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Most common & annoying things that show up in Pokemon fiction

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AuraSoul93

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What's something you constantly run into when looking at Pokemon fanfiction? For me, it's that the main character is either an Aura Guardian, owns a Pikachu or a Riolu/Lucario or both, or has control over some incredibly overpowered Pokemon (Metagross, Hydreigon, etc.) right at the start. These things just scream Mary Sue since they have such good things going for the character before the story even begins.

Not every character has to have these things & it's more than okay to be normal (all the way through for some people, at first for many others). I don't like talking to a buddy of mine about a fanfic & the conversation goes like this: "Hey dude, you read dat Pokemon fic I told you about?" "Which one?" "Da one w/ da emo Champion." "Which one?" "Where he has a Tyranitar." "Like I said bro; which one?" "Da one where he has da hot smart girlfriend watching all his Pokemon except for when he battles" "For the last time; WHICH ONE???.

So many of these stories are a dime a dozen & I wanted to know what are some common things you find when reading Pokemon fanfics, specifically ones that bug you?
 
Wow I've never seen any of those actually xD

Something that I find annoying and that I seen in every fic....oddly enough I can't really recall, well there is one thing, I've gotten a bit tired of the cliche confident and naive main character that starts out in a journey, you know kind of like an Ash rehash.

But something that's bothered me most honestly is fics that take something that isn't really that serious and make it too serious. This is okay if the plot of the fic is something that separates itself from the setting but for example, we get journey fics where normal kids have to deal with matters that a lot of adults would run away from (I'm super super guilty of that I have to admit) and people making a lot of things more serious than they should be, like journeys. There are a lot of journey fics that treat their character's adventures as if they were just an excuse for them to run into a disaster, yes struggle is important but just adding a lot of dark tone into something isn't going to make it great.

Othe rthan that I don't really have too many complains myself, at least nothing that annoys me.
 
Hmm...

1. Definitely the Riolu/Lucario one.
2. Also Eevee. Screw Eevee.
3. 'Unique' starters in general. I put it in quotes because actual unique starters are good (when was the last time you saw someone start with a Sunkern?) but the oh-so-special Riolu/Dratini/Eevee/Pikachu really grinds my gears.
3. Main characters who never lose.
4. Corollary: Main characters who sometimes lose, but never learn anything from it.
5. The 'it's my tenth birthday so it's immediately time to leave home with a Pokemon' thing. SO done.
6. Rescuing Pokemon from abusive trainers/abandonment/whatever and immediately gaining their trust and undying love.
7. Characters who see the world in black and white and fail to understand that 'good' and 'evil' are subjective concepts (a little author avatar syndrome going on here usually)
8. Legendaries. You don't capture them. You just don't. It doesn't work. Bit of a sliding scale on this one, depending on number, rarity, size, temperament etc, but generally I'm not okay with Trainers who battle with legendaries.
 
I don't read much in the way of fanfiction (owing mostly to Sturgeon's Law), but two of these points remind me:

3. Main characters who never lose.
4. Corollary: Main characters who sometimes lose, but never learn anything from it.
In one of my stories, one of my MC's first major battles ends in a major defeat, because he didn't realize exactly what he was getting himself into. The ones who have to rescue him do criticize his lack of strategic thinking and work on training him so he can avoid doing something similar in the future.

6. Rescuing Pokemon from abusive trainers/abandonment/whatever and immediately gaining their trust and undying love.
Then there's another one of my stories where a Ranger found a Jolteon pretty near death as a result of abuse by its trainer (the trainer's other Pokemon were none to happy about doing it, but an order's an order). A Pokemon Center was able to heal him physically, but the Ranger noted that his emotional wounds would take more or less forever to heal.
 
Hmm...

2. Also Eevee. Screw Eevee.

But...I like Eevee *whimpers* Okay, I've never written a fic where it's a starter, or written a Pokemon fic period, but...

3. 'Unique' starters in general. I put it in quotes because actual unique starters are good (when was the last time you saw someone start with a Sunkern?) but the oh-so-special Riolu/Dratini/Eevee/Pikachu really grinds my gears.

I have to agree on that part. Dratini are supposed to be very rare, so starting with one...you'd have to be really lucky. And starting with Pikachu already seems like you are copying Ash.

3. Main characters who never lose.
4. Corollary: Main characters who sometimes lose, but never learn anything from it.

Agreed.
5. The 'it's my tenth birthday so it's immediately time to leave home with a Pokemon' thing. SO done.
6. Rescuing Pokemon from abusive trainers/abandonment/whatever and immediately gaining their trust and undying love.
7. Characters who see the world in black and white and fail to understand that 'good' and 'evil' are subjective concepts (a little author avatar syndrome going on here usually)
8. Legendaries. You don't capture them. You just don't. It doesn't work. Bit of a sliding scale on this one, depending on number, rarity, size, temperament etc, but generally I'm not okay with Trainers who battle with legendaries.

Agreed on all of these. Just because someone is old enough to get their own Pokemon license doesn't automatically mean they start traveling or competing in leagues or contests. I mean they could, but maybe they don't want to leave, or maybe their parents don't want them to leave. And with abused Pokemon, you're right. It takes a while to heal and regain the ability to trust.

With the legendaries thing, I am mostly in agreement. I haven't gone over all the legendaries thoroughly, but some of them are clearly too powerful for a single person to capture. Like Dialga. Dialga is time itself. There's only one of it (or he, or she, or whatever it wants to be called) and it doesn't breed like other Pokemon, because why would it? I would be okay with the legendary birds, since there seem to be multiple of those and they aren't universal embodiments. I have even reluctantly accepted Darkrai too. I didn't want to at first, and I was not happy when I read that someone used it in the show to sweep the gyms, but eventually I chose to accept that Darkrai and it's compliment Cresselia are not in the "only one" category.

And now, if I may add some of my own.

One: Mentioning of sweat drops or anime falls. I think it distracts from the story. Those things are unique to the anime medium, and seem to work only as a visual joke, not in writing. It might possibly work if you were writing a parody or if you were going for a TV show format (like a realistic looking script), but otherwise it doesn't work.

Two: Pokemon levels. I hate it when people make Pokemon have levels in fanfiction. Game-logic vs. Story logic. We are reading a story and pretending it is real. Pokemon do not have levels. They are not data. They are meant to be treated as flesh and blood animals that get sick and die. I was reading a story once that started out good. It was dark, in a good way, it was emotional, it was well written and described. It even had this plot starting up about Pokemon genetic enhancement (Like a Hypno with muscles). But then the story said that Ash's Pikachu was level 88, and that's where I stopped and went away.

Pikachu is not data! Even Porygon, the virtual Pokemon, probably doesn't have levels. Levels are a construct meant to make playing an RPG easier, more quantifiable. Porygon, though digital, wasn't really built with games in mind, so it probably doesn't have levels in the sense that the games use it. If Pikachu has levels, then that means it is a piece of data, that this is in fact a game. If he's a piece of data, he has to true will of his own, and neither do any of the characters. They are all programs or controlled by a user. The characters are empty shells, and so why should I care about them? It misses the point of fiction entirely.

In fact, any raw data mechanics usually make me irritated.
 
One: Mentioning of sweat drops or anime falls. I think it distracts from the story. Those things are unique to the anime medium, and seem to work only as a visual joke, not in writing. It might possibly work if you were writing a parody or if you were going for a TV show format (like a realistic looking script), but otherwise it doesn't work.
Having spotted one of those quite recently, I agree. For me, while I may imply that a character just facepalmed / face-planted in direct response to something that another character said or did (e.g. "one of my feet slipped, and I fell right back down onto the sand, face first"), but I won't outright state it. The reader can figure it out on their own.

In fact, any raw data mechanics usually make me irritated.
Definitely. "Heaven help you, have you ever used the term 'hit points' in your novel?"
 
One: Mentioning of sweat drops or anime falls. I think it distracts from the story. Those things are unique to the anime medium, and seem to work only as a visual joke, not in writing. It might possibly work if you were writing a parody or if you were going for a TV show format (like a realistic looking script), but otherwise it doesn't work.
Having spotted one of those quite recently, I agree. For me, while I may imply that a character just facepalmed / face-planted in direct response to something that another character said or did (e.g. "one of my feet slipped, and I fell right back down onto the sand, face first"), but I won't outright state it. The reader can figure it out on their own.

In fact, any raw data mechanics usually make me irritated.
Definitely. "Heaven help you, have you ever used the term 'hit points' in your novel?"

From what I recall, the first volume of the Electric Tales of Pikachu manga had Ash proclaim that Pikachu's "Hit points were almost zero!" That's another bit of fail. And even the anime has made some poor blunders (like in that Pokemon Tech episode where they talked about what level Pigey learns moves/evolves). And even though they use "level" in dialogue many times, usually I can pass it off as a metaphor, because they don't usually add numbers. But the anime is also clever at times because in the episode where Ash caught Treeko, they had it take serious damage to electricity because it was up in the air, and established that grass type and ground type resistance to electricity only works if they are on the ground. That's very smart.

By the way, that's a great list of questions. I'm going to have to remember that link.
 
...they had it take serious damage to electricity because it was up in the air, and established that grass type and ground type resistance to electricity only works if they are on the ground. That's very smart.

By comparison, when a Flying-type uses Roost (in-game) they lose the weakness to Electric/Ice/Rock. I agree that some attacks should be more or less effective depending on the specific context in which that attack is used, disregarding its usual effectiveness (e.g. how exactly does one use Flamethrower in the middle of ocean diving again?) .

I don't necessarily mind characters mentioning certain mechanics, it depends on how it's presented to the audience. For example, I have one scene planned (in a PMD context) where a Mienshao is trying to teach my MC how to execute a Shadow Ball, but he ends up learning Shadow Claw instead. Techniques, for example, may be noted in-universe by a particular name . . . but as the narrator I'll try to avoid mentioning that.

The four-move-limit is another thing that doesn't make sense outside the game. If you have a voice, you can "growl". If you have teeth too, you can "snarl".
 
I agree with you. I don't mind using attacks myself, or necessarily using game mechanics. My question is whether those game mechanics can be translated into something that makes sense in fiction. Sometimes they can, and sometimes things are lost in translation. And as for attacks, I am more concerned with how attacks would actually work and look in a real life context.

I like the example about Shadow Ball and Shadow Claw. As for move limits, I also agree with you. Though I thought the limit was six. Then again I've never played the games, so what do I know? I see some sense in that the move limit corresponds to memory, and attacks may require constant practice not only to make them instinctual and natural, but to keep the Pokemon from getting rusty. But some attacks shouldn't count. For example, Tackle. It's rather basic, so it shouldn't tax memory. Or Water Gun for a water Pokemon (if they have the organ for it, it should be natural) or Flame Thrower for a fire Pokemon.

On the subject of real world battles, I actually came up with an interesting strategy myself. I have mentioned it in another place, but I am playing around with a story involving an Ash clone. Don't expect the story to come out any time soon, I am just playing around, and I have to definitive plot. But in that story, the clone (who I have named Ace) had a Gengar, and I thought of a way for it to have a powerful advantage over fire types, and defeat them with ease, even though fire types don't have a particular weakness against ghosts.

You may recall that Gengar is solid for the most part, but has the ability to become intangible, aka, pass through solid objects. If you read the Bulbapedia entry, it also mentions that Gengar's body acts like a heat sink, so the spot it stands on suffers a temperature drop to negative ten degrees. With that in mind, Gengar could severely weaken or flat out defeat a fire type simply by walking through its opponent. The sensation of cold is simply the process of an object stealing heat from another, warmer object.

If Gengar becomes intangible, and passes through a fire type, its body would sap heat right out of the fire type. That would no doubt be extremely unpleasant for the opponent, if not weaken them. And by continuously doing that, Gengar could possibly even incapacitate them, without breaking a sweat. It's a good strategy, but not something that works in game.

And about type advantage again, I think it's important to come up with why some types have advantages over others. It's not too hard at times, because the type advantages are usually grounded in some real world logic, but things like the "grass and ground types protect themselves from electricity by grounding it" is a perfectly logical answer that allows for a better story or fight scene. TV Tropes has a fanon Pokedex that tries to go over the special characteristics of each type, though they haven't gotten far, and I am not sure I agree with the ghost type entry. But that sort of thing says something about how Pokemon work.

For example, hearing that Dragon types are weak to Ice type attacks, that would suggest to me that Dragon type species are cold blooded, and have the same crippling, immobilizing weakness to cold as actual lizards.
 
For example, hearing that Dragon types are weak to Ice type attacks, that would suggest to me that Dragon type species are cold blooded, and have the same crippling, immobilizing weakness to cold as actual lizards.
I actually used this explanation in my fic., they're cold blooded and their scaly bodies can't handle intense cold. Or how a plant can't be too hot(Fire-type) or too cold(Ice-type).

1.Grammar - Sometimes I just am....ARE YOU EVEN TRYING?!

2.Look at me and my team of Pokemon, a Pikachu/Eevee/Riolu/Charizard/Lucario/Infernape/Some over hyped/popular Pokemon. I'll never understand why writers feel the need to toss people any Pokemon right off the bat, there's nothing wrong with it but I expect some form of set-up. What are the chances a trainer just so happened to get a Charmander in Hoenn? Starter Pokemon are given to a trainer for a reason, most likely because they're easy to control and pose little threat to an inexperienced trainer.

3.Overpowered Pokemon right off the bat, a rookie Chimchar shouldn't know how to use Flamethrower fresh outta the lab.

4.There's nothing wrong with legendaries being owned and controlled by trainers, however the likes of Reshiram. A deity that seeks a truthful world shouldn't be owned by just anyone. Nor should a main character just have a huge assortment of legendaries. I actually don't think there's anything wrong with legendaries being in fic. under trainer control. It's something that shouldn't be done too much imo, as it comes off as a tad tacky. There's little chance a rarely fresh trainer should be able to catch a Heatran, however if the trainer is experienced and has been at the game for a while there's nothing wrong with it. It shouldn't just happen, it should come with set-up and exposition. Pyramid King Brandon owning the Regis makes sense, he's been an exploring for a long time in his life. An example of a fic. I feel that does the legendary thing correctly in one of its chapters. The main character has a Heatran but doesn't even use it an immense amount at all, it's actually one of the weaker and lesser used Pokemon of his team. That's been the only legendary in the fic. aside from a Zapdos owned by Arcade Star Dahlia, he handles their power well provided excellent set-up for both situations.

5.Anime Effects, sweat drops, face faults, etc.

6.Shiny Pokemon, main character has a whole team of them. Little sense.

7.Quick evolutions, makes perfect sense after training the Pokemon for a while and it's on the weaker side like a Caterpie. Makes no sense to have a Gible evolve into a Garchomp in one week, Dragons are rare and hard to raise as the games and mostly every other canon implies. They shouldn't evolve on a dime just because you want a main character to have a OMGBADAZZGARCHOMPZ!111

8.Weak females, I absolutely do not care for females who are damsels in distress most of the time or exist solely to be the love interest of the main character.

9.Ash Clones, aura, etc.

10.Heavily canon characters paired with OCs, Ash falls in love with Barbara. No thanks.

11.When a writers tries too hard to make their characters "BADAZZAMAZING." It make no sense for a regular trainer to be performing backflips left and right and acrobatics out of the blue.

12.Script fic.....
 
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We already have a thread dedicated to problems with fan fiction. I don't think we need two on the subject. Thread closed.
 
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