EVERYONE: - Complete The origin of Missingno

[Anime Psyclone]

This story deals with death and is such rated Teen. It is based on a comic I saw.

Spoiler

Every day, a Pokemon Trainer lets their Pokemon out of their Poke Balls at least once. Poke Balls aren’t meant to hold Pokemon for many years. If it happened, the data was at massive risk of becoming corrupted.

Once, a little girl and her Pikachu loved each other very much. The Pikachu didn’t like it’s Poke Ball but it didn’t want to upset it’s trainer. Nothing could tear them apart. The Pikachu’s name was Chuey, and the girl was Annie. The two were best of friends, until one fateful day.

Annie had Chuey in it’s ball one day when traveling through the woods. Neither of them knew what was about to happen. As it started to rain, a Venusaur captured Annie and killed the poor girl. But as Chuey was in the ball, it didn’t know she died.Chuey was patient, then confused, then sad... When would it be let out?

About one year after Annie’s death, Chuey had given up on hopes of being released from the ball. A flashing error message started a few months earlier. Chuey was surprised at first, but it was another part of it’s now boring life. Then, it said something new. “Poke Ball: 1% corrupted.”

As the corruption rate grew higher, Chuey changed... Static and glichiness covered it’s body, then it twisted, deformed... Chuey wasn’t recognizable as a Pikachu.

The error message now said “Error: Missing No.” as Chuey bust out of the ball. Then it roamed the wild, and scientists were unable to explain at first, before other Missing No’s occurred. The glitched data was know called Missingno... A corrupted piece of data. It took several forms, but they were all once Pokemon, no longer.

 

[canisaries]

@Haunted Doll Could you link the comic in question? It would be nice to see so that we know how much of this is from the comic and how much from you, and how things are adapted.

 

[Anime Psyclone]

@Haunted Doll Could you link the comic in question? It would be nice to see so that we know how much of this is from the comic and how much from you, and how things are adapted.

It's in this collection

 

[canisaries]

For future reference, it's better if you link the actual original source. People work hard on their art and comics, they should get the recognition they deserve. Wouldn't you like your fiction to be linked back to if its ideas were used by someone (likely without your permission as well)?

As for critique... The grammar, punctuation and formatting seem fine, save for the wrong form of "its" being used, but I'm sorry to say that this loses a lot of the atmosphere the original comic had.

The comic takes the viewpoint of the Pokemon and puts the reader in their shoes. The few lines of dialogue feel personal and put more impact on what's said. They and the few snapshot-like visuals leave a lot of room for interpretation. The contrast of red against the black and white as well as the contrast of normal, soft drawings and glitchy, pixelly, erronous text intensifies the fear and change.

Here, a lot of things are just told upfront. The entire concept of data corruption is established at the beginning, while the comic only slowly gets there. The comic shows the bond between the Pokemon and the trainer with some dialogue, monologue and most importantly the sweet images of them interacting - this makes the reader feel for the Pokemon and trainer. Here, we don't get to see their bond close up. The trainer's death here is told as it happens, not just the fact that it does, but also how. This removes the mystery from the original (How exactly did the girl die? Did she trip and fall, did a wild Pokemon maul her, was she murdered? Not to mention the skull of the trainer isn't even the focus of the frame, so it isn't the first thing noticed). The fact that the transformation is into Missingno specifically is only revealed at the end of the comic with a word and the sprite pattern, here it's already mentioned in the title, removing the twist.

When working on an emotionally charged short story, it's important to consider what elements exactly make happy things happy, sad things sad and scary things scary. Short stories are short not because of the lack of content or inspiration, but because they're meant to be concise - all the fluff is removed, leaving room for interpretation, which leaves the reader wondering what might have happened. In that way, short stories are a bit like poetry. In poems, every word matters, and in short stories, every sentence matters, while whole novels have a lot more wiggle room with their sentences, given that they need to tell a lot of parts clearly in order to make all the twists and turns and other complex plots fall in place. Short stories typically have simpler plots or only describe a few events.

I'm not saying all of my critiques are absolute - by this I mean that these choices could work individually if a different take was gone with. But, in my opinion, this story didn't really add much to the original source material and didn't reach the level of impact the comic had. This story would have been better had it shown more instead of telling and left more as subtle mystery.