Feedback for Drifteranon's 3rd Chapter of "A Loser and a Very Lost Snowpix"

https://rentry.org/xme9axuw

[...] and the rocky hoodoos as my company.

Tautology! Hoodoos are inherently rocky already. Just a minor nitpick, though.

I'm in a state that borders California and arguably has more crime than most of California!

The double Cali reads odd. The second mention could probably just be "it" or a different nickname for the state. Maybe play with the geography of the states a bit? "[...] and arguably has the highes crime rate west of the Rockies" or something like that.

My car tried to accelerate even faster, the engine groaning.

The car seems to be sentient? Shouldn't it be Val trying to push the car further to its limit?

Truth or Consequences, Liberal, and the state hopping

Made sense in the moment, until you look up the names and the states. I only found a "Truth or Consequences" in NM. Close enough to AZ, but then jumping directly to Liberal in KS, 700 kilometres away? It feels like there is something missing between the paragraphs, even knowing that Val gets lost in thoughts. And yes, I looked up everything and did the calculations.

I'd caught myself going in circles more than once at least once

That double "once" reads weird. Scrap "at least once".

How was are the roads this poorly maintained!?

"How were the roads [...]" or "How are the roads [...]"

《》, ≪≫ and ""

I'm really confused when you use which quote. Normal quotes are for regular speech while《》are for internal thoughts, I think I got that down correctly. But what are ≪≫ for — Monologues? Can't be, because you use them as thoughts while talking to the cop.
I like the different quotes to convey different things, but sometimes less is clearer, even more so because you use unconventional characters for them.

As soon as I was out, they started doing a couple of tests. You know how on TV, they have you stand on one leg and recite the alphabet in order of 13, 1, 26, 14, so on and so on, and so on? Yeah, that shit is boring in real life too.

Sudden entry of a narrator? You already show the whole ordeal right after, so it kinda feels like filler. Either rephrase or remove.

Police just takes away your keys and then lets you hanging in bumfuck nowhere instead of taking you in for a night in a sobering-up cell.

Dafuq? Is this how the police does things in the US? Just leaving you to your own devices after taking away your only mode of transportation in the middle of nowhere? I refuse to believe a police officer would do something like that after seeing the mental state of Val here. That's reckless at best, and a death sentence at worst.

《Oh, how quaint! I remember when my hometown motel advertised color TVs,》

Just how old is Val? Colour TV was widely adopted in the mid 60ies. Most TVs were colour by the mid 70ies at the latest. If the story takes place in 202x, that would make him around 60 years old? That remark has a lot of weight, unless I got my dates completely wrong or the US was just really, really slow to adopt.

[...] but I couldn't help but ask myself, 《was it enough?》
I walked down the central street of the town I had stayed [...]

Okay, that was some major whiplash. I think this is the part where Snivy and Macho said you should expand a bit?

The whole Claydol scene and then suddenly forest

I don't have too much on the lead-up to the Claydol exploding the house. That part was fine. But the transition to the forest was very sudden.
I assume he got teleported into the forest? There is something missing to convey that to the reader. A weird sensation while Val is teleported could serve that purpose.
Also, isn't this similar to how Matsui ended up in America? Lovely parallel! Would be funny if he'd end up in a forest in Japan.

Val finding himself in the forest

He's surprisingly level-headed here. Not necessarily out of character, but I would've expected a bit more panic.

Lots of mentions of the word "rock"

You might want to ease the use of the word in those paragraphs and use more synonyms instead.

Frolicking through the forest

Love to see it! Good taste in music as well!

The Absol was nowhere to be found [...]

Absol wasn't mentioned before, was it? You're missing the encounter with the Farigiraf and the beginning of the fight between the two Pokémon.

After getting to a nearby tree, I stopped to watch the angry Pokemon.

Hold on. His vision is so bad, that he mistook the gun for his glasses, but now he is just fine watching two Pokémon duke it out without them? Not only that, but he could see details on the Farigiraf's face just a second ago too. That's a major consistency error. You should let him find his glasses first or describe the scenes with other senses for a nice change of pace.

Enter Dr. Abet

I don't know what kind of doctor he is yet, but not checking anyone after nearly getting mauled and just greeting them with an outstretched hand seems a bit out of place. Especially since Val got bruised and cut by debris quite hard before.

Absol has the glasses, Val just sees fine without them anyway

Again with the sight inconsistency.

"No can do. That Farifarig isn't staying asleep for long, and it will be angry to see you again."

It's Farigiraf, unless you wanted him to misspell its name.

Farigiraf in general

Alright. With my background knowledge that the Farigiraf is the mother bear of the cub, it's obvious that she just wanted to defend her offspring. But why did she give chase after Val fled? Black bears are defensive, not offensive, as far as I know. They mostly try to scare away threats, not chase them to the end of the world and lingering in the area once they cannot see the threat anymore.
We could say that the Farigiraf instincts are responsible, but why would a supposed herbivore go out of its way to kill a potential threat? Why spend the additional energy if the threat already stopped being a danger?
Don't get me wrong, I liked the action, but it seems a bit too much Alien/Predator, and less animal not wanting you in its vicinity.

but I knew that anything was better was doing nothing.

Should be "was better than doing nothing."

Val not remarking the feeling of touching the Absol while it keeps him steady.

Missed opportunity here.

《I'm willing to bed that you're pretty soft,》

Never mind, there it is! Also, should probably be "bet".

≪but seriously, what the fuck's with your gait?≫

Again with the different quotes. What is the difference supposed to be?
Absol is just part of the Ministry of Silly Walks, pay no attention to it.

The tree is most stereotypical looking, but also abnormal, almost perfectly blocky-spherical shaped.

Those two are opposites, my dude.

I didn't know the name of the chair, but it had a minimal back with a wooden hole in it.

How can a hole be made out of wood? Weird phrasing.

«You are an unbelievable retard,»

New quotes enter the fray... The mixing of unusual quotation marks, together with normal quotes and the Guillemets is off-putting to my European eyes. And yes, I know that the Guillemets here are supposed to be quotes inside the quotes, but that's not how they are used in France and Switzerland. It's double Guillemets (« and ») for the quote and single Guillemets (‹ and ›) for inner quotes. Just another argument to not overdo the types of quotes you use. You could've used ⟨ and ⟩ instead to keep the consistency.

I know it's a rather specific problem for us Swiss and French, but it really put me out of the immersion for a second. I subconsciously read that inner quote as a completely different person talking to Val before I realised that it's supposed to be Val quoting himself in his thoughts. It took me out of the flow, which sucks. I think this is a great example why you shouldn't use too many unconventional characters―and if you do, at least apply the correct rules.

Closing Thoughts

Overall enjoyable, although a bit rough around some of the edges. There are some things I find illogical, but those might be explained by the American culture I'm not overly familiar with. You already posted some updates since you published this Rentry page, and I like the improvements in them. I chose to ignore those updates here to give you feedback on your first draft.

Dr. Abet seems like a likeable fellow and I want to see what's up with that Absol, too! Making me curious about the future is high praise and means you certainly did something right! I can see you exploring physiological aspects of Pokémon with Abet, like you already did with that Primarina. I love science-y stuff like that! It would also go great with Val wanting to pet every single Pokémon.

However, it is abundantly clear that you rush ahead sometimes and don't reread what you wrote too often — or at least not with enough time between the rereads to see the mistakes — hence the weird time skips or logical errors.
Adopting a slower pace and maybe doing shorter segments instead of 12k-word behemoths would help with that. Write a 3k-word segment first, then wait a few hours or days before rereading it for catching glaring issues. Then move on to the next segment and repeat until you have written your Magnum Opus.

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Pub: 07 Feb 2026 18:44 UTC

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