Fanfiction Lounge

[Venia Silente]

Thanks everyone for their comments on the gendered nouns issue, I learnt plenty of interesting things today. It's a good thing that when people criticize me for spending too much time in the [tubes, I can just point them to forums like this one *.

... It's actually convention to refer to most large vehicles as feminine--ships, spaceships, cars and similar, etc. tend to be referred to as female. As far as the language itself is concerned, though, they are inanimate objects without gender; the words that refer to them also lack gender. I can't tell you how it came about that people prefer the female pronoun for them, but their actual identifiers are gender-neutral. It's just a quirk of common usage (or a term of endearment, really, usually most often used by the ship's owner/inhabitants), ...

This. Thanks for the info, it served me to ponder this issue a bit. I have never seen a car called a her, but other large land vehicles such as freight trucks. Now that I check what you say about "large vehicles" and "terms of endearment" and took a little Wiki Walk (at Wikipedia, not at TVTropes...) this reminded to me that people assigns a "natural" female gender to things that they belong to (like countries), or that carry them (vehicles) or protect them (like guns),; probably an example of the anthromorphization context that you talk about when applied to the mother-son relationship.

This is a subject I'll research more deeply with my teacher during summer (winter for most of you people), when we'll be doing some practice to smuggle me into a postgraduate-level English training program for teachers *snickers* . (Also, my teacher was very happy that I ranked 3rd in a writing contest; I didn't let him know that it was about Pokémon, however)


As for Giratina's idea, sorry that I haven't commented but I just remembered I had to read about it. The idea itself sounds interesting, and it's not something I've seen excessively fleshed out so far.

Lance (no, not the canonical Lance, a different one).

Canonicals, now that we have HG&SS... :D

So you're basically saying that this guy is a jerkass and that for some reason the "truth" is explained to him in a dream (how convenient) because one Legendary messed up the realiy for the others... and then Arceus gets down to Earth (so to speak) and misinterprets all the stuff. As a plot, it is nicely planted out. Beyond that little detail of the dream which would set up the story too nicely for the guy, it's all fine. Mostly, it sounds like it could be heck of fun, which is what matters to me.

Also, Nurse Joy sneaks in and takes his Pokémon. Ha! I knew there was a conspiracy going on! :D It's a nice point because it plays with a number of things. Not only the fact that one of the Pokémon to be healed is an effing Shiny Zapdos but also the sneak-in itself. I always think of conspiracy theories when some NPC says they want to heal my Pokémon and then the screen would fade to black while I was left hearing a jingle.

Hey, three posts here in one day. Things seem to be improving... :D

 

[Giratina ♀]

Well, I couldn't think of any other way. Perhaps Manaphy simply dropped in and starter talking to him and he convinced himself it was a dream or something. Or Nurse Joy could be possessed. Or he's confronted by a dude dressed as a Manaphy in the dead of night. It could be anything, really, but at the time I couldn't think of anything better than 'dream it up'.

And yeah, that's the gist of it. And Mew has required that all of the Pokémon he catch (except Zapdos, because they seem to have bonded and have almost the exact same personality - with the shiny Legends being somewhat warped versions of the originals, personality and otherwise) be sent back up to Arceus' land above the clouds via Arcanine post - that is, an Arcanine drops down in a much more comfortable manner and claims the Pokéball from him. And yes, it is basically about a yellow jerkass, a burgundy-haired jerkass, and a semi-jerkass (Weavile) running around collecting Shiny Legendaries before they can show up in the real world and make people freak out and send the human world into chaos and whatnot.

Did I forget to mention that all of the Legendaries and the Arcanines speak the Unown language, which is uncannily similar to English?

 

[Citrinin]

Me, of course. You think I'd diss anyone else like that?

Ah, XD. I thought that that was really out of character for you. XD;

 

[Misheard Whisper]

Yuh-huh. (I'm a masochist. If nobody else wants to hurt me, I hurt myself :3)

 

[Elite Overlord LeSabre™]

How often do you use death in your fanfics?

I'll answer later. Sleepy right now XD

 

[Bay]

How often do you use death in your fanfics?
A few. In She Just Smiles, I did mention Cyrus' (non-canoical) sister died, but that's a no show. :P In Heart of the Sea and Hounds of Goldenrod, I have Pokemon killed. In NE, Ernest died by falling down the stairs. :x Also, Bunny and Matt almost got killed by gunshots. D:

 

[Feign]

How often do you use death in your fanfics?

Well my whole zombie one shot was on death, my contest entry had death (much to the displeasure of some I imagine), my current fic has some death. Yeah... XD

 

[Citrinin]

How often do you use death in your fanfics?
A lot, with minor or unnamed characters. Less so with main ones - the biggest character I've killed off has only appeared in a few chapters. XD;

 

[Swift!]

How often do you use death in your fanfics?

As much as possible. I use it when the situation calls for it, but, seeing as death is one of my favourite things in writing, I try to make the situation call for it a lot. Also, I'm not a crazed killer IRL. xD

 

[Misheard Whisper]

How often do you use death in your fanfics?
Torn. The setting is a warzone in the middle of Sunyshore City. Just about everyone dies. XD In Shattered, nobody yet, but there will be some. And my upcoming oneshot will also heavily feature death.

 

[Citrinin]

Sometimes death is a very useful tool. You have the "death all around" scenario (like Sparkles' one-shot, Torn), the ability to have a monumental effect on the reader (like killing off a likable character), or simply to advance the plot (killing a villain).

I know nobody asked me, but I just thought I'd note that. XD;

 

[Misheard Whisper]

It is very true. I'd get my alts in here to back me up, but I really can't be bothered. XP

 

[D. Lawride]

How often do you use death in your fanfics?
Much and not much. I'll try to put it in a way that makes sense. It's more or less simulated, since most deaths aren't permanent - although the character did, in fact, disappear against its will. For instance, somewhere in Nightmare, there's a mutation to the body of a Pokémon that demands the destruction of the previous body, which unfortunately happens in front of everyone's eyes and gives he impression of death.
That's more or less how death's taken in my stories, even though you will find more ordinary deaths in the middle (being shot at, age,stabbed, etc.). There you have the not much part. xD

 

[Buoysel]

How often do you use death in your fanfics?

While I only plan on death once or twice if that. I plan on a lot of near deaths in order to put the characters through more and to strengthen their bond. (Pokemon and Human bond)

 

[Percy Thrillington]

How often do you use death in your fanfics?

Mmhm. More than some, less than others. I don't kill off characters for the hopes that people will keep reading to find out which characters actually survive (which is the sort of tone the last two Harry Potter books gave me, and that was a massive let-down), but I will kill off certain characters for the sake of the progression of the plot. Most of them are minor characters, but there are two or three characters who don't actually die, but I guess it'd be a good way to describe their fate. Plus, it can often be really fun to write a death scene. I know that makes me sound horribly twisted, but think about it! You can have a cold blooded psychopathe taunting his victim in his final minutes, you can have an emotional death that could have the potential to make readers cry or a whole other bunch of scenarios that your mind can think up. But yeah, death is a pretty central part of my current projects - I don't see it leaving anytime soon.

 

[Dagzar]

How often do you use death in your fanfics?
Only once and a while in Mentor and that's only for minor or unnamed characters… for now.

 

[Sgt Shock]

How often do you use death in your fanfics?

My death toll is pretty high since it is a crime fan fiction dealing with a Mafia, a crime organization, an assassin group, and the police so yeah... XD

There are significant deaths and less significant deaths. It's pretty interesting how I incorporate something that hardly exists in the pokemon world into the general mix of things.

 

[txteclipse]

Good lord, lots of bold. I'm too lazy to answer all of these, so.

How often do you use death in your fanfics?

"On our backs, in our hearts," i.e. a character living on through other characters' memories and continuing to inspire and motivate them, will be used to great effect in the second book of the Chronicles series. Apart from that, I've already had some quasi-major death scenes, the first of which was the first time my main characters killed anything. Lots of throwing up and trembling and crying. The second scene served to kill off one villain and make another one even more evil.

Mastermind is a different fish. Endless hordes of Bydo (aliens) get slaughtered, but that's okay because they're slightly trying to destroy the planet. There are some key death scenes, however, such as one I have planned out in which Mewtwo (flying the "Mastermind," of course) has to combat a rival ship design piloted by a Metagross. She disables the other vessel, and then is given the "kill" order for the first time.

Later, although I'm not sure I'll go this route or not, there will be a good old-fashioned pokemon battle in which she is given the "finish him off!" command so commonly tossed about in the anime. And...well, she finishes her opponent off. Messily. Much to the surprise and horror of her trainer, who does not know she is a biological weapon and quite possibly the strongest creature in the universe.

 

[Elite Overlord LeSabre™]

How often do you use death in your fanfics?
Not much at all, and definitely not as much as I had originally planned. Only two characters die during the course of the story, and their deaths aren't major news, nor do they play a huge role in the story.

 

[purple_drake]

...

*jumps in*


How often do you use death in your fanfics?

Just as necessary, either to the plot's logic or a character's development. I killed off a major character in Heart of the magma, but have no deaths at all planned for its chaptered sequel Choice and consequence. The taming of the northern wind implied the death of a major character, but one of the fic's peripheral themes is about death, or 'endings', so yeah. There's multiple off-screens deaths in At what cost, but the aftermath is shown and they're mostly there to serve as a point towards failure. Some in The rookie's handbook, but given that that's set in a war-zone it's not unexpected, and they're not the focus of the story. Prolly the fic where death is most important is The good fight, in which the deaths of three kids pretty much lead up to the point of the story.

Hm. I've killed off more people than I thought. Although granted there's always this underlying assumption that if, in a battle, you're not careful, you can get really hurt. I mean, in CaC, half the protagonist's pokemon battles are life or death because she keeps involving herself in things she shouldn't. Obviously she hasn't died, but none of her opponents were exactly trying to hold back from killing or seriously hurting her either.