bobandbill:
Regarding the screenshots, did you take them yourself, or just use an LP? I’m thinking possibly the former, given how Brendan was standing next to every NPC he spoke to in the same way.
The former. I used a "PC version" of the game [since I don't think I can say what it actually is in this forum
], and saw that it had a nifty screenshot tool in it, so I used that. It's fun viewing all of the pictures in a slideshow since you'll notice how Brendan is in the exact same position in all of them. XD
The introduction to the stories I feel could use a little work. I’m not too sure how trying out the specialties of local restaurants really makes for a great topic of conversation (as much as I like food myself), and it did feel a bit repetitive towards the end of it that Brendan was indicating he was going to share some of the stories/conversations he heard with us.
In short, the introduction could perhaps use a little tweaking here and there, so the set up is smoother from it to the stories themselves.
Duly noted. I agree that the introduction could use some work, and with what I have planned for this, it really does call for a revision. Thanks for pointing that out.
Overall the stories that were told were interesting, although some did fall a little bit flat to me – the second one for instance, or the two-lined conversation with the swimmer talking about how going with the flow won’t get you anywhere. To a lesser extent, the third story (the female veteran trainer) also felt a bit flat to me, as what she spoke about just felt a bit predictable. After her first sentence, I felt that I knew what she was going to continue to talk about, and nothing particularly remarkable or interesting popped up afterwards. So in a sense, I felt that the story did take a little while to get going.
The fourth story by contrast was much more interesting to me, and it was here where I was really beginning to enjoy the entry. Here, the trainer gave more of a sense of her thoughts and feelings in what she said, and that was the difference I felt. This particular conversation carried some more meaning, while the veteran’s thoughts on her worries with current methods of Pokémon training didn’t carry the same impact as it could have. She was basically just telling her worries, but I couldn’t really see them, if that makes sense.
This I think is what Negrek points out in her comment about how people who aren't familiar with HONY might react to the more mundane ones, seeing as I deliberately included the very short sections like the swimmer's, the picknicker's (in the desert), and the fisherman's to capitalize on the HONY effect. I'll try to think of a way to make them still have a heavy impact while keeping with their conciseness.
As for the veteran trainer's, I treated it as a contrast to the first two, a setup to the succeeding dialogue, and an overall setup to the mood of the one-shot being an examination of the title of "trainer." I figured that it was inevitable for something like this to be present, seeing as Hoenn has quite a lot of aged trainers dotted here and there [this one being in the peak of Mt. Chimney of all places]. As far as her worries just being told rather than seen, I'll be sure to take that into account when I revise it.
[Btw I assumed you meant "him" and "he" for the fourth story, since you're referring to the younger brother of the Bug-type expert - unless you're referring to the one next to it, which is the battle girl in the beach of Route 115. In any case, thank you
]
Which leads me to a thought I had a couple times when reading – the stories could have perhaps benefitted from some description outside of dialogue. I certainly appreciated the challenge at writing a story entirely out of dialogue (sans the introduction I suppose) and replicating the inspiration’s format as well, but it may have helped flesh out some of the stories some more. For instance, including how the veteran trainer spoke and perhaps something she did during the conversation, would better convey how she was feeling to the reader. Maybe she could be interacting with her Pokémon, or inspecting Brendan’s Pokémon while complaining about the complexity of training today. Other stories could have also benefitted; e.g. some description of the enthusiasm and excitement the woman in the couple spoken to about what she’d do when she found treasure would have further enhanced that part, I felt.
Speaking of which, that story was one of my favourites from the bunch. Three others I enjoyed in particular were the following one (the guy sending letters via Wingull), the Numel trainer’s conversation, and the man with the Zigzagoon. A bunch posed rather interesting insights into Hoenn, such as the Team Magma trainer, and I found it neat that you even included the likes of a Gym Leader and E4 Member. I liked the interpretations you provided for such characters – they certainly expanded well on the few lines they get in the games.
I'll certainly take the description outside of the dialogue idea into account, since that also means that the person describing them - which in this case would be Brendan - would also be characterized based on how he describes them. Killing two birds with one stone, too, since it improves on what little the readers know of Brendan from the introduction, and from the comments I had in "Berries" where I used pretty much the same device (both stories being dependent purely on dialogue), his characterization could be a point of criticism if I kept it this way.
I noticed how the stories that caught your eye are the ones which talk about a specific Pokemon of theirs, so I'll definitely see how those worked out to make the others better.
And I'm glad you pointed out the Team Magma trainer - his is definitely my favorite, and I can blame him for being the reason why I made this fic seeing as his internal conflict is so interesting and such a breath of fresh air from the otherwise straightforward Emerald plot.
I do feel that the ordering of the stories might be interesting if they were ordered ‘chronologically’, or rather, in order Brendan would have met these characters in the games. Steven’s conversation at the end was a decent selection I thought and this would keep it at the end as well if you had it as a post-E4 picture in Emerald, going by the content of that story. Otherwise, in its current state there wasn’t a clear order and that might help give the story a bit more of a structure. And now I’m intrigued by the idea of such a story being done as a trainer fic – the adventure of the games only told by conversations with people encountered every so often, heh. I guess that’s one of my favourite things about this; the unique structure and potential such a layout has.
You have no idea how much I laughed at this, because I expected the order of the story to be called into question and I can't help but be amused at how poor my reply was going to be - which is that it was an issue that arose of something entirely independent of the writing. My original plan was to do it in the way you said, which is to arrange them in the order Brendan meets them in the game. Unfortunately, the "PC version" of the game suddenly crashed on me after I beat the Pokemon League, which meant I was unable to get the post-E4 screenshots of the two characters who I planned to end the story with: Mr. Briney (in the S.S. Tidal) and Steven (in Meteor Falls). Knowing that I'd be called into question if the screenshots were of their earlier appearances, I decided to shuffle the order and make it so that they're arranged thematically instead of chronologically, which still gave me the luxury of putting Steven's entry last (and I thought it worked well when I put it after the cooltrainer/Winstrate's).
Of course, that's a very poor excuse, but after seeing the thematic connections and how it works well with my plans for this fic, I thought it'll be okay to go with that. I'll definitely improve on the transitions and try to make the order more clear and structural. I do see the potential of the "journey" being tied in well with the chronological order though.
Thank you very much for all the comments bobandbill! They were all very helpful.
Dragonfree:
I quite like the idea of Brendan just really liking to hear people's stories; what with how the player character listens to people say the randomest things about themselves in the game, it seems very fitting. The trainers' anecdotes are a nice cross-section of the variety of lives trainers might lead, each with their own troubles and views of the world, and a lot of them interestingly take on issues that you don't really see much in Pokémon fanfiction.
That's a really neat way of putting it! I have to be honest and say that I didn't make the connection at first and thought that Brendan's penchant for learning about other people's stories really just fit in with how he's an adventurer and how he gets into a lot of conflict in his journeys, but the way you say it makes so much more sense. So I'm gonna have to file that as an accidental hit. Sorry! XD
The variety of the trainers is no accident, though. I haven't read that many trainer fics, but I figured that it's unfair to say that the journeys of all the trainers are as clean-cut as what the player character experiences, and I took it as an aim to bring up many of the overlooked aspects of it: mainly familial, social, and economic aspects, with some gender and political issues thrown in there, too. I really believe that there's so much about the "trainer's journey" trope that can be explored, which is why trainer fics are so popular, and I thought that this fic could tackle that in a more calm but in-your-face way.
I did think it ended rather abruptly, though. I expected either an anecdote that clearly ties the others together somehow or a return to Brendan - as it was I was just surprised to find eventually I couldn't scroll down any further. It fits with the "Humans of New York" inspiration, since that project doesn't have an end, but in a self-contained short story it leaves it feeling kind of aimless.
Hmm, noted on the ending. It's unfair for me to claim that the lack of a definitive conclusion is the result of me gunning for the HONY style since this is still a one-shot that should follow certain conventions, so I'll try to see if I can make the ending more conclusive. I'm not sure if that means I'll be revising Steven's dialogue or adding one with Brendan, but thanks for pointing that out.
I also felt the stories could have been more consistent in the level of realism in their approach to the Pokémon world. Mixing lighthearted comedy and seriousness is fine, but some of the more comical stories sound exaggerated and artificial, rather reminiscent of in-game dialogue - the first couple, for instance, as well as the one with the woman recounting all the things she wants to buy and especially the one with the Pokéfan going on about her Pokémon. It wouldn't be so bad if all of them tried to emulate the style of the games that way, but because the others tend to be more realistic and genuine, I think the two styles kind of sabotage each other - the more realistic ones make the more gamelike ones sound cartoony and fake in comparison, and the more gamelike ones make the more realistic ones harder to take seriously.
Interesting comment. I admit that I didn't really think of there being a rather deep divide between the comedic and serious ones aside from their mood, seeing as almost all of the stories were based entirely on in-game dialogue that was expanded into a sort-of drabble. But that means I have to work on making each story have a less conflicting effect on the reader. I'm leaning towards toning down the cartoony ones, but I'll just have to see. Thanks for pointing this out.
The one about the Numel the woman got from a Team Magma member is an unusual case; there the woman's actual story is told in a more serious manner, but the scene it describes and the dialogue quoted is distinctly clichéd, with the heartless evil team member calling Numel a "good-for-nothing Pokémon" and being willing to fairly battle a random bystander for her. It seems particularly shallow in light of the very next story, where the reasons somebody might be part of an evil team are explored in a more sympathetic fashion; the flatly villainous game-style Magma grunt described in the previous story does not feel like he belongs in the same world as the man who feels trapped and worries about repercussions for his family if he quits. Compared to the other, far more sweet and genuine story of a trainer befriending a Pokémon (the one with the Zigzagoon that was trying to clean up the beach), the Numel one feels pretty uninspired.
I'll definitely keep this comment in mind when I revise this, since that Numel one and the Magma grunt one are two of my favorites in this collection, and I really want them to be good since I think they create such a nice contrast when one is read after the other. I'll definitely work on making that contrast much more pronounced and seem like they aren't just two sides of a coin.
Thanks for pointing out how the Zigzagoon one worked - I'll definitely see if I can incorporate what I did there to the Numel one.
There are also some typos and odd wording here - not enough to detract massively from it, but enough to be somewhat noticeable. A few more rounds of proofreading would have smoothed it out better.
Overall, I think you did a good job of portraying a little slice of the Pokémon world, showing how different people's stories can be and the kinds of things different trainers may be thinking or worrying about. Some of these stories are beautiful, sweet, interesting, even insightful perspectives on their respective topics. But the cartoonier entries felt a bit out of place, and the lack of structure and closure blunted its impact a bit for me.
I'll definitely do more proofreading before I post this in the forum, and I'll be sure to do something about the ending and the contrasting effects. Thank you very much for the comments, Dragonfree! I realized things that I really should've the first-time around, and it'll really help me in revising this one-shot.
Negrek:
I love this idea. I'm a big fan of Humans of New York, and I'm always excited to see somebody trying something new for a contest.
I think you do a good job of capturing the feel of HONY, too. In particular you have a great knack for getting down the "**** people say" style excerpts, where the interviewee says something completely on the nose and vaguely funny or wise (I'm talking in particular about entries like the first "figuring out the trainer part" one or the one with the picnicker in the desert).
YEEEES another HONY fan! It's such a simple but powerful concept and I'm glad to see that someone who knows that saw some of its feeling in this fic, so thank you very much for pointing that out. If anything, the idea for this one-shot came after I spent half a day at work reading up on three years' worth of HONY posts (it was a really slow day). XD
After reading through the whole thing, though, I felt like you were missing a bit of the poinancy of the original. You have some trainers with difficult backgrounds, some who don't really know where they're going in life, some who're having a great time, and so on, but the tone of them is pretty similar throughout; they don't really drive towards the extremes. In HONY itself you have some stories that seem just impossibly tragic or beautiful or downright hilarious in addition to the mundane. There weren't any interviews that struck me that way in this group. Obviously transcendant stories like that are a ton to ask of a writer, and a lot of what makes it possible for HONY is that you're getting people's actual stories, rather than constructed fiction. It adds a raw edge to things that's very difficult to imitate. Nonetheless, I'm not sure you were stretching towards capturing that kind of effect as much as you could have been. I feel like the emotional range of the stories being told could have been broader, and that if it was it would help give the story as a whole more versimilitude and impact.
Hmm, interesting. I was thinking that the trainers I picked were all pretty diverse in terms of where they were coming from, but I didn't think about how the intensity of all of their stories isn't as impactful as what you'd expect to get every one in seven or eight posts in HONY. Off the top of my head I can think of around three potential stories that can get this treatment (Team Magma trainer, the Victory Road Cooltrainer/Winstrate, and the Bug Master's younger brother), so I'll see what I can do about that.
However, while I thought the tone for the interviews might have been a little same-y, I love how varied you made the trainers' backgrounds and aspirations; I thought you did a great job of portraying more than just the "typical" trainer's journey. That definitely helps give the impression that this is a real world Brendan's inhabiting, and the diversity of people's views on what training means, and the many different reasons they pursue it is obviously important to your theme. However, given the number of people who espouse some disdain for hyper-competitive trainers who are obsessed with climbing the achievement ladder, suggesting that people perceive it to be a common perspective, I'm a bit surprised that Brendan didn't actually run into any of them during his wanderings.
While I liked how many different stories you gave glimpses of here, I think you might want to consider cutting down on the overall number. By around page 22 things were starting to feel a bit draggy to me. Choosing what stories you want to include in a piece like this is always going to be difficult; obviously you need to choose ones that relate to your theme and/or desired message, but you don't want the collection to feel too constructed, so you don't really want a laser focus either--there should be room for kind of quirky, off-the-wall inclusions that only indirectly comment on the theme or act to mix things up a bit. You want the collection to feel a little messy, I think. Overall I think the balance you came up with here is good, so I would suggest trying to maintain it if you do decide to eliminate some entries (i.e. don't simply get rid of all the jokey ones).
Noted about the
smogon-like hyper-competitive trainers. Admittedly the closest one to those types of trainers I included was the cooltrainer/winstrate in Victory Road, and his issues aren't really focused on that aspect of him, so I'll see if I can insert one somewhere.
As for cutting down the number, that's definitely something I've been trying to work on, since the version I submitted here was actually cut down from its first draft, which had around seven or eight more stories on top of the twenty-nine that made the final cut. I'll see if I can meet a happy medium of taking out some while adding in others and maybe revising the contents of others so that I can also work on the diversity, which seems to be one of the better points of this one-shot. Speaking of which, I appreciate your comment on their variety, since like I said above in my replies to Dragonfree's comments, it's really something I worked hard on.
As for the theme itself, I think what you're going for here is a message about finding yourself and going your own way--enjoying the journey for the journey rather than being heavily focused on results. I think it might be a little subtle; after the first read-through I wasn't entirely sure what you were going for, but returning to the piece again later I thought the intent was pretty clear. I think you might want to foreground the theme a little more, although again, that's going to be a real balancing act in a story like this, since nothing would make it more tedious than getting punched in the face with "SO THE MORAL OF THIS STORY IS" every page.
Actually, like what I said in my replies to Dragonfree's review above, I was gunning more for an exploration of the "trainer" title/occupation/role and what that means to different people, but I do think that the theme of finding yourself is a logical extension of that, since an exploration of your role as a trainer is related to a reflection of who you are as a person. While some of the stories here have a pretty clear moral attached to it, I do agree that I might overdo it if I make it more obvious in the others, so I'll see what I can do to keep the effect not too overt and not too subtle.
As far as the writing goes, there are a few typos here and there, but all in all it's nicely polished. As I said earlier, I think you do a good job of capturing the conversational tone you often see on HONY. If anything, it would be nice to see a little more variation in how the people being interviewed speak. The vast majority of them seem to speak in a fairly neutral voice--slightly pleasant, slightly wise, but without a lot of individual character. There are exceptions, but not many, and they're pretty universally played for laughs (the pokémon fan, for example; that one felt a bit out of place). I don't really get the feeling that any of the people being interviewed are particularly cranky, or were jokesters, or pushy, or any of those other strong sorts of personalities that you can pick up very quickly from people. This is again difficult to pull off because these traits often aren't as pronounced in what real people say, in short snippets, as they are in fiction. But I think a little more diversity in tone, to match the diversity of backgrounds in the interviewees, would help to make the exerpts feel more interesting and realistic.
Ah, that's something I have to work on. I've been called out a lot on how the tone of my characters are very similar when you put them side-by-side, and that isn't really something that should happen in a dialogue-heavy story like this. This also relates to your previous comment of increasing the emotional range of the stories - even if I do that, that won't really amount to anything if I keep their tone the same, so thank you for this.
I also have to admit that this didn't feel very "Hoenn." The pictures, of course, are all of Hoenn locations, some of them very iconic. The prose, though, often didn't do a lot to locate the speaker in the region. How might a trainer from Hoenn have a different perspective from a trainer from Kanto? For the most part the responses sound like they could come from ordinary people living anywhere.
Fair point, and I'm afraid I don't really know how to solve this since "Trainers of Kanto" isn't really in my mind now
. I try to focus on this in one of the groups of connected stories that focus on Hoenn (the one with Mr. Briney) and how the ranger from Almia thinks that this beauty is under-appreciated. Unlike HONY, where you get that sense of diversity from the contrasting social, cultural, and economic spheres that reside within New York, Hoenn doesn't really have much of that outside of the fanatics (the villainous teams). If anything, I can try to focus on how different areas of Hoenn may react differently, but the games don't really give much of that in the dialogue, so that's something I'll have to expand on my own. (ORAS does something akin to this in the contrast of Mauville Hills with the rest of Mauville, so I'll definitely use that.)
In the end I also gotta admit I don't know how well this one would work for somebody not already familiar with HONY. Not that that's a bad thing, really, but it'll be interesting to see what some of the judges who aren't familiar with/fans of it think.
BNB's comments above may be a good indicator of this, since unlike your review and Dragonfree's, he doesn't make any comparisons to HONY at all. I'll definitely see what I can do about that, and I wonder if Phoenixsong has a non-HONY-influenced perspective as well. I'll get to PM-ing her.
All things said and done, this was the entry that excited me the most, and while I think there were some elements that could have been executed better, I absolutely love the idea. This is just such a very, very hard kind of writing to imitate without actually having real people's words to draw on--usually when we write fiction, we're not actually trying to capture the world precisely as it is, but rather construct a world that feels real but is actually more refined than true reality. Here you really want to capture that reality, but using words that are completely made up. It's a tall order, but even with some imperfections, it's great to see somebody take on that challenge.
I'm glad to hear that, and it certainly was a challenge that I was more than happy to take. Thank you very much for the review, Negrek, and thank you for holding such an awesome contest!
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