Mario and Luigi PIT Novelized!

TroopaJuniorr

TroopaJuniorr

The Block Whisperer
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Hello there!

As an avid Mario and Luigi fan, and ESPECIALLY a fan of Mario and Luigi Partners in Time, over the last half of 2019 I've created a novelization-ish of a 2005 DS RPG classic, which is currently 5 chapters and about 17,000 words long.

If you care to delve into a new way to experience that game's fantastic story or are looking into it for the first time, then do as you please!

The links:

Fanfiction.net: https://www.fanfiction.net/s/13336090/1/Mario-and-Luigi-Partners-in-Time-Novelized-ish

Archiveofourown: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21527092

Of course, if you are able to and want to (emphasis on the latter,) feel free to post your thoughts on my work! As a burgeoning writer, you can see why I'd be craving such criticisms and praises.
 
Hello, welcome to Marioboards! As a hugely avid PiT fan myself, I am more than happy to give your fanfic a read! Maybe not tonight as it's getting a bit late for me, but I'll definitely try it out tomorrow and I'll lob my thoughts of it once I'm done.
 
I'll read it and see what I think! (Just know I haven't played the game, though.) Looking forward to it! (As a writer myself, it's always fun to read works by others.)
 
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Fellow author here! I've published two novels, so if you need any advice, please ask! I'll give it a read in a few hours.
 
I've read some bits of your first chapter, few things I gotta say.

As a Baby Mario and Baby Luigi fanatic, I think it would be better to refer to them, as babies, as their proper names, Baby Mario and Baby Luigi, at the very least, from the narrator's point of view, since you're using an omnipotent 3rd person narrator as your pov for the story (the characters themselves on how they refer as the babies are fine). The naming is pretty inconsistent, you proper named them in the beginning, referring them to as "baby Mario brothers" and "Baby Brothers" and then switched over to just plain Mario and Luigi. Prince Bowser as well hadn't been referred to as a baby as well aside from brief mentions of his size.

I understand why Mario and Luigi don't speak as it's very true to the games, but I think things would be more interesting if they did actually spoke, because in a novelization like this without the context of them being in a game, it just looks awkward that they're unable to emote outside of body language. Also, it's fine if Baby Mario and Baby Luigi don't speak either...it's not clear on how well Baby Mario and Baby Luigi are able to actually speak, as they spoke full sentences in the Super Mario-Kun manga to them just spouting gibberish in the Mario Super Sluggers games.
 
Oh, yeah, consistency with proper nouns has actually been one of my more frustrating challenges over the course of writing the piece. I've been torn over not sounding the same with my referral of characters and actually being grammatically correct, and by now I think I've gotten better with consistency. I.E., only using either 'Babies' (or variations of that, such as Tykes and Tots) or simply 'Baby Mario/Luigi' as you've said. More specifically, I think it's gotten better by chapters 4 and 5 (especially 5).

Now, having them actually speak is an interesting idea, although to be honest I don't know how I'd be able to make them talking gel with the rest of the story. Why should the Babies speak if the Bros can't? Why would they need to speak? Would it become too awkward? I just don't know how that concept would pan out well. If you'd like to expound on that, please do.

As a general philosophy for the story as a whole, I'd like to keep it that I don't change much about how things work, how people talk, fight, the basic stuff, but instead fill in for the details where I can, like the dialogue, the fights themselves, description, antics, etc. Thank you for at least seeing why I'd prefer the Babies not speaking, though.
 
Well, since your story is primarily directed at people who played the game already by the way I've read it, it's going to be clearer for them to understand who "Baby Mario" and "Baby Luigi" is than "Mario" and "Luigi" just from context. I'm glad you're able to get the consistency fixed later on though, but keep in mind that since your PoV is third person omniscient, the narrator is the one who should know everything about the world and what's going on and is the one who should probably call them that: think of the narrator the same person who tells the story like it is in the instruction booklet for Partners in Time. Getting consistency right is difficult, which is why I suggest plenty of revisions and rereadings to iron out the flaws of your story so they don't become too distracting.

I completely understand that giving Mario and Luigi dialogue is a difficult task especially to impose on a story where they originally had no speaking roles, and that's why it's simpler to relay their emotions through expressions than dialogue as it jives better with the original intent of the story. Though you also should understand, sometimes, things that work in the game simply don't work when you adapt it in a written fanfic format where your only medium of discussing the world is through words rather than imagery, and I feel like them not having any dialogue is one thing that I wouldn't mind changed in an adaptation of the story and I think would improve it.

Like for example, in your story, the Toads in the scene that adult Mario and Luigi are introduced in essentially speak the same things Mario and Luigi are going to say anyway, making the Toad's only purpose is to serve as mouthpieces for an arbitrary restriction. They do this a lot in the games and even in the games I'm not all too huge of a fan of it because it doesn't make Mario and Luigi interesting characters, but the problem becomes much more apparent in a novelization than the game, which at least distracts you with actually controlling and reacting to the characters.

And I can see your approach to the story by adding in details from the game where the game cannot elaborate on. That's taking advantage of it being written, and that's the sort of stuff that makes written adaptations interesting in their own right rather than just playing the game again. I've enjoyed how you described the fight against the first boss in Partners in Time, as well as Baby Bowser scorching Toadsworth.
 
...Thanks for the criticism overall!

Overall, I haven't gotten much over my time writing the novelization as a whole, so it's all VERY much appreciated.

Since all of it is very widespread and covers the whole fanfic, I won't respond to them specifically (at least for now,) but I will try to implement some of what you said into my future writings, both PIT Novelized and non-PIT Novelized related works.

Now, I'll say that maybe a bit of what you said I'll lay off from using in the piece itself, but rather to use as groundwork for stories from now on, as I don't want to completely change the direction of my work on a fundamental level. Nevertheless, it was all very constructive and useful to a degree I haven't seen much of before!
 
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