#yeah tho Emmet was very difficult for me to write for the longest time. Unlike him I tend to ramble and I have a certain fondness for big-

[emmet-appreciation]

Mun donut just wanted an excuse to ramble about Emmet’s dialogue. And also I guess tips for those who might have a hard time writing Emmet

I’ve been musing Emmet for upwards of two years now, and while I am certainly far from the best portrayal of him (seriously, some of you guys are so cool), I think it’d be beneficial to at least have one post analyzing his speech patterns on here. 

If anyone is interested in seeing me list references and overanalyze Emmet’s speech patterns, I’ll have it all under the cut :)

// I’m making too many edits to this so I’ll just list the changes at the end of the post Last edit: 19.07.2022

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To preface, Emmet is very clearly autistic. Please keep that in mind while portraying him and make sure you aren’t falling into ableist stereotypes.  There are many wonderful autistic (as well as other wonderfully neurodivergent) people in this community, so I’d suggest looking to them for advice or guidance (though, you should make sure they are alright with sharing, of course! Please do not nag people who do not want to talk.)

I also highly suggest reading this post outlining some of the ableist characterizations in the submas community and why they are harmful. Please try to commit its messages to memory, they are CRUCIAL!! For those of you hesitant to read such a long post, I’ll also include a shorter list of the posts’ relevant points here as well:

Emmet’s “simple” speech and smiley demeanor have made infantilizing characterizations an easy pitfall for some to fall through. Autistic and neurodivergent people have been infantilized as a form of ableism, so please ensure you steer clear of that!

Seeing Emmet express strong negative emotions in an unhealthy way can be a harmful or insensitive characterization if taken to an unrealistic or extreme point.

Before proceeding with writing, ask yourself why you’ve decided to portray Emmet in a certain way, and if that “reason” perpetrates narratives that may be harmful to neurodivergent (as well as mentally ill) communities.

Now, with that out of the way, I’ll actually start this ramble haha.

Let’s Talk References!

There are quite a few places that you can turn to for references, but my go-to source is Bulbapedia! It’s one of the most reliable sources we have in the Pokemon community, too, so if you want canonical lore about anything, you can go here as well! If you have not consulted Emmet’s quote page, bookmarked it, or left it sitting on your browser window for the rest of eternity then I suggest you take a minute to do at least one of those :>.

There are also multitudes of resources for you to stream official content online, which has been compiled in this neat little masterpost. It includes links to find things from Pokemon BW and BW2, Pokemon Masters, the Pokemon Anime, and Pokemon Special. I highly suggest scrolling all the way down to the reblog portion- @/mala-sadas linked an awesome website that host Pokemon Special Scans- not to mention a whole bunch of spinoff mangas. There shouldn’t be any ads either :>

Any sort of canonical information would be ideal to use as reference, though I personally would advise against using the anime. It’s entertaining to watch, but there is much more nuance to be found in his other portrayals.

Unfortunately I haven’t read that much fanfiction lately, but heart hungry like a fire (cw cursing, only a sprinkle of angst) definitely has my favourite interpretation of Emmet :).  Other than that, try reading fanfiction where the submas are portrayed similarly to how you’d like to portray them! 

Keeping his autism in mind also, I’d also like to direct you to @/1863-project’s posts on Emmet (if you have not heard of her, please visit her blog! She’s a very nice and funny person and is always happy to inform people about submas, trains, and autism :>). She’s made many a post about autistic submas and the important ones are linked on her pinned post, but I’ll link some of helpful ones down here as well:

Emmet from Pokemon Gen V is Autistic, Fight Me - This highlights the specific Autistic traits that Emmet exhibits (Scripting, Stiff Dialogue, etc) and gives possible reasoning as well. Cool, huh?

A Verrrry Short Look At A Verbal Tic - crying why is the title so good for this one?? But yeah it’s just a brief overview of Emmet’s “verrrrrrrry” verbal tic

A Few Lists of Train Terminologies - Many people seem to struggle with Ingo and Emmet’s train lingo so I think it’s worthy to add here as well. (The last two links are probably more relevant for the purposes of this post, though)

Man, I totally forgot to link a particularly fun ramble made by my friend @/kotekie!! I’ve talked about it here before but it deserves a spot on this post:

Ingo, Emmet, Dialogue, and Truth and Ideals - A ramble about how Ingo and Emmet’s dialogue actually ties into the Truth/Ideal theme that BW/2 has going on. Reading this can give you a certain mindset to frame their dialogue in, so I highly recommend checking it out!

Analysis Time!

Arceus, you thought I would’ve already gotten here by now, right? This is just me rambling about things I’ve noticed specifically about Emmet’s dialogue and what I try to apply when I go in-character with him.

Let’s start with his dialogue after he beats you on the Super Multi train:

First of all: AW,, HE IS SO ENDEARING I AM GOING TO CRY- 

Second! This is a clear example of one of the trademark aspects of his speech: short and choppy sentences. His ideas tend to spread out among multiple different sentences. For example, the “I won against you. But this is not the end.” bit could be combined to form a single sentence, but Emmet tends to stop his sentences after one idea / clause (making them very short).  Thanks to this, his speech is extremely direct. What he says, he means. There is verrrrry little extraneous details added. In short: keep his dialogue short, and to the point.

It’s a very striking quality that very few Pokemon characters have, and it’s most definitely the reason why I latched onto his character over three years ago.

He also will occasionally emphasize a certain point with a shorter sentence (sometimes with a repeated word) afterward, such as here:

and here:

and here: 

also here:

and also his semi-rare use of “yup/yep!”:

But wait! There’s more :>

We see that he has two main scripts in the games- one for himself:

and one for Subway procedure:

Looking through the things he says throughout the games, it seems he uses the first one to introduce himself (naturally), though it’s not unusual for him to start his sentences with “I am Emmet.” This has made way for some portrayals to make him refer to himself in the third person, which I think is pretty neat (though he hasn’t really done that in canon).

The subway procedure script replaces the self script when he is battling someone he’s already battled before, like we can see in his pre Super Multi-Train battle dialogue:

At this point, he’s already infodumped about himself so he goes to the next best thing: subway procedure :)! He also tends to use this script when he’s with Ingo, as Ingo mainly does the introduction for the two of them and gives Emmet the space to chime in when he needs to.

I’ve also noticed that during moments of strong emotion he does tend to drop the choppy sentences thing and use more commas, as we see in his dialogue after being beaten in the Super Multi-Train:

Three commas! Three! This is also the longest sentence he has in the BW/2 games (and is probably comparable to the length of his sentences in Pokemon Masters- where his dialogue is notably more relaxed).  I think this is meant to convey how fast he’s speaking, as he's too excited pause in-between sentences as he normally does. 

Since I’ve also went through the hassle of linking individual manga chapters, I’d also like to analyze some of their appearances in the manga as well! (Note that I’m not using an official translation, so the specifics wording you see here may vary from other translations that exist on the internet!)

Here, when they introduce themselves, Emmet doesn’t use “I’m” or “I am” before he says his name, which could possibly a nod towards his tendency to speak in shorter sentences? Hm.

Once they start watching White test out the Battle Subway, we can see Emmet getting rather impatient and excited to see her get better at battling- interrupting Ingo and also bluntly stating his opinion on her skills. Though, this iteration of Emmet is a lot more mischievous than other canonical media (which makes sense- the manga did make a lot of characters sassier, haha).

We can also see that his usual “choppy” speech pattern has been downplayed in the manga, though Emmet’s blunt and excitable personality shines through brightly!

I’m only putting this here because this is peak sibling dynamic. Specifically using Ingo’s words to tease him is absolutely HILARIOUS to me, and one of the reasons why manga Emmet is my favourite Emmet.

Is that it? Yeah I think that’s it. Feel free to chime in with your own opinions and thoughts and criticisms if you’d like!

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Edit History:

- Clearly, I wrote this while being kinda tired. I fixed up some of the weird wording haha - Added a new reference from @/1863-project, it was made after the post was created and it’s very useful I promise!! - The links to the manga stopped working so I updated it with a new streaming site, hopefully with actually working links now. Also added a ramble from my good friend @/kotekie because I think it shows the functionality of Emmet’s speech in contextualization to BW/2’s themes as well as contrasting it to Ingo’s.  - Added in the “Please Be Careful About How You Portray The Submas” post in the beginning. It seemed kind of odd to say “don’t be ableist” without giving some concrete ways to help avoid that. - Changed my sad links to the manga on a site with nsfw ads to just one- the Submas Official Masterlist post :), including the addition from @/mala-sadas because I just adore jb2448.info.