Gotta Write ‘Em All! A Written Role Call

[WildBoots]

Many players of the main line games or Pokemon Go aim to collect a “living ‘dex”: one of each pokemon in their storage boxes, in order. This is your place to show up your written (or illustrated) ‘dex, a log of each pokemon appearing in your fanworks. This is more than a fun way to procrastinate–it’s a way for fans of underrepresented pokemon to find fics that showcase their favorites.

You can show off two categories of pokemon representation here:

1. Caught!

Any major appearance. If your story technically contains a pokemon but the level of detail would not be enough for you to recommend the fic/chapter to a fan of that pokemon, you probably have not caught that pokemon.

Indications that you may have caught a pokemon:

• It’s a named character
• It takes part in a battle
• It has dialogue
• Its presence changes the outcome of a scene
• You’ve invented original lore for it

1. Seen!

This is for quick mentions and throwaway references, anything that doesn't fall under the category of caught.

Indications that you may have seen a pokemon:

• It’s not a named character
• It’s part of the scenery
• It’s a photo or a drawing seen by another character
• It’s used as an expletive, pun, or figure of speech
• If you covered up the species name, there would be no other way to guess which pokemon it was

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Folks writing sprawling epics will have massive dexes. Let's see who's the closest to completing the National Dex or a Regional Dex!

This is just for fun, so there’s no penalty for making a mistake about pokemon you’ve caught and seen in your fics. Just do your best! Your mileage may vary.

You can represent your dex in any way you like, whether it's a high-effort post filled with sprites or just a list of names, but you might find it easiest to use a tool like Pokedex Tracker.

 

[WildBoots]

I've CAUGHT 76 pokemon, or 6.6% of the national dex. I've SEEN an additional 122 pokemon, another 11.3%. So my national dex has 198 pokemon in it and is 17.9% complete. :o

Surprising no one, a lot of those are Hoenn pokemon, lol. Surprising me, a lot of my favorites aren't here! We'll see if that changes in 2025. :)

 

[Venia Silente]

Oooooh man!

This sounds interesting but it's gonna take a while to cough up some coding skills and get a good metric on what mons are SEEN or CAUGHT from either my local writing docs or the (semi)official listing, because I have to account also for which mons are named / relevant in published loredocs, and which named characters are currently named for flavour but don't have a role onscreen or offscreen so far.

Sounds like an adventure!