This fic is really, really good. I'd say it reminds me of Digital Skitty's Pedestal, especially in terms of tone. Scifi drama isn't a common genre in pokemon, but it is pulled off here excellently. Writing quality is consistently high, character development is great but the real hook for me is the wordbuilding and plot and I can't wait to read more.

ahhhh i got the email for this and then i FORGOT to review skdjks but like,, every time i think the plot's as thick as it can be, it GETS THICKER

door's revelation about family reminded me of that one meme that goes something like "family doesn't have to be a mom, a dad, and a child; family can be [insert literally any random group of things]" jsfkjks

i KNOW geist is weird, we ALL know geist is weird, but i need to know all the details and i can't ? piece them together.. he definitely has something to do with bill (duh) and probably something about prodigyshipping bc you're the author.. but that's all i'm getting lol

i'm very interested in pyro ! idk if he'll make it to the end but ghost pokémon always have a lot of story potential lol and you've done a really good job with the pokémons' personalities, so!

door's really grown on me tbh the more i think about how young she is and how much she's already been through i just *clenches fist* she's a good kid at heart, and i need her to get a good ending.. knives pulls through by the end but i worry about the rest of her future pokémon...

the blacked out name isn't bill (at least? it shouldn't be?) and geist IS zero-one, so ... so i'm still drawing blanks LMAO

ANYWAY, once again, thank you so much for writing and i look forward to the future chapters !

i've never dropped a review on this fic but honestly i really really love it. it's been a while since i first started reading it, and watching how the story is unfolding is amazing ! door's character has really developed nicely as of late and i feel for her so much :( she really was a jerk in the beginning but now she's really softened around the edges.. and knives, as always, is the cutest little audino ever

your plot is so hardcore, i have no idea what's happening with lanette and geist and everything else BUT i love it, and your writing is clear and vivid.. i can really Feel the environment and the characters through it!

thank you so much for writing this! it's definitely a long-term project and i admire how dedicated you are to it! i look forward to the next update!

Hello JX Valentine!
I've been binge reading this Fanfic for days now and I must say, this is freaking awesome. I never fought about humans creating robotic Pokémon that look, feel, and move like their biological counterparts. But enough of that, I wanted to say something that I noticed in Chapter 38.
When each chapter ends, there is always an end conversation with Lanette and ?, or some other person. Each conversation ends w/ the phrase [End Recording] but on Chapter 38 all we get is ? saying "What? No! Wait-" when Lanette was gonna shutdown the LFA core. No [End Recording] like usual. That's kinda concerning about what just happened. I can't wait for the next chapter, my friend. You just yourself a new fan of your work.

I'm not sure I have all that much to say about this chapter. Mostly because I was just sort of taking it all in. This was, rightly and truly, a trainwreck. And like any good trainwreck, I couldn't look away from it. So, I just kind of read through it. I like that things start off very happy and bubbly and with Knives being Knive, only for everything to zigzag(oon) straight into a game of disaster dominoes with this Triple Battle. I'm legitimately curious, did you accidentally trigger this battle in your game, and then couldn't run from it? Or was this intentional because you were feeling pretty pissed and just wanted to take it out on some random NPC trainer? I mean, it's not like we really knew the Pokémon that died all that well, so it wasn't quite the gut punch that Chargestone Cavern was. If anything, it's more like Door's steadily losing it. *cue the death metal playing in the background* She doesn't say all that much this chapter, either. The visceral descriptions of the actual battle do most of the talking. Up until the end, anyway, where she's about to lose Knives and she's finally snapped out of reality. I... don't actually know who saved her there. I'm guessing this is a character you made up, though for some reason I thought of Grimsley when I saw him. So, who really knows?

Lastly, silly quote stuff!

[The sunlight hurt.]
"Door is a vampire" headcanon accepted.

[She needed to hurt something else. Badly.]
CRAAAAAWLIIIIIING IN MY SKIIIIIIIIN! *glass shatters somewhere*

[Abruptly, the boy’s watchog caught Neptune in its enormous jaws, and before Door could even think about it—in a move so fast she almost missed it—Neptune snapped in half.]
I guess you could say that Neptune... wasn't all he was quacked up to be. :V

[Door took one look at his hand and punched him in the face.]
This chapter is now 100% Captain Falcon approved.

... g'night, everybody!

They really don't build those things to last, do they? A charge beam straight through the chest is pretty brutal. Then again, this whole fight is, really - I feel like this is a part of BW where I've had a couple of party wipes during my own nuzlockes, especially in triple battles where you can end up taking way more damage than you initially calculated, so I guess I'm not too surprised that this is where things are starting to get dicey for Door. She's got talent, sure, but talent only gets you so far, especially in a permadeath blood sport. (... what an awful, awful combination of words.) That she's realising it now, coming to terms with the fact that her actions have consequences and that she should care about those consequences, is a mark of how far she's come - would that she'd got here via a different route, but, you know, sometimes I guess you just learn things the hard way.

One thing that does seem odd about this battle is the way that Door feels locked into it even when she no longer wants to fight. Like, her opponent is a human being, not an NPC; he can't force her to keep battling if she doesn't want to, especially given that Knives has already demonstrated that she's organic (by bleeding) and therefore that she is far too rare a specimen to be risked if there's a real chance she might be seriously injured. Even if there was some reason for Door to continue the match, surely she could just forfeit and walk away? The two of them were ostensibly fighting over that deerling, so Door could have just been like "you know what, whatever, you have it" and leave. Her opponent might not like such a cop-out ending, but I feel like he'd have to be exceptionally vicious to keep attacking her even as she started to depart.

That aside, though - these two chapters have been. so good. for Door/Blair interactions. I've mentioned before how adorable these two dorks are, and they just keep getting more and more so all the time. The way their relationship has evolved over the course of this story is just so brilliant and heartwarming, not just because it's nice to see the two of them making each other happy but also because they're bonding over their trainer journey. Which is the kind of thing that trainer journeys have always been about, and I think it's part of what's starting to show Door that her Unova isn't a place of desolation but of incredible hope and promise: even now, even after everything that's happened, people are finding a way to repair things, to pave the way for a brighter future. They found a way to make machines that can basically do magic, to spin sentience out of circuitry, even to bring flesh-and-blood pokémon back from another world - and they've found a way to preserve what it is that really makes a trainer journey, too. Technology and artifice isn't purely negative; it can be creative and healing, as well. I don't think Door would have realised this alone: if you go all that way by yourself, that's a very limited kind of trainer journey. It's Blair and Geist and her pokémon who have taught her otherwise, and the relationship between her and Blair in particular feels like it's followed a very similar trajectory to that between Door and the world around her. Yeah. Have I said I really like this fic in this review yet? Because damn, do I like this fic.

So, at first I was worried how I was gonna be able to copy any text b/c FFN is just awful like that. Then I remember the Nuzlocke forums and so awaaaaaaaaaay we go!

Of course, given how things ended, I kind of expected her to end up comatose. I did not expect Door to be comatose for multiple days on end. Ouch. Door dot exe has stopped responding, much? Now, there's a part of me that's tempted to call Blair out and smack her across the face for lapsing into a story about her when Door's the one who's hurting so badly. Seems kinda selfish (and right on point for teenagers, I suppose, but still, not cool!) to do. And I found myself wondering just what the point of it was, exactly. But it started to come together a bit with the explanation as to why she had acted as she did. And that it turns into one of those confidence pep talks and "let me your be your friend!" moments. Which is fine. It's so very... teenager. Which is true-to-life, and that's kind of hard to pull off in these kinds of things. So, kudos! Of course, the reveal that she's the daughter of Hugh's sister that got her Purrloin swiped by Team Plasma all those years ago is interesting too. It all comes together after all! (jazz hands) Also bonus points in that the talk actually doesn't work at all. That takes stones to do.

Aaaaaaand then it follows with a heartwarming little Pokémon/trainer moment. I suppose this is Audino putting its empath Dex characteristicts to good use here. Except, y'know, this Audino's a serial killer, so I don't know how genuine she's being vs. she just wants to go out and kill some more folks. Also, y'know, it's sweet, but I could reaaaaaaally see this stuff getting taken the wrong way. Tell me this wasn't some sort of bizarre shout out to that random bit in Pokéspecial that had the "That's the last bath I take with my Tentacool," or whatever it was. I liked how awkward the conversation b/w Door and Blair wound up becoming. That's one of those instances where it's good to be super awkward. It's... one way to kick off a relationship, if I'm reading this right.

Just a few witty remarks to end things off here...

[Blair barely understood anything about what was going on, to be honest. But she was learning in her free time. Slowly.]
Sounds like Blair needs to visit the Stairs of Learning! I'll call Spongebob and Patrick.

[You don’t deserve anyone.]
There's that negative self-talk that teenagers love so much!

[“Don’t say that. You were great,” Blair said. Then, without skipping a beat: “Opal? Will you get us some tea? You like tea, don’t you, Door?”

Door cracked a wavering smile and sobbed. “I hate it.”

Blair must have felt Door’s expression pressing into her shoulder because she shuddered with a laugh. “Opal? Three cups. Make it green tea. One of them should be audino-sized.”]
I'm just going to assume this is age-appropriate "drowning your sorrows," then, ha ha.

[: Lanette, it’s okay! I’m fine! See?

LANETTE: You’re fine? There’s a hole in your chest, you idiot!]
I guess you could say that this mysterious individual... now has a "hole" new perspective.

... I'll show myself out!

I'm going to just take the opportunity to address both the extras I didn't get the opportunity to read right off the bat. Even though FFN kind of hates me with submitting reviews. :V

First off, with Extra 5, it was cool to see the Lostlorn Forest scene from an entirely different angle. It gives a more fleshed out sense of what happened, and introduces this "Big Brother's always watching" element with Team Matrix. Very Orwellian of you. Also, maybe it's just me, but the way you described some of Zappy's movements made me think more of Reshiram (since it's the more feminine dragon of the duo, crotch fuzz not withstanding).

And Extra 6 gives me a better understanding of how Belle's operating. More of an "I owe my life to you" sort of thing, with a bit of hitwoman mixed in for good measure. Oppenheimer's explanation for not wanting to just swipe the dragons right away honestly seems more creepy than anything else. Maybe it's because he has Ghetsis' B2W2 eviiiiiiiiiiiil cane. Yeah, I'm definitely going to attribute it to the cane, because I can.

First off - I have to say this was a very thematic chapter. Door (and by extension, the reader) has to think to at least some degree about not only what the difference is between real pokemon and fauxkemon but between real pokemon like Jack, Knives, and Needles and a real pokemon that may or may not also be a former human like Red (and, by another extension, the differences between humans and pokemon). Door doesn't get to express her thoughts on this for very long because of the action happening, but it definitely is a point where the reader starts thinking more on what these distinctions are! I like how much of this chapter gets to be a discussion of the themes even though there's a lot of actual action going on too.

Second - the action itself. I like the way the deaths aren't gorey (or even, strictly speaking, deaths so much as desummonings which kinda makes the fauxkemon deaths more "real" than the real-mon ones in a way... that got kinda rambly). It'll be interesting to see how Blair changes from this since she took out Red. Door's in a bit of trouble now, huh? Harmstone Cave, here we come. I like how the magnetism of the cave presents its own obstacle!

that was one heck of an awesome gym battle

that was amazing

i don't blame geist for trying to warn food about how anyway one could use hon

I really liked this first chapter! I thought it was really awesome, especially the opening sequence because I felt it had a really poetic rhythm and it helped me get into the story. I like Doreen's character and thought it was cool and unique that she's nicknamed Door. :)

Following. I'm like the plot of this story.

Finally trying to get back into reviewing the fics I like after a long hiatus.

I really, really liked how Door panicked in the gym battle. Not just how the panic itself was written but what caused it: the feeling of being judged, the crowd she can only read as being against her... it's the sort of thing that makes the brain, bright thing that it is, think you're in real danger even though she's not actually the one battling and you captured it very well.

And, man, does feeling judged feel funky even when it isn't from your opposition, which both Door and Blair express nicely in their first exchange in the chapter before it gets into the more antagonistic version.

Roland trying to throw Door by turning using knowledge into an insult of playing it safe is pretty indicative of a shady dude all right! It was good to see her stick with her strategy even when he tried to manipulate her.

The only thing that threw me was the use of "the crowd ate it up" at the beginning of two paragraphs not very far apart. Maybe something else would be good in the second use of the phrase?

Somehow, I don't think I'm prepared for Chargestone.