Thoughts on a potential Pokemon fic?

Erm, hi.

I'm normally not shy about sharing my ideas, but I'm a bit more wary with this one. Why? Because it's fanfiction. (Yes, I'm planning another; zip it.) Anyway, as the title says, I want to write a Pokemon fanfiction. The idea popped into my head about a week ago, after discovering some very old (and bad) sketches and amateur story-things and my few isolated-chapter-comics of a certain manga. I haven't been able to get it out of my mind since, so I've decided I'm going to write it.

I've taken some basic notes on what I want to do with this thing. Since they will grow quickly and massively, I'll summarize what I've got:

"Set in Kanto, during the Generation I time frame, with the attendant limitations. There will be one, possibly two, main characters. I am certain that one of them is a somewhat Tomboyish girl, named Sheila. Sheila Burke. She likes to be called "Shell," and rarely "Shelly." She comes from Mossgreen Village. She is 11 or 12 at the start. She does not know what she wants to do when she grows up, and bored and frustrated, decides to become a Pokemon trainer, hoping that perhaps it will ignite the passion that she lacks in school. The other factor in her making the choice is that she, "wants to see what it's all about," living in a world where Pokemon trainers have respect and status akin to celebrity. Living alongside, of course, those with the jobs in our world: lawyers, doctors, law enforcement, and so on.

Given that her hometown is situated near Cinnabar Island (a locale populated by Poison and Fire-type creatures), she chooses a Charmander as her starter Pokemon. Unsure of what what lies ahead of her, she sets out. Her first catch is a Rattatta that tried to steal from her.

Her main team will consist of the following Pokemon:

• "Char": Charizard, male

• "Nib": Ratticate, female

• "Quincy": Vaporeon, female

• "J": Arbok, undetermined

• "Chu": Pikachu, male

• "Joker": Ghastly, undetermined

She was raised (I'm using this cliche on purpose, just FYI) by a single parent: her somewhat aloof, pushy, and gruff father. Her mother left them for a man with whom she was having an affair, two years prior to the start. Sheila hears from her sporadically, mostly through letters or calls on the PC-Video-Phone-esque thing.

I'm mixing the worlds of both the first-season anime and the manga "The Electric Tale of Pikachu". Courtesy link: [1]

The world is dangerous, and Pokemon are basically, "defense against all the other creatures." I want to look at a number of things: What if a trainer isn't successful? How can an 11 or 12 year old be sent out, by themselves, with monsters that they're expected to train as protection and competition? How would a kid that age actually handle that situation? What if a criminal organization were in fact the most reasonable option for survival?

I'll have more later, I'm sure, but how's this for a start?

edited 30th Dec '11 2:14:26 PM by punkreader

Looks pretty good to me. If you're doing a depressing, dark, deconstruction type thing, I personally dislike those, since they've been done to death with Pokemon, but like I said, seems fine otherwise. I honestly wish there were more "OC character goes on their first pokemon journey!" so I like the idea of an OC protagonist, actually. I'm wondering, are you going to have any of the later generation Pokemon?

Write it out and post it on fanfiction.net. You'll get a larger response on a whole that way.

You can also try linking it in the Pokemon thread in the New Media sub-forum.

I definitely will. I just want to cover my bases first. For me, that means planning things and having notes I can refer to that will help me figure out where I want to go. Ironically, I suck at planning everything that isn't writing. So I plan sometimes to excess, when I know that I can, for once in my life, plan what I'm trying to do and not fail at it miserably.

@Noir: Thanks! I'm not planning to take it far into Darker and Edgier territory. Just a little, but not blood-guts-and-death-rampant. As far as Deconstruction, I love deconstructions with a passion, but Pokemon has a lot of those already. I just want to have fun and not expose all the "deep, dark secrets," or whatever. Mmh, I might, actually. It would make sense to incorporate Jhoto Mons, now that you mention it.

Slight non-sequitor: I might also change that Ratticate into a Meowth... Mostly because I really like Meowth, and can attest to its usefulness if raised properly. ^^; Maybe hers could learn to write instead, like how in the manga I mentioned, apparently Ash's Fearow can write (or make signs, at least), and Pidgeotto can definitely write, although it looks a bit scrawled... A claw dipped in ink would actually be a pretty good writing instrument, if a bit difficult. I tried fixing my hand in a cat-paw positioning (not that hard, amusingly, given my wacky joints), and using a nail to trace letters. It's potentially doable, I think.

That manga, as I read it, is actually giving me all sorts of Fridge ideas... Damn.

EDIT:

@Chihuaua0: I actually did make mention of it in that thread, I think, but I'll link it there once I've got something I can show. Good tip, though - thanks!

edited 30th Dec '11 9:21:33 PM by punkreader

I like Meowth too! Or Persian, rather. I kind of suggest changing the Pikachu as well, just so it's not so similar to Ash.

I like both, but Meowth's overall personality is more appealing to me. Good point. I noticed that a lot of trainers in the first gen. anime had Pikachu(s). I'll switch it for something else. What could it be, though...?

EDIT: I think I'd like to have it evolve into a Raichu. It can keep the same nickname, but it will be less similar to Ash. It being timid would be interesting, I think.

edited 31st Dec '11 11:01:44 AM by punkreader

There's also a high chance with this fic of mild "Rocketshipping" (Jessie/James).

I'm wondering if Shell should have a human travelling companion...Although it feels like that's a cliche in the anime series that the MC (Ash) always has human travelling partners.

She could have a friend, though, I suppose, albiet one who doesn't travel with her. It would be a guy, her age, maybe a year or two older. From a different town/city. Hmmm... Fellow Trainer, likely. A somewhat sensitive guy. I need a name before I can get a sense of the skeleton...

Also, I'm not going to write any Lemons for this fic. They'd feel out of place to me.

Rocketshipping sounds good to me. Also, I think it would be good to have traveling companions. It may be a 'cliche' but it's one of those things that really gives it the good ol' pokemon flavor. Also it's better to have more characters for interaction, and I think it's actually more realistic for people to travel in groups that alone. Just make sure the traveling companions are proper characters in their own right.

edited 1st Jan '12 1:54:36 PM by NoirGrimoir

I've always liked those two - I actually find them more sympathetic than the main characters. Especially Jessie - she's had it pretty hard.

Probably, yeah, you're right. It does seem more natural, to me, that people travel in groups (although I'm the odd duck out — I often prefer to be by myself, possibly just because I'm so used to it.) I still have no ideas on her companion, though... I will make sure that he is, once I have more of a sense of him.

I've begun the first chapter. What follows is the opening scene.

edited 13th Jan '12 8:11:25 AM by punkreader

I finally have a title for the work: "The Smell of Burning Embers".

I'm making good progress on the first chapter, too. Hopefully, the next thing I post will be the entire rouh draft.

Not to be annoying, but I'm kind of having a conversation with myself here. Can I get some response, critique, criticism, something?

Here's my idea on the setting's technology (or at least a fledgling idea): http://bmgf.bulbagarden.net/f313/level-technology-diverging-branches-science-125894/

And on the purpose of the badges in the "Electric Tale of Pikachu" manga: http://bmgf.bulbagarden.net/f275/question-about-electric-tale-ranks-levels-manga-126007/

I hate to beg, but I'm begging now. Please, I need a dialogue with others. It is the most helpful to me in terms of spurring me to actually write and share material. I don't want to be an all-talk, no-results kind of author. That's what I turn into if I don't discuss things and ideas with others.

Um, you mean on what you've written so far? Your idea hardly seems unique, I suppose, but that's also part of the charm of pokemon for me. I liked your chapter excerpt and I thought you wrote from the pov of the charmander well. The issue of language between pokemon and trainer has always been an interesting issue, I think, but one that has also been rarely exploited. For some reason, the pokemon can always understand humans, even if the humans can't understand them back. I always thought that like real animals or even other human beings it would take time for the pokemon to learn and understand the human language being spoken to them.

But really, just continue writing this and post it up on fanfiction.net. You really will get more feedback there, and just post a link here cause I'd like to read it.

Ern, yeah, that's what I meant. Sorry for not clarifying. Don't worry, I'm not fooling myself that my idea is unique, but I agree that that just overall familiarity is part of the charm of the series. Thank you! I think the potential for a language-barrier is interesting also, and I wondered how all Pokemon could know human languages. And I want to explore later on Pokemon (and people) having trouble with understanding other human languages. I'm going off of the assumption that people are generally speaking Japanese and their speech and thoughts are just being Translated For Your Convenience. Yeah, exactly, just like it takes a human or a dog or a cat time to work out a language being spoken to them. My dog, for example, knows his commands in English, German, and French, but only because we started training him in all three languages almost right after adopting him, and we always make sure to follow the foreign language command with its English equivalent, so that he learns what the word means by association. I can see Pokemon-understanding working something like that.

I will, and I'll post the link here once the first chapter's up. I'm glad to hear that, though.