Dragonfree
Just me
5th-6th place TIE: Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Plasbad by Umbramatic
Scoring
bobandbill: 7th place (30 points)
Creepychu: 5th place (50 points)
Dragonfree: 6th place (40 points)
Sike Saner: 5th place (50 points)
Total: 170 points
Reviews
bobandbill
You were right - the title was silly. But I approve of anything using the phrase ‘plasbad’, so points from me there. =p
I found the story plot and the direction you took the plot to be neat. It was interestingly the only one which followed the entire plot of a game like so. It was nice to see you highlight some interesting points such as ‘Plasma used Poke Balls despite wanting to free Pokémon’ and the hypocrisy of some of its members (like the Munna kickers). It was also neat that you characterised a couple grunts in telling this story that I recalled from the games, and their reactions to different developments in the game felt reasonable. Good job with that!
It may have been nice to see more conflict between the pair in the lead up to the otherwise nice, warming ending of the two friends appreciating each other like that, as they seemed fairly agreeable throughout with a few light ‘arguments’ that usually ended in a hug-out anyway. There was a lack of tension in their issues, I thought, which is maybe fitting for a comedy piece, but it didn’t at the same time work with that final resolution as it had never been a major point I felt needed a resolution during the story.
What we saw of their two Pokemon was neat as well, but their names at the end seemed like an odd detail to add in then and there, so when their names came up a second time I had nearly forgotten they were the Scrafty and Golurk. On the other hand, the bit about N remembering those two grunts as friends? That was pretty neat.
The humour was mostly entertaining and did the job. A couple segments or moments may have missed their mark but overall I was amused by it. (I also caught the reference to a certain Nuzlocke comic before reading the latter part of author notes. =p On that note the likes of Simpsons references did not escape notice either.) Highlights for me were some of the details with N’s isolation, the pair just getting accepted in Plasma like that, and the random what-if scene with talking to someone and pulling out a chainsaw scene. (Hi, bemused other readers of this review! Why yes, this is a weird thing to write or read out of context!)
Overall this was a neat story that could use a bit more thought with tense usage and maybe a touch more fleshing out to give the final scene more impact, but was certainly enjoyable already and had some nice moments expanded upon in the games.
Creepychu
I'm of two minds on this one. On the one hand I appreciate the ambitious scope, since trying to bridge the events of the BW storyline within the bounds of a one-shot takes some doing and it's interesting to see someone tackle that challenge. On the other hand, I feel the length is not always committed to the interesting parts of the story.
To begin with, you've got a solid enough pair of leads in Roger and Tom, who both come off as your fairly standard grunt-material types. Their interplay works pretty well and I can buy why the two are friends from the way they stick together and look out for each other even when their personalities clash from time to time. They've got decent chemistry going and their squabbles come off as genuine enough. Equally, I can buy why they'd get involved in Plasma given Roger's personal baggage and how easily Tom gets excited and swept in with things. As protagonist go, they make a solid pair for making things happen and getting involved in the situation and have enough moments of occasional cleverness to buy into them catching onto the ruse the way they do.
That being said, I felt that the other key relationship in this story (that being the one between N and our main duo) came off as a bit more forced. His initial shock at having two grunts barge into his room is appropriate enough for a shut-in, as is his soft-spoken manner, but given the initial shock and his low opinion of people he gets strangely verbose with them very quickly after that, barely even getting past initial introductions before immediately launching into expositing about his character motivations. Plot-wise this is obviously important for getting Tom and Roger involved and invested in finding out more, but character-wise it feels far too abrupt for a character who should by rights have some pretty serious trust issues with unknown human beings. I can buy this relation forming over time, but I felt it would have been more believable (and interesting) if the development was more gradual and more focus was given to this aspect of the story, since it's such a core part of the plot and would also have provided some nice opportunities for staggering out Roger's and Tom's personal matters. The story with Hazel in particular felt like it came to a head very abruptly, since you have nice hinting at it early on with his feelings about pokémon treatment, but the actual moment of reveal kind of blindsided me. The other question that comes to mind is how negligent Ghetsis is of all this. These two burst into N's room, with brownies, and yet apparently he is completely unaware of it after the fact despite all the pains he's gone through to isolate N and control every influence he gets into contact with? Given the impression they made, I'd be very surprised if N had just kept quiet about the whole thing, especially given how out of character it is for how things normally operate in the castle. Likewise, it feels strange how strong their implicit trust of N is based off just a single quick meeting where they find out he's a bit strange. It just feels like there should be more of a story to tell there, and it'd have been interesting to see how both Ghetsis and the two protagonists would have handled the situation.
By contrast, there are other places where I feel you are going over the same information to excessive amount. The most prominent is the run-in with Ghetsis in the hallway, where you first describe the scene as it happens and then launch straight into Tom explaining for a second time what we you just got finished explaining to us. In this case, I feel it would have been more efficient to cut straight to Roger's reaction to the story rather than going through the conversation leading up to it itself, especially since you already have a lot of ground to cover writing-wise.
On a writing-level, dialogue is where your story shines the most. All the core characters have distinct ways of expressing themselves that set them apart from each other and feel appropriate to the personalities in play and aside from the odd expositiony bits here and there the flow of conversations feels natural. The narration does its job competently and I appreciate the attention to body language, since it does a good job of conveying the emotions at play, enough so that some of the character explaining their feelings out loud feels redundant at times. This is particularly strong in the part after N is defeated, where I'd have appreciated more emphasis on the way they speak and behave rather than on each of them talking feelings since it's the kind of shocking moment where I'd expect that sort of self-reflection to be difficult.
On the note of people explaining feelings, it also felt rather awkward for Reshiram to have to explain Tom's loyalty before Roger realized it, since the two have come off as close and loyal to the point where it seems very weird that Roger would find this surprising. Given how much is going on I can understand him needing an outside push to actually make him speak his mind on it, but a more subtle nudge should have been quite enough for that sort of thing and it does sort of cheapen the sentiment to know that he was genuinely surprised to find this out not a minute ago.
On a technical level, I didn't find anything particularly off, though I did notice an odd switch to present tense for no apparent reason:
The paragraph could easily have been past tense and honestly should be.
Lastly, the ending line felt like a pretty perfunctory note to end on, especially since you had a little ending joke on the previous line that would itself have worked better. It's equally a little bit strange to end on the words of two pokémon that have been silent side characters up to the story, but what they're saying is at least thematically fitting and would make for a better end point.
All in all, there's a fair bit of rough edges here and I would have appreciated more attention towards building the relationship with N and less on recapping plot points from the games (which your expected readership should already be pretty familiar with) but I found myself rather liking the core story. Trim off a bit of the excess exposition, give a bit more focus to the central character relationship and you should be good.
On a non-evaluation point, I'd also consider trimming down those authors' notes. There's no need to distract your readers by trying to pre-empt criticisms when you could simply stand behind your work with confidence and address the complaints as and if they come instead.
Dragonfree
So this is basically Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead, but for the fifth-generation Pokémon games instead of Hamlet. That's definitely a pretty amusing idea. I liked that you gave them the same names and somewhat analogous personalities as a homage to Tom Stoppard's play, and the Waiting for Godot reference near the end was a treat, too (although I've got to wonder why they'd give their Pokémon names all of a sudden then when they haven't had nicknames for most of the story).
You do a good job of characterizing Tom and Roger as distinct; their voices are quite different, to the point that I have no problem following even long stretches of dialogue between them with no dialogue tags, and that's always a plus. Tom's hyperactive, childish eccentricness is sometimes over-the-top (his immediate declaration that he's going to walk over to the king of Team Plasma and give him a "big Ursaring hug" seemed particularly exaggerated), but he gets less so as the story goes on, and overall both Tom and Roger are quite lovable and endearing and you show their relationship nicely.
This wasn't as much of a story about their friendship as I expected, though. At the end Reshiram gets Roger to tell Tom that he cares about him and he's the best friend he's ever had, and Vladimir comments that they've learned that the bonds of friendship can withstand great strife and work past great differences. But while this is adorable, it didn't actually feel at any point in the story like there was any significant strife or great differences between them, or a sense that Tom felt particularly unappreciated by Roger and needed to hear how much he cared. They argued about some trivial things, sure, and Roger called Tom an idiot sometimes, but they didn't have anything that seemed like a major interpersonal conflict - it just looked like regular friendly bickering to me. Overall, I think if you truly wanted an arc about their friendship evolving and growing stronger as they withstand great differences, you should have tried to convey that conflict and strife in a more focused way - show Tom being hurt when Roger lashes out at him, show them fighting over something that matters and not reconciling at the end of the scene. That would have made the "Total bros" scene far more potent - it's definitely sweet as it is, but it would be even more so if we truly felt like they hadn't been as certain of their friendship and their need for each other before.
Instead, in its current form it's more of a mostly-comedic story about Black and White's storyline as told by some grunts hovering on the sidelines. You do a nice job of showing N and how passionate but sheltered, manipulated and ultimately screwed-up he is, even with lighthearted, comedic scenes, as well as portraying Team Plasma members who sincerely believe in N's cause slowly losing their faith as they realize how deep the corruption at the heart of the organization goes.
There were a number of things happening throughout that struck me as kind of strange, awkward or unnatural, though:
- Why do Roger and Tom need to be told what Ghetsis and N look like? Would they really never have seen them or any photos of them or anything in the process of signing up for the team? As far as I can tell there's no story reason to have them not know from the start, either - it just adds unnecessary dialogue to describe them.
- Why does Tom's Scraggy immediately start hugging his leg? It's cute, but not generally a thing someone would do when confronted with a complete stranger they know nothing about. This especially jumps out at me because it'd actually be interesting to see some indication of exactly where Team Plasma's Pokémon come from. Were they "liberated" from other trainers? Then they'd probably be confused and upset to have been separated from them. Or were they caught in the wild by other Plasma grunts? Did their captors explain to them that they'd be assigned to other new recruits - and then wouldn't they be initially wary, wondering if the people they're assigned to can be trusted - or were they just caught and the next thing they know is standing in front of some completely different people - in which case they'd probably be confused and scared? Were they perhaps persuaded to join the cause, being passionate about Pokémon liberation themselves? We don't really get any idea of Scraggy and Golett as characters, even though there's a lot of potential there, especially for a story focused on Team Plasma - they have personalities, but there's no real sense that they have their own desires, motivations and lives, and I think that would be a great addition to this story, enhancing its themes both about Team Plasma and about friendship.
- How did Roger and Tom not notice until after the fact that N had been talking about what Pokémon were saying during the battle with Hilbert? That would immediately jump out at anyone who think it's impossible to understand Pokémon speech, not be an afterthought that doesn't occur to them until several minutes afterwards. It makes sense Roger might not mention it until the battle is done, so that they can listen to the rest of what's going on, but then that should definitely be the first thing he comments on, not his disappointment that N used a Purrloin and lost.
- The image of murderous cackling N with a chainsaw saying his name stands for "No survivors" definitely cracked me up, but it comes off as a very visual gag, which makes it feel a bit strange - I can just picture how this cut would happen in a TV show, but in prose it looks a lot weirder to have an absurd imaginary scene inserted in the middle of a conversation the same way. I'm not sure what to advise you here, because the scene is genuinely amusing - it might work better if you just had Tom describe it in a vivid, cinematic way, but I'm not actually sure how well it would come across. So, really, I don't know.
- Why are the grunts by the water cooler so eager to casually volunteer the fact that they abused a Munna? Surely, even though half of Team Plasma doesn't really believe in N's ideals about saving Pokémon, they'd know to at least try to keep up the pretense around other members they don't know. It would be a lot more believable, and actually possibly more sinister, if they were doing their best to minimize and talk around it - perhaps Roger would notice that they're being vague and probe them until he fishes it out of them, or something like that. Either way, currently they come off as rather cartoony, like they have no conception that anyone would have a problem with kicking Munna, even though they're in an organization that revolves around exploiting people's genuine sympathy for the cause of Pokémon rights.
- How do Roger and Tom have the time to beat up the thugs and shove them "somewhere inconspicuous" (where would that be, in the middle of an amusement park?) before this one car of the ferris wheel passes? If it's moving continuously, they only have a few seconds to get on. This encounter also makes Tom and Roger out to be implausibly skilled fighters by easily taking out two "thugs" with nothing more than random frying pans, just for the sake of a cartoony visual gag - honestly, I don't think it's worth it for the unbelievable setup here, given nothing about it has any wider repercussions for the story or is addressed in any way later. You might as well just have them go straight to spying on N and Hilbert.
- Skipping completely over how Tom and Roger did find N at the end, right after saying that he could be anywhere, stretches suspension of disbelief, even if you end up making a lampshadey joke about it. By the time the joke comes along, we've already spotted that it doesn't make sense, gone "Wait, what?" and concluded it's not going to be explained - at that point you can't back out by making it into a joke. Even if you did make it work out so that the first time we realize they shouldn't have been able to find N was right before the joke, though, I don't think this fic has set the right tone for that kind of joke. So far, the humour has been entirely grounded in normal reality - there have been no bizarre unexplained happenings waved away in this manner, and when it suddenly happens at the end of a ten-thousand-word fic, it just seems to come out of left field. I kind of like the joke in theory, but it needs to be in a very particular sort of story to work, and I don't think this story is it.
Overall, I feel like this entry is a bit longer than it needed to be. That's not to say entire sections should be cut, just that I notice quite a few chunks of dialogue throughout that just don't add much - they don't further the plot in any way that couldn't just as well have been left out altogether, and they're not actually jokes or part of a setup. Mostly these are bits that give information, discuss the implications of something that just happened or tell us about something that's about to happen, where the information being given could easily be inferred by the reader or at least condensed to not take up several lines of back-and-forth dialogue. It's not a huge deal - it's not like these are long stretches of the story, just a few lines of dialogue here and there, and it doesn't seriously hurt my enjoyment of it - but it's something I noticed and that you might want to think about, especially when you're worried that you might go over a word limit, as you indicated you were with this entry.
This story is very dialogue-focused, and I feel like it would have benefitted from a bit more narration. Everything is kind of abrupt, and while that works well for the comedic bits where it makes the dialogue more snappy and keeps up the rhythm, the more dramatic parts could convey emotion in a clearer, smoother way if they did more of describing the characters' actions, expressions and body language. You already have some body language in your dialogue, and it's generally well done body language that really adds to the reader's understanding of what they're saying and how they're feeling (good job on that!), but there's still comparatively little of it. Especially in scenes like where Roger is finally telling Tom about Hazel, I feel that it would come through better if you spent more time on what they're doing while this is going on - both of them, not just Roger. How does Tom react to hearing that story? Does he come over to try to comfort Roger? Does he look like a heartbroken puppy at the very thought of that kind of Pokémon abuse? When he says he joined Team Plasma to help stop this kind of thing, how does he say it and what does he do as he says it? It'd be more vivid to the reader if you wrote out a bit more of that kind of detail.
There are also some proofreading mistakes in here. In particular, a couple of times you confuse Tom and Roger's names, and you slip into present tense in several places; watch out for that.
That's a lot of criticism, but I genuinely really enjoyed this story. It's sweet, adorable, definitely has its pretty amusing moments, and overall just makes me smile. Not everything in it makes sense, though, and I think you could have built a more consistent, solid narrative arc about Tom and Roger's friendship that would have made it even more adorable.
Sike Saner
This was definitely one of the most readable fics of the bunch. The style was nice and clear; at no point did I stop and go, "Buh?" Overall, this was a pretty fun read.
The only things that really snagged me at all were the little grammatical/stylistic oopses and whatnot, and even they were pretty minor:
I do get what you were going for with the space-hyphen-space combo. But I think it'd be a little clearer and tidier to use double hyphens--like so. Plus some word programs will go ahead and format double hyphens into a proper em dash for you, which looks even better.
There were also a few missing quote marks, a couple of tense errors, a few extraneous letters, and a couple of space errors. Again, though, minor stuff.
As far as comedies go... well, I can't say I laughed my *** off at every gag. But I laughed all the same, especially at "but calm the fuck down"--probably because that bit mirrored my thoughts exactly at that point, heh. And perhaps more significantly, I didn't laugh at the stuff that wasn't meant to be funny, i.e. the Deino backstory.
Scoring
bobandbill: 7th place (30 points)
Creepychu: 5th place (50 points)
Dragonfree: 6th place (40 points)
Sike Saner: 5th place (50 points)
Total: 170 points
Hello, judges! (And anyone who bothers to read this once the results go live.) This is my third time entering in such a contest, and again my main goal is to do at least a bit better than last time, either in terms of overall story quality, actual placing, or, hopefully, both. But before you go off and start reading the damn thing to see if I succeed or not, I just want to note a couple things:
First, this was written as a side story to two previous oneshots of mine: Green and White and its fairly-recently posted sequel, Truth, both staring N and Reshiram. However, while both characters show up in this story, it's still a side story with totally different protagonists and a totally different focus, and there's no need whatsoever for any of you to read the previous oneshots if you haven't already (Though hopefully you've all got at least a basic grasp of the plot of the Unova games). Only thing you should know in terms of headcanony bits is that in this fic (and Truth for that matter) N never gives the player character of White 2 Reshiram. You'll find out how that affects this story when you get to it.
Second, this fic's title is probably going to be one of the sillier ones you'll get (though I'm eagerly awaiting to see if anyone tops me). However, this is partially because I want to bit more of focus on comedy this time because I feel at least some of my recent work has been leaning too serious for my liking and I want to start fixing that because... well, I like writing comedy as much as I do drama. Also, while silly, the title still fits the story in more ways than one.
Finally, this fic contains a decent amount of swearing and a few mentions of drugs and porn, but that's about it as far as required warnings go.
But this is getting too damn long, so I give you...
Rosencrantz And Guildenstern Are Plasbad
Two young men stood side-by-side in the corridors of a massive, lavish castle. They were dressed in strange uniforms, resembling the armor of medieval knights, with an elaborate blue-and-black symbol on their chestplates. The young man on the left - black-haired, hazel-eyed, and sharp-featured, looked around at his surroundings, sighed, and shook his head.
"You'd think we'd spend more of our budget on our cause instead of buffing up HQ, but whatever."
He then turned to his companion - brown-haired, blue-eyed, soft-featured, and shaking madly and grinning as if some cosmic force inside him was about to be unleashed full-blast.
"...You seem excited, Tom," said the first young man.
Tom turned instantly and energetically towards his companion and replied as if said cosmic force was in fact bottled up inside him the whole time.
"Am I?! Roger, this is gonna be freaking awesome! You and me are gonna help save the world and every Pokemon under the iron heel of hu-"
"Yes, yes, Tom, this is gonna be a world-shaking event for a cause we both deeply care about and very much want to make a reality for the good of the world, but calm the fuck down. We've already been hired by Team Plasma but we're still waiting for an evaluation and debrief before we can actually get in on the action, and if you mess that up it's good-bye for the both of us. So just try to calm down, OK?
"Can I still do the skit wher-"
"Dear Cobalion, no. Act as serious as you can."
Tom then stood up unnaturally stiff and straight, saluting with an exaggerated grimace on his face. Roger sighed again.
"Not like that. Just... Relax, OK?"
Tom finally shifted to a more-or-less neutral pose and expression.
"Perfect," said Roger, smirking.
Tom then noticed something out of the corner of his eye. "Hey! The evaluation person is coming!"
"Shit!" said Roger. "Do what I said!"
The two stood in position as a blonde woman, slightly older than they were but wearing the same uniform, approached them with a disdainful look on her face.
"Are you two the new recruits?"
Both Roger and Tom nodded.
"Alright then... Names?"
"Roger Guildenstern." replied Roger.
"Thomas Rosencrantz!" replied Tom in turn.
"Alright then..." said the woman, in a fashion so dry you could tell the exact multitude of times she'd done this before from sheer inflection. She produced two Pokeballs, handing each to Roger and Tom with a similar lack of enthusiasm.
"These are the two Pokemon you'll use to further our cause. You can request more when you've been around long enough... Or liberate them from other trainers. Your choice."
Roger frowned. "Wait a minute. We're supposed to prevent Pokemon from being misused in this way."
"Yeah!" said Roger. "We can't free 'em all if we stuff them in teeny little balls like everyone else does!"
The woman rolled her eyes. "We get that a lot. Unfortunately people opposing our cause will likely use Pokemon against us, leaving us no choice but to use Pokemon of our own. The Pokemon used by Team Plasma will be liberated alongside everyone else's when the time comes."
"Oh! That totally makes sense!" said Tom.
"...If it's necessary and lets them be free in the end, alright," Roger said, looking down uneasily at his Pokeball.
"Alright then," said the woman. "You two are good to go."
Roger stared at her in shock. "...That's it?"
"Well, you got through the actual hiring process, didn't you?"
"...Point."
"Anyway, you two joined up just in the nick of time... We're having a big rally in Accumula Town in a few days. N, the King of Team Plasma, and his trusted advisor Ghetsis will be there."
"The King?! His most trusted advisor?!" said Tom, giving an audible squeal of excitement.
"Um, ma'am," said Roger, "Could you give us a rundown on what they look like so I can prevent To- er, either of us from inadvertently pissing either of them off?"
The woman raised an eyebrow, but continued regardless.
"Ghetsis is an older guy, has green hair, dresses like a priest with castle battlements on his shoulders. N is around your age, also has green hair, and wears a black-and-white trucker cap, a white polo, and khakis. That good enough for you two?
Both Tom and Roger nodded.
"Good. Is that all?"
They nodded again.
"Good. Welcome aboard, you two."
With that, she walked off, not bothering at all to look back.
Roger stared after her blankly for a bit before turning to Tom, who had a huge grin on his face.
"This is gonna be great!" said Tom.
Finally, Roger smiled back.
"I sure hope so, buddy. I sure hope so."
First, this was written as a side story to two previous oneshots of mine: Green and White and its fairly-recently posted sequel, Truth, both staring N and Reshiram. However, while both characters show up in this story, it's still a side story with totally different protagonists and a totally different focus, and there's no need whatsoever for any of you to read the previous oneshots if you haven't already (Though hopefully you've all got at least a basic grasp of the plot of the Unova games). Only thing you should know in terms of headcanony bits is that in this fic (and Truth for that matter) N never gives the player character of White 2 Reshiram. You'll find out how that affects this story when you get to it.
Second, this fic's title is probably going to be one of the sillier ones you'll get (though I'm eagerly awaiting to see if anyone tops me). However, this is partially because I want to bit more of focus on comedy this time because I feel at least some of my recent work has been leaning too serious for my liking and I want to start fixing that because... well, I like writing comedy as much as I do drama. Also, while silly, the title still fits the story in more ways than one.
Finally, this fic contains a decent amount of swearing and a few mentions of drugs and porn, but that's about it as far as required warnings go.
But this is getting too damn long, so I give you...
Rosencrantz And Guildenstern Are Plasbad
Two young men stood side-by-side in the corridors of a massive, lavish castle. They were dressed in strange uniforms, resembling the armor of medieval knights, with an elaborate blue-and-black symbol on their chestplates. The young man on the left - black-haired, hazel-eyed, and sharp-featured, looked around at his surroundings, sighed, and shook his head.
"You'd think we'd spend more of our budget on our cause instead of buffing up HQ, but whatever."
He then turned to his companion - brown-haired, blue-eyed, soft-featured, and shaking madly and grinning as if some cosmic force inside him was about to be unleashed full-blast.
"...You seem excited, Tom," said the first young man.
Tom turned instantly and energetically towards his companion and replied as if said cosmic force was in fact bottled up inside him the whole time.
"Am I?! Roger, this is gonna be freaking awesome! You and me are gonna help save the world and every Pokemon under the iron heel of hu-"
"Yes, yes, Tom, this is gonna be a world-shaking event for a cause we both deeply care about and very much want to make a reality for the good of the world, but calm the fuck down. We've already been hired by Team Plasma but we're still waiting for an evaluation and debrief before we can actually get in on the action, and if you mess that up it's good-bye for the both of us. So just try to calm down, OK?
"Can I still do the skit wher-"
"Dear Cobalion, no. Act as serious as you can."
Tom then stood up unnaturally stiff and straight, saluting with an exaggerated grimace on his face. Roger sighed again.
"Not like that. Just... Relax, OK?"
Tom finally shifted to a more-or-less neutral pose and expression.
"Perfect," said Roger, smirking.
Tom then noticed something out of the corner of his eye. "Hey! The evaluation person is coming!"
"Shit!" said Roger. "Do what I said!"
The two stood in position as a blonde woman, slightly older than they were but wearing the same uniform, approached them with a disdainful look on her face.
"Are you two the new recruits?"
Both Roger and Tom nodded.
"Alright then... Names?"
"Roger Guildenstern." replied Roger.
"Thomas Rosencrantz!" replied Tom in turn.
"Alright then..." said the woman, in a fashion so dry you could tell the exact multitude of times she'd done this before from sheer inflection. She produced two Pokeballs, handing each to Roger and Tom with a similar lack of enthusiasm.
"These are the two Pokemon you'll use to further our cause. You can request more when you've been around long enough... Or liberate them from other trainers. Your choice."
Roger frowned. "Wait a minute. We're supposed to prevent Pokemon from being misused in this way."
"Yeah!" said Roger. "We can't free 'em all if we stuff them in teeny little balls like everyone else does!"
The woman rolled her eyes. "We get that a lot. Unfortunately people opposing our cause will likely use Pokemon against us, leaving us no choice but to use Pokemon of our own. The Pokemon used by Team Plasma will be liberated alongside everyone else's when the time comes."
"Oh! That totally makes sense!" said Tom.
"...If it's necessary and lets them be free in the end, alright," Roger said, looking down uneasily at his Pokeball.
"Alright then," said the woman. "You two are good to go."
Roger stared at her in shock. "...That's it?"
"Well, you got through the actual hiring process, didn't you?"
"...Point."
"Anyway, you two joined up just in the nick of time... We're having a big rally in Accumula Town in a few days. N, the King of Team Plasma, and his trusted advisor Ghetsis will be there."
"The King?! His most trusted advisor?!" said Tom, giving an audible squeal of excitement.
"Um, ma'am," said Roger, "Could you give us a rundown on what they look like so I can prevent To- er, either of us from inadvertently pissing either of them off?"
The woman raised an eyebrow, but continued regardless.
"Ghetsis is an older guy, has green hair, dresses like a priest with castle battlements on his shoulders. N is around your age, also has green hair, and wears a black-and-white trucker cap, a white polo, and khakis. That good enough for you two?
Both Tom and Roger nodded.
"Good. Is that all?"
They nodded again.
"Good. Welcome aboard, you two."
With that, she walked off, not bothering at all to look back.
Roger stared after her blankly for a bit before turning to Tom, who had a huge grin on his face.
"This is gonna be great!" said Tom.
Finally, Roger smiled back.
"I sure hope so, buddy. I sure hope so."
Reviews
bobandbill
You were right - the title was silly. But I approve of anything using the phrase ‘plasbad’, so points from me there. =p
I found the story plot and the direction you took the plot to be neat. It was interestingly the only one which followed the entire plot of a game like so. It was nice to see you highlight some interesting points such as ‘Plasma used Poke Balls despite wanting to free Pokémon’ and the hypocrisy of some of its members (like the Munna kickers). It was also neat that you characterised a couple grunts in telling this story that I recalled from the games, and their reactions to different developments in the game felt reasonable. Good job with that!
It may have been nice to see more conflict between the pair in the lead up to the otherwise nice, warming ending of the two friends appreciating each other like that, as they seemed fairly agreeable throughout with a few light ‘arguments’ that usually ended in a hug-out anyway. There was a lack of tension in their issues, I thought, which is maybe fitting for a comedy piece, but it didn’t at the same time work with that final resolution as it had never been a major point I felt needed a resolution during the story.
What we saw of their two Pokemon was neat as well, but their names at the end seemed like an odd detail to add in then and there, so when their names came up a second time I had nearly forgotten they were the Scrafty and Golurk. On the other hand, the bit about N remembering those two grunts as friends? That was pretty neat.
The humour was mostly entertaining and did the job. A couple segments or moments may have missed their mark but overall I was amused by it. (I also caught the reference to a certain Nuzlocke comic before reading the latter part of author notes. =p On that note the likes of Simpsons references did not escape notice either.) Highlights for me were some of the details with N’s isolation, the pair just getting accepted in Plasma like that, and the random what-if scene with talking to someone and pulling out a chainsaw scene. (Hi, bemused other readers of this review! Why yes, this is a weird thing to write or read out of context!)
Hard to notice but there is an extra space before ‘said’ there.
This did read a bit awkwardly, and maybe could be better worded with some more showing rather than telling that he had turned ‘energetically’.
Extra quotation mark.a
And here there was a missing quotation mark.
One thing I noticed was that tenses seemed to change every so often. Tom panicked, stood, saluted, trembled – past tense phrases, but then Scraggy hides and cowers - in the present tense. (This was better showing nonetheless.) Be more consistent in what tense you use in your writing, as it can get confusing.
This could use some rewording as well, e.g. ‘Why are those always the...”.
Overall this was a neat story that could use a bit more thought with tense usage and maybe a touch more fleshing out to give the final scene more impact, but was certainly enjoyable already and had some nice moments expanded upon in the games.
Creepychu
I'm of two minds on this one. On the one hand I appreciate the ambitious scope, since trying to bridge the events of the BW storyline within the bounds of a one-shot takes some doing and it's interesting to see someone tackle that challenge. On the other hand, I feel the length is not always committed to the interesting parts of the story.
To begin with, you've got a solid enough pair of leads in Roger and Tom, who both come off as your fairly standard grunt-material types. Their interplay works pretty well and I can buy why the two are friends from the way they stick together and look out for each other even when their personalities clash from time to time. They've got decent chemistry going and their squabbles come off as genuine enough. Equally, I can buy why they'd get involved in Plasma given Roger's personal baggage and how easily Tom gets excited and swept in with things. As protagonist go, they make a solid pair for making things happen and getting involved in the situation and have enough moments of occasional cleverness to buy into them catching onto the ruse the way they do.
That being said, I felt that the other key relationship in this story (that being the one between N and our main duo) came off as a bit more forced. His initial shock at having two grunts barge into his room is appropriate enough for a shut-in, as is his soft-spoken manner, but given the initial shock and his low opinion of people he gets strangely verbose with them very quickly after that, barely even getting past initial introductions before immediately launching into expositing about his character motivations. Plot-wise this is obviously important for getting Tom and Roger involved and invested in finding out more, but character-wise it feels far too abrupt for a character who should by rights have some pretty serious trust issues with unknown human beings. I can buy this relation forming over time, but I felt it would have been more believable (and interesting) if the development was more gradual and more focus was given to this aspect of the story, since it's such a core part of the plot and would also have provided some nice opportunities for staggering out Roger's and Tom's personal matters. The story with Hazel in particular felt like it came to a head very abruptly, since you have nice hinting at it early on with his feelings about pokémon treatment, but the actual moment of reveal kind of blindsided me. The other question that comes to mind is how negligent Ghetsis is of all this. These two burst into N's room, with brownies, and yet apparently he is completely unaware of it after the fact despite all the pains he's gone through to isolate N and control every influence he gets into contact with? Given the impression they made, I'd be very surprised if N had just kept quiet about the whole thing, especially given how out of character it is for how things normally operate in the castle. Likewise, it feels strange how strong their implicit trust of N is based off just a single quick meeting where they find out he's a bit strange. It just feels like there should be more of a story to tell there, and it'd have been interesting to see how both Ghetsis and the two protagonists would have handled the situation.
By contrast, there are other places where I feel you are going over the same information to excessive amount. The most prominent is the run-in with Ghetsis in the hallway, where you first describe the scene as it happens and then launch straight into Tom explaining for a second time what we you just got finished explaining to us. In this case, I feel it would have been more efficient to cut straight to Roger's reaction to the story rather than going through the conversation leading up to it itself, especially since you already have a lot of ground to cover writing-wise.
On a writing-level, dialogue is where your story shines the most. All the core characters have distinct ways of expressing themselves that set them apart from each other and feel appropriate to the personalities in play and aside from the odd expositiony bits here and there the flow of conversations feels natural. The narration does its job competently and I appreciate the attention to body language, since it does a good job of conveying the emotions at play, enough so that some of the character explaining their feelings out loud feels redundant at times. This is particularly strong in the part after N is defeated, where I'd have appreciated more emphasis on the way they speak and behave rather than on each of them talking feelings since it's the kind of shocking moment where I'd expect that sort of self-reflection to be difficult.
On the note of people explaining feelings, it also felt rather awkward for Reshiram to have to explain Tom's loyalty before Roger realized it, since the two have come off as close and loyal to the point where it seems very weird that Roger would find this surprising. Given how much is going on I can understand him needing an outside push to actually make him speak his mind on it, but a more subtle nudge should have been quite enough for that sort of thing and it does sort of cheapen the sentiment to know that he was genuinely surprised to find this out not a minute ago.
On a technical level, I didn't find anything particularly off, though I did notice an odd switch to present tense for no apparent reason:
The paragraph could easily have been past tense and honestly should be.
Lastly, the ending line felt like a pretty perfunctory note to end on, especially since you had a little ending joke on the previous line that would itself have worked better. It's equally a little bit strange to end on the words of two pokémon that have been silent side characters up to the story, but what they're saying is at least thematically fitting and would make for a better end point.
All in all, there's a fair bit of rough edges here and I would have appreciated more attention towards building the relationship with N and less on recapping plot points from the games (which your expected readership should already be pretty familiar with) but I found myself rather liking the core story. Trim off a bit of the excess exposition, give a bit more focus to the central character relationship and you should be good.
On a non-evaluation point, I'd also consider trimming down those authors' notes. There's no need to distract your readers by trying to pre-empt criticisms when you could simply stand behind your work with confidence and address the complaints as and if they come instead.
Dragonfree
So this is basically Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead, but for the fifth-generation Pokémon games instead of Hamlet. That's definitely a pretty amusing idea. I liked that you gave them the same names and somewhat analogous personalities as a homage to Tom Stoppard's play, and the Waiting for Godot reference near the end was a treat, too (although I've got to wonder why they'd give their Pokémon names all of a sudden then when they haven't had nicknames for most of the story).
You do a good job of characterizing Tom and Roger as distinct; their voices are quite different, to the point that I have no problem following even long stretches of dialogue between them with no dialogue tags, and that's always a plus. Tom's hyperactive, childish eccentricness is sometimes over-the-top (his immediate declaration that he's going to walk over to the king of Team Plasma and give him a "big Ursaring hug" seemed particularly exaggerated), but he gets less so as the story goes on, and overall both Tom and Roger are quite lovable and endearing and you show their relationship nicely.
This wasn't as much of a story about their friendship as I expected, though. At the end Reshiram gets Roger to tell Tom that he cares about him and he's the best friend he's ever had, and Vladimir comments that they've learned that the bonds of friendship can withstand great strife and work past great differences. But while this is adorable, it didn't actually feel at any point in the story like there was any significant strife or great differences between them, or a sense that Tom felt particularly unappreciated by Roger and needed to hear how much he cared. They argued about some trivial things, sure, and Roger called Tom an idiot sometimes, but they didn't have anything that seemed like a major interpersonal conflict - it just looked like regular friendly bickering to me. Overall, I think if you truly wanted an arc about their friendship evolving and growing stronger as they withstand great differences, you should have tried to convey that conflict and strife in a more focused way - show Tom being hurt when Roger lashes out at him, show them fighting over something that matters and not reconciling at the end of the scene. That would have made the "Total bros" scene far more potent - it's definitely sweet as it is, but it would be even more so if we truly felt like they hadn't been as certain of their friendship and their need for each other before.
Instead, in its current form it's more of a mostly-comedic story about Black and White's storyline as told by some grunts hovering on the sidelines. You do a nice job of showing N and how passionate but sheltered, manipulated and ultimately screwed-up he is, even with lighthearted, comedic scenes, as well as portraying Team Plasma members who sincerely believe in N's cause slowly losing their faith as they realize how deep the corruption at the heart of the organization goes.
There were a number of things happening throughout that struck me as kind of strange, awkward or unnatural, though:
- Why do Roger and Tom need to be told what Ghetsis and N look like? Would they really never have seen them or any photos of them or anything in the process of signing up for the team? As far as I can tell there's no story reason to have them not know from the start, either - it just adds unnecessary dialogue to describe them.
- Why does Tom's Scraggy immediately start hugging his leg? It's cute, but not generally a thing someone would do when confronted with a complete stranger they know nothing about. This especially jumps out at me because it'd actually be interesting to see some indication of exactly where Team Plasma's Pokémon come from. Were they "liberated" from other trainers? Then they'd probably be confused and upset to have been separated from them. Or were they caught in the wild by other Plasma grunts? Did their captors explain to them that they'd be assigned to other new recruits - and then wouldn't they be initially wary, wondering if the people they're assigned to can be trusted - or were they just caught and the next thing they know is standing in front of some completely different people - in which case they'd probably be confused and scared? Were they perhaps persuaded to join the cause, being passionate about Pokémon liberation themselves? We don't really get any idea of Scraggy and Golett as characters, even though there's a lot of potential there, especially for a story focused on Team Plasma - they have personalities, but there's no real sense that they have their own desires, motivations and lives, and I think that would be a great addition to this story, enhancing its themes both about Team Plasma and about friendship.
- How did Roger and Tom not notice until after the fact that N had been talking about what Pokémon were saying during the battle with Hilbert? That would immediately jump out at anyone who think it's impossible to understand Pokémon speech, not be an afterthought that doesn't occur to them until several minutes afterwards. It makes sense Roger might not mention it until the battle is done, so that they can listen to the rest of what's going on, but then that should definitely be the first thing he comments on, not his disappointment that N used a Purrloin and lost.
- The image of murderous cackling N with a chainsaw saying his name stands for "No survivors" definitely cracked me up, but it comes off as a very visual gag, which makes it feel a bit strange - I can just picture how this cut would happen in a TV show, but in prose it looks a lot weirder to have an absurd imaginary scene inserted in the middle of a conversation the same way. I'm not sure what to advise you here, because the scene is genuinely amusing - it might work better if you just had Tom describe it in a vivid, cinematic way, but I'm not actually sure how well it would come across. So, really, I don't know.
- Why are the grunts by the water cooler so eager to casually volunteer the fact that they abused a Munna? Surely, even though half of Team Plasma doesn't really believe in N's ideals about saving Pokémon, they'd know to at least try to keep up the pretense around other members they don't know. It would be a lot more believable, and actually possibly more sinister, if they were doing their best to minimize and talk around it - perhaps Roger would notice that they're being vague and probe them until he fishes it out of them, or something like that. Either way, currently they come off as rather cartoony, like they have no conception that anyone would have a problem with kicking Munna, even though they're in an organization that revolves around exploiting people's genuine sympathy for the cause of Pokémon rights.
- How do Roger and Tom have the time to beat up the thugs and shove them "somewhere inconspicuous" (where would that be, in the middle of an amusement park?) before this one car of the ferris wheel passes? If it's moving continuously, they only have a few seconds to get on. This encounter also makes Tom and Roger out to be implausibly skilled fighters by easily taking out two "thugs" with nothing more than random frying pans, just for the sake of a cartoony visual gag - honestly, I don't think it's worth it for the unbelievable setup here, given nothing about it has any wider repercussions for the story or is addressed in any way later. You might as well just have them go straight to spying on N and Hilbert.
- Skipping completely over how Tom and Roger did find N at the end, right after saying that he could be anywhere, stretches suspension of disbelief, even if you end up making a lampshadey joke about it. By the time the joke comes along, we've already spotted that it doesn't make sense, gone "Wait, what?" and concluded it's not going to be explained - at that point you can't back out by making it into a joke. Even if you did make it work out so that the first time we realize they shouldn't have been able to find N was right before the joke, though, I don't think this fic has set the right tone for that kind of joke. So far, the humour has been entirely grounded in normal reality - there have been no bizarre unexplained happenings waved away in this manner, and when it suddenly happens at the end of a ten-thousand-word fic, it just seems to come out of left field. I kind of like the joke in theory, but it needs to be in a very particular sort of story to work, and I don't think this story is it.
Overall, I feel like this entry is a bit longer than it needed to be. That's not to say entire sections should be cut, just that I notice quite a few chunks of dialogue throughout that just don't add much - they don't further the plot in any way that couldn't just as well have been left out altogether, and they're not actually jokes or part of a setup. Mostly these are bits that give information, discuss the implications of something that just happened or tell us about something that's about to happen, where the information being given could easily be inferred by the reader or at least condensed to not take up several lines of back-and-forth dialogue. It's not a huge deal - it's not like these are long stretches of the story, just a few lines of dialogue here and there, and it doesn't seriously hurt my enjoyment of it - but it's something I noticed and that you might want to think about, especially when you're worried that you might go over a word limit, as you indicated you were with this entry.
This story is very dialogue-focused, and I feel like it would have benefitted from a bit more narration. Everything is kind of abrupt, and while that works well for the comedic bits where it makes the dialogue more snappy and keeps up the rhythm, the more dramatic parts could convey emotion in a clearer, smoother way if they did more of describing the characters' actions, expressions and body language. You already have some body language in your dialogue, and it's generally well done body language that really adds to the reader's understanding of what they're saying and how they're feeling (good job on that!), but there's still comparatively little of it. Especially in scenes like where Roger is finally telling Tom about Hazel, I feel that it would come through better if you spent more time on what they're doing while this is going on - both of them, not just Roger. How does Tom react to hearing that story? Does he come over to try to comfort Roger? Does he look like a heartbroken puppy at the very thought of that kind of Pokémon abuse? When he says he joined Team Plasma to help stop this kind of thing, how does he say it and what does he do as he says it? It'd be more vivid to the reader if you wrote out a bit more of that kind of detail.
There are also some proofreading mistakes in here. In particular, a couple of times you confuse Tom and Roger's names, and you slip into present tense in several places; watch out for that.
That's a lot of criticism, but I genuinely really enjoyed this story. It's sweet, adorable, definitely has its pretty amusing moments, and overall just makes me smile. Not everything in it makes sense, though, and I think you could have built a more consistent, solid narrative arc about Tom and Roger's friendship that would have made it even more adorable.
Sike Saner
This was definitely one of the most readable fics of the bunch. The style was nice and clear; at no point did I stop and go, "Buh?" Overall, this was a pretty fun read.
The only things that really snagged me at all were the little grammatical/stylistic oopses and whatnot, and even they were pretty minor:
I do get what you were going for with the space-hyphen-space combo. But I think it'd be a little clearer and tidier to use double hyphens--like so. Plus some word programs will go ahead and format double hyphens into a proper em dash for you, which looks even better.
Here's another place that'd benefit from em dashes/double hyphens. I think it'd also benefit from having them inside the quotes rather than outside.
The bolded bit can probably go. The "in a fashion so dry" already does the job for it.
This might flow a bit better with that "later" at the beginning of the sentence, followed by a comma. Also, that comma after "their" can go.
There were also a few missing quote marks, a couple of tense errors, a few extraneous letters, and a couple of space errors. Again, though, minor stuff.
As far as comedies go... well, I can't say I laughed my *** off at every gag. But I laughed all the same, especially at "but calm the fuck down"--probably because that bit mirrored my thoughts exactly at that point, heh. And perhaps more significantly, I didn't laugh at the stuff that wasn't meant to be funny, i.e. the Deino backstory.
![[Imaginative]:[Clockwork]](/data/avatars/m/192/192875.jpg?1525616141){kind=avatar}
