Okay, time to explore Slateport!
Or first, the sandy area right before it.
I try out my now L8 Silver and his mirror coat, which manages to just barely beat a L13 tentacool, then with Poochyena’s sacrifice manages to beat the following machop too. Also, ice beam looks really cool now.
Okay, now I’ve got to head into Slateport to heal. Current team:
L11 Silver 
L15 ralts
L15 thunderdoggy 
L18 Makit 
L15 ralts
L11 nincada 
When you sink a man-made object into the sea to make a habitat for Pokemon, it’s called an artificial reef! We in Hoenn are well known for our reef. We call it Sea Mauville!
Most artificial reefs barely work, and we make them because the real reefs are dying of a million causes we don’t fully understand. This seems worrying.
On the other hand, reefs are one of the ecosystems that’d be messed up by Team Aqua’s plan, so maybe the reason they think it’s safe to go ahead is that the pokeworld has a handle on reef rebuilding. Given reefs are themselves pokemon, moving them around might not be too hard.
Inside a house, a girl says, You’ll need a Contest Pass if you want to enter a contest. I got mine from the famous contest star Lisia!
From osmosis, I expect Lisia to be important. But right now, the bigger issue is it sounds like contests restrict participants by making them find another existing coordinator to sponsor them. I hate that kind of aristocratic bullshit. MAYBE I’ll just refuse to participate in contests then, game!
Okay, into the shipyard. Cutscene triggers. I see a guy who doesn’t know what he’s doing in front of a crude blueprint. Apparently his name is Dock. I try to make the parts his problem, but he won’t have them and tells me to go find the other guy.
Everyone else in the building is also a guy, reminding us that as awful as sexy female scientist was, she was still a big step forward.
Fanclub! Let’s see what their position on pokemon happiness is!
If you keep letting a Pokemon faint in battle, it’ll start feeling sorry for itself.
Not “it’s actually hurt” but “it’ll mope for no real reason”.
Soon, it will become less trusting of its Trainer.
So even in the club for people who like pokemon, this is entirely based around what’s best for you.
I then talk to someone who says she loves seeing friendly pokemon/trainer relationships, and about how it’s great because it’s just the pokemon mirroring my feelings toward them as opposed to because they deserve decent treatment.
Finally a girl wonders to me if pokemon like having items used on them, because when she decided to do that, her pokemon seemed happy. See, this seems like the sort of thing you should actually figure out and not just idly wonder.
I hate everyone in the club.
Outside is the market, which is mostly stuff I can’t afford right now. Also, a poster:
Hoenn’s Local Heroes
The Hoenn Rangers Coexistence Force!
We fight for the peaceful coexistence of Pokemon, nature, and people!
Ah, but which do you prioritize? When these things are in conflict, who do you choose?
Let’s try the contest hall.
Welcome to the Pokemon Contest Spectacular! …Oh? You don’t seem to have a Contest Pass. We only accept Trainers who have Contest Passes as contestants of the Pokemon Contest Spectacular! Well, let me see… You might be able to get it from somebody.
So aristocratic bullshit confirmed.
Going to go back to the beach and finish up the battles there.
Silver’s now L14 and not doing nearly as bad as he should be, so I swap him out for Magikarp, who I take to the name rater who’s really the name renamer and change that to Shirou Emiya, which precisely fits.
The final person on the beach tells me, The water around these parts is clean. But my Zigzagoon still picks up litter from the shoreline at times. Dirty water becomes rain and joins our rivers, which we drink from…If we pollute the sea, it all comes back to haunt us eventually.
Which is true, but I guess I feel like we’ve all heard the self-interest reasons and it’d be nice to say that we should consider other people too. The fact the oceans are filling with plastic really isn’t that big of a deal for us, but that doesn’t mean we should accept it.
Oh, missed an area. Off to the side there’s someone wondering if the lighthouse startles sea pokemon, which is actual the sort of thing you should wonder about and try to take into consideration, and another person – an adult person and sailor no less – says, The sea is just so vast… Could the sea have been made by the tears shed by Pokemon? which I take to mean the pokeworld has no formal education system.
That said! The idea of the ocean being made by tears “of pokemon” and not a particular event in the past involve particular pokemon suggests a sort of slow apocalypse wherein if humans mistreat pokemon, the ocean slowly grows until it overtakes everything. And that could be an interesting future setting.
…okay fine NOW I’ll go into the museum.
Hm. Ocean Mini Fact 1
Why is seawater blue? Light is composed of many colors. When light passes through water, most kinds of light lose color. However, blue light retains its color, making the sea appear blue.
I thought answer is supposed to be “because it’s reflecting the sky”. Looking it up I find the actual answer is we’re not sure and these are the current theories. It’s always weird when you find out science doesn’t know something basic, isn’t it?
Another grunt explains that Team Magma is great because they’re going to help people. If they’re supposed to be the pro-humanity team, I just appreciate that finally I’m going to get a team that totally admits that they mean “people” as in “we don’t think pokemon are our equals in the least” and none of that “people and pokemon” garbage.
One of the Magma grunts recognizes me as the all-powerful newbie. In fear, he offers me tribute in the form of the thief TM. Yes. You may live.
Upstairs, I finally manage to hand over the parts only to be ambushed by extremely overconfident grunts and their numels who are apparently made of tissue paper.
Ah, now Maxie shows up. And I see that fanart did not represent the cranky lines of his cranky, cranky face.
Now here I was wondering how you could be held up in the simple act of seizing a case. Do I take it you are being stymied by this child? Hm…
L17 thunderdoggy
L16 ralts
L20 Makit
L16 ralts
L12 nincada
L11 Shirou Emiya 
Flop, Shirou, flop!
Shirou Emiya was horrified by Maxie’s villain speech, knowing that sacrificing a huge portion of the pokemon population solely for human advancement runs directly contrary to his ideal, which is “to save everyone, human or otherwise.”
He isn’t interested in salvation that’s limited to a set number of species, and he’d never consider sacrificing the few for the many.
He has to make his ideal come true for Kiritsugu, a tentacruel who was able to save Shirou, and only Shirou, from Team Magma’s prototype testing, which destroyed one of the few remaining natural reefs for the sake of creating a small, uninhabitable island.
How about:
Character Name: Shirou Emiya
Species: Magikarp
If a trainer, what pokemon do they have? What personalities?: N/A
Brief background of character: He was raised by Kiritsugu, a tentacruel who was able to save Shirou, and only Shirou, from Team Magma’s prototype testing, which destroyed one of the few remaining natural reefs for the sake of creating a small, uninhabitable island. He suffers survivor’s guilt as a result.
What are their strengths/skills? What are their flaws and weaknesses?: Shirou’s devotion to his ideal of being a hero capable of saving everyone render him extraordinarily tenacious. He’s not strong or even especially durable, but he simply won’t give up.
Though the fire stripped Shirou’s mind of his fear and self-concern, the pain of being stranded on the new, still-hot island was almost literally seared into his body. He is plagued by traumas that return to him every time he faces battle, causing his body to convulse as it did that day. He does not know splash and uses struggle instead, though he could learn to use flail with training and practice.
What are their goals? What are they focusing on?: Shirou wants to stop Team Magma from destroying pokemon for the sake of humans.
How might they deal with meeting or being a pokemorph?: Pokemorph Shirou would be pretty similar, but give him an extraordinarily powerful female gallade he keeps stupidly trying to protect despite how she outclasses him in every way.
Appearance and distinctive features, if any: None. Perhaps due to the fallout of Team Magma’s experiment, Shirou heals very well, so he lacks the scars you’d expect from throwing himself into the path of every danger.
Connections to canon characters (if any): Just the Team Magma connection.
How does your character get on with those around him/her?: He’s genuinely very nice, but feels it’s especially his duty to protect/sacrifice himself as a meatshield for the sake of any women around him, which gets old very fast for the women in question. He will also pull out stuff about how girls aren’t meant to fight to justify this stupidity.
What’s something unusual or unique about this character? Anything a writer should keep in mind?: Shirou does not give up or change his mind easily.
Do you have any opinions or restrictions on romance?: Nope.
Any suggestions on what your character would be useful for?: I think he’d make an interesting addition to someone’s team.
Is it okay to change things to make them fit into a new story?: Sure.
Do they feature in any stories already?: Shirou is a modified version of the character from Fate/Stay Night.
I think, to make him more like a magikarp, you need to add this to flaws:
“Though the fire stripped Shirou’s mind of his fear and self-concern, the pain of being stranded on the new, still-hot island was almost literally seared into his body. He is plagued by traumas that return to him every time he faces battle, causing his body to convulse as it did that day. As a result, he only knows the move ‘Splash’.”
Otherwise, it’s excellent, and I can’t think of anything else offhand. edit: I got the idea from your “Flop, Shirou, flop!” and got the horrible mental image of a magikarp Shirou flopping around the new, still-steaming landmass, which was like a frying pan too impatient to wait for him to die.
editedit: I guess the only other thing would be that I’d wish it was more UBW!Shirou and less Fate!Shirou, but that’s a small gripe considering where he’ll end up anyway.
Oh, I meant he’s only got magikarp moves, though I should probably make that explicit. Don’t think it’s fair to say he can’t eventually learn tackle, though – he does improve under Saber’s guidance, and “tackle” seems about his level of post-training competence.
True. There’s also the fact that it’s not in Shirou’s character to freeze up in combat even if he is traumatized. I just couldn’t really think of another way to show why he’d initially be utterly useless in combat. I mean, it was understandable in F/SN because the opponents were all far above human levels, but there’s every indication that early-game Shirou would kick the ass of most muggles. Thus, I thought it’d be weird to say he sucks so much that he doesn’t know basic Pokemon moves.
I think flail and struggle are the best bet. Flail does more damage the more injured you are, so that might actually be too good for him, and all pokemon know struggle but only use it when out of moves because it does equal damage to the user – so basically perfect for him. Maybe he’ll need to level up to get flail.
Either way they both fit his character, aye. It’s almost sad to have to level him to 30 for Flail when he could become Archer at L20 though.
I don’t plan for game vermissitude here! Mine’s evolving at L20 for the sweet, sweet pokedex credit.
Maybe he actually doesn’t know splash, just struggle. That’d make him better in combat than a regular magikarp while still being worthless in combat as far as actual fighting goes, plus self-destructive, and with the option of learning flail through experience and effort.
Yeah, that does indeed sound better. I get caught up in game… verisimilitude… because I dunno, fuck it, I’m a by-the-book sort. And yeah, the deal for a minor favor stands. It was worth it just for that character outline, hahaha.
The problem with pokemon moves is there’s too many that you’d never get to use in fic at all because they’re egg moves or something, plus battles are just more interesting with wider move pools.
I have no idea. Like you’ll notice I only really know the names of the Generation One pokemon. I don’t even really remember the hundred they added for Generation Two, and everything beyond that is just hopeless. I’m imagining the moves expand correspondingly.
I’m imagining the moves expand correspondingly.
Oh yeah. New ones every generation. And there’s like twice as many TMs, plus egg moves they can inherit if you breed them with a father of a species that learns it naturally, plus all sorts of giveaways of pokemon knowing moves they usually can’t.
Sounds needlessly overblown, but this is what happens when you expand your system instead of adding depth to it.
edit: actually that’s being unfair. It seems a lot of depth was added to pokemon. It’s just not all necessarily “good” depth.
Well, that’s been the pokemon series! Battle system is broken? We should make a totally different battle-like system to so you can get two broken games for the price of one!
The egg moves thing wasn’t that bad in the second gen, because there were still only 251 so it was possible to think maybe it’d be fun to raise a second pokemon with a different moveset or something. Plus they were really just trying to show off how cool it was we could get eggs. But it was the start of a horrible downward trend. Now pokemon sometimes know five+ moves at L1 with the first being something really good because there’s this mechanic where you can trade a heart scale for your pokemon to relearn a move it knew, and also there’s zero overlap with egg moves because of course there’s no need to make things easier when we could make them harder and…
In other words, pokemon has a built-in “raise your own Sue” feature with breeding. Great. I can’t even really comment on that.
Anyway, I’m going to post it to the thread as today’s character, I’ll credit you.
You did most of the work there; don’t look at me.
oh my god
Yeah, it’s a work of art.
“Pokémon” newbie here: magikarps are the useless fish that evolve into giant sea serpents, right?
Yeah, that’s actually quite appropriate for Shirou, I’d say.
But playing the contest storyline is how you get closer to Lisia, who is my girlfriend. :(
(In all honesty, you’re probably not gonna like her very much, since she’s the one who makes you wear that abominable contest outfit.)
Also she’s constantly crotch-thrusting. :c
since she’s the one who makes you wear that abominable contest outfit.
I actually don’t mind that too much – it’s meant to be ridiculously showy for the sake of an actual performance, and since the game doesn’t directly tell you that you’d have gotten a better outfit for being a boy, I can just assume that his would be equally dumb and he’d do exactly as dumb a pose in it.
:)
Her reaction to you after she’s stuffed you into it is the gayest thing. Actually, all her interactions with May are super gay.