"No, it won't all go the way it should, but I know the heart of life is good."
One of the most highly regarded fan-made Nuzlocke comics, A Petty Nuzlocke Challenge tells the story of PettyArtist's run through Pokémon LeafGreen.
The story is told through the perspective of a young, boyish-looking girl from Pallet Town named Locke. Locke begins her Pokémon journey with her Bulbasaur, Spuds, just to get away from her deadbeat mother and Professor Oak. The comic starts out purely gag-based, but becomes much darker and more emotional as it goes along.
The original comic is now complete, but a sequel set in Pokémon HeartGold is currently ongoing. After three years and moving to Johto, Locke find out that her trainer card is expired and she is no longer legally able to train her Pokémon. In order to fix this, she sets out again with her new starter, Athena the Totodile.
The first run begins here
, and the sequel can be found here.
This webcomic provides examples of:
- Adaptational Sexuality: Morty and Eusine are dating in this version.
- Anti-Hero Substitute: Battle-loving and abrasive Athena in comparison to the kind and gentle Spuds.
- Anti-Villain: Gary becomes a Type 2 at the end of the webcomic, when his status as a
Jerkass Woobie is established. - Art Evolution: "This is proof that anyone can improve something they never expected/intended to."
- Art Shift: Petty puts animated videos on YouTube for the more touching moments of the run, including the epilogue.
- And now it's not just limited to touching moments! There's a hilarious Shout-Out to Carly Rae Jepsen and everyone's favourite Youngster.
- And in Part 9.1, Locke catches a Nidoran by channeling Sailor Moon.
- And now it's not just limited to touching moments! There's a hilarious Shout-Out to Carly Rae Jepsen and everyone's favourite Youngster
- Back from the Dead: Broseph. Well, a part of him anyway.
- Badass Adorable:
- Barb, especially because of the art style and her personality. Nidoqueen in official art are much more imposing.
- Lulu, a cute little Butterfree who absolutelywrecks most of her opponents.
- Both Locke Togepis, one of which evolves nearly instantly after hatching, and the second easily winning a match against an Onix with a Judgement attack.
- Badasses Wear Bandanas: Barb gets one upon evolving into Nidorina, and she proves herself to be a formidable fighter. Her adopted son Spuds Jr. gets one too after his explosive debut.
- Bag of Spilling: Locke being unable to use the team from the Indigo League is explained, but not why Locke seems to have lost all her items, such as TMs.
- Bifauxnen: Locke dresses and looks like the male player character, with flippy hair.
- Lampshaded in the Heart Gold arc when everyone in the Goldenrod Gym mistakes Locke for a boy... and they're not happy.
- Big Bad: Giovanni, at least in the LG comic.
- Bizarre Alien Reproduction: Exploding is apparently part of Geodude's reproductive cycle.
- Bros Before Hoes: Quoted by Broseph when Whitney's Miltank used Attract on him.
- Call-Back: In the HGSS challenge, when trying to find any secret in the Mahogany shop, Locke finds a sign warning not to remove it because there is a big hornet behind, she immediately punches it knowing there is a button behind. You cannot read the content, but you can recognize it because is the same sign used to "hide" the button to the secret entrance in the Celadon Gamecorner.
- The Chosen One: Weston the Shiny Leaf Togepi.
- Curb-Stomp Battle: Lulu versus the entire Fighting Dojo, and later all of Bruno's Pokémon. Also, Athena versus Silver's Chikorita.
- The first thing that Weston (a Togepi) does upon being hatched in the HG comic? It completely obliterates a Onix with Metronome. The move it got? Judgement. Locke is understandably left speechless.
- Circling Birdies: Penelope sees stars after she runs into Locke.
- Darker and Edgier: Compare the earlier chapters to the later chapters.
- Defeat Means Friendship: Naturally. But unlike the games or anime, it's much weirder considering Locke's Pokémon (and all Pokémon in her verse) are completely sentient and can talk. Basically, Pokémon become willing slaves if beaten up by a given trainer...
- Determinator: Both Locke and Gary.
- Early-Installment Weirdness: At first, when the webcomic was more focused on gags, Locke apparently had no problems with killing some Pokémons. For instance, her first Kanto gym battles ended with her killing the Pokémons of the Gym Leader (especially clear with Brock's, Misty's and Erika's), before spouting a Bond One-Liner. Her fight in Erika's arena is a straight-up Mook Horror Show, where her Pokémons gleefully slaughter the plant-type Pokémons. All these instances are played for Black Comedy and disappear once the story becomes more serious and plot-oriented though, so it's very likely a display of this trope.
- Fastball Special: Executed by Athena and Percy. Percy being the fastball.
- Fate Worse than Death: Mewtwo claims that the experiments he went through were this, to the point that he goads Locke into killing him just to escape it.
- Girliness Upgrade: A temporary one for Locke and all her female Pokémon when they hit the Celadon Department Store. Promptly subverted when she ignores a sales girl offering Pokémon dolls in favor of TMs to increase her battle power.
- Hammerspace: Barb is shown getting the BlackGlasses and deciding to just carry them, but they're never seen again. Same goes for all the held items.
- Happily Adopted: Spuds Jr. evolves into a Togetic (which requires maximum Happiness) straight out of the egg.
- Heroic Sacrifice:
- Odette does this for Barb.
- And in the Heartgold one, Archimedes does this to shield Locke and Broseph from an explosion.
- History Repeats: Bird Pokémon don't seem to last long in these runs, to the point that Petty has often joked that she's cursed.
- Ineffectual Sympathetic Villain: Gary has shades of this. Despite the fact that he beats Locke to every gym and even beats the League before her he just never achieves his real goal, even losing his arm when he tries to capture Mewtwo. And, of course, the only reason he tried was an attempt to get strong enough to defeat Locke.
- Also doubles as Character Development, he starts off with a notable Inferiority Superiority Complex, deriding Locke and bragging about his team, and then eventually, after several horrendous losses to her, the loss of his Raticate, and the loss of his arm, winds up as a highly sympathetic Jerkass Woobie.
- Also doubles as Character Development, he starts off with a notable Inferiority Superiority Complex, deriding Locke and bragging about his team, and then eventually, after several horrendous losses to her, the loss of his Raticate, and the loss of his arm, winds up as a highly sympathetic
- Lethal Joke Character: Lulu the Butterfree. Lulu never got boxed and survived the Elite Four. And by "survived the Elite Four", we mean ate Bruno's Fighting-types for lunch. And Agatha's Poison-Types, as well. Now do you think Butterfrees are useless?
- Mr. Fanservice: The artist has drawn Gary shirtless a couple times, and in a noticeably more realistic and detailed style than that of the main comic.
- Mundane Utility: Rick the Voltorb/Electrode doubles as a music player. Each chapter he appears in also comes with "Rick's Playlist" featuring a relevant song.
- Mundane Fantastic: Spuds and Barb, a large hulking plant monster, and a spiny poison mammal, working in human convenience store has shades of this. Mainly because no one seems to care or mind - until their size causes some wanton destruction
- Non-Lethal K.O.: Every single time one of Locke's Pokémon KO's an opponent, with the probable exception of Gary's Raticate. However, see Early-Installment Weirdness.
- Official Couple:
- Spuds and Barb, who are also a Battle Couple. With the adoption of Spuds Jr. thrown into the mix, they've shot straight to Badass Family status.
- In the Heartgold run, Eusine and Morty are apparently dating.
- Rule of Cool: Spoken word for word when Junior appears to have hatched as a Togetic.
- Four of Locke's Pokémon (namely, her Croconaw, Geodude, Paras and Hoothoot) evolve at the same time when battling a Team Rocket grunt. In the comments, it's noted that only two of them actually evolved at that point (the others evolved during a grinding session afterwards), and that the others were depicted evolving in that moment due to a combination of this trope and for the sake of saving some time.
- Shy Blue Girl: Barb.
- Signature Headgear: Lulu's flight cap, which she's worn ever since she learned Aerial Ace.
- Suicide by Cop: Mewtwo chooses death over being forced to return to the scientists who created him and goads Locke into ending his life for him by calling her a coward.
- There Is No Kill Like Overkill: The in-universe explanation for the death of Broseph the Graveler. In real life this happened due to a tragic misclick.
- Time Skip: Officially stated to happen between LeafGreen and HeartGold, with three years between the two. In the meantime, Locke's trainer's license expired.
- Took a Level in Badass: Barb again, especially when she evolves into Nidoqueen.
- Barb has one right at the beginning when she learns Double Kick.
-
Trolling Creator: On April 1st of 2012, Petty claims to be ending the comic because she just doesn't have time anymore. (This after her updates have been getting less and less frequent for months.) Oh Petty, you sure are a stinker. - Troubled Abuser: Silver, who is a total jerk to all his Pokémon, but obviously has some serious issues of his own, especially if, like in the games, Giovanni turns out to be his dad.
- Undying Loyalty: Silver's Bayleef toward him, despite suffering emotional and verbal abuse from him, not to mention risking physical harm on his behalf.
- Weak, but Skilled: Lulu's stats don't shine the brightest, but she more than makes up for it by being an aerial menace and cunning with powder moves to debilitate her opposition. To quote a response from the Q&A...If you had all the power in the world, what would you do?
Lulu: Who needs power when you've got pure skill? - We Hardly Knew Ye:
- Janice the Spearow, Locke's first casualty, died a few panels after she was captured.
- Henrietta the Diglett died to a Magnemite due to bad luck: her Magnitude came up as Magnitude 4, and Magnemite was able to beat it with two Sonic Booms.
- Phil the Drowzee and Sashimi the Magikarp died just after they began training.
- Broseph the Graveler who appeared in a few panels and self-destructed himself. He gets better, and is back as of HeartGold—or a part of him is, as exploding apparently just makes more Geodude. Who knew?
- Simon the Dewgong, who appeared and died in the Sevii Islands update, has the worst of it. He had a grand total of one panel.
- And perhaps more importantly, Vinny the Magneton, who had a huge fanbase after his first appearance and then promptly died to a cheap crit the very next comic.
- The first death of HeartGold outdoes Simon's death in unfortunate circumstances. Tilly the Rattata got killed in the panel immediately after being named. Yikes.
- Ricky the Pidgey is a non-lethal example; he got benched for Janice and never returned to Locke's party.
- Worst Aid: After Athena attacks Locke in a fit of radio wave induced madness, Locke tries to use a spray potion intended for Pokémon. Needless to say, it doesn't do much to help, and the nurse at the Mahogany town clinic chastises her for making the mistake.
- Worthless Yellow Rocks: Barb's "paper collection", which happens to contain a bike voucher.
