Pokémon pcb0000

[Bluwiikoon]

This one is, hmm... it's hard to explain!

The setup for this story requires you to do a small task to progress to all the other parts. The entire thing is hosted on my website in whole, and accessible as soon as you complete said task. Please try your best!

Content warnings (spoilers!)

Spoiler

Existential dread, descriptions of body horror, corrupted graphics, death, suicidal ideations.

Part 1:
Pokémon Sword and Shield: The Unused Box Customisation

If you need some help:

Spoiler

This story requires you to translate the binary code (the 010101s) on the page into text to progress. You can find binary converters with a quick Google search.

I'd also like to request that discussion of plot details be in spoiler tags. Thank you!

 

[unrepentantAuthor]

I loved this! It was pretty short and sweet (bittersweet?) by my judgment, and absolutely worth the read. The integration of graphical elements, the minor format screw, and lore/mechanical details from the games were all implemented well and I'd say they really paid off. The plot was compelling and had that precious quality of making total sense in retrospect while not being at all obvious going in, and being just hinted-at enough to piece together if you're attentive. Great work, gets my solid recommendation.

 

[Dragonfree]

I really loved this story! You make the main character incredibly endearing in a short space (the graphics help in making them really expressive), and I actually cried at the end. The overall concept is super clever.

Spoiler: Plot

My theory through most of the second half was that 'Porygon' was Adam's Blastoise - it'd make sense given she's the one individual corrupted Pokémon we actually hear about, and 'Porygon' had such a visceral reaction to her being misgendered I figured it might've been a buried memory thing. But on a reread, they also indicate positively that they don't actually experience gender, so in retrospect that was probably a bad reading of that scene. The colors of the glitchy blob at the end indicate they're possibly a Nosepass, which'd make sense for you!

As I at least understand the plot, Clay P. found out about the plan, told Adam and others, and then the "unknown hacker" who corrupted the system and wrote imsorry.txt is a third person who heard about it from them, who is Nosepass's trainer, and that's the N███████ in the note? I do kind of wish we got some kind of followup on Adam's Blastoise too, and as it is, assuming I'm right about Nosepass, I think it may be more subtle than ideal - there's not really any way to put together that they're the hacker's Pokémon at all except on a reread, by figuring the corrupted sprite is a Nosepass, and then going back and realizing the Pokémon referenced there was an N-something. There's a real emotional punch to that - the last bit of imsorry.txt was the bit that made me cry - but when there's no way to actually connect it to 'Porygon' at the time of reading the note, I think it can't quite land as well as otherwise - I imagine it'd be very easy for the reader to just miss entirely, and even if you do connect it it's very ambiguous (quickly checking in with a friend who also read it, she also believed they were Adam's Blastoise and didn't connect the Nosepass thing at all). If I were you I might consider making it just a tad easier to piece this part together, to make sure that punch can fully land? Assuming I'm actually right that this is what you were going for.

 

[Bluwiikoon]

unrepentantAuthor: Thank you so much!! ^^ It was an interesting challenge sprinkling the hints in with the names of ARUGULA heads and the like, for example. I'm really glad to hear you enjoyed it!

Dragonfree: Thank you for your feedback, and I'm incredibly happy to hear you loved the story! :D I'm so glad the graphics aid with the emotional resonance of the story too omg

Spoiler: Response to Dragonfree's plot feedback

I'm really glad to hear your thoughts on the plot points! I think with Porygon's true identity I felt it would be cool for it to be a bit open-ended about just which Pokemon they are, but you're definitely right in that it would be even more compelling if it was Blastoise, or if the Unknown Hacker and their Pokemon were Known People beforehand. It's really useful for me to hear what you thought about this (and what your friend thought!), and I think I may be able to change some things to add a little more depth.

Blastoise's circumstances being mentioned in the emails at all was intended as a hint alluding to the fact that ARUGULA aren't exactly trustworthy (what with Blastoise's Mysterious Disappearance), but with your feedback I can also definitely see how she (being the only named Pokemon) is a prime suspect for Porygon's identity on an initial read. Thank you!

Porygon is just really passionate about respecting genders!! ^^ Haha

 

[Bluwiikoon]

Story Update: With the help of everyone's feedback, I edited a few tiny details so that there's more clues. If anyone reads again or is a new reader, I hope it enhances the story. ^^ I also hope it's not too blunt! I suppose it's only extremely obvious if you read the previous version?

Spoiler: Affected sections

Part E (pcb0000e)

 

[Chibi Pika]

oh my god this was beyond adorable. I pretty much had no idea what to expect going into this! Definitely wasn't expecting to fall in love with a cinnamon bun porygon and then get my heart stabbed. Normally I'm the kind of person to speculate while I read, but with this I kinda just went along for the ride, so I didn't find myself trying to theorize much about the mystery. Aside from, like the Blastoise email obviously indicating that something was going wrong with the borrowed Pokemon. I also wasn't really thinking about who Porygon was, aha. xD; But of course it makes perfect sense on a reread. "Hope you and Nosepass are doing well otherwise. How is Nosey's volunteering going?" ;-;

On a lighter note, I pretty much lost it as "Augh!!! It's so obsceeeene!!!" in response to idiot.txt. x'D

 

[Negrek]

Yo! I read this when you first posted it, but it was a delight to revisit it, and I hadn't seen your edits, either. I love the way you've used the flexibility of being able to code the page however you like to really go wild with your format. The little porygon faces, being able to change around various colors, spacing, etc. for dramatic pages, and even little details like the navigation getting changed to "ESCAPE" all add to the experience in a way you can't achieve just with text. I don't know if you've read 17776, but that's one of the few other stories I've seen that really takes advantage of the ability to design the page however you like, and it's a really fun format!

Spoiler: plot

The first time around I completely forgot that arugula is rocket in the UK. That certainly makes what's going on REALLY OBVIOUS much earlier on in the story, heh.

Curious whether you meant for "Lambda" to actually be Petrel! I'm guessing so... I think you do a nice job sprinkling hints about what's going on over the course of the story, building up to the big reveal. Love the marketspeak e-mails where people are suddenly "retiring" left and right, heh.

Okay, so here's the plan. When you get me out of here, you gotta surprise me with a big present box full of soda and snacks. And a nice letter!

This being my second time reading this, oof.

What ultimately happens to "Porygon" is tragic, and I think you make good use of their eager, lighthearted personality (or as much eagerness and lightheartedness as they can project) in contrast to the grim final few pages. Love the open-ended choice at the end, although the fact that we now know that those species have become "uncorrupted" and are now usable in Galar maybe puts a different face on things than when certain pokémon ever returning was an open question. The little bit of interactivity (and the choice the reader's asked to make!) at the end really top things off wonderfully.

I think the previous time I read this I was thinking the "porygon" was really Blastoise--I know you made some small changes, I think to address that, but whatever they were I didn't notice, heh. Unfortunately I can't say how they might have impacted my conclusions on Porygon's species, since I already knew what you were going for there.

Only other thing I'd say is that the next/previous links are a little hard for me to see on the black background... I'd say either upping the saturation a little, or bolding or making the text bigger would probably solve that. But all in all this is a wonderfully unique and heart-wrenching story, and I'm really glad you chose to share it. (Man, why our nose club fanfics gotta be so sad recently? Justice for nosepass!)

 

[WildBoots]

Aww, my heart.

Spoiler: Plot Stuff

A couple line reactions:
"But you, you probably talk with all your friends all the time, right? I bet you're super popular!"
Oh my sweet summer child. I too effectively live in my computer because plague. 🙃

Oof, the misgendering of the blastoise. Clearly these folks care a lot about what happens to these pokemon. I think I know where this is going. Big oof.

Oooh I wasn't expecting it to take such a dark turn at the end, given the speaker's lighthearted manner (and sensitivity to "obscenities," poor baby). Definitely moving.

This reminded me of an episode of this horror podcast I've been really enjoying lately! Similar in that it deals with the horror of a living thing being traped inside a computer. Especially the "These locked-permission files!! They hurt my vaguely-defined limb interface!!" The line in the episode is "The maze is sharp on my mind. The angles cut me when I try to think." I'll link the wiki to the episode in case you're curious. (The first few paragraphs are tame and safe but it does get spoopy, so I'd stop after "Tessa found a post to a link to a file called 'Ushankas_Despair.exe'" if you're sensitive to creepy things and blood.)

The unique format was really fun! Clearly a lot of love and effort went into it. <3

 

[kintsugi]

oh my goodness, my HEART.

on a TUESDAY

this concept is so ingenious. oh my gosh. I loved this so much.

okay i'm really bad at telling what's a spoiler or not (?) so I'll just spoiler the rest.

Spoiler

I guess since I was a Pokémon, I don't have the permissions or something? But since you're a human, or, your device thinks you're a human, you should be all good.

Oh gosh. I had a sense that things were doing downhill so fast from this line, but I didn't realize HOW fast. I copied this to my notepad when I was reading blind because it made me go "hmmmmm? oh! that's an interesting dichotomy to bring up casually", and wowowow did this deliver, haha.

This is such a delightful mix of sincere and funny. The porygon is such a good and helpful friend and you utilize the format effectively -- all of the different faces! Amazing! The spritework here is so cute and early on it does a great job of showing how earnest this character is, and by the end we don't even really *need* the sprites to know what they're feeling since the story has made it clear, but the sprites are still there. It's like chocolate syrup on my sundae: it was good without it but don't mind if I do?? I don't know how to phrase it haha. The shock/sweatdrop sequence with "this next file"/"you'll see" was so good; my heart dropped like a foot lol. And the payoff at the end of the fic with the corrupted nosepass sprite at the end my HEART.

The concept here is fascinating. I think the pacing was really good; it didn't really linger on things falling apart for too long but it was just long enough for me to watch the trainwreck in slow motion. I liked the Nosepass additions. My dear Nosey. I don't know what you were volunteering for but I'm sure you were incredibly helpful. And there's a lot of interesting questions here that don't get fully unpacked, but I actually think the story functions stronger as a result -- for me at the end I was struck with wondering exactly how much the heroic hacker knew, if in their head it was somehow better to strand all of these pokemon in the ether rather than have them fall into Team Rocket's hands -- or if this was just a really big coding oopsie, accidentally set on variable to an integer instead of a float and the entire system just craters. I find both answers dissatisfying -- this story illustrates how pokemon in this universe are clearly people, and so this would effectively be a hostage situation -- but would I do any better in their shoes? And that made the final choice so much more interesting -- was I going to knowingly or unknowingly repeat this person's mistakes?? i cheated and picked both tbh so i could read both

But there's also comedy?? Excuse?? "Sent from my Rotomphone 7" I'm dead lol this was amazing. So many sweet bursts of humor. What a sweetie.

sorry i really have no concrit thoughts to say; looks like you've already been editing really carefully and also this story is such a good read anyway omg

 

[love]

This was a nice, light, cute read. I like the visuals that went with it. I can't comment much on the plot, because I don't really know much about mainline pokemon, but I understood it well enough to read the story.

 

[Sinderella]

WOWOWOWOWOWOWOWOW BLUWII. BLU👏WII. MY HEART IS IN MY THROAT.

I knew this story was pretty dark, but I didn't know it was like that. I'm still kind of reeling, and my heart hurts so bad for Porygon...especially because I've played with them in mafia, I have a special connection!

For spoilers sake, I'm going to hide the rest of my review, because I have A LOT to say. AHHHHHH.

Spoiler: AHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH

Okay, so at the beginning I was getting very frustrated because I had absolutely no idea how I was supposed to put the .shtml code in...until I realized I'm an idiot and that it blatantly goes into the web address. I swear, I'm smart and know how technology works. Once I figured that out, I was in awe. Like, the format of this story was SO ingenious--I felt like I was literally talking to poor Porygon the whole time and my heart was so 🥺. No idea how you masterfully formatted all of this, but fucking KUDOS, you're AMAZING.

With each passing file that was "opened" I felt my despair growing astronomically, because I just KNEW something horrible was going down here. The eerieness of it all really starting hitting at the email log about Adam wanting to see his Blastoise, and really came to a head when Clay asked to speak to Adam then suddenly "retired" in the next log. Like. I have a huge, massive, astronomical love for stories with an overarching sense of "something bad is going to happen" and you captured it perfectly in this story. It kept me going, because morbid curiosity just wanted to see what the fuck happened.

I actually am hypothesizing that Porygon (being that they stated they weren't always a Porygon) might have been Lisa's Nosepass? Maybe possibly, and doesn't remember? Ugh, the theories I have, they make my heart hurt MORE.

Also, the TWIST, with this actually being a Team Rocket scheme? WOWOWOWOW, my mouth actually dropped open! At first I was thinking everything was a big old accident, but then Adam's first email log got me thinking that there was something more nefarious afoot, and I was thinking that Arugula, Inc. was just out to do some experimenting on Pokemon, but IT WAS TEAM ROCKET ALL ALONG. Honestly, this totally seems like something they might do, which is...downright awful.

And then, last but not least, the END. This bittersweet ending...I have a weird relationship with bittersweet. I like happy endings, and it makes me hurt when it doesn't feel like everything is wrapped up in a neat bow, but with something like this...there really isn't a way to wrap it all up. It's all kind of "as is" right now, because the humans are still trying to find a cure for these poor corrupted 'mon, and there's really nothing more to do. I, being my 'happy ending' self, selected to just put the box into sleep mode, because I couldn't bring myself to delete Pory. I know that's what they wanted, but I was clinging to the idea that a cure would be found, and deletion was just too finite (of course, that didn't stop me from going back and reading that ending too lol) but let the RECORD SHOW, Pory is in sleep mode. A cure will be found, I AM SURE OF IT!!!

All in all stellar fucking work. I am so impressed, and so happy to have finally sat and read it. You should be so proud of this work, and I can't wait to read more from you soon. Love you to death, Blu!!! <3