Writing Pokemon battles hard. Why have be so hard?
Lots of emotional things are going into the Pokemon battle I'm trying to write. The first half of this battle is a farce as Emmet is not taking the battle seriously at all and is in fact TRYING to lose (but not trying to make it too too obvious). The second half is very serious as Emmet has to fight back from a disadvantage, only to barely eke out a win. I think this is possible with the parties I've set up for Emmet and Ingo in this fight, but coming up with the moves I want to have happen and why is proving to be very haaaaard!
Every time I try to sit down and think through the moves of each round, it just makes my head hurt. >.<
I want to stay true to the game mechanics as I think that these parties and Emmet and Ingo as characters are more impressive if you understand the game mechanics. But I need to hit these emotional beats for the sake of the story. It's a lot to keep track of and consider, and trying to work all of this out in my head gets confusing and head-hurty after a while.
I don't want to do anything that makes it look like Emmet and Ingo don't know what they're doing, because they very much do! But after a while, my brain has a hard time keeping up with everything! This is especially the case since I've come up with little strategies that I think are clever for Emmet's team and want to showcase them.
I've even tried recreating these teams on Pokemon Showdown and have been having them battle it out. But I'm not creating results that are very satisfying because I simply don't typically play like how they would, nor can I duplicate the circumstances in a way that brings me satisfaction.
I wish that I could have an AI run a few versions of this battle for me and then I could pick and choose what I want to happen. But from my looking, I don't think that such an AI exists, nor do I think that any of the Showdown AIs that presently exist would work with the kind of battle that needs to happen here. So this has been proving to just be... Frustrating... >.<
At this point I'm pretty much thinking that I need some actual flesh and blood people to run through these battles for me. A set of players that don't know what they're doing and are fucking around, and a set that do know what they're doing and having a serious fight. Then I can splice the two together to get the effect that I'm looking for. Because my brain just does not have the processing power for this. AAAUGH! >.<
