Crossposted judge reviews for Thousand Roads' Aeons and Avatars one-shot contest.
A Voice's Burden
Looking at the Mystery Dungeon games from the point of view of a Voice of Life was a neat concept, I think. The Voice of Life may not
exactly be a legendary Pokémon as conventionally defined, but I think what you do with it feels quite appropriate to the contest theme, focusing on this higher being with a duty to fulfill for the mortals of the realm. Being trained by Mew definitely adds to that as well - a sense that a Voice of Life is ultimately the same sort of being as a legendary, even if they aren't quite called by the same name.
I also think you did a nice job on the general somber atmosphere and narrative voice here - the narration feels very consistent and clear, minimalistic without becoming too sparse, and the second-person POV is a neat choice to put us in their head. Ninetales grapples with a persistent sense of inadequacy and inability to act and difficulty living up to what Mew wanted from them, all the way until they can finally pass that burden on to the to-be Hydreigon.
Ultimately, though, I did find myself wishing this story gave a little more insight into what's behind Ninetales' state of mind. They observe but never approach Mewtwo - why? Ninetales berates themself for it, and then continues to be frustrated with their own inaction, but I'm having a hard time getting a real sense of why, if Ninetales hates their inaction from effectively the start, they
don't in fact try to do more. Surely there's some underlying reason that's stopping them - whether that's fear of intervening in the wrong way, curiosity to just see how things play out, some apathetic inability to
care what happens to the mortal world, or even just ADHD-esque procrastination where they can't muster the willpower to do the thing even while fully intending to - but it doesn't feel like we get any real insight into what that underlying reason
is, why Ninetales actually finds themself so reluctant to intervene despite how much they hate it. And when that seems to be the central thread of the story, I think that's a little unsatisfying; we don't quite get the proper punch of exploring the mindset of a legendary or legendarylike creature because we're not fully diving into where that mindset comes from or what it's about.
Finally, a minor grammatical nitpick: you use rather too many commas where they don't belong, most prominently before most every "and" - generally, you only need a comma before "and" if what comes after the "and" is a full sentence with a subject and verb.
All in all, I do wish this story had a bit more depth to its exploration of the Voice of Life's mental state, but I like the concept and the core of what it's doing - I'd just like to see it fleshed out in a more illuminating way.
A Wonderful Leaf Boat
This is a fascinating story with a huge scope, and I thought it was definitely one of the most interesting and expansive takes on the theme - tackling a mortal Pokémon ascending to the legendary role, the
weirdness of being put in this position of protector, the awkwardness of interacting with his much smaller mother after the change, the heartwrenching treatment of the now-immortal Midas having to helplessly watch her wither away and die, and finally how in immortality everything begins to blur together and memories fade, and Mew's advice that they'll never stop caring and hurting but it's still worth it.
I thought you did a nice job with Midas's mother in particular; she has a very distinct sense of character as this grumpy, kind of cold parental figure who nonetheless loves him very much, and I thought the buildup and emotional writing as she ages and dies was really strong. But I also enjoyed Midas's naïvety as he learns (him being motivated by the childish belief the previous Latios had just abandoned everyone, oof), as well as Mew's particular character, nonchalant but sympathetic, this older immortal finding joy in just watching ants. They're all strongly characterized and have a distinct charm to them.
The biggest thing to drag it down for me was that on both of my main readthroughs of the story, I found my attention simply wandering off it a lot in the first half, until around the point where Midas has met Mew a couple of times. I think it's largely because up to that point, it feels a lot less focused, with more dense imagery and slow scenes just sort of describing Midas's everyday existence as Latios without a very clear sense of direction, where the second half develops a much more interesting sense of themes and character dynamics and emotion, which are the story's greatest strengths. I think some of the first half here could have been condensed to make the story stronger overall and get to the more powerful moments earlier - or perhaps Mew could have been introduced earlier, frontloading that character dynamic more and letting it serve as more of a running thread throughout.
While the prose was atmospheric and evocative, it also felt like it had a fair number of oddities and mistakes - typos, words swapped out for other similar (or not even that similar) words, missing words, extra words, strange phrasing that I needed to squint at a bit to understand, or couldn't quite understand at all. It made the story more opaque than it needed to be at times, with sentences that didn't quite parse right and required extra concentration to piece together, and that perhaps played a part in why my brain slid off it a bit (though I actually feel like I noticed more of these mistakes in the second half). A couple of times it awkwardly took me out of otherwise strong emotional moments.
Also, I had a really hard time in this story figuring out what sort of Pokémon Midas (pre-transformation) and his mother were. On the first page you describe Midas as having a bushy brown tail and his mom as having blue ears; from there I was just trying to remember any Pokémon species that has both a bushy brown tail and blue ears until finally on page 15 out of 21 we learn he was adopted. It was a significant distraction from everything else about the story on my first read, just combing through the text for any other kind of cue or hint as to what species I was meant to be picturing. Having these tiny early clues at all while making them so vague and kind of misleading is a counterproductive choice, I think; either making it plain early that he's an Eevee and she's a Nidorina
or leaving it completely vague until we're in a position to be able to actually identify them would have worked better without leaving the reader to puzzle over it for most of the story.
One last nitpick: I found myself kind of surprised that after calling what's presumably an actual boat a "human craft" at the beginning, Midas's narration then goes on to insistently call leaves drifting downstream in general "boats". I'm a bit surprised in general by why he would call leaves boats even when they aren't carrying ants (it feels like an apt metaphor when they have 'passengers' but less so otherwise) - but more importantly, if he knows the word "boat", surely he'd use it for human boats, too?
All in all, though, I think this story has very interesting themes for the contest, memorable characterization and some very solid emotional execution. It could be tightened up pacing-wise and read more smoothly, but otherwise I thought it was very well done.
Free to a Loving Home
The Silvally narrator here is a joy to read, so incredibly sincere but simplistic in thought. The buildup is super cute and endearing, and it's very easy to care about them and what's going to happen to them. You really got across this sense of cute playfulness and innocent desire to please coupled with persistent lowkey anxiety, and the descriptions of their sense of fun in particular are really joyful and on point. What a good pure chimera who just wants to do good for their pack.
I was kind of surprised by how quickly they wound up turning against their former pack, after the buildup about that being how they think of the scientists. All they saw on the TV was Rose/Tackysuit (why isn't
his designation in the narration a capitalized variable like everyone else's?) being disparaging, but they don't even hesitate before immediately dismissing all of their old packmates who
aren't him as liars who never cared - even completely ignoring PINK_PONYTAIL as she does everything she can to stop LEADER from euthanizing them. In their position I feel like I'd be in denial a little bit, figure it's just Rose who's the bad guy here, and then that maybe Rose and LEADER are but PINK_PONYTAIL is good and trying to help - but they seem to extremely easily conclude they were simply
all bad and nobody cares about them, despite their prior loyalty and current active evidence to the contrary. It wasn't a huge thing but it did give me pause a bit.
I was kind of confused and not entirely convinced by what happens after they get taken away from Macro Cosmos in general, though. You've made a point of how PINK_PONYTAIL seems well-intentioned, which makes it feel strange that she would just slap the helmet on them without a reassuring word, even if (I'm assuming, even though it's not really suggested in the story itself) she thinks it's the only way to stop them from having destructive panic attacks. Silvally is already known in this world, what with Gladion being on TV with one, and there have been news broadcasts about how Rose wanted to manufacture more because they're the perfect Pokémon to sell and wealthy trainers will fall over themselves to get one - but for some reason now nobody wants the narrator, even when they're being given away for free? I can't make any sense of everyone shunning them and giving them dirty looks - it feels kind of like an unreliable narrator thing, like they're just
imagining that, but the fact nobody actually takes them despite the sign seems to suggest nobody
does want to raise a Silvally, for some reason. Why? How is Silvally so unforgivably freaky, in a world where there are so many much freakier-looking Pokémon? Why
are Leon and Gloria the only people who'll even look at them?
I also felt this section of the story dragged a bit, especially since the narrator's internal monologue loses its naïve charm here in favor of a stream of bleak pessimism and bitterness and self-flagellation that feels a little repetitive and melodramatic. I think this part could have been shortened a fair bit without negatively impacting the story - but also, I think this all might work better if there was more emphasis on the narrator's violent panic attacks in particular as the driver of why it's so difficult to find them a trainer, assuming that's the intent - as it is they're so deemphasized that I didn't even realize until the second read that that might be it. Imagine if PINK_PONYTAIL explained to them that she's really sorry but they need to put the helmet on so they won't hurt people; if we were told people have heard they attacked people and
that's why people are hesitant to be their trainer, out of fear rather than disdain; if maybe there were people who showed interest but Sweatsuit wouldn't entrust them to just anyone; if their self-esteem issues were more about worrying they really are dangerous and unfit for companionship than the nonspecific perception that they're 'a freak'. I think that'd make this whole bit hit harder and feel more real!
All that said, the charm picks up quickly again once the narrator is with Gloria; the scene with Zippy is adorable, and it's extremely sweet that Gloria thinks of introducing her new chimera Pokémon to one who's a little similar, in their own way. The ending is super heartwarming, Gloria is really good, and I wish the best for Buddy now that they finally have a new pack. The ending is just really lovely, again bringing out all these good little details that sell the POV.
I'm feeling some hesitation about how to class this story as a
legendary POV, because while this story definitely has a very strong sense of POV, and Silvally is technically officially classified as a legendary Pokémon, this story feels like it rather leans
away from the things that make Silvally legendary. This isn't a story about Silvally's awesome power or role as a Beast Killer imitation of Arceus - it's about a naïve experimental Pokémon created to be sold to regular mundane trainers, one that apparently no one wants or cares for until Gloria gives them a chance. If anything it's a story that would kind of make more sense if they were a
less legendary Pokémon! That's not a bad thing for the story itself, but I do think it hurts its relevance to the theme a bit - this feels somewhat less like a story that speaks to what it is like
to be a legendary Pokémon than some of the other entries. That's definitely something quite ambiguous and debatable, though, and it's not at all unreasonable you wrote this for the theme!
One minor nitpick that struck me: when the scientists call the narrator "ready for market", it feels odd to me that despite them having no idea what that means until they internally look up the word "market", they immediately jump to the conclusion that they're the goods that are about to be sold, instead of simply that they're ready to visit the market with the pack, which would surely be a more straightforward interpretation given they clearly don't recognize the connotations of the specific phrase "ready for market".
All in all, I think you've got a lovely first half and ending featuring an incredibly adorable Silvally who is heartbreakingly easy to root for, but are dragged down a bit by the chunk in between. I really did enjoy the narrator a lot, though, and I think it wouldn't take much at all to tighten it up.
Koki'o Ke'oke'o
I loved to see a story here about legendaries being revered as gods by humans and the relationship between them - first this very amicable one, with the gods walking among them and freely helping them, only for it to turn ugly. The legendaries taking on a human (or superhuman) appearance while maintaining this friendly relationship with the humans only to revert to their more guarded canon appearances after suffering a betrayal was an interesting touch, and I loved the detail of their bodies being built from black sand and how you work with that throughout.
I also appreciated what you did with the relationships between the Tapu, particularly with Fini's wary cynicism compared to Lele's naïve optimism before the latter is cruelly crushed. I quite liked how the others all fight to subdue Lele when her anger threatens to destroy the island but after she's calmed a little Fini just tells her they're there for her, obviously sensing that Lele is lashing out because something horrible has happened to her. All in all I thought that was a strong portrayal of destructive trauma responses and those who love her having to be firm in the face of those tendencies even as they care and empathize and wish to help her heal.
I thought you did quite a good job on the portrayal of violence and trauma here, in general. You make healing the war injuries feel horrid, and the sexual assault tactfully looks away from the worst of the actual deed but lingers afterwards on particular sensory details of the memory in a way that felt very visceral in conveying its horror and the sense of violation. It was an interesting (and painful) touch, too, that at the beginning she likes to be much taller than humans, inspiring awe, but had specifically chosen to make herself vulnerable to be less imposing before it happened. And the way she reacts in the aftermath is heartbreaking - that desperate confusion and revulsion and self-loathing, tearing away at her own body and distorting it into a non-human form to destroy everything it was and any resemblance to the attackers. It was evocative and memorable, and the way the island itself responds in tandem with the aching trauma of its goddess just magnifies it.
And then, though life goes on for Lele from there, she's oozing with heartbreaking rage, using her healing powers to draw out fights between Pokémon in the dark hope of watching others have to hurt like she has (in stark, painful contrast to her previous desire to heal everyone who's hurting), and the hibiscus never grows there again - until the descendants of the Akalans come to atone. They bring hibiscus plants, but also bandages and poultices, which I can't imagine Lele
literally needs right now but are clearly very symbolic of them wishing to help
her heal, instead of just constantly taking and taking and expecting her to keep giving like their ancestors. In the end, Lele has managed to heal and find peace again, in the safety of her hibiscus grove, even though what happened did permanently change her, gave her a hardened shell she can only ever truly step out of among the flowers. I think that's a beautiful, haunting portrayal of how trauma never truly leaves you but a form of healing can still take place, create at least limited spaces of safety that can allow one to be vulnerable again.
The main criticism I have is that I felt like Lele's thought process over the course of the bit where she heals the Magå'haga and then returns and explains it to the Akalans wasn't entirely clear, and that's a moment where I feel like we would really benefit from exploring what she's thinking more thoroughly. As it is I found it hard to tell whether she
doesn't realize these are the very people who inflicted the horrible injuries she ran into the forest to escape from, or whether she realizes but her mindset is simply that she desires to heal everyone in need no matter who they are and naïvely assumes the Akalans would share that mindset until they reject her for it. I think either of those interpretations could make sense and be evocative, but when I can't quite tell which of them is what's actually going on, it's a bit harder to reconcile and to stay immersed in her character and mental state, and that's a shame because this is such a crucial part of the story!
There were some mistakes here and there - nothing that seriously disrupted reading, but it might be worth giving it an extra round of proofreading - and a couple of times where I might quibble with the effectiveness of particular phrasing, but nothing too major.
All in all, though, I thought this was definitely one of the most effective entries here, both as a story about trauma and recovery and as an exploration of legendaries as gods. Really nice work on this one.
Mew's Meddling Mischief
What a delightful little fic. You've got a lovely ditzy narrative voice for Mew here and her persistent total misunderstandings of everything were both entertaining and a fun more humorous sort of exploration of legendary POV - an immortal just constantly searching for something novel enough to be fun, so detached from mortal life and especially
humans who normally seem like the most boring species on Earth that she just fails to comprehend anything about human psychology and interactions.
The little love story you tell in the process is quite cute; though beset by a sitcom conga line of misunderstandings and silliness, Darren and Cass's interactions feel pretty grounded and genuine in their hopeless teenage awkwardness, and their will-they-won't-they is easy to root for. I also enjoyed their Pokémon - minor roles, but you gave them some cute moments and personality in the process.
You made some really nice use of Mew's particular POV here, too. Her psychic senses play a prominent role, letting Mew attempt to puzzle out the pair's feelings based on her empath sense with no frame of reference. And then there are the bits where she transforms into other species and has to contend with being hopelessly easily distractable or sleepy or loving to eat rocks - just a very fun bit of POV flavor that remains entertaining throughout.
I do find myself sort of wondering how this is the first time Mew's ever managed to take enough of an interest in humans to notice basic things about them, but that feels like a very fridge-logicky concern here; ultimately the reason why is because it's funny, and in this story that's what matters. The comedy is all in all just very successful here, I feel; Mew's terrible ideas for poking and prodding them remain amusing as the story goes on, and while it would probably have started to wear out its welcome if it'd gone on much longer than it did, I thought you picked a good pacing and place for it to end.
I don't have many real criticisms here, all in all; it's a well-executed comedy piece with a cute emotional core and thoroughly informed by the particular POV of your chosen legendary. It's always a little tough for a comedy in a contest like this, where they easily get overlooked in favor of more serious dramatic pieces, but I thought this story was great at being exactly what it's going for.
Mountains Will Never
You've got a fascinating concept here - a mortal Pokémon takes over the role of Yveltal after Yveltal has powered the Ultimate Weapon and must learn to serve Yveltal's role as psychopomp. I like the various strong imagery here, and the way that it expands upon the story of X/Y (AZ's brother being named Byron, starting with the second and second-last letters of the alphabet, was a fun touch).
The twist that the voice in the shard is the old Yveltal kind of confused me when I got there - because that's what I'd already been assuming from the very beginning! We had established that the weapon was powered by Yveltal, so when the weapon apparently had a voice, I assumed automatically that that voice was Yveltal - the bit where it was powered by Yveltal seemed like the only explanation for a weapon having any kind of
voice at all, and other bits also seemed to straightforwardly suggest this from the start, like with how indignant the shard is that she "stole" Yveltal's role and how it then sets about teaching her how to serve that role. So it was quite surprising to me when it turned out in the story that the new Yveltal had never connected the voice to Yveltal at all and apparently just sort of assumed the weapon itself had its own voice that had nothing to do with Yveltal somehow. This seemed like a much less intuitive conclusion to me than that it simply was Yveltal, which made it read weirdly to me that that would have been her first thought! Maybe it's just me, but it made my first read feel very strange.
The story is largely a collection of little vignettes of Yveltal carrying out her duties, some developing the central interaction between Yveltal and the shard along the way, some serving more to just show Yveltal's daily work and present little contemplations about death. I thought they were quite atmospheric and had resonant little points and images to them - it's a very somber, philosophical sort of story, all in all, and it succeeds in this almost meditative string of little stories of death, and how this Yveltal chooses compassion.
But I did find the story didn't feel entirely focused. We spend a while on how the shard has promised Yveltal that it'll tell her who she was in her previous life, but then it reveals it never knew, and that entire thread just sort of feels like it gets quietly dropped - we never quite address it after that, neither with any further information on it
nor with Yveltal coming to any kind of resolution about letting go of the desire to know her old self. The topic just sort of silently moves on to the reveal that the shard was Yveltal, and then we never bring up the new Yveltal's previous life again. And while the vignettes are strong in their own ways, only some of them quite feel like they're building up to the main thrust, making the primary plot feel a bit detached from them.
I also found the prose a bit dense and difficult to understand at times in a way that doesn't quite come together even on a reread. That's something that's always going to depend on the reader a bit, but to me, at least, it felt more obscure than it had to be, in a way that made it harder to get through. I also noticed that while the mechanics were otherwise very clean, you tend to use commas before "and" even when what follows is not a complete sentence (doesn't have its own subject and verb), which you generally shouldn't.
But I quite liked the concept and main themes you've got going here, and some of the vignettes were stark, powerful images that linger. Yveltal ending by taking the old Yveltal to the next life felt right and like it came full circle. All in all, it was a fascinating story exploring a very interesting legendary from two quite different angles - the lonely god who joined a project to cause devastation, and the ascended mortal who grows into a more compassionate wielder of the role.
Of Mon's First Disobedience
This story has a very distinct and fun narrative voice, and I enjoy the concept of this twisted, legendary Pokémon-flavored reframing of the Christian story of the Fall.
I think you do a nice job here with portraying Venira's relationship with Arceus in particular - him as this controlling father figure who is nonetheless
ultimately just trying to keep her from becoming a corrupted beast dependent on blood, her in this teenage rebellion sort of phase, not understanding the emotions she's feeling but just knowing she wants to defy him and be away from him, but realizing over the course of the story that she's
afraid of him and that he's legitimately abusive towards her. Arceus probably just
wanted to raise a good crop of legendaries and give them domains, but he went about it entirely the wrong way, and his treatment of Venira is genuinely ugly, in the way of actual abusive parents. Venira learning to name and understand her emotions is a fun touch throughout, coming to a satisfying head as she slakes her bloodlust and finally manages to name
wrath (the use of unusual formatting was fun in that bit). Her final confrontation with Arceus is both viscerally satisfying, from her point of view, and also thoroughly Oh No; we can have a certain sympathy for Arceus in his shock at losing his children to becoming embodiments of the deadly sins, even while acknowledging he's an abusive dick.
I'm left sort of curious about Arceus's angle here generally. Venira mentions Arceus gave her a hairpin, and that's sufficient to unlock her window, which she calls attention to as being kind of dumb on Arceus's part; it made me wonder if Arceus had actually meant for this to happen all along, but the final scene makes me feel more like his shock is genuine. No one calls into question that he created the seraphs, which makes me wonder why they were created this way, whether something made it impossible for him to simply
not make them hunger for blood, or if it happened by accident in some way he couldn't predict. All in all it makes me curious about Arceus's role in this universe from here - is
he now out there trying to stop his vampire children? These aren't really criticisms, per se, so much as just the questions that I pondered as I read, knowing this is a spinoff of a larger story; as a free-standing story and entry in the contest, though, it does leave a lot of things ambiguous.
I do feel that as the legendary POV goes, in this story it's easy to forget at times that Venira even is a legendary Pokémon - her vibes feel strikingly like a human teenager a lot of the time, even as she's still in the process of learning emotion words and is casually talking about eating asteroids. In scenes like the one where she eats starfruits with Avareed while obviously crushing on him, I feel distinctly like I'm just reading about humans with magic powers raised in a quirky place. That's not inherently a bad thing - legendaries being able to take human form and/or being very humanlike in thinking is a perfectly valid choice for stories where that's the kind of legendaries the story needs. But it does mean in a contest that's about exploring legendary POVs, it might make it a little less noteworthy for the theme aspect.
There were a number of mechanical mistakes here and there, including several instances of homophone confusion ("bearing his teeth", "taught lips") and some present tense - something worth watching out for with a beta, I think. But it wasn't majorly distracting and didn't interrupt my reading much; for the most part it read smoothly.
All in all, I enjoyed the premise and core character dynamic of this story in particular and how you built up to the emotional climax. For the purposes of the contest I felt it did less with the legendary POV per se than some of the other entries, but as a story it was a fun read, and definitely intriguing backstory for Venira and her siblings.
The Face of Time
I was immediately intrigued to see this was a story about Jirachi's experience, exploring the implications of an immortal being that awakens for seven days every thousand years, living through all of history via short glimpses of each individual era. That's a really neat concept to go for, and very appropriate for this contest!
There's a fun sense of scale here, with Jirachi casually recounting the literal
millions of wake-ups before Earth even has any interesting life on it. The Ice Age happens in what's a blink of an eye to Jirachi, and from one wake-up to another a miracle granting one family riches has created a powerful dynasty with people who run the gamut from nice, kind people to power-hungry bastards, leaving Jirachi to deal with the consequences. (Though a thousand years is a long, long time in human generations - by the second wakeup the original family's descendants would number like fifty million people forty generations removed from the family Jirachi met previously, so Jirachi even recognizing these specific humans as descendants of the family they met previously may be a bit of a stretch!) Meanwhile, Jirachi was initially sad to realize they would never see most of those they spent their seven days with again, but over time it all blurs and they don't spend their time being sad anymore. These are interesting contemplations on power, immortality, human nature and the butterfly effect that were fun to tackle here.
I did find the structure and way the story was told to hinder its effectiveness in conveying its themes a bit, though. In the first half we spend a while just sort of recounting a Pokémonized basic timeline of the evolution of life on Earth, which is definitely some interesting history, but within the context of the story, it feels a little dry and doesn't tell us all that much about how Jirachi experiences the world. And at the end, Jirachi catches up with the present day but then continues by sort of aimlessly describing their legendary Pokémon friends, which feels similarly not quite like it gives us very much insight into Jirachi's legendary Pokémon perspective or is very related to the rest of the story - it feels a little strange there, like an odd tangent added onto the end.
And Jirachi is telling us about all this after the fact, summarizing things briefly and offhandedly, which doesn't give us a lot of time to get emotionally invested or really feel the weight of these events; we're just told that they happened, and it goes by in a bit of a blur. I think it would have been fascinating to see Jirachi's encounter with the initial human family and the later thousand-years-later encounter with their descendants written out more fully, exploring Jirachi's state of mind as this was all happening further - Jirachi's escape with Jezebel from those who wanted to abuse their power in particular sounds like an exciting scene, but we're only told about it in in a couple of sentences as it is, so we don't quite get to feel that excitement!
So all in all, I thought this was a fascinating subject drawing out interesting themes, but I would have like to see it flesh out those themes and be more focused on what's relevant to the story's core subject matter. It was a very cool, ambitious thing to tackle, though!
The Way to a Legend
This was a really unique entry that kept me guessing most of the way through. I definitely enjoyed the large amount of whump, opening with hypothermia, then moving on to psychic assault, then the stabbing and Nic's slow awareness that he's dying and moreover that even if he weren't he'd simply starve, in a world whose food is incompatible with his biology. It was fascinating to explore that concept, of an isekai protagonist simply being an alien in the world they've found themselves in and not being able to sustain themselves in it, and I did feel something at Nic about to pass out and just wanting to hear more about the wonders of the Pokémon world for comfort after growing up with the franchise as a kid.
I thought you also ultimately did a pretty good job with Nic and Lani's quick bonding. They may not have known each other long, but the psychic connection of their emotions, Nic's nostalgia-fueled desire to help her and how hard he tries to do so while still being very carefully respectful of her wishes ultimately works to make the attachment she feels for him by the end work, for me. Her rescuing his soul into her stillborn egg felt like a fairly satisfying ending, thanks to how we had set up the extra egg from early on.
However, the way this story is written unfortunately drags it down, and also made it deeply confusing on a first read; for a substantial portion of the first half, the first time I read this, I simply felt like I had no idea whatsoever what was going on. The
biggest reason for that was the unexpected rapid POV switches, which sometimes also jumped back and forth in time, but if that were all I could probably have worked it out okay. As it was, though, the prose is also frequently unclear and marred by numerous typos, punctuation and homophone errors and tense shifts, and it often makes it hard to tell which character is saying a line of dialogue, too. And a lot of the happenings themselves were also confusing, or at least told in a way that made them harder to get a grasp on, one way or another. Individually each of these various elements would probably also not have given me so much trouble - but there were enough such things giving me pause to leave me just feeling hopelessly confused.
One such minor thing is how Articuno is described as white and established to have psychic powers, for instance - no version of canon Articuno is
white, and while legendaries all having some degree of psychic powers isn't an absurd concept, here I found myself squinting wondering if this was supposed to be Galarian Articuno, until at some later point it instead describes her as white "and cyan". Lycanroc, meanwhile, is described as a
gray dog when attacking the narrator, but then as gray
and orange (which one would think would be the more noteworthy color) in the later sequence, which then turns out to be actually happening earlier; all in all it took me some squinting and scrolling back and forth to connect that the dog Nic punched was in fact the Lycanroc described in the later scene, even on the second read. The Rocket admin refers to Nic as an "anomaly", making it hard to tell he's talking about Nic at all and not some other creature that might for all I knew have been present in the scene - and to be honest I don't understand why he would call him an anomaly at all, when this turns out to be actually taking place
before the catch sequence, which is the first thing that might make the Rocket think he's not an ordinary human.
After that, Articuno chooses to mindmeld the human who just rescued her with the human who just tried to capture her, apparently to help them understand each other, but I don't understand why she would want that - wouldn't that from her point of view just be likely to turn her rescuer against her? During the mindmeld, Nic extends "one last mental fist" in the Rocket admin's direction, but then we don't get to hear anything about what that was, which memory he sent, how he managed to win the mental tug-of-war - the Rocket is just suddenly knocked out, somehow, and we just don't address how that happened.
And at the very beginning, the story opens with Nic seemingly casually admiring the stars and then complaining irritably about his backpack and frozen sandwich, with no sign that he's actually lost in the Arctic with no prospects of rescue until it suddenly comes up offhandedly a while into the scene. It's the sort of thing where by the time it gets brought up I feel like I must have missed something earlier - it really didn't feel like that was what was going on up to that point! Something like someone getting disproportionately angry at a backpack refusing to open could be a subtle hint that they're feeling some broader distress, but here, Nic's narration explicitly addresses his irritation with the backpack as simply being because "failing at the easiest task for five minutes straight could make even me furious", expressly making it out to be just your average everyday annoyance.
And while we have a number of brief scenes of Lani's POV, and Nic
becomes an Articuno at the end, and technically it's suggested towards the end that real-world humans are actually 'Pokémon' (though this doesn't entirely make sense to me; the dark blood resembling Deoxys is cited as a reason, but Articuno's blood is still orange like the Rocket's, so that seems like a particular Deoxys thing that if anything more suggests Deoxys
isn't a Pokémon, and obviously real Pokémon
are able to feed in the Pokémon world), none of that quite makes up for the fact the vast majority of this story is the POV of a human and not a legendary Pokémon, to me. For the duration of the story, Nic simply is a human with human concerns who thinks like a human, and the insight we get into Lani's POV during her sections is fairly limited - she cares deeply about her children and is wary of humans, but we don't learn much more about her or her perspective than that. This story is an interesting exploration of several things, but I don't think the POV of a legendary is quite one of them, so I don't think it was entirely the best fit for this contest!
All in all, it's a very interesting story with some nice whump content, but marred by confusing execution and prose, and I think for an entry in this contest it wasn't quite focused on the theme. But it was very creative and I quite enjoyed the concepts you had going on, by themselves. I think this story could really shine with a beta reader who could help you smooth out the various errors and confusing bits to make it easier to read.
What Life Has to Offer
Loved to explore a really alien POV here - Ena's Eternatus identity seeps out of every word in this story, and that was a great choice for this contest. The way that she's innocently fascinated by Life, and believes she's simply helping and nurturing it as she destroys planets, and then finally comes to realize maybe Life can teach her things, too, was a lovely little character arc, and the narration strikes a nice twisted chord between deeply creepy and oddly wholesome in its misguided way.
I did find myself not always entirely clear on what the story was getting at, though. It's always a delicate balance trying to write an alien POV while still ensuring a human reader can understand, and I don't envy you for having to try to juggle that here, with a particularly alien Pokémon. But while I certainly got most of it just fine, it was sometimes legitimately hard to get a grasp on what was actually happening. I'm not sure what the bands of light that let Ena see memories actually are, for instance, and Ena seems to explicitly have a metallic body early on only to suddenly be feeling what it's like to have a physical body for the first time, which left me confused as to what exactly her former body was.
I'm not totally sure what you're going for with the square brackets surrounding some words, either. They do call more attention to those concepts, but just the capitalization would have done that too, and it's just not entirely clear to me why all these things need square brackets and others don't. The closest I've come to understanding it is noticing you use square brackets for concepts the Eternatus larvae have only seen and experienced from the light bands, but even then, there doesn't seem to be a shift towards
not bracketing things when Ena proceeds to actually experience things herself in real life - Rose, for instance, is someone she only meets corporeally and can't have been part of any memories she viewed, but he still gets square brackets. This is a very minor nitpick, but it is something that was confusing me a bit throughout the story.
The pacing here also bugged me a little. You have loving descriptions of individual scenes from Ena's early life, only for the last bit, tackling her encounters with the Pokémon world planet we're familiar with, to be much more summarized glimpses that feel almost like an afterthought in comparison. It leaves me curious whether you originally meant to tackle Eternatus POV without getting into Rose or the Darkest Day and then changed your mind late in the game. I do wonder if it could have been more effective to expand and flesh out some of that as much as you did Ena's spawning and final conversation with her mother!
All in all, though, I thought this was a lovely entry - a very in-depth exploration of a legendary's POV with a lot of neat details. It had some proofreading errors and I had some niggles and points of confusion, but overall I thought it was successful in what it was trying to do.
