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Reviews for Battle with Yunalesca

By : Sethite
  • From SailorAF on September 12, 2010
    Some very good ideas and juicy parts here. I like how you miexd story with game mechanic. Very good work.
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  • From ProudAfroDude on May 18, 2010
    I wouldn't call that a Game Over...
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  • From ANON - rb9 on January 31, 2010
    Oh, and good lord, ignore that review above me, unless you really want unnecessarily picky feedback. This is a work of erotic fiction in a genre that can use every piece it can get. Your writing style didn't detract significantly from your story. If anything, I would encourage you to develop some of the conversations more and add more details, but your English is OK by my book.

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  • From ANON - rb9 on January 31, 2010
    I don't remember if I ever reviewed this, but it's a great little story. Yunalesca definitely doesn't receive enough attention, so I'm glad you wrote this. What was hottest was the sheer hopelessness- how Yuna gave up and used items on Yunalesca. HOT!
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  • From Helluin on October 25, 2009
    Actually, some of us are not vindictive yaoi fangirls, but older bi or lesbian writers with more experience in writing and higher standards. Even non-consensual lesbian sex can be written more or less well. We want yuri that sounds like real sex, not male fantasy.

    That said, I see Sethite has asked for concrit. I've been afraid to give any, because I don't want scare the poor guy. But I wrote some pretty lousy stuff too -- luckily, it was before the web existed, so no one's ever seen it -- and ya don't learn if nobody points out what worked or didn't!

    So. Mistakes. I won't mark 'em all, just point out some things to work on:

    1) There's a lot of places where you've dropped the word "the." If English is your second language, check a grammar guide; English is frustratingly random in when to use "the" and when not to.
    Examples:
    "[The] Party was fighting Yunalesca in the ruins of Zanarkand..."
    “Lulu, use all you magic on her!” – Commanded [the] high summoner..."
    "[The] Black mage drank it..."
    "causing [the] undead witch some serious damage."
    "Lulu fell on [the] earth"
    and so on.

    2) Verb tenses are NOT random. In any language, verb tenses help make actions clear by showing which things are happening when: past, present, future. Again, verbs are hard to get right if you're not a native speaker.
    Some corrected examples:
    "She knew that they might be in troubles, but Yunalesca [had] received some damage too."
    ---"had" shows the damage happened before "Yuna knew". There's past tense, and then MORE past tense. A lot of people miss this!
    "Yuna withdraws behind the backs of her both friends."
    --- change "withdraws" to "withdrew" to match all the other past-tense verbs.
    "She was sure that they’ll be able to beat that monster."
    -- change "they'll" (future) to "they would" (future perfect). Ah, grammar!
    "Yuna noticed that her guardian has some kind of problems,"
    -- change "has" (present of the verb "have") to "had" (past of the verb "have"). Yes, "have" is a strange verb.

    3) Don't use a long-dash in dialog. For example:
    “Lulu, use all you magic on her!” – Commanded high summoner – “Rikku, use the grenades! I’ll be healing you both!” –
    should be:
    “Lulu, use all you[r] magic on her!" commanded the summoner. “Rikku, use the grenades! I’ll be healing you both!"
    Other examples:
    “Yuna, Rikku!” – she cried. Corrected: “Yuna, Rikku!" she cried.
    “Osomse” – Yuna casted next spell... Corrected: “Osmose.” Yuna cast [the] next spell.
    Here is a great page on writing dialogue:
    http://mrbraiman.home.att.net/page13.html

    4) When using foreign words or terms, it's customary to use italics. This isn't such a biggie, but I find the standard way of doing it looks better. So drop the quote marks, and use firaga and osmose and so on, instead. More importantly, I'd stick to capitalizing all the spell-names or none of them, not some one way and some the other.

    5) A few slips with game details:
    Yuna is not the "high summoner" until she defeats Sin.
    Kimahri's name is spelled, "Kimahri."
    Lulu's weapon is spelled "mog" in this game. There's "moogles" in other games, but never "moggles."

    6) This may depend on reader taste, but I find so mny video game terms distracting (HP, MP, "intelligence points", "mix"). It feels like a video game player talking about a game, instead of what the character is actually experiencing. For example, would Yuna think in terms of HP and MP? Or would she feel Lulu's magical power pulsing into her veins, feel her life-force draining away? See the difference? One of the great challenges of writing video game fanfic, I think, is finding in-character ways to describe points, turns, character abilities, statistics. It makes a story so much more vivid when you translate game mechanics into first-person experience!

    7) Being true to character is the hardest part of fanfiction writing, and there's no easy way to teach it or to learn it save by practice. It's hard to make characters sound, think and act like themselves. You have to capture their speaking style, their body language, pick up clues from the game in how they relate to each other, their shared history and hidden secrets. It's even harder when you're writing nonconsent, forcing them to betray themselves: part of the power of this kind of story is in showing how the character feels when forced into an alien way of acting. For example, Yuna's very tentative, loving, although she can be strong. Even if she were being forced to hurt her friends against her will, part of the experience would be horror, fear, concern for them. Lulu is fierce, older, protective of her younger friends, so I could well imagine her spitting in Yunalesca's face, raging as her body betrays her, or (depending on how great the control is) being sultry, sexy, since she's a more mature and sexually experienced character. Rikku, as a young teen, would probably be freaked out. Or maybe you could play with the hints the game drops about how Rikku looks up to Lulu -- "she's really developed!" -- and envies her womanhood. Now suddenly she has a chance to "grow up." In short, if I were to write a mind control story, I'd concentrate much more on how each individual character would act and feel— on the one hand, how they might respond to sex, and being given free license to do things to each other and enjoy things that they wouldn't normally try, and on the other, how each of them feels inside about what's happening: fear, outrage, shame, confusion, helplessness. I'd keep in mind that gentle Yuna's passive form of helplessness may feel very different than fierce Lulu's powerlessness, raging that she can't save her friends.

    8) Back to basic nitpicking, this varies by reader preference, but generally, erotic stories should sound erotic. I *might* use "boobies" because that's how Rikku talks, but it breaks the sexiness of the scene. It takes practice and a lot of reading of good erotica to figure out what words can make a scene more sexy, what make it sound like horny teenaged boy fantasies. "Boobies" and "D-cup" and "perky ass" sound childish, not kinky. Maybe that's just me.

    Again, sorry if I'm coming down like a load of bricks — I'm sure many readers will find this just fine, and don't demand good writing from their smut! But I enjoy good writing, believable characterization even in erotica, so that's why I'd 3-star a piece like this.
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  • From salarta on June 23, 2009
    Actually, Sethite, I just looked at your author profile and realized that I might have read your story on here before... since this is a repost. I don't know if you realized that you already put it up on here, it's your earliest FF story here on AFF.net.

    http://ff.adultfanfiction.net/story.php?no=600082093
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  • From salarta on June 23, 2009
    I read this elsewhere. As always, great stuff, and ignore the votes; I've seen people here on AFF mass downvote swaswj. Without a review, I have come to believe the downvoters are just yaoi fangirls pissed at there being something other than yaoi of their favorite games getting posted around here.
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