Lit Critique

I've never been into Pokemon. Not even when I was little and the craze started, and every single one of my friends owned a Charmander or Bulbasaur. Back then, I was the only boy who didn't have even a single Pokeball on his bookshelf. Now, those friends have grown up alongside me, are capturing, evolving, and battling Pokemon daily, winning championships, traveling the world. Everyone I know has at least a passing interest in them, watches the televised matches, discusses stats and movesets with coworkers, takes care of a relative's Pokemon on occasion. The funny thing is that I don't even have a good reason; I'm not one of those who protests about animal cruelty, or who thinks of the possible damage to the environment from forced evolution of animals, or who argues about exposing children to violence, or wonders if it's possibly slavery depending on the level of sapience of the Pokemon in question.

I just don't care for them at all and never have.

If I had to choose a Pokemon I liked least, it would definitely be Sylveon. I don't like the color pink, but everyone seems to THINK I would because I'm gay. The honest suggestions from good friends about how it would make a perfect Pokemon for me (and the deriding jokes from bad friends about how we're both "fairy type") lasted for months. It was almost as painful as continuing to hear from my uncle about not getting a girlfriend, or from my mother about how she won't have grandchildren. Oh, I hated Sylveon so much for so long, even though I knew nothing about them besides what I saw in pictures.

I live in an apartment complex, alone in a single bedroom unit. The guy who lived across the hall from me was a loud, brutish oaf who obsessed over Pokemon every day of his life. I often heard him yelling at his team about their miserable skills and hammering into their little brains about attack patterns and whatnot. I tried to ignore it for several months, but one day it suddenly got worse. Apparently, one of his Eevees evolved, and he wasn't happy about which one, though I only caught bits and pieces because it had turned from yelling to screaming and throwing things against the wall. He screamed that it wouldn't fight, that it couldn't learn anything. There was something about "waste of a shiny", which of course I did not understand.

A few days after, I was coming home from work like usual, and as I walked down the hall to my door, I could hear his yelling, like usual. I heard him clearly this time, though, and he said: "NO! I wanted an Umbreon, not some useless girly thing! I didn't raise you to be like that!"

>Alright, up to this point it's been pretty good. A quick comment on capitalized words: italics will usually work just a well, and people seem to be more accepting of them. I do like the repetition in the first sentence, as it's nice and effective at characterizing the neighbor. It'd also be beneficial to change "NO!" to "No!", while emphasizing what the main character is hearing. "I heard him clearly and forceful/angrily/obstinately etc...". Omitting the "and he said" off of the prior example would make it flow better as well.

Something about the exact words he used sent a prickle up the back of my neck, and a white-hot rage came to full flame in my heart. I was estranged from my father since I came out of the closet; I'd heard things like that before from him, had friends who heard the same from their parents. I had just finished unlocking my door, but instead of walking inside and closing it, I stopped and turned around. I'm not confrontational — I intended just to yell something at the bastard across the hall — but still, that moment's hesitation changed everything.

>This paragraph is a bit messy, but the meaning is clear to the reader, so it's not too bad overall. To start with, there's a bit of an issue with "Something about..." and "I was estranged". It should be no mystery to what "something" set him off as he knows he's been disowned by his father. There's also a similar issue nestled right inside these two sentences! "Prickle up the back of my neck" and "white-hot rage" don't mesh well together. The former isn't something I've seen used to describe anger, but more for becoming shocked or unnerved. On the other hand, "white-hot rage" is being used to describe the MC's internal anger, but it seems unfounded because of the weak external appearance of his anger. If I were to write out this scene, here's how I'd do it: "I froze when I heard those words. My hand clenched the doorknob as if to choke it, and my face was flushed with a roiling heat. Those were the exact same words my father used before we became estranged. Those words that some of my friends had heard under their parents, and now those words are used on my neighbor's pokemon. In that moment, my aversion to conflict burned away. Ignoring him was no longer an option, and yelling at him wouldn't be enough, so I turned and walked towards my neighbor's door." External anger, internal struggle, call to action.

I heard the yelling again, and then a cacophony of thumps and bangs, and then something new: a bright, loud wailing and crying noise that made my hair stand up on end. The door across the hall flew open, and that was the first time I saw that Sylveon.

>"New" and "bright" could be better. Together, those two have a positive connotations. Try "alarming" and "panicked/shrill", in their place.

He had somehow managed to open the door using one of his ribbons, and jumped into the hallway. His coat was a glistening, shining snow white, accented with a playful, boyish powder-blue, his eyes a pale and vulnerable red like an albino's; I was taken aback. I'd never seen a Sylveon like this before. If my door had been closed, only God knew where he might have ran, but because it was not, he scurried inside my apartment and cowered behind me. Across the hall, his owner stood at the doorway, dressed in ratty shorts and a wife beater, holding a baseball bat and baring his teeth at me.

>Describing the Sylveon with "glistening" , "shining", and "playful" tend to contradict the more serious mood of the scene. He is already beaten to some extent, but the first sentence is being viewed in a positive perspective, despite the protag being in an angry state.

"Give him back, or else," he snarled at me.

I should have been scared. I should have complied. The man was six inches taller than me and twice my weight, and looked ready to back up his threat. I'm not confrontational. The Sylveon behind me curled into a ball and wailed. He was small like a puppy, shaking, pissing all over the linoleum in my entry, and I noticed that his muzzle was swollen and bleeding from having already been hit. I weighed my options, walked on the knife edge of a choice that might be painful either way, paused and took a deep breath... and one of the Sylveon's ribbons, slow and hesitant, snaked up and wrapped around my wrist.

>From the first two sentences we already know the MC's choice. Having him weigh his options later isn't necessary. The distinction of taking a pause isn't very effective either as he's already spent several moments analyzing a tense situation in which he's most likely on the losing end. Now that I think about it, this should be a major point of conflict in this story. The tension should be high. I personally think the MC's non-confrontational-indifference really hurts an such an important moment.

The shock was immense. I couldn't move, couldn't breathe, couldn't think. In an instant, it was like I perceived it all. I could feel every ounce of his pain, his fear, his shame at failing his master, his peaceful nature. But there was more: his courage, his passion, his intense spirit and will, a flame in his heart to match my own. These fires combined, stoked by a wind from my past, and built into a blaze of fury and strength inside me.

>You're telling and not showing here. Plus, it's getting a bit purple with the talk of flames in hearts and past winds. Keep it simple. Again, this should be a tough choice for the MC, and it's fine that Sylveon's influence is a deciding factor. Just keep things a bit more down to earth and less about internal fiery spirits and it'll be good.

"No," I said, quietly and simply; my eyes said the rest. The walls trembled. The man looked away, his shoulders slumping in cowardice, and he slunk away.

>Shit man, like I said earlier, you can definitely do better. Like I said earlier, more tension would help this scene a lot. Right now there's hardly any and it's dispelled in an even weaker and more awkward fashion. The neighbor has a baseball bat for christ's sake. Why would he simply leave? If he was truly scum, why wouldn't he fight back for his pokemon, only to illegally pawn it off (I mean, shinys are valuable, right)? What's stopping him?

I stooped down, gathering the shaking little Sylveon into my arms, cradling him and nuzzling him, caring not for the urine soaking from his fur into my shirt. "It'll be okay. I won't let anyone hurt you ever again." He pressed into me, licked my face, and happily fell asleep.

>He still doesn't care for pokemon that much at this point, so nuzzling is kind of odd. He should obviously be empathetic to the Sylveon's plight, but there's too much of a 180 in their currently almost non-existent relationship. Also, why would a creature fall asleep after such a traumatic experience?

Walking back into my apartment, I called up a female friend that did Pokemon veterinary work on the side, and then drove over. His ribbon stayed wrapped around my wrist the whole time.


I gave my Sylveon the name "Shin", because it means "new" and he signified a new part of my life... and totally not because it's short for "Shiny" and I'm hopeless with names.

At the time, I did not notice, but someone down the hall filmed the whole confrontation between me and my neighbor. From what I heard, while I was with my friend the vet having Shin looked at, the police came and asked him some questions. His apartment was raided, and he was arrested on various charges. All his other Pokemon were confiscated and later adopted out to loving homes. The apartment across the hall is now home to a kindly older lady who thinks me and Shin "look so cute together!" I quit my job and work out of home so we can stay together longer.

He's older and bigger now, the size of a large dog, while still retaining the grace and limberness of a feline. He's grown strong and yet gentle, fierce and yet kind. His four ribbons can extend to ten feet or longer, and depending on his intentions can touch like cotton or slice like giant knives. He is intelligent (he even uses the toilet like a cat and even flushes when done), can do more than a well-trained service dog, can understand me, and I can understand his various vocalizations and inflections of "Sylveon" and "Shin(y)". Though, often, I need only allow him to wrap his ribbons around my arm for us to know each other's hearts.

Shin still doesn't like to fight. Out of deference to my love for him, I was willing to swallow my unwillingness to do anything Pokemon to train him and let him battle, but he wants nothing to do with it. He wants nothing to do with anything that isn't me. But just because he doesn't want to fight doesn't mean he can't. A pair of muggers in a dark alleyway learned this one night. Shin stood in front of me the way I had stood in front of him the day we met. While the ribbons from his ear swept back, wrapping around me to protect and reassure, the ones from his neck arced forward, whipping around, tearing gashes into the concrete ground and the brick of the surrounding buildings. He let out a roar like a lion, and I swear the sunglasses one of the muggers was wearing shattered. They took off running, and that was that.

When Shin reached his pubescent years and entered his first heat, I tried to find him a Pokemon to pair up with, but male or female he rejected them all. I could tell he was needy because of the way he kept rubbing against me and cuddling with me. In desperation, I took him to my friend. She did not need to examine him. One look at his behavior and she awkwardly forced out that Shin had chosen me as his mate. Despite the fact that Sylveons tend to be affectionate with their owners, this sort of thing was apparently extremely uncommon and always caused because the Sylveon never had access to potential Pokemon mates. Either way, she said it wasn't TECHNICALLY illegal to have sex with a Pokemon, and that she would keep it a secret.

I had to apologize to Shin. I had been thinking of his clingy behavior as I would a dog's, instead of recognizing his true feelings toward me. When I treated him as I would a human partner, his intentions became obvious. We ate dinner by candlelight (his food dish on the floor, though), snuggled on the couch, watched a romantic movie, and then went to the bedroom. I licked his muzzle, he licked my face. He bit my neck to signify his claiming me as his mate, and I reluctantly did the same to him. For our first time, I insisted that he be on top, and he insisted that I lay on my back on the edge of the bed so we could hold each other. His canine-like knot inside me kept us tied together for about a half-hour, but his ribbons wrapped around me kept us tied together until morning.

Our relationship hasn't changed. We do the same things we've always done for 23 hours of each day, just the remainder we spend embracing in physical as well as emotional joy. We breed each other, loudly and like animals, but the most appropriate term I can come up with for this is "lovemaking". I don't understand why people find this to be taboo, because it's so pure and beautiful; our love burns the brightest when we're connected mind and body. Maybe it's because Shin is different, or maybe it's just because he's my mate.

I've never been into Pokemon, but finally I understand why some others are.

>I'm going to be as terse as I over these last few paragraphs. I mentioned contradictory statements being an issue, and there's a few here. Shin has intelligence to understand the world as much as a human can, but he eats on the floor and the MC for some reason likens his affections to a dog, despite being able to read each other perfectly from the beginning.

>As for the bigger picture, the exposition and mid story conflict were paced decently, and the rest is glossed over to the end. After the external conflict with the neighbor, the major aspect of the MC and Shin's relationship is covered in loose time skips and anecdotes to the point where the story is seemingly already concluded halfway through, with the latter half being an epilogue of sorts. On a related note, I think trying to have this relationship develop from childhood to adulthood in such a short story is another issue. If you wanted to have the inclusion of friendship to courting to sex, the bulk of the story should've taken place in a consistent time frame. If this were to be written again, putting the focus on having Shin traumatized at or near adulthood, and having the MC forced to develop an interest in pokemon, would give both of them a base to bond and help one another.