I finished reading the first season of the Eon Academy earlier this weekend and had a lot to say about what I read. I can add a spoiler tag if you think it is necessary, but I think that the obnoxious length of this post should scare off most people.

This story has a fantastic premise. There are so many wonderful side plots and character development that add to this story, but the underlying idea that the battling style of pokémon trainers has stagnated to an alarming degree is intriguing, as is the proposed solution. Jon Drake, will help the next generation of trainers to bring innovation and creativity to the field. The way that you maintain and develop this idea gives this story an energetic backdrop to a very enjoyable slice of life story about young trainers growing and developing in battling and as people. The curriculum that Jon lays out is a solid one, and includes a lot of things that are present in other stories or RPs along similar lines, but with the added twist of media relations. What sets the Eon Academy apart is that you (and, by extension, Jon) really know your stuff about the subjects and about how to teach children. Throughout the story, Jon teaches life lessons almost to a greater extent than he teaches his students about pokémon battling. I remember this ability of yours being demonstrated in a GCeA story of yours I read a long time ago, and this story offered many, many chances to do so again!

Your premise was also interesting because you did such a good job of balancing the game components with the aspects of a real-life system. For example, when Justin is considering which legendary pokémon to add to his team, he looks at its stats, but also his personal battling style and how it fits in with his team. He is not seeking to build a team from scratch, but looking to compliment his existing partners. Furthermore, you not only have the consideration of insurance, public relations, and crime which would entail from a world full of pokémon, but also the moral dilemmas that are raised by familiar hallmarks of the competitive battling scene like breeding and IVs. That is something that has long scared me off from any kind of competitive battling because to me all of that undermines the idea of pokémon being living creatures worthy of love and respect regardless of their make-up, and thus becomes a world in which I do not want to live.

The battles that you described are always thrilling and serve to showcase the characters. The Day Zero, midterm, and livestreamed battles in particular showed how the students developed over the summer and applied what they learned. You highlighted double-battles, the queen of battles, and multi-battles, the holy grail, which I greatly appreciate! I came into the story thinking that it would be dominated by concerns about Lance and Rayquaza and it was a pleasant surprise that this was not the case! It was very nice that the battles in this season were almost never high-stakes affairs, except for the pride of the trainers and the demonstration of their education. If battles are not fun for the characters, it will be harder for them to be fun for a reader (or livestream audience!), and you crossed that hurdle easily. One shortfall was that the battle with Lance's goons seemed compressed when they invaded the campus. The Hydreigon was specifically built up as a big threat and then easily dispatched.

It felt like five students was the perfect number to follow with Jon, Alyssa, Steven, and a few others, so I am curious what things will look like with more students in the next summer. That being said, one thing that I would have liked to see more of was the personalities of the pokémon that the trainers had. Latios got his moments, but overall it felt like the other pokémon were neglected. We hardly saw them outside of their pokémon balls just being cared for, even the Alolan vulpix which Chris received, which I think was a missed opportunity.

You did a great job hinting at ongoing plot threads ahead of time as well. Little touches like Chris' team being mostly dragons hinted at his family connection with Lance, and Justin's repeated thefts of Abbee's phone also had a great payoff down the line. There were only a few times that it felt as though things did not pan out. I thought that Jon using Rayquaza to save Chris despite the risk of being seen, and later introducing the boy to the legendary pokémon would pay off, but neither did as I expected.

Justin felt like the weakest character to me during the main story, so I was happy to see him get an epilogue which developed him more and even gave him a bit of romance. During the bulk of the story, I was almost certain that he was going to be in league with Lance or something because I just had a hard time understanding what his purpose in the story was. Seeing how he battled against Regieleki made me wish that there had been a graduation battle for the Eon Academy. It still felt like it was too late in getting him that valuable time in the sun. Plus, he didn't get a kiss either for New Year's or for goodbye, what's up with that?

Dylan was a sleeper hit in this story, and the resolution of his situation with his step-father also gave Jon a great way to showcase how he has developed. The man who beat Lance into a hospital bed was willing to wait for Dylan's parent to come to him and provoke a fight instead of seeking one out. It may have ended not dissimilarly, but the circumstances leading up to the comeuppance did demonstrate some growth. It will be good for Dylan to spend more time with Jon and his family, plus it makes sense for him to join the staff to cover an area where Jon is a little weaker. More students will mean more staff, although Jon's offer for all the inaugural class to serve as staff did feel as though it made Dylan's resolution less special. It also felt like Dylan was missing from the second epilogue even though it would have been great to see how he and Alyssa's family adjust to each other over the holidays. I understand that it was a Jon chapter but still, food for thought.

Speaking of Jon, he also got plenty of character despite his role as the mentor figure. The second epilogue was a bow on top of everything, but even before that there were places where his development was prominent. Things like his advice to the students in chapter twelve ("People are s**t, and if you want to survive in this world, you gotta have each others back.") and his plan for world domination in chapter five highlight his cynical nature, but with the understanding that he uses those expectations to do something positive instead of merely wallowing in the negativity. That makes him a very interesting character in my book! Where he goes forward after working on his relationship with his dad will be very interesting. In the S.S. Wishmaker RP, it seemed as though he introduced himself to every character with his abusive childhood, so that was obviously a big part of his self-conception.

Besides Jon, Charlotte was my favorite character of this season. I loved her struggle with Chris and the deeper issue behind their rivalry introduced with friendly banter. How you handled Abbee's grief and Dylan's abuse were very well done, but I think that you covered some less frequently explored ground with examining Charlotte's feelings of inadequacy compared to a rival. The payoff was initially brutal, but ultimately beautiful. Her rushing Luxray to learn a new technique contrasted wonderfully with the patience she showed when raising her Feebas and deciding whether to evolve it.

Yet another thing that your story has done very well thus far is making the canon characters of gym leaders and champions feel like real people, while also not letting them dominate the spotlight. All of the original characters in this story feel like they are able to share a scene with figures like Steven Stone without being overshadowed, even Justin!

A few points of critique before I return to the unrestrained gushing. In the fifth chapter I thought that some sentences read awkwardly when it was so dialogue-heavy and multiple characters were referenced rather quickly. It is something I would keep an eye out for in the future. The mention of specific websites like Twitter can be useful, but they also risk dating the story should those sites fall out of favor, like a Harry Potter fanfiction in which Harry checks his Myspace account. There is a lot of use in putting those ideas in your story, and I would love to see some exploration of the positives and negatives of social media for trainers (maybe in one of Alyssa's lectures?), but it is just something I would recommend caution around. Stanley Kubrick thought that IBM and the Soviet Union would dominate the year 2001.

Less critiques and more nitpicky areas include my thinking that Chris' family ties to Lance would not be as surprising given the amount of gossip that the average civilian knows about League figures in the games, and that there does not seem to be a reason to keep that information a secret unless, like Jon, you are actively trying to keep a low profile. The team of dragons at least should have tipped someone off. The other thing is that, going back to the idea of developing the pokémon characters more, I would have liked to see Jon use his ability to talk to pokémon in order to help Charlotte and her Luxray cope with its hospitalization.

Going forward it will be great to see these characters in mentor roles, and to see what other seeds that you planted blossomed, especially seeds which I may not have noticed at the time! My big prediction is that Victini's teaming up with Abbee is going to draw more attention to the relationship between Jon and the Diamond Ladies, maybe even leading to their rediscovery.

Your story and writing have been very enjoyable, but also very intimidating. It makes me worried about my own ability to tell a compelling Pokémon story. But your story also contains its own answer to my dilemma in another of Jon's lessons. Motivation cannot be found in comparison with another, but in the desire to be one's own best.

Life does not always end in finales, and I think that this season ended in a nice, bittersweet way, much like a real summer camp. Thank you for this story, and I am looking forward to starting on the next season!

Lastly, I want to highlight some of my favorite lines from the season!
In first place: "Nine times out of ten, nothing good comes out of someone calling me Christopher." - This is one of the best introductions for a character that I have had the pleasure of reading. It hints at Chris's history and personality in one beautifully economical sentence!

In second place: "I really hope the media don’t hear about this,” Steven joked. “Hoenn Champion and High Seas Champion, trusted to keep region safe, don’t realize they can have their Metagross and Latios levitate furniture. Carries it manually a hundred meters…"

My third favorite line, from the first epilogue: Regieleki was constantly producing enough electricity to potentially power the entire Galar region, which shocked Justin immensely. - This is a great pun.

Finally, my fourth favorite line, also from the epilogue: "Hey, snowflake!" Justin called out. "Come get some!" - I just like how unapologetically goofy this was. It definitely felt like something a teenager would say.

Next up: Season Two!