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Salvage Chapter 48 Commentary
After some chapters of nothing much happening, suddenly everything happens in this chapter! What is a pacing and can you eat it.
All in all, I'm fond of this chapter. Not much has changed with it since it was first published, although it used to be split across two, which is somewhat evident in the split early on in the scene with Hypno. Most edits went to changing the tenor of the child/Mewtwo interactions, since their relationship is considerably different this time around than it was in the original. An entire argument got cut out of the final scene--a bit weird to read the child lecturing Mewtwo like it has any kind of authority over him at all. Its reaction here is really just "Nope nope nope nope bye"... but it's going to have a hard time getting some proper avoidance going, given what they're supposed to be doing here!
I'm rather pleased with my shadow pokémon lore as presented in this chapter; this is probably the one true infodump I've allowed myself in the fanfic, although I hope it's at least reserved by infodump standards! We'll be learning more about shadowfication from shadow pokémon themselves over the course of this arc, and I'm looking forward to that as well. I remember being apprehensive way back when I was first researching for the Orre part of the fanfic that there was going to be some shadow pokémon lore presented that would contradict what I had in mind and I'd need to figure out some way to work with it, but there really is absolutely nothing presented about it in the games. Cipher could be importing shadow pokémon from some other planet out in Ultra Space for as much as the Gamecube games care to touch on the situation. So I get to set things up exactly how I like them. I really do love Pokémon's Swiss cheese canon. :P
One minor change made here is that Professor Krane originally agreed to talk with the child while he did some upgrade work on the Purify Chamber. Here it's changed such that he was supposed to have an appointment, but the people coming for it hadn't shown up yet, so he agreed to talk with the child until they showed up. This appointment of course is supposed to be with Hypno and her trainer--that scene had always referenced
I also 100% thought the Purify Chamber was the Purification Chamber up until the final round of edits here, and that's what it was called in the previous version. "Purification Chamber" is obviously better, but whatever, at least the find + replace on it probably didn't screw anything up.
Not much to say about Hypno's introduction scene. I like this one, and it went in mostly unchanged from the previous version. I did manage to cut out a bit of useless choreography: in the previous version, Mewtwo has Hypno give the master ball back to the protagonist, then tells them everything's fine and to give him back to Hypno and stall the human. It's maybe
I'm rather fond of the Agate Village segment. The part where the protagonist tries to chase off the trainers is maybe a little goofy for my taste, but I like Agate's atmosphere, and I've always been fond of the sort of "hidden paradise" sort of effect the Relic Stone had in the game. If I were going to do a banner for the fic, at least the second half, then Mewtwo with the Relic Stone would probably be my choice of subject!
And then, as previously mentioned, the final scene was dramatically reduced by the elimination of an argument between the protagonist and Mewtwo. Hard for them to have a disagreement on even remotely equal ground, now! I guess Mewtwo gets to sob in peace. But the protagonist won't be able to avoid him forever...
That's it for this one! The next chapter is the last of the previously-published ones; after that, it'll be all new material through the end of the story! Starting with some of the stuff from NaNo 2020. Pretty weird to be using NaNo draft only a year or so after writing it--in the past I've tended to only reach it at least two to three years after the fact! The next chapter also introduces the heracross character I had kyeugh draw for me earlier this year. Hope you'll enjoy meeting her. :)
As of this chapter, I've laid out what I consider all the information necessary to figure out what happened with Mew; we won't be getting much more that will help answer that question before we get the actual full reveal. (At the end of this arc! Ten-ish chapters from now?) There was one piece of info that I thought was in this chapter but which turned out not to be--I may have cut it because I felt it made things too obvious. But upon consideration I did decide that without it, the last jump in logic was probably too hard to make. So the hint is back in, albeit in somewhat oblique form. As always, I feel like what's going on has to be screamingly obvious now, but no way to know until I can see if anyone guesses right. Usually I'm not being as transparent as I think I am. :P
Also of note, this is the chapter where the AU that Blacklight!Nate is from splits off from the main timeline. Celebi wasn't absent in every world...
All in all, I'm fond of this chapter. Not much has changed with it since it was first published, although it used to be split across two, which is somewhat evident in the split early on in the scene with Hypno. Most edits went to changing the tenor of the child/Mewtwo interactions, since their relationship is considerably different this time around than it was in the original. An entire argument got cut out of the final scene--a bit weird to read the child lecturing Mewtwo like it has any kind of authority over him at all. Its reaction here is really just "Nope nope nope nope bye"... but it's going to have a hard time getting some proper avoidance going, given what they're supposed to be doing here!
I'm rather pleased with my shadow pokémon lore as presented in this chapter; this is probably the one true infodump I've allowed myself in the fanfic, although I hope it's at least reserved by infodump standards! We'll be learning more about shadowfication from shadow pokémon themselves over the course of this arc, and I'm looking forward to that as well. I remember being apprehensive way back when I was first researching for the Orre part of the fanfic that there was going to be some shadow pokémon lore presented that would contradict what I had in mind and I'd need to figure out some way to work with it, but there really is absolutely nothing presented about it in the games. Cipher could be importing shadow pokémon from some other planet out in Ultra Space for as much as the Gamecube games care to touch on the situation. So I get to set things up exactly how I like them. I really do love Pokémon's Swiss cheese canon. :P
One minor change made here is that Professor Krane originally agreed to talk with the child while he did some upgrade work on the Purify Chamber. Here it's changed such that he was supposed to have an appointment, but the people coming for it hadn't shown up yet, so he agreed to talk with the child until they showed up. This appointment of course is supposed to be with Hypno and her trainer--that scene had always referenced
I also 100% thought the Purify Chamber was the Purification Chamber up until the final round of edits here, and that's what it was called in the previous version. "Purification Chamber" is obviously better, but whatever, at least the find + replace on it probably didn't screw anything up.
Not much to say about Hypno's introduction scene. I like this one, and it went in mostly unchanged from the previous version. I did manage to cut out a bit of useless choreography: in the previous version, Mewtwo has Hypno give the master ball back to the protagonist, then tells them everything's fine and to give him back to Hypno and stall the human. It's maybe
I'm rather fond of the Agate Village segment. The part where the protagonist tries to chase off the trainers is maybe a little goofy for my taste, but I like Agate's atmosphere, and I've always been fond of the sort of "hidden paradise" sort of effect the Relic Stone had in the game. If I were going to do a banner for the fic, at least the second half, then Mewtwo with the Relic Stone would probably be my choice of subject!
And then, as previously mentioned, the final scene was dramatically reduced by the elimination of an argument between the protagonist and Mewtwo. Hard for them to have a disagreement on even remotely equal ground, now! I guess Mewtwo gets to sob in peace. But the protagonist won't be able to avoid him forever...
That's it for this one! The next chapter is the last of the previously-published ones; after that, it'll be all new material through the end of the story! Starting with some of the stuff from NaNo 2020. Pretty weird to be using NaNo draft only a year or so after writing it--in the past I've tended to only reach it at least two to three years after the fact! The next chapter also introduces the heracross character I had kyeugh draw for me earlier this year. Hope you'll enjoy meeting her. :)
As of this chapter, I've laid out what I consider all the information necessary to figure out what happened with Mew; we won't be getting much more that will help answer that question before we get the actual full reveal. (At the end of this arc! Ten-ish chapters from now?) There was one piece of info that I thought was in this chapter but which turned out not to be--I may have cut it because I felt it made things too obvious. But upon consideration I did decide that without it, the last jump in logic was probably too hard to make. So the hint is back in, albeit in somewhat oblique form. As always, I feel like what's going on has to be screamingly obvious now, but no way to know until I can see if anyone guesses right. Usually I'm not being as transparent as I think I am. :P
Also of note, this is the chapter where the AU that Blacklight!Nate is from splits off from the main timeline. Celebi wasn't absent in every world...