Fritz Westmyn Behind-the-Scenes

This is a list of the logic/struggles behind some of the decisions made in writing The Story of Fritz Westmyn, as well as related facts that are just interesting.

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Part 0: Preamble

The concept of this fanfic dates back way way, to a Christmas Contest on Bulbagarden sometime, or some other event. The basic concept was one foreign "Blair West" taking on a renound trainer (Ash Ketchum himself in the beta) with a few wrestling-themed influences (including him cutting a heel promo before the battle) and taking place on Christmas Eve. This would've been spun off a fic that reeked of a wrestling promotion. I never finished it, though.

I was able to reuse the concept when a roleplay called Knight Pokemon University popped up. I retooled Blair into risco "Fritz" Carlos Westmyn. Many of the basic concepts from both the prototype and this fic were in there as well - namely, much of Blair's personality and the concept of trainer attending an academy despite having a ton of skill already. However, I was banned from this RP for messing around with its IRC channel during a Netsplit. I originally had an idea of a fic to fill the character's days off, but with this it became an entity of its own.

This fell off, however. One day I felt like working on it again. One problem was that the school visit itself was too ingrained to the overall plot I'd thought up. I thought about reworking it or making it an unmentioned background thing, but neither really felt right. So I came up with my own concept for an academy to insert - reading Flaze's Pokemon Academy to help with some inspiration. Fritz also underwent a dramatic perosnality shift, both for convenience purposes and to make him more likable. The two friend characters (Reika and Thatcher) were developed from there with the concept of Fritz playing a mentor role to them, followed by Cronus Aporon to serve as a rival. The general skeleton of Part 1 was created. The school itself got named Rukh's, as a subtle chess-based nod. And that's how this got started.

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Part 1: Welcome to Rukh's University!

While I expanded this part into one with dignity as described, it wasn't always like this. My original concept was more true to the events of the KPU plot, and lasted a very short period of time before Fritz got expelled. It bears literally no resemblance to the current plot. One of the few things that survived in some form was the concept of spoiled food in the cafeteria. More on this can be read here: http://pastebin.com/a8tUNqhZ

The Eevee and the lake Pokemon from KPU waere also set to be a part of the fic later on, so I recreated their obtaining in the context of the fic. I used Aporon to give an element of tension there and as a way to officially kick off their rivalry. So how to drive the plot progression of such a section of the fic? I didn't want to go for a slice of life style, so had to think of actual events to occur. This is how the Tactics Tournament and The Beast of Abet got their start. Same for the fire/man in white part. The rest of it, I figured I could use Reika - she was designed as a character who's supposed to be barely on the cusp of likability both in and out of universe. What I ended up with was kind of cumbersome, but served its purpose.

I also designed Rukh's to intentionally run counter to many other academy tropes I've seen. For example, it's not prestigious and is not set in a remote location. The latter fact also allowed me to add in the town. Dorms are similarly a thing, but I modified them. Themed dorms I've seen in a few places (including Pokemon Academy and KPU), but here they're just sorted based on year. I also cover things like the money factor, ages, free/supplemental Pokemon, and why people would go their in the first place.

1-1:
▪ The three students here (Carlie/Irene/Andrew) actually were given their names, although they weren't planned beyond this part originally, so they weren't actually going to be revealed. Similarly, the woman on-stage and Irene's mother is Mrs. Audrey Faris.
▪ The scene in which Fritz receives his Eevee was something planned to give a bit of support for the revelation in 1-3. When looked back on with context, the reaction makes a lot more sense.
▪ I tried to write the first battle so Fritz looks like he's sort of stumbling through. Which he kind of was anyway.
▪ I always intended even as far back as the RP to make the Lake Pokemon's identity concealed for a while.
▪ The beeping tone for a bell is a real-life references. My first few years in school had a bell that sounded like...well, a bell. Then I moved, and from there on out, all I got were beeping tones.
▪ Sciences was called Biology in the original plan. The change was actually a small mistake that I kept, just because.
▪ Dratini and Gyarados being two possible identities for the lake Pokemon is another reference to KPU - where a student and teacher thought the same things, respectively.

Bonus 1-1:
▪ The Pokemon spelling/pronounciation inconsistency was something I felt should be in. Hence its inclusion here. Then I figured it should be in the main part of the fic, hence why it's in 1-3 as well.

1-2:
▪ Fritz tries to lure out the lake Pokemon by throwing rocks over the lake. In the RP, it appeared when he was doing just that (aiming practice with his Houndour)
▪ In the original story, Fritz fought the lake Pokemon with Tangela. Here he fights it with Mareep, to debut it.
▪ Having the lake Pokemon move over to shallow waters was part of crafting the logical nature of the world. The boomeranging never made sense to me.
▪ I actually made myself hungry when writing the description of the sandwich, and had to stop partway to eat myself.
▪ The Gyarados scene was actually the first one that I completed in the fic. Gyarados and Cradily were in turn made the first two Pokemon I wrote a description for. I really got to play around in a fun way with them.
▪ Yes, I do know the rings on its face aren't actually Cradily's eyes. Fritz doesn't, though. It's just another detail of his character and the narration style. Following a similar logic, since its lower half is below the surface, you don't get a description of that until it's knocked out of the water.
▪ If Gyarados was aiming for Cradily's head with Hyper Beam, missed by 20 feet when it ducked, and we assume Cradily is its height of five feet as in the games, it would make a 14.04 degree angle. Although sizes, of course vary (esp. because your Pokedex-sized one would barely be the size of a two-storey house), a Gyarados who has, for instance, around 15 feet of its body out of the water would be around 40 feet away. This was all a sanity check.
▪ "Cronus was beatened?!" was originally a typo. I kept it though, because it fit the panic better.
▪ I had set Fritz up/tried to give the illusion of him being a beginning at first here. Then I completely erase the notion of it with his against the Gyarados.
▪ It was hard to write the exchange after Aporon captures the Gyarados. There was going to be more after the "fish food" comment, but I decided to end it there.

1-3:
▪ I actually wrote out the first little bit of Dean Howard and Mr. Miedere's conversation, just to get things going. This eventually became a bonus scene.
▪ The second scene was just written as a quick transition. I actually was going to have Fritz find his friends here, but it made more sense from a logical standpoint for him to be unable to.
▪  I decided to have Reika describe Ms. Odell, for no reason other than a change of pace.
▪ This is the first chapter where it's made fairly clear that the differences between Pokemon aren't necessarily psychological. It's also why I tend to give descriptions of Pokemon anyway.
▪ Just a note: Fritz' estimate on Eeveelutions isn't necessarily wrong in my fanfic. Amusingly enough, I overestimated just to cover all hypothetical bases, and then Sylveon came along. I upped the number in the rewrite to keep the spirit of the line intact.
▪ The description Fritz gives is mostly the reason why I drew up a map of the grounds. I didn't make a similar one for the city. I tried to, but then figured it was pointless.

1-4:
▪ "The other trainer stood with agitation, almost desperation." was a line recycled from the second draft of the story.
▪ I decided to put the first battle in to pad the chapter out, and as a way to introduce Muriel before she is brought up proper. Her opponent, on the other hand, was a throwaway character whose features were literally determined by random.org. Seriously.
▪ Just like 1-2, I made something of a typo instead of correcting it. In this case, I gave Edgar dyslexia. "Talking you to" and "comsequences/nessing" aren't typos! Considering his random "consider that one a freebie, kid", he may also not know what a few phrases actually are.
▪ Live and die by logic. With no magical rock materialization in my world, I changed up the effects of Secret Power to be adaptable, summoning rocks for Primeape to use.

1-5:
▪ Getting the parody of the Red and Blue opening speech just right was a pain in the ass. I only thought to add Nidorino later on, on that note.
▪ I actually went to a site with business terminology to help add to the feel of Dean Howard's lines. Despite this, he was actually reasonably easy to write here. And really fun, too.
▪ I was having difficulty writing the scene, which is why I came up with the idea of Fritz falling asleep during the speech, so I wouldn't have to write as much - and making the cutaway feel more natural.
▪ Reika's opinions/her rant was hard to perfect. Particularly when I had to expand it to three paragraphs.

1-6:
▪ In the scanning device entries of Zubat and Golbat, I actually did some research into their locations in games. Specifically, Zubat's not being able to adapt to hot places actually lines up with how it doesn't show up in volcanic places, despite infesting nearly every other cave.
▪ This battle, besides introducing Reika and Thatcher, is where some of the battle logicistics of the fic's world really come into play. No eyes = Sand Attack is useless. Not round enough = Defense Curl isn't as effective. Which was part of the reason why I had Fritz and Reika go with those choices.
▪ For Golbat, writing them to be logical was a nightmare. I actually retooled the design a little, so they actually have room for internal organs instead of just being thin things with massive mouths who presumably have a hypercube stomach for storing blood.
▪ I sanity checked the collapsed tunnel, just to make sure that's how it works. It didn't turn out too well, but I did it as best I could anyway. This is also the reason why Fritz admits he doesn't know for certain.

1-7:
▪ This is actually the only chapter in Part 1, besides the first, to keep its planned name.
▪ I hadn't thought of a name for the device yet, so it's just called a device here.
▪ Picking the right word for Nidorina's training was hard. 'Stamina' could be used as a synonym for health, and in fact actually can work like that in my fic. So Fritz specifically says 'sufferance', in order to make it clear that he's referring to the ability to battle/exert itself for long periods rather than taking any hits. It was the best I could do.

1-8:
▪ I came up with an entire list of things and snacks that might be at the school. Pointlessly.
▪ There's nothing really special to note about the original version of this scene before Elyna/the RPing to make a scene concept was introduced.
▪ One of the most important scenes that I had to be careful of when writing: the moment when it's revealed Reika isn't entirely a bad person.

1-9:
▪ 168 is an interesting number with a variety of traits, but was mainly chosen for being a lucky number in Chinese, for being homophonus with the phrase "fortune all the way".
▪ Another scene I had to be careful when writing. It took a while to get the flow just right.

1-10:
▪ Simulated sunlight? I figured "screw it, they need light too and I'd imagine they'd find a way to have those by now." May remove this in a rewrite, however.
▪ I sort of came up with Premala on the spot. I'm glad I did, though.

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Part 2: Omnipresent Secrecy

I broke this off into a second part because the overall tone and themes of the fic start to change a bit with this part. Its name was intended to evoke a feeling of godliness with "Omnipresent", which kind of fits with Premala. The second part of the name, 'secrecy', is a bit of a theme throughout this part - Fritz hiding his nationality, Premala hiding her career, Mr. Li hiding what he did for his son at first, and so on.

I decided right away that the main drives for the plot in this part would be the Tactics Tournament and Premala. The latter I set up as a very important character for later use. I also built towards the first very serious battle in the fic against Elyna Dragomir.

I added in Tulu Turner's bug plot and the explosion in the technology class more or less as red herrings. More attention will be drawn to these in rewrites, but these incidents combined with the fire were supposed to give the impression that something is going on at Rukh's University - and a possible target is suggested in the form of the forest shrine's guardian. Furthermore, the principal doesn't seem to like Premala very much, which adds to this pile.

Towards the end of this part, I realized that one viewpoint can give a rather narrow view of things.  I came up with the idea of bonus scenes - snippets of various lengths and styles that shows things from points of view other than Fritz'. They vary in style and POV drastically. Since then, I've retroactively introduced several of these to previous chapters.

2-1:
▪ Had to get Fritz and Reika next to each other so Fritz could hush her during the argument with Josef, and so I went with RPS for no real reason. It fit with their boredom, though.
▪ I actually couldn't think of what Josef could say what Thatcher is the second time, which is why he whispers - allowing people to use their imaginations.
▪ I only put in the thing with Ina talking to Aporon, to exposition the fact that some students don't think Fritz is too hot, given that Aporon battled the Gyarados way before. How much each of them actually did to it is intentionally ambiguious.
▪ You can basically tell who's giving which reaction when Fritz proposes a Triple Battle, despite the speakers not being directly identified (in order, for the record: Ina, Thatcher, Reika, Josef, Aporon). Basically done just to show off the unique speech mannerisms.

2-2:
▪ The math involved in Double Team is pretty ridiculous. Basically I can tell you this: in order to create afterimages, a Pokemon must be able to move its own width in howevermany "frames per second" the target sees. Let's assume a "framerate" of 20fps. In Scyther, this would be 30m/s (108km/h), and in order to overcome forces to prevent shooting off in a straight line while encircling its foe, it must be lying at ~2.9° with the ground in an ideal system. Taillow fares better, especially if it doesn't have to face the enemy. I generally try to limit this move in my universe because of it.
▪ The second battle was the hardest to put together, due to the awkwardness of both characters involved. I mostly used it as an opportunity to show off how things are different in the battling system, like how the type chart as we know it has been thrown out the window.
▪ Fritz vs. Aporon was the first one finished, and was actually started on before some of the things in the latter half of Part 1. It accomplished two things - showing off Aporon in a battle, and hinting at his weakness when it comes to them.

2-3:
▪ Again, I made some additional dialogue to lead into a conversation in-progress.
▪ I carefully crafted the scene where Fritz and Premala see each other, putting in several little neat details.

2-4:
▪ A chapter much like 1-5. This was mostly to see if I could directly influence mood just based on the pace. True to the title, it's chaotic - not unlike how it is at Rukh's.
▪ The external reason for the block switcharound in the original/adjustment so that classes take place on Saturday in the rewrite was so that Socials could be last on Wednesday.
▪ The coaching battle was written amusingly: similar to before, AiedailEclipsed RP'd Elyna's advice.
▪ The purpose of the coaching battle was to advance the Fritz/Elyna storyline without them having to actively face each other, as well as giving Fritz some more natural 'training'.
▪ I figured Fritz could get away with the information device from a narrative standpoint, and I wanted to remind people it exists.
▪ I wanted to be extra sure Phoebe's introduction went off smoothly.

2-5:
▪ This chapter was originally 'Part 1' of the next chapter. I compressed that into a single chapter and came up with this, however.

2-6:
▪ The whole glaring portion was hilariously fun to write.
▪ Fructology is amazingly not a real profession. Pomology (pomus being Latin for fruit) only studies pome fruit. Fructus Fructus is where I got it from. Creaturafructology naturally adds creatura (creature) to the mix.
▪ Vespiquen and the Beedrills are partially recycled from the earliest draft of the story. Fritz uses an entirely different team against them, though. And instead of a multitool to duel Vespiquen, he grabs a knife that's handy. Eevee flips out in a similar manner.
▪ I honestly don't know what the deal was with the detention thing, but I went with it since it wasn't important.
▪ The intro to the Activism Club is intended to give a feel of unity, of several people from different backgrounds united under a single cause.
▪ That kiss. It sets the tone, telling the readers they're in for a VERY non-traditonal relationship between Fritz and Premala. If it even goes anywhere.

2-7:
▪ This chapter was intended as a somewhat natural way of introducing Muriel and those she's mentoring. The other option would've been them just coming up out of nowhere and having a confrontation.
▪ This battle also adds to the list of 'bug Pokemon incidents', together with the bees from last chapter.

2-8:
▪ I honestly don't like how this chapter turned out, aside from the name. Dissident Perception of the Absolute is a very meaningful name - it not only refers to the fact that people are denying the fact that the Bug Pokemon incident occured, but it also refers to Fritz' view on Premala. One of the meanings of absolute is perfection, and indeed - in any other light, she would be branded a Mary Sue in an instant. This is about all there is to say about this chapter. Really.
▪ The question about day or night was...clutch. To say the least.
▪ The scene in the shrine itself felt like it came out a bit rushed.
▪ Oddly though, Fritz being to-the-point in saying Premala is hiding something from him actually kind of worked out.

2-9:
▪ The battle here was in-part a vessel to show off Premala in-action, as well as bringing up a couple things about her.

2-10:
▪ Nothing to report that comes to mind at the moment.

2-11:
▪ This was another instance of RPing to create a character and a scene, this one by Flaze. It actually worked out quite well, as it provided a more friendly rival to Fritz.
▪ Yujo Toni was just a name in my list of names with no real context. I forgot what I was going to use it for, so I used it here. Graham Fragarach is much the same story.
▪ The battle against Yujo had two simple purposes: show off the fruits of Fritz' training Mareep, and having him use it to begin with so Aporon could complain later. It's short by design.
▪ I was having trouble with the second battle until Twitch Plays Pokemon came around, and thus I had my second opponent for Fritz. It was intended to show Fritz having a bit of trouble, while showing that a battle can be entertaining on its own merits.

2-12:
▪ The point of this battle was to pull the same trick as in 1-2: showing Fritz is WAY better than he lets on. Almost to the point where you have to seriously start questioning why he's here in the first place if he has so much skill. It helps him realize it as well.
▪ I pretty much skipped out on the Torterra entry due to laziness, but did come up with a reason as to why Fritz might not mention it.
▪ I went back and forth between Fritz barely losing and barely winning. I decided on the latter, as it had more of an impact and better fit the overall plot.

2-13:
▪ There were two versions drafted way before I got this far of the scene where Premala explains her actions. I decided that for effect, the version where Fritz doesn't say or think anything before stating Premala doesn't seem very confident was better.
▪ Abet's Bluff was planned for a while. I had trouble coming up with the backstory myself, besides the mining operation and it was named for a liar. I asked the #TPP channel on badnik what they thought a good first name for someone with the last name Abet was. Someone came up with Faber, which I decided was the best. Then someone else said it sounded Middle-Eastern. Hence, the too-hilarious-not-to-go-for boasting face of the infomercial was born, and everything fell into place.
▪ I actually wrote out some of the Beast's words in order to help write this scene. So much easier when you actually know what's being responded to.
---- "Do you think I am incapable of reading hearts as well? I am. I can see your fear of me. I have sensed your power, and I can tell you have been aware of me for a while yet. If you did not fear me, you would have come sooner. You knew I was here all along. You had to bring along a protector."
---- "The past? The past does not matter anymore. This is my present. And future...! Your future!"
---- "Don't you get it yet? Well, allow me to spell it out for you, maiden."
▪ Finally got to use some of my healing based recanonization here.

Bonus 2-14:
▪ A scene added to dampen Fritz' victory a bit as well as show off the effect it had.

2-14:
▪ Not too happy about how the battle turned out, even though it's supposed to be slightly spur-of-the-momentish due to present tensing and state of mind. The idea with it was to show Fritz really struggling in a situation that really matters. It's not necessarily due to any inability or weakness, but rather, it's a desperate struggle to survive with what he has.
▪ The battle also shows off that wear and tear on Pokemon do remain if they don't get any rest.
▪ I wanted the Beast to do something absolutely terrifying as its last gasp of air. I say I came up with something quite nasty. With the added bonus of it helping with its death.
▪ The scene where Fritz finally decides to give Premala a chance was very difficult to write, due to having nothing to work with and it being highly unusual circumstances.

2-15:
▪ I accidentally had a time inconsistency with the bonus scene: Fritz originally saw the time as being just after ten. I felt 9:40-ish fit better, so changed it to match here.
▪ I almost decided on a bonus scene full of little side-discussions here after RPing Markus with Flaze, but couldn't think of any more.
▪ The reactions to Fritz' origins being revealed is essentially a far more extreme version of 2-1's version of the same. There's lots of dialogue in there to be recognized!
▪ What I was trying to do with Reika's rant was to make characters feel almost sorry for Fritz, and/or hate Reika for turning so quickly on one of her few friends. As a bonus scene in 2-16 shows, this actually did happen.

Bonus 2-15:
▪ I slipped in some Japanese things here for worldbuilding purposes.

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Part 3: The Aimless Path

Fritz has been expelled from the University and has been cast out into the world to fend for himself. This twist has been a bit notorious in this fanfic...

So why do this so abruptly? Why just throw everything away that I'd built up? Well, I actually did have a rough outline of how the school portion would've gone had it continued. But there were three reasons as to why I didn't do so. The first and most important reason was that I'd eventually run into a corner in the narrative. The school portion was always intended to be temporary, and the state he'd leave the school if he'd stayed after the revelation would be different enough to logically and drastically change the events of what was to follow. The same end result would be achieved in the end, complete with characters from these parts popping up later.

The second reason is that it made no sense for Fritz to want to do this in the context of his character. While I had an outline of the general plot, as this document explains, it has changed several times over the course of writing depending on new ideas or consideration of the characters - after all, forcing something for plot's sake is never a good thing. To this end explains his logic in 3-2. The third reason is that I felt I could do more with the fic this way, in spite of the negative consequences.

That aside, this is a part that changed drastically in development. It was originally supposed to be much more episodic. Something like a serialized crime series. A few factors that went into changing that were trouble writing the characters of the Travelling Hobos (Mr. Gruff in particular is very ridiculous, very much inspired by Mr. Hubert from Billy the Cat), pacing issues, wondering how to make things interesting, and just thinking it wouldn't be well-received. So I chose to have it be overall about Fritz wondering just what to do with his life after the school incident - giving him several options for this. This is the reason behind its name: Fritz is both on an 'aimless path' in the sense that he's on a road with no destination, and in how he has no real path in life.

There are two overall themes of this part. The first being the path one chooses in life. Characters like Bonnie (choosing to become a coordinator), Shinzo in 3-2 (choosing to pursue a relationship with a foreigner), and even Akio (choosing to become hardened to deal with Saiko-dan). The second is the effect you have on other people's lives. Fritz becomes involved in a lot of these; even Maribel in 3-3 counts.

What was a catalyst for the change was that character of Bonnie in 3-3. I enjoyed her so much that I wanted to write her more. Originally, Fritz was to make the stunt at the end, or possibly travel there himself as a test for a future part where he'll be on his own. But with this in mind, I added her into the trip while experimenting with a different style of the original plan with the La Fortuna arc. Since I liked how it turned out, that's what I'll be doing from here on out - focusing more on the characters/camaraderie between the Traveling Hobos and making their cases be longer.

3-1:
▪ The Tulu exchange and incident was more or less intended to give some final expositions to Rukh's.
▪ I could say the battle against him was comedy or parody, but it was more a reason for Fritz to bring out Vespiquen so Tulu could talk about it.
▪ The main point of the Josef battle - and indeed, many of the early battles here - was an introduction to some of Fritz' older Pokemon. After all, if I were to just introduce them out of nowhere before a serious battle, it'd come across as random and a bit of a deus ex. Like, him just using Pokemon he'd never even mentioned before that he conveniently happens to have on him. With this in mind, I was careful to make sure I did mention them ahead of time, namely Houndour, so this itself wasn't random.
▪ Trying to come up with a good explanation for Mega Evolution beyond what was - or rather, what was not - explained in the game was hard and beyond stupid. In the process, I decided to designate them unique names. I may actually cut this in a future revision.
▪ I originally intended to get this chapter out shortly after the announcement of Mega Sceptile. Unfortunately, delays saw to that not happening. Still, I beat ORAS' release.
▪ I actually edited it after to make it a bit more clear this takes place in the universe where Mega Evolution isn't as prominent, and pretty much only applies to Pokemon that changed.
▪ You can totally tell how rushed this last scene was.

3-2:
▪  I tried to come up with something that could have a name in actual Japanese. The Eternal Banquet can indeed be represented in Japanese by 永宴
▪ This chapter went through a ton of revision as I tried to figure out how to handle it. Originally, it would have been focused on the husband. It would be revealed he's in a scandalous affair with the mayor, but when Railriders reveals it (probably at Dick's insistance), they would be run out of town by people who love the mayor and think he can do no wrong. The whole incident with him discovering an affair still happens in the story, but off-camera and to a far less dramatic effect.
▪ I was still unsatisfied with how everything was turning out, so I again took to my old RPing trick to craft this one, with help from Glitchipedia. Takeko's first name and first scene, as well as general way to act in the second, all come from him.
▪ The Machamp vs. Lairon battle was inspired from one of my original plans, just as before. It was really tough deciding what to use on the Focus Punch sequence, so I went with a compromise that kinda did both.

3-3:
▪ This chapter was originally going to be Fritz just sitting around doing nothing but thinking about his predicament while the others go do their thing. However, he already kind of did that in 3-2. Hence I came up with this, which also fit the theme of this chapter by adding in another option for him to pursue in life.
▪ The reason for the weird format of the Contest is being unsure which I wanted to go with due to advantages for both formats in each individual battle, so I set it up so both battles would be optimal writing-wise.
▪ Immediately on thinking this up, the idea for a battle against Maribel Capdevila came to mind. I felt that facing her right away would be a bit much though, so added in Bonbon/Bonnie as padding. This also let him continue to show off his older Pokemon. I also noted Fritz doesn't have a lot of respectful opponents, so that was the basis for her personality.
▪ I was originally going to describe Bonbon's Minun as 'close to Pikachu', but decided to give them all an official classification in-universe based on the sheer number of similar Pokemon.
▪ The battle against Maribel was mostly to write an entertaining high-level battle, to develop/show off both characters. It also fits two themes: the effect one has on other people's lives (Fritz' defeat of Maribel in her slump is a new low for her), and the overall theme of Fritz doing well against people he arguably has no right doing well against with due to outside influences.
▪ I settled on Absol for Maribel's choice, though considered Mawile. I first wrote the ending of it before I wrote the rest of the battle. Then  I wrote Fritz' comeback and the opening up to the ice ball being tackled at Tangela. I followed it up by figuring out the lead-in to the former and what happens after the latter; other things I considered were Absol throwing the ball and Tangela shooting it down with Solarbeam (opening it up to a Psycho Cut), or Tangela trying to bash it down before it's cut.
▪ I wrote a few thoughts of Maribel's that I used to help her character flow better throughout the battle.
---- Let's check the score. What the, two-thirds for me? He's keeping up better than I thought. Still, points and the battle are in my favor.
---- Where did that come from!? Didn't think he'd have a battlefield-wide attack. Need to relax and calm down, Maribel! It has to have been tired by that one.
---- Oh no, it's not tired at all.
---- Relax, Maribel. Concentrate! You've been in worse places against better Coordinators. He has to be out of ammo by now. You just need to break up his momentum and beat him from there. Ugh! No time!
▪ When I decided to use Bonnie for longer, I added the scene with her at the end where she clarifies her real name.
▪ Celeste Faris being here was an addition I thought up on the spot. I felt it would give some smaller character building to more minor characters, and give a face to an otherwise faceless person who would suggest Fritz get into Coordination proper.

Bonus 3-3a:
▪ This was essentially made for worldbuilding purposes, as well as to damage control Fritz' draw a bit.

3-4:
▪ Me-Me from Sorcery's PokemonRPG channel made Barrold Chinthwaite. His idea was to create a character "that's believable but interesting without stealing the spotlight", and serves as this chapter's guest.
▪ Sairo Mujina was originally intended to have a name that has an angellic/demon duality. This is where Sairo came from (it's Orias backwards), but I dropped the secondary aspect.
▪ I considered several alternates for Rhyperior once I planned for Bonnie to catch a Rhyhorn in 3-4 formal, including Rampardos, Tyrantitar, and Armaldo, just to sidestep any conversation/implication that she was inspired by it. In the end, Rhyperior worked best.
▪ Didn't want to expose Bonnie's character too much just yet, which proved a bit problematic during the writing process.
▪ This was originally intended to be an exposition-y bonus chapter, but I changed it to a full one.

3-5:
▪ The chapter's original name was Off the Rails, both referencing how Fritz is literally off them and a tongue-in-cheek reference as to how this was not originally planned.
▪ I always wanted to do something like this, since Live-a-Live owns.
▪ The rabbit Pokemon (Leverex) was invented just to make a joke later in 3-6. I actually developed its entire line though, as a series of hard-kicking hares (Leverex/Harpedis/Lepururis).
▪ I considered another guest to act as the Sheriff, but decided against it when I couldn't find or think of anyone.
▪ I thought about changing the thug's line where he says he likes girls with a little restraint to a more fitting word, but figured it more fitting that he does not.

3-6:
▪ This chapter allowed Fritz to bring up his Mareep's accuracy problems to an electric Pokemon expert sooner rather than later. It was entirely accidental, however.
▪ It was a nightmare to write the scene with Morgan - particularly the part that's supposed to be a reference to three different things. It turned out adequately enough in my opinion.

Bonus 3-6a:
▪ Did toy with the idea of showing Bonnie's side of things, and so I did.

Bonus 3-6b:
▪ This chapter's unique style and lack of graphical description was intended to represent the fact that the narrator, whoever it may be, in a sense blind.

3-7:
▪ The bit at the beginning is supposed to be an odd dream, intended to raise eyebrows.
▪ The scene with Bonnie was originally at the end of the previous chapter. I held off until here, putting her departure and Fritz' regret over it in the same place. This was due to the length of the previous chapter and because it felt more natural here.

3-8:
▪ I wanted to give the Spanish/English/Japanese counterparts for all the sayings, but couldn't find the former for the second one. For the record in the latter, "only the strong survive" goes like, "The weak are meat; the strong eat."
▪ I actually tried to look up Japanese street name conventions, and found out this - http://www.todayifoundout.com/index.php/2012/04/most-japanese-streets-dont-have-names/ - so I made Porcella Town accurate to this while, for consistency, added a design tweak where more modern and metropolitan cities had ironically adopted a Western-naming scheme to some extent.
▪ I thought to add the news report as a reminder of past events, as well when I remembered that I didn't really make that incident in Mylon City as clear as it could be.
▪ I kind of added the temple on a whim to help add to the description of the town. I just started writing the bit about the temple at the end to help pad it out. I justified it by its revealing Fritz' views on religion.