Author's Note Discontinued until further notice.

So, I know this is lame.

But I am not happy with this story… Not so much with the plot, or the ideas, I still genuinely really like those. But the way the story has turned out—not so much. There are a few reasons for that. 1) Selene feels bland or like she has no character and just does whatever to fit the current scene; 2) Elio feels inconsistent in the first half, very wishy-washy, again as if he were unplanned; 3) Faba's remorsefulness feels forced towards the end; 4) the entire subplot with Plumeria literally would have been better as a Hidden Grottos and embarrasses me to read over now, 5) same with the subplots going on with Zossie; there's just… There's a lot going on in this story. And while it WAS fun and that was the ultimate goal as I kept saying throughout the chapter notes, I just… it's becoming less fun because I'm just not liking how it's all piecing together by the end.

Part of the reasoning for these issues are that I just didn't plan Ultra Sun out as well as I did Black or Black 2. SM/USUM are MASSIVE titles with a LOT of plot going on and my wee ADHD brain thought that I could tackle all of that in a single story and it work out fine lol. Maybe I can—maybe I'm overreacting—but I just don't care for my rendition of it. Another is that Selene and Elio were kind of rushed characters. I also felt like I couldn't do anything interesting with Selene because, well, let's say I had "Tumblr syndrome" for a while. If you have been around fandom for a bit on Tumblr, you'll know that there are essentially purity crusades going on there. People will perform witch hunts if you have squicky themes in your stories or if your characters do something they deem "problematic." I received a good amount of backlash on Black 2, so I was afraid of doing anything so daring again. I literally saw a meme post about this the other day, how you can't have a female character do basically anything because then it's "misogynistic." It sounds ridiculous, like a joke, but this is genuinely how people feel about many characters in fiction. They cry for a realistic female character, then get offended when she acts like anything more than a blank slate. So, Selene was all over the place, as I wrestled with "wanting to do something with her" and "not wanting to upset anyone." I feel like she got this treatment while characters like Plumeria, Lillie, or Rosa avoided it because Selene is the protagonist. So, I not only have Internet Culture™ telling me she has to be the moral high ground at all times, but she's supposed to be the pinnacle "Good Guy!" Even though that itself isn't true either. Elio was just a little underdeveloped from the start, I like what I had going on for him—most people have said they like Elio the most out of this cast, after all—but I just wish I would have had a more concrete approach for him at the start.

I think the fact the story was not planned very well accounts for most of the other problems. Various character inconsistencies and me straight up forgetting details.

So, with all of that being said, I am not going to continue writing for this FOR NOW. In the future, I do intend to revisit this story and likely rewrite a significant amount of it. I doubt I will start it completely over—it's 300k+ words and I don't think ALL of it is trash, lol. I just don't like how characters behaved in certain circumstances. So, the plot will likely remain mostly the same, just with some fat trimmed out (extraneous subplots, for example) and the characters more ironed out. I quit posting on Tumblr and I stopped following all of the toxic fandom pages I was following. I didn't realize until I basically didn't want to write anymore that these pages even were toxic… Literally every time I sat down to write I would just be assailed with anxiety about what people would think if a character did this, or that, or xyz…

And frankly, that's stupid. It's a fanfiction and I have it properly tagged and with even a custom warning at the very beginning of the story. If anyone reads it and proceeds to get offended or thinks I am condoning something messed up, that is honestly their problem at that point. I think I am going to try to keep that in mind going forward.

For those curious, however, here's a vague explanation of how I kind of planned for things to end (if it sounds chaotic, welcome to the club, this is why I was struggling to write toward the end lol): Selene's parents are allowed free because Rosa's turned-in helmet reveals that they were truly being mind-controlled. The implication, of course, is that Colress developed the technology and Rosa allowed him to test it on her. Later, Hau "captures" the Tapus. He doesn't keep them, though, he does this to simply show people in Alola that they can be worked with. At first, they react poorly, of course, but Selene tries to offer her support to him. It takes the other three Tapus plus some people to subdue Tapu Bulu, but even he agrees in working with people as opposed to against or over them. Hau finds new meaning in the phrase "the tapus chose you" that Hala used to always say to him (Hala didn't mean it like that or anything, but it allows Hau to live comfortably with the phrase rather than in fear of it as he did before). Hau and Kukui come to a truce on their forward views: the Pokemon League is fine to exist, but the Island Challenge should not be axed, as Kukui wished for it to be. A formerly unbudging Kukui sees the hope that things can be the way Hau says they can be and agrees.

Elio would investigate anomalous activity around the sinking of Aether Paradise only to discover a massive vessel in the water, and Rainbow Rocket aboard. After ousting Rainbow Rocket, Elio would realize that there are "mirror worlds" that may very well be in crises much as their world has been. Despite being told it would be quite nearly pointless to try to help others in those realities, since there are countless numbers of them, Elio argues that even making the difference in a single one is worth it. He would want to go back to Ultra Space.

Necrozma is found by Kukui who (and this is another characterization thing that I want to change in the future; Kukui's character growth was basically forgotten about at one point so some crucial stuff was missed!) wants to help it. As much as he would gain from keeping the discovery for himself, he decides to tell Interpol, which alerts the URS. This, in turn, alerts Elio, and he, Selene, Lillie, and the URS arrive on scene. Selene 'talks' with Necrozma some more and ultimately, Necrozma ends up going with Selene. Selene, however, believes that Necrozma's pain can be eased—she just doesn't know how, exactly, since it's not like anyone there's exactly an alien biologist on the single rarest entity in the universe lol. Privately, Lillie has already been considering going with Elio, since she can't stand the idea of being away from him all the time (not to mention how she can't stand the thought of returning to Aether like Gladion does), so in the end, she decides to be with Elio in the URS to try to learn what she can about Necrozma while Selene holds onto him. Selene will be having Interpol, the URS, and even Kukui keep tabs on her and Necrozma, but she doesn't mind so much, because Necrozma was clearly uncomfortable with the rest of them.

After Necrozma is dealt with, Phyco and Soliera are alerted and realize that Selene was serious about how Necrozma behaved. They apologize sincerely, clearly having just been extremely frightened and stressed before, and revoke the "banishment" they had assigned Elio, Dulse, and Zossie, making them full members of the URS again.

Hau releases the Tapus in the end, as a show of trust to them to still work with people despite not being bound to pokeballs. They agree and Hau steps up as the new Kahuna of Melemele Island. Nanu comes to visit Selene sometime later, as she's living with her parents back in that house on Melemele Island and asks her if she would be willing to train under him a bit. He makes it sound like a business offer lol, but he's essentially asking if she'd like to be the Kahuna following him. Selene plays his game and comes with him.

As for Po Town, Guzma returned to it and hashed out everything with Plumeria. Sadly, it's discovered that Makua did not survive his injuries and died at Hapu's grandmother's back on Poni Island. However, fewer and fewer grunts have returned to Po Town—and it's not due to anything bad like before. Plumeria has met a few of them back out there on the Island Challenge, where people have been urged to allow them to participate again (…mostly thanks to Nanu and Hau's influence). I think it would have ended with Guzma just making an offhanded comment that maybe Po Town won't need to be the refuge it has been for much longer, implying that Skull would entirely disband given enough time.

In the epilogue, it would be shown that the ship Rainbow Rocket was on was actually an alternate universe's Plasma Frigate. Colress and Rosa were still there after everyone else dispersed, as they were hiding in their cloaked suits, keeping them invisible from everyone else. The ship is deserted at night. Colress is shown getting into the helm and raising it out of the water, as it starts to fly. Rosa is with him. Colress is clearly upset with her for having given away her helmet to Interpol, but seems far less concerned about it now that he has a Plasma Frigate back(1—this will include spoilers btw so don't read the footnotes if you're interested in reading Black/Black 2 yourself). However, he bitingly tells her that if he can't trust her to test his equipment, maybe he needs a different test subject. He calls upon the Shadow Triad to fetch him someone. They bring back Wicke.

Anyway, I'm sorry, I know this isn't very exciting, but… yeah. As for my other stories, I intend to spend some time really ironing out what I want to happen in Red, and then I will focus on that. I think I'm going to try to get some chapters written in advance, so that if I do have dry spells, I don't run out of content to post, lol. That will start getting properly posted in June. Also, although I discontinued use of my Tumblr account (well, aside from looking at memes), I'm still open to PMs on and comments/reviews are always welcome!

Thank you all so much for the support for the series and I look forward to fixing it in the future and completing more stories!