Going to try to respond to reviews within a week from now on as part of my New Year's resolutions!
The equation of training a new pokémon on the sly to cheating on a romantic partner is one that I think both has some inherent humor to it but also kind of works if taken seriously. After all, if you're in a world with sapient pokémon, there's often a lot invested in the relationship between a human and their pokémon--a lot of emotion and potentially years of time! Of course, training multiple pokémon is a lot more accepted in the pokéworld than taking multiple romantic partners is in ours, which is something that would make the narrator's behavior here super weird. I'm guessing that's something you recognized, based on the bit at the end where they mention that lots of people are getting second pokémon now. I wonder whether this story's supposed to be set in a different time when it wasn't as common for people to have multiple pokémon for whatever reason. It otherwise reads like a contemporary story.
Yeah, this is set in a world where only training one Pokemon is the norm, primarily for a reason I'll explain later. I think this is actually the case in the Pokemon Conquest setting too, so I guess this in this timeline, that just never went away as the world modernized.
In particular I liked the one-sided argument over why the narrator had bought a fire stone for the arcanine but not Nida; at other times it felt like Nida wasn't saying much and was mostly letting the narrator say their piece, but the moon stone bit at the end was more interactive and we got much more of that "negative space" view of Nida and how she's reacting to all this.
I imagined that Nida was a bit too stunned by the initial confession to speak for some time after that, which is why the narrator had a string of uninterrupted lines in the middle.
This piece overall didn't feel like it knew exactly what tone it wanted to strike. Like I said, you definitely could have played it either straight or humorously, and based on the ending, I think you were going for "straight" (or at least more straight than parody). However, in other places, particularly earlier on, the story felt comedic. For example, when the narrator's referring to their "threadbare excuses" and "petty lies," it's funny, but it's also hard for me to take the story seriously as a heartfelt confession, because that doesn't feel like a genuine way that people tend to talk about their mistakes to me. I think the "Of course, I only said that she could stay with me..." paragraph is where it felt like it switched over from comedy into something more heartfelt (but still humorous). At that point you're done with the direct parodying of cheating tropes and move on to the moon stone argument. You don't want to lose that tongue-in cheek sort of tone, I don't think, but perhaps toning down the narrator's over-the-top speech here and there would heighten the emotional impact of the story a bit.
Yeah, I originally intended for this to be a purely humorous piece, but then I realized I didn't really have any jokes besides the sillyness of the cheating analogy and the narrator's various lies to cover it up. That in itself would've been much too short, so I just sort of kept going, writing out what I thought would come next, and it ended up switching tones entirely. In retrospect I should've put more effort into maintaining a single tone - I usually think that consistency of tone is overrated, but that's probably more true for longer works than shorter ones, and in this case I think it really hurt the piece.
Dozens of them!! (This is making me think of cows being the most dangerous large animal in the UK, for some reason. They do kill a few people a year!)
"Dozens" is probably true as a worldwide statistic here, but not for just Kanto.
I was a little confused by your use of dashes in this one; sometimes you go with a longer en(?) dash surrounded by spaces, and sometimes you use what I think is a hyphen with one space after it. I'm not sure how you're choosing whether to go with one or the other, or why you want to distinguish between the different types of usage.
The longer dashes were meant to represent the narrator moving from one idea to the next in their speech, without slowing down enough for it to constitute two separate sentences (or because the first part was only a fragment), while the hyphens were supposed to represent the narrator getting interrupted. Looking back, I really did use a
lot of those long dashes, and perhaps I was a bit sloppy with that.
This is the fun flavor of parody that makes you deeply question the source material. I'm here for it, although I imagine it's a narrow audience and it's definitely a hard line to balance--it's got the same type of "wow this premise is a little absurd if taken at face value" that I find emblematic with a lot of your work, but this time we're laughing at a crumbling relationship where one party is trying to guilt the other into staying after doing atrocious things, instead of like, Birch fighting mecha Groudon or something.
I'm totally here for it, since slapping canon/fanon dissonance in the face is an excellent brand, but it's a rough sell and I see why you'd be expecting mixed results on it. It's more of the "oof, rip" laughter than belly laughs, because at some level this fic also goes really deeply into ideas of trust, hurt, vulnerability, and so forth. It lands for me though, and in particular I like this reframing because, like, it's saying the quiet part that goes unsaid with all the people who cheer for Ash to ditch his shitty and weak pokemon for OG greats like Charizard, Butterfree loses too much--framing it with the terms used more in cheating in a romantic relationship conveys how absurd that kind of mentality is if those pokemon are supposed to be your friends/partners.
Hmm - I wasn't really intending for this to be a parody when I wrote it, because it's so far from the actual canon. It's definitely true that in most of my universes, you definitely can't expect to go about team-building like you can in the videogames and expect to get away with it.
Monologue is hard to establish characters in, especially with the central premise that the narrator isn't super trustworthy/has withheld information before, but I think you do a solid job.
Hey, thanks! In general I'm pretty worried about my ability to establish characters that aren't one-dimensional comedic archetypes, so it means a lot to hear this from someone as good at subtle character work as you are.
I think you do a nice job with the monologue implying what's going on in the opening. We get a sense of Nida feeling weak, wanting this rematch, and the trainer awkwardly trying to dissuade her from a match he knows she's unlikely to win while assuring her that nonono, it's not that she's weak or anything! Undertones that he's kind of more reluctant to lose her battles while trying to make it out to be out of concern for her; after all, no real reason she shouldn't fight losing battles if she really wants to, right? But it's still fairly understandable that he's trying to tell her things like no, being angry doesn't actually help you win.
Hmm - I didn't actually intend for there to be any undertones about the narrator being reluctant to lose battles. The primary reason why the narrator didn't want Nida to go ahead with the Thrasher fight was that they knew she'd only become even more mopey and bitter after losing. Also, they knew that Nida cared a lot about the fight, and were correct in their assessment that there wouldn't be a second chance - to Nida, Thrasher is her biggest rival, but to Thrasher, Nida is just some rando he happened to fight a few times.
The whole mankey attack image is delightfully silly and lends more absurdity to when the trainer is super melodramatic about how they nearly died. I wouldn't put it past a Walrein fic to have someone actually die to a Mankey attack, but in this context I'm definitely inclined to read it as some over-the-top melodrama on his part.
The narrator was definitely playing up the danger, but in this universe there actually was like a 5% chance they would've died, and a 15% chance of getting permanently maimed. Growlithe's intervention made those odds
worse though, by escalating the situation.
No matter how he justified his way into keeping Arcanine, which isn't bad on the face of it, the going behind Nida's back on it with an absurdly insistent series of lies is the really shitty part, and he's only cornered into apologizing for that offhandedly when called out, and then goes right back to justifying himself in the next breath. Good on Nida for dumping him.
I'm not sure why you thought the narrator only admitted and apologized for the 'cheating' after being "cornered into it" and "called out" on it - the entire premise of the fic was about them voluntarily confessing to the cheating and lying, after which they immediately apologize for it. Yes, they do move on to try to explain how it happened, but I generally don't count people's attempts at explaining or justifying their misdeeds as further points against them. I think that that dynamic can lead to scenarios where someone is accused of a bad thing, and then it's impossible for them to disprove it because all attempts to rebut it are only taken as further evidence of their badness.
We get the sense he got frustrated over time with Nida being not that strong and stubbornly insisting on fighting battles she can't win, but instead of really communicating about it he went and found a stronger Pokémon.
I don't think it's fair to say the narrator specifically went searching for a stronger Pokemon, at least assuming their explanation of how they met Arcanine was true. I was trying to imply with the opening that they
had been attempting to communicate with Nida, but it hadn't produced much fruit. Also, in this world, breaking off a relationship with a Pokemon because they're too weak would be seen as like ending a relationship with someone because you think they're too ugly. It's not something a "good" trainer would do or even insinuate doing.
"There are lots of trainers who have two pokemon these days – sometimes more than two, even!" cracked me up.
Thanks, this line was one of my favorites when I was writing it.
Just, yeah, this is how arguments go. Reaching for justifications, awkward self-contradiction, swerving to a new topic when this one's lost, new protestations and reasons every time one's knocked down, the other party hitting potshots when they can even when they're rather besides the point. I think it gave this a level of realism, despite the silly stuff like the excuses near the beginning. People do be like that.
I wouldn't say that the narrator ever contradicted themselves here, or that Nida even "knocked down" any of their points about how her fighting the Arcanine would be a bad idea. The narrator was consistent about evolution making a Pokemon stronger in the short term, but premature evolutions being bad for a Pokemon in the long term. What they were responding too with "That's not what I said!" was Nida saying something like "Weren't you just saying that evolution made Pokemon weaker, now?" which was an unfair strawman of their position.
No shit Sherlock. What makes you think you can whip out this juggernaut of a confession when the first interaction didn't go too well either?
Although perhaps it wasn't the best time for the confession, to be fair, there really hadn't been any
good times for it recently - Nida's insecurity had been an ongoing issue for a while at that point, and the narrator was right about them perhaps not being able to muster up the nerve to make the confession if they let it go then.
Ok, so, just out of curiosity: How many trainers die each year by Nidorino attacks? I think for this year it's one and the cops say it was justified.
Interestingly, probably less than the number killed by Nidoran, since they're more common, harder to see and therefore easier to startle into sudden attack, and also generally less mature and more likely to respond to situations violently. Also I guess it's worth pointing out that I strongly disagree that murder is called for in this situation.
Oh, you gaslighting son of a bitch!
I realize that the meaning of the term 'gaslighting' has perhaps broadened somewhat besides its original meaning of trying to make someone think they're insane by attempting to convince them their perceptions of events are delusional, but I still really don't see how it applies here? Like, it's not even
dishonest to point out that the Arcanine would be hurt if the narrator suddenly broke off their relationship - she probably would be! The original concept of 'gaslighting' was genuinely useful, I think, but it really gets diluted down if it can be used to mean 'any kind of social manipulation'.
The short piece of worldbuilding about how Nida trains for the League is pretty interesting. I love seeing the league set up as other trainers grinding xp to get up there. In the game, everyone just waits for you to pass through, this makes it feel much more alive.
Yeah, I have to imagine that a more realistic version of the games would have most trainers try to schedule matches with particular people in advance rather than just having battles with whoever they bump into while traveling.
I admittedly mostly stumbled upon this one-shot mostly by accident, and noticed from the first paragraph that it's about a Nida that uses Double Kick. I happen to write for a Nida that uses Double Kick, so I found it a bit of a funny coincidence. So let's take a gander at what's going here and do a blind read (minus checking the disclaimer) and see where this goes...
When I was writing this I thought "Hmm, what's a good name for a Nidorina? How about 'Nida'?" and didn't realize I was using the same name from
Fledglings until after it was published. I didn't realize the further connection of also having an Arcanine in the story until you pointed it out in this review, though.
I mean, if this Nida is what I think she is... I wouldn't be too sure about that. I mean, sure, it probably couldn't work consistently, but bunnies know a thing or two about hopping. :V
I guess in this world earthquake just lasts too long to avoid it solely by jumping. Also, Nidorina morphology is probably a little less suited for jumping then a Nidoran's would be.
Nida: "No you're not." >:|
This is one of the areas where I think the tone inconsistency hurt the story - I intended for the narrator's contrition to be sincere, but phrasing it in a funny-sounding way for comedic value probably made it come off otherwise.
You see, this is why you don't spring this news on Pokémon when they're in the midst of doubts about their self-confidence and self-worth.
Unfortunately the doubt had been going on for a while at this point, so there wasn't really a great time to do it.
***
One thing that surprised me a bit with the responses was the level of antipathy for the narrator. They breached Nida's trust and did a bad thing, yes, and I don't think Nida was wrong to leave them at the end, but I had intended for the story to be a bit more ambiguous - almost a tragedy, really. I guess a big reason for the discrepancy was that in my own personal imagining, everything the narrator said was basically accurate - they exaggerated the odds of them dying in the Mankey attack, and laid it on thick when talking about the "soul-deep longing" in Growlithe's eyes, but otherwise were completely honest. Premature evolution really
does hurt your potential in the long term, Nida really
wasn't ready to evolve while Growlithe was, the narrator actually did make genuine efforts to try to get Growlithe placed with another trainer and did sort of blunder into keeping her almost accidentally, they really
did feel obligated to her for saving them from the Mankey, they actually
would've done the same for almost any Pokemon in that situation (save for perhaps very odious or difficult to care for Pokemon like Grimer or Onix). Obviously, of course, it was entirely reasonable for anyone to expect that some or all of these things could be false, given the narrator's previous lies, and also the fact that the explanation of how they met Growlithe seemed too perfectly calculated to make them appear maximally sympathetic (which occurred because, in reality, it
had been calculated by me to make the narrator more sympathetic and the story seem more tragic).
Another thing is the protagonist's motivation - a lot of people seemed to believe the protagonist had 'cheated' on Nida because they were tired of losing with her and wanted a stronger Pokemon, but that wasn't what I had in mind. The reason the 'new' Pokemon was stronger and rarer than Nida came from a decision by the author, not the narrator - I made the 'new' Pokemon be an Arcanine so that
Nida would come to the conclusion that the narrator was replacing her because she was weak, to increase the level of pain and drama. But the protagonist's actual motivation was
fear - they were
afraid of being alone. The only real hint I gave to this was that the protagonist mentioned being anxious about Nida leaving them during their walk where they ended up meeting Growlithe -
so anxious, in fact, that they missed an alert for a life-threatening situation! In my internal canon for this world, which obviously never got mentioned, there's a stigma against not having a Pokemon companion once you're past a certain age - after all,
surely only a loser or a terrible person would be unable to get a Pokemon to agree to stay with them. At the very least, it's a marker of being lower class. This is mostly why there's the social rule about only training one Pokemon at a time - to make sure that there's "enough" Pokemon for everyone (although of course few people would actually admit this is the reason).
From the protagonist's perspective, they had
no good options after meeting Growlithe. If they told Nida that she was going to be staying with them for a while until they found another trainer for her, Nida would likely have misinterpreted the situation and abandoned them, given her immaturity and that their relationship was already in a rough patch at the moment. Then they'd be left with Growlithe, but - easy come, easy go, you know? Growlithe would likely also leave them soon. If the protagonist had told Growlithe that they absolutely couldn't stay with them while looking for another trainer, and had to either return to the wild or get dumped off at a homeless Pokemon shelter, that would've seemed really cruel to say to a Pokemon who had just saved their life - and people in that society would've
agreed with that take, and called the narrator a bad person for having done so. So, unwilling to face either option, they decided to simply keep Growlithe a secret while trying to find another trainer to take her in. But, as the protagonist mentioned, Growlithe didn't like any of the other trainers she was introduced to - what were they supposed to do,
force her to join one of them? And then Growlithe kept asking the protagonist to take her to battles and contests - and a
good trainer is supposed to listen to their Pokemon's wants, right? They could hardly just leave her at home to rot. And then she asked for the fire stone - and the narrator could see she was genuinely ready to evolve, so how could they deny her?
Yes, the right thing to do would've been to simply explain the situation to Nida at the beginning, and then accept whatever consequences arose from that. But that would've required a certain degree of courage, wouldn't it? It's easy, of course, to say that
you would've been brave enough to do the right thing in that situation - and perhaps you would've been. But in general I think people tend to overestimate their level of courage when it comes to doing things which will likely result in a reduction of their social status. It's an understandable flaw, in my view, and I guess I'm inclined to a degree of forgiveness for it given that the protagonist
does, eventually, work up the guts to confess their misdoing. They could've, at that point, found a way to break off their relationship with Nida without ever letting her know about Arcanine, by that point secure that Arcanine was going to stay with them. But they did genuinely still care about Nida, and wanted to do right by her.
Naturally, almost none of this was conveyed in the story at all, so it's totally understandable no one else had the same perspective on it that I did. However, I do want to point out that in real life, we rarely see these kinds of events alongside all the context for them, and it's easy to pronounce judgment based on a simplified version of the story that matches to a pre-existing pattern - ah, this person
has to be lying, they're obviously an abusive asshole - ah, if true, this would be inconvenient for cause X, so whoever said that
must be a terrible person who hates cause X! And then I think there's a dynamic where you feel compelled to give stronger condemnation to these things than you would otherwise, lest someone think that
you support an abuser or hate cause X.
***
However, despite my surprise at how much people's interpretation of the story differed from my own, I'm still grateful to everyone who reviewed. I'm glad the story was enjoyed and I had fun writing it. Your responses were thoughtful and helpful, and made me think much deeper about the story.
...unfortunately, I'm afraid I can't let things end there. For, you see, I have a confession of my own to make: I stole the central joke of this fic from a blog post by My Little Pony fanfic author John Perry, where he 'confessed' that he was cheating on MLP by seeing a different cartoon. The line "And it’s very serious between us now" is something I think I took almost verbatim, although sadly John Perry deleted his Fimfiction account so there's no way to check. I can only hope all of you find it in your hearts to forgive me for this terrible crime.
