Subject: Crit which is hopefully con!
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Posted on: 2015-03-03 10:14:00 UTC

I'm not gonna comment on the artwork, for the record: just the writing.

Corrina is... well, first and foremost, she's not bothered to learn her own backstory. She was bribed into joining the army with a female Ralts (from Hoenn, not Sinnoh; she can tell the difference because... she can!), and this is her first assignment... but she's in the army because of her father, and she's been subject to repeated court martials. Given the way she tore up her first assignment, she not only deserves a court martial for gross insubordination, she should have the Ralts taken away from her and probably be locked up as a suspected spy.

But of course, she isn't. Instead, she just sweeps out of there - deserting from the army in a time of war (yeah) - and Superior McOfficer is powerless to stop her. Actually, I really empathise with Superior here - she's trying to fight a war here, and Corrina's whinging about not wanting to do anything. Yeah, Corrina, if it weren't for the woman whose office you're smashing, your cozy little log cabin would probably be on fire.

So, for the first chapter (and backstory), what can I say? Actually, given that Corrina teleports out (meaning Superior probably couldn't have stopped her), she's perfectly written - as a spoilt brat who'll hopefully get her comeuppance. With a slight tweak to imply that her previous disciplinaries - the ones her father got her out of - were during training, this scene works pretty well. Always provided we're not meant to like her.

Chapter 2. Again, the idea that Corrina is a loose cannon Voltorb who lashes out at everyone works here: Maya is clearly terrified of her. The fact that she then apologises to Maya suggests she's changed a little since exploding at Superior. Probably the best way to handle this would be to actually show us 'Chapter 1.5' - the journey to the battlefield. Show us Corrina abusing her Pokemon (verbally and in terms of what she makes them do), but then show us her first experience actually killing another person. She may be the world's greatest hunter - but her prey doesn't normally whisper it's wife's name while it dies. Training is all very well - both Pokemon training and military (which she of course mostly ignored) - but it doesn't prepare you to actually, y'know, murder someone.

(Depending on how high you want to drag the horror up: have her run into an armed man outside a log cabin and murder him - and then have his children run out of the house)

Oh hey look it's plot! The technobabble sounds, uh, technobabbly, but hey, Pokemon being able to view the past isn't too farfetch'd. But then Mew... uh... um.

Okay, Mew's pretty obnoxious, but I can see two ways it could work. Either Mew has an evil plot, and the cheerful stuff is an act, or Mew is acting out of goodness and light and trying to make Corrina into a better person with all this 'chosen one' malarkey. Quite possibly the story could use a double twist in which we find out the true story - and then find out that there's actually a deeper true story under it all.

Chapter 3: whooooooa, did I miss a bit? Suddenly we've gone from 'you're the bratty chosen one!' to naked panels and implied prostitution. Um, right.

This doesn't really work, because it's way too subtle for Corrina. Her technique for getting out of the army was to yell 'I'm leaving!'. Her technique for getting out of disciplinary trouble was to call for Daddy. Her technique for getting past the guards immediately before Chapter 2 was to beat them up and (fail to) wipe their memories. There's no way she'd do anything here except all-out attack. (Also, haha, sure you were trained by ninjas, I bet you beat them in every fight, didn't you? Because, y'know, your daddy would have killed them if they didn't let you)

But actually, my version of Corrina might just do this. She wasn't trained by ninjas, of course (though Daddy might have taken her round once and glowered at them until they said she was a 'natural'), but with her experiences on the borders, and watching Nicolai die... yes, I can see her deliberately going for a non-lethal approach. She'd probably have a hard time keeping her temper under control as the guards continued to refuse to let her in; I'd imagine that ultimately she slaps one, they draw their weapons, and she (or Pichu) kill them in desperation. But that wasn't the plan, and she's upset by it.

Basically, I see Corrina as a deconstruction of Eragon: where Eragon goes about saying killing is bad and then keeps justifying it to himself, Corrina starts off thinking it's bad, realises it's awful - and then keeps failing to stop herself. Her ultimate victory in my version is when she's finally able to not commit murder in self-defence - even though it means she'll probably die. She started out using her 'principles' as an excuse to do whatever she wants; she ends up following her principles even when it's the last thing she wants to do.

hS

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