#‘WHY COULDNT YOU JUST PLAY THE GAME? NOW EVERYONE’S MAD AT YOU AND THEYRE GONNA-’

[starryluminary]

NoCoVember Week 2: Monsters / Angst

Do you ever wonder what happened the night Noah got eliminated in Island that had Cody and only Cody sad. I do. And I came to the conclusion that he was mad for a different reason than everybody else

Week 2 of @zuureleena s Nocovember, Folks!

[colonelbaryl24]

Pokemon rant

So I'm gonna rant about the news pokemon recently put out and a fee other things.

TLDR: im still hyped about the games and cant wait to play them.

So pokemon let us know that not every single pokemon is going to be in sword and shield, and it seems like a lot of people are mad because they cant transfer in their pokemon from previous games into the new games. But the main reason why im kinda mad about this is people are upset about things they arent 100% percent sure of yet.

"Theyre cutting half the pokemon from the games!"

- when did they say half?

"They can just import the models from the old games, and focus on making models for the new pokemon"

1. everyone complained when they did that from x and y to sun and moon.

2. They are focusing in giving the pokemon new animations so they seem newer and unique and not just the gen 6 and 7 models.

"Theyre just being lazy, if they really cared they can just delay the games"

They could do that... if pokemon was just a video game. If they delay the games then they'd also have to delay the anime, trading card sets, toys, and all other forms of merch. This would result in them losing loads of money. And even if they did delay the games i garuntee the people who are mad about the pokemon home stuff would be FURIOUS about a delay.

Okay thats all the stuff that is directly about the sad news. Its not the best news we've gotten, but i understand and am not mad at gamefreak, it was as a tough call for them too.

So here's a bunch of random tangents ive encounted when hearing about this news, and my opinions on them.

Pokemon is getting lazy because the animations arent as in depth as pokemon stadiums animations.

-heres why i think this is stupid: stadium is mainly focused on battling, like theres the battles, minigames, and menus those are the only things you can interact with in the game. Where as in the 3ds games you have the battling, moving your character around, every single location, the fact that pokemon are randomly generated in places where you encounter wild pokemon theres a lot that actually goes in the games.

-the stadium games only feature the first 2 generations of pokemon, whereas the 3ds feature every single pokemon up until generation 7, so like 251 models is obviously easier to animate than 807 (that doesnt even include form changes).

This might be a little hard for me to put into words, but ill try. The main focus of the pokemon attack animations are the attacks themselves. This makes it so different moves can easily apply to different pokemon, so it makes the games not take 8 years to release (think about how long it would take if they made every single move cater to thenexact body structure to every single pokemon)

My final point about the stadium games is that the battle animations dont even look that much better? Id understand if the pokemon actually made contact with each other, but nope. The specific example ive seen is charmander and scorbunny both using double kick where scorbunny does his physical attack animation and charmander just kinda jumps and kicks the air. If anything id say the fainting animations were a lot better, not the attack animations.

So now that rants done time to move onto the next. People are complaining about how (and ive heard this about 12 times in several different threads) that they are mad that half the pokemon are being cut out and theres no way they'll ever get to play with the old pokemon ever again!

1. chill they know "everyone" hates this, they will probably fix this in patch updates (to me thats the best case scenario) if not they'll probably just put them all in the inevitable optimal version of generation 8.

2. Why is everyone so sure theyre going to cut exactly half of the pokemon? I get that avengers endgame happened a while ago but this isnt thanos. Im sure they are gonna bring in as much as they can, especially because they have stated that THEY ALSO HATED THIS DECISION.

3. I also dont understand why people think that gamefreak wont figure a way to fix this? Like it happened a lot in the history of the games. We didnt have a way to get a lot of the gen 1 and 2 pokemon in ruby and sapphire, but then they released fire red and leaf green with its new post game that was possible. Repeat everything but with genrations 4 and 6. Also remember when sun and moon first came out and pokemon bank wasnt working for the first like 3 months after the games came out? Yeah you couldnt get every single pokemon upon release....and no one cared because gamefreak didnt address it. But they fixed it, and theyll probably fix this too.

Another complaint ive seen is people specifically not being able to bring the pokemon that theyve EV trained, bred to perfection, or raised to level 100 into sword and shiled upon release. And to that i say....why would you want that? That would make the games way too easy something i know every fan complains about. And if you bring up the competetive aspects to it i guess thats fair, but like if you want to do an official competetion the rules dont instantly change upon release, you'll still have to wait until thats all settles and players have had time to actually make their teams incase they wanted to use any of the new pokemon. Also if you said competetive, but you meant just playing against a couple of friends pokemon showdown exists, and even in that you dont even have to breed or train.

Personally when i get a new pokemon game my first concern is mainly all about the new pokemon to which im pleasantly surprised cuz they all (so far) look really amazing! And my very last concern (and i mean i'll find every single tm, and npc to talk to before i do these) last concern is bringing in old pokemon from older games.

Anyway sorry to whoever ends up reading my thoughts on this, i hope i didnt upset anyone. I just wanted to get my thoughts out without yelling them at the same 3 people for the 5th time this week.

[pastelacrylics]

im gonna throw up bc i feel sick but this one’s for you babe 😘

Assault TW under the cut

Alright so the date started out pretty fucking fantastic and we were just being dumb kids and playing basketball, harmless and fun, right? right. anyways it was pretty good shit. we went downstairs and like an idiot i try to show him my favorite video game. it doesnt go well and he gives up but whatever. then my sister (i love her shes great and joined us up until this point) suggested playing minecraft. now, i hate minecraft. it is all the wrong shapes and triggers my ocd. i have lots of trouble with this and its dumb, i know. seeing that i was upset, he was pretty nice and said “maybe later” but like then suggested watching greys anatomy

now greys anatomy is the shit. i love it. its my absolute favorite show but it freaks my little sister out so she left. nows a good time to mention that prior o the date i said i wanna take shit really slow. like super fucking slow. that im autistic and it takes me a while to get comfortable with physical contact and i dont want that. that im ace and not interested in sex wit him. that he should avoid sexual situations bc idk what ill do. that i dont even romantically like him, just have lots of excited positive feelings about him.

i was alone with this boy. in the basement. note: i always go to the basement, and my brothers always make me uncomfortable when theyre down there. im not loud. there is essentially nothing i can do at this point. we watch a vague amount of greys, and i curl up into a tiny fucking ball. this is my normal. everyone on the fucking planet knows this is my normal. he ask if i want to cuddle, and i dont really say yes or no, but i was definitely telling him i was uncomfortable and wanted to take things slow. he cuddles me anyways, but he triggers a pressure stim so i assume it will be fine. eventually we stop watching greys and i recount all the noncon/ abuse so he gets why ive gotta take it slow

im not entirely sure how it got to this but before our vaguely sexual act he kept staring at me weird and i kept telling him to stop. he kept asking or trying to kiss me and i kept saying no. i dont know how many times i said no that night. after that he started touching my skin, but like in a nice stimmy way. i was okay with it. it reminded me of one of my friends comforting me, it was familiar. he started going towards my chest- note: im dysphoric as all hell and do NOT like my chest being messed with if i dont trust you. (Also some time during my telling him about my past he started trying to pull me into his lap. i only now realized its so id be sitting on...... anyways) i did not say no. i wanted to try. i wanted to be okay. eventually he pulled at my shirt and bra. eventually i was exposed. i said nothing. this was not something i wanted or was comfortable with, but this was MY doing. i started crying. i told him to stop. i told him no more for the night. i told him no more contact, yeah i was kinda turned on but i was overwhelmed, i was done, and i wanted to STOP. I told him it was done. We could continue to hang out, watch tv, he could go home when he assumed, but he would stop touching me. he told me “sometimes you need to push your boundaries” I tried to convince him to fix his problem so he would fucking leave me alone. he refused. we ate dinner. i grabbed another jacket and went to the bathroom or whatever. i went back down, curled up again. he tried shit again. i told him to stop. he asked if we could “cuddle” i said okay. he started involuntarily bucking. i told him this. i told him it was funny but to stop. he said okay. he didnt stop. he kept going. eventually i gave up. my brother came down and i had 15 minutes of peace. we started watching anime. he was staring at me creepy. he forced me into his lap. i told him to stop. i told him no. (i went nonverbal while he was bucking and this was him assuming i was “okay” again i guess idk it was gross) i was pushed onto my back. he pulled my shirt all the way up. he did what he fucking wanted. i gave up. he sucked on my nipples, he left a bruise on one. he moved onto my neck. he left another one there (i dont bruise easily, and i got it to fade quickly because i hated looking at the proof, and my body doesnt generally take to bruising) i was on my back. he moved my hand so i would be getting him off. he started to take his fucking belt off. i told him to stop. i told him it was time to go. I was not being penetrated without my permission ever again. he didnt want to leave. he asked me “that did nothing for you?” no. no it didnt do anything for me. i told you no. i told you i didnt want it. you make me sick. i just told him “no” and laughed it off

i told him to get an uber. i tried to kick him out. it was another 5-15 minutes of silence and avoiding touching him as he waited for his ride to come. i walked him to the door, and locked it. my mom immediately knew something was wrong. she asked me what happened. instead i wanted to throw up, and i went to bed. i told my best friend, and ex. my ex was really fucking good to me about all of this. he left his fucking hat and i want to burn it. i hate all men. i hate teenage boys. i hate misoginy. i hate that i didnt believe the last girl who was assaulted, who told me, because he lied to me. i hate that i can be clearly scared, and youd rather believe him. i hate that youre angry at me for this. i told the girl i didnt believe i was sorry, i confirmed something with the girl i fought with last year, i told my best friend and my ex. i told twitter “something happened” on private so a friend at lunch could see. i told an older friend so i could ask for help. i told my other best friend. (7 people online) but in person?   i quietly told 1 friend at the beginning of the day, 1 teacher who i thought could help me avoid him, 1 friend in my group that i couldnt participate (she was his ex, shed understand) and you. thats when i fucing told you. next i told a girl who i knew was vulnerable to that bullshit, then a teacher so i wouldnt have to. see him in the next class. then i threw up and went home. didnt even tell our last friend at lunch. he doesnt know what happened. he might assume based on the other two girls but i didnt say shit. (6 people in person) ...the teacher i asked to help me avoid him told my councelor and my principal and my mom was called. I said i was going to talk to my therapist first but that didnt fucking matter, did it? no one fucking gives a shit about me and im just making this up right? I had to recount details to my mom. she said it didnt count as assault because i. wasnt penetrated (legally it does) she said it wasnt bad enough. that i asked for it. that i should have been more fucking clear. that i. was sending mixed messages. that she went through so much worse. that it wasnt worth ruining his life over. that it wasnt worth sending him to jail over, that it wasnt worth having him marked a predator over (3 girls minimum have been attacked)  because im just fucking lying about this, right? and you dont believe me? well i cant fucking believe you. go eat lunch with someone else, and in the mornings im gonna hang out in the only classroom in the school that will protect me from him even though shitty people will be there too.  and babe? he told me hes glad im not mad. that ill see him again “soon ;)” he sucked on my lip and made me feel violated. but misoginy is so ingrained in us that you dont fucking support survivors, and you never support me. I love you but im so fucking done.

[survivormuxloe]

Episode #6: “because Sweyn’s Baddies are COMING” - Jones

My bitch ass glasses broke so I’m more than happy to be doing a challenge that requires my ears. Maybe wil my eyesight so poor my hearing will get better to compensate who knows. Even if we lose I’m in a Gucci spot to survive.

Tribal was a success. With the first tribal done I’m happy trust is built and I can stop being paranoid.

With that said I think I’m in a good position going forward as I have an alliance and we’re probably reaching a merge or a swap soon.

my plan of action for my tribe since we legit havent got Anything on the doc yet (me n michael have an excuse..) is to make it seem like im doing more than i am. oh im gonna work on it soon! i’ll do this soon! like its all about seeming like im contributing.. when i aint LAMDKNDG

me n michael made a f2 altho it breaks my heart to say its just for the sake of my survival on this dumbass tribe.. theres no way malik flips on me and with michael as my f2 i can essentially force him to flip on danielle if he wants to stay which is like perf rn since i dont really trust her..

i miss my close allies tho lol. like ryan is my #1 n its unfortunate he isnt getting a chance to make more bonds considerig we need those bonds for his idol to make a big move.. hopefully mercia loses again and wes goes tho? it evens it up to 6 sweyn vs 6 mercia and i think itll swap again before merge and hopefully ill be with ryan/rhys/jones :)) my social game is good rn i think.. i just gotta lay low with physical and downplay strategy so im never the target. hard w/ these personalities tho. X

SOOO THIS CHALLENGE IS FUCKING HELL!!! U KNOW WHAT WOULD BE BETTER? IF OUR WHOLE TRIBE FUCKING DID SMTH!!

like im actually gunna go fucking mad.. its songs. yah its hard to identify bc theyre distorted and overlapped but theres no excuse not to get at least artists.. or even one song. malik n michael can barely do that.. LIKE YEAH I HAVENT DONE THE BEST BUT IVE GOT 2 SONGS THERE RN AND IDENTIFIED NICKI + XTINA SO! BLOOP! im gunna kill myself.. poor dani. its especially painful knowing ill try to get her out if we lose LMAOAOAOA but i mean.. (: oh well!

This challenge can litterally chomp on a dick. No. I hate it. I dont want to do it. Like BEGONE.

Honestly its so hard, and like i dont listen to pop so im struggling with it. Hopefully we win, but I feel safe if we go to tribal.

At this point I am so upset because I feel useless because all the ones I know have been picked and idek if anyone took my suggestion seriously. If this round ends my game, I’m going to be so upset!

We’re pretty much fucked unless a miracle happens

I've been a bit nervous about my position and stuff in the game and I'm trying to catch up socially with a lot of people and stuff. I'm doing what I can on a five person tribe and hope I can work on hard on getting as far as I can in this game. I have a feeling we merge next round so that could be cool. I wanna make it far as I can this game, I'm trying to be active but UTR so hopefully it works.

WE WON FIRST PLACE AGAIN AND THIS TIME I WASNT A FUCKUP WOOOOOOOOOOOOP WOOP I’ve been talking to David more and I helped out a lot with this challenge so I’m hoping he won’t want me out next time we go to tribal.

THREE IN A ROW, BABY. Feels good to not have gone to tribal since Jose's elimination. Also an added bonus that I basically carried our tribe to win today, not a big deal, LOL.

Also, with the reward, I've now got a vote steal advantage. This is HUGE for me. I have a group of people I wanna work with in this game and if this group is down in numbers at any point, this vote steal can come in handy.

that challenge was a damn mess but i'm just glad we made it out alive. sad Canute lost though ugh i'm sending all of my positive energy to Scott so he can make it through.... hope we merge next round that would be cute; i'm ready for more action in this game

im gunna kill my self . :) WE LOST. AGAIN. :) NOT MY FAULT. AGAIN.

n now i gotta deal with fucken awkward 2-2 tribal lines when i have a f2 with michael and a love for malik.. but bc dani is good at challenges her ass wont go and thats so annoyin but u can bet ur ass ima try somethin if i have to bc i dont trust malik to keep me safe vs her whereas michael will.. if i have to flip on malik i will

why me tho like im a good person. i dont deserve this. why couldnt i be on a competent tribe. LMAOAOAOA.

THANK GOD WE WON IMMUNITY if we lost I probably would’ve spontaneously combust Bc I love??? My current tribe??? I love Madison too and It sucked we voted her out Bc I actually adore her but she wasn’t doing a lot. I just love this tribe and if we had to vote for each other again I’ll lose my marbles. Maybe we can work more together going into merge if we get there? I hope so, because Sweyn’s Baddies are COMING

Well, we lost once again and I’m upset about it. The challenge was super hard for us and we struggled. It seemed like everyone wasn’t really putting in all they could as they just said “I forgot” I was like oh!! cool!! This tribal, I’m not crazy worried right now. I trust Scott a lot at this point because he doesnt have a reason to lie to me by telling me that I’ve been holding up the tribe because... I have been. I think the move this week is to vote out Malik. We’ll see whats going on but I really think we might be doing that this week. Hopefully there’s a merge soon because I need to fucking be by myself!!!

My ass is for sure on the line tonight. I know that  Malik is targetting me for being weak and all that so rn I’m just trying to get Scott 100% on board with voting me and Malik 100% certain that he is safe with me just in case there’s an idol and maybe if I’m too in my nerves and scared I have no qualms with throwing a vote on dani incade of a tie

You know what they say, another week safe, 

That one didn't seem so easy,  partially cause I sucked at it and mainly because I sucked major balls at it. But hey Mo and David saved our asses so yeeeeeeeeeeee boi. And not only that we also got reward but not really cause the only thing I got was a jpg image, and so did Felix David and Mo according to them which means either one of them is lying or Wes has it. Either way I guess it's not the end of the world.

So now Canute is going to tribal I wonder how that is gonna play out, a part of me wants Dani and Michael to be safe but another one wants rocks but at the same time another one would be jealous cause I wouldn't be a part of it and I could use some rocks in my life. Either way that's it for now folks now if you excuse me Felix wants to kidnap me and introduce me to the spooky facebook wikia comunity, spooky shit indeed.

So WOOOOOOOO this is the first tribal of the season that i'm not attending which is amazingggg and feels so good to finally have a break!! Plus like I honestly LOVE my tribe rn bc everyone is so iconic and fun and we even made a charlie's angels thing bc its so iconic... ugh love them BUT if it came down to tribal I think I would be okay still since i've really worked on rhys and we have a 3 dude gay guardians alliance of me, rhys, and ryan even tho im not even gay but they dont need to know that... my boy scott is in tribal rn but i hope he comes out okay!!! if he doesn't well oops idc bye bitch but if he does then yay!!

Tonight I am absolutely terrified I think the votes are gonna be on Malik but you just never know so my best plan is just to hope for the best and campaign to stay I’m not just gonna sit back and get eliminated especially this close to a merge situation where I know I’ll be in a good position to make it far.

im legit gunna die im so nerv and i shouldnt be. LIKE. I TRUST THAT MICHAEL HAS MY BACK. AND MALIK ISNT VOTING ME. SO IT SHOULD BE IMPOSSIBLE FOR ME TO GO. BUT I DONT THINK THAT FOR SOME REASON. all i can think of in the back of my mind is what if michael and dani flip on me and its 2-1-1.. but theres nothing i can literally do bc if i vote michael and stay our relationship is gone lol

ughhhh i should just be positive but its so hard bc even if malik goes.. i feel awful LMAAOAOOA but like. uhm. yes ): i feel awful

Scott as much as I like the guy I can for sure see he lets his emotions dictate how he plays and while that’s not necessarily bad it’s difficu when you’re trying to blindside someone and he could just run and tell Malik so the nerves are here and out to play hunny

My thing is I think it’s is going to go to rocks. Which is why we were worried about that when linus left but it’s real. Dani we don’t wanna vote each other, hell everyone says they don’t want to vote me which is always weird for me to hear but if that’s true good if they’re all voted me then nasty.. but I don’t want to vote Dani and I definitely don’t want to vote Scott..so that kinda leads to Michael which I don’t want to vote either but I have reasons: the main reason is the past couple of challenges he’s done the worst in, and if we need to survive incase there’s no swap or merge then we need all the strong members here.

I feel a bigger bond with Dani and Scott vs Michael who I feel is cool but I don’t feel we’re clicking on a better level. And it’s not even a tribe thing it’s literallt what I feel could save us from tribal, and how don’t i know if Dani and Michael won’t vote me out right after Scott leaves? So basically what’s happening is it’s likely going to be a 2-2 on Michael and Scott, and I’m not changing my vote. So I’ll likely go to rocks and lose but that’s ok. I did my best and it could be a stupid move but I don’t wanna risk Dani and Michael voting me out if we lost again, because I’d hope Dani wouldn’t but you never know. So rocks here we come!

Malik is voted out 3-1.

[tumblunni]

Also HELL YES FOR CASUAL PLAYER LOVE

Im so happy to hear that Let's Go is indeed INTENTIONALLY designed to be "more casual" and everything these super anti-casual conpetitive players are complaining about was intentionalky put in there cos the developers legit think its better. THANK YOU!

i dunno man it just seems like we NEVER heae about the developers doing anything for the fans unless its enablibg competitive play or iv breeding or whatever. Like those are the only definitions of "fans" that interviewers seem to care about. And Its hard to know what the developers really think when the questions that are asked leave out a huge componant of the fanbase, yknow?

And uhh.. I mean its just good to specificially know that theyre okay with casual fans existing, like not just "its for kids" but "hey you are not bad if you are an adult who also enjoys the game for its intended appeal points and not for a huge mega complicated mathematical metagame people made up to be 'more mature'". I was really surprised to see that written interview with masuda specifically mentioning IV breeding as the place where conpetitive goes too far and makes the game not fun anymore. "Pokemon wasn't meant to be a game about hatching eggs and nothing else." Like.. Playing competitively itself is not bad, i dont wanna sound like i hate hardcore fans and im a big ol jerk. I admire the dedication because it all seems so super unattainable and mathematically magical to me! Im not into that stuff but i can admire that you have to be a damn genius to achieve all that stuff. BUT i also get what he's saying. Because it sucks when you HAVE to be a damn genius to EVEN START PLAYING! Whenever high level competitive strats become the goddamn baseline it makes competitive completely inaccessable to everyone except the most hardcore of the hardcore, and its like damn man how do you even become that if you have no way to start practising? Iv breeding is so INSANE in retrospect! Like when you think about it, its wild that people even cracked the code for how to game the system and get the highest possible randomized stats for every ridiculously minor thing. Like how the fuck did they even figure out any of this?? And then all the further madness into figuring out how to attain it and how to raise odds of shinys and hidden abilities and how they keep figuring out new ways to do it with every new system each game brings out. And then people will spend friggin LITERAL DAYS OF REAL TIME running up and down the same road in the game, hatching thousands of eggs just to get the one mathematically superior pokemon from a confluence of random events. And this is treated as fuckin REQUIRED to play the game! You can't touch competitive if you dont do it. And these bad sorts of competitive players will try and force this requirement onto other non-competitive parts of the game, and shame casual players for not doing it even though its literally not what they want to play the game for.

Seriously, man! Individual values were just designed to make individual pokemon more random, so the play experience would seem more unique to each run. It was literally invented for a "casual" reason! It just really sucks that they implimented it in a way that had an objective "best" value to get, so people ignored the whole point of "adding personality" and just wanted that one. Tho i mean at least they patched out the early issue where gender and shinyness were linked to these values so you couldnt get certain types of pokemon as the "best" version and it was even more limiting. Glad that GSC didnt have online metagame yet, lol! (Tho it makes it possible for people to more easily predict which pokenon will become Shiny when transferred from rby to gsc, which is neat.)

ANYWAY WHERE WAS I

Oh yeah! I appreciate that each generation of games lately has made it easier to see your IVs and EVs and to get them to their "best" versions, with even the FUCK YEAH feature pf being able to "fix" bad IVs on level 100 pokemon. I carried my Sneasel named Reaper since RSE and he's been completely unuseable for so long and bottlecaps fixed that! Kid me just played the game like he was my starter and i loved him. I didnt know about IVs or EVs, so i took this terribly-statted dude with a bad ability and made him fight all the wrong pokemon because he is my best friend and he needs to win every gym battle and i will buy him lemonades afterward. Also he wore the Blackglasses item forever cos i thougjt itd be cool if you could put accessories on your pokemon. So yeah i did Everything Wrong and thus all the pokemon i actually cared about were made weak and useless by my love and i had to spend 48 hours running down a stupid road to hatch and abandon 1400 new ones just to get one that was "useable". Thanks to bottlecaps, this is no more! Decade old weasel pals can be revived! Tho still it sucks that i hit level 100 before this mon's evolution came out. Alas!

BUT

Like.. Even tho now its slightly less hard to make a "perfect" pokemon its still tedious as hell and really takes you out of the moment and you have to already know beforehand that its necessary. Kids are just gonna blunder in and not even know why they keep losing due to no fault of their own. Adults are gonna also do that. Seriously this isnt a "kiddy fans vs mature fans" or "non fans versus FANS" thing, this is just "fans who have one very specific skill for memorizing a bunch of numbers and steps and enduring hours of boredom doing it vs..people who think that kinda ruins the game". And even if nintendo fully streamlined the process into sonething easy, itd still feel like an unnecessary roadblock in the way of just getting to play the damn game. We really need to add some sort of hardcore/casual or iv breeding/no iv breeding thing to league divisions, as well as the tier lists. This is why im so hyped for the current "Spooky Cup", since it actually seems like a "just for fun" multiplayer experience, and its kinda dumb that we have to rely on nintendo actually programming limitations into a tournement cos the players refuse to allow anyone to just do it normally. I did a big whoop at "no mega stones" and "everyone gets a participation prize even if they lose"! And the limitations being a random event based thing rather than a skill cap! Yay ghost types!! Reminds me of the baby pokemon only tourneys in the n64 games. That was a kind of hardcore challenge that had a bit of creativity to it!

So anyway anyway what i'm getting at...

I'm just happy that the devs are saying "yes this is a casual game with more of what casual players want, and less of those hardcore limitations" and THATS NOT MEANT TO BE A NEGATIVE!! Actual developers sitting on a couch hugging giant pikachu plushies and saying this game is for people who just want a fun game about..well, hugging pikachus! They changed the way you catch pokemon because they wanted it to be more fun. They brought back following pokemon because fun. You get all these new features for your starter because they wanted you to really feel like a kid going on their first pokemon adventure and sharing all these special moments with pikachu! They talked about how the art style was decided upon because it was the closest to "how you imagined it in your head when you played pokemon yellow", and "if it was photorealistic it just wouldnt feel right". They picked eevee for the second option because they actually paid attention to the fans and which pokemon was the second most popular and had a similar "both cute and cool" appeal with all audiences. And they put the most effort into the visuals and the cuteness and making everything just feel like a good and fun adventure that recaptures everything you wanted as a kid playing the first game.

And they just act so unapologetically HAPPY about all these parts of the game! These are their favourite parts! They're the goddamn DEVELOPERS and even they say that they prefer the story and the characters and the relaxing childlike whimsy to the concept of refining gameplay to a ridiculous hardcore perfection and throwing out everything else in pursuit of that. And man, seeing them hugging the big pika and eev plushies in EVERY PROMOTIONAL VIDEO and just enjoying playing their own game so much!! And babbling on about dressing up your pokemon!!

God its just SO GOOD to see this as a fan who's been here since the very beginnibg and is starting to feel quite self concious about being an adult fan who isnt doing it "properly". Like man the pressure of hardcore competotive being the "only right way" started even when i was just 11, like seriously THE AGE THE ACTUAL TRAINERS ARE IN THE GODDAMN GAME. Before you even hit your teens you already got stuck up older kids telling you you were too old to just enjoy a game cos you enjoyed the damn game, noooo you have to make it as unfun as possible and only derive enjoyment from defeating other people. It took me until ORAS to actually even be able to try competitive at all, i found it so overwhelming until they added other methods to EV train. And even then i still felt like the blandness of the preparation outweighed any fun of playing these "higher level" battles. Like sure maybe some people like that stuff but it felt so dissappointing after all these years of being pressured to try it...

Sometimes its just good to enjoy a game cos you legit like the world and characters. Sometimes its just really validating to see the developers talking about enjoying making those things, cos it gives you permission to be less embarrassed about it. Sometimes its good to also see them hugging a hundred dollar giant pikachu while you hug your hundred dollar giant mimikyu. Cos seriously what is the point of being an adult if youre not allowed to buy these adult sized plushies? What kid could ever afford those! Im not letting my childhood dream pass me by just because ~maturity~ when im finally able to slap a fat wad of cash on the table and yell GIVE ME THE BIGGEST CHU

I will embrace all my pure childhood love and enjoy this game of just huggins and nothing else! And i really like this concept for the series, if they continue doing Let's Go as a spinoff so we'd have a set of games appealing to each of the casual and hardcore demographics. I always feel bad complaining about hardcore when really my actual opinion on it is just "its not for me" and im actually only complaining about the rude fans who tell me im not a real fan unless i like their genre of stuff. Dude i was three years old when pokemon came out, i think ive earned my right by seniority to hug a plushie or two! So itd be awesome if hardcore doods could get their super hardcore game too, and we could just argue less cos we'd each be able to enjoy what we enjoy. Tho i mean the main series games already have a pretty clear divide between story/fun being the main game and hardcore competitive being a postgame thing. And yet we still get all this fandom fightibg over "ignore the actual 90% of the game, skip the plotline and only play competitive" apparantly being the "real" way to play it. Like man im worried that attitude is still gonna stick arpund even if they do give us separate games appealing to each side of the fandom?

EHHH WHATEVER! Im just gonna sit here in my corner of casual hugs and work on my self confidence to be able to stop feeling bad about not being someone else's idea of a "real" fan. If real fans can't have pikachu in a little hat, then that is not the life i wanna lead!

LITTLE GODDAMN HAT, MY GUY

[tumblunni]

ALSO TO FIX EXCELLUS

Because tangeants again lol

Recognise that its fuckin stupid and bigoted to expect us to believe someone is a villain INSTANTLY after seeing that they're queer, before they even do anything. Don't spend your entire damn game having the characters go "eww its that disgusting person of ambiguous gender we should kill them because gross" rather than.. Yknow.. "Excellus fuckin murdered those people". Recognise that literally doing this is gonna make your character LESS villainous and MORE sympathetic long before you finally get to goddamn showing them do anything bad except say "ohoho i wanna be a princess". And it'll make bunni REALLY PISSED OFF because nobody wants to feel sad for an asshole murderer yet THAT SADNESS IS FOREVER ENGRAINED IN MY SOUL NOW

Seriously fuckin hell it even made the heroes look less heroic! I felt like Excellus was almost justified in becoming a murdering selfish monster if she spent her entire life being treated that way by both sides in this big good or evil conflict. Why the fuck should she give a shit if she's being degraded? Like FUCKIN OBVIOUSLY murdering people and wanting to conquer a random japanese country as a mad dictator is not a remotely logical reaction to being misgendered. But like they could have changed some stuff and made a perfectly good sympathetic villain who gets manipulated by the bigger bad because of her sad past of being treated like shit and like she feels like this is her only option to be herself. And then maybe you can reignite her hope in the world and her self esteem and moral centre and help her redeem herself and team up with you to take out the real horrible fucks with no sympathetic motives. Instead she's friggin played as THE one who's evil cos she has no sympathetic motive. Like that's her whole Thing, she's supposed to just be selfish and greedy and horrid. Your damn bigotry somehow failed your own story as well as failing all trans people ever!

Or like yknow.. If you want an asshole fuckboi then actually write an asshole fuckboi. Scrubby scrub the trans = bad shit from this plotline and you do indeed have a selfish monster who murders a bunch of innocent people and gets his just desserts. You had a ready made simple character archetype and you were so preoccupied shoving your transphobic screed into your game that you fucked it up!

So yeah i think either make this goofy ohoho trans auntie a good character, make the asshole ohoho bad character a cis man, do both at once, or like even i'm not opposed to having a trans villain exist but like seriously make them a synpathetic villain. If they're the only trans character in the plot its already gonna send a bad message if theyre in the role of "worst most underhanded jerk villain", even if it WASNT also transphobic as fuck. So a sympathic trans villain or adding more LGBT characters so it doesnt seem like this one individual was designed to make a statement on your entire feelings for a minority.

ALSO

like seriously please do not do this stupid thing of mooshing every stereotype together from every LGBT identity and acting like theyre all the same thing?? Like man i fuckin HATE that anime trope that yknow.. The gay man says all this trans stuff cos he's ~just that flambouyant~ Like being a drag queen is what 100% of gay men are, 24/7, and anyone saying theyre a trans woman is just one of those drag queens who's really getting into character. Or just.. I dunno. I cant even wrap my head around what train of logic must have led to that stereotype in the first place! And its so fuckin annoying as a queer person trying to talk about why this is bad queer stereotyping, it just makes me extra sad to straight up not know what pronouns to use for the character so i feel like i'm being just as horrible to them as their creators were. Like man i've only settled on going for "she" for Excellus cos after years of looking into it it does seem like the original japanese was indeed specifically using stereotypes of trans women and not trans men or nonbinary people. Though all languages do seem to call the character male it seems pretty strongly to be a "i believe that trans women are men and can never be women" kind of thing, rathe rthan the character herself calling HERSELF male. She calls herself a woman in both english and japanese, and its just that the english has everyone else use male pronouns for her and added the non-canon "explanation" that she only acts like a trans woman because she has something wrong with her balls. (Ugh!) And in japanese on top of calling herself a woman she also uses feminine (and specifically trans/drag queen coded) variants of "I", and other common speech pattern traits used for negative stereotypes of trans women. Though again we do have other characters calling her a disgusting perverted man instead. Sigh!

Ok ok ALSO BIGGEST FUCKIN FIX! dont draw the character like a horrible distorted cariacature goblin in an entirely different art style to everyone else. Seriously its so annoying how they tried to make you agree with "excellus is disgusting just for acting queer" by LITERALLY DRAWING A DISGUSTING CHARACTER. If you take away the weirdass overdetailed horror movie monster face, there is nothing ugly or even "manly looking" about her! She's just like somebody's perfectly normal chubby aunt or something. You could go out in any street all over the world and see five of her! I hate it cos its almost like psychological manipulation or something? Like i've seen so many lets players who arent bigoted but merely oblivious still agree that excellus is ugly and disgusting and comical because of it, cos all the implications of transphobia/homophobia flew over their heads and all they saw was a character drawn to look monsterous. And just.. This is so common. Its the overwhelming japanese stereotype of trans women. Draw them looking INFINATELY MORE MANLY than the cis male characters. So manly that it really hammers home how "obvious" it is that a man in lipstick or dresses "just looks wrong" and of course there's NO way they could ever pass and ha ha look how deluded they are that they think they look pretty. It's horrid. It really is. Seriously I like to point at Tabitha from Pokemon ORAS for a good counter example, cos he's also an ambiguously transgender character from a game that came out around the same time and by some weird coincidence they look very similar. Except for the literal entire face. The literal entire exact same face, just its drawn hideous and distorted on the one who's supposed to be a negative trans stereotype, and drawn exactly like everyone else on the positive one. And there's not one example in the whole game of anyone calling Tabitha ugly because he looks trans, or even insulting his weight or anything. Same damn character design, just drawn without bias and treated like a human being. I mean seriously right down to them having the small "evil eyes" but with Tabitha he's always drawn with them in a perpetual sort of happy face and then his pose with them looking similar to Excellus is supposed to be a BADASS MOMENT of this comic relief villain showing his worth! And hw literally has red eyes on top of it! His design is even MORE "evil" yet just not drawing it as a stereotype entirely changes the player's perception and he became beloved by many. Whereas with Excellus even the trans people in the audience couldnt relate to her and just felt fuckin sad.

Oh also i guess Excellus is implied to be a trans woman and Tabitha is implied to be a trans man? But i don't think game freak was trying to say anything about trans men being more valid or whatever, cos the first canonical LGBT character of any sort was a trans woman npc in the battle maison. And tabitha being trans isnt really confirmed as clearly as she was. i hope someday theyre able to confirm an LGBT main cast member but until then i will forever hold onto the glimmer of hope that was given to me by Beauty Nova.

Also seriously Tabitha and Excellus both also look EXACTLY LIKE ME IN REAL LIFE so I kinda took Excellus extra hard and latched onto the Tabitha headcanon so much more because it was good healing after all that nonsense. Tho I also did considee nonbinary Tabitha at the time, because his japanese name is a gender neutral one that's merely like 75% female, rather than a 100% feminine one. But then his old RSE design was very masculine so i think maybe a trans man is what they were trying to imply if they did indeed do it on purpose. Anyway i probably would have translated his name as Ashley cos it has the same "technically neutral but more popular with girls" aesthetic while also keeping the same fire pun as Homura. I have no idea how on earth Tabitha is supposed to be a joke, honestly. Tho i meam maybe he's just the one type specialist on the entire poke-earth who doesnt have a joke name?

ANYWAY thank you terrible transphobic stupid manga i read today for reminding me that i love Tabitha. And also the developers love Tabitha. And also all the characters in universe love him, like seriously the only difference between the devon dialogue of him and Shelly is that they mention the other scientists nicknamed him tabitabi. And its so cute how seriously they said it too?? Its like "our boss tabitabi,the most feared and respected genius man".

Lovv dat tabb