Introduction
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From coast to coast and to the heart of the countryside, along ancient trackways and through the celebrated streets of the cities, Bethany Pavell sets off to rediscover the essence of Kanto: the legends, the history and the people that flavour the region, and the tension between humanity and the natural world that has come to define it.
May I present, at long last, my second fanfiction project. There and Back Again is a little unusual as fanfiction goes, taking the form of a travelogue around the Kanto region written by my wittier, prettier alter ego Bethany Pavell. The story is set in the same universe as my other story The Long Walk, visiting game and anime locations with a similar approach to the worldbuilding. The chapters are intended to be read in any order (You'll find the Table of Contents after the Introductions below).
This journey started at the end of another.
I was sitting outside a café in Aquacorde Town, feeling very tired, thoroughly frustrated, and altogether far from home. It was a fine, sunny day, as it always seems to be in Kalos (They must manufacture sunshine here), in a pretty, Neo-Romanesque town, charming in that carefully calibrated, faintly smug way Kalosian towns are. Squadrons of rollerbladers glided along the bank of the Chartreine, dodging around people crossing the Pont du Quarellis.
I took a few photos, for the look of the thing. It’s not like I had anything better to do. I should have been on the 8am coach to Lumiose City, but the ticket officer who had printed my return in the first place had somehow managed to print a ticket for the 8pm departure instead. Naturally I carefully explained this to the conductor, who bluntly pointed out that this was the 8am departure, not the 8pm departure. I pointed out that this was clearly the ticket officer’s mistake, as evidenced by his signature here, see? A classically Kalosian shrug. In desperation I put on my best cute voice and told him that I really needed to be in Lumiose that evening for work (Which was true, by the way).
“J’en ai rien à foutre,” he said.
So, there I was, killing time and cursing the sheer wooden-headed obtusity of Autobus Nationale employees. I hadn’t any idea how I was going to properly finish my article for Near and Afar without Madrigal Madness – instead I nursed my frustration and savoured the prospect of having a good shout at some Autobus Nationale employees who really deserved it. Oh, they’d give a foutre then.
These days most of my work is written for magazines. Now, it had been a couple of years since I wrote my first book, 30 Days of Johto. 30 Days had sold moderately well – itself an achievement in the travel writing world, one I’m proud of – but nothing like well enough to put it anywhere near the bestseller lists. So when my agent phoned out of the blue it was very much a double-check to see if I'm dreaming moment.
“Beth Pavell. You were trying to call me, Simon?” I said.
“Collingwood want you to write another book,” he announced.
“They do?” I said.
“They do. They want to commission you to write a travel piece in the style of 30 Days.”
“So … they want me to do Kalos?” I said uncertainly.
“No!” he said, squashing that notion. “They want you to do Kanto.”
Kanto? I thought. I could hardly think of a more tired region for a travelogue. Kanto was so familiar, so usual, her paths trod and re-trod by countless writers before me. What was there to find in Kanto that hadn't been found a hundred times already? I accepted, not because I expected to be surprised, fascinated, or delighted by the Home Region, but because a commission is a commission and I never like to turn down work.
But still, it would be a clichéd commission, a banal journey around a banal region, right?
As it turned out, my perception was wrong. I'm not sure I can claim to have discovered anything like a hidden, unexplored Kanto, but on my journey I was genuinely surprised, fascinated, and sometimes really quite delighted.
Habitually we speak of a united Middle Kingdom, and indeed Kanto and Johto have a lot in common. But Kanto has its own subtle identity. For good or ill, the Home Region looms large in our shared Imperial culture, praised by Nationalists, mythologised by Romantics, and, of course, chronicled by travel writers. And, not without reason. Kanto is a land of natural beauty married to human endeavour – Cerulean City shining between the mountains and the sea, Fuchsia of the million flowers, green and glad Celadon City. Humans have lived in Kanto since the Stone Age, each successive generation leaving behind a new page of the long story inscribed upon the landscape.
After years of travelling the Middle Kingdom, I've found that's what these regions are – story after story, laid down over the centuries like layers of chalk.
Some of these Kantoese stories have been told and retold so often that they, and the associated wonders they describe, have become stale through repetition, clichés. I'm not a Kantonian – actually, as a native Johtoan I am very nearly honour-bound to expound at length about how Johto has its own unique charm and fantastic wonder. But I’ve realised a couple of things on my travels. That the clichés, dry and tired though they may be, are usually true. And that clichés are not all that Kanto has to offer.
It is this diversity of spirit (And, it must be said, of people), the clichéd and the novel, the charming and the odious, that makes the Home Region anything but banal. Clichéd, odious – unflattering adjectives, and I make no apology for them. In writing There and Back Again, I’ve been determined to write with sincerity. My hope is to have written a book with a broad appeal – not merely a paean to Kanto, but an honest snapshot of the history, geography, and culture of the region. For broad appeal, too, I’ve tried to include plenty to interest readers both national and international. To help me with this, my friend and fellow author Nine Pretty Butterflies has contributed some supplemental information for the international reader.
I'm doing the final edit of this introduction at my desk, back home in New Bark Town. Rain drums at the window pane, flung onto the glass by the winds of new beginning. One of my favourite little ironies, being in New Bark at the end of a journey. I tap my pen fruitlessly on my cheap, battered MDF desk, wondering what I can say to round this introduction off.
In desperation I turn to the quotation book in search of ideas. Oh, dear me. I hadn’t hitherto realised how pompous my fellow travellers can be. ‘The world is a book, and those who do not travel have read only one page’. ’Don’t tell me how educated you are, tell me how far you’ve travelled’. I won’t even bother telling you the attribution to these – neither saint nor prophet said either. The real source, I suspect, is probably some upper middle-class hippy drunk on homemade rice wine and second hand Dharmic koans.
It doesn’t really get much better. The next one really gets on my tits:
‘Travel while you’re still young and able. Don’t worry about the money, just make it work. Experience is far more valuable than money will ever be.’
How supercilious! How completely inane! Just make it work? I’m lucky enough to get paid to travel, and I pay my bills in dollars, not cute stories about cycling around Tianxia.
It’s in the midst of my quotation-inspired bad temper – mentally composing savage diatribes against it – that I realise what an ideal region Kanto is to explore. You can wander the region for months at a time, footloose and carefree, but you can just as easily explore an interesting corner of Kanto in a weekend. It’s definitely worth looking into. If you do manage to visit, be open to surprise, fascination, and certainly, delight.
May I present, at long last, my second fanfiction project. There and Back Again is a little unusual as fanfiction goes, taking the form of a travelogue around the Kanto region written by my wittier, prettier alter ego Bethany Pavell. The story is set in the same universe as my other story The Long Walk, visiting game and anime locations with a similar approach to the worldbuilding. The chapters are intended to be read in any order (You'll find the Table of Contents after the Introductions below).
- Substance use - infrequent consumption of alcohol
- Moderate suggestive themes - infrequent mentions of sexual behaviour
Kanto: There and Back Again
Miss Bethany Pavell
This journey started at the end of another.
I was sitting outside a café in Aquacorde Town, feeling very tired, thoroughly frustrated, and altogether far from home. It was a fine, sunny day, as it always seems to be in Kalos (They must manufacture sunshine here), in a pretty, Neo-Romanesque town, charming in that carefully calibrated, faintly smug way Kalosian towns are. Squadrons of rollerbladers glided along the bank of the Chartreine, dodging around people crossing the Pont du Quarellis.
I took a few photos, for the look of the thing. It’s not like I had anything better to do. I should have been on the 8am coach to Lumiose City, but the ticket officer who had printed my return in the first place had somehow managed to print a ticket for the 8pm departure instead. Naturally I carefully explained this to the conductor, who bluntly pointed out that this was the 8am departure, not the 8pm departure. I pointed out that this was clearly the ticket officer’s mistake, as evidenced by his signature here, see? A classically Kalosian shrug. In desperation I put on my best cute voice and told him that I really needed to be in Lumiose that evening for work (Which was true, by the way).
“J’en ai rien à foutre,” he said.
So, there I was, killing time and cursing the sheer wooden-headed obtusity of Autobus Nationale employees. I hadn’t any idea how I was going to properly finish my article for Near and Afar without Madrigal Madness – instead I nursed my frustration and savoured the prospect of having a good shout at some Autobus Nationale employees who really deserved it. Oh, they’d give a foutre then.
These days most of my work is written for magazines. Now, it had been a couple of years since I wrote my first book, 30 Days of Johto. 30 Days had sold moderately well – itself an achievement in the travel writing world, one I’m proud of – but nothing like well enough to put it anywhere near the bestseller lists. So when my agent phoned out of the blue it was very much a double-check to see if I'm dreaming moment.
“Beth Pavell. You were trying to call me, Simon?” I said.
“Collingwood want you to write another book,” he announced.
“They do?” I said.
“They do. They want to commission you to write a travel piece in the style of 30 Days.”
“So … they want me to do Kalos?” I said uncertainly.
“No!” he said, squashing that notion. “They want you to do Kanto.”
Kanto? I thought. I could hardly think of a more tired region for a travelogue. Kanto was so familiar, so usual, her paths trod and re-trod by countless writers before me. What was there to find in Kanto that hadn't been found a hundred times already? I accepted, not because I expected to be surprised, fascinated, or delighted by the Home Region, but because a commission is a commission and I never like to turn down work.
But still, it would be a clichéd commission, a banal journey around a banal region, right?
* * *
As it turned out, my perception was wrong. I'm not sure I can claim to have discovered anything like a hidden, unexplored Kanto, but on my journey I was genuinely surprised, fascinated, and sometimes really quite delighted.
Habitually we speak of a united Middle Kingdom, and indeed Kanto and Johto have a lot in common. But Kanto has its own subtle identity. For good or ill, the Home Region looms large in our shared Imperial culture, praised by Nationalists, mythologised by Romantics, and, of course, chronicled by travel writers. And, not without reason. Kanto is a land of natural beauty married to human endeavour – Cerulean City shining between the mountains and the sea, Fuchsia of the million flowers, green and glad Celadon City. Humans have lived in Kanto since the Stone Age, each successive generation leaving behind a new page of the long story inscribed upon the landscape.
After years of travelling the Middle Kingdom, I've found that's what these regions are – story after story, laid down over the centuries like layers of chalk.
Some of these Kantoese stories have been told and retold so often that they, and the associated wonders they describe, have become stale through repetition, clichés. I'm not a Kantonian – actually, as a native Johtoan I am very nearly honour-bound to expound at length about how Johto has its own unique charm and fantastic wonder. But I’ve realised a couple of things on my travels. That the clichés, dry and tired though they may be, are usually true. And that clichés are not all that Kanto has to offer.
It is this diversity of spirit (And, it must be said, of people), the clichéd and the novel, the charming and the odious, that makes the Home Region anything but banal. Clichéd, odious – unflattering adjectives, and I make no apology for them. In writing There and Back Again, I’ve been determined to write with sincerity. My hope is to have written a book with a broad appeal – not merely a paean to Kanto, but an honest snapshot of the history, geography, and culture of the region. For broad appeal, too, I’ve tried to include plenty to interest readers both national and international. To help me with this, my friend and fellow author Nine Pretty Butterflies has contributed some supplemental information for the international reader.
* * *
I'm doing the final edit of this introduction at my desk, back home in New Bark Town. Rain drums at the window pane, flung onto the glass by the winds of new beginning. One of my favourite little ironies, being in New Bark at the end of a journey. I tap my pen fruitlessly on my cheap, battered MDF desk, wondering what I can say to round this introduction off.
In desperation I turn to the quotation book in search of ideas. Oh, dear me. I hadn’t hitherto realised how pompous my fellow travellers can be. ‘The world is a book, and those who do not travel have read only one page’. ’Don’t tell me how educated you are, tell me how far you’ve travelled’. I won’t even bother telling you the attribution to these – neither saint nor prophet said either. The real source, I suspect, is probably some upper middle-class hippy drunk on homemade rice wine and second hand Dharmic koans.
It doesn’t really get much better. The next one really gets on my tits:
‘Travel while you’re still young and able. Don’t worry about the money, just make it work. Experience is far more valuable than money will ever be.’
How supercilious! How completely inane! Just make it work? I’m lucky enough to get paid to travel, and I pay my bills in dollars, not cute stories about cycling around Tianxia.
It’s in the midst of my quotation-inspired bad temper – mentally composing savage diatribes against it – that I realise what an ideal region Kanto is to explore. You can wander the region for months at a time, footloose and carefree, but you can just as easily explore an interesting corner of Kanto in a weekend. It’s definitely worth looking into. If you do manage to visit, be open to surprise, fascination, and certainly, delight.
Bethany Pavell
September 2014
September 2014
Last edited: