Glad to hear it! With all this preparation time, Hoenn should blow Kanto out of the water. I already have a lot of stuff to include, I just have to figure out where to put it.

 

He will be allowed to enter, but it'll basically be through a loophole. Normally trainers employed by the League aren't allowed to enter (you weren't imagining it) since they're paid to have much better things to do than compete in a glorified talent scouting event.

They're willing to make an exception for Ash, however, since as a trainee he has far more freedom than most League trainers and is basically a free agent barely affiliated with any of the Leagues under the current deal between Lance and Steven, which causes the issue to become a legal grey zone. Even then it's going to require a bit of maneuvering on Lance's part to make it happen, which I'll explain once we get to that point in the story.

But I have to let him enter because all the other Elite Four will laugh at Ash if he joins without winning one measly regional Conference. :awesome

 

I am pumped to see what happens in Hoenn. The first two gen games got played a lot by me growing up, but nothing compared to the amount of hours I logged into Ruby. Great job with Kanto by the way. You have written one of the few chaptered Pokemon fanfics that is actually readable and I would go so far as to say it is easily one of my top-three favorite Pokemon fics.

Also welcome to DLP

 

With any luck I'll do your expectations justice. Hoenn's actually my favorite region as well, although Kanto is a very close second. Sapphire was my first main series game and I know Hoenn a lot better than Kanto as a result.

Thanks!

 

So Ash will be doing the Hoenn gym circuit, correct?

If that's the case then I'm already pumped for the Norman battle. Those Slakings.

 

Yes. A few of the battles will be different since I'm screwing the timeline by going to Hoenn a year early, but the Norman battle isn't one of them. Also, don't expect to see the Hoenn movies due to the timeline difference.

 

Since you mentioned that, I've been hoping that the mention of the unknown and the

Spoiler

false

Entei weren't just a tease. Have to admit, I've been waiting for Infernus to whoop some legendary ass and ride to his proper place among the gods.

 

I'd actually like to see Nidoking cement his place as leader of the team, if not in terms of sheer power, then in terms of ability. He got the unique Moon Stone, but so far we haven't really seen any drastic changes as a result of such a powerful relic.

/TeamNidoking

 

I won't say too much on that for obvious reasons, but I will say that the foreshadowing wasn't just a nice bonus for people who remembered the movies.

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Nidoking will improve greatly during Hoenn, especially now that Ash has finally realized that Nidoking will never really be able to match Infernus or Torrent in raw power. He's going to shift beyond just power and variety and turn Nidoking into his most tactical teammate. Poison is something that has only been used on rare occasions so far, which is something I'm going to change.l

He's going to improve in other ways as well, but I'll leave those alone for now.

 

Huh, that's definitely one of the more unconventional compliments I've gotten, lol.


If it makes him feel any better I've been working on it ever since I finished replying to reviews and PMs. The Hoenn timeline is mostly complete, although I'll probably tweak it a few times. I'm about to start work on the next chapter too, so hopefully it'll be out earlier than expected.


I've almost finished rewriting/editing the first chapter to the point that it won't cause spontaneous bleeding of the eyes and the first prequel chapter is about halfway done as well.

 

I'm just wondering though, if you were following anime timeline at all. Especially with Orange Islands and those birds. Though, it's easily a non-issue if we maintain the fact that Team Rocket has been dismantled and won't be aiming for them.

 

For what it's worth I think Traveler really started to find its voice after Jonathan and Amelia left - toning them down and focusing more on Ash and his training might make those early chapters a lot better.

 

I'll go ahead and say that Ash won't be traveling through the Orange Islands. I don't want to waste time with what amounts to a filler arc when I could be writing Hoenn instead.




As for the anime timeline, I'm trying to work with it -- at least my assumptions of the timeline, at least. I've organized each of the Conferences so that they each take place over one month and none of them occur at the same time. It has no basis in canon but it's the system I've come up with. So, based off of that, Ash in the anime would have one month after the Indigo Conference to go explore the Orange Islands. That's obviously not feasible, but it's what I'm working with. The Orange Islands really just complicate everything.

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I've gotten that a lot and I agree for the most part. That was actually my initial plan. But I'm mostly trying to make the early chapters be of much greater quality (not that that's difficult) while still retaining most of the original content. I'm just going to focus on making Jonathan and Amelia more bearable to read through and paraphrasing their battles rather than altering their role in the story.


Hopefully that explanation makes sense.

 

Quick heads up that Traveler updated. I haven't gotten a chance to read it yet.

 

Well, this explains how the plot will continue moving forward. This is one of the stories that attempted to go from "street-level" to "world-level" and seems to be succeeding at it.

Badge fights, tournaments, and et cetera will be very anticlimactic after this chapter. I'd guess the next part of the story will focus more on the Aqua vs Magma plot lines?

 

"Land and Sea, Behemoth and Leviathan... they breathe."

Groudon and Kyogre are comin'

Christ, talk about getting me hype for ORAS tomorrow.

 

spoilers ahead:

Digging the new chapter. Ash, Lugia, and Infernus were suitably epic, and I did not see the temporary Legendary!Infernus twist coming until right before it happened.

It raises questions on how Legendaries are born in the first place. Ash's comment about making his whole team strong enough to take on Legendaries was nice-- something that's bothered me about the fic is the relative lack of agency Ash has in a world where physical gods can take on dozens of elite trainers (each with 6 Pokemon at least) and walk away without a scratch. So hopefully he'll find a way to fight with them on more even terms.