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Wednesday, 06 May 2020 14:56

Admin Story Spotlight Theatre #8

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Happy Humpday, everyone!  First off, want to extend a thank you to Woodclaw for dropping an assist and filling in for me last week when I was tied up.  With that said, I'm back on serve this week with another installment of Larafan's Literary Likes.  And this one is a doozy!

Serena's Lucky Day by Yohashuan

While all of the previous installments focused on older and lesser-hyped one-shot stories, I decided to take a different tact this week and feature a story that is probably a bit more popular in the SWM circles.  Why you ask?  Well, in the last few months, we have seen an uptick in new visitors -- both on the site and in Discord -- and after talking with a few of them, I discovered not just one, but two people who had never read -- or heard -- of Serena's Lucky Day.  So while it is featured in the Multi-Story Library on the site, it IS pretty old and probably has been missed by a lot of our newer members.  I felt obligated to remedy this!
Over here in the States, the "Mount Rushmore" model is frequently used in sports to denote the top four of all-time in a particular discipline.  For example, if someone asked who was on your Mount Rushmore for best players in basketball of alltime, you might say "Michael Jordan, Magic Johnson, Larry Bird, and Wilt Chamberlain".  Ok, with that context explained, if I had to select a "Mount Rushmore" of SWM Stories, I would probably have to say that Serena's Lucky Day would be up there for me.  The story date in our library is list as May of 2006 but, if memory serves, it was on SGI even before that.  Regardless of it's exact age -- we'll just call it 'old' -- it is a classic!   While there are several elements of the story that make it the great tale that is, there is one particular element that sets it apart from the rest -- the transformation scene!
I know I'm not alone in saying that one of my best parts -- if not THE best part -- of ubergirl stories is the origin/transformation part of a story.  Some authors do it better than others, but no one does it better than Yosh does with Serena.  In my opinion, it is THE quintessential transformation scene written in the genre -- which is quite remarkable to considering it was written 15 years ago!  Admittingly, it probably gets some additional brownie points for being so damn long, but I don't anyone can dispute the amount of detail and sensuality that is written into paragraph after paragraph, depicting Serena's transformation from ordinary to amazing in Chapter 1.  In my early conversations with Yosh, he joked that he thought it was too repetitive and that he just kept adding to it trying to end it.  The next thing he knew, he had PAGES worth of excrutiatingly detailed transformation.  Yosh...not too repetitive at all!
But the transformation scene is not the only thing that makes this story great.  The subsequent "power discovery" scene is just as good, with Yosh focusing on every ability with fantastic detail and decription.  One of the best parts of these scenes, in my opinion, was the highlight of her super senses and intelligence which was probably one -- if the THE -- first significant uses of this in an ubergirl story.  While all stories highlight an ubergirl's ability to fly, repel bullets, and lift cars, Serena was the first one I can remember (along with Marknew's Spell 'R' Us) that focused significantly on showcasing her super intelligance and super senses (in Chapter 2).  I don't mind admitting that it inspired my writing significantly enough to say that writing "super smart" scenes is now one of my favorites!
If I'm being honest with myself (and everyone else), Serena's Lucky Day starts out strong with the first two chapters and then levels off, seemingly trying to do "something" with Serena but not quite getting there.  Yosh admitted this to me one time which is probably why it kinda just stops with Chapter 6 rather abruptly.  Sadly -- and this is becoming a regular thing with my spotlights -- Yosh never wrote any more chapters or any other ubergirl fiction after this.  He lurked for many years on the site and would pop up on the forums from time to time, getting bombarded with requests for more Serena, but alas, no more from him. 
After asking and begging him via chat a million times to continue, I finally came to a stage of acceptance that there would be no more.  During one of our chats, Yosh told me that Francine Dee was one of his inspirations for the character, and that years later he actually met her at a party.  Talk about blurring the lines of fantasy and reality!  Anyways, as a tribute to Yosh and to help me with closure at the reallization that there would be no more Serena from him, I composed a fake "movie poster" of Serena's Lucky Day for SWM's Movie Poster Contest back in the day that features Francine Dee as Serena (and Alisha Cuthbert as Hyperwoman)!

 

poster serena v1

I have no idea if Yosh still visits the site and if he is still lurking, but to him I say, "Well done, Brother!"  And to anyone who has not read Serena's Lucky Day, I say emphatically, "Go read it, now!"

 

 

 

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