Since I’ve finally finished my “Pokémon Noir” fan-fiction, after allowing the first half to sit idly on my hard drive for the past three years, I’m deleting all the old notes that have accrued. Reading through them I found some things interesting to me that I wanted to post on my blog for the sake of posterity, before the notes are gone for good. This post will offer a glimpse into my creative process, which consists of conceptualizing, planning, outlining, scrapping, retooling, and then replanning over and over again until I’m satisfied. And, holy mother of God, looking at the dates on these documents it looks like this project is actually six years old rather than three. I really need to work on my memory skills… Why did I think it was three years old? I think I wrote the first half of the current product three years ago, but the idea for the story must be much older than that. That must be where my confusion comes from.
First, it turns out that I originally wanted “Pokémon Noir” to be a potentially never-ending series of loosely related, episodic short stories, rather than the novella it became. I had brainstormed ideas for crimes that Ash would solve in each episode, with the search for his mother being the overarching crime that drove the whole series. Each of these planned crimes made it into the final product, such as the drug Desire, which was originally called Glitter but which I renamed “D” as a nod to A Scanner Darkly, and the restaurant serving endangered pokémon, which was always a nod to that Tony Jaa film The Protector. It seems I dropped the episodic idea fairly quickly.
In one of the very earliest versions of the story, according to my oldest documents, Ash’s girlfriend was going to be named Danica and his mother was originally going to have been murdered by Team Rocket for her Mr. Mime. This prototype was going to have Ash and the Saffron Police working together to put Giovanni away for good by proving that he had committed a murder with his own hands. Jesse and James were going to get released from prison at one point, but they were still going to be the bumbling idiots they were from the show rather than the psychotic killers they became in the final version. Giovanni was to give them a trash assignment to get them out of his face. They were to kill Ash Ketchum. At one point, according to these notes, Ash was going to adopt a Growlithe from the local Pokemon Center to protect Danica while he was away from home.
This is embarrassing. Here’s how the story was originally going to open. I hope I’ve gotten better as a writer in the three years since I wrote this, but I doubt it. Reading this over, it seems like Ash was originally going to be an actual homicide detective working for the police rather than a private eye…
Detective Ketchum crouched beneath the yellow police tape stretched across the apartment door, following forensics and a police photographer. The apartment was small, one room combining the bed, kitchen, dining room, and even a toilet in the corner. No showering unit, public showers down the hall. It smelled like piss and menstrual fluid to Ash so he held a handkerchief to his nose as he gathered the details.
A man’s corpse lay against the wall just under the windowsill, blood caked between the wrinkles on his face.
“It’s Brock all right,” announced Ketchum, recognizing an old friend. The name of the vic caused a stir among the crowd of officers and scientists milling about the room.
A younger cop just out of school tapped Ketchum on the shoulder, and asked if it’s the same Brock who married the billionaire hotel heiress Elektra.
“It is,” said Ketchum. “This isn’t his apartment. Does anybody know who’s apartment this is yet?” Nobody in the room answered.
The body was reported in the morning by the tenant in the next apartment who complained of a smell. Based on the level of decay, Ketchum guessed his old friend’s time of death to be about a week ago. Cause of death, massive blood loss, brain trauma. He knelt besides the body with a penlight, for the room was quite dim in the evening, and lifted up the patch of bloody hair that hid the wound.
That young cop was following Ketchum, and said, “Blunt force trauma?”
“What’s your name?” asked Ketchum as he closed Brock’s eyes for the last time.
“Name’s Ness sir,” he said.
“Ness,” said Ketchum. “There’s a bagel shop across the street. Run over there and get me a bagel, yeah?”
“Yes sir,” said Ness, turning to leave.
“No sour cream,” said Ash.
The photographer knelt beside Ash with his flashbulb camera and took a close-up shot of the vic’s face.
“Did you know him?” asked the photographer as he adjusted his lens.
That was awful. Did I really name a minor character after Ness from Earthbound, or was it perhaps a reference to The Untouchables? I’ll never know.
After I reimagined the story, Ash became a private investigator, May became Ash’s live-in girlfriend rather than Danica, and he was planning to propose to her when the time was right, and Pikachu was still alive, though he had a tumor in his brain. The surgery to save Pikachu was far more than Ash could afford on his private eye budget and he was torn between pulling the plug or getting the money somehow. As well, Brock wasn’t a transgender at this point, but rather Ash’s best friend who often met with him at a local bar to talk over his cases. Brock was still going to die early in the series, according to these notes, as his murder was one of the crimes Ash was going to have to solve.
One theme that I had wanted to pursue which didn’t make it into the final product was Ash’s conviction that God and Pokémon cannot coexist. I would’ve had fun with that one. Also, according to these notes, I wanted to make it a point that Saffron City had a huge Rattata infestation to symbolize the pervasiveness of crime throughout my Pokémon universe. There were going to be Rattata extermination squads made up of kids who crawled through the sewers with flamethrowers. That probably wasn’t going to be a significant part of the story. I just thought it would be cool. Misty was going to have an abusive boyfriend from whom she was trying to escape by moving in with Ash. This act was to rekindle their old relationship and complicate things with May. Misty was also to be a chain smoker and a foil character to the purity that May represented. Brock was going to have an eye for May as well, though I’m not sure where I was going to go with that.
After I retooled the story, this next bit became the new introductory chapter, which more closely resembles the final version…
Scyther and Nidoran were having a go in what started like a friendly match but didn’t seem to stay that way. I had five centuries on Scyther for the second round knockout, having had in the past generally good luck with the bug types, and plus the tip that the Nidoran had a bum knee that would tip favor to the knifey bug.
The two pokemon stayed mostly at their own ends, strafing in circles with eyes locked, growling and drooling rabies. Their trainers stood on the platforms at either ends of the arena and barked orders over the howls and yips of a drunk and rowdy crowd. I hovered near the back of the dimly lit warehouse, where it was less dense with sweat and cigarette smoke, and close to my escape route.
Most people in the back, including me, stood on crates and stacked pallets to see the battle. I about tore up my bet ticket when the Scyther backed away toward his trainer like a wimp. The trainer reached for a pokeball, enlarged it, and seemed ready to withdraw the coward son of a bitch when Nidoran pounced at it and the retreat turned out a bluff. Scyther’s left claw, sharper than a shiv, swung out from below and caught the Nidoran under the jaw like a fish hook. Scyther and his trainer cackled as the blood dripped to the dirt and the Nidoran howled and ground its teeth. It squirmed and flopped around, its tail flailing, but the Scyther never pulled out.
When the Nidoran finally stopped moving, the whole crowd cheered. It was deafening even in the back. Even though I had reason to cheer, being five centuries richer than I was when I left the office, I kept to myself to draw the least attention to my face. Blend in, like a Bellsprout in a field of tulips.
There was another battled scheduled for right after and I considered either to cash in and bail out while I was ahead or place another bet but that might be pushing luck.
As I walked with my ticket to the cashier, my sixth sense started tingling. Something in the air changes when cops show up and if you train yourself well enough you can smell it sixty seconds before the door’s kicked inwards. I ripped my ticket in half and started back for my escape route, quiet and nonchalant so as to keep the rest of the rabble from getting wise and bottlenecking my exit.
The door led into a scrap yard behind the warehouse… a maze of old car parts and abandoned furniture. I’d scouted out the route the last time I was at the arena, and nobody else seemed the better for it. All mine. I ditched the sound of the arena and the smell of cancer and body odor, and a whole grand or two months rent, behind. Better luck next time, I thought to myself.
“Hold it there,” said a man in the dark. My eyes shot up and caught the glare of two flashlights, no faces. Back toward the arena, I heard gunshots and hollers as the boys in blue crashed the party. The cops had my out covered, and just attending a pokemon battle was enough for an arrest and a sharp pistol whip to the nose if you protest.
The cop said, “Hands in the sky or your obit in the paper.” I obeyed.
Then the other cop lowered his flashlight and raised his metal. Both their faces were in the dark to me still, so I just hugged the sky and anticipated the steel bracelets I love so much.
“No one’s around,” the other cop said. “Let’s ghost this cretin.”
“Gary,” I said. “You son of a bitch.”
“Little bit past your curfew, huh Ash?” said Gary as he holstered his Beretta.
“Just by a few years,” I said.
“You know this kidder?” asked the other cop.
Gary said yes and laughed because my hands were still reaching for clouds. I lowered them and Gary said, “Now run along little doggy and don’t let me catch you round these parts again or I’ll have to whip you something wicked.”
Gary and his partner’s attentions turned to the warehouse where red and blue lights bounced off the smoky air and stragglers had started to seep out despite the gunshots and skull-bashing.
“Got to catch ‘em all, right?” I said to Gary. Gary and his partner both brandished their nightsticks and nodded to me before disappearing into the black.
#
My name’s Ash Ketchum, and as of last night, I was broke. That five centuries I had was all that was left over from what the state paid me for my consulting on a murder. Luckily, I’d paid rent on the apartment before taking the rest down to the stadium. But damn, if the cops hadn’t shown up I’d have doubled my fortune and would’ve been sitting pretty for at least a month.
I got to my apartment around midnight, threw my duster, hat and holster on the coat rack, and dropped on the couch like lead weights were around my neck. Either from exhaustion or just plain depression from being so broke, I slept like an infant on morphine. So tired was I when I got home that I didn’t even check my answering machine, which is usually the first thing I do.
In the morning then, after a bowl of rice and a spring roll, I pressed play crossing all fingers that it was a client. It was May.
She said, “Um, where are you? You said you’d take me out to dinner tonight, and it’s already ten o’clock. It doesn’t matter. I guess you were busy at work. I’m sure you know that tomorrow is Friday. Do you want to go tomorrow? Call me if you do. Bye Ash.”
Ah for Christ’s sake. Of all things to forget.
I punched in her number and it rang a few times before she answered.
“Sorry, babe,” I said. “Something came up at work.”
“What came up?”
“Just following a lead is all,” I lied, and hoped she didn’t know I didn’t have any case at the moment and therefore no leads to follow. I changed the subject, “I don’t know if I want to go this week.”
“Why not?”
I couldn’t think of any clever excuse, and I definitely couldn’t use the same one from last Friday, so I just came with the truth, said, “Don’t think it’s wise.”
“Pikachu misses you,” she said solemnly.
After a long pause, I confessed that I’d been thinking of taking him off life support. It costs so much a month, and with business as slow as it is…
She started to sob. And if there’s one thing gets to me the most it’s a woman’s sobs. I wasn’t going to beg for her to stop, though. I’d made up my mind. Pikachu, after all, was my friend and not hers. It wasn’t May who traveled with the little lightning rat for years and had to put up with his stubbornness, but Ash, me, and it was my call how long to keep him alive.
“He’s just suffering the way he is now,” I said. I could hear May blowing her nose. I said, “I got to go.”
“And do what?”
“The other line is ringing,” I said. “Could be a client.”
“I thought you already had–” I hung up on her.
The other line wasn’t ringing. I didn’t even have another line, but she didn’t know that. I just can’t stand to see a dame cry.
Gag. Here’s another, slightly earlier manuscript I just found in which the scene immediately after Gary and Ash part ways is completely different and meant to highlight the city’s Rattata infestation rather than his strained relationship with May and Pikachu.
The streets were empty as a cemetery, and creepy as one, too. Ocean breezes from the south whistled between the buildings and Saffron City never felt so lonely. I crossed the street between two black cars, hands stuffed in the pockets of my duster, one of them holding steel because nobody walks alone at night unless they’re on the prowl and looking for easy cash, or stupid like me and staying up past bedtime.
Where I live is called Ono Apartments, on the third floor and across the street from a bar that reaches its maximum rowdiness around three in the morning. The volume is enough to sometimes make me want to shoot a few slugs into the building, just to see if I could hit any of the bastards by chance.
As I approached the stairs, cropped by bushes on either side, I was startled to see rustling in the leaves that wasn’t due to wind. With it not being exactly a secret where I call home, and with so many people in Kanto ready to ghost me at first chance, I didn’t know what to expect, so I drew the peashooter out of my coat pocket and threatened to let slugs escape if intentions weren’t stated.
“It won’t be pretty if you don’t show yourself,” I commanded. I moved just next to the bush, and stuck my pistol through the leaves. My finger almost pulled when a couple of filthy Rattata leaped through the leaves and scampered toward the sewer drain, glints of gold in their mouths and chains rattling against the sidewalk.
“Thieving bastards,” I muttered to myself. Rattata had a penchant for slipping into open windows, even so high as the second floor of this building, and slipping back out with old maidens’ jewelry. Cops say it’s because the rats are attracted to shiny objects, like little kids, but I know the truth. Pokemon can be just as dirty as people, if the conditions are right.
While the finished product became ten chapters long (eight chapters, really, with a brief prologue and epilogue) due to compressing concepts, I had previously plotted it out to fourteen chapters. According to this outline document, the conclusion was supposed to play out like this, and it isn’t too far from the finished version, though it takes place on the boat ride back to the mainland after Ash has won the tournament, and Giovanni has not been murdered:
Chapter 14: “The Ice Bitch” – On the boat on the way back, Ash has the briefcase full of money, and Misty. They’re about to make love when Jessie comes in, ready to kill them both. The tournament bit, that was for Team Rocket. It took so much will power to not kill them before, but now that they’re no longer needed… Giovanni doesn’t even need to know. She’ll just tell him that the two tried to escape and she had to kill. Ash and Jessie have a sword fight while Misty is tied in the hull. Ash and Jessie cut each other up but Jessie is the superior fighter. Ash manages to slash her across the back, and she falls overboard. Ash goes under to untie Misty. And Jessie attacks one last time, stabbing Misty through the gut. Ash shoots Jessie in the head. And has to put Misty back into a pokeball until he can get her to a hospital back on the mainland. She doesn’t want to go back in there… it’s like Hell. But Ash talks her into it, and she goes in. (Mirror the scene in Episode 001 when Ash talks the injured Pikachu into getting into the Pokeball.)
Apparently I had not planned an epilogue by this point.
And now that I’ve published all my notes, I can delete these files from my computer and never have to worry about “Pokémon Noir” again. I hope you enjoyed surfing my brainwaves as I relived the creative process, and if you want to read the finished story, click here.
is not an exit 