A competent but otherwise unremarkable novelization, two instances of weird untagged porn (including totally-not-incest between adopted siblings), and what looks to be an actually good grimdark Rocket takeover AU.
Anime: 6
https://www.fanfiction.net/s/13305464/1/Can-t-Escape
Hi! I’m doing a round of reviews around the site, hoping to help give people constructive criticism instead of just vague appreciation or flames. If you do choose to take my advice I will be glad, but you don’t have to feel like I’m making demands of you. I usually try to point out things that could help with future stories, so they can be useful even if you don’t want to edit the current story. Feel free to disagree with my interpretations and don’t be afraid to let me know why. I will be pointing out grammatical errors as well; please understand that I am not trying to be judgmental, but that I honestly believe corrections can improve the story. You are free to verify everything I say on Grammarly or other open-access grammatical resources if you think I’ve gotten anything wrong.
Your summary should tell us what the story is about; production information should go in an author’s note.
Titling chapters in the story itself looks kinda weird; the dropdown menu should suffice.
[Her eyes looked desperate, and she was pleading with me to not abandon her.
He looked back at her]
You seem to switch from first-person to third-person here.
[Break]
You can add horizontal lines through the in-site editor. They look neater.
You’re formatting dialogue incorrectly. Dialogue is written as [“Hello,” she said] or [“Hello!” she said], never [“Hello.” She said] or [“Hello,” She said] or [“Hello” she said] or [“Hello!” She said]. This is because dialogue and speech tags are considered to be part of the same sentence, so they have to flow together. The only exception to this is if the next sentence doesn’t contain a speech verb. In that case, the second part IS considered a separate sentence, so it’s written as [“Hello.” She grinned], never [“Hello,” she grinned]. Note that something isn’t a speech verb just because it’s a sound you make with your mouth, so generally stuff like “laughed” or “giggled” is in the second category. (“Speak” is also not a speech verb.) Furthermore, if you’re breaking up two complete sentences it’s [“Hi,” she said. “This is it.”] not [“Hi,” she said, “this is it.”] or [“Hi,” she said “this is it.”] And if you’re breaking up a sentence in the middle, it’s [“Hi. This,” she said, “is it.”] The same punctuation and capitalization rules apply to thoughts, except you don’t use quotation marks (or single quotes) with thoughts. This is because quotation marks for thoughts make it look like your characters are talking out loud, which is confusing to the reader.
[the last 3 years.]
In prose, numbers less than 13 or so are written out with letters.
[A yawn was let out across the room.]
This is passive voice, which sounds awkward – a yawn was let out by what? It might be better to say Jax heard the yawn, to cement him as our viewpoint.
You wouldn’t capitalize animal or mouse or dragon, so you shouldn’t capitalize words like pokemon or pikachu or charizard. The only time you should capitalize it is if you’re using it as the pokemon’s name, ie, Ash’s pikachu is called Pikachu. This is because you only capitalize when it’s a proper noun, which are the names of places or things. Similar reasoning should be applied to any other words you’re thinking of capitalizing, like trainer or professor or gym.
This is too insubstantial for a first chapter. Remember that your first chapter is your opportunity to hook your reader – you don’t need to put all your cards on the table, but you need to have something to show. Start where your plot starts; you’re not obligated to cover every mundane detail leading up to the inciting event.
https://www.fanfiction.net/s/13305290/1/Pokemon-Alola-Journey
Blocked, don’t recognize them. Anime.
https://www.fanfiction.net/s/13305277/1/Pokemon-Legion-Beginnings
I don’t watch the anime, so I’m not going to be able to review this story on content. Please tag your story as anime fic so people searching for anime fic can find it. Find your story under “Manage Stories” and select it from the dropdown menu that says “World: Any” in the “Category” section.
You might want to pick a more original title. There are quite literally thousands of titles in this category that are variations on, if not identical to, this one.
You seem to have a formatting error here where none of your sentences have spaces after them. You should preview your story to catch errors like these.
[pallet town]
This is a name, so it should be capitalized.
You need to have story content before you post.
https://www.fanfiction.net/s/13305017/1/Slaves-of-a-Cutie
Blocked, don’t recognize them.
https://www.fanfiction.net/s/13304977/1/Someday
Hi! I’m doing a round of reviews around the site, hoping to help give people constructive criticism instead of just vague appreciation or flames. If you do choose to take my advice I will be glad, but you don’t have to feel like I’m making demands of you. I usually try to point out things that could help with future stories, so they can be useful even if you don’t want to edit the current story. Feel free to disagree with my interpretations and don’t be afraid to let me know why. I will be pointing out grammatical errors as well; please understand that I am not trying to be judgmental, but that I honestly believe corrections can improve the story. You are free to verify everything I say on Grammarly or other open-access grammatical resources if you think I’ve gotten anything wrong.
It’s better if you separate your author notes with a horizontal line; otherwise, they look like part of the story. You can do this through the in-site editor.
[Bianca didn’t respond, a bad habit of hers, and instead threw open the front door with a bang. She almost didn’t hear her mother call out to her right as she stepped outside,
“and don’t forget to introduce yourself to the new neighbors!”]
The dialogue here should be capitalized, and on the same line as the narration. This is because the rule about new speakers getting a new paragraph is an extension of the rule about new subjects getting a new paragraph; the speaker is the subject, not the dialogue. (You can place the dialogue on a new line, but this is generally reserved for special cases where you want emphasize the dialogue for dramatic effect.)
[Cheren was a smart young boy with large glasses and short, black hair.]
[That day, Cheren wore a red and white striped shirt, and basketball shorts down to his knees. His shoes were worn-in, but not necessarily dirty.]
This isn’t too bad because it’s so short, but the description here is still a bit awkward. Notice how these sentences do absolutely nothing to advance the narrative; you’ve brought the story to a screeching halt to tell us these things, and you’re going to jerk us back into motion just as suddenly when we continue. These sorts of “start-stop” moments are things you should try to avoid. Though it’s difficult, you should try to incorporate description into an action, or wrap it in imagery that’s thematically relevant to the character or scene. Give it layers, basically.
[“What’s wrong, Cheren? Aren’t you excited about having a new friend?” Bianca’s excitement quickly faded into concern as her friend didn’t seem happy at all. He sighed, spinning around on his heel for a moment before responding.
“W-well… I am excited, but…” he adjusted his glasses, looking up to the front door of the new neighbor’s house, “You know… she’s a girl, so…”
“Oh-em-GEE!” Bianca shouted, cutting off Cheren completely, “You can’t talk to girls, can you!? That’s why you’re so-”
“NO! Bianca, no, of course I can talk to girls!” His face now bright red, Cheren shoved his hands in his pockets. “I was going to say that because she’s a girl, you’ll leave me hanging to go do gross girly stuff!”]
This isn’t really how nine-year-olds talk. I could see this from tweens, but kids this young typically don’t have complex gender politics yet, especially when Cheren already has a female friend.
[Her face didn’t hold a lot of expression, she was definitely a quiet type.]
This is a comma splice. You need to split this sentence in two or use a different transition.
You wouldn’t capitalize animal or mouse or dragon, so you shouldn’t capitalize words like pokemon or pikachu or charizard. The only time you should capitalize it is if you’re using it as the pokemon’s name, ie, Ash’s pikachu is called Pikachu. This is because you only capitalize when it’s a proper noun, which are the names of places or things. Similar reasoning should be applied to any other words you’re thinking of capitalizing, like trainer or professor or gym.
[Cheren frowned. A coal museum didn’t sound too bad to him.]
Hold on, who’s the viewpoint in this scene? Elsewhere it seems to be Bianca, but here you let us peek into Cheren’s thoughts. It’s important to be consistent about whose head we’re in.
[A loud boom was heard outside]
This is passive voice, which sounds awkward – a loud boom was heard by what? It might be better to say the viewpoint character heard the boom; a clear subject helps to ground the reader.
This is a bit insubstantial for a first chapter. You spend a lot of time on the dream, but it doesn’t tell us much that we can’t already infer from canon, and skips the details once it reaches the parts we can’t. There’s not much of a hook here: We don’t know why Hilda’s disappeared, or why Bianca is so invested in getting her back. Since that is (presumably) the driving question of the story, it would be good to get a better idea of it early on.
https://www.fanfiction.net/s/13304824/1/The-Moon-Has-No-Legs
Blocked, don’t recognize them.
https://www.fanfiction.net/s/13304813/1/The-Ditto-Theory
[The Ditto transformed into the scientist that created it. It was a perfect imitation. The scientist was startled and started to back away. The Ditto got up off the table and grabbed the scientist by the throat. The scientist gasped for breath. The Ditto choked the scientist until he passed out. The Ditto then dropped him to the floor. Ditto kicked the unconscious scientist out of sight.]
The sentences here are very simplistic, and so they lack gravitas even though they describe a dramatic event. I’d recommend experimenting with more complex structures and imagery to break out of a repetitive “This happened, then this happened” rhythm.
[Original Ditto yearns to cause the downfall of all humans by infiltrating their governments and sowing seeds of chaos.]
Okay, but why? There’s not a very clear narrative to this; there’s no clear reason why the ditto immediately decides it wants to replicate itself and sow chaos. Mewtwo had a specific reason for why he turned on Rocket and humanity: he was tormented by them and used for selfish purposes. Why is this ditto aggressive right out of the box? The ditto we see in canon tend to be pretty passive.
https://www.fanfiction.net/s/13304593/1/Vinicius-s-memory-in-Saigon-Capital
Hi! I’m doing a round of reviews around the site, hoping to help give people constructive criticism instead of just vague appreciation or flames. If you do choose to take my advice I will be glad, but you don’t have to feel like I’m making demands of you. I usually try to point out things that could help with future stories, so they can be useful even if you don’t want to edit the current story. Feel free to disagree with my interpretations and don’t be afraid to let me know why. I will be pointing out grammatical errors as well; please understand that I am not trying to be judgmental, but that I honestly believe corrections can improve the story. You are free to verify everything I say on Grammarly or other open-access grammatical resources if you think I’ve gotten anything wrong.
Your title needs to be fully capitalized.
There’s a lot of weird punctuation problems going on here – you have extra spaces around quotes and punctuation, and some punctuation seems to have disappeared. This sometimes happens when you convert from certain word processors. Make sure to preview your story to catch these problems.
I’m not entirely clear what this has to do with Pokemon.
https://www.fanfiction.net/s/13304494/1/Shirub%C4%81h%C4%81tourufu
Blocked, don’t recognize them. SYOC.
https://www.fanfiction.net/s/13304264/1/Silver-Nestled-in-Evergreen-A-Team-Rocket-Story
Blocked, don’t recognize them.
https://www.fanfiction.net/s/13304192/1/INTELLIGENCE
Blocked, don’t recognize them.
https://www.fanfiction.net/s/13304164/1/I-ll-be-here-waiting
I don’t watch the anime, so I’m not going to be able to review this story on content. Please tag your story as anime fic so people searching for anime fic can find it. Find your story under “Manage Stories” and select it from the dropdown menu that says “World: Any” in the “Category” section.
Your title needs to be fully capitalized.
Titling chapters in the story itself looks kinda weird; the dropdown menu should suffice.
[A couple of months after releasing Togepi (Togetic)]
This isn’t a video game. You should establish time and place through context or narration.
You’re formatting dialogue incorrectly. Dialogue is written as [“Hello,” she said] or [“Hello!” she said], never [“Hello.” She said] or [“Hello,” She said] or [“Hello” she said] or [“Hello!” She said]. This is because dialogue and speech tags are considered to be part of the same sentence, so they have to flow together. The only exception to this is if the next sentence doesn’t contain a speech verb. In that case, the second part IS considered a separate sentence, so it’s written as [“Hello.” She grinned], never [“Hello,” she grinned]. Note that something isn’t a speech verb just because it’s a sound you make with your mouth, so generally stuff like “laughed” or “giggled” is in the second category. (“Speak” is also not a speech verb.) Furthermore, if you’re breaking up two complete sentences it’s [“Hi,” she said. “This is it.”] not [“Hi,” she said, “this is it.”] or [“Hi,” she said “this is it.”] And if you’re breaking up a sentence in the middle, it’s [“Hi. This,” she said, “is it.”] The same punctuation and capitalization rules apply to thoughts, except you don’t use quotation marks (or single quotes) with thoughts. This is because quotation marks for thoughts make it look like your characters are talking out loud, which is confusing to the reader.
https://www.fanfiction.net/s/13304118/1/Serena-and-The-Perfect-Gift
Please tag your story as anime fic so people searching for anime fic can find it. Find your story under “Manage Stories” and select it from the dropdown menu that says “World: Any” in the “Category” section.
https://www.fanfiction.net/s/13304108/1/Revenge-is-a-dish-best-served-cold
I don’t watch the anime, so I’m not going to be able to review this story on content. Please tag your story as anime fic so people searching for anime fic can find it. Find your story under “Manage Stories” and select it from the dropdown menu that says “World: Any” in the “Category” section.
Your title needs to be fully capitalized.
You wouldn’t capitalize animal or mouse or dragon, so you shouldn’t capitalize words like pokemon or pikachu or charizard. The only time you should capitalize it is if you’re using it as the pokemon’s name, ie, Ash’s pikachu is called Pikachu. This is because you only capitalize when it’s a proper noun, which are the names of places or things. Similar reasoning should be applied to any other words you’re thinking of capitalizing, like trainer or professor or gym.
[Sam, Delia, Misty, Brock, Tracey, Daemon May, Max, Dawn, PauI, Iris, Cilan, Serena, Drew, Alain, Clemont, Bonnie, Lillie, Kiawe, Mallow, Lana, and Sophocles are people who betrayed, and murdered Ali]
Long lists are generally things to avoid, as they break the flow of a story. It is probably easier to simply say that everyone betrayed him.
You’re formatting dialogue incorrectly. Dialogue is written as [“Hello,” she said] or [“Hello!” she said], never [“Hello.” She said] or [“Hello,” She said] or [“Hello” she said] or [“Hello!” She said]. This is because dialogue and speech tags are considered to be part of the same sentence, so they have to flow together. The only exception to this is if the next sentence doesn’t contain a speech verb. In that case, the second part IS considered a separate sentence, so it’s written as [“Hello.” She grinned], never [“Hello,” she grinned]. Note that something isn’t a speech verb just because it’s a sound you make with your mouth, so generally stuff like “laughed” or “giggled” is in the second category. (“Speak” is also not a speech verb.) Furthermore, if you’re breaking up two complete sentences it’s [“Hi,” she said. “This is it.”] not [“Hi,” she said, “this is it.”] or [“Hi,” she said “this is it.”] And if you’re breaking up a sentence in the middle, it’s [“Hi. This,” she said, “is it.”] The same punctuation and capitalization rules apply to thoughts, except you don’t use quotation marks (or single quotes) with thoughts. This is because quotation marks for thoughts make it look like your characters are talking out loud, which is confusing to the reader.
https://www.fanfiction.net/s/13304050/1/Pokemon-Oblivion
Hi! I’m doing a round of reviews around the site, hoping to help give people constructive criticism instead of just vague appreciation or flames. If you do choose to take my advice I will be glad, but you don’t have to feel like I’m making demands of you. I usually try to point out things that could help with future stories, so they can be useful even if you don’t want to edit the current story. Feel free to disagree with my interpretations and don’t be afraid to let me know why. I will be pointing out grammatical errors as well; please understand that I am not trying to be judgmental, but that I honestly believe corrections can improve the story. You are free to verify everything I say on Grammarly or other open-access grammatical resources if you think I’ve gotten anything wrong.
I appreciate that you’re not capitalizing pokemon species names. However, you shouldn’t capitalize the word “pokemon” itself, for the same reasons.
[A pokemon story spun on its head! In this world not everything is happy and rainbows, and for Cole, this couldnt be more true. But when he by chance meets one of the elite four, he starts off on his journey, one with humor, pain, romance, and as much action as can be written! Welcome to Pokemon Oblivion!]
Summaries should tell us more than just the genre. Lots of adventure stories contain humor, pain, romance, and action. What’s specifically special about this one? (You also have a typo with “couldn’t”.)
[the mud slick ground]
You want “mud-slick”, with a hyphen.
[it’s fearful eyes]
You want “its”. “It’s” always means “it is”.
[it’s probably to late already]
You want “too”. “To” is a conjunction.
[which some how didn’t knock any teeth out]
You want “somehow”, one word.
[“What’s wrong Cole, you feeling bad?” He says]
Dialogue formatting rules remain constant regardless of punctuation, so this should be [“What’s wrong Cole, you feeling bad?” he says]
[This sent caterpie flying over at least 7 yards]
You’re missing an article for the caterpie here. (If you mean for “Caterpie” to be its name, it should be capitalized like one.) Additionally, in prose, numbers less than 13 or so are written out with letters.
This ends very abruptly. Remember that your first chapter is your opportunity to hook your reader – you don’t need to put all your cards on the table, but you need to have something to show. Right now, we still don’t have a very good sense of what this story’s going to be about, as the story is still in medias res.
https://www.fanfiction.net/s/13303460/1/Legends-Abound
Blocked, don’t recognize them.
https://www.fanfiction.net/s/13303442/1/Today-Tomorrow-and-Forever
Hi! I’m doing a round of reviews around the site, hoping to help give people constructive criticism instead of just vague appreciation or flames. If you do choose to take my advice I will be glad, but you don’t have to feel like I’m making demands of you. I usually try to point out things that could help with future stories, so they can be useful even if you don’t want to edit the current story. Feel free to disagree with my interpretations and don’t be afraid to let me know why. I will be pointing out grammatical errors as well; please understand that I am not trying to be judgmental, but that I honestly believe corrections can improve the story. You are free to verify everything I say on Grammarly or other open-access grammatical resources if you think I’ve gotten anything wrong.
You wouldn’t capitalize animal or mouse or dragon, so you shouldn’t capitalize words like pokemon or pikachu or charizard. The only time you should capitalize it is if you’re using it as the pokemon’s name, ie, Ash’s pikachu is called Pikachu. This is because you only capitalize when it’s a proper noun, which are the names of places or things. Similar reasoning should be applied to any other words you’re thinking of capitalizing, like trainer or professor or gym.
[the fresh coat of pain on the outside]
Should that be “paint”?
You initially refer to the salazzle as “a salazzle”, but then just as “Salazzle”. Since Pip has a real name, it’s odd to use her species name as her given name.
[“Hehe. That’s what I like to see come from subjects such as yourself.]
Missing endquote.
[“So, as I was told by the supervisors,” he pulled out a small syringe, “I’ll just have to change that knowledge.”]
You’re generally formatting dialogue correctly, but when interrupting with a non-speaking verb, you need to use different punctuation. For a quick action like this, dashes would be appropriate. You can put them inside the quotes to emphasize the action, or outside to de-emphasize it, like: [“So, as I was told by the supervisors –” He pulled out a small syringe. “– I’ll just have to change that knowledge.”] or [“So, as I was told by the supervisors”–he pulled out a small syringe–”I’ll just have to change that knowledge.”]
[He placed the needle against Toby’s thigh]
Who is Toby?
[fur soaked with sweat]
Animals with pelts don’t sweat. It’s an acceptable handwave if you want to make pokemon more humanlike, but it’s an odd detail.
I feel like I’m missing something here. You’re writing like these pokemon are anthropomorphic – they have animal traits but are still capable of manipulating objects like they have opposable thumbs and you make reference to wearing clothing – but you don’t state this in the author’s note. There are also many references to a backstory and prior relationships between the characters that I’m not familiar with at all. I don’t understand the significance of what’s going on here or what this organization is. And I know porn doesn’t need to make sense, but I don’t understand how raping him also erases his memories.
You should also definitely include content warnings in your author’s note, as it’s not clear from the summary or opening that this is porn.
Deleted and reposted. It’s always the mildest reviews that get the worse reactions.
https://www.fanfiction.net/s/13303402/1/Royal
Blocked, don’t recognize them.
https://www.fanfiction.net/s/13302980/1/The-Academy
Hi! I’m doing a round of reviews around the site, hoping to help give people constructive criticism instead of just vague appreciation or flames. If you do choose to take my advice I will be glad, but you don’t have to feel like I’m making demands of you. I usually try to point out things that could help with future stories, so they can be useful even if you don’t want to edit the current story. Feel free to disagree with my interpretations and don’t be afraid to let me know why. I will be pointing out grammatical errors as well; please understand that I am not trying to be judgmental, but that I honestly believe corrections can improve the story. You are free to verify everything I say on Grammarly or other open-access grammatical resources if you think I’ve gotten anything wrong.
You might want to pick a more original title. There are quite literally thousands of titles in this category that are variations on, if not identical to, this one.
[Welcome to the Wildland Pokemon Academy! Whether you want to become a Trainer, Coordinator, Profesor, Breeder or anything in-between this is the place for you!]
Similarly, summaries should tell us more than just the genre. What’s your plot? (You’ve also misspelled “professor”.)
You wouldn’t capitalize animal or mouse or dragon, so you shouldn’t capitalize words like pokemon or pikachu or charizard. The only time you should capitalize it is if you’re using it as the pokemon’s name, ie, Ash’s pikachu is called Pikachu. This is because you only capitalize when it’s a proper noun, which are the names of places or things. Similar reasoning should be applied to any other words you’re thinking of capitalizing, like trainer or professor or gym.
I see HCM has already informed you about dialogue formatting; they are correct, as you can confirm yourself by checking external sources such as Grammarly.
Your dialogue formatting errors make this too hard to follow for me to read further.
https://www.fanfiction.net/s/13302736/1/Pokemon-Delta-Edition
Blocked, don’t recognize them.
https://www.fanfiction.net/s/13302567/1/Pokemon-Tales-Beyond
Blocked, don’t recognize them.
https://www.fanfiction.net/s/13302332/1/The-People-of-the-Water
I don’t watch the anime, so I’m not going to be able to review this story on content. Please tag your story as anime fic so people searching for anime fic can find it. Find your story under “Manage Stories” and select it from the dropdown menu that says “World: Any” in the “Category” section.
If you use lines to separate your author notes, it’s generally better to use a different marker for scene transitions; otherwise, your notes can look like part of the story.
Endnotes generally do not work well for web documents. While it is easy to simply glance down and read a footnote without losing your place, scrolling all the way to the end of the document and then back is more tedious. Especially when your information is, frankly, pretty minor, they’re just not necessary. The information you currently have would be fine as a standalone author’s note.
[“Y-you talk?!” questioned the priest.]
“Questioned” is what police do; it’s a synonym for “interrogated”, not “asked”.
You’re formatting dialogue incorrectly. Dialogue is written as [“Hello,” she said] or [“Hello!” she said], never [“Hello.” She said] or [“Hello,” She said] or [“Hello” she said] or [“Hello!” She said]. This is because dialogue and speech tags are considered to be part of the same sentence, so they have to flow together. The only exception to this is if the next sentence doesn’t contain a speech verb. In that case, the second part IS considered a separate sentence, so it’s written as [“Hello.” She grinned], never [“Hello,” she grinned]. Note that something isn’t a speech verb just because it’s a sound you make with your mouth, so generally stuff like “laughed” or “giggled” is in the second category. (“Speak” is also not a speech verb.) Furthermore, if you’re breaking up two complete sentences it’s [“Hi,” she said. “This is it.”] not [“Hi,” she said, “this is it.”] or [“Hi,” she said “this is it.”] And if you’re breaking up a sentence in the middle, it’s [“Hi. This,” she said, “is it.”] The same punctuation and capitalization rules apply to thoughts, except you don’t use quotation marks (or single quotes) with thoughts. This is because quotation marks for thoughts make it look like your characters are talking out loud, which is confusing to the reader.
[We have prayed to Lord Arceus for the longest time asking for this.]
Arceus is not the Judeo-Christian God and it’s really ethnocentric of you to assume a Chinese- and Buddhist-inspired deity must be a stand-in for yours. Nothing about Arceus in any canon implies it responds to prayers or cares one whit about humanity at all. Similarly, what you have here with the priests dedicating temples only to Arceus and not even mentioning other gods is really, really not how any religion outside of Abrahamism works. Even in the West, Zeus and Odin did not completely dominate the conversation in their respective pantheons. If this is a pantheon, other gods should matter.
[Arceus and his children]
Arceus is genderless. Assuming it to be male is sexist and reinforces the harmful idea of male as the default.
https://www.fanfiction.net/s/13302261/1/Pokemon-Primordial-Fury-Unleashed-DX
Blocked, repost.
https://www.fanfiction.net/s/13302162/1/Hentai-World-Pokemon
Blocked, oh no.
https://www.fanfiction.net/s/13302115/1/Homework
Blocked, don’t recognize them.
https://www.fanfiction.net/s/13302978/1/Ghosts-in-Kanto
Hi! I’m doing a round of reviews around the site, hoping to help give people constructive criticism instead of just vague appreciation or flames. If you do choose to take my advice I will be glad, but you don’t have to feel like I’m making demands of you. I usually try to point out things that could help with future stories, so they can be useful even if you don’t want to edit the current story. Feel free to disagree with my interpretations and don’t be afraid to let me know why. I will be pointing out grammatical errors as well; please understand that I am not trying to be judgmental, but that I honestly believe corrections can improve the story. You are free to verify everything I say on Grammarly or other open-access grammatical resources if you think I’ve gotten anything wrong.
[Three friends set out from Pallet Town to follow in Red’s footsteps and one day be the Kanto League Champion, but a new organization called Team Specter threatens the region with dark and sinister plans.]
Summaries should tell us more than just the genre. What makes this story different? Who are Team Specter and why should we care?
[The sun rose and cast a golden glow over Pallet Town. Josh lived with his mom and little brother in the house furthest south, closest to the beach. He positioned his bed along the eastern wall of the loft and left his curtains open on purpose the night before. As he hoped, the sunlight poured through his window and woke him up well before his alarm.]
The second sentence here sounds out of place. If you remove it, you have a clear progression from one line to the next; everything relates to the first sentence describing the sunrise. Dropping a random infodump into the middle of unrelated information is really awkward; it would probably be better off moved to another paragraph.
[throwing the covers of his head]
Should that be “over his head”?
You wouldn’t capitalize animal or mouse or dragon, so you shouldn’t capitalize words like pokemon or pikachu or charizard. The only time you should capitalize it is if you’re using it as the pokemon’s name, ie, Ash’s pikachu is called Pikachu. This is because you only capitalize when it’s a proper noun, which are the names of places or things. Similar reasoning should be applied to any other words you’re thinking of capitalizing, like trainer or professor or gym.
[Josh lived closest to the lab of the three boys, and while he could see Tanner booking it down the hill from his house on the other side of town, he’d never reach the lab first. A victorious smile of elation parted Josh’s lips as he opened the double doors and stepped into the lab.]
There’s a disjunct here, as you don’t actually describe him reaching the lab or add any sort of break that implies time passing. “A victorious smile of elation parted Josh’s lips” also sticks out oddly, as it’s far more ornate than the surrounding prose. It’s generally better to keep an even rhythm.
[“Let’s wait until the others get here,” Professor Oak interjected.]
That’s not what interjecting looks like. If you want to convey that Josh feels like it’s a jarring interruption, it might be better to break from the standard speech tag format and add more detail. Something like [“Let’s wait until the others get here.” Josh had to swallow a whine as his hand stopped just inches from the pokeball.] would convey that well.
[Morning, Prof!]
This doesn’t work unless he’s literally saying “prof”, pronounced phonetically. Title abbreviations only work if they’re appended to names.
[It’s an exciting prospect to think of all the species migrating to one region or another around the world. Decades ago, we only had one hundred and fifty-one in ours.]
This is a little interesting, as there’s some apocrypha identifying Mew as a South American pokemon. It makes me wonder if it’d really be classified as a Kantonian pokemon.
[Josh tuned out while he and Tanner talked about how sea otter Pokémon from the Unova region acted as the water starter for new young trainers there.]
That’s not really how it works; though we think of professors as the source for starters because that’s how the games always do it, there’s not actually a lot to imply it’s normal outside of a few cases. Oak, for instance, only gives you a starter because you’re friends with his grandson, and even he tries to use it to wring free labor out of you. In the case of Juniper, it’s strongly implied she gave the starters out as personal gifts, and doesn’t do the same for all trainers.
[Hello there! Welcome to the world of Pokémon! My name is Oak! People call me the Pokémon Prof! This world is inhabited by creatures called Pokémon! For some people, Pokémon are pets. Others use them for fights. Myself…I study Pokémon as a profession…]
This speech doesn’t make sense in-universe. He clearly already knows these kids, so greeting them like strangers – “Hello there!” – doesn’t make sense, they’re already living in the world of pokemon so they don’t need to be welcomed to it, and again, they already know him so he doesn’t need to introduce himself.
[All he needed to do was press the button, toss the ball, and out he’d come.
Or she.]
Placing a short piece on its own line puts a great deal of emphasis on it, so this is a little weird when it seems like an incidental detail. It seems like it’d make more sense to fold that into the narration on the first line, something like [All he needed to do was press the button, toss the ball, and out he’d come – or she, he supposed.]
[What does “hidden ability solar power” mean?”]
When you quote inside a quote, you use single quotes instead of double quotes; otherwise, the reader will be confused about where the dialogue ends. (If you quote inside a quote inside a quote, you go back to double quotes.)
So, here’s the thing. The Pokemon games are not well-suited to novelizations, as their plots are largely just vehicles for making you fight a bunch of battles which, while cool in a game where you’re actually playing through them, are not interesting to read about. If you want to make a story out of it, you’ll need to diverge heavily from canon and introduce a ton of unique elements of your own. Notice how the anime and manga did this, and note also that they were still visual media that could fall back on cool, flashy battles, while you won’t be able to.
You’re doing a better job than most I’ve seen, as you have multiple OCs with distinct personalities and a lot of dialogue. But that’s still not going to be enough to carry a story of this length. “To be the very best” just isn’t a terribly interesting motivation in the long term. Notice how in a lot of sports movies/anime, the actual competition is secondary to whatever the character’s real motivation is. They want to win the tournament BECAUSE of something – to win someone’s approval, to get prize money, etc. That’s good because it provides stakes. What happens if Josh flames out? He’ll… be a little bummed out, but he can start again later or just move on to something else. There’s no tension. To hook the reader in the long term, you’ll need a little more. Maybe you do have an epic plot planned, but in that case you’ll want to signpost it so people know this isn’t going to be just yet another generic trainer journey that sputters out when the author gets bored of it.
And while a gay couple somewhat counterbalances it, I am rather disappointed in the lack of female characters here. Even the canon, as sexist as it is, at least consistently has one girl in the hero groups. Currently, this is looking like it’s going to be nothing but boys.
https://www.fanfiction.net/s/13305589/1/Quagsires-Quest
I should not have to tell you that sentences need to end in punctuation. Put a bare minimum of effort into this, please.
https://www.fanfiction.net/s/13302481/1/Lorelai-and-Mackenzie-A-Pokemon-Journey
Hi! I’m doing a round of reviews around the site, hoping to help give people constructive criticism instead of just vague appreciation or flames. If you do choose to take my advice I will be glad, but you don’t have to feel like I’m making demands of you. I usually try to point out things that could help with future stories, so they can be useful even if you don’t want to edit the current story. Feel free to disagree with my interpretations and don’t be afraid to let me know why. I will be pointing out grammatical errors as well; please understand that I am not trying to be judgmental, but that I honestly believe corrections can improve the story. You are free to verify everything I say on Grammarly or other open-access grammatical resources if you think I’ve gotten anything wrong.
You might want to pick a more original title. There are quite literally thousands of titles in this category that are variations on, if not identical to, this one.
You wouldn’t capitalize animal or mouse or dragon, so you shouldn’t capitalize words like pokemon or pikachu or charizard. The only time you should capitalize it is if you’re using it as the pokemon’s name, ie, Ash’s pikachu is called Pikachu. This is because you only capitalize when it’s a proper noun, which are the names of places or things. Similar reasoning should be applied to any other words you’re thinking of capitalizing, like trainer or professor or gym.
It’s better if you separate your author notes with a horizontal line; otherwise, they look like part of the story. You can do this through the in-site editor.
You’re formatting dialogue incorrectly. Dialogue is written as [“Hello,” she said] or [“Hello!” she said], never [“Hello.” She said] or [“Hello,” She said] or [“Hello” she said] or [“Hello!” She said]. This is because dialogue and speech tags are considered to be part of the same sentence, so they have to flow together. The only exception to this is if the next sentence doesn’t contain a speech verb. In that case, the second part IS considered a separate sentence, so it’s written as [“Hello.” She grinned], never [“Hello,” she grinned]. Note that something isn’t a speech verb just because it’s a sound you make with your mouth, so generally stuff like “laughed” or “giggled” is in the second category. (“Speak” is also not a speech verb.) Furthermore, if you’re breaking up two complete sentences it’s [“Hi,” she said. “This is it.”] not [“Hi,” she said, “this is it.”] or [“Hi,” she said “this is it.”] And if you’re breaking up a sentence in the middle, it’s [“Hi. This,” she said, “is it.”] The same punctuation and capitalization rules apply to thoughts, except you don’t use quotation marks (or single quotes) with thoughts. This is because quotation marks for thoughts make it look like your characters are talking out loud, which is confusing to the reader.
You also don’t need to write out both pokespeech and translation. If it’s important that we understand what the pokemon is saying but also that humans can’t understand it, that’s denoted through different formatting, such as italicized dialogue or different quote marks. (You can see this in published books when they do a translation convention for foreign languages.) However, if this is from the trainer’s perspective, it might be better to not tell us what the pokemon is saying at all, to better align us with the trainer’s own perspective of not understanding her pokemon.
I understand the urge to explain basic information to the reader to set the stage, but opening the story with description or exposition is actually not a good idea. Readers don’t actually need to know this stuff just yet to enjoy the story; things like how the character acts and what they’re doing matter much more in the long run. Show don’t tell, etc. This early on, you should stick to information that is immediately relevant. Specific details can be parceled out over time, after the reader has become invested.
[14 year olds]
This should be hyphenated, like [14-year-olds]
[what to do with there prisoner]
You want “their”. “There” refers to place.
This is rather disjointed. Starting with the comparatively normal Lorelai is really burying the lede here; Mackenzie is the one with all the plot and drama at the moment. It might be better to just focus on Mackenzie at first until Lorelai’s plot gets somewhere interesting.
https://www.fanfiction.net/s/13305880/1/Pokemon-Roses-of-the-Garden
I don’t watch the anime, so I’m not going to be able to review this story on content. Please tag your story as anime fic so people searching for anime fic can find it. Find your story under “Manage Stories” and select it from the dropdown menu that says “World: Any” in the “Category” section.
You wouldn’t capitalize animal or mouse or dragon, so you shouldn’t capitalize words like pokemon or pikachu or charizard. The only time you should capitalize it is if you’re using it as the pokemon’s name, ie, Ash’s pikachu is called Pikachu. This is because you only capitalize when it’s a proper noun, which are the names of places or things. Similar reasoning should be applied to any other words you’re thinking of capitalizing, like trainer or professor or gym.
Titling chapters in the story itself looks kinda weird; the dropdown menu should suffice.
[the Hill of Origin]
Typo.
You’re formatting dialogue incorrectly. Dialogue is written as [“Hello,” she said] or [“Hello!” she said], never [“Hello.” She said] or [“Hello,” She said] or [“Hello” she said] or [“Hello!” She said]. This is because dialogue and speech tags are considered to be part of the same sentence, so they have to flow together. The only exception to this is if the next sentence doesn’t contain a speech verb. In that case, the second part IS considered a separate sentence, so it’s written as [“Hello.” She grinned], never [“Hello,” she grinned]. Note that something isn’t a speech verb just because it’s a sound you make with your mouth, so generally stuff like “laughed” or “giggled” is in the second category. (“Speak” is also not a speech verb.) Furthermore, if you’re breaking up two complete sentences it’s [“Hi,” she said. “This is it.”] not [“Hi,” she said, “this is it.”] or [“Hi,” she said “this is it.”] And if you’re breaking up a sentence in the middle, it’s [“Hi. This,” she said, “is it.”] The same punctuation and capitalization rules apply to thoughts, except you don’t use quotation marks (or single quotes) with thoughts. This is because quotation marks for thoughts make it look like your characters are talking out loud, which is confusing to the reader.
It’s written “okay”, four letters. It is not an abbreviation for something else, nor is it pronounced “ock”, therefore it should never be written as OK, Ok, O.K. or ok.
[In the Rose Garden]
This isn’t a video game. You should establish time and place through context or narration. Non-general scene transitions are jarring.
[I will talk to Arceus about this flower when he comes back.]
Arceus is genderless. Gendering it as male reinforces the harmful narrative that male is the superior and the default.
You have a few odd tense and structure errors throughout this. I’d recommend getting a beta reader to help you.
https://www.fanfiction.net/s/13305865/1/Poke-Saga-Rise-of-Rocket
Hi! I’m doing a round of reviews around the site, hoping to help give people constructive criticism instead of just vague appreciation or flames. If you do choose to take my advice I will be glad, but you don’t have to feel like I’m making demands of you. I usually try to point out things that could help with future stories, so they can be useful even if you don’t want to edit the current story. Feel free to disagree with my interpretations and don’t be afraid to let me know why. I will be pointing out grammatical errors as well; please understand that I am not trying to be judgmental, but that I honestly believe corrections can improve the story. You are free to verify everything I say on Grammarly or other open-access grammatical resources if you think I’ve gotten anything wrong.
You wouldn’t capitalize animal or mouse or dragon, so you shouldn’t capitalize words like pokemon or pikachu or charizard. The only time you should capitalize it is if you’re using it as the pokemon’s name, ie, Ash’s pikachu is called Pikachu. This is because you only capitalize when it’s a proper noun, which are the names of places or things. Similar reasoning should be applied to any other words you’re thinking of capitalizing, like trainer or professor or gym.
Titling chapters in the story itself looks kinda weird; the dropdown menu should suffice.
[They’re son]
You want “their”. “They’re” means “they are”.
[As the Tachibana’s were researchers, specifically, they were archaeologists,]
Commas don’t work for this aside. You’d want parentheses or dashes, like [As the Tachibanas were researchers (archaeologists, specifically)]. You also don’t need the apostrophe there, as you’re using a plural, not a possessive.
[when we were about ten years old]
[My family took Kakeru in and raised him like a son. Still, Kakeru and I weren’t siblings, and so no one complained when the two of us began dating in Junior High.]
Ew.
Do you understand how the Westermark effect works? It’s not some kind of magic that knows to only target blood relatives. It targets anyone you grow up with from a young age. Dating someone you grew up with is still incredibly squicky even if you’re not blood related. It also carries the implication that adopted family “doesn’t count” – because that’s what Kakeru is, he’s her adopted brother – which is incredibly hurtful to adopted kids who already get a ton of crap about that in real life.
[As Kakeru and I got older, we naturally went through puberty. We started seeing the other sex as attractive, and once Kakeru and I started dating, I wanted to be as attractive to him as I could be. I started wearing tighter and more revealing attire as it was what Kakeru enjoyed. Soon, this turned from simply revealing attire to wearing nothing at all around the house.]
Oh, so it’s just a creepy fetish thing. Cool, but I’m out. Tag for this next time.
https://www.fanfiction.net/s/13306625/1/Just-an-update
Covered by Talarc, not blocked.
https://www.fanfiction.net/s/13306544/1/Shatter-the-Dark
Blocked, don’t recognize them.
https://www.fanfiction.net/s/13306473/1/Kill-the-Sun
Hi! I’m doing a round of reviews around the site, hoping to help give people constructive criticism instead of just vague appreciation or flames. If you do choose to take my advice I will be glad, but you don’t have to feel like I’m making demands of you. I usually try to point out things that could help with future stories, so they can be useful even if you don’t want to edit the current story. Feel free to disagree with my interpretations and don’t be afraid to let me know why. I will be pointing out grammatical errors as well; please understand that I am not trying to be judgmental, but that I honestly believe corrections can improve the story. You are free to verify everything I say on Grammarly or other open-access grammatical resources if you think I’ve gotten anything wrong.
I appreciate that you’re not capitalizing pokemon.
[Your soldiers aren’t dispensable, Lance; mine are.]
Nitpicky, but “dispensable” sounds like an odd choice here. “Disposable” or “expendable” sound more natural, I think.
[Anyway, Rocket didn’t win because of skill or strength. Rocket won because its people and pokémon are fucking fearless. What? It’s true. You’re all maniacs, the lot of you. For Rocket Grunts, death is just another part of life, another blip in the system. Their brothers collapse all around them, crumpling under League sanctioned pokémon, and they barely bat an eye.]
That doesn’t seem very Rocket-esque. They’re Mafia, not death cultists. I know a lot of people like to reinvent them as a more militaristic force to facilitate epic plots like these, but I’d say it requires at least an acknowledgement that things have diverged from what we know. Why did Giovanni make the jump from organized crime to an outright power grab? How did we get from Point A to Point B?
Also, to be clear, you are intending to say pokemon are not people?
[non-Rocket Johtans vastly outnumbered Rocket’s forces by at least a hundred to one]
[Giovanni’s a nasty son of a bitch, but he’s got a head for war, and his men are expendable. He knew that if he kept throwing them at Johto’s walls, piling up the corpses, then the region would crack eventually.]
Both these things can’t be true. If you’re that vastly outnumbered, you can’t win by taking massive losses. You’ll run out before your enemy does. If Giovanni truly has a head for war, he should know that’s not the strategy to use for this situation.
For this to work, I’d say you’d need to establish that the Rockets are outgunned but not outnumbered. If they have roughly the same numbers but more determination, a zerg rush strategy could work. But again, it’s unclear to me how Giovanni would accomplish that – how did he turn a crime gang into a massive army willing to die by the droves for him? The opening recording implies that he actually won due to some kind of psychological warfare or negotiation with Lance, which seems much more his style.
[for a mere normal type to slice it to ribbons in such an effortless manner–]
A few of your dashes, like this one, aren’t full dashes. It’d probably be a good idea to go through and edit them for consistency.
[You know what actually makes a pokémon egg hatch? It’s not the environment, nor external stress. It’s love.]
That’s a cool idea. I love it when people make pokemon actually magical, especially in otherwise down-to-earth settings like this.
[Does the death of the pokémon cause the extinguishing of the tail flame, or does the extinguishing of the tail flame cause the death of the pokémon?
Nobody’s got enough of a callous lack of empathy to actually test either hypothesis.]
Doesn’t Rocket have scientists, though? And even in real life, people have got up to some heinously unethical animal experiments.
[lord of the legendary beast and bird trios]
This is more a pet peeve than anything else, but I feel the fan nicknames for the legendaries lack gravitas. When everything’s a “legendary trio”, boxed into such mechanical, repetitive terms, it kinda takes the magic away. I imagine the pokeworld inhabitants would have more creative names for them.
This is a very good opening. Gold is a little rambly, but I don’t mind – his diversions stay interesting because he doesn’t just talk about himself, and his speech feels real without being so meandering it’s disengaging. You’ve dropped some enticing mysteries about himself, Giovanni, and whoever his audience is.
My only real criticism is what I’ve already said about Rocket feeling OOC. You say you’re taking info from the anime and manga, so maybe it makes more sense in those canons, but just going by the games, this feels more like an original villain organization than Rocket. Rocket was always very small-scale and kept to the shadows. Even Mewtwo… it’s been ages since I’ve seen the anime, but I’m pretty sure that was just to cement Giovanni’s existing power structure, not to take over the world? Giovanni has never seemed interested in world domination the way the other team leaders have.
This version of Rocket is also, itself, less interesting than the canon version. An organization of totally devoted martyr drones sounds scary, but they also have no personality. From what you’ve established here, I feel like any Rockets we encounter in this story are going to be pretty boring, one-dimensional villains. Rocket was interesting in canon precisely because its members had varied opinions, personalities, and motivations. A monolith doesn’t accomplish the same thing.
Perhaps relatedly… I’d like to know how the pokemon fit into this? In that scene of Rockets using their pokemon to murder a civilian, why did the pokemon agree to it? Are Rockets’ pokemon as heartless as they are? How can that possibly be true for every single one? Are all pokemon empathically receptive to their trainers and end up sharing their personalities? Do the Rockets condition their pokemon somehow? You’ve kept the feature of Rockets stealing pokemon – how do the pokemon feel about that? Do pokemon ever try to rebel or run away? If such rebellions are put down by the Rockets’ own pokemon, well gee, that’s really messed up, isn’t it? What do those pokemon think of enabling the abuse of their own siblings?
What makes Pokemon unique among fantasy stories is that the protagonists’ power is so contractual. No human in this world has any power their pokemon does not give them. That has some interesting implications when applied to selfish, evil villains, because it necessarily means they cannot be totally self-centered. They must have done something to get their pokemon on board. How did they do that? What is Giovanni’s nidoqueen getting out of this that she’s willing to help him level entire cities? Pokemon are living creatures, not inanimate weapons or magic spells, and I feel you lose something if you ignore that.
Still, this looks pretty promising even as an ordinary fantasy epic. Good job! It’s hard to do an opening for this genre that’s this effective.