POPULAR: Simple Questions, Simple Answers

[CrystaI]

The first place you will see in Kanto: Vermilion Seaport.

Why? Simple. That is the first place you'll arrive at, provided you came overseas by ship/boat.

 

[Persephone]

Thinking about what people would like, in-universe...

Cerulean Cape seems to have at least national fame. A resident mad scientist on the side of good, romantic lore and vague whisperings of a resident god would all boost its reputation.

Mt. Moon has at least some tourism industry if I'm remembering GSC right? Not a huge fan of the Johto games (sue me) so I don't remember. The clefairy are at least popular in the game world, though.

Mt. Silver is technically in Kanto iirc and at least very iconic in... Johto. I imagine if they were treated as separate countries there would be border disputes.

Celadon City? Saffron's bigger, but Celadon has the mall, gardens and is generally prettier. It's also not really that much smaller.

Since you write in the Anime-verse and Ash is never allowed to be famous ever, Pallet Town would be a non-entity.

 

[CrystaI]

Pallet Town is famous for being the home of the authoritive Pokemon Professor Samuel Oak.

Ash Ketchum? Who's that?

 

[Misfit Angel]

So here's a thought. How does an empty Pokeball determine that a Pokemon has already been captured by a trainer? There's obviously safeguards in place to prevent Poketheft, but how might it work? I figure in the case of trainer battles, all Pokeballs are equipped with a wifi signature that says "hey, that bulbasaur is mine, you can't catch it", but what if the Pokemon escaped and the owner is miles and miles away?

 

[AetherX]

You could do that same thing but have all the information be stored in the cloud, with a super-comprehensive network of satellites providing global coverage. Every time an empty Pokeball is thrown at a Pokemon, it checks to see if its DNA is already registered in the database as belonging to another trainer.

Perhaps a simpler solution would be to have a Pokeball implant some kind of marker in a Pokemon when it is first caught, and Pokeballs would check for that marker before capturing. It could be a physical chip, or maybe some tiny genetic thing.

 

[lucarioknight56]

On that note, the genetic marker or chip would be erased upon release. Certainly works in the world, and it would be less complicated than a cloud system; we already have something like that for Pokemon storage after all.

 

[canisaries]

so does anyone have tips on how one should go about writing horror? preferably good horror, not cheap "and then rayquaza's eyes started bleeding hyperrealistic blood" horror. doesn't necessarily have to be great, my main goal is just not to be be narmy.

extra relevant question because october OuO

 

[UselessBytes]

so does anyone have tips on how one should go about writing horror? preferably good horror, not cheap "and then rayquaza's eyes started bleeding hyperrealistic blood" horror. doesn't necessarily have to be great, my main goal is just not to be be narmy.

extra relevant question because october OuO

depends on the kind of horror you're going for, tbh. I'm an avid horror fan myself. at the core of it, there's psychological and physical horror. Psychological obviously has to do with the mind and generally tends to focus on the supernatural/incomprehensible while physical is the gorier, being chased by a big ass monster side of things.

Either way, for both categories an easy way to make any situation ten times more terrifying than it actually may be is to drive home what exactly the scene is supposed to convey, and then double that. If you've got a monster following a guy in a cave, focus on the guy's paranoia and fear of the monster following, and something on the environment, like the ground trembling with the just out of sight creature's footsteps.

There are a lot of intricacies to horror, and I'm no expert, but I hope I've helped.

 

[Gengarzilla]

There's a little writing related roadblock I'm having. I'd love to post this completed Pokémon Mystery Dungeon fanfic I wrote during July 2016 to January 2017, but I'm feeling too daunted by a lot of the good stories in the workshop to make it happen. It doesn't help either that it was my very first long-term writing project so I'm worried about the reception that my first couple of entry level chapters might receive.

How do I get through this? I hate being stuck in that spot...

 

[diamondpearl876]

There's a little writing related roadblock I'm having. I'd love to post this completed Pokémon Mystery Dungeon fanfic I wrote during July 2016 to January 2017, but I'm feeling too daunted by a lot of the good stories in the workshop to make it happen. It doesn't help either that it was my very first long-term writing project so I'm worried about the reception that my first couple of entry level chapters might receive.

How do I get through this? I hate being stuck in that spot...

Hey, there! You could always go back and edit your early chapters if you're not particularly comfortable releasing them to the public just yet, or there are plenty of reviewers here who are willing to offer constructive feedback for your early chapters if you aren't sure what/how to edit! At any rate, we don't want anyone to feel afraid of posting their stories here because they feel inadequate. Each writer has their own strengths and flaws, and comparing yourself to other authors doesn't do much except make writing a painful, unfun thing to do. At any rate, I'm a fan of PMD fics myself, so I hope to see yours soon!

 

[AetherX]

There's a little writing related roadblock I'm having. I'd love to post this completed Pokémon Mystery Dungeon fanfic I wrote during July 2016 to January 2017, but I'm feeling too daunted by a lot of the good stories in the workshop to make it happen. It doesn't help either that it was my very first long-term writing project so I'm worried about the reception that my first couple of entry level chapters might receive.

How do I get through this? I hate being stuck in that spot...

dp ninja'd me here, but I thought I'd post this anyway.

If you're not too confident with your early chapters, then editing them is a good way to go. I've been posting a fic for a while, but going back and updating the earlier chapters has been very satisfying. And if people critique the old stuff that I haven't had a chance to get to yet, then I don't have to worry about it because I already know I'm better than that. It's all about mindset. Take it from me, try not to compare yourself to other authors. You'll avoid a lot of grief. We all have our weaknesses and insecurities, but also a lot of strengths that we may not see in ourselves.

Best way to get through this nervousness, in my opinion, is to just post it and see what happens. If you want to ease into it, feel free to send the first couple chapters to me or another Workshop mod to get some private feedback before you publish. You could also post in the General Chat thread to see if anyone there is willing to help in the same way. Hope to see your story soon!

 

[lucarioknight56]

@Gengarzilla

I'm working on a PMD fic myself right now, 'PMD: The Forgotten Isles', and I'd be glad to help you out if you need it! And don't be discouraged about posting it; we could do with a little more variety around here. It's been a while since anyone other than me has posted a fic like that.

 

[Misfit Angel]

Here's something I'm stumped on. The latest chapter of my story focuses on two side characters, who are discussing something before they call the main character. The chapter I'm currently working on starts just a little before that phone call for a brief interaction between the main character and the deuteragonist, which I feel is fairly important for their ongoing development together. Then she gets the phone call from the previous chapter, and after a hard break, the chapter resumes after the phone call, since there's no reason to tread the same ground twice.

How do I let the reader know that the phone call she receives in this chapter is the subject of the previous chapter? I don't want her to announce it in the chapter, since she knows the contents of that phone conversation will freak out her travel partner, something she very much wants to avoid.

 

[Gengarzilla]

I've always been comparing myself to others in a lot of things I enjoy doing and that's something I know I shouldn't get caught up in. There's some friends off site who I've shown this to, but I didn't have this problem then because none of them write any Pokémon fanfiction.

It's mostly the first three chapters I've been fretting about since they're from back before I really found a groove and got comfortable. The rest of this, I feel content and happy enough with how they look to post them as they are.
Number 1 in particular is a real bedbug thing so I've been making some edits to that one now. I can't really promise masterpieces but this encouragement has really helped me out. Thanks!

What I've been writing is a retelling fic based upon the RT games, mostly using its general story of "human is summoned to stop falling star" until the human lead's return and then running that into my own story afterwards with the source's settings. It bothers me how those games didn't have any sort of overall plot after the credits roll; this whole thing started from me wanting to fix that.

EDIT: It's started! Thanks again for building me up!

 

[Beth Pavell]

Here's something I'm stumped on. The latest chapter of my story focuses on two side characters, who are discussing something before they call the main character. The chapter I'm currently working on starts just a little before that phone call for a brief interaction between the main character and the deuteragonist, which I feel is fairly important for their ongoing development together. Then she gets the phone call from the previous chapter, and after a hard break, the chapter resumes after the phone call, since there's no reason to tread the same ground twice.

How do I let the reader know that the phone call she receives in this chapter is the subject of the previous chapter? I don't want her to announce it in the chapter, since she knows the contents of that phone conversation will freak out her travel partner, something she very much wants to avoid.

Well, there's your reason to re-tread some of the ground twice. Reproduce some of the dialogue at the beginning of the call - the polite pleasantries, I'd assume - to make it clear it's the same conversation. It's not redundant if it's establishing a timeline

 

[canisaries]

what should normal groceries bought for essentially a family of four or five cost? and especially in pokemon world. am stuck, being someone who barely ever buys anything by herself aside from school lunch.

 

[Beth Pavell]

Our weekly shop usually comes to around £100, give or take. That's being fairly thrifty but not harshly frugal. I don't see it as being significantly different in the pokémon world - unless it's the kind of region where there are hardly any transport links between cities, of course

 

[CrystaI]

Rather than asking such question in the Writer's Workshop, go instead ask your parents to bring you along during the next grocery shopping.

 

[canisaries]

should have been clearer: in the second part of my question, i wanted to ask about currencies. dollars, yen, pokedollars, pokeyen, what to use, pros and cons? doesn't help that my country uses euro.

the region in question is kanto, which in my universe is at least ethnically a mix of asian (primarily japanese) and caucasian (and of course whatever the hell ethnicity would have anime hair colors).

 

[Beth Pavell]

The "Pokédollar" thing is a real pet peeve of mine - it's all a bit too smurftastic.

Every currency has its own etymology and therefore history. The pound - sterling or otherwise - has the least cultural baggage, being originally based on a simple weight of precious metal. Dollars aren't bad. I use them in an otherwise English Johto, probably to the surprise of my readers, because dollars have more interesting slang. Dollar comes from the Czech thaler, I think, but it does have versions in a lot of Northern European languages. Yen I'm less familiar with, but if your Kanto is predominantly culturally Japanese I can't see how it would be inappropriate.

Alternatively otherwise defunct currencies are available. The sovereign is a pretty culture-neutral coin, similar coins being the medieval English royal, the Spanish réal, and I'm pretty sure there was a French roi. Similarly the crown is a fantasy staple. Many coins have simple origin names, if you wanted to invent one. The famous Spanish doubloon is an Anglicised version of doblón, I think, "double", so called because it was worth two escudos