These are Starlight Aurate's nominations and comments for the 2014 awards. See all nominations here.
A fic with a morally-skewed protagonist who enlists/forces the help of an unwilling ex-Team Rocket Grunt, this does an excellent job of portraying the logic that runs through a child's mind while at the same time showing a relationship between a trainer and their Pokemon.
Captivating, original, and easy to follow with high writing quality.
Inspired by Humans of New York, this is quite unlike anything I've seen on the site. It delves into the minds of each person a trainer encounters when journeying across Hoenn, and rather than presenting it as a chronological story, they're all presented as interviews. It really humanizes each NPC that many players probably took for granted and paid little attention to.
The Great Butler has incredible skill with writing. He always manages the perfect blend of description with dialogue and action, so that the reader can easily visualize the scene with details but not get too caught up in the description so they forget what's going on.
Chapter 13:The child's memories are fragmented things, moments here and there connected by no more than confusion and a sense of creeping dread, but the pokémon's are just incoherent tatters. She hangs suspended in a haze of nightmare and delirium, and you can make out only a horrible sense of restraint, a heaviness of limbs and mind that leaves her too weak to concentrate and consider the swelling wrongness growing beneath it all. She spends scant waking hours in terror of hallucinations that turn the mirrors of others' minds dark and disjointed, so senses no longer line up and reality distorts along manifold planes.By the time she realizes she's pregnant, impossibly, grotesquely so, it's too late. She's aware of a new mind taking shape inside her, but it's growing wrong, taking on a form she doesn't recognize. She tries to guide its budding awareness the way a mother should, tries to mold it back into the right shape, but her confused reaching only makes things worse, when she even has the strength to try. As the alien mind stirs inside her, scared and horribly alone, she grows more anxious and her attempts at contact become more desperate. And as her agitation increases, the drugs get stronger, until all the rest is lost in a gray blanket of unawareness.
Elliot then looked at Brooke. “Alright then, I know how much you want to, so… would you like to go travelling? Together, I mean, through Kanto. I mean, I like our spot in Route 35, but you are right, there is a lot to see out there that I’ll-” Before he could finish Brooke had jumped on him and embraced him in a gleeful hug.
What else is there to say? After an adventure that gave him much more excitement than he had ever wanted, Elliot was still willing to break out of his role and go exploring throughout the Johto region with his friend.
End of Chapter 15:Now you think you want to move. You try to open your eyes but can't get them to more than watery slits, a bit of graying light coming in through the cracks. You want to run away, but you can't move your legs at all. Your heart starts beating faster as panic floods your brain, but your limbs no more than twitch. Weight rolls in like a heavy fog and smothers your resolve. It really is getting hard to breathe. You try to swallow and choke instead, saliva dribbling from your mouth. Your eyes close again, and you can't get them open.It's poison. They poisoned you with whatever they put in those darts. They? Someone. You're poisoned. Your thoughts are starting to fall apart, but you try to hold on to one thing, one last thing. Escape. Run. You have to get away from here. You have to heal yourself, get all the poison out. Escape.It stops raining. The marowak is gone from under you, the bone-numbing ice traded for cold earth and a scattering of jabbing twigs. That's all you know, that's all you can tell, before you fall into a healing stupor and all the rest is lost.
As the author of one of the most well-known works on the site, "Anima Ex Machina" as well as the newest mod to the fanfic forum and winner of this year's Omega Ruby and Alpha Sapphire contest, JX Valentine has been nothing but a great influence and kind presence in Serebii's fanfiction community.
Ever since I've been on the forums, I've known Dragonfree to be one of THE writers of the forum–one of the mods, and one of the most inspiring and talented writers I've ever seen. Her incredible storytelling and writing shows just how experienced she is at writing fanfiction.
Has been extremely helpful anytime I or any new writer asks for help, but she isn't callous or rude.