Butterfree
Admin
Website: The Cave of Dragonflies
Commenting on: 01-10-12

Sky: This is not a retelling of something that happened to me on an actual game. It does have elements derived from personal experience - I did ditch my first Butterfree in Yellow at level 28 after thinking it was the best thing ever when it beat Brock, and wanted to train it up again but never got around to it - but ultimately this is a piece of fiction about a real Pokémon trainer with a real Butterfree, not someone playing a video game, so asking what game it is or what level the Butterfree was doesn't really make sense. It takes place in Kanto, and the Butterfree was left on the PC at some unspecified point before the trainer battled Blaine. There is no game, and even if levels were to be interpreted as an in-world feature, I don't know the Butterfree's exact level any more than I know the names of the trainer's friends. They don't have any significance to the story, so why would I decide on something specific for them?



Butterfree certainly didn't enter the Hall of Fame the time the trainer went and became champion, and I don't think a trainer in the Pokémon world would actually keep battling the Elite Four over and over again after they're already the champion. I suppose the trainer might have gone on to other regions, or been de- and then rethroned, but it is doubtful the Butterfree battled, what with the whole not-battling thing, so no, it was probably not entered in the Hall of Fame.



Ymedron: Well, the story wouldn't be very interesting if the Butterfree were having a grand old time on the PC. :P



I don't really have a single consistent headcanon - the box isn't like this "for me" so much as it is like this for the purposes of this story, because this story is most interesting that way. You might as well tell J.K. Rowling "Well, I don't think magic works that way" - of course you can prefer different magic systems, but ultimately magic is fictional either way, and Rowling is nowhere claiming the Harry Potter system is The Way Magic Works, just that it's how it works in Harry Potter. My stories all vary pretty wildly when it comes to anything that pertains to the interpretation of the world (barring those that explicitly happen in the same universe, like TQftL and Scyther's Story/The Fall of a Leader); they each just use the interpretation that seems most interesting for that story. If I were to think up an interesting story sometime that would call for the PC to be like your interpretation, I'd write that.



Blastoise Fortooate: I'm kind of surprised by how many readers just see the ending as unambiguously happy. Here I was thinking people would think it's stupidly indecisive.



KuroRekkuza: I had a Haunter on my permanent team in Crystal, and I was actually devastated to find I couldn't cancel trade evolutions when I traded everything over to Gold so I could restart Crystal. It just wasn't the same when she was a Gengar. D:



Thanks for your kind comments, everyone. Man, this was a whole lot better received than I thought it would be. Maybe all the time I spent on it just made me jaded. Or that contest I judged just made me think way, way too hard about one-shots.

[12/01/2012 17:42:02]

Sky
Commenting on: 01-10-12

So, did the Butterfree enter the Hall of Fame or what? Is this FR/LG? What level was the Butterfree?

[12/01/2012 13:33:40]

Ymedron
Commenting on: 01-10-12

The butterfree-story made me cry like many of your past ones have. However, to me the pokemon box is such a different place as it is for you - I always think that the pokemon are on a great enclosure, training and eating and sleeping and having downtime.

But then again, Im rotating about five boxes worth of pokemon, so thinking that they all have to rot for months on end in a pokeball is very… Crushing to think about.







I was also expecting the butterfree to do something evil, but Im glad that for once there isn't any sinister things going on.

[11/01/2012 23:31:59]

Blastoise Fortooate
Commenting on: 01-10-12

Butterfree, you managed to make a story with a happy ending that is till somehow sad! This is an amazing accomplishment.

[11/01/2012 22:26:12]

KuroRekkuza
Commenting on: 01-10-12

This is absolutely beautiful… this makes you realize that Pokémon can be more than just a computer program, that you can truly be connected to them, like they're living beings.

It reminds me of my Haunter, just hanging in my PC until I'm able to trade him to evolution, because he hasn't been rising to the challenge of defeating trainers. But he's my favorite Ghost, so you know what, I think I'm gonna go train him and have fun, and he'll evolve when he evolves.

[11/01/2012 22:18:32]

DarklitZelda543
Commenting on: 01-10-12

I managed to get through the Elite Four for the first time thanks to my Butterfree. But I do recall having to swap out some Pokemon for HM Slaves, and I regret dumping mine in the PC for a good amount of time.



In reference to how the Butterfree in your writing normally didn't do well, my Butterfree is the same way, sadly, so much relation there.



Good job, keep on writing!

[11/01/2012 21:07:52]

Alex
Website: Not Entirely Incoherent
Commenting on: 01-10-12

That was fantastic. When I played through my copy of Leafgreen a while back I switched my Butterfree out for a Mankey or something like that, quite early on, and now I feel all guilty about it :( Really well written, thanks for posting it.

[11/01/2012 18:04:27]

guy standing behind you
Commenting on: 01-10-12

This is excellent. It really shows that there is a bond between the trainer and pokemon more than that of always trying to win. It shows that the Butterfree has feelings too.

[11/01/2012 01:31:22]

Butterfree
Admin
Website: The Cave of Dragonflies

Still Ten. Matt Smith is hilarious, but I really like Ten's relative humanity, and my absolute favorite episodes are all Ten episodes (Midnight, The Waters of Mars, and The End of Time), although The Girl Who Waited comes close. Moments like returning to save the Mars people anwyay and justifying it with an insane fit of megalomania, or his rant when he realizes he's going to have to die to save Wilfred, are the reason I like fiction, damn it.

[09/01/2012 22:37:37]

Yamiidenryuu

Oh, okay.



So which of the three new-Who Doctors is your favourite?

[09/01/2012 16:47:45]

Butterfree
Admin
Website: The Cave of Dragonflies

I've watched them too, but there was only time to watch the first four series (and the specials) in that single week. We literally finished The End of Time something like half an hour before I had to leave for my flight back to Iceland.



Then when I was home I picked up with series five with Shadey. And eventually rewatched series 1-4.

[08/01/2012 22:02:20]

Yamiidenryuu

You've only seen the first four new seasons? That means no Matt Smith! You don't know what you're missing, Butterfree.



(Oh hay and my spam Pokemon is a Butterfree too)

[08/01/2012 21:35:07]

Butterfree
Admin
Website: The Cave of Dragonflies
Commenting on: 01-01-12

As in what is a Week of Centrifuges and TARDISes, or what is a TARDIS? Assuming the former, since you seem to at least know it has to do with Doctor Who, basically I stayed at Dannichu's place for a week, where she showed me (most of) series 1-4 of the new Doctor Who, and I showed her ReGenesis (possibly my favorite TV show ever, which contains biological lab work montages that often prominently feature centrifuges). The centrifuges became something of an inside joke (we'd go YAAAAY CENTRIFUGE whenever one appeared), and on one of my last days there she drew me an absolutely wonderful picture of a Pikachu, a Butterfree, a TARDIS and a centrifuge, captioned "Dannichu + Butterfree's Week of Centrifuges and TARDISes".



So, in short, I'm afraid it was kind of a one-time thing. You should totally nab the concept and host a similar thing with your friends, though. Especially if you include the ReGenesis half.

[06/01/2012 05:01:24]

Frostagin
Commenting on: 01-01-12

Quote: .."Week of Centerfuges and TARDISes."

TARDISes.

What is this thing and how can I be involved? *wants to be involved with Doctor Who stuff*

[06/01/2012 04:24:04]

Butterfree
Admin
Website: The Cave of Dragonflies

The thing about mitochondrial DNA is that mitochondria used to be separate organisms, they replicate independently and mitochondrial DNA, as far as I know, affects only the structure of the mitochondria themselves. To propose that the DNA of organelles that used to be separate organisms like mitochondria is responsible for the whole appearance of the Pokémon seems pretty absurd. (Hence why I asked if there were examples of 'large-scale' inheritance only through the female line.)



Real-world definitions of concepts like species don't apply very clearly to the Pokémon world. The point of defining a species as a group that can interbreed is that for as long as the group can interbreed, they share a common gene pool and as such are meaningfully a unit. When Pokémon can interbreed with different Pokémon but always produce an offspring that is 100% the mother's species, that isn't what is happening; there is no meaningful mixing between, say, the Dragonite gene pool and the Salamence gene pool, even if they can breed (specifically, any mixing that occurs doesn't affect any of the factors that make an individual a Dragonite or a Salamence). So there is very definitively a meaningful sense in which no, Dragonite and Salamence are not the 'same species'; it's just not a situation that ever occurs in the real world (or, well, so I thought, anyway).

[05/01/2012 06:11:59]

Kevin

If the reference to inheritance through the female line was referring to something akin to the fact that Pokemon always hatch with the subspecies of the mother, I can think of one thing that, at least, sort of fits that.



That being Mitochondrial DNA. Mitochondria, the organelles, have their own DNA, and the DNA in any human (or most species, for that matter), is identical to the DNA in the Mitochondria of their mother [This is because Sperm have no mitochondria, but eggs do.].



Of course, Mitochondrial DNA is, I believe, non-coding, and, even if it does, relatively unimportant in terms of phenotype.



However, going back to Pokemon, it is very possible that the subspecies, which basically encompasses almost the entire phenotype, is inherited in this way by some other organelle.



Oh, and something else - I am officially referring to the different Pokemon as "subspecies". They could not interbreed if they were different species. Plus, being subspecies also explains the concepts of Egg Groups.

[05/01/2012 03:59:23]

Slix
Website: Poliwager
Commenting on: 01-03-12

Thanks so much for giving feedback on my site! I took it as a learning lesson, and actually already started going through pages and rewriting sections and fixing the things you pointed out to me, so thanks! Maybe someday in the future I'll send you another request. :)



Slix

[04/01/2012 23:18:21]

Butterfree
Admin
Website: The Cave of Dragonflies
Commenting on: 12-29-11

Bleh, that post I made earlier makes no sense now that I reread it. BASICALLY: Yeah, I'm not really into epigenetics, but I thought I knew enough for the very vague description I was going to put there to make sense without specifically looking into the particular mechanisms that would be at work, which I guess it didn't. Also part of what I wrote in the explanation in the fan theory guide was really weirdly worded and implied the actual sequence of the paternal genome was changed, which probably didn't help.



The earlier guestbook post sounds like I'm defending this theory on the basis that theories don't need to make sense to someone with a more intimate understanding of the field; that was meant to be a response to the final "does it matter if someone well-versed in a subject will recognize a theory as nonsensical" question, not the comments about my theory in particular. If, indeed, Pokémon inheritance can make perfect sense with normal Earth genetics, then my theory is very silly and obviously way overcomplicating things, and I'm very intrigued because genetics fascinate me and I've never heard of anything like that in real life. So if you were to throw some examples my way I'd be overjoyed.



Hope that made somewhat more sense.

[04/01/2012 19:53:09]

Butterfree
Admin
Website: The Cave of Dragonflies
Commenting on: 12-29-11

Ultimately, since there is no actual reality to be discovered behind how governments/Pokéballs/genetics/etc. work in the Pokémon world (i.e. the creators almost certainly didn't have some specific educated idea in mind), and these are sufficiently complex things that any explanation posed will be pretty wildly speculative, I don't think it's especially productive to look for the explanation, or generally anything other than "well this is how *I* think it would work". When you get to that level, the best a theory can do is fit with what we observe, and there's no guarantee any possible theory could fit with what we observe while at the same time making perfect scientific (or economic, etc.) sense. It becomes a matter of trying to turn Pokémon's fantasy world into science fiction, essentially. Of course one theory can be simpler and more plausible than another, and most theories can definitely be improved by someone who knows more, but I can't help feeling just about any theory explaining the more fantastic elements of something like Pokémon is bound to be unconvincing to someone very intimately familiar with the real-world science at hand.



Or, while more research is always better than less, it strikes me as pretty futile to strive to make fan theories about something like Pokémon satisfy people with a greater education in the relevant academic fields. Because it wasn't created to make scientific sense in the first place, there's only so far anyone is likely to go in making sense of it after the fact.



All that said, I'm very interested if there are actually organisms where something like Pokémon's inheritance system actually exists. Are there examples of something like that large-scale inheritance-only-through-the-female-line in nature?



I tried to be vague on things like the mechanism by which genes are 'activated' or 'marked' as moves are learned, both because I'm not intimately familiar with epigenetics personally and because it struck me as unimportant precisely how it happens, so specifying it would just needlessly complicate an already pretty overcomplicated theory (I also didn't want to specify whether Pokémon's genetic material is DNA or something else, so talking about mechanisms specific to Earth cell chemistry would have been odd). But my admittedly cursory understanding of epigenetics was that the epigenetic processes that would be involved here could more or less be described as 'marking' particular genes, and that's also how I understand the Wikipedia article you linked. If I'm way off on that count, or if my wording is completely absurd given a more extensive knowledge of the subject, please correct me.

[04/01/2012 18:52:54]

Negrek
Commenting on: 12-29-11

I find it kind of hard to keep track of the guide without pictures, especially the step-by-step explanation of how germline cells are formed.



It's kind of hard to talk about what would be plausible or implausible about this system of inheritance without getting down to "well this is how *I* think it would work," and there are plenty of real-life organisms with systems of inheritance that get roughly this crazy. At the same time, though, there are ways similar problems have already been solved by organisms that live here on earth, so your system ends up looking pretty strange and complex by comparison. Chromatin remodeling would be a plausible explanation for the way that moves are inherited (does your system account for the fact that level-up moves can also be inherited, but only if *both* parents know them?), for example. I dunno, I don't really want to be like "go out and do a ton of research on high-level topics for your pokémon fantheories," but it would really make what you came up with ring more true, I think.



Perhaps that would be something to address in your fan theories guide? It's fun to speculate about things like how the government of the pokémon world might operate or the technology behind pokéballs, but unless you happen to know a lot about government or theoretical physics/engineering you're probably going to come up with something that would look pretty strange, if not outright wrong, to someone well-versed in those areas. Or would you say that's not important?

[04/01/2012 08:44:01]