Quote Originally Posted by Kentucky Fried Torchic View Post
First off, phenomenal story. You did a marvelous job of painting a picture of this woman and her Pokemon in an economical but fulfilling way. You really let her actions and thoughts speak for her, with the narration much more content to convey rather than demand details, a process which can all-too-often resemble squeezing blood from a stone.

I am not a big fan of Toucannon because I feel like he and Rowlett conspired to deny me the Grass-Flying starter based off of tropical birds that I have been wishing for since 2007, but you did a great job of throwing the reader into the excitement of the battle as well as slowing down to handle the more reflective and emotional second segment. Your battle sequence was very interesting to me because it seemed to be based much more on a transcript of an actual sequence in the Pokemon video games rather than the more anime-esque battles that are common. Not a lot of the characters in Pokemon fanfictions use Substitute or Leftovers in my experience, so that you were able to incorporate real world elements of strategy and item usage into your story helps make it stand out quite well.

If your battle sequence explored untapped reservoirs of detail, so did the second half of your story. Aside from VictoryFire, I am not aware of too many stories that deal with the loss of Pokemon (maybe I need to get out more, bleh). in all of the excitement of pitting Pocket Monsters against one another and traveling the regions collecting badges, it can be easy to forget what it must be like to lose your cherished partners and face the question of starting again or letting the past be past. My parents have a dog who is old enough to vote, and they have talked a lot about how they are just too old to face getting another dog after he shuffles off his mortal coil, so this really resonated with me as something I have seen and experienced in my life. Just little things like making the winning trainer in her early forties go a long way towards widening the "World of Pokemon" past its usual focus points of children and traveling trainers to give voice to the forgotten stories. That was nice too.

As always, it was a real pleasure to read your work, and if you don't mind, I am going to go tell my dogs that I love them.
Aww, thank you so much. <3 That means a lot! I'm glad that you thought I did it well. :D

Haha fair enough. And yeah, for some reason I decided to have it a little more turn-based because, I guess, I figure that each party would attack or act as often as possible which would likely result in a turn-like exchange. I wasn't sure that it worked so well but I wanted to trial it I suppose. The fact is, those strategies exist in theory so why wouldn't trainers plan out similar strategies in tournaments and such? It's hard to incorporate game mechanics into a story, but yeah, this is the first time I've played with the idea and I think it definitely could have gone worse! XD I got criticised for this by some other reviewer on fanfiction who was an absolute butthead (they reviewed one of your stories years ago; I remember reading their profile back then and recognised them this time, haha) and was really rude about everything and tried to criticise literally everything while demanding that nothing about it was enjoyable. xD I was like, "Okay whatever, have a nice day!" and blocked them. xD Absolute tosser. That's not how you give criticism.

Oh really? A lot of stories and comics I've read include deaths of pokémon, but I suppose expiring of old age is much more uncommon simply because of timelines. Yes, that's what I figured. And pokemon tend to have longer lifespans than animals as well. Yes I agree; you never see stories about older trainers! I thought it might make a nice touch. :)

Glad you liked the story, and thank you so much for the comment! :D

Quote Originally Posted by Pokemon Trainer Sarah View Post
Aww. :'( This is my favourite kind of story. Sad but with a little hope. I really liked that Isla was an older trainer. We don't hear much about them. Also Typhoon is an awesome name for Toucannon. Thanks for the great read!
Aw, thanks, Sarah! It makes me happy to hear. :) No, certainly not. It's kind of unfortunate that older trainers aren't really written about much. And haha, thanks! :D Thank you for the comment and for reading! ^-^