Creating myself a fanfiction.net account truly opened a Pandora’s Box I’ll never be able to close.
Last time on “The Adventures of Jason Ruining his Credibility on the Internet,” I had a bizarre reaction to Stardew Valley that drove me to write a fanfiction about the budding relationship with my farmer character.
I spent a whole lot of hours writing and editing that instead of writing the book that I’m in the middle of.
Because, as I said, you sometimes just need to strike when the iron is hot.
In just over a week that story has been viewed 23 times and received one ‘favorite’ by a user named madcat3200.
Shout out to them.
Those analytics for a brand new platform are almost immediately better than the traffic per-post on my blog, so maybe it will be worth dumping the occasional story over there.
Which of course means now I’m thinking about all the fanfictions I want to write instead of my novel.
Though I think I’ve come up with a decent compromise.
The next major idea that came to mind is based on something I’ve been enamored with since… Around 2012. Resurfaced by hype for incoming titles.
Pokémon Black 2 and White 2 are some of my favorite Pokémon games. They have the most optimized 2D aesthetics and fantastic world building thanks to a two-year time jump from the original games.
And they have fantastic music bolstered by a little post-game event called the Pokémon World Tournament (PWT).
The PWT had Gym Leaders and Champions from all five regions currently available gathered in one place to battle with a remix of their games’ original music.
It’s easily my favorite Pokémon post-game, and personal headcanons make the event even better.
For instance, I always loved the idea that Unova Poison-type Gym Leader Roxie performed the music for the PWT, as she’s the head of a punk-rock band.
I like Roxie enough as a result that I got this at Anime Expo some years ago:
Beautiful, isn’t it? I wish I took note of who the artist was so I could promote them… Past me was so insensitive.
Another character added in Black/White 2 was Yancy. To this day, she serves as my favorite almost-canonical relationship in Pokémon history due to a side-quest that involves your character building a bond with her. Very underrated ship.
Yancy also happens to moonlight as a superstar named Nancy — creative, I know.
So… Now that I have an outlet for fanfiction stories… I decided to do something incorporating a few of these characters in the setting I love.
I’ve written two chapters of my Pokémon World Tournament story, which in many ways is a similar dramatization to the Stardew piece. However I have some ideas for bigger developments should I keep the story going.
Thus, where Stardew a one-off, I’m now going to try and write a serialized piece with regular uploads.
Right now I’m imagining a chapter per-week every Monday.
That should be manageable for the first few expository chapters I’m well into writing. From there we’ll see how popular it becomes.
There are a decent amount of stories tackling the same subject matter, and in just a half-hour my story has almost 20 views — though many of them seem linked to warning me about an abstract danger I’m getting myself into by writing about Pokés.
The first chapter is mostly setting a scene. Electric-type Gym Leader Elesa and Ground-type Gym Leader Clay are finalizing some set-up for the tournament.
Plus a brief disclaimer. Because why not?
From here on I’m delving into the history of the PWT in my imagining of the story, then having match commentators introduce the preceding.
After that the sky’s the limit! Though there will probably be a lot of simulated Pokémon battles between various leaders from different regions.
Should be fun, right?
If you think so maybe you can follow along. If a few people I know from real life know about this goal, perhaps I’ll be more accountable for publishing once a week.
Let me know how you feel about the idea! It’s probably silly to start another writing project but…
What can I say? I have a lot to get out to the world.
Jason's Blog - Work in Progress 