After we covered Artist Khaled Akil’s depiction of Pokemon Go in the Syrian War, we stumbled onto a new group of creators through whom the Pokemons have finally found their adult voices and we are excited!
Pokemons of New York is a fantastic collection of the tiny little snippets from the lives of our favorite childhood friends, and they are going strong, bringing to the table quirky tales and anecdotes.
We chatted with the creators and found some absolutely amusing answers to our questions.
Q. There isn’t much that is known about Pokemons as characters, apart from certain traits. However, your stories tend to be very perceptive. Who are the brains behind them and what are the motivations?
The brains behind the page would be three people: Abhishek Singh Kadian, Avish Revis and Aakash Shah. Abhishek and Avish realized one day that now that there’s Pokémon out there in the real world because of Pokémon GO, it’d be fun to hear from them and see what they have to say to people. So, in an attempt to tell the world their stories, I ended up naming the page Pokémon’s Of New York for obvious reasons.
It fascinates us to see elements from two very unrelated domains (Pokemon and Storytelling) being brought together. How, and from where did the idea spring up?
Yes, people don’t know much about Pokémon. The show had character development to some extent, but most of it was just Ash and the Pokémon looking at each other. I won’t be exaggerating if I say that it’d be an ‘aww-inducing’ moment if we could just hear Pikachu talk to Ash or Charizard say mean things to him. The page isn’t a big deal on its own. But we’re playing with people’s nostalgia here and that means a lot to us.
Have there been any times when you’ve struggled with creativity? What has the escape been?
There have been struggles. When I can’t write about a certain Pokémon, I usually go watch its episodes in the show. Or perhaps, I look at the Pokémon’s pictures and think about how it’d use its abilities in the real world. Like Koffing, a gas type Pokémon, being an old guy, he ends up farting at times in the subway and people try to get away from him, it sometimes lands him a seat in the subway.
A very cliché question, but do you have that one favourite Humans of New York post?
My favourite HONY post would be this, I’ll quote it.
“Do you remember the happiest moment of your life?”
“This one time I was in Hawaii with my family, and we were walking to the beach, and we came to the top of this giant hill. And I said, ‘I’m going to take it.’ And I put my skateboard down, and started rolling down the hill, and I got going so fast that the board started to shake because the trucks were loose, and toward the bottom of the hill I came to this crack, and the board got caught and I was thrown onto the pavement. I got all bruised and scraped and my mom was screaming because she’s a total freak-out.”
“That was the happiest moment of your life?”
“Yeah, I was just glad I took the hill.”
The quote instantly sounds like me, I’d do anything for happiness. It’s one of my favourite things to think about. Even the page is just a mere attempt to make people a little happy for some seconds while they read stories.
Oh, in the same context, do you have that one favourite Pokémons of New York post?
Personally, my favourite PONY post would be the Charmeleon one. I shouldn’t really have a favourite child like that though. But I like how he’s a middle child. And because of that mostly he’s just frustrated. Anyway, a parent can be biased sometimes too after all!
These are some absolutely brilliant minds put in action here, and we would love to see where this goes from here! To know more about them, go check them out on Facebook.
