(This is my first time posting a comment with the new updates so... ack.)
I have been frequenting TVTropes a bit more frequently than usual, but I'd like to think that it isn't enough to ruin my vocabulary. I chose "high-octane" because that's an adjective that is usually used to describe spectator sports and the like, which is what battling is to a lot of the population.
I never really described Team Rocket as "kind," even for villains. Whenever the grunts did things like that, I always chalked it up to them being incompetent. That being said, I guess that this TR in general is a lot more... competent? And I think a big part of that is that they all have goals that they want to accomplish, hence the "profit-seeking backstabbers" bit. The organization does have loftier goals than that, but yes, a lot of the members themselves have selfish motives. So I guess that would make them most like the Special-verse TR.
This chapter was very much an info dump. I had huge problems with it and curbing some of the information to make it readable. Unfortunately, as I've become extremely preoccupied with world-building, I'm finding it difficult to reach the happy medium between making this universe as whole as possible and ruining the flow.
Ironically, Green, Red and Domino do take mandatory history lessons in Act III. No info dump there, though. I'd originally tried to contain most of the info dump needed to establish the state of Kanto politics and history to this chapter so that future chapters could get anything in with dialogue and offhanded descriptions. Still, I'd find Green reciting mandatory history lessons to be exactly the kind of scene you pointed out was a problem here: characters talking just to present in-universe facts. I used a conversation with Giovanni to, yes, provide context for increasing social contact between them, but also to provide some insight into what Giovanni's motivations and philosophies are.
As for making them talk about family issues, I'm not quite ready to make that jump yet. The Giovanni-Green relationship is based more in business (at least to Green) than personal connection. Yes, he's like a "father figure," but the context their relationship develops in is strictly business-like. Giovanni finds it easier being "fatherly" with Domino, but that's because she's been around longer and was taken in as a toddler, basically (all these Domino backstory facts come up next update).
Green has only been there for about six months or so, most of which Giovanni had no contact with him. At this point, it's not going to happen for Giovanni and Green. I envision the Boss as finding it hard to be both a "father" and the "Rocket Boss," which is my explanation as to why he and Silver have such a strained relationship. He can't express affection or openness easily, so most of his interactions with these kids take the the tone of him talking with subordinates. The most affection he expresses is approval of them doing well or allowing them to sit in his office doing nothing while he works. But thank you for the suggestion - more openness between Giovanni and Green does develop later.
Unfortunately, Part 2 is an even bigger info dump than Part 1. I'm working on a way to curb that, which is one of the major reasons as to why I split this update into two parts.
I see what you mean about the rubies, though in retrospect I believe I have only used it once before (when I described the blood on Archer's arm after Eevee bit him in Act I). Still, you're right. I should vary my descriptive diction a bit more.
I'd never actually given much thought to scene decompression. I have not received formal instruction in writing yet, as the program at my university is application-only and I haven't gotten around to applying yet, so there are times when these terms and techniques are lost on me. That being said, I do appreciate what you said about that scene in particular; when you called attention to it, I did realize that it was decompressed. I'll be sure to pay more attention to things like that in the future, especially since I'll be writing more action scenes and pokémon battles in the future.
Thank you for your comment! It's always great to hear from you!
If TR refuse passage to the player when we're out of money it would be normal/formal. If they were evil they'd beat the player up before/after refusing. Instead they took pity on the player being poor and let the player pass anyway. I mean, in real life, if you go on a bus and doesn't have enough money to pay the fare, you'd get kicked off. Yet those two Team Rocket grunts let you pass instead of kicking you out and force you to take the dangerous tall grass route. That's pretty kind to me.
Believe me, it's entirely possible to have both the flow and the world-building.
Oh no, history lessons do not have to be characters talking just to present facts. Maybe you had this impression because your classes were boring, but believe me, it's possible to make a lesson much more interesting than that. And in the context of presenting history in a world of Pokemon, landwalker did it pretty well in his Yellow Nuzlocke (look it up). All the pokemon of Red came out of their balls and gathered around Red and the lesson was like a night-time story by a bonfire. It also accentuated the pikachu's personality/role as the mentor/caretaker and established the charmeleon's personality as a geek. It also twisted into a tragic moment, but that's another story. In short, it did its job of presenting in-world facts and at the same time made it a socialising/bonding ceremony between the characters AND shed light on the characters' personality via that. A very emotion-charged scene. Granted, that was a comic so holistic presentation was far easier, but I'm sure that you can do that with just text too.
If you want an example of how flow still works even with a ginormous world-building and bucket-loads of info-dump, try Terry Pratchett's books (maybe you have already read some?). If you don't know where to start, you can start with Equal Rites. Warning: Pratchett's sense of humour is very... dark.
You see, from what I see, the world-building is the bones of a story. The characters are the flesh. The events are the blood. The first is solid, the second is somewhat flexible and the third is fluid. What you are doing in this chapter is putting the bones in the foreground. Picture a human with bare bones outside. Doesn't it look wrong? Very. A bone should be between pieces of flesh, and the flesh is nourished by the blood. In story terms, a world has characters and characters live between streams of events. The bone is solid. It doesn't move. The flesh and the blood move. The bone is there. You see it under the flesh and the blood. When you see a calf, you will know there's a tibia under it because you see it and its shape under the skin and the flesh. There's no need to take it out (unless you are forensic or something and need to study it in detail, but that's the equivalent of a scholar and science magazine articles, not a writer and creative fiction). What I mean is that the world-building should be inserted between scenes about characters and events. Not the other way around. Ok, maybe in an info-dump chapter, but the flesh and the blood must be there and be felt by the readers. You have to make us feel more for the blood and flesh than for the bones or at least equally. Never more bones than flesh. That's a skeletal monster. Or a science/professional magazine article.
Nah, I wasn't talking about Giovanni acting more fatherly with Green, I was thinking if Giovanni would talk to Green about Samuel Oak and how organisation, reputation and power come before family. But I guess more openness could work too.
I don't like when motivations and philosophies are expressed over dialogues. Humans are liars. Even when humans are not intending to lie, they still lie via denial and confabulation. It isn't hard to find people who won't stop saying how good they are while abusing people or mean-looking people who claim to be bad secretly caring about people and want to help. Actions say more about philosophy and motivation than words. When a person expression opinion via words, I always doubt if it's really what he or she thinks or just something that was said because it "must" be said. Of course, affirmation or contradiction of verbally expressed philosophy via actions is always welcome. But if it's just or mostly via words, I won't buy it.
You only use rubies when you talk about the colour red and you haven't used much red. In fact, you haven't used much colours in general. This fic is a monochrome gray (you use relatively more black and white than other colours) most of the times. It does add to the gritty feeling and accentuate the red, but if you didn't intend this you could add more colours. Blue would be good.
And why so many scenes are indoors? You are not filming this, you don't need to wait for the weathers or anything. You won't save budget by making them all indoors/planes/elevators. I think you are doing this to convey the ambience, the suffocating feel, the claustrophobia and how those people are like wild animals in cages ready to be released and cause havoc or something. That would be good. But it'll be good to have a outdoor scene as contrast in one or two parts out of like thirty. Too many you'll cancel out the gray, but one or two will accentuate the gray. And just being outdoors won't do, it must be felt.
It's not like I have received "formal" instruction in writing. If you want to learn about something, school won't be enough. School is a jumping board you use to know the jargon and the passwords. Once you know the jargon you do a research and you learn it from your peers and on the Internet. And you've read my writings, I'm not a good writer, I'm just an amateur fiction-taster. I like feeling. I like reading and creating those images, to transform information and attempt to understand them. Writing is hand in hand with, not just reading, but feeling, experiencing. I know that you do that too, as in the Red fic you told me how you tapped into part of you to write about Red's depression. I don't want you to get lost and forget about this. Writing takes talent and effort. I'm not sure if I have the talent, but you seem to, so I want you to succeed and via this wish I'm making my share of efforts too. I'm trying to learns the secrets to writing and pass them to those who want to know. Many people say "there's no magic trick, just work hard", but that's not just it. They already have the skills so they are not aware of them. Skills do require tricks and talent. The tricks, as much as I know, are some kind of unconscious-consciousness of things. It's working the theories in a way they become muscle-memories. It's called procedural memory in psychology. As my teacher puts it, it's countless memories about the same subject, piled into the thickest cylindrical lens you know and looking from it. It's not just about time and repetition, but piling them in a way you can see through them. I cannot help you with time and repetition, but sure I can try to help you pile them. And pile my own memories.
(I think I read too much shounen manga. What's with that spontaneous pep talk? brb, facepalming.)
That doesn't change the fact that they were illegally charging a toll in the first place. This is fundamentally different from a bus driver or someone in a similar position (who owns, or works for someone/thing that owns, the means of transportation) and therefore has a right to charge the person for its use. Those grunts did not build that gate. They do not own that gate. They were using their superior numbers and gang affiliation to strike fear into the passerby and extort money from them. That is not kind to me, even if they decided to give the player a "free pass" through the gate in the event that they did not have enough money.
Then again, we're arguing about the actions of the "villains" in a game that was developed for children. Of course they aren't going to beat the player up, which is a moot issue considering that when any other grunt has tried to beat up the player, he/she just defeats them in a pokémon battle. Not to mention that in real life the villains wouldn't stop trying to achieve their goals just because a ten-year-old defeated them in a battle. I would assume that they would have a Plan B. Like a firearm.
I never said that it was not possible. I know it's possible. I just said I was having a bit of a hard time finding a balance. That being said, I do intend to focus on world-building a great deal, because I want to make it so that this piece has a story running through every layer. While I have indeed stated that this is a story about two children and how their experiences with a criminal organization changes them relative to their other childhood friend, this is also a story about the nation they live in. I am aware that treating this universe's Japan as "the flesh" in your analogy is unfeasible and clunky, so I am trying to strike a balance between characterizing Green, Red, Leaf, Giovanni and company and developing the world around them, which is very much integral to the plot.
This fic is contained to indoor scenes at the moment because Green and Red are confined to Rocket HQ, ostensibly against their wills. You did put your finger on why the scenes are monochrome and what-not. Since the previous updates have been working toward creating an immersion for the reader in Team Rocket that mirrors what is happening for the boys, there has not been much of an emphasis on what is going on outside the walls of Rocket HQ. Still, there are other characters like Leaf and Professor Oak, and though it might seem like it, I have not forgotten about them.
I think one of the hardest parts about writing a long-fic with multiple installments (and it being a work-in-progress) is that while the writer knows where everything is going and has the holistic experience, from beginning to end, in his head, the reader does not. While this installment is more drab than its predecessors, I can assure you that this is not going to be the tone for the rest of the story. I can also say that this is essential to the story. How I went about introducing it to the reader may have been heavy-handed and boring, I know. In fact, I believe this is the gist of what you are trying to convey to me.
So no; I have not forgotten that writing is about more than dumping loads of information onto a reader's plate. Trust me, I have not. Given that this is a long-fic, however, and that its ultimate purpose and impact has to encompass more than what kettering or armistice day did, things need time to develop. If I laid them out now, I can assure you that they would not feel as intense as they will when I get its foundation laid out. Again, I know that in laying out this foundation I may be presenting it in a manner that is too cut, dry and bare, so I am trying to rectify my errors by editing Act II (Part 2) before I post it to my journals and FFN.
I do appreciate what you are saying. Trust me, I do. I can only hope that I can improve enough to write at or beyond a level that amazing writers like Terry Pratchett do, or produce writing that evokes images like the comic does visually. Because I know for a fact that I am nowhere near that level yet, ha ha.
True, a toll isn't usually extracted in a gate like this, but they had more or less conquered the town. It was their gate now. The gate was there so people can cross the field without running into wild Pokemon. It was still a service. They did not build it, but they owned it for the time they had it. This might not be a good example, but North America was populated by the Natives at first. Then foreigners drove them into reserves and took over the land. Then they charged immigrants that came later, like the Chinese, "head tax" for living in this land. It was only near Y2K that the tax got removed. Both money are charged for using a land that the current owners did not own at first. Both are used for the owners' survival. A country needs money to stay alive. TR needs money to stay alive. The people using the land need it. It's a survival thing. It's the desire to expand and prosper. It's not evil by itself.
Hey, Silver did punch/kick/throw the player in the same game. TR had the same potential. They just couldn't because the player had their Pokemon ready most of the times. When Silver hit the player, the player didn't have his or her pokemon yet. In the gate, the player was caught by surprise and wouldn't have the time to get the pokemon and TR there didn't know that the player is strong at pokemon battle. They could've decked the player in the face because they wouldn't know they'd have their ass handed to them once the player gets his or her hands on a pokemon. Yet they didn't.
Firearm? My pokemon can spit fire for no extra charge, but bullets cost money. Firearms aren't efficient in that world. And do your guns make baby guns that grow into big guns by themselves? No. Pokemon do. They need long-lasting, low maintenance weapons. Therefore, Pokemon and whips and maybe rocket launchers. It's more economically efficient. I suppose high-ups might have firearms, but grunts might not get such privilege. Equipping all these grunts with guns and constantly provide ammunition cost money. Make them equip themselves with wild beasts and have them earn their own food money is cheap and highly profitable. And the high-ups are pretty honourable, thankfully for the protagonist, so even if they do have guns they won't use it on a kid.
Giovanni? Like I said before, I suspect he saw a son in Red and wanted to play fair with him. Red was special to him. In HGSS, in the Celebi event, at first he wanted to ignore the protagonist and just go back to TR, but then he saw the protagonist's face and said something like "your eyes... just like him..." before doing the same fair bet again. If the protagonist didn't remind him of Red, maybe he would shoot him/her if pressed too much. But it didn't go that far.
Because of how all this happened, I can affirm that gameverse TR are Lawful Evil. They are evil, but they have standards rules that the decided to follow, no matter the consequence. The TR you see is more of a Chaotic Evil or Neutral Evil, mostly Neutral Evil. While they bear the same names, they do not have the same alignments. Yes, I can see that you see the game TR as incompetent for not having a plan B, but keep in mind that they have never run into trouble before the player came around, so they didn't have any mistake to learn from. In Pokemon Special, nearly all gym leaders, some with their personal armies, who are not already TR are actively fighting against TR, so they had a lot to learn in order to stay alive and powerful and more ruthless. The kinder/less competent grunts just cannot survive in that world as a TR, so all that are left are at least Neutral Evil.
Good, because I'm getting a claustrophobia fatigue and it's getting less effective... A movie with its entire story indoors is just 3 hours long. Because of decompression, your fic is already giving me the impression of something longer than that and it's lessening the ambience-feel. Others might get the fatigue later or sooner than me, but from my pacing if you don't show other colours by Act V it's going to be feel-less.
Edit: I'll trust you on that one and at least wait till the end of this fic to give a final judgment (as in, a final rating of the strengths and weakness of the writing). Notes: (Sorry, Freudian Slip because of mid-sentence idea change.)
I have been frequenting TVTropes a bit more frequently than usual, but I'd like to think that it isn't enough to ruin my vocabulary. I chose "high-octane" because that's an adjective that is usually used to describe spectator sports and the like, which is what battling is to a lot of the population.
I never really described Team Rocket as "kind," even for villains. Whenever the grunts did things like that, I always chalked it up to them being incompetent. That being said, I guess that this TR in general is a lot more... competent? And I think a big part of that is that they all have goals that they want to accomplish, hence the "profit-seeking backstabbers" bit. The organization does have loftier goals than that, but yes, a lot of the members themselves have selfish motives. So I guess that would make them most like the Special-verse TR.
This chapter was very much an info dump. I had huge problems with it and curbing some of the information to make it readable. Unfortunately, as I've become extremely preoccupied with world-building, I'm finding it difficult to reach the happy medium between making this universe as whole as possible and ruining the flow.
Ironically, Green, Red and Domino do take mandatory history lessons in Act III. No info dump there, though. I'd originally tried to contain most of the info dump needed to establish the state of Kanto politics and history to this chapter so that future chapters could get anything in with dialogue and offhanded descriptions. Still, I'd find Green reciting mandatory history lessons to be exactly the kind of scene you pointed out was a problem here: characters talking just to present in-universe facts. I used a conversation with Giovanni to, yes, provide context for increasing social contact between them, but also to provide some insight into what Giovanni's motivations and philosophies are.
As for making them talk about family issues, I'm not quite ready to make that jump yet. The Giovanni-Green relationship is based more in business (at least to Green) than personal connection. Yes, he's like a "father figure," but the context their relationship develops in is strictly business-like. Giovanni finds it easier being "fatherly" with Domino, but that's because she's been around longer and was taken in as a toddler, basically (all these Domino backstory facts come up next update).
Green has only been there for about six months or so, most of which Giovanni had no contact with him. At this point, it's not going to happen for Giovanni and Green. I envision the Boss as finding it hard to be both a "father" and the "Rocket Boss," which is my explanation as to why he and Silver have such a strained relationship. He can't express affection or openness easily, so most of his interactions with these kids take the the tone of him talking with subordinates. The most affection he expresses is approval of them doing well or allowing them to sit in his office doing nothing while he works. But thank you for the suggestion - more openness between Giovanni and Green does develop later.
Unfortunately, Part 2 is an even bigger info dump than Part 1. I'm working on a way to curb that, which is one of the major reasons as to why I split this update into two parts.
I see what you mean about the rubies, though in retrospect I believe I have only used it once before (when I described the blood on Archer's arm after Eevee bit him in Act I). Still, you're right. I should vary my descriptive diction a bit more.
I'd never actually given much thought to scene decompression. I have not received formal instruction in writing yet, as the program at my university is application-only and I haven't gotten around to applying yet, so there are times when these terms and techniques are lost on me. That being said, I do appreciate what you said about that scene in particular; when you called attention to it, I did realize that it was decompressed. I'll be sure to pay more attention to things like that in the future, especially since I'll be writing more action scenes and pokémon battles in the future.
Thank you for your comment! It's always great to hear from you!
Reply
Believe me, it's entirely possible to have both the flow and the world-building.
Oh no, history lessons do not have to be characters talking just to present facts. Maybe you had this impression because your classes were boring, but believe me, it's possible to make a lesson much more interesting than that. And in the context of presenting history in a world of Pokemon, landwalker did it pretty well in his Yellow Nuzlocke (look it up). All the pokemon of Red came out of their balls and gathered around Red and the lesson was like a night-time story by a bonfire. It also accentuated the pikachu's personality/role as the mentor/caretaker and established the charmeleon's personality as a geek. It also twisted into a tragic moment, but that's another story. In short, it did its job of presenting in-world facts and at the same time made it a socialising/bonding ceremony between the characters AND shed light on the characters' personality via that. A very emotion-charged scene. Granted, that was a comic so holistic presentation was far easier, but I'm sure that you can do that with just text too.
If you want an example of how flow still works even with a ginormous world-building and bucket-loads of info-dump, try Terry Pratchett's books (maybe you have already read some?). If you don't know where to start, you can start with Equal Rites. Warning: Pratchett's sense of humour is very... dark.
You see, from what I see, the world-building is the bones of a story. The characters are the flesh. The events are the blood. The first is solid, the second is somewhat flexible and the third is fluid. What you are doing in this chapter is putting the bones in the foreground. Picture a human with bare bones outside. Doesn't it look wrong? Very. A bone should be between pieces of flesh, and the flesh is nourished by the blood. In story terms, a world has characters and characters live between streams of events. The bone is solid. It doesn't move. The flesh and the blood move. The bone is there. You see it under the flesh and the blood. When you see a calf, you will know there's a tibia under it because you see it and its shape under the skin and the flesh. There's no need to take it out (unless you are forensic or something and need to study it in detail, but that's the equivalent of a scholar and science magazine articles, not a writer and creative fiction). What I mean is that the world-building should be inserted between scenes about characters and events. Not the other way around. Ok, maybe in an info-dump chapter, but the flesh and the blood must be there and be felt by the readers. You have to make us feel more for the blood and flesh than for the bones or at least equally. Never more bones than flesh. That's a skeletal monster. Or a science/professional magazine article.
Nah, I wasn't talking about Giovanni acting more fatherly with Green, I was thinking if Giovanni would talk to Green about Samuel Oak and how organisation, reputation and power come before family. But I guess more openness could work too.
I don't like when motivations and philosophies are expressed over dialogues. Humans are liars. Even when humans are not intending to lie, they still lie via denial and confabulation. It isn't hard to find people who won't stop saying how good they are while abusing people or mean-looking people who claim to be bad secretly caring about people and want to help. Actions say more about philosophy and motivation than words. When a person expression opinion via words, I always doubt if it's really what he or she thinks or just something that was said because it "must" be said. Of course, affirmation or contradiction of verbally expressed philosophy via actions is always welcome. But if it's just or mostly via words, I won't buy it.
Reply
And why so many scenes are indoors? You are not filming this, you don't need to wait for the weathers or anything. You won't save budget by making them all indoors/planes/elevators. I think you are doing this to convey the ambience, the suffocating feel, the claustrophobia and how those people are like wild animals in cages ready to be released and cause havoc or something. That would be good. But it'll be good to have a outdoor scene as contrast in one or two parts out of like thirty. Too many you'll cancel out the gray, but one or two will accentuate the gray. And just being outdoors won't do, it must be felt.
It's not like I have received "formal" instruction in writing. If you want to learn about something, school won't be enough. School is a jumping board you use to know the jargon and the passwords. Once you know the jargon you do a research and you learn it from your peers and on the Internet. And you've read my writings, I'm not a good writer, I'm just an amateur fiction-taster. I like feeling. I like reading and creating those images, to transform information and attempt to understand them. Writing is hand in hand with, not just reading, but feeling, experiencing. I know that you do that too, as in the Red fic you told me how you tapped into part of you to write about Red's depression. I don't want you to get lost and forget about this. Writing takes talent and effort. I'm not sure if I have the talent, but you seem to, so I want you to succeed and via this wish I'm making my share of efforts too. I'm trying to learns the secrets to writing and pass them to those who want to know. Many people say "there's no magic trick, just work hard", but that's not just it. They already have the skills so they are not aware of them. Skills do require tricks and talent. The tricks, as much as I know, are some kind of unconscious-consciousness of things. It's working the theories in a way they become muscle-memories. It's called procedural memory in psychology. As my teacher puts it, it's countless memories about the same subject, piled into the thickest cylindrical lens you know and looking from it. It's not just about time and repetition, but piling them in a way you can see through them. I cannot help you with time and repetition, but sure I can try to help you pile them. And pile my own memories.
(I think I read too much shounen manga. What's with that spontaneous pep talk? brb, facepalming.)
Reply
Then again, we're arguing about the actions of the "villains" in a game that was developed for children. Of course they aren't going to beat the player up, which is a moot issue considering that when any other grunt has tried to beat up the player, he/she just defeats them in a pokémon battle. Not to mention that in real life the villains wouldn't stop trying to achieve their goals just because a ten-year-old defeated them in a battle. I would assume that they would have a Plan B. Like a firearm.
I never said that it was not possible. I know it's possible. I just said I was having a bit of a hard time finding a balance. That being said, I do intend to focus on world-building a great deal, because I want to make it so that this piece has a story running through every layer. While I have indeed stated that this is a story about two children and how their experiences with a criminal organization changes them relative to their other childhood friend, this is also a story about the nation they live in. I am aware that treating this universe's Japan as "the flesh" in your analogy is unfeasible and clunky, so I am trying to strike a balance between characterizing Green, Red, Leaf, Giovanni and company and developing the world around them, which is very much integral to the plot.
This fic is contained to indoor scenes at the moment because Green and Red are confined to Rocket HQ, ostensibly against their wills. You did put your finger on why the scenes are monochrome and what-not. Since the previous updates have been working toward creating an immersion for the reader in Team Rocket that mirrors what is happening for the boys, there has not been much of an emphasis on what is going on outside the walls of Rocket HQ. Still, there are other characters like Leaf and Professor Oak, and though it might seem like it, I have not forgotten about them.
I think one of the hardest parts about writing a long-fic with multiple installments (and it being a work-in-progress) is that while the writer knows where everything is going and has the holistic experience, from beginning to end, in his head, the reader does not. While this installment is more drab than its predecessors, I can assure you that this is not going to be the tone for the rest of the story. I can also say that this is essential to the story. How I went about introducing it to the reader may have been heavy-handed and boring, I know. In fact, I believe this is the gist of what you are trying to convey to me.
So no; I have not forgotten that writing is about more than dumping loads of information onto a reader's plate. Trust me, I have not. Given that this is a long-fic, however, and that its ultimate purpose and impact has to encompass more than what kettering or armistice day did, things need time to develop. If I laid them out now, I can assure you that they would not feel as intense as they will when I get its foundation laid out. Again, I know that in laying out this foundation I may be presenting it in a manner that is too cut, dry and bare, so I am trying to rectify my errors by editing Act II (Part 2) before I post it to my journals and FFN.
I do appreciate what you are saying. Trust me, I do. I can only hope that I can improve enough to write at or beyond a level that amazing writers like Terry Pratchett do, or produce writing that evokes images like the comic does visually. Because I know for a fact that I am nowhere near that level yet, ha ha.
Reply
Hey, Silver did punch/kick/throw the player in the same game. TR had the same potential. They just couldn't because the player had their Pokemon ready most of the times. When Silver hit the player, the player didn't have his or her pokemon yet. In the gate, the player was caught by surprise and wouldn't have the time to get the pokemon and TR there didn't know that the player is strong at pokemon battle. They could've decked the player in the face because they wouldn't know they'd have their ass handed to them once the player gets his or her hands on a pokemon. Yet they didn't.
Firearm? My pokemon can spit fire for no extra charge, but bullets cost money. Firearms aren't efficient in that world. And do your guns make baby guns that grow into big guns by themselves? No. Pokemon do. They need long-lasting, low maintenance weapons. Therefore, Pokemon and whips and maybe rocket launchers. It's more economically efficient. I suppose high-ups might have firearms, but grunts might not get such privilege. Equipping all these grunts with guns and constantly provide ammunition cost money. Make them equip themselves with wild beasts and have them earn their own food money is cheap and highly profitable. And the high-ups are pretty honourable, thankfully for the protagonist, so even if they do have guns they won't use it on a kid.
Giovanni? Like I said before, I suspect he saw a son in Red and wanted to play fair with him. Red was special to him. In HGSS, in the Celebi event, at first he wanted to ignore the protagonist and just go back to TR, but then he saw the protagonist's face and said something like "your eyes... just like him..." before doing the same fair bet again. If the protagonist didn't remind him of Red, maybe he would shoot him/her if pressed too much. But it didn't go that far.
Because of how all this happened, I can affirm that gameverse TR are Lawful Evil. They are evil, but they have standards rules that the decided to follow, no matter the consequence. The TR you see is more of a Chaotic Evil or Neutral Evil, mostly Neutral Evil. While they bear the same names, they do not have the same alignments. Yes, I can see that you see the game TR as incompetent for not having a plan B, but keep in mind that they have never run into trouble before the player came around, so they didn't have any mistake to learn from. In Pokemon Special, nearly all gym leaders, some with their personal armies, who are not already TR are actively fighting against TR, so they had a lot to learn in order to stay alive and powerful and more ruthless. The kinder/less competent grunts just cannot survive in that world as a TR, so all that are left are at least Neutral Evil.
Good, because I'm getting a claustrophobia fatigue and it's getting less effective... A movie with its entire story indoors is just 3 hours long. Because of decompression, your fic is already giving me the impression of something longer than that and it's lessening the ambience-feel. Others might get the fatigue later or sooner than me, but from my pacing if you don't show other colours by Act V it's going to be feel-less.
Edit: I'll trust you on that one and at least wait till the end of this fic to give a final judgment (as in, a final rating of the strengths and weakness of the writing).
Notes: (Sorry, Freudian Slip because of mid-sentence idea change.)
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