Orwell

Orwell is Kimberly Bond's Crawdaunt, and the eighth Pokemon she acquired on her journey, as well as the third Pokemon she caught in the Galar region.

Personality

Orwell is, in a word, unusual- probably the most unusual Pokemon Kim has had on her team with the possible exception of Peechee. However, he doesn't go off on random tangents about things, or blurt out random words that don't make sense in regards to the conversation. Instead, his oddness comes from his speech patterns: he speaks almost entirely in Newspeak, the language from the novel 1984, with seemingly no explanation whatsoever. As a result of this, he can be rather difficult to understand for someone who has not read the appendix of 1984, which had a detailed explanation of how Newspeak works; only Elton can fully understand him, and as such the two of them have become fairly good friends. Orwell is generally very cheerful towards everyone he meets, despite his quirks, and seems to understand English fairly well; why he chooses to speak in full Newspeak is still unknown. Due to the fact that both of them are crustacean-like Pokemon that speak unusual variations of English that came from classic dystopian novels, Orwell gets along fairly well with Peechee, and the two of them have a sort of friendly rivalry while trying to understand each other's languages. In regards to battle, however, they are complete and utter foils: while Peechee relishes the opportunity to battle and is very violent in doing so, Orwell is much more reluctant- read; he's just as terrified of battling as Freddie is. During Ikoria, the thought of going into battle with a giant kaiju Luxray frightened him so much he went into a fetal position and proclaimed it to be torture, and when Kim found the den with the Dynamax Abamasnow, he practically begged to not be included in the "raidbatt." However, Orwell has learned to be slightly more confident with regard to battling other Pokemon, in large part thanks to Peechee: soon after the Hulbury Gym Battle, Orwell and Peechee discovered that Kim's father was in the hospital, having been mauled by a giant Krookodile. Peechee decided to go after the Krookodile and make him faint, and ultimately decided to take Orwell along with him, believing it to be good battle experience. While still very much reluctant, Orwell accepted, showing a desire to learn to be more confident in his battling abilities even if the thought of battling scares him to no end. When he actually is in battle, his fear is still very much prominent: in both the practice battles and during the battle against the Krookodile, Orwell mainly used Protect to shield both himself and Peechee. When he does battle with physical moves, such as his Double Hit-turned-Night Slash against the Krookodile, he is still very much in tears and shows a desire to not actively faint the opponent.

After evolving into a Crawdaunt, his personality hasn't changed all that much: almost immediately after evolution he cheerfully expressed how scared he still was of battling to the Krookodile, and proceeded to ask Peechee to land the final blow rather than land it himself with Night Slash, Bubble Beam, or another move. He also found himself somewhat horrified by the fact that he was a "waterungoodlobsterpoke", believing in his mind that he had become a supposed instrument of torture by evolving into a Dark-type Pokemon. That being said, however, Orwell's use of Newspeak has changed after evolution. Unlike Dalt, however, it hasn't gone away completely. Instead, Orwell will now only use full Newspeak with Kim, Ian, Evelyn, and all the other members of Kim's team- the only people and Pokemon who can understand and tolerate his use of Newspeak. With anyone else, he will now switch straight to Standard English until they feel comfortable understanding his Newspeak. The first time he did this was shortly after his evolution into a Crawdaunt, wherein he spoke Newspeak to Peechee before immediately switching to Standard English when speaking to the Krookodile, who couldn't understand it. This stunned Peechee, Kim, Ian, and Evelyn; Peechee in particular had to pause to comprehend it before landing the final blow against the Krookodile.

Kim's personality file on him reads as follows:

"NEW POKEMON CAUGHT: ORWELL THE CORPHISH. HE IS... SLIGHTLY ODD, BUT IN A GOOD WAY. ORWELL IS RATHER SMART AND INQUISITIVE, AND VERY CURIOUS ABOUT THE LANGUAGE OF NEWSPEAK— TO THE POINT WHERE HE SPEAKS IN IT PRACTICALLY ALL THE TIME. IT'S PRETTY FUN TO DECIPHER— THOUGH I HAVE A FEELING IT WILL FRUSTRATE REVER TO NO END. ELTON LOVES DECIPHERING HIS NEWSPEAK. LIKE ELTON, HE HAS A THICK BRITISH ACCENT— THOUGH NOT QUITE COCKNEY."

Details

• Met: The Wild Area
• Ability: Shell Armor
• Favorite Move: Protect
• Nature: Quirky
• Ball: Poke
• Evolves in: https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/posts.php?discussion=12971269370a74820100&page=22780

Known Moves

• Double Hit, Protect
• Bubble Beam
• Night Slash

Trivia

• Out of all of Kimberly Bond's Pokemon, Orwell is the first to not be named after a musician of any kind, instead being named after George Orwell, the author of 1984 (which is the book in which Newspeak originates).
• Orwell's chat handle is waterlobsterpoke, which doubles as his Newspeak word for "Corphish"; after his evolution into a Crawdaunt it was changed to waterungoodlobsterpoke, which is Orwell's Newspeak word for "Crawdaunt".
• Orwell's favorite musical artist is David Bowie, which was chosen by Goldenheart388 due to the fact that Bowie had planned a musical version of 1984, and even wrote a few songs for it, but the project ultimately fell through.
• According to Goldenheart388, Orwell's character theme is "1984" by David Bowie, his Broadway character theme is "I'm Calm" from A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Forum, and his headcanon voice is Sam Marin as Pops in Regular Show.