Stop! Yagmitime!
Yeah, I’ll hit myself for that joke later, chapter 10 is titeled “Dark goes to France!” Ok, the lack of CAPSLOCK TITLES ARE AWESOME here fills me with some joy, maybe just a spark of hope that this insane Marty Stu rhapsody is coming to a close. Well, what does the authors notes say? NO SHINIGAMI FIGHT THAT IDEA WAS DUM. THIS IS COOL THO! CAR CHASES WOOOO! This is better than the alternative, and I actually agree with the author here, the thought of two shinigami fighting is ridiculous. However, if you do not consider how stupid your ideas might be before you write them, odds are you’re better off just going through with it and trying your best. Of course, a last-minute recon is a bit of a cheap trick, but it is infinitely better than say… just deciding that the idea was stupid, drop it and never mentions it again. That kind of stuff breaks the immersion, if you ever had such a thing in this fic, that is.
Well, instead, we go to France, where It was a sunny day. Some birds were high in the trees and making happy noises. Then a explosion. The French, and that apparantly mean all the french wonder what the explosion was, but as the author puts it, It was........... a mystery! Again, this is about as exciting to watch paint dry, but y’all knew that, I suspect. Well, back in… America, rant: chapter one, Dark gets cuffed, straightjacketed and fitted with a facemask from Silence Of The Lambs, exactly why both handcuffs and a straightjacket is necessary? I dunno, Dark is the new Houdini or something. It’s all for naught, though, seeing as Dark writes GO BACK IN TIM!” in his everything note. Yeees, I’m not sure Tim will appreciate that, but ok, your fic. Anyway, this strikes me as yet another scene that could be suspenseful if the author knew what he was doing. The protagonist struggling against a straightjacket, before, in the last minute reaching the everything note and saving his bacon, now that I could live with. Dark simply ignoring the straightjacket without any further explanation, on the other hand, I find increasingly difficult to swallow.
So, Dark appears in France, four days earlier. Why he goes to France four days in the past? To kill Near, apparently. At this point, I start to realize, to my great shock, that the author might have had some sort of plan with this whole Near clusterfuck. Sure, it’s possible he’s just freestyling while looking at his notes from earlier, but it’s still way more thought-out than I’d ever expect this mess to be. Well, let’s not dwell on it too much. So, Dark does a couple of things that’s not relevant to anything before he tries to shoot Near, with a sniper rifle, although that’s not even mentioned before it’s revealed that Near shoots the bullet and the sniper scope with his nerf gun, which is a nerf gun but still fires bullets. I’ll just go with it at this point. “F-CK! HE SEEN ME!” bellowed Dark and jumped out the tower and laned in the river tames. The river Thames? Gah, this guy knows about as much about geography as he knows about sex, which isn’t all that much. Well, Dark (I think) steals a cab, the French is yet again rude and with, for some odd reason English with poor French Funetik Aksent as their language of choice.
The car chase that follows, well… “You can’t catch me!” rofled Near as he got in a NASCAR and vroomed away. There was action and guns shot and a bullet nearly hit Dark but he did a nitro and dodged it and it hit a French bread instead so everyone was okay. A guy started throwing knives at the car but the cab was knife proof. Dark grabbed one and throwed it back and it hit the guy and he blooded and died and there was so much blood Darks car went red. Near did an hand break turn around the mona lisa church and smashed a window and drived through beeping to scare peeps away. Ah, so much insanity, so much poorly written action. I think I’m going to let this speak for itself, mostly because it makes so preciously little sense... ok, I feel I have to ask a couple of questions which just forces themselves to mind. Why is there a NASCAR? What does the author mean with “There was action,” is he writing the action movie bible or something? Why does a guy throw knives at Dark? Why can't I? Mona Lisa Church? Does he mean the Louvre? Does this guy even know what research is? When will this madness end? I need scissors, 61?
So, Dark chases Near into the… famous… French Red Light District? I’m not saying France doesn’t have a red light district of any kind, in fact, I do not know, but I'm assuming he's thinking of the Amsterdam Red Light District. The two racers speed towards a traffic light, which the author thinks doesn’t exist in France, yet another facepalm. The car chase causes an accident, as tradition dictates. Unlike most traffic accidents, however, this involves a car carrying nukes, and the two race for their lives against Magical Fire that can go around corners, the authors words, not mine. They end up in the wrong lane, but kept going like 300 killmeters an hour (an: killmeter is france for miles) Again, does this guy even know what France IS? Let alone the language French? So… Darks handsomeness, again with his damned handsomeness, causes yet another car accident, but this time Dark takes the time to rescue the victim, the real Naomi.
What follows… ugh, just doesn’t make sense. Dark asks if Naomi didn’t die in chapter four, again probably consulting the script or delivering painfully unsubtle exposition, take your pick. Naomi, however, states that the one who died at that point was Takada dressed as her. How does anyone of these people know anything of this? Ok, Dark believing Naomi to be dead, I can handle, but Naomi knowing that he’d think that and knowing that it was Takada? Oh, and the author chimes in with a helpful in case u forget. Again, treating your readers as flipping morons does not make loyal fans, nor happy readers, for that matter. So, Dark reasons that Near plans to escape to England, through the England-France tunnel, but that’s apparently no problem because: “I am from Lodon!” she replied and showed him her knickers (AN: English for panties) wtich had the british flag on them. *sigh* ok, whatever you say fic. I don’t see how this is supposed to make any sense, but ok, Nears plans will surely be foiled by the power of… having a local on Darks side.
The author wraps this chapter up with the following: I KNOW NOAMI WAS NOT ENLGISH BUT IT MAKESS THE STORY COOLER THIS WAY! My first reaction to this is bafflement as to why the author feels like it is necessary to excuse for changing around on characters now. Part of this might be because Naomi originally was American, or simply because the author, unlike the other times he has shoved a white-hot poker up Death Note canon’s ass, is aware of what he’s doing at this point. So yeah, this chapter was less monumentally stupid than the previous one, which I might look at as a good thing, hadn’t it been for the fact that there’s still more than enough stupid to go around. It’s like if Uwe Boll got a decent budget and some known and at least decent actors Oh, Wait!. If anything, this chapter was boring, not even entertainingly bad, and I'm writing that off as yet another low, minimal improvement notwithstanding.
