Pokemon Fan Fiction ❯ The Forgotten Son ❯ Final Thoughts ( EndNotes )

So, the story's over. But I feel like there are a lot of things people may have missed, so I've compiled some Endnotes for you to eat up. Enjoy, as you might find something out that you hadn't noticed before.

 

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Motif and Theme-

 

By the end of the story, Luke has come full circle; that much should have been obvious. I tried to use some more subtle means to make that clear, though.

 

The last sentence of the epilogue, you'll find, is copy and pasted from the first sentence of the prologue. Aside from that, I also made a clear connection between Giovanni's murder of Griffe's cyndaquil and Luke's murder of feraligatr; both were Johto starters, and both were killed by being crushed twice. And, they were both Griffe's. In an earlier draft I actually had Griffe recount the story of his encounter with Giovanni to Luke, but later made it so that Luke never actually heard it; I wanted Luke's actions to be more ironic and imitative.

 

I used eyes to connect Griffe, Luke, and later Giovanni—I stuck to a handful of adjectives. “Icy, sharp, dark, evil, cold, piercing,” etc. Giovanni, Griffe and Luke share distinctive eyes, once again making it clear that Luke has become a part of what he'd originally wanted to avoid.

 

It's a shame that early on when I started writing this I wasn't as competent a writer, so I never really established any motifs or themes. I ended up putting together a lot with the last handful of chapters. I did try to connect back to earlier scenes that hadn't been intended as motif, though; I used a lot of “falling” imagery as well as a lot of “darkness,” to characterize Luke's fall from innocence; compare his fall into the slowpoke well, his journey in the Mortmain mountains, his fall from the radio tower, and his venture to the Goldenrod underground.

 

And as a small Easter egg of sorts, I actually included a teeny-tiny biblical reference in the epilogue. If you browse it (or do a simple `ctrl+F' search) you might be able to find a couple numbers in classic Chapter:Verse format that's commonly used to reference the Bible. As for the book I referenced, it's one of the four Gospels. If you know the names of the four Gospels, it should be painfully obvious which one I used.

 

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Character Analysis-

 

Luke-

Luke is somebody I have grown to hate over time. I started The Forgotten Son after a bad break-up mostly to relieve emotional stress and of course it came out very angsty. Luke more or less became a symbol for my own inner weakness following that. I feel like he always came dangerously close to me, which I regret heavily. In previous works I invariably accidentally made a Mary Sue- a character who was too powerful for the story's own good. Luke was a bit of an overcorrection for that, at least at first.

 

This really started to become a problem when I finally got over myself. It made writing a lot harder because I had to keep up Luke's persona without sounding mocking or condescending. I'd always wanted Luke to make a full circle, but when I became too fed up with it I re-wrote the ending so that Luke could have a sudden snap earlier on and spend the rest of the story kicking ass.

 

So, he ended up being a character whose deepest inner grief came from a power struggle. Luke felt weak and abandoned and unrecognized, and as a result he eventually lashes out against his oppressors to prove that he can be strong. Of course, he takes it too far and the story ends with him having become, ironically, his own father.

 

I don't know if you realized, actually, but at the end, Luke is something of a water pokemon master; Kenshin is his only non-water type pokemon at the end; even in the epilogue the only new acquisition on Luke's team I bothered to reveal was water-type. That was on purpose, to mirror Giovanni's earth-based team.

 

You should be happy to know that originally I planned to have a joke ending; Luke would meet Giovanni in the Goldenrod underground instead of Griffe, and the story would end with the line “Luke, I am your father!” I was cracking up at the prospect when it first came to me. That's where Luke's name came from.

 

 

Kenshin, Woop, Miltank and Magikarp-

Kenshin was a bad idea from the start. I put him there because at the time I liked treecko, even though he really just didn't belong with Luke at all. I ended up using him as a driving force to push Luke into battle, but I still feel I could have picked a better pokemon. His story was embarrassingly bad at first; he thought he was a samurai because he watched too much Ruroni Kenshin. God, I'm ashamed even to bring that up again. For those who did not read the eventual update, I later changed it to him just being a bloodthirsty treecko who was left in Luke's care; Luke abandoned him, but he never left.

 

Woop was there to counteract Luke's depressiveness. By the time Woop made his way in the story was just getting way too needlessly angsty. He also becomes a mindless supporter of Luke, following him whichever oath he takes; giving him the confidence to move forward every time.

 

Miltank was another bad idea. She was good for Luke, but her anti-battling really hurt the plot later on. She really does end up becoming a useless waste of space. I feel like I should have killed her off earlier on. Her abandonment did make for a nice bullet point after Luke's turn to the dark side, though.

 

Magikarp ought to be really, really obvious. At the beginning, Luke is like a magikarp. At the end, he's like a gyarados. This isn't rocket science.

 

 

Griffe and Ken-

These two trainers, the Gold/Silver/Crystal rival and hero, respectively, were meant to be opposing forces on Luke's development as well as keep the story tied in the the Gold/Silver storyline. The alteration between time with Griffe and Ken went on for a while until eventually Ken stopped showing up at the right place and right time, and Griffe did. You could say that in the end Griffe's mentality won out as a result.

 

Griffe sort of ends up pulling a “reverse Luke” at the end; right around when Luke starts to take charge, Griffe shrinks back and at the end Luke leaves him, emotionally wrecked. I imagine that should it continue Griffe would adopt miltank, finally get it to fight and we might have gotten to see some interesting clashes between brother and brother as Luke slowly climbs to the top of team rocket.

 

 

The Blade Master/Karate King-

While not connected at all by the plot, I feel they both turned out to be just about identical. Cliché, with a dumb title to boot, they overpower Luke with their high-level pokemon and give him something to strive for. The Karate King in particular spends a vague amount of time with Luke so that when he emerges from the Mortmain mountains he's ready to actually win a fight or two. And toward the end Luke and Kenshin conquer the Blade Master by putting an end to their bickering.

 

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