3rd place: "Pokémon: Carnival Magenta Version" by TheCharredDragon
Scoring
Judge | Spelling/Grammar | Character, Plot and Description | Comedic Value | Total | Full Total |
Bay | 8 | 8 | 8 | 24 | |
bobandbill | 7 | 7 | 8 | 22 | |
Spiteful Murkrow | 7 | 6 | 6 | 19 | 65 |
BAY
I see that you're having this as a parody of the main games and a bit of the anime too. While first-person point of view is a mixed bag for many people, I think it works well here as it shows Magenta's wit here. I also like the narration going back and forth with the Pika-announcers and the craziness happening. (I admit I also didn't see Magenta going to get a water Pokemon by diving semi-naked lol).
The pacing reminds me of the Pokemon Origins mini-series where it shows a bit of Red's journey in the beginning and then goes straight to Giovanni and the League. In this piece, it's focused a bit on Magenta helping her first Pokemon coping with their losses against Ash and the first few badges with some mentions of Team Goh on the side. The plot then goes straight to the final villain battles and shiny Mew before going to the League. I do get not wanting to chronicle all the gym leaders and such before this is supposed to be a parody. That bit though with mentions of Magenta and her Pokemon celebrating each victory feels more like feel-good fluff, which is still cute!
Speaking of Team Goh, I've watched a good chunk of Pokemon Journeys and get that referenced. I am well aware the anime fans either love or hate Goh, and to be honest I'm more of the former. I guess that reference was a bit in your face to me.
SPITEFUL MURKROW
Spelling/Grammar
7. Generally good, but there were a lot of typos and tense errors scattered around that could’ve been caught by reading your prose aloud. I’d have been harsher, but this entry was prose end-to-end, so I cut it some slack
Character, Plot and Description
6. I get that the story’s gimmick is that it’s “defeat the League in an afternoon and mock series clichés along the way”, but even in spite of that things still felt rushed. Lots of things suddenly get revealed after the fact like Magenta suddenly picking up new Pokémon or evolutions out of nowhere. You might find it worth considering converting your format from one “long cut” for the story, to a series of short cuts as a vignette or a montage.
There are a few other larger quibbles that I had with this story, the first of them that I had is that the story’s narration can be a bit confusing since it jumps between inner voice and commentary quite frequently.
Also, you should consider having more description in general since the lack of it makes some scenes hard to follow, and others fall a bit flat. One thing that really stood out from the lack of description was that I didn’t get a solid read on a lot of character details because of it. For instance, it took me a while to pick up Magenta on still being a human in spite of having a Gengar dad and literally going in the luggage with him.
The part where this stood out to me most as something that undercut the story’s beat was that one 3-page battle sequence set to a
very animated anime OP’s lyrics near the end… where all the actual action in it occurs in after-the-fact single bits of dialogue. There are two routes that would’ve improved it there, one would be to describe things more given how the OP you set things to
literally is paired with flashy action sequences in its originating work.
Or alternatively get a bit meta and use your narration to poke fun at the story quite literally fast-forwarding through various events.
The other big quibble I have is that the characters are a bit dry, especially ones not named ‘Magenta’ or the announcerchus. While it’s funny for some characters like Ash and Goh where the story is taking the piss out of them transparently filling a role, it doesn’t work for all of them. Freesia and his teammates in particular could get more chances to show off their personalities, or else lampshade a lack of them in the narration
Comedic Value
6. I like the overall premise, but structural issues aside, it felt like there was quite a bit left on the table such as making jokes in the narration about how absurd everything is. The ‘reused assets’ joke was pretty great, but you need a bit more along those lines especially since you establish that the narrator’s a bit of a snarker. For example, in the final Team Evil sequence, it might’ve made sense showing Bianca-chu and Barry-chu get horrified over how Magenta handles it since they were shown being taken aback by her chucking Collector Goh out a window earlier in the story, and the entire sequence there is significantly more violent. It feels like a simple thing that could’ve been done to make that part a bit funnier and more animated.
Magenta’s finale with Bianca-chu and Barry-chu also might’ve worked better showing Magenta getting more and more fed up with their presence as the story went on. She actually seems to be going on that track for about two-thirds of the story, but then winds up backing off in the last third until the very end. The joke at the end works best as a “much-delayed revenge finally arrives” sort of thing, which ideally you want consistent buildup towards.
I generally found the second half of the story to be funnier after I realized what was going on premise-wise. You might want to make it more obvious what the direction of the story is earlier on if you touch this entry up. I’d also like to point out that your narration can get pretty funny at times. Make more use of it and describe more about things that are actually happening since huge chunks of your story were disembodied dialogue, and given that your inherent plot premise assumes a very sped-up series of events, it might make sense to have the story itself poke fun at some of the absurdities and more obvious fast-forwarding.
Concluding Thoughts
Your entry has the ingredients of a funny story and made me smile at times, but it was a bit hit-or-miss on delivery. There are two directions I think you can potentially take things that I think would help:
- In Column A, you could cut the story up into individual scenes to better focus on different sequences that would get expanded. Going this route also also opens doors for stuff like Gilligan Cuts or shot-and-chaser moments that doing a long cut doesn’t lend itself well to
- In Column B, you could keep the “long cut” format, but build up certain things more and have the narration through Magenta and possibly the announcerchus question and lampshade things that come out of nowhere and the “Plot” very obviously cutting corners for comedy value. For example, you could potentially pull off the bit where Pilea is mentioned for the very first time under that route like so:
“Thankfully Freesia and Iris were already level fifteen more or less at that point. Our newest addition, Pilea the Zubat, not that far behind. I probably should’ve been more concerned that I suddenly had an entire extra Pokémon with a name that seemingly came out of nowhere, but whatever, it made for a quick battle. However, when it ended, someone bumped into me.”
If you do expand your entry for publishing, I’d strongly encourage you to add more narration and description in general. They’re both good fodder for absurdist humor in your setup and it helps your audience better visualize what’s going on. Remember that a picture’s worth a thousand words, but you don’t have pictures to work with in a written medium, so you kinda need words to paint a picture :V
I’ll be rooting for you to put a fresh coat of paint over your story, since even if it’s a bit rough right now, I think that a little extra polish on this story would’ve let it hit its comedic notes better. I think the premise is solid, just spit shine it a bit and I think that you’ll have an end product that’ll be really funny and make others laugh.
BOBANDBILL
A neat take on a run of the games, and I take it some anime aspects as well, with some good old fourth wall breakage involved.
There were some spelling and grammatical mistakes throughout, that could have been tidied up. It was a long entry so it does average out, but nonetheless it did detract a bit more. The general plot and ideas with it was fine; my main suggestion to improve it there would be the pacing. Some parts seemed to transition very quickly, which is hard to avoid when you’re trying to parody and involve so much in the entry. More description in parts would have helped with slowing scenes down to alleviate this issue.
I liked the interactions between our protagonist and the narrators, including some bargaining involved in getting events to happen favourably. Those were the funniest to me, and I also appreciated the silly finale complete with anime lyrics coming from nowhere.
Some bits of the tale were a bit odd – the trainer was as far as I can tell human, but had a Gengar parent? This didn’t really come up anywhere else in the story or had an impact, which does feel like a missed opportunity. These areas could have been used to make the tale even funnier.