#gym leader sona saga

[eikotheblue]

Behold! This absolutely incredible drawing of me as a Pokemon gym leader, drawn by my wonderful and incredibly talented friend Fen @salt-and-bramble 💙💙💙

I love it so much as a work of art and as a drawing of me and I'm using it as my profile picture everywhere now.

Fen did a wonderful job of - capturing lots of details that match up with things I actually wear (the heart gems I put on my forehead, my favorite top with the boob window, the galaxy print on my favorite dresses, the color of the glowy wheels on my skates), while also adding so many delightful little things that spark so much delight in my soul (the heart-shaped pupils, a much fancier design on my gloves than I currently have, the poi-pokeballs, a lil bit of embellishment on the cleavage) and. the hair.

Gods, the hair. Y'all have to understand - I've legit never seen a picture or depiction of my hair I've loved anywhere close to how much I love this. I've gotten a lot of compliments on my hair over my life, and despite historically really hating it, lately I've been figuring out ways to get it in a state where I can appreciate it myself, which has been a slow and strange process. But when I first saw this drawing, I felt like I understood for the first time what people are seeing, when they look at my hair and tell me it's beautiful. (When I told Fen this, they said I have the curls of the ocean... ;-; this has stuck in my head, and I think of it when I look at my avatar or my hair.) And the action lines in the rest of the piece really enhance the wave vibes...

it's just so perfect ;-;

[eikotheblue]

I liike your new profile pic

me too!!! [more gushing about it available here]

[eikotheblue]

please tell Fen that picture is FANTASTIC i love it so much and especially the hair!!!

@salt-and-bramble for your fyi

[eikotheblue]

Fen this "shitpost" art is an epic poem. To me. 💙 (And the fact that you did this in a medium and style you have no experience with is just. mindblowing to me. like. what.)

(Pokemon team and more story below the cut)

So the story of how this all happened is that - I was doing my local cryptid routine (I spin poi out around town wearing my usual all-blue, and am at this point decently well known for it) and we ran into some Local Youths, one of whom wanted a photo with me and another who said he didn't need one because he'd gotten one already. This caused his friend to say "oh, she's like a pokemon, huh" which I found delightful, and reported back to my discord server. This started a discussion in which Rob Nomaly asked "how hard would it be to come up with a well-rounded pokemon team that was all-blue?" and my wonderful roommate @toasthaste started brainstorming an all-blue pokemon team for gym leader Eiko. She did an incredible job and came up with:

Which is perfect. I love all these pokemon so much, and as a team it's just - exactly the kind of shitpost I'd be doing as a gym leader! Because it looks like a traditional Water-type team, for the first 3 mons! And then Glaceon shows up, and you think "well, hmm, that's unusual, but I guess Ice and Water are pretty close typewise" and then the last two are pure Dragon and Psychic-Steel, because the actual theme is just "blue pokemon". (Bonus: the Dragonair has an evolite, which combined with its typing just makes it annoyingly tanky against the moves you'd traditionally use against Water-type pokemon).

Then Fen posted their first draft of the drawing!

and the rest of my discord concluded that I'd be skating around the gym and the player would have to catch up by defeating trainers and manipulating various smarthome devices to block off my route and catch me. Which is an amazing gym concept. (One detail I didn't call out the original post is that the background shapes in the final drawing are a stylized depiction of Andrew, my smart washing machine. :D).

Behold! This absolutely incredible drawing of me as a Pokemon gym leader, drawn by my wonderful and incredibly talented friend Fen @salt-and-bramble 💙💙💙

I love it so much as a work of art and as a drawing of me and I'm using it as my profile picture everywhere now.

Fen did a wonderful job of - capturing lots of details that match up with things I actually wear (the heart gems I put on my forehead, my favorite top with the boob window, the galaxy print on my favorite dresses, the color of the glowy wheels on my skates), while also adding so many delightful little things that spark so much delight in my soul (the heart-shaped pupils, a much fancier design on my gloves than I currently have, the poi-pokeballs, a lil bit of embellishment on the cleavage) and. the hair.

Gods, the hair. Y'all have to understand - I've legit never seen a picture or depiction of my hair I've loved anywhere close to how much I love this. I've gotten a lot of compliments on my hair over my life, and despite historically really hating it, lately I've been figuring out ways to get it in a state where I can appreciate it myself, which has been a slow and strange process. But when I first saw this drawing, I felt like I understood for the first time what people are seeing, when they look at my hair and tell me it's beautiful. (When I told Fen this, they said I have the curls of the ocean... ;-; this has stuck in my head, and I think of it when I look at my avatar or my hair.) And the action lines in the rest of the piece really enhance the wave vibes...

it's just so perfect ;-;