#heck if i know!

[thebirdandhersong]

mentally kicking rocks

[saurotitan]

Honestly, forget dog racing. Dogs have suffered enough from humans breeding them for that. Get me a selection of reptiles, some heat lamps, and let's see if we can get a monitor lizard Grand Prix

my mans running animation only got two frames

[egophiliac]

I'm still processing 7-13, in the meantime have this super quick thing! of all the things that happened that I didn't expect, one of 'em certainly was a not insignificant subplot revolving around Silver unintentionally committing international mail fraud.

[akanemnon]

How to be an annoying little jerk 101

FIRST - PREVIOUS - NEXT

MASTERPOST (for the full series / FAQ / reference

[inkdragon42]

"Thank you for teaching us the insides"

[rouxenne]

Okay so this is going to be exceptionally ramble-y but I have SO many thoughts on pokemon evolution and I need to yell about them. Also this is just generally good brainstorming for my own AU too. So. Sorry LMAO. Gonna throw it under a cut because I know that this'll be long.

So, there's only a few real methods to evolve pokemon, and they're not always consistent. Just with a brief glance at bulbapedia, the main methods (in-game) are leveling up, interacting with a specific item, and being traded, then there's like. a dozen different conditional things that sometimes apply.

The animated series and manga both roughly stick to this... mostly. There's a few major differences, like the lack of levels and the fact that pokemon can evolve during a battle rather than after, as well as that they can evolve entirely outside of a battle. I think that this mostly comes about as a difference between mediums, and while I personally believe that the animated series' evolution probably seems more "accurate" to what is seen in the pokemon world, both have some potentially interesting implications depending on how you want to interpret them. This all actually led me to discovering this Bulbapedia page listing every animated series and this Bulbapedia page listing every manga evolution, which are spectacular?! Really great.

These two pages really help to point out my major thought: it's not just battling that can trigger an evolution. I think it still makes sense to tie levels and exp to battling- the primary source* of experience is still battles, the exp share looks like a type of helmet that (through game/anime logic) probably transmits acquired skills between wearers, small amounts of exp can be gotten from playing with your pokemon while camping in SwSh, so it just works.

A lot of the evolutions in the bulbapedia pages can be sorted into a few categories, with the main one being directly tied to this experience. There are loads of evolutions that happen during or after a battle, or after training. But there's still plenty of other categories that are unrelated to battles: becoming strong to overcome a challenge, item interactions, and personal choice unrelated to a battle/challenge. There's more than a few of the first type, usually with the challenge being to protect against a threat, but sometimes there's a non-life threatening competition on the line instead. The number of times the second type's happened by accident is... not small. But personally I find the last one really interesting with what it suggests about the rest.

It's not all that common. James' magikarp evolves because it was upset at being released, and Team Rocket's koffing and ekans choose to evolve out of care for their trainers. Brock's bonsly evolves after it's already saved him, when it's celebrating its success. Ash's rockruff evolves after it decides how to manage its emotions, something that's apparently common for rockruff to do before evolution.

As I said, not that many. But they show that a pokemon can make the active choice to evolve, particularly outside of times of stress, which I think is important to acknowledge.

But then pokemon can also choose not to evolve. Pikachu's the easy example of this, famously refusing to ever touch a thunder stone. The number of times that a pokemon reaches blindly into a bag just to pick up an item and evolve is... not small. at all. But that's just choosing to not interact with an item. There's actually another way more interesting example.

Dawn's piplup is fascinating. It trained enough to initiate evolution, then had to repeatedly use bide (injuring itself in the process) to keep the evolution from going through. Additionally, it did all of this against the wishes of its trainer. I don't know if this situation was ever seen again or if Piplup was just a one-off case, but again I think it's important to see that a pokemon can be forced into evolution by its own biology.

So... a pokemon can choose to evolve to overcome a battle or challenge. Or it can evolve just because it has the desire to. Or it can be forced to evolve, even if it doesn't want to.

I don't necessarily know what to make of this! There's loads of implications, and potential paths to explore with this (which loads of people have already been looking at for years. I am in no way as coherent as them). But, notably for this post, there so so so many potential tragedies that can happen.

Needing to evolve for the sake of winning (was the win worth it? was it worth uprooting your identity? how do you calculate this worth, your worth? can you keep winning in this new body? did you even truly win, if you had to change to do it? did it matter that much? who would you be without the win? who are you now?)

Needing to evolve to protect someone (does it matter? was it enough? do you actually have the battle experience to back it up? what will be enough, now that you've already done it? do your loved ones recognize you? are you still the same?)

Being forced to constantly suppress evolution (can you find an ever stone? your options are to accept evolution, constantly fight it at the cost of your health, or forever hold an ever stone... what's the lesser evil? do you even have the body-type to hold something? what happens if you drop it? what happens if it's stolen? do you tell people that you have it? is it safe?)

Being forced to evolve because you accidentally interacted with some specific item (did you know it would do that? how could you? how could you have known it was there?)

Being traded and suddenly, once you wake up in a new land and under the authority of a new trainer, being in a body unfamiliar to you (did you have a choice? what do you do now? did your trainer ask? did you want this? did you know this would happen? did your trainer give you an item, just for this? will you be traded back? were you traded only for the sake of evolution? were you not enough?)

Wanting to evolve, but being unable to because you don't have the required happiness or affection (does your pokemon not love you? don't you love your trainer? can't you force yourself?)

Wanting to evolve, but you just can't figure out the move you need before you can (why can't you figure it out? every other pokemon can, so why can't you? it must be a failure on your part, right?)

Wanting to evolve, but you can't access the required location (where is magnetic enough? what rocks count as mossy, as icy? is the mysterious cave/spring/tree, heard about only in myth, even real? what do you need to do once there? can you even get there?)

Wanting to evolve, but you're not the right gender (what's so wrong with your gender? is it even gender that matters, or is it sex? does wanting to evolve imply that your trans, or being trans imply that you want to evolve? does it matter? does it fix anything, even if you are?)

And all of this is ignoring that, hey, evolving is such a massive change to who you are! It makes sense that a personality shift would accompany it! The anime really capitalizes on this sometimes, notably with Ash's charmander. I've seen some interesting interpretations of this type of change over the years, with my favorite being that evolution occurs when the pokemon's ready to change, rather than its personality changing because it evolved. I'm not sure how much there really is in canon to support it, but I think it makes for an interesting spin on it.

So... yeah. I think I lost where I was going with this by the second paragraph, honestly. Should've made an outline for myself first. I'm not sure that I've really added much onto the original post other than several hundred words of rambling expansion on what was already said and some additional potential for angst, but I've spent long enough writing it that it's probably worth keeping. I hope you've enjoyed reading, if you've gotten down this far? I'm gonna... go to sleep now. I think I might be more tired than I'd realized.

* And now for a tangent that I wrote before realizing it doesn't fit the flow of the rest of the post: so battles are definitely the primary source of exp, but there's still a few oddities; mainly candies, curry, and sandwiches. Rare candies and exp candies are hard to interpret, due to a sheer lack of information. Their descriptions consistently say that they're "packed with energy," they've been around since at least the time of Hisui, rare candies are consistently rare (no duh) but smaller exp candies can be frequently gotten from raids and even be bought in Legends: Arceus. The quest you do to unlock the candy store is called "Serving up Snacks" and apparently in an interview (for whatever that's worth) it was said that humans eating a rare candy would be like a human eating dog food. I don't really know what to make of them without getting too far into the weeds of headcanons. The fact that they're packed with energy and just considered a food reminds me of protein bars/shakes, so I can see how they may aid in the boosting of stats and physical condition, which I guess can contribute to battle skill/experience? Like a mixture of all the different vitamins blended into an energy drink, I guess. Healthy! (/j) They're also not found in any of the mystery dungeon games with joy seeds taking their place, which suggests to me that they're specifically a human invention and not something that pokemon (are able to?) make for themselves in the wild? The one time they appear in the animated series is so incredibly inconsistent with how they work compared to anywhere else and they don't really show up in the manga, so there's not much to go off of. I'm just not really sure what to make of them. The idea of them being a shot of... borderline steroids, i guess, also works with curries and sandwiches being a source of exp. Giving a pokemon better nutrition just helps to boost their growth. It's like an athlete needing a specialized diet to properly get the most out of their exercise. I'm personally big on the headcanon that there's a difference between professional competitive battlers, the generic trainers that you see in-game, and the average person in the pokemon world, so I'm maybe a bit biased in that interpretation. Who knows.

Pokemon evolution is fun and all but you ever think about how evolution in-lore isn't based on age, it's based on fighting.

The challenge, the desperation, the love for those you care about that clasps hand with the fear that you can't save them changes you.

Pokemon apparently don't evolve when living comfortable lives. They evolve when the chips are down and there is nowhere left to run.

Their body warps to make them stronger. So that next time, what hurts before can't or won't knock them down ever again. Which is a thing to be celebrated, it's growth in a way that makes them resilient.

But sometimes those changes aren't just strength; sometimes it makes them angry, it makes them mean.

It kind of makes you wonder about a Pokemon's own agency when evolving given how permanent this whole thing is. And how refusing needs to be the active choice and not the default.

(but can you even refuse if you are all that stands between those you love and disaster?)

Anyways this post is about my pmd au choice for rockruff!Pearl and her "bad-ending" self being a midnight lycanroc.

[chamiryokuroi]

TOH fandom tell me someone has written the AU where Raine asks Eda to marry them and Eda is all “Oh I would love to, but technically I am already married” and the gang has to go down to Gravity Falls, Oregon, to get Stanley Pines to sign the divorce papers.

[yes-asil]

Made fake screenshots for a role-play story I read way back when.

[yuukirita]

B-127 is filled with cuteness and blood lust.

He's a cute killing machine! He gets that from his other dad. And Orion Pax is very proud, but also concerned.

Megatron is just proud. Elita too but she'd never admit it.

They are found family I will die on that hill.

[shepscapades]

[Part 1] [PART 2] [Part 3]

The unexpected return of a face Xisuma never thought he'd see again.

[hashtagarting]

Oh, stardust . . .

[critterbitter]

Sometimes, it's lonelier when you're in a crowd you can't understand. Elesa, who struggles with the language divide and being hard of hearing, solves this by simply refusing to engage.

BONUS! The twins did not get their starters yet. They think Elesa’s so cool and stoic. This is a hilarious misunderstanding.

Want something funnier? Here's my submas masterpost!

[screwpinecaprice]

Get squished

[licorishh]

double ?? upload ???? yeaaaahh i've gotten FASTERRrr for whatever that's worth so complementary blyla because guess what i miss them too (nobody was surprised by that)

[elodieunderglass]

Eggs for Killie is over!

I award myself the 150th egg for all of the little bits of art. Thank you so much for inspiring me to make them! It’s been really amazing to see all the hard work and to truly appreciate the wide range of crafts and activities everyone can do. Bobbin lace? Shoemaking? Knife forging? Translating Irish? It’s genuinely incredible.

I also really appreciated the people who were taking a rest, too. Thank you for that as well.

And I SUPER, SUPER appreciate everyone who was going through saying encouraging words, leaving replies/reblogging with comments, or liking all these posts. That was also a huge outpouring of kindness and time. I saw you doing it (and tried to make sure OPs did too) and any credit for people feeling empowered? That’s for YOU.

I know for a fact that people were following each other simply because they spotted one of their people through doing this. Thank you for being here - and being brave enough to find each other! ��

If you have a project you were working on specifically for this, and missed the inbox, drop me a message - I don’t want to miss you.

150 eggs x 60g (weight of medium-large chicken egg) is 9000g of eggs.

That’s 16.8% of Killie’s body weight in eggs.

I am planning to write a book about Killie and I think it will be very VERY funny to acknowledge every single username who contributed in the acknowledgements…

…. Because I am planning to throw them back at you.

Now rest up, everyone. April Fools tomorrow, we gotta make the REST of the website unusable.

[coffeebanana]

okay but what if. video game designer marinette...