POPULAR: Cliches in Pokémon Fanfiction

[Greninjaman]

Probably because he's a well-known and popular name. Using those type of characters is an 'easy trick' for people to draw attention to their fic and 'compensate' for their flaws in writing. (Not for all of them though, but it can be a factor.)

Ash is certainly very well known since he is the protagonist of the anime. Everyone knows what sort of person he is. If the main character in your fanfic is named Ash, people might assume that you are going for a similar character to Ash from the anime.

 

[Lightning Flame Blast]

Probably because he's a well-known and popular name. Using those type of characters is an 'easy trick' for people to draw attention to their fic and 'compensate' for their flaws in writing. (Not for all of them though, but it can be a factor.)

So much so that taking a look at FFN’s most favorited pokemon fanfics, every piece in the main page has Ash in the tags (last I checked, anyway).

 

[RK9]

So much so that taking a look at FFN’s most favorited pokemon fanfics, every piece in the main page has Ash in the tags (last I checked, anyway).

FFN has the issue that they classify Pokémon as 'Games' only, so literally every anime thing is also instantly classified in the game-verse section and shit ends up flooding each other out.

But I feel that's also a result of that actually going on. People write stuff about stuff that's relevant cause that's on their mind and it's also what gets people attention cause it's on their mind too (while not impossible to draw attention to something that's not under people's attention anymore, it's simply easier to do with stuff that is). Once a new game drops or other type of game-related medium, just like with fanart, there will be a new influx of game-verse fics that drowns out the anime/Ash side.

 

[KrspaceT]

Ash has the benefit of an established set if traits. The game protagonists don't really have that.

To use another example Game Serena could be anyone, but everyone knows who Anime Serena is.

Honestly that helps a ton. Structure is useful