#pokemon is one of those things i might not be obsessed with to the point of making fanart or even owning merch

[panicbones]

detective pikachu was admittedly an alright movie all things considered but it spoke to a very core child part of me that has always wished so desperately that pokemon were real and i could have one (for real)

[kynimdraws]

INFO POST

Name: Kylee (they/them). 30+

A totally normal Korean American mostly known for my drawings, specifically my Pokemon nuzlocke comics. But I will talk about other things on occasion because I do have periods of being fixated on certain topics. I also am a doctor!

Interests: Pokemon, League of Legends (everything except the game lmao), Fire Emblem, Advance Wars, Animal Crossing, Mother series, Korean history/culture, character design

General FYIs: 

General inquiries/commission work/etc should be sent thru kynimdraws [at] gmail [dot] com! Tumblr messaging/asks/etc is not 100% reliable

I will not follow NSFW accounts but I am fine talking/interacting with them. There may be suggestive shitposting but I like keeping my content on the SFW side

I am VERY picky about who I follow/interact with online. Fandom content in particular is a minefield for me aka I have many things I dislike and don’t want to see, even if it might be a popular thing in media that I otherwise enjoy. Therefore, I will unfollow/block/mute liberally. There are times I accidentally block a blog bc I mistake them for bots. So if you got hit with that, just send me an ask or email me

I am very open about what I like and dislike, and none of those things are a direct attack on your sensibilities. I have never gone out of my way to directly send hate or whatever have you if I end up seeing shit I don’t like. My complaints in my little online space ain't a personal attack on you.

My ask/submission box/DMs  are open for criticisms if you have any issues you want to resolve in private. No one is perfect and I may have done ignorant shit that needs to be pointed out. I have deleted or edited posts in the past if people tell me what I did wrong. PS I get that some of my stuff may upset you, but try to act civil when pointing shit out please.

I try to tag all my things whenever I can. Again, send me a message if anything bothers you. I am all for good debate but if you send me excessive hate or threats bc I have different opinions about matters that are trivial, I will block/delete them.

If you wish to use any of my hcs, please credit me. And if you are comfortable with it, send me the works so I can check them out! Or @ me if that is easier.

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FIRE EMBLEM FYI: Specifically for 3Houses/3Hopes because I need a separate one for this franchise specificially given how many crazy things I got due to being involved in this fanbase via my fanworks:

DO NOT try to convince me to like or tolerate Byleth/student ships, ESPECIALLY the ones with the lords (aka CIaude, Dimitri, EdeIgard). I already summarized why I don’t like FE3H Byleth ships with student chars here. While the spinoff game FEW3H has now removed that teacher/student problematic situation, the fandom keeps putting the FE3H elements into the FEW3H fanworks (i.e. remembering Byleth from “another life” trope)...so no thanks!! DO NOT SHOW ME IT!!!

As for the Byleth ships with faculty members, my response is here so don’t try to bait me about that topic either thanks.

I do not care whom you ingame S-support. 3Houses limits the dating-sim part of the game to that character, so I cannot care less about how you play the game. The main issue I have is when people treat Byleth the “character” as a legit ship material when I personally think they are a cool character ruined by fans who are too obsessed with badly executed self insert otome tropes bc they self-project super hard onto them. Just to be clear, any FE3H or FEW3H OC/Canon >>>>>>Byleth ships personally. Even Byleth-sonas that remove the teacher/student aspects are better than canon FE3H!Byleth

Please don't drag FE VA statements as some sort of “gotcha” on my opinions like this post here. IDC what other people prefer with ship shit, that’s their problem and not mine. I am not gonna bother them about it. So don’t bother ME about it.

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Links to check out:

Myths of Unova + Episode Grey (Pkmn White/White2 Comic)

Tales of Sinnoh (Pkmn Diamond Comic)

Art Site (Portfolio)

Twitter 

Instagram 

[yukyunotabibito]

Celebrating TOA and the people who contribute to make our group what it is.

Repost, don't reblog. Only fill in what you feel comfortable sharing!

Happy anniversary, TOA! Here's to many more years spent together.

From neffi <3

Name: Vergil

Pronouns: She/He/They

Birthday (no year): November 14th

Where are you from? What is your time zone? I'm from the Midwest (America), but my current timezone is PST

How long is your roleplay experience? 'Bout two and half years total I think? If tumblr RP

How were you introduced to roleplaying as a whole? Does warrior cats on the playground count?

How were you introduced to TOA? Stalked the twitter for like a year

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Do you have any pets? I have a cat back home, but she's not with me at college

What is your favorite time of year and why? (Season, holiday, general period) Fall! Because it has my birthday :3

What is your IRL occupation? Student <3

Some interests and things you like/enjoy? Well isn't this embarrassing. My current obsession is 2ha/Erha

What non-Fire Emblem games do you play? Devil May Cry, Bayonetta, Elden Ring, Persona, Ensemble Stars, etc.

Favorite Pokemon type & Pokemon: Dragon! Appletun <3

Tell us some funfacts and trivia about yourself! I'm a marine biology major!

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How did you get into Fire Emblem? A friend of mine introduced it to me in 6th grade and like any autistic child I immediately got completely obssessed

What Fire Emblem games have you played? (In order of the number), Blazing Blade, Path of Radiance, Radiant Dawn, Awakening, Fates, Three Houses, Engage

First & Favorite Fire Emblem games: First was Fates. Current favourite is Radiant Dawn I think.

List your 5 favorite Fire Emblem characters across the series! Nasir, Kurthnaga, M!Corrin, Erk, and Zephia

Who was the first character ever to make you go “ooh I like this one in particular” and why? Can be any context and reason!

Any Fire Emblem crushes? 😳Camilla. Any hot woman in general, so most of them. Vaguely Nasir.

If you’ve played (or are familiar with) the following games, who was your first S support? Who would you S support nowadays? - Awakening: First was Chrom. IDK now. - Fates: First was Jakob. Mozu now. - Three Houses: First was Claude. Yuri now. - Engage: First was Alfred (Male Alear). IDK now.

Favorite Fire Emblem class? Kinshi Knight!

If you were a Fire Emblem character, what would be your class and stats? Would you be playable? Random village NPC #12

If you were a Three Houses character, what would be your affiliation? (Black Eagles, Blue Lions, Golden Deer, Church of Seiros, Those Who Slither in the Dark, unaffiliated civilian, other - for example Almyran) Black Eagles

If you were an Officers Academy student, what would be your boons, banes and potential budding talent? Boon: reason, bane: gauntlet, budding talent: bow

If you were an Engage character, which nation would you originate from? (Firene, the Kingdom of Abundance; Brodia, the Kingdom of Might; Elusia, the Kingdom of Knowledge; Solm, the Queendom of Freedom; Lythos, the holy land of the Divine Dragon; Gradlon, the desolate land of the Fell Dragon) Elusia

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How do you pronounce TOA? 🤔(separate letters, to-ah, other?) As the letters, so Tee-oh-ay

Current TOA muses: Kurthnaga, Nasir, and Zihark!

Past TOA muses? (In no particular order) Velouria, Anankos, Izana, Cadros, F!Morgan, Forrest, M!Corrin, Cadros, Erk (am I forgetting anybody???)

Who was your first TOA muse? If you no longer have them, can you see yourself picking them up again? Velouria. No, I don't think I can see myself picking her up again at this current point.

Do you believe you have a type of character you gravitate towards writing? (If you filled this out last year, has this changed in any way?) I don't even know anymore. Zihark has confused me. #Girl send help.

Do you have characters or types of characters you don’t think you can handle writing, but wish you could? God. If a man could dream.

What kind of scenes, situations etc do you believe you enjoy writing the most? (If you filled this out last year, has this changed in any way?) Emotional drama :3

Do you have any scenario in mind for your muse(s) that gets you thinking “man I hope I get to write this one day”? Hm... I'm not sure

Favorite TOA-related memories? Dollhouse.

Present or past tense? Past? I think?

Normal size text, small text, no preference? Normal please wah wah wah

Got any potential muse delusions to share? 😉Under the right circumstances Yukimura could happen. But I don't that will be any time soon if ever

[invisibleraven]

Imagine your OTP where Person A works in retail and Person B keeps coming into the shop and asks for help with the most ridiculous things. + if Person A loses it one day and confronts Person B about their motive feels like Willex to me, please and thank you.

Willie pressed himself up on his toes and down again, as if that would relieve the pressure of his uncomfortable dress shoes. He wished he could just wear his beat up kicks, but that wouldn't mesh well with the image Caleb wanted to convey with his store.

And since Willie worked there as a way to earn a bit of cash and avoid having to work at the club, he had to deal with the shoes. At least he didn't have to cut his hair and got to choose his shirt and tie.

The other bonus was that he had direct view of the nerd store across the hall in the mall where his jib at the suit store was.

Now Willie did appreciate the odd nerdy thing, but his main focus in that store was just under six foot, had golden blond hair, and an affinity for pink.

Willie had tried every way to talk to Alex in hopes that he would manifest the courage to ask him out.

The first time he had just gone over to introduce himself, welcome them to the mall, and ask if they wanted to hear the gossip about the other stores there. The next time was to ask if he could use their microwave in return for letting them use the private bathroom attached to his work.

But those interactions would only get him so far.

The next time he went over, holding up two ties, and asked Aled which one he should wear. Totally noticing on how his eyes were glued to the line of his throat and top of his chest exposed where he hadn't buttoned up his shirt. Points for him, and he loved how Alex stuttered through choosing the goldenrod coloured tie.

The next time he went over asking Alex for a good started Pokemon since he had just started playing the game. Unfortunately, Alex directed him towards Reggie for that since he was hopeless at video games, and Reggie could talk your ear off about anything. But it did get Willie interested in catching a Bidoof, if only because the name made him giggle.

After that it was a game of finding out exactly what Alex's area of interest and nerdiness lay. So every time they were working the same shift, Willie would come over and ask about something different.

"What class would you recommend for a beginning D&D player?"

"What's the conversion rate of sheep to wood in Catan?"

"What's the best version of Monopoly?"

"Do you guys have any idea how Magic the Gathering works?"

On and on, but every time, Alex would direct him to one of the other guys working though he did always smile and blush whenever he looked at Willie-and usually convinced him to add to his sock collection at least once a week, all while throwing his own employee discount on it for him.

Then one day, Willie moseyed into the store on his break, veering right towards Alex. "So did you get a cavalcade of Funko pops based on the new anime adaptation yet?"

Alex whirled around, glaring at him. "What is your deal?"

"What?"

"Every day, or almost, you come in here, and it's always something inane or weird or I dunno... do you get some sick joy of making fun of the nerds or something?" Alex exploded.

"No!" Willie exclaimed. "I'm a nerd! Or well, kind of one, given the love of cartoons from my childhood and obsessive sock buying."

"Then why do you keep coming over here and asking me about all this other stuff?" alex asked, shoulders still stiff as he looked at Willie.

"Because I like you dummy!" Willie said with a laugh. "I've been looking for any excuse to come talk to you in hopes you might engage in conversation with me and then maybe we could go out sometime."

"Oh... oh!" Alex replied. "I like you too!"

"Then how about we get an Orange Julius and you can tell what nerdy stuff you are into?" Willie asked, offering his arm.

"Through in a soft pretzel and it's a date," Alex replied, looping their arms together.

It turned out that Alex wasn't much of a nerd, but Reggie needed staff, Alex needed money, and he did like dancing games and Trivial Pursuit.

"Sounds like a fun idea for our next date," Willie said with a grin.

"Only if you're in the mood to get your butt whipped," Alex teased back.

"Oh it's like that is it?" Willie stated. "Challenge accepted."

Alex beamed, but then looked at his watch and scowled. "My break is almost up."

"Well then let me bring you back and on the way I can catch you up on the latest happenings with th jewellery store guys."

"Man, fuck those guys," Alex said as they walked back hand in hand to their hallway.

"I know right?"

From then on, Willie didn't have to find excuses to come talk to Alex any more. But he did come by with gossip, kisses, and a choice of tie. Because there was nothing better than making his boyfriend blush-even more than a discount on funky socks.

[adobe-outdesign]

Thoughts on Goldengo? Gimigoul's evo (sorry if I spelled anything wrong!)

Gholdengo has proven to be one of the most divisive Pokemon from this generation. It's one of those love it or hate it 'mons; while lots of people like it, others feel like it looks too much like a mascot and/or a wacky waving inflatable tube man. Which, to be fair, is objectively right. Less objectively, however: I love them.

This thing is simply the definition of friend-shaped. It's a silly surfer dude with a fanny pack that makes friends with everyone and knows how to do sick kickflips. It literally has a page decided to it on Know Your Meme. I simply cannot, nay, will not say they're a bad Pokemon because they're just too inherently likable for me to take any issue with them.

Plus, on a slightly more serious note, I think it's genuinely cool that it's Pokemon #1000 and you evolve it by collecting 999 coins. Likewise, its body being made of coins is interesting from a biology aspect; it sheds the coins when battling to avoid taking damage (or to inflict damage depending on its m.o.), can use the coins to shapeshift itself a surfboard, and has an ability that reflects it being an object-mon. I also think it's neat how it greedily obsessives over coins as a Gimmighoul, then becomes super chill once it's successfully evolved.

However, as much as I enjoy the string cheese man, I can agree that there are some odd aspects about this direction. For example, Gimmighoul is kind of an inverse chest mimic; instead of the chest itself being a monster, the chest contains a monster. But by the time it evolves, any mimic angle is lost with Gholdengo. Even the chest itself is regulated to being a fanny pack, which while funny, does raise a lot of questions about proportional sizing (the chest is a bit less than a foot long judging by Gimmighoul's height, but Gholdengo is only about 4"; so the chest should be 1/4 its size, yet it's absolutely tiny).

It's also a bit odd that all horror angles were lost with it. Gimmighoul is ever-so-slightly eerie, what with it mind-controlling people and draining their life force. I like that Gholdengo is chill, but it does feel a little jarring. (I joked when it came out that it was funny to think that the promo short story they did with the girl collecting coins would've ended with her seeing a Gholdengo peacing out and skateboarding away had she just turned around.)

Anyway, the point is: this mans is delightful and one of my personal Gen 9 favorites. However, I can objectively agree that it's a bit tonally dissonant from its pre-evo. In that respect, a regional or split evo could be a potentially interesting angle that might satisfy those looking for more of a traditional mimic. In the meantime, however, we at least get to enjoy this silly man in all his silliness.

Radical.

[loopscereal]

I wasn't sure whether to ask you or Pía so maybe each of you can add your own commentary?? but I'm very curious about your OC Red :0 you've both posted about them a lot and I've been very curious about their admiration for Owynn and their feelings of being inorganic I think? (I might have misinterpreted idk sorry). Whatever the case I just want to know more about the lil guy

Hello!! Sorry for the late responseeeee. Thank you very much for being interested in them :D Also don’t apologize for presumably misinterpreting stuff it's not like we’ve explained him lol ToT It will be a bit of a really weird story to share though, so buckle up lol (Red uses any and all pronouns btw)

This is the capital weird part of our lore AKA programs which we already mentioned in our Pup explanation, but yeah for recap: when shadows interact with a video game that meets the requirements of 1) being kinda broken and 2) having a lot of care put into it (whether it’s how it was created or how the person that had it cherished it or whatever) as in the saying of “putting your soul into it” the shadow gets the idea or asset or whatever of a character or a concept within that game and becomes conscious, that good old trope of "The game becomes self-aware". Normally they get a body and that’s it, they incorporate to normal human society normally and also have mandatory therapy because you cannot come out normal from that ToT 

The exceptions to this are Pup and the now titular little guy!! Red. Red’s name comes from rival red from Pokemon! Red itself comes from a Pokemon copy, a really broken and busted down copy of the most broken Pokemon game everrrr Pokemon fire red: A really buggy and glitchy mess held by tape and raw will power, a start of a beloved franchise with tons of love put into it and also just busted. And That sort of brought Red into existence 5 years ago.

Red did not take over a character or an idea or a concept of a character, Red took over the literal glitches, every unused asset and every game breaking bug, this made it so that whenever he TRIED telling someone of its existence, it just read as glitching and nonsense and what you would think of when someone tells you “haunted game”, everyone with self-preservation is not going to entertain that and will just shut the thing off and sell it or something, programs are expected to emerge in a somewhat normal 4th wall break or something not screaming and static and the game shutting off on its own. He took the name red because among the scrapped nonsense there was also a scrapped trainer Red sprite in there and it was the only semblance of a face amongst that entire mess, and you take any face you can get when you don’t have any, and you take any semblance of an identity you can get when you also don’t have any.

So Red gained consciousness a hot second ago, 5 years ago from current timeline, but was not taken anywhere to become a real person because no one could tell she was one. A guy had his cartridge and just let it rot under his desk for those years because that thing is unplayable and also probably haunted!! Eventually he decided to sell it and you would not guess who got it (Owynn and Loon.)

Loon bought it because he’s just game obsessed, and at this point he was already dating Owynn so they were just hanging out and Loon wanted to play the thing. Haunted game screeching and screaming ensures and Loon was about to do the normal person reaction that is turning the thing off, but since Owynn is a weirdo he didn’t really care? Owynn is curious, not easy to scare at all, and he HARDCORE doesn’t believe in ghosts, so he was determined to fucking around with the thing trying to figure out if it what was wrong with it.

So a lot of Red’s inherent craziness towards Owynn and Loon comes down to the fact that they were the ones who actually got him out of that hell, Owynn fucked around and treated her as some sort of ARG like a loser and figured out what she was trying to say and what she was. Thisss is also badd and this is the moment where we tell everyone that they should never look up to Owynn OR Loon.

Basically, they figured it out! (Mostly Owynn) woho!!! Now they will take her to get a body and be normal right? (no). Owynn is a curious bastard and also inherently just morally skewed, and Loon is sort of a pushover and also an absolute dickhead to strangers and rlly low empathy (doesn’t seem people he’s not close with as real), so owynn just basically kept her in there?? for a few months??? They tried to frankenstein him a bit, tried to figure out what he was and how he worked and all that stuff. And it was obviously dehumanizing as hell and messed up how they were just playing mad scientist with his life, but also 5 years of being completely alone kind of warps your brain a little (a lot), and being seen as something “precious” or cool or interesting got her crazy attached to them 2. 

Eventually they talked and Loon got over his “if i don’t know you you aren’t real” thing because he DID know them now, and they EVENTUALLY after a literal hot second got Red to get an actual body. Took them long enough jesus. 

First of all, they had no idea how to even do this?? Because you need to fill out forms and that and Owynn couldn't on the basis of bad homelife, and Loon technically could but he was also incredibly out of it because he was taken to a part of town he didn’t even know at all and that just panicked him way worse. So problem number one is that, problem number 2 is that Red wasn’t even normal by program standards and was still just inherently glitchy. It all worked out surprisingly, Neither of them had the money nor the want to take care of Red or whatever, and in theory he should’ve ended up in the foster system but the woman who worked on his body saw that even with a body she is just inherently unstable and decided that she could take that responsibility given that she was an expert on the stuff.

So, Red has a really warped vision of those two because how do you not after that??? He sees them as sort of gods? which sounds crazy but then again how do you not after that. When Red is taken out of DS hell, two things are evident. 1) Her file was an English copy, so their “mother” language is English, most of the spanish he knows was acquired directly from hearing the real people out in the real world talk with each other over those 5 years, and even if that sounds like a long time to learn his cartridge was stuck and stored in a desk so what he could hear was limited and also muffled. So their Spanish is kinda bad, they tend to default to English but even then words are pronounced wrong because he never had the need to say most or any of them out-loud. 2) they have no animal. This is due to the scrapped Rival Red sprite having no animal traits. So he has to chose what type of animal person he will be, they knew they wanted to be an arthropod. Loon and Owynn are both arthropods, and she wanted to resemble her saviors, her gods. She chooses a cicada, a true bug! Actual bug! It’s a bit of a play on words on our part, since Red is an accumulation of all of Fire Reds bugs. Cicadas also represent rebirth, and new beginnings, and he was pretty much reborn into a new life by being taken out of DS hell. Another thing you may notice about their design is their eyes, one is a bar that you cannot see the end of, and her other small dot eye, this is also something he chose to have. Its the same eye disorder Owynn has! Xe also styles xir bangs like Owynn, wears stud earrings like Loon, and is in the insect subsection of arthropods with Loon. Generally tries to emulate them both. So, for the parts of themself that Red could choose in, he decided to look like the people he admires/worships.

Little visual help go!! :

Due to forming within an accumulation of glitches, and not a normal sprite like most programs, her physical form still glitches out. Things like chromatic aberration and actual spikes of distortion, which are all visual glitches but still hurt. This facet of how she exists is a lot of electricity, and messes with electronics, and with other programs, since their bodies, although made to be as realistic and human as possible, are still built things. machines and electronics, and therefore tamperable. Due to his glitchy nature, this means that he can bypass a lot of rules set inside of Programs that were made in fear of “machine uprising” nonsense.  Every program is able to re-enter electronics, they can go into the computer and chill there while their body is just sleeping/knocked out. They can do anything you normally can, but have a built in chip that prevents them from easily prating things, easily stealing people's information to make purchases, getting peoples ips, and in general messing with things for their benefit. These are all bypassable by Red due to her “inherently broken” nature. 

Speaking of being compatible with computers, programs have little items on them that their consciousness can retreat into if their physical body is too damaged, this item is sort of like a hard drive of their entire being? It holds them, and can be used to transfer their memories onto exterior hardware like a laptop, phone, or computer. Think of it as back ups to keep themself extra safe! Red is, again, glitchy, and have a terrible memory that gets erased and corrupted as they exist, and the longer they go without uploading their memory the more likely he is to have it become corrupted and forgotten. THey are reminded to upload it, and sometimes do, but even still the memory held within its own mind will corrupt eventually. They are left with watchable memories, thoughts and experiences that they don't remember doing or having. Undeniable proof (memory upload on exterior device) vs I Dont Remeber THat. 

Due to the fact that they clinged so hard to the image of the only useable face they had, and being baseline modeled after it, she has a bit of a thing with hats, since one of the key features of trainer red has always been having that iconic red cap and all of that it’s both a comfort and also something she hates. He doesn’t want to be trainer red or code or something that isn’t alive, but it’s also something that makes him feel less afraid and lost and stressed out because it's familiar, and she has very few things she can even classify as familiar at all. Which is why in some art she has it and in some she doesn’t. 

Xe also needs glasses given that xe willingly screwed his eyes up, but they tend to forget them a lot and having stuff on their face is just generally a foreign and weird feeling she hasn’t gotten used to, so she also may pop up with glasses or without glasses.

She has yet to really crack how to act like a normal person, has a hard time understanding social norms and the concept of lying in general. She’s blunt and sorta rude, she’s not used to moderating the volume of her voice so it tends to be either too loud or too quiet, and he’s horribly bad at lying and borderline cannot do it. They are very easily startled and scared, but she translates that fear into an immediate fight response, so they read as very easy to piss off and also very easy to hit things or hit people. 

Programs are sorta normal by now, and there’s other students who are programs, Red absolutely loathes all of them. It’s mostly just crazy strong jealousy at the people who claim to be “like him” to live so much better than him. Aside from the glitching, Red’s origin has made her have bad memory, be sort of physically numb to a lot of sensations aside from pain (can’t feel cold all that well, can’t feel light touches and stuff), and have an awful time with a lot of motor skills. And none of the other programs have to deal with any of that and it drives him crazy. Other programs also have memories from inside their world, since they are usually “character gains sentience” types, but Red has none of that, They are not a character, not even the MC, they are the glitches. Super jealous, sad, but overall mad. So he just messes with a lot of them, due to being glitchy when he touches other programs he makes THEM glitch and therefore hurt, and he tends to not get into a lot of trouble for it given that Owynn is vice president and plays devil's advocate. He tends to stick to just touching them to mess them up that way but he does have one guy he specially hates who he straight up gets into fist fights with, and it’s the guy who used to have his cartridge. Who is also a program!! how unfair!! he got to live those 5 years completely normal while Red was stuck! Xe wants to absolutely kill that guy.

Speaking of her body and the issues that come with it, They have a hard time doing a lot of stuff and are inherently clumsy due to not being used to any of this. They've had a body for about 6 months? So everything is still insanely overwhelming, scary and stressful; and such emotions of instability heighten her glitches which hurt and make her more stressed and it’s just a mad man’s cycle.

She also just has a really hard time even seeing her body at all, he has dysphoria because he’s nonbinary and her body was made to be male so they look masculine, they have a broad back and a square-ish face and a deep voice and it makes her feel gross. And he also has body dysmorphia, so he just looks fundamentally wrong and it cannot click in her head that the body in the reflection is actually hers at all, it doesn’t feel real in the slightest and it tends to make her derealization and her feelings of not being a real human worse.

They tend to have a really hard time feeling real, mostly when they’re alone because it just plops them right back into that crushing loneliness of being completely on her own for 5 years. When it’s on its own a way they ground themselves often tends to include biting, biting his fingers or a pen or chewing hard candy, likes the pressure in her teeth and likes exerting any force at all and it having a clear effect, this also means that her jaw tends to be super tense and that they grit their teeth a lot, also just bites her nails off and tends to pick off the loose skin around the nails with her teeth which just ends up in messed up fingers.

He has a fixation or proving his own realness, by experiencing as much as he can. Doing is living. Theyll try anything once except they will actually do it, unprompted, anything. Impulsive thought to eat something that by all means no one should consider eating? It's already in her mouth, sorry. Uh she learns about her cicada biology through Owynn (freak) and learns that she can process liquids a lot better than anything else. Soooo her best friend is the blender in her kitchen. They will blend up bread, insects, and meat. Think of that funny scene where Town explains his juices except 100 percent serious that is what she is drinking. It will also drink blood, in some hope that it will make it more of a living person. “how would drinking her own blood make him more of a person if he's having a hard time thinking of himself as one?” Who said it was their own blood? checkmate.

They are mostly not good at school, which makes sense given her background, but she’s freakishly good at math. This isn’t a robot thing, it’s not because she’s has a calculator built in or anything. It’s  because in those 5 years she spent completely alone there wasn’t really anything else to do other than thinking, because doing much else broke the game and therefore threatened to break them. But after a bit she just ran out of things to think about, and then she just started counting to entertain herself, counting up and down, making up operations and then solving them, and doing anything at all to keep himself (somewhat) sane. Numbers click into place and make sense, numbers tend to be constant and expected, a multiplication between two numbers no matter how big will never vary, counting is a way to keep herself entertained. Fun fact, Owynn also counts when he feels trapped, smiley. 

He outright despises the idea of trainer red, the literal character, because a part of his brain tells him that he’s not really a person, nor is he that beloved character, they are a scrapped version of it, a literal error that just happened to present itself with that well known face. And yet he clings to it, because if he doesn’t have that face and that name then he has nothing at all, and she has changed her body enough to resemble other people so it shouldn’t matter, and sometimes she wants to look like the character to feel as if he was a normal program at all. Just don’t bring up that character in front of her, lights a fire in her head.

Despite how Red may feel about their “game counterpart”, they don't harbor any resentment toward the overall Pokemon franchise. This is mostly because Loon really does like Pokemon, I mean, he was interested in the Fire Red cartridge for  a reason. Red has this mental system about how they feel about things, naturally you'd assume they hate Pokemon bc resentment for their source material, but since Loon is someone they consider above them, it “overrides” that. Her emotions toward people she would otherwise be indifferent to is easily and sharply shifted by the people she considers herself to be “on the side of”. extra thing we didnt know how to transition to: 

While Loon is unable to see strangers as real living people, Red has a tendency to see strangers as just inherently more alive than her, more deserving of being called living beings and all of that, everyone who isn’t a program is an actual breathing person, while programs are a cruel mockery and none of them are alive, including her.

AND THATS ALL THANKS FOR READINGGGG

Never ask us anything ever again we WILL send the bible every single time without fail /J

thank you so much for being even a littlee bit interested in our beloved oc Red, we really do love him alot. Uh! you can always ask either of us anything, we share one braincess we have a bluetooth connection… Uh uh iiii do suggest if u were to ask pia ask it oh his not-art-blog @3point14a <- that blog, if you would be so kind

[pinkhairandpokemon]

Apologies, I didn't really check what you have said in your past posts, but are you sure that is what Lord N wants? For separation between humans and pokemon?

It’s what Lord Ghetsis has been preparing him for his entire life. Of course it’s what he wants.

Lord N thinks that no matter how well-intentioned a trainer might think they are, every single one of them are hurting or suppressing their Pokémon in one form or another, whether they realize it or not. Since most people can’t understand Pokémon like he can, he doesn’t think true coexistence is possible without Pokémon giving up something for humans. Whether a trainer is blatantly and knowingly abusing them, or they’re doing something like reprimanding their Pokémon for performing a natural instinct it can’t control or didn’t know was wrong (like scratching or making noise or knocking something over), Pokémon are always doing something or are sacrificing something for our needs. All of that, and the fact that no amount of “good” trainers in the world can reverse what horrible things people- like Lysandre or Rose- managed to commit by using Pokémon they exploited as building blocks to their schemes.

I… used to believe him. I’m not sure if I do completely anymore, though. He has a few good points. But… then there’s trainers like Cole, who can’t understand his Pokémon but works with them so well in battle that it’s almost like he can. And the people I’ve been talking to on here… they all seem to love their Pokémon more than anything.

Even those kids Cole hangs out with- Cheren and Bianca. N and I were talking about them and he said he wasn’t impressed by them. Cheren is too obsessed with being stronger, working himself and his Pokémon to the bone to try and be perfect. Bianca is too finicky, too all over the place, and that’s going to affect her Pokémon as much as it does herself. But… in the few times I’ve seen them over the course of this journey, it seems like they’re changing. There’s been times where they’ve dropped everything to come help Cole fight back against Plasma any way they can. Because they all love Pokémon.

But… I don’t think Lord N sees this. Or maybe… deep down he does, but doesn’t want to admit it? I can’t figure out why. Lately he’s been more frustrated, and even more concentrated on locating Zekrom than before.

That’s where I’m torn… See, I wasn’t handpicked by Lord Ghetsis to join N on his journey and protect him. Honestly, I probably never even crossed his mind at all. It was Lord N himself who asked to bring me along. He didn’t have to. He knew I couldn’t provide anything the Shadow Triad couldn’t. But he knew I’d been missing life outside the castle for a long time, so he did anyways.

From the beginning of this journey I promised I’d do anything in my power to help Lord N achieve his goals… but what am I supposed to do now that I’m starting to doubt him? Turn my back on him? Try to convince him to abandon something he’s spent his whole life working towards? He cares about Pokémon more than anything. He cares about saving them more than anything. Even…

…even more than he cares about me.

-Blake

[thesilvercondor]

(Spoilers for Aim To Be A Pokemon Master Ep1 (JN137) below the cut)

ok so i am perpetually obsessed with Anabel and thus extremely biased but like. fun little conspiracy theory. Ash is actually developing Empathy (ability to sense pokemon's emotions, and use this for knockoff telepathy with them).

I have not seen past the first episode of this series, if there’s further evidence I might return to this theory but I kinda doubt there will be any lmao. Proceed beneath the readmore if you want to see my insane ramblings (1k words).

So, let’s look at this episode real quick, shall we? First major event- Ash accidentally attacks a Beedrill nesting site, potentially angering nearby Beedrill. And like, in the vast majority of Bulbapedia’s anime entries about wild Beedrill- those things get angry all the freaking time. I’ve already seen people down in the comments of this episode talking about how they didn’t think they’d seen a wild Beedrill be calm before.

However, Ash manages to calm it nearly instantaneously- which one other character has actually pulled off before- the only canon Empath, Anabel (S9 E24, ‘Talking A Good Game’).

I just find it interesting that this scene was included in the episode, given that it has no obvious importance to the rest of the storyline, you know? Unless it was meant to draw parallels, between this episode and *checks notes* some obscure episode from the early 2000s that barely anyone remembers. *sweatdrops*

 Uhhh but anyway!- next major event in the episode- the token ‘Empath’ finds an extremely powerful Pokemon, who is openly hostile to them, but calms it down by helping to care for its wounds.

In JN137, this is Ash helping Latias with a (burn?) on its wing, while in S9E24, it’s Anabel pulling out a stick from a Gyarados’s injury.

 Then, the third (and most major) event is the reveal of Empathy being used as Telepathy in a battle situation. This one uh. This one I have less evidence for, but we’re just going to pretend that Ash isn’t good enough at empathy yet for the parallels to be perfect, ok? Just to stoke my own ego.

Anyway- S9E24, Anabel first uses this with her ace, Alakazam. It’s characterized by her giving orders without talking- aka, though Alakazam can’t physically hear her, he can still hear her.

In JN137, Ash is captured by Team Rocket’s ‘Supercooled Capsule’. Here, Ash’s voice is extremely muffled- to the point that even Team Rocket (1-2m away from him) can’t hear him well. Meanwhile, Pikachu is uhhh 25-40m away? Down on the forest floor. (perspective is unhelpful, here’s the best screenshot I got).

Anyway, while being extremely muffled and getting progressively further away, AND while having his back turned on Pikachu- Ash proceeds to practically whisper his command to Pikachu to aim a 10, 000 Volts at him. And Pikachu understands instantly. Like yeah, I get it, this is an anime, not everything is realistic- but doesn’t this feel at least a little sus to y’all?

(left: Ash’s whisper, right: Anabel’s Empathy)

So yeah uh. I’ve yet to watch the other episodes of this anime. But if he gets overlaid on Pikachu at any point to give commands, then Imma 100% claim Empathy my dudes.

Especially since, the next RSE episode (S9E25, ‘Second Time’s The Charm’) is partially about Anabel trying to teach Ash Empathy- with the final line of the episode being her thinking- “I guess you can’t sense feelings yet, Ash […]”. Here, please just picture me pointing commandingly at the word ‘yet’. She reckons he had potential- and maybe that potential is finally coming true.

 Since we’re doing Anabel quotes right now, I’m going to throw another one at you- her response to being asked how she talks to Pokemon like that (aka while using Empathy):

“"I don't even really know how I do it. I guess its been happening ever since I was a little girl. I'd come to the forest and talk to everything. Trees, grass, the stars; and all the wild pokemon- and that's how it all started!" (S9E25)

So you know. She went into the forest. Not much of a goal. Interacted with literally everything she saw, without discrimination. Sounds kinda like the start of the episode; with Ash stopping to interact with every single wild Pokemon he sees. That’s how she developed Empathy- so maybe this is how he develops it too.

Like, this is Ash’s final series. Why start with him just wandering around looking at random mons, unless that act is something seriously important?

 Finally, just to add a bit more pizzazz; this episode is about Latias and Mew. (Oak’s poem at the start is something about if you want to make a lot of friends, you need to find 151- and 151 is Mew’s Pokedex number so. Yeah.) These two just so happen to be two of 9-12 ‘Empath Pokemon’ I have currently identified.

I’m counting Empath Pokemon as anything that has a Pokedex entry that mentions its ability to sense emotions (like Anabel does). Not just influence emotions (like Milotic), or get attracted by specific emotions (like Shuppet/Togetic/Blissey), but actively sense all emotions.

Latias’s Pokedex entry mentions that it “…is highly sensitive to the emotions of people.”

Meanwhile, Mew’s Pokedex entry mentions that it “…only appears to those with a pure heart.” (this is one of my ‘debateable’ Empath mons, as like. What is a pure heart exactly. I’m guessing it needs to be able to see all emotions in someone to decide whether their heart is pure or not, but I could be wrong.)

But yeah, if this series is about him trying to acquire two Empath Pokemon… it might also be about him trying to acquire Empathy itself.

 Anyway I’m gonna. I’m gonna watch the other episodes eventually. Not just yet, cos I wanna dream about a world in which this conspiracy theory is any way feasible-

  (oh yeah also before anyone asks. Anabel didn’t use an Empathy Pokemon in the anime, but in the games (Emerald and USUM) her ace is either Raikou or Latios, with the latter being another Empathy Pokemon- “…it can sense the emotions of others.”.)

(oh and full Empathy Pokemon list: Latias, Latios, Ralts, Indeedee, Hatterene, Sylveon, Audino, Solrock, Finizen. Bonus: Mew (how do you determine a ‘pure heart’), Mesprit (it created emotions so surely it can sense them?? But no pokedex entries on that) and Lucario (can sense emotions but through Aura not Empathy).)

[wyrdle]

General Geeta + Professors + other Area Zero HCs/Theories

I have some stray thoughts over the unexplained questions, such as why Area Zero's labs have no staff, why the Academy continued funding Ops despite the dangers, how things went so unnoticed, how Geeta got her Glimmora etc.

I think I'll preface this by saying I don't think anyone in this story is nefariously evil in a way we're used to in past Pokemon games. By and large the biggest ? is the mysterious creature in Area Zero, but I like to think most of the people of Paldea are just average people with flaws that cause ramifications (Ie. The professors being the prime example.) No one has crazy wild ambitions like taking over the region as an authoritarian leader etc.

Anyway! On those questions I mentioned, I think a lot of it is attributed to the lack of fleshing out for Geeta tbh, and her role as Chairwoman to the academy. I like to think that she was appointed just about when Tera orbs were founded, and by then Area Zero's official Academy funded explorations/research was wrapped up. This means Clavell and any other lab folk leaving the area for other pursuits. AKA Academy wiping their hands of further research in the area, since they've gotten the crystals.

I've seen some writings of the violet and scarlet books being mostly thought of as fiction, and the Academy controlling all source of knowledge being highly sus... but maybe it really is just that. The Academy-funded researchers in their time in Area Zero spent enough time to not witness/have any evidence pointing to Heathe's observations being true, even if it might be once upon a time. (I have some other theories that the time machine is really just a giant pokemon that Sada and Turo figured a way to induce into opening its portal back but eh. next time.)

In light of all this, post tera crystal discovery, everyone packs their bags and vacate Area Zero, all except the professors of respective games. With their obsession, it works narratively for them to be so inclined to self initiate research and fund it themselves (I can't imagine they wouldn't be loaded for inventing terastilisation). To do this, maybe they required some sign off of approval from the Academy chairperson (Not funding or backing, just permission to continue using the existing labs at their own expense), gifting Glimmora as some sign of thanks. Geeta comes to regret her oversight on the professor and the leftover labs in later years.

All this explains why the labs only have Turo/Sada and lack maintenance despite being Academy funded once upon a time. The Academy + League saw no harm in letting their most brilliant scientist continue studying the area + the crystals possibilities, probably not knowing about the whole time machine and strange pokemon thing until things turned out the way they were. Extreme oversight on their part, and I'm hoping more people catch on to this just because I love the thought of Geeta being prim and proper as a mask, internally she's also overworked + stressed and extremely regretful that her leadership led to so much danger.

Alternatively, Glimmora is just a gift from the researchers post Tera crystal discovery. Simple explanation that's very plausible imo. From this very fine post dissecting Geeta's team composition, Glimmora is an odd one out from the rest. I like to think it makes sense for the leader of Paldea to have a pokemon from the area's greatest scientific discovery to parade publicly, no? Glimmora is a pokemon for Paldean pride, their pride in their knowledge and especially, the success of this Academy funded expedition: Tera crystals.

I think it's more fascinating for me personally, to see how the flaws of these people affect things/people around them. There's a lot more potential for side characters to have meaningful grounded conversations with the player and so forth. As opposed to wiping away all of this complexity with some grand scheming.

[a-tale-of-legends]

( l thought of an idea for Sakura's backstory that expands more on the "Arceus created her for a purpose" concept. As I was writing this, I liked the implications, so I might make it canon to her story....maybe. I'm indecisive lol)

Truthfully, Arceus has always planned to create a being to live among the humans, ensuring that there's a solid bridge between people and pokemon. Having to raise three other children, however, the idea had to be left behind for now. It wasn't until eons later, where one child has been locked away, and the other two fought a bickered, was when Arceus thought it was time to let that idea become a reality. Arceus was going to create a human. A....greater human. A human that directly shares his blood.

An angel.

A daughter.

She started out small, as human children do. She reminded Arceus of his own children, now much bigger, a long time ago. But there was no way Arceus was going to drop a baby into the world. Unsupervised?! Alone?! No, that wouldn't do at all. So,the baby stayed with him,deep in the void, Arceus' light shining onto her.

Years later, she's still a child. But her babble turned into speech, and she has been floating on her own for a while. She's very curious, asking hows and whys, wanting to know more and more about the humans below. It's entertaining, seeing her be so much in awe. Exhausting to answer all her questions- she goes mile a minute, truly. But it's worth it. She looks up at him with a giant smile and calls him papa. His heart swells. He hasn't been called that in a long time. She's still not ready. She has to stay with him a little longer.

Teenagers are rebellious. Arceus should know, he's raised three at one point. He has learned a lot during those times. But he hasn't learned enough. She was always curious, wanting to explore the world below. He refused to let her go. She wasn't ready ( well when will she be? ). She didn't like that answer. She found a way to reach the human realm. Unsupervised. Untrained. Alone. She got hurt. Hurt bad. He found her quick, fortunately. But she needed rest. So he put her in a slumber. She will sleep until her time has come. She had a purpose,after all. Arceus is beginning to dislike the idea more and more.

The choice, however,is not his to make. It's been years. She's an adult now, her hair has grown as long as her body. Pink and curled,holding her body as if it was a nest. During her slumber, Arceus decided to do some digging. He was everywhere and anything all at once. He looked to the future, decades from now. He has gained insight then. Of many things: Giratina, their child, has gotten a Chosen. They seem happier, much happier. Good. That's good. That's all he ever wanted. But that's not the only thing. His daughter has descendants. One that caught his eye was a young Kiran. He....may have caused the poor child to become obsessed with him. Caused him to reach dangerous territories,almost akin to the likes of....of....oh. Again, Arceus is everything and everywhere. He knows what's bound to happen. And for the most part, he lets things play out, but this...history cannot repeat itself. Not again. So he does the most logical thing: bring the child back in time to complete the Pokedex and learn of what he shouldn't do. Though perhaps Arceus focused too much on Kiran. He didn't realize Giratina's influence seeping in. He didn't realize his daughter was starting to stir, gaining consciousness. Not before it was too late. His daughter was beginning to fall, down to the realm that she loved.

It was then where Arceus realized she didn't give her a name.

Arceus didn't want her to go. She was still healing, still resting she- She wasn't ready. He wasn't ready. He didn't want to let her go, not yet. But there she was, beginning to fall. The choice was never his to make. He should have known , she has descendants of her own. How is that possible if she was still here with him? So, in a haste, Arceus called out to her, shining his light before she fell for good. He gave her a name, Sakura, pink as her long curly hair. He reminded her- the both of them- of her purpose: bring people and pokemon together. Let them live in harmony as one. He asked- no. He begged for her to always remember. Remember him, her father. But more importantly, remember who she is. Never forget who she is.

He didn't get the chance to apologize for the years she lost when she fell for good. Their connection was lost, and Arceus would only hope that his daughter, his Sakura, was able to live and thrive in the human world, just like she always wanted to all those years ago. He could only hope....

[thatoneguy031]

Can I talk about something? Out of character, I mean.

It's a long post, but you don't have to read it if you're not interested. It's more of a vent post than anything else.

I've been having a hard time with this blog. Not in the popularity sense, this is what I expected from this kind of thing. I mean like... I don't know what to do with it. I've experimented with a few things(You can go way back in my post history if you want to see what I mean), but those ideas sorta fell flat, no?

This was originally meant to be a storytelling blog. I wanted to share my little synopses of my characters and plot points or whatever, because I was genuinely proud of what I've done so far.

Then I resorted to trying to be a comedian. I would try to post something funny under most reblogs, leaving them be if I couldn't come up with a remark of any kind.

It wasn't until recently that I decided to turn this into a Pokemon IRL blog, and I'm not even doing that well with this. That, and I'm afraid that I come off as self-centered, so I cut any posts that give that kind of vibe. Heck, I even tried doing a playthrough series, but I keep forgetting about it, and when I do remember that it exists, I just postpone the next update to oblivion.

I really want to keep this blog going, and trust me when I say I'm going to, but it's not going anywhere, and I feel like nothing is happening. At first, I thought it was just Tumblr having boring days, but I realized that I'm just not doing anything entertaining. My blog just turned into a pool of reblogs with the occasional Pokemon-related post or rant. And I mostly wait for either @the-one-from-dres or @drizzileiscool to bring up the occasional topic that I might have enough insight to talk about. Sorry for @'ing you guys, by the way, I just need folks to know who I'm talking about. Y'all the goats.

Once I got my drawing tablet, I thought that I could do a bunch of art stuff, but then it devolved into the same potential self-obsession problem, where I would just draw that one character(which is literally just a Samurott with anxiety and a Goku complex, let's be honest with ourselves here) over and over again. I have other characters I can draw, and I'm even taking free art requests. Granted, I haven't gotten any requests yet, but the option was still there.

And that's how we got here. I have to retake my Regents in literally under 24 hours, and I'm bitching and moaning about how I'm not getting anywhere in my ha-ha internet blog, which everyone already takes as a joke anyway.

If anything, I think my problem comes from a lack of communication. There was this like, 4 day period that I didn't hear a word from Dres, and I thought he hated me for something I did, until he involved me in 3 back-to-back reblog games literally the next day.

I still feel awful about it now, it was so petty of me to even think that way. For context, Dres might as well be my day one, and he's inadvertently taught me the ins and outs of Tumblr, like how to use tags and things like that. Hell, we even played DnD together once. No exaggeration, he's the closest thing I've had to a real friend in years, and I'm convinced that's only the case because he hasn't seen me in person.

I love him deeply, and only wish the best for him. To think that he'd leave me after I did basically nothing, I've really hit a new level of desperate. He likely had his own things to do, while I'm still stressing about things that probably don't even matter in hindsight.

Back to my original point, I want to do a lot more on this blog, and I also wanted to make it a chill place.

That's one of the reasons why I don't talk about politics myself. I don't want to get involved in things like that at all, because I want people to live without worry. The furthest I go with that kind of thing is "Stop being dicks to each other. We're people, deal with it." I know it's more complicated than that, but at this point, I'm almost scared to get involved in that kind of thing. I don't even know what a terf is. I didn't know Rowling was a bad person until recently when Drizzile was talking about her.

And it's like, I don't even know why it's so hard to talk to people for me. But at the same time, I think I really have something wrong with me, but I'm too scared to get it checked out. And, while I'm not getting into personal details, I don't have the right circumstances to even have that happen in the first place. That's the out of character reason why I say I might have ADHD, instead of outright saying I have it. I literally can't get it diagnosed myself if I wanted to, and I don't do the self-diagnosis stuff because I always get paranoid and think my problem is worse than it is. For example, I've convinced myself three times within the past year and a half that I had appendicitis, because I would get this really specific pain in my stomach. Guess who I told about it?

No one. I was terrified of wasting someone's time just for it to be me freaking out over nothing, and if I'm being honest, I still am. At this point, I have a plethora of things wrong with me, I know that now, but I don't ever get them checked out. I'm doing well so far with them, why worry about it now.

I just don't want to offend anyone. All I wanted to do was make a place where I and other people could have fun.

This is still going to primarily be a Pokemon IRL blog, but I'm doing something different. Please, if there's anything you all want to see on here, let me know. Stuff for Guy, art stuff, whatever floats your boat besides the obvious. And I'll do my best to keep up with my stories and fanfics or whatever. Once I get my stuff settled again, obviously, but I don't want to make it seem like I'm doing this for myself.

I don't want to turn this into a pity party. I really don't. At this point, I'm sick of having people worry about me. Whenever they do, I feel like I'm being an attention hog, and it sucks. If you did read this, thanks for listening. I just needed to get this much off my chest.

[epersonae]

ehehehehe time for fic writer asks! R, Z, AN, AP, BC, BV, and then BW, BX, and BY for carlita <3

GIRL THIS IS SO MANY

Do you title your fics before, during, or after the writing process? How do you come up with titles?

fuck titles, all my homies hate titles, etc etc. I don't think I've ever come up with a title first, but I can't say never for sure, so: sometimes during, often after. occasionally it'll be a significant line from the story itself, sometimes it'll be the classic thing of looking for a song lyric (and sometimes that means you are pitching me TMG lyrics), and once I just ended up with the dumbest description and couldn't think of anything else. (Looking thru the first page of my recent works, I swear there's one of every possible methodology, and actually I think Commit to the Bit I had the title either before or very early during the writing!)

Which of your fics would you call your wildest ride?

Carlita help (ie, for the benefit of all the broken hearts) - I say this both as a writer and about the story itself, the whole process has been a kind of extended madness, and also it's just a very odd piece altogether imho.

If someone were to make fanart of your work, what fic or scene would you hope to see?

we were talking about this on the phone yesterday! there is a scene in the next chapter of for the benefit of all the broken hearts that I would actually make good art. I also think there's some good visuals in the boss battle scene of The Reckoning Arrives that would be fun to have as art. (oooh, or Lucretia sitting at Taako's bedside after?) Oh, and Ed and Stede in the auxiliary closet in nice either way.

What’s the last fic you read? Do you recommend it?

I just read the second chapter of Respawn and it's very good. This AU gets something about Stede that I really appreciate, and Izzy's intro is fucking hilarious.

Of the characters you write for, which is your favorite? Has that choice been swayed at all by your followers/readers’ reactions to certain ones?

Is it possible????? that the unnamed wife (aka carlita) of for the benefit of all the broken hearts???? has supplanted my other faves??? Which is tricky because she is more or less an OC, so I don't know if that counts.

Honestly, even though it's been ages, it might still be Lucretia, if only because I am fairly evenly split in my enjoyment of writing both Ed POV and Stede POV.

I don't think? reader reactions comes into it much, except maybe specifically your obsession with Carlita lol.

You’ve posted a fic anonymously. How would someone be able to guess that you’d written it?

THIS IS A FASCINATING QUESTION THAT I HAVE ACTUALLY THOUGHT ABOUT. (I'm not digging it up now but I wrote a long rumination about that in re that collaborative Choose Your Own Adventure project, and trying to recognize writers I know.) Here's what I would say is particular to my unbetaed work: punctuation pokemon (gotta catch em all!), excessive parentheticals, "and then", and "is verbing". (I cautiously tag @gaypiratebrainrot who is by now exceedingly familiar with all my writing tics)

Thematically? idk. I'm pretty sure it's there, but I often don't notice those things until someone else points them out.

These three were requests about for the benefit of all the broken hearts specifically:

What scene in [Fanfic Name] took the longest to write? What was difficult about it? 

I don't know about the longest, but I'm pretty sure this most recent chapter (13) took the most drafts and the most reworking and rethinking.

There's so much going on, and all of the characters are finally "on deck" as it were, which means there's both a ton of conflicting emotions and motivations to keep track of AND "I am bedeviled by the matter of the pronouns" AND there's important action that takes place entirely off-page, and deliberately so, which meant I was resisting the need to write what that was because it was going to be throwaway writing, but it turns out I had to in order to make it work. The bit where Mary and Ed first meet backstage I probably ended up with four drafts altogether, including once where I threw out a huge chunk and just rewrote from scratch.

(oh plus I had a real life experience that necessitated a handful of little setting tweaks)

All of which is fair, because it's a big turning point and needs to be both surprising AND make sense in context. Which means I also had to go back to earlier points in the story and adjust in order to get some sense of foreshadowing, or at least plausibility. So thank you for pitching me on the idea for what turned out to the most difficult thing I've ever written in my entire goddamn life, I guess.

Did you have any ideas that didn’t make the final cut of [Fanfic Name]? 

I had this idea for something where Mary and Carlita would be painting together, maybe in the style of Jackson Pollack? (this may have been based on one of your pitches) And I can see it in my mind's eye but it just didn't work in context at all!

Do you have a favorite scene you’ve written from [Fanfic Name] story/chapter? 

I have two favorites, and one of them is the painting scene that I did write. I love the tension and the physicality of it. The other is in chapter 17, so a few chapters from now (YOU know the one), and I'm not going to spoil it but I like it a LOT.

[fic author asks]

[veresiine]

Headcanon and thoughts dump; the vast majority about Leon because I've been having almost nonstop blorbo thoughts for over half a year, but there's some stuff on some other SwSh characters too in the background.

Topics:

Ages

Battle Tower

Leon as League Administration

Darkest Day and Eternatus

On Dragapult

Hop and Leon's Family and Early Childhood

Consequences of this

Others' Family Backgrounds

Rose

Relationships and Orientations

How I got to be so obsessed anyway

Actual content under the cut due to length

Ages:

At the time of the game, Leon is 22, and Hop and the protagonist are 14-15 years old. Sonia is the same age as Leon, maybe a few months older. Raihan is maybe around two years older than Leon and Sonia. Nessa's around the same age but I'm hoping she's closer to Raihan's age than Leon's and Sonia's, because I sincerely hope she wasn't dealing with the double whammy of being a child athlete AND a child model for a long time, because that's just FAR too much pressure to put on someone, even if she seems so well-adjusted.

So this means that Leon was Champion for 12 years. Yes, in the fic I wrote, I'd had him 20 years old and champ for 10, but I have since changed my mind after thinking it over for a while.

Battle Tower:

In addition to actually winning and losing, Battle Tower gives points for battling style / showmanship, and takes points away for damage to the surroundings.

Leon is in charge of operating the tower and is also its final boss (most of the time; sometimes other pro trainers like Raihan or Mustard might step in briefly), but he's graded on the same system as everyone else, and he had lost quite a few points for damaging the battle area before he and his pokemon re-trained themselves to be more restrained and less destructively showy. It's a different style from how he battles in the stadium!

Leon also considered that the gym challenge requiring endorsements means both a lot of nepotism and also, talented trainers without connections being SOL; he's since added the ability to get an endorsement from Battle Tower performance.

Battle Tower supports itself financially both from a small entrance fee, and from virtual tickets to higher-level matches; all this gets turned around into paying the staff and providing prizes. This is not a for-profit thing; this is a "let's have fun and make each other stronger!" thing that has to be financially solvent to justify its existence to the League

Leon as League Administration:

Instead of one single assistant in everything (i.e. Oleana), Leon ends up with a group of 4-5 senior League staff he goes to for advice a lot, and who help keep him on track.

He's known half of them since he was a kid so at this point they're basically extended family

He was still pretty emotionally conflicted and fragile for a few months after the whole Darkest Day thing and then losing his title, and needed some time to regroup and find himself again. Leon was in touch with the League during this time, and trying to do his part to untangle the League and Macro Cosmos and deal with the fallout of the Darkest Day, but he wasn't doing anything in any official capacity; he just kind of stuck himself in the middle of things and did what he could, mental health permitting, in between training sessions.

And he wasn't actually offered the chairman position until those few months had passed and Leon had had some time to sort himself out, and some of the investigations had wrapped up, helping to clear the League's image.

Rose had Leon attend all kinds of events and sometimes listen in on meetings while he was Champion; it wasn't Rose's intent to train Leon to be his successor as chairman, but it does mean that Leon's not going in completely blind; he has some prior experience.

Leon is concerned about the League, yeah, but he mostly just wants the region's trainers to have fun as they reach for the top, provided they play fair. He's a lot more hands-off than Rose was, with one major exception:

During the gym challenges, he lets meetings slide a bit so he can watch as many of the battles as he can, and has taken to delivering little notes to the challengers, encouraging them or telling them an aspect of their style that really impressed him. And if a trainer is really struggling, he'll praise their perseverance.  He aims to get each challenger at least once in a season so no one feels left out; part of this is thinking back to Sonia.

And in the years after that, he extends the note thing to gym trainers and League staff as well during the challenge season, since they need encouragement too!

He really wishes there were more battles and fewer meetings, but that's part of what his involvement in battle tower is for; getting him to blow off steam so he can tackle more admin stuff.

Darkest Day and Eternatus:

Leon was up there fighting Eternatus for a few hours by the time Hop and the PC arrived to save the day; after all, the protagonist and Hop had time to fly to the opposite side of Galar, wander through the Slumbering Weald, get the artifacts, fly back up to Hammerlocke, battle Rose, and THEN finally confront Eternatus. With a battle that long, mistakes are inevitable.

There is security camera footage of the first 15-20 minutes of Leon vs Eternatus, but the cameras got knocked out after that.

I think the anime mentioned something about Galar particles converting to electrical power? And presumably they do so naturally at some rate, but can be more efficiently converted with the power of technology.

Before Dynamax bands were introduced to the stadiums, Magnolia had made SURE to test that the Galar particle exposure involved in using a Dynamax band had negligible side effects on trainer and pokemon, and had introduced some kind of shielding to make it even safer. The one dynamax per side per battle rule is also there out of an abundance of caution.

But that's Galar particles from a Power Spot, not a source of INFINITE Galar particles. Exposure to the levels Galar particles and electrical effects released by a rampaging ETERNATUS cannot be healthy, never mind whatever type of poison Eternatus is packing. Exactly what effect, temporary and lasting, all this had on Leon and his pokemon, I don't know, and I frequently change my mind and up the stakes, but whatever it did, it was bad, and some of it was permanent.

The player character, Hop, and their pokemon weren't facing Eternatus for anywhere near as long, so they shouldn't be as affected.

... Physically, anyhow. Everyone who was present for that battle is probably more than a little shaken-up, psychologically.

On Dragapult:

I love Charizard as much as the next person but I feel that Dragapult as a pokemon is a better representation of Leon

Dragapult is Galar's pseudo-legendary, and pseudo-legendaries usually go to / reflect champions.

Though it is not 1:1, as Hoenn had 2 pseudo-legendaries and while Steven and Metagross fit to a T, Salamance is just kinda there, vibes-wise. Being awesome without being linked to a trainer

Also Dragapult gives Leon 2 repeat types on his team; 2 dragon (haxorus and dragapult) and 2 ghost (aegislash and dragapult) and it's nice to have that theme/consistency.

And Dragapult's evos match his story a bit. Dreepy are super weak; Leon started out as a kid out in the middle of nowhere with only one friend and not much else going for him. Drakloak look after their younger evolutionary relatives, it's their whole Thing; Leon was left to raise his younger brother, and also his entire dream is to look after / inspire all Galar's other trainers to encourage their growth. And then Dragapult is a pseudo-legendary; Leon's a champion for a long time, and Dragapult have the whole thing about lock-on and targeting; pokemas Leon has a special skill that makes his moves NEVER MISS, regardless of base accuracy (this only applies to Leon's sync pair with Charizard though).

Also I like the idea of there just being Dreepies everywhere, and all the Dreepies flocking to Leon as much as they do to Dragapult; he's totally their dad too.

Hop and Leon's Family and Early Childhood:

Leon and Hop's grandparents' are their mum's parents; their dad married in and wasn't particularly well-liked by the grandparents. When Leon was little, they tried not to argue in front of him, for his sake, but Leon probably picked up on some of the tension anyway.

Then the dad got sick when Leon was around 5; mum was busy being his caregiver, and the grandparents were busy with tending the wooloo flock and also errands; this left Leon to pick up some of the household labor in the form of more chores than expected of a kid that age. Mum was concerned about offloading too much onto her kid, but the grandparents didn't really care.

Then mum was pregnant with Hop and that meant that she couldn't do as much around the house, and so more work fell to Leon. Then Hop was born, and their dad was taking a turn for the worse, and it was not a very happy situation to grow up in, even if Hop and Leon's actual parents did care about their sons and wanted them to have a happy childhood, but unfortunately, circumstances didn't work out that way, and the grandparents were borderline neglectful, in part because of their feelings about their daughter's husband.

So yes! Leon does have some domestic skills! Like cooking and cleaning and the like! He's not great at it, since he hasn't had much practice since he became Champion, but the basics are in there somewhere!

This is also where we get Sonia's observations, both in-game and in the anime, that Leon didn't have time to spend with other kids, because he was busy helping around the house and with his little brother, and 'practically raised' Hop. Which isn't to say that their mother did nothing! She certainly tried, and after the dad finally passed away, and she'd had some time to mourn, she made a point of trying to do more for her kids and to get them to have more happy childhood memories.

This is how Leon ends up going somewhere and getting his Charmander. I've heard theories that he must've gotten him from Mustard on the Isle of Armor (and that's probably when he trained there) and I am definitely not opposed to this (it makes sense!) but also haven't directly addressed it.

Hop would have been 3 years old or so at the time Leon left on the gym challenge, old enough to remember his promise about becoming Champion.

Consequences of this:

Hop never knew his father; he died when Hop was too young to remember. Leon is the closest person to filling that role for Hop.

Leon does remember his father, but not very well. He mostly remembers how much his father meant to his mum, and how much his death broke her. He does have a few good memories of his dad playing with him and reading stories to him, but as the years passed, he realized that Rose had ended up being more of a father figure to him than his own dad had a chance to be.

No one in the family really talks about Leon and Hop's father; Hop learned quickly that asking his mum made her sad, asking his grandparents made them angry, and asking Leon mostly got him shrugs as answers.

Mum is very protective of her kids' health after what happened with their father; this is part of what caused Leon to take such an interest in fitness, as a way of saying 'don't worry, mum!' He does really enjoy being physically active in general, and always has, but that's an additional layer on top of it.

Leon probably had her worried sick with all his wandering around lost; she was extremely grateful for Sonia (and Yamper) for bringing him back from wherever he'd ended up. She's glad that Hop doesn't have the same issues, and only ends up in the middle of nowhere if he wants to.

Because Hop didn't bear as much witness to hostilities from his grandparents, he takes more interest in them and their Wooloo flock than Leon did, and his grandparents are the ones to let him pick his favorite Wooloo to be his own personal pokemon.

Leon actively tried to keep Hop away from the spotlight so he'd have a chance to have a normal childhood; Rose encouraged this as well, but Leon eventually decided that Hop was ready to give it a shot (as of the start of the game), since he wanted his little brother to have a chance at having an adventure with pokemon, too, as much as he hoped Hop wouldn't have to deal with all the pressures and expectations of the public. This caused some friction with Rose, but they talked it out and smoothed things over eventually.

Others' Family Backgrounds:

Sonia is not Magnolia's only grandchild, but she is the only one who's stayed in the area. Magnolia had a few kids; at least one of them moved to a different region following their career path. Some of her grandchildren probably did, too.

Sonia is also one of, if not the oldest of Magnolia's grandchildren.

Raihan has a sister who works in the archives. He lived with his sister, away from his parents, for a few months, before going to live entirely on his own. The circumstances behind this change pretty much every time I bounce them around in my head.

At least one of Raihan's parents is/was an architect.

Rose:

HHHHHHHHHH

I've considered the possibility that Rose gave Leon his Aegislash (either at its current evolutionary form or earlier ones), since Rose is a Steel-type specialist, and also there's Aegislash's whole pokedex entry about it sometimes being manipulative.

Macro Cosmos and the League being so closely tied together is only a recent development, and it's Rose's doing. Separating the two entities is going to be a long process.

Rose genuinely feels terrible about how things turned out. He didn't want anyone to get hurt (physically, anyhow); though he had accepted it as a possibility, he wanted to avoid it in possible, and thought that no matter what happened, it would be worth it in the end. Spoiler alert: it wasn't. He screwed up big time, and I hope he realizes WHY he screwed up.

That said, I HC he was the immediate successor of that one Chairman who tried to rig matches, causing Mustard to leave the League, and because of that, Rose is very popular for having 'drained the swamp' in his own time. League veterans like Opal and Kabu really appreciated him for that. Opal appreciates him significantly less now that she’s gotten Bede to open up to her.

Relationships and Orientations:

Nessa and Sonia are in a relationship

Other than that it's just a big murky mess of 'I make every character I get my hands on bi and/or aspec, though exactly what flavor combination depends on the weather, the day of the week, and what's on sale at the grocery store'

How I got to be so obsessed anyway:

I didn't actually like Leon at first. He and Hop gave me name-related psychic damage (I could explain but that would require at least 3 paragraphs of personally identifiable information as context), and his initial interactions with Sonia rubbed me the wrong way.

After that rough introduction, it was 'ah it's this guy again;' he existed and I had no strong feelings one way or another. He still annoyed me slightly, but he was helpful and clearly trying his best.

Then he had Charizard shield Hop and the player, and I decided that if nothing else, I appreciated how much he cared, and what he was willing to do.

And then

AND THEN

His losing animation hit me right in the feels. When I saw him pull his cap over his eyes, my first thought was "I understand this man on a spiritual level". Everything about that animation was perfect. I could see myself in him. Everything fit into place. Terrible sense of direction? Check. And that's not something I often see in fiction; I guess there is Ace from HnKnA but I'm not a fan of yanderes, thanks. Hiding emotions behind a hat? Check. That was a staple of high school me. The anger, but forcing it down and letting it go? Over the course of a few seconds? *chef’s kiss*.

More importantly, pushing himself to be the strongest, to help others, to bring them up to his level, to entertain, and to protect the region? That's the exact kind of power fantasy I used to try to live in MMOs and part of why I (almost) always play a tank. And of course, with being a tank comes having an ego, but Leon doesn't put people down to build himself up, which is really nice to see in such a confident character.

Then everything I learned about him after that just made me love him more.

TWILIGHT WINGS. All of it. That honestly made me go from loving Leon to loving all of the SwSh cast, honestly; it even got me to sympathize with Oleana! I mean yes, what she did to Bede (and to Goh and Sonia in the anime) was beyond messed up and I am not justifying her actions, but at the same time, I appreciate her character.

Battle Tower outfit 12/10! A solid half of my blorbos over the years are fancy bastard wizards and battle tower Leon gets to look the part too! It's great!

I love how the anime and pokemon masters fleshed out his interactions with other characters, especially with Sonia and Raihan.

I could go on and on and on but I won't, especially as there's some self-recognition through the blorbo I'm not ready to admit to

[rainnotliam]

I posted 447 times in 2022

That's 447 more posts than 2021!

168 posts created (38%)

279 posts reblogged (62%)

Blogs I reblogged the most:

@themilkyourdadssearchingfor

@spiritmdraws

@salsa-di-pomodoro

@torens-nightshift

@bl00dblight

I tagged 404 of my posts in 2022

Only 10% of my posts had no tags

#pokemon volo - 94 posts

#pokemon arven - 55 posts

#pla volo - 54 posts

#merchant volo - 45 posts

#volo is love volo is life - 34 posts

#volo - 32 posts

#pokémon scarvio - 26 posts

#cute bastard - 24 posts

#random shit - 24 posts

#fanfiction - 21 posts

Longest Tag: 120 characters

#and some requests are welcomed too if i can figure out this damn app (still struggling since spirit pulled me into this)

My Top Posts in 2022:

#5

Not me sobbing over this picture I screenshot over ten times

Simp energy aside, Arven my precious. Penny giggling and Nemona with that fierce yet energetic expression. Miraidon being the pet. (Yes that is my MC, Vee)

I feel like this really shows the dynamic everyone has together, and that cutscene after you leave Zero? Perfection. Nemona I thank you for that wonderful idea to cheer up Arven, and Penny for telling him his dad/mom would have a great adventure in the future/past.

This really shows that Arven did end up trying to leave those feelings behind of utter hatred for his dead parent behind. The dialogue shows that he did know they died but didn’t want to accept it. Plus before we even helped, Mabostiff was on the brink of dying. The only one who’s been there for him.

62 notes - Posted November 27, 2022

#4

Penny: I’m starting to think Arven’s a dog…

Nemona and Y/N: What makes you think that?

Penny (points at Y/N): He stares at you like a lovesick puppy, almost how Mabosstiff looks at Arven when he wants food.

(Y/N sputters Spanish rapidly under their breath)

Arven: (Literally in the other room hearing them, his face could rival a Cheri berry’s color of red)

80 notes - Posted November 29, 2022

#3

Yandere Arven head cannons (AU), credits to @weirdthinkingdragon for the idea. Possessive behavior, mentions of violence of course, slow corruption:

Arven has never had another person care for him as much as you. He loves how you always pay attention to him, and act like you belong to him.

This process would go as a pure heart to slow corruption. Just simple flirting with you from any classmates (from being Champion) first only annoy him. They’re not doing anything wrong… right? Until it gets to the point where he wants to bash their skulls into the wall, keeping them there as warnings for all others to approach you.

Arven realizes his treasure all along from the assignment of the Treasure Hunt was you. You are your upperclassman’s treasure… isn’t that sweet…?

When you’re with Nemona or Penny, even praising their skills of hacking and battling… he feels an urge to pull you away. He’ll find any excuse, from Nemona apparently teaching you a way to “cheat,” or accusing Penny of wasting your time. He doesn’t get as violent with him, as Arven knows you’d be saddened if something were to happen to your friends.

He’s quite possessive. A common phrase whenever you’re in a busy conversation with classmates is “Sorry, I’m going to have to take my stuff,” and leave by dragging you across the room.

Cuddles. Arven loves feeling the warmth of the one he treasures the most (in this au at least). He might occasionally pull you into an embrace, only to rest his head on your shoulder.

Naive mind. One thing that Arven doesn’t know, is that this behavior isn’t normal for friends. He thinks this is normal for any friend. He thinks wanting to silence others just for only attention of that certain friend is normal. He thinks it’s normal wanting to have a habit of constant obsession with friend.

Nemona and Penny don’t realize Arven’s behaviors right away. But slowly, as the middle of the year comes by… they question why some classmates, some who interact with you, ignore you. They watch, fear settling in their chest as Arven can be seen looking at those who even get near you. Near his treasure.

If Nemona or Penny realize this behavior soon enough, they might try to leave Arven behind. That means excluding him from your life, exiting in large groups, or having their Rotom phones record on.

Arven may realize what they’re doing. He will find a way to silence them from telling any teacher or Director Clavell. He will attack them if he needs to.

Question of the Day: Want me to make a Yandere Arven x Reader fic? Self insert for someone? An audience?

108 notes - Posted December 5, 2022

#2

Is it possible to make a yandare arven but kinda fluffy? Sometimes I wish the main character/reader can accept the yandare-ness (especially arven cause he been through a lot) idk so fluffy yandare arven please? 🥺

Yandere Arven, but fluff fic? Challenge accepted my friend!

Reader x Arven, of course . Slight possessive behavior, but much fluff and cuddles too!

You scrolled through your Rotom phone, absolutely tired from today. As nice as it was to have Battle Studies, the amount of training one had to go through to satisfy Dendra was energy draining. The only thing that made it really worth it was the amount of Experience Points that could level up any team easily.

Luckily, this period was language. Mr. Salvatore had mercy on class (no pun intended) and let a little of free time before class. So you decided it would be best to see what kinds of battle items would help your team in the Ace tournament.

“Leftovers would be good… but perhaps the Lucky Egg could level my team up faster?”

You questioned your decisions, torn between power or levels.

“Or maybe-”

Suddenly, there is a rush of footsteps, before your vision is covered. You drop your Rotom phone in surprise, the device landing with a loud CLACK! on your desk.

“Who is it?”

An energetic tone emitted from the question. You chuckle to yourself, before putting your own hands over the large warm ones.

“Hmm… I don’t know? Who’s very good at cooking, the soon-to-be famous chef?” You smile.

“I wonder?” The voice had a hint of amusement too.

“Arven, eres bien canijo!”

A giggle escaped your upperclassman’s mouth, as he uncovered his hands from your eyes. Arven bent down to hug you from your sitting position, burying his face into your neck.

“We’re best buds, of course you know who I am!”

“Why wouldn’t I? Arven, your voice is so soft just like that caring soul. Plus, those hands are rough from all that adventuring,” you tease lightly.

There was definitely a smile going on, because you could feel his lips curving upwards.

“I shouldn’t expect any less, that’s coming from a Champion,” Arven said. He looked up from his position, now resting his chin on your shoulder. “Que estás viendo?”

“Battle items. The Ace tournament is a lot harder, Nemona’s been training hard.”

Arven hummed, one of his hands traveling up to your hair. He ruffled it slightly, fingers gently caressing the strands.

“She’s not empujando te to do something, is she?” He asked.

Your stomach felt like jittery jello hearing those few words. Nemona had asked you to train with her but…

“No, of course not! She may be eager and happy someone is her rival, but it doesn’t mean she goes to those lengths! It’s nothing to worry about,” you manage to muster.

Arven pondered about the answer for a minute or two, before taking himself off you.

“Well, class is starting. Gotta go to my seat, see you later bud!”

He waves at you with a happy aura painting him. You smile to yourself: Arven reminded you of a joyful puppy.

A puppy that hadn’t seen light in a decade or so, ever since Turo died. Ever since Mabosstiff got injured.

You didn’t mind the way he held you especially close. After all, he had suffered through so much, the least you could do was stay by his side… right?

Well, that joy only lasted for so long. You froze as you heard the seat right beside you creak, someone sitting in it. They placed their items near yours, giving you a slightly warm smile.

See the full post

117 notes - Posted December 7, 2022

My #1 post of 2022

Here’s for you Arven simps. Don’t think I don’t see you, I am one myself. Come out of the shadows my friend.

Arven didn’t want to think about the embarrassing situation Mr. Saguaro had gotten him into. He could hear the whispered remarks about him, saying “Oh, I thought he’d be a bit more on the studious side” or “Thought he had his father in him.”

Frankly it was nothing thankfully, as the students had quickly gotten silenced by one statement of his friend. Y/N.

“Escuchen, porque sólo digo esto una vez. Leave him alone, he can be his own person, not just a professor’s son!”

They ran for it, and judging by the bell, were scrambling to make it to lunch. Safely, where the teachers were.

“Cobardes.” Y/N muttered under their breath. “Arven, you alright?”

Their upperclassman looked at them with a silent gaze, only to shake his head. “I’m fine… they’re not even worth it.”

Y/N stared at Arven for a few moments, before breaking into a pure smile. “Glad to see you’re taking steps!”

“Cállate,” Arven gently nudged them in the ribs with his elbow, to which Y/N playfully did the same back. He couldn’t stay sad for long: this bundle of energy would find a way to cheer him up either way.

“I hope Nemona is there early for our table, I am star-ving!” Y/N laid heavy emphasis on their last words.

Arven slightly frowned. He wasn’t used to the battle-loving girl yet, who would used to defeat him and Mabostiff nonstop…

“Yeah. Hope she is,” he said flatly.

He didn’t say anything else as they arrived to the lunchroom, before Y/N practically ran over to Nemona, who jumped out of her seat to hug them. Arven awkwardly sat on the opposite side of both of them, as Nemona squeezed the air out of Y/N. Literally.

“Ahhh Y/N I missed you! We haven’t seen each other as much as we should beeee!”

“Me too- Could you let go a little?”

“Only a little!” Nemona pouted as she had her face right against Y/N’s. “We shall never separate as much again!” She announced.

Arven rolled his eyes, resting his hands against his face, elbows on the table.

“You make it sound like you’re dating almost,” he chuckled.

“Arceus no! Y/N is just a friend I really need,” Nemona responded as she hugged them tightly. “How’d it go in classes?”

Arven’s face heated a little, before promptly looking away. He could only stare at the lights again for so long. “Alright, I guess.”

“Oh! Mr. Saguaro mentioned about a ‘boy’ who’s really into culinary arts and then asked me for a correct answer on how to make meals tastier. But after I got the correct answer, he slipped Arven’s name in.” Y/N piped up.

Nemona and Arven looked at Y/N.

“…”

Nemona bit her lower lip, lowering her face. Her entire body was shaking, before a small giggle came out of her mouth.

“You can’t be serious-“

“Y/N! Bud, I told you not to mention anything-!” Arven half yelled, standing up as he said.

Oh.

Oh boy was that a mistake. Arven could only hear the silence filling the room at this statement, dozens of students looking at him.

He quickly sat back down.

Only to hear Nemona burst into a fit of laughter, and hear participation from others too.

See the full post

187 notes - Posted November 28, 2022

Get your Tumblr 2022 Year in Review →

Oh. Well, uh…. Funny enough Volo is my most used tag yet Arven is more popular… y’all are down bad simps/j

[texinfinitearts]

This is Nicht Benannt. He is an Aron.

He wasnt always that way. Look below the Cut for a Character Synopsis about this Guy.

Nicht is a Young Aron with a Stutter. He hates and fears the Cold and is utterly obsessed with Surviving. While he will attempt to help other Civilised Pokemon, he is very distrustful of anyone actually offering Help.

Unfortunately, his Home Continent didnt always have Berries growing, the Harsh Winters made sure of that. So he had to make compromises. At this Point, hell eat anything.

Setting himself on Fire to avoid freezing is a Gambit he has taken several Times. He always wears that Winter Cloak, but sometimes it just isnt enough. Nothing is ever enough. He keeps freezing. It is so cold.

While he prefers to avoid Fights, he can definitely do some Damage.

The Corruption in and expanding out from his Eye grows whenever he gets close to Death. That Eye doesnt belong to him, after all.

A long Time ago, The Sage Continent Fell. And no one was around to see it.

No one knows what happened. A Plague? A God? Or a series of Smaller Incidents? Whatever it was, Civilisation died. All that remained were Ruins, and Feral Pokemon. But one day, things changed.

One, or perhaps, several Powerful beings took pity on the Husk of a Continent, and sent Nine Champions to save it. Humans, plucked from their Homes and given Pokemon Bodies, appeared there over the Course of a Week. None of them noticed each other at first.

Nicht was one of these Champions. Afraid and freezing, he found Refuge in the ruins of an Fort. He decided to keep a Diary. And then, Three Days later, he lost his Memory.

How did it happen? No one knows. The Aron awoke, freezing, without Memories, without a Name. And his Eye Hurt. It hurt so much. It wasnt his Eye anymore. Whatever it was that lived in his Eye Socket, it wasnt his Eye. Quickly, he made himself a Makeshift Eyepatch, and the Pain Stopped. Soon, he found what remained of his Diary.

The First Nine Pages had been Ripped out, and the Rest were blank.

Soon, he decided to explore. After fighting many Ferals, fleeing from many more, and almost freezing to Death many Times, he found the other Champions. For them, he took the name Nicht Benannt, and together, the Champions of the Sage Continent attempted to figure out why they were here, and what had happened to this Continent. Nicht meanwhile, searched for the missing Pages of his Diary. But he would Never Find them.

For a Month and Nine Days after the Champions arrived, something else came too. A Tower, built as if someone had stacked many Buildings on top of each other. The Champions, intrigued, began to climb it, but Nicht fell behind. He found something odd, a Statue of a Mythical Pokemon that seemed... familiar. A Victini.

Did his Hesitation doom them? Who knows.

When Nicht reached the Top, there was nothing Left of the Champions. There, before him, stood an Entity that seemed wrong. Every Part of his Body screamed at him to run, and the Eye that wasnt his started to Burn! He cant remember what happened next.

When he woke up, he was falling. The Tower was collapsing. The Continent was sinking. By a stroke of Luck, he grabbed onto a falling Log, a Piece of the Tower. And with a Splash, he landed in the Water. The Sage Continent was gone.

And Nicht began to drift on the Ocean.

Through every Storm, he holds onto the piece of Driftwood that saved him.

How long has he been drifting? How has he not starved yet?

Soon, he stopped thinking about those Questions. He keeps holding on, in the Faint Hope that someday, a Storm will save him.

And who knows? It might be quicker than expected.

God why did I have to make so many characters

[tracinginwardinvestigation]

Play #6: The Magic Circle of Just Dance

I know in my latest essay I said that I would stop talking about “Stupid Media” for the time being, but my recent renewed obsession with Just Dance makes me think it would be a fun to talk about the silliness of playing a dancing video game; nice change from all that talk about video game narrative lately.

Most people have probably heard about Just Dance, Ubisoft’s dancing video game series that is famously known for its continuous release on the Wii even when Wii U and Nintendo Switch already made Wii obsolete; Just Dance 2020 in particular was the final Wii game that was released physically in North America. Its gameplay is as simple as it gets: the player dances to the choreography on screen, earning points by performing the correct moves. The song list is generally made up of a mixture of classic songs as well as modern ones, and aesthetic-wise, the game’s choreography videos are very colorful and energetic. It is a fairly simple formula, but it works well enough that the series has continued releasing new entries yearly. Due to its casual nature, I am not surprised that conversation about the series rarely occurs in gaming discussion; I suppose that as the game gets released yearly with the same old formula and all, not much more can be said about the series’ evolution in gaming design (outside of upgraded visuals and more complex dancing moves). But despite all of that repetitiveness, Just Dance continues to be a fun part of my life for nearly a decade now, and so I think it would be fun to examine why it is fun to me. The simplest answer is that it is just fun to dance to colorful music videos! But after some thinking, I think there are a few more reasons to that, which I can chart it up to the power of playing inside a magic circle.

One of the ideas that comes to my mind right now is Theorizing Stupid Media’s concept of bodily stupid. In the chapter “The Stupid as Ludonarrative Dissonance”, the book mentions that one of Pokemon GO’s appeal might be explained by the way it forces players to move their body weirdly: “One of the things that Pokémon GO illustrates is that the stupid is not singularly located in the media referent, but rather in the reception of the body. The way that we respond to watching other bodies (mindlessly) twist, tumble, fall, relent to gravity, or confront the concrete realities of space, geography, architecture”. But more importantly, such bodily stupid often evokes a desirable reaction: “it is the uncontrolled flailing body in a Pokémon GO fail that elicits a different affective response—laughter”. Such laughter, I think, is one of the reasons I’m drawn to Just Dance to this day.

As much as I love Just Dance, I have to admit that most of the choreographies are not designed to elicit a sense of professional dancing, at least not the kind of acceptable forms of public dancing like salsa, ballroom, and hip hop, in part because of the series’ casual vibe. As the series is supposed to appeal to all ages, the choreographies in general are often repetitive and simplistic. Back when Harmonix's Dance Central was still a thing, people often compared its complex dance choreographies to Just Dance’s as a way to make fun of the latter’s simplicity. Nevertheless, the series’ casualness is also what makes it perfect to play at a party! I still remember how these games were often a blast at my parties; there were laughter from my friends who flailed around, trying to match up to the choreography, as well as from those who just had fun watching the players fumble badly. Those joys occurred through the bodily stupid produced by the game. In a way, even though we laughed at each other’s clumsy movements, it was not with the intention of making fun of them, but more so in the shared joy of playing. I wonder if this is a similar principle behind party games that involve body movement like Twister?

In a way, Just Dance’s great strength is its casual approach to dancing, from its vibrant visuals to ease of use. Even people who are unfamiliar with gaming can easily play the game by themselves; all they need to know is how to open the game, select a song, and dance to it. Moreover, no matter how badly the player performs, the game’s positive vibe doesn’t berate them for failing, but encourages them to try again. In game studies terms, I could say that the playful atmosphere of the series forms a magic circle for people to dance to their heart's content without being made fun of; a safe space to explore the joy in dancing even if you are not good at it (me!). It is funny to compare dancing to Just Dance to the idea of live-action role playing (larp for short), but I think Stenros and MacDonald’s quote that describes the joy of larping also applies to playing Just Dance: “They are beautiful to do, but not necessarily interesting to watch”. Yeah, I may fail to dance well, but it is the attempt to dance to my heart’s content that makes Just Dance fun for me! It is this kind of joy that makes me return to the series, solo or with friends, for nearly a decade now.

Thinking about Just Dance as a magic circle also gives me some thoughts about the values of the circle itself. After all, Just Dance is the kind of game that technically can work even without the medium; one can simply play a YouTube video of the game and dance to it. But such imitating typically lacks the value of immersing into the magic circle and respecting the game’s rules. By following the game’s immersion rule—I have to move my entire body even if the game only tracks my hand movement through “larping” tools such as a joy-con or my phone—I enter into a safe space that allows me to dance badly without getting made fun of. I suppose, the value of playing inside a magic circle is that it allows one to safely explore a concept that is outside of their comfort zone without getting berated. Without a magic circle, playing is simply imitating, an act that is often frowned upon in societal rule. There is still a lot more to look into about the powers of dancing and the rules of magic circle, but I will stop this essay for now. I can say for sure that I don’t see myself losing my love toward Just Dance series any sooner (well, maybe if they increase Just Dance Now’s subscription costs…)

P/S: Stefanie Heinzmann’s Diggin' In The Dirt is such a great motivational song to dance to every time I ever feel down.