Pokémon Pokemon Heroes: The Black & White Chapter One (All Ages) (COMPLETED)

[133TFR33k]

Again, a good eye for weird wording.

Aurea doesn't have a husband. I believe it was Cedric, her father, she was referring to. Meanwhile, Minnie is basically Hilda's little sister.

I hope for this to be the calm before the storm for Hilda and Oshawott since it won't be all sunshine from here out. I didn't want to go through the "two lead characters meet and are at odds with each other" cliche. Not for this story. Hope I pull it off well.

Glad I can be of service on wording!

Ohhh!! I had to go back and re-read that part and I see the problem I had! I was interpreting it as Aurea was referring to her own husband as dad because she was talking to Hilda whom I was thinking considered him as a father figure! I think this might have been obvious to me if I had played Black/White. I'm guessing this won't be a problem for most of your readers, but if it concerns you, it looks like an easy thing to reword.

Good to note regarding Minnie & Hilda. I was having a hard time trying to pin down exactly what their relationship to each other was like.

Upsetting things happening in a story can be captivating as well. I'm ready to see what else your story has in store with bated breath.

 

[DroopyMcCool]

Hi there! Noticed you were asking around for reviews and I had to start somewhere so why not here. Read the whole thing.

I'm always down for a good B&W rewrite. Those games definitely take the cake for biggest dropped ball in terms of game stories. Lots of potential in their ideas and no delivery. Having a protagonist that can also talk to pokémon is immediately a good twist. It also makes for some fun moments and lots of depth in the pokémon characters. The only potential issue is it can make for a very large cast of characters if you end up juggling a team of six or more as well as the human characters.

I noticed enough typos and grammatical errors that I stopped keeping track of them. If you'd like me to point out the ones I noted down so you can fix them I can do that, but for now I'd suggest being a bit more meticulous in the editing/revision stage. One of my favorite tricks is to read the chapter out loud, very deliberately saying exactly the words on the page rather than skimming through and letting my mind fill in what I know should be there. It kinda forces you to go word by word and you'll catch a lot more spelling mistakes, punctuation errors, inconsistent tenses (which I saw a few examples of in the first chapter but was good after that), and even subjective stuff like weird word choice or repetitive descriptions.

I think you have a really good grasp of structure and how to use tropes to your advantage. More than anything it's clear to me that you understand what makes a good story good. That alone is one of the most important parts of being a good storyteller in my opinion. Hilda running through town and meeting a whole bunch of people is a great example of that. Is it a little bit cliché? Sure, but it's a cliché because it's really effective at getting information across. We learn more about what kind of person Hilda is and what kind of town Nuvema is. However, I think it drags on a little too long. If these characters don't end up coming back, we could have done with much briefer, denser interactions that get the exact same points across.

That leads me into another thing I noticed. You do a good job of writing dialogue and character descriptions and whatnot that has rich subtext that adds depth, but you don't trust it. Examples:

"They would've been too late as usual," Hilda jabbed back, not ceding any ground. "And that's assuming they bother to come at all." To make a long story short: she had history.

"Not... recently at least." Rubbing the back of her neck awkwardly told a perturbed Oshawott that she had a history.

(both of these use the term "had a history" but that's a coincidence, they're just good examples of what I mean here)

The dialogue in both of these is good. It has its surface level meaning that advances the conversation, but it also has implications that something deeper is here. It's efficient. Then you follow up with an explanation of the subtext which throws that efficiency out the window. Trust your readers! Most of us are smart. Some people might miss the subtleties (though I wouldn't exactly call the subtext here terribly subtle), but I don't think it's worth catering to those readers at the cost of efficient prose. Trust your readers and trust your own writing.

Speaking of efficiency, the pacing of this story isn't bad, but there are some parts like the running through town and meeting all her friends (and frenemies) that could have been a little more condensed. They're good scenes and definitely serve the story, they just linger longer than they need to. The biggest offender here is the entirety of Chapter 7. From a plot perspective, it's practically identical to Chapter 6 right up until the end. I know it's easy to get caught up in writing battles (and also specifically wanting every one of Hilda's woodland friends to get their chance to shine). But as well as slowing the pace down, having that many battles in a row kind of undercuts the ending a bit. Oshawott has won more battles here than he ever has before, and only barely loses to the hardest opponent he's ever even seen. I understand you're doing an anxiety thing here and mental illness is rarely rational, but it really feels like that moment should have happened way earlier. You'd think winning a bunch of matches in a row would build a pretty decent cushion of confidence. If Oshawott v Watcher was the only battle though, or maybe there was only one before it that Oshawott barely won by mostly luck instead of straight up outplaying the entire group (ie basically what happened when he faced Minnie), then it would make a lot more sense. Especially since the fact he won two separate 1v2s is never brought up as a way to cheer him up.

That all could be subjective though. No need to go back and change anything, just some feedback from a lowly reviewer that you can take into consideration moving forward if you want. The right building blocks are all there, some of them just get used too many times.

I love love love that this appears to be a journey story that is really taking its time at the beginning. There's so much potential to be had in establishing a protagonist in their hometown and the process of picking a starter, but it often gets brushed through in a chapter or two (I am guilty of this).

I'm looking forward to how you tackle Team Plasma in the long run. Antagonists that lowkey have a point are always great fun, but you have to be careful. If they point out legitimate grievances, I'm not a fan of throwing those out the window once it's revealed their leader is actually just a mustache-twirling comicbook villain. Hilda-who-can-talk-to-pokémon is already a step in that direction. I wish you luck!

I also want to mention that using the term "chapter" for your "book" titles threw me for a loop given that you also use "chapters" in the usual way. I read "To Be Continued in Chapter Two…" and was like "But… we're on Chapter 10???" Turns out I'm just dumb. I'd recommend finding different terminology for at least one of those uses. Could be books or episodes or arcs or anything really. I once read a fic that was split up into "symphonies" and "movements" though I don't think you need to get that wild with it haha. That all said, I do like the way you've split it up. Makes it easier on the reader and kinda forces you to have good structure and pacing.

I hope this was helpful. Reading it back it's more negative than I would like, but please be assured I did enjoy this story. I wouldn't have finished it otherwise. I'll check out the sequel when I get a chance. Keep up the good work!

 

[matt0044]

Hi there! Noticed you were asking around for reviews and I had to start somewhere so why not here. Read the whole thing.

I'm always down for a good B&W rewrite. Those games definitely take the cake for biggest dropped ball in terms of game stories. Lots of potential in their ideas and no delivery. Having a protagonist that can also talk to pokémon is immediately a good twist. It also makes for some fun moments and lots of depth in the pokémon characters. The only potential issue is it can make for a very large cast of characters if you end up juggling a team of six or more as well as the human characters.

I noticed enough typos and grammatical errors that I stopped keeping track of them. If you'd like me to point out the ones I noted down so you can fix them I can do that, but for now I'd suggest being a bit more meticulous in the editing/revision stage. One of my favorite tricks is to read the chapter out loud, very deliberately saying exactly the words on the page rather than skimming through and letting my mind fill in what I know should be there. It kinda forces you to go word by word and you'll catch a lot more spelling mistakes, punctuation errors, inconsistent tenses (which I saw a few examples of in the first chapter but was good after that), and even subjective stuff like weird word choice or repetitive descriptions.

I think you have a really good grasp of structure and how to use tropes to your advantage. More than anything it's clear to me that you understand what makes a good story good. That alone is one of the most important parts of being a good storyteller in my opinion. Hilda running through town and meeting a whole bunch of people is a great example of that. Is it a little bit cliché? Sure, but it's a cliché because it's really effective at getting information across. We learn more about what kind of person Hilda is and what kind of town Nuvema is. However, I think it drags on a little too long. If these characters don't end up coming back, we could have done with much briefer, denser interactions that get the exact same points across.

That leads me into another thing I noticed. You do a good job of writing dialogue and character descriptions and whatnot that has rich subtext that adds depth, but you don't trust it. Examples:





(both of these use the term "had a history" but that's a coincidence, they're just good examples of what I mean here)

The dialogue in both of these is good. It has its surface level meaning that advances the conversation, but it also has implications that something deeper is here. It's efficient. Then you follow up with an explanation of the subtext which throws that efficiency out the window. Trust your readers! Most of us are smart. Some people might miss the subtleties (though I wouldn't exactly call the subtext here terribly subtle), but I don't think it's worth catering to those readers at the cost of efficient prose. Trust your readers and trust your own writing.

Speaking of efficiency, the pacing of this story isn't bad, but there are some parts like the running through town and meeting all her friends (and frenemies) that could have been a little more condensed. They're good scenes and definitely serve the story, they just linger longer than they need to. The biggest offender here is the entirety of Chapter 7. From a plot perspective, it's practically identical to Chapter 6 right up until the end. I know it's easy to get caught up in writing battles (and also specifically wanting every one of Hilda's woodland friends to get their chance to shine). But as well as slowing the pace down, having that many battles in a row kind of undercuts the ending a bit. Oshawott has won more battles here than he ever has before, and only barely loses to the hardest opponent he's ever even seen. I understand you're doing an anxiety thing here and mental illness is rarely rational, but it really feels like that moment should have happened way earlier. You'd think winning a bunch of matches in a row would build a pretty decent cushion of confidence. If Oshawott v Watcher was the only battle though, or maybe there was only one before it that Oshawott barely won by mostly luck instead of straight up outplaying the entire group (ie basically what happened when he faced Minnie), then it would make a lot more sense. Especially since the fact he won two separate 1v2s is never brought up as a way to cheer him up.

That all could be subjective though. No need to go back and change anything, just some feedback from a lowly reviewer that you can take into consideration moving forward if you want. The right building blocks are all there, some of them just get used too many times.

I love love love that this appears to be a journey story that is really taking its time at the beginning. There's so much potential to be had in establishing a protagonist in their hometown and the process of picking a starter, but it often gets brushed through in a chapter or two (I am guilty of this).

I'm looking forward to how you tackle Team Plasma in the long run. Antagonists that lowkey have a point are always great fun, but you have to be careful. If they point out legitimate grievances, I'm not a fan of throwing those out the window once it's revealed their leader is actually just a mustache-twirling comicbook villain. Hilda-who-can-talk-to-pokémon is already a step in that direction. I wish you luck!

I also want to mention that using the term "chapter" for your "book" titles threw me for a loop given that you also use "chapters" in the usual way. I read "To Be Continued in Chapter Two…" and was like "But… we're on Chapter 10???" Turns out I'm just dumb. I'd recommend finding different terminology for at least one of those uses. Could be books or episodes or arcs or anything really. I once read a fic that was split up into "symphonies" and "movements" though I don't think you need to get that wild with it haha. That all said, I do like the way you've split it up. Makes it easier on the reader and kinda forces you to have good structure and pacing.

I hope this was helpful. Reading it back it's more negative than I would like, but please be assured I did enjoy this story. I wouldn't have finished it otherwise. I'll check out the sequel when I get a chance. Keep up the good work!

Wooo.

First, I absolutely want to thank you for going all out just for me. It was great to have such a thorough lookover.

Second, I'm gonna answer certain parts in chunks if you don't mind:

1. I find the typos weird in how I always think, "I SWEAR I had caught them or that my spellcheck caught them." It's often that weird Madela Effect for writers if that makes sense. XD

2. For "efficiency," I... actually have to passionately defend my stance on this. While we will see a few of Hilda's friend we see in Chapter 1 in stories to come, my idea with their scenes and the battles against Hilda's forest friends was to establish a sense of normality. A status quo. It was born from how I enjoyed Red Vs. Blue and how the casual antics of the Blood Gulch Saga made the adventures with Project Freelancer and Chorus all the more impactful.
It was also out of recognizing how a lot of shows are being made to be bingeable now. All thriller, no filler. None of that self-contained breather episodes/scenes. Hell, it's worse with Streaming Originals with services trying to dillute seasons from 13 to 10 to 8 episodes. Some work it to their advantage but others... feel like 13 episodes crammed into half the time and no time to adjust.

This isn't to say you can't have a perfect balance between episodic adventures and an overall plot. I wrote a piece on Doctor Who Series 1 doing just that.

Be that as it may, I want to show my characters not always on the clock, in a battle, in a race against time, etc. Sometimes Hilda and her Pokemon will be shooting the bull, discussing human nature with a Pokemon's perspective and a lot of stuff even when they are on the clock.

...

Okay, I got a bit rambly there. Point is that I want to make sure there's a norm set. My concern is whether you found the characters in those scenes entertaining in the moment rather than rushing for the plot. I feel we all could stand to slow down in life.

3. This normality is why Oshawott gets three narrow wins and one devastating one. Especially since I've had moments where being reminded of my shortcomings can over overwrite anything I was feeling good previously. Like we as people or living beings are more keen to remember the negatives over the positives. At least, that's been my experience.

4. My putting Cheren and Bianca on Team Plasma's side in my way of humanizing the grunts more. Bright, Vanessa, Simon and Sammy will assist in that. Though my read on Ghetsis was that of a rich man co-opting humble citizens in their desire to change their world for the better. I hope to lean into that and maybe show him, erm, playing both side of the Pokemon Liberation controversy that Unova is embroiled in.

5. It's not that I don't trust the subtext or that I distrust the audience so much as, well, I don't know what to not spell out and what to be crystal clear on most of the time. Like we all go on and on about exposition or info dumping yet when a work is more dense and more open to interpretation, it will leave a lot of readers going, "Um... wut?"

And maybe that's distrustful of my readers but it's maybe... a misplaced sense of wanting to be helpful to those who are keen to assume the worst or just... not get it. As an autistic person, I have often struggled with trusting my own subtext lest others read something more sinister into things.

It's complicated brain stuff and I'm no shrink sadly.

In any case, this review was not at all negative and I'm glad my story inspired such a reaction. Though I am curious as to how the characters and changes in adaptation struck you with the story as is. Also I hope my next installment will be just as interesting: https://forums.thousandroads.net/th...rest-for-the-trees-all-ages-in-progress.1861/

The finale is yet to be posted but I hope for feedback on the lead up to it.