Here's a bit of a cross-over thread for anyone who writes Pokémon fanfiction, roleplays and such~
Do you try to give your characters some teams that you would see yourself use when you play a Pokémon game, or do you possibly do the opposite? In which case, how hard do you think it would be to beat a Pokémon game with the team one of your characters has?
Are there any Pokémon that don't mean much to you in-game, but that you love to write as in your roleplays, either as "Mystery Dungeon" style characters or as some trainer's companion - or has the opposite ever happened to you?
And for those of you who also play competitive Pokémon, I'm wondering... have you ever tried to pull off a competitive team by working around one of your characters' signature Pokémon or strategies? How do you think that would go, or if you tried, how did it actually go?
That's quite a lot of questions, sure, but in this case I see them mostly as prompts to discuss this topic - the difference between Pokémon teams in your writing and in your game savefiles!
This is something that wasn't so evident for me at first - I started off trying to give my characters strong Pokémon, the same I'd use in a game for instance, without realizing just how many more possibilities you have when writing, especially in a setting that resembles more the anime. And that's how I gave my character a Bagon, without really thinking about how to battle with it. Now that it's unevolved and with some pretty bland, straightforward moves, I often feel like all its battles are similar to each other and dull to read.
So many Pokémon can be useful outside of battles, or utilize some incredible strategies that you could've never thought of in-game. Their movements become surprisingly more important when writing, and so do their feelings or quirks. Avril and Poppy (Flabébé) started off as a way to explore these dynamics more, and it is working so, so well! The same could also be said for Arianne's Lulu (Morelull), who - despite being a very weak Pokémon in game - can lend itself to all sorts of shenanigans, all while being still challenging to write! I mean, it's a mushroom with nothing but one stem to move around~
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