Arcanist's Narration: Ezra just hoped they weren't in over their heads in all of this.
BackSet: Ezra you poor, poor boy.
BackSet: Ezra you poor, poor boy.
— Arcanist and BackSet Basically Setting the Tone for the Rest of the Roleplay
The Very Best: A Pokemon Roleplay is a Pokémon Roleplay on RP Nation
GMed by a user named BackSet.
The plot is simple: 15 years ago, Red (you may remember him as the main protagonist of the obscure 1999 indy game Pokémon Red and Blue) defeated Giovanni and dismantled Team Rocket. That was the end of that, right? Unfourtanetly, it was not. Though Giovanni and his gang had been defeated, two splinter cells of Team Rocket, Team Aqua and Team Magma, were still around, hiding in Hoenn and waiting for the time to strike. Apparently, now is that time and it's up to a group of young trainers and their Pokemon to put a stop to it.
The main IC can be found here. The OOC can be found here.
The Very Best (A Pokemon Roleplay) provides examples of:
- Abusive Parent: In her backstory, Mare's father was very abusive towards her and her mother (as in beating her mother and verbal abuse to Mare herself).
- Absent-Minded Professor: Ezra has a tendancy to ramble on and is very clumsy and forgetful.
- Action Girl: Mare tends to solve her problems with violence and is very strong and both Whimsy and Gracia are excellent Pokemon trainers who have been through many fights.
- Adaptation Origin Connection: In the original Pokémon games, Team Magma and Aqua had absolutely no connection to Team Rocket. Here they're splinter cells of the criminal organization.
- Aerith and Bob: You have people with normal names like Ezra. Then you have more exotic names like Whimsy.
- Afraid of Needles: Mare, though she vehemently denies it.
- Artifact Title: The title was this from the beginnring, being a leftover from previous, failed versions of the rp.
- A-Team Firing: Team Aqua and Magma fire at the Hoenn protagonists with a airship mounted gatling gun and only grazes one person.
- Berserk Button: Every character has at least one listed on their character sheet. In Alphabetical Order:
- Ezra: Being called 'four-eyes', or any other glasses insult, when his work is demeaned or not acknowledged, when salt is put on his food order (after specifically asking for no salt).
- Gracia: Being called short, being called childish, being ignored altogether.
- Mare: Making fun of her ribbon, the suggestion that she’s Afraid of Needles.
- Whimsy: Bullies (towards people and Pokémon), anyone that tells her she won't make it in music, those who press her about her past.
- Brains and Brawn: The dynamic between Archie and Maxie is portrayed like this during their temporary truce, with Maxie being the smart level-headed one and Archie being the boistrous, powerful one.
- Canon Discontinuity: There was originally a story line set in Kanto running concurrently with the Hoenn story, but it was deleted from canon when it stopped getting replies.
- Cool Airship: Team Magma is in possession of several and uses them in the attack on Mauville.
- Deadpan Snarker: Mare endulges in plenty of snark, mainly towards her Pokemon.
- The Drunken Sailor: Team Aqua is specifically described as looking drunk.
- Foreign Cuss Word: Zig-Zagged. Mare cusses in Kantonese which is translated into English but uses Translation Punctuation.
- Foreign-Language Tirade: Mare reverts to her native language (Kantonese) when especially angry. This is helpfully translated for the reader.
- Info Dump: Wattson likes to give these. Lampshaded in the OOC (by the writer of said Infodumo, no less):BackSet: Behold! A shit ton of Exposition!
- Lampshade Hanging: Lisia's use of Say It with Hearts is heavily lampshaded.
- Master of Illusion: Jay, Whimsy's Zoroark, who can take on an illusionary human form and create massive illusions like the legendary Yveltal.
- Mr. Exposition: Wattson is generally the one to exposit the backstory and plot details.
- Oh, Crap!: The collective reaction of Team Magma and Team Aqua (except for Maxie) when they see the illusionary (though they don't know it) Yveltal Jay conjures up.
- Oh, My Gods!: Most characters use Arceus in place of God and one or two characters use Lugia in the same way.
- One Degree of Separation: A minor example. Ezra is Professor Birch's assistant and protege and thus has had occasional run-ins with Mare, who is Professor Birch's niece, prior to the behinning of the story.
- Painting the Medium: Every character speaks in a different color (though Ezra, Mare, and Jay all speak in red by accident). Lisia also tacks sparkles and hearts onto the end of her speech, something which other characters make note of.
- Patchwork Fic: The roleplay takes certain parts of Anime canon and adds them to game canon (most notably an ancestor of Sir Aaron summoning Rayquaza to stop Kyogre and Groudon's feud and Sir Aaron himself setting out to stop the war of 3000 years ago mentioned in Pokémon X and Y instead of some unnamed war).
- Pokémon Speak: All Pokemon only say their names, though Jay is able to talk in human form.
- Present-Day Past: Downplayed because it's an alternate universe. The roleplay presumably takes place in 2011note but features all the futuristic and modern day aspects of Pokemon.
- Real Life Writes the Plot: At one point Gracia's player, BoltBeam had to temporarily go on hiatus so to explain Gracia's absence from the plot she caught a cold and was temporarily incapacitated.
- Say It with Hearts: Lisia tends to punctuate sentences with hearts when she isn't using sparkles. Sometimes she uses both. This is lampshaded.
- Shout-Out:
- Mare needs to make like a tree and get out of here.
- The posters in Sea Mauville are described as being not at all out of place in a Semi-Popular Video Game Series.
- Sea Mauville itself is described as looking like the set of an SCP Article.
- Silent Snarker: Hoots, Ezra's Noctowl, can't speak Hoennian (or any other language) but still manages to convey snark by facial expressions and body motions.
- Speaks Fluent Animal: Mare can understand what Pokemon say.
- Translation Convention: Absolutely nobody in the setting is speaking English. All the dialogue is translated into english for reader convenience. Languages not spoken in the current region are translated like they would be in a work where English is the actual language, putting all "foreign" languages in <>s.
- Translation Punctuation: All "foreign" languages are surrounded by <>s.
