rimly
Here for the dynamics
- Location
- a pocket dimension
- Pronouns
- They/She
Okay so that arm breaking scene. Holy shit. Sobs this is messed up huh. I honestly was not expecting this like… augsuh.
And the childs reaction is just irritation! Like ugh what a nuisance this human cant even heal properly! Theres no awareness that breaking someones arm while theyre conscious and cant move is an absolutely horrifying thing to do! The child is annoyed that Nate fainted because now it has to wait for him to wake up to keep healing him, which… well…
This is where I realized the child genuinely does not understand that what its doing is cruel. Or maybe it doesnt care. It saved Nates life so in its mind Nate owes it cooperation. The arm thing is just fixing a mistake. The fact that it causes agonizing pain is irrelevant because the end result is Nates arm works properly now right?
Its that same black and white thinking from before but applied to physical torture and the disconnect is making my skin crawl. The negotiation before that is almost funny in how badly it goes. The childs trying SO hard to explain logically why Nate should cooperate- I saved your life! You owe me! This benefits both of us!- and Nate is… honestly being really stubborn. LOL which, I mean, valid? But also I would be more horrified I think.
I love that Nate immediately calls bullshit on the whole thing. That bit where the child starts to walk away and Nate grabs its tail though- I didnt see that coming! And Nates reason for changing his mind is petty as hell, hes literally like fine Ill come with you so I can make your life miserable as revenge. It was funny though they accept it entirely.
The ending where the child is hoping Nate will try to escape and die overnight is so darkly funny. It forced him to come along and now its like ugh I hope he runs away and dies so I dont have to deal with him.
Tooooooo chapter 8!
The evil twin bit kills me because Nates not wrong! The child looks exactly like him and keeps doing weird kid stuff and Nate is watching his own face have a pillow fight with pokemon and hes SO disturbed by it!
When the child tries to do that partners speech I had to stop reading for a second because the secondhand embarrassment was so bad. Listen pal youve made good friends with some bad people- its delivered with such confidence like the child really thinks this is how humans talk to each other!
The child is trying to reference movies and TV to figure out how to human and it keeps picking the wrong genre! Like it doesnt understand the difference between a cop movie and a kids cartoon so it just grabs phrases that sound right and delivers them with zero self-awareness!
Nate finds out the child spent all his money and hes furious right? Understandable! And the childs defense is that the money was stolen so Nate shouldnt have had it anyway therefore it was fine to use it. And like. On one level I see what the child is going for with that logic. If the money was gotten illegally then yeah technically Nate shouldnt benefit from it. But still.
The bath thing made me laugh though. Nates locked in a room being guarded by Thunderstorm and he just. takes a bath. Makes himself comfortable. I think this is the point where Nates realized hes not getting out of this situation so he might as well try to stay sane? Like hes still hostile and sarcastic but hes also just coping because what else can he do.
After the pillow fight, when the child says it depends how you count- used to be twelve, then died, now eight- All the tantrums and mood swings and impulse control issues suddenly make sense because hes dealing with an eight year old who has the power to break his bones!
That line about the child saying itll be like this forever is interesting cus… huh. Never maturing? I feel like they’d eventually get there even if they’re immortal.
Toooooooo chapter 9sssssss
Gym time! Wars fight with Rapidash was interesting, I kept waiting for War to just sweep because water beats fire right? But Rapidash is so fast and he keeps dodging and bouncing over the attacks and War gets his beak stuck in the ground! And even after War manages to poison Rapidash and take him down Wars so exhausted he goes down immediately to Arcanines Wild Charge!
I love that the child is down after one pokemon. It fully expected War to carry and suddenly its in a hole and panicking. The Rats fight made me feel sick. That description of her holding on to Arcanine with her fangs while her fur is literally on fire and shes screaming but she just keeps biting deeper- gdo….
And the child recalls her and immediately sends out Titan like theres no time to process what just happened, just keep going, win the fight.
I dont know if this is good or bad exactly but it made the battles feel uglier than most pokemon stories where fainting is just like falling asleep. Here it looks like it HURTS. :(
The Titan fight dragged a bit for me honestly? Like there were good moments- the Magmar shoving her tail in Titans face to break his Seismic Toss was clever, and Titan getting confused and stumbling around unable to hit anything was tense. But it went on long enough that I started skimming because it was just Titan confused, hits himself, snaps out of it, gets confused again, repeat.
The ending was strong though! Titan trying to attack Blaine after winning because hes so worked up he cant tell the fights over- that felt really real. Hes not a trained battle pokemon hes a kid who just got put through a meat grinder and doesnt know how to turn the aggression off.
What got me most was that moment where the child freezes during the Rats fight. It cant figure out the answer because its thinking like a human. Then it closes its eyes and changes something and suddenly the solution is obvious- Sucker Punch! So the child battles better as a pokemon. It makes smarter calls when its thinking like a pokemon instead of a human. Which makes sense because it IS better at being a pokemon! But it wants so badly to be a human trainer that it keeps handicapping itself!
That tension between what the child is good at and what it wants to be is really interesting and I dont think the story has fully explored it just yet more but Im sure there’s more on the way.
The child being literally eight years old recontextualizes a lot but it also makes some of the earlier stuff feel off? Like the child has been doing this identity theft thing for years right? It got Rats from the Cinnabar ruins which was after the volcano eruption which was years ago.
The morality stuff is really interesting because the child has this rigid good-bad framework (Rockets bad, trainers good, stealing bad, justice good) but it applies it in the most warped ways. Taking Nates money is justice! Breaking his arm is just fixing a mistake! The child genuinely believes its the good guy here and that makes it so much more unsettling than if it was just knowingly cruel.
Nate is the first person whos really pushing back on the childs worldview and I want to see where that goes. The child doesnt have good answers for his questions and it just gets angry and shuts down.
The gym battle proved the child can win fights but it also showed the cost, its a lot more brutal then I expected. I was expecting maybe the gym fight to be a little more chill then real fights, but at least no one died. Yet.
Either way! Good stuff, interesting to see where this is going- and poor Nate.
And the childs reaction is just irritation! Like ugh what a nuisance this human cant even heal properly! Theres no awareness that breaking someones arm while theyre conscious and cant move is an absolutely horrifying thing to do! The child is annoyed that Nate fainted because now it has to wait for him to wake up to keep healing him, which… well…
This is where I realized the child genuinely does not understand that what its doing is cruel. Or maybe it doesnt care. It saved Nates life so in its mind Nate owes it cooperation. The arm thing is just fixing a mistake. The fact that it causes agonizing pain is irrelevant because the end result is Nates arm works properly now right?
Its that same black and white thinking from before but applied to physical torture and the disconnect is making my skin crawl. The negotiation before that is almost funny in how badly it goes. The childs trying SO hard to explain logically why Nate should cooperate- I saved your life! You owe me! This benefits both of us!- and Nate is… honestly being really stubborn. LOL which, I mean, valid? But also I would be more horrified I think.
I love that Nate immediately calls bullshit on the whole thing. That bit where the child starts to walk away and Nate grabs its tail though- I didnt see that coming! And Nates reason for changing his mind is petty as hell, hes literally like fine Ill come with you so I can make your life miserable as revenge. It was funny though they accept it entirely.
The ending where the child is hoping Nate will try to escape and die overnight is so darkly funny. It forced him to come along and now its like ugh I hope he runs away and dies so I dont have to deal with him.
Tooooooo chapter 8!
The evil twin bit kills me because Nates not wrong! The child looks exactly like him and keeps doing weird kid stuff and Nate is watching his own face have a pillow fight with pokemon and hes SO disturbed by it!
When the child tries to do that partners speech I had to stop reading for a second because the secondhand embarrassment was so bad. Listen pal youve made good friends with some bad people- its delivered with such confidence like the child really thinks this is how humans talk to each other!
The child is trying to reference movies and TV to figure out how to human and it keeps picking the wrong genre! Like it doesnt understand the difference between a cop movie and a kids cartoon so it just grabs phrases that sound right and delivers them with zero self-awareness!
Nate finds out the child spent all his money and hes furious right? Understandable! And the childs defense is that the money was stolen so Nate shouldnt have had it anyway therefore it was fine to use it. And like. On one level I see what the child is going for with that logic. If the money was gotten illegally then yeah technically Nate shouldnt benefit from it. But still.
The bath thing made me laugh though. Nates locked in a room being guarded by Thunderstorm and he just. takes a bath. Makes himself comfortable. I think this is the point where Nates realized hes not getting out of this situation so he might as well try to stay sane? Like hes still hostile and sarcastic but hes also just coping because what else can he do.
After the pillow fight, when the child says it depends how you count- used to be twelve, then died, now eight- All the tantrums and mood swings and impulse control issues suddenly make sense because hes dealing with an eight year old who has the power to break his bones!
That line about the child saying itll be like this forever is interesting cus… huh. Never maturing? I feel like they’d eventually get there even if they’re immortal.
Toooooooo chapter 9sssssss
Gym time! Wars fight with Rapidash was interesting, I kept waiting for War to just sweep because water beats fire right? But Rapidash is so fast and he keeps dodging and bouncing over the attacks and War gets his beak stuck in the ground! And even after War manages to poison Rapidash and take him down Wars so exhausted he goes down immediately to Arcanines Wild Charge!
I love that the child is down after one pokemon. It fully expected War to carry and suddenly its in a hole and panicking. The Rats fight made me feel sick. That description of her holding on to Arcanine with her fangs while her fur is literally on fire and shes screaming but she just keeps biting deeper- gdo….
And the child recalls her and immediately sends out Titan like theres no time to process what just happened, just keep going, win the fight.
I dont know if this is good or bad exactly but it made the battles feel uglier than most pokemon stories where fainting is just like falling asleep. Here it looks like it HURTS. :(
The Titan fight dragged a bit for me honestly? Like there were good moments- the Magmar shoving her tail in Titans face to break his Seismic Toss was clever, and Titan getting confused and stumbling around unable to hit anything was tense. But it went on long enough that I started skimming because it was just Titan confused, hits himself, snaps out of it, gets confused again, repeat.
The ending was strong though! Titan trying to attack Blaine after winning because hes so worked up he cant tell the fights over- that felt really real. Hes not a trained battle pokemon hes a kid who just got put through a meat grinder and doesnt know how to turn the aggression off.
What got me most was that moment where the child freezes during the Rats fight. It cant figure out the answer because its thinking like a human. Then it closes its eyes and changes something and suddenly the solution is obvious- Sucker Punch! So the child battles better as a pokemon. It makes smarter calls when its thinking like a pokemon instead of a human. Which makes sense because it IS better at being a pokemon! But it wants so badly to be a human trainer that it keeps handicapping itself!
That tension between what the child is good at and what it wants to be is really interesting and I dont think the story has fully explored it just yet more but Im sure there’s more on the way.
The child being literally eight years old recontextualizes a lot but it also makes some of the earlier stuff feel off? Like the child has been doing this identity theft thing for years right? It got Rats from the Cinnabar ruins which was after the volcano eruption which was years ago.
The morality stuff is really interesting because the child has this rigid good-bad framework (Rockets bad, trainers good, stealing bad, justice good) but it applies it in the most warped ways. Taking Nates money is justice! Breaking his arm is just fixing a mistake! The child genuinely believes its the good guy here and that makes it so much more unsettling than if it was just knowingly cruel.
Nate is the first person whos really pushing back on the childs worldview and I want to see where that goes. The child doesnt have good answers for his questions and it just gets angry and shuts down.
The gym battle proved the child can win fights but it also showed the cost, its a lot more brutal then I expected. I was expecting maybe the gym fight to be a little more chill then real fights, but at least no one died. Yet.
Either way! Good stuff, interesting to see where this is going- and poor Nate.