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Completed Morphic

I actually really liked the fact that Jean got the short end of the evolution-stick. Shows that even if you try to go for beauty, you will always be faced with the reality and fail SOMEHOW.
(I assume that Jean grows into her shape? Or will her legs always be ahead of her other body?)
 
“Good.” Jack nodded and turned his attention to the yellow rock and CD case in his hands. “Okay, I hope Felicia doesn’t mind becoming an Arcanine. Can somebody hold this for a moment?”
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...this line was very confusing.

...it was a good chapter, although the action scenes were very fast and confusing. Who died?

In addition, how many bullets were in those guns? Handguns aren't very large, mind you.
 
(I assume that Jean grows into her shape? Or will her legs always be ahead of her other body?)
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She'll probably grow into her shape at least partway, though things like the shape of her face are permanently off.

...this line was very confusing.
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How so? Or rather, which part of it? The yellow rock and CD case part, or is the dialogue confusing?

There really weren't a lot of bullets fired per gun. Gun 1 fired three shots at Peter and a fourth at Katherine (though Peter jumped in the way, getting himself hit in the side but not killed as far as we know yet). Gun 2 fired two shots at Jack, the latter of which went through his right leg, but he sustained no more wounds. Gun 3 fired once at Will, killing him, and was later picked up again to shoot a few shots at Lucy (to no effect, thanks to her insubstantiality). Gun 4 fired an unspecified number of shots in the air before Mia killed the guy who had it. Gun 5 fired three shots at Mia (killing her), an unspecified amount at Felicia (killing her too), was reloaded, and then fired one at Katherine (causing unknown damage). Gabriel then collapsed for unknown reasons, leaving Will, Mia and Felicia definitely dead and Peter, Katherine and Gabriel in an ambiguous state for the moment, while Jack seems to be alive and well.

Can you be more specific about what was confusing in the action scenes? It's hard to have a good idea of these things when you wrote it yourself, so it would be very helpful if you could point out in more detail what was tripping you up there so I can fix it.
 
She's a Vulpix.

The line says she's going to evolve into an Arcanine.

This should be easy enough to figure out.

My problem is that you had to explain who died and who lived. The problem is that I had no idea who had kicked the bucket at the end; if you're going to have a scene where three people die you could probably slow down the pace a bit. There were definitely times where you could have taken a pause, but everything happened very quickly.

I liked the part where Gabriel was rolling in the sand. Would you like to roll in ze hay?
 
What Squornshellous Beta said; the intention was to evolve the Growlithe, but because Jean was stupid enough to just grab the Fire Stone when Jack asked somebody to hold it, she's the one that evolved. Hence why at the end of that scene, Jack asked Peter to go get another Fire Stone.

Hm. I think it isn't so much the action being particularly fast as the number of characters involved. I mean, if there were only three people there I don't think this speed would be a problem at all, but with seven Pokémorphs and an Arcanine (especially since there is so long between chapters that you've probably half-forgotten who all the Pokémorphs are in between), it's probably hard to keep track of what happened to all of them at the same time. Thing is, I think it might take more than just the kinds of pauses that could plausibly be taken here to let it all fully sink in immediately under those circumstances. It's hard for me to judge since I'm the author and automatically keep track of everyone.

I mean, there is already a pause where Jack freaks out over Will's death for some four or five paragraphs, which probably could be lengthened, but not by that much and that's very early in the action. Then after Mia gets shot, it seems very difficult to insert much in the way of pauses, since at that point Isaac Daniels has entered the room with a gun trained on Jack and from that point on it needs to be pretty much send out Felicia, she gets shot, Katherine tries to butt in, she gets shot, Gabriel roasts Isaac, with any pause in between opening up the question of why Isaac hasn't just used that pause to shoot Jack already.

Do you think it would help to stop a bit longer sometime after this and maybe have Jack go over the situation in his head or something, then? Or did you have other moments in mind?

(This is very helpful, by the way - thanks for bothering.)
 
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That would probably work pretty well. Jut a simple paragraph, ie:

Jack paused and caught his breath. Everything had happened so fast... the men shot Joe, the men were sliced in half by a chainsaw-wielding Ronald Reagan, he ate a sandwich... too fast for his tastes.

Except not sucky.
 
Congratulations for finishing it after all this time. I was somewhat satisfied with the events that were shown, and I don't really think I could ask for more. Be proud!
 
It was great while it lasted.

Also, if that possible sequel comes out, would it be additional details of the Pokémorphs' lives before the kidnapping, or would it be staged after the fic, or...?
 
The sequel would be set after the fic (otherwise it would be a prequel). Yet again, though, I only have a very vague idea of something that could possibly be a sequel if I figure out a proper plot to wrap it around, so I don't actually know precisely what I would be doing with it.
 
What if you focused on the morphs' lives in solitary confinement and showed them dealing with the long-term effects of living alone?

I don't remember if this was fully addressed in the fic (I can't remember how old everyone is, for god's sake) but do they ever get the urge to do something primal like their Pokemon would do? Presumably so, what with Mia going axe crazy, but I'm not sure if this is true.
 
Again, I have an idea; if I had to look for something to write a sequel about, I wouldn't be writing a sequel, because that's what leads to stuff like direct-to-DVD Disney sequels. The problem is just that the idea isn't exactly a plot, the same way that the idea for Morphic was "It might be kind of fun to write a story about how messed-up the lives of genetically engineered Pokémorphs might actually be", but it wasn't until I came up with the plot of religious fundamentalists trying to kill them that it actually became a viable story to write.

(Also, they aren't in solitary confinement. @_@ You're the second person to be completely confused about how that was actually resolved. Clearly I need to make this way more explicit.)

The morphs have been behaving variously Pokémonlike throughout. Mia thinks and behaves like a predator, Will liked playing with balls of yarn and calming himself down by cat-washing, Jean growled at some people who were being mean to her at one point, Peter hates being confined inside buildings. And of course, they all have an affinity towards violence, competitiveness and wanting to solve their problems the physical way, to varying degrees. I'm not sure how you'd define "something primal" here, exactly.
 
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Bachuru said:
The morphs have been behaving variously Pokémonlike throughout. Mia thinks and behaves like a predator, Will liked playing with balls of yarn and calming himself down by cat-washing, Jean growled at some people who were being mean to her at one point, Peter hates being confined inside buildings. And of course, they all have an affinity towards violence, competitiveness and wanting to solve their problems the physical way, to varying degrees. I'm not sure how you'd define "something primal" here, exactly.
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That's pretty much what I meant.
 
I realized that they were under house arrest, but not until Jack actually said it after Gabriel pulled him off the balcony. A quick mention of "house arrest" earlier on is probably all that's really needed.

One thing about Jack's attempted suicide - I was confused by the description of the balcony. I understood it when I reread it, but what threw me off was this sentence:

Slowly, trancelike, he climbed onto the bottom part of the balcony railing.
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I pictured a balcony with two parts to it and two railings; the word "climbed" makes me picture him climbing over it, and then he goes and climbs onto the "second railing" which was the top of the only railing. "Stepped" might be a better word to use - his foot can't have very far to go (the bottoms of those railings aren't usually very high), and "stepped" implies less movement than "climbed." "Base" instead of "bottom part" might make it a little clearer as well. After this sentence is fixed, I think the rest is fine.

Another note about this scene, this sentence in particular:

He imagined wrestling away from him and throwing himself down anyway.
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I found it interesting how Jack again feels the temptation to kill himself. I expected that, once Gabriel grabbed him and Jack was suddenly afraid to die, that Jack would completely fight to live. The fact that he toys with the idea again creates a more realistic image of someone dealing with what he's been through - his problems aren't going to miraculously go away when he's afraid to fall. So - I liked that. It was interesting.

For the story as a whole, I love the characterization of the Pokémorphs. Not much else to say about it - I thought the varying blends of their human and Pokémon traits were very well done, especially the fact that some were more (or less) Pokémon than their friends. I also thought Jean's evolution an interesting twist - which brings me to my next point.

Jean evolved - can the rest of them? In chapter 13, when Gabriel is melting/eating his way through the wall, this quote: "it did alarm him somewhat that his skin really did seem to be getting hotter and hardening more quickly" made me think that he was evolving. Maybe this is a stretch (I associated the word "hardening" with Magcargo), but it did leave me wondering.

Another thing about Gabriel specifically - he is a wonderfully built example of what a real-life Pokémorph. He can use his Pokémon powers, but it will kill his human organs. Gabriel felt very real to me.

However, Dave (or any of the other normal humans) didn't feel very real. Dave in particular I hoped to have more of an opinion for, because he's this guy that has to deal with raising these creatures that he planned to just destroy. I think what would help most with this is a revision of chapters one and two; in chapter two especially, Dave felt very impersonal as he explained each of the Pokémorphs. Granted maybe he wouldn't have given much feeling to the explanation, but that whole scene seems rushed - these people are essentially adopting a child and I feel that decision needs more importance than the women giving pleading looks to their husbands like they're bringing home a new toy or pet. Of course, this could be the tone that you're going for - these employees really don't (at least at this point) think these things are human children, so they don't give as much concern to the decision. However, if that's the tone you wanted, I think it needs to be made more intentional. Right now it seems very hasty. (Though those are the first few chapters and, going off of my own story-writing experience alone, those are inherently the most in need of revision by the end of a story, I feel it's still worth saying.)

This sentence also bothers me in chapter two:

“Well, as you almost definitely know, we decided a couple of months ago to attempt to create ‘Pokémorphs’, which means, in the unlikely case you haven’t read all that pseudoscientific crap like ‘The Life of a Morph’ or the ‘Sarah Hooter’ series, a human being spliced with a Pokémon to create… well, something like this.”
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If they all most definitely know it, then it doesn't need to be said and it sounds like it has been thrown in for the reader's benefit, therefore sounding awkward coming from a character's mouth. I do like the examples of the "pseudoscientific crap," but if everyone definitely knows it, then it should be part of Dave's thoughts or something; he doesn't need to tell them.

Also: I appreciate Mia's lack of understanding of birthdays in chapter 11. Not that I'm opposed to celebrating birthdays by any means, but her view of it really brings across the fact that she just is not as human as the rest of them. (Plus the thing about years and days not lining up right totally makes sense.)

I feel like there was one other minor thing I wanted to bring up, but I can't remember it now. In any case, a lot of this review is nitpicky things (except for chapter two; I would enjoy seeing that rewritten and the pace slowed down, at least with their adoption decisions). Overall I enjoyed this story. I most enjoyed the interactions and introspection of the Pokémorphs - I haven't read an excessive amount of Pokémorph fan fiction, but I've seen enough bits and pieces to know that this is a very believable interpretation of the concept, and believable interpretations of the Pokémon world are wonderful and rare jewels. So nice job! =D
 
Yeeeeah, I kind of despise chapter two. A large part of it is that when I originally wrote it I had decided on very little of what the story would actually become and in particular it was meant to take itself a whole lot less seriously at the time than it ended up doing (case in point: its primary genre on FanFiction.Net was originally humour, and nobody was supposed to die). Everything about that chapter and especially so the characterization and everyone's reactions is, acknowledgedly, horribly off. That whole scene won't be in the rewrite at all, actually; I ended up introducing all the morphs in their own POVs anyway, the whole thing is just a huge pointless infodump randomly introducing fifteen billion characters who it turns out mostly aren't going to be important, and it unnecessarily delays the start of the actual plot. So yeah, please pretend chapter two doesn't exist.

I must admit to being irrationally preoccupied with your complaints about Dave because he happens to be my favorite character I've ever written. Were you just bothered by the unnaturalness in the first chapters or do you also find his characterization inadequate in the later chapters?

It's not quite house arrest. It's best summed up by Gabriel in his POV scene: they're restrained from society at large. They can't impose their presence on people, but as long as that holds they can, in theory, go wherever they want. Hence, Peter being outside is okay if there's nobody around. In practice, however, they're mostly going to be stuck at home, hence why Jack refers to it as house arrest.

Yeah, I had trouble finding the right words for the balcony scene (my English vocabulary tends to fall apart when it comes to describing things too ordinary and everyday to come up regularly in stuff I read). Your suggestions seem spot-on. Thanks.

Jean evolved - can the rest of them? In chapter 13, when Gabriel is melting/eating his way through the wall, this quote: "it did alarm him somewhat that his skin really did seem to be getting hotter and hardening more quickly" made me think that he was evolving. Maybe this is a stretch (I associated the word "hardening" with Magcargo), but it did leave me wondering.
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Depends. Jean's body reacted with the Fire Stone, and something similar would probably happen with Katherine and Lucy if they were exposed to their respective stones, though Jean's example will probably ensure they stay far away from all Shiny and Dusk stones. Evolving Mia would probably have been impossible because that requires a trip through a trading machine in addition to the Metal Coat. Level-up evolutions... I actually haven't quite decided how plausible those would be (and how they would work), and I'd rather keep that question open since otherwise I might close off something interesting for the hypothetical sequel, so. In any case, Gabriel was not evolving; his slime was just metabolizing a lot more than normal.

Thanks for your comments and criticisms and for reading. :3
 
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