Farseer Sen'Zabl
Accolyte of 'Common Sense'
- Location
- Dome of Crystal Seers, Ulthwe
Well played Flair, well played.Well, if you want to know that badly, fine: Mawile!me's current level is [REDACTED].
A Backwards Grin (Pokemon) (Mawile SI)
- Thread starter Flairina
- Start date
- Location
- Waterford
You, apparently. Not even understanding your own language... (Trails off into unintelligible grumbles)
- Location
- Elsewhere
Hmmm, a secret organization that will stress pokemon-trainer pairs in elaborate and dramatic confrontations and "incidentally" cause evolution, now where could we find something like that?'
SmashQueen
Professional duck-cat.
...I did not know Mawile's moveset changed in S&S. Haven't played them yet. >.>; Least I know what to refer to now.
...bulbapedia had gen 8 listed first. Whoops. Earlier gen had Fake Tears at a lower level. That's better.
Damian45
Only Sane Man
I apologize for that. It was 12:30 at night in my timezone and I really care about how to tell a story. I just focused on trying to get my viewpoint across instead of being polite.
It's ultimately up to you whether to have levels or not, I was just trying to give good advice. I've read other Pokemon fanfics, some of which are pretty good, and almost all of them avoided mentioning levels. When something is powerful, they show it.
Traveler is probably the best example. It's long, but very well written and a very engaging read. Early on in the story, Ash encounters an incredibly powerful Rhydon, later revealed to be over 1000 years old, and well..
The Rhydon treats the mountain its fighting on as an extension of its body. Let that sink in. Its so powerful that it can move hundreds of tons of earth and metal as easily as moving its own body. The only reason Ash wasn't killed was because it let him live. Legendaries are even crazier. It does a very good job of communicating how strong they are, and its much more engaging to read than looking at a number.
Like I said, its up to you. I'm just trying to help.
Burned_Cookie
Very tired girl.
- Location
- Plato´s cave.
- Pronouns
- She/Her/It/Its
Except that makes perfect sense? It's easy to come up with failures, but in order to come up with a solution you tend to take all available knowledge into account. Wich for you is effective omniscience. Except that you then have to limit your viewpoint and prevent the untold rivers of knowledge from tainting the end result. Sounds insanely hard to me.
OH MY GOD YES!Hmmm, a secret organization that will stress pokemon-trainer pairs in elaborate and dramatic confrontations and "incidentally" cause evolution, now where could we find something like that?'
Everything had a much smaller and different movelist in the beginning. It's always best to assume that nothing has stayed the same and be suprised every once in a while when it does.
I mean, I always have to do a double take when Mawile is fairy soooooo yea.
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OffBrandANON
eldritch horror, pink flamingo
- Location
- California, USA
- Pronouns
- She/Her/They/Them
i would be happy that you settled down, but you still haven't gotten what we've been saying. flairina was not ever gonna go into "just looking at numbers", the mention of levels does not, in any way, stop people from showing power. you were upset over nothing. now, i'm gonna leave you alone now and hope this ends.
- Location
- Canada, probably
Many learnsets changed in Gen 8. It applies most strongly to evolved Pokémon, since Gen 8 did away with pre-evolution moves. If you could learn it before evolving, then in Galar you can still learn it.
But there were also a lot of other change-ups too in Gen 8, probably due to all the moves that got removed, and all the additions from new TMs and TRs. Gen 6 had a huge number of changes too, thanks to the invention of a new type and the transition to a new universe.
The only problem with having levels is: this is a serial work, therefore numbers invite versus debates, versus debates invite speculation, speculation invites headcanon, headcanon invites salt, salt invites Mobile Oppression Devices.
Having levels is perfectly okay.
Having levels is perfectly okay.
Gonna call mawile Maw!you now
Granted it will probably get confusing
OffBrandANON
eldritch horror, pink flamingo
- Location
- California, USA
- Pronouns
- She/Her/They/Them
flairwile for third-person, mewile for first person, mawyou for second person.
Kirakishou
Rozen Maiden
- Location
- N-Field
I love how Flairwile crying is just so intrinsically adorable Chimchar doesn't even care that it was (quite literally) crocodile tears. It's just too cute! Everything's going to be okay! Have all the berries you want!~
SilverShadows
Under autumn skies
- Location
- US
The only way I could see levels even slightly working in a non-game setting is if they're just vague abstractions of a pokemon's battle ability that the pokedex itself generates based on various data points.
Less a definitive measure of where it is compared to its absolute maximum, and more a rough skill rank estimate of the pokemon's overall estimated battle ability for the sake of official pokemon league comparison.
Kinda like belt colors in martial arts. Or ranked player scores in online games.
"Sorry kid, according to the scans your pokemon's maturity, moves, and attributes only put them in 'level 30' range. This is a 'level 50' range tournament."
That's just a rationalization on my part though and I generally prefer immersion breaking game mechanics like levels just not be a thing outside the games.
I am not sure what you are referring to with ranked scores, but typically scores are awarded arbitrarily, so come down to a levelling system, just with lots of levels, and rankings have no relevance to actual ability, merely how many people have greater ability, so are completely different to the usage of levels here. For example, a Pac-man game might have score awarded for pellets eaten, which would be a whole value with no indication of how near to collecting the next pellet they were, and would ignore other factors such as how trapped they were when they died, how much time they had survived, how many ghosts they had eaten... so it is both assigning specific break-points to a smooth progression(getting the next pellet is the product of all the preceding effort, to only register the pellet is to ignore all the efforts prior to that) and assigning value only to those values which are measured, while no doubt there are myriad supporting elements not measured. For a further example, the scores might be: 1st 1000, 2nd 999, 3rd 555 I, 5th 555 II, 6th 555 III, 7th 300, 8th 100...; which wouldn't match pokemon levelling at all due to the difference between 1st and 2nd being massively different to the difference between 2nd and 3rd and not actually saying anything at all about their actual capability. Or at least I am confident that that is not how pokemon levels work, on account of them not having official listings from which to derive these values if nothing else.
That said, being an agregate evaluation of one's combat-ability is plausible. Personally, I suspect that levels probably measure the internal power-source that Flairile has been drawing on to produce pokemon moves. It would probably be indexed based upon the average value when newly hatched/evolved and/or the average rate of increase over a proceeding time-frame, or something along those lines. The main point being, that such would influence their move-pool and move-stamina very significantly, but there would be many other means of gaining ability, such as whatever speed-training or such that, say, Pikachu goes through in order to torment a raichu. That way levels would be very much a real thing, or, well, perhaps "real thing" is the wrong term, but as real as bench-press weights being used to measure someone's strength for example. Bench-press weight may not be the be-all/end-all of strength measurement, but it is a significant contributor. Likewise I could see a measurement of internal energy-pool and associated attainment of an inherent ideal of pokemon being for want of better terminology being the primary value when comparing pokemon battle ability, as a result of that energy granting access to more uses of more powerful moves and infusing a pokemon with more of its inherent qualities such as harder steel-types, hotter fire-types, more vigorous grass-types, or what-have-you. This could be measured in levels and would be a massive boon for the one with the greater level, but there would be other factors such as Swolebesaur's chunky vines dominating an ivysaur with 20 levels over it because Ivysaur spent the last year getting drunk on a beach while Swolebesaur spent that time lifting weights and can use its vines to keep flipping Ivysaur so that it can't aim any of its high-level attacks.
And, of course, it is an artificial world, so the granularity and range of personal improvement can be whatever they want. Levels could really exist and actually be distinct, detectable leaps in one's ability. Like if one's ability to lift weights only ever changed in values of precisely five kilograms. It'd be weird for us, but for the people used to it they would probably not bother with kilograms and instead index their weight-lifters based upon those 5-kilogram increments, and whatever term they used, it would be synonymous with levels.
That said, I am not actually advocating the use of levels, I just think that there is a capacity for them to function, and be just as plausible as distinct "moves" are. I mean, it is a setting where there is a qualitative distinction that dramatically separates a proper "bite" attack from just biting while channelling dark energy; such that they can do it wrong and if they do then it is obvious, even if they are still smaching their dark-coated teeth into something. It is a world where bite-force can go from 1 to 10 without having the potential to hit any of the intervening pressure-values. I do not know what levels signify in this story. Levels are not required and if they are present they do not need to be important. I do, however, feel that they are consistent with the setting and can be used productively in the narrative.
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Levels are Anime canon, though what they mean is unclear. Lots of stuff are anime canon though but obviously don't work the same way as the games. For example, move wise:
Pokemon can learn moves they can't in the games. Ash's Pikachu has used Tackle.
Pokemon can learn moves outside of how they can normally be obtained. Ash's Pikachu learned Volt Tackle.
Pokemon can use moves that don't exist in the games, as new moves can be created. Ash's Pikachu knows a move called "Volt Tail" a mix of Volt Tackle and Iron Tail.
Moves, weather, and terrain can be used in more abstract ways. "Aim for the horn" is probably the most stupid, but the anime is full of stuff that doesn't work in the games, but sort of makes sense. Ash and Misty's battle in the episode When Regions Collide has tons of this back and forth.
Fundamentally whatever level Pokemon are in the anime clearly doesn't mean much in a real battle, due to all this. Actually thinking things through and training to perform moves in various situations seems to account for a lot more than whatever level a pokemon is.
On the other hand Natures seem to be anime canon and Flairina doesn't have those in this story so, you know, whatever.
Pokemon can learn moves they can't in the games. Ash's Pikachu has used Tackle.
Pokemon can learn moves outside of how they can normally be obtained. Ash's Pikachu learned Volt Tackle.
Pokemon can use moves that don't exist in the games, as new moves can be created. Ash's Pikachu knows a move called "Volt Tail" a mix of Volt Tackle and Iron Tail.
Moves, weather, and terrain can be used in more abstract ways. "Aim for the horn" is probably the most stupid, but the anime is full of stuff that doesn't work in the games, but sort of makes sense. Ash and Misty's battle in the episode When Regions Collide has tons of this back and forth.
Fundamentally whatever level Pokemon are in the anime clearly doesn't mean much in a real battle, due to all this. Actually thinking things through and training to perform moves in various situations seems to account for a lot more than whatever level a pokemon is.
On the other hand Natures seem to be anime canon and Flairina doesn't have those in this story so, you know, whatever.
OffBrandANON
eldritch horror, pink flamingo
- Location
- California, USA
- Pronouns
- She/Her/They/Them
well, natures are alot less important on their own(mostly just meaning stuff for stats and a specific things), and a bit less likely to come up(i mean, the anime didn't even mention them until sun and moon).
SilverShadows
Under autumn skies
- Location
- US
For clarity's sake I was referring to player scores in modern ranked online games. The ones that determine things like what bracket of a league you can play in. Not high score leaderboards.
And that's more or less what I meant in terms of pokemon levels too. That levels are just a human social concept developed by the pokemon league to give a rough estimate of a pokemon's ability and what they could reasonably be expected to fight.
The assumption being that two theoretical pokemon judged to be level 40 for example could be expected to have reasonably even odds against each other in a fight. In the same way two yellow belts or two bronze league players are theoretically roughly on par before things like physique, experience, age, or circumstances are considered to swing advantage one way or the other.
But that would still just be a purely human construct. The pokemon itself wouldn't care about that beyond the fight itself. For example, they don't suddenly get 3 more points of speed when they level up, they got faster through training and were subsequently judged to be higher level. A chimchar doesn't evolve at level 14, they simply evolve when they're ready to. That frequently happens to occur around the time they reach level 14, but it could just as easily be level 6, or 36, or never depending on circumstances. Because it's just a human judgement of their own relative battle ability.
That's the only way levels make sense to me in a non-meta game setting. I wouldn't bat an eye if a character in a Neptunia or Disgaea fanfic specifically called out their level and that they need 300 more exp to level up again and increase their stats because those are the kind of meta series where those are a known part of the setting.
But Pokemon, especially the anime, isn't typically meta like that.
That's not to say it couldn't work that way. Both in terms of the author deciding to write a pokemon story with meta elements, and in the narrative itself. I just would find it somewhat odd for a while until how that works is made clear.
And this is all just me sharing my opinion, I'm not trying to convince anyone that my way is the right way or anything. Just throwing out my opinion on how I think levels could work in a non-meta setting since people were discussing it at the time.
- Location
- Here
All this hullabaloo about levels comes down to the map-territory relation. @Damian45's initial complaint can be paraphrased as, "It's very easy to slip into terrible storytelling if you make levels the territory." Some of the pushback, most recently from @SilverShadows, can be paraphrased as, "I'm pretty sure they're the map though." In other words, this isn't a LitRPG; rather, levels are more like the aforementioned belt colours in martial arts.
Flairina
Least Omnipotent Goddess
- Location
- The next infinity over
So, after quite a bit of thought, I have indeed decided to remove the Pokedex's ability to determine a Pokemon's level in this fic. Not only am I doing this due to them simply being an unnecessary feature for the story I intend to tell, but because, upon review of the episode I thought the information was mentioned in... it's never actually said.
No, seriously - I thought it was brought up in episodes 3 and 6 of the Diamond and Pearl saga (having rewatched them previously specifically for the purposes of this fic), but upon a second look, the only thing Paul confirms in them is that the Pokedex can determine a Pokemon's moves. Granted, it's possible I just happened to miss where it was said (I did skip around a bit), or it was confirmed later on in the season - hell, maybe I even had the right episode, but the mention was limited to the Japanese version. Since this fic's world is based on the English version of the anime anyways however, and the specific timing of when that information was disseminated was largely why I included levels to begin with, I now have a perfect reason/excuse to remove them.
As such, the section of Chapter 9 that mentioned levels has now been edited, and some additional information has also been added to better describe the Pokedex's interface. The edited portions are as follows:
Hopefully this change makes sense to everyone, and rest assured I will try not to have any other "retcon" style changes in the future of this fic. Thank you to everyone who gave their input on the topic previously.
(...but yeah, changes aside, Mawile!me totally "spawned" into this world at Level 100 from the get go. Shh, don't tell me!)
Huh... I thought you were just joking for a second, but you might legitimately be on to something there. Just how many evolutions HAS Team Rocket managed to directly or indirectly cause during the time they've been chasing Ash and co around? More than a few of Ash's fully evolved Pokemon are only a thing because of these three, and they've had quite a few one-time encounters with other Pokemon that evolved just to send them blasting off at the end of the episode. All totaled, they really are quite good at that. Ash should honestly thank them at some point; he might not have even ever made it to some of the leagues if not for these three constantly following him around.
Yeah, not sure why they changed that. I mean, Fake Tears already isn't great on Mawile (by game standards anyways; the anime pretty much just uses it as a distraction technique the only two times it's used), but by the time a Mawile hits that point of its growth, how useful would fake crying even be? Why would that be a skill unlocked only after reaching a relatively high level of power/experience? I mean, Pokemon is nonsensical in places by nature, but that doesn't mean they should deliberately make it even more so.
Good point... which rather neatly sums up why Subsumption hasn't updated lately as well, honestly.
(For those of you read that as well, I'm about ready to toss Sayaka off a cliff at this point for my lack of ability to reason out what she'd be likely to do in the next chapter.)
Honestly, Mawile makes perfect sense as a fairy-type to me, what with the outwardly cute demeanor that quickly turns horrifying when it tries to eat you. Other fairy-types however, such as Snubull/Granbull, Galarian Weezing, and Klefki... those ones I have a harder time making sense of.
(Why the frick isn't Klefki a steel/ghost-type, exactly? I realize that Honedge was introduced in the exact same generation and you need to differentiate them somehow, but a ghost possessing a keyring that as such likes collecting/stealing keys makes a lot more sense to me than a fairy that just happens to look like a keyring and started gathering similarly-shaped objects, and if your goal was just to base a fairy type Pokemon on the superstition of lost objects being stolen by Fae, then why make it look like a possessed keyring?!)
I mean, I do love speculation, and I'll even gladly participate in a versus debate so long as everyone stays civil, so I suppose I'll be missing out on that now. That said, I would indeed prefer not to invite the presence of MODs (at least in any capacity beyond them being readers themselves), so maybe this'll be for the best anyways.
I mean, as long as it's clear enough to get the idea across, feel free to just call Mawile!me whatever you like.
(On that note, I suppose I'll give Me!wile a trial run for a little while. If it doesn't feel right, I'll switch back to Mawile!me, clunkier though it technically may be.)
No no, literal crocodile tears would be if they were coming out of the side of Me!wile's maw, or perhaps if it had suddenly sprouted eyes of its own to cry out of.
(...come to think of it, you could probably make an evolution for Mawile based solely on the pun potential inherent in that idea. Mawile->Mawcodile? Heh.)
Right, and that's the sort of thing I intend for this fic to show as largely more important anyways. Hopefully any strategies I come up with (both in and out of universe) will trend on the less ridiculous/nonsensical side of the various ones seen in the anime, but if not... well, at least I'll be being accurate to the source material. ^^;
To be perfectly honest, I didn't know natures even were canon to the anime until looking it up due to this comment. Thankfully, any mention of them seems to have been isolated to a single episode, and it was cut out of the English dub anyways (which is what this fic is explicitly based on), so it's not something I really need to worry about addressing.
True, although if I wanted to do a properly meta version of this fic (in as much as taking RPG game mechanics as literally as possible can even be considered "meta" anymore, given the number of Gamer fics we have going around these days), I'd have set things in the game version of the Pokemon universe from the get go and just gone from there. Walking from town to town would take minutes rather than days, most people would only have one thing to say, I might mention the HP bar being visible or audible music playing in the background... stuff like that. That's pretty low hanging fruit though, and if you stick TOO closely to the game's mechanics without adding anything new, it's hard to have much of a larger plot - besides, I think Stand-in fulfills most of my requisite "meta" quota anyways.
No, seriously - I thought it was brought up in episodes 3 and 6 of the Diamond and Pearl saga (having rewatched them previously specifically for the purposes of this fic), but upon a second look, the only thing Paul confirms in them is that the Pokedex can determine a Pokemon's moves. Granted, it's possible I just happened to miss where it was said (I did skip around a bit), or it was confirmed later on in the season - hell, maybe I even had the right episode, but the mention was limited to the Japanese version. Since this fic's world is based on the English version of the anime anyways however, and the specific timing of when that information was disseminated was largely why I included levels to begin with, I now have a perfect reason/excuse to remove them.
As such, the section of Chapter 9 that mentioned levels has now been edited, and some additional information has also been added to better describe the Pokedex's interface. The edited portions are as follows:
Hopefully this change makes sense to everyone, and rest assured I will try not to have any other "retcon" style changes in the future of this fic. Thank you to everyone who gave their input on the topic previously.
(...but yeah, changes aside, Mawile!me totally "spawned" into this world at Level 100 from the get go. Shh, don't tell me!
)Hmmm, a secret organization that will stress pokemon-trainer pairs in elaborate and dramatic confrontations and "incidentally" cause evolution, now where could we find something like that?'
Huh... I thought you were just joking for a second, but you might legitimately be on to something there. Just how many evolutions HAS Team Rocket managed to directly or indirectly cause during the time they've been chasing Ash and co around? More than a few of Ash's fully evolved Pokemon are only a thing because of these three, and they've had quite a few one-time encounters with other Pokemon that evolved just to send them blasting off at the end of the episode. All totaled, they really are quite good at that. Ash should honestly thank them at some point; he might not have even ever made it to some of the leagues if not for these three constantly following him around.
Yeah, not sure why they changed that. I mean, Fake Tears already isn't great on Mawile (by game standards anyways; the anime pretty much just uses it as a distraction technique the only two times it's used), but by the time a Mawile hits that point of its growth, how useful would fake crying even be? Why would that be a skill unlocked only after reaching a relatively high level of power/experience? I mean, Pokemon is nonsensical in places by nature, but that doesn't mean they should deliberately make it even more so.
Good point... which rather neatly sums up why Subsumption hasn't updated lately as well, honestly.
(For those of you read that as well, I'm about ready to toss Sayaka off a cliff at this point for my lack of ability to reason out what she'd be likely to do in the next chapter.)
Honestly, Mawile makes perfect sense as a fairy-type to me, what with the outwardly cute demeanor that quickly turns horrifying when it tries to eat you. Other fairy-types however, such as Snubull/Granbull, Galarian Weezing, and Klefki... those ones I have a harder time making sense of.
(Why the frick isn't Klefki a steel/ghost-type, exactly? I realize that Honedge was introduced in the exact same generation and you need to differentiate them somehow, but a ghost possessing a keyring that as such likes collecting/stealing keys makes a lot more sense to me than a fairy that just happens to look like a keyring and started gathering similarly-shaped objects, and if your goal was just to base a fairy type Pokemon on the superstition of lost objects being stolen by Fae, then why make it look like a possessed keyring?!)
I mean, I do love speculation, and I'll even gladly participate in a versus debate so long as everyone stays civil, so I suppose I'll be missing out on that now. That said, I would indeed prefer not to invite the presence of MODs (at least in any capacity beyond them being readers themselves), so maybe this'll be for the best anyways.
I mean, as long as it's clear enough to get the idea across, feel free to just call Mawile!me whatever you like.
(On that note, I suppose I'll give Me!wile a trial run for a little while. If it doesn't feel right, I'll switch back to Mawile!me, clunkier though it technically may be.)
No no, literal crocodile tears would be if they were coming out of the side of Me!wile's maw, or perhaps if it had suddenly sprouted eyes of its own to cry out of.
(...come to think of it, you could probably make an evolution for Mawile based solely on the pun potential inherent in that idea. Mawile->Mawcodile? Heh.)
Right, and that's the sort of thing I intend for this fic to show as largely more important anyways. Hopefully any strategies I come up with (both in and out of universe) will trend on the less ridiculous/nonsensical side of the various ones seen in the anime, but if not... well, at least I'll be being accurate to the source material. ^^;
To be perfectly honest, I didn't know natures even were canon to the anime until looking it up due to this comment. Thankfully, any mention of them seems to have been isolated to a single episode, and it was cut out of the English dub anyways (which is what this fic is explicitly based on), so it's not something I really need to worry about addressing.
True, although if I wanted to do a properly meta version of this fic (in as much as taking RPG game mechanics as literally as possible can even be considered "meta" anymore, given the number of Gamer fics we have going around these days), I'd have set things in the game version of the Pokemon universe from the get go and just gone from there. Walking from town to town would take minutes rather than days, most people would only have one thing to say, I might mention the HP bar being visible or audible music playing in the background... stuff like that. That's pretty low hanging fruit though, and if you stick TOO closely to the game's mechanics without adding anything new, it's hard to have much of a larger plot - besides, I think Stand-in fulfills most of my requisite "meta" quota anyways.
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Unseelie
(Verified True Fae)
- Location
- Tír fo Thuinn
I'm just going with "you". Who knows, maybe this story is even written by a mawile.I mean, as long as it's clear enough to get the idea across, feel free to just call Mawile!me whatever you like.
(On that note, I suppose I'll give Me!wile a trial run for a little while. If it doesn't feel right, I'll switch back to Mawile!me, clunkier though it technically may be.)
Well, this point is moot now. Still curious why you didn't check your own entry though.
- Location
- Canada, probably
Snubbull and Granbull have the category "fairy Pokémon." Not type, the category, as in "Snubbull, the fairy Pokémon!" I'm not entirely sure why? It's probably do do with the fact that that they're shy and gentle despite looking like they will eat your face.
Klefki should definitely have been a Ghost though, I agree. And Galarian Weezing should have been sent back to the drawing board. That's not how you do steampunk. Try harder.
I find it weird to look at Pokémon that didn't become Fairies. I suppose they were saving Audino's Fairy-ness for its mega-evolution, but why is Chansey not a Fairy? Or at least Blissey, just look at the thing!
They also should have made a Galarian Misdreavus that's Ghost/Fairy, based on banshees. Instead they dressed Weezing up as Abraham Lincoln. Grumble grumble.
- Location
- Here
The Chansey line aren't Fairy-type to maintain pattern with the Clefairy and Jigglypuff line. All three started in Gen 1 as rare pink normal-types. All three got baby forms in gen 2. Then, when the Fairy type was added, Clefairy's line became pure Fairy, Jigglypuff's line became Fairy/Normal, and Chansey's stayed pure Normal. I think I would probably have switched which type assignments Jigglypuff and Chansey got, because both Chansey and Clefairy are consistently rarer than Jigglypuff, but I can see why they gave each line a different typing.
Bulbapedia very helpfully says that in Diamond and Pearl, the Pokedex can check a Pokemon's level, but then provides no episode where this is done. Very frustrating. It mentions this in the Pokedex article.
I on the other hand completely forgot it was cut in the English dub, since I like to work with the Japanese myself.