Gonna ramble a bit about my heccin fic thingy so spoilers for 'I Tried My Best, Didn't I?' (Things contained are not yet actually in the fic but I need to yap abt it SOOOOOOO BADDDDD) its a bit long under the cut
So, reason why I picked the fic to be a blend of ORAS Game and ORAS PokeSpe was because of the Delta Episode, its a perfect takeoff point (as opposed to RSE since those games didn't really have much of a postgame and if I wanted it to be Steven-centric then it would likely have to be abt Groudon and Kyogre which I've already decided to do with AniRedux X_X)
I had a loose premise in mind for the fic (Steven being on his own after something happened) at first I was going to make it just barely after the Delta Episode in which Steven just had enough and runs away feeling completely torn up after everything (would also tie into why he kinda just vanishes after you find his letter and the Beldum in the games) but then I decided to go a bit of a different direction since the whole Infinity Energy plotline was never actually expanded on too much (ZA not relevent in this fic bc the game literally came out 4 days after I published ch1 jcbfhdhdjdj)
This version of Steven can def be read as being slightly OOC but I did try to keep as close to canon as I could justify without it just being 1:1 (I did sprinkle in some personal worldbuilding stuff I had with different regions having their own Officer Dog mons ie Kanto/Johto with Growlithe/Arcanine Hoenn with Electrike/Manetric ect) I want to add in more stuff since the specific area where most of the fic will be is actually pretty small ingame
The themes of child abandonment also cropped up especially when I started brainstorming what I wanted to do with Courtney's character and ngl, I really grew attached to the fic version of her I built up, she was seen as a very snobby kid by the adults around her growing up and was often neglected by them (unable to express much outward emotion outside of extreme cases growing up also ment she was a complete social outcast, the robot persona was a coping mechanism which she carried into adulthood) its the primary reason why she joined Team Magma since she had gotten expelled from the collage she had been attending prior wheras Maxie saw endless potential in her and her research on weather phenomena and Hoenn's unique ecosystems (its why she is so attached to him because he was the first person, specicially the first older male figure, in her life to actually show interest in her and not immediately start scolding or chiding her)
Then there's also Prof Cosmo that acts kinda like Steven and Courtney's caretaker, he already has experience with being abandoned/neglected by parental figures (please go watch the video on YT covering the New Mauville stuff its genuinely really good) and he sees himself in those two kids (not kids in the literal sense since Steven is 26 about to be 27 and Courtney is 23 but you get what I mean) he wants to give them a second chance at life, to actually find what they want to do and pursue (in Courtney's case its actually berry farming and in Steven's case its still Geology but he is taking an interest in engineering and pottery)
And then there's also the paralells between the two of them, Courtney has already made peace with the fact that she doesn't want to see her parents ever again while Steven on the other hand only has his father left and his feelings towards Joseph are very complicated (he wants his father in his life but at the same time he had crossed a line so horrendously bad to the point where Steven doesn't thing he will truely be able to recover from, between finding out that his father was wholely willing to revive all Infinity Energy projects the company had to then disowning him when Steven had tried to sabotage it was just too far)
There is also the paralells between the two on how they feel attraction towards people in their life,
With Courtney, she has an intense attraction and infatuation with Maxie because he was the first person to believe in her, she did grapple with those feelings for a very long time trying to parce if it was just a simple infatuation that would eventually fade but came to realize that it was a full on romantic crush on him too which legitimately scared her because what if he rejected her? The thought of being with another person romantically was never something she had even considered being a possibility since she was so offputting through her teen and early adult years to everyone that she had blotted it out of her mind, but this? She would also come to realize that she felt, to a much smaller degree but still there, the same about Shelly and how the few times they talked that she also had the same kindheartedness that Maxie had towards her (knock knock bi awakening incoming)
Steven had always had the idea that he would eventually HAVE to marry since he, himself, is the heir to one of the single largest companies in the world and he, himself, would need an heir of his own too. Romance wasnt something he saw as a choice but moreso an inevitability or an obligation, he had never dated anyone before and never really felt any interest in it even when he was still traveling ghrough Hoenn on his League Challenge run, meeting Wallace did spark something very deep within him. Steven hadn't considered that he could possibly want a relationship with another man since that was kinda implied to never be an option for him but he really, genuinely, cannot see himself with anyone but Wallace. He had never gotten the chance to confess but especially having been shunned completely from anything League related he actually had time to think about his feelings more, yes, he still absolutely wants to be with Wallace but now the line between romantic and sexual attraction and infatuation just feel... blurry, the expectations of being in a relationship do make him feel nauseous just like how the thought of being with anyone but Wallace makes him feel (Steven has quite a bit of a crisis realizing that not only his is asexual but also quite possibly aromatic or at the very least on the aro spectrum)
