Very late finally getting around to saying this, but in response to your response to my statements:
I would like to point out that it had to make up an OC to give Nick an abusive upbringing in order to justify how f***ed up Nick is at the beginning of the story, since Nick\'s actual trauma depicted in the movie wasn\'t enough to justify the severity of it. The fact that he gets better later in the story does nothing to change the fact that his starting state is inauthentic to canon.
The movie painted a picture of someone who never fully recovered from having his childhood illusions shattered, and coped with it unhealthily by convincing himself he was happy being the dishonest grifter everyone seemed to expect him to be, and also by pigeonholing other species into their own stereotyped roles. He genuinely had himself convinced he was content with this, until spending too much time with Judy awakened his long-dormant idealism.
This fic, on the other hand, paints the picture of an utterly broken man who has suffered horribly all his life and whose apparent personality is just a superficial mask that he maintains to hide his endless despair.
Even if his relationship with Judy helps him recover from this, it doesn\'t change that he wasn\'t authentic to the movie to begin with, because the weight of his emotional baggage at the start was orders of magnitude more massive.
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An awesome look at the impact Judy made on Nick's life.
A great story that deals with the "Time Skip" between the scene at the museum and Nick fully embracing and reiterating his decision to enroll in the police academy and become Judy's partner. It beautifully handles the impact his helping Judy had on his hustling lifestyle that would lead him to joining the ZPD, from becoming publicly known, to having to register as a police informant to prevent his involvement from being used by Bellwether's lawyers, to resolving old debts with Mr. Big, to showing how a sly fox lived on the streets for 20 years. All was handled thoughtfully and realistically.
But even more than that, this tale took the "best friends" relationship between Nick and Judy and developed it so well. As Judy recovers from her leg injury in Bunnyburrow and Nick undergoes the process of dismantling his hustling lifestyle, their nightly phone calls quickly became my favorite part of the story depicting two mammals deepening their friendship not through great emotional revelations on the phone, but just checking in and asking about their respective days, truly enjoying the sense of connection afforded to them across the phone line, even taking satisfaction in just hearing the other breathe in their moments of silence. It portrayed Nick as a mammal who had been lost in the desert, not even aware he was dying of thirst, then suddenly coming across an oasis and finding a need being meet he didn't even know he had.
A beautiful story that shows the impact Judy had on Nick's life and their deepening relationship as best friends. I highly recommend it.
NOTE: In light of BURGINABC's comments, I modified my review in agreement that Platonic Life Partners was not accurate. I do take issue with his assessment that Nick's internal dialogue was indicative of mental instability. The tale introduces an OC of Nick's uncle, a very bitter fox with a "me against the world" mentality who raises Nick after his mother dies (the author didn't know that Ms. Wilde is still alive). As Nick is first starting to dismantle all traces of his old life, he does have conversations with himself between "old Nick", "new Nick", and the voice of his uncle quoting harsh "truths" about the world but this fades over the course of the story as Nick proceeds down his new life path with growing confidence. The author was trying to show Nick at a crossroads and I didn't find this to be evidence of an aberrant mental state, however, this is the author's first published fan-fic and he admits that dialogue was something he needs to work on so any appearance of mental instability should be weighed against an author working to improve their writing skills. That said, I feel he gains his footing rather well over the course of the tale especially during Nick and Judy's nightly phone calls (which it seems BURGINABC never got to read since he stopped halfway through).