You might know me as 'Spiteful Murkrow' over on Serebii Forums, Bulbagarden Forums, or Thousand Roads, or alternatively as 'Fobby' from Archive of Our Own until May 2021 when I belatedly synchronized the name spelling of my account there with my FFN account. Don't be fooled by the different names, that's all me, and it reflects in the content hosted. I'm not super talkative, but I pop up here and there on some writing Discords where I can be chatted up if I'm online and available.

My Stories

Fledglings: (In-Progress) - The fic that I'm most known for, an original setting PMD fic starring baby Lugia and a fledgling Rescue Team in a battered "7.8 - Too Much Water" world where thar be pirates and island-hopping adventure with (mostly) Saturday Morning Cartoon vibes. This a joint project between me and Virgil134 here on this site, who hosts a gaiden story from the same setting he took point on called Casting Off on his profile. FFN unfortunately is kinda dumb about handling attribution between stories with multiple authors, so if you want to make Virgil134's day, shoot him an author fav if you liked the story enough to give me one over it.

As you might have gathered from the word count, this story's kinda long at this point. For those of you feeling dicey about a story that big, it's structured in an episodic nature modeled after TV shows that's a bit more obvious on other platforms due to supporting image headers. If you want to tackle things in organized chunks, these are the following episodes and their corresponding chapter runs as specifically numbered in their titles (and not by FFN index number) in the chapter listing:

Episodes:

- Episode 1 - Awakening - Prologue & Chapters 1-3
- Episode 2 - Upheaval - Chapters 4-8
- Episode 3 - Trial - Chapters 9-13
- Episode 4 - Departure - Chapters 14-19
- Episode 5 - Boisocéan - Chapters 20-25
- Episode 6 - Kenobi - Chapters 26-32
- Episode 7 - Mengir - Chapters 33-38
- Episode 8 - Otvaga - Chapters 39-43
- Episode 9 - Orleigh - Chapters 44-49
- Episode 10 - Sormus - Chapters 50-54
- Episode 11 - Giotto - Chapters 55-61
- Episode 12 - Buyeom - Chapters 62-67
- Episode 13 - Pioppo - Chapters 68-74
- Episode 14 - Haipheh - Chapters 75-79
- Episode 15 - Homecoming - Chapters 80-83
- Episode 16 - Vollezee - Chapters 84-

Additionally there are some chapters that much like Casting Off (best enjoyed either immediately before or after Episode 11), function as stand-alone stories in the same setting. Four of which are canon one-shots to the story and referenced in following chapters, and one is an April Fool's Day crossover with Ambyssin's Pokémon Mystery Dungeon: Guiding Light that while not canon, is a fun ride in its own right and written so that it could be understood even if you've never read anything of Guiding Light. While these chapters were written assuming everything beforehand had already been read, you can jump right to them via the following chapter numbers in the on-site index:

Special Chapters:

- Special Chapter: Auld Lang Syne ( FFN Index Chapter #27 )
- Special Chapter: Swinging the Lamp ( FFN Index Chapter #46)
- Special Chapter: The Deepest Wounds ( FFN Index Chapter #66 )
- Special Chapter: Yesterday is Gone ( FFN Index Chapter #89 )

Bonus Chapters:

- Bonus Chapter: Turbulent Roadtrip ( FFN Index Chapter #58 )

There is also a series of authors' commentaries that are hosted on Archive of Our Own called A Fledgling's Commentaries that contain some behind-the-scenes about how the story and its setting came to be. It is a handy companion to read alongside the main story, though unfortunately cannot be hosted here due to FFN's rules for postable content and its inherent limitations for embedded media support.

As an author's note, since Fledglings is an ongoing story, everything in the above section is subject to change as more content is uploaded.

Once a Thief: (In-Progress) - a grand experiment in writing a longer serial work alongside my work on Fledglings, a.k.a. an excuse to at once write a story following Outlaws in a PMD setting and indulge my inner derivative hack by making a truckload of references and homages of varying levels of subtlety to other stories and media I like, especially to the Xeno series. As you’ve probably gathered from the content rating and summary, this story isn’t roughly tracking a Saturday Morning Cartoon vibe, but rather something closer to the mix of levity and heavy themes found its preferred sources of homages.

Once upon a time, this was going to have about 20 chapters, but after outlining about 90% of them and going back to start filling them in with prose, a good chunk of them turned out kinda… long. So yeah, that '20' is probably going to wind up being something closer to '30 to 35' once the dust settles. Updates target a once per calendar month schedule since I’ve got other irons in the fire to manage, though as with all my other works, things ship whenever they’re done.

Time will tell whether or not it was a good idea to take on this experiment, but hey? Better to take a swing and miss than never try, right? As with Fledglings, due to being an in-progress story, everything in the above is subject to change as more content is added. Special thanks goes to Virgil134 and Shadow of Antioch who help beta read the story's chapters to make it as enjoyable a ride as it is, along with TorchicBellow, who writes up the German-language content and translations in the story.

Dragonspiral's Children: (Rewrite In-Progress) - A little short story of camaraderie with a family in Icirrus City and the process of growing up with them across the years, with a perspective twist. A rewrite of this story was launched on 1-24-2022, which fixes a number of structural issues with the original version, adds a noticeable amount of new content, and reindexes the events of the original version of the story into more numerous but more fleshed-out chapters.

While a passion project, as a sideshow to my other writing, releases operate off a "when I have time and energy" schedule, especially for more heavily re-written chapters. Special thanks goes to Venia Silente, CinderArts, and Tangent128 from SerebiiForums, who helped beta read the chapters of the rewritten version of the story.

For the curious and nostalgic, the original three-shot version of the story published in mid-2014 is hosted on Archive of Our Own under the title Dragonspiral's Children β with absolutely no changes from the original in all its janky glory beyond adding proper line breaks, which posts updates in parallel with the new version of the story once events in the updated Dragonspiral's Children catch up to those of one of the original version's chapters.

Context Switch: (Complete) - A little six-part story following a hapless desk jockey's journey developing the Pokéworld's analogue to Ruby and Sapphire at the Cove Lily Motel in Hoenn alongside his Corphish and a new companion found on the job. Also the story of how you got stuck with Wynaut stationary for going through the trouble of getting a fully completed Pokédex back in the day.

A rewritten version of this story was uploaded over the original on 7-23-2021, which fixes a number of structural issues with the original version and adds a noticeable amount of new content. Special thanks goes to Venia Silente and Dragonfree, along with Tangent128 from SerebiiForums who helped beta read the chapters of the version of the story currently hosted on this site.

If you're curious as to what the original version of the story published in late-2014 was like, it's hosted on Archive of Our Own under the title Context Switch β with some slightly different chapter titles and more accurate code syntax.

NO AUDIO: (Complete) - A one-shot originating from a site challenge on Serebii Forums to write a story that has exactly zero dialogue in which weird stuff along with the occasional very unsubtle video game reference gets picked up on the surveillance footage of Sinnohan gas stations. Published as a gift fic for Umbramatic from this site using a piece of Pokéverse headcanon that he uses in his writings. Special thanks goes to Venia Silente, rmctagg09, and Tangent128 from SerebiiForums who helped beta read the story prior to release.