the_genderman

Well, if any of y'all MCU fans are also Pokemon fans, you may be familiar with the similarities between N's story and Bucky's story. So, I thought, huh, what if I write a fusion fic? And it wouldn't be completely just retelling Black and White with MCU characters, since I'd be making the MCU characters gym leaders because I can't write kids worth diddly. So, who would each gym leader be? A potential list and some commentary. Choices are based on Pokemon type used, not the original Unova gym leader's personality.

Striaton City - Grass/Fire/Water - Loki, because it would be very Loki to be like "Wouldn't you like to know what type I'm going to use? It's a surprise, kids."
Nacrene City - Normal - Clint, but mostly because I couldn't figure out who to use and eh, 616 disaster Clint.
Castelia City - Bug - Natasha. I'm gonna give her a Joltik because it's a zappy spider.
Nimbasa City - Electric- Tony. Thor makes more sense, but I feel like he might be too busy keeping Loki in hand.
Driftveil City - Ground - Rhodey. It's the next city over from Nimbasa, he has a type advantage over Tony, and Excadrill is part steel type.
Mistralton City - Flying - Sam. This was a given, yes?
Icirrus City - Ice - Steve. Because I have a terrible sense of humor, I'm making Steve an ice-type gym leader.
Opelucid City - Dragon - Shuri (and/or T'Challa, I haven't decided if I'm using only one gym leader, or if I'm taking into account that Black and White versions had different leaders depending on which game you chose). Strongest gym leader in the game, who became a gym leader very young due to her immense talent, who becomes the Champion in the sequels? Sounds like Shuri to me.

Elite Four:
Ghost - Ava Starr, simply because Ghost, and I couldn't not.
Dark - Doctor Strange
Psychic - Wanda
Fighting - Either Bruce of Okoye, I can't decide. Okoye is a far more disciplined fighter, but the Hulk is like, smashy smashy fighting type.

Champion - Carol

Ah, the beginning of entering a new fandom. Or, I suppose, re-entering a fandom I was in twenty years ago. Things are super different now, it won't just be a bunch of middle schoolers with a link cable and maybe an AOL chatroom, if you've gone to the right person's house and their parents let you do that kind of thing. I don't have a group, but that's ok. I'm going back to an old comfort. Of course, there's been a lot more Pokemon since I first started playing the games. I've played all 8 generations, but haven't seriously drawn for them since probably second gen. I wrote one short ficlet for gen 5 many years ago, but I think I deleted it off of wherever it was posted. It was Cilan/Burgh. It was also cringey.

So. Where do I want to start? Gen 2 because that's like a soft fuzzy comfortable blanket (and also in the gen 4 Johto remakes have what I consider canon* trans rep in Will and Bugsy)? Gen 5 because of that tiny little fic foray? Both? May consider race-bending some of the Unova Gymleaders and Elite Four because if the region is based off of NYC, it's probably not going to be ~80% white. (Pokemon, though I love it, has its faults. As does much of the popular media we consume.) Johto is based off of some region of Japan, can't remember off the top of my head which, so if it's a bit heterogeneous, there is that reason. May still consider some tweaking?

* NPC Pokemon trainers tend to have teams whose sexes/genders match theirs, unless of course they're species with skewed sex ratios like the starters or Eeveelutions or any of the all male/all female/all genderless species. In Gen 2 Gold and Silver, Will and Bugsy had male Pokemon (except, obviously, for Will's Jynx). In Gen 4 HeartGold and SoulSilver, their teams had been changed to all (primarily?) female Pokemon, even from 50-50 ratio species. Which says to me that they're trans (because they've trained their Pokemon since they were kids (or, Bugsy still is a kid) and caught/were given Pokemon that matched their gender assigned at birth. And if you've trained a Pokemon for years of your life, enough to become a Gymleader or join the Elite Four, you're not going to swap them out on a whim just because they don't match the standard gender convention).