Review for Left Behind

Left Behind

(#) facia 2007-04-02

Well...an interesting take, but I think you took it too far. You overdramatized and wound up blaming Ash for things that weren't really his fault - esp. the Squirtle bit. I mean, he's saving lives! It's understandable he might be upset about failing to save one girl, but she wouldn't be less dead if he hadn't been there, and everyone else he saved would be dead too. Plus, he wanted to go. You're blaming Ash for not forcing his pokemon to do something it didn't want. And Charizard...you can't both have Charizard thinking about how glad he is to be free of "the little brat" and calling him incompetent, and then having Charizard act like he's been betrayed by his friend and how he'll "never forgive the human he once called friend". Honestly this comes off almost as a bashing fic.

I think you could weave a decent story around the idea that not all of Ash's releases/abandons/givenaways were for a good reason, but simply listing each one and having a pokemon curse Ash isn't the way to do it. You have to establish why what he did was wrong, why he should have known better and why the pokemon feels betrayed now. And the bit about his current pokemon that also hate him is really weak, like you added it in just to complete the set.

Author's response

This was one of my first dark fics. I was trying to capture Ash in a negative and positve way. I know I didn't do this very well, and I will be rewriting this. THanks for your input.