(omigoshhh i am so sorry it took me 3000 years to answer this, i have not been active on tumblr in forever... bdsbaskjbd)
twig and ivy were previously part of different rescue teams, but lost their partners. for twig, his partner up and left without saying anything one day-dissatisfied with the whole exploration/rescuing thing as a whole-and for ivy, her partner prefers treasure hunting whereas she prefers rescuing and helping others.
the two stumbled upon each other by chance on the beach one day while lamenting over their previous partners, shared their stories with one another, and felt less alone with how similar their situations are. they then became really good friends, which eventually led to them forming their own rescue team together!!
they've both got fears and anxieties of being too much/not what their partner wants them to be, so some moments between them can be...awkward, but for the most part, they're more than happy to be with each other and try to work through their issues together!!
while marble's pretty timid, she takes the role of doing most of the talking and decision-making. bream's super nonchalant and agrees to/does like, 90% of the things marble asks her lol. she will, however, enter a "protective" mode if she senses something's amiss.
What initially inspired you to make Verity a Popplio?
well. the short answer is that it's my favourite pokemon.
the long answer is. extremely complicated. also, after finally writing all of this up, i'm realising that i'm more talking about ttb's general history than verity specifically, but the two kinda go hand in hand if you think about it.
so this all initially started as a document i made for my idea for a gen 7 pmd game back in 2017. i distinctly remember making a post on poorly-drawn-pmd back when i was still modding that (if anybody reading this remembers that you're a real one and also i'm sorry that you knew me when i was 15-17) about wanting a pmd game with a villain protagonist and you could have different endings and choose whether or not to chamge your ways and become a hero or stay being a villain and i wanted to try fleshing it out into its own story, though that didn't pan out in the end.
unless i vaguely remembered this idea (though i forgot i made the actual document) when making ttb and scrapped it for parts. what who said that.
iirc calypso was supposed to be a litten? i wanted to be epic and have a male popplio/female litten duo. but yeah this is where that idea ends for now.
then, in 2019, i wanted to make proper pmd ocs after seeing how much fun my wife was having with his, so i completely shifted gears and made brand new ocs. most of the art for these has been lost to time, but i did manage to salvage some from the depths of my art blog. i remember the team consisted of a torracat, meowstic, archen and rotom, there was a rival team of a braixen, ambipom and murkrow, and there were a few side ocs like a brionne (lol), rockruff, umbreon and tsareena. i can remember their names and relationships too, but i won't go into that here.
i can remember that the first art was done for lesbian visibility day, and that's why there were pride flags sjhdjhebd.
i basically drew a few things with these but not much else but i'm realising now as of writing this that i scrapped some of them for parts for ttb too.
moving forward to 2020, i wanted a complete overhaul because i wasn't really satisfied with these ocs. gen 8 was out properly now, so i had new pokemon to choose from, and popplio/scorbunny were such a good duo together. again, this mostly stemmed from wanting another new non-remake pmd game, back when i was young and optimistic (💀), so i sketched up some icky yucky designs of what would eventually become my disgusting children.
unfortunately, i still lacked commitment to actually doing something with them so they sat on the backburner for another two years. in that time, in 2021, i made a more general piece of art with a popplio/scorbunny duo expressing my want for another pmd game with simplified designs.
around this time i was also thinking about this duo but as humans? like it was going to be completely detached from pmd and i think this is when i thought of giving human!scorbunny a younger sister (which eventually turned into kaira) but i eventually returned to my roots and made them pokemon again.
it wasn't until 2022 where i finally locked tf in and was like "okay. i'm actually gonna make a proper pmd story." now it's four years later, and i still haven't actually made the story, but i have a way more fleshed out idea that i'm much more committed to than i was before. and it went through some changes, especially in early 2023, when i shook the main cast up and reassigned everybody's roles, but that's kinda how ttb became what it is in its current state.
What would your Rockruff moveset be in a PMD setting?
My moveset is howl, bite, tackle and rock throw ! I don’t think that would change if I was in PMD :3 howl is good for my teammates too! Would probably need a teammate with good coverage for fighting types & physically bulky mons…..
I talked a little bit about my introduction to PMD here!
Basically, I got Gates to Infinity for christmas back in 2013, and I've been obsessed ever since - I still remember beating the game for the first time and browsing DeviantArt for hours just to look at all the pmd fanart and comics. Victory Fire was a huge favorite of mine back in the day. :] <3
What are your favorite starters to choose for each PMD game?
Ooooooh, good question! Lemmie see...
Rescue team: gonna go w eevee hero and pikachu partner, they've been my usual choice for years so I'm pretty attached 🥺
Explorers: riolu and shinx! mostly riolu hero and shinx partner - though I'm also a big fan of shinx hero and cyndaquil partner. Idk what I'd pick for time + darkness bc while I've played them, I've always used cheats to modify my starters in those lol
Gti: snivy hero and axew partner 💜💜💜💜 absolute HELL for the lategame w all the ice weakness but I got incredibly attached on my first run and can't imagine picking anyone else now...
Psmd: still need to finish this one day, but snivy hero and cyndaquil partner 💜
Bonus for expanded sky just bc I can: I've got a couple of playthroughs that I've started with some pretty fun combos - one is fuecoco hero and rockruff partner, and the other is quaxly hero and scorbunny partner (the latter has such a cute thing going on with their colour schemes 💜)
