Pokémon Forum: BattleNET is a Pokémon chatfic by FriTik about Ash forming an online chatroom for young perspective trainers (and young current trainers, and coordinators, and Pokemon who also want to be trainers, you get the idea).
"Two years before his tenth birthday, Ash comes up with the idea to make a forum where he can meet other kids who are or want to be Pokémon Trainers. With a little help from his Mom, they create Pokémon Forum: BattleNET! Bit by bit more kids around his age join the server and start forming friendships and sharing their ideas about being trainers. To various degrees of success."
Pokémon Forum: BattleNet can be read on FriTik's AO3 account here.
Pokémon Forum: BattleNNet contains examples of the following tropes:
- Abusive Parents: Giselle's are the neglectful variety, barely interacting with her and sending her off to boarding school. She didn't even know what a hug was.
- More abusive brothers, but Mikey's family also counts. They don't even notice when he goes missing during the Day of Blood. Nor do they realize he was gone for the three weeks after.
- Adaptational Badass: Many characters in fic but the most glaring examples are:
- Ritchie catches an Aerodactyl, gets chosen as Nebby's guardian, and wins the Manalo Conference.
- Ash ends up getting Koraidon and winning the Violet League.
- Casey is tapped as the Chosen One in Shamouti, along with being the one to beat Drake in the Orange League
- Serena decides to become a Pokémon Ranger instead of a Performer.
- Gary ends up placing far higher in the Indigo League. And unlike everyone else, he's not even a forum member.
- Misty catches the Articuno from the Shamouti incident.
- Adaptational Early Appearance: Every companion and rival from the anime appears before the end of Kanto. Ash ends up getting his canon Riolu right after beating Surge.
- Alternate Continuity: Allister being picked for the Stow-On-Side Gym Leader position, along with Nemona attending Uva academy, places the fic's events squarely within the continuity of Pokémon Shield and Pokémon Violet. Although Ash catching Koraidon instead of Miraidon muddies this.
- Ascended Extra: A lot of one-episode side characters such as Samurai are recurring ones due to being on the same forum as everyone else. Special mention goes to Giselle for not only becoming a traveling companion but a main character in her own right.
- Brick Joke: Goh gets repeatedly accused of being a disguised Zorua due to his color scheme. He later gets turned into one after being sent to the Mystery Dungeon world my Mew.
- Broken Pedestal: Mostly played for laughs, but Misty stops idolizing Lorelei during the Orange Islands arc. First after realizing she's an ice-type trainer instead of a water-type one, and later after she attacks Ash and his friends due to being obsessed with "exposing" Team BattleNET.
- Cool Old Guy: Charles Goodshow. Not only was he the only member of the League to speak out concerning Ash's kidnapping at the Conference and how it was handled, but he stayed up to watch the Violet League, a tournament sponsored by Uva Academy in Paldea for the finalists that dropped out to save Ash. He even has commemorative Badges made, along with a proper trophy for the winner.
- The Dividual: Liza and Tate are a pair due to their shared psychic connection. They even managed to get registered as one trainer.
- Dueling Hackers: Penny and Sophocles. It starts when Soph breaks into convenience store systems to try and keep tabs on the TRio, leading to Penny breaking into the forum. Soph repeatedly bans her, only for her to keep popping back up.
- Elaborate Underground Base: Played with as multiple members start teaching Secret Power to their Pokémon and making Secret Bases.
- Empowered Badass Normal: Giselle turns out to be one after learning she could use bite based Pokémon moves.
- Entertainingly Wrong: Lance assumes BattleNET is a new evil team in a gang war with Team Rocket instead of the gaggle of overpowered preteens it is.
- Even Evil Has Standards: As Damian finds out after he makes the mistake of casually mentioning him leaving Charmander to die in the rain right in front of Guzma, who just so happens to have been an abuse survivor himself.
- Evil-Detecting Dog: Ash's newly hatched Riolu is very aggressive towards the staff of the St. Anne, who are all actually disquised members of Team Rocket.
- Forced Transformation: Happens to Misty after being recruited by Mew. With implications that it also happened to Brock and Goh.
- Specifically, Misty gets turned into a Buizel, with Brock and Goh becoming a Rockruff and Zorua respectively.
- For Want Of A Nail:
- The BattleNET Forum itself. It started off as a server for new trainers to communicate and exchange advice with each other and has evolved into a full fledged vigilante group, making certain characters stronger than they were before.
- Instead of making it to the Top 16 of the Indigo League, Ash ends up in the Top 8.
- Misty ends up winning the Laramie Clan Race with her Cyclizar, which makes the clan start banning cyclizars from participating in the future.
- Team Skull hosts a recruitment drive after hearing rumors of BattleNET.
- Due to not figuring out Koraidon's proper typing and insisting he is a Cyclizar, Ash ends up losing to Drake in the Orange League while Casey wins the Orange League.
- Instead being inspired to become a coordinator, May decides she wants to be a full on trainer after being inspired by the battle between Ash and Ritchie.
- Happily Adopted: To date: Giselle, Mikey, Bea, Sawyer, and Duplica have all been adopted by Delia. With all but Giselle seeking her out for adoption and all of them entirely satisfied with it.
- An inverse case happens when a nest of orphaned Zorua find Meema and adopt her as their new collective parent.
- In Spite of a Nail: Ash still gets kidnapped at the Indigo League by Team Rocket like he did in canon, but at least he gets rescued by his friends this time.
- Internal Reveal: Ash and the others find out a LOT later than the reader that Latias and Hoopa are legendary Pokémon.
- Locked into Strangeness: Casey's eyes glow green after she gets resurrected.
- Man Bites Man: This becomes Giselle's whole shtick after joining up with Ash, even going so far as to learn actual pokémon moves that involve biting.
- The Mole: Played for laughs with Karen, who joined BattleNET under the orders of Lance in order to find out what they're planning. Unfortunately she's left in a constant state of confusion due to A. none of them planning anything besides the league challenge due to being children, and B. all of them being generally insane.
- My Significance Sense Is Tingling: Sophocles gets a bad feeling after Ash dies at New Island, then again when Casey dies at Shamouti.
- Mythology Gag: Several to the author's other fic, Zorua Trainer. Delia has her team of Blastoise, Pidgeot, and Clefable, the term Bamboozle is used to describe a group of Zorua, and Mina, the ditto who became a trainer, is a member of the Forum.
- No Challenge Equals No Satisfaction: Heavily implied with Gary, who only ends up winning the indigo league due to all the other top 8 finalists getting disqualified to go rescue a kidnapped Ash.
- Oh, My Gods!: Various expressions based on in universe mythology are used, with each region having its own set. Johto characters reference the burned tower, Hoenn characters swear by land and sea, while Kalos characters reference the Tree and Shadow, and Sinnoh call out to almighty Sinnoh ala Legends Arceus.
- Running Gag: Ash insisting his Koraidon is just a shiny Cyclizar.
- Scissors Cuts Rock: In this fanfic, Ash managed to win the Thunder Badge from Lt. Surge by only using his Flying types (presumably his Butterfree, Pidgeotto, and Spearow).
- Screw the Rules, I'm Doing What's Right!: The Top 8 finalists sans Gary Oak, upon hearing that Ash has gone missing before his match with Ritchie, drop out of the Conference to look for him after the referee tries to wave off Ritchie's concerns. This results in everyone being disqualified and Gary winning the Conference by default.
- Sir Swears-a-Lot: Gloria (The female Sword and Shield protagonist) curses at least once a sentence, leading her to get constant bans from the forum. She tones it down due to being tired of missing stuff while banned.
- Stalker without a Crush: Mew ends up following Giselle around after it saw her use the move Bite on Mewtwo.
- Supernaturally Young Parent: Ash, Richie, and Casey all end up becoming the biological parents of Amber/Amberthree due to being cloned together.
- Super Spit. After getting revived by the empowered song of Lugia, Casey finds she's able to make random plants grow wherever she spits.
- Wins by Doing Absolutely Nothing: For the most part, the reason this year's Indigo League Conference Winner, Gary Oak, won the whole thing is that Ash got kidnapped by the Team Rocket Trio and the rest of the Top 8 finalists decided to go look for him, which is enough for the League to disqualify them. The trope ends up being deconstructed because Gary is seen as a laughing stock on the internet as a result and how he feels about winning the Indigo League by default ends up pyrrhic as well.
