A request from Cadenceheart117, last seen giving a revenge review and then furiously backpedalling. Not sure what prompted the change of heart, but here we go anyway.

https://www.fanfiction.net/s/12870744/1/A-Test-of-Will

(Part of the chapter review exchange.)

[We all have our stories. Some of us smaller than others. But I love my mate. Nothing can change that.]

This is a pretty vague summary; it only really tells us the genre, which is already obvious. Look at the blurbs for published romance stories and notice that they tend to have a unique hook. “We all have our stories” – that’s a very generic truth that doesn’t tell me much about this story. Why might your intended audience want to read this story? What makes this story unique?

I generally find it’s best not to use the same symbol for scene breaks as for extra-narrative sections such as author’s notes, as it can make the notes look like part of the story. Horizontal lines, which can be inserted in the in-site editor, are usually used to separate notes.

[It’s piercing eyes studied his movements, letting him get within twenty feet before he moved.]

You want “its”. “It’s” always means “it is”. The pronouns are also ambiguous here; who’s the last “he”? The opponent lucario?

[This time, he hadn’t even bothered with bone rush]

There is some debate over whether or not to capitalize attack names; personally, I am in favor of capitalizing them if you choose not to use articles with them, as here. We can perhaps assume pokemon use a Vancian-like magic system, with attack techniques as discrete and unique entities.

[it smashed into the humans gut]

Missing apostrophe.

[Lohki wheezed, but steeled himself, turning toward the Alpha. All he had to do was touch… But he was too late. The Alpha dropped, spinning, and sweeping his leg around.]

I’m having difficulty picturing what’s happening here. Right before this, you say the lucario punched him. Where did he go after that? From this it sounds like he jumped above and is now dropping down for another attack? If he moved, there should be a note of that.

[The crowd of Lucario’s and Riolu’s]

Apostrophes shouldn’t be used for plurals. Fandom has generally decided that there is no pluralization for pokemon, i.e. this would be written as “lucario and riolu”.

[(Three Days Before)]

I can see how this is necessary, as it’s not immediately clear that this is taking place before the opening, but it’s still very awkward to have to break the story like this to provide time and place information. Movies, comics, and video games have to do this because they’re visual media, but in prose there are neater ways you can convey this. Giving us the exact timeline can actually remove tension by making it obvious that things have to match up with the future scene by X time. One possibility would be to add a piece of narration in the opening that makes it clear it’s in the future, perhaps by naming some of the characters that will appear in this flashback, or one of those “he thought back to when this all started…” transitions – tacky, but it works.

However, I think I’d actually recommend nixing the flash-forward opening entirely. The technique tends to be overused on this site and is often used in bad faith to bait-and-switch the reader, which makes some readers suspicious. Your story should be good enough to stand on its own, without requiring an initial splash of blood and action before it starts. Flash-forwards can be interesting if they change the context of the present-day story, but there doesn’t seem to be anything surprising or unexpected in it. It’s pretty easy to predict that Lohki is going to fall in love with the lucario girl and her dad is going to be mad about it just from the first few lines. There would be more tension if we don’t know exactly how that’s going to end up.

More discussion on the use of flash-forwards can be had here: fanfiction (d o t) net/topic/11834/142411850/1/First-Chapters#142801968

[“Why can’t I talk to him, Father? He just offered to help me bring berries back to the nest.” asked Crystal]

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]. 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.

Also, a new speaker means a new paragraph. You’re generally good at doing this, but there are a few sections where you don’t, mostly towards the end. It’s really hard to follow conversations when you don’t do this.

[“Because, Crystal, you are my daughter. The daughter of an Alpha. You will be raised, and treated as such, so as your honor demands. Lohki may be kind, but he is human. He does not possess proper strength befitting of an Alpha, Beta, or even Theta. He is a lowly Omega. And while you will not mistreat an Omega, you will not associate with them either. It makes you look weak, which makes me look weak, which in turn makes the entire pack look weak. Need I remind you of what happens to weak pack members?”]

Okay, so, just to be clear – real animals don’t actually work like this. The pack hierarchy thing is an artifact of how animals are raised in captivity, and even that artifact doesn’t really look like this. What you’re describing here is a rigid class or caste system, which is something only seen in human societies. It’s fair if you want to do a story about that, but I think it would be better to cut out the middleman and just write them as literal aristocrats. You are already portraying them as essentially human anyway, so it wouldn’t be too jarring.

I’m also unclear what relationship this model has to canon. In the main series, humans are clearly on top of the social order, and in PMD, humans don’t exist at all. This setup has more in common with a totally original setting than Pokemon.

[her fathers values]

Another missing apostrophe.

[heading farther up the mountain]

When discussing distance, “further” is used. This is just a quirky English thing.

[Arrow nodded once, and the sentry at Lohki’s side stepped away, releasing him. He turned, leaving the Alpha’s cave and heading farther up the mountain, straight for his home. His was the farthest up, and as such, the coldest and least comfortable. And yet, he was eager to arrive. He knew who would be there, waiting for him.]

How did she get there before him? They start in the same place, if I understand the scene correctly.

[Honestly? She hadn’t]

Wait, is this Crystal’s perspective now? It’s generally a bad idea to switch POVs without indication. It’s harder to follow a story if we’re jumping around peoples’ heads without warning.

[Means you don’t value your position over your friends.]

Maybe I’m just not in tune with the current romantic culture, but this line feels awkward and kind of insulting to me. It just seems like a very clinical, political thing to say, and I just can’t imagine lovers talking like this. Like… this should be obvious to both of them, right? He shouldn’t need to state something so apparent.

[the packs only game]

Another missing apostrophe. You seem to have trouble with this.

[You had to trap your opponents pieces, and give your opponent nowhere to move.]

The general you is awkward in third-person; I’d recommend rephrasing this to “one”.

How does Crystal play the board game? Lucario don’t have opposable thumbs.

[Knowing crystal]

Forgot the capital here.

I feel like you’re overusing the tilde. I understand it’s meant to connote a specific tone, but people don’t usually singsong every other sentence. Doing it too much can make the character feel silly and childlike. In prose, it’s usually better to use the tools available to you and describe the dialogue as playful and singsong; this also gives you the benefit of being able to customize and vary the descriptions if you want to convey different types of singsongy-ness.

[she questioned mentally]

This sounds really awkward and roundabout. “Wondered” would be much clearer here.

[Noone showed any interest]

You want “no one”, two words.

[He couldn’t have her; he was an Omega, she was next in line to lead the pack.]

The punctuation is wonky here. Something like this is typically structured like [He couldn’t have her. He was an Omega; she was next in line to lead the pack.]

[the talks almost everyday now]

You want “every day”, two words. “Everyday” is an adjective.

[The real thing though….]

Ellipses are always three dots, never more or less. You have a few other odd ellipses like this one.

[“You’ll show your emotions. Lucario’s, myself included…. We don’t do that often. We may be honorable, but a lot of that is also pride.”]

That strikes me as odd. Lucario are aura readers. I didn’t see the movie about them so I’m not 100% on what that means, but it would imply they have a greater sense of emotions and intentions. Possibly you could take it to mean that they’re not good at expressing their emotions in ways humans can understand, but it shouldn’t be possible for them to hide emotions from each other.

[“So… Will you claim me?”]

I really, really don’t like this trope. I find it incredibly creepy and objectifying to act like you can stake a claim on someone by banging them, and it ties into all sorts of awfulness about virginity fetishization and sexual control. This isn’t even how it works with real animals, as many do not mate for life. I mean, if this is your fetish, fair’s fair, but maybe add tags in the note or something?

And I’m just going to skip over the sex scene…

So, my takeaway from this is that this doesn’t feel like Pokemon fanfiction. As I said before, this doesn’t have any clear relation to any setup in canon, and you’re writing the pokemon society as if it’s a human one. If your pokemon characters are acting exactly like humans, why not write them as humans? (Or if this is a monster girl thing, orcs or demons or fairies etc…) I strongly recommend publishing this as original fiction with an “inspired by” label on the top instead. See here for more information: fanfiction (d o t) net/topic/11834/165030563/1/Original-Fiction