#i hope tumblr fixed the bug where readmores don't work in blog previews at some point

[duthea]

It's Pokemon OC Monday again! I talked about Taiko last time, so like I promised here's some of her descendants: the Drum family tree! because I've been really into drawing family trees for my OCs lately! also yeah, i like dumb name puns on my ocs as you might guess

So, some members of the Drum bloodline get blessed by Arceus from birth, receiving ridiculous physical strength and near-invincibility. But because Arceus can't bless anyone without fucking it up, they also get anger issues and a difficulty relating to normal, non-superpowered humans. Platinum and Pearl both have this "blessing" due to Arceus foreseeing some evil rising in their lifetimes that they would be fated to defeat. ...Then they both defeated their fated enemy early on in their childhood, leaving them with a lifetime of superpowers with no target and a whole lot of personality issues.

More about all the characters behind the cut! (like, a lot of text about the characters. and another smaller family tree too. this got really long haha)

When they were younger, Platinum and Heart went on a Pokemon journey in Sinnoh with Heart's friends Palmer and Cynthia. Naturally, that's when Sinnoh faced a crisis with random gates to Distortion World opening all across the region and Giratina rampaging and struggling to get out. Platinum wasn't very into Pokemon training or Pokemon battles, but she could beat up Giratina with her bare hands, bringing peace back into the world. After that, she started just travelling across the world, looking for peaceful quiet places where she could be alone without anyone bothering her.

On one trip to Johto, Platinum met Kevin, a young man around her age who'd recently inherited Johto's Moomoo Farm. The two quickly fell in love, quickly got married, quickly had kids, quickly fell out of love and got divorced. Platinum got custody of their son Gold, moved to New Bark Town and became an incredibly bad single mother. As soon as Gold grew old enough that Platinum figured he could survive on his own (which is to say, way too young) she started going on her travels again, usually leaving Gold alone at home.

Somehow, possibly out of spite, Gold survived to become a mess of issues in the form of a child old enough to go on a Pokemon journey, and left, never looking back. Gold's also one of my favorite OCs ever and I could talk about him forever, but this is already long enough so let's move on.

Kevin, meanwhile, stayed at the Moomoo Farm and tried his best to manage both the farm and raising his baby daughter, but ended up having to hire help. Enter a pair of women named Joyce and Jennifer, a former nurse and a former cop respectively, who also had a baby daughter named Crystal, one year older than Soul. They moved to the farm as Kevin's roommates and co-workers, and over the years became practically family, with Crystal and Soul thinking of each other as sisters. ...I guess I should put their family tree here since I'm talking about them, but I'll have a separate post about them at some point too, most likely. I'll talk about them then.

(I thought of having this family tree as part of the Drum family tree at first, but I figured for ease of readability it should be separate.)

Anyway, Soul grows up to be a sweet if shy well-adjusted kid. Kevin often wonders how Gold is doing, but due to their distance and legal reasons (Johto's divorce laws are similar to Japan's in that divorced couples are expected to never have contact with each other or each others' families) he never tries to meet up with him. But when Gold, after a wild Pokemon-related injury, stumbles into the Moomoo Farm, Kevin realizes who he is and goes "oh fuck, my boy is fucked up, Must Dad". Gold is unused to the kind of soft parental affection Kevin shows him and has a hard time trusting him, or adults in general, but ends up hitting it off with Soul and accepting her as his sister easily. (Crystal is harder for him to get along with, as she reminds him of his mom in some ways.) whoops i ended up talking too much about Gold after all

Anyway on the other side of the family tree, Heart Drum is a pretty accomplished and strong Pokemon trainer, rivalling Palmer in their youth, but then ended up falling in love with Pokemon Contests instead. Through Contests, he met Johanna Oycester who became his new rival. They fought over Contest victories for years, until one day realizing they'd been in love for the last few years, and got married. When Pearl was born, Heart, having grown up with Platinum as his little sister, was unbothered by her inhuman powers and raised her the best he could with Johanna.

Though she was raised with love and understanding, and able to blow off some steam by fighting her dad's Pokemon growing up, Pearl still grew up with anger issues and a tendency to solve every problem with violence. However, becoming a Pokemon Trainer helps her gain some empathy for her Pokemon, and eventually people, though it's a slow process. She regresses in her thinking many times after growing frustrated, but thanks to people like Cynthia and Maylene teaching her their ideas of what it means to be strong, she eventually becomes a better person than her aunt Platinum. Pearl's another one of my favorite OCs, in case it's not obvious. it's about breaking the cycle of violence and improving yourself despite being dealt a bad hand and also angry violent little girls are fun to write and i created her at a time when i needed some outlet to lash out through and maybe her character development is also my own character development in some way???

Anyway if you want to ask me questions about any of these characters feel free! Thanks for reading all of that!