721 mini

AKA: That thing where I write one drabble (100-word story) for every single pokémon

Type of thing: Fanfic/drabbles

Status: 77/721 written (well, 78, but I never posted one of them because I want to redo it)

Mostly self-explanatory, and yes, still a thing that is happening even though I haven't touched it all year. The drabbles are of wildly varying tone, genre, quality and ridiculousness—somehow I've managed to write a thing about mystical ninetales magic and a thing about how diglett are actually drilbur in a costume on the same goddamn page—but I figure that I should leave most of the less-than-perfect ones alone until I have more of them written (aside from the aforementioned #78, which I guess I'm being pickier about as it's about one of my favorite pokémon). I do rather like some of them, though.

I'm half tempted to try this for NaNoWriMo just to get it moving again and make some serious headway before Gen VII happens and increases the dex size for a third time since I first started toying around with stories for every pokémon/evolution line/whatever. 50k words would be 500/721 drabbles, if I'm not mistaken, and I'd just have to do seventeen of them per day. Seventeen different ideas a day for thirty days sounds like pain, though, so probably not.

Altered Origin

AKA: That thing where I put whatever fandom/fanwork-related (mostly Pokémon) stuff I occasionally barf out

Type of thing: Fansite

Status: I am the worst parent

Such a bad parent, in fact, that I've managed to go without updating all year so far. Didn't even get around to my annual "Fandom Resolutions" post back in January, although to be fair I didn't really come up with any because I was too focused on my Ungodly Video Game Backlog. (At least I've made a little headway on that...) If nothing else, before the year is out I intend to clean up the Ethereal Gates LP and crosspost it there, and I do have a few new pieces of artwork to add (MEWCOOL, etc.). I'd still like to do something nice for the site's 8th birthday on December 3rd, however, and NaNo will probably eat up a lot of the time I'd have to work on that. If some Arilterra stuff does reach a presentable stage—see below—then I guess that'd be something, but I don't want to bank on that. I kind of want to do a new style that's based on skiddo, since I have styles for my other two favorite pokémon, but that's not content. There's also part of me that wants to move the site off WordPress and use a static site generator or something, as AO doesn't have anything that requires a database backend aside from comments, and I can just punt those off to Disqus or something. But I'm not done testing the alternatives yet, and there's nothing wrong with sticking with WordPress, so I dunno. Hopefully I'll find enough time and enough moments of minimal hand pain to work on something during November. Or I can start a new LP, I suppose, which could just begin on the 3rd, but that's still going to require some thinking and preparation and clearing out of more backlog.

Arilterra

AKA: That thing with the Tolkien nonsense that I simultaneously never shut up about and never explain in any meaningful detail

Type of thing: Fan... worldbuilding... maybe fanfic?... thing

Status: Drowning under all these haphazard notes, please send help

Aha. Aaaahahahaha. Ha.

Whirlwind summary for those who are new/have miraculously managed to miss my earlier aimless gibbering about this crap: Tolkien-esque fantasy (elves, dwarves, etc.), but with added "what if instead of magic there was Pokémon". It's okay if you want to unfollow me now, I'll understand.

This is technically a worldbuilding project rather than a fanfiction project. That's why I'm not leaning harder on getting a story draft bashed out—I'm not "avoiding the actual project" by building instead of writing because the world is the actual project, and any stories that end up set in said world are just nice to have. I want to take a fantasy world, full of its own cultures and customs and locations, and see how thoroughly (and entertainingly) I can work pokémon into it. What would that change, not just about the way the world develops, but about some of the common fantasy tropes you see? Worldbuilding in general is fascinating, but what additional tools and ideas can I use if I have pokémon available to me as well? That sort of thing. It's weird, and ultimately I don't know how interesting it will be to other people because it's so different from the long-form Pokémon media you usually see fans (or canon) producing, but it's the sort of massive creative exercise that I really enjoy thinking about, so I'm happy.

I did some work on this last NaNo, but a lot has changed and so my current plan for this November is to revisit my Big Ungodly Pile of Notes Cleanup and actually get somewhere meaningful with it this time. (World Building June didn't go so well, as some of you will recall, but I've won every NaNo I've ever done except the very first, so in theory I'm a lot more likely to get stuff done this time...) The difference is that I'd like to have something tangible to show for all this work and all the annoying blabber I keep pestering y'all with. To that end I'm going to see what I can do about getting the initial information into something resembling a shareable condition, or at least as "shareable" as anything ever is immediately after thirty frantic days of NaNo waffle. IDK, I may chicken out of actually sharing it right away, even if only for post-NaNo editing purposes, but I'll be attempting to add and structure what I write with presentability in mind. (Last time it was mostly just notes for my sake that I hadn't intended to show off directly.)

Even though this project isn't supposed to require a story I still feel like a narrative of some kind would be fun at this stage, so I may take 5,000–10,000 or so of the words and dedicate them to a... travelogue? I dunno what to call it. May actually just be little snippets of "story" that go with some of the pages. Whatever it is, I guess I'd better decide quickly, hahaha... ha...

Should any of my vague Arilterra-related plotbunnies solidify by the end of the month then maybe I'll write those for NaNo instead, but I'm not focusing on stories right now so that's unlikely.

Holding Out for a Hero

AKA: That thing where Tabitha is a wizard and Shelly can turn into a shark monster

Type of thing: Fanfic/one-shot(?)

Status: A decent outline (currently being revised) and a few pieces of the first draft written

This train wreck is supposed to be a silly superhero-filled punchfest reimagining of the climax of Emerald Version (although it borrows the ORAS versions of Aqua and Magma because, you know, the admins are actually individual characters in the remakes instead of people who are only distinguishable from normal grunts by their annoying laughs). I came up with it for the "action" prompt for the Serebii Fan Fiction Mafia's "Hoenn Gauntlet" challenge. That was last year and is now so far past the deadline that I don't even know, but I love Wizard Tabitha and Shark Week She-Hulk Shelly too much not to keep going, even with me not knowing the first thing about writing superheroes and supervillains. I feel like this might end up being a little longer than a "one-shot", but it's certainly not a multi-chapter epic or anything. I actually have a few decent chunks of this written! Aside from a little addition a few weeks ago I haven't touched it in a good while, though. I'm currently reworking bits of the outline, and when I'm done with that I swear I'm going to keep going with the first draft aaaaaaaaaaaa

(In fact, even though it has nothing to do with Arilterra, I'm tempted to cheat a little and force myself to bash some of this out for NaNo, too. I want to finish iiiiiiit ;-; )

IdeaDex

AKA: That thing where I reblog a lot of weird animals and things that would make cool fakemon

Type of thing: Tumblr

Status: Moving a little slowly

Obviously this is still around, although I haven't had a lot of time/attention span to fill up the queue or answer the big backlog of questions, so posts have been a mite more sporadic than their usual once per day. Definitely need to set aside some time to answer those asks, if nothing else. Some of them are from months and months and months ago because I am a terrible person :(

I'm also going to clean up that "how to make fakemon that look like pokémon" post from a few days ago, and after that maybe work on a few other longer advice posts. Not sure what, though...

Oh, How the Mighty Have Fallen

AKA: That thing with Giratina complaining about stuff all the time, AKA the reason I keep tagging giratina-related posts with something about someone named "Virgil"

Type of thing: Fanfic/chaptered

Status: Partial first draft, though idk if I'm going to keep it as-is

The first draft of this old thing was my NaNo project for 2010, although I've had the initial idea since 2008. Giratina gets turned into a human for some nonsensical reason and ends up going on a badge quest because Mew is a jerk for some nonsensical reason. (I do actually have reasons for these things, for the record, but I'm not totally satisfied with them.) I may turn this into something else that involves even more nonsensical legendaries instead of a journeyfic, though; possibly something like a silly argument somehow being settled during a tournament? IDK. Even though it's not my primary focus right now I still like it enough to want to do something with it, so I'll see what I can figure out.

Pokémon Turquoise

AKA: That thing where you can roleplay your way through the New Logora region

Type of thing: Forum roleplay

Status: Still active, although nothing plot-relevant has happened in a while

I'm going to be totally honest and say that my heart hasn't been in this much lately, and so I haven't been able to think up anything interesting to progress the plot. (Everything I do already know happens much later in the story, unfortunately.) If I can, I might try to come up with something for folks to do for Halloween, at least. I've got "trick-or-treating" in my head, but I'm not sure how I might set that up in a forum RP quite yet. Hm.

The Best at Second-Best

AKA: That thing with Blue in it

Type of thing: Fanfic/chaptered

Status: First draft finished, though it's probably going to undergo some serious changes

FRLG from Blue's point of view. Mostly just me having fun with how annoying he is + playing with the idea that the little brat actually has some redeeming qualities. My one-shot The Best Game was originally supposed to be a part of this, but I ditched the idea of using flashbacks in the main story so that technically stands on its own now. This already has a very shaky but technically complete draft, but I'm thinking of trying a different angle with this, too. Not sure if I want to cut it down to mostly just the important battles and locations, for example, or maybe something a little more out there.

No, Blue's raticate doesn't die in this story, before you ask. I have a better plan for explaining where it went. It's not as complicated as you might think.

The Phoenixdex

AKA: That thing y'all already know about and is presumably why a lot of people are following me, but just in case you're new here it's that thing where I work on a giant, multiple-region fakedex

Type of thing: Fakemon stuff

Status: Workin' on some new 'mans

Right now I'm just focusing on adding more new fakemon—I have some spoopy critters I want to get up by Halloween, a few revamps because I rearranged bits of Accolanto again, and then I want to make sure that I have about 150 fully-evolved fakemon up by the end of March, so I'll be continuing to add a few more of those each month to reach that number. After NaNo I may do a little more work on writing up descriptions and making proper pages for Accolanto's locations, since I do already have them all mapped. Need to set aside some time to actually get pictures of all the important characters (gym leaders, etc.) done as well, although since I'm still feeling pretty shaky with my people-drawing skills that will have to wait a while. I've been toying with using some of those online "dollmaker" dress-up games to throw together some temporary prototypes; that's not going too well so far, since I'm being picky about them and can't find any that have wide enough ranges of body types/ages/skin tones/clothes/etc. for what I would consider presentable temp images. Eh, I'll figure something out eventually.

Walking Rocks

AKA: That thing where there are cowboys in Hoenn for some reason and an aggron punches a train in the face

Type of thing: Fanfic/one-shot

Status: Most of an outline that needs to be reworked and a few itsy-bitsy draft bits, mostly about aggron punching trains

The "Hoenn Gauntlet" I mentioned in the notes on Holding Out for a Hero actually contained multiple prompts, and this story is the only other one I had any solid ideas for. I'm not sure why I was able to come up with more ideas for a western set in tropical Hoenn, of all places, than I was for a mystery or a cuddly story about friends or whatever, but hey, once you start writing about an aggron punching a train you can't really look back. Walking Rocks isn't a priority at the moment, but I definitely do want to shore up the rest of the plot and then complete the draft at some point. After I finish the superhero nonsense, maybe.

ZC Tower/The Calivera Games

AKA: That thing where you can use my fakemon in some simple single-player battles

Type of thing: Fangame/Pokémon Essentials

Status: An old 1.0 version exists but is not currently available; working on 2.0 for early next year

I dunno if any of you remember that old-ass "game" where you could do an extremely basic Battle Tower challenge with my fakemon, but yeah, that, only better. Hopefully. More up-to-date with new fakemon and newer-gen mechanics, if nothing else. I may actually attempt to expand it into something more like Stadium/PBR/a Battle Frontier, although I still have a lot more to learn about Essentials before I give any serious consideration to trying that. I would like to release the initial 2.0 version on the Phoenixdex's 6th birthday at the end of next March, which is not enough time to do all the fancy Stadium-y things I'd eventually like to do, but hey, baby steps. As such, at the moment all I'm gunning for is feature parity with the old one (such as it was... that basically just means "working Battle Tower") and all the 6th-gen mechanics and newer fakemon/moves/abilities/etc. I can add/program without tearing my hair out.

The title is technically "ZC Tower" at the moment, but if I do get around to expanding it into more than just a lonely little Battle Tower it'll probably change to "The Calivera Games" or something similar. S'part of why I haven't actually talked about the Calivera region on the Phoenixdex yet—it's not a normal badges-and-pokédexes-and-evil-teams-and-so-on sort of thing, and I have a lot more thinking to do about it before I put anything down for people to look at. Or play with, I guess.

Other Stuff

I have a few other one-shot ideas in the pipeline, although I don't have enough to say about them to make 'em worth separate sections. There's something I thought up when I noticed that evil team contest on Serebii four days before the deadline (I need to lurk moar, oops), and a weird thing about messing with the good ol' Gen 1 glitches. Speaking of glitches, I am still tinkering with Mnemosyne, but although I've mentioned bits about characters like Jack Red here and there I don't really have anything concrete to say about it at this time. I've also got a different trainer fic idea, Bonne Chance, simmering in the back of my mind and a in few notes, but it's mostly just characters at the moment and no real plot aside from "go get badges yes go".

Beyond that, I'm still kicking around the idea of a Uranium LP, or perhaps NetHack for a rather more dramatic change of pace (read: dying a lot). I do also have another idea for a fangame, one that would actually permit some exploration and whatnot as opposed to just being a bunch of battles and nothing else, but I've got some logistical issues to sort out before I properly commit to that—it's highly likely that it'll be done in something entirely different from RMXP/Essentials, for one thing. Using the other thing will save me the trouble of having to get all those art/tile/music/etc. assets and also let me be dangerously experimental just because I can, I suppose. I will go so far as to say that it's probably gonna happen in a new region and may or may not have some of my fakemon in it (likely including the owlbear guys if so), but it may not, because I guess they aren't strictly necessary and may be tricky to pull off in the Essentials alternative. I may save the new region for something else later. Maybe something like the Custella Region blog? I've always thought that was a really clever way to present a region.

Also, video game backlog. Got some Fire Emblem games to finish up next, in case you were curious, and then I need to start Twilight Princess. (I just finished Ace Attorney Investigations 2 and will probably be rambling about that in a little bit, because it was full of all the silly tiny unnecessary details and terrible jokes that I crave in my video gaming experiences. LET ME TELL YOU ABOUT THE INSIGNIFICANT AND COMPLETELY POINTLESS REASON THAT KNIGHTLEY IS MY FAVORITE, YOU GUYS.)

In Summary