Originally Posted by
Negrek
I think the largest issue with your story as it stands is that so far it's mostly been made up of crazy coincidences that conveniently get your character out of trouble. Despite being markedly clueless, Aron hasn't actually suffered at all in his journey because wacky things keep intervening to protect him. The thing is, what makes a fanfic interesting is the hardship, not just watching the main character wander around and get involved in hijinks (generally speaking). Right from the start, Aron makes a mistake in helping the rufflet despite his reservations, and as a result ends up attacked by a bunch of braviary. But then, instead of having to deal with that, he gets rescued out of nowhere by Cyrus, who vanishes again shortly thereafter. Then, it turns out his piplup doesn't like him. But rather than getting to see how he deals with this, how he's able to actually work through his problems with Piplup and develop a bond with it, a gible magically appears to give Aron a chance to show Piplup how devoted he is. Further, although gible would ordinarily be a tough opponent, and it would have been interesting to see how you managed to solve that problem with the usual resources available to a beginning trainer, Piplup instead conveniently learns a super-attack that's able to take Gible out of the battle completely. Rufflet doesn't like Aron much, but this turns out to be fine because it's totally badass and willing to take down opponents by itself, even if it doesn't listen to his commands. It simply goes on like this, down to Aron not knowing how to get to Jubilife but, instead of getting lost and having to actually work for something, is instead shown the way by the trainer who conveniently happens to be going in the same direction. There just isn't a lot of tension here: it's clear that your character is going to be just fine, becacuse even when he gets in over his head something is going to come along and bail him out. This makes your fic feel very low-stakes; it prevents you from building up any real drama. Further, it robs you of a lot of room to stretch in your story. How is your character ever going to learn and grow if all of his problems keep getting solved for him by convenient happenstance? If he's not going to evolve as a person during his journey, what's even the point? It's hard to get interested in someone who kind of just wanders around in life, getting things handed to them on a platter. I think this is a serious problem with your story at this point--it's simply not interesting, because it's clear that nothing really matters.
I think naming your main character "Aron" is a problem; it's a valid spelling of "Aaron," but unfortunately is also the name of a pokémon species, which makes it really, really confusing in this fanfiction context.
The introduction of the rival over the past couple of chapters is pretty cringe-worthy. You've clearly set the girl up as a generic "pokémon are just tools!" eeeevil type who will, inevitably, be shown up by your protagonist who is all about happiness and friendship and rainbows and suchlike. This is hideously overdone and not very interesting; it's really just the rival serving as a foil to make your protagonist look awesome, rather than being a character in their own right. And what satisfaction is there, really, from watching someone beat down a caricature? It also further highlights a problem that your protagonist has, and which most others in the fandom do, really: he plays lip service to respecting pokémon and being all horrified when the braviary get electrocuted, but when it's him battling he clearly isn't all remorseful about hurting the opponent's pokémon. He lets Piplup trap the gible in the bubble, without a care for how it might starve or be easy prey for other pokémon detained like that. He realizes that Rufflet probably wants to go back to the braviary flock, but because he's worried about getting hurt again, he decides he'll just take it with him, rather than manning up and giving it a shot, giving Rufflet to someone else who can take it and release it, or even trying to ask Rufflet itself what it wants, which is what one might imagine someone who cares about pokémon's feelings and doesn't just treat them as cool collectible battle machines might do. Aron certainly isn't as over-the-top eeeevil as the rival character, but so far his lip service to caring and compassion hasn't been backed up by his actions. The exception is when he's nice to the luxio after Marina tosses it out like not even the most terrible trainer would do unless they were actually a moron, because we need to have a scene showing how much of a better person Aron is, of course.
It's pretty worrisome that you say you abandoned your last 'fic because you ran out of ideas, because right now this story isn't showing any clear sign of where it's going, either. Aron claims he doesn't really know why he's going on a journey, then kind of lackadaisically decides to check out the gym challenge--it's not exactly a compelling hook, and it kind of suggests that you aren't sure where you're going with this either. If you do have an idea of a larger, more interesting plot, you really want to get that out there in the open as soon as possible. There really hasn't been a lot going on in the story thus far--mostly just Aron wandering around and stuff happening to him. It's not very interesting! If you have a plot to get on with, you want to go ahead and do so, because that's generally what's going to bring in readers--people who are intrigued and want to know what's going to happen next.
Which isn't to say that it's all bad, of course. I think you need to get some things straightened out, though, because the story so far has been meandering, and you haven't really done a lot with your characters. Figuring out what the journey's going to be about could really help give this 'fic some direction and give your characters solid problems to chew on. If you've already done the figuring out, then you need to let it show! You seem to be interested in exploring the relationships between pokémon and their trainers, but up until now that hasn't really come through; for the most part, any hiccups in understanding between the trainer and the pokémon has been resolved largely by circumstances outside the trainer's control or simply don't end up mattering. There's not much room to grow if you're doing fine to begin with! I think you could work out a very interesting fanfic by focusing on that kind of a storyline, but you do have a ways to go before you get there at this point. Best of luck with your writing.
Bond [PG-13]
Reply With Quote
