*furries

James Cameron is really "on the nose" with his naming. "Grace" - Good guy/woman ... "Selfridge" -Bad guy

Every character will get character-development sooner or later. Including the pokemon. If a character ends up 1-dimensional, I will have failed as an author. But her teasing and domineering/confrontational behavior will probably never fully leave. It just fits too well with what I have in mind for her personality.

? Only the city is in crisis. Because there was just 1 route connecting Canalave City to the rest of the region.

Nope. She's dirt poor and the rewards for 1st place in the tournament were a TM and a pokemon egg -> she wouldn't sell either of those for money.

At current pace and predicted length of the next volume: early May.

A fire would attract too much attention.

Yep. It's Zoey.

Was the purpose of the ritual only to give the MC trauma? It seems otherwise just wiggled in for no reason.

No need to get flustered, bro. The frustrating part is definitely real too. It was a conscious decision to make the MC very innocent and just "book-smart" in the beginning. The greater theme of the fic is "being forced to grow up", so the frustrating part is necessary and I believe it leads to a better overall story. Have fun reading the rest [img=recommend]

I read the first 2 chapters again, and while I really appreciate your criticism, I have to say that you are wrong about (almost) everything. The father is clearly characterized as a person who doesn't believe in comfort. He's tough and covered in scars. Comfort isn't a thing he concerns himself with. In addition to that, both tents and lighters would have gotten MC killed because the pokemon would have spotted him. MC knows what to do in the wilderness and he proves it with his survival skills. MC is aware of the danger of pokemon. He says it himself over and over again. But there is a difference between "knowing" and "understanding". His "ignorance" is just "innocence". Would he have read about it hundreds of times? SPOILERS say no. This is an assumption you made that just isn't true and there is not a single paragraph in the first 2 chapters that supports the claim that he read about the dangers somewhere. He saw practice matches between strong pokemon and he saw battles on TV. No deaths occur in either of them and they aren't "spats of dominance" either; Unlike the first and second encounter with Starly. There are no inconsistencies. Not a single event should have killed him. Except maybe the fat Bidoof - which is an unnatural occurrence that nobody could have predicted. And it's not MC's "parents'" fault. It's MC's father's fault. The mother is absent in the first 2 chapters. I really think you went in this with some wrong preconceptions. Especially the "light tone" comment hints to that. The Synopsis talks about the "end of the world" and "struggling to save everything". I hope you will still continue reading. The fic is very worthwhile to read, I swear.

I appreciate the comment, especially because I aim to write without any plotholes or character-inconsistencies. I understand your criticism, especially the part where MC has never seen real-life battles before. That's something I should fix. (Did I actually write he never saw RL pokemon battles??? Or did I write he never saw RL WEAK pokemon battles? I think I wrote specifically about weak pokemon to fill exactly that plot-hole.) But the rest is actually correct as it is. I just didn't frontload any worldbuilding. I can't explain why the other things make sense here, because it would be spoilers for later content. As for Hisui; The book was a gift that he received just the day before and he actually decided not to read it any further because it seemed useless to him. He doesn't know that much about Hisui. And the story is actually pretty dark. Not light. The light beginning is to create a contrast with the wilderness that doesn't care about MC's "innocence". When the father told MC about his past, the tone should already have been clearly tending towards dark. I will give the beginning 3 chapter another read to double check if I need to change anything... I can probably kill some misconceptions resulting from incorrect assumptions with a line or 2 by the narrator.

I see what you mean, but it wouldn't fit into the type of story I'm writing. Every pokemon the MC will get will be an actual character and that means I can't spam new members into the team. And this result also ends up characterizing the MC better: A guy who risks himself for his friends sake. Not because of some tangible reward.

WLAN works. Cellphone tower's just broken.

Helping his friends? Besides, it's not the wilderness. It's just that the wilderness encroached on the non-wilderness without anyone knowing at that point.

regular fish from the supermarket.

Thanks. I did a LOT of reading fanfics. (the reason why I started writing is because I ran out of good fics to read). Eventually, you just learn what's bad and what's good. Then you also need to actually plan out what you want to write and what archetypes you want to use. Chapters 1 to 6 are "the heroes journey". And I had to do a lot of editing. The first volume took me 5 or 6 passes of editing. I also use AI for editing sometimes. Especially earlier, I used AI to help me write with higher quality.

This was still almost 50k words. I estimate the next part to be around 100k words. I'm basically planning a complete romance novel within the fanfic for Volume 5. If I don't get sick again, 4 or 5 months?

Both is god-tier

Fugg the pokemon (literally)