Just sliding right in over the starting line to get in some pre-sprint recommendations for those who want to hit the ground running, featuring my highlight reel from last year:
Just Hold Still by
@icomeanon6
This was admittedly another one of those recommendations that I made on a leap of faith since it was based off just the first chapter, but
boy did that chapter live up to the hype of what I'd heard through the grapevine for this story. So I decided to own things and let them ride for this one.
Just Hold Still is a journeyfic spanning the last few years before Bill's PC revolutionizes the ability for trainers to keep large numbers of Pokémon and communicate with each other as they travel around, back in an age when aspiring trainers had to make do with face-to-face meetings and letters left behind at Pokémon Centers. It is here that we get a glimpse of budding hobbyist photographer Luke Andersen as he sets out on his journey through Johto with his Drowzee Zoe in the fall of 1988, and cut ahead five years with to the aftermath of his
failed journey, with all the friends he made in the opening scene now estranged and distant memories.
After making a decision to call things quits and focus once again on photography with his now-Hypno, Luke makes the trek out to Violet City to try and line up a few prize shots of the local Sprout Tower when much to his shock, he discovers that his once childhood love from his friend circle left a letter for him at the local Pokémon Center a little over two weeks back. When the day of happens to be said once-love's birthday. One thing leads to another as Luke isn't
quite as over things as he thought and he finds himself hunting for stationery to belt out a response and the stage is set for a story showing how a journey falls apart from snapshots of the past, and how it continues to stick with people long afterwards in the present day.
The prose is
very well-done and buttery smooth, with a story hook that I'm not sure if I've ever seen someone attempt in the context of a trainer journeyfic, and a world that is at once familiar and feels very alive and fleshed out. TBD if I'll have enough time to come back to this story before Review Blitz ends, but if you are hunting for a fun story to pick up a last-minute Week 1 bonus and get your foot in the door for Week 2's repeat bonus, you could honestly do a lot worse than shooting a review this fic's way.
The Foolish Oddish by
@Negrek
This was actually one of those fics that I started in Week 1 of last year's Review Blitz where the
only reason why I didn't mention it in my recommendation for that week was because the author wasn't new to me. Well, fortunately for me, Week 2 was focused specifically on catching up on stories we've already read, and I was fortunate enough to have the time to come back to it and give it a bit of a spotlight.
The Foolish Oddish is a three-part short story following Ragweed, who starts out as an Oddish who wants for nothing in her life as a Mystery Dungeon encounter beyond stories to collect, and Elkesiss, a fidgety and hyper Zubat with his (nonexistent) eyes set for one day seeing the world outside their dungeon through the cave exit far, far below. One thing leads to another and the two begin to form a budding friendship based on the promise of a grand tale that will last all the way to the journey to the outside world, which works swimmingly... at first.
It's a very well-done story showing life through the eyes of a character where even things we take for granted like sunsets and not having half your neighbors vanish off to parts unknown when you wake up are alien concepts, and at various points, it will make you smile and laugh, and wince and start to grow misty-eyed in others. It has a
lot of worldbuilding and lorecrafting all put together for characters that would quite literally be disposable extras in most others from its genre.
Everything about the story just oozes polish, and the prose does an amazing job getting readers into the head and thought process of Ragweed while breathing what would otherwise be samey procedurally generated environments with their random encounters to life. If you're into PMD stories and have the time and energy to throw at a 12k three-parter, this one's well worth your attention.
Gathering Moss by
@NebulaDreams
Alright, so a decent chunk of you might have already seen or heard of
Gathering Moss since it was
one of two first-place stories in 2024's onsite writing contest. From what I could see from it, the story quite earned the accolades, but let's get into the nitty-gritty of
why you should read this thing:
So for the uninitiated
Gathering Moss is a story about coffee, and the almost 2000-year old Golurk who soldiers on making it in a café they keep open in memory of a recently deceased trainer, up until the day they're forced to content with their own looming mortality that suddenly isn't just a distant hypothetical. So, you know, less about coffee, and more coming to terms with death, the fleeting nature of life, and its purpose. All as the hired Mogrem baker turns the kitchen in the back into a perpetual disaster zone.
For those of you who read some of
@NebulaDreams ' fare in the past, you'll likely find the general contours of the world quite familiar since it's effectively a spinoff to
I, Isobel, but the worldbuilding is quite imaginative, and the characterization is on-point throughout. It effortlessly weaves the past and the present together in different scenes and pulls off a surprising mix of levity and somberness with a convincing and heartfelt exploration of what it's like to realize that your days are numbered and then trying to come to terms with it.
It's a bit up there in terms of length at around 9400 words in length plus a foreword and an afterword, but nothing about the story ever feels superfluous or out of place. If you happen to have time to spare for it during Review Blitz, make a cup of coffee and dig in. Just check your eyes for stray moisture at the end.
krookodile tears by
@kintsugi
krookodile tears is the story of Baku, the child of a sahnim of the Southern Stones in what is now Route 4 of Unova in a bygone age, and how through some ill-advised decision-making when trying to get a Sandile to train, he's handed over by his father to Samira, the leader of the local Krookodile who decrees that in lieu of the swift death he deserves, that Baku shall be made to live amongst them until he can learn the error of his ways.
More broadly,
krookodile tears is a story about people experiencing the alien and unfamiliar, about how people react to being hurt, and the ways that they rationalize and talk themselves into the harshest of cruelties, which Baku winds up experiencing and witnessing from multiple directions amongst both the humans and Pokémon in what is now Route 4. Totally par for the course for a story that once upon a time was a chapter of
The Envy of Eden before
@kintsugi spun it off into its own thing.
Much like kintsugi's general portfolio, it's a haunting and melancholic ride, with a lot of love put into the folklore and breathing life into a bygone Unova that is at once very familiar and very,
very different to the one we all know and love. All as we get to see a Baku's tale go through its ups and downs up to its explosive climax. It's a bit on the chunky side, with the overall fic being about 19,000 words long and the third part being
hosted entirely off-site.
That said, if you can swing that much story or else even just want to get your foot in the door, it's well worth your time as a story. Just give your eyes a good rub by the end.
For those
still looking for more reading material to chew on, I also have my highlight reel recommendations
from Review Blitz 5 and
Review Blitz 4, a similar slate
from Review Blitz 3, and everything that I linked to in
my post on the on-site Master's Eight thread.
By the way, I am a huge fan of romance, but only if it's done right. 
It's so delightfully creative in the ways it explores the worlds of the future and past too. This series is a gem among gems and I can see why Nekodatta has been running with it for so long.