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Review: Training Day

Training Day by blue___22

Genre: Pokéfic

Current Chapter Length: 1 Chapter, Complete.

Update Schedule: N/A

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~People's Choice Award Winner!~

Summary: The one in which Clair is tasked to train Silver...unfortunately.

Training Day is such a wonderful read. I just love, love, LOVE how this story starts out. It talks about this ancient word, Summall, which is really nice because it's a word the author made up. To be honest, I was convinced it was a real word because of the vast vocabulary that is used in the story. I absolutely love it when stories do that, especially since I got to learn a new word or two while reading. It's hard to come by that in Pokéfic.

Another thing that I absolutely loved was that this book was centered around a Gym Leader who isn't featured a lot in Pokéfic: Clair. Now, it's been a while since I've played a Gen 2 game (back when HGSS came out, so do the math on how long ago that was, and that was how long it has been) but looking back on it, I'd always wondered why she isn't a major character used in Pokéfic. I mean, think about it. This girl is cousins with Lance, a member of the Elite Four, and both are Dragon-type Trainers, a type that was pretty much OP early on in the games (and a type I could probably overuse in any Pokemon game). Seeing that the writer chose to write about this character makes me happy, but it also makes me realize why she would be overlooked.

Part of that being that there is a rift between Lance and Clair. Clair is overlooked because of her cousin (who, is a much more notable character than she is). Now, I will say, this book doesn't paint a clear picture on what exactly happened between the two of them until the end. It goes straight into the elders taking away her gym rights and having to train Silver in the meantime to learn from her mistakes as a Gym Leader. As a reader, I wish I could've seen something that would've lead up to that. Maybe a Trainer and her arguing right before she is called to see them, or an intro do that. I just wanted more because it came kind of sudden.

And that's another thing that came up during this story: why was it Silver that she had to train? He just seemed like a random choice to me. Silver was in the middle of his journey, and wanted to defeat Crystal. His personality to what the games perceive him to be was off too as he didn't come off the same. Unlike Clair (who has all rights to be modified as she has a minor role and no outstanding features about her) Silver is pretty much a cut and dry character. As a reader, I was expecting this cold Trainer, and here, he kind of reminds me of Blue by the way he's a bit cocky in the beginning, and seems better than Clair.

But he still had his own personality, and that's something that needs to be noted. He doesn't seem like a character with no personality, which is something I can see a lot of in one-shots. Silver is one to come off as this cold, "I-don't-really-care" kind of personality (unless a fic shows a different side of him because of the romance) but here, he seems to kind of care and puts forth the effort to help Clair. He doesn't have to, but he does. While this could've been a change from before the fic, since this is a standalone, I wish he would've stayed true to his original character because he seemed different. While the personality wasn't something I had expected, it was still there, which is a good thing.

The last thing I'm going to point out was the amount of time skips/scene breaks that happened through the one-shot. I'll admit, it's tricky writing a one-shot because you want to tell a whole story in a limited space; however, there was almost too much. This isn't just in the amount that was told, but the depth that each character could have. I craved more, but almost for it to be a short story rather than a one-shot, because the scene breaks were almost too much.