15 KiB
[RT][FF] Pokémon: The Line, Chapter Five - "Reclamation"
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Author: u/Bunnybeater *
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URL: https://www.fanfiction.net/s/11273833/5/Pokémon-The-Line
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Score: 23
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Created: 2016-12-07T06:06:44
Post:
Comments:
u/Golden_Magician [+7] (a day later)
This is great as usual! Although I must say, Red seemed to miss a bit too many cues during the conversation. Especially when he kept jumping to the wrong conclusions regarding the Sandslash. Was expecting a bit more cunning on his part!
u/noahpocalypse [+8] (a day later)
Yeah, I was a little disappointed in his intelligence. Origin Of Species has spoiled me. This Red has quite a ways to go. I look forward to seeing his journey, though.
u/Bunnybeater [+6] (a day later)
I can certainly understand the disappointment. Line!Red is definitely not Origin!Red, largely because I believe DaystarEld has done that in a manner far greater than I am capable of. Line!Red is reasonably smart, but he is not a genius, and lacks experience.
Writing the Sandslash part of the conversation was actually the portion of this chapter I agonised over the most, as it's a tricky line to walk. In the end, I decided on the slightly less-brilliant approach when I placed myself in Red's position for a while - he's quite intelligent, but this is also his first meeting with a man of tremendous power and considerable dread. He's feeling a lot of pressure, and I felt that if I had been in his position, I would have flubbed the question.
Red is not incapable of working this question out himself - rather, he came into the conversation with a preconceived notion, and when it was broken he was too flatfooted to think it through properly. On reflection, this does not come across clearly enough in the text, and this'll be a priority on any retroactive edits that are made.
Thanks very much for the feedback, it's much appreciated. (ping /u/Golden_Magician - I'm not sure if Reddit sends alerts for once-removed replies to comments)
u/Golden_Magician [+3] (2 days later)
You're welcome! I was checking this story for the promised update almost every day back in September and am glad that you got back to it. To elaborate on my point, it was clear to me how you were walking the line (hehe) between portraying Red's cleverness and his inexperience and actually appreciate the latter showing. It makes your Red more unique, in different ways than Game of Champions!Red and Origin!Red. It just seemed to be somewhat forced at a some points of the conversation, as you surmised.
On a side note, I found your world-building and especially the pallet part to be brilliant as usual.
u/jldew [+3] (6 hours later)
Forget Red's Journey. I want to see a war fic set in this universe.
u/Teal_Thanatos [+5] (19 hours later)
I liked this chapter. Reclamation is a project that I can understand, and see myself getting behind as I told myself it was for the betterment of mankind. Especially if it's obvious that you can tell theres been genetic damage from the incident.
u/Garudian [+3] Dai-Gurren Brigade (a day later)
Huh. So instead of this being a world which is arbitrarily darker and more vicious than canon, things are this way as a direct result of events occurring pre-canon. I don't think I've ever seen this one done before. I am now sad that it has taken this long for someone to think of it and do it well. This is really cool, looking foawrd to more.
u/noggin-scratcher [+3] I am a happy tree (2 days later)
As yet unclear whether Giovanni will be in any way as villainous as canon (and that's as it should be - we only just met him), but there's a definite edge to him; my internal voice consistently dropped an octave when I read his dialogue compared to Red's.
Great stuff. Glad to see this return to active writing.
u/None [+2] (5 hours later)
[deleted]
u/Bunnybeater [+1] (5 hours later)
Just tested it on my own phone, got through fine.
Though I will note that for the first half hour, this link did not work. See, I was in a real hurry to get it out, as I had to rush out for something by 7pm (NZ time).
I managed to finish my last edits, set up the doc, get the links up. Overlooked the whole 'uploading the chapter' thing.
Edit: Couldn't find anything on the web about FF having trouble with links for mobile, and I've confirmed that the link in the header is definitely the correct one. Afraid I'm out of ideas, mate.
u/TofuRobber [+1] (2 days later)
Just read all of the current chapters and wanted to preface this by saying that I do like this story. It's interesting and fairly well written. The start of Chapter 4 is a bit confusing though. It made me think that Red's nidoran had died. I like the setting and the characters have some personality which is great. I'm keeping an eye on it and hope to see some enjoyable development.
However I do have complaints.
I can't help but think that Red is just not very smart, hard working, or ambitious. This leaves room for his development but I'd rather be able to relate to him from the beginning and see his development into something beyond my expectation. We are told that he's all of that yet everything that I've read just proves the opposite.
Red has been given an incredible start and his performance has been disappointingly underwhelming. He has yet to take things into his own hands. He seems to be simply following the path outlined for him. He does what he's told. He hardly seems to have original thought. And, so far, his defining characteristic is his immature outbursts.
The stuff that we hear about Blue, that is what I want to see from Red, at least the same degree of ingenuity. Blue circumvented his circumstances and caught and trained his own pokemon before even officially getting his own. Sure he was using experienced pokemon and it was behind the back of Prof. Oak but so what. He did it on his own. Blue stole eevee from under everyone's nose and still managed to gain public approval. Illegal, yes, but impressive nonetheless.
What did Red do? Given the opportunity to use a newly caught wild pikachu, he did nothing with it and simply waited a week for his already trained squirtle. Yes it would be stupid to embark with a practically wild pokemon and that was obviously laid out, but, I would have loved to see him acknowledge it and attempt it anyways. Maybe attempt to train him on his own while waiting for the squirtle to arrive AND take them both when he'd set out, or at least play with the idea. What did we get instead? Red sitting his butt down for a week and we hear nothing more about it.
Red's conversation with Giovanni was particularly hard to read. Nothing against the prose but both of their characterization are unlikable Giovanni is forgivable as he's the potential antagonist but Red as the main character is less so. Red is a hot headed, immature brat and Giovanni is a overly pompous jerk who is full of himself. It would have been nice if Red was simply feigning ignorance during their discussion about Jasper's match but he wasn't. Giovanni having to continuously remind Red that he's is extremely competent and a gym leader for a reason just made me even more disappointed at Red.
On another note, I'd love to read the mechanism of pokeballs since it apparently digitizes pokemon but they are still able to somehow break free during a capture. Or more information about how potions work (nano-machines?).
Keep up the good work.
u/Golden_Magician [+2] (2 days later)
I personally believe that the twists going on in the first two chapters were brilliant, including the Pikachu subversion. It pokes fun at canon, while acknowledging the true danger of feral pokemon in this universe. Sometimes being smart means gracefully accepting defeat, like Red did. If he had pulled some kind of miraculous comeback to get behind Blue it might have made a cooler scene, but less of a lesson and character-establishing moment. It would also have felt like an ass-pull to be honest.
Blue is indeed cooler and clearly a genius, which makes the rivalry even more interesting compared to the genius vs genius dynamic shown in Game of Champions. I can't wait to see how/if Line!Red will be able to compete with his rival.
I agree with the issue about the start of chapter 4, I had the same initial impression. I wonder if it was intended?
u/TofuRobber [+1] (3 days later)
I agree that the pikachu subversion is great. We don't need more pikachu fanfare. The problem is what we're told of Red's character and what we actually see him do. As I mentioned, why didn't Red take pikachu with him? He already knew that Blue had two other pokemon when he started off. There's nothing in the rules that we know of that said you can only start off with one starter. Training a pikachu from start would have been a great challenge. He's 18 and learned from Prof. Oak. He should be fully capable of taming a pikachu on his own. Instead we get nothing other than the setup for a joke. That's fine but it's still disappointing.
And then we get to Red actually leaving. We're primed to expect vicious aggressive pokemon in the tall grass but what we get is all the pokemon running away. WHY? This is further contrary after the dinner with Giovanni and his speech on the war and the "bloom". Red has yet to be shown to be in any real danger when everything about this setting is telling us that danger is everywhere.
Other complaints: Why didn't Red catch both nidorans. They were both injured. It should have been an easy thing to do. Why did he pre-commit to only catching one? What's the benefit? We already know that pokemon can and will probably die. That's all the more reason to have as many as you can get. Yes it takes time and effort but it's not like he was going to gain anything by not catching both, especially when he had such a hard time encountering them just before.
u/RadHominin [+2] (5 days later)
EDIT: This is the author. I just realised I've been posting using my old account, a username I've ceased to use for quite some time now.
Hi!
Thanks for the thoughtful comments. I really appreciate you taking the time to give your thoughts on a number of issues.
The confusion at the beginning of Chapter Four was definitely not intentional. When writing, I had felt it sufficiently established that Nidoking's condition had been stabilized, and the opening line was intended to serve as a hook. Looking back, I can see how that can be confusing. I will see if I can rewrite the opening in such a manner to avoid that particular conflation, while preserving impact.
Red's character has been something of a challenge for me. I've been leery of making him too intelligent and brilliant, largely because I personally tend to get annoyed when a young inexperienced protagonist shows up out of nowhere and immediately grasps everything with perfect clarity. However, having recently looked back over the last few chapters, I'm coming to question whether I may have gone too far in the opposite direction. His dialogue with Giovanni, in particular, is likely going to be retroactively edited to make him a bit less of a dunce - though not drastically. I intend to revise the finer details of Red's intellect after the completion of Arc I (at time of writing, two chapters remain to be published).
why didn't Red take pikachu with him?
I like that someone picked up on this. The idea isn't even dismissed by Red and the Professor, it simply doesn't occur. Yet, having a second starter Pokemon - especially one of an entirely different and complementary type - is obviously desirable. But Red is not immune to internalising the status quo. Trainers begin their journey with one Pokemon. They have one starter. This is Just The Way It Is, and it's so deeply ingrained that even the Professor regards starter choice as an either/or proposition.
On another note, I'd love to read the mechanism of pokeballs since it apparently digitizes pokemon but they are still able to somehow break free during a capture.
Not quite. The Pokeball is merely an electronic shell, encasing an Apricorn. The Apricorn is what does the actual capturing - the Pokeball itself is capable of translating the contents into a machine-readable code (as well as some supplementary features), but the Pokemon is not digitized. Permit me to quote from the text:
There had been much effort in recent years to develop tools which could alter Pokémon through direct manipulation of the code. This had been widely speculated about ever since the development of electronic Pokéballs - if Pokémon could be converted into binary data, surely we could manipulate that data to improve, perfect, duplicate, even invent Pokémon.
And since Pokéballs could be used to store inanimate objects, the phrase “post-scarcity society” had been spoken with increasing fervour and excitement. It was an exciting prospect - but the Professor had quietly told Red not to pin his hopes on it. His colleagues at Silph were of the opinion that the technology was decades away at best, utterly unfeasible at worst. Reading the contents of an Apricorn in code form was one thing; altering that code and pushing them back into the device in a way that manifested as desired was another altogether.
We're primed to expect vicious aggressive pokemon in the tall grass but what we get is all the pokemon running away. WHY? This is further contrary after the dinner with Giovanni and his speech on the war and the "bloom". Red has yet to be shown to be in any real danger when everything about this setting is telling us that danger is everywhere.
Pokemon in Kanto are drastically more aggressive than they used to be. The only wild ones we have yet encountered, however, are along Route One, which has been a major worksite of the Reclamation. Their aggressive instincts have been heightened, but they are still functioning cognitive beings, and the Pokemon near Viridian have learned harshly that humans = extreme danger. This is elaborated upon in the next chapter.
Why didn't Red catch both nidorans. They were both injured. It should have been an easy thing to do. Why did he pre-commit to only catching one? What's the benefit?
The other Nidoran was long gone once Red had captured the first. He placed a much higher priority on capturing the weakened one due to its critical condition, the victor flees when Admiral attacks, and subduing the defeated one takes more than a few seconds.
Also, I seem to have referred to the Apricorn as an 'Apricot' in that passage. My God, this thing needs a solid edit.
Again, thank you for taking the time to write out these concerns. Your feedback has been tremendously useful.
Cheers!
u/RMcD94 [+1] (9 days later)
I don't understand how the secret codes work if every match is broadcast surely every trainer going up against Giovanni would be well aware of his secret code and what a scream means.
Edit: True in the next match too. You'd want a secret code that changes constantly.
I'm always a bit peeved that Red wouldn't have heard of a classic famous example of someone misleading someone else with a pokemon, that seems incredibly basic. Bluffing is first level stuff.