Pokémon Just Hold Still

[Rusting Knight]

Here with a review for the first three chapters! Hopefully more to come.

First off, I’ll say straight up that I love your writing! This story had one of the most immediate draws for me that I’ve experienced in fanfic, mainly because of how strong your characters felt. In particular, Luke and Aaron came through very strongly for me - the reader gets a quick grasp of Luke as an anxious, nice kid, and Aaron as a massive douchebag. Effective! I think that character of Wendy and Nadine came through a little less strong, but I got a pretty good grasp of their basic personalities. For Luke, the level of detail when talking about photography grounds you in the idea of this being a real passion for him - introducing his camera with a specific model name was really effective for this. Plus, both Zoe’s personality and her status as a kind of service Pokémon gives you the sense that Luke’s anxiety is pretty bad. It makes me wonder if relying on Hypnosis like he does is harmful in some way? I assume not, but saying ‘natural sleep’ implies to me maybe some future conflict there… intriguing! Obviously the hinting of disasters to come are very effective foreshadowing too, both the overt and the more subtle hints like Luke rubbing at his shoulder.
In particular, your dialogue was really effective, and felt natural and realistic, though maybe a little too mature for your characters stated ages - without the dates I would have put Luke at maybe seventeen or older, not fifteen. This isn’t really a detractor though; it gives the sense that the Pokémon journey has set different benchmarks of maturity, so it feels supported by world-building instead of weird. In terms of criticism, I’d say that the ‘travel with us for the sake of photos’ feels a little contrived, but since its mostly explained by worldbuilding and characters also, it doesn’t come off all that strange. Overall I like how this story keeps both the whimsy of Pokémon media while combining more mature and serious topics - I like how it seems that the journeys partially function to lead kids toward finding fitting career paths. On side note, my own fic has a main character named Luke that heavily features letters, which is kinda funny to me.

Similarly, I liked Wendy’s first POV chapter for much of the same reasons - dialogue, strong characterisation (I liked Amanda a lot for someone I assume won’t show up much - very vivid personality), good but light world building. The work that Wendy does for the Johto Conservation Society, and her ambitions in going to uni, both seem realistic, and give a sense of maturity from her, mingled with a kind of naivety in how she thinks of what happened in 1988. Which was very effective; the violence from Luke, and in particular from Ace, which was genuinely kinda sickening, which she reacted to with such complete surprise… awful! It makes me wonder what happened with Nadine, too, if Aaron is pretty clearly some kind of bully. In particular, I’d say my favourite scene in this chapter was the one between Wendy and Luke in the hospital room, which felt realistic and viscerally disturbing. In contrast, Wendy’s calmer, hopeful state of mind during the 1993 section, her desire to reconcile with Luke, give a nice balance between her maturation and her utter confusion about what happened in 1988.
As with Luke, Wendy feels like a very well-rounded chacter (I actually just wrote ‘person’ there by mistake, which goes to show), with her internal narration (and specific brand of anxiety) different enough from his to seperate their POVs. It’s difficult to provide unique narration for both Luke and Wendy at both 10 and 15, and you pull it off really well. There’s a lot of good balances in your narration - what happened in 1988 and what caused it (whatever that was) are horrible without there being a tonal disconnect between the grounded tone.

Chapter Three has a great opening, with the exchange between Wendy given a real sense of connection versus the general, subtle rudeness of Aaron (particularly when talking to Nadine - really makes me understand why Luke punched him, and I’m sure I haven’t even gotten to the ‘really’ bad stuff yet). That kind of covert bullying brought me back to primary school, to be honest, so big, uncomfortable thumbs-up for realism there. The ‘I’m being your friend here’ thing that Aaron pulled with Luke after his forfeit was miserable. In contrast, you get the same sense from Wendy this chapter that she’s fundamentally nice, but a bit clueless when it comes to people - but hey, what ten year old isn’t? Her letter to Luke in 1993 was also great, in the kind of ‘made me physically grin’ way (Larvitar(!!!) is, I imagine, also how I would feel in her place)… and then came the urging to reconcile with Aaron.

Overall, I’ve been loving this fic so far, and I hope to come back to it soon! Also - a belated thank you for your Catnip review - our feedback was really helpful.

 

[WildBoots]

Hey, Anon! I saw Negrek flag this story as a relative newcomer to the forums in need of more reviews, and it sounded right up my alley, so I'm giving it a go!

You've chosen a lot of the tropes that I'm an absolute sucker for. I love a heavy dose of realism in my journey fic (if this can still be said to be a journey.) Beans and rice over a camp stove! Pokemon ecology! You've clearly put a lot of thought into those areas.

Drowzee/hypno is an interesting choice as well. Rare to see that evo line in a non-villainous role. (And a female! You gender rebel.) I expect insomnia to be an ongoing thing for Luke--I have to imagine that's the main reason you picked that starter.

I also liked the choice to start the story at the end of Luke's badge journey. (I'm also a sucker for stories about trainers who actually aren't trainers anymore and are instead trying to figure out what else they're doing with their lives.) I'm expecting this to be a character-centered story rather than one driven by battles and fighting Evil Team. It looks like the main themes are going to be regret and growing up, which are served well by looking back on the beginning of a journey that he thinks is finished. Also themes I think are especially fun to explore through the lens of a nostalgic children's game set in the 80s and 90s. ❤️

The overall vibe is world-weary and pensive. I'm into it, but I had trouble matching it with the protagonist's age. The details Luke notices and the vocabulary you've chosen (not to mention the wistful meal in the bar) felt like a much older character. I've seen arguments that the expectation of solo journeying at 10 would mean maturing faster, but my understanding of human brain development and my experience working with teens for my job tells me probably not. The two solutions I see are aging up the characters or tweaking your narration style to evoke a younger voice. I'm biased because I prefer writing adult trainers, but I do think older characters would fit the theme of reclaiming (?) lost love better. The older you are, the more deeply you can sigh as you gaze upon your wasted youth, lol.

There were also a few places where world-building details raised more questions than they answered. To achieve realism, you do a lot of borrowing from our world, which I think is normally a sensible strategy. However, there were places here where it created a gap between my understanding of our world and my understanding of the canon you're drawing on; since I couldn't reliably draw on either, I couldn't fully grasp what the rules of this setting were. The biggest example was the bar. What's the drinking age here? Or, is this a bar in the way the The Bronze in Buffy the Vampire slayer is a bar, one that doesn't serve alcohol because it's meant for teens? What legal rights do teenagers have in this setting? What about the ten-year-olds?

However, take that with a grain of salt, because you've got a lot of detail here to begin with. In Luke's situation, it makes sense to be reflective and even sad; I don't see a fast-paced version of this story working. We're not doing explosions and car chases and a checklist of battles to fight. Even so, the ratio of descriptive passages to plot is very high, which makes things move slowly.

I imagine some of that is addressed in the later chapters. Again, the amount of work you've put into this shows.

There's enough here for the reader to give you the benefit of the doubt and continue reading, I'd say! Your prose style is different from mine, but it's well-edited: I didn't notice many glaring errors. And Luke's level of self-awareness so early in the game makes me interested in seeing how he'll grow and change. He's currently withdrawn and a bit socially anxious, compartmentalizing to hell, and seems to recognize that it's a problem despite having no clear strategy for fixing it. He knows he's made mistakes in the past, even if we don't know yet what those mistakes were, and now he's got an opportunity to make some of them right. Maybe. He takes a passive role for most of this chapter, so I'm looking forward to seeing what kinds of choices he'll be presented with in future chapters.

Things definitely picked up when he found her letter at the pokecenter. The dialogue there felt very natural to me, and the situation was a good use of the time period and the technology you've established is available.

I've got some line-by-line reactions, including some temperature checks and some concrit. Feel free to use what feels useful and ignore the rest.

Spoiler: Line-by-line

While e-mail and online bulletin boards were not new technologies in 1995, among adolescents they were still limited to the tech-savviest those whose parents could afford a home computer.

OMG. You've got mail.

My old username, back when my only project was a Johto journey fic, was Old School Johto, but it I think you've got me beat. Oldest school.

This is a fun vibe, especially for gen 1 & 2, and I don't often see fics explicitly set in the early 90s. I can immediately imagine some challenges and opportunities presented by this level of technology, and I'll be intrigued to see where you go with it.

milestone: He

Heads up that a clause or sentence following a colon typically is not capitalized.

Her wrinkled trunk led her headlong

I'm appreciating how this immediately establishes that she has an inhuman intelligence. If smell is her primary sense, she's going to notice different things than Luke will.

(EDIT: taking back part of what I said here and reframing.) However, I do think you could trim some fat at the sentence level. On the first pass, I couldn’t at all accept that she would be moving *fast,* first because the sentences are long and Luke has so little urgency, and second because the emphasis on her trunk immediately put me in mind of an elephant and the inquisitive way they explore. I do think switching it up with a few simpler sentences (and maybe breaking up the paragraph into her action and then, separately, his reaction) would give some of the details more room to breathe.

he couldn’t pretend to know much about what made her tick yet.

I'm curious why not! Right away, Luke displays aptitude for observing pokemon in their environment (the heracross in particular), so I'm surprised he doesn't even have an inkling. Regardless, it sure seems like it would be worth his time to try to learn something about her if he's training her. If it's meant to be that she's extra hard to understand because she's a psychic-type, I'd love more support in the text for that.

Are pokedexes not widely available in this setting? Even if they're not, I'd guess there'd be other options available, like a local library with an encyclopedia or something (it's the era of the card catalog, babeyyyy!). In a setting that aims this hard for realism, I also wouldn't be willing to hand wave that Oak is still doing some of the basic research that will eventually inform the dex that's available by Red/Blue/Yellow, since the 80's in our world already had enough science to put a guy on the moon.

He also wondered how long it would be until he came across a training question he already knew the answer to.

Another milestone for sure, haha.

The wording is a little clunky though. A suggestion: All these weeks on the road and he still had so much left to learn.

Luke put his right eye to the viewfinder and got the Pokémon in focus. The light meter indicated underexposure, which was unsurprising, as his last picture had been taken in direct sunlight. Lowering the shutter speed seemed the correct choice (rather than widening the aperture) since the subject was motionless for now.

Oh fun, are we doing Snap? Love seeing a trainer who has a skill right out the gate. I could do with a smidge less photo-taking detail to keep the plot flowing, though.

How could anyone commit to that level of specialization at age ten?

Oh man, I gotta say I was surprised that Luke is only ten. I'd been wondering earlier how old he was, but his pensive vibe had made me guess much older. That said, this is a good bit of world-building, establishing both the reputation of wildlife pokemon photographers and how far Luke is from reaching that bar.

My mom bought her from a breeder because she was worried about my insomnia being a problem on the trail. “From my parents.”

Luke comes off as guarded. It's hard to say here whether he's appreciative that his mom got him a starter (or whether he should be--how do most kid get their starters in this setting?), but his reluctance to give the real reason suggests that his insomnia is very serious, his mom his very overprotective, or both.

“I call it manners,” said Aaron with a laugh. “But whatever—no pressure.”

This was another moment that felt more like a teenager than an elementary school kid to me, the way he softened the jab and took it back. I feel like children are less aware of how their words affect others and more concerned about enforcing rules (especially when it's to get something they want). Less, "Whatever, man," and more, "Don't you know it's rude?"

“Can you take a picture of us with our Pokémon?”

That checks out. ✅

The way it moved in the air was mystifyingly airy—as if gravity had less of a hold on it than it should.

Nice detail. I did feel like the pokemon got more detail here than the humans, and I'm not sure that should be the case if this is the momentous first meeting with Important Girl. But this was at least a detail that seemed sensible.

“When in doubt, get closer,” his dad had told him countless times. “The big mistake every new photographer makes is thinking you need to get everything around the subject in frame. If you’re shooting a scene, shoot a scene—otherwise, shoot a subject.”

Ah, so photography is personal for him.

but the thought of saying something so presumptuous made him awfully nervous,

Good with machines and technical processes, but not so good with people.

June 28th, 1993

The television above the bar

Okay, I think I'm getting the scope and rhythm of what this fic is going to be. Already catching a whiff of potential vs. regret and childhood vs. adulthood as themes. Expecting to bounce between "then" and "now" throughout the fic.

comprised as much of trainers as of adults

Bold juxtaposition: this implies adults are rarely trainers. (If so, surprised the kids are allowed in the bar, even in the 90s. Surely there are other places with televisions where they might be watching a big match, like a pokecenter.)

His bio says he’s fourteen, but his birthday is in August, and Mr. Barlow has shown as much poise under pressure as any fifteen-year-old this year.

Now I'm wondering what the drinking age is in this setting and when someone is considered an adult! He's not present in the bar, I know, but in general I'm having trouble sorting out where social norms are different from our world and where they're the same. Is this bar like one I would see in our world here and now, or does that mean something totally different in this context?

just enough eligibility left

Odd way to frame it. I think eligibility is less like something you can use up and run out of than like a light switch: you're either eligible or you're not.

It didn’t help that said companions had moved on from their earlier conversation

I know this structure is very commonly accepted in fic, but it's wordy. Reads more clearly as, "It didn’t help that they'd moved on from their earlier conversation..."

“Daaaaamn,” said Sundeep at what was undoubtedly some impressive replay footage. “That’s a Flamethrower.”

Oh, hello--pleasantly surprised to see a more diverse cast than I'd initially expected in the Luke, Aaron, and Wendy of it all. It also suggests a wider world beyond Johto and Kanto.

Also appreciating the scattered color commentary. Sounds like it comes from a place of genuinely enjoying sports. :)

Goldenrod-pancake from the iron griddle in the middle of the table.

I wondered by not simply call it okonomiyaki, since it seems clear from the rest of the paragraph that it's that kind of pancake, not the butter-and-syrup kind I was initially primed for.

Zoe lacked in both respect for personal property and in the ability to guess how much physical food her stomach could handle. No one could reasonably expect the former from a Hypno, of course,

I find Zoe more interesting when Luke talks about her with authority than when he's shrugging his shoulders at her inscrutability. This is one way to show he's grown since the "before" portion of the chapter! I almost wish instead that 10-year-old Luke had made a guess that teenage Luke now knows is wrong. Like, sure, she can have berries! Those are good for pokemon!

I'm interested in hearing more about how drowzee/hypno see the world--sounds like they're not good at paying attention to their bodies. I'm curious if and how the dreams she eats affect her waking life then. This is an unusual enough take that I think it would be worth expanding on, but maybe you've already done that in later chapters.

This wasn’t compatible with the others’ plans, which included winning the Blackthorn Gym Badge after another try or two, then getting bounced after their first battles at the Indigo Plateau and sticking around to watch the Tournament from the bleachers for free—the usual.

This part made perfect sense to me.

He’d be lying if he said he hadn’t been scouting all three of these guys to find the right trainer for Shane, and Ken had the insight and patience to click with any Pokémon.

He comes across as a little calculating here. He's not unkind, but he sees other people as a means to an end and holds them at a distance.

it made Luke a little ill to know he wasn’t going to miss them at all.

Oh, and he knows it. Glad he's at least self-aware. That gives me hope for his eventual growth, lol.

She was always amenable to facilitating fast, deceptively dreamless sleep, having a literal appetite for it as she did

I know what the idea here is, but the wording is imprecise. It's the dreams she's eating, right, not his sleep itself?

I liked the moment of him worrying about her dream-diet though, haha. Still on the clinical side, but it's the first indication we've gotten that he cares about her.

Also, oof, sounds like he's holding big parts of himself at a distance, too. I'm sure compartmentalizing his feelings is going to go great and lead to no further complications.

flat, utilitarian, late-twentieth-century buildings,

Another moment where I had trouble believing that Luke is fifteen. With a 3rd person POV that follows this closely, the implication is that the things that narrator notices are the things that Luke notices. Also, given that this setting includes both a ton of Anglo names and also an okonomiyake game strong enough to be the defining food of a city, I'm not sure what "twentieth-century buildings" look like in this setting anyway. E.g., are they Japanese-style buildings or Western ones? Flat and utilitarian actually give me more to go on.

or was she going out of her way to check for a reply?

You've got mail, a mournful redux played on a kazoo, lol.

I hope those thoughts are useful!

I've gotta say, based on your approach to journeyfic (and your interest in Tolkein!), I think you'd really vibe with my journeyfic, Spring. We're both doing very animal-like renditions of pokemon and Pensive Vibes, among other things. I'd be down for a review exchange if you want, but no pressure.

You'd also like Broken Things by Persephone (lots of camping and animal behavior) and Dragon's Dance by Pen (big feelings about growing up) if you haven't already checked them out. (I've been away from the forum and server for a while, so I'm a bit out of the loop, sorry!)

Cheers! 🍻

 

[K_S]

Hi here for the blitz. Let's get started.

Love how "misplaced time" is a milestone. As well as "possibly lost". And all the other fun fall out. Pre GPS that must of happened so many times...

Huh he's a photography fan is he? Interesting. And more cumbersome since smart phones are not a thing. I like how each step and adjustment for that perfect shot is such a tutorial in how those old devices worked.

And then the fun"did I get the shot right" scenario that so many snap players would confirm. Luckily he got shot 2 so hopefully one or the other works out.

And pride goes before a fall... or rather a snapped twig scares off the perfect shot. Glad the trainer trio are taking thier catching opportunity loss well enough.

I kinda suspect the mon mania that's encouraged would make any kid that age assume a photographer is a 'mon photographer. Anything else, especially for the trainer crowd, is probably alien.

Wonder why luke has insomnia?

Laughs. Love how the kids are dogged in enforcing mon game logic. Eyecontact equals battle, no questions asked.

Unless you know it's a problem. Then all questions asked. And with Wendy's idea of impromptu group photo I can see the title being dropped pretty soon.

Or not. Though how would the cyquin's flames that are forever in motion work with the shot?

I can hear the kids "wait it's not a Polaroid?"and the readers sgoing "what's a Polaroid?"

That's quite a time jump. And Luke seems anti trainer/league life I wonder what happened. Seriously he might want to stay in during league party week if it smarts this bad.

Suffice to say the regulars are prying and ther seems to be pain under that rock. Or rather (after further reading) the others of his training buddy system are being a bit noisy. But Luke seems to be disengaging from trainer life and getting into photography/civilian life while shedding his team. That's got to be a hard but common aspect of trainer life.

I can't see Luke getting rid of Zoe. They seem to look put for each other too much.
Love the interaction between Luke's last group of travel buddies and himself. Even though he has plans outside of their scope they still are supportive and warm towards him. From the foreshadowing you mentioned thus far sounds like the original group and second weren't so kind.

It's a shame that whatever went down with Wendy seems to have eroded his ability to connect with trainers and mon...

His plans for photography sound like an adventure of their own. I wonder if Zoe sees this as the ultimate sightseeing adventure with a free meal ticket/friend tag along and is just totally oblivious to the human themed drama.

White noice for Luke... spaming the "next button" for players... same difference.

Oh no this letter has got to be from the og training squad. Nothing else would twist the knife more.


Please don't be wendy...

Nevermind that bit of optimism... this is going to rip open wounds and Luke between trauma, anxiety, and insomnia is not going to have a good time of it I can tell.

Well thank for sharing and welcome to the forums.