Recap / Citadel Of The Heart Brothers Forever

Brothers Forever is a non-canon (sort of) side-story of Citadel of the Heart that revolves around the real-life inspirations of Grandis (Martin "Marty" W. Mollohan) and his older brother named the same in real-life and fiction (Dalton T. Mollohan). The story is a Gaiden Game that essentially depicts both characters in the vein of a Real-Person Fic, alongside the overall plot being a Deconstruction of a Self-Insert Fic. The plot also heavily features Pokémon and especially the setting of the Pokémon anime series, but much in the vein of Scoobynatural, the base material of Pokémon is being used as a side-order in comparison to the story being told from the Real-Person Fic perspective. However, despite that, that doesn't mean the entire Crossover is a Whole-Plot Reference of Scoobynatural. Let's summarize this in a simple paragraph.

"24 and 26 year old brothers Martin "Marty" W. Mollohan and Dalton T. Mollohan respectively end up going to a yard sale and purchasing a television set that, according to the salesman, can grant anyone's dreams but is also said to be cursed. Marty decides that if the television is cursed he's just going to have to figure out how to use this to his advantage in-order to debunk it; little does he know the haggling of its price would be the most normal thing that happens to him within the next day, in what will be a very, very long day. Dalton helps Marty install the television into his bedroom, in which Marty rigs the television using a DVD collection and a special signal from his and his brother's 3DS handhelds to try and invoke the cursed television into action, using the original series of the Pokémon anime as a means of seeing if the machine can indeed make their dreams come true. Dalton fears that this will only be the beginning of Marty's own lose of his own grasp of reality; as things begin to go the duo's way a little too well, Marty's own developing insanity and sense of control over this fictional world begins to get to his head, leading to Dalton attempting to escape. However, Dalton learns that because of Marty's lose of touch with reality, not only is he trapped here, but if Marty completely loses touch with reality, he'll never be able to escape at all. Marty's dreams have come true; the curse, however, is only just beginning for Dalton. Now Dalton must gather his courage to battle Marty in a Pokémon battle in hopes of freeing his younger brother from his own twisted dementia, in hopes that the duo can finally escape back into the real world before things become worse."

Despite the story being mostly non-canon, Marty and Dalton are written as Composite Characters of their real-life individuals as well as their fictional personas, especially in regards to Marty and Grandis if merely because it's heavily implied in the canon series that they're already one in the same.

Tropes that apply to Brothers Forever

• Absurdly High-Stakes Game: How Dalton realizes he has to defeat Marty in a Pokémon battle to get back to the real world; problem is Marty's teams are highly designed to pulverize anybody in its path.
• The Ace: Marty is an expert at competitive battling when compared to Dalton, although amusingly neither of them have a good track record when pitted against online opponents who easily far outclass the duo. Marty can actually stand a chance against such opponents, but even he's got a miserable lose record because of Marty's teams relying too much on an unorthodox gimmick that's a hit or miss to work for him.
• Achilles' Heel: As good as Marty's teams are built, the moment you can figure out how to counter his current team's gimmick, it's incredibly swift with how Marty's team falls apart in an instant once said gimmick is dealt with quickly enough.
• Ascended Fanon: Ditto is used to transform into Giovanni's Mewtwo in which it completely curb-stomps him after the latter was crippled by Marty's Electrode by both Thunder Wave and Explosion. This is a tactic some people use in Pokémon Stadium to bring the Final Boss Mewtwo down for the KO.
• Be Careful What You Wish For
• Big Bad: Marty isn't evil, but for him and Dalton to get back into the real world, he's ultimately this in terms of role because his attachment to the Pokémon universe is what's keeping them from being able to leave.
• Big Brother Bully: Inverted, but ultimately Averted; it's a playful rivalry at best, the problem is that Marty's an insane lunatic who can't tell when to stop at his own game for his own life, and Dalton's rendered the Only Sane Man for this story as he has to snap Marty out of it, but ultimately Marty's superior skills in Pokémon are ultimately what intimidates Dalton from trying earlier.
• Cain and Abel: Marty is Cain and Dalton is Abel here. Downplayed when they're both their normal selves prior to Marty's Drunk with Power experiences in the latter half of the story.
• Captain Ersatz: Marty's Dragonite has a completely carbon copy moveset from Lance's Dragonite in Yellow, that being Hyper Beam, Thunder, Fire Blast, and Blizzard all on the same Pseudo-Legendary. Marty and Dalton are both more than well aware of this.
• Crippling Overspecialization: Marty's downfall when it comes to his Pokémon is no matter how well designed they are to do their given task, when they're put into a situation that very clearly isn't what they're trained to counter or take on, they very quickly become hampered by their incompetency to adapt to the situation on a dime.
• Deconstruction Fic: Of the Self-Insert Fic variety. See below for the laconic version of what happens in regards to Marty.
• Deconstructive Parody: Of the Trapped in Another World Wish-Fulfillment story; what happens if one begins to lose touch with their former selves to the point they need to be saved from their own immersion.
• Establishing Character Moment: Marty manipulates the original owner of the TV as part of his means of haggling the price far lower than the base, as Dalton ends up showcasing in a playful Pokémon battle at the beginning of the plot that he's the inferior combatant in regards to battling when compared to Marty.
• Extreme Doormat: Dalton, at least until he begins to realize he has to stand up to Marty to return home.
• Foreshadowing:
  • Marty's Tempting Fate monologues tend to end up predicting almost exactly what ends up happening to him in the story, although before that, the fact the television is cursed is not fully elaborated on until Dalton learns of how the duo being in the television has become an Absurdly High-Stakes Game for them both to return to the real world.
  • Marty explains how all of his and Dalton's Pokémon both came from their 3DS handhelds, and thus the very games they own for said system. This is the biggest early hint towards the fact Pokémon from outside of Gen I will appear, such as what we ultimately see with Marty's Dusk Mane Necrozma.
• Genre Savvy: Many of Marty's Pokémon have movesets built after teams universally considered to be That One Boss, most notably having a Dragonite with the same moveset as Lance's Dragonite in Yellow.
• Informed Attribute: At first Marty being claimed to be highly skilled in competitive doesn't make much sense considering each Pokémon we see him use is already a juggernaut in their own right, especially if Marty's Fatal Flaw of Crippling Overspecialization is meant to indicate anything. Turns out Marty isn't even trying to be serious with his teams. All of the Pokémon we see him use here? They're the intended targets to be on the receiving end of buffs passed on via Baton Pass. Marty chose against it and instead favored unparalleled brute force while trapped in the TV, since he doesn't know how Baton Pass would've functioned in the anime verse's setting at this point in time, especially since the move doesn't even exist yet at this point.
• The Juggernaut: Marty's infamous Dragonite which he modeled after Lance's equally infamous Dragonite from Yellow. Prior to this, Marty's Gyarados is hyped up to be this but even Marty admits his Dragonite is still stronger regardless.
• Knight of Cerebus: Marty robbing this role from Giovanni ultimately cements his status of what is to come later.
• Manipulative Bastard: How Marty gets much of the first half of the Pokémon plot to happen in his favor, as well as what ultimately allow him to buy the damned TV in the first place.
• Maybe Magic, Maybe Mundane: Hints towards both exist as to how the titular brothers end up in the TV world to begin with, considering it's heavily implied magic is how they end up in the TV world, but also mundane is implied as to how the duo have access to their Pokémon from their 3DS games.
• Mythology Gag:
  • Marty's Dragonite is an incredibly blatant rip-off of Lance's Dragonite from Yellow.
  • Dalton's Blastoise makes him a parallel to Gary Oak, with Marty's Charizard making him a parallel to Ash.
  • Mewtwo appears as part of Giovanni's team.
  • Marty's Ditto can immediately transform into the target, reflecting its Hidden Ability Impostor from which every Ditto from Gen I and II will have when transferred to Gen VII by default.
  • Marty and Dalton's Red Oni, Blue Oni dynamic reflects several different parallels their own Pokémon have with each other, such as Marty's Charizard and Dalton's Blastoise, or with Marty's Ditto and Mewtwo.
  • The method Marty uses to KO Giovanni's Mewtwo is a common tactic used in Pokémon Stadium to completely cheese the whole Mewtwo fight.
  • Marty gives an indirect, manipulative suggestion to Giovanni to start Team Rainbow Rocket as we see him a part of in Ultra Sun and Ultra Moon, as Marty ends up giving Giovanni the Mewtwonite X as a parting gift.
  • Mewtwo knows Shadow Ball before it exists just like it does in Mewtwo Strikes Back, which is something it had unique to it until Generation II and is considered the original Mewtwo's Signature Move in the Super Smash Bros. games.
  • Once again as per tradition in Citadel of the Heart, a Deconstructed Character Archetype of a Mary Sue trope is yet again cast as the Big Bad of the story in some way or form.
• No Social Skills: Dalton clearly has trouble with socializing with Ash's group and generally stays quiet, but Marty throws all caution out of the window in comparison, and decides to use his Genre Savvy knowledge to manipulate the cast to his every whim.
• Only Sane Man: Dalton is definitely this, due to refusing to get so heavily invested in the shenanigans Marty gets himself involved in.
• Parody Sue: Deconstructed as to how Marty first behaves, and then ultimately how he behaves towards the second half of the story in which he ultimately ascends to the role of Big Bad.
• Proud Warrior Race Guy: Considering Marty's boasts, he seems to imply the Mollohan lineage is this, especially since he consistently refers to Dalton as a "fellow warrior".
• Real After All: The TV is confirmed to be real and existing in Citadel Of The Heart canon via The Stinger in which many eons later, Flare enters the TV contemplating whether or not to kill Alain, but decides against it by calling it incredibly petty to do so and simply leaves back out of the TV.
• Real-Person Fic
• Sanity Slippage: Implied to be the actual reasoning for Marty's increasingly destructive behavior.
• Shout-Out:
  • Brothers Forever's title should speak for itself to Scooby-Doo fans.
  • Due to the fact the TV has the name "Megatron" on it, Marty ends up deciding to copy the mannerisms and Verbal Tic of Beast Wars Megatron, yesss.
• Status Quo Is God: While everyone does get to learn and experience what happens around them in regards to the two brothers, Marty's Ditto as Mewtwo is commanded to memory wipe everyone just before he and Dalton leave back to the real world.
• The Stinger: Flare, a WarGreymon, from Citadel Of The Heart appears in the TV many years later in which she confirms the TV does indeed exist in Citadel Of The Heart in addition to this world's equal to reality, and that Flare is questioning whether or not to terminate Alain and his Charizard while Charizard can no longer Mega Evolve in the aftermath of the Kalos League. She ultimately decides against it and very quickly leaves.
• Take That!: Marty gets to fulfill his desire to knock Erika and Giovanni down a peg or two by completely dominating the two of them with his own team, as well as manipulating the two into being forced to fight him as he sees fit; first by threatening to have Erika's gym shut down by an investigation, and then to have Giovanni's ego be played to by saying how Giovanni must be bored having no actual challenge for the world's strongest Pokémon to prove itself against.
• Take That Us: Flare's entire reason for showing up is a potshot against one of the author's planned ideas for Alain in Truth and Ideals, but ultimately got thrown out the window and even when confronting the canon Alain, she calls killing him out of spite to be incredibly petty and leaves without attacking anybody, more or less reflecting what the author ultimately decided to do in the end of it.
• Victory Is Boring: Why Marty, and also Dalton, refuse to use Legendary Pokémon until the very climax of the story. See Where's the Fun in That? below for more details on this.
• Wham Shot:
  • Marty's strongest Pokémon is one not even from Gen I; Dusk Mane Necrozma. Everybody in the crowd goes dead silent because none of them are aware as to what Necrozma even is, yet alone the Solgaleo part of the fusion as well.
  • In The Stinger, Flare, a WarGreymon, appears to basically confirm that the TV that appears in this story also appears in Citadel Of The Heart proper, as confirmed when she's questioning as to whether or not to terminate Alain or not upon detecting him, but she ultimately decides against it.
• Where's the Fun in That?: Uttered by Marty in regards to why neither he nor Dalton end up busting out their Legendary Pokémon until the very end of the story; they'll flat out curb-stomp the fictional characters' teams without question, considering the anime's physics have the Legendary Pokémon undergo a case of Adaptational Badass that would only make them stronger from the game's incarnations of them.
• The Worf Effect: Marty's Gyarados is felled by Erika's team just before the debut of Marty's Dragonite.
• Worthy Opponent: No matter what Marty's consensus of everyone is, he always considers Dalton to be this.
• Wrong Genre Savvy: Dalton thinks Marty's tactic with Ditto transformed as Mewtwo won't work because in Red, Blue, and Yellow, Psychic Types are Immune to Ghost Type moves. Unfortunately, the anime verse never had this mistake; when Ditto transforms into Mewtwo and ordered to use Shadow Ball against Mewtwo, it deals Super-Effective damage just like it would in the games beginning with Gen II onward, and was always the planned intent.