WHAT?! How did this not come up earlier?!

[Gavin Luper]

Okay ... going through the Fanfic Superthread and found an old old old Against All Odds.

Posted by a writer I used to admire for his fic "The Azure League" - Dragon_Knight.

Mattbcl - you were previously Dragon_Knight?!?!?!?!

How did this not come up earlier?!

[Shadow Wolf]

REALLY!? No wonder he has good writing skills.

[Gavin Luper]

REALLY!? No wonder he has good writing skills.

I know, right?!

I was like "wow, this guy writes really well!"

Turns out he's the person whose fic, The Azure League, I used to read in 2001. It made me massively inspired for LTL.

Not only that, his writing style and description and vocabulary in The Azure League totally made me grow my skills as a writer when I first joined in 2001. It was actually a big influence on me.

And the main character - Tom - being psychic was, I think, a big influence on Gavin Luper being psychic in LTL.

And it influenced my writing of The Crystal League, too.

Seriously, how did this not come up?!

[mattbcl]

Whoa, hold up there, my friend, 'fore everyone gets all bent out of shape. The reason it didn't come up before is because the truth is I'm not actually Dragon_Knight, so I can't claim credit for his personal brand of awesome. But back in the day, he was one of the first people to R&R my story, and we were... well, I don't know if I'd say exactly "friends", but "acquaintances". We'd ping back and forth a little bit. He enjoyed it so he kept up with it, even until the main TPM site went kaput and I moved it over to Fanfiction.net. After it was completed there, he contacted me to let me know that there was a forum active here with archived fanfiction, and he asked if he could have my permission to repost it. I said sure, since TPM was its first home anyway - by that time I was delving into other genres and hobbies, and I hadn't touched Pokémon for a little while, hence why I didn't do it myself. Maybe I could have, but he pretty much took care of that for me.

Also... *facepalm* I cringe to see what my writing was like back then, and to know other people are seeing it too! I hope that what I've been producing this year shows marked improvement.

[Gavin Luper]

^_^ Okay, have actually read the first post of that thread now so ... my bad.

Are you still in touch with D_K at all?

[mattbcl]

Not these days, we fell out of touch some time ago. I don't think it was anything bad, but when I stopped writing Pokémon, we just kinda stopped chatting. (Gosh, I wonder if there's a connection there...) I remember he was pretty cool, though, and a gifted writer, so it was quite a compliment to have him as a fan.