Drunkard's Walk Forums

Oocities provides handy dandy Wayback Machine links for pages not in their archive, and WB has at least the first part in all its WEB DON'T glory. (Orange on black is not a legible colour scheme, mmkay?)

Okay, found the part I was referencing (its in part 22):
For the record... the one complaining the loudest about the aspects of Marvel being inserted into the story is the main character.
The above spoiler is perhaps the biggest plot point /most important info in the story for addressing most of the complaints.
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On a different note Benjamin A. Oliver most famous for Nuke'em Till They Glow... Which started off shortly darkish... moved to utter cracktasticness then gibbered there for a good long while... the abruptly everything was a letter addition to chapter 10 and the plot abruptly went end game dark on the main character.  Then a spin off that had some user poll elements.. that got 3 chapters and a finished 4th chapter poll... then he decided it was time for a darker edger reboot... that stopped so he could do a cluster of web comics of the prequel... which lasted a while and then abruptly stopped.

Does it ever actually say that his powers are coming from the transition between universes, a la El Hazard? I recall interpreting the quoted segment as meaning that Metallia was like the White Witch in Narnia, a being of power who happened to be from another world, and since Carrot is also from another world he's basically an out-of-context problem, in that they have no idea what powers he may or may not have. Just because Metallia is god-tier, does not mean that all other travelers are as well; A single instance does not a pattern make. 
I also don't recall any mention of Metallia being a Haruhi level reality warper, like Carrot is showing signs of being, if he is what is causing the Marvel infestation.  
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Stand between the Silver Crystal and the Golden Sea.
"Youngsters these days just have no appreciation for the magnificence of the legendary cucumber."  --Krityan Elder, Tales of Vesperia.

Jorlem Wrote:Just because Metallia is god-tier, does not mean that all other travelers are as well; A single instance does not a pattern make.

On the flip side, it doesn't mean that they aren't, either. As you said, a single instance does not a pattern make.
--
Rob Kelk
"Governments have no right to question the loyalty of those who oppose
them. Adversaries remain citizens of the same state, common subjects of
the same sovereign, servants of the same law."

- Michael Ignatieff, addressing Stanford University in 2012

robkelk Wrote:

Jorlem Wrote:Just because Metallia is god-tier, does not mean that all other travelers are as well; A single instance does not a pattern make.

On the flip side, it doesn't mean that they aren't, either. As you said, a single instance does not a pattern make.

Quite true, but I was specifically pointing out that Beryl (and by extension, Necratoid) are assuming that it is the source of the travelers' powers, based on one instance of it occurring (assuming Metallia didn't lie to Beryl for some reason).  It very well could be that it is the case that any and all dimensional travel grants incredible powers, but we as readers have no way of knowing if that is true yet, as it has not been explained in narration or as exposition of the source of his powers, only as exposition for why Beryl is after him.  Beryl believes the dimensional travel=powers idea to be true, but does not have enough data to satisfactory prove this, so we can't really take the segment that Necratoid quoted as a satisfactory explanation for what is going on regarding all the Marvel expys cropping up.  Heck, if Metallia came over in a similar manner to Carrot, she might know the true source of her powers either.
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Stand between the Silver Crystal and the Golden Sea.
"Youngsters these days just have no appreciation for the magnificence of the legendary cucumber."  --Krityan Elder, Tales of Vesperia.

Errr... no.  It specifically says that they don't know how much power he'll eventually end up with.  Its the threat of him possibly ending up with that level of power that is the issue... also the whole not with them issue... and the whole thing about them screwing things up by the ever present assassination attempts.  Its the sheer fact he popped up out of no where ices a youma with little effort and no magical equipment... and keeps offing their forces that freaks them out.  That and its their fault he is there.
The panic the quote shows also mean this has happened before...  Its one god-like characters back story... as shown in quote.    This entity is freaking out.  So this is where his powers come from (vaguely addressed as it is)... So its not 'one example as a pattern' its   Its an in character explanation of game mechanics.

As you said, it is an in character explanation, but not of the mechanics. The way I see it, Beryl is potentially jumping to conclusions here, based on a too limited data set. As far as I can tell from the quote, this has happened before, but only once, as part of Metallia's backstory. If it has happened other times, apart from Metallia and Carrot, then that is another story entirely, but as it is, Beryl only knows of this happening once before, and in that single case, Metallia, the interdimensional traveler grew to god-tier. That is what I meant when I said that a single instance does not make a pattern, as Beryl is assuming from the single instance that she knows of regarding dimensional travel, that there is a pattern of those that traveled gaining some amount of power because of it. Beryl and Metallia are fallible sources though, especially as they have been sealed away for the last 10,000 years. Maybe interdimentional travel actually happens all the time, but the odds of it causing any sort of power is one in a million, and Metallia (and possibly Carrot) just got lucky, but Metallia doesn't know about any of those cases, and assumes what happened to her is the norm.

With a situation like this, I would require either multiple statements from at least three different, unconnected characters with reasonable authority all stating that traveling gives power (A combination of Metallia, Queen Serenity's ghost, and a researcher in one of the Marvel expy labs all stating that it give you powers, independently of each other would be acceptable.), a single, truly authoritative source that could basically be assumed to be flat out exposition on the mechanics (Records on the topic in the Mercury Computer, for example), at least three cases of interdimensional travel blatantly granting powers, besides Carrot (either new inserts show up, and start manifesting, or mention of this having happened multiple times in the past is made.), or a scene in which the narration clearly implies that powers were added in the transition between dimensions (this would likely have been part of the actual transition scene, and we are way past that point now.)

I think this makes enough sense for 5 in the morning. Goodnight.
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Stand between the Silver Crystal and the Golden Sea.
"Youngsters these days just have no appreciation for the magnificence of the legendary cucumber."  --Krityan Elder, Tales of Vesperia.

The thing is there are several entities like Metallia... Pharo 90 for one.  So its hinted at that this is something that happens randomly.  Sailor Moon end bosses do tend towards this kind of being.  So we have a confirmed sample size of two...  and several potentials.  Granted Beryl and her puppeteer are of non-standard sanity... but apparently Carrot is showing enough signs of back story parallel to induce panic.  So we have a sample size of two... and again several parallels.  My problem is that we have a massive Chekhov's gun in that quote... and things currently do fit the pattern I've shown... the hole in your criticism is that if not the explanation I have... where do his powers come from?  Also Beryl vary clearly gives a freak out that says his power level may become a problem... that she isn't saying he will be a godlike entity if not stopped means to me that Beryl knows of more than one example of this happening.  Worse case Carrot isn't having that happen to him... but with the gun over the fireplace... someelse will show up like that.
Either way... that we can have this kind of debate means the writer is good enough to hook people in... even with the huge update gaps that I think make him a 'bad author... no biscuit!' writer in this thread.

Folks... off topic. You're derailing the original purpose of the thread. Feel free to take it to a new thread.
-- Bob
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Then the horns kicked in...
...and my shoes began to squeak.

Ah, sorry about that. Kinda got focused onto a particular gripe against a certain plot point.

That said (and back on topic somewhat), I think his main problem is a lack of focus. It has happened in his other stories as well, where the story wanders off for a while when something else catches his fancy, and he doesn't want to start a new story, so he just wedges it into the current one. The most blatant example I can think of was in Insertion, where he just created a whole new universe to run a sidestory in, then went back to the main universe when that plot was resolved, but he's done it in other stories, like Kyubed. In that story, it started out with two 'real' sneaky type ninja, and then wanders off with Naruto becoming king of the foxes.

This is a problem for some other authors too, such as Perfect Lionheart. While it is definitely not his only problem, he starts stories with one idea, such as the horcrux in Harry's head waking up and warping him, then gets distracted and switches to other ideas entirely, like becoming a champion of the Queen of the Fae, or time travel shenanigans. Any one of these could carry its own story, but they try to cram all these and more into one story, and it falls apart. I do enjoy reading Contrabardus's stuff, even with this flaw, as the stories are quite fun and the characters enjoyable, which is not the case for PL's stuff, which I have given up on as I came to hate his protagonists.
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Stand between the Silver Crystal and the Golden Sea.
"Youngsters these days just have no appreciation for the magnificence of the legendary cucumber."  --Krityan Elder, Tales of Vesperia.

Quote:This is a problem for some other authors too, such as Perfect Lionheart. While it is definitely not his only problem, he starts stories with one idea, such as the horcrux in Harry's head waking up and warping him, then gets distracted and switches to other ideas entirely, like becoming a champion of the Queen of the Fae, or time travel shenanigans. Any one of these could carry its own story, but they try to cram all these and more into one story, and it falls apart.

Oh yeah. The one time I wrote Skysaber -- who is by his own admission Perfect Lionheart -- it was about his story Shampoo's Revenge, where exactly that happened. It was a great idea that he started with -- Shampoo tries again with the memory shampoo, only does it right -- she makes Ranma forget Akane, and in such a way that she can tell him to his face that she's erased his memory of another girl and he doesn't mind. Nabiki and her failing attempts to return to the status quo (for her own profit, of course) are the main plot thread -- until Skysaber came up with another idea entirely and grafted it on, which was that Nabiki, who seems to be on top of everything, is actually so blinded by her own greed and self-centeredness that she doesn't know that Kasumi's an Olympic ice skating champion or that her own mother is not dead (she divorced Soun, who took it badly and treated her as if she died; and no one told Nabiki, who took her father's version as gospel). Trust me, he sold it well enough that I bought it (at least at first). But the later story line started crowding out the first, which I was really more interested in.

So I dropped him an email pointing out that he had two good plot ideas crammed in together there, and he really ought to split them off into their own stories.

And I got back, best as I recall, a classic Skysaber paranoid rant about unwelcome criticism intended to destroy his artistic muse or some such, and shortly afterwards he did one of his disappearing acts from the Net.

Oh well.

(Oh, and if anyone's curious, Shampoo's Revenge can be found here.)

-- Bob
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Then the horns kicked in...
...and my shoes began to squeak.

Ah, the same thing happened to me and Fred Herriot: In one of the comments in an episode of one of his Anime Addventure threads, I went off on one talking about how all his plots are the same. I admit that I occasionally read his works, at least until they become too sanctimonious for me to read any more, so I had a good grounding on how Herriot writes. And when Herriot responded with a comment that my commentary was somehow less constructive than somebody else's (the comment he responded to suggested that he should introduce somebody who was on par with Negako's power level in that thread.. which sounds like Fred would have interpreted that as "create a new Mary Sue to be Negako's friend/lover"), I basically hit him with the full laundry list of my problems with his work.

Herriot abandoned that thread soon afterwards. He ended up starting a new thread after a few months gone, before abandoning that and disappearing from the Addventure again.

Actually, I've been reading some of his more recent material, and I think he's improved. In his Harry Potter "Icemaidens" stories, he seems to have lost that "punish those who've hurt the main character" traits and the associated lecturing/preaching -- in fact, the Dursleys and Snape get nicely redeemed. There's still a lot of expospeak, but it's not as bad as it was, say, ten years ago. Which just cements his place in my list of favorite "less-than-perfect" writers -- he's no artist, but he writes stories that are fun to read if you don't mind wading through the verbiage a bit.
-- Bob
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Then the horns kicked in...
...and my shoes began to squeak.

Link to these, Bob?
--
Sucrose Octanitrate.
Proof positive that with sufficient motivation, you can make anything explode.

Oh, sure.

Harry Potter and the Icemaidens, a prequel of sorts which takes you from That Halloween up to the summer before Harry's first year.

The Icemaidens and the Philosopher's Stone, the First Year story, which I haven't finished reading yet, and isn't marked as complete, so my opinion on this is based solely on the first 25% or so of it.

-- Bob
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Then the horns kicked in...
...and my shoes began to squeak.

Does it contain Nendo-Kata? Because honestly, that was interesting the first time I read it, until the third chapter waxing lyrical over how they were surely the ultimate civilized society and so powerful and so on, and then they became an auto-abort trigger for reading fics.

- CD
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"Anko, what you do in your free time is your own choice. Use it wisely. And if you do not use it wisely, make sure you thoroughly enjoy whatever unwise thing you are doing." - HymnOfRagnorok as Orochimaru at SpaceBattles
woot Med. Eng., verb, 1st & 3rd pers. prsnt. sg. know, knows

If I'm remembering Nendo-Kata right they are the Virus... so basically any story witth them is all about an anti-male zombie apocalypse where the zombies ramble on about their 'moral superiority'.  They are also squid based and are what Cthulu would be if he was less interested in eating things and being in the horror genre and corrupted things with lust, instead of insanity.
Another 'problem' that CarrotGlace has is lack of a filter editor.  Though many writers have this issue... his manifests oddly.  Specifically, it manifests in the chapter titles... I've been hearing the same issues constantly (for a certain definition of constantly popping up for roughly a decade now.  He does complete stories.  He completes entire arcs.  He actually resolves major plot points and does major chunks of character development.  The main issue he seems to get here is that he fails utterly to label theses in the chapter title headers as such.  In the past I've seen pages and pages of complains on this in a single post.... the person freaking out totally and at length... that then gets utterly confused when you brake things down for them.  Its less about content than formatting with him.
You have to remember that when you get past stories of 10-15k there is only so much to say about the subject before you have to add new things... or you end up with Bleach... the same arc over and over and over again.  To the point 3-4 episode battles are used to make a BIG reveal... the character still has a sword with exactly the same powers and and you must have forgotten about it by now.  Bleach is also what happens when you drive the plot by character popularity polls... strangely characters people know get picked commonly over ones that appear in a single episode.  *facepalms*
Personally. I think one of Skysaber's major issues is that writes past the limits of his own attention span.  He then forgets the main plot purpose and never bothers to reread the story he wrote before continuing the story.  At that point he starts filling in the plot points as they remember what he was thinking at the time... eventually things dillute until he forgets what the character's personalities are and then uses them all as megaphones for some rant.  This ends up with him getting called on it and freaking out and hiding from the Internet.  If its been long enough he breaks down and rereads his own work again and either ditches it or tries a new version of the chapter.

No Nendo-Kata so far, and I'm halfway through the second story.

And Necratoid brings up a point that I forgot in my initial note about Fred: lesbians everywhere. To squick levels, sometimes -- right now there are at least two lesbian pairings among the 11-year-olds in Harry's first year, one of which has already gotten to (off-screen) sexual intimacy. It's only because it is off-screen that I haven't quit reading yet. I mean, consenting adult lesbians are one thing. Prepubescent lesbians leaping directly into bed within hours of meeting each other are another.
-- Bob
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Then the horns kicked in...
...and my shoes began to squeak.

Speaking of Favorite Bad Authors with Lesbians: JoeHundredaire. 
His stories are crammed with lesbians and/or one lucky guy with a bisexual harem.  I find his stuff fun to read as long as I don't take it too seriously and neither does he.  When he gets serious he tends to go for angst in some character but it's likely to come out as "angry insufferable jerk lashing out at everyone".  Watching Joe's interaction with others in forums, he also comes across as something of a jerk and a bully.  In one of his profiles he proclaims his hatred of 99.9% of humanity and I don't think that's much of an exaggeration.
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No, I don't believe the world has gone mad.  In order for it to go mad it would need to have been sane at some point.

Deadpan29 Wrote:Speaking of Favorite Bad Authors with Lesbians: JoeHundredaire. 
His stories are crammed with lesbians and/or one lucky guy with a bisexual harem.  I find his stuff fun to read as long as I don't take it too seriously and neither does he.  When he gets serious he tends to go for angst in some character but it's likely to come out as "angry insufferable jerk lashing out at everyone".  Watching Joe's interaction with others in forums, he also comes across as something of a jerk and a bully.  In one of his profiles he proclaims his hatred of 99.9% of humanity and I don't think that's much of an exaggeration.

Yeah. His fics are amusing, if cliche'ed by this point.
His sister occasionally provides fan-art for them. Apparently she's a lesbian herself, which may be part of his inspiration.
--
Sucrose Octanitrate.
Proof positive that with sufficient motivation, you can make anything explode.

One of JoeHundredaire's habits that annoys me is that occasionally he'll decide he has a better idea for how he wants his story to go, and delete a bunch of chapters, but not warn the readers he's done so.
(Edit for typo)
___________________________
"I've always wanted to be somebody, but I should have been more specific." - George Carlin

So, up to about chapter 22 in that Icemaidens story of Freds... Dammit, he's at it again. Silly but fun concept being ruined by surprise lesbian Voldemort harem.

As in, a harem of lesbian Voldemorts. That want a ten-year old Harry.

Dammit Fred.

I'll have to second Skysaber.  Before he spirals out of control, his stories are pretty good and fun to read.  

Azunth Wrote:I'll have to second Skysaber.  Before he spirals out of control, his stories are pretty good and fun to read.  

Speaking of Skysaber, he recently added a fourth chapter to Asrild's Restaurant, one of his Ranma 1/2 fics from 2003, and the main character's casual acts of sociopathy have started: (www.fanfiction.net/s/1229331/4/Astrilds_Restaurant).
In a previous chapter, Ranma used his amazing magical powers to build a huge wall around his property. In this chapter, the local building inspector showed up and ordered the wall to be removed since no building permit was ever filed. Ranma responded by Jedi Mind Tricking the man into ignoring the current lack of a permit, doing all of the necessary paperwork himself while postdating it to before the wall was built and quitting a bunch of distasteful but perfectly legal personal habits (drinking and smoking). The word "smugly" is applied to describe Ranma while he brainwashes the man.
Furthermore, when he is questioned as to who'd been at the door, Ranma responds: "A cheap and small man who just had a miraculous change of heart, that's all. He'll smooth over a few bureaucratic tangles for us."
That's right, a government inspector trying to do his job of protecting people by ensuring that new construction meets local building codes is met by a response that boils down to: @#!% you! You're stupid and wrong to try to interfere with my property and that gives me the right to mentally rape you in order to make my life easier!
Having talked on several occasions with officials from my local code enforcement agency, I know that although building regulation are annoying, they are there for a reason. What if the ground beneath that wall is unstable? It could collapse onto a pedestrian. When he had his magic tools build the wall, were they checking to make sure they didn't damage any utility lines? What if the wall interferes with proper drainage? The next heavy rain could cause a flood either on Ranma's property or on the property of a neighbor, resulting in tens of thousands of dollars worth of damage. Since the wall wasn't installed by a licensed contractor working to engineer approved blueprints, insurance will not cover any damage. If anything ever goes wrong with that wall and the investigation reveals that the inspector illegally postdated paperwork for a structure that never met the building code, the poor brainwashed guy is going to lose his job and may even wind up the victim of a lawsuit since everyone will assumed that he'd been bribed to do those things.
--End Rant--
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"Anyone can be a winner if their definition of victory is flexible enough." - The DM of the Rings XXXV

But... how could something go wrong? Everyone knows that Skysabers main characters are awesome and perfect and anything they will never have anything go wrong.