Negrek's Nominations

Short and simple, this one-shot nevertheless manages to be a vivid depiction of what it might be like for a Pokémon to be captured while at the same time avoiding so many of the clichés that usually come with that scenario. The Growlithe's capture isn't absurdly abusive and awful, but neither is it the beginning of a beautiful friendship between Pokémon and trainer, and [Imaginative]:[Clockwork] gets across the complexity of the situation deftly, always mindful of the fact that his subject isn't human and thinks in a different way than any of us. Definitely the one-shot that made me think the most out of any that I read in 2017.

This is a great little character study that really showcases diamondpearl876's skill with description and introspection. It does help to have some Ace Attorney knowledge to properly enjoy it, but if you don't have the Ace Attorney knowledge to properly enjoy it you can improve your life by obtaining some, so that's okay as far as I'm concerned.

Real-world myths, legends, and bits of history remixed with Pokémon? Sounds good to me! PhalanxSigil knows how to choose a cool story to give the Pokémon treatment, too; you'll find both familiar tales and some you probably haven't encountered before in this collection, which I think really adds to the fun.

icomeanon6's wild west-Pokémon fusion is a wonderful take on Pokémon in a pre-Pokéball era. Although this is a short story, icomeanon6 manages to pack in loads of details that suggest a much larger world, and a fascinating one at that. Worldbuilding aside, the bleak mid-winter environment lends the story the perfect atmosphere and is so perfectly described I could practically feel the chill coming off my computer screen. A great example of how to do setting right!

It might seem kind of weird that I'm nominating a story based essentially in the real world for "best setting" (and have actually kind of done it twice, hmm), but I think considering how Pokémon would really work in a world much like our own and putting your own spin on both real-world and Pokéworld culture requires just as much creativity and attention to detail as cooking up your own region or really digging into a canon location. And while so many real-world-Pokémon fics are set in the United States or Canada, roule chooses places most people might not think of as the settings for her stories–Ukraine, in this case. Her stories always show a high level of research and understanding of the place and people she wants to represent, and this gives them a much different flavor than all the iterations of "that time I was walking home from high school and randomly found a Pikachu." She has a lot of different fics to choose from, and this is a characteristic of all of them; I'm just nominating the one I'm most familiar with here. If you're interested in Pokémon-real world mash-ups, it's definitely worth checking some of her work out!

Was going to nominate this for "Best Setting" again this year, then realized I was already full up for that category, oops. In any case, the world-building in Fledglings goes way beyond creating a cool new world for the characters to adventure in; it does its best to have that world make sense in a way the canon often doesn't. One of the coolest aspects, for me, is how the Mystery Dungeons are tied into both daily life for the Pokémon and their history and culture, and somehow Spiteful Murkrow makes the weird, well, mysterious dungeons feel like something that could actually exist and make sense in a coherent world. A big part of what makes this story fun is the vibrant, sprawling place Spiteful Murkrow's created for it to happen in, and the way he builds on Pokémon canon is definitely an important facet of that.

Whether you enjoy over-the-top large-ham characters, slapstick comedy, character-driven humor, or just loads and loads of video game references and in-jokes, Guiding Light probably has the joke for you. Ambyssin brings several different kinds of humor to the table, making this a fun read regardless of where your tastes lie in a joke. There's also the death, hideous alien infections, and abusive authority figures, but: still funny.

One of the rare trainer fics that actually dispenses with the trainer journey in favor of what might otherwise be the "B" plot–Team Rocket shenanigans, in this case–The Legendarian Chronicles is a great example of how much you can do with the premise of "but what if young kids were actually tasked with taking down a criminal empire?" Chibi Pika answers with explosive action scenes, high drama, and real stakes that drive home how serious a situation the characters, newbie trainers who just wanted to have a journey with Pokémon, have gotten themselves into. It's an excellent trainer fic that presents a new take on a classic genre and is a blast to read on top of that.

Guiding Light has many of the elements you'd expect from a PMD story: guilds, amnesiac humans, a sinister threat trying to upend a world full of cute magical animals. Ambyssin isn't interested in writing just another heroic dungeon-crawler, though. He drills down and examines what might happen if the first Pokémon to find you washed up on a beach wasn't destined to be your perfect best friend, if the hero maybe was really kind of bad at being a hero, if the big bad wasn't just a nameless outside force but something much more personal and horrifying? Guiding Light tackles all this and more with a broad cast of quirky characters, a generous helping of humor, but never any inclination to flinch away from the darker side of its premise.

As with the other fics in the saga (The Origin of Storms, Communication), The Worldslayers delivers exactly what I'm looking for in a Pokémon-centric fanfic: Pokémon whose biology and abilities actually affect how they view and interact with the world, Pokémon societies with diverse structures and priorities, Pokémon/human relations more nuanced than "training good, everyone loves training" or "training is slavery!!!," and Snorunt driving cars (or in this particular fic, not driving cars because they've turned into spiky ice-snakes. There are great fakemon, too!). It's a bonus that Sike gives so much attention to interesting and under-appreciated Pokémon like Nosepass, Glalie, and Arbok, and even more of a bonus that she has a penchant for writing Pokémon who are messed up and sad inside–not a specifically Pokémon-centric thing to recognize, but something I personally very much enjoy!

[Imaginative]:[Clockwork] does one of the best jobs I've seen of getting into a Pokémon's head with this piece. What the Growlithe protagonist focuses on, what he sees and hears and thinks about, are all distinctly non-human and yet deeply relatable. This story is worth a read both for the skill [Imaginative]:[Clockwork] shows with the POV and for the lovely little story it's wrapped up in.

Mark is your everyman protagonist, thrust into a crazy situation way outside his control and unlike anything he expected when he began his journey. And that's why his character works so well; his very ordinariness grounds him in the midst of all the high-stakes drama surrounding him and keeps him relatable even when he's dealing with truly fantastic problems. And despite the dangerous and fantastic problems Mark encounters in the story, Dragonfree resists giving him any kind of special powers to deal with them, or even particularly high-level training skills; Mark gets through on the strength of trying his best, working to be a kind and compassionate person, even when it seems hopeless, and generally trying to understand other people and help them solve their own problems. He's an excellent commentary on the power of simply trying to be a decent human being in the face of cruelty, hopelessness, and chaos, and I think that makes him both an unusual and especially effective journeyfic protagonist.

Annie isn't your typical journey protagonist; a lot of them have problems, but not a lot are recovering from serious medical issues, strained family relationships, and unhealthy coping methods. But Annie certainly isn't a downer to read, and her sharp observations of the world around her and her refusal to take anybody's crap make it fun to follow her even when she's stuck in the hospital. It's going to be a delight to see her journey get properly underway and how she changes from the trials it's sure to entail… get Annie out of Sandgem 2k18

Gregory was already starting to show some interesting depth in the previous version of Love and Other Nightmares, and diamondpearl876 has brought him back strong out of the gate in the revised version. He's one of the few people Annie can really rely on while trying to recover from her illness, and while she doesn't entirely trust him (probably wise!), he stands out as being a character who actually does seem to care and want to make things better, without making Annie's suffering all about him. I'm really curious to see where their relationship goes in the future and what secrets Gregory might be hiding.

It's really difficult to talk much about Starr without getting into serious spoilers (that being a major reason I chose to nominate her under this particular name, heh), but she's absolutely one of The Legendarian Chronicles' most nuanced and well-developed characters. Her relationship with the protagonist, Jade, is painfully complicated and real, and it's already shifted a lot even in just the opening portion of the story. I foresee a long and difficult road ahead for Starr as she tries to come to terms with her past and what her future might hold, and I can't wait to see how she handles it.

For someone who can't talk, Golduck has a whole lot of personality and a whole lot of influence on the story. I love to see pokémon who aren't just extensions of their trainer, with their own lives and opinions and character arcs, and Golduck frequently makes it clear that he doesn't always agree with how his trainer does things. He pushes her to think about why she's doing what she's doing, or why she isn't, and in doing so makes her a better person and more interesting character. And even though he might give his trainer a hard time now and again, he's strongly devoted to her, and his mixture of sass and quiet strength mean it's always a pleasure to see him show up in a scene.

The most stoic of woobies, poor Null is often left playing the only sane man while his two high-strung teammates bicker, get into trouble, or have emotional breakdowns. Despite being in constant pain from headaches caused by the power-limiter clamped on his head, resisting the murderous urges instilled him by the genetic engineering that created him, and dealing with the fact that the majority of people who meet him are repelled by his odd piecemeal appearance, Null manages to remain one of the kindest and most level-headed characters in the entire story. What a good dog-chimera-guy. I have a feeling his character arc is going to have some seriously heartwarming moments (also, some quality angst), and it's possibly the one I'm most excited about in the entire fic.

Rick is a great antagonist in that he's not only horrifyingly threatening to the protagonists, being in possession both of a terribly powerful super-super-clone and a deathwish towards one of them in particular, but also a very tragic figure. His intense paranoia and the extreme actions he takes because of it make sense, given his past, but at the same time drive him ever further away from any hope of actually feeling better or solving his problems. You can't help but feel a little bit bad for the guy, even when he's trying to choke the life out of another beloved character.

I believe Dramatic Melody nominated Tabitha for "Best Human Villain" last year, so I guess it's my turn now, heh. At this point Tabitha's only clinging to "antagonist" by the skin of his teeth, which is pretty good for a guy who's held a kid in terrifying captivity for days, ordered people's executions, and generally continues to be loyal to that guy who wants to evaporate the ocean for some reason. It's clear that he's wavering in his convictions, though, and isn't at all comfortable with what his job's pushed him to do. Will he remain an antagonist much longer? It's hard to say, but he's already well into the gray and shading lighter all the time–my personal favorite flavor of villainy.

Metagross starts out as just a quirky guildmaster character, rigidly logical and with no sense of humor, but generally unremarkable. As time goes on, though, his decisions as guildmaster start to morph from "hmm, that seems a little odd" to "I'm not sure that's a good idea or even ethical" to "WOW THAT IS 100% NOT OKAY." He's been implicated in the death of an important character, and the signs have only been growing stronger that there's something a little off at the heart of his guild. While this all has taken a backseat to the A-plot world-saving shenanigans, Metagross just keeps getting more interesting as time goes on, and I look forward to seeing him step into the spotlight later on.

Cordyceps has exactly one gag, but I'll never get tired of it. I hope the mushroom approves.

This scene really needs to be appreciated in context for the full effect, but I think the tension shows through even in this small excerpt. Weeks on weeks of fruitless searching, with no leads and no idea of what else they could possibly try, and the characters' nerves are clearly fraying. At any time their end-of-the-world detector Chaletwo might inform them that it's too late, that they've failed and all their increasingly-hopeless searching was for nothing. Dragonfree's writing this chapter really brings you into the characters' experiences, feeling the same tension and uncertainty and rising unease as the apocalypse draws closer, as powerless as any of the characters to stop it.

The fact that The Worldslayers is getting nominated at least twice in this category should give you a sense of what to expect from the story; there are just too many fantastic heartbreaking moments to choose from! Cutlerine already picked a good one, but I wanted to put a word in for my personal favorite. Sometimes it might be possible for Ren to forget that he's the last human on earth, but unexpectedly stumbling across the remains of a long-abandoned Secret Base brings that knowledge back with crushing brutality. A brief, quiet moment, but the few words here speak volumes.

Gladion, you monster, how could you ever leave that adorable Riolu behind?? I definitely wouldn't be strong enough. Just the thought of his sad little face is enough to do me in.

This scene is so representative of Jade and Starr's relationship and makes a hugely satisfying capstone to everything they've been through in the first part of the story. They both still want to be friends, even after everything they've been through–or done to each other–but at the same time, they don't really know how. This moment, where they finally manage to talk to each other and agree to start over, is probably my favorite in the story so far.

If it's just ONE WHOLE CHAPTER that's wicked fight scene from beginning to end, you'd better be sure you can deliver something exciting that won't become tiring or boring when extended through thousands of words. Chibi Pika delivers here with my favorite battle of the story thus far, full of twists and turns, loads of tense moments, and real peril for both the legendary Pokémon and their would-be defenders.