#lliwless aus

i originally made the AU when the DSMP was still at its height of popularity, i think right after hannah joined? the story was going to follow benchtrio going all around sinnoh, meeting EVERYONE from the dsmp who were living their silly little AU lives, and getting tangled in a bunch of Lore with the lake trio and creation trio, but a combination of burnout & lack of interest in a lot of the CCs after a while made me eventually downscale it to just being SBI-centric instead and cutting out a lot of characters. I still really like some of the ideas I came up with before dropping them though, regardless of how half-baked they are LOL.

in the original version, benchtrio were going to have the three starters - tommy with chimchar, ranboo with piplup and tubbo with turtwig. they'd eventually get other pokemon as the story progresses but I didn't really plan much before dropping the idea oTL

tommy was gonna catch a shinx who'd match his energy and eventually a buneary like in the comic (itd be a really cute story of enemies to "i would kill and die for you" bc i love buneary starting with 0 friendship in the game LOL), ranboo was gonna catch an abra bc "hes anxious just like me fr" and tubbo was gonna catch an onix. bc he would and i think the image of him looking innocent in front of a giant fuck-off snake creature of Rocks is funny as hell LOL

the story would follow all of them getting badges and working together to be the regional champion but along the way they'd realise they wanna do other stuff instead - mostly ranboo with pokemon contests and tubbo with breeding, aiding phil in research (he'd create a little garden/pokemon nature reserve around lake verity IT WAS GONNA BE CUTE!!!). i don't remember tommy LOL

here's art for ranboo doing pokemon contests (this is 2 years old im better at designing characters now i promise. i promise)

off the top of my head i also know that niki was gonna own a chain of bakeries with the main one she's usually at in eterna city, with food-themed pokemon from all types of regions gifted to her by wilbur (MORE ON HIM SOON). eterna city specifically because the bike mechanic guy would be jack fucking manifold the absolute legend AND THEYRE BEST FRIENDS IN THIS AU TOO!!!! jack would have electric & steel-type pokemon but his partner would be pachirisu who's basically co-owned by niki as well :3

SBI TIME philza was gonna be the professor and his partner is a specific murkrow called "chatterbox", shortened to "chat". no i don't care if it's too easy. he's seen as kinda quirky, kinda scary, because he's constantly followed by (and arguing with) flocks of murkrow wherever he goes - SPEAKING OF I DIDNT SHOW ART OF THEM. RAAAA

wilbur was phil's son and he honestly just wanted to fuck around and find out. his curiosity landed him a solid position at his father's side as a sort of apprentice as well as son, and while he contributed a lot of helpful work he also mostly just liked travelling around with his partner drifblim, almost becoming the charismatic face for sinnoh's research team instead of his more blunt, off-putting father. that's how he introduced niki to food-related pokemon :33 also he's evil and fucked up but i'll get back to that

TECHNOBLADE MY BELOVED!!!!! the regional champion, moved to sinnoh from unova when he was 18 after dropping out of college due to mental health reasons and wanted a complete fresh restart in a new region, trying to figure out what he wanted to do with his life. he started physically training in the wild with pokemon, living essentially as a hermit and travelling all around sinnoh, learning to live peacefully and control his anxiety while befriending pokemon on the way. he met phil by chance when camping in a forest and phil was like wow ur strong why dont u try becoming champion and techno was like ??????? and phil challenged him to a battle and techno understandably sweeped him and his team off their feet. and phil was like Yeah Holy Fuck You're Strong. go do the thing. go challenge ppl. and techno was like yea sure why not. he has not lost a single battle :) also he kept meeting up with phil after gaining his first couple of badges, gaining a reputation for being unbeatable, and got gifted a cleffa by phil when venting about his stress and anxiety and stuff. cleffa became techno's emotional support partner and it makes me so so happy :33