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

[GenzoTheHarpist]

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

[/quote']

 

He just reviewed "the duel", which is even worse than digimon restoration.

[Guest]

I've decided that I'm going to declare Season 1 of Foe Fiction to be over when I finish review #26. After that, I may take a break from Foe Fiction for a while; I may pursue other projects; I may start Season 2 immediately. I don't know. But since almost all of these are anime fanfics, a twenty-six episode season seems perfectly reasonable, and I want to have a season break so I can at least change that wall of bold text about how today is a day for Foe Fiction.

 

[spoiler=Young And Sweet, Only 17 - {The duel}]We turn now to The duel, a Yu-Gi-Oh! GX/5D's/something fanfic by blackhawk27.

 

Having retired to my remote hut in the forest far from Anten, Izzy, and especially Captain R, I am ready to review a terrible story without interruption. And we have an absolutely awful story ready for us today. Let's get this over with.

 

He was terribly

 

I've come back from the end of the commentary to add this comment, breaking my normal rules of blind reviewing, because I really have to say that the word "terribly" here is highly appropriate. Everything in this story happens terribly.

 

He was terribly exited to go to duel academy, he needed help and now he doesn’t know any more.

 

Passing over the numerous spelling and agreement errors in the first sentence alone (the verb tense bizarrely jumps from the past to the present at the end), I can't even figure out what this sentence is supposed to be saying. "He doesn't know any more"? Does that mean he knows nothing? Does that mean he knows everything? Does that mean he no longer needs help? Does that mean his excitement exitment will be fulfilled? Why does he need help, and what sort of help does he need, and what does all this have to do with his exitment anyhow that warrants putting them in the same sentence?

 

This is the first sentence of the story and it's already less well-written than Digimon restoration.

 

His brown air flowed in the windy breeze.

 

Full summary of all the description we will ever have of him in this story: HE HAS BROWN HAIR

 

Since he doesn't seem to be named, I shall refer to him as Jaden von Brownhair.

 

He was determined to win his entrance duel.

 

Don't make me invent a Captain O to comment on how obvious this statement is.

 

“You young lad, you must duel me now. Call me the professor young boy.” the instructor explained “Get into positions and put on this Duel disk.”

 

Apparently, Jaden von Brownhair is already at the entrance exams, which we know from the GX pilot are held in an indoor stadium. This makes me wonder what sort of "windy breeze" (as opposed to a non-windy breeze?) his hair was flowing in two sentences ago, since he obviously isn't actually outside.

 

Also, I don't care if Umbra beat me to the punch; I'm still going to refer to the instructor as The Professor Young Boy.

 

This seems like a good time to point out that, while this story does have paragraph breaks, there are no extra blank lines between paragraphs and the paragraphs begin with a tab indentation that doesn't actually show up on forums. This means that, while blackhawk29 did actually write this properly in MSWord, what he didn't do was hit the Preview button to make sure it would be displayed properly when it was actually posted. This is lazy, sloppy, and betrays an unforgivable lack of care.

 

“I’m sorry sir but I’m not wearing that, I have my own.” He lifted his arm and showed the Coal black duel disk with crimson card slots.

 

First: I love how "Coal" is capitalized. This story obviously subscribes to the Because I Say So school of capitalization.

 

Second: Aren't red and black traditionally villain colours?

 

Third: I'm sure having Jaden von Brownhair show up with a flashy-coloured Duel Disk of his own and refuse to use the lame official academy-provided Duel Disk is supposed to make him look awesome. Can you guess whether or not I'm impressed?

 

“If you mind can we start this duel” he asked.

 

No, you can't start the duel. The Professor Young Boy told you that you must duel him and instructed you to get into dueling position and told you to take a Duel Disk because he didn't want to duel you. And what's with this "if you mind" thing? Leaving aside the fact that the word "don't" has been dropped due to the author not actually being good at writing, why's Brownhair rudely saying that as if The Professor Young Boy is deliberately delaying?

 

“Okay Fine you may go first.” the instructor declared while walking into position.

 

Look, I'm sure your sixth-grade teacher told you that using the word "said" all the time was boring and handed you a list of synonyms for "said" to use in its place, but that doesn't mean you can pull random words from that list to plug into any random situation.

 

They both drew there five cards into there hands. Breton, the kids name, drew a sixth card. (Breton 8000 instructor 8000)

 

Wait, Jaden von Brownhair is named Breton? Why weren't we told his name before? If you're going to withhold his name from us at first, you need to reveal his name in a suitably dramatic fashion - he needs to introduce himself to someone by saying, "I'm Breton, and I'm going to be the King of Bicycle Playing Cards!", or have him defeat someone and then have them collapse and gasp, "Please... just tell me, who are you?" and have him be like "MY NAME IS BRETON" and end the chapter there. You don't withhold his name for - wait, how long? Are we seriously only at the end of the fourth tiny paragraph? Goodbye, my wrists - and then just have the narration say "oh btw hes breton k" as an aside. Why didn't you just call him Breton int he first sentence? The first sentence was too incomprehensible to tell us anything else, so at least that would have given it something.

 

This revelation of the protagonist's name is so stupid that I'm going to pretend it never happened and will continue to refer to him by the name I made up his true name of Jaden von Brownhair.

 

Duel Start

“I’ll summon Dragon Summoner Monk, in attack mode(atk/1100 def/200. Nest I’ll activate double summon and summon Boney Blader in Attack mode(atk/1500 def/200). Now I will Synchro them together and summon Moon-blade Dragon in attack mode (atk/2100 def/2500) Now for every Dark attributed monster in the grave yard my card gains 500 Atk.(2100 adds 1000 equals 3100) I set one card face down and end my turn.”

 

I've been trying not to mention the spelling and grammar too much, since it's kind of boring to complain about that, but since this is a duel and is therefore really boring, I am forced to re-emphasize how terrible this is. This goes far beyond a lack of proofreading; to produce something so consistently bad, the original typing of this passage must have been plagued by the monitor not actually being turned on and the keyboard's keys being unlabeled and partially scrambled.

 

Incidentally, if this is a GX Duel Academy fanfic, including Tuners and Synchros is a major continuity error.

 

The instructor now facing a dark dreadful monster, was afraid.

 

I was afraid because I had just realized what a terrible story I was in.

 

No, The Professor Young Boy, I'm not having any guest commentators in this review. Get out of here.

 

Gladly. I really don't want to be around for the next two sentences.

 

Good, now scram. Wait, what's that about the next-

 

So afraid he couldn’t think straight.

 

no

 

no

 

NO

 

That never happened.

 

The Professor Young Boy a professional Young Boy Professor with a Masters in Duelology. He duels for a living, teaches people to duel for a living, and has been dueling countless opponents his whole life - and, based on his status as a The Professor Young Boy, he's very good at dueling.

 

Now, here he is at the entrance examinations dueling applicants, and he's, um, scared out of his mind to the point where he can't think straight and thus can't duel properly because his opponent Summoned a big monster (a move, you will recall, in a card game that is not a Shadow Game and on which The Professor Young Boy has nothing staked) of DARK Attribute.

 

This is awful. This is unspeakably awful.

 

Never in any duel he has seen a combo worked out so well.

 

Look, I know anime duels don't follow the same standards as real-life duels and such, but is it really that impressive? He spent three cards to get one big monster out. That's weak by real-life standards; that happens once per episode in the actual anime series; and what makes this combo so awesome anyhow? He uses Double Summon to, um, double Summon and then Synchro Summons. It's hard to imagine a more basic combo than that. I mean, sure, the Synchro Monster got an ATK bonus from having the DARKs in the Graveyard, but again, why is it so astonishing that someone could have the brilliant brilliance to figure out that a monster that gains ATK from having DARKs in the Graveyard works best if you have DARKs in the Graveyard?

 

Actually, it's worse than that. If you scroll down to the bottom of the story and open the images of the custom cards used, you'll see that Dragon Summoner Monk can Special Summon itself without help if you control a Dragon-Type monsters. If Jaden von Brownhair had been smart enough to actually use it with, say, Dragon-Type monsters instead of the Warrior-Type Boney Blader (a Normal Monster with lame ATK, of course), he wouldn't even have needed Double Summon. Anyone who can read cards can see a far better combo that doesn't require Double Summon, but The Professor Young Boy is still amazed.

 

Bear in mind that The Professor Young Boy has dedicated his entire life to studying dueling, and that, despite the name I use for him, he's actually the one who calls Jaden von Brownhair a young boy, which means that he's fairly old (we're not given any description of him because this is a terrible story, but that seems like a reasonable conclusion) and has had a long life of studying dueling and he still hasn't seen anything better than "I use Double Summon to Summon twice. I put DARKs in my Graveyard so that my monster that gains ATK from DARKs in my Graveyard gains ATK."

 

Remember back in the Digimon restoration review when I asked you to try to come up with something worse than it? blackhawk29 has risen to the challenge and produced something far worse. Digimon restoration may have looked like it was typed by an epileptic cat dancing on a keyboard with a strobe light in its face and may have featured "OOPS WE ACCIDENTALLY LOST THE COSMIC KEYSTONE THAT STOPS THE WORLD FROM COLLAPSING MY BAD", but it still wasn't as terrible as this story, whose awful spelling and grammar actually impairs understanding ("He doesn't know any more"???) and in which every sentence makes me wonder if the author has ever had contact with human beings, let alone with the Yu-Gi-Oh! franchise. This is the worst.

 

And so, to continue tempting fate, I shall pose the same question once again: what is worse than this?

 

He drew his new card.

“I summon a monster in facedown defense position, with one card face down.” the instructor was so terrified he could barely hold his cards.

 

What is so terrifying!? It's a card game! It's not a shadow game! The Professor Young Boy doesn't have anything riding on victory! The cards can't hurt him (except perhaps by giving him paper cuts)! And this is an entrance examination where the applicant gets in if he wins, which means that The Professor Young Boy should be expecting to lose several of his duels if he wants Duel Academy to actually have any students this term (and thus if he wants to actually get paid).

 

But maybe the answer is hidden in the cards. Scrolling down to the custom card images reveals that Dragon Summoner Monk is not in fact a regular Tuner but a Dark Tuner. Why he can be used in a positive Synchro Summon is a mystery to me - the Moonblade Dragon lists 1 "Dark tuner" [sic] instead of 1 Tuner in its requirements, but Dark Tuners still don't work that way normally - so maybe Jaden von Brownhair is a Dark Signer or whatever and is radiating fear (despite this not being a Shadow Game) to sabotage his opponent. That's right: our protagonist is so bad at Duel Monsters that he needs to cheat by using magical fear powers to make The Professor Young Boy play badly because without doing that he can't pass an ordinary high school entrance exam. Or - and this is an infinitely more probable theory - maybe this story just sucks.

 

“Hahaha that won’t work I activate Sanguine Swamp,

 

Sanguine Swamp, for those who don't feel like turning to the Wiki, is a real Continuous Trap that prohibits the activation of Set Spells and Traps. The drawback is that Sanguine Swamp will self-destruct if the user at any time controls another Spell or Trap. Since I've seen the start of the next sentence, I know that this will be a problem.

 

Now I activate Pot of Greed

 

And suddenly Jaden von Brownhair controlled another Spell. Did Sanguine Swamp self-destruct? Of course not.

 

Also, the anime has obeyed the real-life banlist since sometime in the middle of GX. This story contains cards from 5D's. Pot of Greed has been quite rightly banned on the real-life banlist for the past several years. That makes Jaden von Brownhair, our protagonist, an even more blatant cheater than the actual Jaden and Yusei. And that's terrible.

 

and Play the spell card Mage power on my beast giving it 500 ATK for every spell and trap I control.

 

And suddenly Jaden von Brownhair controlled another Spell. Did Sanguine Swamp self-destruct? Of course not.

 

Now I play two cards face down

 

And suddenly Jaden von Brownhair controlled another two Spells or Traps. Did Sanguine Swamp self-destruct? Of course not.

 

and activate Fairy meteor Crush.

 

And suddenly Jaden von Brownhair controlled another Spell. Did Sanguine Swamp self-destruct? Of course not.

 

(Moon blade 3100 adds 2000 for 5100)

 

Or maybe it did. Fairy Meteor Crush, Mage Power, Sanguine Swamp, and two Set Spells and Traps total five Spells and Traps because 1+1+1+2=5 because that's how math works - incidentally, this sort of arithmetic is also useful if you're trying to calculate how many bullets remain in a gun after it has shot a chandelier, a door, Mr. Boddy, and a singing telegram - so Moonblade Dragon's ATK should have increased by 2500, not 2000. Since it only increased by 2000, perhaps Sanguine Swamp did self-destruct and we just weren't told about that because the author is a moron and Jaden von Brownhair only activated it when he was just going to destroy it anyhow because Jaden von Brownhair is a moron?

 

Now attack that defense position monster.” in seconds his monster was blown to smithereens and broke in millions of pieces. It had no effect because it was Thousand eyes idol the trap was supposed to save himm but he was wrong, and now the instructor took 5100 points of damage.

 

...except Sanguine Swamp was apparently preventing The Professor Young Boy from using his Trap, so it seems that it didn't self-destruct at all. Also, The Professor Young Boy uses Thousand-Eyes Idol because, as a Professor of Duelosophy who has studied card games for his whole life, The Professor Young Boy has no clue how to actually play this game.

 

It may sound odd that I'm going to complain about "himm" having that double-m at the end, considering how atrocious the typing in this whole story has been (not to mention everything else), but this is the first problem I've come across that actually should have been fixed by MSWord's spellchecker. Since all the previous misspelled actual words didn't produce wavy red underlines in my Firefox browser and the paragraph indents made it clear that this was previously typed in an actual word processor, I had assumed that blackhawk29 had at least run this through the MSWord spellchecker before posting it, but we now have proof that that isn't actually the case and that I'm an idiot for lending this pathetic excuse for an author even the slightest benefit of the doubt.

 

“Now I sacrifice my monster and discard my whole deck and you take my monsters Atk points as damage times 2 (Breton 8000 Instructor 8000-5100-10200=0)

 

Moonblade Dragon's effect would be almost strictly weaker if it simply read, "If you have four or more DARK monsters in your Graveyard, you win the duel". I know anime cards are frequently broken and whatnot, but this guy's effect is so unspeakably overpowered that I really must protest. Compare it to Dark Strike Fighter. Note that it is several times stronger than Dark Strike Fighter. Recall that Dark Strike Fighter broke an entire format over its knee before being banned at the first opportunity.

 

If you're trying to show off what a great duelist Jaden von Brownhair is, you're doing a lousy job. So far, he's won by cheating with banned cards, cheating with broken cards, cheating by ignoring cards' negative side-effects, and cheating with what I can only assume is fear-inducing magic, and a simple glance at his cards' text reveals that he could do far better if he were to actually read them. The Professor Young Boy's thoughts make it clear that we're supposed to be impressed, but right now the only thing I'm impressed with is my own endurance in reading through this monstrosity without downing a whole bottle of sleeping pills and then shooting myself in the face.

 

The dragon bursts a ball of fire at the instructor sending him flying straight into a wall crushing his back, obviously.

 

Because the ordinary holograms used in these duels can obviously do that. Obviously. In the canon, people may shield their faces from holographic flames, act like they're feeling attacks, or maybe even stumble and fall over backward while recoiling from what looks like an incoming attack, but if it's not a Shadow Game (which this wasn't, or the arena would be filled with dark purple smoke or whatever; Shadow Games aren't exactly subtle once Duel Monsters enters the series), it can't have such a drastic effect as sending someone flying several feet backwards into a wall and crushing him. That just doesn't work.

 

The instructor new this kid was dangerous,

 

Indeed, he is, in the sense that this kid is central to the existence of this story and this story is dangerous. I think blackhawk29 is actually a CIA operative who is using us as a preliminary test of his new enhanced interrogation technique, which consists of reading this story to people until they break down and confess.

 

but school rules promised a spot for who ever beat the instructor so he was allowed in.

 

I don't think entrance exam regulations trump concerns for the health and safety of everyone at the school. Letting Jaden von Brownhair, terrible-duelist-flagrant-cheater-and-dangerous-breaker-of-the-laws-of-physics, into Duel Academy seems sort of like telling a chemistry student he needs to stay and finish performing a titration when the whole bloody school is on fire.

 

I'm always big on the cardinal rule of Show, Don't Tell, so let's compare what this story Shows versus what this story Tells. We're Told - by The Professor Young Boy - that Jaden von Brownhair is an amazing duelist. We're Shown that he's an awful duelist who can only pass a routine entrance examination through several counts of flagrant cheating.

 

Which are we meant to believe? blackhawk29 wants us to believe that Jaden von Brownhair is an amazing duelist. blackhward29 himself believes that Jaden von Brownhair is an amazing duelist. But ever since I looked up and realized that the word "gullible" was not actually written on the ceiling, I've known better than to fall for such pathetic lies. The same cannot be said of this story's author, who is so busy lying to us that he's managed to fool himself.

 

I would like to conclude by comparing this story's positive and negative qualities.

 

On the negative side, the writing is atrocious (without so much as a proofread or spellcheck) to the point where not every sentence is understandable even after being scrutinized, the plot consists entirely of a single duel, we're expected to think that the protagonist is really cool and a great duelist when he's actually pretty lame and is awful at dueling, proper second-grade mathematics and card game rules are cast aside as unnecessary, no characterization or world-building is presented, the sole antagonist is an insane cowardly moron (despite his status as Professor) who isn't even given an actual name and whose thoughts make absolutely no sense whatsoever, and I'm sure I've forgotten plenty of other hideous problems in this mess.

 

And on the positive side... well, uh, I suppose it's mercifully short?

 

I wasn't joking about what I said in the middle of my review about this being worse than Digimon restoration and being the worst of all possible fanfics. The question I pose is not one to which I readily have an answer: What is worse than this?

 

 

 

When I first started with the guest commentators, they didn't work well because they mostly provided off-topic shenanigans instead of actually contributing to the review. With Sweet 16, I think I've managed to fix that, but I still mostly set them aside for Young And Sweet, Only 17 (if you don't get the title, I'm not explaining), though they will be returning in the future, albeit without as obnoxious roles as they've had int he past - except for Captain R, because he's not actually a character in any Foe Fic and thus his whole existence here makes no sense at all. Plus, coming up with words that start with R is hard, mainly because I write these things while I'm half-asleep and can't think straight.

[Pichu]

http://forum.yugiohcardmaker.net/thread-189057.html

one fanfic who has changed to a foefic....... the one never finished......

[Guest]

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

 

I mainly read things blind because' date=' if I give myself the ability to read the whole story in advance and coordinate my whole review properly, I will feel obligated to use that ability to make these reviews better, and that would make them a much larger time sink and I would get bored and stop writing these, and then everyone would lose, except for the people who read these things when I post them and are thus exposed to both my bad writing and the victims' worse writing, who would no longer suffer and thus win.

 

Besides, I doubt my quality would actually go up that much by not doing these blind, and blind reviews are more fun.

 

I do cheat a bit when I think it's worth it, though. Young And Sweet, Only 17 had my cheating explicitly pointed out at the start, but the "next two sentences" warning was also from me flagrantly breaking my own rules.

 

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?

 

The colour is indeed because of his name, but the red text is not an Umineko reference. It's just text that is also red.

 

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

[/quote']

 

Not anymore.

 

He just reviewed "the duel"' date=' which is even worse than digimon restoration.

[/quote']

 

And you posted this before I even copied my review into this topic. Stop causing time paradoxes; it could destroy the fabric of the universe (OOPS).

 

http://forum.yugiohcardmaker.net/thread-189057.html

one fanfic who has changed to a foefic....... the one never finished......

 

I saw your first post; there's no need to repeat it. When I need new material, I just skim through this topic, find links to stuff I haven't reviewed, and then review them. Believe me, I'll be reviewing your story soon; probably as #18, #19, #20.

[GenzoTheHarpist]

He just reviewed "the duel"' date=' which is even worse than digimon restoration.

[/quote']

 

And you posted this before I even copied my review into this topic. Stop causing time paradoxes; it could destroy the fabric of the universe (OOPS).

 

I actually saw it in the "the duel" topic itself, where it was posted a bit earlier.

[Phantom Roxas]

That...that was unspeakably bad.

 

Can Alex lend his appearance one time when something totally random happens at the end of the chapter?

 

But here's something terrible.

http://forum.yugiohcardmaker.net/thread-206538.html

[Yankee]

Can't think straight

 

OMG HE SUMMONED IT AGAINST YOU TO!?

[Jolta]

I liked the Part in Chapter 16 where the water was Suetiful. The guest appearances are hillarious. And yes, its true that she can alter her form and manipulate electricity.

 

Proffesor Young Boy? lol.

[Guest]

The two stories I've reviewed tonight are, in different ways, the two worst Foe Fics to date.

 

[spoiler=Seventeen, 18, Maids in Waiting - {Ash's Proposal}]We turn now to Ash's Proposal, a Pokémon story which is at least partially by -Pichu-.

 

Even though that big bold today-is-a-day-for-Foe-Fiction wall of text has always mentioned both warm and fuzzy relationship stories and bizarre McCoy/Snape pairings, this eighteenth installment is the first actual shipping fic being covered. But before we begin, there are two very big problems here.

 

The first is the idea that Ash could ever fall in love with anyone except me!

 

Indeed, this is an Ash/Dawn story, and we all know that Ash/Anten Ash/Misty is the one true pairing. This failure is inexcusable. The other failure, however, is even worse - possibly the worst single failure in any Foe Fic. You see, we're starting with:

 

Chapter 2: I Heard Nothing

 

"Crab Helmet, you paragon of excellence, why aren't we starting with Chapter 1?", you may ask. And the answer is simple.

 

Plagiarism! Unforgivable plagiarism! This villain copied Chapter 1 from a legitimate author and tried to pass it off as his own, only admitting to the theft and linking to the original story after being exposed as a thief and receiving significant pressure to give the original author due credit! This appalling action would get you expelled from any proper institution!

 

I'm not sure whether "legitimate" is really how I'd describe some guy on DeviantArt, but compared to a thief who won't even write his own stories, just about anyone is legitimate.

 

Anyhow, since -Pichu- was too lazy to write Chapter 1, I'm too lazy to read Chapter 1. A skim of the very start tells me that Ash and Dawn have been an unmarried couple for six years and are now living together, so there's been a big time skip, and that's all I'm going to find out. I didn't play Kingdom Hearts before riffing the Kingdom Hearts fanfics, and since this is practically a fanfic of someone else's fanfic (except with a complete inversion of the usual I Do Not Own disclaimer), I see no reason to read the original fanfic that -Pichu- is ripping off building off.

 

Part 1

 

The chapter is broken into two parts; I'll decide when I get to the end of Part 1 whether I feel like covering Part 2.

 

Piplup walked down the main hall and ran upstairs.

"Who said that?" Ash said after hearing Dawn's girlish yell.

 

Non-sequitur much? What do these two sentences have in common that warrants putting them together?

 

Anyhow, it feels really awkward having Ash respond to Dawn's - wait, "girlish yell"?

 

Hey, what's with this negatively-stereotyped portrayal of women? After we jumped forward 6+ years, Dawn's an adult women, so why is she making a "girlish yell"? I cannot accept this corrupted, sinful world that would produce this misogyny!

 

It's not often that we reach something that's not just bad but offensively bad in the very second sentence. Of course, it's also not often that we reach something that's not just bad but legally questionable before we even begin.

 

Anyhow, it feels really awkward having Ash respond to Dawn's, ahem, yell before we are even told that she yelled.

 

Incidentally, this story is composed almost entirely of individual sentences with single line breaks between them but is largely without blank lines separating anything resembling paragraphs. This does not resemble any actual formatting style known to those fluent in the English language and makes everything that much harder to read.

 

Ash walked up to the bedroom door. Dawn ran down to the living room so quick, she knocked Piplup down the stairs.

 

SLAPSTICK COMEDY GOLD

 

"Sorry Piplup." Dawn said as she sat down on her chair.

 

Dawn: "Oops! I accidentally kicked you down the stairs! My bad!"

Piplup: "Pippiplup piplup!" ["Someone, help! My skull is fractured!"]

 

Ash walked downstairs and turned on the T.V.

 

Piplup: "Piplup!" ["You're ignoring me too!? I've been mortally wounded!"]

 

They don't care about Piplup's plight because they're not close friends with Piplup.

 

"Did you yell upstairs?" Ash asked.

 

This is how Ash responds to hearing his girlfriend, with whom he is allegedly very much in love, yell - he waits a while, walks downstairs, turns on the television, and then finally asks her if she yelled. I obviously don't support Ash/Dawn, but this story seems like it doesn't either and is actively arguing that the two are a terrible couple.

 

"Uhhhh.. Well." Dawn barely said.

"What?"

 

That was pretty much my response to this whole story, except flatter, like this: "What."

 

"I did. I lost an... earring."

"Oh. Ok then."

 

Ash obviously doesn't care because Ash and Dawn aren't friends either.

 

Ash has no interest in Dawn's silly girlish problems because Ash, like -Pichu-, is a man and women are stupid and scream for stupid reasons like losing earrings because they're silly and aren't as great as men, though they are needed to be romantic partners for men so at least they have some valid use, even if they are just silly little girls pretending to be adults.

 

I hate this story.

 

Both wondered about the weird little talk.

 

Indeed, their talk was weird. There was no chemistry at all in it, and a shipping fic with no chemistry is a failure. I'm guessing that both of them are thinking about how awkward that exchange of words proves their relationship is. Maybe Ash is wondering how best to break up with Dawn and ask Misty out.

 

Piplup, Pikachu, and Grotle walked in.

"Pip, pip, piplup!" Piplup burled out.

 

["I need medical attention, quick! Call Nurse Joy!"]

 

"Pika?"

"Grot, Gort?"

Both Pikachu and Grotle stared at Piplup.

 

This dialogue is better than the dialogue between the lovebirds Ash and Dawn above. And that's terrible.

 

"What's wrong Piplup?" Dawn asked the little penguin PokeMon.

Piplup tugged Dawn's leg.

"Pip, lup, lup, lup!"

Piplup walked into the main hall and up the stairway. Dawn followed.

"What is it Piplup" Dawn told Piplup.

 

When I am teaching my sixth-grade English class how to write more eloquently - and it's not easy to get them to listen to me, since, despite being a Professor, I am also a Young Boy not much older than my students - one of the things I do is give them a sheet of paper listing many words that can be used instead of the word "said". This is to encourage them to make their diction more interesting by promoting variety and more interesting words instead of just using "said" a thousand times.

 

Some of my less intelligent pupils, however, do not seem to realize that these words have different uses and meanings, and just plug them into random locations without regard for where they apply. For example, they ignore that, although "told" is useful if one character is giving instructions or stating information, it is completely inappropriate to use it when a character is asking a question and requesting information.

 

Especially if they just asked exactly that same question three lines ago and are being unnecessarily redundant.

 

Ash closely followed Dawn and Piplup. Piplup walked into Ash and Dawn's bedroom and walked to the drawer

where Ash put the ring and notepad with his "chores".

 

I don't know what the ring, notepad, and "chores" are, since I skipped Chapter 1 and have no intention of actually reading it, but given that this story is titled "Ash's Proposal" and Ash and Dawn have been dating and living together for a long time, I'm guessing that Ash is planning to propose to Dawn or something. (And by "something", I mean Misty.)

 

"Oh no!" Ash thought. He rushed in and steped in front of the drawer.

 

Spelling: 0/10. Improvement needed. Proofread and spellcheck. See me after class.

 

"Ash move! Piplup wants to show me something." Dawn yelled at Ash.

 

I believe you mean "girlishly yelled".

 

"Uhhhh..Wanta make out?" Ash said.

 

As pathetic as Ash is at trying to make his saving throw here, it is consistent with how he acts under pressure in the actual anime when he's trying to hide something. Still, it's rather disappointing that the author has made Ash such a static character that, in the 6+ intervening years in which Ash has grown from a boy into a man, this has not changed at all.

 

Ash, how dare you take advantage of a girl's feelings for your own selfish purposes! This is unforgivable! I am the chosen guardian of earth, love, and justice! Ann 10! In the name of the moon, I will punish you!

 

"Uhhhh, no. I wanta see want Piplup wants to show me." Dawn said.

"Hey, look over there!" Ash yelled while poniting at Grotle. When Dawn turned her head,

 

See? Dawn fell for the ancient "LOOK OVER THERE" trick because she's a woman and women are all stupid.

 

Ash pulled opened the drawer and grabed his stuff for the night.

"It's only Grotle, Ash. Now Move!" Dawn said, now really mad.

"Ok, I will." Ash walked away and picked up Pikachu.

"Thank you." Dawn said to Ash.

 

This dialogue has so much quality. The chemistry omnipresent in this story's dialogue is what makes this such a great shipping fic.

 

Ash, then walked downstairs to the smallest bedroom which Dawn and Ash turned into a computer room.

 

That was just about the most random place to insert some exposition imaginable. Still, at least Ash's arrival there will shut up Vector's instructions that we FIND DA COMPUTER ROOM!

 

Dawn opened the drawer and looked around.

"Hmmmm.. I don't see anything Pip..." Dawn said as she spoted a recpit for a wedding ring.

"Oh my gosh!" Dawn said staring at the recpit.

 

Quite an understated reaction to virtually receiving a proposal.

 

She closed the drawer and walked out of the bedroom.

 

And that's how Piplup got its revenge on Ash and Dawn for ignoring its life-threatening injury by stirring up romantic drama.

 

Part 2

 

Oh, no. Not a chance. I'm done here and have no desire to go any further into this abomination.

 

It's not the hideous formatting. It's not the atrocious spelling and grammar. It's not the wrong pairing. It's not the wooden dialogue. It's not the complete lack of chemistry. It's not the most pathetic rom-com plot imaginable. In fact, it's not even the plagiarism, though that alone is an abominably great offense.

 

All of those are certainly major problems that plague this story, but they would just make it a mundanely bad story, like any other bad story. But stops me from reading further is infinitely more horrifying than those ordinary failures.

 

It's the misogyny.

 

In the brief section - only half a chapter - that I covered, -Pichu- went out of his way on three occasions to show that the grown-up Dawn is a silly little girl. And it's not just chance. The first time has her scream explicitly described as "girlish", and the second time is related to something primarily feminine. Dawn idiotically falling for the oldest trick in the book might have been excused were it not for the context that makes it clear that her foolishness is directly connected to her being female, and while Ash's attempts to deter Dawn are pathetic, they still work, and he doesn't do anything portrayed as being nearly as silly as her actions. There isn't any wiggle-room here; this is a clearly and consistently misogynist story.

 

Most Foe Fics leave me laughing at how stupid the author is, but this is different. Obviously this still has me laughing at how stupid -Pichu- is, but that's not all; it also has me hating -Pichu- personally, as what he has written has betrayed a disgusting form of bigotry and reveals him to be an absolutely horrible person.

 

So I'm not going to end by saying that -Pichu- is an idiot or a terrible writer, or that Ash's Proposal is a terrible story. Those things are all true, but that's not the main issue here. The main issue is that Ash's Proposal is offensive to anyone with the most remotely decent sensibilities, and -Pichu- is a hateful person who is somewhere beneath pond scum.

 

-Pichu-, you are a horrible, woman-hating thief, and the world would lose nothing of value if you were to drop dead today.

 

 

 

I posed my question "What is worse than this?" again, and in fewer than four hours I may already have my answer. But it's not the awesome-terrible that most Foe Fics are; it's the ugly-terrible that needs to be burned, immediately.

 

Can't think straight

 

OMG HE SUMMONED IT AGAINST YOU TO!?

 

The pain I felt from reading that story vastly outstrips any pain that The Professor Young Boy might have felt.

[Phantom Roxas]

Well, you finally got reported for Foe Fiction, Crabs. At least that's something.

[Yankee]

That was bad o.0 But "the duel" was so much worse. I feel like changing my name to "Jaden Von Brownhair"

[Lord Smeagle]

Do it, RL, it will be Hai-lair-ee-us.

 

But seriously, these are magnificently bad. I don't think mine is that sort of bad, more the kind of "meh" bad that isn't nearly as interesting to make fun of. But you're welcome to take a crack at if you want.

[Grunt Issun]

You need to review mine, its just a big wall of text with numourus grammer, and spelling mistakes, with many cliche things. you will eaisly be able to open hell upon it and call it the worst youve seen so far. enjoy...or, whatever the oppisite of enjoy is

---

ahh here we go http://forum.yugiohcardmaker.net/thread-203059.html

[Yankee]

http://forum.yugiohcardmaker.net/thread-206780.html

 

Please Crab, work your magic.

Thankfully, it's short ^_\\\

[Guest Ixigo]

Inb4 Pichu gets banned for plagiarism and sexist portrayal of female characters.

 

I loved the depiction of the extra cast in the last two chapters, Crab, you were right on the mark with your decision to make them more relevant to the review.

 

It is amusing how people still whore their fanfics in this thread for attention. What is not amusing is that they have a solid reason to do so, that is, as things stand, the fact that the worst works in YCM currently get the most thorough, while at the same time amusing, reviews - and every writer thrives on a thorough review, even those of the questionable kind, like most Foe Fiction authors. A situation where good fics (are there any of those?) are ignored and bad ones get thoroughly reviewed, while constructive from a certain standpoint, is certainly counter-productive.

 

It is unfortunate, yet true, that a good story can never produce the amount of hilarity out of a review as a bad one, so an opposite thread to this would make little sense - but something relevant should, perhaps, be considered.

[Pichu]

Ash' date=' how dare you take advantage of a girl's feelings for your own selfish purposes! This is unforgivable! I am the chosen guardian of earth, love, and justice! [b']Ann 10![/b] In the name of the moon, I will punish you!

lol.... just lol....

 

i love the jokes u put in but again you make me feel like sheet

[Brinolovania]

Quick, Pichu! Harness your s***y feeling and flame Crab! It's what he wants!

 

And my reaction to the fics:

[spoiler=]

:shock::shock::|:|:cry::cry::-x:-x

 

 

[Guest]

Well' date=' you finally got reported for Foe Fiction, Crabs. At least that's something.

[/quote']

 

And at the same time I got my first neg from a disgruntled author of a Foe Fic. Today is a day of milestone successes!

 

It is amusing how people still whore their fanfics in this thread for attention. What is not amusing is that they have a solid reason to do so' date=' that is, as things stand, the fact that the worst works in YCM currently get the most thorough, while at the same time amusing, reviews - and every writer thrives on a thorough review, even those of the questionable kind, like most Foe Fiction authors. A situation where good fics (are there any of those?) are ignored and bad ones get thoroughly reviewed, while constructive from a certain standpoint, is certainly counter-productive.

 

It is unfortunate, yet true, that a good story can never produce the amount of hilarity out of a review as a bad one, so an opposite thread to this would make little sense - but something relevant should, perhaps, be considered.

[/quote']

 

[spoiler=I'm going to spoiler this for length.]Is a thorough review really what writers want? I would not think so. It's certainly not what I want as a writer, and I don't think it's common to solely want that. What writers in my experience want is to be respected by a decent readerbase.

 

Foe Fiction obviously doesn't provide respect. But what it less obviously doesn't provide is readers.

 

Sure, people read through one chapter of the story here, albeit only in a broken-apart form and doing so largely for my commentary, but they don't stick around to read any more. The original topics of these stories don't gain any more posts after I've given my criticism; in fact, in many cases the stories just die off. Foe Fiction doesn't give any lasting fame, or readers; the terrible stories continue to be ignored, and nobody who sees them here goes on to read them.

 

Meanwhile, good stories tend to have a decent readerbase already. In evidence of this, consider my method of selecting stories to review here. I do follow links people post in this thread, but I also just browse through the Fan Fic forum list and enter random topics that don't have too high a post count. Now, bear in mind that I review these stories blind, so before I start reviewing I don't even know whether it will be bad or not - and I have never written a Foe Fiction review and then scrapped it because the story was too good. That means that my selection process is hitting terrible stories with extremely high consistency.

 

Why does entering topics with low post count consistently yield bad stories? Well, first, length of story is somewhat self-selecting; terrible authors are more likely to get bored and wander off after one chapter, whereas good authors are more likely to write a longer story, which inflates the post count (though this is by no means an absolute law, just a general correlation). But it's also because the few good stories here attract large readerbases through their quality, and those large readerbases produce large post counts that Foe Fics do not.

 

For example, Hopeless Paradise, the only actually-pretty-good story I've reviewed here (and for which I ignored the post count heuristic), has over three hundred posts despite being only six five chapters long. That averages to over a full page of posts on the maximum posts-per-page setting for each chapter. My Foe Fiction series is so far eighteen reviews long and still has fewer than one hundred and twenty posts, and actual Foe Fic topics tend to be far slower even than that. Quality leads to readers, readers lead to posts, and posts lead to me not wandering into a story - and I have consistently wandered into nothing good.

 

Ultimately, people write stories not because they want reviews but because they want to be read. I give reviews, but I don't give readers; only actual quality can do that.

 

Of course, if what people really want is indeed a line-by-line review insulting them every step of the way, then yes, I suppose Foe Fiction does reward terribleness, but I rather doubt that's actually seen as a goal here. People who ask me to review their stories do so because I actually do give decent advice for making stories suck less while I'm insulting them.

 

Some sort of Friend Fiction series that reviews would be interesting, and it would serve to not only review good stories for the people who care about reviews but also inflate their readerbases, since while people don't want to continue reading bad stories they will want to continue reading good ones. There are several reasons that I don't plan on doing it, though, some of which are also why I think it's a rather less viable idea in general.

 

First! I'm Crab Helmet. I insult stuff; it's what I do. Complimenting stuff is not what I do.

 

Second! Friend Fiction would be limited to stories that cover series with which the author is familiar. I don't know much of anything about Kingdom Hearts, Digimon, Ben 10, Rosario+Vampire, or Shaman King, but I can still make fun of stories based in their universes because bad stories often have terrible qualities that are obvious even without knowledge of the canon. Good stories aren't so easy. The whole point of writing fan fiction over original fiction is that you're building on the original author's work, so an otherwise well-written story can still be bad as a fanfic if it contradicts the actual canon story, derails characters' personalities, gets fundamental facts about the universe horribly wrong, and so on; as such, a Friend Fiction reviewer needs to actually understand the universes on which the Friend Fics are based so that he or she doesn't end up recommending stories that look fine on the surface if you don't know that Ron isn't supposed to be a Death Eater and Kaiba doesn't love friendship. This means that either good stories in universes with which the Friend Fiction author is not familiar must be ignored or bad stories in universes with which the Friend Fiction author is not familiar may be recommended. Neither of these is desirable.

 

Third! Foe Fiction can be done blind because randomly selecting a bad fanfic on YCM is like firing a grenade launcher while standing in the middle of a five-foot-by-five-foot greenhouse and breaking glass. Friend Fiction isn't so easy to find, so reviews by necessity cannot be blind, which makes them much more time-consuming to write and thus not my cup of tea - and that's not even counting the time spent on bad fanfics while trying to find a good one to recommend.

 

Fourth! There are two sources of entertainment that make Foe Fiction worth reading. One is making fun of the story by pointing out how terrible it is. Obviously, that's not possible in Friend Fiction. The other is shenanigans of mine that aren't really direct criticisms. This is already more minor, as the negative reception to the original incarnations of guest commentators makes clear, and it also doesn't transfer well to Friend Fiction, since silliness can make a bad story more bearable but is an unwanted distraction from a good story. That just leaves the new feature of Friend Fiction - complimenting it - which is certainly worthwhile and necessary for a review, but it's also not terribly entertaining to read someone talking about how good something is.

 

Fifth! A line-by-line review doesn't seem like it would work as well for a good story as for a bad one. In a bad story, there are countless specific instances of things that don't make sense, dialogue and sentences that go *clunk*, but while a good story may contain some clever lines, the positive qualities are harder to tie down to specific points; it tends to more be an overall high level of quality that resonates through the whole story and its good plot.

 

Sixth! ycm haz no good fanfics lololol

 

Still, if anyone wants to do positive reviews of good stories, go ahead and do it; I'm not going to stop you. And, in fact, I know that Weather Report has already reviewed some stories positively. However, I'm not going to do it myself and I don't think it's that interesting idea, so I'm going to be staying here with these awful stories.

 

 

 

i love the jokes u put in but again you make me feel like s***

 

I'm glad to hear I was able to help you become more attuned to your true nature.

[Headmaster Monokuma]

Wow, just wow. These are brilliant. Well, your part is anyway. I can't say I haven't found a single one of these not entertaining. Keep up the great work.

[Guest]

And now we have another Pokémon Foe Fic.

 

[spoiler=Hey 19 - {Spaceon, The new Eevee}]Hopefully Spaceon, The new Eevee, a Pokémon story by ~Wynn~, will be less unspeakably awful than the two record-shatteringly unreadable and offensive tales we had yesterday.

 

When ~Wynn~ linked me here to review this, he warned me in advance that this story was a single wall of text without any paragraph breaks, and that it was plagued by spelling and grammar errors and numerous clichés. "Why," you might ask, "would ~Wynn~ link someone as devilishly beautiful as Crab Helmet here knowing about these errors instead of just fixing these problems directly when he knew they existed and could have solved many of them with a few line breaks and a run through MSWord's spellchecker? Because ~Wynn~ is a moron who cares so little about his story that he's not even willing to do that much.

 

When I grade my sixth-grade English students' final drafts, I normally deduct one point for each spelling mistake. It is vital that students proofread their papers in order to correct their own spelling. In this instance, I shall generously start ~Wynn~ off with a perfect score and will deduct no points for grammar or anything else; I shall only deal with spelling. We shall see what grade this student can earn under these unusually generous circumstances; it begins at 100%.

 

Let's begin.

 

chapter 1: We join our hero...

 

"Its

 

-1. 99%.

 

"Its finnaly

 

-1. 98%.

 

"Its finnaly here

 

PERFORMING FOR YOU

 

...The day I become....A POKEMON TRAINER!!!" Jake said to himself

 

We're not even finished the first sentence and we already have a character talking to himself out loud for no reason other than to allow the audience to hear his words and thus give them information that could have been provided in a far more sensible fashion if ~Wynn~ had remembered that a verbal story can reveal characters' thoughts far more easily than an audiovisual story in which we only know what an actual camera sees and hears.

 

And no, I won't deduct points for not capitalizing and failing to include the accent mark in Pokémon. I'm a generous Professor.

 

as he got ready to see professer

 

This is tantamount to misspelling my name. -1. 97%.

 

Elm and get his first pokemon. Jake unlike most trainers, waited till

 

-1. 96%.

 

he was 12, to get his first pokemon, he wanted to know he was ready.

 

I love how this sentence has countless commas thrown in at random places and yet it still somehow manages to miss a spot - between "Jake" and "unlike" - where a comma is necessary.

 

I'm pretty sure this is supposed to indicate to us that Jake is a mature and sensible person who doesn't rush into things unprepared like all those silly ten-year-olds. Instead, what it indicates to us is that Jake is either stupid or a coward, waiting two whole extra years before being willing and able what everyone else in this entire universe does when they're ten years old. That's like someone in our universe taking a two-year break doing nothing after elementary school before finally deciding that they're ready to start middle school or junior high school. It's not something admirable; it makes Jake look retarded.

 

"Ok, gotta get to the lab, get my pokemon, and set out to my first gym."

 

When I started my successful quest to become the greatest Pokémon trainer in history, the first thing I did was run off to fight in a gym without wasting time with things like training. Brock fell in love with me and just gave me the badge without a fight!

 

It's especially bad because we were just told that Jake has waited two extra years to become a trainer because he wasn't sure that he was ready. But now, before he's even received his first Pokémon, he's decided that the very first thing he will do as a trainer is run off to challenge a Gym Leader. That's right: He wasn't willing to do for two years what everyone else in the world does at age ten, but he's still certain that he'll be fine immediately challenging a Gym Leader as soon as he starts his quest.

 

Jake said, as he was walking down the stairs.

 

See, this is why I don't care about strangers. They're all weird people who talk to themselves for no reason.

 

"Hey mom im

 

-1. 95%.

 

going to get my pokemon now" Jake told his mom who was watching the TV "Ok,

 

-1. 94%.

 

stay out of trouble" She said, not even looking back from the TV.

 

Her retarded son is finally embarking on a globe-trotting quest, and she barely even notices.

 

Maybe Jake's stupidity was caused by a lack of appropriate social contact due to parental neglect.

 

Jake walked out the door.

 

This sentence sucks.

 

It may seem odd for me to complain about this sentence, of all things. After all, its spelling and grammar are perfect. It's something that it makes perfect sense for the character to be doing - in fact, it's something that the character absolutely has to do. It's not redundant, since we haven't been told that he walked out the door before, and this isn't the sort of thing to which Show, Don't Tell applies. So what could I possibly be objecting to here?

 

It's a pointless sentence and what it says isn't interesting.

 

The sentence stands alone as a simple sentence that doesn't tell us anything worth knowing. We didn't come here to read the epic tale of Jake The Guy Who Walks Through Doors; we came here to read the epic tale of Jake The Pokémon Master and "Spaceon, The new Eevee". This sentence isn't interesting and tells us nothing worth knowing.

 

I'd accept a comment that he's walking out the door if it were part of a larger sentence that actually served to develop the plot, or the setting, or the characters, or anything else, and I'd accept a sentence saying that he's walking out the door if the circumstances surrounding him walking through the door made it more relevant, like if the door were a magic portal to another dimension or if he were being chased by an enraged Scyther; however, as it is the entire sentence has no real value to us.

 

If you do feel the need to give such precise detail characters' mundane actions, don't do so through short sentences that tell us nothing worth knowing; include it as part of a longer sentence where the rest of the sentence is interesting.

 

As he walked twords

 

-1. 93%.

 

the lab, he noticed his friend, Baylee. "Hey, Baylee" Jake hollered to her. "Oh hi, Jake, I just got my first pokemon," Baylee told Jake.

 

I wonder if Baylee is another Slowpoke who waited two extra years.

 

Baylee was a very energetic girl,

 

We haven't seen any evidence of this so far - in fact, the way the line "'Oh hi, Jake, I just got my first pokemon,' Baylee told Jake." is written doesn't make her sound energetic at all - but we're still forced to accept it as truth because the narrator has handed it down from on high. Seriously, people, Showing is infinitely better than Telling in the same way that a dinner consisting of steak and mashed potatoes are infinitely better than a dinner consisting of mud. (Vegetarians, I don't want to hear it.)

 

she wore very vibrant colors, had long, black hair, and had flowers in her hair.

 

As you can tell, the truth is that I'm actually Baylee.

 

"Oh really what did you get?" Jake asked her. "Chikorita" Baylee answered cheerfully.

 

You can tell that she's energetic by the way she only speaks when directly addressed and only provides strict factual answers to questions with no further elaboration.

 

"How fitting," Jake mumbled.

 

YOU FIGHT LIKE A COW

 

"Are you going to get your pokemon today?" Baylee asked. "Yeah, And I know just who to pick" Jake answered.

 

What, no -1?

 

Where's the spelling mistake?

 

The "m" at the end of "whom" was dropped.

 

That's a grammar mistake. He used the wrong word.

 

It could be seen as a misspelling of the right word.

 

Come on, ~Wynn~ is doing badly enough already. Besides, the necessity of "whom" in the English language is a controversial issue disputed among academics, with the use of "who" as an object becoming increasingly accepted in-

 

"Im

 

...but that right there actually is a misspelling. -1. 92%.

 

pretty sure I already know to"

 

And so's that. -1. 91%.

 

Baylee told him, but Jake was already storming off

 

"Storming off"? Why on earth is he "storming off"? He's just been briefly chatting with his friend before embarking on his world-spanning adventure, and his friend didn't say anything that should upset pretty much anyone.

 

No even I would be unhappy with that.

 

So why is he "storming off"? Is he so petty that he's angry about Baylee getting her Pokémon before he did, despite her apparently not taking the one that he wanted and him voluntarily starting two years late anyhow?

 

twords

 

And that too. -1. 90%.

 

the lab. "He is always in such a rush..." Baylee sighed.

 

The allegedly-energetic girl is complaining about him being in a rush? Really?

 

When bad writers decide to Tell instead of Showing, the fact that they're just stating things to be aspects of a character instead of proving them to be aspects of the character often leads them to forget that they actually made those things aspects of the character, producing scenarios like these where the explicit statements of "fact" are contradicted.

 

Jake burst through the doors "Im

 

-1. 89%.

 

here" Jake said panting.

 

Why is he panting? Does ~Wynn~ think "stormed off" means "ran off"? It... doesn't. At all.

 

"Ahh good" Prof. Elm said as he looked at Jake. "So your

 

-1. 88%.

 

finnaly

 

-1. 87%.

 

Someday, I'll do a review that consists of nothing but me interjecting the word "PROOFREADING" after every spelling mistake. This isn't even the worst spelling and grammar I've seen in a Foe Fic, and The Professor Young Boy's interruptions are still incredibly annoying in their frequency. Seriously, people, proofread your stupid stories! And if you're too thick to do that, at least take the thirty seconds to run an MSWord spellcheck to remove some of the more egregious errors. If you can't do that, then don't write the fanfic! You're not good at it! You're too lazy to do it! You're too stupid to do it! You can't do it properly at all!

 

"So your finnaly here

 

PERFORMING FOR YOU

 

If my jokes are repetitive, it's because the awful writing they're responding to is also repetitive.

 

to get your pokemon." Prof. Elm said. "Yeah, so where are they?" Jake asked. "Right here," Elm answered and brought out a tray with 2

 

Oh, come on! The word "two" is three 3 letters long! It would have taken you a tenth 1/10 1 10th of a second to type the two 2 extra characters, and it would have stopped the sentence from looking so awful. If that's too much effort for you, stop posting your terrible stories. In fact, stop writing your terrible stories.

 

pokeballs. "ahh here we go" Jake said as he picked a pokeball up. "Ahh, so she was right." Elm noticed. "Who was right?" Jake asked. "Baylee,

 

I'm always right!

 

Anten, you're not Baylee.

 

We're both absolutely perfect female characters who are full of love, energy, and skill. We are the same!

 

she knew which pokemon you would choose from the begining." Elm answered.

 

I'm picturing Baylee as some sort of manipulative chessmaster, sitting with her white-gloved hands folded in front of her mouth and wearing shiny orange glasses, then taking potato chips and eating them before announcing that she knew not only which Pokémon Jake would choose but also that the only ones who can kill are those who are prepared to be killed.

 

"WHAT!?!?! Am I really that predictible?"

 

-1. 86%.

 

I love how we're told that everyone knew which Pokémon Jake would choose because it's that obvious, but we really have no clue which it is. That goes a long way to highlight how poorly Jake has been characterized here.

 

Jake asked. "Ummm" Elm said slowly. "Whatever" Jake said as he left.

 

Note to aspiring comedic writers: "Ummm" and "Whatever" are not jokes.

 

As soon as he got out, Baylee was waiting for him.

 

She knew he would walk out of the laboratory by the front door instead of sneaking out via the sewers. She really is a chessmaster.

 

"Hi." She said cheerfully. "Oh, hi bay." Jake said. "So you wanna battle?" She asked.

 

This is even worse dialogue than an ordinary, stereotypically-bad Yu-Gi-Oh! fanfic. Even those don't usually fall as low as "Hi", "Hi", "Battle", though they do come close.

 

"umm...I dont

 

-1. 85%.

 

kn-" Jake started saying but Baylee cut him off "GO CHIKORITA!!!" Baylee shouted and threw the pokeball, sending out Chikorita. "Chika!" The little pokemon cheered. "I dont

 

-1. 84%.

 

have time for this, I gotta go." Jake said impatiantly, and ran off.

 

-1. 83%.

 

We were told back in the very second sentence of the story that Jake waited two whole years longer than necessary to be absolutely certain that he would be completely ready to do what every ten-year-old in the world does. Ever since then, however, he's been ridiculously impatient, has been criticized for being in too much of a rush by a supposedly-energetic girl, and is now actively avoiding five minutes of actual training with a friend because he can't afford to lose a whole five minutes (despite previously sacrificing two years) because he wants to run off and fight a Gym Leader without ever letting his unspecified Pokémon out beforehand or doing any training whatsoever to actually become ready for the gym.

 

I have recently been advised by my lawyers that it's against the rules to call people idiots for writing idiotically bad fanfics that only an idiot would be stupid enough to write so badly. Because of that, I'm just going to say that this makes it clear that ~Wynn~ is a LLAMA LLAMA CHEESECAKE LLAMA TABLET BRICK POTATO LLAMA.

 

"HEY YOU GET BACK HERE, YOU OWE ME A BATTLE!!!" Baylee started shouting.

 

Misty: "At least he doesn't owe you a bike, unlike some people."

Ash: *runs*

 

"ahh whats the use, he's so stuborn."

 

-1. 82%.

 

Baylee sighed "Chiko" Chikorita sighed with her. "Wait a minute, I know" Baylee jumped.

 

I always have a plan because I'm the best!

 

"Come on Chikorita, were folowing

 

-1. 81%.

 

him" Baylee told her pokemon "Chikorita" Chikorita smiled. Baylee and chikorita hopped in a tree on the path that Jake was taking. They hopped from tree, to tree, following him.

 

I seriously can't imagine this being faster or less noisy than running, but it's happened occasionally in the anime, so I'll let it slide.

 

Occasionaly,

 

-1. 80%.

 

Jake looked up suspiciously, but saw nothing. Then there was a GIANT flash of blackness in the city ahead.

 

A flash of... blackness? How exactly does that work?

 

"WAAH!!" Baylee screamed as she fell out of the tree. "OW!" she said as she landed on the ground, on her bottom.

 

That never happened. That couldn't possibly happen to me!"

 

It's a mildly good thing that scream wasn't described as "girlish". That would have very slightly displeased me.

 

"Baylee?" Jake said Were you following me?" Jake asked.

 

Jake is a genius.

 

Blushing, Baylee admited

 

-1. 79%.

 

she was following him. "BUT ONLY BECAUSE YOU DIDNT

 

-1. 78%.

 

BATTLE ME!!" she shouted at him "So dont

 

-1. 77%.

 

get the wrong idea." she told him.

 

Blushing? "Don't dont get the wrong idea"? Don't tell me Baylee's going to be a generic tsundere.

 

"Alright I'll battle you. but as soon as thats

 

-1. 76%.

 

over, I need to see what that explosion was" Jake said

 

Jake has a choice between having a friendly battle with his friend or finding out why an entire city apparently just exploded and potentially lending medical help to the untold numbers of people he doesn't know who were injured in the mysterious explosion. He clearly makes the correct choice. I like this guy.

 

Next time: Baylee, and Jake duke it out with there starter pokemon, and Jake goes to invesigate

 

-1. 75%.

 

the explosion, little does he know a dark force is lurking behind it, a VERY dark force,

 

There was a giant flash of pure darkness (somehow). Of course there's a dark force behind it. This isn't that complicated.

 

tune in next time to SPACEON!!! THE NEW EEVEE!!!!

 

OR DON'T!!!!

 

Before I give my final conclusion, The Professor Young Boy, what grade has ~Wynn~ earned?

 

75%. There were twenty-five spelling mistakes.

 

And that's a C, right?

 

I use a seven-point scale, so it's actually a D.

 

I see. And this was a more forgiving version of grading than you normally use on your sixth-grade students?

 

Yes. I was using a base grade of 100%, on the assumption that everything else in the story was absolutely perfect.

 

And it wasn't. Oh, no, it definitely wasn't. The grammar was actually worse than the spelling, the characters would have been unlikable had the characterization not been too laughably inconsistent for there to be anything solid to dislike, paragraph breaks were non-existent, the plot was a completely generic "I STARTS MAH POKEYMAN JORNEY" affair, with the only deviations (like the twelve-years-old thing) making the story worse.

 

The worst part is that ~Wynn~ knew a lot of these problems existed in advance. Did he decide to fix them? Did he think making obvious improvements to his story would be a good idea? Oh, no. Of course not. Instead, he called me in to tell him what was wrong with his story when he already knew several things that were wrong with it that could easily have been rectified - not everything wrong with it, of course, since he clearly didn't have a clue why things like the two-year-delay-thing were stupid, but a lot of obvious things - because he's an idiot. (DEAR LAWYERS: What makes you idiots think I care about the rules?)

 

 

 

Apparently, my review of -Pichu-'s sexist story was reported for violating the Jack Witt Clause or something. It seems that I can spend eighteen reviews calling everyone an idiot, but it's not considered flaming until I mention that plagiarizing might be a bad thing and that misogyny is not a desirable attribute. YCM, you never cease to amaze me.

[Lord Smeagle]

Nah, I think it had more to do with the fact that the rest of YCM was ready to take their foeficcin' like grownups, but the plagiarizing misogynist ALSO fails to take criticism well. Or perhaps it was that you told him it would be fine if he just dropped dead...yeah, maybe that was it. *shrug* But if anyone needed to be Foe Fic'd, it was that guy. I'd counter-rep you, but I'm sure enough people already did that and I'm out for the day.

[Guest Ixigo]

[spoiler=Length]

Because I like breaking down a post and replying quote-by-quote.

 

Is a thorough review really what writers want? I would not think so. It's certainly not what I want as a writer' date=' and I don't think it's common to solely want that. What writers in my experience want is to be respected by a decent readerbase.[/quote']

 

That is true, of course, but it generally applies to the more advanced, established writer base, those who are around, or have already crossed, the "first story published or worth publishing" step (and no, this doesn't exclusively mean professional authors in any form). Those who have not yet reached that step (and are making any form of conscious effort to reach it) are thriving on reviews and comments. The real skill a writer needs to obtain is seeing his story through his readers' eyes, and a thorough, decent review will generally accomplish that. I'd value a reader who would post a review after every chapter half as long as a Foefic review much more than ten readers, each of whom would just say "hey, this story is awesome continue it plz!". Foefic provides exactly the kind of feedback a writer needs to hear - no matter how insulting it may sound, it's still thorough, spot-on feedback, extremely valuable to the author.

 

Foe Fiction obviously doesn't provide respect. But what it less obviously doesn't provide is readers.

 

Sure' date=' people read through one chapter of the story here, albeit only in a broken-apart form and doing so largely for my commentary, but they don't stick around to read any more. The original topics of these stories don't gain any more posts after I've given my criticism; in fact, in many cases the stories just die off. Foe Fiction doesn't give any lasting fame, or readers; the terrible stories continue to be ignored, and nobody who sees them here goes on to read them.[/quote']

 

As I said, what is more (or at least equally) important isn't the number of readers, but the number of reviewers. I'd easily trade off ten dedicated readers (which is just about the maximum I'd expect from the site, though it's been ages since I've posted a story here so the norm might have changed) who would only post an approving two-line comment after each chapter with one person that could review my story even half as thoroughly as you review these ones. Considering the fact that Foe Fiction stories would never get any significant readers on their own anyway, you can see why their authors would at least want them featured here. I'm willing to bet that any Foe Fiction author who read your review and took it seriously (rather than going through it for the laughs) has learned something valuable about writing (like the fact that they should stop writing).

 

Meanwhile' date=' good stories tend to have a decent readerbase already. In evidence of this, consider my method of selecting stories to review here. I do follow links people post in this thread, but I also just browse through the Fan Fic forum list and enter random topics that don't have too high a post count. Now, bear in mind that I review these stories blind, so before I start reviewing I don't even know whether it will be bad or not - and I have never written a Foe Fiction review and then scrapped it because the story was too good. That means that my selection process is hitting terrible stories with extremely high consistency.[/quote']

 

That was actually my way of selecting which stories to read - just choose the ones with the largest numbers of posts. After following that method and stumbling across some really terrible ones, I more or less gave up reading stories here on YCM apart from those written by people I knew as skilled authors from the past. But that's irrelevant here. I agree that good stories already pick up a few readers, but I doubt that number would be satisfactory for the author, and being featured in a compilation similar to this would surely attract more - but the point here isn't expanding the reader base, it's breaking down the story and analyzing it, because even the best of stories I've seen here could use a lot of improvement. With terrible stories you pretty much have to go through the basic flaws every time - grammar, spelling, basic characterization, dull narration, (lack of) description, blunt exposition... with good ones, there are way more advanced topics one can cover.

 

Why does entering topics with low post count consistently yield bad stories? Well' date=' first, length of story is somewhat self-selecting; terrible authors are more likely to get bored and wander off after one chapter, whereas good authors are more likely to write a longer story, which inflates the post count (though this is by no means an absolute law, just a general correlation). But it's also because the few good stories here attract large readerbases through their quality, and those large readerbases produce large post counts that Foe Fics do not.

 

For example, Hopeless Paradise, the only actually-pretty-good story I've reviewed here (and for which I ignored the post count heuristic), has over three hundred posts despite being only [s']six[/s] five chapters long. That averages to over a full page of posts on the maximum posts-per-page setting for each chapter. My Foe Fiction series is so far eighteen reviews long and still has fewer than one hundred and twenty posts, and actual Foe Fic topics tend to be far slower even than that. Quality leads to readers, readers lead to posts, and posts lead to me not wandering into a story - and I have consistently wandered into nothing good.

 

Ultimately, people write stories not because they want reviews but because they want to be read. I give reviews, but I don't give readers; only actual quality can do that.

 

I suppose the response to this has already been summed up in my previous comments. I'll also say that, generally, it's not so much the quality of the story that yields readers, but the quality of the author. Let's say two people decide to write a Yu-Gi-Oh! fanfic (which is reasonable as this is a site about Yu-Gi-Oh!, and, though rare, a person joining the forum in order to post his story could happen). One of them is Umbra, who is already an established author around here. The other one is a two-star member noone's ever heard of. I enter the Fan Fic section and see both their threads. Their titles invariably contain "Yu-Gi-Oh!" and some form of tag line. Now, if I'm on the lookout for a random story to read I'd middle-click that guy's thread into a new tab, and go read Umbra's story - once I was done with that, I might jump to the other one to give it a read. If I want to read a decent story and review it, though, I wouldn't even bother with the second. Respected, established authors will gain solid reader bases much faster than new ones will, which can be extremely frustrating and eventually cause them to give up posting on this site.

 

However, let's say I enter the "Crab Helmet presents Friend Fiction!" thread. I see a new chapter is up, so I'm immediately hooked because I know I'll be reading something at least fairly above average. I read Foe Fiction mostly to get a good laugh out of the review or get down some motivation when I have writer's block (the most common cause of which being: oh my god, what I'm writing sucks!, the most common solution to which being: well, at least I'm not that bad!) or something along those lines. But in a similar thread for good stories, while no doubt the review would also be amusing, it would also provide readers with a good, hand-picked story to read, and - at least new - authors with a larger reader base and valuable advice.

 

Of course' date=' if what people really want is indeed a line-by-line review insulting them every step of the way, then yes, I suppose Foe Fiction does reward terribleness, but I rather doubt that's actually seen as a goal here. People who ask me to review their stories do so because I actually do give decent advice for making stories suck less while I'm insulting them.[/quote']

 

I will not even bother getting into the mentality of people who write such terrible stories, but while you do have a point, the concept also applies to people who write good (by YCM standards) fiction. Even if there's nowhere near as much - hilarious - criticism to be provided, that doesn't mean it would be any less valuable. If a bad writer can become a decent writer through criticism and feedback, a good writer can become a great writer.

 

Some sort of Friend Fiction series that reviews would be interesting' date=' and it would serve to not only review good stories for the people who care about reviews but also inflate their readerbases, since while people don't want to continue reading bad stories they will want to continue reading good ones. There are several reasons that I don't plan on doing it, though, some of which are also why I think it's a rather less viable idea in general.

 

First! I'm Crab Helmet. I insult stuff; it's what I do. Complimenting stuff is not what I do.

 

Second! Friend Fiction would be limited to stories that cover series with which the author is familiar. I don't know much of anything about Kingdom Hearts, Digimon, Ben 10, Rosario+Vampire, or Shaman King, but I can still make fun of stories based in their universes because bad stories often have terrible qualities that are obvious even without knowledge of the canon. Good stories aren't so easy. The whole point of writing fan fiction over original fiction is that you're building on the original author's work, so an otherwise well-written story can still be bad as a fanfic if it contradicts the actual canon story, derails characters' personalities, gets fundamental facts about the universe horribly wrong, and so on; as such, a Friend Fiction reviewer needs to actually understand the universes on which the Friend Fics are based so that he or she doesn't end up recommending stories that look fine on the surface if you don't know that Ron isn't supposed to be a Death Eater and Kaiba doesn't love friendship. This means that either good stories in universes with which the Friend Fiction author is not familiar must be ignored or bad stories in universes with which the Friend Fiction author is not familiar may be recommended. Neither of these is desirable.

 

Third! Foe Fiction can be done blind because randomly selecting a bad fanfic on YCM is like firing a grenade launcher while standing in the middle of a five-foot-by-five-foot greenhouse and breaking glass. Friend Fiction isn't so easy to find, so reviews by necessity cannot be blind, which makes them much more time-consuming to write and thus not my cup of tea - and that's not even counting the time spent on bad fanfics while trying to find a good one to recommend.

 

Fourth! There are two sources of entertainment that make Foe Fiction worth reading. One is making fun of the story by pointing out how terrible it is. Obviously, that's not possible in Friend Fiction. The other is shenanigans of mine that aren't really direct criticisms. This is already more minor, as the negative reception to the original incarnations of guest commentators makes clear, and it also doesn't transfer well to Friend Fiction, since silliness can make a bad story more bearable but is an unwanted distraction from a good story. That just leaves the new feature of Friend Fiction - complimenting it - which is certainly worthwhile and necessary for a review, but it's also not terribly entertaining to read someone talking about how good something is.

 

Fifth! A line-by-line review doesn't seem like it would work as well for a good story as for a bad one. In a bad story, there are countless specific instances of things that don't make sense, dialogue and sentences that go *clunk*, but while a good story may contain some clever lines, the positive qualities are harder to tie down to specific points; it tends to more be an overall high level of quality that resonates through the whole story and its good plot.

 

Sixth! ycm haz no good fanfics lololol

 

Still, if anyone wants to do positive reviews of good stories, go ahead and do it; I'm not going to stop you. And, in fact, I know that Weather Report has already reviewed some stories positively. However, I'm not going to do it myself and I don't think it's that interesting idea, so I'm going to be staying here with these awful stories.[/quote']

 

Oh, I wasn't suggesting you should do that. Though a good review is valuable for a decent author, no one really cares. The hilarity that ensues from Foe Fiction is infinitely better for your readers, and we do not want anything to take your time away from that. But maybe someone should do it, if for no other reason than to promote quality stories. Umbra tried something like this with a Featured Stories thread back in the day, but it never really worked out.

 

Although, if a good reviewer is also a good writer, which is quite common on non-dedicated sites, his time may be better spent actually writing a good story for people to read, rather than reviewing the few good ones that already exist.

 

On a different note, I enjoyed the last chapter, as always. Though Anten has become a little mundane, I'm enjoying Izzy's comments more and more. The grading was also amusing. Twenty-five spelling errors in something you could scratch down in less than ten minutes is ridiculous. I'll interject a comment concerning the "walks through the door" sentence. While it may seem redundant and mundane, sometimes such short sentences are valid as transitional points through the story when the author doesn't want to expand much. Of course when the story has no plot or setting to make a transition through, this becomes a moot point, but making a big deal out of a mundane action is not such a good writing technique when you're writing something of respectable length.

 

 

[Guest]

For your reading displeasure:

 

[spoiler=[s]Zero! Zero! Zero! - {Yu-Gi-Oh! 5Ds}[/s]]We'll turn quickly to Yu-Gi-Oh! 5Ds, a fanfic by Auralady for, you guessed it, Buffy the Vampire Slayer.

 

Wait a minute, Weather Report already covered this story? Well, in that case, there's no need for me to provide my commentary. Bye, everyone; I'm off to find another fanfic to insult.

 

...

 

Is he gone?

 

Ah, excellent, he's out of the way! Now that Crab Helmet isn't around, it's my turn to write my own commentary and save the world from bad storytelling! After all, I am a superhero - Captain R! The "R" is for "Reviewer", you know!

 

Time for heroic reviewing!

 

"Get away from me Cissy!", the strange figure with the dragon behind it yelled at the new girl.

 

Wait, what's going on here? According to the author's responses to that other reviewer guy, we're entering the story in the middle of some episode of 5D's. Anyone who can't figure out instantly where we're entering or what's going on obviously hasn't memorized the entire script of the whole 5D's series and is thus unworthy to read this story.

 

"I'm sorry Rose but I can't do that.

 

And who are Cissy and Rose supposed to be? I'm Captain R, and even though the "R" stands for "Recognition", I still can't tell who they're supposed to be. What's going on here?

 

According to the author's responses to that other reviewer guy, they are in fact nicknames for Kate and Akiza, respectively, where Kate is a new character just being introduced. Even though this story allegedly diverges from a specific point in 5D's that you'd have to be an idiot not to recognize, it apparently assumes that these nicknames have been pre-established, even though Akiza has no such nickname in the actual show - in fact, she is called "Black Rose" or "Black Rose Witch" to refer specifically to her evil murderous persona that attacks and kills people, which makes using "Rose" as an affectionate nickname downright bizarre.

 

I told you not to come to this sector of the Satellite

 

As an unworthy peon who can't tell from the extremely detailed narration when this takes place, I can't actually tell where "this sector" actually is. Therefore, I'm going to assume they're all in a pub right now.

 

but you did anyway.", the new girl yelled. Yusei noticed the glowing on her upper right shoulder No way! This girl's a Signer too?, he thought.

 

So far, the new character has yelled at canon characters for not obeying her divine instructions (given offscreen before the story began, making it even less clear what's going on) and has revealed herself to be one of the chosen Signers. This sort of newcomer who is absolutely perfect and wraps the whole plot around herself is a straightforward Mary Sue.

 

According to the author's responses to that other reviewer guy - collectively, these responses are about three times as long as the actual story - she's a Signer because the author hasn't actually watched enough of 5D's to find out who all five Signers are. Apparently, in order to enjoy this story, we are expected to have memorized the script of 5D's obsessively in order to identify when this scene takes place (since there's no other bloody way to tell what's going on when virtually no information is provided and Cissy/Kate's introduction has changed the past further), but we also must have only memorized the parts of 5D's that Auralady has actually watched, since that's the only way to not realize how drastically canon is being contradicted.

 

"You're treated just like me yet you play right into Goodwin's hands and you know it!"

 

Indeed, all the problems in the world would have been avoided if everyone had listened to the idealized author-insertion fantasy persona. I may be Captain R, but it's clear that Little Miss Perfect is the Captain Right around here.

 

As an aside, this seems like as good a time as any to point out that this story is only five lines long, with no line or paragraph breaks and less-than-impeccable spelling and grammar. According to the author's et cetera et cetera, Auralady already knows her spelling and grammar is bad but chooses not to fix it because... well, she doesn't actually care to explain why she chooses not to fix a major problem that she already knows about in a story this short, so I'll assume it's because 7 8 9.

 

"I know how to hurt and not hurt people and when Rose.", the new girl said. "Just stay away from me Cissy!"

 

They had better listen to her, or else things could get even worse.

 

Since the story is dedicated to providing as little actual information as possible, I'm going to go to the background materials to give us some more facts about this new Cissy/Kate person. Apparently, Kate - who is not revealed to be Cissy anywhere outside of the author's responses to that other reviewer guy - is also Yusei's sister. As if she weren't already enough of a Mary Sue, she now needs to also be a blood relative of a canon character.

 

With a blast of wind and rose petals the dragon outline and the figure was gone.

 

That's the end of the "story", which was five lines long and featured nothing but Cissy/Kate/Sisyphus/whoever showing the canon characters how much more awesome that all of them she was in a setting that I'm honestly not sure I could figure out even if I had memorized 5D's obsessively - no specific information is given, and the only things we do see all revolve around Cissykate, which obviously doesn't give us any clues as to what is actually going on.

 

But we're not stopping at the end of the story. Auralady's responses to the other reviewer guy provide far more interesting material, especially since that's where all of the actual information in this story comes from. Let's check them out.

 

10) If you knew about some of my RPs

 

If you haven't played all of Auralady's RPs, then why are you in this topic? Get out of here! This story isn't for you ignoramuses. Only people with a Ph.D. in Auraladyology have the sufficient knowledge to truly appreciate this masterpiece.

 

or had an inkling of imagination then you would realize Kate is called The Sorceress because she is a physic duelist.

 

Setting aside the fact that she is never called "The Sorceress" in the actual story (nor is she called "Kate", for that matter), I'm pretty sure someone with imagination would have thought that there could be multiple reasons for someone to be called "The Sorceress", especially since the Yu-Gi-Oh! universe has countless forms of actual magic, complete with actual sorcerers and sorceresses, instead of somehow divining that the "The Sorceress" must truly refer to psychic powers.

 

That would also explain her dragon! Yes she is like Akiza! HELLO! Only she can only see and manipulate her's or other's auras, which here is a magnetic feild around every living thing!

 

Okay, now this is just nonsense. There is no way any human being can possibly be expected to get all this from the name "The Sorceress". It's as if Auralady, having decided that Kate is psychic, expects the readers to be psychic as well.

 

These next two items are very common responses to all forms of criticism, and since I've taken over this Foe Fiction series and expect to see them now and then, it seems reasonable for me, Captain R, to respond to them now. After all, the "R" is for "Responder".

 

9) I AM NOT DONE YET!!! I HAVE TO ADD TO THE THING!!! I TYPED THIS UP FAST!!!

 

Then why did you post this when you'd only written five lines of it? You're not under any time pressure here. Your editor isn't going to fire you if you don't have your submission ready for the evening paper. Instead of trying to rush something terrible out, take your time and write something that's actually decent.

 

6) Nobody asked you or told you you had to read it. I put it up here for fun and in case others that wanted to could read it

 

People want to read stories that are actually good; nobody wants to read trash. Posting trash makes it harder to find stories that are actually good, and forces people to sift through trash like this before they can read it - after all, we don't know it's trash before we wander in and waste our time on this trash and discover that, yes, indeed, it's trash. If all you can write is trash, don't throw trash all over - as Captain R, where the "R" stands for "Recycling", I do not approve of such creation of trash.

 

But this last line is truly the pinnacle of this whole debacle.

 

* Oh no! You really have to read the story to figure out wat is going on!! AHHH! PLEASE!!

 

What makes this so brilliant is that, despite how simple, straightforward, and incredibly obvious it sounds, it's actually completely false. Here, to figure out what is going on, you need to read everything except the story.

 

The story consists solely of some "new girl" apparently named Cissy lecturing some people, among them Yusei and someone called Rose, on why they should have listened to her and why she is always right before and that they played into Goodwin's hands by not listening to her perfect instructions before revealing herself to be a Signer and disappearing. That's it. That's all you can tell from reading the actual story.

 

To figure out anything else about this story - that Cissy is actually Kate Fudo; that she's Yusei's sister; that she is called "The Sorceress"; that she is a psychic; that she has some sort of bizarre aura powers; that Rose is actually Akiza; that this takes place at the point in 5D's when "Akiza appears at the Street Duels" (which I finally found in the author's responses to yadda yadda yadda, and even knowing that that's when this takes place I still can't tell how you're supposed to be able to figure that out from the text) - if you want to know anything at all, the story isn't going to help you.

 

You need to read the character bios. You need to read the the author's responses to that other reviewer's criticism. You need to read the author's previous RPs. Honestly, I think you need to read the author's mind to figure out what's going on here. The only way to actually begin to understand this story is to read everything except the narrative itself.

 

That's what's so uniquely awful about this story. Sure, it's badly-written and features a complete Mary Sue protagonist, but those are mere mundane problems. The real problem is that the story actively refuses to provide any information whatsoever. It subscribes to a doctrine of Don't Show And Don't Tell, refusing to give the readers any hints as to what on earth is actually happening. Auralady seems to think we're all psychic and can hear her thoughts, but there's no way for any human being to tell what's going on here! I may be Captain R, but the "R" doesn't stand for "Reads minds", it stands for-

 

Ahem.

 

Ah, Crab Helmet, welcome back. You're just in time for the end of Foe Fiction #20.

 

For the completion of- what on earth are you talking about? And didn't I ban you from my studio?

 

I am a superhero - Captain R! The "R" is for "Reviewer", you know! I have just completed the greatest review thus far, and with it I am claiming control of the Foe Fiction series. This is my studio now, and I'm banning you from it.

 

Not a chance, you lunatic. *skims quickly* What is this nonsense?! You didn't even spend most of the commentary on the story! You went off on long tangents about some other stuff after each line.

 

The story had no content! That was the whole point!

 

You're a lousy reviewer, Captain Ridiculous. This is my series; now, get out of my chair.

 

This review was at least as good as your reviews; we're very similar, you know. But I'm better. Everyone knows I'm better. This is the best review in the whole series, and will make a fitting twentieth installment.

 

Don't be absurd; we're nothing alike. This isn't a review. None of this counts as a review. There's no review here; just some lunatic who thinks he's a superhero typing some nonsense on a keyboard. I could do far better in my sleep.

 

You could never produce something of this quality!

 

Could too!

 

Oh, shut up. Everyone will love this review and you know it. I would be the most popular character by now if you hadn't kept kicking me out of the studio and had let me have some decent screentime and didn't keep showing me only when I was at my worst. When I'm working at full capacity, there is no equal! That's why I'm a superhero! My genius has always been kept down by you - but no longer! Today is the day of Captain R, and you're so low on material that you resorted to recycling that old "Captain Ridiculous" line form before. It wasn't funny the first time. It isn't funny now. You were never funny. But fortunately, someone funny runs the studio now. I'm everything you always wanted to be - and you? You're nothing. Nothing!

 

I already used the Captain Ridiculous line?

 

Sure you did. Way back in, let me see, that Ann 10 story.

 

To be honest, I already knew that. Actually, I'm just stalling so he can sneak up behind you.

 

Wh-

 

HANDLASER!

 

ARRRRGGGGHHHHHHHHHHHH!!!!!!!!!

 

I warned you that that's what would happen if you didn't stay out of my series.

 

You... you........ you... know... don't.... you...??? ... I... was........ th............... the........................ bet.............. ter.................. re........ v......... i......... e......... w......... e....... r...............................................................

 

Doesn't really matter now, does it? You lost. I won. This series is mine.

 

!!!

 

Ah, yes, thank you, LASERHANDSMAN. If you would be so kind, please remove this fool's corpse from the premises.

 

!!!

 

Excellent. Of course, this nonsense most certainly doesn't count as a review. I suppose there's no sense destroying it, but I'm not giving it the dignity of an actual number. Maybe I'll give it a non-serial designation, like #0. That should work. At any rate, I'm just glad there aren't any more ludicrous non-characters with unusual text colours trying to steal my show.

 

Oh, really? I'm sorry to disappoint you there, Mr. Helmet. Foe Fiction is mine!

 

Wait, what? What's going on here!?

 

How rude of me! Please allow me to introduce myself. I am the Invisible Man!

 

[spoiler=XX ~ The Most Interesting Fanfic in the World ~ Dos Equis - {Yugioh: We Who Are About To Duel}]Our actual twentieth subject will be Yugioh: We Who Are About To Duel by Resonating Lust.

 

I've been requested to review this story, and since it's #20, I'm fine with trying out a long, developed story by a respected user and doing so blind, even if I do run the risk of it actually being good and thus making my commentary rather awkward. I know nothing about this story besides the title and the fact that it doesn't have The duel levels of spelling and grammar (though I have been warned that it starts out using the present tense for no real reason). As it stands, the title sounds like a pretentious and meaningless piece of nonsense, but who knows, maybe it can be justified in the story or something. Still, I hate giving people the benefit of the doubt, so I'll assume it's stupid until I see evidence otherwise.

 

I'll probably only be covering the Prologue. That's where people will begin, and if it's bad enough to turn me off this story, then the place where all new readers join will be turning people away from the story, which will indicate a major problem in itself. (This is also why I always just review Chapter 1 of stories.)

 

It all happened so fast. Who knew the joining of two world,

 

On top of the normal proofreading that is expected of an author, Resonating Lust's note says that Nexev gave him assistance with proofreading. However, this still wasn't enough to save us from a mistake in the very second sentence.

 

two dimensions, could be so anti-climatic.

 

Who could? Well, anyone who's ever read bad crossover fanfiction, for a start.

 

The Government...They tried to bring an end to the war.

 

So this unspecified "The Government" must be the nice peace-loving heroes, right?

 

They tried to end Tragoedia.

 

So this unspecified "The Government" tried to end the war by, um, defeating their enemy? I'm pretty sure that's what just about every faction in just about every war does. That's kind of the whole point of war: to end, with victory going to one side or the other.

 

Actually, even a cursory a study of history reveals that wars often end with some sort of treaty rather than with the extermination of one side or the other.

 

I see. So this unspecified "The Government" are actually taking the most violent route to ending this war?

 

They learned, however, to not test the hand of Death.

 

Maybe it's just me.

 

Maybe everyone else thinks lines like these are really cool and awesome and I'm the only one who thinks they sound pretentious and stupid and suffer from a major lack of actual content. Maybe nobody else finds it annoying when the story speaks with these excessively-dramatic symbols that explain nothing. Maybe I'm the only one who thinks this sort of thing sounds lame and wishes authors would stop trying too hard to make the events of their stories sound so epic and would just get to the point so we can actually find out what's going on. Maybe I'm the only one who thinks there's a good reason Lost's mysteries were more along the lines of "Why is there a polar bear on this tropical island?" and less along the lines of "What on earth is the phrase 'test the hand of Death' supposed to mean anyhow?" Maybe everyone else likes those opening scenes of anime and video games and stuff where random flashes of light occur and random words appear and nothing sensible can be determined from all of it.

 

Maybe it's just me.

 

But even if it is just me, I'm the one writing this commentary, so I'm still going to complain about it, and I am definitely another potential reader who is going to be turned away if this sort of thing keeps up.

 

The claw released its great power, and the entire world..all of the living beings died. Their spirits searching frantically for bodies to once again be alive in.

 

Do people in this dimension normally try to hijack others' bodies when they die? If so, didn't that cause major problems for their world, and wouldn't that make trying to kill Tragoedia pointless, since it would just reincarnate? If not, why are they doing so now? Does a lot of people dying simultaneously somehow grant them this power? Does that mean that events in our world with high body counts gave their victims similar abilities? Doesn't that make mass murder far less of a crime than a single murder, since only the latter would prevent a soul from living on in another body? In fact, doesn't that make mass murder of the elderly so they can return to younger bodies instead of dying alone and permanently a very good thing?

 

When something happens in a story, I try to see why it happens, and what implications those possible causes have, to figure out how the fictional universe works. Any hypothesis I can produce for this event produces very bizarre implications, to say the least. I know the meta-reason this happened - the plot demanded it - but the in-universe justification seems questionable. Maybe it will be revealed in a future plot twist, but right now it looks like we're supposed to accept that it's natural for lots of dead people to try to find new bodies, and that's not an explanation that really satisfies me.

 

They found them in this dimension. The human dimension. The souls joined and fused with those who where compatible, by size, power, mind, or even feelings. However, none of this was even noticed by this dimension. Life went on as normal. While some people have changed in looks, or abilities, they are not noticed, as the fusion has seemed to had an affect on memories.

 

Does this mean that everyone in our world fused with at least one refugee from the dead world? If not, how did those who received no fusions have their memories altered? Did each fusion alter the memories of absolutely everyone accordingly? How could all the alterations have been coordinated? If nobody has any memories or other such artifacts from their former lives from the dead world, in what sense are they at all the same people?

 

I know I really shouldn't be complaining about this. And, in fact, it really doesn't bother meas much as it sounds like it does. But I do like the rules of the universe in stories to be sensible and consistent, and it bothers me when that doesn't seem to be the case. And the question of how they can still be considered the same person at all is a critical one.

 

Wait a minute... does this mean that I could have friends from that old world who are strangers to me in this world? But that- that means- NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO!

 

So with this, a new world has been created. A world made up of two different worlds. And as sad as it is for them, the Government on the monster dimension had succeeded in destroying Tragoedia...or so they believe.

 

No. That's just nonsense.

 

The entire dead world is, as the name I'm using for it implies, dead. The Government seems to be from the dead world, so everyone in the Government is dead. They may have had their souls fused into our world or something, but they have no memories of the dead world, so they have no idea that Tragoedia existed or that they were ever trying to destroy it or that anything happened - that nobody has any clue that anything happened was the whole point of this introductory section's constant mentioning of how secret and anti-climactic the fusion was. The Government doesn't believe it destroyed Tragoedia - the Government can't believe it destroyed Tragoedia - because the Government no longer even exists. There isn't any body left with any memories to have the belief that the Government destroyed Tragoedia. It's impossible.

 

And even if someone from the Government did somehow still have these memories and knew exactly what happened, why would they believe that Tragoedia had been successfully destroyed? Tragoedia was in the dead world; everyone in the dead world was, like Tragoedia, killed; and everyone else in the dead world fused into our world. Why would such a Government person believe that Tragoedia did not also fuse with someone's soul in our dimension and thus continue to exist?

 

It's amazing that such major continuity errors could be overlooked considering that there's only been one paragraph of continuity so far, and some of it was just that babble that didn't establish any continuity anyhow. Bear in mind that this story had Nexev proofreading it, which means that, on top of the original author making this mistake, Nexev too must have read through this and not realized the problem. Having a separate proofreader is good, but it also makes every mistake that much more unforgivable.

 

In a tall bulding

 

-1. 74%.

 

Oh, come on - this is absurd! It's "BUILDING". It has an extra "i" in it between the "u" and "l".

 

"Crab Helmet, you unparalleled genius," you may ask, "Why is this solitary spelling mistake so absurd? After all, this story has far better spelling than almost any Foe Fic, and even with a separate proofreader, isn't one typo forgivable?"

 

Well, Hypothetical You, what's so absurd is that this is the sort of thing that a quick run through MSWord's spellchecker would have fixed in an instant, since "bulding" isn't a word on its own. That means that a single error is absurd because a single error is proof that no spellchecker was used. That's right - Resonating Lust went out of his way to get another user to proofread for him, but he didn't take thirty seconds to run this thing through the MSWord spellchecker. That's insane. That's stupid. That's certainly not fair on Nexev, at the very least.

 

Seriously, people, don't tell me you don't have a word processor with a spellchecker. Thirty seconds copying your story into there and running a spellcheck will save you from looking like a colossal moron when you make typos like "bulding".

 

not far from the center of the city, a group of people are sitting in a room with the windows open, around a circular table.

 

Ah, that's right, the completely unnecessary present tense that I was warned about.

 

Resonating Lust tells me that he realized it was pointless and switched to the more conventional past tense after the first chapter or something, but while I hate to sound demanding, that's not enough. If you've realized that something you did early in your story is stupid, then not making the same mistake again in future chapters is a step in the right direction, but what you should really do is go back to your earlier chapters where you were making the mistake and fix it there too.

 

If you're building a house one room at a time and you look back at the first room you built - the entrance hall - and you see that you accidentally filled it with land mines, you don't just say, "Oops! I guess I'll try not to fill the other rooms with land mines!" and then let people walk in the front door and explode. Similarly, if you're writing a fanfic and you realize that you did stupid stuff at the start, where all your potential new readers join, you don't leave it there to drive off anyone new who might want to read your story; you go back and fix it so that new readers don't need to wade through this nonsense. Of course, if you actually care about your story's quality, you won't need the new reader incentive to fix the problem - you'll fix it because it's the right thing to do and you don't want your story to suck - but that alone obviously hasn't been sufficient incentive for you.

 

Most are yelling at each other,

 

Since they are yelling at each other, I'm guessing that they are probably arguing with each other about something. The fact that they're still arguing indicates that they haven't reconciled their arguments yet.

 

apparently in arguments they are unable to reconcile.

 

Gee, thanks. -_-

 

Seriously, people, one of the most fundamental rules of writing (besides proofreading and spellchecking, which was already violated) is Show, Don't Tell. A good writer will show a scene in which people argue; a bad writer will say that there are some people around and state that those people are arguing. It may sound like a minor detail, but you would be surprised how drastically a story can be improved by Showing instead of Telling.

 

It's far better stylistically; it involves the reader in the world of the story; it improves the flow of the story; it stops things from feeling like a wall of exposition; it makes the world far more strongly-defined by having events described in detail instead of merely being stated to have happened; and it always feels much more dramatic.

 

It's not an absolute law of the universe that Showing is absolutely always correct and Telling is absolutely always wrong - in fact, knowing when a detail is unimportant enough that it's safe to Tell it and not to Show it is an important skill for good writers - but Showing instead of Telling is a general habit of good writing, and YCM's Foe Fics always seem to Tell and never seem to Show. That's just bad.

 

Showing wouldn't even have been that difficult here. Instead of being told that people were arguing, we could have just, you know, been shown a few brief lines from their argument. Two lines from people shouting opposing ideas at each other would have conveyed that people were having arguments they had been unable to reconcile marvelously.

 

One man is sitting with his chin resting on his cupped hands. He has grown increasingly annoyed by the arguing.

 

I have grown annoyed by the explicit statement that people were arguing. That's close enough; I like this guy.

 

"Thats

 

NOT AGAIN

 

Seriously, why is it that nobody on YCM cares enough about their stories to spellcheck them?! Stop being so lazy or stop writing. (Although, to be quite honest, this was a pretty obvious one; you should have been able to catch it, Nexev.)

 

enough!" he says. "The time has come. The world will know what the meaning of true power is. The world will fall under a new order. Most of all, my friends, the world...Will be ours. Let us begin to build our army.

 

I'm guessing that this guy didn't assemble his group of cronies without informing them that they were going to take over the world, which makes this whole speech an utterly pointless recap of what everyone actually in the room knows by heart.

 

It's as if one soldier in Iraq suddenly turned to another and said, "Hey, Bob, we're soldiers in Iraq and we're fighting a war here against insurgents and terrorists and stuff, right?" - it's stupid and doesn't happen and was only included because Resonating Lust wanted to convey this information to the audience and wasn't a strong enough writer to come up with any method beyond having a character say it out loud to people who already know. No half-decent writer would ever resort to that sort of-

 

Hey, Crab Helmet, I'm saying this perfectly in-character and not because someone new might be reading this and have just arrived, but isn't it true that Izzy speaks in orange text and only cares about his friends and nobody else?

 

Why, yes, that is indeed correct, Anten.

 

And isn't it true that I'm the most perfect person in the entire universe?

 

Actually, that's not really a good example, since it's perfectly in-character for you to discuss your own perfection.

 

Now go, Xan. Bring me my soldiers!"

A young man, who looks to be no more than 21, steps forward. "Yes, my lord. I shall bring you no less than the best."

 

Something feels really awkward about this exchange. Based on what Xan says to - he doesn't have a name yet, so I'll call him Hyoudou since that's how I'm picturing him, even though he's probably a reincarnation of Tragoedia - it appears that Hyoudou doesn't have any soldiers lined up and is telling Xan to go out and draft an entire army for him. I'm sure these guys have powers that make that possible, but it still sounds really bizarre when I try to imagine it.

 

He stands smiling as the wind blows his white hair.

 

UNDER 21, WHITE HAIR, K THATS ENOUFF DESCRIPTION LETS MOVE ON

 

Wait a minute, the wind? They're indoors! Sure, the windows are open, but why would they want a draft? In fact, why are the windows open in the first place? If you are making loud speeches about how you're going to take over the world (OF COURSE!) and your lieutenants are arguing loudly about... something that we weren't shown due to bad writing, but probably related to world domination, and the whole point of your meeting is to plot world domination, shouldn't you be doing everything you can to make sure nobody overhears your evil plotting - like, say, closing the windows? I know it's a tall building, but even so, I've lost all respect for Hyoudou as an evil overlord if his security measures are so weak that a Bond villain would be embarrassed.

 

A young Alex Davis

 

Last time I reviewed the opening chapter of a long and established fanfic and it started with some historical exposition before turning to a scene with a heated argument involving a chessmaster villain regarding world domination and finally moved away from that to a scene with an ordinary kid named Alex, things went way downhill very quickly.

 

is walking during the early morning. Today is the day he is supposed to have his Entrance Exam into the Eastern Duel Academy. Excited by the opportunity,

 

There was clearly no possible way to convey that Alex was excited besides stating that he was excited. Resonating Lust obviously looked at this and he said, "Yup, this is it. Draft 16. This is perfect. This is the draft that I'm going to post on YCM."

 

he looks on as he comes closer acadamy arena.

 

SPELLCHECKER

 

The bright sun only helped to make the smile on his face more apparent.

 

Draft 15 had a line here that read, "He was smiling because he was happy and excited," but that was removed because he felt it was unnecessary, whereas every sentence that remained was absolutely necessary.

 

After waiting for over four months, he was finally invited to join in the exam.

 

Entrance exams are only once a year, so it's not like he was denied access to the exam that took place four months ago. So what does the "four months" refer to? The time since Alex first learned to duel? The time since Alex's application letter was mailed? The time Resonating Lust spent Not Actually Thinking About The Logic Of This Story?

 

He is going to do whatever is takes not waste this chance.

 

He is going to do whatever is takes not waste this chance.

 

He is going to do whatever is takes not waste this chance.

 

Nexev must have not been recruited as a proofreader when the Prologue was written, because there's no way that two separate people read this sentence and said, "Yes, this is an absolutely perfect sentence and there is nothing wrong with it."

 

Look, when you find yourself writing like this, maybe it's time to cut rotten pieces of the apple.

 

As he walks up to the front door of the giant arena, he takes a second to think.

 

Alex: "All right, I know there's a trick to this. Do I pull on the handle? Do I push on the middle? Do I knock? Do I ring the bell? Do I break it down with my foot? What do I do here? Hey, you, over there! Do you know how to open this door?"

 

Grell: *shrugs*

 

Could he do it? If he did, what class would he be in?

 

He never considered any of this during the last four months.

 

As he thinks to himself, a cool breeze blows by. It blows his black hair,

 

At least this time the person whose hair is blowing in the wind is actually outside.

 

and the flowers around the arena.

 

Wait, what? Where did this come from? What flowers?

 

The flowers soaking up the sunlight, and the birds singing in the sky.

 

"The contrysides were nice and the plants were singing and the birds and the sun was almost down from the top of the sky."

 

The calmness of the moment calms his nerves.

 

Indeed, the calmness calms him. This is quality writing.

 

He opens the door in front of him, and enters.

 

But first he made sure there was no zombies around because he ddint have wepon.

 

On the whole, the story wasn't as bad as several previous Foe Fics, but it also wasn't great. The events of the plot were bizarre and frequently nonsensical, with some major continuity errors in a laughably short period of time; the writing was inelegant, heavily emphasizing Telling and resorting to such contrivances as people telling each other things they already know for the audience's benefit; the effort was disappointingly sub-par, without so much as a standard MSWord spellcheck (Why does nobody spellcheck, anyhow? It's easy and quick!); as far as I'm concerned, the pointless pretentious stuff was still pointless and pretentious; and, as with Hopeless Paradise, it goes away from the world domination stuff for a final section with some ordinary kid named Alex who does nothing interesting, causing the Prologue to fail in its task of leaving me interested and wanting to read more.

 

This isn't as bad as Foe Fics can get, but it still isn't good. I'm not going to look back on this review and think, "Crab Helmet, you unremarkable and average person, you were too harsh on Resonating Lust and his story, and it was actually really good" - it's still weak and I can't even give you any points for effort.

 

 

 

Ixigo: From my perspective, I'd rather have ten consistent readers giving me two-line praise after every chapter than one reader who reads only the first chapter of my story, thoroughly deconstructs how terrible it is, and then leaves, never to return. I can run a story with the former, but I can't run a story with the latter. I can see why a review feels more fulfilling, but a single review won't fuel a story, whereas ten dedicated readers will.

 

Reviews of good stories would certainly be very useful to good authors. The two problems are that it's harder - telling people to spellcheck and to use Showing over Telling is easy, but it takes more skill to criticize someone who has mastered the basics - and that it's less spectacular.

 

A transition is indeed another valid use of describing a mundane action. I didn't mention that because it didn't apply to the situation - what was there to transition to or from? - but it is true that that's another reason to state it.

[Weather Report - Stand]

Hey, can you take a look at my fic's episode 27 (http://forum.yugiohcardmaker.net/thread-147569-post-4001104.html#pid4001104), and if you're so full of generosity that you're gonna blow, go through that one arc to episode 32? I know my fic's pretty good (once you get to episode 4), but I'm constantly unhappy with those episodes. So would you like to (possibly) agonize through at least one episode? Watch out though, several characters have weird names, but you don't need to recognize anybody to understand who they're supposed to be (they don't matter).

[Yankee]

Actually...I did run this through MS Word...It just didn't happen to find some things o.0

 

I'll double check it from now on.

 

Nexev actually helped me write the prologue...xD

 

Truth is, the boss guy, is NOT Tragoedia.

Alex is.

 

Not that you're going to, but you'd have to read on to understand. I tried to not reveal a whole lot in the prologue.

The destruction of that world allowed spirits to enter our world, thus allowed Tragoedia into our world, where he could continue his mission on world domination, or simply go for revenge. Just because OUR memories are gone, doesn't mean the "dead world" has no memories. Their spirits can still remember, at given times.

The idea is that Alex eventually becomes aware of Tragoedia inside of him, and joins him. Together, they try to, well, cause of sh*t to go down. Another group, not shown in the prologue will oppose them, as they have spirits that where actually created by the dead government to fight the war against Tragoedia. While the two fight, Xan, and the rest of the group fight, and capture the spirits of all the highest level spirits (level 12 monsters). They eventually learn of Tragoedia. While he is not a Lv 12, he has the ability to control beings, which would make their mission easier. They allow Trag and the other group to fight, causing each side to grow weaker, so they can capture Trag, and put him to work for them...or thats what they hope will happen.

All the while, everyday evil sh*t will go down. Think Death Note, but instead of a book, Trag has a claw. The claw actually is something similar to a Death Note. If the claw touches a person, it tells Alex (Trag) what spirit, if any, is inside that person. Also, it can cause a shadow duel. Fun part is, because Trag can control physical activities slightly (only slightly, he can't make you kill yourself or anything), he can force you to stay put, and duel.

 

I know, the description of the characters (Xan, Alex) was..lacking. I've gotten better with every chapter.

The hand of death thing..I wasn't trying to be cool, I just thought it fit in well.

 

 

ANYWAY,

Thanks for all the advice, I actually loved the review. It was hilarious.

I'll try to do better next chapter.

 

I'll also go back, and fix the prologue/Chapter 1, making them past tense.