Blitz 2022: Hype & Fic Recs Thread

[Arukona]

So my recs for this final week of Blitz are:

Fledglings, by @Spiteful Murkrow and @Virgil134. It’s quite a prominent longfic that most on here may be aware of already, but if you haven’t gotten around to checking it out, then definitely do! Having only done so recently, the first few chapters certainly have captivated me, with a world full of intrigue and a colourful cast of characters (and a certain white birb that will absolutely steal your heart away with his cuteness. He certainly stole mine!). Beyond that, there’s a lot of camaraderie to be had, and shades of something darker, with pirates and the ominous Company playing the antagonist roles. I'm definitely looking forward to reading more of this fic and seeing where it goes.

Pokémon Mystery Dungeon: Extra Fiction, by @GumPlum. This is a nice oneshot (currently oneshot, with plans to expand) about two characters due to appear in Gum’s main fic, Pokémon Mystery Dungeon: Free Fiction (go check that one out too while you’re at it!). I liked this one a lot, with strong ties of friendship between Kiho and Algamede, and I also like the fic for the unique species choices, too. Not too often you see the spotlight on a Ledian character. I look forward to seeing how they fit into Free Fiction’s plotline, once they’re introduced there.

 

[Shiny Phantump]

My fic rec has to be for Crux of the Self by @Truebrush. It's not the first PMD fic here to have body dysphoria as an element, but none take it on quite like this. And it's gone really underappreciated on TR, I actually found it offsite, doing one of my Ao3 searches for specific combinations of tags in pursuit of something that hits a particular emotion.

Yet it's the first fic I've read for a while that's had the gripping bingeread property for me, and one of the few times my vain quests to find a specific emotion in a fic has ended in success, so when I found it was here and had gone under my radar, I knew I needed to review it before Blitz ended... (Although I cut it pretty close there, didn't I?) It's scratched a "PMD with dysphoria as an important core component" itch for me in a way I haven't experienced before and other people who find that idea appealing should go read it too.

 

[Dragonfree]

I'd like to throw in a rec for Kills-Other-Humans by canisaries - which you may have heard her talk about on Discord as the Andrefic. I knew going in that it was about her second serial killer character, who murders scumbags he thinks deserve it. Like canis's other work, though, there's a rich tapestry of things going on here - fascinating worldbuilding of a trainerverse where some Pokémon are sapient citizens, unflinching exploration of moral quandaries, and stellar characterization, both of the two central Pokémon (Barely-There, a young Shuppet fascinated by this unusual human who kills other humans, and Ben, an Ursaring belonging to a trainer Andre murdered) and especially of Andre himself, a man whose belief that he's doing the right thing is challenged and questioned and interrogated - by Barely-There but mostly by different parts of himself - as the events of the story progress. I've really enjoyed reading it and it definitely deserves more attention.

 

[JFought]

So it's a bit late to get last second reviews in, but even if you won't get blitz points for it I recommend checking out Do Psychic Cats Dream of Electric Sheep? Its an adaption of SPMD where Espurr takes the role of the main human character instead. Though there's a lot more to it than just that: SparklingEspeon has done a lot to really flesh out the story and its world, with tons of new characters, places, and worldbuilding elements that make it so that even if you're intimately familiar with the original story, there's more than enough new here to keep you on your toes. And it can't be understated just how much it all adds to and improves the original story. It's a great fic that I wanted to review more of this blitz, so review more for me, please and thank you!

 

[HelloYellow17]

Tossing in a rec for White Swan, Black Swan by @Sinderella ! There are so many delightful things about this fic. To name a few:

• Wonderfully expressive and colorful characters, each with distinct personalities
• Some of the best Pokémon puns for irl equivalents you will ever find
• Absolute MADLAD and chaotic gremlin energy through at least half the cast
• Several different types of Chaos Gremlin, from Noel to Loïc to Odette herself
• Mystery and intrigue
• Characters that will crack you up constantly
• Characters that you will absolutely LOVE to HATE
• Charming Pokémon characters that you will instantly fall in love with
• Epic fakemon

And honestly so much more, I’m barely scratching the surface here! By far my favorite thing about this fic is the dialogue itself—it’s so varied and speaks volumes about each character! WSBS is a fantastic read with a fabulous cast. 💛

 

[Negrek]

Blitz 2022 Final Wrap-Up​

The reviewing frenzy is over, the dust has settled, and it's time to look back at what we accomplished this year over our four weeks of reading and reviewing madness! All in all we had 36 reviewers publish 597 reviews on 216 stories, covering 1,347 chapters and totalling a whopping 594,643 words!

Coming out on top of all that activity was @Spiteful Murkrow with 176.5 points, 95 reviews, and 165,047 words written. That's 28% of the total words published during this event!

In second place is @Torchic W. Pip with 170.75 points, 104 reviews written, and 37,330 words published! Torchic reviewed more different fis than any other person in this event, 95 in all! They may have more knowledge of TR's catalogue than anyone at this point!

And in third place is @Navar, racking up 130.25 points off of just 5 reviews that covered 86 chapters! Navar shot to third place by writing the chunkiest reviews out of anyone during Blitz: one covering 30 chapters of PMD: Warped Skies that was 9,614 words long, and another for PMD: Dual Wills that went over 26 chapters and totalled 8071 words. Amazing work!

Here are the final breakdowns of reviews written and chapters covered! While the overall ordering is similar, we can clearly see cases where people preferred to write longer reviews covering more chapters rather than more reviews as such.

We can also look at total words written...

...where no one comes at all close to catching Spiteful Murkrow! He wrote more than four times as much text as K_S, who placed in second by this metric. And K_S was no slouch, with nearly 40k words all told this Blitz!

Looking at stories reviewed per person, we can see that while man top scorers hit up a lot of different fics, it wasn't hugely necessary! Some people achieved big scores getting stuck in on a handful of particularly long stories.

Taking a step back from individual stats, let's look at the event overall! Here's what the number of reviews per day looked like:

Things started slowly, building to the first peak of activity on New Year's Eve and settling into a steady pace of about 20 reviews per day before falling off towards the middle of Week 3. Things were initially quiet in Week 4 before building to a huge final reviewing push. There were 62 reviews posted on the final day of Blitz alone--10.4% of the reviews posted over the course of the entire event.

We can also look at the total number of revews posted by week:

Despite the madcap rush to the end of the event, Week 4 actually ended up having the fewest reviews posted, with 125--barely edged out by Week 1's 129 total reviews. Week 2 had the greatest number of reviews overall at 187.

The number of words and chapters reviewed showed a different pattern, however:

Despite having a relatively low number of reviews, Week 1 actually had the most words written out of any week! Weeks 1, 3, and 4 actually had fairly similar numbers of total words. Week 2, which had the highest number of reviews, had the lowest number of words and chapters covered. Meanwhile, Week 4 had the highest number of chapters covered despite having the lowest number of total reviews. This paints a picture where Week 2 sees the most reviews posted, but they tend to be short--which makes sense, because the stories reviewed also tended to be short. That was one-shot week! It makes sense that so few chapters were covered, too, each one-shot only having one. Meanwhile, though people weren't necessarily posting as many individual reviews during Week 1, those reviews themselves were a bit beefier on the average. Meanwhile, Week 4 was once again a lower-review week, but we saw a lot of people catching up on chapterfics here--and as a result, the total number of chapters covered jumped quite a bit!

Overall, I had a lot of fun this Blitz, and I hope that you all enjoyed it, too! A huge thank-you to everyone who participated, our wonderful prize volunteers who are hard at work making sure everyone gets rewarded for their reviewing efforts, the logistics team approving reviews and keeping everything running behind the scenes, and of course Dragonfree and kyeugh for their work on our lovely new Blitz app! I'd also like to take a moment to shout out the people participating in their first Blitz this year: @Arukona, @Forestoak, @JFought, @Joshthewriter, @Poivron, and @Venia Silente! I hope you had a good time and will join us again later this year for Review Blitz 2023.

That's all for Blitz this year! Remember that there's still time for you to pick out prizes if you'd like. I've also opened up a thread for suggestions and feedback for next year's Blitz. I'd love to hear what you thought of this even and if you think there's anything we could do better with the next one!