A new fandom, a new start. We'll see how it goes. For those interested, all of my other stuff can be found under vladtheinhaler. It's mostly Harry Potter, but some of you may cross-over with that particular fandom.
Firstly, I need to give credit to Sun Soul – easily the best pokèmon fanfic I have ever read (out of an admittedly very small pool) and one of the most well written and engaging fics in any fandom (a substantially wider selection). While the story I hope to tell differs significantly, I take from this story inspiration and hope, as well as an ideal of achievement in regards to a realistic world of pokèmon, where they are by nature powerful and dangerous monsters.
Readers will note that this story diverges from the television show more-or-less during episode 26. Or episode 25, wherein 26 features enough changes that it's already victim to the butterfly effect. Whichever you prefer. For backstory purposes, canon is as canon was. However, I ask you to bear with me on a few things:
Namely, that the show was designed to be enjoyed by young children, and thus aspects that are clearly unrealistic – even within the confines of a world overrun by sentient monsters that can breath fire and create huge torrents of water out of nothing – should be ignored. While the basic story up to this point is the same, Team Rocket has never been blasted by bolts of electricity thousands of feet into the air, Ash has never take a flamethrower to the face – or enough electricity to charge a small nation, for that matter. These things simply won't happen from here on out (or if they do, will have dramatic and permanent consequences), and it makes no sense for them to have ever occurred if the story is to attempt some sense of realism.
Smaller differences include character ages (same point, letting a ten year old fight and fight with potentially murderous monsters is a bad idea, and it generally makes for a dull protagonist) and probably a number of mutations to canon, but that's part of the fun, eh? Ash is also less outright stupid, though I've tried to keep some of his well... shall we say, density.
Nor does anyone fall over backwards because of something embarrassing.
That being said, I hope you like it. This is my first foray into the pokèmon fandom, and first non-bookbased fanfiction as well. I hope I've captured the tone (much harder when you can't simply mimic the original author). All criticism and commentary is welcome, though do understand that story-wise, I'm pretty set on where this is going.
Thank you and enjoy.
~ M