Playing God SPORK Ch1 - Kira's Goddess (Begin The Torture) (PART II)
Playing God
Chapter I
Kira's Goddess
(Begin The Torture)
(PART II)
Stepping in front of the entrance of the 30 story building (that's storey, with an 'e' for paying an Energy Bill to stay there... and orange? Really?), she took a gulp of breath and straightened her hair. She couldn't just rush in with any explanation and though her gut wanted her to rush in and head upstairs to look at the Deathnote, she had enough self-control not to do that.
Or, I'm a Speshul Snowflake capable of anything and everything. Face it, if you were really in this situation, you would just say goodbye to self-control.
She pushed the door open and stepped into the lobby. It too was a bright orange and had a few lounge chairs here and there.
To the right was a desk with a sleeping doorman, which she knew as Hotaru,
WHO she knew as Hotaru! WHO!!! Doormen are people, too, you know!!!
and to the left was a spiraling staircase. There was an elevator too, but it was in desperate need of repair. She carefully approached the desk and gave a small, "Hotaru?"
The man made a small mumble, but showed no intention of waking.
"Hotaru." she said with a bit more volume in her voice.
Still he refused to wake.
"Hotaru!" she practically yelled.
Oh, I’ve seen this in fics before. It’s a cliché, did you know? A Sue has to assert her dominance in the story, and to do so, the Suethor makes her show it through demanding behaviour like this, and what I like to call ‘Wake-Yells’. It’s meant to be funny, get a few giggles, and life goes on, but I just see this and think ‘amateur’. Children, Wake-Yells are boring and cliché, and if you were to try waking someone in real life, a small nudge or proportionate shake of the shoulder will do the job nine times out of ten.
Finally Hotaru woke, but with a scream. He lifted his head up from his crossed arms violently and in the process, his head connected with her already bruised nose. She gave a yelp of pain and covered her nose with both of her palms, creating a small shield to protect her nose from further harm. Hotaru blinked and saw he had hurt his friend.
Friend? Wasn’t he a doorman just a few minutes ago? Please, in the interest of professionalism in any job, Hotaru should really only be one or the other, especially as his friend is a girl. Yes, this sounds sexist, but it’s for the good of at least one of them. Also, that tiny bit of action was just boring. I can see how the future action scenes are going to pan out.
He instantly began to fuss over her and when he saw her cut cheek, he just began to make a scene.
And so I christen this idiot ‘Papa Ho-Ho’. Obviously, he is meant to be a big brother figure to the Sue, someone who has always been a friend to her but is probably hiding romantic feelings for her, the only problem being that he’s been friend-zoned for so long that there’s nothing he can do about it. For those of you who understand Twilight-parlance, he is the ‘Jacob’.
"Kuro, are you okay?" Hotaru almost squealed. [5] [5]
Why is Papa Ho-Ho a squealer? It just doesn’t seem like something a doorman would do… how old is he? And don’t doormen mainly exist in American apartment buildings?
"I'm fine, Hotaru. Jeez. I slipped outside and got cut."
"I told you, you should be more careful out in the rain, but no you won't listen to me."
And neither will you consider proper use of commas. They’re punctuation too, you know.
"Never have, never will." Kuro said with a smirk.
Hotaru huffed and crossed his arms as Kuro chuckled at him. Hotaru always was a bit childish. He walked back over to the desk and had a frown on his face.
Here we have it, folks: Our Sue has a loyal man-child as a sidekick. What’s the point of good characterisation when we can make our Sue look good? Certainly don’t need it for any of our OTHER characters! Poor, poor, poooor Papa Ho-Ho. Note how she keeps using the Sue’s name, now that she’s been named, even when it’s just not necessary to do so.
"You know Kuro I worry about you. And I worry about your comma abuse. I mean you always seem to be in trouble and c'mon! Your name is Kuro Shi for Kami's sake!" [6] [6]
"You worry too much, Hotaru. I'm fine. Now I need to go up to my room and get started on my studies."
"Ah, yes. You spend so much of your time on your studies to get into college." said Hotaru with a smile. Weak exposition, much? We can see that she’s going to end up meeting Light and L at To-Oh now, so I’ll call this one…
Slapsgiving count - 4
Kuro returned the smile and headed up the stairs to her apartment. She had some reading to do and it didn't involve studying.
-Yawn- I feel SOOO fired up for the next chapter… bring it on… ughhhh.
[1] That some serious childish fantasy.
[1] Hello, and welcome to the first of many footnotes to come. This is one thing I seriously disagree with, concerning this fic, so expect me to be commenting on them in this fashion for the rest of the fic as well. As for this first note itself… the structure of this sentence does not make sense, and is completely unnecessary, considering how obvious this fact is.
[2] Yeah, it's just some plain notebook. Right.
[2] Yeah. Of course it is. There was not even a need for you to mention this in an author’s note. We already got from the mention of some college kid with too many books dropping it as hint enough. By the way, all college kids come with a bag of some kind to hold those books. After several years of schooling beforehand, it’s already well drilled into them that they are going to need a book bag, and they will invariably use a book bag. Girl, get a clue.
[3] This is kanji, but it is from Google Translate so, sorry if it is incorrect.
[3] Fact. This is not kanji. This is katakana, one of two kana scripts used in Japanese. This particular script, believe it or not, is used mainly for words of foreign origin, for names of foreign origin, and for sound effects/onomatopoeia. As someone who is literate in both scripts and pretty good with kanji (the Chinese characters (no, that’s literally what ‘Kanji’ means)), I can tell you that, while the katakana is correct, the fact that she needed Google Translate to find it is astounding, as it’s written on the cover of every Death Note volume to date. If she really wanted the katakana, she could have gone onto the Death Note page on Wikipedia, clicked to translate it into Japanese, and copied and pasted the katakana from there. She could have even gone onto the useful romaji-to-kana site Mauve Cloud, where she could type in ‘Desunooto’ and receive the reading in hiragana and katakana in seconds.
IF you did not understand already, I am a hater of Google Translate. A true hater. Also, this G.T use and gratuitous foreign script behaviour will be going on for the whole course of the fic, I do believe, and so my Japanese knowledge will be used for epic winning time and time again. You’re welcome.
[4] These are the actual rules for the book or so I believe. They are from Wikipedia.
[4] Or so you believe… or so you believe -shakes head-. These rules can be found in every copy of Death Note volume 1 across the nations. If she was an actual fan of Death note, and not a dabbler/idiot as I believe her to be, she would know this. The fact that she had to refer to Wikipedia, and that she thinks we need to as well is just insulting. We readers are fans! We know the rules!
[5] Glad to finally learn her name?
[5] No, not really. I just know what to call her now, and what to NOT mark her grave with when she finally dies from a spork-related death.
[6] Kuro Shi translated into English means black death also according to Google Translate, this is why Hotaru is fussing over it.
[6] Uggghhhhhh. I’m very sorry, but this very name actually irritates me so much. Why? First of all, it is incredibly clichéd and unimaginative concerning that this is the Death Note fanon we’re talking about. Secondly, ‘kuro’ is the noun form of the word black, not the adjective, and the proper Japanese for ‘Black death’ is ‘Kuroi Shi’, not taking into account that this phrase is generally nonsense.
Thirdly, I may not be an expert in Japanese culture, but if there’s a pattern I’ve noticed, it’s that Japanese surnames tend to be associated in some way with nature, geographic locations, that kind of thing. Considering that Japanese beliefs often have an association with nature, this is not surprising at all. Examples include ‘Matsuda’ (‘Pine Field’), ‘Aizawa’ (‘Fellow Swamp’) and ‘Kitamura’ (‘North Village’). Sometimes, there are names associated with Shinto or Buddhist religion, such as ‘Yagami’ - while in the DN canon, it means ‘Night God’ (as 夜神), the meaning in the real world (as 八神) is ‘Eight Gods’, which is a reference to the eight Japanese Buddhist gods of Wealth and Good Fortune (the change in meaning, of course, was to assure further that there wouldn’t be a real life person who would be cursed thanks to a coincidence in shared names (the fact that Kiyomi Takada, a real name, was used was because Ohba didn’t realise he/she would be bringing her back for evil)). The fact is that, no matter how different you should have the names of your murderers to make sure that there will not coincidently exist a person who has the same name as a criminal, there would under no circumstances exist anyone with the surname ‘Shi’. At all. It just would not happen, especially as the Japanese attitude towards death is usually full of such euphemism and superstition (there are actually quite a few words and phrases that refer to death, many of which can be translated as ‘passing away’, or ‘giving up the ghost’).
As for the first name, let me tell you a little story. Once upon a time, a little Japanese boy was born to loving and well-meaning parents, and for whatever reason they had, they wanted to name this little boy of theirs ‘Akuma’ (悪魔), which of course means ‘demon’. Pretty happy with their choice, they sent it to the registrars to be validated by the record-keepers, however, when they got back to the parents, they told them that the name was completely inappropriate and cruel, and so they forbade them from naming their child Akuma. Whatever name he has now, it’s presumably an acceptable one. You see, the fact is that this name is just inappropriate. Not only that, but it does not actually work as a female name at all: Nine times out of ten, you can tell the difference between a boy’s name and a girl’s name by the ending sound/suffix. For girls, such endings include ‘ko’ (‘Aiko’, ‘Sachiko’, ‘Eriko’), ‘ho’ (‘Miho’, ‘Shiho’), ‘mi’ (‘Mayumi’, ‘Kiyomi’, ‘Naomi’), and a few more. For boys, you have ‘to’ (‘Light’ (pronounced as ‘Raito’ in Japanese, which is how Light’s been getting away with that name all these years)), ‘rou’ (‘Tarou’, ‘Soichirou’), ‘suke’ (‘Sasuke’, ‘Kyosuke’), and a few more. Now, I wouldn’t be too mad at this name, had the Suethor known anything about Japanese names and had thought to make it more culturally acceptable.
So, to include this huge gaff and all Japanese language gaffs and Google Translate screw-ups to follow, I will introduce a new count: The ‘Google Addicts Anonymous’ count.
Current Google Addicts Anonymous count - 1
Author's Note: Well there's chapter 1. I hope you all enjoyed it. Really? If you meant that, I would have. I will be updating this story once a week since it is my primary fic right now. I will update it usually on the weekends and will update whenever possible, but it will usually happen every week on the weekends. Oh goody…
Now I would also like to start something that I started in Crawling In My Skin. I call it the RQOTD. IT stand for Random Question Of The Day. It also stands for ‘I can’t control my Cap Locks. I ask you readers a random question and you answer in a review! Here is today's question:
RQOTD: How was the first chapter? Great, Good, Bad, or Terrible?
Leave your answer in a review!
‘Random’ question of the day? What this really is, is an obvious prompt forcing you to tell her what you think when we already know how to actually do that. We have a review button for a reason, you know. You know, If I was running a segment like this, I would ask about your thoughts on apple crumble, or spanky pants, or the Arms Race, or Sheldon Cooper, not something so unimaginative as this.
*waves*
And that, children, was the first chapter of ‘Playing God’, as sporked by me, Ruin Takada. Before I give you a bit of good news, let me tell you that this was one of the most painful things I’ve ever experienced, taking into account my appendectomy. I think the only thing that kept me going through this is the fact that our fellow A-ST4ce member BB will be joining me for chapter 2, and the fact I got my hair cut today (13/10/12).
Because I want to leave this now and have a necessary break before chapter 2, I will leave you now with just the update on the current counts.
Exploding Canon - 4
Slapsgiving - 4
And the Indians Got the Clap (when Slapsgiving comes true) - 1
Google Addicts Anonymous - 1
On that note, I say adieu, and thank you so much for enduring my rage and anal-retention.
Thanks again,
Ruin Takada XXX
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