Some stuff to actually talk about today.

https://www.fanfiction.net/s/12305487/1/Easier-Said-Than-Done

[“Lavaridge is that way.”]

It took me a few tries to work out this out. There’s a really big gap between it being said and V reacting to the speech, at which point you start marking its dialogue differently which makes it seem like someone else, like the gengar’s trainer, said the first line. For a bit I thought it was speaking to them individually, so its first line to V was unheard and only indicated by her being amazed it was speaking, then it contacted Anabel for the first time. I assume you didn’t want to start off marking it as ~ because you didn’t want to give away what it was, but it’s all really confusing. You’re using italics for emphasis a lot here, but maybe it’d have been better used as a tag for weird mind speech. It being italics would’ve been ambiguous the first time while letting you stay consistent.

The dialogue is a bit easier to follow after this point, but there’s still a lot of separation. For example:

[~We are magnanimous -~ it paused. ~That means nice.~ Anabel jerked her head. The cold pulsing words shattered her thoughts, emptying her mind to fill it with echoes. She didn’t want it there. Get out! ~ You may leave unharmed.~

Anabel couldn’t move. She waited for the pokeballs to drop out of the gengar, for the evil joke to be over.

“Pokeballs have trackers,” she shakily pointed out. “We’ll get them back. We…” She squared her shoulders. She was bigger than it! “We’ll tell the Professor!”

The ghost’s grin sharpened further, its red eyes burning with evil.

It was so dark. Around them there were only sandy hills and clusters of tall trees. Fear. Ghosts fed on fear. If Anabel stopped being scared, it would get bored and stop this.

“That’s enough,” she said more strongly. “Give it back.”

The wilds could be trouble. They were for experienced trainers only, those with five Gym badges or more. But these weren’t the wilds. They were less than a mile off the route. They’d not broken any rule. Rangers were supposed to keep places safe!

“This isn’t what ‘nice’ is,” V pointed out, pushing long tangled curls out of her face.]

That is a really long gap from “I’m nice” to someone objecting to the statement.

You’ve also got a number of missing spaces throughout this, with words stuck together.

[“Catch, you’re dumb,” V snapped, taking a step forward. “You’re clever but dumb because you let them make you bad.” Her skin glowed purple. She was way too close to that monster. “Steal your own pokeball instead of ours! You’ll get stuck in a computer forever when your trainer gets caught. You can come with us.”]

This is certainly a good threat, but on the other hand, is it true? Because it seems pretty weird to believe pokemon are only bad when bad people are giving the orders but bad people’s pokemon stay in limbo forever, although maybe “let them make you bad” means it’s common belief that once given bad orders, pokemon are tainted.

At any rate, I like how they’re talking to, and about, pokemon throughout this. And the way the gengar keeps telling them to get moving suggests this has less to do with stealing starters than it does stealing them, which is definitely interesting.

One.

https://www.fanfiction.net/s/12305572/1/Pokemon-Sun-and-Moon-But-mostly-Sun-faanfic

Paragraphing has rules. You start a new paragraph with a new subject. The goal is not to divide your story up into even blocks. Also, a new speaker means you start a new paragraph.

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 telephone or trainer. Or professor.

Zero.

https://www.fanfiction.net/s/12305594/1/Snow-Warning

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 telephone or trainer. Or professor.

Paragraphing has rules. You start a new paragraph with a new subject. The goal is not to divide your story up into even blocks. Also, a new speaker means you start a new paragraph.

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. The only exception to this is if the next sentence doesn’t contain a speech verb, which is a verb describing how the dialogue is said. (“Speak” is not a speech verb.) In that case it’s written as “Hello.” She grinned, never “Hello,” she grinned or “Hello,” She grinned or “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. 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 any other ones with thoughts.

You really could’ve used more of a plot than virtually personality-free pokemon do Christmas for their trainer.

Zero.

https://www.fanfiction.net/s/12305603/1/Pokemon-Rising-Sun-and-Dawning-Moon

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. The only exception to this is if the next sentence doesn’t contain a speech verb, which is a verb describing how the dialogue is said. (“Speak” is not a speech verb.) In that case it’s written as “Hello.” She grinned, never “Hello,” she grinned or “Hello,” She grinned or “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. 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 any other ones with thoughts.

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 telephone or trainer. Or professor.

You really do not need to repeat the opening of the game. Anyone interested can either play it themself or watch it on youtube. Start your story where it starts, not where another person decided to start off the game.

Zero.

https://www.fanfiction.net/s/12305617/1/The-Legends-of-Amber-Drei

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. The only exception to this is if the next sentence doesn’t contain a speech verb, which is a verb describing how the dialogue is said. (“Speak” is not a speech verb.) In that case it’s written as “Hello.” She grinned, never “Hello,” she grinned or “Hello,” She grinned or “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. 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 any other ones with thoughts.

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 telephone or trainer. Or professor.

Your story’s really dialogue heavy, particularly dialogue of people explaining the plot events to each other over letting events happen naturally. Are all of these characters people who only make sense as part of your other story? Because you’re really not doing much to characterize the cast here. Your main character has some personality, Amber is mostly just her infodumping quirk which starts off meh and gets steadily more boring each time, and then there’s a whole mess of other people who have even less going for them – and worse, it’s the mess of people who seem to be driving the plot while I can’t care less that some jerk who you just introduced has only four months to live so he wants to find some random legendary for his jerk daughter and how much it has to do with the main character’s suddenly introduced grandfather’s diary and so on. Hearing strangers chatter on about strangers is the least interesting way of telling a story.

Or put another way:

[He knew from his friend Bolt that Mewtwo was something of a friend to the city’s gym leader, Sabrina, and thus was known to drop by Saffron from time to time to visit her. Amber’s theory was indeed correct, but Quinton wasn’t sure if he should tell her that. ]

This doesn’t just tell us he knows about Mewtwo, it tells us he’s the sort of person who feels uncomfortable about blabbing the knowledge to somebody he knows nothing about who could be planning Mewtwo’s capture.

[“Uh… if you’re asking if I think Pokemon like that aren’t living things, nothing could be further from the truth.” Quinton assured her. “My very first Pokemon was a Porygon. It’s since evolved into a Porygon-Z, and it’s still one of my most trusted Pokemon. What I’m trying to say is that I’ve never thought as some lifeless computer program brought into the real world. That Pokemon is one of my best friends.”]

This, in contrast, is incredibly clunky and “some of my best friends are…” is so misused it actually does the opposite and makes it sound like actually he is precisely that sort of asshole. Showing him treating that pokemon as valued and a best friend would’ve worked way more than having him just say it.

(…as would, you know, not evolving his pokemon with something called a “dubious disk” because, valuing his friend so much, he’d rather have a weaker unevolved pokemon than wreck his friend’s brain with a software update every last pokedex entry says had something wrong with it,)

[“A shiny Porygon-Z?” Quinton identified.

“Use Psybeam!” Amber commanded.

Tron fired twin beams of multicolored light from its crazed down at Purugly, hitting her in the chest. Upon being hit, Purugly fell to her side and was unconscious.

“My Porygon-Z was traded away by its original trainer because they thought it was weak.” Amber remarked as Vivian called back Purugly. “I have just proven them wrong.”]

Also a good bet if you’re trying to present your characters as good people who care about pokemon: not handing them shiny pokemon with some nonsense excuse about how your character just so happened to get it for an unrelated reason because they care about all pokemon and the part where it’s sparkly and rare and sought after by everyone wasn’t a factor in their decision at all.

Seriously, the only reason you should ever have a shiny in fic is to make a point that why yes, your character IS that much of an asshole that all they care about is what the pokemon looks like.

Three.

https://www.fanfiction.net/s/12305811/1/Blood-Stone

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 telephone or trainer. Or professor.

[“A stone that is like a Mega Stone. I wonder what sort of power it truly exhibits.”

“I’m unsure but regardless, I’m afraid it may ferment disaster if found by that team.”]

One mega stone isn’t going to do much of anything. I know the games like to talk like it’s a big deal, but the games also hand out mega evolution like candy to every halfway important NPC and nothing comes of it, plus you’re saying it’s Team Rocket and their thing is just money so it’s likely they’d just sell it and really unlikely they’d try to blow up the world or whatever the other teams are planning this week. You’d be much better served by streamlining this down to something more direct – they said they were looking for it to accomplish (some ominous-sounding goal), therefore stopping that would be good. Or he could just assume it’s some sort of money-making scheme and should be stopped because they’re criminals.

Zero.

https://www.fanfiction.net/s/12305914/1/A-New-World

Proofread, this is a mess of typos.

Write out numbers with letters.

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 telephone or trainer. Or professor.

Paragraphing has rules. You start a new paragraph with a new subject. The goal is not to divide your story up into even blocks. Also, a new speaker means you start a new paragraph.

Don’t use ‘ for thoughts, it’s too close to the ” used for dialogue and makes it look like your character is speaking aloud.

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. The only exception to this is if the next sentence doesn’t contain a speech verb, which is a verb describing how the dialogue is said. (“Speak” is not a speech verb.) In that case it’s written as “Hello.” She grinned, never “Hello,” she grinned or “Hello,” She grinned or “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. 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 any other ones with thoughts.

Zero.

https://www.fanfiction.net/s/12305942/1/What-Might-Have-Been

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 telephone or trainer. Or professor.

Semicolons should only ever be used when connecting two complete sentences and even then almost never.

Conversely, something like “said” could stand to be used a lot more. Said/asked/replied stands out a lot less than rarer speech tags. As it is, by the tenth or so unusual speech tag, they’re jarring and distracting.

I’m impressed by what you did with the song here – it actually seemed part of the story and not the nuisance it generally is.

One.

https://www.fanfiction.net/s/12306054/1/Snowbound-A-Pokemon-Fanfic

Paragraphing has rules. You start a new paragraph with a new subject. The goal is not to divide your story up into even blocks. Also, a new speaker means you start a new paragraph.

Opening your story with a character waking up for the day is generic and horribly, horribly overdone, and to be honest, it’s so incredibly dull and boring a start that even if I hadn’t seen it, very literally here, thousands upon thousands of times before, I would still tell you you should have started at some other, interesting point.

Write out numbers with letters.

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 telephone or trainer. Or professor.

Zero.

https://www.fanfiction.net/s/12306081/1/Beasts-and-Beauties

spoilerz

https://www.fanfiction.net/s/12306269/1/Child-of-Nature

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 telephone or trainer. Or professor.

[his eyes reminiscent.]

This is really overwritten. If you’re just trying to say he’s reminiscing, say that.

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. The only exception to this is if the next sentence doesn’t contain a speech verb, which is a verb describing how the dialogue is said. (“Speak” is not a speech verb.) In that case it’s written as “Hello.” She grinned, never “Hello,” she grinned or “Hello,” She grinned or “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. 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 any other ones with thoughts.

[So baby in the box abandoned at the edge of Pinwheel Forest. Hey, N did say that he was abandoned in a forest! Though this happens before that. Are you confused? (That makes two times N is abandoned in a forest…)]

Mostly by why that doubling seemed like a good idea.

N didn’t just happen to have bad luck getting left places, he was in the forest so eventually he’d be useful for Ghetsis’ plot. If Ghetsis intended to do that with an infant, he wouldn’t be dumping the kid in a populated forest. And if he wanted N adopted and raised up a bit before getting dumped in some other forest, he could drop off N on a street corner and call it a night.

Given Ghetsis does not seem to think much about the dangers of a kid growing up without any human help, I could totally believe that he’d try it with infant N, and your main character has a perfectly good reason to be wandering around remote, distant forests, so why the weirdness of it happening twice but the first time in a way that serves no purpose?

(Being distant would also better fit the trope of finders-keepers. Finding it far from any help would mean she’d have to take care of the kid for a while, and could end up attached. Finding it ten minutes from a city and she can bring him to the authorities and wash her hands of it quick.)

One. Seems pretty decent, actually, but given there’s nothing but red flags for how the plot will be executed makes me hesitate to add it to the C2.

https://www.fanfiction.net/s/12306322/1/Artificial-Beauty

spoilerz

https://www.fanfiction.net/s/12306774/1/The-Guardians-of-Hope-A-Pokemon-Story

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 telephone or trainer. Or professor.

Your story really shouldn’t open with mammoth paragraphs summarizing years worth of information. If it’s interesting, you should’ve written it out as an actual story, if it’s not, cut it and bring up anything that matters when the real story gets to it.

[The stranger, named Zoroark, stayed there with dark intentions in mind. During the night, Zoroark used his illusion ability to disguise himself as Lucario, knocking out Aggron to get to the kings quarters. As Vespiquen slept, Volcarona was killed by Zoroark and the seed was stolen using Lucario’s fingerprints as Zoroark was in disguise. Zoroark then threw Volcarona’s body off the citadel so the people down below could see that Lucario seems to have killed the king. As people flew up to investigate, Zoroark changed his disguise to blend in with the crowd, and fled the scene with the seed in hand.]

Also, you’d think in a world of harmony and cooperation they’d know about the illusion ability and either have some way of checking for it or at least being a bit suspicious when someone’s personality appears to do a 180 right at the same time a newcomer with the relevant ability appears and then disappears.

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. The only exception to this is if the next sentence doesn’t contain a speech verb, which is a verb describing how the dialogue is said. (“Speak” is not a speech verb.) In that case it’s written as “Hello.” She grinned, never “Hello,” she grinned or “Hello,” She grinned or “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. 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 any other ones with thoughts.

Zero.

And with that, I’m just a day behind, so I’ll stop and try to catch up properly tomorrow.