the thing about writing fantasy stories is that language is so based on history that it can be hard to decide how far suspension of disbelief can carry you word-choice wise – what do you call a french braid in a world with no france? can a queen ann neckline be described if there was no queen ann? where do you draw the line? can you use the word platonic if plato never existed? can you name a character chris in a land without christianity? can you even say ‘bungalow’ in a world where there was no indian language for the word to originate from? is there a single word in any language that doesn’t have a story behind it? to be accurate a fantasy story would be written in a fantasy language but who has the time for that
Tolkien had the time apparently
LIsten. Linguistics Georg, who invented over 10,000 conlangs each day, is an outlier and should not have been counted.
so this one time, I had a great idea for pokemon fic.
It was basically about this older gruff jaded trainer who finds a little kid wandering around the route, calling for his fearow. Like little tiny babby’s first time training trainer.
So he asks the kid ‘Yo kid, you lose your starter or somethin’?”
Kid: “Yeah, it’s my fearow, he flew off after some raticate and now I can’t find him.” Older trainer’s like goddamn, who gets a kid a fearow as a starter?
“Your parents uh get you that fearow?” Cause he’s gonna have some words with this kids parents if that’s the case. Kid’s still like looking in trees and bushes and shit.
“No, caught ‘em myself out by the powerplant, saved up and bought the greatball myself and everything!” Kid’s super proud of that, meanwhile the older trainer’s thinking, weird, there’s no fearow out by the power plant, meh, maybe one flew there by accident.
Long story short, it’s not a fearow. A storm front rolls in and the kid’s like, ‘welp, there’s my fearow. Finally.’ Older trainer gets the heart attack of his life when fucking zapdos lands next to this kid out of a goddamn thundercloud and starts preening little kid’s hair.
“That’s not a fearow.” Is the only thing older trainer can say.
“What are you blind or something mister?” Says the little kid. “He’s got the spiky fearow feathers and everything. I can’t believe you call yourself a trainer. Come on Fearow, let’s go find a real trainer to battle.”
!!!!!! that is /excellent/ Yes please.
One of the ideas was to have team rocket show up and menace them, and have ‘fearow’ show up to strike thunder god fear in their hearts for scaring its trainer.
The other idea is kid gets an igglybuff as their second pokemon and everyone assumes the iggly is their only pokemon.
“Oh no, mr iggles isn’t for fighting.” Kid says. “That’s what I have fearow for!”
They are the worst best trainer ever, because zapdos would fly this kid to the moon if they asked because they are a precious little bundle of naïvety and joy. But kid only wants to beat up other trainers for candy and poffin money.