Let's first address the two "See Below" first. And they are fairly related in their answer. Usael is a pretty big concept. Not only are their millions of potential people in the country to be background characters, but there are also 16 teams. I had already posted in the original journal post that people can make entire teams so long as there are still openings and the teams follow the same rules (mostly, a team of six with each being a pokemon that can evolve and stats filled out in the way mentioned previously). So there is far more than enough opportunity for other people to take over and follow other teams, write entire stories or comics with those characters, etc. And if they want to make those go into adult situations, then that's fine. I, however, will not take this comic in that direction. There are really only 2 caveats I have for other people doing their own things with other teams or characters: 1) try to coordinate who is where so you don't end up with Team 6 being in three separate locations all theoretically at the same time. Even if they're all doing different things, they should be canonically consistent with each other.

2) I would still like this one to be the main branch of the whole thing. Meaning there are plot points and reveals and whatnot to be found out. There are details the audience do not know about but I do. Now if you want to help collaborate on what all to have happen plot-wise I am all for it. If you want to know what they are so that you can keep them in mind when doing your own project, that's fine. I'm willing enough to share. But there is a general sequence of events I have in mind already and am more than willing to have people help me expand these events. As I said in the previous page i don't actually care if Team 4 is the team to win and complete the task. If another team ends up beating them fairly, then they get that honor and my comic will show what Team 4 is doing while that team is taking care of things. But the major plot reveals and twists should still come from my comic. Call it selfish if you will but I'd rather not build in some foreshadowing to a major twist several years in the making and then have someone else just flat out say it in their comic a year before it's revealed in mine.

Now for cameos specifically, as i said, this is a huge comic. Eventually i should be able to start peppering in background characters into the thing. But given the time allotment and whatnot, I think it is important at least in the beginning if I focus on just developing the main characters first. Introducing background characters right at the start would only confuse readers when they don't yet know who is important and who is not. Especially since my skill level's so low that it would really stand out if I show a random character out of the blue. Eventually, though, yes. I will have established enough who the characters are that when I just bring someone in on a one-off or a few-off, then it wouldn't have any issues with readers. Course at the same time if people want to just write for a single character, then that's fine. Just keep in mind I'd need responses fairly quickly since I am drawing these on a mostly daily basis.

Now for one other note: If I'm not using the pokemon names, moves, mechanics, or characters, then why use pokemon in the first place? Short answer: Familiarity. Pokemon has a lot of fairly complex interactions that are rather well defined and well known. If I show a six-tailed fox going up against a giant praying mantis with blades for arms without the concept of pokemon there will be a lot of contention about which should have won. After all the praying mantis is a lot larger, and has blade for arms. There is a lot less contention, though, about the little fox winning when you see it's a vulpix vs a scyther. With pokemon, typing is well known, certain interactions are easy to see coming. If I show a blue turtle in this comic being approached by a pissed off red and white ball, the viewer knows what's about to go down without me having to explain it. By using pokemon I can skip having to explain a type chart or interaction between the elements or what character is what type and how that interacts with all the other types. I can just draw it, and people will understand since it's a known commodity. Further, pokemon also have a lot of different character designs to force me out of my comfort zone without having to spend much thought into what it should look like. So there are a ton of advantages for creating world-building shortcuts in the comic by using pokemon and not have to explain them all, even if I'm using next to nothing of the pokemon universe itself beyond the basics. That said, if I do end up getting a DMCA from Game Freak or Nintendo, will I just shift everything to a non-pokemon equivalent? Depends on how big it is, but probably not. I'd probably just do something else.

One final thing since I thought of it here. If there is a pokemon that has no evolution (and thus belongs in the Bound Class) and then the next pokemon game comes out that gives it an evolution, would I change its class? That depends on how big of an issue that it'd cause. If the character revolves around them being a Bound character, then no. If it's just a detail about them, then i'll likely just hand-wave it away.

Also, unless anyone has any other ideas on what they want me to go over, this will likely be the last setup page for a while

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