a brief criticism....

I have yet to finish YS, but I have one minimal complaint. And yes, I am being nitpickey, but I feel like I must point this out. Being a teenage girl/anime geek with (admittedly, very slight) goth tendencies, I didn't really feel Abby's narration was believable. It was pretty close, for an author who has never been a teenage girl, but I don't think the AG has quite captured modern teenage speech patterns yet.

opinions, anyone?

Of course, everything else about YS (so far) is very shiny indeed. (I'm trying to get "shiny" to catch on as slang for good/cool/awesome...ok, maybe I'm not the best example of teenage speech patterns.)
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I thought it was spot on, but I'm an almost 40 year old mom, so who am I to say.
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OH holy cow!!! You have to be kidding me.... o.k. I don't know where you live but for a California person AG seems really to have the Midwestern speech pattern thing... but I live with two of you anime' manga teenage I want to be Japanese people.... My first thought when I looked at Abby's fake myspace page was HOLY CRAP where'd he get the picture of my daughter... except that her hair has electric blue and neon green and her tights are black and neon green striped. She and her friends talk EXACTLY like that!! So maybe it's a Midwest Goth accent (don't ya know?)Sorry, i had to What the MOST believable part was that at times she sounded like a 40 year old street hardened prostitute and then 2 sentences later would say something that sounded like she was in third grade with drama queen drizzled all over the in betweens..... they talk EXACTLY like that! The only thing he DIDN'T get about them is that French is tres de'passe' and speaking Japanese is ku wa ii or however you would write that in Japanese
OOOH, a thought, I too am an almost 40 mom....maybe they can't hear themselves like we do... you know, like when your voice is on the answering machine recorder and you go who the crap is that?? To themselves they may sound more mature or something.... will go ask teenage guinea pigs who read book now...
teenage boy.... yep, they sound just like that
teenage girl..... no, it was messed up
It's true, they can't hear themselves............................
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Awwww Gorram it , she said Shiny
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I love the Abby parts the most. I'm sure not all teens talk that way, but I've seen plenty of it on MySpace.
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HazelRah wrote:

Awwww Gorram it , she said Shiny

HEY! THATS MY LINE!
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Most of it is ok, but at times it sounds a bit like a 40 year old mom trying to sound like her daughter. The instance that really bothered me was the chapter that begins "OMFG-W00T I have failed..." This is total misuse of the word w00t (which has been out-of-use for about a year, but i'll forgive that cuz it was probly in use when he wrote it) W00T is an exclamation of excitement/joy like "hooray." Even if it were intended as sarcastic in this context, which it didn't seem like it was, this would be very odd usage of the word, to say the least. However, I must give the AG credit for spelling it correctly; with zeroes instead of o's.
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Kay, when you put it that way I believe you.... I thought that meant extra added emphasis or something.....
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KatarinaNavane wrote:

Most of it is ok, but at times it sounds a bit like a 40 year old mom trying to sound like her daughter. The instance that really bothered me was the chapter that begins "OMFG-W00T I have failed..." This is total misuse of the word w00t (which has been out-of-use for about a year, but i'll forgive that cuz it was probly in use when he wrote it) W00T is an exclamation of excitement/joy like "hooray." Even if it were intended as sarcastic in this context, which it didn't seem like it was, this would be very odd usage of the word, to say the least. However, I must give the AG credit for spelling it correctly; with zeroes instead of o's.

Somebody said W00T to me just 3 days ago ...
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knikkki wrote:

KatarinaNavane wrote: Most of it is ok, but at times it sounds a bit like a 40 year old mom trying to sound like her daughter. The instance that really bothered me was the chapter that begins "OMFG-W00T I have failed..." This is total misuse of the word w00t (which has been out-of-use for about a year, but i'll forgive that cuz it was probly in use when he wrote it) W00T is an exclamation of excitement/joy like "hooray." Even if it were intended as sarcastic in this context, which it didn't seem like it was, this would be very odd usage of the word, to say the least. However, I must give the AG credit for spelling it correctly; with zeroes instead of o's. Somebody said W00T to me just 3 days ago ...

somebody how old exactly? No teenager I know has used it since our mothers started catching on and using it.
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KatarinaNavane wrote:

somebody how old exactly? No teenager I know has used it since our mothers started catching on and using it.

LOL --- young 20's ...
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I think you are right about the language used by Abby. But when I was reading I remembered all her hello kitty attachments and all the changes she went through. She lost the kitty but not the language. My daughter is into fruitsy clothing, bohemien style and dabbled in the goth. I know all of Voltaire's songs. She never says OMG. Abby, on the other hand is a wanna be. This to me, probably as to you, makes her someone you want to reach out and help. She is a great charachter.

KatarinaNavane wrote:

Most of it is ok, but at times it sounds a bit like a 40 year old mom trying to sound like her daughter. The instance that really bothered me was the chapter that begins "OMFG-W00T I have failed..." This is total misuse of the word w00t (which has been out-of-use for about a year, but i'll forgive that cuz it was probly in use when he wrote it) W00T is an exclamation of excitement/joy like "hooray." Even if it were intended as sarcastic in this context, which it didn't seem like it was, this would be very odd usage of the word, to say the least. However, I must give the AG credit for spelling it correctly; with zeroes instead of o's.

*raises hand* I still use "w00t." Only because I write in l337 to my friends during class, though.

I thought AG did pretty well on Abby considering he's not a teenage girl.
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So if AG was a teenage girl, how many of you guys would do her?
After she turned 18, obviously...

wOOt!

BTW, I thought he spot on with Abby's vernacular, of course I'm stuck out here in bumfuck Southern Cal and not in the hotbed of cutting edge cool known as the midwest.

KatarinaNavane wrote:

Most of it is ok, but at times it sounds a bit like a 40 year old mom trying to sound like her daughter. The instance that really bothered me was the chapter that begins "OMFG-W00T I have failed..." This is total misuse of the word w00t (which has been out-of-use for about a year, but i'll forgive that cuz it was probly in use when he wrote it) W00T is an exclamation of excitement/joy like "hooray." Even if it were intended as sarcastic in this context, which it didn't seem like it was, this would be very odd usage of the word, to say the least. However, I must give the AG credit for spelling it correctly; with zeroes instead of o's.

KN, I developed Abby's voice from Blogs on MySpace and VampireFreaks.com. Nearly everything that Abby says comes out of the idiom I found there. I realize, that if you take into account that it took a year to write the book, and that to you, that's ancient history, so there's really no way to keep up to date. I completely understand that this is your world, and it's important to you, but accuracy is absolutely impossible, given the shelf life of teen culture. You might also take into account that Abby lives on the West Coast, in a big city, within a very large punk and goth subculture, and I suspect that your environment may be different, especially as she is fictional and is working as the minion for two vampires, which, upon closer examination, may not reflect reality as we know it either.

You write dialect as an aproximation of speech. A replication of speech is generally unreadable. The most important element of Abby's sections, to me, is that they be funny.