Epic Crack Crossover Chapter 6 and Ending
And finally, here is Chapter 6. It's only a few paragraphs long, and was also last edited in July 2011. I'm still putting it here anyway, just for completion's sake.
Chapter Hub
CHAPTER 5 - In Which There is Travelling
POKEMON SEEN IN THIS CHAPTER:
Bulbasaur
Charmander
Pachirisu
Tropius
Once they were back in their room in the Pokemon Centre, the three pokemon resting downstairs, Chick pulled a map out of her bag and opened it up on the bed. "Now, there are two paths around Kickassia from here that we can take."
"Okay," Critic replied, leaning over the map of the region and quickly locating Blisthumb in the centre. "But I thought we were waiting for you to beat Joe before we left?"
Chick glared at the boy. "And let you sneak off while I'm fighting him? I'm not letting you get off on not paying me back for my bike!"
Critic had the decency to look sheepish before mumbling "Right, forgot."
"Anyway," Chick continued, "these two routes we were training on yesterday are the branching point, as you might have guessed. Route 106 goes around the cliffs to Might Town, and from there you can go around that gym and the ones in Schwartz, Circle and Molossia in any order, then loop around through Malachite Isle to Cinemass Acres and Ink Town." She pointed at each town as she described the route, Critic nodding along to show he understood. "The problem with this way," she continued, "is that you have to backtrack around through Might, Schwartz and Molossia to get to Count Town for the League if you're taking them on."
"Which I am," Critic added with a confident smile.
Chick smirked. "I guessed," she remarked. "In which case, we're better off going on this un-named route through Four Stars Forest. From Ink to Circle, it's a linear route, and you can decide how you want to take on that last loop of four when we get there, although I'd suggest going this way." She pointed on the map to show a path that didn't contain backtracking, finishing at the massive League Complex in Count Town.
Critic grinned. "Yeah, that's easy!" he boasted. "We could have this thing done in, like, a week!"
"The travelling alone would take longer than that," Chick said, bursting Critic's bubble with a smile.
"Whatever," Critic insisted, running to his bag and packing the various articles of clothing, items and occasional list he'd left lying around the room. "Let's get ready to go as soon as Flare, Spark and Fern are healed up!"
Chick nodded, also eager to get going. Her Bulbasaur Vine just smiled from her spot on the floor.
That's it for Chapter 6. And now, the reason why I'm putting all this up now.
I started planning for this story in 2010, sometime after joining the TGWTG fandom/Treehouse not long after Kickassia debuted. At the time, Critic/Chick was probably the most popular het ship (I'm still not comfortable writing slashfic, especially when all examples provided to me at the time resulted in sexual activities, which I'm also not comfortable with writing myself no matter which pairing of characters is involved). Spoony was still a major part of the site, and had a girlfriend called Scarlett, who featured regularly in various fanfics. Todd in the Shadows, as far as I know, was not very well known and still only a newcomer to the site, and had yet to start the popular 'love triangle' between him, Lupa and Chick. Linkara had only just had his at-the-time girlfriend Iron Liz cameo in his videos. Suede had yet to make his big return and was still MIA. I, personally, was only a regular viewer of Nostalgia Critic, Nostalgia Chick, Atop the Fourth Wall and The Spoony Experiment, and even then I hadn't yet had the time to watch all of their respective series.
In the course of my research on characters, I would watch at least three videos for everyone on the site at the time, and become a regular viewer of many of them. Every character mentioned above was included in the story somewhere, in varying degrees of significance. Naively, I thought I could finish the fic, that the only changes in the future would be good ones, and learning more about the people behind the characters would never result in awkwardness.
Fast forward to now, June 2012. I haven't been active in the fandom or for this story since starting uni in February 2011, and the situation has rapidly changed. In the positives are Todd's popularity and Suede's return. In the negatives are the break-ups of Spoony/Scarlett and Linkara/Liz, and finally the very recent seperation between Spoony and TGWTG. I'd thought it was too weird when Scarlett left to leave in a mention of a relationship between them, and it would be too awkward to really include her at all anymore, so she was cut. Then when Liz made her announcement on the Treehouse that she wanted no more fanfics about her and Linkara, I had to cut a rather more significant portion of the story, not just because she asked, but because I knew it would be too awkward for me to include her anymore, either. Nevertheless, carrying on with the story as it was could still have worked. It could still have happened once I got the free time and desire to write it... well, right up until Spoony left. Now, it's just too awkward to include one of my three main characters, and removing him would necessitate completely reworking the story.
I basically had two choices: Rework the story and then leave it to work on once I have time, or quit while I'm ahead and tell everyone what my plans were. As you can probably see, I chose the second one. My uni workload has already resulted in a complete lack of contact with my fandom friends, finalised by the fact I'm barely on Twitter anymore and I've finally removed Skype from my computer. I guess the problem with timezones should have been a hint that, yet again, I was not going to be making friends that lasted more than a year. It's probably my fault. They didn't want to talk to me anymore, and apart from TGWTG, we didn't seem to have too much in common anyway.
So, that's it. This is the end of the TGWTG/Pokemon Crossover, that I once called 'Epic'. So much for that.
Coming up is a more in-depth post discussing my plans for the story and what would have happened had I managed to finish it.
Chapter Hub
CHAPTER 5 - In Which There is Travelling
POKEMON SEEN IN THIS CHAPTER:
Bulbasaur
Charmander
Pachirisu
Tropius
Once they were back in their room in the Pokemon Centre, the three pokemon resting downstairs, Chick pulled a map out of her bag and opened it up on the bed. "Now, there are two paths around Kickassia from here that we can take."
"Okay," Critic replied, leaning over the map of the region and quickly locating Blisthumb in the centre. "But I thought we were waiting for you to beat Joe before we left?"
Chick glared at the boy. "And let you sneak off while I'm fighting him? I'm not letting you get off on not paying me back for my bike!"
Critic had the decency to look sheepish before mumbling "Right, forgot."
"Anyway," Chick continued, "these two routes we were training on yesterday are the branching point, as you might have guessed. Route 106 goes around the cliffs to Might Town, and from there you can go around that gym and the ones in Schwartz, Circle and Molossia in any order, then loop around through Malachite Isle to Cinemass Acres and Ink Town." She pointed at each town as she described the route, Critic nodding along to show he understood. "The problem with this way," she continued, "is that you have to backtrack around through Might, Schwartz and Molossia to get to Count Town for the League if you're taking them on."
"Which I am," Critic added with a confident smile.
Chick smirked. "I guessed," she remarked. "In which case, we're better off going on this un-named route through Four Stars Forest. From Ink to Circle, it's a linear route, and you can decide how you want to take on that last loop of four when we get there, although I'd suggest going this way." She pointed on the map to show a path that didn't contain backtracking, finishing at the massive League Complex in Count Town.
Critic grinned. "Yeah, that's easy!" he boasted. "We could have this thing done in, like, a week!"
"The travelling alone would take longer than that," Chick said, bursting Critic's bubble with a smile.
"Whatever," Critic insisted, running to his bag and packing the various articles of clothing, items and occasional list he'd left lying around the room. "Let's get ready to go as soon as Flare, Spark and Fern are healed up!"
Chick nodded, also eager to get going. Her Bulbasaur Vine just smiled from her spot on the floor.
That's it for Chapter 6. And now, the reason why I'm putting all this up now.
I started planning for this story in 2010, sometime after joining the TGWTG fandom/Treehouse not long after Kickassia debuted. At the time, Critic/Chick was probably the most popular het ship (I'm still not comfortable writing slashfic, especially when all examples provided to me at the time resulted in sexual activities, which I'm also not comfortable with writing myself no matter which pairing of characters is involved). Spoony was still a major part of the site, and had a girlfriend called Scarlett, who featured regularly in various fanfics. Todd in the Shadows, as far as I know, was not very well known and still only a newcomer to the site, and had yet to start the popular 'love triangle' between him, Lupa and Chick. Linkara had only just had his at-the-time girlfriend Iron Liz cameo in his videos. Suede had yet to make his big return and was still MIA. I, personally, was only a regular viewer of Nostalgia Critic, Nostalgia Chick, Atop the Fourth Wall and The Spoony Experiment, and even then I hadn't yet had the time to watch all of their respective series.
In the course of my research on characters, I would watch at least three videos for everyone on the site at the time, and become a regular viewer of many of them. Every character mentioned above was included in the story somewhere, in varying degrees of significance. Naively, I thought I could finish the fic, that the only changes in the future would be good ones, and learning more about the people behind the characters would never result in awkwardness.
Fast forward to now, June 2012. I haven't been active in the fandom or for this story since starting uni in February 2011, and the situation has rapidly changed. In the positives are Todd's popularity and Suede's return. In the negatives are the break-ups of Spoony/Scarlett and Linkara/Liz, and finally the very recent seperation between Spoony and TGWTG. I'd thought it was too weird when Scarlett left to leave in a mention of a relationship between them, and it would be too awkward to really include her at all anymore, so she was cut. Then when Liz made her announcement on the Treehouse that she wanted no more fanfics about her and Linkara, I had to cut a rather more significant portion of the story, not just because she asked, but because I knew it would be too awkward for me to include her anymore, either. Nevertheless, carrying on with the story as it was could still have worked. It could still have happened once I got the free time and desire to write it... well, right up until Spoony left. Now, it's just too awkward to include one of my three main characters, and removing him would necessitate completely reworking the story.
I basically had two choices: Rework the story and then leave it to work on once I have time, or quit while I'm ahead and tell everyone what my plans were. As you can probably see, I chose the second one. My uni workload has already resulted in a complete lack of contact with my fandom friends, finalised by the fact I'm barely on Twitter anymore and I've finally removed Skype from my computer. I guess the problem with timezones should have been a hint that, yet again, I was not going to be making friends that lasted more than a year. It's probably my fault. They didn't want to talk to me anymore, and apart from TGWTG, we didn't seem to have too much in common anyway.
So, that's it. This is the end of the TGWTG/Pokemon Crossover, that I once called 'Epic'. So much for that.
Coming up is a more in-depth post discussing my plans for the story and what would have happened had I managed to finish it.