CARD CAPTOR SAKURA :: I See Dead People
CARD CAPTOR SAKURA :: I See Dead People
Review by: Leather Daddy
SCORE
CHARACTERIZATION: 1/5 (Well, Fujitaka wasn't turned into a psychotic axe murderer, just a creepy loner. And Yue's hair ought to sue for defamation of character, the way it violates things in this fic.)
PLOT: 0/5
WRITING: 1/5
DANGER OF PASSING OUT FROM LACK OF AIR BEFORE REACHING THE END OF A SENTENCE: 5/5
Ah yes. This fic is notorious among the Fic Bitches, and I fought, kicking and screaming, to have the pleasure of reviewing it. My only sorrow is that I have to leave this author's Wish lemon to a fellow Bitch, because it's not fair to hog all the easy targets.
Let's see, the plot...where's the plot...Fujitaka grades papers by moonlight, thinking of the many nights he's wandered about his house, checking on his children in a slightly creepy manner. Oh, and Yue's there, but all he's really there to do is to drip with adjectives, like everything else in this fic. Right, Yue realizes that Fujitaka is a ClowClone, and swishes about before disappearing into the moonlight.
It's something like that. I didn't have the patience to wade through the prose twice more to give a more detailed summary. The plot's not the point here, obviously. Some fic writers would call this a "vignette" or a "snapshot" or a "shortfic." I call it "crap."
A short fic has to either have a plot or really reveal something new about the character. How they behave or feel. SOMETHING. Having Fujitaka stare into space, thinking vaguely about Touya, and then Yue, and then about Sakura, and then I suppose about his lunch tomorrow, or what color socks he should wear, does NOT count as character insight or a plot. Yue appearing in Fujitaka's room to make out with him doesn't count as plot resolution. It's just another random occurrence.
One wonders, why did they write this? What was the point? To use all the $20 words in the writer's vocabulary?
*That*, really, is my beef with this fic. If it were short and pointless, fine. It's the fic version of Olestra - tastes bad, but no calories. But long, verbose, and inane fic makes me want to reach for my red editing pencil and stab it through the ficcer's eye." PUNCTUATION IS FREE! USE A PERIOD! ADJECTIVES ARE EXPENSIVE! QUIT USING THEM!"
Okay, let me pick a good sample. Hm, here.
" That the incorporeal chiaroscuro cast by the alabaster glow of the deceiving nightsky's eye had acquired the ethereal shade of human form..."
Upon squinting at that for a while (and I have an excellent vocabulary, so I didn't need a dictionary, but god help anyone who isn't an English freak like me, much less a non-native speaker) I figured out what the author was trying to say: That the shadows cast by the moonlight had come to life...
Now, look. Isn't that much clearer and cleaner? Doesn't make you gag on adjectives, and you can actually figure out what damn picture the author is trying to invoke. I'm sure you can phrase it more beautifully, but the idea's the same.
Freud once said, " Sometimes, a cigar is just a cigar." The same sort of applies to writing. Sometimes, red is just red. Blue is just blue. But in this fic, we have caramel, ivory, silver, hazel, alabaster, almond, argentine (that's silver, y'all), and amethyst. I don't know whether to eat Fujitaka or wear him, based on the adjectives used to describe him. Yue's definitely an expensive piece of jewelry or something, you silver-haired, amethyst-eyed, alabaster-skinned moon angel you! A few of these adjectives are fine, but more than that is tiresome.
Another thing about this fic is how the laws of English bend to Val's will, kicking and screaming. Nouns become verbs. Verbs become nouns become adjectives. While reading this fic, I felt like English was a solid oak table that she'd tried to tie into a pretzel. And the adjectives she tries to apply to nouns are just nonsensical at times Let's have some examples:
- a soft cradle disguising the true hard sustain of the wooden back of the bed's head
- Moonlight as silvery and bright as if the ivory orb had suddenly acquired the intensity of a midnight sun broke through the window in daring intrusion, fireflying through his short hazel hair and refracting itself willingly through the clear crystal of his glasses [(wow, sentient moonlight!)]
- the tests he was supposed to handle to his agonizing students
- his other hand rushing to cast the until then forlorn bedsheets over his long slim legs, as his frozen almond gaze [{ forlorn bedsheets?!}]
And dear god, if I were reading this fic out loud, I'd die before reaching a period.
Moonlight as silvery and bright as if the ivory orb had suddenly acquired the intensity of a midnight sun broke through the window in daring intrusion, fireflying through his short hazel hair and refracting itself willingly through the clear crystal of his glasses in an almost blinding way, making it even impossible for both his sight and mind to focus in the vital work of correcting the tests he was supposed to handle to his agonizing students tomorrow morning.
THAT'S ONE SENTENCE, PEOPLE!
Okay, enough bitching about the structure of the fic. Let's try content.
Fujitaka scares me. He comes across as a borderline pedophile, what with the way he stalks through his house at night, checking on his children.
"Sakura-san, how many times does daddy have to remind you good little girls like you don't stay up until midnight?"
He remembered himself walking slowly, nearly carelessly towards the muffled sound he'd heard coming out of his daughter's room, the soft rugged floor completely silencing the sound of his footsteps as he headed down the dark corridor, barely illuminated by the half-veiled light of the cloud-surrounded crescent...
"Sakura-san, you can't run away from daddy," he had smiled then when he had heard the rustling sound of smoldered movement down the corridor, the hushed whisper of cloth caressing the downy surface of the rug as if the little fugitive he thought was chasing tried to escape his eye by tiptoeing away from her door-closed room.
"Come along, sweetheart. Daddy's not angry..."
Dude, that's some fucked-up shit right there. Heh heh. Come to daddy, Sakura.
"Really, Touya-san?" yet carrying a Babel tower-sized pile of text books in his other arm, he had managed to let the other's fingers intertwine with the soft spiky brown hair the boy always carried cut tidy around his graceful, already handsome face, "Another of your new schoolmates?"
The small head was shaking beneath his tender fatherly touch...
Tender fatherly touch intertwined with Touya's hair. I'm sure. Notice how Touya carries his hair around, as if he takes it off and puts it in a bedside jar at night?
And then there's other interesting things, such as how Yue's hair fills an entire room, the moonlight willingly decides to blind Fujitaka, and how Fujitaka has caramel-colored pupils. Not irises. Pupils. IIINTERESTING. I think another Bitch commented that his caramel pupils must cover the apple of his eye.
I could keep going for days, really I could. But then I realized that I've sharpened my claws long enough on this, and I'm in severe danger of lapsing into frothing incoherency. I really don't understand the reason that fics like this don't get bitchslapped out of existence as soon as they appear. Fawning 'nice people' fall all over themselves to praise pretty crappy writing. But then again, usually these asskissing groupies express themselves as coherently as the fic writers themselves. "OMG!!! THAT WAS SO GOOD!!! MORE PLS!!!!"
Hey, at least it's not the Wish lemon.