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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
review responses! psyche, rip suNday. sooN (TM)

Hi kintsugi.
Hi Rain!!

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. : )
lol, apologies if this is a dumb question, but why 137? am I being called out on quantum stuff already lol
(either way, glad to see you back here! always a treat to hear your thoughts, regardless of the format that they're in!)

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
oh my god what a mood. also, bless, I think this is the first time I've seen you swear.

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.
This song really slaps, and yeah, it's from Boots and Pen! I think Pen recommended the song and Boots pointed me to the orchestral cover, correctly guessing that it'd be even more my aesthetic. It definitely paints a specific imagery for me, and I think we're on the same page with the kind of tone it sets, yeah!

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.)
omg for once I referenced cracks here without intentionally making it about the kintsugi concept--in this case this scar is probably not one that changes things for the better.

(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?
In the context of "Beekeeper" I understand it as expressing the sentiment that doctors and farmers are equally valuable to our society, that their tools require equal amounts of skill to use, parallel imagery of cutting something open to sustain life--and yet we greatly revere one over the other. But that's just me! I think music often means what we want it to.

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.
This is actually a game quote from N--and I agree, it's one I find fascinating. Attributing someone with the ability to lie means assuming they're capable of morality, choice, and some degree of intelligence. So for N to so casually suggest otherwise is wild to me. This does get revisited, and frequently, although the main focus of it in the beginning is just: who should we be asking to tell the truth in this situation?.

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.
This solution is far from ideal, yes. But as the Hero of Truth that's kind of par the course, unfortunately.

(And is "people" in the general sense here, or is it very specifically for a certain set of human communities?)
N uses "people" in the general sense to refer to anyone he thinks is a person--this includes humans and pokemon. Most pokemon consider themselves people. Most humans, based off of the common phrase in the games "people and pokemon", do not consider pokemon to be people. The divide created by that exclusion is pretty core to this fic and its themes, yup!

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.
Ha, I wish I had a cool quantum answer for you but the answer is more or less "your life flashes before your eyes in the moment before you die."

Always a pleasure to hear from you! Loved the unique perspective and line-by-lines here; it's always great to see what this fic makes people think about.

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.
Hi Nebby, long time no see! I know you've been drifting away from the fandom, and I definitely get that--there's a lot of weird shit in this specific fictional universe. Ironically I feel like we do end up circling the same drain here with our general confusion about the Pokemon world lol.

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.
Honestly I'm always baffled when the dex casually mentions that humans almost killed off multiple species of pokemon (lapras, stantler, farfetch'd) and it's like, y'all know we aren't supposed to be complicit in the genocide of our friends, right???

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.
nope, you're very right on the pickup there, and I'm glad you spotted it/that the one-sidedness of this comes through--N grows up around dragons and not native Unovans, so when he talks about that specific part of history he focuses on the pokemon only. It's a pretty glaring flaw of his and it's generally a root of why he fails to understand certain characters in future chapters.

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.
Ha, I'm glad you made the POV jump okay! It's been kind of a weird thing to juggle because I definitely want to make people feel like they aren't reading about humans, but at the same time it's a lot to ask as far as jumping to weird heads.

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.
I mean it's fine, right? The rotom itself doesn't risk permanent damage, since it can unpossess the drone if it's ever in any real danger :') Alola casually mentioning that we just shoved a bunch of sentient ghosts into our smartphone/pokedex combos really made me raise my eyebrows at the whole "friends vs tool" line that you poke at here, yup.

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.
Oh, apologies if this was unclear--they're never hacked by Plasma. Ghetsis threatens to harm Markus if he stops the broadcast, so Markus doesn't stop the broadcast. Later, when Wave isn't getting the footage Markus wants, Markus zaps Wave, but said zap doesn't strip free will so much as just jolt him--I sort of got stuck on the concept of how you'd try to discipline a ghost drone and landed on EMP, but it's no more hacking than slapping someone in the face would be considered mind control.

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 glad you picked up on this! Ghetsis treads a very muddy line of "has a point" and "but you still shouldn't try to burn children alive". Sometimes people assume I'm trying to hardline him as 100% right or 100% wrong, but I'm really not lol.

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.
Ha, very true on the Ghibli inspiration (Castle in the Sky is admittedly my favorite for nostalgia reasons, although I think you're right that Mononoke is way closer to my aesthetic), although in this case it's actually because Alder's nicknamed his team team (Saffir, Ghibli) after different kinds of winds. I thought it'd fit nicely in with Unovan towns being named after clouds and Alder's beliefs in general being simultaneously blistering and difficult to pin down.

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.
<3
seriously, this is really great to hear. I know there's a lot of tone shifts in the early arcs and I'm glad that it seems like the emotional weights landed where I wanted/needed them to here.

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.
ba-dum-tsss indeed lol.

Cheren's interesting to me because he's not, in my opinion, all that far removed from a lot of trainers, both in fic and canon. You're absolutely correct that one of the central themes of this story is ignorance--pretty much all of the conflicts here are caused because one or more parties are unable to wrap their heads around someone else's situation. To me ignorance is a much more insidious way to build up an antagonist than to make them outright evil/malicious, and the older I get the more I realize that this is more often the case. You don't have to actively seek to harm someone to become an antagonist in their lives; all you have to do is close your eyes when they need you to see. Ignorance and ignore share the same root.

(and besides. if you were in Carnel's shoes, how long would it take for you to play nice with your new owner?)

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.
oof wow! This is really high praise, and I'm definitely glad that it made you think (and even change your mind on some things!! that's always the dream but it's really awesome to see it come through). I struggle with words here but I'm glad that it's making you revisit some of those thoughts.

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.
One of the fun things about reverse chronology is putting everyone at their extremes--this is as far polarized as both sides get. Ghetsis tries to immolate a child, because he thinks it'll get him what he wants. Cheren takes possession of several people and completely disregards any notion they have for their own wants/needs/self-realization, because he thinks it'll get him what he wants. As we go further back the crimes get less and less extreme, since in many ways we build up to atrocities by boiling the frog, so to speak. But at the same time, even at the end--does one side's existence/bad actions justify backing the other?

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.
might I interest you in ... ?

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.
Again, hard to find words here, but this means a lot to me and I'm glad that you had such a good time with this. The music recs slapped too. <3

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.
Hiya K_S, nice to meet you in the wild! I have review preferences tagged in the index post (it's easily buried), and for this fic it's basically "hit me with anything I'm always happy to read it", so happy accidents there.

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.
It's not quite an earthquake--canonically N says that his goal is to create two separate worlds, one for humans and one for pokemon. Reshiram is making that desire into reality, so the "fracture" in this case is more of a reality-altering schism.

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...
Re: time--it's more about the former, with things being perceived in slow motion, but not happening in slow motion.

The klinklang is N's here (although the scientist, Colress, also has one! but he does not appear).

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...
N really doesn't want to fight here, but (as the rest of the chapter shows), he ultimately will. But yeah, the alarm bells are a fair reaction to have since he's about to end the world.

"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?
N's character seems pretty entwined with doubt--in the games he definitely seems paralyzed by the weight of the choice he has to make, if he should be the one who should be doing all of this Plasma stuff, if he's right to oppose you, etc. The climax literally has the dragons running on the strength of their hero's convictions; canonically, N doubts himself and fails to stop the protagonist. And yeah! He's definitely unsure if he's picking the right answer here. He's convincing Hilda that he's ready just as much as he's convincing himself.

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.
Thanks for your kind words, and thanks for stopping by!

HERE FOR CATNIP. CHAPTER 2.

That. Was a time. A very good time and a very terrible time all at once.
Hi Umbra, really appreciate you stopping by! I think you nailed the content/tone I was aiming for with this chapter, which was really great to see.

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?
This is such an accurate and succinct summary of chapter 2 omg. I love it! I'm glad that I was able to make those points clear to you lol--Ghetsis has enough good points that people will back him, but also he's a massive piece of shit.

There is a lot of good action here. Though it is. Uh. Very morbid. I, a Volcarona fan, had an especially miserable time.
deep apologies if anything made you uncomfortable--if you have any recommendations for updating the tags I can definitely do so!

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?
I must admit, for a fic that advertises itself as being "a story about things that start with N", things rapidly get out of hand and the things that start with N rarely end with them ...

Thank you for stopping by! Always fun to see you around. :quag:
 

bluesidra

Mood
Pronouns
she/her
Partners
  1. hoppip-bluesidra-reup
  2. hoppip-bluesidra-pink
  3. hoppip-bluesidra3
Hello! Here for the catnip.

Oh my, this is gorgeous! And terrifying, for sure. Gen5 is my favourite game story-wise and has N, who is still some sort of enigma to me. Right from the beginning I can tell that your version of N is way more mature than the clueless idiot of my memory, but I will gladly throw this version out for yours.

Also, big Kudos how you’ve managed to get such complex thought-processes out of something so benign as pokemon. I mean, I like to immerse myself as well, but darn, that is on another level.

So far I’ve read through up to “notorious”, and I’m not entirely sure how to give you feedback. I’ll try it chapter by chapter, let’s see how that goes.

End is a very short chapter that only lasts for a few seconds in story. It’s a slow motion view of the final battle between N and Hilda, and N questioning if what he is about to do is the right thing. In the end, his decision stands, but the outcome is still obscure.

It does a great job setting the mood for the story. From the very beginning, the teeth are bared. There are pokemon who are probably dead and there’s one man in the middle of all of this. It’s short, it’s sweet, it hooks you in and you are both dying to know how it got to this and what will happen next.
Nominal shows the interaction between N and Hilda before their showdown in end, from the perspective of Hilda’s Serperior.

I was on Serperior’s side when she basically said “Don’t use those big ass words around here, Aristoteles”. Because I couldn’t follow what N said most of the times. At least not when he was responding to himself. When he was engaging with Hilda – and to some extent with Serperior, it was easier to follow, because I understood the jumping off point.

What I did get however was the impression that N was stalling. He wanted to be convinced otherwise, yet at the same time dismissed every opportunity to rethink his stance. He said that he was a neutral party, only observing and judging, but I did get the impression, that he is way more convinced of his ideas than he admits to himself. Every time Serperior challenges him or his view, he almost snaps back (which is, by N’s standards, still very calm). That makes him look vulnerable in that regard, as if questioning his believes would actually hurt him. Which is totally understandable – but that also means that he is lying to himself.

Hilda is desperate, afraid and determined. I don’t know her enough yet to tell much about her, but her state of mind is reflected excellently through Serperior’s good intuition for her trainer. I especially like how you described her as “knowing how to talk, not to listen” and N as “knowing how to listen, but not to speak”. I like that image. It places both sides of the battle with equally good and bad strengths and flaws, without favouring any one.
Oh boy! OH BOY! That chapter was so intense! Oh my. I don’t even know where to start!

This battle was insane. It had just the right amount of violence for me to feel the impact and the pain but without being appalled by the gore. Also, the krookodile bursting out of the ground? My personal highlight! Super cinematic and it showed that the E4 were not just sitting on the sidelines but actual forces to be reckoned with.

Now, on to the content of the chapter: We see the events through the lens of a drone-Rotom, which helps to filter the shock out by a lot. I think if I didn’t have that emotional buffer between me and that fight, it would have been too much. Contrary to Serperior in the previous scene, this Rotom toys around with the ideas that Ghetsis presents, but in the end, sides with neither side. Only acknowledging the injustice that Hydreigon had to die to prove any point at all. Which was a nice and much needed nuance. If Rotom would have ran off to join team plasma now, I wouldn’t have been half as satisfied with that chapter.

Ghetsis uses his fight against the champion to showcase his ideals to all of Unova, and his methods are less than savoury. Every time he gives one of his speeches, it does make sense. We do put pokemon through this ordeal but when a human life is on the line, suddenly it isn’t fun any more etc…
But after a bit of distance from reading it, I have the feeling that, for all his conviction, there is a gigantic hole in his points: He was the one who brought this up. This entire ordeal and the escalation was his doing. So I don’t even know what he’s complaining about now.
It’s like if I shot the other boxer in the ring dead and then held a big speech why boxing is a cruel sport that should be banned. He clearly broke the rules and limitations of the sport and that made it a crime. He was the one who brought the excessive violence to the battlefield.
And yes, no one had asked the pokemon beforehand if they wanted to fight. But if they didn’t want to, they’d probably show. Hell, he didn’t ask his pokemon either.

Alder and Marcus are the two guys I have the most problems with in that scene. Alder is pretty passive. I know he doesn’t do much in the games either and I don’t remember if his actions in the palace could be interpreted the way you did. But he did strike me as a wise and balanced man, even if he wasn’t without his flaws and past screw-ups. So I was a bit confused how he basically fell into paralysis when his words couldn't reach Ghetsis. I would have at least expected him to give him what he wanted and stop endangering lives. His inaction did help some of Ghetsis arguments, but I felt it was a bit unjust to the character – I might be remembering incorrectly though.

Marcus is Rotom’s trainer and the commentator. Nothing wrong about him, there was just this one line that implied that he was physically abusing Rotom. I liked their dynamic in the beginning, with Rotom being a bit shy but wanting to please Marcus and Marcus being 100% focused on his work. There is some sweet and wholesome relationship fluff to be had and I was happy. I can understand that such a traumatic event and the different coping strategies can drive a wedge between two friends. But from that line with the implied abuse forward, all the tragedy of the enstragement was gone.

Things I liked in general:

The backwards narration is surprisingly powerful. It was a really good and weightful end to the intro chapter and does a great job unravelling what is hinted at there.

The viewpoint of pokemon fits very good with N’s theme and acts as a very effective framing device. I like how the pokemon’s thought patterns/perceptions are distinctly different from human ones – like Serperior being somewhat overwhelmed with a pretty simple scenario or Rotom listening to all radio frequencies 24/7. The focus of the narration is still on the humans – which is kinda ironic given the content of the story – but necessary from a narrative perspective. They are the reoccurring cast that we explore, not their teams.

Style:

Your style is a few grades above mine and what I’m used to, and I have to admit that I couldn't follow “nominal” as much as I wanted to. It got better in “notorious”, because there was a lot of battling going on, which is easier to parse than abstract things like “truth” and “ideals”.


Overall, it is a great great read. I am hooked and if I didn’t have to go to bed now and had a busy day tomorrow, I think I would have binged your fic instead of writing this review. Maybe I get something in after work tomorrow and can even put my thoughts to paper. In that case, I might edit this or drop another comment. But be assured that I will stick around!
 

bluesidra

Mood
Pronouns
she/her
Partners
  1. hoppip-bluesidra-reup
  2. hoppip-bluesidra-pink
  3. hoppip-bluesidra3
Hello! Back for the catnip

After my initial inferiority complex when I converted EoE into epub last time, I wanted to give me a bit of distance, but the dice have decided otherwise. Anyway, I'm glad to be back.

I'll see how far I can go over this weekend and add my thoughts along the line

This chapter follows a freshly caught Boldure that has some serious language barriers with his teammates. They don't want to fight and rather go back home, but their trainer, Cheren, does not take the time to understand.

Awww... I'm so torn on what to feel about this. Except for love for Boldure. They are so lovely and patient and kind. I love how you took the line "rocks live too long to be angry" and ran with it.

The last part, where Tourmaline talks about hiding your emotions away is heart-wrenching, but also preeetty unhealthy. Her approach is to not try to communicate with Cheren at all, which won't solve their problem. Instead, if they keep following his orders, he will "read" them as willing to be by his side, and he can't really be blamed for it. Because, as Tourmaline said and the story shows, Cheren is not a bad guy, just not a perfect one either.
I might sound really bad right now, when I'm arguing for suppressed groups to "just talk a bit louder", but on the other hand, Tourmaline feels like she is whispering in the presence of a near-deaf person and then complaining why they aren't listening.

Then there's the issue of how Tourmaline's speech, while very engaging, misrepresents reality. I don't want to take any of her personal experiences and feelings away, but she makes it out as if every pokemon is forced into battle. But doing so, she clearly disregards Cheren's other team-members and Hilda's team. And her arguments for why the Pansage, Dwebble and Lilligant are "forced" into their life is not backed by any evidence. Never once did she ask those pokemon about their opinion. In the end, she assumed just as much about them as Cheren did when he caught Boldure.
Because when I see a Lilligant with an impressive flower, I think about a healthy, happy pokemon and a trainer who dearly cares about it. A Pansage might produce bitter leaves when it focuses on battling because it wants to become stronger. And the Dwebble might have this extraordinarily beautiful rock because its trainer gave it to it as a gift.

Also, on a side note: I guess Boldure's former trainer was N. I wonder how their relationship was like. Because, even though Boldure speaks fondly of him, N must have gotten Boldure out of their status quo. And Boldure does not like this when Cheren does it. So what made N so compelling for Boldure, that they would willingly leave their cave for a while? And how did N's eventual departure impact Boldure? Were they happy he left? Did they feel abandoned? Was it like a business-deal that had been fulfilled? I mean, I'm happy that Boldure seemed to have only made good memories at N's side, but it also kinda doesn't add up...

Aside from that, I'm once again smitten by how great you can depict pokemon as their own species. Boldure feels first and foremost like a rock-type. I like the earth metaphors and how you described Boldure's vision. Only one little nitpick: In the beginning, Boldure's vision gets foggy after about 30 centimeters. But during the battle and especially later in the pokemon center, they seem to have good vision. They can easily stare at and make Lilligant feel uncomfortable without any major drawbacks.
In this chapter, we follow Amara, Thundersinger of the Plains (a wonderful name) and her worries while Hilda and her confront N.

I am mostly confused, because I don't get what Amara's problem is, frankly.
One point of content for her seems to be, that Hilda makes her fight, even though she doesn't want to. But a few moments later, she says how she is proud that she gets to fight and become stronger, so she can protect her herd.
Then the whole thing about humans not being kafara. The entire chapter is about how Hilda endangers them and her team because of some greater good. That is the role of kafara, as Amara has defined it. The one who sacrifices itself for the herd. In the end, when Hilda shows weakness in front of Amara, she again does not acknowledge that as a sign of a kafara, even though she knows that for humans, strength is all.

I'll go over the chapter again to find the lines that sounded the most infuriating to me, but bottom-line: Amara comes across as very, very selfish for a pokemon that laments on and on about how the herd is more important than the individual.
She fails to see Hilda's struggle because she is too wrapped up in her (very weakly based) doubts. And Hilda does clearly struggle, she just doesn't charge across fields engulfed in thunder. But Amara points it out herself (how Hilda is clearly not in a good spot mentally when at the campfire, how everything puts her under an immense amount of pressure).
And while she does that, she expects something in return for her struggle? Like their relationship is a one-way lane where only Amara gets to suffer and get hurt. Again ignoring how Hilda provides for them and gives them the safety the plains don't offer.
It all feels, like Amara, who is so centered on the concept of a herd, can not wrap her head around working side by side with someone for their sake. Vaszelva made such a good point: "Hilda is our partner and that's why I fight for her." That right there should be enough. And after this point, Amara loses me, sadly.

If I take a huge step back, ignore all the messages this fic has sent me so far, and go back to purely analysing the character of Amara, I see a complete absence of empathy, which is concerning. Amara can not feel for others or herself, and is mostly confused. (She can't feel for Hilda, she doesn't understand Vaszelva and not even the death of her mother sparks any emotion in her.) Her confusion makes her volatile and dangerous, however. Because of it, she is easily persuaded by outside "snake-tongued" N, making her a wild card for her team. In the end, she is the one who can't be trusted, just like Reylin.
She also circles everything back to herself and how things relate to her. That and her lack of empathy for others strikes me as a narcissistic personalitly overall. All of it makes for a really atypical Zebstrika who might have been shunned by her herd as well.
If this was a character-driven story centered on Amara, I would be thrilled to know where that goes. Sadly, I know how Amara ends and that there is no further mention of her.

Then I have an issue with N, or rather his influence on Amara. From what we've seen in this chapter, there is no single reason to even stick to him. He has no concrete plan how to achieve his ideal world, no proof of concept, his getaway is a lie and the dragon has not deemed him worthy. I know that N's arguemnts are better than this, but judging from this chapter alone, Amara went into this whole 48minute debate with herself after N said "Hey, imagine a world where you wouldn't have to fight for Hilda." And that without providing a picture of how this world would actually look like. Would Amara be back in the plains? Who would her herd be? Would they take her back? I get that believing him is easier than to question yourself, but then why not blindly believe Hilda?

But after all is said and done, I have to say I like the motive of song here. It felt really melodious, almost like a singsong when Vaszelva and Amara were talking around the campfire.

Hilda’s role is to stand on the sidelines, protected and safe. Your role is to enter the fray. This is what it means to be kafara.
But doesn't Hilda enter the fray for her herd (other humans and their world) as well at the moment? At the moment, she's alone at the frontlines and just has you as backup

But clouds never descend to engulf the mortals. Reshiram would not turn a human to mulch. Reshiram would never harm a human.
What makes her think that? Has she never seen a human harmed by nature? Or struck down by something bigger than them?

this isn’t how things have to be.
If that is all he has to offer, it is very poorly thought out.

It’s easier to pretend that N is speaking for you.
I mean, yeah, he offers a sweet alternative without the nitty-gritty details of how to make it work. It's always easier to mock the established than to try to build something yourself. All in all, that makes N look like an idiot at best and like a terrorist at worst.

But in the herds, you must always question.
That is the exact opposite of how I experienced large groups of individuals, but ok.

But like Vaselva and Reylin, he never wrestled with these questions as you did, and you know better than to ask.
Again, another assumption about the perspective of others.

But you doubt her, this human child, time and time again. How could you not? She who strives to be a hero, even though it would destroy her and you alike. She hurts you, she makes you get hurt. But that’s what heroes are for, surely. Being brave means you have to suffer first. 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.
Amara has this huge issue about how sacrificing is important and noble, and yet she does not want to sacrifice herself. That dilemma is completely ok for a character to face and I get that struggle, I really do. But all the other chapters pointed an inequality out, even if they were colored or clouded by the narrator's view of things. This chapter here strikes me more of an Amara-issue than a larger issue.
Maybe that's my gripe with this entry - that it's so out of place from the ones I've read before.
 
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slamdunkrai

bing.com
Pronouns
they/them
Partners
  1. darkrai
  2. snom
ah, geez

So, I've read all the way up to the end of nuestro here, and I've gotta say that I'm really struck by this story's opening few chapters. The form of it is obviously a little bit arresting -- we're presented with little vignettes that working backwards, of course, an d we're going from viewpoint to viewpoint in second person. I also note that our perspectives have, so far, been Pokémon pretty much exclusively; I'm used to seeing exactly none of this, but thinking about it, it works devastatingly well already. I mean, not to bat for renowned abuser and violent hypocrite Ghetsis here, but there's something about seeing that battle with Alder go down while he makes his point about how Pokémon lack autonomy and are thrown under the wheels of a violent system with no means of fighting for themselves that really gave me pause being in the shoes of a Rotom camera drone. (Just as equally, it gave me pause to imagine this while the man speaking is ordering his own Hydreigon to utterly mangle his opponent's Pokémon, but y'know, such is Ghetsis.)

I think the way this format mingles with the story also sticks out to me when we're going from this to, say, Tourmaline describing Cheren as a "necessary evil" but reasoning that things could be far worse. It's always a delight to see a non-PMD story that puts such focus on its Pokémon as characters really make them successful, believable characters to this extent, of course, but presented with that little tidbit... inside a chapter where we see the phrase "if he's kept you around this long, you're probably strong in the ways he wants", inside a story that really does not shy away from exploring the psyche of the Harmonia family -- I dunno, it's really struck a chord with me in ways I've not often previously experienced with this kind of story. It's really damn effective. This is obvious from the get-go where we see the outcome of all this, but it's remarkable how much the sense that this is not a perfect world for everyone and nor is that world so easily attainable. It's an uneasy conflict, and I mean, I've really been taken in by it.

Not 100% related but still worthy of note here, and something else that I've really enjoyed -- which I am not the first to comment on: I notice that N and Hilda's Pokémon are on speaking terms, which is both an endearing take on this particular dynamic and leads to some more excellent dialogue. I don't really have all that much to say beyond this, which is fine. I just think he's neat.

All in all, really wonderful opening few chapters that I couldn't really identify any really glaring flaws in; I'll be sure to stick with this story, and check in from time to time as I progress it a little bit. I'm affected by it in ways that I'm not often affected, and I think you've done a superb job in writing it so well. :>
 

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
Review responses! Sorry for the delay. I've been quite occupied. <3

Hello! Here for the catnip.
After my initial inferiority complex when I converted EoE into epub last time, I wanted to give me a bit of distance, but the dice have decided otherwise. Anyway, I'm glad to be back.
Hiya! I do want to say I'm super flattered that you like my writing this much, but I also hope it isn't causing you too much stress--there's really nothing to feel inferior about, and from the sounds of it there's things you would choose to do differently than me, which I think is great! Thank you so much for writing out all your thoughts here. As someone who learned a lot of writing from watching fanfic, I deeply emphasize with the struggle of trying to put out words for people whose writing you respect (and normally I just! don't review! lol), so! Hi, and thanks!

What I did get however was the impression that N was stalling. He wanted to be convinced otherwise, yet at the same time dismissed every opportunity to rethink his stance. He said that he was a neutral party, only observing and judging, but I did get the impression, that he is way more convinced of his ideas than he admits to himself. Every time Serperior challenges him or his view, he almost snaps back (which is, by N’s standards, still very calm). That makes him look vulnerable in that regard, as if questioning his believes would actually hurt him. Which is totally understandable – but that also means that he is lying to himself.
Canon-N strikes me as someone who's consumed by doubt, and yeah, stalling a bit! There's a whole bunch of times he can just choose to end the plot but he waits for the player to show up and stop him, almost as if he wants to be wrong and is just waiting for a convincing argument.

Although, I'm curious about your assertion re: "questioning his beliefs would actually hurt him"--since the choice to start this dialogue, and ask these questions (rather than just summoning Reshiram) is entirely his own here.

Ghetsis uses his fight against the champion to showcase his ideals to all of Unova, and his methods are less than savoury. Every time he gives one of his speeches, it does make sense. We do put pokemon through this ordeal but when a human life is on the line, suddenly it isn’t fun any more etc…
But after a bit of distance from reading it, I have the feeling that, for all his conviction, there is a gigantic hole in his points: He was the one who brought this up. This entire ordeal and the escalation was his doing. So I don’t even know what he’s complaining about now.
It’s like if I shot the other boxer in the ring dead and then held a big speech why boxing is a cruel sport that should be banned. He clearly broke the rules and limitations of the sport and that made it a crime. He was the one who brought the excessive violence to the battlefield.
And yes, no one had asked the pokemon beforehand if they wanted to fight. But if they didn’t want to, they’d probably show. Hell, he didn’t ask his pokemon either.
It's definitely not a fair setup! That's sort of the Point. But it's the "if they didn't want to, they'd probably show" that Ghetsis is picking at, and kind of what this fic picks at in general. Does Carnel show Cheren he doesn't want to fight? Does Tourmaline show that she doesn't want to be owned? Does Amara show that she doesn't want to die? Does the volcarona show that he doesn't want to have his wings ripped off? It's that "probably" that fits volumes.

Alder and Marcus are the two guys I have the most problems with in that scene. Alder is pretty passive. I know he doesn’t do much in the games either and I don’t remember if his actions in the palace could be interpreted the way you did. But he did strike me as a wise and balanced man, even if he wasn’t without his flaws and past screw-ups. So I was a bit confused how he basically fell into paralysis when his words couldn't reach Ghetsis. I would have at least expected him to give him what he wanted and stop endangering lives. His inaction did help some of Ghetsis arguments, but I felt it was a bit unjust to the character – I might be remembering incorrectly though.
In the games Alder's pretty passive, and hopes that the player can do things in his stead--which is, arguably, because if the champion solved the problems then the player wouldn't really be able to do anything.

Marcus is Rotom’s trainer and the commentator. Nothing wrong about him, there was just this one line that implied that he was physically abusing Rotom. I liked their dynamic in the beginning, with Rotom being a bit shy but wanting to please Marcus and Marcus being 100% focused on his work. There is some sweet and wholesome relationship fluff to be had and I was happy. I can understand that such a traumatic event and the different coping strategies can drive a wedge between two friends. But from that line with the implied abuse forward, all the tragedy of the enstragement was gone.
I didn't actually want this to be super fluffy--like you say, Rotom's entirely focused on pleasing Marcus, and Marcus doesn't even notice. There's a recurring theme in this chapter of people expecting (or forcing?) other people to fly into the line of fire on their behalf (Alder to his volcarona, Marcus to Wave the rotom, Ghetsis to Hilda), and some of them are definitely more wrong than others, but all of them are pretty wrong.

The last part, where Tourmaline talks about hiding your emotions away is heart-wrenching, but also preeetty unhealthy. Her approach is to not try to communicate with Cheren at all, which won't solve their problem. Instead, if they keep following his orders, he will "read" them as willing to be by his side, and he can't really be blamed for it. Because, as Tourmaline said and the story shows, Cheren is not a bad guy, just not a perfect one either.
I might sound really bad right now, when I'm arguing for suppressed groups to "just talk a bit louder", but on the other hand, Tourmaline feels like she is whispering in the presence of a near-deaf person and then complaining why they aren't listening.
I really do value your thoughts here--they ended up inspiring how I wanted to bring the final chapter together, for what it's worth. But I do disagree with this idea that Tourmaline's the one not accommodating Cheren here--that his deafness somehow supersedes her muteness, when in reality it's his deafness that allows him to pretend that she's mute, and as such ignore what she's saying.

It's difficult, right? I think we want to come at this from the assumption that the trainers are correct, so we want to justify that the pokemon are wrong if they think the trainers aren't correct. Is it their job to tell us that they're hurting, that remind us that we aren't doing our jobs--or is it our job to do our jobs?

Then there's the issue of how Tourmaline's speech, while very engaging, misrepresents reality. I don't want to take any of her personal experiences and feelings away, but she makes it out as if every pokemon is forced into battle. But doing so, she clearly disregards Cheren's other team-members and Hilda's team. And her arguments for why the Pansage, Dwebble and Lilligant are "forced" into their life is not backed by any evidence. Never once did she ask those pokemon about their opinion. In the end, she assumed just as much about them as Cheren did when he caught Boldure.
Because when I see a Lilligant with an impressive flower, I think about a healthy, happy pokemon and a trainer who dearly cares about it. A Pansage might produce bitter leaves when it focuses on battling because it wants to become stronger. And the Dwebble might have this extraordinarily beautiful rock because its trainer gave it to it as a gift.
I like your interpretations here of what a lilligant or a dwebble could be--but that's sort of Tourmaline's point, isn't it? That if we don't ask, we see what we want to see. You want to see light; she wants to see darkness. But what we want to see doesn't really matter in the face of what is.

Also, on a side note: I guess Boldure's former trainer was N. I wonder how their relationship was like. Because, even though Boldure speaks fondly of him, N must have gotten Boldure out of their status quo. And Boldure does not like this when Cheren does it. So what made N so compelling for Boldure, that they would willingly leave their cave for a while? And how did N's eventual departure impact Boldure? Were they happy he left? Did they feel abandoned? Was it like a business-deal that had been fulfilled? I mean, I'm happy that Boldure seemed to have only made good memories at N's side, but it also kinda doesn't add up...
N's a bit of a self-fulfilling prophecy--his pokemon only have good memories of him because he can listen to them, and as such doesn't try to keep pokemon that don't want to be with him.

I'll go over the chapter again to find the lines that sounded the most infuriating to me, but bottom-line: Amara comes across as very, very selfish for a pokemon that laments on and on about how the herd is more important than the individual.
She fails to see Hilda's struggle because she is too wrapped up in her (very weakly based) doubts. And Hilda does clearly struggle, she just doesn't charge across fields engulfed in thunder. But Amara points it out herself (how Hilda is clearly not in a good spot mentally when at the campfire, how everything puts her under an immense amount of pressure).
And while she does that, she expects something in return for her struggle? Like their relationship is a one-way lane where only Amara gets to suffer and get hurt. Again ignoring how Hilda provides for them and gives them the safety the plains don't offer.
I think this one might be one where we disagree, honestly, and that's okay! But my intent in structuring the story this way, showing Amara's death before her motivation, is more or less for the same reasons you don't like this chapter. When we first see her, Amara is a prey animal who tries to 1v1 a dragon. While she has three broken legs. Because she wants to protect Hilda. Honestly I think that's one of the bravest things anyone in this fic does, specifically because Amara knows she can't win that fight, and doesn't even want to fight this fight for herself, and tries to anyway.

I think part of it comes down to types of heroism. There are people who don't hesitate before running into danger, and people who do hesitate before running in as well. But are the ones who realize the danger and feel the fear, and overcome it anyway, less brave than the ones who don't seem to feel the fear at all?

It all feels, like Amara, who is so centered on the concept of a herd, can not wrap her head around working side by side with someone for their sake. Vaszelva made such a good point: "Hilda is our partner and that's why I fight for her." That right there should be enough. And after this point, Amara loses me, sadly.
I'm curious! If someone told me "you're my partner and you should fight for me", I don't think I'd be convinced. I'd certainly be flattered (and a little confused) if that was all I had to do to earn someone's (literal) to-the-death loyalty, but would that argument convince you to be willing to die for someone else? To hurt for them? To be owned by them?

If I take a huge step back, ignore all the messages this fic has sent me so far, and go back to purely analysing the character of Amara, I see a complete absence of empathy, which is concerning. Amara can not feel for others or herself, and is mostly confused. (She can't feel for Hilda, she doesn't understand Vaszelva and not even the death of her mother sparks any emotion in her.) Her confusion makes her volatile and dangerous, however. Because of it, she is easily persuaded by outside "snake-tongued" N, making her a wild card for her team. In the end, she is the one who can't be trusted, just like Reylin.
I'm sorry if this sounds rude, but I'm not sure why you'd "ignore all the messages this fic has sent so far"--I did spent a fair amount of time trying to send those messages, so I'm not sure why you'd strip my writing of that context. I might be misunderstanding this part, so if that doesn't sound like a charitable interpretation of your words here, please feel free to correct that!

same tbh

I really mean this, haha--this review made me grin for like a solid day. I make a lot of really wild style choices in this fic that are pretty outlandish even for my normal decision-making process, and they don't always land with everyone, but I made those choices for a reason. So, for lack of better words, to see you work through the process of "telling this story [backwards/in vignettes/from xenofic pokemon POV] is an odd choice" to "but I think I see why you made this choice" is a really, really wonderful experience as a writer who made those choices without fully knowing how they'd land. It's truly delightful.

Not 100% related but still worthy of note here, and something else that I've really enjoyed -- which I am not the first to comment on: I notice that N and Hilda's Pokémon are on speaking terms, which is both an endearing take on this particular dynamic and leads to some more excellent dialogue. I don't really have all that much to say beyond this, which is fine. I just think he's neat.
I really love this detail in the games and wish we got to see it more--N just straight up talking to your pokemon first and then remembering that you're in the room, lol. It speaks volumes of who he wants to hear from more.

All in all, really wonderful opening few chapters that I couldn't really identify any really glaring flaws in; I'll be sure to stick with this story, and check in from time to time as I progress it a little bit. I'm affected by it in ways that I'm not often affected, and I think you've done a superb job in writing it so well. :>
:'''''''''''')))))

I've been a bit less active than normal as of late but I really hope to return the favor soon.
 

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
oh hey it's sunday somewhere

some housekeeping updates: I've added/edited some bits of necktie and nocturne. I do lots of stealth edits and assume they never get reread. Honestly, like most of those edits, these are quite short and I'd pretend like they aren't important to anything upcoming (and they aren't important to this chapter), and hey, they're kind of cool on their own. but I mean, then I wouldn't be calling them out, so.
necktie said:
But when you think it all through, it isn’t the vocabulary that she lost in Unova, or her hand-voices, or even her name. There’s a concept that your people learned from hers, or perhaps the other way around—that of four we’s. The language that she speaks now has forgotten it, and when they hear it in the dialect of dragons they do not understand it. There is the we that means you and us without them, and there is the we that means us and them without you. The third we is the one Unovans pretend to use—you and us and them—when in reality you think they simply mean we without you and them.

For you and Iris, it is always you and I. It can be with them, or without. You do not care. Plasma claimed to want to give you back your freedom. What they fail to understand is that your soul has only ever known a leash. Unova has always held you both by the neck; there is no separating your struggles from hers. Not one without the other.

nocturne said:
Have you ever heard the nocturne lament Spoken?}

{Spoken?} His voice lilts on your pronunciation. Not a true native speaker, then.

{Not spoken, but Spoken,} you confirm, and this time he seems to understand the emphasis. {We can retell her words without feeling them, as we can with any words. As I did in my story just now—I spoke. But.} You draw yourself up to your full height, wings outstretched, voice unyielding. {If we understand it. If we mean it. For a brief moment she lives again. She Speaks, and through her, so do we.}

Across the sands, you have seen and heard so much. Yet each time you see Stormdancer’s words given life again, you find it beautiful, and terrifying. Sometimes she is invoked in these words, secreted down across the generations, across the world. Sometimes she only lives on in a gesture, in a cry, a gaze. Yet the intent is unmistakable.

and now for something completely different:
 
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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
[[there was a chapter here! but I moved it :o]]
 
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WildBoots

Don’t underestimate seeds.
Pronouns
She/Her
Partners
  1. moka-mark
  2. solrock
General thoughts:

Fuck.

That's it. No further comment at this time.


...


JK. But I did read this and immediately just ... lie down and take a nap, lol. 🏳️

This definitely is a long one, but it flows smoothly from end to end and demands to be read through. It's certainly relevant to the rest of the story we've seen up to this point, but it could also easily stand alone as a one-shot. (Okay, maybe the Stormdancer stuff would be confusing. But it otherwise feels very complete and satisfying.) I did think that the jump from Nepeta to here was pretty big, bigger probably than it would've been from siglyph chapter. BUT, I'm really happy Lizard Mom was here, and this was such a fun surprise to stumble into blindly.

A lot of my thoughts are buried in the line reactions, but a few things that stood out enough to me to make sure I hit it here:
1) This super duper gave me Princess Mononoke vibes, especially Moro the wolf mother (who was always my absolute favorite).
2) Interesting how the tattering of his father's robe goes hand-in-hand not with the loss of his humanity exactly (because in many way it's the human tribe who loses that) but with the loss of a human's expectations for what a good life looks like.
3) The absence of follow-up on the sandile who rejected him stood out to me. No attempt to find her and apologize, not much further reflection on her growing up while he was growing up. Especially since his tribe moved on without him, getting taller and changing their beliefs, while he was with her people, getting taller and adopting her beliefs.
4) I wasn't entirely sure why (echo of Baku) does seem to still be able to speak as a Yamask.
5) Is little flurry a nod to Baku attempting and failing to bridge these two sides? Icy dragonshellmom snapping in two again. I also wondered how far down the Southern Shore was supposed to be. Modern day Castelia? OR, the crookodile parts of the desert stretched into what's now Nimbasa? I guess the desert could have snow flurries too—mine did, after all, though I'm picturing this less like the deserts of the US Southwest and more like the Sahara.
6) The final passage felt a liiiiiiitle fast. I wanted a smidge more time with the ruins and the yamask.

Gud fic plz update more when

Besides, you were born on the plains, and you know—even if you wanted to run, there’s nowhere for you to go.
Colon?

They don’t bind you, and you’re grateful for the dignity that affords you. Besides, you were born on the plains, and you know—even if you wanted to run, there’s nowhere for you to go. At the front of the procession, the sanhim walks with a ramrod-straight back, the fringes of his cloak trailing in the dry grass. Behind him is Nali, on his heels like a verdant shadow, and behind her is you. They don’t look back for you. If you wanted to slip away, you could. Without Nali you would stray from the path and quickly fall to the sun, no doubt. Without the sanhim, you would surely be able to live, but the shame would fester at your insides until the day you died.

I sort of wanted this to be broken into several smaller paragraphs to help me digest the strangeness:
They don’t bind you, and you’re grateful for the dignity that affords you. Besides, you were born on the plains, and you know—even if you wanted to run, there’s nowhere for you to go.

At the front of the procession, the sanhim walks with a ramrod-straight back, the fringes of his cloak trailing in the dry grass. Behind him is Nali, on his heels like a verdant shadow, and behind her is you. They don’t look back for you.

If you wanted to slip away, you could. Without Nali you would stray from the path and quickly fall to the sun, no doubt. Without the sanhim, you would surely be able to live, but the shame would fester at your insides until the day you died.

That said, I like this opening. We're VERY internal here (though I appreciate the dry grass dragging to ground us in space), which makes a lot of sense. This chapter, and especially this moment, is about Baku understanding and failing to understand, so we definitely need to know what his fear and shame feel like. The disorientation also makes a kind of sense here: it's like he's coming unmoored from his sense of self. It also adds to this sense of another time, the way it makes these humans hard to recognize at first: they aren't quite us, and this history has been totally lost in the wake of all the current conflicts. It IS alien.

The land that holds your judgment
I like the personification of land (alluding to the krookodile, to the laws of nature, to Samira's assertion that all of life is of one body), but "holds" doesn't quite feel right to me.

the uncomfortably-tight knot in your throat.
No hyphen, I don't think.

The sands around Samira’s legs shiver as well, and another krookodile emerges headfirst, staring haughtily down at you. This one is closer to regular size, its wedged head as large as your torso and its body twice your height, but your heart still catches in your throat—when you cast your gaze around the dunes, you see dozens of pairs of beady black peeking back from the sand. There is a low, vibrating hiss. You can’t tell from where.
Powerful moment! I think emerging headfirst is redundant—that's what I picture by default—but otherwise I love the details here. They stack until we have this breathless vision of an incomprehensibly big creature and her brood.

but I fear he will only feel like justice is dealt if his words are also heard.”
Usually a good start! And this is a form of restorative justice that only works because Baku knows he's done wrong, and that it's shamed not only himself but others around him.

Each of her inhalations is large enough to blow your hair forward; each exhale cloaks you in a warm, moist breeze. You manage a shaky bow.
*Blow your hair back?

Powerful image, though!

the sonder of maractus.
Sonder!

You watched the familiar sight as an outsider, as everyone chattered and danced and ate.
The double as is a little funny, but oof at the sentiment.

Nali grabbed Harana and her newfound maractus by the hands
This tripped me up on the first pass, though I guess it shouldn't have. It made me question for a second whether I was wrong for thinking that Nali was the maractus or where the extra maractus had come from, I think because I somehow hadn't completely pieced together that Dad was Nali's [trainer], or maybe because I don't have a mental image for Harana. I think it's mostly a me thing, but this was a lot of names to digest in a moment where I didn't completely understand how everyone connected together yet.

chattered with the darumaka that had befriended her daughter in the desert tongue
*chattered in the desert tongue with the darumaka that had ...

When the sun rose, your clan would return to the south, with five new children.
It speaks volumes that these little prevos are recognized as children by the humans. New children, even: not servants but adopted family members.

“I wanted her to have picked me, but she didn’t. I was wrong.”
Woof. This so painfully echoes moments in our world where boys try to forcefully overtake girls who didn't choose them, except this kid has much more self-awareness and regret than those boys and men usually do.

the sanhim had declared that because your crime was against the krookodile, they would be your judge instead of him.
Oof

already older than you’ll ever be.
A lot to wrap your head around. She's like a tree.

“They have heard your plea. To lay a hand on another is a great offense amongst the krookodile, but Samira recognizes that it may not be the same for us in the south.”

Your ears burn with shame: that is a kindness she assumes of you. If you had touched Harana like that, or tried to steal Mila—
Oof, oof, oof, oof, oof.

“To Samira and her kind, it is clear that we of the Southern Stones have failed in raising you to respect the peoples of this land. So she proposes this: they will raise you instead, and teach what we could not.”
That's a pretty gentle resolution to his asshole move! I can appreciate how it wouldn't feel that way from his perspective, though—he has to forcibly remind himself it's not supposed to be a punishment—and it doesn't feel unearned. Just ... wow. Can you imagine if we kept drawing that parallel to restorative justice in sexual assault cases all the way through this moment? This would be wild as a solution to that crime. The krookodile are doing a lot here.

But an aching part of you wants to hear the familiarity of the words, to curl up and close your eyes and lose yourself like Sunchaser almost did. Yet you can’t lie to your father, so instead you ask, “Could you tell it again?”
I hiccuped over this, not quite sure where the lie would've been. Saying he didn't remember? It feels like he asks this question not instead of lying but instead of curling up and losing himself ... which he could still do listening to the story anyway.

she could now see her shadow cast ahead of her, framed by that light.
Shouldn't her shadow be behind her if she's facing the light?

‘Please hear me, oh great waters. I need to reach the light beyond you and use it to find my sister. Could you lend me your aid?’

The water stilled at her words, and then with a burbling hiss of sea foam, parted to form a path for her. Thus Sunchaser and the water bounded the first sea.
!
I liked the way this echos the partnerships between the people of the Southern Shore and the three pokemon tribes. Not a demand or a compulsion but a favor. In our myths, the waters would be literal and magical. Here, it feels like it's both that and slantwise references to pokemon. Interesting to reimagine Zek as a proto-trainer. (Of course it's the humans who frame the story this way.)

‘Good that I could not see without your light,’ Sunchaser replied petulantly.
But isn't she illuminating her?

“Little flurry, we cannot control the things we love,” he whispers into your scalp. “Sometimes, we must let them go.”

In response, you clutch him tighter.
Oof.

Wearily, he picks up his staff, and he is the sanhim again.
I liked this moment. It echoes other places in this chapter where characters set aside their personal bonds to play their role instead.

Nali throws her arms around your leg, her spines carefully withdrawn.
So sweet.

“This cloak is not what makes me sanhim to our people, Baku; nor will it make you a leader to theirs. But what it will do is keep you warm, little flurry, and it will keep us with you.”
❤️

She rumbles something, and belatedly you wonder if she’s been trying to speak to you this whole time.
🙃

there’s nothing here but blackness and if you think about it too much it’ll rise and choke you, tendrils of worry and shame around your throat—
So visceral.

with no body to place to it
This might be fine, but it struck my ear funny for some reason.

but the pangs in your chest suggest that you’ve simply forgotten about eating until now.
*stomach?

The sandile who rejected you was supposed to teach you patiently, your father by your side to translate. Not this.
*who'd/ who had?

It also occurs to me as sort of odd that Baku never attempts to talk to her, whether to apologize or to yell at her in a moment of weakness. It seems like he should either be barred from contacting her, offered a chance to apologize, or simply unable to recognize her, but either way he should wonder about her more. (Haha, yes, your chapter still isn't long enough. More, please.)

Either she tried to feed you something inedible or you went to bed hungry.
Seems like it should be something more like "either you tried to eat what she fed you or you went to bed hungry."

Laying out stones in the desert to bake breads and dry fruits. Carefully harvesting from the cactus fields with Nali by your side to delicately unpick the spines from your hands when you were too eager. These are not things they would do in the dunes, you realize, thinking of Samira’s gargantuan frame and maw.
Love the pairing of such tenderness against Samira's bluntness.

but at the same time you know Samira would not be able to help you if you missed one. With no vision and nothing else to do, you’re able to drown yourself in the task, and your thoughts circle in a vortex as you pick the carcass clean.
We talked a little about "lol, my new pet human can probably eat this raw fish, right? lol bye", which definitely IS here ... but I also saw a kind of love in this: she's treating him like a sandile. That obviously might not be a wholly appropriate way to care for a human, but the humans in this story pretty much never make the mistake of assuming pokemon are like themselves.
🙃
(Except for Rhea and Tourmaline! And N, of course.) There are certain kind of delicate care Samira can't provide, but she's also granting Baku the faith that he'll figure it out and be as tough as he needs to be.

I also love that ending clause. Really underlines both the anxiety and the way he has to distance himself from his body to be able to choke this thing down.

The knowledge is hard-earned, from endless hours spent in the dark, observing, categorizing, trying to understand.
Observing feels like maybe not the right word.

that your eyes were not made to piece the subterranean darkness and that when you live among them you live blind.
So, funny enough, I misread the first line as "they don't blind you" except oops they kinda do after all.

petrified by the thought of it washing away in the breeze.
Neither "washing away" nor "breeze" feels quite right. Like, we're not in the water anymore, so it can't wash away. And it's heavy with water, so a breeze wouldn't do it. Certainly, still reeling over what was almost lost though, yes.

You’ve heard this one before; she always seems to ask it before she moves you. Curiously, you echo it back.

She freezes beneath you, and then after a pause she repeats it. There’s something different here, something you can’t quite place or replicate—it echoes in a more sibilant way and the pauses feel less protracted.
My heart.

And because of who we are—we take great care to ensure that there is never more or less of our number each year—our names are passed down. When we lose one of our own, the new hatchling takes that name. Thus we remember our burden, and what our burden is to the desert.}
!
This reminds me of Midsommar, of all things.

Also, WOW, the idea that they see themselves as a burden upon the desert speaks volumes. Like, how responsible? But also wow ouch. Because that is a mood and a hellova parallel to where humans stand in the present.

{Never in my life have I had to name something. This is new to me. I consulted the other krookodile and they felt the same.}

“Nofangs?”
LOLOLOL

I didn't have any ideas, so I just named you Leafy.

You see waves crashing into the shore, safely tucked to one side as she gathers an enormous treasure trove of fish in her jaws.
! Oh, I see, we've traveled off the canon map, into one of those places barred by rocks but still tantalizingly partially visible.

towering even taller than she and you stacked together.
"You and her" sounds more natural to me. Definitely has to be her because without you it would be "taller than her."

She introduces you to the vulture queen, a young but proud mandibuzz who pecks curiously at your skull before a warning hiss sends her scooting back.
Persephone's here! Haha.

I liked the inclusion of some other species that don't directly partner with humans. The world is bigger and more complicated than that.

You can’t help but notice that Haruna’s grown taller in the past year; she’s unfolded like a sapling and stands a full four inches over you. Her maractus, a new flower bloomed on his forehead, introduces himself as Aji. Haruna wears a cloak you’ve never seen before; her darumaka peers out anxiously from its folds. You watch, mostly, while they chatter. Has it really been a year since you heard the human tongue?
Oof, the way seeing someone suddenly change physically in the time you've been gone amplifies the distance and time between. Ouch.

Also, interesting that they can have more than one partner! I guess it makes sense, because they don't own them (yet, oops) but are adding them to their family. Families come in many sizes, after all. It just hadn't occurred to me until this moment in the chapter.

At ten feet away you can see the arched trepidation ingrained in Samira’s spine, even if in the soft moonlight you can’t make out the expression on your father’s face.
OOF. Like, yes, she's much larger, so it makes sense that her reaction is more visible at a distance. But also, ouch, what an effective parallel to the shift in Baku's loyalties.

Self-consciously, you pull your cloak more tightly around your shoulders, painfully aware of how threadbare it has become. This cloak is supposed to last until you are a man, old enough to make a cloak to guard a child of your own. Your father began spinning the threads as soon as your mother realized you were growing inside of her; together, they dyed the flaxen strands to match the winter sunrise. Standing in the shadow of your home, for a moment you’re struck with a memory you never had—the sensation of the two of them tracing their fingers over the freshly-woven fabric, discussing in soft voices the patterning of the golden grass stitched into the border, their hands drifting to the swell of your mother’s belly as they imagined the world they’d show their son.
This was powerful. Truly, he can never go home again, because the path he expected to walk is already no longer available to him. Yet this still isn't a sign of him losing his humanity, per se, even though it's already a foregone conclusion that he'll switch sides. Arguably, it's the humans who lose their humanity.

The girl he joined did not wish to let him leave, and tried to compel him there first by words, then by force.
Fuck. Someone didn't listen to the Sunchaser story very well.

They lived in pockets of sandstone, their corpses lined with sun-bleached stones that you later realized were too oblong to be bones. Samira paid it no mind, but you remembered the careful ceremony your father had conducted, how he’d solemnly borne thing that was no longer your mother into the center of the village, how all who knew her took up a torch and offered her to the winds. Her bones he wrapped away in her cloak and buried, carefully. To see so many there, so naked and forgotten, casually picked over and riddled with holes—that is the feeling Samira means.
I'm still confused by corpses in that first sentence. I get the sky burial that follows (so cool! "No research" my ass, BTW) and that they leave behind picked-clean bones that the human bury. But I'm not sure about this first mentioning of corpses. These can't be the corpses of mandibuzz, can they? Do they not eat their own? Or are these krookodiles?

{We see this place once as hatchlings, and then we do not return except when we have hatchlings of our own, so they may see it for their last time.}
For their first time, isn't it?

you are mine, Nofangs.
<3 I'll eat you up I love you so.

I love this because it's so different from the claim of ownership the humans in the modern era are making. She does let him go in the end, tries to send him away somewhere safe, lets him choose to come with her into the final battle. He's hers not because she controls him completely but because they love each other.

We peoples of the desert must protect one another. The sands are an enemy so great that we cannot afford to fight amongst ourselves as well. All the earth’s children share one body, after all.
<3 </3

But underground, the krookodile have no use for words that must be seen.
Ooh, nice.

This is our punishment. One day, the Great Mother will be proud once more of what we have done and She will reawaken, instead of hiding away from us and our shame.}
Oof.

{Now each solstice we send our children to guard you.
!!

{In taking you, in codifying your guilt, I took your birthright, and with it his lineage. That is the price he and I decided on that day, Nofangs. That is the judgment I chose to pass.}
Damn.

{If anyone witnessing this thinks there are two sides to choose from, then the sands will be plunged into war. And then we have all lost.}
👋🎤

{Greetings, traveler. We serve.
Ouch.

when you look back you know without knowing what happened to the darumaka your people stole, the horrible stonecrafting magic Samira spoke of. Did she know it could be used like this?
Okay, so THIS is where the zen darumaka came from? Interesting indeed.

When the time came for him to pass—” She wraps her hands around yours, and suddenly you grow cold when you realize what she’s saying. “—for him it was fast. I was there. But I wish you were, too. I knew you wouldn’t have wanted him to be alone. But we had no way of finding you.”
:CCCCCCC

This is a lesson—

There is nothing to be learned here. That anger sparks you upright. This is senseless, and you could spend the rest of your life trying to understand it.
What a mood. This moment rang true for me.

“But if they fight us, doesn’t that mean we were right to defend ourselves to begin with?” she asks stiffly.
🙃 Oh no. Nice self-fulfilling prophecy there. Very Cold War of you.

You hug your father’s cloak to yourself and wonder what you could’ve become. If they hadn’t taken you. If you hadn’t taken her.
Yeah, the people of the southern shore moved on without him in more ways than one. This almost made me wish we knew what bad jokes and other shit their culture casually carries that allowed Baku think for an instant that it would be okay to snatch a sandile ... but we don't really need it for the chapter to work, I don't think.

Would they have gone to war if you’d learned faster? If you’d answered Samira’s questions in one year instead of two? Would Livari have listened if you’d spoken better?
Ah, he's blaming himself much in the way Samira did.

{I could take you far from here. I could leave you here when the night falls. The maractus could look after you, or even the mandibuzz; I fear this conflict will spread and you’d be safer further—}
This is petty, but I think it's farther. My understanding is that farther = physical distance and further = philosophical distance (further from the truth), though I definitely use them interchangeably in speech.

When you’re finished, she hums carefully. {We also speak of a sister like your Sunseeker. In ours, she asks a stone to carry her through the sky, although it is her fate never to find that which she seeks. Sometimes she loses faith and goes dark, and sometimes she is almost as bright as her twin.}
Ahaha making Zek and Resh somewhat interchangeable.

{Perhaps.} Samira laughs quietly to herself. {Although I always thought of the two of them as the Great Mother’s hearts, chasing one another through the peoples and across the sands.}
!!

The traditional response is almost out of your mouth before you stop yourself. It shouldn’t be that way. It wouldn’t be fair. This can’t be the only option. But these are the only pieces you were given.
Man, no one in this story can quite escape false binaries, even when they recognize them. He is just a kid, after all. :c

before you realize that your bravery last night wasn’t bravery at all, but foolishness.
Oops.

“Sigilyph warriors, to me!” someone is shouting, and then Livari is overhead, flying like the mandibuzz. You catch a glimpse of widespread wings, painted more colors than you’ve ever seen at once, and then there’s a harsh crack as the earth beneath Samira’s feet shatters and a blast of wind sends you tumbling backwards. As you crash down her spine your world is a multicolored blur; when you finally catch yourself on a fin you see that the sky is blotted out by rainbow wings.

Samira hisses and lurches beneath you, swiping out with one claw at the nearest one and slamming it into the ground. It shatters upon impact, shards of clay scattering. More stone magic? But you don’t have time to figure it out, because their eyes glow in unison and then Samira is coiling up and plunging underground and it takes all your focus just to hold on.
Ahh this makes a lot of sense as an origin story for siglyph. They're a good countermeasure to ground-type attacks and, being manmade, perhaps they have more ... inherent loyalty. 🙃

“The desert is not yours,” Livari says, turning.
Unova isn't yours! :o

But then your heart sinks: she’s holding the white half of the Dragonmother’s heart.

It had gone to the darmanitan this year, you remember distantly. They must’ve …
A-yup. That checks out.

In the next instant, the Dragonmother’s dark heart awakens.
!!!!!

{Where are we?}

Arwi, he responds. The mask’s mouth does not move when he speaks.
:c

clutching in a way that’s simultaneously furious and delicate.
❤️

By the time the sun begins to rise and instinct tells you to take cover from the light, you’ve found the sun-bleached spine of a krookodile stretching out of the sands, thousands of years of erosion having claimed the rest of her, and you know all that you need to know. The word desecrated hisses in the back of your mind.
Mommmmm :c

Other ghosts do not become yamask.

Third: no one else knows why yamask echo instead of speaking; or perhaps, if they know, they do not care.
Wait, Baku doesn't seem to be echoing here but forming sentences. Is the idea that he could speak both languages but the ghosts of the other humans could only speak their own language?
 

bluesidra

Mood
Pronouns
she/her
Partners
  1. hoppip-bluesidra-reup
  2. hoppip-bluesidra-pink
  3. hoppip-bluesidra3
Hello! Thank you for the response! Whew, that’s a lot to dig through. Let me see.

Although, I'm curious about your assertion re: "questioning his beliefs would actually hurt him"--since the choice to start this dialogue, and ask these questions (rather than just summoning Reshiram) is entirely his own here.
The choice is his, but we don’t always make clever choices, do we? I mean, his snapping makes him look defensive. It’s almost like he wants to hear criticism, so he can rebuke it, and thus showing himself that he was right all along. But since he doesn’t fully engage with the criticism, but deflect it rather quickly, it comes across like the aim was never to improve his worldview, but to justify it.

Now I’m not saying that he 100% does this in text. But what I described above was the mechanics that I kinda assumed that he was working under.


But it's the "if they didn't want to, they'd probably show" that Ghetsis is picking at, and kind of what this fic picks at in general.
I get that in general, and there is a lot of nuance around that, especially in the examples you listed. But I feel like Ghetsis in particular shoots his message in the knee with his approach. Like, that’s not a criticism of you, the author, but of the character and his brain-ways. If he didn’t put on such a grueling show, his entire argument falls apart quickly.


In the games Alder's pretty passive, and hopes that the player can do things in his stead--which is, arguably, because if the champion solved the problems then the player wouldn't really be able to do anything.
The flaw of all pokemon games…
There's a recurring theme in this chapter of people expecting (or forcing?) other people to fly into the line of fire on their behalf
Eeey, another thing I didn’t catch

I really do value your thoughts here--they ended up inspiring how I wanted to bring the final chapter together, for what it's worth. But I do disagree with this idea that Tourmaline's the one not accommodating Cheren here--that his deafness somehow supersedes her muteness, when in reality it's his deafness that allows him to pretend that she's mute, and as such ignore what she's saying.

It's difficult, right? I think we want to come at this from the assumption that the trainers are correct, so we want to justify that the pokemon are wrong if they think the trainers aren't correct. Is it their job to tell us that they're hurting, that remind us that we aren't doing our jobs--or is it our job to do our jobs?
That are two difficult paragraphs to parse, let me try… … ...

Ok, I think a lot boils down to how our (yours and mine) baseline for human behaviour is. You seem to think that Cheren actively leans into his
deafness’ to not have to think too hard about his pokemons wellbeing. While I assume Cheren is legitimately deaf, because as soon as he got even the hint of something not being ok, he’d immediately act to correct it.
(And yeah, the modern art thingy Boldure did when it wanted to show that it wanted to go back to its cave was pretty clear, if one would take a minute or two to look at it. But Cheren didn’t, so I don’t want to take all the guilt off of him.)

Bottom-line: I don’t even want to assume that trainers are correct, but I assume that the average trainer does everything in their power to accomodate for their pokemon, and that’s as much as they can do within the limits of their senses.


I like your interpretations here of what a lilligant or a dwebble could be--but that's sort of Tourmaline's point, isn't it? That if we don't ask, we see what we want to see. You want to see light; she wants to see darkness. But what we want to see doesn't really matter in the face of what is.
Wait, I don’t think that was Tourmaline’s point at all. I recall her more like “look at all those pokemon, pretending to be alright when they probably aren’t.” So my counter was “look at all those pokemon, being alright because they have a healthy relationship to their trainer.” Neither one of those statements is proven, and that’s where Tourmaline’s argument falls flat imo. (Like, again, not your argument as the author, but Tourmaline as a character)


I think this one might be one where we disagree, honestly, and that's okay! But my intent in structuring the story this way, showing Amara's death before her motivation, is more or less for the same reasons you don't like this chapter. When we first see her, Amara is a prey animal who tries to 1v1 a dragon. While she has three broken legs. Because she wants to protect Hilda. Honestly I think that's one of the bravest things anyone in this fic does, specifically because Amara knows she can't win that fight, and doesn't even want to fight this fight for herself, and tries to anyway.

I think part of it comes down to types of heroism. There are people who don't hesitate before running into danger, and people who do hesitate before running in as well. But are the ones who realize the danger and feel the fear, and overcome it anyway, less brave than the ones who don't seem to feel the fear at all?
To be honest, I don’t remember Amara’s fight too well. It was kinda in the background and I focused more on Vaszelva than on the way Amara fought. In retrospect I couldn’t tell if she was being afraid, heroic, reckless… any of that.

I really love those ‘ways of heroism’ you described there btw.


I'm curious! If someone told me "you're my partner and you should fight for me", I don't think I'd be convinced. I'd certainly be flattered (and a little confused) if that was all I had to do to earn someone's (literal) to-the-death loyalty, but would that argument convince you to be willing to die for someone else? To hurt for them? To be owned by them?
I think it depends on the scope, but yes. The keyword is “earn”. If I’m in a life-and-death situation with someone I love and care about, I’d fight to the death for them because I know they are doing the same for me. And I kinda assumed Amara and Hilda had that bond at this stage of the story.

Like, I don’t expect my newly caught Wurmple to put its life on the line for me, not at all. But a friend of many months, if not years? Especially if heroic death is one of the best things to do in the culture I come from. Would do without hesitation.

Especially because the odds are kinda even. Hilda is way more fragile, and she is in physical danger every time she walks up to N or Ghetsis.


I'm sorry if this sounds rude, but I'm not sure why you'd "ignore all the messages this fic has sent so far"--I did spent a fair amount of time trying to send those messages, so I'm not sure why you'd strip my writing of that context. I might be misunderstanding this part, so if that doesn't sound like a charitable interpretation of your words here, please feel free to correct that!
I totally didn’t mean it like that. Sorry if that upset you.

It was more like an attempt for me to make sense of Amara’s character. Like, I know that you are sending a message with this fic and the main focus is this message, and not the characters and the 800th layer to their personality. So when I’m analysing, I should mainly focus on the message and not read things into a character, because that’s probably not intended to be there.

But if I ignore the main focus of your fic for a moment and deliberately analyse something I shouldn’t, this would be the conclusion about Amara’s character that I’d come to. Like, I didn’t understand what Amara’s problem was, and so I tried taking a step back from the problem and look at her behaviour. Maybe there’s the reason that my logic doesn’t apply to her. Something like that.

Hm, idk if that explains it sufficiently. But it’s got nothing to do with you or your fic, and more with me trying to make sense of what I perceived.


I might be a bit too optimistic for this world, but I also kinda want to assume the best in people before I'm taught otherwise. Else I couldn't approach them on a respectful level. You seem to have a more nuanced approach. That was at least the hiccup in two instances.
Still, thanks a lot for your in-depth reply. Looking forward to see more of those thoughts!
 

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
some responses?? in this economy? we finish STRONG on the review replies I swear

General thoughts:

Fuck.

That's it. No further comment at this time.
I really love this review--I'm fascinated that we had such different takeaways on it and yet you still ended up enjoying the chapter, perhaps even moreso and for entirely different reasons than I did, haha. It's truly a testament to how much I'm still figuring out a lot as a writer that this somehow landed the way that it did lol.

It's certainly relevant to the rest of the story we've seen up to this point, but it could also easily stand alone as a one-shot. (Okay, maybe the Stormdancer stuff would be confusing. But it otherwise feels very complete and satisfying.) I did think that the jump from Nepeta to here was pretty big, bigger probably than it would've been from siglyph chapter. BUT, I'm really happy Lizard Mom was here, and this was such a fun surprise to stumble into blindly.
mentioned in Discord, but yeah, I thought this was kind of a hilarious segment to plan out because it's like, alright, everyone wants to understand things about Hilda and N! So many questions about the humans that still need to be answered! What color are their orbs? What happened in their childhoods that make their actions sympathetic and justify the situations they orchestrated? Did they eat pancakes or waffles?

But this is a story about things that start with N, not a story about N. This shit's way past him now.

except for the scene that features this yamask eventually becoming ghetsis's cofagrigus and then teaching N how to speak the desert tongue, which is inexplicably mentioned as his native tongue in chapter 14, while a younger zahhak watches angrily and is very tsundere about the whole thing

3) The absence of follow-up on the sandile who rejected him stood out to me. No attempt to find her and apologize, not much further reflection on her growing up while he was growing up. Especially since his tribe moved on without him, getting taller and changing their beliefs, while he was with her people, getting taller and adopting her beliefs.
This one I definitely agree with--in my head one of the many things that Samira hissed at Baku was a general "it's not her job to teach you how to be a better person and you should never expect her to do that or even forgive you," but I realize that I shouldn't have that relegated to sssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssss sssss
4) I wasn't entirely sure why (echo of Baku) does seem to still be able to speak as a Yamask.
This one is! oops! Explained in Discord but basically I wanted ghosts to be able to speak the language of whatever they spoke before they died--so a dead pokemon who becomes a ghost would speak the forest tongue/the desert tongue/whatever. Humans die and only speak the dancer's tongue, but specifically once they become pokemon ... they can no longer speak the dancer's tongue, and as such are unable to speak at all. awkward gg.

seriously though I don't get why this game insists that you should be able to own actual dead human children
5) Is little flurry a nod to Baku attempting and failing to bridge these two sides? Icy dragonshellmom snapping in two again. I also wondered how far down the Southern Shore was supposed to be. Modern day Castelia? OR, the crookodile parts of the desert stretched into what's now Nimbasa? I guess the desert could have snow flurries too—mine did, after all, though I'm picturing this less like the deserts of the US Southwest and more like the Sahara.
Oh, I actually pictured the (area north of Castelia that's currently known as the Desert Resort for??? reasons? and contains Relic Castle, etc) as this general area. There were some arid parts but in general the krookodile kept it flourishing, kind of similar in climate to California/Death Valley, where the land really does go from dunes to snowcapped mountains to grass plains in under a hundred miles? Maybe a bit of an exaggeration but the giant earth crocodiles are able to support the water demands in such a small area. Until the big ones are all killed in a freaky freaky war and are consistently killed before they can reach a large enough size to continue preventing the area from becoming a desert wasteland.

made the line edits; bless you for keeping up with my bleary 1 am prose

That's a pretty gentle resolution to his asshole move! I can appreciate how it wouldn't feel that way from his perspective, though—he has to forcibly remind himself it's not supposed to be a punishment—and it doesn't feel unearned. Just ... wow. Can you imagine if we kept drawing that parallel to restorative justice in sexual assault cases all the way through this moment? This would be wild as a solution to that crime. The krookodile are doing a lot here.
this is honestly the most "deserved", for lack of a better word, way I could think of to justify someone deciding to forcibly take ownership of someone else, and tbh there's still a lot of lives ruined and a lot that's riding on "just trust that the people looking after you are going to make the right decisions". it's kind of telling that I basically modelled prison but with crocodiles ...

We talked a little about "lol, my new pet human can probably eat this raw fish, right? lol bye", which definitely IS here ... but I also saw a kind of love in this: she's treating him like a sandile. That obviously might not be a wholly appropriate way to care for a human, but the humans in this story pretty much never make the mistake of assuming pokemon are like themselves. (Except for Rhea and Tourmaline! And N, of course.) There are certain kind of delicate care Samira can't provide, but she's also granting Baku the faith that he'll figure it out and be as tough as he needs to be.
haha I never considered this moment as tender, but I suppose against the backdrop of the Cherens of the world, this isn't the worst ...

I think a lot of the trainers in this fic are specifically wrong because they unilaterally fail to accommodate human/pokemon differences, though.

! Oh, I see, we've traveled off the canon map, into one of those places barred by rocks but still tantalizingly partially visible.
nope! these are probably basculin!

honestly non-sentient/non-pokemon fish probably also exist in this world and it could be them as well. but if they were basculin they can't talk in a language we understand and they can't fasten scarves without fingers, so it's fine.

Also, interesting that they can have more than one partner! I guess it makes sense, because they don't own them (yet, oops) but are adding them to their family. Families come in many sizes, after all. It just hadn't occurred to me until this moment in the chapter.
this was straight-up a typo. I do appreciate you assuming the best of me, though.

I'm still confused by corpses in that first sentence. I get the sky burial that follows (so cool! "No research" my ass, BTW) and that they leave behind picked-clean bones that the human bury. But I'm not sure about this first mentioning of corpses. These can't be the corpses of mandibuzz, can they? Do they not eat their own? Or are these krookodiles?
I meant to type "caves" and instead I typed "corpses". My brain is quite large.

I love this because it's so different from the claim of ownership the humans in the modern era are making. She does let him go in the end, tries to send him away somewhere safe, lets him choose to come with her into the final battle. He's hers not because she controls him completely but because they love each other.
or because she ended up raising him away from his family for long enough that he lost all ties to them and more or less lost the ability to relate to them, bit of column A, bit of column B

This is petty, but I think it's farther. My understanding is that farther = physical distance and further = philosophical distance (further from the truth), though I definitely use them interchangeably in speech.
this is probably true! but as is tradition with lay/lie I just removed it entirely rather than try to figure out which one it's supposed to be.

Hello! Thank you for the response! Whew, that’s a lot to dig through. Let me see.
Hi again! Appreciate you stopping by a second time!

The choice is his, but we don’t always make clever choices, do we? I mean, his snapping makes him look defensive. It’s almost like he wants to hear criticism, so he can rebuke it, and thus showing himself that he was right all along. But since he doesn’t fully engage with the criticism, but deflect it rather quickly, it comes across like the aim was never to improve his worldview, but to justify it.

Now I’m not saying that he 100% does this in text. But what I described above was the mechanics that I kinda assumed that he was working under.
I guess the part that would benefit me most as an author would be to know where he does this in the text--100% or otherwise!--that leads you to this conclusion. I hadn't quite intended for his dialogue to come across that way, so if there are sections that made you feel that way I'd be interested in knowing what they are so I can take a look at revising.

I get that in general, and there is a lot of nuance around that, especially in the examples you listed. But I feel like Ghetsis in particular shoots his message in the knee with his approach. Like, that’s not a criticism of you, the author, but of the character and his brain-ways. If he didn’t put on such a grueling show, his entire argument falls apart quickly.
I'm not sure if this will change your opinion, but during that battle specifically Ghetsis mentions several injuries that happened during previous championship matches that were more or less considered okay by everyone's standards--an unfezant gets third degree burns, for example. The point he's trying to get at is that trying to quantify an "acceptable" amount of pain, especially when it's "pain that is not and will never be felt by me", is kind of a bonkers concept and it's inherently difficult to say what should be "acceptable" for everyone.

In a world with instantaneous healing, is it really so bad to get your limbs ripped off if they can be attached on later? Are third degree burns bad really so bad? Broken limbs? Bruises? Papercuts? I think everyone's got a different level of what they're willing to tolerate for a given payoff, but that's far from universal.

One of Amara's major quibbles with Hilda is because Amara's leg gets broken during a gym fight--but it's healed now, and you mentioned not really seeing what Amara's problem is with Hilda's methods, so presumably you'd put "broken limbs" as "acceptable". But I definitely wouldn't! Which is more or less Ghetsis' point when he, correctly or not, dramatically or not, chooses to go all the way to the extreme end here--maybe the line for "acceptable violence inflicted on pokemon" shouldn't exist at all.

Ok, I think a lot boils down to how our (yours and mine) baseline for human behaviour is. You seem to think that Cheren actively leans into his
deafness’ to not have to think too hard about his pokemons wellbeing. While I assume Cheren is legitimately deaf, because as soon as he got even the hint of something not being ok, he’d immediately act to correct it.
I think these are fair assumptions to make of Cheren-from-the-games-Cheren, or Cheren-from-the-anime-Cheren, but I guess my struggle here becomes:
(And yeah, the modern art thingy Boldure did when it wanted to show that it wanted to go back to its cave was pretty clear, if one would take a minute or two to look at it. But Cheren didn’t, so I don’t want to take all the guilt off of him.)
--since this Cheren-in-this-story-Cheren does get lots of hints that something's not okay and doesn't immediately act to correct it, which is something you acknowledge! So like, even if you don't take all the guilt off of him--is he still responsible for rectifying this mistake? Should he still be entitled to owning pokemon who don't want to be owned?

Bottom-line: I don’t even want to assume that trainers are correct, but I assume that the average trainer does everything in their power to accomodate for their pokemon, and that’s as much as they can do within the limits of their senses.
I guess the roadblock I get stuck on, then, is that choosing to own pokemon despite being "at the limits of their senses" (which in Cheren's case includes "being completely unable to discern if my pokemon event want to be here") becomes an irresponsible and cruel choice. If you can't look after someone correctly because you're incapable of doing so, then I think a fair answer is to not become the sole person responsible for their well-being.

It's not really like there's a binary, right? Tourmaline was happy in a situation that didn't involve Cheren. Carnel was happy in a situation that didn't involve Cheren. Cheren, who is incapable of understanding when Tourmaline and Carnel are expressing unhappiness, takes it upon himself to remove them from these situations and assumes massive amounts of control over their lives--they literally cannot go outside unless he permits it. That's a choice Cheren makes, that he doesn't have to make, and him being "deaf" doesn't mean that it's Tourmaline's fault that he's chosen this life for them.

Wait, I don’t think that was Tourmaline’s point at all. I recall her more like “look at all those pokemon, pretending to be alright when they probably aren’t.” So my counter was “look at all those pokemon, being alright because they have a healthy relationship to their trainer.” Neither one of those statements is proven, and that’s where Tourmaline’s argument falls flat imo. (Like, again, not your argument as the author, but Tourmaline as a character)
debating "the point" is kind of hard, but I think these lines from her form a pretty apt response:
Tourmaline said:
With those same eyes, they will look at a scolipede’s venom, or at my claws, and tell themselves—yes, this means they must want to fight. A trainer will clap for us, cheer us on, laugh with us. They will tell us that we are amazing and powerful as we fight to keep ourselves and those we cherish safe. They will take our victories and give you their weakness. But they will do everything except listen, Carnel.
Tourmaline and Carnel said:
{I would think … } The answer comes easily. {Because he didn’t want to leave it.}

Tourmaline nods to herself and then sits back down by your side. She looks over one shoulder to stare at you, unblinking. {This is what you think. This is what I think as well. But we are colored by our expectations of others.}

{Like a gemstone is colored by the light it sees,} you agree.
Tourmaline explicitly agrees that she and Carnel have biased perspectives, just like the humans do. But that's more or less the point--we're outsiders, like Cheren, and we're choosing to draw conclusions because we can't ask. There are also several pokemon in this scene who explicitly say they aren't alright and don't have a healthy relationship with their trainer, so I guess I don't entirely understand why their statements don't get to count here.

To be honest, I don’t remember Amara’s fight too well. It was kinda in the background and I focused more on Vaszelva than on the way Amara fought. In retrospect I couldn’t tell if she was being afraid, heroic, reckless… any of that.
That's okay! That's kind of the point. Wave doesn't focus on it either. And that's sort of the bitter irony of Amara, I guess.

I think it depends on the scope, but yes. The keyword is “earn”. If I’m in a life-and-death situation with someone I love and care about, I’d fight to the death for them because I know they are doing the same for me. And I kinda assumed Amara and Hilda had that bond at this stage of the story.
I think ["I kinda assumed Amara and Hilda had that bond"] is a big assumption but I'd love if you could point me to the lines in the text that got you to that conclusion--would definitely like to reexamine what I'm implying if that's the case.

I also really like to unpack that assumption in general--love and courage to me are more powerful when they aren't assumed to be the norm. Apologies if this is a deep lore dive or anything but I was recently discussing LotR musical composition with a friend so this scene is fresh on my mind, but also I feel like it's just an impactful scene in general: the scene in Fellowship of the Ring where Frodo chooses to take the Ring to Mordor.

Part of what makes this scene, and the conceit of the movie, work so well, is how it's structured--these are the most powerful people in the kingdom and they're all scared shitless of taking the Ring. There's a large discussion that quickly devolves into a fight. We get a wide shot of their reflections in the Ring and realize this has probably happened before--people falling into discord and squabbling in the face of evil rather than uniting, because the Ring corrupts. It devolves naturally.

And then! Frodo gets up. He's hesitant at first. The music is still overshadowed by discussion. Most people don't hear him. But Gandalf does, and when he realizes what's happening, his face breaks. Gandals is a near-immortal wizard from a guardian race of spirits called the Maiar from two or three Ages back who were responsible for shaping the world, and his face breaks when he realizes what's happening. And when everyone else realizes, they fall silent as well. The music finally swells, and we have a moment to realize how close to dissolution this entire plan almost was, except for one person standing up when no one else could.

Contrast to the version where it's Assumed that a brave hero will take the Ring, Frodo gets up and does it, and then they all fuck off to Mordor on eagles--it's a lot less impactful because it doesn't feel like it was ever in question, like it was ever in doubt.

Pokemon as a franchise fascinates me because the games pretty much Assume that things are always going to go this one way--of course pokemon are going to be unquestionably loyal to you! If they aren't, it's just a phase and they'll work through it. There's never any doubt. There's never any pokemon who don't end up doing this. All pokemon do it and they do it always; those are the rules.

Contrast with pretty much every other franchise--heroism isn't the norm for any specific species or group of people. Not all the elves in Rivendell take the Ring to Mordor, or even join the army to fight Sauron. Not all the students in Hogwarts join Dumbledore's Army; a lot of them don't even stay for the Battle of Hogwarts. What makes heroes special (or what makes protagonists heroic, idk) is when they choose to be brave specifically when others aren't--when no one's Assuming that they have to be brave, and they still choose to do brave things anyway.

So to tie back to Amara: to me it's less powerful when it's just assumed that pokemon will inherently love and die for their trainers after X months. Like you say, the keyword is "earned"--but is it really earned if it's something that's just Assumed to happen eventually?

Like, I don’t expect my newly caught Wurmple to put its life on the line for me, not at all. But a friend of many months, if not years? Especially if heroic death is one of the best things to do in the culture I come from. Would do without hesitation.
I also think it's telling that we pivot back so easily from "would you want to die for someone" back to this hypothetical Wurmple! Particularly fascinating in light of a story that asks you to step into the shoes of a pokemon--but again, the question isn't if Wurmple should put its life on the line for you; it's if you would put your life on the line for Wurmple. Specifically if you didn't actually like Wurmple that much? Wurmple decided you were friends but maybe you didn't feel the same way? Your culture values being kind to others, so surely being Wurmple's servant to the end of your life is what you meant by that, right?

I totally didn’t mean it like that. Sorry if that upset you.
Not upset! Just trying to understand. It's a good learning experience for me and I appreciate your responses here, so I want to do them justice.

It was more like an attempt for me to make sense of Amara’s character. Like, I know that you are sending a message with this fic and the main focus is this message, and not the characters and the 800th layer to their personality. So when I’m analysing, I should mainly focus on the message and not read things into a character, because that’s probably not intended to be there.

But if I ignore the main focus of your fic for a moment and deliberately analyse something I shouldn’t, this would be the conclusion about Amara’s character that I’d come to. Like, I didn’t understand what Amara’s problem was, and so I tried taking a step back from the problem and look at her behaviour. Maybe there’s the reason that my logic doesn’t apply to her. Something like that.

Hm, idk if that explains it sufficiently. But it’s got nothing to do with you or your fic, and more with me trying to make sense of what I perceived.
I don't quite understand this one yet. I'm really sorry! Amara's character is definitely integrated into the plot, 800 layers or no. In general I struggle with separating plot and characters, since characters form the plot and plot tends to shape the characters--so I guess where I struggle is trying to figure out what's left to analyze when you step back from the plot? What parts of Amara are you analyzing without also analyzing the events that happened to her?

I might be a bit too optimistic for this world, but I also kinda want to assume the best in people before I'm taught otherwise. Else I couldn't approach them on a respectful level. You seem to have a more nuanced approach. That was at least the hiccup in two instances.
Still, thanks a lot for your in-depth reply. Looking forward to see more of those thoughts!
I think that's fair! I try to be optimistic as well, and sometimes I think I'm also too optimistic, but perhaps we're both wrong.

A parting question, though, if you're able to answer? If you want to assume the best in people before you're taught otherwise--what would a trainer need to do before you're "taught" that they shouldn't be allowed to own a pokemon?
 
xvii. enharmonic

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
xvii. enharmonic
(end)

※​

Telling the story forwards, the way everyone else says it should be told, makes it a sad one. You talk to a lot of people and everything gets worse. You walk across an entire continent only to end up right where you started, and the only option ahead of you is to separate humans from pokémon indiscriminately, because some wrongs cannot be righted, only undone.

It’s much easier to look at things this way instead. Turning things on their head is what Unova does best, after all. Now right is wrong, black is white. Put the effect before the cause and it’s immediately clear that there were a thousand times you could’ve been stopped, helped, before you had no other choice, if anyone had just listened. If you had just known how to ask them to understand.

It’s much easier not to look at any of that. It’s easier instead to let the beginning and the end intertwine. Zahhak told you a story like that once, about a human who met an adamantine dragon and was permitted to see through the web of time, to watch a war in reverse.

It’s reassuring to pretend you’re that human now, and to quietly undo your own tragedy. Told backwards, everyone gets a happy ending. Hilda solemnly walks away from a healing battlefield and returns all of her badges and pokémon, her scowl fading piece by piece as they leave her, until she’s grinning through tears as she claps for a mincinno. Tourmaline is taken from a trainer she hates, returned to two humans she loves, and sleepily rouses herself by the fire. Zahhak stretches himself out, unharmed, from enormous pile of rubble; his scars fade; he smiles toothily. Human children all over the country enthusiastically direct pokémon to fling themselves away from one another. Hundreds of pokémon are pulled away from lives of violence and accompanied by their human friends into the wild to live quiet, peaceful lives among their kind.

And further back still. A clever human scientist unstifles a gasp of surprise after freeing a pokémon from the first pokéball, and deconstructs it with shaking hands so it will never imprison anyone against their will again. Sagaris rears up on her hind legs and swallows a torrent of dragonfire so that it doesn’t burn anyone; in turn, humans plug her gaping wounds with their weapons and remove them once her roars of pain turn triumphant. Stormdancer opens her eyes and inhales as blood bursts from a king’s hands back into her throat. Reshiram and Zekrom reconcile back into the Dragonmother, who draws all of her children close once more.

Every victory, every defeat, every pain—it all gets wound back until everyone is smaller and simpler and less violent, until no one can hurt anyone else ever again. There is nothing more beautiful and terrifying than their innocence.

Perhaps selfishly, you focus on a very small child with green hair who watches with wide eyes as screams to turn cheers, who lays down his burdensome mantle of being the hero and closes his eyes in a peaceful world.

※​

The moment before it all ends is serene. And then:

{Hero of Truth. Is this what you want?}

You can’t quite hide your surprise. Both at the words, and at their speaker.

“Zekrom?” you ask slowly.

{I have listened to you, and I have listened to the Hero of Ideals, and I have come to an understanding,} Zekrom rumbles.

You say nothing. Pure truth is a response.

A massive fracture crawls across the room, inevitably toward Reshiram; by the time they touch, you will have split two worlds that will never rejoin again.

{I sensed your presence when you passed by Relic Castle, many moons ago. I slumbered deep inside of the Dark Stone, and yet your conviction for a better world stirred me. But unformed hope for a brighter future is not an ideal; I did not and do not believe you have the capacity to struggle for a dream that you cannot see. And yet, even as we stand here at the end, I sense that you are not fully convinced in your truth, even as Reshiram stands behind you. So I ask you again: is this what you want?}

You aren’t sure if gods have a concept of rhetorical questions. So instead you look Zekrom in the eye before your better judgment holds you back, and in the depths of red you see unfathomable wisdom, pain, and hunger. A black eyelid shutters, granting you a brief moment of respite. “What do you want instead?” you manage.

{What I want no longer matters,} Zekrom says, wearily casting one arm across the cratered battlefield around you. {Hero of Truth, all that matters now is your heart, and if you still can believe enough to extend it.}

The words sit heavily in the room, which you find has grown unnaturally still. In this one, serene moment, everyone else but the dragon before you is frozen in place.

{You seek to reset us. I find that quite unideal, and instead I seek to compromise. I believe neither of us want this ending, although you think your hand is forced. Even I have no faith in wishing on the past. Do you understand what I am saying, Hero of Truth?}

At first you don’t even understand the question, the situation, any of it. What is Zekrom trying to tell you? That your choice here will be irreversible? You know that; you’ve known that all along. That some concepts are never meant to be merged as one; that your beliefs are as incompatible with the current world as fire and water? You’ve known that as well.

But Zekrom, who surely knows far more than you ever will, must know both these things and more. They wouldn’t ask you if there wasn’t a reason, something they need you to understand.

Why are you making me do this?”

Unbidden, the memory surfaces. Your father played chess with you when you were younger. You asked him in a very clear voice why he insisted on playing you, because that you thought it was silly and he was always going to win. And the rules were quite foolish. Some pieces could belong on some squares; everything had to be divisible. You’d asked him why black and white had to be cordoned off into their own boxes.

And Ghetsis had coldly answered all of your questions at once: “Because some people don’t have a choice.”

You hated that game, how every piece had only its one set of moves, how kings could go nowhere at all but were somehow the only piece that mattered. But you hated most of all how the board reset like nothing had ever happened, as if a dozen pieces hadn’t fallen for a polarized victory. At first you thought you disliked the game because you kept losing, but you once you tasted victory you hated winning even more, because it never felt like success, not when there was simply an endless string of games ahead.

The answer coalesces along with the image of tiny, trembling hands resetting the pieces across the board, prepared to start it all over. “You’re trying to tell me that I cannot fixate on the past. I cannot return things to the way they used to be and expect better results.”

Zekrom rumbles an agreement. {Reshiram and I are in eternal conflict over which force should be the driving factor in this world. I suspect we always will be. To explore and know the truth, you must look to the past and understand how previous actions have guided you to where you are today. To explore and know your ideals, you must look to the future and understand what steps you must take to walk the path to where you wish to be. But if you desire only to return to the past, if you seek to create a future that was simply what once was … you, like us, will be trapped in a cycle of conflict forever.}

It’s an ugly truth, and an even uglier one to hear from the Dragon of Ideals.

“I know. But Reshiram and I knew of no other way to help. This is all we can do.” You look away. It takes all of your self-control not to burst out then. You know that, and yet—there’s nothing else you can do. No other way to reverse this situation. Surely even Zekrom can understand that truth: if there was a better path, you would’ve taken it long ago. But it’s more than that. You remember the stories you were told growing up, about the black dragon who had strength beyond compare and yet whose greatest gift was to have faith in others despite everything. “Would you also stand there and let things continue as they are, knowing what you know now? Could you do nothing when there are people who cry out for you?”

Zekrom says quietly, {You remind me of my eldest daughter.}

On reflex, you can’t help but look back at them. “I’m sorry?”

{In times she was like you, with her green voice. In times she was like my Hero of Ideals, with her fighting spirit. But in her best times, she was both. That was who she was always meant to be.}

Your stomach clenches. Stormdancer. Does Zekrom know?

You see something in Zekrom’s eyes twist and seethe, and the truth strikes you with the same sort of certainty with which you’d say the sky is blue. Zekrom knows what happened to Stormdancer and her voice, and what happened in turn to the rest of the Dragonmother’s children.

“I’m sorry.”

Zekrom breaks your gaze. {You are not the one I have chosen, but I respect the goal that you seek. When I was reborn amidst a battlefield and the very first thing my Hero of Ideals did was command me to attack another one in suffering, one who would invoke my daughter’s words in the face of certain death, I understood: even her Ideal world would involve pain for the innocent. Perhaps not for everyone, perhaps only for a few, but pain enough that I hesitated then. Pain enough that I believe I could shelve my conflict now with you and my sibling to break us from this cycle. And, of course, even I understand the other simple truth—if I do not try to intercede here, you will act anyway. I cannot stop you.}

They’re … not wrong.

{This future you envision, where so many people struggled for so long, only for you and my sibling to rip their rewards from their hands—I cannot say it is an ideal one. I hope we both agree there.}

Zekrom waits for you to respond, so you have to try.

There had been a single moment, back when you were idly standing in the Icirrus pokécenter, the TV buzzing gently as background noise, when it had all finally come together for you, months too late. There was a crowd gathered round, watching intently, but you hadn’t noticed them at first. It was late at night and Spur was talking about an interesting thought experiment involving a traveling man and a map, and there was a weird feeling in your chest—Zekrom, you’d realize later. You must’ve sensed the dragon from halfway across Unova.

What made you look up was his voice, tinny but unmistakable. You pushed through the crowd to see him on the screen. Zahhak, beaten and bloody, glared up at this god and invoked those words, the full thing, the parts he hadn’t been able to truly say back in the castle, and it felt in that moment that his words were for simultaneously for you and for all of Unova: forgive me, dear sibling.

The last time you’d seen him, you’d split the oath between yourselves; he’d taken on the sacrifice and you’d taken on the regret, but in front of Zekrom he’d accepted them both, and when he was done, he passed them on, relinquishing the mantra of martyrs for another. Those words were never meant to be held for long.

Something inside of you had caught fire that night. There was once a childish, hopeful part of you that still hoped for a way that didn’t involve suffering, and that night it burst into a flame.

In those flames you could steel yourself to the harsh reality that you’d seen Zahhak accept. Changing the world would require a piece of yourself in return. Denying that fact only meant that someone else would suffer while you waited. Sometimes a little, sometimes a lot. In that one moment that drive had taken all of Zahhak, and a little bit of you as well. And from that one moment there was no more avoiding it; it was time to give the rest up to the flames.

There is no change without sacrifice. This is the conviction upon which you called to Reshiram. This is the fire that roared so loudly it stirred a god.

To look Zekrom in the eyes, and to say that you could still believe, that you could still look to an ideal that you had always sought but had been taken from you, time and time again? Can you agree?

No. You cannot. You tilt your head up. Bitterly, like every human in Unova before you, you choose silence.

{My sibling and I,} says Zekrom when you fail to answer, gesturing with an errant flick of an arm the size of your body towards Reshiram, {were once one being. You have surely heard the stories of how we were embroiled in aiding in a battle of brothers, much like the one you are in now.}

Your brow furrows, but you understand before you have to ask for clarification: the tongue of dragons has no word for civil war. It is a purely human construct, to pretend that wars could be civil. Zahhak once— “Yes. I know the legends. The conflict was so fierce that you and Reshiram were sundered.” You can’t bring yourself to look Zekrom in the eyes, but you hope the regret carries through in your voice at least. “Humans did that to you. I’m sorry.”

“N,” she says suddenly, voice shaky. “Do you … do you trust us?”

Behind the dragon, one hand outstretched, one tear tracking through the ash smudged across her cheeks—Hilda has been here this entire time. Watching, silent, listening.

Trust her?

It’s such an innocent, impossible question. How could she trust you? That night you did nothing but watch as Zahhak ripped Amara to shreds. She couldn’t have known that that was the last thing you’d wanted, that half of why you’d tried to hard at Dragonspiral Tower was because you knew what Ghetsis would do when you failed—but you couldn’t ask Hilda to separate you from them. Indirectly or not, you’d known that was the inevitable end to the path he’d set himself on. He was a dragon, after all. A dragon who thought that the only gift he had left was violence. You’d seen the hesitation on her face, even before you summoned Reshiram. For once, she hadn’t wanted to battle you. Was it because she knew it would come to this? Because she, like you, had come to doubt the drive that had gotten her here?

But doubt isn’t reconciliation. Regret isn’t redemption. How could she ask you to trust her? She couldn’t even understand half of this conversation; hers is a one-sided scream into the void that Zekrom somehow chose to answer. Hilda tried, and she tried very hard, but what does she know? What does anyone else know? How was it so easy for her to call to a dragon whose words she would never understand?

In the frozen moment that follows, you want to tell her so much. Of Stormdancer and the Dragonmother, of a chord the two of them had formed on a starry night in a time long-since dead, of the gift your ancestors stole to get you both here today. But your words die in your throat.

What would she say? What would she choose?

Did she know?

When you don’t respond, Hilda’s the one to break the silence. “You used the word sunder to describe Reshiram and Zekrom,” she says quietly, almost hesitantly. “Do you know where that word comes from?”

She’s repeating your words back to you. Draconic. There was fire in your voice when you told her the tragedy of Sagaris not ten minutes earlier, fire that you aren’t even sure came from you. But you can’t hear rage in her. You look hesitantly to Zekrom, who nods, so you shake your head slowly.

“My mother told me a story when I was young.” You can see the tremors racking up her arms, but she keeps her voice steady. “Our Great Mother was born with two hearts. Seeing the strength she was given, she tasked herself to safeguard this world. But while her role was very important, it was very lonely. To walk without equal is a horrible thing. And so the Great Mother sundered into the Twin Gods.”

You want to spit her retort back at her. You know how the story of Reshiram and Zekrom ends. One became two so that two could be like one. But just because it turned out one way hundreds of years ago doesn’t mean it’ll work out this way now.

“The word sunder for us is a special one.” Hilda’s voice finally quavers. “It comes from our ancient word for alone. My mother often reminded me that her language has many words to divide, but only sunder has that connotation. I always thought the distinction was important. I’ve never tried to explain it before. Do you know why they chose to split in that moment, when before they had endured so much as one? To me it’s only obvious if you know why we chose sunder. If you know why they chose to stand alone.”

You almost don’t want to answer her. You’ll just prove her right, after all, and you can’t doubt, not here, not when you’re so close. But you know how this story ends. You know what this ending calls you to do.

The words slip out despite yourself, and the dialect of dragons is heavy on your heart when you say, “So they would always have one who could stand beside them?”

“So they would always have one who could stand beside them,” she repeats solemnly, her smile watery.

Can you imagine it? Zekrom and Reshiram opening their newly-sundered eyes and beholding the other. How did it feel in that moment, doing the hardest thing a person could do? How did it feel to face yourself?

Something tells you it can’t have been entirely unlike what’s happening now.

Nothing would hide the truth that the harsh fire of Reshiram’s truth revealed. Nothing could quench those flames now that you’ve stoked them with yourself. But perhaps within them, you could reforge yourself instead. Hilda must have, somehow, if she could still stand here and believe after everything she’s lost. The invitation is clear, if you could only just take it. If you could just believe.

“Do you trust Zekrom?” she asks. She hesitates. “Even if … even if you don’t trust me?” She tilts her head up defiantly, the same rigid determination she’s worn into every battle glinting in her eyes. But there’s something else now, too. Desperation. “I don’t fully know what Zekrom’s planning, N. Or if it’ll even be what I want. But I know … I know Zekrom knows we can’t do it without you.”

So they would always have one who could stand beside them.

Maybe it didn’t just refer to Reshiram and Zekrom. Maybe there was a reason pokémon chose to partner with humans, no matter the myriad of ways that that partnership led to pain. Maybe they’d realized that the alternative was just failing alone.

It has to be a trick of the light. But for a moment, you don’t see Hilda standing by Zekrom. There’s another child there with wide, innocent eyes, another black dragon standing by a human, and—

Did Stormdancer trust Human? Did Human trust Stormdancer? Did she care? Did she know?

Did it matter?

The answer to all those questions, surely, was the same as the one you must give now.

And in that last, serene, fragile moment before it all ends, you decide.

You look at that child and exhale. “We can’t be you.” Blink. Hilda’s there again. For a brief moment you wonder if Reshiram saw the same trick of the light; if the power of Zekrom’s ideals showed them two dragons standing as one, the beauty of a future that could’ve been, that could still be. “But we can help you. And we can learn from you.” You look up to the resplendent white dragon at your side, feeling for all the world like a petulant child. “Can’t we?”

Reshiram is still hesitating, still on the verge of fracture. Pure truth is a response, after all.

In a slow voice, Reshiram finally answers. {When Zekrom and I were one, we had an immutable gift. The strength to imagine any ideal and the power to make it true. We could not handle that burden. We split, and each sought Heroes like ourselves, and our quarrel in turn sundered Unova.}

Reshiram’s neck snakes down until their eyes are level with you. {In my millennia of slumber I came to regret my actions in choosing to stand against my sibling, and the damage we wrought upon your world, but I understood as well that my actions could not be undone. You were correct before when saying you were too idealistic to be the Hero of Truth like you knew in legend. You called to me, and I chose you, not because you embody what I am, but because you carry what I lack. What I cast aside all those years ago.}

You follow Reshiram’s gaze over your shoulder, where Hilda stands next to Zekrom.

{And I see now,} Reshiram rumbles, {that I was not unique in my regret.}

Blue blood drips down Zekrom’s throat. {Could we not be in accord once more?}

The two dragons stare levelly at one another.

{We cannot be us again,} Reshiram says after a long silence. {But for this moment, in this very last moment, I believe a temporary alliance could be brokered between us, and we could work together to protect the peoples of this world, as we once did so long ago.}

Both dragons turn once more to look at you, and suddenly you know without doubt what the Heroes of Ideals are asking you to do, what Truth’s response must be. Your heart is suddenly heavy, and full.

Ten thousand years ago, in this very spot, a legend says a human clutched a dragon’s body and cried into the night for help. You can’t say for sure what happened next. But you can believe this: beneath a starry sky, despite everything before or since, the world changed.

You face the shattered battlefield, Hilda, the ancient dragons, and you bow low before invoking the words that will once again change Unova forever:

“Forgive me, dear sibling. This is all I know how to give.”

※​

o. new

※​

The last notes of a long-forgotten song fade away.

“N!” Footsteps. “Are you okay?!”

“He will live, Hero of Ideals.”

There is a heavy, weighted silence.

“Zekrom?”

“Yes, Hero of Ideals.”

“What … what did you do?”

What follows is incomprehensible, a strangled hiss.

“N?”

“He says: ‘The dragons have given pokémon a Gift, Hilda.’”

“… Reshiram?”

“Reshiram and N reached an accord, just as you and I did, Hero of Ideals. I represent this land as it could be, a Unova that we can aspire for. My sibling stands for the Unova that is, the ugly realities that bind us. In our struggles we have forgotten how we were once one, how we once stood for a world that could be beautiful because of its flaws, not despite them.”

“We stood for the Unova that is becoming. My sibling is correct. We both forgot this. Even if we had the power to split these worlds, to return all of you to a universe in which pokémon live on their own and humans are kept far away to make their own disasters—we could not without first giving everyone a fair chance to make things right. Pokémon never had a chance to dictate the terms of their partnership. Humans never had to listen for an answer. That much we understand now. We could not ignore your plea, but nor could we ignore our own. And so it is quite simple. From N we took, and to pokémon everywhere we gave, the gift that we lost so long ago. We gave Voice.”

A strain of music echoes in the distance.

Another incomprehensible hiss.

“He says: ‘No more can you speak and humans live in blissful ignorance in the gaps between your words. When they speak, you will hear.’”

“But what … what happened to him?”

“In giving his Voice fully to others, he has lost his own. That is how the world is, and how it has always been.” Pause. “One day we will create a world where it no longer has to be.”

“Is it permanent?”

“Yes. But all four of us knew that before we began.”

Another pause.

“I know.”

“He says this, Hilda: it isn’t your fault that pokémon were betrayed in such a way for you to have your gain, nor is it our place to mete judgment by ripping pokémon and humans apart. This world was made for you, and you did not make it, but for those of us who received so many gifts, the burden is on our shoulders to make it right. My hero sought to solve the equation that would change the world, but along the way we learned: that equation is an inequality. It cannot and will not be solved by our hand alone, nor will it be solved today. But we must try, and we must do so together. For that future … he says he is more than willing to join those who sacrificed their own gift.”

“And thanks to them our work can truly begin, Hero of Ideals.”

The sound of crumbling stone.

“To you, dear sibling, and to you, Hilda—and to all people—N and I warn this: with the gift of Voice, you and we have allowed humans to hear the words pokémon speak. We cannot make humans listen, nor can we force them to understand. This is merely one step down a long road. There will always be injustices that we will need to fight. We have given one half of a gift. You must teach the other. You must prove that humans meant what they said when they wished to partner peacefully with pokémon, and that it was only because you could not hear them before that you were deaf to their cries. You must welcome them now into a world where they are free to be people. If you plug your ears now, if you harden your hearts to their pain, if you insist that battling and violence are the only way you can understand them, then we will have no choice.”

Wingbeats. The sound of crumbling stone. A roar with no words.

“We say this: if we must roar again, he will not speak to humans, nor will I give his Voice to pokémon. We will bare our fangs, and we will call the storm.”

※​
 
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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
So as I find myself wrapping up this fic, I also get to take a little step back and be in awe over how social this entire process ended up being--not even because I was particularly unsocial in fic before, but because I got to meet some people I probably wouldn't have met otherwise.

This is a story about voice, and art, and doing brave things, and doing silly things. If I'm being fully honest, having a fanart gallery has always been a thing that I've been a little jealous of/a hidden secret goal of mine, and at some point in the past year I realized, holy shit, i'm finally here, and that was a wild experience in itself. True to form I immediately forgot to make an actual gallery for all of these because I am the worst and instead kept them in a private document so I could oggle at them in my own free time; if I've lost your link, please accept my apologies and also maybe let me know?

wow it's
a r t
(spoilers for the entire fic, probably)
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[by Panoramic Vacuum / Wolflyn Tumblr | AO3 | FFN]
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[by sun / finersun | Twitter]

and, a little something from my muse to yours:

Me0k1OZ.jpg


My most sincere thanks to WildBoots and Pen, who stuck on this train for 17 months of oops-too-real, provided incredible beta work, and generated more engaged discussion about the implications of ferris wheels than I thought was possible. Without them this story would be far more messy, confusing, and typo-ridden than it is, and my life would contain roughly 40% fewer shitposts.

And of course, enormous thanks to anyone who’s read up to this author’s note. In a very unsubtle way this story is about inspiration and legacy, communication and conversation. It isn’t my way of fixing the world, or myself, or really anything consequential at all—but in a year spent quarantined and online, this story means a lot to me, and in no small way it’s trying to be from me and my muse to you and yours, so to find it read and heard means the world.
 
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bluesidra

Mood
Pronouns
she/her
Partners
  1. hoppip-bluesidra-reup
  2. hoppip-bluesidra-pink
  3. hoppip-bluesidra3
Heya! Oh man, I didn’t realise you were about to wrap this up already! Congrats! That is one strange feeling… The fact that a fic can be finished :P
It’ll still take me forever to finish reading it, because I can only go one chapter at a time
Ok, now for your questions.

I guess the part that would benefit me most as an author would be to know where he does this in the text--100% or otherwise!--that leads you to this conclusion.
Ok, going back over the text to find instances of N deflecting. There are some, but they aren’t as strong as I remember them. Mostly because there are less exchanges than I remember. There are still some.
Mind you, I get it. My dialogues are corpses stitched together from bulletpoints I have to hit, and I’m happy if it sounds somewhat human after all. So some methods of “unjust” rhetoric might have slipped into my text when I didn’t intend it.
Also, mind you, I’ve never been to a debate club or anything. There might be several things I’ve labeled wrongly or that I picked up the wrong way.
But you can’t help but pity Hilda, who was so good at leading that she never learned to listen. She latches on to the last word of the sentence and nothing else. “Make them? That’s draconic.”

N is calm when he responds, so calm it’s almost surreal, but beneath the stillness of his voice is a fire brighter than the sun. “Draconic?” Perhaps unintentionally, he imitates her inflection. “Do you know where that word comes from?” He waits. Hilda scowls. “Three hundred years ago humans discovered the land beyond Twist Mountain. At the time it was the nesting ground for wild haxorus, and was known to the native peoples as the Valley of the Dragons.”
N redirects the argument to a emotionally gripping, but in the end irrelevant tale. Instead of elaborating on what Hilda was going at (the pain of separation from a loved one), he whips out the Haxorus tale, which is cruel, and a nice parable, but in the end not impactful to the argument at hand other than giving the listener an emotional impact that favors N.
The Haxorus tale is nice worldbuilding, it serves to show that humans are cruel etc. I get that. But right now, there's Hilda confronting N, 300 years later. There is no Haxorus at the scene, Hilda is not the conqueror of Unova, and in 300 years, things might have changed. But he doesn't elaborate on that.
So other than divert attention from a question that he doesn't have an immediate answer to, it doesn't do much in making a logical point.

You twist uncomfortably in place. {I’m happy with her, N. Hilda is a good trainer. She made me who I am.}

“She made you who you are.” He repeats your words back slowly, chews on them like he’s trying to eat them. Almost sounds sad, if you could believe that a human like him would pity a creature like you. “But are you happier than you would’ve been if you’d just been free?”
He is asking an unanswerable question in order to shut up Vaszleva.
This question is so hypothetical, it would take me several days to even compute what that world may look like. Then I wouldn't have made my mind up about wehter I like it or not.
Also, emphasis on the may. N has so far never provided a clear model of how things would work in a world after his design. Only a vague "things are better there". So this question also doesn't take into consideration, that my "free" may be different from his.
And he is very well aware of what scope of a question he is asking. He doesn't know the answer to it either. So far, I've seen him falter at the nitty-gritty details more often than not (eg a few lines above iirc). So asking Vaszelva this question is a very unfair method of pivoting the argument in his favor.

{N, this isn’t what you want. Humans have been cruel to us before, but pokémon and humans are meant to live alongside one another, and you can’t change that! Look at Hilda and me now. If you seek to separate us you are no better than Ghetsis. And.} You freeze. Grateful, at the very least, that only N can hear your words. Hilda would surely withdraw you if she heard what’s about to slip from your mouth. {I’m sorry for what happened to him. I know you’re upset by that.}

If he is, he certainly doesn’t show it. The second you mention his father, his face is a mask, carved like a cofagrigus, not a single expression showing through the gilding.

{But don’t you see? His methods were wrong. He tried to force people to change, and that made people reject him.}

“They rejected me as well, Vaselva. Ghetsis may have tried war, but I certainly tried peace. I’m beginning to think that it’s not our methods they disagree with, but our ideas—and they simply use one of us to excuse the fact that they cannot refute the other.”
This is actually an example of a very good exchange imo. Vaszelva unknowingly hits a weak spot in N and gives him time to process, instead of overloading him with another emotionally challenging questions. And N answers in a very human way, not in grand speeches but from personal experience.
Here, even though I disagree with how he acts, I still can't blame his reasoning for it.

So finally, he shakes his head slowly. “It’s not your fault, Hilda. This world was made for you, but you didn’t make it. And it’s not your fault either, Vaselva.” You think at first he misspoke, but he looks directly at you. “This world forced you to be strong enough to fight others, but it didn’t teach you how to be strong enough to fight back. There is strength beyond pure power. That is the truth Reshiram and I will show the world, and we will change it.”
"Strong enough to fight other, but didn't teach you how to be strong enough to fight back" I mean, same shit applies for humans, but I think N has included them in his list of why it would be better if humans and pokemon were separated.
"There is strength beyond pure power" That sentence sure sounds cool, and at surface-level I want to agree with him and cheer him on. But then again, he follows it up with "Now watch me force this upon you by sheer strength of a legendary". Kind of a fallacy there.

Which is more or less Ghetsis' point when he, correctly or not, dramatically or not, chooses to go all the way to the extreme end here--maybe the line for "acceptable violence inflicted on pokemon" shouldn't exist at all.
Ok, I can accept that. (Not really, but as an argument)

If you can't look after someone correctly because you're incapable of doing so, then I think a fair answer is to not become the sole person responsible for their well-being.
I agree with that. You shouldn’t have pets unless you know how to care for them. BUT (and now watch me going off on a tangent)
That's a choice Cheren makes, that he doesn't have to make, and him being "deaf" doesn't mean that it's Tourmaline's fault that he's chosen this life for them.
It’s not Tourmaline’s fault, but it is her responsibility to deal with her situation, not anyone else’s.
Here comes the tangent: In my years I’ve encountered many people who are as “deaf” as Cheren is here. They might be incapable of reading the room, might not for the love of god engage with you on the same level, voluntarily or involuntarily miss the point of a conversation etc. I think you know what I’m talking about.
Now those people may do this willingly or not. Willingly because they know how to steer an argument so that they come out as the winner; or unwillingly because they have some issue that holds them back (for example autism).
Whether willingly or not, when in a conversation, you are dealing with them on the limits of their perception. In online spaces, you can simply walk away from a conversation like this. But what if you can’t, because those are your coworkers or your family.
It’s up to you to go to your limits of expression to make them understand your point. Because they can’t do anything more and no one else is going to step up for you. You want to bring your point across and it’s your responsibility to change those people’s minds. Sad as it is, but sometimes, you have to scream to be heard.
That’s the most offence I’m taking in Tourmaline’s approach. It is so goddamn passive. She expects that her passive-aggressiveness will be enough to change her circumstances, because the universal karma will eventually look out for her. And I get it. It’s unfair. She shouldn’t be in this position. But bitching and spreading unproductive negativity will not change it either.
Just stating that something is unjust and should therefore not exist is an easy statement. But it also spits in the face of the people struggling in this situation. (And here comes me getting all frustrated about any social justice debate I’ve ever had.) It always feels like stating the fact is enough, and now it is up to someone else to act on it. With no guidance whatsoever for it. You’ll say “It’s not Tourmaline’s responsibility to work out an environment that suits her, it’s Cheren’s because he is the one in power.” But Tourmaline’s the one who knows what she wants, not Cheren. Her leaning back and being “I’m unhappy, but I won’t try to communicate it to the human, but instead claim that everything is shitty and that’s it” won’t improve her situation at all.
Ok, this ends my tangent on why I value proactiveness, even if it is objectively unfair, over unproductive stating of facts :D

Re “They will take our victories and give you their weakness. But they will do everything except listen, Carnel.”
She kinda ignores that this is a two-way system. She does what she can do better than humans - fight. While the human does what they can do better - provide food, shelter and safety from the world around.
Tourmaline always acts like she wouldn’t have to fight if she was without a human. But then it would be for sheer survival.

This goes close to something that’s been bugging me about N’s perfect world, too. In his mind, humans and pokemon should be separated, because their differences make it impossible to communicate their needs properly.
But N is a human, and following his logic, he lives on the human side of his perfect world. So what now. He already saw that humans also don’t understand him. Well, he can jugg it up to him being special and awesome and a poor martyr and whatnot. But what about disabled people? What about people who can’t communicate their needs? Or what about naturally charismatic people who impose their will on others by sheer force of personality?
Where does he draw the line now? Will he come to the conclusion that humankind should be separated from itself? With pokemon, it’s easy. You go by how they look. Is it as easy with humans?
And what about pokemon who suffer the same? Or what about prey-species? They had a happy life in the niches they carved out for themselves in the suburbs of humans. Suddenly they get eaten left and right by predatory species. I think they won’t thank him.
I need to see a business plan, N!
Ok, so Amara and Hilda’s relationship. Going over it again, it’s clear that Amara isn’t all that happy, but there were some lines that stroke me as a sign of deep friendship.
It’s cold. The wind picks up, yanks the rainfly out of her hands. You flick your tail and walk closer to her so that your body can shield her from the wind. Your hooves sink three inches into the snow.
Amara shields her from the winds even though she sinks deeper into the snow, which she doesn't like. Hilda usually recalls Amara, because she gets startled by weather like this . They take care of each other's needs and know them without much of a second thought.

This isn’t like her. She used to get caught out after dark like this, but that was long ago, when you were just a blitzle. She learned after the first few times. That’s what she does best, after all. She’s always calculating, always planning. It’s the only way she can be one step ahead of everyone else. Hilda’s always believed that if she just thinks hard enough, she’ll be able to plan a way to keep everyone safe. And she’s usually quite good at it. You respect that much about her.
I'd feel very happy with a person who plans and plans and racks their brain to keep me safe. So I try to keep them safe in return. So far, for me, there's nothing unfair in this relationship.

While you wait there patiently, casting light around the grove of trees she’s trying to use as a windshield for tonight’s camp, you count up the times she’s let you out while she sets up camp. It’s a small number, one that’s quite close to the number of times the batteries in her headlamp have run out.
I mean, yeah, but Amara also stated that she is uncomfortable and visibly tiptoes around. If I were Hilda, I'd have also kept her in her pokeball, if my lights worked.

You were Hilda’s second. But you were the first one she chose. Of all the blitzle in the plains, she’d picked you.
That to me sounded like Amara was proud to be on Hilda's team.

So you should be grateful for what Hilda gives you. She makes you important. She gives you something to protect. She lets you fight for her but doesn’t require your life. Her battles give your pain meaning. The dark stone in her bag sings to you, in the tongue of the ancient song. It marks her as worthy. Hilda’s role is to stand on the sidelines, protected and safe. Your role is to enter the fray. This is what it means to be kafara.
I mean, I can identify with Vaszelva much more. Her approach to who to trust and who to fight is simple and is probably what resonates most with me because I have a similar view. But that right there for me personally would have been the last tipping part.
I don't get what else there is to question. (From a logical standpoint, Amara is of course allowed to be insecure and everything). But to me, that's everything I'd ever want. Someone to protect, who makes me feel important and who gives my life meaning. I don't see any reason to not go to the end with that person.
Heroism isn’t the norm in the pokemon franchise either. Most npcs are pretty passive, to the point of ignorance. I’ve had a conversation recently about how Volker’s antics with putting the whole of Sunnyshore on a weeklong blackout is just accepted with a “boys will be boys” kinda attitude, that is really concerning.
The only active npcs are the villains who want to change things and some assorted champs that fight back. Now, sadly, proactive villains and reactive heros are a staple in fiction. You rarely see someone setting out to make the world a better place. Simply doesn’t make as good as a narrative. So I get that choice from a storyteller perspective.
Heroism is only the default for the hero. And since the hero is always so narratively flat, it never feels right. (ooooooh do I have opinions on the undeserved hero-status of various player characters.) The only halfway good thing I can take away from the default-hero is to teach kids that doing the good thing should be your default. And because all expecpt Gen5’s villains are straight out evil or stupid, that is usually a solid message.

Re Assuming pokemon are always default loyal.
The franchise kinda works on the assumption that you love and care for your pokemon and that pokemon are also naturally affine to humans, and the other way around. Pokemon are kinda like dogs in that way - they are very reliant on humans, but could live in the wilderness if they should. That’s the baseline the pokemon logic works on. So I can forgive the games with that approach.
And especially the anime has instances of pokemon being treated wrong. They don’t look too happy and lash out against their captors (usually Team Rocket) in a very kids-friendly way.

Pokemon are a lot like pets. I love my cat. Pretty sure my cat loves me. So I treat her right and she treats me right. I give her food, she brings me mice. I lay in bed, she comes crawling in. She has shiny fur and purrs a lot.
If she was unhappy, I could tell. I can read cats well enough to know when a cat is purring over pain or out of happiness. She can tell when I’m unhappy and crying a lot and lays next to me because she knows I’m happy when she does.
I don’t like dead mice on my doorstep and she doesn’t like me picking her up and cuddling her extensively. But we both keep up with it, because we know that that’s each other’s way to communicate and we value being around each other more than that upsets us.
Like you say, the keyword is "earned"--but is it really earned if it's something that's just Assumed to happen eventually?
I wouldn’t devalue loyalty earned over time just because it’s the default. It can still be a strong bond, even if you didn’t have a dramatic scene to kickstart it.
I also think it's telling that we pivot back so easily from "would you want to die for someone" back to this hypothetical Wurmple! Particularly fascinating in light of a story that asks you to step into the shoes of a pokemon--but again, the question isn't if Wurmple should put its life on the line for you; it's if you would put your life on the line for Wurmple. Specifically if you didn't actually like Wurmple that much? Wurmple decided you were friends but maybe you didn't feel the same way? Your culture values being kind to others, so surely being Wurmple's servant to the end of your life is what you meant by that, right?
I don’t understand what’s telling about that statement, but I still stand by it.
Let’s assume I just caught that Wurmple, let it out of its ball and it gets snatched up by a starly. Well, shit happens. I would feel bad about it, but probably shrug it off after a few days. And I don’t feel bad about that seemingly heartless statement either. Because what happened? Wurmple slouched around in its forest, got caught and the next minute it was eaten by a Starly. It would probably been eaten by a Starly sooner or later anyways, my actions did not affect that outcome.
Situation two: My and Wurmple are best friends. She’s been with me for years and we do everything together. Now a Starly comes and snatches my Wurmple. I would personally choke the life out of that Starly. Because it attacked my friend.
What I’m saying: Just throwing a pokeball at a pokemon doesn’t mean we are friends. Both ways. It means we have to check out one another if we vibe with each other and maybe a friendship will grow.
Friendship also implies that Wurmple isn’t my servant, but someone I value a lot and want to give the best life to. So if I see that Wurmple is better off without me, I’d have to let her go, as hard as it might be. Same with my cat.

What parts of Amara are you analyzing without also analyzing the events that happened to her?
I’m analysing her behaviour without looking at the message you want to bring across, even though I know I’m reading too much into it.
I mean, I understand the point of the chapter better now that you explained that it was about choosing to be heroic. But I totally didn’t catch that it was about choosing heroism. To me it felt like Amara was perpetually questioning something I didn’t see the point in questioning.
And I’m pretty sure you didn’t intend for Amara to be borderline narcissistic. That way, her arguments make sense to me. But that is clearly not the message that I was intended to take away from that chapter. The message was “Isn’t it mean that this pony is caught up in something that might end its life?”

If you want to assume the best in people before you're taught otherwise--what would a trainer need to do before you're "taught" that they shouldn't be allowed to own a pokemon?
Having an unhappy pokemon. Like I said, I can tell when a cat is hurt. Same with dogs. They might be in a physically good condition and have wonderful hair, but there is something about a mistreated dog that you can just tell. Their posture isn’t immaculate, even though they aren’t limping. Their ears are slightly drooping. Their fur is ruffled and spiky, even though it shouldn’t be. They might be easily spooked and not find comfort in their owner.
If I see an unhappy (not unhappy to be in a particular situation, but in general) animal, I know that person shouldn’t have that pet. And then it’s my responsibility to ask what is going on. Of course, I can’t always act on that responsibility, and solving those situations is tricky.
But yeah, I’d assume a pokemon and their trainer are both giving their best to make each other happy until I see one party unhappy.

Oh boy, this got way longer than anticipated. If I could write my story with the same ease as I could write discord/TR messages, I'd be the new Stephen King already.
Hope you have fun with these answers, and congrats again on finishing EoE!
 

slamdunkrai

bing.com
Pronouns
they/them
Partners
  1. darkrai
  2. snom
Congrats on finishing this project, first things first! Embarking on something this ambitious, and something that's deliberately constructed so differently than usual, is something to be proud of as it is; seeing it through to the end is a tremendous feat. I'm super excited to see what else you've laid out over the course of the rest of the story, but for now -- happy for you, on seeing this through to the end! :>

Anyway, reporting back from just after nonconformist: aw heck

I think one of the reasons why this particular mode of storytelling (to be precise, the vignette aspect of it) is clicking so hard for me in this story is that you have an excellent eye for protagonists. Like, I'm such a sucker for the premise of "story heavily predisposed with the matter of pokémon having voices, cycling through an assortment of their POVs" as it is, but the variety here is truly fantastic, and you have an eye for what makes each one so compelling -- each one brings their own set of hang-ups to the table, and their perspectives are shaped by both the people they're pre-occupied with and the experiences they've had with them, from Zahhak and Amara -- two pokémon who are right there in the thick of the story -- to, like, a police herdier and a camera operating rotom (not in this run of chapters, but I'm bringing it up again because I loved that). And it ties REALLY neatly into the overall theme of the story, which is difficult to pull off but adds a lot of depth to this. (Just as much, it holds a magnifying glass up to a subject that, as you say, the canon sort of presents to you but then abstains from really elaborating on because that'd give the player a Moral Quandary(TM) to worry about. Seeing the approach of... y'know, actually going into all the implications here, makes all the differences between this fic and the original games stand out more. And that's great, frankly!)

I think I was most partial to narsil, which seemed to both encapsulate some of the big issues near the heart of the project -- giving autonomy to creatures denied it, the injustices and complications inherent to training, the realities of abuse versus the cartoonish and evil framework of it in the original setting -- while presenting perhaps the most... probably not the most fitting word but I'm gonna use it -- idealistic take on the setting that I've seen thus far. Like, yeah, when otherwise innocent people enter harmful situations, they'll become more prone to perpetuate that harm, but I like that there's a recognition of the inverse being true here as the chapter comes to an end, with Mina taking a genuine interest in helping out our bisharp. But there's a lot of moments from this bit of the story that really resonate with me too, and I think everything here is pretty fantastic. Zahhak's story and his close moment with N was wonderful; there's some vague form of mutual understanding there, just with layers upon layers of incompatible approaches and ideological quirks that neither party is willing to renege on, which I thought made that moment of kinship all the more poignant. Rhea talking about Tourmaline also got me pretty good! It takes real finesse to tie commentary on injustice into the lives of the people affected by it that well. I could go on, but you wrote the story, and I don't want to just recount its contents to you. Generally, I just want you to know that I was enthralled by this run of chapters. As much as I was when I read the first few, and was really getting to grips with the way the story functioned.

Which is great! I love this. It's great. I'm a wreck right now. This is a damn fine story, and I love what you've done with it; cannot wait to press forward. I love this approach to N. Shoutout to that funny little guy.

(Also, picking out typos and funny sentence structures isn't my strong suit -- I tend not to notice or remember a lot of the time, honestly -- but there was one that kinda jumped out at me near the start of nonconformist because I wasn't sure what it was supposed to be:)
but you can see the pinches in her forehead fNaling her darting eyes.
 

bluesidra

Mood
Pronouns
she/her
Partners
  1. hoppip-bluesidra-reup
  2. hoppip-bluesidra-pink
  3. hoppip-bluesidra3
Ok, so not really anything substantial, but oh heck!!!

I just updated the epub and in the process skimmed over the your self-indulgent authors note!

I'm now super emotional by only reading the author's note! Man, I really want to finish this fic, but it is so beautiful!!! Which means I have the urge to put it off and life in the blissful feeling that there is still some beautify out there that I haven't yet discovered...
Also, I am definitely too stupid for this lol. Or too uninterested in what's going on in the world around me. But let's ignore that for a moment...

If I ever finish it, be sure that I'll draw some fanart that you can add to the gallery. Or to your funeral, because that adds up with my reading speed :P

Congrats so much on finishing this masterpiece! It is great, surely among my top 5 best pieces of literature I've ever read. I don't know what you're studying, but I hope you can get that thing graded and take something else than my infinite gratitude and online brownie-points away from it.

Congrats soooooo much, you are a great author!!! Thank you for writing this
 

slamdunkrai

bing.com
Pronouns
they/them
Partners
  1. darkrai
  2. snom
Reporting back from necktie this time! I think much of what I wanted to say has been said by others, tbh, but I'll try to add what I can. A big thing that I like about this run of chapters is that the sea of changing perspectives really comes into its own in a different way here: it adds an interesting effect where we're both forced into a distance from, and given several points of view on, the continuity while we also learn more about it. I think this approach is particularly effective in how we learn about Hilda -- with her being the protagonist of the games, it's interesting that she's (relatively speaking) so de-centered in this narrative, which is a reversal of roles I couldn't help but pick up on (of course, most of the pokémon in the canon are extremely de-centered from a story which they drive, so... I'm realising this is a long-winded way of saying "you put the pokémon and humans on even ground in a way that works very well", but hey! It's true, you do that). At the same time though I think it works well as a means of painting an increasingly clear picture of her character, and it helps justify the ways she reacts to things. For example, at the end of nidifugous, I like how Reylin's comment to N (which is then conveyed to Hilda in disastrous fashion) ends up being a genuine reveal; it's something we only find out about when N poses her the question, and we only get a flickering sign that she's going to react to it the way she does in how the tension is built there (see: "I'm not sure if that's what she wants to her"). Just as much, I like that Hilda assumes Reylin could never know about that. She's fine hearing stuff from her pokémon, yes, but only if they're not personal questions; they could never come from Reylin, after all. It ties into the overarching theme here of humans (not out of hate; the opposite, in fact) assuming that pokémon are less observant, intelligent, or person-like than they really are. And it's good stuff!

Other stuff I wanted to comment on:

- the POV characters you pick are charming as ever here. Special mention goes to nondeterministic here; I am absolutely a sucker for how intricately you write Spur thinking and talking. I initially scanned 'biggear' as a typo ("bigger problem?") and was going to mention it here, but as it turned out, it wasn't, and I was delighted! Seeing that little dude work process everything and try to offer something, ultimately deciding to stay with N... delightful stuff. Big fan of that.

- intersectionality! I appreciate how social commentary about our real world maps very clearly, but not quite 1:1, with the pokémon world here; this also comes up with social media, but I thought in necktie it came up pretty well. It was, in particular, striking to see the "ten thousand years ago," etc. chain of events displayed in the order that they were. Ties into the overall approach of trying to deconstruct current problems by figuring out where they came from, and they end up all tangled together. Also, I can't help but pick up on the critique of how well-meaning, often Euro/US-centric social movements sometimes end up targeting indigenous people. It's a nuanced depiction of that struggle!

- the further I get into this, the more I find myself going back to the title post that mentions this being a quarantine fic, and like. Yeah. It makes this a challenging read, which I say positively; recent events over the last year and a half have posed many questions on how the broken ways in which society works can be fixed, and I also struggle to come up with answers. This strikes a chord for me! Which might be why I'm reading this so slowly, in part because there's a lot to digest here but also in part because I realise how much I tend to read pokéfic as escapism. And this decidedly isn't that, at least not at all in the same way much of my usual reading material -- and, y'know, I think that's excellent! I notice that I'm inching nearer the end, too; I'm intrigued and excited to see how the story takes a turn in the run-up to its final chapter. Either way. Damn good stuff! Thank you as ever for writing this. :]
 

slamdunkrai

bing.com
Pronouns
they/them
Partners
  1. darkrai
  2. snom
So Blitz is here! My top priority is getting caught up and finished with this fic, and my plan is to do this in two installments. This is the first, spanning noogenesis through nocturne — so, without further ado:

I'm fairly certain you alluded to this (or something like it) in your post-finale notes, but the story of the Nocturne Lament (and, more generally, the interaction between our POV character and N here) feels like it's as close as there has been to a mission statement for the story as a whole so far. Which is slightly funny, I feel, because its qualities that resonated with me most in this regard are the ones specifically about voicelessness (and, specifically, it not being the same thing as throatlessness) and the differences in how the loresinger and N interact with the story. To touch on the first part, I think what stood out most to me was this particular quote:
“Come back to me on this day each year, and I will sing for you my aria, and so share with you my gift of Voice. When I sing, the world has no choice but to stop and listen.” Stormdancer swept out one leg and curtsied deep. “The same holds true for you now, dear sibling. When you speak, all creatures in this world will listen. This is the gift we share.”
I like how open-ended this is, in a way I don't think I really appreciated until I thought about. My initial reading of this focused on the "when you speak, all creatures in this world will listen" quote, which stood out to me as a piece of cruel irony given the cruel fate imposed upon Meloetta in this tale. The story as a whole very much asks the questions "who gets to speak to the whole world?" and "why?", and I mean, in the society depicted here (as is the case in the games), one answer is "humans, broadly speaking, but only a very specific set of them". It's the same as later on in N's version of the story when Meloetta mentions the qualities of strength as opposed to power — the nature of power is in its unevenness here, and thus pain is felt disproportionately by some (captive pokémon doing the legwork in battle is the obvious way this is shown; there's also Bianca, N, Iris) as opposed to others (the specific counterparts to these examples: trainers; Bianca's father; Ghetsis; Drayden-but-more-broadly-the-beneficiaries-of-colonialism) in a number of different ways.

At the same time, though... cruelty is not the beating heart of the world, is it? In spite of the tragedy here, the voice is a gift and not inherently a weapon. And obviously, despite having her own gift torn out from her, she never really loses her voice; it's passed on from generation to generation, and many many years later, it's told between two travelers in the desert. The meaning of it is unclear and not uniform, because obviously, our loresinger and N are interacting with different versions of the story passed down across generations of two wildly different cultures; in spite of the differences present here, N finds common ground with our sigilyph over this, and there's something kinda beautiful about this, I feel. Sums up the more optimistic facets of the story here — sure, to look at history is to look through a story of tragedies, atrocities, and exploitation, but there's something intangible about the ways in which people (and pokémon, though here this feels like an arbitrary distinction) are brought together to work towards a better world in spite of it all. (But N is not perfect, of course, and changing the world is not so simple — to do so single-handedly would require an incomprehensibly vast understanding of the world, when even understanding yourself is not so simple, for that matter! the nature of change, of course, is that it often comes with tragedy and sacrifice. So it goes. I noticed Slaughterhouse-Five mentioned in one of your responses to a review as an influence on the way this story is told, and my reading of this is very much influenced by having to write half of a 3,000 word paper on it earlier this month.)

(And, of course, this story explicitly puts the human reader in the shoes of pokémon protagonists as its mode of narration, so, har har, who gets to speak to us now?)

But anyway, the other two chapters were also very good! Less to say about them that's not just re-hashing what I've said elsewhere, but I liked them a lot. Particular things I liked about them, in short-ish form:

  • Munny is a delight, and honestly, I 100% relate to Rhea and N here. You poor fuckin' thing, you. :( I found it difficult not to feel for Bianca too, even despite her culpability in all this (and her ignorance towards it) because, y'know, she's a scared and abused kid dealing with trauma nightmares; it's not right that Munny should have to put up with this, and the reason Munny's struggles hit so hard with me is that... she doesn't seem to mind (even despite her own pervasive habits of putting herself down — "your Bianca is very smart and you're not," etc. — but when the prospect of a better world where she doesn't have to battle is raised, her response... man. Man. If only Bianca could be made to understand. If only there were better ways to communicate this. But then, we wouldn't have a story if things were that simple, would we?
  • The conversation between N and Hilda in noogenesis is as excellent as ever, but my favourite bit of that chapter was specifically the part where the spectacle of Super Simisage Samantha, a Creature of Many Talents that You (Yes, You!) Can Look At, is compared to N. Not 100% sure I'm able to put my finger on why this resonated with me like it did, beyond by maybe saying it puts us right in N's shoes without even taking us away from the POV character.
  • And most importantly of all,
There’s another pokémon, the one who tries to eat the Moon, and he’s pitch-black, right? So it would make sense if he sent bad dreams and made them out of black mist, yes. That’s very true.
Yes! Yes! My pal! My homeboy! My rotten soldier! My sweet cheese! My good-time boy! He is here! He exists! Very good. Beyond me gushing about my favourite guy, I appreciate the folklorish nature of this line (and quite a few others, but for reasons elaborated upon in the previous sentences, I was drawn to this one as my example).

Anyway, on the whole, good stuff as ever and so on and so forth. A little sad that I think my next review will be my last, but hi-ho, what a story it's been. Happy Blitz(insert suffix)! I hope you've enjoyed my varyingly lucid reviews (this one is going live at 4:14 am!) even a fraction of the amount that I've enjoyed this story. It's really like nothing else I've ever read in the fandom, in a way that I so sincerely appreciate.
 
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Sinderella

Angy Tumbleweed
Staff
Location
In Guzma's Closet
Pronouns
She/Her
Partners
  1. sylveon-shiny
  2. gothitelle
  3. froslass
  4. chandelure
  5. mimikyu
My first Blitz 2021 review and I! CHOOSE! YOU! This story has been on my read list for 84 years so hi hi hello. I know it's about N and considering N was my prime Pokemon Simping Flavor(TM) once upon a time, I was hella hype, and my hype was WELL RECEIVED by what was going on in what I assume is the prologue and chapter 1. However, it has also been 84 years since I have touched my copy of White, so liiiieeeeek...excuse me if I sound like an ass in any of the coming paragraphs.

To the absolute surprise of nobody on this plane of existence, your prose was stellar. The mixture of almost formal and conversational verbiage worked really well, especially in chapter 1, because we're talking about N here--he's always hid this sort of pompous vibe to me that meshes extremely well with the exposition that was going on here. Just super fitting with his character, in my humble opinion. However, I was very, very surprised by the second-person POV that was used here. I don't read a lot of 2nd person because I feel like it doesn't fucking exist anywhere and because I'm a third-person gigachad, but I was super impressed by how well this was unfolding from that POV. I think once I got past the odd character switch between the prologue and chapter 1, and realizing I was in the eyes of a Serperior, it was all smooth sailing from there. But, that does mark my main gripe thus far; I just found that switch between "You are N" to "You're a Pokemon, specifically a Serperior" was a tad jarring, especially because I came out of the prologue wondering what the fuck happened in N's eyes, and the POV switch didn't help my question there.

Getting a little more into the content, I was really really starting to jive with these really fucked up connections Vaselva was making throughout chapter 1. Like, it was sort of chilling to me that the concept of being taken from her mother to be handed to some snot-nosed little girl for a Pokemon journey was just so "aye this is no big deal, it is what it is" to her. Like...long story short, I now fully completely totally understand why you drill the fuck out of me about how Pokemon function in my world-building :ROFLMAO: It's not the blaring focus of the chapter, but it definitely offers an almost eerie "wow fucking YIKES bro" undertone that I wasn't anticipating, but definitely appreciated.

It was almost infuriating how N was so caught up in his "split up Pokemon and humans so Pokemon don't suffer at the hands of humans" and Vaselva was so "No, you can't take me away from Hilda, I like Hilda!" while simultaneously trying to remember her own fucking mother because Professor Juniper KIDNAPPED HER IN COLD BLOOD (a hyperbole but like, you know what I mean, son) thus kind of proving N's point. Like on one hand I'm totally on the side of "yeah but a lot of Pokemon wouldn't want to be split up from humans!" but also again, N do be makin' a little sense here. Really, just make a Pokemon democracy at this point and give them the right to choose. Pro-choice, but make it Pokemon deciding to stay with humans or be wild.

I'm very curious to see how the rest of these chapters pan out, because if I'm understanding correctly, this is going backwards? Which is very cool; I love stories where the timeline isn't a standard linear scope, and I'm left having to rearrange to get everything in the right order. This is most certainly going to be a fun time. I'll be circling back when I can actually keep my eyes open.

For now, some line-by-lines, just because:

On the edges of the throne room are the first casualties of this fight: a pair of Corinthian stone columns. Fractured from the sheer heat of a stray fire attack, based on the scorch marks and soot. 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.
Alright so we're starting at the tail end of a big Zekrom v. Reshiram ultimate smackdown, I guess?

Down further, at the foot of the dais, a klinklang is scattered on the ground, their body gears in four separate pieces. 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.

Closer, directly above the sundered gears, a reuniclus is splayed on the stairs, his arms limply tracing down the steps. Collapsed beside him is a carracosta in heavy-plated armor, his fins and head partially withdrawn into his shell.
Oh my fucking god, they're fucking dead D:

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.

The rest of the story plays out backwards.
I really really liked these lines, they just hit. I do feel like that last line is a little disjointed with the other two because it seems like the exposition is trying to say "This is you, this is how you feel" and then suddenly I'm pulled out of that characterization to be told, kind of in an almost "instruction" fashion, the story is playing out backwards. I kind of think it would be a good idea to consider omitting that line altogether and letting the readers gradually figure out this is a reverse chronological story? Granted, this is personal preference, because I know there might be some mixed reactions to that. I've just been watching a lot of The Witcher lately and that show has a SCREWY timeline with no indication of skips, and I love that shit.

When Hilda sends you out this time, the leaf-haired one is there.
Oh, hey N!

He’s almost conversational about it, almost pleasant, but you sense thorns beneath the roses.
Whew, this line. This chapter is packed with these really spicy lines.

You wonder if he even knows what it means to be taken from someone you love.
This was my first instinct of yikes.

A small brood for a serperior.
I marked this because another issue that I had was I felt it took just a tad too long to figure out what kind of Pokemon I was--personally, when it comes to second-person, I like having all of my info right off the bat. I'm not particularly fond of reading "you're this, this, and this" without first being told "you're that and that," because it leaves me wondering and makes it that much harder to try to sink into the character POV, especially one as immersive as second-person.

In your clutch there were seventeen.
Seventeen what...other snivy/serperior? Was a little confused there.

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.
This was a shady ass fucking read, and it was scary accurate as well. N, who spent most of his life being dictated by Ghetsis 👀 Chills. Very nice.

“Unovan settlers led by a human named Draccus Kensington led the routing and subsequent slaughter of the entire colony there. But humans were not strong enough to confront fully-grown haxorus directly, so instead they snuck in at night and smashed their eggs, slaughtered the hatchling axew as they fled. The survivors were hunted down while they mourned. Today the Valley of Dragons is known as Opelucid City, and their people live in blissful ignorance of the blood upon which their city is founded. That is draconic. Draccus’s son, heartbroken by the actions of his father, tried to make peace by enshrining dragons in their town, revering them as sacred, denouncing his father’s name as a synonym of the violence he inflicted, but—haxorus never again nested in the Valley.”
This was...so sad.

{I’m sorry for what happened to him. I know you’re upset by that.}
Oh my god what happened to Ghetsis? I mean, I'm not sad or anything, I just want to see the body.

After you were taken from your mother, you and your siblings were moved to Professor Juniper’s lab. There, she gave you all your lifelong mission in a slow, firm voice as you all watched with wide eyes—you were entrusted with these human children, to guide them and defend them through Unova. You were guardians, to be their anchors and their starting point for as long as they would have you.
Wow, this is so fucked up. I'm so curious to see how exactly they were taken. I'm guessing it wasn't a violent catch, because I don't think Vaselva would be so "it is what it is" about that...or maybe it was and she just doesn't remember? My head, ow.

If your mother trusted you to this woman, and this woman trusted her children to you—then there couldn’t be anything wrong with that, right?
It really burns that she's trying so hard to like...justify it, I guess? Or rather, make sense of it?

In this land, your human is your earth, your rock.
YIIIIIIIIIIKES this struck me as really...Stockholm Syndrome-y

“N …” Hilda says, and for a single, perfect moment, you think it’ll all work out. She’s finally listening. She’ll understand. But in this moment, the last moment humans have to say something in response, Hilda opens her mouth and finds that the words do not come.
I was a tad bit confused here, and even through the chapter because there were other lines like this mentioned. From my understanding, Vaselva agrees with Hilda in a sense that N shouldn't be doing what he's doing, and that Pokemon and humans belong together, but it was lines like that that made me think that wasn't the case? That Vaselva was siding with N and wanted Hilda to see N's side? I mean, I guess I could see her trying to be devil's advocate I guess, but if she was supposed to be painted as somewhat wishy-washy on a stance, it didn't show. It came off as "I'm with N, don't do this...but Hilda, listen to him because you're not listening to him, it seems" and I had a hard time tracking it. Granted, I am most definitely half asleep, so that could just be me not connecting the dots, but that's where I kind of stand currently. Will revisit later.

Hypothetically. What would happen if you disobeyed?
👀 Has a...seed been planted?
 

SparklingEspeon

Back on Her Bullshit
Staff
Location
a Terrace of Indeterminate Location in Snowbelle
Pronouns
She/Her
Partners
  1. espurr
  2. fennekin
  3. zoroark
~Review of Chapters 1 – 6~

Hello! I’m here for the first of your three reviews from the BLEC review awards, and will be covering this fic in three batches of six!

Though I’ve never played it, B/W has always read to me as the perfect opportunity to delve into the ethics of pokemon training and the actual morality of the society that Pokemon in general shows to us. Sure, it’s a utopia, but at whose expense? And there always is an expense somewhere. The Envy of Eden attacks this topic with no holds barred, mostly to success! …And some aspects that I wonder about, but I’ll get to that a bit later on.

The second thing that needs to be addressed is how backwards the fic is. …Quite literally, I’ve noticed, to the point where even the table of contents is on the wrong side of the page. It took me a moment to get that one; before I thought it was some archaic sorting thing I wasn’t aware of. Fridge genius! The backwards aspect is a little jarring at first, and there are definitely a couple of inherent differences from a traditional story that the change brings. For instance, it makes the story take on a much more “snapshot in time” feel over being something consistent, with characters I can feel consistently attached to. But your writing style seems to work pretty well with the change too.

This reads a lot more like an anthology with continuity, with each part focusing on a different perspective. The back in time mechanic reminds me a lot of the movie Memento, which did a similar thing with each next scene being what happened previously, and past events being revelations for the future. And it’s pretty cool here to see stuff like Reshiram’s unleashing foreshadowed repeatedly chapters in advance because it already happened, and then see it happen and get the full the context—because the present and future lose a lot of their meaning without what came before, right?

Past the base mechanic, it seems like each chapter of this is dedicated to exploring a different portion of the ethics issue that this story is covering. I was particularly struck by Ghetsis’ chapter, the one with the Boldore, and the Kafara chapter. I feel like a lot of them made good points about how the pokemon feel about pokemon training—Ghetsis with the league system, Boldore and Tourmaline with how trainers often misread signs of pain and suffering in pokemon as other, benign things, and Bisharp both as an example of the bad effects pokemon training can have on some pokemon and as an example of what a proper bond between a human and pokemon can look like. All of them were very poignantly written and made their points well and succinctly.

But though I’ve gushed on it a lot, I do sometimes feel that it’s been a bit oddly framed. Of the six chapters that I read, all of them take place from Poke-POVs, and all of them have underlying themes of “maybe we’d be better off without humans/humans just don’t understand us”. Even the verdict we see in the very beginning (or, end) is that N accomplishes his wish and manages to presumably separate humans and pokemon and turn the clocks back 300 or so years.

The takeaway so far seems to be that N was right, it’s an unquestionable fact, and that even if Ghetsis went too far, Team Plasma had an unshakeable point. And, sure. Ghetsis did make a very convincing speech in his champion battle against Alder. Even if he went too far, the system ~technically~ allowed it. (at least, if his reading of the rules are accurate and not twisted.) And that system falls apart when the biases are stripped away. But what I haven’t seen broached yet is that all the players in this fic—Hilda, N, Ghetsis—are attacking a symptom of a larger issue. They aren’t just fighting the trainer regime, they’re fighting the deeper issue of inherent discrimination across species. N setting the clock back isn’t going to solve any of that. Our real-life world proves that separating humans and pokemon wouldn’t solve the issue—the system of oppression would just take a different form. There are still twelve more chapters to go, though, and it might be a bit presumptuous of me to try and analyze the story from this angle when I’ve only read a third of it. I’ll just say that it would be disappointing if N setting back the clock is what solves the problem. A missed chance to go deeper on a topic that only ever seems more relevant than before.

If he does end up setting the clocks back, though, something that’s made me wonder is if the backwards nature of the story is because of that reset. If N turned the clocks back, then there’s no reason that they wouldn’t go… literally backwards, instead of everything just poofing out of existence. Based on the beginning that’s currently my running theory, especially since it gives purpose to an otherwise seemingly just for gimmicks mechanics. Given how the rest of this story likes to operate, I feel like this mechanic has more depth and meaning than just as a gimmick/a way to better express the themes.

This is overall a fun start, though! I admire your conciseness and poignancy in getting the themes you want to portray across, and I’m excited to see what you’re going to do in the next twelve chapters. If it’s anything like the six I read before, I think I’ll be in for a wild ride.

~SparklingEspeon
 

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'll get these done before Blitz" she said "so I'll have more time"
idk why I spend so much time writing about the hero of truth when i am full of LIES
Welcome back! sorry for the late response here; I do try to wrestle with the best way to approach these convos and sometimes I just don't!
Heya! Oh man, I didn’t realise you were about to wrap this up already! Congrats! That is one strange feeling… The fact that a fic can be finished :P
heh, it's certainly wild, and it was a surreal feeling to actually finish something after ten years of just ... not doing that.
Ok, going back over the text to find instances of N deflecting. There are some, but they aren’t as strong as I remember them. Mostly because there are less exchanges than I remember. There are still some.
Mind you, I get it. My dialogues are corpses stitched together from bulletpoints I have to hit, and I’m happy if it sounds somewhat human after all. So some methods of “unjust” rhetoric might have slipped into my text when I didn’t intend it.
Absolutely! Which is why I always find that it's helpful to look at the quotes when we start these conversations--it's interesting to see what we walk into a conversation with, what happens during the conversation itself, and what we walk out of the conversation with.

(Which, same here, I get it--had an interesting conversation with a friend the other day about how I really don't ever vibe with the "kid gradually sees the good side of an abusive parent" trope. Doesn't really matter how well it's written, how much depth gets added to the parent; I just don't empathize with that trope at all and I acknowledge that! But in those cases I'm careful to acknowledge my biases about that trope before critiquing the work as a whole, and to try to separate my feelings for that trope vs the actual writing quality of the work.)
N redirects the argument to a emotionally gripping, but in the end irrelevant tale. Instead of elaborating on what Hilda was going at (the pain of separation from a loved one), he whips out the Haxorus tale, which is cruel, and a nice parable, but in the end not impactful to the argument at hand other than giving the listener an emotional impact that favors N.
The Haxorus tale is nice worldbuilding, it serves to show that humans are cruel etc. I get that. But right now, there's Hilda confronting N, 300 years later. There is no Haxorus at the scene, Hilda is not the conqueror of Unova, and in 300 years, things might have changed. But he doesn't elaborate on that.
So other than divert attention from a question that he doesn't have an immediate answer to, it doesn't do much in making a logical point.
Splitting this argument into a few points (both so I keep track of them and so that you can confirm that I'm addressing all of the points of what you were saying here, since there's a lot of directions this could go into):

As I understand it, you're primarily arguing that him bringing up Sagaris's story here is unfair/irrelevant because:
1. It wasn't related to what Hilda was saying / He can't actually answer Hilda's question
2. Hilda is in the future, not during the time of Sagaris
3. There are no Haxorus present
4. Hilda wouldn't necessarily have chosen the same thing that the people who killed Sagaris did
5. Things might've changed since then

1. It wasn't related to what Hilda was saying / He can't actually answer Hilda's question
Here's what Hilda's question is:
But you can’t help but pity Hilda, who was so good at leading that she never learned to listen. She latches on to the last word of the sentence and nothing else. “Make them? That’s draconic.”
Here's the full exchange there, for context:
N: Believe me, Hilda, when I say this: I would much rather that we live in one world where pokémon and humans can be friends. But after everything I’ve seen, after everything humans have done, I no longer think that humans would allow for that on their own, nor do pokémon have the power to carve it out for themselves. And so the burden falls on me to make humans listen.
Hilda: Make them? That’s draconic
N literally tries to explain why he's doing what he's doing--he feels like he has no other choice, and that human society has explicitly gone out of the way to prevent him from taking less drastic measures ("I would much rather that we live in one world where pokemon and humans can be friends"). But Hilda's the one who focuses on a single part of his statement--make--and boils it down to that. It might feel like N's responding to a very small part of an argument here because Hilda's responding to an even smaller one.

2. Hilda is in the future, not during the time of Sagaris
But you already know how Sagaris’s story ends. Every pokémon does.
Dragons are your cousins, your mother told you in those fourteen blissful suns, but they are not you. And you are not them. You will not die a dragon’s death, you will not be the last of a dying breed, she warned you sternly. You must not. Seeds will grow in whatever soil they find. Dragons will die on their hoards. There is no in-between.
Vaselva, also living now, knows about Sagaris--this lesson isn't for her, either, because she already knows it. Even though she's not a dragon, Sagaris's tale was important enough to her people that her mother took the (very limited) time that they had together to impart this to her children. For serperior, Sagaris's story is a cautionary one.

Admittedly, for N and Hilda, it's very different, and the caution goes the other way. They don't need to fear humans wiping out their species. To N, it's probably closer to a cautionary tale of what humans can and will do if they're unchecked. But to Hilda, the story means nothing at first, because it's something she's never heard of. She literally does not know about this story before N tells her.

"That's all in the past now" is a perfectly valid response if people have moved on from a thing. But that's a pretty big "if". Before telling the story, N asks if Hilda knows the origin of the word "draconic", and Hilda does not know. This is notably different from moving on--she never knew about it in the first place.

In this world, for someone familiar with the stories of dragons, the word "draconic" would be a very fraught term, since in this case it stems from their genocide. N was taught this term by the other surviving race of dragons on Unova, in a similar manner to Vaselva—to Hilda it’s just another word; to Vas and N, it’s a loaded reminder of what happens if humans don’t get their way.


3. There are no Haxorus present
The reason there are no haxorus present is because they're dead! So! It's kind of unfair to say that because we killed them all they don't get to talk, right?

If might makes you right, then by that logic N's right because he wins the resulting fight here, right? Once he reshapes the world there are no humans present at the scene, so who cares what they think, or would've thought, or what happened to them, right?

4. Hilda wouldn't necessarily have chosen the same thing that the people who killed Sagaris did
She isn't, in your words, a Unovan conqueror, no. And I think this is probably the closest to being innocent that Hilda is--Unovan conquerors, as it turns out, fucked her ancestors pretty badly too. A lot of her reason for fighting as hard as she is is because she's seeking to undo what they did to her, and N is definitely Not Getting That, which is a definite shortcoming on his part (which other people end up calling him out on, and rightfully so).

But I think it's interesting to unpack why the Unovan conquerors killed Sagaris--she had a thing they wanted (land), and they were stronger than her. From N's point of view, in this specific imagining of Unova, this is a recurring theme in human/pokemon relations--pokemon have a thing that humans want, and humans are able to compel pokemon to give it to them. Hilda and the humans who are defending training here aren't explicitly advocating genocide, no, but she's still copying a lot of their reasoning.

5. Things might have changed since then.
I cheated a bit and put this one last on the list because I think it's the most important. Vaselva notices:
You realize what he was waiting for in that silence. He paused, and he watched, and he listened—for one of you to tell him why. To stop merely denying his stories, and to instead explain why humans and pokémon could live in harmony. To tell him what had changed three hundred years ago that wasn’t true now.
And, sure, we never really get to know if that's a goodfaith interpretation--but at least Vaselva (who's biased against N, if anything) thinks that the one thing he wanted to hear more than anything was to hear how things have changed since then. Because he doesn't know, but if someone could tell him, he'd be willing to listen. Hilda just doesn't provide him with an answer.

He is asking an unanswerable question in order to shut up Vaszleva.
This question is so hypothetical, it would take me several days to even compute what that world may look like. Then I wouldn't have made my mind up about wehter I like it or not.
Also, emphasis on the may. N has so far never provided a clear model of how things would work in a world after his design. Only a vague "things are better there". So this question also doesn't take into consideration, that my "free" may be different from his.
And he is very well aware of what scope of a question he is asking. He doesn't know the answer to it either. So far, I've seen him falter at the nitty-gritty details more often than not (eg a few lines above iirc). So asking Vaszelva this question is a very unfair method of pivoting the argument in his favor.
I think there's a bit of a dichotomy here between "questions that are unanswerable" and "questions that N doesn't know the answer to." N's well-spoken but he's not omnipotent--he genuinely doesn't know the answer to the question he's asking here; it's a hard question. But he thinks that even though it's a hard question, Vaselva would definitely be better able to answer the question of "would Vaselva be happy if X happened" than either he or Hilda would, which is why he asks the question.

"he doesn't know the answer to it either" is the root of why he's asking the question tbh--if he was only asking questions that he actually knew the answer to, I think that'd be a much more telling sign of him trying to steer the argument in his favor, no? Since then he'd be able to structure his argument around the answers he knows are coming, rather than trying to figure out what Vaselva feels.
"Strong enough to fight other, but didn't teach you how to be strong enough to fight back" I mean, same shit applies for humans, but I think N has included them in his list of why it would be better if humans and pokemon were separated.
I think in a post-split world where the world is just humans and humans are still doing shitty things to each other, N would still be campaigning for justice, even among humans. He's the kind of person who I don't think ever really gets to rest.
"There is strength beyond pure power" That sentence sure sounds cool, and at surface-level I want to agree with him and cheer him on. But then again, he follows it up with "Now watch me force this upon you by sheer strength of a legendary". Kind of a fallacy there.
This one is true for sure. Ultimately I'm not going to argue that N is in the right in this exact decision with Reshiram to split the worlds. The solution to oppression isn't segregation. It is in fact one of the shittiest solutions!

(This is an important lesson that we'll be stowing away for later, I swear.)
It’s not Tourmaline’s fault, but it is her responsibility to deal with her situation, not anyone else’s.
Here comes the tangent: In my years I’ve encountered many people who are as “deaf” as Cheren is here. They might be incapable of reading the room, might not for the love of god engage with you on the same level, voluntarily or involuntarily miss the point of a conversation etc. I think you know what I’m talking about.
Now those people may do this willingly or not. Willingly because they know how to steer an argument so that they come out as the winner; or unwillingly because they have some issue that holds them back (for example autism).
Whether willingly or not, when in a conversation, you are dealing with them on the limits of their perception. In online spaces, you can simply walk away from a conversation like this. But what if you can’t, because those are your coworkers or your family.
I agree with you here, but I think there's a core difference in your comparison--your coworkers and your family don't own you. You can't just walk away and abandon them, sure (I mean sometimes you can, and that might be for the better), but they don't get to decide your legal rights regardless of if you agree or not. There are soft variables at play in every situation, and there's definitely some social maneuvering that needs to happen in these conversations, but at the core if you and these people walk away agreeing to disagree, you still have legal rights as a person.

Tourmaline does not. Cheren gets to decide if she is allowed to go outside, who her "family"/"team" is, when she gets to eat, how often she gets to hurt. In this version of canon, pokemon have no legal rights. Cheren literally purchased/adopted her from a shelter that she was placed in against her will.

It’s up to you to go to your limits of expression to make them understand your point. Because they can’t do anything more and no one else is going to step up for you. You want to bring your point across and it’s your responsibility to change those people’s minds. Sad as it is, but sometimes, you have to scream to be heard.
That’s the most offence I’m taking in Tourmaline’s approach. It is so goddamn passive. She expects that her passive-aggressiveness will be enough to change her circumstances, because the universal karma will eventually look out for her. And I get it. It’s unfair. She shouldn’t be in this position. But bitching and spreading unproductive negativity will not change it either.
This line gets buried but tbh for a fair amount of the fic Tourmaline is the least passive person in fighting for her rights here:
But Tourmaline stays quiet. In a soft voice, she says, {My last human felt like you do. She couldn’t hear my spoken words, but she could hear the unspoken ones. She and I worked together to free pokémon like you. Like me.}
We jump headlong into this by virtue of achron, but Tourmaline did used to be an active member of Team Plasma. She screamed to be heard. And she ends up here because she wasn't heard, because she is considered property in the eyes of the law, because Cheren isn't.
Just stating that something is unjust and should therefore not exist is an easy statement. But it also spits in the face of the people struggling in this situation. (And here comes me getting all frustrated about any social justice debate I’ve ever had.) It always feels like stating the fact is enough, and now it is up to someone else to act on it. With no guidance whatsoever for it. You’ll say “It’s not Tourmaline’s responsibility to work out an environment that suits her, it’s Cheren’s because he is the one in power.” But Tourmaline’s the one who knows what she wants, not Cheren. Her leaning back and being “I’m unhappy, but I won’t try to communicate it to the human, but instead claim that everything is shitty and that’s it” won’t improve her situation at all.
I understand your frustration here--in the modern day it's hard to separate keyboard/twitter activism from people actually trying to make change, and there are definitely instances where those two lines get substituted when they shouldn't be.

You've suggested some lines for me but I don't quite think I'll take them--I guess I'm more curious about how you'd prefer Tourmaline to tell Cheren what she wants instead. You mentioned a lot of interesting/helpful ways to tell if a pet doesn't like you + how ignoring them makes you a bad pet owner--and I think Carnel stacking stones and doing an aggressive pantomime of his cave is at least as expressive, if not moreso, than that--but Cheren doesn't listen, and instead Carnel is badly hurt as a result. Tourmaline alludes to having done similar things and also having been ignored by Cheren. Should she try harder? For how long? In what way?
Ok, this ends my tangent on why I value proactiveness, even if it is objectively unfair, over unproductive stating of facts :D
no worries this cat would literally be considered a terrorist if she were legally considered a person. she was highly proactive before she literally lost the right to choose when she went outside. this is a major factor for why she feels this way.
Re “They will take our victories and give you their weakness. But they will do everything except listen, Carnel.”
She kinda ignores that this is a two-way system. She does what she can do better than humans - fight. While the human does what they can do better - provide food, shelter and safety from the world around.
Tourmaline always acts like she wouldn’t have to fight if she was without a human. But then it would be for sheer survival.
Sure! I think "she wouldn't have to fight if she didn't have a human, but she'd be alone" is a similar, albeit reversed, argument for N's whole splitting the world thing in the first chapter--and again, I'm not going to argue that the solution to oppression is segregation. I'm just not lol.

But again there's a middle ground here, right? There's a line between "everyone is wholly separate and never talks again" and "humans get unilateral control over pokemon", right?
This goes close to something that’s been bugging me about N’s perfect world, too. In his mind, humans and pokemon should be separated, because their differences make it impossible to communicate their needs properly.
But N is a human, and following his logic, he lives on the human side of his perfect world. So what now. He already saw that humans also don’t understand him. Well, he can jugg it up to him being special and awesome and a poor martyr and whatnot. But what about disabled people? What about people who can’t communicate their needs? Or what about naturally charismatic people who impose their will on others by sheer force of personality?
Where does he draw the line now? Will he come to the conclusion that humankind should be separated from itself? With pokemon, it’s easy. You go by how they look. Is it as easy with humans?
Yeah, mentioned this earlier up, but I think in this world N would always be fighting for a more equal world. By the time he summons Reshiram, his mantra is "there is no change without sacrifice"--he would absolutely keep fighting in the name of changing the world to be more fair for the humans you've mentioned.
And what about pokemon who suffer the same? Or what about prey-species? They had a happy life in the niches they carved out for themselves in the suburbs of humans. Suddenly they get eaten left and right by predatory species. I think they won’t thank him.
But again, it's not a straight dichotomy here, right? If the choice is, as you say, either "this prey pokemon surrenders their bodily rights to a human and consents to be owned by the human" or "death"--is that reaaaaalllly a fair choice? It's a realistic one, sure, but I wouldn't really be like "well, you didn't pick death, so you must really love the other option you had instead, since you chose it."
Amara shields her from the winds even though she sinks deeper into the snow, which she doesn't like. Hilda usually recalls Amara, because she gets startled by weather like this . They take care of each other's needs and know them without much of a second thought.
This strikes me as a really one-sided relationship, though, since Hilda has the pokeball and can control when Amara's outside, right? The two scenarios you've described are "Amara can't return to her pokeball where it's warm" and "Amara can't leave her pokeball". She chooses to shield Hilda, sure, and that's very nice of her, but she's in this situation explicitly because Hilda put her here.
I'd feel very happy with a person who plans and plans and racks their brain to keep me safe. So I try to keep them safe in return. So far, for me, there's nothing unfair in this relationship.
This one may be where we disagree. The "danger" that Hilda's protecting from is identical to the danger that Hilda's creating by having Amara right, right? You wouldn't need to protect Amara in a battle if Amara weren't in a battle. Hilda's a great planner and she's making lots of great plans, but the easiest way to keep Amara safe is just not to send her into battles where a four foot excavating mole is going to break her legs. Hilda's aware of this fact but is choosing to ignore it.
I mean, yeah, but Amara also stated that she is uncomfortable and visibly tiptoes around. If I were Hilda, I'd have also kept her in her pokeball, if my lights worked.
That's true! But again I think that's looking at things with only two options--"send the zebra into the tundra, which she hates" or "never let the zebra go outside."

The third answer, that Amara isn't able to produce, is just "let the zebra somewhere go else where she would prefer to be".

One of the things that I really respect about anime!Ash and the anime in general is that he's okay letting his pokemon go after a while. It feels a lot less like they're signing on contracts for life, and more that he and his pokemon are choosing to partner when it benefits them--but he doesn't drag sun-loving Bayleef to snowy Sinnoh, you know? It's clear that he loves them fiercely, but when the time comes for them to live lives separately from him and outside circumstances require the two of them to part ways, Ash always respects that decision.
That to me sounded like Amara was proud to be on Hilda's team.
You can be proud of wrong things tbh. I cut my own bangs when I was a teenager and I was proud of that.
Heroism isn’t the norm in the pokemon franchise either. Most npcs are pretty passive, to the point of ignorance. I’ve had a conversation recently about how Volker’s antics with putting the whole of Sunnyshore on a weeklong blackout is just accepted with a “boys will be boys” kinda attitude, that is really concerning.
The only active npcs are the villains who want to change things and some assorted champs that fight back. Now, sadly, proactive villains and reactive heros are a staple in fiction. You rarely see someone setting out to make the world a better place. Simply doesn’t make as good as a narrative. So I get that choice from a storyteller perspective.
Heroism is only the default for the hero. And since the hero is always so narratively flat, it never feels right. (ooooooh do I have opinions on the undeserved hero-status of various player characters.) The only halfway good thing I can take away from the default-hero is to teach kids that doing the good thing should be your default. And because all expecpt Gen5’s villains are straight out evil or stupid, that is usually a solid message.
I think we're dancing around the same point here actually! "Heroism is only the default for the hero"--but we also expect our pokemon to charge blindly and bravely into battle, but they never really get to be the protagonists of the story, right? They never really get to make choices that matter. They get kidnapped and turned into weapons and exploited and sold, and they also get to be our brave companions as we fight the people who would do those shitty things--but they never actually get to choose to be heroes, even if we expect them to be heroic.
The franchise kinda works on the assumption that you love and care for your pokemon and that pokemon are also naturally affine to humans, and the other way around. Pokemon are kinda like dogs in that way - they are very reliant on humans, but could live in the wilderness if they should. That’s the baseline the pokemon logic works on. So I can forgive the games with that approach.
I would agree that the franchise works on that assumption, but I would also point out that the franchise doesn't do much to actually assert that assumption--requiring something to function doesn't make it true, you know? It would be really awkward for the game logic if that assumption weren't true. This fic is for exploring that awkwardness.
Pokemon are a lot like pets. I love my cat. Pretty sure my cat loves me. So I treat her right and she treats me right. I give her food, she brings me mice. I lay in bed, she comes crawling in. She has shiny fur and purrs a lot.
If she was unhappy, I could tell. I can read cats well enough to know when a cat is purring over pain or out of happiness. She can tell when I’m unhappy and crying a lot and lays next to me because she knows I’m happy when she does.
"Pokemon are a lot like pets" is definitely one common headcanon. It's also not the one I'm using here, which I hope is made most obvious by each of the pokemon narrators having highly complex thoughts/emotions that we would call more sapient than pet-tier intelligence. If Vaselva's assertion that [she loves Hilda and would be willing to die for her because she understands the sense of duty that is required by a starter pokemon] is to be taken seriously, it requires us to accept that Vaselva is smart enough to understand 1) conditional love 2) death, specifically that it can come for her, 3) duty, 4) the construct of being someone else's pokemon. These are all topics that I don't expect my pet to understand, which is why the most strenuous thing I've ever asked of her is to chase the ball many times, not to team up with me to stop god from creating the multiverse.

I don’t understand what’s telling about that statement, but I still stand by it.
sorry whoops I think I deleted an entire paragraph somehow--the original question was "would you, bluesidra, die for someone". not "who should die for bluesidra". So I wasn't really sure where wurmple came into this, or why wurmple dying was on the table when the original question was if bluesidra would.

Let’s assume I just caught that Wurmple, let it out of its ball and it gets snatched up by a starly. Well, shit happens. I would feel bad about it, but probably shrug it off after a few days. And I don’t feel bad about that seemingly heartless statement either. Because what happened? Wurmple slouched around in its forest, got caught and the next minute it was eaten by a Starly. It would probably been eaten by a Starly sooner or later anyways, my actions did not affect that outcome.
Situation two: My and Wurmple are best friends. She’s been with me for years and we do everything together. Now a Starly comes and snatches my Wurmple. I would personally choke the life out of that Starly. Because it attacked my friend.
likewise here, I'm not going to argue that you shouldn't be angry and punch birds if they hurt your friends! but the question wasn't about that, it was "would you be willing to be wurmple in this situation?"
I’m analysing her behaviour without looking at the message you want to bring across, even though I know I’m reading too much into it.
I mean, I understand the point of the chapter better now that you explained that it was about choosing to be heroic. But I totally didn’t catch that it was about choosing heroism. To me it felt like Amara was perpetually questioning something I didn’t see the point in questioning.
And I’m pretty sure you didn’t intend for Amara to be borderline narcissistic. That way, her arguments make sense to me. But that is clearly not the message that I was intended to take away from that chapter. The message was “Isn’t it mean that this pony is caught up in something that might end its life?”
I definitely don't intend for Amara to be narcissistic, no! I'm curious what behaviors you'd rather her show that would make her not that, I guess?
Having an unhappy pokemon. Like I said, I can tell when a cat is hurt. Same with dogs. They might be in a physically good condition and have wonderful hair, but there is something about a mistreated dog that you can just tell. Their posture isn’t immaculate, even though they aren’t limping. Their ears are slightly drooping. Their fur is ruffled and spiky, even though it shouldn’t be. They might be easily spooked and not find comfort in their owner.
Amara is nervous and unhappy this entire chapter and spends 80% of her chapters in this fic with broken bones--to you, is this a sign that Hilda shouldn't be allowed to own pokemon?
If I see an unhappy (not unhappy to be in a particular situation, but in general) animal, I know that person shouldn’t have that pet. And then it’s my responsibility to ask what is going on. Of course, I can’t always act on that responsibility, and solving those situations is tricky.
But yeah, I’d assume a pokemon and their trainer are both giving their best to make each other happy until I see one party unhappy.
I think that's fair! But several pokemon in the sections you've read so far--notably Tourmaline and Carnel, but also Amara--have blatantly said they're unhappy, so I guess I'm wondering what your next step would be there since you don't really agree with any of their statements of unhappiness.

---

I'm sorry for dumping the essay here on you--I get the feeling from your responses that lots of text is also your way of saying "hey, I'm here and I had lots of thoughts in response to your thoughts", but if this feels like too much back and forth over pokemon fanfic or anything, definitely let me know! I really appreciate you taking the time to type everything up here; I know review-review-review responses are like six levels deep in the nesting hierarchy and definitely aren't your duty as a reviewer, so I appreciate the well-wishes and your general time here.
Congrats on finishing this project, first things first! Embarking on something this ambitious, and something that's deliberately constructed so differently than usual, is something to be proud of as it is; seeing it through to the end is a tremendous feat. I'm super excited to see what else you've laid out over the course of the rest of the story, but for now -- happy for you, on seeing this through to the end! :>
<3 thanks! honestly I've made so many jokes about never finishing a longfic that it was utterly surreal to just ... finish a longfic.
I think one of the reasons why this particular mode of storytelling (to be precise, the vignette aspect of it) is clicking so hard for me in this story is that you have an excellent eye for protagonists. Like, I'm such a sucker for the premise of "story heavily predisposed with the matter of pokémon having voices, cycling through an assortment of their POVs" as it is, but the variety here is truly fantastic, and you have an eye for what makes each one so compelling -- each one brings their own set of hang-ups to the table, and their perspectives are shaped by both the people they're pre-occupied with and the experiences they've had with them, from Zahhak and Amara -- two pokémon who are right there in the thick of the story -- to, like, a police herdier and a camera operating rotom (not in this run of chapters, but I'm bringing it up again because I loved that). And it ties REALLY neatly into the overall theme of the story, which is difficult to pull off but adds a lot of depth to this. (Just as much, it holds a magnifying glass up to a subject that, as you say, the canon sort of presents to you but then abstains from really elaborating on because that'd give the player a Moral Quandary(TM) to worry about. Seeing the approach of... y'know, actually going into all the implications here, makes all the differences between this fic and the original games stand out more. And that's great, frankly!)
I think this is just the general theme of my responses here but it really, really makes my day to hear this. "hurr durr what if a camera told a story and then the next chapter was a rock" is such a stupid idea on paper but I was really committed to making it work, and to hear that it landed like this means a lot to me. I'm really glad you're enjoying.
I think I was most partial to narsil, which seemed to both encapsulate some of the big issues near the heart of the project -- giving autonomy to creatures denied it, the injustices and complications inherent to training, the realities of abuse versus the cartoonish and evil framework of it in the original setting -- while presenting perhaps the most... probably not the most fitting word but I'm gonna use it -- idealistic take on the setting that I've seen thus far. Like, yeah, when otherwise innocent people enter harmful situations, they'll become more prone to perpetuate that harm, but I like that there's a recognition of the inverse being true here as the chapter comes to an end, with Mina taking a genuine interest in helping out our bisharp. But there's a lot of moments from this bit of the story that really resonate with me too, and I think everything here is pretty fantastic. Zahhak's story and his close moment with N was wonderful; there's some vague form of mutual understanding there, just with layers upon layers of incompatible approaches and ideological quirks that neither party is willing to renege on, which I thought made that moment of kinship all the more poignant. Rhea talking about Tourmaline also got me pretty good! It takes real finesse to tie commentary on injustice into the lives of the people affected by it that well. I could go on, but you wrote the story, and I don't want to just recount its contents to you. Generally, I just want you to know that I was enthralled by this run of chapters. As much as I was when I read the first few, and was really getting to grips with the way the story functioned.
narsil/noted are some of my favorite bits as well--those are definitely chapters that got written more in the middle stage of drafting, when I was beginning to look at things and realize I might actually have a compelling story here.

The Tourm/Rhea conversation is loosely just based on real life, so I'm glad it hits in this way, yeah. <3
(Also, picking out typos and funny sentence structures isn't my strong suit -- I tend not to notice or remember a lot of the time, honestly -- but there was one that kinda jumped out at me near the start of nonconformist because I wasn't sure what it was supposed to be:)
goodness this is an abomination that I can only imagine I created through prodigiously unlucky find/replace lol.

Reporting back from necktie this time! I think much of what I wanted to say has been said by others, tbh, but I'll try to add what I can.
hi ur takes are based thank you for adding them I feel truly blessed
A big thing that I like about this run of chapters is that the sea of changing perspectives really comes into its own in a different way here: it adds an interesting effect where we're both forced into a distance from, and given several points of view on, the continuity while we also learn more about it. I think this approach is particularly effective in how we learn about Hilda -- with her being the protagonist of the games, it's interesting that she's (relatively speaking) so de-centered in this narrative, which is a reversal of roles I couldn't help but pick up on (of course, most of the pokémon in the canon are extremely de-centered from a story which they drive, so... I'm realising this is a long-winded way of saying "you put the pokémon and humans on even ground in a way that works very well", but hey! It's true, you do that).
This one is really fun! I remember pitching the idea to a friend in April of 2020 in basically these words, so I'm really glad that the garbled telephone of 1.5 years and actually writing the damn story managed to actually convey the same idea back out.
At the same time though I think it works well as a means of painting an increasingly clear picture of her character, and it helps justify the ways she reacts to things. For example, at the end of nidifugous, I like how Reylin's comment to N (which is then conveyed to Hilda in disastrous fashion) ends up being a genuine reveal; it's something we only find out about when N poses her the question, and we only get a flickering sign that she's going to react to it the way she does in how the tension is built there (see: "I'm not sure if that's what she wants to her"). Just as much, I like that Hilda assumes Reylin could never know about that. She's fine hearing stuff from her pokémon, yes, but only if they're not personal questions; they could never come from Reylin, after all. It ties into the overarching theme here of humans (not out of hate; the opposite, in fact) assuming that pokémon are less observant, intelligent, or person-like than they really are. And it's good stuff!
i mean yeah pokemon would never say things that make me feel bad. they're my friends. and friends would never question who i am!!
- the POV characters you pick are charming as ever here. Special mention goes to nondeterministic here; I am absolutely a sucker for how intricately you write Spur thinking and talking. I initially scanned 'biggear' as a typo ("bigger problem?") and was going to mention it here, but as it turned out, it wasn't, and I was delighted! Seeing that little dude work process everything and try to offer something, ultimately deciding to stay with N... delightful stuff. Big fan of that.
<3 <3!! I'm still continually in love that Spur was a popular viewpoint character; this was very much a self-indulgent "hey it'd be fun to ramble about p=np but like in the most esoteric xenofic possible" chapter, but I love that people love Spur and that they make people think.
- intersectionality! I appreciate how social commentary about our real world maps very clearly, but not quite 1:1, with the pokémon world here; this also comes up with social media, but I thought in necktie it came up pretty well. It was, in particular, striking to see the "ten thousand years ago," etc. chain of events displayed in the order that they were. Ties into the overall approach of trying to deconstruct current problems by figuring out where they came from, and they end up all tangled together. Also, I can't help but pick up on the critique of how well-meaning, often Euro/US-centric social movements sometimes end up targeting indigenous people. It's a nuanced depiction of that struggle!
heyoooooo yup ... this was something that made it into the fic later, but I did initially think that Plasma as I outlined it here was sort of just difficult to argue against. Like the option is "own people"/"don't own people" and it felt like I wasn't going to be able to get an audience on board with Hilda as anything more than a strawman, since she's opposing "don't own people" this was in fact an incorrect assumption. But as I got further in, I ended up turning to intersectionality for this, yeah--the example that I personally drew from was climate change measures re: developing countries, and that eventually translated more cleanly to Iris with the example you gave. It's really exciting to see the core ideas of this get reflected back to me, seriously--I'm glad the fic is landing like this for you and it means a lot to me.
- the further I get into this, the more I find myself going back to the title post that mentions this being a quarantine fic, and like. Yeah. It makes this a challenging read, which I say positively; recent events over the last year and a half have posed many questions on how the broken ways in which society works can be fixed, and I also struggle to come up with answers. This strikes a chord for me! Which might be why I'm reading this so slowly, in part because there's a lot to digest here but also in part because I realise how much I tend to read pokéfic as escapism. And this decidedly isn't that, at least not at all in the same way much of my usual reading material -- and, y'know, I think that's excellent! I notice that I'm inching nearer the end, too; I'm intrigued and excited to see how the story takes a turn in the run-up to its final chapter. Either way. Damn good stuff! Thank you as ever for writing this. :]
not sure how much you've read of the final author's note shoulda tagged that shit for mega spoilers OOPS, but I agree with you on pokemon fanfic as escapism for sure. I think escapism comes in two flavors though--the world where people can change, and the world in which they don't have to. one might even say it's a dichotomy of truth (a world where people can accept and grow beyond the ugly truths) and ideals (a world that isn't ugly) For me fanfic has always been firmly in the former, heavily grounded in my own version of escapism (an enormous dragon doesn't prevent problems from existing, but an enormous dragon is a good solution for many problems and not others; this message was brought to you from Wataru)--but it's been an experience as an author to watch that flavor of escapism crash headlong into the "but what if there just weren't these problems" flavor of escapism.

I like how open-ended this is, in a way I don't think I really appreciated until I thought about. My initial reading of this focused on the "when you speak, all creatures in this world will listen" quote, which stood out to me as a piece of cruel irony given the cruel fate imposed upon Meloetta in this tale. The story as a whole very much asks the questions "who gets to speak to the whole world?" and "why?", and I mean, in the society depicted here (as is the case in the games), one answer is "humans, broadly speaking, but only a very specific set of them". It's the same as later on in N's version of the story when Meloetta mentions the qualities of strength as opposed to power — the nature of power is in its unevenness here, and thus pain is felt disproportionately by some (captive pokémon doing the legwork in battle is the obvious way this is shown; there's also Bianca, N, Iris) as opposed to others (the specific counterparts to these examples: trainers; Bianca's father; Ghetsis; Drayden-but-more-broadly-the-beneficiaries-of-colonialism) in a number of different ways.

At the same time, though... cruelty is not the beating heart of the world, is it? In spite of the tragedy here, the voice is a gift and not inherently a weapon. And obviously, despite having her own gift torn out from her, she never really loses her voice; it's passed on from generation to generation, and many many years later, it's told between two travelers in the desert. The meaning of it is unclear and not uniform, because obviously, our loresinger and N are interacting with different versions of the story passed down across generations of two wildly different cultures; in spite of the differences present here, N finds common ground with our sigilyph over this, and there's something kinda beautiful about this, I feel. Sums up the more optimistic facets of the story here — sure, to look at history is to look through a story of tragedies, atrocities, and exploitation, but there's something intangible about the ways in which people (and pokémon, though here this feels like an arbitrary distinction) are brought together to work towards a better world in spite of it all. (But N is not perfect, of course, and changing the world is not so simple — to do so single-handedly would require an incomprehensibly vast understanding of the world, when even understanding yourself is not so simple, for that matter! the nature of change, of course, is that it often comes with tragedy and sacrifice. So it goes. I noticed Slaughterhouse-Five mentioned in one of your responses to a review as an influence on the way this story is told, and my reading of this is very much influenced by having to write half of a 3,000 word paper on it earlier this month.)
I don't really have words here to describe how pretty these words about my words are. That's it lol. I'm really glad that you end up drawing the conclusions that you do here; it means I'm doing something right.
  • Munny is a delight, and honestly, I 100% relate to Rhea and N here. You poor fuckin' thing, you. :( I found it difficult not to feel for Bianca too, even despite her culpability in all this (and her ignorance towards it) because, y'know, she's a scared and abused kid dealing with trauma nightmares; it's not right that Munny should have to put up with this, and the reason Munny's struggles hit so hard with me is that... she doesn't seem to mind (even despite her own pervasive habits of putting herself down — "your Bianca is very smart and you're not," etc. — but when the prospect of a better world where she doesn't have to battle is raised, her response... man. Man. If only Bianca could be made to understand. If only there were better ways to communicate this. But then, we wouldn't have a story if things were that simple, would we?
I feel bad for shafting Bianca pretty hard since she's typically the rival who gets shafted anyway, but I'm glad that the fraughtness of her situation comes out here. It's absolutely true that humans and pokemon together could create situations that are mutually beneficial--and otherwise the conflict of this story would just be a bunch of asshole humans doing shitty things just Because, not because there's at least a self-interest here--and it's a lot of responsibility to put on literal children to figure out how to navigate those situations correctly.
  • The conversation between N and Hilda in noogenesis is as excellent as ever, but my favourite bit of that chapter was specifically the part where the spectacle of Super Simisage Samantha, a Creature of Many Talents that You (Yes, You!) Can Look At, is compared to N. Not 100% sure I'm able to put my finger on why this resonated with me like it did, beyond by maybe saying it puts us right in N's shoes without even taking us away from the POV character.
name a better pair than me making comparisons to N being a grass type tbh

Yes! Yes! My pal! My homeboy! My rotten soldier! My sweet cheese! My good-time boy! He is here! He exists! Very good. Beyond me gushing about my favourite guy, I appreciate the folklorish nature of this line (and quite a few others, but for reasons elaborated upon in the previous sentences, I was drawn to this one as my example).
okay i've been diligently stalking the reviews of HSC and the story itself is excellent but far and above my favorite part is seeing everyone guess anyone-but-your-boy for the chapter 1 shadow lolol
Anyway, on the whole, good stuff as ever and so on and so forth. A little sad that I think my next review will be my last, but hi-ho, what a story it's been. Happy Blitz(insert suffix)! I hope you've enjoyed my varyingly lucid reviews (this one is going live at 4:14 am!) even a fraction of the amount that I've enjoyed this story. It's really like nothing else I've ever read in the fandom, in a way that I so sincerely appreciate.
absolutely been enjoying them! I'm so sorry that it's taken me so long to respond; I have a nasty habit of creating pyramid schemes instead of doing my actual projects, but I really really appreciate these reviews. They genuinely make my day.
hi hi!! belated thanks for liking all of my shitpost announcement/ads on bulbagarden, btw
The nonlinear storytelling is also very interesting and adds to the surrealism of the story. Most stories I've seen follow either a forward moving path or jumping from current to flashback to flashforward, but this is the first I've seen where it's going backwards. For the most part, I think it works; it's like "you probably wonder how I got in this mess?" There are probably other stories that follow this structure, but I don't know of any lol. If you know of any, I'd be happy to check the out!
[we talked a bit in DM's--elyvorg's Foregone Conclusion doesn't go strictly achronological, but I'd say it was one of the first fics that alerted me to the idea that, hey, fanfic can take these high level concepts like "what if ending come at beginning" and make effective story telling choices with them.]

I do think in general the most interesting reason for messing this hard with the chronology is to put the effect before the cause, like you say--traditional stories are about finding out what since you understand everyone's motives at that point; but reversed, you have a good understanding of what but you want to find out why.
Time to go into AP Lit-tier analysis. Please let me write my Q3 essay about Pokémon fanfic, Collegeboard:
i give this essay a 6/6 congrats
With "nominal", it's a little more nuanced: "nominal" means "very small" or "existing in name only". We see themes of names and the scope of ourselves in this chapter: the chapter starts with Vaselva's name. Vaselva and Hilda's efforts to stop N are meaningless, since we know how this story will end. The story of the Valley of the Dragons is remembered only by the word "draconic". Dragons seem to be fading, known only in stories and legends.
There's actually a running joke (and by "running" I mean only I tell it) that all of my story titles have like six meanings, and yeah, "nominal" was one of them! Fun to see it picked up on here!
Even the fact that Hilda nicknamed her Pokémon, something most trainers don't seem to do, shows she cares for her Pokémon. The fact that she's inexplicably the last Pokémon Hilda sends out shows their bond is strong. She trusts Hilda. She respects Hilda. She values Hilda. But that doesn't mean that Vaselva's feelings for her are simple loyalty. She's conflicted. She was taken from her family. She was a number in a pack.
It's endearing that Hilda nicknames her pokemon, but it's also sort of rough, right? Vaselva doesn't even remember what her first name was--that version of Vaselva doesn't even exist in name.
N's conflicting emotions and thoughts are very interesting. There's some doubt in his thoughts, but he's not going back. Vaselva's story was also heartbreaking and had some similar conflictions: she likes Hilda, but she was still taken from her family. This isn't a black and white issue (pun intended lol).
N as a character always feels defined by his doubts for me, yeah. This is the weird mashup where he's still conflicted but has conviction.
Also the "draconic" part was interesting. I know that's not the real world etymology of the world (it comes from the Athenian lawmaker Draco), but still, it's good stuff.
It does, yeah! I wanted something that harkened back to the original etymology (Draco made real shit laws; Draccus made real shit decisions).

Thanks for stopping by, and I appreciate hearing your thoughts! I give you 5 stars on your AP Lit.
My first Blitz 2021 review and I! CHOOSE! YOU!
i'm legitimately flattered by this <3
This story has been on my read list for 84 years so hi hi hello. I know it's about N and considering N was my prime Pokemon Simping Flavor(TM) once upon a time, I was hella hype, and my hype was WELL RECEIVED by what was going on in what I assume is the prologue and chapter 1. However, it has also been 84 years since I have touched my copy of White, so liiiieeeeek...excuse me if I sound like an ass in any of the coming paragraphs.
definitely not an ass!! thank you for stopping by and giving me your thoughts here!
To the absolute surprise of nobody on this plane of existence, your prose was stellar. The mixture of almost formal and conversational verbiage worked really well, especially in chapter 1, because we're talking about N here--he's always hid this sort of pompous vibe to me that meshes extremely well with the exposition that was going on here. Just super fitting with his character, in my humble opinion. However, I was very, very surprised by the second-person POV that was used here. I don't read a lot of 2nd person because I feel like it doesn't fucking exist anywhere and because I'm a third-person gigachad, but I was super impressed by how well this was unfolding from that POV. I think once I got past the odd character switch between the prologue and chapter 1, and realizing I was in the eyes of a Serperior, it was all smooth sailing from there. But, that does mark my main gripe thus far; I just found that switch between "You are N" to "You're a Pokemon, specifically a Serperior" was a tad jarring, especially because I came out of the prologue wondering what the fuck happened in N's eyes, and the POV switch didn't help my question there.
Second-person is hard, yeah, and past-me was like, "sure, I can definitely sell people on second person xenofic but the entire story is told backwards and chapter 2 is literally from the POV of a camera". It was definitely an ambitious decision and I know it makes the reading a lot harder, rip.

(But it's also one I stand by, I think. Second person for me is useful for conveying one of the core conceits of this fic--can you put yourself in someone else's shoes? How does it feel to be told that you're someone you don't think you are? And pokemon POV was pretty core too--I don't think the story of pokemon equality can really be complete without hearing from the pokemon.)
Getting a little more into the content, I was really really starting to jive with these really fucked up connections Vaselva was making throughout chapter 1. Like, it was sort of chilling to me that the concept of being taken from her mother to be handed to some snot-nosed little girl for a Pokemon journey was just so "aye this is no big deal, it is what it is" to her. Like...long story short, I now fully completely totally understand why you drill the fuck out of me about how Pokemon function in my world-building :ROFLMAO: It's not the blaring focus of the chapter, but it definitely offers an almost eerie "wow fucking YIKES bro" undertone that I wasn't anticipating, but definitely appreciated.
nah! Vaselva's super happy! idk what you mean fucked up she's HELPING

(sidebar--it goes without saying imo, but I'm happy to say it: if I'm ever drilling too hard on your Pokemon worldbuilding definitely tell me and I can back off. It's something I clearly have been thinking a Lot about in the past year or so, but if it's not something you want in your story I totally get why this wouldn't really be the rabbithole that everyone in the fandom is trying to fall into)
It was almost infuriating how N was so caught up in his "split up Pokemon and humans so Pokemon don't suffer at the hands of humans" and Vaselva was so "No, you can't take me away from Hilda, I like Hilda!" while simultaneously trying to remember her own fucking mother because Professor Juniper KIDNAPPED HER IN COLD BLOOD (a hyperbole but like, you know what I mean, son) thus kind of proving N's point. Like on one hand I'm totally on the side of "yeah but a lot of Pokemon wouldn't want to be split up from humans!" but also again, N do be makin' a little sense here. Really, just make a Pokemon democracy at this point and give them the right to choose. Pro-choice, but make it Pokemon deciding to stay with humans or be wild.
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I feel like I should put a disclaimer somewhere that I don't and am not arguing that the solution to oppression is segregation, since, yeah, N's super wrong about that as an answer here. There's definitely a middle ground between his solution and Hilda/the game's solution (do literally nothing), and I think it does lie really strongly in your Pokemon democracy, hmmm ...
I'm very curious to see how the rest of these chapters pan out, because if I'm understanding correctly, this is going backwards? Which is very cool; I love stories where the timeline isn't a standard linear scope, and I'm left having to rearrange to get everything in the right order. This is most certainly going to be a fun time. I'll be circling back when I can actually keep my eyes open.
Yup, straight backwards here! I swear there's a Point.
Oh my fucking god, they're fucking dead D:
nah they're fine here it's all fiiiiine
I really really liked these lines, they just hit. I do feel like that last line is a little disjointed with the other two because it seems like the exposition is trying to say "This is you, this is how you feel" and then suddenly I'm pulled out of that characterization to be told, kind of in an almost "instruction" fashion, the story is playing out backwards. I kind of think it would be a good idea to consider omitting that line altogether and letting the readers gradually figure out this is a reverse chronological story? Granted, this is personal preference, because I know there might be some mixed reactions to that. I've just been watching a lot of The Witcher lately and that show has a SCREWY timeline with no indication of skips, and I love that shit.
I considered it! I love not-telling things when I can, but in this case I think it'd be hard for readers to put together since there's enough changes to the story (where is Ghetsis???) that it'd be difficult to put the clues together while also doing second person while also doing xenofic without reusing narrators lol.
This was my first instinct of yikes.
they're FIIIIIINE
I marked this because another issue that I had was I felt it took just a tad too long to figure out what kind of Pokemon I was--personally, when it comes to second-person, I like having all of my info right off the bat. I'm not particularly fond of reading "you're this, this, and this" without first being told "you're that and that," because it leaves me wondering and makes it that much harder to try to sink into the character POV, especially one as immersive as second-person.
This one I definitely struggled with, rip, and I don't think I had a good non-meta way to fix this easily. If you want a cheat for future chapters though, there's a little spritebuddy that corresponds to the narrator of a given chapter alongside each chapter title!
Seventeen what...other snivy/serperior? Was a little confused there.
oh yup, other snivy! my b
This was a shady ass fucking read, and it was scary accurate as well. N, who spent most of his life being dictated by Ghetsis 👀 Chills. Very nice.
Vaselva is a salty mofo lol
This was...so sad.
I really want to talk to whoever was writing dex entries for Lapras/Farfetch'd/Stantler and was like, you know what this needs? genocide. I really do. I have so many questions.
Oh my god what happened to Ghetsis? I mean, I'm not sad or anything, I just want to see the body.
there's definitely a body!
Wow, this is so fucked up. I'm so curious to see how exactly they were taken. I'm guessing it wasn't a violent catch, because I don't think Vaselva would be so "it is what it is" about that...or maybe it was and she just doesn't remember? My head, ow.
nah, it wasn't a violent catch! they probably just scooped them up and put them in pokeballs. they used the pokeball instead of nets and tasers so it's fine, right?
It really burns that she's trying so hard to like...justify it, I guess? Or rather, make sense of it?
I think that's a common trend for people who don't have power--there has to be a reason, and the reason has to be something more than "some people are dicks" or else that just is ... too sad to live with, almost.
YIIIIIIIIIIKES this struck me as really...Stockholm Syndrome-y
what??? in this economy????
I was a tad bit confused here, and even through the chapter because there were other lines like this mentioned. From my understanding, Vaselva agrees with Hilda in a sense that N shouldn't be doing what he's doing, and that Pokemon and humans belong together, but it was lines like that that made me think that wasn't the case? That Vaselva was siding with N and wanted Hilda to see N's side? I mean, I guess I could see her trying to be devil's advocate I guess, but if she was supposed to be painted as somewhat wishy-washy on a stance, it didn't show. It came off as "I'm with N, don't do this...but Hilda, listen to him because you're not listening to him, it seems" and I had a hard time tracking it. Granted, I am most definitely half asleep, so that could just be me not connecting the dots, but that's where I kind of stand currently. Will revisit later.
Oh oops! "she's listening/she'll understand" is referring more to "she'll understand [that N wants to hear her say anything]"--I'll try to see if I can rephrase that one elegantly.
👀 Has a...seed been planted?
maybe! sucks the world ends immediately after this.

I really appreciate you stopping by! Thanks for the fun commentary, as well as the deeper stuff--it's always fun to see how this particular project lands.

EDIT: oh wow hi SparklingEspeon! I'm truly spoiled that I literally can't type responses fast enough before there are more things to respond to--I'm kinda dead for the night but I'll be back <3
 
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