Pokémon Rigged from the Start

[zion of arcadia]

a/n: So I wrote this for a PMD prompt back in January, but I debated for a long time if I wanted to publish it. It's off-the-cuff, tangential, unbetaed, partly based on an old concept which makes it muddled, and my frame of mind wasn't exactly sunshine and rainbows at the time of writing. But I thought about it some more, cleaned it up slightly, and figured it was worth sharing despite the flaws because it comes from a place of genuine sincerity. As an aside, you'll need to have played Gates to understand certain references, although I wouldn't call it mandatory to get the gist. Enjoy.

General: "You're not what I was hoping for, but you'll have to do."
Specific: The human arrives in the Pokémon world too late.

…

My stepfather's family owned a lakeside cottage; I absolutely hated it. It smelled like mothballs and mildew, and a crazy cat lady probably picked out all the furniture. Every summer was the same. My parents would sit around with our relatives, yammering on and on and on about boring shit, completely ignoring us.

The lake was always either too hot or too cold, and everything was overgrown and crawling with nasty ass bugs. Worst of all, our aunt would bring this disgusting seven-layer salad that we had to pretend to enjoy. Every. Single. Summer. And the cherry on top? Whenever we got home, we had to be checked for ticks. Our cottage fucking sucked, man.

When I was ten years old, my parents brought our bikes up north. They thought we could cycle along the roads together—bond as a family and all that jazz. Plus, they knew both my brother and I were in our 'mobbing through the streets of our home town like we're hot shit' phase. Maybe then the trip would be less of a dumpster fire. It almost worked, too.

I really loved biking. I could go wherever the hell I wanted. The weather had been perfect, crisp and clear. The road dipped and curved, and every turn felt like an adventure. I never knew what was around the corner.

Well, I did—more trees and maybe a car or two—but I could pretend otherwise. Something about the thrill of the unknown, or perhaps the idea that something strange might be out there, spoke to me during the quiet of that long, warm, sleepy afternoon.

Of course, things went wrong, because I was, and still am, an absolute dumbass.

The driveway leading to our cottage slanted at a sharp forty-five-degree angle for a good fifty or so feet, before bottoming out into a ten-foot-tall retainer wall. Probably had been a ramp at a dirt bike course in another life. Regardless, I went down the driveway on my not-dirt bike, thinking I could brake to a stop.

(I didn't stop.)

I barely remembered the details. Everything happened so fast. One minute Mom was yelling at me to get off the bike; the next, I was hurtling through the air toward an enormous oak tree. The wind ruffled my hair, and it felt a little like flying.

I'd closed my eyes. I wished I hadn't, because then maybe I'd know how I wound up on the ground with nothing more than a few scratches while my bike, twisted and mangled, rested against the tree, wheel spinning haplessly.

Mom randomly burst into tears throughout the rest of the day. She'd promised beforehand we'd go biking again later (we didn't). Everyone told me it was a miracle I'd survived mostly unscathed. My brother pitched a fit; he'd been looking forward to another bike ride.

The whole thing had scared the ever-loving piss out of me, although it would take a long while before I realized how much worse it could've gone. But at the same time, it was lowkey one of my favorite trips ever, because for once, all eyes had been on me.

Now, as I plummeted thousands of feet through the grey sky, the memory struck me once more. This time I kept my eyes open. I wanted to see how I'd survive. Falling was probably the closest I'd ever get to flying.

…

It was cold. Not just cold. Fucking freezing. It reminded me of the time the polar vortex swept through our city. The temperatures had dropped as low as -40 degrees Fahrenheit. A physician assistant had been walking back to her car in the hospital parking lot when someone jumped her, beat her unconscious, and then left her there to die.

They found her frozen but still alive the next day. Paramedics came with boiling buckets of water to melt her skin from the pavement. She died on the way to the hospital.

Kind of unfortunate, considering it was only a couple yards away. Mom's hands wouldn't stop shaking, struggling to open a bottle of wine, as she told me the story. It featured on the news the next day, too.

It was that type of cold. The type that made it hard to breathe. The type that made it hard to keep your eyes open. The type that made people do crazy shit.

I'd fallen from quite high up in the sky, although how I wasn't a bloody smear in the snow was beyond me (I'd bounced. I'd fucking bounced). My body throbbed like the time I fought that punk Jimmy Brosner for my mile stick—I'd walked a mile and I'd earned it, dammit, he wasn't going to take the credit from me. He put up a hell of a fight, though, and I'd felt it several days after.

At that point, I realized I wasn't human anymore. I had scales and paws and more torso than leg and these weird things that felt kind of like a mouthguard. I ran my tongue along the thick, smooth, annoying bumps on the inside of both my cheeks, a small distraction from the creeping numbness in my limbs.

I stood in the remains of a village. Structures shaped like strangely familiar monsters lay torn open to the elements. They reminded me of faces maimed by terrible scars, eyes staring sightlessly at the grey sky. Wind whistled through tattered flaps of leather and broken pieces of wood.

I recognized some of the monster designs; they were Pokémon. I hadn't thought about Pokémon in years. Jesus Christ, this was one bizarre goddamn dream.

My first Pokémon game was Pokémon Yellow. I'd been too young to really get how to play, and somehow Mom wound up beating pretty much the whole thing for me. She still told that story sometimes in the aftermath of a bad argument. It was a nice memory.

The shaking of my new, weird, dopey little body distracted me. I needed to find shelter. Fast.

I shuffled toward the large, ordinary building in the center of the town—no way was I going near those creepy-ass head tents—grateful to at least be out of the wind and snow. Upturned tables and shattered glass littered the floor and the bar. No one was here. I huddled down, still shivering, and glanced around. Now what?

(What now?)

A purple box tucked away in the corner caught my eye. With nothing better to do, I stumbled toward it. The box was locked. My paws were already clumsy and foreign, made worse by the cold. I tried to open it the good ol' fashioned way for several fruitless minutes. Then, on impulse, I bashed my head against the box and cracked it open. Huh. Neat.

Inside rested several brightly colored seeds and berries. I wasn't hungry, so I ignored them. There was also an ice crystal thing. Curious, I awkwardly picked it up with those grubby claws of mine. I expected it to be cold, but it wasn't. If anything, it felt warm, pulsing like the beat of a heart.

A voice came from the crystal. I dropped it.

Clink.

The sound was loud in the abrupt silence.

I picked it up again.

"... Guess this is it, huh?" The voice was low and gruff. "Maybe it's better this way. Already worse than useless. Makes me sad, though. All those homes I coulda built with my team and now…"

I relaxed my grip, and the voice stopped. The crystal had a ring of stones wrapped around it. By fiddling with them, I could 'tune' into a variety of voices like one of those old fashioned radios. I found the gruff one again.

"... I hate this. Hate that I wasted so much of my life doing absolutely nothing. Some of the best years, just gone. And I ain't never getting 'em back. And now it seems like there's no future, neither. I just, I just hate wasted potential.

"But that's not even the worst part. Ya know? I dragged my buddies down with me into my pity party—it's true, don't bother saying otherwise, mates—and ruined any chance they had at being something more too. What kinda boss does that? What… how am I s'pose to fix it…"
And then he broke down crying. Low, deep, harsh sobs. I'd never heard any man cry like that before. They were always so stoic (although my brother and I once noticed Dad's moist eyes at the end of Old Yeller. That caused quite a scene) and silent when things went wrong.

Then I thought about all the stuff I hadn't done yet in my life. I hadn't had sex. That definitely sucked. I hadn't won the fifth-grade science award, but that was because Kevin Junior robbed me, the little asshole.

I got cut from the high school basketball team after snagging a rebound, sprinting down the court, missing an open layup and slamming into the backboard. As I lay on the ground, probably concussed, everyone had stopped to stare at me, because I'd tried to score on my own team's basket. Look, it was an honest mistake (although the coaches hadn't seen it that way).

Once Mom screamed at me after finding out I'd been skipping Spanish class. She'd gone on and on about my lack of drive and ambition. The fuck did someone say to that? I was only sixteen, damn. Chill. And the Spanish teacher was one of those teachers, who thought they could be best friends with the students and made us do 'fun' projects (group projects are never fun, never). Like holy shit, just give me some worksheets and let me get out with the mandatory credit I need, Christ.

It was still cold, although it didn't bother me as much anymore.

I listened to more voices. Some of them gave names; Emolga sounded like a dude constantly hopped up on caffeine. Some of them gave names I recognized; I'd used a Quagsire in my old Pokémon Silver game. His name was Blue and he knew four water attacks. He also hadn't come off as a potential serial killer, which could not be said for this Quagsire.

Man, I fucked with Blue, though. I loved him so much I cloned him five times with that one PC glitch. Together the goon squad and I destroyed our bitch ass rival and the Elite Four. When I got Ruby for my birthday and figured out I couldn't do the same thing, I realized perhaps the time had come to move on.

One of the voices was soft and clearly feminine. Her name was Virizion, whatever that was. Maybe the phone-type pokémon.

"I know things look bleak. I know that. But… I'm glad I won't be alone. I'm glad I met everyone. It would be so much harder alone. As long as we have each other, I have hope that we can still figure this out. Thank you. Thank you, thank you, thank you."

Once at the cottage, I went kayaking with my brother. He ditched me, taking off to explore on his own. I was left alone. I just drifted toward the opposite bank. The water had been so still, clouded over with algae. And then, out of nowhere, I screamed and screamed and screamed until the neighbors came running. They found me with tears running down my cheeks.

I had the urge to cry now, too, for some reason. But maybe this body couldn't cry. Or perhaps it was too cold. I didn't know; I just kept listening to the voices.

"... If you've found this, chances are pretty good the world's already ended. My name's Pikachu. I've been searching for something for a long time—I wanted a place where pokémon could laugh together. Feel safe together. A place where we all would trust each other so completely it wouldn't matter if we fought. In the end, everything would be okay. True paradise… that's what I was searching for. And then I finally found it.

"Paradise is lost. I thought I could keep hold of it forever. I thought together we could keep hold of it forever. But I guess not. Pokémon more important than me decided otherwise. It hurts to pour your heart and soul into a dream only for it to not matter in the end. It feels like nothing I've done has ever really mattered. I don't want to be forgotten. I don't want Paradise to be forgotten. I worked so hard on it… it's not fair.

"This is my way of being remembered, I guess. It's not much, but it's better than nothing. Just know there was something beautiful once, even if all that's left is cold and grey. If someone finds this, know this: here I am."

Paradise, huh.

Sometimes I dreamed about California and the sun-bleached tetherball courts at school. We'd be in the shade playing with Pokémon cards. No one knew how the game actually worked so we just made shit up. For a game where we treated rules more like a suggestion than something that had to be followed, Jeffery still somehow almost always managed to win.

Jeffery was one of my closest friends; he lived next door and had an N64 and Pokémon Stadium. I didn't actually like him, he was kind of a huge dick, but he had a ton of cool stuff. Then one day, I found him playing Pokémon Silver (my Pokémon Silver) and asked him if it was mine. And Jeffery, the little shit, lied right to my face.

(I did nothing.)

Eventually, I got my cartridge back. Dad apparently stormed over and demanded it back. But the damage was already done—Blue and his army of clones were gone, replaced by a lame ass totodile and one of those brown squirrel things.

Sometimes I dreamed about California and how Dad would bring us to this small, cramped condo. It was so different from the enormous home we'd had when Mom and Dad were still together.

This place was squat and threatening. The carpet was worn and dirty. I kept a bunch of Pokémon cards in a pink and green metal Scooby-Doo lunchbox, and I used them to play make-believe with my brother. It was one of the few times we went on adventures together, him with his trusty alien-pirate-Pikachu and me with my mobster-boss-Jigglypuff. Meanwhile, Dad went into the other room with our babysitter

Maybe California wasn't my paradise. But what else did I have? That shitty cottage up north? Hell no.

Although I did have one good memory from there:

I was laying in the hammock watching my stepfather and my half-sister stand out on the pier together. She was still really little back then, only two or three years old.

My stepfather was this huge, tall dude and also pretty strict. He'd never been in the military, but you wouldn't have known it looking at him. We came up with a nickname together: D.O.D. It stood for Department of Defense. I didn't know it at the time, but his friends and family actually made fun of him for the nickname (and to be fair, it sounded pretty fucking stupid when said out loud).

But yeah. They were out on the pier together. And my stepfather was holding my half-sister so gently despite being so goddamn fucking massive that I called out to him, and I called him Dad. He turned toward me, and the closest I'd ever seen a smile like that on his face was when he caught me watching porn once...

... God, I was such a waste of oxygen...

… And now I was walking towards the pier. It rained recently and the clouds were still clearing out. The sun was low in the sky, a deep, dark red.

Beyond the lake and over the treeline we saw a rainbow. Not just one rainbow but four of them, one larger than the rest and ringed by the other three. All I could think of at that moment was that stupid video where the guy yells, "It's a double rainbow!" or whatever the fuck he said.

Suddenly I couldn't stop laughing, and now I was walking away, toward the tree where my crashed bike still spun. I picked it up, giggling like an idiot, and returned to the pier. My stepfather and sister were gone, replaced by Pikachu, and he didn't say anything. He just quietly stared at the rainbows.

"You know this fucking cottage isn't even ours anymore, right?" I told him. "Stepdad finally caved and sold it. Good fucking riddance. We're both technically trespassing though, y'know."

Pikachu's ears twitched.

I threw the bike into the water. We watched it sink together, watched the algae break apart and then swirl back together. Shallow, standing water. Disgusting.

We jumped into the lake. It should've been ice cold that time of year, but instead, it was warm. Pleasant. I could drift off and sleep in water at this temperature. Maybe the cottage wasn't so bad after all.

(In the end, I closed my eyes.)

 

[Pen]

I have not played Gates but I am always down for AUs in which the hero is too late. So.

This was a very compelling one-shot. It's very much grounded in our world, but I love the way you used the tragedy in PMD to illuminate something about this protagonist. Isekai style stories, like PMD, give us a chance to discard all the problems of life--of family, friendship, growing up--with the the chance to be a hero in a fantastical realm. You've reversed that, using the set-up of the hero coming to late to dig into the life he's leaving behind. It was a poignant read and many moments stood out--in particular, I like how you described the time the narrator is alone on a lake and suddenly screams.

Line by line reactions and edits are below--these edits are fairly detailed and specific, since the power of this story seems very rooted in its prose. Suggested rewrites are primarily for the purpose of clarifying my point!

Also, I'd recommend you go through and sort out the line break issues. The missing line breaks make the fic feel a bit sloppy.

My stepfather's family owned a lakeside cottage; I absolutely hated it.

So, this first line, with its semicolon linkage, has a formality that doesn't quite fit with the tone that emerges in the next few sentences. Also, the double 'it' obstructs the flow. Maybe something like 'My stepfather's family owned a lakeside cottage. Man, I hated that cottage.'

My parents would sit around with our relatives, yammering on and on and on about boring shit, completely ignoring us.

I think the doubling down negates the effect here. 'yammering' plus 'boring shit' smacks of trying too hard. I'd suggest taking out 'boring shit' which 'yammering' already implies.

The lake was always either too hot or too cold, and everything was overgrown and crawling with nasty ass bugs. Worst of all, our aunt would bring this disgusting seven-layer salad that we had to pretend to enjoy.

Love these details. Absolute peak mundane family gathering horror here.

Our cottage fucking sucked, man.

Again, I think the effect is stronger when you stick to one intensifier. Here, for example, I think 'Our cottage fucking sucked' would end the paragraph more decisively.

When I was ten years old, my parents brought our bikes up north.

This is a little vague, since we don't know 'up north' means the cottage.

I really loved biking. I could go wherever the hell I wanted. The weather had been perfect, crisp and clear. The road dipped and curved, and every turn felt like an adventure. I never knew what was around the corner.

The simplicity of this is really effective here. Up until now, the voice has felt very performative, so these simple sentences convey a real sense of sincerity and vulnerability in the narrator.

Something about the thrill of the unknown, or perhaps the idea that something strange might be out there, spoke to me during the quiet of that long, warm, sleepy afternoon.

This is a little wordy and a place that could use some tightening, I think. It's a jolt going from this sentence into the next one.

I barely remembered the details.

Should this be present tense? This story is being narrated and the not remembering is contemporaneous with the narration as far as I can tell.

I'd closed my eyes. I wished I hadn't, because then maybe I'd know how I wound up on the ground with nothing more than a few scratches while my bike, twisted and mangled, rested against the tree, wheel spinning haplessly.

Really interesting character moment

Now, as I plummeted thousands of feet through the grey sky, the memory struck me once more. This time I kept my eyes open. I wanted to see how I'd survive. Falling was probably the closest I'd ever get to flying.

I really liked how you use the bike accident to lead into this. I think the last sentence is a bit weak, simply because it's very much a cliche. The insight about wanting to see how you survive is a lot more interesting and unique to this story. I'd suggest cutting the last sentence and going:
'I kept my eyes open— this time, I wanted to see how I'd survive.'

It was that type of cold. The type that made it hard to breathe. The type that made it hard to keep your eyes open. The type that made people do crazy shit.

Nice

(I'd bounced. I'd fucking bounced).

Not sure this parenthetical adds much here.

I had scales and paws and more torso than leg and these weird things that felt kind of like a mouthguard. I ran my tongue along the thick, smooth, annoying bumps on the inside of both my cheeks, a small distraction from the creeping numbness in my limbs.

Scales and paws is a bit of a weird combo.

I stood in the remains of a village.

Think the past progressive would work better here -- 'was standing'

Structures shaped like strangely familiar monsters lay torn open to the elements. They reminded me of faces maimed by terrible scars, eyes staring sightlessly at the grey sky. Wind whistled through tattered flaps of leather and broken pieces of wood.

I found this hard to picture. 'Structures' is very vague, and leather and wood don't immediately suggest anything about what the structures actually look like. Later you call them tents and I know what you mean from PMD, but I think it would be helpful to use the word tent earlier.

Jesus Christ, this was one bizarre goddamn dream.

Again, intensifiers. I'd say pick one, either 'Jesus Christ, this was one bizarre dream' or 'This was one bizarre goddamn dream.'

My first Pokémon game was Pokémon Yellow. I'd been too young to really get how to play, and somehow Mom wound up beating pretty much the whole thing for me. She still told that story sometimes in the aftermath of a bad argument. It was a nice memory.

Really nice moment. 'in the aftermath of a bad argument' is a bit ambiguous--is this a story she'd tell after they fought, to reconcile them? Feels like you could expand this sentence a bit 'Sometimes, after a we fought--a real argument, shouting ourselves hoarse--she'd tell me that story, almost like an apology.' etc

The shaking of my new, weird, dopey little body distracted me. I needed to find shelter. Fast.

Maybe 'shivering' instead of 'shaking' here? It wasn't immediately obvious that he meant shelter from the cold. I think you've piled on one too many adjectives here--I'd choose between weird or dopey (I prefer dopey!)

Then, on impulse, I bashed my head against the box and cracked it open. Huh. Neat.

A bagon?

Inside rested several brightly colored seeds and berries.

Something about this doesn't fit the narrative voice to me. Maybe because 'rested' is a much more relaxed word than the narrator's mental state? Something more businesslike like 'There were some brightly colored seeds and berries inside' would read better to me.

There was also an ice crystal thing.

This could be better described. Again, I know what you mean, but it doesn't seem like the narrator would. Does it look more like a crystal, that's the color of ice, or does it seem more like an ice-thing in a crystalline structure?

I expected it to be cold, but it wasn't. If anything, it felt warm, pulsing like the beat of a heart.

Nice uncanny moment.

The sound was loud in the abrupt silence.

Not sure about 'abrupt silence' here. Hasn't it been pretty much silent this whole time?

And then he broke down crying. Low, deep, harsh sobs. I'd never heard any man cry like that before. They were always so stoic (although my brother and I once noticed Dad's moist eyes at the end of Old Yeller. That caused quite a scene) and silent when things went wrong.

I really like this moment. I do think the parenthetical lessens the impact.

The fuck did someone say to that? I was only sixteen, damn. Chill. And the Spanish teacher was one of those teachers, who thought they could be best friends with the students and made us do 'fun' projects (group projects are never fun, never). Like holy shit, just give me some worksheets and let me get out with the mandatory credit I need, Christ.

So again, I think this would be stronger if you picked one intensifier with each line-- 'damn' or 'chill'; 'holy shit' or 'christ'. don't think you need the parenthetical about group projects. While of course you're correct, the 'fun' in quotes already says it all.

Some of them gave names I recognized;

'Some of the names I recognized'

He also hadn't come off as a potential serial killer, which could not be said for this Quagsire.

Lol

Her name was Virizion, whatever that was. Maybe the phone-type pokémon.

. . . ooph, that is so bad and yet so good

"I know things look bleak. I know that. But… I'm glad I won't be alone. I'm glad I met everyone. It would be so much harder alone. As long as we have each other, I have hope that we can still figure this out. Thank you. Thank you, thank you, thank you."

You do a good job making each of these voices unique and compelling in only a few sentences.

He ditched me, taking off to explore on his own. I was left alone.

Might want to remove the own/alone internal rhyme here.

I just drifted toward the opposite bank. The water had been so still, clouded over with algae. And then, out of nowhere, I screamed and screamed and screamed until the neighbors came running. They found me with tears running down my cheeks.

'Started to scream and scream and scream' perhaps? This works really well well though.

"... If you've found this, chances are pretty good the world's already ended. My name's Pikachu. I've been searching for something for a long time—I wanted a place where pokémon could laugh together. Feel safe together. A place where we all would trust each other so completely it wouldn't matter if we fought. In the end, everything would be okay. True paradise… that's what I was searching for. And then I finally found it.

"Paradise is lost. I thought I could keep hold of it forever. I thought together we could keep hold of it forever. But I guess not. Pokémon more important than me decided otherwise. It hurts to pour your heart and soul into a dream only for it to not matter in the end. It feels like nothing I've done has ever really mattered. I don't want to be forgotten. I don't want Paradise to be forgotten. I worked so hard on it… it's not fair.

"This is my way of being remembered, I guess. It's not much, but it's better than nothing. Just know there was something beautiful once, even if all that's left is cold and grey. If someone finds this, know this: here I am."

Great monologue

Jeffery was one of my closest friends; he lived next door and had an N64 and Pokémon Stadium. I didn't actually like him, he was kind of a huge dick, but he had a ton of cool stuff. Then one day, I found him playing Pokémon Silver (my Pokémon Silver) and asked him if it was mine. And Jeffery, the little shit, lied right to my face.

(I did nothing.)

Eventually, I got my cartridge back. Dad apparently stormed over and demanded it back. But the damage was already done—Blue and his army of clones were gone, replaced by a lame ass totodile and one of those brown squirrel things.

This story could be compressed a little. You've got some great atmosphere building with the pokemon's final speeches, the cold, and this story breaks it a little by going on so long. I like where it ends, with the loss of his pokemon, with that part of childhood.

My stepfather was this huge, tall dude and also pretty strict. He'd never been in the military, but you wouldn't have known it looking at him. We came up with a nickname together: D.O.D. It stood for Department of Defense. I didn't know it at the time, but his friends and family actually made fun of him for the nickname (and to be fair, it sounded pretty fucking stupid when said out loud).

Again, I think you could tighten this a little, so as not to lose momentum going in the weeds. Like, 'We called him D.O.D, which stood for department of defense. I found out later that his friends gave him a lot of shit over that nickname (and it was a pretty stupid one)'

And my stepfather was holding my half-sister so gently despite being so goddamn fucking massive that I called out to him, and I called him Dad. He turned toward me, and the closest I'd ever seen a smile like that on his face was when he caught me watching porn once...

I do this a lot when I'm trying to describe a super significant moment, pile up too many words and dole out the moment in jerks. This is a place you want to cut through, 'And my stepfather was holding my half-sister so gently, despite him being so fucking huge, that I called out "Dad."

… And now I was walking towards the pier. It rained recently and the clouds were still clearing out. The sun was low in the sky, a deep, dark red.

Beyond the lake and over the treeline we saw a rainbow. Not just one rainbow but four of them, one larger than the rest and ringed by the other three. All I could think of at that moment was that stupid video where the guy yells, "It's a double rainbow!" or whatever the fuck he said.
Suddenly I couldn't stop laughing, and now I was walking away, toward the tree where my crashed bike still spun. I picked it up, giggling like an idiot, and returned to the pier. My stepfather and sister were gone, replaced by Pikachu, and he didn't say anything. He just quietly stared at the rainbows.

"You know this fucking cottage isn't even ours anymore, right?" I told him. "Stepdad finally caved and sold it. Good fucking riddance. We're both technically trespassing though, y'know."

Pikachu's ears twitched.

You've definitely captured a surreal, doomed, dream sequence vibe here. I love the image of the pikachu watching the rainbow silently.

We jumped into the lake.

This could use a transition word or phrase. 'That was when we jumped into the lake' etc.

(In the end, I closed my eyes.)

Gut-punch of an ending

 

[kintsugi]

This is a little closer to the vibe I was expecting from Pizza with a Slice of Pain lol.

(haven't played Gates but I know in broad terms that the enemy is snowflakes. this is 100% an accurate summary and I'm accepting no arguments to the contrary).

I think my favorite part of this is how you portray mundane life for the protagonist as still being full of its conflicts and problems. It conflicts with the Gates bad-ending in that everything ends up as cold and dark and still; hypothermia's a quiet death. I liked the little hints at suburban issues: Mom's hands shaking on the bottle of wine; Dad going off into the other room with the baby sitter; the "kind of unfortunate" act of someone being boiled off the pavement a few yards down. I think you do a really good job of escalating the problems from layered salad and ugh god my parents own a lake house but it's shitty because the water is water-temperature--these are kinda mundane problems in the scheme of things, but that's life, and when you're a kid especially it's easy to lack the perspective. As the story opens up we get to see that maybe it wasn't actually the salad that was the reason the vacation wasn't fun; the kids aren't alright.

Maybe California wasn't my paradise.

I like the thematic implications of this--I think one of the sadder elements of PMD is that the protagonist is so thrilled to stay in the pokemon world. And on some level, yeah, it'd be fucking lit and you can wear a cool scarf and be adorable forever; the world loves you and thinks you're great; there's purpose and exploration and meaning without major consequence. But also for someone to choose to stay implies something deeply unhappy about the world they choose to leave behind.

And beyond the PMD element there's just a really visceral emotion conveyed here, kind of the root of a lot of teen angst--that idea that the world isn't actually paradise, that looking back there's little granules of joy but those aren't coming back. The other line that hit me hard was the narrator deciding to give up when Pokemon Ruby came out because they couldn't do the quagsire squad again--it's a hilarious image but it also speaks to the idea that you can't keep doing the same kind of things forever. PMD/Isekai in general strikes me as an interesting genre because its primary temptation is the idea that paradise is a thing you build for yourself; you drop into the world with nothing and you're able to strive towards something; you have the ability to improve your world.

I think the ending hits really well here. It's soft and understated, a little dreamy as the two worlds end up running together and we realize in both cases the narrator wasn't able to make things go the way the wanted, and it punches really well.

What kinda boss does that? What… how am I s'pose to fix it…"
And then he broke down crying. Low, deep, harsh sobs.

[dropped a line break here]

Then I thought about all the stuff I hadn't done yet in my life. I hadn't had sex. That definitely sucked. I hadn't won the fifth-grade science award, but that was because Kevin Junior robbed me, the little asshole.

I thought the transition to this one was slightly off. The previous paragraph about Dad not showing any emotion makes tracks and hits hard, but it's weird to transition back to the recorded dialogue without the narrator thinking about it.

I'd used a Quagsire in my old Pokémon Silver game. His name was Blue and he knew four water attacks. He also hadn't come off as a potential serial killer, which could not be said for this Quagsire.

bless this image. it is such a specific image, and yet I understand the exact flavor of "my favorite pokemon with 4 stab moves yes good"