Pokémon Acquisition: A Roost Spin-off

[K_S]

time to finish this off!

Spoiler: Chapters 5-6

the formula scene is where the money thing stops being abstract. a weeks worth is a fourth of Daisys monthly budget. Giovanni loads up another seven cans without asking and thats half a months pay just sitting there. and if this goes longer than two weeks shes burning through contest winnings that kept her housed for three months.

the math is right there. shes doing the math in real time. and Giovanni just... covers it. doesnt make a thing of it. but Daisy understands what it means. :( he is your dad. hes your dad! boogie woogie woogie!

Spoiler: Chapters 5-6

Shes been aware for a while. But its a quiet scene to show undoutably that shes his. He will support her. No matter what


(Well until MANGA canon hits but thats its own insanity)

the pacifier aisle is some great late stage capitalism work which is genuinely fucked up. toxic glitter marked "dont put in mouth", but also it gets to show just how prepared Giovanni is.

Gios a man hell bent on doing better. And he wont let daisy make amy serious mistakes if he can help it.

Giovanni checking plastic safety ratings because he took nine parenting classes and learned baby products are full of poison. this isnt played for laughs either tho it is a little just... God its so dark you gotta laugh a little like damn isnt that real, its just... real. late stage capitalism will absolutely sell you toxic shit for your baby and make it cute.

Yep. It has and will. Gios not wrangling w quality control in the markets. He does not have enough time for that insanity. But it does show that even w wealth theres some staggering holes...

and THEN the racism. weve heard about it and seen it but now we really really get into it.

Ohh yeah this is your first encounter. Roost has some nasty scenes (where Green recalls Silver getting viciously hazed for being a ittalian and neither one of the kids (silver was like 5 at that point and green was eight amd bothbwere incredibly poorly socialized per canon events) know how to deal with it or gett why it was a thing... shes explaining the words to her parents and gio, all completely confused and wondering why gios looking ticked and her parents are making mute "stop now" motions).

but the real examples are in my anthologies Villiantines. Fur flies between fractions. Theres dead people in the end of a few examples. (Gio loses a beloved niece from police brutality. Grace is assulted by the police for assisting foreigners/being unpatriotic, amd is later nearly assasinated)

staff following them through the store. manager approaching to make sure Giovannis not "bothering" her. nationalist flags in bins at kid-eye-level by the entrance. a security guard for a town with under 100 people??

Glad you liked this small sampling of it tho. And yes. Kantos pretty icky under the table.

"He was very careful to never move suddenly or let his voice hit certain octaves or volumes. Anything that could be construed as hostile was carefully trained away." man thats like 3real5 me isnt it? Ignoring the aggression and hostility and you just need to smile and wave and pretend it's fine cuz if you react you're the problem.

Theres a reason Grace does all the shopping or they rely in delivery.

Im with daisy. I would be planning an out-of-Kanto vacation because "metropolitan areas like Viridian and Vermillion were diverse enough to offer some safety... Pallet clearly was not."

she can leave. he cant. his life is here. :(

Oh he can leave and take his wife and kid. No issues as he has no loyalty to anyone but himself and his small circle... its the Mob/Rocket thatd make things difficult. Hes not don. Just a con'.

the bit where staff interrogate Daisy assuming shes in danger while Giovanni keeps telling her in Italian also too just... AAA ...

Gio: for fricks sake daisy orn is making a ransom as is do not scale this up to harassment levels.

Daisy: cherrily provokes the staff to throw food at her like derainged monkwys and purlions the high end treats for them both.

Giovanni is so valid for his anger and frustration at the world. "ice half of pallet and sleep like a damn innocent after." AND YAKNOW idont blame him! they all suck! But also it's super cute how Daisy bribes him with his own chocolate and they go watch a documentary about violin construction until they both pass out.

Glad you liked it. They are pretty close and i try to show it...

in the end theyre in a shitty situation but they're in it together :)

Very much so. At least until CANON strikes.

OKAY SO, story wrap up! 🎺 to toot toot! what is my opinions and thoughts

Spoiler: Winter wrap up winter wrap up-

So! What happened!

first off, kantos whole system is designed to fail people and it's not a flaw this is a feature cus they all suck. the legal system treats kids as criminals.

Spoiler: Winter wrap up winter wrap up-

Well kids that are abandoned and of undesirable nationalities. Kanto and the world stage is a mess. This is all set after the equivulant of a world war (where gio and surge served, as did maxie and archie tbh) and while Kanto survived, it did not do so well and everyones against everyone right now. That sentiment bleeds out all over the place.

baby products are toxic. childcare is unaffordable. the mob runs an underground railroad because official channels dont work for Italian families.

Official channels would like to evict all the italians. They tried to do so in the past. It went very baddly for them and entrenched Rocket so deep utll take generations to extract them.

Giovanni cant exist in public without being surveilled.

Outside of pallet and fuscia hes fine. Otherwise hick land ahoy.

this is about two people who already have a rocky relationship working together and rebuilding it. its a really interesting look into usually a set of very flat characters in the games and giving them new life by making their situations understandable.

your character voice for Daisy is very strong. she's bitterness, sarcastic, the way she cycles through anger at Oak and anger at herself... she's a very good character and I like her. the worldbuilding is DARK too, really really dark. every system is broken, the custody hearing legalese, the racist legal precedents, the toxic pacifiers, the cost of formula.

Part of this tale, and villiantiens and a few others, is to show the process of fixing things. And how long it takes. Things get better. Slooowly... but its a progress.

Giovanni is also complicated in good ways. hes been Daisys support system and her abuser. hes trying to be better.

Hes had so much therepy. And he tries. And daisy and his wife ground him to keep him frpm royally backsliding...

he has mob connections and uses them to help kids.

When he can. If he can.. the mobs complicated....

he can talk to Pokemon too which is cool! he has to perform as this super non-threatening in public and it costs him.

Pokemon as actual characters works. Amewse calling for help, Nidoking with his Dolly Parton obsession and his criminal record, the whole crew having personalities. I would have loved to see more, but also that's not really what the story is about.

Oh therws more never fear...

overall its a really dark but interesting character study focused on two characters i really never would have thought about before. in the end there's some questions left hanging but it's on purpose, like how is it gonna last long term, is the system actually going to let Daisy keep blue,

Eventually. Tho how that pans outnis going to be... a surpruse i think...

and the most important- Nidoking know Dolly Parton isnt a banette.

He figures it out eventually. And is sad. Until grace gifts him a dolly stuffy and hes happy again.

XD you can feel that at the very least they're both gonna work together so it'll be okay even if its not okay.

but, the typos are breaking immersion fairly constantly. missing spaces, wrong words. this needs a serious editing pass, even if its just throwing it in a spell checker just to get the overall words correct. usually im able to guess what you meant, but it can bring me out of the story :( the pacing can drag in middle sections a bit. chapter 3 with the baby-proofing, parts of chapter 5. you can trim a third of those scenes once we get the idea, but its okay.

also, on occasion the blocking is sometimes unclear. whos doing what where, whos speaking, just adding an extra name or two sometimes can help.

Blocking?

i'm also left wondering what was Oak doing. was it actually an experiment or just criminal neglect? i think i missed that, but its never really fully explained i feel.

but!! overall, this is a strong story with a brutal premise youre committing to. the bones are excellent- character work is there, worldbuilding is compelling, relationships are complicated (which i'm always a fan of!). it needs word corrections and some pacing tightening but the core is solid.

YEA!! good job! and congrats on finishing it!

Glad you enjoyed it and thanks for dropping a line!

 

[rimly]

Spoiler: Response

Oh thats not an automatd system. That be an aide. It comes out during the trial later in my outline...
They dont want her moving the eggs actually. The person behind the camera is one of those stereotypical science trainers w bottle rimmed glasses/vision problems so he thinks shes manhandling an egg.

wait okay so i totally misread that, the voice was so mechanical i just assumed it was automated?? but knowing its literally just some aide with bad eyesight who thinks shes messing with the eggs thats... ahhhgh. like automated cruelty is at least consistent, this is just some dude who cant see right and now a girl is getting forcibly teleported and a baby is in a fire hatchery because of glasses. human error snowballing into catastrophe is so much worse than malice because nobody MEANT for any of it to happen ;c;

Its a bit more benign but no less crazy.
More like neglecting him in a cooker...

that is somehow WORSE than experimenting?? because at least experiments get monitored! like at least someone is paying attention?? even if theyre paying attention for terrible reasons. Oak just... forgot his kid existed. in a fire type hatchery. the bar for parental failure keeps dropping and he keeps clearing it lol

Daisy was also a faiked/washed out kid protagonist that tried to pull a pkmn red/blue aka taje on Rocket. And she failed.
Her injuries are due to the aftermath of that failure.
also in daisy and gios earliest interactions gio was like 19-20, daisy was 10.

oh. OH. okay so she tried to take down Rocket at ten?? and thats how she got hurt and thats how she met him?? that recontextualizes their entire dynamic, i had no clue, shes not just some coordinator he mentored shes a failed kid hero who got permanently injured and hes been carrying guilt about that for like seven years. and the age gap context is important too right, 19-20 meeting a 10 year old means his careful treatment of her isnt romantic care its guilt and responsibility, which explains SO much about why he treats her so gently even when hes being controlling. like he watched a child try to do what he couldnt and she got destroyed for it. no wonder hes like that ;c;

Hes been controlling, and rude. But hes been damn careful not to be cruel. Per the nature ofnthier meeting (and daisys injury which is partially his fault) he treats her as gently as he can.

yeah that makes sense!! and when i said "kind of her abuser" i was pulling specifically from chapter 2 where it says "his verbal nudges could have been considered abusive in a certain light" so i was working from the text there. but your clarification that its controlling/rude but NOT cruel is an important distinction tho, and knowing the foundation of how they met makes that line between controlling and cruel feel way more deliberate on his part

As for the scene... if oak entered gio and daisy would of ripped him to shreds. It was actually gio and orn.

okay that helps!! my issue was literally just tracking who was where physically, "Tall shot an arm in front of Short" is the spot i got lost, i genuinely could not figure out which was which. thats what i mean by blocking, its the spatial positioning in the scene not the dynamics, the dynamics were fine, just needs like one extra name drop and itd be immediately clear

Actually it less criminals and more.. kanto takes care of its own. Until proven otherwise john doe isnt, thus not thier responsibility.

right so its not "treat as criminal" its "prove youre Kantoian or we dont help you." which is somehow damn,,, because its just... policy?? nobody has to be actively evil for the system to abandon people, it just does it by default and calls it procedure. thats really effective worldbuilding honestly, it makes Rockets whole kid recruitment pipeline make perfect sense without anyone needing to be a cartoon villain about it

And as a nidoking, he onky wanted to evolve because hed get hands and be able to change the damn channel.
Gios had to endure years of his mon changing stati8ns mid Rocket stake outs.

LMAO NIDOKING EVOLVED SPECIFICALLY FOR HANDS. TO CHANGE THE RADIO. that's i think the funniest motivation for an evolution ive ever heard. Giovanni suffering through station changes during stakeouts for years is good, and honestly it tracks perfectly with the "you trained him to sentience" thing from chapter 3 where hes timing Earthquake to song lyrics. this mon has priorities and i respect every single one of them.

Ohh yeah this is your first encounter. Roost has some nasty scenes... Gio loses a beloved niece from police brutality. Grace is assulted by the police for assisting foreigners/being unpatriotic, amd is later nearly assasinated

so the Wooper-mart scene is MILD compared to the rest of the verse. cool cool cool ill just... brace myself then :)

Well kids that are abandoned and of undesirable nationalities. Kanto and the world stage is a mess. This is all set after the equivulant of a world war (where gio and surge served, as did maxie and archie tbh) and while Kanto survived, it did not do so well and everyones against everyone right now.
Official channels would like to evict all the italians. They tried to do so in the past. It went very baddly for them and entrenched Rocket so deep utll take generations to extract them.

post-war setting explains so much tho!! Kanto tried ethnic cleansing, it backfired and entrenched Rocket so deep itll take generations to extract them, and now the whole regions running on paranoia with systems designed to exclude.

appreciate all the clarifications genuinely!! knowing Daisy was a failed kid protagonist at ten changes how i read basically everything about their relationship going forward. question tho, you mentioned the teleportation thing being expanded in a oneshot? which one is that?