POPULAR: Cliches in Pokémon Fanfiction

[Beth Pavell]

I've never had a taste for the League as a form of government either. You could tangentially argue a hint in the canons of the manga or the games, since Gym Leaders there seem to gallivant around doing exactly what they like

 

[BackSet]

I'm sorry, but I couldn't recall any official materials from whichever canon that had ever stated or even implied or at the very least mildly hinted that the association which holds the Pokemon League or any battle conference consist of any political power or being involved in any political affairs of a region or a country.

Wasn't there that one where the Leauge were the bad guys?

 

[Misfit Angel]

Imagine FIFA having any sort of political power, that would be a terrible tragedy. It does kinda happen in some ways, what with slavery being employed to construct Qatar's world cup stadium and FIFA doing absolutely nothing to stop it, maybe even encourage it.

I guess Pokemon can be an idealistic world where there isn't corruption of that level, but things like that are why I would never leave things like government and law up to a sports league. Maybe they could lobby for laws related to Pokemon ownership, but that's it.

 

[AceTrainer14]

As I always end up saying in this thread, it is a cliche if it's done badly. Just saying the gym leaders are in charge is dull and a bit of a cop out, but if them ruling the region serves a purpose to the plot and is thought out well enough, I see no issue with it. I generally would prefer that in Pokemon fiction over bringing our brand of politics into things.

I generally imagine it as there being city councils running each city on their own, controlling rates and taxes and such, while the League and certain high profile individuals, such as top professors and researchers and such, vote on major issues of national and international significance. However, most regions run without much interaction between each other. Businesses and local councils organise trade of goods and what not, but as Pokemon-based industries are the biggest economic earners in this world, the League has a lot of authority.

And indeed, taking the FIFA example, I do think sports and non-government institutes like that tend to have a lot of influence and control anyway. I just don't see a reason to follow a democratic system in my world when it is not our world. There is no Athens to have invented it, only tribes of people that existed in their own ways and were fairly separatist until Pokemon battling brought the world closer together. Having too much of a focus on a proper Government institute would also probably make it a lot harder for any of the teams to take power, and then I'd have no stories XD "And the building remained standing because government regulations ensured proper construction and a lack of killer clowns" does not make for good reading.

 

[Beth Pavell]

Government that makes sense is not the same as "democracy". And it's a long and complex road from the tyrants to the poplar democracies of today.

The thing is, government is as much tied together with societal ideals, technology, trade, and all the other paraphernalia of life. The more complex the human world gets, the bigger the government is needed to keep it running - and the more people care about it being done properly. This is where the canon shows that Pokémon is a narratively lazy franchise - it's all completely ignored in order to have the "kid protagonist beats super villains" plot go ahead with the absolute minimum effort.

It's a shame, really. I'm reminded of The Wind Singer - a book featuring a kind of meritocratic dystopia published well before the fashion for dystopias. Don't get me wrong, it was still as juvenile as a kid's book could so often be before Harry Potter, but at least it made an effort to build a world where the kid protagonists made some sense.

 

[AceTrainer14]

Government that makes sense is not the same as "democracy". And it's a long and complex road from the tyrants to the poplar democracies of today.

The thing is, government is as much tied together with societal ideals, technology, trade, and all the other paraphernalia of life. The more complex the human world gets, the bigger the government is needed to keep it running - and the more people care about it being done properly.

And again, it depends on the context of the story. What standards should a fictional government be held to in order to "make sense"?

 

[BackSet]

Pokemon in general has been narratively lazy. That's kind of why we've always have the same beat 8 gyms and take down evil team excuse plot in every game.

 

[Beth Pavell]

People are still people. The motivations of a society have to make as much sense as the motivations of a main character. To take a Pokémon example, the laziest way a League government tends to be written is to stick the Champion at the top as head of state ... with the title gained in the same way as it is in the games, i.e: simply being a good trainer. At the head of a modern state, with modern commerce, modern communications, sometimes even a modern legal system. And you have a kid who knows nothing of any of it.

So you have the question of why anyone would put up with someone so manifestly untrained for the job being given the top job. If the Champion is supposed to be a ceremonial figurehead - a symbol of authority that justifies the exercise of power - then who actually runs things and how do they get the job?

By this point many authors will have already got bored and decided to just use the old "it's fantasy" excuse to avoid having to think about it at all. In a story where this doesn't impact much on the plot - a tale of a personal struggle between two rivals, say, or one set in a kind of wild west beyond the frontiers of organised power - it can be reasonably avoided. In a story about people who aren't human you can give them an entirely different set of priorities and ways of thinking.

I think Harry Potter is an apt comparison in many ways. The way the wizard community organises itself raises some serious questions, but as a rule the way they do things differently to non-magical people is a matter of looking at how people might act, given that this kind of magic exists. It is, I think, one of the weaker aspects of Rowling's writing given that it's supposed to grow up as the series continues - but at least she's tried.

 

[BackSet]

People are still people. The motivations of a society have to make as much sense as the motivations of a main character. To take a Pokémon example, the laziest way a League government tends to be written is to stick the Champion at the top as head of state ... with the title gained in the same way as it is in the games, i.e: simply being a good trainer. At the head of a modern state, with modern commerce, modern communications, sometimes even a modern legal system. And you have a kid who knows nothing of any of it.

I fully agree with this. It's completely stupid. It makes monarchy look like a good idea. At least the prospective new monarch is educated about how to be a proper monarch in that scenario.

 

[Persephone]

I only pay attention to the GameVerse and, in general, I tend to agree that the idea that the sports league controls a modern state like Unova is odd. While in the past sports confederations have controlled governments (Early Byzantine Empire comes to mind), that is a long time before the period the games are apparently set in.

Caveats/deeper dives

1) Alola genuinely might have "the league" (the kahunas) in charge because the islands are small, apparently sparsely populated, and the kahunas are appointed for reasons other than their battling strength. And if this is based off of the old government of Hawaii before the British/Americans took it over, it makes sense to have chief-kings ruling a sort of theocratic and communal region. Also the past struggle among Trial Captains kind of suggests actual political influence.

2) The Ranger games might actually have the league-equivalent hold political power, or at least be a government agency. But it's been a while since I played any of those so I might be recalling something.

3) Orre is the closest thing we have to a main series region outlining its government. But even that's vague. Every town has a mayor and one character mentions the region has a governor and he wants to be appointed to the office. If Orre is Arizona/parts of Mexico, the governor title kind of implies that it's a part of some broader country. Since Pokemon Trainers are definitely not competing based on strength to become mayor or governor, it probably holds that the region and the broader country have a primarily civilian government.

4) If the country had far more pressing external threats than internal struggles, it's possible they would want their strongest warrior in charge because a small team of very powerful Pokemon could genuinely matter in battle and presumably they're a good enough tactician. But since all wars have been in the distant past that we've seen... seems unlikely.

5) Pokemon Centers. Healthcare is expensive and someone is clearly paying for those. Are they league institutions? The government? I can't imagine the league could finance them with just merchandise revenue, so I'm going to say those are owned by the government. Whether or not that means the League.

6) I really doubt that the Champions are meaningful heads of state because some of them (Blue, Iris) are very much unqualified to run a modern nation-state. Others (Wallace, Diantha) just don't seem like they'd have the relevant skill sets from their life experience. Really only Lance, Cynthia and Alder strike me as even plausibly qualified people to run a country.

Although given the current state of American politics, I would still take half of those people over the real life elected president. But the current situation also shows how out of their depth a professional athlete would find themselves in a position of real power.

 

[CrystaI]

When you just mentioned GameVerse and Unova, it suddenly reminds me another caveat where it may added to your list:

7) Drayden is the mayor of Opelucid City, and he is a gym leader in Black and B2W2. In White, his gym leader position is taken by Iris, but that didn't make him not the mayor of the city. Well to be fair there is also an unexplained vagueness of did Drayden become the mayor before or after he become a gym leader. If he was a mayor already before he was a gym leader, then very clearly there exist a distinction between the governmental affairs of a city if not expanded to a region and the battle affairs of Pokemon League. Though even if he was a gym leader already before he became a mayor, there will be the counterargument of does that mean every single gym leaders are mayor of their respective cities/towns despite not stated explicitly? I would highly doubt about this.

So, instead of suggesting the political power of Pokemon League, I would say this official material is rather oppositely suggesting the separation between governmental/ministerial affairs and Pokemon League.

 

[AceTrainer14]

I definitely agree that putting the Champion as the head of a government and implying they rule everything is a terrible way of handling things. I personally think one of the better ways to handle it is to put the Champion as a ceremonial Head of State to handle all the show-pony elements of keeping the public happy while others handle the nitty-gritty side of things.

Again, I think a lot of these complaints come from implying the Poke-world is a copy/paste version of our own. While my Athens/democracy comment may not have been terribly thought through, I do think that the context of the world and its history is important to viewing the government. One reason in my world why I believe the League would have considerable influence is there is a history of Pokemon/human conflict that extended centuries until humans began to tame and train Pokemon, and the idea that being able to tame Pokemon is a sign of power would have been passed down through the (not very many) centuries since that first happened. If your world is akin to ours and civilisation has been unfolding and developing at a steady rate for two thousand years, the League having such power would become increasingly unlikely.

I also again disagree with the notion that we should follow hints left in the canon. If we did things solely by the canon, all of our stories would be bland, identical entries about ten-year-olds very easily advancing on journeys through their

 

[TRNatalie]

I also again disagree with the notion that we should follow hints left in the canon. If we did things solely by the canon, all of our stories would be bland, identical entries about ten-year-olds very easily advancing on journeys through their

Not to mention, there are times when the canon(most specifically the anime)contradicts itself. When that happens, what are we supposed to take as correct?

 

[Twilight-Kun]

One common cliché I love thoroughly subverting is "Ash is the Chosen One" that came about as a result of a dubism in M02

Hence why there's usually a good dozen or so humans/pokémon picked by various Legendary Pokémon Trio Masters running around in my stories, keeping the local evil idiots in line

 

[Nitro Indigo]

From what I can remember, in the Japanese version of The Power of One, everyone was all like, "hey, Ash, you're here, you might as well save the world."

I also started reading this Digimon crossover recently, and it falls into the trap of slotting canon characters (in this case, Mew) into pre-existing canon events (in this case, the first episode of Digimon Adventure) without changing much.

 

[TRNatalie]

From what I can remember, in the Japanese version of The Power of One, everyone was all like, "hey, Ash, you're here, you might as well save the world."

According to some translated blog entries from the writer of the movie, the whole theme of the movie was coexistence. Also at one point, Team Rocket were going to be the main characters of the movie.

 

[BackSet]

Also at one point, Team Rocket were slated to be the main characters of the movie.

Why didn't this happen!?!

 

[TRNatalie]

Why didn't this happen!?!

From what I'm getting from the entry, it seems to be a combination of it would've been impossible for them to stay as villains at the end in the first draft(and this writer believed they were necessary for the show's existence) and Rocket episodes are hard to write with an extra hardship of the plot that was eventually penned was not their movie(although he made sure to try to give them as much of the center stage as possible).

 

[Nitro Indigo]

According to some translated blog entries from the writer of the movie, the whole theme of the movie was coexistence. Also at one point, Team Rocket were slated to be the main characters of the movie.

That's not directly relevant to what I said... also, I knew about the co-existence thing from The Cartoon Gamer, but not Team Rocket being the main characters.

 

[TRNatalie]

That's not directly relevant to what I said

Sorry. Still its kind of funny how the original version of the movie subverted the 'Ash is the Chosen One' cliche before the dubbed version introduced it.