#volo's not evil he just needs a lot of therapy

[grismavessel]

Inktober: Week 3

"Need not worry your small mind."

Volo's one of my most favorite characters and I don't draw him that often, only when inspiration strikes me right can I actually draw him.

In the canon pla story line and in the vessel au, Volo's basically responsible for the distortions going on with Giratina's help. He's the puppeteer holding most of the strings. He wants the plates, he wants to see Arceus, he's doing all of this for greater things but it's destructive.

In the au Gris is the star of the show, but Volo hates the fact Gris gets to do everything. Volo's delighted to have someone new to talk to, but Gris is also just another stepping stone to get what he wants.

[greentrickster]

Okay, so I’ve mentioned Cyrus encountering Akari, and Volo as a result, so here’s how I think it starts to go down.

I was leaning heavily towards @someoddmix‘s suggestion of having it happen due to Cyrus making deliveries via Giratina, but I think I’d like to make it a bit more accidental than that, at least to start with. Because I really, really like the idea of Akari getting antsy after being so used to being so highly active and involved in things daily back in Jubilife Village. Gonna say Cyrus been back about a year and ten months, meaning it’s been three months since it was decided he wasn’t going to be charged for his actions in Diamond/Pearl/Platinum (so it’s known that he’s back by people in Sinnoh, but he’s off in Kanto so it’s not much of an issue for them), and Akari arrived home again from Hisui about one month after Cyrus got dropped on Red’s mountain, was back and dealing with the Melli and Ingo situation for the next eight months, and the rest of it has been her readapting to modern life. So that’s about a year and one month of being back in Sinnoh without anything particularly ground-breaking she needs to do, and it’s been great, she really needed this, but she’s bored now. She wants to be out doing something again, you know? (Also, I think all that works within the timeline, but I cannot be bothered to check at the moment, because this is an AU, not a formal fic, I can fudge the details a little, as a treat.)

Anyway, this is the point where Dawn mentions that Kanto’s Pokemon League season is about to start, why not get out of Sinnoh for awhile and give that a shot, now that she’s gotten so good with training? Plus, don’t her friends Emmet and Ingo go there sometimes? Why not visit some of the places they’ve been herself, that could be fun!

Things Dawn doesn’t remember at the time: Blue is still the head of Viridian’s Gym, aka the final stop for the Indigo League, and Cyrus currently works as one of Blue’s trainers (and sometimes assistant).

Things Akari flat-out doesn’t know: The same things that Dawn doesn’t know, because she wasn’t involved in the original Team Galactic shenanigans and at the time of Cyrus’s trial was busy with figuring out her life a bit more, therapy (because while she does have the usual protagonist trauma resistance package, that was still A Lot, and she needs some help processing it sometimes), and also off visiting Ingo and Emmet in Unova. Gotta visit the train fam, you know?

Thus, Akari doesn’t realize what she’s walking into until she’s halfway through the Viridian Gym and a trainer in a goldenrod baseball cap pulls out a crobat (Crobat and Gyarados are the only members of Cyrus’s team that are really native to the Kanto region, and Crobat fits inside the gym better, so Crobat tends to get used for Gym battles), and when he looks up suddenly Akari’s getting flashbacks because, um, Cyllene? What the heck?! Did you get dragged to the future by mistake too-?!???!

Cyrus: I think you’re confusing me with someone else, I’m Cyrus.

Akari: Cyrus? ...wait, not Team Galactic Boss Cyrus?!?

Cyrus: ...technically no but legally yes.

Akari: ...

Cyrus: ...

Akari: ...okay, I’m just gonna win this battle and get my Earth badge real quick, but then we’re coming back to this!

Cyrus: Why?

Akari: Because Dawn is my twin, Lucas is her friend-rival, and Barry is her friend!

Cyrus: (doesn’t fully remember who those people are, but is pretty sure she’s talking about the kids who were talked about during his trial) ...fine.

Akari: (...he’s an evil team boss who tried to pull a Volo and he has almost no facial expressions, he shouldn’t be allowed to be making me feel like I just kicked an eevee for saying we were going to talk later-!)

Also, once Akari gets to Blue, she very much gets a “Hi, nice to meet you, saw you talking to Cyrus, I know Professor Rowan personally, I know Dawn, I recognize you, if you try and mess with one of my trainers I’ll pull out my actual team instead of the one I use for gym challengers and I will Demolish You, and then I will call down Red to hide your remains for me. :D”

Blue grew up in the Team Rocket era, Blue does not play softball when it comes to people trying to cause shit in his gym, town, or region. Akari’s lucky that he knows enough that he’s aware she’s one of the few people who probably has the right to ask the questions that he thinks she’s going to, but he’s sure as heck not going to let her be a bully about it-!

And then Akari’s actual questions are more along the line of, “What the heck are you doing here, I thought you were in Distortion World? Lukas was very upset about that, and that made Dawn upset, they were worried about you! Did you tell them you’re back? You should tell them you’re back so they can stop worrying.”

Blue: (texting Red to get his rear down here and bring popcorn, things are probably about to get entertaining as heck)

[epicspheal]

I was debating on whether or not I should ask about this via messages or ask, but decided to go with asks cause why not.

I feel like I've asked something super similar to this in the past, but how do you handle the villains of the series in your cactuverse? Cause I've actually been having some difficulties with how I want to share them in the legendverse. Guzma and Ghetsis are fairly easy for me to know what to do with them, but others are difficult, especially in relation to my ocs. Cyrus seems the most difficult for me. He caused Danica a lot of trauma, despite her chill demeanor. She literally had to defeat him at a young age with little to no help outside of her friends, Looker( kinda) and Cynthia ( kinda. Still working on that part). Oh and Rowan, but he's the grandpa moral support. But she still did a lot of the work, you know? She was still the one that got dragged into that mess.

My main difficulty is trying that balance of " this man is literally evil" and " he can learn to be better if he legitimately tries" and that's so confusing with someone like Cyrus. He got the implied sad backstory that makes me go " ah. He needs therapy" but that doesn't excuse for what he did. Sorry if I'm talking in circles here( and for that rant) just. Cyrus. Villains. Author problems? Yeah.

Hi, there @ihopethisendswell! Ah yes, author problems! How do we handle the villains of Pokemon? You've asked me about how I felt about the villains in general which more or less goes to I really don't care for most of the villain teams. As I've mentioned before Cactusverse tends to be rather painfully accurate to the game canon for the various main series game events. Now what happens after the credit rolls varies between the villains/antagonists I'll start with Legends Arceus. Even though Kamado still retains his position as commander there is a quite noticeable dip in faith in his leadership after what he pulls on Rei (cactusverse legends protag). Over time as Jubilife Village continues to grow Kamado will eventually step down handing the reins to Cyllene and it's Rei who becomes the captain of the survey corps in his adult years. Now with Volo, there's a bit more of an emotional pull. The one thing I do change in canon for Legends is that Rei is not an isekai'd protagonist. Rather he's someone from that time period who happens to be of the Celestica people much like Cogita and Volo. So the betrayal and everything hits a lot different since there are just so few Celestica people left in Hisui at the time. I'm admittedly still ironing out the details for cactusverse!Hisui so I don't have much more to say here. Now for Team Rocket. After the events in Johto the Rocket admins all get arrested by the G-men (with the charge mainly led by Silver and Yellow with Lance in the background now that he's no longer champion after being dethroned by Ethan). Giovanni of course makes his escape as he does appear in BW2 over a decade later only to get Hyperbeamed by Lance on-sight (sorry Giovanni, Lance is Silver's new dad), and Looker arrests Giovanni. I do include the Let's Go Kanto Trio in cactusverse but I give them their own unique villain plot with the Team Rocket Trio since they are the last remaining members of Team Rocket who eventually realize they're better at being good than being bad and so they officially disband Team Rocket in Kanto. Then there's Team Aqua and Team Magma. Hoenn is one of the regions where there's some heavy meshing of canons. The climax of the plot ends up like Emerald where they both summon their respective legendaries and shit hits the fan. But this is more or less ORAS Hoenn so they have their ORAS designs and Megas and Zinnia are involved. Steven is still champion here but I do include him and May tag-teaming in the main game like Emerald because that was the coolest thing ever to me as a kid (and I had the biggest crush on Steven and at some point, I need to gush about him because he's still bae). Since Maxie and Archie are more misguided than anything they do get rehabilitated over time, with Zinnia and Wallace (who becomes champion after May decides to not be a standing champion) who help them get better.

Alright so for Team Galactic. Cactusverse follows Platinum for its events. Cyrus stays in the distortion world and dies. It's only after Dawn and Cynthia hear the story of him in Sunyshore that they realize he was more misguided but by the time they try to rescue him it's too late. The admins are arrested through a combination of Looker and the aura guardians of Sinnoh (mobilized by Riley). For Team Plasma well Neo Team Plasma largely gets arrested over time through the combined efforts of Good Team Plasma, the G-men, the international police, and the Village of Dragons (who contain the few remaining full-fledged aura guardians in Unova). Ghetsis and the Shadow Triad die in the Giant Chasm though. For Team Flare, Lysandre dies. Xerosic and Malva go to jail after the Emma events. For Alola, I've mentioned this before but I do mix up a bit of SM and USUM. The SM part is Lusamine being evil AF to her children. Lusamine also dies here but right now I'm torn if Marsha and Lillie bring her back to their world and she succumbs to the poisoning there OR if Lillie and Marsha decide to leave her in Ultra Space. Last but not least is Galar...chairman Rose goes to jail and because he is genuinely remorseful he doesn't take the lighter punishment given (because of his wealth as the courts in Galar are rather corrupt) and serves his entire sentence. The Royal Twins get off easy mainly because of their royal connections.

So that's pretty much how I handle cactusverse villains. I'll be down to talk more about legendsverse in DMs if you want to throw some ideas around!