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Pokémon Fledglings

Trivia #1 (Prologue - Episode 3)
  • Spiteful Murkrow

    Busy Writing Stories I Want to Read
    Pronouns
    He/Him/His
    Partners
    1. nidoran-f
    2. druddigon
    3. swellow
    4. quilava-fobbie
    5. sneasel-kate
    Author’s Note: This trivia section was originally posted alongside Chapter 14 of Fledglings on Serebii. Annotations and revised commentary not originally in this trivia section are noted in bolded text.

    What's the story behind those chapter headers?

    As I recall mentioning once or twice in prior pre-ambles on Serebii, I took a healthy bit of influence from television structures when still in the planning stages, which lead to me tackling this fic's chapters in batches roughly corresponding to "episodes" (I will think of proper names for them… Someday). The actual idea for putting them up came from Tangent128 from Serebii, who fairly adamantly suggested presenting the fic in something beyond straight text from fairly early on in the planning process. While it's not nearly as fancy as some of the original proposals we bandied around, the headers act as a means to subtly touch on important elements for a given block (i.e. the first and its eggshells, the second and its ship, the third and its team badge) and act as an eyecatch.

    How do you come up with that release schedule anyways?

    It's a series of guesstimates based off of the progress of my "drafting" and "editing" queues. Once I get a block of chapters fully drafted, I spend some time along with my beta readers to chop them up into initial chapters that will both be less intimidating to polish and intimidating for readers to parse (currently I aim to keep things between 12 and 20 pages each, though have tripped above the latter limit on a couple occasions).

    LOL, that was a real blast from the past. There are a number of later chapters that were added after this trivia that went well beyond that length limit, but that’s a bridge to cross when we get there here on Thousand Roads.

    After splitting, each chapter is then polished from the trainwreck-tier writing it is into something that is hopefully readable and absent of plot holes (granted, I could be failing at that, but if so, I haven't seen it yet) and titles thrown around, any further splitting (as in the end of the second block) is done, little touchups such as accenting the 'e' in 'Pokémon' happen, and then things actually get published.

    Drafting and editing are done in more or less rotating blocks, and on good stretches I can get one cycle out in about 10 days (granted, lately with all the late deadlines it's probably been skewing closer to 14), with the presence of the editing queue (usually about 4-5 chapters long) helping to provide a safety buffer for the drafting queue for busy or otherwise creatively dry spells.

    Yeaaaaah, the cycle’s been taking a bit longer in recent arcs and Virgil134 has since joined forces as a co-writer, though the fundamental organizational structure is still basically the same all these years later. Fortunately for those of you following from Thousand Roads, you get spit-shined updates on a consistent two-week schedule here.

    How did you come up with Pleo?

    As mentioned in an earlier chapter preamble, Pleo owes his name and a good deal of the core of his character premise to an old off-site friend of mine. More specifically, it was Luke924 from fanfiction.net who came up with OG Pleo. The decision to make Pleo a "mutant Wingull" was done after I realized that whoever I chose to fill the role of a cosmically important underpowered midget with lots and lots of room to grow should be someone who should more or less embody the sort of setting that this story takes place in, namely "7.8 - Too Much Water" and a few sea rocks.

    The decision also has influenced a few of the titles that have popped up for this fic. For one, I probably would not have called it 'Fledglings' if Pleo was say… a Kyogre.

    How did you come up with Kiran?

    Kiran's species has more or less been constant from his initial envisioning as a character somewhere in between a "Little League coach" and "apprentices' master" whose primary role in the guild would be to help graduate young Pokémon into being able to function on their own at the guild. Kiran is also the character that has gone through the most name changes of any of the more major characters at this point in the story, his initial working name being "Mikoyan", and then later "Anastas" all the way up until about half a week before the first chapter got published. After a bout of dissatisfaction with his name, I chanced to browse a list of training aircraft, and thus "Kiran" came to be, named after an airplane used by India's Air Force to train its pilots.

    How did you come up with Nida?

    So a lot of you are probably wondering, "why a Nidoran?" Well, once upon a time, during a late night session when I was stuffing placeholders into slots for the rough characters in the fic. One of those roles was to be someone who had a tendency to chomp at the bit and be a touch self-anxious about standing out in a crowd. After going down the Bunnelby hole about using a Numel for a while, I thought to myself "Hmm, why not use a Pokémon from the original set of PMD games that readers would easily recognize… Like Nidoran!" Once I had about 8 hours of sleep afterwards and grew a bit more lucid, I remembered that Nidoran wasn't exactly a starter, but... It fit everything else that I wanted from the character role just perfectly, and so the Pokémon that would become Nida came into being.

    I am actually indebted to Tangent128 for coming up with Nida's name, originally as a throwaway placeholder. After a while, I decided that given Nida was intended to have a crowd of siblings, that it might make sense for her parents to tend to name their kids after lame simple, cute rearrangements of 'Nido' phonemes, and thus 'Nida' stuck.

    How did you come up with Crom?

    As readers who also pecked through some of my other writing might have guessed, Crom and the rest of his family are a reference to the narrator's family in the first fic that I ever published, Dragonspiral's Children. His name owes its origin to Crom Cruach, an Irish fertility/harvest deity that was allegedly served with human sacrifices. For obvious reasons, the name for our favorite baker's child was chosen moreso for the ties to grain and harvest, though he would probably be a-OK with eating bread effigies of other Pokémon and the occasional purchase from a 'scavver'.

    If you're wondering why he's part of a baker's family of all things, I must confess that back in the original spitballing stages, he carried some non-trivial influences from another yellow-eyed childish dragon from a different series, one with a bit more red and white on his hide. A few of those influences lingered and carried on into the little Dragon-Type that we know today.

    How did you come up with Elty?

    The process of filling Elty's role of "formerly shady and less-than-innocent teammate" was actually the one that went through the most species of any of the main characters. Offhand, Pokémon that were considered for the role included Pancham, Scraggy, Litwick, and a few fire starters, before Growlithe was finally settled on. As with Crom, Elty too also owes a good deal of his existence to being an homage. In this particular case, Elty gets a good deal of his character's broad strokes (and his proper name) from a recurring character concept that my good friend Venia Silente from Serebii plays with, the first appearance that I know of being in the fic Playfield.

    The "tongue" that Elty uses was originally going to Esperanto, as a nod to some meta surrounding his inspirations (his "proper" name being a splice between the present and future forms of the Esperanto verb for "to endure", making his explanation for his name back in Ch. 8 not too far off from the mark). After spending some time thinking it over, Esperanto wound up seeming a little too "inorganic" for the setting I wanted, so I decided to go with a linguistic nod to Esperanto's origins instead for his source of little loanwords and phrases.

    Why the languages?

    A few reasons, actually. The first and most important reason, which those of you who read my Freshman effort at fic-writing probably picked up on, is that I simply don't interpret "Pokémon speech" as being unified or universal, but rather a mixture of mutually unintelligible languages. As such, "Charmander" and "Hitokage" would both be accurate, but not understandable by local Pokémon outside of rather specific geographical ranges. The second reason for going down the route is that it provided a relatively easy way to distinguish fairly divergent cultures from their speech alone.

    As mentioned in passing by Nida in Ch. 4, the main reason why "English" (or more accurately and more probably, some manner of pidgin rendered as English) predominates is due to the relative proximity of Pokémon in the Cradle, which lead to the emergence of a "common tongue". Well, that and the fact that as much as I'd like it, I'm not quite an omniglot and most of the loanwords/phrases that pop up in the story are either vetted by native speakers such as Venia Silente, who provides translation assistance for Spanish terms in this story or are "best guesses" thanks to brushing up on some phrasebooks and basic grammar. (As such, if you happen to speak Polish and see me doing something egregiously wrong, please do tell me about it.)

    What's with those Protect users?

    They are just putting their skills to use for the mundane purpose of helping to cut down on some property damage, which was influenced by a nifty little one-shot that Venia Silente wrote a while back about the workings of a stadium complex in the Pokémon world. Unfortunately in the Pokémon universe, it seems to be a recurring trend that Pokémon are significantly tougher than a number of things around them: simple buildings, air balloons, ketchup bottles…

    As such, when surrounded by things that are much frailer than you and need to keep things you value dry from water either falling from the skies above, or as Hess' crew demonstrated in Ch. 6, the seas beneath, making an attempt at keeping that object from getting shredded by a stray beam attack becomes a decently high priority.

    Why do you always have those special thanks in your preambles?

    This question is referring to a practice that I do on the Serebii version of the fic. I’ve decided to include it since the spirit of it still holds for Fledglings regardless of where it’s published.

    Because as much as I'd like to hog all the credit for myself, Fledglings would simply not exist as the fic that you know (and hopefully enjoy reading) today if it weren't for the shoulders of others to stand on. As such, I just felt it was appropriate to spend a little time to give credit where credit was due, this week to Tangent128, Venia Silente, and Virgil134 in particular, along with the people that read and review this thing.
     
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    Trivia #2 (Episode 4)
  • Spiteful Murkrow

    Busy Writing Stories I Want to Read
    Pronouns
    He/Him/His
    Partners
    1. nidoran-f
    2. druddigon
    3. swellow
    4. quilava-fobbie
    5. sneasel-kate
    Author’s Note: This trivia section was originally posted alongside Chapter 20 of Fledglings on Serebii. Annotations and revised commentary not originally in this trivia section are noted in bolded text.

    How did you come up with Hatteras?

    Hatteras was initially envisioned as a character that much like Wigglytuff, would be a goofball off in his own world for a good portion of the time that still manages to get things done. Obviously, doing a direct retread of Wigglytuff would have been boring (plus Ampharos probably don't say "yoom-tah"), which lead to Hatteras picking up some divergent traits down the road. The major ones would be his ability to better sell a firm, no-nonsense impression to tough customers; being a little further up there in years; and his comedic jack-of-all-trades shtick. The whole "being an electric sheep" came along after talking over some possibilities along with Venia Silente from Serebii one night, where we figured that since the town was by the sea, it might make sense for its leader to potentially be someone who could help out with some sort of major practical role, such as making sure ships don't run aground. Funnily enough, this all happened before Pokémon Super Mystery Dungeon was even revealed.

    As for why he's called "Hatteras", our favorite electric sheep's name takes after his night job a bit, complete with black stripes.

    How did you come up with Ander?

    From a very early point on, it was decided that in the world of Fledglings, small numbers of the Pokémon known as the "Marked" would be intermixed into communities around the Cradle.

    As such, when coming from a background that is commonly viewed with suspicion and misgivings (to put it generously), it makes for characters that exist at the fringes of their respective societies, with a hefty dose of siege mentality.

    Ander owes his origins primarily through his (budding artist) daughter's species in a throwaway idea-generating session. His current occupation as a "scavver" is informed by a mix of being something that would naturally attract suspicion and unease (especially from Pokémon that aren't apex predators), as well as something that having a pair of long, sharp blades on your person constantly would be useful for.

    As for where his name comes from... his and the other names in his family are all derived from fragments of one shared name that alludes to some plans from the original draft of Fledglings. While they don’t occur in full in the final version, they’re still retained enough that I feel it’s one of those things that’s spoilery enough to punt off into its own bit, and is best looked at after the story gets quite a bit further into its run.

    Ander and his family’s names are all based off fragments of "Cassandra". That’s all I will say on the matter.

    How did you come up with Tromba?

    Tromba's natural features were informed by wanting to make an idyllic tropical island that could plausibly support constant cultivation for more than one crop cycle in the year. The Mystery Dungeon was stuck where it was in order to give a bit of a surreal vibe to the place.

    The island having Spanish as its "tongue" is one that I chose because it was one of the more simple and reader-friendly ones to start out with. Have a passing knowledge, know people like Venia Silente who have a better knowledge, and the Spanish localizations for Pokémon names being the same as English kept the dialogue from the main characters from being overly cluttered, as opposed to being bombarded with "Crimgan"s or "Schwalboss"es right off the bat.

    As for the name, it is merely Spanish for 'waterspout', which being an island named after a whirlwind, seemed to be pleasantly appropriate for the home of a Lugia. The other beta names that were floated around for Tromba similarly kept the 'whirl' theme in the local tongue, which included 'Torbellino' and 'Giro'. Or 'whirlwind' and 'turn'/'whirl' respectively.

    How did you come up with Bluewhorl Town?

    Bluewhorl since its earliest concepts has always been intended to be one of those small, sleepy, peaceful-seeming villages where most locals know each other and look out for each other without a whole lot going on, to the point where its working name during the planning stages was literally 'Podunk'. Obviously, trouble is not nearly as distant as it seems from a glance, but such is life in most towns chosen to host the protagonists of a story involving journeys faraway. Especially when beings seen as gods and shady ambitions come into play.

    Bluewhorl's name was chosen to be a cutesy and simple two word "word salad" title that would be in the "common tongue" that is spoken in the Cradle. 'Whorl' once again being a play off of Lugia's haunt back in G/S/C. As for "blue", well when you're surrounded by sea and sky, blue tends to be on the mind quite a bit. :P

    What's with the Apricorns?

    Apricorns in this setting are an interpretation that I borrowed from Tangent128 from Serebii that I felt suited the setting and chose to roll with because conservation of mass is a thing it presented plot and worldbuilding threads that could be drawn upon, with most applications in setting coming from conversations with Virgil134 about potential uses.

    Specifically, Apricorns in this setting are nuts that grow with natural pocket dimensions inside of them that suck in unfortunate Pokémon that overly disturb them. The pocket dimension gets interrupted and reformed depending on if the nut's shell is fully enclosed or not. It's a bit on the out-there side of interpretations, but when taken on its own logic, allows for it to become something that is both threatening to the locals in-setting and also a vector that would have both allowed old codgers in Johto could fashion them into things that could catch murderbeasts in an age before mass-produced plastic and metal contraptions, and also be able to make them into nutritious drinks for more athletic types.

    How did you come up with Lyn?

    Whelp, I'll admit that this is one of those parts of the meta backstory that's kinda lame, but... Back when I was putting together rough character roles, I came to the decision that Pleo and company would get punted out of the proverbial nest by someone who basically carried the same shtick as Admiral Zhao from ATLA as someone who was far too ambitious for his own (or anyone else's) good.

    On the other hand, I also wanted a villain that wouldn't be an "expected" species, which per PMD/franchise trends, basically ruled out Poison, Ghost, and Dark-Types, along with all of the "stereotypically jerkish" Pokémon such as Salamence.

    Cue remembering an old character concept that Tangent128 from Serebii batted around elsewhere in the deep, dark corners of the internet. Specifically a concept of a jerkish, underhanded Dewott in a PMD setting that had a tendency to bully around some locals lower on the totem pole, who lends Lyn his current name.

    After pushing Lyn up the power ladder a bit relative to the concept that inspired his character, I thought to myself, "hey, this actually covers both bases pretty well!" After all, Samurott may be a starter and trend "le noble swordsmon" in prevailing depictions, but it also draws influence from a warrior class that gave the world Night Slash tsujigiri, or in plain English: the practice of going out to a crossroads and testing out your sword’s sharpness on random passerby peasants. And so it was that our "favorite" Commissioner came to be.

    There are a few layers to the onion that got added during the planning process regarding how Lyn came to be the not-so-little terror he is in the story now, but it will be a little while longer before they come into play on-screen. (Lol, okay so barring some hints here and there, it was closer to six years, but who’s counting?) After all, when on the run from someone who's kidnapped you from home, there's higher priorities than going into life stories off the bat.

    How did you come up with the Company anyways?

    Those of you who have a passing knowledge of 17th and 18th century world history (or have otherwise have seen a Pirates of the Caribbean movie) have probably picked up on the Company drawing rather non-trivially from historical outfits such as the British and Dutch East India Companies. Namely outfits that blend corporate structure with on-the-ground power and governance and casual exploitation of those unlucky enough to be under their authority.

    Obviously, the British and Dutch East India Companies never butted heads with their sponsoring governments quite to the degree that Ellsberg hinted at during his stint in Bluewhorl, but this is a fanfic and not a historical allegory. :P

    What's with those purple squares on the Company scarves?

    They are T-Square fractals, with the complexity increasing by one level with each rank up the ladder.

    i.e. Lyn is a Third-Rank, as such his pattern is as depicted in the headers of the chapters in Episode 4. Osmund and Ellsberg as Second-Ranks both have a square with four smaller ones anchored on the corners. The common grunt (and Pleo in the chapters immediately after Lyn caught him) has a sad, single, lonely square. After all, a shady company-turned-government needs some way to encourage its more petty members to climb the internal ranks.

    Why does Lyn's ship have cannons and why don't they shoot proper cannonballs?

    Lyn's ship has cannons because for a society that can cobble together crude huts and ships, the ability to throw together a reinforced wooden tube that channels explosions to shoot things out is fairly trivial, especially when prepackaged low grade explosives turn up on a fairly regular basis in Mystery Dungeons.

    As for why they don't bother shooting proper cannonballs, it has to do with a confluence of factors:

    The first, and primary one, is simply the lack of metal to work with, as mentioned in passing in earlier chapters back. As in real life, metal tends to by hard to come by on isolated sea rocks unless you hit the geological jackpot, and lack of thumbs tends to get in the way of metallurgy at low tech levels. Both of which make metal a wee bit too valuable to the perspective of the Cradle’s locals to risk losing a collection of cannons' worth of metal to the bottom of a sea. Let alone use it to make proper cannonballs that would similarly turn out to be pains to try and retrieve after shooting.

    The second biggie is the materials constraints of what they do have. In real life, wooden cannons are frail pieces of junk that rarely last more than a few shots before breaking when shooting out heavy projectiles, often explosively. As such, for the sake of ease of reloading and getting the most uses as possible out of it, a dangerous, but lightweight projectile that doesn’t require that much to get going is ideal for such cannons. Hence Apricorn grapeshot.

    The last contributing factor to why Lyn's weaponized wooden tubes are the way they are is due to them occupying a different niche relative to cannons in our history. Much like throwing a Pokéball would, a cannon that shoots Apricorns in this setting would fundamentally have most effect being put to use kicking a weakened Pokémon while they're down, putting Pokémon into sticky situations thanks to sudden terrain changes (i.e. busting out at the bottom of a lake), or for intimidation purposes.

    For more practical endeavors such as bringing your foe to their knees, or putting a hole in a relatively frail wooden ship, there's a whole list of attacks and usable items that will do the trick almost as well as a cannon and not break into pieces from an errant Brick Break or Thunderbolt.

    What's with all the pirates and ships anyways, isn't this a PMD fic?

    Well, in my defense, my exact words when this fic started were that Fledglings was a PMD-like fic. But the features of this fic that are more sea-oriented were chosen since they seemed like logical outgrowths of transporting a PMD-like society into a setting with a lot more seawater.

    PMD-esque settings commonly have outlaws, a setting as waterlogged as the Cradle has a bit more of a premium on land. Thus, the analogues to outlaws in the Cradle adopt a modus operandi that is better suited to their craft out on the underwatched sea.

    Similarly, such societies have an understanding of basic carpentry and stonecutting, which would imply that when push came to shove, that making simple wooden floaty things to take the burden off of Lapras and other sea Pokemon needing to lug or tow around cargo and passengers by themselves would both be possible, and desirable as long as they could be defended.

    But most importantly, they’re there because they help make the setting a bit more unique and fun to read. o3o
     
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    Trivia #3 (Episode 5 + Auld Lang Syne)
  • Spiteful Murkrow

    Busy Writing Stories I Want to Read
    Pronouns
    He/Him/His
    Partners
    1. nidoran-f
    2. druddigon
    3. swellow
    4. quilava-fobbie
    5. sneasel-kate
    Author’s Note: This trivia section was originally posted alongside Chapter 27 of Fledglings on Serebii after its thread received 8,000 views. Annotations and revised commentary not originally in this trivia section are noted in bolded text.

    How did you come up with Maranda?

    Maranda owes her origins to choosing to flesh out a background gag from all the way in Chapter 1 where her letter popped up as part of a load of mail to Bluewhorl's guild, which saved a lot of time coming up with a species. In the original drafts of EP 5, Maranda was entirely the local medic, and the Mairesse was a distinct character. After a few stabs, it became quickly apparent that neither of the distinct characters really had that much screentime or depth, and so the fateful choice to merge the two was done, and our favorite medic-mayor came into being as a character.

    How did you come up with Daraen and Margi?

    Margi was actually the first of the duo to be developed thanks to her role helping Team Traveller slip off the island all the way back to when Episode 5's plot was a really, really derivative retread of the Kiyoshi Island plot from ATLA. After going my own way a bit more aggressively with the plot there, Daraen wound up coming into play thanks to a plot bunny exploiting how a Marked would see a Legendary if he was kept in the dark (har har) about its nature.

    As for their origins… this is another one of those behind the scenes bits that gets on the lame side again, but Daraen and Margi draw a hefty dose of thematic influence from the protagonist and main antagonist of Fire Emblem: Awakening. In the game, the two have a (significantly less happy) child/parent dynamic going on (okay, it's more complicated than that, but still) and the protagonist has an implied background that is not too dissimilar from the situation that Daraen was born into (if with significantly more cosmic power). Daraen's name is a straight lift of the protagonist's default name in French-language copies (and European versions of SSB4), while Margi's name is a lazy anagram of the antagonist's.

    So yeah, if you were wondering where the description of Daraen's scarf design came from, or why he was depicted as being the main brains behind his team's plays in his "Substitute Battle", those influences were kind of a help coming up with that.

    That said, it's not a total rehash. The characters here are just a mother seeking to get by with her child and be left alone, and a kid trying to be a normal kid with friends in a world that doesn't like them very much. Which would have made for a much more boring story in Awakening.

    How did you come up with Team Chasseur?

    As you may have noticed in a prior response, Team Chasseur is a nod at some of the cast from the original version of Love and Other Nightmares, specifically Kephi, Obieme, and Virokoe. I remain eternally grateful to diamondpearl876 from Serebii for allowing me to mangle do a broad-strokes cameo of her characters.

    Now obviously, Team Chasseur is just a little different from their sources of inspiration, namely by having a few fewer demons that they struggle with in their series (that we know of). That said, the major traits of each character heavily guided the ways that the team's members turned out. Since the explanations are a bit spoilery for the original version of LaON, I've dumped them into a separate spoiler for those of you who haven't gotten to reading through it yet. (And you should, it's great!)

    'Venner' carries a name that can mean a couple of things depending on the language you interpret it in. In Dutch and Northern German, the name is a topographical surname for someone who lives next to a pit, moor, or marshy area. In English, the name is an occupational surname for a 'hunter'. Both meanings obviously fit in the story here (albeit for a different value of 'hunter'), and it's a way of nodding at the old job Kephi used to have in LaON.

    'Francoeur' is a name that means 'open / generous heart', which is a take off of a white lie that Annie feeds Obieme later in the story with regards to his name supposedly meaning '"strong heart" in Kalosian'. This was just a little bit of a mean irony here, since as of the time of writing, Francoeur's namesake had a long way to go before he was an open or generous anything and has not been reintroduced into the rewrite just yet. The skeptical personality is not too far from the mark, though.

    'Actor' is a non-name since I couldn't really get a bead on something to nod to 'Virokoe', which was reused here as Actor's stage name. The epithet, and Actor's background as a… well… actor, are an allusion to Virokoe's own history in LaON.

    As for 'Team Chasseur', which Actor knocked as being 'uncreative' way back when. Chasseur is a French term for 'hunter'. So our team is strutting around as 'Team Hunter', in a world where 'Hunter' is common slang for Rescue/Exploration Team members. The snowflake design on their scarves mentioned early on in EP 5 is a nod to the Legendary their LaON counterparts are affiliated with.

    How did you come up with Boisocéan?

    Boisocéan as a location was envisioned from fairly early on as being a heavily wooded island overrun with bugs, which influenced its working name during early planning, "Vizsla"- a transparent ripoff of the bug-infested island of the same name in Solatorobo.

    After a little while, Boisocéan as a concept evolved into something a bit less hazy, and the name also got a bit less lazy. After settling upon French as the local tongue, the current name was quickly narrowed down to "Boisocéan" (rendered as "Boisocéane" originally thanks to typos), or roughly, "Woodocean".

    The name was also settled on because it happens to be plausibly close enough to sound like a corruption of "Bois aux chênes", or the French localization name of "Ilex Forest", which in turn influenced the choice to make Celebi the local Protector.

    How did you come up with Seahive Square?

    Seahive's name was chosen based off of the same word salad naming rules that informed Bluewhorl's name, in this case, being named after location, and the fact that its locals are disproportionately chitinous. As for why it's Seahive Square, not every settlement can be a "Town", just ask PMD R/B, and it's filled with bugs. The style of architecture is more or less a less anthropogenic, and soggier Fortree City, with little French-style flourishes here and there such as the latticing on the shrine tree.

    Earlier names toyed with for Seahive at various points during planning included "Versillage", "Woodwake Town/Square", and the oh-so creative "Creepy-Crawlie Square".

    What's with those Gummi Fabs?

    They're a somewhat fudged way of depicting the creation of magical food pills that provide nutrients to Pokémon well enough to serve as a compromise to different species, much like the anime's take on kibble.

    As such, the places where these mysterious food pellets come from struck me as places where the means of assembly would be a touch processed and artificial and use some more obscure techniques for extracting the crude nutrients necessary, that with a little flavoring, would be passable enough to serve as 'dinner' to the average resident. Hence the depiction of crude electrolysis.

    As alluded to in passing, the gummis on their own won't magically make you smarter like they do in-game. Or at least not coming fresh off the line. They're more analogous to those colored spheres that the Treasure Town guild fattens you up with in the Explorers games during dinner cutscenes.

    What is Tromban New Year based off?

    Tromban New Year is the result of putting four winter holidays into a blender. Namely Christmas, which was responsible for the gift-giving; Gregorian New Year, which gave the fireworks and use as a "cardinal point" in the local calendar system; Diwali, which provided the emphasis of light and color for decorations; and St. Martin's Day, which provided the door-to-door lanterning and candy-grubbing.

    The rest of the details are a mix of taking facets of the local setting into mind and a few nods at different bits of the franchise. The occurrence on the Winter Solstice was chosen because it is a natural divider between the point where days get shorter to when they start getting longer and spring starts getting closer that occurs over a very specific range of dates in the year, helpful for a society where "technology" is fairly primitive. The "berry powder" in the fireworks is a nod to AG033, with the choice of explosives being the type that involves the least effort to procure locally.

    And of course, much like most other winter holiday, the primary purpose of Tromban New Year is to make winter a bit less miserable and celebrate another year keeping the dreary elements away, namely by marking an expectant dawn to a long night without Legendaries by defying the lack of light on the longest night of the year.

    What's the big deal with scarves in the story anyways?

    They're partly a big deal in this story thanks to their ubiquity in the canon games for Rescue/Exploration Teams. That, and as simple effects that are highly visible, they serve as a means of telegraphing identification and affiliation in a society where literacy is not necessarily as strong as it is in real life.

    There are other articles of clothing that are used to similar effect in-story by some other Pokémon in the Cradle, but it will still be a little while down the road before we really see them beyond chatter in passing.

    Do you have headcanon VAs for any of your characters?

    I certainly do, the same VA that is used for the Explorers games.

    For a more serious, less trolly, and somewhat lame-ish answer, I do not have any headcanon VAs in particular. Though I will say that thanks to drawing a heap of influence from ATLA and Digimon Tamers, I sometimes hear characters here and there in the story with VA's voices from those series.

    Do you have a headcanon OST for your fic?

    Not particularly, no. I do have a shortlist of OSTs that I'd feel wouldn't be too out of place with the story up to this point, though. Aside from the obvious of PMD and Pokémon music in general, I've found One Piece music, and the OSTs of Final Fantasy IX and Bravely Default to be fairly fitting with the story. Which may or may not have anything to do with the fact that I listened to those songs on loop during planning and early writing from time to time.

    Oh yeah, Lugia’s Song from M03 would totally be a prominent part of the OST. Not sure how that got missed in the original version of this trivia way back when. Virgil additionally is of the school that some tracks from Final Fantasy X and Kingdom Hearts would be very at-home in a Fledglings OST.
     
    Trivia #4 (Episode 6)
  • Spiteful Murkrow

    Busy Writing Stories I Want to Read
    Pronouns
    He/Him/His
    Partners
    1. nidoran-f
    2. druddigon
    3. swellow
    4. quilava-fobbie
    5. sneasel-kate
    Author’s Note: This trivia section was originally posted alongside Chapter 30 of Fledglings on Serebii after its thread received 10,000 views. Annotations and revised commentary not originally in this trivia section are noted in bolded text.

    How did you come up with Kenobi?


    Kenobi as an island is the result of throwing Quest Island, Kanto's Rock Tunnel, the Ruins of Alph, and a Regi chamber into a blender, producing an island with scruffy terrain in some parts, and ruins with weird glyphs that loom large in the local mythology.

    Both the endonym- 'Tennobi' and the exonym- 'Kenobi' for our beloved rune-island owe their origins to being corruptions of 'Tanoby'. 'Kenobi' in particular was considered since it was a lame cute Star Wars pun that was hard to pass up on, which in turn influenced Japanese as a choice for the local tongue due to a mix of being one of the few languages that would plausibly produce 'Kenobi' as a natural-ish sounding name, and as a meta nod to the influence that Japanese cinema had on Star Wars as a series.

    From there 'Tennobi' was also considered since it sounded like a more plausibly Japanese name, then I got indecisive, one thing led to another, and the issue was tap-danced around with the decision to make one name an endonym and one an exonym.

    How did you come up with Mossaisle?

    Mossaisle, or as readers with long memories recall, originally Aisle Town, again owes its name to lame cute pun, namely to a wretched hive of scum and villainy on a desert planet in a galaxy far, far away. The original name owes itself to recycling a town name from some past writing Spiteful Murkrow did on a Play-By-Post RP, while the transition to Mossaisle was done in order to preserve the 'two words' naming scheme that settlements had in-story.

    As for its architecture, Mossaisle is basically a traditional Japanese village put together with more primitive tools… spliced together with a favela. Hence why sliding doors and Skittle-colored walls exist side by side there. Andaku, the gaudy, sensual district and most concentrated site of scum and villainy in town, owed a bit of its inspiration to Shinsekai, a tourist trap district in Osaka that is infamous for its underworld ties. The name itself is a corruption of the Japanese localization name for 'The Under', along with the obligatory suffix meaning 'Ward'.

    Where did Lansat Berries as a drug come from?

    Lansat Berries being used to make recreational drugs is based off of the games' flavor text of describing Lansat Berries as being seen as 'a legendary Berry. Holding it supposedly brings great joy' coupled with a simplified version of how drugs are extracted from natural plants.

    In real life, many drugs, both medicinal and recreational, are simply concentrated and treated extracts of the active substances within a plant. Similarly, in Fledglings, some more benign substances such as Vitamins can similarly be produced by concentration and treatment.

    The case of Lansat in particular draws heavy inspiration from how coca leaves are perceived in some Andean countries. Where the innocuous natural plant can be traded and consumed openly, but the distilled drug formed from it is neither desired nor legal from an administrative perspective.

    What's with that weird Pokémon language description?

    The way that Pokémon language is described to work ultimately stems from the assumption that Pokémon speech in PMD games is fundamentally 'anime-style' in nature. As such, the most plausible way for different creatures to be able to communicate verbally with each other would need to be something divorced from phonetic values.

    As it so happens, there are real-life languages such as Mandarin Chinese that use non-phonetic features to encode meaning, namely enunciation, including to some extremes that aren't too far removed from anime-style Pokémon speech.

    As such, the decision was made to have Pokémon languages in Fledglings be fundamentally based upon enunciation, rhythm, and a hefty dose of context-specific meaning. Or in other words, a language where it's not what you say that's important, but rather how and when you say it. A feature that would allow both 'Nidoran' and 'Growlithe' to potentially communicate the same things for Pokémon, if potentially make some things we take for granted such as gag dubbing songs significantly harder for them.

    And what about their writing that was described?

    This is actually a topic that I had to cut down a bit on describing in Chapter 28 to avoid going full textdump, though there was still a good deal that got communicated if one read in between the lines. Mechanically, the writing system used by Fledglings' 'civilized' Pokémon is heavily influenced by East Asian scripts, which themselves are used to render languages with low phoneme densities and context-dependent meanings.

    In Fledglings, meaning in writing is disambiguated through the visual form of logographic runes, much as it would be used to distinguish homophones in a language like Chinese or Japanese. Similarly, runes in Fledglings can be read for their rhythmic or enunciatory value, which is used to mimic the way that a word with unclear or uncertain meaning would sound to Pokémon ears as opposed to its ideographic meaning (ergo "tee-yem" as opposed to "technical machine").

    The presence of ideographic meaning also allows for the meaning of written words to be roughly understood across languages even if the 'pronunciation' and grammar are highly divergent. This was subtly shown in Chapter 27 where Nida read the name of 'Ryūbokuya' as 'Driftwood House', which seemed to be appropriate for both keeping a complex world sufficiently simple for our heroes to navigate, and the logical direction that a writing system used to render a 'common tongue' with many influences would evolve in.

    In terms of visual appearance, the 'runes' in-setting owe their description to the various depictions that have been shown of writing in the canonical PMD games. For those of you who have paid attention to the flavor text in the PMD series from the Explorers games on, you may have noticed that the writing is often described as 'Footprint Runes' or 'footprint-like'.

    On the other hand, those of you who remember the art from PMD R/B's manual may remember that their depiction of writing was not remotely footprint looking at all. And a writing system tightly bound to footprints would be impossible to write in a casual context short of constantly lugging along a large collection of stamps.

    As such, the logical result and middle ground for a PMD-esque world seemed to be to have a writing system where the runes had distinct origins from composition from footprints, but in casual usage would be rendered abstractly.

    What is the Dungeon Colony based off of?

    The Dungeon Colony owes its origins to a character concept that Spiteful Murkrow batted around with some friends in other parts of the net of various Cubone who lived in a tribal structure and had a culture that placed a hefty emphasis on veneration of the dead. In transitioning the concept over, a few changes were made to various features, such as making nomenclature for how their dwellings and kinship networks worked a little less anthropogenic.

    All of the names that are thrown around among the Cubone and Marowak of the colony are deliberately chosen to be valid Japanese names… If highly featural ones that would sound rather doofy to modern ears. A listing of the names, their etymologies, and rough meanings:

    Tetsuzui (鉄髄) - "Iron Marrow"
    Shugodeshi (守護弟子) - "Guarding Student(/Disciple)"
    Mojisenshi (文字戦士) - "Word(/Rune/Character) Warrior"
    Machitabi (町旅) - "Town Journey"
    Keikaiashi (軽快足) - "Nimble Feet"
    Kuraikamen (暗い仮面) - "Dark Mask"

    How did you come up with the Siglo Swellow?

    The Siglo Swellow ultimately owes its role in the story thanks to an evolution in Crom's role in Fledglings. Up until the early part of Episode 3, Crom was initially planned to more or less bow out of the story after Lyn abducted Pleo until the end. After seeing the positive reader response to him as a character, we wound up retooling those plans to have Crom on a 'search quest' for Pleo, which would also allow showing off bits and pieces of things going on in-setting that wouldn't normally be depictable with a sole focus on Team Traveller.

    Most of the characters that have names are nods to past character concepts that Spiteful Murkrow played with in his past writing, Pladur in particular being another nod to Dragonspiral's Children. As for the name of the ship, it's a more literary way of rendering 'Century Swellow' in Spanish, taking obvious influence from Star Wars' Millennium Falcon in style.

    What have been some of the more helpful practices you've encountered while writing Fledglings?

    Offhand, one of the primary things that we have learned to be grateful for when writing this fic are beta readers. Beyond helping to iron out kinks in the drafting phase, having beta readers to act as a sounding board has been immensely helpful for getting past moments where one is stuck, and for helping to coalesce ideas at the hazy beginning around a concrete base.

    We can also heartily vouch for the virtues of maintaining a queue of work in a publishing pipeline. Even if it's not all 'there' after initial drafting, maintaining a pipeline of work helps to keep your immediate future events defined solidly enough to have structure and certainty, while fluid enough to accommodate any last-minute changes, which has been instrumental for maintaining the generally fast publishing pace of this fic.

    What PMD Games Did You Base Fledglings' World On?

    The technical answer is 'none', since it was decided to set this story in a setting completely divorced from the canon ones since there would be significantly fewer canon 'toes' to step on. This opened the door to pulling dynamics from other series, and meant that things ever wound up conflicting with a future installment of PMD, we could play the 'lol multiverse' card that Game Freak so generously provided fan worldbuilders as of ORAS. Now, if the question is what PMD games influenced Fledglings' PMD-like setting, well...

    This is the awkward part where we reveal that at first, Fledglings was based off of Spiteful Murkrow’s second-hand experience with the R/B and Explorers games via Lets Plays and osmosis. About a month into writing, he started to do concurrent playthroughs of the series, starting with Gates to Infinity, followed by Blue, Sky, and finally PSMD when it launched in the winter of 2015.

    So in other words, it's a grab bag of influences from all of the games (as evidenced by the appearance of Wands in Chapter 28), though the DS games in particular left a particularly large footprint in coming up with how the setting worked.

    What Inspired You to Write Fledglings?

    For those of you who read around Serebii Forums, Spiteful Murkrow answered this question from his perspective regarding the earlier parts of the story. While the story has since grown beyond its initial beginnings after Virgil134 became involved in directly creating chapters starting in the initial run of Episode 4, a good deal of Fledglings’ origins hail from experiences Spiteful Murkrow had in the roughly 18-24 months prior to the Prologue’s publishing in spring of 2015.

    The fundamental tone of this fic was heavily informed a short while after Spiteful Murkrow watched ATLA and Digimon Tamers in relatively short order during a particularly trying season of his life. After perusing some fics after that, he felt that there didn't really seem to be any prominent stories out there that had a similar mix of 'lighthearted' and 'grave' atmospheres, and filed a 'fic that feels like ATLA and Digimon Tamers' onto the idea bin.

    As it so happens, Spiteful Murkrow used to Play-By-Post RP, and he chanced to spend some time reviewing some old posts on one by the name of 'We Are All Pokémon Trainers'. A few of the posts he revisited happened to be from a PMD-style campaign within it (long story there) and spent some time waxing a little nostalgic about some experiences and fun characters and worldbuilding during a season where One Piece's OST was the personal 'flavor of the month' music.

    Somewhere along the line, a switch went off and he wondered 'what would an Ocean Punk PMD look like?' since the thought crossed Spiteful Murkrow’s mind that he didn't know of any PMD fic that had tried such a premise before. From there, he remembered the old fanfic idea and realized that an oceanpunk setting would allow for fairly easy episodic transitions much like in ATLA. From there, he started to drabble out rough ideas as a theoretical exercise, and started playing around with a setting, a story structure, and of course, a cast.

    Over the course of about a year, some other influences wound up worming their way in after sharing the draft documents with some close friends. He wound up dipping into Watership Down thanks to Venia Silente, which wound up providing influences for the protagonist and some in-setting folklore. The metaphysics wound up pulling a bit from the Megami Tensei series, which particularly informed the Marked's counter-mythology with regard to Legendaries.

    And then, after about a year of that, he decided to take a leap of faith, put the proverbial pen to paper, and start making that theoretical exercise a reality.

    From the start, Virgil134 had always taken a bit of a shine to the story, and starting during the events of Episode 4, he began to play an active role plotting out where things would wind up going in Fledglings. Including working together to create and develop characters and episodes that would otherwise have not existed, and to touch up some rougher sections of the earlier bits of the story. The story doesn’t follow exactly the same vision and isn’t going to the same narrative destination as it was originally envisioned back in early 2015, but having different perspectives to counterbalance and sanity-check each other has proven invaluable for making the story stronger and a bit more coherent. And Fledglings simply wouldn’t be the story you know and love today without both writers’ efforts.
     
    Last edited:
    Trivia #5 (Episode 7)
  • Spiteful Murkrow

    Busy Writing Stories I Want to Read
    Pronouns
    He/Him/His
    Partners
    1. nidoran-f
    2. druddigon
    3. swellow
    4. quilava-fobbie
    5. sneasel-kate
    Author’s Note: This trivia section was originally posted alongside Chapter 37 of Fledglings on Serebii after its thread received 15,000 views. Annotations and revised commentary not originally in this trivia section are noted in bolded text.

    How Did You Come Up With Kellner?


    Kellner is based off of a recurring character concept that Fobbie has dabbled with of a well-intentioned Aerodactyl underling for a malevolent force, if with a bit of a more world-weary bent than past incarnations. Kellner’s premise as a character was to be a character that put on a cheery face to mask dissatisfaction with his job and the actions of his superiors, but also was unable to contemplate a viable alternative to the present order.

    Beta names that were considered for Kellner at different points of his creation included Dan, Buffetaut, Grigorescu, and Hatzeg all based off of the team that discovered the largest pterodactyl, the Hatzegopteryx. After growing dissatisfied with those routes, I then got to Alexander (Wilhelm Armin) Kellner, a leading expert on pterosaurs thanks to suggestions from Virgil134. After a debate between between Armin and Kellner for a while, Kellner won out and the rest is history.

    How Did You Come Up With Salvini?

    Salvini from the very beginning was designed that was meant to be a duty-focused Company Pokémon who could be relatable to readers. Salvini’s initial concept had her as a Pokémon “just doing her job” that had largely operated in a bubble, where the more questionable activities the Company was involved in could be filtered through the lens of her companions along with the needs of her host village. As such, a major portion of this episode in planning was interleaving how a Company Pokémon with well-meaning intentions responded to a moral dilemma that couldn’t be easily rationalized away.

    Salvini’s name owes its origins to Salvinaiales, the name of the taxonomic order of water ferns, which also informed her beta names “Salvi”, “Salvin”, and “Salvinia”.

    How Did You Come Up With Salvini’s Teammates?

    Salvini’s teammates were envisioned as a cross-section of Company types that would be more down-to-earth with the communities they were assigned to guard, with names and species owing influence to Virgil134.

    Hertsog was envisioned as a seasoned and more benevolent “head guard” archetype, akin to a more loyal and serious-minded Osmund. As for his species, the rationale behind that has to do with something hinted by Briggs in chapter 34. Originally there were plans to bring that concept more front-and-center in this episode, but due to rewriting, it will be something for another day. Hertsog’s name is Bulgarian for “Duke”, and was chosen due to a mix of being a valid (if rare) surname, and thanks to me watching Zootopia shortly before I started publishing the chapters in this episode.

    Payak was developed as a “by-the-book” character with a good deal of blind loyalty. Payak was chosen to be an Ariados thanks to its “intimidating” association, and its utility in making traps and restraints thanks to silk-spinning. Payak’s name owes itself to being the romanization of the Bulgarian term for ‘spider’, which coincidentally is a valid Polish surname. During character creation, a few beta names related to ‘Peter’ were floated around for Payak, including ‘Petar’ and ‘Penko’. If you’re wondering how that happened, well, there’s a simple explanation for that.

    Phyllis was envisioned as an example of the Company being an equal-opportunity shady employer, as her Marked heritage (theoretically) takes a backseat to her abilities as a guard. Phyllis due to a combination of being a Pokémon more associated with humans (which have been consciously overrepresented as Marked) and was chosen due to fitting the forest theme that Mengir had, considerations that influenced an initial beta direction of making her a Bayleef. Phyllis’ name was chosen due to having a literal meaning of ‘foliage’ in Greek, with ‘Kalina’ being a name that was left on the cutting room floor during character design.

    How Did You Come Up With Commander Briggs?

    Briggs was envisioned as the primary “conduit” between Salvini’s world on the beat and the backdoor intrigue of the Board. Briggs was developed as a very ruthless and results-oriented character, whose loyalties focus primarily on his abilities to advance up the hierarchy in the Company. Briggs’ name owes its origins to Anomalocaris briggsi, a species of an extinct crustacean that Armaldo is based off of.

    Why Aren’t the Grunts All Antagonistic this Episode?

    One of the objectives for this current episode was to show that within the Company, there were Pokémon with relatable and sympathetic motivations, and to explore how they reacted when some of the Company’s more questionable practices interfered with their judgment and decision making. After all, even grunts in villainous organizations have lives and yearnings of their own, which aren’t always in line with those of their employers.

    How Did You Come Up With Mengir?

    Mengir as an island is heavily based off of Geosenge and the Kalos Route 10 from Pokémon X/Y, due in no small part to the island’s role as the home of Xerneas’ egg. The name ‘Mengir’ is the Bulgarian rendering of ‘Menhir’, a type of historical stone pillar (which riddles Kalos Route 10) that influenced both the local customs in the island and also the local topography. As for why Bulgarian was chosen as the local language, there was a conscious choice to make Mengir’s language a departure from prior islands, which lead to examining languages that were spoken in and around the Balkans. One thing lead to another, and before I knew it, I had settled on Bulgarian.

    In the initial planning stages, Mengir was creatively dubbed “Killer Beautifly Island” and closer to publishing, “Stone Forest”, with the central premise of the island being a sleepy and seemingly-innocent location that was dangerous and dysfunctional on a closer examination. The placeholder names also influenced the design of the Mystery Dungeon, which was developed as a splice of monarch butterfly nesting grounds and the karst formation of the Malagasy Tsingy de Bemaraha.

    How Did You Come Up With Fensedge Village?

    Fensedge Village owes its name to being a veiled reference, specifically to one ‘Sawgrass Town’ from Knightfall’s PMD: Overthrown. In Knightfall’s writing, ‘Sawgrass Town’ is a town that is so synonymous with “sinisterness and danger” that it is literally blotted out on maps and Pokémon speak of it in shuddering tones. Since Fensedge from the earliest stages of planning was also envisioned as a “sinister and dangerous” location, the reference seemed to click, though in a more metaphorical sense thanks to Fensedge having an exterior meant to be superficially cheery and idyllic unlike its namesake.

    As with Mengir as a whole, Fensedge also carries heavy Geosenge/Route 10 theming, including the Cromlech Inn, a nod to Geosenge’s name in the French, German, Italian, and Spanish localizations. The Everbloom Taverna is similarly a nod to Geosenge, referring to one particularly plot-important flower associated with the town in-game. Much like other islands, Fensedge’s architecture and culture pulls from real-life influences to an extent, with the local architecture carrying traditional Bulgarian influences, if with more paleolithic-style monuments littered around.

    What Was With the Map Scene With the Stars?

    It is a simplified depiction of navigational techniques that historically used to be a mariner’s best friend. In the scene, Elty uses a simple astrolabe, along with a crude planisphere and star chart in order to determine latitude what direction the team should go at night. The stars that Elty uses as his guide are based off of the constellations that the anime depicts, which in turn are heavily based off of the constellations in our world.

    Unlike historical times, Elty and his companions also have the benefit of having a means of rudimentary timekeeping through the Travellers, which enables him and fellow mariners in the Cradle without assisting sensory perception to solve the historical problem of calculating longitude when charting courses.

    How Did You Come Up With Valatos and His Friends?

    Valatos and his companions owe their origins to a confluence of influences, due in no small part to my beta readers. Valatos owes his origins to a character concept of a cocky, bullying Yanmega character of the same name that @Venia Silente plays around with in some of his works, which formed the underpinnings of Valatos’ depiction in this story. His name owes its origins to a vowel swap of "veleta", the Spanish term for a weather vane.

    Alvise owes his origins to a concept of a character of (formerly) higher breeding floated by Virgil134, along with his name and his species. His name is a Venetian form of ‘Ludwig’, which can be interpreted as ‘famous’, ‘war’, ‘battle’, and influenced the decision to make him into the team area-of-effect attacker.

    Nori as a character that was drawn up from the very beginning as one that could interact with Guardia’s colony, and serves as the “simple bruiser” of the lot. Nori’s name is similarly tied to his character, meaning “ceremony” or “rites” in Japanese, which was the main means through which he is able to be manipulated by Tetsuzui in the prior episode.

    Where Did “Substitute Battling” Come From?

    “Substitute Battling” as a sport was envisioned as the outgrowth of Pokémon’s vague recollections of the experience of battling alongside trainers. In a Substitute Battle, two opposing sides attempt to protect a vulnerable target that stands in for a trainer from the opposing side, while destroying the target belonging to the other.

    The intention was to make a simple concept that was reflective of human influence upon Fledglings’ cultures, as well as to provide an easy platform for different variations (i.e. team sizes, substitution of the Substitute with a “team captain” Pokémon to be KOed). Substitute Battles are far from the only sport in the Cradle, though given the focus that Pokémon have upon battling, it looms particularly large in the local culture. Beta names that were floated for the sport included “Pro-Battling”, “Search and Destroy”, and “Trainer Defense”.
     
    Trivia #6 (Episode 8)
  • Spiteful Murkrow

    Busy Writing Stories I Want to Read
    Pronouns
    He/Him/His
    Partners
    1. nidoran-f
    2. druddigon
    3. swellow
    4. quilava-fobbie
    5. sneasel-kate
    Author’s Note: This trivia section was originally posted alongside Swinging the Lamp on Serebii after its thread received 20,000 views. Annotations and revised commentary not originally in this trivia section are noted in bolded text.

    How did you come up with the Subway?


    The Subway is based off of a couple ideas from past experience, cobbled together with some Mystery Dungeon-induced wibbly-wobbly and artistic license with physics into bubble-tunnels along the seabed in order to provide a way for terrestrial Pokémon to have independent movement undersea, but in a way that the resident sea Pokémon could control. It was also particularly important for keeping movements fluid for battle scenes rather than encumbered by moving against masses of water, and allowed for having scenes made with an Unova-style "Marine Tunnel" aesthetic.

    Aircrystals, the ultimate thing that makes the Subway’s tunnels viable, are a broad-strokes take off of oxygen-absorbing crystals in real life, with the properties tweaked to gather enough air to form breathable pockets. Bubbleweed is based off of an idea Spiteful Murkrow encountered from his days in We Are All Pokémon Trainers of air-bubble generating seeweed, which is used both for primitive rebreathers and to give structural support to Subway bubbles in the context of the Cradle’s Subway tunnels.

    How did you come up with the concept of Ocean Clans?

    The ocean clans, or rodov as they are sometimes referred to in the story owed their origins to a series of thought exercises as to the implications that undersea life would have for a society of "civilized" Pokémon. The ultimate decision was that since the sea was a much more open environment, any mode of social organization would be inherently somewhat nomadic, prioritize usage rights for areas over fixed territories, and need to factor in the consent of its members lest they vote with their fins and swim away. The ultimate outcome was a society of clans of sea Pokémon bound together by kinship ties, who could move along with the currents and waves as conditions dictated.

    The use of the Russian as the local language in turn influenced the choice to derive some of the trappings of the clans, particularly rank and their semi-militarized structure off of historical, and similarly nomadic Cossack Hosts.

    How did you come up with Dimitri?

    Dimitri owes his origin to a character premise proposed by Virgil134 for a sea Pokémon character that would act as a guide to lead Team Traveller into the Subway after their escape from Mengir. This character quickly shape around a Kabutops fascinated by land and the culture of its rescue guilds, with a bodytype that lent itself to his landlubbing curiosity. The premise ultimately influenced the character’s final name, "Dimitri", or "earth-lover" in Greek.

    Dimitri has grown a bit in role since his initial proposal, and as such, you can look forward to his reappearance in the fic for a decent while. During development, he for a time had the working name "Ariel".

    How did you come up with those other Khranitel Rod Pokémon?

    The Pokémon of the Khranitel Rod similarly owe their origins due to a back-and-forth with Virgil134, with Viktor and Kuda both carrying particular influence from him. The two were developed to be a set of foil characters, with both being grouchy and cynical seahorses, but Kuda filling the role of more of an upstart "arrogant bully", whereas Viktor was intended to be the more seasoned "stern, but well-meaning" superior.

    Viktor owes his name due to a naming gag based off of Call of Duty: World at War, as the name of a similarly uncongenial superior to a playable character by the name of "Dimitri". The name also carrying the meaning "victor"/"conqueror" helped to seal the deal for acceptance since it was fitting for his role and personality. Kuda owes his name’s origins to Hippocampus kuda, the scientific name for the Estuary Seahorse.

    How did you come up with Cyanea + Katyusha?

    Cyanea and Katyusha owe their origins to a series of conversations with Virgil134, who helped to suggest the premise of a female Tentacruel and Sharpedo duo with the showboat jellyfish with strong aspirations of restoring her home's former glory acting as the main ringleader. The premise struck me as coincidentally alike to that of some minor villains of the same species from DarkerShining’s Pokémon Mystery Dungeon: Reflecting Balance, which in turn wound up influencing Katyusha’s name through the fic’s Sharpedo ne’er-do-well, Missile. Name-wise, Cyanea owes her moniker to a genus of jellyfish, while her partner is named after the nickname of a Soviet rocket launcher.

    How did you come up with Otvaga?

    When Otvaga was being sketched out on the drawing board, it was developed in mind for being a place that could act as a conduit between the Pokémon that lived under the sea in-setting while being uncontrollable by a surface power like the Company or the Empire. Meta-wise, Otvaga also needed to fill the requirements of being a place where the party could lay low for a while, and receive guidance in their quest to go home through a more knowledgeable fellow Protector, a role ultimately filled by Nerea.

    The island ultimately took shape after it was decided to associate one of the Lake Fairies with the location, which led to it being envisioned as an atoll surrounding a lagoon, a logical adaptation of lake trappings to a more maritime context. The local language was settled on as Russian following a throwaway detail in Episode 5 and deciding to streamline the number of languages to one for the entire patch of sea around Anyilla. After settling upon Azelf specifically as the local Protector, that in turn helped the process of settling on the name "Otvaga", or "Valor/Courage" in Russian. Working and rejected names for the atoll at different points of drafting included the painfully generic "Atoll", as well as "Razreshit" and "Reshimost".

    How did you come up with Braveshoal Town?

    Braveshoal Town was a town that was designed to be a gathering place for the various mobile groups of Pokémon under the sea, as well as for visiting traders from the surface. As such, the town took shape concurrently to the development of the premise of a "Subway" network in the Cradle, which made the logical niche for the town to be a hub between tunnel-routes under the sea.

    Braveshoal Town’s architecture owes heavily to a mix of the aesthetic set by the Undersea Ruins in Unova, as well as broad-strokes Russian architecture. The name was ultimately a pun, which came along after toying around with local mottoes as a thought-building and logjam-clearing exercise, owing to "Brave souls pass through Braveshoal". Some of the rejected names that were thought up during the logjam included Deepshoal, Blueshoal, and Cyanshoal.

    The bar that Cyanea and Katyusha hang out at in town, owes its name to a character allusion to a ne’er-do-well Sharpedo and Tentacruel from DarkerShining’s Reflecting Balance. In it, the Tentacruel ringleader chronically botches the name of an Alomomola teammate "Sophie" as "Soapy". Since the story-relevant visitors in the bar in Braveshoal were a Tentacruel and a Sharpedo, this gag was in turn referenced for the name of "Sophie’s"/"Soapy’s" respectively.

    Did any other fics inspire you while writing this story?

    As alluded to in my prior answer, during the process of writing this story, there were a few others that I read and I liked enough to make nods or borrow elements to. These fics included Pokémon Mystery Dungeon: Reflecting Balance, Love and Other Nightmares, Pokémon Mystery Dungeon: Overthrown, Time and Tide, and Pokémon Mystery Dungeon: Guiding Light, all of which I would heartily recommend a read in their own right. As both this story and my reading list have been continuing on, I fully expect this list of outside fic influences to be a tick larger by time this sea yarn winds down.

    How do you usually come up with these Header designs?

    Headers are usually developed during the week before a new episode or special chapter is released. During that time, we settle on a design that is topical to the given episode or special chapter and start out by either editing an existing image from Pokémon media or public domain, or if the object is simple enough, hand-drawing in GIMP. After the base image is created, an outline is whipped up, and the chapter title is overlaid onto them. The process gets particularly streamlined for episodes, as each header can be created by simply changing a text box. From there, it’s a simple matter of putting the header image on a hosting site, and using the tag that the forums support.

    How did you come up with ship names?

    Ship names in the story are developed in order to either reflect personal qualities of their captains, act as references to other things, or both. For instance, Ellsberg’s Nektar Weide has the meaning of "Nectar Meadow" in Dutch, designed as a twofer reference to the "Nectar Meadows" PMD dungeon in the games, as well as being evocative of a "safe place" for its captain. An unused name for his ship, the Theseus, was similarly a nod to the Ship of Theseus thought experiment, alluding to a similar dynamic that befalls Ellsberg’s crew in Episode 8.

    Most of the ship names so far have additionally been alliteratives, including the Siglo Swellow, Lyn’s Argent Aviso, the name of a type of ship and an indirect nod at Silver Trench, a dungeon in PMD where Lugia can be encountered; Hess’ Mistral Marauder, nodding to the Mount Mistral dungeon from PMD; and from today’s chapter, the Tramontane Tyrant, a nod to the sea wind. While not every ship name will follow the mold, it still makes for a relatively easy way to come up with catchy names.
     
    Trivia #7 (Swinging the Lamp + Episode 9)
  • Spiteful Murkrow

    Busy Writing Stories I Want to Read
    Pronouns
    He/Him/His
    Partners
    1. nidoran-f
    2. druddigon
    3. swellow
    4. quilava-fobbie
    5. sneasel-kate
    Author’s Note: This trivia section was originally posted alongside Chapter 50 on Serebii after its thread received 25,000 views. Annotations and revised commentary not originally in this trivia section are noted in bolded text.

    How did you come up with Orleigh?


    From the story's very early days, Orleigh was intended to be a town that served as a pirate haunt. The logistics of the island needing to be located in a place where it could still prey on shipping while being unfeasible to root out wound up informing its location within a buffer zone between the Company and the Empire.

    The island's features owe a good deal of their existence to Macalania Woods from Final Fantasy X, which informed both the structure of the crystal-studded forest, and helped to more quickly narrow down the island into having a disproportionate amount of Fairy-Types to play into the more mystical atmosphere, including its implied protector, Diancie. The name owes its origins to a corruption of "Orre", which in turn influenced the choice of local tongue to be a Gaelic language, Irish eventually being settled on as the tongue of choice thanks to Irish mythology being particularly steeped in fairies and Ireland having a history of piracy in medieval times.

    How did you come up with Rosequartz Town?

    Rosequartz Town is a town that was envisioned as a formerly sleepy and parochial town that had transformed into a Port Royal-esque haunt through becoming a hub for piracy. The local architecture is strongly influenced by the gray, stone architecture associated with Ireland and Scotland, if adapted to non-human sensibilities and transplanted into a more densely wooded setting.

    Rosequartz Town ultimately owes its origins as a nod to Agate Town, with the two being named after separate varieties of quartz, and Rose Quartz having a similar appearance to Diancie, who was chosen to be the island's protector. Another name that was floated but ultimately left on the cutting room floor for the town was the unimaginative working name of "Fairy Town."

    How did you come up with the concept of the Pirate Council?

    The Pirate Council was envisioned as a leadership structure where the strongest and most imposing captains of Orleigh's pirates dominated the overall workings of the town via a mix of consensus and brute force, rotating out through retirement and succumbing to the dangers of pirate life. During the planning stages, the Pirate Council's size fluctuated between three and five members, before ultimately settling on the current band of four.

    Dirk and Ingela both owe their names to historical pirates, the former being designed as a leader figure for the Council, while Ingela was conceived as an "ice maiden" archetype out for revenge in the vein of Jeanne de Clisson. Tarquin as a returning figure was envisioned as a former subordinate to Darzin and a foil to Hess, owing his name to King Tarquin of Rome, a name that has become a byname for tyranny thanks to cultural osmosis from the Roman Republic. Sibich owes his name to a treacherous advisor from Germanic mythology, which was chosen to accentuate his intended role as a "manipulator" character.

    How did you come up with Hess?

    Hess owes his origins to a composite of a minor seafaring Aggron character from Tangent's past writing, along with a recurring truck nemesis to a recurring Skarmory show-within-a-show character. Those influences served to provide a suitable basis for making a villain who could be both bumblingly incompetent as well as a credible danger as the situation dictated, which also influenced some character details for Hess such as his past hostile encounters with Trizano and with Marowak. As for the name, in keeping in line with half of his composite, it owes its origins to the name of a manufacturer of toy trucks.

    How did you come up with the Iron Fleet?

    The Iron Fleet from its outset was envisioned as a bottom-feeding crew of flunkies, which was intended as a warm-up hostile encounter for Pleo that grew in plot prominence as the process of writing went on and we took a bit of a shine to the characters and wanted to see more of them. The Iron Fleet fundamentally reflects the outsized aspirations and ambitions of its captain, coloring its characteristics such as the use of flashy gold-and-silver colors, as well as the steely iron-themed title.

    A few of the more prominent faces from the crew had their own histories behind how they were developed. Kichiro, or as he insists, 'Keiichiro', was developed as a character from his initial throwaway appearance as the Iron Fleet's signaler in Episode 3 into a snarker who got his deal of misfortune from his crew. That in turn influenced his choice of name, a Japanese name meaning "good luck" that was chosen primarily for irony value.

    Rodion as a character similarly was expanded from a throwaway appearance in Episode 3, and was developed into Hess' First Mate. As Rodion took shape, he was developed to be a "straight man" character who would help keep his boss in line and his plans from blowing up too disastrously, coming into his own in Auld Lang Syne. Rodion's name as well as a rejected beta name of 'Rodya' owes its origin as a nod to Crime and Punishment's protagonist, Rodion Raskolinov, though his choice of crime is a bit different from the novel character's and as of yet he has not received his punishment.

    How did you come up with Pyry and Pekka?

    Pyry and Pekka owe their origins to an antagonistic Garchomp and Flygon duo that appears in Umbramatic's writings from time to time, if brought down the threat level a few notches and played more for laughs than their original incarnations. Pyry's name was chosen as a mix of irony and "things a Gible and its evolutions would fear", leading to the choice to pick a Finnish name meaning "snowstorm". Pekka's name is a Finnish version for "Peter", which was chosen due to its meaning of "rock", a nod to some meta surrounding his inspiration character.

    How did you come up with Rasp and Bech?

    Rasp and Bech were designed to fill the role of a pair of good samaritans from Orleigh whose lives could be upended through Team Traveller's arrival, being designed to be the catalyst to help send the team into a crisis of cohesiveness and confidence.

    Bech owes his origins due to being a convenient means to depict a Secret Bazaar in-story, being designed as a direct analogue of Shedinja from PMD: Explorers of Sky. His Flygon progeny, Rasp, was chosen for deliberate irony as the dramatically larger Dragon-Type son to a Fairy-Type while still being theoretically viable thanks to sharing an egg group, and serving as the in-town presence for the duo. Bech's name was one of those uncommon instances where the name clicked at first sight, whereas Rasp went through a number of beta names including Flann and Odhrán.

    How did you come up with the Merchantry?

    The Merchantry owes its origins to being an expression of the constant of Kecleon-staffed shops in PMD's games, which in turn served as a vehicle for providing a justification for the existence of Poké as a trader's currency backed up by the outfit in question by giving the Merchantry strong, transnational influence and reach. From early on, it was decided that the Merchantry would be less Kecleon-centric than in-game, with the core of the company controlled by a dynasty of our favorite chameleons, but their local presences being reliant on partners of other species (ergo the presence of Pokémon such as Alphonse in Boisocéan).

    If the Merchantry Logo as depicted in Swinging the Lamp's header reminded you of anything, there's a good reason for that. It's the same sigil found on the rugs of Kecleon shops in in-game dungeons.

    How did you come up with Calino?

    Calino was developed as an aloof and somewhat insensitive shopkeep who could fill the role of a local vendor in a sleepy town like Bluewhorl Town. From early on, his personality was envisioned to be such that could plausibly self-inflict getting stuck in a dead-end position as a demotion, the circumstances around which were finally realized in Swinging the Lamp. Calino's name owes its origins to an offhand suggestion by Venia Silente during the drafting phases of the first chapter from a chance encounter with a store sign he had during a commute.

    Were There Any Story Changes That Happened While Writing Fledglings?

    Quite a bit, actually, as Fledglings' plot has wound up undergoing some substantial shifts from initial plans since the day the first chapter was published. Some of the more significant changes that have occurred from the plot planning up to this point in the story since that day have included:

    - Crom originally was not going to leave Bluewhorl and would have effectively been absent from plot after Episode 4 until the very end of the story
    - Lyn was originally going to storm Seahive Square and cause a minor case of massive property damage
    - Trizano was originally not going to enter the plot until the second half of the story
    - In early drafts, there was going to be a feral Flechinder that aided the team on Mengir
    - Nagant originally was not going to be introduced until the Orleigh episode
    - Hess originally would not have reappeared in the plot until the Orleigh episode
    - Otvaga was initially intended to be visited two episodes after the team arrived at Sormus
    - Berecien was originally envisioned as an Iron Fleet member, and was slated to appear in place of Kichiro in Chapter 26
    While the core of the plot of Fledglings has by and large remained constant, those changes do add up, and have since helped to season the story with some of its more memorable moments so far. A testament to the importance of being flexible with planning as a writer.
     
    Trivia #8 (Episode 10)
  • Spiteful Murkrow

    Busy Writing Stories I Want to Read
    Pronouns
    He/Him/His
    Partners
    1. nidoran-f
    2. druddigon
    3. swellow
    4. quilava-fobbie
    5. sneasel-kate
    Author’s Note: This trivia section was originally posted alongside Chapter 53 on Serebii after its thread received 30,000 views. Annotations and revised commentary not originally in this trivia section are noted in bolded text.

    How did you come up with Sormus?


    From its initial conception, Sormus was envisioned as a desert-like island with the oh-so-creative working name of “Desert Island”, primarily in order to add climate and topographical variety to the Cradle. When mulling over potential reasons why the island would still be valued enough to settle on, one possibility that Virgil134 and Spiteful Murkrow quickly took a liking to was to make the island valuable for mining, which would give it strategic importance in-setting.

    The character of the island gradually evolved in the background as the series progressed. From Pyry and Pekka’s introduction on, it was decided that the island would have Finnish as its local tongue as a dash of cosmic irony. The desert environment led to the eventual decision to make the local Protector Hoopa, who was thematically appropriate both for a desert and a location with the materials to make shiny rings, which in turn informed the name Sormus, which carries the literal meaning of “Ring” in Finnish. There was some uncertainty originally as to whether to depict Sormus as a rockier or sandier desert, though in light of craggier islands earlier in the story such as Mengir and Kenobi, the decision was made to tilt the general topography to something dune-filled, with relatively small stony areas. Names that ultimately didn’t make the cut for Sormus included "Kierre", "Kierukka", and "Vanne".

    How did you come up with Copperband Village?

    Copperband Village was envisioned as a relatively sleepy mining town, reflecting the realities of life in a desert with a few occasional flourishes of more Nordic architecture, hence the occasional expensive wooden structure admixed into the sea of adobe. The town by design was intended to also carry the attendant strains of mining life that pushed more adventurous types out into high-risk/high-reward jobs, which although somewhat compressed in depiction, would be relevant in any depictions later down the road.

    The town’s name owes its origin primarily to the metal that is primarily mined on the island, the copper that the Empire uses for its coinage, with ‘band’ being added in reference to the banded appearance of rock layers. Names that were considered but left on the cutting board included “Coppertop”, “Copperpit”, and “Copperloop”.

    How did you come up with Aulis?

    Aulis mechanically was intended to fill two roles in-story. The first was to help guide the team into Copperband for a short stint, and the other was to help act as a miner viewpoint character for better gauging the character of the town and its residents. That of a gruff, no-nonsense, and somewhat belligerent character with good intentions. The choice of Tyranitar of a species primarily revolves around being an homage to Pokédex entries dealing with Tyranitar destroying mountains, which mining is capable of given sufficient time and energy. Aulis’ name was chosen primarily to echo his role, being a Finnish name meaning “helpful” or “willing” . Names that were considered but ultimately not selected included “Jyri”, “Markus”, “Otto”, “Urho”, and “Vieno”.

    How did you come up with Sormus' nobility?

    Sormus’ nobility is the local branch of the Empire’s ruling crown, and hereditary rulers of the island, a premise which was developed after a few back and forth conversations with Virgil134. Atlas and Agila in particular were developed primarily to help show off a baseline setup for nobles within the Empire, consisting of a family administering a “fief” along with a Governor operating alongside of them to act as an intermediary (and enforcer of loyalty) on behalf of the central crown, as represented by Orloff. Atlas and Agila in particular were chosen due to Volcarona’s association with deserts in the mainline game series, with their names being drawn from moth species. As for their confidants, Orloff was chosen to be a Blaziken partly as a throwaway reference to a minor internet meme, and in order to match the Duke and Dutchess type-wise and owes his name to a Russian chicken breed, with working name of “Proofster”. On the other hand, Clyde owes his name to Mudsdale’s inspiring horse breed, the Clydesdale. Originally Clyde’s role was going to be filled entirely by Orloff, until it was decided to have a distinct messenger play a role in-story.

    What motivated you to depict Mystery Dungeons the way you do in-story?

    The Mystery Dungeons in Fledglings basically are built around a structure of being as faithful as reasonably possible to the games’ mechanics while still coming off as a believable place. For that reason, the field tilted heavily early on to depicting Dungeons as regions of distorted dimensional activity, or as is sometimes referred to in-setting, a place where worlds meet. The formal explanation will be due for sometime down the road in-story, though the fundamental premise is of Dungeons being a space where Fledglings’ world intermixes with that of other dimensions.

    Eh? But the games' Mystery Dungeons didn't have fog surrounding them or stable zones. Why did you add them?

    Again, the Mystery Dungeons were built to be as faithful as reasonably possible, and as such, there are a few additions added in order to keep things believable and consistent with the setting’s logic outside of Mystery Dungeons. The fog was added primarily as a means of keeping Mystery Dungeons from being reliably predictable from outside, as well as to act as a distinct ‘separator’ from the more normal world. The notion of “shortcuts” and “stable zones” was a much-expanded depiction of non-randomly generated areas in Mystery Dungeons such as final floors or floors with save points. This particular expansion owes its existence to the nature of “feral” Pokémon in Fledglings fundamentally being the same as their “civilized” counterparts beyond culture. As such, that required the setting to give Pokémon that lived in Mystery Dungeons a means for them to navigate and live around a place that occasionally clears floors with strong winds, while preserving the volatile “cartographer’s nightmare” aspect of dungeons.

    Why is law enforcement so different from the canon games?

    To be fair, the title for the heads of Imperial law enforcement was retconned into the canonical 'Sheriff', but this has to do primarily with a combination of canon PMD being extremely vague about the civilian/military divide in its law enforcement, and tweaking things to suit a setting where the fundamental level of social organization extends higher than what is explicitly shown in the games. As such, the primary reason why things are different is because things have been defined in a much more definitive direction, with the overall function of a guard trending closer to that of a gendarme in real life, hence accompanying changes from in the local lingo in Anyilla from the canonical “Sheriff” among Company islands, which would have their own reasons not to reuse titles from their Imperial counterparts.

    Why do characters in Fledglings never seem to have issues moving around buildings and ships in-story? Wouldn’t some be too small or too big?

    This is in part plot-related necessity to not slow things down, as well as buildings and structures being structured around their users. As such, a place that has to accommodate a wide variety of Pokémon will be built to be accessible to both large and small Pokémon with adaptations in favor of different body styles, implying ceilings and doors that are proportioned relative to roughly 2 meter tall entities, which is sufficient to accommodate the vast majority of Pokémon species barring the occasional outlier such as Wailord. The trend is not necessarily true of more private spaces such as residences (such as Nida’s burrow back on Tromba).

    As for the aforementioned adaptations, you’ve seen a number in-story already. The most omnipresent of these adaptations consists of chair designs that are designed to accommodate tails and non-bipedal bodystyles, which makes stools particularly common form factors. Door handles are also a commonly divergent architectural feature, with the default form factor being a push pad to allow quadrupeds and armless Pokémon to open doors along with more bipedal counterparts.

    What’s with the escorts for ships in setting?

    They are there for more or less the same purpose as the Protect users around battlefields in-story, to help keep rickety wooden ships from getting their hulls shot full of holes and sinking. Sea escorts in particular focus on defending against threats from the sea and the waves, whereas their counterparts in the air focus more on engaging flying threats. Beyond passive defense, escorts are valuable for engaging attackers that are beyond the reach of Pokémon on the hull, and play an important role in helping to boost ships along to reach top speeds and change directions faster.

    What’s with the alcohol that shows up in-story?

    Because what’s a sea yarn without some bottles of rum to go around? More seriously, it’s there because it’s a particularly ingrained meme from the human cultures that the Cradle’s cultures attempt to emulate, as well as to play into the setting’s atmosphere. Thanks to being made for a non-human audience, alcohol in the Cradle differs primarily through strength to accommodate for lower alcohol tolerances (namely by being watered down) and in the ingredients it is made off of (with berries playing a larger role than more common real-life ingredients such as hops and barley).
     
    Trivia #9 (Episode 11)
  • Virgil134

    PMD Writer
    Partners
    1. sylveon
    2. weavile
    3. kommo-o
    4. noivern
    5. mothim
    Author’s Note: This trivia section was originally posted alongside Chapter 59 on Serebii after its thread received 40,000 views. Annotations and revised commentary not originally in this trivia section are noted in bolded text.

    How did you come up with Giotto?


    Giotto is one of the few cases in-story where the island's first sketches were defined by an abstract idea that it should serve as the seat of power to the Empire, along with a name, which was a corruption of "Johto". The island was eventually planned as having a Venetian theme thanks to a decision to style the capital on it after a mashup of Venice and Amsterdam, which seemed to fit since 'Giotto' still sounded like a plausibly Venetian-sounding name, and because of meta of Venice's history as a sea-based center of power. As for the Amsterdam portion of the hybridization, that influenced the description of the canal layouts and the presence of polders further afield of the city. During the run of the story, it was decided to debut Alola Form Pokémon on Giotto given its role as a major narrative checkpoint, which led to a decision to go ahead and hybridize the island at large thematically between Johto and Alola. For reasons obvious in the story, it was decided to make the island's name originate from its characteristics reminding its residents of a place in the Old World as opposed to being tightly connected to its past, as those of you who have read Casting Off may have discerned from a throwaway mention of the local Protector being Tapu Fini.

    How did you come up with Tidemill City?

    Tidemill City and its surroundings are the result of taking pre-modern Amsterdam's footprint of streets, canals, and dikes and plopping Venetian-styled architecture on top of it. Rather than a direct copy, the infrastructure has been adapted for Pokémon and pulls from historical features of even larger-scale cities from history such as Ancient Rome, which influenced the depiction of insulae-styled apartment blocks. In keeping with 'Giotto', the city pulls influences from Olivine City, which influenced the choice to make a lighthouse a portion of a prominent local landmark. As for the name, it is named after a type of mill used to grind flour and generate usable energy built by the sea exploiting wave energy, a relatively common feature of parts of the world with large numbers of dikes, which similarly influenced its beta name of "Watermill City".

    How did you come up with Vecioferàle Arena?

    Vecioferàle Arena was the product of splicing the Roman Colosseum together with some stadiums from the anime for design and layout, particularly the ones used for the regional conferences in the B/W season. The lighthouse attached to it was created fairly late into development, and added in order to better accentuate a Johto motif to the city.

    How did you come up with the Visitor District?

    The Visitor District was developed after a realization that Tidemill City felt a touch too open to outsiders for a world with pirates roaming around the seas. Fortunately for us, a reusable template for larger settlements had already been used in some capacity in Andaku in Kenobi, which led to the Visitor District being developed as a less crime-infested analogue akin to closed ports in history such as Dejima for Shogunate-era Japan. Although not a haunt for pirates, the Visitor District serves much the same purpose as Andaku, a place where strangers who are not fully trusted can be allowed in and dealt with while in theory remaining isolated from the rest of the island.

    How did you come up with the Trouble Center?

    The Trouble Center is an idea and terminology that was cribbed from Paper Mario: TTYD in order to expand on the premise of how requests for help outside of Mystery Dungeons would be dealt with in a PMD-esque setting. Those of you with good memories of the earlier parts of the story may recall that Nida mentioned that such requests were generally expected to be posted at establishments such as Juice Bars as opposed to the message boards of guilds, which given the density of a large city, seemed to be sufficient to support an entire business based around matching up Pokémon to take such odd jobs.

    How did you come up with the Empire's legal system?

    This is the somewhat lame part where we reveal that this episode had planning for Ace Attorney references for multiple years involving a scenario that would have Team Traveller caught up in uncovering a deep web of intrigue in the process of exonerating Eric, Sela, and Hanuna. Although the focus on courtroom antics was dialed back quite a bit for this episode, the fundamental Ace Attorney-style structure of "a judge handing down a sentence based upon presented evidence" (a.k.a. the system used in Japan until mid-2009) was retained since it both added an immediate contrast to the Company's more decree-based legal system where local rulers call the shots based off of outside feedback and the inherent needs of being able to process large volumes of prisoners at once lent themselves well to a system that in its original incarnation was explicitly stated to have been developed to an explosion in case load.

    How did you come up with the characters in the legal system?

    The characters in the Giotto legal system are fairly transparent references to characters from the Ace Attorney series. Cardino is based off of Detective Gumshoe and owes his name to an Italian pet name for 'Richard' much as Dick is in English, Pikachu being chosen due to its canonical status as a detective Pokémon. Although it should be fairly obvious by now, Nico is heavily based off of Phoenix Wright, his name being a riff off of his in-series pet name as 'Nick' and chosen to be a Fletchinder as a nod to phoenixes. Rita is based off of Maya Fey with her species chosen to be Misdreavus due to its morphological similarity to Maya's necklace and owes her name to 'Meg', a misnaming her inspiration character gets from a part of 1-4. While searching around for variants of the name, Virgil134 stumbled on 'Rita', and the rest was history. The Judge is based off of the Judge that presides over your cases in the first five games, with the choice of Slowking being chosen due to its simultaneous vibes as a wise but airheaded Pokémon. Akin is a fairly transparent take off of Winston Payne, down to the punny pain-based name which is a groaner pun off of 'aching'. Since Akin's inspirational character was a fairly straightforward example of a 'smug snake' archetype, his species was quickly settled on to be Serperior.

    How did you come up with Eric, Sela, and Hanuna?

    Eric, Sela, and Hanuna owe their origins to a group of characters created by @Umbramatic that he refers to as the 'Booster Trio'. They were incorporated into this story thanks to them being particularly memorable, and their original incarnations origins as a band of thieves making them feel like a suitable fit for a setting infested with pirates.

    How did you come up with Nagant?

    Nagant was developed later into the course of pre-planning Fledglings as a conscious foil to Lyn from the side of the Empire. Specifically, she was envisioned to be a Pokémon who was in thrall to the past in a much more direct fashion than her Samurott counterpart, with her driving motivation for pursuing Pleo being to restore a happier time in her life.

    Nagant's species was decided fairly early on to be a Clawitzer, with her name being a nod to a line of firearms that saw service in early-20th century Russia, with the Mosin-Nagant rifle in particular being particularly influential, which also influenced her beta name 'Mosina'.

    How did you come up with Nagant's crew?

    At its core, Nagant's crew was envisioned as a hodgepodge of naval recruits, mercenaries, and press-ganged misfits that would reflect the Empire's scarcity of resources to throw at its naval fleet and give her a bit of a headache in the process. Her ship, after going through a number of chapters unnamed was ultimately dubbed the Vasilek, the Russian name for a cornflower, which is a symbol of nobility… and the name of a mobile artillery piece.

    Jun owes his origin to a character premise suggested by Virgil134 of a very 'by-the-book' first mate that could serve as a foil to Nagant's relative laxity when it comes to rules and procedure (as evidenced by her precipitating multiple plot events by charging off on her own behind enemy lines). The decision to make the first mate a Beedrill came from the ability of many insects, including bees and wasps to see polarized light, which aids navigation by tracking the position of the sun even in conditions that would obscure its rays. The fact that he covered the skies as a complement to the waters that Nagant handles helped to reinforce that decision. Jun's name is a Korean name with the meaning of 'army', which seemed fitting given the martial nature of his character. During development 'Jeong' was also considered as a name for the character, but didn't make the cut since it didn't roll off the tongue quite as well.

    Cabot owes his origins to a character concept thrown around by Virgil134, which entailed putting in a cheery, optimistic, yet naive character who joined the navy out of desire to go on adventure. He was named after John and Sebastian Cabot, both real life explorers who were born in Venice. Given Cabot's personality and his origins from Giotto, the name seemed like a fitting match. During his creation, Cabot went through multiple evolutions in concept, going through beta names that included Alenquer, Nehsi, and humorously enough for those who have read Casting Off, Galton.

    Berecien owes his origins to a character from @Venia Silente' s Playfield, specifically the Rapidash running mate to Eltenios. The bond between the two originally was emphasized more beyond Elty and Berecien's current budding rivalry, with the original concept for Fledglings' incarnation of Berecien being of him as an Iron Fleet member who was pals with everyone's favorite Growlithe.

    Niilo is another character who owes his origins to a concept created by Virgil134, specifically of a character to fill the role of a mercenary who's mostly just in it for the money. His name is a Finnish version of Nick or Nicholas which was chosen for two reasons: the first being for irony value as Nicholas means "victory for the people", a far cry from the very money-oriented motives that everyone's favorite Sandslash sellclaw has shown off. The second reason is a matter of playing to type, as Nick is the name of the actor who plays Lance Hunter, a cynical mercenary character from Agents of SHIELD, whose premise influenced Niilo's character. Although his species has been fairly constant, during his creation, other names for Niilo were considered, which included Lance and Keihäs.
     
    Trivia #10 (The Deepest Wounds + Episode 12)
  • Spiteful Murkrow

    Busy Writing Stories I Want to Read
    Pronouns
    He/Him/His
    Partners
    1. nidoran-f
    2. druddigon
    3. swellow
    4. quilava-fobbie
    5. sneasel-kate
    Author’s Note: This trivia section was originally posted alongside Chapter 65 on Serebii after its thread received 50,000 views. Annotations and revised commentary not originally in this trivia section are noted in bolded text.

    How did you come up with the Queen and her Chancellor?


    Aleria was developed around the idea of making a young and well-meaning, but ultimately clueless and out-of-touch leader to helm a crown that had obviously seen its better days, which led to her current depiction. In keeping with a naming theme for all of Anyilla's reigning monarchs (except Alexander, but he wasn't exactly ever intended to become a ruling king in-story), Aleria's name was consciously chosen as one meaning 'eagle', with her species chosen due to carrying both regal and goofy qualities. Aleria's species was settled fairly early on in development, with 'Alegria' being a name that was at one time considered for her.

    Osborn was developed later as a counterweight to Aleria, serving as the 'adult in the room' who keeps her grounded as an advisor, though still lacks vision and is just as out of touch with the Empire’s subjects. Archeops was ultimately chosen as Osborn's species due to being a fellow bird for Aleria to confide in, and for the colorful and regal appearance of Archeops’ plumes. Osborn's role underwent a great deal of evolution in early decision-making, with potential species that were considered at one point or another including Toucannon, Chatot, Serperior, Sigilyph, and Braviary, with one name that didn't make the cut being 'Fairfield', owing its same roots as 'Osborn' to prominent paleontologists who studied velociraptors.

    How did you come up with the three Prime Minister candidates?

    Of the three contenders to be Aleria’s Prime Minister, Coil is the oldest conceptually, with the ever-so-creative working name “Shady Prime Minister Candidate”. From the get-go, Coil conceptually was intended to be a law enforcement figure who dabbled in crime much in the vein of Jonathan Wild from early-1700s London. Coil’s species was chosen as a deliberate irony since Magnezone is a recurring species of police officers in mainline PMD, with his name being a bit less inspired than most as it is merely the Japanese name for Magnemite, which happened to roll off the tongue smoothly as a name.

    Walpole as a character was developed shortly after Coil, who was envisioned as being a figure that could act as an ‘inside man’ on behalf of the in-setting incarnation of PMD’s omnipresent Kecleon shopkeeper cartel. Walpole was developed as a neutral if amoral figure, who isn’t afraid to bend the law if it advances his or the Merchantry’s interests. Walpole owes much of his character inspiration, including his name from Robert Walpole, who is largely seen to be the first Prime Minister in British history and received his position from climbing the ranks of power in the midst of a politically sensitive economic crisis.

    Thalez is the most recent creation of the three candidates, and is essentially an expanded reference to Mettaton from Undertale that exists as a comedic foil to the other candidates to show off Aleria’s more questionable parts of her decision-making process. The decision to make Thalez a Rotom came from how it possesses objects as host bodies, which seemed to gel well with his source of inspiration. As for his name, it owes its origins to a more fancy and Rotom-esque reading of “Thales”, the name of a researcher of electricity from Ancient Greece who is the first known member of his field.

    How did you come up with the Saéta Family?

    The Saéta Family was developed as an outfit of mobsters that was part of Alvise's backstory and then later used to interact with Team Traveller during the course of their investigation of Admiral Coil after it was realized they could be worked into becoming a crucial information source fairly easily. As you might have been able to tell, they draw inspiration from archetypical mafia depictions with a dash of Team Rocket for their scarf design. The mafia vibes in turn influenced their naming as a "Family", if with the title going to the name of its current head as opposed to a familial surname as is more common in real life.

    Saéta was envisioned as an elder, if still cutthroat figure that could play the role of a disappointed father to Alvise and his poor life choices, and was designed to be someone that would be approachable, yet thoroughly unheroic at the same time. In light of a father role, Saéta’s species was decided from the get-go to be a Manectric, though his name, Venetian for "thunderbolt", underwent a few evolutions during development. The alternatives that were considered were Saetta, the Italian analogue to Saéta and part of the Italian localization name for Amp Plains, 'Pianure Saetta' (which ultimately inspired his current name choice), and Sita (which was dropped due to sounding a touch too feminine).

    Luca came later in development and was envisioned as a bullying older brother to Alvise who would constantly overshadow him, and follow closer in his father’s footsteps in maintaining the family “business”. His name owes its origins due to a Venetian reading of ‘Luke’ and it sounding similar to 'Sal Deluca', a character of a mobster-themed map from Call of Duty Zombies. When thinking of a name for Luca, a number of alternatives were thrown around, including Marco, Magno, and Valerio, the last of which was reused as a throwaway name for the Zebstrika that pulled the cart Luca used to abduct Alvise and his pals in Chapter 59.

    How did you come up with Sirmia?

    Sirmia was developed to fill the role of Elty’s mother after it was decided that The Deepest Wounds would focus on Nagrobek, which served as a particularly opportune time for incorporating the story of how Elty became a pirate. Sirmia, like Elty, owes her name to a splice of Esperanto verbs, specifically the past (ŝirmis) and present (ŝirmas) forms of ‘to protect’ or ‘to shield’ with an omitted ‘s’ at the end, indicating her intended role as someone who would always try and protect her loved ones in both the past and the present.

    How did you come up with Captain Amaro?

    Amaro conceptually was developed in the process of creating The Deepest Wounds, and was envisioned as a more noble and star-crossed colleague of Dirk from the era when the much fabled in-story Captain Beatrice plied the seas, and someone who could give some context behind Dirk’s vicious and cynical temperament. He was chosen as a Pyroar to play to off of cultural tropes surrounding lions to make him fierce figure with an air of nobility. At one point in development it was considered to make him a Krookodile in order to give him parallelism to Laurens, which was ultimately decided against on the grounds it would make the two feel too samey.

    Amaro owes his name origins to the fabled Spanish pirate Amaro Pargo, who was known for passing portions of his loot onto the poor, and mainly attacked Dutch and British ships, both of which seemed fitting for a more idealistic pirate who would go toe to toe with the Company. Other names that were left on the cutting floor include Brenton, Aaden, and Bren.

    How did you come up with Laurens?

    Laurens was originally developed as a former feral from Vollezee and a no-name has-been who retired from piracy after being scared out of the business and deciding to get out while he could, who was later revisited for The Deepest Wounds and adapted into a one-time rising star who quite dramatically fell from grace and never recovered when the Special Chapter was being planned out. Much like Amaro, Laurens owes his name to a pirate of historical note, specifically the Dutch captain Laurens de Graaf.

    How did you come up with Buyeom?

    Buyeom was designed to be a fire-themed island that would occupy roughly the same role that Kenobi did to the Company in terms of a strategically important island with a mid-sized settlement on it. While batting around different ideas, Lavaridge Town came to mind, which ultimately influenced the decision to make Buyeom a volcanic island characterized by hot springs. Buyeom’s name similarly carries influence from Lavaridge, with the name being a Korean reading of the component words of the Japanese name. The nature of the island helped inform the decision of making the island’s Protector, Volcanion, which you may have noticed in the passing description of the local shrine.

    How did you come up with Magmapool Town?

    Magmapool Town was built around the idea of being a town that filled a niche akin to Mossaisle Town for the Empire, though making a consciously different choice in how to attempt to defend it, which led to the town being designed to have particularly strong walls financed by high levies on the local population. Due to being on a fire-themed island, the town was also developed into a glassblowing and smithing center, which is why the local buildings feature glass more prominently than even Tidemill City did, with the presence of hot springs leading to the name Magmapool fairly early on in development. In keeping with the Korean motifs, the local buildings commonly feature some high-level details of traditional Korean architecture such as slate roofs and sliding doors.

    What has changed with Fledglings’ concept since you started writing?

    First and foremost, the scope. Fledglings originally was structured around the equivalent of a three-season TV show, which after quickly realizing it would wind up collapsing under its own weight was cut back to the events roughly corresponding with the first and most developed third of the initial concept. The sequence of events in this story was also a bit different, with some locations such as Otvaga appearing much later in the original draft than they did in the final work, and a couple locations since being inserted into the sequence of events. As explained in a prior answer regarding the Siglo Swellow, a number of characters that were originally intended to have minor or one-off roles wound up becoming more recurring and plot-important characters. All of the special episode chapters were not planned during the original draft, and the concept only came into being after Auld Lang Syne was entered into the third issue of the FanFiction Quarterly on Serebii.

    What was originally gonna happen in both this episode and the previous one?

    The episode on Giotto originally was structured entirely around the Ace Attorney homage subplot, with no tournament at all factoring in the mix. The grunt work of amateur attorneying was originally to be done by Nida, Guardia, and Elty who would be tapped to become amateur attorneys overnight, but through some sleuthing and careful deduction, arrive at much the same place as what happened in the final product. Pleo's breakout was originally set to occur at the courtroom, with him and the team breaking out after he was called to testify. These plans were reworked into the tournament structure to address some meta regarding the team's strength by giving them an experience dump and due to repeated troubles making Team Traveller’s newfound attorney positions feel logical, which led to the premise being retooled into becoming detective’s assistants.

    The concept of the current episode set on Buyeom was created around 3 years ago, with there originally being a plot on an ice-themed island in which Team Traveller would face off against a feral Froslass as the main antagonist that caught them off-guard thanks to being reminded of Hariti. In this original concept the Company would also not appear during the episode. The plot was ultimately replaced with the current incarnation of episode 12 due to overlapping too much with Mengir’s arc in terms of a “blundering into a dangerous feral” dynamic, and it feeling too much like filler. The original arc’s relevance to the plot beyond some worldbuilding regarding the nature of the world would have been that it taught Team Traveller a lesson that two Pokémon of the same species can be very different, but since it was a lesson the team logically ought to have already known, it was decided to scrap the plot in the end.
     
    Trivia #11 (Episode 13)
  • Virgil134

    PMD Writer
    Partners
    1. sylveon
    2. weavile
    3. kommo-o
    4. noivern
    5. mothim
    Author’s Note: This trivia section was originally posted alongside Chapter 73 on Serebii after its thread received 60,000 views. Annotations and revised commentary not originally in this trivia section are noted in bolded text.

    How did you come up with Pioppo?

    Pioppo as an island was built first around the premise of it being the site of Darkrai’s egg. Which from there gave the idea of casting an eerie-feeling island with haunted forests and an above-average number of Ghost-Type Pokémon. Unlike most islands, the name of Pioppo was not the first name related to the island that was decided, with the first named part of it being the destroyed town that Trizano hails from, Blackmoon Village. Blackmoon Village owes its name to being a nod to Newmoon Island, the site in which you encounter Darkrai in Sinnoh, by describing the appearance of a new moon as its name.

    The island name was developed afterwards after a bit of a concept walk from ‘Alamos Town’ and discovering that an ‘alamo’ happens to be a type of poplar. ‘Pioppo’ happened to be the Italian word for ‘poplar’ and rolled off the tongue fairly well, and the name stuck. Before 'Pioppo' was settled on, a few different names and directions were considered for the island, including names themed after dreams such as 'Sogno' and 'Incubo', 'Vuoto' which was themed after the idea of a void, and the possibility of just straight-up calling the island ‘Alamos Island’.

    How did you come up with Darkwood Square?
    The premise of Darkwood Square as a small hamlet trying to hide away the truth of its inhabitants and the location of the Cradle’s Xerneas has existed since the very early days of Fledglings’ planning. Specifics regarding the village were floating up until just a couple months prior to this episode starting to be published, which is where the structure of the village being hemmed in by dungeon fog and sporting terrain damage from a hostile encounter with Kline were determined. ‘Darkwood’ was settled on fairly quickly as part of the village’s name for a few reasons. It shared a beginning with ‘Darkrai’, the local Protector, it was nestled among deep, thick woods that blocked out the sunlight, and had some continuity name-wise with the now-destroyed ‘Blackmoon Village’. For a period of time ‘Darkwood Square’ was known as ‘Darkwood Village’ until it was decided the name was too samey with Blackmoon and 'Square' won out.

    How did you come up with the con artists from Buyeom?

    The con artists on Buyeom were developed under the premise of being a team of hucksters that could swindle gullible Pokémon by tapping into their hopes and dreams of a future return of Legendaries and humans to their world. The structure of the team was built around the premise of ‘overused PMD protagonists plus an illusionist’ which resulted in picking Riolu, Eevee, plus a Ditto to fill the roles of Charlie, Marilyn, and David respectively. Albert was added as a floating fourth member as a nod to PSMD and the relationship that you have with Nuzleaf in the game, and serves as the gang's coordinator that helps to structure and sell the team’s acts.

    The names of the crew’s members are drawn from entertainers related to each individual Pokémon’s role on the team or meta. Charlie and Marilyn are named after actors Charlie Chaplin and Marilyn Monroe respectively, fitting their roles pretending to be a human and his partner. David is named after David Hand, the director of Bambi while Albert is named after Albert Freedman, a producer of “The $64,000 Question” who was caught fixing show questions to much public scandal. Most of these names were settled on fairly quickly, though ‘Charles’ was considered instead of Charlie at one point, as was ‘Shirley’ instead of Marilyn.

    How did you come up with Cernun?

    Cernun’s personality as an immature and naïve Legendary using his powers with reckless abandon has been around since before the first chapter of Fledglings was published, as have his origins from Mengir. Cernun’s name is a fragment of ‘Cernunnos’, the Celtic horned god of the forest, which was historically associated with stags. During development, ‘Ikethirn’ was also considered as a name and has similar origins, specifically being a corrupted shortening of ‘Eikthyrnir’, the stag that stands atop Valhalla in Norse mythology.

    How did you come up with Valter?

    Valter was initially built around the concept of a ‘guardian’ figure for Cernun, who could for better and worse act as a conduit between him and Pioppo’s Pokémon and influence their thinking and convince them to take extreme measures to try and preserve a status quo the lot had gotten used to. Valter’s species was chosen as an homage to Dusknoir from the Explorers PMD games, though his motivations are by far purer and less destructive. Of the characters that were introduced this episode, Valter by far went through the most considered possibilities, which included “Antelmo”, “Ernesto”, “Salvio”, “Salvius”, “Salvo”, “Raniero”, “Bruno”, and “Costanzo”. His final name being settled on since it had more ‘leaderly’ connotations, as it is an Italian variant of ‘Walter’, which means ‘ruler of the army’.

    How did you come up with Trizano?

    Trizano is based around a character archetype that Tangent128 created that he refers to as ‘Valiant Knight Skarmory’, specifically of a hammy, extroverted metal bird that goes out to play the hero and help others in need. His name here owes its origin to a Chilean folk hero that Venia Silente chanced to tell Spiteful Murkrow a few stories about, and after finding it to roll off the tongue and the stories to gel well with the character premise, we decided to use it as the name of our favorite Immortal Skarmory.

    How did you come up with Roteck?

    Roteck was consciously designed as a foil to Hess and teammate to Trizano, and as such his name was derived as something that would be in ‘opposition’ to Hess. Since Hess’ name was themed after machinery, it was decided that Roteck’s name ought to reflect some sort of obstacle to machinery, which quickly narrowed down to mountains.

    Roteck’s name is shared with a mountain in the province of Tyrol in Italy. Other names left on the cutting board were similarly mountains from Italy, including 'Casentino', 'Néry', and 'Emet'. His team’s name was chosen due to being something related to metal that would be able to get battered around, which led fairly quickly to ‘Team Anvil’.

    As you may have gathered, Roteck has a bit more going on with Hess than meets the eye. What specifically that is shall remain unsaid for now, since it’s something that will come out into the story in due time.

    How did you come up with Team Phantom?

    For those of you who have read Guiding Light, you may have quickly surmised that Team Phantom is a fairly transparent expy of the Horizon Continent’s Team Specter. The name owes its origins to rendering our favorite ghostly pranksters' name as ‘Spectre’ as a base, which is a term for a ghost, as is ‘Phantom’.

    The three are all named after comedians of Italian heritage, Vince after stand-up comedian Vince Sorrenti, Lisa after comedian Lisa Lampanelli, and Cantone after Mario Cantone. The three’s names were drawn from a large initial pool of names based along the theme of ‘comedians’, and as such at once point the Haunter now known as ‘Vince’ was Cantone. Unused names from the pool include “Aldo”, “Sebastian”, “Jeni”, “Ferrera”, “Paola”, “Dom”, and “Ray”.

    What's with the ghosts?
    The ‘ghosts’ that prowl Pioppo are a mashup of different ghostly illusion party tricks from different parts of the Pokémon franchise. In particular, Fledglings’ depiction drew from encounters with ghosts in Lavender Tower prior to obtaining the Silph Scope, down to recycling dialogue from some of the possessed trainers as lines for the hidden Ghost-Type Pokémon in-story.

    What's with Immortality?
    Immortality is a minor expansion of the wibbly-wobbly that AZ uses to stay alive for 3000 years in XY after something went wrong with the Ultimate Weapon. In this case, the effects of the weapon are credited specifically to Xerneas, with a few expansions for flavor and to emphasize that the effects are by design and not an accident such as the cross-shaped irises, the lack of aging, and regenerative abilities to make it more obvious who was Immortal and who wasn’t. Virgil134 and Spiteful Murkrow also may have been watching Baccano around the time those details were fluffed out, so it was helpful for keeping the topic on the mind.

    As depicted in Chapter 72, the big constraint of Immortality that was added for metaphysical balance is that it’s only good until you die once. An Immortal that is killed will be resuscitated as a normal Pokémon so long there is enough of a body left over to stitch itself back together. Similarly, a normal Pokémon brought back to life by Cernun’s powers will not be able to become Immortal and will die permanently at some point down the line.
     
    Trivia #12 (Episode 14) New
  • Spiteful Murkrow

    Busy Writing Stories I Want to Read
    Pronouns
    He/Him/His
    Partners
    1. nidoran-f
    2. druddigon
    3. swellow
    4. quilava-fobbie
    5. sneasel-kate
    Author’s Note: This trivia section was originally posted alongside Chapter 78 on Serebii after its thread received 70,000 views. Annotations and revised commentary not originally in this trivia section are noted in bolded text.

    How did you come up with Haipheh?


    Haipheh as an island was developed first as a concept based around a tropical island that was unnaturally frigid by the intervention of the activities of Ice-Type Pokémon, leading to its oh-so-creative working name of ‘Tropical Freeze’. Further along in development, it was decided to make the local tongue a Chinese language, and after some internal consideration, Hokkien was chosen for those purposes. The name owes its origins to being a Hokkien rendering of ‘Seafoam’, the beloved haunt of Articuno in Kanto, and didn’t go through many prior changes other than a brief moment considering rendering it as ‘Haiphoeh’.

    How did you come up with Whitepalm Town?

    Whitepalm Town as a location was one of those rare places in Fledglings where it originated based off its underlying culture prior to other intervening factors. In Whitepalm Town’s case, it is a blend of a few quirkier regional cultures and practices in China as adapted for large numbers of Ice-Type Pokémon, including large communal round houses modeled after tulou that are seen in some parts of South China, and the coloring put on ice sculptures that are placed about the town takes inspiration from the annual Harbin Ice Festival. As for the name, it was chosen as a reference to the frozen-over palm trees that are described as being in the town. Whitepalm town from early on was built around a ‘palm’ naming theme, with names that didn’t make the cut including Whitepalm Village, Icepalm Town, and Icepalm Village.

    How did you come up with Neil and Chan-iu?

    Neil and Chan-iu were developed as a pair in a rough “PMD pair” mold, with Chan-iu being the more experienced member of the duo and Neil the lesser. Chan-iu for a time was not going to be a Greninja but a Delphox, though his ultimate choice in species helped in settling on his name, which originates from a compound of two characters, meaning “to help”, “to support” and “ocean” respectively. Neil’s species was chosen to be one that could easily be outwardly ambiguous in age, and was named after Neil Armstrong. The theming around astronauts was always a constant when coming up with Neil’s name, with an unused beta being “Gagarin” from Yuri Gagarin, the name of the first man in space. As for why Neil was named after an astronaut, I shall leave that unanswered for now, though his interactions with Team Traveller this episode may help give some clues.

    How did you come up with Valan?

    Valan as a character was developed as someone who could fill Admiral Coil’s role and grow into a foil for Nagant as her character progresses down a different path in the second half of the story. Valan has always been envisioned as an arrogant and unintentionally off-putting character, which helped steer things fairly quickly towards casting him as a Salamence, which in canonical fluff has a tendency to be described as domineering and intimidating. Valan’s name was initially considered primarily for its sound, though its meaning happened to fit his character well due to it being a Scottish Gaelic name meaning “healthy” or “strong”. Other names that were considered for him but didn’t make the cut include Nerva and Sisu.

    How did you come up with Tegu and Melli?

    Tegu and Melli first appeared in this story as a pair of randoms on Nagant’s crew from Chapter 44 and Chapter 45 that were subsequently expanded to be cast as part of Casting Off and brought back in expanded form into Fledglings. During the process of being fleshed out for Casting Off, Virgil134 opted to give them a background of a duo of former pirates, playing off the fact that the Royal Navy consists of all kinds of Pokémon, something that was acknowledged in the first depiction of the Vasilek’s crew.

    During their expansion, the two had a pair dynamic developed for them built around how both Pokémon are of species where only the females can evolve, where the male of one would paired with the female of another. This contrast was further carried to their personalities as well, which is why Tegu continues to exhibit mannerisms not far removed from a pirate while Melli... doesn’t.

    Tegu’s name comes from a number of lizard species from the Teiidae family, whereas Melli’s name comes from Apis mellifera, which is the latin name for the European honey bee, both of which were settled in short order during the drafting of Casting Off Chapter 2, and as such there were no unused beta names for either character.

    How did you come up with Clyde and Barrow?

    As those of you who also read Pokémon Mystery Dungeon: Guiding Light have surely gathered, Clyde and Barrow are fairly transparent expies of Sneasel and Jangmo-o from Team Fang in @Ambyssin’s story, down to their verbal tics. Their names derive from Clyde Barrow of the infamous Depression-era bandit duo Bonnie and Clyde, modeled after the same naming scheme used for Team Rocket in the anime.

    How did you come up with Niilo’s Mercenary Buddies?

    Niilo’s mercenary buddies are imported characters that were initially introduced in Casting Off, and were created to help flesh out Niilo’s backstory as a mercenary in the Empire’s ranks. The three owe their names to the different creatures and plants their species are based off of, Molina being named after a biologist who helped to classify camels taxonomically, Orcutt after a researcher of cacti, and Chalco after a lake in Mexico where axolotls natively live.

    What's the deal with Teleport Gems?

    Teleport Gems in Fledglings are loosely based on the Teleport Gems from PMD R/B that allow Pokémon to jump large distances to a fixed end point, which in the Cradle are usually locations within the Wastes. As of the moment, Teleport Gems are rare and hard-to-craft items that run off of unexplained wibbly-wobbly much like the canonical ones, though given the nature of the setting, it is almost certainly a product of the Distortion of Mystery Dungeons channeled by experienced Teleporters.

    What's Casting Off?

    You probably already gathered since they're both under the list of works Virgil134 and Spiteful Murkrow have published, but Casting Off is a gaiden story focusing around Cabot’s early days in the Royal Navy. While it doesn’t connect directly with Fledglings, a number of characters and setting devices were initially debuted there, and it is by far worth the time to stop and give it a read to get a chance to see more of Cabot and his friend circle in a light that doesn’t come up as much in this story.

    How did you decide what characters to get art of?

    It was primarily a matter of Spiteful Murkrow and Virgil134’s preferences, though we made a priority of getting portraits of members of Fledglings’ and Casting Off’s core casts. As you might have noticed, we wound up growing fond of Chibi Pika’s artstyle, and have been rewarded by quality service and output that we’d highly recommend for anyone looking for commissions from within the Serebii community.
     
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