![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
Entry tags:
Obligative again
http://www.fanfiction.net/s/6993044/1/Nothing_is_Perfect
[After waking up at 9:30, as he generally took Tuesdays off, a farmer settled down to make some breakfast for himself. After frying up some bread, bacon and eggs (he'd heard of nutritional values before, but didn't hold to them) and pouring himself some coffee he picked up his now slightly steaming plate, a newspaper, and settled down on his veranda to enjoy his breakfast.]
Your sentences are jumbled. You also shouldn't repeat the same opening word like that.
[his wife's 15th anniversary in 2 days before ]
Write out numbers with letters.
[of september]
Needs to be capitalized.
[Stephen walked out of his own bedroom into the living room to meet up with his parents and sister, Shana (who had a knack for being a lot more annoying than you'd expect from a 7 year old) and head down to breakfast, which had only opened and proceeded to bolt down cornflakes and milk (the kitchen hadn't started cooking yet) with the rest of his family. ]
Really, shorter sentences. Focus on one thought at a time.
[our Taxi]
Doesn't need to be capitalized.
["Oh...bugger."]
Is not really the sort of thing a farmer in Pennsylvania would say, especially the sort who can't stand Canada.
[Even at 8 o'clock, the streets were already heavy with cars, and as such it took them an hour to even reach Manhattan. On the radio, it was apparently the 57th anniversary for the day the US troops entered Germany, on the 11th of September in 1945. ]
...I am really not sure this was necessary, let alone a good idea.
["Because there's lots of traffic, and there are too many cars on the roads, and they can't handle them, so they all got stuck or something" Stephen replied, showing enormous insight for a 10 year old ]
You also have miscellaneous grammar errors, like your disappearing punctuation here. Proofread better.
["But that's stupid! Why can't they just make all the lights green?"
"Becaus- Argh! I dunno! Maybe then all the cars would crash?"
"Why would they crash?"]
Also, no, kids are not complete morons.
["I saw a plane come flying at us, and then... I-I think it crashed into us..." Stephen mumbled.
"The fire exit! Its our only hope!" Someone yelled, and suddenly, everyone snapped out of their individual panic attacks, and proceeded to attack each other in a vain attempt to get through the fire exit.]
Okay, this has managed to go from bad idea to fucking obnoxious really fast. Part of the reason for the death toll is that people didn't immediately realize how bad things were. Also, the errors are piling up. Get a beta reader. For both things.
[Stephen recalled his grandfather's words "You take life for granted until you realise that maybe it isn't guaranteed, maybe nothing in the world is, maybe everything comes down to chance..." ]
No, it really wasn't chance.
[The...Pokemon looked a little like a carnivorous dinosaur, much like a T-Rex, however, its arms were of a much more normal length, and had some kind of gauntlet-like armour on them. Its fur was a light purple, with several stripes and bands on its wrists, tail, torso and neck. However, its most distinguishing features were the two pink pearls set in its shoulder plates. ]
This is everything wrong with description. You're just listing off a jumble of random features in a way that serves to obscure what you're talking about instead of clarifying anything. A short description and a name would have been an infinitely better idea.
[The purple dinosaur Pokemon (who bore no relation to Barney whatsoever...trust me on this one)]
Also no. Not only do we, the readers of the story, already know about pokemon and the fact they don't have to do with Barney, but avoiding its name in favor of bad description is terrible writing anyway. Furthermore, parenthetical asides that have nothing to do with the story do not highlight your cleverness so much as show off a lack of it.
My impression here is you tried to write a description instead of just going with the name, realized that description was stupid, and then instead of revising it (or better yet, calling it by its actual name), you commented on it, serving only to make the problem even more obvious.
[He realised that he was floating in infinity.
For most people, infinity is actually impossible to comprehend, and as a result, Stephen found himself mentally imagining huge walls in the far off distance, so far away that he couldn't see them, and to his surprise, it seemed to work.]
This is inane. He can't tell he's somewhere infinite, just that he can't see the end. Furthermore, infinity isn't a thing. Infinity can just as easily be infinite stuff as infinite emptiness.
["What? He, I mean, I became me? And now you expect me to become me? Wait, that didn't sound sane..." Stephen paused, slightly nervous, "What I meant to say was, how come you get to decide when to randomly switch our-... my places?"
"Notice that big plane that flew into the building you were in? I thought you did. Well, your other self was sent back in time by yours truly about 2 hours... and HE will remember the camera." The fairy-thing responded "and by the way, I'm Celebi, and before you ask, yes... I can travel through and manipulate time."
"Oookay...," Stephen started uncertainly "...so you're saying that by remembering the camera, we wouldn't have wasted time looking for a disposable one, and so would have gotten out of the building... before the plane crash!"]
So let me get this straight. Two gods are rewriting existence so this dumbass will avoid being part of a tragedy that killed three thousand people and caused wars with a death toll of at least a million?
[. "You may be asking, why not just send you back in time? Why get the other you to do it? ]
No. That is not what I'm asking.
[Celebi can't tell us much about it at the moment, but basically the versions of our world with the other you all end in tyranny, with one absolute ruler ruling over all humans, with all Pokemon sent to an alternate universe to die away there..." ]
So he's a sue. A double sue because Celebi wants to do this ridiculous runaround instead of just killing him to avoid the issue.
["Think of the fact that at least your parents and Shana will be saved as a reward for agreeing to come help us. ]
...and yep it doesn't even occur to him to ask why they can't do something like, say, call ahead with a bomb scare to evacuate the buildings instead.
["But... doesn't that mean that I would still die here, in this new world?" Stephen, still nervous about the whole dimension thing, asked. ]
God I hope so you selfish fucker.
[and while Palkia pretty much stayed the same colour (that's right, use British spelling!), ]
It's like you want me to hate you.
[You will gain all the memories that the other you had in this reality, while retaining your own ones. ]
So also, you're erasing one of the major hurdles that a swapped character has to go through. I'm assuming none of his own memories are that incredibly interesting, so besides knowing that in another world they're just a videogame, how is this any different than if we were following a kid born in the universe with the same super special destiny?
[I have already explained this to the other you, but your name here is spelt with a 'v' instead of a 'ph', so your name is now Steven" Celebi's voice appeared in his head. ]
That's stupid and pointless and I don't know why you're mentioning it.
So, in sum:
These sort of swaps work when the danger is on an individual or family level, so avoiding it personally is all that matters. When the character is just one of many people who are all going to die, having them alone survive looks really bad. It makes them look horrible for not caring and it raises all sorts of questions about why someone with this much power wouldn't intervene to help everyone else.
Your grammar is really bad. It's not systematic errors where you don't know the rule, it's just inconsistent mistakes, like not putting punctuation at the end of your sentences, and it makes this hard to realize. You also put in author notes in the middle of your story, which is infuriatingly bad writing.
As far as I can tell, the secondary plot about the farmer was completely pointless and in context, tasteless given it's just there so you can include even more references to an actual real life event you shouldn't have included in your story in the first place.
Speaking of pointless, most of this chapter was. You take forever to get anywhere. You don't need to spend time with them wandering around doing unrelated things when the point is that the kid is going to get bodyswapped.
The bodyswap bit is terrible. I'm assuming you'll expand it further, but you already have walls of text explaining the backstory and it makes no sense - no reason for why his version in the pokemon universe is so special, no reason for why he's got a duplicate at all, no reason for why they think swapping him is going to change anything, no reason for why they even want him around.
http://www.fanfiction.net/s/6993044/2/Nothing_is_Perfect
...so you combined the first and second chapter but left the second chapter placeholder up? What the fuck made you think this was a good idea?
http://www.fanfiction.net/s/6993044/3/Nothing_is_Perfect
What the fuck. Now the pokemon-verse version is asking to have his original memories because he thinks this life is better? You realize that's the same as committing suicide. It's not like he's even keeping his current personality plus memories since he explicitly says he wants them erased because he had issues with his pokemon-verse parents and wants that part of his relationship gone. Why did they even bother moving him when apparently he would have been fine if they'd just handed him a loaded gun?
["Repressed memories..." The now familar voice caused Steven to start, drawing the frightened stares of his classmates as he entered his classroom. "Something that your other self did and immediately regretted, and tried to forget. You'll have to find out what happened yourself..." ]
That's not how memories work. That's especially not how memories of things that make everyone stare at you in fear every day for the rest of your life work.
Also, even if one accepts that he can't remember that, he should remember all the kids acting like this normally because that's a memory too.
["Oh, that?" The boy lifted up his sleeve, and revealed that his scar didn't travel much further past his sleeve, stopping before his shoulder. "That was from the car crash that killed my parents... I don't like to talk about it much. If you really want to know, I'm at Floaroma Orphanage now. ]
He doesn't like to talk about it except when someone glances at his scar, in which case he'll launch into an explanation and offer to give a longer one if they want it?
[Isrea was shocked. She had just seen Steven, that moody, maniacal, hot-tempered, self-centered bully feel empathy. ]
...and there goes that mystery. You know, dramatic irony has surprisingly little to recommend for it. It's almost always more interesting to follow along with a character trying to figure something out instead of getting handed the answer then sitting around until they catch up.
Also that makes no sense. Something done and immediately regretted might refer to a single major event, not constantly being an asshole to everyone. If he's normally a bully, it should be pretty easy to remember why everyone's acting scared of him.
...and now the teacher is going from screaming rage to comforting tell-me-what's-wrong. This is painfully inconsistent, especially right after the teacher noted that he's in an unusually good mood right after hospitalizing some other kid, which makes his claim he's sorry pretty hard to believe.
I have no idea what you're trying to do with the plot. First you give him the memories so he'll know what's going on, then you insist on playing out the standard plot where the character doesn't know what was going on in their double's life, then you have him corner a random kid and ask to be told why everyone's scared of him, and instead of reacting like a normal person they explain like it's not surprising for people to not know their own personalities...
[ I'm..." Steven fidgeted, unused to having to tell a lie on the spot. "...kind of like an identical twin. I've swapped places with him, and he's gone...really far away. I don't think I'll ever see him again."
Isrea could see that Steven was holding something back, but him being such a different person seemed to explain his sudden change of demeanor and attitude towards his classmates. "Why don't you tell everyone then? You'll just be like a new kid, and no one will be scared of you."]
Then he says insane nonsense. And then she acts like insane nonsense was something believable.
["I could, but I'd like to keep this as secret as possible." ]
Why, given that apparently people in this world believe any absurd thing you say?
[After school, Steven began to walk home, before Aron came over and called him over. "Hey! All my friends are telling me to stay away from you! Apparently you're a psycho or something."
Steven decided on telling the same half-truth as he did to Isrea. "My twin was, but I've swapped places with him, and hopefully I'm not a psycho, yeah?" he laughted nervously.
Aron looked at him suspiciously. "You expect me to believe that?"
Steven panicked before deciding to go on with his story. "No, but what else am I meant to say? It's the truth!" And in a sense, it was.
"Ok. I didn't think you seemed that type anyway. Care to come over to my house tomorrow?"
"Yeah, cool."]
I just. Why. This is going in circles. You're inventing problems that don't make sense then solving them immediately afterward in even more absurd ways.
http://www.fanfiction.net/s/6993044/4/Nothing_is_Perfect
["Steven, do you still want to become a trainer when you reach 11 years of age?" ]
It's ten.
[Needless to say, when Steven's mother was 'unable' to cook, they had what they could find in the freezer, with boiled vegetables and bread. ]
Because men are unable to learn to cook.
[Steven, however, was more preoccupied with the question that had been broached to him. "Do I want to become a trainer? It would be an adventure, and I've never really thought about what I wanted to be when I grow up." ]
He's just been transported to a world where pokemon are real and he's apparently more interested in an ordinary day of school than being a trainer? Seriously? I don't even care if it's possible for someone to think this, what on earth makes you think they're an interesting character to focus on?
["You got me...I'm no trainer! But that doesn't matter, seeing as you don't know where you are, why you're here, and how long you'll be here. Me? I can't answer any of those questions, but I'm here to show you who we are. With that, he pointed to his shirt, where a red capital 'R' was printed on it. "Yes, I know that Team Rocket don't operate in Sinnoh, but doesn't it make the best place for us to conduct research? Anyway, I don't know much, I'm just a field agent..." ]
I assume this ramble is supposed to be aping the game's style of dialogue? Don't, it just sounds stupid. Why on earth would they want her to know who they are, especially if they're in Sinnoh because people aren't expecting them around?
["...How many times have I told you that Pokemon training will get you nowhere! Sure, you hear stories about the stars of the battling scene, like Lucas, Dawn or Barry... but for every star, how many failed trainers do you think there are? Do you think that battling at the lower levels is glamorous? Do you? Don't take a path that will only lead you into poverty!" Steven's father raged. ]
Another cliché notch. This isn't even canon. Being a trainer doesn't prevent the kid from doing anything else later on, and it's obvious that plenty of people manage to keep pokemon in addition to whatever else they're doing in their life.
...okay, see, technobabble is supposed to be nonsense to justify plot, but that's different than saying stuff that's just flat wrong. Using real concepts incorrectly is just bad writing. If you don't even have enough knowledge of the subject to avoid using words that mean something, don't write up fake science papers, just say a character's reading it and gloss over the details.
[ This involves the transport of a Human consciousness from a human subject into that of a Pokemon's. Even though our knowledge of the Pokemon psyche is insufficient to allow a reverse transplant of a Pokemon's consciousness to ta Human mind, the opposite can be more easily achieved. ]
No. If they're transporting over "consciousness" as a whole there's no reason they can't use it on pokemon. Furthermore, if lack of test knowledge was the issue, it'd be on the human side, as it's a hell of a lot easier to grab another forty rattata every time you need to do more tests than it is to kidnap kids.
[He couldn't make rare Pokemon from humans to be sold, and by all rights this part of the project had failed.]
That. That was seriously his plan? Why not just make rare pokemon from regular pokemon?
[The results of his search were staggering. Steven found out that hundreds of thousands of children around the world set out to become a Pokemon trainer every year, and that only several thousands ended up entering into training professionally. However, the career opportunities for an ex-trainer were still amazing ]
Replace "trainer" with "basketball player" and maybe you'll realize this isn't "staggering" so much as "really pretty obvious and why are we still spending time on this subplot, especially when it's not like there was ever the slightest bit of suspense about if he'd be a trainer in the first place seriously".
http://www.fanfiction.net/s/6993044/5/Nothing_is_Perfect
["Even though technically I live at Floarmoa Orphanage, my father had set aside two houses to be given to whatever orphanage I happened to end up in, on the sole condition that I get to live in one of the houses by myself if I wanted to." ]
And like magic, I no longer feel the slightest bit of sympathy for the guy. Why on earth did you think this detail was needed?
[It turned out that Steven's family had been very well off ]
You mean Aron.
...and now instead of anything plot related, they're watching two other characters have a battle on television for no real stakes.
...to be honest I've just been skimming over the legendary subplot. As far as I can tell, all it is is a bunch of people talking about who else knows about what they're talking about, mostly Celebi saying stuff that is not completely true in boring and petty ways, and now it's claiming to be honest although that might just be more of the same, and this is the fifth chapter, either have something happen or make them shut up until it's time for something to happen.
More battling. Look, would you make an entire chapter about two characters watching a basketball match? Because that's really what this is. It doesn't matter who wins and we know nothing important will happen to anyone in the process. Both sets of pokemon will be fine, neither trainer will get so much as scratched, and the only change is which one of them gets to say they won.
http://www.fanfiction.net/s/6993044/6/Nothing_is_Perfect
Okay, your story is chasing its own tail at this point. We're back with pokemon-version yet again, this time to hear that erasing his memories didn't completely work because anything he felt bad about couldn't be erased, which renders the entire thing moot, so now he has to go back to the pokemon world to say a bunch of words. For no reason you have Celebi make a big deal about it being ten words, but actually it's more, and ABSOLUTELY NONE OF THIS MATTERS.
All the characters are just running in circles.
Your plot is doing the whole Red Queen thing. You're constantly introducing things and jumping between characters and having all sorts of stuff going on, but it never goes anywhere.
Stopped there because I either couldn't follow the plot or there wasn't one.
[After waking up at 9:30, as he generally took Tuesdays off, a farmer settled down to make some breakfast for himself. After frying up some bread, bacon and eggs (he'd heard of nutritional values before, but didn't hold to them) and pouring himself some coffee he picked up his now slightly steaming plate, a newspaper, and settled down on his veranda to enjoy his breakfast.]
Your sentences are jumbled. You also shouldn't repeat the same opening word like that.
[his wife's 15th anniversary in 2 days before ]
Write out numbers with letters.
[of september]
Needs to be capitalized.
[Stephen walked out of his own bedroom into the living room to meet up with his parents and sister, Shana (who had a knack for being a lot more annoying than you'd expect from a 7 year old) and head down to breakfast, which had only opened and proceeded to bolt down cornflakes and milk (the kitchen hadn't started cooking yet) with the rest of his family. ]
Really, shorter sentences. Focus on one thought at a time.
[our Taxi]
Doesn't need to be capitalized.
["Oh...bugger."]
Is not really the sort of thing a farmer in Pennsylvania would say, especially the sort who can't stand Canada.
[Even at 8 o'clock, the streets were already heavy with cars, and as such it took them an hour to even reach Manhattan. On the radio, it was apparently the 57th anniversary for the day the US troops entered Germany, on the 11th of September in 1945. ]
...I am really not sure this was necessary, let alone a good idea.
["Because there's lots of traffic, and there are too many cars on the roads, and they can't handle them, so they all got stuck or something" Stephen replied, showing enormous insight for a 10 year old ]
You also have miscellaneous grammar errors, like your disappearing punctuation here. Proofread better.
["But that's stupid! Why can't they just make all the lights green?"
"Becaus- Argh! I dunno! Maybe then all the cars would crash?"
"Why would they crash?"]
Also, no, kids are not complete morons.
["I saw a plane come flying at us, and then... I-I think it crashed into us..." Stephen mumbled.
"The fire exit! Its our only hope!" Someone yelled, and suddenly, everyone snapped out of their individual panic attacks, and proceeded to attack each other in a vain attempt to get through the fire exit.]
Okay, this has managed to go from bad idea to fucking obnoxious really fast. Part of the reason for the death toll is that people didn't immediately realize how bad things were. Also, the errors are piling up. Get a beta reader. For both things.
[Stephen recalled his grandfather's words "You take life for granted until you realise that maybe it isn't guaranteed, maybe nothing in the world is, maybe everything comes down to chance..." ]
No, it really wasn't chance.
[The...Pokemon looked a little like a carnivorous dinosaur, much like a T-Rex, however, its arms were of a much more normal length, and had some kind of gauntlet-like armour on them. Its fur was a light purple, with several stripes and bands on its wrists, tail, torso and neck. However, its most distinguishing features were the two pink pearls set in its shoulder plates. ]
This is everything wrong with description. You're just listing off a jumble of random features in a way that serves to obscure what you're talking about instead of clarifying anything. A short description and a name would have been an infinitely better idea.
[The purple dinosaur Pokemon (who bore no relation to Barney whatsoever...trust me on this one)]
Also no. Not only do we, the readers of the story, already know about pokemon and the fact they don't have to do with Barney, but avoiding its name in favor of bad description is terrible writing anyway. Furthermore, parenthetical asides that have nothing to do with the story do not highlight your cleverness so much as show off a lack of it.
My impression here is you tried to write a description instead of just going with the name, realized that description was stupid, and then instead of revising it (or better yet, calling it by its actual name), you commented on it, serving only to make the problem even more obvious.
[He realised that he was floating in infinity.
For most people, infinity is actually impossible to comprehend, and as a result, Stephen found himself mentally imagining huge walls in the far off distance, so far away that he couldn't see them, and to his surprise, it seemed to work.]
This is inane. He can't tell he's somewhere infinite, just that he can't see the end. Furthermore, infinity isn't a thing. Infinity can just as easily be infinite stuff as infinite emptiness.
["What? He, I mean, I became me? And now you expect me to become me? Wait, that didn't sound sane..." Stephen paused, slightly nervous, "What I meant to say was, how come you get to decide when to randomly switch our-... my places?"
"Notice that big plane that flew into the building you were in? I thought you did. Well, your other self was sent back in time by yours truly about 2 hours... and HE will remember the camera." The fairy-thing responded "and by the way, I'm Celebi, and before you ask, yes... I can travel through and manipulate time."
"Oookay...," Stephen started uncertainly "...so you're saying that by remembering the camera, we wouldn't have wasted time looking for a disposable one, and so would have gotten out of the building... before the plane crash!"]
So let me get this straight. Two gods are rewriting existence so this dumbass will avoid being part of a tragedy that killed three thousand people and caused wars with a death toll of at least a million?
[. "You may be asking, why not just send you back in time? Why get the other you to do it? ]
No. That is not what I'm asking.
[Celebi can't tell us much about it at the moment, but basically the versions of our world with the other you all end in tyranny, with one absolute ruler ruling over all humans, with all Pokemon sent to an alternate universe to die away there..." ]
So he's a sue. A double sue because Celebi wants to do this ridiculous runaround instead of just killing him to avoid the issue.
["Think of the fact that at least your parents and Shana will be saved as a reward for agreeing to come help us. ]
...and yep it doesn't even occur to him to ask why they can't do something like, say, call ahead with a bomb scare to evacuate the buildings instead.
["But... doesn't that mean that I would still die here, in this new world?" Stephen, still nervous about the whole dimension thing, asked. ]
God I hope so you selfish fucker.
[and while Palkia pretty much stayed the same colour (that's right, use British spelling!), ]
It's like you want me to hate you.
[You will gain all the memories that the other you had in this reality, while retaining your own ones. ]
So also, you're erasing one of the major hurdles that a swapped character has to go through. I'm assuming none of his own memories are that incredibly interesting, so besides knowing that in another world they're just a videogame, how is this any different than if we were following a kid born in the universe with the same super special destiny?
[I have already explained this to the other you, but your name here is spelt with a 'v' instead of a 'ph', so your name is now Steven" Celebi's voice appeared in his head. ]
That's stupid and pointless and I don't know why you're mentioning it.
So, in sum:
These sort of swaps work when the danger is on an individual or family level, so avoiding it personally is all that matters. When the character is just one of many people who are all going to die, having them alone survive looks really bad. It makes them look horrible for not caring and it raises all sorts of questions about why someone with this much power wouldn't intervene to help everyone else.
Your grammar is really bad. It's not systematic errors where you don't know the rule, it's just inconsistent mistakes, like not putting punctuation at the end of your sentences, and it makes this hard to realize. You also put in author notes in the middle of your story, which is infuriatingly bad writing.
As far as I can tell, the secondary plot about the farmer was completely pointless and in context, tasteless given it's just there so you can include even more references to an actual real life event you shouldn't have included in your story in the first place.
Speaking of pointless, most of this chapter was. You take forever to get anywhere. You don't need to spend time with them wandering around doing unrelated things when the point is that the kid is going to get bodyswapped.
The bodyswap bit is terrible. I'm assuming you'll expand it further, but you already have walls of text explaining the backstory and it makes no sense - no reason for why his version in the pokemon universe is so special, no reason for why he's got a duplicate at all, no reason for why they think swapping him is going to change anything, no reason for why they even want him around.
http://www.fanfiction.net/s/6993044/2/Nothing_is_Perfect
...so you combined the first and second chapter but left the second chapter placeholder up? What the fuck made you think this was a good idea?
http://www.fanfiction.net/s/6993044/3/Nothing_is_Perfect
What the fuck. Now the pokemon-verse version is asking to have his original memories because he thinks this life is better? You realize that's the same as committing suicide. It's not like he's even keeping his current personality plus memories since he explicitly says he wants them erased because he had issues with his pokemon-verse parents and wants that part of his relationship gone. Why did they even bother moving him when apparently he would have been fine if they'd just handed him a loaded gun?
["Repressed memories..." The now familar voice caused Steven to start, drawing the frightened stares of his classmates as he entered his classroom. "Something that your other self did and immediately regretted, and tried to forget. You'll have to find out what happened yourself..." ]
That's not how memories work. That's especially not how memories of things that make everyone stare at you in fear every day for the rest of your life work.
Also, even if one accepts that he can't remember that, he should remember all the kids acting like this normally because that's a memory too.
["Oh, that?" The boy lifted up his sleeve, and revealed that his scar didn't travel much further past his sleeve, stopping before his shoulder. "That was from the car crash that killed my parents... I don't like to talk about it much. If you really want to know, I'm at Floaroma Orphanage now. ]
He doesn't like to talk about it except when someone glances at his scar, in which case he'll launch into an explanation and offer to give a longer one if they want it?
[Isrea was shocked. She had just seen Steven, that moody, maniacal, hot-tempered, self-centered bully feel empathy. ]
...and there goes that mystery. You know, dramatic irony has surprisingly little to recommend for it. It's almost always more interesting to follow along with a character trying to figure something out instead of getting handed the answer then sitting around until they catch up.
Also that makes no sense. Something done and immediately regretted might refer to a single major event, not constantly being an asshole to everyone. If he's normally a bully, it should be pretty easy to remember why everyone's acting scared of him.
...and now the teacher is going from screaming rage to comforting tell-me-what's-wrong. This is painfully inconsistent, especially right after the teacher noted that he's in an unusually good mood right after hospitalizing some other kid, which makes his claim he's sorry pretty hard to believe.
I have no idea what you're trying to do with the plot. First you give him the memories so he'll know what's going on, then you insist on playing out the standard plot where the character doesn't know what was going on in their double's life, then you have him corner a random kid and ask to be told why everyone's scared of him, and instead of reacting like a normal person they explain like it's not surprising for people to not know their own personalities...
[ I'm..." Steven fidgeted, unused to having to tell a lie on the spot. "...kind of like an identical twin. I've swapped places with him, and he's gone...really far away. I don't think I'll ever see him again."
Isrea could see that Steven was holding something back, but him being such a different person seemed to explain his sudden change of demeanor and attitude towards his classmates. "Why don't you tell everyone then? You'll just be like a new kid, and no one will be scared of you."]
Then he says insane nonsense. And then she acts like insane nonsense was something believable.
["I could, but I'd like to keep this as secret as possible." ]
Why, given that apparently people in this world believe any absurd thing you say?
[After school, Steven began to walk home, before Aron came over and called him over. "Hey! All my friends are telling me to stay away from you! Apparently you're a psycho or something."
Steven decided on telling the same half-truth as he did to Isrea. "My twin was, but I've swapped places with him, and hopefully I'm not a psycho, yeah?" he laughted nervously.
Aron looked at him suspiciously. "You expect me to believe that?"
Steven panicked before deciding to go on with his story. "No, but what else am I meant to say? It's the truth!" And in a sense, it was.
"Ok. I didn't think you seemed that type anyway. Care to come over to my house tomorrow?"
"Yeah, cool."]
I just. Why. This is going in circles. You're inventing problems that don't make sense then solving them immediately afterward in even more absurd ways.
http://www.fanfiction.net/s/6993044/4/Nothing_is_Perfect
["Steven, do you still want to become a trainer when you reach 11 years of age?" ]
It's ten.
[Needless to say, when Steven's mother was 'unable' to cook, they had what they could find in the freezer, with boiled vegetables and bread. ]
Because men are unable to learn to cook.
[Steven, however, was more preoccupied with the question that had been broached to him. "Do I want to become a trainer? It would be an adventure, and I've never really thought about what I wanted to be when I grow up." ]
He's just been transported to a world where pokemon are real and he's apparently more interested in an ordinary day of school than being a trainer? Seriously? I don't even care if it's possible for someone to think this, what on earth makes you think they're an interesting character to focus on?
["You got me...I'm no trainer! But that doesn't matter, seeing as you don't know where you are, why you're here, and how long you'll be here. Me? I can't answer any of those questions, but I'm here to show you who we are. With that, he pointed to his shirt, where a red capital 'R' was printed on it. "Yes, I know that Team Rocket don't operate in Sinnoh, but doesn't it make the best place for us to conduct research? Anyway, I don't know much, I'm just a field agent..." ]
I assume this ramble is supposed to be aping the game's style of dialogue? Don't, it just sounds stupid. Why on earth would they want her to know who they are, especially if they're in Sinnoh because people aren't expecting them around?
["...How many times have I told you that Pokemon training will get you nowhere! Sure, you hear stories about the stars of the battling scene, like Lucas, Dawn or Barry... but for every star, how many failed trainers do you think there are? Do you think that battling at the lower levels is glamorous? Do you? Don't take a path that will only lead you into poverty!" Steven's father raged. ]
Another cliché notch. This isn't even canon. Being a trainer doesn't prevent the kid from doing anything else later on, and it's obvious that plenty of people manage to keep pokemon in addition to whatever else they're doing in their life.
...okay, see, technobabble is supposed to be nonsense to justify plot, but that's different than saying stuff that's just flat wrong. Using real concepts incorrectly is just bad writing. If you don't even have enough knowledge of the subject to avoid using words that mean something, don't write up fake science papers, just say a character's reading it and gloss over the details.
[ This involves the transport of a Human consciousness from a human subject into that of a Pokemon's. Even though our knowledge of the Pokemon psyche is insufficient to allow a reverse transplant of a Pokemon's consciousness to ta Human mind, the opposite can be more easily achieved. ]
No. If they're transporting over "consciousness" as a whole there's no reason they can't use it on pokemon. Furthermore, if lack of test knowledge was the issue, it'd be on the human side, as it's a hell of a lot easier to grab another forty rattata every time you need to do more tests than it is to kidnap kids.
[He couldn't make rare Pokemon from humans to be sold, and by all rights this part of the project had failed.]
That. That was seriously his plan? Why not just make rare pokemon from regular pokemon?
[The results of his search were staggering. Steven found out that hundreds of thousands of children around the world set out to become a Pokemon trainer every year, and that only several thousands ended up entering into training professionally. However, the career opportunities for an ex-trainer were still amazing ]
Replace "trainer" with "basketball player" and maybe you'll realize this isn't "staggering" so much as "really pretty obvious and why are we still spending time on this subplot, especially when it's not like there was ever the slightest bit of suspense about if he'd be a trainer in the first place seriously".
http://www.fanfiction.net/s/6993044/5/Nothing_is_Perfect
["Even though technically I live at Floarmoa Orphanage, my father had set aside two houses to be given to whatever orphanage I happened to end up in, on the sole condition that I get to live in one of the houses by myself if I wanted to." ]
And like magic, I no longer feel the slightest bit of sympathy for the guy. Why on earth did you think this detail was needed?
[It turned out that Steven's family had been very well off ]
You mean Aron.
...and now instead of anything plot related, they're watching two other characters have a battle on television for no real stakes.
...to be honest I've just been skimming over the legendary subplot. As far as I can tell, all it is is a bunch of people talking about who else knows about what they're talking about, mostly Celebi saying stuff that is not completely true in boring and petty ways, and now it's claiming to be honest although that might just be more of the same, and this is the fifth chapter, either have something happen or make them shut up until it's time for something to happen.
More battling. Look, would you make an entire chapter about two characters watching a basketball match? Because that's really what this is. It doesn't matter who wins and we know nothing important will happen to anyone in the process. Both sets of pokemon will be fine, neither trainer will get so much as scratched, and the only change is which one of them gets to say they won.
http://www.fanfiction.net/s/6993044/6/Nothing_is_Perfect
Okay, your story is chasing its own tail at this point. We're back with pokemon-version yet again, this time to hear that erasing his memories didn't completely work because anything he felt bad about couldn't be erased, which renders the entire thing moot, so now he has to go back to the pokemon world to say a bunch of words. For no reason you have Celebi make a big deal about it being ten words, but actually it's more, and ABSOLUTELY NONE OF THIS MATTERS.
All the characters are just running in circles.
Your plot is doing the whole Red Queen thing. You're constantly introducing things and jumping between characters and having all sorts of stuff going on, but it never goes anywhere.
Stopped there because I either couldn't follow the plot or there wasn't one.