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Pokémon motivating objects [oneshot]

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
Eleven months after beginning her pokémon journey in Nuvema Town, Bianca published her first research paper under Professor Juniper. Four years later, the Pokémon League asks her to defend it.

In which I ramble about science for a little bit, and also try to write to a prompt for the first time in forever. Ohana means some people get left behind.

crit preferences: anything goes!



motivating objects



Incoming call: Dad
Accept | Decline


Bianca stares at the pop-up for a full two seconds before she fully processes what she’s looking at. Then, she inhales a slow but steep breath, and weighs her options.

She’s got more than enough reasons to decline. But with him they always feel like excuses instead of reasons. Professor Juniper’s going to show up any minute—Bianca had agreed, quite hesitantly, to the professor’s offer to treat her to dinner in honor of the special occasion, and it’d be rude to keep her awaiting once she arrives. She could be tired after the long shuttle ride to the League Summit, and too distracted to check her email for missed videocalls. She could be rehearsing her opening remarks for the hearing tomorrow. Could be. Should be.

The hearing is a black hole that consumes her any time she so much as thinks in its general direction. As soon as she arrived at the hotel she’d unpacked her laptop and sprawled across one of the suite’s comically enormous beds, scrolling through every file under U:\Network\Users\Bianca\grad\research\pokémon sapience, searching for anything that might help in an errant line of questioning tomorrow. That was three hours ago.

The trip down memory lane had been an uneasy one, and not just because she made this folder before the IT department had explained the rules about putting spaces in folder names. Rather, it’s the same mild repulsion she has whenever she sees a picture from her trainer days, the gut-wrenching pull of that uneasy smile and gawky knees and ill-fitting shoes. Professor Juniper is convinced that she’s ready for tomorrow; obviously this honor is a result of her hard work and intellect. But alone with the photocopies of her old lab notebook, Bianca can see, with the same certainty with which people recognize their own handwriting, the uncertain, unscientific phrasing of her initial experiment (are pokémon capable of long-term planning?), and she can’t help but wonder if nothing’s changed.

At least this folder is just for her to know. At the hearing tomorrow they’ll get the real thing, the conclusion that’s been peer-reviewed and lovingly polished. When Bianca is called up tomorrow she’ll be Doctor Harlacher, and while to some it’ll be immensely clear that she’s two months fresh from receiving her doctorate, most of the room won’t be able to tell. This is what Professor Juniper has told her, and this is what Dr. Harlacher can believe, even if Bianca can’t, even if—

Incoming call: Dad

The window’s stubborn on her screen, blotting out the fifteen-odd documents she’s been listlessly tabbing through all afternoon.

He hasn’t called her in months. It’s not like she’s tried very hard either. Life gets busy, you know?

But now, pinned down in the moment, her heart races. Would a grown-up Bianca decline, because Dr. Harlacher will need to present tomorrow as the poised, confident, intelligent researcher that everyone is expecting? Or would she answer, because Dr. Harlacher wouldn’t be thrown off by something as simple as a call from home?

Phrasing it like that makes her choice obvious. She rolls into a sitting position and angles herself so that the bedside lamp won’t give her a backlight. Her hair’s a mess, but that’s probably a good thing here—Dad never trusted people who looked too prim, too proper.

Her hand is forcibly steady when she mouses over to ‘Accept’ and clicks.

“Hey, Dad,” she says when her webcam light blinks on, trying to channel as much warmth into her voice as she can.

She’s braced for an askew xTransceiver shot that’s got half of her childhood home in the foreground, and her father barely in frame. Maybe it’ll be pointed at the sofa clutter, a pile of car parts on the cushions where she used to sit, some empty soda cans scattered around the trim with the crumbs. Maybe she’ll see the leaky splotch in the roof above the kitchen, which her father had scowled at and patched a thousand times while it resolutely continued to drip and grow. Bianca had been painfully aware when she walked in here that this hotel suite was about the size of her parents’ entire house.

She’s so steeled to modulate her reaction that when a spectacled young man looks back nervously at her, his pale brown hair just a little shiny in an overhead fluorescent light, she’s too shocked to react.

“Hey, Bianca—or, belated congratulations, Dr. Harlacher,” he says in the kind of voice that Bianca recognizes as being hesitant but rehearsed. “Long time no see.”

“Jay?” For a selfish few seconds, her confusion is replaced with anger and irritation. And then she sees the full contact name—Dad, Lab—and realizes that all of her anxiety has been for nothing.

Former self-appointed “Lab Dad” Jay Torres is more gaunt than she remembers, and there are frown lines ingrained firmly into his forehead now. But he’s certainly still got the same expression as he did when they were in class, with bags under thoughtful eyes, an effortless warmth radiating from his smile. The room behind him betrays the sort of organized chaos that she remembers from him: from notebooks to imaging equipment to coils and coils of cables, everything’s got its place, but there’s just so much of everything. There’s even his old klang up on the wall behind him, its gears ticking past one another slowly in slumber.

A different wave of nostalgia washes over her, the kind that smells like chalk dust and musty library shelves full of newspaper scans and the gluten free cookies that Jay brought in on Mondays.

Jay’s voice breaks into her thoughts. “Sorry, I don’t want to take up too much of your time, so I’ll cut to the point. I, uh, heard that they were making some moves with that paper you’d published ages ago. Delayed gratification behaviors in domesticated and non-domesticated pokémon species.” The ‘uh’ sounds more than forced, given how quickly the entire paper name rolls off his tongue. “It turned out great, Bi. You were always the best of us. But then I heard a few weeks ago about the League’s interest in implementing sapient species laws, and I saw that you were being listed for expert testimony, and …” He pauses, bites his lip, and frowns. “Please. You can’t.”

“I can’t?” She’s too confused to sound angry.

“At this rate I have no doubt that people will look back and recognize you as a cornerstone for the field. But the conclusions on sapience in that paper were fundamentally flawed.” Jay seems to interpret her head tilt as anger, because he quickly backtracks: “Well, ‘flawed’ is perhaps not the best word to use here, but I’m afraid of the long-standing repercussions if the League starts passing policy with this study as a basis.”

Bianca exhales shakily. She’s already Dr. Harlacher in this sentence, repeating in a polished, almost callous, voice what Professor Juniper had already reassured her of: “The League is considering a wide swath of tests for their sapience trials, and certainly no sane researcher would advise against selecting anything less than a comprehensive suite of data. We pride ourselves on our past, current, and future collaborations with top-level researchers across the country, and Nuvema Institute’s contribution will be fractional at best.”

(“A significant fraction,” Professor Juniper had added in a more hushed tone, her eyes betraying her pride.)

“Comprehensive?” Jay flusters, and then stops. “Have you considered what the outcome of the hearings tomorrow will be?”

The question sounds so much like one her father would ask—those smarmy intellectuals, never stopping to think about how it’ll affect us regular folk—that she can almost hear his heavy breathing in the other room. Dr. Harlacher replies almost on reflex, “The League will institute new protections for pokémon nationwide. Based on the tests, the League will identify which pokémon species are considered sapient enough to understand and provide consent. Trainers will have to provide proof of informed consent upon registering captures of sapient pokémon species. Sapient species will also be permitted to file for release at any time, without input from their trainer.” She blinks twice, to steady herself, and then she’s Bianca again: “It’s a small step for pokémon rights, but I’m quite proud to be a part of it.”

There’s genuine distress in Jay’s eyes now. “You’re proud—” But then something in his voice goes softer, and it’s like they’re back in the library, deep underground, comparing class notes and trying to prepare for whatever witchcraft is on Juniper’s final exam. There’s a whiteboard with neat, purple notes interspersed with scrawling corrections in red, and Jay’s urging her to flip the problem, look at it from a different point of view until the solution appears. “Are you concerned that a species could be incorrectly labeled as non-sapient, and would lose the legal ability to consent as a result? Or that intelligent members of a declared non-sapient species would not be adequately represented in this policy?”

“I mean, that’s a genuine concern in everything we do, isn’t it?” This time it’s definitely Bianca answering, with a nervous laugh before and after her words, like a parenthetical. “In this case we purposefully set the bar much lower, since I think anyone would agree that it’s much more important to accommodate false negatives over false positives. I was the one who fought for that, remember?”

That feels like a low blow, and from the way that Jay’s face crumples, she knows it is one.

But it’s true. She remembers writing out the methodology in a sunny spot outside of Juniper’s lab, and she remembers above all defending to Jay why the bar had to be so low, even if, like he’d repeatedly pointed out, her own pokémon had proven themselves far smarter than the modern research gave them credit for. You had to start with the small victories, because as soon as you messed something up, the failure would follow you everywhere. Someone as effortlessly respected as Jay would never understand that.

She can’t help but glance at the notebook scan under this pop-up, where the first draft of her test procedure is scrawled between her deciduous pokémon physiology intro notes and an all-caps reminder to CALL HILDA. There’s a revised version three pages over that doesn’t sound as childish, as unprofessional, but this one still has the core:

  1. Determine a motivating object for the species of pokémon.
  2. Place subject in test environment, with quantity one (1) of the motivating object visible and readily available.
  3. Explain to subject that the operator will leave the testing environment for ten minutes. Explain that if the motivating object is untouched during this time period, subject will receive an additional [totaling quantity two (2)] motivating object upon the operator’s return.
  4. Leave test environment for ten minutes.
  5. Return, observe, and reward as necessary.
The premise had been straightforward, at least to a budding, eager-to-impress researcher: which pokémon could delay gratification? One of a pokémon’s primary benefits from training, or even from pokémon-human partnerships in general, was that humans were capable of complex strategy, which tended to rely on opponent analysis and long-term planning. Wild pokémon often had scuffles, but wilds tended to fight in a more straightforward, instinctual style that favored quick bursts of raw strength rather than strategic analysis. There were, of course, several potential explanations for this phenomenon, but—

“A good trainer needs to be able to plan ahead, and identify what you can lose to create an opening. That’s your problem,” Hilda had said, not unkindly, after Bianca’s third loss to Skyla. “You want to keep your pokémon safe when they’re on the field, but they aren’t on the field to be safe. If you’d left your musharna in against Skyla’s swanna, your serperior would’ve been fresh, instead of taking a Hurricane to the face. You have to understand when to sacrifice.”

Bianca hadn’t been able to take that advice to heart, at least not until while she was off the gym circuit, trying to write a research proposal that would adequately impress her heroes. Knowing when to sacrifice was what made someone an intelligent strategist, so it could also be what made an intelligent pokémon. It seemed simple enough that it was at least worth trying. She’d just never thought that it would get this far.

“Are you concerned that human perceptions of sapience might not be universal? Your study relied on motivators, but are you concerned that your study might’ve failed to find a sufficiently motivating object?” Jay asks quietly. He nods at the dozing klang behind him. “For example, Cash doesn’t seem to conceptualize physical ownership of property, because klinklang chains require neither food nor large amounts of territory, and their primary resources are intellectual. And beyond that, even if you found a suitable motivating object, it’d be difficult to convey that you’re purposefully withholding it and expecting an exchange, because klinklang share all resources across their chains to guarantee the most informed outcome.”

When Bianca doesn’t respond, Jay presses further: “And presumably designating sapient species via these methods requires testing on a wild population—since, given Dr. Anderson’s inclusion on the list of expert witnesses, Anderson, Bloomfield et. al’s conclusion that trained pokémon are inherently more intelligent than wild pokémon is relevant to the League’s considerations. Would you be concerned that this test and similar ones unfairly bias towards pokémon species that already have a strong presence near human population centers, as they’ll be more comfortable in a human-occupied testing environment, and more likely to perform in a way consistent with their typical behavior? Or that the very similarities that led them to prosper near human population centers in the first place would self-select for communities exhibiting behaviors that humans consider relevant for sapience testing?”

These are the questions she wished Professor Juniper had asked her when they were practicing for the panel. This is the kind of grilling she wants tomorrow, even though she knows that the people at the hearing aren’t here for doubt. She isn’t sure if she adequately explained the consequences to the pokémon she tested with. She isn’t sure if the pokémon she’d used as subjects had respected her enough to listen to her explanation. She certainly isn’t sure if recognizing long-term consequences should be a necessary requisite for sapience—given that the idea from this test had come from her own inability to strategize intelligently enough to be a top-tier trainer.

The League will repeat her tests, of course (or fund Professor Juniper to do it), with a broader, more-resourced team to properly identify the sapient species in Unova. But repeating a flawed test doesn’t mean its results will get any less flawed.

Dr. Harlacher won’t tell them that, of course, and even if anyone asks she’s received much training on how to respond properly. But Bianca has been assured that no one tomorrow will be asking.

Belatedly, Bianca realizes that Jay’s still waiting for an answer she doesn’t have. “I can’t tell you that our science is foolproof. And I’m not going to say that in the hearings either. But my job is to do the best that we can.” She’s Dr. Harlacher in this sentence, for sure—Jay wouldn’t know, but these are words she’s rehearsed a million times. “After the Plasma incidents, I started to realize that there definitely are grey areas in how people currently relate to pokémon. But, you know, most people after the Plasma incidents …”

—They make awkward eye contact across the screen as Bianca remembers a few seconds too late that Jay had picked industry over academia. Instead of a postdoc, he’d conducted research in pokémon battle potential at P2 Labs, under then-renowned Dr. Nikolai Colress—

“… I suppose you’d know better than anyone,” Bianca finally manages.

“Not a good look, yeah, when your only non-academic job reference decides to become a terrorist over winter holidays and repurposes three years of your research into a city-destroying freeze ray.” There’s a wry sort of humor in Jay’s words, but it doesn’t go all the way down. “Sorry I missed your thesis defense. I was busy complying with a very thorough subpoena, and I technically wasn't even invited. All things considered, I can’t blame Juniper for not keeping in touch.”

She’s never admitted it, but Jay was probably the first person who ever really believed in her. Even Elesa or Professor Juniper felt like they were standing up for someone else in Bianca’s clothes, an idea of a fearless woman that felt like it fit anyone else but Bianca. Female, blonde, soft-spoken, prone to wearing floral prints to lab—most people in her classes wrote her off as Juniper’s pet diversity candidate. And before that, it wasn’t like Hilda or Cheren ever thought she was going to be a real trainer. And before that, it wasn’t like her parents ever really—

So that’s got to be why she’s shifting in her seat now. Her hesitation is coming from sympathy and respect for Jay, her own self-consciousness. But Dr. Harlacher will need logic tomorrow.

Would you do it? If you were in my shoes? The question dies quickly; she already knows the answer, and she doesn’t want to add his disapproval to the pile. Instead, she says, “They won’t change their minds even if I renounce my work, you know. If I recuse, it just means that I won’t even get a say in the legislature they pass.”

“Bianca. You’re still telling yourself the same old lie, aren’t you? That you’ll never be important enough to accomplish anything. So small. So harmless.” Jay’s voice softens. “But look at you now.”

“It’s more complicated than that. I’ve got people relying on me. I can’t just get up there tomorrow and …” And do what, even? It’s not like he knows either.

“I know,” Jay says after she can’t finish her sentence, and there’s enough warmth in his voice that she can almost believe him. “For old times sake, though. Could you flip the problem? What questions would you want to be asked tomorrow, so that you can prove that you’re smart enough to speak for yourself?”

She wants to be mad at him. It’s not fair, and it’s definitely not the same. Dr. Harlacher had to fight tooth and nail to get people to take her seriously, and sometimes Bianca doesn’t even know if she should take herself seriously, and this isn’t just about one false negative.

A dozen excuses flood through her mind all at once, but none of them strike her as answers.

“I—”

There’s a knock on the suite door. Professor Juniper’s here.

“I’m sorry,” she says, flashing a pained smile. “There’s a dinner I’ve been invited to, and—”

“I understand,” Jay replies, and this time it sounds like he’s lying. “Thank you for your time, Dr. Harlacher.”

He waits for a few seconds, and after Bianca says nothing else, he shifts in his seat and the webcam goes dark.

※​

Bianca hasn’t been at the League Summit since Hilda’s installation as Champion, when the main hall had white sheets draped over ashy scorch marks, red tape blocking off the crumbling upper floors. They’ve cleaned up a lot since then. Somewhere along the way, the marble halls were restored to their ancient beauty, and there’s nothing left now to suggest that, less than five years ago, the walls here witnessed the battle for Unova’s soul.

One thing’s new for sure, though: molded into the marble at the end of the hallway, the Hero of Unova stands tall, wind whipping at her hair and flowing into a white dragon around her, feathery wings outstretched. Reshiram’s not quite life-sized and Hilda’s larger than life; together they arch around the entrance to Unova’s Hall of Justice. Their twin gazes are pupilless, stony, and blind. Craning her neck up at them, Bianca can’t help but once again feel hopelessly out of her depth.

Years ago, just once, when Lenora had begun to suspect the true nature of Nacrene Museum’s newest acquisition, Bianca had been allowed to hold the Light Stone. It had probably been the coolest thing she’d ever done, the closest she’d ever come to being up on that pedestal. For a tiny, selfish moment, she’d let her fingertips close around the smooth stone, felt the coldness in her palm, prayed that she was the one brave enough to be the hero.

But it wasn’t her place, and it never had been. The stone had remained inert in her hands, and she’d been changing out the mulch in the snivy pen while Hilda and Cheren stormed a castle and saved the world. Reshiram had understood that waiting for the Hero of Truth was better than settling.

Now Hilda’s crossed the horizon to explore new lands, and Cheren’s wrapped up in training the next generation, and Bianca’s left waiting on the bench outside of the hearing until she’s invited in, alone with nothing but her thoughts.

Jay’s explanations for why pokémon would fail the test are the ones she should be considering, if she should be devoting any more time to doubting at all. They’re the most in-line with Professor Juniper’s research, with the previous understandings of wild social hierarchies, with all the clean and tidy reasons that can be quantified and discussed in a polite environment. But the hearing’s a black hole, and she’s slipped past the event horizon. Bianca’s thoughts gravitate to a version of the test where she’s the one sitting at the table, eyes glancing nervously around the room, the sinking feeling of unbelonging roiling in her stomach. Test-Bianca has a smile drawn over her lips like a second skin. A man in a lab coat walks in. He—

In one world he slaps her cheek so hard that her vision becomes a field of shooting stars.

In one world he places a human-motivating object, a marshmallow, in the center of the testing area.

“I’m sorry. I love you,” her father says, while her cheek throbs, while the marshmallow sits innocently there. “I won’t do it again, baby. Trust me; you’ll see.”

For a while, she believed him, until one day, she couldn’t. Not the part where he loved her, or that he was sorry; that much was probably still the truth. But a dirty dish in the sink, a too-late night out with her friends, a stressful day for him at work—she’d waited and waited. But he’d always found a reason to do it again.

Having explained the rules of his game, he leaves the room.

In one world, she stares at the marshmallow.

In one world, she snatches it up and runs all the way to Nimbasa before he catches her, and she keeps running still. Her lips purse; her brow furrows; she hoards knowledge and the few victories she can scrape until she shapes them into a pedestal.

That pedestal is what Jay’s asking her to topple today. That thin, rickety stack of careful papers and sleepless nights that she’d tried to summit, so desperately and so hungrily that she didn’t even notice until she was halfway across the country and her father was yelling at her in a windswept fairground. She never had Hilda’s brash courage or Cheren’s calculating drive. And though she’d proven that training wasn’t the only way to matter, she’d never been able to shake the feeling that everyone else always saw her for less once she walked away from the badges and the glitz. She came into the research field with no connections besides Professor Juniper, years late to the game. And now she’s being asked to lose the backup to her backup.

Last night, after Jay left and ‘Call ended: Dad, Lab’ hung ominously on the screen, she’d wracked her brain a little longer, wondering if after dinner she’d have the energy remaining to call her father for real, if there was a way to phrase what she’s doing currently in a way that wouldn’t open herself up for some derision, some hurt—

That’s all she has to do, right? Demonstrate that she’s capable enough of forward thinking that she can accept stomach a punishment in the short-term to receive what everyone else agrees is a greater reward. Call her father. Believe that Juniper won’t turn away if she embarrasses the lab today. Wait for the second marshmallow. Trust when someone else says that something better will come. The truth’s all there in black and white, hanging down from Reshiram’s marble feathers, cold and clear to the touch. It’s easy, and it’s obvious. Right?

“Dr. Harlacher?” The door opens, and an official-looking man in a suit looks at her expectantly. “Please come inside.”

They’re ready for Dr. Harlacher. All her life built up to this. The rest doesn’t matter.

Above the waiting door, Reshiram’s stone eyes spear through her, and she imagines dragonfire burning through her to reveal the truth.

In this moment, years too late, she can be brave enough for the Light Stone, curled up and waiting for the right person to come. Can’t she?

Bianca enters the room.
 
Last edited:

seatherny

Altareon made by Bluwiikoon <3
Partners
  1. marowak-alola
  2. ho-oh
Huh, I was curious as to what other one-shot you'd released alongside your contest entry, and... Bianca isn't a whirlipede. I have been bamboozled. :sadbees:

For real, though, I'm glad you ended up doing something with the marshmallow test idea. The story perfectly captures the uncertainty that plagues social science research and the researchers themselves. For the latter, it's even better that, even in such a short piece, I feel like I got a realistic and in-depth view of a canon character I hadn't really thought about much before. Bianca's impostor syndrome is all too common in researchers, and there's a nice balance explaining both the personal and professional reasons as to how it developed in her, plus how it impacts her self-concept and actions. I also enjoyed the friction between Bianca and Jay during their phone call, and how they seem to have the type of friendship that involves challenging each other to try to be better, do better.

I thought we'd be getting a scene of the hearing proper, but I think the end is fitting, really, even if the execution feels a tad abrupt... Bianca has a long road ahead of her learn that wanting to be important and do important things can come at a significant psychological and social cost - and not just for herself. The point is that such uncertainty and self-doubt is going to keep following her, because there's never going to be an objective answer to the questions she's pursuing.

Also, I'd be remiss if I didn't mention the research topic itself... Pokemon sapience is naturally a divisive topic, as it is for animals in the real world. I also loved Jay detailing how the League judging pokemon sentience could backfire, and the ramifications of rushing forward with such an idea. Even if it is important work, I agree with Jay that Bianca's study was not generalizable, nor was it comprehensive by any stretch of the imagination, lmao. But it's realistic that one study that catches the attention of the right people at the right time can have tangible, long-term consequences.

1. Leave test environment for ten minutes.
2. Return, observe, and reward as necessary.

Curious if the part where the research participant is observed during the 10-minute interval was left out intentionally?

Anyway, just wanted to leave some thoughts. I enjoyed this as both a fan of sapient pokemon takes and a social science researcher. And because I'm rusty as hell at reviewing, I really want to take a stab at constructive crit before I go:

she remembers above all defending to the Jay why the bar had to be so low

jay.jpg

this blue jay approves of the typo and says thank you for the cameo

okay byeeee ily see you on Discord <3
 
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kyeugh

you gotta feel your lines
Staff
Pronouns
she/her
Partners
  1. farfetchd-galar
  2. gfetchd-kyeugh
  3. onion-san
  4. farfetchd
yeowch.

there's so much to love here. the overall conceit is great and something i don't think i've read in fiction before, in fanfic or otherwise. bianca's inner turmoil is just so real. the interplay between her impostor syndrome, her craving for approval and recognition, and the need for rigorous results is just great; the social dimension of the scientific process goes forgotten too often. how do you know whether your reservations about your research are irrational self-doubt or reasonable and important self-criticism? when and where do you draw the line of "good enough"—when does something become better than nothing, the boons worth the curses? how many concessions can you make before you've obliterated your project and replaced it with something unrecognizable and worse? these are such real questions. i think they fit perfectly into the mythos of unova too, caught between truth and ideals, maybe trying so hard to serve both that you satisfy neither. reshiram's penetrating stare at the end really tied it all together for me. and i love the parallel drawn between reshiram and bianca herself here, it made the ending really powerful and satisfying to me:
Reshiram had understood that waiting for the Hero of Truth was better than settling. ... ... In this moment, years too late, she can be brave enough for the Light Stone, curled up and waiting for the right person to come. Can’t she?

i really liked the throughline with bianca's father. in the context of her abusive upbringing, her fear of failure made a lot of sense to me. when talking to jay, she thinks to herself that he can't possibly understand that once someone like her makes a mistake, it will follow her around forever. jay may be privileged enough that he does enjoy a sense of security that she doesn't—but i felt like her upbringing played into this too, because bianca is someone who is conditioned not to expect forgiveness. for her, avoiding missteps was a matter of safety. just like her impostor syndrome, unlearning this is something that she will need to strive towards consciously—but how can you know when you've gone too far, given yourself too much permission? i thought this was an interesting parallel and i actually think that her experiences with her dad could have been drawn out a little more explicitly in places; you hint at this duality when she has the twin visions of being struck/receiving a marshmallow, and i loved that; i almost wanted to see her ruminate on this some more, although i can also appreciate the subtlety and maybe i'm just pining a little too hard for angst here, heh.

tiny nitpick:
“Frankly, it’s a small but extant step for pokémon rights, and I’m quite proud to be a part of it.”
i felt like "extant" was a bit of an odd pick here. i tend to think of "extant" as describing something that remains or survives despite having been otherwise diminished; i guess it doesn't mean this strictly speaking but in my mind it exists within the context of extinction, and i feel like that acknowledges a level of dilution in bianca's project that she wasn't willing to admit to herself yet at that point in the story. i might rephrase it to something like "a small but important step" or "It's an important step for pokémon rights. A small step, maybe, but it is a step, and frankly I'm quite proud to be a part of it" etc.

it was great to see bianca be the hero of her own story; she's one of the more compelling canon characters to me and you served her brilliantly here. thanks for sharing this thoughtful story with us.
 

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
Huh, I was curious as to what other one-shot you'd released alongside your contest entry, and... Bianca isn't a whirlipede. I have been bamboozled. :sadbees:
The whirlipede bit got cut sometime in revision hell, but in case you were worried about the quality content that was lost ...
unknown.png

For real, though, I'm glad you ended up doing something with the marshmallow test idea. The story perfectly captures the uncertainty that plagues social science research and the researchers themselves. For the latter, it's even better that, even in such a short piece, I feel like I got a realistic and in-depth view of a canon character I hadn't really thought about much before. Bianca's impostor syndrome is all too common in researchers, and there's a nice balance explaining both the personal and professional reasons as to how it developed in her, plus how it impacts her self-concept and actions. I also enjoyed the friction between Bianca and Jay during their phone call, and how they seem to have the type of friendship that involves challenging each other to try to be better, do better.
thank youuuuuu! this means a lot, haha, esp coming from you. I'm glad you enjoyed! I feel like I do Bianca pretty dirty in EoE (which, tbf, everyone is done pretty dirty in EoE), and she already gets shafted pretty hard in canon imo, so it was nice to be able to take a look here. And, yeah, oof, it's a ogod thing that uncertainty is endemic to social science research and not just life! or anything! that would be super awkward otherwise.
I thought we'd be getting a scene of the hearing proper, but I think the end is fitting, really, even if the execution feels a tad abrupt... Bianca has a long road ahead of her learn that wanting to be important and do important things can come at a significant psychological and social cost - and not just for herself. The point is that such uncertainty and self-doubt is going to keep following her, because there's never going to be an objective answer to the questions she's pursuing.
I'm not sold on the ending tbh. In my head the emphasis on it being Bianca entering the room as herself, not as Dr. Harlacher, is supposed to be the sign that a decision was made, and now it's sort of up in the air for if the reader, like everyone else, can trust what happens next ... but I don't think it really panned out that way, haha. Open for suggestions if you've got them!
Also, I'd be remiss if I didn't mention the research topic itself... Pokemon sapience is naturally a divisive topic, as it is for animals in the real world. I also loved Jay detailing how the League judging pokemon sentience could backfire, and the ramifications of rushing forward with such an idea. Even if it is important work, I agree with Jay that Bianca's study was not generalizable, nor was it comprehensive by any stretch of the imagination, lmao. But it's realistic that one study that catches the attention of the right people at the right time can have tangible, long-term consequences.
I have gone way off the rails on sapience since my last story tbh; the deep end is just SO deep. one of the more interesting concepts that I've heard is basically this one--that there would be tests to establish sapience, and rights conferred to sapient pokemon that nonsapients wouldn't get--and, well, I am left with a lot of questions. I think the idea is that obviously pokemon like gardevoir and lucario are shown to be smart, so it'd be unfair to own them, but also obviously caterpie aren't and they're fair game sad gaia sounds, and it's great that there's a clean and obvious line in the sand.
Curious if the part where the research participant is observed during the 10-minute interval was left out intentionally?
kind of tbh! ["There’s a revised version three pages over that doesn’t sound as childish, as unprofessional, but this one still has the core:"]--I wasn't sure if it'd be realistic for Bianca to even entertain reneg'ing here, since that's a hugely destructive step here--so I wanted to seed the idea that there's reasons she'd already be on the fence about this, one of them being that the first draft (which was missing just basic, rudimentary things bc it was one of her first ever proposals) and the one she performed/now has to defend aren't all that different. have you improved enough to be markedly different, sort of thing. but for once i didn't really hammer that into the text very explicitly, sooooo.
Anyway, just wanted to leave some thoughts. I enjoyed this as both a fan of sapient pokemon takes and a social science researcher. And because I'm rusty as hell at reviewing, I really want to take a stab at constructive crit before I go:

View attachment 4938

this blue jay approves of the typo and says thank you for the cameo

okay byeeee ily see you on Discord <3
WE STAN JAY IN THIS HOUSE

thank you for stopping by!! I'm glad you enjoyed; fancy seeing you in these parts tbh! <3

yeowch.

there's so much to love here. the overall conceit is great and something i don't think i've read in fiction before, in fanfic or otherwise. bianca's inner turmoil is just so real. the interplay between her impostor syndrome, her craving for approval and recognition, and the need for rigorous results is just great; the social dimension of the scientific process goes forgotten too often. how do you know whether your reservations about your research are irrational self-doubt or reasonable and important self-criticism? when and where do you draw the line of "good enough"—when does something become better than nothing, the boons worth the curses? how many concessions can you make before you've obliterated your project and replaced it with something unrecognizable and worse? these are such real questions. i think they fit perfectly into the mythos of unova too, caught between truth and ideals, maybe trying so hard to serve both that you satisfy neither. reshiram's penetrating stare at the end really tied it all together for me. and i love the parallel drawn between reshiram and bianca herself here, it made the ending really powerful and satisfying to me:
I'm glad you enjoyed it! <3 The Reshiram throughline was something I'd conceptualized pretty early--white truth vs white lie. I also realized pretty early that I wanted this year's piece to be about imposter syndrome because, haha, zoroarks, but also, my god, mood. Unova is full of people who should be doubting themselves and don't, and people who I wish didn't doubt themselves and do. I felt like I did Bianca pretty dirty in eoe and it was nice to not do that; I'm glad that those things landed!
i really liked the throughline with bianca's father. in the context of her abusive upbringing, her fear of failure made a lot of sense to me. when talking to jay, she thinks to herself that he can't possibly understand that once someone like her makes a mistake, it will follow her around forever. jay may be privileged enough that he does enjoy a sense of security that she doesn't—but i felt like her upbringing played into this too, because bianca is someone who is conditioned not to expect forgiveness. for her, avoiding missteps was a matter of safety. just like her impostor syndrome, unlearning this is something that she will need to strive towards consciously—but how can you know when you've gone too far, given yourself too much permission?
For sure! For a while I wasn't sure how I wanted Bianca to change her mind here--I thought it was a little too idealistic, and also a really boring story, for her just to talk to someone who explains how she should feel--so developing the internal character a bit more helped with that, and I realized that "someone who is conditioned not to expect forgiveness" was more or less how I wanted her to see the pokemon who would've/did/will fail the test.
i thought this was an interesting parallel and i actually think that her experiences with her dad could have been drawn out a little more explicitly in places; you hint at this duality when she has the twin visions of being struck/receiving a marshmallow, and i loved that; i almost wanted to see her ruminate on this some more, although i can also appreciate the subtlety and maybe i'm just pining a little too hard for angst here, heh.
I'll ruminate on the dad bits. I was trying really hard to keep this short and cut probably 2k words in drafting, some of which were contextualizing her relationship with her father more--in short I thought their relationship is a lot more complicated than I could really focus on in just this story, since there was already a lot going on under the hood. There's definitely a version where those two threads get knitted together more, but I have yet to achieve it lol.
tiny nitpick:
Fixed the phrasing; I agree!

Many thanks for your thoughts here; I'm glad you enjoyed! <3
 

Persephone

Infinite Screms
Pronouns
her/hers
Partners
  1. mawile
  2. vulpix-alola
Demonstrate that she’s capable enough of forward thinking that she can accept stomach a punishment in the short-term to receive what everyone else agrees is a greater reward.

I think one of “accept” or “stomach” needs to go.

Also, OHANA MEANS FAMILY AND FAMILY MEANS NO ONE GETS LEFT BEHIND, LIAR.

*Ahem,* now with that out of the way, it’s cool to see Unova fic where compromises on Pokémon rights are discussed. Or any fic where concrete Pokémon rights proposals are discussed, even if “is good or bad” isn’t really the point of the text of the fic. And Bianca(!) being important to the themes of the games? Very cool. Even if her study has nothing on Truth v. Ideals: A Statistical Analysis.

Having a fic with text about scientific study design is also cool, especially when it deals with the problems of extrapolating to something the initial study did not test. As much as I hate to agree with lab dad, Dr. Harlacher made a list of which species would wait to get two objects instead of one. Basing legal rights on whether someone will wait for marshmallows is objectively absurd, but it is pretty much how animal sapience research works.

Well, that’s not fair. Animal sapience research works by running a bunch of tests with mirrors, sounds, hurt, language, etc. and then whatever the outcome is the animal is deemed non-sapient for legal purposes and receives no rights. But if we were to make An Objective List it would probably be with the mirror test, which is maybe even more flawed than the delayed gratification test in this fic. So I get where Lab Dad is coming from: any single test is going to be a terrible way to determine rights. Don’t get why he’s so adamant about one test being deleted instead of the author advocating for conducting more tests when the For Real Official Classification Tests are done.

Which brings me to maybe my biggest problem with my reading comprehension here: I have no idea what lab dad really wants. Maybe it’s in subtext I missed idk. Like, his text is that he wants a more expansive definition. But also her not testifying at all will probably lead to no definition and no progress? That would certainly be her father’s argument for her not to testify, that no progress is a good thing. And I know well that progressive groups will rip themselves apart over issues far smaller than this one. Idk. Just couldn’t get a good read on him. Partially because Bianca does seem a bit more concerned with her own reputation and being attacked personally than on the ultimate ideological issues. It’s not important to her why she’s being attacked, just that she is. And I get that. It’s in character. Just frustrated me a little as a reader.

I think I’ve padded things to 250 words. Anyway, I thought this was a neat character study, hypothetical BW sequel, and discussion of scientific studies in one. I did actually like it. Just struggle to devote arbitrary word numbers to things I like.
 

Pen

the cat is mightier than the pen
Staff
Partners
  1. dratini
  2. dratini-pen
  3. dratini-pen2
This is a really smooth read. It doesn't have as many balls in the air as some of your stories, which meant you got to focus in and really flex your descriptive skills with Bianca, especially with body language. There were so many small moments of characterization for Bianca that made her pop off the page as a person.

The actual content on the science was predictably well thought out and fascinating. The whole set up of her study being a flagship for a new law, despite its failing and lack of comprehensiveness checked out hard. I liked all the background Juniper politicking. She comes off as a savvy player in this world and the kind of mentor that it's hard not to just obey, because she knows how things work so much better than you do. I liked how nervous Bianca is about the hard questions Juniper has already assured her she won't be getting--and the sense we get that some of her nerves are precisely from the fact that she won't be getting them.

“A good trainer needs to be able to plan ahead, and identify what you can lose to create an opening. That’s your problem,” Hilda had said, not unkindly, after Bianca’s third loss to Skyla. “You want to keep your pokémon safe when they’re on the field, but they aren’t on the field to be safe. If you’d left your musharna in against Skyla’s swanna, your serperior would’ve been fresh, instead of taking a Hurricane to the face. You have to understand when to sacrifice.”

Demonstrate that she’s capable enough of forward thinking that she can accept stomach a punishment in the short-term to receive what everyone else agrees is a greater reward. Call her father. Believe that Juniper won’t turn away if she embarrasses the lab today. Wait for the second marshmallow.
The idea of sacrifice and what we give up in the short term for the long term are interwoven nicely between Bianca's experiment, her current predicament, and her whole life. I like that it's not even so clear which choice would be waiting for the second marshmellow. Bianca, under Reshiram's gaze, seems to interpret it as telling the truth at the hearing, even if it torpedos her career. But you could conceive the second marshmellow differently--swallowing her doubts and saying what she's supposed to at the hearing, so that her career flourishes and she can have a voice in the future, where it matters more. (Perhaps that's what Bianca does in Zekrom verse.) The first option feels more satisfying, but the second option might actually be the move if she wants to have a continued presence in making these tests better. It's the classic change from the outside or the inside approach, where on the outside you can speak truth to power and on the inside you can say less but power is more inclined to listen. I might have liked to get Juniper's voice more fully in the story as a counterweight to Lab-dad--it does a bit have the feeling of Lab-dad calls up, tells Bianca the right thing to do, and she ultimately agrees.

Finally, it was nice to see Bianca get a chance to shine. There's a meta element to Bianca's feeling of not being the one who matters, because she certainly does not get love in Black/White fic. That's always annoyed me. Realized I wrote a drabble to that effect back in . . . god, 2014.

The trip down memory lane had been an uneasy one, and not just because she made this folder before the IT department had explained the rules about putting spaces in folder names.
TOO relatable, rip.

But alone with the photocopies of her old lab notebook, Bianca can see, with the same certainty with which people recognize their own handwriting, the uncertain, unscientific phrasing of her initial experiment (are pokémon capable of long-term planning?), and she can’t help but wonder if nothing’s changed.
I really like the handwriting comparison, because there's definitely a kind of figurative handwriting to how you come up with something like an experiment.

This is what Professor Juniper has told her, and this is what Dr. Harlacher can believe, even if Bianca can’t, even if—

Incoming call: Dad

The window’s stubborn on her screen, blotting out the fifteen-odd documents she’s been listlessly tabbing through all afternoon.
The flow here is excellent.

Maybe she’ll see the leaky splotch in the roof above the kitchen, which her father had scowled at and patched a thousand times while it resolutely continued to drip and grow.
Nice background characterization.

The ‘uh’ sounds more than forced, given how quickly the entire paper name rolls off his tongue.
That is so real. I have definitely done this myself.

This time it’s definitely Bianca answering, with a nervous laugh before and after her words, like a parenthetical.
Again, well described.

She certainly isn’t sure if recognizing long-term consequences should be a necessary requisite for sapience—given that the idea from this test had come from her own inability to strategize intelligently enough to be a top-tier trainer.
Welp, yeah. I like the humor you sneak in here despite the seriousness of the topic.

“Not a good look, yeah, when your only non-academic job reference decides to become a terrorist over winter holidays and repurposes three years of your research into a city-destroying freeze ray.” There’s a wry sort of humor in Jay’s words, but it doesn’t go all the way down. “Sorry I missed your thesis defense. I was busy complying with a very thorough subpoena, and I technically wasn't even invited. All things considered, I can’t blame Juniper for not keeping in touch.”
The awkward in this conversation is so strong, it's wonderful.

But the hearing’s a black hole, and she’s slipped past the event horizon.
Love this.

In one world, she snatches it up and runs all the way to Nimbasa before he catches her, and she keeps running still. Her lips purse; her brow furrows; she hoards knowledge and the few victories she can scrape until she shapes them into a pedestal.
I like this because it shows how taking the reward now can be extremely rational depending on your situation. For the marshmellow test to work, you have to believe there is a second marshmellow. That's dictated by your life experience.
 

Negrek

Play the Rain
Staff
Loved this one. It works really well both as a character study and for chewing on some fun ("fun"?) pokémon worldbuilding. The question of how we even recognize intelligence is obviously one of real-world concern as well as fictional, and one that humans have traditionally been bad at, so it's fascinating to think of how it might be approached in a world where you have so many essentially-alien creatures you might somehow want to classify.

I think you do a great job of laying out how fraught it would be to determine what pokémon should be understood to "count" when it comes to providing them with rights. The marshmallow test is a great choice to explore here; one of those simple, intuitive ideas that's easy to explain and seems so common-sense obvious until you really start to dig into all the failure modes the way Jay does here. It's a great example of how difficult science is, and how easily it can be misused--and some of the dangers of its misuse. This one-shot presents a lot of questions without a lot of answers, but I think that works really well here. These are huge problems that people have been wrestling with for decades, and they aren't going to get resolved in the space of 5,000 words. But they're nonetheless worth thinking about and determining how you would answer them, or at least begin to answer them--to at least be aware of different ways of thinking about them, to try and chart a course through all the pitfalls. It's messy stuff, here as in real life!

And, of course, I love the allusions to all the wild different ways that pokémon cognition and culture might manifest. Jay's brief example of how the marshmallow test wouldn't really work on his klink was a highlight for me.

I was kind of curious about Jay's comment that some species might "lose legal ability to consent" as a result of being misclassified by Bianca's test. That makes it sound like right now all pokémon have to consent to capture and some might explicitly lose it, while my impression more generally was that right now no pokémon is considered sapient or needs to consent to capture. If the former is the case, it definitely makes this hearing a much bigger yikes.

I loved the characterization for Bianca here. It's so painful watching her not just lack confidence in herself, but be stuck trying to please other people even now, at a moment that's supposed to be a personal triumph. But she doesn't feel comfortable as Dr. Harlacher, and even worse, isn't entirely sure that being Dr. Harlacher is actually what she wants. She may have physically escaped her father, but he's still ever in her thoughts, ever guiding her actions--and in some ways, she's moved from trying to appease one person to trying to appease another, or perhaps several (the whole world?). In some ways she's as hemmed-in as ever, unsure how much of what she does is for herself and how much is trying to live up to someone else's expectations. It's a heartbreaking portrait of someone who has always had to struggle, has never been respected, has never been able to trust that there will be a second marshmallow. And now, after how hard she's worked, can't the world at least let her have this?

I quite like the little sketch we get of Professor Juniper here, seen through Bianca's eyes. Someone who's presumably a brilliant researcher but above all else knows exactly how to play the game, what to say and what to do to advance her agenda, ambitious and focused on success perhaps before anything else. Definitely a familiar type in academia.

I had a little trouble pinning down what the actual relationship between Bianca and Jay was here. It sounds like he was probably pretty important to her early on in her grad school career, but they lost touch after he moved on to do his postdoc at surprise!Terrorists Lab. Bianca acknowledges here that Jay's probably the first person to really believe in her, but she doesn't really seem to have a lot of an emotional reaction to seeing him pop up on her screen (other than relief that it's not her REAL dad). She's mostly just wrestling with his questions throughout, which is fair--he's mostly just launching them at her throughout, and of course she's going to be scrambling to keep up, but if there was any real connection between them I didn't get much sense of it. It was also strange to me that this was the first time Bianca was asked any of these questions... She mentions having to defend a permissive definition of sapience to Jay before, so it sounds like they've already discussed this in depth? idk, maybe the work progressed while Jay was gone so he didn't see what it's become until just recently, or maybe he was holding off out of politeness/because he didn't want to destroy her confidence earlier. I just kind of had trouble figuring out how they'd end up reaching the point of this conversation, I guess. But whatever their relationship, that deliberate "Dr. Harlacher" in Jay's sign-off really stings--whatever relationship was there, it clearly isn't anymore.

Sure as hell is a lot for Jay to pile on Bianca the night before her hearing, one way or another. She's right that raising concerns about the use of her research, or refusing to endorse it at all, is probably going to have little impact and if anything just close her out from being a part of the conversation at all in the future. What alternative does he see that's actually going to improve how pokémon are treated? But Reshiram wouldn't accept an excuse like that, would they? The Hero of Truth would accept no compromise... Quite a decision to foist on anyone, and quite a lot to wrestle with, imagining oneself in Bianca's shoes. The ambiguous ending works wonderfully here.

All in all maybe my favorite of your non-imitations for the Games thus far? Thought-provoking and emotionally resonant, really well done. And it's wonderful to see a fic that actually takes Bianca seriously. She got done dirty in canon, she gets done dirty in fic all the time--she by no means got a W here, but she at least got someone to treat her like somebody who matters. Thanks for writing this!

Couple minor typos:

at least not until while she was off the gym circuit
I think you wanted "until."

she’s capable enough of forward thinking that she can accept stomach a punishment
Same deal here; I like "stomach" better myself, but that one's definitely at your discretion!
 

Sinderella

Angy Tumbleweed
Staff
Location
In Guzma's Closet
Pronouns
She/Her
Partners
  1. sylveon-shiny
  2. gothitelle
  3. froslass
  4. chandelure
  5. mimikyu
Hey Kint! Long time no see! I don't remember the last time I read something of yours so I was pleasantly surprised to roll you this catnip.

To start, I think this was wonderfully written. This really worked as a wonderful character study of Bianca, which was nice to see, because I really don't see her very often in fic, let alone written this well I don't think. I recall not liking her that much when I first played BW but she ended up really growing on me, and I had a great time seeing her with some more depth and more emphasis on her own self doubt and lack of confidence. I also really liked seeing her speak in such a professional and I want to say cold way, even if it was in this alter ego she's created. Speaking of which, I really liked how Dr. Harlacher has simply become this other side of her personality, the one she's seemingly had to put on to get people to even glance in her direction--yet it seems like it's still not entirely something she enjoys having around. She seems to struggle between which facade to put up, which really adds to her turmoil in this whole thing, and it was really fun to watch that interplay.

Jay was also pretty nice! I couldn't remember if there was an actual canon Jay in BW and I couldn't find anything in his regard so I'm assuming he's an OC (forgive me if he's not, cuz I'm what the kids call stupid). I was really eh about the fact that he was calling Bianca the night before her big research defense hearing to tell her not to do it; felt like a huge case of "too little too late bestie wtf are you doing!!!!!!!" but as the conversation went on, I started to warm up to him. I liked the whole implication that he seems to be the only one in Bianca's life who really sees her for her. Sees right through her facades and just straight up knows what she can do without the alter egos or any of the extra mental fuzz. The only thing I was a tad confused about was how Jay and Bianca knew each other...I'm assuming they were classmates/coworkers/fellow lab assistants but I couldn't quite pinpoint that much. I can tell they were close at some point, maybe still are to an extent, but that's all I gleaned from it and I think I would have liked to have learned just a little more about their relationship. Just a little.

I was also a little jarred about the revelation that Bianca's dad used to beat her. From the way she thought about him at the beginning of the story, I only got the gist that they were kind of estranged and not close (which......I guess happens between abusive parents and their kids), but I definitely did not get any sort of vibe that she was afraid of him like I did when she recalled how he smacked her around. The exposition around her thinking about how she pretty much ran away from home to get away from him implied to me that she was scared of him; she was scared of him finding her and dragging her back home in some sense, and I feel like that contrasted greatly from the more nonchalant response to her thinking he's calling her. I guess I understand the want for the big reveal toward the end as she thinks about her "motivating objects," which is fine, but maybe some sort of extra indication at the beginning that she's a little more uneased by picking up the phone and not just airing on the side of apathetic. Just something to indicate there is a little more there than just a normal "eh we're not that close I don't think we need to talk rn."

All in all, this was a great read! The vibes were immaculate, and I thoroughly enjoyed how everyone was depicted here. Great work, and thank you for sharing!
 
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