EVERYONE: Evolving Pokemon earlier.

[matt0044]

So a rival Trainer in my story will have a team of five Pokemon that, at a certain point in the story, will evolve together in a dramatic turn of events and make a turning point in the plot.

The fourth slot was to be filled with a hotheaded, energetic Darumaka but after feeling that its character was done already, I decided to go with a Mienfoo while keeping the simultaneous evolution scene intact. Unfortunately, while the others on the team evolve around Level 35, Meinfoo doesn't become Mienshao until Level 50 and I got worried about reader calling BS on it.

However, I don't use the concept of "levels" or "stats" in a game mechanic sense within my story and I've written in plenty of discrepancies from the games like when a Pokemon learns whatever move or where you find certain Pokemon in Unova.

This got me thinking about how other official canons don't adhere to the game so strictly. PokeSpe's Black has a Braviary from the first chapter and onwards even though Rufflet only evolve around Level 50. And the Pokemon Anime pretty much perfected the art of giving the game mechanics and story the middle finger.

So to make a long story short, I'd like to ask people what you think about these sorts of discrepancies like evolving Pokemon WAY ahead of time.

 

[Instrutilus]

It depends on how you do it, really, and if it remains consistant. For example, some people might try and have it so experience is still a deciding factor in metamorphic evolution, but the evolution could instead be triggered by difficult situations, thus why they evolve in a battle or if their trainer is falling to their deaths, but their evolved form can help them. Really, adrenaline seems to be the trigger for evolution in most cases, storywise.

 

[AceTrainer14]

I've never used levels in my stories. I generally just leave things up to progress in the story: if it has been a certain number of chapters roughly equal to how long it would take to evolve that Pokemon, I evolve them, but it also has to fit into the plot. You can't have five evolutions per chapter, that is just messy and detracts from the narrative impact.

Evolving early can push people though. I got a bit of flack initially for evolving Paige/Alaska's Pidgey so early in 8ES, and admittedly now it would've made more sense to have delayed it at least to the next arc.

 

[CrystaI]

My motto of story-writing is: Everything needs to make sense in terms of story progression.

By "story progression", it is not necessarily equal to plot. "Plot" is a planned outline of the events within the story, but story progression is the way and manner how each individual events are connected together. If an event occurs earlier/later shall make the next upcoming event seems illogical, I will rather change its occurrence timing, or even scrape it away after reexamine its over importance to the story progression and to the involved characters. That is not only limited to pokemon evolutions, but also including the traveling and any activities of my characters, where will they go, who they will meet, what will they do, when it must be done, and how it will be done.
The basic of story planning: 5W1H

I'm here to write a story centered around a character set in a fictional universe I'm interested in, I'm not here to write a game walkthrough. Therefore I don't care at all about any systematical mechanics designed only for gameplay purpose, that includes levels and stats and any other numerical values, unless I somehow translated that mechanics into reasonable background setting that is realistically logical which don't make pokemons into some robotic avatars.

 

[GastlyGibus]

I only follow the game mechanics in the most general sense, like evolutionary stones, items, etc... and even then I try not to be too strict with it. I take levels as a sort of general guideline on exactly how quickly a pokémon can evolve. If it's a bug pokémon like wurmple, which evolves at level 7 and then again at level 10, I'll use that to say it can evolve more quickly than other species, whereas if it's a pokémon like deino which doesn't evolve until level 50, then again at 64, I'll say that it takes considerably more time.

As for evolving pokémon early? It all depends on the context. Like, if I was writing a journey fic, and some trainer finds a wild houndour who is pretty experienced already, knows how to fight and is not a newborn, than I probably wouldn't think twice if it evolved relatively quickly. If it was newly hatched, and then somehow just evolved without any kind of specific plot reason why, then I'd probably scratch my head a bit. In your case, I think if the mienfoo has been with the team for a while and has seen its fair share of battles, I wouldn't pay too much mind to it evolving 'early' compared to its companions. Though I would try to be careful with them all evolving at the same time, as that might make it seem like the protagonist has some kind of plot armor.

 

[matt0044]

I should emphasize that the Trainer in question is a rival and not really the protagonist.