#ash / para

[pokemontvtime]

Charmander and Trauma (S1E11)

As Ash proceeds on his Pokemon journey, he ends up picking up a lot of new Pokemon friends.

Few are as iconic, though, as his Charmander, who will eventually evolve into Ash's disobedient Charizard.

It's that disobedience that I really want to delve into today, though.

Ash acquires Charmander after finding it abandoned on a rock. Charmander's trainer, Damian, has told it that he will return to pick it up later, even though he has no intentions of doing so.

Charmander is shown to be an exceedingly loyal Pokemon, who continues to wait and hope that Damian will return even when its life is endangered by doing so. Ash, Misty, and Brock venture out in the middle of a fierce storm to rescue Charmander, knowing that if its flame were to go out it would die.

While a night in the Pokemon center brings it back to tip top shape, it is shown to still feel obligated to wait on Damian to return, still having faith that the trainer it cares for will show it the same care in return.

After a confrontation with Team Rocket, Charmander saves Pikachu, and seems to begin to accept that Damian may not be coming back. It seems to consider traveling with Ash and his friends instead, who have so far shown it kindness.

But just when Charmander begins to consider its new reality without Damian, Damian himself shows up and tries to convince Charmander to return with him instead.

Charmander is torn between its old loyalty and the kindness it has experienced with Ash.

When questioned, Damian admits to Charmander that he had not intended to return, and is glad that its period of abandonment has 'strengthened it up,' so that he didn't have to go through the trouble of training it himself.

This, as well as the support of its new friends, seems to seal Charmander's decision, and it refuses to rejoin Damian, sending him packing (with the help of Ash's Pikachu), and joins Ash on his continuing journey.

While this makes for a very heartwarming episode, and a wonderful backstory for the little Charmander, the end of the episode seems to suggest that most of that story won't be returned to, as it's treated very much like an "adventure of the week."

While Damian himself won't return in future episodes, nor will overt references tying it all up, I think you can point to a lot of Charmander's experiences here and understand how it leads narratively into Ash's disobedient Charizard.

Charmander went through a pretty intense trauma, with abandonment and a near-death experience. It was also told pretty explicitly by a trainer it had once trusted that its only useful was based in its power.

In the episode "March of the Exeggutor Squad," (S1E43), Charmander evolves after an intense fight to prevent the extermination of a herd of Exeggutor. Ash's other Pokemon all failed to disrupt the herd, who were subjected to a Hypnosis attack and began marching toward a town center.

It's shown that only Charmander's flames are able to snap them out of their trance, and the weight of the entire situation falls on Charmander. If it fails, a bomb that was planted will go off, and kill the Exeggutor.

Charmander is able to pull of the feat, and the experience triggers its evolution into Charmeleon.

However, right away Charmeleon doesn't seem to show the same characteristics of Charmander, who'd been to this point an obedient, loyal, and generally sweet Pokemon.

In the following episode, "The Problem With Paras," (S1E44), Charmeleon is asked to battle Paras, but to "take it easy" and let Paras have a free win in order to gain battling confidence.

Charmeleon disregards all these orders and tries to battle all-out.

This continues to be a problem, as two episodes later in "Attack of the Prehistoric Pokemon," (S1E46), Charmeleon again refused to obey orders, taking a snooze rather than attempting to battle the attacking fossil Pokemon.

Only an attack by Aerodactyl caused Charmeleon to take an interest in the battle. It evolved into Charizard, seemingly in pure frustration at being unable to follow the flying Aerodactyl.

But Charizard didn't obey Ash either, with its primary goal being to attack the Aerodactyl.

Interestingly, though, Charizard is shown to still care, at least in some form, about Ash. In the resolution to the plot, Jigglypuff sings all the people and Pokemon to sleep, including Aerodactyl. Charizard stays awake just long enough to catch Ash mid-air, and make a safe landing on the ground. Somewhere under that exterior of disobedience, Charizard still cares!

Ash would continue to try and coax Charizard into obeying in future battles, but it would seldom work out. Charizard only seemed to show interest in fighting other Pokemon it percieved as strong, and rarely followed Ash's orders when it did so.

Charizard's disobedience ultimately cost Ash his spot at the Indigo League, where Charizard's refusal to battle saw Charizard disqualified, and Ash out of the tournament.

It wouldn't be until Ash's journeys in the Orange Islands that this attitude changed. In the episode "Charizard Chills," (S2E25), Ash battled with a trainer named Tad, who used a Poliwrath.

Charizard attempted to brute force its way through the battle, disregarding Ash's commands and only using its fire. This went very badly for Charizard, who took a bad hit and ended up frozen in ice by an ice attack.

The Pokemon Charizard was fighting, Poliwrath, was very significant, though I didn't realize this myself until I was doing my own reading on the topic.

Apparently, in the original Japanese broadcast of Charmander's appearance (S1E11), Damian's reason for abandoning Charmander is specifically that it was unable to beat a Poliwag in a battle. Thus, the choice of Poliwrath here is likely a nod to this original piece of lore.

Tad leaves, scolding Ash that he should train his Pokemon better, and Ash frantically works to free Charizard, and spends the entire night sitting up with it. Ash's friends help him to build a fire and bring him blankets, and Ash stays up, rubbing Charizard to try and help warm it up.

Charizard at one point begins to panic, lashing out at Ash's attempts to help, but is too weak to actually put up a fight. Ash doesn't let these attempts deter him, and he continues all through the night, talking soothingly to Charizard. He admits, at one point, that he hasn't always done a good job as a trainer, but doubles down that he wants to continue trying to get better.

Charizard, though Ash doesn't know, can hear Ash's words, and though there isn't a spoken monologue here, it is implied that Charizard takes Ash's words and earnest care to heart, and re-examines how it has been treating Ash up till now.

After this incident, Charizard obeys Ash (though it is still shown to have a sometimes-rebellious spirit), and becomes one of the strongest members of his team.

It's easy to come away from the character development with a pretty surface-level thinking, that Ash finally earned Charizard's trust, and was able to begin using it in battles. This would not be wrong at all, and is definitely a piece of the story that the show is telling.

It's also easy to write off, only a slightly deeper note, that the show was attempting to incorporate mechanics from the video games. In the Pokemon games, if a Pokemon is too high a level (usually determined by the number of badges you've earned), it will refuse to obey you. Charizard may have been simply a way for the show to demonstrate what that looks like in the universe of the show. And I definitely think that is a piece of it as well!

However, I think that Charizard's disobedience also makes sense through the lens of a Pokemon steeped in trauma, who is trying to cope with both the trauma and the continued expectations placed upon it.

Charmander moved quickly past the abandonment by its previous trainer, possibly without really processing that, and trying to take on faith that the same thing wouldn't happen again. It then was shown to become one of Ash's most powerful battlers, possibly reinforcing that its value came from its battle prowess. It also then possibly had its trust further eroded when asked to "take a dive" against Paras.

It's not until the past trauma crops back up in "Charizard Chills," (S2E25) that Charizard processes a lot of this, and is reassured that Ash won't abandon it just because it loses a battle, and that it doesn't have to rely purely on itself. A crucial part of its growth is learning that it can trust Ash to have its back, no matter what, and it's important that Ash demonstrates that he always will! In this way, you could look at Charizard's refusal to battle as a test of boundaries.

I love the entire character arc that Charizard goes through under Ash's care. When I started my rewatch, I got curious if there were any fan theories, or further explanations for Charizard's behavior, and reading different perspectives, and seeing the episodes for myself, really got me passionate about what the series had to say about Charmander's trauma.

I was honestly shocked at the depth there was to be found! I could talk about Pokemon all day, and I think there's still aspects that I didn't cover here, but this hopefully gives an overview of a lot of the plot, and some of the underlying meanings.

Posts for another day, though!

[nimaya07]

I'm back, ever since the concept art for Avatar 3 came out I wanted to do an illustration of Varang, it took me a while because I'm not as good as I would like to be. Here is finally the result of Varang🔥.

[icebluecyanide]

John/Yassen/Alex parallels

Rereading some Snakehead scenes and loving this parallel between John, Yassen, and Alex:

From inside the bungalow, Colonel Mike Abbott watched them go. He had an uneasy feeling in his stomach. He was married with three children, and the eldest was only a few years younger than the boy he had just met. He had been impressed. After all he had been through, Alex had a sort of inner calm. Abbott didn’t doubt that he could look after himself. (Snakehead, p. 45)

“Well, as it turned out, the whole thing was a shambles. It wasn’t John’s fault. Sometimes it just happens that way. But afterwards, at the debriefing, I met him properly for the first time, and you know what I liked most about him? It was how calm he was. We had three agents dead - not ours, thank God. The Czech police were going crazy. And the Museum of East European Folk Art and Antiquities had burnt down. Actually, it wasn’t really a museum, but that’s another story. Your dad wasn’t much older than me and he wasn’t even worried. He didn’t shout at anyone. He never lost his temper. He just got on with it." (Snakehead, p. 187)

He looked up just as a complete stranger shot him in the heart. Yassen didn’t do it quickly. I remember thinking that I’d never seen anyone so relaxed. (Snakehead, p. 200)

All three of them keep their calm even in situations where other people would likely be agitated or nervous. As Ash puts it in the book: "In a way, the two of you and Yassen had a lot in common."

[drachis917]

The trailer for the Pristine Cut only just released and I'm already theorizing: I think the Prisoner's new chapter 3 could be called the Iron Maiden, and I'm getting slight Nightmare vibes so maybe we can get our Skeptic and Paranoid team up??

[duckapus]

Pokemon/WarioWare crossover because why not throw yet another Anime Rewrite AU that I say I'll write a fic for and fully intend to but never do on the pile? (i have issues...)

Five years before the start of the series Delia and Ash find a girl around Ash's age with red eyes lost in a park who can't remember anything about herself except that her name is Ashley. Fallers are a bit more common in this timeline than others (though still pretty rare and not yet well understood) so when the authorities investigate they realize her situation pretty quickly...particularly how near-impossible it would be to get a 5-year-old who seems to be from a world without Pokemon (Fallers typically remember what Pokemon are and can name ones they're familiar with, so the fact that she only refers to them by general terms like "cat" or "bird" and is confused by a lot of their behavior is very telling). Delia, of course, agrees to take her in permanently after they break the news to her (she'd already been looking after Ashley during the investigation because of course she would).

So now Ash has a not-actually-a-twin sister. She still manages to become a witch-in-training since she's still got her massive potential for magic and witchcraft is canonically a thing in the Pokemon Anime. She even manages to summon Red and make him her familiar at seven. She's a bit more outgoing thanks to being raised in the Ketchum household instead of growing up more-or-less alone in that haunted mansion, but at her core she's still the grumpy little witch girl we know and love.

Anyway, she and Ash both plan on challenging the Indigo League, though they're going to travel together at least for their Kanto Journey (...yeah they're definitely gonna stick together even after that 'cause this is still meant to be a canon rewrite), partly because they know ahead of time about the Starter shortage and they figure that as long as at least one of them gets a Pokemon they can help the other catch something on Route 1 so they don't have to wait a month for a new set to be available (what, you really think Oak would've left them in the lurch for a whole year if the shortage had been real and not a Timeline Preservation Measure? though given how big a head start that would give the other trainers (particularly Gary) it still makes sense why 10-year-old Ash acted like it was the end of the world).

Of course, their alarm clock mysteriously breaks and they oversleep and end up with a Pikachu who hates them and an Eevee with absolutely no thoughts in its fluffy little head.

Anyway, things are mostly normal for a while aside from Ashley and Red being along for the ride, up until Power of One, where they encounter Wario. Apparently he ended up in the Pokemon World because he found some sort of magical artifact during one of his treasure hunts. Notably, he isn't Amnesiac like most Fallers, and he's not from the version of the Mushroom World that Ashley originally came from, as evidenced by him recognizing her on-sight even though she would've disappeared before ever meeting him. Anyway, he helps them beat Laurence III, then decides to claim the Hikokyu as spoils of war and fix it up to use as the local WarioWare HQ. So he's settling down in Shamouti for the time being.

Meanwhile, back in the Mushroom world, the WarioWare crew and the main Mario cast are trying to figure out what happened to Wario. They eventually manage to create a pipe that goes between Diamond City and Shamouti at some point midway through Johto...and find out that he ran off to Johto with Melody to challenge their League because he found out that Pokemon Battling, especially official League matches, gets you prize money, and he needed funds for replacement parts to get the Hikokyu up and running. So Mario, Peach, and about half the crew are off to fetch him. They don't finally catch up with him until the Alto Maire incident. Ashley's part of the search party, so she and the AU's main Ashley (and both Reds of course) end up meeting and it's a bit awkward at first. They end up going by Ashley K (for Ketchum of course) and Ashley M (for Mushroom, since she doesn't have a last name and Ashley W would be too clunky to say, plus she wouldn't be caught dead naming herself after Wario) for the sake of convenience (the Reds follow suit, of course).

I also have the idea of having the Hikokyu set up shop in Orre after it's been made skyworthy again and fully converted into a second game studio, then having the WarioWare crew stumble into and run roughshod over Gale of Darkness's plot with their own brand of glorious mayhem while just trying to introduce their games to the fresh new audience the Pokemon World provides.

[mypokemonscreencaps]

[shizy-chan]

Mis niños hermosos 🥹🥹 como los amo Dios mío 🥲💕

[liddell-fish]

I don't know what it is but the gore in Though You May Burn To Ash looks so yummy.

[balladetto]

@gloryseized ( Link )

     In the end, the monster falls before he can.

     Which has to be a given, he feels, considering everything about him and everything about here — dying can't exactly be an option when there's so much to be fixed — though Link'd be lying if he said this wasn't a close call.

     He's recovering from a roll when it happens, having sliced through another one of its legs and looking to stick its eye full of arrows as it wobbles to adjust to a new heft. His bow is raised and drawn, aiming just as it aims for him with that strange light and those strange sounds, but something else strikes it before he can loose his shot. There's an explosion of bright blue that he yelps and has to shut his eyes at — dazzling and pretty even from behind his eyelids in the way he's thought only light arrows can be.

     Its noises reach a grinding, squealing peak. Like a death rattle, holding for one heartbeat; two heartbeats; three-four-five. Then his breaths are the only things he can hear in the silence that follows, big and heaving in his chest.

     Okay. That— yeah, okay.

     Taking stock comes first — and instinctively. The monster's done for. He's more tired than he'd like for it. He's got aches he can live with and scuffs he can brush off. There's a soreness to his skin that may speak of burns, but he's got potions. There's a tremor in his hands that gets worse the tighter he grips his bow, but that's just relief. Someone helped him.

     Someone helped him.

     ...Huh.

[lowder-the-koopa]

Weekly Questions #17

Rules:

No Pokémon he has caught or had ownership from any of these lists 1, 2, 3, and 4. This excludes Pokémon he used temporarily, were owned by other people, or were caught for catching contests.

No Legendary, Mythical, Ultra Beast, or Paradox Pokémon.

This will only be done up to Gen 9.

Remember, this all for fun and not meant to be taken seriously.

[emaginations]

I THOUGHT OF TWO GOOD TITLE OPTIONS FOR MY ROTTMNT FANFIC FINALLY

IT ONLY TOOK TWO MONTHs

[aci25]

Burning Ashes: Puerto Rican Voices

For over two decades the AES coal in the Southeast coast of Puerto Rico generated 800 tons of toxic ash a day that blew into residents' homes and leached into the groundwater. Residents in the surrounding communities of Salinas, Guayama, and Peñuelas have experienced rare skin diseases and climbing cancer rates are on the rise. A group of cancer patients now struggles to close the coal plant and obtain accountability.

Directed by Kique Cubero García

[valkyrietookmoved]

So you are a... Tomato disliker huh (writes things in notebook) are you sure you havent found the right ones yet

Yes I am sure... I can take some chunks in like... Sauces and stuff bit raw or just cooked I cannot take it. Not so long ago during the summer I ordered a hamburger with cherry tomato in it (like kinda big one) and I was like "it's been a while since I've had any tomatoes... Maybe I'll like it now..." And I almost vomited at the taste and texture I just can't take it </3

[themarissaharrison]

Ashes to Ashes | Self Para

mentions: @nsloanefms / delilah daniels trigger warning(s): fire / loss / drinking

The nights alone were always the worst. She was glad, happy even, that Nicola was finally doing what made her heart happy - what fired up her passion and sense of self, of duty. But the days when she would have to work late, into the night, through the night... They were hard. Lonely. Right now? Scary. She kept those feelings to herself, as much as she could, because she didn’t want to worry the older woman. Nic hadn’t been taking everything going on too well, blame and guilt flooding her system after promising Viv lessons, and never being able to deliver them. The feeling that she couldn’t escape the dark, poisonous clutches of death - that she was cursed with losing everyone that meant anything... And though she never said it, she knew fear sat heavily on Nicola’s chest. She knew the thought of the killer seperating them forever ran through her mind frequently... She knew because the same thought ran through her own. She knew because it was what was on her mind right now as she sat out on the balcony, eyes on the stars, knees pulled into chest and cardigan wrapped around like a warm hug.

“At the end of the day, I will always come home to you.” 

Marissa was a pessimist at best, and a self destructive hurricane at worst. So, naturally, those words that Nicola had once said to her circulated her mind in doubt, not comfort. At this point, what would she do if that promise was broken? She had promised herself that she would never get into this situation again - that she wouldn’t put her heart, her soul, her sanity in the palm of someone else’s hand. Yet, here she was. Her life, in the space of just a few months, for better or worse, now started and stopped with the firefighter. She loved her more than she had the words to express, unable to go much longer than a few hours without the other brushing past her thoughts, often bringing a gentle smile to her features.

As she looked up into the sky, her mind moved to the last person who made her feel like this - to Delilah. Her heart sank as she thought about the blonde, as she tried her best to recall the way she used to smile and laugh but could barely hear it properly anymore, as if the laugh was coming from behind closed doors - distant, dampened. 

“I’m not leaving this time, I promise.”

That was one of the last things Delilah had said to her before leaving for good. The similarity to Nicola’s promise was eery, making it difficult to not necessarily not trust Nic’s word, but to believe the universe will allow the promise to be kept. She wondered whether Delilah was up there somewhere in the stars, looking over her, bullying the universe into finally giving her a break. Riss sighed, reaching down beside the chair and picking up the glass of wine, bringing it to her lips for a drink. She’d been doing a lot more of that lately - suppressing everything with alcohol. It was easier that way.

She didn’t know how much time passed by as she sat there drinking, thinking. She didn’t know at what point she spaced out from reality, but she clearly did. Sirens brought her back, the sound of fire engines rushing past and, for some reason, she knew... She knew where they were headed. She stumbled to bring herself to a stand, red wine knocked over, spilling out onto the white fabric on the chair. Riss didn’t notice. She was already inside, feet slamming into boots, arms pushing into coat, hands grabbing keys. She rushed out the backdoor and onto the beach. And that’s when she saw it. 

The flames soared up into the night sky, the dark water reflecting the amber blaze. Her home, alight. Before she even knew what she was doing, she was running. Sand kicked up behind her, as she got closer and closer to the inferno. She fell a few times, a mixture of the darkness obsuring objects in the sand and the two bottles of wine she’d already drank tonight. But she kept pulling herself up and she kept running until she arrived on her strip of the beach, and as if perfectly timed, the moment she took a step towards her home, the pressure inside smashed through the bottom floor windows, glass shattering and flames poured out and rolled upwards to the night sky. It was too late. Her home was gone. Everything she had held dear... The last things she had of Delilah’s... Gone. She had moved in with Nic a week or so ago, but she’d decided to keep most of her belongings here... They were supposed to be save.

Marissa fell to her knees, chest heavily rising and falling as tears streamed down her cheeks. She screamed. It was the type of scream that would pierce the ears of anyone around to hear it, the type that one only makes when their entire world is collapsing in on itself. Hands gripped her own shirt as she felt a thousand knives lodge into her heart, as the weight of a million losses tied itself around it and pulled it into the ground. Everything was gone. Delilah was gone.

Crippled over, Riss struggled to catch a breath as tears poured out onto the sand. Little did she know, just a few hundred meters in front of her, Nicola was also struggling to breathe. Little did she know, the fire didn’t threaten to just take the reminiscence of her old lover, but the life of her current. It was probably best she didn’t know what was really happening inside, that she couldn’t hear the calls to Nicola from the other firefighters. If she knew, if she’d heard the firefighters calls, she wouldn’t have thought twice about walking into the flames. But she didn’t know. 

And she didn’t know how long she stayed there on her knees, watching her life burn away, before someone found her. But at some point, a blanket was draped over her shoulders. But at some point, the arms of another wrapped around her. But at some point, a voice told her it was going to be okay. 

But nothing was okay, and nothing was ever going to be okay again. Everything was gone.

[obscure-nexus]

It's my children compared to their child selves! Vin used to be so prim and proper, Lyra so nerdy, and Ash so tomboyish! <3

Picrew link

[mypokemonscreencaps]