This ain't a tea party; it's combat!
Man, it's been forever ago since I used this thing. Geez. Though I know part of that's due to the fact that I got sick twice over the past month - like really sick. As in, wanting-to-puke-but-can't-because-I-didn't-eat-anything-because-I-know-it'll-give-me-indigestion-and-yet-I-am-still-starving sick. Not to mention the cold chills and fevers coming in and out. Part of me likes to think the sudden cold snap is the cause of that since that always seems to fuck my body up, but I've been better now. Since the Diamond & Pearl series is officially over and I've got pretty much nothing left to worry about in terms of staying close to its canon in Trifecta I can start kicking myself into getting a transcript down for Pillars of Friendship! and then finally start chapter 16.
One little detail had me intrigued near the end of DP188, though...
I... had no idea they would establish Brandon as still being in Snowpoint after all this time. He's seriously still there rebuilding the temple almost exactly 60 episodes after that incident? I doubt he'd abandon his duties as a Frontier Brain my fic notwithstanding indefinitely just to rebuild a temple. I may have to go with my so-morally-wrong-it's-not-surprising-coming-from-the-likes-of-me route after all. I certainly do not plan on Brandon staying in Snowpoint for the entire fic as I've already established him traveling throughout Sinnoh, so at best I'll just say he does eventually go back to Snowpoint a few times, making it his makeshift "central hub" of sorts while he's out there.
Anyway, this is still open-ended enough for me to take advantage of and have the second saga of Trifecta go as planned: Paul going to Kanto's Battle Frontier. Brandon can simply decline Paul the request for the rematch since his insufferable kid's only accomplished half of his tasks, and this is a good time as any to say that Reggie's battle with Brandon will occur here instead. Won't that be a fun ride. So yeah, that was a bit surprising right there. Now, the other screencaps...
This was after Reggie told Paul's Pokemon that weren't used for the battle vs. Ash (or... at all on-screen for the League... and for some reason Reggie's Swalot and Staraptor are there too) that Paul would give them all a battle for the first time since forever despite losing in the League. And yes, the main reason I love this shot is because Weavile looks like a total and utter derp here and Honchkrow looks like a flashy priss, which is exactly how I've characterized those two in particular.
The first and only time we'll ever see Paul with an "OHOHOHOHO~!" gesture? This was the result of many failed attempts to get a really good action-y shot of Paul during the final leg of the full battle with Ash - the reason being that while it was one of the few shots that wasn't constantly reused, the transition between the pose and the following scene was lightning-fast and my video player tends to crash whenever I try to rewind, so I ended up with this and settled for it... 'cause you know, it IS a pretty amusing shot all in all.
So D/P has officially come to an end. Dawn achieved GF Runner-up, Ash finally bested his last League placing by reaching the Top 4, and probably would have reached the finals if he wasn't pitted against an uber-using Gary Stu. At least he did defeat Darkrai and Kamikaze'd Latios, which evidently none of Takuto's other competitor's managed, so that's pretty noteworthy. For being a terrible battle in concept, the action was pretty nice and even gave Ash's always-badass Sceptile the honorable distinction of being one of the few of Ash's Pokemon to ever take down a legendary in battle. I think the only others are (obviously) Pikachu with Regice/Latios and Charizard with Articuno. It was a great saga, though I do wish it would've lasted longer and allowed full battles for both Barry and Conway. If only we didn't have those unnecessary fillers right before the League and Nando coming in on it, because that battle was pretty much essentially "blah" - and there was really no reason for it to be any more than that since Nando already got his epic-scale battle out of Zoey. He's not nearly interesting enough to warrant two of those, so I say it would've been best to just axe him completely and give the more deserving characters some more time to shine. But for what we got, it was way beyond awesome and I seriously wonder how the hell the events of Best Wishes will top Ash and Paul's final battle. Until there's an official romanized name for Shuuti/Shooti/Shooty I swear I'm calling him Young Bandit Keith. Also turns out he's getting Tsutarja - a girl, at that. lulzy. And an interesting and legitimate reason for Pikachu's obligatory power-down at the beginning of the series, too. How about that. They'll definitely need to pull out all the stops to fill in the big shoes left by D/P, though.
I have to say Iris already interests me way more than Dawn ever did. Not sure if her Kibago's going to be in Piplup's role of pseudo secondary mascot or not, but I'm sure the producers are pretty pissed about not getting to market Piplup up the ass anymore, so I'm sure they've put loads of thought into that.
Speaking of, I did like the final episode of DP, but was I the only one who was really fucking annoyed with Piplup (or Pochama in this case) crying for like a solid 45 seconds? Yes, I get it - he's depressed - but couldn't they have tried to make said depression less... grating? And this is coming from someone who actually likes Pochama's voice (especially compared to Piplup's), so I will dread the hell out of this scene once it's dubbed. But yeah, that part just reinforces the fact that one thing I am happy about D/P ending is no more goddamned Piplup. It being marketed on the level of Pikachu wasn't what bothered me at all - but I found that Piplup's personality is honestly not that endearing to sit through after almost 200 episodes. I liked its bratty personality at first, but I got sick of it really quickly and Piplup was a serious limelight hog the entire time, which effectively shafted the majority of Dawn's team.
I found it highly odd that they didn't tell us what Dawn would be doing now that Ash and Brock are leaving her. Thought it was suspicious that they were reminiscing over the Pokemon Stylist filler episode of all things and not go anywhere with that since Dawn was offered to partake in that and declined, and in the end it evidently had no bearing on Dawn's goals as she still wants to be a Top Coordinator. So we got that and... nothing else. That could work to my favor as far as the fic goes, though. I just thought it was weird since we had very clear motives for Misty and May to justify their departures. Even Paul got one, but Dawn doesn't? Huh.
Still can't say I'll miss Dawn... at least, not nearly as much as I'm missing Paul/Barry/Conway. I stopped caring about Dawn and her storyline midway in and there wasn't much later on in the series to get me to care otherwise. That's a shame, though to be fair another part of it is that many of us already figured Dawn would get the boot as soon as D/P ended since the anime was establishing a pattern there with Misty and May's departure. So I knew better than to get attached, perhaps? I'll also be glad to see the Pearlshipping riots to finally die down... geh, I hate that pairing almost as much as I hate Pokeshipping.
Brock's departure, IMO, was way more heart-wrenching than Dawn's. It wasn't nearly as detailed and only lasted a few moments, but the subtlety of it (plus Ash and Brock's brief hesitation to let go of their handshake) was truly beautiful to me. As I said, I've always enjoyed Brock no matter how stale/useless he got. At the same time I'm not against shaking things up by replacing him as Brock's been in the anime for such a long-ass time now, and it is nice that Brock finds his true calling as a Pokemon Doctor rather than a Breeder. Thinking back on it, there are numerous episodes throughout D/P (and probably the past series as well) that show Brock being more of an ideal doctor than anything else. So if that was honestly build-up, I have to say that was very nicely done. It really is gonna be weird not having him around anymore after the fact, but I'm sure Dento's going to be a fun enough ride to ease the pain.
Of course, I guess I'll need to get my clothes ready ahead of time for work when Best Wishes premieres the week after next since that's two back-to-back episodes, meaning it'll end at 7 AM (which is close to the time I should start getting ready to leave for work). Daylight Savings Time won't be for another effing few months, but when that happens, that will get rid of that cutting-it-close timing.
Anyway, I've done a loooot of doodling since I've done no writing lately and work has been slow as hell the past couple of weeks. My main project is a Farewell to D/P picture, which I'll show my progress of right now.
This was the initial sketch, in which Paul turned out quite nicely but everyone else ended up all blech, mainly because of the limited space on the page. This is all representative of what I hope to happen for Trifecta once I'm done adapting the entire D/P series. My aim was to have Paul travel to Kanto to take on the Battle Frontier, of course, but this time he would finally have his traveling buddy group just like Ash does. Said group consists of Barry and Conway, of course.
It balanced out nicely, too. I decided that while Paul would take on the Battle Frontier, Conway would decide to switch over to Contests now that he no longer has to take down Saturn and compare his ultimate performance in Kanto's GF to his Top 16 performance in the Sinnoh League. Barry, meanwhile, will be conquering Gyms to enter the Indigo League for the first time. So that way, all bases are covered!
So why is Dawn there? Well, she is the central female to the series and that seemed fitting to include her in the farewell pic since she's going too, but one of my recent ideas was to actually have her compete in Contests in Kanto (similar to May going to Johto at the end of AG) and become Conway's main rival. So she wouldn't be traveling with the group, but she would appear frequently enough and finally give me what I always wanted the anime to do. Oh, I am so pathetic. ♥ Not sure if I'll give Barry a rival or not (no one's coming to mind at the moment), but Paul will have a rival for the BF. Someone who's collecting Symbols at the same time as him.
o shi-
Yup! That is indeed who you think it is. I decided that rather than being an extremely vague reference made at the very end of the story that only people who stalk pokedressing would get that Silver would be made into Paul's full-fledged rival for the BF half of the story. Only he will still be heavily downplayed, and for the most part will only show up when Paul is alone and will be depicted as a silhouette most of the time. But yes, he'll be the mystery rival who makes mincemeat out of Paul's team every time the two clash... y'know, just so the journey through Kanto isn't all smiles and laughs and petty daddy-hatred.
... I am definitely giving that picture a re-try, though. It is completely awful-looking. Anyway, since I wasn't satisfied with how Paul's little entourage appeared in the pic, I decided to draw them individually and add them as layers through Paintshop Pro magic once I get around to the coloring and shading. I already took care of the lineart cleanup, as seen here:
They ended up looking much better, but still pretty sucky since my art skills have always been so pitifully sub-par. Anyway, I'll definitely look into getting this finished before Best Wishes premieres.
So yeah. This may be a subplot I'll give Reggie when he's not busy being PO'ed at his dad or having self-doubts. This was brought up in a Skype chat by kitsune_prophet (and I think kyosukekusaragi) about how Whitney could randomly show up in the Sinnoh region not entirely unlike how Jasmine showed up in Sinnoh one day due to her interest in trying out Sinnoh's Contests. But she also has a history with Reggie (I think way back in chapter 2 Reggie namedropped Whitney; she wasn't a Gym Leader yet back when Reggie traveled through Johto - I picture her to be close to Reggie's age, maybe a little younger... either way I picture Reggie "knows" Whitney in the same manner he knows Candice; familiar, but not close like he is with Roark) and in fact has a mad crush on him and takes every opportunity to get his attention as she requests special training from him despite Reggie not being a Coordinator.
Reggie, derp that he is as well as a nice guy, would take Whitney under his wing and train her, but an extremely jealous other pink-haired potential Reggie love interest named Maylene would see right through Whitney's intentions and challenges her to a battle. A nice little Gym Leader vs Gym Leader battle. Of course, since Maylene's a Fighting-type expert versus Whitney's Normal-types, it's obvious that Maylene would wipe the floor with Whitney.
But then Whitney uses this to her advantage like BAAAAWWWWing like she does in the games, and poor sympathetic Reggie gives all of his care and attention to her... which is exactly what Whitney wanted all along. Thus Maylene is PO'ed that her own victory turned against her.
This is a very nice scenario I would enjoy playing out. I'm not sure when exactly, but it's a perfect way to give Reggie something else to do, and especially Maylene since she's easily the blandest and most bored of Trifecta's primary characters. So yeah, look forward to that, I guess?
My attempt to depict Paul's haircut that he was recently given in pokedressing. And also, Lain~! Paul's expressions are based off of something I'll show off in a later post.
My FAILTASTIC first attempt at Paul's shorter hair that I decided to scan because Reggie turned up oh-so cute and this is also my first time trying to draw Iris. On the left Iris is in Sierra's outfit because in my headcanon of a Total Drama-Pokemon (mostly) anime crossover, Iris strikes me as a perfect Sierra. Mind you, Cody is... ... Max. Make of that what you will. I tentatively made Young Bandit Keith Alejandro, though Dento might fit better. I think I shoved him into Noah's position because I couldn't think of anyone to put him as in the past, but for all I know they could be interchangeable.
On the right, Iris is in a grass jungle skirt that is an attempt to homage Sapphire from Pokemon Special. This is because when I first got a glimpse at Iris, before we knew anything about her, I thought she reeked of "wild girl who is awkwardly trying to fit into modern society" and at least half of that turned out to be canonly right since she is depicted as a "wild girl" who swings off motherfuckin' vines and everything. Wild prediction skills I have, huh? Grass skirts also suit her way too well.
PD-based; Paul's interactions with characters. healing_yellow sleeping over Paul because my god their interaction is cute. Paul knows not to touch her or else Gold will kill him. We've also got insultyoulater ruffling Paul's hair because he's tall enough to get away with it and we always love flustering Paul. Paul attempting to comfort tsuuuun and we all know how well that turned out. Then there's Paul with... Dawn... really could be almost any Dawn in PD. He's looking directly down at her skirt. What a surprise.
Lastly is this piece of crap. Yet another attempt to draw short-haired Paul, how fucked-up he looked after getting his ass kicked at the Awesome Onsen, and a tiny!Paul right after he became traumatized due to his mother's death. He had that expression on his face for at least a week and wouldn't even talk. All sorts of sadness with this asshole!
Admittedly I'm having a hard time figuring out what to do next with battlestandby. It may have taken me like a year more than everyone else, but now I'm starting to get sick of the drama, the sense that things will never improve for this guy, and that fact that the vast majority of the characters he interacts with are ganging up on him... and that fact that he keeps getting his ass kicked in battle. I mean, it's been amusing for a long time, but now I'm getting really bored and even depressed with it because I'd like to see some semblance of progress with Paul's character since his +1 year at PD, but very rarely does one get to see that growth.
Then again, it could just be pointless bitching from me, but I would like to get Paul out of jobber status one day and in a position where his sanity is not totally lost on a daily basis. Because at this rate, he'll end up being another Pryce and I'd really rather not have that happen.
Um, this post is getting crazy huge so I think I'll wait for another day to talk about other stuff (namely Total Drama World Tour-related stuff), but while I've not updated Trifecta's timeline yet, I will soon, but I would like to confirm some (tentative) titles for future chapters. I've also mapped out plans for Chapter 26 in full, and I have confirmed that Chapter 27 will be the Fighting Fire with Ire! adaptation. Anyway, here's what the chapter titles are looking like right now from chapters 16 onward:
Chapter 16: Viva La Regi-lution!
Chapter 17: We're Gonna Need a Montage!
Chapter 18: The Worst of Messes Become Successes!
Chapter 19: Black Ice Battle!
Chapter 20: The Breaks of Making Up!
Chapter 21: TBA
Chapter 22: TBA
Chapter 23: Ghost Busted!
Chapter 24: TBA
Chapter 25: Going Eight!
Chapter 26: TBA
Chapter 27: TBA
Now... Going Eight! in particular is a title I'm worried that the TCPI dub will actually use in the near future. The reason for the name is because Conway will get his final badge in Chapter 25. Obviously this is a spin on the phrase "going ape".
Now consider Ash's official battle with Volkner and the fact that Infernape will play a huge role in it. And that this will be Ash's eighth badge gain.
Does it seem extremely plausible or what?!
Then again, I was almost sure they'd use It's On Like Bastiodon! (Chapter 5's title) for Ash's battle with Byron, but instead settled for an extremely generic Dealing With Defensive Types!, so it could be the same case here for all I know.
But this IS quite an opportunity to use that awful pun, isn't it? What to do you guys think? I'll hate having to come up with something else if it ends up being used after all... d'aww man.
Oh, and one last thing. Belatedly, oh-so belatedly, I must bow and thank demonoflight for this wonderful piece of fanart (though I did comment +fav... two days after it was posted). Words really cannot describe how much it tickles me silly to get fanart from other people based on my stories. ♥ It's a great thing to look at whenever I'm feeling down; I swear Andrea's drawn better here than how I actually draw her. Go figure~.
Okay, everyone go chew on that and chew me out as you deem fitting!
One little detail had me intrigued near the end of DP188, though...
I... had no idea they would establish Brandon as still being in Snowpoint after all this time. He's seriously still there rebuilding the temple almost exactly 60 episodes after that incident? I doubt he'd abandon his duties as a Frontier Brain my fic notwithstanding indefinitely just to rebuild a temple. I may have to go with my so-morally-wrong-it's-not-surprising-coming-from-the-likes-of-me route after all. I certainly do not plan on Brandon staying in Snowpoint for the entire fic as I've already established him traveling throughout Sinnoh, so at best I'll just say he does eventually go back to Snowpoint a few times, making it his makeshift "central hub" of sorts while he's out there.
Anyway, this is still open-ended enough for me to take advantage of and have the second saga of Trifecta go as planned: Paul going to Kanto's Battle Frontier. Brandon can simply decline Paul the request for the rematch since his insufferable kid's only accomplished half of his tasks, and this is a good time as any to say that Reggie's battle with Brandon will occur here instead. Won't that be a fun ride. So yeah, that was a bit surprising right there. Now, the other screencaps...
This was after Reggie told Paul's Pokemon that weren't used for the battle vs. Ash (or... at all on-screen for the League... and for some reason Reggie's Swalot and Staraptor are there too) that Paul would give them all a battle for the first time since forever despite losing in the League. And yes, the main reason I love this shot is because Weavile looks like a total and utter derp here and Honchkrow looks like a flashy priss, which is exactly how I've characterized those two in particular.
The first and only time we'll ever see Paul with an "OHOHOHOHO~!" gesture? This was the result of many failed attempts to get a really good action-y shot of Paul during the final leg of the full battle with Ash - the reason being that while it was one of the few shots that wasn't constantly reused, the transition between the pose and the following scene was lightning-fast and my video player tends to crash whenever I try to rewind, so I ended up with this and settled for it... 'cause you know, it IS a pretty amusing shot all in all.
So D/P has officially come to an end. Dawn achieved GF Runner-up, Ash finally bested his last League placing by reaching the Top 4, and probably would have reached the finals if he wasn't pitted against an uber-using Gary Stu. At least he did defeat Darkrai and Kamikaze'd Latios, which evidently none of Takuto's other competitor's managed, so that's pretty noteworthy. For being a terrible battle in concept, the action was pretty nice and even gave Ash's always-badass Sceptile the honorable distinction of being one of the few of Ash's Pokemon to ever take down a legendary in battle. I think the only others are (obviously) Pikachu with Regice/Latios and Charizard with Articuno. It was a great saga, though I do wish it would've lasted longer and allowed full battles for both Barry and Conway. If only we didn't have those unnecessary fillers right before the League and Nando coming in on it, because that battle was pretty much essentially "blah" - and there was really no reason for it to be any more than that since Nando already got his epic-scale battle out of Zoey. He's not nearly interesting enough to warrant two of those, so I say it would've been best to just axe him completely and give the more deserving characters some more time to shine. But for what we got, it was way beyond awesome and I seriously wonder how the hell the events of Best Wishes will top Ash and Paul's final battle. Until there's an official romanized name for Shuuti/Shooti/Shooty I swear I'm calling him Young Bandit Keith. Also turns out he's getting Tsutarja - a girl, at that. lulzy. And an interesting and legitimate reason for Pikachu's obligatory power-down at the beginning of the series, too. How about that. They'll definitely need to pull out all the stops to fill in the big shoes left by D/P, though.
I have to say Iris already interests me way more than Dawn ever did. Not sure if her Kibago's going to be in Piplup's role of pseudo secondary mascot or not, but I'm sure the producers are pretty pissed about not getting to market Piplup up the ass anymore, so I'm sure they've put loads of thought into that.
Speaking of, I did like the final episode of DP, but was I the only one who was really fucking annoyed with Piplup (or Pochama in this case) crying for like a solid 45 seconds? Yes, I get it - he's depressed - but couldn't they have tried to make said depression less... grating? And this is coming from someone who actually likes Pochama's voice (especially compared to Piplup's), so I will dread the hell out of this scene once it's dubbed. But yeah, that part just reinforces the fact that one thing I am happy about D/P ending is no more goddamned Piplup. It being marketed on the level of Pikachu wasn't what bothered me at all - but I found that Piplup's personality is honestly not that endearing to sit through after almost 200 episodes. I liked its bratty personality at first, but I got sick of it really quickly and Piplup was a serious limelight hog the entire time, which effectively shafted the majority of Dawn's team.
I found it highly odd that they didn't tell us what Dawn would be doing now that Ash and Brock are leaving her. Thought it was suspicious that they were reminiscing over the Pokemon Stylist filler episode of all things and not go anywhere with that since Dawn was offered to partake in that and declined, and in the end it evidently had no bearing on Dawn's goals as she still wants to be a Top Coordinator. So we got that and... nothing else. That could work to my favor as far as the fic goes, though. I just thought it was weird since we had very clear motives for Misty and May to justify their departures. Even Paul got one, but Dawn doesn't? Huh.
Still can't say I'll miss Dawn... at least, not nearly as much as I'm missing Paul/Barry/Conway. I stopped caring about Dawn and her storyline midway in and there wasn't much later on in the series to get me to care otherwise. That's a shame, though to be fair another part of it is that many of us already figured Dawn would get the boot as soon as D/P ended since the anime was establishing a pattern there with Misty and May's departure. So I knew better than to get attached, perhaps? I'll also be glad to see the Pearlshipping riots to finally die down... geh, I hate that pairing almost as much as I hate Pokeshipping.
Brock's departure, IMO, was way more heart-wrenching than Dawn's. It wasn't nearly as detailed and only lasted a few moments, but the subtlety of it (plus Ash and Brock's brief hesitation to let go of their handshake) was truly beautiful to me. As I said, I've always enjoyed Brock no matter how stale/useless he got. At the same time I'm not against shaking things up by replacing him as Brock's been in the anime for such a long-ass time now, and it is nice that Brock finds his true calling as a Pokemon Doctor rather than a Breeder. Thinking back on it, there are numerous episodes throughout D/P (and probably the past series as well) that show Brock being more of an ideal doctor than anything else. So if that was honestly build-up, I have to say that was very nicely done. It really is gonna be weird not having him around anymore after the fact, but I'm sure Dento's going to be a fun enough ride to ease the pain.
Of course, I guess I'll need to get my clothes ready ahead of time for work when Best Wishes premieres the week after next since that's two back-to-back episodes, meaning it'll end at 7 AM (which is close to the time I should start getting ready to leave for work). Daylight Savings Time won't be for another effing few months, but when that happens, that will get rid of that cutting-it-close timing.
Anyway, I've done a loooot of doodling since I've done no writing lately and work has been slow as hell the past couple of weeks. My main project is a Farewell to D/P picture, which I'll show my progress of right now.
This was the initial sketch, in which Paul turned out quite nicely but everyone else ended up all blech, mainly because of the limited space on the page. This is all representative of what I hope to happen for Trifecta once I'm done adapting the entire D/P series. My aim was to have Paul travel to Kanto to take on the Battle Frontier, of course, but this time he would finally have his traveling buddy group just like Ash does. Said group consists of Barry and Conway, of course.
It balanced out nicely, too. I decided that while Paul would take on the Battle Frontier, Conway would decide to switch over to Contests now that he no longer has to take down Saturn and compare his ultimate performance in Kanto's GF to his Top 16 performance in the Sinnoh League. Barry, meanwhile, will be conquering Gyms to enter the Indigo League for the first time. So that way, all bases are covered!
So why is Dawn there? Well, she is the central female to the series and that seemed fitting to include her in the farewell pic since she's going too, but one of my recent ideas was to actually have her compete in Contests in Kanto (similar to May going to Johto at the end of AG) and become Conway's main rival. So she wouldn't be traveling with the group, but she would appear frequently enough and finally give me what I always wanted the anime to do. Oh, I am so pathetic. ♥ Not sure if I'll give Barry a rival or not (no one's coming to mind at the moment), but Paul will have a rival for the BF. Someone who's collecting Symbols at the same time as him.
o shi-
Yup! That is indeed who you think it is. I decided that rather than being an extremely vague reference made at the very end of the story that only people who stalk pokedressing would get that Silver would be made into Paul's full-fledged rival for the BF half of the story. Only he will still be heavily downplayed, and for the most part will only show up when Paul is alone and will be depicted as a silhouette most of the time. But yes, he'll be the mystery rival who makes mincemeat out of Paul's team every time the two clash... y'know, just so the journey through Kanto isn't all smiles and laughs and petty daddy-hatred.
... I am definitely giving that picture a re-try, though. It is completely awful-looking. Anyway, since I wasn't satisfied with how Paul's little entourage appeared in the pic, I decided to draw them individually and add them as layers through Paintshop Pro magic once I get around to the coloring and shading. I already took care of the lineart cleanup, as seen here:
They ended up looking much better, but still pretty sucky since my art skills have always been so pitifully sub-par. Anyway, I'll definitely look into getting this finished before Best Wishes premieres.
So yeah. This may be a subplot I'll give Reggie when he's not busy being PO'ed at his dad or having self-doubts. This was brought up in a Skype chat by kitsune_prophet (and I think kyosukekusaragi) about how Whitney could randomly show up in the Sinnoh region not entirely unlike how Jasmine showed up in Sinnoh one day due to her interest in trying out Sinnoh's Contests. But she also has a history with Reggie (I think way back in chapter 2 Reggie namedropped Whitney; she wasn't a Gym Leader yet back when Reggie traveled through Johto - I picture her to be close to Reggie's age, maybe a little younger... either way I picture Reggie "knows" Whitney in the same manner he knows Candice; familiar, but not close like he is with Roark) and in fact has a mad crush on him and takes every opportunity to get his attention as she requests special training from him despite Reggie not being a Coordinator.
Reggie, derp that he is as well as a nice guy, would take Whitney under his wing and train her, but an extremely jealous other pink-haired potential Reggie love interest named Maylene would see right through Whitney's intentions and challenges her to a battle. A nice little Gym Leader vs Gym Leader battle. Of course, since Maylene's a Fighting-type expert versus Whitney's Normal-types, it's obvious that Maylene would wipe the floor with Whitney.
But then Whitney uses this to her advantage like BAAAAWWWWing like she does in the games, and poor sympathetic Reggie gives all of his care and attention to her... which is exactly what Whitney wanted all along. Thus Maylene is PO'ed that her own victory turned against her.
This is a very nice scenario I would enjoy playing out. I'm not sure when exactly, but it's a perfect way to give Reggie something else to do, and especially Maylene since she's easily the blandest and most bored of Trifecta's primary characters. So yeah, look forward to that, I guess?
My attempt to depict Paul's haircut that he was recently given in pokedressing. And also, Lain~! Paul's expressions are based off of something I'll show off in a later post.
My FAILTASTIC first attempt at Paul's shorter hair that I decided to scan because Reggie turned up oh-so cute and this is also my first time trying to draw Iris. On the left Iris is in Sierra's outfit because in my headcanon of a Total Drama-Pokemon (mostly) anime crossover, Iris strikes me as a perfect Sierra. Mind you, Cody is... ... Max. Make of that what you will. I tentatively made Young Bandit Keith Alejandro, though Dento might fit better. I think I shoved him into Noah's position because I couldn't think of anyone to put him as in the past, but for all I know they could be interchangeable.
On the right, Iris is in a grass jungle skirt that is an attempt to homage Sapphire from Pokemon Special. This is because when I first got a glimpse at Iris, before we knew anything about her, I thought she reeked of "wild girl who is awkwardly trying to fit into modern society" and at least half of that turned out to be canonly right since she is depicted as a "wild girl" who swings off motherfuckin' vines and everything. Wild prediction skills I have, huh? Grass skirts also suit her way too well.
PD-based; Paul's interactions with characters. healing_yellow sleeping over Paul because my god their interaction is cute. Paul knows not to touch her or else Gold will kill him. We've also got insultyoulater ruffling Paul's hair because he's tall enough to get away with it and we always love flustering Paul. Paul attempting to comfort tsuuuun and we all know how well that turned out. Then there's Paul with... Dawn... really could be almost any Dawn in PD. He's looking directly down at her skirt. What a surprise.
Lastly is this piece of crap. Yet another attempt to draw short-haired Paul, how fucked-up he looked after getting his ass kicked at the Awesome Onsen, and a tiny!Paul right after he became traumatized due to his mother's death. He had that expression on his face for at least a week and wouldn't even talk. All sorts of sadness with this asshole!
Admittedly I'm having a hard time figuring out what to do next with battlestandby. It may have taken me like a year more than everyone else, but now I'm starting to get sick of the drama, the sense that things will never improve for this guy, and that fact that the vast majority of the characters he interacts with are ganging up on him... and that fact that he keeps getting his ass kicked in battle. I mean, it's been amusing for a long time, but now I'm getting really bored and even depressed with it because I'd like to see some semblance of progress with Paul's character since his +1 year at PD, but very rarely does one get to see that growth.
Then again, it could just be pointless bitching from me, but I would like to get Paul out of jobber status one day and in a position where his sanity is not totally lost on a daily basis. Because at this rate, he'll end up being another Pryce and I'd really rather not have that happen.
Um, this post is getting crazy huge so I think I'll wait for another day to talk about other stuff (namely Total Drama World Tour-related stuff), but while I've not updated Trifecta's timeline yet, I will soon, but I would like to confirm some (tentative) titles for future chapters. I've also mapped out plans for Chapter 26 in full, and I have confirmed that Chapter 27 will be the Fighting Fire with Ire! adaptation. Anyway, here's what the chapter titles are looking like right now from chapters 16 onward:
Chapter 16: Viva La Regi-lution!
Chapter 17: We're Gonna Need a Montage!
Chapter 18: The Worst of Messes Become Successes!
Chapter 19: Black Ice Battle!
Chapter 20: The Breaks of Making Up!
Chapter 21: TBA
Chapter 22: TBA
Chapter 23: Ghost Busted!
Chapter 24: TBA
Chapter 25: Going Eight!
Chapter 26: TBA
Chapter 27: TBA
Now... Going Eight! in particular is a title I'm worried that the TCPI dub will actually use in the near future. The reason for the name is because Conway will get his final badge in Chapter 25. Obviously this is a spin on the phrase "going ape".
Now consider Ash's official battle with Volkner and the fact that Infernape will play a huge role in it. And that this will be Ash's eighth badge gain.
Does it seem extremely plausible or what?!
Then again, I was almost sure they'd use It's On Like Bastiodon! (Chapter 5's title) for Ash's battle with Byron, but instead settled for an extremely generic Dealing With Defensive Types!, so it could be the same case here for all I know.
But this IS quite an opportunity to use that awful pun, isn't it? What to do you guys think? I'll hate having to come up with something else if it ends up being used after all... d'aww man.
Oh, and one last thing. Belatedly, oh-so belatedly, I must bow and thank demonoflight for this wonderful piece of fanart (though I did comment +fav... two days after it was posted). Words really cannot describe how much it tickles me silly to get fanart from other people based on my stories. ♥ It's a great thing to look at whenever I'm feeling down; I swear Andrea's drawn better here than how I actually draw her. Go figure~.
Okay, everyone go chew on that and chew me out as you deem fitting!