#and i have pokémon home. which isn’t really a game

[goldensunset]

nintendo STOPPP

[cherrieflavouredheadcanons]

hi luv! i hope you're doing great. Saw your recent post and i do have a hc request (since im having a haikyuu brainrot rn 👀), what would you think of making papa!haikyuu hcs 😩. How would these volley boys make as a father! (especially kenma, tsukki and noya) and you can add your favs too 💕sjsjjsjs hope you have a great day ahead!

I'm doing okay, I hope you are doing good and that you have a nice day! I hope you enjoy this post and it is to your liking

Them as fathers

Characters: Kenma, Noya, Tsukki Gender neutral reader, it is not mentioned whether the children are adopted or biological, Kenma’s is longer than the others because i had way too many ideas for him

Kenma Kozume

First things first: I don’t think Kenma would have more than one kid, if you really wanted to have more he would relent but he is perfectly happy with just one, he thinks 3 people is the perfect number for your little family.

You may think he wouldn’t be that involved in his kids life, but that is a big misconception,

No matter how much work he has to do he makes sure to spend time with you and your kid.

Kenma would never show his child on the internet in any way, he wants to keep his private life private and keep his child safe, he knows how cruel the internet can be, no way in hell will he put his young child into that kind of situation.

Once your child learned to crawl he brought the three starters of Pokémon black and white (gen 5 best games I don’t take criticism) to see which one your child would choose.

Based on what they chose he will be sulky or proud. (I nearly made this into Oshawott propaganda but I didn’t you’re welcome). But at the end of the day he knows that they just choose one based on colours and shapes, he would teach them once they are older how to perfectly choose a starter.

Best believe that as soon as your kid is old enough to understand things he will show them all kinds of (age appropriate) video games.

You enter his gaming room with some snacks for him and you can just see him play Slime Rancher as your kid sits in his lap, eyes glued to what their father is doing.

He already has started a Stardew Valley coop farm for you three to play together one day, he is just waiting for the day your child is old enough.

Now enough video game talk, (though I have so many more ideas about this lol) your child loves it when Kenma reads to them before they sleep, his voice is very soothing to them.

Once they are asleep Kenma stays at their side a bit longer, watching them sleep a serene smile on his face.

Kenma can’t say no to your kid, he will buy them anything they want. You sometimes wonder how he can be so responsible with his money in any other situation, but your child just needs to point at something and he will buy it for them unless you intervene.

Lastly, be prepared for Kenma and your kid to team up against you. Board games? Yeah they are a team even if the game isn’t a game for teaming up. (Monopoly is a nightmare with them, Oh you need a red? Too bad your kid and Kenma are trading it between one another instead of giving it to you) But you can’t really seem to mind when you see the way Kenma and your kid smile. (Unless you are like me and are fiercely competitive in games then you may want to strike Kenma down)

Yu Nishinoya

Noya would take longer to have children with you, at least until he is done travelling, he does want kids but is aware that travelling the world with them wouldn’t be ideal, he wants them to have a stable home.

Once you two do have kids, he wants at least 2 or 3. Noya wants a big family.

I feel like he is the type of Dad that throws his kids in the air and then catches them (he won’t do it high) and it always gives you a heart attack.

Instead of reading them good night stories he always tells them (embellished) stories from when he travelled the world, for example he once exclaimed to one of your kids how a mermaid vied for your attention but he fought them heroically off.

This does bite him in the ass years down the line once your kids are teens, they will bring these stories up whenever they can to tease him.

Asahi is basically an uncle to your kids, he often visits you and brings the kids many gifts. He loves to spoil them.

And yes Asahi designs the clothes for your kids as well, it often leads to many people asking you and Noya where you got the clothes for them from since they are such a high quality.

Yes, he will teach your kids “Rolling thunder”. No you can’t stop him. Even if your kids don’t play Volleyball they will still know the move.

This leads to your kids looking for his old jersey’s from highschool, putting them on and pretending to  be their dad. No he is not crying, he just got dust in his eye.

Vacations and holidays are important to Noya, while he can’t travel the world with your kids, he will take them on memorable vacations across the country when they are old enough to remember them.

He wants them to have a happy and fulfilled childhood with as many experiences as they can have.

Kei Tsukishima

When you first brought up having children with him he asked “Are you sure you can take care of a child? Don’t you wanna practise with a pet rock first?” You lightly punched him in the chest for that and he had his signature smirk on his face.

He is honestly neutral on the aspect of having kids, he is not against it but also it was never his dream of having them, so he is fine with whatever you want.

Just like Kenma he would probably only have one kid, with his Job as a Volleyballplayer and everything he isn’t home that often, so if you had more than one kid he would feel guilty leaving you home alone with them.

Tsukki is probably the first one from Karasuno to have a kid, so he is smug about the fact that he is ‘better’ than the others in that regard.

The first team reunion after you two had your child will have him holding his child proudly, while he tells all the others how slow they are for not having kids yet, which has everyone rolling their eyes. He is very proud of his kid so that he will hold it up Lion King style so everyone can admire it.

Unluckily though he miscalculated the height of the ceiling and bonked your kids head on it, which left everyone in the room in a stunned silence (True story from my infant days, my dad did this exact thing with me)

You had made him change every diaper for 2 weeks for the heart attack he gave you with that, even if your kid was fine and wasn’t hurt.

Tsukki and you switch every night who is going to read your kid, while you pick different topics every time, he only ever chooses dinosaur stories to read to your kid.

Speaking of dinosaurs, Tsukki once claimed he had to educate your kid on certain things while you went out grocery shopping, when you came back you saw that the thing he was educating your child on was “The land before time” which made you smile.

Now no matter if the child is biologically yours or adopted, it somehow interhits his sass, which means you will be surrounded by two sassy little pieces of shit (affectionate).

Though you get both of them to calm down their sass by offering them some strawberry cake if they stop, it surprisingly works better on Tsukki then on your kid, who would have thought?

[parasolladyansy]

Ansy PKMN Timeline

When I started posting Diamond x Pearl REWRITE on my instagram, I did quite a bit of set up for new readers, including a full timeline for both Ansy & Ikrit. The mister & I (the players behind these characters) have been playing Pokémon since very beginning (though I had a very long break between Blue & Black), & now we play Pokémon together! 🩵

Ansy was born in Kanto, had a very coming-of-age story in Unova (following an attempt at a journey that didn’t end well), & considers the latter her home region. It’s where Ikrit & she live to this day when they’re not running around other regions (maybe in Nuvema Town, moving from Undella in favor of a little town still near the ocean but more affordable & quiet). She isn’t the strongest battler, but she’s definitely gotten better since Ikrit started training with her. Strange things seem to happen around her though…

Her design is often inspired by the female PC, though she’s often holding an umbrella as her trainer class is usually Parasol Lady (she likes rain teams, mostly Water PKMN). 🌧️ Exceptions are in Blue (Lass) & Sword (Gardener).

PS: So I got confused with which Legendary you got in BW & BW2, so while I just played Black when I realized that’s the one with Reshiram lol, I just rewrote White 2 - I didn’t realize the Reshiram you help in the game was N’s Reshiram, so I pretended it was Ansy’s Reshiram instead (as my hc is that players more befriend Legendaries than catch them like in the anime). 😅

PPS: the time skip between BW & BW2 is officially 3 years, but since I didn’t really want to jump from 10 (when I played Blue) to 22 (when I played Black), I made it about 9 years.

[wildflowercryptid]

Hope its okay if I ask about your versions of Florian and Juliana, thanks ^ _ ^

- Are they siblings?

- What are both their personalities?

- Were they actually raised in Paldea? The MC's in the game are implied to originally be from Galar so I was just wondering that

- Which storylines from the game are each the of them the main character of?

I'm so sorry if I've missed out an info sheet on them hhhhghg

Thank u again!

oh, it’s more than okay to ask about them! i actually really like talking about my interpretations of the pokémon characters, but i just struggle to articulate my ideas a lot of the time. or forget to share them. i’ve been meaning to drop lore for these two so i’ll do that now!

( putting the answers under a cut because i kinda ended up rambling. oops. )

are they siblings?

yes, they are! juliana is the older of the two, but they’re actually super close in age ( with jules not even being a year older than florian. ) because of that, they’re pretty close and sometimes get mistaken for twins. they still bicker and annoy each other like any other typical sibling relationship, but they respect each other a lot and consider each other their greatest confidant. their relationship kinda ends up paralleling carmine and kieran’s own dynamic as siblings, with juliana and florian seeing each other as equals while the same can’t really be said for carmine and kieran.

what are both of their personalities?

while they’re both pretty level-headed, juliana is definitely the more outgoing and confident of the two. florian is more of the reserved type, someone who typically keeps to himself and would much rather wait in the wings than be center stage, ( too bad he’s basically the major protagonist of the story. ) they’re both fairly friendly, but he struggles connecting with others more when compared to his sister. essentially, they’re kinda like a dialed-back version of mabel and dipper pines. florian generally is a very sweet and open-hearted kid who tries to see the best in others, which often leads to his kindness being taken advantage of and getting pushed around easily, ( i.e. carmine convincing him to keep the secret about ogerpon from kieran. ) because of that, juliana is a little protective of him and isn’t afraid to step in when he struggles to stand up for himself. and while she does like to be seen as reliable, that doesn’t mean that she doesn’t encourage florian to be more confident and advocate for himself more. he does end up growing more of a backbone during the timeskip, which makes her very proud. meanwhile, juliana is a lot more outspoken and doesn’t hold back when things need to be called out. she’s still just as compassionate as her brother and is extremely reliable, along with having a very strong moral compass. she definitely fills the cool, reliable older sister role pretty well.

were they actually raised in paldea?

they grew up in galar like what’s implied in canon, but the details are a little different. they’re actually paldean on their mother’s side, who was originally from cabo poco herself. their family decided to move from wyndon back to her hometown after their father lost his job at one of macro cosmos’s now defunct finance subsidiaries. luckily, he was able to land a new desk job in medali and now larry’s his boss. ( the two get along well, they talk about their kids during lunch breaks. )

which storylines from the game are each of them the main character of?

juliana takes on the victory road and starfell street storylines while florian tackles the path of legends and filling out the pokédex, with both of them coming together for the way home. initially, i conceptualized them as co-protagonists and they still kinda are… but florian has definitely taken on the role as primary protagonist with how much shit keeps on just happening to him. i would expand the specifics of how the path of legends plays out for florian and how his friendship with arven develops, but i’ve already rambled enough so i’ll try to talk about that in another post.

hope this answers all your questions and sorry if it's a little long, i've just gotten attached to these kids and have a lot to say about them.

if you have any other questions ( about the paldea kids or mjverse in general, ) please feel free to ask them! it might take me a sec to reply, but i'll try my best!

[sage-nebula]

When Kieran joins Masters EX, his partner should be Hydrapple. But when / if he gets a Sygna Suit, his partner then should be Pecharunt, because color scheme aside, the two are so much alike that it has to be on purpose.

Unfortunately, a lot of the similarities are relegated to Pecharunt’s backstory video on the official Pokémon YouTube channel, which is really disappointing and yet another way that the severe time crunch these games / DLC are released under hurts the finished product. Nonetheless, here’s a brief summary of the video in case you missed it:

Pecharunt was found by an elderly couple in a distant land who, having no children of their own, decided to adopt him. They loved him, but Pecharunt, feeling that he wanted even more of their love, decided to feed them some of his special mochi that he created from the poison inside his shell. This poison drew out the old couple’s greed, and they began to send him on errands to collect things for them. To make these quests easier, Pecharunt recruited Okidogi as a retainer to bring things back to the old couple’s home. Eventually, the old couple requested that Pecharunt bring them some special masks from the land of Kitakami, and Pecharunt, having grown bored of the routine tasks he’d been given, agreed. Pecharunt used his special mochi to bring Fezandipiti and Munkidori on as retainers as well, and together the four traveled to Kitakami in order to steal the masks. This led to Okidogi, Munkidori, and Fezandipiti killing Ogerpon’s trainer during the theft, and Ogerpon killing the Loyal Three as revenge. She nearly killed Pecharunt as well, but instead Pecharunt managed to roll into the woods and fall into a deep coma, eventually coming to rest as a “plushie” at Peachy’s for an untold number of years after (i.e. until the Mochi Madness epilogue took place).

So to recap: Pecharunt was loved by the old couple that took him in, but he wanted more than what he was given and used his mochi to try to get that. Things ended up spiraling out of control, and he almost died because of it.

Sound familiar?

When we first meet Kieran in the Teal Mask, we’re given the impression that he’s a friendless boy who is bereft of any real battling skill, friends, or opportunities. In fact, I think Kieran himself tells us that he doesn’t have any friends (or at least leads us to believe as such when he gets so excited at the fact that MC wants to be friends with him). But Carmine is quick to tell us that Kieran is actually really strong in terms of battling ability (and also that he hates to lose, which is foreshadowing his later fall from grace), and while their entire family is ostracized in the village (it’s very obvious that Carmine isn’t well-liked either), two things become very obvious once we arrive at Blueberry Academy in the Indigo Disk:

1.) The only bully at Blueberry Academy is Kieran himself

2.) No one at Blueberry Academy had issues with Kieran before his field trip to Kitakami

After the Mochi Madness epilogue, when speaking to Kieran in the League Club room, he mentions that it used to bother him that he had a Kitakami accent when no one else did at Blueberry Academy. (Specifically that he “talks different because he’s from Kitakami”). Note that he isn’t saying that others made fun of him for having an accent; this is a problem that Kieran himself had, which fits in to how Kieran tends to project his own insecurities onto others and blow them up into issues of his own creation. The other League Club members, sans perhaps Drayton, don’t seem to have had any issue with Kieran prior to his becoming Champion and becoming a bully, and Lacey, Amarys, and Crispin all seem more than willing to welcome him back once he is defeated and willing to try again. Even Drayton, while teasing him about being an “ex-champ,” does so while asking what Kieran is eating for dinner nowadays — a roundabout way of checking up on him, to see not really what, but if he’s eating, since we know he wasn’t before.

In other words: It’s highly likely that Kieran wasn’t friendless at Blueberry Academy before. And we know, too, that his family loves him (yes, his entire family—take it from someone who did have an abusive older sister, Carmine never once abuses him, she teases him just as any normal older sister would and it’s clear how much they mutually love each other). Furthermore, while he throws his little hissy fits over losing battles to the MC, we know exactly why that is, because Carmine tells us why that is at the beginning of the Teal Mask: it’s because Kieran hates to lose. Kieran is seriously strong, she says. He’s very good at battling. This is why he was in the League Club to begin with, which I’m pretty sure he was even before they went on the Kitakami field trip, even though he wasn’t the Champion then. Kieran was already strong, but the strength he had just wasn’t good enough because he was losing to MC. Being friends with MC wasn’t good enough once he had to share their friendship with Carmine. His pokémon weren’t good enough when they weren’t Ogerpon / when they lost to MC, and so on and so forth. Like Pecharunt, Kieran wanted more.

And what did he do to get it? Anything he could, regardless of the feelings of others.

See, here is the thing about Pecharunt’s powers: Pecharunt’s mochi is a mind-altering substance. Pecharunt’s poison (game mechanics aside) doesn’t kill, but rather, it alters the mind in order to “draw out the desires and innate abilities” of those it affects. It draws out the greed of the victims, but it also binds them to Pecharunt’s will. In all the cases we have so far, Pecharunt’s will is to have them love him. He wanted the old couple to love him. He wanted Okidogi, Munkidori, and Fezandipiti to help him retrieve things so the old couple would love him more, but also, presumably, to be his friends. (Which is why he reacts so furiously if you send any of the three against him — he sees this as a betrayal on their part.) It’s unclear if Pecharunt is consciously stripping people and other pokémon of their will, or if he just thinks that his mochi is so damn delicious that they really love him more, but I have to think it’s a little column A, little column B. At the very least, he knew that he was getting the items requested of him and he ordered the Loyal Three to steal the masks. He had enough intelligence to plan the heist. So in that sense, he’s not completely clueless about what’s going on. It’s just whether he knew that he had subjugated the Loyal Three utterly or not that’s in question.

Regardless — back to Kieran.

Kieran, obviously, doesn’t have any mind controlling mochi. But much like Pecharunt feeds people and pokémon mochi to make them do what he wants / needs them do regardless of what they might think or feel about it, Kieran also makes it clear that (prior to his Heel Face Turn at the end of Indigo Disk), the feelings of others don’t matter very much when it comes to what he wants either. When Ogerpon makes it known that she wants to keep traveling with the MC (whom she has spent the entire Teal Mask portion of the DLC bonding with), Kieran decides that he wants to battle for the right to keep her, and dismisses Carmine pointing out that he should consider Ogerpon’s feelings. In the Indigo Disk, when he sees that Terapagos imprints on the MC, he throws a Master Ball and captures it, stripping it of any choice whatsoever, not unlike Pecharunt throwing mind-controlling mochi in people’s mouths during the epilogue.

Both Pecharunt and Kieran also take perceived slights extremely personally. With Kieran, there is a lot of evidence toward this, from Kieran deciding on his own that Carmine and the MC must have been making fun of him behind his back at the Festival of Masks to him lashing out at Carmine for befriending the MC while trying to yank Terapagos free in the Indigo Disk. With Pecharunt there is precious little evidence, but as I mentioned earlier, if you send one of the Loyal Three to battle Pecharunt in Mochi Madness, Pecharunt has an angry, betrayed reaction — even though none of the Loyal Three have any choice in the matter and cannot have betrayed Pecharunt willingly. (Much like how Carmine never intended to hurt Kieran’s feelings by befriending the MC, and likewise, MC didn’t do anything wrong by befriending Carmine either.)

All of this is to say, Kieran and Pecharunt have a lot in common. Both have shades of entitlement, selfishness, and greed. The primary difference is, by the end of the Indigo Disk, Kieran has started to try to move past his, while Pecharunt’s is “solved” by being captured. So why should they be paired up in Masters EX?

Well, that’s simple:

While we all know my feelings about how Kieran was written, setting that aside, Game Freak says that he’s all better now. However, Pecharunt isn’t. But if Kieran is all better now, then I think there is no one better to teach Pecharunt how to be better than someone who was in his shoes. Someone who can say, “Hey, I know how you’re feeling, and I understand the temptation, but maybe instead of poisoned mochi we can eat some candy apples instead.” Tie a neat little bow on all that character development. Finish off Kieran’s redemption while also showing that Pecharunt has had some growth, too. Plus, it keeps with the fruit theming for Kieran; first he gets an apple, now he gets a peach. Maybe his third pokémon partner could be a Cherrim.

Those are my thoughts, anyway. We’ll see what DeNA actually does with him.

[pahrak-the-sinnoh-slizer]

Game Night: Cassette Beasts

Pokémon fans threatening to find a new monster taming series is like Americans threatening to move to Canada: we’ve all said it at some point, and for completely valid reasons, but the reality is that it just isn’t that easy to pick up and go.  For me at least, it’s hard to pin down exactly what it is about Pokémon that’s central to my interest in it, so I’m not quite sure what to look for in other monster tamers.  At the very least, when something like Palworld rolls around I can easily tell that it’s not that.  The last several Pokémon games have been some of my favorites, but I’ve remained curious about the genre at large; unfortunately these games are innately a rather large commitment, which doesn’t pair well with my indecisive uncertainty.  All this to say, while I was definitely intrigued by Cassette Beasts when I first heard about it years ago, that intrigue never actually went anywhere…until now.

I believe I recently heard someone toss it out as a recommendation on a stream I was watching, which is why it stuck out when I was browsing the Games Done Quick channel on YouTube.  Out of curiosity, I wound up watching the speedrun.  I then poked around the official wiki a bit and came to realize this game could be very appealing to me specifically.  And BOY was I right about that!

Before we get into it, spoiler-free tl;dr: Cassette Beasts both wears its inspiration proudly on its sleeve and iterates upon it in many truly fascinating ways, with an atmosphere that switches effortlessly between delightfully cozy and creepy cool.  I have some gripes, but I have been thoroughly entertained and downright mesmerized playing this game.  If you have any interest in monster tamers, pixel art indie RPGs, and/or cosmic horror, I highly recommend checking Cassette Beasts out.

>PLAY

The game first asks you to customize your character, sans outfit—that comes later so you’re not entirely overwhelmed right away.  There’s also an option for pronouns, including he/him, she/her, and they/them, which is lovely to see.  You are then dropped onto the shore of a mysterious island, and are found by a girl who tells you that you’ve landed in a different dimension.  So, yes, technically an isekai.  But this is a limbo-esque world that only has humans because they keep falling into it from time to time—every single character is either from another world, or was born to parents who are stuck here.  That, combined with making your character’s explicit goal “find a way home”, excellently avoids the most common pitfalls of the genre and lets you assess it without preconceived notions.  What’s really interesting about this is that people are pulled from many different worlds, and from various points in the timeline: you have characters talking about the Mars landing of 1969 and the 20th century peace treaty with the elves, and also famous Greek philosophers and Karl Marx.  I love how eclectic it is, and it’s frequently used in really funny ways. (You all remember Diogenes, right?  Guess what traits are shared by all the monsters he uses.) The people brought here have all banded together in a mutually supportive community, with everyone contributing what they can and materials like wood and metal being traded for goods as opposed to using money.  Why do we want to go home again?  This sounds like a nice place to live!

But anyway, we’re here for the monsters.  And in-game they are just called “monsters”, never “Cassette Beasts”.  Which strikes me as odd.  But the monsters have been in this world way longer than the cassette tapes, which are actually a relatively recent arrival courtesy of an isekai’d shopping mall.  Rather than catching a monster, you record them on a blank tape, meaning that even if you are successful you’ll still need to defeat the monster or flee to end the battle.  You then use your tape and cassette player to take on the form and powers of the recorded monster, and fight your battles first-hand!  Pokémon briefly flirted with this idea in a spin-off manga (Pokémon ReBURST), but here it’s fully embraced; this sort of approach can be seen in other aspects too, as we’ll see later.  After learning the basics, you’re given a few major questlines and then set free into the open world of New Wirral, tackling whatever catches your attention as you romp around.  There is some level-scaling, though I’m not sure of the specifics.  Regardless, both it and enemy AI can be adjusted via Settings, and you can also turn off the glitch effects that show up if those are impacting your experience.  In battle you control both your avatar and one of several recruitable partners, and can carry up to six tapes at a time—essentially Doubles format, with all the complexity and chaos that entails.  One very interesting wrinkle in the formula is that in addition to the tapes/monsters having health bars, the humans also have their own health bar, hidden under that of their tape as if the tape’s HP was a shield meter.  If attacks overkill your tape, the excess damage is dealt to your own HP, and if you lose all of your HP then you’re done regardless of how many tapes you have left.  It’s an important extra resource to keep in mind, and the same is true for (most) NPC cassette-users: if you deal enough damage to their own health bar you can defeat them without having to get through all of their tapes.  Until the late/post-game, that is, where your human foes are invulnerable beneath their tapes while you very much are not, and that feels very unfair.  I also find it strange that there’s no item for restoring your human HP—campfires to rest at are fairly plentiful, but it’s still somewhat odd.

Each monster has one type, and rather than limited uses for each of its moves, both characters generate AP every turn they can then spend on certain attacks.  Moves also each have a type, but while there is a same type attack bonus (STAB), it’s not as significant as it is in Pokémon.  Naturally, each type has advantages and disadvantages over other types, but!  Weakness and resistance is also toned way down, and is not your primary goal when using type advantage. Type interaction is far, far more nuanced in this game, involving the entire spectrum of ailments and buffs and debuffs, and even changing the target’s type.  For example: Water extinguishes Fire, temporarily reducing its attack power.  Using Fire on Water creates steam, which heals Water over the next few turns.  Fire also melts Ice, changing it to a Water type for a few turns.  And this is all just barely scratching the surface!  A chart showing these interactions is given to you in-game, which is nice; more than that, whenever you discover a new interaction for the first time, a tutorial box pops up and elaborates on the effects, as well as providing an explanation of why (extinguish, steam, melt, etc) that goes a long way in keeping track of them all.  While a fantastic feature, it can get repetitive at times: the mystical Astral type has identical interactions with all four classical elements, and despite all 4 being mentioned the first time, you’ll still get that same text box explaining that interaction 4 times.  Types range from the usual suspects (Fire, Water, Air) to some very…surprising choices (Glass, Plastic, Glitter), plus Typeless moves that take on the type of the monster using them.  Moves are treated as stickers applied to your tapes, and can be peeled and moved at your discretion; you obtain them either from leveling up a tape, or from shops and chests and drops.  Leveling up monsters (from 0 to 5 stars) also increases their max AP and how many move slots they have, and I think slightly increases their stats?  Your human characters, though, have their own stats which increase as you level them up from 1 to…well I’m not sure exactly but it exceeds 100 at least.  I couldn’t tell you the exact mathematical way the two sets of stats interact, but it’s a neat idea, strengthening yourself as well as the tapes you collect.  Your partners gain experience even if they’re not with you, and thank God they do, otherwise it’d be a pain to spend proper time with each and every one of them.

There’s one other major battle mechanic unlocked at the end of the tutorial segment: Fusion.  After filling up a meter, your avatar and partner can fuse their monster forms together to unleash hell upon your enemies.  Monster sprites were made modular so that the game could automatically generate fusions on its own, meaning that there are in fact over 16000 different fusions you can make, and your bestiary will keep a list of them all. (Thank God there are absolutely no incentives for filling that list!) Fusing will also cause whatever music track is playing to gain vocals, which is a fun way to up the presentation factor.  Your relationship with your partner is key to Fusion: its measured from 0 to 5 hearts, and you need at least 1 to be able to perform Fusion at all.  At 2 hearts, you gain a super move.  Every level gained increases the stats of your fusion as well.  It’s a fun mechanic to mess around with, even if a lot of the fusions can look a bit derpy—small price for the sheer flexibility of the system.  I’m sure I don’t have to tell you that Pokémon fans have been enamored with fusion since at least B2W2; I doubt it’s coincidence that Cassette Beasts chose to implement it as a Mega Evolution-esque gimmick.  Once you get to the late/post-game, the NPC fights also gain access to Fusion, giving you a chance to figure out ways to play around the feature from the other side.

Like I said before, this game greatly expands upon a number of fan-favorite concepts from Pokémon, and I’m pleased to say that extends all the way to Shinies.  Every monster has a small chance to be a “bootleg”, with not only a different color scheme, but a different type.  There are a total of 14 types in the game.  Do you see where this is going?  Every single monster has 14 variants with different types and color palettes (even their original type, weirdly enough?).  And every single one has a page in their bestiary dedicated solely to tracking how many of these variants you’ve found.  Probably nightmarish for a completionist, but holy shit is that insanely cool!  Multiple palettes to choose from instead of being stuck with just one that might suck!  And they have mechanical differences to incentivize recording them beyond simply collector’s value!  Fantastic!  There are also various ways to increase your odds, all the way up to 20% in specific cases, which I imagine will entice quite a few players into the hobby of bootleg hunting.

Let’s see, what other mechanical topics can I cover before moving onto more story-related stuff?  Field moves are a thing—you obtain them by recording a specific monster, and in the case of some like the glide you’ll partially transform when it’s activated.  I think it strikes a nice balance: it’s dependent on what you yourself have actually recorded, but doesn’t ask you to dedicate move or party slots to it.  Their approach to evolution feels simplified: when you rest after getting a tape to 5 stars, you’ll be prompted to “remaster” it if applicable, rather than having to guess which level you should be aiming for.  There are a few wrinkles when it comes to branching evolutions, but only a few, and mostly come down to either having a certain move on the monster to change its remaster, or, after choosing to remaster, being given two options right there.  Those options can be a bit vague, though; I looked into it ahead of time, and if I had gone with the option my gut opted for when remastering my starter, I would have gotten the less cool-looking monster.  I also want to mention the loading screens; you know how The Sims lists random stuff on its loading screens?  They do something similar here, except they’re all related to one of the monsters: “Directing Traffikrab”, “Tuning Kittelly”, “Sharpening Ripterra’s knifeclaws”.  It’s a little thing but I find it charming, and perhaps a bit devious in making players curious to track down these various monsters being teased.  Oh, and selecting the Flee option will tell you your percent chance to flee, and even if you fail you can still choose to blackout if you really just want to get out of there.  There’s also a Mystery Gift analogue that’s been used to distribute various bootlegs, and things I haven’t even tried like the “Gym Pass” to customize your player character's stats.  Beating the game also unlocks customization options for future playthroughs like randomizers and permadeath.  There’s a LOT.  It’s a very packed game.

Right then, story.  There are two BIG big questlines, one of which being a setup similar to collecting Gym Badges: there are 12 special NPCs all over the map who give you a stamp when you defeat them, but rather than specializing in a certain type, they tend to have a favorite tactic they employ in battle.  One of the easiest to find specializes in moves that create defensive walls; one particularly annoying one prioritizes controlling accuracy and evasion; there’s even one who specializes in just one particular monster with an elaborate signature move.  It’s perhaps not an enormous difference, but again, it’s nuanced.  There is also a “Champion” fight at the end, but I won’t get into that.  More importantly, the questline that the game is largely centered around and leads to the end credits, is the hunt for hidden subway stations that house powerful, eldritch boss monsters known as Archangels.  Apparently, when humans first wound up in New Wirral, they didn’t know what to make of the monsters and tended to refer to them as angels or demons.  That fell out of fashion as the community came to understand monsters better.  The Archangels, however, cannot be understood by human minds.  Each one is drawn/animated in its own style that clashes with the world around them—your partners all say that it hurts just to look at them, and just being in the stations makes them feel uneasy.  A personal favorite is the claymation skeleton with a vertical mouth, to give you some idea of what to expect.  These fights have their own unique mechanics, and the Archangels tend to hit very, very hard; if you do survive, some floating guy in a red coat with a 3D rendered reflective triangle for a head shows up and absorbs the boss (concerning), and you’re given part of a riddle that will eventually lead you to the final dungeon.  The vibes are incredibly at odds with the typical overworld gameplay, and I mean that in THE best possible way.  The Archangels were a real highlight for me.

In addition to those, every partner you can recruit has their own questline, which can range from a single fight all the way to finding 6 hidden locations around the map with their own substantial battles to win.  The girl who finds you at the start of the game, Kayleigh, is your first partner, first having a quest that’s essentially “finish the tutorial” before switching to a more personal quest that involves dealing with an actual cult.  You’re also very early on pushed in the direction of Eugene, who has that long, long quest finding hidden locations all over the map.  Slow-going as it is, though, it’s about fighting off a horde of capitalist vampires who are trying to establish a housing market, so.  That’s fucking hilarious.  But it has stiff competition in Felix’s quest, where you follow his middle school OC brought to life as she journeys to four sacred altars to slay their guardians.  That’s right, Felix’s edgy anime OC, an angel demon catgirl ninja named Kuneko, is also up and about in New Wirral and he is mortified by this discovery.  Excellent questline, no notes.  Another partner you’ll run into fairly early is Meredith; her quest involves navigating a dungeon you probably won’t get to for a good while, though it’s a solid dungeon when you do get to it.  There’s also Viola, the character from Twelfth Night by William fucking Shakespeare, whose search for her brother takes her into a haunted shipwreck to face a villain from a different Shakespeare story.  New Wirral is very eclectic.  But perhaps least expected of all is Barkley the dog.  One of your playable partners is a dog.  His quest is the shortest and an utterly fucking brutal punch to the emotional gut.  Anyway I like all these folks, they’ve got personality and endearing character development that touches on some personally relevant topics.  Aside from Barkley, you can romance any partner after maxing out your relationship level, and that was a tough choice to make.  The Gym Leader analogues are sufficiently quirky for their role, and you meet a handful of other perfectly fine recurring characters—including a few who are only encountered in post-game quests.  If I’m really being strict here, I don’t think I’d say any of this game’s characters have jumped the ranks to new blorbo status, but take that as you will.

The post-game has an interesting structure to it.  You don’t unlock any new areas, not really, but after engaging with the newly-unlocked sidequest board for a bit, you gain access to a few longer questlines.  There are two that eventually come together which each feature their own new characters, one following the direct consequences of actions you took earlier in the story, and one that’s about someone new being dropped onto New Wirral, showing that the world keeps turning even if your particular story is over.  There’s also another questline which delves even deeper into the background lore of the game, and that’s something I’ll never get enough of.  The repeating sidequests are brief and rewarding enough to from a satisfying gameplay loop to disguise the grind, and I’m only just now considering an extended break after nearly 70 hours total gameplay (which I would guess is around half post-game).

Oh, I should also talk more about the bestiary and completing it!  Each monster has the standard flavor text and habitat listing, plus that page that tracks bootlegs, and a list of how many you’ve encountered/defeated.  However, when you raise a tape to 5 star level, you also unlock an additional page of flavor text, usually something related to the inspiration for the monster’s design.  While heavily scaled back, having this sort of progression in the bestiary reminds me of doing research in Pokémon Legends Arceus, and I very much appreciate that.  Going that far is optional, of course—really, doing anything involving the bestiary is optional.  But the game does nudge you in that direction and reward you several times along the way.  When you first encounter the “professor” character, he gives you a series of quests that just ask you to record one of the monsters found in the central region of the map.  Easy!  From there, he gives you a handful of resources and tapes every time you hit a new milestone of 10 monsters recorded.  In the post-game you can also randomly get quests asking you to get a certain monster to 5 star, or perform a specific fusion, or use a specific monster to fight the professor’s assistant, all slowly, slowly nudging you in the direction of completion.  But what’s really interesting is that you don’t necessarily have to fully complete the bestiary to get the grand prize (this game’s equivalent to the Master Ball).  Cassette Beasts originally had 120 monsters.  A later update raised that to 128, and some time after that, they released a DLC that added a handful of unnumbered monsters.  You get the Master Tape by recording 128 monster species.  So, if you record a bunch of the DLC monsters, you can “complete” the bestiary without tracking down every last monster in the base game.  If you do go beyond that, the completion percentage will actually go over 100%, which is so weird to see, but in a cool way.  It seems the intention was specifically to not make completion increasingly difficult as new updates are added, which is honestly pretty rad!  And, again, though I appreciate the bestiary remembering all of your fusions, I’m so glad there’s nothing incentivizing you to from every last one of them.  Same goes for bootlegs.  So, does this mean future updates/DLC with even more monsters are on the way?  No clue.  But they are working on a multiplayer update expected to release soon! (I don’t have Switch Online so I won’t be able to do much with that lol.)

I did purchase the DLC right away; I was confident I would enjoy the game enough I would want it eventually, and buying them both together was slightly cheaper than buying them separately. (The bundle also comes with a cosmetics pack but it’s nothing that interests me personally.) After progressing through the main quest enough that you become able to access the final dungeon, a small boat washes ashore, and you’re able to ride it to a dock in the middle of the ocean housing some sort of carnival.  The ringmistress asks you to explore the three major attractions and beat their power sources, the “Infernal Engines”, into submission.  Despite being a small area it’s still just as open-ended as New Wirral, an effort I appreciate.  You can tackle the attractions in any order you want, even leave in the middle of one to go do another if you prefer.  The place is also populated by several new monsters to record, including one of my personal favorites, a ghostly book monster named Hauntome.  It’s a few mini-dungeons, some solid bosses capping them off, and then one last boss, with a loose story in the background that has some connections to the main story but isn’t anything essential.  I don’t know if I’d go as far as to call it a must-buy, but it is fun, and inexpensive, and more Cassette Beasts.  Up to you.

There are two major themes I picked up on during my playthrough: community and art.  The people who’ve ended up in New Wirral, in spite of coming from countless different dimensions, have all banded together to support each other and however many newcomers show up; they don’t even ask for anything in return, they just value life and want to be sure people are cared for.  The theme that plays in Harbourtown is transparent about this: “we’re all in the same ship […] but at least we’re together […] I don’t know you but we’ll make the most of / wherever we are now”.  Fusion is about literally joining with someone to create something stronger than either of you could do on your own.  There are even some genuinely scary twisted manifestations of this idea, like the Mournington cult and the truth behind the Landkeepers—people crave community, and there are some who will use that to their own advantage.  It’s baked into the motivations of all your partners, and, switching gears, most of them are heavily connected to art too!  Felix is an artist learning he doesn’t need to be ashamed of his past, less “polished” work.  Kayleigh, after addressing her regrets with Mournington, reconnects with her old hobby of playing guitar.  Meredith actually takes things in a different direction: she used to spend all of her time consuming vast quantities of art to the point that it cut her off from her community, showing that you still need to exercise moderation when it comes to art.  Viola is a character from another, pre-existing work of art!  The Archangels play into this as well: one of the biggest things setting them apart is the way they clash with the rest of the game’s art style, and their nature as incarnations of humankind’s ideas is a delightfully malevolent spin on the whole thing.

Taking these two themes together, Cassette Beasts presents a thesis on our responsibility to our fellow people and how we can all find our own way to fulfill it, with a particular focus on art and how it broadly conveys our ideas and inspires change.  The final boss fight punctuates this beautifully when, after Aleph destroys your cassette player, Morgante awakens and tells you that you don’t truly need the cassettes.  “THE ABILITY TO MANIFEST YOUR WILL TO ALTER REALITY…TO CHANGE YOUR WORLD, AND YOURSELVES...THAT LIES WITHIN YOU.”  Then she and ALL of your partners fuse with your avatar, and through your combined might, you strike down the malevolent forces in your way, secure a path home, and bring a huge, fundamental change to New Wirral as its inhabitants now have the option to decide if they should stay or go.  It’s an extremely satisfying ending, even if it does see you and your partners going their separate ways.  But, who knows?  Given a few tidbits from the post-game, it sounds like we just might get to meet them again someday.

Again, I had a really, really great time with Cassette Beasts and highly recommend it.  It’s charming, its fun, and it’s only $20!  Maybe don’t get it on Switch, though, not if you can’t stand frequent load times.

And, just to brag about my bootlegs a little:

-The random free bootleg from Harbourtown was a Glass-type Dandylion for me

-The freebie Ritual Candle netted me a Water-type Glaistain!

-The post-game bootleg starter, I got a Poison-type Candevil

-Was able to use the mailbox to get a Fire-type Undyin

-And obviously there’s Barkley’s Ice-type Pombomb

-The first one I encountered purely by chance was an Astral-type Jellyton

-Air-type Jellyton

-Ice-type Carniviper

-Astral-type Carniviper

-Fire-type Traffikrab

-Plant-type Squirey

-Ice-type Boltam

-Lightning-type Snoopin

-Poison-type Kirikuri

-Glass-type Scubalrus

-Glass-type Spooki-onna

-Lightning-type Dominoth

-A Fire-type Piksie

-A Glitter-type Picksie

[teenyweenyeenymeeny]

any more little scott hcs?

Yes yes hmmm… miscellaneous ones hehe…

• easiest way to tell how old he is feeling are his energy level and how much he’s stimming… in his Normal age range [about 4-8] he is a tiny ball of energy he can’t sit still at All and when he is feeling Especially teeny it is the opposite he barely moves just curls up in a little ball or clings onto someone and Freezes… when he’s a grown up he’s kind of in the middle 🤍

• ^ when he is little he stims in more ways than when he is grown up too… grown up Scott flaps his hands if he’s excited and I Think I will give him the excited stomping and the toe and finger wiggling… little Scott does all of this But sometimes he runs around in a little circle if he’s excited too… and perhaps rolls around on the floor… he Does have other stims too I think but these are the main Specific Consistent ones I can think of

• when Scotty draws or colours pictures he sticks his tongue out… the first time Kim sees him do it she laughs because she remembers him doing that when they really were kids

• ^ speaking of colouring pictures Scotty doesn’t really Believe in the lines hehe… or even the picture he is Supposed to be colouring in 🤍 he is the type of kid to draw big monster battle on top of the lines for like. Peaceful day in the forest :) or something… hehe

• ^ and if he Is just colouring not really adding his own pictures it is way more fun to scribble !!!! Boring to colour in the lines…

• this is something I think I talked about with Sunny [I don’t know if you would want to be tagged hehe… and if so with which blog……] but when Scott plays games like Pokémon he is the type of kid to get bored with the levelling up process and run directly to the next gym hehe… and then when all his Pokémon are so under levelled and he gets his butt kicked he whines and whines… when he is grown up he understands the issue and has more patience to do levelling up but Pokémon is more for when he Isn’t grown up…

• ^ he has to beg for help hehe… he goes Wallace… Wallace sniffle help……. And Wallace goes I don’t know what to tell you buddy you could try levelling up… and Scott just whines More hehe…

• ^ sometimes Scott makes Wallace go with him to visit Neil so he can ask him to help… Neil is the expert……

• ^ this doesn’t Always work out though so sometimes Wallace will try to play for Scott and Scott will stare over his shoulder and do backseat gaming I think hdjsjs and Wallace will get annoyed and say you’re welcome to play your own game if you know best little guy and then Scott will whine about That Too

• ^ if Wallace doesn’t Want to play Scott’s game he will give him a task like ohh could you find whichever Pokémon for me I want you to catch this specific one… and this tricks Scott into doing the levelling up heehe

• ^ oh yes and if Wallace Isn’t there and Scott is home alone he will just. Give up 🤍 he will get annoyed and just start doing something else and forget about the game Immediately…

• I think I have said before that little Scott is Clumsy but I think it was in reference to him always needing a sippy cup… spilling drinks is not the only way he is clumsy !! Another way is. He messes up a Lot if he tries to play his bass

• ^ like he doesn’t Actually know how to play it Ever but he can get by with playing by ear and muscle memory when he’s a grown up… if he regresses during band practice though he forgets what he has taught himself

• ^ sometimes he just starts playing with his bass too trying to make funny or really loud sounds… even if he is supposed to be rehearsing hehe

• ^ I think that MOST of the time Stephen n Kim just laugh it off if this happens and either encourage him to entertain himself or play With him to try and make funny sounds

• ^ maybe once or twice though when they had a show coming up and tensions were already high they got annoyed a little though… snapped at him maybe to at least try to take the band seriously

• ^ that didn’t Help though obviously it just made him feel even Younger and upset :( and he just started crying </3 so Then sex bobomb had to Really end practice because Now they had to comfort the baby… ooooopsie… it would work out though I know it 🤍 and everything would be okay

• when Scott is little he talks really fast and stumbles over words a lot… and I think he is the type of kid to forget to breathe between sentences so he will end up having to cut himself off mid-word to take a big breath hehe

• he can only focus on things if he’s being supervised… it’s weird and he doesn’t really get why he’s like that but if he’s home alone his attention span bounces all over the place but if Wallace is there he can stick to one task for Hours… especially if he gets Contact like sitting in Wallace’s lap while watching TV that sort of thing…

ummmmm all for now ☆

[cat-appreciator]

I’m jamming together story ideas in my head, as one does, and I might actually have the beginnings of a plot? I have a setting *and* overarching character goals instead of just a setting! Now I’ve just got to figure how to solve the plot …

I began by rotating in my head an old idea of mine, itself composed of shiny things I liked enough to steal:

1. The idea of a landscape built over giant, ancient machinery. You may recognise this from MMORPG World of Warcraft’s Ulduar or Action Platformer Hob’s everything, but the real genesis of it comes from half a line from the song Dominion Road by The Muttonbirds: “he can see the engines in the hills”.

2. “The protagonist washes up on a mysterious island, joins a society of similarly stranded strangers, and must find a way off the island”. This could be Gilligan’s Island or Lost but for me it’s the basic plot of Cassette Beasts, a game best described as “80s Pokémon Brigadoon”.

A mysterious island riddled with enigmatic, gargantuan machines, snatching up shipwreck victims for unknown reasons, is a cool setting! But it sat there as a setting, being idly rotated in my mind, until it idly collided with a couple of other ideas:

3. The Tatterdemalion King. “Tatterdemalion” is a cool word and one I had idly appended to a different fantasy world years ago. The Tatterdemalion King sounds reminiscent of the King in Yellow. I decided that it creates an illusion of a physical form for itself by assembling various rubbish and scraps into a humanoid shape - which I may have gotten from Elizabeth Bear’s Jacob’s Ladder trilogy (otherwise forgettable, and Bear has some really fucked up ideas about neurodivergence which emerge in her sci-fi (and more recently her fantasy) writing). It’s also possible Pratchett’s Auditors got there first.

So now I have an eldritch entity sitting at the heart of the machine-island, reaching out its influence to snatch up passing shipwreck victims from other worlds. But “eldritch god of lost things” isn’t, thematically, a match for “giant machinery built into the landscape”.

4. The existence of the engines implies the existence of an Engineer.

5. From there neurons started to jam together furiously: the Tatterdemalion King is imprisoned on the island, kept there by the engines, for the purposes of the Engineer. It’s been reaching out, snatching lost ships or sailors, in the hopes that it can grab someone that can free it.

5a. The Engineer is probably not present on the island at all; it has robots running about to keep the engines running.

5b. These robots present a major threat to the human inhabitants in their shipwreck shantytown, because humans tend to poke around and interfere with the proper running of the engines.

5c. Why has the Engineer imprisoned the Tatterdemalion King? It could be as a power source, or it could just be because eldritch entities are inconvenient and not particularly nice.

Thus I have my plot: the protagonist washes up on the machine island, and has to uncover the secrets of the island and find a way to free the Tatterdemalion King in order to return home.

6. Thus I have my current sticking point: What exactly is the mechanism by which the King is freed? Once I have that I feel like I’ll be able to work backwards from there, but it needs extra brain power applied first …

6a. The answer is probably not “sufficiently large explosives to blow up the engines” or “assemble the four power crystals at the control dais”. To cage an eldritch god of lost things those engines are doing something metaphysical, so the solution must lie in how they’re doing it.

6b. ???

7. Profit?

[chaoticgeminate]

Cloud Nine (ii)

Summary: Returning home to Paldea to retire, after living a life known as the "Champion of Champions" brings you back to an old friend -now a new love- with dark secrets who need your help.

Pairing: Javi G x f!Reader

Rating: T (Any smut is going to be implied only)

Notes/Warnings: Nothing major, this story is going to be fairly light hearted, though I will be using some of the wild Pokédex entries as reference for a few scenes.

Written for @yearofcreation2023

Series Masterlist | Year of Video Game AUs Masterlist

and how much cooler could my life get? (3k)

Geeta waved cheerfully and you couldn’t help but return her enthusiasm, the League Chairwoman had been a fierce competitor during your own run and ever since you’d left she’d become a good friend keeping you updated on how many students came that qualified to compete for the title of Champion (not many), and if there was anyone who loved Pokémon in all of Paldea as fiercely as you did it was her.

“So, the Champion of Champions is ready to retire? It’s about time.” Geeta nudged you playfully and you couldn’t help but roll your eyes, following her into the room where the rest of the Gym Leaders were all assembled. It was a camera free meeting, which Iono had tried to put up a fight about, but even she relented that if they were going to discuss major League infrastructure that it’d be best to keep that from the public for now.

“Vaultin’ Vezula! If it isn’t our Champion, home again I see!” Kofu was on his feet in a second, quick to come and clap you on the shoulder, with enough force to make you stumble, but the cheerful chef still made you grin even though you were sure that you’d end up with a bruise. You introduced yourself to the room, given the number of people here you hadn’t met or seen in so long, and most of them were really welcoming even if they were intimidated by Geeta’s presence.

As you took your seat it was Grusha who cleared his throat to speak up first.

“Team Rocket thugs were spotted on the mountain, trying to steal Pokémon from academy students, they’ve been getting bolder.”

“I’ve had my fair share appear in Artazon, they’ve tried to steal the Sunflora during my Gym Challenge.”

“They’re all around Cortondo too, I’ve had to request more Officers for patrols because of how many new students were being cornered.”

You listened to each Gym Leader begin talking about Team Rocket sightings, still not sure just how far Lucas’ influence reached, and noticed the way Poppy was watching you intently. If you were less paranoid you might’ve chalked it up to her being a child but you weren’t willing to rule anything out, not with your life -and Javi’s life- on the line here.

“Did we create a map network of where they’ve appeared? We may be able to triangulate their base location if there’s a center point.” Assuming Lucas was dumb enough to make his manor on the outskirts of Alfornado was a bad idea, for all his grandstanding and fake smiles Lucas was craftier than anyone could expect, you wouldn’t factor it out but you weren’t going to go charging in Water Gun blazing.

“We have a few locations marked but we hadn’t thought to do so immediately.” They sent you a copy of the map pins to your Rotom Phone, your eyes scanning to see if there were any possible patterns even with the limited sightings available to you. There wasn’t, especially with Area Zero blocked off in the center of the region completely, so for now you made a note to keep an eye on reports of Team Rocket sightings and add them to the map.

“I’ll start investigating the areas marked, since we’re still waiting on this year’s group of Academy students to progress through the League, and if anyone else has any sightings let me know immediately.” As the Champion you did have the allowance to forgo Squawkabilly taxis and just use a flying Pokémon to travel, since any League responsibilities were a priority, and your Corviknight -Rook- was always ready to stretch her wings.

Grusha nodded and the meeting shifted to talks of limited certain press interactions now that Rotom Phones were giving people unhindered access to Uva students and League challengers, Iono’s streaming popularity had inspired battle streamers and care-taking streams or food making streams, but the adult members of the press that began stalking and cornering these minors were a problem that had gone unchecked for so long.

As the room began to clear, once the meeting was adjourned and Geeta had a plan of attack to draft new limitations for the protection of the kids, you were stopped by Katy and Grusha for a moment in private. The two of them waited for everyone to get out of hearing range, with the former summoning her Nymble to make sure that the coast was clear.

“We think Team Rocket has a foothold with the Police force, and maybe the League.” Grusha was right to the point and you decided to choose your words carefully since you didn’t know if these two could be trying to learn what you know to report back to Lucas.

“It’s always a possibility, do you have viable evidence? After I helped put Giovanni behind bars I was sure that the records of Team Rocket members were thoroughly combed and that every member was subsequently locked up too.” Katy let out a soft noise before she glanced at Grusha, then handed you her Rotom Phone. On the screen she had a video playing of a police officer talking to a member of Team Rocket, near the Cortondo gym, promising him a better haul of Pokémon if he didn’t touch the Smoliv. Reminding the grunt that the Pokémon from Javi’s business were off limits.

“I sent this to the police and all that happened was new officers being sent to Cortondo, no arrests were made, so when I elevated it to the League and nothing changed… well I got suspicious.” Katy watched you send a copy of the video to yourself, taking her phone back, and you looked between the two of them carefully.

“I’ll head up to the Glaseado region to start my investigation, since they’ll likely expect me in Cortondo first given the amount of young trainers that come through. What I want the two of you to do for now is ask any trainer, any resident, if or how often they’ve seen Team Rocket grunts and a rough idea of where. We can’t find the source without narrowing their headquarters down.” Both Gym Leaders nodded and set out while you waited a moment, leaning against the wall, and Sneaky -your Mimikyu- slipped out of your shadow and hopped up onto your shoulder.

“Guess I should throw on a parka, huh Sneaky?” You had to make the moles, whoever they were, think you had a pattern; it was easy as the Champion to announce where you were going and appear there, it’d be expected of you. Meanwhile you tapped out a message on your Rotom Phone to Jacq, your former classmate -now biology teacher- about that potential Champion of his. Getting a child involved, a student no less, was risky but you personally had to handle this as carefully as you could.

If that meant being the distraction was the role you had to play then you'd take it.

Addie Cage was very chill compared to her father, Nicolas and Olivia had been thrilled that you’d reached out to meet with the contender Geeta and the other gym leaders had scouted out for you, you’d spent far too long having the actor attempt to convince you to do some public interview thing with him before he relented so you could plan a meeting with his daughter. Now as you sat at the picnic tables, having already laid everything out for her, you were very impressed with her immediate go-getter attitude.

“I’m not afraid of those Team Rocket thugs, a few of them have tried but none of them are as good as my team is.” You could understand now where Geeta and the others saw potential in the girl, she valued each of her partners in a way that some trainers just didn’t, the bonds of trust and love she was building with her Pokémon would inspire them to be stronger for her as well.

“That’s what I like to hear, I’ve reached out to the other region Champions and so far it looks like Team Rocket is the only one that has a return on the horizon. So if we stop them here then that should be the end of things.” You traded contact information directly once you knew she’d change her course back to Cortondo, to start looking around as subtly as she could, under the guise of wanting to look for specific Pokémon for her team. As you donned your parka and called Rook out, nodding to Addie, your Corviknight set off for Glaseado Mountain.

You would have to contact Javi and make sure you kept him updated too, though for now you were careful of using any contact that could be recorded or intercepted, but for now you made you way into the cold. As you expected the crowd was waiting for you, you had told Grusha to heavily mention your return, and after answering questions and signing autographs you got to work on scouting around the area for any signs of Team Rocket activity. A message from Addie confirmed that there were sightings in Cortondo, in the span of a few hours -while you’d searched through the cold- she had beaten three grunts and made sure that they were given to police custody.

Coordinating travel with Addie was easy, her Miraidon presented a lot of surprise in that you had never heard of the Pokémon before and it offered her much more mobility than a Cyclizar ever would, and by the time night began to fall you felt much more confident about your challenger and her capabilities as well as being able to outsmart Team Rocket after Addie recruited a few of her friends to the cause. Penny, Arven, Nemona, along with the former Team Star bosses -and their crews- were eager to help protect Pokémon all over Paldea and you couldn’t help but feel a little bit of regret and guilt that you were doing to them what had happened to you.

Making these children step up to protect their region because you’d been so absent from the League by traveling that nothing had changed to make things better for them.

Javi’s penthouse apartment was warm and you could hear voices when you opened the door, closing it silently and using the heavily padded carpet to your advantage.

“I did not tell her anything, Lucas, if she knew the truth do you truly believe she would have chosen to be with me?” Hearing the sound of Javi’s panic set you on edge but hearing his cousin’s name explained it well enough, you moved as quietly as you could to slip closer to where the duo conversed without being noticed and ducked behind the kitchen island to stay well out of sight of Javi’s study door. You silenced your Rotom Phone and set it to record, just in case Lucas said anything incriminating as a response, and the Pokémon controlled device moved to the top of the door frame silently.

“You do have a point, but I can assure you that if I find out you lied to me the consequences will be far worse than simply taking Arizona from you. It won’t be too hard to stage an accident for our Champion of Champions or even make her the scapegoat-“ His phone began to ring loudly and you resisted the urge to go in ready to fight, so far all that had been revealed was a threat against your life and that wouldn’t be enough.

Whoever was on the other end must have said something that set Lucas off.

“What do you mean our employees have been turning up in police stations significantly more? How are they losing to children?!” Lucas stormed out, slamming the door closed loudly to talk on Javi’s patio, and you waited until you heard Javi’s soft sniffles before sending out Sneaky to ensure the place was actually empty of Lucas’ possible men to hear you. Hurrying while Lucas’ back was turned to the elevator entrance, setting your bag down and slipping your shoes off in the entryway as if you'd just arrived.

Lucas’s head turned, the thick glass muffling what he was saying, and met your surprised gaze; it took all your acting ability honed from interviews to smile warmly and wave at the man like he was still just an exasperating relative. Lucas’ smile was a touch sinister -if you knew what to look for- as he waved back and pointed to the phone. You turned toward the study with a wrinkle of your nose and a roll of your eyes, crossing the penthouse to where you boyfriend was, and Javi’s eyes were wet with tears when you knocked on the study door; he darted a panicked look toward the window that made you shake your head gently.

“I slipped in while you two were… talking. I heard enough to know he think I don’t know the truth and that he thinks he can kill me or make me his fall girl.” Your whispered confession made Javi wrap his arms around your torso and you ran your fingers through his curls gently, cooing softly to make the sniffles go away, and you made sure your Rotom phone was tucked away when you heard the patio door open again. Lucas looked like he hadn’t just been screaming, which was impressive, as he walked into the room.

“There she is, our Champion of Champions has come home, how have you been?” You let go of Javi to hug the other man, not wanting to alert him to anything.

“Exhausted, the press is a nightmare so I spent so much of my time camping, this is the first time in a long time I’ve had a bed to sleep in; which just made me realize how badly my back hurts.” Lucas laughed with you and didn’t complain when you moved to sit down in one of the two heavily padded arm chairs, taking the other, as Javi excused his tears by saying Lucas had delivered good news. Your head tipped and the man only huffed before pulling a ring box out of his pocket.

“Oh? Who’s the lucky person?”

“Her name is Leona, our daughter Poppy is a member of the Elite Four., I’ve been putting this off but decided it was about time.”

Now you understood why Lucas influence in the League was both slow and very high up, as a child Poppy wasn’t given tasks that allowed her a lot of direct influence but she had to be permitted to sit in on League meetings.

“I didn’t know you had a daughter, Poppy is a darling little girl.” Javi looked just as surprised as you felt at the revelation, you suspected Lucas had kept his personal life very far from Javi on the chance that your boyfriend decided to finally fight back. Unseating Poppy as the Steel Type trainer for the Elite Four likely wouldn’t be difficult, all someone had to do was defeat her in a best of five battle after applying to the role, and if push came to shove you wouldn’t mind being a member of the Elite Four rather than the Champion if it meant securing Javi’s freedom.

“Somehow I got lucky that she’s most like her mother, I should probably allow you two some time together given your no doubt busy schedule.”

“Oh, well, just more of the same I guess. Preparing for the League season to potentially allow me to retire, making sure the Gym Leaders and Elite Four are up to snuff, and now working to shut down Team Rocket before they can get a solid foothold. I think the press is my biggest issue, since they’re too excited for interviews and whatnot, but I’m sure I’ll find whoever is trying to steal Pokémon from their trainers and revive Team Rocket soon and I’m more than willing to work with the League even if I get retired.” You decided to test the waters, to make sure he truly believed Javi hadn’t told you a thing, and Lucas’ soft chuckle as he patted you on the shoulder was warm with fondness.

“I’m sure you will, you certainly proved me wrong from so long ago, you’ve proven many naysayers wrong by making it as far as you have. Be safe.” As he left you waited for Sneaky to give you the all clear, the little ghost Pokémon purring when you picked it up to hug it close, and Javi met your gaze with a sad smile. If Lucas was telling the truth and Poppy was his connection to the League you had to be very careful how you handled this, sending a message to Geeta to stop my your apartment tomorrow, and you sighed softly.

“I had to get students involved, since they can move around virtually undetected, the press and Lucas will have their eyes on me. Addie, the one that Geeta and the other Gym Leaders have said is shaping up the be a solid contender to unseat me, got her friends involved too. I’m putting children in the line of fire, Javi-“

“Was that not what happened to you? Even before you began the Champion of a region, on your journey through it you were putting these organizations behind bars, and until the League steps in to do more this is the only way. Now that you’re home that can be your aspiration, to change things for the better for those that come after us, but for now you need to take advantage of this to keep ahead of him. I will not lose you to his greed, to this evil of my family.” Javi buried his face into your neck and you nodded, perched in his lap as you vowed to somehow repay Addie and her friends for doing what you couldn’t and cleaning up Paldea for good.

"Addie's father, Nicolas, is my favorite actor so it is very much bizarre to think that she's going to be facing you soon."

"Really? Huh, I guess I'll have to take him up on his offer to meet sometime then."

Javi's soft eyes and the way he silenced the slight whimper made you smile and kiss him on the corner of his mouth.

"You'd be attending too, silly man, don't act like I won't use my connections to make you happy too."

While it was a no strings attached offer you were more than delighted in how he expressed his gratitude.

All Fics Taglist: @haylzcyon @wordsnwhiskey @pagannightwitch @radiowallet @tauralmie @amneris21 @trickstersp8 @practicalghost @alwaysdjarin @alexxavicry @all-the-way-down-here @xoxabs88xox

Just Pedro Taglist: @maievdenoir @beecastle @littlemisspascal @writeforfandoms @aynsleywalker @lovesbiggerthanpride @mswarriorbabe80 @emiemiemiii

Alt Taglist: @imtryingmybeskar @fan-of-encouragement @grogusmum @sizzlingcloudmentality @deadhumourist

[ladala99]

Pokémon World Championships... The Disqualification Thing Going On

For anyone not in the know, a bunch of people got disqualified on Day 1 of the Pokémon World Championships (Day 2 as well) for having illegitimate Pokémon (Pokémon obtained through cheating devices).

Which for me, watching from the sides and sometimes thinking about getting into competitive but never actually doing so partly because of how much cheating is normalized/somewhat required, is a nice change of pace. On the surface. There’s a lot going on this tournament, though.

Quick history of cheating in the Pokémon competitive scene: it’s been part of it from the very beginning. Pokémon have hidden stats (called IVs - or Individual Values) that just make some better than others and it used to be incredibly improbable to get perfect ones. Especially when you consider older generations allowed Pokémon with event-exclusive moves only obtainable in Ruby/Sapphire in specific locations to compete. A legitimate one came from some machine in Japan years prior. And had random IVs.

Also Legendaries. Most Pokemon you could breed to get a fairly good one, but Legendaries it was all luck. And you have one try per save file. So if you caught Kyogre during the story and it has awful IVs, too bad. You have to play Sapphire all over again to get a good one.

Naturally, some people used cheating devices to get their Pokémon. And because some people did it and got away with it (since you couldn’t really be the luck police. Maybe they really did get a straight 31 Shiny Kyogre. You don’t know they didn’t), others did it too. By the time I was looking into getting into it in the Diamond/Pearl era, there was a perception that if you don’t cheat, don’t bother. You will be at a disadvantage.

Starting with XY and getting better each generation, it started to become sanely possible to get competitively-viable Pokémon in-game. First by making it easier to control breeding and with Legendaries always coming with half of their stats as perfect, then in Sun/Moon being able to raise any stat to perfect, and finally in Sword/Shield being able to fully customize Natures and Abilities, which also affect a Pokémon’s performance and were previously set at a Pokémon’s generation.

At this point, any Pokémon you obtain can be fully made perfect… except if you want the Speed and/or Attack to be the worst they can be instead of the best. Which in certain circumstances, you do. This is relevant.

What is also relevant is how the tournament structure normally works vs how it’s worked this year. Usually, year one of a game coming out is a Regional Dex format. This means only Pokémon that are actually obtainable in the games that just came out are useable. This is an accessible tournament that anyone just getting into the series can play with just the latest games.

This time, though, while the rest of the season used a Regional Dex format, with the small shakeup that certain categories of Pokémon were excluded at first and got included later, Worlds did a much larger shakeup - some Pokémon only obtainable in Sword/Shield and Legends: Arceus are also allowed. And many of these are high-power Pokémon who are practically needed in the current meta.

Most noteworthy are Ursaluna and Enamorus. They both play best at 0 Speed, which isn’t something you can change on the fly. Which for Ursaluna, you can still breed its base form elsewhere and just use Legends: Arceus to evolve it, so it isn’t that bad.

But Enamorus. It’s not breedable, it’s exclusive to the postgame, and it’s a pain to catch. And once you actually catch it, Legends: Arceus calculates stats in a different way so you can’t tell what its Speed IV is until you save the game and move it into HOME. If it’s wrong, you have to play the entire game over again to try again. Oh, and because Legendaries have half their stats perfect by default, you have a 1/64 chance to get one with a 0 Speed IV instead of the 1/32 you’d have for a regular Pokémon.

Did I mention the ruleset was only announced two months before the tournament?

Yeah. Having a multi-game ruleset at the highest level when the rest of the series only required the most recent games was bad enough, but announcing it so late meant people playing legitimately did not have the time to get perfect Pokémon along with all the rest of the theorizing and practicing. If you want to use those new Pokémon, you are very likely to cheat to get them, or get them traded from someone who cheated to get them.

Add in that Worlds introduced new hack-checks never used before. Most people using illegitimate Pokémon have been pretty comfortable not getting caught. As long as it’s theoretically possible it’s been okay. It’s only people snooping in the metadata of those who uploaded their teams that could tell. But now the official hack-check checks the metadata.

Metadata that you cannot check without using cheating programs yourself, by the way. Say you play 100% legitimately and you wanted to use a team with a non-slow Urshifu. You only have Scarlet/Violet, not Sword/Shield. What are you going to do? Trade for one, of course! You get one fresh off the GTS, train it up and you’re ready to go. Right?

Nah, you find out at the tournament that the person who traded it to you cheated it in and you can no longer use it for the rest of the tournament. Shouldn’t have cheated, cheater!

And that’s why this doesn’t feel good even though I have little respect for those who in this day and age still hack in their competitive teams. Changing up not only the barrier to entry but also rules enforcement literally at the final tournament is just not a good thing.

[magicmindless]

What are your hcs of Simone and Didar after their flipdecks?

Didar’s are a WIP as of right now but I have Simone’s headcanons ready

A HC list but it’s just Simone

- Her lips get chapped sometimes and she has a habit of peeling the dead skin (gross) so she has to have chapstick wherever she goes

- She has really sensitive hearing so she always has headphones wherever she goes to drown out noise if it gets overwhelming

- Her favorite character from Encanto is Dolores

- Her sexuality isn’t exactly defined but she has an interest in girls

- She has a pet hedgehog named Rowen, based off Professor Rowen from Pokémon Diamond and Pearl

- Went camping for the first time with Didar and had a blast with him and the Mystery Mountain Club, apart from staying up late looking for the sugarsquash (as much as she would like to catch it’s existence she doesn’t like staying up late)

- She likes fire. Not in a pyromania way but like during campfires (she’s the one person who lets her marshmallows catch on fire on purpose) or lighting candles at home

- Was a tech theatre kid and a band kid (she played the saxophone), a dangerous combination

- Her parents were rather supportive of her interests and trusted that she would be able to pay her own tuition when she said that she wanted to

- She’s pretty introverted and reserved but likes using sarcastic and overly-confident humor sometimes

-Can be mischievous and pull pranks or tricks and the best part is that no one ever suspects her to

- She’s slightly older than Didar though she tends to follow him around in social situations

- Really likes Sonic the Hedgehog and listens to the soundtracks like it’s crack

- She sometimes gets bored of people, so if she feels like it she’ll just leave. Like if she were having lunch with some of the Mocharia crew and they weren’t talking about anything interesting then she’d just leave to eat somewhere else

- Can sing like VERY well, she slays at karaoke but will only do it in a room ONLY with people she’s comfortable with

- Skeptical about paranormal and unknown creatures but likes to believe they’re real to make things fun

- Besides lofi she also likes video game OSTs, jazz and electro swing

- She has a fursona which is a hedgehog but she can’t draw so she’s commissioned other people to draw her fursona

- One of her favorite games is Animal Crossing

- Has considered being a voice actress, and is still open to the idea. She wouldn’t mind playing almost any character archetype but she’d prefer being a villain, antihero, or the cool side character

-Aside from Didar she also grew close with Shannon during Mocharia since they were similar to each other. Simone even gifted her headphones since Shannon also had sensitive hearing

[journish]

I have this running theory about the next big Nintendo console. I think they are going to expand on the switch model a little bit more with a few peripherals that allow new methods of play.

They’re going to keep docked and handheld mode of course but I think that the technology has progressed enough since the virtual boy that it’s time they try again with VR. I think they’ll make a headset you can pop your switch into. They already started experimenting with this with LABO, which wouldn’t surprise me if that wasn’t a sort of “market test.” Nintendo isn’t going to make a Legend of Zelda or a Mario game as their VR release title, they are the champions of creating safe, comfortable environments when they’re first introducing a new concept (think of the “playground” they gave us to explore moving in three dimensions with super Mario 64), and too much movement in their first VR title is going to make people sick. You know what’s the most still and comfortable game Nintendo has ever made and have for some reason neglected for twenty years?

Nintendogs.

I think they’re going to give us VR, and coddle our scared little brains afraid of change by going “here’s a puppy!” It’s a game where you basically stand perfectly still and interact with puppies, what could be more basic and soothing? Except for one portion, and that’s taking your Nintendogs on a walk. How are they going to manage that you ask? The headset comes with a camera, Nintendo DS style. Augmented Reality. They already started experimenting with that with the Mario Kart Live Home Circuit! We’re all going to walk around out neighborhoods in our big stupid headsets, joy-con leashes in our hand, and it’s going to be Pokémon Go 2.0. There may even be a multiplayer functionality where you can see and interact with other people’s Nintendogs you meet out on walks.

After we’ve all gotten used to this new tech, they’re going to start releasing bigger titles for VR/AR. They’ll start with Pokémon I believe, because again, it’s a MASSIVE title that has declined in popularity over the years and they’ll want to revitalize it by letting you interact with your favorite Pokémon IN THE REAL WORLD?? You can battle other trainers on walks! You can go out and catch Pokémon in your neighborhood! It’s gonna be what what we actually wanted Pokémon Go to be like!

I have no doubt if Nintendo did this that we’d all start foaming at the mouth and bankrupt ourselves trying to get our hands on it. It would pull virtual reality out of this current cultural space where it’s both really fucking advanced and interesting, and also subsequently associated with crypto bros and mark fucking zuckerberg. They’d make VR games your grandma would feel comfortable playing. What else do you think they’d do with this technology?

[yahargulian]

Tagged by @spookyfroggi, thank you so much!! ❤ Sorry it took me like a month to actually do this :')

Three ships: I've thought about vashwood every day for months now, with no signs of stopping. If anything it's getting worse ahgdjksajgk as for two others.. probably serennedy, which Does still have a grip on me, and cynonari, which is still such a source of joy and comfort even a whole year-and-change later. I also do have to mention chiscara though! That's one I'll never be able to shake off

First ever ship: So. It's technically the female protag of Pokémon BW and N, which I don't even know the ship name of in all honesty. But I was never super invested in it; I went and read a few fics and saw art on like. DeviantArt probably. And that was it. The first ship I ever got invested in was girokuru from Sgt. Frog, way back in 2012! Right around the time I made this blog. Though most of my engagement with it was, I think, through DeviantArt

Last song: It's this, from my Trigun Bloodborne AU playlist hehe

Last movie: Totally Killer, and it was really fun! I'd recommend it to any slasher/comedy fans

Currently reading: I'm still behind on Chainsaw Man and Jujutsu Kaisen, I really should catch up soon. I also bought This Is How You Lose the Time War over the summer and haven't even picked it up since bringing it home :') I've just been caught up in work and fic stuff and video games

Currently watching: It's currently a few episodes of Blood Blockade Battlefront every weekend with the Trigun Server Gang (if any of you are reading this I'm waving at you 👋) since we finished Trigun 98 and Badlands Rumble together over the past month. And my brother and I finished Shadowhunters last Friday, so this Friday we'll be watching the first half of Fall of the House of Usher! I've also gotta start House of the Dragon soon for a friend. And Bungou Stray Dogs for another friend. You both know who you are (and I'm waving at you too 👋)

Currently consuming: Nothing, and I really should be because it's past midday and I haven't even eaten breakfast. And I've gotta leave the house in just under an hour oops

Currently craving: Soup with freshly baked and buttered bread rolls. Either chicken soup or leek and potato. My coworker had some chicken soup at work yesterday and it smelled so so good..

I'm tagging @ji-woonhaksslut, @reddish-wren, @lunarbelles, @roomtemeraturemysterymilk, @cainhuurst, @they-are-separate-things, @kagakutsukai, @artoriasss and @mochadove! 🥰

[lavendertownfreak]

Yo! Names Damian! Former Unova resident now living out in Lavender Town. I used to be a fairly nomadic trainer who faught many a gym leader, but I’ve since settled down and now focus on studying odd Pokémon. Also sometimes sub in as a gym leader for the gym that the town got recently. Um… he/they pronouns… Oh yeah! Meet the lads! I have a lot of mons from my days challenging gym leaders, but i only presently live with 4 of em.

To briefly talk about the lads:

Una: a tentacruel i caught as a tentacool and used in Johto. She’s probably the smallest and nicest tentacruel I’ve ever met! She lives in my pond out back. She’s super affectionate and loves hugs, which I’d be cool with if not for the venom.

Penny: a shiny ariados i found here in Lavender Town actually. She’s great, actually a saint. I’m outta the house pretty often, and she’s my main line of home defense! She just sits up in the rafters. Bit of a big baby tho.

Roleplay: this little spook I found in Alola. Was checking out some haunted mall and this little booger just kinda latched onto my leg and refused to let go. Super affectionate, but also timid. I’m pretty sure she’s in the cupboards usually, though I don’t ever know where EXACTLY she hides during the day. Shy to new comers but warms up fast. She also refuses to leave my property, which makes vet visits fun…

Suki: If Roleplay isn’t my partner Pokemon, then Suki is. Found this little shit in Hau’oli city at the tail end of my Alola trip. She just kinda started following me and effectively caught herself in my sleep. She’s super energetic and mischievous (frankly more than I typically have the energy for) and gets on well with the others. Follows me everywhere and likes hiding in my hats.

I also live with this jigglypuff lookin thing I found on a vacation to Paldea with my girlfriend, but he’s not really part of the household. Call him Korbous, or Korbo for short.

(Oh right, I also take asks or something…)

(OOC: Yo, guy running this here, just a quick heads up that Im gonna be a little loose with some bits of game cannon, and also that I’m gonna treat some Pokémon changes I wish were real as though they were (common examples: ninetails is part ghost and there’s a regional variant/fake of Aipom based on the White Hand thing. These will mostly just be type or ability changes, but regional variants I’ve thought up for Kanto will be acknowledged, so keep that in mind.)

[unhingedselfships]

LINK TO GAME

🌍Adventurecore🌎 ~ If you could take your F/O anywhere in real life, where would you take them?

Literally anywhere. I would go anywhere with this man, as long as I could be with him.

🛍️Barbiecore🛍️ ~ Show us your favorite outfit that your F/O has worn!

I have posts about this already lol.

🖕Bastardcore🖕 ~ Are there any “flaws” of your F/O that you find endearing?

Uh. I really shouldn’t like that he’s a man-child, highly manipulative, serial killer with mommy(?) issues, but here we are.

🌳Cabincore🌳 ~ You and your F/O are enjoying a weekend in nature. How do you spend it?

Attempting to camp! Then giving up, renting a cabin, and enjoying nice hikes that end with us in a very pleasant actual bed.

📖Dazecore📖 ~ What would you say is your F/O’s biggest passion (outside of you, of course 🥰)?

Murder? I’m kidding. Guns, knives, cooking. Probably.

😱Expressionism😱 ~ Describe to us exactly how your F/O makes you feel! Or, for a twist, describe how you make your F/O feel! Or do both!

Oh lort its a lot. Tired, frustrated, annoyed, happy, content, safe, comfortable, satisfied. He exhausts me but I wouldn’t trade him for anything.

I couldn’t really speak for Kenshi, except I know he needs me too, and that he is… a bit conflicted, about the nature of our relationship. But then, feelings in general confuse him so.

🖤Femme Fatale🖤 ~ What, in your opinion, is your F/O’s greatest achievement?

Look at all that emotional and character growth!

🔍Film Noir🔍 ~ Are there any questions about your F/O that you’d like to see their source answer?

So many. I’m working on wearing the creator down!

🪨Groundcore🪨 ~ What would your F/O do if you became a worm?

Bruh idefk. Let me ask.

Apparently, per Word of Creator, in character, he would step on me and crush me. Now we know how he really feels lmfao.

📝Hipness Purgatory📝 ~ If your F/O drew you, how would it turn out?

… I actually know nothing of the man’s art skills. I’ll need to investigate. Will report back.

Ok so update! He has no art skills but he does have steady hands. So it would be a vaguely Kimi-ish human shape with a "sorry" speech bubble because she apologizes all the time.

💾Internet Academia💾 ~ How did you discover your F/O or their source?

I stopped being intimidated by Majimemegoro and interacted and then BAM. Shit happened.

🚎Joyride🚎 ~ How would a road trip with your F/O, friends/associates, and you go?

Depends on which friends/associates. But probably not too terribly? Probably? Kenshi loves to drive, Kimi loves to ride. They'll trade aux/Bluetooth control. Lots of pee breaks for Kimi that he'll pretend to be annoyed about. So many snacks. They'll definitely take a rental so she doesn't get crumbs in his car.

🪁Kidcore🪁 ~ Tell us about the earliest memory you can remember with your F/O!

Meeting him at a Tojo Clan party! Incidentally it was my introduction to basically everyone. He was one of a very few that spoke English and the only one not being an asshole to me!

(Childhood Friends AU, we meet when I find him crying in the corner of a park and I drag him home with me! What a cutie!)

🎧Lo-Fi🎧 ~ Let’s say your F/O is up late working on something. How do you support them, or how do you get them to go to bed?

Depends on how focused he is but generally he can be coaxed into bed with cuddles. Otherwise I keep him stocked in smokes, snacks, and water. He handles his own alcohol. I miiiiight bring him coffee. Maybe.

🎮Nintencore🎮 ~ Create a Pokémon team for your F/O!

This one’s tough. Do I make a team I think actually represents him, or one he would have? I’ll try for both. Majimeme can weigh in perhaps. I can say there would be absolutely NO dog types lmfao.

(Should I do a team for Kimi too?)

Team One

Muk - reference to the environmental impact of the factories Sneasel - a sneaky ambush type attacker Murkrow - bearer of misfortune Mimikyu - tell me this isn’t Kadokura in pokemon form. lonely, but watch out! Porygon-Z - science! technology! the future! Garbodor - majimemegoro insists he’s trash so….

Team Two

Sudowoodo - trees! nature! conservation! Ursaring - mountain village vibes, Hokkaido energy Abomasnow - Hokkaido, snow, do I need to explain? Sawsbuck - more nature shit Gothita - he has no idea what this thing is but it’s cute and it makes Mio happy so whatever Pangoro - “Kimberly this feels racist” “hush it markets well”

🐕Petcore🐕 ~ What animal reminds you of your F/O?

He’s known as a Coyote. He often acts a bit like a cat. Is there an intersection to be found there?

🍷Red Academia🍷 ~ What’s your favorite fun-fact about your F/O?

SPOILERS hehe

💤Sleepycore�� ~ What is it like going to bed with your F/O? How do they sleep?

He’s clingy. Bad nights he takes a ton of pills and good luck waking his ass. Worst nights, night terrors, although those are pretty rare.

[eleanorblue]

We saw Kinky Boots last week, and friends, never in my life have I cried that hard during a musical.

Spoilers for Kinky Boots, Derry Girls, Stranger Things, and, uh, Pokémon Violet?

We bought the tickets like three months ago, and then three days before the show I suddenly thought “Hm, isn’t there a part where Lola sings to her dying estranged father?“

I looked it up, and there is in fact that part! Not only that, Charlie’s dad dies in like the first five minutes and one of the themes of the musical is Charlie filling his dad’s shoes (lol) and trying to make him proud/do what he wants with his life/be like him/not be like him.

“Gee,” I thought. “Better warn my brother. That might bring up some stuff.” But the tickets were expensive, particularly for a regional theatre, so off we went anyway.

So we got through most of the musical, and I was enjoying it (great show!), and I was a little on edge due to all the Dad™️ stuff but it was okay, and I knew we were coming to the Hard Part…and then LAUREN came out and started talking about how she felt when her dad died, and all I could think was “Jesus Christ, is everyone’s dad in this show dead??” That’s about when I started crying.

Right after that seen is Lola’s song to her estranged dad. If you don’t know it, it’s called “Hold Me In Your Heart” and it’s essentially about loving a difficult parent despite their flaws and needing them to love you too. I’d look it up. It’s worth a listen.

So Lola sang her song, and I actually full-out cried through it (I tried to be quiet, but I’m sure the people behind me noticed and goodness knows what they thought was wrong with me). Then a light came up on her dad sitting in a wheelchair, pretty zoned out. Lola walked over to him, says “It was good to see you, Daddy,” and put her hand on his shoulder. He didn’t say anything, didn’t really react, but then his hand came up to cover hers.

Lola visibly choked up, said “I love you,” and then left.

My brother and I didn’t, like, perform a drag show for our dying estranged dad. But, uh, the non-responsiveness? The hand coming up? THAT WAS KINDA LIKE WATCHING OUR GOODBYE WITH OUR DAD ONSTAGE.

So I was pretty much gone, and couldn’t really enjoy the finale.

My brother was…okay. He handled it better than I did, and he squeezed my hand throughout the entire scene. We react to different things.

The show was fantastic, by the way. Excellent cast. Lauren was amazing. I wish I had a recording of her song. It just so happened to be deeply personally triggering for me!

I feel like media is full of dead dads lately. I watched Season 3 of Derry Girls? SURPRISE, A DAD DIES! I played Pokémon Violet, a children’s game? SURPRISE, THE ESTRANGED DAD IS ACTUALLY DEAD! I got caught up on Seasons 3 and 4 of Stranger Things? SURPRISE HOPPER IS DEAD* AND OH LOOK ELEVEN FOUND A LETTER HE WROTE FOR HER BEFORE HE DIED! I went to see Kinky Boots! SURPRISE, EVERYONE’S DAD IS DEAD OR DYING!

Or maybe it’s just the frequency illusion. I think about dead dads (well, really one specific dead dad) a lot, I notice dead dads more.

There’s not really a point to this wall of text. Kinky Boots is a great show. Grief is weird. I should maybe avoid musicals with estranged-dead-dad-goodbye scenes.

Which is too bad, as I’d really like to see Fun Home.

*yes I know he's not dead that's not the point