Private, re your reblog of my post: Please tell me more about Calem and Serena in your canon!
OKAY SO. after writing this all up i unfortunately have to tell you my ideas are much less substantial when written out on paper than in my head, and i dont know how satisfying this will be to read
and in further disclosure. for all i think about them i have done minimal writing for them and so so much is very vague and undefined. and also i started this iteration of The Big XY Wip not too long before PLZA was announced and that halted a lot of development in its tracks bc i wanted whatever i wrote to be at least vaguely canon-related, and now plza has come and gone and i have many conflicting thoughts about it and what protagonist takes harmony's place (a pseudo-harmony that's really just an oc or shauna herself. more on that later)
also i don't know how to be concise so i have written you an essay. there's a tldr in the tags
anyways
to set the scene, the general idea of thebigxywip is it's a. i don't want to say generic "narrating the game" type of fanfic but it's kinda what it is, but with many creative liberties and goes more off the canon rails the further on in. the first act (out of 3 maybe?) is a typical fun summertime road trip with the friend group - tierno's got a Volkswagen Bus he's been working on for them to meander around the region with, took the back row of seats out so he could shove a mattress in. maybe park somewhere and spend a few days camping out in da wilderness, catch some pokemon, do some battling before heading on - which is where the calem & serena dynamic starts
the protagonist As I Am Working With is "serena" in the sense that when i played Y on launch day i thought it was stupid the canon names weren't xavier/yvonne so i named her Yvonne so that's how i refer to her in my verse (and functions as a good indicator if i'm talking about like. my serena or the general one) (also i have a beloved baby cousin named serena so no doubles). anyways for yvonne this is like, a very fresh start for her. she's spent most of her life being her mom's #1 assistant for her rhyhorn racing outside of school and maybe some other hobby idk, but now she's in a new town, and her mom's retired bc of health issues, she's finally going off by herself, she's looking for a little reinvention. has some aspirations of becoming a sky trainer, but she's never actually had a pokemon to do battling with (besides her mother's Bastard fletchling), so a journey to catch some pokemon and get some experience under her belt isn't a bad idea
and she's lucky enough to find a group of ppl in the area in her age group (young adults) who for whatever reasons also haven't gone on a journey yet, and they get to know each other for a few months before someone goes "hey, why don't we all travel together for a bit?" and it's mostly fine! they all get along together well, yvonne's a friendly person, tries to be considerate, practical, good to travel with. she and calem also … they don't hit it off, but calem's the only other person in the group who really likes battling and up until they start traveling, is a fine person to talk theory and strategy with! unfortunately, the trouble is when they really hit the road - i'm probably biting off more than i can chew, but i really want to write a story that grapples with the themes of the game, class/poverty issues, resources, beauty, gender, and how they can all interact with each other. so calem - a guy who's in-game somewhat privileged and kinda reactionary - has some preconceptions about what yvonne is really going to do during this journey of theirs, what her interests are, and his own capabilities, mostly being: that yvonne isn't going to be interested in contest battling, she's not afraid to get her hands dirty, and she's instinctively a better battler than him, even with all the tutoring and resources he's had in his life. the last one in particular really rankles him.
and so as their journey during Act 1 (vaguely up until yvonne receives her mega ring from the tower of mastery) continues, their friendship grows more tense and the group starts to fracture under the pressure. yvonne's pushing the boundaries of what it means to be an acceptable attractive woman in society - even as a girl helping her mother with her racing, there was still a certain standard of femininity to perform, a certain line that couldn't be crossed - and is caring less and less about not being palatable to other people, asserting her opinions n wants, being aggressive in battle, not bothering to wear makeup, embracing her latent lesbianism, not worrying if she's like wearing raggedy clothes and such. and everything comes to head at the tower of mastery - by that point the two of them are very passive-aggressive with each other, definitely contentious. calem is not as chill as he is in canon about the mega ring - he thinks it should be a given that he wins it, he's been a trainer for longer, he's spent hours battling at the maison, he SHOULD win it, and he didn't expect that assumption to be challenged by yvonne, and uh. crashes out spectacularly when she wins.
for the rest of the game narration (Act 2ish) the friend group splits. yvonne spends some time in shalour city actually learning about mega evolution getting visits from shauna, tierno and trevor do. something. idk haven't decided yet, and calem goes off to sulk. they tentatively reunite in laverre city, deal with the pokeball factory, etc etc and hang around town while a renaissance faire is ongoing (entirely for my own indulgence, i adore ren faires), which goes …… fine, awkward but civil, until yvonne and shauna drink too much hard cider and decide to share their first kiss very publicly on stage, to general support from an also mildly tipsy crowd, but also in full view of calem, who was just starting to get over the sting of having his ass handed to him by the girl he's got a thing for. and had no idea she actually liked girls. and apparently has a thing for the other girl they were traveling with. the girl that he's known for years and had written off as kinda dumb and frilly. much like losing the mega ring, something he presumed was his (when it never was), he doesn't take this well, and goes off to sulk again with a bonus of getting radicalized
and here's where things get vague, bc i haven't thought too much about the material of calem's going ons - i tend to focus on yvonne's perspective, so what he's got going on up until the ultimate weapon sequence is profoundly undefined. but basically the by n by is that some flare recruiters, like how lots of incels and associated assholes get ppl with them irl, lend a sympathetic ear and tell him that his life sucks, he's valid to feel mad etc etc while wanting to use him as a tool for various things (again, mostly undefined bc i have not yet figured it out) but namely, for eventually springing soem sort of trap for yvonne.
bc what's ALSO been going on in the background this whole time is lysandre. specifically, he's Really Weird about yvonne. she's a favored student of sycamore (who's actually her dad but shh that's not important), she's proven herself in strength and in bond with her pokemon by getting the mega stone, she's incredibly dedicated and passionate, she's strong willed, a strong sense of justice, she increasingly cares not for the cloying desires of an ugly world (again, gender and beauty - women are shamed for performing to social standards, and shamed if they don't) while remaining within his aesthetic approval. like in canon, he calls on the holocaster a lot, shows up in person to speak to her, generally oversteps a lot of boundaries
also i lied when i said it's not important that in my verse sycamore's her dad (she doesn't have concrete proof, but like, she suspects, he knows, but he was absent for most of her life and doesn't know if she would accept him inserting himself into that role). lysandre does have A Thing for sycamore but whether it's internalized homophobia or internalized something else self-esteem related he doesn't act on it and instead projects that shit on yvonne (he also does not know that sycamore is yvonne's dad i think, but there's something like. subconscious there he's picking up on). so like there's some psychosexual nonsense going on there
and basically, once we get to the turning point of the team flare plot - in that, the UW is going to be fired imminently and everyone is going to die - calem is used like the tool he is to lure yvonne to one of the flare hideouts and get kidnapped bc lysandre's spiraling mind came up with "i want her to be essentia in the new world and enforcer of my will in case all these fuckers start to act up" and basically put her in the psychological torment box to do a hard reset of her brain. calem, of course, has not been told the truth about a great number of things - freaks out, but it's too late, and also gets shoved in a torment nexus in the form of xerneas bc lysandre honestly hates his ass, and maybe if a still-dormant xerneas has something to focus its weird fairy energy on it'll stop trying to take over the minds of his grunts like a parasitic fungus (to be clear, flare got yveltal and xerneas, but they're using yveltal in the UW - xerneas is my verse is not a benign force, and is dangerous to be around, even asleep)
i told you we'd be getting increasingly off the rails
anyways. yvonne gets rescued, geosenge gets stormed, yvonne aura-bonds with yveltal when it wakes, beats lysandre, all that good stuff.
Act 3. Geosenge onward. Yvonne is having a bad time. was kidnapped by terrorists and hooked up to some weird machines for a week while getting brain blasted by a malamar, stormed a doomsday bunker, got mentally connected with death incarnate, and narrowly avoided dying when the doomsday device went off. to say she's gone through it is an understatement, and she is very lethargic, depressed, disassociating a lot. she manages to resume her journey through an incredible force of will, and also desire to become champion to utilize whatever influence she can get to … help see flare remnants brought to justice, protect herself, see it through.
Calem is still here. he managed to get out geosenge himself, but functionally with the shackle of having caught xerneas in a master ball (it woke when yveltal did), who is still actively frying his brain. he's been badly coming to realization that he was used as a tool for some jackasses, that he himself did something incredibly fucked, but is desparately trying to cling to some sort of justification that absolves him. he does catch up to yvonne on victory road, i don't know if they have a battle like in canon, but whatever happens between them is clearly unfinished business, and yvonne choosing to let him walk away alive is a profound act of mercy and self control in choosing to continue to the top of the mountain.
it should be noted, however, on yvonne's journey to snowpoint city, she briefly went spelunking in a certain set of abandoned mine tunnels rumored to be home to a monster, and she narrowly avoided dying once more when the cave ceiling oh so randomly collapsed on her. no particular reason really
End of game/post game fic
it's been maybe a year? or 2? yvonne is … idk if settling is the right word but she's beaten diantha. come to terms with yveltal as her partner (they're actually quite good buddies).
the usual post-game stuff happens - the detective plot in lumiose, searching for mega stones, chasing down legendary birds, kiloude city. maybe the cut southern kalos? this is however the point where i stopped confidently planning the plot bc PLZA was announced and i wasn't sure how involved zygarde was gonna be.
the broad strokes, however: yvonne is Mad As Hell. not going to therapy, simultaneously stricken with exhaustion and insomnia, coming to terms with her father still being gone for lysandre, establishing herself as flare grunt hunter #1. she's spiraling bad. calem: still around, still getting brain blasted by xerneas.
towards the end there may or may not be a xerneas vs yveltal confrontation/battle that gets broken up by shauna. maybe with the assistance of a certain hexagonal wyrm. again very unsure but basically yvonne starts to get snapped out of a very angry individualistic mindset (mimicking how lysandre was). calem gets the fairy parasite goop knocked out of his brain and the understanding that he fucked up all on his own, and whatever manipulation flare did to him at the start he didn't have to keep going with it, he could've backed out at any point, and you can't keep blaming someone else for your own mistakes into his head. also stop trying to involve everyone else in your self flagellation. we've just convinced yvonne not to kill you, stop trying to kill yourself. live. or not, just make a decision one way or another
PLZA
so. i've got 2 routes i'm struggling to take PLZA with. the first one i started working with was harmony/zoey, as i call her, being yvonne's little sister. having been living under her sister's shadow for a while, she's decided to take a trip of reinvention in the heart of lumiose, and gets swept away in all its intrigue! she keeps the itty bitty little secret that her sister is the reigning champion of kalos close to her chest. and then flare gets involved. and then she (who had some idea of what happened) starts to understand more and more and oh no. oh nooo
post-game that involves yvonne landing her charizard in Hotel Z's front lawn (not yveltal - unfortunately her, she and her hellbeast have had to part ways for legal reasons) at some point, desperately worried about her little sister. and all the many people who have complicated feelings about team flare and lysandre slowly turn to zoey (older sister is #1 flare destroyer) (by reputation has a kneejerk reaction against anything flare) (lysandre is alive. who's gonna tell her)
yeah it's not pretty lol. at this point (which may be more than 5 years later, depends on how much i feel like fucking with the timeline on any given day) she has … calmed down a little. this is evident in her not smiting mable or grisham or griselle where they stand. does not trust them as far as she could throw them but accepts that her sister is amiable with them. glowers silently when they are in the room.
but doesn't take it well that the guy who tries to blow up the world and turn her into his enforcer in the aftermath is still cooking, even if he has no/little memory of it. she probably drains the lingering vitality (side effect of being yveltaled. drain the life from anything you can touch, including things that are already technically dead) from whatever piece of antique furniture she's holding on for support at the time. may or may not crash out over the possibility sycamore knew he was alive. for the sake of not cutting off canon branches … doesn't kill him? maybe can't? but it's a near near thing. if the mention of calem makes her look like she wants to strangle someone, the mention of lysandre makes her look like she wants to scorch and salt the earth. and they just LET her LITTLE SISTER around him?????
it's at this point where the zoey-as-protagonist train of thought comes to a screeching halt, bc i had another idea: what if shauna was the plza protagonist?
things would definitely go differently in the main game - shauna is more experienced in battling and life than Team MZ, has more personal negative experience with team flare -and has her really balancing out the trio that never got completed in xy w/ xerneas yveltal and zygarde, and better than zoey, who would theoretically have a stronger connection with yveltal than xerneas, and i want whatever post-game dynamic with them to be a little more equal.
like, yvonne has been shauna's partner for a good many years now, but she was calem's friend for many years also (hcing their parents to be family friends, so they just kinda grew up knowing each other, even if he was kinda a pity friend from his perspective), and even as he's done shitty things, it doesn't erase when he was her only friend sometimes. and yvonne can rationally acknowledge that now but it still clearly bothers her even if she doesn't aim it towards shauna and it's like she's caught in between these 2 things. and it's the kind of thing where asking her to let go of that rage feels shitty as hell, bc how the hell do you let that go? but also she's worried, bc for all yvonne's made steps calem is still one of the few things that consistently gets to her, and shauna doesn't want that anger and disgust to consume her like lysandre. calem, on the other hand, has more come to terms with himself being shitty? and trying to make up for it in … some way? getting into "i haven't thought too much about it yet" territory.
but yeah in either branching timeline they don't take it well. in the shauna timeline she's kinda freaking the fuck out about it, quietly, because's she's not sure if she's seeing ghosts or not but what. what??? and then goes to have a very strong drink with emma. and then they both ponder the crashout yvonne will have when she inevitably finds out
and then this is where this train of thought ends because ive been unproductively ping-ponging between the what-ifs.
either way, for calem … it's. something. he's not trying to justify himself anymore, but his guilt is still so obvious he's inadvertently making it other ppls problem. i want to say that kind of encounter could help him move past that, but i'm not sure how. maybe it would knock him down by making him realize how similar L is to him? like he's gone full repression mode and trying to ignore everything that happened re: act 3 but seeing L again brings all his guilt back. writing this up really made me realize i need to focus on his character more lmao i've got so little on him compared to yvonne and shauna. i also don't want his character arc to be like identical to L/lysandre's, but it could offer some interesting symmetry - yvonne is in danger of becoming like him as lysandre, calem is very similar to him as L. hmm
or i could axe some of this character development and bring my og xy postgame fic ideas into a plza postgame fic. the aura trio showdown that was promised is finally coming to fruition, triggered by the appearance of one (1) homeless man and his dog
