My Issues with Pokémon Fanfiction.

Issue #1, Ask Or Dares

OK, so let me just preface by saying this before anything else. I do not think that, as a concept, Ask Or Dares are necessarily that bad. They can help improve the likeness of a character by having them interact with the audience, or with each other in more zany scenarios than they'd otherwise be seen in.

However, Eeveelution fanfiction in particular has run this trope so cataclysmically far into the ground, that it is completely dead and buried. Here's why:

The characters they use are characters that aren't present in other works by them, or any other works at all. This makes them feel overwhelmingly barebones, and ultimately void of any kind of foundation to initially attract us to the characters. For an example, let's take a random Umbreon, named Dusk, shall we say. 

Dusk has not been used in any form or capacity in any other books, thus giving him no personality to work with to understand his reactions to scenarios around him, or how he gets on with others.

This would, by proxy, make Dusk shallow and a bad character, correct?

So, why does everyone seem to use this premise to write their characters? I doubt I myself will ever write an ask or dare, even of fleshed out characters of mine, because it oftentimes feels like an unfortunate, almost desperate final stretch towards reads.

Ask Or Dares for me have made finding Eeveelution Fanfiction worth reading, and the list of gold in the dirt in this category likely only stretches to less than 10.

It is a problem that has perpetuated since my humble beginnings as a writer here, for the few who know what I'm referring to. But, I digress.

Also, I have quite a lot to say about a certain Eeveelution story, but that will be covered later. I have many, MANY foul words for that story, and I will voice them there.