spiritual vs. mechanical
I love how people complain that Lance (or Falkner, or anyone) in the games has under-leveled pokemon and pokemon with attacks they can't 'officially' learn. Talk about getting hung up on technicalities; gameplay mechanics are only there in order to actually make the game playable, as a representation of a supposedly 'real' world. In a 'real'
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Ah, but that's just the thing--Lance having underleveled pokémon with illegal moves violates the internal consistency of the game world! It's a bit dodgy to compare stories and games in this way; remember that the story is just one element of a game, and the game mechanics are about on a level with story (or greater than it, some might argue) in most games. Mechanics of a game aren't really the same as mechanics in writing; mechanics in writing are rules regarding how you convey ideas so that others are able to understand them. The mechanics of a game are more like the physical laws that govern its world. So, Lance having "unobtainable" dragonite (lower-leveled than can be obtained by evolution) and a rock-slide aerodactyl, while not a huge issue, is really violating the laws that govern normal pokémon gameplay.
When you rationalize that it's okay for Lance to have these sorts of pokémon, you're going outside of the game in order to do so--because, of course, inside the game the law is clearly dragonite at 55, no rock slide for aerodactyl (in G/S, anyway). But the game world is not our world--it has its own logic, and while much of that may be at least based on our world, it exists under its own rules. When it violates those rules, it causes inconsistencies that bother people, just as people would be bothered if there were the occasional item on earth that suddenly was no longer subject to gravity.
Really, all the stuff in your first paragraph is fan interpretation; you're looking at your conception of the world and then trying to justify from that a logic break inside the game. But there are so many different interpretations that one could have--evolution levels vary according to nature? Well, no, I say that evolution is a sign of level, not the result--when your dragonite evolves (or starts attempting to), that's when you know, "Oh, I've reached level such-and-such." This interpretation could still fit within the framework of general pokémon canon, and yet Lance's dragonite would still violate it. Similarly, I can accept that aerodactyl can easily learn rock slide only if I accept your premise that pokémon attacks can be learned in the manner of martial arts moves, rather than being the manifestations of something heritable and ultimately inaccessible to pokémon without certain inherent characteristics.
But ultimately it doesn't matter, because we're arguing from outside the game. I think maybe you're having some kind of "law vs spirit" issue thing here, where people who complain about Lance's pokémon are following the letter of the law rather than the spirit of pokémon. But in the games the law is the spirit; there is nothing more to the world than what is explicitly in there. If you move out of the realm of the actual games, though, and talk about the "world of pokémon," then there's room for that kind of thing. But within the context of the game, that sort of stuff is out--pokémon do or do not learn certain attacks, and there's really no arguing.
It's not a huge deal, IMO; it's not like OHMYGAW Lance has crazy pokémon! Getting terribly worked up about it seems unreasonable. But complain about it? Sure. Consistency is very important for any world so that people feel that it is genuine, and ultimately so that they can get a grasp on it. Game mechanics are game mechanics, but a game is its mechanics, as much as it is its story or characters, so violating them is, in the context of the game, a fairly big deal.
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Putting it in the perspective of consistency isn't something I'd thought of before, strangely enough, but it makes sense, as does the refined 'law vs spirit' issue. I think part of it is my perspective: I don't tend to view the individual mediums as anything but a 'gateway' into the larger world of pokemon, so to speak, so the bells and whistles of the 'gateways' don't tend to seem quite as important--or at least, they're an opportunity (or 'proof') of a particular aspect which needs to be explained in terms of the 'spirit'. It reminds me of an issue in the fifth Harry Potter book, when the students go to Hogsmeade to organise an underground Defence club and Rowling accidentally placed a student there who was underage for visits to Hogsmeade. The HP Lexicon explained its stance as not so much looking at it as a canon error, but considering justifications for why it's like that. That's probably more in line with my thinking. I can't find the exact quote now though, gah.
That said, given that I do tend to confine my thinking about a specific medium to what's shown in that medium, I should work on at least being aware of the consistencies between those mediums, even if some don't seem like a particularly big issue to me. Come to think of it, overlooking that is probably a throwback from when I was a rampant canon-merger.
It's really not so much that it's a huge deal, it's just that I see the complaint around often enough without anyone attempting rebuttals, so ... decided to try my own? XD; Well, that worked well.
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