Genre of the week: Action

Now we have the genre that can be combined with just about anything.

With all of the super hero movies that have been coming out lately, I feel like action is one of the genres that's in the mainstream media the most. I'm not the biggest fan of this genre, but I do enjoy a good movie with a lot of action in it as long as the characters and plotline are still good. Sorry Transformers, but that doesn't include you. We all watched you for the explosions anyway.

So what do you guys think about the action genre?

I'm not sure if I've read a pure action book (unless you can could comic books/graphic novels/mangas), but I've seen my fair share of the genre in other medias like movies and tv shows. I can get into action if the events blend in with the plot and characters well enough.

In terms of writing action scenes (like a Pokemon battle or chase scene for instance), now that can be hard to pull off at times. I heard from several people how the hardest part of writing action scenes is pacing.

I'm not sure it's really a thing in Pokemon... or, from a different perspective, all of it is. By nature Pokemon fanfiction tends to involve a lot more action sequences than other fics to the point where not being able to write a fight scene at all kind of limits you in the genera. Especially in the ever-present journey fic. Indeed to a certain extent the average journey fic is an action story since you have a main character who wants to be the best at a certain fighting technique who usually ends up having to battle off hordes of evil minions of a distant villain while effectively alone or with a small group of badass friends. So action.

On the flip side, if we count journey as something else entirely there just aren't many action Pokemon stories. Perhaps because every story has action elements it's kind of boring to just see lots of battles in a row with little to no plot. There are a dozen high quality options I could find on ff.net in an hour that have satisfactory action and plot/character development. So I think that really hurts straight action as a genera.

Of course, sometimes "THE VILLAINS TAKE OVER THE WORLD/UNITE!!!" fics happen and those tend to be straight action. But they are comparatively rare in the fandom and usually get abandoned pretty early on because they make less sense the more you think about them.