Ohhh boy.
Love you Get back here long time. :D
I've been absent for the last couple of days, since I have been called to help audit a live system at College. Whether that's good or bad remains to be seen, unfortunately I can not disclose much more AON.
But it's good to be back, even if for the duration of a
blink, and noticing that, despite some comments above that we needed "more broad interaction / beyond bold topics", there has been a miniflood of bold topics here for me to comment by.
So... where to begin?
Why do you write fan-fiction?
I was there when the topic at Serebii began. I'm not bothering quoting the answer, since it is there for others to see (
here). Suffices to say that writing them doen is the most effective way I have to stop those plot bunnies from eating my Vitamin-A-fed brain cells.
That and I like to explore my literacy vein (I'm more of a computer kind of person).
If you could pick any character from any of your current or soon to be fics as a recurring character in one-shots or the like, who would they be?
Lileep. Definitively Lileep. After having gone do some researching I liked the way I managed to write him, and I've actually received comments from people who say they liked the character as well. I wouldn't mind writing a longer, OT-style FIC with him and his soon-to-be-trainer going around next year (which is when I'll presumably be free enough to take writing as an
actual hobby... figures!).
txteclipse's answer to the above
I actually RP'd once with a character named Kai who was beta'ing a government-issued Porygon. The pokemon talked using wireless speakers in Kai's backpack and could download and use any number of a wide array of gadgets that the kid made, as long as there was a wifi connection. I loved that duo to death: their relationship was so hilarious. Kai was a grumpy, sociophobic geek, while Porygon was painfully outgoing and perpetually happy.
A happy-go-lucky Porygon speaking thru something like WAP+SSH+Espeak? It sounds
awesome. I'd as much figure that such a character could be "conveniently" used for pranks like this one:
(xkcd #440)
And yes I like to make references to
xkcd.
Seriously, txteclipse. Where is link? I want to read this.
And now that I think about it, I haven't read more than a handful stories that give interesting "uses" to Pokémon. There's the usual "water Pokémon for a shower" and "HM slave for fly/ surf", but that's it. Pokémon like Cloyster, Smeargle and Loudred have huge potential for "unusual everyday uses" but it's either I'm not looking at the right place, or no one is doing it.
And now that I recall even further, Green's Porygon was like some kind of Neo in The Matrix, hacking its way around a mainframe's cyberspace
while with a berry attached, in the FRLG manga if I am not mistaken!
How do you measure your character's Pokémon(s) strength? Using the game mechanics' levels, or other custom standards, such as experience?
I try to not use game mechanics. Maybe adapt some of the more interesting ones to my works, but in no way I relate them to the concept of power or strngth via levels/exp/Rare Candies/whatever. (I count "experience" here by its in-game meaning)
I measure my characters' Pokémon's strength via custom standards, yes: the most important ones are their variety in battles sustained and their relation to the natural order of things. I project those variables in an X-Y axis with the most powerful Pokémon resulting farer from the "origin".
A Champion's Pokémon must be quite though and must have been trained to carry out very different commands under many different circumstances, as they have fought lots of
enemies foes. It does not matter if they are just a baby Electrike, a grumpy Vigoroth and
a newly-evolved Cradily
who are not as important plot-wise as the 10-year-old's Chikorita who beat up Team PickAName to next week. They will fare better and have more powerful attacks than your everyday Gym Leader.
As for the other axis, a "Legendary", being a personification of a power of nature or a creature that exists for a very specific purpose, will have access to a completely different power source, and hence a vastly larger power source, than your everyday überly-trained Salamence, no matter than the little Zapdos hatched from its egg (or something) just last week while Salamence (plus Trainer) has beaten the four Champions and 127 official battles in a row. Salamence
will be fried by a Thundershock.
But overall I do not plug "hard numbers" or something that discretely sets a Pokémon's power or describes / fixates it. I merely use a relative system where it only matters that X is more powerful than Y, not the actual difference or their specific power levels. If I ever get to make use of "the numbers", I'll try for it to be purely for comedic scientific value.
D. Lawride said:
So, lemme give it a try at a topic that has most likely been answered, but searching through 537 pages is committing social suicide. You only end in two days. Maybe less, if you don't eat. :p
I already suicided myself (and continue to do so) so that you guys won't have to! ;)