One-Shot Contest 2025 Theme Poll
June is nearly upon us, and that means it's time to start prepping for our yearly one-shot contest! And the first thing we'll need to do is decide what we'd like to write about this year. Choose your favorites from the options above--up to three--and cross your fingers that one of your favorite themes wins! Many thanks to everyone on Discord who offered up theme ideas this year, and to the mod team for their help refining the list.
If you aren't familiar with how our one-shot contests usually work, feel free to check out last year's results for a sense of how everything comes together. The short version is that all participants write a short story on a common topic, and then a panel of judges provides detailed feedback and ranks the entries to determine a top-three set of winners.
This poll will be open through Friday the 30th, and the contest itself will kick off promptly at midnight UTC on June 1st. The winning theme will be announced at that time.
Most of the themes should be pretty self-explanatory, but for any of them that may be mysterious, you can find more information under the spoiler:
Mystery/Noir: From hardboiled detectives to braniac sleuths, this theme welcomes true whodunnits as well as pulpy . How would someone go about solving mysteries in a world filled with all the strange phenomena and outlandish powers of Pokémon? The judges would love to see your take!
Unusual Perspective: We often see the dramatic events of the Pokémon world through the eyes of its heroes, or sometimes even its villains, but what about the NPC who was just trying to get to work when a space-time rift opened up in the middle of town? What about the Pokémart clerk or kecleon shopkeeper helping outfit the hero before the final battle? For this theme, put a new spin on a familiar situation by giving us the perspective of the sort of character who doesn't often get written about.
Natural Disaster: The Pokémon world is certainly prone to unnatural disasters, from frozen time to wormholes to other dimensions, but it has to deal with a lot of the problems we experience in our world, too: floods, fires, frost, and more. How does the Pokémon world deal with its natural disasters? How might they have shaped its people and its history?
Towns and Landmarks: This theme celebrates the Pokémon world's many unique and magical places, from Ballonlea to the Hidden Land to Aeos Island. Whether you choose an iconic location or something more obscure, we'd want stories based on this theme to have a strong sense of place and evoke what it might be like to actually live in the Pokémon world.
Displacement and Diaspora: Just as in our world, humans and Pokémon in the Pokémon world are always on the move. Why and how do Pokémon and humans migrate from place to place, and what does it mean to be part of a diaspora where you may not even share a species with the land you've come to call home?
Artificial Pokémon: From castform to porygon to metagross and more, humans have made their mark on the Pokémon world not only by capturing Pokémon, but by literally creating them as well. For this theme we'd like to see stories exploring the appeal of artificial Pokémon, what makes them distinct from their wild counterparts, or which otherwise make the fact that the Pokémon is natural rather than artificial meaningful.
Past and Future: The clash between past and future has been a theme throughout the Gen IX games, and for this theme we'd like you to tackle it head-on yourself! Your story can take place during any time period, and might or might not feature time travel, but one way or another we'd like you to explore the tension between past and future in the Pokémon world.
Weird Pokémon Lore: The Pokémon world is full of both strange creatures and strange facts about them: kadabra make clocks run backwards, ground-up stantler antlers are a cure for insomnia, sinistea arose from a lonely person's death. This unusual Pokémon lore often isn't explored much by the franchise, tossed off in a Pokédex entry or NPC dialogue and never revisited. For this theme, we'd like to see you dig in and expand upon some of this underutilized lore! You might focus on what it's like to be a mind-reading lapras, write a story about researchers investigating dragonite's flying speed, or anything else that puts a spotlight on some unusual Pokémon attribute or power.
Festivals and Celebrations: The Pokémon world has its own beliefs, religions, and most certainly holidays--what sort of things do the people there celebrate? Or take a familiar celebration and show how it changes when put in a Pokémon context. This theme is all about how and why people celebrate in the Pokémon world!
Songfic: It's time to channel the year 2005, when FFN was the only major fanfiction archive and you had a burning need to have your characters tearfully sing along to Evanescence's "Bring Me to Life" while standing in the rain, to express their unique and profound inner life and struggles. For this theme, your story should center on a particular song, whether you choose to literally incorporate that song's lyrics in the text or not.
Unusual Perspective: We often see the dramatic events of the Pokémon world through the eyes of its heroes, or sometimes even its villains, but what about the NPC who was just trying to get to work when a space-time rift opened up in the middle of town? What about the Pokémart clerk or kecleon shopkeeper helping outfit the hero before the final battle? For this theme, put a new spin on a familiar situation by giving us the perspective of the sort of character who doesn't often get written about.
Natural Disaster: The Pokémon world is certainly prone to unnatural disasters, from frozen time to wormholes to other dimensions, but it has to deal with a lot of the problems we experience in our world, too: floods, fires, frost, and more. How does the Pokémon world deal with its natural disasters? How might they have shaped its people and its history?
Towns and Landmarks: This theme celebrates the Pokémon world's many unique and magical places, from Ballonlea to the Hidden Land to Aeos Island. Whether you choose an iconic location or something more obscure, we'd want stories based on this theme to have a strong sense of place and evoke what it might be like to actually live in the Pokémon world.
Displacement and Diaspora: Just as in our world, humans and Pokémon in the Pokémon world are always on the move. Why and how do Pokémon and humans migrate from place to place, and what does it mean to be part of a diaspora where you may not even share a species with the land you've come to call home?
Artificial Pokémon: From castform to porygon to metagross and more, humans have made their mark on the Pokémon world not only by capturing Pokémon, but by literally creating them as well. For this theme we'd like to see stories exploring the appeal of artificial Pokémon, what makes them distinct from their wild counterparts, or which otherwise make the fact that the Pokémon is natural rather than artificial meaningful.
Past and Future: The clash between past and future has been a theme throughout the Gen IX games, and for this theme we'd like you to tackle it head-on yourself! Your story can take place during any time period, and might or might not feature time travel, but one way or another we'd like you to explore the tension between past and future in the Pokémon world.
Weird Pokémon Lore: The Pokémon world is full of both strange creatures and strange facts about them: kadabra make clocks run backwards, ground-up stantler antlers are a cure for insomnia, sinistea arose from a lonely person's death. This unusual Pokémon lore often isn't explored much by the franchise, tossed off in a Pokédex entry or NPC dialogue and never revisited. For this theme, we'd like to see you dig in and expand upon some of this underutilized lore! You might focus on what it's like to be a mind-reading lapras, write a story about researchers investigating dragonite's flying speed, or anything else that puts a spotlight on some unusual Pokémon attribute or power.
Festivals and Celebrations: The Pokémon world has its own beliefs, religions, and most certainly holidays--what sort of things do the people there celebrate? Or take a familiar celebration and show how it changes when put in a Pokémon context. This theme is all about how and why people celebrate in the Pokémon world!
Songfic: It's time to channel the year 2005, when FFN was the only major fanfiction archive and you had a burning need to have your characters tearfully sing along to Evanescence's "Bring Me to Life" while standing in the rain, to express their unique and profound inner life and struggles. For this theme, your story should center on a particular song, whether you choose to literally incorporate that song's lyrics in the text or not.
