Blitz 2024: Hype and Rec Thread

[Spiteful Murkrow]

Heya, sliding in a bit late for this. I honestly had trouble settling on just one story plus four honorable mentions to highlight for this week, but after handicapping slightly for less popular (by views) fare that I read, I wound up going with my heart in the end:

Weekly Fic Rec: Week 2​

The Foolish Oddish by @Negrek

This is actually one of those fics that I started in Week 1 where the only reason why I didn't mention it in my recommendation then was because the author wasn't new to me. Well, fortunately for me, this is a week focused specifically on catching up on stories we've already read, and I was fortunate enough to have the time to come back to it and give it a bit of a spotlight.

The Foolish Oddish is a three-part short story following Ragweed, who starts out as an Oddish who wants for nothing in her life as a Mystery Dungeon encounter beyond stories to collect, and Elkesiss, a fidgety and hyper Zubat with his (nonexistent) eyes set for one day seeing the world outside their dungeon through the cave exit far, far below. One thing leads to another and the two begin to form a budding friendship based on the promise of a grand tale that will last all the way to the journey to the outside world, which works swimmingly... at first.

It's a very well-done story showing life through the eyes of a character where even things we take for granted like sunsets and not having half your neighbors vanish off to parts unknown when you wake up are alien concepts, and at various points, it will make you smile and laugh, and wince and start to grow misty-eyed in others. It has a lot of worldbuilding and lorecrafting all put together for characters that would quite literally be disposable extras in most others from its genre.

Everything about the story just oozes polish, and the prose does an amazing job getting readers into the head and thought process of Ragweed while breathing what would otherwise be samey procedurally generated environments with their random encounters to life. It might be a bit of a lift to still grab a repeat bonus for Week 2 from this story, but if you're into PMD stories and have the time and energy to throw at a 12k three-parter, this one's well worth your attention.

Honorable Mentions:

I, Isobel by @NebulaDreams , The Origin of Storms by @Sike Saner , Making It Big by @Pen , What the Gods Gave Me by @tomatorade

 

[windskull]

Week 2 recs! This time, my top rec would be Pokemon Mystery Dungeon: Path of Valor by @Ambyssin

At the time of writing, I have read through chapter 32. Up to this point, PoV has already been a zaney, fun, and quirky adventure full of memorable characters. It already had a lot of moving villainous parts, something that I really enjoyed. But the chapter I just finished throws a whole new wrench into things and into everything I thought I knew about the story. And from I heard, it only gets wilder from here (in a good way!) I definitely want to come back and read more before the end of blitz, even though it'll be out of theme for the remainder. And I highly recommend it if you like your action/adventure with a slice of comedy.

Honerable Mentions:
1. Hands of Creation by @Namohysip
2. Warped Skies by @Team_Ion
3. Fledglings by @Spiteful Murkrow and @Virgil

 

[Ambyssin]

So, if you were paying any attention to my week 2 output, it should come as no surprise that my recommendation is @SnapDragon's PMD: Flowerbeds. In some fit of craziness I managed to catch up on the entire thing this week. Which, given the meaty chapter sizes, is no small feat. It therefore speaks to the degree that Snap's A plot has my attention. Despite a smaller core cast by typical PMD fic standards, there are a number of moving pieces that interact in interesting ways. It's an original PMD world where there's an alluring blend of human technology with things like a big castle. There's a good deal of politicking happening in the background that's threatening to boil over and swallow up our humans.

It's also unique in that it is a slow burn romance story. Not usually my sort of thing, but the fic does use it to grapple with themes of self and identity in a way many PMD fics don't tend to touch on. Particularly with their human characters. It's also very, very gay. I feel that I should warn interested readers that, despite the more mellow sounding premise, there is a certain level of violence here that isn't typically depicted in PMD fare. And it's not for the sake of "Ow, the edge," either. The fic wants this stuff front and center as its lead character has to grapple with these elements as part of the identity themes. In all, there are a lot of unique elements that make for an enjoyable read.

 

[Arukona]

My rec for Week 2 is @Ambyssin's Path of Valor! This fic is a wild ride - more than 100 chapters long, but each chapter is a modest 5k-ish, so it does make it easier to get through than it might seem at first. It has a lot to like about, key among which for me is the humour that gets a good laugh out of me, something I don't tend to get a whole lot of out of fics. It also has a big cast, a lot of whom I'm very fond of, and characters that are plenty likeable and easy to gravitate towards. There's also an abundance of references to other media in here, namely Final Fantasy, and without spoiling too much, in the later chapters there are some mainline Trainerfic elements brought into the fold, something PMD fics don't tend to do a whole lot of, and I know that might appeal to the more mainline-oriented writers on here.

Certainly looking back at some of the early chapters from where I am in the fic - precisely at Chapter 100 - it certainly feels like a completely different fic from where it starts out, in a good way. How a fic goes through its metamorphosis is always a key curiosity for me when I read fics, and honestly? For me, the feeling of seeing that development play out, looking back to the early chapters and thinking, "We've come a long way since the start, haven't we?" is enough of a reason to get through a longfic like this one.

 

[Negrek]

This week's Blitz theme is one-shots! These bite-sized stories can sometimes go unnoticed alongside sprawling epics, so we'd like to give them some love this week.

Where can you find one-shots to review? One place is from our most recent writing contest, which was focused on daily life in the Pokémon World! You can find links to all the entries that have been published in this round-up post.

Drabble collections can also count as one-shots if you review the drabbles as a set (and they add up to at least 250 words total)! People often publish drabbles after our annual Anniversary Drabble Bingo event, and you can find a list of all of them from 2024 in this post.

And of course, people post new one-shots to the forum all the time! Here's a list of other Pokémon one-shots that have been posted on the forums since the start of last September:

- "Somehow I Created the Universe" by StolenMadWolf
- "You Can Always be Found" by Inyssa
- "The Road to Cinnabar" by windskull
- "Perigee" by windskull
- "To the Letter" by ErazonPo3
- "Wild Horses in Winter" by icomeanon6
- "kaeru" by kintsugi
- "The Perils of Pumpkin Spice" by SparklingBlue
- "Bruxish's Lament" by KandyKorn
- "Fifty Glimpses in Fifty Sentences" by Audrelite
- "Curse of Void" by Namohysip
- "Gakutensoku--A Little Something Extra" by Blackjack Gabbiani
- "The Last Baron" by Arukona
- SVTember Drabble Collection by Blackjack Gabbiani
- "Let's Meet on the Moon" by Nonakin
- "Too Damn Early" by Raindropcroptop

We've also had some fun non-Pokémon one-shots posted recently, so if you see a franchise here you love or just feel like taking a break from Pokéfic, give them a try!

- "a love (not really) like a rebound spike" by lisianthus (Haikyuu!!)
- "Since the World Was Born" by love (Okami)
- "The Beast and the Beast" by NebulaDreams (Darkstalkers)
- "An Unbreakable Bond" by ShinyMachoke (Cuphead)

And of course, if you have one-shots you'd like for people to check out, feel free to highlight them in the Self-Promo Thread!

 

[Spiteful Murkrow]

Heya, sliding in fashionably late in the week and walltime-wise. I honestly had trouble settling on two particular choices for my top pick that both dealt with different but related flavors of heavy themes, but in the end, I wound up going with the one of the two that also had coffee in it:

Weekly Fic Rec: Week 3​

Gathering Moss by @NebulaDreams

Alright, so a decent chunk of you might have already seen or heard of Gathering Moss since it was one of two first-place stories in last year's writing contest here onsite. From what I could see from it, the story quite earned the accolades, but let's get into the nitty-gritty of why you should read this thing:

So for the uninitiated Gathering Moss is a story about coffee, and the almost 2000-year old Golurk who soldiers on making it in a café they keep open in memory of a recently deceased trainer, up until the day they're forced to content with their own looming mortality that suddenly isn't just a distant hypothetical. So, you know, less about coffee, and more coming to terms with death, the fleeting nature of life, and its purpose. All as the hired Mogrem baker turns the kitchen in the back into a perpetual disaster zone.

For those of you who read some of @NebulaDreams ' fare in the past, you'll likely find the general contours of the world quite familiar since it's effectively a spinoff to I, Isobel, but the worldbuilding is quite imaginative, and the characterization is on-point throughout. It effortlessly weaves the past and the present together in different scenes and pulls off a surprising mix of levity and somberness with a convincing and heartfelt exploration of what it's like to realize that your days are numbered and then trying to come to terms with it.

It's a bit up there in terms of length at around 9400 words in length plus a foreword and an afterword, but nothing about the story ever feels superfluous or out of place. If you happen to have time to spare for it, make a cup of coffee and dig in sometime before Week 3 ends. Just check your eyes for stray moisture at the end.

Honorable Mentions:

Searching for a Resolution by @JFought , Day by Day by @windskull , Go by @Dragonfree , A Perfect World by @BestLizard

 

[Namohysip]

And my Weekly Fic Rec this time around will be for StolenMadWolf's Somehow, I created the Universe one-shot, which takes the simple isekai premise except you became Arceus. It's more or less in three acts, where the first one is waking up and realizing what happened, then trying to make the universe (including the Creation Trio) and then an epilogue-like ending that I personally feel is what elevated this fic to my recommendation table out of what I read.

I won't give away much, just that for the way it started out, the very personable ending helped wrap things up in a way that made me wish I could see a bit more on what led to that point. This oneshot is kind of like seeing the beginning and end of a much longer adventure, like a divine coming of age. But for what it is, I still liked it and could fill in the gaps well enough.

 

[NebulaDreams]

Week 3

So, I missed the boat on past rec posts, but I want to give a shout out to the fics I read during that period and highlight a couple in particular that stood out to me.

Empathy Imposed by @love

This one’s a doozy. @love presents a dark take on the Pokemon world with a cyberpunk edge, that basically poses the question of what happens when a Pokemon’s behaviour is rewritten and centres around the concept of a ‘philosophical zombie’. It’s quite a tough one-shot to swallow in terms of its tone, but the effective-as-hell prose, the questions it asks of the reader, and the tragedy of the whole situation topped with a fittingly ambiguous ending made this a really memorable read.

Day by Day by @windskull

This one has the honour of being one of the top entries in the 2024 one-shot contest, and is well deserved, as it portrays its themes of grief with the right amount of sensitivity and authenticity required of the writing, coupled with an interesting expansion of @windskull’s PMD world as seen in Places We Call Home. Its epistolary format also does a great job at sucking you in, as the Buneary protagonist writes in her diary to cope with the loss of her best friend. Definitely give this one a go.

Honorable mentions: Canis’ Bingo Drabbles by @canisaries, Owed Return by @Venia Silente, The Gardevoir’s Wish by @kyeugh, The Cake is Ready by @Flyg0n, PMD: Fulfilling Delivery by @Onatu, and ❄︎♒︎♏︎ ⧫︎❒︎◆︎⧫︎♒︎ ♓︎⬧︎ □︎◆︎⧫︎ ⧫︎♒︎♏︎❒︎♏︎ by @Panoramic_Vacuum

 

[Flyg0n]

Weekly fic rec is Gathering Moss, by nebula dreams!

Winner of the 2024 Magical and Mundane one-shot contest, it's quite easy to see why this netted the win.

Gathering Moss is a touching, emotional story following a steadfast Golurk working at a Cafe, keeping the memory of his friend alive. But even an ancient terra cotta automaton built to last ages must contend with the passing of time.

Gathering Moss is a beautiful emotional journey that explores the human and automaton condition, the need to fulfill one's duty and purpose and what it means to honor the memory of those we have loved and lost. Hard work is a noble goal, but what does it truly look like to pursue that as you age and change, and as the world around you changes.

Can a "robot" change its ways, can a human find a different way to honor that desire to have purpose?

Fantastic, impactful prose that captures its character and the perspective of its main character so well.

If the idea of a poignant exploration of these themes wrapped in a neat package of under 10k words appeals to you, this is absolutely a must read. If stories like Wild Robot and Wall-E appeal to you, this is an excellent pick.

 

[Dragonfree]

My Weekly fic rec goes to @kintsugi's kunāne, which is a slow-building, super evocative story about grief and moving on. It's quite heavy, and mind the content warnings, but if you like a good tragedy with a heavy dose of issues, it's a very stirring one. The narrator's depression and complicated inner conflict is deftly portrayed through the lens of her relationship with her brother, who drags her out of a funk to see their Lapras friend and explore the cove where they used to go as children. The story has multiple twists and turns from there, all building thematically to explore the narrator's issues.

In the process, there's a lot of strong imagery and subtle details to notice and some very apt use of metaphor. It's hard to properly describe the story without getting into spoiler territory, but I do highly recommend it if it sounds like the sort of story you'd dig.

 

[Ambyssin]

For week 3 I'll give a tip of the hat to @JFought's Searching for a Resolution. I like keldeo. You like keldeo. Second best Pokémon x My Little Pony character. Stupid British cotton candy pony. This one-shot's interesting because it feels like PMD meets the Keldeo movie. It's partly focused on the dynamic between Keldeo and the Swords of Justice, reminiscent of the horse movie. Although their actual dynamic and relationship between one another is quite a bit different. Still, it's not something that the PMD games — despite having both Keldeo and Virizion as important NPCs in Gates — have ever really highlighted. And even amongst many original PMD words, you don't see the Swords of Justice with the same reverence they get in the games and anime. But the other part of this one-shot is the relationship between Keldeo and the world around him. There's a bit of politicking mixed into things and it's interesting to see how Keldeo, being an older legend with a lot more experience, views it all.

 

[Inyssa]

Dropping into the blitz pretty late despite having been reviewing for a while haha. In any case, for week 3 my recommendation would definitely have to be Wild Horses in Winter by icomeanon6.

Historical Pokemon fiction is something I wish there was more of, and this scratches that itch so well. And the fact it was written before Legends came out and still gets so many of the things writing is amazing. Not to mention the incredibly strong character writing, not just isolated to each character but completely in line with the era and customs they live in, which is very hard to do. It was bittersweet in pretty much every day, in a way that felt very realistic despite being a Pokemon fic.

Also the writing and the prose are just good. Definitely give it a read if you're interested in this sort of thing.

 

[Umbramatic]

My rec for this week is... It was a literal coin flip between this and Wildboots' Work Ethics, shout out to that too, but I gotta go with StolenMadWolf's Somehow I Created The Universe. Hoo boy this was a fic created for me specifically. I love fics from the perspective of Legendaries and this one takes it a good bit further by featuring a guy who gets isekaied into being an ARCEUS. You see their whole thought process as they literally create and run a universe and it's just delightful. (There's a bit where they create a star and it reminded me of a unfinished story from early in my fanfic career where my Arceus does the same - really cute and nostalgic for me in particular.) Do please check it out, it'll be well worth your while.

 

[Spiteful Murkrow]

Heya, you know the drill with how my weekly recommendations have been this event. This time, I wound up settling on the fic I wanted to recommend pretty early on in the week, even if I held off on writing about it until I got to see how it played out:

Weekly Fic Rec: Week 4​

krookodile tears by @kintsugi

krookodile tears is the story of Baku, the child of a sahnim of the Southern Stones in what is now Route 4 of Unova in a bygone age, and how through some ill-advised decision-making when trying to get a Sandile to train, he's handed over by his father to Samira, the leader of the local Krookodile who decrees that in lieu of the swift death he deserves, that Baku shall be made to live amongst them until he can learn the error of his ways.

More broadly, krookodile tears is a story about people experiencing the alien and unfamiliar, about how people react to being hurt, and the ways that they rationalize and talk themselves into the harshest of cruelties, which Baku winds up experiencing and witnessing from multiple directions amongst both the humans and Pokémon in what is now Route 4. Totally par for the course for a story that once upon a time was a chapter of The Envy of Eden before @kintsugi spun it off into its own thing.

Much like kintsugi's general portfolio, it's a haunting and melancholic ride, with a lot of love put into the folklore and breathing life into a bygone Unova that is at once very familiar and very, very different to the one we all know and love. All as we get to see a Baku's tale go through its ups and downs up to its explosive climax. It's a bit on the chunky side, with the overall fic being about 19,000 words long and the third part being hosted entirely off-site.

That said, if you can swing that much story or else even just want to get your foot in the door, it's well worth your time as a story. Just give your eyes a good rub by the end.

Honorable Mentions:

The Visitors by @Joshthewriter , Weaversong by @Adamhuarts , Of Sand and Shadows by @HelloYellow17 , The Cool Breeze Upon the Mist by @Arukona

 

[Namohysip]

It's probably too late to use it for blitz, but for general reading, I'll still have my Weekly fic rec be for Nebula Dreams' Beasts Like Us. The first three chapters are out, and I suspect there's maybe only one left unless we get a curve ball. If you're familiar with Neb's writing, it's within the usual genre, only this time with a focus on a Machoke and a human's relationship. This is in a world where some Pokemon can match a human in intelligence, making this sort of thing possible without being a problematic--to the characters involved, at least. It seems their society has something else to say, and that's the central conflict the main character, the Machoke, is focused on.

 

[unrepentantAuthor]

Weekly Fic Rec!

Aight, so the other day I read @elyvorg 's Three Heads Are Better Than One, which is a delightful oneshot featuring an unusual POV – the middle head of a dodrio. I've not seen a lot of polycephalous POVs before, but these one was certainly well-executed, and did a great deal to make the hydrabirb feel like a coherent, interesting concept. It pretty much singlehandedly took this Gen I pokémon which I'd previously had little regard for, and make me oddly fond of it basically overnight. It's well-written, of course – ely's a skilled author – but the reason I'm recommending it is because of how unusual it is, how specific. It's a bold concept, and the fic does some interesting things with it; I want more people to have read a fic like this!

 

[Dragonfree]

Posting a Weekly Fic Rec for @elyvorg's Nothing Fickle About Loyalty. When she mentioned she was planning to write a fic about Kieran's Hydrapple, I figured it would be a fun exploration of Kieran's arc from the point of view of one of his Pokémon - but once I actually got to read the first chapter, it turned out there was a delightful lot more to it than that, as tends to be the case with her work. Namely, Dipplin is a Pokémon with two minds, two separate 'wyrms' inhabiting a candy apple - and this allowed the story to delve into one of elyvorg's favorite themes, namely the idea of suppressed parts of a person's psyche manifesting as a separate individual.

So, as Kieran becomes increasingly obsessed with strength, his Dipplin splits into Loyalty, our narrator, who would do anything for him to prove their worth and be strong enough for him - and Candour (or Frustration, as Loyalty is inclined to call them), the other wyrm inside the apple, voicing all the creeping worries and concerns about their trainer's recent behaviour that Loyalty fervently ignores. It's cognitive dissonance made manifest in the most painful and fascinating way, and I have no doubt it's all only going to get more deliciously complicated once the apple grows even more inhabitants. Go read it!

 

[StolenMadWolf]

This is going to be very last minute here, especially since I'm kicking myself for forgetting to do recommendations for weeks 2 and 3 here. I don't have one that fits the theme, but I'm going to throw out my recommendation for @windskull's Places we Call Home. It was an interesting read at the end of the day, even though I've only just started reading through it. What we don't get a huge amount of in terms of worldbuilding we do get with taking in very different perspectives in a rather neutral and realistic way, something which I found really cool to see in the story!

It doesn't match the criteria, but since I missed the last ones, feels right for me to recommend it anyway.

 

[Negrek]

And with that, Review Blitz 2024 comes to a close! Excellent work, everyone--you all wrote 448 reviews over the course of the past month, which is simply huge!

Sitting at the top of the leaderboard this year we have StolenMadWolf in third place with 133.75 points, Ambyssin taking second with 169 points, and Spiteful Murkrow in first place with a whopping 238.75 points and over 150,000 words written in reviews. Incredible showing, all three of you!

What happens now? You have one week to make initial purchases from the prize shop. Then, next weekend, we'll run our prize raffle with some of the remaining items. Then you'll have one further week to donate points to anyone who may need a few extra, and then those point recipients can go on to buy any of the remaining prizes that they'd like.

Also keep your eyes out for a reflective thread in the next few days where I'll be looking for feedback on this year's event, including on the heat bonus we tried out for the first time this year.

I'd also like to give a huge thanks to all the Blitz staff and prize volunteers; I think this Blitz was the smoothest yet! Your hard work is what makes it possible to put on such a big event year after year. To everyone, participants, volunteers, and the writers who gave us so many wonderful stories to enjoy, thank you.