Chapter 3 live thoughts as I read through.

This guy has to be an unmedicated schizophrenic or something.

“The sun in my provided painful stimulation…” the sun will in my what? Missing a word there, I assume eyes?

“With my fury expended, I could calmly remove the keys... And CHUCK THEM INTO THE FUCKING SUN! They went flying…” could doesn’t make sense here, feel like it should read ‘I calmly removed…’ since this actually happened.

“It would take several knocks before…” it took.

“…seven-twenty two AM.” Seven twenty-two.

“I'd slowly grab it…” I slowly grabbed it.

“He'd hand everything back…” he handed.

“I told myself, but I couldn't help but ask myself, 《was it enough?》
I walked down the central street of the town I had stayed in the last few weeks, idly surveying the environment.” It took me a few re-reads of these sentences to realize this was a time skip.

He mentions the town was “strangely unsafe.” How so? Is this just him being ignorant / paranoid and afraid of the outside world? He seems to think everywhere is unsafe.

Finally mention of a Pokémon.

“…proved myself to myself…” this sounds awkward. My ability to myself, maybe?

…a college student who had just started college at some prestigious college…” college three times sounds awkward too.

“…or so I thought so, anyways.” Or so I thought.

The mention of Roblox parodies makes me feel older than it has any right to.

“Moments prior, as my eyes managed to deal…” moments prior doesn’t make sense?

“The only thing that remained of the front wall I used to stand in front of…” get rid of ‘I used to stand in front of’.

why is he ignoring the thing that almost killed him to look at the dining room? Just have the Claydol float up after he makes observations of the inside so you don’t have this awkward excuse to add more details of the destruction.

Val was right next to the explosion but there’s basically no description of any injuries besides ‘arm hurts’. How is he alive? Did he just get lucky? Why didn’t he check himself for major injuries after that? The dining room can’t have been that interesting.

“…my pocket, only to feel nothing but the leather of my wallet in the pocket.” Get rid of ‘in the pocket’.

Guy is presumably wounded, fought back against a maybe aggressive pokemon, and teleported to who knows where, and is finally acting level headed. Adrenaline is a hell of a drug, I guess, because I would’ve expected Val to be absolutely losing his shit again, but a pleasant surprise to be sure.

“So far, it had proven ineffective, but that was in the middle of a town. Here, gunshots were likely to scare off most predators…” what? It was ineffective because you didn’t hit anything.

“A big ole stone, and another big ole stone that was loose. I sat down by the two stones and got to work, using the rock embedded in the ground to split apart the stone that wasn't stuck.” x4 stone c-c-combo.

“I'd use the fragments…” I used.

“They just attacked blindly, screaming and not using any words.” They weren’t screaming? They just turned around and started to float towards Val before he pulled a gun on it, assuming he was under attack? What if the explosion was an accident? Val starts imagining how that could have been a regular person and how scary it was that they lost their mind. Why is he assuming that was the case with Claydol? There was zero interaction beside him immediately pulling a gun on it. He never warns the Claydol from getting any closer, attempts to defuse the situation, or tries to communicate at all. The only reason he hesitates to shoot is because he didn’t know what vital point to shoot it in. I feel like this is a consequence of rewriting stuff out of order and forgetting details.

I’ve been enjoying the lead up to the farifarig encounter.

“The beam would hit a tree…” the beam hit.

“The beast continued to linger in the area, for some unknown reason.” It’s looking for you.

Please find a synonym for lingering.

“I figured I needed to at least see what was making it stick around” it’s looking for you, why is this being treated like a mystery?

This guy gets blown up a lot.

Lots of telling that he feels pain, but not what that pain feels like this chapter. Or looks like. Is he even hurt beyond like, bruising? Show, don’t tell.

The description of him rolling around to avoid getting stomped has me imagining him dodge rolling like a Dark Souls player. I lol’d.

He grabbed a gun and thought it was his glasses? What kind of glasses does he wear that are the same size and shape as a handgun? I can understand not initially realizing what was on the ground on the account of being blind, but grabbing it and not realizing what it was until he tried to put it on seems a little goofy.

How did valentine know the white blob was an Absol, but the gun wasn’t his glasses lol.

“It had little effect-from the lack of noise to the seeming complete absence of the recoil, to the as the outer face suddenly slammed shut after the second shot, the rest seemingly barely scratching their teeth.” I have no idea what’s going on here.

He still hasn’t checked himself for any injuries.

“≪I don't want to hear it,≫ I thought to myself, repeating it a couple of times before finally managing to compose the thought. ≪I don't want to hear that I want to die ever again... no matter the voice...” what? When did he even think this during this entire encounter? Was this something you edited out and forgot to change these lines?

I think I’m halfway through at this point. I feel like this chapter could have been split into two (which I’m pretty sure I suggested a couple weeks ago as well).

“…taking a deep breath, followed by immediately losing my breath as my diaphragm forced an exhale.” There are a lot of sentences like this where you try to over explain basic actions to try to flower up the prose, but it just comes off as awkward? Like, is he just exhaling, or is his body forcing him to exhale a breath he’s trying to hold, or what? I don’t really know how to describe it. I don’t think it’s an issue, but it’s something I’ve noticed.

“…scrubs that were seemingly taped up…” are they taped up or not? There’s no seemingly here to apply, either the scrubs are or not taped. Get rid of seemingly. Removing this wishy-washy descriptor makes your writing sound more confident.

“…ANSI Z87.1 goggles that I were all too…” I was.

Why is a bio major and biochem minor odd to Valentine? These only overlap in the sense that biology is a massive collective field of study and biochemistry is a smaller, focused slice of that.

“…and the sheds, it took had its own set of” what?

“It was a big difficult to tell.” Is big supposed to be bit?

“…the fence fence…”

I really don’t understand what’s going on with this gate. Maybe thats the point.

“…willing to bed that…” willing to bet.

Ok we’re getting to the shed, Val can barely walk, in pain that’s been described as agonizing, yet STILL on one has actually checked for injuries.

“…but who knew if the bacteria was transforming too.” Into what, infectious micro Pokémon? I’m not sure what this has to do with getting sick.

“…so I lifted my throat back…” sounds strange.

So desperate to seem smart around other people. Maybe he has narcissistic personality disorder or something, I’m still trying to sus out what cocktail of mental illnesses this guy has.

"Wha-I-h-ui-I-" It took me a moment for my brain to actually realize what he thought I had said. "I said Sum-NNN-er, not Sum-T-er-what... what the fuck-" why is he flipping his shit over this? Why am I even questioning that, of course he’d have a moment over something mundane like this.

Uh oh, overall shotgun thoughts / opinions. Too long I feel, could have ended the chapter after Qilani rescued him. But i dont really like chapters longer than 10k words, so more of a personal opinion. Lots of telling and not showing. Don’t really care for what was happening in most of the first half until the Claydol, everything after that was fine. I feel like there were some strange inconsistencies in ideas throughout the chapter, and maybe that’s just due to how you went about writing this one. The action sequences were fine. I like Mr. Scientist here, he’s fun. Still don’t find Valentine pitiable like other people do.

My recommendation for next chapter is to slow down and try to let the details breathe a bit, and make the chapter more focused. I’ll admit I was getting mentally fatigued once Qilani showed up because of how much stuff happened. Probably missed some grammar issues, but i did my best to point anything out as I saw them.

"Fuck" counter: 49

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Pub: 28 Dec 2025 02:22 UTC

Edit: 28 Dec 2025 02:24 UTC

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