"To Each His Own" by Lord Knee
It was much too lonely here, Cyrus mused.
In the early morning, the sea on Route 222 gently roared in front of him, filling the quiet atmosphere with a steady white noise. He stood there, watching the water rock and sway in time with the gentle push and pull of the wind. The wind helped in nudging the clouds above aside, gradually unveiling the sun and allowing for some of its rays to slip through. It was enough to morph the chilly air into something a bit more lukewarm. However, the sand beneath his feet remained cool, seemingly unaffected by the shift in temperature. He assumed that would change when the sun climbed higher into its afternoon position, but for now, it was fine and not overly uncomfortable.
After a while, he grew tired of standing, electing to sit down, the plush sand cushioning him as he pulled his legs inward. He stared deeper out to sea, the sunlight making the water glimmer in speckled patches. For the moment, Cyrus inhaled, letting the warm air circulate the back of his throat before exhaling. Admittedly, the conditions were enough to be considered peaceful. He didn’t have to think so much about what he should be doing and how he should be behaving; he didn’t have to continuously teeter between the lines of doing too much or not doing enough. But it wasn’t as though he was doing anything wrong to begin with. Even when he had done something right it was immediately thrown to the wayside. He felt himself beginning to fray, growing tired of doing anything and receiving nothing but ridicule in return.
But, he didn’t have to think about that now. He could simply be a boy by the sea and rise up to no expectations...
Judge Comments
bluesidra
Hello! First off, I’ll have to apologize for not making linequotes for this one, it just didn’t feel appropriate for me to goof around.
Then secondly, what a nice/beautiful/insightful (?) character study. Cyrus always got on my nerves, I was never really able to vibe with him, but you made his plight very reasonable. Like, how he struggles to control his own emotions or is straight up in self-denial about his spirit. In the games, I always thought of him as fraudulent, like he promised a better world but was after world domination for the sake of stroking his ego. But here, I can sort of understand this two-faced nature to him.
It very much feels like it piggy-backs off the generations-episode about him. It shouldn’t make much of a difference which of the (many, MANY) canons it adheres to, one might think, but with cyrus, there’s such a large difference in how he’s presented in dp vs platinum, and I think the generations-shot gives us the best mix of both. So to me this is now my headcanon of what happened before and after that.
It seems Cyrus "simply" being neurodivergent in a neurotypical world has become the official fanon now, and I love the fanbase for it. Because child-Cyrus felt very relatable to me. Especially the part where he thought that no one else was feeling the way he was. When in reality, a lot of people are probably feeling the same, but don’t dare to show it – much like he didn’t dare, too. Sometimes I wonder how people in medieval times dealt with those issues. And I don’t necessarily mean all those mental illnesses that are quite visible (like schizophrenia etc), because that would be possession. More those emotional dissonances that are quiet and inside. Because I figure a peasant in the middle ages still cared a lot for their family members, so seeing someone they love go through depression without an explanation would be harrowing. At the same time, there are almost no sources detailing conditions like depression, so maybe it’s really a modern illness. But enough of my rambling.
Yeah, Cyrus is really just a normal kid in kinda shitty, kinda normal circumstances who tries to deal with his turmoil the best he can. It always surprises me when characters like him find the strength to gather followers and form an organization, when he could have created his perfect world in his mind at any time. But Cyrus didn’t retreat from the world, but instead faced it to create his perfect universe. Though he doesn’t explain why his perfect bubble would need to see the destruction of all other bubbles. But I guess it’s because he can’t let imperfection exist.
Because to me, not withdrawing and facing the world is a sign of extreme willpower and drive, something he might call ‘spirit.’ And though he manages to call himself out on having emotions here and there, his strive for perfection doesn’t once strike him as ‘imperfect.’ But it fits with your characterisation of him as very flawed and not aware of it.
I think the ending’s quite curious. He doesn’t give up on his plans – the distortion world is not a place he feels is ‘perfect’ for him. And how could it be? Aside from being an absolute mess, he’s still riddled with all his angst and emotions and whatnot. So despite the generations-episode implying he’s finally found his peace, it never felt quite right to me. But in your version, he’s not at peace. He’s still restless, but now in a space that’s more comfortable for him, and I’m happy about that tiny bit, too. (And hey, maybe gira has a degree in psychotherapy, would help the two a lot).
So yeah, this concludes my rather rambly review of this story. I quite liked it, in fact, I liked it a lot, given that me and Cyrus have a complicated relationship.
Oh, I didn’t say anything on the technical side of things: I didn’t explicitly look for any typos and errors, and none made themselves apparent while reading. The sentences are simple and easy to follow. The story kept me engaged from beginning to end, never dragging. Actually, I would have loved to see more of his teenage years even. But alas, wordcount restrictions… I noticed that the scene-breaks were inconsistent. Not that that’s a big issue, but much like cyrus, I don’t like those little pesky imperfections. Oh, and I did notice that loose pattern with the beginning and the end of every scene. Very nice. Very structured, to fit a (probably) autistic child like him. Kinda sad it wasn’t in every scene, to be more noticable, but hey – nice enough seeing what’s there!
SparklingEspeon
Really liked this one. I felt like Cyrus was going to be a pretty popular villain to adapt for a villain’s perspective, but admittedly never really felt like he was much more than a nothingburger of a character hiding behind a good motivation. But you’ve taken the task of giving us his perspective head-on, and overall I’d say you’ve succeeded! There’s a definite rhyme and reason to the way that he works here, and you definitely had me believing that someone who holds the beliefs and approach to society that he does could still found and run such a powerful organization.
One thing I enjoyed while reading was the deep dive we took into his thoughts and exploring why he’s the way he is instead of just stating it. I thought it was really clever to tie what would eventually become Cyrus’ motivation to end the world into the need for quiet in his early childhood/the implications that he might have faced emotional abuse when he was in a very developmental phase. It’s clearly not a normal need for quiet, he’s experiencing the world very differently than everyone else and others’ attempts to connect to him just aren’t working the way they’re hoping, but it feels like a very reasonable beginning for that desire, and sold me on the fact that someone could realistically grow up to be the way that Cyrus is. And even when he’s an adult he never really changes out of that mindset of just not finding people good company, he just learns how to field it better and manipulates it to his own ends. He feels like he has some kind of psychopathy, which helped ground his kind of extreme character perspective a lot.
At one point people do find him again, once he’s wound up in the distortion world (I assume a callback to the actual battle in the games), and I liked the way it was written from his perspective to - every time it feels like they might get close to convincing him, he immediately retracts and refers to it as “deluded garbage” and other similar insults. Then, once they’ve left, he just sits and stews there, and it’s implied he’ll keep stewing there until he dies. He got his quiet after all.
Overall, really good job on this one! You definitely did a good job of deep diving into Cyrus’ perspective, and showing how he grew to be the way he is in the canon games from a very young age.
windskull
Let me start by saying I get what you’re going for. The goal of a villain origin story for Cyrus. However, I think the style of the story really gets in the way of your goal and in the end makes it difficult to follow. We don’t really get to get into Cyrus' head, and we’re kind of just told what’s going on in his head.
A lot of the story comes across as telling. You tell us that Cyrus forms Team Galactic, you tell us about his emotions, his decisions to leave, his naming of his commanders, but we don’t really see it happen. In a different framework, perhaps with the story framed as one or more third parties piecing together parts of Cyrus’ life, it could have worked, but as it is, we end up feeling very distant from the action because we don’t see the action. So my personal recommendation for future works or edits is to either show us the action—in this case by letting us see how Cyrus comes to the conclusion that he needs commanders and how he picks the one he has (and doing the same for the other examples I mentioned)—or frame the story in a way that makes it clear that someone distant from the action is telling the story, giving an excuse for events to be glossed over.
When it comes to description, I think you’re on the right path. There are spots here and there that really shine and really help set the scene. But all the prose surrounding it really muddies things.
I think one major contributing factor I saw was an overuse of “to be” type verbs. There were places where you would use phrases like “were becoming” or similar. One example below.
If this location was discovered, then just like on previous days, he would have to run around looking for another place to reside before he ultimately went home. Staying at home was never an option, but it seemed that the ones he had outside were becoming increasingly more limited the longer this infuriating hyper fishing season lasted.
I would reword it something like this:
Just like on previous days, if this hideaway was discovered, he would have to run around looking for another one before ultimately returning home. Staying at home wasn’t an option, but his hiding spots became limited as the infuriating fishing season wore on.
The reason I went back to rewrite two of the sentences instead of just one because I wanted to touch on two other things, one of which is related. The first is passive voice. I won’t go into the details here, but I highly recommend looking into it on your own time, but the short version is that it makes it feel like your characters are acted on, instead of acting. There are times for it, but it’s a tool that should be limited in use.
The other thing is order of information. It’s a bit of an invisible thing. But there are certain structures to the way information is presented that makes it more clear. And that’’s something I came across a lot throughout the fic. It’s something that’s hard to put my finger on though, so instead of lecturing, I’m going to suggest the following:
Find a few published books — not fanfiction — and read them. Take your time going through them, find passages that you either really like or hate because of the way they’re written. Study those passages and see if you can put together why you like or hate them. Then try to emulate the style of the ones you liked. Studies like that could really help improve your prose.
Additionally, I saw a few formatting issues throughout the story where you used different dividers or the spacing between paragraphs was off, and as far as I can tell these differences were not intentional. I recommend making sure you keep those consistent.
I know I had a lot of critique for this story. But I do think there are ways it could have worked. I outlined a few examples above. So keep at it, keep practicing, and you’ll improve with time!
moment right there, but also a testament to great writing.