May as well do a promo post, especially since I have a few one-shots for anyone who is interested this week!
In general, I appreciate all feedback, but specific preferences per-story are noted below. I'm generally especially interested in thoughts on the characters in a story, whether their actions feel like they make sense from their point of view in the story, and how you perceive them - but also stuff like structure (did anything drag?), little details you noticed, anything that gave you pause as you were reading, any sentences that confused you or otherwise disrupted your reading experience, and so on.
Standalone One-Shots
Butterfree (one-shot)
Trainers aren't supposed to have favorites, but you were my favorite. And then you started losing.
A story about Butterfree, a trainer, avoidance, guilt, communication, and forgiveness.
Feedback preferences: Anything goes. I'm particularly interested in thoughts on how the narrator's internal journey comes across, and whether their and Butterfree's actions feel coherent and understandable.
Curse (one-shot)
"That move. Curse. How does it work?"
Aspiring champions Kari and her Dragonite get their hands on the Curse TM, and it doesn't go quite like they hoped.
Feedback preferences: Anything goes. I'm interested in how well it got across what's going on (i.e. how Curse works in this universe) and thoughts on Kari and Dragonite as individuals and their relationship.
Go (one-shot)
I blinked at it, hard, expecting it to be some kind of early-morning hallucination. Obviously. I mean, Pidgey weren’t real, right? It was a game, a stupid little mobile game that I’d installed when I was bored.
What if Pokémon Go was secretly created to prepare Earth for an interdimensional accident where Pokémon are warped into reality? 2016 nostalgia made manifest.
Feedback preferences: Don't examine the premise too closely, but otherwise I appreciate all feedback, especially on whether the narrator's relationship with Pidgey resonated and whether the story generally lands.
Hung Up (The Good, the Bad and the Ugly one-shot)
The rope hangs loose, not even touching your skin, but your throat is tightening anyway, squeezed by phantom fibers.
A character study of Clint Eastwood's character 'Blondie' in Sergio Leone's 1966 spaghetti Western
The Good the Bad and the Ugly.
Feedback preferences: Anything goes. In particular, tell me if the character progression makes sense to you.
Morphic
My 2007-2010 Pokémorph fic and its spinoffs.
Morphic (rewritten version, chaptered, unfinished)
Vulpix genes, instructing a human skull to form canine teeth. It was a fucking breakthrough.
The improved rewrite of the original
Morphic, a story of a team of scientists who create Pokémorphs in the name of medical research, are forced to keep and raise the resulting children, and the religious fanatics who want to murder them.
Feedback preferences: Anything goes.
Morphic Shorts (vignette collection)
Dave peered at the X-rays of Mia’s arms. There it was – the unmistakable bright metal edge along her ulna, brighter towards the elbow. Fuck yes.
A collection of vignettes from the world of
Morphic.
Feedback preferences: Anything goes, but bear in mind these vignettes are not really meant to stand on its own without the main fic - I don't think it's by any means incomprehensible without it, and I'd be interested to hear impressions from readers who haven't read
Morphic, but critique should take into account that it's not intended to be your first introduction to this world and characters, so I'm not planning to make any changes geared toward easing in readers who haven't read the main fic.
Groundhog Dave (three-shot timeloop whumpfic)
Just taking a nap wasn’t enough to fast-forward to the next iteration. As best he could tell, after a few goes, it looped over at six AM. If he was awake by then, he’d just blink and find himself waking up on the sofa again. He restlessly accompanied the others to hospitals, nauseous as he identified Mia’s body for the fifth or sixth time, waiting to just get to sleep already so he could try again.
Another spin-off of my Pokémorph fanfic
Morphic, this time featuring Dave trapped in a time loop on the worst day of his life.
Feedback preferences: This is a whumpfic and overthinking the actual
plot would be somewhat counterproductive. Tell me if something's
really distracting you, but no need to try to pick nits with that. I'm just here to have fun tormenting Dave. On the other hand, I would be very interested in what you make of the characterization and character progression.
Morphic: New and Improved (April Fools' Day one-shot)
“We’re Pokémorphs,” the girl said, her face and voice still unsettlingly nonchalant about the situation. “Team Rocket injected Pokémon DNA into us and now we’re half Pokémon. It’s weird because that’s not how DNA works. I tried to ask Dave about it but he was very evasive.”
The Better(tm) reboot of my Pokémorph fanfic, now with more 2006-era clichés.
Morphic is not required reading, but some things will be more meaningful if you have read it.
Feedback preferences: As an April Fools' Day fic, don't take this too seriously, and I have no plans to rewrite it, but I would love to hear about your impressions of it anyway.
Other
The Quest for the Legends (77 chapters, completed)
The story of an ordinary boy on an impossible quest in a world that isn't as black and white as he always thought it was.
The trainerfic that I started when I was twelve, rebooted when I was fourteen, and completed at 28. The first 31 chapters or so are often deeply silly, in a fun enthusiastic whump-loving teenage journeyfic writer way, and then it gets less silly from there. Featuring: a boy recruited to save the world by a neurotic legendary, his variously messed-up Pokémon team, an angry girl determined to be Champion, and the fallout of a murder. 77 chapters plus prologue, most of them not super long especially early on.
Feedback preferences: This story is old and I'm well aware of most of its flaws. Treat it as a fun enthusiastic teenage trainerfic romp and don't take it too seriously for the first half; by all means do line reactions and poke fun at some of the nonsense, and talk about your general impressions of the characters/plot/world, but please don't waste your time on serious critique or suggesting prose edits; it's extremely old writing that is not remotely representative of how I'd write anything today, and the next edition of the story will be a full rewrite with major structural and plot changes and absolutely none of the same prose. For the second half, you can transition to somewhat more critical commentary if that's your jam, but extensive line edits and such would remain probably redundant - again, I don't really plan on keeping this prose, though it's more likely for later chapters that I might have chunks that are similar or the same. (If you have general tips for me in the prose department based on later chapters, though, go ahead.)
Sutoraiku High (Scyther dating sim)
A visual novel about drama, friendships, prejudice, bullying, total societal upheaval, and high school romance.
Have you always wanted to date a Scyther? Overthrow authority with a revolutionary-minded Scizor? You have come to the right dating sim. Originally an April Fools' Day joke but then took itself pretty seriously, with a sequel
Sutoraiku Legends that counts as another chapter.
Feedback preferences: Take the nonsensical setting in the tongue-in-cheek spirit in which it is intended, but within that, would love to hear what you think of the characters and routes.
