Chibi Pika
Stay positive
IT’S MONSTER REVIEW REPLY TIME.
For those who missed it, Dragonfree left a gargantuan three-post-long review of the entire fic a couple pages back, and I’m only just now getting around to replying to it. The review was so huge that my reply to it has taken this long to complete! (And would have taken up multiple posts itself if not for the new and improved character limit.)
Really enjoyed your analysis of how the events 3000 years ago relate to things happening in the fic’s present! You caught a lot of interesting wording particulars too. All the lines you put in quotes were definitely written that way for a reason, and it’s so great to see someone try picking them apart.
…I think I really should have posted an extra on the teleport mechanics in this fic.
(thank you)
Welp! That should be everything! Sorry It took so damn long to reply to this! Dx (But to anyone watching from the sidelines, I did comment on a bunch of random bits via private message, so it wasn’t as if I totally ignored the review until now!)
~Chibi~
For those who missed it, Dragonfree left a gargantuan three-post-long review of the entire fic a couple pages back, and I’m only just now getting around to replying to it. The review was so huge that my reply to it has taken this long to complete! (And would have taken up multiple posts itself if not for the new and improved character limit.)
Man, this chapter had a ton of repetition. Thanks for the catches, I have a hard time spotting those.Bit repetitive there.
I’m really glad to hear that! That scene in particular was one that had been criticized as being too methodical in the old version, in an in-depth review on PC that still stands out to me all these years later.I quite liked the entire ship-sinking scene. You got across a nice sense of chaos and panic, and Jade's disorientation felt pretty believable and made the whole thing more immersive, I think.
Haha, alright, I should definitely add a little more explanation to this scene. It’s obvious it was super rushed.Did Alakazam guy just leave them there with no guidance, hoping they'd happen to wander to the Pokémon Center? That seems pretty weird too; even if he can't guide them all the way, shouldn't he tell them where to go before the teleporting starts?
This was one of those things that when I first read it, I was like “huh… I wasn’t quite thinking of that,” and then came back to look at it later and went “oh my god it’s perfect.” So while it wasn’t a conscious decision, it absolutely fits his character.I notice Stalker doesn't actually apologize to them for putting them in danger; he just says he didn't expect the Rockets to go this far. He's not big on apologies, is he? As of chapter 25 I seem to recall several different instances where one would expect a person to apologize but he didn't, so I'm guessing this is a very intentional part of his character.
Honestly, for the two years I spent agonizing over how awful 8+9 were, I’ll count “a little awkward” as a victory. ^^; (Course, that’s not to say I won’t try to spruce them up from time to time!)This chapter is fairly transitional, since it sort of follows from the previous chapter and then doesn't really have a main event from there, instead mostly just serving as a not-super-interesting from-A-to-B thing. I did like the ship-sinking scene, though, and there's not really anything egregiously terrible about the rest; the structure just comes out a little awkward.
Hm, I guess the main reason I wanted it to be there was because in the old version, I just had him give a speech on battle strategy, and it was one of the most dreadfully boring scenes in the entire fic, and when writing these chapters, I was on a big kick with trying to figure out how to show not tell. But that’s good to know that the lack of stakes made it hard to get into. If I’m being totally honest, I think I was mostly going off Rule of Cool there. :VStalker's staged double battle felt kind of weird and not really necessary to me, though; since it's staged and it's pretty clear from the start that it's staged, and it's a demonstration with no stakes whatsoever involving characters we don't actually know, I found it hard to really get into it. All in all it didn't feel like we really learned anything by seeing that battle that we wouldn't have learned from Stalker simply stating "Pokémon at a severe type disadvantage can still win with good synergy", or from a one-sentence summary somewhere mentioning Stalker had a demonstration where his Charizard and Dragonite handily beat a Tyranitar and Aggron.
I’m so glad I added it! It was one of the most egregiously “telling” scenes in the old version, summarized by Jade in a single paragraph of “oh yeah we trained and got stronger” but on the flip side, I was really worried that spending too long showing the training would get boring. So glad everyone likes it!The training exercise that begins this chapter is well done, I think. At the start we're not sure exactly what kind of exercise they're doing and are driven by wanting to find out what's going on, then it becomes clear that they need to land one hit and run without being hit themselves (which makes a lot of sense given how as Stalker pointed out last chapter they don't actually want to be fighting the Rockets), and that creates clear little stakes that are easy to grasp for the skirmishes that follow. Meanwhile, Firestorm's character comes through in the way he fights and we see how much Jade has learned as well as what she's still shaky on. All in all, it was an enjoyable opening and a nice way to show the training they've been doing and give a sense of their progress.
In response to the later edit: yep, I tried to tone it down after chapter 18 hit a sort of critical mass with them and Negrek pointed it out. I still like using them, but I can stand to cut back quite a bit.If I have one criticism it's that you're using a lot of epithets for Pokémon - lots of "the fire lizard" and so on everywhere. I definitely used to do a lot of this too, but I've come to find it awkward when used too often; I don't think using the Pokémon's name most of the time actually gets as repetitive as I worried it did back then, and it's definitely less noticeable than repeated use of a phrase like "the fire lizard". Might be worth watching out for. (Later edit: you do this considerably less in later chapters, but I still notice it occasionally.)
Dammit, Adam already pointed that out and I forgot to edit it. Always do your edits asap, kids!Presumably that should be "Salty sweat".
This is one of those things I grapple with a lot, seeing as it’s first person and there’s no line dividing what is and isn’t narration. I guess the reason I have a hard time taking it out is because I grew up reading books that blurred that line a lot.I'm still not a fan of exclamation marks in narration, outside of direct exclamations of the narrator's thoughts, and this definitely reads like narration and not as a direct exclamation. It just feels clumsy and takes me out of it a bit. I guess it seems kind of halfway? Just replacing the exclamation mark with a period would leave the rhythm feeling kind of off, but if it ended in "...to my right" or something it'd read smoothly to me ending in a period.
Pfft, I had never heard of that, that’s great.So that's what the names were called, but what were the names? :O (I'm sorry, I couldn't not.)
Warren was such a random last-minute addition that has gone over so well with readers that I’m really glad I decided to include him. I think this chapter was where I was starting to get better at the whole “make exposition interesting” thing.I like Warren and his tour a lot. The way he describes Team Rocket really sounds like how a loyal member who actually cares about the team would talk - there's a fun honor-among-thieves sense to the way he emphasizes how grunts' actions reflect on their superiors and how they should work hard for the sake of the ones who've mentored them. Details like being proud of the combat unit of his HQ similarly just make it feel like he's at home here, loves his HQ and wants the best for it. You do a very nice job in this scene of making Team Rocket feel like an organization consisting of real people and not just this nebulous evil. Similarly, his brief interaction with Karen conveys a lot about them and their relationship and how the team works in just a bit of dialogue.
Bits like this are so fun in retrospect, aren’t they?Definitely suggesting that this may be Stalker... which in turn may mean that that's too obvious and actually a red herring.
I am so glad. After the unending hell that was writing Chapter 8+9, writing this one was more “ughhh not more of this crap, why did one chapter become four” but looking back on it, I’m a lot fonder of it now than when I first wrote it.This was a great chapter, I thought; when I went to catch up on the fic after falling behind after chapter eight or nine, the Rocket orientation was where I really went "Oh, yeah, I'm into this" and was absorbed enough to catch up on all the remaining chapters immediately. It really feels like the fic is kicking into gear here.
I’m basically going to point out all of these fun Stalker bits that you caught. :3I can't help seeing this as a potential subtler hint towards something potentially Stalker-related.
Ahaha, you’ve gotten that response too? xD But yeah, it’s legit, I’ll try to follow it from now on.Negrek's rubbed off on me; this strikes me as a weirdly wishy-washy way to describe something that shouldn't be very subjective. Did it shake its head or didn't it?
Honestly, this entire mission is a mess, and I think I was just so intent on having Jade’s group fail that I forgot to make sense of what came next. It really does bother me, and while I obviously shouldn’t do a total rewrite because we’d all prefer if I make actual progress on the story, I have been trying to think of ways I can fix this up.If most of them didn't manage to figure out how to damage the machines, why aren't they asking the ones who did succeed how they did it so they can take down the others? It seems really weird that they're all reporting being unable to break them but then don't care or notice that three groups did and presumably they could all do the same. Don't get me wrong, I like the way they ultimately take down the field a lot, but I feel like here the fact you already knew they were going to go with the Selfdestruct plan comes through a bit in the way they dismiss the successes some of them already had without comment. I think this might work better if either nobody had managed to stop the field generators at all or if they actually were asked about it but it turned out they did it using methods the others already tried, or exploiting weaknesses unique to their particular generator - something that definitively leaves them still just as clueless on how to proceed.
Another last-minute addition that I’m super glad I came up with. (Honestly, the “bad guys get mowed down and no one cares” trope really bothers me.)I like this a lot - they're on Raikou's side, but it murdering a bunch of Rockets and their Pokémon is still horrifying and unsettling, and you show that well.
I think the idea was that she’d call Stalker when she was done, but in retrospect, it does seem pretty silly. ><Wait, how is Jade supposed to leave, if Charizard just drops her off and then flies away? I know she ends up flying on Aros, but obviously they had no idea she'd be finding him, so I'm at a loss as to what the actual plan was. Was she going to just get out, call Stalker again and then wait for Charizard to fly all the way over there again?
Ahh, ok, good to know that the rest of the scene worked better. I’ll reword that.I think this description reads a bit too casual, if she thinks she's about to die - she doesn't actually sound afraid here, just inconvenienced. The paragraph after this, and the later descriptions in this scene, are all a lot better.
Jade becoming more proactive was definitely the most important purpose of this chapter, so I’m glad it was effective.I enjoyed this chapter - a little quiet, but it was fun to see Jade proactively decide to take on a solo mission to get Chibi back, the scene with Razors establishes his character well, and overall it was very atmospheric. I also just liked Jade a lot in it - both that proactiveness and her emotions and observations throughout.
I think the idea was that she finds clones weirder than hybrids and superclones weirder than clones, but in retrospect, clones being weirder than hybrids doesn’t make much sense.This reaction reads kind of weird to me. Surely Team Rocket making normal, unmodified clones is less weird than them making superpowered clones or hybrids; heck, given they're making superpowered clones, one would expect they'd probably have started out with normal ones before they had the process down. I have a hard time understanding why Jade is so baffled by this in particular, unless she's meant to be balking at the idea that they'd keep unmodified clones around at all when they had superclones, in which case it's strange that she instead phrases it like it's just that superclones and hybrids were weird, but unmodified clones, man, that takes the cake.
Ah, one of those managed to sneak through!I'm also not a fan of that ellipsis at the end - it makes it sound kind of melodramatic. An exclamation mark actually would be appropriate here, I think.
Yet another thing I’ve known about for ages and forgot to edit! (Well, in this case, I edited the documents, but didn’t post the edits. Gah.) To explain: this scene got chopped up and rearranged a bit at the last second, and Grovyle’s name wasn’t supposed to show up until after Stracion said it, but one of them snuck through.It seems a bit funny that she first describes the Grovyle like she doesn't recognize it, guessing that it's a Grass-type based on the leaves, but then goes on to call it a Grovyle as if nothing were more natural - if she knows easily what it's called off the top of her head, it at least seems weird she'd need to carefully look at the leaves before concluding it's a Grass-type, instead of just "What type was Grovyle again - presumably Grass?"
Yeah, this chapter definitely still suffers from the whole “oops I wrote Jade into trouble let me immediately write her out of it” that used to be so prevalent. I do like the idea of Stracion mentioning that she was keeping an eye out for her though.I'm of two minds about this chapter. I like Stracion a lot; it's fun to see an unashamed Rocket who's still on the rebels' side, sort of, being cool with Team Rocket's regular criminal activity but less thrilled about getting involved with legendaries. It makes sense that that's how some members would think, and she and the way she talks and acts are immediately distinct and memorable. On the other hand, it really does feel a bit cheap that the first person to discover Jade when she's on a highly secret mission and the whole tension is about whether she'll be caught just completely coincidentally happens to be on the rebellion's side - it may be a little counterproductive to introduce Stracion in this particular way during this particular bit, where you've just built up some real, legitimate tension only for it to turn out to be for nothing. While her poisoning Swift and Firestorm and making Jade think she's going to turn her in is a fun character-establishing moment for Stracion, I can't help but think structurally it feels kind of extraneous and like a fake-out with no payoff (particularly since Jade just happens to have Pecha Berries on her, so the poisoning doesn't last beyond this encounter). Maybe it'd feel less so if it were established that Stracion didn't just happen to be the first person she bumped into, but had heard from Stalker that she'd be there and was specifically keeping an eye on her and leading other Rockets away or whatever? Not sure; either way it does feel a bit weird to me.
Man, I’m really glad you were invested in it, because figuring out how to make it feel important was a huge pain.The other highlight of the chapter is Chibi. He's so tangibly messed up and traumatized here, and you do a nice job in this chapter and the last of establishing Chibi and Razors' relationship and making the reader invested in their reunion.
It is one-of-a-kind, but that’s not exactly proven, and the average non-Legendary-enthusiast wouldn’t really know much other than “super rare, no really, no one ever sees it, is it even real?”Is Mew not one-of-a-kind here? It seems a bit weird to me to talk about a single individual as being "rare" (but then again, I'm not the native speaker here).
This is one of those lines from the old version that I kept out of nostalgia and really should have reworked a bit.This line reads kind of funny to me, though. He knows they're the most powerful beings in this world, but also sounds really dismissive and unconcerned, what with the scoffing and "If they're so powerful, why do the humans regard them as pawns" thing, but then also seems concerned that they're in danger. Does he actually believe they aren't as powerful as they're said to be and there's nothing to worry about, or does he not realize what his creators could do if they could control legendaries? I can't properly tell what he's thinking, and the lines themselves sound a bit unnatural to me too.
Yes good. That was a difficult scene for a lot of obvious reasons.You do a nice job deflecting this by making their mutual recognition out to be simply about the plane incident, though - nothing here ends up glaringly "NOTICE THIS", just the sort of thing that slams into you on a reread.
Yesssss. Obviously it was a bit tough to write that since I knew that, well, obviously Astrid wasn’t going to kill her, so the stakes weren’t as high as they appeared to be, but they really had to appear to be and of course Astrid is trying to be convincing, so I had to write it convincingly, and yeah. xD;The entire Astrid scene is pretty great - she has such a strong sense of character and she feels so gloriously competent. There she is, immediately figuring out who Jade is and that she's part of the group that freed Raikou and threatening her and hitting her with an actual attack without even thinking about it - it's clear she's a next-level threat and you make the reader look forward to seeing her clash with Jade again.
I think this is a pretty clear symptom of the fact that I myself didn’t have a strong handle on their wants or goals, and even to this day it’s something I still struggle with. So I’m glad you pointed it out, and I’ll keep that in mind as I head into Book 2.I guess this is a good occasion to bring up that I'm still not really feeling Aros and Stygian as characters, for one reason or another, compared to the rest of the principal cast. I know that Aros is grumpy and not too fond of humans, and that gets across perfectly well with bits like this - but I don't feel like I have much of a real sense of who he is or what he wants, and even less so for Stygian. So far they've just felt like "the other two Pokémon", in a way that's a little disappointing - one would think that having been Team Rocket experiments would color their experiences in an interesting way, but I don't feel like you've been giving them enough focus to develop them very strongly. So that might be something to give more attention to in the future, perhaps.
Yeah, I think I generally need to tweak a lot of the dialogue here, cause it does have that weird sort of “this has already been decided” feel.He kind of has a valid point there, though. However Jade was going to arrange to get back to Midnight Island to begin with (I assume the plan was probably for her to call for Charizard again, somehow?), one would think she could have done that from the random forest, or they could have at least rested in a random forest. When she's not his trainer, and they haven't actually made any sort of agreement about sticking together after escaping, expecting him to fly her great distances really is a bit much. I think it'd make a bit more sense if you'd established an actual agreement between Jade and Aros/Stygian about going to Midnight Island together and talking to Stalker - it feels a bit weird that she just takes them there and then sort of immediately treats them as if they're joining up by going "We can talk to Stalker in the morning" (why should they want some human guy they've never met to decide what they do now?), even though they don't actually do so until later in the chapter.
At one point I apparently decided that Jade’s watch not breaking was a terrible unforgiveable plot hole, and that I would dedicate myself to ensuring that I fixed that in this version.One of those little things that I like a lot - both the attention to detail in having it break and the fact Jade keeps checking it anyway, which is very Relatable(tm).
Oh man, I hadn’t thought of that. I think I’d actually already written most of 20 before writing this chapter, so I wouldn’t be surprised if some of it leaked through.D: Jaaade you and the heartwrenching way you respond to trauma. This is pretty much exactly what happens after the torture chapter, too - it's kind of chilling to see a microcosm of the way she just shuts everything out and refuses to talk about it here.
Yeah, that whole scene was a bit of a mess and it all stems from the problem that I gave them those names in the old version and had no idea how to explain it. Like, “Aros” isn’t a word, and “Stygian” isn’t the kind of word Jade would translate, but neither of those names felt like the sort of thing she would call them anyway unless she heard someone else call them that first, and clearly I should have just renamed them, but then I just decided to go with Stalker. I really ought to have him ask them first though.It feels a bit funny that he just goes "Well, I'll give you names" instead of even giving them the option to choose names for themselves - feels a little antithetical to the idea that they're just going to be free Pokémon that don't belong to anyone, and based on your characterization of Stalker otherwise, I'm not sure that's intentional.
Believe it or not, this paragraph was literally the reason I gave Glaceon Mirror Coat in Chapter 28, rendering special attacks a liability and forcing him to use Fire Punch. Seeing as I love the Mirror Coat moment, I’m really glad you were able to indirectly cause it!I like the Fire Punch scene a lot - it's nice to see Jade actually train with Firestorm, the solution of learning Fire Punch because he's good with physical attacks makes sense and helps reinforce the fact that he's a unique individual and training with him specifically is going to involve some consideration for how he in particular fights, and of course his hangups and his personality come through very clearly while strengthening his relationship with Jade a bit. I'm a bit sad in retrospect, though, that Fire Punch doesn't actually see much use after this - searching the thread, he uses it in the starter battle in chapter 17 and there's one mention of it when he's destroying the computers in chapter 19, but that's about it, and then Charizard teaches him Flame Burst (which doesn't have that same quality of capitalizing on his individual qualities).
Oh, this is a really good point. I’ll try to see if I can fit some more Ebony bits earlier in the fic (I dunno if I have room for a full-on battle, but a few training bits here are there would be a big help.This discussion is making me notice that we've barely seen Ebony battle. Obviously Rudy's a supporting character, and there's not much reason to show too much of his battles, but ironically what we actually see ends up mostly being Rudy using Wartortle, because Wartortle is relevant to his arc. Maybe it would've strengthened it to show a bit more of how Rudy fights with Ebony as a contrast to how he fights with Wartortle, rather than mostly just showing him using Wartortle and then having Jade's narration merely remark on how different he is with Ebony and how much more he uses her off-screen.
:D :D :DSO SPECULATION.
This is a really fun glimpse at how the things I’ve posted on tumblr have influenced what readers might assume about the fic. Dialga and Palkia’s role is going to surprise a lot of people, I think.There are seven legendaries dedicated to ending the war; judging from the fic and outside statements and commentary, I'm guessing at least Lugia, Mew and Palkia are among them. Dialga, in the excerpt you posted on Palkia Positivity, seemed potentially like it was helping but also potentially like it was more "No, there's no point"; I'm leaning towards it being one of the seven too, though. That leaves three more.
Really enjoyed your analysis of how the events 3000 years ago relate to things happening in the fic’s present! You caught a lot of interesting wording particulars too. All the lines you put in quotes were definitely written that way for a reason, and it’s so great to see someone try picking them apart.
Yeah, I’ve been pretty upfront about the fact that it’s the Griseous Orb. The silvery sheen was meant to be a platinum reference.Presumably it's actually the Griseous Orb (attracts Ghost-types, later described as amber, and you go on to pretty much state so out-of-universe), but I've got to admit this description doesn't really sound like it. Saying it gives off a silvery sheen without specifying color otherwise makes it sound like it's silver in color, which the Griseous Orb is not (or at least not in the games).
I wish I could post Book 3 now.The three orbs are almost definitely the Adamant/Lustrous/Griseous Orbs, again, and the Spirit of Origin is Arceus unless you're really trying to pull the rug out from under us. The realms I'm guessing are the worlds of Dialga/Palkia/Giratina/Arceus plus the real world, as portrayed in the twelfth Pokémon movie. This would imply that, since it's the Griseous Orb, it relates to the Distortion/Reverse World, and since the orbs were sealed away to separate the realms, that would imply that bringing the orbs together might reunite them? Which would be "lighting a path to the truth that was hidden from this world", apparently; perhaps originally the world was one, and the Revolution actually did tear it apart. Maybe this world is actually the Reverse World!
It sure is.The most interesting part of this one is the restore balance to that which was never meant to exist part.
At this point I should mention that any of my outside comments become slightly less accurate the further back you go from 2015.Something that doesn't fit into any of this so far: I'm pretty convinced, based on your outside comments, that it's actually going to turn out Mew chessmastered things here after coming from a doomed timeline where everything went horribly wrong. If this is true, Mew is the most likely author of the prophecies, and it's entirely possible they're not factually true, just whatever they needed to be to get the players in this timeline set up the way they need to be.
Aw dang, I wasn’t trying to make it humorous.I don't think this is the greatest ending line, to be honest - after a big dramatic plot chapter, ending on this little belated, kind of humourous, italicized realization seems to cheapen it a bit.
They did, I probably should have noted that.Huh, seems weird that it's that easy for grunts to access higher-ranking uniforms? Unless they used Darren's admin rights to get in and it just wasn't mentioned?
Heh, I’m glad you caught this bit back then.So either Stalker 1) is currently a high-ranking Rocket, but they suspect enough to be shutting him out, or 2) he has Rocket contacts that are either being shut out or have betrayed him. Lexx again? (I'm only really repeatedly bringing up Lexx here because law of conservation of characters, but.)
Well, they didn’t want to teleport out until the trucks reached their location because that was their only lead on where the mission would take place. Unless you mean after they got there, and that they should have teleported away (and then back?) Which… I guess could have worked? Although if they wanted to get back, Kadabra would’ve had to memorize that location (the truck?) and then when they teleported back they would’ve had the same problem of avoiding being seen.Couldn't they theoretically just teleport back to the Midnight Island stadium or some nearby town, since Stalker already knows their location? No huge need for them in particular to be here anymore, and that'd be a lot less risky than staying in there until the truck is opened hoping that Kadabra can teleport them out after seeing the outside but before the Rockets notice. It'd be kind of a bummer, sure, but if Stalker is concerned with the safety of the kids, I would've thought he'd advise them to teleport home rather than try this.
…I think I really should have posted an extra on the teleport mechanics in this fic.
This is a side-effect of the really convoluted way I have the legendary control tech set up in these earlier chapters (with like the big heavy machinery) until they invent a way to just embed the tech inside the Pokéball like every other sensible villain.I'm surprised Team Rocket are transporting Entei and Mewtwo in a van instead of just keeping them in Pokéballs?
Hm. I think I meant for it to only be obvious to Jade because she knows about it and she’s looking for it, whereas to the birds it’s just like “???” since they’ve never encountered anything like this before and don’t even know that mind control is a thing.Something about this dialogue bugs me. Jade immediately noticed Entei's eyes were completely blank - don't the birds notice? Don't they notice that Entei's just standing there as they arrive, not properly looking at them or looking relieved or like it recognizes them, or responding at all even as they say several lines? One would really, really think something would seem off immediately, and they'd already have reason to be wary given apparently they know Entei was captured, but here they just act like phew, it's fine, Entei's escaped, how are you my dude.
The third.So Mew doesn't seem distressed by this at all, which is pretty interesting. Either she's supremely confident that they can get through this with no problem, despite how the legendary birds were captive earlier; she doesn't actually care very much about Entei; or she's just very good at hiding her feelings.
Actually, she’s referencing something a bit more recent than that era.The fact she says "once again", though, suggests the previous war really was between humans and legendaries, which is interesting. I wonder exactly how that war worked without TR-esque technology. (Maybe some legendaries joined the humans willingly?)
Ah, I’ll keep that in mind.Feels like this could be more impactful, I think - Jade was very nearly shot to death here, but her reactions don't sound all that different from how she reacts during, say, training exercises. You do better with her panic in the bits immediately following this.
This chapter was definitely the one where I was like “okay, Jade needs to start doing more things.” Not that she wasn’t doing things before, but they were very reactive things, as opposed to taking the initiative, which is an important turning point in her development.I quite like how the action ramps up here and in particular how Jade becomes more proactive, tips Suicune off about the ALRs and then goes to try to destroy the Pokéballs - we feel a lot more involved and in the middle of things that way. The mutually assured destruction stalemate she ends up in with Astrid is also nice - Jade gets to be a bit daring and cool, even as she's kind of screwed. She really does do a great job on this mission, which is heartbreaking knowing how the trauma of her capture and torture will end up completely overshadowing it in her mind.
YeeepI guess Arcanine knows Astrid doesn't actually want Jade hurt, huh?
That line was one of those ones that I knew I had to get just right for it to be plausible in hindsight.Kind of telling in hindsight how she doesn't look triumphant at getting her revenge, doesn't it?
I really love that line for being one of the best examples of something that kinda made sense in context but then became 8 million percent better in retrospect.NO KIDDING.Astrid stepped through the doorway, her expression cold and disapproving, like she’d rather have been anywhere else.
Yeah, this is a fair point. It was something that made even less sense when the reader doesn’t know who she is, but even post-reveal it has some issues that I’m not totally sure how to fix. I might just cut down the timeIt still feels a bit weird that Astrid gives Jade a full hour. It makes sense she's actually doing it for herself - but would Giovanni not question giving an interrogation subject a full, unmonitored hour to recover their composure and resolve and come up with a convincing lie, just when you've gotten them into a vulnerable, pliable state? Unless nobody else knows about this interrogation or when to expect results from it, which seems very unlikely (presumably Starr is doing this in the first place because it's expected of her), it feels weirdly incautious of her to allow herself that much time without a more solid outward justification for doing so.
Ah, that’s fair, I should probably reword that.This feels a little unsubtle, though. It would be a shame if the reader doesn't remember that Jade actually wasn't a horrible screwup on that mission at all, yeah, but I think by bringing it up specifically here, it undermines the portrayal of Jade's mental state a bit. I don't think she'd be consciously thinking to herself, "Yeah, I did several awesome things, but they don't matter" - it doesn't sound very convincing that way, does it? Inside her own mind, her being a useless screwup should be an obvious, inevitable truth, not something that requires unconvincingly denying how actually awesome she was. I'd say either she doesn't think of her successes at all here, or she reframes them entirely to actually sound like useless failures in a way that genuinely seems convincing.
That part definitely was, yeah. The other one in particular was the repetition of “it didn’t happen,” inspired by the story that gave me the most chills, in which someone went home and filled an entire notebook with those words.aaaa. I'm guessing this is one of the bits inspired by trauma anecdotes, because I've definitely heard similar stories. Quietly intense and horrible in all the right ways.
Oh crap, I didn’t even think of that.Aaahhhh, the barely brushed-past implication here is chilling.
aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaThe entire final scene is really good; it's tangible how traumatized she is and how distorted her perceptions are. Overall, this was a great, harrowing chapter about trauma that pulls it off in a pretty stark, real way that's unlike most standard, clichéd depictions and definitively establishes the fic's ability to deal with heavy subjects in a serious and mature way. I loved it a lot.
(thank you)
Aaaaaa, I really like this way of putting it.I like Chibi's monologue on Razors. We hear some backstory while Chibi goes from apparently angry at Razors not showing up to just angry at himself for having caused his friend to suffer and not being able to deal with how he's changed.
Yeah, this was worded a bit strangely, I definitely need to rework that a little bit.Is that true, though? We've seen all of one scene of Chibi and Razors reunited, as I recall - a brief conversation that was abruptly cut short, but the conclusion of it was that they were both still alive and that's what's most important. Since then we've seen Chibi gazing at Razors and looking contented, a mention or two of Razors not training when the others are, and Razors not coming on the mission, but that's about it. I think this could have been built up better - if you mean to show them having grown apart and clashing, I think we ought to see at least one actual scene of that before this point. As it is, this feels kind of abrupt. It makes sense, but we haven't actually seen them interact in any capacity that shows any real friction, so telling us they're not getting along after one off-screen disagreement just isn't very satisfying.
Razors’s speaking style just kind of happened, without much thought or intent put into it, so I’m glad it left an impression.There's something poignant about this phrasing. I really like the way Razors talks; he has a way of stating things in a very simple, understated way that still says a lot and gets at the core of the issue.
I enjoyed this immensely.Stalker definitely sounds like he's not the Kanto commander here. I suspect it'll still be relevant, though - quite possibly relevant to Stalker, too, even if it's not actually him.
Occasionally, thirteen-year-old Chibi does something right. :VI love the abruptness of the beginning; the last chapter made us expect this would be the Mewtwo mission, and then opening the next chapter with Jade waking up to sudden fire and chaos is just such a nice way to pull the rug out from under us so that we have no idea what's happening anymore.
Yeah, honestly, I should just have her say that she doesn’t know. :P"There's a fire" would take less time to say than "No time to explain", though - and it's not like there's anything else she knows about the situation at this point that she might want to explain besides "There's a fire", so I have to say it feels weird for her to go for "No time to explain."
I really loved the idea that her greatest weakness (in her eyes) was able to become her greatest strength here.Jade, coping! I love how she can reach for the fact she's not trapped and helpless and it actually gives her strength where someone who hasn't lived through what she has might (understandably) be more prone to panic.
Mad-Libs with Dragonfree’s Buttons Pulled from a Hat: The Chapter.I really adore the way this chapter just piles on punch after punch with barely any chance to breathe - it's devastating, and the impact just compounds into one great horrific nightmare.
I absolutely wish I could have.How dare you call me out with this description of my face when I read this chapter for the first time
(no, seriously, this was my face, for the entire chapter. You should have seen me.)
I really, really loved writing that moment, and the bit where Astrid is frozen with shock from Jade screaming was a later addition that I couldn’t be more pleased with.I love Jade's PTSD coming into full force here, leaving her paralyzed until Stygian drags her away. It's also a powerful moment when Astrid stops at seeing how terrified she is of her - definitely one of those moments that really strongly hint something weird is up with her.
I’ll be honest, when you first told me this, waaaaaaay back when I first posted the chapter, I was stunned. It had never occurred to me that something I wrote could make someone cry.This was the bit where I cried, though. It's always the reactions that get me more than deaths themselves, and the way this breaks him so completely and leaves him a murderous, screaming wreck is heartwrenching.
Yeah, that’s the main reason I decided to have it here rather than during a mission.I doubt this would have been super-impactful at the end of a random Rocket mission - Wartortle isn't particularly developed and we haven't connected with him much (which would have been nice to see, I admit). But the fact it's another gut-punch at the tail end of this long, cruel, emotionally exhausting chapter meant it actually made me cry. Nice job destroying me to this point.
Stalker still can’t decide if his pawns are just pawns. :TThat having been said, this is pretty consistent with how he acted after Jade's torture - he cares, but he's just really not very good with traumatized children (or perhaps has a hard time fully facing up to exactly what just happened to them on his watch?) - so you may have been going for that intentionally. It just stuck out at me a bit.
I… can’t even describe what reading this meant to me.This is definitely my favorite chapter of the fic so far. I'm a fan of torture and all and chapter 20 was great, but this was concentrated emotional devastation in a form that I just really, really like - I know there are people who think this sort of sudden, shocking tragedy pile-on is too much or that it loses impact when there's too much at once, but that's pretty much the exact opposite of me. I live for chapters that just relentlessly tear away at my soul until it's left raw and bleeding, and you did that excellently.
You’re absolutely right with this. It’s one of the aspects of that the fic suffered the most from the plot being so mile-a-minute with such little downtime for character arcs. I still wish I could have had some kind of Rebellion-focused chapter somewhere between 16 and 17.Razors' death, or more so Chibi's reaction to it, tore my heart out - but that being said, I couldn't help but feel a certain nagging dissatisfaction in the back of my mind.
Haha, same. Although the inverse (trying to convince myself something was a dream) tends to stand out a lot more in my memory despite being rarer.I'm a little amused at this, because most of the time when I wake up from actual nightmares, it takes a moment for my brain to convince itself that no, actually none of this really happened.
Someone should really have told him this before Chapter 28.Oh, Firestorm. Maybe being strong doesn't solve everything.
Yeah, I was kind of weirdly inconsistent with exactly which flavor of “dumping on Wartortle” was the one I wanted to go with.In this particular case, though, Rudy thought he was going to be fine and could handle more when he wasn't and couldn't. Firestorm is semi-right about him not being strong enough - but the real issue was that the situation was just really bad and Rudy should have seen he was struggling but never paid enough attention to him to notice. "He was fine but no one thought he was good enough" seems like a weird response - he wasn't fine, and that's the whole point.
Yeah. You pretty much nailed it. I don’t think I had a very good handle on what his motivation should be throughout all of this, and it shows.I guess part of what makes Aros a miss for me as a character is that while I can see he's hopelessly contrarian, it's been hard to tell how he actually feels about anything.
I really have a bad habit of focusing on the “big three” protagonists (plus Stalker) so I’m glad I’ve gotten better at spotting opportunities like this one to give some love to the side cast.I like this bit of Darren being his own person, feeling kind of like the third wheel. Probably not relevant in any way, but it's a nice reminder that he's a human being with his own thoughts and small insecurities that don't touch on Jade's life.
Figuring out how to pull off that swerve was a huge pain. ><Nice sudden swerve in this otherwise calm chapter - caught me completely off guard the first time.
In the time that’s passed since this was first posted, I’m sure you seen me mention countless times that this is top of my list of things to fix, even if it’s just making sure her damn name gets mentioned more than once since the Prologue.So. Astrid is Starr.
I like that fact, and I like how you've built it up on the Astrid side - Jade repeatedly noticing something weird or off about her, which is too vague to give it away but makes the reader wonder what's going on there. The Starr side of it, though, is a lot clumsier.
The second option there sounds like the most viable one. It’s really obvious that I wrote this scene prior to all those others that set up Jade’s trauma.I think this scene would make a lot more sense if it played out differently. One possibility would be for Jade to recognize Starr first and then piece together, as she reels from the shock, that actually Astrid hasn't been acting like she really wanted her dead at all, has she? In that moment, when everything has turned itself around in her head and suddenly the person standing in front of her isn't this terrifying monster anymore but Starr, and she's realized exactly why she's not going to kill her, I can see her getting angry and confrontational. It does make for less build-up to the actual reveal, though, which might or might not work as well. Otherwise, just reworking it so that Jade doesn't have to go after her so defiantly would make it work out a lot better, I think - making Astrid interrogate her more and give away more while Jade is still quivering at her mercy, so that Jade begins to put things together without Astrid actually letting her go and walking away.
Yeah, I think it shows that I’m inexperienced with third-person. Well, I’ll get more practice at it later in the fic.(This is in part because these are sentences written like internal monologue, like statements that she'd make - when narrating actions or involuntary flashes of emotion, it doesn't feel like it's supposed to be a coherent statement from the character in the same way, so then you can show one thing and then have the character assert another without getting the same kind of incongruity.)
This conversation was so much shorter and to the point in the outline, and then when I went to write it, it just struck me that I really needed to write these two actually being friends and after a brief moment puzzling over what that would entail, it all just sort of spilled out from there.Ajia is pretty great; she has a pretty strong sense of character, her Pokémon are adorable and you get a really nice sense of how long they've been traveling together and with Ajia in the little ways they interact. I like how her relationship with Jade comes through a lot too - Jade looks up to her and feels so pathetic in comparison, while Ajia is so casual and tries to make her feel better about what she's accomplished with the Rebellion. You also fluidly get across the sense of just how competent Ajia is at this Rocket stuff and how much more she knows by actually showing it instead of just through Jade saying so.
Still love that you called it not being Stalker.And yup, this is definitely the Kanto commander we keep hearing about. Still think the implication that he might be Stalker is too obvious and probably a red herring.
This is one of those hindsight things, where it hadn’t actually occurred to me that that was a possibility because I already knew she had Mew as a trump card. I guess it goes to show how hard it is to convincingly write high stakes into something that secretly has very low stakes.I kind of wish there was more acknowledgement of the fact that if their mission went wrong they might be getting Starr killed - because yes, this does involve turning Team Rocket against her which is kind of a big deal. Jade isn't really as nervous on this mission as I'd expect in general, which you kind of explain by saying Ajia's confidence is infectious, and I can sort of see her feeling like Ajia will make sure they're safe somehow, but even aside from the danger to them, they could also risk the person they came there to save, and I feel like that's something Jade ought to be thinking about a bit, particularly when Starr directly confronts them about that.
Man, I am so glad I decided to include that extra. I really wanna get to the chapter where I can introduce Lexx for real! DxThe extra has some lovely hinting and I like how you write the conversation - it feels like an actual text conversation and I enjoy their different writing styles. So, Lexx is obviously computer-savvy, which is why I'm taking a wild guess and saying he's the one who programmed that flash drive for Stalker, and possibly arranged the rebels' Rocket IDs etc. I did reread the prologue a bit ago and notice that Lexx is Starr's brother, or in other words also Giovanni's son, but clearly he's not by a long shot as determined to be loyal as Starr. I wonder if it's down to simple personality differences or if there's a deeper reason.
I’m so glad that you were theorizing about this stuff back then. Yet another thing that I only could’ve replied to with like a smiley face or something if it hadn’t already been revealed by now. :PSebastian could be Stalker's real name, but I'm going to say it's the Kanto commander instead.
Huh, I hadn’t realized it could be read that way. I was mostly just trying to have him taunt her use of Raichu as being performative.This reads kind of weird to me, though? Why call it "your favorite Pokémon"? It feels like some strange kind of forced infodumping - the sentence makes sense if he's meant to be mocking her for preferring Raichu (which was my original interpretation; I read it as "Oh no, not your favorite Pokémon, whatever will you do"), but then that turns out to be completely irrelevant to the rest of what he's saying (that interpretation would imply he thinks obviously she should just use a different Pokémon because who cares which Pokémon she uses, but then the rest of what he says implies he does think it matters which Pokémon is used, he just specifically wants her to kill them instead of torturing them). Maybe he's trying to get at something else and I'm just not grasping it?
Mmm, this is a good point. I was trying to break her here, but given the following scene, it doesn’t quite fit.It feels weirdly out of character for her to go straight to begging. Surely that has never, ever worked on Giovanni, and so far Starr has acted acutely aware of that. Is there really nothing she'd have thought of saying over this?
Aaaa, yet another last-minute addition I’m really glad I threw in. That line wasn’t in the initial draft for this revision.I really like all of these lines. Starr is so angry and she hates this so much and specifically I like the accusation: you had to know I couldn't! You're always singling me out with this kind of ********! Odds are most Rockets would refuse to kill their close friends or family, but she's the only one who has to go through this, and she reaches for that anger to justify switching sides.
Okay, yeah, I definitely need to have her press the issue more.I'm surprised Jade accepts this so easily. What does it mean when Ajia says she can't tell her? Why? Why doesn't Jade even ask?
Oh boy, I can’t wait til chapter 33. Their interactions are some of my favorite in the entire fic.Aww, not even her not-at-all loyal brother. Wonder if there's a story there.
Yeaahhhh, it really shows that this was the first subplot in the entire fic’s history, originally written as a single chapter. :T I’m essentially banking on the whole “going interesting places from here” thing.Okay, so. I like Starr and how you write her dilemma and ultimate decision to stand with Ajia and Jade despite everything, but I can't help but feel like it was awfully quick, at least narratively speaking. It's been two chapters since we found out who she is, and literally the first thing Jade thinks of to do about it successfully gets her out of Team Rocket - I was kind of hoping for this to be a bit more complicated than "call Ajia, she comes up with a mysterious infallible superplan that we can't know about, Starr is redeemed and joins up with Jade". I'm assuming you're going interesting places with this from here, though, and I can't wait to see more of Starr as she tries to cope with the shock of everything that just happened.
This was probably one of my favorite theories in the entire review! I love the idea of Z being an experiment, and honestly wish I’d thought of that! (Even if I am immensely pleased with the whole Zoroark reveal, and the moment I realized that I could give her one was one of my favorite author moments.)I'm going to say Ajia's Umbreon is the 'Z' she mentioned in the previous extra, and specifically that he's an experiment - the Rockets don't know, hence why he hid whatever he did to break Mewtwo's Pokéball behind that Smokescreen (or similar). He could have just been boosting up his Attack with all those eye-flashes, but since it seems like he also did something to prevent the Rockets from seeing them, and nothing Umbreon can learn obviously comes to mind as a possibility for that, I'm still banking on him being an experiment doing something unusual. My second guess, though, is that Z is a separate experiment and that the white flash during the smokescreen was Ajia sending it out (and then it'd have been recalled before the smoke was dispersed, to make sure nobody saw she had it at all).
Welp! That should be everything! Sorry It took so damn long to reply to this! Dx (But to anyone watching from the sidelines, I did comment on a bunch of random bits via private message, so it wasn’t as if I totally ignored the review until now!)
~Chibi~