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A Backwards Grin (Pokemon) (Mawile SI)

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What I find interesting is that despite all the bad rep Dark types get for being the "evil type", theyre usually just more aggressive on average than other pokemon at worst.

Meanwhile 95% of all ghost types dex entries are about all the ways they kill people going all the way back to gen 1.

Like I get their dex entries are literally ghost stories but there's still loads more evidence for ghost types being evil than dark types no matter what their japanese type name is.
 
SilverShadows said:
What I find interesting is that despite all the bad rep Dark types get for being the "evil type", theyre usually just more aggressive on average than other pokemon at worst.
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I mean…

Darkrai curses people with eternal nightmares that persist even beyond death. Purrloin steals from people because it likes to make them suffer; impidimp does the same, and its evolution morgrem lures people into the woods and impales them with its hair. Houndoom breathes cursed fire that never stops hurting. Cacturne chase humans in packs until they collapse from exhaustion. Hydreigon's central head is in charge because it murdered its other head back when it was a zweilous.

There's no shortage of evil Dark-types.

Meanwhile, polteageist makes tea for people it likes. A lot of people are happy when shuppet are around, because they consume their negative emotions. Marshadow just likes to watch what people are doing. Drakloak is the "caretaker pokémon" because it looks after spirits lost at sea.

OK, that's not a long list. But even many of the ghosts that hurt people are just eating. We may not like being prey, but it's not evil to just want to eat.
 
Warclam said:
OK, that's not a long list. But even many of the ghosts that hurt people are just eating. We may not like being prey, but it's not evil to just want to eat.
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And even then, the description of the acts of some ghost pokemon could be interpreted in different ways or a demonstration of an edge case.
 
Warclam said:
I mean…

Darkrai curses people with eternal nightmares that persist even beyond death. Purrloin steals from people because it likes to make them suffer; impidimp does the same, and its evolution morgrem lures people into the woods and impales them with its hair. Houndoom breathes cursed fire that never stops hurting. Cacturne chase humans in packs until they collapse from exhaustion. Hydreigon's central head is in charge because it murdered its other head back when it was a zweilous.
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I'll give you purrloin and cacturne, but Houndoom's flames "hurting forever" are not a choice on its part. Same goes for Darkrai and it's nightmares. Neither of them go out of their way to "curse" anyone. And aside from one specific exception, Darkrai are always portrayed as going out of their way to avoid doing that. To the point the ones you can capture all live on completely deserted islands.

That hydreigon one I don't know where you got, I checked and no pokedex entry comes anywhere close to saying that. Closest is the Zweilous heads fight over food and the one who eats the most is in charge.

Impidimp and morgrem are part fairy and as hatterene and shinotic show they're not exempt from being creepy too so I wouldn't place the blame on being Dark type there.

So four or so.

Off the top of my head Froslass keeps a gallery of frozen victims, Gourgeist will sing happily as it chokes you to death, Jellicent are responsible for whole ships, crew included, disappearing at sea, Dusknoir drags people to hell, Banette and Drifloon specifically target children, Lampent loiters around hospitals to burn the souls of the recently deceased, and Gigantimax Gengar mimics the voices of loved ones to lure people into its mouth.

And yeah, benefit of the doubt, the pokedex is apparently written by an explicitly stated mischievous ghost now, so god knows how much of that is Rotom messing with us, but that's still worse than most dark types. Heck it's way more than the margin of error that every type has some creepy outliers. And those are only the ones I remember without checking.
 
IIRC Dark types aren't evil so much as being more 'animalistic' and thus instinctual\violent compared to most other types of Pokemon, on average.

This gives them a reputation for 'evil' because they tend to come across and vicious and cruel, sort of the same way that cats get a bad rap for 'playing' with prey, despite cats not possessing the necessary thinkspace to understand morality and having perfectly good practical reasons for tiring some types of prey out before going for a kill.

Ghost types on the other hand are ghosts, they run the whole gamut of ghost stories from evil monsters that actively hunt souls to eat (and\or drag off to hell) while causing chaos and destruction for their own personal amusement, to a haunted teapot that makes really good tea but only if it likes you, to the soul of an ancient warrior possessing his ancestral sword that mentors the worthy and drains the life from the unworthy. (Steel\Ghost is a ridiculous typing btw, Aegislash is such bullshit.)


No Pokemon type is inherently evil, types like Dark and Ghost can seem evil on a cursory inspection, but that is just a misunderstanding of what traits those types actually possess and what traits vary from individual to individual.

Winged One said:
There's a step in the process where you literally add love to the stew. Maybe that's the part that's nutritious for them.
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Most likely; Ghost types are the type that most often gets an explicit line about what they eat, and almost all the ones that do get that line eat some kind of mental or spiritual aspect of other beings; souls, life-force or emotions usually.

So probably when you feed a Ghost pokefood, while their 'physical' body (in so far as some Ghosts have one) might eat the physical food, the actual nourishment or benefits that the Ghost gains from doing so would come from their consumption of the soul of the food, which would presumably contain a degree of the emotional investment put into creating said food. Hence the adding love to the stew being a necessary step in cooking for Pokemon; some Pokemon literally eat that love.
 
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And then there is Meanwile. When she eats with the Big mouth all the food goes into her fairy stomach, when she eats with the normal mouth she'll feel sated.
 
Neruz said:
So most likely when you feed a Ghost pokefood, while their 'physical' body (in so far as some Ghosts have one) might eat the physical food, the actual nourishment or benefits that the Ghost gains from doing so would come from their consumption of the soul of the food, which would presumably contain a degree of the emotional investment put into creating said food. Hence the adding love to the stew being a necessary step in cooking for Pokemon; some Pokemon literally eat that love.
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Would that mean that giving your ghost type generic pokekibble would actually be animal abuse the same way that forcing a carnivorous pet to go vegan is?
 
chrisleech said:
Would that mean that giving your ghost type generic pokekibble would actually be animal abuse the same way that forcing a carnivorous pet to go vegan is?
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It would basically be the same thing yes; generic pokekibble probably has no real 'nutritional value' for most Ghost-types, it might still taste nice to some of them, but I doubt it contains the necessary 'soul' to actually sustain the average Ghost-type.

I wouldn't be surprised if there a bunch of trainers with a Ghost-type that are completely unaware of this though; a lot of the more common Ghost-types seem to feed on 'ambient' emotions and thoughts and thus would happily get all the nourishment they need just from 'grazing' on nearby people and Pokemon without anyone really noticing.

Of course, Pokemon being Pokemon and Ghost-types being ghosts, any Ghost-type that is being abused by its trainer in that manner has a lot more options available to it than say a house cat: Most Pokemon are more than capable of protecting themselves from genuine abuse, though many appear to be willing to suck up a lot of bullshit before reaching that point. (Which would make sense if the knowledge that 'trained' Pokemon are, on average, more powerful than their wild counterparts is general knowledge amongst Pokemon populations; in the life or death struggles of wild living power is king, and not having to deal with the possibility that today is the day that a giant fucking bear decides you look tasty is worth putting up with quite a bit of discomfort. I know I would be willing to put up with a lot in exchange for not having to live in the wild with predators that keep trying to eat me.)

Edifier said:
And then there is Meanwile. When she eats with the Big mouth all the food goes into her fairy stomach, when she eats with the normal mouth she'll feel sated.
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The common themes for Fairy-types seem to be cuteness, sparkles, sparkly magic, childishness, playfulness and a general disregard for common sense and reason.

So having a special bottomless Fairy stomach that is separate from her normal stomach is exactly the sort of nonsense to be expected from a Fairy-type.
 
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Neruz said:
It would basically be the same thing yes; generic pokekibble probably has no real 'nutritional value' for most Ghost-types, it might still taste nice to some of them, but I doubt it contains the necessary 'soul' to actually sustain the average Ghost-type.
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what if you hand-feed them to your ghost while cooing over it?
 
OffBrandANON said:
what if you hand-feed them to your ghost while cooing over it?
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Depending on the Ghost-type and what it specifically consumes that might work, if so it would work even better with food that has an emotional investment though, and it would probably be getting more from the trainer directly than the kibble.
 
Yeah, even though ghost types are pretty dangerous, they seem to be a decently popular type to train from all of the trainers and gym leaders in the game that have ghost types

And I'm not 100% sure but delving deep enough to the lore of ghost types makes you have powers and spirtomb eyes judging from the Hex Maniac.

Fairy powers are also similar...
 
With all this talk about Ghost type diets...

I can't help but want to read about like, a lonely girl that's loves baking and is friends with some ghost types due to her giving them somewhat burnt cookies made with love


...who lives with her grandma, who took her in after her parents died in an accident, who used to teach her how to bake when her family visited.

bEcAuSe hApiNeSs WiThOuT sAdnEsS iS bOriNg

Also, literally ghost parents for more feels stuff

And it's set in some countryside town in Kalos that has a forest nearby, NC chance wanders in there with her Phantom Troupe, where they meet a curious phantump (maybe shiny) that she also makes friends with.

Then the phanthump leads her to where it died.

As a kid, since phantump are literally lost kids that died in a forest. Maybe find a grove of them in a hidden clearing that's actually mass grave for children because of some thing in the past that may or may not involve ol' AZ

Speaking of the immortal king, imagine the tired ol' fella meeting MC-chan who's friends with ghosts, then she offers him a cookie, made with love.

Maybe while exploring the forest, she finds a dirty old sword, which she then visits for clean ups with some TLC. Said sword is actually a honedge that didn't slurp up her lifeforce like a smoothie when she picked it up due to reasons.

Maybe have her go on a journey with her ghostly buddies?
 
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SilverShadows said:
That hydreigon one I don't know where you got, I checked and no pokedex entry comes anywhere close to saying that. Closest is the Zweilous heads fight over food and the one who eats the most is in charge.
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Zweilous has two heads that think for themselves. Eventually, one comes to be in charge. Hydreigon has one head that thinks for itself; the other two are its arms and are completely brainless. So yeah, the fighting for dominance is about who gets to live when evolution comes knocking.

I could point out that jellicent sink ships for food and shelter, or be pedantic and point out that my 4 friendly ghosts already disprove your claim of 95% evil, but I think I'll give the final word to the banana.

Neruz said:
No Pokemon type is inherently evil, types like Dark and Ghost can seem evil on a cursory inspection, but that is just a misunderstanding of what traits those types actually possess and what traits vary from individual to individual.
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SilverShadows said:
That hydreigon one I don't know where you got, I checked and no pokedex entry comes anywhere close to saying that. Closest is the Zweilous heads fight over food and the one who eats the most is in charge.
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I looked and could not find a cite for Warclam's claim. However, I think there's a strong case for it being implied. Zweilous's heads are known to think independently of each other and furthermore hate each other, to the point that a Zweilous will typically be covered in scars even in the absence of anything to fight.

But Hydreigon's heads? Only one of them even has a brain, and it doesn't evolve from Zweilous until its attack is high enough.

Also, on that note, I think an SI into a Deino could be fascinating.
 
Flairina said:
Yeah. I mean, like I've said before, I write my fics more for myself than for others, but it's hard to keep going when the secondary motivating factor of praise, comments, or even criticism just isn't there.
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I'm pretty sure every forum author has been there. *Quietly makes long overdue signature edit.*

For what its worth, I really liked No Leaf Clover. It's the only Zero Escape Fanfiction I've ever actually liked... which may be part of the problem, really (Yes I looked at the ones linked in the thread, but both of them haven't updated in ages, so...). Am I right in thinking that
assuming Phi was listening in on "Clover's" rant in chapter 9, the important bit for her wasn't any of the "bombs" she dropped, but her mentioning how all the codes are letter-shifted phrases? And that rather than getting Dio to spill the codes like in canon, she's going to be figuring out what those phrases are instead?

Obviously you're not going to answer these questions, but I know I like hearing reader speculation (In addition to the other things you mentioned) so I figured you might want to hear my thoughts on that. I dunno).

Anyway, as for this fic... there's not much I can say that hasn't already been said. But you can add my tally to the column of people who think it's Chimchar in that ball rather than Elekid. If it's Elekid, he'd probably try to drag Mawile back to Paul first (and only) thing, and unlike Chimchar I don't think Mawile would be able to stop him from doing so, seeing as Pokemon can bust themselves out of their own Pokeballs. Yes Mawile is afraid of Chimchar, but personality-wise it'd be a lot easier to keep him in line.

As for the dark-type discussion, I've always found it interesting that there aren't any dark-type specialist trainers who are assholes. All of the other types have a canon specialist who matches their type's... well, stereotype, as far as I can recall, but not dark. All of the dark-type specialist are either nice or drama queens, but never "evil," for all that their type is called that. I guess Gamefreak wanted to avert the stereotype before it could even be established.
 
Don't be silly. Evil people don't act like assholes. Evil people either try to make themselves look like good people or avoid drawing attention to themselves. Or they fail to properly hide their nature and get arrested.
 
Arkanian said:
As for the dark-type discussion, I've always found it interesting that there aren't any dark-type specialist trainers who are assholes. All of the other types have a canon specialist who matches their type's... well, stereotype, as far as I can recall, but not dark. All of the dark-type specialist are either nice or drama queens, but never "evil," for all that their type is called that. I guess Gamefreak wanted to avert the stereotype before it could even be established.
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That's an interesting point. The only evil thing about the Dark gym leaders is whoever does Piers's hair. Perhaps we can take the Dark specialists—especially the early ones—as our guide for what Dark-types are meant to be like.

Karen specializes in Dark-types just because they're her favourite, and advocates that everyone just use pokémon they like.

Sidney simply loves to battle. Dude's just happy to be here.

Grimsley is, er, the dark side of the Dark-type. He's got an addiction to gambling. However, he agrees with Karen and Sidney that the most important thing is to love what you do.

Getting more recent, but Nanu doesn't even want to be a gym leader/Kahuna; he was forced into it. What he really wants is to be a good cop, and protect people from monsters and criminals.

Putting them together, it seems like the Dark-type is defined by passion. Sometimes hedonic, sometimes tempered by experience and willpower, and sometimes just loving your job. Hmm… "dark" and "passion" eh? That reminds me of something…
 
Warclam said:
That's an interesting point. The only evil thing about the Dark gym leaders is whoever does Piers's hair. Perhaps we can take the Dark specialists—especially the early ones—as our guide for what Dark-types are meant to be like.

Karen specializes in Dark-types just because they're her favourite, and advocates that everyone just use pokémon they like.

Sidney simply loves to battle. Dude's just happy to be here.

Grimsley is, er, the dark side of the Dark-type. He's got an addiction to gambling. However, he agrees with Karen and Sidney that the most important thing is to love what you do.

Getting more recent, but Nanu doesn't even want to be a gym leader/Kahuna; he was forced into it. What he really wants is to be a good cop, and protect people from monsters and criminals.

Putting them together, it seems like the Dark-type is defined by passion. Sometimes hedonic, sometimes tempered by experience and willpower, and sometimes just loving your job. Hmm… "dark" and "passion" eh? That reminds me of something…
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my thought, based on the pokemon themselves, was always more representing bad things that happen, though i might rethink that for this. doom, deceit, violence, etc., although i realize maybe i was getting too conceptual with my headcanons.

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hah, that's a great point of comparison.
 
Warclam said:
Zweilous has two heads that think for themselves. Eventually, one comes to be in charge. Hydreigon has one head that thinks for itself; the other two are its arms and are completely brainless. So yeah, the fighting for dominance is about who gets to live when evolution comes knocking.

I could point out that jellicent sink ships for food and shelter, or be pedantic and point out that my 4 friendly ghosts already disprove your claim of 95% evil, but I think I'll give the final word to the banana.
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Jamie Roberts said:
I looked and could not find a cite for Warclam's claim. However, I think there's a strong case for it being implied. Zweilous's heads are known to think independently of each other and furthermore hate each other, to the point that a Zweilous will typically be covered in scars even in the absence of anything to fight.

But Hydreigon's heads? Only one of them even has a brain, and it doesn't evolve from Zweilous until its attack is high enough.

Also, on that note, I think an SI into a Deino could be fascinating.
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Yeah, no. Those are reaching to fufill a personal grimdark headcanon. Nothing even slightly implies anywhere that Zweilous murders one of its heads to evolve, and they don't need to reach some level of attack, they just need to reach lvl 64. It's far more likely that, like every other pokemon that used to be seperate entities, the two heads just fused. Especially since its other heads aren't coming out of its neck like Zweilous', they come out of where its front legs used to be.

95% wasn't me counting all ghost types and actually doing the math to find out the exact percentage of ghosts that could be considered evil, it was just a hyperbolic way to say most. And I'm not here to argue that ghost types are absolutely evil and you should feel bad for liking them, heck I like Gourgeist and Froslass and just kinda ignore the whole serial killer pokedex entries. I prefer the anime versions that aren't so needlessly edgy. I'm just argueing that Dark types have a worse rep and are literally called the "evil-type" in japanese when ghost types are consistently worse according to the pokedex.
 
SilverShadows said:
It's far more likely that, like every other pokemon that used to be seperate entities, the two heads just fused.
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So their minds fuse together with their own personal most hated enemy, thoughts mixing and mingling inescapably? That's a pretty grimdark headcanon, dude.

And I'm not sure you have room to criticize theories, what with your "naw, impidimp and morgrem are evil because they're Fairies. Totally not anything to do with being Dark." :p

SilverShadows said:
95% wasn't me counting all ghost types and actually doing the math to find out the exact percentage of ghosts that could be considered evil, it was just a hyperbolic way to say most.
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Er. Yes, that's why it would be pedantic.
 
SilverShadows said:
Yeah, no. Those are reaching to fufill a personal grimdark headcanon. Nothing even slightly implies anywhere that Zweilous murders one of its heads to evolve, and they don't need to reach some level of attack, they just need to reach lvl 64. It's far more likely that, like every other pokemon that used to be seperate entities, the two heads just fused. Especially since its other heads aren't coming out of its neck like Zweilous', they come out of where its front legs used to be.
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that's... not really that big a stretch? or even all that grimdark, really. "heads hate eachother and fight, one that eats more dominates"+"evolution has only one brain"="one head kills other" is a pretty straightforward conclusion, if possibly more indirect than likely visualized. and it is far too widespread to be a "personal" headcanon. and i can't think of many other examples for your "like every other" but reuniclus.

95% wasn't me counting all ghost types and actually doing the math to find out the exact percentage of ghosts that could be considered evil, it was just a hyperbolic way to say most. And I'm not here to argue that ghost types are absolutely evil and you should feel bad for liking them, heck I like Gourgeist and Froslass and just kinda ignore the whole serial killer pokedex entries. I prefer the anime versions that aren't so needlessly edgy. I'm just argueing that Dark types have a worse rep and are literally called the "evil-type" in japanese when ghost types are consistently worse according to the pokedex.
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but of the examples given for ghosts being "consistently worse", the only ones that really seem bad are froslass and gourgeist(also, note how he pokedex does not say that banette specifically targets children, just that it goes after a specific child). also, the thing of calling the games "needlessly edgy" is uncalled for, especially as you said it out of nowhere.
 
I mean, I sure hope Mawile picked up chimchar as opposed to anyone else. Anyone else and all it means is that Mawile picked up a snack for the road, or it's one of the stronger mons and I don't see the point narratively unless their freedom makes them agreeable enough to hang with.
 
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