Oh, happy birthday Calem!
It was so nice of everyone to give them all such good presents…

I feel bad for augustine for all those nasty rumors the other students were saying about him

Holy arceus that first chapter was so amazingly written

To not settling!
Calem confirmed for wild baby

Definitely one of the better ffs, I've ever read. You made the characters, greatly. I would love to read more. Little Calem is so adorable. Teen, Augustine is just sufferable and he's just like me. I hope to see a Garchomp and other Fairy Pokemon, probably a Klefki/Sylveon with him.

I'm, i'm crying
I love this fic and this chapter got me sad:(
I want to know more ;;

Hey! I’m doing a round of reviews around the site, hoping to help give people constructive criticism instead of just vague appreciation or flames. If anything comes off as harsh, I promise that I’m not intending to be. I’m just trying to help us all get better by giving advice and maybe I’ll learn something in the process. Feel free to disagree with some of my interpretations (or misinterpretations) and don’t be afraid to let me know why!

First of all, I wanted to say that I enjoyed how you used exposition to show internal conflict. I imagine that a good deal of this story deals with more personal crises than extraplanar ones or from the invasion of a criminal organization that the games and the many stories here deal with. It’s a refreshing take on the pokemon franchise. To see a more personal conflict than one behind the screen of a championship match is rare.

To keep with parallelism, you can phrase the second sentence as “He’s just received…” Try to stay away from less powerful words like “got” so long as there’s a better word like “received” or phrases like “He’s just been accepted at…” Also, make sure we know *why* getting accepted into the École Nationale Supérieure de Lumiose is cause for celebration – and why by extension its being taken away is cause for mourning. I figured out that it was a good school later on, but that kind of detail needs to be presented immediately rather than to be extrapolated by context clues later on.

Sight is typically not associated to sensations that aren’t visual. I think the word “feel” rather than “see” works better when referring how a protagonist might feel their life falling apart.

Important scenes – well, pretty much of all them, really - need to be slowed down so that the reader can experience the full scope of what’s going on and make their interpretations of what happened themselves. Your job as the author is to design them in a way that directs a reader toward feeling a certain way, like vicarious embarrassment for Augustine or anger at how he’s being treated – or both!

This phrase can be rewritten, for example: “Couriway is a small town, quiet at this time of the year, and Augustine is almost positive that every single one of the residents hears the screaming when Adriane's father puts himself in front of Augustine's mother to yell at her about the irresponsible slut she has for a son.”

A possible rewrite could look a bit like this:

Couriway Town is small by Kalosian standards, populated by only a few houses tightly packed together and even the nearby roar of cascading waterfalls could not drown out the screech of tires on pavement, the slamming of a baby-blue car’s door, nor the angry scream that followed a moment after. A large man drags a pale girl out of the car – his daughter, perhaps – and storms up the stairs that led to his house.

The girl has been crying, Augustine can tell. He can see the redness of her eyes, the sunken pallor of a face that has been deprived of rest. She holds something in her arms as she follows her father up the thin parkway and into Augustine’s driveway. He can see now that it is a baby, wrapped too heavily in loose blankets for him to have made out its shape from the distance. But he can see it now; the girl seems to have noticed, too, because she holds his confused look with an angry glare.

“Adriane!” the large man calls out to her, and the girl comes running up to the front of the house. His mother has heard the commotion and is now talking with the man, who can barely speak. Augustine can understand the bulk of the message, however. “You – woman,” he splutters, “Your son – your *slut* - knocked my daughter up.”

The words are like ice and Augustine feels frozen to the spot. The neighbors are watching, he knows. They point in his direction and mutter things he cannot hear. He can barely even make out his mother’s response through the numbness of his fingertips, the slow grating of his heartbeat pounding harder and harder with each passing second. He thinks of his school – his *future* – and then the small boy swaddled in the girl – Adriane’s – arms.

“Don’t you talk to me like that!” Augustine hears his mother shout. “My son isn’t the only one responsible, you know.” So it *is* his baby swaddled in those blankets. His responsibility. His future… Augustine was shaken from his thoughts when the girl stomped down the stairway and across the stretch of the house he was standing beside. She was no longer able to hold eye contact with him as she thrust the package she held in her arms into his.

“He’s yours,” he heard her say brusquely. She wiped away tears from her eyes as her father announced that they were leaving. He could not find the words to respond, to ask if there had been a mistake. It was all Augustine could do to not drop the baby - *his* baby – as he watched their car pull out of their driveway with another screech and had left as suddenly as it had come.

End of possible rewrite. Scenes like this are seriously powerful and need to be fully explored rather than summarized. Plus, it makes the story a bit longer, which is – while being more effort – totally worth doing most of the time.

When you state things in parenthesis, you’re depriving your readers of the full experience, all the painstaking deliberation done in it. Parenthetical asides should be used sparingly and should not serve as the bulk of explanation of any kind. Avoid phrases like “(It is.)” and “(The DNA test results that come back from Lumiose only reaffirm Augustine's gut feeling.)” – especially if they are in a paragraph of their own. Parenthesis work better to give flavor to pre-existing exposition within a paragraph, not to fill in a paragraph of its own.

*Don't be like your father,* she says. *You are so much better than he is, don't do this, son.* needs a rework. For one, things that were outright states should always be in quotes. The comma in the second sentence needs to be a semicolon as it is separating two independent thoughts.

Be careful not to use commas where there is a pause in how you would read it aloud but not where there *needs* to be one. Comma usage is complicated, but a search through almighty Google should give you any answers you may need.

Some books do use a scene transition like this (“…”) well, but I personally think that exposition serves as a better way to explain what all has gone down in a time-skip of however much time.

“Their mother smiles but turns off the TV, instead trying to make conversation about something else” is worded a tad awkwardly. I think this blurb is better served in two sentences: “Their mother smiles, but turns off the TV. She tries to make conversation about something else, anything other than the fact that his sister is destined for greatness and he, Augustine, will forever be chained to Couriway Town and this small child he named Calem.”

Phrases like “She hasn't brought out her pokémon, says they're tired” need slight reworks. Remember to keep the subject clear for your reader – simply adding a “she says” as opposed to simply “says” would work I think. As it stands, why is the sentence here to begin with, when Augustine thinks about why she didn’t bring her pokemon out. I would think their being tired works as a very valid reason for not letting them out. This doesn’t have much to do with the story, but do remember that pokemon are sentient creatures with the same capacity for restlessness and the need for freedom as any human. Try not to use them as an undue comparison of wealth (of space or money or otherwise) or as an accessory – I can’t really see why else Augustine would be thinking that when the obvious special limitations make such a statement redundant.

This block here needs to be edited: “"I think her name was Adriane," He shrugs "She was blonde. But can't really…" Augustine males a vague gesture with his free hand to try to encompass his lack of knowledge.” I think you have a comma where you meant to put a period and non-verbal actions should not replace vocal modifiers for dialogue. (“She was blonde,” he said, shrugging) works, for example. You also said “males” instead of “makes.” Spellcheck is a beautiful thing but it has its limits. It’s really hard to catch all those errors – believe me, I know. It feels like I’m fighting a regenerating hydra when I comb through for typos; for every one that I fix, two more pop up in their place. You just have to keep up with proofreading is all, though. It’ll run out of heads eventually – hopefully before you lose your own mind over it all!

This needs to be explained better: “At least with Calem, Augustine can stand one-on-one.” I get that the understood statement should be “Augustine could handle parenting so long as it was with only one child,” but it needs to be clearer. Ambiguity is the enemy!

When Diantha pushes her brother down with her foot, it’s a little unclear, because I was under the impression that they were standing or sitting. Make the transition from exhausted crying to laying down a little clearer.

Sentences with dialogue split with punctuation like an exclamation point or a question mark can be continued as though it weren’t the end of a sentence: “"Oh, honey, come see! He's smiling!" His mom prompts the second she sees him” needs to be “Oh honey, come see! He’s smiling!” his mom prompts him the second she sees him.” I think the word “said” or “says” works better than “prompts” though. Avoid too many replacements for that word. The word “said/says” used in dialogue is an exception to how you should go for word variety.

Make this sentence a little clearer. Remember to use a proper split between commas, periods, and/or semicolons in your writing: “She's been living in Lumiose by herself for a year now, and the pokémon journey Augustine abandoned very early on but Diantha is seeing through to the very end makes for a large difference in skill in, well, pretty much everything that has to do with self-care.”

Lastly, explain whatever the “it” is in “Augustine doesn't know exactly what it is…” Never summarize when you can take your readers through the experience themselves. It’s something I have to tell myself when I catch myself paraphrasing, but the more immersive a story is, the more enjoyable it is to read and the more effective it is at getting across a message.

And that’s all! PM me if you have questions, comments, or concerns. I’m here to help!

Short review but this is a great start! I've had minor thoughts about this but never quite this coherent.

Augustine is kept in a very understandable light. He has the most normal and acceptable thoughts. He does just accept Calem right away and he doesn't reject him immediately either. He's very clearly a teenager and it isn't a black mark on him.

Also Diantha and. Augustine friendship makes me so delighted to see. Baby Calem is of course very much a baby. Just likeable enough.

Are we going to see some Lysandre? I'm starting to expect it. The anime watcher in me also kind of wants to see Sycamore with a gible who will grow into a fiercely devoted garchomp. But that's just me.

Good luck with the next chapter! I'm looking forward to it!