Madame Pika

Heh, it's totally beyond my comprehension how Bonnie and Paul would actually be friends (I can see the angle; they're both bratty younger sibs!), but I do like the idea. Back in the Pokedressing days, when I played Paul he had a really weird awkward friendship with Yellow... Paul needs to encounter more girls and little kids just to see how he'd react around them. XD But y'know, Paul and Bonnie becoming friends versus the concept of Bonnie making Paul's life a living hell are equally interesting prospects! She certainly has spunk; Paul should at least respect that! But dude, yes, force him in a Pokevision shoot. I want to see Paul introduce himself, and then point at the camera and call each and every viewer pathetic, bwahahaha~

Alright! I think that covers everything! Let's see how many VMs I have to make outta this.

... Way too many, it looks like!

Live Action PGSM was amazing to me; that's the only form of the show where I am TOTALLY all for Usagi and Mamoru's romance and it doesn't take up the entire story. PGSM did so many unique and awesome things even though it was essentially another retelling of the Dark Kingdom arc, but they were so inventive and added new elements that made me EXCITED to see what was coming up next even though I knew the basic outline of the plot and outcome. I could feel the hard work and effort put into this show even though it had terrible special effects (though SMC's effects aren't really any better); it was a product of love. Sailor Moon Crystal is a product of sheer laziness of the highest degree. Yeah, one this series ends next month (I'm hoping; they never announced they'd do the Infinity arc and beyond yet), I think I need to make a video editorial and get this weight off my chest properly. And then I can write Trifecta without all the bitterness that plagues my heart. XD

And YUP, they most definitely made sure to add Evil Adult Chibiusa kissing her dad not once, but TWICE (happened again in today's episode... I will be SO glad when SMC is over). Y'know, beyond the fact that every character not named Usagi, Mamoru, and Chibiusa can't go an episode without being effortlessly KO'ed and glued to the ground for the rest of the episode, what ruffles my feathers the most is how Usagi and Mamoru's romance is portrayed in SMC. Like you said, while it wasn't exactly PERFECT in the 90s anime, it wasn't shoved in our faces and there was an actual transition of the feelings between the two. Conflict between Usagi and Mamoru pretty much vanished after the first or second episode of SMC, and since then it was nothing but "I have a warm feeling around him!" (make a drinking game around that phrase; you'll surely die), endless fawning, and the messy, self-absorbed romance itself that gets even more unbearable when you add Chibiusa's Electra Complex into it. That's compounded with the fact that I also think the art style is ugly and not at all a good representation of Naoko's style, the animation is horrendous and full of shoddy still shots that are also poorly drawn, scenes from the manga were cut for no reason (Unazuki, though a relatively meaningless tertiary character, was effectively erased entirely from SMC), important moments were given AWFUL changes like the Shitennou living to be poorly-written shipping fodder and Sailor Moon killing Beryl via necklace instead of Venus killing Beryl via sword impalement... it's just an extremely lazy project and SMC's given me nothing that the manga itself can't give itself and have it done BETTER.

As for Brandon's aspirations, I recently came across the videos of the Volcanion event that's still unavailable to us, and BRANDON HIMSELF is confirmed in-game to be encountering it several times, which tells me that DEFINITELY Volcanion needs to be an element in this story. There's also the BF teaser in ORAS that could lead to Brandon founding a BF in Hoenn since animeverse Hoenn has no BF, and I still wanna implement Mega Evos somehow. I already have a set-up for that in the chapter I'm writing. From Palmer, of all people! And it's gonna come off as total stoner talk at first. To paraphrase: "lol Brandon, just think, WHAT IF... a fully evolved Pokemon... can evolve again, man? MIND IS BLOWN." Ahh, sigh. I do have like, bullet points written down for the sister fic to establish what scenes are to happen. Maybe I'll post it under a spoiler tag in a blog post here or something for anyone who wants to know the main points of Brandon's childhood backstory. Might just be me, but I think it's goooood stuff.

Geh... I concocted some ideas of Iris return to XY that I think would actually work out and be believable and at least mildly entertaining, but it would require Iris and the XY gang NOT hitting it off right away, and for the most part Iris just doesn't get along with most of them, especially Serena (who I don't think would take endless kodomo-nes from Iris towards Ash... which don't even work in this series' context since Ash isn't a complete idiot in XY). There's no way I can't see Iris treating Clemont like she did Cilan, and Bonnie's a 50/50, but... if she's ticking off Serena AND her bro, I doubt Bonnie would be instant BFFs with Iris either. I'd like to resolve it with everyone coming to a middle ground, which ends in Serena designing an outfit for Iris and it's her Champion outfit from the games. That's about the only thing I'd like if Iris game back. But if I had to choose, I'd always opt for May coming back and definitely bringing Max along with her.

The fact that I believe Reggie is trying way too hard to be a brother-father-mother hybrid for Paul (and with Reggie's own personal issues and having been very attached to his mother, is on the road to becoming her, practically) means there's gotta be some conflict and tension, especially in a headcanon where Paul knows full well they still have a dad, and that he feels Reggie shouldn't be trying so hard to be is parental figure when that should be the ACTUAL dad's job. Reggie himself, in my headcanon, is FULL of stress and anxiety and desperation to make himself useful. Which is why he broke down relatively quickly in Trifecta, and while he's pretty stabilized now and making peace with how things are since he's pretty much reconciled with Brandon... that's gonna change big time in like 5 chapters. I like to think in the rare event that Reggie breaks down, he can become extremely dangerous. Something of a "Beware The Nice Ones" trope; I know there's gotta be some element of that in there as early on as Reggie's debut, where even in a light scolding tone, Electabuzz very quickly behaved himself... which is notable seeing how much of a dick Electabuzz always was. In a way, Trifecta's slowly messing around with the dynamics of Paul and Reggie where they were first displayed as pure opposites, but later revelations are not only showing how much they surprisingly have in common depending on the situation, but also slowly switching the roles around because of the situation. By chapter 25, I guarantee Reggie's going to come off more like Paul, while Paul ends up in the calm, rational, diplomatic disposition his big bro usually assumes. idk if you spoiled yourself on the Trifecta Timeline yet, but the scenario that triggers is is kind of hilarious and horrible at the same time.

Sorry for vomiting a lot of headcanon on you there. XD I just relish in giving Paul some backstory. Not to excuse his behavior, but to at least explain it. And also, THIS. I briefly RPed a 5 year-old Paul before his mom died and had lots of fun with it. XD The weirdest quirk I gave the little Paul was an accent so thick he could barely articulate his words. Which would be understandable at age 5 I guess, but I made sure little Paul was OBNOXIOUS. So much fun. Can't ever see backstory as a bad thing as long as it's handled well!

Anyway, I agree Paul's issues work out better when it's a number of smaller incidents that make his relationship with his bro strained and why he's imbued with the essence of jerk most of the time. Granted, how I'm handling the loss of mom is a pretty big deal, but the trauma was so overwhelming and suffocating that Paul's brain just shut down and blocked off as much of that memory as he possibly could, to the point where, as the years went by, Paul gradually forgot most of the incident and so presently it's on level with the other issues in his life. But yeah, especially with it being canon that Paul's upset with Reggie for giving up (which my headcanon expanded to Paul and Reggie promising each other they'd follow through with their dreams and defeat their dad to prove their worth... so not only did Reggie give up easily in Paul's mind, but he also broke an important promise), I find it hard to believe there's no tension between the bros at all and that Paul would be 100% subservient to Reggie all the time. Beyond that, siblings typically bicker regardless of age gaps, parents or lack thereof, and other issues that may or may not exist.

Buuuut, even while his wife was alive, as far as my headcanon and Trifecta are conerned, Brandon still had some pretty big parenting flaws. This is territory I'd be covering in Trifecta's still-unnamed sister-story, but the main points were along the lines of Brandon having high expectations from his kids - probably too high - and subconsciously wanting to mold Reggie as someone more like him since Reggie had the means to achieve that, while Reggie was much more attached to his mom and was stubborn enough to stick to his own interests that conflicted with Brandon's, though Reggie tried not to be completely insolent. The big thing here, something I mentioned before, is that Paul was a dillweed even before his mom died. That's because while Paul wasn't physically gifted like Reggie, he had the constant feeling that he had a lot to prove (as younger siblings often do) and meshed better with Brandon because he had the ferocity and tenacity Brandon tried to instill in Reggie. So Paul, in his toddler-to-preschool age days, would actively pick fights with other kids or otherwise antagonize them to establish his "street cred", for lack of better word... and Brandon liked this. His mom, not so much, but the simple way to describe it is if Paul came home, bruised up from picking fights, Brandon would laugh, congratulate Paul, and do nothing to discourage Paul from continuing that behavior. So in a small way one could say Paul's present-day behavior can be faulted on Brandon for doing the opposite of what a parent should do when their kid does a bad thing, but the truth is that Paul had that aggressive streak all along, and he was so stubborn that not even his mother could extinguish that flame. And truth be told, Paul's mother, whenever I get to write her backstory, will prove to be a bit stubborn and reckless in her own right, so then there's doubt that even if Paul and Reggie's mother was still alive, that she would've been able to temper Paul's attitude.

Anyway, it's really cool that you see my fic as the exception to the headcanon you otherwise don't agree with! I never aimed to change anyone's minds, anyway, but being seen as an exception to the rule is fantastic, and is at the very least what I would like to achieve with those who normally oppose my take on things. I've actually received a number of reviews of people saying they initially hated Paul, or Conway, or even BRANDON, but Trifecta enabled them to see them in a new light and appreciate them, which is all I could ever want, honestly. I welcome everyone to feel however they want even if it's at odds with my ideals, but being able to see the merit and justification in my beliefs and respecting that is all I need. If it warms them up to concepts/characters they hate, even better!

But yeah, I see what you're getting at. I do pull a number of risky or questionable twists in the story and I'm not exactly quick about getting to the point, sadly, and it's easy to see how my story elements could make the whole project go straight down the toilet if handled in even a slightly different way. Early on I knew it was important not to villainize Brandon since canon itself proves he isn't a bad person, and it would just be a very cheap ploy to "justify" Paul's behavior if Brandon was a complete monster. I'm glad you and others like how I'm handling Brandon, since he's definitely loaded down with issues of his own. Despite being a good person, generally, he still isn't exactly World's Greatest Dad material and probably never will be. Part of that comes from losing his wife, naturally; Andrea was the one making the most income while she was alive, so Brandon was sort of tossed into a myriad of obstacles he needed to get through to keep what's left of his family afloat.

But really, just beyond having yet another parallel to Ash, Reggie's personality seemed to mesh best with a Chimchar in my mind. With Paul, I kinda think back to when Dawn was about to choose her starter before the Chimchar stole Piplup's food, Piplup threw a fit, and meanwhile Turtwig just calmly sat there and ate while mass chaos ensued in the lab. XD Makes me think Paul might've seen similar antics from Piplup and Chimchar when he was set to choose his starter, and settled for Turtwig because it was the only one that did not immediately annoy him, ffff.

espite all that, though, I imagine we BOTH must like the headcanon that Paul's Turtwig, like most Turtwigs, was fond of chomping Paul's head and every other part of his body it could sink its beak into. XD I wish there was more fanart of stuff like that. I do know I made that a thing for Trifecta, and added on a layer of jerkass to it when Paul reveled in Turtwig evolving to Grotle and suddenly lost its ability to jump up and gnaw on Paul's head due to its massive weight and girth growth, making Paul unable to resist getting some revenge in baiting Grotle to bite him, only for him to quickly pull away before Grotle can get a bite. And by the time it became Torterra, it was sort of resigned to the fate of not getting to use its trainer as a chew toy, though I think in the Pokedressing days I had Paul and Torterra bond with Paul letting Torterra bite his hand when his poor starter was feeling down/massively injured. I imagine, like most tortoises, if Torterra DID manage to bite a limb, it could easily snap it clean off, so it also has to discipline and restrain itself so it doesn't render anyone para/quadriplegic.

ANYWAY! With that melodrama out of the way, moving on! It makes sense that you didn't pick up on those details whilst reading through the fic, because I haven't officially stated in the fic which Pokeomon Brandon started with. I've given some very thinly-veiled hints here and there that it's Torterra, but that's something that won't be revealed until like, chapter 25 at the earliest. Paul's Torterra being hatched from Brandon's is something that would be revealed MUCH MUCH later. The joke in this is that Paul himself doesn't know what Brandon started with; he doesn't even think about it very much in the present day. He'd be shocked to find out, though! Just another silly gag of "apple doesn't fall far from the tree", but it's also important backstory stuff for Brandon. Like I said last time, his Torterra's also a shiny. It's not often used because it's OLD at this point... still capable of fighting, but something Brandon likes to preserve until he really needs it. It's basically what helped Brandon capture the Regi trio in the first place. I'll go ahead and say that when Brandon started his journey, he chose his starter along with his BFFs Byron and Palmer simultaneously, and hence Palmer ends up with a shiny Infernape while Byron got a shiny Empoleon. And it's some kind of mark of destiny or something along those lines, as far as Professor Rowan would imply, and while I haven't determined what that destiny is, it's gotten all three of them into very prominent positions in the present day. I've put lots of lore into this sillyness, yes. XD

I never wanted it to be; I started the fic because despite the headcanon being popular in forum conversations, I don't recall finding any fics that adhered to it before starting mine, and I don't often find doujinshi that adheres to it either. I guess my point is, even if someone does think Trifecta is shit, that shouldn't automatically mean that the headcanon itself is shit. I'm sure someone out there could work the angle even better than me, really. XD I'm not 100% certain because the tumblr is locked to private, but I think battle-standby is the other one who either can't stand me or can't stand Trifecta, but I know that person DOES hate the headcanon. battle-standby's icon is... also one I made. I EVEN COLORED THAT ONE. The original fanart is freaking monochrome. Even more disturbing is that the icon was for my Paul RP account that I primarily used in Pokedressing... aka battlestandby. You'd have to clear up that one for me to be certain, but I'm PRETTY sure that one loathes Trifecta and possibly me as well. @_@ I can live with people hating be because they can't deal with my feelings on Best Wishes and Iris, but to be hated on by fellow Paul fans... ouch.

Arright, VERY VERY SORRY first of all for being so late responding to you! I've gots a trip next week to prepare for, daily pressure put on by mom for going through with it, and being female meant my body demanded like 12 hours of sleep almost every day from me when I wasn't mentally screwed in the head from hormones alone. I finally feel mentally settled now to respond! And don't worry; I wasn't offended with your replies at all and they looked perfectly fine and comprehensible! I'm just very crappy at timely responses. XD

Anyways, I may try and consider a tumblr account during my lengthy vacation since I'll have lots of free time and no real-life drama weighing me down. Plurk is the closest equivalent I have to such an account, but Plurk itself has been very uncooperative as of late and for large chunks of the day just won't load at all for me to use. So that might be reason enough to get another social venue. I'll likely turn anon stuff off from the get-go, but if I do make an account, I'll be sure to add you guys first! I wasn't aware you were familiar with Kirika, actually! You don't have to talk to her about the icon thing unless you really really want to. I mean I still have an LJ account so I could actually contact her myself. If I had found her entry where she and her friend trash me and the fic when it was a fresh entry, I likely would've interceded, but now I feel it's probably petty of me to intrude on older entries. And her vehement hatred of the headcanon is a bit intimidating, really. Characters and bad writing I can understand, but it feels like she hates the headcanon primarily because of my fic, and honestly, my fic should not be the sole representation of the headcanon.

Serena of course has to defend Ash to the death for any snark Paul sends his way, and if Serena gets in Paul's face over it, he should totally just keep his eyes on Ash and keep talking trash like Serena ain't even THERE. Going beyond what I KNOW the show won't do, have Serena paranoid that Ash's heart is already spoken for by this jerkface because Ash's attention to him is so FOCUSED and INTENSE and he just barely registers what Serena's saying when Paul's right there. And I'd totally like to see Paul talking trash just for shits and giggles, too. Like he's already gotten to the point where he respects Ash, but especially to Paul, I highly doubt respect=friendship in his mind and the mockery would work a lot better if this was Best Wishes Ash Paul encountered, but who knows. Maybe Ash will make a really stupid move in battle that will plunge Paul into a pit of misery where he's silent, but the look on his face screams "OH MY GOD I LOST TO THIS IDIOT I CAN'T LIVE THIS DOWN NOW". ALL SORTS OF THINGS. I'm even all for Team Rocket crashing in just to angrily ask why meanieface is around again, and Paul's just all "whatevs" and blasts them off without even trying. Just to be fancy.

... He should be forced into a PokeVision shoot. Somehow. Blackmail him, bind him to the set against his will, oh yes. This is what Serena and Bonnie would tag-team Paul over, so so much.

OKAY I'VE SPAMMED YOUR VM PAGE ENOUGH NOW I THINK

I'd love to see Reggie again, but in all honesty I highly doubt that will happen outside of flashbacks. After all, poor guy's got a job. If that prevents him from attending his own region's league, I'm sure that'll keep him from going to Kalos, unless somehow he and Paul happen to go there on vacation or something. I just like to think Reggie doesn't make a salary that would warrant a luxurious vacation to PokeFrance at all, haha. As for Paul, there could be several reasons for his appearance in Kalos, even if just a cameo, even if it's pre-League, League, or post-League (kinda doubt we'll have some BS filler arc after the Kalos League though). What I WOULD like to see, should Paul reappear in Kalos, is him shoving a nice shiny Brave Symbol in Ash's face before he even says a word to the guy. XD He does this and just casually pockets it just before Ash is breaks out of his startled silence. Beyond that and him and Ash battling (where Paul whoops Ash but good because PAAAAAUUULLL~), definitely wanna see Bonnie puff her cute lil' cheeks at him, and either call him a poopyhead or, to really screw with Paul, do her marry-off-Clemont gag on him to the first passing-by girl she sees, JUST to get a WTF reaction out of Paul. He could use some torment that's karmic of the hell I'm sure he put Reggie through as the bratty younger brother, after all. XD

Aaaaand to round off your final set of questions...! Well, it's almost unfair of me to say I can predict how bad Crystal will be at this point because it's following the manga to the letter even more so than it did during the Dark Kingdom arc (Spectre Sisters don't get their lives spared like the Shitennou, oh no!)... ESPECIALLY considering which act is upcoming specifically because that is guaranteed to be horrible to the point of squick levels. Thankfully it'll be 2 weeks before it airs since this is the last month with a fifth Saturday in it (for some reason Crystal exclusively airs every 1st and 3rd Saturday), but considering the corresponding act in the manga is the exact moment we see Chibiusa as Black Lady seducing Tuxedo Mask FOR REALS, thaaaat's automatically gonna make this upcoming episode a shitfest. Crystal's gone out of its way to enhance the squick of that entire jealousy plot point by putting in some really skeevy perspectives in past episodes with Chibiusa and Mamoru. So that is something that will totally not get censored, unlike the blood from SWORD BLOWS from the DK arc. I wish I could claim bullshit clairvoyance on Crystal, trust me. XD It's just way too easy.

Crystal is just a mess trying to animate anything. And like I said, there's no reason for Crystal to be the way it is. The 90s anime has a really good excuse for its plot deviations and filler (that often I found superior to the manga anyway): it was practically made concurrently WITH the manga for the entire run, airing episodes WEEKLY while the manga was only coming out MONTHLY. Considering the frustration and time crunches that must've been rampant from that setup, the 90s anime still holds up well for me today. I'm actually anticipating Viz's new dub of episodes I've seen DOZENS of times way more than new episodes of a NEW series. Naoko was making up her story as she went along (as many mangaka do), so it was impossible for the 90s anime to be 100% faithful to the manga. PGSM was its own thing, that we clearly know Naoko had a lot of involvement with and they obviously had a shoestring budget given how shitty the special effects looked even back in 2003, but a show can still be good even with poor visuals, and PGSM went above and beyond in that regard and REALLY had a cool and unique way of telling the Sailor Moon story. Oh yeah, PGSM also aired weekly! So for this much time to have passed since the manga ended, for the amount of time we've known Crystal was at least greenlit (early as 2012!) versus how long we had to wait for Crystal to actually air despite the numerous delays, and... for all that, we got a lazily copied manga with incredibly sloppy drawings and even sloppier animation. I never liked Crystal's style; it just reinforces my belief of why the 90s anime streamlined and simplified Naoko's designs: they're overly detailed and would've been pure hell to animate at all, let alone decently. Crystal's just a live example of why those design changes were justified in the original anime, really.

I was never that big on Usagi and Mamoru's romance, but even with the bigger age gap it comes off SO much more natural in the 90s anime (besides that, being explicitly stated as 17 did nothing to prevent Crystal Mamoru from being a complete and total creeper), and it was done BRILLIANTLY in the live action PGSM canon. What really kills me is how Crystal has zero excuse to suck. The manga's been done for over 20 years; it gets the luxury of airing every other week (sometimes with an extra week on top of that for every month that has 5 Saturdays!), and what we REALLY needed for an animated representation of the manga was not a shot-for-shot remake barring the few deviations that were made - ALL of which were stupid and bad and horrible (WHY rob Venus her role in killing Beryl?! Why?!) - but something that carried the manga's story and lore but improved on the mistakes made from the at-the-time young and inexperienced Naoko Takeuchi, who ADMITS her first manga arc was a bit of a rushed mess in some areas. We could've had changes to address some long pondered over plotholes or inconsistencies, but instead every flaw is right there in front of us. Just copy-paste, the laziest thing in the world. So even when Crystal becomes even mildly enjoyable, I usually can't give Crystal itself credit for that because it's not doing anything differently from the manga itself. I can read the manga and enjoy the good scenes even more because they aren't so poorly drawn; I can live without color so long as the picture itself looks good.

Ahh, Moon Pride... it's an alright song for me (it ain't no Moonlight Densetsu or Sailor Star Song, though), but at the same time I think it's COMPLETELY inappropriate for this show, especially for how they're choosing to adapt the manga because seeing how they handle certain scenes and remembering Moon Pride has lyrics like "We aren't weak girls who rely on men's protection" and "We'll save the day without relying on the prince"... eheheh, it kinda makes Moon Pride's message look completely at odds with what you're actually seeing in Sailor Moon Crystal. I'll admit that the Black Moon arc as a whole has been a lot more tolerable and even some degree of "good" on rare occasions, which is WAY more than I can say for the Dark Kingdom arc - as you said, the Senshi/Shitennou deviation was a total crapshoot. I knew it would be the second I saw the director interview where he outright said that was made a Real Thing in Crystal because he had no idea how to distinguish the other girls from Sailor Moon. That's ignoring the fact that I already dislike the Miracle Romance x5 setup on principle, especially when Zoicite and Kunzite's relationship from the 90s anime came off infinitely more legit than any of those shoehorned pairings. And the drama of Nephrite/Naru alone makes Crystal's depiction of UsaMamo look like a total sham. That's not even scratching the surface of how Crystal is akin to a stake through my heart; I've strongly considered doing a video editorial over this because I thought it'd work better than a world record setting number of wall text mountains, but at this point I've stalled and will probably wait till Crystal ends before getting too deep into that.

I'd really like to make a sister fic of sorts to Trifecta; a collection of short(ish, by my standards) stories covering individual characters' past, present, and even future, and tying them into the main plot of Trifecta. I just never could settle on a name and I don't think it's appropriate to start on that project until I complete the chapter that unveils Brandon's dirty little secrets that everyone who's ever looked at my LJ timeline already knows about. XD

--Uhh, DERAILED AGAIN SORRY, I think my point is that while it's possible for an Iris cameo to be well done, they'll have to bring their A-Game to convince me why the hell she's in Kalos. She'll already come off as even more of a major ADHD nut considering she couldn't sit in Kanto for more than a minute before running off to Johto the first chance she got, so popping up in Kalos... heheh, well, Kalos is the region whose slogan is "FUCK YOU, DRAGONS", so that'd be worth SOME entertainment I suppose? I'd honestly much rather have May and Max cameo simply because May's my favorite pokeani girl, ORAS, and I wanna see Max and Bonnie bond so hard~ but overall, like I said in a post I recently made, while the Goodra thing grates my nerves, I have to applaud XY for actually taking that long to piss me off. I do believe 70ish episodes to get under my skin is a record for this series.

BW did such a shit job of justifying Dawn being in Unova at all; they couldn't even keep her story straight during her crappy never-dubbed special. I was under the impression that Dawn fully intended to go to Kanto after her fashion deal with Buneary was done, regardless of whether or not Ash and Brock would still be there by the time she had the chance to leave. Instead, the special has her going to Hoenn because WALLACE (either Wallace himself or the Cup; both are dumb excuses), then some random Elesa fascination makes her drop her journey entirely to go to Unova to accomplish absolutely nothing, buddy up with Iris immediately and puppet her grating catchphrase even though the two have nothing in common outside their gender, and unlike May, we're never told how her Hoenn adventure is going. We don't know how many ribbons she has, IF she has any at all. Then she leaves to go to... JOHTO... because... WALLACE, again?! Like... really, I'd sooner believe Dawn dropped her Coordinator career and became a Wallace stalker instead. But that's one big reason why I'm completely disregarding Best Wishes' canon from Trifecta once I reach the post-DP point. Before all that crap I had planned for Dawn to be in Kanto LIKE SHE WAS ORIGINALLY SUPPOSED TO, to serve as a rival for Conway who'd be transitioning to Coordinator in Trifecta Arc II. Despite that, I'd love to have an excuse to throw in XY references at some point. I'm already heavily leaning towards Mega Evolution being Brandon's new post-Regigigas goal; I just need to iron out some details for that so Brandon's not wandering aimlessly until I get to his fun backstory bits a few chapters from now. :3