The Stark Magikarp (Open for comments/ criticism)

Target: Magikarp
Difficulty: Easiest
Target Characters: 3-5K
Achieved Characters: 5125

The Stark Magikarp​

Neon sheltered his eyes from the blazing fervor that was sprinkling down through form of sunlight. It was a bad day to have worn his black suit; the heat was sweltering to the point where he was legitimately considering just stripping down to his boxers and diving into the nearby fountain. ‘If only it wasn’t frowned upon,’ thought Neon while letting out an exasperated sigh. Neon normally wouldn’t even care whether it was considered legal or not, but in this particular moment he was headed to a job interview with the Mr. Stone, the leader of Devon Corporation. It probably wouldn’t look too good on him if the day he had an interview, his combed brown hair had turned flat and was dripping wet. Not to mention people would be talking about the occurrence for quite sometime.

As Neon walked through the ever-busy streets of Rustboro, he noticed the interesting scene that was taking place around him. There were several shop posts that immediately closed as a dark trench coated man with a black top hat and sunglasses walked by. ‘So this was the infamous Magikarp salesman, a man who wandered the globe wreaking havoc among each town he targeted. He used his expert coercion and charisma to trade items for weak Magikarp and then selling his Magikarp to trainers by providing the traded items as hold equipment for trainers to buy. Needless to say, the economy of the targeted town gets royally messed up enough that it is beyond repair for months.

The Magikarp salesman had chosen Rustboro as his newest target and had spent the past few days scoping the place out, finding whom the newest inexperienced shop owners were. As the Magikarp salesman approached the newest store on the block to make it a deal it couldn’t refuse, he felt a hand rest upon his shoulder. The hand belonged to Neon, who decided that this man wasn’t going to go anywhere near the town within which he planned on working. “Excuse me sir, you wouldn’t happen to be selling Magikarp, would you?” asked Neon with the most innocent farce he could muster.

“Why yes I am!” responded the Magikarp salesman putting on the sleaziest grin he could muster, obviously thinking he had just run into a trainer he could fool.

“Would you mind showing me one or two of them so that I could test how strong they are?”

“Not at all! Come right this way!” The Magikarp salesman led Neon back over to the fountain he had just pondered swimming in, putting on a show the whole way. “These are the strongest Magikarp on the continent! Guaranteed to evolve into fearsome Gyrados!”

“Really? That would be something. Let us see how they fair in a battle against my Murkrow.”
“Of course, of course.” And with that the salesman reached into his pocket, pulling out a black and yellow pokeball that was obviously extremely well cared for. “Come on out Super Scaly Magikarp McLarson!” He threw the ball into the air and out came a gold colored Magikarp that shone in the sunlight as if it had been misted with water not twenty minutes beforehand, to boost appeal.

“Let’s go for it Loki!” Neon threw his pokeball into the air releasing the dark shadow bird into the battle scene. “Murkrow give him a strong Wing Attack.” Murkrow happily complied slamming his wing into the gold fish. What both Loki and Neon assumed would be an instant faint, turned into a shockingly ineffective attack. The Magikarp just lay there completely unharmed and unfazed as if nothing happened.

“See! What did I tell you? These are flawless Magikarp! Go ahead, attack again!”

“Loki, give him a taste of your Faint Attack!” Murkrow drove into the Magikarp with increased vigor. This was to no avail; the Magikarp didn’t budge an inch. The Magikarp didn’t move at all. ‘Isn’t it customary for a Magikarp to at least flop around?’ thought Neon to himself. ‘Wait a moment…’ A siren approaching in the distance interrupted Neon’s train of thought.

“Oh crap! Their onto me already?” And with that the Magikarp salesman ran off and disappeared into a dark alleyway between a few shops.

‘”Well, I am glad to see this story has a happy ending, but what about you little guy?” asked Neon to the still immobile Magikarp. “Want me to get you free of that blasted gold coating?” Their eyes met for an instant and Magikarp seemed genuinely happy for the first time in it’s life. Neon spent the next hour scraping off the gold paint that had kept Magikarp entrapped in a protective shell of super resistant paint. When he finished freeing the Magikarp of its faux valuable coating, Neon realized that he was late for his meeting with his potential new boss. ‘What should I do with the Magikarp?’ thought Neon trying to quickly clean himself of the dirt that the battle had gotten onto his suit. Neon thought on his feet, returning his Murkrow to it’s pokeball and repeating the process with Magikarp putting both in his pocket. ‘There is no way that I am going to leave this poor Magikarp here alone,’ Neon reminded himself of his noble reasoning for taking the Magikarp. ‘But how the hell am I going to explain all of this?’ Neon took off sprinting towards the Devon Corporation Head Quarters building.

 

Claimed for Grading.

 

Introduction:

I thought that this introduction was done well. It drew me into the story because I wanted to know why he'd wear a black suit when it was obviously so hot outside. It also did a fairly good job of describing the environment, since it gave the readers an idea of the current weather and its effects on everyone.

The only thing that your introduction was really lacking was a glimpse into what would go on during the story, which is usually something that helps the introduction draw in the readers even more. The beginning kind of didn't have an overall effect on the plot of the story, so involving the readers in the plot early on would be something I would recommend in your future stories.

This wasn't a problem considering your target, though, so good job with this section.

Plot:
While on the way to an interview, Neon happens to come across the infamous Magikarp salesman, the single-handed bane of the economies of many towns around the world. He gets the salesman to show him the Magikarp, and is surprised at their resilience. However, when the cops decide to ruin the salesman's day, Neon finds that this resilience is nothing more than a coat of paint. Feeling sorry for the Magikarp, Neon grabs it and hurries off to his interview.

It's a basic plot, but you are going after a Magikarp, so there's absolutely nothing wrong with that. Obviously, more complex captures will require more complex plots, but you've written other stories anyway, so you probably know that by now.

Dialogue:
Not too much dialogue here, but you hardly had room for it, seeing as this story is only about 5,000 characters long. Dialogue is important because it allows you to convey the personalities and emotions of the characters to the readers without having to tell them about it and interrupt the flow of the story. This was done well for the amount of space you had; I could see that the salesman was feigning sincerity, and Neon's surprise at the Magikarp's ability to resist attacks was also quite obvious.

Obviously, expand upon the dialogue and give more insights into personality as you write for more difficult captures. For this one, though, it was fine.

Grammar:
One major thing that I noticed was your placement of dialogue and thoughts inside of paragraphs. Even if nobody has spoken yet in the paragraph, you should still give dialogue and thoughts their own paragraph, since there's a switch from description to conversation between characters there. For example, this:

Would become this:

Other than that, I didn't see anything worth noting.

Detail and Description:
Something I noticed:

Okay, which city is the salesman in, again?

Other than that, you did a pretty good job with the details. I could visualize the characters you put into the story very well thanks to your description of their appearances (though a little more might be needed if you're going for something more difficult), and I could pretty much understand the setting (though the above detail kind of threw me off).

What I would recommend is that you describe the surroundings a little more. You said that Neon was in Rustboro; if a reader hasn't played the third-gen games, they probably wouldn't know what Rustboro looked like, so you'll want to describe what it looks like for them. This will also allow the readers to visualize your characters in the situations given to them better than they would without description in this area.

Again, for your target Pokemon, what you have is fine; more difficult stuff may require that you implement my suggestions.

Battle:
There wasn't really a battle, since Neon's Murkrow attacking the Magikarp didn't provoke a noticeable response. That's fine, considering your target. You'll obviously want to expand upon the battles some more as you get higher in difficulty.

Also, it might be worth your time to describe the attacks a little more. From your descriptions of Wing Attack and Faint Attack, I could almost say that they were the same attack, when they are definitely different. Distinguishing them will be worth the trouble, and exploring their effects on the targets (which you did to an extent here) will be helpful when you receive a Grade.

Length:
Magikarp is in the Easiest category; the suggested length for Pokemon in this category is 3,000 to 5,000 characters. Your story is 5,125 characters, so that's more than enough.

Outcome:
Drum roll, please...

...

...Click!

Gotcha! Magikarp was caught!

Be sure to take my suggestions into account when you write for more difficult Pokemon in the future.

Enjoy your catch!

 

Thank you for the grade =). I do plan on taking this criticism to heart for my next works. Sorry about the city mixup, this story takes place in Rustboro. I am currently writing another story that takes place in Slateport as well. Just a slight moment of confusion. Thank you once again.