DUDE I WAS LITERALLY READING THIS AND WAS LIKE "wow TC would really like this concept, I should go tag them" AND THEN COMPLETELY FORGOT YOU TAGGED ME
Hi for context I just got home from sudden rainfall and still out of it from coding for like 4 hours straight.
ANYWAYS SMALL INFODUMP TIME!!!!!
(Edit: I just finished writing my infodump. It was in fact not small.)
I really like the concept of different Pokemon "moves" having small differences to each other or are just interpreted as upgrades of previous moves. It's pretty confusing to explain through words so let me explain this through an example.
Let's say moves like Ember and Flamethrower are considered two different moves in the Pokemon universe, however if we think about it there isn't really any difference except for Flamethrower being a stronger Ember. If you think about it, that's precisely what moves are; Pokemon moves are skills these mons learn and master as they train and grow in combat. It's not like we as humans learned self-defense such as taekwondo or karate or different martial arts off the bat, we evolved from just simply punching things for survival (and eventually we could argue tools as well such as spears and etc), so same applies with Pokemon.
And while we're on the topic, let's go to physical moves:
Tackle, Body Slam, Take Down, Slam,
Cut, Night Slash, Fury Cutter, Psychocut,
Bullet Punch, Elemental Punches, Mega Punch,
We can argue that these moves are all practically the same with one another, it's just that Pokemon use the power of their own nature/species to train themselves to mix it up a bit, which leads to new moves being made in the wild.
I guess some moves can be specially trained rather than found out in the wild with the help of humans and Pokemon bond. Take Pyro Ball for example, with Goh's Cinderace as the primary exhibit. Goh made his Cinderace use a rock as a projectile for "Ember" when it was still a Scorbunny/Raboot. Then only later realizing "Pyro Ball" was the name of the move he was using. But like, that's the thing, what if "Pyro Ball" was just a concept humans referred the move as cuz, well it's a flaming ball of fire.
Dare I say that move names are possibly irrelevant? Cuz move names are technically just human concepts that they've slapped onto the Pokemon using their ability. How Pokemon know which move the humans are talking about when they communicate in battle is possibly another bigger conversation(?).
Do keep in mind I'm talking about the world building of the actual Pokemon universe and not the games cuz duh Gamefreak's gotta make the level up system make sense lmfao, just to clear up any possible confusion.
If you ended up reading this long ass rant and ended up going "Well yeah, that's basically the concept of nature. This guy just ranted about water being wet or smth so obvious" welp then not my problem, you decided to read this. I'm just here to infodump about my favorite fictional game and its world building :]
Thank you for coming to my Ted Talk
