Sure! I will share some stuff about their fam first since it’s relevant to their designs. (Sorry in advance for this getting long.) For some reason I thought I had made a post about what the Pokémon Go leaders (+ Arlo) are up to in this verse but I maybe didn’t? So I’ll just do a quick breakdown here with a focus on the parents of these kids. All three of the team leaders are Kanto League Gym Trainers in this AU: Candela in Cinnabar, under Gym Leader Shouju, Blanche in Cerulean, under Gym Leader Daisy (who specializes in Ice-types), and Spark in Vermillion under Gym Leader Visquez (who is Surge’s successor in the Journeys anime!). (Ok it did get very long so will add a cut here.)

Spark does have a close bond with Lt. Surge (as evidenced by the shared surname), but they’re not related by blood. When getting ideas for how to implement Go characters in this verse I did poke around to see what hcs people had for them, and saw a fair amount of Spark – Lt. Surge and Arlo – Giovanni relation hcs (along with a lot of wonderful Sparlo art which tipped me in favor of the ship haha) so decided those would work well for me as well! In this case, when Spark was young he ended up being orphaned and was struggling on his own, and Surge, a young gym leader at the time, took him under his wing. Spark isn’t formally adopted into the Surge family until after the Lt. and Violet marry, however. Lavender & Heather see him as an uncle, since he’s not that much younger than their parents.

Arlo gets the convoluted RocketFam drama backstory since when isn’t Gio’s family convoluted. Basically the idea I had was to incorporate him into Giovanni and Ariana’s (honesty notorious) on-again-off-again marriage and run with the idea from one particular manga adaptation that Gio has a twin brother. The twin, who I named Giorgio, has actually existed in this verse for a long time (he’s been on Renato & Celeste’s profiles from the beginning I think), but I’ve never really done anything with him so this was my chance! What happened, essentially, is that after Ariana discovered her husband’s affair with Delia she decided to retaliate by having an affair with his brother, which resulted in Arlo (so he’s both the half-brother and cousin to Mars & Silver, along with being Ash & Gabe’s cousin). He’s raised by his father in another region and isn’t super involved with TR until he’s older. I’m still working on how he fits into the modern, Silver-run, somewhat-reformed Rocket and how the Sparlo relationship unfolds but this is the basic backstory.

Ok now finally for Asta and Nero. They’re still heavily in development but I have done a basic Picrew design for both of them. Here they are!

The reason the backstories were relevant for their designs is just since I used grandparents Ariana & Giorgio for some of their looks. Arlo inherited Ariana’s red eyes & Giorgio’s black hair, but Asta inherits Giorgio’s purple eyes and Nero inherits Ariana’s red hair (though his is darker than hers.)

Asta is a very energetic troublemaker type of girl who loves exploring outside and is prone to impulsive stunts. While she’s a trainer, she’s not super interested in the League or anything like that and I have vague plans for her to end up as a pokémon breeder and open a pokémon refuge/sanctuary when she’s older. Basically I channeled a lot of the Team Instinct memes with her haha.

Nero is less developed, but I know he’s the calm and more serious counterpart to his outgoing sister. He’s a bit edgy, especially in his teen years (I like to imagine him dyeing some black streaks in his hair in sort of an opposite look to his father’s dyed red streaks which just makes Asta constantly call him a Zoroark lol). I think he’s probably friends with his cousin Celeste since they’re around the same age, but that’s not super developed yet either. I also have some vague ideas for friendships with the Gary/Goh/Horace kids, but again it’s all still under development.