Board Thread:Article Critique/@comment-4232858-20140831215143/@comment-27765057-20140908022311

And by letting you know when I'm close to finishing it, I of course meant just posting it when I'm finished (also I actually DID manage to finish it by the end of the week, go figure). Before I get into this, I should probably point out that I'm personally not a fan of pokemon crossovers (though my bigger issue is  characters that have pokemon, not actually being one). However, I'll be completely looking pass that when reviewing this character to avoid being biased on that account.

Appearance -

I'm just going to say it: She's absolutely adorable. I love her design and colors. You did a pretty good job transforming the pokemon into mobian form. Don't have much else to say here, just wanted to compliment her appearance.

History -

I'll be honest, I was expecting a story about her being unable to cope with society because of either her unusual appearance or she has a tendency to light things on fire by accident. The story kinda starts off at a weird spot, not even mentioning where she came from or her parents (which may or may not be a step up from them just dying). The first paragraph does make it up for it with very good detail, though. You can clearly tell that she's lonely to an extreme.

The second paragraph does serve to show us that Willow has a motherly side. There is one issue I have here, though. "Written on the inner walls of the pod were instructions for raising him, though most of it was written in a language she had never seen, so she wrote down everything for later." I feel that an explanation for why those instructions were written is needed (was it expected that the escape pod would crash and the Crucite was not going to survive, or perhaps he only survived long enough to write them after the crash?). So she decides to ra- oh, she does have parents...and they're a**holes (I swear this is going to become a pet peeve for me). I'm kinda disappointed that the only reason the parents were brought in to the story was to drive her away from home, and they never are brought into the story again.

The story kinda goes on from there and there isn't much more I feel like pointing out. It's okay overall and I did enjoy reading the first half, but there are some points that I thought could use some elaboration/improvement. My biggest concern is the fact that the parents play little part on their daughter's life (they don't even have names).

Quick suggestion: The fact that she's apparently a ghost could be played with and taken advantage of in the story. There are plenty of things you could do with this, such as an internal conflict on the matter of whether she truly exists or not that leads up to her finding Jared and setting out to prove that she does in fact exist.

Personality -

I think more could be added here to help separate her from other shy characters. Also, you could write about her transition from being a shy to more social person.

Powers -

Her powers make sense considering the pokemon she is. As I usually suggest, having part of her story explain how she came to become more experienced with her powers (or even having her still not be very good at using it) would be nice. Can I just make a suggestion, though? Wax manipulation. Think about it~

Conclusion -

There a lot of things that I love about this character, but a few parts could be worked on like adding more to her story. Overall, I think you did a nice job with this character and I'm sure you'll be improving Willow more as time goes on. I hope this helps you out.