Flamethrower Sentret is
adorable! I'd love to see the fic that comes out of that XD
As for Pokemon heights; for quadrupeds I always took it to be how tall they are either on their haunches or in a seated position. For instance - the baseline size for the average pikachu in my fic, when it is sitting upright upon its haunches, is 1'4" from the bottom of its hind paws to the tips of its ears. Many individuals will be taller or shorter than this depending on their age, their environment (lots of food means the population, on average, will be taller and more robust than a similar population living in a less hospitable area), and simple genetics and quirks of circumstance (such as being the runt of the litter); but on average, the canon heights seem to be a good baseline for me. I imagine bipeds, including birds, would be measured in a very similar way to how we measure ourselves (from the soles of the feet to the highest point of the head; such as Lucario's ears or Machoke's...ridge things XD ); but Pokemon who don't fit the criteria for either a quadruped or biped could be tricky. I imagine fish would be measured the same way fisherman measure their catch - the length from nose to tail - and serpentine Pokemon could be measured in the same manner (which would technically not make it
height admittedly, but it seems realistic :) ). I don't even
know how heights for some ghost pokemon were obtained XD
Canon
weights, on the other hand....sometimes they seem realistic and believable, while other times they seem so far off base that my anal-ness about verisimilitude just can't accept them as being accurate (apparently, my suspension of disbelief works just fine for animals with superpowers; but not for anorexic whales! ^^' ). Wailord clock in at under 1,000 pounds?
Seriously? And tauros are supposed to weigh under 200 pounds? I think it's just easier to gauge pokémon weights by looking at comparable real animals of similar type and size (in cases where comparisons exist, at least - in terms of wispy ghosts, living bombs, and floating bags of poison and the like; the Pokedex is pretty much my only baseline XD ) - but others might see that as cheating, and instead try to work out what the heck Wailord's biology must be like if the average representative of the species is almost 42 feet long, but weights only about 880 pounds. Either way, it's interesting however you look at it! :)
Elite Overlord LeSabre's mention of the research on hotels and cars done for their fic is a perfect lead-in for a discussion topic near and dear to my own heart:
Do you think 'real world' products, events and people/animals have a place in Pokemon fanfiction? Do you include them in your own fics? (Warning: there be massive tl;dr ahead!) Real world geography and locations are pretty well accepted within canon (all four generations bear witness to such evidence); but real world products, events and people/animals exist in a more nebulous area. All have been featured in one canon or another -
Pokemon Pocket Monsters is filled with an infinite variety of examples; but as that is a gag manga, and also pretty much ignores the whole "region" thing and is flat-out set in Japan, I don't think it counts for our purposes, and thus I will not discuss it here :)
For products, we have the infamous
Marlboro billboard in
Poké-Wake; the 7-11 and McDonald's logos that can be briefly spotted in
Dengeki Pikachu; and in the games, we have blatant references to the movies
Stand by Me,
The Wizard of Oz and
Big, not to mention all the Nintendo product placement XD The sole unambiguous example supporting the existence of real world events outside of
PPM that I know of can be found in the games; where July 20th, 1969 is defined as the time of the first moon landing. Some, including myself, have interpreted Lt. Surge's talk about "the war" to refer to the Gulf War of the early 90's, but there is no solid proof of it one way or another XD Other than throwaway gags, mainly during Team Rocket motto sequences in the anime, there are few, if any, examples of references to real people (again, outside of
PPM). And finally,
early anime episodes and the first gen games are replete with references to real species of animals, and
Poké-Wake has
a cat; but in later generations these seem to have been pretty thoroughly reconnected, as they never appeared again (the sole exception I know of is a brief reference to "goat's-milk cheese" in Pokémon Ranger).
Why is it important for me to bother to mention all this? Because, outside of real animals (and I'll get to that briefly), I incorporate
all of the above factors in my own work; and have had to defend the practice more than once by mentioning the few canon examples I know of to demonstrate it's not completely out of left field. I seriously think these sorts of references have a place; not just because canon itself has done it, but also because it's important to me in how I imagine PokéEarth to be - an alternate version of our own Earth, with all its joys and vices, and much of its history. I've long been a fan of alternate history and alternative time-lines; stories that try to imagine what would change if something had turned out differently - like if the South had won the Civil War - or if something new were introduced - like if dragons were real and had been used during the settlement of the American colonies. I enjoy doing the same with Pokémon; though in a fic like
Paws for Alarm, the references tend to be to small, little world-building changes, rather than to drastic events such as wars and colonialism as tend to be popular in the bulk of alternative history fiction. The above-mentioned fic, in fact, opens with a quote from notes to a fictional speech presented to Charles Darwin's
Plinian Society; since the concept of evolutionary theory and biological study in a world filled with such creatures as pokémon was a concept I found deeply fascinating; especially since this is a world in which such godly beings as Arceus and the whole of the Sinnoh pantheon exist. The mating of science and magical events, Darwin and God, modernism and ancient superstitions is just infinitely appealing - even the very name of the mysterious Evolution Stones in the fic, Transmutation Stones, is a reference back to these duel factors, as "transmutation" was the original name Darwin gave "evolution." By incorporating factors and settings we recognize from our own world and using it to explore Pokémon more fully, I feel like maybe - just maybe - we're learning more about the boundless possibilities of both.
That, and I just
liked writing a burly, anime-obsessed nerd of a Firebreather serenading a very grumpy Ash with the opening lines of Oliver's "Good Morning Starshine." XD
Now, unto the issue of "real animals." These are the one factor of our own world I avoid like they give me hives when writing my fanfics; other than obvious exceptions like single celled organisms, simple animals like sponges or hydras or parasitic worms, certain insects, and human beings. Ironically, they are also the factor with the most evidence behind them; having been mentioned or shown many more times than we've ever seen cigarette ads or moon landings. I avoid mentioning real animals so stridently that even
descriptive passages - never mind dialogue! - contain no direct references to known species. In
Paws for Alarm; pikachu and pichu are referred to as simply "rodents;" a furret is called a "mustelid," a murkrow is either a "bird" or "avian" but
never a "crow." Why am I so allergic to
this, when I so freely embrace 19th century scientists and 60's psychedelic pop? I think it's a case of both verisimilitude rearing its ugly head once again, and also my personal feelings as a great lover of animals. Animals, when they're mentioned in pokémon fiction at all, seem to exist only to avoid thorny issues. They're kept hidden from the society, seemingly locked behind closed doors; rendered some sort of quasi-mythical beings that are mentioned only as comparison to a pokemon species (lie, describing marill as "mouse-like") as the contents of a character's dinner (ie, a human munching "chicken" or a pokémon gnawing on fresh-caught "sparrow"), or as something that was turned into clothes (ie, a coat with "fox-fur trim"). Imagining Poké-Earth as some horrible place where every creature that's not a human or pokémon seems to live only to be killed - never loved, never petted, seen as inferior in every way to the "cute and intelligent" pokémon - would, admittedly, be a GREAT premise for a fic if I could ever find a way to pull it off; but it's also rather depressing to an animal-lover. Thus, I ignore it altogether and let pokémon fill in the role - as friends, as partners, as beloved creatures - but also as food and future clothing.
Also, from a survival of the fittest perspective, pokémon would be able to out-compete their real-animal counterparts in virtually every way. Humanity was blessed with a big brain and thus survived; but in the battle of cat vs. meowth? It's no contest, really. The meowth is going to win, paws down.
If you actually read all of that, you get a gold star. ^__^
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