#disappeared at the end of psmd

[primarinite]

here are the evos for my pmd hero and partner designs!

[perenlop]

Sad onion :(

Name: Cleome

She/her

-Was unfortunately born into/assigned the future of darkness. Her predecessor used the last of their power to plant and grow her before passing on.

-Celebi are born to protect a specific time period and remove time anomalies, but because time is paralyzed, Celebi can’t sense any. She also can’t time travel long distances because of her condition, needing to gather all of her energy to create a Passage of Time for others to use. She also cannot enter the Passages herself.

-She also doesn’t know any other Celebi because of her situation. There’s typically a network of Celebi, and none are aware of her existence. It was the same for her predecessors. Technically, her only company is Primal Dialga... who she of course doesn't want to speak to, as he can track her every move. Celebi usually work as agents to Dialga, but Celebi feared hers.

-She looks like a wreck due to the lack of sunlight, her disconnect from nature and other Celebi, and time's paralysis. Her coat is dry and wrinkled.

-Was terribly lonely in her early life. Celebi are solitary by nature when it comes to their own timeline, but she didn’t even have the network to rely on.

-She’s prideful and cheeky to overcompensate for her lack of power. She desperately wants to impress others and is pretty depressed deep down. Grovyle and Dusknoir both see right through this from the start.

-She met Grovyle and Rin when they took refuge in Dusk Forest after losing their home. They had sought her out to ask for her powers, but had gotten attacked on the way. She nursed them back to health, and when she heard about their desire to change the future, immediately jumped in on the plan. She went on their first journey to find the Time Gears’ former locations. She grew very fond of Grovyle during this time.

-As a guardian of time, she naturally wanted to fix the planet’s paralysis. She wanted better for it. But she was miserable. She didn’t take the news that the future pokemon would disappear with too much sorrow.

-Was closer to Grovyle than she was to Rin, but still cared deeply for both of them. She mourns the Rin she knew in the future, but is happy for her and Nimbus.

-She helped Rin with some defensive spells for her aura. When she heard about Rin’s dissatisfaction with being human, she gave them a joking quiz to “determine” what Pokemon she’d be, with goofy questions and answers. Rin ended up with Vulpix, and the two laughed it off. Cleome was near disturbed when she saw that worn Vulpix walking alongside Grovyle when he came back for her help.

-She was rude to Dusknoir for a bit after SE5 LMAO. She isn’t like, overly harsh, she massively appreciates him for what he did on Vast Ice Mountain. But she’s not letting the “capture her and put her in paralyzed agony so he can drain Grovyle’s soul and wear his skin” thing go all that lightly. When they form their exploration team, Team Sunrise, they reconcile and also fall for each other.

-She gets a glowup after SE5. She finally gets access to the network and gets healed and mentored by a Celebi from a new future timeline (The PSMD one!) The flower on her head has been unfrozen and her coat has become more vibrant. Grovyle got incredibly emotional when she came back from the network healed up and with an extra spark in her eyes.

[legrandefungus]

The 4 in the morning fugus thoughts:

I wonder what would happen if the premise I attached to my EoS AU was given to the other PMD games? Where someone with knowledge on the game enters it and takes it VERY poorly, everything somewhat getting worse from there. The story deviating more and more as the Hero changes things.

I'm thinking it's an interesting thought!

I'm not too well-versed on Red and Blue Rescue Team, but! Gengar's a time bomb, A.C.T. is a time bomb. Everyone around them could lead to that triggering event where the Hero and the Partner are hunted down by everyone. At the same time, they would have to befriend Gengar enough without tipping him off that they know the truth. Though, at least the plan is simple: Get Rayquaza to deal with the meteor whilst having an exit plan from the netherworld. Of course, with how things are, it's always better to have a backup plan. Even if they get a bit dangerous, they just need to get to Rayquaza.

Now, admittedly, I barely have any knowledge of Gates to infinity. However, reading a plot synopsis gives a few braincells. Struggling on whether to dance around the main point. But most of all? Being so completely unphased by the effects of Bittercold on everyone. It's not like humans act much different on a day to day basis. I'm sure Hydreigon would be quite confused about the Hero. Being unaffected by the increasing hostility through the mundanity of normal life. The horrors will come along, people will fight and layoffs will happen. But that will pass, and time continues going; food still needs to be made, and the dishes still need to be cleaned.

Now, Super Mystery Dungeon is something I've played to completion. Therefore, I can say with 100% confidence that it would be an extreme tightrope of information management. The Hero knows who all the players are and is split on what to do. It's not like there's a safety net, the game opens with Nuzleaf and the Beheeyem. The Hero lives in the same house with him for the first part of the game. There's actually a bit of an opposite issue here than with Explorers of Sky: There's too many options on where to go. Theoretically, the Hero could go straight for the Tree of Life, as they would know exactly where Dark Matter is. Of course, this is unfeasible, as it's instead locked behind several conditions here and there. At the same time, they already know that everyone around them is a lie. Their friend is Mew and will be the one to disappear; Nuzleaf and Espurr will betray them, the former returning for a difficult fight. Not to mention how many more Pokémon there are in PSMD. There're missions where they talk to Pokémon or meet someone in a cafe, can't let anything slip. At the same time, they have to convince Ampharos of things, and go to as many lategame dungeons as possible for high quality items. Sparkling tiles galore leads to high amounts of stat-boosting items, which means a greater chance that the both of them can make it to Dark Matter at the end.

I'm sure there's more to this, but am a bit eepy so I'm stoppin it there.

Apologies for the rambling format. It's nearly 5 in the morning as I'm about to post this.

Also if yall got anything to add, feel free to reblog this and attach some braincells of yer own!

[lovepmd]

PSMD but partner found hero first.

The resident troublemaker runs off and sends all the adults into a panic only to come back hours later with a weirdo other kid who *may or may not* be a wild, who is just off to the side looking confused while carracosta scolds them.

Maybe Carracosta would end up taking hero in, and seeing first hand the positive influence hero has on partner

oh my god, that would've been so amazing

partner disappears sometimes, but this time it's longer than usual so carracosta and the others start panicking and then when partner finally shows back up, they brought a friend!!!

a confused little kid that seems to have no idea where they are or what's going on

so after a scolding from carracosta, he takes hero in anyway cuz the kid clearly needs help and he's not going to turn them away, and he notices pretty quickly how hero and partner seem to get along/the positive influences they have on each other

[penumbraphantasm]

adding some bits to this...

mega evo actually comes from stones irradiated by energy shot from the Ultimate Weapon that ended the Kalos war 3000 yrs ago. the power came from the life force of A Whole Lot of pokemon whose graves still line route 10.

the meteor didn't split dimensions. in ORAS, Devon Corp possesses the Ultimate Weapon's power source and attempted using it to stop a meteor by sending it to another world. this other world is implied to be one with another Hoenn without mega evolution (RSE) and would've had no means to defend itself from the meteor.

Anabel is implied to have Fallen from Emerald bc her battle theme in SUMO is the very same OG frontier brain theme.

people who traveled through Ultra Wormholes are called Fallers and they're exposed to such large amounts of energy that it lingers. any Ultra Beast that finds itself in the same world as a Faller will be drawn to that residual energy, thinking it's a way back to their original world. this phenomenon apparently occurs enough for the International Police to use these people as bait.

there was a whole thing in Ultra Sun/Moon where villains from alt universes where they Succeeded gathered in one place. it's fine though bc some dude invents a device that sends them back to their respective time/space easy-peasy.

Hoopa rings show up a lot in ORAS and they pull legendaries from past games along with their original themes

Hoopa is also probably largely responsible for teleporting people and pokemon from various timelines/worlds to populate Pasio in Pokemon Masters. a lot of them don't remember how exactly they ended up on the island. there's multiple instances of characters knowing each other but remembering certain events differently or ones that haven't yet occurred for others.

space-time distortions are a thing in Sinnoh/Hisui but also on Pasio too. Adaman and Irida have unique gacha pull animation where they appear from a distortion instead of being summoned by the poryphone.

there was an event in Masters where a gym leader, Liza, fell through an Ultra Wormhole on Pasio. her twin Tate uses Jirachi to wish her return back to their world.

people don't really "slip through the cracks" in the Mystery Dungeon series. usually, they (you) are summoned by something else to that world (Rescue Team/DX, Gates to Infinity) or were already part of it (Explorers, PSMD). in GtI, there were a great deal of people who were brought to the pokemon world and upon perishing, their souls returned to the human world.

Gates to Infinity also expands the mystery dungeon lore. there's an invisible grid of ley lines spanning across the world. when something disrupts these lines (like disasters and calamities) or they get near each other, it creates a force that forms mystery dungeons. the closer they are, the more mysterious the dungeon. with enough understanding and power from external factors like the sun, moon and other special items, these lines can be manipulated to create new paths and dungeons crossing impassable distance in varying amount of time.

in Explorers, a whole timeline didn't disappear bc god decided to be nice

I absolutely love that the Pokémon universe is literally tearing itself apart at the seams. Fantastic worldbuilding, A+++

[nightingaletrash]

me: I wanna write that psmd au where hero and partner both disappear and Nuzleaf and Carracosta go on a journey to get them back. Also they adopt Mew

my brain: great, hope you can find the energy to do that

me: ...please...

my brain: :)

[forffax]

1-5!

TY FESS!!! :]

1. Favorite game(s) in the series?

definitely explorers of sky, but super is a close second! the rescue team remake and gates are also very close to my heart sgdhzgs (pmd.... good)

2. Do you prefer the 2D or 3D games (in terms of style or the games in general)?

2D for sure! The sprites were so good and had so much charm.... although I do love the watercolor texture they put over the 3D models in the rescue team remake! I hope they do smthn similar if they ever remake explorers vdhgds

3. Which final boss and/or final dungeon do you like the most (whether from a narrative or gameplay perspective)?

mmmm my gut response is to say either temporal tower and primal dialga or the tree of life and dark matter... both had such intense energies as u climbed to the top, knowing that it was just u and ur partner left to keep the world from falling into ruin (or being thrown into the sun, in super's case sgdhsgs)! The dungeon themes in both also having two sections was so so cool to me, with a driving powerful theme in the first half and a calmer, more subdued theme as u got closer and closer to the top..... man.

4. What were your hero characters like before being turned into Pokemon? What did they look like and how were their lives? Do they ever recover any of their memories?

dvdbxvzvzhs I will admit. most of my hero characters are self inserts,, there's also one thats just an older oc but he got sucked into the pmd world (so did his bf, unbeknownst to both of them) dvdjshs

my psmd hero though was a cyndaquil named Felix, (and iirc super's whole thing was that ur hero and parter both had been reborn to finish the job of defeating dark matter) so he was probably just a fairly normal human teen (who kept getting reincarnated w/o his knowledge, just at the wrong times) who very suddenly got yoinked back to the pmd world (finally the right time to save the world)!

5. Which Pokemon from Gen 7-8 would you consider potential hero/partner starter options, outside of the regular Starter Pokemon?

hm! definitely rockruff, alolan meowth, and alolan vulpix from Gen 7, and probably nickit and yamper or wooloo from Gen 8! Applin would be cool too I think sghdgs

9. Are there any soundtracks you think are underrated or overlooked, or are there unused tracks you wish were in the game?

Am I allowed to say the entire gates ost bc. The entire gates ost. I know ppl don't like gates much (and I have some complaints abt it as well) but the ost RULES.

Also really like Mt. Horn from pmd2, and Fire Mounain Volcano from super!

10. Which ending do you like the most?

SUPER'S GUT PUNCH SWITCH HURTS SO GOOD.... every previous game is like "oh your hero can't stay in this world/has to dissappear" and even in game your character is preparing for that eventuality when suddenly nope! There goes your partner, disappearing into a ball of light and floating off into the sky </3 made me bawl when I got to it the first time

11. Any headcanons that take place after the games that you want to share?

I always love the idea of ur hero and partner becoming veteran explorers and helping/teaching new adventurers, particularly if they form a guild!

Also I think that for pmd2, dialga allows (infrequent) visits between the future trio and your hero/partner :] it wasn't goodbye forever!

12. If you could change one thing about your favorite game(s), what would it be?

FASTER TEXT SPEED FOR GATES PLEASE.... that's like the number one reason I don't replay it more zgdjdhzs... also expanded post game/better pacing for super would've made it probably my fav pmd game ever ngl

[defendglobe]

anyway here’s a hot pmd take. gates to infinity’s ending diverges more from the typical formula than psmd’s ending does. 

psmd might seem to be the more wildly different of the two because ya know. the partner disappears at the end instead of the hero. thats a big switch. but aside from the role reversal though, the ending is much the same as explorers and rescue team. one person from the hero/partner duo realizes they have to leave and says goodbye to the other before disappearing into light.

gti seems more similar on the surface because it’s still the hero who vanishes but to me the whole situation around it is different. the biggest one being that the hero finds out that when they disappear, everyone in post town will forget they ever existed. that shit changes the whole scenario. instead of saying goodbye to the partner, the hero tries to sneak off without saying goodbye to anyone. because if everyone will forget them, why would they put them through the heartache of explaining why they have to leave?

it’s also different because the partner isn’t really present during the ending. as in not physically with the hero i mean. they hear the goodbye through a recorded message and watch the partner (and the rest of the paradise gang) from a distance but it’s not the same personal goodbye they usually have. 

there’s also hydreigon, who is physically with the hero all through the process of disappearing and gets to have his own emotional goodbye. on that note, gti’s ending kinda stands out to me because it’s not just between the hero and partner. the whole gang is involved in a much more meaningful way than in rescue team where there are other bystanders to the hero’s disappearance. gti’s greatest strength is probably its ensemble cast and that definitely comes through in the ending too.

[eldragon-x]

Okay so for context in PSMD, the partner character is a Mew who in the ancient past worked with a human to try and stop the end of the world but they failed to do so permanently. So Mew made sure it and the human would reincarnate as young Pokemon in the distant future so they could stop the end of the world again.

And without going too much into detail, the hero and partner succeed this time, partner remembers they used to be Mew, and they would soon disappear because their only purpose in this life was to stop the end of the world. But they asked Xerneas permission to stay at least long enough that they could say goodbye to the hero, and thus only dissappear once the partner explains to the player character that they were Mew.

And Loop makes me think about that because they only disappear after Siffrin consoles them during twohats. Which also makes me wonder if that's because their wish got fulfilled. Because otherwise, they should've been gone as soon as Siffrin got out of the timeloop. And even during the battle, Loop's eye is red and the background has a subtle red gradient, indicating a wish breaking. Because obviously, Siffrin isn't being helped when he's going to be killed. And for a wish to break, there has to be a wish to still be broken.

having a moment of "god loop is just like psmd partner" again I think ill have to explain that one at some point

[catflowerqueen]

Hydreigon is an interesting character. I love him a lot, and how kind and genuine he is and how even he seems to undergo character growth in the short time you know him.

Like… I genuinely do not believe he thought everything through in regards to his plan to contact humans for help. And a big part of that is just because of his very nature as the Voice of Life (or at least one of them). We don’t know what form of sentience he had before assuming his current shape, I suppose, but it makes perfect sense that his first priority would be his own world—his own self, in essence, but I don’t think he was thinking about his own individual survival, either, simply because his nature would mean that he wasn’t really an “individual” per say? Not until later. But because of that, I doubt he was really thinking of long-term goals, or the deeper consequences of bringing a human in to help.

Focusing just on the effects to the actual Pokémon World for a moment… he might have known from the onset that the humans wouldn’t be able to stay after providing help… but I doubt he’d thought about the ramifications that come with the fact that they would still have to spend time in the world as they figured out what the problem was, and that it would mean they would be making connections—friends, allies, etc. We don’t know how much contact he actually had with the other humans before they fell for Munna’s trap, but he did seem to genuinely worry about them as people—at least as far as their general welfare went. Like… his being upset about their defeat seemed to go deeper than just “each one defeated is one more that can’t help me.” Which is nice. And then he did genuinely seem to grow fond of the player themselves, and were very happy and proud of how deep their relationship with the partner was.

And that’s part of why I think he was crying when he confessed that the player would have to leave. He’d grown fond of them, and he knew how much the others—especially the partner—cared (and could maybe even feel it in the world itself?) And he was genuinely, truly heartbroken at the fact that they had to leave, and that he would probably be the only one to remember them. Which is probably why he stayed with them for as long as they could while they journeyed out, agreed to take them to see Paradise one last time, and just felt so bad about not being able to do more. As well as why he tried so hard to get them back in the post-game.

As to other things he didn’t think through… mostly the ramifications it had on the human world that he was pulling so many people out of it. Yes, the population of humans is very large, and we don’t know exactly how many people he actually called out to (and for that many, how many accepted his call. Was he just pulling in anyone that could hear him? Because, like… he asked for help, but then didn’t really ask permission to take them, or get any formal agreement. At least not verbally—it’s possible there was something going on behind the scenes with souls or intent or whatever). But there was enough that people were taking notice of the strange lights in the sky—and considering how many the Pokémon of Post Town were seeing on the hill, how many more must have been in other places? After all, the humans can’t have all arrived in the same place, and the pokemon world itself is quite large. How long has this sort of thing been going on? We don’t know, but given the problem I would think Hydreigon would have tried to pull in as many people as possible, so that could be anywhere from… let’s say five (to account for the fact that the Post Town citizens saw multiple balls of light, in addition to the one the hero saw and the hero themselves), to something like a hundred. If not more.

And depending on where in the world he took them from, their ages, their jobs, what was going on in their own lives… this could have some pretty dire consequences, especially considering that the post-game makes it clear that time was passing at more or less the same rate in each world, in addition to the fact that it was a genuine worry of the partner’s that the hero’s friends and family would have noticed and been distressed by their disappearance. So even if it might not affect the human world on a large scale… Hydreigon definitely did not take into account how it would affect things on a smaller scale—namely, the lives the humans were leaving behind for the duration.

In addition to the trauma of having literally died/been so near death that it amounted to basically the same thing in order to actually return home… how many humans then returned to eviction notices, lost jobs, truancy alerts, etc.? How many missed once-in-a-lifetime opportunities, or deadlines? Was anyone on an organ donor list that was now once more at the back of the line because they weren’t there to receive the donation? Or had to reschedule other general surgeries/miss important appointments? Did anyone leave their own children behind, who then had no one to look out for them? Or was the only person in the office who had access to the important equipment/files meaning that now multiple people are out of work? Or was in the middle of doing something/maintaining something really important that crashed and burned in their absence and caused multiple other deaths or injuries?

The human world is complicated, and while it makes sense Hydreigon wouldn’t know about that or prioritize that—not that I blame him for it—it just… yeah, he didn’t think things through.

Which is why it is so genuinely heartwarming that the partner did. And, sure, maybe they didn’t understand the complexities of the situation either, but they at least could consider the ramifications for the hero’s immediate friends and family members if they never went home.

Honestly, it does bring up its own can of worms as far as how the hero will use their new abilities to travel between worlds—because, again, the complexities and bureaucracy of the human world don’t really lend themselves to someone being MIA for long stretches of time unless they’re independently wealthy/have someone willing to look after their stuff while they’re gone, so it might mean that the hero really will eventually have to pick a side, as it were, to stay full time and just the other one as a minor vacation spot (which… like, I hope Emolga was just joking when he said those lines to the hero in post-game about them having to work extra hard to make up for all the lost time while they were in the human world because… if that genuinely is his belief, then the hero isn’t going to be getting any chance to rest in between whatever jobs and things they have to maintain in the human world and their “job” in Paradise. Burnout is not pleasant).

But that’s probably getting too meta about things, anyways. It’s just that Gates is the only game in the series that actually brings those implications to the forefront, because, again, no amnesia for the hero, and the partner (and others) directly speculate about it a few times. Rescue Team was… well, the amnesia thing means that not even the hero knows what their life was like, so it is a… relatively simpler choice to make? In some ways? Yeah, maybe they are leaving some things behind in the human world… but they could just as equally have hated their life. They have no way of knowing, and just based on the new memories they created, they know that could have a good life in the Pokémon world. In Explorers, they didn’t really have a life to go back to afterwards either way. Again, there’s some ambiguity in us not knowing if they were actually from the paralyzed future, as opposed to just being taken their by someone else because of their abilities, but… either way, as far as they knew, they were going to disappear at the end and effectively be deceased. And then even after the fifth special episode, their options were still kind of limited to just the past/present from their perspective and living in the future. Which is fixed now, sure, but the only real connections they’d have to the place would be Grovyle and Celebi—who they only remember from their brief period travelling together over the course of the game. …And also Dusknoir and the Sableye, I suppose, but I feel like that would just be very complicated and awkward. And then I’ve already made myself abundantly clear as far as PSMD goes. Is the hero actually leaving a life behind? Who knows! Not them, thanks to the mind wiping, and even if they were, it isn’t like anyone bothered to give them options or think too deeply on the matter.

[infini-tree]

How about 3

fun meta asks for writers

3. what is that one scene that you’ve always wanted to write but can’t be arsed to write all of the set-up and context it would need? (consider this permission to write it and/or share it anyway)

not a scene, but a whole fic. specifically, an adaptation of the captain underpants movie, but for the pmd au

granted, the scenes won’t be one to one, it just needs to hit some of the main points-- heck the one test scene i did is proof. its just that it really needs workshopping with regards to when i lean further into its component parts of cu or pmd.

ultimately, i kind of imagine the part that covers the ‘first epic movie’ to also be an affectionate parody on the main story of pmd and how ridiculous it can be and effectively speedrunning through it from small starting mission to end and the hero disappearing (which i’ve also thought of)

heck, i could even spin poopypants’ evil plan to get rid of laughter to be on par with gti’s bittercold or psmd’s dark matter since it has to do with emotions but again. it needs a lot of workshopping (and replaying the games)

[perenlop]

2,3,10 :3

2. Do you prefer the 2D or 3D games (in terms of style or the games in general)?

i really need to hand it to the pixel style, i think it just struck the perfect feeling for the series and the environments in both pixel games are just absolutely gorgeous in the style.... gti and psmd had good environments but idk if i can say the style did them justice (ESPECIALLY in gti's case. i love glacier palace but just compare its ingame model to how its portrayed in the animated trailer... it was one of the first 3ds games so i cant be too hard on it, but still. psmd is better with its animations and environments but i still felt as tho some areas could look better. if we get more games in dx's style tho id be up for it...)

3. Which final boss and/or final dungeon do you like the most (whether from a narrative or gameplay perspective)?

well i have different final boss preferences on narrative and gameplay so ill give two sjdklfjsdf

narratively its primal dialga. i love how fight to the finish, while heroic, sounds almost somber at times, like how the hero KNOWS theyre going to disappear after this, but is still fighting to save the world. i also love how organic the final boss is, i liked the concept in gti but i dont really like how psmd made the final boss another "manifestation" deal when yveltal was right there. i just kinda like it when its a corrupt pokemon that needs saving in its own way, with its spinoff-exclusive design. so, primal dialga! in every way the battle feels like a culmination of everything, from the leitmotifs in the song to the arena itself.

my issue with it gameplay-wise is the roar of time move. the way that the game hinges on you bringing as many reviver seeds as possible bc it usually one-shots you in normal gameplay is really annoying and needed better balancing.

gameplay-wise, its dark matter! i do have issues w it narratively (or at least with the buildup) so its not my fave there, but the gameplay for it is magnificent. i LOVE the two phases, i love how it starts with hero and partner evolved, only for them to devolve and save the tree of life without its help, i love the environment and how its the boxart of the game (!!) the music slaps, and i found the tile segments to be SUPER fun. idk i always have a good time with the dark matter battle, again i have issues w it narratively but its a fun time!

10. Which ending do you like the most?

ohhh hard one. it kinda depends on whether you count the postgame i guess? bc i love the main story ending for explorers, with how the hero knew they were going to die but couldnt tell partner til it happened, partner spreading the story but falling into a mindless routine to deal with their grief, to breaking down at the spot where the two first met, thats absolutely beautiful, but i dont care for the darkrai stuff in the actual postgame ending. and then gates to infinity's ending still makes me cry. yeah, the ending is more spontaneous (part of why i like explorer's ending is bc its gradual and hero knowing abt their death just. hits so much more when they go on with it anyways) but everyone defying the literal laws of the universe to remember the hero because they love them THAT much... fuck dude. i was in shambles. i am still in shambles. and then the postgame being about partner trying to get them back and succeeding, how they also fall into a depressed routine but dont know if they want to bring back hero bc they dont want to deny them their birth place so they can be together, only for their friends to encourage it and give hero the choice to go back and forth, and the hero chooses to come back... thats good shit. i really cant choose between those two, it depends on what you count as the ending i guess

[scalproie]

Do you have eos headcanons? 👀 can never get enough of those

I do actually. Unsure if they are good tho :)

As for ones that are fresh off the press uuuuuuuh

Kangaskhan (or her ancestor. Most likely her ancestor) managed to make a deal with Palkia back in the day for some light space disportion in order to help pokemon from everywhere, and that's how you can get the entirety of your stuff inside her storage from statues of her effigy that can be found everywhere, even in the cold dark future.

And then conspiracy theory time: Darkrai during the game wasn't entirely Darkrai, he was fucking... possessed. Him "forgetting" his memories at the end to mirror the Hero at the beginning is him being more "purged" than anything else, and the way he act after that once you recruit him is more how he is naturally, but he wasn't himself for a looong time. After all, as Wigglytuff said himself, "truly bad pokemon don't really exist anywhere." (This one might change once i finish the game tho)

Eventually you'd get a conclusion on the thing that possessed him in-game years later in psmd (**** ******). By the way I'd say Rescue Team happen decades before eos, gates and eos happen around mostly the same time, about a year or so appart, but like, on different continents and sea travel wasn't "invented" then per say. And psmd happen like, 10 years more of less after eos and gates.

Also, Arceus had a "okay I'm gonna let my creations do their own thing and not intervene" mindset before and them stepping in to help Dialga with the disappearing future is the first time they took action in like, Forever. But it was the whole Darkrai situation, that something could happen out of their control, that convinced them to take a more active part in what happen down there in the world. And that's why they have a more impactful role in psmd.

[lovepmd]

Me when Partner disappears at the end of PSMD instead of you: wait, stop, that’s illegal—

SAME

[rokkosmysterydungeon]

Commentary- Day 11: Favorite character

The funny thing about headcanons is that typically the goal is to fill in blanks/define what canon left vague.

But also sometimes it's about entirely re-writing big chunks of canon events and my headcanon for the ending and postgame of Pokémon Super Mystery Dungeon is this. It's very much this.

(Naturally, spoilers abound both here and in the vignette proper.)

I really thought the Partner character in PSMD knocked it out of the park. (in my game & canon, a chikorita named Daigo) It was rather easy to answer the question to myself about "Favorite PMD character" as a result. (I do gather that they seem to be very hit-or-miss among players of the game.)

They had enthusiasm, dreams, but also insecurities, and trouble connecting with others at first. They brought a big sense of energy to the story, but would react appropriately/understandably when stuff started getting real dark.

And also they come with some pretty big lore, which I'll go on about right now.

A big element of the good-bye speech at the end of Super is that the partner reveals they are actually Mew. (Like, literally says "I'm Mew."). Then they disappear.

But then the post-game kicks in and starts making it really fucking bizarre. You meet Mew, in Mew form, who joins your Team, clicks with you, acts like your partner, yet isn't your partner. No memories of either being your partner or your ancient incarnation's partner either. Then it turns out there's some ritual that can like, recover your partner, now just "an aspect" of Mew or something and separate them from current Mew and also you're not allowed to actually know about this ritual, you have to be tricked into it by those who are in on this which is somehow like, basically everyone except you... it was all sorts of ?????????????

Or at least it was to me.

Backing up, when I was experiencing the ending for the first time and saw the line "I'm Mew", it immediately fired up the headcanoning in me. Why they'd choose the plan they did, their choice of form to take, and even as the cutscene played out Daigo as disappearing, I headcanoned a reason why their disappearance was even necessary.

Simply put, this headcanon was that Mew, or as I canon'd up a name for them very soon after, Amui, had a job to get back to. Mythical business and stuff, and so had to be removed from my "self" in this game, Madoka.

(Amui's name comes from Ultraman Tiga, which is also where I chose the names Daigo and Madoka from)

This then informed my rewrite of the post-game as I was playing it and realizing it was baffling the heck out of me. So for Madoka, instead of experiencing the canon postgame story, gets this new one instead.

And the culimination of this is what you see in today's vignette. Madoka's been trying to find & convince Amui to return to the Team, and Amui's been brusque and distant, trying to push Madoka away, yet can't fully bring themselves to stop caring about her. They'd been shadowing Madoka on missions to protect her. (Basically my way of explaining Mew following you in some postgame dungeons)

For this vignette, I focused on two components of their motivation to flee from Madoka/try to push her away.

The larger one is they're absolutely dreading losing her again due to being an immortal whereas Madoka/"the human" is not. They want the separation to be where they can just assume she's living because they're keeping their distance (or at least, their plan before they started shadowing her out of concern)

The second is something I extrapolated from the canon element that Mew wanted to solve the Dark Matter problem with a fresh mind & fresh identity. I took this to mean Amui contending with some serious self-doubt. They felt they couldn't solve Dark Matter as themself and needed to basically be someone else. And here in my postgame story, feels they can't be the person Madoka befriended now that they have their memories back/are stuck being themself once again.

It felt vindicating to write a character like that, given that as I'd come to learn a few years after playing PSMD, that I had Dissociative Identity Disorder, which explained a lot of thoughts I had (and still sometimes still have) about "I'm not the person people actually like, that's another me. The real me just fails at everything!"

To bring this commentary over to Madoka for a second, I really tried to put the most "how I talk" into her dialogue (since she is a self-insert after all). I feel I nailed this aspect in her "Because I care about you!" line, ha ha.

Back to Amui, there's even more cool headcanon that I've gotta hold myself back from saying mainly because those are less and less connected with the vignette this is a commentary for. You'll notice in the Illustration and the second-to-last paragraph that they are shiny. (which here means their fur is blue instead of pink)

This is because of my headcanons to connect the dots between Daigo and Amui. A headcanon I had for Daigo since pretty much the beginning was that they dyed their head leaf with a fade to blue. (Based this off of my awesome IRL partner, who had their hair dyed like this at the time! <3) So when the "mew" reveal came, I was like "Oh! What if Amui is a shiny mew? So that when drawn in the same image, the blue on Daigo's leaf matches the blue on Amui's everything!"

Wow, I've been going on very long on this commentary. That's how you know PMD is a special interest for me... so yeah, basically, strong elements from canon plus compelling headcanons combine to make Daigo/Amui, my version of the PSMD partner, my favorite PMD character!

[eldragon-x]

Some thoughts on PSMD Hero and Partner and their relationship to their parents post-game

Nuzleaf leaves Serene Village for some time to have distance from the Pokemon he lived with and ended up betraying and hurting.

After Partner disappears, Hero runs back to their home and tells Carracosta all about it. It hits him hard and he tries to comfort Hero. They stay with him for a while and are rarely active in the Expedition Society. Both are so happy when Partner returns and Hero now pretty much lives with them and Corracosta who is like a father to Hero by now.

When Nuzleaf comes back, the tree of him welcome him, but don’t have as much of a bond with him anymore. Hero and Partner were still shaken up about what he did and while Corracosta isn’t mad at him, it’s still a lot to know that Partner was put in so much danger and that he thought he lost them.

Generally I just don’t know how to feel about Nuzleaf and his relationship with Hero, knowing that it might’ve all just been manipulation from Dark Matter, so it’s complicated but Carracosta is pretty much Hero’s dad now. Maybe things will get better between them tho.

As for my Gothitelle AU, it’s pretty similar except Nuzleaf is involved in the family and Hero and Partner now have two dads.