"Is this fanfic suddenly political?" (hint: "Always has been")

You shall henceforth excuse my abuse of the meme...

There is a saying that goes that in most if not all circles, there are three taboo subjects:

Politics, Religion and Sex.

Now, that being what it may be, there is no avoiding that over the years, or even since its inception, fanfiction has been both inspired by and a board for political subjects. The very premise of fanficiton is a means of escapism from our reality and it constraints - physical or otherwise.

But in this thread, rather than discussing the politics themselves (which also likely is not very conductive and would go against the rules), what I want to discuss is how the politics, the political process and the expansion of awareness of what "counts as" politics, affect our writing.

Like for example, has your fanfic always been environmentalist or only became so after a certain point where IRL affected your writing? Did the response to large-scale situations like COVID effect how you write the societal aspects of your writing, or een your writing at all?

Does looking back into your older writing realize you the emergence of political influences?

Do your Pokémon Trainers merrily go around the country making their monsters fight and then heal under State-sponsored, free-for-all-childrens'-beasts healthcare? Not to mention entering into random houses and looting them from any randomly lying Poké Balls and items? (hey, it's far better than the "inhouse vandalism" that is Zelda!) How are those trends effected by what goes around your place, or what you see of the world?

I'll say for myself as an opening (and I can comment on further things later) that my human-driven stories are largely built with the phantom of corporate corruption and just plain old capitalism GAINS looming over the horizon because of how things have been going in my country and neighbour places (helloooooo Argentina!). As early as Built for Risk, a strong point was to show how the story's Battle Tower diverged from other projects because it did not have capitalism as a main driver. Overlord is literally the wide-scope effect of Giovanni's position as a leader. And even my recent foray into RPing in Rise to the Top is built upon giving my character the background of a country that is trying to right itself up after some sort of League scandal.

But hey... even PMD or "feral" / "wild" stories can emerge political themes in them, or can even end up creating their own themes as they go. Trainer stories or not, how about yours? Let's see how it happens in your stories!

(pls remember to try and keep the actual politics subjects out of the thread; this is more about the process of.)

I'm calling the 'meme' police

Most of my stuff is built to be in the worldbuilding and specific times of that world, like the harsh rivalry and growing cold war between the 5 originals clans and the collective.

As for current times, I try to avoid directly linking my story to such things or points. When I write, I want to touch on the topic in its conceptual and idealism and something about writing about such things with specific, current events in mind or parallel would make my works more dated. I will say my current stuff (Shattered Crests and PMD the series [whenever I get back to that]) isn't heavy on the politics outside of the global diplomacy and tensions in SC. Other works in the idea/need to write phase (original and fanfic) may have concepts and political themes to them as well, however, I try not to orient around the concepts directly since I'm more interested in philosophical dilemmas and concepts of macro-problems and clashing ideas for how the world should be shaped or move into.

I'm not opposed to writing about politics, but I find that it's far less interesting reading a story that's parallel about situations today or happening around me, rather than taking the concept that is happening, thinking on it, fitting it into your world in a smooth and reasonable way, and from there telling a story that could be either simple (good versus bad) or complex ("my motives are complex").

If there's been any effect to my writing based on current events, it's more to do with me growing as a person and learning more about myself and the world around me as well as building a worldview on concepts about life and what I should live for. But to answer the rest of your question on what kind of politics I do have, I'll give an example as well.

Since Shattered Crests takes place in a part of the world with various countries all doing their own thing, there's a constant clash or at least disagreement on the cultures or political handling of each. Some have added to the problems of tensions whereas others have strengthened the ties of the countries. A huge focus is on how the perspectives we see and the different views of mons living their own lives in their countries. Our mains will get a taste of other places and how different or even similar some places are, and what difficult questions of how differences of opinions can lead to conflicts or a mutual understanding.

There are of course other themes (from all three of the no-no talk subjects) in Shattered Crests, but I don't wanna ramble for too long.

At first I didn't think Foul Play to have political topics, but thinking about it there are a few actually. There's the whole shady stuff with the International Police with how they deal with Fallers, and with Grimsley's backstory I had him come from a family to have some business and political influence. There's also some mentions of how the Alola region's four islands work and how the Pokemon League might or not might change that.

One of the things I could've referenced but didn't is the US Imperialism with Hawaii. I didn't because I couldn't find a good spot to mention that.

Political elements go hand-in-hand with worldbuilding, so I think if you've put even a little effort into that, there's at the very least going to be some stuff implied about the politics of your setting. So, while I wouldn't say that I always go out of my way to include political commentary in my stories, it's not at all uncommon for that sort of thing to slip through. Discussion of class divide comes up a lot in my writing, whether I intend it to or not, because it's something that I personally care a lot about.