Planning a sequel for Gen 8 - questions

[JFrombaugh]

Hello guys,

I may not be particularly well-known on this part of the forums, but you may remember that I wrote the two iterations of the Paxton & Joseph Show, a talk show in which Joseph and Paxton interview various characters from the anime and games universe. You can read them in the archive here:

[Everyone] The Paxton & Joseph Show (Games universe)

An idea I got from Lemmy's Land. Various Trainers from the Pokémon universe get grilled with former Champion Joseph and his father Paxton's burning questions. Each interview is equivalent to a chapter, and will be conducted in a script format (since I feel it makes more sense in the context)...

forums.bulbagarden.net

[Everyone] The Paxton & Joseph Show (Anime universe)

An idea I got from Lemmy's Land. Various Trainers from the Pokémon universe get grilled with former Champion Joseph and his father Paxton's burning questions. Each interview is equivalent to a chapter, and will be conducted in a script format (since I feel it makes more sense in the context)...

forums.bulbagarden.net

If you recall, at the end of the Epilogue,

Spoiler

Joseph begins to feel that the whole talk show thing is a bit overwhelming for him (compared to his more outgoing father), and just when Paxton is discussing plans for a second season of the show, a young girl named Alice who has just moved in to the house down the street comes over and asks to talk to Joseph

...which leads to a teaser advertisement for "The Joseph & Alice Podcast", my planned Games-universe only sequel, planned to be released later this year - possibly summer or fall - once we know a little more about the Gen 8 Pokémon games on the Switch.

My plan is for this sequel is for the interviews to revolve more around other events and an overlapping storyline, compared to the more episodic format of The Paxton & Joseph Show, and for the setting of the interviews to be more private, as opposed to the talk show format of the original. I feel like I made a lot of really good jokes about things like technical difficulties and Team Rocket breaking in to cause trouble and the likes, but for this sequel I was hoping to explore Joseph's & Alice's characters more, as well as the relationship between Joseph and his father after the original show went off the air, whilst keeping the interviews as kind of the main theme.

I'm still in the process of brainstorming Alice, and so I haven't decided on things like whether or not to make her a Pokemon Trainer just like Joseph (and if so, what Pokémon to give her), what region she is from, etc. But my idea is that she will be kind of like Lillie or Serena from the anime in terms of personality. The interviews themselves are planned to be with a mix of Trainers from Kanto, Kalos, and the Gen 8 region, with Alice herself likely being from one of those three regions (again, haven't decided which yet). The plan is for there to be about 8-12 interviews total, with a few filler chapters in between.

But the thing that worries me is this: If the rumors about Gen 8's region being based on the UK turn out to be true, then it is at least possible that Alice could turn out to be the name of a major character from those games (as an obvious shout out to Alice in Wonderland) - which would mean my idea is probably DOA, as it would cause a lot of confusion amongst readers who would think I mean the Alice NPC from PokeBritain.

While I am thinking about making Alice loosely based on Alice from Alice in Wonderland (like maybe with her design or the theme of her theoretical team), I chose the name Alice many months ago for personal reasons, not so much because I wanted to make that particular shout-out.

So...I don't know how many of you have read the Paxton & Joseph Show, but I was wondering if I could maybe get some advice on this - specifically about things like the possibility of an accidental shared name (has that ever happened to any of you?), or maybe advice on whether or not I should just bite the bullet and establish that she is from Kanto or Kalos early on? A part of me would kind of like her to be from the Gen 8 region since it's pretty likely that we will finally get Diamond & Pearl remakes after the 2019 games (it's well established that Joseph grew up in Sinnoh and took on the Pokémon League there), but we just don't know anything about it yet.

 

[Beth Pavell]

Shared names are pretty much inevitable at this point, given how many major characters there have been. I'm personally inclined to ignore it, because otherwise there's this weird implication that there's only one person in the whole world named Erika. But if it's really a big issue for you, then you'd be advised to wait. The kind of wild speculation that the (long) run-up to a new generation creates isn't going to help you, whatever you do

 

[JFrombaugh]

Right now, FWIW, I'm leaning towards having Alice be just some random Kantonian girl down the street in order to keep my options open with her character development & to avoid having to second-guess what GameFreak will end up doing with the Gen 8 games.

The other idea I had was for her to be a Trainer from Kalos who, like Joseph, took on the Pokemon League in her home region but eventually had to relocate to Kanto because of her parents' jobs - and thus she & Joseph end up bonding over being "Third Culture Kids". But at the same time I kind of feel like Pokémon Sun & Moon did that to some extent with the Player Characters, especially in the Manga adaptation.

Once again, though, it's still far too early to call what direction I'll end up going with Alice right now. But regardless of what Gen 8 ends up being like, I suspect there'll be at least a few characters who I will feel are worthy of an interview...which is why I'm planning for the initial chapters to take place just before the events of the Gen 8 games, and then add in any Gen 8 character interviews I decide on towards the end.