It's not necessarily the mons themselves, is the thing.

Mission Start! by Scapegrace and Iximaz on 2015-06-30 17:40:00 UTC Reply

It's not often we see outright trollfics on the Board, it's rare that we see badfics so lazy they're literally one paragraph long, and still rarer that we see Admiral Pansy. But fear not, my friends, because Doktor Trollenfisch und Gabrielle are here to help with all these things and more! Brevity: Not Always The Soul Of Wit is available for your reading pleasure.

TW: MUTILATION

And how sad is it that this fic is about eighty words in length and STILL requires a trigger warning? =]

Some very delayed thoughts. by PoorCynic on 2015-07-12 20:35:00 UTC Reply

I quite liked this! Both agents are very enjoyable, with Trollenfisch being particularly notable. Their reactions to the piece were most understandable. The dramatic turn at the end, however, felt out of place. Maybe I need to go back and more closely read their other mission (which I most definitely will do now).

I will say that the actual mission part of this (as short as it was) fell prey to the issue of sounding more like a MST than an actual mission. Their responses were almost all dialogue. It would have been nice to see some actual physicality beyond the little that was shown.

There's also a sizable PPC continuity error in this piece. Admiral Pansy has been previously written with an exaggerated accent (as seen here and here), which is completely missing in this appearance. This was also stated on his wiki page, which is why it always pays to check those first before writing up one of the PPC shared characters.

So yes! Very nice! Hope to see more with these two in the future.
PETA will be all over this one... by OrangeYoshi99 on 2015-06-30 21:47:00 UTC Reply

Who would even think of doing that? That's cruel... Oh look there's no N on the N key on my keyboard anymore. Huh.
D'aaw... by Tira on 2015-06-30 20:11:00 UTC Reply

Poor Gabrielle. Who would be so mean to such a cute little Pokémon? I'm glad she has Doktor Trollenfisch to help her out. I'm also impressed with your ability to use a mission to a ridiculous trollfic to invoke such strong emotions.

Well, Flareon in Gen 1... by Iximaz on 2015-06-30 20:30:00 UTC Reply

Wasn't exactly the best. It was primarily a physical-based attacker, even though in Gen 1-3, Fire was a Special type. Couple that with a horrible movepool and a jerk trainer... yep. Cuteness doesn't win battles. ~~even though it totally should~~

Cuteness totally should win battles! (nm) by Tira on 2015-06-30 20:36:00 UTC Reply

If I can field this one? by Scapegrace on 2015-06-30 20:27:00 UTC Reply

Who'd be mean to Gabrielle? Competitive players, basically.

Flareon is, in terms of competitive play? Preeeeeeeeetty much garbage. Indeed, it is valued less than Garbodor, who is quite litterally (hahaha) a pile of discarded refuse. Flareon's cute an' all, but it doesn't have the bulk (or typing) necessary to use Guts effectively and Flash Fire's completely useless on a physical attacker. Flareon is classified as PU-tier on Showdown, which is the tier below Never Used. They're rubbish.

So a new competitive player in need of a Fire-type winds up with a Flareon... and chucks it in the box to rot as soon as they get something better, which is basically anything.

And that's how you get Gabrielle's horrifying self-esteem issues.

Well, I don't know much about competitive battling... by Tira on 2015-06-30 20:38:00 UTC Reply

As my performance in the PPC Pokémon tournament probably demonstrated. Heck, I refused to evolve my Torchic in Ruby because I didn't like the way Blaziken looked.

At least Gabrielle is at the PPC now, where she can make some friends and start feeling better about herself.

It's not necessarily the mons themselves, is the thing. by Scapegrace on 2015-06-30 21:00:00 UTC Reply

It's more the trainer. If you think that you're only ever going to win if you have the Bestest Best Pokémon Ever, that says a lot more about you as a trainer than it does about your team. I got to the final with a team that's entirely Rarely Used- and Never Used-tier; you build your team around synergies and core competencies. Tempest, Gabrielle's trainer, didn't really understand that. So he waited until he got Uber Fire-types like Ho-Oh and went from there.

Simply put, Tempest is the kind of person who doesn't like lower tiers because the mons are bad and you can't brute force your way to victory. =]

((Longtime viewers may find it weird that I got 6-0d by Alex in the final. The answer is rather prosaic. Trust me. =] ))