This was written for "PMD: Guiding Light", on Fanfiction.net (Spoiler-y parts have been hashed out here)
~Review of the Prologue~
I haz return to review once more :quilaree:
I remember reading PMD: Guiding Light back in November of 2019, and reviewing it shortly after. BUT… I’m not really satisfied with the review I left, which covered the broad strokes, made some dumb comments, and wasn’t really helpful at the end of the day. So now I return with an in-depth look! :D (I barely remember any of the details by now, so I should be good, I think?) I’ll be going by the parts listed on your profile, since that breaks the story down into fairly manageable chunks of 2 – 6- 8 chapters. Obviously, starting with
~Part I – Chapters 1 – 2~
Already, the prologue reminds me of the opening to PMD: Defenders of Warmth. Which… I’m not really sure whether that was intentional or not, but it’s probably in that italicized monologue about what Life is, which is structured very similarly to DoW’s. Narration aside, this prologue is actually one of the large talking points I have for this story,
but since that relies on context that comes far, far later on I shall hold off on talking about that in-depth until later. The only thing I’ll say about that subject currently is that it does seem fairly obvious what happened in hindsight, and with all the clues he got over the course of the story Shane really should have been able to piece together a better idea of what happened beyond 'I’m Solgeleo’ (which he only knew because of the weird visions he’d been having).
I get that Shane’s supposed to be an ass at this point in the story, but to be frank a lot of his gripes (like the Bulbasaur Riolu thing and getting left behind in the RP thread) sound fairly reasonable? Granted, they’re pretty petty, but I think it would be lying to say that no-one ever has those monologues running through their heads every once in a while. Especially if Shane isn’t particularly enthused about his job, which he isn’t.
I like the imagery with the rain. For some reason whenever a storm happens in a story everyone tries to describe the actual *rain*, and… what gives? Rain is the last thing I want to read about; I’d rather read about how it affects the story. This prologue is quite minimal with the rain description, instead describing things like how Shane experiences it when he pulls his car out of the garage, or how it’s so heavy that he can’t see a thing. I think it works extra well here because it’s limiting Shane’s sight and poses an actual threat to him, since he’s driving. It’s a very creative use of rain that I almost never see, so thank you for blessing us with interesting rain!
…Yes that sounds bad out of context
So Shane is crashed into, gets yeeted into PMD, and then Chapter One begins.
My first thought when reading Chapter One is ‘OMG, this reminds me so much of the beach scene from PMD Explorers. How did I not realize that before?’ Although it seems to work more as a subversion of that scene more than a reskinned retelling. While it has the same structure, there are lots of little things and derailments that ultimately work against it being a cookie-cutter retelling (like Eevee’s brief appearance and Growlithe’s offer to lead Tess-uh into the Guild). I also notice you’ve used it to slip in little bits of fleeting exposition, like
Tessa’s heritage and how having names here clearly isn’t a normal thing.
All of it leads up to the ultimate subversion of the scene, where Tessa whacks Shane over the head and knocks him unconscious on the pretenses of being a ‘thief’, instead of saying ‘ok i believe you’ and then getting robbed by actual thieves. I’ve seen the Beach Scene (and it’s many, many variations) so many times in PMD fanfic that it’s almost always one of the largest turn-offs for me, so seeing a story that subverts the beach scene in a serious way (Whether intended or not, although it looks like it was?) is a nice break away from that.
Sylveon’s house is obviously a reference to the Team Bases from PMD Rescue Team. But she also lives on the fringes of town, not in the heavily populated sector where the Guild is. Are all the houses like that, even downtown? If they’re redecorated to look like the pokemon living there, what happens when they move out? Does it get remodeled for free, or does the pokemon have to pay for that or do it themselves? What if it doesn’t work? What if the pokemon doesn’t want to remodel? Is this even a viable housing situation? Or does Sylveon just have a custom house on the outskirts of town?
I know it’s important for later, but I positively *hate* it when things get ‘stuck’ to a character, like
Shane’s Z-Bracelet. I mean, it’s not really a part of him, there’s just some enchantment holding it there. And it always sets off my OCD because I always imagine there’s like a whole bunch of gunk that builds up under that object that never gets cleaned off because the character can’t clean themselves there. One day Shane is going to find a way to
take off that bracelet, and his fur will be dyed black there from all the dirt ;-;
Espeon, Umbreon, and the
Ultra Beast Mutation plot thread they’ve kicked into action are another one of my large talking points, but I don’t have much to say on them yet either at this point in the story. One thing I appreciated was that you managed to give them the proper weight of how two pokemon as powerful as they are should feel – Tessa doesn’t stand a chance against them, and would be dead and gone if not for her scarf. I think showing a character overpowered like that is hard to get across in writing, and it was done well here.
I find it very interesting that Sneasel and Jangmo-o ‘stole the scarf fair and square’, because last I checked theft was neither of those things.
Thou shalt not insult frozen pizzas
I liked a lot of the mid-battle banter. A problem that I have with a lot of written battles is that characters can have lengthy monologues in the middle of a fight and the fight just ‘stops’ for them. Granted, there’s a little bit of that here, but it can kind of be handwaved because no-one in that fight is really an experienced fighter or knows what they’re doing. I also appreciated that it wasn’t ‘fluff banter’ like “We can do this!” or “Just one more hit!”; the character dynamic is very clear. Shane makes dumb comments because he’s not taking any of this seriously, Tessa is annoyed with Shane for not taking anything seriously, and Sneasel and Jangmo-o are too busy being smug cringelords to get a grip.
One thing that kind of bugs me, however, is the weird ‘laughs’ or noises that follow a pokemon’s sentences (“kweh-he-he”; “yup-yup”). I know that canon PMD does this, but it just reads weird to me, more like it’s a catchphrase than a sound a pokemon would actually make. In Sneasel’s case in particular, I feel like it’s just the standard evil laugh, and that broke immersion for me a good few times because I’d stop to cringe at it. (I mean granted both of those thieves seem to be cringey by design but still)
I’m not sure whether Tessa’s scarf having a sun and moon design and then getting split into a sun scarf and a moon scarf is symbolism of some sort or just a ‘wink wink’ reference to Pokemon Sun and Moon. It’s *probably* safe to assume that
Shane got the sun half, which would match up with his connection to Solgeleo throughout the story (And Tessa would match with Moon since her mother is affiliated with ‘lunala’), but not sure whether that was intended or not.
Haven’t got much to say on Eevee and Sylveon yet, as they are barely present in this story from what I remember, but so far I think the prologue and first two chapters hold up relatively well! I noticed some typos throughout, but nothing that detracted from the enjoyment of it as a whole. I know that they were two chapters, but honestly it felt to me like they were just one large chapter split in two due to length. When I reached the end of Chapter Two I felt some closure, but it felt to me like the closure of a chapter of a story ending, not a chapter like one of the Chapters in a PMD Game. But either way, the beginning holds up really well! Looking forward to coming back and doing the rest.
~SparklingEspeon
Listening to: Mina_Dracula – Wojciech Kilar
