This is partly a review(-in-progress, up to chapter 84) of the Fanfiction "Pokemon: The Origin of Species" (OoS, my initialization, I’m not sure what the fandom calls it) and partly a collection of thoughts and a realization about fanfiction.
First, some context and setting the stage.
Pokemon: The Origin of Species is a fanfic written by Daystareld set in the Kanto region of the pokemon universe, centred on three main protagonists; Red, Blue, and Leaf, as they start their Pokemon journey. The fanfic is written in the "rational fiction" subgenre/cluster and borrows many elements or idea-buds from other similar works like "Harry Potter and the Methods of Rationality" (HPMOR). However, HPMOR only (mostly) has Harry to use as its mouthpiece for telling its story, and can only focus on so many Rationalist ideas. OoS, through its use of three protagonists (though Red is presented as protagonist Prime) can stand on the shoulders of HPMOR, by way of exploring more specialised aspects of rationalist ideas and subculture, and does so through each of its protagonists. Red is interested in psychology and the titular origin of Pokemon species, and wants to be a Pokemon researcher. Blue is interested in Pokemon battling, wants to become Champion, and permanently make an end to the terror that roaming legendary Pokemon represents (more on that later). Leaf is interested in Pokemon welfare and is...kind of figuring out what she wants to do, but knowing that it would somehow be involved with welfare. Through each of these lenses, the fic explores therapy, leadership, social media (spotlight) management, academic coordination problems, group dynamics, journalistic integrity, and more, and that's just our main characters. The fic includes many, many characters that have equally rich motivations and struggles as the main characters, who sometimes get the spotlight in the occasional interlude chapter. The Pokemon world also presents a good opportunity for creating good villains. There are already so many "known" trainers, and building from the skeleton that has been presented in the source material, creates a living world with several high-power players.
Before moving onto the reasons why I liked OoS (and why you might like it), I wanted to talk about some reasons why some people might not like OoS, starting with the simpler ones. First off, if you didn't like HPMOR, and you can't believe Harry's character in HPMOR, you might not like OoS. While Red and Harry are different, the molds from which they were cast were made blacksmiths of the same guild. There are meta-points about optimisation that both Harry and Red are constructed to carry across, and if that completely throws you out of the story, OoS might not be for you. Related, if characters taking breaks in the action/story to spend paragraphs either giving exposition to a scientific concept (e.g. of therapy, physical law), or discussing a philosophical topic, OoS might again not be for you. And lastly, like much webfiction, OoS is a slow burn. If you consider that a downside, OoS is not for you.
Now, onto the reasons why I liked OoS. The first reason is that it's a slow burn. Being a slow burn allows OoS to meticulously set up several distinct domino pieces, and then knock them down as it pleases. In many cases, you can see those pieces being set up, which leaves the reader wondering "OK, is that going to be knocked down in this next conflict, or will it be saved for the next, or even the next one after that?" And when the pieces are knocked down, they are knocked down in a deluge that carries you through the climax frantically scrolling through your phone to get to the resolution. OoS does arc-climaxes better than anything I have read in a long while, and are at least comparable in this aspect to some of my favourite authors and works of fiction like Worm, the Stormlight Archives, andthe Practical Guide to Evil. The fact that OoS is a fanfiction lets it get away with things in this aspect that the others don't, which I will talk about in the next section. But the specific Pokemon setting also allows for incredible set pieces to be constructed, where Legendary Pokemon are brought in to create what are basically natural disasters, as according to those Pokemon's natures. OoS also toys with the nature of artificial intelligence, though as of chapter 84 this hasn't fully been brought fully to the fore, but some mix of AI and animal welfare themes are heavily foreshadowed for the next or final arc.
This was actually one of the avenues through which I was introduced to (and eventually impelled to read) OoS. Someone I follow on Twitter posted a link to; Chapter 28: Interlude IV - 2.351. This chapter is non-spoilery for the rest of the series, but does take away from the reveal of this chapter you would otherwise have gotten if read in chronological order, which could be a small detraction from the series' overall impact (if it was meant to be read first, it would be posted first, yeah?). Regardless, I stand with the person who posted this link on my Twitter when I say; if you think the things I've talked about in this review sound interesting, read that chapter. If you're hooked, start from chapter 1. Link, if you want to go for it. Go, right now even. The rest of this post will be here when you return.
The last thing I enjoyed immensely about OoS is the competent characters. This is partly implied by the ratfic subgenre, but cannot go unmentioned. If you like smart characters acting intelligently, you might like OoS. I cannot overstate this too much. While HPMOR was careful in sprinkling its intelligent characters about, in OoS there are lots of them. Gym leaders, E4s, Champs, Professors, random trainers, and more, all can have knowledge about rationalist-style cognitive science, psychology, coordination problems, economics, and more. In OoS the main character is not obviously the smartest character in every room they enter (as was mostly the case with HPMOR with like, two or three exceptions). The Pokemon world is also overall slightly smarter than ours - less prone to biases and coordination problems, and it seems mostly not to be because they didn't have those in the beginning, but because the research was done and they *acted* on it, as a society. This means mostly that the problems that are left are harder than the ones in HPMOR, or even Worm, where !!! SPOILER, SKIP THIS SENTENCE IF YOU'RE WORRIED ABOUT WORM SPOILERS !!! there turns out to have been a secret conspiracy of smart people that were all along trying to figure out how to stop the apocalypse.
So, if those things sound interesting to you, I can highly recommend Pokemon: The Origin of Species. Now, that was enough of my explicit review, and I will finish off this post with some more general thoughts about fanfiction. First, about why I like OoS when I generally don't read fanfiction, and second some thoughts about how fanfiction can authors can do some interesting things in an established universe where the reader has knowledge beyond the text.
I'm not a big fanfiction reader. HPMOR and OoS is basically my full experience with it, though I’ve sampled other works, and it was never that appealing to me. With most fiction I'm familiar with, the characters get a satisfying final arc and I'm not that interested in exploring alternate endings or journeys for them. Lots of fanfiction also seems contrived to me - much of it stretches the limits of plausible belief that the characters are acting within the boundaries of the world and premise created by the original author. I think that my enthusiasm for OoS is helped by the fact that Pokemon, because it's a videogame, doesn't give me that strong connection or characterisation that a book series would. The player characters in the Pokemon games are already silent protagonists, blank slates where the player can insert whatever they want for that playthrough. This gives the fanfic author a lot of freedom in how those characters can be portrayed. This freedom extends only partially to other named Pokemon characters, as those characters have a characterisation, but it's not strongly constructed either, and relies in large part on things like "This character specialises in Rock types and the player can draw on their ideas of what Rock types are like to characterise this Gym Leader". The fic relies on this to a degree to think "OK, but let's extend that and give them an actual personality with motives and fears and ideals etc. on top". So the fic isn't really trampling on the feet of any vision I held of any of the characters that appear in it; that's why I'm not taken aback by it. Maybe if I had read more of the Pokemon Adventures manga (or even the anime) I would have stronger characterisations of each of these in mind as I started the fic, and therefore more compunctions against the protagonists, but I didn't and here we are.
This seems to me the most likely reason why I liked this fanfic and not others (I've sampled Worm fanfiction and didn’t enjoy much of that), but other reasons include the general good quality of writing (as opposed to e.g. the "longest running fanfic", the smash bros subspace emissary fic, where the original characters also have loose characterisation, but I couldn't get two chapters in before I gave up), the high stakes and overarching plot of similar ambition as the original (as opposed to general slice of life fanfics of e.g. Worm, which I've tried and disliked).
So those are reasons why I liked this fanfic in particular, and why I stuck with it when I've dropped others before. But reading this fic - and reading quite a lot of chapters into it, made me realise some other things about fanfiction. Namely, that in fanfiction, the author is working off of an expectation that the reader has knowledge about the general world and story structure of the original work, and can build off of that in creating their story. This next section will be heavy on spoilers up to and including chapter 84 of OoS (because that's how far I've currently gotten), so feel free to stop here if you want to avoid spoilers. If you’re fine with spoilers and haven't read OoS, you might find this next section interesting as well.
So first off, there are some things that can be expected in Pokemon stories, based off the general structure in the games, manga, anime, and movies. In OoS, some of these things are expanded upon and made better. For example, in the games, Legendaries are ~relatively casually included, while in the manga and anime, they are mythical, rare, one-of-a-kind, and mostly revered or thought of as myths. OoS cranks this to eleven. In OoS, Legendaries are FORCES OF NATURE. Zapdos flying over a city is a localised moving thunderstorm that drives into a frenzy all of the Pokemon in its path, and must be responded to by all of the capable Trainers in that area, as well as available Gym Leaders. The "Pressure" ability, shared by many Legendary Pokemon, is equally cranked, and is now an aura of debilitating stress around the Pokemon that incapacitates those who are not ready to face it - or those who have faced it too many times. So, with only slight alterations to the source material, there are suddenly dozens of potential disaster-level threats available for the author to peruse as they wish. The first major arc climax of the series comes when Zapdos flies over Vermillion City and our protagonists are there to help with the safeguarding and rescue efforts. Not to try to stop Zapdos - remember, it is a force of nature and they are not ready for it, even the Elite 4 member who engages Zapdos is driven out to sea and only barely survives the encounter - but simply to deal with the stampeding Pokemon horde caused by the Pressure and thunderstorm.
This arc also sets up the expectation that the fic will use the premises of the source material - the Birds are roaming around Kanto - and make something more of them. This follows through all the way in the next Legendary encounter. This time, we follow the general guidelines of the (Omega?) Ruby/Sapphire/Emerald (O/RSE) games, as Team Magma and Team Aqua try to summon their respective weather mon, Groudon or Kyogre. Maxie and Archie (the leaders of the Teams) are not introduced in any detail, and we get no glimpses into their backstory, no chapter on their ideals or incentives or journeys. But the second they are part of the story, I was thinking "OK, so Groudon and Kyogre will be introduced at some point". Once the encounter between the two Legendaries starts, the fic leans further into the reader's pre-existing knowledge, bringing together the Champions of the different regions (Lance, Steven, Cynthia), with Steven as a viewpoint characters, without even having mentioned them by name before.
In almost any other book, introducing three new characters to be the main actors in a vital encounter, DOES NOT WORK, because they have not had the character work, backstory, or personalisation to make the reader know and care for those characters. Furthermore, through the perspective of Professor Birch, we learn also that Brendan, May, and Wally (the player characters and rivals in O/RSE) are off doing their own thing during Kyogre and Groudon's summoning, at which point I as a reader was immediately on high alert, thinking that they would be introduced as pivotal in summoning Rayquaza or otherwise calming down the weather Primals because that is the expectation set up by the source material. The fic spent not a single word characterising Brendan or May, but my brain filled in the blank canvas with "Oh I bet they have equally interesting ratfic-y stories in the Hoenn region as Red, Blue, and Leaf have now in Kanto". Wally was then also put forth as pivotal to this, which I thought was a brilliant decision because of his general lack of importance in the original games’ stories (he might be well utilised in the Adventures manga, but I haven’t read that). Thinking back on it, Wally was immensely underused in RSE, when he in OoS provides an obvious third party to the trifecta consisting of him, Brendan, and May, as a reflection to the Weather Trio (Groudon, Kyogre, Rayquaza) of their region.
So, I hope that gets across my view that fanfiction allows the author to do things in their stories that authors of original source material cannot do, because they can expect that the reader will have extra-textual knowledge about the agents and story structures that have been used in that world before, and therefore play with or otherwise make use of that knowledge.
End-note; if my enthusiasm for Oos was not already shining through, here’s a screencap of my reading stats summary for it; about 50 hours over 8 days
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