Nine
9. Cities and Wonder: Slateport
Slateport!!! Scrunkly meow meow city (...somehow. Though not as scrunkly meow meow as Sootopolis)
She’s taught her combusken a few dance moves, modified from battle tactics and even punctuated with some pyrotechnics.
Combusken!!! Older Torchic!!!!
You’re still humming it to yourself as you enter the coffee shop. You pay for thirty minutes of computer time and a caramel macchiato to make the task of checking your emails less… You sigh as you approach the monitor and bolster yourself with a sip of the sugary drink.
This reminds me of the time I was on vacation in Europe and didn't have phone/laptop access, so I would go down the the internet bar in the hotel in Venice to 1. get references for Art Fight attacks, and 2. to play Run unblocked. Fun times.
First is an email from your mother, which isn’t so bad.
A... postcard email???
With a little distance — or, okay, a lot — you’ve begun to appreciate her more.
Maybe this is good advice.
My dumb brain first thought of Care Bears, then Strawberry Shortcake, then Canterbury Tales.
With this one we get the internettttttttt. Also emails. WiFi connections must be hard when you're travelling a lot. Also more Hoenn good.
Ten
Water, you thought, implied beach.
Well, there's freshwater, tap water, water in the air, ice, Water types because on freshwater fish...
You stand beneath a sign that warns against swimming and diving, wondering who would dare. Oil shimmers on the water’s surface. Plastic bottles and Rage Candy wrappers mass beneath the pier. Your rain coat is zipped over your swimsuit to hide your error, and your belt is clipped over the coat for ease of access. It’s not raining hard, but it’s enough to soften the city’s electrical buzzings and distant sirens. You’ve been here for over an hour, half-waiting for someone to challenge and half-waiting for a better idea to come to you. It’s only been raining for fifteen minutes, and you can’t decide if it’s worth waiting for it to stop again.
...Oh. Oh shit.
There’s an unpleasantness in his stare, communicating something beyond a challenge. It occurs to you that he might not be looking at your belt but at your body. If there were other people here it wouldn’t feel so creepy, but there aren’t and it does. He smiles, and it’s not a friendly one.
Oh shit.
This one seems to be based more on the unpleasantries of the cities you pass by on your journey—pollution, corruption, and harassment. It made me wince, but it's also very, very realistic.
Eleven
11. Cities and Silence: Driftveil
Oh hey it's the theme everyone memes about.
“You have a light?”
A younger or drunker version of you would’ve brought out your typhlosion, delighting both in watching the large pokemon perform the delicate task and in gently threatening another trainer. Instead you hand over your lighter and accept it back without comment.
Lighting cigarettes is... very good imagery. Like, smoking bad, but there's a lot you can convey in a scene like that. Especially in Pokémon.
You lean against the back wall of Judo Cufflink, a bar and music venue locals call simply The Cuff. Like every Driftveil joint you’ve been in, it’s a dive with cracked leather booths and peeling murals out back. You’ve heard it’s also known for occasional fights (both the kind that involve pokemon and the kind that involve just fists), but the courtyard is calm now, hazy with smoke and conversation. You don’t smoke anymore but it’s cooler out here. Quieter too. The first band of the night — Something Punch, or maybe Punch Drunk Something — sucks. Too nasal, not enough bass.
I love bar and nightclub scenes. They just,,,,,, light something up in my dumb brain. The vibes. The themes. The vibes. And I love the imagery here, the quiet loudness.
Churches and homes give way to rectangular concrete buildings
CHURCHES?????? WHAT RELIGIONS DO THEY HAVE IN UNOVA
In a flash you remember the summer Goldenrod City was so overrun with grimers that the city actually paid trainers to catch and remove them. The sour-smelling air gave your mother headaches, so she spent most of that summer in a dark room with a wet washcloth over her face. One grimer managed to ooze its way up the pipes and into your bathtub. An exterminator with a slowbro had to be called, and there was still a purple ring around the tub for weeks. After all this time, you’ve still never caught a poison-type.
Ew...
Grimy fic, pun intended. But also a dive bar. 10/10.
Twelve
At first, it’s just another battle, if a frustrating one. Sure, your opponent is dressed shabbily, but so are you. Your nice shirt is for gym battles and important events, not fast cash battles in the parking lot of a foreclosed grocery store. You assume he wants the same thing you do.
Oooh interesting stuff, with certain Trainers having certain outfits for certain battles. Really interesting stuff.
To win, you thought he meant.
Oh??? Does he mean something else???
The other trainer shouts, “Now, Zodiac!”
A weird name for a rhydon—
You don’t realize what’s actually happened until you see the umbreon flicker into view from out of the other trainer’s shadow. In its mouth, you recognize your distinctive orange wallet, a gift from a friend back home.
I almost screamed reading this line. Instead of screaming out loud, I will scream by typing.
NOOOOOOOOOOOO
Thirteen
spending $3.50 in quarters
Not me making my fortune off of collecting way too many coins.
Don't have a lot of line by lines for this one, but I thought it was interesting to follow the thread of money as a theme here, with budgeting, knowing where to cut costs and where to not risk it, getting a job to get a discount, lots of interesting stuff. One thing I've been noticing is that chapters will often connect to each other in a chain of themes. So A will connect to B in theme, and B will connect to C in a different theme. Fun stuff.
Fourteen
14. Cities and Seeing: Lilycove
Lilycoveeeee
I will be taking notes.
LeyLine is just as interested, if not more, in selling to fashionistas and to the young hopefuls who quit after a few weeks, the ones who are more dedicated to dressing like a trainer than to doing the work.
You know, I've never thought of beauty standards in relation to Pokémon Trainers before, mostly because I always thought that appearance wasn't the main focus (unless you make that your brand). At the same time, I can sort of see it being a thing, because... life, ya know.
Today the contest hall is packed with trainers, pokemon, and spectators alike. All down the long hallway to your left and to your right other trainers stand at attention beside their pokemon, smaller ones placed atop a pedestal draped in a tablecloth in the color of their contest category. A few water-types occupy enormous tanks instead. Behind you is a second row of trainers and pokemon. The trainer behind you keeps bumping into you as he animatedly answer passing spectators’ questions about his loudred. You’re wearing shorts because the city is hot and humid this time of year and a halter top with horizontal stripes because it’s your favorite shirt. You don’t care if people look at your thighs or your jiggly arms. You care that they look at Squish, playing with her own tail on her pink-draped pedestal, and vote for her to win.
Was not expecting the Contest route! And yes, I think a lot about body image and Contests, because... well, just look at real-life pageants and the brutal nature of not fitting into the standards of beauty—being too something or not something enough is enough to draw ire from the public.
And hey, social media influencers! An interesting and believable angle to see
and yes PeN I do see your comment about Wallace's Instagram feed and yes I appreciate it.
Fifteen
15. Cities and Hunger: Nimbasa
This is such a minor thing, but this title isn't center-aligned like the others.
When you walk a long time through the city, you begin to crave wilderness.
And I'm the opposite
It’s not anxiety, even though cities do make you anxious. All those other trainers vying for crumbs of fame, the violent crime in the headlines. Or, at least, it’s not only anxiety.
Okay, but this? This is also a big mood.
Torchic: I love cities
Also Torchic: Cities are scary
Sometimes talking to strangers makes you lonelier.
New trainers, all wide eyes and new clothes, stop you and your pokemon on the street to plead for advice they’ll ignore. In bars, trainers lonelier than you tell you things they ought to keep to themselves. There are others you could talk to, maybe even some you’d like to travel with, if only for a little while. You know you hold other trainers at more of a distance than you have to. But…
I am both the people trauma dumping at the bar and the one listening at the bar, both at the same time.
You haven’t forgotten last year in Nimbasa City. The trainer with the seviper tattoo winding down her leg. She caught your attention the second she strode into the hostel common room. First her foreign pokemon, a big one — a crobat, dozing atop her backpack. Then that look in her smoky eyes, wordlessly daring the world to just try her. You didn’t have the guts to talk to her — what would you say to someone like that? But when she caught you sneaking glances, she came to you.
Oh shit she's hot
“Then you must be batshit crazy too.” She grinned, and immediately it was like the two of you were the only ones in the room. Electric. “I was thinking about checking out the amusement park later. You been yet?”
PUNNY TOO????? AND LIKES AMUSEMENT PARKS????? Girl, do you wanna go on a date where I talk about Wild Mouse roller coasters????????
At first you were shy, but she wasn’t. She took your hand as the roller coaster started its slow climb. Her hand was surprisingly cool. Later, behind the popcorn vendor’s stall, you kissed until you were dizzy with it and the vendor’s assistant came out to chase you away. The two of you ran laughing between the aisles of flashing lights.
Eeeeeeeee
The people of Nimbasa dress loudly, many of the girls choosing fashions inspired by the local gym leader. Emolga is a popular pokemon here, both as a companion perched on the shoulder and as a design motif: emolga-head purses, emolga-patterned tights. You see lots of couples.
Like this lil description
The trainer leans away reflexively but doesn’t stop smiling. “When I saw you here I thought, that girl’s too pretty to be sitting by herself. Thought I’d see if you wanted to ride the Ferris wheel with me.”
You don’t mean to laugh. When his face falls you do feel a little bad, but not bad enough to stop you from standing and shouldering your pack. “No. I’ve got somewhere to be.”
The path out of the park takes you past the Ferris wheel, and you stop for a few minutes to watch it cycle round and round. You’re sure that trainer will find someone to ride with him. This city is dependable for at least that much.
Well, that was an ending 😭😭😭
This one is probably my favourite one so far. Just... it vibes so hard with me.
Sixteen
16. Cities and Silence: Coffee Shop
Coffee Shop??? Where????
There are two ways of describing a postcard: a gift or a burden.
POSTCARDS!!! LIKE THE TITLE OF THE FIC!!!!!
Flicking through the spinning card racks is tiresome. Your mother would love this photo of the skyline at night, but you wrinkle your nose at it. Certainly you have never seen the city looking so tidy and still. And everywhere you go — scattered between the postcards featuring landmarks and famous residents — there is always the same saccharine pikachu, photoshopped with sunglasses, a pool float, and a margarita. Wish you were here. Many of the souvenir shops are cash only, forcing you to turn out your pockets for change or walk out empty-handed. Once, you were already at the city limits before you remembered you’d forgotten to buy any cards and had to double back.
Okay, so I relate to this on many levels. I also have a habit of buying postcards—mostly as a collecting thing. I never send them. Sometimes they have really, really beautiful art or pictures or vibes or sentimentality, but some of these postcards, man, are y'all buying them from the same lazy manufacturer? It's a similar thing with souvenir shops in some places—a lot of them have the same, mass-produced, cheap souvenirs, and all of the stores are right next to each other, so like... what??? But there's also a lot of places with hand-made goods, or funny oddities, or BOOKS IN DANISH! I must resist the urge to ramble about the bookstore in Solvang with vintage Danish alphabet books. Such good stuff.
Seventeen (it's the end I am cry)
Leaving there, you finally arrive once again at the place called home. It’s not home anymore, not really. But you’ll never be able to call it anything else.
Am I gonna cry again? (Yes.)
When you walk a long time through the wild, you begin to crave home. The annual county fair. Your dad’s spaghetti and meatballs. The old fashioned candy shop where you can still buy a giant jawbreaker for less than a dollar.
Feel very nostalgic reading this—the same kind of nostalgia I get watching
Snoopy, Come Home! For some reason. (Good movie. pls watch)
Jenny and Alex got married and have a toddler. A toddler, already.
whAT
They don’t gossip or leave passive-aggressive notes on the coffeemaker. There is no coffee maker.
They should, and there should.
When you walk a long time through your home town, you begin to crave the world again.
Auto correct is saying that it should be "hometown", but idk whether or not that's right.
But also... mood.
What
is the capital of Hoenn
listing friends you should visit and an upcoming church picnic
Again, WHAT RELIGIONS ARE THESE CHURCHES FOR????? (My worldbuilding priorities a surely priorities)
Okay so maybe I did get teary-eyed reading this one. Not just because the story's over, but because... I don't know, it had this wistful, bittersweet vibe to it. Like, what
is it like to come home after years of being a Trainer? Seeing all of your friends grow up and make lives of their own? Returning to see what's the same and what's changed?
Overall, I really liked these snippets into being a Trainer, the good, the bad, and the ugly. I think the city ones were my favourites. Maybe because I vibe with cities more. I like how you didn't pull punches in showing some of the squickier parts of the trainer lifestyle, nor did you neglect the sweeter parts. And the prose was really nice. Like, really, really nice.
Great job, WildBoots! Thank you for sharing this wonderful fic, and have a wonderful day.
