I read an interesting pokemon fanfiction, “The Word for Wilderness is Wild” by Clavain. It is a tragedy/angst. If you read please read carefully. Why do I ask? Well you seem to get a lot of pokemon questions from varied things including games. What about pokemon literary commentary and for your readers. Doesn’t hurt to try I think. If you don’t want to its fine I think it would be good. Stockholm’s syndrome and other ethics get discussed in there along with identity crisis from a herd pokemon.

Link for the benefit of others.

Okay, I want to say right off the bat that I don’t want to make a habit of this, just because it’s kinda time consuming and if I accept it in principle I’ll soon be reading every piece of Pokémon fan fiction on the internet, and seriously f$#% that (I’ll read the other one you sent me, though).

Anyway.

This is interesting.  There are some things I find very odd about it – the way Rapidash seems to imply, for instance, that Tauros are unique among Pokémon in their lack of individual sentience, or what exactly we’re supposed to understand is happening when Tauros learns language.  The narrator’s eloquence also seems very odd.  My ‘editor,’ Jim, read this and thought it sounded like a philosophy student’s creative writing assignment, which is a little blunter than I would put it, but a fair point; this Tauros sounds like a verbose and highly literate existentialist.  Given the level of self-awareness with which Tauros begins the story (i.e. none), even given the transformation that is the central theme, the narratorial voice is oddly poetic (the title, in particular, just feels unbearably pretentious), and the depth of vocabulary and sentence structure is a little jarring.  Sometimes the ability to write in a simpler register can be a virtue.  Having said that, this story raises some very interesting points about the reaction of Pokémon to training: that different species are inevitably going to be affected in different ways, that highly social Pokémon are likely to be confused and dismayed by separation from their communities, that Pokémon themselves may very well come to understand the intrinsic weaknesses of their own species compared to others and develop feelings of inadequacy as a result, and that gaining greater self-awareness and greater comprehension of other species and the world may not necessarily be a gift.  This last I particularly like, since I’ve always thought that this is something trained Pokémon especially gain over wild Pokémon, but never considered the possibility that they might resent the broader perspectives they’ve learned.  I like being shown things I haven’t thought of.

I find the Alakazam a particularly interesting character, as brief as his involvement is.  As the narrative points out, a wild Alakazam is an extreme oddity anyway, and it seems to me that an Alakazam who didn’t want to be captured would have little difficulty avoiding it.  I find myself very curious about what he was doing and why.

I like to say that, although I personally don’t see the Pokémon world in that way, if likening Pokémon training to slavery or otherwise presenting it in a negative light will allow you to tell a good story, then I’m behind you all the way.  This is a good example of why.