Category: Articles

The Top 5 Worst Ways to Advertise your Fanfic

In some ways, the life of a fanfiction author is easy these days. The internet makes it quite simple to share your creations, and it’s just as simple for others to respond to your stuff with their feedback. Many sites even let us know the page view count, so we know just how many people were interested enough to click on the story’s title. Sharing is, in a nutshell, very easy.

The downside of this, of course, is that there are a lot of fanfics out there. Some of them are very polished, some of them not all that much so. Some of them are incredibly popular, some are practically void of all attention. Every writer wants to get at least some attention, and it can be quite difficult to distinguish yourself from the mass. So, you do what real world authors have to do to get attention. You have to advertise.

There’s many ways to go about advertising your creations – this applies to fanfics as well as art, let’s plays, fan music, AMV’s, what have you. Some of them are good and effective. Some of them aren’t.

Here are a few that pop up every now and then, but should never be used by anyone.
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Are Pokemon designs getting worse?

No one would really like to think it, but are pokemon designs getting worse? Sure there might be a few good ones here and there, but are there enough to redeem the recent generations? The answer is quite simply, there is no answer. It’s all about what you’re looking for.

Say generation one is your favorite. With awesome designs like Charizard, Cloyster, and Sandslash, it’s pretty hard to go wrong. The designs back then were plain and simple. Not full of these crazy markings and logos that litter today’s generation. In fact, the most notable marking was Arbok’s hood. Now it’s all about how much we can stuff into one pokemon until it’s overloaded with markings. It just makes the design look crowded and ugly. The Pokemon today hardly even look like Pokemon. It’s fine to put a few markings on a design, but there’s a limit.

Time to switch gears, let’s say that generation five is your favorite, with really cool pokemon like Gigalith, Zebstrika, and Zoroark. There’s a lot of detail put into those designs. Surely much better than those bland Pokemon all the Kanto fanatics are raving about. All those extra touches Game Freak puts on the Pokemon really brings out the factors that people look for. Generation one Pokemon don’t have anything on the detail work of Sigilyph. After all, if you can put more details on Pokemon, why not?

I would just like to say that comparing one generation to another is like comparing apples to oranges. You obviously have your favorite, but if someone doesn’t like one or the other, there’s no way of convincing that person to like the other. Let’s take a moment to look at each of the generations and the general vibe we got from the new pokemon.

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Top 10 members of villainous Teams

Just so you know, avid readers, there will be spoilers in this article for pretty much everything Pokemon related. You have been warned.

Hello, all you little FIGHTAMANIACS! I’m back for another look at the wonderful world of Pokemon. Now, if you know me, you know I’m an avid supporter of Teams Rocket, Magma, Aqua, Snagem, Galactic and Plasma. I always feel bad when I mow down a grunt for a Team I love, so I thought I’d make up for it by counting down the top ten members of villainous teams. Keep it in mind when you read this that I’m not sticking to one canon. Characters from the anime, games, and manga are present on this list. I didn’t really have a specific criteria when I made this list. As such, the characters aren’t here because they all have varying levels of a certain quality, it’s mostly just based off of opinion.

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The Mystery of the Three Musketeers

Before I start, I’d just like to let you know that there are MAJOR spoilers for the Pokemon anime, games, and the Pokemon Adventures manga. You’ve been warned.

The Three Musketeers? I know, you’re wondering who I’m talking about. I’ll be doing a comparison of the three main characters of the Pokemon franchise: Ash from the anime, Red from the games, and Red from the Pokemon Adventures manga. Now, let me start off by saying that these are not all the same character. Many people think that you play as Ash in RBY/FRLG, as the design for Ash and Red is very similar. Same with Red from the games and Red from the manga. However, all three of these trainers differ in amounts of skill, personalities, back stories, and many other aspects.

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Tawada’s Song

Pokémon as a franchise is fairly large. Not only does it have the main game series by Game Freak that churns out a game every two years at worst for a good while, it has a large number of spinoff titles to complement that list. It also has the anime series coupled with it. Given all that, one can imagine the number of staff working on the music of the series.

Among the bunch, there has been one music composer which has popped up on the credits list for a few spinoff games for Pokemon. He is Tsukasa Tawada. He’s been in the music business for the video game industry for many years, but a curiosity of his work that has only cropped up in Pokémon titles is a short tune that appears time and time again.
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Top 10 Creepiest Pokémon

When most people think of Pokémon, they usually think it’s just a kids’ game. I mean, we have all these cute little colorful critters to befriend, and then you have friendly battles with other kids with your pocket monster buddies. The more famous Pokémon are often just these kinds of Pokémon. You’ve got Pikachu, Eevee, all the adorable starter Pokémon, Jigglypuff, Mew…

Some Pokémon, of course, look a bit scarier. There’s various dragons, like Garchomp or Dialga, that look like they might actually startle you if you saw them in real life. There’s human-sized insects and other mildly unsettling design choices. But overall, it’s still a pretty friendly game. There’s nothing really scary there, right? It’s all perfectly suitable for kids.

…And then you go read the Pokédex entries for some of the perfectly nice-looking, unimposing Pokémon you’ve collected during your fantastic, happy travels, and suddenly the world isn’t such a friendly place anymore. And this isn’t just about Ghost-type Pokémon, or even just about Dark-types. There are some seriously creepy Pokémon out there, and they come in all shapes and sizes. Here is my pick of the top ten creepiest ones.
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Why doesn’t Ash age?

Whether or not you watch the anime, there is one question you’ve probably heard of or discussed and that question will be answered right now! Why doesn’t Ash age? All throughout the series Ash remains ten years old. As I dug around and asked some friends on their thoughts on the subject, I found some legitimate, funny, and just plain disturbing answers to this puzzling question.

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Well at least his hat changed.

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The Truth Behind Team Rocket

Jessie, James, and Meowth are widely viewed as completely evil people with no good in them in the black and white elitist society of the Pokemon world. However, this is not the case. Need an explanation? Read on!
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Pokemon Analysis: The Lotad Line!

Pokemon Analysis: The Lotad Line!
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Pokemon: From lilypads to…dancing pineapple ducks with sombreros. What’s not to love?

This is the first analysis in which a random number generator has determined the Pokémon line for us to examine! And what an oddball bunch we have here. They have it all, from a rarely-seen ability and certainly unique typing to what are frankly weird designs. It’s no wonder that the majority of people tend to prefer the Sapphire version exclusives to Ruby’s Seedot line.

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Pokemon Olympics: A Recap!

The Pokemon world has just concluded its Pokeathlon Olympics, and what a week of leaping, running, swimming, teamwork and general bashing-up-each-other it was! Trainers came from all over the globe to duke it out against each other for that shiny gold medal. And let’s not take away from the silver medalists and those who netted shameful, shameful bronze either!

This year’s events went fairly smoothly, all things considered. The big four regions of Japan has a strong showing again, and Unova’s trainers this time performed better than the previous Olympics in the initial events giving themselves more time to recover from jetlag. The rangers of Fiore and Almia had a respectable showing as well, although some still hold that using Pokemon that they don’t actually own in a Pokeball was merely exploiting a loophole in current rules. Orre had a modest number of participants this year as Shadow Pokemon were no longer allowed due to the large number of injuries and broken javelins (an event that was also cancelled for the year, along with Dodgeball with Qwilfish), but a few medals were still taken out by the desert nation.

A small riot had broken out in Goldenrod (where many of the participants stayed in) when it was discovered the Game Corner had been replaced by Voltorb Flip, and the nearby National Park is now seeking damages from having hosted a few side events (both Tuesday’s and Thursday’s Bug-catching competition had to be cancelled), but otherwise it was a success all around, and one simply cannot wait for the next Olympics!

Below is a few of the highlights in events this year.

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Wii U – Hands On Impressions

It’s been a good while since the Wii was new and everyone was excited (or angry) about its Wiimotes and Miis and strange naming theme. Now it’s time to do it all again with the Wii U! Of course, one with even a passing interest in Nintendo consoles would wonder what it’s like and whether it’s worthwhile to get. And if one is a Pokemon fan, what possibilities it offers for Pokemon may also be of interest.

So why worry? Take this reporter’s word for it, as he got to try it out exclusively at a VIP event, and without killing anyone to get the chance either.

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Opinion: Emulator Legitimacy

Nowadays Game Boys, Game Boy Colors and Game Boy Advances (SDs) seem out of reach. Impossible to get now. Then great minds decided to dump the files of their GBA cartridges and make ROMs. Then further sciences on the internet made a practical way to play these ROMs or “Read Only Memory” files. Now we have Gameboys on our computers with an endless supply of games at our disposal. We can play Mario, Zelda, Pokemon and everything in between. The emulators offer much more then just being able to play classic games from our childhood; they make things convenient. Some of the features of the emulators include being able to increase the frames per-second with a push of button, effectively speeding through cut-scenes and other long and boring things. They allow easy input for Gameshark and Action Replay codes, when normally these things would have to be purchased. Yes these emulators provide much more ease while playing through old games. So, how does this relate to Wynaut and Pokemon?

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Black and White’s Story – A genuine breakaway from formula?

Many know that Pokemon Black and White was billed as having a more intricate and engaging story compared to previous games, coupled with entertaining characters. And it is certainly true that in many aspects it is better. For instance, most of the gym leaders in this game actually had a hand in the main story, doing daring things like chase Plasma about, which is more than say the likes of Sabrina when Team Rocket ran riot in Sliph Co. Or for that matter most of the other gym leaders which had until recently been quite content sitting inside their gym, waiting for you to go beat them up on your quest to being the best. The rivals also had interesting personalities and their own hopes and dreams and conflicts.

But what about examining it all in depth?

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The Top 5 Worst Ideas for an OC

In the writing career of most fanfiction writers, there comes a time when you wish to write a story in which a character of your own creation appears. Some writers only work with their own characters. Some use mostly canon characters, but then add in some with their own touches. Some only use their original characters as very minor characters. Either way, most writers do end up creating a character of their own sooner or later.

As it turns out, that’s not very easy. No, seriously. You need practice in that type of thing, and not many people are willing to go through the trouble of mastering this process. Simply because you like your OC doesn’t mean it’s a good OC – it could mean that, but in many cases it also doesn’t. This is especially evident because many writers want to take shortcuts and make things easy for themselves instead of going through the effort of fleshing out their characters and making them believable.

Here are five ways to create an original character that you should use if you really don’t want people to take you or your characters seriously.

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Pokemon Analysis: Wynaut and Wobbuffet!

Pokemon Analysis: Wynaut and Wobbuffet!


They sure look excited.

Because what better set of Pokemon could one possibly use for the first magazine analysis than these? Other Pokemon to grab the spotlight later on shall be chosen by a random number generator, but these two get the exception solely because Wynaut is the name of the magazine.

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