Some decent stuff today, including a pretty interesting anime AU where Ash is raised by Mewtwo. Most of the trainer fic also at least has nonstandard openings. There is, however, a lot of weirdness around pokemon treatment, including a heartwarming story about a guy using his brother’s ghost for dogfighting.

Anime: 17

https://www.fanfiction.net/s/13142630/1/Ignite

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.

[No one pays him any mind which saves him from embarrassment, but feeds the exasperation derived from a lack of assistance.]

I feel like this flows better if the comma is move up one clause – [No one pays him any mind, which saves him from embarrassment but feeds the exasperation derived from a lack of assistance.] “No one pays him any mind” is a complete thought, so it makes sense to lump everything after it.

[Simon is small, stocky, and non-descript, olive-skinned with brown hair and brown eyes. Despite all of his efforts to seem otherwise, he is young. He wants to be certain, confident, and sure of himself for his travels. He wants to prove that he knows what he is doing. But this has not been easy. And for the first time since he’s left New Bark Town, it is finally hitting him: he is alone.]

This is a good way to give us description in the start. You don’t linger overlong on mundane details, and the conversational narrative tone helps tie the details into the character and keep us engaged.

[Hesitation frustrates him, yet his chikorita’s is steadfast.]

This is unclear to me – “chikorita’s” implies a possessive, but I don’t know what it could be referring to.

[Spearow begins to shriek]

You refer to it as “the spearow” elsewhere, so you should probably add the article here for consistency.

You use lines for scene breaks earlier, but at this point you switch to dots. You should pick one for consistency – I would recommend the dots, so that lines can be kept for your author’s notes.

[Cherrygrove from route 20]

Route names are proper nouns, so that should be “Route 20”.

I like the tone here. Erudite narration can sometimes feel dry or stilted, but here it conveys a strong sense of dissociation from the young protagonist, making us feel like we’re outside observers looking in. I think this is the first time I’ve seen omniscient perspective done well in a while.

This is a good opening – I like that you’re having a trainer struggling and not immediately succeeding – but it does end rather abruptly. It feels like the scene got cut off, rather than a proper chapter break. Cliffhangers are generally something to avoid in first chapters, as we need to be invested in the first place for them to have an impact.

https://www.fanfiction.net/s/13142693/1/Under-the-Moonlight

Previously reviewed, not blocked.

https://www.fanfiction.net/s/13143114/1/To-Catch-a-Champion-s-Heart

Blocked, don’t recognize them.

https://www.fanfiction.net/s/13143592/1/I-don-t-give-a-fuck

Blocked, previously encountered.

https://www.fanfiction.net/s/13143663/1/Story-rules-Pikachu-s-secret-dates

Blocked, don’t recognize them.

https://www.fanfiction.net/s/13143756/1/Sootopolis-Songs

Blocked, previously reviewed.

https://www.fanfiction.net/s/13143932/1/Eyes-Wide-Heart-Open

Blocked, previously reviewed.

https://www.fanfiction.net/s/13144191/1/The-Owl-s-Receiver

Previously reviewed, not blocked.

https://www.fanfiction.net/s/13144324/1/The-Pokepurge

Blocked, don’t recognize them.

https://www.fanfiction.net/s/13144548/1/The-Ultimate-Champion

Blocked, don’t recognize them.

https://www.fanfiction.net/s/13145069/1/The-Last-Light-on-Earth-a-Hardenshipping-Oneshot

Blocked, previously encountered.

https://www.fanfiction.net/s/13142738/1/Protector-of-the-Chosen-One

[Smart but not genius Ash]

I have watched like two episodes of the anime and I still know that being dumb is a fundamental part of Ash’s character. At a certain point, you really need to ask yourself why you’re so uncomfortable admitting you want to write about an OC that you have to staple Ash’s face over theirs. Just write about your OC. Trying to force this to hit the same beats as canon to justify it being Ash will just cheapen the changes you’ve made and make the entire thing more boring as you take what could be an original plotline and hammer it back into the same shape as always.

[Calm down, breath… breath…]

You want “breathe”. “Breath” is the noun.

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.

I’m sorry, but this is a mess. It’s really not acceptable to have uncapitalized instances of the pronoun “I”. You need to get a beta reader to help you.

https://www.fanfiction.net/s/13142775/1/Serena-or-Sarina

This isn’t tagged as anime fic, so people searching for anime fic can’t find it. That’s very unfortunate! You can help people find your story by selecting it from the “World” dropdown menu when you select your story under “Manage Stories”.

https://www.fanfiction.net/s/13142965/1/Closer-Than-My-Hands-Have-Been

[“I got wet!” Her best friend and co-worker announced]

https://www.fanfiction.net/s/13143031/1/Transcended

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.

[a women asked]

You want “woman”. “Women” is the plural.

[The blonde]

You’re overusing epithets. When you are writing a story and refer to a character by a physical trait, occupation, age, or any other attribute, rather than that character’s name, you are bringing the reader’s attention to that particular attribute. That can be used quite effectively to help your reader to focus on key details with just a few words. However, if the fact that the character is “the brunette,” “the trainer,” “the older man,” etc. is not relevant to that moment in the story, this will only distract the reader from the purpose of the scene. If your only reason for referring to a character this way is to avoid using his or her name or a pronoun too much, don’t do it. You’re fixing a problem that actually isn’t one. Just go ahead and use the name or pronoun again. It’ll be good.

In this case, for instance, this scene is a political discussion where the characters’ relative titles and positions are much more important than their physical appearance. Calling her “the champion” or “the Sinnoh champion” would be much more appropriate here.

[The only other notable items in the room was a picture of the speaker]

You say “items”, so to agree with the plural, you want “were”, not “was”; you’d also have to list them all at once rather than stopping. If you want to list each picture as a separate sentence, you’d have to rearrange this, to something like, “The only other notable items in the room were pictures of the speaker. In one…”

[She wore a light blue dress that complimented her light brown hair and dark blue eyes.]

You want “complemented”. “Compliment” means to give a compliment.

I feel the description in this scene is excessive. They don’t really do anything to advance the narrative; with every description, you bring the story to a screeching halt, then jerk it back into motion just as suddenly in the next paragraph. 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.

In this case, since they’re canon characters, your audience already knows what they look like and it’s not required to give establishing shots. If any particular detail about them is important, you can draw attention to it, but otherwise you can just call them by their names – or give unique identifiers, like Cynthia as “the Sinnoh champion” – and we can fill in the details.

Also, you really should not use “male” or “female” as epithets, as those are only ever used in clinical research contexts and sound unnatural and objectifying in prose.

This all seems very dry, I have to say. You’re focusing almost entirely on literal descriptions, with no emotion or flourishes to them. It’s just a lot of, “This happened, then this happened, then this person said this, then this person reacted in this way.” It feels more like I’m watching a documentary than reading a story. I would recommend focusing less on literal description and more on what the characters are feeling. Particularly, it would help if we could get inside their heads – right now it seems like you’re adopting a far-view third-person omniscient perspective, where there’s no clear narrator but we can hear the thoughts of everyone. That creates a very detached feeling, like we’re just observing things dispassionately rather than getting into the thick of it.

[“Well, with the Lake Trio, they created the Red Chain and summoned both Dialga and Palkia. Using the Red Chain, they planned on taking control of Dialga and Palkia, which they succeeded for a bit,” Lenny said. “The region was about to be destroyed, but sensing a disturbance, Giratina came and trapped their leader in the Distortion World. The Red Chain was disrupted and Cynthia and Lucas defeated Team Galactic!”

Professor Rowan nodded in approval with an impressed look on his face. Lenny saw that and gave him a smirk, drawing Rowan to roll his eyes.

“Not going lie, Lenny, I’m impressed you remember that much. Of course, there’s more to it, but for a brief explanation, it’s spot on,” Rowan told him. “Anyway, back to my theory.]

In particular, I’d avoid doing things like this – reiterating things we already know. If you want to do a plot based on the events of D/P, it would be more expedient to just have the main characters be familiar with it already and work from there. This is just structured like an interruption in the theory – Rowan doesn’t even mention anywhere he was wrong or really react to it in anyway, he just says “Now that the exposition has been dealt with, let’s resume the plot.” If you find that you’re writing something that doesn’t convey meaningful information to the characters, that’s generally a sign it doesn’t convey meaningful information to the readers either. It’ll be more engaging if readers can get straight into the thick of things.

https://www.fanfiction.net/s/13143608/1/Blizzard

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.

Your capitalization is all over the place – you’re not capitalizing names like “Christmas” or the pronoun “I”. You really need to put more effort into this.

https://www.fanfiction.net/s/13143788/1/I-Just-Want-To-Travel-The-World

I appreciate that you’re not capitalizing pokemon.

[Oh, you are asking me who I am in my previous life and whether you know me? Who and what I am before is not important anymore. What is important is who and what I am now.]

I thank you for this, but it does still raise the standard question of why this has to be a reincarnation story at all. If her past life doesn’t matter, why is the fact she had one a detail we need to include in the story?

[I didn’t know it at that time that I was reborn, all I can tell that I was being manhandled ]

For tense consistency, that should be “all I could tell”, and you seem to be missing a “was” after that.

[an equally gigantic women]

You want “woman”. “Women” is the plural.

You’re dropping a lot of connecting words and making a lot of tense errors, which makes the story very hard to follow. I’d recommend proofreading more thoroughly and getting a beta reader to help you.

[He can understand why Vance chose to be an ACE trainer. After all, he himself used to be one, much to his father’s chagrin.]

This is confusing, because Vance’s father is already being mentioned here. I initially thought this meant that Vance used to be an ACE trainer much to Griff’s chagrin. It might be better to just remove that final clause.

[Fallarbor town]

All parts of a name are capitalized, so this should be “Fallarbor Town”.

[3 idiotic trespassers]

In prose, numbers less than 13 or so are written out with letters.

[He felt a mixture of bitterness, sadness, pain, rage and guilt.]

So uh, how does our narrator know this? Does she have the godlike ability to see into the hearts and minds of everyone at any point in time? You go on to describe Velda in third person. All in all, this just makes it sound like Griff is the real main character. If you mean to change POVs here, a) you need to use a scene break marker to show that something’s changed, and b) that’s generally a risky proposition in a first chapter, where we need to get a clear sense of who our main character is and why we should be invested. Derailing that to spend many pages on someone else just makes things muddled.

[Hanna’s blond and wavy hair]

You want “blonde”. “Blond” is the masculine form.

This all seems incredibly scattered, like you have a lot of information but don’t know how to convey it in an easily digestible manner. This whole chapter is just dumping a metric ton of information on us, with little of it having clear relevance to the story. All in all, it sounds like you want to write a worldbuilding primer more than a story (and that is a legitimate story type you can post here). And I again have to ask why it is necessary to have a reincarnated character rather than just having a regular trainer convey this information.

https://www.fanfiction.net/s/13143913/1/Moonlight-Eclipsed

Placing the title in the story body is redundant and looks kinda weird.

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.

[Her light island attire didn’t fit the chilly whether but she reasoned]

You want “weather”, and a comma after it.

[The large crystalline structure look so perfect there]

The rest of the story is in past tense, so this should be as well.

[Moon had not seen the mountains peak]

Missing apostrophe.

[She knew many locals of alola who weren’t happy with the change, especially at such a sacred spot, but sometimes sacrifices needed to be made for progress.]

Missing capital for “Alola”, and this is a very conceited thing for a foreigner to say. I don’t think the Kantonian really gets to decide what sacrifices the Alolans need to make to replace their own traditions with Kanto’s while calling it ‘progress’.

[her roll as champion]

You want “role”. “Roll” is the verb.

Your scene break marker looks a bit awkward, since it’s both left-justified and text characters, making it blend into the story too much. I’d recommend centering it, or using a horizontal line instead.

[the man holding the reigns]

You want “reins”. A reign is a period of a king’s rule.

This is a nice concept, but you really need to work on those grammatical errors. I recommend getting a beta reader to help you.

https://www.fanfiction.net/s/13144329/1/Wild-Boy

[A beige feline creature]

I don’t really see what this method of description adds, to be honest. We know what pokemon look like, the narrators know what pokemon are, it’s perfectly reasonable to just say “a persian”. That also removes potential ambiguity if the description isn’t clear enough, especially as there are so many pokemon with similar designs now that you can’t assume everyone will recognize them from a few details.

[A blue canid that would have come up to his waist were the boy standing was in position in front of him]

I feel like this clause is a bit overwrought – the aside takes too long and is too specific, I think. Again, just saying the pokemon’s name would help a lot here.

[A strange shimmering of physical data occasionally coalesced in front of the boy]

I don’t understand what you mean by “physical data”? The Barrier move is just telekinetic force.

[Just before they would have been hit with the stars, the strange gathering vanished.

Atop a craggy mountaintop, a man wrapped himself more firmly in his cape before continuing down the slope.]

This appears to be a scene transition, so you need something to mark it, such as a horizontal line.

[Lance just hoped that the enthusiasm that Deino showed wouldn’t wane quite as much as he suspected that it would after they started training.]

I would be more concerned about the temperament issues that its evolutions display. Is Lance aware of that?

[Lance glanced over her [trembling legs, stock-still posture indicating her heightened alert state, the scales slowly beginning to bristle along her spine] ]

Why the brackets here?

[she squeaked and hid behind Lance’s far less formidable form. Charizard growled, the deep rumble in the back of his throat echoing against the ground and into Lance’s form.]

Repeating sounds and words too quickly together sounds awkward, especially if they have the exact same placement in the sentence. I’d recommend using a different word to describe Lance here.

[He seemed malnourished but not starving, weak but from lack of movement rather than lack of nutrition.]

Malnourished means lack of nutrition – it’s kind of there in the name. What you’re describing here might be better termed “atrophy”? Or maybe just “he seemed weak but not malnourished” would work.

[He mused on how to acquire a Porygon adaptor without anyone on IT questioning why he would need it so that he could grant the being a physical body of its own.]

Ah, that’s a nice detail for squaring how a supposedly virtual pokemon can have physical form.

[Her shadow blinked at Lance, a multi-eyed sea of unfathomable depths.]

Ooh, this is a nice detail. Are you leaning into the concept of psychic trainers and postulating that pokemon masters take on the traits and powers of their chosen type? That’s quite interesting.

I like the way you’re conveying telepathy. It’s a common narrative conceit to make it work like spoken words, but real thoughts tend to be a lot stranger and more jumbled than that, so this concept-driven speech is perhaps more accurate.

[he said as encouragingly as he could manage.”]

Errant quote here.

This is quite good, and I like the concept. Mewtwo is always a fun character to play with. I will say that the story feels a bit slow – not only in that the majority of this chapter is spent on hashing out technical and legal details, but that some of the description feels like it takes a bit too long to get to the point. It might be good to tone it down just a notch, maybe combine a few sentences to increase momentum.

https://www.fanfiction.net/s/13144353/1/Pokemon-Harem-Love-Story

[It was the combination of both anime series and video games. Also, brand new characters I created. Instead of Ash as the main protagonist, I make a new protagonist which is the cousin of Ash in which I named Elisa. Also, I included the male protagonists from the video games who will be the her new harem love interests.]

I would still say this should be classified as anime fic. The game protagonists are blank slates; you don’t need to be familiar with the games to understand them. The reader does, however, need to be familiar with the anime if you are referencing characters and events from there.

Additionally, harem stories are not appropriate for children and should not be rated K.

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.

Titling chapters in the story itself looks kinda weird; the dropdown menu should suffice.

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 have a lot of extra spaces around your punctuation marks. This sometimes happens when importing the story from a file. Remember to preview the story before it’s posted.

Generally, this is quite confusing and hard to follow. Are you not a native speaker? I recommend getting a beta reader to help you.

https://www.fanfiction.net/s/13144456/1/Washed-Up

[K for Pokémon battles, mild violence, and stressful situations.]

As you can see here, FFN is annoying and strips plus symbols, thus making this look nonsensical. You’ll have to literally type “K-plus”, or just vaguely say “rating is for…”

Titling chapters in the story itself looks kinda weird; the dropdown menu should suffice.

[I flipped the book a few pages and at the top of the page was a picture of a Doduo that detailed its anatomy and lower on the page it documented its behavior and habitats.]

This is a run-on sentence; generally, if you find yourself using multiple “and”s in a single sentence, that’s what you’ve got. You should reword this so it’s split into multiple sentences.

[these last 5 Years]

In prose, numbers less than 13 or so are written out with letters. “Years” also shouldn’t be capitalized.

[“Well your birthdays this weekend and I suppose this could be an early gift. That is if you want it?” I looked down at the tube as he held it out to me “of course thanks dad!”]

Missing apostrophe in “birthday’s”; when a title (such as “mom” or “dad”) is used in place of a name, it’s capitalized like one; and a new speaker requires a new paragraph.

Generally, this has a lot of punctuation errors (missing commas, etc.) that make it hard to read. I’d recommend reading up on that topic, and getting a beta reader to help you.

https://www.fanfiction.net/s/13144488/1/Pokemon-Soul-Link

It really sounds like you want to be designing a video game rather than writing a story. Mechanics aren’t inherently interesting to read about, but people will be much more engaged if they have to use them themselves. You may want to consider Twine, Inform 7, or RPG Maker for your needs.

https://www.fanfiction.net/s/13144808/1/Clemont-Please

[“Let’s see,” she mused pensively, “Where do I register?”]

If the dialogue is meant to be all one sentence, like [“Let’s see, where do I register?”], then it should be written like it would be if there was no narration – the “where” should be uncapitalized, in this case.

“Mused pensively” is also a redundant adverb choice, which sounds strange. It’s better to save adverbs for when their modifier is unusual or non-obvious; we can presume that if someone is shouting, they’re shouting angrily, but if you say they’re shouting quietly, that’s an unusual thing that will make us pay attention. Saving adverbs for those moments will give them more impact.

[“Serena!” The female voice called]

Dialogue rules remain constant regardless of punctuation, so this should be [“Serena!” the female voice called].

[BEGIN DIVERGENCE]

You don’t need to declare this; this kind of artificiality just damages immersion. Your audience will recognize the divergence point if they’re familiar with the source.

https://www.fanfiction.net/s/13144953/1/Uxie-s-Just-So-Stories

[The former suggested either even less degrees of freedom than UXIE thought existed]

In this construction, you want “fewer”. I believe the distinction is that “fewer” is for discrete amounts, while “less” is for unmeasurable differences – “less sand”, “fewer grains of sand”.

[nor be able forming memories about specified locations]

It looks like a word was dropped here.

[Simply using these locations left a trail – and so UXIE designed an algorithm to ensure that for every one that needed to be hidden, 100 others were as well.]

I don’t understand this.

This does provide helpful context for “What Uxie Knows”, but I still feel like this observation doesn’t add much – going too meta just makes it impossible to engage with the story, to me. It’s hard for me to tell if this is supposed to be silly or serious, but I feel it only really works as the former.

https://www.fanfiction.net/s/13145110/1/The-Pokemon-Master-Dakota-Gryphon

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. I do consider this to be the case even if you are using some elements from game canon, as the games are the baseline blank slate and rarely contain information that contradicts the anime. Unless non-gamers would be just as lost in this story as people who don’t know about the anime characters, I’d recommend labeling this as anime.

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.

[Chapter Zero (Prologue)]

This construction is quite awkward, as prologues have a distinct purpose from chapters. You can just say “prologue”.

[When I was very young, I remember being scared of Pokemon. I grew up on Pacifidlog Island with my mother and father. One day, two wild Gyarados were having a territory dispute while I was outside playing. The destruction caused by their dispute was devastating and since that day I have had a hard time trusting Pokemon. It was only because my mother found me that I am alive today. I remember her shouting and picking me up just as one of the Gyarados launched a hyper beam toward us. I remember the flash of light and then nothing.]

The phrase “show, don’t tell” pops into my mind here. Do you see how this is very dry, like reading something out of a textbook rather than someone relating a story? You’re severely summarizing and abridging the events, and you don’t show us anything of the protagonist’s actual reactions to those events in the moment, you just tell us that they’re scared. It makes for a much stronger narrative when you’re able to immerse us in the events and make us really empathize with the characters.

Some points for killing off both parents instead of just the mom, I guess?

[“Are you ok?”]

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.

[I shook to hard I could bearly stand.]

Typo, and you want “barely”.

There really isn’t much here. 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. Backstory details such as these aren’t always necessary to know before we start the plot, and if they are they can almost always be brought up in the middle of the story, after we’ve gotten invested.

https://www.fanfiction.net/s/13145221/1/It-s-Been-A-Long-Long-Time

Previously reviewed, not blocked.

https://www.fanfiction.net/s/13145421/1/It-s-not-too-late

Previously reviewed, not blocked.

https://www.fanfiction.net/s/13145871/1/Regal-Lords

Non-story content is banned on this site.

https://www.fanfiction.net/s/13146007/1/Down-The-Road-From-Home

https://www.fanfiction.net/s/13146253/1/One-Shot-Collection

Blocked, that weirdo conservative military nut who’s really into pokebanging but only straight couples.

https://www.fanfiction.net/s/13146877/1/Pokemon-Champions

Blocked, previously reviewed.

https://www.fanfiction.net/s/13147144/1/Thin-ice

Not capitalizing sentences makes me not want to read your story. Put a bare minimum of effort into this.

https://www.fanfiction.net/s/13147258/1/Adventure-of-a-Lifetime-Outtakes

Blocked, SnowLucario.

https://www.fanfiction.net/s/13147354/1/Kris-Farting-Problem

https://www.fanfiction.net/s/13147426/1/A-Present-For-Delibird

Only four reviews! Four! I even allowed anonymous reviews! The obvious conclusion from this is that only one person in the entire fandom hates me.

Of course, I say “only”, but this is still more than the average story’s getting.

https://www.fanfiction.net/s/13147575/1/Ultra-Aura-Force

Titling chapters in the story itself looks kinda weird; the dropdown menu should suffice. You also want just “Prologue”, no D.

Posting multiple chapters in the same document is against the rules of this site. Please use the chaptering feature so people can follow the story properly.

[(First Person POV)]

You don’t need to label POVs when they’re obvious from context. I also recommend against switching POVs within the same chapter, as it makes the story hard to follow.

https://www.fanfiction.net/s/13148026/1/Pokemon-Rewrite

Blocked, don’t recognize them. Anime.

https://www.fanfiction.net/s/13148567/1/Have-a-Nice-Swim

Lana is canonically underage, so you should either include an author’s note establishing she has been aged up for this piece, or tag this underage.

https://www.fanfiction.net/s/13148622/1/son-of-a-pokeball

Trolling is supposed to be entertaining. Try harder.

https://www.fanfiction.net/s/13149099/1/Thorax-Edition

Blocked, don’t recognize them.

https://www.fanfiction.net/s/13149515/1/Pok%C3%A9mon-Coming-of-Age

Blocked, don’t recognize them.

https://www.fanfiction.net/s/13145999/1/Burn-and-Electrify

[“I can’t negotiate with someone whose ideals failed her,” N’s lips curl]

When narration doesn’t describe how something is said, it’s its own sentence and is punctuated accordingly. So this should be [“I can’t negotiate with someone whose ideals failed her.” N’s lips curl]

[Arrows barbed with poison strike Touko’s heart. Toxin flows through her bloodstream, causing her knees to shake and a shaky breath to escape from her mouth.]

I feel that this is over-the-top – metaphor over simile tends to sound overdramatic in this situation.

[There doesn’t need to be anymore bloodshed.]

You want “any more”, two words. “Anymore” is an adverb.

This doesn’t seem terribly in-character for N – even disregarding the obvious silliness of him allowing you to keep challenging him if you fail the battle in the games, the fact he keeps pushing to make the PC the hero throughout the plot when he’s effectively already won the war rather implies he wants them to win. But I’m annoyed by spineless canon N, so it’s fine to give him a harder characterization here.

The bigger issue, I feel, is that you’ve focused on these two to the exclusion of what they’re actually fighting for. Touko seems to imply there’s an actual war and people have actually died, which is a far cry from the milquetoast combat we get in the games. In that situation, it really bears asking exactly why this war is being fought. Why are so many people willing to lay down their lives for this? If it’s for a stupid reason, then it makes sense for Touko to just want to end it, but if it’s for a good reason, like liberating obviously sapient creatures from second-class citizenship, then maybe N has a point? Touko very much has failed as the hero of ideals here – she appears to have no convictions or desires of her own other than to snuff out everyone else’s ideals. I’m baffled why Zekrom chose her at all. That makes it hard for me to root for her.

https://www.fanfiction.net/s/13146134/1/A-New-Journey

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.

[Striving to be a Champion is a worthy goal indeed, but can an orphan like Sasha really accomplish that? (An entirely new region based on Russia, filled with new Pokemon and New teams)]

You may also want to pick a more original summary. Right now, this only tells us the genre, which isn’t much to go on. What’s your plot?

The chapter dropdown throws off centering on the first line, which makes chapter titles look awkward. I’d recommend finding a way to bump it down a line, or just eschewing it entirely.

[Sasha Smirnov looked out into the stars as she layed on the grass.]

You want “lay”, not “layed”. English is inconsistent like that.

[The girl was rather small, pale with long blonde hair trailing down to her waist and bright blue eyes]

This sounds like you’re saying the hair trails down to her eyes. I’d recommend rearranging this.

[the fourteen year old girl unable to sleep as she stared into the nebulous abyss above her]

This is also a run-on when appended to the description. I’d recommend making this its own sentence.

[Even her friends, Nicholas and, well Natasha wasn’t as much as a friend as she was someone the girl knew]

There should be a comma after “well” here.

[would be starting their journey’s as well]

You want “journeys”. Apostrophes aren’t used for plurals.

[Zelenyy town]

Missing capital here. When a name is multiple words, every word should be capitalized.

[“Is that…a Minior?” She asks herself.]

Additionally, the rest of the story is in past tense, so this should be as well.

[It’s shell]

You want “its”. “It’s” always means “it is”.

[At the Zelenyy Town Labs…]

This isn’t a video game. You should establish time and place through context or narration. Non-general scene transitions are jarring.

[‘Will you be my friend? My mommy’s gone and I don’t have anyone else.’ It asked, and the purple haired girl felt her heart break at that. No wonder Fennel thought she would like it, the pokemon was just like her. An orphan with no one else. Resolve filled Sasha’s heart as she looked down at the creature.

‘I will be your friend.’ She replies, and the smoochum walks closer and hugs her leg.]

Uh… so, talking pokemon are an enormous can of worms you shouldn’t open unless you have a very good explanation for why one group of people is being owned by another group of people. Unless pokemon training is going to look very different from what we’re used to, then no, she’s not going to be “its” friend – friends don’t keep their friends in stasis capsules, expect them to obey orders like a robot, and take all the credit for their accomplishments, but that’s the model of training we’re given in canon.

[So, what are you gonna call her?” Fennel asks, and Sasha mulls it over before coming to a name.

“Sneg. It’s Strana for Snow.” She says and Fennel nods.]

Friends also don’t decide on names for their friends without consent. Why doesn’t the social creature already have its own name? As a psychic, she could just ask.

This is a decent opening, but you do need to work on those grammar errors. I’d recommend getting a beta reader to help you.

https://www.fanfiction.net/s/13147723/1/Banette-and-Phantump

[This is a one-shot. I’m not solid on the history of all the characters from Pokémon, but as far as I know the backstory on this one is open-ended, so I chose her. Aside from that, it’s all original content based on the Pokémon universe. I have no affiliation with Gamefreak/Nintendo blahblahblah, all rights reserved, Pokémon is owned by Gamefreak/Nintendo, not me, hope you enjoy.]

Okay, so, this doesn’t tell us anything about why we should be reading your story. Meta information like this is better suited for an author’s note; due to limited space in summaries, you should dedicate your summary towards hooking the reader and explaining the story itself.

Web documents don’t allow indents, so to avoid paragraphs blending together, you should double-space between them.

[It had been a long day, dad had taken me to Grandpa’s place for the night]

When a title (such as “mom” or “dad”) is used in place of a name, it’s capitalized like one. Additionally, this is a comma splice. You need to split this sentence in two or use a different transition.

[Anyway, a long, long time ago, back before we had fancy technology such as Pokéballs, the only way we could get Pokémon to do our bidding was to befriend them and raise them the normal way. This, in and of itself, was a hard task, but the harder part was getting their eggs so we could raise them from hatching. Even the ones we raised ourselves would eventually leave the village, looking for a new mate, and it would be sheer chance if we ever saw them again. So, we had our strongest members of the village go out every time a mating season came to an end to go search for eggs.]

Uh, that sounds pretty messed up. Going by this, humans are literally changelings from a pokemon’s perspective. That’s really creepy, and the fact that pokemon otherwise universally choose to leave seems like rather indisputable evidence that they don’t actually like being with humans and the training system is not equitable for both parties.

[Now, my brother and I used to be so enamored with the thought of one day being able to earn the right to raise our own Pokémon, a rather straightforward trial, all things considered; find and take an egg, then make it back alive without attracting the attention of the nest’s owners. ]

This is improper semicolon usage. As a general rule of thumb, you should be able to replace semicolons with periods and still have the resulting sentences make sense; for instance, what I’m doing here. You want a full colon here.

[“Which eggs did you find Grandpa?”]

Missing paragraph break here.

[So we decided to go ourselves, and share the responsibility of whatever egg(s) we found.]

The “(s)” notation is unnecessary; that’s only used for machine writing where you’re actually displaying a variable value. You can just say “eggs” here.

[One of them lowers it’s head at us]

You want “its”. “It’s” always means “it is”. Additionally, you switch to present tense here, which is very jarring. The grandfather is recounting a story that happened in the past, so it should stay in past tense the whole way through.

[I looked at the two Pokémon, my old doll turned-Banette, and my long-lost little brother turned-Phantump, and hugged them both. My son came over and hugged me, and afterwards we all returned to the village.”

“So *that’s* where your Banette and Trevenant came from, Grandpa?”]

Okay, so he’s using his baby brother to win dogfights. You go on to say he literally collared and captured him. Can you not see how incredibly messed up this is? He knows this pokemon is a person he knew and loved, yet he’s treating him like a pet. That’s horrible. If they’re really so “docile”, he shouldn’t need pokeballs to keep them in line.

This is a decent story, but in addition to the issues I brought up, I don’t see what the framing device adds – the granddaughter doesn’t seem to contribute much to the story, so you could just as easily have written the story as narration, which would have the benefit of avoiding interruptions. Presenting a story like this can be effective if you mean to make the storyteller an unreliable narrator, but that doesn’t seem to be what’s going on here.

https://www.fanfiction.net/s/13148671/1/Kanto-Retold-A-Charmander-s-Story

[the Professor said that there would a trainer coming]

Dropped a word here.

[coming to start their journey, I hope that I get to travel today.]

This is a comma splice. You need to split this sentence in two or use a different transition.

[My Arceus, Blue!]

Okay, even if we assume that pokemon do universally worship Arceus (and that’s not a safe assumption), this phrasing is as absurd as saying “my Jesus” or “my Zeus”. When Christians say “my god”, they literally mean THEIR god, the one who is named God, as opposed to all the fake heathen gods from other religions. They are able to say this because their religion has only one god, but in a polytheistic system the phrasing would be completely different. The Greeks said “By Zeus!” or “In Zeus’ name!”, along with other more creative curses that had nothing to do with the gods, like “To the crows with you!” Even then, you should say these things aloud to see if they sound like things people would actually say – some things work and some just don’t. “Mary mother of God!” is a curse, but “By Mary!” isn’t.

[Now that red has finally chosen.]

Missing capital here.

[He was about 5 feet tall]

In prose, numbers less than 13 or so are written out with letters.

[“Nice looking lizard you got there Red.” Blue taunted “Let’s see it beat my Squirtle though.”]

[“Blue, Red has never battled in real life before. Please at least let me explain the basics of battling to him first.”]

Except everyone reading this is already intimately familiar with the mechanics, so this is a waste of time. This isn’t even in the game, if memory serves. There’s no reason to do this and it only slows the story down.

[“Okay Charmander time to use that special egg move!” I smiled at Red, or at least what I could see of him from the ground “Charmander use counter!”]

what

[“In that case, Squirtle use Aqua Jet!”]

what

[Now under normal circumstances, this move would have been too quick to avoid, but Squirtle was so tired that he couldn’t get enough momentum built up to go fast enough to completely overtake me, this gave me one last opening.]

That’s ridiculous. This battle has been going on for, what, two rounds? It’s incredibly overpowered to say your main character just gets to ignore a move’s defining feature because you say so.

[“Looks like we have a chance, Charmander. Let’s finish this with a Dragon Pulse!”]

WHAT

Okay, I think you should probably add that you’re also giving Red a ridiculously overpowered starter, because that’s also a pretty major change.

The pokemon POV adds nothing here. You are just repeating a canon scene line for line while Charmander acts as Red’s cheerleader, with no personality or motives of his own. If you’re going to make a big point of this as your story’s defining feature, it needs to actually affect things. Charmander should be his own person, not an extension of Red’s will. Does he have any wants or opinions that might conflict with Red’s? He expresses interest in reaching the pokemon league, but why, and how does he even know about that in the first place? Shouldn’t he have a different perspective on battling, being the one who’s in the thick of it? How does he feel about Red shouting all the orders; is there ever a case where he disagrees? How does he feel about doing all the work while Red gets all the credit? If he only ever wants what Red wants, there’s no tension to the story and his narration doesn’t add anything.

For examples of the sorts of things I’m talking about, I recommend taking a look at “The Friendly Battle” by Farla and “Gods and Demons: ad terminos terrae” by Keleri.

https://www.fanfiction.net/s/13149173/1/Adorbs-Journey

I appreciate that you’re not capitalizing pokemon.

[Alola, listen sweet heart,]

This is a comma splice. You need to split this sentence in two or use a different transition.

[you’re father]

You want “your”. “You’re” means “you are”.

[He had dark blonde hair]

You want “blond”. “Blonde” is the feminine form.

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.

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/13149761/1/Doomed-to-Fail

I appreciate that you’re not capitalizing species names. However, the word “pokemon” shouldn’t be capitalized either, for the same reasons.

[Not that the fence was really that y’all to begin with.]

What?

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. You’ve introduced the character and premise, but we have no idea what the story’s going to look like. I’d recommend perhaps fusing this with your second chapter.

One Comment

Marshall Lee the Espeon King says:

December 24, 2018 at 11:36 pm

First off, a very Merry Christmas to everyone. But I’m starting to love it how Hybrid is basically screaming at every user now for ignoring her. She is like that stalker you ignore who resorts to burning your name in your front lawn.
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Dragon Quill

Writing With Scales

[28] The Other Pokereviews, Part 145

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