#if anyone wants to add on I think itd be neat if it was sort of a collaborative thing Cause man I am Insane

[kiwibirdlafayette]

MIANITE AND LIFE SERIES? oh please,,, please tell me holy shit im VERY normal abt that idea (im lying)

YESSSSSS I AM SO. I AM SO NORMAL (biggest liar)

I'm still sorta workin on the story plot wise but basically I imagine it as like the lifers are brought into like a semi-reset realm of Mianite under the guise that it's supposed to be like a regular life series (but its not 👀!) Ianite's back to being imprisoned and maybe there's also some other underlying happenings Watcher related or not idk haha

(the god followings i mention later on were based off @ranababamboo , they made some awesome art for this crossover u should totes go check out :D)

I think it'd be funny if theyre still greeted by a version of Dec (or maybe Pix or Iskall would make a funky cool prist :Oc) and are introduced to the mechanic of the game- It works similar to Secret Life where they're all given a set of tasks; One from Mia, Dia and Ianite, and based on how they go about the tasks each session, it leads into them forming factions (aka the god teams) with Lizzie starting off with Mianite and later finding evidence of a Marthanite and BigB doin his funky backrooms things (he's set to follow the World Historian how he gets there I'm not sure but if anyone wants to add on feel free! /nf)

Tiem Reester isn't present but I think it'd be interesting if there's like traces of them (implying this takes place post-s2 but funky multiverse relative universe things hehe) I have plans for Jordan and Tom specifically in linking this to their hardcore series from last year I affectionately named Linked Life bc of the whole "if we all die the server resets" but ye. ye ;]c

I imagine tons of shenanigans ensue ofc from both just them all bein the silly goofys they are, and then as they start to form their factions (maybe both by god followings but also if the factions are mix of the different gods too would be interesting to see... Like Mounders with two dianitees (pearl n joel) a mianitee (bdubs) and an ianitee (mumbo) for example👀 As the sessions go on the tasks become more interesting/offputting or odd that are maybe more lore related, like one big one I keep coming back to is Ianite sending Mumbo to the S1 skycage via a book only given to him with a chest of redstone supplies to make a flying machine

How much the gods appear kinda varies, I've already half written this bit that Scott, Tango and Mumbo are the first to see a physical form of Ianite after a redstone-filled night of building and Pearl becoming Dianite's champion so yeyeyeeyeyeeee!!! :D

[dahniwitchoflight]

Homesquared Chapter 13

Oh jesus it’s the clown funeral

oh wow getting Jake to hold Annie’s leash, cmon Jake don’t be complicit in this

Interesting turn of phrase calling Gamzee a “Purple Prince” though

does kinda suck to see how far Jane has fallen though

like oh man, saying only humans were blessed from birth with the ideal of moral fortitude, OOF

“ of the sword of justice that hangs over us all- “

Afraid of your own Sword of Damocles there Janey?

Could it be that you Know deep down that you are expensing the cost of your happiness on the misery of others? and That someone Just might one day Call you out on it?

and like, they couldn’t have made it clearer how hypocritical Jane’s being, she’s literally got Annie on a collar not unfamiliar to a tiara she herself once had

Dirk calls Annie Little Red as well, hah

she seems more Wolf than Riding Hood though

Does seem to solidify her “color” as being that maroony red though like a previous panel implied with the cloths in Harry’s sewing room 

Now though

here’s a thing

Homesquared is undoubtable taking place in a realm of Dubious Canonicity and Reality

and Jake English proper as a Hope player, already had a good amount of potential sway over what was “Real” or “Not Real” in Proper Canon, if he’d been able to get to the core of those powers

Brain Ghost Dirk, is very much not real

but here, he’s as real as anything else is to Jake

I imagine the amount of “sway” necessary to make something “Real” or “Imagined” is a much smaller barrier on this side of the canon than back in the comic

So who’s to say Brain Ghost Dirk will Stay “Imaginary”?

Not saying it will happen, but itd be an interesting crossing of barriers of the suspension of disbelief and well, “Yiffany” exists and I seem to be accepting her deluded origins just fine

who’s to say I won’t accept Brain Ghost Dirk becoming a “real” Dirk if Homesquared decides it thus?

Where is my jump rope line of suspended disbelief truly lay? Even I don’t really know to be honest

Anyway, Get her! Sic Jane Yiffany!

no don’t kick the casket leave the corpse where it is

“JANE: For Gamzee Makara taught us that even the most loathsome degenerate can take their place in society.

JANE: All they need is the right redemption arc - !”

OH MAN. IS THAT WHY JANE TOLERATED GAMZEE????

it just hit me

If even the most Horrid of Evil person, can find a way to “Justify” themselves

Does Jane think she might have the power to immunize herself from a Just Death if she just Justifies her actions hard enough through whatever sort of imagined redemption arc???

Is she attempting to rules lawyering her immortality? Like, if reality is the sum of wills then if enough people Justify her as Good than she won’t have to suffer the Just Death she inevitably fears so much??

Oh man, no that makes so much sense for her to do, she’s always been avoidant or downplaying of personal consequences, and Death is the One Big Personal Consequence for her, thematically it works as well since She’s a Maid of Life, her game function IS a “get out of death” free card

but for it to work, for herself to be Justified, she has to push the idea that Anyone can be justified, she knows if she draws a line anywhere, shed be on the wrong side of the line

No wonder Jane feels the need to slather herself in all of her good deeds, gotta cover up all the bad she knows she’s done

What IS funny though is the idea that that’s the reason we keep having to suffer to through the appearance of Gamzee constantly in Homesquared even after his death

because he managed to get just enough Wills on his side convinced he was justified enough to keep being relevant, like calliope and somehow, inconceivably, millions of unnamed nobodies on earth C, the input of their wills, even small individually, adds up grain of sand after grain of sand, it IS Their Earth C afterall, they live in it, and if they all want to pity the clown man who’s to say they can’t?

And Annie basically is just exceptionally strong willed on a personal level

super neat, nice angle on Jane I didn’t think to consider, and I will laugh my ass off if I’m right about Gamzee

[cielospeaks]

imaginary numbers event review!

Story- 6/10. eh.... idk? its not... bad but im not into it either. it didnt really add anything new or interesting. screentime of the nemolings is cute, but we already see them a lot in the main story. nemo being playable is super nice! (tho im a little... dampened due to him not coming home... rip my quartz). the foreigner story/lore i dont rlly have any interest in, its less a personal dislike on a moral level and more just im not into that sort of thing. so i cant rlly give it any lower rating, but not really any higher either.

Free servant- n/a. no free servant pien. but tbh no free servant imo is better than a free servant whos an awful character id want to avoid at all costs (not that there was anyone like that involved in this one... but still im wary)

Gacha servant- 7/10. ofc u know my feelings on nemo rip. pls come home eventually! gogh is ok, i wasnt super into the designs, but i dont dislike her as a person, and i actually like the curveball spoilers related to her, its something unique and neat/interesting. but still only rolling on nemo side (trying to only roll on nemo side) was a bit of a downer, both for waiting and for the actual rolls. rip. the ces arent anything amazing either, but thats pretty normal.

Event gameplay- 6/10. a little annoying to figure out at first, but def not as bad as the grail front or the accursed board game one. its a little cute/funny launching okki and the others out, and seeing the nemolings’ dialogue for them is cute too! the actual fights are ok.... a little gimmicky a la guda4 (which i didnt like) but not the worst? def not as bad as like... the rerun fights of like... cf or something. only had to quartz on the final boss, and i think thats absolutely fair.

Other- 6/10. idk what other would necessarily be? foreigner lore was more clarified, and given some aspects of it im not necessarily sure beet would be a good fit for one. idk if it was beet but also not beet id rather they be a berserker even if its a more basic option, thats much better than having go take a narrative of “beet only composed well bc of some deity giving him stuff, not his own merits or suffering” like heck that. guifei is cute, i dont rlly know/care the story but shes cute and i like seeing her. no new costumes i think? the myroom is nice! its impossible to not get hyped up w the music playing tho, i kinda prefer calmer myrooms but this one fits and is really cool so i dont mind at all!

Overall- 6/10.

for the first “super hard” event for some time it isnt bad. def better than saber wars 2 or cf (which were some of the more recent ones). however, its not great either. disappointing time in the gacha was definitely a factor tho in my dampening, busy irl schedule as well. tho now that nemo is added in permanent gacha maybe theyll come home to me... eventually? i hope? pls nemo im begging u ; ; ill take you to disneysea if u come home. anyways i think if itd had a lower rarity servant added/free servant/friendpoint servant added it would easily be a 7/10. but i dont actually mind tbh bc it didnt add anyone i didnt like either.

[tumblunni]

BUNNI WATCHES RANDOM OUT OF ORDER SINNOH EPISODES THAT WERE LEFT ON THIS HARD DRIVE I GUESS

Today is diamond and pearl season one episode 28 "Drifloon On The Wind!"

Huh this one had a cold open showing the climactic moment from the end of the episode before it actually happened. Thats the first time i recall the anime doing that? I thougjt initially it was a flashback and i missed the first of a two parter.

Such a cool neat weird premise! A traditional pokemon centre out in the countryside! That adds so much worldbuilding to the setting! They never state it in the english dub but it seems to be a joke on a japanese onsen? (An inn built around hot springs) the archetecture just seems to be very similar, and from what i've seen in anime the "my mum and my mum's mum and my mum's mum's mum worked here" thing is a common trope. The nurse joy family is probably a joke to exaggerate it? Also i loved the scene where Brock is like "wait what the fuck this identical nurse joy is actually old enough to have a daughter ash's age and also OH NO A WEDDING RIIIIIING" And then he thankfully,blissfully GAVE UP and we had one nurse joy centric episode without him being a fuckboi. Seriously, the older you get the less funny you find brock, it sucks that the stuff that's meant to be over the top jokes is now barely more exaggerated than how some dudes act in real life. All you real life brocks, nobody finds you as charming as a fictional goofball! You're just rude! AND REAL BROCKS DONT HAVE A CROAGUNK TO STOP THEM

Anyway i LOVE the cute cottagey aesthetic pokemon center/hotel place! It seems the family mostly treats wild pokemon in the forest and they were actually so surprised to see customers that they thought they were burglars at first! And then daww ash and co help out doing chores to pay them back for the meal and bed even though the family is like 'no dude thats the duty of a pokemon centre'. I think that was a really mature moment for ash? He realized that this pokemon center gets less business than usual ones and figured he should give them a hand. And its so nice to see him being so super excited and wowed by the chores?? Like i mean its CHORES but for him its all so new cos its learning how to work in a pokemon center. Ash's best characrer trait is how his enthusiasm really has no limits, he'll go 100% be the best choremon master ever! Or maybe he was intentionalky being all THIS IS SO FUN because the joy daughters were fighting and he wanted to help cheer them up? In a lot of ways i prefer season 1's bratty egotistical sarcasm ash just cos he had more of a visible personality and you didnt have to sorta sleuth it out like this and always be left wondering whether they really meant to write nice-Ash this way or you're just imagining it. But when nice-Ash has monents like this he's way better and i just wish it hapoened more often and was 100% confirmed, yknow? Most of the time in sinnoh he feels less like nice-ash and more like nothing-ash or changes-every-day-into-whatever-the-plot-requires-him-to-be-ash. But in sun and moon season they have all those more slice of lifey and emltional plots and he's the more nicer ash that i always wanted, and i love it!

Anyway lol im going wildly off topic. Also fun fact i spell "the" wrong so much that "tge" is the first result in my autocorrect now...

Another thing i like is that these Joys seem to be a ghost type specialist family? The kids have a big pile of drifloon cuties and when the gang first arrived they saw a bunch of happy gastlys enjoying their stay at the inn. I like to think maybe all the ghosts they have are "drifty" types like that? I feel that the writers ppicked gastly cos the pokedex entry saying they blow away on the wind like drifloon. Cos this is actually the valley windworks adaptation episode! That was such a nice surprise when it turned out momma joy's husband was the windmill electrician guy!! He looks SO cute in the anime too! He's really chubby and has such a nice round face with a button nose and big anime eyes and a cute turquoise jacket electrician uniforn thing. And he's funny and goofy with his kids and very caribg and cautious about letting them ride home alone in the bad weather, and also he's a GIANT BADASS with an ampharos that thunderpunches the shit out of team rocket and defeats them before ash can even get there lol! Actually they never show what momma joy's main pokemon is? I like to think maybe its a gengar cos thats the most chansey-ish ghost type. And also itd mean the chubby guy has a tall and thin pokemon and his tall and thin wife has a chubby pokemon. Theyre such a cute couple so itd be even cuter!

Oh and i forgot to mention that everyone travels around via drifloon??? Thats so surreal when you consider their pokedex entries saying them carrying children is a bad thing that means theyre kidnapoing them. Like, they domesticated a very dangerous pokemon and now it uses its dangerousness for the powers of good instead! Maybe its just the anime censoring a scary thing or maybe it was intentional to show how badass this momma joy is that she could tame so many spoopy ghosts that everyone thinks are pure evil? Seriously i LOVE how they show this family working to protect and heal the local wild pokemon and them all being super friendly to humans because of it. And it makes sense theyd be ghost tyoe trainers cos if youre befriending all the pokemon in a forest youre bound to find a few lost souls. Mountains and forests are like the deadliest areas for travellers so mountain forests especially so! Everyone's lucky they have this badass family team watching over the area like guardian spirits~

OH SPEAKING OF WHICH

I forgot to mention that the main conflict of the episode is that the joy sisters have a fight because the older sister is a bit overprotective and dismissive of her little sister, causing her to be reckless and get lost trying to "be grown up and help mommy". And in the end the big sister rescues her with the help of the guardian spirit of the hot springs and they reconcile their differences and have big cute hugs! Its all very well written and dramatic actually.i really felt for the older sister's determination to save her, and i felt it was a good case of a conflict where both of them were wrong and both made mistakes and it was just like they coulda avoided those mistakes if they talked it out better. And both of them had a point at the same time, yknow? So it didnt end with either of them losing the argument or anything, it was more like the lesson is just to appreciate your siblings while theyre there and also talk about your problems in clear language with younger kids instead of using excuses like "you just cant, cos im older and i said so".

Oh also SUICUNE!

The super onsen spirit is suicune?? The little sister just casually mentions her biggest best friend in the forest is suicune and is surprised when ash says its a legendary! Wow thats actually a really cool idea? You wouldnt necessarily think of it cos you kinda think of hot springs for the hot part but theyre also a sort of super clean water like how suicune is meant to be able to purify polluted lakes. Maybe it came here to make its nest cos places that are already purified are comforting to someone who wanders the earth blasting stinky water with its powers every day. I like to think maybe this is the same suicune from Generations where they said the legendary beasts are roaming legendaries because humans treated them as demons when they first walked out of the ashes, and now theyre still scared of us even centuries later. Itd be sad if they literally kept running forever, so i like to think they all have a comforting spot to sleep in, somewhere. And for suicune its this little isolated lake in the sinnoh region which used to be super far away from human civilization. But then this family's ancestors built this hospital here and suicune was initially like "oh no my house is ruined" but then it saw that these humans were helping protect tge forest pokemon too. So its like "ah fellow coworkers" and theyre the only humans it trusts. And whenever theyre in trouble it sneakily helps them and dashes away before it can be seen, but one day it got unlucky and the kids saw it and now OH NO it is stuck havibg CUTE TINY FRIENDS! I bet the littlest joy just treats suicune like a big puppy, and this great noble beast of legend plays along because it loves her so much. But if anyone else sees it demeaning itself with a game of fetch, it would be Total Social Death In The Legendaries Club

Anyway there's some cute moments of Emotionally Wise Kind Ash The Best Of All Ashes where he finds the lost little-joy and he tries to cheer her up when she's scared by the storm and keep her dry from the rain. And he has absolute faith that his friends will come to save them both! The only thing i think coukd have maybe made it better is if the big sister joy didnt beleive in suicune? Cos it just ends with her going to ask suicune for help and then suicune helps. There's a lack of tension cos you know suicune could easily resolve all this and you already know suicune is real cos the lil sis says that big sis told her to keep it a secret cos its a Big Deal and Bad People Could Take Suicune Away and stuff. Like it might have worked better if the big sis thought that little sis was just making up rumours to be all boastful, or playing with an imaginary friend. Then her going to ask suicune for help would have symbolized something, yknow? And the audience might have been tense about whether it was real or not.

But even without that added suggestion it was still a great episode! Lots of cuteness, emotionalness, familyness and a few great jokes along the way! Also i just loved them giving unique character designs and a full backstory to these minor npcs from the game. Whenever i play it now i'm totally gonna headcanon this all as true! I mean all we know about the daughter character in the game is that she says "papa youre stinky but i still love you" and that feels very in character for the slightly mischievious little sis joy that we meet in this episode. Though you only see the one daughter and she acts like she hasnt caught a drifloon yet and dreams of seeing it if you can fix the windmill problems so it'll come back. So maybe the game version takes place a little before the anime? Like, that daughter is the engineer dad's daughter from a previous relationship and the older daughter is joy's daughter from a previous relationship. And i dunno maybe lil daughter's hair colour actually is the generic npc brown from the games but she begged her momma to dye it so she could match. Like she just loves her new momma and sister so much!! And now the struggling mountain poke-center is doing better because both parents work difderent jobs now and have enough money combined to be able to keep the family in a better quality of life. And maybe the team galactic incident at the valley windworks got it a bit of publicity as a tourist destination? and after the daughter caught that drifloon everyone who visited was like GOSH ITS SO CUTIE and the dad was like "yes our special windmill attracts these pokemon that are normally only found high up on the mountains, speaking of which my wife runs an inn up there and you can go on pokemon wildlife tours to see them in their natural habitat!" And just I LOVE THESE GUYS AND I WANT THEM TO HAVE ALL THE SUCCESS IN THEIR LIFE!! There is NOTHING better than "hey we're adapting this gane what should we do?" "Add MORE FAMBLY" Like oh my god whoever had that wonderful idea should be promoted!

Thus ends bunni's disjointed review of FAMBLY EPISODE

[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