28(+3) Reviews: The Pokemon Fanfiction Zeitgeist
Where did Pokemon fics come from? Where are they going? Why does the Borne of Caution guy want to bang his Vulpix?
Preface: A very brief history of Pokemon fics by someone who was barely there
I’ve never particularly felt like a “Pokemon fan”. I dropped out of the scene when I was still pretty young, around the Pokemon Diamond era, and while I speed-played Black 2 and X long after they came out, I didn’t really get back into it until last year, and that was partially influenced by a certain renaissance I’ll mention soon. I still can’t recognize many gen V-VIII pokemon.
I say this for context. I didn’t really seek Pokemon fics when the games’ popularity was at their apex,1 and you should take everything I’m about to say with a grain of salt.
With that out of the way, here’s a table with the timeline of all fics I’ve reviewed, and a couple important ones I didn’t:
We can instantly see that there’s some recency bias, with most everything being post 2020 fics, and only the biggest fics (and Pokemon Animus, for some reason), making it to my radar. It could be less recency bias and more that I didn’t really use Fanfiction.net’s search, which was where fics were back in the day.
My first introduction to the scene was Pedestal, a 500k word 2009 fic you can see at the start of the timeline there. Though I’ll go somewhat in depth about it there, based on it and some other fics whose names I can’t remember, this was the scene for at least one standard of fic before and around that year:
Light tone, like the Pokemon anime. No focus on worldbuilding if the writer can get away with it.
Heavy dialogue, focused on the roleplaying aspect, with short action sequences and almost no introspection.
No strategy involved, everything will be resolved with power ups, evolutions in the middle of fights and shonen energy.
Wish fulfillment, and generally bad writing. Almost universally written by very young people.
According to someone who knows about the state of the scene in 2006, there were plenty of edgy fics too, but they were puerile and very obviously written by edgy teens, more than an attempt to consciously worldbuild something consistent. This matches my experience with Harry Potter fics from that era, actually.
In addition to that, there were plenty of anime fics with Ash as the main character that took the character or story in a different direction. The Sun Soul is the epitome of both these two archetypes:
Ash rolled onto his back, looking for the stick to defend himself, but could only raise one arm in front of his throat as the Rattata jumped at him yet again. This time the huge teeth sliced through Ash's forearm from both top and bottom. The Pokémon closed its mouth around Ash's arm and began jerking its head from one side to another as it had on his leg, tearing open Ash's arm and spattering both Pokémon and human in drops of blood.
A huge grey hand jutted out of the grass, so large that when it closed around the Rattata the feral rodent looked even to Ash like a toy. When the thick fingers closed around the Pokémon with crushing force the animal immediately released Ash. Its eyes bulged as the hand, which Ash saw was connected to a another Pokémon stepping out of the grass, slammed into a fist, crushing the rodent with a sloshing crunch as bones snapped and internal organs burst like rotten fruit.
Jesus christ.
Let’s call this early period “Gen I” to be needlessly confusing.
This Cambrian explosion ended as Pokemon stopped breaking sales records. Fics became rarer, good fics non-existent. I believe Pedestal and The Sun Soul might have marked the end of the era. Some small fics kept being made but nothing truly earth shattering came out.
During this period came Game of Champions, Ashes of the Past and Pokemon: The Origin of Species respectively.
If I had to describe them in a nutshell, these were written by older people who wanted to put their current interests and inclinations into what’s really a children’s franchise, because that clash usually creates this kind of work. Think The Sun Soul but written by adults instead of edgy teens. I’m told you can see the DNA of the latter all over Game of Champions, though Game of Champions is, you know, good.
This era hardly deserves a name, since it’s largely embodied by a dearth of new fics, and a focus on the two I’ve mentioned. They each appealed to a different type of person though.
Long after that, starting in 2020, we arrive to the present, the Pokemon Fic Renaissance, or “Gen II”.
What caused this? I think, the fic Borne of Caution being posted to Royal Road. Royal Road deserves an article of its own. Non-romance, free fiction online had already been suffering for a while when the site came out and it started using modern startup strategies to take over, while also offering a somehow great user experience, and letting writers earn money from their work.
Borne of Caution introduced Pokemon fics to a new generation. More than that, it introduced a subtle message—that anyone could make fics that merged Gen I’s whimsy with the cold thought of Game of Champions, and even make money from it. You can have a light tone with realistic mechanics. Today, a popular activity is just taking Borne’s worldbuilding and writing your own character, your own team. You can insert yourself into the story, someone who’s played Pokemon games for years, and people will still love it.
But maybe the above is just wrong. The calendar seems to imply Hard Enough is actually the influential fic, with Borne marking the beginning of Gen II but not being itself the cause. It’s just a feeling for me.
Whatever the cause, that’s where we’re at right now. I’ve seen an explosion in new high quality Pokemon fics since 2020. This is the motivation for this post. There’s an entire new ecosystem built around a few giants, and it’s a healthy one.
Onto the reviews!
The Good
A couple decent fics that aren’t the best ever, to start this off.
Hard Enough
This is a fic that begins in-medias-res. A Pokemon fan who self-inserted into Brock of all people has already taken advantage of the low hanging fruit, made money and built a strong team. Essentially, he’s already won. This is the aftermath of what “winning” looks like in the Pokemon world.
How’s the fic? The writer is a relative newbie to serious writing (insofar as we can call Pokemon fanfics serious), only having written some porny fics and quests, and it shows. The early chapters have surprisingly weak and repetitive narration, more than could be fixed with a simple editing pass, but he gets way better over time. During the first big fight, you’ll slowly realize you’re reading something special.
As mentioned, the self-insert is Brock, the first gym leader in the games. You’d think any story with that protagonist would focus on fights, but overall the fic is about an eldest brother taking over parenthood of a broken family, and the legal/logistical drama caused by an isekai protagonist upsetting the status quo and the bigger players. In basically all Pokemon canons, Brock was kind of a joke. If he’s not a joke, a lot of things change.
Brock is practically an adult at the start of the fight, or at least at the end of a traditional Pokemon journey. He’s skipped all the setup you usually see in Pokemon fics, he even comes with two best friends, Lt. Surge and Sabrina, both of which are excellent characters in their own way.2
While fights remain a side element of the fic, they are solid action scenes, with some flourishes referencing annoying, real world game strategies, like spamming the move Stealth Rock because it’s stupid good and free damage. Compared to other top-tier fics they’re nothing special. I will say Hard Enough excels at making you care for the outcome.
He always wins though. Unless he’s deliberately handicapping itself so people can get medals, he’s kind of a Gary Stu in this way. This is the most common criticism directed at this fic, and it’s completely fair. Or it would be if the fights were the point.
Back to the plot, we start off with a randomly chosen fight, with Lance being forced to fight Brock. Brock destroys him thanks to meta-knowledge from the games, which pushes him and his gym into the big leagues. In other fics, Brock would probably have to laboriously beat every E4 member or something. In these, the world pushes back by forcing an audit on him. We get scenes such as the hiring of his new accountant, his meeting with his lawyer, discussing marketing with his hired influencer, and so forth. It sounds boring, but this writer is competent at writing dialogue about boring things if nothing else.
The attack also silenced the crowd as they felt their seats vibrate. In truth, they weren’t actually feeling the effects of the attack but rather mild vibration features I had installed to enhance the crowd’s experience.
Many vignettes like these, from defeating level 1 trainers, to overseeing training of his gym members, catching burglars, doing patrols, comprise the brunt of the story. It’s not about big fights at all, but the guy has done his research and thought hard (enough) about what it would mean to really be a gym leader.
However, as you can intuit, the pacing is really slow. I don’t think this was the writer’s intention, but as of 2023 I’m confident slotting it in the Slice of Life genre. There is a long term plot—Brock has to decide whether to follow Ash when the anime plot begins, or leave his family and new life behind—but it sure is taking its time to get there. After almost 100 chapters, only the big question is left, one week away, thankfully every other major plot hook has been addressed. But it did take 100 chapters.
Another big issue is the ballooning cast. I’m pretty sure there are some 50 named characters. Every once in a while old characters return, and you’re meant to remember them by their name. The writer now has to put a character list at the top of every new chapter.
All that besides, it’s a solid recommendation. Just expect a refreshing and thoughtful Slice of Life story about running a gym and you’ll wholeheartedly enjoy it.
Borne of Desire
You might want to read the Borne of Caution section first, as this is a comedy spinoff the writer works on whenever he needs to disconnect from “serious writing”.
This is a crack fic where anime tropes are a real force in the universe. The main character decides to exploit those tropes for his benefit, putting himself in positions where he can call on the Power of Love, act chuuni3 when truly desperate, or trick the enemy into doing things that ensure they’ll lose through dramatic irony.
This has all the best and worst parts of Caution, but it’s very slightly more furry and way crackier. Contrasting the original’s motivations, this protagonist just wants to become famous. It’s safe to ignore this fic if you couldn’t stand the original.
The crack makes this story really funny, though. Somehow, the entire backstory of one of the main pokemon is the infamous “Fuck you, leatherman” (link somewhat NSFW) video. You’d think it’d be cringeworthy, but the fic manages to make it work, I’ve talked to people who didn’t know the reference nor noticed anything wrong with it. In any case, there are enough serious aspects in the worldbuilding and other characters that keep the fic somewhat grounded, especially as it goes on.
This is not a deep story that warrants more paragraphs than the ones written. I recommend checking out Borne of Caution first, and if you enjoy it, this is a natural second thing to try next.
Pokemon Destinies
I was surprised by this little fic, especially after a really bad first chapter. You have probably seen many prologues like this one, starting in medias res and refusing to give you any context. This one goes a step too far and it becomes a mess of names and concepts that you can’t keep straight, instead of helping you get acquainted with the world. Horrible first impression.
Nevertheless, it instantly gets better by the next one, with an exquisitely written backstory for Giovanni and Oak.
The plot is divided in “Present” and “Past” storylines, with the latter being far more interesting and better handled, but providing needed context for the former. The present plot relates to an original character that has just recently escaped a sort of cult, and needs to stay escaped, which is an engaging enough plotline.
The original character is alright, I guess, but I can’t overstate how good the Giovanni chapters are (actually, I guess I can, don’t get TOO excited). Some refreshing stuff, both conceptually and in practice. It’s hard to go into details without spoiling, so I won’t bother.
This fic is still in its early stages, but it’s got some definite potential, and you can feel the writer getting better as they go along.4
The Questionable
Some significantly flawed fics that I probably wouldn’t recommend.
Pokemon: The Origin of Species
It’s likely that if you’re reading this blog, you know of Harry Potter and the Methods of Rationality. After that, there’s a coin flip on whether you think it’s the best thing ever with a few flaws or the worst thing ever with a few positives.
Well, with Origin it’s less of a coin flip, in a bad way.
Much like HPMOR, Origin recontextualizes the main character as an aspiring rationalist, down to giving him the Verres last name. However, in the former case, Harry’s goal is essentially to take over the world with cool powers, and his attitude is that of a young, proactive kid, with a few interesting experiments shown on screen and vastly more frequent practical applications.
Red’s goal in this fic is that of a boring real-world researcher, and his attitude and personality match that exactly.
The writer realized this made for a terrible viewpoint character, so he added a dark backstory to him. But it’s psychically locked through trauma, so… he acts normally the vast majority of the time. 99% of chapters, he’s only a boring researcher with some psychic abilities he rarely uses.
When I say a researcher you might be imagining a Professor Oak-type character with a fun attitude, but no, the Professors and the entire pokemon world are redesigned to be essentially a copy of ours, with the worst parts of academia crammed into the story. Red needs to send emails to random people so his papers make it to scientific journals, a process we see in detail. It’s like bringing the DMV over.
This is another “Pokemon are deadly and will kill you and your own Pokemon without caring” fic. This further harms the fic’s tone by continuously keeping it barely over grimdark at the best of times. The main character doesn’t get any victories that aren’t “realistic”, often his Pokemon are hurt or even killed in frankly unengaging action scenes where he can’t fight back in any true way.
Then, if you thought the HPMOR aspects were bad, this fic misunderstands the aspects that made Worm interludes good, and apes the format and frequency without bringing the extremely high quality. In Worm, it was rare when you didn’t think “damn, this character is actually more fun than Taylor to read!”. In Origin, you’ll just want the writer to get to the damn point. There are a couple fun Mewtwo viewpoints, and that’s it. A deal breaker segment of five or so boring “journalist”/”crime” themed interludes alternated with Red chapters with no plot progression is what finally made me drop the fic.
There are some other points I won’t even get into because I don’t want this review to take over the post, such as a massive mismatch of power, with extremely overpowered villains that will not ever be realistically defeatable.
I read this live as it was coming out I tried rereading it last year, just in case it read better archivally, and I had to drop it even earlier. This is with recommendations from trusted people that there have been some good chapters lately. I just can’t take it. All I can praise from my perspective is the stable (but slow by word count standards!) update rate, one chapter a month. It’s been updating for ten years now.
Origin’s worst crime is being boring. It takes the worst parts from every work it’s transparently influenced by, and the end result is a mess that takes forever to get anywhere and doesn’t contribute much to the canon. Over one million words and they’re still in the Silph Co. arc. I recommend you stay away and pray Daystar eventually rewrites half of it.5
Pedestal
The main character is a non-self-insert whose starter is a Numel, so points for originality. He’s really whiny and depressive, and this is a Pokemon fic before people figured out how to make the setting make sense, how to keep tension going. The story is a classic “very slowly build your team and win your gym fights with random evolutions”, with nothing all that special to it besides being the big fish in a small pond that was 2009.
I still remember the name after ten years though, so it must be somewhat readable. No way I’m going to reread it, because I’m certain it’s at best mediocre, but as previously mentioned, it’s culturally significant.
I Will Touch the Skies
Highly recommended fic. By other people.
I just read it, and could not tell you the first thing about the plot. Like many others, this is just an elaborate excuse to write SERIOUS POKEMON WORLDBUILDING.
I guess the girl protagonist has a Togepi? What I do remember about the fic is that boy does this world get edgy. It’s not like The Origin of Species, where you can tell the author just wants it to be realistic at any cost. It’s more that this writer has a penchant for bloody murder and angst.
It’s got some cool ideas about dragon types, where you basically need to abuse them until they take you as their top dog, and let them be your Pokemon team’s leader. Until then, they’re basically mindlessly attacking everything and won’t listen to you. They are very much not human in how they think.
I don’t have much else to say about it. The plot is the typical Pokemon journey and there aren’t many variations. I don’t at all recommend this unless you share the author’s love for grimdark and/or extensive worldbuilding.
PokeWild
The beginning of this story was really lame. I was ready to drop it, but a couple interesting hooks kept me going, and I encountered some unique gimmicks.
The worldbuilding is fairly special. Instead of merely reimagining game mechanics or anime events, it’s an alternate universe where Oak is still the champion (not to be confused with the shithead Oak from an upcoming review). A different personal history lead to Oak not only keeping his champion power but pushing for different laws. Adults are the only ones that can carry Pokemon, among other details making the world less whimsical, but not in an edgy way.
Our main character starts with a baby pidgey that can barely use the Tackle move. He’s essentially a homeless person that has to take advantage of the government’s post-war charity system to get started, contrasting the usual badass self-inserts who actually know how to survive in the wild.
Even with the limited selection of characters, and a ridiculous amount of training scenes in the woods, the fic doesn’t feel tired yet. It’s super early in the storyline, so I still question whether it’s worth reading, it doesn’t have the room to really stand out. Maybe wait until it’s a couple gyms in.
Hearts of Shadow
I had already read this one years ago but didn’t realize until I was ten chapters in, which should tell you all how memorable it is.
The best I can describe this story is “stock”. It reads like a bad published novel, where you could predict every line and major event in advance. It’s somewhat competently written in that there are no typos and characters don’t act inconsistently, but a passing grade in every area doesn’t automatically lead to an entertaining story.
It has maybe two remarkable elements: it takes place in Orre, region from the spinoff game Pokemon Colosseum, and the author insert becomes a Bug type specialist. Those alone gives the fic some breathing room and unique scenes until your patience and the author’s ideas run out, because the story has no forward momentum. The main character just goes along with whatever happens around him.
Interestingly, the writer of this fic, Blackhawk748, is in many a popular Pokemon fic’s comment section, finding contrived excuses to shill his work. That’s the real heart of shadow right there.
The Type Specialist
Our self-insert wants to become a type specialist. In particular, Fairy type, starting with an Alolan Vulpix he surprisingly doesn’t want to have sex with.6
It’s just okay. I do like an element of the fic: the apparently one-off characters from the first arc, wherein he gets a job in a Pokemart and slowly saves up money for his journey, end up sticking around in a way.
Not only is he representing the small Pokemart in a sort of sponsorship deal (which makes him somewhat infamous because most other serious trainers have real sponsors), but having a scene once in a while where he gets a video call with old people who gave him Pokemon-raising advice is pretty heartwarming, as is when they show up at his first big match to support him, having flown to a different region to do so.
Otherwise, pretty by the numbers team-building exercise. I don’t remember the plot, and I just read it. It’s not bad, but it’s not great either.
Pokemon: Way of Life
This one stands out for being a gamer fic. The author has like three of them, all actively updated. Our main character has an inventory, skills and stats, can level up… in addition to whatever his regular Pokemon team does.
This is really stupid. But wait, it actually features an original plot about a boy waking up from a coma, having been experimented on in the meantime. He’ll have to go through rehab to even walk, while also dealing with the fact he’s slowly turning into a Pokemon. All these handicaps are pretty reasonably balanced with the gamer abilities.
Despite the rehab storyline, I find this writer pretty good at skipping over the uninteresting sections and keeping the quality character interactions in (even if those character interactions tend to always include a small section where the author is transparently expositing to the audience).
However, this can backfire. At one point he wrote the first part of a long mind palace therapy sidequest, realized it was boring, and quickly aborted it in-story, which reads even clumsier than it sounds. You can tell he’s writing by the seat of his pants, which also has some positive consequences, like a funny sidequest where he “composes” the Pokemon Theme and becomes a social media influencer to earn money for his journey. Haven’t seen that one before.
Maybe I’m still overselling this fic a little, because even with the skipping, the pacing is really slow. I started trying to call the chapter he’d finally go on his journey, after he fixed his legs and still had to go to Pokemon camp before getting a proper start. All my predictions repeatedly missed. In the end, it took twenty-three chapters and a hundred thousand words for what’s usually Chapter 1 in any other Pokemon story.
Something incredibly silly is a gratuitous crossover element? The Weasley family from Harry Potter is just… there, as a family of Pokemon trainers our main character meets. It’s just the names and personalities, it’s not a real crossover. But. What’s the fucking point????
All said, it still dodges many pitfalls of slow paced fics, so it’s okay. There are no retreads, very limited training scenes, he’s not slowly catching a dream team, etc. I did end up dropping it because the Gamer element became so unbalanced that Arceus had to introduce little handicaps for the main character like having to walk to places instead of taking a car. Instead of funny it just became a little too annoying and immersion breaking.
Pokemon Trainer Vicky
I honestly don’t know if this is meant to be a crack fic or not, but taking it as one, this is a pretty funny story about a precious child Mary Sueing her way into earning big bucks by “discovering” new evolutions and Pokemon.
There is some nonsensical worldbuilding like the “secret” to evolving Growlithe (just… use the Fire Stone that’s right there) being a big deal, just so the main character can shine.
This is SOMEWHAT justified by some alternate history worldbuilding, which only makes sense if you squint. You really need to turn off your brain to enjoy this story, which I did successfully. Good luck to you.
When is a Spoon a Sword?
This one features a female Ralts, who’s destined to be a special attack-based Gardevoir, wishing to become a physical-based Gallade like her father. She picks up a spoon as her new fencing weapon. Comedy ensues.
Her trainer is a self-insert perhaps made a bit more compelling by being sort of a fencing champion, so he’s studying the blade and training Ralts on proper spoon use while other trainers are teaching their pokemon useful moves (noobs!).
Besides these elements, it’s a typical pokemon journey story. I guess it gets points for being reasonably active, though other people enjoy this far more than I did (I thought it was kind of unambitious?).
Throne of Mud
Pretty standard fare. Guy isekais to a dangerous area, where he finds his new Golett and meets Cynthia, the champion of the Sinnoh region. From there, he goes to Unova to start his journey.
I give the author points for not setting it in the usual two regions, and having the main character become friends with the (female) canon protagonist of the Pokemon Black video games, Hilda.
This ties our MC into the usual Evil Team plot, which has been thought over a bit more carefully by the author than the game writers. Hilda also becomes kind of his tutor in the Pokemon ways, which is more engrossing than it sounds, since training in this author’s worldbuilding is a bit more involved. For instance, Golett is pretty much immune to physical attacks, but has pretty terrible agility, so our MC needs to train him in a very specific way in order to win even a single fight.
Ultimately though, there isn’t much to this fic beyond the cosmetic, and there is barely a plot. The characters are pretty good, but it updates so slowly that even if I liked it very much I would have ended up dropping it. Your choice whether to follow my lead.
The Natural
Other fics such as Hearts of Shadow and Borne of Desire strand their main character in the wild, but this one faces the consequences, and actually forces its self-insert to suffer through a very long survival arc instead of getting him out in a couple chapters. It’s pretty good.
Regretfully, he finally makes it to civilization, the Johto region. A few more quintessential Gary Stu journey plots ensue, with some interesting flourishes and sidequests like an origin story for a Spiritomb.
Eventually the author gets bored of standard plots, and turns to the Pokemon Sun and Moon games for inspiration. The protagonist’s isekai has caused a destabilization in spacetime that’s sending some crazy ultra pokemon after him. The writer writes his SI into a brand survival scenario, this time in an alternate dimension where pokemon took over and civilization is gone. He needs to find his way back now.
This fic is completely dead, by the way, so he’s stuck there forever, the ultimate survival arc.
All in all, this is kind of a mess structurally anyway, and it’s not worth catching up. The Alola/alternate dimension plot was pretty boring, so if you pick it up I’d stop reading the moment he touches ground.
The Common Factor
I added this to my backlog without checking the length. It’s 20k words long and basically still in the prologue. The protagonist is realistically weak, with only a Zigzagoon in his life and skills he needs to slowly develop. Not very interesting. I literally have nothing useful to say and neither will you if you read it. You’re welcome for this review.
The Truly Terrible
Read these if you want to suffer.
Oak
Yep, that’s really the name. Surprisingly, it’s not actually Samuel Oak, but a (pretty edgy) OC self-insert son.
It’s got hilariously fast pacing. Events that in other stories would take up an entire chapter comprise a single paragraph instead. Power-ups, massive losses, it doesn’t matter to this author. He will finish the story, no matter the cost, no matter the many typos, terribly justified anime character nicknames…
Pre-chapter A/N; Since everyone is asking for one of these, here's a breakdown of the character names before we get into things
Broly - Kleavor
Quicksilver - Pidgeot (dead)
Kisame - Milotic
Igneel - Charizard
Kenpachi - Tyranitar
Gai - Hakomo-o
Magnezone - Magnezone7
Hashirama- Trevenant
… and, most offensively, a misunderstanding of basic type matchups, a first for this article. It’s like ten-year-old Ash8 is writing this story.
Somehow, or maybe thanks to the above, Oak makes it to the seventh gym as of my readthrough. I think that’s one of two fics in this entire article that makes it that far.
Should you read this? Fuck no.
PokeSync
A writer has many tools in their toolbox when it comes to delivering exposition naturally.
This author decided to pick the hammer and bash the reader by having every single piece delivered deadpan to the camera by every character. And they have a lot of pieces to share with you!
To be fair, the mission statement of this fic is as follows:
Note: I combine the core games, side games, manga, anime, TCG, and every other media to make the most realistic and complete image of the Pokemon world I can, which is my main goal, and might be overwhelming to some people.
This kind of sounds cool. In practice, the writer was so proud of merging every setting he forgot he was writing a story. After seeing the main character describe the heights of every. single. pokemon she met, and recount the variety of items in her backpack, I decided to quit while I was ahead. Possibly the most unreadable story in this article and that’s saying something.
We were warned.
Pokemon Animus
Right off the bat, I need to mention how ridiculously fucking horny this is without actually being a porn fic. This guy will comment on every single new female character’s proportions even after he gets a girlfriend.
Somehow it still doesn’t feel like porn, it’s kind of a generic Gary Stu self-insert plot about a main character who’s lost all memories but ones related to the franchise. He becomes a bodyguard for a rich girl on her journey. While he’s not all that good at battling and overrelies on his huge Crobat and a shiny Joltik (author guy also LOVES his Pokemon variants, he comes up with unique type variations and more weird shit), he finds the skills of an action hero within him, and slowly “discovers” he was probably part of the Navy (SEELs?) in his previous life. Really dumb stuff, but it leads to many heist scenes.
This is also a world that’s been timeskipped around 20 years into the future compared to the anime. First time I’ve seen that. It makes it so we meet the children of characters we know, and people like Ash are established adults9 known by all. Some other fan favorites are going through messy divorces.
Another interesting thing is that in this world, Arceus is explicitly known to send legendaries against people the moment they rock the boat too much, which is why the evil Teams don't break the game rules and society is so static. Very reminiscent of Worm. It also means the main character himself has to become somewhat eco-friendly in order to keep his favor. His dream becomes owning a plot of land around a lighthouse to keep his growing collection of creepy Pokemon in.
Very descriptive writer, though annoyingly he always feels the need to post his inspiration landscape pictures at the top of each chapter. He’s also really bad at editing his own dialogue sometimes, because he wants to get back to descriptions:
While May was talking the little girl pulled out her own phone and showed me my picture at the top of an article titled, 'Old Hoenn record shattered after nine years, largest recorded Zubat Captured.'
Nerd girl, "With that big fella I bet you make it pretty far in the end of year tournament. I heard the prize you got was a whole package of supplements."10
Overall, it’s sometimes funny, but objectively terrible. At one point there are multiple “balls” double entendres in a row. After three years, it’s also only five badges in, which isn’t helped by a love of showing every fight from four characters’ perspectives before the plot can move on.11 Even sticking to chapters involving only the main character, it's slow.
Fan Fics are tricky, I don't enjoy the super angsty ones or self inserts or ... 'Ya he's so bad ass hes gonna have all the strongest and bang all the ladies' type of junk
HE LIES.
Pokemon Typechange
Charizard carefully lifted the glass and drank the glowing water quickly. As he set the glass down his body began to change. First was a change to his coloration, with his belly altering to a light blue and teal stripes appearing along his back. Next was the major change as his wings altered dramatically, the thin membranes bulging out and the overall structure moving inward to become a large pair of mobile fins. His fingers lengthened slightly and a thin webbing formed between them, with similar changes occurring with the claws of his feet. Finally the end of his tail expanded outward into a fin, with the tailflame changing to a green fire that spread to cling more tightly over the entire new fin.
Alexa did her best to describe the process as it happened. The speed and extent of the change surprised her, and she felt somewhat worried about the awkward movements of her friend as he inspected the changes to his form.
The entire fic and sequel is more of this. I’m not exaggerating. It’s ALL this. Over 250k words of experimentation with Pokemon designs, no plot.
Pokemon Retold
This one stuck out to me because of a cute little gimmick, where every chapter has a few overworld sprites representing the MC’s current team at the top of the page.
Much like Game of Champions and Origin of Species, this is meant to be a retelling of Red’s original video game adventure. It takes a radically different approach to this: Red is incredibly incompetent.
No forethought whatsoever is involved. He will fail to catch Pokemon, lose most battles, and his only contribution to an overall plot is having bad luck in encountering Team Rocket. Who, in this universe, can refuse Pokemon battles and just beat you up or escape. Even if they accept a fight and lose, they can still fuck you up, they’re criminals.
Sadly, while it’s an original twist to have an aimless incompetent character at the focus, it leads to an equally aimless and incompetent story. The writer realizes this quite a few chapters in, and hamfistedly gives Red two new friends to travel with. They are both pretty boring anime stock characters, and they have no chemistry with the comparatively original lead.
Since the traveling sequences are now awkward and unengaging, the writer then decides to start spamming timeskips, leaping all over potentially good scenes, without actually helping the pacing all that much? It’s super messy. I dropped it because it had lost me somewhere around the third timeskip, having lost all connection to the events or the characters.
Wandered Off
![Pokemon Vietnamese Crystal (Bootleg Translation) [GBC] « Legends of Localization](https://substackcdn.com/image/fetch/f_auto,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fsubstack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2Fce85f5b2-a909-4ed5-84ca-78329cb4effe_1280x720.png "Pokemon Vietnamese Crystal (Bootleg Translation) [GBC] « Legends of Localization")
Starts off stuck in a terrible “League helping the main character get his feet on the ground” prologue arc for twenty chapters, but what really kills this story is the ESL writing. Try reading this if you want a headache:
As the monster took the next step forward, a different screech cut through the air, just as loud as the earlier one, coming from behind me. A second one, joining the first, almost sent me back to my knees in pain, but somehow, I managed to stay on my feet. My legs were in no condition to turn around but I managed to turn my head, even as fear was trying to paralyse me again and part of me wished I hadn’t looked.
Behind me were two more monsters, about as big as the one in front of me. The one on my left side looked a little like the one in front of me. While all three were similar in size, those two were on all four, or rather six legs. The one on the right side was upright, standing on a pair of legs, leaving its two arms, with wicked-looking claws, free to do things. Like tear me to pieces, if that thing ever wanted to. Not that it would need to, any of the three could simply step on me, and I’d be done for. One, on my left side, looked a little like the one in front of me, a massive silhouette, only with fewer legs. Where the one in front of me had many, that one only had two, alongside two arms, high above my head.
This continues for 140 chapters. I don’t think the pacing or writing get better, I skipped ahead to check.
A Backwards Grin
This subgenre of Pokemon fics used to be really popular. Or maybe it still is and I just avoid it. The writer self-inserts into a Pokemon, the carnivorous Mawile.
It mostly caught my attention by not being obvious fetish bait within the first chapter. That doesn’t mean it’s good though. You can imagine the entire fic from this review, hence its position in this article.
Time to Be a Hero
This is just a retelling of Pokemon Legends: Arceus.
Our protagonist, a self-inserted Dawn Berlitz, is the most glaring Mary Sue in all these fics you’re reading about.
The only reason I kept reading was that it was mostly played for comedic effect, and the fact the actual storyline of the game is already Mary Sueish in the first place, which, when taken at face value, would lead to some absurd scenes.
Still, it’s pretty trash. There is a sequel in present time that’s even more laughably terrible, couldn’t get past the first couple chapters.
To Forge Our Story
This one is a quest, with readers choosing what to do next after each chapter.
Of course, this immediately leads to forum users building their dream team, so Blue (the main character) has four Pokemon before he’s even beat the second gym.
I will give the author this, the guy has mostly thought out a balanced battle system. Unfortunately, he dropped the pokeball with the actual characterization, both our MCs and named characters are insanely boring.
Everything that’s not a fight or a training sequence is also poorly planned, with ridiculous sidequests like “take a picture in every new city” giving experience and, by consequence, readers being forced to add multiple shitty scenes to the story in order to advance, and having to delay fighting a gym as long as possible to keep the streak going.
Near the point I dropped it, the guy starts having multiple sidequests running concurrently, with all individual chapter being divided into various storylines that are impossible to keep track of. Rarely do you see so many failure modes of the quest format happening at once.
Pokemon: Jordinio Version
This one is horny AND actually feels like a porn fic without literally qualifying.12 It’s one of the most pathetic wish fulfillment stories I’ve ever read.
But somehow it dances on the knife’s edge of “so bad it’s good” and kept me reading for a way longer time than I should have. Here are some choice quotes:
I scrolled down to my owned pokemon and pulled up Feebas' profile, "Female huh? Good stuff," I mused, while I wouldn't say no to a male one, I think a beautiful pokemon like Milotic is better suited as a female. God if any of those feminist's and SJW idiots could read my thoughts they'd be so triggered, "Swift Swim as the ability which means it'll get Marvel Scale and as for attacks, Splash, Tackle, Dragon Breath and Hypnosis. Not fucking bad at all." I continued to read.
This comes out of nowhere, as does this:
"Row!" Fearow happily saluted with one of his massive wings, while Butterfree again simply nodded, all stoic and badass like.
Not something you'd expect from a butterfly, but I'm an adaptable, accepting sort. I only beat the crap out of a few gay guys growing up after all.
And that was just because they were pricks. One seriously idolized that 'Leave Brittney' alone dude and shoved it in my face and called me a homophobe when I told him to please not do it near me. We were on a bus, to school.
He was seventeen, and I was 12 and full of piss and vinegar. Suffice to say, I beat his ass and my opinion on homosexuality was soured for a few years.
But that is neither here nor there.
I looked to Pidgeotto who looked at the tiny in comparison to himself, Zubat, and then to me and gave me an aghast, wide eyed look.
What kind of monster would stop reading here and not keep looking for more deranged shit like this? Certainly not a monster that would willingly choose to read twenty plus Pokemon fic reviews.
There are some hints of brilliance that make me suspect this guy could be a genius comedic writer if he actually tried and held himself back, Gary Oak’s introduction and Surge’s gym fight specifically.
It’s pretty well paced and goes down fast. It’s still pretty fucking terrible.
The Actually Great
What the experts call Pokino.
Game of Champions
If you’ve read only a few fics, chances are this one is your #1. This is the story of the very first games, with Red and Blue as the main characters, turned into an epic.13
I must admit I was negligent and avoided rereading it while going through my Pokemon backlog for this article. I just don’t think it can live up to my memory of it, and it’s unfinished, which really hurts.
The author did leave some notes of how he was planning to end the story, but all he ended up accomplishing was proving that it’s all in the execution, not his ideas. The plot is pretty basic, built around a framing device wherein Red is being interrogated by Team Rocket, trying to figure out how a kid infiltrated their headquarters. Every detail revealed leads to a story of overcoming painful odds, roughly following the “plot” of the original video game.
The writer’s skills show in how every action scene feels like the most important event in the Pokemon world so far. He’s great at making you feel like an underdog facing ancient giants as you read, at crafting a good atmosphere and keeping you glued to the page.
I don’t have much more to say about it, and not just because I haven’t read it recently. Some things speak for themselves.14
Borne of Caution
A pattern breaker, this guy decided that everything in his self-insert needed to make at least some sense, including the universe-hopping method. He’s a big cat zookeeper who gets caught up in a mutually assured destruction-style nuclear explosion.
Unlike most fics, the PTSD associated with the jump has a serious effect on the plot, yet the nuclear explosion means he doesn’t have an unengaging “I just want to go back to the boring normal world” motivation, his old life is gone.15
When he arrives to the Pokemon world, he finds his Pokemon Emerald team, at the time only a Vulpix, has been transferred over with him. His starter has some telepathy, and in this world Pokemon are universally as smart or smarter than humans, so from the start this isn’t a “lone trainer vs the world” type story.
He instantly explains everything to Professor Birch, the Hoenn professor, and a psychic pokemon confirms his story. Birch decides this is an excellent opportunity to study how someone from another world would tackle the gym circuit. We get a pretty decent motivation for every character involved, and the worldbuilding merges the anime and the games into something anyone can enjoy, and even reuse for their own stories.
This is overall a light hearted fic, but not cloyingly so. There is conflict, and there are plenty of arguments and dark moments, sometimes unjustified. A couple of times, the writer realizes he’s made his main character too powerful, and tries poorly to recontextualize some earlier successes as either luck or toxic behavior. This is the worst aspect of the fic, though rare, and also…
I really…
I really wish he didn’t want to fuck his Vulpix. The writer is a very obvious furry with a previous account in Fanfiction.net hosting some related borderline erotica, so this isn’t just unfortunate implications. He’s barely holding himself back from writing that into his self-insert.
It’s very easy to ignore, especially because the writer has promised it’ll never actually happen (anywhere besides his mind, presumably). But the community constantly memes about it, so this is hardly a hallowed masterpiece we can publicly admit to enjoy.
As the fic has gone on, as of the very latest updates, another problem has begun to crop up. Interlude hell.
Interlude hell is a famous problem in Worm fanfics. I don’t want to get into the specifics, but basically it amounts to seeing the same event or issue from many different viewpoints. This can be cool if it develops new characters. It can be awful if it means you have to wait four months before the plot moves on from that scene.
Unfortunately, Borne is going into that direction. Recently we had two characters’ reactions, a forum thread and an audio log about an important event.
Despite my shitting on the fic for so long, I religiously follow new updates. It’s good. This writer breathes Pokemon. I just wish he wasn’t also kissing them.
The Most Evil Trainer
Do you know Smogon? It’s basically the top website and community for the competitive Pokemon community. Many of their users devise advanced strategies and put them to use in Pokemon Showdown, their online battling game.
Smogon might be most known for their tiers system, which in short allows people to play the game with their favorite Pokemon without being destroyed by legendaries, which are locked to the Ubers tier, or vastly more competitively viable pokemon, which are locked to the OverUsed/OU tier, and so on. There’s even a tier for unevolved Pokemon, the Little Cup.
However, every competitive community has munchkins16, and a series as poorly balanced as Pokemon breeds more of them than maybe any other. Smogon is the place for those. There are thousands of toxic, messy and just funny strategies17 to drive your opponent mad.
The main character of this fic is a user who tried to beat the League the fair way, lost pathetically, and is now resorting to Smogon tactics to beat it.
This goes poorly with the overall society, who value fairness and didn’t actually expect a rando could waltz in with the brainchild strategies of a million bored internet users.
The fic is as fun and less cracky than it sounds. It starts off right at the League conference tournament, so there is no annoying “prelude” (i.e. two million words) where he’s slowly building his team. You’re right in the midst of fully developed teams and tactics. There are a lot of politics, because the League doesn’t want our main character to be emulated by anyone else, and cool reveals because the MC’s internal monologue holds things back from us.
As of writing this, if it keeps its quality up to the end it’ll be the best Pokemon fic I’ve ever read.
…
Hey, it’s me again. I’m reading this draft a couple months later, and I feel the need to beat up my past self.
Don’t get me wrong, this work is still really good. At the point where I wrote the above, it qualified for “the best Pokemon fic I’ve ever read”. The issue is that right after that, it becomes a mess.
It’s basically impossible for me to believe it’ll stick the landing now. You can draw a line between the actually interesting plot and a secondary plot that has now become the main story, a plodding sidequest where he has to convince the Elite Four to back him even after the entire initial plot and tournament, the conceit for this novel, is over. Every new chapter is just a slow conversation where the plot advances at a snail’s crawl. The writer doesn’t even have a Patreon to justify stretching the story. I’m at my wit’s end here.
Anyway, if you do read The Most Evil trainer, just keep the above in mind. Stop after the tournament is over and wait for further instructions. Who knows, maybe the author will pull a miracle and the boring chapters will be reocontextualized into a beautiful arc and ending.
Well, that’s the reviews. Do I have any conclusion? Yeah, since Borne spawned so many decent copycat fics, I can’t wait for the next generation spawned by Hard Enough and Most Evil Trainer.
Maybe something that isn’t in Kanto or Hoenn this time? Please, dear zoomers?
Okay I guess Pokemon Go also blew up, but there are no Pokemon Go fics.
This and Most Evil Trainer make me think this is some barely tapped secret sauce to making really good Pokemon fics. Is the slow search for a full team and beating eight different gyms really the most engaging way to write a story?
Of course, the story instantly went into Life Hiatus after I caught up.
After all, I did love his Remix of HPMOR’s first five chapters.
Look, you do need this disclaimer, just keep reading the article.
He took this one from the Pokemon anime.
Hey speaking of Ash, one of the most popular Pokemon fanfics is a time travel one named “Ashes of the Past”. I’ve tried picking it up a couple of times, but it’s an unreadable angsty mess that insists upon itself. Can’t get through it no matter how hard I try. People love it for some reason… that’s my mini review for you, because I don’t remember anything besides how much I hate it.
You’d think this would just be an excuse for the horny writer to hit on legal versions of the Pokemon cast, but somehow it never happens.
No, guy really left the “Nerd girl” thing there to keep track and forgot to remove it.
You’ll be surprised to find this is a trait shared by one of my favorite fics later on.
Hey speaking of porn fics, Pokegirls: Orre (no link for you) is a porn quest where all Pokemon are monster women that need to be caught and bred or they go crazy. Seriously. It got recommended on the Rational Fiction subreddit for being “highly well thought quest with optimal choices and amazing worldbuilding”, paraphrasing slightly. SERIOUSLY. I found it really overrated and more fetishy than even the description suggests, but it is unique and not poorly written. I still wouldn’t recommend it even if you ignore the porn, though, but it’s close I guess. Top ten stupidest footnote I’ve written, but I had to mention it somewhere.
I cringe every time I use this word. I can’t imagine how mythologists feel daily.
“Isn’t the whole point of a review…?” SHUT UP.
You’ll notice I ignore this aspect of The Most Evil Trainer because it’s good enough to get away with it. The plot wouldn’t happen at all!
Here are some, though none of these are used in the fic: https://www.smogon.com/smog/issue23/annoying_sets
From the ones that I've read, Born of cuation is pretty good, and Pokemon Trainer
vikey is fun (untill the recent arc involving the new unexplored area).
I've read Hard Enough but don't quite remember it, will be rereading soon.
I Will Touch the Skies and The Type Specialist are meh. When is a Spoon a Sword? is alo meh but less meh than the other two.
Game of Champions I've heard about but haven't read due to people saying it's one of the best fics they have ever read, and that also it's abandonded.
The Most Evil Trainer I have never heard of this one, it sounds good so I'll be checking it out, Thank you!
Have you read pokepoking?
https://forum.questionablequesting.com/threads/poke-poking-or-how-i-learned-to-stop-fretting-and-love-the-pokemon.19367/
surprising really good world building for how it's a porny fic