Meow

Posted October 03 2017 on NaNoWriMon

It makes me so happy that you got the Sun and Moon pokemon :)

CryptoChimera

Posted October 01 2017 on NaNoWriMon

I'm trying to get an alolan marowak, what would I put in to make sure that I don't get the regular old marowak once cubone evolves? Or is it just random chance?

Negrek _Admin

Website: Thousand Roads

Posted September 26 2017 in reply to Coatl

I drew a scene from chapter 32 as kind of a thank you for all the years you've been writing awesome fanfic. It didn't exactly come out the way I'd hoped (partly because I don't know what kind of billboard ads they would display in your pokémon universe, partly because I don't know how to illustrate a psychic aura), but I guess it gets the point across.

Oh wow, thank you so much! It's fantastic! And I think you did a great job with the banner ads, they definitely look like the sorts of advertisements I'd expect to see in a Kanto League match. You really captured Mewtwo's attitude, and I love the creepy Red lurking in the background.

Anyway, it's interesting to see Mewtwo actually playing along with the protagonist's lie at the beginning. He didn't seem to have much to gain from doing so, and I half-expected him to straight up laugh in Nathaniel's face.

One thing the protagonist didn't consider is that it might not be such a good thing that Mewtwo played along with it here... he has his own reasons for doing so, and they're not exactly benevolent.

Being as psychic as he is, I'd imagine that he'd even pick up on the part where the protagonist is collaborating with Team Rocket to get Nathaniel captured, and I don't imagine he'd be too happy with that given his history.

He's definitely aware of this, but for one reason or another he's not so against collaborating with Team Rocket when the payoff is winning his freedom. He doesn't mind Nate getting sold out, either; if anything, he thinks it's hilarious. He doesn't have any love for Nate, or humans in general really, so while he hates Team Rocket with a passion, he doesn't care if they screw people over so long as those people are human--or one particularly irritating human in particular!

The fight scene here reminded me a lot of the battle the protagonist had with Team Rocket all those chapters ago, when Nate was the one doing the whole double cross thing. Just so many pokémon everywhere, basically dogpiling the protagonist.

Absolutely. One of the most reliable ways to deal with it is to overwhelm it with sheer numbers, although we'll see people come up with different/more sophisticated ways of dealing with it in the future.

I'm really curious why the protagonist decided to save Nate after all. It was pretty ambivalent about giving Nathaniel up in the first place, but I wonder if the whole double cross was what made it decide to side against Team Rocket in the end. I suppose we'll all find out in the next chapter, and I really can't wait!

I don't think it really understands why it saved him itself, but for sure if Eskar had just taken him and left, without trying to go for the master ball of the protagonist itself, Nate would have been screwed. We'll definitely hear more about that next chapter, as well as what was up with the championship battle.

Thanks so much for the review, as well as the lovely fanart! Hope you enjoy what's coming next.

Coatl

Posted September 24 2017

Hi, it's me from ff.net.

I drew a scene from chapter 32 as kind of a thank you for all the years you've been writing awesome fanfic. It didn't exactly come out the way I'd hoped (partly because I don't know what kind of billboard ads they would display in your pokémon universe, partly because I don't know how to illustrate a psychic aura), but I guess it gets the point across.

Since I'm not allowed to post links in the comments on ff.net, I figured I'd post it here instead:

https://i.imgur.com/Wmd6isH.jpg

Happy fifth anniversary, Salvage!

Negrek _Admin

Website: Thousand Roads

Posted September 22 2017

Chapter 32 Reply

After seeing the Serebii post saying chapter 32 would be out by the end of August, I bookmarked the last page of that thread and (probably from the middle of August onwards) refreshed it anywhere from 3-4 times a day. Not obsessive at all. At ALL.

Oh dear. D: Sorry it ended up being a week late after all that. At least 33 went up more or less on schedule!

The fight with Red reminded me a lot of my first time battling him in Mt. Silver. [...] It was eye-opening how much better he was than me, and I feel that exact same feeling in this chapter.

Awesome! I definitely wanted to evoke that feeling of Red being a real class above any ordinary trainer, sort of in a league of his own.

Although it’s very in-character for the protagonist to be so predictable in the way it uses its powers, I can't help but be disappointed.

Yeah, this was the primary reason the chapter took so long to get out: this was just never going to be a very interesting battle, and I kept rewriting it to try and make it less boring. The problem is that cheating really doesn't encourage the use of clever strategy. Creativity usually arises out of restrictions; when you have access to the most powerful attacks/abilities/whatever, it generally makes the most sense to just spam those, rather than trying for something fancy. The effects of serene grace, technician, iron fist, etc. are marginal when compared to the ability to completely ignore all your opponent's STAB super-effective attacks, so there's no reason to use them when e.g. water absorb is available. If it were free to from one ability to another, i.e. it took no time or effort to switch, then yeah, you could use iron fist and unleash a bunch of punches, then quick change into water absorb only when you expected a water-type counterattack, but the protagonist isn't able to do that; it's best to simply sit with the most generally useful ability and slug away. There were some more interesting strategies that I wrote in at various points, like one I was particularly fond of with ghost-type curse, but ultimately they ended up feeling too clunky, with too little pay-off compared to just defending against the opponents' attacks and slugging away. There are some more powerful options available, like wonder guard, but they tend to be obvious in one way or another (wonder guard gives you a little halo, which should have been described when the protagoist used it during the Rocket ambush a ways back). I do like the idea of galvanize + some normal-type moves against Charizard and Blastoise in particular, though! That's one I might have been able to use, but it didn't occur to me.

Anyway, all that to say that I don't think the nature of this battle lends itself to very interesting strategies, and so I ultimately tried to play up the creepiness of Red's team in order to add some interest to what admittedly is among the worst battles of the story. (Unfortunate that it had to be the final battle in the championship series!) That's my excuse, anyway!

The weird emotionless zombie nature of Red's pokémon also has me pretty curious. Given that the aura corruption is PURPLE, my guess is that Mewtwo has something to do with it.

Mewtwo does! Although he isn't what I was thinking of when I chose to make the aura purple.

Maybe Red gets some kind of psychic boost from having Mewtwo around all the time...

Yes! People who are exposed to psychic energy for long periods of time tend to become more sensitive to it over time, and may eventually gain some minor psychic abilties themselves. Flat aspect and funky purple auras aren't documented side effects, though.

I thought I remembered the protagonist turning into a pidgey in chapter 16, but looking back at it, I'm not actually sure what the protagonist does there. It mentions growing feathers and using the "illusion of a pidgey", but after it catches up with Mewtwo it also shrinks back down to its usual size. I'm not entirely sure why it would grow itself in the first place unless it was copying the shape of a particular flying pokémon.

It doesn't transform into a pidgey there, but instead uses the illusion ability to make itself look like one ("you wrap yourself in the illusion of a pidgey). At the time it was transformed into a member of Team Rocket, who was an adult, so when it eventually went back to its "usual" form it had to shrink. So it wasn't the case that it grew while it was getting ready to go after Mewtwo, only that it didn't bother to change its size at all, then later became smaller when it reverted to normal.

That's the only time the protagonist has used an illusion instead of just transforming into something, and it's confused multiple people, so I'm going to see if I can revise that scene to either remove the need for it or make it more clear what's going on.

I don't know how the protagonist isn't just a flat level 100 or level 0, though, since it's the only known member of its species.

It's because it's me as the author telling you its level. :P In-universe if you pointed a pokédex at it you'd get some kind of error message because it isn't a recognized species. The pokédex would still attempt to give a level estimate, but it would be based on the "average" amount of energy pokémon have at a given level, across all species. Because the protagonist has higher base stats than average, the estimate would overshoot its actual level a bit and probably be given as level 60-65 or so.

Either way, I'm looking forward to seeing how the protagonist handles the doublecross in the next chapter.

I hope it lives up to your expectations! As always, thanks for leaving such a thoughtful and detailed review! Sorry the battle was a bit disappointing, but I hope it at least wasn't too tedious to read.

Negrek _Admin

Website: Thousand Roads

Posted September 22 2017

Chapter 25 Reply

I don't have a account, but I've been following Salvage since 2012, immediately after the end of Clouded Sky (which left a big hole in my life), and long after I stopped being interested in the fandom in general.

It was so mindblowing to get a review with this for an opener. Thinking about how long I've been doing this fanfic thing is already weird enough, but the thought that there are people who've been reading my stuff nearly as long as I've been writing it really takes things to another level.

While I was sad to see the end of Clouded Sky, I would have lost a thousand Clouded Skies if it meant more Salvages. I love love LOVE this story. I love the oblivious, nearly sociopathic child with its identity issues and overwhelming combo platter of abilities. I love grumpy, foul-mouthed Nathaniel and all of his pokémon, and I especially love how they get along with each other. I love Mewtwo and how scary and misanthropic (in the most literal definition of the word) he can be. I love the mystery and the action and the little details that you put in that make everything just come together (like what it's like to have superhuman healing abilities and have to deal with massive blood loss at the same time, or what it's like to be able to just change the physical structure of your brain to become less empathetic).

Thanks, I'm glad you like those things so much! I have so much fun working with all those elements in the story, so it's fantastic that they're enjoyable for you as a reader, too. And it means a lot that you like this story even better than Clouded Sky. I HOPE I've improved a bit as a writer since I began that one, and so it's nice to think that I managed to turn out a better story this time around.

I really don't know, but I wish more people would read this story and comment about it so I could sift through the comments and read something that someone else thought of that I also thought of at the same time and be all "HEY! I noticed that too! That was cool!" with the strange afterglow of human kinship that comes with having the exact same opinion as a complete stranger whom you've never talked to or met.

Haha, I wish I knew, too! Although I think to some extent this is a story that was never destined to become popular: it's really weird, both in terms of presentation and subject matter, so I think it does have a pretty niche audience. Though of course I'd always love more reviews, I've actually been pleasantly surprised with the reception the story's gotten. And I love reading other people's reviews for the same reason you do, it's so cool seeing how other people react, what stands out to them, and where their opinions are the same and where they're wildly, wildly different. I actually follow the reviews for some fanfics where I haven't read the fanfic itself. :P

Anyway, I have your profile bookmarked and I pop by a few times a week to see if this is updated, and when it does, I smile like an idiot and check the hell out of life for the next hour or two of my morning/afternoon/evening so I can sit there and eat the whole thing in one sitting. I even re-read the whole story from time to time, when I anticipate an update coming soon.

This is so awesome??? It always floors me that there are people who are willing to read through this godawful long story more than once. I apologize for the long waits, it must be super frustrating to have to keep checking back when you can't use the subscription feature.

Don't lose hope because you don't see us anonymous lurkers leaving comments on your story. You can be assured that we're here and eating up every word.

Thanks, I'm super glad you popped up and decided to leave some comments! I've really enjoyed reading them, and you've really made me think about some of the decisions I've made along the way. It means a lot to me that you've been following my fanfics for so long and leave such wonderful feedback.

And no worries. I'm as slow as ever about posting, but unless I get run over by a bus or something I guarantee you'll get to see the end of this story eventually.

Negrek _Admin

Website: Thousand Roads

Posted September 22 2017

Chapter 26 Reply

After checking out every single post in that Serebii thread, I gotta say I really enjoyed the story of how Nate met his Mightyena. She is adorable, and I wish she was my friend. I loved all the little worldbuilding details, too. Team Rocket seems oddly plausible as an organization in this universe, and I finally understand why Nate might have joined them and why he might be in trouble with them as well.

Thank you! I'm particularly fond of the Nate and Poochyena extra myself; I wrote it a long time before it got posted, and it was something I really looked forward to being able to publish once I got to the right place. It's been a while since I've done any kind of extra, but I'm hoping to get some more out in the near future; they're fun to do, and I think it's nice to be able to give people some more background info that doesn't really fit anywhere within the frame of the story itself. I'm glad that you liked reading over the Serebii thread in general, too... it's always nice to be able to see the reviews other people give to stories I'm following, just because they so often catch things I didn't, or have interesting theories, or just remind me of some of my favorite bits. One of the disadvantages of posting across multiple sites (and FFN not being set up for public replies, grr!) is that it's easy for readers to miss out on that kind of thing, which I think is part of the fun!

My favourite thing, though, was the little extra where Nate tried to get the child to turn into what it was like when it was human. I really wish that had been in the mew backstory chapter [...] In any case, I would have liked to have a little more of Nate and the child's more lighthearted interactions to bookend the grimness of its origins. The contrast would have been nice, and "absurdly dark plot development mixed with the hilariously oblivious child's perspective" is something that I just find incredibly charming about this story.

Interesting! I do like that little exchange, and I'm planning to remove one of the flashback scenes when I revise this chapter, so that will free up a little space for something extra. (Your comments about a chapter "feeling" long versus "being" long are duly noted, though!) It's true that the chapter's unusually grim overall, so a little more humor wouldn't go amiss.

And while I'm on the subject of that chapter, it reminded me a lot of Peter S. Beagle's The Last Unicorn, particularly the bits about Mew's perspective and her life in the jungle. It's my favourite chapter to date, and I really appreciate the work you put into the contradictory task of making her sensory information both alien and understandable at the same time. I eat that stuff like candy.

Wow, that's some high praise! Thanks so much! I'll admit that the backstory chapter is my favorite thus far, too. It was a very difficult one to write, so I'm glad it turned out well. And I'm glad you enjoyed how I handled Mew's POV... it definitely is difficult to make psychic perception seem alien but also comprehensible to the reader. I certainly don't always get the balance right, but I'm glad that it worked well for you in that chapter!

The details about how the child got through Leonard's shielding were also really cool. I love reading about how people work around restrictions and safeguards, because it makes the world feel real. It's like stuff has been made by actual people with actual technology that has actual rules, and isn't so much just a bunch of cool things that are slapped together because why the hell not.

Awesome! I've had to think a lot about the kinds of technology that would develop to kind of curb/contain pokémon abilities in this story, and I'm glad you enjoy some of the stuff I've come up with.

I want more information about that Deepwilds thing.

I do hope to do an extra that will talk about the deepwilds more, but basically territory in most pokémon-world regions is split into three categories: human-controlled land, routes (both pokémon and humans have jurisdiction here), and pokémon-controlled land. Pokémon-controlled areas are commonly referred to the "deepwilds." While it's perfectly legal to catch whatever you want in a city (human-controlled) or on a route (joint jurisdiction), it generally isn't in the deepwilds. That's where you'll find many all- or predominantly-pokémon socieities, and that's typically where pokémon go if they don't want to interact with humans. Of course, a lot of the pokémon out there are quite powerful, so certain unscrupulous people do go looking out there for things to catch...

Negrek _Admin

Website: Thousand Roads

Posted September 22 2017

Chapter 27 Reply

What happened to Leonard Kerrigan?!

Haha, well, you know that now! Hopefully the wait wasn't too bad.

The cradily with storm drain and the role play ability swap was definitely my favourite part of this chapter. After the lovely, evocative description of what it's like to be a cradily, the child immediately follows it up with a comment about how weird it is to just freaking pretend to be a cradily in the middle of a battle. Love, love, LOVE it.

Thank you! I think that overall this is probably the best battle in the story--it's definitely my favorite, and the part with the cradily is my favorite part of that. I'm really pleased with how it turned out.

One thing I appreciate about the battles you write is how cleverly they incorporate strategy from the actual games.

Glad you like it! I have a lot of fun putting together the battles, and I do try to make them a little more clever than simply trading attacks until one of the pokémon falls down. It's cool that you go look things up on Bulbapedia and so on--I never thought anybody would do so much work for one of my battles, heh.

Also, even though Jason Muskowitz had maybe two or three lines that aren't direct orders to his pokemon, he comes across as oddly endearing. I like it.

People seem to like Jason! It's always fun when a super minor character gets some fans.

Anyway, rambling aside, it's a solid chapter with some really interesting battles, but after the last one, it feels like a weird hiccup in pacing. It seemed like the story was gearing up to really knuckle down into the plot, but suddenly there's another battle for the championship.

Yeah, like I think I said elsewhere, the high density of battles do cause pacing issues in the tourney arc. It's tricky because I don't want to skip all of them, because what happens during them is important, and it would seem kind of pointless to have a tournament arc without showing any of the actual battles. Ultimately I think there just isn't enough marriage between the battles themselves and the larger questions of the plot... it's something I've thought a lot about how to fix, but haven't come up with a good solution for yet.

Negrek _Admin

Website: Thousand Roads

Posted September 22 2017

Chapter 28 Reply

But man, I laughed pretty hard at Nate's comment about how the child is keeping Leonard Kerrigan, and even harder about how the child is basically all: "YES, THAT'S RIGHT. YOU SHOULD BE AFRAID OF MY THREAT TO TIE YOU UP IN MY SHACK NAKED, COVERED IN MY STICKY WHITE GOO."

Not as hard as I laughed at this line here, I bet! Way to make it sound even more horrifying. XD

It's nice to see the child display actual empathy for once. Children are notoriously bad at that sort of thing, but I was starting to wonder if the child is actually a sociopath.

Well, being what it is, the protagonist does actually have low empathy relative to normal humans. Whether or not you would go so far as to call it a sociopath, I don't know, but it's definitely not normal in that regard.

Negrek _Admin

Website: Thousand Roads

Posted September 22 2017 on NaNoWriMon in reply to Rin

Awesome! I'm planning to update the UI and add a couple new features this year, so hopefully it'll be an even more convenient process this year. Definitely need to knuckle down on that stuff, though, how is it nearly October already...

Rin

Posted September 20 2017 on NaNoWriMon

I'm so excited to hatch a new nanowrimon this year! Just waiting for the nano website to roll over to start

Negrek _Admin

Website: Thousand Roads

Posted September 06 2017

Chapter 30 Reply

I have to admit that up until this point, I had been kind of frustrated with the pacing of the league tournament: entire chapters consisting of nothing but lengthy pokémon battles, very little plot development and, occasionally, chapter ending cliffhangers that were never addressed again (what the heck happened between chapters 20 and 21?).

Yeah, unfortunately the execution on this arc wasn't great. The tournament really did slow everything down, and while I love writing battles, having such a dense run of them probably wasn't the best decision. I don't know what it is with me and tourney arcs, seeing as one popped up in Clouded Sky at pretty much the same point in the story. At least that time I had the good sense to cut if off partway in (in the original plan, Tobias really did get into the finals of the Lighthouse Tournament)--but this time I went all the way, and I don't know that it was the right choice.

Your mention of cliffhangers isn't something I'd thought about, so thanks for pointing it out. Obviously I find them very easy to follow, since I know the full context and everything in between, so I hadn't realized that they get confusing. Looking back, yeah, the one between 20 and 21 is particularly bad, to the extent that I'm not even sure what I was going for there. I'll think about how I can edit things to make some of those transitions clearer.

After reading chapter 30, though, I understand now that the fights aren't that important in and of themselves; they're more of a way to frame Nanthaniel's relationship with his pokémon as well as the incremental growth the protagonist.

But yes, this is 100% what I was going for. :P I hope that the battles are entertaining in and of themselves, but they're really more about the characters than about the battling per se. In particular I'd hoped they could serve as a kind of barometer for the relationship between Nate and the protagonist, and how that changes over the course of the tournament.

Also, even as someone who hasn't touched the handheld games since Gen IV, this battles in this chapter were a delight to read. Once again, I love the strategy incorporated in these league fights. I love that the protagonist managed to pull it together in a bad situation to cheat intelligently for once, and I appreciate that its internal narration even echoes some of Nate's advice from earlier chapters (something I didn't fully grasp until my latest re-read).

I'm glad you like the strategies! I love writing and reading battles, and coming up with clever tricks is one of my favorite aspects of that. I tried to pull out all the stops for the big, splashy League fights--I won't get much opportunity later in the story--and I'm glad you like the results!

And yes, the protagonist actually learns something from Nate and remembers some of his advice in the later battles. I'm glad you caught that!

First, why did the protagonist choose to be an infernape for the tournament?

De-gamifying some of the battle mechanics also leads to more questions. Mostly, how the protagonist's shapeshift ability works at all.

Your questions in the last part of the review all tie together, I think, so I'll try to explain how the protagonist's morphing capabilities work, and I believe that'll clear things up. I think I should insert an explanation somewhere in the story as well, as I've gotten similar questions (e.g. why the protagonist doesn't turn into a joltik or something else tiny when it's in the air ducts) before, and I think it would help to have things spelled out more clearly so that people understand just what the protagonist can/can't do. Unfortunately I'm not sure where I'd stick that kind of a conversation, and I feel like there's a lot of exposition already, but

The protagonist's morphing abilities are strange because in some ways they're extremely powerful/flexible (deriving from Mew, a legendary with significant power), but they also have a number of constraints that pokémon don't have to deal with due to its human side.

To begin with, I'm using a more anime version of transform, which I think is a bit less constrained than the games. A pokémon like Mew can transform into pretty much anything it pleases, whether or not it has a direct reference available (e.g. Mew can transform into Ho-Oh even if there isn't a Ho-Oh nearby to copy). But more than that, it can also do partial transformations: . It's therefore also able to make one arm a salamence-arm and the other a sneasel-arm simultaneously. This also means that it can modify a form by, for example, adding sandslash-spikes to a charmeleon-body's back or feathers to an aerodactyl. Or it can become a water-type charmeleon with the poison point ability. It doesn't need to adhere to species/type/ability combinations that actually exist by any means.

However, there are limitations. The protagonist is more a human with some pokémon abilities than a true hybrid or a pokémon with human traits. Its "base form" is humanoid, and it isn't as good at shifting mass as a pokémon would be. A ditto can transform into something as massive as Primal Groudon or as tiny as a cutiefly, but the protagonist wouldn't be able to gain/lose so much mass. It hurts to transform, and it hurts more to remodel dense tissue like bone and muscle: it can't deviate too far from a basic human body plan. And while it can alter the structure of its brain to some degree, it has to keep it at roughly the same size, and not change it too radically, or it runs the risk of seriously damaging itself, or at least changing itself into something not recognizably human, in the mental sense.

What this means in effect is that the protagonist is restricted to taking on forms that are roughly humanoid and about its natural size if it wants to be able to reproduce them well. In particular the head needs to be about the same size/shape as a human head in order to accommodate its human-y brain. It's fairly flexible in modifying the limbs it has, but adding/subtracting them is really hard... it could look mostly like a machamp, for example, but its second set of arms would probably be quite small and atrophied. On the other end of the spectrum, something like dragonair would be really tough. It would probably end up as a kind of weirdly thick, weirdly short dragonair with an outsized head. It should be noted that it can take on any feature it likes of a given pokémon, like it could be a humanoid thing but with yellow joltik fluff and joltik mandibles¸ but actually trying to replicate the pokémon's precise form can be very difficult for it.

The biggest restriction on the protagonist's power is that, while it can match the form and gross physical features of a pokémon (within certain limigs!), it doesn't gain that pokémon's unique, inherent powers. Attacks, typing, ability, yes, in line with the game mechanics of transform, but additional powers, no. So it doesn't have access to Suicune's water-purification ability, for example, or the ability to walk through walls like a ghost type. Critically, it has access to psychic-type attacks, but not general psychic-type abilities, like what we see with Mewtwo: the ability to read minds outside the limited abilities afforded by attacks like mind reader, the ability to project emotions into other organisms, the ability to integrate sensory data from multiple other organisms. So, there's your answer for why it can't change into an alakazam to use its telepathy.

Honestly the justification for this is that it would be just too powerful if the protagonist had access to all the crazy supernatural abilities pokémon have in addition to everything it gets from the various attacks and abilities open to it. In some cases I can give some justification for it: it can't walk through walls, because unlike ghost-types it actually needs its corporeal body to survive. If it went totally insubstantial, its body would be essentially nonfunctional and it would just die. For most other powers, it's just a matter of not wanting to give the protagonist too many options: like, if it transformed into Celebi or Dialga, would it then be able to use time-manipulation abilities? Time travel is something this story totally doesn't need, you know? I don't want to deal with that, or the ability to melt into water/lava or, or the ability to predict the weather. So, the protagonist's pokémon abilities are limited solely to pokémon attacks, abilities, and types. For fun I added the implication that it knows attacks etc. that humans haven't discovered/named yet, but you should only expect to see it use canon attacks and abilities in this story.

So in a nutshell, the protagonist can turn into or take on the physical features of pretty much any living thing. It can do a decent impersonation of humanoid and roughly human-sized pokémon/other animals, but is less good the farther you deviate from the human body plan. It can use any attack, be any type at any time, and have any pokémon ability, and it can mix and match those freely in any combiation it likes. It can't do things like control the weather (dragonair), predict the future (absol/xatu/gothitelle) or bring people back from the dead (Ho-oh).

SO, why did the protagonist choose an infernape form for the tournament? It's one of few pokémon that it can imitate quite well, because it's reasonably human-shaped and around its base size. It woudln't have wanted to pick a form it couldn't imitate well because that would attract too much attention, like, if it showed up as a weird-looking charmeleon, and then maybe it seemed to battle a little strangely... people might start to wonder, you know? The number of pokémon that the protagonist can emulate to a high degree of believability (it's much better at human transformation, though obviously not so good at mimicking appropriate behavior) is actually quite small, and I think infernape is probably the option it would have liked the most out of them, as well as being very versatile and generally being a useful choice. (Dat fighting weakness, though. There are some psychic-types it could have picked that might have worked, like Mr. Mime, but anyone psychic-sensitive would be able to tell it wasn't real because it wouldn't have a proper psychic field. And, tbh, I just like infernape. :P I did consider having a scene where the protagonist was going to do Mr. Mime because of that fighting weakness and Nate was all, "NO. CREEPY. FUCK NO. ANYTHING ELSE.")

Then, there's the issue of strength. i.e., how does that even work with transform?

The protagonist says it's stronger than most pokémon, but how would that translate to something that can shapeshift without reference and has no fixed form?

Well, when the protagonist is saying that it's "stronger than anybody" or stronger than most other pokémon, it's not making a very scientific statement, and ymmv on the degree to which that's true. So, yeah, there's some bragging involved. But, let's go a little into how defining "strength" would work for the protagonist, considering its transforming abilities.

In this 'fic, "levels" refer to the amount of "pokémon energy" a pokémon has relative to the highest known value attained by a member of its species. So a pokémon that's level 50 is basically "50% of the maximum known strength for this kind of pokémon." Different species . That's why a raticate and dragonite can both be "level 50," for example, but in practical terms the dragonite is significantly more powerful.

When the protagonist transforms into a pokémon, its BST can change. Ordinarily transform exactly copies the stats of whatever is being transformed into, but the protagonist can rarely do a perfect transform! So while its BST can change, it's not as straightforward as "change into a snorlax, get a snorlax's stats." It probably isn't going to be able to be as beefy as a proper snorlax, which is probably going to give it a lower HP and physical stats than a real snorlax would have.

The protagonist is quite powerful, with base stats more or less in line with Mew's (so, hundreds all around). It would be rated at around level fifty. And it can change its stat distribution somewhat by adopting other pokémon forms that have a higher BST, though as discussed, it's probably not going to be able to go all that much higher because it won't be able to perfectly emulate the pokémon with the higher BST. So from a purely mechanical standpoint, it's roughly as strong as a lv. 50 "mystical" pokémon (i.e. Mew, Celebi, Jirachi, etc.). That's pretty powerful! For the Indigo League tournament specifically, though, that's "powerful," but there are absolutely more powerful, level-wise, pokémon there, and most everything in play is going to be at least mid-forties, level-wise.

Of course the protagonist's real strength isn't reflected in its stats. Its real strength is that flexibility, the ability to use the best attack for the situation, pull shenanigans with its ability, and so on, and that's very hard to quantify. It's also more effective against single enemies than groups, which is something that kind of came up in the battle where it got ambushed by TR. Against one opponent the protagonist can really tailor itself to the foe so it has the best possible matchup, but if it's fighting a group of pokémon with diverse capabilities that's far less possible. On the whole I'd say it's very powerful and capable of beating pokémon substantially higher than its official level in one-on-one scenarios.

Hope that clears things up! Like I said, I do think I should try to get this into the story more somehow, I'm just really not sure where. The choice of infernape I can elaborate on a little, at least... I tried to imply some of this when Nate's initially skeptical about the protagonist participating in the tournament because he wasn't impressed by its charmeleon impression, and then he's surprised by how much it looks like a real infernape. Adding a couple more lines there, like if he were to ask why it couldn't be a garchomp or something instead, would allow me to elaborate a little on some of the things here.

Anyway, thanks for asking such great questions! It's always fun to elaborate on the mechanics of the story like this, and it helps me clarify my thoughts on these sorts of issues, too.

Negrek _Admin

Website: Thousand Roads

Posted September 06 2017

Chapter 31 Reply

Even though the next chapter (presumably the battle with Red and the meeting with Mewtwo) should be the climax of the arc, or even the whole story, I really feel like this one is the emotional culmination of everything written so far. The child begins to question its overly simplistic worldview, while Nate is forced to confront his uncertain future, self-doubt, and even his personal failings.

The climax actually comes after the battle against Red, in Chapter 33. And we're a loooong way off the end of the story, heh. But you're right, this is one of the most significant chapters in terms of the characters themselves. I had a lot of fun writing it, and I'm glad you enjoyed reading it!

Mightyena went and asked the question everyone's been wondering all along, and Nate's response to it was just so heartbreaking. He's scared and confused and he doesn't have any options, but his pokémon want him to be happy and do the right thing. He's built up all these big angry walls around himself, and they're so high and spiky that he would hurt himself badly just by trying to climb out of them.

Yeah, exactly! I love how you describe the situation here. Nate tries really hard, but he can't really even conceive of life being any other way, much less how he would even go about trying to find something better. It's great, I think you got everything I was hoping for out of that scene.

Before Nate could talk to his pokémon, Nate might have loved them, but it was in the way that people love their pets. Humans might entertain the idea that their pets are intelligent, but humans also tend to project, and they rarely consider that unconditional love and unconditional acceptance are not the same thing. Raticate even brought up that point very succinctly in the part of the conversation that Nate never heard.

Yes, definitely! I don't know that I've done a good job of conveying that Nate's relationship to his pokémon has changed based on the fact that he can properly communicate with them now--I don't think he's really had enough time to have many real conversations with them in the past few chapters. But it's definitely the case that even though he always loved and appreciated his pokémon, there was that element of his loving and appreciating his image of his pokémon rather than them as they really are. Not really his fault, he didn't have the opportunity to interact with them properly before. But now that he can, some things will definitely have to change.

And I hope he has some bengay for that burn.

Alas, the protagonist didn't translate that statement, either, so he got savaged without even realizing it. :P

I can only guess how Mightyena felt about that, but I assume that she's kind of carried the idea that while Nate is usually a jerk, he was HER jerk, and he would never be like that to the people who mattered.

To some extent. Nate has blown up at her and the other members of the team from time to time; there's kind of a pattern in how he responds to stress, which is part of why Mightyena's so cautious in how she broaches the subject, and kind of ended up putting it off until what turned out to be the worst possible moment. Even though she was expecting things to go badly, though, what Nate said was WAY over the line.

And finally, I really love how the child is finally, FINALLY starting to understand that the world isn't divided into good people who love pokémon and bad people who hate pokémon. It was really a long time coming, and it's been smacking the child in the face left and right, but as was established, the child is pretty dense when it comes to these sorts of things. For a good while, I wasn't sure if the child had its emotional maturity stunted permanently as a result of being whatever the heck it is. Either way, it's so gratifying to be witness to its ambivalence as it confronts its own beliefs.

Heh, I think the denseness of the protagonist is something that frustrates a lot of people. It's nice to be getting to the part of the story where it's at least wrestling with some things that it had previously dismissed entirely. It's worth noting, though, that it does have some physical limitations as a result of its transformation: it really does have low empathy and difficulty understanding what other people are thinking and feeling. So it's not incapable of learning or coming to understand messy human-problem kinds of things, but it's never going to be a quick study and it's working with disadvantages relative to most people. In any case, I hope you enjoy the very slow process of it maybe coming to appreciate

I can't wait to see how the protagonist is going to use all of its cheaty hacky powers in the battle against Red. Those are the kinds of strategies that I LIVE for.

Well, the battle doesn't really end up going in that direction, unfortunately. :P Hopefully you enjoy how it plays out nonetheless!

A long, long time ago, when you were writing (the exact same chapter, no less) Clouded Sky, I sent you an email asking about the alternate version of what happened in the robot lugia lighthouse (if I'm remembering correctly, it was an indoor fight with a wailord that ends up impaling itself on icebergs). It's a little uncanny how history ends up repeating itself.

Oh man, I completely forgot about that! It's been a scary amount of time since Chapter 31 in that story, heh. What a fun coincidence.

Thanks a ton for following along with my stories for all these years, and for leaving such wonderful comments! Your reviews always brighten my day, and I'm glad this chapter in particular worked so well for you. &slugma;

Jenna

Website: Epicface.com

Posted September 05 2017 on PMD Personality Test

YAY!!! I GOT SNIVY!!!!!!!!

Negrek _Admin

Website: Thousand Roads

Posted August 30 2017 in reply to Jenna

It should be as straightforward as picking a choice for each question, then clicking "Submit!" Let me know if that doesn't work.