New region... old Pokémon. Why!?

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New region... old Pokémon. Why!?

I've seen this in fanfiction a lot over the years: "This story is set in (insert brand new non-canon region here), but there are no fakémon, just the canon 151/251/386/493/however-many-we'll-have-in-5th-gen." Honestly, this really bugs me. For two main reasons.

1: The only reason it's like that is because the writer dislikes fan-made Pokémon, or (even worse) they're afraid that others who dislike fan-made Pokémon won't read the story just because they made up a few new ones.

2: Because it makes absolutely no freaking sense for a brand-new region that's miles upon miles away from Kanto, Johto, etc. to have the exact same Pokémon.

Think about it. In real life, the critters within one country will be pretty consistent as long as the terrain and climate are pretty consistent (with some only showing up in certain parts of that country, but the more common ones all over.) But when you go across the ocean or over a mountain range to some other place, everything changes. There might be similar bugs/birds/fish and other common critters, but other than that the populations of critters will be completely different. You're not going to see elephants in Australia or kangaroos in the African savannah, for example, though some of the common bugs and birds and fish might look very similar.

So yeah, it's realistic for something widespread like Rattata or Pidgey or Magikarp to pop up in new regions. Or maybe the new region is the original habitat for something that only rarely shows up in PokéJapan, like Bulbasaur. They don't show up in the wild anywhere in PokéJapan, but they had to come from somewhere. And of course, if a Pokémon was likely created as a result of human activity (like Voltorb or Grimer), they can probably show up just about anywhere.

But the chances of a completely-seperate-from-PokéJapan region having nothing else aside from the canon 493? Pretty much zero, unless the native Pokémon were all wiped out and replaced with introduced species at some point in the past.

Basically... If you want to write using only the canon Pokémon, just set your story in one of the canon regions. If you want things to be different than they are in the games, put it in a different time period! Look how much changed in Kanto just in the three years between R/G/B and G/S/C--Cinnabar was wiped off the map, the Unknown Dungeon's entrance collapsed, the power plant is operational again, somebody chopped down Viridian Forest, and the Pokémon Tower is now a radio tower. And of course, the gym leaders aged, and one of them even moved up to the Elite Four and got his wimpy daughter to take over for him in the gym back home.

Or if you really want to set up a new region with old Pokémon only, at least come up with an explanation that makes it actually work, like my "native Pokémon were wiped out by introduced species" example above. Or at least put your new region VERY CLOSE to one of the canon regions so it's at least somewhat realistic that they have the same Pokémon. I'm just tired of seeing "this is hundreds of miles away from Kanto... but miraculously, it still has all of the same Pokémon!"

 

[Phoenixsong]

Re: New region... old Pokémon. Why!?

You seem to be forgetting the spin-off regions. Admittedly at least Almia is probably very, very close to Sinnoh, so a similar selection there is realistic, but Orre is quite far away from pretty much anywhere else and what wild pokémon selection they do have is nothing new; there is also no indication of fantabulous species completely unknown elsewhere that have vanished off the face of the earth now that Orre is devoid of wild pokémon. And where is Fiore, or this Oblivia place? A region is never named for Trozei (I think... never played it), but assuming it isn't one of the others then what about its pokémon selection?

I would also argue that making up a pokémon "just because the region isn't the same" is stupid. You shouldn't make up some fakemon purely as filler to satisfy people who are nitpicking about realism. (Those are, in fact, primarily the fakemon that people will complain about!) And if your story doesn't require new pokémon but really is best set in a new region, why force it? As someone who attempts to make decent-quality fakemon on a regular basis, the last thing I want to see is people being encouraged to make up something stupid and irrelevant; depending on the level of detail you want to go into it can also be time-consuming, and that effort would probably be better spent beefing up the story itself.

Case in point--I'm working on a story that I feel is best set in a few new regions, as I deliberately want to avoid any relation to the canon locations. I like making up fakemon, but they are entirely unnecessary for this story and I don't want to shove them in there just because (though I did consider it briefly). Now, I'm not going to c/p the Kanto pokédex and say "this is exactly what you can find in Actarias"; I sat down and chose species based on what would naturally appear in these regions' climates, and I did take most of the "cosmopolitan" species into consideration. That's still realistic enough for my purposes and is what I feel suits the story best.

Long story short, as long as the region is well-made and the story is well-written, it's good enough as it is and there's no real reason to get all worked up over creative license. Fakemon should only be included if the author actually has a reason to include them and can make them believable; otherwise it's just as bad as a region with an "unrealistic" selection of canonmon. A logical explanation for the selection is nice (and I think this is a stronger argument to push than telling people that they should cram fakemon into their fanfics), but really, who's it going to kill?