Forging Bonds:

"When Selena loses her partner to a few mistakes, she is set on a journey to remember what she once kept most important to her heart.

A tale of the trials of sorrow, friendship, and forgiveness."

Genre: Fanfiction, short story

This fanfic was recommended by Shayminkid123 .

dste (d_s_t_e )'s Review:

Forging Bonds is a short story that seems to be attempting to evoke strong emotion. This is something that I've seen quite a lot of in one shots and short stories here on Wattpad. Its entire plot is built around a tragic occurrence that is meant to make the reader feel sad, but simply having a tragic event and a main character who feels regret is not enough to evoke true emotion from me.

I think my favorite part of the story was the second paragraph. It has concrete details of setting, including sensual details for sight and touch. Beyond that, I felt as though this was a scene that I could relate to. I could see myself as the character, and I felt a lot of sympathy for her. It made me want to keep reading to find out more.

Unfortunately, I never found out very much more than what I had learned (and guessed) in those first two paragraphs combined with the story's description. The ideas of what Selena did wrong are vague. We know that she pushed Eth too hard and failed to appreciate her, but neither of these ideas is fleshed out very fully. At one point, we hear the narrator start a flashback by saying that she had been dishonest, but the scene ends before we hear what lie she told. At another, we get a flashback consisting entirely of dialogue between the narrator and an unseen, unnamed individual that seems to imply that the narrator wanted to save Eth and was prevented from doing so by the unnamed individual. If this is the case, I have to wonder why she feels so guilty about causing Eth's death. Or does she not feel responsible for that at all? Is all of her sadness and regret based only on how she mistreated the Pokémon before she died? I honestly don't know.

I feel as though the entire story is written from a perspective that fails to take the reader's perspective into account. This is a common problem for beginning writers, and perhaps for young writers in particular. I have no doubt that the author knows all of the details of the characters, the plot, the character motivations, and the backstory. I suspect that the author wrote this story in such a way that it seems to be very well-written and emotional to her, but I also suspect that it seems that way because of the background knowledge that only the author possesses.

When a person is reflecting back on his or her own memories, as Selena is in this story, that person knows all of the details of what happened and would probably do exactly as Selena does, which is to focus on snippets of the most emotional scenes and to think about them through the present perspective, without dwelling on details that are obvious or facts that are easy knowledge to him or her. That is realistic, but, unfortunately, it doesn't work in a story that is shared with other people. Selena's abbreviated thoughts and flashbacks make perfect sense to Selena, but remembering what a person already knows is completely different from viewing the events for the first time, which is what any reader of this story will be doing.

One easy example that demonstrates the difference between author knowledge and a reader's perspective is Eth herself. When I originally read this book as a judge for the Pokémon Watty Awards, the cover suggested that she was either an Eevee or a Flareon (I couldn't quite tell). However, this is never explicitly stated. In fact, the only thing that is explicitly stated is that Eth was "an ugly Ducklett who turned out to be a very beautiful Swanna". Having no other information to go on, I took this to mean that Eth is literally a Ducklett. I later became confused by the mention of a Ducklett having paws and by the later mention of this "Ducklett" having brown fur and a white-tipped tail. Putting on my thinking cap, I conclude that Eth is an Eevee and that the author meant for the "ugly Ducklett" description to be a metaphor. I'm sure this made perfect sense to an author who knew that Eth was an Eevee the entire time, but a reader can only reach conclusions based on what he or she is told in the story. There is no description of Eth before the (possible) metaphor, and there also is no further explanation of the way in which her appearance or personality resembles the tale of The Ugly Duckling. Thus I believe that most readers would have come to a completely erroneous conclusion about a major character in the story.

This story suffers from many such failures to recognize a reader's perspective. As I read, I found myself asking questions like: Wait, does the main character live in a Pokémon daycare or have her parents placed her into a human daycare during this particular scene? Is Miss Racquee the main character or her mother or someone else? Is Eth holding the main character's ankle because she hurt it when she fell, or is this a gesture of comfort because she was frightened?

There are many details that are missing and many questions that are never answered. I was very surprised that the book ended in the place that it did, since I was hoping for the final chapter to wrap up the loose ends when it actually turned out to be just an author's note.

In terms of smaller things, I do like the current cover better than I liked the old one because I wasn't able to read the author's name on the old one and because, again, I couldn't tell if the Pokémon pictured on it was meant to be an Eevee or a Flareon. The new cover is simple and clear, which is good.

In terms of grammar, spelling, and punctuation, the story was fairly good. I noticed a few mistakes that seem to have been corrected since the first time I read the book. There were no spelling mistakes or typos at all, which meant that the biggest error was occasional tense switching for a sentence or piece of a sentence at a time. There were also some punctuation errors with commas and semicolons. Not bad at all.

Overall, this book failed to have an emotional impact on me because it didn't give me enough details to go on. I found myself confused and uncertain often enough that it distracted from the impact that the book was intended to have, and the lack of concrete details made it difficult for me to properly empathize. I think the book was built upon a solid idea, but, unfortunately, I suspect that it didn't fully make it to the page.

4/10

Sheldon (SGmijumaru )'s Review:

Who's that Pokémon? It's not a Jigglypuff from above, nor is it something I can actually recognise from the vague description. That's not to say this isn't a fun game to play, but it's unfair if I'm not given enough information to stand a decent chance. What's my point? Forging Bonds is about as unclear as what's beneath a Mimikyu's cloth.

The story tells of a young girl called Selena who has a fear of Pokémon, yet manages to make friends with one, spoils that friendship, and then laments it. Maybe it's something you've seen before, but it's not a plot to shake a stick at and dismiss, especially here, where the emotions are real. It's a short story, too, so it isn't dragged out with clichés or wasteful content either. It's straight to the point, a quick read to bring out your 'feels'.

The author's strength is obvious here in this story. From beginning to end, the style Forging Bonds is written in is nothing short of purely poetic. The wording is varied and artistic, yet flowed smoothly as I read it in my head, whilst generating interest from me at the same time, the same way a deep, meaningful poem would. There's very few gripes with the wording that I noticed, such as describing Eth as 'furry' – At one point, I'm made to believe she's a Swanna. Therefore, it should be 'feathery', right? (I'm wrong by the way; Eth isn't a Swanna. But I'm about to get to that.)

Either way, it's hard to pick up on such errors, which is both a good and a bad thing. For the most part, I was impressed, as not only could I not find a misspelled word, but the errors were very far and few in between. I was able to read it the first time and not find any, so it's almost perfect in that regard. The author has nothing to worry about when it comes to spelling and grammar.

As much as I would love to yammer on with raining positives for this story, I'm afraid I find it hard to find any that aren't simply necessities, such as the good spelling and grammar. Forging Bonds has an enormous issue with clarity, to put it bluntly. As poetic and engaging as the writing style is, barely ever does the story ever make it clear exactly what it's talking about, even when it's something as trivial as describing what Pokémon Eth is. It actually took me several reads to figure that out, and I'd like not to think that that's because I'm stupid.

It just... isn't clear what's going on. Necessary descriptions of events, characters and emotions are lost amongst the fancy writing style, all trying desperately to feel special as they fight for your focus to figure it all out. When a story has me rereading it in an effort to try to understand what is going on, it's nothing special at all. It has flat out failed at being a story, since it fails to clearly tell a story. Perhaps if this was a series of poems telling of a story then it would get a bit more praise in that regard, but here, I'm just left questioning the biggest plot points, and, even now, I still can't say for sure I fully understand them. What exactly happened to Eth that made the main character feel so bad in the opening chapter? What exactly happened when they met? And why was their friendship suddenly dwindling?

Then there's a few hiccups that I personally did not see performed too well, such as the bold text or the breaks in time (those ~~~ spaces). It wasn't that I didn't understand the reason for emphasis on certain lines, it was the inconsistent placement of such lines and paragraph breaks. There were times where Selena's thoughts followed a paragraph break, but the scene itself did not actually change, and so the breaks weren't necessary; they simply slowed down the delicate flow of the writing.

I feel like this is a story that pulls off an illusion of a well written story, and it pulls off that illusion well. There are a lot of questions to be asked, but whatever your imagination conjures up while reading is what generates the enjoyment you can get out of this short story. That is to say that there was a part of me that actually enjoyed this one despite having little to praise about it, and that the negatives I had in the long run only came from me having to continuously reread to understand the plot. As such, even though I enjoyed the story to an extent, I wound up not remembering it very well either, which is far from a good sign. Not fully understanding the story failed to let it sink into my memory, something the experience of every good story has done for me so far.

+ and – points. **SPOILER WARNING**

+The writing style is really a highlight. With some more careful planning, and a more original plot, this author could write something special.

+I liked the fact that the story was written through a vision of the main character's thoughts. That's something difficult to perform, but here it is done quite consistently.

-The descriptions seriously need to be clearer. That might cost the story its poetic flow, but if it's so vague it doesn't make sense, then such style accomplishes nothing.

-So Eth was left behind in an explosion, right? If Selena was at a school for Pokémon rangers with partner Pokémon, what ranger would abandon a Pokémon?

-If I understand what broke their friendship properly, then the way Selena feels is pretty exaggerated, in my opinion.

**SPOILERS END**

OVERALL SCORE: 4/10

A fancy story written in a fancy style that misses the mark entirely on what makes fancy writing so special. Forging Bonds can certainly be saved, but, as of now, its length, vagueness and questionable events keep it from truly being a significant Pokémon fanfiction. If this story was written in a way that gave away just a little bit more information than it did, then maybe I would have been experiencing the emotions it was trying to evoke from me – but no matter how hard I reread to try to experience those emotions, I just couldn't.

Kat (Sheare)'s Review:

While the concept itself was clean and had miles worth of potential, the overall execution of the idea was poorly done. The way it was written and formatted made the message and events confusing and jumbled. So yes, the idea was simple enough to lend itself to a great short story, but it wasn't on par with what it should be.

It was essentially a story fueled by regret as Selena basically is upset about how her relationship with her Pokémon unraveled. It was a simple concept for a short story.

However, emotion behind it was terribly transparent and had little effect on me. I felt like the way you wrote it led to that issue.

You kind of executed the idea through flashbacks and constant shifts to the present. There were constantly changes between clusters of italicized paragraphs and reflective forward writing. This caused frequent cuts; then, there were also cuts within the flashbacks, making it even more jumbled. Those frequent cuts made the movement and rhythm poor and overall affected the delivery of the emotion.

The best formatting for this story could've been a scene in the beginning with their separation and then the rest of the story as flashback. Or—even better—the whole story as a present "retelling" of sorts. The kinds when nothing is through flashback, but instead as the narrator telling readers what happened in a reflective way.

I also don't get why this wasn't originally told as a one-shot. The way the parts were split up just seemed not deliberate and was just to have more parts. Each part didn't really have a significant event or proper closure.

I felt like you needed more content too. I would see four paragraphs of writing, then a cut with two paragraphs, and then another cut with roughly the same amount. If you insist on doing constant back and forth, at least have the cut possess more content? Especially since the emotion was rather bland and didn't really escalate to anything.

And then you had odd italicized bits that were forward thoughts. For example, at the end of the first part:

"You were the best partner I could ever have. Heck, you're even better than I would ever be."

It shows italicized thoughts with the same knowledge of the forward, making the narrative even more inconsistent.

Then, there was bold lettering that seemed to be in the forward, but some parts of the bold were also italicized. Basically, I don't think you knew what you were doing with all of the italics and bolding.

The obsession with bolding itself was cringe-worthy for me. You attempted to emphasize thoughts of the foreword perspective. While I appreciate the anaphora in the last part, the bolding was just absolutely unnecessary. Isolating the line itself as a separate paragraph is enough emphasis. Also, the isolation and bolding of "Whoosh" annoyed me to death. It was just super not needed at all.

Overall, it was a relatively simple idea that was poorly executed.

4/10

Eve (NaivEevee )'s Review:

What first appealed to me about the short story Forging Bonds was the intriguing synopsis. While it was very short and simple, it stirred up a lot of questions which made me more excited to start reading and find out what happens. Also, the simplistic cover was attractive. It was a solid blue color, which helped to convey the melancholic mood since blue is a color that I associate more with sadness. I'm not entirely sure if this was intended, but my first impression of this story was very good because of these two points.

The first chapter was a bit of an emotional opener. It first introduced the main character, Selena, who curses herself in present-day for her selfishness and neglect to the needs of her own Pokémon, Eth. I liked how the story attempted to bold Selena's regrets after she had lost her faithful partner by singling the statements for effect. (However, this would have been less distracting if it had just been italicized instead of bolded.) The story then went on to reveal more about how Selena and Eth first met with flashbacks.

Basically, Selena was unable to make friends at school as a child and yet, she managed to "befriend" Eth, a wild Eevee who was battling against a Phantump over territory.

Selena was afraid of wild Pokémon, yet she approached the two Pokémon in the middle of their fight. If you were scared of Pokémon, and they were fighting of all things...wouldn't it make more sense to run away? So why did Selena get closer?

Also, I didn't find Eth to be very realistic. Nowhere in the story did it mention that Eth was an Eevee, but the reason I was able to deduce this was because I once saw the story's previous cover, which had an Eevee on it. The only physical clues given in the text were that Eth was "brown-furred" and "brown-eyed." It could've been some other Pokémon, such as a Teddiursa.

And speaking of Eth being wild, I felt that Eth was too nonsensical. Eth was too good for her own good. She had no reason at all to go with Selena, but yet she chose to. But why? Why did she choose to go with a random human that she had just met when the human didn't show any signs of kindness or hospitality to her? Why did she care about Selena? Why didn't she just run away like normal wild Pokémon? What was the purpose for her to hold Selena's ankle? There could've been some clever reasoning for this, but it was never elaborated upon in the story.

I also had some confusion regarding Eth's "death", mostly because there was a lot of questions about it that were never answered, even to the end. Why was Eth left behind? What caused the fire and the explosion? It made the whole story feel empty and meaningless because these details were so important for me as a reader to comprehend what had happened.

So while Eth's dedication and devotion to stay with Selena despite Selena's "toxic" attitude towards her was very touching, their meeting wasn't believable and so I couldn't feel Selena's emotion as much. Also, Selena's actions towards Eth were only briefly mentioned, so I never knew how exactly she wronged Eth in the first place.

I also wanted to note that chapters b and c had some parts that were identical? I'm not sure of the reason for this.

Grammar was well done. I saw there were some cases of double punctuation and separated onomatopoeia, but the story was overall clean.

Overall, I felt that the message could've been more moving if story wasn't so condensed. Each chapter felt chunky because it was sectioned so much into parts that didn't fit with one another. I believe this story has a lot of potential to be unique and sentimental if it was lengthened and made to be more detailed. There was a lot of obscurity for parts that could've packed some emotional punches, but they were left out.

4/10

Ji (Shaymin- )'s Review:

The way I see it, Forging Bonds is a story based around the friendship that a girl and her Pokémon share - particularly how it goes wrong.

The book was very short and covered the story of the relationship, but I felt as though the blurb was a bit misleading. The author wrote that the main character, Selena, was "set on a journey to remember what she once kept most important to her heart". There wasn't a journey after the fall-out. If anything, the aforementioned journey occurred before anything happened to the Pokémon. I also felt as if the author could have put more detail in the story. I didn't get a clear sense of what was going on for the majority of the story; I had to reread it to understand the progression of events.

On the other hand, it is made abundantly clear to the readers that Selena feels remorse. The varied formatting of text was effective as it drew attention to important lines, adding to the mood of the text. Although the story is mainly dialogue (whether recalled in memory or directed at Eth), the negative emotions felt by Selena are clear throughout the book. Eth could have done with some more development in that her reasons for joining Selena aren't really explained. However, I appreciate that it is always harder to give Pokémon distinctive characters - particularly in a short story - so I think the author did a good job with the time they had.

If I had any advice to give to the author, it would be to try to cover more scenes showing companionship so that readers can get more attached to the characters' relationships before throwing in conflict.

Trevor (PumpknHead )'s Review:

Positives:

1. I liked the formatting of the story a lot! In the first chapter the reader could make educated guesses about why Selena was mourning, and the following chapters built their relationship to show why it was so painful to her. Normally it's the other way around, so I liked the change of pace a lot.

2. I enjoyed watching Selena go from being scared by Eth to being really comfortable around her! Especially since she seemed to be scared of Pokemon in general, it's hard to show such dramatic development in such a short novel. You pulled it off well, however, and it made the book much more enjoyable.

3. I really liked how, on the surface, the relationship between Selena and Eth seemed to be growing stronger and healthier, but when one dug deep they could see the real issues. Selena kept denying that she was doing anything wrong, but over time it became more obvious she only valued Eth when she benefited off of her. That buildup made it easier to portray emotion when she finally realized how poorly she had treated her partner.

Negatives:

1. You shouldn't use bold letters for emphasis. I could see what you were trying to do by bolding the last sentence of each part, but, if anything, use italics. Using bold like that makes me feel you don't feel confidence in your ability to convey emotion with your words alone. I think the sentences should be powerful enough to stand out without bold or italics, but use italics if you want to keep them as is.

2. [SPOILERS] I feel like the climax could have been more powerful. I know the book is basically a collection of memories, but it confused me when the school was about to blow up. There was no clear cause of it, there was just a kid saying "The school's about to blow up!" I think you should either explain what caused it, or actually show whatever caused that happening at the beginning of the chapter. Also, everything happened so quickly that I feel there was little emotion portrayed. This part should be one of the most emotional parts of the story, but it felt empty. I'd suggest going into more detail on what exactly Selena felt when she realized she was never there for Eth and what emotions she felt when she left Eth. [END OF SPOILERS]

3. [SPOILERS] I'm still kind of confused about how Eth died. In the first chapter it seemed like Selena had pushed Eth to her absolute limit, but the last chapter suggested Eth was caught in the explosion. Going into more detail about what's going on during big events like that should help clear any confusion. [END OF SPOILERS]

OVERALL: 4.5

***

Credits:

Article written by: d_s_t_e

Reviews by: d_s_t_e , SGmijumaru , Sheare , NaivEevee , Shaymin- , PumpknHead

Special thanks to TheFieryFennekin for giving us permission to do this review! Our new interviewer blue___22 will be conducting the interview soon, so that will be posted when it is finished.