When you're on a route or a patch of grass battling a wild Pokémon, encounters probably don't seem like a big deal. At best, battles against easy enemies are experience fodder. At worst, they're an annoyance. If you stop and think about what you're really doing, however, things can get pretty dark!
Pokémon player epifex has been chronicling his playthrough of Pokémon via comics over at Deviantart. What makes his journey through Pokémon special is that he's doing the "Nuzlocke" challenge. As Pokémon veterans know, Nuzlocke is basically hard mode for Pokémon. While there are many variations to it, the most common rules are that fainted Pokemon are 'dead' and must be released, and the only Pokémon that you can catch are the ones you first encounter in an area. Players sometimes also nickname the Pokémon they capture, so they become attached to them—and because of it, any 'deaths' become all the more brutal.
While this is but a small sliver of this particular playthrough, the intense comic strip highlights just how intense Nuzlocke runs can get. Take a look:
Damn. Now I feel a little guilty about all the families I've probably torn apart thanks to grinding in Pokemon.