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 84-91
- Episode 17 - Gestirn - Chapters 92-

As an advisory, but as of August 2022, this story began a rolling reindexing of its longer chapters in parallel to its Thousand Roads version, which were divided into TV-style multiparters as a quality of life feature to make enjoying their content easier for readers. These reindexed chapters are published alongside new content, so if you see the chapter count tick up by 3 or something like that in the span of 24 hours, only one of those is new content. Such multiparters should be pretty easy to pick out, since you'll see their chapters suffixed with the likes of ", Part 1", which is done to keep them consistent with versions of this story that still have the chapters hosted in their combined format.

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. Note that there is some minor discrepancy between their formal and index titles thanks to FFN having character limits for title names. 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 ( Special 1, FFN Index Chapter #27 )
- Special Chapter: Swinging the Lamp ( Special 2, FFN Index Chapter #46)
- Special Chapter: The Deepest Wounds ( Special 3, FFN Index Chapter #70 )
- Special Chapter: Yesterday is Gone ( Special 4, FFN Index Chapter #93 )

Bonus Chapters:

- Bonus Chapter: Turbulent Roadtrip ( Bonus 1, FFN Index Chapters #58-60 )

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 '40 to 45' 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 TorchicBellow, who writes up the German-language content and translations in the story, along with Virgil134 and Shadow of Antioch who help beta read the story's chapters to make it as enjoyable a ride as it is.

Like a Dragon (Complete) - an anthology of short stories about dragons the world of Pokémon, a world where 'dragon' can mean a lot of things to a lot of people. After all, there are Dragon Egg Group Pokémon without Dragon-typing and no shortage of Dragon-types that don't look the part outwardly. This anthology focuses primarily around such gray areas, by showing snapshots of life through the eyes of such creatures from a second-person perspective framing.

This series updates whenever I have time, inspiration, and motivation to add a new short story to the collection. I have exactly zero promises regarding the final number of stories other than that there will be at least seven uploaded before this series is marked 'Complete', and even if it is labled 'Complete'... don't be shocked if it comes back with a batch of fresh content at some point in the future. Indefinitely expandable premises have a way of growing past their initial concepts like that.

These short stories originated from a series of drabbles written for Thousand Roads' Third Anniversary Drabble Bingo in May 2022. If you're curious as to what those originally looked like, they're hosted on Thousand Roads' version of this story, or in a standalone anthology on Archive Of Our Own called Like a Dragon β.

Dragonspiral's Children (Complete) - a short slice-of-life 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 2022-01-24 and completed on 2022-08-18, which fixes a number of structural issues with the original version, adds a significant amount of new content, and reindexes the events of the original version of the story into more numerous but more fleshed-out chapters. An additional extra one-shot originally entered as a submission to Bulbagarden Forums' Autumn 2022 One-shot Contest was uploaded on Halloween 2022, which is set in between the events of Parts 4 and 5 of the main story. 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 here 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. For the really adventurous, I happened to dig up the original SerebiiForums contest submission one-shot from mid-2013 from my hard drive shortly before completing the story's rewrite, which is also hosted as Dragonspiral's Children α on Archive of Our Own if you want to see the full journey the story has taken since its initial conception.

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 2021-07-23, which fixes a number of structural issues with the original version and adds a noticeable amount of new content, with a two-part Epilogue which was additionally written for the story for the 20th Anniversary of the release of Pokémon Ruby and Sapphire. 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 different chapter titles and more accurate code syntax.

Hunting Game (Complete) - A one-shot originating from a submission to Thousand Roads' Mischief and Malice One-Shot Competition from mid-2022 that's about the people and Pokémon that go about catching Pokémon... in a manner of speaking. This piece is a bit on the experimental side, and was written in second person perspective in part as a mechanical pilot for Like a Dragon. It also happens to be one of the darkest written pieces I've formally published as a writer and contains depictions of abuse of Pokémon, so... yeah, don't go in expecting the story to be sunshine and rainbows.

The original contest submission can be read on Archive of Our Own under the title Hunting Game β, though unlike other works of its ilk mentioned on this page, the differences in content are relatively minor. Special thanks goes to Lizard Leliel, who beta read the story in its original contest submission form, and to the judges of the Mischief and Malice contest on Thousand Roads, whose feedback helped me get things tidied up into the final product you know and love.

NO AUDIO (Complete) - A one-shot originating from a site challenge on Serebii Forums to write a story that had 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.