(Whew, this took a while.)
Yamato-san,
Thank you for thinking of the manga, I had actually kinda sort completely forgotten it. :dead: Here are my thoughts on your thoughts:
Originally Posted by Yamato-san
but Pokemon canon itself is very complicated. It's divided between video games, anime, and several different manga, each of which taking place in their own world and with their own levels of technology. While most people do follow anime canon, the other types of canon can still be tooken into account in a fic. In the anime and games, they have plenty of technological advances, I'll give it that.
....
OK, I posted a response to this segment, and then I wrote the rest of this post and then I scrolled up and found it had disappeared. So, basically, my responses was: yep, it's complicated, I wouldn't use the word "divided" to discuss its presence in those three mediums, and I don't think simple differences levels of technology is a problem because the categorization system would have to be fairly liberal with accepting stuff as canon. (Of course I responded to all of this in greater detail later in this response, as you'll read.)
However, in some aspects, it is lacking compared to our own world. In terms of transportation, have you ever seen an airplane, or anything more complex than that (OK, there is the Mossdeep rocket, but aren't they still experimenting with that?)? No, the closest you ever see is hot air balloons and dirigibles and such. In fact, Pokemon training and Rocket technology aside (maybe ignore La Rousse City, too), the world is exactly like our's, if not even more simplified. Now, when you read the manga by Toshihiro Ono, this isn't the case. In that, you see several technological advancements even outside of Team Rocket and being a trainer. Holographic screens, hover cars, towering futuristic metropolises, etc. Because of this, some things can apply as 'sci-fi' to certain types of canon, but not to others.
On the idea of the Pokemon world being lacking in some technology: why would you think that? ;) Pokemon are the ultimate technology in the Pokemon world, let's not forget. What their scientists focus on may be different than us, but technology and science are very distinguishable... Their technology and their world developed and develops differently than ours because they have a different world, different needs. The key difference is the presence of Pokemon but let's not forget other minor details that evident though the anime--lack of disease, possible human nature that's less corrupt than our own which would explain why there's little high crime, berries. They have hot air balloons and carrier-sized flying-type rather than airplanes, but does that mean they couldn't make airplanes? Although I believe they may have had small airplanes before--didn't the Pidgey carrier guy have a plane on his roof in the anime? Commercial airplanes wouldn't be necessary as people don't travel as much or in the same ways or for the same reason and motivations as in this world, and buying/constructing an airplane and then learning to fly it is an understandably uncommon thing IMHO.
No one ever said the Pokemon canon was clear-cut. In fact, I said the opposite in a previous post :\:
There does exist a Pokemon canon. It's not so clearly laid out, but the vast majority of the Pokemon canon comes from the video games and the anime. Some people might follow the anime pretty clearly and borrow a concept from a Pokemon game for use in their fanfics, like item storage, for instance.
If all concepts are borrowed from the manga, anime, and video games, and the fanfic is mainly based off of one of the three with and borrowed concepts that don't betray the canon, and at the same time form a coherent fic that isn't set in a world that's radically different from any of the three... then that could be acceptable as canon, for purposes of making this system work. Personally in terms of strict canon I would say that the anime has primary credibility, but that's just me. (Maybe you believe the manga is better for that; stand by the anime based on--as you said--the vast majority of fanfic being based off the world of the anime, and also the world in the anime being very solid IMHO. The manga is probably solid too, but unfortunately I haven't read it. Is Satoshi Tajiri involved in the plot? I think he is in the anime, based on credits, but I'm not sure.) It's true that as far as a credible, consistent world, the manga and the anime are the only two things I can think of to base a story off--the video games is usually only used to borrow concepts off, I've never seen anyone try to stick strickly to the video games.
You do raise a good point, do you think that making a kind of label for what it's based off would solve this? "anime" and "manga" would be the two primary categories I'd imagine. Maybe even a secondary label for another canon source that's less prevalent. If you borrow a few concepts from something or other that is both Pokemon and from Nintendo (i.e. could be considered some kind of canon), then you can put it in as "expansion+" maybe. (See my explanation of the "expansion' label in the first post.)
And Frost Weaver's right, we don't need to categorize our stories because there's not that many here. If you wanted the categorization system to be in place just so people could find what style of stories they like, I think that can be easily solved with a thread that lists off different categories and links the fics that apply to them (since there's no point in seperating the whole forum as such).
No one ever said this was a need. The idea that this would be
exclusively for PC is something I never thought of, either. (My only mention of this idea relating to forums specifically was "Not to say that I'm too lazy to click on topics in Pokemon fanfic forums and read a few paragraphs, but I am so selective that it would very much increase the efficiency of such forays if I were able to pick out the few that I might enjoy especially.", and believe me, I regret confusing the matter.) The idea is something that I find interesting and had hoped other people would too, but if it's too much hassle to think about there's no reason for you to bother with any of this- though of course I've appreciated your look on things (I kinda forgot about the manga) and would like to see this discussion continue. :)
Separating the whole forum is another thing that I'm not sure I quite understand and certainly never suggested. And the idea of a topic with categorized links to fanfics was how I'd imagined this concept could be utilized on PC (but with a full categorization system, not just cliche plotlines that frostweaver mentioned), if for some reason everyone read this topic and immediately became suffused with organizational enthusiasm and intellectual zeal :D, but of course that never happens with my ideas (in fact, response/explain topics like this one are what usually happen to my ideas) and I never suggested it because I didn't know what people would think. (I planned on suggesting it as an idea of something someone could do, if at least 2 people understood my idea and weren't against it. Yes, I set low standards (because I'm egocentric, though in a selfish way, I just focus on myself when it comes to the vast majority of things, including ideas). :\ )
frostweaver,
First off, I'd just like to say, in terms of discussing the idea... VICTORY IS MINE!!!!!

We've gotten past me explaining correctly my idea because I see from your response (and Yamato's I believe) that you understand it fairly well enough... you just don't think it works with the Pokemon canon, an argument which I will now address. The war or words (in an intellectual/problem-solving sense of course ;)) may be far from over, but the battle goes to me! Well, both of us really, but I was afraid it would be stuck at that stage forever, and my relief is evident to myself.
Originally Posted by frostweaver
I think Yamato-san summed up already... We see Pokemon World being capable of cloning (Mewtwo exists in all games/tv/manga) yet we don't see any of them having airplanes. If we include robots to the ranks of Gundums from the Gundum series in the Pokemon World, does that count as "science fiction" or not? Well Team Rocket makes up some pretty crazy robots that define all source of science as well... so do we classify that as science fiction or "possible" for the Pokemon world?
Not quite sure I understand this. Well, that's not true actually, I am sure I don't understand it. The first sentence or two about cloning and airplanes I'm fine with, but about Gundams... I feel like maybe there's just a word or two I'm not realizing is mental typo'ed. (I am the king of mental typoes, don't challenge that unless you want a list of dates and times... well, okay, there's no list, but really, it's absurd how many silly mistakes I've been making recently. Err, anyway.) Could you mean "If someone wrote a Pokemon fanfic with robots from the Gundam series, would that be sci-fi or just ordinary Pokemon fanfic? Because robots are possible according to the anime which is canon" then my response would be--in what I actually think is the kind of way of saying things that you often have--would the reverse be true, if a giant Meowth robot was introduced to the Gundam world? My answer would be, "Only with a very good explanation." ;) If Gundam Wing was a television show in the Pokemon world, then yes. If the author decided to make it that Gundams existed somewhere but had never been mentioned in the anime or anywhere, then that would be classified under "expansion" as "expansion++++", or (if the author was a moral person and didn't want to stretch the limits of "expansion") that would just be defined as non-canon.
where if they can fire bubblegum as bombs, surely they got the technology for firing real bombs?
How would we know that? We don't. We assume it because we know that powerful technology in our world is often invented and used for destructive purposes, but even Team Rocket has never indicated, that I've seen, that they would kill someone unnecessarily. People might think differently in their world. Maybe it was based off smokebombs, which were used for special effects in movies. You never know. ;)
But the fact that our concepts of science-fiction always get involved when we're thinking about a science-fiction for a fanfic whose basis may well perhaps be a science-fiction already...
My advise is: stop thinking of Pokemon as sci-fi or fantasy. When you write a fanfic, don't write something and think "Oh, this is something that could never happen in the /real/ world" or "Oh, they should have airplanes because that's an advanced technology." Think as though the Pokemon world is the world you live in, and if you ever find yourself considering the "real world", do so in a remote and observational way; think as though everything outside of the Pokemon world simply exists to provide ideas for writing within the Pokemon canon, whatever you may consider that to be. It's unfortunate that people confuse this--I really don't think that way when I think of Pokemon sci-fi actually except when you mention it in this concept--but, yeah, people should be able to think clearly if they put their mind to it; of course, clear thinking isn't that difficult, in theory, but... yeah. :surprised
It's not just a problem with do we have enough fanfics to start categorization system... Fanfics on vb forums are pretty flawed to begin with. The fact that readers can only rely on the fanfic title to decide rather if the fanfic is interesting enough to read or not is very devastating... You don't have the one line summary in fanfiction.net, or the title page/whole page summary on the back of books in the library... Fanfics have so little chance to show itself to potential readers already. Must we put a categorization system so some fanfics won't even get a chance to be seen by light? Let the readers do some work to scroll through the different fanfics so every fanfic regardless of category/genre gets an opportunity to show itself so readers will read them...
I'm afraid I'm not acquainted with vb forums. Although I'm not necessarily arguing the advantages and disadvantages of the implementation of this idea, only the possibiliy of the development of a classification system that would have the ability to categorize a Pokemon fanfic in such a way as to allow someone who reads the label for that fanfic to make a decision on whether they'd enjoy the content and subject matter of the fiction, that would be correct satisfactorily-often enough. But I think I can say that a good categorization system would encourage people to read fanfics, especially older fanfics that were written years ago but are unique in a certain aspect--if the system were to work, then the only fanfics that would be unread would ideally be the ones that the reader wouldn't enjoy to the extent that the reader enjoyed the fanfics that fit the category he or she specifically browsed for. If someone fanfics are less read, then that's a matter of people's tastes, not necessarily the skill of the writer.