And now, on to the the interview.

INTERVIEW:
<StevenSavage> Well, let's start from the top. Pokemon: Evolution is a complete world, a look at Pokemon twelve years into the future in a very detailed setting. How did this idea start?

<Alicia> Well, the idea had profoundly humble beginnings. It started when my co-writer, DamienK, wanted to run a metaconcept of a canon character in an IRC roleplay channel I frequented.

<Alicia> So, he made a list of 16 anime characters he'd like to play. He went strictly for character who he thought were unpopular or 'second string'. A lot of folks like, say, Ah My Goddess' Keiichi Morisato were on the list.

<Alicia> Unfortunately, I can't get more specifics... but Gary Oak was on there, too, as Damien had gotten to really like the character's concept from the videogame and anime.

<StevenSavage> And from there?

<Alicia> Anyway, Damien also made a list of 16 very 'odd' occupations... things like sentai hero, bounty hunter... and, well, one was 'hitman'.

<Alicia> His plan was to use a scheme of coin-flipping based on binary numbers to match a character to an odd occupation.

<StevenSavage> And the end result?

<Alicia> After deciding that 'Megumi Morisato' and 'sentai hero' was completely unworkable, he flipped again and got 'Gary Oak' and 'hitman'.

<Alicia> The end result was Adauchi.

<StevenSavage> Isn't that Gary's name from the original animated series?

<Alicia> No. Gary's original name was 'Shigeru'. 'Adauchi' is Japanese for 'vengeance', and we refer to him like for a very particular and spoiler-laden story reason.

<StevenSavage> I won't pry for the sake of future readers.

<Alicia> I become a part of this when Damien plays Adauchi a few times, likes the concept, but finds the power level of the roleplay is too high to do much with an ordinary human. He asks me about making a companion character for him.

<StevenSavage> And that character is?

<Alicia> That would be Satoshi. The design came to me very quickly, as did the bare concept of what Evolution's world would be. Damien had only sketchy notes for how Gary and turned out the way he did, and part of why he asked me to get involved was to help flesh out the world and see what other things might have changed.

<StevenSavage> And Satoshi, is, essentially, Ash, the hero of Pokemon, evolved as it were?

<Alicia> Precisely. He also seemed, out of all the canon cast to choose from, the one who would be most interesting to bounce off of Damien's idea.

<StevenSavage> So the two archnemeses, in your concept, were now companions.

<Alicia> By necessity. Ash started out as something of an NPC 'guide' character. For the fanfic, we had fewer character and more control of the plot, so Ash become more of a true protagonist there.

<Alicia> Appropriately enough, Evo's story changed and grew over time.

<StevenSavage> So you started as role-play, and that became the fanfic. How did this come about? And what was it like to play such characters who, originally, were antagonists?

<Alicia> The characters had an enormous amount of chemistry with each other stemming from their history as antagonists.

<StevenSavage> Sort of the classic old-movie concept of you need to be able to dislike someone to like them?

<Alicia> Somewhat like that, though not quite.

<StevenSavage> Go on, please.

<Alicia> We were playing mostly from anime canon, and the anime canon paints Gary much more as a self-centered jerk than as a real antagonist.

<Alicia> Particularly towards the end of the first season, he's portrayed as simply being a 'competitor' of Ash's rather than someone who's out to harm him in some way.

<StevenSavage> Thus less hatred, more . . . jerk.

<Alicia> Precisely. They were more two little boys who wanted the same toy and couldn't share, in my opinion. And that played into their relationship as adults... on one hand, they sympathize with each other, but on the other, they often irritate each other immensely.

<StevenSavage> So with the relationship and the characters established, how did this bloom into the current storyline?

<Alicia> Well, when we finished the Evolution campaigns, we decided that some of the events there were interesting enough to warrant being shared with other readers.

<StevenSavage> So you brought your storyline to a close, your RPG, and then made them into stories?

<Alicia> Right. The current projected plot of the fanfic will almost blend all our RPG storylines into one that sort of sums up the entire worldsetting and everything we're saying about it, and about other things, too.

<StevenSavage> Ah, so the fiction uses as well as extends on your roleplaying experiences. A "directors cut" of the world, in a way?

<Alicia> That would be the best way to describe it, yeah. The fanfic has more depth than the roleplays did, and that's intentional.