Fanfic Influences

[Persephone]

Exactly what it says on the tin.

What fan fiction, Pokemon or otherwise, had the most impact on your writing? What period did you read it in? What specifically did it influence? Would you recommend it to others.

I’ll give my full post later on when I have a laptop to work with.

 

[Umbramatic]

WHEN I WAS

A YOUNG ENBY

i went on to the delightful thing known as the internet and discovered ~Pokemon fanfiction~! Some of which made fun of the common Pokefic cliches of the time, which i otherwise had no clue were a thing

Eventually I stumbled on the Serebii forums where I discovered The Origin Of Storms and Communication by @Sike Saner , Morphic by @Dragonfree , and Lost Evolution by Elyvorg. Those were huge influences in how I write Pokemon and inspired me to go "hey, i want to do this too!" It took a few years before I did though.

It wasn't a fic, but the RP We Are All Pokemon Trainers also had a massive influence on how I write the Pokemon world, and all the factors combined eventually led to the Yangverse as we know it.

 

[canisaries]

I actually didn't get into Pokémon fanfic or really any fanfic until a few years ago. I think I read a stray one or two, but I don't really remember them having much impact. I followed more comics if anything, and even then not many. (However! I did follow Black Adventures, and it's probably the main reason I love Unova so much nowadays and I think it also made me a fujo.)

In any case, it wasn't until 2015 or so that I first started writing Pokémon fiction of my own. I'd already been making drawings and comics in the Twitch Plays Pokémon fandom for a year or two, and when I had ideas that were just way too long and complicated to draw, I figured I should try to convey them in a literary form instead. To avoid a tangent, I'll just say that there were other writers in the community that I looked up to even if I wasn't necessarily engaged in their content. The passion and skill was enough. I became friends with an author named Lyca, who was very helpful and supportive when I was taking my first steps to the new medium. I didn't end up reading a bulk of her stuff, but I became familiar with her world through our chats and the stories I betaread. We shared the common "issue" of having drifted away from the main canon into largely original territory and could relate to each other in that sense. Both our stories had very distinct and even "edgy" interpretations of TPP characters in the lead. We even spitballed a little crossover scenario. Eventually, though, she kind of lost touch with TPP community, which I've been doing to an extent as well in the past year or two. Fortunately, friendships have remained and we still hang out online weekly. If you're curious about her stuff, here's a link (warning for likely mature content, though it's still within the guidelines of this site).

That all is just what inspired me to write TPP fics, though! In terms of my PMD fics, there's more to the story.

Back when I was relatively new to Bulbagarden Forums, a fic by the name of Unequivocant was starting. It was a PMD fic - well, the kind that's really only PMD in name, but I'd always liked PMD, so I gave it a try. Going in, I didn't expect a fantasy epic with an original setting, but I definitely liked it! It reminded me of The Belgariad that my mother had read to us kids when we were young, and while I'd started disliking fantasy since, UE hit just the right notes for me. The explosive beginning of the villain escaping from his thousand-year prison really caught my attention, and having drawn the cover for the story as a contest prize (iirc) didn't hurt in case of interest, either. The character moments and intricate worldbuilding kept me with it for its entire run, and I even became a beta reader for it near the end of the story. It's a shame that kind of entered revision purgatory from receiving some harsh critique in the Awards after it had been finished, and then I believe the author decided not to bother and instead chose to pursue original writing outside the forums instead. There was also a prequel fic of sorts that got two or so chapters before that cancellation occurred. Unfortunate, but I understand the choice and support it.

Either way, UE and glimpses of some other fics made me want to try out a Pokémon-focused story of my own in a new, clean world. The result was Pletora's Story, the first of my so-called PMD stories. I can't remember anymore if @Namohysip started posting Hands of Creation on Bulbagarden before or after I'd gotten the idea and motivation for PS, but following it certainly hasn't hurt my interest in creating more pokécentric content. HoC is the second fic I've been following from the beginning (well, beginning on Bulbagarden, but back then I was only on there so it counts okay), and I have no intentions of dropping it.

 

[Persephone]

Okay time to answer my own thread I guess. This won’t be in any particular order.

Salvage
With the benefit of hindsight I may have drawn a lot from Negrek. Second person, the narrative snark, Pokemon(-ish) POV, the general tone... yeah. I read this kind of early on in my process and it probably had the biggest long term effect on my writing.

some rise by sin | Spectra | kunāne
Three works by kintsugi. The first is a first person dark journey fic that has some tonal influence on my work. Darkly humorous pokemon sidekicks and a teenage protagonist who’s actually bad at everything definitely influenced this draft of BT and my style in general.

The next two stories are newer and shaped BT in particular more than my past works. Both are about grief. They influenced my approach to those feelings in particular, and the latter also led to a re-evaluation of Alola’s culture. Is good stuff.

Pokédex One Shots
I won’t say that this is why The Alola Pokédex exists but it was certainly a big push towards thinking more about expanded lore and figuring out how even neglected species can be used well. I read this very early in my fan fiction career.

The Long Walk
I won’t vouch for everything in this one. It’s gone kind of weird lately and pushed me away. The start is also kinda rough. But the middle (Azalea and Ilex) has some great character interactions, worldbuilding, and low stakes but still meaningful plot movements. It’s probably the fic that had the most impact on me drawing down from grand Save The World plots to the relatively low stakes BT. The author is also a solid reviewer who led me to reconsider things.

Ghost Town and it’s sequel/spin offs
Look girl-like-substance is a marvelous writer and almost everything xie makes is gold. Ghost Town’s exploration of spiritomb and transgender issues affected how I approach Pokemon in general and BT’s handling of queerness.

Coreolanus Rowland’s Guide to Pokemon Husbandry
This is why the Alola Pokédex exists. I envy girl-like-substances ability to draw humor and expand canon from short field guide entries. It’s also hilarious. Read it. Seriously.

Striking Back: Memoirs of a Clone
It’s a great character study on Mewtwo and, well, a great character study in general. Tries to be a vaguely realistic take on one of Pokémon’s most OP characters and mostly does alright. Drove me to more character-focused writing.

The Human Species and it’s prequels
This is the fic that got BT started. Very remotely, but still. For those unaware ShadedSkies wrote three prequel stories (a murder mystery about a cult, a fluffy Christmas one shot about mew and mewtwo, and a sort of parody about a pikachu on a quest to fight a god. They then wove them into a tale that went strong for over 100 chapters. It also has the best one-one-one Pokemon fight I’ve ever read (Torrana v. Lonesome Wanderer Lucario, can’t remember the exact chapter).

Anyway I thought I would do something similar. I finished two of the prequel arcs and gave up. Then I decided to do a sinnoh journey fic that was a spiritual sequel in that characters with very defined past backstories came together to save the world. I didn’t like that one so I rebooted it.

I got bored with the reboot so I started a side project as a prequel focusing on one of the main characters. I eventually dropped the sinnoh fic and rebooted the Alola one into BT. So, uh, thanks ShadedSkies for bringing me here.

A New Journey
Yes, it’s an FFN shipping fic. No, I don’t want to reread it to see if it’s actually any good with the benefit of hindsight. It does take a long time for the romance to get going though.

Anyways, this is on the list as the other battle I’ve referenced the most when writing fight scenes. This one is a three-ish chapter miniarc where Ash fights Paul in a full battle. It gets a lot of things very right in pacing, tactics, characterization, stakes, etc.

Don’t Give Me Diamonds
The first Good Fic I read. Inspired me to do better.

 

[NebulaDreams]

I had wanted to write Pokemon fanfiction for a while, given my love-hate relationship with the series, but these following fics opened my eyes to the sorts of stories I could tell with the fandom. I found most of these through the TV Tropes fanfic recs page.

I Am Lucario

Of course, what would my fic be without one of the most overused Pokemon in existence: Lucario? While it has been discontinued, it gave a really refreshing take on the Pokemon world with a wonderful protagonist that grows along with his inquisitive nature about humans. The best way to describe it is an episodic slice of life that periodically changes genres in certain chapters, from murder mystery to high school drama to action, and each of them felt natural. It informed a lot of my themes going into Pokemon fic writing, including Pokemon/human relations, how important education and language is to the Pokemon characters, and how a Pokemon-filled society would function in both domestic and wild areas.

I initially wrote a fic featuring a similarly inquisitive Lucario way before The Curious and the Shiny, but dropped it before too long due to my lack of experience. TCATS still takes a lot of influence from that, but is a bit more heavy on deconstruction and having a grander plot in mind. I'd also say Curio is the opposite of the protagonist from IAL.

Alterity

While I'm not really a fan of Nuzlocke, when I read this fan-comic a while back, that also got the writing juices flowing. While it can be funny in places, it also poses some serious questions about what a Pokemon's place is in the world, especially with the main character's starter: a really bitter Torchic.

The Bond of Aura
This was written as a prequel to The Subspace Emissary's World Conquest. While I couldn't get into that fic after a few chapters, and this fic doesn't really offer much new in terms of drama, it's a perfectly breezy slice of life fic that explores a Lucario that gets reverse-Isekai'd into the real world, and lives in his new trainer's apartment. It's fluff at its finest.

 

[Chibi Pika]

Hoo boy. Fanfic influences.

The problem with LC is that it’s been in progress for just so damn long and my headcanons have changed so much throughout that time that it’s sometimes hard to pin down exactly where the original ideas stop and the influences begin. For the longest time, I tended to sort of absorb headcanons through osmosis and then they’d find their way into LC and I wouldn’t realize it until much later, so it’s really hard to say if it’s an idea that I would have come up with on my own or not.

Ideas dating back to 2003 I can pretty definitively say weren’t influenced by any other fanfics, because I simply didn’t read much fanfic yet. But then in 2004 I started reading a certain fic. And then within the next few revisions, suddenly LC had an inept protagonist who learned Pokéspeech from school, wasn’t allowed to go on a Pokémon journey until the fateful day that they rescued a Charmander, gets recruited to stop an impending war by a petty, insecure Legendary, bickers constantly with said Legendary, and has a character arc centered around becoming less passive and more active as time goes on.

It’s actually a bit hard to imagine what LC would even look like had I never read The Quest for the Legends. There are a few details where I can definitely say, “okay, yeah, that came from QftL,” and a few others where it’s like “idk man, our headcanons are just identical on like everything.” There were countless times where I’d come up with some awesome new idea while brainstorming, write it into the fic, and then a week later I’d be like “dammit, this is just like in QftL,” and I’d have to ask myself if it really was an accident. Sometimes I’d even remove a detail that truly had been shamelessly ripped off, only to replace it with a different idea that also was in QftL. (See: the time I finally removed the “parents not letting their kid go on a journey” thing, only to replace it with “kid failed the training exam.”)

So in the end, it’s just kind of impossible to talk about how LC changed over the years without talking about QftL. It’s fourteen years of coevolution, and I genuinely don’t think LC would be recognizable as the fic it is today without it.

Ironically, I don’t actually think QftL shaped my general tastes in fiction all that much, as those were pretty well-established beforehand, so I think we can say it’s just coincidence that like 90% of my buttons overlap with Dragonfree’s. :V

Anyway. Leaving QftL finally. It wasn’t until fairly recently that I became secure enough in my writing to see what another writer was doing and just straight-up go “oh that’s neat, I’d like to do something like that” as opposed to absorbing it subconsciously and then trying to pretend I came up with it by myself. A couple of notable ones:

Will Somebody Stop These Kids? by icomeanon6 - This fic got me to think about Pokémon training as a sporting institution in a way that I’d never considered before (the author is a huge baseball fan and the fic is saturated with evidence of this.) Also it’s just generally a really great character-focused slice-of-life/action hybrid, can’t recommend it enough.

Arbitrary Execution by girl-like-substance - Persephone already said it, but this author’s works are pretty much the gold standard of Pokémon fanfiction. Aside from just being an incredible work of suspense and intrigue, this fic got me to think about how to portray a region that’s shaped by the institution of Pokémon training, and the kinds of League accommodations that would have to exist in order for training journeys to even make sense.

 

[Katanaeyegaming]

Some of my main influences for fanfiction are a lot of different dark fantasy franchises.

But above all of those the biggest singular influence is the works of several close friends as they have ideas that I have slightly borrowed from in my own unique way as time has gone on.

 

[SparklingEspeon]

Influences... there are a lot of influences my writing has changed from over the years.

This is a fanfic influence thread, but the largest influences on my writing have never come from fanfiction, strangely. Perhaps it's because writing in a smaller sphere where you can actually meet and talk to the people who inspired your writing is a very different deal from having huge commercial stories like Harry Potter inspire you. But also, a lot of what shaped what I write about now came from things I read or watched when I was younger. Small-town mystery plots, usually told from the POV of children (and just stories told from the POV of children) are one of my favorite settings, mainly because nearly everything I read was about children needing to be smart in a world where adults wouldn't listen to them (A Series of Unfortunate Events, The Mysterious Benedict Society, Stephen King's IT, the first three Harry Potter books). I picked up a penchant for thriller-writing after watching both Death Note and Attack on Titan at a young age, and intertwined political stories after watching Game of Thrones, and later Battlestar Galactica. A lot of those main themes have trickled down into nearly everything I've published, and I don't know that any fiction has shaped my writing more than those have.

For fanfiction inspirations specifically...

PSMD: The Gravity of Perspective, by Goat - I don't think I would have started writing my current project if Goat hadn't written first. It's a slight remix of Pokemon Super Mystery Dungeon, that doesn't change much and is far from perfect... but it changed enough. Enough to get me thinking on what would happen if I channeled my energy towards writing my own. It also has a chapter late in its run that both inspired a pivot away from the Slice of Life direction early on and served as the idea basis for a similar sequence of events for my own story.

PMD: Warped Skies, by Team_Ion - Warped Skies started shortly before I did, and basically turns Explorers of Sky into a horror-themed epic. I was already introducing some horror elements on my own, but Ion's writing was what inspired me to go completely in with it. I'm not sure Psychic Sheep would have turned out the same if I hadn't read Warped Skies.

PMD: Hands of Creation, by Namohysip - I admire this fic a lot for not only the immense amount of characters it juggles, but also how meticulous it is with its twists and lore. It's a level of detail that I aspire to myself, and I basically yoinked both the way I ladle information and the way I use Special Episodes from HoC.

The Legendarian Chronicles, by Chibi Pika - I read LC back a couple years ago and was entranced. I thought for a while on what made me like it so much and eventually concluded that it was a mix of having easy-to-digest pacing, but also having a lot of fun with the premise/story. I'd kind of been lacking a proper direction philosophy up until then, but after digesting LC I realized that ultimately I wanted to write something that was just fun to read. It's also the reason I have chapter art. And the original inspiration for Crashing Fate, my other project until I started reading Animorphs and realized my outline was identical in structure

 

[FistsTornAsunder]

When I couldn't even read or write in English, I found a Spanish-translated version of Silver Resistance on FFN, and got hooked immediately. That prompted my first attempts at writing Chains of Time, which eventually fell flat cause I was just trying to imitate a writing style that I had no experience in using myself.

That was the one fanfiction that really got me into writing and reading. After that, works such as Neon Genesis Evangelion, Scott Pilgrim, Fullmetal Alchemist, and Grant Morrison's Doom Patrol helped develop my tastes and the direction of the themes of my story, which I had failed to take into account the first few times I tried it. Dune and The House of Leaves have also inspired some elements and narrative devices.

 

[BestLizard]

I never really got into Fan Fiction. That being said, there was one fan fiction I read - Latias' Journey by Ri2. It was a decade ago when I was an edgy teen looking for an edgy read and I got exactly what I wanted.

I guess it's my most influential one by default as I never finished any other fan fiction (although I'm working on it), but I found the plot to be grand and intricate, and that always inspired me. That inspiration probably since mixed in with other influences so I can't say I'm directly inspired by that fan fiction, but it's one I still thought about for a long time after reading.

 

[Spiteful Murkrow]

Oh boy, where do I even start for this one?

I suppose that the Copperajah in the room would be my experiences PBP RPing, especially in my stint in the aforementioned We Are All Pokémon Trainers, since literally everything that I've written has drawn influence either from my experiences in it, or something written by someone who was once/is still active in that RP such as @Umbramatic or @Venia Silente . It's been almost a decade since I was regularly active there, but it was just such a target-rich environment in general for characters and plot bunnies to want to revisit that it continues to influence me as a writer, and likely will well into the future.

As for story-specific influences, it's by no means a complete list, but for things not named 'WAAPT' or 'internal homaging' that influenced individual stories...

Dragonspiral's Children

Digimon Tamers and Calvin and Hobbes, natch. There's a few points where those influences are pretty on-the-nose that you can pick out, especially in the earlier run of the story.

Context Switch

The beta versions and development histories of Pokémon RS and Final Fantasy IX, along with a dash of "write (a caricature of) what you know".

Fledglings

I've actually answered this one in gory detail with Virgil in the story trivia before in two parts, but the TL/DR version of it is "ATLA, Digimon Tamers again, more hours of One Piece music than I can count, with a dash of MegaTen for the Marked's mythology and Watership Down". There's a few other fanfics that left a minor imprint here or there on Fledglings while writing, though Pokémon Mystery Dungeon: Overthrown by Knightfall is probably the main standout in terms of influence.

[NO AUDIO]

Umbramatic's Yangverse, since the central premise is built around a bit of his headcanon he uses for that setting. Oh, and a very strong dash of Persona 4.

Once a Thief

The various Xeno games that Tetsuya Takahashi worked on. While I was being facetious when I said the story was about Xenoblade references elsewhere, there is a lot of influence from it and its sister series running through its veins. The story also carries a number of influences from other stories that I was reading while polishing the core narrative, with Pokémon Mystery Dungeon: Power Trip by Talgoran and Pokémon Mystery Dungeon: Rebirth by @Shadow of Antioch being the ones that left the most direct influence in the actual narrative. I'd also have to give credit to where it's due for Pokémon Mystery Dungeon: Path of Valor by @Ambyssin for encouraging me to just have some dumb hack-y fun with the story.

 

[BossCar]

Inspiration and ideas can come to me from anywhere. Paintings, nonfiction books, the TR server, etc.

But without a doubt, the fic that has influenced Identity and its sequel, There's No Better Team, the most is Of Sands and Shadows. Orre was present as a backstory element, but OSAS inspired me to add Wes and Rui, then I added more lore, etc. Now Wes and Rui are mainstays, the ship is there, and Orre's the first canon region I'll be writing a setting. I've even snuck in shoutouts to both OSAS and its wonderful author in Identity and There's No Better Team. I like to weave in shoutouts to fic authors that have inspired me.

Silver and Kris being friends to lovers was inspired by Silver and Kotone from Cress's The Meaning of Power. There are two Hilda/N on A03 that gave me the extra push to go ahead with Valen/Hilda, thus forming a vee.

 

[Diamondseed345]

I've gotten inspired by another fic for what I could say would be the most important chapter I've written for my first storyline, "Sins of the foundation."

That inspiration came from another Sun and moon fic I haven't completely read yet, but I've been meaning too. Storyline is similar to Sins of the foundation, but thats basically the whole fic. I won't describe what happens in it, in case you want to read it for yourself, but mainly what I put in my chapter was How my protagonist was treated by the Aether foundation. A test subject, a means to an end. The whole thing was basically just petty revenge for what happened in the past. I might look back at it soon though since I'm rewriting Sins of the foundation soon.

 

[Cresselia92]

Hmm... Truth to be told, I've been a bit more involved in the Pokémon fanfiction realm only in recent times. I actually started as an avid Super Smash Bros fanfic reader, and I only considered trying out writing stories in English only after reading a story featuring Pokémon Trainer being beaten up by Crazy Hand on a daily basis.

…Yeah, I still question my younger persona to this day, and I don't even know what appeal I found in that story anymore. XP

But hey, that sparked my interest in creative writing, so that’s something!

However, what truly got me into writing fanfic was an EarthBound RP I had with another user on Serebii. The plot of that RP involved a trio of misfit teenagers who got their psychic powers and who had to investigate a widespread source of PSI that infested the world. Alas, that RP was discontinued years ago as we drifted apart. :/

Still, that experience only added to my motivation, so I checked out some anime-inspired works to get some inspiration. That's when I found the one fanfic that influenced my entire writing modus operandi to this day: A New Chance At Life by ArcyAnderson (formerly known as ARCEUS-Master).

The longform format, the idea of reimagining canon, the way in which battles are scripted, the interactions... I absorbed everything about that fanfic, and I mixed it together with my own (albeit still underdeveloped) writing skills.

That fanfic alone and my back-then dislike toward the Best Wishes series inspired me to write my own retelling: Pokémon Best Wishes: Reloaded Edition. Unfortunately, it ended up on hiatus as I hit a massive writer's block, but that set up the standards for all my future works.

From then, my desire to seek more Pokémon-related stories grew, and I got into both the comics Pokémon Mystery Dungeon: Victory Fire by Sulfurbunny (on indefinite hiatus :c) and Festival of Champions by Seijun Tombo (ongoing).

The first story allowed me to take a deeper glimpse into the PMD genre, resulting in the birth of Pokémon Mystery Dungeon: Delta Dossiers (waiting for its third revamp) and SWAP! (huuuh... plz don't read it). The other story, instead, made me gain some interest in tourney fanfics and journeyfics. Also, both stories feature various cameos of various characters from various sides of the Pokémon canon, and this rekindled my dormant interest in crossovers.

And then, I got another spark of inspiration when I found what I consider the best cross-canon crossovers: Pokémon Adventures: AshGray Chapter and Crisis of Two PokéWorlds. Two different stories that have two elements in common: showing the sheer potential of characters of different sides of the Pokémon canon meeting, and the fact… that both stories are discontinued.

Yep. Two great crossover stories with plenty of potential that have been abandoned years ago. It was truly saddening when I reached their “final” chapters and had to accept that I probably won’t see their ending ever, but I respect and understand the wishes of the writers, and I thank them immensely for introducing me to such a great concept.

By combining the great worldbuilding of A New Chance with the fanfic fuel potential offered by AshGray and Crisis, my mind finally crafted and developed my most ambitious project: The Meaning of Power, basically the MCU of the entire Pokémon canon.

…Frightening concept to tackle, no doubt. More so for someone who has roughly three or four years of writing. XP

Am I biting more than how I can chew? Heh, maybe! Most likely. But who cares? I don’t, because I’m writing something that I wish I could read. A great concept with no physical form… yet.

If there are no active crossover fanfics, well… someone gotta fill that spot, no? :3