Ten pages including a strangely entertaining royal eeveelutions thing, some impressively pretentious prose, and someone managing to botch a perfectly good fic.
Okay, just so we’re clear – the premise of your story is that pokemon are going extinct due to plague, and the solution is to make pokemorphs, which is to say taking perfectly good humans and jamming infectable pokemon into them.
[*Whisper* ]
Never do this. You’re writing a story, use narration.
Paragraphing has rules. You start a new paragraph with a new subject. The goal is not to divide your story up into even blocks. Also, a new speaker means you start a new paragraph.
You wouldn’t capitalize animal or mouse or dragon, so you shouldn’t capitalize words like pokemon or pikachu or charizard. The only time you should capitalize it is if you’re using it as the pokemon’s name, ie, Ash’s pikachu is called Pikachu. This is because you only capitalize when it’s a proper noun, which are the names of places or things. Similar reasoning should be applied to any other words you’re thinking of capitalizing, like telephone or trainer. Or professor.
For the same reason, it’s Team Flare, because that’s the group’s name.
Semicolons do not indicate sophisticated or intelligent writing, even when grammatically correct. Use sentence-connecting semicolons sparingly, judiciously, and only when the ideas in the clauses are inseparable. If you have a semicolon sitting between a pair of sentences because the sentences are kind of, sort of related, it just makes you look pretentious.
Sentence fragments are similarly a bad idea.
Dammit, science! Can’t you do anything right?
(1)
[my Trainer ID. ]
Probably shouldn’t really be capitalized, our equivalents aren’t.
I think you go a bit too far trying to keep things mysterious and minimalist, but I like the story and that it had twists and didn’t just go the standard pokemon-trainer-beats-legendary-in-battle. Plus, an explanation for why masterballs aren’t everywhere!
(0)
There are seven thousand stories just on this site in this category with “pokemon” in their title. “New” features in another thousand. There are over four hundred “chronicles”, more if you include misspellings, even more with “begins” and “beginning”, and even more “Character Name”‘s whatever. There are almost eight hundred with “legend”. There are fourteen hundred with “journey”, twelve hundred with “story”, almost three hundred with “quest”, and two thousand with “adventure”. The different region names appear another thousand or two times. “Saga”, “region” and “champion” come in around two hundred. In sum, you should try to choose an original title that has to do with your story in particular, not something that indicates it’s yet another story about a pokemon trainer.
Opening your story with a character waking up for the day is generic and horribly, horribly overdone, and to be honest, it’s so incredibly dull and boring a start that even if I hadn’t seen it, very literally here, hundreds upon hundreds of times before, I would still tell you you should have started at some other, interesting point.
You wouldn’t capitalize animal or mouse or dragon, so you shouldn’t capitalize words like pokemon or pikachu or charizard. The only time you should capitalize it is if you’re using it as the pokemon’s name, ie, Ash’s pikachu is called Pikachu. This is because you only capitalize when it’s a proper noun, which are the names of places or things. Similar reasoning should be applied to any other words you’re thinking of capitalizing, like telephone or trainer. Or professor.
Dialogue is written as “Hello,” she said or “Hello!” she said, never “Hello.” She said or “Hello.” she said or “Hello,” She said or “Hello” she said. The only exception to this is if the next sentence doesn’t contain a speech verb, in which case it’s written as “Hello.” She grinned, never “Hello,” she grinned or “Hello,” She grinned. Note that something isn’t a speech verb just because it’s a sound you make with your mouth, so generally stuff like laughed or giggled is in the second category. Furthermore, if you’re breaking up two complete sentences it’s “Hi,” she said. “This is it.” not “Hi,” she said, “this is it.” or “Hi,” she said “this is it.” or “Hi,” she said “This is it.” And if you’re breaking up a sentence in the middle, it’s “Hi. This,” she said, “is it.” Also, remember that generally “said” is the best speech verb to use, and even more importantly, “stated” is not.
[After what seemed like ages, Arashi swaggered into the room, a Pokeball in tow. Moriko didn’t even wait to see what Pokemon her rival had chosen ]
If she’s defining this girl as her hated rival, it makes no sense that she has no interest in getting a type advantage. It’s really obvious you’re trying to set up a situation where she ends up with a type disadvantage anyway despite it not making sense with your insistence her evil rival gets to go first.
[Moriko didn’t even hesitate before picking up the Pokeball on the bottom right. She didn’t even know what it was, but something inside her told Moriko that it was the right choice. ]
This is a terrible way to write your story. You’re saying that your character will do stuff for no reason but that you, the author, say she will. What exactly was so awful about having her actually decide she wants a turtwig?
(0)
Write out numbers with letters.
Dialogue is written as “Hello,” she said or “Hello!” she said, never “Hello.” She said or “Hello.” she said or “Hello,” She said or “Hello” she said. The only exception to this is if the next sentence doesn’t contain a speech verb, in which case it’s written as “Hello.” She grinned, never “Hello,” she grinned or “Hello,” She grinned. Note that something isn’t a speech verb just because it’s a sound you make with your mouth, so generally stuff like laughed or giggled is in the second category. Furthermore, if you’re breaking up two complete sentences it’s “Hi,” she said. “This is it.” not “Hi,” she said, “this is it.” or “Hi,” she said “this is it.” or “Hi,” she said “This is it.” And if you’re breaking up a sentence in the middle, it’s “Hi. This,” she said, “is it.” Also, remember that generally “said” is the best speech verb to use, and even more importantly, “stated” is not.
You wouldn’t capitalize animal or mouse or dragon, so you shouldn’t capitalize words like pokemon or pikachu or charizard. The only time you should capitalize it is if you’re using it as the pokemon’s name, ie, Ash’s pikachu is called Pikachu. This is because you only capitalize when it’s a proper noun, which are the names of places or things. Similar reasoning should be applied to any other words you’re thinking of capitalizing, like telephone or trainer. Or professor.
You do not need to go through her waking up and putting on clothes and eating waffles. If you have a point to this, get to it already.
Stories need more of a plot than that there’s a kid and they have a pokemon.
(1)
[Bens POV ]
Ben’s, apostrophe for possessives, and you shouldn’t be labeling POVs in the first place.
Your grammar is generally abysmal throughout. Proofread better and get a beta reader.
(0)
You wouldn’t capitalize animal or mouse or dragon, so you shouldn’t capitalize words like pokemon or pikachu or charizard. The only time you should capitalize it is if you’re using it as the pokemon’s name, ie, Ash’s pikachu is called Pikachu. This is because you only capitalize when it’s a proper noun, which are the names of places or things. Similar reasoning should be applied to any other words you’re thinking of capitalizing, like telephone or trainer. Or professor.
[It was always the same, he had a strange color, he had an odd pattern over his body ]
So your character is wangsting about how being a super special shiny pokemon means no one but your other character love him, in the process giving your other character a super special shiny pokemon while pretending it makes him a candidate for sainthood.
Dialogue is written as “Hello,” she said or “Hello!” she said, never “Hello.” She said or “Hello.” she said or “Hello,” She said or “Hello” she said. The only exception to this is if the next sentence doesn’t contain a speech verb, in which case it’s written as “Hello.” She grinned, never “Hello,” she grinned or “Hello,” She grinned. Note that something isn’t a speech verb just because it’s a sound you make with your mouth, so generally stuff like laughed or giggled is in the second category. Furthermore, if you’re breaking up two complete sentences it’s “Hi,” she said. “This is it.” not “Hi,” she said, “this is it.” or “Hi,” she said “this is it.” or “Hi,” she said “This is it.” And if you’re breaking up a sentence in the middle, it’s “Hi. This,” she said, “is it.” Also, remember that generally “said” is the best speech verb to use, and even more importantly, “stated” is not.
[A blonde boy complained against a brunette. ]
“Against” is the wrong word and both blonde and brunette are the feminine forms.
[“Don’t give up, Charmander! I thrust in you!” ]
Trust. You have a lot of these mistakes and some of them, like this one, are really really bad, so get a beta reader.
(0)
Look, you really, really shouldn’t ask for characters. Doesn’t work right. You get people doing all sorts of characters, and they may each be fine but they don’t fit together properly. It’s like trying to complete a hundred-piece puzzle by taking fifty of the pieces from fifty other puzzles. They may all be good puzzles, and you may pick only the prettiest pieces, but you’re going to end up with a mess.
I’d think you’d have realized this yourself given you’re complaining about your stories crashing and burning and how you keep deleting them.
Semicolons do not indicate sophisticated or intelligent writing, even when grammatically correct. Use sentence-connecting semicolons sparingly, judiciously, and only when the ideas in the clauses are inseparable. If you have a semicolon sitting between a pair of sentences because the sentences are kind of, sort of related, it just makes you look pretentious.
[People like them are always respected; no one is sure why that is, but their title is always followed by that command of reverence. But a title is nothing more than word given to somebody’s name, so why do these people, the gym leaders of the world, always bring themselves to our eyes? ]
Speaking of pretentious wankery, the actual words do that just fine for you. Really, no one knows why they’re respected? How about asking the people who respect them, do they freak out and say that oh my god they never realized but actually they don’t have any idea why?! Also “command of reverence” doesn’t even mean anything, and titles don’t work that way.
[Seated alone in the far corner of the room, his eyes glazed over the very top of his glasses, the thin wire frames forming a small line in between his eyes and the waitress walking towards him, a gentle smile appearing on his face. ]
This is just painful to read so I’m stopping here. It’s more important to say what you mean than to jam as much irrelevant detail into a sentence as badly as you can.
(4, because if something is unreadable it must be great.)
Headline and title are two different words.
Dialogue is written as “Hello,” she said or “Hello!” she said, never “Hello.” She said or “Hello.” she said or “Hello,” She said or “Hello” she said. The only exception to this is if the next sentence doesn’t contain a speech verb, in which case it’s written as “Hello.” She grinned, never “Hello,” she grinned or “Hello,” She grinned. Note that something isn’t a speech verb just because it’s a sound you make with your mouth, so generally stuff like laughed or giggled is in the second category. Furthermore, if you’re breaking up two complete sentences it’s “Hi,” she said. “This is it.” not “Hi,” she said, “this is it.” or “Hi,” she said “this is it.” or “Hi,” she said “This is it.” And if you’re breaking up a sentence in the middle, it’s “Hi. This,” she said, “is it.” Also, remember that generally “said” is the best speech verb to use, and even more importantly, “stated” is not.
You wouldn’t capitalize animal or mouse or dragon, so you shouldn’t capitalize words like pokemon or pikachu or charizard. The only time you should capitalize it is if you’re using it as the pokemon’s name, ie, Ash’s pikachu is called Pikachu. This is because you only capitalize when it’s a proper noun, which are the names of places or things. Similar reasoning should be applied to any other words you’re thinking of capitalizing, like telephone or trainer. Or professor.
(7)
There are seven thousand stories just on this site in this category with “pokemon” in their title. “New” features in another thousand. There are over four hundred “chronicles”, more if you include misspellings, even more with “begins” and “beginning”, and even more “Character Name”‘s whatever. There are almost eight hundred with “legend”. There are fourteen hundred with “journey”, twelve hundred with “story”, almost three hundred with “quest”, and two thousand with “adventure”. The different region names appear another thousand or two times. “Saga”, “region” and “champion” come in around two hundred. In sum, you should try to choose an original title that has to do with your story in particular, not something that indicates it’s yet another story about a pokemon trainer.
Look, you really, really shouldn’t ask for characters. Doesn’t work right. You get people doing all sorts of characters, and they may each be fine but they don’t fit together properly. It’s like trying to complete a hundred-piece puzzle by taking fifty of the pieces from fifty other puzzles. They may all be good puzzles, and you may pick only the prettiest pieces, but you’re going to end up with a mess.
Write out numbers with letters.
Trainers start at ten.
Opening your story with a character waking up for the day is generic and horribly, horribly overdone, and to be honest, it’s so incredibly dull and boring a start that even if I hadn’t seen it, very literally here, hundreds upon hundreds of times before, I would still tell you you should have started at some other, interesting point.
You wouldn’t capitalize animal or mouse or dragon, so you shouldn’t capitalize words like pokemon or pikachu or charizard. The only time you should capitalize it is if you’re using it as the pokemon’s name, ie, Ash’s pikachu is called Pikachu. This is because you only capitalize when it’s a proper noun, which are the names of places or things. Similar reasoning should be applied to any other words you’re thinking of capitalizing, like telephone or trainer. Or professor.
Dialogue is written as “Hello,” she said or “Hello!” she said, never “Hello.” She said or “Hello.” she said or “Hello,” She said or “Hello” she said. The only exception to this is if the next sentence doesn’t contain a speech verb, in which case it’s written as “Hello.” She grinned, never “Hello,” she grinned or “Hello,” She grinned. Note that something isn’t a speech verb just because it’s a sound you make with your mouth, so generally stuff like laughed or giggled is in the second category. Furthermore, if you’re breaking up two complete sentences it’s “Hi,” she said. “This is it.” not “Hi,” she said, “this is it.” or “Hi,” she said “this is it.” or “Hi,” she said “This is it.” And if you’re breaking up a sentence in the middle, it’s “Hi. This,” she said, “is it.” Also, remember that generally “said” is the best speech verb to use, and even more importantly, “stated” is not.
(1)
[She didn’t want to open her oddly colored eyes ]
Second sentence of your story and already things are looking bad. Is there a reason she needs to have super special eyes? I notice you don’t even seem to care what those odd colors are so long as everyone knows they’re odd.
Paragraphing has rules. You start a new paragraph with a new subject. The goal is not to divide your story up into even blocks. Also, a new speaker means you start a new paragraph.
Dialogue is written as “Hello,” she said or “Hello!” she said, never “Hello.” She said or “Hello.” she said or “Hello,” She said or “Hello” she said. The only exception to this is if the next sentence doesn’t contain a speech verb, in which case it’s written as “Hello.” She grinned, never “Hello,” she grinned or “Hello,” She grinned. Note that something isn’t a speech verb just because it’s a sound you make with your mouth, so generally stuff like laughed or giggled is in the second category. Furthermore, if you’re breaking up two complete sentences it’s “Hi,” she said. “This is it.” not “Hi,” she said, “this is it.” or “Hi,” she said “this is it.” or “Hi,” she said “This is it.” And if you’re breaking up a sentence in the middle, it’s “Hi. This,” she said, “is it.” Also, remember that generally “said” is the best speech verb to use, and even more importantly, “stated” is not.
Storywise, this is relatively solid – her interactions with the other pokemon are fine and you do a good job of suggesting past events and how there’s a rift between her and the other pokemon.. You just go over the top with her special eyes and emoness, like her actually acting like hatemail laced with thorns was a serious concern.
(0)
Spellcheck.
Dialogue is written as “Hello,” she said or “Hello!” she said, never “Hello.” She said or “Hello.” she said or “Hello,” She said or “Hello” she said. The only exception to this is if the next sentence doesn’t contain a speech verb, in which case it’s written as “Hello.” She grinned, never “Hello,” she grinned or “Hello,” She grinned. Note that something isn’t a speech verb just because it’s a sound you make with your mouth, so generally stuff like laughed or giggled is in the second category. Furthermore, if you’re breaking up two complete sentences it’s “Hi,” she said. “This is it.” not “Hi,” she said, “this is it.” or “Hi,” she said “this is it.” or “Hi,” she said “This is it.” And if you’re breaking up a sentence in the middle, it’s “Hi. This,” she said, “is it.” Also, remember that generally “said” is the best speech verb to use, and even more importantly, “stated” is not.
As explanations for real world/pokemon world stuff goes, technology tends to be the worst way. It’s just that much dumber to say people invented a button to go to an alternate universe that just happens to match a kid’s TV show.
You wouldn’t capitalize animal or mouse or dragon, so you shouldn’t capitalize words like pokemon or pikachu or charizard. The only time you should capitalize it is if you’re using it as the pokemon’s name, ie, Ash’s pikachu is called Pikachu. This is because you only capitalize when it’s a proper noun, which are the names of places or things. Similar reasoning should be applied to any other words you’re thinking of capitalizing, like telephone or trainer. Or professor.
[“Pokeballs that contain Pokemon owned by Trainers have this,” he pointed at a button with a needle sticking out,”a DNA button. It links your DNA to your Pokemon, and allows you to control it with a link used by your DNA. ]
So we’re not even pretending this is done on friendship rules, these things are build to control the pokemon.
[“What are these?” I asked. There was a bar, going red to green to blue. It looked like it had place for six settings and the switch was in the middle between green and blue.
“Ah! That is your method of control over the Pokemon. The closer it is to red the more control you have over your Pokemon but the less you are in sync. The closer it is to blue the less control you have over your Pokemon but the more you are in sync. Green is in the middle. Get it?”]
Except for the part where you failed to say what “in sync” actually involves. Also, this may be normal to the inhabitants but your character is looking more and more evil with every second he doesn’t ask what exactly them mean by “control”, especially when in your universe pokemon are capable of human speech and so far appear as intelligent.
There really seems to be a substantial core of people who are actually into pokemon because of the slavery subtext.
(1)
You wouldn’t capitalize animal or mouse or dragon, so you shouldn’t capitalize words like pokemon or pikachu or charizard. The only time you should capitalize it is if you’re using it as the pokemon’s name, ie, Ash’s pikachu is called Pikachu. This is because you only capitalize when it’s a proper noun, which are the names of places or things. Similar reasoning should be applied to any other words you’re thinking of capitalizing, like telephone or trainer. Or professor.
Dialogue is written as “Hello,” she said or “Hello!” she said, never “Hello.” She said or “Hello.” she said or “Hello,” She said or “Hello” she said. The only exception to this is if the next sentence doesn’t contain a speech verb, in which case it’s written as “Hello.” She grinned, never “Hello,” she grinned or “Hello,” She grinned. Note that something isn’t a speech verb just because it’s a sound you make with your mouth, so generally stuff like laughed or giggled is in the second category. Furthermore, if you’re breaking up two complete sentences it’s “Hi,” she said. “This is it.” not “Hi,” she said, “this is it.” or “Hi,” she said “this is it.” or “Hi,” she said “This is it.” And if you’re breaking up a sentence in the middle, it’s “Hi. This,” she said, “is it.” Also, remember that generally “said” is the best speech verb to use, and even more importantly, “stated” is not.
[“Fight back!” Tyson announces, Headbutting the Braviary in the face. Mandy goes in for a Drill Peck, but was interrupted by a Fire Spin, trapping her. Emma took out her stick from her tail, and there was a small fire at the end of it. Mandy growls. Meanwhile, Drake was overpowering Tyson. The Dunsparce was using Take Down, but was being countered easily by Drake’s Superpower. Tyson fell to the ground, fainted. Meanwhile, Emma was doing well against the Mandibuzz. Mandy kept trying to use Whirlwind, but failed, as it only increased the raging Fire Spin around her. Emma used Psyshock, until eventually, Mandy crashed through the flames, and fainted. ]
This is insanely boring. Instead of Character used Attack on Other Character, actually describe what’s happening. Or if that’s too much work, summarize properly instead of listing each piece, like just saying they fought and it was a close, chaotic battle.
(4)
You wouldn’t capitalize animal or mouse or dragon, so you shouldn’t capitalize words like pokemon or pikachu or charizard. The only time you should capitalize it is if you’re using it as the pokemon’s name, ie, Ash’s pikachu is called Pikachu. This is because you only capitalize when it’s a proper noun, which are the names of places or things. Similar reasoning should be applied to any other words you’re thinking of capitalizing, like telephone or trainer. Or professor.
[When I saw you coming, I intentionally lured you in here.”
“Why?”
“Because you are strong trainer. And if you win, I won’t turn you in for your crimes. But if you lose, I will report your location to Looker. I have the phone number for his headquarters. If you refuse, however, I won’t stop you. But would you really want to walk away from the greatest battle you will ever experience?”]
I don’t know what made you think this was a good idea.
Cynthia is not some sort of selfish megalomaniac nutjob who’d see the threat of turning in someone as horrible as Ghetsis as a great way of getting a fun battle.
Literally all you had to do to explain why the two were battling is say Cynthia found him and decided to bring him in, as any decent person would. Instead you go for insane psycho reasoning.
Worse, because you did it this way there’s no real tension. It’s just two assholes who like battling pokemon. If Ghetsis wins, he continues on his way. If Ghetsis loses, he presumably still continues on his way because Cynthia doesn’t bother saying she’ll keep him there but Looker will know his last location, which totally matters despite her saying she only knew he’d be there because Looker knew the guy was in town in the first place.
[Spiritomb felt the souls it had collected over the years cry out before being extinguished forever. If its master would heal it when the battle was over, it could recover them all, but… ]
Not what forever means.
[“No,” said Cynthia. “I’ll just turn you in.”
And in five minutes Ghetsis was in the Undella jail until Looker showed up. Cynthia had left to rhendezvous with him as he approached the area.
But before they could meet up, Ghetsis, according to the warden, had already broken out, riding on a three-headed dragon, and holding an Ultra ball in his hand…
Cynthia finally met up with Looker. “Sorry we couldn’t hold him.”]
And now everyone’s too stupid to even think to take his pokemon away from him, apparently. Also, spellcheck.
(0)
[The truth was… he was too young to lead. Both parents had died, and at the age of sixteen, some refused to let him rule as king, which resulted in a vote, in which Umbreon lost. So now, he was just the Prince, but still the had the highest rank in the Kingdom, so he was able to throw out commands and watch the fireworks from his castle. ]
How exactly do you see this working?
A “vote” by who – the nobles? If the prince still outranks everyone and rank is the only reference you make to how their system works, then in absence of a king the prince would have exactly the same power as one, wouldn’t he?
Capitals are for proper nouns – unique names. So it’s just “prince” and stop capitalizing “kingdom” when you’re not referring to a specific one by name.
[Espeon’s not exactly your type, but if you two marry, then our Kingdoms will finally be merged and we can take over the Star Kingdom with our combined forces. ]
It is possible to have alliances that don’t involve marrying first.
You wouldn’t capitalize animal or mouse or dragon, so you shouldn’t capitalize words like pokemon or pikachu or charizard. The only time you should capitalize it is if you’re using it as the pokemon’s name, ie, Ash’s pikachu is called Pikachu. This is because you only capitalize when it’s a proper noun, which are the names of places or things. Similar reasoning should be applied to any other words you’re thinking of capitalizing, like telephone or trainer. Or professor.
Also, it just plain doesn’t make sense to be introducing multiple pokemon of the same species when you’ve spent most of the fic using those species as if they’re regular names. I was going with it assuming there was some fairy tale logic preventing more than one pokemon species existing at the same time, but now you’ve got houndooms running about.
Well. So far this seems to be no different than a bunch of human characters you’ve named after pokemon, with the closest to pokemony it gets is that the runaway princess evolves instead of swapping clothes. You should have really embraced the weirdness of a world where there can only be one member of a species at a time – where, for example, Eevee could only evolve into Glaceon since the other eevee evolutions are already taken, and only now can a new kid named Eevee be born.
Also if you’re making a plot point of how Umbreon hasn’t been crowned king, explain more about how that actually works.
(3)
Hm. I like the narration, but the poison connection is kind of weak and oddly built – you don’t go for recognizable metaphors, like poisonous words or acidic looks.
(1)
You wouldn’t capitalize animal or mouse or dragon, so you shouldn’t capitalize words like pokemon or pikachu or charizard. The only time you should capitalize it is if you’re using it as the pokemon’s name, ie, Ash’s pikachu is called Pikachu. This is because you only capitalize when it’s a proper noun, which are the names of places or things. Similar reasoning should be applied to any other words you’re thinking of capitalizing, like telephone or trainer. Or professor.
While I like that you’re giving a good reason for his family to want to keep him from a journey, you still have his older sister blocked from a journey for no reason – why add in the plot hole of her parents saying she couldn’t leave at the standard age and then she ran off anyway and then she got killed when you could just say she left at the standard age and got killed?
[It wasn’t hatred he felt; it was jealousy. Every person in possession of a Pokémon was, in Indigo’s eyes, someone who deserved to have their skull pounded down into oblivion. ]
That sounds exactly like hatred and not jealousy.
(0)
FFN has just decided it doesn’t want to let reviews work, so we’ll stop here.
“It links your DNA to your Pokemon, and allows you to control it with a link used by your DNA.”
…you can’t even consciously control your OWN body with your DNA, and regulating THAT is its actual function. I used to think I had a pretty good handle on other people’s misconceptions about DNA, but they just keep getting weirder and stupider.
I’m hoping that the DNA is just like an access key. That only has the problem of how the hell is it maintaining the connection.
If you don’t mind, what’s your view on weapon technology in “realistic” pokefic? Obviously the fact that the evil teams (particularly Team Rocket) don’t and/or “should” use guns pops up a lot in parodies or other works mocking the series, but personally I can’t see that the technology would have come about. From memory, it’s stated in-game that humans and pokemon have worked together for hundreds of years or something, right? Certainly a far longer time than the development of gun tech in our world. But why would you invent a flamethrower when you reliably have fire-types that can burn things? Why invent bombs when so many pokemon can use self-destruct? Why invent guns at all when there are so many easy ways to kill people using pokemon?
I suppose you do have the argument of pokemon having their own morality/free will/whatever and thus not wanting to be used as weapons (I personally take the view that pokemon for the most part are smarter-than-usual animals, not actually sentient, since I really don’t like the slavery subtext), but all the nasty ways to coerce someone aside, it’s also stated in-game that pokemon raised by bad people become bad themselves. With how fast pokemon grow, it wouldn’t be hard to steal pokemon eggs and raise them to be weapons.
Anyway, sorry for kinda ranting a bit there (and wow, this ended up looking more sociopathic than I’d intended, ahahaha), but what do you think?
Strictly speaking, my opinion is I’m here for the godmonsters and if something’s getting in the way of that, there’s a problem.
In terms of how it might actually work, one option might be that it was much like inventing cars even when you have horses.
And I just realized that this might mean their technology ground to a halt when pokeballs were invented.
The primary advantage a car has over a horse is you can stick it in a building when you aren’t using it without needing to worry about food and shit-production. If modern pokeballs are a relatively recent invention, which is what I took from the fact young Oak had visibly different pokeballs, then being able to store pokemon indefinitely might have happened in, say, the past hundred-fifty years. There might also have been something similar to bronze going on – bronze is actually a really great metal, and the reason the “Iron Age” is when people start using tools everywhere is because you just can’t get enough bronze. There might have been a period when they could store pokemon, but the raw materials were so costly that a region could only afford a few. (And like anything based on a natural resource, the harder you tried to get more the pricer each one gets.) Apricorn balls seem to also require specialized techniques to make them, and may have a limited shelf life too. So limited raw materials + significant investment of human time and energy + possibly need to be replaced periodically = no giant pokemon army kept on your shelf.
Then there’s the issue of pokemon not obeying, which is another thing that’s a bigger problem the fewer you have. When Ash’s charizard decided it didn’t care about doing what he wanted, he still had five other pokemon and could have just caught another one (or exchanged it for one of the other pokemon he already had). If you can only afford to give a soldier a single pokemon, and that one pokemon stops listening…
Once you’re capable of selling pokeballs for pocket change, though, you’d need some pretty awesome guns to be worth it. I think you’d end up with a similar situation as Rome ignoring steam power because they already have all these slaves and they need to be using them for something.
Which might explain why the tech seems so haphazard – videophones can’t be replicated by pokemon, so they had plenty of reason to innovate. Teleportation would be something they’d be really familiar with but probably had trouble doing reliably or on a large scale, so that makes sense as an area people would try to invent new ways of doing things. And aside from plain guns there doesn’t seem to be much sign of other weapons, suggesting fancier stuff like flamethrowers was never invented because the effort it took for the result you got wasn’t worth it.
It would also explain why the genocide beam was powered by pokemon and not, say, coal. Both weapons and energy seem like they have the strongest associations with pokemon, so it’s what someone would go to first.
Also if modern farming innovations happened the way they did in America, where suddenly you end up with a surplus of food and trying to find a way to cram more down everyone’s throat, you could also have a government deciding to funnel that into pokemon and cutting all funding to alternative methods because it’s more important to keep the status quo chugging along. Prior to that, even stored pokemon might have been pretty costly because you still had to feed them for the period of time they were working, making alternative technologies more appealing.
(That’s all assuming pokeballs are stasis and don’t require you to keep feeding them, which there’s a lot of evidence against. If they need to be fed regardless than pokeballs aren’t a big factor and the end of non-pokemon technological advances might have only happened once they learned to churn out the food for them.)
Ah, thank you for your answer! It was really interesting to read. The
part about young Oak having different pokeballs – is that from the
anime? I haven’t actually watched all of it, and what I have watched was
roughly fourteen years ago when I was a kid (I’m a bit of a games purist,
haha), so I wasn’t aware that pokeball technology was so recent by the
anime’s reckoning. Ah, but I guess Kurt in G/S also implies that
apricorn-pokeballs were more common until relatively recently as well.
I
always felt like you’d get a similar effect in more
technologically-minded fantasy or urban fantasy settings that have magic, where it
can replicate the effects of a lot of modern-day technology. Though in
those settings, magic generally isn’t as widespread and available to
everyone like pokemon are, so that would account for innovation to make
things available to non-mages. And it also depends on how cost-effective
magic is compared to doing the same thing without magic, for both the
mage and for whoever’s hiring the mage.
Argh, why’s it screwed up the formatting? Sorry about that.
In B2W2, there’s a flashback between Iris and Drayden where it says
[When I was little, Poké Balls didn’t exist yet. Sometimes Pokémon would run away from awful Trainers who didn’t try to understand them.]
so mass-produced pokéballs are definitely a recent invention in the games. Silph might’ve developed the mass production of pokéballs, since they are pokéball manufacturers (at least in Kanto).
Wow, that would mean pokeballs are a really recent invention. That would mean their society is way less stable than it seems in the games.
Although it’s weird that there was still some mechanism for capturing pokemon if the only recourse pokemon had was to eventually flee bad trainers.
…which very much implies that they cannot do that now that pokéballs exist. So, yeah pokéballs = evil.
The Celebi movie. Most of my anime-knowledge was fossilized about halfway through Johto when I stopped being into that area of canon.
I find most fantasy settings break in half if you dare ask why wizard magic isn’t being used for something other than throwing fireballs at each other.