DISCUSSION: Collecting Fics and the Storage System?

[Sir Turtlelot]

Hi there! I've been lurking around the fan-fiction section for awhile now, and I was wondering about the collection aspect of Pokemon fanfics and how they are typically handled.

I've been on a fairly long hiatus from writing, and am looking at trying to get back into the hobby, so I figured I would try my hand at fanfiction for a change. Your site has quite of wealth of knowledge and writing tips for Pokemon fics, but I feel this is one aspect of the games that doesn't seem talked about as much in discussions, at least from what I've seen.

So I suppose my main two points of discussion would be:

How do you handle having a protagonist with the goal of completing the Pokedex, especially in regards to relationship(s) with their pokemon?

How do you handle the transferring of team members to and from the Pokemon Storage System?

Thanks!

 

[Beth Pavell]

There's really no getting around the fact that there's only so much space in any one story. Even with a team of three to six pokémon it's quite a juggling act to give them all screentime, and it all squeezes the amount of development any one of them can get. The anime (A story with mostly one-dimensional characters, let's not forget) learned this the hard way in the Unova arcs.

If I were to write a collecting fic, I wouldn't try and treat the pokémon as characters in their own right, instead going down the "bright animals" route. The only other option I could see working would be to have an extremely small main team - perhaps no more than three pokémon used specifically for capture - with all the other captures as essentially one-off characters. This would mean sacrificing any Badge-collecting narrative, but that's the choice the medium presents.

 

[Drakon]

The only real way around this is to make each new capture a "character of the chapter" or something along the lines. Have them make an appearance, develop them a little bit and then send them away to the storage system/Oak's ranch.

Or even just make them akin to weapons or animals with minimal personality and emphasize the trainer's personality and traits.

If you want to have the pokemon as characters...then that's nigh impossible to blend with the "collecting" aspect. It's very difficult if not outright impossible to make even 150 unique characters and have them all make an appearance in the story.

But for a full "epic adventure" fic or badge collecting narrative, then I don't think the collecting idea will work out at all.

 

[Sir Turtlelot]

Thanks for the solid advice!

I am curious though, why do you consider completing the Pokedex to be incompatible with badge collecting? I understand that one or the other would have to be the primary goal, with the other being a more secondary goal, but wouldn't it be possible to have the occasional break in dex completion to challenge the local gym? Both require the trainer to travel the entire region, so it's not as if they wouldn't be passing gyms along the way.

Just a thought.

 

[lucarioknight56]

It has to do with the fact that game mechanics often don't translate well into the literary world. You have to design a plot with a particular conflict in mind, which tends to be a singular goal. In this case, taking on the gyms or Pokedex completion. If you try and do both, you end up not having a focus on the plot, and thus, can result in a lack of character development.

Having collecting and challenging inside a game is a sound concept, as you want to have as many things to do as possible. But in a story, you have a completely different goal: to entertain your readers with a plot and cast set in a fictional world. You have to do this in the shortest time frame possible, which means keeping the plot and the world relatively simple to understand. Along with the issues previously mentioned with collecting Pokemon, I find that there really isn't much conflict with wanting to do that, outside of maybe having competition with another trainer. Even then, to what end would you need to capture all the Pokemon? You could simply scan them like they do in the anime and have that count.

There simply isn't a feasible way you could make a quality story with over 150 Pokemon to use as characters. Layering that with the gym challenge only makes that more complicated. I've had a hard time making five characters fully fledged, let alone that many. It would make the story far longer than it should be to devote a chapter to each, and having the gyms on top of that would simply be too much. Sorry if this sounds repetitive.

 

[Beth Pavell]

lucarioknight pretty much hits it on the head - what's interesting in a game isn't necessarily what's interesting in a story. It ought to be remembered that games are inherently interactive in a way that a prose story isn't.

It's also worth mentioning that big stories are tiring. There's a reason most journeyfics are abandoned in their infancy - they take time and effort to write, often trying to balance the competing needs of multiple narratives

 

[Iggy]

There simply isn't a feasible way you could make a quality story with over 150 Pokemon to use as characters.

Then don't have them as characters is that I would do. It's about collecting, not trying to interview 150 Pokémon or make them seem as complex as humans. The anime and the game portrait most Pokémon hardly above dumb animals, so why would you make them more than they need to be and give yourself a nice headache in the process?

There's something else, too: having them turn out as deeply complex as humans and try to apply any character development would seem to deviate from the story's premise of collecting Pokémon and therefore hurt the story. I'd say it's really an open invitation to wander off with your story into the bushes, having completely lost the original focus.

 

[AetherX]

I agree with pretty much everything that's been said here, as someone with a long journey fic nearing its completion after seven years of on and off writing. I'm hoping I speak for everyone however, when I say that I don't want to sound discouraging. If you have a cool idea, then write it! I think there's a lot of ground to be explored as far as fics based around catching Pokemon rather than just battling. Like LK said, combining them can give your characters stuff to do, but it will likely result in a story that's all over the place in terms of pacing and plot. For a lot of fanfiction, that's standard and perfectly fine. But personally I'm a fan of more structured narratives.

Like I said though, I think there is potential in the idea so I'm going to ramble for a bit, take what you want from this

I've never personally dealt with a Pokemon storage system beyond leaving a few Pokemon in the care of a friend/family member, so I can't say much on that front. Completing the Pokedex would be a mammoth task that would be challenging to break down into smaller subplots and a climax without skipping over a bunch of it, which wouldn't be great to read. Unless that was the whole point. You could split it up into a bunch of connected short stories that focus on the most important captures, and maybe tie those in with important events in a character's life. Maybe they meet their rival for the first time when the two are chasing after the same Spearow. Maybe the protagonist falls in love with their partner while they're on a mission to catch a Sudowoodo together. Telling them as separate short stories would make skipping over most of the captures much more bearable (while actually telling the story of every capture could get boring real fast). Alternately, the focus could be on capturing certain kinds of Pokemon rather than all of them. Legendaries, shinies, rare or interesting Pokemon in general, powerful Pokemon for breeding/whatever. I'd definitely stick to a small consistent team of Pokemon to actually accompany the protagonist(s), like has been suggested. The relationships with the captured Pokemon should only be relevant if they're actually joining the team. Battling/gyms could be part of it, but I would personally keep it as a subplot. Journey fics often struggle with the gym circuit not meshing well with the actual plot. Either way, you'd need really engaging characters, since they would very much be carrying the story.

That's all subjective rambling, though. Hope some of it helps.

 

[Drakon]

Also, on a more "realistic" note, completing the pokédex is a far more difficult task than even winning multiple leagues.

A large amount of leagues and badges could be won in a few decades. Completing the pokédex could literally take someone their entire life.

In the anime Oak mentions that people have spent their whole lives searching for Ho-Oh without success.

This could work for an adventure fic but then again, you'd have to abandon the battling and gym badge aspect. And then there's the risk of the reader (or author) simply losing interest because the story's dragging on.

 

[Persephone]

I kind of plan on working with collecting in guidance, albeit on a very toned down level that amounts to fulfilling the USUM sidequests of getting Pokemon other people request. I sort of plan on going about it by making the targets just wild animals they're hunting with no further consideration of their character.

On the rare occasion something stands out about a particular capture, it will join the main team.

 

[Sir Turtlelot]

I guess I would equate writing a collecting fic to how you would go about completing the Pokedex itself in game. There's a handful of Pokemon that would be used as your team, but the rest would be captured and sent off to the box.

Giving a fleshed out personality to every 'mon seems excessive, since most would only be around for a battle and a capture. The team members would obviously be fleshed out, but that's because would be around for more than a single chapter.

Just to clarify, I'm not necessarily planning on a writing such a piece myself, I was simply curious about the subject, since arguably the two most common goals of nearly all Pokemon media is to either collect badges/become champion or to complete the Pokedex. Seeing as latter seems rarely discussed in this section, I was simply curious as to why not.

I appreciate all the input!

 

[KrspaceT]

My personal experience is that with Professor Oak's lab you can work around the issue of feeding and care and the locking away of Pokemon (or a substitue for Oak's lab in theme). Personally I feel that a character with a 'catch them all' or such goal should have this, and also a reason.

In my own fic Misty wants to capture one of every Water-Pokemon, and Professor Oak agrees to keep the ones she catches at the lab for her (she has family issues in Reset Bloodlines). He can research Pokemon he doesn't get a lot of (fully aquatic), and she can more effectively work to her goal.

 

[Beth Pavell]

The main issue I have with the "Oak ranch" solution is that it potentially runs into the same problem of logistics. This is something the anime pretty much ignores, but there's got to be an upper limit to the number of pokémon that can be fed and housed on any one piece of land.

 

[Sir Turtlelot]

I've always liked the idea of leaving boxed pokemon at an expanded secret base. There's zero basis for it in any media, that I know of, and doesn't make sense from a logistics point of view, since who's going to man the computer transfers, but it just seemed like a more personalized version of Oak ranch. Not to mention secret bases can be in just about any environment, which is good for those who specialize in Pokemon specifically from a certain environment, such as mountainous or coastal.

Just a random thought.

 

[KrspaceT]

The main issue I have with the "Oak ranch" solution is that it potentially runs into the same problem of logistics. This is something the anime pretty much ignores, but there's got to be an upper limit to the number of pokémon that can be fed and housed on any one piece of land.

I assume that the Professor has additional funding from places. Though I do feel a fanfic exploring how Ash handles the death of Professor Oak with his reserves.

 

[Greninjaman]

How about having a PC box system like in the games? That would solve the problems that leaving them at Oak's would create.

 

[KrspaceT]

How about having a PC box system like in the games? That would solve the problems that leaving them at Oak's would create.

Suspended animation is better than running around a open field training themselves?

 

[Greninjaman]

Suspended animation is better than running around a open field training themselves?

...I guess you have a point...

*idea* How about instead of leaving all the Pokemon with one person, you could do this:
Kanto Pokemon are sent to Oak
Johto Pokemon are sent to Elm
Hoenn Pokemon are sent to Birch
and so on...

There. Problem solved.

 

[Beth Pavell]

Doesn't solve the logistics problem. You can pare it down if there's only one trainer collecting such huge numbers of pokémon, but if they're going to be out and about they're going to need feeding, watering, health care, space. Some will need specialised habitats ... more pokémon means more staff needed to do all this. Where's the money for all this coming from? Who's paying for it all and why?

None of these are necessarily insurmountable problems, but they do at least need to be thought about in a story where collecting pokémon is the focus

 

[Greninjaman]

Or you could just have that happen off-screen so to speak, and not worry about it.