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Hmm... Pokemon Impact?

Brian Random

I WAS FROZEN TODAY!!
Hi, everyone. Sorry for being away for so long. Had a lot of things to take care of.

Yeah, it’s been years since I last wrote my main fic. Here are the summaries / Links:

Series 1: Meet former Team Rocket grunt, Black Jack, the veteran pokemon trainer who prefers smashing heads and drinking beer rather than be a pokemon champion. If you want action, this is the one fanfic you wanna read! Link removed

Series 2: Black Jack returns to make another Impact! This time, he has a better reason, other than to crack skulls. He teams up with his new ally Ash Ketchum on a new adventure in the Orre Region, where a new and mysterious criminal organisation intends to wreck havoc everywhere. Link removed

Series 3: Five years ago, a criminal organisation called Team Dark crumbled at the hands of Black Jack, Ash and others. Now, Black Jack and his niece, Alice, travel around the world, looking for new adventures. As much as fighting new enemies comes as no surprise, Black Jack discovers something new (or old) about himself. Link removed

Series 4: Sometime after Black Jack split away from his niece to look for answers, a new pokemon battling event has been announced as The Tag Team Terror (Triple T Tournament for short). With Alice teaming up with her friends Keith and Jerry, BJ sought partnership from two of his old allies, with suspicions behind the truth of this event. Link removed

And that’s all I got. The thing I got on my mind right now is that I’ve been thinking about starting over, change a number of things here but still make the story, well, relatable to this, plot-wise. But what do you think I should do? Continue or reboot?
 
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JX Valentine

Ever-Discordant
There are a couple of things to take into consideration that might help you decide. First off, while some of your old followers from way back when might be hanging around, today's fic forum is populated by a completely new set of regulars. So if you continue, the people who will stumble across your continuation now will most likely not be familiar with the earlier installments and will have to go back through years of work in order to catch up with you. On the other hand, it's also worth it to note that some folks have come back from years of hiatus and resumed their stories just fine. (Or, okay, I can only really think of one person who did that, and that's Bulba the Great. You might also be able to count Blackjack Gabbiani.) Of course, I'd also recommend checking out the activity level of their stories and deciding whether or not it's up to par for you. I mean, sometimes, the whole "this is the continuation of an ongoing series of stories that went on hiatus a few years ago" thing is a point of intimidation for readers, as the aforementioned authors have probably already learned. But tl;dr, yes, your former audience has probably moved on from SPPf, so you'll want to decide whether or not you think you can build a new audience by just going back to work.

The other and more significantly straightforward (I swear!) thing to keep in mind is the fact that your earlier work is, well, your earlier work. The changes you have in mind might actually mean your story right now is not 100% heading where you want it to go, and either way, the writing style of the past installments are not a reflection of your current skill level. With the former issue, even if you're making minor changes, that might cause a shift in the exact plot that you want to follow, shifts in tone, and so forth. Meanwhile, when it comes to the latter, just keep in mind that unless your continuation feels like it can stand on its own sufficiently enough, your readers will probably need to go through your earlier work. The point is that whether or not you continue or reboot hinges on whether or not you feel satisfied with your entire fic as it is right now. If you can go back and read through your work without cringing and if you can figure out how to continue the story from there without touching the earlier fics, then by all means, continue. If, however, you go back through your earlier work and find it massively embarrassing or if the changes you're thinking of making would lead to more and more changes down the line, then you might want to reboot.

I hope this all helps! But yeah, to distill it down to a paragraph, what it all comes down to is two things: whether or not you think you can rebuild your audience from a continuation and whether or not you're personally satisfied with the earlier series as they are. If you say to yourself that you don't think you'd be able to build another audience (and would prefer a more happening thread) and that you're not quite satisfied with the earlier fics as they are, then reboot. Otherwise, feel free to continue.

Good luck!
 

Brian Random

I WAS FROZEN TODAY!!
Thank you very much for the advice, Valentine. All I can say for now is that a good revision is in order.
 
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