Afterword

This is simply a retrospective outlook. The story has ended. If you're looking for more of it, there's nothing here for you. However, if you're interested in its history, its process, and the possibility of its future, feel free to read on.

Perhaps you can think of the writing of the story to be a story itself, I certainly would not blame you.

Something to this day (SttD) held a special place in my heart. It was the first thing I've ever decided to share to an audience larger than my circle of friends. You might be asking 'but wasn't this story written in mid 2011?'. You are correct. I'm not particularly old, if that somehow helps explaining. I've gone on to write many other things since then, but this one will always have a certain amount of significance.

Let's take it back. Around the end of 2011, I was beginning to discover this whole 'fanfiction' ordeal. I've once before borrowed a few things from a premade setting or two, but I've never even thought of the possibility of rewriting, or continuing, an already established canon. For the next eight months or so I spent a good deal of time discovering the possibilities that accomapnied such a revelation. To this day, is still the only site of the same effect that I still visit. I hardly ever read anything here anymore, but it was fun while it lasted.

Naturally, as an inexperienced writer with far too much time on hand, I made the decision to write one for myself. I understood that as an author with no brand recognition and no special appeal, it was hard for me to make a break out, and attract a lot of readers. That was why the SttD was written as an one-shot at first (you can still see the remnants of these decision somewhere during the first few chapters). It had hardly any reply, but still more than I originally thought I would get. I wasn't going to get any busier, so I decided to continue it (the previous one-shot became the Prologue – not that it made any sense). For some reasons, I abitrary chose three thousand to be my dedicated length (this was applied to Chokehold as well, but that's the most referencing you're going to hear from me). The chapters fluctuated in terms of word count, but always staying above this threshold.

I've never personally lauded Pokemon for its writing. It was a great game back in my childhood (even without ever owning a Nintendo handheld in my life – to this day mind you) and I felt that it was a world open enough, with little enough canon that I could possibly jump in and make whatever I wanted. Furthermore, the fanfiction generation were interested in other things, symbols of clear-cut characteristics that they wanted to latch on more to. I don't judge, but it also gave me a great opportunity. Plenty of older Pokemon NPCs (gym leaders in this case) could use quite a bit of fleshing out. The original one-shot turned out to be romance somehow, meaning that before that I needed to pick a pair.

Now if you've read any of my other work at any length (published or otherwise), it's no surprise that I had to pick a female couple to be the lead of this story. Out of all the older generation's gym leaders, I felt a special attachment the most to Sabrina. She'd been one of my favourites since the Pokemon Adventures manga. I will say this right now though, I do not take inspirations of particular from neither the associated manga nor anime. They had some serious problems in respect to what I'd need to observe, so I decided to make it my own. There are certain likeness here and there, but that's simply just the games themselves depicting these people in such a light.

Now I needed someone else. Misty was personally someone I never even considered, since I've hold certain disdain for her through my earlier years. Thus, Erika was the only choice left (unless I wanted to risk Koga's daughter – probably not a very good choice), and honestly it was fine with me. I never intended for it to go long, and someone witth an apparent contrast to Sabrina's personality would be of great help.

Now, the fact that I wrote everything at first was to make it an oneshot seriously limited my continuity in ways that I could not have resolved back then. Thus, after I decided to make it a series in its own right, I had to rewrite what happened. I figured giving the readers a wider perspective and a less skewed narration would help develop my characters as quite a bit more than just token representation of girls' love or something. This was where I wanted to develop a decent back story, and allow myself ways of reaching back later.

This was how Penny was created. I wasn't sure what I was thinking at the time, but somehow making a complimentary side-character to contrast Sabrina's sardonic growls was what I decided on. Erika was this to an extend, but not this early in the story, and she was more of a subtle flower type, I'll get to that later. Penny, on the other hand, was old enough to be able to see things with a bit of perspective, and young enough that I could reasonably write dialogue for. She ended up having a far larger role than I planned. In fact, I only planned her to be a quick catalyst for the meeting on the cruise. As I wrote on, I realise what kind of importance a character like this could bring to the plot as a whole. Someone who's not personally involved, and can act as an anchor between scene shifts.

Green, on the other hand, was the complete opposite. He was obviously a major character, but honestly there was just so much about him that I didn't want to write about. He's twelve years old for god's sake, and after two chapters of him I've already lost track of why he was even written in in the first place. It was a seriously weird feeling to cut someone's screentime short, but I never meant for it to be like that. It was simply a necessary commitment that I have to keep. You can find traces of this by all of the backstory and internal dialogue that he had, that was never put to use. Oh well, nothing I can do about it really. This wasn't a revisionist history experience.

Something else that can also use a mention is the Pokemons themselves. Let me be honest here, Pokemon aren't very interesting for anything except for fights, unless I made a concious effort to pay attention to a few in the first place. I didn't. I had a Pokemon battle a few chapters in, but I found Pokemon fighting to be utterly ridiculous outside a gameplay mechanic point of view, so I decided to stop doing it altogether. You may also see these creatures coming up every now and then, but nothing in any significance. At a lot of points it made me doubt myself as to what exactly I'm writing for. This is a Pokemon fanfiction and there are hardly any Pokemon in it, and if you were to do some selective reading and cuts one could ever argue that they might as well not exist at all. This is something I'll try to fix the next time around.

Sabrina's psychic ability was something worth paying a bit of attention to. It was quite a bit of a plot device earlier on, but hardly made an appearance as the story continued. This was because of the time splits between when parts of the story was being written. If you're one of the few who followed it from the very beginning, you're probably well accustomed to my absolutely insane updating schedule (that is to say none at all). I sometimes write ever weekend, and at times no words will come out of me on the subject for months. A lot of the ideas and continuations I had at the early chapters were already lost and gone by the time I started putting in the later ones. That's just the reality of it, and nothing I can really do.

The story itself was divided into two arcs, the one with the cruise and the one with Ren. The first arc was pretty much just me messing with the possibilities and directions, without being completely sure what I was going to do with everything once it ended. It was such a mess, but it was also much more positive per se. Things can't remain positive forever, however, as that's just how drama works. Romance simply doesn't work for long without it, and I wasn't good enough to write good drama yet. Whatever, can't dwell on it now.

The second part was the Ren arc. This one was quite the intense internal debate. Ren was yet another original character (the last one being Dan who was not of any importance) intended to be a side one. However, both she and Penny played a far larger role in moving the plot forward than the main couple could. It was a stunning revelation, and perhaps it made things seemed a bit unbalanced half way in. It was fine by the end since they became main characters themselves, but that just made writing even more complicated. The butler – mansion arc was something that I thought up because I felt it made more sense. The original drama was because of Sabrina's serious commitment issue, but where would I take it from there. That's the kind of problem you talk about, and unless I'm willing to boil my characters down to teenage angst and incapibility of rational thoughts, there needed to be something else. It was a way of introducing a villain into the story, so to speak. Years later now looking back on it, I could have done things differently, but it is what it is.

Ren, of course, wasn't the villain. She was just someone caught in the middle. I never thought of it, but her love for Erika simply spoke through my words before I became conscious of it myself. A love triangle was something that never even crossed my mind at any point, but somehow it was very apparent, though more subtle. There was no yelling, no breaking down crying, no running around like headless chickens. However, there was sabotage, there was reconcilation, and there was confrontation. At the end of the day I felt that there are certain things and cerain cliches that I felt comfortable keeping. It also made for a hell of an emotional struggle, which I've been told as the meat of my plot a lot of the time. If that's what it is, then I suppose there aren't much else to say.

This is the part where I dedicate an honorary mention of Surge. What a character this guy turned out to be. At first, he was someone that I needed to demonstrate the fact that Sabrina was someone who's comfortable and open about her sexuality. The lieutenant was there for hardly anything more than that, and only served to show how crude I was with these kinds of details when this story started out. As the retcon happened, I was forced to give him a personality and a role. I did, and he was the closet thing to a villain the first arc had (with the Giovanni – Green – Red arc ended up being cut after some deliberations). I didn't write him with that conscious mindset but he took it upon himself to fill the role. Quite a few chapters when the scene where Sabrina visitted his house happened, I felt the need to revamp the man. He was no longer needed as an antagonist to anything, and I was being fairly unreasonable with him from the start. That's how he developed, a family friend and a man with attitude.

There was also Red, who was playing the scene for a brief part of the last few chapters. He was there only as a throwback to the Green – Red arc mentioned above. I couldn't simply let him go, and his being on Mt. Silver in the original 2nd generation game only made things more interesting. Being honest, I could've taken this opportunity to do a much better job with locales and setting shifts, but I blew my chance, oh well.

At some point during writing, the idea of putting Penny and Ren together as a couple actually made sense to me. However, I never went through with it because I realised that this story was never meant to be about them. I have already made the mistake of allowing their roles to be so high elevated that I almost failed to keep track of them. This was an idea that was toyed with, but no further than in my head, because it hampered the direction I intended the story to go. In the future, it probably won't happen either, truth be told.

As for the resolution of the butler arc and the decision to end the series, I have little to say. From the very start, the idea that Sabrina and Erika will end up together at the end was one of the few things in the story that I was not willing to compromise. After putting Ren in the picture, it needed to stop there. The romance could only have so much drama without having to resort to risking character integrity. Things needed to end, and they needed to end like how adults (emotional and sporadic creatures as they are) would handle something like it. Erika was not logically someone who needed to rely on her family lineage to live on, and she also wasn't going to suddenyl develop a feeling for Ren out of pure pity. In the interest of moving on, Everyone did. People didn't necessarily change, but they were willing to make the compromises needed to forward their situations. Funnily enough things like that don't always happen in real life, but I have a certain respect for these characters. I believed in their ability to handle themselves, that was why I wrote them as such. On a very small note, Erika's grandfather made an appearance back-to-back. I didn't actually intend him to be a villain, although I certainly could understand someone viewing him as such. He was just supposed to be a more relateable face of the central conflict, nothing more. If he was, he wouldn't be so full of cliches. It doesn't make him unexpectedly so, but regardless that's all I'm willing to say about that.

That's a lot I said, and this certainly was longer than the afterword for November Princess (and for good reasons), but it also have something else. I've been thinking of continuing this Pokemon universe for a while now, and the decision is that I will do it. When this afterword comes up I'd have already begun writing it. I elluded to it during Ren's dialogues in the epilogue, and at least she will make an appearance (if not just cameo). I'm not sure as to what do with Penny moving forward as of yet, but hopefully that's not something to worry about in the end. I'll try my best not to treat these two like such established characters, because they would definitely not be the main ones of my upcoming series. If you're interested, keep an eye out for the next few days after this comes online, as something will surely come.

With that, I'd like to say my personal goodbye to the couple of this series. It was a hell of a few years, and looking back I'm glad I chose the ones I did. Their story has ended – effectively – and I can't help but feel a little emotional looking back at it. It's the same feeling one has everytime a decent-length piece of literary work is finished, especially satisfied ones. Sure, I could just continue writing about them, but that's only delaying the inevitable. I'd rather end this now than risk getting inevitably burn out in the worst possible ways and leaving things in hiatus. They taught me quite a lot of lessons, in both writing and character, and perhaps there's nothing better to get out of something like this. Perhaps at some point I may even read everything from start to finish just to relive this journey again, knowing it would never continue.

I won't say I won't elude to them in a dialogue or two though.

If just to remind myself,

LightRedemption