The 7 Day Fic Challenge!

[WildBoots]

The 7 Day Fic Challenge
#7daypokeficchallenge​

The 7 Day Fic Challenge is a time to reflect on the fics that have affected you, made you a better writer, or simply brightened your day. You actually have TWO WEEKS to finish, but there will be a new prompt for you every day. Each day this week, there will be a themed prompt.

⭐For folks participating in Blacklight, Namo has agreed to give 3 BLECs for folks who complete at least 3!⭐

Your response to each prompt should include:

• A link to the fic
• Something by you: a review (targeted at potential readers rather than the writer), a piece of artwork inspired by the fic, or an excerpt imitating the fic you’ve chosen.

You can comment directly on the thread!

I'll threadmark prompts so they're easy to find. At the end of the week, I'll make a post indexing all the prompts and recs for easy access. I'll also be cross-posting recs for authors who aren't on the TR fourms to the Rec and Review Archive.


Some additional guidelines:

• 250+ words suggested for reviews and imitations
• You cannot link to your own fic
• You cannot repeat a fic you have already used for a different prompt that month
• You can use a fic that someone else has linked to
• Only link fics you’ve read
• Linked fics do not have to be hosted on Thousand Roads

Not sure what to say about a fic? Here are some starting places:
- What do you like about it? Who's your favorite character and why?
- Do you have a favorite scene or moment?
- What kind of reader would like this fic? Which other fics (or another piece of media) have you read that it reminds you of?
- Do you have any memories associated with the first time you read the fic or conversations you've had with the writer?
- How does the fic compare to the writer's other works?
- Does this fic make you want to try any new characters or writing techniques in your fics?
- Does the fic add something unique or important to the fandom? Does it shed a new light on an old concept? Did it make you think about a character or plot point differently?

This event is about showing love to fics you've enjoyed and to celebrate your relationship to the text. Even if everyone recs the exact same fics for each prompt, everyone could have a totally unique response to it! I can't wait to see which fics have touched you.

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☀August Prompts☀
​

Day 1: Let’s go to the beach! Share a fic that is set in Alola, features Alolan pokemon, or includes a major scene on a beach.
Day 2: Weather-ball! Share a fic in which the weather is important.
Day 3: Heatstroke! Share a fic featuring fire-type trainers or pokemon.
Day 4: Cool off and hydrate! Share a fic featuring ice- and water-type trainers or pokemon.
Day 5: Surf's up! Share a fic that features surfing on a pokemon, fishing, boats, or your favorite ship.
Day 6: Cocktail time! Share a fic with an element of world-building that you liked so much you put it in your own work.
Day 7: Bloc party! Share a fic that features trainers and pokemon having a good time!

 

[WildBoots]

Day 1: Let’s go to the beach! Share a fic that is set in Alola, features Alolan pokemon, or includes a major scene on a beach.

 

[WildBoots]

Response to August 1 Prompt: a fic that is set in Alola, features Alolan pokemon, or includes a major scene on a beach.

Fic: Tapu by Farla
​

Summary: Though Alola's first champion left with the four tapu before she was even born, they are still her gods. No one will take that from her.

Rating: T

Wordcount: 552 (one-shot, complete)

Video games often encourage behavior from the player that, although in-game characters never comment on it, would be rude or even villainous in a real-world context. We walk into strangers' houses uninvited and inspect their trashcans. We tell poor, forgetful Oak his grandkid's name is Stupidface McJerk HAHAHAHA. We capture the gods and trade them away for shinies.

Quite a few of Farla's works take a game mechanic or beat and extrapolate it to the bitter end. Tapu imagines the aftermath of the player character's tour through Alola, after she's become the champion ... and after she's captured the four tapus and taken them away from Alola. It's only about 500 words, but it packs a punch. Though the fic is very short, we get to watch the protagonist grow from a toddler to a young adult ... and watch her make some harsh choices.

The protagonist of Tapu grows up in an Alola that has been diminished, and it weighs on her ... but she doesn't have a lot of outlets for meaningful responses, so she turns to Team Skull for some petty crime. I love the interpretation of Skull not as capital-C Criminals but as disenfranchised kids. They certainly felt that way to me in my playthrough. They're disorganized, silly, and probably a lot of them just want to be DJs when they grow up. (The first two gunts you meet seem to 90's hip-hop swagger from place to place as their sole mode of locomotion. Kills me every time.) My favorite moment in Tapu is when the protagonist climbs Mount Lanakila to spraypaint a message of rebellion. It's exactly the kind of crime carried out by people whose voices have been taken from them.

If you only have ten minutes to read today, this fic is worth the time.

 

[kintsugi]

(this is a really cool idea!)

(Alola theme! there is of course an obligatory plug for Broken Things and Alola Dex but for this one I'm trying to rec things that I'm normally not constantly rec'ing! You can get a little variety, as a treat!)

Silver Bird, by saphira and shruikan
In which a boy steals a beast, and they teach each other how to live. The story of Gladion and his Type: Null.

the fic premise is about Sun/Moon spoilers, so! click at your own risk; game's been out for a while so I think it's probably cool, but anyway.

Hurt/comfort normally isn't my wheelhouse, but this was a great jumping off point for the genre for me. The summary is honestly very indicative of what you're going to get--Silver Bird tells the story of Gladion and the Type: Null he steals from the Aether foundation, as well as the lessons they learn from one another. It's mostly character development for young!Gladion coming to terms with what he was running away from, and for the Type: Null (Silvia) getting to know the wide, wide world outside of the lab. The two work so well together and in general it's a really sweet way of just showing how projection/empathy/learning can go a long way in helping us understand each other and ourselves. Really scratched that paired hurt/comfort itch for me and it's inherently satisfying to watch them learn to heal by watching the other one heal.

There's also some really great pokemon biology/physiology and the worldbuilding in general is primarily pokemon-focused (compared to fleshing out the human/societal bits of Alola) so it only comes up in passing, but I really liked it! The author has some neat analogues for pokemon as real world animals that makes their behaviors feel ahuman while also unique. Type: Null gets the best end of the stick out of this since she gets the most focus, so there's some really neat bird behavioral traits that I didn't know were real until reading this fic, lol (this is likely because my bird research is all corvids over cockatoos, not because there's a thesis on birds).

And! This has taken a backseat in the story so far in favor of character development, but there's definitely hints of a deeper plot for the lore surrounding the Aether foundation, their general research plans, and what they expected to get out of Mewtwo project 2.0 to fight the aliens.

Look, it's a fic about babby Gladion ordering baby-safe soap on pokeAmazon prime and giving his bird a bath while telling her cute stories. There is a lot to like.

Warnings: spoilers for Sun/Moon, story is incomplete (but it is 60k words so it's still a lot of quality content)
Word count: 60k

This one is sort of just cheating because it also has a lot of genres that I really like--basically a doggobird, soft edgelord Gladion, Silvally is the best pokemon, lapslock chapter titles ...

 

[WildBoots]

Day 2: Weather-ball! Share a fic in which the weather is important.

 

[WildBoots]

Response to August Day 2 prompt: Weather-ball! Share a fic in which the weather is important.

Fic: Freezing Point
Author: @Pen​

Summary: I captured a god. I did it to prove a point. I did it because I could.

Word count: 9,337 (three-shot, complete)
Rating: G
Genre: Trainer fic, gen

I dunno if y'all knew, but Pen has written a lot of one-shots and few-shots that are only on FFN right now, and they're all quite good.

I thought of Freezing Point for this prompt because it uses weather and temperature in a couple of different ways. Articuno is a major character so, as the title implies, cold and winter weather come into play quite a bit. The story also refers to the events of the Hoenn games, despite being set in Kanto. There's even a major flashback set in the Hoenn weather institute!

This story is nostalgic for me because it's the first thing I ever read by Pen. I'm due for a reread. I remember second-guessing a lot of the plot points because I didn't know enough about Pen's storytelling chops to trust where it was going, hahaha. It's fitting because I'd say this story is in many ways one about humility.

The narrator of Freezing Point has decided to capture Articuno--she's tough, so she can handle any consequences, right? Well, there are, in fact, consequences. Articuno is super upset by her actions ... and she's not the only one made to suffer for them. Just because you can do something doesn't mean you should or that it's worth it.

You'll like this story if you like stories about the bonds between a trainer and their pokemon, cautionary tales, and angry gods.

 

[kintsugi]

you can't spell "Hoenn" without "weather crisis". I mean, you can, but why would you?

Final Gambit, by Wolflyn
word count: ~19k, complete

What if there was no intrepid young hero to save the day? In a reality where all that is left is to stare down the maw of death as Kyogre threatens to drown the world, the League and its trainers turn to desperate measures in Hoenn's final hours. Borrows from the manga-verse, alternate retelling of the game's climactic moment sans the player character, AU.

Another case where honestly the summary does it justice and I don't really need to describe the premise any further--a look at the Hoenn weather crisis if we didn't/couldn't rely on 10 year-old kids who arrived in the country a few weeks ago in the back of a memetic truck to save the world. This opens up a lot of room to show off competent leadership from the Elite Four/gym leaders, and their characterization is excellent, both expanding on them to make them interesting while still making it feel like their canon counterparts. While we get lots of good moments from the Hoenn cast in general, the new star of the show is Steven Stone, and through his eyes we also get to see a lot of the Hoenn lore unfolded beyond "whale and dinosaur and dragon make clouds come and go".

Speaking of which, the expanded lore is my favorite part of the story. Steven's a bit more interested in the geology aspects of Hoenn than the average protagonist, and that leads him to seek out a new solution to the weatherpocalypse that's not presented in the game--and really, the weatherpocalypse in this one feels like something genuinely destructive and threatening, and not something that can be resolved with one plucky hero having a cool battle. I really like the scale that this fic applies to the world and how it makes the crisis feel real from both ends, both in the sense of the magnitude of destruction and in how people respond to it.

 

[Pen]

Response to August 1 Prompt: a fic that is set in Alola, features Alolan pokemon, or includes a major scene on a beach.

Fic: Blood Is Thicker Than Water by St Elmo's Fire​

Summary: Everyone always told him he would be a great trainer. No one ever asked him if he wanted to be. (Hau-centric fix-it fic)

Wordcount: 6,550

Fic: Saving Lillie by @Keleri​

Summary: Some adventures Lillie had with me, and the ones she had afterward. (Sun&Moon endgame spoilers; fix-it fic; OCs; illustrations on my profile. Concrit always welcomed.)

Wordcount: 11,039


The Pokemon games don't often shine in the area of character development, but for me the Sun/Moon games are an exception. The rival characters had story-lines beyond a vague desire to be the best, story-lines that I felt invested in as a player. Of course, not all these story-lines came to the most satisfying conclusions. And where you have mishandled characters arcs, you have fix-it fics. I'm reccing two today because I'm a cheater who can't make decisions plus these two go well together.

Saving Lillie pushes back on the fate the games gave Lillie, and Blood Is Thicker Than Water gives Hau, probably the most overlooked of the Alola rivals, a serious treatment and chance to shine. Both fics interrogate the problem of parental expectations--what do we owe our parents? And what do you do when what your family wants for you isn't what is best for you?

It's not easy for Lillie and Hau to defy their families and claim their agency. But precisely because both have such meek but compassionate personalities, their struggle to chart their own way feels particularly moving to me. Blood Is Thicker Than Water features a scene between Hau and Gladion that always hits me hard in the feels. The fic also does some excellent Alola world-building, exploring the alternate paths to interact with pokemon available in the region. Saving Lillie features a fun and fast-paced retelling of the Sun/Moon finale and some very enjoyable banter. I'd recommend these fics to people who enjoyed the Alola games, but felt a little dissatisfied with the character resolutions. Check these out to get your Lillie, Gladion, and Hau fix!

 

[Namohysip]

Tagging in for the day 1 ~ Alola theme! I've got just the thing, though it's probably a given coming from me:

Ambyssin's Guiding Light!

It is something that, in effect, I would say starts off one way and quickly spirals into being its own thing. Guiding Light starts off as essentially something that the PMD fanbase has wanted for a long time--a Gen 7-themed PMD game, one that had apparently been scrapped by devs a while ago. It starts off similarly, but there's a clear difference right away, where we have a protagonist who doesn't seem to have amnesia at all... and is in fact thrilled to be the new hero of his favorite franchise! Though, that clearly goes out the window when it's clear that the narrative isn't quick to put that protagonist crown on his head.

Guiding Light starts off with a lighthearted stroke that has very clear, dark undertones under the masks worn by the Pokemon around them--masks that slowly crack to reveal the insecurities and stagnation that had permeated the world following Dark Matter's defeat. Then, in true PMD fashion, a worldwide threat emerges and takes full advantage of the emotional scars left behind by crises of old. And eventually it taps into the lore of Kirby. No, seriously this game contains some spoilers for Kirby: Star Allies at some point. It makes significantly more sense in context, though no knowledge of that franchise is required to read this story.

Highly recommended for anybody who likes serial escalation and high power scaling from small beginnings, character-focused plot lines, and a bit of zany humor.

Warnings: Rated Teen. Spoilers for all PMD games, some antagonistic entities from Kirby: Star Allies, and Gen 7 games. Contains realistic violence including blood and broken bones, occasional cursing, crude or sexual humor, alcohol and drug use, character death, and strong themes of mental health, including depression and suicide.

Words: ~1 million, complete.

 

[WildBoots]

Day 3: Heatstroke! Share a fic featuring fire-type trainers or pokemon.​

 

[WildBoots]

Day 3: a fic featuring fire-type trainers or pokemon

Fic: Blaze by LittleMissFirebright
AO3 | FFN​

Summary: Indra Kerrigan is terrified of fire. Mauled by a one-eyed Charizard as a child, she bears terrible scars from her ordeal. And in a village that specializes in flames, she's never been at peace. To earn her freedom, she must take on the Trial by Fire, and travel alone across the deadly volcanic mountains…the hunting grounds of the same monster that burned her once before.

Rating: T (some pretty intense injuries)

Genre: Adventure, spiritual

Wordcount: 10k (one-shot, complete)

I stumbled upon this fic yesterday by accident, but I can't think of a fic that better highlights both the best (and most fearsome) aspects of fire! (Like, even the author's name?!)

From the first paragraphs, we learn that Indra was severely burned as a child, and it colors her relationship with her hometown and with herself. She wants to leave and seek her fortune elsewhere. But Sunfire Village is surrounded by the sacred, foreboding Emberlands, and only the initiated can pass through. So, despite her fears and misgivings, Indra decides to take her shot at the coming of age ritual, Trial by Fire.

The trial takes up the majority of the story, and for good reason. The lore is really fun--a little bit of mysticism, a little bit of visual spectacle, and a lot of character-targeted sacrifices and challenges. I really enjoyed how she worked in different aspects of fire: burning and suffering, warmth, sacrifice and loss, and rebirth. Before long, Indra's old enemy, the one-eyed charizard, Drakul, joins the scene. The guardians of the shrines tell her she has to forgive him to pass the trial ... but the challenges aren't easy, and neither is forgiveness. Healing and forgiveness are big themes in this story and, like in real life, the journey there is messy, imperfect, and not-quite-linear. But don't worry--there's also a lot of feel-good pokemon-human partner bonding to gush over here.

You'll like this fic if you like ... world-building and original settings, lore and pokéreligion, or hurt/comfort stories.

And I can't not point out a couple of things that really tick my boxes: a moment of healing with plant medicine and a moment of realizing her canteen is empty and needing to fill it before the blazing sun comes up. It me.

 

[kintsugi]

🔥

scales, by aikotters look at me and my endless supply of unorthodox format lapslock title fics
wordcount: 2,869, complete (don't be turned off by the chapter count! it's a drabble collection)
warnings: parental death, implied non-con, there's talk of a plague wiping out lots of Unova that might be weird to read now. warnings are posted on each chapter as they're relevant.

I don't really think the games created a particularly compelling champion with Alder--this fic helps fill in those gaps for me. There's some really interesting attention paid to his family/past, as well as the family he eventually chooses for himself, and how this fuels his drive to become (and relinquish) the title of champion.

Drabbles as a whole are interesting both to read and write because it really drives home what information is important. At some points it's minimalist and at some points I think it says too much, but even then I'm really forced to consider why the author has chosen to tell this particular bit of information when there are so many things that could be said. The result is a really compelling story that feels like it has a much grander scope than its wordcount would suggest, as we get entire character arcs spanning a few hundred words.

Since it's Alder you'd probably expect the fire-type star of the show to be volcarona/larvesta, and those are there too, but for me the stealth winner here is actually Victini, for how it comes to represent Alder's unrelenting drive for victory, and where that star takes him.

---

Honorable mention for this prompt is Rainbow, a mystery following Mai, a dancer who strives to be a kimono girl. The fire-type of choice (Ho-oh) takes a backseat and I'm not entirely caught up on it yet, but it's an excellent mystery and has some really neat worldbuilding if longer fics are more your thing!

 

[Chibi Pika]

August 1 Prompt: Alola

Beasts and Beauties by dietofwurms​

Summary: Money. Fame. Status. After capturing the Ultra Beasts and being catapulted into success by Lusamine, Guzma (thinks he) has gotten everything he's ever wanted.

Wordcount: 300k
Rating: T
Genre: Angst/Drama

This fic gets Guzma and Lusamine (and Faba, and Plumeria, and Gladion, and the rest of the SM cast) in ways that I never knew it was possible to get. It delves deeply into its cast and tears into them in ways that really show you what they're made of, and every single non-canon addition feels completely 100% true to their character.

There's just something so compelling about watching Guzma try so desperately to put the broken pieces of his life together and find something that can actually make him happy. One minute he'll stumble upon the chance to actually do some good, and the next he'll tear it all apart again. And that's to say nothing about Lusamine. This is as much her story as it is his--she's fantastically cold, cunning, and calculating, dishing out emotional manipulation and abuse like a dose of slow-acting poison, and all you can do is watch as she tears down everyone around her (herself included.)

It's honestly a bit hard to count just how many times this fic ripped my heart out of my chest, sometimes multiple times per chapter. The characters are so rich, the emotions so raw, this ensemble of thoroughly damaged characters just trying to put their lives back together and figure out what it is they really want. If you like reading about broken people trying to put their lives back together, this is the fic for you.

 

[WildBoots]

Day 4: Cool off and hydrate! Share a fic featuring ice- and water-type trainers or pokemon.

 

[WildBoots]

Day 4: a fic featuring ice- and water-type trainers or pokemon.


Fic: The Legend of Faye by Niesse

Summary: Don't worry, she knows what she's doing. She's really very good.

Rating: T
Genre: Adventure
Wordcount: 6k (few-shot, complete)

Listen, y’all. I know two fics about trainers who decide it’s a good idea to catch Articuno and then, oops, it’s a bad idea. Life’s too short not to share both of them.

In The Legend of Faye, the Celadon Gym comes under attack, and all the kids in the pokecenter rally to defend it. If you like action and battles in which the trainers ride their pokemon into battle (to their own peril), you’ll like this one. But, don’t worry, Faye is a very talented trainer, so everything is fine.

Something Niesse does well here is depicting crowds. The mass of kids in the pokecenter is a character unto itself even though most of them would be “extras” if this were a movie, and they talk and behave just like real kids do. The battle has a lot of moving parts and players. Niesse very effectively breaks it into smaller beats that play off each other. This is a really, really useful read for anyone who’s grappling with big, epic battles in their own writing projects!

Niesse has also written a couple of drabble sets I really enjoyed. They focus on dialogue and character-work--they get a lot done in a very small space, and as a set they work together like a short story. Very cool stuff. … Pun intended. Because Articuno.

 

[Namohysip]

Tackling Day 3 ~ Fire for this one and giving a shoutout to my fellow Char buddy, Shadow, and his Mystery Dungeon fic, Rebirth!

While fire is not an ultimate, central theme to the story, there are very noticeable undertones throughout the plot that suggest embers are something to keep in mind. Rebirth is about a Charmeleon who has lost his memory, everything up to and including his name. Therefore, when he finds tenuous companionship in the first group he meets, he adopts a new identity to carry him over for the time being: Flame.

The story starts off simply with him trying to get his bearings as part of this world's version of a Rescue Team, but in the background, mysterious "portal storms" dot the landscape more and more frequently, giving rise to Dungeons and new perils. As the story progresses, Flame's significance to a grander scheme bubbles to the surface, the pasts of his friends comes to light, and it's all put to the test when Flame is forced to make a decision on who to follow... or to lead on his own. The great mystery of "Icarus" looms above it all.

It's a little purple at the start, but it balances out as the story progresses. While not fully uploaded here yet, I'm using the statistics from FFN:

Warnings: Mature for violence, blood, and some mild gore; language; alcohol and drug references or use; some suggestive or sexual language, and on-screen death.
Word count: 250k, ongoing.

 

[kintsugi]

ironically this exercise has reinforced that I have read way more fics than I've reviewed.
ice/water!

side note, if anyone has good recs for fics with lapras, I will give you a firstborn. not necessarily mine, but like, a firstborn is a firstborn, right?

The Wysteria Files, by SilverRockets
word count: 77k, ongoing
warnings: graphic blood/death, horror, child death, adult death, lots of death in general
In the road connecting Vermillion and Fuchsia there's a small, abandoned town called Wysteria, from where multiple rumors and urban legends have emerged. My alias is Tulip Glasslip, and this online journal is my attempt to document these strange occurrences, years after the townfolk's mysterious disappearance. Welcome to the Wysteria Files; I hope you enjoy your read.

Pokemon is ripe for the pickings for some sort of supernatural procedural story--and this definitely delivers. Each chapter starts off as a monster-of-the-week story, formatted as an interview between journalist Tulip Glasslip and a witness of one of the horrible occurrences in Wysteria. The format itself eventually becomes a tool for further tension as Tulip finds her investigation carrying her way out of her depth, and gradually it becomes clear that this definitely isn't monster-of-the-week, and there's more than just a geographical connection between the paranormal activities here.

I particularly like the pokemon choice--most people would think horror and immediately go to ghosts/maybe some of the more mindfuck dark types, but that's not necessarily the case here. Sometimes the most horrifying expression is a smile, ya feel? I think the longer arc of the fic is probably going to trend more towards horror with psychic-types and some of the legendary pantheon, but I'm recc'ing it for this theme because 1) it has a really good twist on a water-type (a type you almost never see in horror) and 2) it has really good lore on Lorelai and her ties to the Sevii Islands/Tanoby ruins (a character you never see in fanfic). I'd name the water-type in particular but for me half the fun is trying to guess what pokemon could possibly be responsible for the events occurring--so you'll have to guess and find out!

The line between bad lavender town creepy pasta and genuine horror is often blurry and different between readers--I think the early chapters of this fic sometimes trend a bit too edgy when a more restrained hand with the gore/horror might've actually resulted in a more disturbing outcome, but by the later chapters, I think it really hits a stride. There's an undeniable tension that builds through each chapter, and in particular the last string of plot twists have been horrifying and fascinating to read through.

Look, there's latin flower puns, Blair Witch Project but pokemon, and cool things about photography. I'm a simple gal with simple tastes.

Note: this fic is canon-adjacent to the author's main work, The Child of Thorns, a 700k and counting word epic set in Sinnoh (DPPt, ish), if that's more your style! Cannot speak specifically to it because I'm not caught up, but I've heard good things.

 

[WildBoots]

Day 5: Surf’s up! Share a fic that features surfing on a pokemon, fishing, boats, or your favorite ship.​

 

[WildBoots]

Day 5: a fic that features surfing on a pokemon, fishing, boats, or your favorite ship.

Fic: kunāne by Kintsugi

Rating: T (content warnings: implicit suicide, depression, language.)
Genre: Grief and loss, spiritual?

I know a few people in this community have already read it … but I just really like this fic. Gonna rec it anyway for those of you in the back who haven’t yet.

This is a story about two kids going down to the beach to visit their lapras friend, a conversation they have, and a treasure hunt of sorts. You’ll like this story if you like introspective character work--it’s very juicy.

My favorite thing about kunāne is how it tackles the idea that, yeah, training is hard. And life is a journey and not a destination, but going on a journey still doesn’t magically fix you or tell you what to do with your life. This is a story about healing, how it means not moving on from the hurts in your past but acknowledging the hurt is still there and getting up anyway.

There are some heavy feelings in this story … but it does end on a hopeful note. Real life is hard and messy, but it’s never over til you say it is. There’s always hope, even at the bottom of the sea.

 

[WildBoots]

Day 6: Cocktail time! Share a fic with an element of world-building that you liked so much you put it in your own work.