain."

 

Then two more black portals opened in the air and two more people in the same black hood and robes walked out into the neon lighted plaza. They too wore hoods, so it was impossible to see their faces.

 

Please, YCM. Your fanfic isn't being televised. In a third-person omniscient story, you can refuse to reveal information without having it obscured from the camera by contrivances like LOL MOAR CREEPY CLOKES since there is no camera in written text.

 

“I’m here!” said a young girl’s voice. She sounded very excited.

 

~MT~ reached this point in the fanfic and thought, "How can I convey that this girl is excited? What is the most elegant way to do that?" He spent hours pondering before deciding, "I know! I'll just have the narration say she was excited." So he did that. Then he looked over the fanfic and said, "This is perfect. In every way. I should definitely post this."

 

“Why did you want us here?” The first man said, his voice was sharp.

 

At least the capitalized word after the quote isn't "Said" this time.

 

While it's not as bad as that of the awful Digimon restoration, the grammar in this story is rather inconsistent, even in relatively basic ways. This sentence is a good example: if you're writing a fanfic that you think is worth sharing with the world, then you should know that, as the great philosopher Morbo once said, commas do not work that way. Goodnight.

 

“Yeah, you interrupted my fun!” pouted the girl.

 

“Torturing another captive, huh Larxene?” The girl named Larxene laughed.

 

“Of course!”

 

“You and your vicious tauntings.” The first man said to Larxene.

 

Tauntings.

 

I am sorry, but when I think "torturing captives", I don't think "tauntings". I suppose they can be vaguely related, like when I'm being tortured by a terrible fanfic while I'm taunting it, but it seems somewhere between an absurdly pathetic whitewashing and an absurdly pathetic failure of knowledge of the world to equate torture to taunting in any story.

 

“They don’t call me the Savage Nymph for nothing Axel.” The man named Axel then jeered at her.

 

All of the writing here feels horribly awkward. Once a person's name has been used, there's no need to refer to them as "The man called Bob" or whatever; just call them by their name and be done with it. This is especially true in cases like this where these are canon characters with highly familiar names; in particular, most readers have Axel's name memorized.

 

Then there's other problems. Why is the "Axel jeers her" message put with the quote where Larxene responds to Axel rather than in the lone where Axel actually jeers her? Why go out of your way to explicitly state that he's jeering her in the first place when you can just show him jeering her and thus avoid violating the cardinal rule of Show, Don't Tell?

 

And why do these sentences with no technical problems constantly feel so awkward? Something about that last sentence reads very badly; maybe removing the word "then" would make it flow better, in the same way that removing the whole sentence would make the story flow better and removing the whole story would make the internet flow better.

 

“Not as much as you. I don’t find pleasure in ripping off people’s limbs as much as you hunger for blood.”

 

We've gone from "tauntings" to ripping off limbs and hungering for blood.

 

Maybe "tauntings" was inserted by a hideous misuse of the thesaurus?

 

“Silence!” shouted the third man.

 

“Yes Marluxia.” Said the other two.

 

"Said" count: twelve. Not this again.

 

“Now I brought you two here for a reason,” said Marluxia with a grin,

 

Excuse me, Mr. ~MT~, but I believe you mean, "The man called Marluxia".

 

“I’ve come up with a plan to strengthen our organization. You two are absolutely perfect for the job. What with you Axel, with your fiery strength,” Axel laughed at that.

 

“You got that right!”

 

“And you Larx, with your cruelty to your enemies.” Larxene giggled at that.

 

“You bet!”

 

“And me with my . . . . . . . special talents.” Marluxia laughed.

 

And so the characters continue to tell each other things that they already know purely for the benefit of the audience who just entered the story - except here it's even worse because the target audience already knows this stuff anyhow.

 

Also, these people have somehow just located and entered the mysterious lost city in the void that nobody knows about and landed in the town square of unknown name next to the skyscraper of all the lost memories, and all they've done is chat amongst themselves about the "tauntings" that are surely routine for them. This would seem absurd even without the opening paragraph going out of its way to try to make this place sound as mysterious and epic as possible.

 

“But sorry, why would we want to join you on this stupid escapade?” Scoffed Larxene.

 

“Because,” Began Marluxia, his voice booming, “don’t you want the glory of ruling the world?! Of being human?!”

 

This demonstrates how stupid the concept of the insanity-causing silence was.

 

But isn't it sweet how he just wants to be human?

 

what

 

Captain R, did you get a paint job?

 

Nonsense, Person Who Is Inferior To Me! I am Ann Tennyson, unspecified descendant of Ben Tennyson, chosen defender of earth, hero of the world, and lover of the green grass and the blue sky!

 

Yes, I'm sure that's wonderful. Now get out of here.

 

Your words have no effect on me, for I am pure as pureness itself and cannot be corrupted by your hatred! I know that, with a little love, both you and Marluxia can be converted to the side of goodness, and as the most perfect person in the word, I am the best qualified to do that. Deep down, you're all good people that I can heal with my goodness!

 

Why is my own supporting cast always even more annoying than the fanfic itself?

 

Axel and Larxene thought about that for a minute. The two then bowed their heads in approval.

 

With my limited knowledge of Kingdom Hearts, I thought that that was the whole point of Organization XIII. Why would Axel and Larxene suddenly forget that, then bow in complacency when Marluxia reminded them of it?

 

See how good and loyal they are? I'm sure I can easily woo them to the side of justice!

 

Anten - do you mind if I call you Anten? - they're part of an evil organization trying to take over the world.

 

That's only because they haven't seen me yet and witnessed my perfection. Everyone I meet falls in love with me at first sight because I'm so amazing.

 

You've been here for two minutes and I already can't wait for you to make a heroic sacrifice due to being too good for this sinful earth.

 

Marluxia then pulled out a faded piece of parchment and showed it to Larxene and Axel. The two read the paper over to themselves.

 

“That’s it? You take us too little Marluxia.” Axel boasted.

 

"You take us too little Marluxia"? Anten, I don't suppose you could woo ~MT~ to the side of good writing, could you?

 

I can do anything!

 

Also, he's being offered humanity and world domination. What more could Axel want?

 

...my love?

 

“But I guess we will join your mission.” Added Larxene.

 

“Good. Besides Axel, you can show them your full power.”

 

“I would like that.” Said Axel

 

"Said" count: 13.

 

as he raised the palms of his hands. Two rings of fire circled around his hands. The twirling fire then turned into two spinning disks.

 

“And Larxene, you can do whatever you wish to the others. I know how much you like to play with your food before killing it.” Said Marluxia.

 

“Sweet!” gushed Larxene as she held her hands to her chest. A dozen kunais appeared between her fingers.

 

“And I,” Marluxia held his left hand out in the air. In a flash, a huge, faded pink scythe appeared in his hand, “I will KILL anyone in my way with no remorse what so ever!” Spat Marluxia.

 

This city is empty, isn't it? There's no one here to kill. And if they're leaving this place to go somewhere where there are people to kill, then why would they come here in the first place?

 

You're too hateful. I shall convert you to the side of love and rainbows too!

 

Look, Anten, don't make me have my other friend escort you out of my studio.

 

Who, Captain R? My amazing beauty has already turned him into Captain Rapture toward me. He can't hurt me!

 

No, not him. My other friend.

 

You have other friends?

 

Yes - for example, the one who shoots lasers from his hands.

 

...I'll be back later.

 

The three all had deadly weapons in their disposal then.

 

You've just shown each of them pulling out a deadly weapon and saying something that was probably supposed to be really cool. Why would you then tell us that they each have a deadly weapon? Stop making these pointless statements.

 

“Well then, are we ready to go?” asked Marluxia.

 

“Ready!” shouted Axel and Larxene in unison.

 

“Then we go!” yelled Marluxia, “TO KNIGHT’S TOWER!” And they were gone.

 

Finally, in this last section, the words after quotes stopped being capitalized. But it was too late to save this story from its terribleness.

 

You really should have done more. Half the story was banter between the Organization members that never went anywhere when you could have used the time to focus on their love for me and subsequent redemption.

 

...or on actually getting to the point. Even the plot-relevant portions weren't actually revealed to the audience, so all we know is that - gasp! - Organization XIII is Up To Something. That's not worth an entire chapter.

 

What, you're not throwing me out again? I knew you would fall in love with me!

 

Actually, I let you stay because you were actually saying something useful to the review for once.

 

Better grammar is good! Your words are awkward!

 

But if you're just going to echo what I already said, Captain Repeater, then you can just leave.

 

But you can't-

 

Hands. Lasers.

 

...fine.

 

Overall, not a lot happened, and when stuff did happen, it was done badly. Meanwhile, the story is so basic that there is nothing present as of now that could possibly elevate this story above mediocrity, even were it not for its other major flaws. Maybe the next twenty-one chapters fix things up, but as it stands this is not a good fanfic.

 

But there is potential for improvement and redemption! You can be redeemed, just like everything else!

 

 

 

And despite going for a 22-chapter story that's actually a sequel to another completed story, we found another bad one. YCM is so consistent in its terribleness that it's rather frightening.

 

Incidentally, I'm amazed that the Digimon restoration guy took my commentary in good humour and actually improved his writing somewhat for the third chapter. I figured that, after all this time, I had finally found someone who would be angry when I insulted his terribly story, but it turns out that I failed again. WHO DO I HAVE TO INSULT TO GET FLAMED AROUND HERE? (At this point, I've taken to trolling my own readers with terrible side-characters who speak in differently-coloured text.)

 

The part I liked the most about that one was how it "turned out" that the crests were necessary. That probably would have been a good thing to know ahead of time.

 

I honestly had no idea how to properly express how stupid it was that we accidentally got rid of the cosmic keystones holding together reality; all I could manage to come up with in the face of something so insane was "OOPS".

 

Though I believe I can already guess your views on the subject' date=' Crab, I would be pretty curious as to your opinion concerning fanfiction (or even original stories) which "request" fan-made characters. Most especially ones that have not even started yet.

 

It has disturbed me how many of those I've seen in here. I think one of those could possibly topple even Chapter 14's 'masterpiece'.

[/quote']

 

Those are indeed the worst, since it means that the author wants to neither write a new story about existing, well-known characters nor to invent their own original characters, which makes the whole purpose of writing highly questionable; after all, if someone isn't the sort to care about the characters in their own story, they're not the sort to write anything even remotely decent. I just haven't yet stumbled into any of those that have actually gotten off the ground; authors too lazy to make up their own original characters are generally also too lazy to actually write the bloody story.

 

Have you considered doing follow-ups with second and third chapters from foefics you've already...foefic'd?

 

I thought about it, but as of now I don't think it's likely. If I've already covered a story here, then I've already explained why it's a terrible story, so there's not much sense in doing a follow-up review, as that would just be beating a dead horse. Maybe if I ever decide to write something called Friend Fiction in which I recommend good stories I could cover stories I previously covered here but that have since improved (and if I do, Hopeless Paradise will be Friend Fic #1), but that seems highly unlikely because complimenting things is less fun and YCM doesn't have enough good stories anyhow.

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Then Izzy it is.

 

[spoiler=Sweet 16 - {Heroes of the Elements}]Our next subject will be Heroes of the Elements, a story - original rather than fanfic, I believe? - by yugiohblaze.

 

We begin with a Chapter Plot that is bolded and not even put in a Spoiler folder. This does not bode well for us; I've expressed my views on Chapter Plots before - they're completely pointless, since the plot should emerge from the story itself.

 

Plot: In the grand and beautiful world of Radia, people with the power to control elements live along side each other in harmony. However, it wasn't used to be like this.

 

Two sentences into the plot summary and there are already two mistakes. This indicates either that the author did not proofread, a sin that renders the author unworthy to write a fanfic, or that the author does not have a good command of the English language, a sin that renders the author unable to write a fanfic. Either way, we're already doomed.

 

Once, there was a war called The Grand War of the Elements

 

No, there wasn't.

 

I know it sounds silly to complain about naming conventions in a story about a fantasy world where people have elemental powers, but this name is just so over-inflated in an attempt to sound awesome that I just can't take it seriously.

 

Look back through history and try to find another war with a name as long and inflated as this one. You will not succeed. If a war's name does contain a word designed to just emphasize its importance, like the two World Wars (or, as the former was formerly called, the Great War) or arguably all of the X Years' Wars, no additional information is attached - here, the war would simply be called the Grand War. Conversely, if a war is named after something like its subject (like the War of the Spanish Succession) or its contenders (the Spanish-American War), no generic words like "Grand" are attached. This war's name is not realistic.

 

This may sound petulant. And it is. But here's something less petulant: if this world is composed of people with the power to control the elements, then why would anything be called the Grand War of the Elements? That would be like a war in our world being called the Grand War of the Guns and Bombs. The war's name being too inflated is forgivable - maybe Radia's naming conventions don't even match ours - but forgetting that the use of elements would be perfectly normal in-universe rather than something so noteworthy as to be worth naming a war after. That betrays a lack of care being payed to the world being built, and a lack of care to world-building is the hallmark of shoddy writing.

 

in which different civilizations fought against each other in order to gain complete control of Radia. A hero who had the power of lightning was able to stop the war by uniting the civilizations together.

 

What sort of lone hero could end a war between hostile powers by uniting them together?

 

I could, of course! In fact, I'm pretty sure one of my forms has lightning powers.

 

You have multiple forms, Anten? Are they all equally purple in text?

 

I am the guardian of earth and the heir to my ancestor's legacy! I am the chosen hero who wields the Omnitrix. I have ten forms, each with mystical alien powers and each more beautiful than the last! I alone could unite the warring nations!

 

Are all of your beautiful forms sketched in MSPaint?

 

It seems obvious that I am the hero of this story. Only one as universally-loved as I could accomplish such a task.

 

Wonderful. A backstory character is a stealth Sue.

 

Soon the hero died and left his empire to his closest friend.

 

To hold the empire together, that wonderful friend must also have been me!

 

As time went by, the world began to mend their friendships and once again the world was at peace.

 

The timeline here is confusing me. A hero united the whole world into his own empire, and only later did the world return to peace? There couldn't have been more wars occurring with no nations for the empire to war against.

 

However, as more time passed, bonds between nations started to crumble as political issues evolved within the nations. Join Lucas Avic, as he goes on the search for his father, and make friends along the way.

 

wait what

 

"Here's the history of the political wars in this world. Join this kid as he looks for his father."

 

At least he values his friends. Friends are very important. The power of friendship cannot be denied.

 

...Izzy? Don't you have an unreadable Digimon story to star in?

 

Eh, my friends in that story are safe for now, so there's no need for me to keep going there.

 

I thought your world was collapsing?

 

Don't underestimate my friendship.

 

The power of our love and friendship will unite the world!

 

If the world wants to be my friend, then I might consider saving it.

 

All the world wants to be my friend!

 

Have we seriously not even finished Chapter Plot yet?

 

As the political war rages on within the nations, Lucas may be the one to stop a second Grand War from happening.

 

Then Lucas must also be me!

 

Why would he want to stop another war? If he can keep his friends safe, then that should be enough.

 

There are an improbably high number of lone heroes settling long-standing, large-scale political disputes in this universe. I hate to complain about genre conventions, but each and every one of these lone awesome supermen who can awesomely unite the divided world absolutely screams Mary Sue to me, at least of some variety.

 

At least it seems like Chapter Plot was more Chapter Backstory than the usual "Here's a one-paragraph summary of Chapter 1" fare. That's something, I suppose.

 

And now we can move on to Chapter 1? No. Now we move on to Chapter 0. I hate this job.

 

Then give it to me! Captain Reviewer! Here to save the day!

 

No. Get out of here. Captain R, I'm cutting you from this series. Anten and Izzy are my guest commentators. You're unnecessary and are never getting any more appearances here again. Just like in your first appearance, you are... redundant, Captain.

 

Noooooooo!

 

On a small island named Kikko Island, near the mainlands of Radia, a young boy with blonde hair by the name of Lucas was windsurfing on the beautiful shining gem-like water. Water rushed up into the calm wind where it reflected the sunlight, causing a gem-like shine.

 

This water's description sounds a lot like... me!

 

Even the water is Suetiful now? By the time we get to Chapter 1, we had better have about five different Mary Sues fighting to the death over who the most perfect of them is. Still, considering that this is about as much environmental description as we get in an entire chapter of most Foe Fics, I guess I should be thankful for it, even if the description is merely of the "IT'S REALLY PRETTY K" variety.

 

Lucas' face showed signs of overflowing excitement and enthusiasm as he surfed the calm ocean waves that was brought in by the sea winds. "WHOOHOO!!!!! I sure picked a perfect day for doing this!!!!" Lucas exclaimed with clear signs of overflowing happiness in his voice.

 

And here we go again.

 

One of the cardinal rules of writing effectively is Show, Don't Tell. What does that mean? It means that, instead of explicitly stating things, you should show us what is happening and let us infer those things. Characters' emotions should not just be handed down from on high by the narrator; they should be revealed by the characters' words and actions.

 

For example, here we have a chap called Lucas windsurfing while saying "WHOOHOO!!!!!" and talking about what a perfect day it is (the day is a Mary Sue?) with too many exclamation points. That certainly sounds excited, enthusiastic, and happy. That's good. So why does the narrator then need to come in and tell us that Lucas is excited, enthusiastic, and happy? It's redundant, it's bad form, it's amateurish, and it does nothing but cheapen the work as a whole.

 

Of course, Lucas's spoken words have problems of their own - they suffer from the problem omnipresent in fan fiction of characters randomly speaking aloud to themselves for no other reason than to provide exposition to the audience, because authors forget that this is a verbal rather than an audiovisual medium and thus that we can be told what a character is thinking without having them randomly say it - but the Show, Don't Tell problem is far greater and far more fundamental to writing.

 

Back at the beach shore, a young girl with medium-length light brown hair arrived with a serene smile on her face. She looked at Lucas and her smile became more sincere.

 

So it was insincere before?

 

She's happy to see her friend. I can understand that. Friends are important.

 

"Hey Lucas! Your mom wants you home!" the girl yelled out as she waved at Lucas. Lucas turned around and noticed the girl. His eyes widened and Lucas gave an excited smile.

 

We just were told that his eyes widened, so we already know that he's excited. Rather than a standard problem of Telling Without Showing, you've got a more bizarre system working here - you Show, then you get insecure and lose confidence in your Showing so you decide to Tell as well just in case your audience is composed of coma patients.

 

"Hey! Hi there Abby! Alright, tell my mom I'll be home soon!" Lucas responded.

 

Suddenly, the calm wind began to pick up and Lucas' windsurf board started to swerve wildly. In a matter of mere moments, Lucas fell into the water. "Whoa!!!!" {SPLASH!!!}

 

This relates back to Lucas's unnatural instance of speaking aloud to himself, as the two have a single underlying cause:

 

You're not writing a written story.

 

Or, to be more precise, you are writing a written story, but you are writing it as if it were actually a transcription of a television show, writing down everything the camera would see and hear.

 

That's why you force Lucas to talk to himself when it's unnecessary - you forget that you don't have to do that because this isn't a television show in which we can only know what a camera in the area can hear and see. That's also why you're writing this sound effect as crudely as "{SPLASH!!!}" instead of narrating normally; it's because you're writing it as a television sound effect instead of writing it as you would in an actual novel.

 

Not all media are identical. Do not make the mistake of writing for one medium in the manner of another.

 

Abby was shocked by what had just occured. "Lucas! Are you alright?!"

 

This friendship drama is intense!

 

"Occurred" is properly spelled with two r's. That may sound like a minor complaint, but the fact that it was misspelled in the story's text shows that you definitely didn't even bother to run this through Microsoft Word's spellchecker before posting it. On top of not proofreading, you're not even doing the minimal expected amount of quality control. That makes the story much worse, and that also means that you don't care about this story to spend thirty seconds spellchecking it. And that's terrible.

 

Why isn't there anything in here that I can comment on?

 

I've been waffling on about the technical aspects of writing for a while. You're a Mary Sue. You don't really have much place in this section.

 

Izzy had stuff to say!

 

Izzy interjects random comments about these friends because friendship is all he cares about.

 

Izzy, can I have some of your lines? I love friendship too!

 

No.

 

But I want to talk!

 

I don't care.

 

Don't you care about me?

 

You're not my friend. I don't care about you at al-

 

ENOUGH!

 

Lucas' head resurfaced, followed by the top portion of his body. "Hehe, yeah I'm alright! Were you worried just right now?" Lucas asked as he gave a big grin towards Abby. Abby's face turned bright red as she showed signs of embarrassment.

 

Indeed, her face turned bright red as she showed signs of embarrassment. In the next chapter, she starts swinging a large cleaver around while chanting "I'm going to cut off your head" as she begins to show subtle signs of murderous insanity.

 

Come on, this isn't kindergarten; there's no need for Show and Tell.

 

"N-no! I wasn't concern for you, you dummy!

 

This is such a cookie-cutter tsundere line it's not even funny.

 

I was worried about how your parents would feel if you drowned!" Abby responded hesitantly, her face still red like a crimson-colored rose.

 

Brilliant metaphor. Her face was red, just like... something crimson!

 

"Hehe, don't worry Abby, I'm just messing with ya. I know how to swim after all." Lucas stated confidently as he scratched the back of his head. "{Sigh} Lucas, just becareful next time you idiot....." Abby said quietly to herself as he face became her normal color again.

 

More sound effects and a "becareful" typo that thirty seconds with MSWord would have fixed. This isn't improving.

 

As the sun set on the day, Lucas was seen sitting in his house snapping his fingers in an attempt to turn off a nearby lamp with his lightning powers. However, it seems his efforts were to no avail. "Tsch, stupid lamp...... Must be deffective or something......"

 

You only need three periods to make an ellipsis. Each additional period makes the story that much worse.

 

His powers are vastly inferior to mine! I would never fail like that!

 

Apparently Lucas isn't a Sue yet. I suppose he just gets stupid levels of power later in the story.

 

Lucas stated with one hand placed on his left cheek for support and his face showed signs of irritation.

 

I don't get it. You're Showing just fine - far better than most other Foe Fics. That's the hard part. But then you're insisting on Telling when it's completely unnecessary. Showing is the hard part, since you need to actually do something effectively, but Not Telling is easy - you just don't do explicit statements like this and let the Showing do the work. Why do you have the hard part down but insist on going out of your way to fail the easy part?

 

"Stop pouting like a little kid Lucas. You are thirteen now you know. Time to act your age." Lucas' mom stated as she was washing the dishes.

 

Here's something important to remember when writing: just because a thesaurus or any other list of synonyms says that two words mean pretty much the same thing doesn't mean that those two words are interchangeable. The word "stated" here feels like it was ripped from a list of synonyms for "said" and tossed in here even though it doesn't fit.

 

And this is where I quit.

 

No, seriously. I'm done here.

 

I normally choose stories to review whose first chapters aren't too long, since my commentaries are invariably far longer than the section of the story actually being reviewed, but even after all of this so far I'm not even close to being done with Chapter 0 - there are still a full nineteen paragraphs to go, and since this is one of those stories that idiotically refuses to add paragraph breaks between quotes from different characters (there's another problem that badly needs fixing - haven't you ever read an actual book?), those aren't invisibly short paragraphs either.

 

And while this story suffers from bad writing, what might be a series of Mary Sues, and a very generic plot (SPOILER ALERT: WATER FALLS, EVERYONE DIES, and Lucas goes off to find his dad like Chapter Plot said he would), it doesn't even benefit from "Trainwreck Syndrome" - it's bad, but it's not bad in the amazingly-bad way that Digimon restoration was bad, where it's awful but it's so incredibly awful that you can't take your eyes off it, but rather in a more mediocre form of badness that gives me no incentive not to turn my eyes away.

 

Besides, my work here is done. I gave the author valid writing advice about his recurring weaknesses so that he can improve in the future, so that's good. I threw in some allegedly-humorous shenanigans, so that's good. I got rid of the terrible character that was Captain R and introduced Izzy, so that's good. All in all, I've done everything that needs to be done here, so I'm fine with retiring now. My energy would be far better spent on Foe Fic #17 than on dragging this review out any further.

 

 

 

Incidentally, I could use feedback on what people think of the guest commentators.

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Phantom Roxas Enthusiast

Phantom Roxas

Posted
Posted

"Chapter 14"? D=

C'mon!

"For Teen Spirit"?

"Inappropriate 14s"?

 

Notice how it's immediately after the chapter entitled "A Series of Unfortunate Events..." while Chapter 14 has been changed to "...and Chapter 14" to make it clear. If you still haven't gotten it, it's a reference to the fact that the epilogue of the 13th and final book in the Series of Unfortunate Events series is actually called Chapter 14.

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Umbra Newbie

Umbra

Posted
Posted

Captain R is my personal favorite of the guest stars, but now that he's been written out of the series... A spinoff show, maybe?

 

And you should do the duel. There's one particular moment which should be incredibly hilarious, and could serve as a return for my second favorite recurring character, LASERHANDSMAN.

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bury the year Newbie

bury the year

Posted
Posted

"Chapter 14"? D=

C'mon!

"For Teen Spirit"?

"Inappropriate 14s"?

 

Notice how it's immediately after the chapter entitled "A Series of Unfortunate Events..." while Chapter 14 has been changed to "...and Chapter 14" to make it clear. If you still haven't gotten it' date=' it's a reference to the fact that the epilogue of the 13th and final book in the Series of Unfortunate Events series is actually called Chapter 14.

[/quote']

 

holyshit. How did I not realize that until now? Dx

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Phantom Roxas Enthusiast

Phantom Roxas

Posted
Posted

You don't know just how nerdy you just sounded' date=' do you?

[/quote']

 

Yes, and? There's an explanation for that, so why not give it?

 

I'm well aware of the potential answer "If you're can give explanations for something so easily, why didn't you do that in your own story?" I'll just abstain from answering.

 

I should point out a couple things in Ann 10. Because of the Mary Sue protagonist's name, I thought it would have been fun to just give a slight nod to LarryCotter's story. As for the fact that she slams the watch, that's a failure on the author's part for neglecting to point out that there's a switch that sticks out to press what you wish to shapeshift into.

 

So I'm guessing this is why you read things blind.

 

"Chapter 14"? D=

C'mon!

"For Teen Spirit"?

"Inappropriate 14s"?

 

Notice how it's immediately after the chapter entitled "A Series of Unfortunate Events..." while Chapter 14 has been changed to "...and Chapter 14" to make it clear. If you still haven't gotten it' date=' it's a reference to the fact that the epilogue of the 13th and final book in the Series of Unfortunate Events series is actually called Chapter 14.

[/quote']

 

holyshit. How did I not realize that until now? Dx

 

Did you also notice the possible reference in Captain R's speech color or the fact the font is that color because of his name?

 

Not to brag, but I find it funny that Hopeless Paradise is (one of) the best of the Foe Fics, and yet Digimon Restoration is the worst.

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