Arceus Archives

"Come on, not much longer now! Your entire life is behind you, and the future ahead is pure white."

- Giratina

Arceus' Archives (occasionally referred to as the Archiverse) is the collective name for all Pokémon fanfiction written by the troper Giratina. The name comes from the literal 'Arceus' Archives' in fanfic continuity canon, which is where the Celestial Librarian (Giratina) records all the interesting happenings in the human world. This is for two main reasons: One, Arceus' memory simply can't hold all the cool stuff that's ever happened in the universe, and two, they're fascinating for other Legendaries to read and make for some good Internet publicity when disguised as 'fanfiction'. Every story that has been put on the Internet has a "Link!" sign at the end of the summary; click it to read the story.

This page is always getting longer as the Archives do, and only stories with any tropes will be listed, but so far the full list is:


 * Metal Coat (the first entry in the group, and Magnezone's earliest work that she cares to remember. A rewrite is a definite possibility)
 * The One-Shots (Indebted, Voices, The Song for the Lonely, Beasts Like Us... all oneshots written by Magnezone)
 * Rock Megaphone (a PMD fic now on hiatus and will be given a rewrite when an actual plot has been established)
 * Wings Have We, previously known as Delta Species (a 'journey fic', and Magnezone's only currently-running project. Features plenty of canon mashups and, of course, Delta Pokémon. Probably going to have the greatest amount of tropes)
 * Don't Stop The Future (an unwritten work that Giratina's been sitting on since at least summer of '09)
 * Abecedarian (New story - will include lots of Unown and a few familiar faces for readers of WHW)
 * Unnamed Kanto Project (unwritten work, been sitting on it for a while but details are vague. Will definitely take place in Kanto, main characters being Red and Blue)
 * Double-Time (an unwritten work that is still in development - a parody of Magical Girl shows in the Sailor Moon vein)
 * Genericana (Eevees. Lots and lots of Eevees.)

Note: This page is updated mostly by the author (as a fun reference for herself, and as such will contain some spoilers of events or stories that haven't really happened yet. Big ones will still be spoiler-tagged, but unless you enjoy reading about her plot developments ahead of time, you may want to stay away from this page. Also, despite the fact that this page is updated mostly by the author, it is of course an All The Tropes page and anybody is welcome to add examples.

Universal tropes are tropes that appear in many - or every - entry into the Archives.


 * Anime Hair: For the most part the 'dos are pretty tame by anime standards, but Casey takes the term "Xtreme Anime Hairspikes" to a whole new level. There's also Kris, who looks like a Mankey is sleeping on her head, and Alonzo, whose hair puts Black Jack to shame.
 * Author Avatar: Giratina.
 * Canon Discontinuity: The ending animations are not considered part of Archiverse canon; Magnezone watched the movies on Cartoon Network, where it's nearly impossible to hear or see the endings under advertisements.
 * Also, since Metal Coat was plotted before details on the Platinum Spear Pillar Incident were given out, she uses the DP one instead.
 * And then there's the HGSS character redesigns.
 * And Apollo, Athena, Lambda, and Lance's English names.
 * Canon Fodder: Plenty of plots have been kick-started by these sorts of things, such as the Seven Treasures, the Tanoby Key, or even the significance of the flash of light that signals the disappearance of god-wannabes.
 * Continuity Nod: Considering the author has fitted every story (or story idea) into one timeline, there are naturally many characters and aspects twirling in between them.
 * Dysfunction Junction: In varying degrees.
 * Gratuitous Latin: the Dea Procol Machina. "Procul" - 'at the' - was replaced with "procol" - brash. Hence, "Goddess at the Machine" turns into some nonsense about a brash goddess. Let's see, how many brash goddesses can we think of...?
 * Omniscient Morality License: All of the Legendary Court, particularly Arceus.
 * Patchwork Fic
 * Reality Warper: Palkia. Also Giratina and Zero, in Never-Turn-Back and the Reverse World.
 * Sliding Scale of Silliness Versus Seriousness: The stories of the Archiverse, much like Pokémon itself, tap-dances all over it.
 * Meaningful Name: Quite a few.
 * Sophisticated As Hell: Giratina is fond of this.
 * The Library of Babel: Arceus' Archives, naturally.
 * Lemony Narrator: Giratina.
 * The Verse: The continuity of Arceus' Archives - otherwise called the Archiverse - has strayed so far from the canon that it's pretty much this.

Metal Coat is a twisty-turny adventure where the three protagonists' only goal is to survive long enough in Sinnoh enough to find a way back to Treasure Town. Unfortunately, they are also hindered by a few minor difficulties: two of the group members were Pokémon for most of their lives and don't know the first thing about human society, they've got a whole host of angry people and Pokémon after them, and one of them is named Cyrus. Link!
 * Badass Longcoat: It runs in the family. Amelia has a trenchcoat, Cyrus has a duster/lab coat hybrid.
 * Continuation: Metal Coat was written with one of the aims being fixing a Plot Hole in Diamond and Pearl: After the flashy light show, where do the villainous team members (or at least one of them) disappear to?
 * Freudian Trio: Caro (Id), Cyrus (Ego), and Kris (Superego), of course. Not only is Cyrus the greatest argument-halting force in the group, he also gets the "middle ground" role because... well... on the scale, he's not really anywhere.
 * Humanity Ensues: This being an inverse PMD fic...
 * Insurmountable Waist High Fence: Inverted, courtesy of Magneton Man. "...Cyrus approached the fence. He calmly stepped over it (not highly difficult, seeing as the fence was about one-third as tall as he was)."
 * Killer Rabbit: Mesprit. Yes, really. Mesprit.
 * Loud of War: Giratina's introductory scene. Once she realizes that the group hasn't woken up yet (or so she thought), she tries to bring them back around by playing some nice music that would hopefully wake them up. However, Giratina had to get the Dea Procol Machina modified so that the volume went to ten times the normal maximum, so you can guess how "nice music" turned out.
 * Never Say "Die": When Mesprit says "DESTROY THEM!" she's not trying to say "KILL THEM!" She means literally destroying them, as in ripping their souls out of their bodies and burning the remains into little ashes.
 * Not-So-Distant Finale: It was only a couple of months after the main events, but still.
 * Wasn't That Fun?: "Well, that was fun... can't wait until Giratina snaps."
 * Year Inside, Hour Outside: Inverted. Two years in the Pokéverse is equivalent to ten years in the Pokémon World.

Rock Megaphone is a Pokémon Mystery Dungeon story (taking place in the Pokéverse) about an Exploration Team on a quest to find the Seve- ahem, Eight Treasures. Cantre the Aerodactyl, Shiva the (female) Vaporeon, and later Jag the Scyther make up the team. They are competing against the clearly-evil Team of Sho the Rhyperior, Aria the Tropius, and an ever-changing third member to be replaced with someone else as soon as the previous one's use is no longer needed. It's on hiatus. Link!
 * Incredibly Lame Pun: Remember the Seven Treasures? Well, there's actually an eighth: the Electric Guitar.
 * Overly Long Name: Lightradiantperfectebonyclawsonicflightdementiaechoserenitytarachime the Chimecho, shorted conveniently to "Chimey".

Double-Time is the story of Rocco, who - after an incident involving Jirachi's Key and his wandering fingers - ends up in the PMD world as a male Lopunny. He soon eats one of eleven magic fruits, which gives him the power of the Rock-type and the catchy title of "Iwa-mi". He is quickly assigned to a mentor in the form of a cute little fox-Jirachi named Superfantasy. He's soon flung into combat with the forces of the corrupted Aku-mi (dark-type) the Typhon. It may sound ridiculous, and it is - the entire thing is a big, glorious parody of Magical Girl shows in the Sailor Moon vein.
 * By the Power of Grayskull: Rocco needs to use a certain phrase to allow Superfantasy to transform him. When she asked him what phrase she should use as a cue - it can't be changed - he emits the first thing his whirling brain could muster: "This is ridiculous!"
 * In the Name of the Moon: "By the power of the Wishing-Star, you... are SCREWED!" [fingerpoint]
 * Magical Lopunny: Rocco.
 * Mysterious Protector:  Human Rocco. Rocco, being the sort of self-centered Lopunny that he is, has been in love with himself for a loooooong time.
 * Peek-a-Bangs: Rocco, both forms - with Lopunny being a mirror image of Human.
 * Skunk Stripe: Rocco's Peekabangs are a much lighter brown than the rest of his fur; however, normal Lopunnies have huge shoots of similarly-colored hair growing above their eyes, so it's not just a random thing.

Wings Have We (also known as Delta Species) is among the dreaded 'Journey Fic' genre, and focuses around five Pokémon Trainers (more or less) who run around the revamped region of Holon. Along the way, they will attempt to survive under fire from the diabolical Team BDV, and either play painfully straight or make a mockery of every journeyfic trope in existence. Link!
 * Aerith and Bob: Kidd, Billy, and Aerith.
 * Aliens Speaking English: The Unown Dialect. It's spoken exactly like English - save for a faint New York accent - but is written in Unown runes. Only Legendaries and the Mewkizuu are fluent in it.
 * Aerith the Delcatty, who due to some... scientific experimentation simultaneously gained the ability to speak English and lost the ability to speak Pokémian.
 * Author Avatar: Giratina, of course.
 * Backstory: One of Team BDV's sadistic experiments exists mostly to dig up unpleasant backstories from other characters, as well as occasionally causing physical pain. Needless to say, it is used.
 * Berserk Button: Clyde Gordon quite detests being called lazy, and heavens help anyone who says the word 'Clefairy' within Grant's earshot.
 * Big Damn Heroes: The arrival of Aeveon and Sheridan.
 * Big Damn Villains: Take a wild guess what 'BDV' stands for... yes, Big Damn Villains, but this was meant to imply how Team BDV are all big, scary, menacing people. When they were named, there was only one person present who was trope-savvy enough to realize this. Nobody believed him... after all, the person who pointed it out was insane.
 * Black Cloak: Well, technically speaking they're blue, but the male BDV Grunts are required to wear these.
 * Juan's distinguishing feature (besides mrrrrrring at people) is the hood he wears over his eyes, with goggle-lens-like things stuck into them to let him see.
 * Break the Cutie / Trauma Conga Line: While not exactly a Cutie in the first place, an incident with a pack of angry Luxrays left one of Holon's Gym Leaders much worse for wear. Cue the stacks of multipliers that made the next five years a living hell...
 * To a lesser extent there's Torsten, the twentysomething who as a child constantly had an inferiority complex to his brother Lor (in adulthood it turned into a belief that he had botched up in a major way and that he was frankly a disgrace to his brother, who he believed to be a great scientist). He was dragged off to work for Team BDV, subjected to the wrath of Lemmy on multiple occasions, and after taking a good long time to reflect upon himself and how much he messed up. The kicker? He does actually meet Lor somewhere down the line, and finds much to his horror that  Naturally, he proceeds to give Torsten a Reason You Suck Speech and basically tells him to man up.
 * Catch Phrase: Juan's Verbal Tic seems to serve this purpose too.
 * "Kh!"
 * Clasp Your Hands If You Deceive: Fedora Man is fond of this tactic.
 * Cuteness Proximity: Sheridan, of all people, seems to be prone to this.
 * Defeat Means Playability: A rare instance in fiction, where playability = joining the main team. It isn't Defeat Means Friendship, because Clyde (the one to be defeated) had 'agreed' beforehand, and he's not actually a villain anyway.
 * Detached Sleeves: Except for a few black strips of leather tying them together, Clyde has a pair of these
 * Disability Superpower - One of the 'not quite' examples. has made up for his blindness by creating a psychic link with his Natu, who pretty much sees for him, along with a slew of other advantages. Of course, there are still some other difficulties he can't overcome.
 * Eyes of Gold: Alonzo. You don't want to know what it's for.
 * Faux Action Girl: Sheridan. She acts just like a regular Action Girl in most ways... of course, when it comes time for her to fight, there's no way to get her to engage in a Pokémon battle with her beloved Shinies. Well... she did once, but she was just pissed off at how immature everyone else was, and she vowed that they should never put her through that again.
 * Five-Man Band: Casey (The Hero in the loosest possible sense - he dwells within the 'Hero as Loser' category when it comes to Pokémon), Caro (The Lancer), Sheridan (The Smart Girl), Clyde (The Big Guy), and Grant (The Chick, a male variant, who later shares this role with Saffron). Not to mention Rotom, the people-orbiting Team Pet and the thing that gave the group its collective name: The Groupie Galaxy.
 * Hair-Trigger Temper / Grumpy Bear: Rodney (!!!), who apparently doesn't care that he lives in the generally upbeat Archiverse of the Pokémon World.
 * Hive Mind: The Karmada act like this; whether they're actually controlled by one single entity is unknown, though about two hundred tiny ghost thingies speaking in perfect unison is one of those things that only dreams can allow.
 * Idiot Ball: Casey is sometimes prone to this, considering how much he actually learned about Pokémon before being shoved into the main plot is unknown.
 * Improbable Weapon User: Grant is very attached to his metal pipe, but this does not stop him from threatening to whack you around the head with it. And he will follow through.
 * Lotus Eater Monster: The aptly-named Lemmy (or LEM), whose specialty is taking these blissful visions and mutating them into the victim's worst nightmares... of course, sometimes he skips the happy parts entirely and cuts directly to the torment.
 * The Nicknamer: Giratina has a mild case of this. When two unnamed characters are talking, she has gotten into the habit of calling them by nicknames ('Fedora Man' for a dude in a fedora, 'Whitey' for a person clad in white, etc.) until they're named. In the case of Fedora Man, Giratina's nickname has escalated to his general name in the narrative and outside of the fic; most others had their names revealed sooner or later (including the previously mentioned 'Whitey', who turned out to be Hikaru), but Fedora Man is always called such.
 * Billy, Kidd, and Aerith don't usually call the 'planets' of the Groupie Galaxy by name, instead opting for a nickname for all of them.
 * Casey = Redhead
 * Caro = Raichu Boy (for his hoodie, which has a Raichu pattern)
 * Sheridan = Blondie
 * Grant = CD-0000 or Grunty (when they're feeling particularly malicious towards him)
 * Clyde = Rock Star
 * Quirky Miniboss Squad: Juan, Hikaru, Nami, Iskra, and Solana of Team BDV.
 * Plot-Relevant Age-Up: Casey, as a part of the 'Savior of the Future' package... he's not pleased with it. At all.
 * Purple Eyes: Alonzo. ...Usually.
 * Refusal of the Call: TWICE. Giratina attempted to hide Rotom's Pokéball in a place where Casey would see it. He saw it, but didn't remove it from its place and walked away. The second time she literally went up to his bedroom window and tossed the Pokéball at his head. He tries to ignore it. Finally, Rotom is forced out and Casey is... well... forcefully ejected from a cop chase and into a long sequence that basically states, "You're going to have to go on a Pokémon journey, despite the fact that you've probably never seen any other Pokémon before in your life, because Phione - who is very unreliable- told you to. Oh yeah, and we're also going to change your appearance. Painfully. Isn't that cool?!"
 * Shadowland: In the same city.
 * Shorter Means Smarter: Sheeeeeridan.
 * Shout-Out: An entire arc has been designated to serve as a shout-out to as many literary works as possible, fan or otherwise. The entire plot premise was based around the 2005 fanfic Hoenn Mirror World, and by extension the video game Kirby and the Amazing Mirror (HMW itself was based off of Amazing Mirror), and there was a reference to Brave Story with the identity of the previous Guardian of Mirror, as well as a basis for the character Anti-Ash.
 * Fedora Man's real name may as well be Havelock Vetinari.
 * Stranger in a Familiar Land
 * That Poor Cat: One scene involves one of Our Heroes throwing something over their shoulder - and directly into the hiding place of Aerith, Team BDV's talking Delcatty. Aerith responds appropriately with a startled "DAIIII!" The heroes look amazed, and Clyde offers, "Wait, I didn't know that happened in real life."
 * Turn Out Like His Cousin: parents were trying to avoid this. It worked... initially.
 * Verbal Tic: Juan makes this funny little throat vibration a lot, mrrrr!
 * And (um) Tiffany's "um".
 * Cresselia has a tendency to put emphasis in all the wrong places. Sample dialogue: We Legendaries are capable of taking human forms, you’ll understand. In case we need to handle business with mortals… how is you put it? Margorito?
 * You Are Number Six: CD 0000 and later 507786, two Grunts of Team BDV. Presumably, Team BDV includes letters because there are too many Grunts just to settle on numbers... but who knows how those people operate...?

Don't Stop The Future is an unpublished story about the rather misguided teenager Marzel "Lugia" Blackwood. Due to a sporatic bout of good or bad luck (depending on how you look at it) found a 'Shiny' Celebi knocked out in the middle of the road. Shinies work much differently with Legends in the picture. Soon after he is forced into a quest to find the rest of these strangely-colored Legendaries, test subjects of Mew and imperfections in Arcues' radiant world, before the latter kills them. In the meantime, Marzel comes to terms with Arceus on exactly why he was abducted from his homeland and deposited a few thousand years into the future.
 * Berserk Button: Lugia's hair is, in fact, burgundy. Not pink. Burgundy.
 * Head Pet: Celebi.
 * Jerkass: Marzel 'Lugia' Blackwood.
 * Jerkass Gods: No, Lugia doesn't become a god.
 * The Stations of the Canon: All meetings of the Player and the Rival in HG/SS have been simulated by Lugia and Lawrence.
 * Xtreme Kool Letterz: Marzel again.

Abecedarian is the Sinnoh-based tale of Rodney Harrison (before we go any further: and yes, that Rodney) and his considerably older traveling companion Anima Ardall (again: yes, that Anima). After the former picks up a dropped tile and walks into the woods, he winds up staring over the edge of the universe itself. From there it's into the Unown Zone, which is obviously the dimension where the Unown flit back and forth without any particular purpose. After wandering around for a while and consequently getting the boot, he winds up somewhere around the Solaceon Ruins, where he meets Anima - a Ghost-type trainer who is mildly interested in the Unown. Cue adventure, slippery Unown, and - if irony allows - lots and lots of Luxrays.
 * Foreshadowing: Unintentional and intentional. Rodney, in the early days of his existence as a Neopets roleplay character, has always sort of balanced between Pefectly Behaved and Easily Irritated; the author forgot about this entirely when she came up with what happened to him... ah... later. By then she had been using him without the short temper for quite a while, but upon realizing the similarities she brought it back into his character.
 * And as for the intentional part: keeping in mind what happens Later, there will most likely be lots of Electric-types prancing around.
 * Mama Bear / Team Mom: Anima.
 * One-Letter Name: X, as well as a few other Unown.
 * Perfectly Cromulent Word: Contrary to popular belief, 'abecedarian' is a real word.
 * Xtreme Kool Letterz: Zeke Iordanou. Even better when you consider the fact that his original surname was "Xylander".
 * There's also X...

Genericana is a work still in the early stages of development about Anakrista and Koya, about two International Police agents who are deployed on a mission and wind up sucked into an alternate universe wherein everone is an Eevee... including them! "You're held up by technology and you live off Brutal Honesty so if you saw what you'd go on to be do you think you'd die?"
 * Brutal Honesty: Koya, all the time.

Fantastic Racism: The Eevees here come in two varieties: normal Eevees, and Eevees who are born with unique colors and patterns, some of which have scavenged small objects from the real world to wear on their person. The 'Pureblood' Eevees have reduced these colored Eevees to a few small colonies, and see everything they do as disgusting. (They were also responsible for the degrading nickname of 'sparklevee'.

The Oneshots - Voices, Indebted, The Song for the Lonely, Alone Its Song Will Fail, The Cat and the Cradle, and Beasts Like Us - are, in order: the story of a Skitty being... well... haunted by a Haunter, a little explanation on how Zero came to be the assistant of Giratina, exactly what Anima was doing in Mt. Thetoile anyway, an incident involving an Articuno and a seriously distressed widower, what happens when a childhood is fractured at the hands of a pixie with a head shaped like an onion, and highlights from the life story of Suicune. "Articuno: Sir, the loss of your wife was not my doing. For you, the day she was attacked and frozen was the most important day of your life. For me, it was rescue two hundred and thirty-seven."
 * A Friend in Need: Anima took a "leave of absence for an indeterminate amount of time" from her duties as a Gym Leader. Leaders can definitely take trips, but this one could be long enough to cost her her job. What was she doing?
 * But for Me It Was Tuesday: Articuno's explanation.


 * Cool, Clear Water: Inverted in Beasts Like Us. Suicune gets no nourishment out of theoretically clean water - it's the dirty, human-polluted stuff he needs to survive!
 * Song Fic: The Cat and the Cradle, to Cat's in the Cradle. It is not tied strictly to the song, though, as the song's trope equivalent is never really played upon.
 * The Stations of the Canon: Suicune's encounter with Ash and company in Beasts Like Us.