Writers' Workshop General Chat Thread

[Nitro Indigo]

For some reason, I really like seeing people thoroughly criticise things I'm not interested in.

I've also noticed over the years that anime is one of the many subjects where most reviewers of it are "in the fandom" and thus gloss over certain things because they're used to them - except this time, the fandom is one for an entire medium. I'm also worried that I'm coming across as pretentious - I'm not above being "in the fandom" either. (That Power Rangers video I did? I rewatched the episode over and over and became more and more excusing of the shows' flaws each time.)

 

[canisaries]

For some reason, I really like seeing people thoroughly criticise things I'm not interested in.

that reason is called shadenfreude and we all have it

 

[UselessBytes]

Haven't been around for a hot minute, but I absolutely want my first message back to be bowing in awe to canis's new pfp

 

[canisaries]

thank you thank you it was made with love and care

 

[hanecco]

What do you think the current trends are in the Pokemon fanfic-writing community?

 

[Beth Pavell]

Here on Bulbagarden Pokémon Mystery Dungeon are in the ascendant - stories involving humans, generally, are out of fashion. There's still a fair mix on fanfiction.net, though a lot of stories seem to involve Ash and some kind of Pokémon master league

 

[Nitro Indigo]

I've only ever written two Pokémon fanfics with humans in them, and they were both terrible. One was an attempt at a parody, and another was this Legend of Zelda Adult Timeline AU where it would have turned out that Jirachi was the spirit of the Triforce who always existed, and transformed every mortal being into Pokémon to protect them from Ganondorf. I gave up writing it halfway through The Wind Waker. This was in 2016.

As for trends... to Archive of Our Own! It seems that most of the recently-updated G and T-rated Pokémon fanfics are set in the animeverse and focus on Ash's friends, with Graphic Depictions of Violence. Also, someone somehow got their character tags to only display the English names, instead of being automatically changed to "Japanese | English". (I wonder if it's different on other language-versions of the site?)

 

[hanecco]

My ideas (literally none of them have been written down as fanfics yet) almost always involve human protagonists. I have thought about using a Pokemon protagonist before, but if I did that i would really want to explore what it is like to be, well, a not-human.

For example, do Psychic-types view the world in more abstract ways - say, as idealists who maintain that physical objects don't exist and that we're all just bundles of ideas in God Arceus's mind? (Berkeley's idealism for you.) Oddly specific, this one, I know.

As sentient beings, why do Pokemon exhibit behaviour similar to far less intelligent real-world animals? How does that mesh together with the ideas of catching and owning Pokemon? Until I've sorted out those things, I'm not happy writing stories from the point of view of Pokemon.

Anime fanfiction does seem very popular, especially ones centering around Kalos, it seems. The Kalos anime had a perfect storm of Serena (Amourshipping) and Ash being competent enough to have reasonably won the League, although as we all know, he didn't; these two are fertile fanfic breeding grounds

 

[Nitro Indigo]

@Lumilite

I'm going to explore some of those ideas in Moonkind: The Wayward Butterfly! Specifically, how Psychic-types perceive the world (though I'm planning to go more into that in a half-baked side-story idea) and Pokémon acting like wild animals. Any more details would be spoilers, but I hope you like My Little Pony.

 

[canisaries]

exploring the ideas of what a non-human mind may be like is very interesting, but i'll confess that it's not the primary reason why i enjoy writing pokemon leads. that would just be pure furrying out for me. i usually do pokemon leads only for the stories in my pmd-esque stories anyway, in which i like to have larger casts and explore more physical gimmicks in bodies and interaction. they're not terribly introspective outside pretty standard internal conflicts.

in a way, hunter, haunted is a story where i do explore an unconventional mind, but that's still one of a human.

 

[Nitro Indigo]

Part of my motivation to write Moonkind was that I wanted to avoid the cliché of humans adapting to their new Pokémon bodies easily. I made a thread about transformations a few months ago, and someone basically said that a transformation would "realistically" come with personality changes. While that doesn't apply to anything I've written, I've since realised that it's basically how regeneration works in Doctor Who.

 

[Daren]

Here on Bulbagarden Pokémon Mystery Dungeon are in the ascendant - stories involving humans, generally, are out of fashion. There's still a fair mix on fanfiction.net, though a lot of stories seem to involve Ash and some kind of Pokémon master league

It's a very odd coincidence that a story that's been rolling in my mind and trying to call me out of fanfic retirement is a human-less Mystery Dungeon style world (not quite the MD world itself) story.

Anime fanfiction does seem very popular, especially ones centering around Kalos, it seems. The Kalos anime had a perfect storm of Serena (Amourshipping) and Ash being competent enough to have reasonably won the League, although as we all know, he didn't; these two are fertile fanfic breeding grounds

I sort of suspected when Kalos ended the way it did would cause an explosion of Kalos league rewrites. Serena added even greater fuel to the fire.
Not that rewrites were ever uncommon in the anime fanfic community.

 

[Nitro Indigo]

I was just thinking about why I don't like the design of Archive of Our Own that much, and I realised that it and its "culture" are designed around shipping, which I'm not interested in. Other examples of fanfic cultures I've seen include:

• On Fimfiction, it's common for people to write spinoffs for other people's stories. The fanfics that usually get into the SFW featured box are cute/funny oneshots, AUs which rewrite specific episodes, elaborations on small parts of the latest episode, or tones that the show doesn't do. Shipping isn't as popular.
• Snuggles once said that he(?) prefers summaries that are a factual description of what will happen in the fanfic, but I've only seen those on this website. It would just look odd on non-forum stories.

 

[Beth Pavell]

I sort of suspected when Kalos ended the way it did would cause an explosion of Kalos league rewrites. Serena added even greater fuel to the fire.
Not that rewrites were ever uncommon in the anime fanfic community.

I don't expect the Serena obsession to slacken off any time soon - Lillie's had her share of attention as far as fanfiction.net is concerned, but not so much as shipping fuel

 

[hanecco]

@canisaries
What are you talking about? Red is a completely normal guy! I can't imagine him even harming a fly.

I generally don't read that much fanfic, despite occasionally writing it, but I do remember avoiding AO3 for the sheer amount of NSFW shipping fics that would come up in the search results. Fanfic.net has the same issue, but to a lesser extent - I can usually find something good to read on there (which doesn't involve shipping) without much effort.

Maybe the PMD trend is because of nostalgia for Gen 4, which is when the most popular PMD games came out. Right now everybody wants to see Sinnoh make a return. Not that I mind...

 

[Nitro Indigo]

Yeah, Archive of Our Own is mainly for short fanfics, which is probably why Moonkind hasn't caught on there. It seems like it's easier for fanfics to become popular on Fimfiction. The main reason I'm using AO3 is because I like the tagging system, and because I'm worried that people won't "get" my fanfics if I post them on this site, either because they're products of Fimfiction's culture, or about things that aren't that popular.

 

[Nitro Indigo]

I briefly discussed the homogenisation of Pokémon spinoffs at the end of my latest video. The only part I'm particularly unhappy with is that I think the first and second paragraphs of the EOTD section should have been the other way around.

 

[unrepentantAuthor]

Had some pretty heavy news at the start of the week and it's somewhat consumed my thinking over the last several days. I reckon I have my mind sorted out again now, though, and a good thing too; I have a job interview tomorrow. Wish me luck!

 

[Daren]

Best of luck tomorrow, unrepentantAuthor!

 

[hanecco]

Good luck, uA. I also applied to a job today, and I'm waiting to hear back. Very nerve-wracking.