#floating timeline

[hisuian-history-makers]

Throughout my years of being a Pokémon fan (and other fandoms fan), I have come up with several ideas for stories I wanted to write. Who hasn’t humored the thought of translating their ideas to reality. Except putting yourself out there is extremely nerve-wracking. Even more so when you are a somewhat perfectionist like myself. Improper grammar/capitalization can make potential readers not want to read fanfics. And I am not nitpicking the occasional errors.

To name a few: using too many commas, repetitive word choice, improper grammar, uncapitalized words throughout the entire story, thick blocks of text when you need to break up paragraphs, etc… You get the point. The last one seriously makes me mad because I will lose my place in a chapter. I understand the first drafts won’t be perfect from the get-go, but them not improving frustrates me. What I am trying to get at is writing something you are satisfied with is harder than it sounds.

Moving onto the main point of this post. The Pokémon world’s floating timeline presents a unique problem. Whether it is the eternal summer of the Anime or games remakes making concrete events more vague. I’m not going into the darker Manga events since I barely know them. It tends to be different from our own in many ways besides super powered creatures. Here are some questions I ask myself whenever I think up any fanfic ideas.

—Do all individuals of a species look the same? {Pokémon look like mirror copies no matter how many you catch in the games. I would like to think there are other appearance traits than the bigger size. Maybe some have shaggier fur, longer claws, and different colors besides being shiny considering the genetic diversity.}

—Why do some people have Pokémon before being ten years old? {We know being ten is the minimum requirement to take on the league. Yet we see visibly younger kids have Pokémon in several other regions. I think ten is the youngest age you are allowed to be to compete in official tournaments. Ash had a trainer’s license in the Anime which might relate to this.}

—Are talented/prodigy trainers granted special privileges? {In a short answer, yes. We see very young trainers like Tate and Liza appointed to co-gym leader status. It seems talented trainers are very sought after in the Pokémon world. The youngest high-ranking trainer has to be (SPOILERS) the Paldea’s Poppy. Her attitude and visible appearance make me think she is five to six years old. Poppy is strong enough to hold an Elite Four position in the game!}

—Why are we made the new champion after beating the old one? {This is one of the few things about the games that genuinely annoys me. We are not only the strongest trainer in-region but given a high authority position. League champions appear to be people who rank first in the tournament. What would make more sense is the former champion mentors whoever beat them for a few years. Champions hold the highest authority being able to go to places too dangerous for average trainers.}

—What exactly are Legendaries/Mythicals? {Not the easiest question to answer so let’s go over the basics. All species have the strength of fully-evolved dragon types. Each has a job to do in the world, some more important than others considering what they represent. One's like the Creation Trio and Arceus are actual real gods. Giratina itself was described as eldritch. People can go their whole lives without seeing one in any continuity. A lucky few can catch them and they will actually listen to orders.}

—Is it legal to have a Legendary Pokémon considering how important they are? {When you take into account their sheer strength and abilities this is a grey area. We catch the region’s legendaries/mythical in every game. I have personally used at least one box legend on teams to beat the Elite Four. In the universe though how often does this genuinely happen? Where they bond enough to let themselves be caught by a mortal. It would be so easy for Groudon or Yveltal to just kill us if they didn’t want to listen... Are there rules for this? A limit to how many you can use on a team. Does the trainer have to let the league know they have one if they take on the Pokémon League? Look at how easily Tobias swept the gym challenge.}

—How advanced is the technology? {Another odd area so rarely addressed in the Pokemon World. Bags, a staple thing, can hold several items including Bikes in them without weighing us down. Pokemon are transported by digitizing them across the internet/electric lines. Centers can heal our pokémon with a machine in just a few seconds. Teleport tiles have existed since the first freaking generation! The Pokemon World is much more advanced than our own. I would say they focused on medicine, science, and transportation the most.}

—Is battling similar to animal fighting? {PETA has kicked up enough fuss over the years when it comes to the Pokémon franchise. The games have shown that trainers make friends with their Pokémon enough to affect battles. Some even shrug off status effects to not worry the trainer. There are cases of Pokémon abuse and abandonment in the series. Yet tend to be much rarer than our cases in our world. Besides, wild Pokémon will battle to get stronger.}

—Are there any real-world animals? {Evidence for this is present when you look at species classifications. Cats, dogs, mice, crocodiles, and others like that are found in dex entries. Fish were seen in the anime’s early episodes. Pidgeotto ate an actual worm before Ash caught it... So kinda. Smaller animals seem to inhabit the Pokémon World from what we’ve seen. Makes the food situation less grim.}

—What is pokémon training actually like? {I imagine that it’s far less glamorous than the games show. Camping for months on end without access to showers. Having to feed six super-powered creatures three times a day. Not to mention having an unstable budget to rely on. I pity those who repeatedly lose.}

Now questions I don’t have answers/ headcanons/theories on currently.

—What was the Pokémon World’s reaction to parallel dimensions being real? Ultra Space

—Why are there two different types of Rangers? One that uses poke balls and one using stylers.

—Is time travel a somewhat regular occurrence and do people watch for timeline changes? The Hisui situation is not subtle with there being Porygon in the pokédex. Time-space distortions might appear in the modern day.

—Are humans in there more durable than us? Ash gets hit by Pokémon moves and Lance hyper-beamed someone in Mahogany Town.

—How can friendship be quantified?

—What’s the yearly number of Pokémon killing humans?

—Are psychics employed as lie detectors?

—Is it wrong for a psychic to read minds?

—Do mediums need special training?

—How do non-Pokémon related careers fare in a Pokemon training-focused world?

—Does ditto breeding have any side effects?

—What requirements are there to become a gym leader? Why is it only one gym per town?

—Can a trainer be charged with murder if one of their Pokémon kills a human in self-defense?

—Are there blacklisted species against the law to be trained without licenses?

—What happens to all the less-than-ideal babies from IV breeding? Shiny breeding?

—Where do Pokémon eggs actually come from?

—How often are Pokémon actually injured to the point if bleeding?

—Why does this crazy world let ten-year-olds wander in the wilderness?

—Are the evil teams' schemes years in the making? What were they thinking messing with the God-like Legendaries?

—How much does the league tell the public about us stopping evil teams?

—Are the additional non-native encounters in remakes caused by the Legendary Pokémon raging? Mass migrations away from danger.

—Can they take away our legendary Pokemon?

—Do the legendaries have cult followings?

—Would using Mega Evolution or Z-Moves to battle trainers who can’t be considered unfair?

—How rare is the ability to talk to Pokémon?

—Do badges/ribbons expire?

—Is evolving less maturing than just growing stronger? Can evolved mons still be immature?

—Are atheists a thing in the Pokemon world?

—How many grimdark or nuzlucke stories are just dark timelines?

—What if Legendaries are classified as genderless because nobody has studied them?

—Do Pokémon have to be re-caught if the trainer wants to switch their poke ball type?

—How rare are evolution items?

—How do TMs teach Pokemon new moves?

—Are ghost types immortal?

—What happens to Orre during the time skip?

—Does Ash age or is he stuck at ten?

—When does Ingo get sucked into the past?

—How long was he there before we show up?

—How do trade evolutions occur wild?

—Do we control the player character to save the region?

—What weapons if any exist in that world?

—How old are the Champions?

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I ask myself these when I consider any future stories history and worldbuilding. Hope to one day write quality fanfic that avoids the cliches.

[everwen]

Great! Time for my daily existential crisis!

[choppedcowboydinosaur]

I don't like the floating timeline in the Simpsons where they keep changing Homer's youth to keep up with the times. First, he was a teen in the 60's and 70's. Then they change it to him being a teen in the 90's. It just feels weird, since the Simpsons itself had so much of an impact on 90's pop-culture. And yet they obviously can't reference that aspect of the culture because the Simpsons are fictional in our universe, but they are real people in their universe. So, it just feels jarring and anachronistic.

[dr-archeville]

Mutantkind had one small country for less than a decade...

Sadly, in-universe, it was probably a lot less than that.

The "Krakoan Era" was seen in comics published between 2019 and 2024, five years.

But keep in mind, Marvel has a “floating timeline/sliding timescale,” meaning that most of the earliest heroes and villains got their start not on a particular date, but “about fifteen years ago.”

Which, in 2024, would be sometime around 2009.

The Fantastic Four’s encounter with cosmic rays, Matt Murdock’s first outings as Daredevil, Tony Stark getting shrapnel’d & building his first Iron Man suit, Xavier forming his first group of X-Men, Peter Parker losing Uncle Ben and truly becoming Spider-Man, Banner getting Gamma’d, the Avengers forming (and later thawing Cap), all took place “about fifteen years ago,” in 2009. When Tony Stark was written about in the 1960s and 1970s, he was injured in the Vietnam War, but in the stories written in the 1990s, things were updated so that he was injured in the Gulf War, and later updated again so that his injury occurred in the American War in Afghanistan, and updated again so that his injury occurred during a war in the communist Asian country of Sin-Cong.

(The Sinancong War/The Sin-Cong Conflict is also now the war that Frank Castle & Ben Grimm also served in.)

So, either "The Krakoan Era" existed for the latter third of the Modern Heroic Age, or it lasted... about fifteen months. :(

My favorite thing was less than a week after I deleted Julian's blog, Marvel dropped THIS preview

Now we don't know for SURE it's him, but based on the outfit being his colors, the powers being green, and the fact that the book's main cast has Laura, David and Victor, who all have ties to Julian and the editor hinted that Julian would make an appearance somewhere I'm like 99% sure it is him. It's just hilarious that we didn't get to see any of Julian's life on Krakoa, he had a single line of dialogue during the entire era, and yet I'm completely fine with him in this role.

Julian is a traumatized young man who has lost a home more times than he can count. If losing Krakoa is the moment that makes him SNAP it's completely believable. He has lost his hands, his family abandoned him, and he's seen countless trauma as his friends have been brutally murdered in front of him. Julian turning to villainy or at most a vengeful freedom fighter is SUCH a natural progression of his character. The seeds have been there since the early days of his character:

( Sidenote, this run was always trying to frame Julian as being wrong, but I think me and 75% of the readers sided with Julian on most things during this comic and that's a big reason why he and three of his fellow Hellions became main characters post decimation while only David, Nori and Josh stuck around for the New Mutants )

I'm just worried that the editors are gonna make him some one note villain, that they won't point out that his reactions to losing YET ANOTHER home are valid. I want him to cry, and scream, and I want him to talk to David and Laura in particular. I don't want them to swing this story as Julian being unreasonable and EVIL because that'll PISS ME TF OFF, but I guess we'll see what happens!

[qwuilty]

(worlds most melancholy playing of you cant fight the homestuck)

I havent done sprites in a bit but i had a lot of fun doing these, i tried to stick mostly to the canon style and drew most the sprite parts myself besides using nepeta's coat and editing the god tier sprites (also thank you to my partner for helping me decide some especially p1's <3 <3 <3)

Bonus alternate god tier for p3 cause i feel both are fitting for him

[louisisalarrie]

..

[shannonsketches]

If Pan's only 3 in Super Hero it means that

Battle of the Gods

Resurrection F

Universe 6 Tournament

Zamas

Tournament of Power

Broly

Moro

Granolah

and Super Hero

all took place within ~4 years

no wonder Geets is done with everything all the time and Gohan had to lock himself in a room to finish a dissertation, good lord

[wilygryphon]

It takes place in the present of when the individual books are written. The pop culture references date it differently each time. As of the latest book, there's a new season of Jessica Jones coming out (Magnus Chase- The Hammer of Thor) at some point after Lil Nas X released Montero (The Sun and the Star) and WandaVision was put on Disney+ (Chalice of the Gods).

Okay does the Percy Jackson tv show take place in 2023 or 2005? Because those are two very different times.

[campercabeth]

I'm sorry but if we’re taking Rick's word for it that Percy was "always born 16 years ago" or whatever our boy would have been born in 2008, after TLT was even first published. No sir, I do not think so. That math ain't mathing and I will not be incorporating that into my canon.

[nocofamilyau]

What year would you say this au takes place in? (also very nice art)

i guess 2023 if we're being realistic??? idk, with that maybe Total Drama aired a bit earlier than in canon, more like early 2000s instead of late 2000s/early 2010s, around the time when reality tv really began to blow up (I remember reading somewhere before TDI23 was announced that Total Drama would hypothetically take place around 2003 because Chris was allegedly 25 at the time of island ik none of this is canon but fuck it why not) (from td wiki)

if anything, I like to think this au takes place on some sort of floating timeline since then there's no need to worry about certain events and making things dated, along with adding bits and pieces from media from a wider range of time (eg. sam still owning a DS)

[diaryofageekgirl]

Ace Attorney fandom. I am taking you by the hand and leading you to the best idea I’ve ever had.

Okay, so you know how every prosecutor gets partnered up with a detective for investigations? And you know how Fulbright is no longer Blackquill’s detective partner on account of, y’know, being dead and also not really being Fulbright the entire time we’ve interacted with him?

Consider: Blackquill needs a new detective partner. Consider: There are previously established detective characters who haven’t gotten nearly enough screen time. Consider: One such detective will have surely finished his jail time by now, and with Gant no longer calling the shots, would likely try to work his way back up to detective after unfairly being demoted.

Consider: Simon Blackquill and Jake Marshall’s Ongoing Samurai/Cowboy Insanity.

[veilkeeper]

Orin: Allies? No no. We had a balance, the Chosen three, but it tumbled when you turned the Bone Lord to ash. Now Gortash tries to gouge me from the city.

Ketheric Thorm: For that, [Myrkul] asked that I serve as his Chosen, join Orin and Gortash to grow the cult of the Absolute, and then... take control of it.

An excerpt from "Elder Brain Domination", written by Ketheric Thorm: Clearly all three Netherstones must be controlled by a single leader - me, by preference - but not until after all stakeholders have made their essential contribution.

Lord Enver Gortash: So Ketheric was ready to betray our alliance, too?

to his credit, gortash really does seem like the only one who was genuinely trying to make the alliance work. perhaps they all knew eventually theyd have to stab each other in the back, what with their gods' longstanding beef with each other, but gortash seemed like the only one committed to making sure that happened well after they were secure in having won, if it happened at all.

ive gotta get into his office. maybe there's stuff in there that will tell me he was planning on betraying them asap but.... from what ive seen so far, it doesnt seem like it.

[scribesofcalamity]

Something something musician au halloween crossover piece idk this sketch was too cute not to render lol 🎃💀

My Sophie and my bestie’s La Sombra Silas ❤️🪽😈

[slanax]

Post-canon Akane and Junpei Zeroescape discuss baby names

Akane, wanting to make a cute little inside bit that Sigma and Phi would find really sweet: How about Quark? The Morphogenetic Field: :) Junpei, instantly and violently recalling 45 years of post-apocalypse, his adopted grandson, and another FUCKING death game for good measure: hhhhhh

[theladyofshalott1989]

[ Read the Like Moths to a Flame series ]

Sebastian & Damien's relationship theme song: "Hold Me Down" by The Happy Fits

"Maybe I'm crazy I've Been talking to myself at night And I'm feelin' so alone If I can get the words out right To tell you how I feel, I might But they're comin' out so wrong Then the voices, they come rushin' in Like a ten tonne truck into soft cement Now the words make sense but I can't repeat Because sense don't make what it used to be I'm here, my love, but I'm floating, baby"

[elvenbeard]

Not Yet

Just a random little scene that might wanna still write out in full in the future. Angst, what angst? I would never...

100% blame @humberg for the wonderful upcoming poses fueling me with angsty thoughts and scenarios 💜