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Pokémon Butterfree (one-shot)

Dragonfree

Moderator
Staff
Location
Iceland
Pronouns
she/her/hers
Partners
  1. butterfree
  2. mightyena
  3. charizard
  4. scyther-mia
  5. vulpix
  6. slugma
  7. chinchou
2020-08-08-butterfree-small.png

Hello, everyone! This is a one-shot that I originally wrote in 2012 and have just made some significant revisions to. It means a lot to me to convey what I'm going for correctly in it, so I'd really appreciate any kind of feedback!



Butterfree

“Metapod, just a bit more! Hang on!”

And at that moment, your cocoon split open in a burst of blinding, searing light, and with a flutter of giddy elation in my chest, I knew that you were evolving. This was the dream: we’d been training tirelessly for a full week now, following my second failed battle against Brock. Somehow, at the time, it felt like the climax of everything I’d worked for, like there wasn’t a whole journey and seven more gyms ahead of me.

I remember, almost in slow motion, watching you crawl out and spread your fragile wings for the first time. I remember them quivering as you stretched them out, the experimental twitch of your antennae, that glorious moment when you leapt up and took flight. I remember how you circled me quickly, flapping your wings teasingly in my face, and Brock’s Onix growled, and I said “Confusion!” and you cried out and then…

Of course I remember it. It was my first gym victory; how could I ever forget? I remember the Onix roaring and collapsing, the rumble under my feet as it hit the ground. I remember Brock’s calm voice telling it to return while the widest grin I had ever sported spread over my face. I remember literally jumping for joy, feeling as if my heart were about to explode, and you fluttering down towards me in a little playful loop before landing on my head and snuggling into my hair.

It feels like yesterday.

It also feels like it’s been a long, long time… because it has.

-------

Trainers aren’t supposed to have favorites, but you were my favorite. I loved Charmander and Pidgey and Nidoran to death too, of course, but I’d loved Butterfree since I was a kid, and you were everything I’d dreamed of. When the others were struggling, I could always count on you; your powder moves were indispensable for powerful foes. For those months you were my most powerful Pokémon by far, the pinnacle of my team. I don’t think I could ever explain just how proud I was every time I sent you out of your Pokéball and heard your defiant battle cry, every time a far larger Pokémon’s eyelids drooped as it breathed in your Sleep Powder and slumped helplessly on the ground, every time an opponent admitted defeat and you landed triumphantly on my head, giving me that cute little snuggle of yours. I earnestly felt like you were invincible. I imagined you putting Lance’s dragons to sleep, me carrying you on my head into the Hall of Fame to be crowned champions. I imagined it would be you and me on the covers of the newspapers, me grinning at the camera while you nibbled on my ear.

And then… you started losing. Just the occasional battle, at first. It hit me pretty hard when that hiker’s Onix, the same Pokémon you had so handily defeated in Brock’s gym, slammed you into the ground with its tail and you didn’t rise up again, but I knew you were at a severe type disadvantage, so all things considered it wasn’t that strange. But then it started happening more and more often. My other Pokémon evolved, not only catching up with you but overtaking you, and so did the Pokémon possessed by the other trainers around me. It started to dawn on me, slowly, that you were frail and not very fast. I tried buying carbos, offering them to everyone, but still more and more of the Pokémon we faced would land a heavy blow before you even got the chance to launch a Sleep Powder. Eventually, with a pit in my stomach, I gave in to my nagging suspicion that you were underperforming compared to the rest of my team and decided, silently, to start keeping track.

It was true. You fainted more often than any of them and finished the fewest battles on your own. And the margin was increasing.

Initially I think I explained it as being that I’d been overconfident, that I’d used you in too many battles you weren’t well suited to while I’d been more cautious with the others. I took care not to do that. It helped, a little, but eventually I had to face the fact that you just weren’t keeping up.

I wasn’t disappointed in you. It’s hard to explain, but it wasn’t like that. It broke my heart to realize you were falling behind, not because you weren’t good enough, but because I loved you and loved your joy when you won and loved being able to trust you to win any battle. It broke my heart to have to recall your unconscious form after you’d done your absolute best, to let my hand wander past your Pokéball when I knew you wouldn’t be able to handle my opponent’s next pick, to switch you out and send out Charizard instead because you couldn’t take another hit. And more than anything, it broke my heart to notice that you were becoming more nervous, your battle cry losing confidence – something I could hear in your voice because I knew you so well, even though you were trying not to let me hear it.

(I never told you that I could tell. I never told you that I could feel the increasing desperation in your victory snuggle. I never told you how I felt, or that I knew how you felt. I probably should have, but I didn’t. I don’t think I could quite admit it to myself at that point.)

I started using you less, only when I was facing a Pokémon that seemed like particularly easy prey for you. I suspect you noticed, but you never complained. I know now that it must have broken your heart to see that loss of confidence in your abilities, but I didn’t see that far at that point.

And then I started rotating my team. That wasn’t because of you – I’d caught more than six Pokémon now, and I wanted to train the others and pick the most adept team for any situation. But it wasn’t long before you were rarely on my active team. I felt guilty every time I left you on the PC – I would think to myself that after I’d gotten past this route, or beaten this gym leader, or battled these trainers, I’d get you out again and we’d find someplace where you could really shine and get some training in. At first I really did it. Then I started occasionally deciding it wouldn’t hurt if I just used some of my other Pokémon that also needed training and were better suited to the wild Pokémon in the area for now, and I could get you out later. And then I started putting it off because I knew you were undertrained and would have a difficult time either way. And then I promised myself when I got the chance I would take you back to a lower-level area and there I could surely get you back on level with the rest of my team again.

When I finally did get the opportunity to go there again, I simply forgot. I have no excuse. I had gotten caught up in my journey; I loved my other Pokémon, I was excited about getting Blaine’s badge before my friends, you had been pushed to the back of my mind, and I just forgot about it. When I remembered, I was already on the way to the Seafoam Islands to investigate rumours of Articuno sightings; I couldn’t just turn back.

By the time I returned, I was too ashamed to face you. It had been so long, and I’d just left you to rot. I tried to get myself to go and retrieve you, but I didn’t know what I would even say to you. I told myself I had other important things to do, that I had just one gym left and I might as well get that done without having to first spend the weeks it would take getting you caught up by that point.

I defeated Giovanni, triumphantly watched Gyarados dispose of his Rhydon with a Hydro Pump. And as I left the gym with my badge and looked out towards Route 22, I realized you would never be on the team that I’d take to the Indigo Plateau, and that Victory Road just wasn’t any place for a Butterfree. I decided, really decided, that I’d train you up when I’d taken on the Elite Four; then, surely, I could relax and train whomever I wanted, wherever I wanted.

I became the champion with Charizard by my side. I was ecstatic. My original dreams, that image of you buried in my hair in the Hall of Fame, had faded; I’d moved on, and by this point I’d developed new dreams, dreams about a victory flight with Charizard. And that was everything I’d hoped for. I didn’t even remember that you weren’t there until I was back home, being congratulated by my mom.

Again, I was ashamed. I didn’t want to have to tell you I’d fought the Elite Four without you. I had other Pokémon who needed training, more rumours of legendary Pokémon, an invitation to the Sevii Islands.

I told myself I’d take you out and train you later.

It’s been six years.

-------

And so, now I’m finally standing here, facing the sunset, on the road leading to Viridian Forest, where I first met you that fateful day I headed out on my journey.

The breeze is light and cool, like it was that day. I still remember you, as a Caterpie, crawling out eagerly from behind that tree, my first challenger and my first catch. Now all I can think is that you probably should have stayed hidden, evolved on your own time, and maybe gotten another trainer, a nice bug catcher or somebody, who wouldn’t betray you like I did.

I take a deep breath, and my hand trembles as I reach for your Pokéball. The scratches and tiny dents in its surface are nostalgically familiar; when I got it out I hadn’t seen this ball in so long I was surprised at how worn it was, but I guess I always remembered somewhere in the back of my mind, that sensation of holding it and rolling it between my fingers. This is the last time I’ll hold it like this, I realize, and it stings.

I press the button, and the ball maximizes in my hand. A part of me is still hesitant, still wants to go back and release you through the PC, so the Pokémon Center staff will handle it after closing and I can just pretend it never happened – but that’s not an option. I know that now.

With guilt clenching at my gut, I drop the ball onto the ground, and you emerge from it in the air, facing away from me. I watch, unable to speak, as you scan the area for an opponent, then flutter in a half-circle and turn to look at me.

Your face can’t form expressions like a human can, but I can see anyway in the slight tilt of your head, the confused twitching of your antennae, the slight slowing of your wing flaps, that it takes you a moment to recognize me. That wrenches at my heart more than anything; suddenly it occurs to me that your sense of time on the PC was muddled, that your first realization of how long it’s been is seeing me suddenly a teenager in place of the child that you knew. You hover there silently for a second, just staring at me with those unblinking red compound eyes; I don’t know if the accusation I see in them is real or if I’m just projecting. I try to imagine what must be going through your mind, what it might feel like to realize you’ve been in stasis for years, that everyone you knew has just moved on without you – but I can’t even begin to comprehend it.

“I’m sorry, Butterfree,” I whisper; my voice is hoarse, and as I say it, tears prick at the corners of my eyes. “I should have done this long ago.”

It’s painful to speak, so I point the ball back at you and press the button, showing you that nothing happens, that I’ve deactivated the Pokéball. I throw it away; it bounces off the ground and comes to a rest by the roadside. You stare at it for a second, then look back at me.

“I kept telling myself I’d keep training you,” I say, fighting the urge to avert my eyes; this whole time I’ve been refusing to face you, and I can’t do that anymore. “And I never did. I released the others I couldn’t get the chance to continue training, so they could move on and have a life, but not you. I could never accept that you’d be better off without me. But… you would, and pretending for so long was selfish. It was… it was cruel. I’m so sorry.”

You look at me for a moment more, and then you turn abruptly and flutter upwards, circling a few times in the sky for the first time in six years – six years that you never even knew. I try to swallow the lump in my throat, but I can’t; my mind is full of every time I avoided using you, every time I put off training you, every time I remembered you and realized I hadn’t thought about you for weeks. It’s an aching, suffocating feeling of opportunities lost, potential wasted and friendship neglected.

I expect you to turn in the direction of the forest and fly off, but you don’t. Instead, you slow down, looking back at me. My lip trembles, tears pricking at the corners of my eyes; I wish burningly that you’d just leave before I lose my composure.

Instead, you take a graceful dive, land on my head and bury yourself in my hair. A thousand memories blend together, guilt mixes with triumph and joy and love; everything shatters to pieces inside me, and I break into sobs as my resolve gives way. I can’t do this.

“No, wait,” I say without thinking, my voice thick and strained, “I’ll train you up again, we’ll train and be together and make everything the way it was supposed to be and I’ll never leave you behind again – please don’t go.”

You don’t. You stay, nibbling lightly at me, a comforting weight to remind me you’re still there, while I cry and cry and can’t stop. You stay as I run out of tears and just stand there shaking. You stay while I finally collect myself, wipe my face and take a few deep breaths. I don’t deserve your forgiveness but you stay anyway, and a part of me hates that, wishes you’d just hate me as much as I do so I can stop feeling so undeserving.

“I’m sorry,” I say when I regain the ability to talk, staring unseeingly at the pink-tinged clouds in the distance. “That was… I shouldn’t have said that. It’s your life. I’ve taken enough of it away from you already. I have no right to want anything from you. And I don’t. I just want you to be happy.”

You snuggle up to me again. There’s a burning feeling in my throat as I swallow. Do you not understand what happened? Didn’t I explain well enough? I reach up, pull you as carefully as I can off my head and let your wings take over to hover in front of me. “Butterfree, it’s been six years. You were falling behind and I started treating training you like a chore that I put off and forgot about. And then I didn’t do it even when I remembered because I couldn’t admit it to you, so I just… left you there.”

And don’t you see how selfish that was? Don’t you see that a true friend would never do something like that?

There is a pause. Your antennae droop a little, and I immediately wish I hadn’t brought up your battle performance; it seems like I’m blaming you for it. “No, no, it wasn’t your fault,” I add. “I was being impatient and it was unfair. I should have just…”

I trail off. To be honest, I’m not sure if there is any one thing I should have just done. Would you have been happier if I’d given you special extra training to keep up, a constant reminder that you couldn’t just be part of the team like the others but needed special attention? If I’d continued to send you out only against the weakest of opponents? If I’d continued as normal and you’d just gone on being pummeled and getting more nervous about battling until you dreaded it altogether?

But no, I realize; I know the real answer. I take a deep breath. “What I should have done is I should have tried to talk to you, Butterfree. We should have talked about it. Do you know, I – I could see that you weren’t really having fun battling anymore? You were losing your enthusiasm, I could tell, and instead of asking you about it I just kept dragging you on trying to – to make sure you just wouldn’t lose as much. Like that’d fix it.” I hate saying that; I feel so, so stupid, more so with every new thing I force myself to admit to. “I – can we talk about it now? Unless you want to just go; I don’t blame you.”

You flutter towards me and gently bump my head. Playfully, lightly, a friendly admonishment. I guess you don’t want to go, however bizarre that is.

“So,” I begin, hesitant. How do I do this? It’s not like you can literally talk talk; I’m going to have to do the heavy lifting. “You stopped having fun battling. Do you even want to battle anymore?” You flap from side to side in a noncommittal shrug. “But… I don’t want you to have to give up something you loved. We can still battle if… you did love battling before, didn’t you?”

You do that same indifferent motion again. “Wait, really? But you always seemed so enthusiastic – why…”

You dive straight at me and bonk my forehead again, with a bit more insistent purpose. At first I can’t make sense of it. “…Because of me?”

But it makes sense, now that I think about it, if what you enjoyed about battling was mainly about doing your best for my sake. You lost your enthusiasm because you thought you were letting me down, not because you hated losing. And of course when my reaction was to let you battle less and give you intermittent special training sessions just to keep up with the rest of the team, it only made it worse.

For a few seconds I can’t quite speak; I just stand there, feeling like a colossal jerk, a mixture of emotions fighting within my brain. “Butterfree,” I finally manage to say, “we don’t have to battle. If you’re sure you want to stay, you don’t have to… or if you do battle, I don’t care how you do, so long as you’re having fun doing it. We can just… if you want, you can just come along and… not battle. Or you can battle, if you want. Just tell me if you want to battle and…”

You fly at me to snuggle into my hair again, like you’re happy and everything’s okay now. My mind is numb. Everything is not okay. I still don’t even feel right about taking you with me again; it seems to be what you want, but I can’t shake the feeling that it shouldn’t be. It could all have been avoided if I’d paid better attention, or tried to understand you more fully, or just talked to you instead of leaving you on the PC so I wouldn’t have to – if I’d really treated you like someone who had feelings, instead of something that induced feelings in me.

But this is about you, not me. And I really do want you to be happy.

I clear my throat. “I… I don’t know why you want to stay. But if you do… I’ll do everything I can to make it up to you. I’m never putting you on the PC again, or not unless I talk to you about it first. I’m going to listen to you and pay attention, and talk to you about anything that involves you. And… and my other Pokémon, too. And – if anything’s wrong, and I don’t realize, please let me know. I want you to tell me, because if I hurt you again I’ll never forgive myself, and I’ll try to notice even if you haven’t said anything but if I’m an idiot again, please tell me. And you shouldn’t ever feel obligated to do anything just to make me happy. That’s…”

I pause. This isn’t enough. I pick you off my head again so I can look into your eyes. “Butterfree, I… I need to know that you’re not doing this for my sake. That you’ll actually tell me if I’m being an idiot. You’ve gone this whole time just doing things for me, and that’s… I’m grateful for that but you need to do this for you. If what you really want is to fly away from here right now, I’ll be happy watching you go, I promise. And even if I wouldn’t be, you should still do it.”

You look up at me silently for a few seconds. That’s actually reassuring; it indicates you’re really thinking about it, not just automatically defaulting to sticking with me no matter what. You flap your wings, and I let go of you, watch you turn away and stare towards the forest as you consider it.

You flutter over to the tree where I caught you, and my breath catches in my throat, but I follow with hesitant steps as you circle the tree. I can see now that there are two other Butterfree there, resting in the boughs. You chirp a happy greeting, and they look up; one flies straight into you while the other circles nearby. You gently bump heads a couple times, a familiar gesture that makes my heart clench in my chest. After a moment the three of you settle back down on the branches of the tree and begin a chittering back-and-forth. My heart actually lifts, for the first time since I went to retrieve your ball. You’ve still got friends here. You really would be happy in the wild.

I smile at you, and I mean it. But just as I’m starting to turn around to leave you to it, you cry out again, take off from the branch and approach me again.

“You really sure?”

You give an emphatic midair nod, dive at my head and nibble at my ear. I still don’t really understand how you could forgive me so easily. But I’ll do everything I can to deserve your forgiveness. It’s the least I can do.

I take a deep breath. “You know, it seemed like you were having fun with your friends.” Your family? Not sure. Butterfree that you know. I wonder if they were Caterpie last time you saw them – there’s another sting in my gut. “I’ve been wanting to check out the Trainer House – if you want to stay and catch up a bit more, I could go do that and come pick you up after.”

For a moment you seem surprised. But then give an excited titter and snuggle into my hair for a moment before fluttering back towards the tree. And that… makes me happy.

-------

I got used to having you around again. It’s easy to almost forget what I did to you when you’re there, keeping me company, cheering my team on, as if those six years never happened. You really do seem happy, and your joy warms my heart, like it always did. Maybe I don’t have to understand. Maybe this is just who you are, as a person.

You don’t really battle; you usually seem to have more fun watching, nestling comfortably on my head and flapping your wings eagerly when the others score powerful hits. But now and then, on a whim, you take off and ask to take part. And sometimes you win, sometimes you lose, but it doesn’t really matter, now. You’re thrilled either way, and so long as you are, so am I.

Some of the others like to watch sometimes, too – not that I hadn’t let them before if they wanted to, but I get the sense they feel more comfortable asking to sit one out now, after I talked to them about it. Charizard snorted when I asked, fighter that he is – but I finally convinced him he doesn’t have to fight those Water-types that make him nervous, either.

Trainers aren’t supposed to have favorites. And that’s fair, because you shouldn’t have favorite people. But you’ll always have a bit of a special place in my heart, as a friend. Every day I strive to deserve the confidence you decided to place in me for this second chance.

And every time you disagree with my plans, or call me on my nonsense with a playful bap of your wing, I feel a little more reassured that maybe I do, after all.
 
Last edited:

Flyg0n

Flygon connoisseur
Pronouns
She/her
Partners
  1. flygon
  2. swampert
  3. ho-oh
  4. crobat
  5. orbeetle
  6. joltik
  7. salandit
  8. tyrantrum
  9. porygon
😭😭😭😭😭😭😭😭😭😭😭

Who's crying? Me? No it's raining inside my room and I'm cutting onions.

AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH

So I've just read both versions. Both are really good, but there's a solid improvement in the ending of the second one. Your intent comes off much clearer. I just... So heart wrenching...

Somehow, at the time, it felt like the climax of everything I’d worked for, like there wasn’t a whole journey and seven more gyms ahead of me.
I like the inclusion of this line, I don't think its in the original.

Trainers aren’t supposed to have favorites, but you were my favorite.
This hits home because I do have special favorites. Like my bug in Galar. Galahad, my dear Orbeetle. But... I'm not crying... I swear

I wasn’t disappointed in you
This really struck a cord. As a fan of games and anime, the games always hurt to play sometimes. That feeling of having a pokemon I liked, but realizing they couldn't cut it in battle. Failing them, but you're not like, disappointed. Its not their fault, right? But you want them to succeed but you don't know how and maybe its better to just put them in the PC because why should they have to keep losing and 😭😭😭😭😭
IM NOT CRYING OK IM FINE

Victory Road just wasn’t any place for a Butterfree.
Its not... right? 😭😭😭 I mean, Butterfree wouldn't want to come. Right? And its better not to bring that pokemon who loses a little to much because then they'll lose again and type advantages and stuff and... you don't want to. For their own good. Right? 😭😭 Ouch. This wording hits. Hard.

The scratches and tiny dents in its surface are nostalgically familiar; when I got it out I hadn’t seen this ball in so long I was surprised at how worn it was, but I guess I always remembered somewhere in the back of my mind, that sensation of holding it and rolling it between my fingers. This is the last time I’ll hold it like this, I realize, and it stings.
Oh man I like this change. I really love worn pokeballs specifically.

A part of me is still hesitant, still wants to go back and release you through the PC, so the Pokémon Center staff will handle it after closing and I can just pretend it never happened – but that’s not an option.
Now this is intriguing world building thoughts and also... very sad. 😭 I'm fine though. Im not sad. Not me.

What I should have done is I should have tried to talk to you, Butterfree. We should have talked about it. Do you know, I – I could see that you weren’t really having fun battling anymore? You were losing your enthusiasm, I could tell, and instead of asking you about it I just kept dragging you on trying to – to make sure you just wouldn’t lose as much. Like that’d fix it.”
😭😭😭😭😭😭😭😭😭😭😭😭

And that’s fair, because you shouldn’t have favorite people. But you’ll always have a bit of a special place in my heart, as a friend
Oh shucks. I do have favorite people though. Oops
But... he calls Butterfree... his 😭friend 😭 AHHhHHHHhhhhHH

😢😢
I'm fine. *ahem*

Oh boy this revision is very good. I have no real prose critique, I think it was all very well done. Having it be like, first/second person-y is a real cool choice. You tweaked the wording, throughout, so the improvement is palpable. However, the real shining star is the ending. The themes of personhood and friendship are even stronger. Butterfree shines in this version, and the details of mentioning Charizard and the rest of the team is great. Providing a real path to his plans also helps. How he states he wants to become better and he will actually talk to Butterfree from now on. The confirmation that Butterfree likes a battle now and then, but really just loves to be with their trainer. Everything comes together much smoother, and much less abrupt.

Just a... really really good read. That definitely didn't make me tear up or anything.
 

kintsugi

golden scars | pfp by sun
Location
the warmth of summer in the songs you write
Pronouns
she/her
Partners
  1. silvally-grass
  2. lapras
  3. golurk
  4. booper-kintsugi
  5. meloetta-kint-muse
  6. meloetta-kint-dancer
  7. murkrow
  8. yveltal
  9. celebi
I always really liked in particular how you phrased the summary of this one--not sure if it got cut from the rewrite or if it's just a FFN vs TR relic, but I found it really catchy and attention-grabbing with so few words.

Some quick line-by-line thoughts and then longer thoughts at the end

a flutter of giddy elation in my chest
heh, I thought "flutter" was a particularly clever word choice

This was the dream: I’d been training you tirelessly for a full week now
Somehow, at the time, it felt like the climax of everything I’d worked for
I liked how the beginning exposition sets up those innocuous moments of selfishness for the main character--I'd been training you; everything I'd worked for--when the more fair phrasing would be "we" or "you". In particular I think the shift in perspective throughout this oneshot is really good; it's a subtle build through gradually realizing that, lol, maybe you should treat your friends like people, but it helps that you so strongly established the self-focus early.

It hit me pretty hard when that hiker’s Onix, the same Pokémon you had so handily defeated in Brock’s gym, slammed you into the ground with its tail and you didn’t rise up again, but I knew you were at a severe type disadvantage, so all things considered it wasn’t that strange.
This sentence felt a bit long and it might've read more smoothly as two.

I tried to feed you carbos, but still more and more of the Pokémon we faced would land a heavy blow before you even got the chance to launch a Sleep Powder.
The phrasing of "I tried to feed you carbos" confused me a bit--it suggests that the narrator tries to feed Butterfree carbos and the act of feeding doesn't work, when I think it's supposed to be that the carbos don't make Butterfree fast enough to matter.

Also, oof, it's really hard to sympathize with this narrator especially in the beginning bits, if the end takeaway here is that pokemon are people--every time I read this I picture a nasty spouse/partner who controls what you eat and wants to make you a "better" person, she'll have the salad sort of sleaziness wrapped up in the conviction that it's for your own good.

It broke my heart to realize you were falling behind, not because you weren’t good enough, but because I loved you and loved your joy when you won and loved being able to trust you to win any battle.
Likewise, the phrasing here gets a bit muddled--it looks like the narrator is ascribing Butterfree falling behind to their loving Butterfree. I think flipping the phrasing to "You were falling my heart, and that broke my heart, not because you weren't good enough, but because I loved you [...]" or "Realizing you were falling behind broke my heart, not because you weren't good enough [...]"

And so, now I’m finally standing here, facing the sunset
I think (?) the comma after "so" feels unnecessary but comma rules are sort of bullshit

---

general thoughts!

“And I never did. I released the others I couldn’t get the chance to continue training, so they could move on and have a life, but not you. I could never accept that you’d be better off without me. But… you would, and pretending for so long was selfish. It was… it was cruel. I’m so sorry.”
I like the revised ending more, and I appreciate that the conversation has been lengthened out and the narrator gets to extend that compassion to the rest of their team as well. I also like how this doesn't really feel like this solves everything, and there's still room to grow for everyone--gotta have those slow and difficult conversations for growth, but the growth is slow. It's been a while since I read the original but it feels like Butterfree has a bit more of an active role in their final conversation, which I like as well.

And overall I do like the bits where the narrator has to walk through what they've done, how they put a plan for improving themselves on the table, how it finally becomes more of a conversation rather than a monologue. It's really tricky to establish a two-person dialogue in this sort of setup since one party can listen and the other party can speak, and really both of them have pretty limited tools in trying to play the other's role, but I think you get the point across that this is Butterfree's choice. It's rough too because you need someone in the story to drill down what the narrator has been doing incorrectly, but since they're the only character capable of speaking it has to be them lol--but I do get the sense that this was a really genuine and difficult conversation for them to have!

I also like the passage of time here (and I feel like it's much more clear than the first time? unsure; it's been a while)--assuming trainers start at a relatively young age, six years is a long time. I think you really captured that sense of giddy/blinded elation that would come with those first victories, and I like how this is framed as a story looking back, since it's always interesting to see what bits get remembered/focused on.

Trainers aren’t supposed to have favorites. And that’s fair, because you shouldn’t have favorite people.
I like the message here but two things, one minor and one larger:
1) The "you shouldn't have favorite people" runs into the awkward trap of how do I use general "you" in second person--it becomes clear that it's not that Butterfree shouldn't have favorite people, but at first I thought this was going to shift back to the idea that the narrator doesn't think they're deserving of Butterfree's love haha.
2) I felt like this idea of ascribing personhood falls short in the context of this fic--you shouldn't be allowed to lock people in the non-existent void for six years either, even if they don't feel the passage of time and you do feel guilty about it later, sorta thing.

I sorta struggle not to believe that pokemon don't get the short end of the stick in this setting, though. This is a valuable lesson for the narrator to learn and I'm really glad that they do, but there was also nothing forcing them to do it except their own guilt--I struggle with the closing idea that pokemon are considered people in this setting if the only thing standing between them and being locked in the PC for half a decade is the conscience of a teenager. And it's not like the narrator is relatively low-key or isn't emblematic of training culture; they're the champion, and they never mention that their methods are out of the ordinary--so it's difficult to accept the conflicting ideas that 1) pokemon are really allowed full personhood and 2) it is also possible for them to be stripped of their consciousness/existence for years at a time and no one bats an eye.

I think there was some verbiage in the older draft about how pokemon maybe just don't process betrayal/love/trust in the same way as humans, and I wish there was a way to get into that? I struggle to get around the existential horror of someone locking me in the ether for six years without my consent, so I dunno if I'd brush it off so easily, but I'd be curious to get a glimpse into the mind of someone who would. How long do Butterfree live? Is this a lot of time lost for them? How much of their friends and family have been scattered away from Viridian Forest? Are they surprised that the narrator's team is different? Do they care? It's definitely hard to convey this non-verbally, and I don't fault narrator for not being able to get really deep into the weeds in a single conversation with mostly yes/no questions + they do try their best to get the answer, but as a reader I struggled to understand. For me it's easier to handwave around "yeah, pokemon love their trainers and battling is fun for them" in fic since that's a central conceit, and I did think those aspects get communicated fairly well, but I wanted a bit more explanation for why/how Butterfree feels about this welcome back--the fact that the choice to stay was being made was quite clear, and I liked it, but I didn't understand the reasoning behind it. Like with the carbos quote above--I don't know if I would initially read triumph/love/compassion into someone who had been controlled like that choosing to stay/grow with the person who had done that to them, swearing this time it's different--I think I needed more concrete understanding of what Butterfree thinks was wrong with the first situation (if anything?) and what's changed now. Or is the idea that they never thought anything was bad except that the trainer felt bad?

As a result, the lesson the narrator learns feels almost inconsequential--they move to "sometimes you win" instead of "everything I'd worked for", but for me the central question of this story of what if pokemon are people and feel bad when we don't treat them as such? struggles to answer itself since the narrator doesn't have to change their behavior significantly either way--Butterfree still loves them regardless. Butterfree's decision validates their choice, and while they do get to convince the rest of their pokemon that it isn't necessary to jump into every battle in order to get their trainer to like them (oof. was that the lesson there?), it doesn't really seem like the narrator made a meaningfully different choice in the beginning by not asking for consent either, since Butterfree appeared perfectly happy to battle for them even in the bad setup and mainly just cared about if the narrator was happy. It's sort of like watching someone use all the wrong equations to get to the right answer--I don't really know if the lesson was learned here, since it isn't applied to a situation where that lesson would result in a meaningful difference (such as the reverse--rather than a pokemon that the trainer doesn't need to win wanting to stay, a pokemon that the trainer does rely on for victory wanting to leave).

For whatever reason I remember reading the old version and thinking that this was more of a game-adjacent fic, where the pokemon have no real desires of their own and it's common practice to get a bunch and leave most of them in the PC--and while I do appreciate the stronger characterization in this rewrite, I think that conceit almost works better for a narrative like this. In this story it's clear that pokemon do have desires and wants, they are people even if society doesn't protect them as equally as they would humans, which I think makes Butterfree's choice to stay at the end more poignant, but it also makes the narrator's ability to go back to enjoying society as normal feel really conflicted. Whereas this story almost works better if we accept that pokemon are hard-coded to love their trainer no matter what, and the narrator is still going the extra mile to earn their trust and love despite that--maybe this is still true in this canon? and I'm just jumbling a bunch of different sources together.

---

Is this once again too much poking with a stick? Absolutely. I think the central idea is a really good one, and a nice flavor of the "strong pokemon/weak pokemon/that is only the selfish perception of people" in longform. This is a story that made write about dumb teenage kids not appreciating their way-more-mature-and-generally-a-better-person butterfree enough and used to make me feel guilty about using the PC in pokemon games lol. I read it almost ten years ago and I still think about it.

this is probably pretentious af to quote someone else in a review so I won't do the whole thing, but re-reading this again I think of that Maya Angelou quote about how people forget what you actually said but never forget how you made them feel--and this fic gave me feels that I certainly remembered for years, which, quibbles about lessons and payoffs or whatever aside, is emblematic of a good story.

good fic update more
 
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love

Memento mori
Pronouns
he/him/it
Partners
  1. leafeon
before you even got the chance to launch a Sleep Powder.

"launch" seemed like an odd verb to me.

it bounces off the ground and comes to a rest by the roadside.

Litter! >:(

Would you have been happier if I’d given you special extra training to keep up, a constant reminder that you couldn’t just be part of the team like the others but needed special attention?

I think it would read a little better if you got rid of the first "special." At any rate, it kind of felt too long to me.

It’s not like you can literally talk talk

I think we could safely get rid of the second "talk."

We can just… if you want, you can just come along and… not battle.

This almost seems like too obvious of a solution. Now it just seems kind of silly to me that they haven't already thought to do that. (Though, after reading the whole thing, I think it would be too harsh for me to really hold that against the story; it doesn't really dilute the message or anything)

That’s actually reassuring; it indicates you’re really thinking about it, not just automatically defaulting to sticking with me no matter what.

Had you just written "It's reassuring; it means you're really thinking about it" then I think the implication still would have been clear.

You gently bump heads a couple times, a familiar gesture that makes my something clench in my chest.

Is there a reason to use "something" here instead of "heart" or whatever? Kinda made me raise my eyebrow.

You give an emphatic midair nod

This is really pretty trivial, but you could remove "midair", since I would have assumed Butterfree was in the air anyway.

Maybe this is just who you are, as a person.

The "as a person" is pretty powerful. I like how you snuck that in there.

You don’t really battle; you usually seem to have more fun watching

This bit seemed just the slightest bit wordy to me—could we cut out "usually" or "seem to"?

Trainers aren’t supposed to have favorites. And that’s fair, because you shouldn’t have favorite people. But you’ll always have a bit of a special place in my heart, as a friend.

Okay, I almost misread this as the narrator saying they *don't* see their other pokemon as people. Since I picked up on the "person" thing earlier anyway, I wonder if you wouldn't be better off just cutting out the second sentence and maybe tweaking things a little from there?

Overall, I thought this was well done. I think you got what you were going for. I feel like the point of the story is mostly summed up in the sentence:

It could all have been avoided if I’d paid better attention, or tried to understand you more fully, or just talked to you instead of leaving you on the PC so I wouldn’t have to – if I’d really treated you like someone who had feelings, instead of something that induced feelings in me.

Basically, my takeaway is: seeing others as actual people instead of thinking selfishly leads to greater happiness for everyone in a relationship. Simple enough, intellectually, but more important than the idea are the feelings, and I think you did well getting those across.
 

NebulaDreams

Ace Trainer
Partners
  1. luxray
  2. hypno
This was a nice story! First and foremost, this was a nostalgic experience for me since I felt like it captured the spirit of the early Pokemon days. That’s not just because it takes place in Kanto — the story of the trainer/Pokemon bond feels very reminiscent of the first anime series in a good way. That’s not only reflected in what happens in the story, it’s also reflected in the prose.

This was one of my favourite aspects of the story since it read like a heartfelt letter to a dear friend the protagonist had wronged, while also getting sentimental at times about their experiences. It has that right balance of introspection and recollection for me, and it made for an immersive experience, especially with the use of 'you' for Butterfree. It also helped me get into the head of the protagonist since I found his character flaws very interesting without coming across as insufferable.

The core message here is that ‘trainers shouldn’t have favourites’, and I really liked how that was explored here. The lesson the protagonist learns, which could also apply outside of the context of the Pokemon world, is that looking at someone through rose-tinted glasses and putting them on too high a pedestal can end up really hurting them. I empathised with him since he has good intentions all throughout, and it’s not one decision or lost battle that led to him abandoning Butterfree, there were a lot of factors at play that eventually eroded his relationship with his Pokemon. That, and since he was only a kid at the time, it would’ve been too much for him to shoulder that responsibility.

As immersive as the prose is, and the story does build to a gripping confrontation scene where the protagonist acknowledges his faults and also gets closure on the issue, there is an iceberg of fridge horror lurking beneath the surface of this that prevents me from feeling fully satisfied by the ending.

The most pressing issue is that Butterfree was left in the PC for 6 years. It is a hard hitting moment when we find out the protagonist neglected him, and his actions also seem understandable. I can actually relate to that part, where you put off something important like contacting a family member, and you end up procrastinating out of guilt as well as a fear out of what happens when you finally try to get closure because you’ve left it for so long. I think you bank on the horror of this concept well enough, since it was quite harrowing to see Butterfree confused at the passage of time after spending so long in there. It also probably mirrors how players would feel after returning to their save file after 6 years and seeing all the Pokemon they left collecting dust in the PC. So I think you intended this to some degree, and of course, I can’t tell how much of the story was changed from the 2012 version.

The reason I find this hard to swallow is because of the implications of Pokemon intelligence here. At first, I thought you would’ve gone down the superpowered animal route since the protag only mentions the battling side of things until the confrontation scene. From this point onwards, I got the impression that the Pokemon in this setting do seem capable of communicating despite the language barrier, and Butterfree seems to understand the abstract concepts his trainer brings up, while also expressing shame at being a weak fighter. Charizard’s response also seems to reflect this. This tells me that Pokemon are intelligent in this setting, not quite on a human-like level, but enough to be considered people by their trainers if the protagonist’s reaction is of any indication.

Yet, being left in stasis for 6 years against their will is an existentially petrifying concept. Since it was so easy for the protagonist to do that here, this also tells me that any Pokemon can just be cast aside like a sock in a dryer and the trainers don’t have to face any serious consequences for it.* So it seems odd that the protagonist suddenly cares about treating Butterfree like an equal when there weren’t any mentions of him doing anything else with Butterfree outside of battling. This could be explained as him being naive as a kid and not considering how his Pokemon would feel at the time, but it also feels like something the narration could’ve embellished more on since there would be those cooldown moments during a journey.

*It is a bit of a grey area since the Pokemon doesn’t seem to suffer in the PC. But the concept of being able to lock someone away like that and possibly having to deal with loved ones ageing (in the case of the protagonist) or dying during those years rips them of their personhood despite their intelligence. I don’t believe it was wholly the protag’s fault, but if he was a kid back then, then why didn’t anyone else in that world try to push him to release his Butterfree?

A part of me is still hesitant, still wants to go back and release you through the PC, so the Pokémon Center staff will handle it after closing and I can just pretend it never happened – but that’s not an option.

This aside adds even more fuel to the fire, since it makes the Pokemon Center sound apathetic about the situation and that there are no rights to be considered when releasing Pokemon. Since that grey area complicates the morality of the situation, it does add more questions than necessary to what’s supposed to be a simple story of friendship, guilt, miscommunication and forgiveness.

As a result, even though the protagonist really regrets his actions and expresses that clearly to Butterfree, I think the story lets him off a bit too easy. Well, it does make sense that Butterfree would still be attached to him as he likely wouldn’t understand the weight of a 6 year time gap, but since it’s confined to the protag’s perspective, I don’t get much of a sense of how bad his actions would be considered in that world. And so I don’t really know whether or not this happy ending feels earned.

Keep in mind, these points can be chalked up to my views on the Pokemon world -- I tend to get bogged down in the implications of the world when reading something in this fandom. In the end, I still enjoyed reading this, and I don’t think the implications get in the way of the message, but it did leave me feeling conflicted in terms of what emotions to feel. In any case, thanks for the good read. :)
 

SparklingEspeon

Back on Her Bullshit
Staff
Location
a Terrace of Indeterminate Location in Snowbelle
Pronouns
She/Her
Partners
  1. espurr
  2. fennekin
  3. zoroark
Hiii I'm here for catnip and thought this was something completely different so I'm currently dealing with the whiplash but it's okay because this definitely didn't make me tear up or anything

This is fine 🔥 :coffee:

I definitely read the original version of this a long while ago, but I remember barely any of it - which is clearly evident because I thought this was the oneshot where the trainer deletes their save file and all their pokemon have varying reactions/goodbyes.

I feel like this story is meant to be taken emotionally rather than logically - I'm coming up short with plotty stuff to munch on, but the feeling of the oneshot comes through very strongly. There's a place or two that I could poke it that somewhat negates that feeling IMO, but in the end those are pretty much nitpicks. I think, for the most part, this was a flying success!

The mix of first and second person does a lot of favors here, IMO - assigning pronouns to the main characters and structuring the POV around that makes it feel like the narrator addressing the reader, but also kinda feels janky when you think about it - since "you", the butterfree, don't actually have a POV moment here. Although I think that kind of works in your favor too.

I feel like the emotional core of this story is 90% in the trainer's head, kinda? I get this feel of "Butterfree forgives the trainer just like that because Friendship Is Strong", but then once you get past the initial reaction of 'aww, that's sweet' you begin to realize that maybe this isn't such a large thing from Butterfree's side? Like, what mattered to them seemed to mainly be that they wanted to make their trainer happy, and then disappointed their trainer enough that they abandoned Butterfree all alone for a while. Is there a lot to get angry about here? Sure. And the trainer knows exactly what they've done, and it's basically set up in front of us with neon flashing lights. It just doesn't really feel like Butterfree is taking it nearly as hard as it should, since it immediately forgives the trainer without a second thought. And also, it's made clear that six years to a pokemon locked up in the PC isn't 1 : 1 with RL time, so the full depth of the situation likely didn't really register. I don't feel like the depth of this was entirely mutual - it mainly feels like the trainer's emotional journey, but the butterfree doesn't actually have a lot of agency in this story even if it was adorable. It's just vibing for most of it. I guess this is really a long-winded way of saying "I wish we got more of Butterfree's perspective here, because I don't really buy that Butterfree is nearly as invested in this as the trainer is".

Agency aside, though, I do feel like the point of the oneshot came across astoundingly well. It's about a trainer apologizing to a pokemon they've wronged and cast to the side, being forgiven, and then forging a stronger bond through that. The feels came through pretty strong. I'm particularly glad that it isn't all forgotten the moment that the trainer repents (although, again, this seems pretty one-sided since we're only seeing the Trainer's guilt and the butterfree seems perfectly happy).

I also thought it was interesting how the trainer slowly goes from treating butterfree like a pet to treating it like a person. In the beginning, their main concern is how well Butterfree battles, and while they do show some compassion and worry about butterfree's feelings although to be fair I'm not sure how much of that is tinted by Present!Trainer's reminiscence, it's the kind of compassion you show to a dog or some other pet - evidenced by the trainer kind of just letting Butterfree go gradually instead of talking to them. Then, after the six year interlude, they've grown up a bit, and a lot of their apology centers around how instead of talking it out with Butterfree and seeing what Butterfree wanted, they made assumptions about what Butterfree would have wanted and acted on those. Seeing them offer Butterfree a choice and then Butterfree choosing to go with them was a very powerful moment, IMO. As well as showing the epilogue, where they treat all their pokemon that way now.

That's.... honestly all I have to say - like I said in the beginning, I feel like this oneshot is more focused on conveying a feeling than it is providing us with All the Plot, and I think it succeeds pretty well in doing that, even if I felt the POV was a bit one-sided. I definitely had feels reading, lol. This was a good read!

~SparklingEspeon

Listening to: Sheer Mountain Range, PSMD
 

Equitial

Ace Trainer
Pronouns
he/him
Partners
  1. espurr
  2. inkay
  3. woobat
  4. ralts
I liked the writing and the emotion in this oneshot, but some issues with the execution made the story somewhat lackluster for me. To start with, I'll go through some positives:

I like the format of the fic, the first person narrator speaking directly to Butterfree via second person. It's a very good choice to pull emotion from this fic. It really put me in the place of a narrator, and because of the subject of the fic it felt like a relatable experience. In Pokemon games, I've ditched Pokemon I loved when they couldn't catch up. And when the narrator reaches their conclusion at the end, it feels like it's relating to me as well, speaking about how I view the Pokemon in my games.

I like the journey the narrator goes through as they age. In the beginning, they really feel like a kid. I particularly liked this line:

I remember literally jumping for joy, feeling as if my heart were about to explode, and you fluttering down towards me in a little playful loop before landing on my head and snuggling into my hair.

So adorable, and it sets up a good hook when the mood turns somber. As the protagonist recounts what happened, I feel them age and grow. They feel like a dynamic character in a short time.

One particular quirk of your writing that I liked was the repetition toward the beginning. In the first section, the "I remember... I remember... I remember..." instantly gives the story a nostalgic edge. A bit later, you repeat "It broke my heart... it broke my heart..." which gives the same air but more tragically. This moment was absolutely heartwrenching:

it broke my heart to notice that you were becoming more nervous, your battle cry losing confidence – something I could hear in your voice because I knew you so well, even though you were trying not to let me hear it.

However, after the build-up, the climax did not satisfy me much. In my case, I think this stems from two main points: I feel like absolution came to the narrator too easily, and the final moral is not well led up to.

The trainer feels immense guilt for what they did -- indeed, leaving their Pokemon in the void for six years is quite harsh -- which kept me sympathetic towards them at first. But when they finally confront Butterfree, I feel like their guilt is dropped too easily. A large part of it is due to Butterfree. I understand that there are in-universe reasons why Butterfree would act the way they did, but story-wise their immediate acceptance of what happened to them is lackluster. In-universe, Butterfree may not understand what happened to them, but I the reader do. I would have preferred if I had gotten more emotion from Butterfree's end. As it is now, they feel more like a vessel for the moral rather than a complete character.

Now, the main crux of the fic is that the narrator originally didn't treat their Pokemon partners as people. I like that concept, but the way the protagonist got to this realization doesn't seem to follow.

What I should have done is I should have tried to talk to you, Butterfree. We should have talked about it.

This is all fair, but I never saw this exact issue (lack of communication) coming before the narrator brought it up. I think this could have been helped if that aspect of the fic had been highlighted in some way while the narrator is recounting what they've done. While reading, it felt more like the trainer was too focused on their goals, and that was what drove them and Butterfree apart. The narrator wanted to be a Pokemon master; when Butterfree was viable, the narrator liked them, but when Butterfree no longer was the narrator neglected them to focus on what the narrator personally wanted to accomplish.

I also felt like the fic's relationship focus was a bit too narrow. Obviously, a story called Butterfree is going to be largely about the Butterfree, but the narrator had a problem with how they viewed all Pokemon. A little bit of recollection about their other Pokemon here and there could have made this story feel more cohesive to me.
 
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Umbramatic

The Ghost Lord
Location
The Yangverse
Pronouns
Any
Partners
  1. reshiram
  2. zygarde
So somehow I had never read the original version of this after all these years??? And now I am reading this revised version? And now I want to cry??? Like my meds are the only reason I'm not crying right now.

687 - SGoSkHp.png

The progression of this was reallly beautiful, with Butterfee's journey being (mostly, I will get into that) well showcased. The Trainer's emotions are also well-portrayed, I want to hug both of them.

My one (1) problem, and this is going to be massively hypocritical coming from me, is that the first half fels a little rushed? Liike we could have gotten individual scenes but no, it's more of a summary the protagonist gives to presumably Butterfree. Which doesn't not work but could be better you know?

Second half is much more solid. Here we get a proper in depth scene of the protag and Butterfree's relationship. Butterfree's body language and mannerisms are really well-writen and convincing and also really cute. Meanwhile, the protagonist has anxiety! Is he really being good to his friend? Can he even call Butterfree his friend anymore? It's so delicious. It's also all portrayed and described very well.

But fortunately there is a happy ending! Butterfree makes the best headpet. I do recall you saying the original DIDN'T have a happy ending. I'm just imagining FEAROW SWOOPS IN AND EATS BUTTERFREE, PROTAGONIST IS IN DIS PEAR, THE END. Probably not but my brain is like that.

Thanks for polishing this baby up and posting it for Thousand Roads to see! No while you're at it rewrite Curse so I can be traumatized by it all over again.
 

Flaze

Don't stop, keep walking
Location
Chile
Pronouns
he/him
Partners
  1. infernape
Boy, I didn't expect to get emotional this late on a saturday night but you sure did it didn't you.

This one hit really close to home, as I'm sure it should've considering that it speaks to an experience that I'm sure everyone that's played pokemon has had. Butterfree is one of those pokemon everyone's used at some point, whether you liked it or not, the game kind of required you to.

I've always been a fan of Butterfree myself, in fact, it's still my favorite bug type pokemon, so much so in fact that when I was met with the same issue as the protagonist in this story while playing leaf green I also felt bad for leaving it in the PC. Tho after I passed the game I took it with me to the sevii islands so it could get a victory lap and left it at the daycare center.

But what I'm trying to say is, this oneshot, as short as it is, feels real, the way in which it tackles that feeling of seeking forgiveness for something you've been trying to avoid, the way that it channels the character's emotions. It resonates because your protagonist's words paint such a clear picture of what happened, how he felt and why it was understandeable at the time.

I honestly didn't expect things in the story to end as well as the did, but I'm glad the did. I think it had a wonderful lesson about trying to make up for past mistakes and how true love for someone and real commitment to improve and comeback from those mistakes can help relationships and people grow and just become happier in general.

It was really cute dragonfree, thanks for making me cry.
 

Starlight Aurate

Ad Jesum per Mariam | pfp by kintsugi
Location
Route 123
Partners
  1. mightyena
  2. psyduck
Hey! Here for your very long overdue I-have-no-excuses-and-I'm-sorry Blacklight review!

Right off the bat, I love that this is written addressed to someone specific. It definitely feels very unique and gives a stronger personal touch.

Of course I remember it. It was my first gym victory; how could I ever forget? I remember the Onix roaring and collapsing, the rumble under my feet as it hit the ground. I remember Brock’s calm voice telling it to return while the widest grin I had ever sported spread over my face. I remember literally jumping for joy, feeling as if my heart were about to explode, and you fluttering down towards me in a little playful loop before landing on my head and snuggling into my hair.
Gosh, I absolutely love all of these specific memories. So cute!

And then… you started losing.
:c Awww

I wasn’t disappointed in you. It’s hard to explain, but it wasn’t like that. It broke my heart to realize you were falling behind, not because you weren’t good enough, but because I loved you and loved your joy when you won and loved being able to trust you to win any battle.
Being able to love happy memories with someone and having to move on past them hurts badly. I think you did a good job of displaying that here.

I had gotten caught up in my journey; I loved my other Pokémon, I was excited about getting Blaine’s badge before my friends, you had been pushed to the back of my mind, and I just forgot about it. When I remembered, I was already on the way to the Seafoam Islands to investigate rumours of Articuno sightings; I couldn’t just turn back.
I felt like the use of semicolons here slightly broke the tone; up until now, the narrator had broken up the train of thought with periods and so seeing the semicolons felt a little more formal than colloquial to me. I notice you use them more as the one-shot goes on, though, so it's consistent.

By the time I returned, I was too ashamed to face you. It had been so long, and I’d just left you to rot. I tried to get myself to go and retrieve you, but I didn’t know what I would even say to you. I told myself I had other important things to do, that I had just one gym left and I might as well get that done without having to first spend the weeks it would take getting you caught up by that point.
Oh, dude, nooooooooo. Never ghost someone! Face your fears!

It’s been six years.
How... How long is a Butterfree's lifespan? :c

That wrenches at my heart more than anything; suddenly it occurs to me that your sense of time on the PC was muddled, that your first realization of how long it’s been is seeing me suddenly a teenager in place of the child that you knew.
This definitely hit hard.

I'm also just now realizing that being deposited in this fic doesn't mean going to Oak's Lab like it does in the anime, but that the Pokemon are stuck as computer programs for years. That's horrifying D :

I try to swallow the lump in my throat, but I can’t; my mind is full of every time I avoided using you, every time I put off training you, every time I remembered you and realized I hadn’t thought about you for weeks. It’s an aching, suffocating feeling of opportunities lost, potential wasted and friendship neglected.
A very good depiction of what guilt feels like!

It's incredible that a teenager who's won the Pokemon League championship breaks down into a sobbing wreck when he tries to let a Butterfree go. I know this had been an incredibly tight friendship in the formative years of his life, but I'm wondering if there's also some deeper insecurities or issues running there.

It could all have been avoided if I’d paid better attention, or tried to understand you more fully, or just talked to you instead of leaving you on the PC so I wouldn’t have to – if I’d really treated you like someone who had feelings, instead of something that induced feelings in me.
Becoming self-aware of utilitarian actions is painful!

Charizard snorted when I asked, fighter that he is – but I finally convinced him he doesn’t have to fight those Water-types that make him nervous, either.
Ha, nice comeback.

Personally, I really liked this! It's definitely something that personally resonated with me; as a kid playing Pokemon Red, I always caught Caterpie and trained them up to Butterfree and relied on it to get me through the first two gyms and Mt. Moon. Having Butterfree fall behind was something that was kinda sad, but just locking it away in the PC and getting stronger Pokemon to move forward was practically a necessity unless you wanted to get through with only 5 Pokemon (and no HM slave).

I really got the sense here that trainer cared for Butterfree. I know others have brought up the issue of just how similar Pokemon are to people in this one-shot and how cognizant Butterfree is and whether Trainer treated him properly, but Trainer's descriptions of loving Butterfree's joy, of being happy at seeing Butterfree happy and of making his best effort to do whatever he could so Butterfree could remain as part of the team seemed genuine to me. I felt like I got a good idea of how sentient Butterfree is and think you do a good job showing it through his actions. He clearly understands Trainer and responds but still has animalistic characteristics. It really pulled at my heart when Trainer realized Butterfree's sense of time had been muddled from being in the PC for so long.

And Trainer being a jerk is something I think can be chalked up to him being a child/teenager. How many of us have ghosted and ignored our friends growing up? How many people have gone through breakups where their significant other flat-out stopped talking to them? It's a harsh thing to do, and he's totally to blame for it, but I think he's at an age where it isn't unexpected. Until we saw Butterfree again, I was worried that his lifespan might have been so short that within six years he had passed away, but thank goodness it wasn't like that!

I also like that it had a happy ending--I certainly wasn't expecting it! This was set up to tug at heartstrings, and I think it did so wonderfully. I'm glad Trainer got to keep Butterfree around, if as a friend and companion more than a battler like before. On the whole, I think this one-shot was less about viewing Butterfree as a person than it was about Trainer's growth and his relationship with 'Free. We see that relationship strong at the start and deteriorate as Trainer gets his head caught up in battling and winning--and then loops back around to valuing that relationship with Butterfree enough to want what Butterfree wants, not just whatever makes Trainer feel best.

All in all, a cute one-shot that was good for a little emotional trip :' ) Thank you for sharing!
 
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