#whatever the fuck lysandre and sycamore had going on

[onitekka]

occasionally I think about X and Y and get sad over all the wasted potential

#you had the themes of life and death to work with!!! the underlying commentary on class issues and elitism!! #some of the visuals are stunning! fuckin. reflection cave!!! #but. there's a lot of spots where it's clear there was going to be Something. sea spirit's den. #that room in reflection cave that was clearly for diancie. everything to do with zygarde. #and magearna + volcanion. #the whole background theme about legacy!!! and inheritance / cycles #whatever the fuck lysandre and sycamore had going on #mega evolution eternal flower floette there was so much there. #oni's getting personal

[jonphaedrus]

for ao3 wrapped i want to ask 28, 29 and 25 teehee (twirls hair)

25: did i get any gifts this year?

yes you goblin i absolutely did and im still not fucking over them this samifer guy (no idea who that is except he seems like the perfect dude i should get to know him) gave me no less than SIX GIFTS this year including lysandre dildo objectification, FANART, ankles, the mortifying ordeal of being known, lysandre getting run over by a car (sex way), and a multimedia piece of godlike creativity and immersion including art and reddit and FRENCH FANFIC and RECURSIVE TOP/BOTTOM DISCOURSE and it's my favorite gift ive ever gotten on ao3 ever.

i also god a really lovely cooking disaster 5+1 and some ff14 otp porn!

28: favorite work i wrote this year?

i want to say roleswap but i've not technically finished writing it, so im not going to count it. instead i'm going to say tomorrow you must love me, which would be the best thing i'd ever written if i hadn't started writing roleswap immediately afterward and it's even better.

29: best line i wrote this year?

from ch15 of roleswap:

Augustine Sycamore fell in love not so much like falling. Augustine Sycamore fell in love like the crescendo had slipped the last note, stopped before the moment of greatest ascent, like he stood atop a platform and watched as his train passed by, leaving him wind-strewn and buffeted and lost, because whatever could he do next?

#insecateur #this is a stable writing tag

[sage-nebula]

em-exceeds-change-zearu replied to your post:

same mood. I want to see Alan in squishy pokeani 2020 style but after they handled korrina episode...it wasnt bad but it wasn't super impressive either so im just kinda...waves hands

I haven’t seen the Korrina episode yet, so I don’t have any opinions on that specifically. My main feelings have to do with how they ended Alan’s story (and by extension Manon’s), and to a lesser extent how they’re handling Ash now and what I think that could mean for Alan’s return.

I’m sure you’re familiar with my gripes re: Alan’s ending, but to summarize them again here: XYZ044 showed us that Alan was traumatized and depressed to the point of dissociating even when at a table filled with friends and family and having thoughts that sounded a whole lot (to older / experienced viewers) like suicidal ideation as a result of Lysandre’s abuse and manipulation. Ash makes Alan promise to battle him again someday, and while Ash makes that promise with a lot of people, in this particular case the way Ash phrased it and the general anxiety and fear he showed as he phrased it (as well as Alan’s reaction to it) made it sound like he was giving Alan a reason to keep living, something to look forward to. It was really beautiful, and I felt a big, needed step toward the healing and recuperation he was bound to receive at the lab since Sycamore had told him that he was needed there . . .

. . . only for him to take the “start from zero” approach like Ash’s other companions and immediately fuck off into the wilderness in search of Mega Stones again, Manon at his side. This was phrased as him picking up the work he was doing before Lysandre picked him up, but it’s also continuing the work he was doing for Lysandre, in a way, since Lysandre had him going after Mega Stones in addition to collecting Mega Evolution energy. (Notably, the Mega Stone he finds in TSME 1 is Gyaradosite, and we all know who ended up using that.) More importantly than that, though, is that Alan’s trauma seems to be magically gone. He’s magically all better. He’s “starting from zero” (whatever that means) and so he’s all better. He’s not needed at the lab anymore, apparently, nor in Lumiose, despite everything that happened. Nope, it’s fine to have him just fuck off into a cave somewhere. That’s cool.

As you can tell with my tone, that’s not cool for me. XYZ044 set up a beautiful ending for him, but the actual last episode he appears in (I think it’s XYZ046? I can’t remember) throws that out the window. It’s obvious that the writers wanted to wrap up his story in a neat bow while showing Just How Influential Ash is by having Alan copy his words (even though Ash already had a positive influence by giving Alan a reason to look forward to the future ffs), but in doing so they completely disrespected Alan’s character and his story, and to this day I remain salty about it. Given that, I really don’t trust how they’d depict him if he showed up again, particularly considering that I’m absolutely positive they wouldn’t give his battle with Ash the emotional weight it deserves given that they tried to throw that weight out the window immediately after introducing it.

(As a side note, I also remain upset at how he’s traveling with Manon again specifically, and not just because her stans / the shippers were particularly obnoxious back in 2016. I’m upset by it because it’s not good for Manon, either, with regards to her independence as a trainer. Manon became wholly reliant on Alan protecting her, never once attempting to battle herself outside of the time she captured Flabébé (RIP) in TSME 1, and while she did have that heroic moment in TSME 3 where she dragged Alan’s unconscious body off the ice, that still wasn’t an attempt on her part to battle. In fact, while Hari-san did assist Mega Metagross in fending off attacks that were headed toward Manon and Alan, that wasn’t on Manon’s orders. She never told Hari-san to protect her. In TSME 4, when Alan brings up the very real danger he finds himself in as a result of his work, Manon dismisses it and says that it’s fine because he’ll protect her. He tries to argue back by saying that she’s depending on him too much, and she again talks over him and ignores it. The thing is, she does depend on him too much. For someone who claims to want to be a strong trainer, she never trains nor battles and instead just takes cover whenever Alan himself does. Setting aside the very real issues with how Manon consistently overrides Alan’s consent and how that itself is an issue with them traveling together considering that she never apologized for that (because it takes two to fight and Manon crying in TSME 4 doesn’t change the fact that the fight that led to her crying was due to her pushing and pushing and pushing and not taking no for an answer until he snapped), Manon doesn’t ever take responsibilities for herself as a trainer. She depends on Alan to do the battling for her, tells Hari-san to “leave her alone” in a strange place instead of putting him in his pokéball (which leads to him helping Squishy escape / becoming comatose), et cetera. And while it’s not wrong for Alan to protect her given how inexperienced she is (though it is wrong to deny him a choice in whether he will or not by tagging along without his consent), it’s not doing her any favors to continue the habit of depending on him if she truly wants to be a trainer. She needs to learn and grow on her own, and so having her travel with Alan again not only rewards her for overriding his boundaries and consent so many times (see, just keep pushing and cry some and you’ll get what you want in the end!), but it also doesn’t give her the opportunity she needs to stand on her own two feet to grow as a trainer, like she’d have if she resumed her original journey on her own, rather than tagging along on Alan’s. This was a much longer side note than I wanted it to be originally, but I feel it’s all worth saying so I’m saying it anyway.)

All of that aside, though, the way Ash is being handled in the new series gives me another layer of concern, in that I feel like he’s being handled super powerful pokémon with the express purpose of being able to steamroller anything in his path. With the exception of Riolu (who is a literal baby) and arguably Galar Farfetch’d (who is still Stage 1), the new pokémon that Ash has acquired in this series are super powerful from the outset, either because their species as a whole is powerful and they’re in the final form of it (Dragonite) or because they were previously trained up to the final form and he just got to inherit them (Gengar). People are upset that Ash didn’t capture Sobble, but they’re missing the fact that Ash is acquiring pokémon that are going to give him an edge in every battle, presumably to satisfy those in the audience who care about nothing other than to see Ash win. Farfetch’d will undoubtedly become Sirfetch’d (something that gives it a battle edge over Gou’s Kanto Farfetch’d, and you don’t see any Gou fans upset that he got the competitively useless one), and Riolu is bound to become Lucario. Ash is being handed a team that will make it “understandable” when he defeats Leon at the end of the series, in a way that makes it honestly seem that the only reason he is here at all is to placate those who are only interested in the anime to see him win and to help Gou grow as a trainer (since he does have moments of mentoring Gou). 

And if you’re wondering how this relates to Alan . . . I feel like, if Alan comes back, he’ll come back solely to battle and lose to Ash. And while I’m not one of those people that feels that MY FAVE MUST ALWAYS WIN EVER (TSME 3 is my favorite of the TSME episodes and Alan nearly dies in that one), not only do I feel that their promise to battle again won’t be treated as the lifeline it was in XYZ044, but I also feel that Ash would only win in order to make him seem like The Most Powerful Trainer Ever to placate his stans, particularly those that to this day remain bitter about the Kalos League. (Yes, there are still people bitching about it four years later. Unsurprisingly these are usually people who don’t understand basically anything about battling, but I digress.) And considering how much emotional weight was given to their future battle in XYZ044—that it was about giving Alan something to look forward to in the future, a reason to feel like living to that future was worth it—having it reduced down to something to Make Ash Look Cool and Apologize For The Kalos League (which doesn’t need an apology) would be really upsetting to me. It’s not about who wins or loses, but about why the battle is taking place and the emotional significance of it. And I really don’t trust the PokéAni to pull that off.

So with all that said, should Alan come back, I actually don’t want him and Ash to battle yet, and I’d rather Manon be on her own journey elsewhere so that she can gain that much needed independence. But I can’t see them bringing Alan back and not having him and Ash battle, so at the end of it I’m just kind of left like

#this was long i'm sorry #but I have a lot of Feelings and Thoughts when it comes to the TSME cast #and Alan specifically #emexceedschangezearu #pokeani #pokemon #champion alan #trainer manon #long post for ts #pokeani criticism #pokeani negativity #not putting this in Ash's tag since I'm not suicidal (anymore) #and despite how all this sounds i've actually warmed up to the Alan & Manon brotp again #despite how those who shipped it romantically put me off even the (CANON) platonic relationship for a LONG time #(particularly since they wouldn't stop bringing gross romance onto my platonic posts UGH) #but i still think it would have been better for BOTH of them if Alan stayed at the lab #and Manon resumed HER OWN JOURNEY #since outside of the very beginning of TSME 1 she wasn't ON her own journey #she was tagging along on ALAN'S journey #and yeah . . . she did want to do that (though he DIDN'T want her to do that) . . . #but it's still sad that her entire journey was put on hold and that she (seems to have) lost confidence in herself as a trainer as a result #maybe she doesn't want to battle despite what she originally thought - or maybe she'd be happier as a Coordinator or something #it's possible! but she will NEVER FIND THAT OUT if she doesn't search out a journey on her OWN #rather than just tagging along on whatever Alan does #and Alan being sent after Mega Stones when Lysandre had him doing that? #B O I #like yeah he did it for Sycamore first #but he did it for Lysandre longer #and this is just . . . ignored . . . i #[deep breaths]

[invictarre-archive]

So, this is what people meant when they said their heart was in their mouth. Even Eternatus hadn’t managed to inspire this level of fear in him.

He hadn’t needed the hint to figure out who this mysterious caller was. There was only one person maniacal enough to kidnap someone in their home and then brag about it, and only one person who’d dare to oppose the Knight of Kalos in general. And as he stares at his screen, willing another call to come through, another text, anything, he feels his Rocket mask shatter. Whatever Noel had been, he sure as fuck wasn’t here anymore, and Leon did the one thing he should have done the second he even considered donning this hideous uniform.

He ran.

He sprinted through the halls like Giratina itself was at his heels, barely remembering to press the button on Charizard’s pokeball before he threw it metres ahead. It occurs to him now that he doesn’t have any idea where he’s going - their home would already be empty, and Lysandre may be insane but he wasn’t stupid enough to leave behind traces of his destination, so the only place left was... what? 

Diantha? ...Don’t be stupid, Leon.

Her parent’s home? A possibility, but he doubted they’d take too kindly to an (ex?) Rocket showing up on their doorstep.

Guzma crossed his mind, too, but to get him involved would be to sign his death warrant. Possibly sign the warrants of all of his loved ones, too. And flying to Alola would take time he couldn’t afford to waste.

That only left the Professor. Not someone who would have been Leon’s first choice, but desperate times called for desperate measures and Augustine did, at least, have some knowledge about Lysandre. Perhaps he’d know where to start the search.

They’re flying now, zipping through the skies before anyone could notice Noel’s sudden disappearance. He was still low on the ranks, unimportant, and wouldn’t be missed for a while yet. And by that time, he’d be across oceans and on the warpath he’d been trying so hard to guide Rocket onto.

He always had to do everything himself, it seemed.

And do it himself he would. He would burn through every single pocket of Flare until only Lysandre was left alive, and then he would finish the job Reggie started. Flare would die by his hand, and this time there would be no acts of mercy to save their fanatical leader.

Eternatus’ deepest scar thrums in time with his panicked heart, a constant drumbeat willing him and his dearest pokemon forward, and Leon cast a single plea upwards to whatever deity may be listening that his arrival doesn’t arrive too late. The voicemail had assured him that she would be kept alive, but the words of a madman were never to be trusted.

                     ❝  Please, baby, hold on for me. I’m coming as fast as I can.  ❞

He pulls out his phone, the brick of a burner thing he’d got for the sake of privacy, not that it had done much to help. With the way things have gone, he may as well have sent a letter straight to Flare detailing his plan and his home address.

...Could there be Flare agents in Rocket? Is that how he’d been found out?

Giovanni didn’t know of his plan, he was sure of it, so how had Lysandre heard? Could he-

He shook his head to disrail that train of thought. Not the time! For now he dialled another one of his memorised numbers and waited for voicemail.

                     ❝  Sycamore, it’s Leon. I don’t know what you’ve been told or what you think of me, but you are going to put that shit aside and help me. We can talk about it afterwards, assuming the world hasn’t been wiped clean by then.  ❞

                     ❝  Right now? I expect you to get your fucking act together because our time has well and truly run out. Call me back once you get this.  ❞

#( 👑 ) what fearless hand dare seize the fire? / ic #( 👑 ) what you see is never what you're gonna get when you’ve got everybody playing revolution roulette / v; rocket #in case you've wondered what makes leon leave rocket: this is it lads #nothing like a kidnapping and potential end of the world to make you realise your mistakes

[clefaiiiry]

we know how you feel abt cyrus, but what's your take on the other pokebosses, like ghetsis or giovanni?? if you don't mind sharing

STRAP IN GUYS, GALS, AND NB PALS:

Giovanni:

honestly the strongest villain narrative-wise. The biggest issue I have with villains in Pokemon is that they don’t really tie into the player’s goals and therefore are not true counter-forces to the player. Giovanni, being a Gym Leader and therefore an obstacle to prevent you from finishing your main quest, is the most effective boss as a result.

But I haven’t finished playing Blue on the 3DS port and I barely watched the anime so my only real exposure to Giovanni directly is via Generations and his limited appearances in HGSS and USUM.

Although I love Silver and seeing him try so hard to distance himself from Team Rocket and his father’s legacy is really interesting and creates great drama aha.

Archie:

water dad is best dad. He really feels like a cool science teacher, honestly. He tries to convince you to back off but he knows you’re gonna come after him so just tries to have fun with it.He almost makes me think of McCree from Overwatch; super smart and could totally kick your ass but has mastered the art of pretending to be an idiot so people lower their guard around him.

As much as I love his design in ORAS, he really is over-designed to the point that it’s kinda distracting. I want to stress that I love his character and I personally really like the design but it’s still kinda… yeah…

And honestly his goals are so ridiculous??? “Humans are assholes so I’m gonna fuck over every other Pokemon species that can’t survive in water.” Archie, honey, I know you’re trying, but please think this through a little more.

Maxie:

i aim for maxie’s level of extra. Seriously, he decorates his base with GLOWING DEADLY LAVA TUBES just for aesthetic. He needs to scare off a kid who’s messing with his plans? “I’ll bury you with my bare hands, don’t test me, you little shit.” Also his voice in Generations is really gooooooooooooood………

And his design is really good??? In ORAS at least. Like, his TURTLENECK LEGGINGS + SHORTS COMBO are fucking stupid, but overall it’s pretty decent. In RSE he looks like he’s about fifty and struggling to get through his eighth mid-life crisis.

HIS PLAN IS EQUALLY SILLY. “I’ll make Groudon increase the power of the sun so that the oceans dry up!” That’s… That’s not even slightly how it works, Maxie, for God’s sake, you’re a scientist, you should know this.

not gonna talk about cyrus because i ramble about him enough already lmao

Ghetsis:

FUCK THIS GUY HOLY SHIT I HATE HIM SO MUCH HE’S SUCH A GOOD BADDIE BUT HOLY GOD I HATE HIM. His Hydreigon (which is hacked btw because Hydreigon don’t evolve until level 64) has a full-powered Frustration and is probably the reason he’s missing an arm… or at least it’s so fucked-up that he keeps it under that carpet he calls a cape.

BUT GOD HE’S SUCH A PIECE OF SHIT. The way he talks to N makes me so angry. I legit had to stop playing to calm down when I played through the first time. He reminded me way too much of personal issues that I won’t delve into here but yikes.

He’s also kinda over-designed but that’s more just me trying to find issues with him so I can hate him more lmao. As if the list of reasons wasn’t long enough.

Lysandre:

talk about wasted potential. I have no idea if he’s utilized better in the anime but in the games he’s probably the weakest boss we’ve had so far? He complains about why humanity is making the world ugly but we’re never shown what happened to him to make him think that way??? He’s just some rich asshole who’s mad that things aren’t the way he wants them to be??? You wanna join his squad of people who wanna make the world pretty? Sure! Just pay £1 million or whatever it was…

And he has history with Professor Sycamore??? Why couldn’t we explore that? That would’ve been way more interesting than the 72 extra side characters we had in Kalos who didn’t really do anything??? Why do we have so many side characters when we have barely developed our main antagonist???

I will say this much though, his suit is fucking great, 10/10, who is your tailor? can I hire them? damn son…

Guzma:

IT’S YA BOI. I love him??? So much??? He really cares about his team but showing a soft-side kinda ruins the image he works so hard to maintain so he’s gonna be a grump about it. He’s trying so hard to look cool and tough and gain approval from others that he makes self-destructive decisions and ends up being manipulated into helping with some super shady multi-dimensional bullshit. Honestly same. But seriously, it makes me sad that he wasn’t expanded on as much as he could’ve been in USUM.

HIS DESIGN IS SO GOOD. It really represents him as a character perfectly. Also, any fanart that has him standing up straight to be taller than the other bosses is great, 10/10, I laugh every time.

I just want him to be my best friend, okay? Me, him, and Cyrus can go beat up shitty adults together. Dream Team.

Lusamine:

UUUUUUUUUUUUURGH. I have so many problems with how her character is handled in USUM. Look, obviously I’m not against redemption arcs, y’all know me too well by now, but I’m certainly against bad redemption arcs. Lusamine’s isn’t even an arc! She’s just… suddenly not evil and forgiven for all her shitty actions??? Lillie and Gladion both just forgive her for years of abuse because “it’s okay guys! she was being brainwashed the whole time!” It feels really shitty.

I would’ve been less angry about it if she hadn’t been instantly forgiven by her children and accepted that she may never be able to make it up to them, but she would still work to fix all she had broken and better the world. But nope! She just gets a free pass! With all due respect Game Freak, fuck off.

I like her hair though, I’ll give her that much, her stylist deserves a raise.

#team rocket leader giovanni #team aqua leader archie #team magama leader maxie #team plasma leader ghetsis #team flare leader lysandre #team skull leader guzma #aether foundation leader lusamine #pokemon #sorry for any typos i just wanted to get it all out while i had the motivation lmao #long post #ask #ria.txt #anon #okay to reblog #abuse mention

[marawis]

Pokémon Villain-Champion Switch Scenarios

There were some sort of prompts in a thread that go like this:

Switching the champion and the villain in most generations can lead to some interesting stories.

Cyrus is similar to nanu as a champion, gets his thrills out of battle Cynthia wants to see the world burn for shit and giggles and wants giratina specifically

Actually in the case of XY Sycamore swapping with Lysandre would be more compelling

So of course I had to let my mind go wild on the concepts and think of some scenarios for Hoenn, Sinnoh and Kalos (with some liberties taken, mostly for Sinnoh). I kinda feel bad about leaving them on an anonymous board so I may as well share them here just for memory’s sake. 

They all began to get longer with each gen, so this is a very long post. Sorry if I have some spelling errors. I still hope you all like it. (Check out an Alola scenario here)

Hoenn

While going through the first gyms you hear word from some NPCs saying the League is having issues because the Champion seems to have left.

At first everything is played kinda straight, with Maxie and Archie looking as bad guys that are also opposing each other, while Steven is a cool guy who likes rocks and helps us fight them.

The more you advance in the story things start to get suspicious.

Turns out Steven is actually a really corrupt businessman alongside his father, and they are trying to wake up Groudon and Kyogre for their own ends.

Archie and Maxie were trying to stop Devon's advances to protect the sea and land respectively, but they acted as enemies because their interests and egos made them disagree even though they had the same endgoal.

By the climax they already solve their differences and work together with you to stop the legendaries.

You save the world and finally go to finish your Pokémon challenge, since it seems the Champion issue has been solved and they have returned.

Wait "they"?

Surprise surprise double battle for the Championship against Archie and Maxie.

Sinnoh

You first meet Cyrus in Lake Verity, he acts kinda creepy still but his monologue is about wanting to understand how the universe works.

You start your Pokémon journey and meet Cynthia, who talks to you about all these cool mythos of Sinnoh and the legendaries tied to them.

You keep encountering Cyrus and interacting with him. He seems to want to be left alone but still talks to you about legends and myths too, and how he wants to investigate about them.

Cynthia follows you closely and starts to feed you misinformation about what Cyrus is on about, he is quite the antisocial guy so it's easy to make him look like he could be a lunatic cult leader after all.

Turns out she has been doing the same with Looker, the Interpol guy sent to investigate some criminal activity in the region. 

You two then leave to check what Cyrus is doing, and letting Cynthia act freely.

Let's be honest, Cyrus' labs look like what a mad scientist would have, and seems his machines are indeed working with portals and experiments on the fabric of time and space.

You confront Cyrus on the matter, but turns out he wasn't trying to destroy the world or anything, he was trying to save it.

Wait what?

Cyrus is actually the Sinnoh Champion, and while doing usual walks on the region (since it seems Champions like to do that) he noticed there were some anomalies going around in the region, with time and space flowing in weird ways. He was leading an investigation to try to solve the issue and if possible track the origin of it.

You remember all the stuff Cynthia talked with you and realize she has been lying to you.

Saturn informs us that weird lectures have showed up in the Spear Pillar.

You all rush there.

There is Cynthia in control of Palkia and Dialga.

She then reveals her plans to us. She wants to use the Time and Space pokémon not to try to reshape the universe, but to summon Giratina.

Giratina indeed shows up, but before Cynthia can do anything they all get into the Distortion World.

There you search for Cynthia, who took some advantage to try and fight the Antimatter pokémon.

You find her before she manages tho.

You interrogate her again on her motives.

She tells you that after studying so much about the myths and legends, she realized something.

Palkia and Dialga aren't really such a big deal. Giratina is far more interesting.

She wanted to summon Giratina to capture it and THEN use it to get to the actual big deal: Arceus.

Cyrus calls nonsense. Maybe Giratina had some basis to exist (and indeed it does), but Arceus is just a fairytale that people made up to avoid thinking about where the world comes from.

Cynthia is adamant on her believes tho, and begins a rant about how Arceus is indeed real.

You all still don't understand why exactly she wants Arceus, if she isn't interested in making changes to the world.

Cynthia laughs at you.

"Because if I capture the Creator, then I will be the strongest trainer in all the world!"

All of this just for some stupid trainer title?

Cynthia rants again while throwing more backstory to us.

She and Cyrus had a battle similar to the one Hau and the MC had in USUM, one to decide who would become the Champion. And Cyrus won.

Cynthia didn't take defeat quite well. Her reputation as a strong trainer was tarnished. Her social status and villas in every region were lost. All because this weirdo "got lucky"!

Cyrus apologizes.

"Hu?"

Cyrus had no idea the title meant so much for her. Sure, he wanted the title, but it was just because it was a promise he did to "an old friend" back on his early childhood. If he had known the Championship meant way more to her, he would have surrendered.

Cynthia thinks he is looking at her as so inferior she needs his pity, and gets even angrier.

A pokémon battle for the fate of the worlds starts!

You defeat Cynthia.

Cynthia doesn't understand. She just can't understand. Losing to Cyrus on a Champion battle was one thing, but you haven't even finished the Gyms, how could you defeat her?!

Now with all her pokémon fainted and no revives to spare, she can't even try to fight Giratina.

"Fine! Whatever! May all as well rot in this place! No way none of us gets out now!"

You spot Giratina nearby.

Cyrus thinks you may have a chance against it, if your battle against Cynthia just now was proof enough of the strong bonds you can make with pokémon. Sure Giratina will see both that and your strenght as a trainer.

You go and fight Giratina and win. This is a lineal plot now so you have to capture it and it gets added to your party.

Cynthia can't fucking believe it.

She finally loses her marbles and tries to take away from you the pokéball Giratina is on. After all she did all the hard work to find it, what business you have with it except being a kid with a pokédex?

Cyrus has to intervene and pushes her away from you.

Cynthia takes a bad step because of it and Distortion World dynamics screw her up, making her fall to an uncertain fate.

There is no time to waste though, so you use Giratina to get back to your own world.

Cyrus gives a small speech about spirit and emotions, and how they lead to Cynthia's demise.

"They are quite frightening, and can be ugly sometimes. But I guess without those ugly emotions, we wouldn't be able to experience the beautiful ones. That must be what means to be human after all."

You part ways, with Cyrus wishing you luck on your challenge and saying he waits for you at the League.

You go and have the Champion battle against him.

You win, and he says he is proud of your progress.

He almost tells you he is happy to have met you, but stops himself before he can say it all out loud. He isn't quite ready for that stuff, not yet.

Hall of Fame and credits roll.

Kalos (well this one is actually a bit different)

You start your journey just fine. Meet with this cool young professor who wants you to help him study Mega Evolution.

You then meet Lysandre, who after seeing your pokédex realizes you are working with his good friend Sycamore. He is also helping him on his research. He gives you a cool Holo Caster update to stay in touch and so you can send Mega Evolution data to them.

The encounter with Lysandre and Diantha in the Café Soleil still happens, but is a more amicable chat about how a movie star can get roles in different niches if she just ages normally instead of remaining "young" forever, and how that is beautiful in it's own way. First clue that Lysandre isn't batshit insane here.

Lysandre tells you his lineage's story and the Ultimate Weapon on his café, but instead of using it as a "THEY ARE FILTH" monologue he uses it as a moral about current events.

The Ultimate Weapon "cleaned" the region from the "undesirable" back then, but he thinks that is a coward path.

He wants to believe Kalos is beautiful, but the truth is, it isn't.

The glamorous Kalos we know is because the region is making it's best to hide away the poor and homeless people and pokémon from tourists and visitors, just to preserve this fake image of Kalos being all nice.

Lysandre doesn't agree with this, and wants to help everyone so there is only happiness and real beauty in Kalos. 

Well that was motivational and sad, but you have no time for this, you have to go around collecting some stones!

You go around getting your Key Stone and Mega Stones just as normal.

With the updated Holo Caster you send every piece of data you get everytime you Mega Evolve your pokémon, and Sycamore is happy. If you don't use too much Mega Evolution -or at all- Sycamore at first tries to encourage you to use it, but later starts to get annoyed by your lack of cooperation.

Eitherway, Sycamore is doing progress with his research with or without your help, and he shares some stuff with you.

He sometimes calls to just tell you about his own standards on beauty tho. It is all Holo Caster and chill until he slips some bigoted small remarks, like how creepy it was that some kid on rags approached a woman near a café. Stuff like that that may not be anything but still triggers some red lights.

On your way on Route 15 Lysandre calls you, and asks you to meet him in the Lost Hotel up north.

There he tells you he is a bit worried about Sycamore. He is noticing him acting strange ever since he began to make actual progress with his research on Mega Evolution. He has noticed some weird movements on his businesses too ever since.

You tell him about what you have noticed on his calls too, and Lysandre for a moment begins to connect some dots, but dismisses them almost immediately. No way his friend would be capable of such things, he says.

You continue your travels to Anistar City, when a Holo Caster call reached every single trainer in the region.

The figure on the Holo Caster can't be seen due to some noise in the signal, but the message is quite clear: The Ultimate Weapon will be revived and used to erase from existence all those pariahs that ruin Kalos' beautiful image.

Immediately after that call ends, Lysandre calls you. Looks like someone took over his Labs and he asks you to come help him since there are too many grunts guarding the place and he can't fight everyone in there while trying to get back in.

You manage to get in, and there you find Sycamore. 

Sycamore notices Lysandre isn't as shocked as he thought he would be. Lysandre admits that he did know what was going one after talking with you at the Lost Hotel, but he didn't want to believe it. He didn't want to believe his dear friend was using him and a bunch of kids for such an ugly goal.

Sycamore is actually hurt by those words. 

He reminds Lysandre of what he would always talk about, about how ugly Kalos actually is because of all that people who can't contribute anything to society.

He saw his dear friend suffering over this, and he wished he could help him somehow.

His research on Mega Evolution was totally scientific at the start, but then he started to notice some links it had to the Ultimate Weapon.

It all made sense after all. It was fate™, you could even say.

Mega Evolution was the product of the remnants of the Ultimate Weapon, which is why it is only found in Kalos. What a beautiful region Kalos is indeed. And yet, not every pokémon was able to reach such a state.

If Sycamore can get his hands on the Ultimate Weapon, he can both liberate even more energy to make every single species reach Mega Evolution, all while killing all the unproductive people that are the source of his friend's suffering.

This isn't what Lysandre wanted at all, and he is mad that Sycamore would think such an idea, knowing his hatred for the Ultimate Weapon and what it did to his ancestors.

Sycamore of course believes everything will be worth it in the end, and he will find a way to forgive him.

But for now the chat must end. He already got what he was looking for in the labs, and now he had to leave to his real destination: Geosenge Town.

The professor calls on two masked guys to make up time for him to leave.

You defeat these guys who look similar to Dexio and Sina (totally not them, right?), and Lysandre wonders what could Sycamore be looking for in his lab.

He then remembers about the suspicious movements he found some days ago, and goes to check out.

You find AZ in the usual place as in XY. Seems Sycamore was paying way too much attention to Lysandre's ocassional history lessons, and was searching for the immortal king too. AZ tells us Sycamore already took the key for the Ultimate Weapon, and asks you to stop him.

You all leave to Geosenge Town.

You go down the base where everything where everything is already in motion.

Sycamore is a more practical man, he doesn't waste time with buttons.

Lysandre tries to reason with him. The weapon takes energy from a Legendary pokémon, yes, but for the scale Sycamore wants, it also takes away the life energy of pokémon near the place. Part of his plan could backfire on him if he keeps going.

"Well I think we can live without Bunnelby and Diggersby"

Lysandre challenges him to a fight to distract him, so you can go to where the Legendary is and hopefully stop the weapon.

You go and catch your Legendary, only for Sycamore to show up immediately after.

He doesn't need a Dr. Octopus outfit, he is a more practical man and can beat the shit out of champion level trainers by himself, being a professor and all.

The pokémon battle for the destiny of the world starts!

You win the battle. But that doesn't really mean you have stopped him, does it?

Lysandre shows up, still beaten up from the fight, and still tries to talk Sycamore out of this. It isn't too late to stop this nonsense. He will forgive him. Just leave the Ultimate Weapon alone and let's work together to make a beautiful world where nobody needs to be sacrificed.

Sycamore for a moment thinks about the offer, but realizes there isn't any future left for him after all what he has done. Lysandre and the protagonist may forgive him, but the world surely won't.

"You have a minute"

He activates the Ultimate Weapon. It doesn't really have much energy left, but is enough to destroy the whole place.

You have to take Lysandre out by force, since he didn't want to leave without Sycamore.

You manage to get out, but Geosenge Town is a mess.

Lucky thing everyone managed to evacuate those box houses and make it to safety.

Lysandre doesn't say anything. He doesn't even move from his place. It has been too much to process for just one day.

Oh yeah you get a parade. Yay!

Without a professor, things are quite messy in the whole region, but please don't let that stop you from continuing your pokémon adventure.

You defeat the E4 and make it to the Champion's room.

It is empty.

But there is a note for you.

It asks you to go to Lysandre Café.

You go there and meet Lysandre.

He asks you to forgive him, but he didn't really feel like going to the League after all what happened.

He gives you a long talk about his friendship with Sycamore. How they both met when they were younger and studying. Sycamore would become the regional Pokémon Professor while he would go and invent gadgets at his own company to help improve the life of humans and pokémon.

If he was told at that time what would have happened a few days ago, he wouldn't believe it. In fact, he still can't.

This is all a bad dream and he will wake up at any moment, with papers all around him and Sycamore mocking him for not getting proper sleep.

But he knows very well that's not the case.

It can't be helped. What's done is done and there is no going back.

But you don't want to keep listening to the sorrows of a sad man, do you? You are here for your final challenge.

You have your battle for the Championship and win.

After getting an extravagant parade for saving the region, this is quite an unceremonious event. Not that it bothers you tho. There is some beauty on keeping things simple.

You still get registered in the Hall of Fame, and Lysandre asks you to hold the Champion title with respect.

Credits roll.

Honorary mention to Johto, which was just the idea of Lance being like his manga counterpart and Giovanni taking the 3 years timeskip to become a researcher and the champion too.

Thanks for reading!

#pokemon #writing #pokemon au #villain champion switch #hoenn #sinnoh #kalos #johto #champion cynthia #galactic boss cyrus #aqua leader archie #magma leader maxie #steven stone #lysandre #professor sycamore #augustine sycamore #marawis writes #I guess

[balsamina]

So. Anything more on Lusamine and Lysandre you haven’t gotten a chance to talk about yet?

oh my god can i just……be lazy and copy-paste this post i made on my personal a while back? because i’ve never really posted about it HERE, but i totally did on my personal…….you know what i’m going to just do that

Lusamine is Rich Bitch and has always lived a life of exorbitant privilege, but a lot of her life was characterized by a deep sense of loneliness and cynicism. her manipulative and controlling nature, as well as her reliance on a hyper-sweet persona, came about from her recognizing those things in the people around her. her father, though well-intentioned and loving, was also kind of negligent, often Too Busy To Parent, and wasn’t really equipped to teach Lusamine about the unique pressures she would face as a woman, allowing her to fall into a lot of unhealthy, toxic habits when she was growing up. very early on, she accepted it as a simple truth that everyone was as fake and self-serving as she was, and her relationships with other people would never be anything more than superficial/hollow and transactional. many, many people have tried to take advantage of her, and so she became Ice Queen out of perceived necessity, concealing and manipulating to keep herself from being hurt or used

she and Lysandre are basically The Same Fucking Person and probably encountered each other early on as they went about their business, eventually bonding over a shared belief that they alone had exposed the inherent cruelty of people and the world at large, making them Above It All. they found comfort in each other, but also brought out the worst in each other through their mutual arrogance, narcissism, and destructiveness…i’m imagining a lot of late night talks about running away and going off the grid, dipping into increasingly horrifying doomsday fantasies after they’ve both had way too much wine…

fast forward a few years, they both go off to different Pokeuniversities. Lusamine meets Wicke and Mohn, who are both very unlike anyone she’s ever met before. she bonds with Wicke and ends up spending a lot of time trying to toy with Mohn in her Lusamine-y way, which…never goes the way she expects it to. they both challenge her through sheer good will alone, and eventually her perspective shifts. like hey maybe there is some genuine good in this world…maybe i don’t have to be such a huge fake bitch all the time if these people see me at my worst and still love me for who i am and not for my money, body, persona, etc.

Sycamore could have been Lysandre’s version of that, buuuuut for whatever reason he wasn’t slain in the same way Lusamine was by Mohn, and this may or may not have caused something of a falling out between them once they reunited. suddenly Lusamine’s happily married with kids, has a successful and fulfilling career, and is believing there is a kernel of goodness in the world that should be defended like some kind of NORMIE and Lysandre feels more alone and misanthropic than ever

the fact that he goes off the deep end (something that surprises Lusamine and yet probably shouldn’t have) and assumedly dies at a time very close to Mohn’s disappearance definitely does not help Lusamine’s own mental stability

#fightiniumz #ooc #{ in the garden || HEADCANON } #i've explored this a little bit with a few Lysandres BUT I'M ALWAYS OPEN TO MORE...... #this does assume a few things about Lysandre (his age and background in particular) that may not apply to your interpretation... #also in my own headcanon Lysandre is gay so while Lusamine might have tried to jump his bones one or seven times it never went anywhere #but i know other people headcanon Lysandre differently so HEY...IF YOU THINK THEY'D FUCK......LEMME KNOW #i do genuinely also love the angle of Lysandre being like 'FUCK THAT MOHN GUY..THE SLOB DOESN'T DESERVE HER' that's good shit

[kibibarel]

Lusamine is Rich Bitch and has always lived a life of exorbitant privilege, but a lot of her life was characterized by a deep sense of loneliness and cynicism. her manipulative and controlling nature, as well as her reliance on a hyper-sweet persona, came about from her recognizing those things in the people around her. her father, though well-intentioned and loving, was also kind of negligent, often Too Busy To Parent, and wasn’t really equipped to teach Lusamine about the unique pressures she would face as a woman, allowing her to fall into a lot of unhealthy, toxic habits. very early on, she accepted it as a simple truth that everyone was as fake and self-serving as she was, and her relationships with other people would never be anything more than superficial/hollow and transactional. many, many people have tried to take advantage of her, and so she became Ice Queen out of perceived necessity, concealing and manipulating to keep herself from being hurt or used

she and Lysandre are basically The Same Fucking Person and probably encountered each other early on as they went about their business, eventually bonding over a shared belief that they alone had exposed the inherent cruelty of people and the world at large, making them Above It All. they found comfort in each other, but also brought out the worst in each other through their mutual arrogance, narcissism, and destructiveness...i’m imagining a lot of late night talks about running away and going off the grid, dipping into increasingly horrifying doomsday fantasies after they’ve both had way too much wine...

fast forward a few years, they both go off to different Pokeuniversities. Lusamine meets Wicke and Mohn, who are both very unlike anyone she’s ever met before. she bonds with Wicke and ends up spending a lot of time trying to toy with Mohn in her Lusamine-y way, which...never goes the way she expects it to. they both challenge her through sheer good will alone, and eventually her perspective shifts. like hey maybe there is some genuine good in this world...maybe i don’t have to be such a huge fake bitch all the time if these people see me at my worst and still love me for who i am and not for my money, body, persona, etc.

Sycamore could have been Lysandre’s version of that, buuuuut for whatever reason he wasn’t slain in the same way Lusamine was by Mohn, and this may or may not have caused something of a falling out between them once they reunited. suddenly Lusamine’s happily married with kids, has a successful and fulfilling career, and is believing there is a kernel of goodness in the world that should be defended like some kind of NORMIE and Lysandre feels more alone and misanthropic than ever

the fact that he goes off the deep end (something that surprises Lusamine and yet probably shouldn’t have) and assumedly dies at a time very close to Mohn’s disappearance definitely does not help Lusamine’s own mental stability

..............

nah i’m just fucking with you guys, would that be fucked up or what

[deathofamemer]

001 Pokemon, 003 Hilda, 003 N, 003 Looker

001 | Send me a fandom and I will tell you my:

Favorite character: Looker, N, Lillie, Wally, Zinnia, Cyrus, Rowan, Nanu, Barry (pokemon has a lot of good characters)

Least Favorite character: ghetsis and lusamine, full stop

5 Favorite ships (canon or non-canon): uhhhhhh red/blue (or green, if you use the japanese name, that spiky haired fucko), lysandre/sycamore, kukui/burnet, hilda/bianca, moon/lillie

Character I find most attractive: zinnia, full stop. god i would fucking kiss that woman

Character I would marry: also zinnia

Character I would be best friends with: n. he’s a good boy

a random thought: ive got trouble playing any pokemon game pre-bw bc of the exp curve (i started with x) so i might pick up desmume to actually play through em

An unpopular opinion: n harmonia is a good boy and he needs love. also cyrus is just depressed and extra, i’m a cyrus apologist

My Canon OTP: kukui/burnet

My Non-canon OTP: red/blue (or green, im lookin at you lars)

Most Badass Character: rowan will beat you to death with a briefcase and i support him

Most Epic Villain: i really like oras archie, he’s got fun vibes

Pairing I am not a fan of: if you ship ghetsis/colress or n with the bw protags i will come to your house and beat you to death but also i’m just generally not super fond of looker/nanu for whatever reason? i like those old men better as old friends who tried it once and didn’t click as opposed to an active relationship

Character I feel the writers screwed up (in one way or another): trying to redeem lusamine in usum is a cardinal sin

Favourite Friendship: does the protags bond with their pokemon count? i read the full affection messages and i cry

Character I most identify with: cyrus. i too am a depressed nihilist who just wants to Stop

Character I wish I could be: nanu is my ideal

003 | Give me a character & I will tell you:

How I feel about this character: hilda is very good i love her shorts

Any/all the people I ship romantically with this character: bianca!

My favorite non-romantic relationship for this character: cheren and n. good pals

My unpopular opinion about this character: hilda is feral, thank you

One thing I wish would happen / had happened with this character in canon: let her be in b2w2!!

Favorite friendship for this character: i love the bond that me and lucas have given her with n, it’s very good

My crossover ship: don’t have one

003 | Give me a character & I will tell you:

How I feel about this character: n harmonia is my fucking son and i would kill for him

Any/all the people I ship romantically with this character: uhhhh i don’t, really? i tend to interpret him as aroace, or at least as someone who doesn’t like humans enough to consider romance as an option

My favorite non-romantic relationship for this character: him and the protags! fwiendship

My unpopular opinion about this character: n is not a bad boy he’s just misguided don’t be mean

One thing I wish would happen / had happened with this character in canon: i wish he’d been able to punch ghetsis in the dick personally during the rainbow rocket episode the way colress did. also i want n to meet lillie, they can bond

Favorite friendship for this character: him and hilda! fwiends

My crossover ship: don’t have one

003 | Give me a character & I will tell you:

How I feel about this character: looker is a perfect fool and quite honestly i adore him, he’s so fucking charming

Any/all the people I ship romantically with this character: don’t really have ships for looker

My favorite non-romantic relationship for this character: looker and nanu! also looker and emma, he’s a dad

My unpopular opinion about this character: i don’t really see him and nanu as a couple, more as old pals who tried it once but didn’t click as anything more than friends

One thing I wish would happen / had happened with this character in canon: i need the hot lore on looker’s past.... ALSO GO BACK TO EMMA AND BE A DAD YOU IDIOT

Favorite friendship for this character: looker and nanu! they’ve been friends forever

My crossover ship: don’t have one

#answer v #pokemon #i have a lot of feelings about pokemon in general #Anonymous

[spiritofjustice]

Pokemon for the ask thing please! -maddie

send me a fandom and i’ll tell you…

the first character i ever fell in love with:  Ohh, man.  It’s hard to think back that far, but I think if I can recall correctly, Archie was my first favorite!  I loved Team Aqua so much.a character that i used to love/like, but now do not: I used to really love all the Team Galactic characters.  I still like them, but nowhere near as much as I initially had.a ship that i used to love/like, but now do not: I used to love whatever Lysandre/Sycamore was called.  I don’t dig it now.  I just don’t really care about either character nowadays!my ultimate favorite character™: Archer.  He is literally the reason I bought Pokemon Let’s Go– fantastic game, by the way.  Highly recommend it.prettiest character: Archer, or Lyra.  She’s adorable!my most hated character: I wouldn’t say hate but I don’t like Professor Sycamore.my OTP: I do really like Soulsilvershipping (Silver/Lyra).my NOTP: Excluding protag/villain ships?  I don’t particularly love Gold/Silver and I don’t love Archer/Ariana either.  But the latter is mainly because I headcanon Archer as being gay.favorite episode: I don’t watch the Pokeani. F.  HeartGold/SoulSilver’s my favorite of the games, though.saddest death: I can’t believe Lysandre Fucking Died but it’s not sad lolfavorite season: Diamond and Pearl, the only seasons I really watched.least favorite season:character that everyone else in the fandom loves, but i hate: Hate is such a strong word, but I REALLY don’t love Ethan/Gold.  His Pokespe interpretation tends to be the general fan interpretation of his character gameverse.  And guess what?  I fucking despise Pokespe Gold!  And Pokespe Black!  And Pokespe Sun!  Since they all have the same exact personality anyhow!my ‘you’re piece of trash, but you’re still a fave’ fave: Protonmy ‘beautiful cinnamon roll who deserves better than this’ fave: SiLVER but also Lyra and Krismy ‘this ship is wrong, nasty, and makes me want to cleanse my soul, but i still love it’ ship:my ‘they’re kind of cute, and i lowkey ship them, but i’m not too invested’ ship: Archer/Giovanni

#Anonymous #asks #pokemon tag #thanks for sending Maddie!!!

[sage-nebula]

PokéAni - Immortality AU headcanons

I honestly want to re-write the one fic I have for this AU (in order to fix up some details that are either now incorrect, as well as add in things I forgot, like how Alan keeps Gabrielle after Sycamore’s passing), as well as write more fics for this AU (including and especially one showing Ash’s life after the events of all this), but since I don’t know when I’ll get around to all of that, I figured I’d go ahead and make this post real quick so that I can at least have details for this on my blog. (Plus, if I have the structure down, this means I can hop around in this AU and write fics for it wherever. I can refer to this as a masterpost if anyone ever has any questions.

So with that said . . .

The basic premise is that this would happen near the conclusion of the Flare arc. I first conceived this AU before the Flare arc finished, when all we had was an episode summary saying that Alan and Ash were going to head into the Megalith. Back then, I hadn’t yet realized what the Megalith actually was, and thought that it might have some connection to Xerneas due to its rainbow color (and because we were still speculating at the time that the ultimate weapon from the games was going to come into play somehow thanks to Lysandre). Now, however, I’ve realized that the Megalith was actually the meteorite that crashed in Hoenn eons ago and allowed the Draconids to get Rayquaza to mega evolve (since it served as a massive Key Stone, and thus reacted with Rayquaza’s innate ability to mega evolve thanks to Dragon Ascent), so that idea is kind of scrapped. However, I can still work with this. For the purposes of this AU, let’s say that Lysandre does still have his hands on the ultimate weapon, unbeknownst to anyone (save perhaps Xerosic and the other scientists), and was keeping it as a backup. When he loses control of Squishy and Z2 thanks to Bonnie (and therefore Plan A fails), he moves on to Plan B and relocates to Fleur-De-Lis Laboratories in order to put the ultimate weapon into place. Now, the Megalith still has to factor in somehow. In the actual arc, it activated thanks to the life energy Hari-san had absorbed from Squishy, thereby going crazy with roots and whatnot as it moved toward the Sundial in Anistar City. That can still happen, but perhaps that was a diversion. Lysandre set it up so that the Megalith would activate and head toward Anistar City, supposedly to wreak some kind of havoc and end the world, but in all actuality all that would happen is that there would be some more city destruction because on its own, the Megalith can’t do anything. It’s just a massive Key Stone, after all. Unless Rayquaza is there to mega evolve with it, no world ending is going to happen. Nonetheless, everyone is distracted and still goes after the Megalith as in canon, particularly since Hari-san is still trapped inside, and Alan made a promise to get Hari-san back for Manon. So all of that still happens. However, again, it was a diversion. While everyone else is doing that, Lysandre is preparing the ultimate weapon, which he can then use to cause mass genocide all on his own, without making Squishy or Z2 do it for him. Though he does need a legendary to power it, it’s possible that he has another Zygarde core (perhaps Z3?), or maybe there could have been something about how he found Yveltal and/or Xerneas, or at least their energy. Or maybe, and I like this idea even better, the real reason why he was already in Hoenn after sending Alan there to search for the Megalith was because he---unbeknownst to the rest of the TSME squad, Steven included---was having a business meeting with Steven’s father, the current CEO of Devon Corporation, and the result of that meeting was that Lysandre got his hands on enough raw Infinity Energy in order to power the ultimate weapon. Remember, the Infinity Energy that Devon Corporation canonically makes (according to the games) is the same exact energy that was used to power the ultimate weapon 3,000 years ago, made from sacrificed pokémon and all. (Well, it comes from the lives of dead pokémon, but that’s not to say Devon Corporation is necessarily sacrificing pokémon to make their technology. That said, the games also don’t say that they’re not doing that, so . . .) This means that if he had that Infinity Energy, he could power the ultimate weapon even if he didn’t have Zygarde, Yveltal, or Xerneas. I like this idea a lot better, particularly since it doesn’t require him to pull a legendary out of thin air. Let’s go with it. So Lysandre, while everyone else is busy stopping the Megalith, is powering up the ultimate weapon, possibly (probably) with Xerosic’s help, along with the other scientists (e.g. Celosia, Mabel) once he rounded them up from wherever they were. Once Hari-san is rescued and the Megalith stops, instead of Lysandre having his “surprise, bitch” moment by showing up actually on the scene, his “surprise, bitch” moment comes when someone picks up on a really frightening energy reading coming from near Geosenge Town. (I believe everyone might have already been near there, but I can’t remember if they said where the Megalith was, exactly, when they managed to stop it. They may have, but I’m not going to rewatch those episodes right this second to find out.) Lysandre perhaps hijacks everyone’s HoloCasters and other equipment again to make another announcement about his plans, this time adding that he has an ultimate weapon with which to carry them out (and at this point perhaps Sycamore can have a moment of horror as he realizes what this ultimate weapon must be, gives a brief history lesson to those who either aren’t native Kaloseans or else don’t know their history / lore), and thanks Devon Corporation for providing him with the energy to do it (as a “fuck you” to Steven, who definitely hates him now if he didn’t hate him before (and trust me, Steven hated Lysandre before, we have canonical evidence for this)). Of course, everyone is beyond horrified about this, and when whoever was picking up on these signals or energy readings or whatever pinpoints the location and gives the exact coordinates for where this is going down, Alan wastes all of .01 seconds before hopping on Lizardon’s back (FINALLY) to fly there and do something to stop it, because you know he would. (And so does everyone who knows him. Like, legit, Steven tells him to wait, Manon tells him he can’t, Sycamore is in shock, but does Alan listen to any of them? Nope. He and Lizardon are going to stop the director right now and you better believe that no one can stop him.) I don’t think that, even mega evolved, Lizardon could presently fit two people on his back . . . but Ash would still try, chasing after them and jumping to try to hitch a ride on Lizardon’s back. He falls, but Alan catches his wrist, and in the next second Lizardon grabs Ash (and Pikachu, of course!) in a tight bear hug, and off to the ultimate weapon they go. They arrive before the weapon is fired, and of course Lysandre has his gloat moment like in the games. Since the confrontation on Prism Tower borrowed dialogue from the games (the “what are you protecting? A tomorrow that is even worse than today?” line he gave to Alan, as well as his woe is me sob story about how people were greedy when he tried to help them and thus everyone deserves to die), more dialogue could be borrowed and put to use here, such as the “you did stop me fair and square, but I’m not going to stop because lmao you can’t always get what you want” bit, among other things. Lysandre would have healed his pokémon by this point, probably, so they could battle again, and once again Lysandre would lose (hopefully with Lizardon getting a win over that pyroar because tbh, he deserves it). Lysandre is mad, kind of, but in this case the battle would mostly be to stall as the ultimate weapon powers up. Lysandre still plans to fire it, but before he can, both Alan and Ash order attacks on it, and Lizardon and Pikachu follow through. While this doesn’t break the ultimate weapon entirely, it damages it enough so that it at least can’t fire on all of Kalos. And this time, Lysandre is truly angry, he’s truly enraged, and he lashes out at Alan in particular because, you know, Alan has been his abuse victim for the past two years, so why wouldn’t Lysandre lash out at him in retribution for his plans having failed? So there’s another verbal fight there (and also Ash speaking up because hey, Lysandre, shut up), but eventually it stops when Lysandre realizes that (as I said before) they didn’t break the ultimate weapon completely, it can still do something, and he starts laughing and says that even if he can’t unleash this on the world (as the world deserves), he can still use it on them. Alan realizes what’s happening and he says, “Ash, run.” “What? I’m not gonna run and leave you here,” Ash says, indignant. “Pika pika!” Pikachu agrees, equally indignant. “We can all get out!” Alan says, but he doesn’t really, completely mean that, because the fact that Lysandre is doing any of this at all is his fault (even if it was Infinity Energy and not mega evolution energy that he’s using for this particular portion of it, but details), and so if he dies that’s okay, but--- “Lizardon, take them and go.” “But are you actually going to follow?” Ash would ask, and Lizardon hasn’t moved either, because he knows. He knows. And Alan is so frustrated, but there’s no time--- And there really isn’t, because this little bit took maybe about three seconds, and that was enough for Lysandre to do what he was going to do, and what he did results in the ultimate weapon exploding in a burst of rainbow light, and that---that did it. That did the trick. See, in the games, his final gambit failed. The protagonist and other characters didn’t die (Y Version), nor were they cursed with immortality (X Version). But here, it doesn’t fail. No one dies (though Alan, Lizardon, Ash, and Pikachu are all unconscious and buried under rubble when they’re found), but they are struck with immortality. (Lysandre isn’t found, by the by. He’s not there when everyone else shows up to dig through the rubble and recover the human boys and their platonic soulmates. But he is immortal. He just had the good sense to get the fuck out of dodge before the police showed up.) But this isn’t something they don’t realize right away. How could they possibly know? It isn’t until later that, well . . .

First, as a disclaimer: I’m aware that the way immortality affected AZ was that he grew into a giant (though personally I think that’s just genes?) and did seem to age to some extent. But that said, it’s been 3,000 years and he still just looks like a really big old man, so I think it’s less that he just stopped aging at some point, and more that he was just already somewhat old when the immortality struck him, and so he’s just been frozen like that all this time. Floette also makes me feel that way, since she still looks perfectly young, like any other floette. So for the purposes of this AU, the immortality I’m saying they were struck with is the “stop aging as you are right now” type of immortality, so they won’t grow or physically age beyond that point. (With one exception, kind of. More on that in a second.)

A lot of the stuff that I had in the original fic I wrote for Alan still holds true. At first, no one knows that Alan, Lizardon, Ash, and Pikachu are immortal. This is because they have no real way of knowing, no one told them, and also because aging is slow, you know? Teenagers don’t show that much variation as they get older, once they’re older teenagers, so even though Alan doesn’t seem to change when he turns sixteen (shortly after all this), or seventeen, or eighteen, no one thinks much of it. But when he’s twenty-five, he looks the exact same as he did when he was fifteen, and Manon jokes about his moisturizer, like, how does he still look so young? And as he nears thirty and still looks like a teenager, well . . . Sycamore puts the pieces together a few years before that point (like, early 20s, maybe 23-24). He realizes that when the ultimate weapon exploded, there must have been some kind of reaction. And that’s when Alan leaves to find some way to end this, to stop it, because he doesn’t want to be immortal and outlive everyone he cares about, he doesn’t want this. (He’d probably sort of . . . not necessarily resign from being Champion, per se, but since he can’t do his duties while traveling like this he’d at least step down to an extent, and the day-to-day stuff would be handled by a standing Champion, kind of like what Lance did while Red was being a hermit on Mt Silver in the games. In this case, standing Champion would probably be Diantha.) 

That said, even if the non-aging stuff wasn’t as immediately apparent for Alan, for Ash? Whether we go with the idea that he was ten (as is canon) or thirteen / fourteen (as I prefer because it makes more sense), you’re still going to see a lot more variation in the next few years due to how kids are, you know, supposed to have growth spurts around this time. But Ash doesn’t. His voice doesn’t get any deeper, and he doesn’t grow, and at first he’s just really irate, because really? Really? He was already always pretty short for a boy his age, and he’s been looking forward to finally being taller than Misty (he plans to gloat so much), so when is his growth spurt coming, huh? When is this gonna happen for him? It’s not. It doesn’t. And when he gets to be about fifteen and he looks and sounds the same way he did when he was thirteen, he gets really alarmed. He’s alarmed enough to see doctors about it, but they have no idea what happened. And he asks Professor Oak, but Professor Oak doesn’t know either. Neither does Professor Kukui. For some reason he doesn’t think to ask Professor Sycamore (in fairness, Ash was never that close to Professor Sycamore), so they don’t talk about it, but he sees various people to see if they know why he’s just not aging, and no one knows, but most tell him not to worry. At least, they do when he’s fifteen. When he’s twenty and he still looks and sounds thirteen / fourteen (just let me have this), yeah, then they get concerned. But Sycamore had realized about Alan in Alan’s early-to-mid twenties, and to be honest around the time he does he might contact Ash himself to ask Ash how he’s doing, and when he sees that Ash still looks ten, well . . . good news is, he knows why. Bad news is . . . everything else. So, that’s real great news. Ash is thrilled. [/sarcasm]

Like I said, a lot of the other stuff for Alan still holds true. Alan doesn’t find a way to reverse it (of course), and so he can’t do anything to stop the fact that the people he cares about age out and die while his body stays fifteen. Meyer, Clemont, and Bonnie (so, his stepdad and stepsiblings) all grow old and die, with only their kids and/or grandkids (mostly just in Clemont’s case---Bonnie never has any kids) living on. Manon grows old and dies as well, and though she always seemed to find delight in the fact that people mistook her for the older one and Alan for her younger brother / son / grandson as she grew so much older than him, toward the end of her life she did let on that she realized that Alan never found those jokes nearly as funny (and she realizes why he never found them funny), and encourages him to, hey hey, maybe spend some time with her surviving family? (She’s a lesbian, but she got married to a nice woman and they adopted some kids, who had some kids, and so on and so forth.) And Alan says sure, but his heart is really not in it. And as for Sycamore . . . Well, Sycamore was always pretty worried, you know? He’s a forward thinker, and he knows his son, and he saw how desperate and despaired Alan got when there really was just no way on record to undo what happened (because why would there be?). And so he spent a lot of the time they had together alive trying to look on the bright side of things. Alan is immortal, so think of all the things he can learn! The places he can go and the things he can experience! So much left to learn, and explore, and do. There’s no getting around the fact that Alan is watching everyone he loves (apart from Lizardon, ofc) grow old and die (and no gentler way to put that, either), and of course that’s heartbreaking, but Alan is still alive and can do so many more things and Sycamore just wants Alan to keep learning, keep experiencing, please, promise him you’ll keep doing this--- And Alan promises that he will, but . . . again, his heart’s not really in it. Alan would take Gabrielle once Sycamore passes away. Gabrielle is a dragon by species, so even though she’s not immortal herself, she’s still aging very slowly. She’s got a lot of longevity in her. So Alan, being immortal, takes Gabrielle (or Gabby, as he calls her) with him, because as an immortal he’ll actually outlive her, but he’ll also be able to care for her for the rest of her life. Plus, he’s family, he’s the one who originally brought her home . . . so it makes sense that he would be the one to take her from there, too. (The lab is left in his name, but it’s too painful to be there once Sycamore dies. So although Alan does own the property, he lets the assistants that were presently working there still run the place. The parts of it that were home are closed off, no one can go through their bedrooms, but . . . yeah, he just can’t bear to be there anymore. It’s too painful.) That really, really bad moment where Alan legitimately tries to kill himself because he just can’t stand this anymore still happens. This time, though, it’s after Bonnie’s death, since Manon was a little older and thus would probably die a little sooner? Then again, Bonnie was a Ranger . . . well, either way, after losing his father, his stepfather, his (step)brother, and both of his sisters (stepsister in Bonnie, tagalong kid that he formed a sibling relationship with in Manon), that’s just . . . kind of more than enough. And so he still has that really, really bad moment where he actually gets the alcohol and all of those pills and is about to really do it . . . but the he feels the weight of Lizardon’s pokéball in his pocket, and he realizes what he’s doing (that he’s about to leave Lizardon alone, too), and so he calls him out and has that moment where he apologizes and apologizes while hugging Lizardon, and just cries, and all of that still happens, because it’s honestly based on my own near-suicide and how I only stopped because of Shiloh and hugged her and apologized in much the same way, and therefore it’s personal enough for me to keep. So that stays. After that, Alan gets himself together again and decides to keep traveling, as noted in the fic. He does go to so many different places, experiences different things . . . but, perhaps most importantly, he also makes it a point to always get involved in any criminal, world-ending things that are going down to stop them, because if he’s not doing that, then what’s the point? (Also, yeah, he stopped being Kalos Champion a while ago---like, officially gave it up---but that’s just a tiny blip to this whole story now.) He also starts wearing the second outfit I described in this post (yeah, this is the AU that I was talking about; the fic I was trying to keep from being spoiled got deleted when I lost my “current WIPs” folder, so). CTRL+F and search for “the other outfit I have in mind” to jump to that part. Alan is given the coat from the Johto Dragon Clan after he helps them out with something, as part of his “when there is a crisis, stop to help” thing he has going on. I’m not sure if he’s actually aware of his heritage (though quite possibly, if his biological parents also sought him out in this AU), but whether he is or not, it’s not entirely relevant, because he was given the coat as a gift nonetheless.

All of that said about Alan . . . remember how I said there was one exception among the four to the “no longer grows or ages” bit? Yeah. Lizardon. My headcanon for the charizard species is that the 5′7″ height given in the Pokédex is an average height for charizard when they first evolve from charmeleon, but that they continue to grow in size as they grow older. This is why all of the charizard in the Charicific Valley are so big, why Ash’s charizard has grown over time, why Kiawe’s charizard (which was his grandfather’s) is so big, et cetera. And so, as the years pass, Lizardon gets bigger, too. The thing is . . . he shouldn’t be. At least, Alan doesn’t think he should be. He was caught in the blast, too---the ultimate weapon should have affected him, too. And look, guys, look, he has already watched his entire family grow old and die. Gabby will live for hundreds of years or so, but she’s going to die, too, and he knows this, he’s accepted this, but Lizardon . . . yeah, he had that brief moment where he flipped out and was going to take his own life, where he wasn’t thinking about Lizardon, but then he did think of Lizardon, and he stopped because of Lizardon, because he can do this, he can do this so long as he has Lizardon, but only as long as he has Lizardon. If he . . . if he has to . . . if he has to watch Lizardon die, too . . . if Lizardon also grows old and dies too, then he . . . then he . . . He really tries not to think about it. He really, really tries. But Lizardon, as a charizard, gets to be pretty damn big. Like, ten feet tall? Something like that. Eventually he just can’t be indoors anymore, he’s definitely big enough to carry multiple riders, he could make the earth quake when he roars, like. He gets to be a big boy. And he doesn’t look older, really, other than that, but like . . . it’s deeply, intimately terrifying for Alan. He knows he really will lose it if Lizardon dies, too. Nothing will hold him back. Not even Gabby. So he tries---he tries to tell himself that maybe the Infinity Energy just affected Lizardon differently because he’s a dragon. Maybe it still lets him grow because he’s a dragon, but he’ll stop growing at some point. Maybe . . . maybe . . .

As for Ash, well, as mentioned, he was irate when he realized he wasn’t getting his growth spurt, then scared / worried, and then he learned what happened and he . . . he just . . . Oh.  At first, he tried to look on the bright side. Look, Pikachu! We’re immortal! We’ll never grow old and die! We can do everything forever! Our journey will never end! Hooray!!! The thing is, there’s only so long the bright side can hold you over. Although Ash is only thirteen / fourteen physically, emotionally and mentally, he isn’t. He matured. And so, say, did his feelings for Misty. He had a big ol’ crush on her that he didn’t fully understand or know what to do with when he was ten, but those feelings matured over time. And to be honest, Misty had feelings for him back then as well . . . but as she grows into her twenties, she doesn’t feel attraction toward him physically anymore, because . . . well, he has the body of a child (young teen, but you know). So although she still cares about him very much, she moves on. He doesn’t, but she does. And she gets married to someone else. And Ash---feeling salty, and bitter, and more than a little upset that the woman he loves is marrying someone else because he looks like a thirteen-year-old even though he’s mentally twenty-six---doesn’t attend the wedding even though he was supposed to be part of the bridal party (he was Misty’s best friend, after all). He does send Pikachu, but this still causes a huge fight with Misty, who wanted him to be there, but Ash is angry and emotional, and it . . . it’s a huge, big mess.  And that’s just one thing---that’s just one thing that happened. There are other things, too. Such as, well, just as Alan had to deal with Sycamore dying, so, too, does Ash have to deal with watching Delia grow old and die. She teases him sometimes about never giving her grandkids (“At least I have lots of pokémon,” he says), but for the most part she’s of course still very supportive and loving of her immortal son until the day she dies (from old age, peacefully in her sleep). Ash inherits the house, and unlike Alan he still visits someitmes when he’s older. It’s kind of rare, though, because as the years (and centuries) go on the populace of Pallet Town changes a lot, and so while no one can take the house because it does belong to someone and not the town itself, there are so many urban legends surrounding it from the Pallet Town populace. Whenever Ash does show up, everyone is always pretty “!!!!” about the fact that some seemingly random “thirteen-year-old kid” is going into the “abandoned house,” so Ash usually tries to sneak in at night, or however he does it. And it’s not just his mom. After enough years, when Ash is mentally in his thirties or forties, he realizes that the TRio hasn’t been around. He seeks them out, and finds that they have . . . a house? A house. They have a house. (Probably squatting, but whatever.) And they’re . . . not following him anymore? Really? “We’re old now, twerp,” James says. “Speak for yourself,” Jessie snaps. “We’re the same age,” James says, offended that she had swatted his arm like that. And it’s true, they’re in their forties or fifties now, like---it’s fine if they retire now, right? “But don’t you wanna try to steal Pikachu?” Ash asks. He didn’t sit down at the kitchen table even though they told him to, even though Jessie is fixing up some tea in the little electronic kettle they have, and James is preparing pancakes at the stove. “No, not anymore. If we wanted Pikachu we would have gone to take him. We don’t do that anymore,” Jessie says. “We’ve moved on.” “Moved on?” Ash says. “Everyone’s gotta grow up sometime, kid,” Meowth says, from where he’s curled up in front of the fireplace. And that was the wrong thing to say. When Jessie and James turn around to give Ash his tea and pancakes, he and Pikachu have already bolted through the open window.  He never speaks to them again, though they have an uncanny ability of tracking where he is, and so they send him things from time to time. After enough years pass the gifts dwindle down, and then the last thing Ash gets is a letter written by James telling him that he and Jessie are very old and also sick and don’t have much time left at all, but that they want him to take care of himself, and also to never let anyone else steal Pikachu, either, because if they didn’t get to no one else should, okay? He goes back to them at last just to make sure they can have proper funerals, or at least memorials. I mean, they didn’t have any family. No one besides him and Pikachu, really. And it bothered him too much to see them all old and stuff when he wasn’t, and when they weren’t going to steal Pikachu (or try to steal Pikachu) anymore, and so he had stopped visiting, and he really regrets that now, and--- I’m sure you can imagine the breakdown for yourself. I don’t need to write it out. He had stopped talking to Misty for a good chunk of years after their fight, but this motivates him to seek her out and really . . . make up. And she calls him an idiot for thinking that she wouldn’t have wanted to see him, or that she’d still be holding a grudge, and so they do reconcile. But when she dies, he doesn’t go to her funeral. He does’t go to Brock’s, either. Or Gary’s, or Tracey’s, May’s, or Max’s, or Dawn’s, or Iris’s . . . See, here’s the thing. He had to accept his mom was dead because he was the one to put that funeral together. He had to accept the TRio was dead, because same. But if he never sees anyone else’s funerals, or hears of their deaths, or anything like that, then he can just pretend they’re still alive somewhere. Old, sure, but still alive somewhere. He never has to move past the denial stage. Definitely not to acceptance. And this is totally a perfectly healthy way to live, so he’s just going to do that. It’s a bit harder for his pokémon. Most of them aren’t dragons by species. They die over the years. He always makes sure he’s there for that, as best he can be. Charizard is still alive, being a dragon by species, and in the Valley for a good portion of time. Gible, Noivern, and Goodra as well (though he doesn’t have Goodra officially, anymore, but still). He does eventually get Charizard on his team permanently once again (along with a Key Stone and Charizardite Y), as well as the aforementioned Gible (now Garchomp) and Noivern. He also gets a milotic (since milotic are dragons by species---sea dragons), and this milotic actually gets a nickname: Mysterica. He calls her Myst or Mysti for short. “After a real special girl I knew a long time ago,” he says. He never becomes Kanto Champion in this AU, because around the time he was going to he has already realized / learned of his immortality, and it was pointed out to him by Gary that, well, it’s probably not the best to put himself in public spotlight then, is it, because then everyone will realize what has happened to him. And to say that Ash is a little bitter about this on top of everything else that his immortality makes him salty about is an understatement. Bad enough it makes him have to watch everyone grow old and die (even his dragons will grow old and die eventually), but now it has also taken his dream from him. Great. He does keep traveling, though (of course he does), but after a little while he stops getting travel companions, for the most part. That’s just more people he’d have to get attached to, only for them to grow old and die later, and also most of the people who’d want to travel with him are kids, because they think he’s a kid, and he is . . . not a kid, mentally, at all. But sometimes he does still mentor some new kids, and when he turns one hundred he decides to pretend that he is a brand new trainer fresh out of Pallet Town again as a “fun prank” (so mentally healthy!), and that’s how he meets Souji and Makoto. See, look, I can do things with M20. I can make it even sadder than it already was. Look at me go. Like Alan, he ends up purposefully involving himself in world-crises as he travels around, because he’s Ash, of course he does. The outfit I usually imagine him in is heavily based on Red’s from SM. He has the t-shirt with the 96 on it, and the backpack that has the strap go across his chest. But his hat is actually the one Red had in his original art, albeit the leaf badge is instead replaced by his Key Stone. (To use it, he swipes his fingers across the Key Stone and then grabs the bill of his hat to turn it backwards in one fluid motion. His invocation is: “Let’s understand the power that’s inside! Mega evolve!” Because come on, it’s perfect.) His pants are baggier, too, and fall over his sneakers, and he still has some dark fingerless gloves on. That’s how I picture him in his immortal years, anyway. But speaking of traveling . . .

So both Alan and Ash travel around, getting involved in things, probably dropping fake names and aliases everywhere, you know. They both know, in the back of their minds, that the other is immortal. But any attempts at communication failed for some reason or another (they both travel so much being the main reason), and for decades and decades their paths never crossed, and Ash was doing his best to avoid everyone for a time, and things happened . . . But finally, they both do reunite, purely by chance, during a crisis in Oblivia. How I imagine it is that there’s this big, huge battle going on, and Ash is fighting, and all of a sudden he hears “Dragon Claw!” and he knows that voice, he knows, and he looks over and there’s Alan and Lizardon, and he calls Alan’s name, and Alan looks at him, and they realize so many things in that second, but there’s no time to talk, so they finish up the battle. Everything gets wrapped up, and it takes another couple days, but when they finally get a chance to settle down and reunite and talk it’s just . . . it’s really emotional, for both of them. But we also know what Ash tends to do with emotions he feels about other humans, so he says, “Hey . . . we never did have that battle you promised me.” So they battle. Lizardon vs. Charizard, and maybe mega evolution is involved, but either way. They battle and Alan wins, but at the end Ash is staring at Alan, and when Alan asks him about it, Ash says, “Nothing, it’s just that this is the first time I’ve seen you really smile in three days.” And it’s true. Alan feels . . . lighter, and the battle made him feel happier, than he has in . . . god, as long as he can remember. He forgot . . . even with his eidetic memory, after all these years, he forgot that Ash always had that effect on him. But it’s not just him. I said it was an emotional reunion, and I meant it. Like, Ash is . . . for the first time, Ash is faced with someone from his past who looks the same as he always did, because he’s immortal, too. Alan is immortal, too. Those feelings---he had formed such a connection with Alan in Kalos, even before the immortality. Alan had helped Ash, too, back then, even if it wasn’t as obvious. And now Alan is here, and Ash hadn’t even realized that he needed this, hadn’t even realized---of course he has Pikachu, they’re platonic soulmates, of course he does, but . . . to have another human being that he can connect with, that he can be honest about his immortality with, that he won’t have to watch grow old and die . . . When they go to part ways, and Alan goes and hops up on Lizardon’s back, Ash runs after him and is like, “Wait! Alan!” And Alan does. He waits. And Ash asks him where he’s going, and Alan shrugs, because who knows. And Ash says, “I don’t really have anywhere I’m going either, not really. Wanna go wherever . . . together?” And Alan is quiet, and at first Ash thinks that Alan might say no. But then Alan smiles a little, and extends his hand. And Ash grins, and takes it, and allows Alan to pull him up on Lizardon’s back. So they start traveling together.

They continue what they were both doing before, but together. Lots of exploration, but also lots of world defending, like . . . they intervene with huge criminal organizations or legendary crises, yes, but they also keep an eye on political stuff, too. Like, at one point the Charicific Valley loses federal protection as a result of some corrupt government dealings in Johto, and as a result poachers descend on the place en masse. Ash and Alan book it to get there, but they get there a little too late. They save some of the charizard (a couple, here or there), but a lot of them were just . . . it wasn’t pretty. It was devastating, actually. But they did their best, all the same. They felt it was their duty. The least they could do. But this is a part of the reason why, years down the line, the charmander line is . . . basically extinct. There are maybe still some others, apart from Lizardon and Ash’s charizard, but . . . they’re very, very few in number. (And like, no, the Valley was not the only wild charizard sanctuary, but the fact that it was necessary at all tells us the charmander line was already hurting. This . . . this didn’t help.) But sometimes they are more successful, and as I said, they keep an eye on things like that. There are times throughout the years when a government gets too corrupt and they actually intervene to help stage revolutions. At one point, there’s a Champion (maybe even in Johto or Kanto around the time the Valley massacre happened?) who likes to wear a necklace made out of charizard fangs, and Alan actually jumps up on that stage to use that necklace to pull the Champion near so that he can punch him in the face, and the government was so corrupt at the time that this puts a bounty on Alan’s head, so that was a thing that happened. (Ash was there, but he was in the crowd and is like 4′8″ forever, so. Not easily seen.) They made it out of that one, but you know what, the guy deserved to be socked in the face. Alan had enough.  But anyway, main takeaway here is: They keep an eye on world events and intervene when necessary. If you ask Ash, “We’re . . . kind of like guardians.” It’s the least they can do, you know.

Both are considerably happier once traveling together. Now that he has someone human to joke about it with, Ash likes to make lots of jokes about their immortality. He says he likes to think of his age as, “Thirteen with an asterisk.” He sings songs like “Wouldn’t It Be Nice” by the Beach Boys for the irony. (’Cause you know, the first lyrics are, “Wouldn’t it be nice if we were older, then we wouldn’t have to wait so long . . .”) It’s been a long time since he was ever in the mood to spontaneously sing, but hey, he is now! And Alan asks him if he’s a steel-type, actually, because, “Your irony is killing me.” Ash is delighted. He’s so delighted. They eventually do tell each other all about what they’ve been doing in the interim. Ash is the one human Alan was always able to confide in without problems, so he does naturally tell Ash about his suicide attempt. And Ash? Now Ash is not delighted anymore. He’s furious, and horror-stricken (because he can’t help thinking about what if Alan had gone through with it, he wouldn’t be here right now, he wouldn’t be---) and he’s just, “We hadn’t had our battle yet! You promised!” Alan stares at him. “I wasn’t thinking about that.” “Well, you should have been!” Ash says, and before Alan can say anything else, Ash points at him and says, “Three hundred more battles. I want three hundred more battles with you. Promise me.” Alan is aghast. “That’s . . . excessive,” he says. “That’s an absurdly high number---” “We’re immortal,” Ash says flatly. “We’ve literally got forever. Promise me.” And Alan knows what Ash is making him promise, really, and so he nods. “I promise.” “Good. I’m gonna make sure you keep it. Right, Pikachu?” “Pika!” Pikachu says, and believe me, he means it. 

They get very close, as could be expected. They reach a point where they can communicate certain things just by looking at each other. Pikachu, as he always did with people he and Ash became close with, does have a way of saying Alan’s name after a time (Kacha), as well as Lizardon’s (Pikaacha). I know that the names Pikachu has for others typically start with Pi, but there was just no way I could make Alan’s name work with that, so. Just work with me, here. Sometimes he rides around on Alan’s shoulders or head as well, depending. Ash, being a person who conveys love through physical affection and who loves physical intimacy, is often the one to initiate any sort of cuddling. Sometimes he uses Alan’s chest or stomach as a pillow (and complains about Alan’s abs, which Alan absolutely has as a dragon rider, because god, they’re so hard, couldn’t he be a bit of a softer pillow?), or just throws himself back against Alan when they’re watching a movie or something, if they’re staying at Ash’s house or somewhere else. Alan doesn’t mind; he might not initiate the cuddling himself, but he doesn’t mind it. Ash is really grateful for this. Sometimes, when they encounter others, people mistake them for brothers. Neither Alan nor Ash ever bother to correct them, although they don’t think of each other as brothers. In Alan’s mind, he only ever had one brother, and that was his stepbrother, Clemont. In Ash’s mind, well . . . he just never really thought of his friends as siblings, you know? He was an only child. Closest he ever got was Gary, he guesses, and also probably Brock. So even when someone calls Alan his brother, he goes with it, but he doesn’t really think of Alan like that, not really. It’s different than that. But they don’t ever discuss it. Alan figures they’re fine as they are (gee, wonder who he learned that from, Sycamore), and Ash kind of does, too. I do think Ash probably thinks about it more than Alan does, particularly since . . . well, keeping in mind that mentally they’re both over a hundred years old, probably, by this point (and that in canon we never saw a maturity gap between them anyway), and Ash is demiromantic pansexual (in my headcanon, at least), it is possible that Ash would actually develop feelings for Alan. But---and this is important---Alan is still aromantic asexual, so he’s not going to reciprocate those feelings. And Ash is very emotionally intelligent, I think he’d be able to tell that Alan is not in love with him. (And he figures, well, he still looks thirteen anyway, he still looks like a kid whereas Alan looks like a teenager, so thanks for that once again, immortality.) And he’d be fine with that, really, so long as they can stay together. Like, whatever he feels, even if he doesn’t realize “I’m in love with him,” I think he’d at least know that he wants to spend the rest of his forever with Alan, or at least he does for the time being. And he hopes Alan feels the same way. And even if he did tell Alan, and Alan was like, “Oh . . . I can’t---” and was feeling kind of alarmed, Ash would assure him of this. Like, he might want Alan to know, but he doesn’t expect anything from it, like that. Don’t worry. But that said, even though Alan is aroace, make no mistake that Ash is just as important to him, like . . . we all saw those canon episodes, we know what kind of deep connection these two have. So especially in Immortality AU, where they’re the only humans each other has left, really, that bond is going to be even stronger. (It’s going to be a mega bond, if you will---okay, I’ll see myself out.) So that’s definitely where the queerplatonic relationship comes in, even if it’s never actually called as such between them. (Actually, in a situation where someone who knows they aren’t brothers asks what they are, Ash would probably just shrug and say, “Dunno. Haven’t thought too much about it. It’s good, though.”) So that’s a thing, too. 

But oh, I’m sure anyone who is still reading this is probably wondering . . . what about Lizardon? Because I mentioned up above that Lizardon still grew physically, and Alan was internally wrecked with worry and impending grief over this, and Ash, being emotionally intelligent, would pick up on Alan’s fear even if Alan never actually said . . . Well, you really can’t expect Ash to just let this go, can you? The thing is, Ash has a way with legendary pokémon. You know this, I know this---we all know this. And by this point in his immortal life, he’s just not down to take any nonsense from them. So he decides, okay, you know what, we’re just going to go ask Xerneas about this. Let’s go to Kalos and ask Xerneas what is up. If Lizardon’s not immortal, we’ll have Xerneas fix that. And if Lizardon is and is just growing anyway because he’s a dragon, hey! Now we know! And if he isn’t immortal and Xerneas won’t fix it, I’ll have a talk with Yveltal to fix me, Alan thinks, but doesn’t say. No, Ash thinks when he can tell that Alan is thinking ths, but also doesn’t say because Alan didn’t say his part, either.  So they go to Kalos so that Ash can tell Xerneas to get his antlered ass out here so they can have a little chat. (Probably he approaches this with a bit more tact, but . . . only a bit, because this is Ash we’re talking about.) And he succeeds at getting a chat with Lizardon, and Alan is suitably impressed, because like---it’s not that he didn’t believe Ash when Ash said, “Oh, no, trust me, I’ve got a whole thing with legendary pokémon, I can make him have a talk with me,” but it’s just . . . seeing is different than believing. Anyway, as it turns out (thanks to Pikachu helpfully translating), Xerneas’ power did affect Lizardon differently because Lizardon is a dragon by species. Essentially, it took longer to kick in, wrangling with Lizardon’s longevity. Lizardon did age normally for a few years, but all the while Xerneas’ power was slowing that process down, until it does eventually stop. Lizardon is fine. He won’t grow old and die. He’s immortal, too. Alan’s so relieved he nearly cries. “Great! Thanks, Xerneas,” Ash says, and he grins. “That’s all we had for you. You can go now.” Xerenas is more than a little bewildered by this sudden dismissal, but he probably does go. (A fic I was writing was originally a time travel fic wherein Alan and Ash, in the midst of trying to find Xerneas, were sent back in time by Celebi (who was feeling mischievous and pranky, I suppose) to the time period between TSME 4 and the League. They end up encountering Sycamore by happenstance, and Sycamore doesn’t realize that this is time-travel, and so it’s all emotional as Alan gets to see his father for the first time in 80+ years, and as Sycamore tries to talk to Alan about Lysandre, but Alan is cagey and won’t talk about that and says, “Nothing you say to me right now will change anything” and Sycamore doesn’t know why, and Ash keeps interrupting and changing the subject every time Sycamore tries to press, and also Alan refuses to call Lizardon out and Sycamore doesn’t know why that is, either (it’s because Lizardon is over ten feet tall and, uh, that’s going to be more than a little noticeable, probably), but he’s really worried because Steven told him that Lizardon healed fine after the incident in Hoenn, so ??? Anyway, I was originally a fic about all that, but then I lost my “current WIPs” folder, so. That’s gone now. I’m as devastated as anyone about this.)

There’s probably more that I could say, but wow, I’ve been typing this up for two hours and it is long, so I’ll leave it at this, haha.

#pokemon #champion alan #ash ketchum #qpp: let's battle again someday #immortality au #i'm not tagging all the other characters mentioned in this there are too many #but #lizardon #pikachu #those two are important #the bond that overcomes reason #i choose you #those relationships are important as well even if i didn't talk about the latter as much #and also #lab family #brot3: i knew you guys would come through #bc those two were mentioned as well #oh and i guess #satokasu #that too #okay that should be everything

[sage-nebula]

8 for Alain, 18 for BotW Link, 33 for BotW Zelda, 34 for Sycamore, aaand 41 for Satoshi!

Alan:

8.) Dreams

Ever since the Flare crisis—ever since all of … that … ended, sometimes Alan has dreams about Lysandre.

It’s difficult to call them nightmares, because they aren’t nightmares in the typical sense. Nightmares, as he has always understood them from childhood, usually involve something horrifying. Nightmares are supposed to consist of ax murderers, or terrifying demons, or being drowned, that sort of thing. But these dreams … aren’t like that. Instead, they’re always dreams of … they’re not memories. Even if they start out that way, that’s not how they stay. Usually they’re dreams of the present, except different, because in these dreams Alan’s present reality is that Lysandre is alive, and Alan is—for whatever reason—either working for him again, or, worse, actually living with him. It’s horrible; Alan feels with every fiber of his being that it’s horrible, that it’s wrong, that he doesn’t want it … but he also knows, in the dream at least, that it is reality. It’s inescapable. He has to accept it, no matter how ashamed it would make everyone who cares about him, no matter how miserable or anxious it makes him, no matter how much he struggles to remember how or why things ended up this way. They’re not … nightmares, exactly, but every time he has one of those dreams, he always wakes feeling shaken and uneasy, and everything about the rest of the day he has to face feels off. He feels off, in ways that hardly anyone notices, but that he wouldn’t be able to explain even if they did.

These dreams never go away. They’re often different—once he had a particularly strange one in which he had, mentally, been sent back into the past, back to the years when he was working for Lysandre, and was stuck there despite his knowledge of how things would end up—but they never go away. Even over a decade later, when it all should have been well and truly behind him, he still finds himself waking in the earliest hours of dawn, shaken in a way that makes him tug his blankets up over his head for a few minutes before he kicks them off completely so he can go spend some time with Lizardon before the day takes off.

(I have a fic on this subject here.)

Link, Hero of the Wild:

18.) Winter

Winter was, objectively, the worst goddessdamned season.

Oh sure, some would say that was a subjective opinion, that Link was speaking for himself and therefore it wasn’t objective at all, especially since all of his vitriol came from his “personal feelings.” Well, Link would say that his personal feelings held a lot of validity, thank you very much, especially since it was his personal feelings that drew him to start going after the Divine Beasts not ten minutes after throwing himself off the Great Plateau with nothing but a rusted sword, thin clothes that were poor excuses for armor, two apples, and a paraglider. That worked out real well for him when he landed and was immediately attacked by a swarm of keese, and then attacked by a camp of three bokoblins and two actual goddessdamned moblins when they heard his panicked screaming as he tried to hit the keese with his sword (which promptly broke, because did he mention it was rusted as fuck?). Yeah, that was real great, but you know what? He still did the thing anyway. He still made it through all that bullshit, and went after the Divine Beasts, and fought off the Ganon Blight within them, and did a whole bunch of other honestly suicidal, nonsensical bullshit, because his personal feelings told him that it was the Right thing to do. So if his “personal feelings” were valid enough to justify him saving Hyrule from Calamity Ganon, then Link felt that his “personal feelings” were valid enough to say that winter objectively sucked.

And you know what? He was going to say it. Winter. Objectively. Sucked. 

What good was winter? No good, that’s what. Winter was when everything got really, ridiculously cold. And you know what, that wasn’t too abnormal in certain parts of the world. Goddess freaking knows Link had to tromp through enough snow during his quest, and don’t even get him started about how many times he fell in that freezing damn river while trying to get to the frigging shrine on the Great Plateau so that he could get the spirit orb to appease the ghost of Zelda’s dead father (and honestly, if His Majesty didn’t approve of Link as a son-in-law after all this, then Link had picked up on a lot of modern day rude gestures that he would love to educate His Majesty on, because for someone who really wanted Link to save his kingdom and also his daughter, he made getting that paraglider a real pain in the ass). But in winter, everything was balls to the walls cold. Every part of the world was freaking freezing, except maybe Death Mountain, but excuse Link for not being able to spend an entire season cooped up inside a volcano because the rest of the world couldn’t handle being even halfway decent.

Farore.

And you know, some people would say he was just being whiny about the temperature. “Boo-hoo,” they’d say, “you don’t like the cold.” Well, first off, Link thinks it’s real rich for people who let monsters waltz around like they owned the place for ten thousand years to tell him “boo-hoo,” and then even more rich for them to get offended when he says this when he was able to learn how to fight them off by himself when he spent ten thousand years naked and asleep in a chamber. And oh, don’t give him that “well YOU got ten thousand years of rest” bullshit, because he only got that after he died, and he was weak as a day old kitten when he stumbled out of that cave, blinking into the sun, an apple shoved into his mouth by an old man who then gave him a stick and told him to venture off into the wilderness with no clue on what to do. He was naked, do you hear him? Naked. And yet he was still able to fight off bokoblin, so you know what, he doesn’t want to hear it.

“But you’re the Hero—” And you are people with hands, feet, eyes, and ears. You can fight bokoblin if you really try and put some backbone into it, don’t start with him.

Anyway. Where was he? Oh, yeah. Winter sucked, and the reason why it sucked was because everything was cold, and that really, really sucks when you spend 95% of your time sleeping outdoors. Here’s a newsflash: Campfires don’t warm your entire body at once. Do you know how uncomfortable it is to be huddled up in a mass of snow-soaked clothing, constantly tossing and turning so you can warm one side of your body while the other half freezes over again? Yeah, Din, thanks a whole lot for not making your fires more all-encompassing. It’s going to be real easy for Link to save Hyrule when half his body has frostbite. Oh, and when he’s half-starved, because a good portion of the world’s animals go into hibernation in the winter, and crops don’t freaking grow, and food is scarce so villages are charging an arm and a leg for it, and you know, Link would part with his limbs, he’s not too attached to them after ten thousand years of having them, but it might be kind of hard to save Hyrule with just a single arm and leg. He could probably still do it, if you gave him time to figure it out, but it just might be a little harder than it already is, and you know, it’s already kind of freaking hard enough in the dead of goddessdamn winter. 

FARORE. 

All right. Link is being a little unfair. It’s not exactly nice of him to drag the people of Hyrule for not doing anything to defend themselves from monsters when they are average citizenry who are, obviously, innately completely helpless, and incapable of learning basic self-defense. And okay, okay, that’s mean, too, he needs to be nicer to the people, but it’s just hard, you know, when he’s freezing no matter how many fucking layers he piles on, and his fingers are stuck to the hilt of his sword, and he hasn’t had a decent meal in a week because he has no food, and it’s snowing again, and do you know how much of a pain in the ass to climb mountains in snow? It’s at least possible, unlike when it’s raining (for real, fuck the rain, you can take all of your goddessdamned rain back, Nayru, take it back!), but for fucksake, climbing snowy mountains is not fun, and in winter, all of the mountains are snowy mountains.

But still. He’s being mean, and he knows it. Zelda wouldn’t appreciate that, even though Link knows she can be just as scathing as he, and more eloquent about it, too. But still, she wouldn’t approve, and he knows that, and he needs to be a little nicer, at least where the peoples of Hyrule are concerned.

He just really.

Hates.

Winter.

Princess Zelda:

33.) Safe

Her father kept a safe in his chambers when he was still alive.

There were multiple safes and treasure keeps around the castle, some known to the staff, and some hidden. There were some treasure troves, Zelda thought, that were probably unknown even to her. Hyrule Castle was a storied castle with many secrets; rumors and legends surrounded it, tales of ages past that certainly none alive today (and probably none alive ten thousand years ago) could verify. But while there were rumors of secrets the castle would take with it long past its destruction, there were some safes and treasure troves that Zelda knew to be true, and one was the safe that was embedded in the wall behind the headboard of her father’s bed.

Once Calamity Ganon is defeated, Zelda returns to her father’s chambers. She never knew what was in the safe. Once again, there were rumors; Zelda overheard some of the servants talking about it, ten thousand years ago. Some of the more ludicrous stories were that keys to the Sacred Realm were kept within. Others speculated that they were merely precious gems. Zelda didn’t know, and in honesty, she had never felt compelled to ask. Whatever was in the safe, she had known ten thousand years ago that it would not help her. If it would, no doubt her father would have given it to her. He had been just as desperate as she for her to unlock the power that slumbered within her. Had there been anything in the safe that could have enabled her to do that, he wouldn’t have hesitated to hand it over.

But now that ten thousand years had passed, and her father was long since deceased, Zelda felt compelled to check. She went by herself, without Link, to see what it was her father had kept in that safe. It wasn’t greed that compelled her, and the curiosity she felt was slim. Rather, it was the state of her kingdom. Link had done a fantastic job saving Hyrule, as she had known he would, but the Hyrule that he had to save … well, there wasn’t much of it left, anymore. There were settlements of people all across the land, but they were impoverished. They would need help to get on their feet again. And if there was any help that could be offered, any at all … if there was anything in her father’s safe that could pay for the reconstruction of the kingdom, she had to use it. 

So she returned to his quarters once the castle was safe again, and shoved the bed away from the wall. She used her telekinesis to undo the lock (such an easier feat than restraining Calamity Ganon), and pried the door open.

Her heart stilled as she saw what was inside.

There were no jewels inside the safe. There were no keys to the Sacred Realm. There wasn’t anything, except …

Drawings.

Gently, Zelda lifted aged pieces of parchment out of the safe. The drawings were simplistic, and clumsy. They were childish, as could be expected, given that they had been produced by a child.

Her.

The drawings were hers. Some were in mere charcoal, and others were in paint, but they were all … she had drawn all of them. There was a drawing of herself, her father, and her mother; there was a drawing of the stable boys tending to the horses; there was a drawing of flowers, and another of apple trees, and yet another of one of the Rito emissaries. There was a drawing of Impa, too.

Zelda went through the drawings one by one. She could still remember drawing some of them. Others, not so much. But they were there, each and every one, until she had stopped producing them altogether. She wiped her cheeks after a couple errant tears fell onto an illustration of a dog chasing an apple, and set the pictures aside as she looked back in the safe. There was one last portrait inside—a small, personal one—separated from the stack that Zelda had removed from the safe. She picked it up with trembling fingers, and stifled a sob with her other hand as she looked down at it.

It was a self-portrait, at least partially, painted by her mother. Unlike Zelda’s own artworks, this one was masterful. Her mother had captured both herself and her father when they were younger, smiling, laughing—in love. Zelda set the portrait aside and buried her face in her arms, unable to stop her sobs or tears from flowing now.

There had indeed been treasures in her father’s safe. Just not the type everyone had gossiped about.

Sycamore:

34.) Affection

Augustine doesn’t have one primary love language. He has three: Words of affirmation, physical affection, and gift giving.

The type he employs somewhat depends on the person, but it also depends on his mood. He likes picking up gifts for those he cares about while he’s out and about, on a whim. There doesn’t need to be a special occasion to give a gift, he feels, especially if it’s something small, a little token of, “I saw this and I thought of you.” (Of course, gifts are given on special occasions, absolutely. But it doesn’t have to be a special occasion.) And it isn’t at all uncommon for him to ruffle Alan’s hair, or gently give Gabrielle a hug, and if he’s upset, then he certainly loves to be hugged, and finds comfort in cuddles. And as far as words of affirmation go, well—those are normal, aren’t they? Why shouldn’t he tell his loved ones when they’re marvelous? Why shouldn’t he tell them that they’re loved? (Not that he’s always the best at communicating things that need to be communicated—he’ll always kick himself over the fact that Alan had any doubts at all that Augustine saw him as a son—but he will tell someone on a whim that they’re wonderful, that he’s glad to have them there. He can’t imagine not doing that.)

So Augustine is, at his core, a very affectionate person. He loves doling it out, and he of course likes receiving it in turn, though it isn’t always strictly necessary. But that said, he does struggle a bit with the remaining two love languages, however much of a mastery he has on the other three. When it comes to acts of service and quality time … those two can certainly be struggles.

Acts of service tend to be a struggle for Augustine in two parts. As far as doing them is concerned, Augustine is often both so wrapped up in his own duties that he doesn’t have very much time to complete someone else’s work (not that acts of service are all about work, but—), and he’s also always so focused on gift giving, or showing affection through physical or verbal affirmation, that acts of service seem a little … unnecessary, or even performative to him, not to mention perhaps a little … not lazy, per se, but … perhaps … demanding on the part of the one who wanted them? And as far as receiving goes, well, Augustine doesn’t really ask others to do his work for him (having lab assistants is different, because they need jobs, too), and when it comes to grander scale things, well … in all honesty, he would prefer it if Alan would stop risking his life to try and protect Augustine’s. It’s supposed to be the other way around, if anything (this is one act of service Augustine doesn’t feel is unnecessary or performative, given that he is Alan’s father), and really, he would be a lot more grateful just to see his son alive, happy, and well. That’s all he wants. That’s all he’s asking for.

So acts of service can be a bit difficult, and trust in the fact that this struggle Augustine has with this particular love language did cause some strife during his university years, given that his roommate Fulbert was all about acts of service, and Augustine was not, and so in freshman year in particular there were a lot of “fights” that wouldn’t have been fights at all had they realized that their hurt feelings all spawned from a misunderstanding about whether they liked each other or not. (Which they did, but Fulbert just wanted Augustine to perhaps take some initiative to clean the dorm once in a while, whereas Augustine didn’t understand why Fulbert wouldn’t compliment him, or give him a friendly hug, or sometimes bring him back a smoothie from the on-campus smoothie shop. Fulbert didn’t realize that Augustine was trying to be friendly by always trying to hug him or get his favorite snacks when he went out on grocery runs (rather than being clingy or trying to buy his friendship), and Augustine didn’t realize that Fulbert doing Augustine’s laundry along with his own wasn’t Fulbert being a neat freak, but rather was Fulbert trying to be helpful. It was just … a bit difficult, for a little while. 

(“I just don’t understand why you still hate me after all this time!”

“What the—I don’t hate you, whatever gave you that frigging idea?”

“What do you think? You never say a single nice word to me, you push me away when I try to hug you—”

“I don’t like to be hugged—”

“Who doesn’t like to be hugged?!”

“Me!”

“You’re always so cold—”

“I—I do your damn laundry every week, I’m always cleaning your side of the dorm, I make sure you get to class on time—”

“I don’t ask you to do any of that, Fulbert, and you never appreciate how I always make sure to get your favorite chips from the—”

“I don’t ask you to do that, either! And maybe it’s not about asking, maybe I just help you out because I want to—”

“Well, maybe I just get your snacks because I want to!”

“Why do you want to buy my damn snacks?”

“Why do you want to do my laundry?”

“Because I want to make sure you have something clean to wear so you don’t get yourself sick!”

“Well I want you to be happy, and I know that having your favorite snacks while you do your homework makes you happy!”

“Wha—since when do you care if I’m happy?”

“What are you talking about? I’ve always cared!”

“Since when?”

“Since always! You’re the one who doesn’t—”

“If I didn’t care about you, I wouldn’t give a damn what you do or how sick you got because you think a cereal bowl’s still clean after the first use so long as you wipe it out with a paper towel first.”

“It’s clean enough—”

“It damn well is not!”

“… So you really don’t hate me?”

“Of course I don’t frigging hate you. Whatever gave you that stupid idea in the first place?”

“I don’t think we need to go over this whole thing again.”

“… Yeah. You’re probably right about that one.”Idiots, the pair of them. In their defense, they were ~18, but still. Idiots.)

Ash:

41.) Memory

Ash doesn’t remember his father.

He thinks he should remember his father, and sometimes, if he tries hard enough, he can almost make himself believe he does. He has pictures of him, or at least one or two; he has one in his bedroom, a framed candid photo of his dad with his chikorita (his dad’s chikorita, that is, not Ash’s own then-Chikorita, now-Bayleef), and he thinks his mom has at least a couple somewhere, though they never look at them. Sometimes, if he looks at the picture of his dad long enough, he thinks he can remember some things from when he was very small. He thinks maybe he can remember his dad holding him when he was a baby, or what his dad smelled like. He knows he … probably doesn’t. Babies don’t have memories from when they’re that small. But whenever he asks his mom, she always gives him positive answers. That’s just how his mom is, and he knows that’s a fact, because there were times when he’d go downstairs in the middle of the night to get a glass of milk when he was real small, and he’d hear his mom crying in the kitchen, but when he went to see if he could make her feel better like she always did for him, she’d smile real bright and tell him that everything was just fine, and what was he doing up so late? It was way past his bedtime. She was lying, and he knew it, and he also knew that the reason why she was lying about crying probably had something to do with the fact that his dad was never home, and they didn’t have very much money because his mom had a hard time running the restaurant all by herself, and he didn’t think his dad ever sent money home for the them. (But whether he did or didn’t, Ash really didn’t know for sure. His mom never liked to talk about money very much with him, unless she was uncomfortably apologizing for not being able to get him the coolest new toy that all the other kids and especially Gary had, but Ash never really cared about that, and he hoped she believed him when he said it. It was always good enough for him just to have her as his mom.)

But even if his mom remembers his dad, Ash himself doesn’t. He knows things that his mom has told him. He knows that his dad is a pokémon trainer, somewhere out there in the world, and he knows that his dad would be proud of him, because his mom said that his dad would be. And Ash hopes that’s true. His mom wouldn’t lie on purpose, unless she was trying not to worry him, but … well, sometimes Ash thinks about what it will be like if he ever runs into his dad on his journey. He can’t remember him, but that’s okay; he can always make new memories of him. He wonders what his dad will think when he meets Pikachu, or Ash’s other pokémon. He wonders if his dad’s chikorita is a meganium now, and he wonders how his dad’s meganium will get along with Bayleef. He wonders what it’ll be like to talk to his dad, and if … if he’ll be mad, maybe, when he meets him, if he’ll be a little mad, like how Brock was when his dad finally came home. He at least doesn’t think he’d try to turn his dad into a doll, like Sabrina did hers, even if he had that power, but he thinks … he doesn’t remember his dad, but he remembers how hard it was on his mom, raising him by herself, because even when he tried not to cause too much trouble, trouble usually had a way of finding him. He remembers the nights he’d walk into the kitchen to find his mom crying at the kitchen table, a lot of papers spread over it that he realizes years later were probably bills. He remembers that his mom was only eighteen when he was born, and that if she was on a pokémon journey herself at the time she probably had to end it, but that his dad hadn’t ended his even though Ash was just as much his son as he was his mom’s. And he thinks … maybe he would be a little mad, if he ever got a chance to meet his dad. Because maybe his dad would be proud of him, and maybe Ash wants his dad to be proud of him, but maybe … maybe Ash isn’t very proud of his dad. And maybe he doesn’t remember his dad, but maybe his dad should have remembered him and his mom, and maybe it seems like he didn’t, and maybe … maybe Ash is a little mad about that, yeah, if he thinks about it.

But it’s complicated, and Ash isn’t always the biggest fan of thinking about complicated things. And truth be told, he doesn’t need a dad, anyway. He’s got his mom, and his mom is the best mom in the world. They’re the only family they need.

Whether he remembers (or ever meets) his dad or not, that’s good enough for him.

#ryttu3k #headcanon meme #my valiant dragon son #feisty cinnamon roll son #fic fix

[sage-nebula]

Do you think Alan and Keith would get along?

Absolutely!

Keith and Alan actually have a lot in common personality-wise, which I think is undoubtedly what drew me to Keith’s character. It’s like I could tell he was going to be similar to Alan, like I just knew it on an intrinsic level, and so it really drew me to him, made me pay attention to him, and now I love him to bits and pieces and he’s very important to me.

But that said, because they have so much in common, I really do think they’d get along. For starters, when it comes to basic temperament, they’re quite similar, which would make it easy for them to coexist in the same space and work well together. Both are quiet and introverted, as well as observant. They’re both more prone to watching others rather than volunteering information about themselves, or rather than trying to pry and pull personal information out of other people for the sake of their own interest. What this means is that, if they were in the same space, they would be comfortable just chilling in silence, doing their own thing, and would respect each other’s privacy without trying to pull personal details out of them. (Though at the same time, neither one is actually averse to socializing, at least in terms of one-on-one socialization, or socialization in small doses. They’re quite introverted, yes, but they’re not misanthropic, which is a prominent mischaracterization of Keith in particular.) Moreover, not only are they both quiet individuals, but they both prefer the peace and quiet. Keith outright says, “I like it out here. It’s quiet” at one point, while Alan’s preference for tranquility and peaceful atmosphere is evident in his tendency to sit in secluded areas of nature (another similarity he has in common with Keith—both enjoy nature), his love of Sycamore’s lab, and his tendency to hang back in the midst of festivities or get a bit exasperated / worn out when Manon is being particularly loud and energetic.

So on a completely regular, average day, both tend to be rather quiet and introverted. They also tend to be rather calm on the regular, with mild demeanors unless they’re provoked.

And if they’re provoked? Well …

When it comes to temper, they do have a bit of a difference. Keith is quicker to raising his voice than Alan is, because Alan tends to shut down and go silent when he’s pissed off. Usually, the angrier Alan is, the quieter he is. I say usually, because even Alan has a breaking point when it comes to this, a point at which he will start shouting when being quiet and rebuffing the source of his aggravation is not working. (We see this in both TSME 3 and TSME 4 with Manon, and we also see him strike back verbally against Lysandre during the Flare arc, though it was difficult for him to speak up then due to how emotionally ravaged he was.) Keith is quicker to lash out and express himself verbally, quicker to show his temper in that way, but even Keith has his moments of just going quiet and ignoring whatever is pissing him off if the provocation is not serious enough, and this is a tactic he usually tries to use with Lance before Lance pushes him too far. So even when they have differences in this area, I feel like they still handle things relatively the same.

That said, irritation is not the only form of provocation. When it comes to danger, Keith and Alan tend to react similarly. Both are very protective of those around them (e.g. Alan diving to catch Manon when Rayquaza’s blast knocked her off her feet, Keith catching Pidge when Ulaz threw her). Both tend to take point and lead when a crisis happens, responding immediately and giving directives as needed (Keith does this multiple times in the first two seasons, Alan does this in TSME 2 when Rayquaza attacks). Both are very intelligent and observant, but they also tend to let their instincts lead them, leading to actions that seem impulsive and reckless to an outside observer, but which make perfect sense to them and they could explain and back up (e.g. Keith fighting Zarkon one-on-one, Alan throwing himself out of the aircraft to go after Lizardon in TSME 3). Both Keith and Alan are independent, courageous, and have good instincts when it comes to what to do in dangerous situations. Both of them think quickly on their feet and favor action over hesitation. Both of them are very passionate about facing situations head-on, and have unflinching belief in their teams / partners.

And to that end, they have similar morals, in the sense that both are very, very Gryffindor. Both Keith and Alan operate on a basis of what they feel is Right, versus what they feel is Wrong. I won’t go into a long and drawn out House analysis right now, but one of the main components of Gryffindor House is the chivalry component, which comprises the knight code, and part of that is “honor”, which in this case pertains to the personal, inner gut feeling of Right versus Wrong that drives each Gryffindor. What is Right and what is Wrong can differ from person to person, from Gryffindor to Gryffindor, but the important distinction between a Gryffindor and someone from another House is that, for Gryffindors, this is what drives them. And this is the case for both Alan and Keith. Both of them are very, very driven by what they feel is Right. They will stand for and fight for that until their dying breath, even if it makes everyone else hate them, even if others disagree. It’s important to them that they do this—they have to do this. They have to follow what their heart of hearts says is Right, or else they feel extreme discontent and unease. We see this with both of them at multiple points throughout the narrative—we see how they will risk their lives, their security, and even sever ties with loved ones if necessary in order to see this through (e.g. Alan dropping out of contact with Sycamore for years, Keith refusing to give up the Trials of Marmora / his knife for Shirologram). It hurts them, absolutely—kills them, even, emotionally, because of how badly it hurts—but they’re willing to do it because, right then, they feel that it is the Right Thing to do, however much of a personal sacrifice it may be. Both of them are driven by this, and from what we’ve been shown of their characters it’s clear that they would by and large agree on what the Right Thing is, about what the greater good is. Their morals align in that sense and so there would be no conflict there.

Both of them place heavy importance on training, and on being strong enough to protect others (both those closest to them and the world). Alan likes to study and research more than Keith does, but Keith had a lot of books in his desert shack, so I don’t think he’s averse to reading, either. They’re both orphans who long for family, yet due to their introverted natures (and C-PTSD, tbh) tend to have difficulties connecting with others and often come across as loners. Both of them care deeply for those closest to them and would do anything to protect them (even if it means cutting them off, as we see with Alan severing his ties with Sycamore and Manon, and Keith being willing to exile himself from Team Voltron in 2x06). They both love exploring, love seeing new places, and love thrills and adventure (e.g. Keith loves speeding on his hoverbike, Alan loves battling with Lizardon and I headcanon that he loves flying on him, too). They both show an open dislike for pretension, and related to that, a distaste for people who brag unnecessarily. They’re both very confident in their own skills and abilities—they know what they can do, even as they push themselves to do better—but at the same time they harbor a lot of inner demons and insecurities largely related to traumas they’ve faced in their past / are related to their histories as orphans. They’re both very independent and strong-willed. They are Determinators who do not quit nor back down regardless of the size of the challenge set before them. They’re both incredibly honest people who do not lie or fuck around with people, and who react poorly to those who try to manipulate, use, or lie to others (which makes what happened to Alan all the more painful, but). They both take promises they make seriously and do their damnedest to see them through (see: they are Determinators who do not quit). And on and on—I could probably compare them for ages, but you get the idea by now.

The point is, while they’re both clearly their own characters still, they do have a lot in common. I do think they’d get along pretty spectacularly. The only time I see them clashing is if they each had a different idea of how to handle something, and even then, most likely they’d come to an “you do your thing, I’ll do mine” agreement and then head off to do whatever it is they originally wanted to do, because that’s just how they are.

So yeah, I think they’d get along really well. I love them both so much for a reason. ♥

#my valiant dragon son #a blade of storm and fire #orasforlife