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POPULAR: Cliches in Pokémon Fanfiction

KrspaceT said:
Nothing worse than dumbing down your enemies IMO. Victories must always be achievements.
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True. Nothing feels worse than an unsatisfactory victory in a story...and not to the characters, I mean. A victory in-story can be satisfactory, but to the reader, it may be unsatisfying. Perhaps that actual battle/showdown was mundane or didn't live up to your story's buildup. Maybe the author failed to address certain things. Maybe the battle felt rushed. Maybe it was too talkative. Maybe it was too descriptive(this can be a bad thing). Maybe it was't described enough.

There's a lot of factors into it, but in my opinion, dumbing down the protagonist or whatever character's enemies is always done for the sole purpose of plot; in which case, you're automatically doing something wrong. This is a sign that you're writing your characters around the plot, and not the plot around the characters-which is a no-no in writing.
 
AnimeJewel246 said:
True. Nothing feels worse than an unsatisfactory victory in a story...and not to the characters, I mean. A victory in-story can be satisfactory, but to the reader, it may be unsatisfying. Perhaps that actual battle/showdown was mundane or didn't live up to your story's buildup. Maybe the author failed to address certain things. Maybe the battle felt rushed. Maybe it was too talkative. Maybe it was too descriptive(this can be a bad thing). Maybe it was't described enough.

There's a lot of factors into it, but in my opinion, dumbing down the protagonist or whatever character's enemies is always done for the sole purpose of plot; in which case, you're automatically doing something wrong. This is a sign that you're writing your characters around the plot, and not the plot around the characters-which is a no-no in writing.
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While it is not Pokemon I've always been struck by one Harry Potter fic where Dumbledore declared 'without my Elder Wand my powers are so weak I am but an ordinary wizard'.

Paraphased, but I feel that makes the idea of Dumbledore as a threat a ton less amazing. If you take him down there (and this is EVIL! Dumbledore, for reference) is it an accomplishment?

....I find that when it comes to rivals Paul is probably the worst with this trope. Even when Ash would be 'serious' (Bah. Never trust a fic with Serious! Ash. What, do they think he's still in Indigo no train mode?) Paul is a trainer of equal merit and can match him. The only scenario where Paul should struggle a bit is if he ends up being a lot less experienced than Ash somehow.

...And yes, I do speak from personal experience. Against a P.S Ash with his early Kalos level of experience a rookie Paul struggled, but I was also very clear to demonstrate that the inexperience was the main hurdle (as Reset Ash and team only has memories and has to retrain his team to match those memories). Paul passed in-universe milestones before Ash did and several of his own 'behind' statuses came from Paul's own morals about badges, and he's more or less established himself fully on level now.

Still Paul is the main victim of this trope in Pokemon, which is a pity because a good back and forth of a Ash and Paul doing a reserve and new mon mixture clash would be interesting to read. You just have to commit to Paul winning a few times as much as Ash wins a few more times than in canon.
 
KrspaceT said:
Still Paul is the main victim of this trope in Pokemon, which is a pity because a good back and forth of a Ash and Paul doing a reserve and new mon mixture clash would be interesting to read. You just have to commit to Paul winning a few times as much as Ash wins a few more times than in canon.
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Paul is a victim of a lot of tropes. I don't want to end up being repetitive, but I'm going back to the betrayed fics for a moment here: why the bloody hell is Paul almost always on Ash's side? Let alone, why is he always going out of his way to be Ash's friend now in some kind of edgelord competition? And for some strange reason, when he isn't on Ash's "side", he's working with one of the "traitors"! Like, lol, that is the most OOC thing I've ever seen. (Ya know, besides the thing with Pikachu and Delia betraying Ash because Delia's a mom and moms are never appreciated and because Pikachu is supposedly overrated and they don't look at any other positive aspect because when it comes to pokemon all they care about is them winning battles)
 
I really dislike attempts in fanfiction to shame Ash for not using his reserves.

I mean yeah it would be cool to see them in WCS matches, but they really go too far trying to make it seem like it is some sort of great affront and crime that Ash doesn't rotate them.

....Seriously if the Ash mons want to go on adventures with him it is already established all they have to do is ask. Phanpy did it, and Aipom did it. You don't need anything more.

Oak's lab is not hell, and they do in fact train there on their own or with Oak and co's help. They are not getting weaker there....the opposite in fact. That's all but said aloud in canon to be the case.....

If you want Ash to use reserves....it's just that simple. You don't need to do any sort of dramatic WHAT HAVE I DONE! moment, you just have them ask. At no point did one of the mons ask Ash to be used at a league like Hoenn or Kalos and Ash said no, he talked to Oak or his other Pokemon about that.

(....Caveat, I do think that Juniper was an inferior reserve base that did contribute to the lesser performance of the Unovan mons, however I did not treat it like 'hell' and I had Ash himself in universe think that Juniper was at fault for that in any way was stupid when I wrote that in Reset.)
 
AnimeJewel246 said:
Paul is a victim of a lot of tropes. I don't want to end up being repetitive, but I'm going back to the betrayed fics for a moment here: why the bloody hell is Paul almost always on Ash's side? Let alone, why is he always going out of his way to be Ash's friend now in some kind of edgelord competition? And for some strange reason, when he isn't on Ash's "side", he's working with one of the "traitors"! Like, lol, that is the most OOC thing I've ever seen. (Ya know, besides the thing with Pikachu and Delia betraying Ash because Delia's a mom and moms are never appreciated and because Pikachu is supposedly overrated and they don't look at any other positive aspect because when it comes to pokemon all they care about is them winning battles)
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For why paul is on ash's side, I think betrayal fan writers just want someone to be snarky and tough and to show how far the betrayers have gone, cause now marinette/ash is friends with chloe/lila/paul domino instead of any of their friends in canon. Snarky characters can be funny, but it's only achieved by the writer bending the universe backwards in order to make Paul/Lila?chloe firends with the protagonist.
 
Bulbabrain said:
For why paul is on ash's side, I think betrayal fan writers just want someone to be snarky and tough and to show how far the betrayers have gone, cause now marinette/ash is friends with chloe/lila/paul domino instead of any of their friends in canon. Snarky characters can be funny, but it's only achieved by the writer bending the universe backwards in order to make Paul/Lila?chloe firends with the protagonist.
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So they're basically just like "screw logic" then.
 
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The Miraculous Ladybug fandom is possibly the only fandom that is worse than Pokemon fans when it comes to betrayal fics (or Salt Fics as they call them).
 
AnimeJewel246 said:
So they're basically just like "f*** logic" then.
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To be fair, a lot of writers do this. Some even admit doing it for the "rule of cool".

I'm personally not a fan, but people weak to the rule of cool eat it like a jar of cookies so I guess there's an audience.
 
RK9 said:
To be fair, a lot of writers do this. Some even admit doing it for the "rule of cool".
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Hm...reminds me of how many "cool" and "edgy" stories I see on Wattpad...seriously, I can't find a single pokemon story that doesn't have to do with Ash magically being serious, a loner, betrayed(the big one), having some dark side, or there just being some so called "dark" undertone to the overall story.

It gets even more annoying when you see people in the summaries going like, "smarter and not oblivious Ash"..."not oblivious" Okay, let me just stop you there for a second: why??? I'm not saying there's anything wrong with this, you can do that(since it might only work for some people's styles and its easier if they make him not oblivious-even though he's really only oblivious during Kalos...) but the issue is when people blatantly point it out. And by "tags", I mean in the summary. I don't want to read a summary of a story only to see "Smarter!Ash" and "Mature!Ash" just plastered onto the end like it'll improve their story quality.

But I guess if people like it...

I guess it just makes me a bit frustrated. I've actually chatted with someone on Wattpad before over this; where those that follow cookie-cutter templates that can take at the very most ten minutes to write up gets a lot of praise and views whereas those that put time and effort into an original story looking for feedback is generally ignored. That's one of the reasons why I stopped reading stories on Wattpad: I got sick of the repetitiveness.
 
Wattpad is a weird place. Other than the navigation being a mess, the content is... something, for sure.
 
AnimeJewel246 said:
where those that follow cookie-cutter templates that can take at the very most ten minutes to write up gets a lot of praise
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That reminds me, on Fimfiction there's this genre called Displaced. Usually, the setup is that a self-insert goes to a convention cosplaying as their favourite character from something, buys something from a suspicious vendor, and gets sent to Equestria and transformed into the character they were cosplaying as. It draws the ire of a lot of experienced writers, but Displaced fics continue to gwt featured.

The other day, I read this Displaced-ish fic where the protagonist turned into a Zeraora and sent to a world where game mechanics are literal and humanized ponies are also there, and the author admitted that they wanted to write something cliché after I critiqued them. The problem with these sorts of stories is that the authors tend to get bored of writing them because they rely too much on novelty.
 
BackSet said:
What does not-oblivious even mean? Does it refer to his ignorance in the field of romance?
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Being able to pick up hints pretty fast (Either romantical or not-romantical), highly perceptive, etc.

Usually it's used for "He sees and smells romance now" but oblivious doesn't necessarily have to be in a romance context.
 
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