Awesome_Sauce_9607

TFTCs!

Man, I really made a gigantic wall of text. Sorry everyone lol

Then again, I prefer fics that stay true to the feel of Pokémon and don’t get too edgy. For some reason, a lot of people want the Pokémon world to feel much grittier in an attempt to make it feel more real or something, but all that does for me is detract from part of the entire reason I like Pokémon in the first place, which is the idealistic and almost utopian setting where everyone gets along and the bad guys are relegated to easy little groups that never succeed in the end. The funniest part is that making this world with so much appeal for self-inserting darker and grittier doesn’t even make it more realistic, just less appealing; all of the SI fics I listed flesh out the world in a way that makes it seem more alive and real, without compromising the appeal that the world holds; some stay closer to the real world while others stay closer to the idealistic world, but they never stray into gritty. That’s just my personal preference though. Additionally, I also don’t like fics with stupid systems or cheats that make growth completely artificial and surface-level because it was handed to them. Because the MCs don’t do much hard work, or at least do much less work than they should or that is typical for an average person in the story, it leaves them feeling very hollow and I don’t get attached. It also game-ifys a world of what should be living, breathing creatures, and makes it feel less real. With how prolific this is on Webnovel, it goes without saying that I don’t read much on here anymore lol. Again, this is also a personal preference, and systems can also be done well like in Chysalis (never cheats though, cheats are pretty much the author cheating out of having to write character growth 99.9% of the time, and this includes system cheats. In Chrysalis, everyone has the system, which is why it works)

I don’t really like most of the recs given here, but I second the Borne of Caution and Borne of Desire recs. Other SI fics I would recommend include Throne of Mud, The Type Specialist, and The Natural. Those five are my favorite ongoing Pokémon SI fics, and all are found on FF.net with some on RR, not Webnovel. In fact, I find that the stuff on Webnovel in general is of a much lower quality when compared to the stuff on RR or FF.net, so you might also just be looking in the wrong place imo

Jim will definitely escape lol

Hope you’re doing well man

For example, criminals are part of that gray line, but there should at least be some moral complexity before killing them. If there isn’t any, well, I’m not interested in reading about an unrepentant murderer lol

I bet it’s cuz killing has been normalized to some extent through some of the edgier novels on this site. It’s part of why I try to avoid them; if I can clearly tell that a main character is killing people without good reason and without even just considering a more peaceful option, I tap out, because I don’t want to follow a psycho. Very generalized statement, and there’s definitely shades of gray, but I feel like this usually holds up in my experience

Typical of the Legion to assume that every monster in existence has a desire to destroy civilization, and use that as justification to kill the relatively amicable Mother Tree