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Pen

the cat is mightier than the pen
Staff
Partners
  1. dratini
  2. dratini-pen
  3. dratini-pen2
My heart. Okay, so I'm not going to harp on you nailing Cat POV--the line-by-lines cover that pretty thoroughly. Tourm's voice is so sharp, so prickly; she's so young and desperately afraid of being alone and abandoned. Her mom tried to protect her from the life she lived, but they live in a world without options, so Tourm sees her best path as seeking out a trainer anyway. Her story is the embodiment of pokemon not being free to be people here. I found her interactions with Vaselva particularly poignant. Tourm thinks Vaselva has everything she wants, but Tourm has the one thing Vaselva doesn't--the name her mother gave her. The feels, kint.

N continues to be lovely here. You always give him so much texture through his gestures and emotions that it's a treat whenever we get an N adjacent character. I don't know if I can keep doing slam-poetry night memes--that scene was really beautiful. I see why it angers Zahhak, but Zahhak is fully in the trap of power. The only song of power he knows is the Nocturne Lament. Tourm's thoughts on strength here reminded me a lot of the discussion of power vs strength in the Meloetta chapter. She thinks she wants power--the ability to hurt others. But the mincinno's song was a demonstration of strength.

A tear traces down Hilda’s cheek. Does she even know why?
This really feels like the crux of the chapter for the larger problems of the story. There's something transcendent about song. We can be moved by melodies with completely foreign words, or melodies that are wordless. In that sense, song is the perfect tool of communication. But being moved is not the same as understanding. Emotion without context creates a catharsis that makes no change. Ferris wheel chapter is still vivid in my mind, so I noted that the mincinno's song harkens to the past, and some better, more innocent time. There's no future being created here.

{Train me,} you command.
And just like that, I know we're in a cat POV.

Did you say simpering, smug? You meant supremely superior. Of course.
Lololol

{Please,} you say in the dialect of forests, even though the word tastes like birdshit on your tongue.
Is it the please that she objects to, or the dialect of forests?

{I want to be strong for myself,} you say. And that’s not even a lie. You do mean it. {But being strong means having strength to spare.}

The green one considers. Thoughtful. Yes, she would make a good partner on the field anyway. You’ve picked well. Finally, she shakes her head, and then tugs at her human’s pantleg with her scaled hands. Looks up. Nods.
Wow, what might have been. Tourm and Vaselva do have more in common than a lot of the characters we've met.

You’ve done it! You have a human! She will be yours! You will call her something witty, clever. Hummy, perhaps. Brownie? She has the hair for it.
Really clever nicknames here!!

{I will be good. I will take care of the birds. I am exceptionally good at taking care of the birds. I will feed myself. No birds will bother your grassy one.}
So good.

You—

Are eating ravenously.

When you look up, they’re gone.
Noo, baby is hungry!

He sold the expendables. Her new life wasn’t so bad; the humans who bought her were wealthy and took good care of her. But when she grew out of her prime, they discarded her like an old toy. She scrounged for a new home, and her once-proud head bowed for scraps, which she ferried back to you.
Oh no, no wonder Tourm worries so much about humiliation.

He pads around, always nervous, always gentle, always quietly,
You've got adjective, adjective, adverb here, which reads funny.

He surveys the other humans with a quiet, withdrawn sort of precision. Even watching him carefully, you can’t quite tell if he’s looking at them or if he’s wistfully studying the trees.
Hm, I'm not sure if it can be described as precision if she can't even tell whether he's looking at them or the trees.

He’s observant, but he points his withering focus at one or two things at a time, and the rest slip out.
Yuup, sounds like N. Withering focus is an interesting one. Not entirely sure it works for me.

Excellent. You are bonded for life now.
Her cunning plan succeeded. Much cunning. Much plan.

you realize that he’s left precisely half of the oran.
That is classic N.

It squawks periodically, and then falls silent, as if it’s forgotten that it wants to be obnoxious. And then it remembers, and it’s shrill calls echo again.
oh no, this poor pidove. Cat POC continues to be excellent though.

He gasps, and rushes towards it—

Good! He’s seen your gift!

—“What? Who hurt you like this? Oh, no, you poor thing.”
Ooops.

He pulls out a pokéball and catches the stupid thing, hopefully so he can eat it later.
I'm sure that's what he's intending.

She has to get her guard fully down, this miniature human, or else you’ll never succeed. Absolutely.
Absolutely Tourm, I believe you.

You’re three steps into your dramatic walk away when you realize he isn’t stopping you.
oh no!!

Yes, absolutely, do you ever stop?
Hah!

She puts her hands on her hips like she’s analyzing the situation carefully. Silly. She should be more like your human, who isn’t staring at the opponent at all.
. . . Ah, N.

Your mother said that when she was on the circuit, she’d just moved all the bits of her that she thought were soft and delicate and hidden them deep in her chest. {Which is where I hid you, Tourmaline, my love,} she’d whispered, nudging you with her nose. {So you wouldn’t be hurt.}
Oh no! What she told Carnel came from Mom no help it hurts.

And then, in a softer voice, he looks at the snake. Sounds almost hurt. “You … you didn’t even hesitate. Why?”
The N-Vaselva relationship is one of my favorites in eoe. It's so fraught, so subtle.

And that’s how you end up glaring at the stupid pidove again in the pokécenter, both of you bandaged up and neither of you in the mood to speak.
Vivid mental image here.

N says with a weak smile, one where you can’t even feel the edges of it against your cheeks.
Lovely description, but I don't think it works for a cat. They don't really smile/feel smiles against their cheeks, so wouldn't be able to describe that in others.

“You’re right on time!” N says. “Could Vaselva make it?”

Hilda blinks politely. “Pardon?”

N flinches and seems to catch himself. “Oh, pokémon are welcome in this space. If Vaselva would like to join us, we’d love to see her.”
N's so careful here. Eggshells. Zahhak would be laughing.

{I’m not talking to her,} you yowl from your perch.

Vaselva calmly shakes out her tail. {Scared?} she asks before N can respond.

Your claws sink into the wood of the stool. {I’d be happy to entertain our guests,} you say frostily to N, and he flashes you a grateful smile.
Vaselva and Tourm bounce off each other really well.

It’s not like she ever had to struggle for what she wanted, blessed as she was by her birth to make her someone the humans wanted. Snivy are powerful, uncommon. She probably had everything she ever wanted given to her from the moment she hatched.
There's a lot of wanted here. Maybe, "It’s not like she ever had to struggle, blessed as she was by her birth to make her someone the humans coveted. Snivy are powerful, uncommon. She probably had everything she ever wanted given to her from the moment she hatched."

yeah except the name her mother gave her, which you have and she doesn't

“The—” he flinches back as the microphone in his hand screeches, and when he starts over again he’s careful to keep it further from his face.
He replaces the microphone and slinks off the stage to scattered applause.
N physicality so good here. I can feel the discomfort rolling off of him in waves.

His tail twitches, and that’s when you see how dirty it is. Strange. Usually the rats clean one another; it’s the first thing they do when they meet. {Traditionally, it should be sung with at least five others, but the Yarrow Clan was separated when our part of the forest was clear-cut. Um. The melody is very simple, and you are welcome to join in on the chorus if you would like.}
Baby! Love how Tourm notices the tail not being clean.

So she hid you carefully in the alleyways during the day while she fawned around her humans, and ran to you at night. {But I was thinking of you the entire time, my love,} she whispers with a soft laugh, her tongue rasping against the fur on the back of your neck.
Nooooo

You want to focus on how they aren’t as good as he is, how they’re distracting from the real talent in the room, but you can’t. You can’t even bring yourself to join them; you just stare, stare at the stupid rat as he finishes his song with his eyes closed.
Love this moment. I've felt it myself frequently, when you want to be detached and skeptical, but the beauty of whatever is happening washes that away.

Hilda scrutinizes the flyer in her hand—what, does she think it’s going to answer for her? “I think I will.” She swallows. “I learned a lot tonight. And you had a good time too, didn’t you, Vaselva?”

The snivy nods, and then adds quietly, {This was a very nice performance. Thank you.} She looks at both you and N when she says it.
I'm guessing this is our high water-mark of Hilda and Team Plasma. I think I'm starting to see the arc--she is intrigued by happy slam poetry night plasma, but the Bianca thing and N's confirmation disillusion her.

You’ve never seen someone handle fire so delicately. Normally you’d expect him to be rough about it; it’s fire, after all. He should be afraid. But he’s not, as he gently pokes at the embers with a stick, blows a little into it, and coaxes it into a crackling hearth.
I'm not quite sure what being rough with fire would mean here.

But you can sense the loaded intent in his words. If they had form they would be an adult liepard, rear legs bent taut and ready to pounce.
Nice

“But I find that I hear quite enough of my own voice these days.”
Ugh, N.

“You were very stealthy,” he says, very carefully. He’s a very bad liar.


These are thick concepts. You’re reminded of trying to tear apart a backpack with your teeth to find the sweet prizes inside—it’s heavy work. The cloth is thick and must be wrestled with.
Ooh, absolutely love that concepts are thick. Very fitting way for this POV to digest ideas, by thinking of he as something to tear open. Very nice.

Even though opening his heart up like that, finding all the soft and delicate bits that he’d hidden deep within his chest and sharing them with the world—that must’ve been harder than any battle. Your wounds from fighting Vaselva healed already, but there’s a pressure on the top of your head, the kind that feels like your mother’s breath on your fur. Tiallys had put that there without even touching you. It feels warm.

That … that was some power indeed.
❤ 💔
 

Persephone

Infinite Screms
Pronouns
her/hers
Partners
  1. mawile
  2. vulpix-alola
Oh, wow, wasn't expecting Pixie to show up in this fic. Kind of weird that she's being called "Tourmaline" and "a purrloin," but it is what it is. Clearly conveyed her voice, from demands of being trained to proving is best borb slayer. Poor Tourm being accused of "being borb weak." Is like when people say Pixie cannot beat fire types even though physics says, yes, Pixie can beat fire types, Pixie is the best, give scritches now or will screm.

Where was I?

...

Oh, right, Tourmaline. It is now canoN that Tourmaline brings the player all of the items they randomly find on routes. As the game goes on she gets more and more desperate and has to leave increasingly better TMs and items, but it never works. No one ever accepts poor Tourmaline. Except for Cheren. At least this entry does explain why Cheren thought Tourmaline was such a good mate for his rock collection. And makes that subplot even sadder, since now Tourmaline lost her family twice and gets used as a battling tool to be thrown out later. Like her mother. Or, well, she would meet that fate if thaNos wasn't set to snap in a week. Good foreshadowing with the half an oran. I Noticed.

Plasma hosting a pokemon concert is very pure and not something I knew I needed. Is good to see them keep getting increasingly non-violent as time goes on. That's definitely a good thing, since this is a normal fic where time flows forwards.

The line about how N might not be able to take Tour where she wants to go hits hard in hindsight.
 

WildBoots

Don’t underestimate seeds.
Pronouns
She/Her
Partners
  1. moka-mark
  2. solrock
Oh man, I made the mistake of reading Pen's reaction first and now I'm like hahahaha words go brrr brr brrr.

Ugh, my heart. On a fucking Tuesday morning.

It's really lovely to have a peek under Tormaline's armor. She is in many ways exactly who she's been since we first met her--she's got cutting commentary and no time for bullshit. She's jaded and feels trapped ... but for different reasons than she will later. For all her attempts to protect her heart, she still ended up getting fucked by the ways of the world. Poor thing. She's a delight to read, though: the hard zags between cat assertions of fact and her looming fear of rejection are beautifully painted.

She and Vaselva play against each other really nicely. It's easy to see how, if circumstances had been different, these two could've shared a world-view. They're both here to tell it like it is and to pursue strength as best as they can. So many people are really warring for Hilda's heart here!

I'm also really appreciating the Plasma through-line for Hilda! It finally becomes really clear here. I love the idea that she would've almost considered Plasma at one point, a divergence from the games that makes her resolve against N more powerful and painful. Again, in other circumstances, they could've been the same.

The open mic was so lovely and poignant, both for what it draws out in the participants ... and what it fails to. This is a lovely way to try to show humans what pokemon could be aside from just tools for their own glory, and I think a necessary one. But, in the end, Hilda gets to say, wow, so lovely and walk away. And I get it! Hilda has an economic reality, too, and this doesn't help her get away from that. Two modes of oppression tangled on each other. The open mic also reminds me of my college experiences! Such a hopeful, idealistic vibe.

My only real complaint is that I sort of wanted Rhea to make an appearance here, even if it's just the back of her head or something. The other side of the chasm we know T is gonna cross. But! You are already at 9.3k, so I can see why you might not have wanted to. It doesn't feel like 9.3, BTW. I only know because I wanted to plug it into my review-tracking spreadsheet, and I was surprised it was that long. Goes to show. Long chapters can be great, word count is just a number, etc etc etc.

You run up to the human. Lithe, powerful, graceful, nimble.
Wasn't sure at first if she was describing herself or how Hilda looks to her.

She’s not even looking at you; she let’s the machine do that for her.
Sad Cheren sounds.

Hummy, perhaps. Brownie? She has the hair for it.
Cackle, yes.

… we can’t really afford to have extras right now.”
Oof. This is a good point for her, especially with Ferris Wheel fresh in my mind.

I will take care of the birds. I am exceptionally good at taking care of the birds.
Aww baby, yes, I bet you are.

She looks like she crawled out of a gutter. Your mother belonged to one of their elites. Her trainer was one of the best in Unova, and she taught all of her moves to you before old age took her.
Ohhh is this--?

It’s that or go hungry.
You did answer this by the end, but as I was reading through, I was wondering why they don't just catch pidove.

He has a strange gait, you decide. He doesn’t walk like a human, all confident and loud. He pads around, always nervous, always gentle, always quietly, as if he knows he doesn’t belong and is trying to draw as little attention to his outsiderness as possible.
Oh N. This checks out. ❤

but he points his withering focus
Withering doesn't feel like a word for N.

runs one finger over the ring of bite marks from where you held it in your teeth.
Good eye, N.

Excellent. You are bonded for life now.


staring over the railing into the depths of the Forest of Pinwheels.
I know you kinda have to do this to establish place, but I wondered if she'd really use the human name for this place.

You look for the third gift while he’s standing in the midst of a crowd.
This had sort of a fairytale feel!

There is a child with a fidget-cube.
OMG NOOOOOOO now I'm going to feel sad every time I see the official art with that thing dangling from his pocket. it's from a good, sad cat.

Yes, this is all part of your plan
Yes, of course, obviously.

open fists
Hmm, a bit contradictory, no? Maybe open palms?

You wait for him to send out a pokémon, to attack you. Something, anything at all. You need to prove yourself. You won’t make the same mistakes as before. You’ll win this time.
Maximum fight or flight. Afraid of being unwanted? FIGHT.

am I talking too fast?
Haha, nice ribbing of canon here.

You can’t look bad on front of them.
*in

The pokémon there weren’t crying out in pain, although surely it must’ve hurt just as badly. Were they just stronger than you? Desensitized to it? Your mother said that when she was on the circuit, she’d just moved all the bits of her that she thought were soft and delicate and hidden them deep in her chest. {Which is where I hid you, Tourmaline, my love,} she’d whispered, nudging you with her nose. {So you wouldn’t be hurt.}
Omg omg omg omg.

Your claws ache under the impact of her skin. She’s got scales, and they’re still soft, not yet battle-hardened, not meant for this, like your claws, but if you can rake fast enough, you’ll win.
I liked these details!

The fronds around her neck are in disarray, and she shakes them out disdainfully before answering.
Love this. Omg, Vas is like the rich girl cheerleader through Tourm's eyes.

{She told me to. For her and her dreams, I would do anything.}

“But … why?”
Oh man. It didn't really hit me until here how long the dialogue between N and Vas has been going on, talking circles around each other and frustrating each other. It's not until that final/first chapter that finally they've said all there is to say and that's it.

And that’s how you end up glaring at the stupid pidove again in the pokécenter, both of you bandaged up and neither of you in the mood to speak.
Mood.

“I’m helping my friends try something out and I think you’d enjoy it,” he explains quietly as he pushes open a gate, steering the two of you off of the sidewalk and onto a garden path. “But it’s a little new. Do you like music?”
Omg omg omg can it be--

‘This place’ is an empty garden just before sundown, with three humans and a watchog fiddling with some speakers. N’s bad at stealth, so when you and he slip in, all of them turn to wave at him when he enters. “The show will start in an hour,” he says in a quiet explanation that, like most of his statements, doesn’t seem to explain anything at all. He pauses. “If there’s anywhere else you’d like to be.”
I'm really appreciating how his attempts to give her respectful space and ask for consent are making her feel unwanted. He reminds me a little bit of guys I've gone on dates with who are so worried about being good guys that they trip on their own feet asking for permission and you end up having to babysit them and reassure them that they are, in fact, being good guys lol. N is so ready for her to want to go, he's almost pushing her to the door.

and you have to move twice (twice!)
HA! Cat POV is so spot-on throughout.

You snatch it from her waiting paws and frown at it, trying to trace over the symbols with your tail. Belatedly, you realize you should’ve asked, What are they for?
This had me thinking about how our attempts to armor ourselves can make us more vulnerable. She has to be STRONG, so of course she can't just ask. So she doesn't get to know.

Second performer, Brex, from Pinwheel Forest.
OMG Brexxxxxx. I love these tiny little through-lines being drawn. We keep passing the same faces on the way down

Third performer, Briselle, also from Pinwheel Forest. When she’s not practicing her harp, she’s working on a leaf-inspired fashion line … what?”
Ha! I can feel her bewilderment and annoyance here. WTF. But also OMG HARP. So sweet.

{You fought well,} you say instead, your voice stony. {Perhaps we’ll fight again.}

{Perhaps your trainer will be better when we do,} she says primly.
Ooooof oh noooo. Define better.

“The—” he flinches back as the microphone in his hand screeches, and when he starts over again he’s careful to keep it further from his face.
*He
Love this moment though. Perfect.

for the hard of hearing.”
Oh I *love* this framing.

Traditionally, it should be sung with at least five others, but the Yarrow Clan was separated when our part of the forest was clear-cut. Um.
Oh noooo. 💔

“The Accumula branch of Plasma has chapter meetings every other Wednesday, and for travelling trainers there’s listserv that’ll go directly to your x-transceiver so you can see what’s going on when.
Good idea!

“I hope that if you ever find a new trainer who gives you a command that you don’t want to obey, you don’t feel obligated to listen.”
RIP.

{I’m not going to sing.}
HA!! Tourm is the best.

What would you learn from this human, though? How to call people together and help them sing? How not to battle? How to hang posters from trees?
Okay, I know the connection is obvious because cats and cats, but this is such a Mark mood. If our Unovas weren't parallel universes, they could be friends.

Side note: petition to get sprites of the POV pokemon next to each chapter title in the table of contents? 👀
 

HelloYellow17

Gym Leader
Pronouns
She/Her
Partners
  1. suicune
  2. umbreon
  3. mew
Another MEGA REVIEW, let’s do this!

I’ve left my general thoughts on this fic as a whole a while back, before I really knew how to actually dive deep into a review and put my thoughts into words. I’ll just restate a few of the things I’ve said before:

Your prose? GORGEOUS. I haven’t read your other works yet, so I don’t know if you went for a stylistic choice specifically for this story or not, but either way, it’s beautiful and very artistic. SO many profound statements that hit like a punch to the gut, tons of vivid and colorful descriptions, incredibly creative use of narrative voice that changes and adapts each chapter to fit the POV of whoever is telling the story—I could go on! I really love the way this is written, from start to finish (well, start to most recent update, anyway), and it makes the story stand out from pretty much every other fic I’ve read.

On that note, your choice to tell the story backwards is really interesting and adds a new level of emotion. For example, we know Amara’s fate before we get to know her, which just makes her chapter all the more poignant and painful. Same with Zahhak and N’s relationship (more on that later—my HEART, kint, how could you do this to me??). I feel like this method of storytelling would be difficult to pull off in a way that makes everything make sense, but you do an excellent job with it, and with tying together events from all the other chapters even though they seem like completely separate snippets at first glance—mentioning the abused conkledurr in other chapters, for instance, or letting us know how Tourmaline ended up with Cheren.

And it’s so very fitting that you tell the entire story through the eyes of the Pokémon. This is about them, after all, and their struggles. We still get to see plenty of what the humans feel about this, about Hilda’s fight against N, N’s own doubts and struggles, etc, but at the end of the day, it’s about the Pokémon. This is their story.

Last thing before getting to the specific line-by-lines: the fact that you chose to use second-person POV for this story. I’m curious as to what motivated you to go this route? It’s not a popular choice for storytelling by any means, and it’s another thing that is usually very hard to pull off, but once again, you utilize it SO masterfully. In fact, the second-person allows you to do lots of things that the other POVs would not; getting into multiple characters’ heads and getting their detailed thoughts on N’s philosophy, their backstories and cultural upbringing that contribute to why they feel the way they do, etc. It’s. Amazing. And I’m just in awe of the way you’ve carefully crafted this entire story.

Ok now that I’ve gushed for several paragraphs, let’s get into the details, shall we??

The moment before it all ends is serene.

POWERFUL opener here! I’m immediately invested with this line.

A crack slowly spreads down the stone, reaching out across the room to trace through all the chaos. Time seems to slow down as it crawls across the battle.

Oookay, I love this?? You use this crack to pull the reader’s gaze around the room, and it works so well.

Closer still. A serperior is frozen in mid-leap, every leaf on her body glowing with green light, so bright that it blots out her face. Beside her, a trainer stands, one hand frozen and outstretched, eyebrows furrowed, mouth halfway through a command. The human’s face is smeared with dust, but her eyes brim with dark flame.

I’ve said this in a previous review, but I love how this scene is frozen in time/unraveling in slow motion, without you having to explicitly say so. It’s all in how you describe the scene, and it WORKS.

The crack twists around the battlefield. An archeops rises up to meet the serperior and her human, his wings halfway down, talons outstretched. Even when still, his plumage is a feathery blur of brick red, leafy green, sky blue.

Ohhh. Coming back to this after reading ahead makes this paragraph painful. He’s now actively fighting against his old trainer. Poor Reylin. Poor Hilda. :(

For some reason, you don’t feel like the hero.

And a powerful ending line to match the opener! I’ve noticed you have a lot of one-liners that hit hard throughout the story, and this is just the beginning.

You only saw her falter once: six days ago, when you lost Amara. In the heat of the moment she was ashen; afterward, in private, she cried herself ragged. The next morning the panic was gone from her voice and you were convinced nothing would make it come back again.

A very brief but effective description of Hilda’s grief. You didn’t go into several paragraphs about how this broke her down, but you don’t have to, because these sentences do it justice.


“I can’t let you do this,” Hilda says at last. Her words are strangled.

He means it. She does not. Your poor, sweet trainer. Always fighting above her weight. Now that gods are on the table, it’s too late to turn back.

Again, reading this the second time allows me to appreciate the details a whole lot more—which is saying something, since it’s not easy to write something that reads better and better each time! Anyways, it’s very interesting to see that Hilda here is uncertain while N is very sure of himself; as the story goes along, Hilda is the one who is sure she’s right, and N is the one who is unsure about himself and his goals.

He’s not a very good human, you decide, to have waited all this time just to have a god call the shots. He would much rather take commands than give them. He’d make a much better pokémon.

N taking it upon himself to lead when it’s not really in his nature is a running theme through this story, I’ve noticed. He’s gentle and soft spoken, but to make the change he wants to see, he has to do things that contradict that.

“I’m hardly younger than you,” Hilda shoots back. “You don’t need to condescend me.”

“I wasn’t,” N says softly, “talking to you.”

OOH. A good mic drop moment.

You lost everything else. You lost them all. You can’t lose her too.

Poor Vaselva :(

You adjust the focus a little, give Markus enough time to cue up the applause track on the broadcast. The air around Ghibli shimmers a bit, which gives you a neat optical trick with soft focus while you let the suspense grow. You’re only a rotom, and a mere camera drone at that, but you understand by now how to draw out the drama.

This took me a minute to figure out we are seeing through the eyes of a camera rotom, but fortunately you don’t take too long to reveal this. The first few paragraphs were a little confusing until this point, though. Also! I love the way you describe the inner workings of the camera. Very nice details.

He’s cheerful, but aside to you, he’s terse: [“Wave, I need that shot! At least get a top-down view if you can’t get in close.”]

Agh, this frustrates me more than anything else in this chapter: the way Markus treats rotom in comparison to everything else. It speaks volumes about the attitudes humans have towards Pokémon in this world.

Alder’s unfortunate like this. His battling style leaves … a lot of collateral damage. You remember Markus’s glee when they finally banned live audiences from his matches for safety reasons—“they need us more than ever, Wave!”—and they finally got better protections for Alder and his challengers, but it’s dangerous to have anyone, even the camera rotom, in the same room when Alder starts calling out massive field-clearing attacks like this.

So everybody’s safe—except poor Wave. :(

“You would heal your friends after you let them get hurt to defend your belief that they should have the freedom to suffer? How kind. Don’t sacrifice too much for our lifelong partners, Alder.” Venom drips from his words. “Truly, your generosity knows no bounds.”

“Are you done prattling?”

“Are you done deciding?”

The dialogue in this chapter is brilliant. Love it.

The hydreigon obeys immediately. One mouth on each wing, and the dragon pulls, and you can’t watch—

[“Wave! Focus! I need—”]

[“Oh my god! Get someone in there!”]

—but you have to watch—

Aaaagh this hurts. Everybody else has the luxury of averting their eyes if they need to, but not Wave.


“T-that’s a hell of a Fire Blast; I can’t even recognize where that would be coming from, and—oh! It looks like Shauntal’s chandelure has found a way through the barrier?” Markus, to his credit, almost makes it sound like this is just a regular match. It’s a good act. So good you can’t tell if he’s acting at all.

That last sentence, though. Pretty telling that he’s so unruffled about it all until humans are in the line of fire. (Literally.)

[“Hilda? Hilda, please. Pick up. Something’s going on at the League, and I know you were planning on being in the area … call me back as soon as you can, okay?“]

I LOVE that Wave is picking up transmissions from outside the room so that we get snippets of what’s going on in the world outside. Hilda is coming! People are watching and freaking out!

He’s so casual how can he be so casual there are pokémon here that are going to die

Your use of italics here really sells Wave’s panic. :(

It isn’t right. It isn’t right that Ghetsis, who called the shots, gets to walk off to trial, while the blood of his hydreigon slowly goes cold and seeps into the dirt.

And that’s the question, isn’t it? Isn’t Ghetsis a huge hypocrite by using Pokémon to prove his point? At the end of the day, isn’t he just another human using Pokémon to get what he wants? No easy answers here.

You pivot slowly on your three legs so as to better see the newcomer, who delicately picks her way into your field of view on four spindly legs. She carries herself like no pokémon you’ve seen in the caves before—she’s light on her feet, like she doesn’t trust the earth beneath. Behind her, a triangular-tipped tail hovers like a different entity, flicking back and forth through the air, its tip floating three feet from the back of her head.

Her skin, too, is like nothing you’ve ever seen. It’s fur-clad like the webspinners, but where they were golden, she is like a gemstone. One of your kind was born different; the rocks of his body were not the bold colors of ore and gold, but were a deep, vibrant—you aren’t sure what word to use for the color. It is between clear sky and blood. That is her color.

ROCK KITTY SHIPPING ROCK KITTY SHIPPING

In all seriousness, though, your descriptions of Tourmaline, not just here but all through the chapter, are stunning! No wonder Carnel has a crush, lol.


{The human will not understand you.} But Tourmaline is staring at you. Her eyes glitter from the depths of her face. {I learned the dialect of caves from … from a time with a previous human, who worked with many of your kin.} Hmm, yes, now that she mentions it, you can see how she pitches her sentence the wrong way. She forgets to pause midway through her sentences to ponder the end. She flicks her tail toward the other two pokémon, firs the blue and then the green. {The dewott and the simisage prefer the dialect of forests. For your language, Ico’s tongue is unpracticed but his ear is sound. Maxis is deaf to you, and likely will be for some time.} One of her ears twitches, and an edge of amusement slips into her voice. {You must forgive him; he’s a slow learner.}

Ooh, this is so interesting! I don’t think I’ve come across the concept of Pokémon having different languages/dialects before, but it makes perfect sense. I like the way you describe and compare the differences from forest dialect to cave dialect, among other languages.

{Cheren caught many boldore before he found you. If he’s kept you around this long it probably means you’re strong in the ways he wants.} There’s something infecting Tourmaline’s voice now. It reminds you of rot. {Ico says he’s … particular like that, with those of us he chooses to keep.}


Ohhh yikes. Is this a reference to Pokémon IVs in the games and how some players will cycle through until they get a mon with the “right” nature? This seems to hint that it’s a common practice in this world, too, which if so...ouch. Agh. It’s like the equivalent of people buying cats with the proper coloring to match their furniture in real life—which, disgustingly enough, does happen and is a thing. I hate what this paragraph implies and it makes me feel disgusted towards Cheren.

There’s a boulder in front of you, a little bit bigger than you. It’s different than the kind in your cave. You could find out more by touching it, but even from a distance you notice no familiar frizzle of electric energy wrapped around it. Granite, maybe. It has flecks of black crystal, and it’s half-submerged in the dirt. There’s another, smaller piece of rock next to it, and a few more scattered around the clearing.

You won’t throw it. That would be rude. How could you? The rock came here for a reason. Clearly it does not want to be thrown, not if it dragged itself here and buried itself in six inches of mud.

Every Pokémon in this story has their own culture, and I really can’t talk enough about how much I love that! It’s also interesting that, by comparison, Vaselva doesn’t have the cultural heritage/lore to refer to that the wild Pokémon do, because she was raised in captivity and is most conditioned out of all of them to be a trained Pokémon. Even so, she still compares things to leaves and seeds and sunlight, due to her being a grass type. Likewise, Carnel compares everything to caves and stones because that’s what he knows.

{My cave,} you say. A big pause, so it can sink in for him better, since he seems a little slow. {This is my cave.} You let the small pebble by the entrance of the tunnel wiggle a little, and then you direct it to roll into the entrance, where the rest of its brothers and sisters are waiting. {Please let me go back to my cave.}

Ughhh poor baby. :( come on, Cheren, isn’t it obvious that he’s at least trying to talk to you and tell you something??

“Wild Charge, Amara!” the human commands.

{Hi, I’m Carnel,} you say politely, looking at her.

She doesn’t respond. By the time the words have left your mouth, she’s already tackling you full-on, her body wreathed in sparks. Arcs of blue electricity jitter up your carapace. You shy back as they explode upon your skin; there’s pain in your shoulder. One of your biotites is loose.

Nooo! He’s so sweet and polite and he’s just thrown into battle with no preparation at all. Again, couldn’t Cheren have at least tried to explain what he’s expecting Carnel to do? This whole time, all he does is talk at his Pokémon instead of with them. Gah.

Your biotites glow, and you firmly wiggle the pebbles at the base of your miniature cave. The pebbles there are happy because they are all sticking together. {Home,} you say slowly. {I want to go home.}

My heart, poor baby. Make it stop!!

She’s still as a statue, but all of the fur running down her spine stands to attention. {Absolutely not,} she says frostily. It’s like she has a second mane now. Fascinating. You wish you could do that.

Lol what a pure little bean rock.

When the earth is about to fracture, she sends messages sometimes. Tremors before the quake. You sense them radiating around Tourmaline now, frustration building beneath the skin. Her next question is calm, but the earth usually is.

Another example of how you use what Carnel is familiar with—earth and stone—to describe what he’s seeing.

{None of us want to be here,} she repeats, and it’s when she changes it to us that you realize what she wants you to understand: the two of you weren’t the first ones to ask a human for your freedom.

Wow what a sad, heavy thought.

Your cave would not fit in this falsecave;

“Falsecave”, love it!

There is a phrase for her kind of request. She would not know the story, but—there was a tale once of a roggenrola that tried to climb a steep mountain. As he neared the top, he lost his footing, and rolled back to where he started—in the process chipping off some of his protruding crags. The more times he tried, the rounder he got, and the more impossible his task became.

To ignore this thought is to push yourself up the mountain. Each time you do it, the more impossible it becomes.

And again, I love that pretty much every Pokémon from this moment forward has some sort of tale or parable that they compare their current experience to. And they’re all very fitting for each type/species.

Long ago, before the age of humans, a great dragon descended to walk amongst the plains. To your ancestors, the great dragon gave spark and color. To the rest of the earth’s children, the dragon asked your ancestors to give their bodies and their protection. They were to protect those who could not protect themselves. In some places, this meant protecting the young blitzle from predators. Sometimes, your father said, explaining the story his human had once read to him, it meant fighting so that humans would not have to.

Many pokemon turned away from the great dragon, and chose to find strength on their own, strength that did not demand that they help others. In their cowardice they prospered. But the zebstrika accepted, and foreswore himself to a duty ten thousand suns in the making.

Thus the first kafara was born.

I found it very interesting that blitzle/zebstrika have such a reverence and connection to dragons, considering they’re electric types and I wouldn’t have pegged them to be the species that reveres dragons this way. But I like it! I’m curious where you got your inspiration for all these different stories and legends.

You snort anxiously. The campsite’s a sorry affair; Hilda’s wrestling with the rainfly of her tent. She’s currently shivering against the wind that’s starting to blow in—a cold front from the moors, perhaps. You wouldn’t know. You were never supposed to go this far north. This is a strange land; when the clouds gather, they do shed not rain, but ice. There is no thunder to be found here, only cold.

It’s unnatural, and you don’t like it.

This does get glossed over in most fics, doesn’t it? The fact that wild Pokémon are captured and taken very far away from home, often forced into situations and climates that are the exact opposite of what they are made for.

First Reshiram, now this. You stamp your foot. Sparks fly from it, and you have to quell your anger before you draw attention. But you needn’t have worried. Hilda’s huddled against herself, eyes held captive by the flames.

Even Hilda seems very disconnected from her Pokémon. It sounds like she’s at least more in tune with them than Cheren is, but there’s definitely still a gap there.

But Vaselva wouldn’t get that. She has bold words for one who was raised in a cage, where the cycle never applied.

Oof, very interesting to see these two clash with their different beliefs and backgrounds.

{We journey alongside one another so we can all grow. It is difficult, but so is life. A seedling that knows only fertile soil and ample rain will wither away under the summer sun. At some point you must not trouble yourself with the why. A plant does not need a reason to flower. Growing strong means you do not doubt.}

Perhaps for a tree. But in the herds, you must always question. Even your father, and his story of a zebstrika’s purpose—you must question this as well. A foal that runs in a straight line is a foal that runs to certain death. {I am no plant.}

Again, very good use of their vastly different cultures to explain how they think.

Your father had never taught you a song for when a kafara’s sacrifice goes ignored by the rest.

Oh, ouch, poor Amara. She’s just trying her best.

But humans pick the strongest. If you grit your teeth through a broken leg, if you remain impassive through a barrage of flames, you are more desirable. You become their rock. Strength will protect you from liepard and make you vulnerable to human hunters instead.

Oh a very good point. Being strong in the wild means survival, but being strong among humans means being subject to more suffering.

When the first zebstrika received his spark and his color, the power was too much. It coursed through his veins and nearly tore him apart. The fracture lines are woven into all of your skins now. Pain is inextricable from sacrifice.

I like this bit about the first zebstrika!

You don’t care. You bowl through them, scattering them to the ground. N’s staring at the stone in his hand, too stunned to give orders. Not that he’d give them anyway. He’s a liar, and an indecisive human, and you were a fool for ever believing he’d be any different.

You bray in frustration, letting out all of the electric charge out at once, and the resulting thunderstrike is so bright that it washes out the tower. When it clears, N is still standing. The klinklang is smoking. One set of gears is jammed together where the heat melted the teeth away.


Ohh boy, she mad. It seems she’s more angry that N was (seemingly) wrong, and thus her hopes are shattered, than she is about him opposing Hilda.

The archeops emerges, his wings flapping wildly. He soars over the chaos and blinks twice. You watch his eyes fasten onto N. The archeops swoops towards the ground, too low for a proper dive, and when he emerges there’s something red clutched in his talons.

The flash of metal catches your attention. His pokéball. He’s grabbed his pokéball.

“Reylin?” Hilda asks, but too slow. The archeops rockets towards N. He grabs N’s shirt in his beak, uses his talons to shove the pokéball into the N’s hands. Reylin shouts something urgently in a language you can’t understand, but you see a faint flicker of understanding in the human’s eyes.

Reylin! :( I can’t imagine what this must have felt like for Hilda.

She was given Vaselva. But you were the first one she chose. So while the serperior gets Hilda’s hopes, you get her fears. When she lost her first gym battle in Nimbasa and almost lost her sponsorship for it; when she received that letter from her father; when the strange boy she thought was a friend was shaping up to be her greatest roadblock. She confided in you. You were her lighthouse, the one on her team that showed no pain or hesitation, guiding her through her storms.

You snort and lean in close, exhale a hot puff of air on her snow that lines her jacket. She reaches out and wraps her hands around the back of your neck, presses her forehead against your own, and sobs.
At least Hilda doesn’t pretend to be a hero.

Powerful stuff. We learn a lot about Hilda in these paragraphs, and about how much Amara really does care for her, despite everything. Which just hurts when you know what happens later.

“Yes, hello.” Pause. “Burr.” Another pause. “B-U-R-R. First name Mina. Yes, it’s nice to talk to you too.”

Pardon me, are you Aaron Burr, sir?

Trainer usually sped through phone conversations at record speed, so it’s almost soothing to see her nodding patiently, biting her lip while the person in the phone talks back to her.

Interesting that bisharp calls him “Trainer” and not by his real name. Even Tourmaline, who detested Cheren, still called him by his name, so this feels really telling here.

She shifts her weight in the chair uncomfortably. “Yes. First name Timothy.”

If you hadn’t mentioned on discord that you named him Tim Burr because of his timburr, I never would have caught it. Lol I love it though

But Trainer was smart in all the ways that didn’t matter. He hit Samson when you did not obey, and the conkeldurr was soft even though he pretended not to be.

Ughhhh I hate this. Seriously, shouldn’t there be like some sort of test before you set out to be a trainer so that its known you can be trusted with Pokémon and in high-stress situations?

You don’t get to say goodbye.

Nobody considers the Pokémon’s feelings for one second in this world and I hate it. :(

She hisses something inaudible and tells the lightbox to show a different person, so it does—a green-haired man making an emphatic speech to a crowd

Gee, I wonder who that is?

The wanderer’s ending made you sad for reasons you couldn’t explain at the time, not that anyone had asked. He seemed unhappy as a wanderer, but he truly didn’t seem any happier as a king. He wandered across the entire earth to find himself a destiny that fit, but in the end the gift of his blood called louder.

LOL for some reason I got LOTR vibes from this movie. Also, I’m struggling to know how the story of the movie applies to bisharp in this scenario. Between this and constantly going back to “what good is a soldier if he won’t follow his Queen”, I think I was struggling to piece it all together.

Humans are nice. They let you rematch if you lose.
Humans are cruel. They make you rematch when you lose.

I really like the contrast of these two sentences, but they didn’t entirely make sense to me. Why would bisharp think both things right after the other?


She swears you aren’t violent; they don’t believe her. You don’t blame them. How could they believe her? How could a bisharp stop being violent?

In a friend’s fic, they touch on the topic of how dangerous it is to lump all Pokemon of a species into one generalized group. Just because a pokemon is a certain species, that does not guarantee that they will behave a certain way. Kind of like the argument for/against pit bulls in real life. So I’m glad that this chapter basically disproves this line of thinking.

Sometimes the phone calls and she doesn’t tell it anything. She lets it scream quietly in the corner and leaves the person inside without anyone to talk to. You feel bad for the phone. It’s frustrating to shout for help and have no one listen.

That last line is powerful. Ugh. Summary of this fic in a nutshell?


{What,} the Queen asks you stonily, {am I supposed to do with a sword that no longer wants to fight?}

This analogy feels more fitting than what you were trying to accomplish with the movie. But that’s just my opinion!

You don’t think you’ll miss this place, it’s true. But what comes next might be worse.

Scary and true. Pokémon have no say in where they go. They are completely at the mercy of the humans and what they decide to do with them.

It feels nice to cut the earth. The ground does not feel pain; it does not recoil from you; it does not cry. In your rank it was a bad idea, a fast way for the blades to grow dull. Cutting softer materials would let you stay sharp.

He likes being able to use his swords in a way that doesn’t hurt anyone—my HEART.

Looking closer, she has tears in her eyes. They don’t look fresh. She’s been storing them, but now she wipes them away clumsily with the back of her hand. That’s when you notice that her hand insides are raw, bleeding. You look back at the shovel, and then you avert your eyes in shame. Wounds are not meant to be witnessed. That is what armor is for.

Something tells you that this wasn’t actually about the garden.

But he went off on his own and did these horrible things to all of you, and everyone’s asking how he could do such a thing, how he could become an abuser. I don’t even answer the phone anymore; someone put my number on the internet and everyone’s been calling nonstop to tell me what a piece of shit we both are. And he’s going to be locked up for years at best; my own child; did I know.”

This chapter legitimately made me tear up the first time I read it, and it was right here that did it for me. You captured Mina’s grief and guilt so painfully well.

They share the same lips and nose, you think—face features are hard. Humans are foolish for not wearing helms. Their skin certainly isn’t strong enough to warrant going unprotected.

Haha. More fun observations on how weird humans are!

She holds herself like someone who’s already been hurt before, and has made peace with it.

:(

Last night she’d watched with tight lips and a pale face as the television announced that officials had found the escaped seismitoad that had attacked its trainer. In the ensuing fight, it had been killed.

Oh. Oh. I don’t think I caught this the first time reading it. :(

“Look at me, talking to a pokémon. I must be going crazy.”

You grate out a response. {I’m listening.}

So even talking to a Pokémon is considered weird? Do people not realize they are perfectly capable of understanding, or do they just not care??


You run your blade deeper through the furrow in the ground, deep enough that the exposed ground is damp again.

She looks at it, frowning.

{For you,} you repeat. {For your seedlings.} A pause. She’s staring at you quizzically. You point one blade inward. {For me.}

Mina looks at the trough you’ve made. “Is this for my garden?”

You tap the shovel. Point at her bloodied hand. Nod.

A smile creases her face. The first one you’ve seen from her so far.

So beautifully bittersweet. This chapter gives me hope that maybe the world could figure things out, like Hilda hoped.


A windstorm came by last winter, she tells you in a guarded voice, and knocked the rawst bush over, nearly tore out all its roots and flung it halfway across the yard. She points it out to you now, how she’s helped it twine around a trio of sturdy wooden stakes that help keep it stable while it grows back into the earth. She left it to root in the spot where it landed, where the winds had stopped blowing it; the oak tree in the center of the garden will shield it from the next storm. It’s coming along quite nicely now. Soon, she says, you won’t even be able to tell; she’s sure that come summer, it’ll blossom just as vibrantly as it always has.

What a beautiful anecdote that also gives a message of hope: torn, destroyed things can heal, and eventually blossom as they were always meant to.

“But they’re growing towards something, and we’ll help them get there. Even damaged leaves still need sun.”

Strands of sweaty hair hang in her face, and the aroma of damp earth is everywhere. She’s got her neck bent over the row of mint that she’s planting, but even still:

Something tells you this wasn’t actually about the garden.

Never was about the garden. 💔

You don’t really understand how people can drink trees. The garden is mysterious indeed.

Lol “drink trees”

The humans tell rumors about you. They whisper that Ghetsis beats his pokemon to keep them in line, that his hydreigon hates him more than anything else in the world.

in one sentence, we know who we’re hearing from this chapter!

Ghetsis is many things, but he is no fool. He understands the hearts of dragons. Sometimes he holds himself with the same reckless abandon. There is an accord between you. You give him what he wants. You protect him from his foes, let his reputation stretch before the two of you like a dark shadow. He gives you what you want. Power. Strength. Vengeance. A bit of coaching. A strange disc that holds the secrets of how to create fire. A wide berth. A warm bath.

It is partnership in the most basic sense. He will never seek you for counsel and you will never seek him for love. But that is not why anyone would ever choose to raise a dragon.

Hmm. Pretty rough, business-like relationship here. It makes for a very interesting foil to N’s relationship with Zahnak.

The door to N’s chambers cracks open. You occupy his room while he’s away, not for any particular reason. You could have your own chamber of the castle, furnished to your liking—but it would be empty. You are a dragon. You have no need for human comforts, least of all this one, but—

lol the tsundere vibes are strong here. Is Zahnak secretly a cat?

No. There is pity in his eyes when he sees your injuries, when he mistakes your scars for weakness. He is no dragon, but he wishes he had the fire in his heart to be one. That is his struggle, you decide. That will always be his struggle. You will not make it your own.

I like the tough love angle here, but it feels like Zahnak switches a lot from tough love to antagonizing to encouraging a lot, and it made me want a little more consistency in his interactions with N.

Six pairs of eyes glitter back at him as you share the truth he already knows.

Six pairs? Do you mean six eyes?

He doesn’t answer at first. You didn’t expect him to. He doesn't want to admit that Ghetsis is a necessary evil. He is the bitter root that cures a deeper poison. You do not love him, but you understand his use. You will endure the flames that lick at your scales so long as they burn away the rot.

Ah, yes, the good old “the ends justify the means” argument.

{And do you know what Sagaris did, N?}

He starts, surprised at the interruption. After a moment to consider, he says, “She agreed, and sought to befriend this pokémon?”

{No. She remembered that the blood of dragons coursed thick and hot through her veins, and she seized the leader’s tusks and tore them from his face. She named herself clan leader, and the people discovered that she was already compassionate, brave, determined and strong; that what the clan leader sought to make her prove was there all along.}

Haha this did not go at all like I expected it to, but it’s a very fitting tale, considering it’s well-known amongst dragons.

He tilts his jaw up towards you, the first and last human to look you in the eyes and defy you, a dragon.

I love the glimpses we get into N’s infernal strength here. He may be soft and gentle, but he is not weak.

And this time, the smile is truly not a real one. N looks up with his emotions frozen across his face, barely able to meet your eyes. It’s like he’s afraid that if he looks too long, you’ll shatter. “Surely you hate me by now, Zahhak? For all I have failed to do for you?”

The frills on the back your neck fold close to your head; unbidden, a deep rumbling sound comes from your throat.

Of all the things the little dragon had to ask you, it was this.

Ohh sad. :( the fact that he refers to N as “the little dragon” just makes this hurt more.

The room suddenly feels heavy and still. You lean down and press the cool, dry scales of your snout against N’s forehead. He flinches back, and then he squeezes his eyes tight and throws his arms around your head, buries his forehead into your scales, runs his soft palms against your scarred jaw. He’s warm. So warm.

If you could both just stay here forever. If Dragonspiral Tower didn’t beckon, echoes of a lost song in the back of both your minds. If the world didn’t demand to be right again.

You close your eyes as well, and in that moment you can pretend you’re both smaller again. He’s just a snot-nosed child, chubby and doddling along on unsteady legs, pulling your unscarred tail, asking for stories. The little freak and his freakish handler, both of you too blind to see how everyone stared. If you don’t open your eyes ever again you can stay like this forever.
Perhaps he truly is the best one to call to the heart of the White Dragon after all, if he could so easily find his way into yours.

That last line!! :cry: My freaking HEART, kint! Why are you doing this to me?! I seriously have tears in my eyes while typing this. So bittersweet, and it’s made worse by knowing how things end for Zahnak. AGH.

{Forgive me, dear sibling,} he says, in the dialect of dragons. It makes your heart stop to hear him invoke it, twists a tiny pang of fear that’s altogether different from how you normally feel when he adopts your tongue. He is small for a dragon, after all. Too small to share your tongue and your fate.

But the tragedy of the nocturne lament was not in the words, but in the choosing of them. In understanding the insignificance of your sacrifice and making it anyway. If he can stomach even a little of that burden, perhaps there is hope after all.

He chanted the nocturne lament like a prayer. The words rolled off his lips so quickly that he almost doesn’t notice they’re there, not until you return the other half to him, make it a promise the two of you share:

{This is all I know how to give.}

This is so cool, that N can speak the tongue of dragons—it seems to solidify how close these two are, since I can’t imagine a dragon would teach just any old human their language.



I will leave you outside of your pokéballs for as often as I possibly can, and if you do not return, I won’t ask why. It’ll be your choice.”

Wait, N uses Pokeballs? Or are these Pokémon he has liberated from their trainers, and thus they have their pokeballs with them? But how would he have obtained their Pokeballs without the trainer handing them over?


He’s gathered all six of you here. The thunderlegs, the stonesinger, the steelseed, the fossil, him, and you; and now he’s posed this very interesting problem that he needs your help solving.

love the names that Spur gives all of them.

And just like that, half your team is gone.

Hm, but does Spur actually think of them as a team?

If you ventured deeper into the cave, you would find your fellow gearlings once more. Your life would be as it was before, with a multitude of gearlings. One day, a cog in the service of a greater machine. This is the most optimal design.

Of all the chapters I’ve read so far, this one might be my favorite in terms of how you write through the Pokémon’s eyes. Klingklang is so methodical, mechanical, and it’s so fitting!

N chews on his lip. Is he trying to subsume it? Horrifying. You look away until he finishes.

This made me laugh out loud xD

Oh no. No, that’s not what you meant at all. Leader stops abruptly. Follower, shocked, grinds to a halt—it’s not like you had a choice in that.

He flinches back. “I’m so sorry. I didn’t mean to upset you.”

Grind grind grind. Follower needs to get back in line. No. Leader needs to lead correctly, not disappoint the soft ones with poor logic. No. Both need to reconsider.

I love this, very good way of describing how a machine can become “upset”.

No, wait. This is when you see him truly get what you were trying to say, because he goes perfectly still, as if the gears inside of him are finally at odds with one another and the paradox reveals itself. What he wants is something he cannot get. He is a gearling that does not mesh with the rest of the world. He will search across every corner of Unova for his follower and will not find it.

Hmmm. This strikes you as unfair.


I like that this shows Spur’s process and how he decides to stay with N, simply because he cares for what N cares about.

The gyms are easier buildings to be in. You don’t like how you can’t see the sky there either, but at least the only cries of pain are your own.

Oof. Sad noises.

His words. His words. Nostalgia washes over you, drenches through your feathers and all the way down to your skin, and you’re just staring at him, eyes wide, those familiar syllables echoing in your ears. None of Hilda’s pokémon sounded like that. None of them knew what to say so you could understand them.

Poor, poor baby. Being carted around, forced to do things you don’t want to do, and unable to speak to anyone. :(

“Oh no, not all of them. I haven’t really picked up the sea dialect as much; it’s a bit harder to meet a native speaker, of course. At first I thought Zara was just using a more obscure dialect from there, maybe a deep-sea one, but then we tried talking to a basculin for a while, and she definitely didn’t know what was happening.”

“N.” Hilda sighs heavily. One of her hands snakes out from her crossed arms so she can rub her forehead. “You came back to Mistralton just for—never mind. What do you want me to do?”

LOL N is such a sweetheart. Would love to see a more lighthearted fic of N just traveling the region for all sorts of wholesome shenanigans and Hilda shaking her head at him from behind.

N swallows. He stares at his shoes while you count three of his breaths. His tongue snakes out and runs across his lips, and then he bites the bottom lip, and then, finally—“He says … if you didn’t like your family so much, why didn’t you just leave?”

Hilda turns to stone. You watch her shoulders freeze in place, raised up defensively around her ears like twin spikes of armor.

Mistake. {I didn’t mean it like that!} you chirp, but she’s not looking at you. Her smile is frozen, curdled on her face.

Yikes, I guess even with a translator, communication is still not the best.

You might think you do, you might think that one kid with a shit dad can recognize another, that you understand, but you grew up with so much that I didn’t. You don’t know the first thing about peasants like me, Lord N.

Very curious to learn more about her dad, but I’m sure we will in later chapters?

My dear sister, Kobo told you once, I have learned a terrible secret.

Kobo broke your pack’s rules, and with that breach came a terrible price. There wasn’t punishment from the pack, for the truth he learned was a horrible one—the world had punished him enough. But it didn’t punish him swiftly, didn’t stop him from spreading his secret to you.

??? Oh? Did you edit this since I last read it? It seems different!

you hear a scream, and then a pop, and you turn just in time to see a gas cannister strike a scolipede in the thorax. The cylinder lodges between the chinks in its reddish armor, and then it begins seeping burning-hot gas while the scolipede shrieks in pain, bucking around wildly.

HOLD UP, is this the burned scolipede mentioned at the beginning of last chapter? If so...ugh. Nooo. :(

{You can drop that now,} the liepard says lazily after the girl closes the door, and you find yourself in a dimly-lit room with grungy walls and short ceiling. Ahead of the two of you, the girl fumbles her way against the bed in the center of the room—she has poor night vision, you remember belatedly—before she manages to turn on one of the lamps on the bedside table.

{Drop what?} you ask innocently.

{Skinchanger, I have met no herdier that speaks the forest’s tongue like you do.}

{We can’t all fawn around humans,} you smirk, and you watch as the hairs running down her spine stand on end in response. But you don’t drop your illusion, not around friends like these.

This seems new to me, too! I think it’s been a minute since reading this chapter so I can’t be sure about all the changes, but overall I think it reads a lot more smoothly! I think Inari is written more consistently this time around.

The girl emerges from the back room, juggling a series of weirdly shaped plastic objects in her arms. She tosses something white to Tourmaline, and then a cylindrical lump lands in front of your herdier illusion. Scentless, too-white, weirdly smooth. What is this?

{The top is weak,} Tourmaline explains before stabbing her claws in through the lid. When her paw emerges, it is covered in pale blue mud, which she languidly begins licking.

Took me a minute to figure out this was yogurt, lol

{How does he—}

{He listens,} Tourmaline answers simply, and bounds away.

Are we ever given an explanation for why N can understand Pokémon? I know he was raised by them, but I wonder if there’s more to it. Sad that he’s the only one who ever learned to listen to Pokémon well enough to understand them.

Phew!! That was a lot. I might be back to finish the story later today, but we’ll see what I’m able to manage!

(Skipped chapter 7 because I’ve already left an in-depth review on that one)
 

kyeugh

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vii. nonconformist

i think this is the first chapter so far where the viewpoint character is straight up unsympathetic, in my view at least. not sure how much of that literally comes down to "he's a cop" rather than something more meaningfully linked to the narrative, but tbf those things are kind of inextricable? it almost seems (through my admittedly acab-tinted lens) as a critique of the police through the filter of your themes rather than an elaboration of your themes by way of a police perspective. i don't mean that as a criticism at all—imo ace's perspective here isn't really the most important thing of the chapter, so if it's just an additional layer of narrative/worldbuilding, that's perfectly fine. just different from what we've seen so far. i did find his pov sliiiightly lacking in some small ways—i would have liked for his perspective on the issues to be a little more coherent and solid, for example. as a cop who weathers a lot of harassment for his position, as well as someone who's at least present for plenty of plasma protests and has heard what they've had to say more than most, i'd expect his opinions on the matter to be a little more developed and a little less reactionary. fwiw this didn't detract from my reading experience at all, but i do think making him feel a bit more solid in that regard would be an improvement.

i may be wrong about this but i believe rhea is the first non-executive member of plasma we've seen so far? i really like the direction you've taken the team here, notably by omitting the word "team." the team plasma feels very much like a rank-and-file organization, what with the council of sages and the wacky uniforms and all that business. it makes it much more difficult to take it seriously as an organic social movement, so what you've done here—apparently making up the base of the organization with grassroots volunteers—works for your particular flavor of team plasma really well. the tear gas/police takedown/liepard gave me CD vibes which is most certainly not a bad thing. i thought it was really interesting that rhea knew N personally, even if it had been a while since they'd spoken. makes me wonder just how large plasma is. i don't know how significant rhea is, but plasma can't be too big if this ostensibly random grunt has received a pokémon from the guy on top, right?

on that note: tourmaline 🥺 it's a crazy coincidence both that she ended up with cheren and that she previously belonged to N. it kind of seems like that would have come up during her conversation with carnel, who also belonged to N if memory serves—did that come up and i just missed it? now that tourmaline's made an appearance here i am assuming the most recent chapter "nepeta" is related to her, so looking forward to that. she's got a very unique take on the situation; i almost feel like ace could have served as a good foil to her, a pokémon with a highly developed opinion on the pokémon liberation issue due to his circumstances, but in the opposite direction as a cop rather than a member of plasma.

cheren continues to be a little ass. fuck that guy honestly. getting major neocon debate club whiz kid vibes from him. love to hate. i wonder if we'll see bianca later?

But he was so was so strong that Mother named the rest after him—you are Clover, and after you came Horseshoe, and Ladybug, and Jade, and Rab.
they always be after me lucky charms.

“You should’ve considered that before you blocked the road,” Sam retorts.
oh man. not ROAD BLOCKAGE. she's going to feel the full fury of the justice system now.

The last one confuses you the most. You protect them from criminals. You aren’t the criminal. If anything, they are. Some people would think Take Down would be excessive. Some people haven’t had to fight the same battles you have.
great, love this guy already.

“It’s not illegal to battle. Driftveil has open challenge rules. Clay’s city, Clay’s rules.”
lol. texas vibes. feels right, given clay.

And in return he’s letting you do so much for everyone else.
😐

You like the boy. Most people who talk to Rhea don’t put forward good points, but he says the things you want to hear.
good points indeed, by the shapiro standard.

“And if they want to go back to their trainers, Rhea? Then what?” Cheren’s voice is starting to get high-pitched, agitated.

But Rhea’s still calm. Quieter, even. “Then I take them back.”

“Even to an abusive trainer? That seems wrong, Rhea.”
i thought taking the away in the first place was wrong!? i really like the way you've constructed cheren's argument here; it doesn't really seem to be coming from a coherent ideology so much as a series of knee-jerk reactions to whatever particular point rhea is making at the time. feels very real.

She just got told a lot of things and didn’t think long enough to question them. She’ll grow up one day.
hmmmmmmm!

It doesn’t matter who listens to you or not, because when you’re strong, your actions will always speak louder than your words.
oof. brings to mind the whole deal with ghetsis at the league.
“Your pokémon will be held by the police pending your trial. If the original owner can claim them they will be handed over; otherwise, after a period of seventy-two hours they will be repossessed by the state.”

That seems to get through to her. “That’s three days,” she says in a quiet voice. And then, faster: “But if you’re going to detain me for—”

“Upon repossession they will be put up for adoption. At that time you will also be able to reclaim your pokémon should the previous window be insufficient.”

They’re talking over each other. Sam’s louder, but Rhea’s more urgent. “Please, you know that if I’m here I can’t—”
but stealing pokémon is wrong! 😠

“The liepard. Her name is Tourmaline. She likes being scratched between the ears. And yogurt. Sometimes she’ll be aloof around strangers but if they talk to her she’ll usually come around. She hates being in her pokéball.”
noooo. :( i was wondering if it was her but decided probably not. i can't believe she ends up with cheren. what shitty luck. poor girl.

You bark. Twice for no.
wasn't it twice for yes before?

---

viii. nondeterministic

gotta preface this one with the confession that this chapter got mad points from me for the mechanical mon pov alone. i'm a sucker for xenofic and it seems to me like mechanical/mineral/etc. pokémon are very much a strong suit of yours. i was in love with the carnel chapter and this one hits all the same buttons. so many lovely little turns of phrase, such a quirky flow of consciousness, everything so elegantly and seamlessly integrated into the narrative without getting in its way. just a delight to read overall.

this chapter didn't feel quite revelatory to me in the ways that previous ones have, but it's got an awesome narrator and we spent some time with best boy, so that's okay. the dialogue really felt like a math lecture to me, and i mean that in a good way. spur is, after all, essentially lecturing N on his point of view, and he does it in a fairly mathematical/Logical with a capital L manner. when N's understanding falters, spur quickly changes gears. very methodical. this is the most optimal design. this fic is very special in the way it takes a single issue and deconstructs it in many ways based on the wildly disparate backgrounds of the pov character, and i think this chapter shines the most brightly so far in that regard. i appreciate that, while spur probably isn't saying anything N hasn't heard before, it seems to really hit home for once because the point is being cast in a new light. makes perfect sense that mr. fOrMuLaS himself would be receptive to spur's particular flavor of reasoning. looks like it didn't dissuade him though, all things considered. and we know spur sticks with N to the very end (beginning?), which is nice.

the insight into hilda's motivations was... sad. i honestly didn't get Sad vibes from her before but it makes sense. i'm curious how she's been let down, as N described. i doubt that question will go unanswered. so far i'm not finding her quite as intriguing as N, but we've also seen much less of her; she's not quite as pivotal all things considered, seeing as she's not the leader of a mass social movement, and her pokémon don't all seem to have quite such strong feelings about her. looking forward to seeing more of her though.

not much else to say aside from very well done. so much fun to read, more narrators like this pls.

This is reassuring. Leader likes this. Follower does as well.
omg, love this. reminds me a bit of parliament of steel.

That is what you remember of him most of all when he looks up at the soft human, who has crouched down and compressed his gangly frame—you have to look away for a moment; it’s unsettling to watch his flesh do that—so he and the thunderlegs are on the same level.
what a fun detail. mechanical pokémon are so much fun, i feel like i'm entertained by things like this every time.

Nonflesh always understood nonflesh in a way that the soft ones simply couldn’t.
i feel like this should be in present tense.

{I will find a new trainer. I did not enjoy losing. I want to fight until I win.}
well maybe you should have thought of that before you became a steel/grass type.

Just before he vanishes into the fuzzy depths,
the fuzzy depths omfg.

So you made something up. It was inoptimal design.
this made me lol. i love this guy.

The humans surely has walked a million miles and could walk a million more.
* human

The world is a biggear problem to change.
😶

“I … I’m sorry about that,” he says. He blows a lot of his breath out through his nostrils, which seems inefficient. “She and I disagree on that. I think in many ways we are destined to fight over that, and to keep fighting, until one of us wins and changes the world.”
"which seems inefficient" lmfao.
i found it a little weird for him to say "she" suddenly here as though the subject is understood. maybe "the trainer we battled" or something?

{So she believes she is correct. That what she seeks is ideal.}
kind of expected "optimal" rather than "ideal" here, heh.

They didn’t make the world bad, so they don’t think they can make it better.
powerful line.

Ah. Yes. He is a rare human flesh that was gifted with the power of understanding your speech, but not all words translate smoothly. {Two gears work as one gearling.} You spin for emphasis. {One day, many gearling will join. Together we will form one biggear.}
ah, so it's not a pun on "bigger." okay, you get a pass this once.

He smiles. Yes. Different. That’s it. That’s the right word. “Formulas?”
this was inevitable.

You get the feeling that he’s a lonely type, even for a human. Humans are lonely by nature, even if they don’t want to be. They don’t get to hold close to one another like the gearling do. Every interaction for them seems to be sparse, sacred, precious. It’s probably why they talk so much. They have to make it count. But you don’t get why they’re so lonely but still push strangers away, people who want to help.
ooof. deep insight into flesh from a gearling. i really like this because it feels true on a deep level but also perfectly reasonable for a klingklang to see clearly. they, by nature of existing, feel complete and whole in a silent way once they find their partner. of course humans, who forever lack that satisfaction, would seem incomplete and lonely.
 

Dragonfree

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Her voice is breezy, to match the woman sitting across from her. But Skyla doesn’t get knocked over the by breezes. She rides them.
One of those bits where there's a neat line but I'm not sure what it actually means, haha. (Also, shouldn't that be "by the"?)

Instead, Iris calmly stirs her coffee and exchanges pleasantries with the most influential woman in Western Unova. You are the dragon and she is the girl, after all; it would not do her any good to rampage here. These humans have silly constructs of power. You beat Skyla’s team in a fight without even trying, and yet Iris is still the one groveling; you’re still the one sitting primly by her side.
I like Sienna's frustration with human social hierarchies not working like Pokémon's do.

And Sundays are usually for quiet training, relaxation, sometimes a few socially-weighted visits. Today is one of the Sundays that’s morphed into an endless train of commitments. Posturing, smiles.
Too relatable

You may have assessed wrong. The new backpack made you think new money, the kind that loves trendy joints like this. The Skylas of the world. But Iris has always had the better eye for strategy, so if she sees something that you don’t, it’s probably there. You try to reassess while Iris flags over a waiter and orders drinks for them both. Juniper’s sponsorship could’ve come with new gear. You look Hilda over again—if it’s all new, how did she manage to make it this far? The boots look like the only thing that’s older than her journey.
Intriguing! Still looking forward to more on Hilda's past.

Unova loved the idea of a tough girl with a pretty face. She couldn’t be too tough, of course. But that’s what you were for, to give the fangs a different face from the flower.
Eep.

You and Iris learned this together when you came here, when she learned to talk with her instead of her mouth
Pretty sure there's a word missing, and possibly also mixed-up order? (i.e. I assume she learned to talk with her mouth instead of her hands, rather than vice versa?)

Precision doesn’t matter nearly as much as just getting it out there. You watched Iris learn this lesson the hard way. You can build a mountain with words and force people to climb up to get you.
Very stark image and very true.

She drifts slightly behind on the pavement; you don’t leave Iris’s side and the sidewalk isn’t big enough for three.
This is a nice detail, Sienna getting assumed priority for walking beside Iris even though she's currently engaged in conversation with Hilda.

Iris doesn’t even look over her shoulder as she begins to cross the street. You glare at the cars for her.
Cute.

You catch the servine on your shoulder; she’s dangerously close to impaling herself on your right tusk and you have to tilt yourself out of the way to avoid causing any serious damage.
Like to see her deliberately holding back to avoid causing too much damage.

{You’re a fast learner,} you hiss approvingly in draconic as you catch the second swing on your scaly forearms.

{I try,} she responds frostily.

{Don’t wind up as much,} you add when her third jab easily goes wide over your shoulder, a crackling blur of green energy. {You don’t need it.}
Like the contrast between her approach and Drayden's (Druddigon's) approach you described previously; she practices what she preaches.

Iris hides her cynicism with a laugh; you vent her frustration into your next thrust, and open-palmed strike with your claws tucked safely out of the way.
Think that should be "an open-palmed strike..."?

But what people hated to see was slow change, these baby steps up a mountain so massive. It reminded them that the battles that really mattered weren’t like the ones in the League, with the cameras and the glitz and the lights. It was slow, boring, and discouraging work. In fifteen years maybe the two of you will have enough power to start tackling the things that really matter. In twenty years maybe you’ll have the courage to look back towards your home. Twenty-five years, or maybe thirty, you’ll come to peace with what you had to lose to get yourselves here.
Only here it turns out actual change is achieved through the flashiest, glitziest means possible, doesn't it.

“I’ve seen you involved in the Pokémon Liberation stuff,” Iris says lightly, but now her words are loaded and heavy. “Be careful which causes you support, Hilda. You won’t be allowed to get away with that forever.”
Huh. Hilda can't have understood it all that well, can she. Surprised to hear she was anything that could count as involved?

“Contradiction,” Iris says shortly. She normally isn’t one for curt, mysterious statements—rather just say something glancing and polite—but even you know it’s too risk to elaborate here. Contradiction between Hilda’s ideals of equality for the kids like her? Contradiction by raising points against the League that brought her here? A bit of both.
Plus, of course, the contradiction of Hilda, who barely pays attention to her Pokémon as we see again here, being involved with the liberation movement.

“Thanks for the advice,” Hilda says drily, and that’s when you know she’s not going to listen. Of course she isn’t. Five or ten years ago, just starting out, you would’ve been in the same boat, idealists and dreamers, believing if you can fight hard enough you can change the world overnight.
Yeah, I'm kind of confused by what you're getting at thematically here. Hilda is an idealist, but a very hypocritical one, and then you've got this bit that's all about the weary belief Hilda's idealism doesn't work because things don't change overnight - only then it turns out things do change overnight, only it's not Hilda who does it, and we never technically find out if she would have been able to. I don't know, this feels a bit muddled to me? I feel like the story's trying to make a point with this, but I'm not at all sure what that point is meant to be. (Maybe here it's mainly about the fact the change they're fighting for is something rather different.)

“Because you of all people should know,” Iris replies stonily, “how it feels to have a pale man stroll into your life, rip off your tusks, and declare himself your king.”
Ohoho, shots fired. (And nice Sagaris reference.)

“Then let her. The time has come for Unova to witness what happens to those who stand idly by, and what happens to those who take action.”
Hmm, the way he phrases this feels kind of at odds with the message he presumably actually wants to send? What happens to those who take action is they get arrested and are subject to brutality, while those who stand idly by are left alone, which is bad, suppressing activism for his cause. But this whole phrasing of "the time has come for the world to see what happens to people who X" is usually used in a triumphant sort of way, when the speaker thinks the thing that's going to happen to people who X is exactly what they deserve - particularly "what happens to those who stand idly by" really sounds like a veiled threat. Unless I'm entirely missing what he's referring to, it feels weird.

You’re an angry activist to Skyla, and a complacent gym leader to Hilda, and a Unovan puppet to Ghetsis.
Well... surely Iris is an angry activist to Skyla and a complacent gym leader to Hilda, but would either of them afford Sienna the agency to consider her that?

It’s quiet for now—they’ll cheer intermittently, when N pauses for breath—but none of the humans look worried; none of their pokémon seem to hide their fear for them.
Slightly funny phrasing; you seem to be going for nobody having an inkling that the protest will erupt into violence, but by saying none of the Pokémon seem to hide their fear, you're implying that they are afraid, just not hiding it (i.e. that they're very visibly afraid). Presumably you were going for "if the Pokémon were afraid, they would hide it from their trainers, but they don't seem to be afraid at all", in which case I think clearer phrasing might be something like "none of the Pokémon seem to be hiding fear"?

“When I look at battling I see the ultimate symbol of humans claiming to speak for pokémon, to know better they do what it means to fight, to suffer, and to be strong,” the megaphone says for N
I think you want "...to know better than they do..."

As you watch N, you realize to him you must be one of the lucky ones. [...] You are the last free fraxure in Unova, but he thinks you are in chains because you choose to live among him.
Huh, this seems contradictory? Does she think N believes she's one of the lucky ones, or that N believes she's in chains? (Also, "choose to live among him"? Just as in, among humans, when N is in the end a human?)

When the crowd quiets, N continues, “And you must understand!” “When asked about the nature of a pokémon’s plight, a human can never know the truth. How can we, if don’t listen? But when it comes to the nature of their own suffering, their own dreams, this much is clear: pokémon never tell lies. How can we possibly claim to know better than all that they know? How—”
Why are these two separate quotes? They're both N, right?

"Pokémon never tell lies" is kind of an odd slogan; suggesting Pokémon can't lie sort of denies their agency, doesn't it. It makes good sense to emphasize believing Pokémon when they speak of their own suffering, of course, but literally asserting that they never lie is in a whole other category, I think. Was this a canon thing, maybe? I can't recall. (It's also kind of amusing on the heels of the Inari chapter, which is all about Pokémon who live for deception.)

A rock hits him in the shoulder.
It's interesting, and telling, that the first rock thrown here is at N, isn't it.

It’s hard; the panic hangs low and thick over the crowd, and you’re both too short to command their presence and too powerful not to. A human girl runs over your tail and almost stumbles into the ground. {Be calm!} you hiss, but she’s already mumbled a sorry and is sprinting off.
Hmm, this sounds like Sienna's just not really noticed at all, so I'm not sure what you mean by her being "too powerful not to [command their presence]".

{We were just trying that, little fraxure. Run along. This is no place for you.}
Zahhak is so condescending to a fellow Pokémon who disagrees with him. Where's that respect for Sagaris now, huh?

What would this human boy who calls himself king know about being someone else’s tool?
oh boy if only you knew

A world where pokémon are free to be their own people is a pretty thing indeed, if you can believe humans are fair to people now. That assumption alone speaks volumes for what he sees and what he refuses to.
Ooh, this is excellent.

Twelve years ago, in her first interview on national television, Tsis’swakeras froze when asked to repeat her name. A sea of unfamiliar pale faces stared back at her. The foreign language heavy on her lips, her quivering hands screaming into white-knuckled fists, Drayden’s hands on her shoulders, she murmured my-name-is-tsis’swakeras, but what came out was a jumble, and then eh-ras, and then an overly-enthusiastic, “Let’s give it up for Iris!”
o o f

I thought this chapter started off kind of slowly, with Sienna not feeling like she had much of an identity of her own, but it really came into its own in the latter half, I think. The whole colonialism angle, and how the liberation movement kind of naïvely ignores human suffering, is really good; more of that good nuance and characters with different legitimate views.

The look at League politics and sponsored trainers and the way they're kind of marketed and made property and reduced to stereotypes is also deeply uncomfortable. Still looking forward to getting more on Hilda's family!
 

Dragonfree

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Your denwatcher, Venant, had watched the skies for centuries. Though their eyes had long grown rheumy, Venant knew their duty, and could hear the comet's call. From their arms split two children—from the right arm came you, Denebola; and from the left came Albieba.
Noticing their names feel very Bouba-like, as in Bouba vs. Kiki. Appropriate!

In Amara's ideal world, she's a zebstrika, but also not a zebstrika. You don't understand the distinction between these two zebstrika but you sense a conviction at the very heart of the blitzle's being. This is different from a regular zebstrika. You'd asked her about it once, when the five of you were gathered around a crackling campfire.

{The difference is kafara,} she'd said solemnly, and though her words were clear to you, their meaning was not.
Having some Amara feelings again.

"I'm going to the carnival. Do you want to stay out, Jer?"

[...]

"One for yes, two for no, Jer," Hilda says when you don't respond. "Reylin said no. The others are staying at the pokécenter for now."
Huh, this seems unusually considerate for Hilda.

With this many people around, you can relax. Hilda was quick to learn this lesson: you do not do well in small groups of people. Their thoughts and their threads spin around your mind, each one screaming for its place. All of them seek things, and you can see where those desires end. Once, Hilda left you alone near Amara, and came back to find you had buried yourself in a pile of leaves to drown out the raging imperfection of her too-short, frayed thread—this one will be cut soon. She learned fast; now, you only come out when the entire group is out, when there's enough minds around to protect you from themselves.
Neat! Not an interpretation I've seen before but it's a fun one. Also, it's interesting she seemingly feels Amara's upcoming death (assuming I'm reading that correctly), and reacts to it with distress but in an entirely different sort of way than someone like a human would. She must be used to the things she senses being things she can't change or affect so there's no reason to try or tell anyone who wouldn't be able to do anything useful with it either? Something like that.

Also, another example of Hilda apparently actually paying attention to what her Pokémon are doing and drawing correct conclusions that something is distressing them? Kind of feels like a whole different Hilda.

You do a nice job of flavoring the carnival and the thoughts that he senses passing through it, I think; it all feels pretty grounded and authentic.

You're not sure she understands what you mean when you chirp thrice, when she says, "Looks like I wasn't missing out on much. Just another place where the games are rigged for you to lose."

In that moment her ideal world is plunged into darkness, and in that blackness you can see her as she sees herself.

She fed the pidove and went to class hungry. She withdrew Vaselva and cried silently, flipped her pokédex over and over in her hands. She hid the stone from Lenora after she heard it call to her, because she didn't trust anyone else with it, because somewhere deep inside she had to know what it truly meant.
Lovely moment of sympathetic Hilda. Implies so much. (Guessing the three chirps are a "the assumptions in this question are wrong" kind of deal?)

In Reylin's ideal world, he doesn't have to fight.

It took Hilda maybe fifteen minutes after meeting him to realize he hates it. She was faster on the uptake than Amara or Vaselva, stymied as they were by his strange tongue, but now everyone agrees.
okay so how about you don't make him jeeez

Hilda dreams of something different. Some of it is amorphous, vague, unshaped. When it comes to Reylin she's not sure what the rules would be, how you'd govern out this loophole where pokémon don't have to fight, but they don't have anything else they're allowed to be. But in this future, it's simple: you and Vaselva and Amara are powerful. Reylin can stay, or he can go—he simply doesn't have to fight any more, not now that Hilda's strong enough that she doesn't need a fourth. That's a similarity between the two of them—Hilda's not necessarily in Reylin's ideal world, either. She's not definitively absent from it, written out the same way that he erases battles and gyms from existence in his, but she doesn't have to be there, either. There's a dim corner where she could be; there from one angle and gone from the next.
Interesting. I definitely didn't get the impression previously that Reylin wasn't being made to battle, but I'd have to reread to be sure. Still kind of confused. Just earlier you said Hilda getting a fourth Pokémon at all just made things more difficult, but here you imply she couldn't stop making him battle until she'd stopped needing a fourth; this feels kind of contradictory. I guess initially taking care of him just made things more difficult and subsequently she came to need and depend on him? But then you did say she figured out he didn't want to fight within fifteen minutes...

I guess the reason Hilda's not just releasing him is because he has no natural habitat anymore and can't hunt after being raised in captivity, or something along those lines? It's a little funny to me that that goes entirely unstated, since it seems like the main core point here and there's no obvious reason she'd have a hard time voicing this to herself, etc. She does say "Where would you go?" but it's not really obvious that there could not possibly be a place for him in the wild.

it took you a moment to understand what was strange. But when you did, the void was everywhere. {Albieba,} you'd gasped, when you were finally able to feel again.
Missing a capital at the beginning of this paragraph.

Venant's right could see the futures people desired. Venant's left could see which ones would come to be. In the moment that she went dark, Albieba took with her Venant's true sight.
Interesting! I guess maybe Amara's frayed thread wasn't knowledge of her actual future, then. I suppose she couldn't quite see much of a future, perhaps? Maybe I should reread her chapter.

In Vaselva's ideal world, she's with Hilda. Everything is the same, except for one small detail, that you scarcely notice at first. When Hilda calls Vaselva's name, she doesn't say Vaselva. But even though you can hear the word loud and clear in the vision, when you try say it aloud you find it's always out of reach.
aaaaaa

"Jericho." He sounds the syllables out carefully on his tongue. "Did I pronounce that right? Nice to meet you."

Hilda finally looks up at the sound of your subdued conversation. "You really can talk to pokémon, can't you."
Huh. I really got the impression she didn't believe he could in the Reylin chapter.

What a strange talent for a human. Unbidden, you think of Super Simisage Samantha and her unicycle. Would there be another tent for this one, where everyone else can marvel at him for his unique skills?
Ha.

Hilda's rage pulses stronger, and with it the image of a shattered Plasma. A future splinters off of her, one where having power didn't mean you could just go around doing whatever you wanted, taking what you wanted, hurting who you wanted.
Really enjoying what you're doing with this ideal futures sense. (And interesting how she sees Plasma as having power here, which they of course do in a sense when they're destroying a poor girl's future prospects in the service of grander ideals.)

You can't help it: you reach out again. Surely a sentence like that, such a wondrous question—surely he would be able to see that world; surely he would be able to know what those choices even are.

There's nothing. Nothing at all.
I'm guessing this is a symptom of the same lack of conviction that made Reshiram initially reject him? I guess he can't really imagine what his ideal future looks like until he conceives of separating humans and Pokémon altogether.

Hilda swallows. "I understand why you don't like battling, N. I really, really do. You don't think it's fair that pokémon aren't free to be people." When she looks at him, her world shines with the brilliance of the sun. It's so bright that she can barely take it into her hands and form words, but when she does, she's unflinching. "But I don't think it's fair that people aren't free."

In that moment, N begins to glow, and you see the thread forming between them, two minds that could touch and feel and share—

"Is that … it is! Hilda Verdandi! Juniper's very own sponsored trainer, here in the flesh!" Someone's pushing through the various throngs of carnival-goers; you see a camera, a looming boom mic. "Hilda, I'm with Nimbasa Nightly. Do you have a second for an interview?"
ooooof

"Battle me," Hilda says in a strangled voice.

"What?" N looks surprised. Perhaps he doesn't realize what's happening, what everyone else is starting to piece together.

Hilda knows the unwritten rules. In a conversation, humans only look at themselves. But in a battle, they'll only look at the pokémon. If he battles her now he'll be nothing more than a blur in the backdrop. If he loses, if he doesn't keep it close, no one will be able to see him afterward, either.
Ooh. Definitely a neat reason for them to have a battle.

You look past him, not with your eyes but with your sight, as something impossibly bright leaks off of him.

You can't place what makes it strange at first. It glows like all dreams do, perhaps a bit brighter. A glimmering hydreigon curls up alongside a human boy and a gently crackling fire. The hydreigon flicks his tail while the boy reads aloud from a book in his hands, and—

The words on the page are razor sharp. The image is clear. There's no haze, no areas he's left unimagined, because he isn't imaging at all. This isn't a future. This is a past.

You recoil in disgust.

Every night the stars are a little different than the night before. Somewhere in the nightly expanse, they're hurtling away; from where you stand, they only shift a hair, in tiny, barely noticeable steps that must be watched across generations. When the stars wander, they do so in different directions, dancing over one another. But none of them double back the way they came. You cannot wish for that. It's simply not right.
Awww. Being nostalgic for a past doesn't seem like it'd be an uncommon thing, though; surely Denebola would have encountered it before?

Albieba? You reach out tentatively.

She isn't there. But Hilda is.

One mind sees: Hilda's battling. She's finally strong enough. Vaselva's a serperior; you're a reuniclus. There's a monster with green hair in front of her; she beats him down, down, down while everyone watches with breathless anticipation as she becomes a hero. The people in power get to make the rules, but if she's more powerful than anyone else? If she gets to make the rules now?

Then she'll do what everyone up top kept failing to do, and she'll protect the ones beneath her. No matter the cost.
A monster with green hair, eh.

Where are you? All you can see is light, and the smudges of creatures who get too close. There's a sandile in front of you now, scuttling around, its mind curiously blank. You reach out and your probe slips smoothly off: it must be partially dark. There's nothing there, nothing for you to latch onto.

The sandile burrows out from under the ground, his jaws snapping. In another world he's not aiming for you; his scales are red and his frame is enormous as he digs through the floor of the League, eyes hungrily fixed on something just out of reach.

But the sandile in front of you is close enough. His fangs dig into your side, teeth digging furrows that blossom into pain, and it's in that moment you understand how someone like Hilda can make an ideal shine so brightly that no one else can see it: you create two minds.

This must be what Venant learned when they ascended, what all reuniclus must face upon evolution. You must do as the human strategists do. With one mind you understand your enemy; with the other, you snuff them out. With one mind you accept that the world is broken; with the other, one that you keep far away, you swear to change it.

Amara, fully grown, brays in pain from hundreds of moons away. One day she dies while you hold a shield up like this one; one day she is safe in her pokéball, unaware of the events that will fray her thread until it snaps.

Which one is it? With one mind, you lash out, ripping up a concrete battle hall to rain stone on an oncoming dragon, cast him back, back, back. With one mind you look up, and the sandile is a tiny brown lump in the middle of a cratered stretch of pavement twenty feet across. N is running forward, his face twisted in horror. You bob forward as well, one of your minds reaching out with a twinge of sympathy only to find that the dark-type's mind is as shielded to you as ever; Hilda's raising her hand and—
Fascinating. Love the trippy confusion of experiencing multiple times at once. (Huh, though, apparently Amara's fraying thread is because she dies. So why did Denebola sense it before splitting back into two minds?)

You think about N's vision again, the way it screamed out to you, raw and wrong. When the human sailor and his companion fashioned their boat, it was because they knew the gods were wrong: flooding the world would only return things to how they were. It would not stop those things from happening again.
Hmmm. So the reason N doesn't have an intelligible vision other than his vision of the past is that... he thinks things will just go back to being the same? But that's hardly the ideal that he wants, right? And the particular memory he was recalling seemed pretty happy, so that hardly represents some awareness that things will become bad again? I kind of love this in principle but I can't actually make sense of how it connects to N's vision being an image from the past... Dunno if I'm just missing what you were going for here or what.

The last part of the vision, of her ideal world, is the most visceral, one that almost has no words. Searing pain. Your shield and your body shattering. Behind you, the deepest black you have ever seen, but it is more than a mere absence of light.

A god roars and acknowledges the one who will reshape Unova.
Hmm, but isn't this an image of the beginning of the fic, i.e. what actually happens, which is not Hilda's ideal world?

This was a fascinating POV, and I enjoyed Hilda a lot here. I did feel almost like she's an entirely different character than she has been, who understands N a lot better and is a whole lot more attentive to her Pokémon, but I'm guessing that's more because I got that impression of her from the earlier chapters and have been reading her in that light since? Ideally I should probably reread to get a better idea with more insight but I don't know that I'm going to have the time for that in the near future.

The whole deal with Hilda having been set up to fail by Elesa, and her frustration at the system and sad depressing ferris wheel ride, and the horrid dystopian TV crew stopping her and N from getting to talk and maybe come to an understanding, is just really sad. I really enjoyed Hilda makinga snap decision to insist on battling N to minimize the attention on him - that's clever and sad and after having complained about the notion of them having a battle in the first place, yeah, I do like this actually.

I do admit to not feeling like I entirely understood all of what you were going for with Denebola's ideal future sense; the thing with Amara's vision fraying puzzled me, as did the whole deal with N's vision. Not sure if I'm just being slow here.

I'm kind of amused by how much of this chapter is like, intriguing foreshadowing for what happens in an earlier chapter, haha. I continue to be really curious how the fic'd come across if you just read it in reverse order.
 

HaruMiju

Hero in their dreams
Location
London
Pronouns
They/them, She/her,
Apologies for the rather late Catnip review, but here it is!



Well, looks like I’m back! Because I’ve read the first two chapters for my last review, this time I read chapter three. Well, the third one down the list. 'iii.nuestro’.

Once again, I’m pleasantly surprised by the presentation. Wording is unique and the portrayal of characters feels well thought out, mostly due to the fact that the scenarios and narrator voice are of unique choices. Having this chapter play out from the point of view of a freshly caught Pokémon isn’t something I’ve seen before, so I was most certainly intrigued by where it would go.

However, this also lends itself to the double edged sword I believe I was picky with last time: the clarity. Perhaps it seems obvious at first glance as the writer, but I had difficulty realising who or what the perspective was for a while. The vague descriptions of various Pokémon and even Cheren himself work incredibly well in-universe, as they sound like what a closeted Pokémon like Boldore would probably identify them as.

However, they carry an equally baffling vagueness with them that makes it tricky to identify for the reader as well. The fact that the Pokémon give their own names, which are different to Cheren’s nicknames and their species, only makes things all the more bewildering to remember or recognise who is who. Thankfully, it isn’t too important to the actual events of the story, but it is worth a note as something that confused me and drew me out of the immersion a bit.

As for the content itself, I loved it. Kind of a darker take on the concept of Pokémon training and well connected to the earlier chapters. Boldore’s innocent thoughts and responses to Liepard’s words made me sympathise quite a bit! Their last conversation towards the end of the chapter is sticking to me a bit, too. If I may say something cheeky, I’m a little sad that we won’t get to see how their companionship develops, since we’ve already seen the climax of the story. Or maybe I’m wrong? I want to be!

I’m not really sure what else to talk about, to be honest. Not much of note happens in this chapter, besides emphasizing points and concepts made in earlier chapters. That’s not a complaint with the chapter itself, as it definitely should be here! Perhaps a little more interaction between Cheren and Hilda or something, with them giving a little more context to the greater plot in their conversation? It was very briefly touched upon here, but it was an interesting little part, too. Or perhaps it’s fine as it is, and mine is just nitpicking. I won’t know until I read the full thing.
 

kyeugh

you gotta feel your lines
Staff
Pronouns
she/her
Partners
  1. farfetchd-galar
  2. gfetchd-kyeugh
  3. onion-san
  4. farfetchd
hi kint! here for catnip, but terribly late. really sorry about that.

ix. nidifugous

small thing, but i noticed the little pokémon icon for this chapter is tirtouga rather than archen. wasn't sure if that was intentional since i'm getting based on other reviews that this chapter may have been from zara's pov.

anyway, yes! archen chapter! i'm a huge archen fan, so i think i was gonna love this chapter no matter what bc, you know, archen. but it was a real treat anyway! i feel like every time i'm like "wow this is great actually!" as if i wasn't expecting it, but every chapter really is so fun in such a unique way, it manages to be surprising every time.

not sure if you intended this here (although i wouldn't be surprised!), but i see a lot of hilda in zara, and a lot of N in reylin. like hilda, zara is very headstrong—they're both strong-willed, and neither of them really seem to pause to reconsider their positions. zara speaks as if everything he does is a simple and obvious thing to do, and though hilda doesn't speak that way quite as much, she certainly acts like it. meanwhile, reylin is skeptical, self-doubting, and searching, just like N. the bit where reylin muses about ~a different life~ where they swap trainers was interesting to me. and reylin's later defection sort of feels like a glimpse into an alternate world, too—what if hilda joined N? what if the two dragons agreed? 👁️ like N and hilda, the two fossils are also sort of Apart from the other pokémon—they're Chosen, and if you really stretch it, they even communicate in an ancient language others can't fully appreciate—the language of truth and ideals and warring dragons! some neat parallels.

there are a lot of really neat bits of worldbuilding that i enjoyed a lot in this one. the Beeg Tortle myth was super awesome for one thing. i also really enjoyed the bits about P2, and how the abusive attitudes toward pokémon run much deeper than the training community—even academics are smacking their priceless resurrected artifacts around! the little genesect reference was cool too. i can't fully remember, but i feel like genesect had team plasma's fingerprints on it in canon—i wonder if they're involved with it here, too? i doubt we'll find out, but it's interesting to think about. just how much of team plasma's operation is N privy to?

i appreciated the way that this chapter sort of turned my perception of N and hilda's dynamic on its head, at least on a class/economic level. i sort of perceive N as like, a recently uplifted underdog type of guy with a background of poverty, whereas hilda seems a little more privileged—i figured she came from a good family with a happy childhood, had a personal relationship with juniper herself, etc. but it turns out that she doesn't see it that way at all! i wonder what the truth of that is, exactly.

the misunderstanding between N and hilda was painful to read, and i agree with what osj said about it feeling very reasonable from both ends—in particular i like how it both fed into and drew from hilda's paranoia about N's motives. i do think you could get a little more out of it, though; we know already that reylin ultimately defects, and his little question here has obvious relevancy to that. i wonder if he couldn't maybe think more consciously about that, maybe asking this question as sort of a test? the dots are there and i definitely connected them myself, but i think i wanted to see reylin connect them, too. i think it could sort of draw all those pieces of reylin's arc as we've seen it so far into a single moment and drive a spear through it—as-is they feel connected but still separate, if that makes sense.

anyway, super good stuff! as i said, i'm a huge sucker for archen, and i really adored some of the cute imagery you set up here, with reylin peering down at his little buddy in a bucket, combating his poor attention span. they are perfect babies.

“—and just let that wing rest up for a few days and your archen should be good as new, sweetie!”
archen chapter? archen chapter!? i know i'm the resident farfetch'd guy, but archen is my second favorite after the farfetch'd line. god bless.

That’s the tricky part, you decide now that you’re no longer in the back room next to the venipede who hissed as an audino dabbed salve on his burnt thorax, now that you can’t hear the panicked shrieks of a simisage through the walls .
the back to back "now that"s read a little clunky to me here. also, bonus space before the period.

You hop after them.
HOP omg i can already tell this chapter is gonna be GOATed

Across the street, a lumpy boldore is examining the cobblestone road intently, but looks up and scuttles carefully over when he notices N.
awww. my boy.

I wanted to know if I could borrow Reylin for a while?
it doesn't read quite right to me that this is posed as a question.

they have this odd way of conjugating without tenses
i'm curious, is this based on something? or did you just sorta spitball?

“I look after my pokémon, N,” Hilda says. Her voice is carefully controlled now.
hilda stfu challenge

“I didn’t come here for that. Um.” He hesitates. Another mistake.
i love how goofy and inarticulate N is in this chapter, especially compared to later on. neat how it seems to reference the fact that he talks abnormally quickly in the games, too. the change in his speech really shows how he developed as a person—or a human, i suppose—in the time between now and the end/beginning.

Where you always thought your form was a little mottled, a little monstrous, there was an undeniable vein of cuteness in TR-62 that the humans always seemed to appreciate. Something about the eyes, you think. The flippers, too, and how when he gets excited—which is often—he’ll curl and uncurl them like he’s clapping one-handed.
couldn't disagree more, smh. archen is not monstrous, it is babey. love yourself, reylin.

From across the glass, TR-62 had always told you that there was a nicer place, somewhere with a wide open tank and an endless ceiling. You hadn’t believed him. Skies ended in right angles. Seas had clear walls. That was simply the way things were.
💔 awesome couple lines though.

Watching it happen, it hadn’t actually been all that hard. You could’ve followed him, probably. You didn’t even have a real tank. Yours was in your mind. Because what would you have done next? Flown across the entire endless sea? What if you’d gotten tired, or there was a storm? You still weren’t the best at flying. And then once you crossed that chasm, what would come next? Would anything get better? P2 wasn’t that bad. The scientists were just curious. They taught you things, and you taught them things.
seems a little defeatist. 😁

{Oh, I see. That’s neat. Are you liking it so far? I just swam and swam for a very long time, and then I washed up near this ship harbor right when N was walking by. He seemed friendly, but he was talking to this strange pink pokémon and he seemed kind of busy, you know? But he understood her, which was really cool! I’ve never met a human who could do that. I think P2 tried really hard but they were going in the wrong direction,} TR-62 adds as an afterthought, and looks at his flippers self-consciously. {But that seemed special, so I trailed him around the shore for a while, and then he noticed me and we tried to talk for a bit. Did you know that most pokémon don’t speak our language? I wonder. N says that archen and tirtouga used to live in very faraway places and times, back when we used to, you know, have more of us. Did you know there used to be more of us? I saw a pidove that reminded me of you. I’m glad you’re okay.}
seems like N has rubbed off on him a bit. maybe the fact that his lungs are adapted to life underwater helps him talk longer without coming up for a breath... 🧐

Hilda had never hit you or anything, not even a smack, and you’re pretty sure she’s a good trainer who would never dream of doing that but—what if she did? Or what if she decided she was bored of you and mailed you back to P2? Best not to find out. Best to keep her happy so you can keep what you have.
ugh. poor baby.

{Oh yes,} TR-62 is never one to resist answering a question.
i think that comma in the curly braces should be a period, right?

TR-62 finishes the rest of the story in a voice that is uncharacteristically solemn: {Do you know why the shining cities of Unova form such a round shape? Look carefully, and you will see Zaratan’s shell, and her human friend right beside her.}
i adored this little story. that is all.

“He says … if you didn’t like your family so much, why didn’t you just leave?”
really good point here actually

Mistake. {I didn’t mean it like that!} you chirp, but she’s not looking at you. Her smile is frozen, curdled on her face.
i wonder what he did mean, then?

You don’t know me. You might think you do, you might think that one kid with a shit dad can recognize another, that you understand, but you grew up with so much that I didn’t. You don’t know the first thing about peasants like me, Lord N.
ouch ouch ouch ouch. ooooof. i wonder if we'll get more information about this as we approach the beginning/end of the story, as we near numeva town.
 

kintsugi

golden scars | pfp by sun
Location
the warmth of summer in the songs you write
Pronouns
she/her
Partners
  1. silvally-grass
  2. lapras
  3. golurk
  4. booper-kintsugi
  5. meloetta-kint-muse
  6. meloetta-kint-dancer
  7. murkrow
  8. yveltal
"responses next week" well smh, it's next week somewhere. just a general note for reviewers, stealth readers, etc--I greatly appreciate you and read + reread these many times when I get them! then I promptly get swamped by real life and fret over proper responses and months pass. please do not take the silence as disinterest here. <3

also note--this is review responses pt 1; still chugging through things! y'all spoil me but I'm also deathly afraid that I'll like, break multiquote or my computer will lose the responses or somethingggg so! going through these purely chronologically; if I haven't responded yet it's definitely still in the works.

For starters I gotta say I loved the descriptions, and most importantly, N! My favorite character from the mainline games. It’s always a delight to see how anyone writes about him, and you didn’t disappoint. Not at all! From start to finish, this chapter got me very fixated on it. It took me a while to find out that the POV was from Reshiram, but once I did… Wonderful! Unova is one of the greatest regions for me, and it was nice to see how you wrote both N and Hilda. The conflict between Truth and Ideals. Two trainers clashing goals. A good and fun start to this fic, which hopefully I’m actually going to finish, since I’m on break from college now. Anyway, My thoughts overall about this chapter were: Nice description, nice characterization, the scenes were smooth and organic, like a fine work of art. So I think you're on the right path here, your story is using canon characters in a good, refreshing way. Like I said, N is always nice to see, so I think I'm gonna read this fic in its entirety later. This got my attention, and I’m looking forward to the rest of the story!
Hi Navar! Thank you for the very wholesome review; I'm really glad that you enjoyed the prologue! N and Unova is such a cool region imo, and I agree, there's a lot beneath the surface that I wanted to explore here. The description's something I played with a lot, so I'm glad that it landed well here.

(a quick sidebar--the prologue is actually narrated by N, although you could argue that at this point his mind and Reshiram's are basically working as one here. The POV's swap across chapters but I think they'll be more clear + I got the cool suggestion to add little sprites to make it more obvious about who's telling what).

thank you for your kind words here!

Hi again! Apologies in advance for the several pings here; you've been busy. As always, your reviews are deeply appreciated and I continue to be in awe of how thoroughly and well you explain your thoughts as you're reading these.

(in general--yes, your typo corrections are all 100% on-point and I'm adding those in)
Ah, Zoroark! Lovely. Also love to hear about what stories the humans tell as a contrast to what the Pokémon do.
Honestly I don't know if I have fresh takes for zoroark any more, but it's practically a rite of passage for N-fic lol. And I did want to look at the canon human myths that we're given, especially in a story that focuses so heavily on the pokemon myths.
Ooh, continuing along that theme with their way of thinking. Deception makes sense because they do it all the time; self-deception does not.

This is interesting, though! Humans absolutely do do that, if in a less literal sense: putting on different masks for different social situations.
Yeah, zoroark in a story whose theme is "pokemon do not tell lies" is inherently a fun one to pick at. I found myself really fascinated by the idea of lies that we tell ourselves vs lies that we tell others here, and I think if zoroark existed they'd be intrigued by our human social disguises but really perplexed that we view ourselves as an amalgamation of those disguises rather than just the one.
Hmm, why would she assume this Herdier would be a sibling of any other Herdier that might be "one of ours"? Figuring he'd probably recognize the other Herdier he knows, yeah, seems reasonable, but why siblings? Only reason I can think of would be if Inari assumes by "one of ours" they must mean one of the family, but then why bring up that they don't forget the scent of a sibling even if they're separated?
Oh yeah that's a fair point. In my head police tend to select/raise lillipup from birth for this (Ace being an exception), and often the same litters have the same desirable characteristics, but there's no way Inari would know this.
yaaaay Rhea she's so good (wow look at that police Herdier immediately canceling the attack when this other Pokémon apparently turns out to belong to a human)

It bugs me a little, though, that Blue explicitly was going for her scent and not the illusion, and thus presumably knew she wasn't just a real normal Herdier - yet didn't sound the alarm when Rhea came along, calling her a Herdier. From Blue's point of view, this should have been extremely fishy, yet the narration here sounds like she just immediately bought it without question, which is a little disappointing. Would've loved to see her as a more active character here.
Oh, that's such a good point! Edited--the communication breakdown would occur between Blue and the officer, but Blue would definitely be Unhappy here.
Around his ankles? Assume you just wrote the wrong pronoun, unless Tourmaline is suddenly very up close and personal with the officer.
zoops
This seems like kind of a funny thing for her to say, given this is the first time she's ever met any humans and prior to that she was actively indoctrinated into thinking humans were scum - she would obviously never have been under the impression being angry about humans "wasn't allowed", and still doesn't even know about Team Plasma or the liberation movement, so her talking about "before anyone told you that you were allowed to be" just seems very strange, like she's talking from an entirely different point of view. (Even if it's purely a hypothetical, a 'You were angry even without anyone telling you that you were allowed to be', why would she assume anyone needs to be told they're allowed to be angry about humans? Why would that be where her mind goes at the notion that humans could be trying to use her?) It's a good line, but I feel like it would fit better in the POV of a different narrator, like Zahhak or somebody, that it would actually apply to.
Mmm, this is fair. I was hesitant to cut the line because I like how it sounded (and you're quite right--it is the relic of this chapter being from a different POV), but you're quite right that it doesn't fit with this narrator lol.
Mineta? Should this be Mitama?
Oh god can you tell I was writing this chapter while also listening to My Hero Academia songs.
The general portrayal of Rhea and Tourmaline's relationship at the motel is lovely - they really do feel like old friends and a girl and her cat at the same time. (Every chapter makes it hurt more that they ultimately get separated forever, the end.)
<3, </3, a story in three acts
Huh, interesting. Not sure I quite see the connection between learning to lie to himself and turning entirely invisible, though. (Then again, maybe that's just something Inari is imagining and not the actual truth. This is written almost like he's actually just dead and returned briefly, temporarily, as a ghost? Especially with him just falling silent and then Inari can't even find him anymore. But that seems like it'd be a strange thing for you to do here randomly.)
This is one I've kicked around and haven't fully been satisfied with--basically, Kobo watches humans lie so convincingly that he can't see through them, and this deeply unsettles him since his entire species' schtick is about doing that to other people. There are a lot of dots missing, but he ends up returning to the zoroark with an illusion that's so good that it's completely invisible to *them*, which deeply unsettles them and him. I think I was way too oblique with the language here though, although I'm currently struggling to figure out how I'd want to tell it instead.
The ending is neat, but I can't help but not find Inari's way of thinking entirely convincing here. Sure, you can refer to Kobo learning to weave illusions better than any other Zoroark as learning to change, and you can also refer to persuading humans to treat Pokémon better as them learning to change, but that doesn't mean that these two things actually have anything at all to do with each other. The logic of "N could (somehow, nebulously, according to her vague guesswork about the fact he came back knowing this skill) teach a Zoroark to be better at illusions" => "N ought to have the conviction be able to change humans' hearts and minds" just kinda seems like moon logic to me. Even if we do take the skill at illusions = ability to deceive connection at face value, "N could teach a Zoroark to deceive even himself" => "N ought have the conviction to be able to change humans' hearts and minds" is still a non-sequitur. Like, does she actually think N just needs to get better at deception and lie to the other humans about why they should treat Pokémon better? Surely she doesn't think that's actually a lie? (And that isn't what he does! He literally does it by bonding with the dragon of truth!) All in all this is very interesting but just didn't quite feel to me like something a person would coherently believe.
This one also tied in to "I was way too oblique" as above, the the logic is closer to "the zoroark lost a key part of being a person (illusions) and N was able to teach it back to him" followed by "the humans have lost a key part of being people (treating others, sppecifically pokemon, fairly) and N should be able to teach it back to them". Tbf I think that logic also collapses if I don't fully sell the interactions between Rhea/Tourmaline as being indicative that humans are capable of this and some of them have just lost the gift, and also it's a big ask for anyone to make--so when I rewrite this bit I do want to play up how enormous Inari finds it that a human was able to teach a zoroark to cast illusions. In general the back half of this chapter is a bit underbaked imo! But I'm still wrestling with how I want to bake it, so to speak. As it stands there are a few loose threads that I haven't fully knit together, and the middle section with the motel is definitely a fun one but then I struggled to bring everything full circle.

Appreciate your thoughts here, though! As always I continue to hit my head against these chapters until something nice comes out, so the external evaluation of what I've put out so far is really helpful here. Also massive appreciation for how long and thorough these continue to be, even in my messier chapters!
Hi Bench! I'm really glad we got to do this review exchange--cross-pollination of ideas is always a really beautiful thing, and your reviews here really made my day! I really appreciate that you stuck with this fic even though some of the stylistic elements, it being trainerfic, it feeling kind of hopeless at first, aren't exactly your cup of tea. That means a lot to me and I'm glad that things cheered up for you in the later chapters!
Also, going back to the chapters, I really like how all the chapters start with the letter N when, except the first one and the last one, which start with N when spoken aloud! A very neat touch, and gives some intrigue as to what sets these two chapters apart, aside from being the beginning and end.
Ha, yeah, it was initially a pun on "a story about things that start with N", as in, a lot of words that start with the letter N, but also a lot of stories that get told because N is there. The first and last chapters are definitely different from the rest of the chapters and I wanted their names to reflect that, yup!
The bit about the dark fire in the trainer's eyes is also very intriguing. Is it because of Zekrom, are they very angry, or something else?
This is a really obscure reference to one of Shauntal's lines in B/W:
> 'Eyes brimming with dark flame, this man rejected everything other than himself in order to bring about one singular justice...' That's part of a novel I'm writing. I was inspired by the challenger who was just here, and somehow I got a little sad... Excuse me.
And honestly I think that line is metal af--I especially like the idea that it's associated with rejecting everything other than yourself, seeking out a single justice--these are all arguably bad things to do, and N gets villified for it in Shauntal's novel, but it's also what the protagonist is doing in that moment. The finale of BW is pretty cool and dramatically I think it has some of the coolest stakes for an E4 runup, but there's not a lot of collaboration happening on either side.

the dark flame is metaphorical in both Shauntal's version and here--but I do think it's easy to see your enemies as supernatural, impossible monsters even when they see themselves as humans.
One thing that does annoy me is that while a story playing out backwards is a very interesting and unique idea, it also has the unfortunate side effect of leaving a cliffhanger either doesn't get for a very long time, or never gets resolved at all. I want to see what exactly Reshiram will do, but that may never be shown, and that's a bit discouraging as a reader. I'm not asking you to rewrite everything to fit this, but perhaps in another chapter, it could be explained what Reshiram being summoned would truly entail? Or maybe you already do that in a later chapter, or maybe you have something else planned! Either way, I do hope that somehow what happens next is explained.
This does get addressed, although in general I picked reverse order because I don't know if the question of "how will this get resolved" is as important to the characters as "why did this happen".
I like how Vaselva keeps making comparisons to plants. A very interesting, but fitting take on the perspective of a grass-type Pokemon.
grass snek likes plonts. it is known.
Hilda is really interesting. She seems to genuinely care about her Pokemon, yet there are moments where it seems like she may not be in the right. I am VERY intrigued by this!
This is a story with no morally incorrect antagonists, I'd argue. Hilda's probably the closest we get to morally dark, if only because of who she is and who's telling the story, but she does so with the best intentions here.
I'm also very intrigued by how N mostly only talks to Vaselva, though still occasionally says a few words to Hilda. A great way of showing how much he cares about Pokemon.
Yeah, I get the feeling that N's sort of more interested in your pokemon than he is in you for a while.
Now for chapter 3...and now I feel very, very conflicted as a whole about everything. This was a very hard chapter to read. You did not pull any punches while writing this. Apologies if I don't mention some things. There was a lot that happened, and it got so harsh at points that I skimmed through some of it.
The League chapter is a bit of a doozy, and I'm sorry if it caught you off-guard. I try to tag it in the content warning specifically for this chapter, but if you think that could be expanded upon, definitely let me know.

So chapters 14 and 15 were both a doozy all on their own. I really liked chapter 14 because of how you went deeper into the mythology behind Unova. Your approach to Sigiglyph is really interesting and as a pokemon that I tend to ignore or forget about, it really painted them in a new life. This chapter also personified the theme of differing truths and perspectives and how those can prevent a person from looking past their beliefs by having N and the Lorekeeper literally debate on their differing opinions of the Storm Dancer and Drago Mother myths.

I think both versions of the myths make sense and could technically work, especially with how they both showcase the relationship between humans and pokemon in a different way. One emphasizes the respect that humans and pokemon should hold for each other, while the other emphasizes how humans always take away things from pokemon. Though ironically N's version of what happened to the Dragon Mother is the myth that the franchise itself uses, but it makes sense since I think that's the most popular one.
This chapter is probably my favorite in terms of ideas, even though I think some of the other chapters turned out better overall. As a writer I'm really drawn to the idea that stories have meaning only in the ways that the people reading them create meaning--so the extension of this myth, which has been interpreted by different narrators to mean different things across the story, and then finally reaching what looks like a unified story up until the end,,, all felt very appealing to me, haha.
I also appreciate that you don't go out of your way to say which of their versions is right, they're both valid and they both exist for a reason. At the end of the day it really comes down to which one the specific person appreciate or reflects their world-view. For N it makes sense, he's been taught his whole life that humans will always take things away from pokemon and oppress them if given the chance. Lorekeeper on the other hand, as someone that's lived thousands of years and lived in a time before training and even had his own "trainer", believes in his version because that's the one that best reflects the life he knew. A version in which Storm Dancer gratefully handed over her ability to humans, just like his creator gave his blood, sweat and tears to create Lorekeeper in the first place.
Yeah, and I'll be a cheap bastard here and say that I won't say which version was true here--because ultimately it isn't known by anyone alive and what's more important are the versions of the stories that they choose to believe, like you outline here.
Lastly the reveal of, regardless of how they got it, humanity possibly obtaining Meloetta's gift to talk to all species is huuuugeee and it answers one of the biggest questions I had, and mentioned, with this story. Pokemon can understand humans because Meloetta's power gives their voice the ability to be heard by all species regardless of their environment.
Ha, yes! I joke that by virtue of how this story is told, it has maybe 0.5 plot twists, and the fall of Meloetta is probably 0.4 of those plot twists. Voice, communication, the inability to be heard--arguably these are the biggest antagonists that the pokemon have been facing throughout the story, and this is the chapter in which we get to see why that happened, and what it means for them moving forward.
This also answers why pokemon are willing to listen to and form partnerships with humans. I mean, outside of it kind of being ingrained in their culture, if we go off on the basis that they can understand humans because they were blessed by a god, it makes complete sense. We've seen that most species are respectful of ancient pokemon myths and especially of the gods, so if the gods gave humans the ability to communicate with pokemon regardless, then why shouldn't they put their trust in humans? At least I can see that connection being made by a lot of them.
Oh, that's an angle I hadn't considered. For me I was mostly leaning into the asymmetric communication--humans can be understood by any pokemon, but only an exceedingly rare human can understand a pokemon. It's an imbalance that greatly favors the humans in this scenario, and even if they mean well I don't know if it's possible to create an equitable society when that kind of imbalance is entrenched in it.
That being said, I did think that maybe the chapter suffers a little bit from retreading old ground in a way. I'd say its biggest benefit is that it's the first time we get a proper look at a pokemon just entering the world of training and we also get our first look at what a ground level battle is like. I say it in the sense that these are meant to be "basic" battles, ones that any starting trainer would engage in, as opposed to the pro level champion level matches that we saw in chapter 2 between Ghetsis and Alder. However, I think that a lot of the ideas from chapter 2 come up again here.
I definitely agree with you there--this one is a bit of a mix of Munny's chapter, Carnel's chapter, and the Ghetsis confrontation. I do want to tweak the ending a bit b/c I have a pretty clear idea of what I want to be different about this chapter now, although I haven't quite gotten around to it.
That being said, I can appreciate the differences. In chapter 2 you showed us the pains of pokemon battling and how that injures pokemon, but the Rotom was still a bystander, here we get a first-hand look at what an inexperienced pokemon might go through and just how uncaring trainers like Tim, and even Lenora really, are towards their pokemon by forcing them to just come in and fight each other no questions asked. Tim even acts like Samson already knows what he's getting into when he gets it which like...how dude? Just cause they're wild pokemon doesn't mean they've been fighting it out each other their whole lives or something.
ha yeah "dude they haven't been fighting it out their whole lives" is something I find myself tilting my head over when people say that pokemon are inherently violent lol
Before getting into the line-by-lines, there is another thing that jumped at me from these last two chapters, that I'm not sure if they were on purpose or not. That is, the ideal for human and pokemon relationships.

Your fic has never actively denied the ideas that humans and pokemon can cohabitate with one another. As long as they respect each other's boundaries and consent humans and pokemon can have a genuine and powerful bond, this was shown to us in chapter 5 and with all of N's pokemon or Iris and her Fraxure. Battling itself is the problem here, because even if there are pokemon that want to fight (just like how there's humans that want to fight each other) that doesn't mean that all pokemon should be expected to fight, or that even if they like to it doesn't mean they have to.

So what jumped at me is the kind of generational gap that was highlighted in these two chapters. Lorekeeper lived in a time without training and without pokeballs, his bond with his trainer was one built on trust and sacrifice for each other. Similarly, Samson's father worked as a construction-mon all his life and had a genuine bond with his partner. Maybe an argument can be made that it's still like humans are using pokemon for tasks that humans could do, but at least it's something that most of the timburr line *want* to do, it's part of the philosophy of their species. That's the difference, Samson's dad was allowed to work in something he actually wanted and his partner treated him as an equal, even allowing him to go back to the wild and raise his own family once the two of them retired.
Yes, this is pretty much right on the mark for what I wanted to convey. It always shocks me that the anti-Plasa folks in the game conveys the dichotomy as either "we keep doing exactly what we're doing" or "N says you can never see pokemon again", because it feels like an unfair dichotomy. There's a logical middle ground where we don't commodify beating up pokemon as a national pasttime and prominent factor in the tourist economy, and honestly canon!Plasma is pretty vague about what they want but I never got the idea that they were really too far from that middle ground.

Pokeballs are a fairly new invention, and pokemon/human inequality is a thing that's existed on some scale for centuries here (see: the fall of the Dragonvalley) but I think they really accelerated with the introduction of pokeballs, yeah. Prior to that there was only so much you could do to make a pokemon do something, but once humans developed the technology to just zoop pokemon into hyperspace, the power dynamics shifted dramatically.
Foooo, I went long enough. But since it's xmas and this is the closest I can give you to a present I'll do some line by lines anyway.
This is such a lovely present, thank you.
Love how you're going specifically with ice, fire and thunder :p
The real storm was the dragons that lived inside of us the entire time!
Wait, doesn't the start of that paragraph contradict what we learn later? that she divided herself after she created her children? At the start it sounds like you're talking about the tao trio.
Ooh, yeah, this is fair and not well-explained in the current prose.
The guardian's words here correlate with what we've seen in previous chapters about humans taking over pokemon, and other humans, cultures.
Definitely! And I don't think the darumaka are wrong to be dismissive of N here, either--they've seen this enough times to guess where it goes, and they have no reason to believe this is any different.
That last part is deep, I'd genuinely never fully understood the difference between power and strength til I read it.
Ha I'm glad it hits hard but don't quote this as a dictionary or something i made this up for pokemon
Again, this is both a good way of repurposing the original tao trio's myth and also shows us how N sees the legend, or rather how it was taught to him. He can't comprehend the fact that maybe humans aren't the ones at fault for everything in the world.
Definitely! And it's a hard question to get around, I think--it's much easier when there's just one group at fault and that is unilaterally to blame. I think that's why N prefers the version of the story where Meloetta's voice was stolen. But at the end of the day, regardless of who caused it, people are suffering now--and that's something N can't get around either.
What about kyurem?
haha shhhhh
I wonder, who are these other forms he's talking about? is it aludding to other pokemon or other legendaries?
Oh, these are the myths that have cropped up in the story so far. The ocean spirit is the tirtouga Zaratan from Zara's story. The storm-striped chosen one are the kafara from Amara's story. And the trickster is Mitama from the zoroark section. For me I was most interested in showing what different people would take away from Meloetta's story, and what bits of that legend would live on through the generations.
I love the little shifts to what other pokemon are doing, we haven't gotten a lot of environment description in the last few chapters.
I think you're right! Lots of people stuck in buildings or being nearsighted or in huge empty deserts lol.
This is honestly really cute :c I do hope that Samson was able to find something like it after he got taken away from Tim but...yeah I doubt it.
Ha no he gets released to the conkeldurr sanctuary (so he does get to see his father again!) but then the world ends.
Damn, I didn't know Plasma included kids in their movements.
Rhea's pretty young too, and I do think the age of maturity in the pokemon world is generally younger since kids get to go out at a much younger age.
I'm gonna assume that's N and Tourmaline? altho I guess if it was N you would've told us.
It is! But Samson doesn't know that so he doesn't notice anything strange lol.
THIS IS A SERIOUS STORY KINT, HOW DARE YOU SNEAK A PUN IN HERE?
Honest to god if I go to hell just for this pun it will probably be earned.
This was really interesting to me. Makes me wonder if there's a lot of gym trainer pokemon that help younger pokemon out in battles so they gain points with their trainers. It's still messed up though.
I think it's definitely possible. Gym leaders vet for worthy trainers, but I think gym pokemon might be more interested in vetting for worthy pokemon, you know?
Everything's fiiinneeee
Everything is not fiiinneeee.
oops lol
It also makes me wonder what nurses, the human ones, think about it all. I mean since they talk with the audino and work with them constantly and have to deal with all these injuries have they just grown accostumed to it or have they started to resent the league as well?
I think general human sentiment would have to be pretty in favor of training, especially for the nurses here. It'd be pretty unstomachable work otherwise.
Again this reveal floors me, especially since this whole chapter stands as a contrast to chatper five, which feature Tim's mom and how that chapter showcased the ways in which human and pokemon could help each other grow.

Anyways, I've gone on for long enough. I'm finally up to date and I can't wait to see what comes next. Also, happy holidays!
It's the worst kind of bookends! Thank you so much for this--what a chunky review, wow, lol. happy holidays

Hey again, thanks for stopping by!
I think this is perhaps my favorite chapter so far? It really stands on its own as a simple, isolated short story with a beginning, middle and end. No context about the actual story of pokemon games is needed, just base knowledge of species. It also has the strongest character arc and growth so far of any individual chapter, in my opinion.
Yeah, this one is a favorite of mine too. Contextualizing your hurt, understanding that it's a part of you and can define you but doesn't make you weaker for it--very Mood for me, and quite literally in my name lol.
I guess pokemon have no word for great grandfather? interesting.
Bisharp have a shorter (and arguably more violent) lifespan than humans, so the percentage of them that would grow old enough to see three new generations is quite low, I imagine.
Trainer has no taste :V. I feel like this movie is really good but judging by this brat's character he has no appreciation for fine cinema.
Tim has many crimes, and his biggest one is certainly his views on the extended cut of LotR.
But no, that's an interesting prospect. being chosen or doing something because you must, even though its not the thing you want to do.
It's very relevant to the themes of this story, yes!
Well you reap what you sow, jerk.

I mean, do I pity him??? It's hard to. Pokemon, and Seismitoad here, show so much patience but really, how can I feel bad? its hardly as if that kid didn't know better. If you're gonna start a fight and dish out hits against beings who lawfully can do little to harm you, you should be ready to take them back, in my opinion.

It's not like this was done unprovoked, for no reason. I'm just gonna say it. Trainer reaped the consequences of his actions.
Sure, I don't think anyone in our universe or theirs is going to argue that he was being the bastion of a good trainer here, or even just an acceptable trainer. I wouldn't even say he's emblematic of the average trainer; the percentage of people in my version of Unova who outright just kick the shit out of their pokemon is quite low and they're shunned in much the same way that abusive trainers are in most canons.

But at some point reactive judgment isn't good enough. Anri gets to dish out what Trainer deserves, lil bisharp friend gets to walk away, but it's too late to undo the actual damage that's done.
Well sheesh humans *really* suck. I haven't seen a decent one so far. Pokeballs are prisons, humans don't majority recognize pokemon as sentient, thinking beings... they treat them like dumb animals. :v
Humans in our world do that to sentient, thinking beings all the time, yeah. Sometimes we even do it to each other.

For what it's worth I don't think this canon actively precludes good trainers and humans from existing. But they aren't fixing the problem, so the story goes on.
I fail to understand at all how a kid? maybe he's much older? is Trainer buff? How he could fracture a conkeldurr's ribs. The logic doesn't add up for me. Do Conkeldurr have weak ribs? Also pokemon take part in battles against other equally strong beings that dish out oodles of force per blow. How does a human possess the strength necessary to fracture pokemon's ribs?

Even though your take on the pokemon universe is more 'realistic', this means humans are nearly on par with pokemon in strength, right? Like, Newtons of force.

A Conkeldurr can fight another conkeldurr but they hit way way harder. So they should shatter every bone in each others bodies, no? Even if it was fighting a rapidash or something, a horse kicks much harder than a human. Also, Conkeldurr are basically all muscle, being fighting types and also carrying around giant pillars like that, are they not?

Did this kid use a bat? Is it a grown man? Maybe an MMA boxer? (although even a grown man I find doubt it could hurt a conkeldurr's bones). I doubt a human could punch hard enough to break or fracture or gorilla's ribs. I think some context here would really help.
I want to approach this question two ways: thematically and anatomically. One is much simpler than the other.

Thematically: this fic wrestles with the difference between enduring pain and inflicting it. Often I think they're equated, as you have here with humans having the ability to harm pokemon--if you're strong that means you can't be hurt, and if you're weak that means you can't hurt anyone else. I think that's a common misconception (because often it's true), but it's not a universal law. Your ability to inflict pain and your capacity to endure it are separate, and thematically that's why I don't make pokemon indestructible in this universe, even when they can hypothetically dish out a lot of damage.

Anatomically: it's actually quite easy to fracture a rib--humans can do it by coughing too hard or stepping off of a ladder the wrong way, lol. It's worth noting that fractures aren't the same as breaks, and fractures are both a lot easier to sustain and a lot easier to recover from.

Humans aren't inordinately stronger than they are here, nor are they physically as strong as conkeldurr. However, there's not a direct biological correlation between the ability to break someone else's bones and the ability to resist having your bones be broken. Consider--if I go to the gym and work out until I can bench 5 of me or whatever, my bones are not getting 5x stronger. Most land animals are relatively prone to fractures at roughly the same rates; having smaller bones will make you more prone to fracture (b/c smaller cross-sectional area means higher concentrations of stress), but conkeldurr are canonically smaller than humans to begin with, so.

Pokemon in this universe can absolutely fuck each other up. Much like in our world there isn't much of an incentive to try to go for defensive tactics--prey species in our world, outside of extreme exceptions, don't typically adapt for getting impenetrable skin or unbreakable bones because it's much easier just to not get hit in the first place. The battle at the League where a hydreigon plows through four pokemon before being crushed to death by rocks establishes this imo--damage in this world is very real, getting hit hurts, and while healing factors do exist it doesn't make you indestructible in the moment. The best ways to avoid damage is to take out your opponent first, or just not to fight to begin with.

At least in this universe, conkeldurr aren't adequately equipped to fight other conkeldurr, because they don't fight one another. My hc ahead: I see them as more akin to social builders, similar to bees, beavers, and termites, in that they primarily avoid engaging in combat and instead focus on building structures (defensive, if needed). They have scary high attack in terms of actual stats, sure, but I think that's more because being hit in the face with a concrete pillar will hurt, not because they're culturally more inclined to violence. Looking at the general biology of conkledurr compared to other fighting types, what stands out to me is the disproportionately huge arm/torso muscle mass compared to the leg muscle mass (which is still large, presumably to support the weight of their enormous torsos lol). But looking at more canonically combatitive species such as machamp, hitmonchan, sawk, throh--their muscle mass is evenly distributed across the body, because frequent sparring would require that kind of build--even boxers, which is primarily punching as offense (compared to martial arts with kicking), have pretty jacked legs, because good footwork is central to good fighting. The disproportionately massive arms and torso would almost be detrimental in a species that spars frequently, because you're hauling around so much bulk on teeny-tiny legs that you'll probably never actually land that devastating hit. Conkeldurr build strikes me more as a construction worker type, not an MMA--effectively, they've evolved to build lots of things out of rocks (see also: their natural learnsets being a large mix of rock-type attacks), not spar each other.

Species will evolve (long term, not pokemon evolution) in ways to suit their environment and their environmental niche. Species that primarily get by on fighting, either for territory, mates, or just social "because it's fun"-ness will probably evolve features to facilitate that kind of fighting, while species that don't need that, won't. A good example would be how rams evolved to have a thicker, almost platelike bone structure at the top of their skull to facilitate their namesake ramming, while sheep don't engage in this behavior and don't have that plate. Or, elephant species share a common ancestor, but African elephants have tusks on both male and females--this is speculated to be to facilitate digging for water/uproot bushes for food, and as a defensive mechanism against pack hunters such as lions and hyenas. By comparison, Asian elephants have evolved so that only the males have tusks, and their tusks are significantly smaller--digging for water and foot is much less necessary in the rainforest, and their primary predators (being tigers) aren't pack hunters. Male Asian elephants still use their tusks for mates and occasional elephant-elephant combat, but it's not as common--same ancestors; different bodily characteristics as a result of different environmental niches being filled.

So, tl;dr, I could absolutely see a non-violent species not evolving to indestructible ribs. As far as studying how likely they'd be to fracture ribs, arguably the closest equivalent for "biped that evolved to build things instead of hitting things" would be humans, but to account for primarily living outside, massive lifting capacity, occasional combat scuffles, etc, it might be more appropriate to look at gorillas. Which, as it turns out, do have significantly higher bone density than humans, but frequently sustain fractures in the wild at rates that are more or less consistent with other primates despite their size difference and massively increased lifting capacity(*)--so it's not that just being bigger or being able to bench your 400 pound bodyweight will make you immune to fractures. It's worth noting that it's difficult to tell where these fractures originate from--for example, arboreal primates are much more likely to fall from great heights, increasing their risk of fracture that way--but it's noted that gorillas often sustain fractures from falls as well (and in general outside of combat situations), so sudden impact under their own body weight would be enough to cause a fracture. I'd also note that repeatedly fracturing an area and then rehealing it, being malnourished, extreme bodily stress from being owned by a piece of shit--these are all things that can overall weaken your bone structure, and also coincidentally things that happened to this conkeldurr.

Is it suspense of disbelief? Possibly, although I don't particularly think it's a huge one; I don't think it's ridiculous that a small child wearing hiking boots could kick a prone, malnourished gorilla (conkeldurr) in the ribs with enough force to cause a hairline fracture. Your call though; even with the gorilla example I don't think we're going to get actual testing data on that scenario any time soon, nor would I want it--although if you've got more papers on wild animal orthopedics I'm happy to compare notes.

Ditto above.
Also this world really overlooks a pokemon's sapience. Yikes. How hard would it be to just get a psychic to translate?
Idk, same reason no one ever gets a psychic to translate in the actual canon. To me it's not even particularly difficult; it's just that most humans don't care. Psychic trainers exist in canon but I don't really see them brought out or even mentioned as far as their potential application of more accurately translating a pokemon's thoughts in this kind of situation.
If I was N, I'd catch Arceus and ask him to use judgement on all of humanity and just, SWOOSH.
why you gotta catch Arceus and then ask him if you could just ask him first :galaxeon:
???? What's wrong with people? Are they just dense?


YES DUH. This seems obvious. I mean I've seen videos of dogs digging holes in gardens for their owner and I don't sit there and say 'hurrdurr wow is that for my garden?'
Flaw on lady, although I unflaw immediately after since she's nice. Still. People really really don't think pokemon are remotely sapient or capable of understanding speech? Yet... they command them in battle... with words... I guess they only think pokemon understand simple commands. Poor pokemon.
From Mina's perspective, the bisharp has every reason to hate her son, because Trainer kicked the shit out of bisharp and was overall a horrible trainer. Mina also wrestles with the guilt--whether correctly or not, she blames herself for her son's actions, since she's the one who raised him. Her internal struggle in this chapter is trying to understand why the bisharp would risk their life to save her son--because frankly, that kind of decision is difficult to understand even when you think all parties present are sapient. Consider:

> If you're gonna start a fight and dish out hits against beings who lawfully can do little to harm you, you should be ready to take them back, in my opinion. It's not like this was done unprovoked, for no reason. I'm just gonna say it. Trainer reaped the consequences of his actions.

I think a lot of people would agree and wouldn't bat an eye, and would frankly see the kid getting the shit pounded out of him by a seismitoad as the logical and deserved punishment for beating the shit out of his pokemon. I expect that even among the people who don't think this is the right response, most of them wouldn't fault the seismitoad for lashing out either. The full extension of this logic involves the bisharp either standing by as Trainer gets beaten up, running away, or joining in. But a setting in which the bisharp stops these consequences from playing out is incompatible with the logic above, because it goes against the idea of reaping what you sow, and it involves the very difficult idea of forgiving someone who doesn't even recognize what they're doing is wrong, and isn't asking for forgiveness. Bisharp is exercising restraint and showing kindness to someone who would never dream of doing the same to them, even knowing that showing this kindness will actively decrease their quality of life; this is something that runs counter to a lot of our baser instincts, and when we see it in the flesh it's hard to understand.

(Something tells you this isn't about the garden.)

Mina isn't struggling to wrap her head around the idea that bisharp understand how gardens work. Mina is struggling to understand that the bisharp knowingly chose to forgive a horrible action and is willing to extend that forgiveness to her as well.

As for the pokeball thing... I guess pokeballs have been around for a really long time in your world? That would certainly explain some things. I suppose I'm mostly curious about the historical context, like I mentioned in the paragraph above.
No, they're relatively new. Things like the massacre of the Dragonvalley wouldn't have ended in outright genocide if pokeballs existed. In the game canon, there's a fairly interesting quote in BW2:

> "When I was little, Poké Balls didn't exist yet. Sometimes Pokémon would run away from awful Trainers who didn't try to understand them."

And this is from Drayden! So the general excuse of "oh yeah Team Plasma is just lying through their teeth" doesn't really hold up here, and I think it's fair to say that this is probably a goodfaith statement that:
1) Refers to pokeballs as being relatively new, and were invented within the span of a human lifetime (exceptions could be -- Opelucid is behind technologically, Unova is behind technologically, or Drayden is a dragon)
2) Refers to pokemon training being older than pokeballs
3) Refers to pokemon leaving their trainers in the past tense

(3) is most interesting for me because of that "would" in the original quote acting as if pokemon running away is no longer the case. You could argue that the thing that changed to stop pokemon from leaving bad trainers was that bad trainers stopped existing, or that pokemon stopped wanting to leave bad trainers, but to me this reads as pokeballs very recently preventing pokemon from leaving bad trainers, when in the past they were able to do so.

Technology dropping can exacerbate types of inequality much more quickly--for instance, the industrial revolution split income inequality pretty catastrophically, because people who had the resources to purchase steam engines and factories were able to output money at a ridiculous rate compared to previously, while the relative earnings of people who didn't have the raw capital to buy into that tech remained the same. It's different execution but similar principal here--pre-pokeballs, partnerships were in general a lot more fair, because they had to be.

I would argue that this being relatively new would actually better explain a lack of revolt than pokeballs being old--less time for pokemon and humas to realize that this way of things isn't actually working out so hot.

We do get glimpses into this history as the story progresses, although currently the most obvious hint is the Dragonvalley stuff, so it's fair that this assumption isn't fully clear to the reader. Most of the narrators were born after pokeballs, and it's not like there's a concerted human effort to teach pokemon about the time they used to be free, although I might go back and add some lines into Zahhak's chapter to clear this up since he's old enough to remember.

Thanks for stopping by again!

gosh gosh hi!! I was happy with what you'd left already tbh, and then the cool art and also this??? I am truly blessed.
The start of many good back and forth things like in this chapter. This officer is a real piece of work towards Rhea, but is kind towards Ace. You are showing that this officer is a human capable of both good and bad (and terrible) things, and choosing to show this chapter through Ace’s perspective was a really interesting and effective way to show multiple sides all at once.
Thank Pen for this one! The original draft had Ace as a little harder to empathize with lol. I am a little biased.
Oof. As you once said in a review on OSAS, sad 2020 police noises. And wow, what a realistic portrayal of this. Many In law enforcement truly believe their forceful actions are always justified simply because they are protecting and upholding the law, so therefore it’s okay. I’m willing to bet there are many out there that don’t enjoy using excessive force, but feel that they have to, because of what they’ve been taught about what is supposedly “okay” and “necessary.”
Yeah, I'm torn, but ultimately I think that a culture with normalized, almost sensationalized conflicts (pokemon training) would absolutely have similar if not more extreme cultural violence.
So, my question is, how did Cheren get in this situation in the first place, then? Did he just attack the palpitoad out of nowhere without talking with their trainer first? Because if so, that’s a dick move, my dude. And if he did talk to the trainer, wouldn’t that have realistically prevented the battle from happening because then he would be informed that it was illegal for him to start a battle at that place and time? Unless he ignored the trainer and attacked anyway — which, again, dick move.
This one is a bit of a relic from the BW games, in particular a(nother) bit that makes me head tilt and go "wtf???". When the player arrives with Cheren at Driftveil Gym, Clay declines to battle them because he needs to deal with some Plasma hooligans causing a ruckus in a warehouse. Clay thinks for a moment and then offers an exchange--if Cheren and the player clear out Plasma, Clay will accept the battle.

There's a lot wrong there but to me it does speak volumes if gym leaders are really going around deputizing children and holding their ability to be challenged as a bargaining chip lol. I made some adaptations--idk what the Plasma peeps are actually doing in the games (I think they're just sitting in a warehouse they don't own), but here it's a protest at the warehouse. But in general it's pretty much a plot where you and Cheren go in, shoot first, and ask questions never.

The timeline I see here is--Cheren arrives at the protest, having been at least nudged a little by Clay to break it up, gets in a verbal fight with the trainer, and then escalates it to a battle (Cheren being under the impression that open challenges are allowed, and smugly being like ohohoho if you're so good with pokemon then let's fight them; his logic is flawed but also he does live in a world that tends to accept trial by pokemon combat as a validation of ideas). There'd probably be time to clear that misunderstanding up, but the police see a pokemon attack from the inside of the Plasma group and assume that it's Plasma inciting violence, and then shit hits the fan.

This chapter is just SO well done. You provide perspectives all at once, and even this passage has a few solid points — police do put their lives on the line, and it’s a pretty thankless job. There are many cops out there that are truly good people, and they have to endure so much due to the nature of the job. BUT. That doesn’t change the fact that there are problems, very big and widespread problems. This is a beautiful portrayal of how someone in law enforcement with good intentions can still get things skewed and end up on the wrong side of the fence in terms of what is right and wrong.
Bless Pen again. I had to dig deep to get even this kind of nuance in the year 2020, but I think you're right and the story is much better for it.

OOOF. Got ‘em. Very profound point here; are Pokémon property or individuals? That’s basically what all of this boils down to.
I think it's very telling that we have all of these different terms--poaching, theft--and none of them are what we'd ever dream of using for the equivalent action being applied to a person (kidnapping). pokenapping as a term sounds stupid as hell tho
Once again, too painfully accurate with today’s current events. The most frustrating thing? He’s not doing anything illegal here. He’s not blatantly beating her or doing anything that will bring him condemnation. He’s not pulling strings to screw her over, but he doesn’t have to, because his power and authority and knowledge of the justice system gives him all he needs to screw her over, and all within the restraints of the law. And for what?? She’s an annoying protester so he has to feel bigger than her, somehow? By taking away her Pokémon? And we all know that it doesn’t matter how cooperative she is, he’ll make sure she’s held for the full ten days just because he can.
</3
Hmm, so we already know that Mali ends up with Acheron eventually, but does he know she is Rhea’s Pokémon? Probably not, but its quite the coincidence.
He doesn't know, and it's definitely a bit of a coincidence, although one that I try to explain--we learn in chapter 3 that Cheren's a bit of a min/max'er (for instance, he also cycles through several boldore before Carnel to find one with better stats). And, somewhat spoilers, but there's a bit of Tourm's heritage that hasn't been revealed yet that would make her particularly desirable to Cheren, unfort.

Cheren is the kind of person who thinks all liepard look the same, so no, he doesn't know and he probably never will lol.

Thank you for dropping in! Again, didn't even expect the back-reviews but they're greatly appreciated and I'm glad you're enjoying.

Hiya Bench! Welcome back.
Time for the rest of my review for the exchange! This review will be on chapters 4-8!

First up, chapter 4, Nuestro! I recognize this as the Spanish word for "our", and that fits in a dramatically ironic for this chapter, since it's about how separate a trainer and their Pokemon are, how they often don't listen to their Pokemon, and how nothing they and their Pokemon do together is truly a group effort.
After that is chapter 5, Nostrum! I've researched this, and found that it means an ineffective remedy for problems, which fits perfectly for this chapter, with how what N is doing might not be truly effective, and how Hilda won't be an effective remedy for Team Plasma in the end.
Aww, I really appreciate that you're going through the chapter titles with such a keen eye! They're a little detail that I put a lot of thought into, so it's nice to know that you like them!
I find the kafara stuff in this chapter really interesting! It's a running theme throughout the chapter, and the story behind it is very neat!

Actually, I really like all the stuff you're doing with Pokemon culture in general. You give each species their own culture, their own way of thinking, and their own quirks, and it's all really cool!
Yeah! imo one of the most interesting things about having so many species is studying what would make them unique and similar to our own, and I think stories provides a really good middle ground for that.
Now for chapter 6, Narsil! This is my absolute favorite chapter yet, for many reasons.

First of all, the chapter title. After doing some research, I found out about the meaning behind this chapter's title, and what a meaning it was.

Narsil is a sword from The Lord of the Rings that was wielded by a king, was broken during a great battle, and reforged later on by a relative of that king. It also means "red and white flame".
I'm glad you liked this chapter more! Definitely there are some darker moments in this fic, but there are some lighter ones as well!

I think N and Aragorn would have some interesting talks. I won't be the one to write them, but I do find the idea of destined callings to be interesting, and the struggle of duty and power.
Even outside of the main plot of this chapter, I love the description and tone of it. I love the warrior-like thinking of Narsil. I love the description of the television and the phone and how Narsil thinks that there's actually people inside of them.

And the ending of the chapter where Narsil thinks back to the garden and how reforging isn't needed to grow anew and everything is hopeful, that's really, REALLY good!

Overall, I absolutely LOVE this chapter!
I'm really glad you liked this chapter! It's definitely one where the hoplessness of the fic lets up for a little, and one where people get a small victory even if the cards in general are more stacked against them.
I really like the narration of this chapter! Zahhak's narration and attitude definitely feels draconic, yet they show a lot of care for N. How they show little concern for their deteriorating body, yet listen to what N says.

N's really great in this chapter, too! I like how, despite everything, he has uncertainties about his goal, connecting back to how he doesn't feel like a hero in chapter 1, and how there are Pokemon who don't consider him a hero as shown in chapter 5. I like how he continously asks Zahhak hard-hitting questions, and Zahhak asks him questions in return. I like how he and Zahhak discuss together what should be done, culminating in N cementing his decision to go to Dragonspiral Tower and summon Reshiram. I love how at the end of the chapter, N speaks in the dragon language, and he and Zahhak make that promise together.
<3 the dragon and his boy are one of my favorite duos here, much for the reasons you've outlined! they're a fun pair to write, even if kind of sad.
I also really like the conversation between Rhea and Cheren, where Rhea keeps trying to get through to him in a variety of ways, and yet Cheren refuses to see her points. It really shows how ingrained trainer culture is in Unova.
I think BW does a great job of showing the kind of pushback someone like N would get if they tried to say these kinds of things--people are loathe to give up things they love, after all. I just find the end result kind of sad.
Looks at chapter 4.

I love how the inclusion of this in a later chapter than 4 lets the reader know exactly how wrong Cheren is.
Ha, you can thank Dragonfree for that one! This was a new line that was inspired by one of her reviews.
And at the end of the chapter, Rhea is imprisoned and her Pokemon taken away to be given to presumably trainers and forced to battle. And all the while, she thinks the Herdier is actually going to help when they aren't going to. A pretty sad ending to the chapter, but an understandably sad one.

Overall, a very good chapter that gives a bigger picture as to what's happening in Unova at large.

Overall, I quite liked these chapters, especially 6-8. I'll be looking forward to reading more of this sometime! This was a really good read!
Thank you for stopping by! Again, I'm really glad we got to do our little swap, and I hope you enjoyed it as well

Hey again! Thanks for circling back!
Hi Kint, decided to review your story once again, haha. Let’s do this, shall we? You know the drill by now, so I’ll cut to the actual review.

Now this chapter has a different point of view, I think. Unless Harmonia is like, N. If they are, then well, nice job! If not, then it’s just a big coincidence, haha. Now to the fight! This chapter contains the battle against Alder, now, Alder is that lovable Champion. I always thought he represented the fanbase in a way, considering his bonds with his team.

With that being said, I think the way you wrote Alder was nicely done, although he seemed a little aggressive. That’s… When my theory got confirmed. Harmonia is N, right? It has to be, maybe I just missed the narration explaining that, but huh… Alder being aggressive about his position as champion makes a lot of sense if you consider how he’s standing against the king of Team Plasma. Because of that, I salute you. This whole scene was stunning, I found myself reading it twice to fully understand the scopes, and to be honest, it was very exciting to do that.
This is a canon-specific thing (so if you didn't memorize that one specific part of BW it's totally understandable that you'd miss this), but Harmonia is N's last name, which he shares with Ghetsis (who is another canon BW character, haha). So the Harmonia in this chapter is Ghetsis, although arguably he's acting in N's name.
Which brings me to the closing moments of this chapter, we see the protagonist calling Hilda. This was another nice scene, the despair of whatever Ghetsis was planning to do there was real, I could sense the tension going on and found that very nice to read. This fic is honestly surprising me, you’re a very good writer, Kint! I’ll be sure to read the rest of it when I can!
I'm glad you enjoyed! let me know if you have any questions--there are definitely some gaps from game canon to this that I may not be patching as clearly as I thought, esp with the Ghetsis/N confusion that you noted here. Thanks for stopping by!

hi mom. wow. truly, I am blessed, to have seen not one but like three persephone reviews in one month, and one of them was even for mine. it sounds like sarcasm when I type it out but it does mean a lot to see this from you, haha.
To be honest I was really tempted to just copy paste all of my shitpost DM reviews here but decided that it wasn't worth going back to find them all. This is a review very much in retrospect so don't expect line by line comments or anything.

We've talked before about how this fic has aged. You thought it had aged poorly in that the police response wasn't actually disproportionate enough then. I think that the general themes and overarching question are more timely than ever. To me this fic's structure is the presentation of a question and then an exploration of the arguments behind it. The Question: Was N right to change the system by violence and/or magic? There's obviously not a singularly correct answer, which is sort of the point of everything after it. Some people and pokemon did eventually find happiness with each other, like the best squishy boy and gardener sharp. And some just don't want to give up their people for one reason or another (herdier, best kitty, Munny, SMUGLEAF). But the system is clearly unjust, as you show often in subtle and major ways. Ghetsis' fight against massacre of Alder's team and the Roto-rebellion that followed was probably the best encapsulation of it and, uh, good job having a Ghetsis who isn't just EVIL INCARNATE but actually had and made really good points and even came close to "victory" by himself.
I think this is probably a more fair response to the idea of this fic aging, yes. I'm vaguely uncomfortable with how timely it ended up being, both in the terms of bad things happening and the tiny glimmers of hope that people ended up finding in the cracks, and the endgoal of the necessity of still tearing down a lot of the shit to get to the good ending.
It's also fascinating to watch Team Plasma get progressively less violent as the story goes on. First it's ending the world, then it's killing pokemon, then it's violent protests and theft, then it's die-ins. The early stuff is all ignored and the latter is demonized. It suggests that N really did try to change the system "the right way" before he invoked the apocalyptic option. There is no metaphor here, clearly. This fic at no point suggests that any real life crimes or fringe political positions may be justified. Any resemblance is purely coincidental.
purely coincidental. absolutely.

This was one of the most compelling reasons for me to tell the story backwards, honestly. Often, people's first experiences with social change are at the end, when it's finally extreme enough to infringe upon your life and make itself heard--it's when people are blocking your traffic or the cops are shooting tear gas next to your apartment or something two very equivalent things ofc and it's impossible to ignore. At first it seems like these things are ridiculous and came out of nowhere, but if you stick around long enough to get to the bottom, there's a natural build to all of this. It's all connected, and a lot of it was slow and sad, even if it felt fast and explosive when it finally happened to you. I meme the shit out of Plasma slam poetry night but ultimately I think that's what N wants Plasma to be--unfortunately that's not what it can be.
Not that it eveN would map cleanly onto real life. Pokemon are genuinely way different from humans, physically and mentally. Repeatedly the perspectives of different pokemon call into questioN if there even is a siNgle good solution for all species. Herdier would really prefer to stay with their hoomans, thank you very much. The fossils wouldn't even exist in the modern world without them. The sigilyph quite enjoys their stories, even if it might be happier without them. The dragons mostly hate them, and not without reason. The Rocks will probably just outlive them anyway, so why bother doing something drastic now?
accurate assessmeNt 10/10
Also this is neither here nor there but I really liked the Axew (?) chapter. The politics of the league, especially re: minorities with power, is fascinating and feels real. If you want to succeed you have to do whatever the racist assholes in charge want, and that's seldom actually what you do. Even the more privileged leaders presumably aren't spared from the flanderization of their personality. And the whole thing with drayden wanting a haxorus but having to skirt the law and kind of ignore the well being of an actual human to get one is great. As is the whole deal about the conservation double step: first kill almost all the animals to hurt indigenous people, then take remaining animals away on the grounds that the indigenous people let the population crash and can't be trusted to manage it. It is a good thing that this only happens in the world of fiction.
These are absolutely fiction and have no bearing on reality, yes.

Ironically a lot of this chapter was drawn from my research for Seven After and deep consideration for how I'd try to tackle these kinds of themes in a way that would believably look like how you'd do it, so it's come full circle here.

Can't help myself, I keep coming back to this story. I think Noted really solidified the intent of this story for me? Even though its present in the earlier chapters, the shift to a pokemon that finally doesn't feel like a prisoner/has a different perspective cements what direction I think this story is headed towards. (Of course, I could be wrong. Only time and reading will tell.) Also, I'll be dual reviewing elements of Noted and Noncomformist.
I won't say either way, although I'm curious what you think the direction is!
I'd like to preface by saying I leave reviews mainly because I guess the skeptics perspective might help.
ofc! you're welcome to your opinion and I appreciate the time and effort spent writing it out here.
I thought this chapter was pretty good. The use of Ghetsis Hydreigon as the POV is intriguing. It works well, as I said, to offer a new perspective in this ever expanding web. Not as strong as Narsil to me, especially near the end. I feel like they talk in circles, but that's also not inherently bad. After all, people in real life tend to talk in circles in arguments. So if that is the vibe you wanted to achieve, good job.

If you wanted it to have a steady escalating feel, I feel like roughly a paragraph of content could be trimmed? Not a lot, just a little, to really drum home your point concisely.
Ooh, overemphasizing my points and talking in circles is definitely a capital-W weakness for me. Happy to hear which paragraph specifically you think is extraneous; at some point I go pretty nose-blind to which parts of my prose aren't necessary to drive the point in.
Zahaak confuses me thematically. From a worldbuilding perspective. Apparently, Zahaak has total free will and freedom of choice. So he says. Because he is a big tough dragon, who are apparently the only race who demand respect, he is totally here of his own free will.

Apparently, a pokemon like Lillipup are simply not strong enough to make their own decisions. Yet pretty much any pokemon seems strong enough to fight back against a human, based on what I've read. What makes Hydreigon here so unique and special? He seems resigned to his fate that he has to do what he does because he doesn't want anyone else to have to.
Zahhak is part of a messy idea--there can be people on your side who you don't necessarily like or agree with. You can be fighting for the same thing as someone else and still dislike them personally, just as you can love someone deeply and be striving towards different goals. It's a confusing theme, but I don't think it's particularly uncommon irl (nor is it any cleaner there).

He's condescending towards lillipup, who could probably make their own decisions, but ultimately Zahhak struggles with accepting that he lives in a world that will never take his ideas seriously, because of who he is.

I would also argue that there's a pretty meaningful difference between willingly choosing something because you don't want someone else to do it (what he sees himself doing) and doing something because you've been pressured into it (what he sees the fictional lillipup as doing). The former is a conscious choice for the good of others; the latter is an action taken to avoid punishment for yourself.

The very next chapter shows us that Herdier Ace has made his choice and quite honestly, I agree with him for the most part. What right do humans have to speak for other fully sapient and thinking beings who are capable of revolting? More hypocritical humans who don't listen. That's how I interpret this.
It's your call to interpret it as you'd like, although I would argue the major difference is that humans can speak a language that everyone else in the fic understands, whereas pokemon cannot. "Speaking for" someone takes on a different definition when that someone literally cannot be understood by half of the world. The line between allyship and putting words into someone's mouth is a thin one, and you could argue that Plasma crosses it, but I'm not sure if that's what you're arguing here, or if you're against any sort of advocating that isn't for yourself.
Later, Zahaak also remarks that he has no choice. So really, it seems pairing humans with pokemon period is a bad idea. He's being used by Ghetsis (or as he says, he's using Ghetsis). It's a partnership he says, because he claims he made this choice. And Ghetsis helps him? Except I don't see how Ghetsis can provide him, a big tough dragon with 'power and strength' as the text says. Other than a TM, what can a human give a pokemon?

There's no aura, nothing to insinuate that there's any kind of mutual partnership. I guess those baths much be dang good.
Aura memes aside--Ghetsis gives Zahhak a platform to be taken seriously, and a way to be heard.

There are multiple Plasma protests throughout this fic involving both humans and pokemon. The most notable one is probably the final one, with Ghetsis and Zahhak at the League. The only reason they're able to get that far is because Ghetsis is able to use his status as a trainer to get him and his pokemon through the Elite Four and to the championship battle, where he's able to get on national television and make sure that his actions are being seen by all of Unova.

Zahhak alone going through this scenario would be kind of absurd tbh. Even assuming the League allows pokemon to battle without a trainer (which I imagine in this world they don't, and in general this is such a rare occurrence in canons and headcanons that I don't think this would happen in most settings), when Zahhak gets to the final room, what can he say to Alder to express his distaste? And would Alder understand? What exactly would Alder's takeaway be here if Zahhak just bursts into the room and makes angry noises and then burns everything down? I would assume that without actually listening to someone who's angry, it's all too easy to write them off as one angry and unhinged individual, even if they're acting for what they perceive is a much larger problem.

I don't think it's particularly a fun idea to understand, but some people are more able to be heard than others. In the pokemon world it's quite literal, in that humans can't understand pokemon (or can choose not to). Ghetsis' primary benefit to Zahhak is that humans take Ghetsis seriously in a way that they'll never take Zahhak.
Zahaak later explains this by trying to compare it to how humans rage against their boring office jobs, but still choose not to leave. The comparison seems very weak. I could quit my job any time. Plenty of people do quit when they don't like their jobs. Of their own singular free will. And being annoyed with my boss is a huge difference from my boss dragging me into fight night every evening and I get bloodied and broken bones. I fully admit that I only stay at my job because its more convenient. But it really doesn't seem more convenient for pokemon to stay with humans.
I think it's pretty situational, and I actually think the job example gets to the heart of that pretty well.

I hated a job and quit it, of my own singular free will, but that hinged on having a lot of things--I had a car to sleep in when my lease ended, I had a marketable skillset that enabled me to find a new job quickly, I had a healthy body where I was okay hoofing it without employee-sponsored healthcare, and I had enough savings to yolo things like food while I was between incomes. I also didn't have a lot of things--I didn't have kids or aging parents or anyone to look after, I didn't have a career where switching employers is frowned upon, and I didn't have medical debt or medical conditions that would make being temporarily unemployed difficult.

So did I quit my job that I didn't like, roughly when I wanted to quit it? Sure. But looking at the resources I had at my disposal and the burdens I didn't have to deal with, I can understand why some people in the same job but a different life situation than me might stay put, even if the job really and truly sucked. Would I have rather stayed and made the job a better place, so that I didn't have to quit it and so that the people who stayed would have a better work environment? Absolutely--I think it's a false dichotomy that you have to either love something wholeheartedly or never see it again. But sometimes that's not in the cards.

I think most of the narrators in this fic give their reasons for staying beyond convenience, although if you disagree there I'd be curious to hear that.
So really, if pokemon hate being hurt so much, and battles=bad, what's to stop two fully cognizant thinking sapient beings from just standing there on the battlefield and not fighting? Why isn't a pokemon leading the resistance?
There's a fun thought experiment you might enjoy called the prisoner's dilemma that's basically this. It's probably not worth doing the full mathematical dissection here, but it's worth noting that the mathematically successful playstyle isn't the pacifist route that you outlined, simply because the cost of being hurt over and over again (if your opponent chooses to fight instead of not-fight) isn't worth it. The pacifist playstyle becomes less and less ideal the more games you play, because your risk of being seriously fucked over only increases each time you try it.

Non-mathematically, I think the fight between Carnel and Amara in the third chapter also outlines how this is more likely to play out--arguably neither Amara nor Carnel want to fight each other, but they don't know that, so they end up battling each other out of fear that the other person is trying to harm them.

Why doesn't Ghetsis and N take orders from Zahaak or another pokemon?
Arguably this chapter is entirely about N taking orders from Zahhak. Perhaps not orders, but definitely requests.

You could argue that N's decision to go to Dragonspiral Tower and to try to awaken Reshiram isn't what Zahhak wants, which is fair. But then Ghetsis taking Zahhak to torch the League is what Zahhak wants, so--one way or another, the conflict of this chapter is about a human doing what Zahhak asks.
Seems to me like every human is a hypocrite still using pokemon for their own desires, given pokemon don't want to fight at all, don't enjoy it, and gain nothing from it except blood and broken bones. (Zahaak being the exception I guess. He likes his broken bones). This is how the story reads to me so far, given the context provided.
I think friendships that mostly center around one party's desires (in this case, the human), are pretty hypocritical and don't really qualify as friendship, yes.
As for battles themselves, I'm curious if its even possible to have a good battle. To not get hurt and bleed and broken and hate every moment of it (as pokemon seem to in this world).
I am too.

I think it's often reassuring to think that actions don't have consequences if those actions also benefit someone--if battling makes one person happy, then maybe we can ignore the part where it might make someone else unhappy, for example.
For example, why do humans always have to be the ones to choose for another race and insist they are wrong for not revolting? Did Rhea's Liepard come up to her and say 'oh yeah I wanna revolt against humans, please help me?'. Doesn't quite seem that way.
That is in fact pretty much exactly what happens, no lie, lol.

I dunno, I always struggle with this dichotomy in the fandom--if you accept the premise that pokemon willingly choose to join trainers and can't be captured against their will (which isn't true in this fic, but for the sake of argument, let's consider it), then that means there were pokemon who willingly chose to join Team Plasma.

Curious which other stories you've seen where humans choose for another race and insist they're wrong for not revolting--I admittedly have been pretty removed from fantasy circles but this isn't a theme I've seen often enough to dub it "always"--happy to expand my reading circles a bit though!
The way this reads to me is that humans, being the race that we are, decided we want to appear super moralistic and heroic by taking it upon themselves to 'free' pokemon who seem to be capable of still freeing themselves?

Even given the pokeball situation, is there no way to break the ball? to escape anyway? Zebstrika could have. Shouldn't Plasma be looking for ways to instate fair laws for pokemon who do want to be with humans? Heck, they should be trying to lobby for pokeballs that pokemon can break out of. Except the juxtaposition of the text kind of implies that 'silly Ace Herdier doesn't know any better'. Of course, I may have misinterpreted,
I don't know if it's easy for pokemon to free themselves in this canon, to the point that they are all capable of doing it. Reylin does so, but it's difficult and he has to get the timing just right, and it also hinges on 1) everyone being distracted because they think capital-G God just appeared and 2) Reylin is immediately able to yeet off into the sunset with someone who will wholeheartedly advocate for him. The seismitoad in Tim Burr's chapter is able to free himself as well, and is immediately killed as a result. Carnel, Amara, and Tourmaline all try at some point and are unsuccessful--I genuinely do not know how else to illustrate this within the world of this fic, and honestly I thought demonstrating the inability to escape as many times as I did was already overkill, but if you have suggestions to make it more clear, I'm happy to hear them.

Plasma does advocate for laws like that, but the Unovan League is resistant to that--see Alder in chapter 2, who rejects Ghetsis' ideas outright even prior to the burning parts.
Disclaimer - its entirely possible Zahaak is an extremely unreliable narrator, in which case some of his remarks make a little more sense. Probably everyone in this story seems pretty unreliable, but I think humans deciding for pokemon the terms of the revolt, then using them to revolt, seems hypocritical. Maybe intentionally so. But really, if this was about humans respecting pokemon rights, pokemon should be in charge. No?
I think the last line (emphasis mine) is the thesis of your argument here, but it strikes me as a bit contradictory. Logically there are two outcomes: either the bulk of humans respects pokemon rights, or the bulk of humans don't respect pokemon rights. In its simplest state, this leaves two outcomes:

1) Egalitarian society/The bulk of humans respect pokemon rights: these issues would not exist, pokemon would be able to have a say in the technology that affect them, there would be pokemon passing legislation, etc. There would be no need for pokemon to advocate for pokemon rights, because pokemon would already have equal rights.

2) Unequal society/The bulk of humans don't respect pokemon rights: the bulk of humans would also not respect pokemon advocacy, which is how these issues got so extreme and awful in the first place. If pokemon attempted to speak up about their rights, they would be ignored by humans, who are already not respecting their rights. There would be no point for pokemon to advocate for pokemon rights, because humans would not listen.

Ultimately it comes down to the fact that humans are fallible, and we are more likely to listen to and trust some people than others. For an exaggerated example, if a stranger told me that smoking was bad for me, I might ignore them, assume they have bad intentions, etc. But if a close friend told me that smoking was bad for me, I'd probably be more inclined to listen to them, because I would assume that they're making a goodfaith argument to me.

I think the idea that humans are more likely to listen to humans than pokemon comes up pretty frequently in this fic, although if you think that wasn't made clear I'm open for suggestions. The most relevant one is probably in this chapter tbh--Cheren has a decently level-headed conversation with Rhea about how he treats his pokemon here. But when Carnel tries multiple times to explain that he doesn't want to be Cheren's pokemon, Cheren doesn't listen, because 1) it would be disadvantageous to Cheren if this were true and 2) Carnel literally cannot communicate in words that Cheren can understand.
Now, this story itself is still very good, for what it is. An exploration of pokemons feeling towards their position in a universe that is darker and less kind. And you definitely raise some interesting topics and are exploring them in unique ways. You've provided some interesting takes and POV's, which I appreciate.
Thanks for stopping by again!

i told myself i was only going to review chapter four and here we are. just prefacing this by saying that this fic was a fun read before but i'm really getting into it now. gonna be pretty torn between finishing this and salvage up the next week or so, i expect. it's pretty late as i'm writing this review and i'm somewhat sleep deprived and have read probably 70k words in the last 24 hours, so forgive me if it's a little frazzled in places.
my dastardly plan.
amara's perspective is a really interesting one—i'm almost beginning to detect a pattern with the perspectives in this fic! :wink: her understanding of the world seems to be built in terms of the herd as the basic social unit, and that comes with a sense of communal living and (ideally) self-sacrifice for the good of the group. that almost appears compatible with the model presented by pokémon training, only it isn't, because there's a trainer and then there's the pokémon. the trainer isn't really sacrificing anything and isn't really themself a member of the herd, so to speak. it makes sense that N's rhetoric would appeal to amara—it basically seems crafted to suit her existing worldview, in a sense. but something is holding her back, something that she doesn't seem fully aware of at the beginning of the chapter. we get the impression that it's something that's weighed on her a long time. she cites her escape attempt as evidence that, yes, she really does want to be free—but it feels like she's trying to convince herself more than anyone else.

i really liked the philosophy of the kafara as a lens through which to view the issue permeating this fic, as well as amara's worldview, although i didn't fully understand what it really meant until fairly late in the chapter and found that more frustrating than suspenseful. i feel like if the meaning of the word was stated very explicitly in the first section of the chapter, my reading experience would have been a fair bit smoother.
This was a fun idea to kick around--it's loosely inspired by a completely different situation in which I tried to apply a life philosophy to a situation where that philosophy was simply not equipped to survive. It's kind of weird understanding that the rules you've spent your whole life following are completely yeeted by someone else, and Amara's a fun exploration of that idea--the kafara mindset works perfectly fine in an altruistic/pacifist society such as her herd, but it's utterly unprepared (and frankly just a bad strategy) in a more cutthroat environment where there isn't just one herd.
amara's desire to be free brings carnel to mind, except for that where carnel was dogged in his attempts to return home and tried his best to remain useless so cheren would no longer want him, amara seems to fight anyway, resigned to her position as a tool used for fighting even when she nominally resents it. she even seems to take pride in having been chosen, which is interesting. she's at odds with herself, and it makes her thoughts at the beginning of the chapter feel incongruous... which makes sense! there is an answer to her conflicted thoughts, she just doesn't find it until the showdown with N. unsure if this was intentional, but i enjoyed the way her colors factored into her characterization here. she's black and white, for one thing, and you give that in-universe significance, too, but when amara charges N, you describe those stark color divisions as melting away as she becomes all lightning. i thought that was super neat.
<3 i'm a sucker for my very Unsubtle symbolism, what can I say lol
so far it seems like many of the pokémon content to fight—excepting N's—are either beaten down (thinking of some of cheren's pokémon here) or have never known anything different (i.e. vaselva). i would say that even amara feels a bit beaten down, to an extent. she's found value and meaning in her position, and genuinely cares for hilda, but it doesn't seem like the life she would have chosen for herself, necessarily—more like one she's come to terms with. do all these pokémon seem like they're suffering cheren and hilda are bad trainers? or is what tourmaline said true—are all captured pokémon really suffering? maybe even vaselva is suffering, she just doesn't know any better; like amara, she's made peace with her situation (better than most), but maybe it still isn't the happiest possible path for her. vaselva claims not to deal in hypotheticals, which is pretty convenient, but...
Most of the narrators are unhappy, especially the early ones, but I think that's a product of surviving with the protagonists to the end of the story lol--they definitely see the shittiest kinds of situations.

Ironically I don't think this fic precludes the existence of good trainers, nor does it necessarily eliminate the possibility of a good relationship between a human and a pokemon. It just doesn't go out of its way to showcase those kinds of trainers either.
fun chapter. reylin's betrayal at the end was simply 👌. i'm a sucker for the archeops line tbh.... curious if we'll get a perspective chapter from him later on—it would certainly be an interesting one, and hey, that's the pattern innit.
ngl i cackled both when I saw this for the first time and when I read it again doing replies
i know "fritz" to mean, like, to be in a state of disrepair, and even then i believe it's colloquial, so it doesn't feel like the right word here. it's unclear to me exactly what you mean—i'm guessing that the yellow light is blinking?
oh huh. This is definitely one of those times that I realize I've just been using the wrong definition of something for my entire life lol.
oof. i sort of bad for her here, but also it seems like she hates being in an unfamiliar environment, so maybe that's not the worst thing.
Yeah, I don't think Hilda's actively in the wrong in this exact instance--the plains zebra who likes warm weather probably shouldn't spend too much time in the snow. If only there were ways around that sort of situation.
damn, "languish" is a powerful word. is it physically uncomfortable being in the ball? or is she just uncomfortable with the fact that she's not outside of it?
More of the latter--at least for this canon I use the idea that being in your pokeball is just being unconscious. It doesn't hurt, you aren't aware of anything, but when you come out the world's moved on a little bit, and that's kind of terrifying. and sad.
loving this imagery. i'm enjoying the description of the plains, too, populated with blitzle and zebstrika and liepard. feels very much like a savanna, which isn't my first thought when it comes to unova, but it makes a lot of sense.
Unova microclimes are weird, but I also have no idea where tf else zebras would evolve.
huh, centuries is less than i'd expected. wonder what the geological timescale is like here.
Oh hmmm, it should probably be millenia, but I'm also torn on like,,, how accurately Amara could pinpoint this.
hah, interesting. this kind of evokes galar.
capitalism is everywhere
yikes. this brings to mind her thoughts from earlier about how reshiram would never strike down a human who can't fight back.
she was aiming for the klinklang amara was just focused on greenhaired softboi it's fine it's fiiine
i don't think of reshiram as four-legged so this sort of threw me for a loop. maybe "scraping at the ground on all fours"? unless that's part of the illusion's malformation.
the second one, yeah--I wanted to drop hints that this was an illusion before putting it on the table, yeah. Plus the zoroark doesn't really have much of an idea of what Reshiram looks like, so she's just guessing based on her understanding of "white dragon" lol. The lashing tail is also incorrect, given Reshiram's whole turbine deal, but all of the dragons that the zoroark has seen have big tails so she's kind of just making shit up lol.
v. narsil

ohhh my heart. this hit me completely out of nowhere.

disclaimer: not too sure what the bisharp's gender is, so i'm sticking with Gorl bc Queen. lmk if that's wrong and i can go back and edit.
I flip on this one tbh I don't really know if bisharp have a binary concept of gender, if the males would sex change upon evolving into Queen/bisharp, etc
i don't have a TON to say about this one, since it feels a bit detached from the narrative so far, but that's not a bad thing. i actually think this could be the kernel of a really powerful oneshot—it kind of gives me the same feeling that neb's outside the frame did. a pokémon with tumultuous feelings roiling around in their heart, a trainer that's gone away now, and only a griefstricken mother to pick up the pieces with. i guess we'll never know what happens to bisharp from here, since we're playing this story in reverse and it doesn't seem to belong to hilda or n or cheren etc, but i really dig the (implied) future you've carved out for her here—this body that had stolen away her chances of returning home can be used for something new instead, not for the combat that she'd spent her life perfecting but instead to help another and to grow something new, to create. i found that really beautiful, and i'd like to imagine bisharp stayed with tim's mother forever, the two of them just gardening in the backyard together.
This one is one of my favorites, although I agree, in the backwards narrative it does seem to come out of nowhere. On a meta-level I kind of liked it for what it represented--I think by now most people were expecting all the chapters to end horribly, and they end up just as surprised as the bisharp when that doesn't end up happening.

They garden in the backyard together and then N ends the world, oops.
i thought the culture you crafted for the bisharp/pawniard was interesting; i say this in the line comments but it definitely evoked bee social structure, for me at least. it's a little strange since bisharp/pawniard are so humanlike, but still pokémon, and still so culturally different. i think the fact that bisharp and conkeldurr are humanlike casts the abuse in a different light—i'm not quite sure what to take away from it, but it definitely feels very different than it would if tim was beating up on, say, a samurott, or a liepard, etc.
ooh, I wasn't quite aiming for bees but I live and die for the hivemind tbh so I'm happy it landed there.

Tim's team was a weird mix of picks. In-universe, he has a seismitoad because he grew up near Nacrene and tympole was his starter; he has timburr b/c [slight spoilers], and he has pawniard because edgelord mcgee likes dark blademasters. From a meta level, I picked a seismitoad because it's distinctly huge and alien/terrifying (but evolves from something whose only defense is crying), conkeldurr because it's distinctly human-shaped and I wanted to fuck hard with that uncanny valley line of "but would you do this to a human tho", and bisharp because it (as you say) it straddles that line of being human and completely alien.
hah. just like her arms, amirite. lol.
SLAIN
lol, i love the idea of a conkeldurr sanctuary. i'm imagining it as like a senior care home but with extra pillars.
ooh, I like that idea a lot better

tbh in my head it's just the area of conkeldurr habitat that they didn't clear cut to build roads or something smh
i guess if it's on tv so much, physical abuse against pokémon must be a really uncommon thing, huh? that's reassuring. honestly surprising that a guy with a conkeldurr and a bisharp would go for it, but i guess that says more about the power dynamic than it does about the guy or his pokémon in particular.
this is probably a bit flavored from my experiences in the fandom, but I think trainers in the pokemon world would really shit on physically abusive trainers and play up how awful they are (even if the percentage of trainers who physically hit their pokemon is actually quite low). but it's catchy, it's morally obvious, and it's a good way to distance yourself from bad trainers, and if you're shitting on bad trainers that makes you a good trainer because then you aren't a bad trainer, right?
wow, this escalated immensely with every comma lol.
i think it's interesting to think about the way unovan history contains stereotypically (western european) medieval stuff like this, since it doesn't really fit in with the, well, new yorkness of it. it's an interesting topic imo, and i'm curious to see whether you expand on it more. it can come down to a lot of little details i think—is unova colonized? if so, when? who built the desert resort? were the kings native to unova, or were they descended from colonizers? etc. that's some of the stuff i find really interesting about unova as a setting. by the way, please write a fic about this Wanderer who takes up the Sword, i would be very interested in reading the unova edition of a certain story i've been plotting up...
w a n d e r s w o r d

a lot of these questions get answered actually! and some of them were somewhat answered already but not in ways that are immediately obvious. but this is an excellent temp check to know that the segments that I specifically thought needed lengthy explanations might indeed be interesting to other people, hmm.
i'm fucking dead
i think this was my favorite chapter so far. beautiful as the last chapter was, this chapter really gets into the guts of what comprise, to me, the heaviest and most salient bits of this fic; in particular, the way it relates to the real world. i think for the chapters preceding this one, i was mostly focused on the individual perspectives—how does this character feel about the issues? what kind of background does this character come from? how do those things predict each other?—without thinking too deeply about what it all means at its root, about the central point all these perspectives are orbiting around. this chapter changed that in a big way. in particular:
holy shit, i was so glad he said this. tell me to stop if i'm getting too Political On Main, but a lot of the liberation that's occurred in the real world—in the US, in particular—gets attributed to privileged people in power having a change of heart. we hear about how slavery was abolished because the morally superior northerners enforced their will on the morally bankrupt south. the working class was thrown a bone during the great depression for no reason other than that FDR was a good guy with good ideas. gay marriage was legalized because the straight majority of america had a change of heart. and so on. even the civil rights movement gets whitewashed significantly—MLK prevailed because he was nice and peaceful to the ruling white class, because he played nice and played by the rules. in the textbooks, so much of the struggle of the oppressed is erased for one reason or another, and the result is a history told in terms of the changing whims of the ruling class, not hard-won victories by people on the ground.

but there's a grain of truth to that warped perspective too, isn't there? it wasn't a slave revolt that struck down slavery; it wasn't a revolution that pulled our country out of the depression or out of the clutches of the robber barons; etc. all of these liberations and victories were won because of mass effort, but they still required the cooperation of the ruling class to some degree. they operated through the system in the end, not against it. i think N is really emblematic of that particular paradox in the national consciousness. n is a human—a human with a special connection to pokémon, but a human nonetheless—championing pokémon rights, not with an army of pokémon at his command but instead an army of humans who have just been convinced by his rhetoric. ultimately team plasma, too, boils down to this idea: that real change can only be enacted by the ruling class on behalf of the oppressed. this fic does an awesome job at digging into that idea by showing so many different perspectives of so many pokémon from such disparate walks of life, and i'm really glad to see that issue tackled head-on here. where are all the pokémon you claim to be fighting for? these are monsters who breathe fire and thunder and ice, who could effortlessly obliterate their soft-bodied rulers if the impulse overcame them. the previous chapter illustrates that vividly and concretely. so why haven't they? why does N have to do it? what does it mean that he's the one who has to take that action?

it's parts like this that make me really glad this fic is in reverse order like it is. we know the conclusion N arrived at when we start; we know the issues he had to push aside in order for him to get there; as we go forward (backward?), i expect we'll see him struggling with those issues in real time, and i'm very excited to see that unfold. seeing characters become less resolved as we go forward is really interesting. anyway, awesome fucking work on this chapter overall, it's definitely one of the hardest-hitting pieces and most thought-provoking pieces of fanfiction i've read and you manage it without feeling preachy at all. the conversation is 100% in the context of pokémon liberation, yet it says so much more, and i think you achieve that really masterfully.
hahahaha too Political On Main??? in this house???? please do.

It's wild because I started drafting this about a year ago, so a lot of the conversations that happened over last summer hadn't happened yet, and I was watching them age in real time. But I think one of the interesting things about telling this story backwards is the idea of inevitability and repetition; we know how these things are going to happen, we know people are going to wear out and grow less interested; we know that a lot of things will stay the same. Obviously in the reverse chronological format it's exaggerated to the point of being incorrect (because they are literally moving backwards), but that gradual loss of resolve is something that sticks with me. And another question that, I suppose had been relevant for a while but was becoming rapidly re-relevant while I was posting this: is it human to wish for a quieter past, and to idenfity the innocence and carefreeness of youth as idyllic rather than ignorant? Yes. Is it incorrect? Also yes. Will people do it anyway?

What fascinates me about BW is that it is, like you say, this story about fighting for liberation and victory, but it's told from the perspective of the establishment (which a lot of stories are), but in a way that's not even trying to pretend like it isn't. And in that regard I think it's really, really effective as far as explaining why people are afraid to change. You're told that the revolt is obnoxious and it's incorrect and the premise is wrong, but no one really goes about actually explaining what's so bad about giving the pokemon the choice--it's just assumed that this is the incorrect path, and that you're on the right one. So your antagonist is basically this vague activist group that ultimately could be a lot of things (up to and including takes on badfaith activism), and the protagonist ends up being someone who champions ... the status quo. It's fucking wild. It's the only answer in "what kind of action is best for social change" that empirically is incorrect.

Exploring these themes through pokefic is fun because I don't actually have to have a right answer. I think you're correct; change is rarely won peacefully and it's also rarely won without the buy-in of enough people who are in charge. Even in a world with magic I don't see a way around that short of complete destruction; if anything, in a magic world I think that questions of who has power and who wants power become even more relevant, as do questions of who actually has power.

idk. as always I think you phrased these sentiments better than I currently can. but I definitely appreciate how you wrote them out like this--it's * chef's kiss * to know that the work functions on its own and gets the points across that I wanted.

since the people of unova are described as having "fire and thunder and ice" running through them, i feel like it would be neat to use those same three elements here too rather than snipping ice out. i also found the last sentence kind of awkward; maybe something like "Better to think that the thing beating in his chest is a different organ altogether" or something? "in his chest" standing on its own in the middle there was a little confusing for me.
ooh yes this is a good fix
ah, behold, the fabled Slam Poetry Night. cheeky bastard.
it's such a funny concept imo, but it's also powerful for the reasons it shouldn't be funny
some hero of truth. i guess in the end things aren't all black and white... 🧐 twist ending where zahhak is actually the hero of truth?
the april fool's chapter we deserve but don't need tbh

My heart. Okay, so I'm not going to harp on you nailing Cat POV--the line-by-lines cover that pretty thoroughly. Tourm's voice is so sharp, so prickly; she's so young and desperately afraid of being alone and abandoned. Her mom tried to protect her from the life she lived, but they live in a world without options, so Tourm sees her best path as seeking out a trainer anyway. Her story is the embodiment of pokemon not being free to be people here. I found her interactions with Vaselva particularly poignant. Tourm thinks Vaselva has everything she wants, but Tourm has the one thing Vaselva doesn't--the name her mother gave her. The feels, kint.
I thought it was fucking WILD when you suggested that line edit for the ferris wheel chapter lmfao. the hydra brain was strong.
N continues to be lovely here. You always give him so much texture through his gestures and emotions that it's a treat whenever we get an N adjacent character. I don't know if I can keep doing slam-poetry night memes--that scene was really beautiful. I see why it angers Zahhak, but Zahhak is fully in the trap of power. The only song of power he knows is the Nocturne Lament. Tourm's thoughts on strength here reminded me a lot of the discussion of power vs strength in the Meloetta chapter. She thinks she wants power--the ability to hurt others. But the mincinno's song was a demonstration of strength.
I think it's crazy that this chapter was initially a meme (in the old outline I wrote something along the lines of "idk they go to a plasma protest or something idfk". But I think slam poetry night, ironically, gets to the heart of what I was trying to say a lot better--it's those golden early days where you aren't defined by who you're fighting, but what you're fighting for. Back before the world sees you as powerful, you get to be strong.
This really feels like the crux of the chapter for the larger problems of the story. There's something transcendent about song. We can be moved by melodies with completely foreign words, or melodies that are wordless. In that sense, song is the perfect tool of communication. But being moved is not the same as understanding. Emotion without context creates a catharsis that makes no change. Ferris wheel chapter is still vivid in my mind, so I noted that the mincinno's song harkens to the past, and some better, more innocent time. There's no future being created here.
<3

(made line edits per your questions on phrasing)

Wow, what might have been. Tourm and Vaselva do have more in common than a lot of the characters we've met.
They do! I think Tourm and Vaselva are also fun because it's kind of like role-swapped N and Hilda--one is made common and undesirable by her birth, tries to rise out of her position and is constantly pushed down for it; one is rare and sought out due to her birth and has a strange power that makes her desirable, but ultimately ends up caught up in a struggle and too doubtful to move on from it.
Really clever nicknames here!!
truly, she is way better than the humans at this why ae you letting them do it
Her cunning plan succeeded. Much cunning. Much plan.
tbh if we just let tourmaline make the plans we'd probably end up in a better spot
That is classic N.
He has to share!! and also split things, such as fruit, and reality.
Oh no! What she told Carnel came from Mom no help it hurts.
I'm happy-sad that you remembered this callback <3. It's been a long time irl!
Lovely description, but I don't think it works for a cat. They don't really smile/feel smiles against their cheeks, so wouldn't be able to describe that in others.
I was playing with the positioning here--she's curled up against his shoulders so their cheeks are actually touching; it was meant to be like, literally, she cannot feel his cheek move, but I agree that the blocking gets a bit lost in the text + the second person.
N's so careful here. Eggshells. Zahhak would be laughing.
HOW ARE THE FLYERS GOING, N???
Love this moment. I've felt it myself frequently, when you want to be detached and skeptical, but the beauty of whatever is happening washes that away.
<3
I'm guessing this is our high water-mark of Hilda and Team Plasma. I think I'm starting to see the arc--she is intrigued by happy slam poetry night plasma, but the Bianca thing and N's confirmation disillusion her.
yeah, this was one where I realized I needed to write out the ferris wheel chapter in full for this chapter to actually work.

I'm really glad this chapter landed haha--this was one that I was reasonably excited about and figured I could yolo with no beta, and I'm glad that it worked out!

Oh, wow, wasn't expecting Pixie to show up in this fic. Kind of weird that she's being called "Tourmaline" and "a purrloin," but it is what it is. Clearly conveyed her voice, from demands of being trained to proving is best borb slayer. Poor Tourm being accused of "being borb weak." Is like when people say Pixie cannot beat fire types even though physics says, yes, Pixie can beat fire types, Pixie is the best, give scritches now or will screm.
SCREMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMM
Oh, right, Tourmaline. It is now canoN that Tourmaline brings the player all of the items they randomly find on routes. As the game goes on she gets more and more desperate and has to leave increasingly better TMs and items, but it never works. No one ever accepts poor Tourmaline. Except for Cheren. At least this entry does explain why Cheren thought Tourmaline was such a good mate for his rock collection. And makes that subplot even sadder, since now Tourmaline lost her family twice and gets used as a battling tool to be thrown out later. Like her mother. Or, well, she would meet that fate if thaNos wasn't set to snap in a week. Good foreshadowing with the half an oran. I Noticed.
By the midgame she just says fuck it and leaves amoongus in the hopes that maybe they'll spore you and get you high maybe that's your schtick idk she won't judge

Appreciate the ThaNos and the commitmeNt to the capitalization lol.
Plasma hosting a pokemon concert is very pure and not something I knew I needed. Is good to see them keep getting increasingly non-violent as time goes on. That's definitely a good thing, since this is a normal fic where time flows forwards.

The line about how N might not be able to take Tour where she wants to go hits hard in hindsight.
Yeah, I thought this was funny in context of how you talked about their increasing escalations, going from die-ins to Ghetsis torching, but it's also true--having seen where things end, it's much nicer to think about what would've happened if people had just listened in the beginning.

It's really lovely to have a peek under Tormaline's armor. She is in many ways exactly who she's been since we first met her--she's got cutting commentary and no time for bullshit. She's jaded and feels trapped ... but for different reasons than she will later. For all her attempts to protect her heart, she still ended up getting fucked by the ways of the world. Poor thing. She's a delight to read, though: the hard zags between cat assertions of fact and her looming fear of rejection are beautifully painted.
c a t
tbt to when you guys had to reign me in from writing cats eating bagels
She and Vaselva play against each other really nicely. It's easy to see how, if circumstances had been different, these two could've shared a world-view. They're both here to tell it like it is and to pursue strength as best as they can. So many people are really warring for Hilda's heart here!
eoe is a hilda harem; you heard it here first!

The open mic was so lovely and poignant, both for what it draws out in the participants ... and what it fails to. This is a lovely way to try to show humans what pokemon could be aside from just tools for their own glory, and I think a necessary one. But, in the end, Hilda gets to say, wow, so lovely and walk away. And I get it! Hilda has an economic reality, too, and this doesn't help her get away from that. Two modes of oppression tangled on each other. The open mic also reminds me of my college experiences! Such a hopeful, idealistic vibe.
yesss, ooof, this is what i wanted to nail
My only real complaint is that I sort of wanted Rhea to make an appearance here, even if it's just the back of her head or something. The other side of the chasm we know T is gonna cross. But! You are already at 9.3k, so I can see why you might not have wanted to. It doesn't feel like 9.3, BTW. I only know because I wanted to plug it into my review-tracking spreadsheet, and I was surprised it was that long. Goes to show. Long chapters can be great, word count is just a number, etc etc etc.
In the original draft she did! In this one I'm not sure if I needed it though--the chapter sets up Tourmaline to make the choice, and we know the outcomes of her choice.

Made line edit corrections!


Oh man. It didn't really hit me until here how long the dialogue between N and Vas has been going on, talking circles around each other and frustrating each other. It's not until that final/first chapter that finally they've said all there is to say and that's it.
Yeah! N's first lines are to your starter and I always think about what they're thinking about in that final fight--how much has N grown since they met? How much has your starter? And for N this is kind of the beginning and end of his glimpse to understand training. But there's no actual answer either time.
I'm really appreciating how his attempts to give her respectful space and ask for consent are making her feel unwanted. He reminds me a little bit of guys I've gone on dates with who are so worried about being good guys that they trip on their own feet asking for permission and you end up having to babysit them and reassure them that they are, in fact, being good guys lol. N is so ready for her to want to go, he's almost pushing her to the door.
Yeah, I don't think N would ever really be on-board with the idea of like, here's your trainer ID, you can officially own your friends, but he's extra off-board in the beginning lol.
OMG Brexxxxxx. I love these tiny little through-lines being drawn. We keep passing the same faces on the way down
! i'm glad you pick up on these tbh. rewards my "i'mma just drop these and hope someone notices" itch SO MUCH
Oh I *love* this framing.
sometimes I just like to flip things back from pokemon POV and look at them, and I think N would too. To them it's not that pokemon don't speak the right language; it's that humans don't understand.
Okay, I know the connection is obvious because cats and cats, but this is such a Mark mood. If our Unovas weren't parallel universes, they could be friends.
It's chill I know a guy who can create parallel universes
Side note: petition to get sprites of the POV pokemon next to each chapter title in the table of contents? 👀
This idea was GENIUS.

thank you for stopping in btw. much appreciated as always <3

THIS IS SUCH A MEGA REVIEW OMG WOWWWWWWWWWWW

honestly, said it before, super happy to say it again, I wasn't expecting this at all and it BLEW ME AWAY?? thank you???? usually when I leave mid-story reviews I don't go back for the early stuff but wowow maybe I should haha this really made my day
Your prose? GORGEOUS. I haven’t read your other works yet, so I don’t know if you went for a stylistic choice specifically for this story or not, but either way, it’s beautiful and very artistic. SO many profound statements that hit like a punch to the gut, tons of vivid and colorful descriptions, incredibly creative use of narrative voice that changes and adapts each chapter to fit the POV of whoever is telling the story—I could go on! I really love the way this is written, from start to finish (well, start to most recent update, anyway), and it makes the story stand out from pretty much every other fic I’ve read.
my default prose is pretty floral I'd say! but some of the narrators definitely encourage me to be more floral than others
On that note, your choice to tell the story backwards is really interesting and adds a new level of emotion. For example, we know Amara’s fate before we get to know her, which just makes her chapter all the more poignant and painful. Same with Zahhak and N’s relationship (more on that later—my HEART, kint, how could you do this to me??). I feel like this method of storytelling would be difficult to pull off in a way that makes everything make sense, but you do an excellent job with it, and with tying together events from all the other chapters even though they seem like completely separate snippets at first glance—mentioning the abused conkledurr in other chapters, for instance, or letting us know how Tourmaline ended up with Cheren.
! I'm glad this landed correctly! "but what if we just,,, told stories backwards" is such a "bruh wtf" idea that I'm always afraid of how it'll land lol, and I think it's a bit of a rocky start for some people, but I like the payoff it results in. It's a story where the reasons behidn people's actions are almost more important than the actions themselves.
And it’s so very fitting that you tell the entire story through the eyes of the Pokémon. This is about them, after all, and their struggles. We still get to see plenty of what the humans feel about this, about Hilda’s fight against N, N’s own doubts and struggles, etc, but at the end of the day, it’s about the Pokémon. This is their story.
Yes! This too haha! If/when you get around to playing BW it's a lot of fun, but one thing that stuck out to me was that it's definitely a story told for humans, by humans. Which, for a story about the consequences of pokemon liberation, seemed pretty weird--and that's a question that I think often needs to be asked: whose voices are we forgetting to include here? Are we telling the whole story?
Last thing before getting to the specific line-by-lines: the fact that you chose to use second-person POV for this story. I’m curious as to what motivated you to go this route? It’s not a popular choice for storytelling by any means, and it’s another thing that is usually very hard to pull off, but once again, you utilize it SO masterfully. In fact, the second-person allows you to do lots of things that the other POVs would not; getting into multiple characters’ heads and getting their detailed thoughts on N’s philosophy, their backstories and cultural upbringing that contribute to why they feel the way they do, etc. It’s. Amazing. And I’m just in awe of the way you’ve carefully crafted this entire story.
Second-person has definitely drawn some ire haha, but kind of for the reasons I wanted it to. It's jarring to be told that you're someone you're not, that the this story expects you to be someone you don't want to be.

But also--as above, humans tell our version of the story differently, but maybe it's not on us to tell the story at all. For those of us on the outside, trying to understand, we need to empathize. The story isn't really about you, but we almost have to act like it is.
Ohhh. Coming back to this after reading ahead makes this paragraph painful. He’s now actively fighting against his old trainer. Poor Reylin. Poor Hilda. :(
This is a little gem of a moment for me! Reylin is brave here, but I think inside he's really hurting.
Again, reading this the second time allows me to appreciate the details a whole lot more—which is saying something, since it’s not easy to write something that reads better and better each time! Anyways, it’s very interesting to see that Hilda here is uncertain while N is very sure of himself; as the story goes along, Hilda is the one who is sure she’s right, and N is the one who is unsure about himself and his goals.
This one is fun as well--if/when you ply BW N things play out in reverse-reverse. The player never really questions their goals and N gets more and more uncertain, to the point where he's consumed by doubt. What changes for him in this timeline is the chain of events where he's too doubtful to awaken Reshiram, Ghetsis storms the League instead, and Zahhak dies.
N taking it upon himself to lead when it’s not really in his nature is a running theme through this story, I’ve noticed. He’s gentle and soft spoken, but to make the change he wants to see, he has to do things that contradict that.
I think it's a hard theme--the people who don't want to be leaders are often best-suited for it, for example. But also, I find myself wondering if a lot of the historical figures we look up to and admire really wanted this, or if they felt thrust into it because they knew it was the only way forward.
This took me a minute to figure out we are seeing through the eyes of a camera rotom, but fortunately you don’t take too long to reveal this. The first few paragraphs were a little confusing until this point, though. Also! I love the way you describe the inner workings of the camera. Very nice details.
yeah this is one narrator I struggle to tip my hand with early. "what if this story were told by a camera", smh, what the fuck was past me smoking
Agh, this frustrates me more than anything else in this chapter: the way Markus treats rotom in comparison to everything else. It speaks volumes about the attitudes humans have towards Pokémon in this world.
This is a bit taken to its natural extreme, yes, but it always bothered me that humans stay safe on the sidelines calling the shots and pokemon don't. When stories have the trainers getting a little scuffed up it's usually a narrative sign of like ohshit.jpg this is getting real, but then the relative danger that pokemon are expected to face (even compared to their souped-up pain tolerances) is just constantly sooooo much higher.
Aaaagh this hurts. Everybody else has the luxury of averting their eyes if they need to, but not Wave.
Ugh yeah this is a bit of real life leaking into the frame I think. You have the luxury of not looking at the things that don't affect you. But if it's your job to look at things but they unsettle you deeply--that's not really fair, is it?
And that’s the question, isn’t it? Isn’t Ghetsis a huge hypocrite by using Pokémon to prove his point? At the end of the day, isn’t he just another human using Pokémon to get what he wants? No easy answers here.
It is, and it isn't. It's a bit of a "isn't it hypocritical that Greta Thurnberg (climate activist) once used a plastic water bottle and yet is against water bottles" sort of thing--at what point is it hypocrisy and at what point is it necessary? I agree that it'd be a more morally pure revolution if Zahhak just came in and brr brr fired everyone, but the humans here don't care or listen to pokemon alone.
Ooh, this is so interesting! I don’t think I’ve come across the concept of Pokémon having different languages/dialects before, but it makes perfect sense. I like the way you describe and compare the differences from forest dialect to cave dialect, among other languages.
It's fun! I wonder why pokemon in the games don't really seem to show interest in one another, and there are even some anime movies where a lot of problems could just be solved if the pokemon just told each other what they knew (thinking about the Zoroark movie specifically but there are probably more). And I mean the meta answer is, the player is more important and a lot of the game mechanics/worldbuilding just center on that to make the child player feel useful. But in a narrative light, in an established world where all humans can be understood by pokemon and no pokemon can be understood by humans--what does it actually mean about who gets to talk and who can listen?
Ohhh yikes. Is this a reference to Pokémon IVs in the games and how some players will cycle through until they get a mon with the “right” nature? This seems to hint that it’s a common practice in this world, too, which if so...ouch. Agh. It’s like the equivalent of people buying cats with the proper coloring to match their furniture in real life—which, disgustingly enough, does happen and is a thing. I hate what this paragraph implies and it makes me feel disgusted towards Cheren.
Yeah, I think it'd be a thing even if they weren't numbers and pixels (although it's definitely fair when they're pixels, less fair when they're people). It's an exaggeration to prove a point (you might notice a trend), but also it's like--in stories, what makes a trainer pick a pokemon? Often it's like "oh this is a cool species" or "wow I really needed a fire-type", but, like, that's not how we make friends.

But I think it makes sense too--if your occupation hinges on being the best trainer, would you start messing with that calculus a bit? I imagine it'd be a slow transformation--first I'll teach Oshawott Ice Beam to round out his grass weakness, then I'll pick up a ground-type in the desert for the electric weakness, Sandile keeps fainting at Clay's gym and Oshawott can't win alone so I'll swap her out,,, etc. I think it's pretty easy to get tunnel vision, and Cheren's entire character in the games is "i must become stronk" so I really see how he gets there.
Every Pokémon in this story has their own culture, and I really can’t talk enough about how much I love that! It’s also interesting that, by comparison, Vaselva doesn’t have the cultural heritage/lore to refer to that the wild Pokémon do, because she was raised in captivity and is most conditioned out of all of them to be a trained Pokémon. Even so, she still compares things to leaves and seeds and sunlight, due to her being a grass type. Likewise, Carnel compares everything to caves and stones because that’s what he knows.
<3 </3
Ughhh poor baby. :( come on, Cheren, isn’t it obvious that he’s at least trying to talk to you and tell you something??
but HY he's trying to tell me something that would contradict my worldview that I am a good person.
And again, I love that pretty much every Pokémon from this moment forward has some sort of tale or parable that they compare their current experience to. And they’re all very fitting for each type/species.
I think it's useful both from a meta perspective (free worldbuilding real estate), and also--stories give us strength! words are powerful.
I found it very interesting that blitzle/zebstrika have such a reverence and connection to dragons, considering they’re electric types and I wouldn’t have pegged them to be the species that reveres dragons this way. But I like it! I’m curious where you got your inspiration for all these different stories and legends.
haha, this one started kind of vague--initially my outline was "amara is an angry blitzle", but I liked how zebstrika were both black and white in a game that's about how black and white are always in conflict. It made for a fun visual image, but I like to think that this affected them culturally.
This does get glossed over in most fics, doesn’t it? The fact that wild Pokémon are captured and taken very far away from home, often forced into situations and climates that are the exact opposite of what they are made for.
it does :( and I think a lot of pokemon would be super excited for it! but in a world where you don't ask,,
Ohh boy, she mad. It seems she’s more angry that N was (seemingly) wrong, and thus her hopes are shattered, than she is about him opposing Hilda.
Yeah! arguments are personal sometimes instead of rational :(
Reylin! :( I can’t imagine what this must have felt like for Hilda.
Hilda, is not, having, a good time, towards the end of the story

canonically there's also just this bit where a bunch of unovan gym leaders are like "hey yes so your buddy N is going to try to end the entire world and we've decided that only you can stop him", which is, wow, a lot to put on a child here. I think she really tries her best but it's hard, and she's not fully present for her team as a result.
Pardon me, are you Aaron Burr, sir?
THAT DEPENDS WHO'S ASKING
Interesting that bisharp calls him “Trainer” and not by his real name. Even Tourmaline, who detested Cheren, still called him by his name, so this feels really telling here.
Bish thinks it's pretty fair tbh--Trainer never bothered learning the bisharp's real name, after all, so why should they care about his?
Ughhhh I hate this. Seriously, shouldn’t there be like some sort of test before you set out to be a trainer so that its known you can be trusted with Pokémon and in high-stress situations?
There could be! I don't imagine many of us would pass tbh, and I struggle to imagine what such a test would even look like--like, the stipulations to adopt a human child are crazy-crazy high! They monitor your house for years, behavioral tests, tons of therapy, they interview your boss and your coworkers, etc. A lot of people who I think would make great parents have failed because they can't produce paperwork about their crazy aunt or something. And that's just the test to temporarily raise someone with human-like intelligence. I can't even begin to imagine what kind of tests would be necessary to determine who is allowed to own someone.
LOL for some reason I got LOTR vibes from this movie. Also, I’m struggling to know how the story of the movie applies to bisharp in this scenario. Between this and constantly going back to “what good is a soldier if he won’t follow his Queen”, I think I was struggling to piece it all together.
It is reskinned LOTR, yeah. Narsil is Aragorn's sword--the blade that was broken in the first fight against evil and is reforged for the final one. Metaphorically this is tied to Aragorn's own heroic will--he spends a lot of time uncertain about his destiny and afraid to make a choice; he's ashamed about his ancestors' shortcomings and doesn't know if he has the strength to correct them, but when Narsil is reforged into Anduril and given to Aragorn, it comes hand-in-hand with Aragorn's decision to take up his destiny and become king again.

It's a bit unclear and I'm struggling with that some b/c I don't actually want to try to condense the themes and story of LOTR into a paragraph (see: my struggle above), but the gist is that Bish watches this movie and feels bad for the sword, and by extension, Aragorn.

I find it kind of weird that a lot of pokemon abuse arcs end in the #notalltrainers route, where the pokemon is taught that not all trainers are evil and it's just that one bad trainer and you definitely would love a different trainer who can treat you right, and then they end up beating the abusive trainer physically and that's equated to an emotional catharsis--not saying that this isn't a happy ending for some, but I do find it weird when it's the happy ending every time it comes up. Bish sees this story and wonders what happens when a broken sword just,,, doesn't want to be a sword at all. Why does it have to be reforged into a sword again? Why does an abused pokemon have to become owned by a better trainer to become better themselves?

(this isn't actually a critique on LOTR btw and I think it handles Aragorn arc beautifully--but stories mean different things to different people, and I think Bish especially would have Opinions on what it means for characters to be forced back into a destiny they tried to escape).
I really like the contrast of these two sentences, but they didn’t entirely make sense to me. Why would bisharp think both things right after the other?
it's the contrast of rematches--they can be both cruel and kind, depending if it's what you want or not
That last line is powerful. Ugh. Summary of this fic in a nutshell?
p much!
This analogy feels more fitting than what you were trying to accomplish with the movie. But that’s just my opinion!
I think you're right! I didn't want to spend too much time summarizing the movie but as a result it doesn't get things across clearly
This chapter legitimately made me tear up the first time I read it, and it was right here that did it for me. You captured Mina’s grief and guilt so painfully well.
</33333 bless
Oh. Oh. I don’t think I caught this the first time reading it. :(
This was new! Tetra wanted to know why pokemon don't just rise up and kill their trainers, and this section of the story became better for it lol.
So even talking to a Pokémon is considered weird? Do people not realize they are perfectly capable of understanding, or do they just not care??
oh hmm, it's more of like "talking [about this] to a pokemon"--like, it's the subject matter at hand, not the act of talking.
lol the tsundere vibes are strong here. Is Zahnak secretly a cat?
yes! pmuch
I like the tough love angle here, but it feels like Zahnak switches a lot from tough love to antagonizing to encouraging a lot, and it made me want a little more consistency in his interactions with N.
he's a bit too tsundere; that's fair. I'm torn on how I want to fix the flow atm but I'm looking at it.
Six pairs? Do you mean six eyes?
math is! so hard
Ah, yes, the good old “the ends justify the means” argument.
it's tried and true!

I think what's so tempting about it though is that often the people being fought are using that argument already--sure, training results in a few pokemon being hurt, but think about all the good that's being achieved! look at how happy everyone else is! the pushback against them has this onus to be morally pure OR risk being viewed as completely flawed, even if the thing they're fighting doesn't have those rules.
That last line!! :cry: My freaking HEART, kint! Why are you doing this to me?! I seriously have tears in my eyes while typing this. So bittersweet, and it’s made worse by knowing how things end for Zahnak. AGH.
these head boops break my heart too hahahaha i am with you. i am sadglad that this worked out lol.
This is so cool, that N can speak the tongue of dragons—it seems to solidify how close these two are, since I can’t imagine a dragon would teach just any old human their language.
It is! And I think, like, if he can understand them, he'd also be able to speak it. Linguistically that makes the most sense to me anyway, barring how pokemon can understand humans and not speak it back but we already know why that exists
Wait, N uses Pokeballs? Or are these Pokémon he has liberated from their trainers, and thus they have their pokeballs with them? But how would he have obtained their Pokeballs without the trainer handing them over?
I don't think he likes it but I don't think it's avoidable--some buildings they have to pass through don't allow pokemon (like the gates between routes, for example), or Zara (tirtouga) isn't really capable of traveling on land. This isn't a world that's accommodating to pokemon that aren't owned by trainers, and N is absolutely working to change that, but in the meantime his workaround is to act like that only when they have to.
Hm, but does Spur actually think of them as a team?
ooh, fair catch! team is probably not the word here
Poor, poor baby. Being carted around, forced to do things you don’t want to do, and unable to speak to anyone. :(
It's definitely not a fair shake for the pokemon here!
LOL N is such a sweetheart. Would love to see a more lighthearted fic of N just traveling the region for all sorts of wholesome shenanigans and Hilda shaking her head at him from behind.
ha ikr. in a brighter world, maybe.
Very curious to learn more about her dad, but I’m sure we will in later chapters?
ha, ironically,,,
??? Oh? Did you edit this since I last read it? It seems different!
i DID! there's lots of editing flying around. the old chapter was a bit rough on the edges
Are we ever given an explanation for why N can understand Pokémon? I know he was raised by them, but I wonder if there’s more to it. Sad that he’s the only one who ever learned to listen to Pokémon well enough to understand them.
there is one! logically it would have to come at the very end I think,,,

thank you so much for stopping by again-again! this was such a gargantuan review and it really made my day!
 

kintsugi

golden scars | pfp by sun
Location
the warmth of summer in the songs you write
Pronouns
she/her
Partners
  1. silvally-grass
  2. lapras
  3. golurk
  4. booper-kintsugi
  5. meloetta-kint-muse
  6. meloetta-kint-dancer
  7. murkrow
  8. yveltal
xviii. narcissus

The moment before it all ends is serene. A white light spreads across the room, washing everything out and searing your eyes.

Then, nothing.

You reach one hand out in the inky darkness, so thick you can’t see anything beyond yourself, and—

“Hero of Ideals. Is this what you want?”

You spin around, only to come face-to-face with … well, you. Brown hair, crossed arms, worn-boots, weary eyes. It’s like looking in a mirror, but when you reach towards her, she doesn’t move.

Before the horror of the situation can flood back in, you’re struck with one thought: since when did you look so tired?

“Hero of Ideals.”

She talks with your voice, her face slack and unchanging, and you know without knowing: “Zekrom?” you ask in a shaking voice.

“Is this what you want?” she repeats solemnly.

You look around; before you is an endless, spanning plain. Another Hilda pops out of the ether, this time with wider eyes and a miniskirt and enormous, silky pigtails that must be absolutely impossible to maintain on the trail. Then another, this time covered in scars and missing an eye; then a third Hilda, who looks absolutely identical to you except for the emboar at her side.

“No,” you say, pursing your lips and shrugging. “We did this one last year.”

“Fair,” replies Zekrom-Hilda, and with a wave of her hand all of you pop out of existence, which happens to you, literally, the reader, you have been vanished from existence and since you read it here that's absolutely true but if you vanished from existence how would you have been able to read that sentence to vanish yourself in the first place and oh gods you've been plunged into the existential version of the grandfather paradox is there such thing as quantum causality for statements of the self and—

you think this is a real line break

It all plays out as if in fast forward. Zekrom roars. Some random girl doesn’t get roasted by a hydreigon. Rocks fall. Everyone leaves.

You sigh and click off broadcast before slamming your laptop lid shut and flopping back onto your bed. So that Ghetsis guy tried a thing. Boring. “If he’d actually wanted social change,” you mutter darkly, “he should’ve just had his bisharp behead Alder instead of monologuing.”

“I agree entirely,” says Whirlipede from her spot at the foot of you bed.

You look over with a start. You weren’t even aware that she was paying attention. Normally she waits patiently in her pokéball until someone needs her. Which, you suppose, lazily draping one arm over the side of the bed, is technically right now.

“You’d tell me if you didn’t like me, right?” you ask her.

“Of course I would. It’d be the first thing I’d say.” She chuckles. “But it’s a good thing I love you so much.”

You stare at the ceiling and then check Chatter on your phone. Samantha’s made a chatter about how the attack on the League is deeply unsettling, but maybe we should consider the message it was meant to send. There are already sixty-two comments and—you swipe down to refresh, and oh, now there are seventy. You scroll through the replies for a bit. Some people are really hung up on the whole “attempted immolation” bit. Weirdos. She hadn’t actually died, and besides, attempting to light children on fire wasn’t strictly a move that would telegraph villainous intent.

More discussion about how the security breaches went down, and a few #LeagueStrong messages already reaching trending. Someone’s made a meme of Ghetsis ripped from a particularly unflattering broadcast still. It already has six thousand more likes than Samantha’s forty-three chatter thread about policy reform.

Boring. You put your phone in your back pocket and sit up. “Whirlipede, I’m going to go grab Trubbish,” you say. “Do you want to come?”

“No,” she replies, which is awfully convenient—until she evolves she’ll walk really slowly anyway. “Unless you want me there,” she adds hastily.

“It’s all good. Your choice.”

“I’ll stay here, then.”

You put her back in her pokéball just in case. She can leave whenever she wants—it’d be cruel otherwise. But she usually doesn’t go in unless you ask her to, probably because she likes it more when you do it for her, like when you used to get tucked in by your mother. You’re struck by the image of tucking a whirlipede into a soft, warm bed with enormous blankets, and you push the thought away with a gentle smile. Her spines would poke holes in the blankets anyway.

this is blatantly a shitpost

The pokécenter is well-lit and cheerful. Canned music plays over the loudspeakers.

“Your trubbish is as good as new!” says a Nurse Joy, her own voice sounding canned as well.

You let Trubbish out of her ball on the walk back because you could use the company.

“Good as new,” she says pensively, one oversized tooth working away at the bandage at her arm. “What do you think that means?”

“It’s a figure of speech, Trubbish,” you say with a sigh. She’s talkative today.

“Is it bad to be old?”

“It’s an idiom, Trubbish. That’s all. You’re looking way too far into things.” You sigh. Trubbish likes to do this sometimes. She looks too hard at what she thinks she sees in the world, rather than what she thinks of the world. Sometimes it’s fun. Most of the time it’s annoying.

“Is it because pokémon are less valuable when they’re injured?”

She’s wheedling again. You pull up short in front of her and turn to face her, exasperated. “I don’t need this from you right now. It’s been a really long day.” Holy shit, it really has. There was that whole kerfluffle at the League. She probably doesn’t even know about that yet. Still. You need to be the one in charge here, because if you aren’t in charge in this friendship, no one is. You put your hands on your hips. “You’re not hurt now, right?”

“I’m fine.”

“Good. That’s all that matters.”

From the deep recesses of her blobby body, something shifts. You see her bare her fangs, and you flinch back. You blink. The image changes. She’s smiling at you, her plastic skin fluttering in the breeze. “I’m so glad you’re here,” she says.

And if you closed your eyes to a pokémon’s pain, what does that make you? Justice may be blind, but you do not have to be.

You can’t shake that image from your mind, Ghetsis and his hydreigon towering over the camera, their eyes spearing straight into you as if one gaze.

“You aren’t mad at me, right?” Your voice catches in your throat. Why did it do that?

“Of course not. I don’t blame you one bit. This isn’t your fault. Don’t feel bad about what happened to me.”

You relax, and grin. She’s right, of course.

The wind shifts directions and blows the smell of fetid trash into your face. You scowl and withdraw her.

literally the main character here is a trash can this isn’t real

“You’re happy here, right?” you ask Whirlipede that evening. It’s hard work, having to look after pokémon like this. It’s not the kind of job you’d wish on someone lightly. Taking care of an entire person, being responsible for their wants and needs, communicating for them, raising them—it was like all of the responsibilities of being a parent, except that you could trust these kids to take care of themselves, except when they couldn’t. And besides, you were a kid, so it wouldn’t even make sense for you to also be a parent.

“I think this whole metaphor is collapsing,” says Trubbish, before you promptly remember that she and her disdain do not exist.

“You’re happy here, right, Whirlipede?” you ask, looking pointedly at your starter.

You can’t actually talk to pokémon. Your mother had explained that in a firm voice, after you’d come home from school with a note from your teacher. Ms. Briggs had been annoyed that you’d tried to use your talents at the science fair instead of an experimental setup. She was disappointed that you’d had six weeks to prepare a booth and you hadn’t brought anything.

Ms. Briggs was a fool. Science fairs were stupid. Maybe you couldn’t actually talk to them, or maybe that N guy had paid off enough people to just believe him when they wouldn’t believe you, but you definitely understood them. Pokémon didn’t talk in words anyway, but you can understand the important bits. You know exactly what they’re saying.

“Right, Whirlipede?”

For a moment when you look at her, you see her antennae quivering, all of her spines extended, poison points bristling from beneath her carapace. You recall her, and she vanishes. But before she does, you hear her say, “Of course I’m happy here.”

You look at the pokéball in your hand. She can leave whenever she wants, of course—all she has to do is tell you that’s what she wants.

You ruminate, stewing at the pokéball for a while longer. News networks were clamoring for a public statement from N after all the fallout. But you already know what he’s going to say—the same old tripe about listening to your pokémon, how they’re the ones whose voices should be heard here. The news networks should go to you instead: you’re around; you haven’t just vanished off the face of the earth like N; you’d tell them what they needed to hear anyway.

It’s a shame no one asked you to tell your story. You’d be the most important person to hear from, after all.

You spin the pokéball in the air and catch it, and your smile slowly grows back on your face. You are the important one here. It’s just a matter of time before people see it.

“It’s a good thing I love you so much.”



it is april 1.

the envy of eden will return when it is not april 1 (more precisely, when it is April 11).
 
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WildBoots

Don’t underestimate seeds.
Pronouns
She/Her
Partners
  1. moka-mark
  2. solrock
Bold of you to give yourself a post-by date.

this is blatantly a shitpost
I like how even your shitposts are thoughtful. And scathingly self-aware.

Wow. Really intruiged by Hilda's descent into madness, here. Can't wait until she wakes up to find it was all a dream, but the top whirlipede is still spinning and spinning and spinning and

But I love the idea that's she's convinced she can understand them when it's clear she's just projecting herself onto them. And woof because golly gee isn't that just a thing we all do. :c WELP.
 

Persephone

Infinite Screms
Pronouns
her/hers
Partners
  1. mawile
  2. vulpix-alola
It’s a shame no one asked you to tell your story. You’d be the most important person to hear from, after all.
Lies. Pixie.
the envy of eden will return when it is not april 1 (more precisely, when it is April 11).
Good call not giving us a year for that April 11.
 

kintsugi

golden scars | pfp by sun
Location
the warmth of summer in the songs you write
Pronouns
she/her
Partners
  1. silvally-grass
  2. lapras
  3. golurk
  4. booper-kintsugi
  5. meloetta-kint-muse
  6. meloetta-kint-dancer
  7. murkrow
  8. yveltal
edit: I hit CTRL+ENTER on reflex and that published this post, sorry, hi, this is review responses; just gonna keep editing in this box rather than trying the delete/repost game; if you showed up early and the post looked completely different, that's why. Sorry!

review responses part 2! thank all of y'all for being so patient and kind with me, just in general, lol.

vii. nonconformist

i think this is the first chapter so far where the viewpoint character is straight up unsympathetic, in my view at least. not sure how much of that literally comes down to "he's a cop" rather than something more meaningfully linked to the narrative, but tbf those things are kind of inextricable? it almost seems (through my admittedly acab-tinted lens) as a critique of the police through the filter of your themes rather than an elaboration of your themes by way of a police perspective.
unknown.png

actual footage of me brainstorming this chapter, smh, sigh

You should've come for the first draft. It was just "my name is Ace and I love being a shitlord because fuck you" ... I dunno haha. I get in a lot of headspaces for writing this but this one continues to perplex me and isn't as fully-realized as it probably could be, lol.

i may be wrong about this but i believe rhea is the first non-executive member of plasma we've seen so far? i really like the direction you've taken the team here, notably by omitting the word "team." the team plasma feels very much like a rank-and-file organization, what with the council of sages and the wacky uniforms and all that business. it makes it much more difficult to take it seriously as an organic social movement, so what you've done here—apparently making up the base of the organization with grassroots volunteers—works for your particular flavor of team plasma really well. the tear gas/police takedown/liepard gave me CD vibes which is most certainly not a bad thing. i thought it was really interesting that rhea knew N personally, even if it had been a while since they'd spoken. makes me wonder just how large plasma is. i don't know how significant rhea is, but plasma can't be too big if this ostensibly random grunt has received a pokémon from the guy on top, right?
Rhea's smol Plasma, yeah! Definite inspiration from OSJ/CD on making the teams less cartoonish by ditching their full Team Evil monikers and trying to bring them more in line with an activist group. Plasma specifically I think would have a pretty large base for grassroots (compared to a lot of the other Team Evils), simply because a lot of what they're asking can be done on an individual level without breaking any laws (compared to like, blowing up pipelines/volcanoes).

Probably the most unrealistic thing about this fic is the Plasma timeline, lol--they go from relatively small to large enough that Ghetsis and N are recognized on the national stage when they're pushing for policy change at the League, but that's kind of the nature of the plot I'm borrowing from, and I defend myself by saying that they were doing a lot of work before they officially called themselves Plasma. Rhea got in pretty early, back before N became like, the figurehead he becomes.

on that note: tourmaline 🥺 it's a crazy coincidence both that she ended up with cheren and that she previously belonged to N. it kind of seems like that would have come up during her conversation with carnel, who also belonged to N if memory serves—did that come up and i just missed it? now that tourmaline's made an appearance here i am assuming the most recent chapter "nepeta" is related to her, so looking forward to that. she's got a very unique take on the situation; i almost feel like ace could have served as a good foil to her, a pokémon with a highly developed opinion on the pokémon liberation issue due to his circumstances, but in the opposite direction as a cop rather than a member of plasma.
okay I lied the most unrealistic thing about this fic is probably Tourmaline's zig-zagging, lol. I just got really infatuated with the idea that N used to battle with a boldore and a purrloin, and coincidentally roughly around the time they leave his team, Cheren shows up with a boldore and a purrloin.

I like the two additions you suggest here though--that she and Carnel could talk about it in Carnel's chapter, and that she and Ace could probably have some interesting dialogue here. Not sure how to incorporate either of them at the time (esp the second one), but I'll think about it!

oh man. not ROAD BLOCKAGE. she's going to feel the full fury of the justice system now.
truly the WORST
i thought taking the away in the first place was wrong!? i really like the way you've constructed cheren's argument here; it doesn't really seem to be coming from a coherent ideology so much as a series of knee-jerk reactions to whatever particular point rhea is making at the time. feels very real.
I really lovehate writing the dialogue in this section because, yeah, neither of them are actually having a coherent conversation. They're just trying to snip at the other. The goalposts here are moving fast enough to get a track and field record.
noooo. :( i was wondering if it was her but decided probably not. i can't believe she ends up with cheren. what shitty luck. poor girl.
She has shitty luck, and also she has good IV's, sooooooooooooooooo
wasn't it twice for yes before?
shit, u rite! fixed
gotta preface this one with the confession that this chapter got mad points from me for the mechanical mon pov alone. i'm a sucker for xenofic and it seems to me like mechanical/mineral/etc. pokémon are very much a strong suit of yours. i was in love with the carnel chapter and this one hits all the same buttons. so many lovely little turns of phrase, such a quirky flow of consciousness, everything so elegantly and seamlessly integrated into the narrative without getting in its way. just a delight to read overall.
This one was like, the second in a long line of chapters where I said "this premise is absolutely fucking batshit but I'm publishing it anyway" (Ghetsis vs League / what if cameras had souls being the first), and I'm always surprised that it lands so well with people haha. Writing "what if gears lecture about P=NP foRmULas N" in my outline was such a bruh moment but I'm thrilled that it works lol.
this chapter didn't feel quite revelatory to me in the ways that previous ones have, but it's got an awesome narrator and we spent some time with best boy, so that's okay. the dialogue really felt like a math lecture to me, and i mean that in a good way. spur is, after all, essentially lecturing N on his point of view, and he does it in a fairly mathematical/Logical with a capital L manner. when N's understanding falters, spur quickly changes gears. very methodical. this is the most optimal design. this fic is very special in the way it takes a single issue and deconstructs it in many ways based on the wildly disparate backgrounds of the pov character, and i think this chapter shines the most brightly so far in that regard. i appreciate that, while spur probably isn't saying anything N hasn't heard before, it seems to really hit home for once because the point is being cast in a new light. makes perfect sense that mr. fOrMuLaS himself would be receptive to spur's particular flavor of reasoning. looks like it didn't dissuade him though, all things considered. and we know spur sticks with N to the very end (beginning?), which is nice.
<3
the insight into hilda's motivations was... sad. i honestly didn't get Sad vibes from her before but it makes sense. i'm curious how she's been let down, as N described. i doubt that question will go unanswered. so far i'm not finding her quite as intriguing as N, but we've also seen much less of her; she's not quite as pivotal all things considered, seeing as she's not the leader of a mass social movement, and her pokémon don't all seem to have quite such strong feelings about her. looking forward to seeing more of her though.
Hilda's a knot I struggle to untangle sometimes lol. I have a general idea of what I wanted her to be doing for this story, but for the most part she's inconsequential to the narrators beyond the pokemon she directly owns--because, at the end of the day, the player in BW does very little constructive in Unova. I don't actually know what most pokemon would think about her, so she ends up relegating to the sidelines--their problems are either definitely about her, or not at all.
well maybe you should have thought of that before you became a steel/grass type.
BW OU rain team called it wants its domination back
this made me lol. i love this guy.
"fuck fuck fuck what do i name this thing uhhhhhhhhhhhh well here's a bad answer" is such a universal mood
"which seems inefficient" lmfao.
i found it a little weird for him to say "she" suddenly here as though the subject is understood. maybe "the trainer we battled" or something?
"why do you gather all of this air only to spit it back out immediately after"
-- spur, probably

you're right, hmm. I get stuck because Spur only communicates in sentences that are 6 or 12 words long (they are a pair of gears, each with 6 teeth; optimal design), so a lot of the phrasing gets difficult on the first pass lol.
kind of expected "optimal" rather than "ideal" here, heh.
oh heh I love this. I was going for Truth vs Ideals but this is a lot more fun.
ah, so it's not a pun on "bigger." okay, you get a pass this once.
it's not, haha. I needed a one word moniker for how klinklang would think of themselves as different from klink and klang,,, and,,, well.
ooof. deep insight into flesh from a gearling. i really like this because it feels true on a deep level but also perfectly reasonable for a klingklang to see clearly. they, by nature of existing, feel complete and whole in a silent way once they find their partner. of course humans, who forever lack that satisfaction, would seem incomplete and lonely.
many thanks to you for stopping by on this weird mess of a journey <3

(general typo fixes happened here; thank you for patiently bringing these to my attention!)

One of those bits where there's a neat line but I'm not sure what it actually means, haha. (Also, shouldn't that be "by the"?)
lmao yes I do these all the time; please continue to call me out on them. it's a definite weakness of mine.
Pretty sure there's a word missing, and possibly also mixed-up order? (i.e. I assume she learned to talk with her mouth instead of her hands, rather than vice versa?)
oooh yup!
This is a nice detail, Sienna getting assumed priority for walking beside Iris even though she's currently engaged in conversation with Hilda.
haha, yeah, Iris and Sienna are fun because I get to yeet all of the normal priorities that most of the trainers have.
Only here it turns out actual change is achieved through the flashiest, glitziest means possible, doesn't it.
It does. I think that's kind of the irony of BW, and maybe one I should use this chapter to acknowledge (since by now it's known that Hilda is tapped for the dark stone)--this actually is the kind of world where big flashy change can be real.
Huh. Hilda can't have understood it all that well, can she. Surprised to hear she was anything that could count as involved?
A little bit for the early parts, and then naturally in Unova's political climate this gets way overblown (which pisses off both her and Plasma probably, lol).
Yeah, I'm kind of confused by what you're getting at thematically here. Hilda is an idealist, but a very hypocritical one, and then you've got this bit that's all about the weary belief Hilda's idealism doesn't work because things don't change overnight - only then it turns out things do change overnight, only it's not Hilda who does it, and we never technically find out if she would have been able to. I don't know, this feels a bit muddled to me? I feel like the story's trying to make a point with this, but I'm not at all sure what that point is meant to be. (Maybe here it's mainly about the fact the change they're fighting for is something rather different.)
Mmm, yeah, I think you're hitting the nail on what trips me up about this chapter structurally. I'm not sure if I have an immediate fix but I'm definitely partial to digging more into how Hilda really could believe in overnight change as a legitimate solution since she has a big dragon.
Hmm, the way he phrases this feels kind of at odds with the message he presumably actually wants to send? What happens to those who take action is they get arrested and are subject to brutality, while those who stand idly by are left alone, which is bad, suppressing activism for his cause. But this whole phrasing of "the time has come for the world to see what happens to people who X" is usually used in a triumphant sort of way, when the speaker thinks the thing that's going to happen to people who X is exactly what they deserve - particularly "what happens to those who stand idly by" really sounds like a veiled threat. Unless I'm entirely missing what he's referring to, it feels weird.
also fair! rephrased this; honestly not sure what I was thinking when I wrote the first draft, but now it's more along the lines of what happens to the world when people stand idly instead of acting
Well... surely Iris is an angry activist to Skyla and a complacent gym leader to Hilda, but would either of them afford Sienna the agency to consider her that?
Sienna's chapter is one in which I struggle with the lack of a second-person plural in English lol--she uses "you" for herself and for herself/Iris almost interchangeably, but it really doesn't come across when I can only use "you". Tweaked the phrasing a bit regardless.
Slightly funny phrasing; you seem to be going for nobody having an inkling that the protest will erupt into violence, but by saying none of the Pokémon seem to hide their fear, you're implying that they are afraid, just not hiding it (i.e. that they're very visibly afraid). Presumably you were going for "if the Pokémon were afraid, they would hide it from their trainers, but they don't seem to be afraid at all", in which case I think clearer phrasing might be something like "none of the Pokémon seem to be hiding fear"?
Oh yeah this one got pretty muddled. Sienna is used to hiding emotions on behalf of Iris and is projecting quite a bit, but I agree that none of that was clear in the original phrasing of that paragraph.
Huh, this seems contradictory? Does she think N believes she's one of the lucky ones, or that N believes she's in chains? (Also, "choose to live among him"? Just as in, among humans, when N is in the end a human?)
oh boy, a lot went wrong in that paragraph. Ditched the line about "lucky ones", and then the end was just my brain thinking one thing while I typed another--it's supposed to be "among them", lol.
"Pokémon never tell lies" is kind of an odd slogan; suggesting Pokémon can't lie sort of denies their agency, doesn't it. It makes good sense to emphasize believing Pokémon when they speak of their own suffering, of course, but literally asserting that they never lie is in a whole other category, I think. Was this a canon thing, maybe? I can't recall. (It's also kind of amusing on the heels of the Inari chapter, which is all about Pokémon who live for deception.)
"pokemon never tell lies" is a canon thing N says in Mistralton, yeah! It's one of the more interesting lines in BW for me because it does suggest that N puts pokemon on a pedestal a bit--like you say, it strips them of the agency to be shitty people lol (which I do think is in-character for N to believe, tbf--he's not right about a lot of things).

But for the more nuanced take, the point I wanted his speech to build to is more the first one that you pointed out, with the first half of that sentence "when asked about the nature of their own suffering"--N means to say we should believe them when they speak of their own suffering, and frankly humans shouldn't really be speaking in that conversation at all. Unsure; I'm not a huge fan of how that line lands at the moment. Added some clarification about the counterpoint--how if you claim to speak for someone that you don't understand, you can't help but lie even if your intentions are good.
Hmm, this sounds like Sienna's just not really noticed at all, so I'm not sure what you mean by her being "too powerful not to [command their presence]".
oh, I think there's a meaningful distinction between "commanding presence" and "drawing their attention" that past-me did not consider.
Zahhak is so condescending to a fellow Pokémon who disagrees with him. Where's that respect for Sagaris now, huh?
lmao he is a salty boi; that much is constant
I thought this chapter started off kind of slowly, with Sienna not feeling like she had much of an identity of her own, but it really came into its own in the latter half, I think. The whole colonialism angle, and how the liberation movement kind of naïvely ignores human suffering, is really good; more of that good nuance and characters with different legitimate views.

The look at League politics and sponsored trainers and the way they're kind of marketed and made property and reduced to stereotypes is also deeply uncomfortable. Still looking forward to getting more on Hilda's family!
It is! this is a strange one, but I do like this chapter for the kind of nuance it brings to the whole argument--a lot of the pokemon narrators wouldn't really be particularly vested or privy to the issues that humans inflict on one another, but Sienna certainly would know firsthand. I do especially like canon!N's status as "king"--it doesn't port super literally here (since like, what even does a king of Team Plasma do), but I do think he grew up in a world sheltered from the more human-on-human conflicts in a way that people like Hilda and Iris were not. And pokemon do kind of represent an equalizer, in a sense--you basically can access huge amounts of power in a way that has no analogue in our own social system, so I think there's a pretty compelling counter-narrative when the silver spoon king says hey, give that up and make do with what you've got.

And then, yeah, pokemon both represent an equalizer and also just another way that we'd probably commodify the shit out of them and do sponsored trainers and bad politics and diva personalities lol.

Glad you enjoyed this chapter even though it was a little rocky! Pardon my dust as I continue making edits, heh.

Noticing their names feel very Bouba-like, as in Bouba vs. Kiki. Appropriate!
Ooh, this was actually not at all intentional! I am Learning a lot today though.

The real naming scheme is a lot less cool imo (seriously, that's such a fascinating linguistics rabbithole; thank you): Denebola, Venant, and Albieba are named after stars in the Leo constellation, said to foretell kings.
Neat! Not an interpretation I've seen before but it's a fun one. Also, it's interesting she seemingly feels Amara's upcoming death (assuming I'm reading that correctly), and reacts to it with distress but in an entirely different sort of way than someone like a human would. She must be used to the things she senses being things she can't change or affect so there's no reason to try or tell anyone who wouldn't be able to do anything useful with it either? Something like that.
Yeah, that's pretty much on the nose!

Lovely moment of sympathetic Hilda. Implies so much. (Guessing the three chirps are a "the assumptions in this question are wrong" kind of deal?)
ha yeah, three chirps is "this binary communication is really inefficient"
Interesting. I definitely didn't get the impression previously that Reylin wasn't being made to battle, but I'd have to reread to be sure. Still kind of confused. Just earlier you said Hilda getting a fourth Pokémon at all just made things more difficult, but here you imply she couldn't stop making him battle until she'd stopped needing a fourth; this feels kind of contradictory. I guess initially taking care of him just made things more difficult and subsequently she came to need and depend on him? But then you did say she figured out he didn't want to fight within fifteen minutes...

I guess the reason Hilda's not just releasing him is because he has no natural habitat anymore and can't hunt after being raised in captivity, or something along those lines? It's a little funny to me that that goes entirely unstated, since it seems like the main core point here and there's no obvious reason she'd have a hard time voicing this to herself, etc. She does say "Where would you go?" but it's not really obvious that there could not possibly be a place for him in the wild.
Reylin's stuck in the whole commodification of training/sponsored training trap--he's a gift from Lenora, so there's a lot of pressure from Hilda to show him off in battle.
Huh. I really got the impression she didn't believe he could in the Reylin chapter.
I think she's kind of clutching for straws in that argument because she's upset--in this one it's pretty hard to interpret N producing Jericho's name out of nowhere as anything but being told it, but also, a plausible explanation could be that he and Plasma have been monitoring her and he's just dropping that information as a ruse.
aaaaaaaaaaa
The Vaselva bit was an addition by Pen during beta reading 2.0 of this chapter ahahaha. It hurts so bad.
I'm guessing this is a symptom of the same lack of conviction that made Reshiram initially reject him? I guess he can't really imagine what his ideal future looks like until he conceives of separating humans and Pokémon altogether.
he cannot, yeah--I think he has a lot of small scale things, but the more he understands about the truth of the world, the less he can believe in the way it could be
Awww. Being nostalgic for a past doesn't seem like it'd be an uncommon thing, though; surely Denebola would have encountered it before?
[...]

Hmmm. So the reason N doesn't have an intelligible vision other than his vision of the past is that... he thinks things will just go back to being the same? But that's hardly the ideal that he wants, right? And the particular memory he was recalling seemed pretty happy, so that hardly represents some awareness that things will become bad again? I kind of love this in principle but I can't actually make sense of how it connects to N's vision being an image from the past... Dunno if I'm just missing what you were going for here or what.
I think it's more that he's never seen it be someone's true goal--Denebola sees what you want but not necessarily what you actually think will happen. It's the "if you could shape the world any way you want it, no rules, what would it be?" and N's secret answer here is a regression to a world that was very much bound by bad rules; he just chooses to ignore them.
A monster with green hair, eh.
Like father like son!

Hmm, but isn't this an image of the beginning of the fic, i.e. what actually happens, which is not Hilda's ideal world?
Yeah, struggled with how much I wanted to put on the paper here vs how much I could spread out as background--in this moment Denebola evolves. Duosion canonically have two separate brains (whereas solosis have one). In this hc, reuniclus split into two solosis at the end of their life; the solosis grow up with one another; they then each evolve into a duosion with two brains (one of which is the solosis brain and one of which is the imprint of the other solosis). And fully-fledged reuiniclus have super powerful precognitive capabilities as a combination of both brains. Normally, since the two solosis live together, they're used to seeing both forms of precog before they evolve into duosion; however, since Albieba died early, Denebola lost that.

Denebola had the half that could sense what people wanted to become reality, while Albieba had the half that could sense the actual future (one might say truth vs ideals)--in this moment, the second brain is formed and the ability to see the true/non-ideal future is returned.
This was a fascinating POV, and I enjoyed Hilda a lot here. I did feel almost like she's an entirely different character than she has been, who understands N a lot better and is a whole lot more attentive to her Pokémon, but I'm guessing that's more because I got that impression of her from the earlier chapters and have been reading her in that light since? Ideally I should probably reread to get a better idea with more insight but I don't know that I'm going to have the time for that in the near future.
It's a bit of column A (I did some back editing) and a bit of column B (she's younger here). Starting with B: I think a lot of her actions are kind of boiling the frog--she takes Amara up north; Amara dislikes the snow; going back to a warmer climate simply isn't an option (because oops half the country thinks I'm the destined savior and I need to hatch a dragon out of a rock); she lets Amara outside less and less; their communication falls apart. It's very "do the ends justify the means", except we see the ends first and we realize they're kind of shitty. By the end, which is where we first see her, Hilda's definitely made a mess of bad decisions, and because she's being viewed by the people who were most affected by her decisions, they aren't super great at understanding the road of goodfaith choices that got her there.

But then, also, I did try to tone her back from the initial drafts based on feedback--I don't think there's much to be gained by making Hilda an unreasonably awful/unlistening caricature of training, so I did do some changes there. Definitely no pressure to reread though; the changes are pretty minor.
The whole deal with Hilda having been set up to fail by Elesa, and her frustration at the system and sad depressing ferris wheel ride, and the horrid dystopian TV crew stopping her and N from getting to talk and maybe come to an understanding, is just really sad. I really enjoyed Hilda makinga snap decision to insist on battling N to minimize the attention on him - that's clever and sad and after having complained about the notion of them having a battle in the first place, yeah, I do like this actually.
Yeah, second half Hilda definitely gets a better shake than first half Hilda as far as sympathy--we get to see why she feels driven to the ends that she is, and she's gotten a pretty shitty hand that she's tried to do the best with. She's smart and can make those snap decisions/recognize the shitty things with Elesa that you point out, but it doesn't really ... help her. :(
I'm kind of amused by how much of this chapter is like, intriguing foreshadowing for what happens in an earlier chapter, haha. I continue to be really curious how the fic'd come across if you just read it in reverse order.
I'm pretty fascinated by that tbh--I certainly haven't done it though, and I don't expect anyone else to.

Thank you for stopping by again! Always a treat.

Apologies for the rather late Catnip review, but here it is!
Ha, no worries whatsoever! As you can tell I am also rather late on the replies. Welcome back!
However, this also lends itself to the double edged sword I believe I was picky with last time: the clarity. Perhaps it seems obvious at first glance as the writer, but I had difficulty realising who or what the perspective was for a while. The vague descriptions of various Pokémon and even Cheren himself work incredibly well in-universe, as they sound like what a closeted Pokémon like Boldore would probably identify them as.
I think you're definitely right here--lots of layers of confusion that I struggle to get around with because of who the narrator is. I tried to clean things up a little, although on some level I think a lot of those details will end up being blurry--to Carnel it almost doesn't matter if it's a simisage or a lilligant blocking his way out of the exit; he's more upset that the exit is being blocked, sorta thing.
As for the content itself, I loved it. Kind of a darker take on the concept of Pokémon training and well connected to the earlier chapters. Boldore’s innocent thoughts and responses to Liepard’s words made me sympathise quite a bit! Their last conversation towards the end of the chapter is sticking to me a bit, too. If I may say something cheeky, I’m a little sad that we won’t get to see how their companionship develops, since we’ve already seen the climax of the story. Or maybe I’m wrong? I want to be!
Ha, lips are sealed here! But I'm glad you liked them both--this was definitely a fun duo to mess around with.
I’m not really sure what else to talk about, to be honest. Not much of note happens in this chapter, besides emphasizing points and concepts made in earlier chapters. That’s not a complaint with the chapter itself, as it definitely should be here! Perhaps a little more interaction between Cheren and Hilda or something, with them giving a little more context to the greater plot in their conversation? It was very briefly touched upon here, but it was an interesting little part, too. Or perhaps it’s fine as it is, and mine is just nitpicking. I won’t know until I read the full thing.
We do get to see more of Hilda and Cheren--they exist on the peripherals in the beginning, but they start coming in a lot more as the story progresses. I'm glad you're enjoying so far though, and thank you so much for the kind review!

hi kint! here for catnip, but terribly late. really sorry about that.
omg never apologize for being late here I am sitting on review replies for four months lmao
ix. nidifugous

small thing, but i noticed the little pokémon icon for this chapter is tirtouga rather than archen. wasn't sure if that was intentional since i'm getting based on other reviews that this chapter may have been from zara's pov.
fuck me

backstory: I was looking up icons, I saw that the tirtouga icon was really cute, and then it was so cute that I forgot to keep looking up icons. seriously. what a cute little bean.
not sure if you intended this here (although i wouldn't be surprised!), but i see a lot of hilda in zara, and a lot of N in reylin. like hilda, zara is very headstrong—they're both strong-willed, and neither of them really seem to pause to reconsider their positions. zara speaks as if everything he does is a simple and obvious thing to do, and though hilda doesn't speak that way quite as much, she certainly acts like it. meanwhile, reylin is skeptical, self-doubting, and searching, just like N. the bit where reylin muses about ~a different life~ where they swap trainers was interesting to me. and reylin's later defection sort of feels like a glimpse into an alternate world, too—what if hilda joined N? what if the two dragons agreed? 👁️ like N and hilda, the two fossils are also sort of Apart from the other pokémon—they're Chosen, and if you really stretch it, they even communicate in an ancient language others can't fully appreciate—the language of truth and ideals and warring dragons! some neat parallels.
they ARE
yesssss haha. Pokemon as foils to different humans is such a fun concept that I love exploring, because the AU of "this is you if you weren't treated like a person" is both horrible and really fascinating imo.
thank you for hitting this nail on the head haha. really fun to see when those concepts get called out by readers
there are a lot of really neat bits of worldbuilding that i enjoyed a lot in this one. the Beeg Tortle myth was super awesome for one thing. i also really enjoyed the bits about P2, and how the abusive attitudes toward pokémon run much deeper than the training community—even academics are smacking their priceless resurrected artifacts around! the little genesect reference was cool too. i can't fully remember, but i feel like genesect had team plasma's fingerprints on it in canon—i wonder if they're involved with it here, too? i doubt we'll find out, but it's interesting to think about. just how much of team plasma's operation is N privy to?
I definitely don't go into it here, but P2 was an offshoot of Plasma that (for? reasons???) wanted to create the strongest pokemon ever and did a lot of weird gene research and resurrection shit. N shut it down in the games apparently, and I think in this hc he gets beaten to the punch--P2 deals with both Plasma and government grants, and the Unovan government wasn't when they found out their super expensive turtle resurrection project just wandered off into the ocean one day. So P2 loses funding, shuts down, and liquidates its assets.
i appreciated the way that this chapter sort of turned my perception of N and hilda's dynamic on its head, at least on a class/economic level. i sort of perceive N as like, a recently uplifted underdog type of guy with a background of poverty, whereas hilda seems a little more privileged—i figured she came from a good family with a happy childhood, had a personal relationship with juniper herself, etc. but it turns out that she doesn't see it that way at all! i wonder what the truth of that is, exactly.
Oh wild, I definitely have different takes for sure haha! N strikes me as being groomed for kingship since birth; maybe it makes him deeply uncomfortable but he's grown up in a place of relative privilege and isolation. I'm probably more than a lot corrupted from all the fanart of smol!King N lmao. And Hilda we definitely see more about is all I can say lol.
the misunderstanding between N and hilda was painful to read, and i agree with what osj said about it feeling very reasonable from both ends—in particular i like how it both fed into and drew from hilda's paranoia about N's motives. i do think you could get a little more out of it, though; we know already that reylin ultimately defects, and his little question here has obvious relevancy to that. i wonder if he couldn't maybe think more consciously about that, maybe asking this question as sort of a test? the dots are there and i definitely connected them myself, but i think i wanted to see reylin connect them, too. i think it could sort of draw all those pieces of reylin's arc as we've seen it so far into a single moment and drive a spear through it—as-is they feel connected but still separate, if that makes sense.
👀 yes this makes sense. taking diligent notes here. I think the ending is still a bit abrupt and I want to coax it a bit more.
anyway, super good stuff! as i said, i'm a huge sucker for archen, and i really adored some of the cute imagery you set up here, with reylin peering down at his little buddy in a bucket, combating his poor attention span. they are perfect babies.
ur fanart for this was such a fucking national treasure I cannot thank you enough
HOP omg i can already tell this chapter is gonna be GOATed
archen is such a good friend omg
awww. my boy.
look if you really think about it cobblestone streets are kind of fascinating there are so many different kinds of rocks all in one place how do you think they feel about being next to each other where did they all come from what are they doing there?
i'm curious, is this based on something? or did you just sorta spitball?
This one is spitballing--I don't actually have good background examples for what isolation languages would look like! But I think since this was just a language that Zara and Reylin roughly evolved on their own and, bless them, they have six brain cells between them, they broke a lot of rules when they were inventing things. Tenses I think would be the first thing for them to yeet--growing up in confinement causing weird perceptions of time and not really emphasizing thinking about the future/past, yada yada.
i love how goofy and inarticulate N is in this chapter, especially compared to later on. neat how it seems to reference the fact that he talks abnormally quickly in the games, too. the change in his speech really shows how he developed as a person—or a human, i suppose—in the time between now and the end/beginning.
ha lmao this evolution low-key breaks my heart--with each chapter he gets to be progressively more vulnerable, because he's less and less on a pedestal and progressively just becoming this chill guy who thinks the best of people.
seems like N has rubbed off on him a bit. maybe the fact that his lungs are adapted to life underwater helps him talk longer without coming up for a breath... 🧐
This wasn't my intent but this is such a good canon can i steal it? thanks

really good point here actually
checkm8
i wonder what he did mean, then?
small bird learns that asking people personal questions might lead to them responding impersonally; more news at 11 :(
ouch ouch ouch ouch. ooooof. i wonder if we'll get more information about this as we approach the beginning/end of the story, as we near numeva town.
👀

Thank you as always for stopping by! and a thousand thanks for blessing me with turtle bucket fanart, holy shit, I love them.

Bold of you to give yourself a post-by date.
yeah I'm kicking myself rn
I like how even your shitposts are thoughtful. And scathingly self-aware.

Wow. Really intruiged by Hilda's descent into madness, here. Can't wait until she wakes up to find it was all a dream, but the top whirlipede is still spinning and spinning and spinning and
this one actually isn't supposed to be Hilda! Bold of me, I know, to have a chapter with two completely different narrators, so that disconnect is on me lmao. But it's April Fool's Day and the rules are made up and the points don't matter. The most important character that we definitely need to hear from is waffles-kun, a trainer who just woke up and at breakfast and got his starter and isn't here for N's BULLSHIT and is going to punch team plasma in the face with violence and
But I love the idea that's she's convinced she can understand them when it's clear she's just projecting herself onto them. And woof because golly gee isn't that just a thing we all do. :c WELP.
Yeah have you considered that I wrote pokemon who like the natural order of this and therefore no counterpoints could exist?

Lies. Pixie.
she didn't visit last year, when this fic didn't exist, sooooooo
Good call not giving us a year for that April 11.
this is becoming increasingly tempting
 
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unrepentantAuthor

A cat that writes stories.
Location
UK
Pronouns
they/she
Partners
  1. purrloin-salem
  2. sneasel-dusk
  3. luz-companion
  4. brisa-companion
  5. meowth-laura
  6. delphox-jesse
  7. mewtwo
  8. zeraora
“We did this one last year.”

I started reading this one and then ended up reading nnaturally instead. So coming back to this one, I was fully expecting absurd and hilarious nonsense. It really wasn't that kind of fic, huh! I parsed this one as being a kind of satire of the very idea of resolving the BW-era ideological conflict by simply asserting that pokémon are all always fine with the status quo and have sufficient agency already. The viewpoint character seems to experience a fragile illusion of such an idealised world, through the force of their stubborn insistence on that interpretation. It was certainly effective at making such a vision of the pokémon world feel inherently absurd in the moment, although my full perspective on this oneshot will likely incubate in me a while longer. Very well-written shitpost that stopped feeling like an AFD joke very quickly, even despite the 'line breaks'.
 
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kintsugi

golden scars | pfp by sun
Location
the warmth of summer in the songs you write
Pronouns
she/her
Partners
  1. silvally-grass
  2. lapras
  3. golurk
  4. booper-kintsugi
  5. meloetta-kint-muse
  6. meloetta-kint-dancer
  7. murkrow
  8. yveltal
I started reading this one and then ended up reading nnaturally instead.
Aww hey uA! Thanks for stopping by on both of these. Definitely two different flavors across the years, but thanks for leaving your thoughts on both!

So coming back to this one, I was fully expecting absurd and hilarious nonsense. It really wasn't that kind of fic, huh! I parsed this one as being a kind of satire of the very idea of resolving the BW-era ideological conflict by simply asserting that pokémon are all always fine with the status quo and have sufficient agency already. The viewpoint character seems to experience a fragile illusion of such an idealised world, through the force of their stubborn insistence on that interpretation. It was certainly effective at making such a vision of the pokémon world feel inherently absurd in the moment, although my full perspective on this oneshot will likely incubate in me a while longer. Very well-written shitpost that stopped feeling like an AFD joke very quickly, even despite the 'line breaks'.
I think, like many of us, I stopped actually writing pokemon fic a long time ago--this is written about pokemon, but it wasn't really in response to Pokemon. The germination for this chapter came more or less from [spoilered for US politics/current events that aren't super fun] back-to-back mass shootings in two different cities I've come to call home, and the rhetoric that tends to follow--oh, no, this isn't the time to start ugly legal conversations about gun violence; that isn't what the victims would've wanted. And I always find that kind of rhetoric equally fascinating and scary because it's so easy to project your thoughts on someone else--if I were to talk about what those people wanted, for example, I'd assume their primary want would've been [spoilered for same reason] not being shot, but again, that's still me imposing my thoughts in a scenario where it's functionally impossible for me to know what they really would've thought.

And that to me is the paradox when you claim to speak on behalf of the voiceless, and a trap I fall into as well--whether, like in the example above, the voiceless aren't actually able to speak for themselves, whether your voice has power over them, or [cw--link has references to sexual violence in a political context] whether your voice is louder--it sure is convenient that the things the voiced say the voiceless are saying and the things the voiced want to say line up so nicely, isn't it? Even if I doubt the voiced would want to be treated the way they say the voiceless want it.

the 16 non-April Fool's chapters that come before this are explorations on voice. Arguably there's a more nuanced take in there since I wasn't explicitly writing satire, but in a sense this fic has always been grappling with the idea of who gets to speak, who has listen, and who doesn't. Writing presents an interesting middle ground on speaking for the voiceless because as authors that's fundamentally our jobs--our characters are voiceless without us, but it's easy for us to fall into the trap of making them say the things we want them to, so for a lark I leaned into that.

is it parody? sure. is it fun? no, honestly, I think I peaked with nnaturally, but here we are.

thanks for stopping by!
 
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Rainfall

minVP ADC atomic step action potential
Location
blue-green spinning rock
Pronouns
he/they
Partners
  1. minior
Hi kintsugi.

Passing by here. I confess that I haven't read further than I already had long ago, and I plan to get there, eventually; I also confess that I have silly reasons for commenting now: I wanted to be post 137 in the thread here. : )
I still don't know much and have plenty to find out about the story, and I expect that I won't have very much to say on it, now, later, maybe ever. A lot of it may just a personal rehash as I process the story! And now my typical leading words flotsam is already getting too long, maybe longer than the review.

Edit: coming back even within hours to look over it, and oh my word, my writing and communication hasn't changed much from high school or college.
If anyone thinks "What is this grammar? Why is it so bad and what's the structure here?" or "What the fuck do these words even mean??", then you're not alone. I don't know what I was thinking about my writing, and I don't know how to make it better at the moment, lol.
--various minor edits [UTC 210425] - misremembered Phyrrhic as Byronic; quotes for term "people", and clarif. ; add song rec note; added Edit note re: my incoherent writing; clarif. in cracking link; remove line about too much of notes on the song; wording on fire to be less "??"; listen-repeat num; bloodflow conjunctions fix;

For now, a few notes here for the "title song" and o: end. Pretty much all commentary/reaction is line-by-lines since I know nothing else and don't have much to say on overall structure.
___

I did listen to The Beekeeper previously, and just did again. Seems like this was from WildBoots and Pen. (The first times I heard the song, it did not do it for me, yet now it's just! wow.) The orchestra! the piano. the vocalist. the choir. the drums, the strings, the wind instruments. The (pre & post)-echoing chorus, the solemn walk, the stillness in the night, the stalwart-spirit march, fist upraised, eyes unfazed.

Am not particularly good at understanding song lyrics (I have laughable examples of this), so I'll take the path of incidental personal reaction to it (and, in theory, revisit as I read more). Seems that the song may be really fitting! Its somber and stirring mood, its subjects.

our tools and our reason [song quote]
Hand and mind. Humankind in the world. Nowhere near the only one with awareness and ability to build, but still distinctive. What is fire, here? What is fire.
it's clear in the animals eyes [song quote]
I do not know why, I initially read this as the upright walkers being clearly different in the other animals' eyes. Seems obvious now that the default reading is that the soul, essence, cognition processing unit, human possibility, is clear in our, humankind's, eyes. Sockets to the seat of being.

(Still hung up on the kindred instruments. Cleaving and furrowing, cultivation or healing, by incision & division?)
What becomes of the colony? Did we bring the night upon ourselves?
___

Beginning at the end.
/(Insert old joke about reviewing this story backwards for a conventional progression.)
The moment before it all ends is serene.
Eye of the hurricane.
Serenity. A peace, where everything is broken and approaching irreparable shambles.

A crack slowly spreads down the stone, reaching out across the room to trace through all the chaos. Time seems to slow down as it crawls across the battle.
Cleaving and furrowing, rending asunder, is there a way to put the pieces back? (Coming back to this before posting: I was initially thinking of The Beekeeper and the no-return choice presented by Reshiram, and just realized: these all link to the kintsugi concept.)

Time is from the perspective of Natural, it seems. "trace through all the chaos" has a nice feel to it. Crawling time is quite the sense, too.

Bits and pieces of them have crumbled inward, shattering on the marble of the floor, but the tiny splinters there immediately dissolve into the web of fractures that’s starting to swallow up the entire room.
Lovely description. Two pillars down (Corinthian, but any other two? Yin and yang? Hilda and Natural? Humans and pokemon? (Ends vs. means?) ), and the interconnected edifice is breaking in a "web of fractures".

It’s more reassuring to look at them in slow motion—were time going at its normal speed, the lack of spinning would be painfully obvious.
Feels like a heart that is no longer even fitfully beating, simply not pumping at all, with bloodflow that is perilously still.
Reuniclus and carracosta, too, beaten up and beaten down.

Closer still. A serperior is frozen in mid-leap, every leaf on her body glowing with green light, so bright that it blots out her face.
They are still striving with all their might, serperior and trainer.

The human’s face is smeared with dust, but her eyes brim with dark flame.
Hello, fighter and defender. Beaten down but still fighting to the very last.

An archeops rises up to meet the serperior and her human, his wings halfway down, talons outstretched. Even when still, his plumage is a feathery blur of brick red, leafy green, sky blue.
Very much enjoy this imagery.

White-feathered wings unfurl across the room, bringing all under their shadow. Blue eyes blaze with all the intensity of a dying star. Their mouth is open in a roar so loud that it blots out all other sound, all other commotion, except—
Very fun contrast, where the white-feathered being of fire casts shadows under them. Blazing eyes with the intensity of a dying star, what a stellar comparison : o Burning at its zenith, both in terms of end of life and peak power, potentially barreling toward a supernova. And blotting out all other sound, except the question, the choice that portends no return...

{Is this what you want, Hero of Truth? If you and I act together as one, what we do here will never be able to be undone, by my power or any other’s.}

Pokémon never tell lies. There won’t be any coming back from this.
An event horizon for the nature of the world? For collapsed bridges, of what form? As noted later, is this Rubicon really worth it? For people, and/or pokemon?

Pokémon never tell lies.
This statement was featured in the title post. I believe psychology (or certain studies within it) may have showed us that many of us are much more prone to lie than we realize. Once the baseline brain power to conceive of possibilities and references is there, it's available. What does this bode for the nature of pokemon? What's the context in the first place. Is it beyond statements? I'll just have to read on to find illumination on it.

In the corner of the room, at the foot of the dais, is the collapsed form of Zekrom. The ancient scales are charred; raw wounds leak blue blood onto the granite. The stone tiles are cratered; the dragon of legends lies unconscious. Sand slowly leaks down around their form, hazing the edges.
Zekrom is already defeated, razed and unconscious. Removed to a corner, vs. the epicenter. Sand is slowly percolating, perhaps in a forceful depression in the ground where they lie, or perhaps to an underground space below. Perhaps not, but potentially they are being slowly interred. Innumerable, featureless particles, but together they can help erase a set of possibilities and even the memory of a different future.

Pokémon. Humans. Black. White. Two worlds that have spent so long trying to merge into one balance, and yet—the interplay was always distinct. Every yin has a yang; at the center of each darkness is a drop of light, but between them there was and would always be a line. Pretending it’s not there doesn’t make the line stop existing.
Separation and interweaving. Extremities, boundaries, relationships. Fun philosophical elements to consider at the core of the tao duo, tao trio.
Here noting that everything is connected, but that the distinctions among entities and groups are real, and that they matter? Perhaps indicating that some limits to cohesion or cooperation may be built-in?

Is it wrong to believe that this was the only ending? Perhaps. But was there a better way? Was there a diverging branch that got overlooked, a path that led to an ideal world where everyone was happy? Probably. Was it worth letting thousands of people suffer while you tried to find the route that left their oppressors undisturbed? No.
Mmmm, interesting. Optimal pathsearching given constraint conditions, limited info, and individual agency by all participating parties, of which there are many. Is a world where everyone is happy possible? Maybe, and also sounds frightfully elusive. And the eternal consideration: do the ends justify the means? Here turned around in some sense. Life/reality is there, you don't really get to experiment all-out to find a best solution. Natural deems that the real suffering of even thousands isn't worth the additional time needed to discover and forge a different path and hopeful conclusion.

(And is "people" in the general sense here, or is it very specifically for a certain set of human communities?)

“Yes. This is what I want.”

Your name is Natural Harmonia Gropius, and you’ve finally, after all your struggles, saved the world.

For some reason, you don’t feel like the hero.
At this point it's not clear at all to me what Reshiram will do. And what Natural has done in the process of saving the world. Whiffs of a Phyrric victory.

The rest of the story plays out backwards.
Oft-commented characteristic of this story. Perhaps like many, an initial response was "How?" Again, I'm very not far into the story, but it seems in part to be a neat way to explore the roots and reasons for choices and how events unfold.

___

...I wasn't even going to listen to "The Beekeeper" again to write this. I really did just play the song on repeat, at least 44 times. For part of the short prologue, I made comments in backwards sequence. But open sequence for writing, even just for responses, are already typical fare. : ) Also meant to dash this off last night, and lol. Poor time mastery, and had a little more for the prologue than I expected.

The premise intrigues. Looking forward in slow time to the inner conflicts, the motivations, the decisions, the major questions.

Be back again in some indeterminate time!
 
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NebulaDreams

Ace Trainer
Partners
  1. luxray
  2. hypno
So, first of all, sorry it took me so long to get to this. I’d heard great things about this fic and I wanted to build myself up to read it because I have a lot of passionate thoughts about the Pokemon world, and as you might know, it’s something I’m trying to abandon since I’ve stopped following the series. I’m also really stubborn when it comes to reading other people’s headcanons, which isn’t anyone’s fault, it’s just to do with my preferences to read something that aligns with my different takes on Pokemon, which ironically led to me staying in my own comfort zone.

Even now, I still find myself coming back to discuss all the dilemmas and moral grey areas that the Pokemon world has. I have not played BW, so I only know N in broad strokes, but I’m all up for something that throws a wrench in the series’ optimistic view about trainers and their pets-- I mean friends.

With that preamble out of the way, Envy of Eden is something special. Right out the gate, I’m impressed by how you’ve tackled this problem and how much depth you’ve added to the arguments here, especially since it takes place from the Pokemon’s perspective. That already gives the conflicts ramped-up stakes, doubled by how the Pokemon are removed from the human world while still being sapient in their own way.

Now we see that Pokemon have something to fight for as well, compared to the games where they’re nothing more than glorified battle mechanics, that makes me care a lot more about the dilemmas presented here than if it was just confined to the perspectives of the humans. I don’t have much to critique here since this is all fantastic stuff, so this will be more of an analysis of each of the chapters I’ve read so far.

Chapter 1:


The narration solidifies that Vaselva’s situation is complex. Her reasons for siding with Hilda are sound, even though she acknowledges N’s arguments, but it also feels somewhat tragic knowing she was forced into this lifestyle by being taken away from her mother, and then found happiness in adjusting to it. Not so much happiness, but acceptance, perhaps. It ends up reinforcing N’s points even more when he talks about the Pokemon having little choice in the matter. Well, they have the agency to say they want to stay with the trainers, but do they actually have any consent over the matter?

You’ve also pulled no punches with N’s antihuman views by describing a tangible example of how much ruin they’re capable of bringing, not as a vague conflict specific to the Pokemon world, but as tangible atrocities in this world as well since it’s written all over our history. At one point, we discussed the issue of colonialism and Pokemon, and that’s certainly applicable here with how Opelucid City sits on the ruins of the Valley of the Dragons and how the settlers took that away from them.

On that note, I’m not sure if N described the slaughter of all life there including the natives, or just the dragons (I could be misreading something there), but if it’s the former, it adds even more validity to his points. In any case, this more grounded tone I’ve come to expect from your fanfiction (just from reading Handfuls of Dust) properly matches the darkness lurking beneath Pokemon’s worldbuilding.

Chapter 2:

The perspective change made my head spin for a moment, and I wasn’t sure if it was still confined to a Pokemon’s perspective or changed over to the human announcer. When Wave finally got his name (or species) drop, it was a brilliant moment just based on how unique this Pokemon perspective is. And this whole setup as well. The coordination of league battles and all the recording and PR behind it is something that gets taken for granted from what I’ve seen in the show and other Pokemon fics. So I really appreciate that this chapter gives a behind the scenes look at what goes into running a league battle. And I’ve dabbled in photography and film, so I get Wave’s struggles here too.

(young, naive Neb just read to the end of this chapter)

So, wow, that was intense, and it answered some questions from the last chapter (what happened to Amara, Ghetsis’ actions, more about Hilda and the Hero of Ideals), and also raised even more questions, in a good way. It’s a lot to take in, but I’ll try to break it down in terms of its characters.

As I mentioned before, the transition to Wave was a nice change of pace, and serves as a great counterpoint to Vaselva; unlike Vaselva’s relationship with Hilda, which is built on mutual respect, Wave is treated more as a tool. I really like how their characterisation built up throughout the chapter. There’s already the sense that they’re sick of Markus’ BS (and wow, Markus has no qualms putting a living drone in harm's way to get a nicer view of the Volcorona), but they either hide it because they have to be a loyal camera bot, or they’ve just had to do it as a part of the mask they’ve built up.

Once Ghetsis enters the picture, the characterisation surrounding Wave gets even more interesting, and raises a lot of great questions about a Rotom’s place as a Pokemon and if N’s plan to liberate Pokemon includes them. How much free will does Wave have if they’re following the whims of their human controllers, whether that’s the announcer or the hacker team?

Once they get hacked, how much of their decision to linger on the brutal scene is influenced by Team Plasma, and how much of it is their own? Do they have the same rights as other Pokemon in N’s plan if they’re closer to having artificial intelligence rather than human/animal intelligence? The restrained emotions in the narration make the moments where Wave expresses their own opinions stand out even more. It also makes me wonder what a Rotom would do once they have the freedom to live separately from humans.

And onto Ghetsis. While there’s a lot of exposition in his dialogue about how Alder’s rule as Champion has stamped out Pokemon rights such as conservation efforts and the licensing system, it feels natural in the context of his speech. Of course, none of this justifies Ghetsis’ actions at all, but he wouldn’t be such an intimidating presence here if he didn’t have a point.

I’m still curious to see what Plasma’s Pokemon as a whole think of the team’s goal. From Hydreigon’s dialogue to Zekrom, they seem to have more agency and are actively fighting to carry out the ambitions of Ghetsis (because of frustration over inaction in Hydreigon’s case), but I’m sure they’ll be given more focus in future chapters.

Oh, and last thing about this chapter, hmm, a Volcorona named Ghibli. Come to think of it, I can see shades of Ghibli’s films in your influences, particularly Princess Mononoke.

Chapter 3:

Well, this was, er… intense, but in a much different way from the previous chapter. While the previous one was a lot more blunt about its messages and more outwardly dark, coupled with the violence, this one is a lot more introspective and manages to be even more sinister in a more subtle way. I felt such mixed emotions throughout it, which is a good thing, since this fic so far has been about exploring the unintentional horror of Pokemon’s premise and making you feel uncomfortable. But as usual, I’ll take a deeper look into it by focusing on the characters.

We get another interesting perspective change, this time focusing on the life of a Boldore. I love Carnel. I love their mannerisms and how they ask the rocks for permission to be thrown. Their tale about the Sisyphus-like Roggenrola was also cute, even though the context was anything but cute. And I really felt for them when they gradually realised what situation they were in and how badly they wanted to get home. At first, I was confused by how many characters were being introduced at once, but over time, I got used to it and realised how deliberate the choice was; Carnel got uprooted from their old life and doesn’t know how they got there, just like we don’t because of the non-chronological structure of the story.

I really like the detail about how Tourmaline belonged to a previous trainer, presumably belonging to Team Plasma, and was rescued (code for stolen) by the trainers who are fighting against that. I don’t have much to say about her character that isn’t discussed later, but anyway, onto Cheren.

He’s the kind of trainer that makes people tweet #GhetsisDidNothingWrong. Jokes aside, I really hated his guts, in a good way, since it highlights one of the central themes of the story: ignorance. Just the way he calls the wholesome intelligent ronk an ‘it’, how he ignores Carnel’s attempt to communicate and how everything we’ve seen of the story so far casts his drive to become the strongest trainer in a more cynical light. He’s not an unlikable or malicious character; he’s just so far removed from understanding any of his Pokemon that he doesn’t even realise the damage he’s causing them.

I was half-expecting the chapter to have a mini-arc where Carnel learns that Cheren really does care about them after all and they learn to play nice with their new owner. But things aren’t that black and white (ba-dum-tsss) in Envy of Eden.

On that note, the conversation with Tourmaline at the end took those hopes of reconciliation and tossed them out of the window. I liked how the two gradually connected and sympathised with one another despite their differences, and Tourmaline’s point about the language of the forest was a beautiful way of bringing in those other themes about communication. But then the chapter more or less ends with her telling Carnel that ‘none of us want to be here, but it’s hopeless to try and make the humans understand, so hide your past as deep within you as you can and hope for the best’. Ouch.

I’d go as far as to say this is the darkest thing I’ve read in any Pokemon fic (again, without being edgy), where it goes to such an existentially petrifying place that I don’t think I’ll be able to think of Pokemon the same way, even with all of the gripes I had towards the series before reading this. This is a bold statement, but I’m not exaggerating either; the concept of a higher being (not necessarily higher intelligence, but more evolved or of a higher status) ignoring your struggles and making everything you’ve done up to that point meaningless is horrifying to me. And the way it ended on such a defeatist note got under my skin, again, in a good way.

I don’t know where the story will go beyond this point, if these characters will be revisited in a different capacity, if Cheren stops being a doofus, or if there is a bit more hope for N’s mission along the way doing genuine good for all these Pokemon. Since the story jumps back and forth between different points in time and it covers all of these different perspectives, maybe there will be some shred of optimism to cling onto.

Overall, even though the three chapters (plus the prologue) I’ve read have all been distinct from one another, they all add up to express this big picture of a very messy conflict, and it tells the story in such a unique, ambitious way that everything just falls into place perfectly.

Both sides have a point. While the trainers and the gatekeepers of the league are complacent about the status quo of the trainer society and enable the awful reality the Pokemon have to live through, they aren’t just total bastards that disregard the wellbeing of their team. Team Plasma is extreme to the point that they are just straight up villains here, but the points raised by N and Ghetsis also have a lot of truth to them to the point that a lot of the Pokemon, even when they disagree with them, side with them still. Hell, the Pokemon seem more open to double-sided conflicts than their own trainers; if N ever gets his wish, these characters should form their own government.

Truthfully, it’s hard for me to engage with Pokemon fics as I once did before. Over time, the series settled more and more into its comfort zone, and it just felt like a waste of energy caring for something like Pokemon when I’m no longer the target audience for it. So reading Envy of Eden, which is a thorough deconstruction of the whole franchise, has been a cathartic swan song for my experiences in the Pokemon fandom, that possibly stands well on its own as just a damn good story. I probably won’t be reading any further, but best of luck to the rest of this fic. This deserves all the good buzz it gets and then some.

And here are two songs that encompass the themes/tone of this story in my head:

Oneohtrix Point Never - Animals

This Heat - Makeshift Swahili
 

K_S

Unrepentent Giovanni and Rocket fan
Alright here per review tag, handling chapters one and two. I'm sorry I didn't see any review preferences so I'm just jumping in and did a line-by-line reaction review. Hopefully, you prefer this style.

Chapter 1
So the world ends in an earthquake? And curious how architecture can be a causality, it speaks of a gentle narrator at heart. Or one with odd priorities.

Now I don't remember black and white very well but I do remember their scientist and his kinklang, I'm wondering if the scattered and dead 'mon isn't his team. Though curious how the narrator can perceive them "in slow motion" to gentle the sight of their death in his mind.... Is the world actually slowed, the story's viewpoint standing in a fraction of a moment watching things fall apart, or is this all some sort of delusion? The attention to detail seems to affirm it's a supernatural event thus far...

and the You is N. Oh boy, if this is game N with his goal of mass separation, then no wonder Reshiram is throwing up a warning sign. But would it be an actual physical separation, or a total wipe so that either side would not know of what they lost...
Considering the "opposers" line and Plasma's dogma... yep this is starting to look more and more ominous..

Chapter 2

It took me a moment to realize the perspective was from a 'mon. It's a curious angle to see this disaster unfold from. Clearly, the leaf snake adores Hilda, and it's nice to see it, but see it so gently shown. The serpent being present during ups and downs that dovetails into him coiling about his trainer, it feels a natural extension of their relationship from first to last.

"He truly means it"

Now someone can mean something, kindness and whatnot, but be cruel while following up on that (tough love and cruel to be kind leap to mind). So N's statement seems a pseudo comfort at best and is ringing alarm bells left, right, and center...


"When he hears your words, he flinches, almost as if you’d attacked him instead."

The fact that N flinches when he is put to a very basic question makes me think he's more torn up about his end game than he's putting on. Also would great emotional harm that he's inflicting, by forcing a separation, bypass the "to stop all harm" ambition that N's using as the crux of his... wish... with Zer's power?

I will give N (and of course you, the writer props) that's a very smoothed-out motive rant. You can feel N's sanity and ideals smack into a disaster dominos as this scene unfolds...

Overall this piece has been a treat, thanks for sharing with us.
 

Umbramatic

The Ghost Lord
Location
The Yangverse
Pronouns
Any
Partners
  1. reshiram
HERE FOR CATNIP. CHAPTER 2.

That. Was a time. A very good time and a very terrible time all at once.

First I love that the perspective of this chapter is from a good ol little SwSh-style camera Rotom, who is trying his hardest but sees enough fucked up shit to go "YOU KNOW WHAT MABYE THAT GHETSIS FUCKER HAS A POINT"

Speaking of that fucker, I ALSO love that there's this whole delicious fakeout about it looking like N is fighting Alder and then PSYCHE It's Ghetsis. It's a well-written Ghetsis - clearly, obviously, a piece of shit, but a clever one who knows how to get his way and may just believe more genuinely in The Cause than canon?

There is a lot of good action here. Though it is. Uh. Very morbid. I, a Volcarona fan, had an especially miserable time.

Zekrom is very good. The Hydregion in the one bit we heard him actually fucking talk was good. Hilda's mons are good.

But. There is a very glaring ommission here. No Ns. Disgusting. Disgraceful. Abominable. You write an N fic and forget to include N in the second chapter? How could you. How could you say no to this face?:

9 - n_derp.png

I will probably be back eventually for more. Most likely when the catnip winds blow me your way agaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaain.
 
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