I know I literally just a few days ago posted a nice long detailed outline of my Alola protag families and said “Now finally I have them figured out” well THAT WAS A LIE. Thanks to the evil, evil influence of some friends I couldn’t get the idea of protag/ultra recon squad out of my brain and just doing more with the URS anyways, so UH now I guess Dulse and Zossie are also there. Sometimes.

I kind of liked the idea that for Ultra Megalopolan culture, when someone’s life/work involves a lot of travel like theirs does, it’s very common to, rather than settle down with a steady partner, be the “part-time” third (or fourth!) to a relationship involving people who live less transitory lives. It settles the desire for romantic and/or physical partnership, without leading into some of the difficulties that can arise from long distance relationships or one person constantly coming to and fro while the other feels like they’re always waiting for them. Obviously everyone has their own preferences and situation that works for them, but this scenario happens enough in UM that it’s considered typical! Very normal for kids to grow up with two/three full-time parents and another parent who comes and goes but is still an important part of the relationship.

With that in mind, Dulse for a long time had that kind of relationship with Anabel & Thorton, spending half his time in UM and always being sure to visit them in Sinnoh when his work took him to Earth. (Less typically, his daughter with the two of them, Carola, travels with him most of the time rather than staying in Sinnoh with her other parents, so she has Dulse’s surname and considers herself more in-touch with her UM side rather than her Earthling side.) Back in Alola, Zossie had grown close with Acerola & Selene and while she too wasn’t “full-time” in a relationship with them, they had a well established dynamic together as well as a daughter (raised by Acerola & Selene). Dulse began spending more time in Alola once Gladion established a program focused on rehoming and safely capturing UBs, working closely with the URS, and during this time found himself growing closer with the Aether president and his husband. It had been over a decade since he’d spent any meaningful interaction with Elio or Gladion, and he found he got along very well with the both of them. Zossie teased him endlessly about how he’d found some Alolans he liked since he wasn’t satisfied with just his partners up in Sinnoh, and he brushed her off until some Moment of Realization that he actually had grown fond of them as well (as had Carola). One thing leads to another, and now Dulse has two families he spends his time with, and Zossie is very smug. It’s definitely the type of relationship that’s unconventional on Earth but quite typical in Ultra Megalopolis, but everyone involved is happy and satisfied!

TLDR: now Dulse is a part-time third to Elio/Gladion and Zossie is the same to Selene/Acerola and I shuffled/added to their kids to accommodate this. Primrose & Enzian now have a baby brother named Osmund (after the scientific name of pepper dulse algae), and Eugenia’s now the name of the baby of the family, while the middle daughter has been renamed to Vallisia “Valli” (after the name for freshwater eelgrass, as opposed to Zossie’s name coming from the marine kind). FINALLY I decided that with this it made more sense for Weiss’s URS parent to be someone else, so he’s now Kahili’s son via a one-night-stand with Soliera, not Dulse! His “real name” has been changed to Thörun (from the Icelandic word for algae) from Söl (meaning dulse), to reflect this.