Not much of note today.

Anime count: 13

https://www.fanfiction.net/s/12993953/1/The-Johto-Legacy-Redacted

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.

[I felt it was necessary to start over again with a clear game plan worked out rather than making it up as I go along like before.]

That is a very good idea and I am pleased to hear it.

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

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.

[after the first 3 miles]

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

[I jumped at the prospect of getting to explore an abandoned village, the idea of a spooky forsaken temple alone was too tempting for me to ignore.]

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

[As I came up to them, I waved, saying, “Hey, Elm, how’s it going?”]

Does Lyra know Elm personally? I like that you’re fleshing New Bark out into a full town rather than a handful of houses, but that makes it less likely that everyone would automatically know each other. The Johto opening implies Elm regularly interacts with the populace, so it would be cool to go into that a bit. We normally think of researchers as pretty reclusive, so why is Elm so personable? Is he a teacher at the local school, or does he let kids tour his lab, perhaps?

[The path was a sparsely traveled trail like it was hardly ever used outside of an occasional hiker.]

There should be a comma here. You have several other dropped commas throughout this, and they’re a little distracting; you might want to get a beta reader to help you catch them.

[This route looked kind of like a thin tunnel that was bored into the dense forest with scattered rays of light hitting the path that spilled down from the canopy.]

I like this description, though it sounds rather unnatural – a tunnel has a clear ceiling, which in this case would mean that the trees on either side would have to bend over the path. That’s not uncommon, but it tends to require artificial cultivation to maintain (lest other plants take root and erode the path), which works against the idea this is an old and abandoned route.

[snarkily joked]

[sarcastically quipped]

You’re overusing uncommon speech verbs and adverbs. Don’t be afraid to use said or neglect adverbs. You may have heard to avoid said because it’s so bland and boring, but that’s actually its greatest strength. Nonstandard speech verbs stick out; they’re used for emphasis, when how something is said is important to the story and you want the reader to stop and take notice. If you use that emphasis for every single line, the reader will become oversaturated, lessening the impact when you actually do want emphasis on a speech tag.

You also don’t have to feel like you have to add a speech tag to every single line of dialogue. Sometimes, how something is said isn’t important, and it’s okay to move on to another action immediately. The lines [“Oh cool, look at all the Metapods! You see that, Bliss?” I asked my Water-type as I looked down to my side to see if Bliss was looking. However, I was confused when I found her staring across the cobbled street toward another building.] stick out to me here – I think it would flow better if you jumped straight to describing what Bliss was doing after the dialogue.

It’s also not a good idea to 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.

[as I racked my head]

You want “wracked” here.

[around 15 or structures remained standing]

Looks like you dropped an “or so” here.

[I turned my head to the left at a doorway that leads to another room]

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

[“It’s because of something I was born with. The doctors called it something like ADHD or mild Aspergers or something else that’s fucking stupid like that!” After saying that he slammed his fist against the wall, which made me and Bliss flinch before he continued, “And because of tha—and because of—” He was so miserable he was having trouble speaking and sound like he was choking on his words. “And because of that, when I turned thirteen and applied for a Pokémon license, the Johto-Kanto League said I was ‘mentally unfit’ to have one.]

Given that the creator of Pokemon is autistic and many trainers display autistic traits, this doesn’t sound very compatible with canon. I don’t see how something as mild as Asperger’s would put him at risk at all, and ADHD is pretty easily treated even in our day and age; the post-scarcity pokeworld should have no problem accommodating him. This would only really make sense if he had such a severe illness he literally could not function on his own, such as schizophrenia.

Also, he’s mentally unfit to go on a pokemon journey but everyone’s fine letting him run off into some abandoned ruins? His parents sound really irresponsible.

[“Look, um, I don’t know about what some doctor might have said about you,” I moved closer to him and sat against the wall about a foot apart from his left.]

When narration doesn’t describe how something is said, it’s its own sentence and is punctuated accordingly. So this should be [“Look, um, I don’t know about what some doctor might have said about you.” I moved closer to him and sat against the wall about a foot apart from his left.]

[the unnatural coppery gold of his iris’s]

You want “irises”. This means possession of his iris.

The first-person narration here feels off, slightly. It’s hard to explain exactly, but I feel like this would be better suited to third person. First-person should do more than just swap pronouns for “I”; its unique strength how intimately it can show us a character’s thought process. I still feel an odd sense of distance here that I normally associate with third-person, like I’m reading about Lyra rather than having her tell the story directly.

The dialogue feels a little off, too. It’s not wooden, but it doesn’t really feel like how kids really talk. Lyra and Ethan both feel caricaturized – I don’t understand why Ethan adamantly refuses to believe anything she says, then suddenly believes her completely when she doesn’t change her tone at all.

I do like that you’re doing something different with this opening, but it feels like though this is fairly long, not a lot has happened. You haven’t even introduced half the characters, and they haven’t even begun their journey that I presume will be the basis of the plot. It might have been a good idea to condense this a little, or add a bit more to bring us closer to the inciting event. Remember that your first chapter is your chance to hook your reader – you don’t want to take too long to get to the hook.

https://www.fanfiction.net/s/12994608/1/Trouser-Slug

[Markus stopped by a shop window to casually peruse the goods It was all]

Dropped a period here.

[Markus’s mom never approved of his friendship, but Mark reckons that Philip’s heart was in the right place.]

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

[he states]

[Philip acknowledged]

[Mark commented]

None of those are really accurate to the dialogue described. You’re overusing uncommon speech verbs. Don’t be afraid to use said; lovely word, won’t bite, usually more fitting than whatever fancy verb you’re using in its place. You may have heard to avoid said because it’s so bland and boring, but that’s actually its greatest strength. Nonstandard speech verbs stick out; they’re used for emphasis, when how something is said is important to the story and you want the reader to stop and take notice. If you use that emphasis for every single line, the reader will become oversaturated, lessening the impact when you actually do want emphasis on a speech tag. And if you feel like there are too many speech verbs in general, know that you don’t actually have to describe every single line of dialogue – you can have dialogue stand alone if you need to.

[“Oh Marky it’s been great,” he paused,]

And when narration doesn’t describe how dialogue is said, it’s its own sentence and is punctuated accordingly. So this should be [“Oh Marky it’s been great.” He paused.]

[“Straight and narrow,” Markus mutters.

“I should’ve stayed on the straight and narrow.”]

This should all be on the same line; currently, it looks like someone else is saying the second line. If this is meant to be a scene break, you should add a horizontal line or symbol to alert the reader.

It’s very confusing how you abruptly switch between Markus and the manaphy’s perspectives at the end; if this is meant to be third-person limited, it’s easier if we only have to follow one person’s thoughts at a time.

It is nice to see one of these that attempts to address the consent issues, though it is rather contrived that he ends up conveniently getting what he wants anyway.

https://www.fanfiction.net/s/12994467/1/A-True-Vacation

[Bold text- SFX

Italics- Thoughts, emphasis

Bold & Underlined- Moves]

I guarantee you do not need a speech key. If basic actions aren’t obvious from context, something has gone more wrong than a key can fix. You also shouldn’t be using special notation for moves – that makes sense in a video game where people need to pay attention to them, but it’s just needlessly distracting in a story.

[Red silently thanked Arceus]

Why does a Kantonian care about an ancient, dead Sinnohan deity? Arceus isn’t the Judeo-Christian God and it’s ethnocentric to assume it takes the same precedence just because of a few superficial similarities.

I like the description of what Red’s pokemon are doing. It’s always cool to extrapolate pokemon behavior based on real animal behavior and their magic mechanics.

[Unlike some person I know]

“Some” is collective, so this would have to be either “some people” or “one person”.

[“…” Red was able to hold one-sided tacit conversations with Blue]

While I understand what you’re trying to reference, this is a visual art convention and just looks really awkward in prose. It might be better to just describe his silent expressions – he clearly must be giving off some signal for Blue to understand him.

[After returning the cups, Red curiously noticed a Pyukumuku attached to the side of a bridge above the pools in front of the resort. A mischievous gleam flashed in Red’s eyes as he plucked the Pyukumuku from its feeding spot.

Blue noticed Red walking towards him with an innocent look. Unsuspecting of Red, Blue stuck out his hands when Red motioned for him to catch.

Almost as if Dialga itself had decided to slow down time, Red tossed the Pyukumuku, which twisted, squirmed, and wiggled for a few split seconds (which seemed like an eternity to Red), before landing rather comfortably into Blue’s hands. Immediately after sticking its landing, the Pyukumuku spat out its organs and squirted its viscous fluid all over Blue’s body.]

That seems awfully cruel of Red. The organ-vomiting is clearly a stress response, not something they can do easily. (It also does damage to pokemon, so it should be pretty dangerous to do it to a human.)

Otherwise, though, this was very cute.

https://www.fanfiction.net/s/12994296/1/What-Could-Have-Been

Blocked, don’t recognize them. Anime.

https://www.fanfiction.net/s/12994274/1/Solemn-Voice-Returns

Is his name literally “Machop”? That’s going to get really confusing if any other machop show up. You aren’t named “Human”, so he should have a real name.

[“サイドン、行け！” yelled an unfamiliar voice.]

I’m not sure what this is supposed to signify – are the main characters English, and this pokemon is Japanese? Do we need to know what’s being said here to know what’s going on? Mixing languages seems like an odd storytelling choice.

[A Pokémon that was red and black and tan was standing near the slope of the mountain, pointing and yelling at a Rhydon.]

I can’t tell what pokemon this is. It might be a good idea to give a description of the body shape as well, not just the colors. It also wasn’t clear to me that it was commanding the rhyhorn; I initially thought this was a three-way fight. A pokemon commanding another pokemon like a trainer instead of fighting themselves is pretty unusual, so it would be reasonable for Machop to note in narration how odd it is, with the bonus of making it clearer to the reader that’s what’s going on.

[The smaller Pokémon finally attacked separately from the Rhydon. It threw something at Machoke and Machop watched as his father disappeared into whatever-it-was.]

Or, wait, they’re a human? But why would a pokemon not recognize a human? That you go on to have the other pokemon admonish him for this just makes it more awkward – yes, why didn’t his dad so much as tell him what humans looked like if he feared them so much?

Otherwise, though, this is an interesting premise. I like exploring the trainer system from a pokemon’s perspective, and how damaging it must be to wild pokemon. I just hope this is not going to end with him getting captured by another trainer and learning that slavery is okay when the right people do it.

https://www.fanfiction.net/s/12994118/1/Snow

I appreciate that you’re not capitalizing pokemon.

You should separate your author notes with a horizontal line; otherwise, they look like part of the story.

This is a neat concept, but I feel like it would be better suited to an animated film than a story. I repeatedly felt like there was a dissonance between what was described and what was happening – as in, it took much longer to describe everything that was happening than it logically would have taken to happen. A lot of this story is just literally describing things, with very little in the way of character thoughts or imagery. That sort of narrative works better with a totally objective perspective, where we can just see clearly what’s happening and draw our own conclusions. Indeed, it might actually be more engaging if we have no idea why the eevee is doing this at the beginning, and are drawn on by the mystery – here, it’s pretty easy to guess she’s looking for her trainer from the beginning.

https://www.fanfiction.net/s/12994069/1/Carrying-God

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.

Capitalizing random words is confusing. In general, this whole thing is confusing – your description is very strange and breathless, and I have trouble understanding what’s going on. You might want to get a beta reader to help you.

Also you should separate your author notes with a horizontal line; otherwise, they look like part of the story.

https://www.fanfiction.net/s/12993592/1/Mansion-of-the-Legends

I’m not too fond of using the term “legendaries” in fic. It’s very much a fandom term, as it’s a shorthand for the canon term “legendary pokemon”. It’s also much too general given the actual range of power of legendaries. Legendaries like latios seem to be merely rare beasts, while legendaries like Kyogre are gods.

[Deciding to give its fellow Legendaries a chance at things they couldn’t experience, Arceus creates an entire dimension and mansion all so they can live together in harmony. Or something amongst those lines. Twist is, they have to live in human forms based on what was apparently calls “Moémon”. Thus, a mundane slice-of-life story begins, starring an all-female cast.]

I genuinely cannot ever understand the motivation for these stories.

There is a lot of interesting stuff to be done with the concept of gods being brought down to mortal. But I have never, ever seen people do that with these stories; it is always just a standard slice-of-life story where the characters happen to share names and perhaps visual similarities with the legendaries. And I just do not get what the appeal there is. If you really want to write slice-of-life stuff, Pokemon has plenty of human characters to do it with even if you don’t want to write original fiction for whatever reason.

[“(Basically, because some complain about being lonely, I’ve brought all of you together so that we can relax as a group.)”]

For instance, this is completely OOC. The few legendaries who do appear to be social are already in groups. The others all appear perfectly fine with being alone (Giratina, in particular, very aggressively defends its solitude in Platinum) if they don’t actively hate being with others (Groudon and Kyogre, and Dialga and Palkia in the anime). It makes no sense that the legendaries would request this or that Arceus would comply.

[a certain eight-legged ghostly dragon complained.]

Why is Giratina in alternate and not origin forme?

[“(…)”]

This is a visual art convention and doesn’t work in prose.

I do appreciate that, for once, someone isn’t referring to the legendaries with gendered pronouns, though it is rather disappointing it’s only so that you can draw attention to the fact that they turn into girls.

https://www.fanfiction.net/s/12993542/1/Doing-justice

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 to avoid this problem. 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.

[Ash is descendent of the god Arceus, his mother dies at the start of this story but three people were responsible, so now Ash is seeking vengeance but with the aid of his friends. will he succeed?]

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.

You don’t need to label POVs when they’re obvious from context.

https://www.fanfiction.net/s/12993493/1/Death-of-the-Dragon

Blocked, don’t recognize them. Anime.

https://www.fanfiction.net/s/12993372/1/Breaking-Barriers

[“Wait up!” She called]

Dialogue rules remain the same regardless of punctuation, so this should be [“Wait up!” she called]

https://www.fanfiction.net/s/12993254/1/Timing-and-Space-Given

[She was currently staying on the top of hill]

I think a word was dropped here. There are many similar errors throughout, and they’re a little distracting. Are you not a native speaker? If you have trouble with this, you should get a beta reader to help you.

Dialga and Palkia are genderless in canon. Using gendered pronouns for them is really weird.

[“WHOA,” Dialga rose to her four and spun furiously]

When narration doesn’t describe how dialogue is said, it’s its own sentence and is punctuated accordingly. So this should be [“WHOA.” Dialga rose to her four and spun furiously]

[‘Damn, should’ve anticipated that one,’ she thought to herself.]

You shouldn’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.

These characters have no connection to Dialga and Palkia outside of their powers. I genuinely do not understand why you wanted to use these characters for this story when you seem so uninterested in everything that makes them unique. This would be better suited to original fiction with your own original gods or wizard characters.

https://www.fanfiction.net/s/12993079/1/The-Book-of-Kalos-Rising-Star-To-Victory

[At first, Astoria wanted to follow her older brother’s footsteps as she wanted to participate in gym battles, but she soon realizes that badge quests is a lot harder than she thought and then decided to have a different goal: Becoming a Rising Star.]

A story about how a girl is too weak to handle a boy career and has to settle for a background role is a really sketchy premise. I will try to keep an open mind as I read, but this summary doesn’t encourage me.

I appreciate that you’re not capitalizing pokemon, however.

[The summertime has just arrived in the beautiful Aquacorde Town, a small town of the Kalos region. It was a classical colonial theme with many shops that sells pokéballs and potions. It also runs a river and has European style apartments.]

Your tenses are all over the place, and that makes following this a nightmare. You need to decide whether you want past or present and stick to it.

Opening the story with physical description is an instant turnoff. I understand why you think it’s important to establish basic information first, but readers don’t actually care about that as much as things like how the character acts and what they’re doing. Show don’t tell, etc. This early on, you should stick to information that is immediately relevant. More minor details can come after readers have gotten invested.

[Good morning mom!]

When a title (such as “mom” or “dad”) is used in place of a name, it’s capitalized like one.

You’re overusing uncommon speech verbs and adverbs. Don’t be afraid to use said; lovely word, won’t bite, usually more fitting than whatever fancy verb you’re using in its place. You may have heard to avoid said because it’s so bland and boring, but that’s actually its greatest strength. Nonstandard speech verbs stick out; they’re used for emphasis, when how something is said is important to the story and you want the reader to stop and take notice. If you use that emphasis for every single line, the reader will become oversaturated, lessening the impact when you actually do want emphasis on a speech tag.

Something that may help here is that you don’t have to feel like you have to describe every line of dialogue. It’s fine to just have dialogue on its own if the speaker is obvious and how it’s said isn’t important.

The dialogue in this opening scene doesn’t sound like how people really talk. The characters spend too much time discussing what they already know in very informative tones; it’s obviously exposition for the reader’s benefit, not something that sounds natural. One of the cool things with writing prose is that you don’t actually have to have characters give exposition to each other – it’s perfectly acceptable to have the main character describe everything that’s going on and how they feel about it in their thoughts, and that’s usually a more efficient way of getting the information across to boot.

And… though you’ve gotten further than most first chapters do, not a whole lot has happened. Do you have a plot for this? An ordinary trainer bopping around doing ordinary battles and ordinary trainer challenges can work for a short story, but a long-form story needs more of a hook. What cool, unique idea do you have that’s going to set this apart from the quite literally thousands of other stories like this one? You should put that on display clearly so people can get engaged right from the start; lead with your best foot forward.

https://www.fanfiction.net/s/12993077/1/Pok%C3%A9mon-Academy

Blocked, don’t recognize them. Profile says they appreciate constructive criticism but don’t like drama, which may be a factor.

https://www.fanfiction.net/s/12992791/1/The-Black-Angel-Chapter-1-Just-Another-Day

Posting chapters as separate stories is against the rules, because it unfairly bumps other author’s stories off the front page. Please be considerate and use the chaptering feature like everyone else.

[First chapter where characters in the Pokémon world are superheroes. Ash Ketchum, the smartest kid in his school, has a chance to tutor his crush, May.]

You should separate your author notes with a horizontal line; otherwise, they look like part of the story.

https://www.fanfiction.net/s/12992651/1/Two-Days

I appreciate that you’re not capitalizing pokemon.

[“No, no, no.” she waves a hand at me.]

The narration should be capitalized here, since it’s a separate sentence.

https://www.fanfiction.net/s/12992613/1/The-Prince-the-Princess-and-the-Pauper-An-Amourshipping-and-OC-Tale

Blocked, previously reviewed by Enki. Anime.

https://www.fanfiction.net/s/12992583/1/She-s-not-heartless

Blocked, previously encountered.

https://www.fanfiction.net/s/12992481/1/Serena-s-Search

You should separate your author notes with a horizontal line; otherwise, they look like part of the story.

Your chapter title is mispelled.

[“Del Del Phox (but Serena we’ve been everywhere and still no Ash)” The flaming fox said annoyingly.]

Putting pokespeech and translation together just looks cluttered. You can note that they’re talking in pokespeech in narration, or use a different symbol than quotes to denote this.

https://www.fanfiction.net/s/12992155/1/The-Missing-Pages

The chapter menu throws off the first line of the story, disrupting your pretty centering. You might want to try adding a blank line or a filler symbol, if FFN allows that this week.

That said, centering text in the first place makes it hard to read.

[Beliefs, religions, opinions, all the things that keep people apart are irrelevant when studying the past. True, unbiased past. All those interested can learn together, separate from their differences.]

That’s not really true. People have complained for decades about bias in historians. The facts may be what they are, but historians’ biases affect what we choose to look at and how we interpret it. Historians frequently do create narratives out of history, if not to themselves than definitely when the information is released to the public. If you’re trying to make a point about narratives vs. reality, there is a lot more to examine in this statement.

[Fiction, on the other hand, rarely lends itself to such dark subjects. Most authors write about the quests, the victories, the successes of their main characters.]

Uh, what fiction have you been reading? The market is absolutely glutted with grimdark edgy tragedies nowadays, and tragedies were in vogue even in the time of ancient Greece. If anything fiction tends to be darker than reality: it is how we grapple with the darkness we see in our own lives.

[But for every hero, there must be a villain.]

Actually, no, unless you are defining “villain” very loosely here, man vs. man is only one of the three classical conflicts.

Quite frankly, this all just sounds incredibly pretentious. You’re making really sweeping and definitive statements that make it clear you don’t really know what you’re talking about. I’d rather just get to the story.

[This is the first chapter, an introduction really]

Those aren’t synonyms. This isn’t a chapter at all – in a book, this would be the opening spiel right before the first chapter. That’s not something that can stand on its own. 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. As in, actual story content, not just setting the stage. I wouldn’t have the foggiest idea what this story is going to be about – what terribly calamity you’re referencing here – if I hadn’t read the summary.

https://www.fanfiction.net/s/12994724/1/Pok%C3%A9mon-Pikachu

[This is the first story I have written, but in a sense it is not mine. The story is about my Decidueye named Webster and it takes place in a modern Pokémon world without humans. I have not shown it to anyone yet, so I do not know what you would think of it.]

If you’d like some second opinions/editors to help you, there’s a good beta reading thread here: fanfiction (d o t) net/topic/11834/42724996/1/Beta-Thread-Signup-or-Request

For now, I will tell you that it’s a better idea to use the summary to convey story information. Behind-the-scenes information such as this can go in your author’s note. Summaries are what will make people click on your story, so it’s good if you can use them to tell us as much as possible. Currently this just tells us the main character is a decidueye and the setting is a no-human world. That’s sort of interesting, but there are a lot of stories like that. What’s unique about this one? What is the decidueye going to do? What’s the story about?

[He was currently following his fondness for battling by being in the career of performing rescue missions.]

So wait, is this the Mystery Dungeon universe? You should say that, then, since that’s a specific setup. “A modern pokemon world without humans” could describe your own concept, and honestly I consider that more interesting than the Mystery Dungeon world.

[Rescue missions were a very popular career for Pokémon because it usually allowed them to travel the world and become heroes and to use their natural talent for battling]

If you find yourself chaining multiple “and”s together, that’s usually a sign the sentence is breathless or a run-on, and you need to use commas or other punctuation to break it up. This sentence is mostly okay, I think, but it does sound a little rushed.

[Tonight, Webster was going on the biggest mission in his career so far, though it would soon be followed by an even bigger mission. Webster was going to face a Legendary Pokémon, a Suicune. This Suicune had been terrorizing a certain city called Slate City which was known for being the biggest industrial city in the world with the largest population of Poison-type Pokémon. The Suicune was said to be kidnapping random Pokémon from the city and dragging them up Mount Articuno which overlooked Slate City and taking them to the mountain’s cave.]

Aren’t legendaries gods? Shouldn’t people have some philosophical or theological opinion on this? Even if not and this modern world has become completely secular, that’s such a departure from canon that it would be a good idea to point it out, and explain how the divergence happened.

Suicune are genderless. Using male pronouns reinforces the idea that male is the default, and is therefore sexist. “They” is a perfectly fine pronoun to use here.

This is an odd story. There are some connections to canon, but overall this feels closer to an original swords-and-sorcery fantasy. You might want to consider trying out original fiction to get a feel for what concepts you like to write about.

https://www.fanfiction.net/s/12989929/1/Ash-the-black-latios

Your title needs to be fully capitalized.

Putting pokespeech and translation together just looks cluttered. You can note that they’re talking in pokespeech in narration, or use a different symbol than quotes to denote this.

https://www.fanfiction.net/s/12994762/1/Gallade-Deino

This doesn’t seem to have much to do with Pokemon; these characters are acting much more like humans than pokemon, complete with being able to grasp and manipulate things despite having only rudimentary hands when they have hands at all. If the aesthetic of the pokemon appeal to you, you’d be better off turning this into a visual medium such as a comic; if it’s the core story that appeals to you, this might be more successful as original sci-fi, where the Pokemon elements won’t distract from it.

You should separate your author notes with a horizontal line; otherwise, they look like part of the story.

https://www.fanfiction.net/s/12991973/1/Cloudy-Vision

I appreciate that you’re not capitalizing pokemon.

It would be nice if the summary told us more about the story – what pairing this is, for instance.

[Further out she could see the clouds pillowing and rolling along, it was surely going to storm if not today then tomorrow…]

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

You’re formatting dialogue inconsistently. 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.

Using hyphens in place of dashes is confusing. To avoid people thinking you’re hyphenating words, you should put spaces around the hyphen, or use a double dash.

https://www.fanfiction.net/s/12991788/1/When-two-lives-meet

Blocked, previously reviewed. Anime.

https://www.fanfiction.net/s/12991777/1/Shadow-Dreams

Blocked, previously encountered.

https://www.fanfiction.net/s/12991762/1/Pokemon-Indigo-League-Retold

Blocked, don’t recognize them. Anime.

https://www.fanfiction.net/s/12991736/1/l-heure-du-printemps

I appreciate that you’re not capitalizing pokemon.

Is this based on the manga? I found myself confused at several points, like this was referencing events I should be familiar with. It’s very well-done, regardless.

https://www.fanfiction.net/s/12991724/1/After-the-Ashes-Aiko-s-Story

Blocked, don’t recognize them.

https://www.fanfiction.net/s/12991527/1/An-Adventure-Beyond-Time-and-Space

Blocked, previously reviewed by Enki.

https://www.fanfiction.net/s/12991302/1/A-Legend-Unleashed

Blocked, don’t recognize them. Anime.

https://www.fanfiction.net/s/12991256/1/Pursuing-Perfection-A-Pokemon-Story

Blocked, don’t recognize them.

https://www.fanfiction.net/s/12991048/1/Writers-Block-Zone

Blocked, previously reviewed.

https://www.fanfiction.net/s/12990294/1/Kanto-Roads

Non-story chapters are banned on this site, and character profiles aren’t necessary regardless. If this information is relevant, it should come up in the story.

https://www.fanfiction.net/s/12995687/1/Aura-Guardian

This author self-reviewed in response to Dragon’s Blaze’s spam:

“For all those who have made comments and sent PM’s at me like I get Colossus sent my way in MCoC (Anyone else play that?)

Don’t worry about me. I have seen St Elmo’s Fire handywork before on Pokemon Fanfiction I have read before.

I just consider them as this,bullies who don’t have a filter. Digital jerks who can’t say they’re problems to someone in their face directly so they have to hide behind a screen to do so.

There will always be three ways to defeat pests like them. I usually go for the route of ignoring. Bullies and Jerks when attacking someone may do it because they want to frame you if they get an agressive response.

No need to worry about me.

I know they will come eventually. And I know just what to do.

-Candy”

…And then did not block me for some weird reason.

You should tag this as anime fic. People searching for anime fic can’t see this unless it’s tagged, so you’re denying yourself potential readers currently. (Seriously, do a filter search for “include anime” – this fic doesn’t show up!)

While I’m here, you should separate your author notes with a horizontal line; otherwise, they look like part of the story. You can do this by adding an hr tag in the HTML source code, or by adding it in the in-site editor.

6 Comments

Ghost says:

July 16, 2018 at 12:53 pm

Probably offering you a chance to review and prove them right.

1

Reply Report comment
1. St. Elmo's Fire says:
  
  July 16, 2018 at 5:15 pm
  
  They did block me afterwards, so probably. Fortunately, they now look like a lunatic by frothing over a review that was nothing but helpful.
  
  3
  
  Reply Report comment
  1. Embershine says:
    
    July 16, 2018 at 6:41 pm
    
    That’s the funniest revenge. The author counter reviewed again from the looks of it. The beginning reads like a dramatic villain vs hero interaction, haha!
    
    So you finally came. St Elmo’s fire, I shouldn’t have to write to fit your needs alone. In that case you might as well hold someone’s hand as they write.
    
    Imagine it like this, your favorite author is writing in a new style that you don’t like and you complain to him. Should he have to adapt to the views of the few or the views of the many? I used a perfectly normal use of bold for notes. Its much simpler and easier to notice. The underline is then used to start the chapter.
    
    This author should be more grateful, though. If it weren’t for you, and the Blaze hate campaign, she would have one single review which complained about her spelling and called out plot holes.
    
    Reply Report comment
    1. Embershine says:
      
      July 16, 2018 at 6:52 pm
      
      I just tried to read the fic. Why, why would you center align the text? The tenses changed multiple times mid paragraph, and the third person was really distracting. The comma splices were everywhere, along with typos, and the plot itself was ridiculous. (Ash jumps into the ocean off a boat in the middle of the night on a whim and nearly drowns, starting a three year time skip, for starters.)
      
      Along with grammar issues, weird scene transitions, and the overall unreadability of the dialogue, this fanfiction is so poorly put together I can’t even make fun of it. It’s pretty depressing actually.
      
      Reply Report comment
      1. Ghost says:
        
        July 16, 2018 at 7:12 pm
        
        I wonder… Would they be willing to engage in epic review combat? That would be hilarious to see.
        
        3
        
        Reply Report comment
        
        Definitely Not the Reeds of Enki says:
        
        July 17, 2018 at 3:45 am
        
        Lol. This would be hilarious, for sure. Also, thank you for bringing the phrase “epic review combat” into the world. I really needed that.
        
        On a tangential note, I should be able to review again soon. Work is dying down and I’m finally able to go to sleep before 12 PM. Looking forward to actually getting stuff done again.
        
        2

Dragon Quill

Writing With Scales

[22] The Other Pokereviews, Part 117

6 Comments

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