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Writers' Workshop General Chat Thread

I'm wondering how some people are handling the villainous teams...

With the way I'm looking at it, most of them do end up broken up. Magma, Aqua, and Plasma are still around; Plasma went legit under N's leadership and the influence of the protagonists from Black and White, while Aqua and Magma are a little busy trying to clean up the mess they made to do anything legitimately villainous. Magma and Aqua are still officially criminal organizations, though.

The rest...

Rocket is dead and buried as a villainous team. No one is even looking for them anymore. Really, compared to many of the other villainous teams, they were harmless.

Galactic is mostly buried. Most of their members were arrested. Cyrus and Mars are still technically on the run; Cyrus is in Distortion World and unlikely to ever be arrested. In general, people don't appreciate trying to destroy the world. Jupiter testified against Charon and turned her life around.

There's an active international manhunt for the escaped members of Team Flare. Unlike Galactic's attempt to manipulate myths, Flare used a real weapon of mass destruction. Unlike the other teams that either reformed or left reformed members littered all over the public sector, no one is even attempting to offer members of Flare a second chance.

No one takes Team Skull seriously. No one. The only arrest warrants out for their members are for unpaid parking tickets.
 
Beth Pavell said:
(Shut up, Prescott, you did some things right in that story)
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Arguably, the only thing I did right. Not sure you'd have liked what I planned to do with them during season 3 (dissolved and reformed under new leadership, with a new name and more heavy handed tactics). I also wanted to bring a Triad-inspired street gang into Storm Island, but I felt like it would have stolen the thunder away from Team Rocket, or the poorly defined/misused separatists (who I intended to be an antagonist but never got to it) in season 2. Thankfully I told myself not to do that, and even kinda rolled them into Rocket overall.

I think the important thing to remember is to focus deeply on one of them if you intend to feature them a lot. Trying to come up with aftermath scenarios for each is going to become to large to properly manage and even explain without relegating it to one-time offhand comments that mean little to the plot. I'm not sure how ambitious your story is, Ereshkigal, but trying to go too wide will only bog your narrative down with either too much detail, or too much time spent. Probably both.
 
It's mostly just world building.

For as much as I put into the story, I put in a lot of work on side-details that might never make it in or might be mentioned very minutely. If I ever need to write what amounts to background chatter, like a news story or a conversation, I have plenty to choose from for it that will still help illuminate the world for the reader. Anything extra I can just mention in an interlude. Or set aside and save for later.

It also helps me work through writer's block or editing boredom.
 
Eliza Prescott said:
Arguably, the only thing I did right.
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The confession scene aboard the SS Beckinshire

Now I think about it, when I was looking at details for Into the Wild I played around with the idea of Team Rocket structured like a corporation - sort of like a domestic version of the way the Cosa Nostra used pseudo-military organisation - Giovanni as the CEO, a "boardroom" of Death Eaters Admins, that sort of thing
 
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As much as I would like to elaborate on what happens to my own Team Aqua, I will withhold this secret information. Probably nothing special, though. :p
 
Kazekage said:
As much as I would like to elaborate on what happens to my own Team Aqua, I will withhold this secret information. Probably nothing special, though. :p
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Do they all drown because they were too stupid to come up with a back up plan to control a giant fish that practically has control over all the world's oceans?
 
0bs1d1an_kn1ght said:
Do they all drown because they were too stupid to come up with a back up plan to control a giant fish that practically has control over all the world's oceans?
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Not thinking things through is a pretty common problem with a lot of fiction. Mewtwo is another example.

It's also a pretty serious problem in the real-world. Some of the more fun examples include plastic grocery bags (this was an American environmentalist campaign to save trees) and destroying a plug that keeps heavily-contaminated water out of a major river, then not telling anyone about it (the Environmental Protection Agency destroyed a river this way).

I see it as more realistic than anything. Not thinking it through or having a back-up plan? So very, very human when dealing with the environment.
 
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Ereshkigal said:
Not thinking things through is a pretty common problem with a lot of fiction. Mewtwo is another example.
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tbf tho I think Archie had the better plan:

>dry up all water on the planet to create more land; all living things die either from lack of water or extreme heat, therefore, land becomes useless.

vs

>increase sea levels in order to engulf all land on the planet; only aquatic pokemon/lifeforms survive in the long run.

y'know, for a guy who's IQ should be well in the triple digits, Maxie's plan was literally second-grade tier.
 
0bs1d1an_kn1ght said:
tbf tho I think Archie had the better plan:

>dry up all water on the planet to create more land; all living things die either from lack of water or extreme heat, therefore, land becomes useless.

vs

>increase sea levels in order to engulf all land on the planet; only aquatic pokemon/lifeforms survive in the long run.

y'know, for a guy who's IQ should be well in the triple digits, Maxie's plan was literally second-grade tier.
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Sorry about the number of edits for my post. I really, really want to rant, but am trying to keep it under control because I know it is off-topic.

Real-world people have done far, far worse. Just ask the Environmental Protection Agency about that river they destroyed. They're an organization of highly-intelligent people whose job includes knowing not to do things like that, they had access to the information they needed to avoid the incident, and yet they still managed to completely foul it up on a level that would have most companies facing multi-million dollar court orders against them.

Being highly intelligent or even massively informed doesn't stop someone from making a mistake that massive. There's too many real-world examples. I don't really see Archie as anything special in that regard.

Edit: Thinking about it, Archie's plan was just as bad. As water increases, so does water pressure. Eventually, it would have likely exceeded what life on the sea floor could survive, and that's an extinction event that would have likely traveled up the food chain. Either way, it could have easily ended up with all life on Earth extinct.

Edit2: And after thinking about it, I guess I can see an important example from the pair of teams.

So many people are well intentioned and think they have a solution. Whether it's for the environment, or for societal problems, or... And in the end, if you really stop and take a look at it, you realize that their solutions are far more dangerous than the problem they solve. The reason why the EPA destroyed a river? They were just trying to do some maintenance of the area where that waste was stored. The plastic bag issue? Trees were not even in danger at the time, and the solution has definitely caused more problems than it solved.

Teams Magma and Aqua were just trying to make the world better for Pokemon. Yet neither realized their solution might kill the Pokemon as well.

The ultimate thing they serve is a reminder that good intentions must be curbed because of the sheer damage they can do. And that's what makes them probably the best written teams of the bunch. There are way too many people from the real world who could have acted the same way with the same intentions without actively trying to be villains. Including even me.

And that's what made them so effectively as villainous teams. And what made Plasma so effective before you found out what Ghetsis was really up to. They were villains who had stances that are not entirely unfounded and not entirely unreasonable. I know I certainly wanted to join Team Plasma when I was playing Black and White.

I think that also reflects on something about what I consider a truly well-written villainous team; they're people whose motivations you can understand. And I will admit that as I have been sitting here reading this and writing this section, I have been reconsidering my own treatment of the villainous teams. I definitely am going to change my plans for how I present them.
 
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0bs1d1an_kn1ght said:
Do they all drown because they were too stupid to come up with a back up plan to control a giant fish that practically has control over all the world's oceans?
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While their plan does include Kyogre and the world's Jakkus' waters... well, I can't say too much except that this plan accounts for every scenario.
 
I shall become a wet blanket when all these villainous team discussion is going on. But a very fundamental question: Is it a necessity where a team of villain must exist for a pokemon story, specifically trainer journey fic?

Is there ever, a pokemon story without a villainous team, or possibly without any character where his/her/its role can be labeled as "villain"? (Note: rival/opponent =/= villain)

As the game canon included villain characters to dramatize the story every generation like a tradition, the more I doubt and questioning the necessity of such tradition.
 
With my fanfic, villainous teams having existed is actually a bit of a requirement. The idea is that it's basically Pokemon, only in the real world. Many of these teams have done things that would have had impacts on the world in some manner, so they are necessary for backstory.

Think about what these teams have done. Galactic proved that other dimensions not only exist, but are accessible. This isn't mythology or science fiction anymore. Think of how every military on Earth would react to the news that invasion from another dimension is something they should actually worry about... now imagine how they react after it actually happens as a result of the events of Sun and Moon.

For that matter, just consider the worldwide climatic impact of releasing Groudon and Kyogre. You don't have to worry about CO2 being a problem anymore; something far worse just happened.

Many of these teams created weaponized Pokemon, created new technologies, discovered ancient weapons or secrets, and other amazing feats. Except for Team Skull, every one of these teams has come up with something that could alter warfare, military tactics, or even baseline technology in some manner. Team Flare's Holo Caster and cybernetics, for example. Genesect might be beyond the finances of the average trainer to have even one just because of the cybernetics, but the U.S. Army could easily afford to field twenty of them. And even one Mewtwo in the hands of a military force could be as unbeatable as nuclear weapons were when just the U.S. had them.

The more I've thought about it from what was said on here, especially after my last post, the more I realized I would have to rewrite some teams. Galactic and Flare make no sense for a real-world team. Flare especially, since taking them down would have serious impacts on the entire European Union and their goal was pretty much cartoon villain.
 
@AceTrainer14 You should tell that to everyone in here then. I'm just picking up their discussion topics and asking further questions.
BTW, isn't this is a WRITERS Workshop GENERAL Chat thread? I think my doubt is general enough for any generic pokemon fanfic writer, not specific to only journey fic (Yeah although I do ask for journey fic, but not necessarily only that). I don't think it is even any cliche, because villain character is...... well, simply a character role type.
 
クリスタル said:
@AceTrainer14 You should tell that to everyone in here then. I'm just picking up their discussion topics and asking further questions.
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The general discussion was just on the villainous teams not their roles in stories. This is a general chat but we also have specific threads that should be utilised so that this thread can flow freely.
So consider this a general reminder to everyone then to use threads such as General Writing Questions, Plot Bunny Zoo and that when the question turns towards your own writing :)

I don't think the villains plans are that bad compared to some villains in other works of fiction. Look at someone like Voldemort - a whole plan requires on getting one boy through a nine month-ish obstacle course in hopes that we will touch an object at the right time. I think summoning gods, when the method to do so is easily accessible, isn't that mad of a plan.
 
AceTrainer14 said:
I don't think the villains plans are that bad compared to some villains in other works of fiction. Look at someone like Voldemort - a whole plan requires on getting one boy through a nine month-ish obstacle course in hopes that we will touch an object at the right time. I think summoning gods, when the method to do so is easily accessible, isn't that mad of a plan.
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I choose to think that was all Crouch's idea, simply for the idea:

"So, Crouch, how will you get Potter here for the ceremony?"
"My Lord, I will enter him in the Triwizard Tournament and enchant the trophy into a portkey, which will bring him to you immediately."
"...could you not just, y'know, enchant a pair of his socks?"
"I could, but imagine the havoc that'll occur when Hogwarts is revealed to have been infiltrated during a massive international event!"
"...well I do like havoc..."
 
Breath of the Wild is turning out to be fanfic gold. Put it this way - the world is sufficiently large that I don't think I'd invent any new geography. There'd be no reason - there's so many named locations anyway that it would be a waste not to use all the geographical setting you'd ever need from a series of screenshots
 
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