Pokémon Star of The Show

[DawningWinds]

About a day ago, a lost Cosmog was attacked by a trainer and her Umbreon.


Episode Zero

XXX

Casting Call


Scene X

The Cosmog looked at the trainer, then at her PokéBall, then at her Pokémon. Umbreon. This was not good. Cosmog was told to avoid trainers, but what had she done? Floated right into one's leg. Of course.


"Ean, Bite!"


Powerful teeth crunched into Cosmog's side painfully. Cosmog flinched in pain.


"Ean, Assurance!"


Cosmog tried to move, but she was too slow. She bounced uselessly, knowing that she couldn't do much else. The trainer threw the PokéBall, trapping her inside. If only she was stronger, or faster(or knew Teleport)! Maybe then freedom would be attainable!


Cosmog slammed her whole body into the PokéBall. Again, and again, until she heard it click and knew she was trapped. Cosmog sighed. If only she could break a locked PokéBall.


"Ean, look, we finally caught it! We have our star of the show, now we just have to get back to the studio and record! Cosmog, come out!" Cosmog felt the locked ball being lifted and spinning. The trapped Pokémon thought she was going to be sick, but she also knew she couldn't easily be.


The PokéBall opened, and a weird light appeared around her as it dragged her out, enlarging her to normal size. It was really awkward to feel her size change so quickly.


"Ean, Cotty, Gleme, Vanil, Shard, Dral, Deci, Lux, Rio, meet the star of the show: Lula!"


Cosmog looked at the nine Pokémon. Umbreon, Slurpuff, Glameow, Vaniluxe, Sandslash, Exadrill, Luxio, Decidueye, and Riolu.


The Riolu patted Cosmog. "That's you, nebula. You're Lula now. I'm Rio."


Wait-Cosmog had to get this straight. Rio was Riolu, though, and now she was supposed to be Lula?! Cosmog couldn't be Lula because she was Cosmog, right? And when and if she evolved, she would be Cosmoem, not Lula. And when and if she evolved again, she'd be Sogaleo or Lunala, not Lula. She didn't want to deal with this madness.


"Lula, come on!" the trainer smiled.


Cosmog hesitantly floated behind the other Pokémon. She had to travel for at least an hour. Then, the trainer abruptly stopped at a large grey building in a town. Cosmog had always thought most buildings in Alola were much more colorful.


The inside wasn't any brighter. And there were so many floors, it bothered her that she couldn't take the floating box. Riolu(who insisted upon being called Rio) explained that the elevator(apparently the ‘official’ name for the floating box) was currently broken.


“All right, Lula,” the trainer said when they were finally stopped, “I suppose I should explain a few things. First, I am no ordinary trainer! I create television about Pokémon, so I get a special I.D. that excuses me from all trainer battles I do not want to participate in AND I get the freedom to carry as many Pokémon as I want! But not when I go to battle. That wouldn't be fair. If I battled with all ten of you, I think I could be arrested."


That was good to know; she probably wouldn't be batting.


"Second, I cannot understand a word you say, so please do not attempt to talk directly to me. Any questions should go to Deci."


That was a useless bit of information, what kind of Pokémon thought humans could understand them? And who was Deci?


"Third, you don't have to worry about delivering your lines! I've got voice actors hired, and they'll do the talking! But, I need you to do as I say through this," the trainer tied a black piece of ribbon around Cosmog's ear. "You Pokémon will hear me, but the cameras won't."


"Fourth, the other ribbon is for the cameras," the trainer tied another black ribbon onto her other ear. "That, everybody hears."


"Fifth, you're the hero, and Rio is your sidekick. Dral, Ean, and Deci are the villains."

 

[DawningWinds]

Cosmog cannot stand this acting, and is still confused. First, Riolu wants to be called Rio, then her name is supposed to be Ara. Why can't this trainer, Ruin, make up her mind?

Episode One

Cozzy and Ara- A Journey Begins!

Lula Sucks At Acting


Scene One




Take One

"Lula, you're training with Rio, use Splash!" the trainer, whose name turns out to be Ruin(such a terrible name, her brother got Salvation, apparently) shouts into her ear.


"Go easy on me, Ara," the ribbon shouts.


"I always go easy on you, Cozzy," Riolu's necklace answers.


Cosmog tries her best to look excited about the battle as she bounces up and down, and Riolu used Blaze Kick, purposely missing before landing a force palm. The look-like-you-can't-go-on step is easy for Cosmog as she falls to the ground.


"Cut!" Ruin shouts into her ear.




Break


"You suck, Lula," Luxio tells her. "Cozzy is supposed to love battling, and anyone can see that you were terrified."


"Great, got it, Luxio. And please stop calling me Lula. It's Cosmog."


"I'll call you Cosmog like you want to be if you call me Lux."


"Lux. Fine."


He nods back.




Take Two


"Lula, Splash!" Ruin shouts. During break, Lux had helped Cosmog understand what was going on. Apparent, trainer are weird and give their Pokémon nicknames. Still, stubborn she was, she continued to tell the luxio to call her Cosmog.


Cosmog jumps, trying to act excited. Riolu attempts a Blaze Kick that would have missed anyway, but Cosmog dodges to the side in time to take a Force Palm, and drops on her back.


"Cut!" Ruin shouts into her ear. Her name definitely suits her, Cosmog decides.




"That was only half bad," Lux tells her.


Cosmog smiles back.

 

[Umbramatic]

Oh no, this poor Cosmog! Gen 7 gave us an intresting bit of lore in that some Legendaries can start off small and helpless, and you've captured this Cosmog's feelings pretty well here. I like that they're so utterly confused by the concept of human names.

The main criticism I have... I'm kinda the pot calling the kettle black here but you transition between scenes and locations fast. Real fast. With little indicator they're transitioning at all in that first chapter (the "takes" in the second chapter make this a bit better). Try to slow down a bit, give us more to savor, give us some line breaks or something.

But so far this is a good start. I am definitely wondering what our little Cosmog protagonist is going to get up to.

 

[kintsugi]

Hey! I stumbled upon this from Review Roulette and found a lot of interesting concepts here! Cosmog, pokestudios (maybe?), some pokemon/human relationships, characters acting out fiction while also not expressing themselves--lotta clever ideas floating around that I liked seeing opened up here.

I think the setup here is fascinating, and I do feel bad for our resident pew-pew friend. Ruin speaks with such conviction and so casually when she tells Lula Cosmog that she's not going to understand Cosmog, so it's not worth even trying. To me that says a lot about this trainer-pokemon relationship--it immediately becomes less of a friendship and more of a transactional exchange. I thought that was a really interesting dynamic to have in the background of acting/performance, since a lot of that also revolves around projecting fictional versions of yourself in exchange for money while people don't actually get to know the real you. Poor Cosmog!

Speaking of Cosmog, I found myself wanting to know more about what she thinks, why she goes along with these things. You set up early that she's very passive because she's so smol and isn't a big sun/moon god yet, but I still wanted to know what she was thinking of doing even if she wasn't going to do it.

Cosmog slammed her whole body into the PokéBall. Again, and again, until she heard it click and knew she was trapped. Cosmog sighed. If only she could break a locked PokéBall.

For example, there's a big emotional shift here--slamming her whole body into the pokeball feels very visceral, very intense! It definitely gave me the image of someone who doesn't want to be there. But then she quickly accepts defeat--the word "sigh" feels very casual, like, oops, forgot to buy eggs, sigh--so then I thought maybe she was excited to go meet a new trainer? But that doesn't seem to be the case either; she does dejectedly follow Ruin around.

And this is something I struggle with in writing fanfic as well! A really weird question is always--what do I do with a pokemon who doesn't want to be caught? How should I write them? I don't think there's really a right or wrong answer here, but I do think it's important to spend a bit more time understanding what Cosmog thinks about this situation, and make sure that what Cosmog thinks matches up to what Cosmog does. It's one thing to sit there and think about how much she hates acting and how confusing all of this is, but then would she do something about it? Try to float away? Refuse to act? Make sad pew pew sounds and not stay in the bag? I think there are a lot of options here, but I wanted to see a bit more of Cosmog's choices in this--otherwise the story feels very passive.

Chapter 2 had a good example of this, I think! I liked the conversation between Cosmog and Lux because we get to see two different angles of this. Lux is happy to be with Ruin, and chooses to accept Ruin's nickname over their own name, and Cosmog doesn't! But they get to talk it out and come to respect each other for it. I was really interested in Ruin's other pokemon, since a lot of them seem very proud to belong to Ruin, and I'm curious to see if they'll have different thoughts moving forward, if they'll change Cosmog's mind, what they think about all these acting shenanigans, etc.

Riolu(who insisted upon being called Rio) explained that the elevator(apparently the ‘official’ name for the floating box) was currently broken.

Parenthesis are a weird type of punctuation mark in that they should be spaced out, like:

Riolu (who insisted upon being called Rio) explained that the elevator [...]

The look-like-you-can't-go-on step is easy for Cosmog as she falls to the ground.

oh nooo! Poor baby.

Apparent, trainer are weird and give their Pokémon nicknames. Still, stubborn she was, she continued to tell the luxio to call her Cosmog.

These two sentences seemed to be missing a few words?

There were some clever details in here as well that I didn't know where else to bring up--I liked the idea of ribbons being used in place of speech, since that helps direction and staging, and it goes back to that interesting question of befriending/working alongside people who can't talk to you. I didn't really get why the ribbons are necessary for the cameras, though, because usually that would get dubbed in later anyway?

Still! A lot of really interesting thoughts here, and a lot of things I'd be interested in seeing fleshed out in more detail. Hopefully Cosmog and Ruin can reach an ending that satisfies them both!