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Alolan Pokemon Concepts

Here are a few ideas for Alola variants of existing Pokemon that I came up with for funsies. I photoshopped some pictures to go along with it but I’m not very good at photoshop and these are generally just concepts and not fully fleshed-out designs.

Emolga

Emolgas love flying from tree to tree in forests, so naturally they all began living in the forests of Alola. However, these forests soon became overpopulated with Emolgas. Breeders had gotten tons of Emolgas because, since they’re such cute Pokemon, they attracted tourists. These packed forests caused some fighting for territory between Emolgas, and the surviving population afterwards had adapted to become a fighting/flying type, dropping electricity in favor of heavier tail slaps and more agility on the ground. Now that the population has settled down and the Emolgas no longer fight for territory, they still maintain the cheerful persona as their non-Alolan counterparts.

Eeveelutions

This concept is relatively simple: because Alola is so well regulated and relaxed, Eevees felt less of a need to evolve because they had few predators. Because they don’t fight as much in Alola, they don’t really evolve as much. Instead, all the Eeveelutions are their original type plus normal, since they’re less evolved and still appear half-Eevee.

Cinccino

Cinccinos do not exactly adapt to their environment, but rather to another species of Pokemon: Mimikyus. Mimikyus have a natural hatred for Pikachus, and would often mistake Cinccinos and other rodent-like Pokemon for them. This didn’t bother most types: Emolgas could fly out of range, and Pikachus were often caught and trained, but many wild Cinccinos were regularly attacked by these Mimikyus. They adapted by becoming a Normal/Steel type, retaining their special fur but gaining some defense against aggressive Pokemon like Mimikyu.

These are just some fun little ideas that I had. They stretch logic a bit but more than anything I just think these would be cool to see. :)

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Day 23 Post

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Day 22 Post

eBay item - Abandoned School Bus

Description: I own a gas station along the highway in Montana and a couple of years ago I arrived one morning, nobody in sight for miles, and this empty school bus was parked a distance away. Why anyone would forget an entire school bus is beyond me, but there it was. No license plate and I had to pull it with my truck over to the gas tank just to fill it up. I put up posters and waited to see if anyone might come back for it, but a year passed and it was still there. I checked in with the police and they said I could do whatever I wanted with it, so I wiped it clean (the seats were caked in some weird yellowy dust) and put it up on this site for sale.

Points of Interest: There is one peculiar thing about this school bus, aside from it being left behind. The back row of seats doesn’t have any windows, but from the outside, it looks like the last window is too close to the back for there to be another row. The back row isn’t cramped in, either; there’s plenty of room. It almost seems like there’s one more row on the inside than there is on the outside. My buddies and I think it must be an optical illusion; one of them calls it the “phantom row”. Maybe that’ll turn some customers away, or maybe it’ll draw some customers closer, but out here we value honesty, so I thought I would mention this phenomenon.

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Day 21 Post

(Took a long, long... long break. Oops.)

It was late. Even the gleaming-wet wires covering the city like a jungle canopy were firmer than Declan’s arms dangling from between his shoulders and the steering wheel. His arms did tense up when a car honked behind him a couple of seconds after the light turned green. It had been a long day at work.

Another red light. His route back home was a zigzag between the city blocks since he lived almost diagonally from the office. A round car pulled up in the lane to his right, a splotch of bird poop on top of the front window. The car was silver, like his, and the same model too. He looked at the bird poop again and adjusted his glasses. Now he was sure he had to be too tired to be driving; for a moment he thought he could recognize bird poop like familiar faces. The windows of the car were somewhat tinted, but he could make out only one person in the car, adjusting their glasses before driving onwards.

The car behind him honked again. He hadn’t seen the light change; a dab of bird poop was directly blocking his view of it. His route home happened to be taking the same street as the other car. He heard traces of a radio from inside the car, including a whack sound - the baseball game. That had been what he was forgetting. He hurriedly turned on his own radio to catch the end of the game. Another red light, another green light; their two cars were taking a surprisingly similar route to each of their destinations.

Another red light. Another honk. Sorry, sorry. Another green light. He was almost home. In his rear-view mirror, he noticed a white fleck on the windshield of the car behind him. He thought he recognized the bird poop, but he caught himself before he went off on that again. The shadowy figure inside that car adjusted their glasses, and he turned back to the road in front of him in case they thought he was staring.

The two lanes merged into one as they broke out of the gridlike heart of the city. He happened to still be following that other car, the one with the bird poop on it. Maybe this person lived nearby? They continued through another couple of intersections. His elbows kept getting lower and lower, his eyelids heavier and heavier. Before he knew it, he was a left turn away from his house. The car in front of him took a left turn; maybe they were taking his street as a shortcut. But wasn’t his street a dead end? Or was that the street he just moved out of? He could barely remember why he was trying to figure such a thing out, so he stopped asking and rubbed his eyes.

As he took a left turn, the glazed white of the bird poop disappeared from his rear view. Then it appeared again since the silver car behind him just so happened to be taking this street to wherever they were going. As he blinked, he heard a faint whack from the radio in the car behind him, and when he opened his eyes, there were more cars on his street than he thought there were before. Silver cars must be trending, he thought. The car in front of him took a right turn into his driveway and into his garage.

He blinked. Had his wife said something about buying a new car? Which wife was he on now? He blinked again, a full moment of closed eyes, not an instinctive blink, but one that served its purpose. The car behind him honked. Yes, yes, yes, sorry. He took a right hand turn into his driveway and into the garage. The garage was very dark, so dark he couldn’t see the back of it. In his rearview mirror, he saw a long line of silver cars displaying splotches of bird poop, and as he yawned he saw those in the two cars behind him raise their fists in front of their mouths, and that’s what he saw before he fell asleep and fell into the garage

He woke up to a screaming alarm clock. Time to go to work again.

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Day 20 Post

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Day 19 Post

There were fifty or so of us living up here on the 42nd Floor. Most of the year we were quite the civilized bunch - we had our leaders and conversations. Our days consisted of waking up to the cool breeze coming from the windows (whose glass had been smashed open in the past for obvious reasons), distributing amongst ourselves the food and water left for us by Santa overnight, and sit and talk in these dusty old rooms. We were even civilized enough to take turns, every two hours, sitting at the edge of the room and gazing out the open windows, down at the rest of the city below. People tried jumping - that’s where all the glass went - but it never worked.

Much of what we talked about were stories, often people’s own inventions of Genesis, explaining why we were all up here, whose idea it was to leave people on the 42nd Floor of a building but still leave food and water every morning. The most common ones are either that we’re lab rats or that we’re victims of a twisted mind’s ideas of a fun time. I like to think we were saved from something; it’s the only thing that keeps me optimistic, thinking we should be grateful for the life we were given up here.

There were two exits. First, the windows; nope, the walls below were too slippery to climb on and the only way down was a fast one. When we look out the window, we look off into the distance, towards the highway, because we don’t want to look at the little pile of people at the bottom who got out through the window. Then there’s the second exit, the reason I’ve been trying to prove to you how civilized we really are, because I know you’ll think of us like primitive, logic-less people when I tell you about it. The Elevator comes once a year, and it can only fit a couple of people - six, at most. It takes you straight to the ground floor; we know because we’ve watched in pure, raw envy as the people who get on walk - no, dance - past the dead bodies and into the city below.

No leader has ever tried to bring law and order to that day. Even the most caring individuals on the 42nd Floor will tell you, without hesitation, that they would do anything, yes, anything, to get on the Elevator. Even if you didn’t want to get on, you’d probably be attacked upon suspicion of some larger game you’re playing. There can’t be any sort of power system because we have no weapons and there aren’t any minions loyal enough to guard a leader to the Elevator. Some of the older folk say a leader did try that once; it took less than ten seconds for the guards to kill them too. So Elevator Day is Purge Day. People abandon every relationship, every previous act of kindness, the moment those doors open.

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Day 18 Post

Chargin Chucks (Kirby vs SMW Part 2)

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Day 17 Post

Lachesism

I slouched in my car seat, my arm now simply a dangling wire connecting my hand on the wheel to my shoulder. Why did I even bother keeping my hand on the wheel when it had been two minutes and the cars hadn’t moved? I let my hand fall to my lap with a slap, and for a moment I thought I had accidentally honked the horn. No, my hand had just grazed the middle of the wheel, pressing it slightly, but the cables still worked.

Part of me wanted to honk that horn. Part of me really wanted to slam my palm, no, my fist, straight into the center of that wheel of madness, pulping a roar out of my car. I knew one honk was all it would take: like wolves howling at the moon or birds flying from the ground to a tree, all it would take to set off this chain reaction was one especially pissed off car. Like a child letting go of their will not to cry, the floodgates would open and every car on this road would be screaming in anger at the world, letting it all out even though they knew no one was listening. Right now, this jam had been wound up like a mechanical toy by the monotony of life itself, and we were all ready for the hand to let go and let us spin ourselves out, marching around down on the floor. I refrained from honking that horn, but I was certain that no part of me could hold me back if someone else hollered.

The cars moved. Now I was ten feet ahead of where I had been before and in front of a split between roads. One path was barren, five lanes wide. The other side was where all of us were headed. I stared at the sun up ahead; my eyes were shielded by my car’s shaded windows. Not even looking at the sun would amount to anything. Then I saw a tiny bit of something fly in front of the sun. Then many tiny bits. I convinced my eyes to get off their behinds and turn to face whatever was the source of these bits. In the distance, I could see a tornado.

“No,” I said to myself aloud. “Stop it.”

But my hand didn’t stop it. Honking was one thing, but this was something else entirely. My hand grinned mischievously as it grabbed the wheel like a gun it was about to shoot someone with, and my leg laughed and slammed the gas pedal. I swerved into the barren path and found myself barreling toward that tornado, full speed ahead.

I think my sudden decision set someone off because moments later I realized there were billions of wolves howling at the moon and birds flying to trees. The horns pounded my ears, and my hand grinned wider and joined in. I felt something in my cheeks and realized I had been grinning too. The cars far behind screamed “faster, faster, you can do it” like parents at soccer games, and I thought I heard the gas pedal whimper in pain. My eyes got off their behinds and stood up, daring the tornado to come closer. I didn’t care if I would fly to the land of Oz or get hurled straight to hell. At least then I would have something to do.

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Day 16 Post

Kirby and a Boo :)

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Day 15 Post

Months with Pumpkin (Part 3 of 4) (Sorry I couldn’t come up with anything good for August. Any ideas?)

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Day 14 Post

Months with Pumpkin (Part 2 of 4)

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Day 13 Post

Months with Pumpkin (Part 1 of 4)

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Day 12 Post

Fionna was left-handed. I was questioning myself earlier, but I’m absolutely sure now. The question had bothered me so much that I couldn’t get to sleep, and some nights ago I couldn’t take it anymore. I had turned the light back on and inspected every photo I could find of her. Yes, there’s too much evidence for even the most skeptical side of my brain to deny it now: Fionna used to be left-handed. I found one picture of her holding her phone with her right hand. The rest of the pictures I found were all the same: she threw with her left hand, wrote with her left hand, used forks and knives with her left hand. I swear it’s true.

But now she does everything with her right hand. This would be only a little strange if, when I asked her about it, she hadn’t denied ever having been left-handed. It would be only a little strange if she didn’t kick soccer balls with a different leg too. It would only be a little strange if her face didn’t look... off. It’s definitely still completely her face, but some new makeup or some trick of the light, I don’t know - it’s not Fionna.

It would only be a little strange if she didn’t instinctively reach the wrong way for her seatbelt, or if her handwriting still looked perfect, or if she could still tell her left from her right or read as quick as she used to. It would only be a little strange if she bothered to clean up the broken mirror in her room, which she insists on keeping exactly the way it is, like a museum piece, or a locked toychest.

But none of those things happened. So, yeah, it’s more than just a little strange.

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Day 11 Post

The quaint town was most famous for the nearby fire trees that could be found around the edges of town or in the central park. Some called the fire trees freaks of nature, others developed religions based on them, and still more believed they were what originally taught humans of fire. They were called fire trees because of their heat-based energy systems - the black bark was nonflammable and they were always as warm to the touch as a human hand or a mug of coffee.

The leaves of fire trees were wide and thick. Like other trees, fire trees’ leaves lost their green pigments in autumn and turned shades of red, orange, and yellow. However, whenever it was time for the fire leaves to shed their leaves for the winter, they would use all the extra energy stored in their huge, ray-catching leaves to burn themselves, letting the fire spread over them and give themselves more heat energy for the winter. It would begin with the “nerves” of the leaves glowing yellow like neon lights, until there was too much heat and the leaves were ripped open from the middle by fire. The fuzzy seeds were often light enough to be carried elsewhere by the smoke.

Tourism was always at an all-time high near the end of autumn, when, one by one, trees began to burst their leaves into flames, often spewing smoke and sparks in a final hurrah before the dead winter. Festivals were often held from sundown to sunrise, complete with feasts and dancing, with only the celebrating fire trees to light the streets.

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Day 10 Post

Quinn leaped onto his horse and fled the village into the vast expanse of the desert. He prayed his horse would last longer out here than the chariots following him. His backpack clunked with every downward motion; it was the sound of amethysts hitting one another. The backpack already felt too heavy for him as the dunes before him seemed to change from yellow to orange, then to red, before they all began to seep into each other and blur into formations in an endless waltz. Quinn’s head was dragged down by invisible hands. He looked behind him - they were still right behind him, if not closer. A trail of amethysts was littered behind him; in each upward motion, his chest threw itself towards the sky and the amethysts gleamed bright white and yellow against the sun’s glare, and in each downward motion, his head spun forward straight into his stomach, the amethysts turned blood red again, and his backpack repeated the same clunk noise, albeit softer each time as the amethysts inside abandoned ship. He kept hearing thunps just beneath him. Half of them were his heartbeat and the other half were the sounds of crystals dropping against the sand. At first he thought he was wheezing, but when he realized you need air in your lungs to wheeze, he realized it was his horse. A growing sense of dread bore down on him from the cloudless sky, moving forward towards him from the horizon with rising intensity until it seemed like he was on the edge of a cliff, wavering back and forth, until the horse’s leg dropped and he tumbled down to the bottom.

Quinn didn’t know how long he had been asleep, but he woke up at the bottom of the cliff, lying on a bed of red fragments around him. The sun was on the other side of the cliff edge and he was barricaded away in the shadows below. Time was either passing impossibly slowly or impossible quickly, he couldn’t tell. Eventually he decided, since he had nothing better to do, to collect the amethysts and then get back to the surface. One by one, he touched two fingers to the smooth parts of he shards, then dropped them into his backpack. The third to last left was burrowed farther down, but he could spot the red a mile away. When he pried it out, the surrounding sand filtered into the space where it had been, like an hourglass filtering to the bottom, until he was looking at a small crater with a hole in the middle. He inspected the tunnel below, only seeing more sand at the bottom.

Night was approaching. Only hours before had Quinn been unraveling in the heat, and now he was to curl into himself until there was nothing left, surrounded by brisk air and even colder sand. His only option was to get into that hole down there, where he might find warmth in the small space. He stamped his foot around the edges and chunks of frozen sand collapsed into the burrow, until the hole was wide enough for Quinn to leap into. He landed hard on a pointed pile of sand below, and he immediately noticed two sources of light: one to his left, a fuzzy and static, gray rectangle resting on a table in front of a leather couch sitting a rotting mass of bones, and one to his right, through a doorway, a white radiance bursting through an open-doored compartment, cold, smoke-like air spilling out and onto the floor. The floor was made of solid ice, which originated from a miniature waterfall from a countertop to the ground, from a pool of ice under a faucet. Behind him, papers were tacked over one another, the front titled “October” above a grid, one tile marked in red “ball of sand from space maybe??”

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Day 9 Post

It was the time of year after snow fell from the sky, when lumps of it still remained between buildings, along sidewalks, gathering dust and dirt like discarded bags of garbage, forgetting the notion of a winter wonderland. The damp pavement road glittered under a lamppost, a ripple of light emerging from the spaces between pebbles, not unlike a sea at sunset. The ripple illuminated the shards of a smashed window which littered the ally, making it a minefield of piercing glass bits. The soggy dog’s home was on the other side of that ally. It attempted holding its paws still while navigating the minefield; a shivering paw would never land right.

As the dog trekked across this new landscape, the brick wall opposite the window frame was illuminated in a soft circle of light, the green spray paint glistening like it had just felt the sun for the first time. The dog was in the middle of the spotlight as if it were on a stage. Its audience was a man on the other side of the window frame, dressed in black, holding a flashlight that was running out of battery. The lambent circle in his hands flickered, then petered out and died. The darkness invited them in their separate ways and they forgot one another.

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Day 8 Post

Part of a series of flash fiction parts. See all parts, with revisions, here.

William was a decent fellow. He had been captain of his football team in high school, he got himself a bachelor’s in marketing, and he married a beautiful woman and settled down near the coast. He lived a life not unlike any other: he got up, took a shower, got dressed, ate breakfast, went to work, got home tired, ate dinner, and watched TV with Julie. His life would have been a lot more leisurely if his two kids didn’t drive him up the walls, or if not for the crayon drawing that kept stalking his son.

William first met the crayon drawing the day after he had complained about Abigail’s and Birch’s behavior. He had told them how they should be acting for their age, how they should set breakfast and fetch the newspaper and be ready to go to class by eight, and Abigail had a fit and Birch bawled, and before he knew it they had both gone to their rooms. Whether he had sent them or whether they had fled, he couldn’t recall. He and Julie settled onto the couch to watch TV.

“You shouldn’t be so hard on them,” Julie had told him.

“Oh, come on, what’s a little discipline ever done?” he had replied.

“It made them upset!”

“Well, of course they’re upset; I told them to do something they don’t want to do. I’m upset I have to go to my lousy job, but I do it every day and the world still spins.”

The next morning William arrived to a dining room with a set table, scrambled eggs and orange juice or coffee at each place. He smiled warmly as Birch and Abigail bounded into the room laughing. Julie came out of the kitchen. “Well, aren’t you two little angels! Thank you so much!”

Abigail and Birch looked at each other for one second, then nodded back and sat down to eat. William sat at the head of the table and drank some coffee. “You two didn’t really set the table, did you?”

Abigail grinned and nodded. Birch held in laughter, putting a hand over his mouth. He suddenly burst out half laughing, half crying, in between getting caught pulling a prank and getting caught stealing. “No, we didn’t, and we’re sorry, we’re sorry -”

“Birch, hush! The neighbors will think there’s a murder,” Julie huffed. “And yes, you did set the table.”

“You don’t have to lie to me, Julie,” William scolded. “They need to know that their mother isn’t going to always let them off the hook from the big bad William.”

“Well, I didn’t set the table.”

“Then who did!?” William pointed a finger at Birch. “Because I’m sure as hell these two didn’t!”

Julie was silent for some moments. “Abigail, Birch, it’s time to go to school. Get your backpacks.”

William shook his head as the three of them left the room and rolled out of the driveway. That’s when he looked up and saw the crayon drawing holding a coffee mug where Birch had been sitting. It was completely black and devoid of light, aside from its shiny black jaw over its chin; even in the orange morning light, it remained a constant and unwavered shade of darkness. Its crayon fingers interlaced around the coffee mug, but it didn’t move an inch. It remained completely motionless.

William didn’t go to work that day.