Fan Fic: Pokémon Mystery Dungeon: Silver Resistance aka: Silver Resistance
…Until the last ember fades.Pokémon Mystery Dungeon: Silver Resistance is a Pokémon Mystery DungeonFan Fic written by ScytheRider, something of a subtle Deconstruction of the titular Roguelike games.It chronicles the story of Char—a human who awakens to find himself having been transformed into a Charmander, stripped of all memories of his past life, and left stranded in Ambera, a world where Pokémon can talk and have built a thriving civilization. All is not well in Ambera however, as it is being ruled by a tyrannical entity only known as "The Master". If that's not bad enough, Ambera is also plagued by "the Watchers", a mysterious group of ghost Pokémon that only appear at night and relentlessly attack any being unfortunate enough to encounter them.Crossing paths with a fugitive Bulbasaur, Char is quickly drawn into the resistance movement against the enigmatic Master. After their recruitment, the two are taken under the wings of an elderly Scyther who happens to be one of the all-star players of the resistance movement. But things don't stay simple for very long: Char soon learns he was lured into the resistance because he possesses a rare latent ability called the Call that randomly turns him into a psychic atomic bomb and mind-controls every Pokémon who hears his telepathic call. When he learns that the resistance wants to use his power to summon legendary Pokémon and win the war, Char finds himself in over his head in ways he never thought possible.The story itself can be found here, and, despite multiple long hiatuses, it is once again updating. It boasts two SpinOffs as of this writing: Silver Resistance: Mystery of the Heart by Diego Zeyon (which itself has a prequel and now has it's own page), and Forgetting by Gorsecloud. Silver Resistance also has a prequel set several decades in the past, Emerald Chronicles: A Frozen Flame, featuring numerous fan-created characters.The character page currently Needs More Love.
All Your Base Are Belong to Us: Subverted by Team X. They get into the base surprisingly early into season 4 but it looks like they actually want to work with the division rather than wrecking it.
Alt Text: The revision's author commentary sorta counts as this.
An Arm and a Leg: Char in the Temporal Tower arc; it's temporary, though.
Arc Words: The author admitted to "four places at once" and "come crashing down" being these. The latter has been revealed to refer to the fall of Temporal Tower.
Authority Equals Asskicking: Played completely straight by Scythe and Adiel. Both (relatively) tower over their subordinates in martial prowess, wisdom, and experience.
Backstory: Scythe has several chapters dedicated to this.
Badass Creed: Several, including the Adrellos Creed, and Team Remorse's "Why do we rise? So that he will fall!"
Big Damn Villains: When Team X shows up to save Team Ember for their own purposes.
Blessed with Suck: So, you have been gifted with a phenomenally powerful form of telepathy that has the ability to subconsciously influence the minds of your friends (see entry under The Empath below), summon Pokémon and Watchers from miles away when you're experiencing an 'episode', compel legendary Pokémon, and whose nature you can barely comprehend, much less control? The Call could be considered the epitome of this trope.
Also played painfully straight with Lily, Char, Saura, and Lucario; the last of whom was born without the ability to use Aura.
Broken Pedestal: The reason Ray's brother disappeared before Ray joined the resistance was because he became a traitor, and Scythe ordered him to be killed.
Also, poor Prince, when he is told his memories of an awful deed were erased. He even asks to be deleted from the time line upon hearing it.
Char gets one too.
Char: Look, whoever you are. I failed. I was an awful leader, I let down all of my closest friends, I almost got everyone killed in the blizzard... And now, I just got us captured. We're probably being taken to the Master's dungeon right now, as we speak. I failed, alright? This is the end.
Doomed Hometown: Saura's village certainly qualifies, as does Zona's in the Spin-Off and Frozen Spring in Frozen Flame.
Door Stopper: 50 chapters in, with 20 chapters being either the previous 50 split up into parts or specials, and we are currently over 500,000 words. At the halfway mark. It's not Ri2's Mystery Dungeon epic Brave New World, at over 2,000,000 words, but it still should take a while to read.
The Empath: Inverted by Anyone with the Call. They're essentially impressing their emotions and perceptions on the Pokémon around them without realizing it. In some cases it's good ( Lily and Prince), but others not so much (See the Nice Job Breaking It, Hero entry below).
The Empire: The Master's reign over Ambera has many trappings of this, though it seems to be a surprisingly benign and laissez-faire version, at first... (See Offstage Villainy below.)
Elemental Rock-Paper-Scissors: An inversion, of sorts: Char is surprised to discover that being a Fire-type does not grant him immunity to fire, and that it's not a very good idea to sleep in a burning brazier. Otherwise played mostly straight; this is Pokémon, after all.
The Enemy Of My Enemy: Team X don't hate the Master. They do, however, have no problem with allying with the Resistance to take down Enigma.
Even Evil Has Standards: In Fate Surprises All, Adiel decides not to kill Saura's family and kidnap his siblings, because he fears they're being protected by divine providence.
Also happens shortly after meeting Celebi. Confusingly, quotation marks are not used to indicate most dialogue. It turns out that all the main characters died and are reduced to spirits, and thus are incapable of talking anymore.
Five-Bad Band: The Master's high command. Unfortunately, due to the ridiculous levels of Offstage Villainy, the only thing we know is their names (through Prince in Temporal Tower) and their species (through either extra stories or direct confirmation).
From Bad to Worse: The fate of Emerald Division in general and Prince's Silver Division in particular. Both suffered catastrophic losses in a battle with the Master's forces that took place between the events of Frozen Flame and Silver Resistance.
WrongGenre Savvy: The entirety of Team Ember, when approached by Team X as part of an extremely obvious attempt to infiltrate the Gold Division in Chapter 23. And then it turns out they were probably good guys all along. Oops...
Ghost Town: The Watchers and the Master's other servants have made more than one settlement in Ambera into one of these.
Also, there is at least one example of a literal ghost town (i.e. a town populated by ghosts): Blackriver City.
Irony: The Master is a Baleful Polymorph similar to Char. It was meant to punish him, but as a reflective transformation, his lust for power turned him into (possibly) Mewtwo.
ScytheRider spends the first half-million words of the story building up to a giant spoiler. He then immediately gives it to us (Char's name) in the first sentence of the rewrite commentary.
Laser-Guided Amnesia: Char is the most obvious example but Prince qualifies as well. He involuntarily burned down an entire town after being attacked by the Watchers and had a psychic erase his memory because of his guilt.
Memory Gambit: Char apparently created one of these for himself before being transformed and having his memory erased.
Mind Probe: Performed by Eva to sense Char's call ability.
Or, rather, not performed at all. As revealed in chapter 71, Eva actually doesn't know how to. She is just a very talented con artist.
Mind Rape: The byproduct of coming into contact with the Watchers and not dying will usually result in this, to a tragic degree.
Minion with an F in Evil: Both the members of Team X and their apparent leader, Dusknoir, seem to be the embodiment of this trope. This may be a clever lampshade by the author, considering what type of character the other Dusknoir was in Pokémon Mystery Dungeon 2.
Not-So-Harmless Villain is probably a better description, with what happened in Chapter 68. In summation, Team X actually succeed in knocking out Team Ember. Of course, due to the intervention of either Giratina or Arceus (whichever one is the voice), they don't actually succeed in capturing them.
Nice Job Breaking It, Hero: In a recent chapter, Char realizes that he, Saura, and Lily have been subconsciously broadcasting their doubts to Scythe—who is especially sensitive to the Call—for the past several weeks. Essentially, more they doubted Scythe, the more unstable he became, and it fed a vicious cycle of erratic behavior on his part. (Confused? See The Empath entry above.)
Nocturnal Mooks: The Watchers are a particularly unsettling example of this.
No Sell: A rare heroic variant, as the Frozen Flame makes Char and Prince (and any other fire-type Pokemon within range) completely immune to rocks or rock type attacks.
The Obi-Wan: Domo the Ditto, and later Prince the Infernape are the only characters who seem to be able to relate directly to Char and teach him more about his fire power.
Offstage Villainy: The Master, to ridiculous lengths. We never see most of the awful things he's done, only hear about them.
Similarly, we have the Master's generals. We know almost nothing except their names and possibly their species of Pokemon - Adiel, Enigma, Cepheus and Mirandalys.
However, the deviantART exclusive bonus chapters do reveal more about Cepheus. Namely that he's Ray and Rautzen's uncle.
Olympus Mons: Many legendary Pokémon feature prominently in the story arc, either as a part of the basic mythology or appearing in actual cameos.
Though, in a slight subversion (and since this is a Mystery Dungeon Fan Fic), no one is concerned with capturing said gods. Partially because one of them is already captured.
Rage Against the Mentor: Char gradually treats Scythe more personally throughout the story, and eventually starts trying to call him out on things he disagrees with.
You've got the leader with split personality, Yuu the overly-excitable second-in-command, Seismic, a child in an adult's body, several more who are mentioned, and Lily, who has The Call. This is actually Lampshaded by the fact that upon seeing all their quirks, Lily runs away from the Guild after she first came to join.
Char returns the favor when he learns that Saura didn't lose his memory.
The Remnant: A rare non-villainous example, but the Emerald Division in its present form may qualify after the sack of Rayquaza's Clutch.
The Reveal: A BIG one in chapter 47. After finally reaching the top of Temporal Tower, Char and the others meet Dialga, who explains that Char is one of many humans that transformed, but unable to determine his real name or purpose with no past to go on. Why he/she is a Physical God that can't abuse the power of Time. That FateCANbe changed, only its very hard to do so. Watchers, or Newborns, are really Pokemon not born yet that reside in Giratina's Reverse Realm and appear as ghost pokemon to better comprehend them. And finally, the Call is really called Heart-speak, an ability found dormant in all Pokemon that allow them to understand humans and other Pokemon to a telepathic level, based on how much time they spend with humans. However, it's a subtle and unchanging force, and isn't meant to grow in strength or be controlled, much less explode like Char's case.
This is all true... except that Dialga was just A SECOND projection made by Celebi, as a means to answer their questions. The first one she also made for 'security' to scare the team away because Dialga's been missing for some time now. And The Call that happened every 27 years? It was Celebi broadcasting a signal through the Time Gears, trying to find Dialga, but unaware of what damage she was doing. Scythe doesn't take it well.
To clear up the terminology about the Call, "Heart-speak" is the innate ability that affects others (such as Scythe), and "the Call" is what happens when Celebi's signal is received by someone with said "heart-speak" and is sent out towards others.
The rewrite commentary on deviantART isn't particularly subtle. The first line has ScytheRider tossing out the fact that Char is named Amadeus, and that the voice is Giratina - both facts that aren't revealed until Chapter 69.
The special episode Fate Surprises All reveals that Saura has a god on his side, most likely Dialga, and Adiel is now going to get the Master's forces to leave Saura and his family alone, because he doesn't want to risk divine vengeance. Also, Saura was actually adopted, and was given to his family by Adiel, who found him originally.
Divine intervention is probably not what happened. It was most likely Celebi cutting off the timeline at the wrong place, causing, in the words of Dialga, "several denizens of the time stream to perceive time running in reverse for about six minutes". Seeing as only Adiel and Saurlee noticed it, and it was only a few minutes of time reversal...
The deviantART journal on the chapter not only confirms this, it also outright states that the god Saura has on his side is actually referring to Amadeus's pre-arranged plan-which would logically protect Saura from Adiel.
Another commentary-given reveal. Domo, the Ditto who saw Mew, was actually transformed permanently into a Mew, but is held back because he thinks that he is still a Ditto.
Shout Out: The author has used the fic to make numerous of these to its inspiration, the Pokémon Mystery Dungeon games, as well as roguelikes in general
There are also several Shout Outs to others fanworks, such as CharCole.
He even shouts out to his own fics, including, of all things, his badfic: "RAYQUAZA DOES NOT PLAY WITH BLOCKS."
Song Fic: Subverted. The story contains lots of poetry inserts, but most of them are actually original lyrics to melodies from Pokémon Mystery Dungeon. The others are just free verse poetry.
We Are Team Cannon Fodder: Ray and Saura but not actually Saura are this to Char, neither having the world-shaping Call.
Xanatos Gambit: Scythe instructs the heroes about creating these at one point, explaining that sometimes you can cause your enemies to help you by trying to stop you. Both he and Adiel pit this trope against each other.
Xanatos Speed Chess: Eventually revealed to have been invoked on multiple occasions by Scythe, largely as a result of the protagonists' actions and (arguably) existence, which derailed many of his carefully laid plans. Unfortunately, this doesn't last long, for Adiel is also an extremely capable Chessmaster.
, and, despite multiple long hiatuses, it is once again updating. It boasts two SpinOffs as of this writing: Silver Resistance: Mystery of the Heart
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