Wow can't believe I made an account here specifically for the purpose of making this one (1) post. The things I do in the name of Play Game and also friendship.
Ch1
I have mixed feelings about the opening. On the one hand I feel like it does a decent job of expressing Salem's disorientation and is generally entertainingly horrifying, but on the other hand it's never going to not be funny to me that she is breathing perfectly well right up until the moment when she decides to stop doing that and all the stress and tension following that stems entirely from something
completely unnecessary which she did to herself. Like, I guess it does okay at communicating that she's struggling to hold onto more than one thought at a time which is why she keeps forgetting she's in the tank, but no matter the justification I can't help but find it goofy.
The sudden change of tone between the opening section and Dusk's narration is fun, and the second section as a whole is absolutely fantastic for how much it communicates about Dusk as a character in a very short time; I especially love the contrast in how she sees herself and what she communicates to the doctor. It's some excellent character writing!
"I see… strange creature, tall like humans, hands like humans, but not human. Blood-feathers at the ear and tail like sneasel, white-fur like tundra sneasel, but not sneasel. Some-thing differ-ent. Some-thing new.”
...that said, this type of broken English is going to get grating fast. I mean, I like it in this chapter for the contrast it makes in how Dusk and Alisha talk, but I am not looking forwards to whole conversations between two characters both talking like this. I know I've already read most of the later chapters but I forget a lot of the details, so I'm going to sit here and hope that either Salem and Dusk do most of their communication in sign or that their speech improves very rapidly.
There must have been at least a hundred in total.
The description of the tanks as a whole is a very cool image but I'm quoting this line specifically because the idea of a hundred tanks raises interesting questions about scale and cost in a way which feels almost sinister. How big is Perihelion? How many pokemon have they morphed? How many are they
intending to morph? Is this their only facility or does the scale expand even beyond what we've seen here?? Am I reading too much into this one throwaway line???
Dusk looking at Salem in the tank is some more nice imagery - classic mirror scene, hey! - but what I think has never hit me before while reading it is how deeply
lonely this scene is. Dusk's so desperate for companionship that she starts making up a little fanfiction for herself about how she and this complete stranger she knows nothing about are going to be buddies and maybe this stranger will be finally be someone who understands her on some deeper level. The sense of loneliness here is only compounded by the way that multiple times she attempts to mentally backpedal ("Did it even matter? She’d get by no matter what."; "This was about wanting allies, naturally.") only to immediately continue imagining a friendship between herself and Salem.
She understood none of it. She closed her eyes and continued to wait out this incomprehensible ordeal.
Both the tank sequences are some nice casual horror, but I think this second one is a lot stronger! Everything the first sequence did well this one does a lot better. It does an excellent job of showing how she's fading in and out of consciousness without much of a sense of continuity to her experience, and Salem's drugged-numb acceptance of whatever's happening to her both feels like a realistic state for her to be in assuming she has to be conscious at all and also adds to the nightmarish (literally nightmarish: the way it's described reminds me a lot of those sleep-paralysis experiences I've had where I've been having a completely normal dream but also simultaneously been completely aware of my own physical body lying in bed unable to move) quality of the situation. And, again, I just find Salem's panicked struggle for air in the first section to be kind of hilarious and can't take it seriously.
...okay please understand I promised myself I wasn't going to complain about things just because I personally don't like them and I sincerely did intend to keep to that but I can't contain myself here. Using "moons" as a measure of time makes perfect sense for Dusk as a wild pokemon, but Salem was a housepet raised around humans (and so much of her character is defined around wanting to be
more human), and so I really genuinely think it would be more interesting here as a character detail to have Salem use "months" as a contrast to Dusk rather than the pair of them measuring time in the exact same way despite their incredibly different life experiences. Okay, that's it, I'm done, I'm done, I promise I will never bring this up again.
I love the contrast between the absolute euphoria Salem feels at experiencing her new body with the subtle but persistent dysphoria Dusk was expressing earlier in the chapter, that's fun.
Ch2
I'm really enjoying Dusk's sections so far. There's so much character packed into them!
Now that I'm reading this all at once instead of as like, individual updates with long periods of time between them, going straight from Salem's semiconscious euphoria in the previous chapter to the sense of disorientation and panic in this one as she's finally forced to fully inhabit her new body is really good and effective!
I don't have much to say about this chapter in comparison to the first, it's just kinda quality all the way through. In terms of pacing I think you do a great job balancing Salem's progress so that it feels slow and incremental and there's a real sense of time passing, without ever reaching the point where it gets frustrating for the reader.
It's also nice to see this time get devoted to showing who Salem is as a character, considering that we didn't really get to see any of that in the previous chapter. I think both her determination to learn everything as fast as she can and the clear sense of joy she gets in every one of her achievements do a lot to make her endearing, which is a lot of what makes the training montage of this chapter entertaining to read.
“Salem, huh? Nice to meet you, Salem. I’m Dusk.”
And now they've met! I like how both chapter endings so far have signified a shift in what the story's been up until this point, that's a cool technique.
Ch3
Ah, I'm delighted to see that Salem and Dusk are both speaking more fluently in this chapter! Ignore my earlier comment, then; the broken English certainly did not outstay its welcome. The off-screen improvement in Dusk's language since the first chapter also helps to contextualise the situation she was in when we first met her. No wonder she was so desperate for someone who understood her, when Perihelion keeps morphs isolated until past a certain point in their development.
To pull back a bit, I like Salem's initial anxiety at facing a room full of morphs in comparison with how willing she was in the previous chapter to pester humans until they did what she wanted, and in contrast to Dusk's desire for a peer from chapter one. That difference feels like it says a lot about their different experiences as a housepet vs as a wild pokemon, and what sort of relationships each is used to having. Laura was definitely the dominant presence in Salem's life, and I doubt she ever had the opportunity to form any kind of a consistent relationship with other pokemon. Frustrated though she may be when it comes to actual clear communication, she certainly doesn't hesitate to make her demands known.
Aaah god Taylor referring to Whiskey in this way skeeves me out. I'm not really sure
why I have such a reaction to it; uhh the best I can articulate it is kind of, it's one thing to see this convention in your PMD fics when it makes sense as just like, how politeness/formality work in that setting, but here it's being used for the first time by a human to refer to a pokemorph in a story where the nature of personhood (and the distinction between "person" and "human") is a major theme, and in that context it comes off as a form of subtle Othering. I don't know if this is what you were intending, but my kneejerk emotional response is that I find it condescending and a little creepy.
The conversation continued comfortably with Dusk doing most of the talking and Salem making remarks to keep the sneasel's momentum up. There was much to learn – about Perihelion, but also about Dusk. For instance, her feather vibrated excitedly whenever Salem learnt a new word from her. Salem liked that.
The common room scene feels like a lot of new information being dropped without much reason why I should care about any of it, but I like the canteen scene a lot! It does a good job of showing how Salem and Dusk clearly enjoy each other's company and find an easy rapport. It's fun and it's cute and it sets things up for an excellent shift when Veracity shows up and the tone completely changes lmao.
Man I love Veracity though. Even in just a few short exchanges she still manages to be so fucken awful! She sucks so much in the best and most entertaining of ways! And yet it's still clear that she's trying to express a specific philosophy and that she has a point she's trying to make. <3 <3 <3 worst birb, lov her
(I also like the intermorph dynamics implied by both Dusk and Veracity about attitudes towards wild vs trained vs pet pokemon! I look forwards to seeing how those play out in future chapters.)
(Further fun facts I kept mistyping Veracity as "Verity" while writing these paragraphs. I don't know why I still do this!!)
Will you find fault in her, or will you admit to your own weakness?
And it's fun to see this line come back as a trigger for Salem's conflicted feelings about Laura!
It's been very clear up until this point that Salem cared for Laura deeply given how often she thinks of her, and I like this conversation both as her attempt to work through those complicated emotions and that sense of loss, and also as a response to what Veracity said to her earlier in the chapter.
"She was the only important person who is not me, for my whole life until now."
"Until now?"
"Yes. But she is still important, and always will be important."
And I think it's important that this conversation's happening at a point when for the first time Salem's life does not wholly revolve around this one specific person.
No morphs here can meet anyone outside, you know. Not even sending messages; it's not allowed.
And then of course there are the continuing sinister undertones of whatever the fuck is going on with Perihelion.
Ch4
Before she was a person, Salem was a cat.
It's my favourite opening line, back again! I really do love this line so much; between the simplicity of how it's said and the complexity of what it's saying, it's one of those perfect examples of what I love about speculative fiction as a genre.
I love both the sweetness and affection of Salem's relationship with Laura -
She would pace through the house in endless loops, groom herself and groom herself again just to have something to do, and scratch the furniture over and over and over until her claws hurt.
- and also how that sweetness is contrasted by the mundane, everyday horror of an intelligent animal which desperately needs more attention and stimulation than it's receiving, only for its needs to go unrecognised by the people who are supposed to care for it. It's clear Laura's trying her best, but it also works excellently to set the stage for just how awful Salem's life will become once Laura's gone.
At least every other episode, he was shown wearing clothes, working a job, or using tools. Salem thought he was practically human.
There was something desperately appealing about it, all the same. Mewtwo made his own decisions, could communicate with humans with ease, and had a life of his own. He was more than a pokémon. Almost human.
And with reference to the opening line, I really enjoy the degree to which the idea of crossing over the boundary between "pokemon" and "human" is incorporated into the media Salem watches. I think it's a nice way to explain how it's something she could believe to be possible, or even think to want.
I also like the references to the in-game events during Laura's conversation with her parents; it's neat that you're using this chapter not just as a way to tell Salem's backstory but also to drop worldbuilding details and add texture to the world outside of Perihelion.
This was a traditional method of Laura's to avoid having to go to the kitchen, and so avoid walking past her parents
You do a lot to characterise Laura and show the struggles she's experiencing in this chapter! The argument with her parents did a lot of heavy lifting, of course, but quotes like this show that the problems in the relationship are deep-rooted and ongoing, rather than just an ordinary disagreement between a teenager and her parents over how her life should go. And I think it's very telling that following the argument Laura turns first to her pet cat and then to media to make herself feel better, rather than phoning a friend to vent; it really starts to feel like she doesn't
have many close friends, that Salem is as important a presence in her life as she is in Salem's.
Yet, she kept asking to be left alone. She spent most of her free time at home buried in her computer, and her books – books which did not get read out loud to Salem.
...but that said, it's also deeply affecting to see how their respective positions as owner and pet make it impossible for Laura's life to revolve entirely around Salem the way Salem's life revolves around her (and, indeed, it's this fundamental imbalance in position which leads to the sundering of their relationship). Laura without Salem can manage, but Salem without Laura has literally nothing, and you really do a good job of building up the stress and despair of Salem's post-Laura neglected existence.
And again I think this is why the lines I quoted at the end of last chapter matter so much! In terms of pacing I really like this chapter about how much Laura meant to Salem coming directly after the one where she's expressed that she has other important people now, as an effective way to show how much her situation has changed.
okay done pls to gib strange seed!! I am incredibly reward-motivated.
