In which I discover that the people who write canon-compliant pokemon high school fics are even worse than the ones who write pokehumans.
On the brighter side, someone finally has a reasonable response to the original fiction issue.
EeveeAlchemist2.0A response to your review at https://www.fanfiction.net/r/12389392/ Hey there. Thank you for the review, I appreciate your concerns. The criticism is valued, and will be taken into account.However, please be aware that this is iDeltaSpark’s first attempt at posting a story. He only just started actively writing, and it took him quite a while to muster the courage to post something. For that reason, we appreciate the constructive criticism, but instead of just criticizing, would you mind telling him what you liked about the story as well, if anything? Please try to be gentle, give him a chance.
Furthermore, I will answer a few of the concerns you had in your review.
A) I’ll take a look at the thread, but I personally consider myself a seasoned author. There are different views on what should be capitalized, and I see many different stories taking different takes on what things should be capitalized, especially in Pokémon stories. I capitalize Pokémon as a general word because it describes a noun category, and furthermore, is capitalized in all of the games, books, and official guides. Therefore, I stand with the impression that it is simply a proper noun within the series, and will stay as such.
B) The first author’s note not being separated is an error on my part, and will be fixed. Thank you for informing me of it. iDeltaSpark writes out the chapters, and I edit and post them to Fanfiction, so this is my fault.
C) Chapters are titled with the author’s names to the side for a reason. This story is co-written between myself and iDeltaSpark, as shown in the story description. Not everyone uses the dropdown menu, and therefore we post it to the top of the chapter as well to accommodate to those who do not. You may use the dropdown menu, if you like. Others choose not to. Simple as that.
D) We’ve taken this into account, and it will be further shown and explained in later chapters. Or, if you want a different take on my side, isn’t that what fanfiction is about? To be creative, and try your hand at creating your own story, with your own views, whether they’re the same as everyone else or different? If every fanfiction stayed with the normal views of Pokémon, honestly, that would be quite boring. We’re trying to do something that’s honestly not even a new prospect. I’ve seen other stories that use the exact same genre and method that we’re using, where quadruped Pokémon go to a high school. Some of them are actually quite popular. If you’d like references, please feel free to ask me, I’d be happy to point you in their direction to further prove my point.
E) I somewhat agree with your statement here, but once again, I am not the one that wrote this particular chapter. Ellipses are quite often seen in stories, and are actually perfectly acceptable in most cases. iDeltaSpark does tend to over-use them, and as his editor and co-writer, I plan to work on this issue with him for the sake of future chapters.
F) Once again, we come to the issue that NOT EVERY AUTHOR HAS THE SAME STYLE. I see many different stories using many different ways to express a thought. Some use italics. Some use single quotation marks. Some use both. Some even use bold point to express a thought. This is true for not only fanfiction, but for printed books, websites, journal articles, and even more examples of writing. Whether you think our way is proper or not, that’s what we do.
G) How does a dog carry around a bone? How does any quadruped carry her pups, or kittens, or whatever offspring they produce? With their mouths. I’m sure that a Jolteon can carry around a piece of paper with no problem, and when he’s ready to read it, set it down on the ground in front of him to do so. honestly, the fact that I had to explain that is somewhat saddening to me.
I prefer to stay professional, so if you have any further problems with the story, please do not hesitate to return this PM. I would be more than happy to further discuss this story with you. If you find that you simply cannot stomach our writing styles, then I urge you to move along and find another story that might make you happier.
Best regards,
– EeveeAlchemist
secs ago
In the future I would appreciate it if you quote the sections you are addressing.
[There are different views on what should be capitalized]
I’d like to see some citations for this.
[and I see many different stories taking different takes on what things should be capitalized, especially in Pokémon stories.]
You mean fanfiction stories, i.e. the things that have no screening, editing, or publishing processes? It’s good that you’re looking for consensus instead of sticking your head in the sand, but fanfiction is not a good metric for proper story construction. Admittedly many published fantasy works are hardly better, but you really should look at published works if you’re going to learn through osmosis.
Anyway, I don’t do capitalization debates, as I said in the review. If you have a counterargument, I want you to say it in the thread.
[Chapters are titled with the author’s names to the side for a reason. This story is co-written between myself and iDeltaSpark, as shown in the story description. Not everyone uses the dropdown menu, and therefore we post it to the top of the chapter as well to accommodate to those who do not.]
Okay, so it conveys important information. That’s reasonable.
[If every fanfiction stayed with the normal views of Pokémon, honestly, that would be quite boring.]
…No, it would be adhering to canon. The entire point of fanfiction is that it is a derivative work constrained by the rules of another canon. If you want to be completely unconstrained in your creativity, you should write original fiction.
[I see many different stories using many different ways to express a thought. Some use italics. Some use single quotation marks. Some use both. Some even use bold point to express a thought.]
Sources, please? I have never seen the latter three outside of fanfiction. Regardless, I did not make that objection for no reason: This style makes it look like characters are talking out loud, and is therefore confusing to the reader. When you have multiple formatting options to choose from, you should pick the one that’s clearer.
[How does a dog carry around a bone? How does any quadruped carry her pups, or kittens, or whatever offspring they produce? With their mouths. I’m sure that a Jolteon can carry around a piece of paper with no problem]
Look at the items in your list: they are all tough, large, and durable objects. Offspring, in particular, actually require a special thicker set of skin around their scruff to allow them to be picked up without harm, because teeth are sharp and destroy fragile things like paper. (The paper would also get covered in saliva, I should add.) Even if this is magical indestructible paper, the quadruped would only be able to hold one thing at a time, and would not be able to manipulate it with the finesse of a human hand — how do they write, for instance? It’s just not a good analogue if you’re including human technology.
You’re missing the forest for the trees. You seem to have started from the premise of “high school with pokemon but REALISTIC pokemon with no thumbs” and are working overtime to come up with justifications for how that can, superficially, work. But this is unnecessary, and only gets in the way of the basic slice-of-life story you want to tell. I honestly do not understand why you don’t want to write this as original fiction; it would be so much easier.
49m ago
“I’d like to see some citations for this.”
Saproneth’s “Ashes of the Past.” If you go to the general Pokémon tab in the Games section of Fanfiction, and sort the stories out by reviews, it will be the first option you see. Go to chapter 97, “Johto 39.” There is an example in there where the author has capitalized the name of a general Pokémon, and also capitalized the word “Pokémon” multiple times. Saproneth is one of the most well respected Fanfiction authors on the website, and is very well known.
If you’d like a published example, there’s, once more, every Pokémon book by Tracy West, the Pokémon manga by Vizkids, and every guide ever released. They all capitalize “Pokémon,” and they capitalize the Pokémon’s names, even if they aren’t owned by a trainer or have a proper name to them. Hell, if you want a real-life example, my computer won’t accept “pokemon” lowercase. It keeps a red bar underneath it until I capitalize it. Only then is it counted as correct. So please, don’t assume that I’ve never looked at any published works.
Oh, and I’ll post this in the thread too, if you’re really that concerned about it.
“No, that would be adhering to canon.”
I get that. But we are still sticking to canon. We haven’t changed the Pokémon themselves, or really anything else. Literally the only thing we have changed is the setting. This is called an alternate universe, or AU, and is commonly used in Fanfiction. This particular idea has been used many times, and once again, I can cite other stories that use Pokémon in high school.
“Eevee High School Tale,” by cresellia, for example. I haven’t read through this one fully, but she uses the same idea.
“Icy Isolation,” by Laptopter321. This story features a Glaceon that goes to high school, very much like we do in our story. This story was iDeltaSpark’s inspiration for starting this story, in fact.
My point is that this is not a brand new idea and has been done before. So if you have a problem with it, then please just stay out of the genre as a whole.
“Sources, please?”
I’ll be honest here, I was mostly talking about Fanfiction. But if you want a real source, Kathy Reich’s, “Virals.” She uses different methods of showing thoughts throughout the book. Then there’s also “The Hobbit,” By J.R.R. Tolkein. He simply does not use quotes or italics, and incorporates Bilbo’s wondering into the sentence.
“The paper would be covered in saliva… How do they write, for instance? It’s just not a good analogue if you’re including human technology.”
I’ll repeat it once more: this is the first chapter of the story. We haven’t even described the school as a whole yet. Don’t you think we would have taken all of this into account? The advances of technology so that quadrupeds are able to write, type, and study will be explained. As for carrying objects, this is Pokémon we’re talking about. There are going to be loopholes that you can use, especially in a children’s cartoon. You see Pokémon in the anime picking up objects like paper in their mouths all the time, such as Ash’s Pikachu picking up his invitation in the first Pokémon movie. You don’t see anyone being picky about that. It’s not like the Jolteon crumpled up the paper, stuck the whole thing in his mouth like a wad of chewing gum and walked off. He picked up the edge of the sheet and walked down the hall.
Furthermore, things like backpacks can be placed on the back, like a saddlebag. Or, if it’s a light piece of equipment, even around the neck. There are plenty of creative ways to imagine these characters going to school.
“You’re missing the forest for the trees.”
No, I’m really not. Believe it or not, we do have this planned out, whether you want to stick around to see that or not. That’s up to you, and I will not force you to stay. But I promise that your questions will be answered later in the story.
“I honestly do not understand why you don’t want to write this as original fiction; it would be so much easier.”
Perhaps it would be easier. But this was iDeltaSpark’s idea, and I will not object to it just because something else might be “easier.” This is his idea, his story, that I am simply co-writing with him. I will go through whatever lengths possible to help him through it. Besides, I like a challenge.
Best regards,
– EeveeAlchemist
7m ago
Pokémon going to school, including quadrupeds, is actually canon.
Pokémon Super Mystery Dungeon, released by Nintendo in America during 2015, involves you and your partner attending school in the first arc of the game. Considering you can choose from many quadrupeds in this game, including Bulbasaur, Chikorita, Mudkip, Turtwig, Tepig, Fennekin, and if you want to count him, Froakie. All of them go to school without a problem, and all of the students during class are instructed to open and read books. This is canon, as it is an officially released game.
Furthermore, in the other mystery dungeon games, you see your character picking up things with their mouthes in dungeons.
I hope I’ve proven my point to you. Have a good day, and best of luck.
Best regards,
– EeveeAlchemist
16Doobop13A response to your review at https://www.fanfiction.net/r/12390363/ Thank you for taking the time to critique the fanfic. Most of your critique is very much appreciated and will be taken into account for future chapters(in both this story and others where it may apply), but there are a few things I must clear up with you.I am not trying to emulate A Song of Ice and Fire, just trying to drive home that the story is rated M for a reason. I suppose I could have done a better job of wording that to avoid confusion. Sorry.I am also perfectly aware of how pokemon work, and simply thought adding classes on top of everything would be fun for people (it’s a troupe in most other RPG franchises after all). I’m sorry if you do not feel that way, but unless there is overwhelming negativity towards them, the classes are staying, because my friends and I enjoy them.
“Doesn’t read like a Pokemon fanfic at all”
That’s mighty pretentious of you. I was not aware I couldn’t write a more serious story using my favorite franchise. I was also quite sure I labeled the fic as a fantasy/drama, and it certainly reads like one. Just because it isn’t what you’re used to doesn’t make it any less of a Pokemon fanfic. That’s a very narrow minded viewset to have and reflects poorly on your character.
That is all.
secs ago[I am also perfectly aware of how pokemon work, and simply thought adding classes on top of everything would be fun for people (it’s a troupe in most other RPG franchises after all).]
I think you missed what I was trying to say.
[I was not aware I couldn’t write a more serious story using my favorite franchise.]
My objection wasn’t that the story was serious. My objection was that the story didn’t have anything to do with Pokemon. To reiterate: your characters are acting exactly like humans with magic powers, in a setting that has nothing to do with any canon Pokemon setting but appears to have tons of rules and history of its own. If you changed all the pokemon names, you could publish this as original fiction; and if the fandom element is that extraneous, it’s disingenuous to post it on a fanfiction site where people are expecting stories that engage with that fandom. And I want to be clear that there is nothing intrinsically wrong with original fiction, it just means the story does not belong on a fanfiction site. Fictionpress and Archive of Our Own do host original fiction, however.
44m ago
Ah, I do see where you are coming from now with your second point.
I still believe that societies and policies built around pokemon types have quite a bit to do with pokemon, and Delphox are said, in the pokedex, to be able to divine the future from the flame on their wands (as that is the only instance of ‘magic’ I can think of that you might be referring to), but I sincerely apologize for my incorrect initial assumption on your reasoning.
If I do see critique similar to yours in the future, I will consider adapting into an original fiction.
jootsgarlandI did not need nor request your critique. Please remove it from ‘The Internship’ I will have your account reported.
If I wanted your advice I would have asked for it. You don’t seem to get much joy out of life, do you?
secs agoSigned reviews cannot be removed once posted.
[If I wanted your advice I would have asked for it.]
No, if you don’t want reviews you have to explicitly not ask for them. If you don’t like feedback, don’t post your work on a website with a public review feature.
oNo shit, well I’m still going to get it deleted for spam. You say I should not ask for reviews on a story I choose to publish publicly? Yeah because that makes sense. Sure I welcome criticism, but your review isn’t even that, it’s just nitpicking and that wasn’t I wanted nor needed.
Unreal.
[You say I should not ask for reviews on a story I choose to publish publicly? Yeah because that makes sense.]
Yes, if you have strong opinions on something it makes sense to express those feelings clearly.
Latios849A response to your review at https://www.fanfiction.net/r/12388146/ I wanted to thank you for your feedback on the story and the link to the beta reader signup site. I have tried to insert a line break but I am unable to do so. Do you have any suggestions?
Told them how.
The Heartless CookieThank you very much for your review! It’s been incredibly, incredibly helpful for a fledgeling author like me. I’ll redo the prologue, keeping your advice in mind. It might be a while since I’m quite busy at this time, but you can eventually expect a much better story!
JAViL15A response to your review at https://www.fanfiction.net/r/12387465/ Alright, firstly I appreciate grammatical advice. This is something that comes with writing experience, something which I am limited in when it comes to stories. Cheers for the clear explanations to go with them, thank you.Continuing on the positive note, I partially agree with your questioning of how truly this really fits as a Pokemon Fanfic. While this is only the first chapter with a focus on exposition, it is primarily a real-world based story with a Pokemon reference as you said.As for everything else though, what can I say. The fact that you’re criticizing the psychic/consciousness side of the fiction I have written as factually incorrect is rather amusing. Clearly human science has already concluded on these obscure areas and we’ll be fabricating our own psychic consciousness in labs for social application in a few weeks.
You also criticize the panther and stealth part.
“Most black panthers hunt at night. They are masters of concealment and use every available rock, bush, or depression to hide themselves and get as close as possible to their prey. As they wait, they are silent and cautious. They sit perfectly still and blend in well with the background. When they stalk their prey, they walk silently and creep very close to them. As soon as they get close enough to their prey, they dash forward, leap on top of them, and grab the victim with their front paws. A black panther may also hide among tree leaves on a tree branch and drop down on top of the prey when they pass by. A black panther kills the victim by a single but fatal bite to the neck with its powerful jaws or by strangling the victim with its paws.”
Right, not stealthy.
The “cover up the tissue” bit – maybe I should at a bit explaining how they perhaps act as radiators or that covering them up would weaken overall strength of the ability. Either way what you’re doing here is called nit-picking.
No I don’t want an insect, if it pleases you I can put something in about how the psychic tissue has a size minimum. Again, I am clearly tainting the known science behind psychic tissue with my inaccuracies.
[“Focus on what’s actually important and what story you actually want to tell.”]
Exposition is important in a first chapter.
Then you have my favorite.
[“why would they pick the glass cannon melee fighter with no opposable thumbs from a video game where everything has to be arbitrarily balanced? This is absolutely ridiculous. Try harder.”]
Clearly you are not familiar with Umbreon as ‘glass cannon melee fighter’ couldn’t be further from the truth. If we’re going 100% true to game statistics here Umbreon is primarily a tank with stall and support capabilities. This is a fictional story however, one can take a bit of creative freedom (A story about substituting and protecting for a toxic stall in conflicts would be pretty awful). There is also a category of moves in Pokemon called “Special” moves, as in they don’t involve physical contact or melee. I’m surprised you didn’t pick up on this through all the criticism you gave the psychic parts of my story, because I mean clearly psychic abilities involve melee combat.
“Try Harder” – I try to stay collective when I receive criticism. Criticism is how one improves their skills. I greatly appreciated the grammatical advice. That said, I think the only response I can give here is you need to work on how you present yourself as a critic. People don’t take kindly to up-themselves arseholes who insult them.
secs ago[No I don’t want an insect]
Ah, okay, so you’re working backwards to justify a desired aesthetic. Okay, that’s fair. But maybe don’t spend thousands of words and your entire first chapter explaining how it totally makes logical sense. It’s okay to be a little self-indulgent and just say this is how it is without having to explain why supposedly sensible people purposefully chose your preferred aesthetic. Because this?
[Exposition is important in a first chapter.]
No. Oh my goodness no. Exposition overload is the last thing you want in a first chapter. You have to make people care about the thing first if you want them to pay attention to the explanation. This has more information: https://www.fanfiction.net/topic/11834/142411850/1/First-Chapters
[The fact that you’re criticizing the psychic/consciousness side of the fiction I have written as factually incorrect is rather amusing. Clearly human science has already concluded on these obscure areas]
Yes it has. We can stick needles in brains and make consciousness stop happening. All psychological phenomena are simultaneously physical, that is the central dogma of neuroscience.
But the more important question here is, why? What makes their synthesis process different than natural reproduction in this one extremely specific way? Are readers supposed to notice that that’s odd and it will have a plot-relevant explanation later, or are we just supposed to shrug and go “I dunno, it’s souls or something” and ignore it?
[“Most black panthers hunt at night. They are masters of concealment and use every available rock, bush, or depression to hide themselves and get as close as possible to their prey. As they wait, they are silent and cautious. They sit perfectly still and blend in well with the background. When they stalk their prey, they walk silently and creep very close to them. As soon as they get close enough to their prey, they dash forward, leap on top of them, and grab the victim with their front paws. A black panther may also hide among tree leaves on a tree branch and drop down on top of the prey when they pass by. A black panther kills the victim by a single but fatal bite to the neck with its powerful jaws or by strangling the victim with its paws.”
Right, not stealthy.]
I’d like you to consider which of those skills are at all applicable to infiltrating an army base. You could kill the first guards easily, sure, but you’re stuck after that; a human could at least pull the steal-the-uniform trick afterwards, a giant glowing black cat is going to be suspicious no matter what you do. (Good luck blending into your natural environment when you’re inside the base, by the way.) Big cats are stealthy *fighters*, they’re good at stalking and ambushing single targets. That’s not the same thing as infiltration and avoiding detection. If they wanted, like… an assassin, maybe, this could work. But not for what they’re describing.
[The “cover up the tissue” bit – maybe I should at a bit explaining how they perhaps act as radiators or that covering them up would weaken overall strength of the ability. Either way what you’re doing here is called nit-picking.]
A gaping plot hole is pretty much as far as you can possibly get from a nit-pick.
[There is also a category of moves in Pokemon called “Special” moves, as in they don’t involve physical contact or melee.]
Yes, and umbreon naturally learns none of them.
[I’m surprised you didn’t pick up on this through all the criticism you gave the psychic parts of my story, because I mean clearly psychic abilities involve melee combat.]
The psychic abilities you focused entirely on the stealth applications and barely on the combat applications of, you mean?
If game mechanics don’t matter, the umbreon thing is totally aesthetic, and psychic powers work based on your own explanations, alright, but then it’s not Pokemon fanfic. If we are supposed to be using game mechanics as a shorthand, umbreon has bad special attack (and is not terribly stealthy either, it’s got bad speed/reaction time too).
You’re missing the forest for the trees. You’re getting too bogged down on details, and that means your readers have to get bogged down on details too. It’s okay to focus on the overall plot and concept you want and not worrying this much about how to get there.
Also I got an interesting response to a Havan submission. To get you up to speed, I say that his pokemon have different names than the nicknames he gives them to emphasize how trainers naming pokemon is kind of messed up.
3h ago
Again, I have two questions I must ask.
First of all, as Havan likes to be flashy inside and outside of the battlefield, wouldn’t he want to show off said flashiness in contest halls more than the league, where they’d be more effective and net him more glory? Is there any reason he wants to tackle the league, other than to be the very best at it?
And finally, what’s the reason behind him calling his team members a different name than their original one? I do see Gabite and Gallade (who by the way, according to pokémon, must be a male, so I’ll have to tweak that little detail) are from other trainers, and so he is unable to change said nicknames. Does this mean Blissey was also formerly from another trainer?
:((((((
It is also interesting how they seem to think that the female gallade was just an unintentional accident.
HarmonytheRocketEeveonA response to your review at https://www.fanfiction.net/r/12391914/ For one, I put it in TV because it’s based on the show and goes along with the episodes and characters. Do you mean the formatting or the content? Please clear this up. Second, I thought I was already following these rules for dialogue. If you could point out where in the story I made the mistake, that would help. Also, I understand your point in the last paragraph. I do tend to overuse different verbs. I’ll try to work on that. Thanks.
secs ago[For one, I put it in TV because it’s based on the show]
You still have to recognize the differences between mediums. There isn’t literally a narrator character literally saying things; if you want to do narration in prose, you can just say narration.
[“This isn’t in the guide,” Brock rubs his chin in thought.]
That comma should be a period, as the narration is a separate sentence. You repeat this error multiple times throughout the fic.
Actually, the Narrator is a real character later on in the story. Also, I guess I can see your point, but he’s rubbing his chin as he’s saying it. What should I do?secs ago[Actually, the Narrator is a real character later on in the story.]
You need to make that clearer, then.
[Also, I guess I can see your point, but he’s rubbing his chin as he’s saying it. What should I do?]
It doesn’t matter. You only use a comma to end dialogue if the resulting narration describes how it’s being said. As a general rule of thumb, you should be able to remove the quotes and still have everything make sense. [Hello, he said] makes sense. [Hello, he rubbed his chin] is a comma splice.
wubbzyA response to your review at https://www.fanfiction.net/r/12392435/ I think it’s fine where it is, thanks?? :)
It isn’t. It will take you ten seconds to change it. Please be courteous to the users of this site who want a functioning filter system.
Naw, I’m good.You’ve now spent more time arguing about this than it would take you to change it. Why are you so committed to to making the site less functional?
SdhjrA response to your review at https://www.fanfiction.net/r/12391284/ dang ok, im still doing all that stuff
St Elmo’s Fire,
A new review has been posted to your story.
Story: Blood is Thicker than Water
Chapter: 1. Chapter 1
From: Poopeez (Guest)
——————-
Poopeez:This belongs in the Anime world. Find your story under “Manage Stories” and select it from the dropdown menu that says “World: Any” in the “Category” section.
You’re formatting dialogue incorrectly. Dialogue is written as [“Hello,” she said] or [“Hello!” she said], never [“Hello.” She said] or [“Hello”, she said] or [“Hello” she said]. This is because dialogue and speech tags are considered to be part of the same sentence, so they have to flow together. The only exception to this is if the next sentence doesn’t contain a speech verb. In that case, the second part iis/i considered a separate sentence, so it’s written as [“Hello.” She grinned], never [“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. (“Speak” is also not a speech verb.) 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 single quotes) with thoughts. This is because quotation marks for thoughts make it look like your characters are talking out loud, which is confusing to the re…
This message has been truncated due to length. To view in full, please visit site.
——————-
Aw, I’ve finally made it to people throwing copypasta back at me! I’m moving up in the world.
AltoAbilityShipper37I believe that i have apostrophe’s around thoughts or telepathy, both of which are noted as to which they are, thoughts or telepathy. I was looking for a beta but have decided that I will decide my beta after the 5th chapter so that I can be assured that they will not leave based on some of my content that they may not agree with such as, possible lemons, blood and guts, swearing and other adult themes.thank you for your review and the links that you added. it will most definitely help in the future but as i have chapter 2 and three already written and them being decently long, i will not go through them to change my dialogue pattern. it will however change to what you have said in chapter four an on.do remember though, i write much of this on my phone so it becomes a bit of a hassle to constantly flip between the alphabet and the symbols keyboard.
thank you,
-AltoAbilityShipper37
secs ago[it will most definitely help in the future but as i have chapter 2 and three already written and them being decently long, i will not go through them to change my dialogue pattern.]
There’s no reason not to. It won’t take you very long. What’s the point of having a buffer if you don’t go back to edit it?
[i write much of this on my phone]
That sounds like a form of torture to me. You should try waiting until you have access to a proper keyboard.
24m ago
Because of that, I write a draft in my gmail and then when I get a chance, save it in Microsoft word, run spell and grammar check, and upload from there.
St Elmo’s Fire,
A new review has been posted to your story.
Story: Blood is Thicker than Water
Chapter: 1. Chapter 1
From: Guest
——————-
:You go around giving stupid advice no one wants, but don’t want people to message you about it?
Aw, aren’t you a big hypocritical baby?
——————-
I’m a bit confused by this one. I think they’re referencing my “don’t message me about capitalization” disclaimer.
I got another review four minutes later that definitely isn’t by the same person:
St Elmo’s Fire,
A new review has been posted to your story.
Story: Blood is Thicker than Water
Chapter: 1. Chapter 1
From: Guest
——————-
:Haha I love how most of the reviews here are trashing you.
——————-
This is actually correct, but only barely — 10/16 reviews were revenges at this point, and that’s counting the many two-in-a-row guest reviews as coming from different people.
noobwriterwilliamA response to your review at https://www.fanfiction.net/r/12325643/ Thank you for the help. Again I am sorry for the grammer, punctuation, and or spelling errors. I am just starting writing and need all the help I can get.
“This is one of the many reasons why I hate PMD.”
Out of curiosity, would you mind elaborating on those other reasons?
Oh, would I! I’ll freely admit that the main reason is because I despise the gameplay. Pokemon’s system is not suited to roguelikes and it is godawful. The only one I finished was the very first one, and I hated it the whole time. People keep telling me that Explorers has a great story, but I played it for hours and saw neither hide nor hair of it, so screw that. I have better things to do wtih my life than spend an hour level grinding before every single dungeon because the designers couldn’t be bothered to balance their game properly.
The other reason is what I hinted at in my response — I hate, hate, hate how it takes such a fascinating concept and completely refuses to engage with it at all. The PMD games are not Pokemon games. They are trite, banal, generic fantasy roguelikes that murdered Pokemon and wore its skin as a suit to make a quick buck. I cannot forgive that. We could have gotten a great Zootopia-like examination of how pokemon behave and develop in the absence of humans and how their vastly different and diverse physiologies interact to create a society. Instead we get characters who are indistinguishable from humans with magic powers. And that has irrevocably poisoned the fandom, because it’s normalized the practice of reskinning your original fiction without any further thought and stifled everyone who would have otherwise rubbed two brain cells together about how pokemon could actually function on their own since now, well, PMD says it looks like this so that’s how it must be!
Hate.
Edit: Oh and also, one of the few things I remember from my Red Rescue Team playthrough was that it confirmed absol to be misunderstood woobies who really are trying to warn people of disasters, because PMD exists only to murder all ambiguity and interesting interpretations and then dance on the corpse.
Instead we get characters who are indistinguishable from humans with magic powers
Isn’t the player character of PMD games literally just a human turned into a pokemon because the plot said so?
Seeing you rage about things like pokemon society and nicknames and stuff is really making me want to write up a pokemon fiction where the pokemon are no more intelligent than social animals (and the main character is a pokemon researcher studying pokemon in their native habitats). And, because I am an ultra-genius writer who will revolutionalize the field of of pokemon fanfiction and make all offer gifts of gold and jewels to my magnificence, it wouldn’t even be a grimdark-is-realistic fiction either!
It boggles the mind to wonder why absolutely no one has ever thought of anything remotely like this concept before!
Isn’t the player character of PMD games literally just a human turned into a pokemon because the plot said so?
That’s actually the most reasonable part. It’s a standard trapped-in-another world convention that potentially provides some interesting hooks for this universe specifically due to the power imbalance present in the human world. How do you react to being on equal footing with these animals you once used as pets? How do they react to you? That part’s fine. What is not fine is how every other pokemon also acts like a human in a pokemon’s body.
I myself always wondered why none of the fic deals with the whole body horror aspect of transforming into a pokemon. It might be because a lot of them seem to go the boring rought of bi-peds or pseudo-bipeds like Riolu and Pikachu. I always found the quadriped grass type starters like Bulbasaur and Turtwig the most intresting by far. How much harder would it be to hold onto you’re humanity if you’re half plant?
It’s a pitty because there’s so much potential for drama–you’re trapped in a body not your own and there are things trying to kill you everywhere, but it’s treated with all the gravity of high school au.
Having seen Zootopia, I can’t really say that it does any better than PMD in imagining animals as a non-human based culture. They pretty much seemed like humans in animal form to me, so could you elaborate on how you saw it as more of an exploration of animals without humans?
Alternatively/in addition to, I’d be interested in seeing what you would want to see out of a “humans not included” take on pokemon, if you’d be willing to share.
While it’s still mostly humans in animal suits, it does a lot with habitat and scale instead of mice and giraffes driving the same cars.
And it also gives everyone bipedalism and opposable thumbs, which goes a long way to justifying how human-like they are. If they were standard animals I would cry foul for Zootopia as well.
Alternatively/in addition to, I’d be interested in seeing what you would want to see out of a “humans not included” take on pokemon, if you’d be willing to share.
Something like Zootopia. A world where their physiology actually matters instead of just having a society that perfectly mimics ours in every way. Show me how tool use evolved for creatures with no opposable thumbs, if it happened at all, or if they do something different. Show me how they accommodate grimer and animal pokemon in the same space. Show me how they accommodate both wailord and joltik. Show me how they accommodate klink. Perhaps even — where do their powers come from, and how do they learn them? And it should give me something I can take back to the main games: show me what pokemon lose by not having humanity, and what they gain. The main games are full of humans talking over pokemon and telling us what they want; show me how true that is.
And, above all, it should not be a roguelike.
I am not the one that wrote this particular chapter
This seems like the oddest sort of defence. Does the critique become invalid because it’s inadvertently directed at the wrong person? If this person is posting the story for a friend, you’d think he’d also toss all the reviews his friend’s way in return.
Some of them are actually quite popular.
As someone who works so deeply in the slice-of-life genre that he once ran a slice-of-life game of First Age Exalted that is so fondly regarded at least one of the players still remembers it literally a decade later, the fact that this is true still absolutely mystifies me.
I see many different stories using many different ways to express a thought.
The thoughts-in-italics copypasta is the one that’s always fallen the most on deaf ears for me. I’ve absolutely never had a problem reading thoughts if they weren’t in italics, and furthermore, not all websites allow people to use italics in posted material in the first place. Some places are purely plain text. How would you suggest writing thoughts there?
I’ve always felt that italic thoughts, especially without any sort of punctuation around them, always looked super odd. I’ve read books where a character speaks through telepathy with one who responds verbally and all of the telepath’s dialogue is written as unpunctuated thoughts, and it’s just terrible. And when an author wants to use italics for things like quoting from books or to just highlight a text as noteworthy, when that text is already in italic because it’s in a thought, so they make it non-italic text? That’s even worse. (But I’m pretty sure that articles in academic journals don’t use italics to indicate someone is thinking very often.)
It’s just not a good analogue if you’re including human technology.
So, from the description of things, it sounds like he’s going with My Little Pony rules for holding things? They grab things with their mouths and use saddlebags until they need to do something a little anthropomorphic and then suddenly their hooves turn into adhesive pads?
But this was iDeltaSpark’s idea, and I will not object to it just because something else might be “easier”.
Didn’t this guy refer to himself as this other guy’s editor? Isn’t that literally what an editor is for? The closest thing I have to an editor for my current project are a pair of friends. One is insanely critical of all writing that he stopped being able to write for pleasure because of how aware he became of all the flaws in his work and the other is satisfied so long as I have a lot of cute girls doing cute things. Between the two of them, they strike a pretty good balance of critique and encouragement.
This is canon, as it is an officially released game.
What the hell kind of logic is this? The official releases of pokemon can’t be non-canon? Does that mean that Pokemon Puzzle League and Pokemon Trading Card Game are both canon games? Where the fuck does Pokemon Conquest’s setting fit into the world of pokemon? Most of Oda Nobunaga’s most well known campaigns were located somewhere within the Kanto and Kansai regions. If we follow the parallels between Japan and the world of Pokemon, Oda Nobunaga started his adventure in Violet City would have met his demise in Ecruteak (although the Burned Tower is a reference to a different tower that burned down. Kyoto has been on fire a lot).
That’s mighty pretentious of you.
Is this backlash towards the idea of writing original fiction really that common in the fanfiction community? This isn’t the first time someone’s acted like you slapped them in the face with the idea they’re writing something based on their own ideas instead of taking ideas from other people and writing about them. Is this just like the opposite of the reaction most people not in the fanfiction community have at the insinuation that they’re into fanfiction (because of the abysmally low quality of almost all fanfiction)?
Fictionpress and Archive of Our Own do host original fiction, however?
Are you sure about AO3? The last time you said this, I read their rules and guidelines and such, and while they might make allowances for inspired works like the one you’re reviewing here, I’m pretty sure that wholly 100% original fiction isn’t really encouraged. From the way they write it, it sounds like you’ll probably get away posting it (especially now, when they’re not that large), but its not something they really want on the site.
No I don’t want an insect
Well, there’s your answer on why it’s gotta be an umbreon. Next, try asking him why they’d be giving this dark-type pokemon psychic abilities. Wasn’t that the type introduced in Gen 2 specifically to address how overpowered psychic types were in Gen 1? You’d think that’d make it ridiculously hard.
Exposition is important in a first chapter.
The shoddy justifications for why an umbreon has psychic powers that make its yellow markings glow is vitally important to the plot of this fanfiction. Get out now.
Also I got an interesting response to a Havan submission.
What’s a Havan? Is it one of the characters you throw around SYOC stories to highlight how bad the idea is?
the female gallade was just an unintentional accident
What, exactly, is it supposed to be?
Aw, I’ve finally made it to people throwing copypasta back at me!
So are you going to cheerfully and politely ask for him to provide specific examples of your dialogue formatting mistakes so you can go through the story and edit them, and then earnestly thank him for caring so much about your fiction to post a review and provide constructive criticism?
You should try waiting until you have access to a proper keyboard.
As someone who has spent months with no way to access the internet other than smartphone, this is the laziest excuse ever. I wrote better than this while casually chatting with folks on AndroIRC, even after I’d been doing it for several hours and my hands were horrible claw-like appendages.
In a limited POV, it’s also fine to write thoughts without italics and just have them as part of narration. What’s important is that you don’t mistake them for spoken words. The purpose of grammar is clarity etc.
What the hell kind of logic is this? The official releases of pokemon can’t be non-canon? Does that mean that Pokemon Puzzle League and Pokemon Trading Card Game are both canon games?
Okay in fairness, PMD has much more legitimacy than one-off games that clearly exist in a void or crossovers. That’s why I hate it so much, I can’t really argue against that. It may be a spinoff but it’s a major series of its own, and it is the only real mainstream information we have to go off of when it comes to how pokemon act on their own. I still don’t think it’s valid because as I said upthread, PMD is not written in good faith with respect to the rest of the franchise, but that gets into pretty subjective and dicey territory. If I say “canon is stupid, ignore it” in one breath while slamming original fic for not following canon the next I’m a hypocrite.
For your other questions, AO3 actually does have a thriving Original Works category, and yes, Havan is one of my SYOC characters, based on a character from a video game I reviewed here a while back. The female gallade is an intentional screw-you to whoever in Game Freak decided that only boys get to be knights in shining armor.
PMD has much more legitimacy than one-off games
I’d still call it non-canon, along with pretty much every game outside of the main line, if not literally every other game. So, when you slam a fiction for not following canon, and someone brings up PMD, it’s irrelevant because its non-canon. Easy peasy. If it helps, the Mystery Dungeon series is something that existed before, and exists independantly from, the Pokemon series.
Havan is one of my SYOC characters
Out of curiosity, what video game?
the female gallade is an intentional screw-you
Not to be rude, but I’ve got basically no nice way of saying this: Isn’t this basically saying “canon is stupid, ignore it”?
The Reconstruction.
It is anti-canon, but it’s so minor that it is within bounds for a fanfic author to change it. It’s essentially a headcanon: it does not contradict anything important or change the setting in any meaningful way. There’s no good reason for it to exist in the first place… so if people are going to be writing grimdark fic where only 13-year-olds are mature enough to traverse the murdermonster-infested wilderness, they can also say there’s no gender restriction on the knight in shining armor pokemon.
The more sane response is to simply ignore it because you rarely need to reference a pokemon’s gender anyway. But they ask for it, so.
Oh, I thought you were saying the gallade was trans.
Nah. I’m commenting on a gender issue, but not a transgender issue, if that makes sense.
Now, with that said, I am curious: How do you feel about the idea of monogendered pokemon as a whole? Do you have any problem with the basic idea of kiralia evolving into different pokemon depending on if it’s a male or a female, or do you just have a problem with the specific pokemon it evolves into? Or what about those pokemon who only evolve if they’re male or if they’re female, like that one honeycomb pokemon from X/Y? Are there any pokemon who only evolve if they’re male? The only ones I can think of are female-only (but I admit near total ignorance of the generations where this idea was used).
For the record, I’ve got pretty much no knowledge about what gallade is like as a party member and how equal in effectiveness it is to gardevoir. Pretty much all I know about it, except for the fact I think it’s design looks kinda dumb, comes from this comment thread. The only time I raised a ralts was in my original sapphire playthrough and I was pretty happy with having a gardevoir on my team. It was a pretty good pokemon so far as I can remember. Is there a problem with gallade mechanically as well or do you just dislike its thematics and fluff?
Monogendered pokemon are dumb. When they use it to mimic real-world biology like with the bugs, I can grudgingly tolerate that, but anything further is unnecessary and betrays a very gender essentialist mindset. Like, okay, froslass is based on a folklore monster that’s the ghost of a woman, but is the woman part really that vital for a creature design that just looks like a freaky demon thing? And did we really need dominatrix salazzle? I think not.
Gallade pisses me off in particular because of how gendered the role is. Gardevoir is modeled off of opera singers and princesses while gallade is modeled off of knights in shining armor… and you just know that if they invented gendered evolution in gen 3, gardevoir would be female-only. To say that humans’ own weird gender conventions are literally BAKED INTO REALITY for these creatures is utterly absurd and more than a little creepy. It’s one thing to have an elf-creature whose natural coat just happens to look like a dress, but when you say they act exactly like this very particular human ideal right down to the gender segregation, it gets really weird.
I actually think the idea might’ve been the opposite, actually. There are a lot of little things in the incidental worldbuilding of pokemon where the people of long ago have developed an aspect of culture by mimicking pokemon. In this instance, I think the intent was that humanity learned about the concept of chivalry through close proximity to gallade.
But your reference to froslass and yuki-onna reminds me about something I’ve wanted to say for while now. This doesn’t have anything to do about monogendered pokemon or any of that, but just about the ecology of pokemon in general. It’s been bouncing around my mind ever since I joked about wanting to write something analysing the ecology of pokemon in a non-grimdark way.
For a long time now, ever since I really started seriously learning about Japanese culture, I’ve found that pokemon make a lot more sense if you just look at them as highly analysed youkai that have filled the ecological niche of animals in this world. Many pokemon are explicitly based on youkai in the first place and the idea of collectable monsters with easily identifiable gimmicks has been part of Japanese popular culture since at least the early seventeenth century. You wouldn’t really be wrong to think of pokemon as newly created modern day youkai. Several kinds of youkai now seen as “traditional” actually only date back to the 1960s, from the manga GeGeGe no Kitaro!
Youkai tend to be incredibly specific creatures with easily identifiable traits and behaviours. Someone could wonder about the ecology of a voltorb from a scientific point of view for ages and still not come to any satisfying conclusion, but if you think of it as a pokeball tsukumogami, a lot of the questions tend to answer themselves. The same goes for pokemon obviously connected to human society, like grimer. Many youkai, such as tsukumogami, are the result of human action or inaction.
It’d certainly go a long way to explaining away that problem you have with nicknaming pokemon and how none of them seem to have names irrespective of humans. They’re youkai. Having a collective name wouldn’t even register as unusual compared to a lot of the weirder elements of youkai folklore.
There’s a youkai (who doesn’t have a pokemon based on it so far as I know) whose entire existence is making you think, looking at it from behind, it’s someone you’re familiar with; but when you try to get its attention it turns around to reveal a perfectly smooth egg-like face without any facial features just to shock and surprise you. I think it’d actually be more odd for an existence like that, defined solely by its lack of identifying facial characteristics, to have a unique name separate from all other creatures of its kind.
I’ve heard that explanation before but the thing is, from what I understand of youkai, they’re not youkai. They’re animals. Some are clearly based on youkai, but the vast majority of them are even more clearly based on animals. If the developers wanted to make a game about youkai, they should have stuck to that aesthetic (as indeed Yo-Kai Watch seems to have done, to great success). But like. Eevee are not youkai. Ponyta are not youkai. Pikachu are not youkai. They’re animals that can cast magic spells. Like you said, youkai are very different in theme and concept than general fantasy monsters, so when you mix them in with general animal and fantasy monsters it clashes with the whole aesthetic. If things like voltorb, froslass, and gardevoir were classed as some completely different kind of creature, I could understand, but if you try to tell me they’re related to a mouse I’m going to balk.
They’re animals that can cast magic spells.
This is probably the most common and well known class of youkai. Just look at kitsune, tanuki, tsuchigumo, bakeneko, and gyuuki. If you count tauros as being inspired by gyuuki (not too farfetched, considering its multiple tails), then all of them have pokemon equivalents. The mascot character of Youkai Watch, sorta like that series’ answer to pikachu, is a talking cat. Much like in the rest of the world, youkai are mythological creatures that exist to explain questions about the natural world, inform moral behaviour, or merely excite the imagination.
Cats are very common targets for youkai stories. They can make very human-like vocalizations (especially if you’re imagining them speaking Japanese), their eyes glow in the dark, they can move very quietly, and they were often found stretched up on their hind legs in an oddly human-like posture lapping up fish-oil based lamp oil to augment their laregly grain-based diets as Japanese pets. Other more rural bakeneko stories have more in common with stories of escaped captive tigers or rabidity. It’s like the difference between meowth versus raikou, I suppose (except raikou, and manectric for that matter, are actually based on a youkai called the raijuu).
Tsukumogami are youkai. Kitsune are youkai. Tengu are youkai. So why can’t voltorb, ninetails, and shiftry all be considered pokemon? “Youkai” is a very nebulous term. There’s even a youkai that was said to make that beautiful girl you brought home the night before fat and unattractive while you slept off a hangover. It was sort of like what people describe today as “beer goggles”, except in early modern Japan, it was a formless demon.
The term “youkai” is very hard to directly translate (and covers everything that we in the west would term beasts, faries, ogres, demons, spirits, and ghosts), but both a flaming horse and a small dog-cat-thing that shifts its form (shapeshifting is almost as common a trait in youkai as evolution is in pokemon) in response to contact with magical items both sound like they’d not be remotely out of place in the work of Toriyama Sekien’s Illustrated Night Parade of a Hundred Demons alongside things like the scorpion-like demon that exists only to cut the nets of fishermen (which was invented by Toriyama himself for his night parade along with the well known youkai known as the kamaitachi- which apparently lends its name to the technique Razor Wind in Japan), chubby snakes that can talk and roll around like wheels by biting their tails, and a wandering monk who gets taller the more you crane your neck back to get a look at his face.
My personal favourite youkai is the mokumokuren, which is a demon that lives in shoji screens and steals the eyes of people who look through holes poked in the paper screens that make up the walls in traditional japanese houses. They teach children to not poke holes in the walls and encourage people to always make sure to repair any holes in shoji screen immediately! That’s a lesson that wouldn’t be out of place in german fairy tales.
To put it incredibly simply, a youkai is basically anything supernaturally fascinating! And what’s a better way to describe the hold pokemon had over people, especially during the second half of the nineties, than that? When the nanban traders brought playing cards to Japan, youkai were one of the first, and most popular, subjects to adorn them with. The pokemon trading card game is just continuing a legacy of monster-adorned playing cards that’s existed for pretty much as long as Japan has had playing cards.
I actually think the idea might’ve been the opposite, actually. There are a lot of little things in the incidental worldbuilding of pokemon where the people of long ago have developed an aspect of culture by mimicking pokemon…
While I will admit that from a worldbuilding perspective that’s an interesting take, the fact remains that pokemon are made in our world and the gender norms presented within it are based on our own (and specifically Japan’s in this case). So if people of the pokemon world based their norms on pokemon, that’s only because those norms are what were enforced by their creators’ views on gender roles (if that makes sense).
So when the game says “oh the males and females can both evolve into X but only one gender can evolve into Y” it makes artificial gender roles in our world become a fact of nature in the game’s universe, which in turn leads to (epecially younger) people playing the game learning to see those roles as natural rather than as ones shaped by human perspective.
This isn’t to say gender-based evolutions are uniformly bad, as gender dimorpism is a Thing and all, but it is very interesting and telling to see where they decide to impliment it and how. Example: note that Pyroar have different designs like lions would be expected to have based on gender, but they’re not considered different species like Gardevoir/Gallade. Or how female-ony pokemon tend to have more defens-oriented stats (or even being healing-focused like Chansey) compared to male-only ones leaning more offensive.
It’d be a different conversation if there were as many pretty male-only lines as there are female, or tough or “knightly” female-only lines as the males.
For a long time now, ever since I really started seriously learning about Japanese culture, I’ve found that pokemon make a lot more sense if you just look at them as highly analysed youkai that have filled the ecological niche of animals in this world.
Nah, I’d say it’s the other way around. Some pokemon’s entries actually reference them inspiring youkai stories, others resemble the stories of animals maturing into youkai but with the creature clearly a pokemon in both stages and merely growing stronger by the same mechanism all pokemon do. Pokemon is a world where the imaginary things we tell stories about are present in mundane animals to some degree rather than actually being supernatural (and there may also be explicitly supernatural things on top of that, as there’s also actual ghosts. They can’t be repelled by priests unless they’re ghosts, either, while a priest should be able to handle youkai generally. These creatures have to eat and drink, they can go extinct in long-ago disasters or be hunted down to an endangered few in the present. And it’s ultimately based on bug catching and fighting.
Pokemon has gone in a more general youkai-esque direction in the most recent generations and their more object-based pokemon, but even that seems more about poor design as the resulting pokemon are always explained in the same biological manner – actual possessed objects are only the province of ghosts, otherwise they’re creatures that just so happen to resemble the object by pure coincidence rather than, say, being the manifestation of our love for ice cream or the anger of cones that were dropped on the sidewalk. I think the closest we’ve gotten to a really youkailike creature is klink, as it appeared recently and presumably as the result of human manufacturing, and that’s just as explanable as a pokemon adapting to a chance in its environment and taking advantage of new resources being avaliable.
Also, making them youkai just gives a lot less to engage with. If they’re the way they are because magic, then it blocks off thinking about how they relate to each other and the environment, or why they have the traits they do, or how they function outside of human society. Grimer being the manifestation of pollution means they’re just a standard metaphor. Grimer being living creatures that happen to thrive in pollution and which can perhaps be wiped out by industries going green, though – that’s a lot more unusual to talk about.
(if that makes sense)
Oh, no, it totally does. But I think that scenario is actually pretty different from the reverse. Taking the gender norms in our own culture and providing a different reason they might come into being is nowhere near as harmful as presenting them as inherent constants of reality.
This isn’t to say gender-based evolutions are uniformly bad
Yeah, I find it an interesting concept without context (especially as a sort of take on sexual dimorphism within the logic of how evolution works in pokemon), but I can see why someone might have a problem with the specific example of the ralts line. Personally, I have a problem with that honeycomb pokemon only evolving if it’s female (or any other pokemon where only one gender can evolve), even if it makes sense. It just creates the arbitrary hassle of having to specifically search out a specific one of the species because why in the hell would anyone ever capture the other gender of a species where only one gender evolves? At least ralts gets two evolutions regardless of what gender it is.
they’re not considered different species
I think this is due the same reason the two nidoran are considered two species. Nidoran was created before pokemon gendering was a thing, and gardevoir was created before gender specific evolutions were a thing. Honestly though, even though my gardevoir just happened to be female, I always wondered why ralts wasn’t a female-only pokemon. It never particularly bothered me, but it seemed like the kind of thing Nintendo would do, and I always wondered why they didn’t. Were they planning to make something like gallade? I have a hard time believing that.
they’re not considered different species
I think this is due the same reason the two nidoran are considered two species. Nidoran was created before pokemon gendering was a thing,
Ah, I guess my point wasn’t clear here. I mean when looking at how sexual dimrophism is done in pokemon, it’s important to look at the ways it’s done and which pokemon they decide to apply it to. They can (and do, given lines like Pyroar) give a pokemon the same stats and a different appearance, but they often also go on to make different evolutions that are gender based… and adjust their stats “accordingly” giving the female Nido-evos defensive stats and protective natures and the males offensive stats and aggressive natures. Why gender a line like Chansey but not, say, Audino? Or the Hitmon family but not the Machop one? Why, when the monogendered lines do crop up, are the males more sporty/aggressive/fighting-focused and the females more maternal/healing/defense focused? Why make a male-only knight evolution when both male and female can clearly evolve into the pretty dress-wearing one?
I don’t mean looking at when the mechanics were introduced, but that’s it’s a good idea to at least think about why they picked the individual designs they did for monogendered pokemon and what roles the monogendered pokemon have in common with each other or have distinguishing them from lines that are a different monogender.
(Sorry for posting so much, I just figured since CrazyEd mentioned not being very familiar with some of the pokemon a quick rundown on monogendered ‘mons would be useful.)
From Bulbapedia:
Male-only Pokemon:
Male Nidos (more offensive based, in both stats and lore), the Hitmons (martial arts as sports are the main base), Tauros (counterpart to Miltank, known for aggression), Volbeat (counterpart to Illumise, offensive and defensive stats are actually the same in this pair, aside from Volbeat being more physically and Illumise more specially inclined, but only Illumise learns healing moves), Mothim (counterpart to Wormadam), Gallade, Throh and Sawk (similar to Hitmons), the ‘Murrica pokemon Rufflet and Braviary (has bravery referenced in his name), Latios (more offense oriented than Latias), the Tornadus, Thundurus, and Landorus trio (two storm spirits who cause mischief and the fertility land god who keeps them in line), and a few pikachu formes based on Ash’s pikachu and Ash-Greninja.
Female only:
The female Nidos (defensively based in both stats and lore), the Chansey line (healers), Kangaskhan (all about being maternal), the Jynx line (which wears a dress and attacks with kisses), Miltank (with healing milk being one of her main features), Illumise (see my note about Volbeat), Wormadam (three forms of cloak-wearing defense), Vespiquen (a bee queen), Froslass, Vullaby’s line (defensive vultures as the counterpart to brave eagles), and lots and lots of flowers: the Petilil, Flabebe, and Bounsweet lines, Latias (the defense version of Latios, notably smaller in size and often seen as being protected by her older brother in side materials like the movies and PMD games), Cresselia (defensive moon legend with a self-sacrifice to heal the team move), and a special pichu with a spiky ear that’s only available in gen 4 Johto, aad a pikachu form that wears cosplay.
The only ones that actually break the offense/defense pattern could be Volbeat/Illumise (though Illumise gets Wish and Vobeat doesn’t). Or I guess the Meowstick line? They have the same species and same stats so I didn’t include them in the above list, but they get different movepools and appearances with the female actually learning more attacks while the male gets the support moves. Other than one single line, though, the pattern is strongly male = attacker, female = defense/healer.
(and Salazzle)
Some pokemon’s entries actually reference them inspiring youkai stories
This doesn’t actually change anything. Our own animals have all kinds of legends and myth surrounding them. It only stands to reason that in a world where youkai fill this ecological niche, they’d get legends about them as well, especially if they can actually shoot fire out of their mouths or teleport. The “fills the same ecological niche as animals” part is just as important as the “youkai” part. They’re sorta like… I dunno, youkai made a mundane part of daily life?
But with that said, I don’t mean to think of them literally as youkai (to answer your point about priests), or even really to look at them in-universe as youkai. I was talking mostly about looking at them from the cultural contexts in which they arose. A lot of youkai, especially those created since the seventeenth century, lack the religious or social metaphor and are just spooky monsters; just like in the west, where we have our werewolves and vampires, but also graboids and that giant bug-monster from Mimic.
But, incidentally, care to name a few of the pokemon that explictly reference youkai, for future reference? As you might be able to guess, the topic of what place youkai have in the modern day is one that fascinates me. I don’t doubt your claim they exist (especially when I think of some bits of Gen 1 like the space shuttle), I’m just curious as to specifics.
then it blocks off thinking about how they relate to each other and the environment
I don’t really consider this a negative thing. The pokemon world doesn’t exactly hold up to even the most casual of examination to begin with. You’ll send the whole house of cards tumbling down if you poke.
According to Pokemon Stadium/Fire Red/X, Grimer is created by sludge exposed to x-rays from the moon, Sapphire/Emerald/Alpha Sapphire says it emerged from sludge that settled on a polluted seabed, Diamond/Pearl/Platinum/Black/White/Moon say it was sludge on a riverbed irradiated by lunar x-rays. So it’s a safe bet to say it’s your basic environmentalism message.
But I don’t feel like looking at them like youkai limits that much anyway. Youkai also have pretty varied origins (probably more varied than a lot of the last couple of gens of pokemon, unfortunately). Even tsukumogami alone generally fall into one of three categories: the kind possessed by spirits (like voltorb), the kind that are created after 100 years of love and care for an object, and the angry tsukumogami that is created by improperly disposing of tools. Like my beloved mokumokuren, tsukumogami are basically the youkai manifestation of the concept of mottainai. And then there are animals who gain a certain age, the souls of impious monks (seriously, there are like a half dozen youkai that used to be monks), the souls of women given power in death (like the yuki-onna or hannya), or even things that Just Are (like nue and tsuchigumo, which might as well have just been particularly terrifying animals for all lore ascribes to them). And that’s just to name a few.
The only thing harder to describe than what youkai are is what they aren’t. I really can’t blame youkai watch for just saying “youkai are youkai, what can we say?” I personally couldn’t do much better, especially when aiming an explanation at the age of the target demographic of those games.
The abundance of tsukumogami-like pokemon in recent generations is totally just a lack of creativity, though. It was clever when they made voltorb (especially since they have overworld sprites like item balls), but vanilluxe is just someone looking around their environment and drawing a face on what they saw.
Still, it’s better than Youkai Watch. I just counted. In the first game, they introduced 245 youkai. 95 of them are duplicates. Some of them are variants, but a good chunk of them are straight up recolours with different elmental affinities and things like that. And that’s not even getting into how there are at least a dozen jibanyans.
I can’t imagine it gets better in the second game, when they have even less folkloric youkai to draw from for new ideas. A quick skim of the Youkai Watch 2 list doesn’t seem to imply otherwise.
a quick rundown on monogendered ‘mons
Wow, I only recognize, like… half of these names. And some of those only just barely. I guess that means I’m an Old now. Oh well. I’ve been waiting for this day to come ever since I turned 12. Glad to see it finally happened.
Now I feel like the oddball out for actually liking most object-based pokemon for being an interesting take on how alien some pokemon can be. Some designs are better in execution than others, but the same is true of the plant and animal ones.
To be fair, a lot of them are easily forgettable bugs with poor typings and stats that leave them by the wayside when it comes to memorability like Wormadam/Mothim and Volbeat/Illumise.
male-only knight evolution
Huh, well, this is interesting. All the fluff on bulbapedia makes gardevoir sound pretty goddamn knightly. Apparently, its name is either a combination of the french for “to guard” and “duty” or a combination of “to keep” and “to see”. And in Japanese, its name is “saanaito” in katakana, which could be parsed as either “come, knight” or just a straight-up romaji version of “Sir Knight”. Gardevoir’s pokedex entries are all about its powers of foresight, protecting its trainer, and creating black holes. Gallade’s are mostly about courtesy and swordsmanship, elbow blades, and being a fierce fighter. Only platinum and the Gen 5 games actually mention anything remotely chivalric and don’t put nearly as much weight on it as gardevoir’s. Reading this, gardevoir is definitely more of a knight, and gallade seems more like just a rakeish duelist. It’s just that gardevoir looks like it’s wearing a ball gown.
It’s not even like gallade is better than gardevoir. They just swap attack and special attack values. And in Mega Evolution, they’ve got the same point totals, they’re just more heavily specced for their type’s preferred attack stat. Gallade is a bit more balanced but gardevoir is a straight up monster in special stats. I’m glad to know my design based choice of gardevoir over gallade (because seriously gallade’s design is a mess) would lead to the pokemon with stats more suited to my playstyle.
I don’t know what the first one is at all (I assume it’s some generation’s catepie/weedle), and I only know of the second set as useless PC filling trash. Pretty sure I’m just an Old. I’m not going to try to fight it.
They’re evolutions of Burmy, a bagworm pupa. Here the evolution difference is actually based on their animal counterpart’s natural sexual dimorphism.
Now this sure is interesting. According to the bulbapedia page for pokeballs, before the invention of pokeballs, pokemon were commonly known as “majuu”, literally “evil spirit beast”, which actually seems to lend some support to my theory of pokemon as youkai made into mundane facts of life.
So after thinking about this a while I’ll say — it’s clear that I don’t know as much about youkai as I thought (I thought they were only just-so monsters like tsukumogami; I didn’t realize kitsune, tengu, and tanuki counted as well). However, if they are truly that diverse it seems they are not significantly different than Western mythological monsters, which can be similarly varied, and I think my criticism still holds.
Look at the examples you showed: they are all extremely specific creatures with extremely specific powers and behaviors that do not make much sense as naturally-occurring organisms. (I mean, yuki-onna alone — does a woman have to die on a snowy mountain every time we evolve a froslass? Or are we snagging the soul of a woman who was powerless up to that point? Too many questions.) The analogous Western creature I would use is the Tooth Fairy (we have others, particularly in Nordic mythology, but that’s the most well-known one). If you made a fantasy ‘mons game that included both dragons and a species that was literally the Tooth Fairy, I would also think that was bizarre. It does not make sense that such a creature to “fill an ecological niche” while still displaying its extremely specific behavior referring to a specific human cultural practice and no real traits outside of that. Ecology does not work that way. Mythology is hugely varied, and different monsters are not always compatible with each other thematically or aesthetically even when they come from the same culture. The overall cartoonish tone of Pokemon lets you stretch things, but only so far.
Now, a truly naturalistic creature thematically or aesthetically based on the Tooth Fairy could actually be really cool, and could totally coexist with creatures that have been more generalized, like dragons. And indeed, many of the better fakemon I’ve seen operate on similar principles. And… while Pokemon seems to have been trying to do that originally, I feel like they’ve really thrown in the towel. An animal that is literally a teddy bear down to the tag on its butt? No. If that kind of goofiness was the aesthetic from the start I don’t think I would mind (though I will have to play Yo-Kai Watch to test that), but we started with much more naturalistic animal creatures. For instance, Koffing was based on poison gas bombs, but it was not literally those things made animate like Vannilite appears to be. It had enough organic features and original touches to look like it was not always a poison bomb but evolved to look like that over time.
Ultimately it does come down to personal preference, but I am in agreement with Farla that pokemon-as-animals is a lot more interesting and gives us a lot more to speculate with than pokemon-as-magic-spirits.
it’s clear I don’t I don’t know as much about youkai as I thought
I highly suggest the Hyaku Monogatari, a website written by Zack Davisson (author of Yurei: the Japanese Ghost). A lot of the information in this post comes from translations he’s made from either the Japanese wikipedia (for modern consensus about youkai) or the works of Mizuki Shigeru (for mythological history and ethnography). I find it an excellent resource for layman’s explanations on everything from azuki-arai to zashiki-warashi. I’d also suggest looking at the works of Matt Alt. Although I’ve never read them personally, they seem like a pretty simple and concise manual, and were written specifically to introduce youkai to westerners.
they are not significantly different from western mythological monsters
Sorta, if you’re being as vague as possible. Succubi and dragons might be both called “monsters”, but you’d never say they’re the same class of being. But a thousand year old fox-witch beguiling the imperial court with her ultimate perfection before being revealed as a monster and going on a rampage across half the country before being killed and turning into a poison-belching rock is a youkai just as much as the ghost of an emperor who became a bird-goblin after death due to sheer rage, or a young acolyte monk who was so pretty that women died from how hard they fell in love with him that turned into an ogre after being engulfed in the smoke of a fire he set using the love letters of the scorned women. In fact, these three youkai are the Three Great Youkai: Tamamo-no-mae (why do you think the spirit summoned in Fate/Extra as Caster can also be summoned as a Berserker?), the dai-tengu Emperor Sutoku, and Shuten-Doji.
Succubi are demons, like hannya, and dragons are more just like ordinary creatures who are so powerful they become supernatural rather than anything inherently magical (like nue). Western ghosts aren’t demons, but many authorities will tell you that the kind of ghosts most similar to western ones (yurei) are youkai, and others will deny this. And that’s not even getting into more nuanced (and more youkai-like) ghosts like onryou and ikiryou. If I were to make a comparison with the west, I’d make it with the concept of “fairies”, which can mean almost as many things as “youkai” while still being fairly unified in nature.
Borrowing some translations from Davisson, the chinese character for ghost, which is read “gui”, is read as “oni” in Japanese. And yet, oni are not ghosts. They’re not even close. The name of the anime Bakemonogatari is a pormanteau of “bakemono”, which is a shapeshifter, and “monogatari”, or story. And yet, the best way to preserve this title in an English translation is Ghostory.
In fact, when I think about it, while all of the Oddities of Bakemonogatari are youkai (Hitagi’s crab being a perfect example of the Supernatural Phenomena type of youkai I mentioned before with the beer goggles youkai), I’m not sure there’s a single strict-definition “bakemono” (though I could be forgetting one). Black Hanekawa isn’t a bakemono (despite changing Hanekawa’s appearance). The curse cat is a classic example of a nekotsuki (literally “posessing cat”).
Personally, I (follwing the most widely accepted modern division of youkai researcher Mizuki Shigeru) divide youkai into four general groups. Spirits of the dead, animals or insects with magical powers, shape-changers, and mysterious phenomena. I consider yurei to be youkai because it wasn’t until very recently (after the opening of Japan’s borders in the late ninteenth century) that it seems like attempts were made to separate the two of them. Youkai collections from the Edo period included stories of both mokumokuren and nue alongside ikiryou and yurei.
In fact, according to Mizuki Shigeru’s incredibly open-minded view of what is and isn’t a youkai based on his experiences travelling the world and comparative mythology study, this is a 100% open and shut question. Pokemon are, at least from the out-of-universe perspective of our own culture, youkai.
Youkai Watch has monsters based on (but not exactly) mythological creatures (moreso than pokemon’s youkai inspired entries), but it also has far more modern “youkai”, like Fidgephant (a youkai that makes you have to go to the bathroom at inopportune times) and Hidabat (a youkai that makes you a hikikomori- literally, its japanese name is hikikoumori, a portmanteau of “shut-in” and “bat”, which is why it is a bat with quilt-like wings wrapped over its shoulders in the typical hikki-hunched-over-at-their-computer pose) that have absolutely no basis in folklore. Personally, I’m not a fan of youkai watch, but I’m not a fan because of its execution and piss-poor amount of effort into its monsters. Hidabat is one of the few original youkai I actually like.
they are all extremely specific creatures with extremely specific powers and behaviours that do not make much sense as naturally occuring organisms
Are you talking about the pokemon examples or the youkai examples?
yuki-onna alone
Yuki-onna are ghosts who became youkai. Another reason why I consider yurei to be youkai. But a froslass is not a yuki-onna. It’s best to think of it as a new youkai that’s been inspired by a yuki-onna. Think about how many different kinds of vampires there are running about, and how they run the gamut from embracing the romantic predator of Dracula (like Anne Rice) or rejecting it has hard as possible (30 Days of Night). The pokedex entries are just yet more folklore and mythology- its not as if they’ve ever been a great resource for knowledge on pokemon. Half of them are admitted guesswork or speculation.
Ecology does not work that way
But youkai do. Of course if you’re looking at an invisible aerokinetic weasel that cuts people’s clothes with highly pressurized air from a scientific perspective, you’re going to come up short. But if you’re trying to make sense of bulbasaur or vanillite from a biological perspective, you’re probably not going to fare much better.
And, really, if you’re looking for the world of pokemon to make sense, you’re kind of wasting your time in the first place. At least this way is halfway internally consistent. And it’d explain how come even the top authorities on pokemon have no clue about basic elements of pokemon biology like “reproduction” or why those rules make absolutely no sense (hot skitty on wailord action producing an egg despite cats and whales both being mammals). Pokemon are obviously not operating according to the rules of a natural creature, so why not look at them as supernatural?
It only stands to reason that in a world where youkai fill this ecological niche, they’d get legends about them as well, especially if they can actually shoot fire out of their mouths or teleport. The “fills the same ecological niche as animals” part is just as important as the “youkai” part. They’re sorta like… I dunno, youkai made a mundane part of daily life?
But the youkai do not fill niches. That’s the issue. Youkai just are.
You don’t need to worry about wiping out the last hopping umbrella, because the hopping umbrella just is and you can always make another one so long as you have umbrellas. You can’t ask what the hopping umbrella wants, because it’s not treated as meaningfully alive, and you can’t ask how it fits into the environment, because it doesn’t. You can’t wonder where it came from, because it just happens spontaneously under boring circumstances.
The people who have blank faces, or eyes coming out of their butt, or whatever, you can’t say “wow, cool, I wonder what they do when they’re not spooking travelers?!” because they don’t. There’s nothing else there. The basis of the game, which is to study and find out about these things as species, no longer makes sense – they’re just whatever weird shit spontaneously formed last night. Scientists studying pokemon migrations, investigating why new pokemon appear, they’re all just wasting their time. 90% of the pokedex entries from the first to the current generation talking about them as living creatures fitting into an ecosystem have to be chucked out the window.
Now, if you’re going far enough back that foxes and tanuki are “youkai” then we’re including things that behave precisely like animals but magic…but then we’re talking about magic animals specifically, not things following the general youkai rules of there are no rules anything goes. We’re talking unicorns and dragons, or the belief a snake can survive being cut up, which do fit into an ecosystem just fine, and saying “youkai, but only the ones that are basically magic animals with natural life cycles” really doesn’t seem like it adds anything that “magic animals” didn’t cover.
According to Pokemon Stadium/Fire Red/X, Grimer is created by sludge exposed to x-rays from the moon, Sapphire/Emerald/Alpha Sapphire says it emerged from sludge that settled on a polluted seabed, Diamond/Pearl/Platinum/Black/White/Moon say it was sludge on a riverbed irradiated by lunar x-rays. So it’s a safe bet to say it’s your basic environmentalism message.
Except, uniquely in Pokemon, it becomes self-perpetuating life we can engage with – something was alive there and mutates into a form of life that relies on poison. It exists, it grows and has feelings and hunts for food, and defends itself from attack and raises children. It’s an exaggerated version of how actual life evolves and adapts. Without that aspect, it’s nothing but the same boring message that poison is bad.
And if you don’t care about them beyond cool designs you can make fight each other, sure, them being youkai instead doesn’t matter, just like it wouldn’t matter if they were all just fancy robots. But it doesn’t actually add anything to the setting to close off every way of thinking about this further.
And in Japanese, its name is “saanaito” in katakana, which could be parsed as either “come, knight” or just a straight-up romaji version of “Sir Knight”.
See, the joke there is that since pokemon say their own names, she addresses everyone as Sir Knight, while her own faux dress marks her as the damsel who loves the knight.
In terms of the pokemon-yokai-animal duality, I think I would say “why not both?” I like the idea of a spiritual ecology that pokemon exist in to varying degrees, and certainly there are pokemon that are more and less animal-like than others. I also like the idea of pokemon taking on new formes or appearances due to human influence, like maybe Vanilluxe looks like ice cream because of the way that human expectations and desires interface with this ecology of spirit (and may have looked less specifically icy in the past), and this also gives rise to other object pokemon or the revenant-like character of ghost pokemon. Meanwhile, normal pokemon like Tauros are pretty comfortable being more-or-less Bos tauros (that can recover from being burned, electrocuted, etc.).
It’s about starting point. It’s far easier to take animals and say a whole bunch of stuff doesn’t apply because they’re spirits now than it is to add in the bunch of stuff to make spirits into animals. In the moemon thing I will hopefully never properly write, I was going with nature spirits – skips a whole bunch of problems, works better with the tone, fits well with the generally surreal situation, etc. But it’d be hell to have that be my start point if I wanted to try to build a story where pokemon are just another form of life.
(And while I suppose it’s another way of reaching that holy grail of intelligent life that’s okay serving humans, because they’re not quite life and so could have completely different priorities, I’d be leery with that as a general answer because most people would probably just go right for pokebots again.)
That’s the issue. Youkai just are.
So are pokemon. That’s the problem with trying to analyse a setting that doesn’t make a lick of sense if you think at all of what is being presented, let alone look past the curtains. You can try to justify them as much as you want, but that doesn’t change the facts about them. Pokemon are what they are because some guy in Japan invented 150 different kinds of monsters and threw them into a world together.
you can’t ask how it fits into its environment, because it doesn’t
And neither do pokemon. This is is a setting that can’t even decide what animal the meat on its character’s plates comes from. Why do you think the pokedex entries hardly ever make any sense in a greater context? The creature was designed first, and then justified in its own separate vaccuum. How does froslass make sense as something meant to be a naturalistic animal?
things that behave precisely like animals but magic
I don’t think I’ve explained the mythological underpinnings that pokemon emerged from very well if “animal that behaves precisely like animals but magic” is what you got out of the story of Tamamo-no-Mae.
Without that, it’s nothing but the same boring message that pollution is bad.
Which is probably 100% exactly what they were going for when they wrote those pokedex entries.
intelligent life that’s okay with serving humans
Ironically, its actually a pretty big pain in the ass to get a youkai to serve you faithfully.
So are you going to cheerfully and politely ask for him to provide specific examples of your dialogue formatting mistakes so you can go through the story and edit them, and then earnestly thank him for caring so much about your fiction to post a review and provide constructive criticism?
Oh, I forgot to respond to this: I totally would do this, but tragically, you cannot respond to anonymous reviews on FFN! Which really just goes to show that they are not trying to argue with me in good faith at all.
Bah, that’s stupid. What’s the logic behind not being able to reply to anonymous reviews? They’re on your fiction’s page. You should be able to post whatever you want on them.
It’s because the review list isn’t a comment section (as much as people like to use it as one). You can’t publicly respond to reviews, you can only PM people. And since anonymous reviews don’t have an account to PM…
Ah, allow me to correct myself then.
Bah, that’s stupid. What’s the logic behind giving people a place to publically respond to your work without allowing public responses in turn?
I think it’s intended to minimize drama and prevent derails like you sometimes see on AO3. We can all see how well that worked out, of course. It works in theory, but the laxness of administrator oversight means there’s no repercussions for treating it like a comment section anyway.
With how often you use your “non-story posts are not allowed” copypasta, it seems like FFN is kind of one big lawless free for all so long as you’re not doing anything illegal.
Haha, you must be new here. I’ve had authors argue in complete seriousness that since they know other stories that break the rules the rules have no meaning and they can do it too.
So basically, yes.
Well, I’ve been posting here for like a week now, and I probably started reading the old reviews here within the last three to six months, so yep, pretty new. And this blog probably makes up 90% of my exposure to the fanfiction community (though I see that the stereotypes, at least so far as the pokemon subcommunity is concerned, have a lot of merit). Before I started posting, I mostly ignored the new posts unless a title caught my eye, and I generally skipped a lot of these fanfiction reviews unless you started them with something horrible or super weird that an author said because its always the same copypasta. No offence meant, but as important as it is to tell the authors about these mistakes, it doesn’t exactly make for the most enthralling blog posts, y’know?