Thread: Rage! (Magikarp Story - Ready for Grading)

Catching: Magikarp
Required Character Count -
3,000 - 5,000 characters
Character Count -
w/ Spaces: 5,619 characters
w/ out spaces: 6841 characters

- - -

There were simpler times in the medieval age. Anyone could get away with anything. Population was not an issue due to the disease, war that spreaded throughout the ages, and to entertain the village people. The village people if anything had already been declared by far, utterly and utmost stupid. No, it wasn't the petty decisions that they made. In fact, it started with a peculiar Pokemon. What was it called? Magikarp "ate-my-parents," which was a trait that children developed in the belief that the orange scaled fish that resulted in Magikarp Rage.

How Magikarp Rage was dealt with varied in the guardians choice to handle their child. Such ways could include the child being beaten half to death until the rage left their system. Then the priest felt wary on whether or not the rage would seep into everyone. That convinced the churches to bury the children to keep their rage down in hell with them. Not all of it was solved since some children lived to carry their rage for Magikarp's. Those children who grew were never thought to have carry the rage. Their minds were never at peace. They had come to the option to kill all Magikarp's.

There was one particular ship that was ran by Captain Fleming. Their task was to venture the seas around Kanto where the Magikarp population was high. Sailors were positioned all throughout the deck. What had all of the sailors had in common? Rage to destroy all the Magikarp.

"Come on you pansies," Fleming said. His arms were crossed and he narrowed his blue colored eyes. His slightly long brown hair was messy and a beard had only begun to grow. Fleming adjusted this tunic and belt while he watched over the sea. "We're not going to return home until we drink our rum, eat our Fearow, and this ship is full of headless Magikarp!" He turned to face the ship crew who had all gladly given their attention to their fellow leader.

"AARGH!" The crew held up their swords as they let out a noise that agreed.

"DEATH TO THE MAGIKARP!" A Sailor shouted.

"BLOW THEM UP!" Another Sailor shouted.

"FISH TILL WE CAN FISH NO MORE!" A third Sailor yelled.

Groups of the crew started to head down onto the canoes. A couple more sailors headed to the bigger fishing nets to cast them in. On average, they got a hold of many Magikarp and out of their own luck, Goldeen and Seaking. A Sailor kept lookout with a telescope. He shook with horror and shouted, "NO!"

Fleming turned around to stare upward to the Sailor and asked, "Mate, what's wrong!?"

"We have a man down!"

The canoe he had spotted no longer had a sailor. An orange blur had flopped on the canoe and now lied there lifeless. Out of fear, the sailor froze when the Magikarp had gotten loose and fell from the fishing rod. Then he acted on instinct to get away and dove into the water. Damn those Magikarp!

"KILL IT!" Fleming shouted.

The sailor nodded and stared out amongst the sea to shout, "KILL THE MAGIKARP! MAN DOWN! I REPEAT, MAN DOWN!"

On the other few canoes, men stared to each other with a nod. One man drew out his long sword and prepared himself to fight off any orange fish that thinks it can get through him.

"Are you insane!?" One of the other sailors asked, and then said, "You have a wife!"

"Then if I go down, tell her I love her," the sailor spoke, "I can't let the Magikarp get away after they caused the death of my parents and my friends!"

"You're a brave man."

Back on the ship, it was the second catch. Each time there was tons and tons of Magikarp, the crew would celebrate with a swig of rum. Not too many Seaking were in there and maybe one or two Goldeen. That came to one conclusion: the Magikarp were killing off the other fish now. This was worst than the stories of how monsters lived in the deep waters of the sea!

"We have to increase our pace," the sailor said.

With that, they started to work harder to get the net in the waters, fetch the net out, empty the net, and repeat. A common event to happen was that this task would get to their heads. At least one of their men would stop to stare in anguish at the dozens of Magikarp. His hands flexed as he tried to resist to grab his knife. The second he snapped, he grabbed the knife, and started to stab every Magikarp he could to release his rage.

"Wait a second! What about him!?" One of the younger males asked as he helped to get the net out.

The other sailor frowned and said, "There's nothing we can do, we lost him."

"Rest in peace mate, rest in peace," the young male said, and then turned his attention back to his task.

Gradually the canoes returned one by one. Some canoes never came back. It could be that no one survived or a sailor could not feel content to return. After an entire journey, some sailors have come to make this a routine. Then there were others who could not withstand being anywhere near the sea. Their rage prevented them from touching the very waters where the Magikarp live.

Fleming ran down to help the rest of his crew. He patted their backs and shook their hands. The multiple barrels of rum were collected. Mugs were passed around that each sailor took with gratitude. It was quite a task to venture out to sea to destroy the creature that had caused sorrow to the multiple sailor's lives.

That evening, all the men were around each other as they ate. Some could not be bothered to move. It was quite tragic what the Magikarp had caused. Then out of luck, one Magikarp just happened to live. Their mugs dropped and glass shattered all over. The wind blew out the light that shone over the deck.

"What do we do?" One of the sailors asked.

"Why obviously, we...." Fleming trailed off and grabbed his sword. He pointed his sword towards his enemy. "Kill it," he said. A couple of the men swallowed in fear. Then the others slowly followed Fleming's lead. In one moment, more Magikarp started to collect on the ship that were alive. The rough waters had sent them on board. "CHARGE!" Fleming exclaimed.

That was the start of a long night. All the men withdrew their weapons or grabbed what they could near them. Fleming slid his knife through a Magikarp's mouth and with his boot, kicked the Pokemon off of his sword. He then swung it around to slice through an orange blur. Multiple cries ran on the ship as the men fought their hardest against the Magikarp. This was the life of those who were born with Magikarp Rage.

"DEATH TO THE MAGIKARP!"

The ship sailed back to the sailors homeland beneath a sunrise. Any sailor left stared down to mourn those who they had lost. When they reached the land, the Magikarp were placed on the sand. One man poured a liquid where ever the Magikarp lied and around the pile they made. Then a sailor stepped forth to lay down a torch. All the sailors stood there and took off their hats as they watched the Magikarp burn.

That was their true happiness.

- - -

Claimin'

Introduction: You simultaneously pulled me in and repulsed me with this. On the first hand, your first sentence is actually pretty intriguing. And the concepts that follow it are also “hmmm”-inducing. Even the concept of the Magikarp rage was like, OOH, I THINK I LIKE THIS. You set an interesting stage for an interesting story, and explain more or less where the characters, plot, and world setting appears.

However. I also can not get my head around what is supposed to be being said, here. It’s not even your sentence structure—that’s fairly straightforward, despite its errors. It’s the actual words. I have only the vaguest understanding of what the Magikarp rage is, and how it relates to the medieval times. I get the impression that you’re trying to build a relationship in your first paragraph, but I’m completely lost when it comes to puzzling that out. I THINK that you’re saying, “village people are stupid not because they make stupid decisions, but because their children go mad with rage when they start thinking that Magikarp ate their parents.” But I’m not sure. If you’re a writer with weak sentence/idea flow, the most important places to ensure clarity are the introduction and the conclusion. If your reader doesn’t know where you’re coming from, the rest of the story can be perfectly sensible and well-written, and they might still have no idea what’s going on.

My main question is, where does this Magikarp rage come from? Why the heck do these children start going mad? Why would they think the Magikarp ate their parents? These are definitely worth answering. I can’t tell if you actually did answer them in text or not, which is a bad sign for the clarity of your intro.

In the future, also make sure that you super-edit your introductions—perhaps even have a friend look over them for you.

Plot: This was soooooo weiiirrddd. XD While I was pretty confused on the specifics of what Magikarp rage is, the plot itself was fairly clear. It was interesting, to think that the survivors of this rage never truly “get over” it, and must go on senselessly murdering Magikarp. You have a fairly diverse plot structure that stretches over several days—this is a rarity in a Magikarp plot. As a whole, I think you actually articulated your story quite well with the actual “plot”-involving segments. The concept of the men just rambling about on the sea, burning and beheading every Magikarp in sight, was surprisingly compelling.

You DID lack a certain element of “plot progression”—it felt more like “a few days in the life” than a coherent story with a narrative arc. When you get into higher level captures, make sure that you “stress” the “bumps” in the narrative arc (ie, when the guy falls out of the boat and the final Magikarp encounter). Make the reader conscious of the fact that they’re reading something that’s bigger than usual—perhaps by describing things in a scarier, more exciting, or more disturbing way, or perhaps by drawing attention to the differences in the characters’ reactions to this event versus another. There are lots of way to do this—tinker a bit.

On a whole, this plot is more than interesting enough to nab you a Magikarp. The progression issues will be relevant when you get into Hard+ capture levels, but don’t matter with a Magikarp. Watch out for the confusion caused by your introduction, because it tainted my understanding of the rest of the fic.

Grammar:This was the weakness that caused all your other weaknesses. SO BASICALLY, PAY A LOT OF ATTENTION TO IT. You had a LOT of grammatical errors that prevented a full understanding of what was going on in this fic. I’ll start with the basic conventional errors, even though they have less of an impact on comprehension.

"DEATH TO THE MAGIKARP!" A Sailor shouted.

Dialogue tags. You never, ever capitalize the first letter in a dialogue tag.

“DEATH TO THE MAGIKARP!” a Sailor shouted.
“DEATH TO THE MAGIKARP,” a Sailor shouted.
“DEATH TO THE MAGIKARP?” a Sailor shouted.
“DEATH,” a Sailor shouted, “TO THE MAGIKARP!”

The Sailor’s dialogue is modified by his name and a speaking verb (ie, shout, say, whisper)—hence, dialogue tag. However, there are situations in which something that LOOKS like a dialogue tag shouldn’t actually be one. Mainly, if you’re using a non-speaking verb in a phrase that modifies the dialogue.

"AARGH!" The crew held up their swords as they let out a noise that agreed.

Like here. This is exactly right, the way you did it. The verb is “held,” not “said.” Good job getting that right. Remember to keep it right when you go about editing dialogue tag grammar in the future.

Not all of it was solved since some children lived to carry their rage for Magikarp's.

Possession versus plurality. Disclaimer, before I explain this rule: generally, when writing the plural form of a Pokémon, it’s exactly the same as their singular form. There are many Magikarp; there were two Magikarp.

However, since you chose to do it the other way and mixed up grammatical rules, I’ll explain them briefly.

The form you use in that quote up there ought to be “Magikarps.” If it were the Magikarp’s mouth, or many Magikarps’ mouths, you would have an apostrophe (before the “s” when singular, and after the “s” when plural.) However, a simple plural group of Magikarp that’s not in ownership of anything appears as “Magikarps.”

Your other errors are pretty complicated, grammatically. A lot of your tense is wrong, and you have comma errors left and right. I can’t point them all out. I’d recommend that you review basic sentence structure, to start with. The Structure of a Sentence is a good place to start. For now, just focus on the smaller things that I gave you, and remember that you should try to clarify your sentence structure as much as you can.

Description: For a Magikarp, you’re good. When you start getting up into the higher levels, you’re going to want to be working in more description. Focus on the senses: sight, sound, touch, taste, and smell. Don’t forget to tack on “emotions” as a sixth sense, if you’re writing from a limited POV. Think about what you want to portray, then what senses could achieve a specific reaction in your reader. Say that you wanted to convey that the slaughter of the Magikarp is disgusting. Perhaps you describe the buzz of flies in the air, the maggots squirming in their flesh, the cloying stench of dead fish mixed in with the salt of the sea… Perhaps you describe their bulging, empty eyes and the fluids that leak from their mangled corpses.

Or maybe you want to focus on the adventure. So you could describe the clang of swords as the sailors scramble across the deck towards their foes, the glint of the sunlight on the metal, the sound of agile sailors swinging from rope to rope in the rigging and leaping over railings… the swoosh of the captain’s coat as he swirls to take down another Magikarp. ET CETERA. What you describe shouldn’t just be a “this happened” sort of thing. It should build an atmosphere that manipulates the reader’s understanding of the situation, so that they see it the way you do.

Length: Good.

Verdict: Magikarp captured. Your prose/sentence structure is going to be a problem for you at the higher levels, but your originality in plot more than makes up for it at the lower capture levels. I’d wager you could get up to a Medium successfully if you don’t work out your sentence structure errors. However, if you want to go any farther than that, you’re definitely going to need to sort out your grammar. Feel free to ask me for more in depth explanations—I didn’t want to weigh you down in a Magikarp grade. XD

Anyway, lovely little story. Nice plot—remember to answer anticipated questions that the reader has, in the future, and you’ll do even better. Your detail was quite adequate for this level—just keep in mind the tips I gave you for future stories. ALL IN ALL, GOOD JOB, AND I HOPE TO SEE MORE FROM YOU IN THE FUTURE.

Thanks there old buddy pal! :D

Actually, I always had problems with sentence structure, plural, tenses, and plot progression.
If you could ever help me with those, it'd be a BIG help.
xD
Grammar I hope to also improve.
My dad bought me a grammar book for such an occasion.
Lawl.

Yeah, a Magikarp grade isn't really the place to get into the nuances of alla that, 'cause it's actually pretty complicated stuff when you get down to it. If you want to hit me up on AIM with specific questions, I'm open to it anytime. :o