Hi, walkswithwheels,

Here from the WA Halloween Challenge. Congratulations on completing your story for the challenge.

As I noted in the other Pokémon entry for the challenge, I'm nominally familiar with the fandom due to having played the game with my kids years ago when they were young and watched a few episodes and the movie with them (I say "movie" because I'm not sure if there have been more since that first one). However, I can't identify any Pokémon other than Pikachu, so when you discuss types, they sail right over my head unless there's a description. Starting into the story, I figured I'd try not to let that interfere with my reading or the review.

Fortunately, I found that didn't matter a bit, particularly when you gave a brief description of our protagonist. What I also found was a really fun story of discovery as our Pokémon hero experiences Halloween for the first time. From his initial questioning to deciding to find out, from joining the children, finding out about costumes, and visiting the home of the generous woman to battling the Litwicks, and from seeing the show to winning his prize and making his realization, all the parts of the story came together well to allow both Pokémon and Halloween novices to get some idea of the fun time that could be had.

I enjoyed the humor, too. My favorite line, "...those creatures were poorer than the others..." and its punchline got a really good laugh.

Overall, the story appeared to be well written with only a few minor questionable points in my casual read.

Thanks so much for sharing, and best wishes in the challenge.

I noticed that this was the only story in the challenge so far rated K-plus rather than T or higher, and reading this, I can see how you managed it - it's a 'discover the fun of the festival' theme rather than the rather grisly attitude taken by some of the other entrants! And it's an amusing idea to have a creature who basically *is* a living jack-o-lantern but has no idea of the implications of this.

You've got a good introduction, with all the various different types of Pokemon all reacting in their own way to the humans' activities without giving anything away to the protagonist, this making the reader as curious as he is as to what is actually going on. "As a full grown Gourgeist, he had better things to do" - this is an elegant way to specify our narrator's species without making the introduction seem clunky; it's one of the few contexts in which it would be natural to think about it!

(I looked up the Pokemon; Google seems to think it's "Pumpkaboo" rather than "Pumkaboo". Is this an alternative transliteration? And is it "Lumiose" or "Lumoise" or "Luimiose"?)

"What could draw the attention of an entire city so much that they could not see that a group of children were being followed by a walking pumpkin?" - when you put it that way, it does seem a little improbable :-D

"as though he'd been hit by an Ice type attack" - I note the use of an in-game simile here; of course Pokemon would think in those terms. (And I like the Gourgeist's immediate assumption that all the humans taking part will get entered into some kind of tournament against each other, like Pokemon in the game!)

"Candy" is a Pokemon Go reference, I assume: it provides an ironic tie-in with the American Halloween, and a very compelling reason for Pokemon to be interested in it...
Speaking as a non-American, I didn't recognise the sweets described here (even the trade names at the end don't mean much to me), so it all sounds just as exotic to me as to the Gourgeist :-)

So he is effectively carrying his booty in his stomach? That's one benefit of having a carved pumpkin body! Though I do wonder how he is going to get them out again... hover upside-down and shake himself? ;-p

And he spends the rest of the night really becoming part of human society: chasing off the Litwick, learning to bop to the beat at a pop show, sharing the scares and generally joining in. None of them seem to be frightened of him, either.

(Re the author's notes: the description of the "trick or treat" move I got from online reference was that it adds on the Ghost type to the target's normal type, thus creating a weakness to anything that type is susceptible to - in this context, I think I'd imagine it as creating a ghost-version of the human hovering alongside the real one. I can't see that idea of mine coming in very useful as a way of getting sweets from people, though :-D)

In terms of style, I note that you've used a lot of very short paragraphs - often only one sentence, and a short sentence at that, and often reflecting consecutive shifts of thought. This does add to the general sense of its being a children's story and helps to emphasise individual sentences, but it can become a bit laborious to read, particularly if you're looking at the text in a relatively wide browser window; there's a reason why children's books in this style tend to have small pages :-(

Typos:
"On the last day of tenth month" - "the tenth month"?
"The Gourgeist was quickly understood that" - I don't think the "was" belongs in there
"a white boney face" - "bony"
"Of course there were still children" - "they were still children"?
"took the food and play some of it" - "placed some of it"
"The woman's eyes lit up as orbs" - "as the orbs"?
"Was there some sort tournament" - "some sort of"

Other things:

There were various places at the beginning when it looked as if you had written "the" when the sense of the sentence led me to expect "their", e.g. "Most would just try to ignore it, but he could see the wispy forms" "they emerged. The flames would burn so brightly"," the flames [i.e. the Litwicks' flames] were so strong that they could rival the sun"

"the shining white bones contrasting eerily in the moonless night" - did you mean contrasting *with* the dark of the night? Otherwise, they need to contrast with something else; I don't think they can just "contrast" on their own :-(

"The Gourgeist almost couldn't see it blending in with the night" - if you say "he couldn't see it blending in", this implies to me that it was doing a poor job of blending in :-(
It seems to me that you've got two clauses run into one here: he almost couldn't see it *because* it blended into the night...

"searching, no *hunting*," - I think you need an extra comma after the "no" here, even though it does mean you end up with an awful lot of commas!

"ear piercing giggling" - should be "ear-piercing"; it's an adjective, not an ear that's piercing some giggling ;-p

Hiya. I'm over from the WA Halloween challenge. I'm not entirely fandom-blind, because I used to watch the Pokemon cartoon years ago, but it's been a while. This was an absolutely adorable idea, and you carried it off really well. I also like how you incorporated your own experience of Halloween growing up. Really cute story, and good luck in the challenge.

This was just so darn adorable. There were a lot of good decisions made on your part. The choice of pokemon, using Kalos, the whole atmosphere; all of it just worked. Descriptions were spot on, and your character development was delightful. Oh, and I love in your A/N how you took from personal experience for this story. Good luck to you in the challenge!

Best
Zad
Critics United

It was fun reading the POV of someone discovering Halloween. Great premise! I wish you luck in the challenge :)

I'm coming in fandom blind, but I thought it was a really sweet story of somebody discovering Halloween. You did great with the descriptions of everything; good luck in the challenge!