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I'm trying to make an OU tier for pokemon use in fan fiction. You can submit the form once per story you're writing or have written. I'll post some data and graphics and lists when it's done in ~two weeks.
Ooh, this looks like fun. Filled it out for my current fic; put down raticate twice since there are two significant raticate, hope that's okay. If I have multiple stories, would you like me to fill it out for each, or just the one? And I take it you're only interested in chaptered works here? I have plenty of one-shots, but the majority aren't going to make it to six significant pokémon, of course.
I don't think you'll be able to use the data because the way you're going about this is substantially different, but Farla did this analysis for FFN a couple years back based on what people had filled in for the "character" field of their story. Pikachu, eevee, lucario, riolu, and Mewtwo for the top five, with things generally falling in line with what you'd expect. Should be fun to compare your results with hers in the end, if nothing else.
If there are two significant members of the same species, that's fine. If there aren't six Pokemon, I would prefer you not answer it both for math purposes and because I'm looking more at longer works.
If you have multiple stories, you can submit once per story.
I'm aware of the Japanese popularity poll and Farla's, but I don't like them for two reasons.
1) The Japanese poll was of one country and its fandom, a generation old and whatever won got a distribution. That heavily skewed the results to legends, and also doesn't account for things like starters and early game 'mons probably being more popular in fan fic than with the general public.
2) Last I checked ff.net has limited character options in the story description, biasing it to starters and gods and the like. My results so far are roughly lining up with hers, but there have been some differences. Will post more on the description in two weeks, except that most of the top tier will not surprise you.
Oh hey, this is a cool idea! I'll be very curious to learn what the results are! I just filled it out for mine, introducing a big pile of Legendaries into the data pool. (For what it's worth, my protagonist does not own any of them, but they definitely fit the bill for "most significant by the story's close.") ^^;
Numbers one and two had 23 and 21 ocurrances, respectively. Number three was eleven. This does not include the combined eevee lines, which I decided not to merge since all of them have vastly different frequencies and uses. Point is, two stood way above the rest in usage.
So your number one and two are...
1) Lucario
2) Charizard
What does all this mean?
I'm not saying you can't or shouldn't use those 37 'mons. Just that a lot of other people do as well, and it might make the story more interesting if you considered whether or not that was just the first 'mon for the role that came to mind or it's genuinely the only thing that can fill that spot. Otherwise, I think there are usually alternatives.
Mienshao or Zoroark over Lucario. Pidgeot, Rapidash or Hydreigon over Charizard. Liepard, Persian or Delcatty over the Eevees. Froslass over Gengar. Bellossom over Roserade. Gorebyss over Milotic. Yanmega over Flygon.
I might share more results from this later, when I'm less pressed for time. In the meantime, feel free to discuss the results. Anything you're surprised isn't used more? Anything you're surprised is used as much as it is?
EDIT: Fun stat. If uses were independent there would be a 96% chance of a given protagonist having at least one of those evolutionary lines in their team of six.
Not really surprised those two ended up being the top two. I'm actually surprised Banette was on the list. I assume it's because of Mega Banette, but even that's not even among the top 10 most popular mega evolutions. I guess I'm glad that only one of the six Pokemon I entered ended up making it on the list. I think Pidgeot is used a lot in written Nuzlocke stories due to everyone playing a Kanto game and practically having a 50/50 chance of having their first catch be a Pidgey. I forget, did PMD stories get lumped in with regular trainer fics? It could be interesting to see if there's any difference between being a popular Pokemon and catching a popular Pokemon.
They were lumped together, since I filled the survey out and all I have is one (in-progress) PMD story to my name. I know three of my submissions made the OU list. I think another just missed the cut, and the other two are total question marks. I'm surprised at the amount of Gen VII 'mons on that list, but it could just be a result of the sample pool.
I have no regrets about making Ash's remixed D/P team have a huge chunk of these, because they worked for me when I played Diamond. Once of my goals of my remixed anime arc series was to see what Ash's journey would look like if he used what I had used when I played each generation (this was why he didn't have Bulbasaur and Chikorita in Moonlight Silver)
This includes PMD, Ranger, Trainer and other spinoff stories. About 15% of the sample was PMD with the other spinoffs encompassing less than 5%. Once I'm done with my actual thesis I'll probably come back and run more stats on that. Anecdotally, though, that's where a lot of the lucario and starters came from.
Flaming Ruby: These stats are by evolutionary line, specifically the final evolution if evolved as far as it could go even if it hasn't reached that point in story. The exceptions were eevee and kirlia, where the final evolution couldn't be known. They were grouped separately. So, yes, Pikachu was definitely OU. It's just listed as Raichu.
The Teller: Pidgeot just barely missed the cutoff. I was personally surprised that of the early game, non-starter mons only luxray and Crobat made the list. I suppose Magikarp and Nidoran could also count as early game 'mons, though.
Well, that was pretty fast! And yeah, not a great deal of surprise in the OU list. Except banette, meganium, and roserade... Meganium (and starters in general) makes sense, given that they're naturally very common for trainer characters and nearly ubiquitous in Nuzlockes. But meganium over feraligatr? I can't remember the last time I've seen a major roserade-line character, either. And banette? I've seen a couple in PMD fics, but wouldn't have expected that to tip it over into OU. Did you have a lot of Nuzlockes? That would explain things like the prevalence of crobat, especially over and above raticate, linoone, etc.; appears in so many different regions and actually doesn't have tissue paper defenses, so it's more likely to stick around and be a major character.
If you combine eevee and the lutions, I'm guessing they outrank charizard? Maybe even lucario?
Negrek: I got 134 responses and didn't really care to keep it open, especially since I'm getting into finishing my thesis and knew if I didn't post it now if could be a long time before I got around to it.
Combined Umbreon, Espeon and Eevee outrank lucario. I had no questions on Nuzlockes.
Anecdotally, if you don't use the even more OU Gengar or Mimikyu and want a ghost, there aren't many options. But I figured it'd be Froslass or Aegislash instead.
Maybe everyone wants to use an underused ghost and they all happen to pick the same one, to the point it's no longer underused?
Oops, yeah, I forgot you didn't have any question that would indicate Nuzlocke or not. If anything it would actually probably be a good idea to exclude them, since the premise is kind of that the author has limited choices in terms of what species they can use.
Maybe everyone wants to use an underused ghost and they all happen to pick the same one, to the point it's no longer underused?
Yeah, I hadn't considered how the low number of ghost-types might have played into that one. Like you I would have expected to see froslass/aegislash instead (especially froslass), but looking for something off the beaten path and not having a lot of options could be an explanation. Or it might be sample size being a bear. Only six instances required to appear on the list, and I'm guessing Banette didn't have many, if any, more than six. At that point one or two authors could make a real difference in the results. Can't believe raticate didn't make it on there with me contributing THREE members of the line...
An OU using the formal tier cutoff and percentages because people asked on discord. I can give usage stats on any other pokemon if anyone is curious. If you want more specific data (usage of any given pokemon by region, forms where stated, final evolutionary stage it ends on) I can email out the CSV file.
As of the most recent Smogon tier update, Fan Fic Lucario would be #8 in usage in OU, for a comparison of the numbers. The #1 Pokemon in OU had nearly 50% usage, and that's with species clause in effect, so fan fic is a little bit broader than metagame. Out of all Smogon tiers, fan fic would be the most diverse. But given that literally all pokemon are "viable," maybe it's kinda weird how much the stats wind up looking like a real metagame? Just stuff to think about.
Aww, sandslash made it onto the extended OU list! Always been a favorite of mine, and now that I think about it I see it fairly often in stories, so I guess that makes sense. On the other hand I'm totally baffled that rapidash is on there. I almost never see anything about it or ponyta. (Also pidgeot's on there now! Nice!)
Was briefly confused by the percentages before remembering that it's presumably "percent of fics with this pokémon," and a given fic can obviously have multiple pokémon in it! It's a little hard to tell, but I think it's not quite as skewed a distribution as I was expecting; the percents actually fall off pretty gently as you go along. That's nice to see; there really isn't *so* much of the writerly attention going to just a handful of species.
I multiplied the percentages by six to give an idea of what this would look like as an actual tier. Right now this is mostly what you described it as (% of fics). The "mostly" comes from allowing multiple entries of one Pokemon species on a team in the same story to all count. So technically this % is meaningless beyond a statistical tier comparison measure.
In the next round I'm going to start allowing fics with fewer than six evolutionary lines and enforcing species clause. Then it might mean something different.
(For what it's worth, my protagonist does not own any of them, but they definitely fit the bill for "most significant by the story's close.") ^^;
