Scarlet Weather
The Game is Afoot!
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- Seen Mar 20, 2016
We all know the story: Trainer wakes up, trainer is late/early/on time, trainer eats breakfast, trainer runs to the Professor's lab (or equivalent place), trainer receives first Pokemon, trainer goes on a journey. On said journey, trainer defeats all eight gyms in order while battling the evil henchmen of Team Blank who plot to destroy the world or some other nefarious scheme by using the power of Blank, which is either an ancient, powerful Pokemon or a new weapon. Along the way, Trainer makes friends, catches Pokemon, watches them evolve, and battles hundreds of wild Pokemon and opposing trainers. At the end of the story, trainer ultimately saves the world from imminent destruction, or becomes League Champion. Possibly both.
If you have never read a Pokemon fanfic with this basic set-up, you are obviously very new to this fandom, or an inexperienced author. Ninety percent of all Pokemon stories with original characters (as opposed to canon characters from the anime) follow this pattern. So much so, in fact, that they have become predictable, bland, and extremely boring to read. As the saying goes, "read one mediocre OT fic, and you've read them all".
"But my OT fic is different!" I hear you exclaim. "Can't you see how different it is from the others? My fanfic has a girl as the main character!" Or, "My fic has an evil team that isn't necessarily evil!" Or "Mine ends with the main character not becoming League Champion, or saving the world!" I have a newsflash for all of you: This is the internet. There are literally hundreds of thousands, if not millions of people, writing Pokemon fanfics. Chances are that at least one of those hundreds of thousands or millions of people is not only writing a Pokemon fanfic with an extremely similar plot to yours, but unless you have evidence that proves otherwise there is a very good chance that this person is doing a better job of it than you are. Even in fics that are large departures from the standard OT fic, there's a surprising amount of authors writing stories with almost paralell plots. Of course, the stories aren't exactly the same. The writing styles and characters of both authors usually differ at least slightly. But that does not change the fact that both fics are almost exactly the same in terms of basic concept. If fics that are relatively unique are similar in terms of plot, what do you think an often-used concept like the OT fic will look like?
Moving on from that, I'm going to show you a few examples of common cliches in the OT genre. By avoiding these, you will be able to distance your fic from the hundreds of similar ones floating around on the internet somewhat, as well as maximising your chances of it looking good in the eyes of reviewers. Eliminating these things from your fic will do something else as well: They will challenge you to be creative. You will need to come up with things to fill in the gaps, different starting points, or invent new ways to accomplish the same ends without being trite. Well, let's get started, shall we?
Let's Talk Professors!
Most people state that when they go to a professor to get Pokemon they are following "Anime Canon" or "Game Canon". However, most people tend to use the standard anime beginning: They wake up, and discover that they are late or almost late, then rush to the professor's. There, they receive either their choice of starter or the last one available. There are three things wrong with this picture.
First, waking up late and going to the professor is neither canonical to the anime or the game. In the anime, trainers do receive Pokemon from the professor at a designated time. However, many trainers disregard this entirely. They receive their first Pokemon from a relative, or run around trying to capture one by using more "creative" methods than battling it. Many trainers in the anime have simply "caught" their starter Pokemon with no outside help. In terms of games, the Professor gives Pokemon only to trainers that he needs to do something for him, or as a thank-you to them. In Red, Blue, and Yellow, Oak gives you Pokemon because he wants you to do something for him after seeing you move into the tall grass. Possibly, he thinks since you want to go out of town, you'd be perfect to go fill up his Pokedex. In RSE, your character saves the professor and he gives you a Pokemon as a thank-you, then asks you to help with his Pokedex. In Diamond and Pearl, you're given a Pokemon after the Professor decides they're really useless as research specimens, and he wants you to fill out his Pokedex. In Gold and Silver, you get one in order to make a delivery for Professor Elm. And you get a Pokedex. Are you starting to see a common thread here? The game professors do not give away Pokemon to starting trainers left and right. They give them to specific trainers in order to help them fill out the Pokedex or accomplish some similar task.
Aside from the fact that "Wake up and grab Pokemon" isn't always canonical, it's overdone. There are several problems with the scenario, the first one being "waking up". Unless you are a fan of reading about trainers eating a suitably generic breakfast, usually including bacon (and it's ALWAYS bacon. You would not believe the number of OT stories I've read including a breakfast of bacon. I don't know what it is, but it seems like every single one involves bacon). How exciting. Please, unless it reveals some hidden secret depth of your character's consciousness, you can skip right over this. There is no need to throw in unneeded details such as eating breakfast. It slows the pace of the story down, and does nothing to capture the reader's attention. In fact, all it does is prove to us that your character really likes bacon. Do us all a favor: do not show this.
Now, I'm going to give you a radical piece of advice over your character receiving their first Pokemon:
Skip it.
You heard me right. I said skip over that part of the story entirely. Starting the story In Medias Res not only allows you to get to the meat of the story faster, it also eliminates the need to write an obligatory first battle or go through the tedium of explaining where your character's team comes from right away. Preferably, you can reveal this part of the story through flashbacks, and only when it becomes completely necessary for you to do so. It's actually much more entertaining to the reader than forcing them to sit through a scene that they've most likely read at least fifteen times before.
Love at first sight, or "The Completely deluded Starter Pokemon".
Never, never, never establish any bond closer than a tentative friendship or partnership between your character and starter at the story's beginning if you choose to begin at they very beginning of the journey. If the character and Pokemon have an unbreakable bond from the start, or form one before even entering the next town, it will seem artificial and forced. Even if the Pokemon respects the trainer enough to obey commands, he may not see him as a friend until the journey is almost over. Remember, friendships take time to build. Unless you start in the middle of the character's journey, his relationship with his starter needs to be built up over the course of the story.
I saved you, now love me!
How many times have I read this? A trainer saves a Pokemon who was injured somehow, and they immediately love him and trust him and want to travel with him. May Zeus and the rest of the Greek Pantheon serve as my non-existent witnesses as I call down curses upon the over-use of this cliche, and its complete departure from reality. It isn't so much the rescue of an injured Pokemon that I mind about this cliche, it's the fact that it becomes devoted to the trainer. First of all, the trainer only found the Pokemon. He had no direct role in nursing it back to health- if anything, I'd think the Pokemon would be more greatful to whatever Nurse Joy was helping to heal it when it was sick. After all, despite their identical appearance, Joys are people with emotions. If they are the ones nursing the Pokemon back to health, the Pokemon probably won't just forget about them. More importantly, oftentimes these Pokemon have been abused by human trainers. Don't you think that if you were abused and left to die, you wouldn't be so trusting? If I were that Pokemon, I would probably rather die than let a human take care of me. In fact, I'd be preaching to all the other Pokemon I met that humans were a nasty, brutish race of people that think only about fighting, and urge them to rebel. It's depressing, but true.
Rant, rant, rant.
When a trainer finds an abused Pokemon, there is usually a period of time where the trainer rants to whoever is nearby, usually the generic Joy, that trainers who abuse Pokemon are the scum of the earth and deserve to die, all the while slyly implying that they would never do such a thing. Yeah, yeah, whatever. If your only method for establishing your character's "good" credentials is to have them rant about how abusing Pokemon is bad, it's time for a re-write. If you can find anyone who actually thinks that abusing Pokemon is a good thing, then feel free to put a rant like this in your fic. If not, however, you can skip it. We already know this. If you want to insert a rant, please make it about something people may disagree with your character on or not realize. If you want to make your character seem nice and caring, have them do what actual nice and caring people do: give them a background in volunteer work or community service. Don't expect us to accept that your character is a moral paragon because of their stand on Pokemon Abuse.
Talk to the animals... and the animals will talk to you.
Pokespeech. In order to avoid robotic Pokemon, the easiest way to give them personalities is to have them "speak human". Or rather, to translate their remarks so that both trainer and Pokemon understand them. Generally, there are two ways of explaining how the trainer understands what his Pokemon are saying, and both of them are equally shaky.
First Way: Trainer gets a machine that magically translates what his Pokemon are saying. The usual explanation is that these machines are either common, or they're prototypes designed by the protagonist's father (never his mother, as far as I know) who works at either Silph or Devon, whichever one is appropriate for the region. First of all, this seems contrived. Both methods make it seem like the only reason that they were put into the story at all was to make it easier for the trainer to communicate with his Pokemon. The second one is even worse, because it makes it seem as if the father's connection to Silph or Devon is only introduced to give the trainer this magical talky-device. If you intend to include either of these objects in your story, the best way of avoiding a cliche is to make them more important. Perhaps the translators are a machine only available to richer trainers? Or perhaps your character's father is an inventor whose ideas rarely work out, and this is his first real success, so he wants them to test it? Who knows. But please, make this more than just a two-line throwaway.
Second Way: Trainer knows how to speak to Pokemon, either through some special power or by learning it in school. Or he is able to understand his own Pokemon from being around them a long time and reading their body language. I'll admit, I happen to think that learning Pokemon as a second language is completely batty. Pokemon, as I understand it, is probably a tonal dialect if it's a language at all, and probably involves many body-language nuances that it would be extremely hard to learn all of. If anything, it could take years to learn Poke-speech. Special powers might be important to the plot, but if they aren't part of the plot of the story they make your character look like a Mary/Gary-Sue. This, obviously, is not a good thing.
The best way, in my opinion, to translate what Pokemon are saying is not to really "translate" it. If your character is an experienced trainer, then perhaps they might be able to guess what their Pokemon is "saying" with some degree of accuracy. Either that, or develop a new language for both to speak that draws from both English and Poke-Speech. Pidgin languages are always fun to develop, and if you can develop one that makes sense, then you can not only solve the problem of communication with your Pokemon but also wow everyone with your language-creating skills. However, any method of explaining how humans and Pokemon are able to speak to each other can be used, presuming that its presence in the plot is not simply to allow them to speak to each other.
I Trainer, your Pokemon! I catch, you travel!
As Farla of fanfiction.net has so often pointed out in her parodies of the OT genre (a must-read), sometimes Pokemon will say no. Not every Pokemon your trainer captures will want to go with him. If your trainer says "Well, being with a trainer can be fun!" or "Trainers aren't like you think they are," he is basically rejecting the Pokemon's ability to choose for itself. He has said to it, "You are stupid and don't know anything, now come with me." If your trainer does this, and the Pokemon not only comes with him but actually enjoys it, you have committed a crime of fantasy racism by implying that all humans know better than Pokemon what is good for them. Pokemon have lives outside of being caught and trained, you know. If your character captures a Pokemon and they don't want to go with it, unless you want to show that your character is selfish and cruel and write the scene to depict it as such, you really shouldn't have him keep the Pokemon. In addition, you may want to give reasons as to why the Pokemon who do stay with your trainer stay with him. Perhaps it's as simple as "Hey, he has food!" or "Well, I didn't have anything better to do, and I might get stronger if I eventually decide to return home, so..."
Now, notice that the thread's title calls this "Part One" of my guide. And so it is. However, Part Two will be posted in this thread. Not any other thread. This one. Merged with this post, if necessary. So DON'T TOUCH THAT DIAL.
THIS GUIDE IS THE ONLY THESIS-APPROVED GUIDE TO AVOIDING CLICHES. ACCEPT NO SUBSTITUTES. UNLESS YOU CAN PROVE THAT THE SUBSTITUTES ARE BETTER THAN THIS THESIS-APPROVED GUIDE. THEN YOU ARE OKAY.
If you have never read a Pokemon fanfic with this basic set-up, you are obviously very new to this fandom, or an inexperienced author. Ninety percent of all Pokemon stories with original characters (as opposed to canon characters from the anime) follow this pattern. So much so, in fact, that they have become predictable, bland, and extremely boring to read. As the saying goes, "read one mediocre OT fic, and you've read them all".
"But my OT fic is different!" I hear you exclaim. "Can't you see how different it is from the others? My fanfic has a girl as the main character!" Or, "My fic has an evil team that isn't necessarily evil!" Or "Mine ends with the main character not becoming League Champion, or saving the world!" I have a newsflash for all of you: This is the internet. There are literally hundreds of thousands, if not millions of people, writing Pokemon fanfics. Chances are that at least one of those hundreds of thousands or millions of people is not only writing a Pokemon fanfic with an extremely similar plot to yours, but unless you have evidence that proves otherwise there is a very good chance that this person is doing a better job of it than you are. Even in fics that are large departures from the standard OT fic, there's a surprising amount of authors writing stories with almost paralell plots. Of course, the stories aren't exactly the same. The writing styles and characters of both authors usually differ at least slightly. But that does not change the fact that both fics are almost exactly the same in terms of basic concept. If fics that are relatively unique are similar in terms of plot, what do you think an often-used concept like the OT fic will look like?
Moving on from that, I'm going to show you a few examples of common cliches in the OT genre. By avoiding these, you will be able to distance your fic from the hundreds of similar ones floating around on the internet somewhat, as well as maximising your chances of it looking good in the eyes of reviewers. Eliminating these things from your fic will do something else as well: They will challenge you to be creative. You will need to come up with things to fill in the gaps, different starting points, or invent new ways to accomplish the same ends without being trite. Well, let's get started, shall we?
Let's Talk Professors!
Most people state that when they go to a professor to get Pokemon they are following "Anime Canon" or "Game Canon". However, most people tend to use the standard anime beginning: They wake up, and discover that they are late or almost late, then rush to the professor's. There, they receive either their choice of starter or the last one available. There are three things wrong with this picture.
First, waking up late and going to the professor is neither canonical to the anime or the game. In the anime, trainers do receive Pokemon from the professor at a designated time. However, many trainers disregard this entirely. They receive their first Pokemon from a relative, or run around trying to capture one by using more "creative" methods than battling it. Many trainers in the anime have simply "caught" their starter Pokemon with no outside help. In terms of games, the Professor gives Pokemon only to trainers that he needs to do something for him, or as a thank-you to them. In Red, Blue, and Yellow, Oak gives you Pokemon because he wants you to do something for him after seeing you move into the tall grass. Possibly, he thinks since you want to go out of town, you'd be perfect to go fill up his Pokedex. In RSE, your character saves the professor and he gives you a Pokemon as a thank-you, then asks you to help with his Pokedex. In Diamond and Pearl, you're given a Pokemon after the Professor decides they're really useless as research specimens, and he wants you to fill out his Pokedex. In Gold and Silver, you get one in order to make a delivery for Professor Elm. And you get a Pokedex. Are you starting to see a common thread here? The game professors do not give away Pokemon to starting trainers left and right. They give them to specific trainers in order to help them fill out the Pokedex or accomplish some similar task.
Aside from the fact that "Wake up and grab Pokemon" isn't always canonical, it's overdone. There are several problems with the scenario, the first one being "waking up". Unless you are a fan of reading about trainers eating a suitably generic breakfast, usually including bacon (and it's ALWAYS bacon. You would not believe the number of OT stories I've read including a breakfast of bacon. I don't know what it is, but it seems like every single one involves bacon). How exciting. Please, unless it reveals some hidden secret depth of your character's consciousness, you can skip right over this. There is no need to throw in unneeded details such as eating breakfast. It slows the pace of the story down, and does nothing to capture the reader's attention. In fact, all it does is prove to us that your character really likes bacon. Do us all a favor: do not show this.
Now, I'm going to give you a radical piece of advice over your character receiving their first Pokemon:
Skip it.
You heard me right. I said skip over that part of the story entirely. Starting the story In Medias Res not only allows you to get to the meat of the story faster, it also eliminates the need to write an obligatory first battle or go through the tedium of explaining where your character's team comes from right away. Preferably, you can reveal this part of the story through flashbacks, and only when it becomes completely necessary for you to do so. It's actually much more entertaining to the reader than forcing them to sit through a scene that they've most likely read at least fifteen times before.
Love at first sight, or "The Completely deluded Starter Pokemon".
Never, never, never establish any bond closer than a tentative friendship or partnership between your character and starter at the story's beginning if you choose to begin at they very beginning of the journey. If the character and Pokemon have an unbreakable bond from the start, or form one before even entering the next town, it will seem artificial and forced. Even if the Pokemon respects the trainer enough to obey commands, he may not see him as a friend until the journey is almost over. Remember, friendships take time to build. Unless you start in the middle of the character's journey, his relationship with his starter needs to be built up over the course of the story.
I saved you, now love me!
How many times have I read this? A trainer saves a Pokemon who was injured somehow, and they immediately love him and trust him and want to travel with him. May Zeus and the rest of the Greek Pantheon serve as my non-existent witnesses as I call down curses upon the over-use of this cliche, and its complete departure from reality. It isn't so much the rescue of an injured Pokemon that I mind about this cliche, it's the fact that it becomes devoted to the trainer. First of all, the trainer only found the Pokemon. He had no direct role in nursing it back to health- if anything, I'd think the Pokemon would be more greatful to whatever Nurse Joy was helping to heal it when it was sick. After all, despite their identical appearance, Joys are people with emotions. If they are the ones nursing the Pokemon back to health, the Pokemon probably won't just forget about them. More importantly, oftentimes these Pokemon have been abused by human trainers. Don't you think that if you were abused and left to die, you wouldn't be so trusting? If I were that Pokemon, I would probably rather die than let a human take care of me. In fact, I'd be preaching to all the other Pokemon I met that humans were a nasty, brutish race of people that think only about fighting, and urge them to rebel. It's depressing, but true.
Rant, rant, rant.
When a trainer finds an abused Pokemon, there is usually a period of time where the trainer rants to whoever is nearby, usually the generic Joy, that trainers who abuse Pokemon are the scum of the earth and deserve to die, all the while slyly implying that they would never do such a thing. Yeah, yeah, whatever. If your only method for establishing your character's "good" credentials is to have them rant about how abusing Pokemon is bad, it's time for a re-write. If you can find anyone who actually thinks that abusing Pokemon is a good thing, then feel free to put a rant like this in your fic. If not, however, you can skip it. We already know this. If you want to insert a rant, please make it about something people may disagree with your character on or not realize. If you want to make your character seem nice and caring, have them do what actual nice and caring people do: give them a background in volunteer work or community service. Don't expect us to accept that your character is a moral paragon because of their stand on Pokemon Abuse.
Talk to the animals... and the animals will talk to you.
Pokespeech. In order to avoid robotic Pokemon, the easiest way to give them personalities is to have them "speak human". Or rather, to translate their remarks so that both trainer and Pokemon understand them. Generally, there are two ways of explaining how the trainer understands what his Pokemon are saying, and both of them are equally shaky.
First Way: Trainer gets a machine that magically translates what his Pokemon are saying. The usual explanation is that these machines are either common, or they're prototypes designed by the protagonist's father (never his mother, as far as I know) who works at either Silph or Devon, whichever one is appropriate for the region. First of all, this seems contrived. Both methods make it seem like the only reason that they were put into the story at all was to make it easier for the trainer to communicate with his Pokemon. The second one is even worse, because it makes it seem as if the father's connection to Silph or Devon is only introduced to give the trainer this magical talky-device. If you intend to include either of these objects in your story, the best way of avoiding a cliche is to make them more important. Perhaps the translators are a machine only available to richer trainers? Or perhaps your character's father is an inventor whose ideas rarely work out, and this is his first real success, so he wants them to test it? Who knows. But please, make this more than just a two-line throwaway.
Second Way: Trainer knows how to speak to Pokemon, either through some special power or by learning it in school. Or he is able to understand his own Pokemon from being around them a long time and reading their body language. I'll admit, I happen to think that learning Pokemon as a second language is completely batty. Pokemon, as I understand it, is probably a tonal dialect if it's a language at all, and probably involves many body-language nuances that it would be extremely hard to learn all of. If anything, it could take years to learn Poke-speech. Special powers might be important to the plot, but if they aren't part of the plot of the story they make your character look like a Mary/Gary-Sue. This, obviously, is not a good thing.
The best way, in my opinion, to translate what Pokemon are saying is not to really "translate" it. If your character is an experienced trainer, then perhaps they might be able to guess what their Pokemon is "saying" with some degree of accuracy. Either that, or develop a new language for both to speak that draws from both English and Poke-Speech. Pidgin languages are always fun to develop, and if you can develop one that makes sense, then you can not only solve the problem of communication with your Pokemon but also wow everyone with your language-creating skills. However, any method of explaining how humans and Pokemon are able to speak to each other can be used, presuming that its presence in the plot is not simply to allow them to speak to each other.
I Trainer, your Pokemon! I catch, you travel!
As Farla of fanfiction.net has so often pointed out in her parodies of the OT genre (a must-read), sometimes Pokemon will say no. Not every Pokemon your trainer captures will want to go with him. If your trainer says "Well, being with a trainer can be fun!" or "Trainers aren't like you think they are," he is basically rejecting the Pokemon's ability to choose for itself. He has said to it, "You are stupid and don't know anything, now come with me." If your trainer does this, and the Pokemon not only comes with him but actually enjoys it, you have committed a crime of fantasy racism by implying that all humans know better than Pokemon what is good for them. Pokemon have lives outside of being caught and trained, you know. If your character captures a Pokemon and they don't want to go with it, unless you want to show that your character is selfish and cruel and write the scene to depict it as such, you really shouldn't have him keep the Pokemon. In addition, you may want to give reasons as to why the Pokemon who do stay with your trainer stay with him. Perhaps it's as simple as "Hey, he has food!" or "Well, I didn't have anything better to do, and I might get stronger if I eventually decide to return home, so..."
Now, notice that the thread's title calls this "Part One" of my guide. And so it is. However, Part Two will be posted in this thread. Not any other thread. This one. Merged with this post, if necessary. So DON'T TOUCH THAT DIAL.
THIS GUIDE IS THE ONLY THESIS-APPROVED GUIDE TO AVOIDING CLICHES. ACCEPT NO SUBSTITUTES. UNLESS YOU CAN PROVE THAT THE SUBSTITUTES ARE BETTER THAN THIS THESIS-APPROVED GUIDE. THEN YOU ARE OKAY.
