Pokémon Just Hold Still

Chibi Pika · Jan 4, 2025

Alrighty, for these chapters we get the fun of going through my original, in-the-moment notes, with occasional interjections from today-chibi who has the benefit of hindsight. Should be fun. :copyka2:

OH NO I UNDERSTAND LESS

It's absolutely incredible how we actually see the moment where everything crashes and burns, and yet we're left every bit as blindsided as Wendy. Non-chronological storytelling ftw.

So I'd originally thought Nadine got burnout or something but now it seems more likely that it was also a falling out.

I love Wendy's internal thoughts, realizing that there must have been a pattern leading up to this that she missed, but not being able to voice it. It's all so real.

Ohh my god and then Aaron goes aggro immediately the moment Wendy asks about it, geez.

You can’t just pretend to be that good of friends with somebody for that long. Nobody can.

Man...

“Just take it back,” she said, hoping against hope he’d grab the rope she was lowering him. “Just say you made it up because you’re mad.”

God, Wendy is relatable here

The thing is, I can genuinely believe that Aaron is just rationalizing to himself after the fact too. It’s so, so easy to believe that they really did have perfectly friendly interactions all this time, but now that it’s gone sour, he has to retroactively justify it to himself like Luke was bad news all along. Wendy’s reaction is practically identical to mine in that kind of scenario. Spot on. (Regrettably, this isn't a hypothetical, speaking from experience.)

[Hindsight chib here with a massive :copyka2:]

She would never say it out loud, but Wendy almost hoped the JCS or the Rangers would perform some age fraud on Amanda’s behalf, if only because this way Amanda was more likely to pursue her long-term goal through cleaning trash, monitoring Pokémon populations, etc. instead of bombing power plants.

dying, I love Amanda, what a memorable side character

~~conservation pales in comparison to my strategy, firebombing a pokemart,~~

I enjoy how naturalistic it feels to encounter a shiny while tagging wildlife for a conservation group. Also enjoy the vague allusion to Wendy peacing out of some other random drama with Amanda's friend group. Just being like "nope."

Oh dear, Luke's been socially awkward penguined into a gym battle.

“She can’t stand quitters”

Thiiiis has some hidden context, I'm sensing.

[Hindsight chib: ahahahahaha]

Oh nooo I am cringing so hard at this group badge pact, oh no. But Luke feels like he's gotta, or else he won't be able to keep being friends with Wendy.

So I was in the middle of typing this up — I dunno if this is meant to have continuity with GSC but I like that it’s easy to imagine old man Pendergast retiring sometime in the next 6 years and leaving Bugsy as gym leader in 1999 — and then right in the very next bit we see that Bugsy is indeed the overeager gym trainer. Excellent.

Present Wendy: *instinctively second-guesses if others mean what they say*
Past Wendy: *takes her friend at her word*
Me: hmmm

Perchance, something has made her realize that people don’t always speak their mind until it’s too late,

Really enjoy Wendy’s way of looking at her own perception of events and contrasting it with what someone else might think, and re-evaluating her gut expectation that other people would actually say what they mean. It feels really natural that she might have developed this habit after all the… everything.

Oh no. I suspect that Nadine is in fact not saying what she means. And Wendy is here taking it at face value.

If people would just speak their mind it sure would make things easier huh. :copyka2:

To Aaron’s credit it ssseeems like he’s handling Nadine’s departure in a more mature manner than I'd have expected. It's easy to see how he might just legit think it's better to give Nadine space here. But at the same time it's like... he knows something.

[ahahahahah]

Really easy to feel for both Wendy and Luke here, and also easy to see how they'd end up bonding over this.

>Krabbyfern
I am certain that this is a pun on what these are called in Japanese but dammit I can’t find its common name anywhere, just a million results about it being invasive in the US.

It's easy to see how there's loads of tiny points of friction between Luke and Aaron, but Luke course-corrects before letting it turn into resentment. Sooo we're probably gonna have ourselves a straw that broke the camel's back situation.

[hindsight chib: the straw was a cement block]

That settled it. He would call this a happy ending, with this perfect letter as the last word. This was it.

Mmm I don’t belieeeve Luke, much as he might think this should be it, with how avoidant he is.

Man, this unofficial gym is making me nostalgic for WSSTK. Love seeing ways that trainer culture is embedded in everything, even outside the classic League circuit we all know.

Man, Wendy's feelings of growing up and looking back on being a kid are real. It's so easy to believe that she'd be feeling this as her journey comes to an end, after all the experiences she's had.

It's a neat detail how Japan's entrance-exams-into-high-school thing slots neatly into kids taking the middle school years for Pokemon journeying. Nadine feels thoroughly like a college student here despite being 15, and it makes perfect sense.

[Hindsight note: it makes a lot of sense that Nadine would catch feelings for a boy making her feel smart after all those years spent with a friend making her feel stupid and inadequate.]

It’s a lot of fun to watch characters deduce things that we already know from previous scenes. And here we have the recurring motif of Wendy replying to someone, and then immediately thinking of what she’d rather have said. Communicationnnnnnn, why is it so hard (this is self-targeted).

God, this cold-open dream sequence hits like a truck. And there's that "quitters" line back again. nnnn.

“Like, am I missing something? Did your team get good enough to earn a vacation while I wasn’t looking?”

[And here we see that the benefit of the doubt has been beaten into an unrecognizable pulp]

Luke's so, so close to giving up, but giving up means losing Wendy, aaaaaaaaa

Really like Wendy getting Luke to keep talking, sharing random details from anecdotes as a grounding exercise.

Man, the entire Mt. Moon segment was captivating from start to finish, I don't even have any notes for this chapter. I was as enraptured as Wendy was and it is illegal that I will never go on a Pokemon journey.

“It’s like… even if it’s years from now, I think I’ll see her again. I don’t know how to explain it.”

Lines that hit harder on a reread—it's hard not to apply this to Luke and Wendy.

Laughing extremely hard at Wendy flustering herself thinking about with "bassy, heartfelt words." It's very "hormonal allo teenager crushing" while being cute and genuine and not relying on tired tropes (even if I'm going off secondhand accounts here, aha). Being the resident asexual curmudgeon, I so often find that kind of stuff trite, so it's a real accomplishment that I'm so charmed by it here!

nooo this dream cold-open is even worse than the last one. 🫠

It’s not enough to be lucky. You have to know what’s lucky when you see it. You have to be ready for it, know what to do with it, and be really, really patient for it. Otherwise, you won’t be lucky often enough.

Man, this feels like the thesis of the fic, huh.

Also, I'm still not over just how perfect the title of the fic is. Chasing a face-to-face meeting that might never happen. Looking back on the impermanence of youth, unable to stop the march of time. Photography.

Oh man, it’s so easy to read how Luke's thinking about the whole “she hates quitters” thing while also so easy to see why Wendy wouldn’t be thinking about that while trying to compliment him for sticking to things. aaaaaaaaaaa

>“You can’t just quit now!”
oh no, this one isn't even a hypothetical, this is actually what she ended up saying. oh no. Rereading their final conversation in chapter 2 is gonna be pain incarnate, isn't it.

Aaron over here calling Luke a narcissist when he’s the one who made everyone's Pokemon journey about his desired pace. Also the chapter title feels extremely appropriate here, but not for Luke.

Look, I get that kid-Wendy was physically incapable of reading subtext, but not being suspicious of everyone’s motives isn’t a bad thing.

Having seen Luke’s internal narration, it’s really hard to believe Aaron’s story. This is the guy who gets paralyzed every time he wants to voice his mind. Snapping unexpectedly makes way more sense than having a history of being aggressive.

Now, while I don’t exactly trust Aaron to have an unbiased take, I can at least guess that there genuinely was a pretty visible contrast in the way Luke’s bottled resentment over being pushed so hard manifested depending on who the source was. Luke’s own narration acknowledged that he didn’t feel angry with Wendy despite clearly feeling just as much anxiety every time she mentioned it, so the double standard is real. Buuuuut there’s also no ignoring that even if Aaron and Wendy both were pressuring him, Aaron was waaaaay more guilt-trippy with it.

Also “I got an earful” was probably just code for “Luke attempted to assert himself” let’s be real. But the point is, it feels believable that Aaron could have this take and feel in the right himself.

The thought of disappointing you scared the shit out of him

Aaron you gave him that phobia,

It's like... there are grains of truth here, it's not a total fabrication, but it’s missing crucial context.

I’m just over here like bro, you’re waxing poetic about your dream. Even if it’s angled like “oh it’d be so great for them” it’s still your dream.

One thing I really appreciate is how even though Luke and Wendy both obviously devote quite a bit of time to thinking about the other, they still feel wholly themselves, as opposed to revolving around the other person. They've got lives, hobbies, they've moved on, they've grown up, even if they both really could use some closure on their shared past.

Allright I think that's probably where I'll leave it! I wanna take my time with the final three, and get this posted before Week 2 ends. Seeya in the next one!

Dragonfree · Jan 4, 2025

Chapter 9

Stop. Please. Stop.

The Typhlosion’s claws came down once more, knocking her flat again and drawing even more blood.

The Poké Ball still didn’t work.

Please. Stay down. Stop moving. Please.

Someone tapped him on the shoulder. He turned. Wendy was there—hazy, but there. Now twelve, now fifteen, nothing the same from moment to moment except the eyes and the smile, taking in the scene like nothing was wrong.

Her lips moved. “If you can’t take it, just leave.” It was Aaron’s voice.

Both a Pokémon battle that he can't stop, and him wishing he could just stop doing this, I expect. Of course Wendy is speaking with Aaron's voice :copyka2:

He stood up, shaking his head at his hollow reasoning. If there were any way to forget about her, he would have managed it by now. He knew he was going to write back. He knew he wouldn’t go a day without re-reading one of her letters. He knew that every time he kept Zoe in her Poké Ball at night to give her a break from the nightmares, he would spend the following day stumbling around like a worthless zombie, and that was that.

Too bad he's going solo and can't do the thing with having her use Hypnosis and then someone else recalls her afterwards before she can eat his dreams... (I suppose there's no way for Pokémon to self-recall in this universe.)

Enjoyed the look into the photo development process, as somebody who's not very familiar. The test strips with different exposure lengths is neat.

December 16th, 1990

Woof, just a week before the big falling-out... Guessing we won't see the immediate leadup quite yet, but.

Luke couldn’t bring himself to answer. Six weeks of walking that nearly crippled him and left him sore for weeks after… endless grief from Aaron for putting them so far off course… hours and hours of extra training to placate him… the final hike up the mountain and every care taken to get the shot just right…

All for nothing.

A blind hand touched his arm. “Luke?”

He took a deep breath. Obviously, it wasn’t for nothing: It was for Sharpy. And for Wendy. Even if the picture was junk, it was for her, so he had to print it. He wiped his eyes, hoping she couldn’t tell.

Oof

I'm sure it's genuinely not as bad as Luke feels like it is, but legit for him to feel like it's the worst, most worthless photo ever taken after all this.

“Hey, how about these?” asked Amanda.

Was this scene meant to have a date heading? It sounds like this is taking place in 1993, but it's immediately following the December 16th, 1990 scene. (Reading further, it looks like this chapter we're swapping rapidly between time periods with no indicator. I think it might be nice to include them, even if it's technically redundant once we catch on, just for consistency?)

It was strange how conscious Wendy was of being in a boy’s room. She’d never thought twice about being in Aaron’s room, but being in Luke’s was “being in a boy’s room” for some reason. She didn’t even know why it was supposed to be any kind of big deal. Maybe she had heard and read the words together often enough that she couldn’t help but be aware of it.

This is cute. She's twelve, there's nothing actually sexual about this, but it still feels scandalous.

Luke continued. “So, what I mean is that even though you have to be lucky since you can’t control the Pokémon, if you can wait that long, and you recognize what’d be a good shot, you’ll get lucky before someone who…”

He trailed off again. She tried to guess the words he was looking for. “Someone who gives up?”

Luke looked away. “…Yeah.”

Wendy wondered what had him distracted. There was nothing where he was looking except bare floor. She tried to bring him back to the topic at hand. “Well, no wonder you get all this good luck! You stick to things better than anyone I know!”

Luke said nothing, and continued to stare at nothing. It puzzled her.

Woof

Inadvertently, the worst thing she could possibly say to him. Making sticking to it sound like it's simply his own principles about photography, even! It's got to have really, really stung for him to get to that point and then have Wendy of all people finish the thought.

The thought had come to him earlier that afternoon and kept resurfacing: The only reason he could keep up this just-distant-enough correspondence with Wendy was because, as a trainer, he was nearly impossible to reach. When he had an actual permanent address again, a home phone number, and maybe an office number, what then? How was he supposed to stay exactly this far away from her?

He couldn’t. It was either get closer, which was impossible, or go where she couldn’t reach him. So again, he found himself pulling the Introductory Galarian textbook off the shelf.

Galar or Unova would be far enough. Every kid learned the alphabet and a handful of useful words before age ten, and he’d gotten further than most of the kids in his class. He could learn enough to survive in either region in a few months, and his chances of getting work as a photographer would be the same no matter the local language. Flipping to a random page, there were already several words he recognized and even a sentence he could read.

He could have thrown up on the spot.

Luuuuke

Why, why, why did Wendy have to say he was good at sticking to things? Had she never noticed how whenever she said something to that effect, never once did he thank her for it or even acknowledge it? Did she honestly not know this was the last thing he wanted to hear, especially from her?

Of course not. If she knew, they wouldn’t still be friends. The question would then come up, “Why don’t you like being told you’re not a quitter?” The answer would be obvious: Because I am. It was the same reason he couldn’t tell her what honesty demanded he tell her right now.

When you and Aaron went to the Gym yesterday, I didn’t have an urgent errand to run for my parents. I lied. I wasn’t there because I’m never stepping foot in a Gym again. I don’t want to put Zoe or Shane or any of them up against another trainer as long as I live. They can’t handle what it takes to reach the Indigo League, and neither can I. I don’t care if I promised.

I quit.

Oof, this is agonizing. Wendy there having what she thinks is a romantic moment with the boy she likes and Luke there just internally screaming the whole time.

Everything she might say if he openly gave up went through his head.

“How can you even say that?”

“This isn’t who I thought you were.”

“You can’t just quit now!”

There would be anger, then tears, then nothing. It would be over. There would be no goodbyes—only go-aways or I’m-leavings.

Luuuuke you're making this up in your heeead because of things Aaron told you (and things Wendy said in blissful ignorance)

His breath caught in the middle of whatever he was saying. It didn’t have to go that way, did it? Couldn’t he keep faking it, keep shielding his Pokémon in secret to stay with her—to not lose her laugh or her smile? Wasn’t that more important than even his own health?

Wasn’t she worth it?

Noooo that's not how anything healthy works D:

Second, everything had blown up within a week, after which she had every incentive to forget about it. And since she never learned whether it had amounted to Luke as anything more than a momentary invasion of his personal space (regardless of how intense it had felt to her), she could easily recateogrize it as a passing misunderstanding. Not one worth remembering.

Ahahahaaah Wendy it was a lot more than a momentary invasion of his personal space but not in the way you wanted it to be

“Second, I was going to say you got two letters today. Another young man was here around noon.”

Oh boy.

I get the point. I’m on my way to Ecruteak, going to be in the area around there through the end of November. I’ll be at the small-time gym north of town every mon/wed/fri evening. If you want to talk that bad, meet me there. – Aaron

Not exactly a bastion of friendliness, is he...

General oh boy here. Wendy's going to see Aaron, and I'm guessing the title of the next chapter is something Aaron's going to say about Luke but applies more to him. The real question is to what degree will Aaron attempt to directly manipulate Wendy.

I think you did a great job on the whole buildup here, the contrast of Wendy's oblivious twelve-year-old crush feelings and Luke's despair stress feelings. The general descriptions of hormones and confused attraction felt very genuine and true to life. I can get why Luke's being avoidant but stillll, please at least meet with her alone. Now she's going to see Aaron first and who knows what he will attempt to put into her head, which is Concerning.

All in all this is agonizing, and I will have to read more immediately while whispering "oh no, oh no" under my breath.

Dragonfree · Jan 4, 2025

Chapter 10

I think Mt. Moon would be a nice dream-destination, too. I’ll put in a good word with dream-me to install an escalator before you get there. In all seriousness, though I’ll never agree the picture was perfect (the enclosed one from the Natl. Park is closer in my book, hope you like it), it does makes me happy that you think it was. Thinking back to when I made the print, I wish I’d taken your appraisal as “mission accomplished” instead of letting the flaws I saw get to me. Mind, I would have spent the same amount of time working on it, just that I shouldn’t have let it ruin what might otherwise have been a perfect day.

Luke, learning to accept a compliment! That's progress!

Maybe I shouldn’t bring up the day in particular because of how close it was to when things went south, but I think a lot of what you told me then stuck even if I didn’t realize it at the time. When I look at my old pictures now, I don’t kick myself as much as I used to, and I even like some of my newer ones. Not that I don’t see the same things to fix I’ve always seen, but it’s a lot easier to take them as lessons-learned and not get mad over them. I don’t know exactly when it happened, but I stopped doubting I could make a living out of photography someday, and I think it’s thanks in no small part to you.

❤️ Aww.

I’m really sorry, but I can’t see Aaron. It took me a long time to find something like normalcy again after what happened, and I can’t risk losing that. I don’t want it to sound like I’m blaming him—I don’t want to hold a grudge. Nobody’s the same at fifteen as he was at twelve, so it wouldn’t be fair of me to be angry at whoever he’s turned into since then. But for my own health (and for Zoe’s until I throw in the towel and get addicted to sleeping pills instead of depending on her), I just can’t be around him. I’m sorry.

If you don’t want to keep writing while a reconciliation isn’t on the table, I understand. But I hope you’ll keep writing anyway. I will as long as you do.

He's also good about this, bless him, which is perhaps one of Wendy's best signs that it's Aaron who was the problem here. Luke's trying so hard to be fair to him, and to Wendy, while still protecting his own wellbeing and setting boundaries. Somehow I doubt Aaron will be doing the same :copyka2:

“Wendy… just, no. Luke’s a violent narcissist. People like him don’t change.”

And there we go. :copyka2:

There were no trainers in earshot. They were all either sparring their Pokémon in the outdoor gym’s arena or hanging out on the bleachers. Aaron had been among the former when she arrived, and had kept her waiting for twenty minutes after that. This line of thought wasn’t calming her down after all, so she got it over with.

Oof.

He snapped his head up and looked her in the eye. “It’s the same reason you didn’t notice what he was the whole time: You’re not hard to fool.”

Wendy froze stiff.

“Sorry,” said Aaron. “That came out worse than I meant. The thing is, you only see the best in everyone. You don’t question anything about them. You just assume everyone’s as sincere, well-meaning, and good as you are. That’s not a bad thing. It’s why everyone likes you. But… it makes you vulnerable to people like Luke.”

And the funny thing is it's not entirely untrue but it actually applies to her inability to see the red flags in Aaron.

Wendy stayed frozen. She had known this about herself for years—about her chronic inability to see past people’s literal words—but had never reckoned with the implications. She’d never considered how this might fundamentally, categorically made her unqualified to judge character. It had never stuck out as potentially the missing piece of the puzzle.

…It couldn’t be, though, because Aaron couldn’t have been telling the truth, not then and not now. There was no way Luke had tried to beat Aaron to a pulp simply because that’s who Luke was. Nothing else fit that explanation. Her mouth opened in the hope of delivering a retort.

All that came were sputters. “But… but Luke’s not like… he never…”

She wasn’t a reliable witness. She never had been. Because she was that easy to fool.

She fought to keep to her eyes dry. She wouldn’t allow herself to cry in front of the imposter. Even if it turned out he was right the whole time—which he absolutely wasn’t because that was impossible—he was still the imposter.

Wendy nooooooo

“All right,” said Aaron. “Here’s the thing. You liked Luke, Luke liked you, so you got Luke at his best. What you saw was how he acts when he wants someone to keep liking him. Whenever you weren’t around, I got the rest of him.”

Wendy couldn’t believe Aaron was angling for sympathy. She still didn’t say anything.

“Whenever Luke didn’t get his way about something—and I mean anything—he got angry. No sense of proportion whatsoever. Whenever you or I voiced an opinion about what we should do next, I got an earful later, or worse.”

Some real DARVO going on here :copyka2:

Leaving even a single detail to her imagination was too much. She found her voice again, at least for the moment. “What’s ‘worse?’ No hints. If you’re accusing him of something, accuse him of it.”

Aaron sucked in a breath and let it out. “Shoving, usually. Sometimes spitting. Every other month or so he’d try to throw a punch, but pushing back was always enough to get him to quit it. Till the last time, anyway.”

Lies. Stupid, obvious lies. This was the kindest, gentlest boy in the world he was talking about.

Unless it only looked that way because I can’t see through people. And I did see him draw blood at the end.

No. Shut up. That’s not it. Shut up, shut up, shut up.

Feeling her compulsive doubts and what-ifs about Aaron's narrative to my bones, oof.

“Yes. You’re the one who came up with that ‘promise’ we made. The thought of disappointing you scared the shit out of him. But he figured if both me and him said we should give up, then you’d feel like you had no choice but to go along with it. The longer I told him ‘No,’ the longer he had to pretend to try to keep up with training, and the less stable he got.”

Gee, I wonder why Aaron responded to this by just telling him no and making him keep going instead of doing anything decent :copyka2:

Aaron took another deep breath. “…I was going to get to that. For starters, he only bothered when you were in earshot. Any time we were one-on-one? Nothing. Just whining and arguing. And when he actually had to get his Pokémon out, he learned every trick in the book to keep things short. I caught him once teaching his team to feign fatigue. He started having them take dives in battles just to get us out of the Gym faster. Absolute crazy-person stuff.”

I bet this probably did happen. But it's not absolute crazy-person stuff, it's a kid who's desperately overworked wanting to get out of something he hates and feels pressured into, like we already knew was happening. Give me a break.

“I know now I shouldn’t have kept quiet while all this was happening. I guess… I was afraid of upsetting you in my own way. After how hard you took it when Nadine quit, I didn’t want you to go through that again. I fooled myself into thinking if he really started trying, if he got even a little caught up, maybe he’d get some confidence and start being more like he acted around you. I was wrong. I’m sorry.”

Wendy didn’t want apologies. She wanted retractions. She was about to beg for them.

“I really did think he could catch up. Obviously, he wasn’t on the same level as you or me, or even Nadine before she quit. But he was smart enough to learn a thing or two. I kept trying to convince him he was getting better, that he could do it if he just took the next step for real, but it was like talking to a wall.”

The absolute condescension of this.

“Okay,” he said. “I know it’s a lot. Just let me say one more thing: You do not want to get back in touch with someone like Luke. Narcissists don’t know how to be real friends—they can only fake it. Sooner or later, you’ll get hurt.”

Wendy knew she had to say the one thing which might get him to stop talking to her. She just had to fight her gag reflex to say it.

“…You’re probably right.”

Oof at the fact she knows admitting he's right is the only way to get him to stop.

There's something basically true in everything he says, but he's either 1) saying something about Luke that actually applies to him, or 2) describing something in a biased way as if it makes Luke look horrible when it really doesn't so much. But that's how people can get you, isn't it. It's all such a tidy narrative where Aaron did nothing wrong other than trying to shield Wendy and Luke is just an awful person and Wendy's an idiot for not noticing - big contrast to how Luke treats the whole thing.

There was a decent remedy for both aspects: Wendy let Sharpy out of her ball. Then, without a word, Wendy got on both knees and wrapped her arms around her warm, pudgy fairy Pokémon. Sharpy’s arms weren’t made for hugging back, but she mumbled a rhythmic, comforting noise and gently swayed back and forth. This day more than any other, Wendy needed to soak in the presence of the one friend she knew to be exactly what she seemed.

Oof, ow. That one hits hard.

With that in mind, she dismissed the diagnosis of “narcissist” as assuredly as she’d dismissed “psycho” in 1990. She’d never known Luke to rank anyone’s suffering below his own—it was more like the exact opposite, especially when it came to Zoe. Even if he could fake all the cares he’d shown Wendy herself when Nadine left, no “narcissist” would undergo the pains she’d seen him take to spare Zoe from bad dreams. On this count, at least, Aaron was guilty of being a malicious liar at worst and not-a-doctor at best.

You can do it, Wendy! You can figure it out!

It should have been enough. For anyone who could trust her own judgment, it would have been. But that wasn’t Wendy. The only way to get her answers now was to see Luke in person. He no longer had a say in the matter. She would hear his version of the story in full, look him in the eye while he told it, suppress her incurable naïveté to the end… and judge.

Her eyes welled up. She squeezed them shut and pressed the letter to her chest, hoping against hope he would forgive her for whatever followed. She promised to make it up to him somehow, after she found him innocent.

Wanting to just see him and not create a reconciliation, at least, makes it something Luke might actually be down for.

She blinked. The question came to her out of the blue: Why was she treating this case like there were only two witnesses?

Nadine. Not only had she quit for basically the same reason as Luke, but when she’d first explained it to Wendy, she’d framed it as something between her and Aaron before correcting herself. Pressure from Aaron, corrected to pressure from how good at battling he was, then clarified to include Wendy as well. Was the reality truly two corrections away from the first thing that came to her?

Theeeere we go. Good job, Wendy!

Aaaahhhh, the tension. Truly painful, stressful chapter to read, but I'm betting Wendy getting Nadine's perspective is going to help a lot, and I'm glad she's going for that, rather than Luke ending up having to answer for all that in person. Ghhhhhh. Really hope things turn out okay for them. And that they can all blissfully leave Aaron behind.

Dragonfree · Jan 5, 2025

Chapter 11

I completely understand if you don’t want to see Aaron, and by no means do I want you to stop writing because of it. Anyway, even if you’d agreed to it, I’ve since learned that Aaron wouldn’t. To get it out of the way, I was able to talk to him recently. It wasn’t pleasant, and I didn’t believe most of what he had to say. It’s hard to see any reconciliation with him for a long time, which makes me angry at him, but mostly sad. When I read your letters, it’s like we never left, but with him, it’s like we were never close.

But even if it’s impossible for all three of us to be friends again, I want to see you. The first and most important reason is because I miss you badly. The second is because there’s still a lot I don’t understand about what went wrong. I worry it’s putting distance between us, and I don’t want there to be any distance between us. I also don’t want to ask you my questions on paper, because I worry if you don’t hear the tone of voice, they won’t come across the right way.

I don’t want to conceal anything, so I’ll tell you that before I wrote this letter, I was waiting for you to get here. I have to go home tomorrow morning to see Nadine, so I’m leaving you this instead. I’ll be coming back in your direction soon. My next surveys for the JCS are the Ice Path and Route 45, but I can put those off as long as it takes if it means we can meet in Mahogany Town.

I trust you, and I want you to know you can trust me, too.

Really good and cathartic seeing these kids continue to ultimately be pretty good about communicating in their letters even when they have a lot of confused internal screaming going on before they write them. Though... I can't help but notice she mentions she's going to see Nadine but not why she's going to see Nadine, so Luke does not know that Nadine will be able to counter Aaron's narrative.

Run away? No. He could never beat her in an endurance race, and she was a tracker.

Die on the spot, then?

The only option he couldn’t picture was sitting down and talking. He couldn’t even imagine what he’d say. What could it possibly amount to besides avoiding eye contact until she eventually walked away in frustration?

Aw, Luke, c'mooooon

More scrutinizing. By now, she would have guessed he’d been putting off Gyarados Lake as long as he could, meaning he was out of specific destinations after that, meaning he would have no reason not to stay for Christmas and New Year’s when he got back. All true enough. She even might have already guessed that he—

“You want one of the one-twenty cameras, right?”

Luke had to crack a smile at this. “If Dad doesn’t mind, yeah.”

She grinned and pointed at him. “I knew it! I knew you’d have snuck off straight north if you didn’t need something from the shop first. But I’ll forgive your pragmatism. Have you eaten?”

Enjoying this whole interaction between Luke and his mom. I think you nail these sorts of incidental interactions with minor characters and make them feel alive.

Dinner came and went. It must have been good, but Luke didn’t notice. Afterward, he again confronted the question of what to write Wendy. Whatever it was, he knew he wanted to have it written in full that night, since it would be safer to have the letter in hand when he went to the Center for Zoe’s pre-trip checkup. That way, if Wendy was waiting for him there, he could throw it in her direction and escape in the momentary confusion.

He acknowledged this to be the single stupidest thing he’d ever thought in his life.

Bwahaha. You awkward kid.

Sometime between then and when he got to sleep in a real bed for a change—on the very sport where, in hindsight, Wendy had properly introduced him to puberty—Luke managed to write the worst letter he’d ever written.

Oh no (though I suspect it's better than he thinks, as is often the case with Luke's works!)

“Is she faking it?”

Luke twitched. “…How many times do I have to tell you we aren’t doing that anymore?”

Aaron rolled his eyes. “So sue me. It’s the one thing your team’s any good at. How am I supposed to tell?”

Goooood Aaron :screm:

Luke jabbed a finger at the yet-nameless Rhyhorn. “Your Pokémon took a headshot while she was on her last breath! Is that enough? Do you want me to shake her?”

“It’s your fault for not recognizing a Head Bash stance. You still think every move’s going to come after the trainer calls an attack?”

That's not even a relevant response, you dick :screm:

“That was too quick. She can keep going.” Aaron reached into his pocket and pulled out a clear vial containing a single yellow pill in the shape of an elongated octahedron.

Luke couldn’t believe what he was seeing. “…Those are for emergencies.”

Aaron glared. “If you’re a scrub or a wuss, sure. Every serious trainer uses a Revive to salvage a lousy practice now and then.”

Gooood you absolute bastard.

It should've been predictable, probably, that this was about Luke's concern for Zoe. You've been building that up since chapter one, and doing a good job of it; of course it checks out that when Luke really sees red, it's to do with Aaron mistreating Zoe.

(Also makes sense, doesn't it, that Luke wanted to apologize to Ace. He was concerned about Aaron's treatment of him too, wasn't he.)

Aaron spoke up first. “I’ve given you every chance to prove you’re taking this seriously again. Wendy and I don’t need a hopeless, lazy quitter with a hopeless, lazy team dragging us down when we’ve got the next level to worry about. Lazy Pokémon are contagious. If yours are going to keep hanging around ours, they need to catch up.”

Luke broke eye contact. It was impossible. He was already doing everything in his power. It simply wasn’t in him to be that caliber of trainer. It had to end. But he couldn’t let it. The same problem, the same non-answer, day after day after day after day.

Oof, calling it that caliber of trainer, as if Aaron really is just doing this because he's at a higher level.

Aaron went on. “You owe me extra. You think I bought that lame excuse you made up to stay away from the Gym last week? That ain’t happening again. We’re not going to keep coming back to your hometown over and over just so you can keep not getting this Badge.”

He doesn't owe you shit you miserable excuse for a human being :screm:

He didn’t know how he would do it, but for an second, he pictured Aaron lying limp on the ground with his head split open.

:copyka2: Oh boyyyy

“Here’s how it’s gonna be,” said Aaron. “You can either get your stuff and go home now, or you can tell Wendy you want to train more, so you’d like us to stay at the lake through the holidays. Pick one of those, or I tell her about you throwing those battles. Your call.”

Just casually trying to blackmail his holidays with his family away from him, like normal reasonable people do :copyka2:

His veins were about to pop out of his head. If someone tried to talk to him, he’d explode, and it would be over. If he left without a word, Aaron would tell Wendy everything as soon as she asked what was wrong, and it would still be over. All the ways to forestall it were gone. It was going to end in a matter of minutes.

He was losing her. She wasn’t coming to his house for Christmas. He wasn’t going to see her again. There wouldn’t be a second time her body leaned against his while she stared into his eyes.

He wouldn’t have to pretend nothing was wrong while she smiled and laughed about everything, either.

He wouldn’t have to pay for her blissful ignorance with Zoe’s blood ever again.

His fists shook.

The words entered his head:

To hell with her.

Ooof. His rage is very well written, super tangible. (Sort of vaguely surprised he can even think about hormones right now, but he is on the cusp of being a teenager.)

“Hey, Luke,” said Aaron. “You were saying something earlier about our plans for—”

Oh boy, and now we know why this particular simple sentence prompted him into a rage; he's trying to prompt Luke to start saying what he blackmailed him into as if it had nothing to do with Aaron :copyka2:

There was blood. Still not enough. Luke wanted bone.

You don’t get to surrender.

He swung again, harder, and connected again.

See how you like getting hit when you’re already beat.

“D… did he deserve it? You didn’t s… stop after his nose started bleeding.”

He sure didn't, which is exactly what Aaron wouldn't have done for his Pokémon :copyka2:

This wasn’t it, he realized. She needed to want to leave. Forever. Or it would never stop hurting.

His voice wobbled and croaked as he spoke. “But if I ever, ever see Aaron’s face again, I’m going to break his teeth.”

There. That had to have done it. She would hate him for saying that. She would leave. She—

“Please… Just tell me what’s wrong.”

Luke couldn’t believe it. He tried to make a fist, but it just sent an ache running up his arm to stab his shoulder again. Hadn’t he said enough? Hadn’t he done enough? It was supposed to be over. What was her problem?

All of this hurts. If only he had just communicated properly right now, but no, even despite how much he despises Aaron he could not get it out of his head that Wendy agreed with all this and would never want to see him again if he told her anything and he just needed to get her to go away. Painful in light of how he's still avoiding her so hard.

“I’m on both your sides!” Wendy sounded like she was crying too. “Just tell me what it is! I won’t blame you!”

Saying she's on both their sides sure does not help in this moment, unfortunately :copyka2:

“We said we were going to Indigo, all three of us, and we’re so close!”

Get out. Get out. Go away. Get out. Go away. Get out. Get out. Get out. Get out.

“You can’t just give up like this!”

The biggest :copyka2:

His voice gave out before the pain did. At some point, the doctor tore the bandage off and said something about needing to redo the stitches. Luke’s breaths came between sobs. They hurt each time.

Oooooofff.

Sure, that one friend would have been Aaron, but this was Wendy. Brilliant, driven, talented, tireless Wendy. There was nothing about her to bring out the sadist in Aaron. She might even have made a decent person out of him if Luke hadn’t been in the way.

He sighed. He really had ruined everything.

Luke noooooooo this is NOT your fault

This brought to mind something else that worried him. Was he going to cut it in the professional world if he needed this much time to get a picture that was worth anything? Everyone needed luck, but to rely on it as much as he did was time-consuming. Could someone who knew what he was doing have gotten three genuinely excellent photos by now? What were his options besides sitting here, waiting for a shot that might not come?

Luke. No. Stop! Stop beating yourself up about everything! You are wrong!

Luke found himself back in the hospital, telling Wendy to shut up and go away, even as he cried over her absence. Zoe shook him awake just in time for him to see the closest Gyarados yet dive back into the water. It was a good thing his first instinct was to hit his forehead and not the camera.

Zoe shoved him again, but it didn’t help.

He rubbed his eyes in a half-hearted attempt to keep them open.

Just then, something in his head jumped. His neck and back straightened up in a sudden, powerful jolt. He didn’t know what it was. Before he could consider what it might be, his eyes began to feel funny. A strange blue tint—almost a glow—was spilling into his peripheral vision. He found his focus drawn to a point out on the water to his front and left, closer than it was sensible to hope for.

Aw, look at Zoe being good! Genuinely looking out for Gyarados for him and making sure that he gets this one!

The red Gyarados is an amazingly cathartic moment - all this good brutal buildup about how grueling it has been and the poor mental place he's been in over it, Zoe helping him get the perfect shots because she really cares about and appreciates him too and has learned about photography from him and is determined to help him have this, the fact he's getting to photograph a shiny Pokémon after he missed the shiny Doduo/Dodrio before. Truly magical moment and I am crying about it.

Writing, he remembered. This was absolutely something he would have written to Wendy about. He also would have spent however long it took in the darkroom to print one more immaculate copy so she could keep one.

But he couldn’t have “mailed” a copy to her, since this was no basic 35mm shot he was thinking about. He couldn’t give her anything short of the best, and this picture would demand a larger print than he could put in an envelope and leave at the Pokémon Center. He’d have to deliver it in person.

Do ittttt

That was never going to happen. And even if he were to do her the injustice of leaving her a smaller print, he didn’t know—didn’t even believe—she would want any more letters from him after reading his last one, which she must have done by now.

His head fell to his knees. When was she going to vacate his brain? Against his better judgment, he considered the possibility that she did still want to write. If this kept going after he admitted to giving up on the pact without telling her—to deceiving her for so long—what would that look like? Would her words turn cautious, distant, merely obligatory? Would the letter-writing end not cold, not hot, but with a slow petering out into meaninglessness?

Luuuuuke, come on

“…Zoe,” he said at length, “what do you think about camping out here for a few more days?”

Zoe’s eyes narrowed.

You and me both, Zoe.

“Well?”

To his surprise, Zoe stood up. She stepped next to him, pushed one hand against the side of his head, and…

And pointed south with the other.

This was unprecedented. She never gave this direct, this human of an answer to a question. He almost said “Okay,” “Of course” on the spot. How could he refuse when she was this emphatic about it?

Zoe is Good.

“…I’m sorry. I can’t do it, girl.”

Zoe stared at him.

“I shouldn’t have asked.”

Zoe made a noise he didn’t recognize. Then she sat facing him, pushed the side of his head with one hand again, and placed other on his knee. It was hardly comfortable for his head this way, but he could never have objected, not when she was so obviously trying to make him feel better.

He could think of a thousand reasons why she shouldn’t. There was no keeping track of all the pain he’d caused her, or failed to prevent for her, everywhere from her stomach to her skull. But here she was, looking out for him.

Maybe she didn’t know any better. He felt sorry for her.

Luuuuuuuke, she knows exactly what she's doing! :screm:

Oh man, what an excellent chapter. Truly had it all. We finally get to see the leadup and then that fateful confrontation from Luke's point of view, and it's absolutely excruciating - Aaron's pure unspeakable bastardry and how well you do Luke's emotions throughout all of it and how it finally drives him over the edge. It's so, so well done, really putting us in his head as he feels absolutely murderous and letting us feel it with him. The biggest copykas on all of that, and on the bit where he actually tears up his stitches. Seeing all of Wendy's lines there again and how utterly badly they hit him is pure pain as well.

But then you also have Luke visiting his mom, and then Luke trying to photograph some Gyarados, and that was such a great sequence as well. Seeing Zoe stepping up to help Luke find the catharsis that he needs, and then try to encourage him to go meet with Wendy, and then just comfort him, is so good and important, especially after really driving home how much his caring for her drove what happened. You've talked about how you don't tend to focus on the Pokémon much in your fics, so I wasn't expecting this here - it was a really, really good moment and I thought it was very earned.

Really rooting hard for him to meet up with Wendy, and I think you will do it (even if it might be offscreen after the final chapter). Man. I think you mentioned to somebody else that chapter eight was your favorite but it's going to be hard to top this one, for me.

“It’s your fault for not recognizing a Head Bash stance. You still think every move’s going to come after the trainer calls an attack?”

Should that be Skull Bash?

He didn’t know how he would do it, but for an second, he pictured Aaron lying limp on the ground with his head split open.

"an second"

His head whipped to the side as the oncoming force drove his body was in the other direction.

Don't think the "was" belongs there.

Things should never had reached that point.

*have

Dragonfree · Jan 5, 2025

Chapter 12

I can guess what some of your questions probably are, so I’ll try to answer them here. I don’t know how much of it Aaron’s already told you, but I assume he said everything was my fault, and to an extent, I agree.

Oof, Luke. But I suppose that is the real proof it wasn't his fault.

Wendy had to set the letter down. She could already tell this was going to be the worst thing she ever read. What followed was certain to be a litany of painful, technically correct facts in support of an utterly false thesis. She had heard enough from Nadine to know this beyond a doubt.

:copyka2: I guess it did end up being the worst thing Luke ever wrote, huh.

“It… started when we were nine,” said Nadine, eyes averted. “That’s when he first told me I… I had to work twice as hard if I wanted to keep up. And if I couldn’t keep up… neither of you would want to team up with me.”

Wendy was convinced she must have heard wrong. “What?”

Nadine pulled her legs to her chest. “He said he’d help me. But his help was… was…” She began to break up.

Eughhhhhh AARON :screm:

When Wendy heard it first from Nadine, she’d been speechless. When she read it now from Luke, she wanted to scream at him through the paper not to concede Aaron a square inch of gray area.

Screaming with you, Wendy

(Love to scream with her instead of at her)

I’m equally sorry about my dishonesty. It probably goes without saying now, but Aaron and I had already hated each other for over a year before the end. Whenever we seemed friendly or joked around, it was an act. I can only guess Aaron’s reason for faking it: He made it perfectly clear that he wanted me to get better or get gone, so it still puzzles me a bit why he was willing to keep the status quo going for so long. I suspect he didn’t want to put you through the pain of losing another friend after Nadine. Maybe he felt responsible for not doing enough to get her to stay.

Oh boyyyyy. The benefit of the doubt he's extending in spite of everything is painful.

“Yes!” Now the words came between sobs. “I believed everything he ever said! Everything about me, about you… He was smart and good at things, good with Pokémon, and I wasn’t… He made of fun of me whenever I did something dumb and everyone laughed…”

“No!” Wendy was beside herself. “No, no, no! You’re the smartest person I know! I’d never laugh at something stupid you did if I didn’t think you were smarter than me! I’m sorry! I’m sorry, I’m sorry, I’m sorry!”

“I know,” said Nadine. “I know now. I still had to hear it. I just… I just believed what he said for years and years, even when I should have known better. He… he made me think everyone was just like him underneath, even you. And I believed him. I believed him, and I threw away… all the time I should have had with…”

Nadine broke down completely. She collapsed, shaking, into Wendy’s arms.

Guhhhhh. These poor kids.

“Pretended to be someone else.” Stupid. What an absurd, neurotic, point-missing, clueless thing of him to write. What did Luke think was so different about himself from the boy she knew then? That he could feign interest in something to avoid disappointing a friend? That he had emotional limits? Those weren’t things you learned about a person—they were things you learned about people over the course of growing the hell up.

But no, there was one thing she had learned about Luke in particular. Namely, he was the sort of person who could put up with all this to stay close to someone as despicable as this caricature of her Aaron had painted for him. Why would he even want to associate with someone so shallow and callous as to make their friendship contingent on his absolute devotion to her own goals? Just how bad could his judgment of character be? Or how little self-respect could he have?

Not that little anymore, she realized. He at least valued himself enough to avoid her now, and skip further grief.

Yeahhhh. I like that she has this reaction, just kind of almost losing respect for him for even liking this hypothetical other Wendy. What an utter tangled mess.

This couldn’t go on. At this rate, when Luke finally showed up, she was as likely as not to kick him in the shins for his intolerable stubbornness and tardiness. Why couldn’t he just be happy with the doubtless dozens of photos he’d taken so far? She knew they’d be good enough. His ridiculous perfectionism didn’t make an ounce of difference to any normal people looking at his pictures. What was the point of it?

“They’re fine!” she barked at the ground, drawing a number of stares and a concerned touch from Sharpy. She covered her eyes, feeling her face turn red. If she was getting this unreasonable about qualities of Luke she explicitly admired, it was time to find another distraction.

This is endearing and true.

Mrs. Andersen looked closer for a split-second, then said, abashed, “Oh! I’m sorry, you just reminded me of one of my son’s friends.”

Wendy hoped the hitch in her breath wasn’t obvious.

Mrs. Andersen made a show of tapping her own head with her knuckles. “No, of course you aren’t her. She’d be with that other boy right now. I always thought he was bad news, but I really liked her. Oh, but there I go rambling!” She patted Wendy’s arm. “Don’t mind me. Have a good one!”

Haha, well played, Luke's mom. (Unfortunately, it does not make Wendy change her mind about not approaching his parents.

)

Well, this one was pretty cathartic as well - seeing just enough of Wendy's conversation with Nadine, and how Wendy has finally fully pieced things together, is really good after everything. I think her reactions are very good and realistic, how mortified she is about everything and just her bafflement at what Aaron had convinced Nadine of. So painful.

And Sharpy gets to be really good as well, making a heroic attempt to get the two of them to actually meet and talk! Unfortunately, Wendy resists despite Sharpy's best efforts. But at least she wrote Luke a new letter, and hopefully after he reads that he will finally chase her down and they can have the reunion they both deserve.

Feel so bad for Nadine; Aaron's bullying was even worse than I thought, starting long before they even went out on their journey. No wonder she was already acting so timid about Aaron from the first time they all met. Geeeez.

Despite everything, I don't think Luke's letter was too bad - blaming himself, of course, but he did manage to be honest, and that's what really mattered here. Eager to see what Wendy ended up writing to him and the conclusion to all this.

Three hours into waiting outside the Pokémon Center, Wendy found herself in utter disbelief that she doing this again.

Missing a word here.

It had to be own words, her own voice winning him back.

Her own words, presumably.

Maybe nothing would have changed, or maybe it would gone even worse, but maybe it would have fixed everything, too.

Missing a word in "maybe it would gone" as well.

Dragonfree · Jan 5, 2025

Chapter 13

None of what happened was your fault. I’m ashamed I didn’t understand what was actually happening until Nadine told me what Aaron did to her, but now that I know, I need to repent of all neutrality and be perfectly clear: Aaron bullied you, lied to you, abused your Pokémon, and knew exactly what he was doing.

Very cathartic to see her write this after all this.

I don’t blame you in the least for throwing battles or anything else you did to cope with what I let Aaron put you through. There is nothing for me to forgive there. Nothing. And if I had seen what Aaron did to Zoe at the end, I can’t promise I wouldn’t have punched him either. If you insist on apologizing for hitting him on the grounds you knew better, or that you had only moderately superhuman patience, then I forgive you. Completely, utterly, without reservation. And if you feel what you concealed from me under duress counted as lying, I forgive you for that even faster. If you still feel an ounce of guilt over what happened, please let me carry it instead.

Also just really good - that you had only moderately superhuman patience and what you concealed from me under duress hit really well, sort of getting at exactly the protestations the reader will have internally raised to Luke's self-blame in just the right way. Seeing fictional characters resolve these sorts of tangles in good and well-articulated ways that drive straight at the point gives a lot of catharsis.

It was unpardonable. Wendy was wrong to forgive him.

Luke

This wasn’t what he wanted. It was bad enough to have years-old mistakes to forget. He didn’t need reminders of awful things he’d done this week. Leaving her to wait, watch, and agonize day after day? While he delayed coming back specifically to avoid her? It was abominable. And now it wasn’t even a secret.

This exact alignment of calendar, clock, location, precipitation, lighting, framing, and subject had formed the most wonderful sight he would ever see by the most cosmically happy of coincidences…

And he didn’t have a camera.

Luck had never beaten him so soundly.

but in a sweet way

I didn't end up noting down a lot of quote reactions last night because it was very late, but that's okay, because I can write up more overall reactions instead, for the chapter and for the fic as a whole.

Luke's avoidance here was truly agonizing - just compulsively unable to shake off that anxiety and take that leap to see her, even after Wendy had made it clear she finally understood everything, and had never cared if Luke was a "quitter", and does not blame him for anything. Straight back to worrying that being around Wendy will just give Zoe more nightmares and he needs to forget instead, even though previously he had already managed to uncover the right lessons about how to improve his dreams from Wendy, and even though Zoe herself was doing her best to nudge him to just go see her and not throw everything away to keep avoiding it. It's understandable, really, that after spending so long avoiding this, and finding so much self-blame and even feeling bad for Wendy forgiving him, his brain's first instinct is no no no keep avoiding keep avoiding, even though it's so painfully apparent to the reader that there has to be a better way and a happy ending for them.

Even then, though, he can't actually quite bring himself to leave that letter for her either. I enjoyed him feeling like he has to wait for her because she already waited even longer for him, and the contemplation on when it became too late to fix it, with his confused conclusion that either it was always too late or it's still not too late, never quite coming to a final resolution.

It was sweet to see them just finally actually meet and hug and kiss; it's very well written with cute little funny bits and some good happy-ending catharsis to all this. I was a little surprised at just how completely everything else fell away in the process, though; all of that enormous emotional baggage that we've spent this entire fic building up seemed to just evaporate a lot more suddenly than I was expecting.

To be fair, it's not like they didn't talk about their baggage: they exchanged all those letters, and we saw them work through everything that happened three years ago in those letters. I was half expecting the fic to end on an ambiguous note where they haven't met up yet, and that could have been perfectly adequate because you had closed the book on all that in the way that really matters with them talking through what really happened and coming to an understanding. But Luke has now spent most of this chapter absolutely convinced that being around Wendy again will trigger his memories of that time and he can't deal with that and that's why he has to tell her he can't see her and say goodbye, and then - nothing properly happens to that belief; he's in the middle of mentally rehearsing it to himself and then Wendy just appears and suddenly it never comes up again and he's just clinging to her without questioning it, like any other romantic lead, I suppose. I think I was expecting to see him experience more turmoil and conflict about it, to panic, to still feel like he ought to say goodbye even if he ends up being unable to or realizing he has to give this a chance.

I do think I get what you were going for, that this was all stuff that his avoidant brain was just desperately pulling out to cling to the status quo and he had already kind of gotten to the point of realizing it didn't make much sense and actually seeing her just brought down all those mental barriers and all of those tenuous excuses simply stop mattering, but I guess I would have liked to see a better sense of the barriers breaking down there instead of just suddenly not being there anymore, or at least more of a tangible sense that the Luke in that final sequence of pure romantic catharsis has just been experiencing all that inner turmoil about it at all.

Other than that, though, it really was a cathartic and enjoyable end, and again, it was a very cute, well-written romantic resolution. I imagine that moment where Luke realizes it's a picture-perfect scene but he doesn't have a camera was one of those ending moments that you have in mind from the start, and possibly the inspiration for Luke being a photographer in the first place - very cute bow on it, and a lovely way of bringing the theme of the luck you make through persistence around in a slightly cheeky way. I also think you did an excellent job with atmosphere in that whole scene, the Christmas Eve bustle and the cold and the snow - we can immediately picture how it'd be the perfect scene for a photograph (and Christmas Eve is a big couples day in Japan, isn't it?). The title drop is a nice way to tie things up; love how the title has many meanings that have applied to many things in the fic but you get a good simple decisive *just hold still* moment in there for the final line.

All in all, this fic was a great ride. I really enjoyed the subtle buildup with Aaron, a couple of Signs in the first chapter that then just keep compounding, and even then the full extent of his bastardry just keeps growing beyond what you'd previously imagined. I'm pleased I was picking up what you were putting down from the start, but you wanted to hit the balance where readers might pick it up from the start or might be more like Wendy and give him the benefit of the doubt until we start to really, really see him be monstrous, and I think you did hit that.

One thing I guess might have been nice to see, in hindsight, is more of Aaron and Luke truly appearing to be friendly from Wendy's point of view - I feel like I don't actually recall seeing all that much of that, in the end, which I guess mutes the impact of her being so baffled that someone could pretend to be that good of friends with someone a little bit. Luke also mentions that he did pretend to be friends with Aaron for that year and they joked around and such, but I think I can barely recall Aaron ever genuinely seeming nice or like he cares about Luke whatsoever - the bit where he's delirious suffering from insomnia and Aaron is just being kind of blatantly unpleasant about it in the background while Wendy's trying to help sticks out in my mind, for example. It might have been nice, to sell Wendy's perception of things, to include a little more of Aaron apparently not being a huge dick, which surely happened sometimes, right? But, then again, I am a reader who was bitch-eating-crackers at Aaron from chapter four onwards, so I was probably more inclined to read literally everything he says as him being a dick than average. :P

I think you did a great job on Luke, Wendy and their relationship development; they have their own issues and interests and things going on, but you also really sell how much they care for each other and why, with a lot of great moments between them that range from just goofy cute-awkward to strong emotional moments making it clear how well they're able to support and be there for each other. And the letters are really good, as I mentioned before - this progression of how they slowly get more honest and are able to express more things, and even when their initial reaction to a letter isn't the greatest, we always see them having managed to get it together enough by the next one they send to make it thoughtful and considered and introspective in a way that's just heartening to read on at least some level. The actual romance aspect is also spot-on; you do a really good job writing confused hormones in a way that's genuine and funny but not generic cliché. The emotional writing, in general, is incredibly strong, with intense scenes like chapter eleven just absolutely nailing the internality of the characters in a viscerally evocative way.

Zoe and Sharpy were a nice surprise - not the most important characters, but you do keep them present and characterized enough to get the emotional payoffs you wanted: Luke's concern for Zoe always, always shines through to make it check out when we fully learn Luke's outburst was about Aaron abusing her, and Zoe helping him with the red Gyarados photography was so, so good. Sharpy's role is a bit less important but still also very endearing and making good use of a weird Pokémon that I don't feel like we see too often in fanfic.

The side characters are also really brimming with life, as I've mentioned before, and you always manage to make them come across well and clearly even if they don't get a lot of space. Amanda is particularly memorable, but I also really enjoyed Luke's parents.

There's also a great sense of worldbuilding and of detail and nitty-gritty to the particular things the characters are engaged in, which makes it feel like there's equal nitty-gritty to everything and makes everything more crisp. Love all the photography stuff that comes up to make Luke's photography more real and believable, but also the Johto Conservation Society stuff and the Pokémon tracking that Wendy's doing - all just good stuff that deepens the sense of verisimilitude, and also contributes to making the characters feel like real people who are really passionate about these things rather than just sort of having an arbitrary list of hobbies.

Overall, this was a really enjoyable fic and I'm glad I managed to power through it for Blitz. I'd love to check out more of your work sometime when I can. Congratulations on finishing a good little story that didn't overstay its welcome, and I hope you'll keep doing fic!

Inyssa · Jan 17, 2025

I’ve been meaning to start this one for a while, so I figured the blitz would be a good excuse to get a handful of chapters in at least, and then keep on reading. I’ll be dividing my thoughts per chapter. Let’s get into it:

I actually remember reading the first scene of this a couple months ago, then getting side-tracked because of irl stuff, but it was comfortably familiar. I remember being struck by Luke. Immediately his personality alongside his age caught my attention, there’s a sort of maturity, of slow, careful deliberation to his inner thoughts and actions that are kind of incongruent with his age, but clearly by design. Not every trainer his age has a Drowzee for such a specific reason, after all. And that’s a… let’s call it maturity, that follows him three years later, ironically making it seem that everyone around him has grown up while he stayed where he was, only with a bit more experience. He also seems extremely disconnected from the people he associates with, which can’t be healthy.

There’s a very cultivated sense of calm and poise to him that can’t be healthy for a kid his age, whether in 1988 or 1993. That level of self-mastery is hard enough on adults. Yet judging by what we see in this chapter, there’s a lot of responsibility that’s expected of young trainers, they practically have to build their careers from the ground up even at that young age. I can’t imagine that being easy. I figure a lot of these trainers fail not because of their skill but because they’re not good enough at handling everything else.

I’m a fan of the way you describe the way the League and trainer journeys work, the little detail with parents wanting their kids to have birthdays close together so they’d go on their journeys at the same time is a particular favorite of mine. It also seems that said journeys end up lasting years, which is longer than I’m used to seeing. It makes me wonder about how that works, logistically. Though I guess we’ll see soon.

I feared I might get a little lost with the amount of characters introduced, but the ones in 1993 don’t seem like they’ll appear much other than in this goodbye, which I’m not sure how I feel about. I am very curious about Luke’s past though, not just what happened with his friend group but also before.

I did think the line “After all, he reminded himself, …she was the best friend I ever had.” was maybe unnecessarily on the nose, but that’s a very small nitpick. Great start so far.

Oof, already the start here shows how rough it is to be a trainer in this culture. They really throw these kids into an incredibly difficult career and expect them to figure it all out, huh? The fact that the most ‘serious ones’ don’t even spend the holidays with their families, and that those who quit are looked down upon paints a really ugly picture about the whole thing. But it’s also so interesting. In most fics where being a trainer is seen as a serious career, they tend to start a bit older than ten, but here it’s the worst of both choices. Though it’s not so bad that it’s unrealistic, I’ll say that. The fact that Wendy was so scared of accidentally urging Luke to end up like Nadine was… oof.

And then that oof gets even bigger when we find out exactly how things went horribly wrong. God, they were even near Luke’s place, ready to have a good Christmas. Or… most likely not. Whatever lit the fuse of that confrontation, it clearly did so long ago. I’m left just as speechless as Wendy, from just these first two chapters I can’t imagine what could’ve led Luke to snap like that. It couldn’t have been just about his inadequacies with training and his future, right? I feel like it must have something to do with Aaron specifically, something about him, or something in Luke’s past. I mean… Aaron couldn’t have been too horrible, or I feel like Luke would’ve had an even worse reaction to his T.V. appearance during chapter 1. I guess we’ll see. But I like that we get the scene so soon, even if without context. It’s a good compromise.

Ace was uncomfortably eager about maiming his trainer’s friend, though…

It’s nice to see Wendy’s POV though, and even nicer that it feels so different to Luke’s. There’s still some of that teenage overthinking, but it feels more fleeting and anxious than slow and contemplative like with Luke. She seems to be in a good place, having managed to put what happened behind her mostly, even if she still wants answers. I get a feeling those answers might make things worse, though.

I like Amanda, I’ve met a handful of young enthusiastic people like that lol, very nice but too dead-set on their ossified certainties.

Well. That first scene explains a few things about their dynamic. Even if it doesn’t explain yet why Luke exploded the way he did, I can see exactly why Aaron is the worst kind of guy to be around him. I can see Aaron think he’s doing Luke a favor with everything he says to him, and I can also imagine him thinking Luke is weird for the way he reacts, not realizing he’s making him uncomfortable. The exact type of personality to become a powerful trainer, I suppose. That was painful to read, in a good way.

A shorter chapter this time, but I like what’s established here. The little cameo with Bugsy was neat; judging by the game’s chronology, it won’t be too long before he’s in charge. I also liked the explanations for how Luke’s photoshooting works, you clearly put a good deal of research into it.

Also damn, Luke really likes overthinking things, huh. You can see how he kinda justifies it in his mind, going through every option until he finds the most ‘appropriate’ one. It’s something that was there when he was younger, but I imagine his outbursts against Aaron only made that habit worse, as he’d want to avoid that sort of situation at all costs. I’m not sure what he actually plans to do, but I can’t imagine it’d be better than either ignoring Wendy or having an honest talk with her.

Though judging by his reaction to reading Aaron’s name… oof.

These first three chapters really caught my interest in reading more, which is all you need first chapters to do, lol. It’s mostly the second one, the Aaron incident that really made me want to learn more, but I also enjoy your prose and character work a lot, even though we’re just starting to know these people. I can tell you know what you’re doing when telling a story, and I’ll be happy to sit back and enjoy as I keep reading and reviewing when I can.

Inyssa · Jan 30, 2025

Back again for more of this fic. I was left wanting to read more last time, I wanted answers and more of that really uncomfortable but realistic atmosphere you’re good at writing between kids in their trainer journey. And it looks like we’re gonna get more of that, and the following fallout, so let’s get into it.

Like before, I’ll be reviewing chapter by chapter.

This is something that, looking back on the previous chapters, becomes more obvious regarding Wendy, but it’s this one that makes it clear that she has an unfortunate blind spot for other’s troubles when they’re not readily apparent. And it’s certainly not her fault. I’ve been in similar positions, and it’s hard when someone’s outbursts comes out of nowhere from your perspective, or when you realize halfway through doing something that it’s probably stupid, or that the other person was trying to avoid you. I feel really bad for her. It’s not something one can concretely ‘get better’ at, but it would’ve helped if Luke and Aaron would’ve realized this about her sooner. I guess Luke kinda did, but still.

And on the other side of that coin, Aaron seems to realize what’s going on with people very easily, and both of the times this happened he acted as though he’d been expecting it. Is he just more observant, more empathetic? Or does he foresee it so easily because in part he’s the one causing it? I still remember how Aaron was so quick to say he knew Luke was ‘bad’ from the beginning, and just like Wendy I found that statement so weird.

Again, it’s hard to tell what made Nadine back out of the trip exactly, at first I thought it was her inability to make progress as a trainer, but would that be enough? Is Aaron just really pushy when it comes to this? I don’t have the answers yet, but hopefully I will in the near future. I really liked the scene at Wendy’s place, though. Her parents seem really nice.

Also damn, Luke. That was the most obvious way to ignore someone and avoid them I’ve seen in a while, to the point even Wendy realized, even if it took her a while. For all he manages to say the right things in the flashback with Wendy, he’s not that much better at talking to people. Poor guy.

Still, that was a really sweet scene at the end there.

Lol, I was talking about Nadine missing the forest for the trees without meaning to, and here Luke is again trying to mathematically quantify every one of his possible interactions. They’re on opposite wavelengths and I love it. I wonder if that’s something Aaron realized when he was traveling with them, and if it annoyed him. Regardless, I’ve met people like Luke too, and it’s amazing how a single sentence of encouragement can so easily take them out of that anxious state. That scene at the end was equally funny and heartwarming. For all Luke wants to engage with people and situations on his own terms, it only takes Wendy’s kindness to calm him into giving things a chance.

I also liked how both parts of the chapter fed into each other. The idea of hunting down a Stantler to photograph it and seeing the space-distorsion of its horns in action was really cool, but it’s how Luke frames the situation with Wendy at first and then has that perception shattered without realizing it that I took from this chapter. Really good writing. Especially because though we the readers are privy to the significance of that, Luke isn’t to the same extent, even if he now realizes he made Wendy’s life better by being there.

Also apparently Wendy and Nadine talked at least one more time back home? Interesting. I figure even then Nadine wasn’t willing to open up, which might mean her reason for leaving was… more dire than expected. I guess we’ll see.

I find it so funny when characters Wendy’s age start talking (or thinking) like that, as though they’re old people past their prime looking toward the other youngsters. Honey, you’re not even eighteen. I mean it definitely tracks, that’s how I sometimes thought when I was her age, but it doesn’t stop being funny. Same with Wendy’s self-admission that she thinks Nadine is so much older than her at this point.

Anyway, nice to be back with Wendy and her late realizations, even if she’s not doing anything wrong. I liked that scene at the ‘little gym’ a lot. There’s some nice worldbuilding there about Gyms that aren’t quite up to snuff to being official and giving out badges, and it only makes sense there’d be a bunch of stadiums like these for trainers to fight in, and I guess adults to bet on. Little leagues indeed. Wendy’s strategy was very good, and I’m glad she gave those girls something to be happy over, even if it landed her into something of a funk.

And Nadine! I love Furret, and the image you painted of Nadine seems to fit really well with that Pokemon. I loved the way you wrote their interaction here, it felt very familiar while also somewhat held-back, at least until Nadine took the first step and opened up the topic Wendy wanted to talk about from the beginning. And… things are really pointing toward Aaron having done something wrong now.

I mean, Nadine’s first ‘explanation’ tracks, if you don’t consider what Wendy realizes, that she’s treating her much better than she presumably does Aaron, that being not talking to him at all. So there’s definitely something else there… I have a lot of theories, and I don’t know which one would make me sadder. At least Nadine seems to be doing really well. Even if I’m constantly surprised by how young these people are studying and working and stuff, lol.

Great batch of chapters!!! I feel like I’m getting a clearer image of what happened during these four’s trainer journey, but there’s still a lot of details that elude me. Still, it’s super fun to try and read between the lines, and the character writing is impeccable as always.

I’ll be back soon for more!!

Inyssa · Mar 9, 2025

Heyy, back again with more reading and reviewing. Hard to make time for it lately, but I was anxious to read more of this wonderful fic that only makes me more anxious. But like, cathartically, or something.

Anyway, one chapter at a time.

The biggest oof I can possibly express for this chapter. It really is an awful miracle that all three of these dopes (and Nadine, who could only stare in dismay) got together and formed the most dysfunctional training group ever, it’s painful to read. In a good way, though. Obviously Aaron is the biggest dick here, but at some point it’s not even about blaming people anymore, it’s just bad luck that these personalities mixed like oil and water and lit matches together, it takes all three to trap each other in that training pact, it wouldn’t have worked with just Luke and Aaron, or at least Luke would’ve snapped way earlier, and probably without it being so explosive.

And of course, the fact that Wendy is still ignorant of the truth of it all doesnt’ help, though Luke isn’t helping himself either by repeating history and trapping himself in these interactions without bothering to explain why it’s painful to him. Poor Zoe, lol.

Speaking of Zoe, I love what you did with the species here, the way her digestion works and how dreams turn into nutrition, which can get her sick. Now it makes me interested in how other Pokemon do that through Dream Eater, or how Darkrai can sustain itself on nightmares without any trouble. I also like that Pokemon medicine isn’t advanced enough to know much about how it works, it makes sense with Pokemon being so different.

That Aaron scene was painful, I could feel my blood pressure rising, both at him and at Luke for staying quiet. At least that last scene was very cute.

At least this one is mostly a nice reprieve, though that probably comes at the cost of Wendy’s obliviousness, which she’s now finally starting to see, lol. ‘Am I really this bad at reading people?’ Yes you are girl, I’m sorry. But I love you for it, and clearly Luke does too.

This is my new favorite chapter so far, solely because of the entire scene leading up to (and including) Sharpy’s evolution. The tiredness from the trek and all of Aaron’s anxiety-inducing scheduling melting away as these two witness a once in a lifetime sight, and you described it so well! I could picture it in my head perfectly. It’s also taking something that already exists in the Pokemon world and re-contextualizing it, this would be such an incredible thing to witness and to photograph, I love the scene so much.

But the rest of the chapter isn’t bad by comparison either. Wendy’s personality comes off more clearly here in this one, the contrast between her in the field and her in civilization make it clearer how she behaves nowadays, and I love how well thought-out her mannerisms and character feel, she very much reads like a real teenage girl, both her actions and her inner thoughts, especially around Luke. I enjoyed reading that a lot.

And finally some self-realization, lol. And a possible meeting on the horizon, though I’m sure Luke will fight it tooth and nail, just like anything that’s good for him. But that’s just Luke.

It’s taking a lot of restraint not to just keep reading instead of writing this down. Definitely going at least one more chapter this time, because I don’t think I can stand that cliffhanger for a whole week or two, lol. Damn.

This fic really makes me want to act like Luke and bury my face in my hands, groaning at these stupid teenagers and their even stupider kid selves, which are written so realistically I love it and want to read more, even if sometimes it causes me physical pain. It’s great. Though I won’t lie, the fact that Luke genuinely considered moving to another region just to avoid the situation with Wendy altogether did get a good chuckle out of me. Ah… teenage overreaction. It’s somehow worse than when you’re twelve, because at that point adult reality gets mixed up with hormones and lack of experience to create exactly this type of situation.

Wendy’s scene after she failed to find Luke was heartbreaking. Because in a way she’s right, it probably wouldn’t have been good for her to find him, not at this point at least. Much like the Stantler they photographed together back then, Luke feels like someone you need to approach slowly, one letter at a time. Still… ouch.

And… Aaron. I figured things would get worse before they got better, but if that letter’s anything to go by, I can’t imagine he’s changed much in the following years. If there is to be a meeting, I don’t see it going well… Agh! I’ll just keep reading.

Well. That conversation happened earlier than I’d expected. In all honesty, it’s probably best that Luke didn’t get around to drop on that meeting, intentionally or not. It was painful to read at more than a few spots, you did a great job at making me feel like Wendy, not wanting to hear another word.

I don’t think Aaron thinks he’s lying, I think he sincerely believes everything he said, and maybe there is some truth to it, maybe Luke’s inner grumpiness did come off less… charming to Aaron than it did to Wendy and it made Aaron think he hated him. But I’m with Wendy on the fact that Aaron does seem like the kind of person to make himself believe those things to justify what happened, even if he was only twelve, even if it really wasn’t his fault. He doesn’t seem the kind to accept his faults even when he was younger.

Wendy’s just having a worse and worse time, huh. That entire scene with her alone with Sharpy, unable to fall asleep and hounded by her thoughts felt real. This and the one after where she waits for so long at the PC, this feels extremely teenager-y. And not because those emotions aren’t important, they definitely are, but there’s such a feeling of ‘This will literally tear me apart if I don’t resolve it’ that scans true with what teenagers feel about their first break-up. Sometimes these things happen, things go wrong and then you gotta live on.

At least there’s still hope for a good resolution. I’m very anxious to see Wendy’s talk with Nadine, but I’ll stop myself here. I see I have three chapters left, perfect for another review blitz later when I have the time.

Again, oof. What an amazing string of chapters, the ramping tension and the answers we got so far didn’t disappoint, I’ll be very sad when this is over, but also I can’t wait to read more lol.

Inyssa · Mar 9, 2025

Actually, fuck it. I’ve been thinking about this for a couple hours, and I don’t think I can wait another week. Back at it again, for the last time now! It pains me to reach the end with how good a time (if painful) I’m having reading this fic, but I’m also itching for the resolution, so here we go!

And we’re back to me wanting to bash my head against a wall every time Luke gets into one of his moods. I love him, but god damn. Still, at least we finally get to see the inciting events that lead to that fight with Aaron and… Yeah. There’s no good-faith argument I could make here in the kid’s favor other than he was twelve. One could maybe let him off the hook right until the point where he almost forcefully shoves that revive in Zoe’s mouth. Before that I could follow his line of thinking and (even if painfully) see where he was coming from, but after that… Yeah. If I were Luke, I would’ve wanted to actually kill him in that situation, christ.

Which only makes the following falling out even more painful to read, even if we already read it before from Wendy’s POV. Just pain all around. And held in for so long, so unnecessarily, all because there was no one to guide these poor kids. I guess that’s one of the dangers of a trainer journey, huh.

That scene with Luke waiting for so long at the lake gave me feelings similar to their stakeout at Mt. Moon, and it really shows what Wendy was telling him back then, how talented he is precisely because he never gives up. For better or for worse. But this might be a good lesson, that all the times he worried that another ‘better’ photographer might’ve taken a better photo were irrelevant, because his persistence landed him possibly the best picture anyone’s taken in the Lake of Rage… maybe.

That last scene once again made me groan painfully, but we’re so close!!! I can hold out hope. I gotta keep reading now, I’m anxious to see what happens next.

Again with the conundrum from last time, I want to keep reading so badly, especially now that I’m not actually sure there’ll be a resolution of the type I’m expecting for this kind of story (and that fills me with dread) but I gotta write my thoughts down first.

Fuck.

That’s one of them. Definitely harder to read, that first part especially. I was worrying that we wouldn’t get to read Wendy and Nadine’s conversation, but the way you integrated it with the letter from Luke was really well made. It saved space that would’ve gone to less necessary details around the conversation itself, and made for a back and forth that was as impressive as it was painful, I loved it.

But man… poor Wendy. Near the end there I was almost as frustrated with Luke as she was, despite him having an actual excuse this time, because I can’t imagine going through that waiting even now. I would’ve definitely died if I’d been in her shoes as a teen, she’s a lot stronger than she thinks.

And also fuck Aaron. Jesus.

That last scene with Luke’s mom was so painful. Only one chapter left, and I’m dreading getting to it as I’m anxious to do it. But here we go.

Shaking, groaning, head in my hands. Holy fuck, you had me guessing through that entire final chapter, the more I read and the more Luke spiraled into that dark place in his mind (almost killing himself, the dumbass) the more worried I got and the more anxious the remaining chapter length made me.

Which, I think… makes that final release of tension, that last scene, so good. I’m very full of feelings and it’s hard to describe it in a more thoughtful review-ish way, but that was good shit. Because it’s not quite at the peak of Luke’s bad brain time that he runs into Wendy. He actually has time to cool down, to realize he does have to meet with her in person, and realizing what he’d been putting her through before he finds her. It’s not something that’s given to him at his lowest moment. It’s only when he takes that first step forward, when both of them do.

And it’s so sweet I almost can’t stand it. In a good way! Man… Finally. These thirteen chapters felt like an eternity, probably ‘cause of so much time between each break, but it’s such a well-paced and thought out story, you had a clear idea of what you wanted to write and didn’t waste a single chapter. It’s the sort of thing I admire and want to learn from, so this was as illuminating as it was cathartic to read.

It’s a good sign when I finish the fic and I immediately want a lot of side content, want the story to keep going despite this being a natural stopping point. It’ll take some time before I’m ready to accept that it’s over, and that’s the highest praise I can give this, probably.

So yeah…. So glad I started reading this, though from your other one-shot I knew I was in good hands. You really stuck the landing, and I’m gonna be reeling for a bit.

Amazingly done, and thank you.

icomeanon6 · 2025-04-26T00:11:34+0100

Review replies in alphabetical order:

Chibi Pika said:
Allrighty, I've been following along as it's been published, but I might as well use the blitz as an excuse to get my thoughts down. :P

Sweet! I have enjoyed watching your emotional journey in reaction emojis.

Chibi Pika said:
We also get this fun little 'aha' moment when Luke says they were teamed up for a few years. Like, "I guess they don't part ways in Azalea after all. :P"

Funny to imagine something going so wrong in Azalea Town that that was all it took though, lol.

Chibi Pika said:
As always, the trainer culture on display is easily my favorite part of this. Of course the Indigo League is a two week party and of course every trainer is gonna make sure they're in town and parked in front of any public TV they can find.

I wrote this scene specifically for people who will appreciate how much sense it makes.

...Okay, I actually wrote it for myself, but it boils down to the same thing.

Chibi Pika said:
(okonomiyaki.jpg)

I included and localized okonomiyaki specifically for people who will appreciate how much sense it makes.

...No yeah, that was also for myself. You get the pattern.

Chibi Pika said:
(Side note, but I only recently learned that the "mob" in Mob Psycho is supposed to evoke similar "extra" or NPC energy.)

New to me, very interesting. Also, great show.

Chibi Pika said:
This sure hits different on a reread. :copyka2: This entire fic is gonna be saturated with dramatic irony, isn't it.

Stuffed to the gills.

Chibi Pika said:
I enjoy the conspiratorial spiral Luke briefly finds himself in before forcing himself to think more logically. No, Wendy didn't psychically predict he'd read it this close to her birthday. :P

Brief conspiratorial spirals are so fun to write. We also see here an early example of how ridiculously specific this fic's timetable of events is - Wendy's birthday had to be a on date that fit travel-time-wise from the date Luke was in Goldenrod, which had to be in the tournament window, which always starts on the first day of summer.

Chibi Pika said:
Alrighty, for these chapters we get the fun of going through my original, in-the-moment notes, with occasional interjections from today-chibi who has the benefit of hindsight. Should be fun. :copyka2:

I am very excited.

Chibi Pika said:
OH NO I UNDERSTAND LESS

It's absolutely incredible how we actually see the moment where everything crashes and burns, and yet we're left every bit as blindsided as Wendy. Non-chronological storytelling ftw.

I was initially worried that placing this flashback here would be too quick an answer to the question raised in chapter 1 of "How did things get ugly?" but it seems I avoided this simply because what's shown is too bewildering and raises too many other questions to feel like an answer.

Chibi Pika said:
The thing is, I can genuinely believe that Aaron is just rationalizing to himself after the fact too. It’s so, so easy to believe that they really did have perfectly friendly interactions all this time, but now that it’s gone sour, he has to retroactively justify it to himself like Luke was bad news all along. Wendy’s reaction is practically identical to mine in that kind of scenario. Spot on. (Regrettably, this isn't a hypothetical, speaking from experience.)

I don't think I've been through this particular scenario, but Wendy's struggles with judging her friends' character and susceptibility to getting blindsided by conflicts she was oblivious to is pretty autobiographical. Suffice to say, having a mixture of readers who give Aaron the benefit of the doubt and who figure him out immediately is a sign to me that I wrote him correctly.

Chibi Pika said:
dying, I love Amanda, what a memorable side character

Chibi Pika said:
Thiiiis has some hidden context, I'm sensing.

[Hindsight chib: ahahahahaha]

Chibi Pika said:
So I was in the middle of typing this up — I dunno if this is meant to have continuity with GSC but I like that it’s easy to imagine old man Pendergast retiring sometime in the next 6 years and leaving Bugsy as gym leader in 1999 — and then right in the very next bit we see that Bugsy is indeed the overeager gym trainer. Excellent.

I tend to think Bugsy's appearance was a bit too fan-servicey (in the "superfluous cameo" category), but I was really scraping for more flavorful details to put in the present-day portion of this chapter, since it's very thin compared to most of them. At least I can say it makes sense!

Chibi Pika said:
Really enjoy Wendy’s way of looking at her own perception of events and contrasting it with what someone else might think, and re-evaluating her gut expectation that other people would actually say what they mean. It feels really natural that she might have developed this habit after all the… everything.

Yeah, for sure. I wanted this to be something that still doesn't come naturally to her, and probably never will, but that she's really working on.

Chibi Pika said:
To Aaron’s credit it ssseeems like he’s handling Nadine’s departure in a more mature manner than I'd have expected. It's easy to see how he might just legit think it's better to give Nadine space here. But at the same time it's like... he knows something.

[ahahahahah]

This is maybe the most Rorschach Test moment of all Aaron's Rorscach Test moments. My aim was to have Aaron say things that sound like what the emotionally mature kid would say, but which fall apart upon closer inspection/with more knowledge of the situation.

Chibi Pika said:
>Krabbyfern
I am certain that this is a pun on what these are called in Japanese but dammit I can’t find its common name anywhere, just a million results about it being invasive in the US.

It's kanikusa! (蟹草, Lygodium japonicum, "Japanese climbing fern") "Krabbyfern" here from 蟹 (crab). I'd say this is the most Research Overkill™ thing in the fic, but it was important to me to give Wendy's specialty some of the attention and specificity that Luke's gets.

Chibi Pika said:
It's easy to see how there's loads of tiny points of friction between Luke and Aaron, but Luke course-corrects before letting it turn into resentment. Sooo we're probably gonna have ourselves a straw that broke the camel's back situation.

[hindsight chib: the straw was a cement block]

lmao

Chibi Pika said:
Man, this unofficial gym is making me nostalgic for WSSTK. Love seeing ways that trainer culture is embedded in everything, even outside the classic League circuit we all know.

Weird to think about "nostalgia" for something I wrote, lol. Stay tuned for when Jen's actual gym pre-abandonment appears in chapter 10! (With the caveat that this fic is not in the same continuity as WSSTK on the grounds that this setting is inextricably tied to my Kanto/Johto Travel Time program, which I wrote in 2021.)

Chibi Pika said:
Man, Wendy's feelings of growing up and looking back on being a kid are real. It's so easy to believe that she'd be feeling this as her journey comes to an end, after all the experiences she's had.

There's a pretty clear divide between the readers who think this looking-back feeling about Wendy and Luke is a perfect fit and those who think it's out of place for teenagers. I think there are more readers in the latter category, but I wrote the story for the former.

Chibi Pika said:
[Hindsight note: it makes a lot of sense that Nadine would catch feelings for a boy making her feel smart after all those years spent with a friend making her feel stupid and inadequate.]

I am very, very glad someone spotted this.

Chibi Pika said:
(mom_holy_fuck.png)

I had never seen this meme before. It is amazing.

Chibi Pika said:
Really like Wendy getting Luke to keep talking, sharing random details from anecdotes as a grounding exercise.

I think that scene's the cutest thing I've ever written. I'm quite proud of it.

Chibi Pika said:
Man, the entire Mt. Moon segment was captivating from start to finish, I don't even have any notes for this chapter. I was as enraptured as Wendy was and it is illegal that I will never go on a Pokemon journey.

Someone better go to jail for this outrage.

Chibi Pika said:
Laughing extremely hard at Wendy flustering herself thinking about with "bassy, heartfelt words." It's very "hormonal allo teenager crushing" while being cute and genuine and not relying on tired tropes (even if I'm going off secondhand accounts here, aha). Being the resident asexual curmudgeon, I so often find that kind of stuff trite, so it's a real accomplishment that I'm so charmed by it here!

I'm really, really glad to hear that. The romantic/hormonal stuff is what I have the least experience writing, especially from the female POV.

Chibi Pika said:
Man, this feels like the thesis of the fic, huh.

(Note to self: Stop making the theses of fics literal lines that characters say.

)

Chibi Pika said:
Also, I'm still not over just how perfect the title of the fic is. Chasing a face-to-face meeting that might never happen. Looking back on the impermanence of youth, unable to stop the march of time. Photography.

The number of readers who've remarked on the multifaceted appropriateness of the title has been a pleasant surprise to me. I have graduated from meme title to thematically resonant title. :yoomtah:

Chibi Pika said:
Oh man, it’s so easy to read how Luke's thinking about the whole “she hates quitters” thing while also so easy to see why Wendy wouldn’t be thinking about that while trying to compliment him for sticking to things. aaaaaaaaaaa

I am wanted in five states for possession of weaponized dramatic irony.

Chibi Pika said:
oh no, this one isn't even a hypothetical, this is actually what she ended up saying. oh no. Rereading their final conversation in chapter 2 is gonna be pain incarnate, isn't it.

Chibi Pika said:
Look, I get that kid-Wendy was physically incapable of reading subtext, but not being suspicious of everyone’s motives isn’t a bad thing.

It really isn't. It's just very, very unfortunate when your childhood second-best friend happens to be a prodigy at emotional manipulation.

Chibi Pika said:
It's like... there are grains of truth here, it's not a total fabrication, but it’s missing crucial context.

That's about right. The grains are pretty grainy, and the fabricated parts are VERY fabricated, though.

Chibi Pika said:
One thing I really appreciate is how even though Luke and Wendy both obviously devote quite a bit of time to thinking about the other, they still feel wholly themselves, as opposed to revolving around the other person. They've got lives, hobbies, they've moved on, they've grown up, even if they both really could use some closure on their shared past.

This aspect of them was really important to me. The POV split was a conscious decision to force myself to make Wendy more than just The Love Interest.

Chibi Pika said:
Seeya in the next one!

Thanks a bunch for reading and reviewing! (And thanks especially for mom_holy_fuck.png.) Always love to hear your perspective on setting and what hits harder in hindsight in particular. No worries if you don't get around to the rest, though. I'm already quite spoiled for reviews, lol.

(On my end, I want to see how much more of LC I can review during the Anniversary mini-blitz...)

Dragonfree said:
Chibi's talked about Will Somebody Stop These Kids? for years

WSSTK taught me how important it is to come up with a good title, or at least an unignorably meme-able one.

Dragonfree said:
I enjoy the unexpected twist on this intro - talk about the possibilities opened by e-mail and then well, this story happens before any of that stuff was possible. It also teases some fun intrigue about the nature of the story - presumably, we'll be following trainers whose stories might have been different if only they'd had the ability to communicate speedily over the PC network.

Glad this weird little pseudo-foreword thing clicked with you. Definitely written more for myself than the reader.

Dragonfree said:
This is making me think of the converse of that xkcd about people vastly overestimating the average person's understanding of their field.

I was 100% thinking of this exact comic when writing this passage.

Dragonfree said:
Generally enjoying the very characterful treatment of the photography here - not just giving him a hobby but a vehicle for showing his character in other ways.

Great to hear; that was one of my top goals.

Dragonfree said:
Oof. A number of things this could imply about Nadine's character and/or her relationship with Aaron - definitely a little hook giving something to watch for.

Nadine's character gave me heartburn because she's really important for Wendy's story down the road, but there's very little room in the narrative for her. This one paragraph sticking out is pretty critical.

Dragonfree said:
Sounding like Shane doesn't even know he's being left with a different trainer, and Luke's hoping to just quietly leave, rather than say goodbye to him at all.

In hindsight, I don't like how this part comes across. The rest of the scene does enough to hammer in Luke's issues with emotional attachment, and it would only be a small dialogue tweak to make his treatment of Shane appropriately humane. I'll likely make that change.

Dragonfree said:
The characterization was very well done here, lots of little details and nuances to notice. Luke at least as a kid is pretty literal-minded (the whole paragraph of bafflement at being asked if he's a Pokémon photographer) and gives me some generally neurodivergent vibes, special interest in photography and social awkwardness and not really wanting to travel with other kids until he's justified it as being temporary - might not be exactly what you were going for or anything, but that's how it's pinging me for the moment. By fifteen he's much less awkward, of course, at least masking better.

I wasn't thinking about neurodivergence while writing, but you make a good case for the interpretation. If pressed, I would say Luke's anxieties and interpersonal difficulties are sourced in my own experience as a kid and teenager (albeit exaggerated and dramatized), so my formal position would have to be that no, Luke's not neurodivergent.

Thinking about it a bit more, I think a key difference is that I wouldn't say Luke is "masking." His outward teenage self is genuinely him, even if it naturally tends to obscure aspects of himself that were more apparent when he was younger.

Dragonfree said:
(It can't be entirely healthy for Luke that he rarely sleeps naturally and usually Zoe hypnotizes him and eats all his dreams about his issues. Not processing any of this very well.)

Stay tuned for more poor processing of Luke's issues!

Dragonfree said:
I also enjoyed the way you portray life as a trainer [...] It just feels very rich and realistic and makes the whole thing more immersive.

This is one of my favorite things to hear - thank you.

Dragonfree said:
Seeing the falling-out but from the point of view of Wendy, who has no idea what was really going on and still doesn't, is a pretty tantalizing tease.

What's amusing to me is that one of the earliest decisions I made was that what happened when it all blew up would be shown early so the whole story didn't turn into vagueposting about The Bad Thing, but the end result of that decision ended up being little less tease-y.

Dragonfree said:
There's a fun dramatic irony to watching Wendy's reaction to having the letter in hand, and being so relieved when it's normal - we've seen Luke, being a normal guy who regrets what he sees as screwing up with Wendy, but she hasn't seen him since he snapped in the most out-of-character way and really had no way to know how he might react.

I really love dramatic irony, and this fic's probably the most all-in I've ever gone on it.

Dragonfree said:
We haven't seen Aaron's POV (at least not yet), but so far I'm definitely not getting great vibes off his part in all this.

It's been really interesting to me to see how early and to what degree readers get bad vibes from Aaron. It's been everything from early "This is an unfortunate clash of incompatible personalities" to immediate "This fucker is bad news."

Dragonfree said:
Feels like Wendy's sort of shooting for an excuse to talk to him, although maybe she's just interested in photography once she's started to hear some of the details.

I really should have a definitive opinion on this, but I don't remember which I was going for. I guess it's best if it feels like it could be either?

Dragonfree said:
Oh nooooo abort abort abort alarms blaring

It begins.

Dragonfree said:
Because she said that same phrase earlier, it felt a little off to see it repeated here without a sense that it's an intentional repeat/callback, though maybe it's just me.

Not just you - that was an oversight. Gonna think about how to replace one of the lines.

Dragonfree said:
Oh no, does Sharpy also have bad experiences with Aaron.

The answer to this one is no, and I would have written that sentence differently if this interpretation had occurred to me. Might not be bad to leave it as is, though...

Dragonfree said:
Oh nooooo Wendy no
[...]
Wendy noooooo

She's clearly well-intentioned and trying to say something positive about what Nadine was working on, just truly not picking up on the subtext here. Mrgh.

I don't want to say I enjoy seeing readers squirm over this, but I hate to lie by omission.

Dragonfree said:
Currently wondering if the main thing is basically that Aaron is pushing everyone else too hard on the Pokémon training front and making them feel like they're failures if they don't keep up with what he's doing (with Wendy happening to already be good, so that she doesn't get pushed by Aaron in the same way), with the manipulative bullshit being mostly in the service of that, or if there's more than that to it.

That just about totally sums up Aaron, yeah. The only "more" to it in my mind is exactly how disgusting the specifics of his pushing and manipulating get.

Dragonfree said:
I underestimated Luke's social competence in chapter one, I think; he's all around pretty sensitive and good about approaching Wendy here, and clearly picked up that Nadine might in fact have wanted to talk about it where Wendy didn't.

This is probably the least autobiographical part about Luke, actually. The main thing Wendy gets from me (or younger me, I hope) is her extreme difficulty in identifying anything worrying in her friends until it's too late.

Dragonfree said:
Anyway, good job, I have animorphed into the screm emoji

This is a high compliment.

Dragonfree said:
Amazing. Legitimately cute.

If writing had video game achievements, I'd want "Legitimately Cute Poop Joke" to be one of them.

Dragonfree said:
Absussing at Aaron's timing, even though at this point I would probably be suspicious at him eating crackers

Yeah, it's just Aaron being selfish about time management rather than actively conniving, but I like this reaction.

Dragonfree said:
It was lovely to see Nadine again in person, and great to see she's doing well for herself today - probably to be expected, having gotten out of there quick when she was still a kid and all, but nonetheless, good to see. Also lovely to see them catch up with each other, just a very nice conversation that feels good. Furret content doesn't hurt!

The reunion with Nadine was one of the scenes I was least sure would land well, both because Nadine's role in the story to this point is very limited and because I'm much less confident in writing "girl talk" than "guy talk" for the simple reason of which I have real-life experience with. I suspect this is why I played the Fuzzy Animal Friend card, which makes writing any scene easier.

Dragonfree said:
I do enjoy moments like these where they really do feel distinctly like kids

I definitely enjoy it when they come across that way, since for all I talk about kids in the world of Pokemon naturally growing up faster as a consequence of living outside for years, I do worry I'm actually just not that great at making kids feel like kids, heh.

Dragonfree said:
Jesus FUCKING Christ Aaron

I might have been sweating thinking about the later chapters when I first read this, lol

Dragonfree said:
Her grounding him by asking him to relate a nice memory and him finally managing to fall asleep from that is lovely. His stress and insomnia is super tangible before that, how he's kind of barely coherent and not very aware of what's going on but it's still intensely stressful and weird. It's good and evocative.

This was one of my favorite scenes to write. Altered states of mind are always fun, and by this point I was getting anxious to ramp up the sweetness in the relationship.

Dragonfree said:
More caring quotes from a child who is great

This line sticks out to me because it's exactly the kind of thing I would write between two actual best friends in a different story who share that kind of sense of humor.

Dragonfree said:
I like how Sharpy is more conscious than Wendy is - she just tells Sharpy to wait, but what Sharpy actually does is help him because he needs it.

I really hate to say it, but Sharpy was shoving him because he was going too slow and she was really eager, lmao.

Dragonfree said:
Wendy's little scene thinking about whether Luke is aging her up and aging him up is cute (though as with every time this happens in anime, I am continually baffled when fictional women are super preoccupied with the size of their breasts). Kids with a crush now teens with a crush.

My thinking with the whole breasts thing was that this is a thought she's only having because she's anxious about what the teenage boy she likes might be thinking about. "Preoccupied" definitely wasn't my intention (more like "momentarily, circumstantially self-conscious"), but having never been a teenage girl, I can't disagree if anyone thinks it's too "men writing women." I may well have missed the mark on how conscious a teenage girl might realistically be of teenage boys' anatomical fixations, and how she'd feel about them if she likes the boy in question. More generally, my goal with the fic was to have it be honestly hormonal without being explicit or tasteless.

Dragonfree said:
I'm not 100% sure if I caught everything you were going for for the implications in that sequence, but I liked it a lot.

You've been on a very close wavelength with the story thus far, so I'd guess you caught everything essential.

Dragonfree said:
Too bad he's going solo and can't do the thing with having her use Hypnosis and then someone else recalls her afterwards before she can eat his dreams...

It was easy to miss, but Wendy suggested this possibility earlier, and my justification was that Luke won't do this because Zoe getting dreams to eat is why he's okay with the arrangement to begin with.

Dragonfree said:
Enjoyed the look into the photo development process, as somebody who's not very familiar. The test strips with different exposure lengths is neat.

Definitely something I included because it was really interesting to me when I first learned it. I may not be a professional or even serious amateur photographer, but I'm glad that one black-and-white class I took in college made this fic possible.

Dragonfree said:
Oof I'm sure it's genuinely not as bad as Luke feels like it is, but legit for him to feel like it's the worst, most worthless photo ever taken after all this.

My thinking is that if Luke were a college student, it'd get a grade of "try again," but that it would be wildly unrealistic to expect a 12-year-old to nail the shot.

Dragonfree said:
Was this scene meant to have a date heading? It sounds like this is taking place in 1993, but it's immediately following the December 16th, 1990 scene. (Reading further, it looks like this chapter we're swapping rapidly between time periods with no indicator. I think it might be nice to include them, even if it's technically redundant once we catch on, just for consistency?)

You're not wrong. My worry is that it breaks up the flow more than that it's redundant, but I'm reconsidering.

Dragonfree said:
Woof Inadvertently, the worst thing she could possibly say to him.

Tactical dramatic irony nuke.

Dragonfree said:
Oof, this is agonizing. Wendy there having what she thinks is a romantic moment with the boy she likes and Luke there just internally screaming the whole time.

Next to the very last scene, this is probably the one I worked the most on in revision simply because it's a romantic scene between two kids that culminates in "Surprise, you're in puberty now," which I was deliriously worried about handling tastefully. Probably speaks to my dearth of experience with writing romance at all, but I'm taking the fact that so far nobody's objected to where this scene goes as a win.

Dragonfree said:
Wendy's going to see Aaron, and I'm guessing the title of the next chapter is something Aaron's going to say about Luke but applies more to him.

Bingo!

Dragonfree said:
And the funny thing is it's not entirely untrue but it actually applies to her inability to see the red flags in Aaron.

I'd say his diagnosis of her is downright correct, which of course makes it even more devious.

Dragonfree said:
Some real DARVO going on here :copyka2:

I had to look this up just now, but yup.

Dragonfree said:
But that's how people can get you, isn't it. It's all such a tidy narrative where Aaron did nothing wrong other than trying to shield Wendy and Luke is just an awful person and Wendy's an idiot for not noticing - big contrast to how Luke treats the whole thing.

Re: tidy narrative, something I was going for was that twelve-year-old Aaron's narrative at the hospital was hasty and unconvincing, while fifteen-year-old Aaron's narrative was how he managed with a more-developed brain and much more time to think about it. His big miscalculation at 12 was that he didn't consider the possibility of Luke starting a fight instead of leaving in quiet shame, so he had to think on his feet at first. I think this may have made the hospital argument too unwieldy on a first reading, though.

Dragonfree said:
Though... I can't help but notice she mentions she's going to see Nadine but not why she's going to see Nadine, so Luke does not know that Nadine will be able to counter Aaron's narrative.

This is one of those "Didn't occur to me, but still not sure I would have written it differently" situations.

Dragonfree said:
Enjoying this whole interaction between Luke and his mom. I think you nail these sorts of incidental interactions with minor characters and make them feel alive.

I do think this one of my honest writing strengths. I credit one-shots, which I find to be the best practice for getting a lot out of characters who appear only briefly.

Dragonfree said:
It should've been predictable, probably, that this was about Luke's concern for Zoe. You've been building that up since chapter one, and doing a good job of it; of course it checks out that when Luke really sees red, it's to do with Aaron mistreating Zoe.

I only realized this was what the story was building up to pretty late in the writing process, and it saved the whole fic. In the outline, Luke's motivation for punching Aaron was more directly the consequence of Aaron's threatening to cancel Christmas (which sounds ludicrously Hallmark when I put it that way) and he was in large part angry on Wendy's behalf, but this would have made a hash of how determined Luke was to cut ties with Wendy in the hospital. Making it about Zoe both solved this problem and made everything else about Zoe, sleep deprivation, and training styles finally snap into place.

Dragonfree said:
(Also makes sense, doesn't it, that Luke wanted to apologize to Ace. He was concerned about Aaron's treatment of him too, wasn't he.)

This is an example of "Didn't occur to me, but I'll take it." In my mind, Ace's role among the Pokemon was akin to Aaron's among Luke and Nadine: Ace was training within his own limits, but not those of Luke's and Nadine's Pokemon. I think your interpretation is better.

Dragonfree said:
Ooof. His rage is very well written, super tangible. (Sort of vaguely surprised he can even think about hormones right now, but he is on the cusp of being a teenager.)

This point about hormones got me thinking about what I was going for. Narratively, I was just trying to tie the romantic through line into the situation, but in hindsight I actually think the hormone element makes more sense than I had in mind. Testosterone simply isn't something teenage boys "think about," rather something that intrudes on their thoughts frequently and inconveniently. It's also a huge part of why he's having violent thoughts that wouldn't have entered his head even a year ago. For straight boys, the same hormone heavily pushes both thoughts about girls and thoughts about clobbering one's enemies, which I think is why the scene made sense to me while writing it.

Dragonfree said:
Oh boy, and now we know why this particular simple sentence prompted him into a rage; he's trying to prompt Luke to start saying what he blackmailed him into as if it had nothing to do with Aaron :copyka2:

All the lines that repeat between chapters 2 and 11 are why I'm really glad I wrote the whole thing before starting to post. It would have been a nightmare to feel obliged to stick to what I'd already posted when writing chapter 11, without the freedom to go back and tweak things.

Dragonfree said:
The red Gyarados is an amazingly cathartic moment - all this good brutal buildup about how grueling it has been and the poor mental place he's been in over it, Zoe helping him get the perfect shots because she really cares about and appreciates him too and has learned about photography from him and is determined to help him have this, the fact he's getting to photograph a shiny Pokémon after he missed the shiny Doduo/Dodrio before. Truly magical moment and I am crying about it.

I'm a few months late in saying it, but this comment made my night.

Dragonfree said:
Seeing all of Wendy's lines there again and how utterly badly they hit him is pure pain as well.

Believe it or not, that other-POV hospital scene was a last-minute addition before posting. My worry during drafting was that it'd be too redundant with the Wendy-POV hospital scene, but I thankfully realized that readers would definitely be expecting to get this scene from Luke's POV.

Dragonfree said:
Really rooting hard for him to meet up with Wendy, and I think you will do it (even if it might be offscreen after the final chapter). Man. I think you mentioned to somebody else that chapter eight was your favorite but it's going to be hard to top this one, for me.

Ending the fic with only the implication that they're going to meet would have been such a Mitsuru Adachi move, who was a conscious influence on my desire to write a love story, but even I am not Adachi-pilled enough to want to emulate that side of Adachi. (Not that I consciously emulated Adachi that much to begin with. He's my favorite mangaka, but we're from different planets.)

I think I said chapter 8 was probably my favorite in the Discord chapter update post, and yeah, drop the "probably," it just is. I don't think 11 could ever be my favorite simply because I don't like how it's placed right before a less-impactful chapter 12 (out of 13). It really bugs me that I couldn't think of many interesting things for Wendy to do in her last two POV chapters compared to Luke in his.

Dragonfree said:
Should that be Skull Bash?

Fuuuuuuuuuuuck.

I'm not even sure whether I meant Skull Bash or Head Smash. I need to fix this one way or the other.

Dragonfree said:
Screaming with you, Wendy

(Love to scream with her instead of at her)

I should change the genre listing in the TR fic index to "Romance / Screaming at Teenagers"

Dragonfree said:
Yeahhhh. I like that she has this reaction, just kind of almost losing respect for him for even liking this hypothetical other Wendy. What an utter tangled mess.

Note to self: Characters meditating on "What version of me exists in my beloved's head?" works better without bringing up breasts.

Dragonfree said:
Well, this one was pretty cathartic as well - seeing just enough of Wendy's conversation with Nadine, and how Wendy has finally fully pieced things together, is really good after everything.

I'm really glad it was "just enough," because it was almost a bit less. Glad you got something out of this chapter - this, 3 (Gym battle), and 5 (Stantler) are the ones I don't think had enough going on in them.

Dragonfree said:
Also just really good - that you had only moderately superhuman patience and what you concealed from me under duress hit really well, sort of getting at exactly the protestations the reader will have internally raised to Luke's self-blame in just the right way. Seeing fictional characters resolve these sorts of tangles in good and well-articulated ways that drive straight at the point gives a lot of catharsis.

It feels a bit like cheating, but I wanted to take advantage of the letter-writing to have the characters say things that would be too composed and on-the-nose in spoken dialogue, like these specific examples.

Dragonfree said:
Luke's avoidance here was truly agonizing - just compulsively unable to shake off that anxiety and take that leap to see her, even after Wendy had made it clear she finally understood everything, and had never cared if Luke was a "quitter", and does not blame him for anything.

This aspect of the chapter was especially important to me, since without it what's left is the dreaded "misunderstanding-driven plot." The primary and final barrier had to be Luke's unwillingness to risk emotional pain, not the misunderstanding resulting from poor communication.

Dragonfree said:
It was sweet to see them just finally actually meet and hug and kiss; it's very well written with cute little funny bits and some good happy-ending catharsis to all this. I was a little surprised at just how completely everything else fell away in the process, though; all of that enormous emotional baggage that we've spent this entire fic building up seemed to just evaporate a lot more suddenly than I was expecting.

I agree on the baggage-evaporation point, especially in hindsight. It's romantic in both the new and old senses of the word, but it's not the best fit for the story that precedes it. I don't know when I'll fix it simply because getting this scene right enough to begin with was a massive undertaking, but it'd be toward the top of my list of things to fix upon a more substantial revision.

Dragonfree said:
I do think I get what you were going for, that this was all stuff that his avoidant brain was just desperately pulling out to cling to the status quo and he had already kind of gotten to the point of realizing it didn't make much sense and actually seeing her just brought down all those mental barriers and all of those tenuous excuses simply stop mattering, but I guess I would have liked to see a better sense of the barriers breaking down there instead of just suddenly not being there anymore, or at least more of a tangible sense that the Luke in that final sequence of pure romantic catharsis has just been experiencing all that inner turmoil about it at all.

Yeah, basically this.

Dragonfree said:
I imagine that moment where Luke realizes it's a picture-perfect scene but he doesn't have a camera was one of those ending moments that you have in mind from the start, and possibly the inspiration for Luke being a photographer in the first place - very cute bow on it, and a lovely way of bringing the theme of the luck you make through persistence around in a slightly cheeky way.

I wish I could remember exactly how early that idea came to me. Luke's photography and the snowy nighttime Blackthorn City ending were both very early ideas, but either could have come first, and I'm positive the "and he didn't have a camera" element came later than both. I would love to be able to say I was thinking about the perfect shot and the luck theme from the beginning, but it's more accurate to say I discovered them while outlining and/or writing. (If I'm being really cynical, I'd say the discourse on luck in the story originated from my selfish author's desire to justify romantic coincidences, and that I only realized later there were actual points to be made.)

Dragonfree said:
(and Christmas Eve is a big couples day in Japan, isn't it?)

Bingo!

Dragonfree said:
I'm pleased I was picking up what you were putting down from the start, but you wanted to hit the balance where readers might pick it up from the start or might be more like Wendy and give him the benefit of the doubt until we start to really, really see him be monstrous, and I think you did hit that.

It seems I did hit it, since there doesn't seem to be much correlation between how early people figured out Aaron and how much they enjoyed the story.

Dragonfree said:
One thing I guess might have been nice to see, in hindsight, is more of Aaron and Luke truly appearing to be friendly from Wendy's point of view - I feel like I don't actually recall seeing all that much of that, in the end, which I guess mutes the impact of her being so baffled that someone could pretend to be that good of friends with someone a little bit.

You're absolutely right. That's high on the list of things I'd address upon revision. Definitely not just you being bitch-eating-crackers at Aaron.

Dragonfree said:
I think you did a great job on Luke, Wendy and their relationship development; they have their own issues and interests and things going on, but you also really sell how much they care for each other and why, with a lot of great moments between them that range from just goofy cute-awkward to strong emotional moments making it clear how well they're able to support and be there for each other. And the letters are really good, as I mentioned before - this progression of how they slowly get more honest and are able to express more things, and even when their initial reaction to a letter isn't the greatest, we always see them having managed to get it together enough by the next one they send to make it thoughtful and considered and introspective in a way that's just heartening to read on at least some level. The actual romance aspect is also spot-on; you do a really good job writing confused hormones in a way that's genuine and funny but not generic cliché. The emotional writing, in general, is incredibly strong, with intense scenes like chapter eleven just absolutely nailing the internality of the characters in a viscerally evocative way.

This means a lot to me. I ought to save this paragraph in a file named mission_accomplished.txt, since this covers just about everything I set out to do with this fic. Thank you.

Dragonfree said:
Zoe and Sharpy were a nice surprise
[...]
There's also a great sense of worldbuilding and of detail and nitty-gritty to the particular things the characters are engaged in, which makes it feel like there's equal nitty-gritty to everything and makes everything more crisp.

Oh, and this too. Thank you.

Dragonfree said:
Overall, this was a really enjoyable fic and I'm glad I managed to power through it for Blitz. I'd love to check out more of your work sometime when I can. Congratulations on finishing a good little story that didn't overstay its welcome, and I hope you'll keep doing fic!

Thank you so much! It was a lot of fun to see your progress (and screams) in basically real time over the course of that evening - I just hope it didn't deprive you of important rest during your illness. I have another chapter fic in the works, and it may take a year or more before it sees the light of day, but fingers crossed!

Inyssa said:
ironically making it seem that everyone around him has grown up while he stayed where he was, only with a bit more experience.

That's an interesting thought. Wasn't what I was going for, but I definitely see where you're coming from.

Inyssa said:
I’m a fan of the way you describe the way the League and trainer journeys work, the little detail with parents wanting their kids to have birthdays close together so they’d go on their journeys at the same time is a particular favorite of mine.

I really appreciate it when anyone likes the kind of details I throw in to justify my obsession with making years and dates consistent, lol.

Inyssa said:
I did think the line “After all, he reminded himself, …she was the best friend I ever had.” was maybe unnecessarily on the nose, but that’s a very small nitpick.

It's a nitpick I share - never been happy with that line.

Inyssa said:
Oof, already the start here shows how rough it is to be a trainer in this culture. They really throw these kids into an incredibly difficult career and expect them to figure it all out, huh? The fact that the most ‘serious ones’ don’t even spend the holidays with their families, and that those who quit are looked down upon paints a really ugly picture about the whole thing. But it’s also so interesting.

I might have given the wrong impression here: It's more that trainers generally often aren't home for holidays because they're too far afield and get everywhere by walking, not much correlation with seriousness.

More generally, I do think a lot of what's coming across as the harshness of training is actually part of what the fantasy of Pokemon is to me, lol. In my mind, it's basically "What if Boy Scout camping was all you did," which to me as a kid sounded like a dream come true, even the tougher parts like setting up a tent in the rain.

Inyssa said:
I mean… Aaron couldn’t have been too horrible, or I feel like Luke would’ve had an even worse reaction to his T.V. appearance during chapter 1.

Stay tuned.

Inyssa said:
It’s nice to see Wendy’s POV though, and even nicer that it feels so different to Luke’s.

Thanks! Giving them distinct perspectives was really important to me.

Inyssa said:
Even if it doesn’t explain yet why Luke exploded the way he did, I can see exactly why Aaron is the worst kind of guy to be around him. I can see Aaron think he’s doing Luke a favor with everything he says to him, and I can also imagine him thinking Luke is weird for the way he reacts, not realizing he’s making him uncomfortable.

Stay tuned.

Inyssa said:
Also damn, Luke really likes overthinking things, huh. You can see how he kinda justifies it in his mind, going through every option until he finds the most ‘appropriate’ one. It’s something that was there when he was younger, but I imagine his outbursts against Aaron only made that habit worse, as he’d want to avoid that sort of situation at all costs. I’m not sure what he actually plans to do, but I can’t imagine it’d be better than either ignoring Wendy or having an honest talk with her.

Yeah, you've got him pretty much figured out.

Inyssa said:
Is he just more observant, more empathetic? Or does he foresee it so easily because in part he’s the one causing it? I still remember how Aaron was so quick to say he knew Luke was ‘bad’ from the beginning, and just like Wendy I found that statement so weird.

Aaron definitely occupies an odd place when it comes to "empathy." He's very good at reading people, very good at seeing inside their heads, basically has all the tools we usually associate with being "empathetic," but he simply does not empathize - other people's feelings are objects to manage and leverage. He never feels anything on someone else's behalf.

There's a lot to say in general about how much sense these characters make for their age, but one trait I'm particularly unsure on is if I made Aaron a bit too prodigious an emotional manipulator.

Inyssa said:
I really liked the scene at Wendy’s place, though. Her parents seem really nice.

I liked writing that one. I wish I'd given Wendy's parents as much presence and character as Luke's get later, but alas there wasn't much room for them.

Inyssa said:
Also damn, Luke. That was the most obvious way to ignore someone and avoid them I’ve seen in a while, to the point even Wendy realized, even if it took her a while. For all he manages to say the right things in the flashback with Wendy, he’s not that much better at talking to people. Poor guy.

I'm very glad the takeaway is "Poor guy" instead of "What a jackass," lol.

Inyssa said:
Regardless, I’ve met people like Luke too, and it’s amazing how a single sentence of encouragement can so easily take them out of that anxious state. That scene at the end was equally funny and heartwarming. For all Luke wants to engage with people and situations on his own terms, it only takes Wendy’s kindness to calm him into giving things a chance.

Spot on. I think a key element to Luke's character is the gap between what he thinks he needs for his mental health and what he actually needs for his mental health.

Inyssa said:
I mean it definitely tracks, that’s how I sometimes thought when I was her age, but it doesn’t stop being funny.

I really like this compromise reaction, lol.

Inyssa said:
I liked that scene at the ‘little gym’ a lot. There’s some nice worldbuilding there about Gyms that aren’t quite up to snuff to being official and giving out badges, and it only makes sense there’d be a bunch of stadiums like these for trainers to fight in, and I guess adults to bet on. Little leagues indeed.

The "minor league" gyms are very much my pet worldbuilding fixation. It's why the observation has been (somewhat) jokingly made that my fics are actually about baseball.

Inyssa said:
And Nadine! I love Furret, and the image you painted of Nadine seems to fit really well with that Pokemon.

I credit "Furret on an Escalator" for making me realize what an S-tier pokemon Furret is. The biggest challenge with this chapter was figuring out how exactly Wendy carrying Quincy would work, size- and heft-wise.

Inyssa said:
And… things are really pointing toward Aaron having done something wrong now.

Stay tuned.

Inyssa said:
The biggest oof I can possibly express for this chapter. It really is an awful miracle that all three of these dopes (and Nadine, who could only stare in dismay) got together and formed the most dysfunctional training group ever, it’s painful to read. In a good way, though.

Something I often think about is how many of my friendships as a kid were basically an accident of who I talked to on the first day of school. Sure can work out pretty miserably in the worst case.

Inyssa said:
Speaking of Zoe, I love what you did with the species here, the way her digestion works and how dreams turn into nutrition, which can get her sick. Now it makes me interested in how other Pokemon do that through Dream Eater, or how Darkrai can sustain itself on nightmares without any trouble.

Interesting question. I imagine different dream-digestive systems draw nutrition from different types of dreams, like how pandas need bamboo while koalas need eucalyptus leaves.

Inyssa said:
That Aaron scene was painful, I could feel my blood pressure rising, both at him and at Luke for staying quiet. At least that last scene was very cute.

Alternatingly infuriating and cute was about what I was aiming for with this chapter, lol.

Inyssa said:
At least this one is mostly a nice reprieve, though that probably comes at the cost of Wendy’s obliviousness, which she’s now finally starting to see, lol. ‘Am I really this bad at reading people?’ Yes you are girl, I’m sorry. But I love you for it, and clearly Luke does too.

Awwwwww

Inyssa said:
This is my new favorite chapter so far, solely because of the entire scene leading up to (and including) Sharpy’s evolution.

It's my favorite as well. I initially picked Clefairy as Wendy's starter for no particular reason other than it was a species I hadn't picked before, which was a lucky thing because I can't think of an adequate substitute for this sequence.

Inyssa said:
she very much reads like a real teenage girl

What you don't hear right now is my long internal sigh of relief.

Inyssa said:
And a possible meeting on the horizon, though I’m sure Luke will fight it tooth and nail, just like anything that’s good for him. But that’s just Luke.

Yeah, you've got this guy figured out.

Inyssa said:
This fic really makes me want to act like Luke and bury my face in my hands, groaning at these stupid teenagers and their even stupider kid selves, which are written so realistically I love it and want to read more, even if sometimes it causes me physical pain. It’s great.

I think I was going for "endearingly infuriating," so this is very good to hear.

Inyssa said:
Wendy’s scene after she failed to find Luke was heartbreaking. Because in a way she’s right, it probably wouldn’t have been good for her to find him, not at this point at least.

For as confident as I am about the final scene, I actually don't know how it would have gone down had Wendy found him here. Maybe Luke would take it better than he thought and actually open up, maybe it would be a catastrophe because he wasn't ready for it. We'll never know!

Inyssa said:
I don’t think Aaron thinks he’s lying, I think he sincerely believes everything he said, and maybe there is some truth to it, maybe Luke’s inner grumpiness did come off less… charming to Aaron than it did to Wendy and it made Aaron think he hated him.

Stay tuned.

Inyssa said:
This and the one after where she waits for so long at the PC, this feels extremely teenager-y. And not because those emotions aren’t important, they definitely are, but there’s such a feeling of ‘This will literally tear me apart if I don’t resolve it’ that scans true with what teenagers feel about their first break-up.

Oof, yeah. It just about amounts to physical illness - not many worse feelings in life.

Inyssa said:
Actually, fuck it. I’ve been thinking about this for a couple hours, and I don’t think I can wait another week.

This is very flattering, no joke.

Inyssa said:
And we’re back to me wanting to bash my head against a wall every time Luke gets into one of his moods. I love him, but god damn.

This is very flattering, no joke.

Inyssa said:
Still, at least we finally get to see the inciting events that lead to that fight with Aaron and… Yeah. There’s no good-faith argument I could make here in the kid’s favor other than he was twelve.

Thank you for staying tuned.

Inyssa said:
But this might be a good lesson, that all the times he worried that another ‘better’ photographer might’ve taken a better photo were irrelevant, because his persistence landed him possibly the best picture anyone’s taken in the Lake of Rage… maybe.

I imagine there's a writing rule about not making "sitting and waiting" a primary, narratively critical action for your characters, but I think I may have gotten away with it.

Inyssa said:
Fuck.

This is very flattering, no joke.

Inyssa said:
Definitely harder to read, that first part especially. I was worrying that we wouldn’t get to read Wendy and Nadine’s conversation, but the way you integrated it with the letter from Luke was really well made. It saved space that would’ve gone to less necessary details around the conversation itself, and made for a back and forth that was as impressive as it was painful, I loved it.

I'm really glad with how that back-and-forth went in particular.

Inyssa said:
But man… poor Wendy. Near the end there I was almost as frustrated with Luke as she was, despite him having an actual excuse this time, because I can’t imagine going through that waiting even now. I would’ve definitely died if I’d been in her shoes as a teen, she’s a lot stronger than she thinks.

A chief writing worry when it comes to teens in love is that their struggles will come across as unimpressive melodrama, so this is especially gratifying to hear.

Inyssa said:
Only one chapter left, and I’m dreading getting to it as I’m anxious to do it. But here we go.

Almost over. You can do it. ;__;

Inyssa said:
I’m very full of feelings and it’s hard to describe it in a more thoughtful review-ish way, but that was good shit. Because it’s not quite at the peak of Luke’s bad brain time that he runs into Wendy. He actually has time to cool down, to realize he does have to meet with her in person, and realizing what he’d been putting her through before he finds her. It’s not something that’s given to him at his lowest moment. It’s only when he takes that first step forward, when both of them do.

I'm really glad this came across. The ending is really an example of me wanting the ridiculously happily romantic ending, and doing all I can to make it convincing. I ought to keep this a secret, but I genuinely don't think I have it in me to write a sad ending for anything longer than a one-shot.

Inyssa said:
These thirteen chapters felt like an eternity, probably ‘cause of so much time between each break, but it’s such a well-paced and thought out story, you had a clear idea of what you wanted to write and didn’t waste a single chapter.

This is especially great to hear because of how early I locked myself into the chapter structure and timeline. My own opinion is still that a few chapters weren't the best use of real estate, but I will 100% take the compliment.

Inyssa said:
It’s the sort of thing I admire and want to learn from, so this was as illuminating as it was cathartic to read.

(I'm blushing.)

Inyssa said:
It’ll take some time before I’m ready to accept that it’s over, and that’s the highest praise I can give this, probably.
[...]
Amazingly done, and thank you.

For my part, I think the highest praise a fic can get is the "thank you." That really, really means a ton to me. Kind of thing that makes my year. Thank you for reading and for all the kind words.

Phoenixsong said:
Hey, Anon! Merry Blitzmas!

And a Happy New Year!

Phoenixsong said:
("...and he couldn't even keep the properties of different focal lengths straight"—rookie mistake, clearly! Very "Average Familiarity" xkcd comic energy, lol.)

I had this exact comic in mind, lol. One of my favorites.

Phoenixsong said:
And it's neat to see how all that overthinking tends to get its hooks into him even when he *doesn't* want to think about something, like whatever happened with Aaron and Wendy and Nadine.

This is a good way of putting it. Guy's not good at letting his brain be.

Phoenixsong said:
And I always love love love settings where pokémon journeys are allowed to be more than just Badge Quest—just any reason for the kids to get out, interact with pokémon, see the region and find themselves, and I'm looking forward to maybe getting to see more examples of that as we learn how all the kids' lives and journeys panned out.

We are very much of the same mind on this.

The chief appeal to Pokemon to me has really always been the thought of an indefinite childhood backpacking trip.

Phoenixsong said:
This was a lot of fun! Wonderfully tasty tidbits and description and natural-feeling worldbuilding, great attention to the details of what it's like to be close friends with a drowzee/hypno (and you gotta appreciate an uncommon pokémon choice getting to feature in a fic). I already love Zoe and she deserves all of the snacks she wants, c'mon, Luke.

Thanks, glad you liked it! It's funny to me how much I've heard about Drowzee and Clefairy being uncommon choices, when this hadn't crossed my mind at all while writing - Gen 1 looms so large in my consciousness that none of the 151 feel under-exposed to me.

And yes, Zoe deserves so many more snacks. What a stick-in-the-mud that Luke is.

Thanks for reading and reviewing!

Spiteful Murkrow said:
Oh no, we’re going back to 80s hairstyles and fashion.

This is why I write little to no description of characters' physical appearances. It would get too scary.

Spiteful Murkrow said:
Oh, so this is a Johto story, huh? Well duly noted, even if a part of me wonders what on earth Indigo League challenges were like back in the day before the Magnet Train allowed for casually jumping between the opposite sides of Mount Silver… if the Indigo League was even unified back then.

Yup, unified League, and I'm going with the interpretation that the Magnet Train lines up with the real-world Shinkansen, and so would have been constructed in 1964, even if it wasn't there in RBY (chalking that up to "no gameplay reason for it to be there"). But this wouldn't have much effect on trainers since the tickets aren't cheap. Few trainers visit the other region before they have all eight of their own region's badges.

Spiteful Murkrow said:
I mean, y’all could all go together and stop by a drugstore or something, since film development services were kinda a dime a dozen back then before digital cameras became ubiquitous.

This is true, but Luke's too in the weeds of photography to not want to print his own pictures. To him, leaving darkroom adjustments to someone else would be a step back to when his dad did it for him.

Spiteful Murkrow said:
Wait, just how many repeating faces are there in these tournaments anyways for these kids to just reflexively predict who the champion will be? .-.

Only a handful. The real prodigies will win a few elimination rounds at age 13, then do even better at 14 and 15, at which point they'll be as famous as the best real-world college athletes. Or a more apt comparison might be future Major League Baseball players like Ichiro who first gained national attention in Japan as high schoolers competing at Koshien.

Spiteful Murkrow said:
Do I want to know how kids manage to balance schooling with entering professional sports at age sixteen in a time before the internet? .-.

I think this line proved confusing to a number of readers. He means going pro as a photographer, not as a Pokemon trainer. 16 is when Pokecenters stop being free and kids (now legal adults) will enter one of higher education, vocational training, or the workforce.

Spiteful Murkrow said:
Wait, how long does the average Gym Challenge last in this setting if Luke’s hoping to get his last badge six years after starting? .-.

Most trainers who get all eight badges get their eighth during age 13. Getting it at 12 like Aaron means you're really good.

Spiteful Murkrow said:
So Pokémon in this setting don’t do animespeak, duly noted.

Lol, I'm very much in the Weird Pokemon Noises camp.

Spiteful Murkrow said:
I mean, I don’t know how healthy that is, but it sure is effective. It probably isn’t as bad as taking sleeping pills, at least? ^^;

Super effective. :coolbat: And yeah, I'm figuring healthier than sleeping pills.

Spiteful Murkrow said:
Well, it’s not quite running into Wendy in person, but… this is totally from Wendy, isn’t it?

Spiteful Murkrow said:
Also, a part of me wonders if the letter formatting would look a bit more letter-y if its body was indented relative to the rest of the narration, but that’s a stylistic nitpick there.

It would, but I have to think about legibility on forum pages, and you don't typically see indentations and blank space between paragraphs.

Spiteful Murkrow said:
I’m honestly surprised that from the way he’s alluding to whatever went down 3 years ago, that Luke still had the stomach to keep going on his Gym Challenge instead of quitting and focusing on photography altogether.

To clarify, Luke hasn't tried for any badges since the falling out (if I implied otherwise, that was a mistake). He's still on the trail since that's the best way for someone his age to travel around and practice photography, and he still had Pokemon who were his responsibility.

Spiteful Murkrow said:
Also, dat prose. Honestly one of the most polished works that I’ve read in this event thus far, and for the most part, it’s buttery smooth.

Thanks! I definitely made polish and revision a higher priority than with any fic I'd written before, especially for smoothening the prose, so I'm very pleased to hear that.

Spiteful Murkrow said:
Though given that they were essentially punted from the plot the very next scene… maybe there was a reason why you didn’t invest much detail on them

That's pretty much the reason: They don't show up again. They had one function to perform in this scene, so I didn't want to give them more narrative real estate than necessary. I do think the scene would be better if there were more traits to differentiate them, but I'd want to find a way to do that in the same number of words for pacing reasons. This first chapter already takes a long time to get to the real inciting incident of the plot, which is the letter. And that's a byproduct of how I started writing this with the sole focus of having fun writing it and with no definite intention to ever post it.

Thanks for reading and for your observations! If you find time for the rest, I hope it lives up to your expectations!

System Error said:
Good thing it just held still, right? Heh.

It makes me really glad how people are seeing the title all over the fic.

System Error said:
As a hobbyist photographer and regular videographer, I like the technical talk here.

Hell yeah.

System Error said:
There it is, the whole eye contact equals battling nonsense. It's kind of ridiculous in many ways when you think about it. Except there is instant dumping on it, I love it.

I wouldn't say I meant to dump on it per se. I just like taking game mechanics and having them exist as ideas in fic, but not as actual rules.

System Error said:
More interesting is that he seems to have been taking multiple swings at the same league.

It hadn't occurred to me, but I guess that would be interesting from an anime perspective, where Ash tries the league once an then moves on to a new region.

System Error said:
Ah, that answers a bit of it, sixteen is pro. But I wonder, "trainers who turn pro have to have a specialty"?

I think I see the confusion: "Going pro" referred to Luke becoming a professional photographer. The vast majority of trainers cease to be full-time trainers at sixteen, and either enter higher education or the workforce.

System Error said:
L'Enfant terrible? Some sort of orphanage in more serious terms?

Nah, L'Enfant is just Nadine's last name.

System Error said:
I like the girl talk here. It's teasing but supportive.

Their conversations were a lot of fun to write.

System Error said:
The pains of trying to get an action shot and having it not be as high quality.

You get it.

System Error said:
That's what I was hoping to see out of this past fic: past Gym Leaders. And I guess this is the reason why it was still a Bug Gym, so you could have this little cameo. Good stuff.

Hate to disappoint, but I think that was the only example, lol.

System Error said:
Hm, should forest be capitalized there? I'm thinking it shouldn't be.

I think it's in a grammatical gray area. In this case, it's capitalized to make it clear it's "the Forest" as an abbreviated form of "Ilex Forest." It's like how someone in my neck of the woods would capitalize "the District" in reference to the District of Columbia, even though "district" in isolation wouldn't be a proper noun.

System Error said:
Wait, Candice?!?!! Probably isn't that Candice.

I really need to start looking up names I use on Bulbapedia to see if they're taken, lol.

System Error said:
Fifteen miles?! Jeez. I've heard of expanding the world before but that's kind of insane for a one room dungeon.

There's a pretty silly reason it's like this. The fic began life as an experiment in mapping out realistic distances in the Pokemon world as mapped to real-world Japan. Obviously the map of Johto/Kanto I was using wasn't to scale, but the thought of making the underground routes basically the Mines of Moria was too funny and interesting to me to not make them like that.

System Error said:
The average walking speed of a human varies greatly. The average adult has a walk speed of 3 miles per hour at the lower end. It is entirely conceivable that a trainer who is in shape could make it through a fifteen mile cave in a single day, even counting the rough terrain and stops to rest.

Conceivable, sure, but you also have to consider that they need to pace themselves for much longer spans of walking than just one day. I chose the walkable distances for 15-year-old trainers based on my own experience with week-plus backpacking trips in boy scouts, rather than average walking speeds.

System Error said:
Like the idea of having to use Hypnosis twice for it to be effective because one bird head stayed up.

A real challenge for me is using Pokemon in ways that preclude me from writing "[Insert Pokemon here]" in drafts.

System Error said:
And hey, they start telling each other where they're next headed in their letters, so now we have a consistent stream of communication. Definitely can see their emotions in the writing.

The real reason I had them say where they're going next is to make the logistics of the story work, but I'm glad it works emotionally.

System Error said:
And unfortunately, she doesn't even get a thanks for it.

The scene when first drafted was a few paragraphs longer and had the girls running back to split the winnings with Wendy. I decided to cut it to end the scene on a different emotional note, but it didn't occur to me that it would feel like the girls didn't thank Wendy between scenes. Whoops.

System Error said:
One criticism: a felony is very much an American term. As far as my research can tell, very few places in the world still use it. This is the 90s when more still used it, but it still really stood out to me. Maybe replace it with "...A CRIME" instead? Just a thought.

The characters are speaking American English, even if it's ostensibly "translated" from the language of Poke-Japan. More importantly, I can only ask you to take my word for it that in American English, "A FELONY" is plain funnier than "A CRIME."

System Error said:
Opening with a very suspicious Gym Battle. I'm pretty sure getting swarmed by multiple bugs at once is absolutely not regulation. The narrative is also suspiciously quiet when it comes to "the opponent".

Sorry if you missed it, but this was a dream, not an actual battle.

System Error said:
Could be a sociopath manipulating everyone.

Bingo!

System Error said:
Looking up that solar eclipse, it should have been around December 1992, and in fact visible in Johto. I even sanity checked the moon phase, and it lines up too, so nice bit of research there.

Making Pokefic astronomically accurate is a ridiculous but fun pastime.

System Error said:
After the not so exciting bit of Fearow Egg hunting, we move straight on to the main meat of this chapter, the flashback sequence.

Sorry you didn't like the Fearow sidequest. One thing I was worried about is that "Wendy as naturalist" wouldn't feel as fleshed out as "Luke as photographer" since I was more interested in the photography, which is my explanation for why I included a scene that might be superfluous.

System Error said:
Even if the badges aren't shared, does Aaron not even so much as want to test his mettle against a Kanto Gym? I sort of find that hard to believe.

This idea hadn't occurred to me, and it's a sensible one. My justification is that Aaron is so dead-set on beating the Gyms that "count" that he's unwilling to spend a day longer in Kanto than he has to.

System Error said:
You had every opportunity to erase the bit about dreaming about her but you didn't. Listen to your heart my dude.

Alas, they're writing in ink.

System Error said:
I have to wonder if she was undergoing emotional abuse as well, but just took it a different way? Stockholm?

The answer turns out to be "not Stockholm." He's manipulating her with respect to her other friends, but not attacking her since she's the one he considers to be a worthwhile training partner, unlike Luke and Nadine.

System Error said:
Actually because I keep forgetting to say it, Just Hold Still has a dual meaning. It refers to both the problems in photography and the fact that our two lovers are moving around Johto without getting a chance to stay and meet.

Bingo! Makes me really happy to see someone hit the nail on the head regarding the title.

System Error said:
I'm genuinely wondering if that was something Aaron made up in order to gaslight Luke and have Wendy all to himself.

Bingo!

System Error said:
All those paranoiac thoughts as they're almost having an intimate moment. This chapter and part is interesting because it's the biggest example of perspective switching so far in the fic. For good reason.

It was definitely one of my favorite sequences to write.

(It was also a priority for me to have a chapter with split perspective so Luke and Wendy would have a near-equal POV split despite there being an odd number of chapters, with Luke's POV starting and finishing.)

System Error said:
The right kind of hateable. I mean is there anything more audacious than openly admitting to someone that she is easy to fool and going right on to trying to fool her?

I like this reaction.

System Error said:
Jeez! Bleeding in a battle? Even in an edgier world that's bad, and this seems to not be that bad.

What I was trying to go for is that it is that bad, but Aaron is one of very few experts on battling Luke knows, and he's given him a false impression of what's acceptable.

System Error said:
And here I was expecting the narrative to kick him down again.

Good! Gotta kick the characters enough so it lands when you don't kick them.

System Error said:
There's a little bit of parallelism where both of them are waiting and waiting. She for him and he for the perfect spot, and maybe to stay away. I do have to wonder though, if he lives in Mahogany, why isn't she waiting there instead?

I'm always glad when something gets called "parallel" instead of "repetitive." Also she is waiting in Mahogany in this chapter; sorry if that wasn't clear.

System Error said:
I was screaming at Luke for being a "fucking moron" when he decided to keep on running and toss the letters in the trash.

Very pleased to hear this. Luke's character was carefully calibrated to induce screaming.

System Error said:
And it's enough for him to finally make up his mind and get his butt moving for the girl of his dreams.

Well, to break up with her anyway, at this point.

System Error said:
Hey, all they said was that no one froze to death, didn't say anything about falling to death.

Hmm, good point...

System Error said:
There is nothing quite like a reunion in the snow underneath a streetlight.

This was one of the very first things I knew was going to be in the story. Probably before I even settled on the sleep deprivation element or any of the side characters.

System Error said:
Well I was hoping for a nice little epilogue after all that. Much as I love reading about love, I also love reading about how it goes along and not just how it starts. But this is a very pleasant note to end on.

I wrestled for a good while over whether to write an epilogue. I do think the ending as-is is too abrupt, but I also want it to be there, and I think anything I appended to it would ultimately diminish it.

System Error said:
It was a great little love story with a unique narrative twist. Fan of unique narratives, and the prose held up well. The characters were well developed and did a good job of instilling emotions.

Sweet, that's mission accomplished. Thanks for reading, and thanks for your thoughts!

Wildboots said:
Back for more, and I'm glad for it--after this chapter, I'm feeling much more invested.
[...]
I see why you started with Luke and not Wendy, but I wish the first chapter had opened with this much energy!

I don't regret establishing from the beginning that there's going to be a lot of life-slicing, so to speak, but I do think it's unfortunate that chapter 2 is so much stronger yet starts right after the point to which one will read when just checking out a story, lol.

Wildboots said:
That said, I was surprised how quick she was to run from them and never look back considering the chapter opens with her feeling bad about losing one friend already. I could see her instead retreating to the pokecenter for the night, then maybe the next day trying to jump back in and mediate or get answers from them separately She'd be more understandable for ditching them after that, but I think it would be even better if it was Luke and Aaron who iced her out, refusing to explain themselves. Buuuut I don't know what the fight is about, so perhaps with more context later I'll be able to see why you didn't go that route.

The way this works in my head is that, like you said, hospital trips are already traumatic, and the venom she gets from both Luke and Aaron would be enough that one night wouldn't necessarily be enough for her to want to face them. Aaron would certainly have left town at first opportunity to go after the last badge on his own - he has major tunnel vision on that goal and would not have waited to change Wendy's mind. As for Luke, he would left the hospital with his parents pretty soon after, and I don't think Wendy would feel she could face his parents even if she felt she could face Luke (which I feel is also unlikely given it was him to told her to leave, and in scary fashion).

Tl;dr: I think your observation makes sense generally, but I don't think it works for these characters in this situation, even putting aside what works better dramatically.

Wildboots said:
I'm not sure I understand the distinction.

(Re: "visiting" vs. "visited") Basically, trainers aren't supposed to live at home. You're visiting when you go to visit somewhere you don't live (or don't live anymore), and are visited when people come to see you where you live. So Nadine is in the odd social position for her age of being a host instead of a guest at Christmas.

Wildboots said:
Another sudden ravine!

I think we're simply at odds over how surprising the presence of ravines are.

Wildboots said:
"Thence" was mismatched to the tone of the rest of the chapter. Very olde Englishe.

Whence, hence, and thence are useful words, and I'm determined to bring them back.

Wildboots said:
Soooo I would be cautious about opening this can of worms if you're not planning to unpack some of the complexity, because I wasn't looking for reasons to poke it until this character started finger-pointing and shouting facism.

I'm opening the can because ultimately I want to evoke real-world culture in this setting, and the real world is full of morally complicated institutions that people variously firmly believe in, tolerate, don't think much about, and object to in the strongest terms to. Gridiron football is anything between an exercise in teamwork between consenting parties and a despicable blood sport depending on who you talk to, and I think Pokemon battling would naturally have equally vehement detractors. Official Pokemon media is cautious about this stuff, and I think that only works when you're writing for small children.

Wildboots said:
This makes it sound like there's very little traffic between pokecenters, which can't be true. If snail mail is the main way for two trainers to communicate or for parents to check in on their kids, there have to be letters flying all the time.

I think the misunderstanding here is that pokecenters act like post offices, which they don't. If you try to mail a letter addressed to a trainer c/o a pokecenter in this setting, it'll get returned to the sender. What they're doing is leaving notes at the desk for another trainer to pick up at the same desk (the intended use case is just to help trainers who've gotten separated re-coordinate). Trainers usually communicate with each other in person or not at all at this point. As for parents, they can generally only keep track of their kids in a passive role by waiting for them to call home from a payphone or send a postcard.

Maybe this system doesn't make complete sense, but the premise of the whole story falls apart otherwise, so for better or worse I'm stuck with it.

Wildboots said:
Curious to find out if she catches him in town or if they have to keep playing snail mail tag for a while.

See you next chapter! 👋

Thanks! Glad this chapter did more for you.

icomeanon6 · 2025-04-26T00:24:34+0100

(See previous post for review replies.)

Afterword

What follows is what I consider to be writing anti-advice. I will detail the bizarre programming- and spreadsheet-driven outlining process behind this fic, which I by no means endorse as a how-to guide. If you don’t want to be tempted into trying something so counter-productive to emotion-driven storytelling yourself, I suggest closing the tab.

…

Okay, now that only us weirdos remain, let’s get weird.

We begin with the interpretation that Kanto and Johto are fantastical versions of real-world Japan’s Kanto and Kansai regions. This idea has fascinated me ever since it first came to my attention, but I never felt I’d “done much” with it in fanfic. Jump to 2021, roughly halfway through my “retirement” from all things fanfiction, and I decided to really dig into a question that had been nagging at me for years: How long should it take to walk from Cherrygrove to Violet?

I began with maps. I googled a land-bound itinerary between the centers of Tokyo and Osaka to get a decent figure for the walking distance between the centers of Saffron and Goldenrod. I then took my favorite combined map of Johto and Kanto, traced out that walking route, and finally derived the scale of the map. This wasn’t a perfect approach—for starters, the map wasn’t drawn to scale to begin with—but it felt reasonable.

So, I had an idea of how far it was between Cherrygrove and Violet, but this didn’t answer the question of how long the trip would take. Something I decided very quickly was that I would not consider “average human walking speed” in the calculation. Pokémon journeys are not taken by average humans walking at average speed. They are taken by kids who live outside all year carrying around heavy packs and pacing themselves for the long haul. Tragically, there are no real-life Pokémon trainers, so I couldn’t poll them to ask how far they walk in a day. They say “Write what you know,” so I considered Philmont instead.

Philmont is a Scouting ranch outside Cimarron, New Mexico. Backpacking trips through Philmont vary in length and difficulty (density of mountains being a factor), but they typically last twelve days and combine a robust pace (for fifteen-year-olds) with ample time afforded for activities. Looking at the numbers I could remember from my trek at Philmont and from earlier, less-strenuous scout hikes when I was younger, and considering that every kid in the world of Pokémon (where the balance skews more heavily toward nature and life is less sedentary) would be in better shape than I was even by age ten, I settled on the following:

Age 10: 5 miles per day
Age 11: 7 miles per day
Age 12: 8 miles per day
Age 13: 11 miles per day
Age 14: 12 miles per day
Age 15: 12 miles per day

So, gradual improvement, with larger bumps after the first year of training and with the onset of puberty, and flattening out at the end on the theory that the kids’ sense and prioritization of load management will eventually catch up with their physical growth. When I’ve run these numbers by people I know, I have variously heard that they both over- and under-estimate children and teenagers, which means I can’t be too far off the mark.

Back to the initial example, I had now decided that the path from Cherrygrove to Violet is 43.75 miles, which would take a new trainer about nine days and a teenage trainer about four days to travel (both rounding up). By this point, the inkling of a new fic was coming to me—one where the plot would hinge on two trainers crossing paths repeatedly but not at the same time—and I saw an opportunity to put this exercise in “realism” into practice.

The next step was writing a program. I broke out the Python and codified the distances and rules, including the wrinkle that when a full day’s march ends with the trainer(s) close enough to their final destination, they will continue on instead of stopping to camp. The program took as input a text file of itineraries, which are comprised of the start date (or continue from the previous itinerary), the trainer’s age, the full list of stops passed (didn’t implement path-finding) including days of rest, and a description label. The output was an exhaustive spreadsheet of locations and arrival dates. (The answer to “Why not just make the spreadsheet and use formulas?” is that I’m more of a coder than an Excel wizard.)

There were two dates when I knew Luke absolutely had to be in a specific location: Goldenrod on the first day of summer—which as the longest day of the year was ideal for the first day of the Indigo League—and Blackthorn on Christmas Eve. I had an idea of how many letters I wanted to go back and forth between him and Wendy, and of how they would be paced in terms of emotional escalation. I also had some ideas for scenarios in the present day and in flashbacks that would require the characters to be in one location or another. With this much as a starting point, I began outlining in conjunction with the itinerary program, thinking through the story as if I were the characters deciding where to go next.

This wasn’t a disaster, or even a total mess. I found this gave me a more solid outline than I was used to working with. By thinking through the story more methodically by means of the itineraries, I found myself uncovering the kinds of inconsistencies and storytelling opportunities I typically missed in the outlining phase. And it was fun! There was a puzzle-solving element to it, and it was satisfying to work the characters back to Blackthorn on Christmas Eve after making changes to earlier parts of the outline.

That said.

This is not a good way to write a story. There is a reason outlines are usually only built around exact dates when you’re writing a historical documentary. When you actually start writing, you invariably discover things that need to change, and the more the outline resembles bedrock, the less willing you become to change things enough. Writing is also how you discover what else needs to be in the story, or even what the overall theme or point of the story is, and making it more difficult to adjust the outline to fit the new ideas is simply counter-productive.

And the benefit of having all these exact dates from a storytelling perspective is simply non-existent. Numbers are not emotional. Saying something took “four days” has an emotional pH of 7, to use a perfectly un-apt analogy. It’s the qualitative words surrounding or even replacing (often preferably replacing) the number that make four days feel like either the blink of an eye or an agonizingly long wait. And it’s plain unreasonable to expect readers to extract meaning from numbers, dates, and years. “1956” means nothing—a rotary telephone means something. “October fifth” means nothing—falling leaves mean everything.

For as fun as this outlining process was, it certainly did not make the story better. I am convinced the opposite is true: This would have been a better story if I’d written it normally. The best excuse for it is that I probably wouldn’t have written the fic at all if not for this little science project. I do not recommend emulating this approach.

To play devil’s advocate, though, something in this story that may not have occurred to me without over-interpreting Pokémon maps is just how long the underground paths are. The entrance and exit of the Ice Path in particular was of great importance, but the map I used is simplified—either the distances between cities is much smaller, or the percentage of the route that’s actually underground is much smaller. There is simply no reason to suppose that the Ice Path is roughly 40 miles long, or nine miles longer than the English Channel Tunnel. That’s absurd. But it also felt insanely cool to cap off the story with a trek through basically the Mines of Moria (to acknowledge another, better work of fiction that contains pointlessly consistent precise dates). It turned the underground paths into rites of passage in a way I found really compelling. It gave a palpable Eighth Badge feeling to the entire city of Blackthorn, accessible by foot only to truly experienced trainers.

Anyway, it’s a lucky thing for me that neat ideas can still come out of idiotic processes.

Attached is the (I believe) final version of the master spreadsheet in all its majestic gratuity. Close comparison with the actual fic may illustrate how when push comes to shove, writing requires you to fudge the numbers before you fudge the words.

Thanks for reading.

Pokémon Just Hold Still

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