If you ask who the first LotE character was, well, there's a lot of candidates. And thinking back, there's more candidates than I realized. As various people know by now, Shanala was my very first Pokemon OC, and Doomsday Survivor (then called "Pokemon Box Adventures") was my first story idea, just a campfire story on Boy Scout campouts. But is Shanala the first LotE character? Originally, the outside world would have been completely inhospitable. (Actually, despite the title, it wasn't going to take place in Storage originally, but rather a small area of the world that somehow escaped destruction.) Shanala would not be someone who let emotions overwhelm her, nor would she fall in love. She would learn to balance caution with ideals. The point is, the original Shanala's story was after the world's end, while the current Shanala's story is during the world's end. She simply wasn't going to be an LotE character. In fact, even after I started writing WoV and LotE, I never planned to add Shanala into the story. I only did so because at the time, I thought the story was almost done (lol). She might be my first character, but she's not the first LotE character. So who is? In the past, I've referred to Mythic as the first LotE character. The first time I envisioned LotE as a full prequel and not just the Doomsday Survivor backstory, I had this vision of an Eevee who saw a terrible dragon enter our world, followed by a long chase scene in which the Eevee would flee Mount Coronet by transforming between Eeveelutions. (I hadn't read the manga back then, but he was pretty much like Red's Eevee). See, part of the backstory to Pokemon Box Adventures was that the protectors of Shanala's village went to fight the Exile and never returned. The Eevee was supposed to be the rookie of this team. There would have been a great battle between his team and the army trying to free the Exile, and because the two sides defeated each other, the Eevee would be the last one standing when the Exile got free. At the end, he would evolved into "Mytheon", which I imagined as the ultimate Eeveelution. "Mytheon" didn't resemble a dragon, but because Dragon was the only pre-gen4 "special" type that didn't have an Eeveelution, it was supposed to be Dragon-type. (If I were to write a story like this today, he would become Sylveon.) Still, while Mythic has always had the same role, he was originally a rookie, not an ancient Pokemon. You could say he was really Speedster back then. Besides, Insyte is a Flareon instead of an Espeon (the usual opposite of Umbreon) because I considered Flareon the most natural evolution of Eevee. So even though Insyte didn't come into existence until long after the others, you could say Insyte is the original protagonist, or something like that. Though not really, for reasons I'll get into in another paragraph. I should note that I hadn't qutie decided on the Exile's identity yet. Originally, the Pokemon sealed at Mt. Coronet would have been Dialga, who would then announce the "end of time" and free many other Pokemon, the "Exiled Ones." I had a map of how Sinnoh would be distributed between these Pokemon, but it was lost in the earliest stages of LotE. It took me a long time to decide between Darkrai and Giratina. Sure, Giratina might be a nightmare, but if Darkrai could defeat Giratina, didn't that mean it was a greater force of evil? Actually, at one point, the Exile would have been an undead Horizon (though I hadn't come up with the name yet, of course). The lineup of the six village protectors changed over multiple retellings, but the leader was usually a Swampert. Rush! Well, not quite. This Swampert was going to be Rush's father. I never did settle on a name for him, but he was based off my Emerald Swampert. (One of my gripes with D/P was how quickly my Swampert was getting taken down. As a character, this Swampert's role was to fall in battle, representing the fall of the old guard.) Rush and Sparktail were made for a story in post-apocalyptic Hoenn, taking place some time after Shanala's story. (This story was based off my replay of Ruby after giving Diamond to my brother, and was about Rush trying to save the world from Groudon, but it never quite got off the ground. Later, Rush and Sparktail would be put into the village protectors. I believe I still have a battle team card on Pokemon Battle Revolution with at least one version of the village protectors: Swampert, Lucario, Pikachu, Umbreon, Skarmory, Eevee. You may notice this sounds a lot like Slick's current team. It's definitely not the first lineup, though it is the first one that had no legendaries. Skarmory is the very last Pokemon from Sapphire, which I lost many years ago. Another symbol of the old guard. Not very much personality, really; one could make a case for Ferricia being kuudere, but the original Skarmory doesn't even have that. Where Swampert symbolized might/offensive power, Skarmory symbolized security/defensive power. Umbreon was from Colosseum, and like Swampert and Skarmory, he also represented the old guard. But while they were simply symbols of power, Umbreon also had a theme of "darkness that is not evil." Characterization-wise, he was mysterious and powerful, but not tragic by any means. He was closer to Lunus than Insyte, really. I won't deny that Lucario is 100% Lyther. He is 100% special like Lyther, while most Lucarios (both in-game and in fanfics) tend to be physical. When LotE was first gaining attention on Route 50, I even traded him back from SoulSilver to Diamond to rename him Lyther. And yet, he was never very important as far as I can remember. His only role was to reject the idea that Aura was the soul. Oh, and to fill an empty slot. Now for the last two. Oh boy. The Pikachu was the free surfing Pikachu, so all of its stats were set. Female, Hardy nature. Resourceful and knew her way around the wilderness. Amber was an attempt to bring back that Pikachu, in a way. Not the same character as Sparktail by any means, but you could say they had the same roles, so in that way, Amber could be called the original Sparktail. But what's this? Mythic and Thalia occupy the same slot. (Honestly, this didn't occur to me until much later.) Now, I don't believe Amber and Mythic were ever intended to fall in love. Rather, Thalia replaced Mythic the way that Sparktail replaced Amber. And yet, one could say Thalia has some of the same motifs as Mythic. Natural, physical power. A product of nature, yet wishes to help humanity. In the past, I've been tempted to scrap LotE entirely becuase it wasn't the story I originally intended. Nostalgia tends to make the past look better than it was. You know how it is. "The new is so different from the old, that something of value from the old must have been lost!"
Well, it's true that the original LotE outlines were much darker and depressing. But the current LotE has much of value that the original never did. Even though the Exile's War doesn't devastate the entire planet, it leaves emotional scars. So I don't want to tear down what I've made for the sake of half-baked original ideas. Volume IV is proof that I can recapture old themes by expanding the scenarios, rather than replacing them. In fact, there are a number of stories in the LotE Bonus queue that draw upon old ideas for LotE. I'm thinking of a very specific LotE Bonus story. I'll point out what I mean when I get there.
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SparkleafSparkleaf has been writing fanfiction since 2009. He also enjoys anime, manga, and visual novels. CategoriesArchives
April 2021
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