Writers' Workshop General Chat Thread

[Instrutilus]

Who's Farla?

 

[Beth Pavell]

A fanfiction reviewer notorious for her blunt harshness. She also has a habit (I had a flick through some of her January reviews earlier while procrastinating) of insisting on the use of her own conventions as if they're standard practice. I also noticed a few other bad habits - selective insistence on canon, treating her own fanon as canon, selective stupidity, and generally phrasing opinions as if they were facts.

She does an annual review spree on fanfiction.net, I believe

 

[Misfit Angel]

January is the month to avoid posting on FF if you don't want a review from her, cause she reviews every new Pokemon fan fic posted that month.

This is actually kind of why I held off on publishing Land of the Roses to ff.net until just now. I wanted to see how bad it was compared to what I've been hearing.

I was a bit disappointed, really.

 

[Instrutilus]

Sounds like a standard Sonic the Hedgehog fan.

What do you guys do about Evolutionary Stones, might I ask? It's just, everyone seems to treat a simple touch as the activating method, but in-game Pokémon can hold them harmlessly. So my thoughts are that you need to break them to let the Pokémon evolve with it, but I'd like to see other thoughts on it.

 

[Beth Pavell]

Land of the Roses doesn't give a caustic reviewer a lot to work with, I think. It's a lot easier to be nasty about a story that ticks a lot of cliché boxes, has ropy dialogue, or hastily sets up a melodramatic premise - finding that kind of thing on fanfiction.net is all too easy

@Instrutilus - tough one, that. I haven't had to deal with it yet, but I've kind of toyed with the idea that levels of exposure matter, which would go some way to explain how pokémon can stone-evolve in the wild.

 

[Lyrebird]

A fanfiction reviewer notorious for her blunt harshness. She also has a habit (I had a flick through some of her January reviews earlier while procrastinating) of insisting on the use of her own conventions as if they're standard practice. I also noticed a few other bad habits - selective insistence on canon, treating her own fanon as canon, selective stupidity, and generally phrasing opinions as if they were facts.

She does an annual review spree on fanfiction.net, I believe

Did you eat her?

 

[Misfit Angel]

Sounds like a standard Sonic the Hedgehog fan.

What do you guys do about Evolutionary Stones, might I ask? It's just, everyone seems to treat a simple touch as the activating method, but in-game Pokémon can hold them harmlessly. So my thoughts are that you need to break them to let the Pokémon evolve with it, but I'd like to see other thoughts on it.

Something I planned to do back in Storm Island was have these stones let out radiation that unlocked a genetic marker in certain species, triggering an evolution just by being in the mere presence of them. Kamin was intended to return with a new capture he made during his time alone, and that capture was supposed to evolve the second he let it out of its Pokeball simply because Kimberly was wearing a necklace set with a gem carved from a Dawn Stone. The more I think about it, the sillier it sounds and I probably won't go that route, but I do want to explore the nuances of the evolutionary stones at some point.

 

[Kharixi]

What do you guys do about Evolutionary Stones, might I ask? It's just, everyone seems to treat a simple touch as the activating method, but in-game Pokémon can hold them harmlessly. So my thoughts are that you need to break them to let the Pokémon evolve with it, but I'd like to see other thoughts on it.

This applies to Mega Stones as well, but I always imagined that Pokémon don't actually hold the items. They're worn around the neck (or wrist, etc.) like a necklace (or bracelet).

 

[Daren]

I got a review by everyone's favorite asshole, Farla! True to character, she picked out the most nitpickiest things that don't actually impede the story or the reader in any way. I wonder what her motivation is for being so needlessly harsh... Maybe she's hoping to crush peoples' hopes so that they don't post anymore, thus giving her less competition for her own stuff?

That review...wow.

 

[Instrutilus]

-ahem-

...-screams continuously for several hours-

...I immensely enjoyed the new Zelda: Breath of the Wild trailer today. How is everyone else's day going?

 

[Tophat Dragoneye]

Woke up early to watch the stream... Worth it

Also, there's a lot of trailers over at Nintendo's youtube channel, including trailers of games not shown in the presentation, Mario Kart 8 Deluxe for example.

 

[Beth Pavell]

I'm deliberately not watching any more trailers for Breath of the Wild - I want to play it as a fresh and free of expectations as possible

 

[Daren]

I noticed both Nobunaga's Ambition (remember Pokémon Conquest?) and it's sister series Romance of the Three Kingdoms during the quick runthrough of various games; NA is apparently a launch title in Japan, though I have no idea if it'll get a US release (the PS4 and PC versions did so possibly).

Very happy to see a new 64-style Mario; Galaxy was a huge letdown for me.

Looking forward to BOTW; it'll be interesting to see an original Zelda style one with modern graphics and power.

 

[CrystaI]

Cold and influenza. My annual event that my body had prescribed to yet hate it so much.
**Cough**
**Sneeze**
**Snivel**
.....Go to bed and sleep (-_-)zzz

 

[Ghostsoul]

Alright, stupid question time:
When using first person metaphors/similes in regards to animals, would they describe it as being like a Pokemon or like a real world animal? (I feel as if I use Pokemon in comparison/metaphors, it might end up sounding a bit cheesy?)
I'm pretty sure it's been established that there is some possibility of 'real world' animals being in the Pokemon world (although this is only in early Pokemon and may have been taken out of the setting as time went on). I'm not too sure it can be considered 'canon' anymore.

 

[Beth Pavell]

Tough call. I've had to think about it a lot myself, and I tend to have two rules of thumb

1. Always make sure it rolls off the tongue. A saying isn't likely to be come popular if it's clunky
2. Make sure it's apt. Animal metaphors are all about making reference to some real or perceived trait - just because there's a rough pokémon equivalent doesn't mean it has an equivalent trait. Same can go in reverse - I think I had a character call a girl a hydreigon once to deliberately reference the species' bad temper

Sometimes it's worth thinking about whether you really can't use the animal. Ok, let's assume for the sake of argument that real butterflies don't exist in your version of the world. But two species of pokémon are known as "Butterfly Pokémon", so clearly the word must mean something in that world

 

[Jaypom]

You can think of it how there are different breeds of dogs in our world. In the Pokemon world, dogs are growlithe and rockruff etc while for us it is Chihuahuas and Boston Terriers. The species aren't what exist in our world but instead in the Pokemon world.

 

[diamondpearl876]

You can think of it how there are different breeds of dogs in our world. In the Pokemon world, dogs are growlithe and rockruff etc while for us it is Chihuahuas and Boston Terriers. The species aren't what exist in our world but instead in the Pokemon world.

Yeah, but then how do you account for all the species and breeds in the real world that aren't in the Pokemon world, especially for species in the real world that are beneficial for nature?

 

[Jaypom]

Yeah, but then how do you account for all the species and breeds in the real world that aren't in the Pokemon world, especially for species in the real world that are beneficial for nature?

Can you give an example? Some things in our world may not be necceary creatures in the Pokemon world, or just have yet to be created by the developers.

 

[diamondpearl876]

Can you give an example? Some things in our world may not be necceary creatures in the Pokemon world, or just have yet to be created by the developers.

Well, ants are one kind of insect that have hundreds of different species, all of which evolved over the years to adapt to their environment based off of climate, soil, etc conditions. But there's only one (maybe two?) ant species pokemon: durant. Surely durant can't be the only ant-like creature to aid in soil decomposition and crops and everything else that ants do. Each species of real world ants plays its own unique role (as silly as it sounds) and I don't see how one species (durant) could fill each and every role to keep the world going on as it does. Also, according to the pokedex, durant should average to be about a foot tall and weigh as much as a ten-year-old child, and it's really creepy to me to imagine a million of things crawling around all over the place. 0_0

You're right in that some creatures might not be necessary or just not created yet. But no matter how many Pokemon the developers make, it's not going to compare to the number of real life animals/species. So I think it's reasonable to assume real animals are in the Pokemon world because of the complexity of the real world that Pokemon by themselves don't make up for. But so far I've yet to see the distinction between animals and Pokemon explored in a fic.