Chapter 109: Wrap Up

Writing this story has been a long and difficult process, but very much worth it. I had a lot of fun coming up with new ideas and stories, and in the end I've overall pleased with the story.

Honestly, I never expected this story to be as popular as it became. Pokemon was a series I'd never touched, and The Alola seasons are a big source of contention among a lot of fans. But when the idea first came to me during a replay of Pokemon Moon, it wouldn't leave until I had put it on the internet. I expected maybe a few curious readers, maybe a few chapters before it became clear not enough people were reading it for it to be worthwhile enough to continue writing. Boy, was I wrong!

Thanks to everyone who read this story. You're the best!

Scrapped Ideas:

1. Originally, Ash and Lillie weren't going to wind up together. At the time I started writing this, I was an Advanceshipper, and hadn't quite seen enough of the Sun and Moon anime to get on board. Besides all that, my original plan was to keep it as close to the series' formula as possible, meaning that beyond the standard ship tease moments, there wasn't going to be much romance. But as I watched more of the series, the ship started to grow on me, and eventually I realized how silly it was to keep Ash so naive, and thus a romance had bloomed.

2. Ilima was originally only going to join Ash for the Melemele Island portion of the story, with the original idea being to have one Trial Captain from each Island join Ash for the duration of his stay there. But over time Ilima grew on me, so I kept him on full time, though admittingly I wish I had given him more to do.

3. The League was originally going to take place on Mount Lanakila, as in the games, but that was scrapped because a full blown league tournament atop a mountain just didn't seem plausible. I briefly considered moving to Manalo Stadium, but when I came up with the idea of the Battle Royal, I decided to move it to the Poni Canyon for more space.

4. Speaking of the League, it went through several different variations before I finally landed on the format I used. First it was just a standard tournament, with no qualifying rounds. Then the qualifying rounds was going to be a series of Battle Royals, and lastly I landed on the Duelist Kingdom-esque adventure to narrow down the finalists.

5. Cross from the I Choose You! movie was going to appear in the league as the original trainer of Bagon, and would be soundly defeated by him. Scrapped when I realized that this would just be the same rehash of Charizard and Infernape's story, just with a different type as the abandoned Pokemon. The Pokemon Journeys did the same kind of story with a Gengar, so yeah...

6. Ilima was originally going to participate in the league, and would be Ash's first opponent. Eventually scrapped because I had so many ideas I wanted to use for the league that it was becoming a jumbled mess, and it wouldn't really add much to the story.

7. The final battle went through various different versions. My first choice was Kukui like in the original games, but I wasn't dead set on it. After the Alola League wrapped up in the anime, I thought about using Gladion here as well, but that just didn't sit right for some reason. Finally, I thought about having Max be his opponent, but I never had a full team in mind for him. Finally, I decided to stick with my original concept.

8. Necrozma was originally going to appear in the Ultra Beast arc, with the league being the final arc like most anime seasons. Eventually, I pushed the arc back to give the story a more action packed conclusion.

9. The Necrozma arc was going to be longer, with Ash and Lillie chasing him through the other dimensions of Ultra Space and meeting alternate versions of themselves. But as the league started to drag on, I started to suffer burn out and decided to shorten it to the five chapters, though I may revisit this idea in the sequel.

10. The Serena mini-arc was originally going to be very different. Serena would be the only returning companion, Ash and Lillie weren't together, and Ash and Serena would go on a date and discover that they were better off friends. This was also going to happen during Ash's original journey through the region, sometime between his trials for Sophocles and Acerola, but eventually I expanded it to include all of Ash's companions so that Serena would have someone to comfort her.

11. Ash was going to get a Beldum from a returning Steven Stone ala Ruby and Sapphire, but there was never a good way to reintroduce him.

12. The ending was going to be different. Originally, Lillie was going to stay in Alola, with Ash promising to write to her as often as he could. The story would then cut to a month later, with Ash receiving a knock at his door, revealing Lillie standing there ready for their next adventure. Scrapped because it wasn't really different from what I wounded up going with.

Thanks again for all your support. Look out for The Journey Starts Today, the sequel and a retelling of Pokemon Journeys coming soon!