Concrit for A Friendly Irin

[a_friendly_irin]

I want to receive feedback by:
Comment where the work is published. If you want to comment anon that is fine, but please do it on Archive of Our Own where I can respond to you.

If you don't have time to read the entirety of the longer works, only reviewing a few chapters is fine.

Here are the works I want feedback on:
Flawed Crystals (Steven Universe), fangame, playtime ~8 hours
The Darkness Between Stars (Steven Universe), 80k words, complete
Unwanted (The Amazing World of Gumball), 10k words, oneshot
The Boulevard of Broken Hearts (The Amazing World of Gumball), 20k words, complete
The Cure For Nothing (The Reconstruction), 3k words, oneshot
The Gospel of Cynthia (Pokemon), 3k words, complete
any Pokemon oneshot (vary between 400 and 10k words)

My works' fandoms and content notes are:
Steven Universe
The Amazing World of Gumball
Pokemon games
The Reconstruction

content notes: Mental illness, references to abuse, family drama, relationship drama and discussion of infidelity (The Boulevard of Broken Hearts), some graphic violence (but mostly isolated to a few scenes). I believe I am pretty thorough with tagging, but please tell me if there are any tags you'd like me to add.

I would prefer gentle (5) or direct (1) feedback, or something in between: Direct

I have these questions for readers:

• For all fics: Were the characters in-character? Did you like their characterizations?


• Most of my Pokemon fic are explicitly commentaries on the way canon and fandom treat pokemon and how much agency can be ascribed to them. With the exception of Blood is Thicker Than Water, they are the focus of the piece and the perspectives you should consider. Please comment on what you thought of them and their behavior.


• For The Gospel of Cynthia, I would appreciate a response to my author's note on the topic of religion in Pokemon. Did the fic give you any ideas or make you reevaluate your prior assumptions?


• The Darkness Between Stars is an explicit response to and criticism of canon, with many scenes being direct parallels or retellings of canon ones. What do you think of this criticism? Do you feel it is accurate or inaccurate? What do you think of the changes I made to make my AU work?


• For Flawed Crystals, did I handle the characters' issues accurately and respectfully?


• For Flawed Crystals, how did you treat Jasper and why? Was the climax of her arc satisfying or unsatisfying?


• For Flawed Crystals, what did you think of the ending and metacommentary?


• For Flawed Crystals, how was the game balance? Did you feel any of the characters were disproportionately useful or underutilized? Do you have anything to add to the developer retrospective?


• For Flawed Crystals, did you fight the superboss and did you feel it provided an appropriate challenge?

Comments

[scansionictus]

Hey there, I've reviewed your Pokemon fic Progress. I chose this one because I'm only really familiar with Gen 1 and 2 of the Pokemon games and while your other Pokemon fics looked great, I wasn't confident enough in my canon knowledge to crit them. I've given my general impressions and then I'll circle back to your specific questions.

My overall impression is I think this piece works really well. It's great to see some worldbuilding, particularly worldbuilding that goes beyond Pokemon trainers and gym leaders—that's something I always look for in Pokemon fic. I thought the fundamental premise of the fic was humourous and you've played with an amusing aspect of canon. The fic felt like a good length for the premise you were exploring.

Other things I liked: I found it amusing that the scientist is slightly-singed, and is shaking ash from her hair. As if she survived the explosion of the original lab and immediately sought to build another. I also like your nod to Johto with your references to Lugia and Ho-Oh, as well your Unova reference. I enjoy when Pokemon fics create links between the different regions of the games.

Some critique: Overall I found that there were a few too many dialogue tags and action descriptors, and these tripped up flow of the fic. As this is a dialogue-driven piece, I would have hoped for a bit more flow. Some examples:

The clerk looked over the papers, nodding to himself as he saw that everything was in order. “Ah, you’re from the cloning lab, then?” he said, looking up. “Such a shame, what happened.”

I think the dialogue tag is unnecessary here and you could omit the "he said, looking up."

The scientist grinned. “Exactly – it's completely unusable right now, which is why we want to get the new one up and ready as soon as possible! No time to waste!”

The clerk smiled back. “That’s the spirit! Don’t worry, we’ll get you back on track. Will you be building in the same location?”

"The scientist grinned / The clerk smiled back" are both a bit repetitious in succession like this. You've already established that the scientist is cheerful and the clerk is polite, so these feel a bit unnecessary.

I also noticed a couple of minor SPAG issues: sometimes you capitalise the names of Pokemon (like Lugia) but you've left Aerodactyl uncapitalised. Ho-Oh should have both the H and O capitalised. The word Pokemon should be capitalised also. There was also a turn of phrase that didn't work for me:

“But ugh, for no reason the Johtoans aren’t returning our calls. I guess they're too busy. But we’ll keep calling.”

Perhaps this is a regional difference but I would expect the scientist to say "for some reason," not "for no reason."

As far as crit goes, these were all fairly minor and didn't detract too much from fic. To address your specific questions:

For all fics: Were the characters in-character? Did you like their characterizations?

As these were OCs I can't say that they were in-character, but I felt that the characterisation was internally consistent. The cheerfulness/enthusiasm of the scientist was perhaps a bit overstated for my liking ("she said cheerfully," "the scientist grinned," "The scientist threw her head back in a sharp laugh," "The scientist nodded enthusiastically," "the scientist squealed"). In general, you managed to convey all of her enthusiasm through dialogue, so restating it in the narrative felt a bit heavy-handed. I didn't have the same issue with the clerk.

Most of my Pokemon fic are explicitly commentaries on the way canon and fandom treat Pokemon and how much agency can be ascribed to them. With the exception of Blood is Thicker Than Water, they are the focus of the piece and the perspectives you should consider. Please comment on what you thought of them and their behavior.

I can't say I got a strong sense of that from this piece. Which is not a criticism as such, because this really was a small snapshot. I can see that you touched on the idea of scientists "playing God" and recreating extinct Pokemon with little thought or care as to how the reanimation process can affect them psychologically, but this piece was too brief for me to identify this theme independently; had it not been for your question, I wouldn't have concluded that this was a theme you'd hoped to highlight.

I hope you've found this useful! Please don't hesitate to let me know if you have any further questions.

[a_friendly_irin]

Thank you very much! Could you crosspost to AO3 too?

[scansionictus]

Hey there, sorry about that! I missed that part. It's been crossposted, you're welcome to delete my comment thread here if you'd like.

[a_friendly_irin]

No worries, I don't mind it here! I just like having it on AO3 so more people can see it.