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TEEN: - Complete But How Will It Be: A Drabble Collection (COMPLETE!)

Okay different format, but as usualish a review when going to A&W.

College Winona
And one of the first things that bird did was find a mate, hue hue hue. But hey, spreading the wings. Not too much to say about this one.

College Steven
Steven Stone, evil director of human resources. And one of the things tying all three together...finally ties them together. Also oh man wanting to be a teacher. Hope he knows how to handle kids.

College Wallace
Swim team duties? Now I'm thinking of Free! except with Pokemon boys. And hey, Filbert! Consistency! And well lighter people do worse when drunk, so kinda a backlashy thing. Odd contrast to the others where he isn't really free, and in fact seems more shackled than ever before. Secret keeping and bottling things up rarely ends well. And ending on a cliffhanger for once. P.S. how to be sadistic bully to wallace: call him for being too skinny
 
@System Error
I've got stuff on my quotes (Nori Carino stuff haha), so my comments will also be unconventional:

  • I see you've read Who Am I hue hue saturation value

  • Chose Human Resources because Steven cares about the employees.
  • Tying everything together indeed.
  • Steven's way of dealing with kids is "Hey you're really cool. Have some rocks."

  • Never seen Free! because I live under a rock (haha punny).
  • Well, they are part of the Facadeverse, and consistency is important to 'verses.
  • Forgot to add this point, but yeah, drunk Wallace is rough, made worse by the fact that, around the time of this drabble? flashback? he’s also starving himself, and drinking on an empty stomach isn’t the best idea.
  • Steven and Winona certainly wouldn't bully Wallace for being skinny. The swim kids? Filbert? Probably would. Probably did. Definitely did.
 
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Mentor - Winona
Mentor - Winona

Winona’s first mentor was her father. Her second mentor was Mari, former Gym Leader of Fortree City.

Mari was a Bug type specialist back when she was a trainer. She left her duties as Gym Leader so she could focus more on her work in the Rustboro Archives, but this work began during her time as Gym Leader. She researched Bug types, but due to the nature of her job, she was well acquainted with Haruki and his family.

Mari taught Winona about Pokémon battles, even if Rina disapproved of it (at least Haruki was understanding). Mari didn’t force Winona to train Bug types; she could already tell that the girl much preferred Flying types, and she encouraged this passion. She encouraged Winona's love of birds, her desire to fly, her desire to be free. Winona is scared of bugs. She can sometimes almost feel them calling up her skin, and she hates being in her house and finding a spider or other creepy crawly. But Mari’s Pokémon, as creepy and crawly as they are, always treat her nicely. Same thing with Bugsy's Pokémon.

But now Mari lives in Rustboro City, living a quiet life as she sorts through documents and pictures of Bug type Pokémon, helping aspiring trainers begin their journey, occasionally teaching at the Trainers School. Winona still visits her when she travels through the city (either when she's visiting Roxanne or giving a guest lecture): to thank Mari, to ask about Bug types so she can better understand her younger sibling, to ask about Bug/Flying type Pokémon.

But now Winona is a mentor in her own right. She's a mentor to the Hoenn Gym Leaders, especially the younger ones. (She may be young herself, but that doesn't mean she's not intelligent.) She’s a mentor to her Gym Trainers—as all Gym Leaders should be, in her opinion—and they look up to her as a strong trainer, a loving protector, a guardian angel even. She works hard to make Fortree City safe. She works hard to help the Gym Leaders, the Gym Trainers, everyone she meets. She works hard to make her parents, her mentor, her city proud.
 
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Mentor - Steven
CW// Self Esteem Issues, Implied Parental Death

Mentor - Steven

Steven didn’t really have a “mentor figure” growing up. He had his mom, until he didn’t. He had his dad, except when he didn’t. He had Beldum, but Beldum was a friend, not a mentor.

But then he became Champion, and then he found Glacia and Drake.

Glacia and Drake are exact opposites. Glacia is calm and modest. Drake is loud and rowdy. Glacia uses the elegant Ice type. Drake uses the wild Dragon type. Steven needs them both. He needs Glacia’s peaceful, motherly listening. He needs Drake’s confidence and years of experience as a Gym Leader turned Champion turned Elite Four member.

He’s been called a mentor several times himself. Many people, young and old, look up to him. He doesn’t yet know how to feel about it, though he figures it’s better than being hated. It’s a bit stressful, however, to keep up an image worthy of being looked up to. He helps everyone he can, especially children. He gives away gifts and advice like candy. (He’s rich; he can afford it.) He accepts victory and defeat, steps and obstacles, and personal strength and weakness with grace.
 
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Mentor - Wallace
Mentor - Wallace

Wallace’s mentor was Juan. Many respect Juan as a member of Sootopolitan high society, a master Trainer and Coordinator, a handsome Don Juan. But to Wallace, he’s more than that. He doesn’t know where he would be without Juan. (And, to be honest, Juan doesn’t know where he would be without Wallace.)

Wallace is a mentor himself: to Lisia.

The two have been close since Lisia was just a baby. Her Hinodejin name is based on her great aunt’s name, Lydia, and her late grandmother’s name: Lucille, which means light. Lisia has always been a light in Wallace’s life, especially during his darkest moments.

He worries that he isn’t a good mentor. If she could see through his marble facade and see the cracks, he says, surely she’d see him as nothing more than a broken pedestal. Surely the illusion would disappear.

But in any case, it was Wallace who inspired Lisia to be a Coordinator, and it was Wallace who taught her the ways of the stage. It gives him some comfort in knowing that she can become a star in the Contest world, in knowing that someone can take his place in the Contest world while he focuses on Sootopolis City and its Gym. Of course, he still stays by her side, making sure she doesn't go down any of the paths he did. Of course, he still occasionally graces the stage by her side, even bringing her along to the Wallace Cup. Of course, he's still there for her. He may be a godlike superstar to her, but she's just as important to his life as he is to hers.
 
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Okay, mentors.

- Works in rustboro but Gyms in Fortree? Hell of a commute
- And yet there is a suspicious lack of bug/flying crossover
- Oh fear explains it. A...bird lover afraid of bugs. Smooth.
- Yknow if Bugsy is related where were all his trials and tribulations when it came to training
- Quite natural for a Gym Leader to mentor

- Well Beldum is supposedly a super computer. I imagine if the language barrier didn't exist it'd teach well
- Pft, Drake ripping off Lance, sans Gameshark
- "Here kid have this Ferrari. Don't worry, i can afford it. Got like ten of them at home."

- Good thing he isn't a criminal mastermind else he'd be Don Juan
- Y'know before Lisia was thrown in during an old fic of mine I had Wallace have a different kind of student: a fat ugly sailor with a penchant for coordinating nonetheless who was also worked in Pokemon grooming
- A light in Wallace's light? Lightception
- But will she become a Gym Leader too??
- Ah so he prefers the stage of battle here
- Dawwww

Briefer than usual in some ways but was in a speedier readier mood.
 
Been waiting for this : )
  • Works in rustboro but Gyms in Fortree? Hell of a commute
  • And yet there is a suspicious lack of bug/flying crossover
  • Oh fear explains it. A...bird lover afraid of bugs. Smooth.
  • Yknow if Bugsy is related where were all his trials and tribulations when it came to training
  • Quite natural for a Gym Leader to mentor
  • Well, luckily you can fly in Pokémon
  • Damn it. Missed opportunity
  • Just like Misty
  • Offscreen. Maybe I should write them :p
  • Yes
  • Well Beldum is supposedly a super computer. I imagine if the language barrier didn't exist it'd teach well
  • Pft, Drake ripping off Lance, sans Gameshark
  • "Here kid have this Ferrari. Don't worry, i can afford it. Got like ten of them at home."
  • T e l e p a t h y
  • The major difference is that Drake can boat, Lance pushes people out of boats (especially Wallace but that's for another time)
  • He totally would
  • Good thing he isn't a criminal mastermind else he'd be Don Juan
  • Y'know before Lisia was thrown in during an old fic of mine I had Wallace have a different kind of student: a fat ugly sailor with a penchant for coordinating nonetheless who was also worked in Pokemon grooming
  • A light in Wallace's light? Lightception
  • But will she become a Gym Leader too??
  • Ah so he prefers the stage of battle here
  • Dawwww
  • Oh yeah like that one anime
  • Sounds interesting. Was it a Nori fic, or separate verse?
  • Damn typos. I'll fix that.
  • If Wallace becomes Champion/dies and Juan dies then yeah probably
  • Sort of. Yeah.
  • :)
Briefer than usual in some ways but was in a speedier readier mood.
Good to see you around again!
 
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Darkest Memory - Winona
CW// Emotional Abuse, Physical Abuse of Pokémon

Darkest Memory - Winona

Winona’s darkest memory is like a thunderstorm: brash and loud. The storm was when her mother tried to drag her back into the cage; lightning struck in the form of Theresa’s insults.

Winona had lost her first Gym battle, a match against Mari. News reached her family, of course. Haruki wasn’t mad; as he told Winona, “a bird doesn’t fly perfectly on its first try.”

Rina, however, was furious. She had demanded that Winona stop her travels, that she come home and learn to be a proper woman and not some rebellious little girl. If she couldn’t even win Pokémon battles, how could she possibly survive alone?

And then came Theresa three days later. She was more than happy to bombard Winona with insults: insults about how weak she was, insults about how pathetic she was, insults about how useless she was.

The final straw was when Theresa lashed out at Aurora, verbally and physically.

It was one for Theresa to insult Winona, but to insult and injure her best friend? That was too much. That was too, too much.

And so, against the wishes of Rina and Theresa, Winona and Aurora left home again to continue their journey. They would prove their right to go on a journey, their right to call themselves strong, their right to exist on this earth. They wouldn't let a lightning storm (or several) strike them down; they would just keep getting up, spreading their wings, and trying once again to reach for the sky.
 
Darkest Memory - Steven
CW// Parental Death

Darkest Memory - Steven

Steven’s darkest memory is like granite rock. Specifically, the type of granite that’s gray as TV static: solid, still, silent.

There have been many dark memories in Steven's life, but all of them have some form of movement, sound, and scent. Not like the day of his mother’s funeral. He can’t remember it like a movie, as he can for other memories, not even as an old, black-and-white or sepia movie (as he remembers most memories). It’s like a black-and-white photo: blurry, grainy, frozen.

Steven has seen pictures in black and white—mostly of his grandparents or great-grandparents—but there’s one of his parents on their wedding day. If he could paint with his memories, he could paint a perfect replica of it. His parents look ethereal in it, like they’re gods on Earth, or ghosts. There’s even a glow around them (something to do with how those photos work).

That’s sort of how his darkest memory feels: a static, black and white image of a small, scared boy and his stoic father, staring at a dark gray grave in a field of light gray grass. Gray coworkers (or friends? Or family? Steven can't remember and doesn't care to) walking away. Everything is gray. Gray like granite. Gray, gray, gray. But no glow. Just dull blacks, whites, and grays.
 
Darkest Memory - Wallace
CW// Implied Mental Illness/Eating Disorder, Drowning Symbolism, and Mentions of Hospitals and Illness

Darkest Memory - Wallace

Wallace’s darkest memory is like drowning: suffocating, slowly losing consciousness, floating in bitter cold and heavy, dreamlike fluid. When you’re drowning, it doesn’t matter which of the Seven Seas you’re in. Similarly (or not), Wallace doesn’t know what his darkest memory is. There’s been a lot of them.

But maybe that time he spent in the hospital gets close to being the worst. Hospitals are scary.

Not the time he spent in the hospital when he was born premature. Not the time he spent in the hospital as a kid when he was struck with pneumonia. Or strep throat. Or a broken leg. It was when he was hospitalized for malnutrition.

In some ways, that memory is a symbol of failure, a symbol of drowning in failure when the mask of perfection couldn’t keep him afloat. Wallace remembers the numbness, the misery, the shame.

In other ways, that memory is a symbol of a turning point. It was a wake up call of sorts. It was like an arm reaching in the darkness towards him, pulling him back up to the surface, pulling him into a lifeboat.

Remembering it is like drowning in darkness, then seeing a light.
 
The Future - Winona
The Future - Winona

For Winona, the future is as expansive as the sky.

When she was a child, her imagination was limitless, but she would have never imagined achieving what she has now: winning eight Gym Badges, becoming a Gym Leader herself, meeting so many people and Pokémon…

But the sky is big and never ending. There are so many things and people and Pokémon for Winona to find. There’s so much to learn, so much to do, so so much…

Winona doesn’t know what to expect from the future, but she hopes that involves flying, both in the metaphorical and literal sense.
 
The Future - Steven
The Future - Steven

For Steven, the future is like a big, expansive cave to be explored.

He was trapped in the confines of his house and his Fate for most of his life, but now? Now he’s free to explore the world, to discover all of the mysteries, wonders, and rocks of the world. Now he can see, hear, touch, smell, and taste the world with his own senses and his own body.

He can explore caves.

One could argue that caves are confining, but Steven argues that they’re the exact opposite. They’re a symbol of freedom from what is expected of him.
 
The Future - Wallace
CW// Some talk about death and hopelessness.

The Future - Wallace

For Wallace, the future is like an endless ocean.

There have been several times in his life where he thought that he wouldn’t have a future. There have been many, many moments of darkness with no light in sight. He still sometimes worry about relapse. He still sometimes worries that he won’t live past 27. At the same time, things are looking up for once. He's recovering, thriving, surviving, living.

The future is uncertain. The future is sometimes hopeful, sometimes hopeless. The future is as uncertain as the sea. They're both—at times—mysterious, confusing, dark, terrifying. But they're also both—at times—beautiful.
 
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hiya, here for crossposting! coincidentally, when I was pulling line quotes, I noticed that you'd finished the collection, so I figured I'd finish as well. Congrats on getting this done!

I really like the setup for these, since it lets you pack in a lot of juicy backstory without having to focus on any of the parts that might be less entertaining. It's sort of like a sampler platter of all of the actual interesting bits, and that's always fun to read through. I liked your decision to flesh out each of the characters' worlds a little--my favorite details were the additions about their family members (I think that's new? correct me if I'm wrong lol), their time in college, and miscellaneous city details such as Sootopolis being this pristine, quasi-grecian marble metropolis. I think the format here lends itself really well to mundane slice of life style--it's hard to establish a world-ending sort of conflict in ~100 word snips, but it's a lot easier to kind of poke miscellaneous concepts that are important to an individual character, and from there coax out a story. Overall it makes the collection feel very efficient; it's only a few thousand words overall but we're able to get a strong handle on each of the three.

I also appreciated the decision to rotate through your cast for these. Shifting POV is a powerful tool when used correctly, and here I think you're able to combine that with picking specific "themes" (themes in the sense that they aren't writing themes per se, but are more specifically what you're focusing each given drabble on) in order to tackle both the theme and the character in a new light. My favorite trios were usually the ones where each of the characters had a new takeaway to offer. "Siblings" was fun for me because it got to the core of the characters and the idea of siblings in a really powerful way--Winona's sibling (specifically Theresa) is a destructive force who encourages her to be a better person; Wallace's sibling is a positive force who isn't able to stop him from spiraling; Steven is alone. These all felt like genuine takes for the characters to have, but it's definitely enhanced by seeing how someone else might experience the same thing. Comparatively, some of the triads such as "First Pokemon" felt a little samesy--it was nice to see the common ground that these characters share, especially because they become such close friends later, but the general takeaways felt a little similar and left me wishing we knew a bit more, either about the humans or their titular pokemon.

Winona's probably the character with the least baggage here, but you do a good job of making her seem fleshed out and interesting despite that. Her struggles with Theresa and her overprotective parents get fleshed out in broad strokes, and we're able to see those threads knitting together into a thoroughly dysfunctional family by the time "Darkest Memory" comes around. I found that a lot of her drabbles ended up using words like free/bird/fly--read all in one sitting, that did seem a little repetitive by the end, and I think the surprise of "oh!! she trains birds!! flight metaphors!!" wore a little thin by the end of them.

Steven's isolation is pretty clear from the moment we first see him, but I like how you balance it--we see the cause of it with his mother's death and his fallout with his father, and we also see him able to open up with people (even if that doesn't end up being a fix-it for everything). He's kind of dorky and loves rocks and caves, so yeah, this parses as Steven in my book. I found myself wishing that more of the triads focused on him, if that makes sense--it felt like Wallace was sort of the star of the show as far as massive traumatic things happening, and Winona was (ironically) the stable/rockish one, whereas Steven feels more like the neutral third party.

Wallace gets the heaviest facelift here, and I admit I don't remember much of his character in the games, but this seems like a lot of new info. I like the additions in general; there's a lot of common themes about perfection and being good enough in Steven and Winona's stories that really seem to come to a head with Wallace; as a result, he sort of felt like the main character even though they were roughly balanced as far as screentime.

"Home" was such a hard word to describe, but Winona knew in her heart that the sky was home, whatever that word meant.
For some odd reason, it feels more like a home.
This is certainly a personal preference, so feel free to disregard at your own leisure: for a lot of these I found myself wishing that the drabble tied back a little more heavily to the theme that it was after-- I wanted an answer to the question of what home means to Winona, in other words. As noted above, the ones that were most interesting to me were the ones where you were able to takeaway different characters' definitions of the given theme (so everyone's ideas of what siblings mean to them). I thought "College" did a good job of this as well, fleshing out the three's relationship through different stages of their college time--but in general I wanted to leave each drabble with an idea of what this thing meant to this character. In some cases I think that could be helped by having more specific scenes rather than a broader summary (Winona in "Education", for example, might've read a little more directly as a more focused vignette about either her dance class or her sex-ed class, for example). For flash fic I find that it's best to be specific, to give a theme a face--it's easy to say "Winona's mother is overprotective but her father is excited to see her try new things and maybe threw the battle", but "and then she did" ends up conveying a lot more of that in much fewer words. It makes the genre into a kind of puzzle, where reading between the lines is a bit more necessary and every word is critical.

Flash fic is tough to get right, and I think you do a good job of making the words count. In shorter works I do find myself both drawn to the verbiage more and less than I normally would--so I guess I end up more critical about word choice but less frequently, oddly enough. Some small line edits in the spoiler:
Winona's first memory was vivid but vague, like fog over a lake.
I like the theming here (how every one of this triad begins in the same format), but I don't really follow this metaphor. Is fog vivid? Is fog specifically over lakes more vivid, or in a way unique than fog over bodies of water or land?
Even long after that trip, she would study the birds of the park, the birds of other parks, the birds of Hoenn, the birds of the world.
I liked how this opens up, with the implication of her exploring other parks and eventually getting into larger zones!
Steven’s first memory was sharp, like the tip of a shard of obsidian.
I was a little tripped up here, since obsidian shards are sharp all over and not just on the tips. Plus if you want to save words, it'd make sense to cut this to "Steven's first memory was sharp, like a shard of obsidian."
In hindsight, it was probably a piece of concrete that had broken off the road. It had probably ended up in a drawer in his childhood bedroom when he ran off to college.
I thought that the "probably" here adds a layer of uncertainty when it doesn't necessarily have to--wouldn't current Steven (who's narrating this now) know what it actually is? Wouldn't he know where it is?
In his words, it was like it was shrouded in a layer of water whenever he recalled it: blurry and glowing with a pale blue light.
Like with Winona's intro I think this is pretty language but I have difficulty understanding what it means.
At least he could remember one thing about that day at the fountain: he and his mother were very happy.
I liked this closer! In general I thought you had strong closers, but this one is a nice sentiment--we often don't remember details of things, but we certainly remember the way they made us feel.
Winona three siblings (by blood), though when people ask, she always says she has two siblings.
"Winona has three siblings (by blood), though when people ask, she always says she has two."
Technically, this makes Winona the oldest sibling.
I think this is the opposite of "technically"--more like "as far as she's concerned, Winona's the oldest sibling"
Like a bird protecting her nest, it's Winona's duty to be the wise one, the one with all the answers, the one who stays calm even in the greatest of storms. Bugsy and Anabel turn to her in times of peril: when one of them has a question about bird Pokémon, when there's important League tournaments coming up, when there are rumors of Team Rocket returning.
I liked the image of a mother bird protecting the nest! I wish we got some more emotional versions of great storms for these two, though.
Instead, Steven hung out with his rocks. And Beldum.

But Beldum isn’t a sibling. The word doesn’t feel right. Steven doesn’t know who is like a sibling to him, because he doesn’t have any experience with siblings.
Poor Beldum! Later we learn that he and Metagross understand one another on like a psychic level, so I was surprised that Steven wouldn't call Metagross a sibling here.
Sure, he has close friends, friends he would die, kill, and give up his rocks for, but they aren’t like siblings to him.
Give up his rocks only as a last resort, lmao, this is a gem of a line.
She was more so someone to admire, someone Wallace, in his mind, needed to impress.
I think the comma stack here is a little hard to parse--I'd rewrite this to "She was moreso someone to admire--someone Wallace, in his mind, needed to impress."
Wallace felt guilty for not being perfect for his sister. Nicole felt guilty for not seeing the warning signs.
oh no oof.
Nicole gave him unconditional love and acceptance, and Wallace returned the favor by keeping up the facade that everything was okay.
I liked how this was implied as a duality here--it speaks to how these thoughts can sneak up as intrusive and justified, even if they aren't.
After all, knowledge would be their greatest tool and their greatest weapon.
I was curious what he thought they'd be using the weapon against here!
The two came to the conclusion that they would let Winona go on her journey if she defeated Haruki in a Pokémon battle.
I was curious if being good at battling was really the concern here--not, like, living alone, having to do adulting decisions, feeding herself. It felt a little too whimsical for that to be their main worry.
For Joseph, grief became workaholism; for Steven, grief became social isolation. Naturally, the two were distant.
Oh no. I liked how these also ended up as two sides of the same coin--workaholism and isolation are really just the same thing at different life stages.
Joseph saw similarities between Sophia and Steven—some of them good, some of them worrying. Joseph didn’t want to lose Steven like he had lost his wife.
This was a moment that I thought would be more effective not as a summary--what similarities does he see?
From then on, Sootopolis City raised him to be the perfect artist, the perfect trainer, the perfect leader, the perfect person.
Juan tried to lessen the burden on Wallace’ shoulders by teaching him that failure wasn’t bad, that failure was a part of learning and growth, that perfection was a summit that could never be reached. Wallace didn’t believe him. In his eyes, anything less than perfect was failure, and failure was bad.
These two lines felt at odds with one another--Sootopolis strives for perfection, but Juan (his primary window into Sootopolis) tries to emphasize that things are okay? I didn't quite follow.
But no matter how strong of a trainer he is, no matter how many Contests he wins, no matter what he does, he can never know if his parents would be proud.

And so he sometimes thinks that they wouldn’t be proud of him.
I think this would land a lot stronger without the closing line here.
Winona started her journey later than most kids, but that didn't mean she and Aurora lagged behind in terms of strength.
I kind of wonder how this works--five years is a huge head start that I'm not sure that natural talent could really overcome.
Aurora is Winona’s strongest Pokémon, but she’s more than just a powerful Pokémon. When Winona is stressed or overwhelmed, Aurora is there to help her, be it through holding her with her comforting wings or singing a soothing melody. Aurora is a very motherly Pokémon (she even has two children with Winona’s Skarmory Horus), and she’s always there to support the other Fortree Gym Pokémon.
She’s an advisor; even without words, she’s able to give him wisdom or be there for him when things get rough. She’s the moon to Wallace’s sun, the other side of his coin, his other half. He's incomplete without her, and she's incomplete without him.
I'm admittedly biased here but I wanted to see more from what it means to Aurora/Victoria to be more than just a powerful Pokemon, what it means to be completed by a trainer. A lot of the framing here is in terms of what Winona/Wallace sees from this relationship, what Aurora/Victoria can do for Winona/Wallace, but I found myself wanting more insight into what Aurora/Victoria wants here, how she sees these things.
And if anyone threatens her companions, beware the wrath of her Dragon Dance.
dumb question but is Dragon Dance inherently more angry than other moves in this context?
To their and Steven’s enemies, Metagross is a menace. To their and Steven’s friends (and young kids and Pokémon), Metagross is a warm, gentle friend. To friendly birds, Metagross is a willing perch.
this is a lovely mental image
Kids in her class would talk about what their journeys would be like, what starters they would choose, how they would become Champion. These questions isolated Winona from her peers.
I didn't quite follow how this would be isolating--as far as I understood, she also wants to go on a pokemon journey, right?
Running away from home sort of put a wrench in his straight As and advanced classes only plan. When he came back home, he had a lot of catch up to do. His dad and therapist made him drop a few of the advanced classes, though. That was helpful, as much as Steven hates to admit it.
I didn't quite track how this was still part of his plan if he also intended to run away.
As Wallace garnered more fame, and as he began to express himself, their comments towards him would become more… cruel. To compensate, Wallace pushed himself to be smarter, stronger, better, perfect in every aspect of his life.
Everyone around her was more graceful, stronger, smarter, better than her. She had to work harder so she could be more graceful, stronger, smarter, better.
The repetition between Wallace/Winona here, as well as within Winona's bit, was a little jarring.
Speaking of peers, she finally had friends. Not just people who were nice to her and who she could talk to, but close friends, people she could trust, people she went out of her way to spend time with, people who genuinely cared about her well being. It felt so strange and so wonderful.
I wanted to see more of this--what she gets out of this, what some of those moments of being cared for feel like for her.
The main reason was that he became Champion during his sophomore year of college. Steven was able to balance his studies, training, and new responsibilities fairly well by doing classes off campus and in Ever Grande City. What time he spent at campus was usually spent with his first two real, human friends: Wallace and Winona, both freshmen, both new Gym Leaders.
I was curious what the workloads for being a gym leader are like, and how that would intersect with the more "standard" go to college, get a job sorta thing--is it just a side gig that doesn't qualify as a full time career? Are these people just reaalllly bored?
Mari was a Bug type specialist
This was another drabble that I think would've benefited from a more concrete moment instead of mostly summary.
He accepts victory and defeat, steps and obstacles, and personal strength and weakness with grace.

Externally, at least. He can beat himself up internally.
This felt like a paradox--I get that the point is to pull the rug out, but this just felt like contradiction.
Of course, he still stays by her side, making sure she doesn't go down any of the paths he did. Of course, he still occasionally graces the stage by her side, even bringing her along to the Wallace Cup. Of course, he's still there for her. He may be a godlike superstar to her, but she's just as important to his life as he is to hers.
I thought this was kind of a sobering look at mentorship in general--the idea that mentors will never really feel like peers to you, no matter how much they try.
It was one for Theresa to insult Winona, but to insult and injure her best friend? That was too much. That was too, too much.
I'm sort of horrified that no one else in Winona's family sees this as a gamebreaker lol.
Everything is gray. Gray like granite. Gray, gray, gray. But no glow. Just dull blacks, whites, and grays.
Oh no :( seems like things nosedive pretty hard for Steven and nothing gets better
When you’re drowning, it doesn’t matter which of the Seven Seas you’re in. Similarly (or not), Wallace doesn’t know what his darkest memory is. There’s been a lot of them.
this is a powerful sentiment
He still sometimes worries that he won’t live past 27, but those are just intrusive thoughts. He’s lived through so much. He’s done so much. He’s accomplished so much. And he doesn’t plan on slowing down.
In general I like Wallace's character arc throughout this, but the closer here feels almost too happy--it's a pretty dramatic improvement compared to everything else, and I struggled to see what caused it.

Overall this is a really fun collection that fleshes out characters that I'm normally not too invested in, and I liked how you bounced them off one another to create some interesting opposites. Thanks for sharing, and congrats on finishing!
 
Here to crosspost too!

Hello there, friend! Good to see you here! Also if this reply is too late, it's because I started responding in a weird state of mind, went to bed, got back up, and finished my responses, all while editing the AO3 version of this story so I could edit this story on the other two sites it's posted. Also I'm not sure if my responses make any sense.
hiya, here for catnip! coincidentally, when I was pulling line quotes, I noticed that you'd finished the collection, so I figured I'd finish as well. Congrats on getting this done!
Thank you so much!! I'm really proud of myself for finishing this.
I really like the setup for these, since it lets you pack in a lot of juicy backstory without having to focus on any of the parts that might be less entertaining. It's sort of like a sampler platter of all of the actual interesting bits, and that's always fun to read through.
I liked your decision to flesh out each of the characters' worlds a little--my favorite details were the additions about their family members (I think that's new? correct me if I'm wrong lol), their time in college, and miscellaneous city details such as Sootopolis being this pristine, quasi-grecian marble metropolis.
Some of the family stuff is canon (ex. Lisia), but some of it is me making headcanons. And yes, I was going/go for Grecian Sootopolis City.
I think the format here lends itself really well to mundane slice of life style--it's hard to establish a world-ending sort of conflict in ~100 word snips, but it's a lot easier to kind of poke miscellaneous concepts that are important to an individual character, and from there coax out a story. Overall it makes the collection feel very efficient; it's only a few thousand words overall but we're able to get a strong handle on each of the three.
Then I did my job well :)
I also appreciated the decision to rotate through your cast for these. Shifting POV is a powerful tool when used correctly, and here I think you're able to combine that with picking specific "themes" (themes in the sense that they aren't writing themes per se, but are more specifically what you're focusing each given drabble on) in order to tackle both the theme and the character in a new light.
Part of that POV thing comes from this fic's origins as a PHAV spin off, but it mostly stems on the fact that these three nerds live in my head rent free.
My favorite trios were usually the ones where each of the characters had a new takeaway to offer. "Siblings" was fun for me because it got to the core of the characters and the idea of siblings in a really powerful way--Winona's sibling (specifically Theresa) is a destructive force who encourages her to be a better person; Wallace's sibling is a positive force who isn't able to stop him from spiraling; Steven is alone. These all felt like genuine takes for the characters to have, but it's definitely enhanced by seeing how someone else might experience the same thing.
I liked writing "Siblings" a lot.
Comparatively, some of the triads such as "First Pokemon" felt a little samesy--it was nice to see the common ground that these characters share, especially because they become such close friends later, but the general takeaways felt a little similar and left me wishing we knew a bit more, either about the humans or their titular pokemon.
Yeah, I should probably expand upon those.
Winona's probably the character with the least baggage here, but you do a good job of making her seem fleshed out and interesting despite that. Her struggles with Theresa and her overprotective parents get fleshed out in broad strokes, and we're able to see those threads knitting together into a thoroughly dysfunctional family by the time "Darkest Memory" comes around. I found that a lot of her drabbles ended up using words like free/bird/fly--read all in one sitting, that did seem a little repetitive by the end, and I think the surprise of "oh!! she trains birds!! flight metaphors!!" wore a little thin by the end of them.
I went really overboard on the bird metaphors lol. And metaphors in general. I ought to tone them down. In my defense, I updated these over the course of a few months, so maybe I didn't pick up on it as well as I should have. I was super worried that Winona wouldn't be interesting because, with the exception of Theresa, she doesn't have too much emotional baggage, but then again, baggage =/= interesting character.
Steven's isolation is pretty clear from the moment we first see him, but I like how you balance it--we see the cause of it with his mother's death and his fallout with his father, and we also see him able to open up with people (even if that doesn't end up being a fix-it for everything). He's kind of dorky and loves rocks and caves, so yeah, this parses as Steven in my book. I found myself wishing that more of the triads focused on him, if that makes sense--it felt like Wallace was sort of the star of the show as far as massive traumatic things happening, and Winona was (ironically) the stable/rockish one, whereas Steven feels more like the neutral third party.
I like to imagine Steven as the logical one, Wallace as the emotional one, and Winona as the mediator of the two, but when writing them, Steven always ends up being the third party balancing Winona and Wallace. Should have made Steven the main character.
Wallace gets the heaviest facelift here, and I admit I don't remember much of his character in the games, but this seems like a lot of new info. I like the additions in general; there's a lot of common themes about perfection and being good enough in Steven and Winona's stories that really seem to come to a head with Wallace; as a result, he sort of felt like the main character even though they were roughly balanced as far as screentime.
With the power of hindsight and other people's perspectives, yeah he sort of feels like the main character.
This is certainly a personal preference, so feel free to disregard at your own leisure: for a lot of these I found myself wishing that the drabble tied back a little more heavily to the theme that it was after-- I wanted an answer to the question of what home means to Winona, in other words. As noted above, the ones that were most interesting to me were the ones where you were able to takeaway different characters' definitions of the given theme (so everyone's ideas of what siblings mean to them). I thought "College" did a good job of this as well, fleshing out the three's relationship through different stages of their college time--but in general I wanted to leave each drabble with an idea of what this thing meant to this character. In some cases I think that could be helped by having more specific scenes rather than a broader summary (Winona in "Education", for example, might've read a little more directly as a more focused vignette about either her dance class or her sex-ed class, for example). For flash fic I find that it's best to be specific, to give a theme a face--it's easy to say "Winona's mother is overprotective but her father is excited to see her try new things and maybe threw the battle", but "and then she did" ends up conveying a lot more of that in much fewer words. It makes the genre into a kind of puzzle, where reading between the lines is a bit more necessary and every word is critical.
This was certainly a challenge for me, and in some ways I succeeded, in other not so much. Now that the fic is complete, I could probably go back and expand on certain parts.
Flash fic is tough to get right, and I think you do a good job of making the words count. In shorter works I do find myself both drawn to the verbiage more and less than I normally would--so I guess I end up more critical about word choice but less frequently, oddly enough.
I'm glad I made the words count :) And it makes a lot of sense to pay attention to verbiage with flash fic.
like the theming here (how every one of this triad begins in the same format), but I don't really follow this metaphor. Is fog vivid? Is fog specifically over lakes more vivid, or in a way unique than fog over bodies of water or land?
I think I was trying to go for "the colors are vivid but it's hard to see through fog", but honestly,
was a little tripped up here, since obsidian shards are sharp all over and not just on the tips. Plus if you want to save words, it'd make sense to cut this to "Steven's first memory was sharp, like a shard of obsidian."
Ooh good point.
I thought that the "probably" here adds a layer of uncertainty when it doesn't necessarily have to--wouldn't current Steven (who's narrating this now) know what it actually is? Wouldn't he know where it is?
Shoot you're right.
Like with Winona's intro I think this is pretty language but I have difficulty understanding what it means.
Part of me was going for intentional purple prose, but I probably should have added something to clarify this part.
"Winona has three siblings (by blood), though when people ask, she always says she has two."
Shoot thanks for pointing that out.
I think this is the opposite of "technically"--more like "as far as she's concerned, Winona's the oldest sibling"
True. Thanks for pointing that out.
I liked the image of a mother bird protecting the nest! I wish we got some more emotional versions of great storms for these two, though.
Oh you're right.
Poor Beldum! Later we learn that he and Metagross understand one another on like a psychic level, so I was surprised that Steven wouldn't call Metagross a sibling here.
Their bond transcends human understanding of bonds
Give up his rocks only as a last resort, lmao, this is a gem of a line.
Love exploiting rule of threes.
I think the comma stack here is a little hard to parse--I'd rewrite this to "She was moreso someone to admire--someone Wallace, in his mind, needed to impress."
Noted. Thank you.
oh no oof.
uh oh.
I was curious what he thought they'd be using the weapon against here!
I should add a thing
za warudo
I was curious if being good at battling was really the concern here--not, like, living alone, having to do adulting decisions, feeding herself. It felt a little too whimsical for that to be their main worry.
Oh you're right.
Oh no. I liked how these also ended up as two sides of the same coin--workaholism and isolation are really just the same thing at different life stages.
Yeeeeeeeeeeeeee
This was a moment that I thought would be more effective not as a summary--what similarities does he see?
Good point.
These two lines felt at odds with one another--Sootopolis strives for perfection, but Juan (his primary window into Sootopolis) tries to emphasize that things are okay? I didn't quite follow.
It was supposed to be "the Sootopolis government/public wanted him to be perfect while Juan was trying to lessen that burden. I could probably word it better.
I think this would land a lot stronger without the closing line here.
Then bye bye to the closing lines
I kind of wonder how this works--five years is a huge head start that I'm not sure that natural talent could really overcome.
True. My thought process was "maybe she knew stuff from her father", but I should probably edit that one.
I'm admittedly biased here but I wanted to see more from what it means to Aurora/Victoria to be more than just a powerful Pokemon, what it means to be completed by a trainer. A lot of the framing here is in terms of what Winona/Wallace sees from this relationship, what Aurora/Victoria can do for Winona/Wallace, but I found myself wanting more insight into what Aurora/Victoria wants here, how she sees these things.
I should probably add more to those.
dumb question but is Dragon Dance inherently more angry than other moves in this context?
Yes. It's also an illegal Dragon Dance, so double angry.
this is a lovely mental image
:)
I didn't quite follow how this would be isolating--as far as I understood, she also wants to go on a pokemon journey, right?
She did, but because she can't, kids would ask her "what starter are you choosing?" and she would say "I'm not going on a journey
I didn't quite track how this was still part of his plan if he also intended to run away.
Part of the point was that he did an impulsive thing and ran away, but I could probably make that clearer.
The repetition between Wallace/Winona here, as well as within Winona's bit, was a little jarring.
I was trying to go for "ooh" parallels but yeah I should fix that.
I wanted to see more of this--what she gets out of this, what some of those moments of being cared for feel like for her.
Watch me add to this drabble and wind up writing a whole oneshot lol
I was curious what the workloads for being a gym leader are like, and how that would intersect with the more "standard" go to college, get a job sorta thing--is it just a side gig that doesn't qualify as a full time career? Are these people just reaalllly bored?
At this point, they're more training to be Gym Leaders. I've explored this idea in other fics, but I could probably add a bit more here.
This was another drabble that I think would've benefited from a more concrete moment instead of mostly summary.
Shoot the more I think about it the more I like the idea of "single moment" drabbles.
This felt like a paradox--I get that the point is to pull the rug out, but this just felt like contradiction.
Noted. I'll take out the last part.
I thought this was kind of a sobering look at mentorship in general--the idea that mentors will never really feel like peers to you, no matter how much they try.
This is why I like reviews—they provide perspectives I never would have thought of alone.
I'm sort of horrified that no one else in Winona's family sees this as a gamebreaker lol.
Haruki? Total gamebreaker. Bugsy and Anabel? Total gamebreaker. Rina? It's... more complicated.
Oh no :( seems like things nosedive pretty hard for Steven and nothing gets better
):
this is a powerful sentiment
Wow I'm deep. Like the sea.
In general I like Wallace's character arc throughout this, but the closer here feels almost too happy--it's a pretty dramatic improvement compared to everything else, and I struggled to see what caused it.
I really didn't want this drabble (and this drabble collection) to end on a depressing note, but I should probably make it less happy. (that sounds weird out of context lol)

Once again, thank you thank you thank you for reading and reviewing :)
 
Different style to finish them off:

- Darkest Memories:
Man I fear for Bugsy if Winona is in that kind of environment. Although it seems it was also a key moment to move forward. She should totally get a Gligar if she's worried about lightning, though! Steven's is more on the surreal side, probably what a child's traumatic memory would feel like. And hospitals are pretty bad, especially nowadays, but my father and late mother both have said it feels like prison at times. Very interesting side of him.

- The Future
There's a sort of head-in-the-clouds thing out of Winona as seen before, heh. Steven being able to explore caves is very dorky and it rules. Funny that he'd consider something so defined and cramped as so liberating, but only for a dorky guy with a pet rock, hee. As for Wallace, that is a very specific age for worrying when he is going to go. Also notably, him and Winona both have undefined futures with potential, whereas Steven simply knows. And theirs is more metaphorical and flowery, and his is quite solid!

And that's the end of these! Grats on reaching the end. Fun ride. I imagine you could do these for more characters if you really wanted to. But for now, onto other fics!
 
Different style to finish them off:
Oh my goodness it's over... feels bittersweet.
Man I fear for Bugsy if Winona is in that kind of environment. Although it seems it was also a key moment to move forward. She should totally get a Gligar if she's worried about lightning, though! Steven's is more on the surreal side, probably what a child's traumatic memory would feel like. And hospitals are pretty bad, especially nowadays, but my father and late mother both have said it feels like prison at times. Very interesting side of him.
Good idea about the Gligar. And yeah someday I want to explore Theresa's affect on Bugsy/Anabel/Kahili hehehe.

Love surreal memories. Sometimes. Most of my surreal memories involve big churches, lots of sunlight, and trippy blind boxes.

Went to a hospital once. Not because of injury, but because of diagnosis stuff. Bloodwork is scary. Can agree hospitals are scary.

There's a sort of head-in-the-clouds thing out of Winona as seen before, heh. Steven being able to explore caves is very dorky and it rules. Funny that he'd consider something so defined and cramped as so liberating, but only for a dorky guy with a pet rock, hee. As for Wallace, that is a very specific age for worrying when he is going to go. Also notably, him and Winona both have undefined futures with potential, whereas Steven simply knows. And theirs is more metaphorical and flowery, and his is quite solid!
Hahaha metaphors.

Haha. Nerd.

It's a reference to the 27 Club, an alleged (and debunked) phenomenon of a statistical spike in musicians/celebrities dying at age 27, mostly from violent/drug related causes. Wallace, with all his problems and his position as a celebrity, worries about it.

Yo it's like how rocks are solid and the wind and water aren't. Imagery. Metaphors.
And that's the end of these! Grats on reaching the end. Fun ride. I imagine you could do these for more characters if you really wanted to. But for now, onto other fics!
Thanks pal. And thank you for reviewing all the way to the end! And yes I could probably do these for more characters heeheehee.
 
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