Aeons and Avatars Contest - Results

[Negrek]

"What Life Has to Offer" by MintyMimix​

How truly infinite the universe was!

An endless expanse of cobalt and crimson forged the lands before Ena as her mind’s eye opened. A curious chirp escaped her maw, and her spiny, skeletal form reticulated as she looked up for the first time.

Floating just above the ground composed of millions of blue metallic plates were her kin. They laughed and played as they flew through the black sky — their Cores flashing with words of excitement.

The joyous glow and buzzes of her brethren beckoned her: come, come new little one; let us bask in the wonders of possibility!

Read the rest on: TR

Judge Comments​

bluesidra

Oooooh I really liked this one! Ena feels truly alien, and yet her reasoning is very cohesive. Where do I even start…? The prose was good. There were a few typos here and there, but nothing groundbreaking. The sentence structure and readability were both great, and that’s way more important in my mind. The choice of words was actually rather simplistic, which drove home the point that this is an infant who is still learning quite well.

Now, back to Ena. Soooooo cool! The description of her slowly growing her plates and eyes, the absolutely mind-blowing abstract-ism in the first part, when she was still part of her mother. I love how you took the concept of infinite energy and ran with it, including all the consequences it would bring to the worldview and morality of Ena. The pov also sticks very closely to her, which meant it took me a while to work out what was actually happening when Ena showed her love to the worlds she encountered. God damn do I love having the narration keep me on my toes like that.

The happenings with Rose being relegated to a sentence and a half felt at first a bit… disappointing, because I thought there would come a lot more exploration of their relationship. But in the end, it made a lot more sense to relegate his presence to a sidenote in her eternal life (and frankly, my petty mind feels satisfied when seeing this self-righteous donkey being denied the time of day).

Usually, the thought of a pokemon having to spend its time in a pokeball gives me existential dread, so I was actually very relieved to see Ena take to being locked away so well. It’s a nice way of interpreting her circumstances and I’m glad she took this mindset. And that she hasn’t given up on her world-ending displays of love like the absolute queen that she is.

Dragonfree

Loved to explore a really alien POV here - Ena's Eternatus identity seeps out of every word in this story, and that was a great choice for this contest. The way that she's innocently fascinated by Life, and believes she's simply helping and nurturing it as she destroys planets, and then finally comes to realize maybe Life can teach her things, too, was a lovely little character arc, and the narration strikes a nice twisted chord between deeply creepy and oddly wholesome in its misguided way.

I did find myself not always entirely clear on what the story was getting at, though. It's always a delicate balance trying to write an alien POV while still ensuring a human reader can understand, and I don't envy you for having to try to juggle that here, with a particularly alien Pokémon. But while I certainly got most of it just fine, it was sometimes legitimately hard to get a grasp on what was actually happening. I'm not sure what the bands of light that let Ena see memories actually are, for instance, and Ena seems to explicitly have a metallic body early on only to suddenly be feeling what it's like to have a physical body for the first time, which left me confused as to what exactly her former body was.

I'm not totally sure what you're going for with the square brackets surrounding some words, either. They do call more attention to those concepts, but just the capitalization would have done that too, and it's just not entirely clear to me why all these things need square brackets and others don't. The closest I've come to understanding it is noticing you use square brackets for concepts the Eternatus larvae have only seen and experienced from the light bands, but even then, there doesn't seem to be a shift towards not bracketing things when Ena proceeds to actually experience things herself in real life - Rose, for instance, is someone she only meets corporeally and can't have been part of any memories she viewed, but he still gets square brackets. This is a very minor nitpick, but it is something that was confusing me a bit throughout the story.

The pacing here also bugged me a little. You have loving descriptions of individual scenes from Ena's early life, only for the last bit, tackling her encounters with the Pokémon world planet we're familiar with, to be much more summarized glimpses that feel almost like an afterthought in comparison. It leaves me curious whether you originally meant to tackle Eternatus POV without getting into Rose or the Darkest Day and then changed your mind late in the game. I do wonder if it could have been more effective to expand and flesh out some of that as much as you did Ena's spawning and final conversation with her mother!

All in all, though, I thought this was a lovely entry - a very in-depth exploration of a legendary's POV with a lot of neat details. It had some proofreading errors and I had some niggles and points of confusion, but overall I thought it was successful in what it was trying to do.

Flyg0n

This entry was an absolute delight. I really liked how you honed in on Eternatus' very alien nature, delving into its origins and life cycle, and ‘unique’ () viewpoint. You really effectively use the unknowing POV to great effect here, and the narrative feels well entrenched in their perspective, yet still clear enough to glean a glimpse of the horrors going on beneath the surface.

The use of words and brackets, mixed with an almost child-like naivete is quite chilling, and leans nicely into a sense of cosmic horror. It's rather refreshing and frightening because in this case, Eternatus just wants to help! Such a shame silly creatures on these little planets don’t want mothers' love...

I really liked the slow building, from Ena’s hatching to devouring, to finally encountering a world of pokemon, who were the first to be able to fight back against her. It all finally comes to a peak when Rose’s machinations lead her to be struck down and captured by the Galar protag.

I think most elements of this story are really solid, from character voice, prose and plot. It also captures the ‘legendary theme’ quite nicely for me. The only part that held me back just a little was the ending. While it was very cool to see it be a sort of ‘canon compliant’ backstory for Eternatus, I did find myself hoping for a bit more. It slots neatly into the game's story, and provides perspective on Eternatus in a great way. But it doesn’t go beyond this.

By the time it got to the end, I actually found myself wishing for a bit more conclusive ending, or to at least go beyond the game's story. I get the sense that maybe Ena’s perspective on devouring worlds is being affected by their human friend, and I definitely understand the decision to opt for a more open ending. Yet at the end of the day, I rather wonder if Ena coming to a stronger conclusion, whether a wrong or right one, might have had more impact.

Still, this entry was very impactful and well executed, and definitely stuck in my mind with its flavorful language and creative lore.

Negrek

Hey, Minty! I'm filling in for auspicious here; feel free to reach out to him for informal feedback if you'd like. My opinion was not considered when scoring the entries, but I wanted to be sure you got as many reviews as everyone else.

I love that you picked one of the more alien legendary pokémon and then really leaned into that otherworldliness with this entry. It makes sense that a spacefaring pokémon with such strange physiology would view the world very differently than what we're accustomed to, and I thought you got that across very well. This approach stood out among the contest entries, and I thought it demonstrated great use of the theme.

In general I enjoyed what you did with the xeno POV quite a bit, with the light-based communication and the communal development as larvae that transitions to a solitary spacefaring existence. I thought the image of the Mother Etrnacore just before Ena leaves it was particularly striking. We do love aliens being alien. I also thought you did a good job with the unreliable narrator aspect of the POV; it makes perfect sense that Ena views her own actions and desires as naturally good and beneficial to all, and I think you did a good job of selling her perspective as what she would naturally think while showing indirectly that she's a mass murderer, heh. It gave the story a bit of a creepy-cute vibe that I found really entertaining. There were a couple images that felt out of place with the xeno POV to me--it's always hard for me to understand characters gasping when they don't actually breathe, for example--but overall I like the approach you took with the POV and enjoyed seeing how you think life as an eternatus might play out.

It's interesting that Ena is noted as being a bit eccentric and out of step with her siblings--maybe the others gobble up planets without feeling particularly bad about it, rather than thinking they're bringing joy and love to the planets' lifeforms with the dynamax/eterna energy phenomena? I kind of wondered how the other eternatus relate to life, if Ena is the odd one out.

It was fun to discover that this is actually kind of a backstory fic, since the eternatus POV here is specifically that of the eternatus from the Gen VIII storyline. Unfortunately, those bits didn't feel as fleshed out as the initial setup of Ena growing up and bouncing from planet to planet. I think it could definitely be fun to explore how an eternatus would even interact with a trainer (transmitting information through sound waves, how bizarre!) and how "life" could end up teaching Ena and being like a mother to her, but the story kind of rushed through that bit, simply stating that Ena was content to bide her time and do what her trainer wanted. I really wanted to see more there, since it feels like such a big change, and the brief summary we got wasn't very satisfying to me. I think the story would have worked fine either if you spent more time fleshing out Ena's time in Galar and showing a bit more about how her experience with humans changed her perspective, or if you cut the Galar bits and left this as a story about how eternatus live in their natural habitat (maybe with a cute ominous ending where Ena's arriving at a new planet filled with an exciting new form of life called "pokémon"...). As it is the last couple scenes feel a little tacked on, which I think gets in the way of what you were doing in the beginning rather than enhancing it.

You did have a fair number of typos, tense slips, and other small technical erros throughout this story; it might have benefitted from another read-through or beta feedback to get things reading a little more smoothly. Also, I wasn't quite sure about the words in brackets. My guess is that these would be words relating to planetary concepts that Ena wouldn't have experienced as a larva, such as soil, plants, the ocean, etc. However, there were times when you'd have words like "forest" or "ash" that wouldn't get the bracket treatment, and I wasn't sure whether that was because I was misunderstanding what words were supposed to be bracketed or because you'd missed some.

In the end I thought this was a very striking story that made good use of the theme. I wanted a bit more from some parts of it, but as an exploration of eternatus I think it holds up well. Glad to see an entry from you, and I hope you had a good time writing this!

 

[Negrek]

"A Wonderful Leaf Boat" by tomatorade​

Second/Third Place Miraidon Flight​

If Latios were to close his eyes and rely entirely on his maimed threads of memory, he would have nothing but smears of colour. Those greens for the grass beneath his once-paws, grey, maybe blue, for the sky and one streak—one brilliant crystalline streak of blue—cutting through the murk and vaporising the scene. It always smelled like the salt and rot of the sea, always felt warm and sunny even when his thoughts were rainy. If he imagined his mouth open, body coiled and poised to spring on summer bugs as he used to, the taste would be sweet.

Even now, hundreds of metres above the beach he once stood on, the impression sends his heart racing.

That would be him.

The first time he saw himself...

Read the rest: TR

Judge Comments​

auspicious

OOO I’m a huge fan of Latios, and this was great!

Theme-wise: this is a bit of a different take on “Legendary POV” than I’ve seen some other stories do, but I’m really fond of it. Midas’s slow spiral into apathy is very tragic. It’s a more desolate take on the theme, depicting immortality in a darker way - what happens when someone’s lost their human connections and seen everything there is to see? You did a good job with it :).

One of the main things in story is its relationships - Midas’s relationship with his mother, and then Mew. There’s a couple big turning points in this story; when Midas meets Mew and realizes that the old Latios had actually died, but the main one is when Midas’s mother dies. His…sense of purpose? Motivation? Gets shaken. After his mother dies, he just sort of detaches from the world and retreats to being with Mew. You did a good job showing his grief, and how it affects him and how he treats the more “mortal” world.

On Mew: hm. I get the sense that she’s probably what Midas could become in the future/is becoming already (actually, I think Midas in the story explicitly says this, haha.). I like how he mirrors her. Mew has this sense of being kind of detached, despite saying she’s never quite managed to isolate herself completely. Historical events are trivial for her; she’s just seen so much that even if she still cares, it all becomes inconsequential. But she lets Midas believe she picked him to be the next Latios (though later in the story he seems to realize it was probably just luck?).

On the ending: Midas at the end is still helping people, but it’s lost meaning to him. The leaf boat was a really nice touch, calling back to earlier in the story where he’s making sure all the ants get off safely, versus now. He’s just going through the motions, but it doesn’t mean anything to him anymore. :(. Good job, haha.

I have a few complaints; the prose can be slightly overwritten/cluttered and I had to reread a few times to parse what was going on (I’ll give a couple examples in the linequotes). You’ve also got a few typos here and there - just wrong words or mispelled words - that can be a bit distracting.

Overall, I thought this was a fun, if bit darker, take on the theme. I enjoyed this, thanks for submitting :).

And the pokemon who made the waves was not as kind as him for making them so great.

not really sure what’s going on in this sentence

He caught the boats before the sea, batting them up to shore. Watching also as the passengers crawled to the safety of the grass.

aw midas is super sweet (also this becomes super painful rereading. good job!)

All they had for the procession were a handful of straggly blue feathers the wingull found washed up on the beach.

oh noooo :(

Down from the hill, baffled all the way but clearly in no mood to explain why everyone seemed so sad.

unclear who’s baffled here - Midas or his mother?

But not many would not have noticed it impact in a sleeping child—hitting Midas like a speedboat crashing against a seawall.

metaphor here felt a little out of place/incongruous with the rest of the story’s vibes

Only then did he understand why they buried the feathers, so another protector could take root in someone else.

“another protector could take root in someone else” sounds a little odd.

Early summer’s memories became real—instead of blinking, only to see the trailing spray of seawater left behind by a ghost, he became it, carving his claws through the whitecaps, feeling the chill spray and salt sticking to his feathers.

oooo i really love this sentence

bluesidra

Oh wow. That was… unexpected. But in a very good way. Who knew that a small-scale slice-of-life and legendaries would mix so well.

This entry in particular has a very grounded, yet surreal feeling to it. Somehow, it feels like this shouldn’t be pokemon. It feels so much more removed from human civilization than mainline usually is. The pokemon species themselves are never named (except for mew and eevee) and yet it still works wonderfully. All in all, this gave me great Watership Down vibes, but with less heartache.
Except for the mom’s death. Thank you for giving me existential dread again.

But speaking of mom. Both her and Midas have a very distinct personality, and they grow in subtle ways over the course of the story. Midas sounds much older at the end than in the span when he returned every evening to his forest. And the mom never lost her gruff and practical, but loving nature.

Mew is a sorta unchanging constant of ~ v i b e s ~, who is really enjoying her time in her creation. Out of all takes on creator gods in this fandom, this is strangely the most soothing one. Just a cat, vibing and eating berries, and being able to see the beauty in its creation.

Oh, btw, I loved how Midas returned home all the time and never really moved out of their burrow until his mama passed. And absolutely not because I’ve also moved back in with my parents. Definitely not.

All in all a very happy, laid-back quality entry. 10/10 would recommend.

Dragonfree

This is a fascinating story with a huge scope, and I thought it was definitely one of the most interesting and expansive takes on the theme - tackling a mortal Pokémon ascending to the legendary role, the weirdness of being put in this position of protector, the awkwardness of interacting with his much smaller mother after the change, the heartwrenching treatment of the now-immortal Midas having to helplessly watch her wither away and die, and finally how in immortality everything begins to blur together and memories fade, and Mew's advice that they'll never stop caring and hurting but it's still worth it.

I thought you did a nice job with Midas's mother in particular; she has a very distinct sense of character as this grumpy, kind of cold parental figure who nonetheless loves him very much, and I thought the buildup and emotional writing as she ages and dies was really strong. But I also enjoyed Midas's naïvety as he learns (him being motivated by the childish belief the previous Latios had just abandoned everyone, oof), as well as Mew's particular character, nonchalant but sympathetic, this older immortal finding joy in just watching ants. They're all strongly characterized and have a distinct charm to them.

The biggest thing to drag it down for me was that on both of my main readthroughs of the story, I found my attention simply wandering off it a lot in the first half, until around the point where Midas has met Mew a couple of times. I think it's largely because up to that point, it feels a lot less focused, with more dense imagery and slow scenes just sort of describing Midas's everyday existence as Latios without a very clear sense of direction, where the second half develops a much more interesting sense of themes and character dynamics and emotion, which are the story's greatest strengths. I think some of the first half here could have been condensed to make the story stronger overall and get to the more powerful moments earlier - or perhaps Mew could have been introduced earlier, frontloading that character dynamic more and letting it serve as more of a running thread throughout.

While the prose was atmospheric and evocative, it also felt like it had a fair number of oddities and mistakes - typos, words swapped out for other similar (or not even that similar) words, missing words, extra words, strange phrasing that I needed to squint at a bit to understand, or couldn't quite understand at all. It made the story more opaque than it needed to be at times, with sentences that didn't quite parse right and required extra concentration to piece together, and that perhaps played a part in why my brain slid off it a bit (though I actually feel like I noticed more of these mistakes in the second half). A couple of times it awkwardly took me out of otherwise strong emotional moments.

Also, I had a really hard time in this story figuring out what sort of Pokémon Midas (pre-transformation) and his mother were. On the first page you describe Midas as having a bushy brown tail and his mom as having blue ears; from there I was just trying to remember any Pokémon species that has both a bushy brown tail and blue ears until finally on page 15 out of 21 we learn he was adopted. It was a significant distraction from everything else about the story on my first read, just combing through the text for any other kind of cue or hint as to what species I was meant to be picturing. Having these tiny early clues at all while making them so vague and kind of misleading is a counterproductive choice, I think; either making it plain early that he's an Eevee and she's a Nidorina or leaving it completely vague until we're in a position to be able to actually identify them would have worked better without leaving the reader to puzzle over it for most of the story.

One last nitpick: I found myself kind of surprised that after calling what's presumably an actual boat a "human craft" at the beginning, Midas's narration then goes on to insistently call leaves drifting downstream in general "boats". I'm a bit surprised in general by why he would call leaves boats even when they aren't carrying ants (it feels like an apt metaphor when they have 'passengers' but less so otherwise) - but more importantly, if he knows the word "boat", surely he'd use it for human boats, too?

All in all, though, I think this story has very interesting themes for the contest, memorable characterization and some very solid emotional execution. It could be tightened up pacing-wise and read more smoothly, but otherwise I thought it was very well done.

Flyg0n

Once I sat down and really took the time to ingest the story, I found myself hooked. The prose felt very unique, and very deliberate. Right off the bat I got the sense this entry would be a bit sad and bittersweet, especially with the opening. It did not disappoint!

I like how you capture Midas' ignorance and naivete in the first parts, there’s a clear sense to me he does not quite understand the world around him fully, culminating in the moment of his anger towards the former Latios, not realizing it apparently died. You tread a nice line between leaving clues for the reader without ever stepping outside Midas point of view.

From there, the story really took off (hahahha). Midas determines to become the protector (Latios), and he actually does! I thought It was fascinating to examine the concept of a mortal pokemon ascending to godhood. At first it seems fun enough, and Midas is satisfied with his role. But piece by piece, we see that the burden of immortality is a sad one too. He eventually says goodbye to his mother, and his home, and the life he once knew. I rather enjoyed this characterization of Mew and their relationship.

Over the course of a few interactions, I really get a sense of their characters. And the tragedy and joys of how immortality affects them. I also love how you weave in how Latios speed is both a boon and a burden. Midas fears straying too far, or forgetting where he came from. Leaving everything behind, being like the previous protector.

I liked the lead up to the ending and the way in which the story has this slight sense of anti-climax, bittersweet tone. It works for this story very well. The leaf boat symbolism in both the beginning of the story, and at the end, and the ties between the tranquility and familiarity of the river blended with how the ocean is scarier and easy to drown something in (the way Midas, in a way, drowns...).

I did find myself briefly confused at one tiny part, which was Midas species. Before the explicit mention, it was a bit unclear, at first I was pretty set on imagining a Zigzagoon for some reason (the colors + a particular mention of Zigzagoon that I interpreted as a self comparison). I don’t think this is a mark against it, given the story deals with Midas feeling distant from his past life, so perhaps that's intentional(?). There were also a few minor grammar and capitalization bits, but they were so small it didn’t overall hurt my enjoyment. In the end, this whole piece felt like a great exploration of the sadder and tougher parts of being an immortal legend, and touches on some weighty topics quite deftly, without feeling too depressing. Amazing work.

 

[Negrek]

"Who Really Needs Who" by RJR Basimilus​

The sky was a sickly ochre, droplets of rain slowly and paradoxically falling upwards from the ocean into the blazing sun. A heavy silence blanketed the stony tower standing tall in its lonely
vigil over the waves, a single lonely cloud hovering over the top.

Rayquaza, peering over the edge of the Sky Pillar, stuck his tongue out - catching a few drops of rain as they flew upwards. He grimaced, drawing back into a coil.

“I may have overdone it slightly,” he said slowly, “Maybe I’m getting old.”

Sitting on the opposite side, his legs dangling off the edge, Palkia glanced over at the other dragon. “Old?” Palkia made a face. “You think so?”

“On second thought, maybe it’s them who aren’t getting any older,” Rayquaza grumbled.

There was a distant roar followed by a vicious grating that sounded like metal being ripped apart. Rayquaza winced, sighing.

“To tell the truth, this has happened before - and I had more than enough strength to spare. This time though, I just recently had to deal with one of those-” Rayquaza clicked his claws, searching for a word. “-trainers. There’s always a few really tough ones that show up every few years.”

“So we’re the help?” Palkia asked. He smiled, the opals in his shoulders glowing slightly. “I didn’t think you knew how to ask for help...”

Judge Comments​

Chibi Pika

Alright, this is definitely a different take on Legendary interactions. :P Palkia has a memorable presence and the legendary banter is fun. It’s hard to describe the vibe… it’s almost down-to-earth, but with an absurdity that cuts through all the ‘grandness’ you’d normally ascribe to a titanic, earth-shaping clash between four gods. It twists the epic into the mundane. There’s lots of physical details that keep the scene strong in the reader’s head, a good sense of space (ha), and visual humor despite the lengthy dialogue.

It does feel a bit disconnected that Dialga feels such a conflict over what his domain is specifically in response to Rayquaza’s request. It doesn’t directly relate to apprehending Groudon and Kyogre at all, aside from just being something that could, in theory, be sped up if he actually used his power. It had me wondering if he’d just never thought about it before, or…?

Maybe if it was like, Palkia’s power being very practical for apprehending Groudon (warping Groudon into position, teleporting attacks away, etc), and Dialga feeling like his power isn’t so helpful without also being a risk. It makes sense to be hesitant to do things like reverse Kyogre because time is meant to only flow one way; it’s not designed to be navigated back and forth the way space is. But then Palkia’s encouragement could help him see that as the guardian, he’s also the only one in a position to manipulate it safely.

In any case, I enjoyed Palkia’s way of describing time to Dialga, as well as the fact that Dialga thought that guarding time meant refraining from manipulating it. And it’s a fun detail that Palkia’s unusual outlook is the result of traveling with a human.

(Side note, but I kept wondering if there’d be an explanation for why Groudon v Kyogre would cause rain to fall upward, then wondered if I was being dense and it was meant to be a metaphor, and then after re-reading… I’m still not sure!)

It did feel like the story dragged out a bit after Dialga’s revelation. That seemed like the high point of the story, but it was only halfway through, and then… there’s a whole lot more banter and small talk afterward that doesn’t accomplish toooo much. I did like the fact that Dialga was confident enough to decide not to rewind the fight if it might compromise the ability for Groudon and Kyogre to learn a lesson from it. Although it was slightly undercut by the fact that they… don’t appear to have learned anything. Ah well. :P

I liked how Rayquaza’s ‘role’ isn’t anything more than stopping the other two, leading Dialga to realize that a legend can be more than just their job—that they can live life how they like it (as Palkia had been doing, as Palkia learned from humans.) Overall, while a bit meandering and unfocused at times, there were a lot of fun and endearing interactions here, and it serves the theme that, even for legends who ostensibly have a ‘purpose,’ life (and time) can be what you make of it.

HelloYellow17

I admit I was not prepared for “average day at the office except it’s legendary Pokémon,” but you know what, I’m here for it. ?

Palkia is such a bro, but like in the best way possible. He’s so likeable! I really love the dynamic he and Dialga share, like that of an older brother mentoring his younger brother. It’s very wholesome with relaxing, laid back vibes.

The dynamic between Groudon, Kyogre, and Rayquaza is also amazing. I love that the former two are going at each others’ throats, only to learn later that they’re just having a sisterly spat, and then the hints at the end that maybe they weren’t even really fighting at all, but helping Rayquaza feel needed? ? The snippet of them bonding at the end was hilarious. Massive sibling energy all around here.

There’s only one little hiccup for me here, and it’s that I don’t quite understand how Palkia’s pep talk gave Dialga the breakthrough he needed. It wasn’t super clear to me how those dots connected, nor how that reassured Dialga enough that he could suddenly understand and use his powers very precisely and almost flawlessly. It was all very vague, and even at the end, when Dialga said “time is everything,” I struggled to see how that was exactly relevant to everything that came before it.

It was also a little uncertain whether the main focus of the story was meant to be Palkia and Dialga’s relationship, the weather trio’s relationship, or Dialga’s struggles with his powers. While all of them were nice additions to the story, I think the fic would benefit by making the main focus a little clearer and picking one of those to emphasize more than the rest.

But! This was a nice, lighthearted take on the average day in a legendary Pokémon’s life, and I rather liked the relatable way you’ve normalized it like a job they all have to do. Life do be like that sometimes—sometimes it’s dull and thankless, but having a purpose really does make all the difference…especially when you have someone you care about right there to help you. :)

lisianthus

This was quite a novel approach to characterizing Legendary Pokémon. In my eyes, Legendaries have always felt very... regal and elegant (with some notable exceptions), so writing them in such a shonen-esque way was a very bold move. It almost felt like they were acting as gijinkas of themselves, with how human they were made to be. I do believe that because of this I wasn't as captured by it as I would have liked, but I have confidence that this story will find its fans quite easily!

Sinderella

So I really enjoyed the way this opened. I was really into the idea of a couple of all-powerful gods just sitting on a ledge talking casually to each other. The dialogue right in that opening scene really gave me that vibe, and I particularly enjoyed how seemingly unamused Dialga and Palkia were about being called in to “be the help.” The line about “charging a fee” got a good chuckle out of me. I also REALLY liked the imagery of rain raining upward? For some reason? The whole feeling in that opening scene was just really neat, and I dug it a lot. I knew pretty much from the beginning that they were probably going to be dealing with Kyogre and Groudon and I was hype to be right.

I liked the segue into the battling, though I did find it somewhat perplexing that there was no dialogue out of Groudon or Kyogre during the exchanges. As I got to the end, I realized this might have been because they were just rampaging and didn’t have the brain matter to talk, which I understand. However, I maintain that I think maybe just a little bit of backtalk from them might do some good. Nothing crazy, maybe just some broken up, angry quips? Mindless little things to really drive home the fact that they’re pissed off. But this is more of a personal preference and something I would take with a grain of salt.

Where I felt the story started to lose its momentum was around the dialogue and how it pertained to what Dialga and Palkia were doing. I wasn’t really certain how their back-and-forths served the point of the story as a whole. There was a lot of talk about what time was and what Dialga was supposed to do with it and how he was supposed to use it, but I wasn’t sure how that all tied in to them being enlisted to fight Groudon and Kyogre by Rayquaza.

I suppose at the end there was a mention of “Rayquaza struggles with his job too, he enlists others to do it” but I didn’t understand how the concept of “Dialga and Palkia got jipped into wrangling Groudon and Kyogre” somehow fell into the main idea of “Dialga now has a better understanding of what his job entails and what time actually is.” The mention of “Rayquaza is just a mediator” felt like an afterthought attempt to tie everything together in the face of pages of brawling and talking about time manipulation and what a strange job it was. I feel like you had two really good ideas for the story (Dialga and Palkia getting jipped into doing Rayquaza’s job, and Dialga discovering how to better use his ability) but you ended up mixing the two and got something that felt a little bit on the disjointed side. If you do decide to go through with any edits, I definitely encourage you to run with one idea or the other, as I think this story could greatly benefit from it!

I had a good time with this story and I thank you for writing it. Congrats on the entry, and hope to see you around!

 

[Negrek]

And there you have it! That's a wrap for our Aeons and Avatars contest. Once again, a huge shout-out to the winners, the judges, and of course all of the writers who put in time and effort to make this another wonderful one-shot contest. I also hope you, the readers, enjoy sampling some of the over 50,000 words of previews, interviews, and feedback in this thread. I hope we'll see all these excellent one-shots published soon!

As in previous years, authors, please let me know when you publish your stories so that I can link to them from this thread! As I did last year, I've also created an AO3 collection to gather all the stories that end up available on that site. If you end up publishing your work on AO3, feel free to add it to the collection yourself!

There were some big changes to the contest structure this year, and I'd love to hear your feedback! Did the parallel contest strucure work for you, or would you really have preferred pooling all the entries and crowning overall top three winners? Are there any changes you'd like to see made in the future? I have some ideas for new things to try next year, but I'd love to hear any feedback you might have about how this contest came together.

I'll be posting information about the Aeons and Avatars zine next week! In the meantime, I hope you enjoy checking out the results, as well as the contest entries as they begin to be posted. Thanks for another great year!

 

[Flyg0n]

Congrats everyone!!!!!! I'd like to say that WOW Miraidon group had some incredibly good entries and it was SO HARD to choose and everyone should be so proud, you guys wrote some amazing stories, and only in a month!! Big kudos

I'll give an extensive, full write up of thoughts at a later date but for now I'd like the record to state I really loved the dual format with winners in each group!! I think it splits the load and gives a chance to recognize more stories, which is always a boon in community events! Plus it added some... mystery? Definitely a success imo, and worth keeping and and making minor refinments.

And lastly, a link to my entry. because I am a woman of many things, but patience is not one of them

Pokémon - From the Ashes [2023 One-shot Contest]

So without further ado I present... From the Ashes Life Endless desert dunes sprawled before us; an unbroken sea of sand. In the distance rocky canyons gutted the land like reefs, and a dark mountain split the horizon, smoke pouring from the mouth. Together we soared across this expanse...

forums.thousandroads.net

 

[Ambyssin]

Can’t say I’m surprised. “Amby didn’t read the assignment.” Oh well. C’est la vie. Congrats and thanks to the judges. Doubt I’m going to be revising because my limited writing attention has to go to my fic, which increasingly looks like it needs to be fully drafted by a certain point or it will remain unfinished forever. Perhaps I’ll be able to carry some things from this experiment into my long fic. Time will tell~

 

[Chibi Pika]

I had a lot of fun with judging this year, and I think the split format was a godsend because I would have died if I'd had to review 21 entries. :'D Not to mention what Tetra said with it adding more mystery to who wrote what since you don't even know which authors are in your pool--always a good thing, imo.