I decided to not have z-moves play relevance in the story because it always felt like a convenient ‘nuke’ that acted like a get out of trouble free card and to be quite honest I think irl it’d be a little terrifying to see a lot of them being fired off in a non threatening situation not to mention I feel it’s alola specific and not easy to balance out story wise.

okay this one is a bit of a doozy. Mega evolution is hyped up to be this superior evolution beyond what’s preconceived and to an extent. It is. HOWEVER it felt odd that you can only mega evolve once when in the XY adventures manga they had X mega evolve all of his Pokémon at the same time thanks to borrowing other keystones so I figured it meant only one keystone could evolve a single Pokémon at a single time. So I thought it'd be reasonable to allow more than the one pokemon to mega as long as the trainer had the prerequisite stamina to sustain such a task.

This one is once again an issue of how to balance it along with feeling too specialized to a region this time being Galar. To dynamax you needed a band with a wishing piece placed inside I believe but…where on earth would a kalos based trainer find something that’s rare even by galar standards so I decided to decline placing this mechanic in the gym battles but it will have a use at a VERY specific moment in the story but nowhere near the beginning or even middle of the story.

So I’m going to be honest with you here. Kalos to me feels exceptionally small in terms of locations to me so I’m mixing in some anime exclusive towns and cities to pad out the story otherwise it’d turn into point A. Do task. Leave. Point B. Do task. Leave. See? So since they added some interesting locals in the show I’ll be borrowing some of those a bit while also making a few of my own.

Now these things are completely busted if you attempt to randomly thrust them into the story. Ultra beasts and parodox Pokémon are notoriously aggressive to anything that’s not them (talk about self centered) that’s not to say ultra beasts are ‘impossible’ to witness but they should be a rare occurrence that I don’t think should be used to make a sudden threat.

Paradoxes on the other hand. Goes into an overly specified region which this time is Paldea. Parodox Pokémon are SO specific in fact that they don’t fit in ANY way shape or form outside of great crater of paldea. On top of just being a super aggressive prehistoric or futuristic Pokémon who like ultra beasts hate anything that’s not itself.

This like Z-moves and dynamax are far too region specific and are heavily tied to Paldea’s story. It’d be a little too convenient to have a paldean suddenly just appear and be like “it’s dangerous to go alone take this magic crystal orb that doesn’t look like it’d fit into Arknights with how they like their magic crystal objects.”

Also to be transparent I don’t like the mechanic all that much it feels slightly gimmicky too forced in my opinion like when you were younger and playing with your siblings only for them to suddenly be like “well jokes on you I’m immune to that type” just because they want to win. Perhaps that’s a bit harsh????

Soooo dragon village to my knowledge was introduced in Johto as a secret place in Blackthorn the very last place you go before heading to the Elite 4. That’s all well and fine except Iris references that very same dragon village having been in the UNOVA REGION this has confused me to no end and I’ve zero idea how they would suddenly shift a local to a completely different region introduced FOUR gens later. Now that’s not to say they haven’t done anything odd before I.e. Blaziken is a Gen 3 starter that got introduced in the first generation of the show years before Hoenn was announced and Ash seeing Ho-oh before Johto was introduced as well. 

So for headaches sake I’m leaving dragon valley/village in Johto as a hidden sanctuary in Blackthorn where various Pokémon seek refuge and safety hence going from a simple “dragon village” to a “Valley”

This ties back to the dragon valley deciding to flip regions on a whim thing. While I did decide to keep the location in Johto the center of that said village has a statue or Reshiram and Zekrom. The dragons of Ideals and Truths that are important in Unovan history. Due to this I had made it where they can simply track their heritage back to ancient Unovans who migrated to what would later become Blackthorn. (Honestly it isn’t going to play much if ANY importance to the story it’s like having a super distanced relative you’ll never be capable of meeting.)

Sooo believe it or not Saya was not supposed to be the main character initially in the story. I had originally thought that there had been a wide swathe of interestingly designed characters that went to waste in one material or another so originally it was meant to be from another’s pov and their journey where they’d meet someone similar to Saya but not quite. However as that idea progressed and grew more and more I got a bit attached to them and suddenly *poof* our odd eyed dragon maiden was born.

Iris

Yea obviously Iris wasn’t supposed to be in the story either but with Saya wanting to be a dragon master and seeing how Iris canonically did run away from Drayden’s academy back to the village due to feeling immensely outcasted (new city with rules she doesn’t understand, people who don’t try to understand or acknowledge her, feeling alienated by not having anything familiar to her and being denied the one comfort she thought she could take solace in) I thought it’d make it convenient to make her and Shannon as both Saya’s childhood friends and in the case of Iris a future traveling companion who can act as a voice of reason and whet stone to each other where they may bump heads or disagree with each other at times but make the other grow stronger for their presence in each others lives.

Verity

For those who don’t know verity is a character that was introduced in the Pokémon I Choose You movie as a non canonical companion to Ash who set out on a journey to get out of her mothers shadow in this story she’ll largely be doing the same thing only having a much more involved existence. By that I mean doesn’t just disappear into the aether of off screen.

Valerie

It probably isn’t hard to realize but YES it is the same exact Valerie that is introduced as the Fairy type gym leader only for the purpose of this story she isn’t one as I have someone else who will be fulfilling that role (look forward to it please)

Shauna

So as was previously mentioned before Shauna is the current “youngest” cast member but she literally two drastically different personalities depending on the material. She is analytical and yet airheaded while also being easily excited in the game and anime but in the manga she is snarky and cynical to a fault how did she have the biggest contrast out of the entire cast. For my sanity I’ve ended up having to blend the two personalities as too much if one without proper justification or backstory just would make her seem a bit…annoying(?)

(Props if you can guess who the main protagonist was originally supposed to be although it shouldn’t be that hard tbqh)