INDIA FIGHTS CASTEISM: The Pokémon Sanctuary Project

Thursday, 28 March 2019

The Pokémon Sanctuary Project

Alola! Welcome to my new writing project!

I've been a Pokémon fan since I picked up Pokémon Red in 1998 just before my 18th birthday. Over the years, I have toyed with the idea of building a comprehensive Pokémon zoo of sorts. It's a huge undertaking that grows with every passing generation of Pokémon game that adds more Pokémon to collect. I've started and failed a few times over the years to create a comprehensive collection of Pokémon to carry forward into future generations.

The closest I came was in a Pokémon Emerald run I did in 2008 (roughly). I'm not sure if those creatures are still on a copy of Emerald, or stored in the Ruby/Sapphire Box on some Gamecube memory stick somewhere. I may try to hunt them down in the future, but for the purposes of this project I'm starting from scratch, and I'm starting where it all began. I'll be playing through the Virtual Console version of Pokémon Red.

I'm going to be documenting this journey in the form of a serial narrative. I hope to upload a short story every week as I progress through Pokémon Red with my created character, Fox, who aspires to be a world renown Pokémon collector and zoologist. In order to make his story more interesting to read, I will also be doing the initial playthrough as a Nuzlocke Challenge that I will detail below. As I handle the writing, my brother will be doing some original art for the series to spice up the adventure. I hope this will make the experience fun and interesting for personal friends and Pokémon fans alike.

The Nuzlocke Challenge

Any Pokémon that faints must be released.
Only the first Pokémon encountered in each area can be caught. No second chances.
All Pokémon will have personalized nicknames to make them more endearing.

These are the basic rules of the challenge and speaking retrospectively they really make the early game quite challenging and intense. I've never had more tense encounters in an RPG in my life. In addition to these rules, I have also decided that (for the sake of the narrative) I will not be using a starter Pokémon. The challenge starts for me when Fox catches his first Pokémon on Route 1 and then trades away the Charmander he used to catch it. I've run from all battles before that point and just rushed to a point where you can catch your Pokémon. So Rattata or Pidgey (no spoilers! don't look at the episode title!) will be the first and only Pokémon on my team leaving Route 1.

Addendum: I will not be catching an HM Slave. All HMs will be taught to actual members of the team unless I hit a roadblock. If the path forward requires an HM that I absolutely cannot teach without catching a new Pokémon, then an HM Slave may be caught. If that occurs, that Pokémon will only exclusively be used for the HMs and never for battle, but I will be trying to avoid this at all cost. Having one of four battle moves taken up by an HM adds to the challenge, but I won't accept it as a loss if I get to an impasse due to HM nonsense and am forced to catch an extra Pokémon.