#no video since i realized i have spoiler pokemon in my party in the video

[shinied]

pecha the shiny pawmo for phase 2 of fancy pattern vivillon!

[eaglefairy]

I posted 1,318 times in 2022

That's 137 more posts than 2021!

87 posts created (7%)

1,231 posts reblogged (93%)

Blogs I reblogged the most:

@phoenixyfriend

@bunjywunjy

@dingdongyouarewrong

@outlaw-unicorn

@chipper-smol

I tagged 1,312 of my posts in 2022

#video - 181 posts

#ace attorney - 129 posts

#art - 101 posts

#tumblr - 91 posts

#pokemon - 79 posts

#xenoposting - 75 posts

#cats - 58 posts

#music - 35 posts

#xenoblade chronicles 3 - 33 posts

#queued - 31 posts

Longest Tag: 139 characters

#sometimes you get murdered in your office. sometimes the god pokemon kidnaps you out of your office and throws you through time and space t

My Top Posts in 2022:

#5

Chapter 5 finale. what the fresh fuck. Back to bullet points because there's a lot to cover here!

LANZ. SENA. ARE WE GOING TO TALK ABOUT THE SUICIDE PLOY. I never thought I'd be thankful for X to appear and yet here we are.

When Mio vanished at the Homecoming I was like "damn they actually killed her" and then when N "killed" Noah I was like "OH SHIT THEY'RE KILLING THEM?!"

When I heard the disembodied voice say "we only need three more months" my immediate first thought was that the party was going to reincarnate at the start of the game, they'd jack a Levnis and/or save Guernica, and we'd resume from there. Tying in to some previous thoughts I had about how the Consuls never really seemed to take the party seriously, making me wonder if all of this has happened before and the reason they aren't worried about the party freeing colonies and stuff is because they already know they'll be defeated

The flashback sequence in the cloudy area (Memory Space lite?) had me well and truly baffled for a while lmao

When Noah pulled out the sword of origin or whatever they're calling it out of the chest of the Ouroboros I literally shrieked "THAT'S A MONADO!!" because it totally is. Look me in the eyes and tell me that's not the exact shape of the Monado II

Also M's ploy with Mio has an extremely Meyneth and Fiora feel to it, at least to me

So Z. I feel like he's...probably not actually Zanza? I don't see how he could be, though I know that 2 already did some retconning to 1 so it's not unthinkable they could do more. But the fact that he's the "creator of this world" and his real name starts with a Z and the fact that Moebius feeds on human souls much like Zanza fed on the Homs as the Bionis makes me extremely suspicious

5 notes - Posted August 17, 2022

#4

There's a lot of things I could say about all of the that that just happened but also there's a bunch of new sidequests that I want to do so instead I'll just say that seeing Eunie say "I'll never understand Moebius even if I live to one hundred" and knowing that the full High Entia lifespan is far longer than that is just...ow

5 notes - Posted August 31, 2022

#3

I was writing up my thoughts on Xenoblade 3 as a whole when I realized that I'd written a mini-essay on why I like the ending and why letting the nations stay together from the start would've been narratively and emotionally unsatisfying. Instead of trying to cram that in with the rest of my thoughts on the game, I figured I'd make it its own post (since this is much more of a meta piece than the rest of my opinions). Spoilers below the cut for the ending!

3 is a heavily thematic game.  One of those themes is that even if the future is uncertain, it’s worth fighting for anyways.  Noah and the party make that choice, and there are two options for what the narrative can do from there: it can reward them narratively for fighting a fight with an uncertain outcome (making the right choice), or it won’t.  They make the right choice, but the narrative doesn’t reward them for it.  I hesitate to call the ending of 3 a “punishment” in any sense, but narratively it somewhat is.  They make the difficult choice to continue fighting against Z, the Moebius, and the endless now, and the consequence of that is that the worlds separate and they have to leave behind the friends they’ve made form opposite nations.  Why would the narrative punish them for making the right choice?

For a second, I’m going to take a tangent here.  In her Trope Talk on magical otherworlds, OSP Red discusses some of the pitfalls of escapist stories, one being that a “happy ending” in a portal fantasy where the hero is allowed to leave their boring life in the real world forever can actually depress the audience, because we will never get that same opportunity to literally leave the dissatisfying parts of our lives behind.  It’s the same principle here.  The narrative could have rewarded the party for making the right choice by giving them a no strings attached happy ending, but that’s not how real life works.  In real life, we also don’t know if the future we are moving towards will be better than what we’re living in right now.  But unlike in Xenoblade 3, we don’t have the option of grinding to max level and beating the superbosses before moving to the future–that is, we can’t live in the endless now.  In a constructed narrative, we expect heroes to be rewarded for their good deeds because that’s a convention of storytelling: good is rewarded, evil is punished.  Good people win, and bad people lose.  But real life doesn’t work like that, and I believe the impact of the ending on the audience would have been diminished significantly if the uncertain future the Ouroboros were fighting so hard for turned out to be unequivocally good.

The other main theme of the game is about grief, loss, and accepting those things into your life, which is another message the ending conveys supremely well.  Just because everything goes back to the moment the world stopped in the beginning doesn’t mean that anything that happened on Aionios doesn’t matter.  It all mattered!  Just because something ends doesn’t mean it doesn’t have meaning while it’s occurring.  That goes for lives, events, relationships, and even worlds.  Nothing in this world is permanent, not even the world itself, and to pretend that none of it matters because it doesn’t last–to say that nothing we did on Aionios meant anything just because it’s all been erased and it’s remembered by no one–is to say that the only things that do matter are those that last forever, and that is a road that leads to nothing but grief and regret.

And besides, the game is very clear that they’ll all meet again at some point in the future.  Even if Monosoft never elaborates or tells us about the reunion from on high, that does nothing to stop us all from imagining it and writing it ourselves–giving the characters a lifetime of joy, and giving ourselves a path to hope.

6 notes - Posted September 12, 2022

#2

There's still nothing funnier to me than the victim of 3-1 being Doug Swallow, who died with a bottle of poisoned pills in his hand Died of poison? No, he was electrocuted, why would you think he was poisoned?

6 notes - Posted January 23, 2022

My #1 post of 2022

Sometimes I remember that during all of the final battle with Volo, the "BATTLE DECIDED" splash screen never appears: not after beating his team, and not after either form of Giratina

20 notes - Posted May 11, 2022

Get your Tumblr 2022 Year in Review →

[rhetorical-ink]

Rhetorical Ink - Pokemon Let’s Go: Half-Way Review

**POKE’ SPOILERS BELOW**

My brother outdid himself for Christmas this year -- he bought me not only a Nintendo Switch (which I did not expect), but also Pokemon Let’s Go Pikachu!

I was in grade school when the first Pokemon Red and Blue came to the U.S. for the Gameboy Color -- and I’ve been hooked ever since!

So, with that said, I’m halfway through the game so far (I’ve been on break from teaching with some time on my hands) and here are:

My Top Ten Thoughts on Pokemon Let’s Go - PART ONE:

10. I’ve always been hesitant to move away from the 2D graphics to the 3D ones only because I feared they would take away from the game mechanics and walk through...

That said, this game is GORGEOUS. The colors, graphics, everything not only flows seamlessly, but the map of the Kanto world (as this is based off of Pokemon Yellow) is recognizable.

At one point, I was watching my brother play (he received Let’s Go Eevee) and I didn’t have to ask where he was in the game. I just knew from my childhood memory where he was at on the map -- the fact that the graphics can get such an upgrade while still retaining its original design is impressive.

9. I have never really understood “Shiny Hunting.” I’ve watched some streams of people hunting and didn’t get the hype of it -- I just thought it was a weird thing to focus on.

And then I was in Diglett Cave, walking back to Vermillion City, and a Shiny Diglett popped out of nowhere.

I caught it...and am now reading up on how to chain and which Pokemon are harder to catch for Shiny chances... *sigh* I might have a problem on the horizon.

8. I wasn’t sure how I would like the whole “Pokemon catching in the wild instead of battling” mechanic -- that aspect of the game seemed so oddly removed from the original -- but I am actually okay with it.

In some ways, it makes leveling up easier, but in other ways, it forces you do encounter Pokemon, whereas, when I originally played the game, I would rather spam battles for experience. It took me a moment to get used to, but I’m okay with this change.

7. I’m also okay with the aspect from Pokemon Sun and Moon, where you have to pet and play with your Pokemon, being input into this game.

It is odd to me that you only get to dress your Pikachu and interact up close with them and not your other Pokemon, but you do still get to have them walk around with you -- more on that later -- but first, speaking of dressing Pikachu and Eevee --

6. -- The fact that you get so many outfits for you and your Pokemon is FANTASTIC. Granted, it’s not as extensive as it is in Sun and Moon, but it’s still a welcome addition.

I never thought I would care so much about what I looked like in the game, but that I can dress as a Team Rocket member (something I wanted so bad as a kid) just made my day when I discovered that outfit.

5. Another thing I absolutely love is the follow feature -- seeing these Kanto Pokemon follow you around in real-size is soooo satisfying!

4. The HM’s that you would normally use on your Pokemon in the game, such as Cut, Flash, Fly, etc. are now “Secret Techniques” that your Pikachu or Eevee learn in the game as extra abilities that are not playable moves.

At first, I was a little mad about it -- I mean, fly and surf are great techniques! But my upset attitude slowly started to diminish as I realized that I didn’t have to have one sole Pokemon in my party that only knew flash, cut, strength, etc.

But then that made me mad that they didn’t think of this sooner and implement it in earlier games --

3. Anyway, that game mechanic and the ones I’ve mentioned above haven’t bothered me.

There are two things that I’ve been a little annoyed with in the game so far:

The first is that you don’t get the in-game event Pokemon, like Farfetch’d or the special trade Pokemon in the poke centers, etc. because these Pokemon are available somewhere out in the wild.

It’s a little tension-less when you see a bunch of Chansey pop up in the wild outside the Safari Zone, but at the same time, I have to imagine how grateful my childhood self would be if this had happened in the original game. In their place, you can trade Kanto version of Pokemon for their Alolan versions, which is fun! Still, though, there was something special about those in-game “special” places to find certain Pokemon.

2. The other aspect is the obvious “kid friendly” treatment the game has received so far in the first half, specifically in Celadon City and Lavender Town.

I noticed at Vermillion when I battled a trainer, they were called “Gamer,” but clearly in the “Gambler” garb of the original game.

And my suspicion was confirmed at the Game Corner, when the large line of what was obviously originally slot machines, had been converted to “video games,” as to not appear as this was a casino. But, any fan of Pokemon knows that the Game Corner is notoriously the gambling area of the game that Team Rocket controls -- having the “prize Pokemon” missing and the dynamics of the place change, it definitely felt odd, and like a forced change.

The same for the Cubone plotline with Lavender Town, when it’s clear Cubone is kidnapped, but never directly stated that Cubone’s mother was “killed,” but rather was just “Gone” after Team Rocket showed up -- it feels a little sterilized to try and appeal to a mass audience.

1. And this game definitely does appeal!

I am really enjoying this game -- but as a fan since the 1990′s, I can tell the more “adult” parts that have been toned down. And while I’m not a fan of that, it hasn’t diminished the parts of the game I DO enjoy -- so far, this game is a lot of fun, and I’m excited to get into the second half of the game!

So, those are my top thoughts halfway through the game! As soon as I “finish” the main game play-through, I’ll come back with a “PART TWO.”

I hope you all had a great Christmas and have a happy new year!

[topomerania]

So I just broke up with Gabe and I’ve had a realization that I’ve been in an emotionally abusive shit show for over a year. I need to process everything that’s happened and honestly it’s an interesting story so more down below about a year and a half long relationship with someone who is an archtype of person to avoid from now on.

I really should have seen the thousands of red flags, but I refused to acknowledge them because he would feel bad about them and as a girlfriend I thought it was my duty to comfort him and assure him I don’t care about those things. I was used.

Initially when me and Gabe got together it was bad. My best friend was in a relationship with him first and I figured we could all just be the best friends. However, he shared a lot of common interests with me that no one else did at the time. At my college dorm he was the only one into homestuck and the convention scene and that gives people a lot to talk about. However, I later found out he only went to conventions with his ex girlfriend and therefor was done with going to conventions for himself and he only read up to act 6 in homestuck and vehemently hates spoilers so homestuck talk was kept to a minimum and he never was interested in going to a convention with me because of “memories” and planned one with his friends instead saying I could go, but without him. He didn’t end up going and I was hurt and of course didn’t plan to go see a convention alone.

Back to the first point I was a horrible person for doing what I did to my best friend. Gabe and I talked about pokemon throughout winter break and I was the first person he told when she broke up with him. I was in a relationship at the time. No one believes me, but I did not end the relationship I was in so I could have a shot at him. Seeing a relationship I thought would work out just end made me look at my own relationship and realize I’m not fullfilled and happy in it and I’ve been keeping some stuff that happened to me in the woods under lock and key. So I ended it. When winter break ended I got together with Gabe when we got back to school. He told me he loved me while he was crying. I was so touched and I had liked him for a minute so I skipped to that stage and told him I loved him too while comforting him. I lied to my best friend about liking him at all and she told me that she wanted a chance to be with him again. I lied to her and we started seeing each other behind her back. It was wrong and when the truth came out I lost all my friends. So it was just me and Gabe and everyone else in the dorm was calling me a whore.

We started dating regularly, but he had a habit of just saying really mean things about me out of nowhere. When I would ask him not to or say that something hurt my feelings he fought me and said that that’s just how he talks to his friends. It was me that should man up. However, he was hurt by the smallest things. 90% of what I said was questioned and he would get so quiet so quick. It came to a point where I had to consider if I was abusive while he would constantly bring things up to ridicule me. But I was alone. Eventually he got it in his mind to break up with me and I spent the entire night writing things down to repair our relationship. First thing he did that morning was come over to my room to hug and kiss me before cuddling me and going through the list. I have begun to think he never wanted to break up with me but to just make me know that he could and that I would be alone if he did.

Eventually we started hanging out with my old friends again and I couldn’t express how much I missed them. However, they weren’t talking to Gabe as much as me at first and he hated that. He would constantly bring up the point that they weren’t talking to him whenever I was distracted from him, planned something else, or was generally happy to have people back in my life. So instead I would have to comfort him and spend m energies not repairing relations but getting them to like Gabe. He constantly said he hated the group and wanted nothing to do with them, too. Eventually we had a fight where I told him to get over that attitude and they’re just people who are willing to forgive if an effort is made and I had been making extreme efforts. He almost broke up with me that night too. There was a lot of times we almost broke up.

He had a panic disorder. He told me on the first date he had told his ex he would kill himself if he broke up with her and I told him that if he self harmed or tried to kill himself to keep me in this relationship that we were through. So that’s why he started punching himself really hard during fights to make points instead of cutting himself. He would rip hair out of himself and scratch down his arms and take up my whole bed. He has broken my umbrella, ripped apart my shoes, and broken my sunglasses off of my face during these episodes. All in an effort to not let me leave. Sometimes we’d be nose to nose and I’d be trying to comfort him and he would say something horrible to me and I would tell him that was horrible to say and he would just punch himself super hard out of nowhere. It was like he wanted to punch me, but knew that would actually call of the relationship.

I missed the New Years party at my own house to go back to my room to comfort him for hours. I missed out on so many parties and friend moments because he didn’t want me in them. I couldn’t go out and dance with my friends countless times. And if I did he would make a huge show. I had to ask for permission to do anything besides hang out with him. Even then he wasn’t satisfied. He hated that I wasn’t into video games or computer science as much as him and would treat it as negative qualities I had. I felt stupid because of him constantly. Because he wanted me to.

This final one that involved Cisco getting involved because I was terrified of him after he smashed his phone and kept punching himself and kept grabbing me and ripped off my shoes and was screaming crazily in my fae as he ripped out hair was just the final straw. I thought I would have to drive him home and when he got in my car he tried to get back to my house. When I threw all of his stuff on the driveway he was refusing to let me close the trunk by putting his hand in the way. He would do that whenever I tried to close a door to get away from him, too. He tried to throw himself in front of my car and I was just on tumblr until he moved.

I kissed someone on the fourth of July and it actually felt good. For the first time in a long time there was genuine care in it. Ever since I’ve just come to realize how important my friends are and how they wanted better for me since the beginning. I didn’t even mention when he molested one of them and kissed the other and then blamed it on me saying he wasn't happy in our relationship and I should have stopped him if I had a problem with it. I didn’t even mention how he broke up with me for a week, destroying me, just to wiggle back into my life by saying that he had gone psychotic at home and his mom realized he was cutting himself because he was so low without me. When I said I needed time to think because I had other suiters at that time he said it was either then or never.

It’s hard losing someone you thought was your best friend, but I keep coming back to the point that it should be harder losing someone that genuinely cares about you. Losing Amanda was heartbreaking and I’ll never forgive myself for it even if she did. Losing Gabe is so liberating. Huss taking me to shoot a gun afterwards totally cleared my mind and made me realize this truth. I think in an odd way Gabe did care about me, but it was because of his own selfish reasons. I was supporting him financially through food, weed, the place he stayed; everything.

Only mourn for those that actually cared about you.

[cosmosogler]

i just made myself sick from holding in laughter. good times. ninja sex party always gets me right here.

ok so after ping’s delightful impromptu 5-am door-slamming and yodeling concert i barely got any sleep and i had the kind of dreams i get when i nap for too long. which is to say, terrifying and horrible in every way.

at the end i was... on a coaster i end up at sometimes. usually it’s a gentle enough ride that my gramma rides it for some reason, even though it tends to dump you out in a field of tall dead grass and you have to hike back to a wooden structure. when you try to climb the structure the people on the platforms try to push you back down by kicking you in the face.

but this time the coaster was super off. i didn’t like it. and the tracks were made of like, sinew. it was still pink and bloody. then the tracks just ended and i crashed straight into the ground with my face. i got mad but i wasn’t hurt too bad. that happened next!!! the operator appeared. for some reason i got really strange and really strong deja vu. then everyone started melting. i watched the girl next to me explode into goop. then my arm fell off. then the rest. i screamed.

i ended up getting up late again... but still 20 minutes earlier than yesterday. despite going to bed an hour earlier. cool!!!!!

i got over to campus on time though. josie and i waited for our classmates to get out of class, but then nobody came to the “lounge,” so we just went to eat tacos by ourselves. it was cinco de mayo so they had margarita deals. we didn’t drink alcohol though. i paid for josie’s meal because she was broke. i had a good time. we talked about The Gay and depression and stuff.

then i hung out in the department for another two-ish hours. i wanted to talk to dr. cole, but he was teaching and then left. and there was an alum who wanted to talk to him so i let him go instead. and i talked to michael, who is doing well. he replaced me as the si for the intro physics course. these past few months would have been a lot more guilt-ridden and miserable if he hadn’t stepped in for me. i am impressed and grateful that he took on so much work.

i gave bradley the rest of my burrito (since i only managed half as usual) and went to sort out my tuition refund. the guy gave me paperwork and answered a bunch of questions. i’m gonna have to get doctors’ notes so i will start with my physician when i see her sometime next week. he said i got until 2018 to complete and turn it in so it is less stressful now.

then i went home because no one was in the lounge and i was tired. i watched adventure time for a while. i assume the next series of steven universe episodes got leaked because my youtube suggestions were FILLED WITH SPOILERS. EVERYWHERE!!! i had to mark all of them as “not interested” so hopefully youtube’s algorithm would get the hint. at least it stopped recommending family guy finally.

and i made my veggie bacon for dinner. i didn’t figure out how to cook it in a way that didn’t turn it to charcoal until the last few pieces but that was ok. it made me kind of ill. i watched some pokemon videos until maranda got back. that’s why i wasn’t laughing out loud. 

i keep looking at adventure time clips trying to find one that could get asher interested in the show. but i know that won’t happen and i shouldn’t try to have everything in common with one friend. i just really want someone to talk to about it that i already know because talking to random strangers about tv shows i like is stressful. it’s harder to get a read on their interest. and starting a new network of friends based around one common interest is difficult and time consuming for me, with no guaranteed payoff. at least with people i used to hang out with because of one shared interest i already know now so like, it’s not like getting to know an entire new group. and meeting friends of friends, at least i got some kind of lifeline, so it’s a little less awkward to introduce myself. it’s not out of the blue “let’s launch into a detailed analysis of this tv show, whoever you are!”

when i tried to join the homestuck fandom as a regular poster, my dog died like a week later, and i was too depressed to strengthen those relationships and they disintegrated extremely quickly. i think that was about when i withdrew from fandoms altogether. 

i guess... if asher or one of my other friends was super into adventure time, at least as much as i am, it wouldn’t feel like i’m wasting their time when i start talking about it because i can’t hold my thoughts in my head any more. they fall out and it doesn’t matter who’s around. i was telling my mom’s friend about it one summer because i was spending a lot of time around the office she worked at. 

i don’t like having that little control over what i talk about. like while i was so excited about one thing, it didn’t matter that it wasn’t relevant to the person i was talking to. what happens if i feel like that around my parents? is that why i got dad to watch the show in the first place? i know he likes it NOW, and i thought he would like it, but... 

did i expect to be able to talk about it with him? the one time i tried to bring up some theme analysis to him he said he doesn’t look that much into it so i stopped and just made references to the jokes sometimes instead. he seems to like that better. the last episode we watched was “you forgot your floaties” which is really plot heavy and dad actually got bored. and commented that it wasn’t very funny. i haven’t shown him another episode since, even though season 7 gets really good again and season 8 has been actually my favorite so far i think. season 6 is the low point for the show and we got right to the end of it and i stopped asking to watch it... and he never ever brings it up himself. i guess it would be easier to get a handle on his enthusiasm if he asked to watch it even like once a month. but these last few months i’ve been so unhappy with him that i just don’t want to sit and enjoy something we both like with him any more. and at the times i would usually ask he’s busy screaming at league now so i don’t feel comfortable even being in the room. because he likes to swear and punch his desk before he looks at me if i say hi or need to ask a question while he’s playing.

i don’t know... i liked having that thing in common with dad. the only cartoons he liked before that were, like, transformers and family guy. and old voltron i guess, he talked about it once when he heard about the remake. and he buys me jake shirts sometimes. but now i don’t like having it in common with him i guess? i have made no effort to be on better terms with him since he told me i needed to get a job before i was even feeling any better back in february. mostly because it was redundant and all it actually told me was that he thought i was being a bum when i literally couldn’t eat solids.

he and mom are always on about, “if you’re sick, you shouldn’t do anything you enjoy or else you’re faking being sick. when you’re sick all you’re allowed to do is rest and do nothing.” except when you’re not allowed to rest any more (regardless of whether or not you are still sick). 

i guess. feeling entitled to positive encouragement is a flaw of mine. my parents are the “if you’re doing your job then no one needs to comment. if you’re not doing your job you should get fired” types. and also “if you have one luxury item/are not devoting all hours of every day to improving your situation (regardless of whether or not the situation is actually improving) you are not really in need of help.”

but there’s... a difference between being entitled to the “everyone gets a trophy” idea and being positivity-starved. even big achievements, like placing well in the statewide math competition in grade school or getting all a’s, are brushed aside as “you did the job you were supposed to so it should be invisible and smooth.” i started doing competitions without any aids or tools that we were allowed to use because anything other than just you and your brain was “cheap.” i placed very badly in those competitions. then i lost my confidence and my grades also dropped.

if i got a single b it would be time for a serious discussion and grounding from any socialization until my grade improved. so there was only fear motivating me.

i mean, it’s not technically “necessary” to motivate with the guaranteed reward/punishment. it’s just, my reward was usually “you are allowed to talk to your friends” or “here is dinner. you have to eat it all or else you will sit here for hours until the plate is clean.” and sometimes my parents would prepare a “surprise reward” for me and then take it away upon getting home and finding out i had messed up in some way, when i didn’t know they were even planning on ever getting the thing i had asked for. they would do that with car trips too. pack me and my sister in the car whether or not we wanted to go anywhere and not tell us where we were going. and then when i got frustrated they would take away the “surprise reward.” 

i mean yeah, one time i messed up really bad watching my brother 10 years ago because he said some really hurtful things and i refused to interact with him while my parents were out one day. then he did a bunch of dangerous stuff while i wasn’t looking because i was busy crying.

hnngnngnghhhhg. i was trying to explore why i don’t feel close to dad any more and why feeling close to him in the first place was a mistake. i only ever felt nostalgia before i went to high school. the moment i realized my life sucked, and had always sucked, i never wished for “simpler times” or “the good old days.” 

come to think of it, i don’t feel close to a lot of people any more, and i should not have been close with them in the first place in all honesty. i didn’t have a lot of options. i have slightly more options now, provided i got the energy to spare. i got lucky with this physics department. i only actively disliked, like, two of my classmates. one of them was a creepazoid and the other one is kind of unfair to her. she ain’t done nothing to me. i just think she’s a little obnoxious. which is pretty rich, coming from me!!!

ok i am tired. and maranda has gone to bed, which means that if i stay up too much longer she will come out and yell at me for having the kitchen light on.

the same maranda that kept me up every night for the last 5 semesters watching the office/parks and rec/psyche over and over and over. when she finished a show, she’d go back to the beginning and start over. when i hear dad watching the office i get subconsciously annoyed and it takes me a minute to figure out why.

i mean, i could have kept asking her to turn the volume down. but when you get a sharp “no” the first time it gets really intimidating. and i couldn’t close the door because ping would just open it.

mom and maranda’s mom are coming up at 10 tomorrow. my aunt will also show up at some point to put my furniture in her pickup truck to get it down to phoenix for us. and the department picnic is at noon. mom wants me to stay at the hotel with her and dawn. i don’t really want to, it’ll be harder to stay up obnoxiously late, but the alternative is to sleep here on the floor. which is even more miserable than trying to sleep in the bed thanks to ping’s concerts the moment he gets bored of everyone around him sleeping.

i did everything i needed to do today. tomorrow i just gotta be present. i hope i can manage that. if i lose out on sleep again tonight i might die though.

i am putting off going to bed... i am out of things to talk about but i want to keep typing. i have been super restless the last few nights. i can’t figure out why. i have been getting, not enough exercise necessarily, but more than usual, and enough that i am tired by the time i get back to my apartment. and the lack of sleep makes me not want to move at all. my brain is wiped. but my legs keep saying “YEAH LET’S GO LET’S DO IT COME ON LET’S GO!!!”

anyway, i’m gonna get ready for bed before maranda yells at me. i will try to think about what is bothering me so much tonight that i don’t want to sleep. if i find out i will try to remember to share it.

the mold, by the way, is a non-issue. it causes respiratory problems and exacerbates already-existing conditions like migraines. those are not the symptoms i am currently experiencing.

[theycallmeshaggyrogers]

Essay Two: The Pokemon League Champion Archetype

March 25, 2018

This post will contain MAJOR spoilers for all mainstream Pokemon games. There, I'm guiltless. You'll thank me later.

I can't stress the importance of the previous disclaimer. Since the inception of the Pokemon franchise, the league champion effectively acts as the game's final boss. By design, a final boss should be something we are emotionally invested in, whether it pertains to a crucial plot point in a game or is a character we are able to feel strongly towards. I think I speak for the majority of gamers, casual or not, when I say that the plot of a video game matters to the overall experience we will have playing said game to begin with. If a game's story is good, or at the very least memorable, we are more inclined to remember it better and more fondly than say, a game whose story is bland or otherwise poorly-written. There are exceptions of course. In my opinion, the three games that make up Fire Emblem: Fates have particularly awful storylines. At best, they are bland and rely on the standard narrative trappings which Fire Emblem games are known for. At worst, they are so narratively broken that their exceptional terribleness is remarkably memorable. That said, FE Fates' “Conquest” route is salvaged only by challenging level design and game mechanics. The degree of polarization regarding Conquest's quality between the quality of its story and gameplay is remarkable to say the least, but it is simply from said polarization that the game is memorable to me personally.

Pokemon, however, is much, much different than Fire Emblem, which prior to 2013 was just a niche series for introverted elitist weeaboos like myself, and the popularity of both franchises in the two decades both have been around very much determines the memorability of an individual title. Perhaps I speak from bias when I say that every mainstream Pokemon game is equally memorable to me, given my twelve or so years as a fan of the franchise. I even started with one of the blander installments, Pokemon LeafGreen, a remake of the original Pokemon Green from 1996. That said, Pokemon is very much a formulaic series. Very little changes from iteration to iteration, from its story to its battling system. As the fandom likes to poke fun at time and again, you often play as a prepubescent Asian child who starts off in a small boonie town that happens to be within proximity of the laboratory of some biologist whose last name is in reference to some kind of a kind of plant. Said plant-named biologist offers you a Pokemon to start your adventure in exchange for collecting more of them to fill up a digital encyclopedia as you travel throughout the game's map (a task you will likely never complete). Oftentimes you have a rival who is also a prepubescent Asian child and also on the same journey to keep you in check as you build your party. You are both likely challenging gym leaders in hopes of one day reaching the penultimate title of champion. There's also at least one organization of bad guys wearing impractical uniforms whom you and your rival have to curb-stomp whenever they pop up in the story, but you've likely trashed them and emasculated their leader by the time you get to the champion themselves. I'd say every game has exceptions to these tropes, but the fact that I am able to give a succinct idea of how these games function narratively should probably queue you into the fact that Pokemon is a franchise rarely allows itself to change. And sure, helpful mechanics have been added over time to service the metagame, such as abilities, natures, IVs and breeding, but once these mechanics are in place, they are there for the long haul. Perhaps that is why I keep coming back. The games never feel incredibly alien even if I don't play one for more than a year.

I don't think the same could be said for these games' plots however. Every game leads up to battling an incredibly strong trainer, usually referred to with the prefix of “Champion”, and the reveal of the champion is meant to be a shock to the player. In almost every game, the champion is a recurring supporting character who at times helps the player on their journey to varying degrees of frequency. Oddly enough, the acting champion never tell the player about their high status in the Pokemon League, and this never has never been explained or justified within the canon. I completely understand this merit from a mechanical standpoint though. In the case of Pokemon, you don't know who the champion is because the game itself is encouraging you to build a well-rounded team to take them on, diverse in species, movesets, type and function. It is worth noting that while some champions specialize in a certain type of Pokemon, the majority of them tend to diversify their team for the very reason I stated.

This deliberate withholding of information also works from a storytelling standpoint too. Like any good JRPG, fighting the final boss of the game needs to feel earned to be memorable. These fights tend to be long, difficult and exhausting, but to ultimately prevail over them is deeply satisfying. In the case of Square Enix's Chrono Trigger, arguably one of the greatest JRPGs in the history of the genre, the final boss has three stages, incorporating movesets from all previous bosses while also possessing its own attacks that the player has to figure out as they continue to fight it. Final Fantasy 6, while less impressive in both aspects than Chrono Trigger, also has a multi-stage final boss fight, whose epicness is amplified with choirs and vaguely Christian imagery, as the boss himself is effectively the reigning god of a now-ruined world, one whom you would not initially expect to be the final boss until the original candidate has been eliminated. The fight is also very much a grudge match, as the final boss, Kefka, is a power-drunk psychopath. To date, Pokemon has only used the grudge match-type final boss fight twice, one of whom is not even the final boss, but a fake-out miniboss of sorts.

The exception to this unspoken rule of not disclosing the champion's identity is Alder, the Pokemon League Champion of Pokemon Black and White's Unova Region (which incidentally, is the first game where you are in fact no longer a prepubescent Asian child, but rather a teenager of indeterminate race because we're in New York City now, baby). In fact, he is introduced as the champion the moment you meet him! Going into Pokemon White in 2011, I knew that Alder was going to be the game's champion because I had listened to a rip of his battle theme posted on YouTube, but I did not expect him to be revealed outright as the champion. I only learned later as I progressed that Alder was not the true final boss of the main game, but instead your mysterious, slightly autistic wunderkind rival, N. By the time you defeat the four obligatory minibosses, dubbed the Elite Four, you find that N has already defeated Alder, and as the proclaimed chosen one by the dragon thingy on the opposite game's box art, he challenges you to a penultimate battle on the top floor of his massive Long Island castle as proof that he is the true king of Unova or something.

And then!

And then!!!

After you catch the guy from the boxart and defeat N, Ghetsis, the leader of the evil team (who is incidentally N's Machiavellian paternal guardian) throws a shitfit and battles you, revealing him to be the game's real final boss. When you defeat him, you reconcile with N, who sees the errors of his ways and leaves Unova on the guy from the other game's box art, then the credits roll to awesome fanfare. (Sidenote: I seriously consider Black and White's credits theme to be one of the best songs in the series). But there, you have finally completed the game, which was in my opinion had Pokemon's most ambitious and best plots to date. Alder can still be battled as champion, sure, but at this point he technically counts as a postgame boss, similar to Red at the end of Pokemon Gold, Silver, Crystal, and its remakes, or Steven in Pokemon Emerald.

I think Generation V was when the writers over at Game Freak realized that the series was getting predictable. Not counting the Gold and Silver remakes, the plot of Generation IV's Pokemon Diamond, Pearl and Platinum versions very much adhered to the same story beats as its predecessor, Generation III. Similar to Gen III, in Gen IV, the big ol' dragon from the boxart makes an appearance because they are summoned by the evil team's leader, seeking their powers for himself. After you beat said leader and catch the boxart-Pokemon for yourself, you are allowed to finish up your adventure, collect whatever gym badge(s) you still need to get, then you head on over to the league to fight the Elite Four and then the champion, who has shown up to help you in small ways throughout your journey. This had also been done to a lesser degree in Generation II, as assisting Lance in uncovering Team Rocket's hideout in Mahogany Town and later liberating the Goldenrod Radio Tower is what ultimately prevents you from reaching the eighth and final gym badge required to challenge the Indigo League. Generation V decided to do away with this formula entirely by making N the rival, evil team leader and de-facto champion, only to throw a curveball by making Ghetsis the real threat, when he had been established this whole time as someone who had long since released his own Pokemon as per the moral duty of Team Plasma's Seven Sages. Black and White's plot makes me happy for all sorts of reasons, but departing from Pokemon's traditional roots of setting up final boss fights made the battles between N and Ghetsis more memorable overall, but I'll get to that later.

From what I've observed, the champion archetype in your mainstream Pokemon story goes as follows: the player encounters the champion early in the game, usually after winning their first gym badge. When encountered, they express their interests a bit, then give you an item with a varying degree of usefulness from game to game. Their appearance throughout the story usually triggers other scripted events required to progress the game along and give you access to the next city or objective you must travel to. Regardless, the story reveals very little about their background, exchanging personal history for a brief explanation of their ideals or motivations. They are often absent from your adventure, but pop in at times to give advice or another item. They will be present for, or at the very least involved in the final confrontation with the evil team as a supporting character while the player confronts the boss. They thank you afterwards and do no appear again until the end of the game. As it stands, this formula applies to four champions, but components of it are subverted in the more recent games (discounting remakes of course).

I want to argue that this champion-reveal archetype started with Generation II rather than Generation I. In Gen I, the champion was your smug, cocky rival who was always three steps ahead of you despite starting at the same time that you did. He belittles you on your whole adventure, even after you beat his over-leveled team. During your run-ins with Team Rocket, he is not involved in those confrontations save for one time, where he battles you in an enclosed area in the Silph Co. building before your second battle with Team Rocket's boss, Giovanni. It is also worth noting that there is no eleventh hour crisis in Red and Blue; that trope doesn't start becoming a thing until Ruby and Sapphire. If anything, the champion archetype of later generations isn't applicable to Gen I because Red and Blue have very different story goals. While it is very much an adventure RPG with the set goals of filling the Pokedex for Professor Oak and becoming the strongest trainer, the core of the narrative is the dynamic you share with your rival. His reveal as the champion works because it has already been established that he progressed through the league challenge faster than you did, not to mention his ceaselessly deprecating attitude towards the player character makes dethroning him all the more satisfying a conclusion to the story.

I personally think Gen II did the champion reveal the best. Lance was established as a strong trainer who asks for your assistance in investigating a strange radio signal, which in turn reveals that the culprits are in fact Team Rocket from the previous games. After you help Lance out, he more or less just disappears without any hint of returning until you challenge him. If you played Generation I or its remake, you would know that Lance was a member of the Elite Four, so assuming that he is still part of the league is warranted. It is only by the time you defeat Karen, who has taken Lance's place as the fourth member from the previous game, that the notion that he may be the champion is not far-fetched.

Gen III's Steven Stone shows up a few times to progress the plot in some arbitrary way or another, is around to express concern when the Hoenn Region starts flooding or drying up (depending on which version you're playing) and he is established as a very strong trainer, but his lack of any spoken association to the league makes his reveal a little less powerful in contrast to Lance. Part of me thinks Wally could have worked as a champion just as well, if not better than Steven did. Here you have this timid, waifish kid who you meet early in the game and encounter about as infrequently as with Steven. He may not deliver on a memorable battle in the two instances he challenges you, but his presence as a champion would have been a nice surprise considering his outward frailty, not to mention given the face that the Hoenn Elite Four's typing is strikingly similar to that of the original Elite Four from Gen I, the rival posing as the champion would have been a nice little thematic reference to the original games, even if it would probably make the reveal more predictable. Regardless, I appreciated Steven as a champion in Ruby and Sapphire than Wallace in Emerald, a character who, while breaking parts of the formula, we do not meet until the evil team-induced crisis is in full swing. The most we know about him is that he was once the gym leader of Sootopolis City, but stepped down and was replaced by some cheesy artsy French fop with a Spanish name. He really only makes a lasting impression in the remakes.

Gen IV's Cynthia meets the archetype beat by beat, and even more so in Platinum when she joins you on your search through the Distortion World to find and confront Team Galactic's Cyrus. Barring Alder, the first champion to subvert the archetype established by Gen II, Cynthia is probably the most plot-active champion to act within it, with the exception of Steven in Gen III's remakes, Omega Ruby and Alpha Sapphire. She also delivers one of the most challenging champion battles in the series, as her team will likely be 10-20 levels higher than that of your entire party unless you decide to train your Pokemon and challenge the league later. She also makes use of some of the most powerful and rare Pokemon in the series, namely Garchomp, Spiritomb and Milotic. From what I can tell, Cynthia is also extremely popular as far as champions go within the fandom, having appeared in every main series game since as an optional postgame encounter. I want to attribute this popularity to both her design and the intense difficulty of your battle with her.

Alder, as already discussed, broke the slowly encroaching archetype set for champions, but is explicitly the champion in name only because it is crucial to the plot for him to possess that role. By the time you battle him, the main story is over and you are likely well into the postgame at this point. I don't consider Alder to be a champion-proper because to be a champion in a strictly gameplay-based sense would imply that his battle isn't optional, which it very much is. The Gen V games in general give you a remarkable amount of stuff to do once the main story has concluded, all of it completely optional. The battles against both Alder and Cynthia in Black and White, along with their sequels, are completely optional too. Hell, I'm pretty sure on a playthrough of Black in 2015, I never bothered to challenge the postgame league. What Alder primarily serves within the games he appears in is that of a role model. He's this lighthearted, virtuous old dude who loves his Pokemon and is not opposed to challenging the worldviews of others, as he does with your milquetoast smart-guy rival Cheren, in order to help them grow as people. He is not nearly as threatening as Cynthia, but he is far and away the most multifaceted champion to date.

However, for the sake of argument, let's say Ghetsis counts as Black and White's champion, even if he is not one in name like Alder. While he fits the archetype well, he is also a subversion of it. You first encounter him delivering a speech in Accumula Town, encouraging the locals to question the morality of owning Pokemon. His speech is offset with a foreboding piano piece, indicating that he will inevitably be a threat to the player in the future. Much of his role on your adventure throughout Unova is to discourage and intimidate the player, but not by way of battling. Anyone who has played the previous generations prior to Black and White will likely assume that Ghetsis will be revealed as the boss of Team Plasma, and while he is the mastermind using N as a puppet leader, the game does not present it this way until you reach N's castle and learn about his upbringing as Ghetsis' groomed successor. Ghetsis' unique design sets him apart from the Seven Sages and establishes him as their leader, but then that would only imply that he would be a higher-ranked admin of Team Plasma, not the leader itself.

Because Gen III and Gen IV had very similar story beats, I honestly thought Ghetsis' arc was going to play out as Cyrus' had in Gen IV. I assumed that you would have to raid the hideout of Team Plasma and face Ghetsis down and fighting/catching boxart-guy afterwards, and only then would you be allowed to complete the gym challenge and subsequently face the league. This was of course flipped on its head when N reveals to the player three gym badges in that he is the king of Team Plasma, and Ghetsis serves under him, not the other way around. This makes Ghetsis' reveal as the final boss shocking, but not too much so that it feels forced. We know that Ghetsis is threatening, emotionally manipulative and of higher standing within Team Plasma's administration than the Seven Sages based on his actions and character design, so the possibility of facing him after facing N becomes a realistic expectation. To be blunt, Ghetsis doesn't fuck around. His team very much feels like a properly-balanced champion team, with Hydreigon acting as his team's resident pseudo-legendary, and his theme music is composed of foreboding drums and choir vocals. He feels more like a champion than Alder does. Ultimately, I would say Black and White has two champions: a story champion and a  gameplay champion. Alder fits the former while Ghetsis fits the latter, and while I love this dynamic for its creativity in a very formulaic series, I wish we had more of it. None of the Pokemon games since  Black and White had this degree of ambition in integrating and subverting the series' narrative and game-play trappings by way of a fake-out final boss, even its direct sequels, who perhaps played it a little too safe.

In Black and White's sequels, Black 2 and White 2, Alder's role as a mentor becomes literal, as he helps the player character get better accustomed to the game when they reach Floccessy Town (which incidentally is supposed to be based off Newark and I think that's hilarious). Instead of acting as the Unova League Champion, Alder is revealed to have stepped down from the league and has been replaced by the former Opelucid City gym leader Iris instead. Now, Iris adheres much more to the champion archetype than Alder does, but that really isn't saying much. In B2W2, she appears in Castelia City at the same time and for the same story function as she did in the previous games: you have to help her track down Team Plasma. That's it. You could argue that she meets the archetype better if you take her role within the predecessor game into account, since in Black and White, Iris is present during the eleventh-hour time of crisis, along with the gym leaders from all of Unova's cities (barring one) rallied up by your other, comparatively less annoying rival Bianca. If you are playing Pokemon White, you will have to face Iris in order to win the final gym badge, which makes her somewhat more relevant as a character, though only in White alone, as you fight her mentor Drayden in Black instead. In spite of this, I wouldn't say that Iris is a very memorable character within both stories she is in, and the time between these encounters are massive. By the time you meet Iris again in Opelucid City in White, it is to challenge her, whereas in Black she acts as a move tutor without any relevance to the plot. In B2W2, she will appear in Opelucid City to wish you luck with your battle with the city's current gym leader, but you won't see her afterwards until her big reveal as the new champion of Unova. While her theme music is catchy, I wouldn't really say the battle itself is incredibly memorable. To this day, I can't recall her team save for her Druddigon without having to look it up on Bulbapedia. It is worth noting that B2W2 have incredibly large postgames that near-eclipse the amount of content provided from the main story, which itself was less ambitious than Black and White and took a more Diamond and Pearl approach regarding to pacing the story with gym challenges, so Iris' memorability can easily be overlooked in a game with so much content.

Now if any champion meets the archetype the least, it is Generation VI's Diantha, and when I say “least”, I don't mean the least faithful to the archetype, because as previously explained, that title goes to Alder. Rather, Diantha's lack of screentime within the main story leads to a weak champion reveal by the end, even more so than Iris or Wallace. In Pokemon X and Y, your two encounters with her prior to the Pokemon League are incidental, as you run into her first at a cafe in the not so subtle stand-in city for Paris, and then at a monorail stop in where I can only assume is Normandy. She doesn't give you any important item or clears any obstacles for the player to advance the plot. Rather, she talks about herself a bit and expresses a desire to battle the player in the future. I probably wouldn't have remembered her leading up to taking on the league were it not for her character design, which fans have likened to that of Audrey Hepburn, and I can kind of see it? It's a fitting comparison given that Diantha is supposed to be a well-respected actress, but that aspect of her character alone is problematic from a storytelling standpoint should you choose to turn off your brain; if Diantha is this insanely famous actress, why wouldn't she immediately be identified as the Kalos League Champion as well by NPCs whenever she's out in the public? Last I checked, Parisian cafes and monorail stations aren't necessarily private venues, and it's not like Diantha is attending these places incognito. One line that particularly annoys me in her first encounter is, “I'm a Trainer myself, in my off time. I look forward to us battling someday!” To me, this line feels like a deliberate misdirect on the part of the writer, because what kind of league champion would brush their battling career aside as a hobby despite being the named strongest trainer in the entire region? There's just something incredibly dishonest about what is ostensibly supposed to be a throwaway line. It implies that we are not meant to assume that Diantha is an exceptional trainer of note, and are meant to see her primarily as an actress instead. This makes her reveal as champion ultimately fall flat, and you as a Pokemon fan could probably assume from thematic shorthand that she was going to be the champion simply because she had nothing better to do in the story.

Diantha's lack of presence in the narrative is what ultimately sells her short. Unlike previous champions, she does not appear during the obligatory time of crisis, though I wouldn't call this subversive, nor is she present during your recurring run-ins with Team Flare (aka the French fashion mafia). To be honest, I think some extra screentime in the vein of Cynthia would make her reveal less forced, or at the very least some hints on the part of random NPCs hinting of her battling prowess. This isn't to say I don't like Diantha as a character, or even X and Y's story for that matter. I actually quite like it. I just wish I saw Diantha more frequently. She is implied to be acquainted with Lysandre, who is revealed to be the boss of the French fashion mafia. Why couldn't that be explored? Hell, I even would have taken a part in the game where you wind up on a film set and you see Diantha performing! Pokemon X and Y took a much stronger influence from the part of the world it is based on than Black and White did, so it's kind of a shame that an aspect of French culture as a famous as their cinema was more or less pushed to the wayside.

At the time of this writing, I had recently finished my playthrough of Pokemon Sun. I accidentally spoiled myself to the champion reveal via YouTube, discovering that your final obstacle before becoming the first ever champion of the Alola Region was Professor Kukui. Compared to Diantha, my battle with Kukui was incredibly memorable, because I lost twice against him before finally emerging victorious. Of course, recency bias is very much a thing and my feelings regarding the quality of the battle are subject to change, but I think it's telling that a lot of thought went into how difficult this final challenge was supposed to be. I have issues with Pokemon Sun and Moon's balancing system, namely the fact that most trainers don't have more than one Pokemon until you're halfway through the game. I understand that the contrary would make the Exp. Share as insanely broken as it was in Gen VI, but in hindsight it appears to have been a necessary evil. By the time I challenged Kukui, both of our teams were almost perfectly balanced, making the battle less about sweeping the opponent's Pokemon as quickly as possible with the right type matchups and more about the strategy it takes to get there.

I would also be remiss not to mention the uniqueness of Kukui's champion reveal, because he is not the champion at all! Technically, you, the player, have become the first champion by being the first to beat the Elite Four, a feat achieved only by your rival in Red and Blue. This final battle you have with Kukui is a formality, as it is explained in the story that he has spearheaded the efforts to establish a Pokemon League in Alola, integrated in with the traditional Island Challenge. Kukui makes it very clear that he studies Pokemon moves, making battling an integral part of his research. It makes him a little one-note at times, but I don't think Pokemon has had as active of a champion character within the main story since Cynthia, and I mean champion in the sense that Ghetsis could be considered one. That said, I don't think anyone would have a problem if SuMo went the route of Black and White and making Lusamine in her drugged up possession form the final boss. My biggest issue when battling Kukui is that I didn't really feel strongly about the character himself.

Obviously I'm speaking from bias, but I think the past twelve years of playing Pokemon have conditioned me to champion trainers who, if they weren't depicted as calm and collected, were at the very least formidable and intimidating. Kukui is probably one of the most high-energy characters in the entire game! Previous champions all had an air of mystery behind them, whereas you practically spend 1/3 of SuMo's 3-hour tutorial being guided by Kukui. You pick up his mannerisms, you find out what he's all about, you find out he's married to a physicist, etc... Even if the game threw a curveball and actually made you the champion before anyone else could make a claim, Kukui's reveal as the final boss feels... underwhelming. This guy has been holding your hand and supporting you practically through your entire journey, and while Alder had a similar role in B2W2, it was not nearly as pronounced by comparison.

That spark of intensity you feel battling a champion like Steven and Cynthia just isn't there. What do you have to prove about yourself as a trainer if there is no champion to challenge at the end of the long road? This is honestly a shame because I was actually hoping around the time of Gen V that we would get a game where the story throws a curveball you become the first champion, albeit with the caveat that you have to compete with someone for the penultimate title. I still think this is possible, but from what Kukui has shown us, it needs to executed differently. I have not picked up Ultra Sun or Ultra Moon yet so I don't know whether or not Game Freak decided to switch up Kukui with someone else (though I'm gonna assume now that it's either Hau or Gladion), but I would honestly welcome a change, not to mention better battle music.

This current generation of Pokemon signals a shift in the way these games will likely be made for the years to come, both in terms of gameplay and narrative. I wasn't a huge fan of the Island Challenge in hindsight, but it was a fresh take from the past 20 years of  gym battles. While the story of B2W2 may come close at times, I don't think we've had two successive generations that followed similar story beats like Gens III and IV did. That said, I very much adhere to the notion that Pokemon needs to continue making memorable final battles for the player. Each story in a mainstream Pokemon game has remained memorable to some degree, but I strongly believe that the games which hold up better are the ones who execute their champion reveals the best, even if it means adhering to a pre-established archetype. Archetypes aren't a form of bad writing, but their overuse turns them into cliches.