#okay back to pokemon stuff lol

[ann-chovi]

On a minor Oban kick (finally got the soundtrack from the 15th anniversary kickstarter aaahhhhh!!!) and was reminded of this old bit of nonsense from college. :'D

[mossyflowers]

Hey so what if I said I was gonna come back and waited like half a year to actually do that lmao

[violentlydefending]

okay that's great and all but hear me out. what if they had pokemon. [id in alt, more under the cut!]

hi. (wearing a shirt that says "ask me about my yakuza pokemon au" but i'm looking in a mirror so i just start going nuts right off the bat)

woah it's some guy with a dragon tattoo!! lotsa dragons, lotsa fighters, and of course THE parent pokemon!! the zangoose is part of a matching set with majima's seviper, naturally. also it matches his autism stare. blaziken's there out of respect for nugget.

GO GO HARUKA!!! lotsa baby pokemon when she's younger :] the pichu turns into an idol pikachu mainly because i wanted something for her that'd fall in line with that but i also think igglybuff is ugly. sorry. happiny's there in particular because of the crazy eldest daughter syndrome she catches from y3 onwards LOL. that caretaker role hit her hard. sorry girl.

seviper's part of the matching set with kiryu's zangoose, naturally :] plus it fits the snake thing he's got going on with his tattoo. also some dogs!! specifically some fucked up ones!! also did you know froslass only goes after men it thinks is handsome. yeah.

daigo's so funny in y2 imo. aegislash is there in particular because it detects innate qualities of leadership!! anyway that bisharp becomes a kingambit when he's chairman (thumbs up!!)

tiger man gets the tiger man. cat. lots of big burly guys for the big burly guy. etc etc. i like that his training in y4 is just to go mining so i HAD to have at least one fossil mon. hi bastiodon!!!

yasuko's getting hit with the one-two of Beauty(TM) and Small(TM) versions of what her older brother's got :']

tanimura gets a lot of fighty guys, in particular i tried to find ones that sorta fit with the little asia stuff he's got going on. blastoise is there because of the tortoise thing and he's got a gun so ??? actually i might switch blastoise out if i end up exploring this au more LOL and zebstrika's there because he's a horse girl <3

akiyama!! a bunch of kicky guys to fit his fighting style and talonflame because of his phoenix thing. audino because he's the lifeline of kamurocho :]

hana!! why does she not have a last name!!! anyway lotsa guys to match her fighting style :]

magikarp -> gyarados is literally THE most obvious thing to pick out for nishikiyama but if it works it works!!!

makoto and tachibana get a matching set of eeveelutions :] i think a shaymin shows itself before makoto either when she gets her watch back or when she gets the new watch strap

i'm not 100% sure for most of these teams if anyone wants to share their own ideas i'm all ears!!

anyway yeah. hi. thanks for checking this out ily <3 (is still wearing the "ask me about my yakuza pokemon au" shirt and but i am now looking directly into your eyes)

[peachyloveswriting]

(Hiii you could ignore this if you want) imagine an AU where you have a miniature version of your soulmate with Vash? His obviously looks like his merch plush 🥺 You just got this little guy that follows you around that squeaks and stuff. Maybe the only thing the minis can say is their own name like pokemon. Your left exasperated that the humanoid typhoon is possibly your soulmate so you gotta like hide him in your pocket so no one gets wind of him.

A small fluffy filler. There’s probably misspellings galore or typos I’m so sorry lol.

A Mini Disaster — Vash The Stampede

Summary: Vash finds you in the desert after you take a tumble down the dune chasing a tiny version of your yo be soulmate.

A few years back, you finally received your own mini version of your soulmate, Vash. At first you thought it was impossible, that maybe you were mishearing the little guy, over the years it became clear that was just what he was saying. You were scared, you didn’t want to get in trouble because of the little guy, so you keep him hidden for the most part. Being a wanderer between cities though, you get to spend a lot of time with your mini-Vash.

He’s your only company out in the endless sands of this dusty old planet.

“Vash!” You hear him squeak from your pocket. A small smile graces your features as you look down at him, carefully scooping him into your hand and lifting him to your face. “What is it?” You coo.

“Is something the matter?”

He squeaked and ran around on your hand frantically, as if he were trying to tell you something. He’d only ever done such a thing when you first found him. Then suddenly and unexpectedly, he jumped from your hand and into the sands. You heart dropped as you screamed.

“Vash, wait!” You called out as you chased after him. He kept running, with no signs of stopping. The sands swallowed every step, slowing you from catching up to him anytime soon.

“You’ll get hurt.”

From the other side of the sand dune, you heard a similar shout. Decidedly ignoring it, you dove to the other side, tumbling your way down in a ball of grunts and groans. You stopped on your back, the dark sky above you filling your vision. Vash’s squeaking could be heard close to your head and a pair of footsteps neared.

“Hey! Are you okay?”

A blonde with blue eyes and a worried smile leaned into your sight, concern swimming in his eyes. “That was quite a tumble! Here, let me help you up.”

He held out his hand for you to take, quietly you grumbled as you took it. “Thank you.” He hoisted you up to your feet. Something about him seemed awfully familiar…that’s when you felt a soft bump against your ankle. Vash had run into your leg to catch your attention. Your heart fluttered as you scooped him into your hands.

“Vash! Don’t go running off like that it’s dangerous!” You fussed.

The man beside you spoke up, visibly confused. “Huh? Me?” He pointed to himself. You look to him with furrowed brows, your stomach churning.

“Is that your name or something?” You asked as you tucked away small Vash into your pocket. Thinking of it now, both your small companion and new friend here had very similar looks. You could feel your heart pounding in your chest as you met his gaze.

He smiled nervously. “Actually, it is.” He chuckles, rubbing the back of his head. “How’d you know?”

You freeze, your lips agape, softly trying to get the words out as you stare in wonder. “Wait.” Looking down at your pocket you took out your little companion again and presented it to the man.

“Vash!” Your companion chirped from your hand. A red hue spread across your mystery man’s face as he looked at your companion. There was a small look of confusion when his eyes flickered up to you.

“What is that?” He asked. Leaning forward, he prodded at the small thing with his pointer finger and a focused face. “It said my name…” He looked back up at you, his brows creasing.

Your chest began to grow warm alongside your face as you looked at him, realization just dawning upon you. Buzzing excitement massed through you and you clenched your hands tightly. “It supposed to represent you…my soulmate.”

His eyes widen at your words and he begins to stumble. “Soul…mate…?” Chuckling nervously, he looks away. “What’s that? I’ve never heard of that before.” His voice is timid and gentle as he speaks.

A soft smile spreads across your face as you tilt your head at him, raising a brow in question. “You don’t know what a soulmate is?” His eyes flicker up to you and he shakes his head carefully. How he couldn’t know about soulmates is beyond you but you take pride in being able to explain this to him. Vash is intent on listening to you, with puppy like eyes and a small content smile.

“A soulmate is someone you were meant to be with, it’s like the universe decided that two people were made for each other and gave them a special bond. It’s meant to be.”

Mini-Vash climbed up your arm and into your shoulder where he nuzzled against your neck. You smiled at that and Vash pointed at your companion. “And that thing is supposed to be me?” He asks.

You nod my head. “Yeah, it tells up who our soulmate is and stays with us until we meet them.” Gently you pet his head, before you look back up at Vash, furrowing your brows. “You don’t have one?”

He shakes his head, his gaze lingering on the small version of him on you shoulder. “What happens to them on eve you meet your person?” A sadness creeps it’s way into his eyes, hearing the what you said earlier he feels it’s not a good thing but you smile reassuringly.

“He gets to stay with me.”

Vash’s eyes light up again and he smiles brightly as he looks at his tiny self. “It’s so cute.” He looks back up at you with that face, that adorable look. “If I’m being honest, you are too.” Smiling sheepishly, his face flushes. You chuckle as your heart fluttered in your chest.

“Well, Vash The Humanoid Typhoon. You don’t seem as bad as they make you out to be. Why don’t you come with me? Get yo know one another.” His eyes soften at your offer and he nods. “That sounds wonderful. I’d love too.”

[genericpuff]

From the standpoint of someone who doesn't even like LO that much. Reading through this gave me a strange sense of discomfort? I think. Something about the combination of the essays, and the digs at the author in a lot of posts, and making a community based on it, and the ranting. It made it feel a lot more group ragging on something than normal fandom re-writes. I can't help but want to say something on the subject (0/3)

Gonna respond to all your asks together if that's okay, from what I can glean there's a word limit on mobile (?) so it makes it very interesting to see who's able to put all their thoughts into one big ask vs. who has to cut them up into parts 😆

So I can understand that discomfort, it's actually one that I also initially felt towards the community when I discovered it. Though even more so because when I found out about antiLO being a thing, I was still a MASSIVE fan of LO and my thought was "wow, these people are losers" LOL but then a lot of what they were saying resonated with me more as I realized the story was going nowhere (it was around the trial arc when Eris was revealed to be the 'reason' for Persephone's wrath).

All that said, I don't think I was wrong to feel off back then even though I don't feel that way now. We have our own takes and ways of approaching certain subjects, and how we feel is how we feel.

I will say that I can't, in any way, take credit for 'creating' the community. AntiLO pre-existed me by years and I was simply welcomed in as my opinions of the comic changed. I was a lot more involved in UnpopularLoreOlympus when it was born around the S2 finale of the comic. So... don't give me any sort of credit in 'owning' this community or anything of that sort, I came in during a period when criticism of the comic was becoming more common practice. I'm just also someone who's very verbose and loud in their opinions which appeals to a lot of people in this community, so I get why people might see me as some kind of "pillar" within it or like I'm the loudest person in the room, but I promise you that doesn't mean I have any sort of ownership over this part of the fandom or that I feel my opinions carry any more weight than the people around me. It's just a community, after all, not a religion.

It's true that saying I'm not making money off Rekindled doesn't mean I'm not benefiting off it in other ways. But the 'benefits' are still kinda... nothing? in the grand scheme of things? like okay great I have loads of people reading my stuff every update but like, this is still just Tumblr lmao none of this is real and as soon as Rekindled is over, I might be lucky to bring some of the readers over into my next project, but I doubt whatever I do next will get as popular as Rekindled was. All the "benefits" I get are virtually the same as what people writing fanfiction get on AO3 get or what people doing redraw videos on Youtube get. It's fake Internet points for making fan creations.

And that's okay, because that's sorta just the nature of fandom in general, throughout any niche community. People will be naturally drawn to what's familiar and what I do here appeals to the people who are familiar with LO and the criticisms of it, often people who agree with those criticisms. The Zelda community has LinkedUniverse, Pokemon has Hanamusa, Attack on Titan has communities that are dedicated to loving the anime, hating the anime, and even dunking on people who don't 'get' the anime, Undertale has every single crazy rewrite and rewrites-of-rewrites that have been spawned from its fanbase. Did you know there's an entire community of people who discuss and argue over fire alarms? I didn't, but when I found out about it, it was after listening to a video on Youtube discussing all the interconnected drama of the fire alarm community. Like that's wild and seems so stupid and pointless... but it matters to the people who are in it, and my opinion of how they operate isn't going to change how it makes them feel to be a part of that space. That's kinda just human nature, we create our own little microcosms of things to bond over so for people within those microcosms, any amount of disagreement or discomfort will feel massive in proportion.

I guess the point of what I'm trying to say is that a lot of this stuff feels crazy loud but it's really only that loud because it's occupying a single room.

The reality is that Rekindled is still a very niche project dedicated to a niche webtoon that's a part of a niche medium. As loud as it is within here, it's still only because it's such a closed community. Anyone outside of the Webtoons community has zero clue what it is. The 'attention' that I'm getting is still from other niche people who occupy a very specific interest.

And that's not even exclusive to Rekindled, despite Webtoons attempts to sell LO as a 'worldwide phenomenon', a lot of people don't know it exists and couldn't care less. Does that mean my rantings about the comic and its creator matter any less to me or the people who are interested in them? Not really. Is it all pointless? Maybe, but not everything really needs to have some bigger point. We're all kinda just here spending time talking about something we both love and can't stand. What I say about LO and do with Rekindled is undoubtedly inconsequential and pointless to people who aren't in the room. That's fine. That's why I keep it all in my own house. There are definitely people who talk about it outside of the home but that's far from what I can control.

That said, I think LO also does fall into a very unique category where it's very easy to do rewrites and redraws of it simply because it, in and of itself, is a rewrite. Rekindled is far from being the first "fix it" fic, not only of LO but also of any piece of media in general, it's not really a new phenomenon (but again, when it's loud, it can be easy to go "well clearly YOU had to influence this"). People are drawn to retelling LO or 'fixing' it because LO is based on Greek myth. If it weren't for that, no, I don't think people would be as interested in doing so. It's because we literally have a solid foundation of reference material - the myths and original poems - that we can go "hey, why did LO do this? it should have / could have been xyz". You can't really do that as much with a purely original work besides wish fulfillment of "what if xyz happened" because whatever an original piece of work winds up being is clearly what it was meant to be. We have nothing to compare it against.

But with LO, we know what it could have been because we know what it was trying to be since day 1 - a retelling of the Abduction of Persephone. That's not to say we always knew exactly what Rachel was planning on doing with it, but it's not hard to be disappointed when we see certain mythical stories being established in LO - such as the tale of Eros and Psyche, the Titanomachy, etc. - only to see them get dropped or completely mishandled.

On the one hand I could use HADES and Stray Gods as examples of popular media that don't get 'rewritten' the same way LO does because while they have their own unique interpretations of the myths they're based on, they still feel like properly thought out stories that appreciate the source material. LO, by comparison, feels like it's written by someone who hates Greek myth.

But on the other hand, those rewrites may absolutely exist and I'm just not aware of them because I don't occupy those rooms! The world is only as big as we perceive it to be.

That said, it's always sort of ironic to me when people say Rekindled is "riding off the coattails of LO" because while I can understand their sentiment - because obviously it's a direct re-creation of LO - that opinion seems to operating from the assumption that LO was ever not riding off Greek myth's coattails to begin with.

And no, I don't think my criticizing of LO on an LO-focused blog should in any way be conflated with "media isn't allowed to be bad". I've said this before and I'll say it again, I'm into loads of bad media. I'm also fully capable of enjoying a piece of media but also shit-talking it without actually feeling any sort of vitriol towards it. House M.D. is one of my favorite TV shows but goddamn some of the plots are just so dramatic and out-of-this-world that you can't help but laugh at them (and that's why we have spaces like /r/okaybuddyvicodin LOL). One of my favorite games growing up was Starfox Adventures because I had never played the original Starfox games but I had played loads of Zelda and Adventures was basically Zelda but with Starfox, and I know there are plenty of people who will go "but puff, that game is ass!" and I know! But I love it regardless.

With LO, it's not a matter of "bad media shouldn't exist!" it's a matter of observing what makes it so bad and why that's had a negative impact on both the audience it attracts (primarily teenagers and children) as well as the culture it's taking its ideas from. If LO was just some "so bad its good" webtoon that was easy to enjoy but also poke fun at, I would have zero issue. It's the fact that it's blatantly problematic in its writing and intentions but still hailed as the #1 webtoon on the platform (webtoons in and of themselves being a medium that I've lived in for over a decade so it's virtually impossible to get away from whatever is influencing the culture as a whole) while winning all these accolades for being "brilliantly written" and its creator is given a voice over Greek culture when she herself is not Greek or even well-read on Greek culture in any capacity - that's the issue and why I've spent so much time talking about LO. And if it wasn't me, it would be anyone else, because the problem has been around for ages and people have been trying to get the word out about it for years.

I don't necessarily think every 'fix it fic' is built equally. I think it's a case by case thing. A lot of people are deadass just doing it for fun and to be a part of a community, and I think that's wonderful. There are also people who try to do this but ultimately disrespect whatever the creator was going for by somehow implying that their own original ideas were inferior just by existing, or using their fix-it fics as a way to deliberately harass the original creators (ex. whatever the fuck 'art lore' is on TikTok, based on what I've seen it seems purely made for bullying budding artists and talking shit which is... gross af, but I don't think it's anywhere near the same as readers of LO calling out its highly successful award-winning creator for having zero clue what she's doing with her comic lmao). I don't think a blanket statement of "fix it fics are bad" accomplishes anything because it depends on a variety of factors like the person's intentions and what they're trying to accomplish. Many fanfictions in general could be called 'fix it fics' even if the creator 100% loved the source material with zero issue - because they're still saying "what if xyz happened instead"?

Me, personally? I'm someone who loves Greek myth and who used to adore LO. I was very discouraged and upset when I saw it turned into what it became, and I wanted to try my own hand at creating something new out of the rubble that could give me closure. It's what I choose to do with my time and other people seem to enjoy it as well. I'm sure there's loads to criticize and speculate on regarding my 'intentions' in creating it, but at the end of the day I'm sorta just doing what I want to do with my time because I have a lot of thoughts and ideas I need to get out of my head and many of them are thoughts and ideas that other people like reading about.

If you feel uncomfortable by the amount I talk about it here and the way I talk about it, that's fine. Those are your feelings. There are loads of other antiLO-themed blogs to read that might not give you that same vibe. Even I have certain icks towards certain opinions within the antiLO community, I've seen some people be genuinely shitty and I'm sure that's ironic to hear considering you're describing your own discomfort towards my stuff, but we all have different tolerances towards different things at the end of the day.

I do my part to keep things in my own house of a neighborhood that's really small in the grand scheme of things. It just feels like a big neighborhood if you don't travel. There will inevitably come a day where I'll pack my boxes and move elsewhere, talk about new things and write essays about other topics. That's obviously not today but I definitely don't want this to just be like, my entire identity or the rest of my life LOL it's just something I've chosen to spend my free time doing and I'm content with that. Maybe a year from now I'll feel differently, who knows? At the very least I'm hoping to one day finish Rekindled because no, I don't want this to actually be my identity for the rest of my life, change is a good thing LOL but what that change will bring is, for now, a mystery. Here's hoping wherever I end up at least brings its own uniquely good times like I've had here :' )

Sorry, that was a very long response with a lot of sorta aimless muddling over the topic at hand, but thank you for the opportunity to discuss it regardless ! because I do think it's important to find that 'grounding point' when it comes to stuff like this. because as much as I get riled up over LO, yeah, at the end of the day, it's just a dumb webtoon and I don't wanna go soiling myself over it LOL but I'm also just like... running a Tumblr blog with my personal thoughts and ideas, no more or no less. Even the "attention" I get is still only 200-400 notes per new episode of Rekindled, which pales in comparison to any real metrics of "success" imo LMAO again, it just feels loud because this is a niche community made up of a lot of the same names and faces; step outside of it and no one gives a shit LOL

[kafus]

why 100%ing the pokeathlon in HGSS is one of the longest challenges in all of pokemon

ok so the pokeathlon right. the fun minigame collection in HGSS that is sort of but not really a replacement for sinnoh contests. one of the achievements you have to get to upgrade the HGSS trainer card to 5 stars is beating all 10 preset records for each minigame in the pokeathlon, and this is probably what it's most known for outside of just being a fun minigame collection. i think most people beat all the records if they're going for completion and call it a day but despite how easy it is to get that trainer card level, it's actually barely scraping the surface of what this game expects out of you for 100% completion. i genuinely think it's one of the most insane pokemon challenges in terms of the amount of grinding and for WHAT??? WHAT WERE THEY THINKING AAAAA

okay deep breath hear me out. all of the images in this post are pictures of one of my own HGSS files that i have been slowly working on 100% completing the pokeathlon in. i am not done yet and you will soon see why

in the basement of the pokeathlon, there are four rooms that get progressively unlocked as you play. the first one ("solidarity room") is there at default, then you unlock the "trust room" by winning a medal in all five courses at least once, then you unlock the "potential room" by winning a medal for all five courses on the same pokemon (AKA what is called a "medalist pokemon"), and then lastly you unlock the "friendship room" by beating all the preset 1st records, which also gets you the aforementioned trainer card level. each of these rooms is there to display various pokeathlon achievements and holy shit there are a lot of them that just get more crazy as you go further back in the rooms so BUCKLE UP

this is the solidarity room, aka the first room. very easy stuff, the only records down here are in the glass case and they show your highest collective score in each of the five pokeathlon courses. for 100% completion of this room you need to get a score of at least 450 in each course and you can tell you've done this when there are two trophy icons filled in next to each on the right hand side. a couple examples:

the only one in particular that took me more than one or two attempts to get the score i needed was the jump course for some reason and i have no idea why honestly, i think i just suck at lamp jump. on the other hand the skill course is extremely easy entirely because snow throw can be cheesed (video of me doing this here)

next up is the trust room. mainly it features the glass case that shows off every pokemon you've ever received a medal on and also totals how many full medalist pokemon you have, as shown below (i don't currently have any pokemon who AREN'T medalists here, but medalist pokemon are given the red ribbon on the bottom screen, so any non-medalist pokemon won't have that icon):

yes i have 73 medalist pokemon at the time of writing this post. don't worry about the trophies right now, we're going to talk about it later

despite the glass case being the main thing here, the flag, jersey, and golden shoes on the back wall aren't actually there at first. they show up for accomplishing certain things. from left to right you have to switch 200 times in any minigame that requires swapping mons, join the pokeathlon (not necessarily win) 50 times, and dash in any minigame where you flick the stylus to dash 5000 times. these numbers might sound kind of high but it's potatoes compared to later and if you're trying to 100% the pokeathlon these will just naturally show up here eventually without you even thinking about it

amusingly after you get them and interact with them, it doesn't actually tell you what you did to get them there lol. it's just like wow! those are yours! crazy!

next up, the potential room: yet another glass case and a couple of tables on the back for more golden items that appear as you achieve stuff. the glass case this time contains all the records for each individual minigame, including those 1st records you have to beat as i've mentioned a few times.

here are some of my records that i am not so subtly taking the opportunity to show off here lol. i have played so much pokeathlon that all of the 1st records are completely gone from the list, i've overwritten the entire list from each event LOL. on the bottom screen, 1st records you've beaten get a little ribbon on the event icon... but hold on, there's trophies too!

yes there's actually two records to beat for each event, the one that gives you the little trophy is called the mastery record and some of them, unlike the 1st records, are actually pretty damn difficult to achieve. circle push requires 60 points for example, which requires you to get a score of at least 60 - and the theoretical highest score you can get, aka a perfect score, is 66!! that's only 6 points off from perfect!! and don't even get me started on pennant capture, imo it's by far the hardest mastery record, it requires you to pick up 50 entire flags in one game and for a variety of reasons this is very difficult and required me to soft reset over and over doing attempts for multiple hours lol. the mastery records are really where i'm like, damn as a kid with undeveloped motor skills this would make me fucking explode (and it did when i was a child. it almost did even as an adult. fuck pennant capture)

oh yeah btw that "Link" button in the top right is specifically for local wireless playing pokeathlon with friends and there are zero achievements related to it, there's no preset records and no local play is required for completion. figured i'd mention lol

anyway as for the two things in the back, the first with the golden pokegear is for 100 first place wins overall and the one i don't have on the right side is for winning each individual minigame/event in first place... 50 times. 50 times each. there's 10 individual minigames, and some of them don't repeat on any other course, so you can start imagining just how many pokeathlon playthroughs this takes. this is getting ridiculous considering the amount of time investment needed but it Gets Worse!

ah yes the last room. the friendship room. it's cute, it has a statue of you and the last three pokemon you won the pokeathlon with, so you can go in with a team of 3 pokemon you care about and take a photo of your screen surrounded by statues of your favorite guys. here the mons are just random though lol

however there's more to this room and this is where the true insanity of the pokeathlon reveals itself. if you interact with your statue, you get this screen:

as you can see, all of the trophies from the previous rooms are totaled here! the collective trophies are the ones from getting a good score on each course from the solidarity room, the trust trophies are from the amount of medalist pokemon you have shown off in the trust room, the potential trophies are from all the 1st records and mastery records you've beaten in the trust room, and the friendship trophies... well those are actually obtained from the big point score on the top screen, of which you need a minimum of 4500 to get the 10th and final friendship trophy. this total is made up of the sum of all five course high scores, the highest score from each individual minigame (after converting to athlete points, AKA the currency earned), and one point per each medal shown off in the trust room, so five points for each medalist pokemon.

and that's the issue. medalist pokemon. you may have noticed that despite me having a whopping 73 medalist pokemon at the moment as well as getting every other trophy in the pokeathlon, i only have 6 of the 10 trust trophies. do you know how many medalist pokemon you need to 100% the pokeathlon and get that last trust trophy? 200 OF THEM.

let me break down why this is fucking ridiculous. so first of all i've been waiting to mention this until now, but medalist pokemon aren't actually logged by individual pokemon, they're logged by species. this means if you go in with a cyndaquil, and then go in with a different cyndaquil, winning medals on both cyndaquils does not count as more medals after you've already gotten them on that first cyndaquil once. this means that to even attempt getting 200 medalist pokemon, you have to OWN 200 individual pokemon species - as of gen 4 there were 493 pokemon in the national dex including mythicals and stuff; that's a little under half the entire fucking pokedex!! think of it this way, there's 30 pokemon per PC box, and assuming no duplicates, you would need to fill 6 and 2/3 PC boxes with different pokemon species.

pokedex requirement aside, let's break down how many times you have to play the pokeathlon minigames MINIMUM assuming you win first place every single time and don't ever bring repeat species on accident. it's math time babey

you need 200 medalist pokemon but you join the pokeathlon with a team of 3 pokemon at a time, so let's divide that by three and round upwards. 200 / 3 = 67 full medalist runs. for each medalist, you have to beat all 5 courses, so let's multiply 67 by 5 to get 335 total pokeathlon wins. but wait, each course has three minigames! so the total amount of minigames you have to play MINIMUM to get 200 medalist pokemon is 1005. and again, that's at minimum assuming you don't fuck anything up!! these minigames aren't exactly short either, they last 1-2 minutes each and this doesn't count spamming A through dialogue and menus, picking your pokemon each time before each course, watching the cutscene of points getting totaled at the end... 1-2 minutes might sound short but even if we take out all that time menuing and assuming every course is JUST 1 minute for math's sake, that's 1005 minutes - that's 16 hours and 45 minutes of JUST pokeathlon gameplay, and that is absolutely an underestimate.

as you can imagine as a person with chronic pain these minigames are kind of painful after a while and so i'm definitely going slow with this grind but i intend to have every trust trophy eventually. i'm not the first to do it but i've seen very few people online who have even wanted to make the attempt and i want to be able to look at that friendship trophy screen and feel accomplished. (i'm also going to get that last achievement in the potential room but if i don't have it somehow at the end of getting all these medalists i'll worry about it then)

side note i think it's really funny how there's something called the Supreme Cup which is just pokeathlon but harder and the only thing worth doing it for is extra athlete points for winning (300 instead of 100), there's literally 0 achievements tied to it lol

oh, and an aside about how ridiculous the pokeathlon is - the data cards. despite all my rambling here about all these different rooms with various achievements, there's actually even more pokeathlon data that is accessible... for a price.

the lady behind the counter here will sell you data cards for athlete points which let you view more personal pokeathlon data on the computer screen right next to her. the issue is some of these are really expensive, most of them 1000 points or more, which is a minimum of two full pokeathlon courses probably won at first place each. and there's also one card that costs 9999 for some fucking reason, it's the one that shows your total pokeathlon playtime, which i think is really funny. you also can't buy it right away, you have to buy most of the prior ones first. they really said ok here's your reward for grinding enough AP to buy all those data cards including this 9999 one: checking how much time you've wasted on getting here! in total getting all the data cards costs 39499 AP. just to view all your data!! if you get an average of 500 AP per pokeathlon course, that's a minimum of like 79 pokeathlon wins!!

i assume most people have never bought a data card much less all of them, like most people are going to use all that AP for purchasing evolution stones and heart scales from the main shop on the right, but it's kind of nutty how much data the pokeathlon actually saves. very minute stuff. since i've bought all of them, here's my current stats at the time of writing this:

anyways don't do this unless you have a lot of time on your hands to tediously replay the same minigames hundreds of times, and if you do for the love of god rest your wrists btw. these minigames were not built for my bones and they probably weren't for you eitherSFDKSFD

[sunseed-leaf]

art dump timeee

lots of pokemon stuff i hope you like it :) this is a looooooooooong post

Originally these were just design mashups, at least, that was the plan for my "redesigns"... but it really made me realize how little they change Red throughout the generations. hence why he looks VERY similar to his canon design, i just added some things i guess. for Blue i could go absolutely ham with things i wanted in his design since there's so much to choose from. the fang idea comes from my friend. also, these are pretty much used for an AU based off of the RG project romhack by @shima-draws (i hope tagging is okay aaa) bc i played it with my friend and we really liked it and it converted him into a pokemon fan and namelessshipper :) In the end we made our own AU based off of it because other characters got thrown into it. we're continuing the timeline in soul silver :p

Here's a design for Leaf, she's Red's sister in my headcanon, i again went for the design mashup thing so that's why she looks like a mashup of Green and Leaf. i don't have much to say here....

Then there's some designs i can't show but it's for the reason that they are just human + trainer versions of sonic exes (not joking, i wish i was. my friend dragged them into our mini-roleplays, only two and they were Red's traveling companions and later Kris's too.)

Then here's a redesign inspired by other Daisy designs. dunno why but i just wanted her to be pink....

Eepy...

even more eepies....

then i made some silly redesigns/design mashups for Ash and Gary

And drew Red and Blue in alola. married dudes -w- Just in general my headcanon is that Red collects keychains, he probably has boxes worth of keychains and puts different ones on his bag every day, he even did this as a child he just didn't stop even into adulthood. Still a kid at heart with his silly keychains more headcanon rambles: Blue hates the cold but loves the warmth and Red loves the cold and hates the warmth. please put him into a freezer he can't handle the heat of alola- also yeah i know i messed up the number on Red's shirt, i learned how to draw 96 after this, i promise

And now we get to Pokemon Soul Crystal,,, which is just pokemon soul silver but with a patch that makes Lyra into Kris lol

Here she is!! i tried incorporating some bits from Lyra and her comfy outfit is based off of Gold i swear i love Kris's design in canon, the hair is a lil funky tho so i made the pigtails a bit shorter and poofier

then we got Silver here... again not much change, i love his design, i just wanted to add some moon details bc why not

I'll batch these together! here's some redesigns for the OG trio for Soul Crystal

Blue is supposed to look like he's been crying (sorry Blue :C) Red just makes me think of pokepastas im sorry, once he gets off mt. silver he'll get a haircut. Leaf is just. i dunno, i don't really know how to characterize her... she cares a lot about people but she's kinda bitchy about it. tough love i guess.. I think after soul crystal is over i'll get working on an continuation of that that isn't tied to a game where she gets more of an important role so i can work on her character. Blue is wearing lots of reds/warmer tones cause why not and Red is supposed to wear lots of blues/colder tones to give a little bit of a connection i guess.

Now, here's the final drawing before i show shitpost stuff, this was drawn with a drawing tablet rather than a mouse like usual

lines are a little funky but i like how this looks, i just need a bit more practice, i'm rusty on drawing with a pen

and now, shitpost:

i love Cinder the Typhlosion,,,, he's so cute

i know this is at the top of the post but i wanna put this here again and credit the idea for this: here.

that's all, goob bye i'll go back into hibernation

[saccharinescorpion]

oh christ i typed up way too many thoughts about the Teal Mask story

spoilers of course

TO BEGIN WITH literally everything here has a big ol’ asterisk with “subject to change” attached to it, i was surprised at how much of a “to be continued” ending the main story had and i’m trying not to get my hopes too high for Indigo Disk, but wowzers

Carmine’s line about tourism… i have a lot of feelings, but the one looming over my head like a fucking sword of Damocles is “did the writers not intend this to have as much weight as i am ascribing to it lmao” because it’s only the one line and GOD i don’t want to be the “reading too much into stories for babies” person all the time but!! But!!!!

(recalls the scene where Nemona talks to you about feeling isolated because of her talent and recalls my feeling of “why was this only in one scene where she flatout looks at the camera and says this”)

well even if it’s not supposed to be “that” important-

1) sure makes the TCG Tournament in Hawaii feel even more bitterly ironic lmao (obligatory yes i know the game writers are not responsible for most stuff that happens in the wider franchise i’m just SAYING it’s ironic)

2) GOSH it sure does make those ugly jokes people kept making about Carmine even grosser than they already were (if you don’t know what i’m talking about, Don’t Worry About It)

As someone on twitter said it feels weird to have this sort of plot point after not exploring it at all in the game with the Hawaii analogue. at the same time i do have to wonder if it was a response to working on those games and doing some thinking. Who can say

God ALL of that was for one line

KIERAN!! Okay, i know i’ve been giving Kieran a lot of shit but his plot progression is genuinely very compelling. recent games have been exploring the “rival who feels inadequate” type of character but this is the first time one has gone off the deep end like this, and i really hope they push it into interesting places

Cutesy shy “oh gosh oh wowzers” pre-development Kieran… in the end i did feel a bit charmed by how sincere he is for the record!

but also i’m genuinely so glad he ended up having Inner Darkness lol

Sorry Kieran i just don’t like it when it feels like the writer is trying way too hard to make me say “i want to protect you”

By extension sorry Wally lmao because he really was the ancestor of this type in the Pokemon franchise

I tried not to take the fact that i really didn’t want the damn Ogerpon too personally lol, this is one of those moments where i really had to force myself to step back and remember that these games are not for me, they are for tiny children who often really do buy into the Gotta Catch Em All thing and probably felt some genuine inner turmoil at this

But god like, please. I have my giant puppy lizard who makes vroom vroom noises. Ogerpon you are so cute but we can never have the bond i have with my bike

Kieran falling to his knees after the last battle genuinely got me, so did him punching the shrine even with the dumb “owie ><” gag afterwards

OKAY talking about the battles damn Kieran and Carmine were tough opponents i had to try Kieran’s last fight like three times (admittedly because i was using my weaker Kitakami team but STILL)

Kieran feeling bad for the ogre was projecting “THIS CHARACTER FEELS LIKE AN OUTCAST” and i picked that up loud and clear, and that was good, but i wish they actually… made him seem like an outcast?

Don’t get me wrong, Kieran definitely has self-confidence issues, issues with talking to others, anxiety issues (possibly), and that can easily make someone feel like an outcast

But i feel like there’s a big difference between that and someone (Ogerpon and her trainer) who is actively shunned and mistreated by the people around them, and i was really hoping for that from Kieran

It’s just the Pokemon thing of finding it hard to depict people really being actively malicious (see Penny and Team Star’s bullies and their enablers all doing their thing off-screen and then leaving off-screen)

But it’s doubly weird because they didn’t have much issue with showing characters in this story being terrible (Carmine)

Carmine!!! Her terribleness was genuinely so entertaining, a lot of the time i was simultaneously laughing and thinking “oh people are going to be SO mad”

But real talk for all my love of Girls Who Suck i do actually kind of get where some people are coming from, she is genuinely very abrasive and unpleasant at times, and though i don’t agree at least i can tell where the character hate is stemming from (unlike some of the absolute batshit stuff i saw about Geeta and Nemona, don’t get me staaaarted)

And speaking of… okay i feel like i’m pushing it even talking about this but i feel it would be dishonest to pretend that i’m not thinking about it

SOOOO the “it’s not like i hit him” line… another case of “did the writers intend this to be as big as it is in my mind,” combined with uhhh writers from a different generation than me, let’s say

For now i will interpret that at face value, but like… damn, i don’t think that reads as you want it to especially in a Pokemon game

Carmine pleaseeeeeee say you’re sorry to Kieran in Indigo Disk please please please i know she apologized for leaving him in the dark but my dearest dream is for her to apologize for being so mean to him all the time. she needs to just treat him better in general. please i will forgive Kieran having to apologize for taking the mask if we can do this please

I know i know cultural differences but we already had Clavell apologize for the failures of the school system, this isn’t THAT big of  a stretch

I am genuinely curious if Indigo Disk will pull a reverse plot twist and reveal Ogerpon’s trainer to be a bad person or reveal that he was the one to attack the Loyal Three first because if not DAMN we’re just going to have some flat out evil Pokemon? that we can potentially put on a team with Ogerpon?????

Ogerpon is a silly lil girl :)

I still haven’t done Perrin’s plot lol

[katethevampire]

All right so the new episodes just came out like 20 minutes ago for me (oh yeah me from the future here it ended up taking me about 3 hours to finish watching the episodes cuz I kept pausing to write stuff in between so uh yeah lol) so everything under the cut will be my live reaction to everything. I'll add time stamps so you know where I'm at in the episodes. I can guarantee you that I will be sticking to my promise about potentially eating paper if I'm wrong about Sir Pentious not dying. Which honestly now I'm not sure if anyone will die, it was pretty much confirmed in a live stream that angel dust isn't going to be the one to die so my money is on one of the Angels. Also I'm using voice to text and while I'll try and fix any misspellings or wrong words I might miss them.

LOTS OF SWEARING PROBABLY also I very much abuse capslock

EPISODE 7

00:51- I love Sir Pentious looking at Keke I just thought I should mention that

01:03- OH MY GOD NO KEKE MOVED TO HIS LAP AND HE'S PETTING HER I LOVE HIM SM

01:10 aw Alastor was sleepy you guys woke him up!

01:22- I CAN'T EVEN APPRECIATE RAZZLE AND DAZZLE BEING CUTE CHARLIE IS CRYING

01:29- he did the gay little hand thing

01:50- okay so I've already seen this part because of the small leak but I cannot get over the fact that Alastor has his shoes on the bed!! Like man take those off you're getting it dirty!!!!

01:59- mfs kicking his feet on the bed acting like a high school girl about to ask out her crush on the phone at a sleepover like dude you're a serial killer you can't do this to me ��� also I should probably slow down cuz I'm making an update literally every 2 seconds

02:18 BROS CHECKING HIS NAILS AND DOING THAT POSE WHILE MAKING FUN OF HER ABOUT THE FACT THAT SHE UNINTENTIONALLY MIGHT HAVE CAUSED THE DEATHS OF MILLIONS 💀💀💀 so fruity i love

2:33- Alasto be like "it's called masking deary. Ever heard of it?"

2:44- if he wasn't saying this in such an evil manner right now I'd be saying he's so me frfr

3:07- what do I even say to that line. He popped off but also like respectfully I think I've heard a third grader say the exact same thing

3:53- OKAY SO I WAS GOING TO SAY SOMETHING BUT I'VE COMPLETELY FORGOTTEN LOOK AT THIS FRAME, this could easily be the profile picture for someone's film review channel and I'm not 100% sure that people will understand what I mean by that unless you know a very specific person

04:38- Alastor is in his hat man era

4:33- okay so a few things, thank you subtitles for telling me that the music is edgy I feel like just the word tense would have worked on its own but I appreciate it nonetheless. Number two, I don't like seeing the girlies be mad at each other :(

05:34 I will support my boy Sir Pentious through and through he did nothing wrong!!

06:54- not the voice I was expecting for Rosie but pop up Queen she speaks the truth

07:24- ROSIE KNOWS WHAT YOU ARE ALASTOR. Also his confusion, I love him so much

11:04- she's kind of like that one Pokemon

Ad time!- I DON'T CARE ABOUT VITAMIN PILLS THAT DOUBLE MY LIFESPAN

11:13- catabettes! Cannibals and catabettes!!! This is going into my vocabulary from now on. Also this frame that I paused at I love her face.

11:57- ugh, susan. All my homies hate Susan

12:54- I have a dream, I'm here to cause a scandal in the cannibal square

13:37- :( well it wasn't obvious to me I just thought the x over the eye was to look cool :(

14:35- SONG FUCK YEAH

15:26 If this song came out years ago I know for a fact there would have been an undertale parody version of it. Also I just got a cosmic brownie and some chocolate milk let's go guys we're eating good tonight

16:00 HOLY FUCKING SHIT SHE CAN JUST GROW BACK HER WINGS

16:30- therapist Rosie is not something I thought I'd be seeing today but honestly I love it. Also I don't think I'm going to be able to finish these episodes today because I'm only a little over 15 minutes through and I've been watching for like almost over half an hour and also I just realized that what if Lucifer is the one that dies?

18:12 ALASTOR GAVE HER HIS MICROPHONE I'M GOING TO EXPLODE INTO A BAJILLION CRYING PIECES RAHHHHHH

19:38 I'm going crazy I'm going insane right now bro literally what how I don't know what to say I love this act I don't know, it's just really good I don't know what to say like this is cool I don't I DON'T KNOW! IT'S I I LIKE IT everybody in cannibal town is cool and I like them and it's like 10 seconds later now and they're literally So based like free food like so me I don't know I'm just rambling at this point

20:56 ALASTOR AND ROSIE'S LITTLE DANCE THEIR LITTLE TIPPY TAPS OH MY GOD YES

21:06- alastor, you know it's not right to make someone your political puppet. Your little dances are cute though so I'll allow it for now.

I don't know why it thought I was speaking Spanish for a second but anyways that episode was really cute and good and I liked it but I'm also scared for the next episode cuz like now I'm wondering is someone actually going to die or were people just lying. I feel like either Adam is going to be the one to die or it's going to be Lucifer cuz they mentioned a lot in the previous episode about how Charlie needs to take up the throne and get ready to take her place on the throne like why does she need to take her place on the throne? Isn't that her dad's job??? Please don't kill Lucifer off please please please 🙏 also I'm still not on board and probably will never will be on the whole political puppet thing. Like I just know I just have a feeling in my bones that alastor's favor is going to be something like "Let me be the ruler of hell lololol" or something anyways

EPISODE 8

01:01-Why are you watching other men get fucked?🤨 (/j)

01:19 🥺 I love 🥺 I oove him so 🥺 so much 🥺🥺🥺 does he have a spatula like spongebob

02:02- wait so how is Vox watching them like does he have bug cameras in the air like those little guys in v3 (woah now I have to put a Danganronpa spoiler on this)

03:42 SOFT ALASTOR FANFICTION WRITERS QUICK WRITE THAT DOWN WRITE THAT DOWN!!!

04:18- I'm not even the biggest huskerdust shipper but awwwww also I don't ship him with anyone but I just want to see Sir Pentious happy pleaseeee also the little Melody of loser baby in the background

04:48- ugh I am clutching my heart right now Sir Pentious is my SON and I LOVE HIM

04:58- what the fuck that ao3 tag was canon this WHOLE TIME???? WHEN DID YOU GUYS HEAR ABOUT THIS?????

05:05- I told you angel dust wasn't going to die

05:38- it's like the song but different! Reprise it's called a reprise also is Mimzy gonna come back

07:15- Vox, you know that you guys are going to die if they lose too right?

Okay I can't timestamp this cuz I'll just be pausing every 2 seconds but just know that everything I'm saying after this is from 07:52 to whatever number I put after later right here->09:47

Okay, so this might be a weird comparison but you know like My Little pony Battle scenes? This feels like that in the very best way possible where they have the scenes with all the different characters fighting with the different music.

Oh my God yes Cherry bomb and angel dust I love them also that was a fire transition also I JUST NOTICED THAT SIR PENTIOUS HAT ALSO HAS THE EYE DOES HE JUST HAVE I HATS FOR EVERY OCCASION

Uh oh Adams angry he's going to do a my hero academia

Oh shit it actually worked that's not good.

I TOLD YOU I CALLED IT VOX IS HORNY

Oh my God that is such a cool shot guys someone should make that frame of Alastor their computer background

OH MY GOD WHOEVER ANIMATED THAT SCENE I LOVE YOU I'M LITERALLY GIVING YOU A METAPHORICAL KISS ON THE MOUTH IN THE PLATONIC SENSE ALASTOR LOOKED SO COOL

Guys I think Adam's going to die

😨 okay so Alastor's microphone just broke and I paused it to add that emoji but as I did the people I live with got home so I'm going to have to pause it for there? I'll update if I get prime working on my phone. Also isn't alastor's microphone alive? Maybe that's the character that died.

Update: all right I got it set up on my phone about 30 minutes later now we're resuming

09:47- okay so I think it's interesting that Alastor pretty much lost all his powers as soon as his microphone broke, my guess is probably that whoever has his soul (lilith, eve, or anyone else) gave the mic to him.

09:53- I like the detail that Alastor is still smiling even though he literally just got slammed against the wall, also Vox has the biggest hate boner for Alastor like

10:02- Alastor: "Have to disagree with you there, radio's not dead." Hun you are bleeding out I'm sorry but I don't think you can gaslight girlboss your way out of this one, also I'm sorry to tell you but the only thing they play on my local radio station now besides music is like, a show that's only on at like 7 in the morning where people call to complain about how their husband wraps Christmas presents

10:38- haha silly also EGGS!!

10:43- NO WAIT MY BRAIN DIDN'T REGISTER THAT THAT EGG WAS CRACKED THEY KILLED THE FUCKING EGG!!!!!! Angel, kill them.

11:12- no no no Sir Pentious you better not I don't want to eat paper

11:21- good for him

11:44- NO GOD DAMN IT PLEASE HAVE A REVEAL THAT ALASTOR OR LUCIFER OR SOMEONE ELSE SAVED HIM PLEASE 🙏🙏🙏 I AM BEGGING ON MY HANDS AND KNEES

12:03- okay this is really cool but is he actually dead cuz I'll legitimately be really sad if so

12:50- *that one vine* "*gasp* Adam."

13:23- KILL HIS ASS CHARLIE

14:12 yes Vaggie, queen shit

SIR PENTIOUS ARE YOU DEAD /J OR /SRS?????

14:35 I KNEW IT I KNOW HE WAS GOING TO COME BACK I MEAN I GOT KIND OF SPOILED CUZ I I SAW THE COVER OF THE EPISODE BUT WOAH 10/10 ENTRANCE

14:44- gasp! His face!

15:00- he is, so stupid. I love him.

15:51-okay I went quiet for a minute cuz there were so much happening but oh my God what do I even say this is just so cool also I don't know if this is intentional or not but the blood stain on Charlie's hair is shaped like an apple

16:34- NIFFTY RAHHHHHHH

17:08- wait okay I had a brief thought that maybe lute was actually Eve but I think I'm wrong on that

17:13- Sir Pentious would've liked pancakes :((((((

Ad Time! I don't care about hard Rock Cafe I just want to know whether or not Sir Pentious is actually dead please I'm going through all the stages of grief right now and Brandan Rogers just came on my screen as Katie killjoy please

18:04- Keke :(

Oh my God they're going to find him in the rubble right? ... Right?? Right guys right???????

18:10- fat nuggets survived that's good I see a rock that looks suspiciously shaped like Sir Pentious military hat whoa guys I wonder if that means anything and it looks like it's up like someone is standing? Whoa I wonder if they'll check behind that rock please

18:16- wait is he actually dead I'm genuinely about to cry

19:16- I am not crying about his death until the episode ends I am not crying until it is 100% CONFIRMED that he died

20:50- omg alastor's alive, he's in his Jack's skeleton era that means that maybe Sir Pentious is also-

21:08- friends :) he said friends just saying

22:04- I TOLD YOU I FUCKING TOLD YOU I TOLD YOU THAT BY DYING IT WAS JUST A CHARACTER BEING REDEEMED I TOLD YOU I'M SO SMART I'M NOT EATING PAPER HAHAHAHAHA I'M THE GREATEST MAN ALIVE HE'S NOT DEAD MY SNAKE BOY ISN'T DEAD HOW DID I GET SO ATTACHED TO HIM I DON'T KNOW BUT I LOVE HIM YES I CAN'T EXPRESS MY EMOTIONS RIGHT NOW I'M GENUINELY SO HAPPY THIS IS WHY THIS IS WHY I WAITED UNTIL THE VERY END TO CRY ABOUT HIM I KNEW HE WASN'T GOING TO BE DEAD THEY WOULDN'T KILL HIM OFF THEY WOULDN'T KILL MY SNAKE BOY OFF JUST LIKE THAT

22:34- you're telling me Lilith was just doing hot girl shit on the beach for 7 years.

[habken]

Okay, I can get tangela and growlite in Bakugo's team...

But how he got sylveon👀? Is there any particular reason?

It's just out of all bnha characters I never associate Bakugo with Sylveon. Although, I get it why he's using sylveon: that is really feral predator, that lures pray and strangle it to death

Having sylveon on bakugou’s team was heavily influenced by noodles_and_tea and dragonpunk15’s pokemon aus, it wasn’t something I originally thought of but thought it was perfect when I saw their stuff !

I just always think there’s something fun about giving sylveon, or any pokemon that evolve based on friendship/love, to characters, and I really like thinking about bakugou loving his little guys so much and them loving him just as much right back :’) I think him wanting a cool eeveelution and getting a fancy little fairy also goes well with part of his journey in the series ! Him learning to set aside his ego, make actual solid friendships and rebuild relationships he’d previously tossed aside.

I also think a sylveon brings some variation to his team, and I like the idea of a lovey dovey little mon and a grouchy kid being pals <3 Also sylveon is a cool pokemon! Like you said, it can be vicious (and I like having one on my own team lol)

[ann-chovi]

*flails* finally halfway done with this stupid silly bit of bonus comic thing and it's STILL probably going to be at least a month before I finish because I have no self control BUT HEY I'M NOT STUCK ANYMORE YAY♡

[bunnygirl678]

tell us about baseball au

fglkjadflkjsdaf I can talk about baseball au all day my dude! (i mean i can talk about any au anyway cause its my fav thing to do lmao)

Okay so I actually have two, one is a high school one, it's a bit darker and handles difficult topics but gold plays baseball and silver starts coming to his games, v cute stuff

The au in which baseball is the focus is pro baseball one (i came up with it on the way home from watching the astros get absolutely wrecked and i needed to cheer myself up LOL) its pokespe cause i can manipulate some stuff for example

-Green's grandfather was a pro ball player and when he was a kid he got sent off to live with Chuck who was a coach and trained him non stop

-something with silver and the masked man but idk didn't flesh that out too much but whatever it was is sad... i think his dad was a pro player or owned a team or something and he got kidnapped for a long time idk tho

-buttttt our main players (everyone is an adult so age gaps don't really mean anything?) are gold, silver, red, green, lance, surge, koga, bugsy, ruby, few others on the team really just characters I like

-Yellow is our Physical therapist cause she's got the powers lol

-Blue is like media/marketing/PR she's sometimes a little shady but its fine

-Crys is an assistant coach or something, half the players are scared of her which is fun, gold constantly talks back to her (ends up running laps a lot lol)

-ships would be gold/silver, red/green but i feel like they would be more background? the focus here is the team its like a sports anime mixed with slice of life

-just their regular season and the hijinks they get into

-its not a very serious au and there is no real plot except them playing ball and trying to win it all (they do)

-there's also an ongoing joke that no one knows who the head coach is

-pokemon are still a thing but like that one episode of Alola so is baseball LOL maybe they have their partners on the field?? IDK

-eventually i'll flush this out more but i've got 50thousand other ongoing fics cause you know I get an idea and i start writing haha

[veryimportantsparkles]

Okay!!! I drew this last night but it was right before bed so I waited to post it so I'd have time to write. This is a tentative design, I'm probably going to restructure that...vest? At least a little bit. Meet Dillia. Technically she's been on the blog once before, when I was working on my Johto trainer outfit...from when I would have been like TWELVE. Today's my birthday by the way, I just turned THIRTY-FIVE.

Dillia was from my original Silver version. I still have the cartridge, but the battery died at some point years ago. When Heart Gold and Soul Silver came out, I was at a point in my life where I couldn't afford to buy new games all the time, so I skipped them. For years after I was buttmad that I have a big gap in my Pokemon experience. From HGSS up until I suppose SwSh, I wasn't buying the new stuff. I'm a lot more financially stable now, but in the meanwhile all the prices on used games had been rocketing up. Well, last year Josh the Boyfriend got me a reasonably-priced legitimate copy of Soul Silver off an ebay listing he had been watching. I had to prep the file with my usual habits (get to the name rater and nickname everything, designate a world sacrifice etc) and wanted to clear out some of my gen 3 backlog (beat leaf green three times, lol, then sapphire, alpha sapphire, and emerald) before starting a new file. I have started a new file!

I had to reset like 14 times for a female Totodile, but it was important to me that I get Dillia back. When I got her the first time, I had no idea that female starters were rare. Totodiles have always simply been female to me. She's almost as beloved as Tortoise, a lifelong companion that has been with me since I was very young. I've waited so long to revive her, it's a shame. I don't have full designs for her gijinka forms yet, but I had done a rough sketch a few years ago.

Using Tortoise's timeline sketch as a guide, Dillia should have Totodile, Croconaw, and Feraligatr forms for her original game, then after death and rebirth in the new game. I think what I want to do is give her very tame clothes in her old life (stuff I would've worn in 2001, 90s thrift store jackets and basic jeans), and punkier stuff for her new life.

I still have a lot of other art to do (champion art for the Alpha Sapphire guys, and the Emerald guys, and...my entire webcomic Laserwing...and other things...) but I wanted to get the basic idea of Dillia out to commemorate her return.

Hopefully she'll help me remember a bunch of other Silver Pokemon that have been lost to the haze of time!

[funeralprocessor]

My thoughts on palworld at like the ~40 hour mark: rough but fun. People saying it's pokemon with guns, a challenger to Pokemon (lol), etc are really off base imho because the gameplay is much more Ark with botw/genshin movement and DQM/Pokemon knockoffs instead of dinosaurs. It doesn't really do anything original, but does combine some of its inspirations in a compelling way.

Palworld's base building and work system is very bare bones at this point and another obvious point taken from Ark, and the pal AI really struggles to pathfind on anything unlevel sometimes, but it's such a neat thing to come back to a base bustling with your little dudes at work. Despite the edgy sweatshop and slavery marketing that's actually wildly inefficient compared to just working them gently and taking care of them, because healing them from sickness and injury is costly not to mention tedious.

The pal designs are...okay? Some take some very heavy inspiration from pokemon but most are just sort of lacking identity if not charm. I definitely don't think they're using AI to make the models or come up with designs, nor do I think they stole models from pokemon. I think they set out to not-quite-pokemon and softballed doing the designs.

So the designs are mid, the base building is scuffed and scanty, and the combat is also bare bones. Somehow though, it's engaging as hell. Maybe it's just the sheer dearth of content in the genre on PC, maybe it's the novelty of exploration (seriously the map is massive, even if there's not a ton of stuff in it (yet?) it's been a blast just running around to see what there is), or maybe it's just me having low standards, but I've enjoyed my time with palworld. I really hope pocketpair can fulfill at least some of the promise the game has, or at least inspires someone else to pick up the torch

[the-one-who-lambs]

AO3 Questions Tag Game!

I was tagged by @bamsara (on my main @onethirdofimpossible but most of my readers follow me here for cotl stuff so I'm posting it here)

I tag @i-eat-deodorant and @megsiepoo!

Under the readmore because this is long as shit

1 – How many works do you have on AO3?

69 BAYBEEEE

2 – What’s your total AO3 word count?

213,360 words published

3 – What fandoms do you write for?

Previously: Pokemon (no longer online), Steven Universe, a few Deep-Sea Prisoner games (Wadanohara and the Great Blue Sea, The Grey Garden, Ice Scream)

Currently: Cult of the Lamb

4 – What are your top five fics by kudos?

The Care and Keeping of Eldritch Gods. Until the rewrite of RL/FG is done, this is my magnum opus

Present My first ever CotL fic. This was the first time I'd written fic in like four years and I was dusting off my writing muscles...

Smitten soft narilamb....

Cat(nip) Boy wrote this for shits and giggles in my early fandom days. The One Who Waits on catnip

How Narinder Takes His Tea First part of the old RL/FG series. Though I'm remaking it as a longform multichap fic, I'm keeping up the old series because of the memories + I don't want other people who saved the old one to lose it.

5 – Do you respond to comments?

All the time! I was able to respond to literally every single comment back in 2022, but as last year went on, I realized I probably can't realistically do that anymore. It's a blessing and a curse.

6 – What is the fic you wrote with the angstiest ending?

We already knew how this would turn out. Title not given directly in my answer in case of spoilers. My readers saw it coming because I had built up to it, but I took my time writing the gradual reveal in the last chapter to make sure it landed the way I wanted it to.

And one more comment I won't post here bc (for anyone who wants to read it) spoils the ending but shoutout to the person who physically felt the shock lurch through their body when the realization hit them after the slow build-up.

As much as I love angsty stories with happy endings, what gets me more are stories that are happy at face value, with endings that are heartwrenching because of the underbelly of what lurked beneath that facade.

7 – What’s the fic you wrote with the happiest ending?

The Risen Lamb and the Fallen God. Bit a spoilers below if you're avoiding that

The original wedding fic (as part of the original series) is up, but it's going to get a good polishing in the rewrite. Lambert and Narinder are going to have a private first dance, Thenana and Narinder are going to have a deeper conversation, Ratau's interactions with Lambert are gonna be shown rather than just told, Aym and Baal will be revived.

8 – Do you get hate on fics?

Mostly no. There was one time last year that I was compared to another writer in the fandom and slowly asks evolved into "your own concepts are being done better by others" and shit, and the other writer got hate messages as well, and... well, it was a whole thing. Don't wanna talk too in detail about it because I don't wanna beat a dead horse but cotl writers have unionized so we got the last laugh I guess

9 – Do you write smut? If so, what kind?

lol ya it's on remainderofreality. What "kind?" uh. experimental because I'd never tried the genre before this fandom and it kinda shows but that's okay.

10 – Do you write crossovers? What’s the craziest one you’ve written?

Honestly, I'm not really into crossovers! Unless it's Webber in cotl. He can stay, he's cute.

11 – Have you ever had a fic stolen?

Yeah. It was actually the first fic I posted online, ever. In middle school, I wrote a whole ~100k-ish word self-insert pokemon fanfic, which I wrote by hand in like five composition notebooks, so I never posted that online. But after that I decided to post shorter one-shots for pokemon online, and a few months later I found one of mine reposted without credit. Plagiarized entirely, basically. It scared me and I deleted everything I had posted online, and I don't have extra copies of the works now. :(

12 – Have you ever had a fic translated?

Nope, but I'd be okay with it if I was asked beforehand and proper credit was given!

13 – Have you ever co-written a fic?

Yeah! Of Duty and Devotion is basically a glorified roleplay between me as Aym, @i-eat-deodorant as Baal, @checkplzjuliet as The Lamb, and @surfdudeboy as Narinder. I also wrote Hide and Seek, a cute little Bishop family one-shot, with @lordiedams (hi Damien I miss you).

14 – What’s your all-time favorite ship?

Narilamb. I haven't focused on a ship for this long, except maybe Rupphire back in the day, but I'm fixated so much more on CotL than I was for SU.

15 – What’s a WIP you want to finish but doubt you ever will?

Honestly, Of Duty and Devotion lmao. I'm much more focused on my own projects and so are Pavi, Surf, and Juliet. I do want to finish it though.

16 – What are your writing strengths?

Pacing, diction, syntax, getting the intended point across and doing it well. Once I commit to doing something, I don't usually let myself "give up" on it, hence why I barely have any unfinished WIPs. That's a skill honed with tons of practice, though. I have massive ADHD, and I'm bad at finishing things, but when it comes to writing by god I'm gonna do it.

17 – What are your writing weaknesses?

I often struggle to get to a point where I'm totally focused in on what I'm writing. It does happen once or twice a month, but honestly, I'm usually so busy with life stuff that I don't get to do that most of the time! I wish I had more time to make room for my hobbies, but alas. At least summer is coming up, and I'll be able to do that more often, hopefully!

18 – Thoughts on writing dialogue in another language in fic?

It's possible to do it naturally for sure, but I rarely see it done well in fic. I've never attempted it...... or, wait, have I? I guess Thenana's sign language counts, huh? ...I feel like I need to do more research about this topic to answer the question properly.

19 – First fandom you wrote for?

Pokemon <3

20 – Favorite fic you’ve written?

The Risen Lamb and the Fallen God or The Care and Keeping of Eldritch Gods.

Risen/Fallen (and the enemies-to-lovers narilamb dynamic) was like the first thing that I did to make a "mark" on this fandom, and I didn't expect it to inspire so many people for sure! But, the first iteration of the series was so rushed. I wrote the whole thing in just over three weeks and averaged one chapter published every day and a half. Now that I have a better grasp on the characters after playing with them for a long while, I get to see my improvement, and I get to see so many friends I've made along the way sticking with me, the revamped "director's cut" version is definitely on track to be my favorite work.

However. It has yet to surpass Care and Keeping. As the oldest of four kids in my family, I based so much of Shamura on my experiences as an eldest sibling, and many of the experiences the younger bishops had in their formative years on our own childhoods. I based Narinder's childhood off of brother #1's (brother who is two years younger than me), Kallamar's childhood on my own, Heket's childhood on my sister's (five years younger than me), and Leshy's off of my youngest brother's (ten years younger than me). This story wasn't just an exploration of the Bishops and their dynamic/relationship pre-canon, it's also a testament to my own love as an eldest sibling... and all the anxiety associated with that, too.

Thanks for tagging me! Back to working on my presentation...

[kafus]

okay i just talked to every NPC in veilstone because it's been a long time and man sinnoh's NPCs are peak, at least out of the 2D games i feel like they provide the most humor and the most random lore tidbits and stuff. i love this region. i'm going to talk about it

first off sinnoh is full of little things like this. random dialogue/flavor text that ties back to the mythos of the region. i love how widespread the sinnoh myths are

i'm also obsessed with when there's two NPCs that link together like this. you talk to one and you move on and then you talk to another and you're like oh! lmao. by the way the rage candy bars being here is cool because sinnoh is canonically connected to johto through the sinjoh ruins and the rage candy bars are from johto, which means they're imported and sold here. in general i'm obsessed with the locations in pokemon that have special treats associated with them, like the pewter crunchies of pewter city in kanto, or the lava cookies from lavaridge in hoenn. iconic

btw don't worry lady literally everyone sucks at making poffins. unless you have four players it's pretty much impossible to make poffins that are better than the storebought ones. good luck getting four people with rare berries who are good at the minigame to play with you, ESPECIALLY in 2023 jesus christ. the basement poffins are OPTIMAL

anyway in speaking of linking NPCs, these two - i wonder if the dialogue in the french version of this game is turned into english? they did that for lt. surge's french pikachu trade, the french versions of HGSS make the pikachu english instead lol. but anyway as usual it's very fascinating to me how much pokemon loves to drop foreign language in its titles, and fittingly i know a lot of people with english as their second language got interested in learning english from a young age due to wanting to play pokemon. how many kids do you think got interested in french because of dialogue like this. the girl even implies what the meaning of his words is

veilstone isn't short on game hints either, useless to me now as an adult longterm pokemon player who knows all this stuff already but still really cool to see. if sinnoh is your first time playing pokemon, those hints on trade evos and stuff are always appreciated.

of course, funny dialogue too that got a wheeze out of my nose, not uncommon for pokemon NPC dialogue SDKFSFDK some of this shit takes me so offguard it's like extra funny

like GIRL ISN'T THAT WHAT A PARASOL IS FOR????

edit: my DUMB ASS (lighthearted) has been reminded that parasols are for the sun and are NOT an umbrella equivalent. okay she makes more sense now LOOL

also LOOKER JUSTIFYING HIS GAMBLING :skull emoji: this shit is taking me out. see this is useful because it's like oh galactic is really all over this city huh. not only their massive building but they have their logo in the fucking slot machines, they probably have some amount of ownership over this place like team rocket did over the celadon game corner. but also it's funny because SDFSDFK

OH AND MAYLENE'S DAD IS JUST... HERE? generic NPC. generic sprite. no name. he's just here. maylene's dad. you know, one of the gym leaders. help girl

anyways i'm aware i basically just posted most of the dialogue in veilstone city verbatim but I JUST THINK IT'S INTERESTING! I MISS WHEN POKEMON GAMES WERE FULL OF DIALOGUE LIKE THIS AHHHH i have more to say about the galactic lore but i'm running out of image space and i need to use the bathroom and get some food so i'll post about that a little later