I honestly don't mind the slow burn of A Cloudy Path, in fact, the chapters dealing with character stuff like emotions and daily life are the chapters I like most. It is true though, the story is way too long as it is and I can't honestly say at which point we are, are we still somewhere at the beginning, middle or are we even nearing some kind of end, and it needs some momentum somewhere in its structure but at least it is paying attention to aspects that most Worm stories just ignore.

It is bloated but still, one of the better Worm stories that are being updated at the moment.

 

The tanuki is sad... Perfect Lionheart aka Skysaber has found WORM and is writing fanfics for it....
https://www.fanfiction.net/s/11359049/1/

And yes, it's a BAD fix fic... -_-

 

Why you do this, tanuki? I was happier not knowing. Skysaber is like a bad penny. ;_;

 

What's more interesting is that he's a popular bad penny. There are lots of bad fanfic writers, very few of whom get his attention. Why?

 

Nah there are tons of bad fanfic writers that get his attention. The key is getting the right combination of feel-good, silly tropes, and inflating-the-reader's-ego into your prose.

 

Now, I haven't read a great deal of his work, but from what I have, I think I can venture a guess.

As far as I can tell, the main reason his work is as popular as it is simple:

It appeals/panders to the base wish-fulfillment power fantasy.

I've noticed that fanfiction readers tend toward strongly investing themselves into the story. When discussing the protagonist, there's frequent use of "us", "we", etc. It's indicative of a lack of separation (consciously or otherwise) between themselves and the protagonist. This in turn leads to strong emotional investment in the success and behavior of the protagonist, which only amplifies the already visceral appeal of power fantasy.

Add that on to the fact that while his work isn't particularly good mechanically, it's not bad enough to appear as such to those less familiar with good writing and you get people who will defend the work as holy writ, because it makes them feel good and therefore must be good.

It helps that he was also one of, if not the first author to do the whole time-loops thing (and if he wasn't the first, he was easily the most well known) and the 'ooh shiny' factor served to draw even more attention to his work and win some converts that followed to his later stories.

It's much the same reason that Gabriel Blessing's work is so popular despite being rather crushingly mediocre.

 

I don't think I have ever seen that happen outside a quest.

 

I see it all the time in comment threads for various stories on Spacebattles, and it's come up in some of the reviews for my own work on FFN. I've also seen similar attitudes (though admittedly the personal investment is more implied than outright stated) on that forum Gabriel Blessing made for his work. It's most common after a cliffhanger or sudden plot twist is revealed and people are discussing how the protagonist should react/what they should do now.

I'll freely admit that I don't exactly have a scientific dataset to draw from, and even if I did, it's by no means a universal trait, so by all means, take it with a grain of salt. It's simply a theory for the massively undeserved popularity of certain works based on personal experience and my understanding of human psychology.

I'd certainly be interested in other people's take on the matter if they're willing to share.

 

Because tanuki saw it and was horrified...

 

Good on nabbing the quote, but I basically consider it to be a giant whopping plot hole that I'm pretty sure, or at least hoping, that will be cleaned up whenever Worm gets fully edited and 'published'. It's something that is without any context from any character I can remember off-hand. Yes, Cauldron has some stake in manipulating Taylor to some end (they even have a good stake in putting her in Birdcage - she's useful enough they probably want to protect her from harm until the end; theorhetically too, if Amy+Taylor+GU had met earlier in the story, we would have seen an accelerated demise of Scion methinks, to the betterment of mankind...though Cauldron wouldn't've known that), but Alexandria's exact thought processes don't make any logical sense. and nobody really corroborates what her plan really was.

I think she was just being a giant dick.

 

Jared Ornstead/Skysaber/Polychrome Knight/White Phoenix/Perfect Lionheart is a terrible author and personality. You'd better not talk smack about his fics or he'll get his brother-in-law the lawyer to sue you. And then he'll quit fanfiction. Again. And after stewing for a year, come back. Again. With another preachy rant completely divorced from reality. Again. And then he receives some well meaning constructive criticism and gets pissy again. The cycle continues.

I don't know how many times he's "quit" fanfiction, but I think the fanfiction community got tired of his histrionics after the first time.

I wouldn't compare him to Gabriel Blessing, because Gabe's storytelling has evolved quite a bit over the years [better in some ways, worse in others, but it is growth and change], whereas Jared has remained stuck in the same rut of awfulness since the beginning. He seem incapable of improvement or accepting criticism as an author. Both writers predate ff.net, but I know which one I'd prefer to read.

I'd consider Jared's writing to be similar to the wish fulfilment SI fics that came from Carrot Glace/Contrabardus. Carrot never much improved as an author either, but he wasn't a prick or prima donna about constructive criticism either, and iirc actively sought it out - there wasn't much other reason to go to the Delphi Fanfic Forums.

Jared managed to unite a lot of people in the fandom who were mutual enemies against him. It was impressive to see in action.

Why is he still so popular? I didn't think he was except among newbs who can't yet tell good from bad. No one should still be reading Skysaber's fics after their first few years of reading fanfiction. Unfortunately, the supply of newbs is never ending.

 

Seriously? When I was like 8 my brother and I started a band called The White Cheetahs. We mainly used Casio keyboard sound effects and wore matching headbands. Kind of reminds me of that.

No, it's a good thing. I mean yeah, the downside is you have the never ending cycle of people who discover fanfic and then read something like I'm Still Here and go "wow, what a novel idea!" but the upside is that the fandom doesn't just die out after a while.

 

The comparison between Gabriel Blessing and Perfect Lionheart is unfair. Like it or not, GB is telling stories, at least, about the fandom he is writing in. PL is telling stories about himself, using the fandom he is writing in. He also does it badly, with all the grace of a a delusional politician who loves to praise himself, and has an undying love to hear himself talking.

His skewed way of perceiving the source material is not helping matters either.

As to why he is popular? Probably the same reason 50 shades is popular, or why people join cults. Hits them at a spot they have no real experience in when they are weak, offering them something that seems to have substance, but actually doesn't.

 

one of the reviews to Stepping On Worm

Edit

Another one:

And he just called Worm a dog turd... Does this guy realize the shit he writes?

 

just read his Worm story, it's almost impressive how much he shits on the whole fandom, not surprising that he takes the absolutely worst story premise on SB, and think it's a good idea...

It feels like he has actively worked at becoming a worse writer since the last time he wrote something as Skysaber, or maybe he just feels like proofreading, editing, proper background research, and any kind of introspection, is beneath an 'enlightened' being such as himself?

It's never a good thing when you get more entertainment value out of the reviews than the story itself, they are probably also more well thought out to boot, I have to return in a few weeks just to see what new scathing reviews might have popped up.

 

After all these years, I'm still not sure weather he's the pinnacle of inflated egos or just a troll. Usually it takes less that 6 years to decide, but the stories are so bad they require constant attention to stop them being accidentally mediocre.

 

6 years? More like 17. Skysaber dates back to the late 90s, 1998 at least. Pre-ff.net.

This might be his first fanfic post ever, March 1998: https://groups.google.com/forum/#!original/rec.arts.anime.creative/YzH8TOf-BLI/lfsQKGcu2FYJ - It's the earliest of his usenet fics that I can see.

 

The RAAC... man that brings back memories...

I forgot he was ficcing while I was lurking on the FFML and RAAC...

 

I posted a bit of feedback to FFML and I think the r.a.a.c. as well. I didn't start posting regularly until Kwok's Delphiforums fic site. I was a big fan of Carrot, Thermopyle, DarkPhoneix (sic), Wfrose, and Corwin's fics back in the days when they posted there. I perhaps wouldn't read them now.

...Anyway. Back to the topic of Worm fanfiction: If you've avoided Skysaber/Lionheart for the last 17 years then you can safely avoid him for another 17 and be all the happier for it.