Finding Your Roots
is a Pokémon Nuzlocke Comic by Salt & Pepper Bunny. Its release began in 2018 and is still ongoing.
The comic is based on SPB's playthrough of Pokémon Omega Ruby, with mostly traditional Nuzlocke rules, but with the added restriction of only using Ground-, Rock-, and Steel-type Pokémon. It takes place in Hoenn, but instead of being inhabited by Human trainers, it's a Pokémon-run Hoenn a la Pokémon Mystery Dungeon.
In Littleroot, a secluded community of Marshtomps, Sceptiles, and Blazikens, Cedar the Mudkip isn't like her peers: she prefers rolling in the mud to swimming. She gets mocked constantly for this because "earthen" Pokémon are seen as inferior to "elementals". While the Mudkip line really are earthens, the Littleroot tribe tends to deny it.
Cedar finds an egg that apparently is of a desert earthen. She decides to set off on a journey to return the egg to the desert and perhaps connect with fellow earthens as well. She teams up with Shelly, a Nervous Wreck Nincada whose Fictional Disability denies her the privilege of evolving into a non-earthen. Racial identity, racial relations, disability, and found family are all explored as Central Themes.
Finding Your Roots contains examples of:
For character-specific examples, see the Characters page.
- Adaptation Name Change: While some have the same name, most characters and towns that are named in canon have slightly different names in FYR. Examples for characters include Roxa instead of Roxanne and Watts instead of Wattson; examples for towns include Slateshore instead of Slateport and Dewfish Island instead of Dewford Town.
- All of the Other Reindeer: Cedar is mocked and ostracized by all her peers in Littleroot for enjoying mud more than water.
- All There in the Manual: Information on Pokémon races and racial relations are sparsely revealed throughout the comic, but often it's necessary to tell characters' social standings just by knowing the types of Pokémon they are. SPB released a guide on DeviantArt and cross-posted it on Tumblr as well, but you'll only find it occasionally linked in comment sections or Tumblr asks; it's not linked from the main comic at all.
- Anti-Frustration Features: While one of the defining rules of Nuzlocke challenges is "if it faints it's dead," SPB allowed herself to revive Pokémon 3 times during the run.
- Art Evolution: SPB's art skill gradually improves over the course of Book 1:
- Chapter 2 brings neater lineart and more detailed scenery.
- Chapter 3 adds highlights to characters' eyes.
- Chapter 4 overhauls character design, giving each Pokémon a more detailed design that breaks from canon to appear more like its real-life counterpart.
- Chapter 6 put the finishing touches on character design, including eye color.
- A Wizard Did It: Glittering Road allows Teams Hearth and Molten to travel halfway across the Hoenn mainland in just a few hours, a trip that would normally take a week. When Shelly asks how that's even possible, Tuffy responds, "It's magic, silly!"
- Blah, Blah, Blah: Cedar introduces herself to Shelly by detailing everything about her journey up to this point, but Shelly doesn't really catch it all, hearing mostly "BLAH BLAH BLAH" and the occasional noun.
- Blunt "Yes": Cedar gives one when Basil voices concerns of her leaving.Basil: Is it really worth risking your life for some burrower's egg?Cedar: Yes.
- Cross-Referenced Titles: Chapter 1, "A Girl and an Egg," against Chapter 6, "A Girl and a Dragon," which replaces the egg for what hatched from it.
- Crush Blush: Shelly has a crush on Peako and her face turns red whenever she sees her.
- Curb-Stomp Battle:
- In the Team Leafblade fight, Nauki defeats Carina in just two hits without taking any damage. Cedar proceeds to do the same to Lucine.
- Nauki beats Watts' gang of lightning elementals so easily it doesn't even need to be shown.
- Edible Ammunition: Nimbus helps Briar fight off a team of Poochyena not with Pokémon moves, but unripe pears.
- Fantastic Racism: One of the comic's Central Themes. Pokémon are divided into five "races" based on their types:
- Elemental: Fire, Water, Grass, Electric, and Ice. Often view themselves as the Master Race, particularly to earthens, and live in exclusive communities. Elementals generally worship Kyogre.
- Common: Normal, Flying, Fighting, Bug, and Poison. They're tolerated but not seen as powerful like elementals. Commons generally worship Rayquaza.
- Earthen: Rock, Ground, and Steel. In some unspecified time period, Team Aqua forced them out of cities and into the desert; while many have returned, they still face discrimination from elementals today. Earthens generally worship Groudon.
- Grimm: Psychic, Ghost, and Dark. They're rarely seen; everyone finds them untrustworthy.
- Fae: Dragon and Fairy. They tend to seclude themselves, but when seen in public, it's customary to bow down to them because they're seen as living gods.
- Of course, since Pokémon can have two types, this classification falls apart when this puts a Pokémon in more than one category, leading to Half-Breed Angst. A key example are elemental earthens, who typically reject their earthen half and pass as elementals, only occasionally being rudely reminded they're still mixed. Others will own their earthen label only to get told, especially by other earthens, that they're not really one of them.
- Fantastic Slurs: Earthens are derogatorily referred to as "burrowers."
- Fictional Board Game: Tiny and Silver are seen playing a board game that's unique to their world, though it seems to resemble Chess.Silver: Your grimm chieftan's taken.
- Fourth-Wall Mail Slot: After the end of each book, SPB accepts questions from readers for her and her characters to answer.
- Gosh Dang It to Heck!: Peako works it into her pirate speak, calling her crewmates "sons of biscuit eaters" for telling off Cedar and Shelly.
- Half-Breed Discrimination: While mixed-race Pokémon can usually pass as the race that's most beneficial in society, they'll still face some discrimination.
- In Chapter 1, Briar says all Mudkip "are stupid burrowers, and you're all just too embarrassed to admit it! But at least other mudkips have the brains to pretend."
- Gadget the Voltorb makes the same comment about Mudkip in Chapter 8, and also teases Watts the Magenton that "[You're] the metal earthens here! You'd know burrower species better than me!"
- Look Behind You: Cedar tells Stonecrusher to look out for pirates behind him, right before blasting water at his back to finish him off.
- Narrator: Each chapter, a disembodied voice in square text bubbles tells us where our characters are and what's happening.
- No True Scotsman: There's plenty of discourse over whether mixed earthens really belong to either group.
- The Noun and the Noun: Chapter 1 is titled "A Girl and an Egg." Likewise, Chapter 6 is "A Girl and a Dragon," a clever callback.
- Police Brutality: Shelly's sister was once harassed by a cop, and then thrown out a window when she decided to snap back. Though not explicit, almost certainly a Bigot with a Badge.
- Sneaky Departure:
- Wesen is offered to join Cedar's team twice, and both times, he leaves in the night while she's sleeping.
- Cedar and Nauki are prone to splitting off from the group to go meet more earthens, without telling the others.
- Starts Stealthily, Ends Loudly: Parodied. Cedar and Shelly try to sneak up on Peako's captor, but Cedar doesn't know the first thing about sneaking. The rest is played straight: Cedar announces that it's Time for Plan B and loudly attacks.
- Teleportation Sickness: Cedar throws up in the bushes after being teleported by Wesen.
- Time Skip: Three months pass between chapters 5 and 6 to age Nauki.
- Title Drop: Cedar drops one when she insists to Basil she is leaving.Cedar: There are so many cool burrowers— No, cool earthens out there. I want to get to know them, and find my roots!
- Wall of Blather:
- When Peako is explaining how she met her girlfriends, the speech bubble is obscured by their heads because Shelly isn't following at all.
- When Cedar reunites with Briar, her recap of her adventure is layered behind the two characters because Briar really doesn't care.
- Happens with Cedar explaining to Brawler what happened to Nauki in Chapter 8 — the text is layered behind Brawler and is clipped by the panel.
- World of Funny Animals: FYR contains no human characters; it's about Hoenn if it were run by just Pokémon.
- You Are What You Hate: Mixed-race elemental earthens who are just as racist against earthens and deny they're "one of them."
