#protasks

My sis and I grew up loving stuff that had messy but fun time stuff (most influential one being Zero Escape), so to bring these people together in a way that sorta make sense, we tried to make use of Hoopa’s abilities introduced in ORAS. 

This is why I had to bring up exactly how we played the games, and the working timeline that is perceived by the trainers in their own flow of time! 

They themselves acknowledge this too, and they always make sure to keep track of the correct flow of time and space, hence two timelines are observed in our verse: 1) the “in-universe” timeline (how they perceive time as above), and 2) the “real-time” timeline, the one that actually follows the games. 

(Note: Pokemas seems to be using the same logic with bringing everyone together despite time discrepancies, but note that it came out last year, we thought of this concept first in 2016 so they copied us HAHAJK)

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Ages when they started in-game: 

Roy/Gwen: 11 

Alex/Ellen: 11 

Basil/Ceci/Tim (GS Gold): 17 

Julian/Maya: 12 

Oliver: 10 

Ophelia: 11 

James/White/Kyouji/Mei: 16 

Xavier: 17 

Yvonne: 16 (some time after XY passed when she joined) 

Louis/Lewis/Kiana/Dani: 11 

Arthur/Emi (Galarians): 14 

In "real-time" age, if we use SM/USUM as landmarks (and disregarding the special cases + Galarians since SWSH doesn’t give hints on the timeline yet), this is actually their correct age order: 

Kanto/Hoenn/Unova1: 21-22-20 (respectively) 

Unova2/Kalos: 18-19 

Johto/Sinnoh: 17-18 

Alola: 11

I had a need to clarify all the age stuff going on 'cause it's been pretty integral with some of their interactions, especially with ships with time gap drama (I don't wanna accidentally make their ages sound weird out of context!), so I hope this cleared up anything problematic!  

Their friend groups also tend to be pretty tied-in with their ages!!! The group uses these groupings to refer to each other: 

Kids: The Alolans + Oliver, Alex 

Teens: Ellen, Gwen, Ophelia, Roy, Hoenn + Galar 

"Grown-ups": the "oldies" (Basil, Ceci, Tim), Unovans, Kalosians

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Since I’m not that familiar with the concept, I followed what my sis sent me and decided with these prominent qualities!

gryffindor - courage

hufflepuff - loyalty

ravenclaw - wit / knowledge / intelligence

slytherin - ambition

So given that: 

Gryffindor - Roy, White, Kyouji, Yvonne, Kiana, Emi, Tim

Hufflepuff - Basil, Alex, Oliver, Mei, Xavier, Louis, Dani

Ravenclaw - Gwen, Ellen, Maya, Lewis, Arthur

It’s official: James and Ellen are related!

They’re second cousins, to be exact. I made this chart to explain their exact relation! It’s a cute coincidence that they have Johto roots in common, it would have been easy to imagine Pryce as their actual grandpa but nah. XD

Some questions we had in mind while tried to piece together their relation over the years:

If Ellen and James are related, then shouldn't they have recognized each other by family name right away? - Yes, that should have been the case! But with all the last name mumbo-jumbo we don’t want to get into HAHA, the family chart explains why the family name of their common ancestor would have been so obscured, they wouldn’t have known unless they knew their lineage that deeply.

So how did they get to finally know they’re related all along? - Ok, protagverse story time: One day, Ellen got called by her mom as usual, but this time she happened to be with the rest of the group. Her mom notices the commotion and gets curious about the crowd, asking her for a photo to send over to her (let’s just pretend they had tech that can instantly send pics at this time lol). The mom sees the picture and notices James, thinking he resembles her cousin (James’ dad) residing in Unova. They put two and two together and wanted to confirm it further with James asking his mom next. He then tries to ask about his dad’s roots, then asking her if she happens to know the name of her niece---she then says “Eleanor”, Ellen’s first name. Boom. *x-files theme plays in the background*

So are they interacting more now? - James and Ellen get along much better now, yeah! They spend their time quietly hanging out and taking care of their Pokemon. One of my favorite interactions from them so far is Ellen teaching James how to cook some Johtonian food :3

^the log in particular

That was completely unrelated to the comic haha, I just thought I’d share it since it’s a very recent Basil-James-Ellen interaction (literally just hours ago)! 

It’s part of our Vday/White Day special where Julian, being Julian, made draw-lots of all the single trainers and paired them up with each other for fun little activities. Basil happened to be paired up with Ellen, and the prompt they got was the Pocky game, which is very interesting since James is close to both of them. 

He’s been very protective of Ellen because Basil always messes with him and spouts nonsense just to provoke him for fun, and well, it’s the Pocky game, duh, just think of the boi showing his protective big bro tendencies. XD

So to answer this, Basil’s actually close to half of them already, namely James, even before the cousins knew they were related! He appeared in the comic because he was the very first one to point out their similarities. Ever since Ellen started to hang with James more, she also gets to hang with James’ other friends too!

If you’re wondering what Basil was trying to say:

"Santa is real, not as a real person, but as an abstract—huh, how do I explain that... 

I mean... the fact that we even ask if Santa is something to be believed in means that Santa IS something... ... an abstract idea. I believe that Santa is a true idea that we have all conceptualized, that we have conceived.