People just keep posting, so halfway in I decide once again that I’m going to skip the romance fics. This year, I’m delegating to my brother and telling him to inform me of those that are worth more than dialogue/capitalization.

https://www.fanfiction.net/s/12303985/1/The-Fallen-Prodigy

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.

[“Tell it to the judge.” The officer responded before walking away.]

…

[Ash assumed several hours had passed, he had no real way of knowing, when Officer Jenny unlocked the door of his cell.

“Ash Ketchum, the court has come to a decision on your trial.”]

While a lot of this seems more like a black comedy, this in particular stands out. See, the reason people say that is began the legal system has trials where the accused gets to find out what the evidence against them is and speak in their defense. In your ridiculous world, a few hours later Ash has been sentenced by a judge he’s never seen, meaning this phase wouldn’t exist.

Look, assuming you at least gave enough thought to this to intend for him to be framed, as opposed to this just happening because it sounded dramatic, then instead of spending the fic on, again, what sounds like black comedy where no one will explain what’s going on, just say what Ash is accused of and the evidence against him. If you have no idea how to write the actual trial section, then have the details of what they think he did tip him off to the fact he’s being framed and needs to escape immediately.

Write out numbers with letters.

“Its” is the possessive form. “It’s” means “it is” only.

Five, including two people pointing out the story makes no sense but one still praising it anyway.

https://www.fanfiction.net/s/12304004/1/Someone-to-Rely-On

[your Uncle’s]

[her Garchomp]

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.

[Lance nodded. “Yes well some people believe that you might have been involved as some sort of publicity stunt.”]

You need more commas and to think out accusations better. “A publicity stunt” would imply there is no such thing as the enemy team and she just did it for attention. What you seem to be going for is that she was actually working with them and pretending to take them down while really letting them escape or actively helping them. A lower key and more believable but still super insulting possibility would’ve been that the reason Team Galactic got so far was that she didn’t want to do anything about them and could’ve taken down the group much earlier, but held off as long as possible because she didn’t want to fight her uncle. And being believable is pretty important – if they’re just making up nonsense to throw at her, it seems less like the uncle is the problem and more that she’s surrounded by crazy assholes looking to tear her down for any excuse they can make up.

One.

https://www.fanfiction.net/s/12304058/1/Vow

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.

[Hilda returned Serperior to its Pokéball, glancing at the Plasma grunts. Her gaze was cold, and all she could remember was a time when she had fought and won against him, only to lose him to fate’s clutches.

“What do you want with me?”

“It’s what Team Plasma wants with you.”

She was shoved backwards and crashed against the Gym’s wall, all the wind knocked out of her. A Krokorok glared at her, and its trainer approached her, slamming his fist into the space just beside her head and leaning in.]

It seems like a really bad idea to recall your pokemon when you’ve just been attacked. Even if there hadn’t been a third grunt hiding out, the others could’ve had a pokemon in reserve and been waiting for her to think she was safe.

Also, Hilda is supposed to be someone who treats pokemon well enough that got through to even N. Having her keep her pokemon inside their pokeballs any time she doesn’t explicitly need them doesn’t really fit with that.

[An elderly man followed.

Hilda shook her head, returning Vanilluxe to its Pokéball. “You’re one of the Seven Sages.”

“Indeed I am. What of it?” The man pulled out a pocket knife, glaring at Hilda suspiciously. She sighed.

“Your orders are so important that you come out of hiding to kill me?”

“Of course. Lord Ghetsis’s orders are absolute!” The sage charged at her. ]

Seriously why does she keep recalling her pokemon, and also why does she never have her pokemon out. They’re supposed to be her friends, aren’t they?

[“Why did you believe in N? Even then… when he used Reshiram for Team Plasma’s goals.” Caitlin broke the silence that had settled between the two since Hilda had finished her explanation.

Hilda glanced up at the sky. “I always thought he wanted to free Pokémon because he was never free.”]

…I think framing N’s entire motivation as selfish delusion is a bit much, but I guess viewing pokemon as mindless props does explain why that’s all they seem to be to Hilda in this fic.

[By the time she had realized what was happening, she was already on her back, pinned against the flower meadows with a cold blade to her neck and a gloved hand to her mouth.]

Even with that said, I’m confused by how not even repeated ambushes can convince her to keep her pokemon out. That’s moving it past tool into actively hating them to the point she would rather risk death than be around them one second more than she needs.

Arg.

Zero.

https://www.fanfiction.net/s/12304137/1/Life-I-ve-Never-Led

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.

Yeah you really never need to stop your story dead in its tracks for a kid to sing a pop song and songfic is straight up banned on this site.

Zero.

https://www.fanfiction.net/s/12304517/1/What-We-Saw-From-The-Stars

[Sol moves to the Alola region with his mom]

[They smile widely.]

So is Sol “he” or “they”?

[ My plans for vlogging my journey in Kanto came to a stop when Rocket began attacking again…” They sigh, rubbing the back of their neck, a terrible habit. “But maybe I’ll have my own adventure here! I am sixteen, after all. Chewy and I are ready for anything!”]

You’d think the fact the seventh gen says over and over this is done by children would’ve done something about the whole “but what if they started way older and more competent and then faced challenges little kids handle fine” thing. And it’s not like an eleven year old can’t handle a webcam.

Blocked! Also, zero reviews.

https://www.fanfiction.net/s/12304530/1/A-New-Pok%C3%A9mon-Adventure-a-next-generation-of-Pallet-Town-trainers-fic

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.

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.

[The blaring noise of my alarm clock jolted me from my slumber at six o clock sharp that Monday morning, which happened to be my eleventh birthday. Not only that, but the UR (United Regions) Champion, otherwise known as the world champion, would be battling another challenger at quarter after. The UR champion, Ash Ketchum, was a trainer from Pallet Town, and my greatest role model.]

Then why are they starting a year later than Ash?

[There are the three primary options: the fire-type Charmander, the grass-type Bulbasaur, and the water-type Squirtle. There is also the special option, which is this time the psychic-type Abra.”

Knowing that my hero Ash had not started with any of the standard starters, my choice was clear. “I’ll take Abra.”]

No. Even with almost a thousand pokemon in existence, abra is still the worst possible starting pokemon and no one would ever offer a “special option” of picking something that’s either useless or going to get the kid killed. Moreover, Ash didn’t choose the “special option”, so how dumb is this kid if they worship Ash but can’t even remember a basic detail like that? Who looks at everything that happened to Ash and thinks the moral is to pick pokemon without getting to know them?

[“I would never do that, sir,” I fervently promised. “People who do not treat their Pokémon with love and respect are worse than the scum that I get on my boots when working in my parents’ barn.”]

Yeah, because nothing says love and respect more than picking a pokemon because you want to emulate some other guy without so much as saying hi to it first.

[“It’s just that I’m always tickled pink whenever I hear someone speak with such a fervent love and devotion to Pokémon.”]

I mean, it is pretty hilarious that this kid is giving a speech like this when tehy can’t even manage something as basic as actually meeting a pokemon before deciding that’s what they want.

[The Professor handed me 20 Ultra Balls. “Despite my complaints about their policies, Pokémarts still won’t sell these to rookie trainers, who need the extra catching power the most.”]

Rookie trainers need to be encouraged to go attack pokemon way too strong for them? Huh. Is the idea here that Oak is even more annoyed by your OC’s behavior and actively trying to get them killed?

Write out numbers with letters.

[“Upon setting up camp on Route One, I released my Abra, hoping to get to know my new friend and partner. Upon being released Abra looked at me with curiosity.

“Hello Abra,” I greeted. “My name is Jesse Reese and I am your trainer from now on.”]

So they do everything else before bothering to get to this, and they don’t even ask if it wants to be their friend but just declare it’s like this now, no choice for you in the matter!

[In fact, the only trainer in recent history who did not is the United Regions Champion, Mr. Ash Ketchum,]

NOPE. As is pretty obvious if you think about the fact almost no trainers have one of the starters on their team.

And the fact pokemon can talk moves up their refusal to meet and care about the starter choices as individuals from hypocritical and thoughtless to outright asshole.

[I have spotted a Pokémon from the Sinnoh region. I wonder what it’s doing here. Anyway, the Pokémon is called Riolu, and is the pre-evolved form of Lucario. I recommend that you take advantage of this statistical improbability.]

Oh good god now you’re handing them the most overused sue pokemon we’ve got at the moment. Well, that sure went from bad to worse at record speed.

Zero.

https://www.fanfiction.net/s/12304559/1/Lovesickness

You need spaces between your paragraphs.

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.

“Questioned” isn’t a synonym for “asked”, it’s closer to a nicer version of “interrogated”.

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.

Don’t refer to people as “the female”. It’s most commonly used by misogynists to talk about women and so has a really nasty connotation these days. Use names.

One.

https://www.fanfiction.net/s/12304593/1/Crowds-Are-Scary

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.

One.

https://www.fanfiction.net/s/12304711/1/Pok%C3%A9mon-The-Fantastical-World

[As I wandered around, crying my eyes out as I called for my mother, I found an injured brown fox-like pokémon with her paw stuck underneath a fallen log.]

Ugh.

Look, if your character is going to just so happen to find some injured pokemon to help, what do you think is more likely – an eevee, or a caterpie?

[Much to my surprise, the police informed us that Eevee weren’t common in Viridian Forest. In fact, the only place they’re known to live is Celadon City far to the east. The police offered to take the Eevee back, but she didn’t want to leave my side, so they keg us keep her, much to my joy.]

Right. Which is why this just looks incredibly sueish and undermines the idea your character actually cares about pokemon as opposed to wanting a popular one, and a female one of a species that’s almost all male no less.

Viridian Forest, across the various generations, contains caterpie, weedle, pidgey, pikachu, hoothoot, seedot, spinarak, ledyba, shroomish, kricketot, numel, spoink, budew, and carnivine. In the surrounding area, other pokemon who could easily wander in are rattata, nidoran, pineco, wurmple, plusle, minun and shinx. In the route above, more pokemon that again could plausibly end up in the forest are spearow, sandshrew, jigglypuff, mankey, ekans, clefairy, zubat, baltoy, and gulpin. But your kid just happens to meet absolutely none of the boring ones and only notices when it’s a cute eevee in trouble, because he’s such a good person who cares about others.

One.

https://www.fanfiction.net/s/12304783/1/Drabbles-Babbles-and-Small-Things

A drabble is a word for something written and edited to be precisely 100 words.

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/12304801/1/Litten-s-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.

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

[But her dried up, matted fur provided no fuel for her flames, and when she managed to conjure them up at all (most attempts typically ended in her hacking up hairballs and smoke), they sputtered out only a foot or two away. In close combat, she was too weak to put much effort in her physical attacks or to speedily dive in and out of range.]

Which is why it doesn’t make much sense her trainer is abusing her in ways that are hamper him.

Feeding her the minimum needed to keep her healthy would still leave her constantly hungry and miserable. Similarly, even if he makes sure she’s healed properly, beating her bloody after a loss is still going to hurt. And if he can present himself kindly, and hide the abuse he’s dishing out to her, not trusting other humans after this makes a lot more sense than if he wears his abuse on his sleeve like this. Dialing the abuse up to eleven makes it harder to take seriously (why is he doing stuff that obviously doesn’t work) and makes it mean less when you have Ash convince her he’s better – it’d be hard for anyone not to be better.

Zero.

https://www.fanfiction.net/s/12304806/1/Pikachu-s-Death

[Ash and Serena are full of joy. Ash had just won the Kalos League and defeated the Champion, Diantha. Serena had a rematch with Aria and won becoming the new Queen of Kalos. However Pikachu wasn’t feeling so well. The battle between him and Diantha’s Gardevoir took a toll on him. Pikachu was able to defeat Gardevoir but he fainted afterwards. Fortunately Serena and Ash got Pikachu to the local Pokemon center in the nick of time. He recovered but Nurse Joy advised Ash to not have Pikachu battle for a while.

Also Palermo, a former Kalos Queen died from a bowel obstruction caused by inflammatory bowel disease. Then Aria was murdered by Serena’s rival, Miette who was mad at Aria because she chose Serena over her. Miette was arrested by Serena’s friend Shauna who turned Miette to the Feds. Now Miette is serving a lifetime sentence without parole for first degree murder.

Now Pikachu is so weak he can barely walk. He can no longer use electric attacks. Then Pikachu lets out a loud scream and collapses. Serena and Ash were on the outskirts of Kiloude City.

Serena tells Ash “This looks really bad. Fortunately the Pokémon Center isn’t too far. We better hurry to save Pikachu.”

Ash agreed and said “You’re right Serena. Also it looks like it’s going to rain hard.”]

…so is this some sort of mediocre joke?

Two.

https://www.fanfiction.net/s/12305033/1/Cry-in-the-Dark

spoilerz

https://www.fanfiction.net/s/12305161/1/A-Mended-Family

spoilerz

https://www.fanfiction.net/s/12305260/1/Various-Perspectives

spoilerz?

https://www.fanfiction.net/s/12305356/1/manga

spoilerz

https://www.fanfiction.net/s/12305418/1/Second-Chances

You really do not need to repeat the opening dialogue of the game. If people wanted that, they can look it up on youtube any time they like.

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.

[All three of them laughed at that, knowing perfectly well how strong the Kantonian Gym Leaders were. Kukui never stood a chance.]

You realize people beat the gym leaders all the time, right?

[“What’s a Kahuna?”]

And don’t even try to tell me you’re capitalizing pokemon because the game does when you’re capitalizing this and the game doesn’t.

[ “Yeah. Like I said, Professor Oak wasn’t allowed to give me a starter Pokémon. It’ll be nice to actually have a partner. Meowth is great and all, but he’s my mom’s Pokémon.”]

Not how it works. If his mom’s able to own pokemon, then she’s capable of using that pokemon to catch another pokemon and then handing him the pokeball. (And that sort of thing is how almost every trainer in every canon gets a pokemon.) If you want an excuse for him not having any pokemon before now, say he was explicitly banned from having any pokemon back in Kanto – for that matter, given you’re changing so much else about the situation, you should have removed the meowth as well. You’re trying to make a point about unfairness and depriving the kid of pokemon, having it changed so the family no longer has their beloved meowth would get that across a lot better than saying he wasn’t handed a rare pokemon for free.

And now we’re back on the rails and everything’s playing out like we already know and it’s a huge waste of time. Look – start with what changed and don’t bother repeating what didn’t. If you absolutely want to include stuff like meeting Lillie and Nebby, have it play out differently than it did the first time around.

One.

https://www.fanfiction.net/s/12305466/1/Eevee-Series-Book-1-The-Bipolar-Suicide-Shift

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.

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.