Another mute character getting a partial magic workaround, more shiny pokemon that supposedly don’t belong to assholes, more “master”.
https://www.fanfiction.net/s/12310998/1/Searching-Silence
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, which is a verb describing how the dialogue is said. (“Speak” is not a speech verb.) In that case it’s written as “Hello.” She grinned, never “Hello,” she grinned or “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.” And if you’re breaking up a sentence in the middle, it’s “Hi. This,” she said, “is it.” The same punctuation and capitalization rules apply to thoughts, except you don’t use quotation marks or any other ones with thoughts.
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.
[“Not now. Not after what they did.” Ash said darkly. “Ashley, they blamed us.”]
You know, normal people don’t flip out about how everyone betrayed them just for believing the massive pile of evidence they did it. I’m assuming here you don’t mean for Ash to secretly be the murderer who’s trying to manipulate his sister here, but that sure fits better than Ash hating his friends for caring his mom was murdered and not being all “oh whatev, you’re our friend!”
[They’re trialing us as adults. ]
Trying. As in, you are tried at your trial. You have a ton of mistakes like this throughout. I’d suggest getting a beta reader.
[“I thought about that, so here.” he put away the notebook and pencil and brought out a white board with a stylus. “Just write on it with the stylus and you can clear the board with this button.”]
That would’ve been a lot better if she didn’t have twin-power free chatting. Had he shown up in her room with that, there’d have been more tension in the escape itself since if anything went wrong she’d have trouble telling him fast.
[Ash opened his mouth to say something, but I stopped him. Ash, knock it off. He seemed harmless enough. I can feel it. He is just starting out as a Trainer. Don’t scare him.]
It’d also mean she and Ash can’t effortlessly chat about anything they want without other people knowing, which makes it way too easy for them to keep up the act.
[‘I got a job as a daycare worker during the weekday at the schoolhouse.’ I told him.]
…so her brother gets the manual labor job of working in a field, where he doesn’t need to talk to anyone, while she gets a job with a bunch of children despite most of them not being able to read and it being really bad she can’t do things like shout a warning if a kid is doing something dangerous. It’s like you picked the job solely because it’s stereotypically female so of course a girl does it.
[It took us about a year to make enough money to build. It didn’t even seem that long. By that time, we were fifteen. We spent our birthday alone while we were on the run, but here, the entire village joined in. It was great. Some of them even offered to help us build. We took them up on their offer.]
It really does not seem like they’re all that concerned about finding whoever murdered their mom.
[Daraku was one of the few boys Ash tolerates near me.]
That just makes Ash seem like a controlling asshole.
[“Since the beach is all clean now, do you want to go there tomorrow afternoon with me?” he asked me. Now I feel like a blush is coming on my face. Did he just ask me out? Did he?
“That sounds like a great idea!” Ash exclaimed. I looked at him. Did he just say that? Did he?! “My sister hasn’t been out for a while now and I think you’re good enough for her!”]
Oh jesus christ. So was I right at the start and Ash is the murderer? I can’t see why else his only characterization in this is a controlling asshole who answers for his sister instead of letting her decide. Why are you making him so awful. Is this what you think siblings do?
Zero reviews. Also hey, more muteness with qualifiers.
https://www.fanfiction.net/s/12311011/1/Stun-III-Alola
Semicolons should only ever be used when connecting two complete sentences and even then almost never.
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, which is a verb describing how the dialogue is said. (“Speak” is not a speech verb.) In that case it’s written as “Hello.” She grinned, never “Hello,” she grinned or “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.” And if you’re breaking up a sentence in the middle, it’s “Hi. This,” she said, “is it.” The same punctuation and capitalization rules apply to thoughts, except you don’t use quotation marks or any other ones with thoughts.
Zero.
https://www.fanfiction.net/s/12311139/1/Squirtle-Use-Squirt
Trolling should be entertaining.
Zero.
https://www.fanfiction.net/s/12311168/1/Tales-from-the-Pokedex
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.
[his shiny Gardevoir ]
Why does he have a shiny pokemon? Is it because he’s the sort of asshole who spent some ungodly sum of money for it because he cares more about looks than anything else, or the sort of asshole who ignored all the other pokemon around and only caught a sparkly one because he cares more about looks than anything else? I mean, there must be some reason that right at the very start of your story you go out of your way to undermine the idea he actually cares about his pokemon as people and not as trophies.
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, which is a verb describing how the dialogue is said. (“Speak” is not a speech verb.) In that case it’s written as “Hello.” She grinned, never “Hello,” she grinned or “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.” And if you’re breaking up a sentence in the middle, it’s “Hi. This,” she said, “is it.” The same punctuation and capitalization rules apply to thoughts, except you don’t use quotation marks or any other ones with thoughts.
Write out numbers with letters.
[ Cara if you want to be a trainer like Matt you should go See Professor Kukui. ]
If pokemon have exactly the same sort of minds as humans, it’s incredibly creepy that if you’ve got a human body you get rights and are fine going right back out to catch other people because they look different than you now so it’s fine.
One.
https://www.fanfiction.net/s/12311222/1/Time-and-Time-Again
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.
[“Eat, Feb, or else.” She just stuck her tongue out at him, but hell, it wasn’t like she’d actually get punished or anything. It hurt him enough to just see her stub her toe, let alone he himself causing her any type of pain. ]
Okay, so I think you’re trying to make him sound nice, but “would feel bad if he beat someone for not eating on command/sticking their tongue out” is not exactly impressive.
[arceusdamn]
Using the name of a specific individual in place of a general term like god is awkward at the best of times but at least we do use “jesus christ” as a swear too. What we do not say is “jesusdamn”. Just damn would’ve worked fine.
Zero.
https://www.fanfiction.net/s/12311286/1/Switch
Don’t open in third person then suddenly jump to first. Pick one and stick with it.
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.
[My name is Nova Coates, but that is no longer true. My life has been switched with another. Recently I went to sleep and woke up as someone else. I realized who this was very quickly. His name was Ash Ketchum. He is a very popular person in my previous world, not that he lives there. ]
Actually seeing this play out would be far more interesting than hearing about it after the fact. Or, if you don’t want to show the event, you could not open with half dozen line repeating OMG YOU WON’T BELIEVE THIS and otherwise drawing this out to waste the most time possible, and instead just say “so hey, I switched places, it’s weird but whatever” and then jump into the actual story.
Write out numbers with letters.
It’s “okay”, four letters.
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.
Zero.
https://www.fanfiction.net/s/12311355/1/Sleigh-Ride
If this is a “Christmas special” set in your AU world with your OCs from a particular fic, put it in that fic as a chapter. That way, the people who know/care about it will see it and random people who aren’t reading your fic don’t trip over a bit that makes no sense outside of it.
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.
One.
https://www.fanfiction.net/s/12311471/1/Smogon-U-SYOC-OPEN
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, which is a verb describing how the dialogue is said. (“Speak” is not a speech verb.) In that case it’s written as “Hello.” She grinned, never “Hello,” she grinned or “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.” And if you’re breaking up a sentence in the middle, it’s “Hi. This,” she said, “is it.” The same punctuation and capitalization rules apply to thoughts, except you don’t use quotation marks or any other ones with thoughts.
One.
https://www.fanfiction.net/s/12311510/1/The-Party
spoilerz
https://www.fanfiction.net/s/12311773/1/Poke-Wars-Apocalypse
[the Pokemon]
[tell mum ]
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. Similarly, words like mom are capitalized when they’re being used in place of the person’s name. 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, which is a verb describing how the dialogue is said. (“Speak” is not a speech verb.) In that case it’s written as “Hello.” She grinned, never “Hello,” she grinned or “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.” And if you’re breaking up a sentence in the middle, it’s “Hi. This,” she said, “is it.” The same punctuation and capitalization rules apply to thoughts, except you don’t use quotation marks or any other ones with thoughts.
Spellcheck. And since you’re also butchering the spelling of pokemon species, add those to your spellcheck.
[“Well you see my son Brock has a Geodude that recently evolved into Gravaler.” Flint explained.” And it seems that Gravaler would like to evolve into Golem, however as you know you need to trade it in order to evolve it, so we were wondering if you’d like to trade your Scyther so that it can also evolve into Scizor?”]
Ugh. Look – if you don’t want trade evolutions to mean anything, just give them the trade evolution and let it be assumed something this boring happened off-camera.
I feel like that’s one of those particularly male writing quirks, the need to explain in tedious detail precisely how any supposed flaw or weakness is removed/where they got each and every special item they collect. It’s the boy version of spending five paragraphs on what brand each item of clothing is.
https://www.fanfiction.net/s/12311847/1/Blood-is-Thicker-than-Water
spoilerz but I will take it on faith it doesn’t suck. Nepotism!
https://www.fanfiction.net/s/12311889/1/Pokemon-Sun-and-Moon-Brendan-s-Journey
[Hi, my name is Brendan. Me and my mom moved to our vacation house here in Alola from the Hoenn region. My other mom couldn’t make it because she has to look after the Ranch back at home.]
It’s nice to see little things like that.
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, which is a verb describing how the dialogue is said. (“Speak” is not a speech verb.) In that case it’s written as “Hello.” She grinned, never “Hello,” she grinned or “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.” And if you’re breaking up a sentence in the middle, it’s “Hi. This,” she said, “is it.” The same punctuation and capitalization rules apply to thoughts, except you don’t use quotation marks or any other ones with thoughts.
Spellcheck.
One.
https://www.fanfiction.net/s/12312038/1/The-Legend-of-Lillie
Try harder.
Zero.
https://www.fanfiction.net/s/12312069/1/Cry-One-Nation
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, which is a verb describing how the dialogue is said. (“Speak” is not a speech verb.) In that case it’s written as “Hello.” She grinned, never “Hello,” she grinned or “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.” And if you’re breaking up a sentence in the middle, it’s “Hi. This,” she said, “is it.” The same punctuation and capitalization rules apply to thoughts, except you don’t use quotation marks or any other ones with thoughts.
[“You ready?” the young man asked his ape partner.
“(Always, sir.)” he nodded. While he understood his master couldn’t literally comprehend his words, he knew his mannerisms would always get his points across. Having raised him from just an egg, his trainer could read him better than anyone else.]
If you’ve got intelligent pokemon, “his master” is really creepy. Referring to both of them as each other’s partner would’ve worked fine, or, if you really need there to be a power distinction, you could stick to “trainer”.
Semicolons should only ever be used when connecting two complete sentences and even then almost never.
Write out numbers with letters.
Zero.
https://www.fanfiction.net/s/12312141/1/Cut-Scenes-Heroine-and-Alola-Edition
[ These are short excerpts that I wrote for my fics ‘Heroine’ and ‘Alola Trials’ but couldn’t find a place to put them. I suggest that you read Stand by You, Heroine, and Alola Trials before reading these. Spoiler Alert for the aforementioned fics.]
If these only make sense as part of your fic, why not just put them in there as extras? Stuff that can’t stand on its own shouldn’t be posted separately.
Don’t center all your text, it’s annoying to read.
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, which is a verb describing how the dialogue is said. (“Speak” is not a speech verb.) In that case it’s written as “Hello.” She grinned, never “Hello,” she grinned or “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.” And if you’re breaking up a sentence in the middle, it’s “Hi. This,” she said, “is it.” The same punctuation and capitalization rules apply to thoughts, except you don’t use quotation marks or any other ones with thoughts.
For god’s sake, stop using “questioned”. It doesn’t mean “asked” and shouldn’t be used just because there’s a question mark involved.
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.
Five.
https://www.fanfiction.net/s/12312265/1/Pokemon-Sun-Moon-Anime-GameFAQS-Edition
Nonstory chapters are banned. This belongs at the top of your actual fic, not by itself.
https://www.fanfiction.net/s/12312265/2/Pokemon-Sun-Moon-Anime-GameFAQS-Edition
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, which is a verb describing how the dialogue is said. (“Speak” is not a speech verb.) In that case it’s written as “Hello.” She grinned, never “Hello,” she grinned or “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.” And if you’re breaking up a sentence in the middle, it’s “Hi. This,” she said, “is it.” The same punctuation and capitalization rules apply to thoughts, except you don’t use quotation marks or any other ones with thoughts.
Zero.
https://www.fanfiction.net/s/12312484/1/Pokemon-Adventures-in-Alola
Write out numbers with letters.
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.
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, thousands upon thousands of times before, I would still tell you you should have started at some other, interesting point.
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, which is a verb describing how the dialogue is said. (“Speak” is not a speech verb.) In that case it’s written as “Hello.” She grinned, never “Hello,” she grinned or “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.” And if you’re breaking up a sentence in the middle, it’s “Hi. This,” she said, “is it.” The same punctuation and capitalization rules apply to thoughts, except you don’t use quotation marks or any other ones with thoughts.
If all that happens in a chapter is that someone wakes up and eats pancakes, it’s a waste of everyone’s time. Start your story when it actually starts and delete any pointless babble you don’t need before that.
Zero.
I mean, I will say it’s possible to justify having a shiny as honestly just randomly stumbling upon them and catching them as you would another pokemon that seemed up for it. It’d be very very unlikely, but technically possible. I don’t really see the point in making your character have a shiny pokemon unless it’s representing something you actually caught in your game or there’s a specific reason for it (a ‘heel’ hawlucha, your character is an asshole, your character is plot-importantly lucky, etc etc).
…it’d also be sort of funny for someone to have a shiny and not realize it because the alternate color is just a few hex codes off from the standard color, like shiny shellos. How would you tell without the in-game red star and animation to tell you??
A lot of these authors will also assume that the readers know what the shiny looks like.
Yeah, which isn’t really helpful.
IDK, part of the appeal of shinies is that they either take luck or hard work to get, in the form of chaining or breeding. But in-universe, chaining to get an ‘ideal’ pokemon or breeding hundreds of eggs to abandon most of the resulting pokemon would be horrific. It’s okay to do in-game because it’s a game, but you really do have to justify it better for a story.
Also, isn’t shiny a game community term? I don’t know why they’d be called that in a story, unless you said the alternate coloration added an extra iridescent or pearlescent sheen. I feel like it’d be treated more like people in the real world treat albinism.
I find this whole conversation about shinies in fanfic really interesting from another perspective too, because they work great as a game mechanic, if you actually try to take it seriously from a worldbuilding perspective you’ll end up with something that looks very different from how it does in the games.
I mean, surely the more sensible thing would be to take “shininess” and extrapolate it into a more general sense of hereditary/evolutionary variation in appearance within pokemon species? So you’d also get things like the pink butterfree from the anime (though that was probably an accident, lol) and maybe certain rare appearance traits would be more valued like game “shinies” (but then you’d also have them becoming more common due to selective breeding and so forth). It’s always bugged me that despite looking like it comes from genetic variation, shininess in the games isn’t hereditary at all.
Long story short, it would probably be better if people introduced more visual variation between pokemon of the same “species” instead of the on-off binary palette swap like the games do. This could also help with distinguishing characters, having some minor level of specialness/uniqueness without overdoing it like traditional shinies do.
One of my favorite versions of this actually deals with cross-species breeding in egg groups, where the kid will be the species of the mother but have traits from the father. You mostly see it as an art challenge in the fandom, but it’d be a great way to introduce variation.
There’s also a ton of other ways to do that, that was just my first thought. I’m planning on writing up a story with my OC, and one of the things I have to decide on is how much in-game stuff I’m cutting for her story version. Like, as a player I’ll optimize and work the metagame, but she wouldn’t even if she could.
Oh yeah. The cross-species “egg group” breeding thing always really bugs me in the games (THAT IS NOT HOW SPECIES WORK), but I accept it for game mechanical purposes.
You even have canonical support for “traits of the father” in a roundabout way, isn’t that exactly how egg moves work? (or used to anyway, I think they changed it recently so mothers can pass egg moves too…) I always sort of headcanoned this as working that way, so e.g. a charmander can use Outrage/Dragon dance/whatever because it’s gotten more explicitly dragonish traits from the father that was a salamence or something, the game just abstracts that as moves because it needs to be a game.
I would cut out shinies and even eggs for mammals. If any part of the game holds the world back, ignore it.
It’s always bugged me that despite looking like it comes from genetic variation, shininess in the games isn’t hereditary at all.
Actually, you could breed for it when it was introduced. Gen2 shininess was determined by IVs (plus they handed you a shiny pokemon along the way) then for some reason gen3 onward decided shinies should be near impossible to get.
Oh yeah, I always forget about that because gen 2 is one of the ones I never played. I think they changed it because people didn’t like that the IVs that determined shininess were also pretty subpar? (well, and also probably because rarity I suppose)
I guess shiny-breeding is still theoretically possible now, with the “Masuda method”, but that’s even more obviously a game-mechanics thing that makes zero genetic sense. I hope nobody tries to use that in fic :P
And then the mammal eggs, oh boy. (Kangaskhan is the most egregiously bad thing, that hatches from an egg with a joey already in the pouch. Just WTF.) Do people actually do mammal eggs in fic? I’ve thankfully never encountered it although I don’t read nearly so much pokemon fic as you.
I’ve seen the mammal egg thing done with bishonen yaoi eevee twins. It’s basically the norm in fic because so many pokemon are mammals.
For whatever reason, ‘shiny’ became a canon term in Black and White, replacing ‘alternate colouration’. The idea that shiny pokémon literally sparkle is quite funny, though. It would be terrible for their odds of survival.
I mean, maybe that explains why they’re so rare!
It’s not about “is this possible” but “is there a purpose”.
Really unlikely events are fine in fiction so long as the story is about the really unlikely event. Imagine you find a tiger in your backyard. That’s incredibly unlikely, but what happens as a result is interesting. Imagine you find a tiger in your backyard and also it’s white. Nothing has been added. The interesting story to tell about the white tiger is deliberately trying to find it (for bragging points/money) or trying to make more white tigers (for bragging points/money).
There are tons of things that are technically possible but add nothing to the story to have them happen.
yup yup yup yup yup this is it, this is exactly it