Scribbles and Sketches: A Brainstorming/Random Thoughts Blog

[Battista]

Part One: The Pokemorphosis

“When Gregor Samsa arose from his slumber, he was surprised to discover that he had turned into a yellow rat with red cheeks and a lightning bolt shaped tail!” - An early draft of Franz Kafka’s The Metamorphosis, provided by my uncle who totally works at Nintendo

Why, yes, I am completely sober. Why do you ask?

I’ve been wanting to write for some time now, and I’ve had a bunch of story ideas swirling around in my head for years that never got past that initial stage. All this time I thought I had to start writing the actual story for it to be worthy of leaving the confines of my mind, but busy-ness, organization troubles, and just plain fear kept me from getting to that point. It wasn’t until I discovered @LightningTopaz' “brainstorming blog” that I finally worked up the courage to throw the ideas out there and see what people think of them. If you’re inspired to turn this into a full fledged story, by all means feel free to take it and run with it. Just let me read it too

The "Prompt": What if we all turned into Pokemon?

There were multiple sources of inspiration for this. The most obvious is probably Kafka’s Metamorphosis, which at the time I hadn’t read but was inspired to. More on that at another time. The second major source of inspiration, however, was a podcast where Russell Moore interviewed Jonathan Haidt about “Social Media Mak[ing] America Stupid”.

What struck me in particular were Haidt’s comments on the sudden acquisition of power that came through the introduction of social media and the iPhone. CONTENT WARNING: DISCUSSION OF FIREARMS It was as if everyone was given a loaded gun all at once. All of us here know that even the weakest Pokemon tends to be more powerful than the most resilient animal. And their mostly elemental abilities could easily be translated into a source of good or chaos in the world. So it made me wonder, what could/would people do if they were suddenly imbued with that kind of power? I think some compelling stories could come out of that.

So why Pokemon? Why would I tie my creativity to an established franchise when I could just as easily have given everyone superpowers to make a similar point? Well, one thing is that My Hero Academia probably beat me to the punch, but second, I just really like Pokemon.

I don’t necessarily feel the need for any stories I write in this vein to be monetized and sold, and as long as I keep it not for profit, there are pretty strong arguments for a story like this to fall under fair use. (I highly encourage people to look up the Organization for Transformative Works, as complicated as the term “fanfiction” is for me).

Some of the “alpha stage” planning revolved around this happening via some kind of worldwide virus. I’ll give you one guess as to the inspiration for that. Other times, it just so happened that people woke up this way, drawing again from Kafka but also the first Pokemon Mystery Dungeon game. The one thing I didn’t want to focus on was providing some kind of origin story. The unsolved mystery behind it comes primarily from the movie Groundhog Day, which also doesn’t provide a reason for the main character’s predicament. Bill Murray didn’t discover the “why” behind it, but he had to figure out what his new life would look like and move forward. That kind of mentality is the one I would want for my characters as well, because oftentimes we are never given the full picture or a clean answer.

So anyway, that’s all I’ve got so far. Do you think this is something worth pursuing? Is it something you would pursue yourself? I want to get back to writing something, and I want it to be fun again. So I figured this brain dump would be a good start.

 

[Red Knight]

I like this idea. I already have enough works in progress that I don't think I'll write a story of my own in this vein, but I'd love to see what others do with it.

One particular thing of note to me: the vast majority of infrastructure and equipment is built with human anatomy and physiology in mind. How does everyone suddenly not only no longer having human anatomy and physiology, but having drastically different kinds of anatomy and physiology cause everything to break down, and how are these issues resolved? Of particular note, I think, is the fact that many people suddenly no longer have arms and hands that can easily manipulate objects, whether because they become quadrupedal, their arms become wings, they lose opposable thumbs, or they no longer have limbs period.

Also, I feel really bad for all the people in Kansas or Mongolia or other landlocked places that turn into, like, Tentacool and other oceanic Pokémon. Unless whatever transforms people into Pokémon has some kind of logic behind it that prevents that kind of situation.

 

[Battista]

I like this idea. I already have enough works in progress that I don't think I'll write a story of my own in this vein, but I'd love to see what others do with it.

One particular thing of note to me: the vast majority of infrastructure and equipment is built with human anatomy and physiology in mind. How does everyone suddenly not only no longer having human anatomy and physiology, but having drastically different kinds of anatomy and physiology cause everything to break down, and how are these issues resolved? Of particular note, I think, is the fact that many people suddenly no longer have arms and hands that can easily manipulate objects, whether because they become quadrupedal, their arms become wings, they lose opposable thumbs, or they no longer have limbs period.

Also, I feel really bad for all the people in Kansas or Mongolia or other landlocked places that turn into, like, Tentacool and other oceanic Pokémon. Unless whatever transforms people into Pokémon has some kind of logic behind it that prevents that kind of situation.

Haha. I love when people throw things out there that I didn't even consider. I mean, I kind of considered how people would drive, type, etc. but didn't get very far with it. In some iterations of the idea, people turn into straight up Pokemon, but in others they turn into Pokemon-human hybrids (gijinka?) which would maybe answer that problem?

Either way, based off the way the real world reacted to our dramatic and sudden shift a few years ago, I would imagine any character in this world would have to deal with some level of anger and hostility, either from others or within themselves. One scenario that played in my head was based off an incident I had at the mall one time. There was one of those kiddie trains driving around and as I were walking it looked like it didn't see us. I eventually had to get out of the way to keep it from plowing into us, and as it passed I thought I saw a scowl on the driver's face.

Now imagine if that driver was a Tauros...

 

[Battista]

I finally got around to writing something in my "everyone's a Pokemon" world. It's very short and probably still needs some tweaking, but it gets the job done for an exercise I hope to do with my students. Speaking of which, I'm not going to be writing too much right now because I'm busy teaching. I don't know how some of these Substack writers do it on top of teaching full time AND getting their graduate degrees!

Spoiler: Writing Blurb :)

I open my eyes and realize I am completely unharmed. The Charizard that had me cornered is now crumpled over in a heap, and the Gallade that knocked him out is checking his vitals. I guess they want to make sure they didn’t rough him up too bad. I recognize the pair from the TV; they call themselves Team Alpha. Lucario turns his attention to me.

“It’s awfully late for a Pikachu to be out alone, don’t you think?”, he says to me. I bristle at his condescending tone. I didn’t choose to be turned into a Pokemon so small and stubby. But I still appreciate their willingness to help me out. I can barely get out my response, “I…I had to drop off the bank deposit. Th…thank you so much.” “Can you get home by yourself?”, he asks. I catch a hint of annoyance in the question. “I’ll be okay. It’s not too far. Thanks again,” I say, my heart still pounding from the whole ordeal. They disappear back into the night.