Twitch Plays Pokemon: The First Novel

After over 250 (or so) hours of work spread out over six weeks, I have finally completed Twitch Plays Pokemon: The First Novel. The novel chronicles the exploits of Red, a broken Pokemon trainer from Pallet Town. In the day he was to set off on a great Pokemon adventure, he began hearing voices. The voices, in turn, began controlling his body. Red found himself helpless to resist the voices, and so he set off on a different kind of journey than he had originally imagined.

It is based on Twitch Plays Pokemon (an instance of Pokemon where hundreds of thousands of people controlled a single character at the same time) and the mythology that the community created. Because of the haphazard controls, unlikely events began to take place in the game. These events were interpreted by the community as "a story on top of a story", sometimes leading to the creation of religious interpretations.

The novel takes the community mythology, interprets it, and gives readers a comprehensive chronicle (with some authorial liberties taken) of the Twitch Plays Pokemon mythology.

The cover of the novel (above) was created by Mallius as a stand alone image (I hope you're ok with my using your incredible art for the novel - if not please let me know and I will take it down promptly).

You will find the Novel in the Twitch Plays Pokemon: The First Novel tab above, or you can click here for the direct link to the PDF.

Twitch Plays Pokemon: The Novel is a non for profit fan-based parody meant as satire. Pokemon is a registered trademark of the Pokemon Company and of Nintendo, and Twitch is a registered trademark of Twitch Interactive. Please support their products by buying the latest Pokemon games and checking out twitch.tv.

Twitch Plays Pokemon: A (very) short recap of the lore up to now

The last moments of TPP Crystal

My previous post, first in this blog but one of many over at Pop Trends, I said that it was, sadly, not likely for the Twitch Plays Pokemon streamer to modify the game ROM to include the same team as Red had when finishing Pokemon Red.I am incredibly happy that I was wrong. The streamer did change the characters, and when AJ Downs finally faced off against Red and sent out Zapdos, instead of the usual Pikachu, The Stream exploded in cries of joy. The Stream could finally help LazrGatr get its revenge against the Old Gods. I was, likewise, happy to see this happen, but for other reasons. Now, with the final battle including the original team, the lore created by the TPP community could be linked into a single overarching saga. That is what I want to write about today - the TPP lore.

There are different versions of the lore going around, and many of the variations revolve around how readers perceive individual characters, but all important plot lines seem to go back to single character interpretations. Was Flareon a false prophet? If Flareon was truly a false prophet, then everything done was the will of the Helix. However, if not, then the voices (the players) are evil and Flareon was only trying to protect Red. Is LazrGatr justified in his quest for revenge? If so, does that make his victory one of Pokemon? Or was he being controlled by Helix after all? Where does Joey's top percentage Rattata fall in all of this?

These are questions that I will explore at a later post. Right now, all I want to do is write an overview of the lore as I interpreted it, mixing in elements of the official Pokemon lore. Yes, it's just a summary of the TPP lore thus far, but whatever. Here it is:

No Gods, No Kings, Only 'Mon

By tsaoshin

Twitch Plays Pokemon is a Twitch.tv stream where people
could log in and simultaneously control a single game of Pokemon. Commands were input through chat are queued and performed in game in the order that they input. This led to the character running around in circles, discarding items,and just outright doing things that a single person would not even consider during a normal playthrough. 

During the first run of Twitch Plays Pokemon, an incredible
lore was created in order to explain the events of the game as controlled by
The Hivemind (all the players). In order to explain why Red constantly used the Helix Fossil, the community explained that he was consulting Lord Helix for guidance, as the voices in his head (The Hivemind) instructed.  In order to explain why Pidgeot had such a high level when compared to the other pokemon, the community explained that the bird was the Chosen Messiah of Helix, Bird Jesus.  

As the game grew in popularity, more lore was created, until finally, The Hivemind defeated Blue (the final boss) and became champion. Red's final party consisted of Lord Helix the Omastar (a god), Bird Jesus the Pidgeot (a messiah), AA-J the Zapdos (an angel), Fonz the Nidoking (a king), Air Jordan (a prince), and All Terrain Venomoth (an all-terrain vehicle, the Dragonslayer).