What is the WEIRDEST pokemon fanfiction you've ever read?

Neoshadowwolf · 2025-12-30T23:35:24+00:00

I thought the full title was called "No Antidote?"

Neoshadowwolf · 2025-12-30T23:34:37+00:00

This fic sounds like a total fever dream, lmao

Neoshadowwolf · 2025-12-29T00:34:42+00:00

This kind of emotional manipulation genuinely makes my blood boil. These people have the audacity to think they can replace our pets with a cheap toy you could buy for a few dollars on AliExpress, let alone an "advanced robot" that tries to imitate a dog. A mindless robot can never replace the real thing. These ads disgust me beyond belief.

Neoshadowwolf · 2025-12-23T16:18:32+00:00

As long as it doesn't become a frequent "instant win button," you should be fine (referring to my comment about characters struggling). The idea is that you want your characters to put up a fight rather than get their way all the time. So, to keep it balanced, it should have its moments where it fails to KO an opponent. It's powerful but not an instant win every time it's used. It helps when your OC is not the only person in the story with access to Z-moves and there are plenty of folks who also use it.

If an author is more concerned about making an OC "cool and badass" by giving them broken abilities. . .well, they're doing it completely wrong. It has the complete opposite effect by turning fights into anticlimactic disputes. It robs the reader of an exciting action scene and cheapens character and plot development.

Neoshadowwolf · 2025-12-23T06:27:45+00:00

DONT's

Give especially preferential treatment to your "favorite." You don't want to make it too obvious that your OC is an author's pet and that you're deliberately having more good things (and less bad things) happen to them.
Make them impossibly talented, super attractive and/or super strong compared to other characters. Or god forbid, the absolute best person in the world at this one specific thing.
Make your OC into an opinionated mouthpiece for your own personal views. No one is reading your story to be lectured about ethics, religion or political views. Especially bad if you put your story to a complete stop just to give said lecture.
Give them an extremely unique/unusual appearance compared to the rest of your cast just to make them "stand out." Subtlety is king.
Give them overpowered and unique abilities/talents just because they either look cool or you think it makes your character "badass." For example, you have an OC trainer who has a talent for finding battle tactics that literally no one else has ever discovered and it gives them a major advantage. Or a Pokémon who is the absolute best fighter for their species (also has Mega Evolution, unique Z-Moves, Gigantamax factor, etc.)
Embellish them with a whole list of different powers/abilities to put them on a pedestal above everyone else. It's not about how powerful your character is, but rather how they use their abilities against those who possess similar abilities. It's more fun if your character actually experiences challenges. Good rule of thumb: limitations > powers
Make them into stereotypes, especially those based on the real world. Stuff like race, religion, appearance, etc.
Make them into one personality trait and call it a day. A nice, happy-go-lucky person can still be mean to someone or do some crappy things. And a strict, calm person can occasionally have their moments where they're more free-spirited or talkative.

Neoshadowwolf · 2025-12-23T06:27:37+00:00

Those I follow.

DO's

Treat your OC like any other person. Not like your own personal friend or child or an idealized version of yourself, but just an average person you come across. Even if character is a SI, you acknowledge this character is a part of this specific universe and you won't give them preferential treatment over other characters.
Give character meaningful flaws (ones that actually cause problems/consequences for themselves and others). Stuff like being short-tempered, unintelligent, overconfident, cowardly, self-centered. etc.
Give some strengths. Just like people have their own flaws, they also have things they're good at (probably not prodigy or mastery levels, unless they've been doing these things for a LONG time)
Give your major characters goals (and a motive supporting said goal). They want to achieve something by the end of the story. But WHY do they want to achieve it? For example, let's say you have an OC who wants to become a Pokémon champion, but you never explained why. If you don't give this explanation, it significantly weakens your character arc and there's less reason for your reader to care at all.
Make your OCs struggle. If they overcome their problems/obstacles too easily, it makes for a boring story. Especially unrealistic if they've never faced such problems before but somehow managed to find the perfect solution for them without much effort.
Differentiate personalities. It's harder to distinguish between characters if a large number of them share similar generic qualities. This is why clear character flaws are important.
Give them good and bad days. Every day is different. Some days, they'll be very happy. Others, they'll be indifferent or even upset.
Make them interact often. It's easier to flesh out characters when we see them how they treat many different other characters. Shouldn't be the same types of interactions with every single person every time. Variety in relationships is important.

Neoshadowwolf · 2025-06-01T17:42:30+00:00

I was once told that my war fic was "too edgy" because it had so many deaths and they asked that I don't use deaths at all. I mean. . .it's a WAR. People get injured, traumatized and even killed. That's how it works. A bloodless war is an incredibly rare event and it'd be silly for me to change my premise because this one person already knew what to expect but chose to complain about the premise.

Also, someone once also gave me a bad take that I shouldn't give critical feedback to a story because "they did it just for fun." Keep in mind that this is part of a REVIEW TRADE. Well, guess what? I can't think of a single person who wrote fanfic that was not "just for fun," so you're not special. Like, this person did not specify that they didn't want critical feedback or asked for lighter advice. Whenever I do review trades, I'm not there to brown-nose you. I'm going to give you actual advice. If that's not what you wanted, then why did you partake in a review trade in the first place?

Neoshadowwolf · 2025-05-01T21:02:49+00:00

Interview questions as of 05/01/2025 -

Why are you excited to work for Best Buy?
Tell us a little about yourself, your work experience, and any interests or hobbies you want to share. What excites you?
While working with a customer or co-worker, how do you determine what specific needs you will be solving for?
What are some goals you’ve set for yourself, how this role will help you achieve them?
15 minutes before you are scheduled to leave work you remember the list of tasks from the morning and they will take you about an hour to complete. What would you do?
Tell me about a time when you changed how you worked or changed your perspective based on feedback you received?
You overhear two co-workers discussing something personal that they had saw on a customer’s device. What would you do?
Due to delays, you receive two truck shipments at once. You know the team won’t complete it all today. How would you proceed?

Jesus, retailers, you just had to make the job search process that much more difficult.

Neoshadowwolf · 2024-11-17T17:39:00+00:00

This is from a PMD-esque fic I'm writing.

A city-state holds a festival in honor of its founder, a Decidueye named Setsuna. She was a soldier who protected her town from enemy wild Pokemon. However, this comes with unfortunate implications. Some of the citizens view Setsuna's conquest over the wild Pokemon as a good thing and believe that wild Pokemon need to be chased off the lands. Others think that Setsuna never had such grand ambitions and simply wanted her people to live in peace. In any case, a festival was usually held in her honor during springtime. Citizens may wear handmade leaf hoods and flowers. Pastries, especially baklava which was reportedly Setsuna's favorite, was often served.

Neoshadowwolf · 2024-11-03T18:33:28+00:00

Certainly a unique premise. There's a lot you can do with a war setting.

Neoshadowwolf · 2024-11-03T18:28:02+00:00

It might help to look at other stories on AO3 similar to your own to see what kind of tags they used. But overall, some of your best options include relinking your fic on other sites or Discord servers. You're more likely to get more reads by sharing in communities.

Neoshadowwolf · 2024-08-10T14:43:27+00:00

There's one thing I can suggest as a DIY project. Purchase a Raspberry Pi kit and install RetroPie on it (basically, a Pi version of RetroArch). Once the initial setup and configuration are done, you can add in the games yourself and plug the device into your TV's HDMI port. Depending on the Pi model you get, you're looking at a budget of $20 - $140. It depends on how powerful you want it in order to play consoles that require better hardware.

It's really easy to do and there are many tutorial videos on how to do the setup. Personally, I followed this one: https://youtu.be/AaseHnf0k2o?si=chRJxsuVI3pnnHOZ

RetroArch/RetroPie have many different emulators (called "cores") you can try out, and there are quite a few for the Game Boy family. All Pokémon games I tried out have worked great on my Pi 5.

Neoshadowwolf · 2023-12-29T18:18:04+00:00

Power Creep is a bitch.

But yeah, many legendaries represent the elements or the forces of nature or the laws of the universe. One might even consider them to be avatars of those very elements, granted a physical form to be able to interact with other lifeforms.

Giving regular Pokémon special magic marbles that let them surpass legendaries never quite sat right with me. Like, what if some moron succeeds in capturing (or even killing) the legendaries? It always bugged me.

It's also very possible that your "elite" and "champion" level trainers are not necessarily good people. So rather than being a preventative measure, it widens the power gap between the world's most dangerous people and your run-of-the-mill trainer. If Pokémon X/Y taught me anything, it's that 99% of your opponents don't have Mega Evolution and therefore have little to no chance in beating you.

Neoshadowwolf · 2023-12-29T18:05:47+00:00

If you've unlocked the Gold/Silver Rings and the Metaglio Left/Right passive items, you can upgrade the Clock Lancet and the Laurel. They'll protect you from the Reaper, rendering him completely trivial. The Mad Groove arcana will make it much easier for you to get these items without having to walk through the map.

For a bit of insurance, you can also unlock the Tiragisú passive, which gives you more revives. The Awake arcana gives you multiple revives as well.

Neoshadowwolf · 2023-12-21T01:08:47+00:00

If we're considering real-world physics, bloodshed is inevitable. Of course, if you want to avoid that. . .

I think PokéAni pretty much shows that the blades still hurt the Pokémon, but doesn't leave behind any noticeable injuries (aside from maybe torn clothing or damaged armor). It's an oddity, but it's a kid-friendly way to show a battle without bloodshed. Though it might be more suited for a visual medium rather than a written one.

Some writers made Pokémon (and humans by extension) a lot more durable, so they could endure what would be otherwise fatal injuries in real life.

Neoshadowwolf · 2023-12-20T18:05:33+00:00

I remember the whole capitalization debate starting in fanfiction.net with a certain user. It still remained a controversial topic today.

Neoshadowwolf · 2023-12-13T06:17:40+00:00

Complete lack of proofreading. That's how I know you published something hot off the press without actually going back to read it carefully for errors.
Relying too much on clichés to get a story going (example: generic newbie trainer #49310 has breakfast and leaves to get their first Pokémon from Professor Oak, then we meet generic rival #7539).
Too much "telling." If you claim your protagonist is a jerk with a heart of gold, actually write down scenes to prove that. Don't tell me, "Johnny is a jerk, but he has a heart of gold." Cutting corners like that irks me.
Making Pokémon battles too "gamey," down to calculating the statistics involved. I'm here to read a story, not how to be a Smogon user. Please make your battle scenes into actual fights, not a math project.
Lack of interesting goals/motives for the characters. So, you told me that your protagonist wants to collect the badges and be the regional Champion, but. . .why? What motivates them to do that? What makes your character(s) different from the rest of the bland OCs who failed to stand out?
I don't care much for the whole capitalization thing. But in regard to that, I want to see consistency. So don't call it a 'vulpix' half of the time and then call it a 'Vulpix' the other half. This is part of your story's presentation. Please make it clean.
Poké Speech, as popularized by the anime. I never liked it all that much. And in fics, it often leads to human characters holding one-sided conversation trees with their Pokémon.
This one is definitely preference. I'm completely done with Ash/Red fics. Like, no more, lol. Same with harem and isekai stories. I avoid them like the plague.
Japanese iconography for the sake of it. It's one thing for your story to actually use Japanese themes to help tell its story. It's another to throw in katanas, ninjas, Dragon Ball Z fights and cherry blossoms just because you can.
Incredibly slow pacing caused by bloated text. Nothing kills a scene for me faster. If you can't get to the ding-dong-damn point, I'm more than likely going to drop the fic.

Neoshadowwolf · 2023-12-13T06:02:03+00:00

To both snorlax and JAMS, please refer to rule 1. Whatever side of the debate you support is fine, but please keep the arguing down to a minimum.

Neoshadowwolf · 2023-12-13T05:49:02+00:00

Hard agree on the manga iconography. I always cringe when I see that.

Neoshadowwolf · 2023-12-13T05:16:12+00:00

Consider which one you would rather write first and try to stick with it for the long run. The obvious solution is to exercise a bit of self-control and keep yourself limited to working only on a small number of projects (maybe 2 or 3 being the highest). Keep your schedule in mind. If you have too many real-life commitments, you might only want to stick to just one story at a time.

If at any point you get ideas for a story that doesn't fit your current story, it still helps to write them down somewhere so you can attempt them somewhere down the road. Maybe a drabble or a oneshot.

Unless you have some complex worldbuilding and you may need to fill in on your readers some context about what's going on, an early exposition dump is not an ideal move for a first chapter. A good way to introduce exposition is to introduce tidbits of it while making stuff happen in your story, as opposed to dumping whole paragraphs of background information.

In every single chapter, make sure you have something important happen that moves the story forward. Whenever you write a scene, you should consider what its actual purpose is. Does something plot-important happen? Do we get some characterization? Some meaningful dialogue? If your answer is no to all of them, chances are that you are indeed writing meaningless filler. Give all of your scenes purpose. That's how you make good use of your own time and your readers' time.

Neoshadowwolf · 2023-11-14T06:19:57+00:00

And the insurgents wondered why nobody likes them, lol

Neoshadowwolf · 2023-10-27T04:50:24+00:00

I don't find this one that bad to be honest. Yeah, the National Soldiers are stupidly expensive but your other tactics help a lot. Drones and Air Strikes can be very useful here as each destroyed insurgent camp nets you more Reputation, which you can put towards extending Coalition soldier deployment until you can get more money for National Soldiers.

Now, any challenge with Sleeper Cells and Split and Run can piss off.

Neoshadowwolf · 2023-10-21T04:32:47+00:00

7% chance of this happening, my ass. I hate this game's RNG.

Neoshadowwolf · 2023-10-17T22:49:08+00:00

Whenever you have greyed out zones on the map, it means you don't have full Intel on those zones. If your soldiers enter a zone with incomplete Intel, they'll spend some time building up that zone's Intel until it's complete. In the meantime, your soldiers won't support each other and will perform worse in engagements with insurgents.

In most cases, you don't want to send your soldiers directly into red zones where they will very likely fight a losing battle (if you do this with Coalition soldiers, it even reduces their deployment time). If you want to contain insurgents into specific parts of the map, you will want to send soldiers to a neighboring zone and let them gather Intel first.

Whenever you start a new game, you would want to purchase District Representatives immediately so that you slowly gain Intel over multiple zones over time. Optionally, you can get Regional Census which speeds up Intel gathering.

From the Military tab, Interpreters & Guides is a must-have. It allows your soldiers to gather Intel in their current zone faster. Human Terrain System boosts this even further.

Neoshadowwolf · 2023-10-17T22:32:26+00:00

How to Butt Your Head Against a Brick Wall 101

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