#I'll say that pokemon black has been my favorite game since I first played it as a kid 11 years ago

[pokecraftking]

Oh my god Tears of the Kingdom might just be my new favorite game of all time...

[differenteagletragedy]

More Our Life headcannons

-- Cove went through a pretty intense Pokemon obsession when he was a kid, like 10 or 11. Played the video games, collected cards, watched the show, everything. He always picks a water starter. Squirtle is his favorite of all time, and he gets a little bummed when he evolves it.

-- During this phase, he wanted to go as Ash for Halloween. He wanted you to do a matching costume and he was Very Excited about it. If you didn't get as into it, he at least made you watch the show with him some.

You: Ok, I'll be Brock/Misty.

Cove: What? No, you'll be Pikachu.

Cove: *smug grin* I choose you.

-- Even if you end up married with a bunch of kids, together for decades, he will still never believe he pulled off that line.

-- If this is too much Pokemon for you, that's ok, this one is for me.

-- BAXTER WITH A BUZZCUT

-- By the time he decided he was done with the black and white hair, he'd been just bleaching the hell out of it for years (it is also my belief that he would literally rather drop dead than have his roots show at this time in his life). He went to his stylist and asked to go all black, but his hair was just fried and that's a whole process, so they convinced him to just buzz it off and start fresh since he doesn't wear his hair super long anyway.

-- He was hesitant, but hoped it might give him a fresh start (it did not). He never kept it that short, but he did feel like a bit of a bad boy while he had it.

-- Derek's parents eventually apologized to him for how much they put on him as a kid. Like a formal, sincere apology. It was intense, everybody cried. He tried to shrug it off at first, saying he didn't mind and it wasn't a big deal, but his parents wouldn't let it go. It was a very cathartic moment for the Suarez family.

-- Cove can't cook or bake, but he can make a mean milkshake.

-- Baxter has a dermatologist that he sees on a very regular basis because he gets nervous about his moles. He always carries sunscreen.

-- I've said before that Derek can fix anything, but seriously, anything. Not just cars or leaky faucets or whatever, like computers and stuff too. If you have something that isn't working, nine times out of ten he can fix it.

[sharpscion]

TOA anniversary munday!

Celebrating TOA and the people who contribute to make our group what it is. Repost, don't reblog. Only fill in what you feel comfortable sharing! Happy anniversary, TOA! Here's to many more years spent together.

Name: Cody

Pronouns: he/him

Birthday (no year): October 16th

Where are you from? What is your time zone? CST

Roleplay experience: Ugh idk man like 6 years or something now

Got any pets? A cat named Laurie

Favorite time of year: Fall because it's cold but not like you're gonna die cold

Some interests and things you like: I love to sit and listen to a vinyl while reading some kind of book or manga. I also like to screech in my car to songs that I like a lot!

Some fun facts & trivia about you: I'll listen to one song over and over again for like 5 months until I get bored of it. I have an odd amount of knowledge about old music and WILL share it with you without hesitation. I'm also a crazy TOA prophet because whoever I tweet about ends up joining TOA like a week after.

What non-Fire Emblem games do you play? I play a lot of Final Fantasy games and also League of Legends. I've played SO many games though, it's hard to keep count.

Favorite Pokemon type & Pokemon: I really like grass and psychic types! My favorite pokemon is Musharna and it has been since N gave her to me back in black and white!

How did you get into Fire Emblem? I got the game for my birthday along with a gameboy way back when I was about 7-8 years old. That game was Binding Blade and I've been riding that wave ever since.

What Fire Emblem games have you played? I have played through almost all of them excluding ALL of fates and the tellius games.

First Fire Emblem game: Binding Blade

Favorite Fire Emblem game: Genealogy of the Holy War

Any Fire Emblem crushes? AUGH MAN- L'arachel honestly...

If you’ve played the following games, who was your first S support? Miss Olivia von Fire Emblem

Favorite Fire Emblem class: AUGH PALADIN!!!

If you were a Fire Emblem character, what would be your class? Sage honestly

If you were a Three Houses character, what would be your affiliation? Golden Deer, easily!

If you were an Engage character, which Emblem would you Engage with? Eirika and Ephraim this was not even a question I had to think about

How did you find TOA? Well it was first mentioned to me by N a year or so before I actually joined! I was really wanting to get back into the FE scene and so I thought this might be a good start.

Current TOA muses: Scáthach, Ephraim, Eliwood

Who was your first TOA muse? If you don’t have them anymore, could you see yourself picking them up again? Male Robin! It's probably unlikely... I love him to death but he's easily my oldest fire emblem muse and he is VERY tired.

Have you had any other TOA muses? Quanathan my beloved

Do you think you have a type of character you gravitate towards? I KNOW I HAVE A TYPE I GRAVITATE TO! I never really knew this about myself until TOA, but I seem to gravitate towards knights the most. There is just something about the kind of devotion a knight feels, and how that alters their entire existence.

What do you believe you enjoy writing the most? I typically really enjoy getting into the gritty of things while I'm writing. Explaining emotion and action, why a character is the way they are. I find this most fun with another muse who has close connections to mine.

Favorite TOA-related memory: I think my favorite moment might be when Soji and I reconnected after 10 minutes of me being in this server. We had interacted one time in indie but she had always been on my mind because of how exceptional her writing is. Turns out she remembered me too, and now we're besties and going to cons together!

How do you pronounce TOA?: I usually just say the letters themselves because I'm extra like that.

Got any delusions that didn’t see the light of day in TOA that you’d like to share? WELL LET'S SEE ahem Astram, Noah, Finn, Sonya, Sain, and so so so so so many more that I can't even think about right at this moment.

[verycharismaticdragon]

Got tagged by @katie-altman to...

Shuffle your 'On Repeat' spotify playlist and list the first 10 songs that play! (Feel free to adapt to whatever "liked/played recently" version of things you have on something Not Spotify as needed)

...and spent some time bluescreening over which of my playlists to use, as I'm very old man about my music and all my playlists are "a bunch of mp3s in a folder". Went with my background-sound-for-drawing one in the end, which is *checks player* 1003 tracks in total. (And yet somehow almost half of this is music from my gacha games... many questions for my player's shuffle algorithm now.) Anyhow...

Roselia - BLACK SHOUT - music from my gacha games #1. Tho Roselia are genuinely good! I like some of their tracks more than others but I don't remember a single one thats a total miss.

Pokemon (Japanese)OP3 - OK! - everyone whos been here since my pokemon phase is being SO brave by staying up to now tbh...

RAISE A SUILEN - EXIST - music from my gacha games #2. If Roselia never misses, RAS just has an entire discography of bangers.

Kaleida - Think - y'know, I have no idea when or why this got into my playlist. it slaps tho.

Photon Maiden - Be with the world - music from my gacha games #3. Photon is kinda hit or miss for me, and this one is on the eh side tbh. From the top of my head, Into the Storm and 4 Challenges are the ones I really liked

Hozier - Take Me To Church - oh a classic!! link is the exact performance that came up in my playlist btw; i rarely enjoy live recordings but this one is. yum

The Machinist - No Peace - I completely forgot this song but its very good!!! due to the special wiring of my brain i find it nice and relaxing, but ymmv on the death metal screams

Florence + The Machine - No Light, No Light - oh, hadn't heard this one in a while... it still fucks

Toby Fox - Spider Dance - i feel the need to clarify that i never played undertale. the ost just crawled into my computer on its own i think

Afterglow - Redo (cover) - music from my gacha games #4! Listen I won't say I love all of AG's songs but Ran is my favorite vocalist in the game so. Like her va's voice is so good its literally so good and pleasant to the ear!!...

I'll tag uh.... @fismoll7secinv @evugh-draws @overthinkersatelier @lingbinghua @crayuu @annaisu if any of ya are up to it!

[ultraternative]

Why pokemon fans should not and do not want gen 5 remakes: an essay

I said I would do it, so here I am. I'll put it under a read more just because it'll be a long one and I don't want to fill your screen without your permission. That being said, let's begin.

As I'm sure many people know, the fifth generation of pokemon games, those being black & white and their sequels, are fan favorites and beloved by many. In fact, black 2 was my second ever pokemon game, so I'm no stranger to the magic it made people feel when they played it. It was ambitious, exciting, and completely new, so I understand people wanting to go back and live it for the first time again completely revamped and with a new coat of polish.

But that's not what this is about. I'm here arguing for the opposite, and why I think it would never work.

Remakes: an underlying problem

Yes, pokemon is no stranger to doing remakes of their games. It's been around since gen 3, with firered and leafgreen, and has been going right up until not too long ago in gen 8, with brilliant diamond and shining pearl. And I understand that it's to let players newer to the franchise play older games on recent hardware, but sometimes it's hard to stay faithful to the original while introducing new mechanics to keep old players interested.

Take for instance, omega ruby and alpha sapphire. Those games were done in a way that kept the spirit of gen 3 while having the new mechanics of mega evolution and such from gen 6. And it worked, in my opinion. But then we move on to brilliant diamond and shining pearl. Maybe it's because it was outsourced to a different development studio, or maybe it's because they wanted to be too faithful to gen 4 on a new gen console, but it didn't have the same impact as the original games. And the only new things they added was fairy type existing and a revamp of the underground, pre-post-game of course. And maybe I'm biased, but the let's go games don't appeal to me because I never got into pokemon go, and the catch mechanic is entirely based on that.

Realistically, what could we expect?

Think about it. Each remake was built in the style of its most recent generation. So if we take that and translate it over to today, we could theorize the region of unova to be a semi-open world 3d environment, letting players explore the world before moving to the next goal. But that's not the spirit of gen 5. The games were fairly railroady, putting you on a path and making you stick to it. But it also had moments like the bridge leading to castelia city being a bit overly long but mesmerizing to experience that first time. The pixel sprite of your character walking along this massive structure as the camera shifts to show off the landscape, making it feel as though you were going on an adventure just as big. How would you translate that to full 3d? How could they capture that same feeling?

Because I don't think it's possible in the current day.

The number 2 and a time skip

Yeah, this is another thing I want to bring up. After the events of black and white, the characters move on with their lives and live peacefully for a while. Then the events of black 2 and white 2 happen. Unlike every other pokemon game*, gen 5 is a canonical 2 part story. Team plasma gets up to shenanigans twice there, and a different kid has to beat them up each time. And if they really want to do remakes of gen 5, I feel they would need to incorporate both the first and second games into the same game to keep the story flow consistent and so fans don't have to deal with buying another game to continue the narrative again.

Some unaware people might say "Well what about the ultra sun and ultra moon games? Aren't those continuing the narrative from the first of those games?" No, they don't. It's roughly the same story, set at basically the same time. It's like an alternate universe at that point. It's not the same.

And I know someone is gonna bring it up, so I will address it here too. I am aware that the events of gold and silver take place after the events of red and blue. However, I am arguing that since they are different generations, they do not fit in the point I am trying to make. Black and white had direct sequels in the same generation, and if they get remakes those should be incorporated. But they won't, because they don't want people getting more games in their game.

A reasonable alternative

The whole reason I started this rant was because I saw an article saying something about players noticing the names of the bike colors in gen 8 could be the names of the gen 5 remakes, and they latched onto that pretty hard. And it also mentioned that they made that connection when the game came out, long before even the gen 4 remakes, and they just wanted to bring it back up for some reason. And I seriously doubt they would tease a game that far in advance, all things considered. I think it was just some cool names for cool decals.

But another article I didn't read said something about a potential legends style game for unova, which I think would be perfectly okay. Since it was established in legends arceus that it's very clearly a prequel to explore the origins of a region, I think it's a better plan to make that game over a glorified port that can't capture the magic of the original.

(Also I would be fine with just a straight port of gen 5 no changes but bundle the first and second games together)

Closing remarks AKA the tl;dr

Just give us legends unova. Don't bother with black & white remakes. It wouldn't be the same and they wouldn't bundle the sequels with them either.

Thanks for reading.

[smilepal]

About me meme

Thanks for tagging me, @gloryride! 💖💖 Nickname: Liv/Smilepal online, irl it's Liv or Olivia. Zodiac: Leo Height: 165cm/5'5 Last movie I saw: Watched Frozen 2 with some friends, who managed to make a drinking game out of it--I didn't partake but it was entertaining to watch all the same. Also got to hear each song turned into a drunken sing-along. You just get used to it after a while when your friends are all former theater nerds. Everything can be made into a song if you try hard enough. Last thing I googled: "Documentaries everyone should watch"--sick at home with a cold rn, and I've been looking for some to binge-watch. It's hard becuase I'm really picky about the narrators and if they sound vaguely irritating, I can't watch them 😂

Favorite musician: Just one? That's really hard to pick, and my music taste is definitely a little eclectic, so I'll go with composers instead--easier to narrow down. Alexandre Desplat and Abel Korzeniowski are two I really adore and Martin Phipps is another favorite. The latter did the soundtracks for the Crown, and they're lovely--I like them for studying when I need background noise. Song stuck in my head: I Don't Care, Fall Out Boy. I went to one of their concerts recently and it's been stuck in my head since (along with This Ain't A Scene, It's An Arms Race). Other blogs: Don't have one, I've thought about it, but one is already hard to stay on top of and I have classes starting soon. So I definitely don't need any more distractions 😅 Blogs Following: 150-ish? I should probably go through those pretty soon and pare out some of the really inactive ones.

Amount of sleep: It depends on whether I'm in classes or on break, but generally speaking not enough. I was averaging 4-5 when I was working in a bakery/trying to juggle classes and now it's more like 6-7. Someday I'll maybe get 8-9 (I hope--I'm bad at sleep though, especially when I'd rather be gaming or talking to people on Discord). Lucky Number: 9 What I’m wearing: Red sleep shorts and a tank top that says "exercise your demons" with a little demon stretching on the front of it--it's a lazy sick day on the couch/working from home so not putting too much effort into it. Dream Job: Archivist or curator for a big museum or archive. I'd love something that allows me to work with art/history, and gives me the opportunity to travel--and maybe get some writing in there too. It's something I feel passionately about, and being able to make a living doing it would be even better~ Dream Trip: Oh man, there are so many places. Ireland/the UK is on my list--so many cool places to visit (castles please) and manuscripts to look at! And a lot of pretty nature too. Or places like Greece/Spain/France--so much cool history, and architecture (and the very good food is definitely a bonus). If we're talking inside the US, I'd love to explore the East Coast a bit more and visit some of the national parks--most of my visits there have been in the cities, and I'd like to do some more hiking. The west coast (Washington/British Columbia/Alaska) is also on my list for the same reason. Anywhere I can explore and take pretty pictures, really.

Languages: English and (terrible) Spanish. Probably going to be auditing classes for Latin/Ancient Greek in the future to help with my degree. Favorite Food: Mm it's hard to pick but I'm a sucker for anything sweet. I love a cup of coffee with biscotti or a shortbread cookie, or any sort of pastry with cream and fruit. On the more savory side, curries are one of my go-tos, especially Thai curry. Favorite Song: I definitely cannot pick just one, but my favorite genre lately has been Blues/Blues-Rock so Black Keys has been one I've been listening to a lot of. Barnes Courtney too. Random Fact: One of the first video games I've ever played was Bomberman Tournament, followed by Pokemon Silver. One of my older cousins had a gameboy he'd let me play, so that's definitely how it started. The soundtracks from those are still so nostalgic 💖 Also have good memories of watching family play the original version of OOT, or Super Mario World on the SNES (and giving me a controller so I'd feel included). The hobby definitely started young 😅 but it's definitely still one of my favorite things to do with friends. Describe yourself as an aesthetic thing: Hard to describe? Low-key goth/artsy probably, but still comfy. I love slouchy beanies and cozy scarves and oversized flannels, and long, drapy sweaters, or overshirts. Lots of black, reds and gray 💖 Leather jackets, and boots too 👌

Thanks for asking!! This was so fun 🥰🥰🥰

Tagging: @onlymeandlife @billlybutcher @faepunkprince @rindemption @saintsofvoid @katsigian @breezypunk @scarecrowshindig @heywoodvirgin @visixv @kerrybearodyne @darkendkurai @squintingneoneyes and @caffeinatedrogue/anyone else who sees it and wants to try 💖