#more pokemon calculations

[vulturevanity]

Thinking about ScarVi's overarching theme being The Truth Shall Set You Free. I am so normal about this

[bobcat-pie]

yes i know everything about this game. no i haven't played it.

[quietwingsinthesky]

my computer died meaning i have no access to my spreadsheets meaning i am now discovering how incredibly understimulated i feel when i cannot arbitrarily sort columns and enter formulas

[oveliagirlhaditright]

Regular Pat just made a video where he sat down and figured out--as best he could--how many Heartless Sora has killed in the Kingdom Hearts series.

And at the start of the video, he said to guess what you thought what the number was going to be. And I actually pretty much got it right. I was, like, only a few numbers off! I kind of wish that I had written it in the comments now or something. LOL. I mean, not that anyone would have necessarily believed that I would have guessed that before he had revealed the answer. But still.

[art]

Creator Spotlight: @camberdraws

Hello! My name is Camber (any pronouns), and I’m a mixed media illustrator located in the southwestern United States. I love drawing everything, but I have a special interest in depicting strange creatures and environments, often accompanied by abstract imagery and mark-making. Professionally, I’ve worked creating concept art and 2D assets for museum exhibits, but currently, I am engaged full-time as a software developer and make standalone illustrations in my free time. I’ve been posting art on Tumblr since I was a teenager, and the site has been very welcoming towards my work to this very day!

Check out Camber’s interview below!

Did you originally have a background in art? If not, how did you start?

I’ve had an interest in drawing since I was barely sentient, but at thirteen years old I decided to become “serious” about art. I was all about reading tutorials and doing a ton of studies. I would tote my heavy instructional art books to school every single day (my poor back!) Despite all this, I decided to forgo art school in favor of a bachelor’s degree in Computer Science at my local college. Alongside my major, I received a minor in Art Studio with a specialization in fine art, which totally changed my views on creating artwork and drastically changed my style.

How has your style developed over the years?

As mentioned previously, my style did a 180 after I studied under some very skilled fine art professors! As a kid, my drawings were very realism-heavy and inspired by video game concept art. I mostly worked digitally, too. During college, I was thrown for a loop when we were instructed to do strange things like, for example, make a bunch of marks on paper using pastel, WITHOUT looking, and then turn said marks into a finished piece of art! I quickly and deeply fell in love with abstract work, and especially appreciated images that are not easily parsed by the viewer. Since then, I’ve made it my goal to combine abstract mark-making with more representational subject matter.

What is one habit you find yourself doing a lot as an artist?

Hmmm, one habit I really enjoy as an artist is strictly tracking the amount of time I spend drawing! I currently work a full-time job wholly unrelated to art, so I have to be careful with my time if I want to spend enough hours drawing each week. I created a spreadsheet that allows you to enter the amount of minutes you’ve drawn each day and calculate how much drawing time you still need to reach your weekly goal (I aim for 20 hours a week.) Having such a clear, numbers-based objective keeps me motivated to work like nothing else!

Over the years as an artist, what were your biggest inspirations behind your creativity?

I know this is a common inspiration, but Hayao Miyazaki’s work has been rewiring my neurons since I was a child. Seemingly all of my artistic interests can be summed up by the movie Princess Mononoke: it has strange/abstract creature designs, a strong focus on nature and environmental storytelling, and a mix of dark and hopeful themes. Additionally, I’ve been deeply inspired by video game series such as Zelda, Okami, Pikmin, and Dark Souls. But arguably, none of these have influenced me more than Pokemon! I’ve been drawing Pokemon since I could barely hold a pencil, and I haven’t stopped since! I believe my love of designing creatures originated with my endless deluge of Pokemon fanart during my childhood.

What is a medium that you have always been intrigued by but would never use yourself?

I’ve always been fascinated by 3D mediums and am so tempted to try them out! Whether that’s 3D models created digitally or sculptures made from clay, I profoundly admire artists who have this skill. Oftentimes, it feels like I don’t have time to delve into a totally different artistic paradigm. However, I feel very strongly that learning new skills can enrich your current work. I should take that advice and someday give 3D mediums a shot!

What is a recent creative project that you are proud of?

I am in the process of creating an art book (a dream of mine!) and have been executing smaller drawings of concepts I find interesting from both a visual and storytelling standpoint. A recent drawing for said book is that of a snail made of ink with an ink bottle as a shell, and it went absolutely viral! I’ve never had an experience like this as an artist before and it has been spectacular! I was able to open a shop using my newly acquired art printer and sell many prints of my snail. Creating something original, directly stemming from my interests, and having that resonate with so many people has been unreal. I couldn’t ask for more as an artist!

What advice would you give to younger you about making art that’s personal or truthful to your own experiences?

I would tell my younger self to chill out and experiment more! I was so caught up in the idea that I needed to have a realistic style to be considered “good.” I also believed that technical skill was the only measure of how worthy my art was. That’s not to say technical skill doesn’t matter, but I now firmly believe the creativity and voice of your ideas far outweigh the skill of execution in terms of importance. Technical skills should elevate ideas, not the other way around. Once I began to revel in strange ideas and stories for my work, depicted oftentimes in odd styles or mediums, I truly found my voice as an artist.

Who on Tumblr inspires you and why?

My peers here on Tumblr inspire me more than anything! Sharing my work with contemporaries and giving each other support brings me joy like no other, and keeps me motivated to continue creating. I wouldn’t be where I am today without them! @beetlestench, @theogm-art, @trustyalt, @ratwednesday, @phantom-nisnow, @svltart, @mintsdraws, @mothhh-hh, @jupiterweathers, @thesewispsofsmoke, @picoffee, @fetchiko, @kaisei-ink, and @pine-niidles just to name only a few!

Thanks for stopping by, Camber! If you haven’t seen their Meet the Artist piece, check it out here. For more of Camber’s work, follow their Tumblr, @camberdraws!

[macabrecabra]

Did art fight and saw so many pokemon OCs...and realized for how much I LOVE pokemon, never had any of my own really...so I made some. Then I wrote a story. Then I built a whole worldsetting.

So enjoy the "End of the Line" pokemon setting that is now born... starting with my favorite trio of ghost pokemon! The Silph bros are known more publicly in connection to the powerful Silph Corporation, but also operate a powerful black market mafia under the table.

More under the tab if you are interested in my character ramblings!

GEN SILPH (Gengar) He is all about image. In the public eye, he is a well liked, always smiling, corporate prodigy and the face of Silph Co. Well respected and always known for handling PR and all the social trappings of an elite status well. Behind closed doors though, he is also running an extensive mafia operation with his fingers on the pulse of Saffron-Lavender City. He may seem nice and upbeat, but when he is ticked, he can show a very cold, very calculative, and very sadistic side as he is not above getting his hands dirty if people are messing up on the perfect persona he controls. Not a pokemon to cross as he will smile and shake your hand while having a gun behind his back. There are very few whom he trusts, as he is known to let his paranoia sometimes get the best of him when it feels like the control he's carefully built into an empire seems threatened even a little bit. Every move is calculated. Every chaos a delicate pull of the strings. Just remember to always trust in Silph Co for your every need!

Design Note: All the Silph bros wear suits because they are classy, but each has a design. For Gen, I was all corporate. Sleek cut, formfitting, Dark colors, and of course, classy tie. The kind of guy without a hair out of place. Also glasses felt fitting for someone that probably has to squint at computers...also makes him look more smart. GHAST SILPH (Ghastly)

The youngest brother of the Silph brothers, Ghast is a bit goofy and doesn't really tend to take things too seriously, but also never one to disappoint his older brothers whom he adores. He really wants to live up to expectations and has since stepped up to being the main leader of the mafia, second only to Gen, but really he just does what Gen says and doesn't ask questions. He really just wants to make his brothers proud, and feels the pressure to live up to Hauts' legacy.

Ghast can come off as dismissive towards others at times, but it comes from his desire to appear just as strong as his brothers when it comes to the dealings of the world. They are super besties with their personal gang of "bad brats" as he calls them, sometimes to the point of trying to step in and keep them out of trouble.

Should be note that Ghast is transgender. What their deadname is, no one knows. They don't much care for being misgendered as there has, and always has been, three Silph brothers, and don't you forget it!

Design Note: I felt that Ghast was the flashy type with bright eyesore suits and sort of a lounge lizard, impractical sort of suit, hence no pockets to be found. The single button suit felt more like going to a party than corporate, which fit Ghast more in my head. Also had to give Ghast unruly hair to mimic the gas around Ghastly.... Ghast's wears a hat to try and control it.

HAUTS SILPH (Haunter) (Alsos one of the main characters of the story!)

There was no doubt that Hauts was how made the Nightshade Mafia a force to be reckoned with. He was smart like his older brother, but also wasn't afraid to be reckless and unrelenting when it came to his goals. He was the muscle that could get any job done, one way or another. Known as a wildcard, laid-back, unpredictable, yet suave, Hauts was a criminal prince and was an important part of keeping the Nightshade Mafia running well....most of the time. His recklessness and disregard for Gen's orders often put him at odds with his brothers.

Hauts felt it more a difference of opinion, but nothing too crazy as at the end of the day, he cared very deeply about his brothers and everything he did would never put everything in danger. Gen didn't see it that way and shot his brother with intent to murder and remove something that was starting to make him paranoid about his control of things.

By all accounts, Hauts should be dead, face blasted open and body dumped in the woods, but he was found by a local pikachu from a nearby village and managed to find his health again. He's hung up his old life though, not interested in revenge, not interested in going back into that world. His guns are hung up to live a peaceful life as a bartender in Veridian Village, at least, until life comes knocking and he might have to pick up his old life again... Design notes: He is very much looking to copy the style of a 1920's ganster, hence the older style to his suit and wears an open jacket to match his more laid-back attitude. Also was one to always make sure you knew he was armed when in company. His hat was fun as it is clear it is blown off and there history and sentiment to it. He's had that torn up hat a long time and is intent on keeping it that way.

[spookberry]

Had an idea for a Pokemon Legends ZA character I couldnt stop thinking about while trying to sleep last night

Basically they're an engineer/inventor type with their own little house you can go into. On a table and tacked to the walls are diagrams for all sorts of strange contraptions. There are wooden wheels and handle like pieces strewn about as well. You talk to this person and they tell you about their time in a nearby region and how over there they use a pokemon to get around and how its inspired their newest invention.

They're just so busy working on different prototypes for their invention that they ask you the player to run a couple errands for them. Idk what sort of errands but I imagine there's like three of em. After each you go speak to them to get the next one and they thank you and update you on the topsy turvy production process, they're a bit scatterbrained. They mention they keep getting distracted by side projects. After theyre done talking you can interact with them again and they'll just repeat these three comments like they're talking to themself:

"maybe more than two wheels would help with the balance...?"

"Should I calculate footsize into the shape of this part?"

"Some sort of braking mechanism might be important..."

Anyways I like the idea that the player is set up into thinking they're gonna get a bike only for the Character to say theres still some work needed on that invention actually but to thank you for helping here's the protoype for a Different invention they made while distracted that they want you to have/test out for them.

Its rollerskates

[raisans-art]

ohhhh now I'm curious about Emmet's eelektross evolution. was it a moment of manic frustration "I'm already so far gone, might as well finish the job"? or a more calculated, thought-out reason? seeing how terrified he was after his first evo and what little we know of the aftereffects of his second, I can't help but wonder why he chose to go through with it... :<?

In the beginning, Emmet was vehemently against evolving further. The thought of completely forgetting how to be human? Terrifying to him.

Alas.. that means he’s an unevolved pokemon. While Ingo managed to get through the elite four with Emmet as an Eelektrik, once he started working at gear station…

Ingo needed pokemon that he felt confident in using to help suppress immediately dangerous situations, and he didn’t want his unevolved pokemon getting caught in a bind he can’t muscle his way out of. He just wanted to keep his starter (and in Ingo’s mind, the pokemon that his twin left behind for him) safe.

After a month of being left in the apartment, Emmet finally decided that he needed to evolve, because otherwise he would just keep drifting further away from his brother. He didn’t want to evolve, but he felt like he had to. That conflict of interest still made him depressed post evolution because he didn’t truly want this, and he lost the last shred of humanity that he was clinging to.

Ingo came home to an Eelektross, staring lethargically up at him.

[loupy-mongoose]

So, since I've not been in the mood to draw, I've been playing a lot of Scarlet, doing some outbreak hunts and leveling up some old buddies.

Eventually, I thought it would be fun to finally build a Shiny Dream Team.

Darren was already level 100, and has been for years. I started raising Mist the Zoroark, and later Ruri the Gardevoir, and it hit me... I had a good shiny team going! So I went on a scavenger hunt to decide the last three members.

All of them come from various points in my shiny hunting (and not hunting, I'll get to that) timeline, and are all more dear to me than other shinies I have. (Aside from Akoya. Nobody tops her.)

This lovely team consists of:

Darren, male Flygon, Timid, Mischievous; Hatched via Masuda Method in Soul Silver, my first ever hatched shiny.

Mist, female Zoroark, Rash, Somewhat vain; Hatched via Masuda Method in Pokemon Y. I'm sure you can imagine the joy I felt at seeing that it was female. :3

Phillip, male Decidueye, Lax, Takes plenty of siestas; Hatched via Masuda Method in Pokemon Sword.

Sulfur, male Lucario, Hardy, Alert to sounds; Hatched via Masuda Method in Shining Pearl. (Yes I'm throwing him in even though he's part of a separate group. He is a shiny I've acquired of a childhood favorite Pokemon, so he's a Dream Team Shiny~)

Ruri, female Gardevoir, Jolly, Scatters things often; Lucky find in Alpha Sapphire. I was training during a Nuzlocke, and on my way back to heal, the radar thingy went off. When I saw it was a Ralts, I thought "Alright, just in case it's shiny..." It was shiny.

Tira, female Talonflame, Serious, Somewhat of a clown (lol); Extremely lucky first-egg hatch in Y. I can't remember if it was Masuda or not, but I don't think so. (I wasn't hunting for a shiny, I just wanted a Flame Body bird for my bro. XD)

Ironically the two birds are named after characters in book series' I like.

I tried real hard to not have any type overlap, and by my calculations, the only type they have no STAB advantage over is Flying. But there are ways counter that weakness. I'm very happy to see these guys all come together like this. :3

[1ightsen]

Maxie Infodump #1 - Little known character details from official media

I promised to post some of my maxie infodumps and headcannons, and I think I'll start it off with something simple. His official character bio that was hosted originally on the first release of ORAS (this will be ORAS Maxie focused)

here is a transcript for easy reading: "Maxie is the leader of Team Magma, the team seeking a world ideal for humanity. He pays attention to even the smallest of details, and is quite sensitive in some regards. He has a habit of describing situations in numerical terms. He possesses a cool-headed outlook, thinking that some sacrifices cannot be avoided if he is to achieve his goals." Okay, so first, after looking at the original japanese version of this page,

小さいことまで細かく気にする、神経質なところがあり、さまざまなことを数字を交えてあらわすのが口癖。 目的を果たすためなら、犠牲が出ても仕方ないと考える冷徹な思想の持ち主でもある。 The one word in here I wanted to be sure of was 'sensitive' since it can have many meanings, and the original japanese gives us some possibilities with:

Personally I think (being) highly strung is the most likely option here, but either way its an interesting character trait. And we all know he certainly builds up frustration and tension and explodes a bit like a volcano. Even if he does manage to correct himself afterwards.

~ ANYWAYS ~

Now that we have the bio, let's break it down a little and look at some fun examples of it in action! Maxie has a habit of describing situations in numerical terms. This typically comes out more when he is nervous or stressed. Here are some examples: Ill just take ORAS as an example here since this is already getting pretty long... In ORAS after fighting him at mt chimney, he lets you know in a specific numerical way, how much he fell behind:

And then again, when you battle with him and lose in the Battle Resort where he just has to let you know the situation in numerical terms by giving you the exact lose chance according to his own calculations of course:

"So the great Maxie has fallen, even when battling alongside your team... I shall commit this curious phenomenon to memory. It had less than a 1 percent probability of occurring, you know."

this culminates in a really interesting interaction between him and courtney after the delta episode. While It's pretty clear that Maxie cares for his team and especially his admins, he definitely struggles when faced with his crying admin, and being unsure of what to say, he settles with a numerical quantifier again.

He assesses the situation, and decides to comment on how MUCH courtney is crying. His "paying attention to even the smallest details" trait also ties into this habit of his, and is probably why he jumps to conclusions a little too early because of small things he's noticed. Accusing Tabitha of wanting his spot as leader, just because he disagreed with him is one of those situations.

Pokemon Masters EX has a lot of new scenes with Maxie, and I would love to talk all day about them, but I'll just pick out one here, and that's from the "A pasio Spectacle" event. In this event, Maxie overhears team break members simply say the word 'glasses' and instantly jumps to the conclusion that not only did they want to talk to him, but that they noticed his "magnificent mega glasses" and would like to hear a lecture on how they were scientifically made.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rZmmaf9bhD8&t=144s here's a link to watch it, its worth it :D He certainly picks up on small details, but tends to miss the bigger picture sometimes, which is fun because I believe archie tends to do the opposite. Perhaps his mega glasses are actually designed to reflect this, because they work like horse blinders, and keep maxie looking straight ahead (trust me, I've made a pair of these, and you cannot see someone standing to your immediate side). Looking straight ahead is also relevant to his life goal, of ensuring the bright future of humanity, and as he says: "propel humanity to greater heights of progress and evolution." And that concludes my infodump regarding this one little bio that is no longer available without the wayback machine, and I just wanted to share it with any other Maxie fans out there :D Next I think I might tackle the bigger topic of how Archie and Maxie have so many fun contrasts in personality and more. and then maaayyybe I'll feel comfortable enough sharing my headcannons and theories. But only if people want more lol, I am not good at writing big posts :>

[cavegirlpoems]

So we all hate DnD, but I am kinda curious what are the actually bad ttrpgs?

I know that 3,5e and pf got bloated even more than 5e did, FATAL is a meme, but what else?

I think Chronicles of Darkness tell you the system's gonna be a sleek, streamlined narrative system and then immediately bukakke's pointless fiddly complexity all over everything, to an extent that I never see most STs actually use half the subsystems (does anybody actually like the Doors mechanic?) but also you can utterly break the game if you combine the right merits and powers in a way that I really hope isn't intentional. WoD games all have slightly clunky, lame mechanics but at least in OWoD the mechanics take an extremely simulationist approach of simply modeling the fiction, balance be damned; CoD throws out the simulationism in favour of abstraction and narrativism, but perversely only makes the mechanics more complex, and deploys more weird dice tricks so eyeballing probabilities gets much harder. Everything is fiddly, everything has specific exceptions, and everything good is gated behind weird prerequisites and builds as if the devs thought they were making pathfinder. If you're some sort of weirdo who actually prefers the CoD settings, run them using OWoD mechanics for the love of god.

Shadowrun 6e's character generation is so complex that people have created third party apps that are basically mandatory in order to wrangle it into shape. It's notoriously complex in play with basically every action requiring multiple steps of calculation, to the extent that 'you need to do calculus if you set off a grenade next to a wall' is a meme; when I played we simply never used grenades because we were all to scared of trying to make sense of the mechanics. However, in play a slightly minmaxed mage can make every other party member obsolete by simply summoning an extremely powerful spirit to solve every task. I hated every minute of it.

Pokemon Tabletop Adventures uses d20-based mechanics for trainers, where you roll a d20 vs armour class to hit, and then roll some damage. It also recreates the mechanics of the pokemon video games largely verbatim. Its expected that trainers and pokemon can and will interact despite using totally different systems, and trainers can even learn pokemon moves. Some classes are good at things like 'capturing and training pokemons' while others are good at 'fighting pokemons themselves with martial arts' or 'winning contests' or 'being a film noir detective', but you only get XP or mechanical support for the first ones. Some classes get abilities like 'perfect mind-control, no save' while others get abilities like 'you're better at growing berries'. You are expected to calculate the stats of every pokemon individually, from scratch, for every encounter. Encounters typically feature 5-10 wild pokemons often of multiple species and levels, alongside 3-5 player characters and up to six pokemons per PC. Its a fractal spreadsheet nightmare. Unlike shadowrun, the app to make this insanity playable doesn't exist. Good god. Send help.

On the other end of the spectrum from stupid fiddly crunch, Ten Candles is responsible for the single most miserable ttrpg experience of my life. It claims to be a narrative game which gives players the ability to define the fiction as they go, but fails at this because the GM has secret knowledge that other players aren't privy to, meaning that it invites players to be creatively vulnerable when they have narrative authority, with a chance that they might get their contributions unilaterally overruled due to information they had no way of knowing. Since the game ends with everybody dying automatically, the game inherently leans on the GM to railroad in what's meant to be a colaberative narrative experience. And finally, on a purely practical level, the clever conciet of playing by candlelight and extinguishing candles as the game progresses means that by half-way in you can't read your fucking character sheets or dice, which is less spooky and more irritating. God I hate ten candles.

[kosmicdream]

The FATE of FEAST FOR A KING

.. and Nasty Red Dogs… 

And some other miscellaneous thoughts about comics, writing, and time.... AND ENDINGS...

============= 

As I’m approaching 10 years on FFAK and NRD is currently 5, I’ve been reflecting a lot on How far this journey with comics has taken me and how far I still have yet to go. For those unaware, my first webcomic was actually Eggshells, which started in 2011, but i only started posting pages publicly in 2013. It too is unfinished, but its planned for 7 chapters. (I’m currently working on chapter 5, which probably will come out early next year.) I have 9 ongoing comics I’m working on. NINE!! 3 of those are FFAK related. (FFAK, After Dinner Treat, and the prequel series “Help.”) It is so many comics though. And beyond that! I have two other stories I’ve been working on for the past few years in secret, one being Nice Blue Cats, which I might still draw as a comic someday.. As well as a series of “one shots” that is meant to be its own collection. Slugmom and “The Teacher & The Fairy” are part of these one shot collections. Which, uh, it was designed to help me practice writing short stories. Which TT&TF is now going to be three parts long, and roughly 300 pages. So I guess that’s short enough…? Ha.. laughs… Anyway, as I was saying.. Sometimes I’m sure, readers might wonder. “Do you ever feel overwhelmed, with so many projects Kosmic?” Yeah dude. I sure fucking do. I got 9 of them! That’s more than a full pokemon team of projects that are potentially a decade + of work. A couple of them already are a decade old/older at this point. (Praeymoon is actually one of my oldest-lasting projects, even tho its first chapter only finally released in 2023.. I first attempted to draw ch1 back in 2016, but was unable to finish it and scrapped the “full color” angle i was trying then. ) All my current ongoing comic projects are as follows: Feast for a King, Nasty Red Dogs, Eggshells, The Teacher & the Fairy, Replacer, The Eyes of Miasma, FFAK: After Dinner Treat, FFAK: Help, are all written. The only one which isnt fully written is Praeymoon, which I don’t mind because the way that story is organized is almost more of a sandbox-fantasy world of mini stories. I’ll be honest, if you havent heard of Replacer or The Eyes of Miasma, I don’t blame you- its not that i don’t like those stories. They just kind of are the “most neglected” comics yet I’m also kind of amazed they exist at all, like I DONT know how I found the time to draw over 100 pages for both of them. They also have fully written outlines and all things considered, are probably only going to be under 400-500 pages in length. But that’s still a decent amount of work there. Its been ten years since I more or less started making webcomics… and as I plan, and try to calculate all my projects for the next 10 years, my main priority at the moment is well.. Finishing all of these fucking stories one way or another. Its hard! I don’t know if I can as I put way too much on my plate. But at the same time like.. Whatever. I could easily drop most of them, if I felt inclined to - but I don’t. They are my library of work, and I’ve sort of made an artist oath to myself that I will see as many of them to the end as I can. I’m excited that three are very close to its end. (Nasty Red Dogs, The Teacher & the Fairy, and Eggshells.) After that well.. I’ll see what I can cross off my list next once I get there.. That’s still going to take years to get those done. But hopefully not too many. 

[Spoilers for potential LENGTHS of FFAK/NRD.. And other things.. I speak very transparently about writing and working on comics here AND including my thoughts on ENDINGS.. You’ve been warned]

I’m comfortable enough sharing that the fairy comic is 3 parts, Eggshells is 7 chapters, but when it comes to FFAK/NRD.. Its much harder to give an estimate, or if sharing those things will only be disappointing or annoying to hear about.. If you have ever been around me for more than 10 minutes, i am constantly talk about the “length left” on these projects a lot anyway. At night, i count them in my head. In the day, I write little lists as if I’ve forgotten the names of them.. They are MY LIST.

 But for those who do not know and wish to, NRD is likely going to end with 10 chapters. I have extended this in the past, so it could still change.. but it only really has gotten “longer” due to pacing of scenes rather than the actual content. And Honestly, it was paced out specifically to avoid this next chapter. Not that I didn’t want to draw it, its because i was Scared to do it.. Why? Because there’s cars I have to draw in it. And dogs. I have drawn those things before, at least once or twice. But I do not enjoy drawing cars or dogs. Dogs are okay now, but i hate that they have legs. Dont give me references, i have those. Its just how my brain is, with those fuckign legs and how there’s four of them. I know practice makes perfect. Or do-able. I have drawn amost 1000 pages of NRD, i dont remember how they bend and i’ve forgiven myself for knowing there’s just some things god cannot do, which is to give kosmic the ability to look at a dog leg and understand. Anyway. Because of this reason, somehow, finishing NRD with it only possibly being 4 more chapters, still feels harder than finishing ALL of FFAK - which (drumroll) might be .. only around 10 or 12 chapters left. Yes, you heard me- for the second AND third arc. 10 or 12 more. Will that also change? Probably!!!!!! Like, yes… its been 9 years and I’ve completed a lot more than just 10 chapters of comics in that time.. But wrapping up a story is way harder and I dont know what that’s like..yet! But i feel still confident that i will. I mean, i don’t really have any other choice than to experience it. I used to recoil and fall apart just emotionally contemplating finishing FFAK. my FUCKING baby. My joy. You mean that has to end?? NEVER. My attachment to it and the characters was incomparable to anything else I had done, and in my mind ever WILL make… (and that is still true.) But.. I’m okay with that now and I actually look forward to seeing how it could end up. Even if its bad! 

Its kind of weird to say, I just don’t really think it will be.. super good? Like.. it could be? I don’t know how readers will react. I dont even know how I feel about the whole thing.. I have felt so many feelings about this comic already, now I’m kind of.. Past it in a new stage. Zen like peace almost. There’s just.. so much that I wanted to PUT in FFAK and so much i could STILL put in. But I kind of just am okay with what i wrote, does that even make sense? The whole comic has felt like such a fluke to me, from the very start. And I managed to accidentally make so many great things in it I don’t actually understand sometimes. And my dreams for the comic has been nearly limitless. I couldn’t possibly contain all the feelings I’ve had over this story over the many years I have been making it, and all the incredible narrative outcomes I could see the characters going in.. the possibilities, the parallels.. The anime music videos..  I would NOT compare my writing style to GRRM, I haven’t read his books. but I can’t help but feel a bit like a weird baby version of him with the amount of cast members I have to push around and draw.. And I want to be clear. If FFAK was written as a book, it wouldn’t happen. I cannot write books. I do not think writing books is easier/faster than making comics, but sometimes it is hard to have to draw everyone. Point is, I understand the reality of a long-term comic project now, I have numbers and logs to prove it  and my range. And I’m fairly consistent, even in my low days. So.. in recent years my writing style has.. has changed to accommodate.. Those.. General Realities i’ve observed in myself. 

That’s why the second arc excites me. It has a lot of uhh, urgency that underlies it. You might have already noticed a change in the tone in chapter 16, which I’ve been working on for almost a year now. (I mean, I’ve been working on the written version for.. LOL.. much longer.) Maybe you haven’t! It could all just be from my own POV with how differently i feel that I delegate time to characters now. I did not start “writing” FFAK until chapter 10, and then i did not really start WRITING writing ffak until about.. Honestly, i want to say as late as 2019. It TOOK SO LONG you guys. I dont even know how many fucking thousands of pages of madness word documents I’ve got, with revision after revision and trying to list, contain, every possibly plotline… character backstory.. Blah blah blah.. Ive cut it down so much its impressive only to me. I don’t remember my lore anymore , and i love it. My readers probably know my lore better, and I don’t love it. Except when it benefits me. Then Its good. I would not describe myself as a RUTHLESS cut THROAT author, im actually too way sentimental to really let go of anyone. That’s why it took me so long to kill off Rock, but also because I wanted spoon to look really sexy and evil and that’s hard to do sometimes when I cant remember what half side he is. And when he was flipping around, I had to actually make a paper doll for him so i could TRY .. TRY to draw his arm on the correct side. Sometimes I didn’t. I just let it go if the drawing is good enough and i let it be a fun game for the readers to catch. But anyway, That’s why characters like Aeschylus are still around. Now that time has passed, I kind of regret it. Rome was right.. I dont need Aeschylus here and I’m mad he brought his friend Randall too. That being said, they’re some of my favorite characters in this arc even if they’re totally useless. In general, i have tried my best to not repeat all my writing sins and all my regrets of arc 1. I would not have been able to do this without the help of NRD to help get me to see that I can get attached and motivated to write new stories. When I hit my writing block in 2016/2017, it almost broke FFAK. FFAK still continued, but it also didn’t. But i was patient, and i worked through it.. And now I look forward to the ends of my comics, not because I want them to end but I’m very deeply excited for all the new opportunities my imagination to go to. I don’t know what that will be like. I don’t know how long it will still take me to get there, but I have it on [digital] paper and it does feel good to see that. Its affirming. I feel like i have a clear mission and I feel strong enough to really do it and commit to it. The second arc has barely started but in my heart I’ve made peace with the ending, whatever it might actually result as. 

Plus if I finish it and its so bad, I’m sure that will be inspiring in itself! People might actually write fanfics!! I think a lot of readers are NOT going to enjoy the ships, for one. The MEAN greedy part of me hopes they don’t. That’s the most ruthless part of my writing to me is the ship choices. Oh! My evil mind. I mean theres no possible way to please everyone, or even myself, but there is a possible way to displease a lot of people. Including myself. So that’s kind of the route I find myself drawn to. Why? Because it gets me out of the hole of like.. I dunno, being stuck. 

I used to write out a lot of big posts but over the years, I’ve kinda stopped. Mostly bc they were honestly really repetitive..or about lore that didn’t truly matter too much… That hasn’t really changed. This post is more or less “im still working on it, everyone! Just hang tight! Wow it’ll be a crazy wild ride” but it also is something I wanted to write to myself as words of encouragement. This has been a tough year. Like so tough that its hard to think about. But its very nice to feel like, i guess, my drive for my stories hasn’t gone anywhere. If anything, i really feel like i’ve gone through the mourning and ego death of “not being able to write a thing how you want” and now I’ve made total peace with it. Its just gonna be what it is, and I like that actually. When my life is tough, my comics at the moment serve as a place of hope for me - and assurance that I can survive through tough years. That’s the message they have ultimately given me, finished or not. And… I honestly don’t think of FFAK or NRD as my masterpieces or anything, but i know they might very well be the only stories people will know of when they think of me. If they think of me! So I wanna do a complete job with those. Rest assured, it’ll get there. I cant make big promises about all the comics I work on… even the bonus comics for FFAK, but at least those main two are my main priorities. That has not changed. THE FIRE is still in me. Even if FFAK took a like.. Mental.. 5 year hiatus its back baby. 

I’m about 30 pages in to my 50 page script for chapter 16, so I guess it’ll be around 300-400 pages more before its done. Things are picking up speed! So it could be less. I am also preparing for the monster that is the 7th nasty red dogs chapter. I cannot stress ENOUGH that this next chapter, I have put off since chapter 4. Yes, I’ve actually buffed the story out to be longer than it intended, just to avoid drawing it. I even put a horse guy in there, I never draw horses because those ALSO have legs but they’re worse than dog legs. And, its not that i didn’t want to draw this part of the comic! But I didn’t think i could do it. It intimidated me. It still does, but, I’m gonna do it already. I know chapters 8-10 will be hard too but like…eh… I know in my heart its gonna really be about 7 for me. It always has been about 7 to me.. 2024 will be a big year for my comics for sure, just because of that alone I think. Not only will I have chapter 16 done, as the first step of the 2nd arc and a new adventure of my apocalyptic wormy drama, I’ll be facing my fears of the dog variety. Its TIME. 

I’m so happy people have stuck around for my work, or shared it with others, even if they’re a strange mess. Its interesting to see, who comes and goes. I still enjoy refreshing my comments every morning when I wake up, and right before I go to bed. Its comforting.

My closing thoughts on this. I don’t HATE the ending of FFAK. I… like it! Its an ending. But I LOVE the ending to NRD. i think that ones legit good, i hope. With FFAK, part of me kinda hopes that turning up the pressure on myself of proceeding anyway will help the story. I don’t really know, or expect the ending to change though LOL…. Maybe i’ll come up with something better, but it will be too late so I cant do it or something, and then we can ALL write fanfics together of something else. Then sometimes I think about GUNNM and how the first ending was retconned but then last order was like? Basically the first ending again? I dont know actually, its hard to remember. THATS NOT GOING TO HAPPEN BTW. Also the ending is not everyone dies, even though that ending is fun and tempting. I didn’t do it, because end of evangelion already exists and its got a great song to go along with it too. YES it is also tempting to have someone go “WELL That was A FEAST.. For a KING” as the like final line, but I.. it wont wont. I prommy i take the ending seriously.

The reason I wanted to write all this, with webcomics, I think in general too people are so scared about writing their big comics that take 328523895235 years and the ending being bad. I see so many webcomics just, kinda die before the finale.. Which I totally understand, But I just.. Wanna show everyone that its much better and much more satisfying to just write the ending even if its a fucking disaster LOL. Because ultimately, its a webcomic. I don’t even know how to spell but people read mine! And so.. If theres anything I feel like i can promise and deliver to the world of the internet/my readers, is this big fucking disaster mess.. But it will end someday! And I’ll miss it. I hope readers will too, when that day comes (?) in probably another… 10 years…. idk.... BUT UNTIL THEN.. I hope you’ll enjoy the rest of chapter 16!!!

HAPPY NEW YEAR!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

-Kosmic Dream

[subwaytostardew]

▽ Subway to Stardew - Emmet 8-Heart Event ▽

This plays after getting at least 8 hearts with Emmet and entering the Railroad between 9AM - 4PM on a Thursday after viewing his 7 heart event.

You recieve this letter when you reach 8 hearts with Emmet!

Commentary and progress under the readmore.

▷ Station Steward Thylak

I DID NOT REALIZE THAT THIS EVENT WOULD BE THAT LONG... I could have sworn it was around 14 minutes max! I was worried that the battle stuff went by too quickly! It's almost 30 minutes long! And that's with me clicking away faster! Emmet really meant it when he said he wanted to spend all the livelong day together...

I thought it was going to be roughly 18 minutes. NOPE. WOOPS. This what happens when you write possibly too much.

We are bad at making short events. Vanilla events are around 1-3 minutes long. A day in Stardew lasts 14 minutes and 10 seconds. I would not recommend trying to play this mod spoiler free on multiplayer because time does not freeze and you will die if you don't skip the events. I wouldn't want to shorten the events either... Cutting down their infodumps would just be wrong.

We had a few requests to have a battle event which made me 😅 because I personally couldn't imagine that going well (truth over ideals...). This event was partially made to shut that idea down. The whole tunnel scene is mostly me trying to write an in-story reason as to why there won't be a battle with the farmer against Ingo... Emmet is competitive! This is not just limited to battles but extends to being your best friend! Behind the scenes... I'm just too tired to write out more battles. I actually really dislike single battle format. I'm not making an Ingo battle event. You already have three games to battle him in. I refuse to make more battle events for the time being.

I say that but there's another half-finished double battle event between submas that I switched tracks from to work on Emmet's 8 heart event... I'll finish that eventually.

Anyways... the creation process did not go by quickly at all either. I sure do have a lot to say on that matter. I do all my coding in google docs (terrible, I know) and so far we have had to make 3 seperate documents becuase things start to break at around 40 pages. The document before Emmet's 8 heart event made it to 64 pages before I abandoned it for a new document.

The longest document we have is around 80 pages along. Which usually contain the draft scripts of multiple events. code documents however take up a lot more since it's basically a giant wall of text. So when Emmet's 8 heart event started to slow down the current code document (the third iteration). We had to give the event its own space.

Emmet's 8 heart event ended up being 36 pages long alone! Also if you didn't know, Stardew's event format doesn't allow for line breaks so I have been staring at a 36 page wall of text for weeks. I plan to upload a video compiling all the different options later because I feel like all of the "good" options for battle... don't quite make sense in the context of the rest of the story. The farmer is supposed to not be good at battle and lose because they got overwhelmed with information. As the one writing out all the battle options though, I can't bring myself to act like I'm bad at battling. The winning options are extra silly just to justify a loss and because I couldn't bring myself to lie about Wild Charge not being a guaranteed OHKO on Archeops either. Especially since Emmet brings out damage calculations in a few of the options.

On that topic, all of the battle options play out accurately in a real double battle! I tested. Every. Single. Path. In Pokemon Showdown between the halves of Emmet's team.

I had nightmares of reliving this same battle over and over because that's all I did when I was awake. Make it stopppppp 😭

The lines about them practicing were references to me actually simulating everything in Showdown! Emmet's frustration is also based on how making this event took over my brain so now I struggle to comprehend how someone who doesn't know what to do in this battle would feel... Thank you Kade for helping me with that part ^^;;;

Your welcome =3

I actually enjoyed the Pokémon Showdown part - when it comes to Pokémon Battles, I have dabbled a little bit into the competitive side of things. Or at least the massive game of 4D Chess... trying to predict your opponent etc. Bait them into making a mistake, etc. There was a good time where we did nothing but Pokémon Battles for a night. And it was fun.

I am in no way good at competitive side of things - (I lose lot but that's okay.) especially in the double battle format. Single Battles I could do. (Though once again, I'm average at best) However I think the most memorable battle I ever had was back in Pokémon X and Y, where I managed to chip away and stall a Mega Aggron with a Umbreon.. And I think Umbreon was my last Pokémon but I kept using Moonlight to keep my health up. My kid self was super surprised and ecstatic that I beaten the odds... but whenever I do Pokémon Showdown I'm either testing battle stuff or making teams. I'm addicted to team compositions and doing a combination of different Pokémon even if it's not the competitive Meta....

I have the choices sorted into good/bad routes in my mind so in most of the routes, Emmet criticizes the player's decisions based on type advantage, STAB, and target. I was torn between the best and worst options for this recording but thanks to Kade's input, you get to see Durant ramming into Emmet instead of him getting mad at you for conducting Shadow Claw on Galvantula.

Battling Emmet as a first time trainer is not going to go well! Not only is he too competitive and he refuses to let you win (unlike Ingo), he pretty much sets you up for failiure. I'm sorry Emmet but Galvantula's stats are not intended for making her a physical attacker (emphasis on the Egg Move at what cost...).

Not to mention... Emmet is a Battle Facility Head. And you don't get to battle the Subway Bosses in the mainline games unless you have a somewhat decent team halfway through the game. Even still! They can both wipe the floor with you if you're not aware that they are using battle items...

Though I interpret Emmet not going easy on someone as him challenging them to push themselves and exceed expectations. Both Ingo and Emmet as characters encourage others in their own way, Ingo through words and Emmet I believe through his actions. Though he also can say some encouraging things.

Not the most encouraging if you compare their quotes pages... Customer service and communication isn't exactly his forte... But Emmet wants you to do your best and win against him! He likes seeing serious battlers like him! He just won't let you win unless if you push yourself to do your best. You'll have to. He doesn't really have the most beginner-friendly approach...

Considering you the Farmer, have no idea what a Pokémon even is. (You're practically learning everything from Ingo, Emmet, Elesa etc.) The fact you get challenged to a Battle because Emmet wants to share his interests with you - to have you better understand Pokémon.

He just struggles with the fact that, he is essentially challenging someone with no real battle experience and it's a Double Battle at that. Controlling two Pokémon at once?! Think about the effort it takes to command one Pokémon. We all seen the Anime and how trainers struggle to connect with their partners because they're new. They're just starting. They aren't going to be Battle Facility levels of skill.

Not to mention that Emmet is a little deprived in the valley and hasn't really battled any other new passengers in quite some time. At most, he battled Iris once when she came to visit, Ingo (who's Pokemon are optimized for countering/pissing him off), and himself (I had the mental image of him sitting in the field practicing for this event like an old man playing chess against himself in a park). He's a little too far gone to fully understand what a beginner would think in this situation other than mayyyybe it would take a moment to catch them up to speed. (I would know... I swear those option paths rewired my brain...)

After inputting all of their data into Showdown, I had actually forgotten that Galvantula and Durant are Emmet's Doubles Line team while Eelektross and Archeops are the Super Doubles Line team when deciding the matchups. (Been a while since they were in the Battle Subway huh...) Story-wise, I was thinking that Emmet should be with his ace and that he wouldn't really trust anyone else with Archeops since... he has higher support needs (depression bird 💔). Eelektross and Archeops are paired up because of Gastro Acid and Defeatist. I was thinking that Galvantula and Durant are a bit more beginner-friendly; they can take a loss a bit more easilly (a little less so in Galvantula's case... she's a hater). The farmer had already met Durant earlier in the 4-heart event so he'd volunteer to return the favor of fighting for you. Once you win his trust, he's more than happy to help. As for Galvantula... She's testing to see if she can trust her clingy child with you.

I'm excited to dive into the Pokémon NPC stories... Durant and Excadrill especially.

Durant was originally going to have Choice Scarf instead of Quick Claw to help narrow down the options. It was a pain reorganizing my notes and options all over again to lump not only move choices but turn order in mind. My notes were a mess.

Durant and Galvantula are a very luck-based combination so it was ultimately easier to write the different option paths with that in mind since Stardew's event format is verrrrrrrrrrrry linear. All of the options need to merge back into the same event (well... besides the option to refuse his friendship/battle which ends the event in the tunnel). Durant has lowered accuracy while Galvantula has higher critical hit ratios, I could write the battles based on their luck which is great because I wanted to force a loss.

I thought it would be a little too... reductive (it sure would reduce the amount of content >.>) and unrealistic for the player to impress Emmet with a victory on their first battle. Emmet sees this battle as a test on if you can follow his train of thought and be a good match for him because he's a little bit dependent on you for emotional regulation. He kind of expects you as his favorite passenger to have twin telepathy like Ingo since that's his standard operating procedure. You won't. Because you're not Ingo. You're just some weird farmer he got attached to. With the setup of a battle, I wanted this event to develop the farmer and Emmet's relationship to show that they aren't exactly perfect for each other (and Will say things that can be wrongly misinterpreted) but ultimately they will put in the effort to communicate and make things work. They won't have the best communication! But it's there.

While Ingo has a proper library confession, this event doubles as Emmet's "confession" of sorts. Emmet is already pretty openly affectionate by this point and I wanted to make it somewhat ambiguous as to whether or not his attachment to you is romantic or strictly platonic. To him, it doesn't really matter, but he does want you all to himself. He's not fond of sharing!

But... While Emmet's event may be more platonic in intent, you can still reject him. It's a lot harsher than Ingo's because refusing to even let him try to be a better friend for you is pretty harsh in itself. Ingo's is mostly the choice of whether or not you want to send him back to 6 hearts for more dialogue variety (it's really easy to miss dialogue when you try to max out their hearts as soon as possible! We're making lines for every day, season, and heart level.) Rejecting Emmet sends you back to 2 hearts and overrides his daily dialogue for the day with him asking if you're still friends, apologizing, and then getting too upset to say anything more.

Anyways!

From the start, I wanted Emmet to be like Nemona; awkward in their attachment, somewhat intimidating in their obsession/competitiveness, and thinks of the player as their savior from loneliness. He wants to be the best friend you have because you're the best friend he has. It's only fair. Best rival for life, favorite passenger, same thing.

The mountain pass events were actually made because Emmet's original schedule included him waiting around near the bushes there like Nemona stalking the player on their gym journey. NPCs actually can't path there so when he did, he was just deleted from the save!

I also stumbled across a bug back when I made the very first introduction event where a question loops unless if you pick a certain option. I kept that with Emmet forcing you to keep battling with him in mind as a slight reference to how Nemona doesn't let you say no to being her "best rival for life". This question also makes SMAPI hate you!

Gotta love Pokémon's false sense of 'Sure you have a choice. Your choice is always YES.'

There's probably a more fitting flower for Emmet outside of poppies. I just looked up every flower in Stardew (some of them aren't real...) and their meanings in flower language to come to the conclusion of poppies. The meanings in Emmet's event refer to the white poppy in particular. White. Rest. Oblivion. It fits. Good enough. It was a bit difficult to find more on the flower language of poppies in English (particularly the "Oblivion" part) so I resorted to Japanese sites for more information.

In English, the meaning of "Rest" seems to precede every other meaning. Poppies are used in death memorials. Emmet and the farmer did accidentally develop a shared theme of dying (overwork exhaustion, slimes, the mines, etc... Emmet can't get a break. I'm sorry.) but I wasn't sure if Kade was okay with the theme of death being emphasized. With that in mind, I was stunned when I that saw that her first battle map draft included a graveyard. The implication that Emmet picked flowers from a memorial site...

In my mind - the area is an old train stop in between the desert area and the forest/mountains that lead into Pelican Town. Also figured there would be an abandon farm - considering how Pelican Town is struggling it makes sense that potentially other places are not in best of shape either.

The graveyard is possibly dead relatives of whatever family or farmer made their life near the rails. Of course a lot of time has passed... So much so that nature has taken back what was theirs in the first place.

I always make up stories when having a location in mind and this area parallels with the tunnel Ingo takes you through to stargaze around 10 hearts. That area being an abandon coal mining operation.... Coal, Wood, etc. was used to powered steam trains so makes sense for there to be a source for it. I'm not the best when it comes to filling up Tiled Maps with decor - but I at least put down enough for Thylak to come in and make it more fitting for Stardew

The battlefield underwent quite a few revisions, one was having the battle area be more centered, and changing the old warehouse/worker area to be more like a train repair station with a water stop. I wanted it to feel like a place where Emmet goes to keep himself busy when he's told to take a break from working on the station.

Here's the final map! The battle area had to be shrunken down to fit in an event. More grass was added because I kept losing track of Joltik in the dirt. There's more flowers for Emmet to observe the quality of and pick tge best ones as gifts that he's too nervous to give the farmer until they wilt and dry. Poppies by the gravestones, of course!

I also did attempt to make a proper scrapbook sprite for when I eventually have Emmet give you his gift, but I never got around to implementing it properly since... I'm not familliar with adding custom items and its implementation changes in the 1.6 update.

Despite having access to the modding alpha, I've been procrastinating on migrating to 1.6 since HD Portraits isn't supported yet (I know... 1.6 releases in 3 weeks...).

WOO 1.6 WE ARE NO WHERE NEAR READY FOR ALL THE STUFF THAT POSSIBLY GOING TO BREAK. LOL.

Until next time! Thank you for reading!

[awellboiledicicle]

As someone who did the whole college thing, Arven being a humanities student that has mmmm nowhere near enough credits to even ponder graduation yet is hilarious.

Not because of his age, because learning happens whenever.

No the funny is the mental image of him just taking cooking class after cooking class that don’t add to his degree... for the sake of making hella good sandwiches.

This is a man that will be in his 7th year of study and finally take a math class and the protag finds him slumped at a table in the library, forehead pressed to the math book, because he’s trying to osmosis basic algebra into his brain. Can he convert measurements from all over the world into one he can use? Yes. Can he probably make some kickass technical food? Yup. Can he remember the quadratic equation? No. No he cannot.

This is a man that asks the Gang for help doing his ‘how to calculate your pokemons health and level’ equation homework and ends up convinced Nemona is speaking Kantonian after the fifth time she goes on a tangent about how types effect how you calculate damage in attacks. 

This is a man that ropes his friends into making flashcards with him for History and feels confident only to promptly only remember the kind of tapas the gang had while studying. He passes on virtue of how much he’s read before the Titan adventure.

This is a guy that gets around to his other credits expressly because he realized his pals were getting closer to graduating and then has a crushing realization that he’s the only one that doesn’t have a set plan for post-graduation. Because Nemona has league stuff, and could well be working as a battle ambassador to other leagues or for more mundane stuff since she also does paperwork stuff. Penny’s going to be working cybersec for the League. Protag could do anything from league stuff, to working with the academy, to just straight up pokemon research given the pokedex. It’s not set, but it’s options. He’s just... the sandwich guy. The others point out he could be a chef, or keep traveling around with Mabosstiff.

I feel like he’d end up working with Kofu if only because i like to imagine Kofu taking him under his wing, which Arven would probably really appreciate.

[spar-kie]

Do You Have The Time?

A Thorough Dissection of What Past Aevium Means For You

So I've been reading through @/jazz-kitty's rejuv playthrough (not actually tagging them bc this will contain spoilers for shit they've not gotten to but if you're reading this Jazz, keep up the good work! It's super fun to read through your playthrough :>), and I've realized we got some concrete dates (in a fashion), meaning that, we might be able to figure out when Storm 9 happens, within a couple months! As well as some other details.

Anyways even if you don't want to hear my rambling about dates, there's gonna be something I really want to share underneath the cut, I'll put some big bold header text so you know where to scroll to.

Now, it all starts here, with Melia's Mimikyu, which we are there to see caught, giving us a concrete date, October 10th, 198X.

Now you may be asking yourself, but Sparkie, the screenshot says 1984? That's because my buddy Nym, who is on the dev team, stated that to its memory, the year is calculated based off your system date. Meaning that the year will change depending on the year you play Rejuv in. However, Jazz's post that I got this from does mention in the tags how the rest of Melia's pokemon are caught from 1981-1983. I had an old save file kicking around that was near Blacksteeple, and checking "Emma's" Pokemon in that I can also say that these dates are variable based off system time. Being 198X-3 through 198X-1. For simplicity's sake we're going to be based off of System Time being the year 2024, mostly because shit like 198X-1 is hard to read. But just keep in mind that as Rejuv is set in 202X these dates have about a 10 year range they can vary by, this will come back later, take note of this.

I want to establish before we go forward, you can also see how this works for yourself rather easily, if you go into the past and catch a pokemon, the date it's caught at will be your system time, minus 40 years. This, combined with some plot elements such as Melia's birthday being after she catches this Mimikyu confirms that the past segments take place exactly 40 years before present day, with the Time Crystals not sending you back or forth to a specific time and date, but rather a set amount of time forward and back (in this case 40 years).

Anyways, this also lets us know that Storm-9 happened a little over 39 years ago as of the game's start, and at some point during the game's time span we will hit the 40 year anniversary. I always thought it was 50 years before the game's start, I don't remember if I got that from somewhere in game or it's just one of them things I got in my head, but between the wiki and a reply from Zumi on one of my tweets it's actually 40. If anyone has the same misconception I had, I hope that clears it up.

But through what we can gleam in game, we can actually tell (roughly) when Storm-9 happens! Judging by the fact we can still visit the past at the end of the .karma files, Storm-9 has not hit the past yet. It's going to happen very soon, but it's not there yet. Thankfully, we have a very concrete date on when that would be, December 25th, 2024, as the Xen Raid is just one day later. Meaning, that as of December 25th, 1984, the Aevium region is still fine. This combined with the fact that there is a note on the door of the house occupied by the A-Gang near Hyoshi City that says they'll be out until the Summer means that they are going to be at school until late May, early June, assuming it runs at similar time frames to a school in the U.S.. Meaning that, at some point, most likely in Early 1985, but possibly for about a week in Late 1984, is when Storm 9 hits. You could extrapolate more (i.e. no teachers/other students in the academy during the Interceptor's Nightmare Realm means people might've been on break, meaning it was Late 1984 and the gang was just hanging out at the academy) but as that's explicitly stated to be not entirely accurate to how that day actually was, I'm not going to do that.

HI IF YOU JUST WANT THE FUNNY INFORMATION SCROLL HERE

Anyways, now that you've heard me ramble about dates like your history teacher, we get to the fun part! That being I get to tell you about the A gang! That being we know the protag choices are 17-18 years old, and given that we know Storm 9 happened in either very Late 1984 or Early 1985, we can assume that the A-Gang were those ages during Storm-9. Meaning their birth years could range between 1966-1968, placing them firmly in Gen X, meaning they are chronologically old enough to be some of the people reading this's parents!

But that's not all, do you remember how I stated that Rejuv took place in 202X, meaning it could be any year of the 2020s? And thus, the past segments take place in any year 40 years before that, in the 1980s? If we were to say, put the year Rejuv takes place in in 2020, then that would mean the A Gang would be born in the years 1962-1964.

The general consensus on baby boomers is that they were born between 1946-1964.

The A Gang could, conceivably, be baby boomers.

Have a nice night everyone.

[avocadotoasting]

Ｈｏｎｅｙｍｏｏｎ Ｂｌｕｅｓ

Blue Oak x Chubby!Fem!Reader | 9.2k | NSFW

Synopsis: It's too much trouble to cancel the perfect honeymoon when it's so close, even though your groom got cold feet. So you go to Alola anyway, numb and heartbroken. Unlucky for you, a rather passionate, nosy, and chatty stranger interrupts your plans, and you allow him to--if he can see through a wager.

CW: Alcohol Use

Note: This is written with the author's headcanon/speculation in mind that Blue is a young adult in the Alola Pokemon games (S/M, US/UM.)

NSFW Tags under the cut.

NSFW Tags: Cunnilingus, Squirting, Domesticity Kink, Breeding Kink Implied.

⋆ ʜᴏɴᴇʏᴍᴏᴏɴ ʙʟᴜᴇꜱ ⋆

“Holdin’ this chair for anyone?”

It was inevitable someone, sooner or later, interrupted your poolside appointment with meditation. Your generously boozy mai tai gently cradled you to a comfortable sleep under the Alola sun as your equally comforting lounge chair kept you company on your first full day at the Hano Grand Resort, as you flew in sometime yesterday afternoon. You felt yourself sigh involuntarily at being woken up from a peaceful, dreamless nap to stir awake. A silhouette blocked the sun before you could even reach a hand up to shield your eyes from the cloudless summer day. A silhouette indeed—Tall-ish. Male. Still too bright behind him to gather more information.

“Which chair?” you mustered out with a tired, hoarse voice. You noticed the silhouette gesture vaguely to his right. Your left.

Not that it mattered.

“This one,” he answered, “Would you rather me take the other one? I’m cool with that.”

You gave a nonchalant wave before you could reach for your half-full, sun-warmed mai tai.

“Doesn’t make a difference. Take them both if you need.”

He scoffed, sitting on the original chair offered to your left. You didn’t bother to look. Men have only proven to be a waste of your time lately. What good would looking do to save a canceled honeymoon? A canceled wedding?

It did flare a grating, irate sensation in the pit of your stomach to have your much-needed alone time interrupted so suddenly.

“No difference, huh?”

You rolled your eyes at his rather smarmy response. If he was going to bother your sacred pool time, you may find yourself opting for the overpriced cabana after all.

“Aren’t you taking the chair?” you asked.

“Nah. Yeah. Yes and no. I’m sitting here.”

“Nowhere else to sit?” you pried further, disapproval making itself known in your voice.

“More families are coming out to the poolside and bein’ annoying. Kinda wanna drink in peace and take a seat next to another adult before I’m stuck next to a crying baby or something.”

“You could try someone else.”

You heard him scoff again.

“Thought it didn’t make a difference.”

“It doesn’t.”

“You’re sure not acting that way.”

His insistence on being a bother was enough to force you to spare him a glance, and you suddenly wished you hadn’t. A tall-ish glass of water laid beside you–the very last sort of thing you wanted to see–fluffed and styled hair with an attitude that matched his tone, big, brown eyes half-lidded from the heavy, warm rush given to him by the iced drink in his hand—you realized you were faced with a small challenge. The permanent smirk on his lips was a blind spot for the first round of your avoidance of all temptations.

Perhaps confrontation was the better option for the likes of him, charming brown eyes and all.

“It doesn’t,” you repeated with finality, meeting his gaze in return.

He took a calculated sip of his drink, his eyebrow piqued in more interest than you noticed (or wanted to notice) before. You suddenly became aware of how much of yourself was exposed in your darling little two piece, how much of yourself may be spilling out where the strings held your generous curves tightest, and how much of you the prying man to your left drank in per moment. He looked mischievous, as if he always knew more than everyone else around, but you weren’t in the mood to fold for even his games. Additionally, he looked familiar, but vaguely so–you weren’t the most in tune with the prestigious battle scene, but it wasn’t uncommon for high-tier trainers to make it to Alola.

You turned back to ring the side button of your chair to call the cocktail waiter. It was time for your refill. After seeing your Rotom phone light up to confirm your second order, you were left to be held conversational hostage with the man beside you.

“You’re single.”

His voice, ever a sharpened knife against rigid silence, cut through the air without mercy.

“I beg your pardon?” you asked, not even sparing him a glance before laying back to close your eyes.

“You’re too stand-offish to be married,” he commented further.

With full offense laid bare on your features, you shot him a glare. He remained impish behind his glass.

“Can you leave me alone?” you demanded. He set his glass down.

“Just making conversation.”

“Most people ask about the weather, or their jobs,” you ranted, “or anything else. What–are you drunk? Or just really annoying?”

You finally got a change of expression out of him–eyebrows raised in surprise at you baring your teeth. He silently reached for his drink once more to take a sip, either to soothe or for courage, but he wasn’t backing away yet. If you weren’t so comfortable in your chair and waiting for your second cocktail to be delivered, you’d have moved already.

“Doesn’t make a difference,” he finally spoke, “this chair, that chair, drunk or annoying–maybe I’m both. Sure not drunk enough, if you ask me.”

His odd self-deprecation got a hefty sneer out of you.

“You must be single too, then.”

“And how’d you surmise that?”

“I can’t imagine anyone willing to deal with this. With you.”

A grin returned to his face–charming, lopsided, dimpled only on one side–it filled you with rage.

“Anyone, huh? You’re still here.”

You flashed your Rotom phone screen to him in retaliation. No way you’d let his pride win.

“I’m waiting for my drink. They’re supposed to bring it to my chair.”

“I knew it. Single. Nobody’s bringin’ your drinks out for you.”

“You’re quite stuck on that.”

“Well, maybe I sat here for more than one reason.”

An exasperated sigh left the back of your throat. He was merciless. It wasn’t often you warranted attention (wanted or not) from anyone in this sort of nature, especially not in the physical likes of him, so interactions of this sort left you wary at the minimum. Considering your last year, you were all the more hostile toward men in particular. All you knew was they could suck you and your darling Pokémon in, absorb all of your life and time until there was nothing left, and leave you with nothing left once they’re bored. Savings account botched, Pokémon missing, and an entire wedding to call quits.

In all fairness to your friends and family, nobody saw it coming. Yet, you still felt stupid for allowing yourself to love so blindly. You felt too stupid to feel deserving of grieving. You felt stupid for trying to ignore how even in the last two years where affection used to be, there was dissonance and distance. He didn’t touch you anymore. He didn’t greet you when you came home anymore.

Begging him to propose to you was stupid. You were the stupid one.

Stupid like the man you were forced to entertain at this very moment.

“So why are you here alone then? Nobody can bear to be around you?” you asked with an accusatory tone. He could only laugh, a melodic, sharp, bitter sound–like being too close to an amplifier boasting an electric guitar solo.

“Just about,” he answered nonchalantly, “came with my friends for the Battle Tree on Poni Island. They’re not really big talkers.”

“You could learn from them.”

“Everyone seems to say that.”

You felt an involuntary laugh escape you, but you cut yourself off before you could give him any further gratification.

“So they’re staying with you?”

“Pssh, hell no. They’re weirdos. They like to rough it and do campsites or whatever. Not me–if I make the money to stay at a five-star resort in Alola, that’s what I’m gonna do. The hell do I look like, a fucking bonehead?”

“Well–”

“Don’t answer that.”

After he alleviated you of his rather offensive onslaught and allowed himself to personably chat, you found his loquaciousness to be good company more moments than not. The poolside filled up pretty quickly as he said with other couples, families, and their Pokémon taking the rest of the seats, so you found yourself content to take your drink and remain next to the ‘friendly’ (a generous description) stranger. It certainly beat having to confront the same small talk around couplehood and families that came with that sort of crowd. You couldn’t bring yourself to bear it.

“So,” he started, fingers tracing the rim of his lowball glass. His second refill looked dangerously empty. You cocked your head to the side, head feeling warm and light from your nursing of your second mai tai.

“What’s up?”

“Can I now ask why you’re here alone? Alola isn’t the sorta place people go to by themselves.”

You could only muster a half-smile.

“It’s a long story. Well–the context is long, but the reason is actually pretty short.”

“I got time. All day, actually. I like to finish all my training in the morning and have the rest of the day, so.”

He adjusted himself in his lounge chair to focus entirely on you, sunglasses resting on the bridge of his nose. When did he put those on? When was the sun not as hot nor high as before?

“Well,” you began, making a vague storytelling gesture with your hands, “I…”

Hazy memories of the last few years made themselves known in your eyes, but the rose gold filter that once covered the reels of a past love had long since faded into grey. It wasn’t fun to recall anymore, hell, it wasn’t even worth recounting for pity–how could you possibly begin? How could you find the words?

“I…”

“You…?” he encouraged, making a rolling gesture with his hand to get you going, “are here for work? Vlogger?”

“Hah–No, I couldn’t be that lucky.”

“Prestigious Pokémon trainer? Battle Tree? Island Trial?”

You snorted, shaking your head.

“No. Not even close.”

“Are you going to keep making me guess? I’ll keep goin’ if there’s a nice prize at the end.”

You weren’t sure if it was the booze, the heat, his looks, or his persistence that lowered your guard down more than you would have liked, but you did feel yourself smile at his rather implicative suggestion. You met his eyes again, and his brow raised again with interest. He shrugged while talking further.

“I mean, look, I’m having fun. But you’re quite private. It’s hard to say I like you if I don’t know anything about you. Other than you don’t like jackassery, you seem pretty intelligent, you’re a hard worker–and I do like looking at you quite a bit.”

“Shut up,” you hushed out with a modest laugh, “I don’t know that much about you either. Other than you are here with your friends, you came for the Battle Tree–so you’re a very strong trainer–you’re a chatterbox, and you’re very forward.”

“I know what I like, and I get what I want. Consider my principles… simple.”

That got a roll of your eyes out of you, and his wink certainly didn’t help. He finally sat up to assert full interest, if not in his implications, then just in you, and cocked his head to the side.

“So do I keep guessing? I have an Alakazam, y’know. He could just mind-read you and give me the answer. I think. I suppose it’s up to him if he wants to help me cheat.”

You paused before you could even meditate on an answer. It wasn’t in your nature to just entertain a stranger so suddenly, but what the hell. Words still escaped you regarding your ringless finger, no matter how hard your therapist tried to work on getting any verbal reflection out of you. The internal looseness and warmth from your drinks and the stifling humidity may have left you more vulnerable than you would have liked to admit.

“What if I didn’t tell you?”

“C’mon–”

“What if I showed you instead?”

That shut him up fast. His bravado stuttered into small bouts of sheepishness as he clunkily moved his glasses up to his forehead. A flush of rose spread across his cheeks that proudly displayed a boastful smirk not just hours ago, causing you to grin at the sight. You hated men–you were sure of it, so positive–but it felt so good to make one so cocky so nervous.

“Wow, not the response I expected,” you teased, now purposely laying in a more compromising position that flaunted the tightness of your scanty bikini–confidence oozed out of your singsong tone, “are you shy?”

He chortled, rubbing his nose.

“Psh–wha? No, of course not! You’re just so–”

His breathing hitched as you sat up to meet him eye-to-eye, and you raised a brow. It was rare you were the kind of woman to render a man like this speechless, so you figured it didn’t hurt to revel. Or rub it in. Maybe you were a bit of a sadist.

“So what?”

“So–” he swallowed, “I dunno if I wanna use all the words I wanna say, uh, until–”

Oh, presumptuous.

“Until what? We’re in my room?” you confronted further, not hiding any inkling of blatant teasing.

He could only nod, his face a vivid scarlet. You looked him up and down–just to torment him all the more–and made sure he watched you doing that. You were even careful to linger your gaze longest on his half-open button down and quickly tightening trunks. So bashful like this from your control—he was very, very cute. Or was that the alcohol talking?

“Well then. Let’s go.”

Little did he know you were only going to give him the worst buzzkill ever once he pieced together exactly what you were doing in Alola all by your lonesome.

It was a swift walk back to your stay, though it never hurt to marvel at the Hano Grand Resort’s relaxing atmosphere. The warm-tinted wooden planks across the lobby added to a rustic comfort that only elevated the feeling of luxury. Even the smell of scattered plants and thoughtfully-arranged trees only filled the resort with the feeling of untouched bliss from the rest of the world. How nice it would have been to enjoy this on your original terms.

If you didn’t have this handsome stranger beside you, you would have felt like you were in a five-star torture chamber.

“Out back,” you gently instructed him, leading out the back halls to the line of bungalows that stood adjacent to the golf course. Colorful rows of tropical flowers and plants proudly decorated the sidewalk trim leading up to your romantic prison cell, as your bungalow–naturally–was the one at the very end of the trail, secluded from the others. Your stranger let out a dry laugh, resting his hands on his hips.

“Man, you gotta walk all the way back here to where you’re staying? I love the privacy, no doubt, but–”

His eyes wandered from you to the artfully-crafted wooden sign in front of the door, and he froze. You only nodded solemnly. He turned back to you.

“I–Are you joking?”

“I’m not.”

His face twisted with something resembling anger as he began to scowl at you.

“I thought you were single–”

“I am.”

He paused, soaking in what you may be implying, and turned back to the sign.

“But this is the Honeymoon Bungalow.”

“It is.”

“And you’re here…?”

“Alone.”

His anger became vague confusion, but you stood in front of him to open the door, and gestured for him to look inside.

“I promise, it’s just me. You can see for yourself.”

Wary, your stranger gave you a glance of concern, but he walked inside anyhow, being the first to confront your ghosts with you.

Your bungalow had little trace of you even using it, as your bed was already made–opulent white comforters ordained with lacy white pillows and topped with enough rose petals to make an entire season’s worth of arts and crafts projects. Your suitcases sat on the rack by the closet, half-zipped, hardly used, and hardly unpacked. The closet opened to two silk robes, both white, both etched with a last name after the Mrs. and Mr. monikers on the back. Your stranger pulled one off the hook and read the back before looking up at you.

“This doesn’t look worn at all; it’s yours?”

“No. It’s not,” you answered adamantly, arms folded over your chest. His brow furrowed.

“It’s in your closet.”

“But that’s not my name,” you insisted. He looked around the room a final time as everything registered in his mind at once, and he hung your robe up again. You could see the sad flash in his eye, the one everyone else gave you on the day you were supposed to get married, as he finally surmised why every romantic artifact in your lovely bungalow remained untouched. The unkempt roses, the real champagne sitting idly unopened in an ice bucket, the jacuzzi with the bath set for two still wrapped with a bow–the nail in the coffin being a small hotel waste bin he could see in the corner of his eye filled with printed photos of you and someone else. Many of them torn. Some of them wrinkled.

“I’m so sorry,” he apologized, closing your closet, “this… yeah, this totally sucks. I get why you had a hard time telling me.”

You could only offer a shrug, ignoring the shaking your grieving racked you with.

“Nothing to apologize for. Sorry I dragged you into this.”

He shook his head.

“No, no. I wanted to know. But most people would cancel their honeymoon trip if the groom gets cold feet, y’know. Why–well.”

He gestured to the room around the both of you.

“Why stick with it?”

“It was too short notice to change my PTO days with my work,” you explained, rubbing your arm, “these days off were already registered with this pay period and–cancellation fees with the Resort, all the plans we had set for two weeks–it was too much. I figured I might as well come and… vacation, I guess.”

He sat on the bed, listening.

“And maybe I deserve some sort of punishment. Who knows. I think he fell out of love with me years ago and couldn’t say. I was never his type in the first place.”

You shook your head.

“That’s neither here nor there. Regardless, I’m here alone, doing all our original plans… alone. Still mentally preparing myself for showing up to our romantic wine tasting in two days with just myself. That’ll be a real laugh.”

His eyes averted from you to the bucket holding the unopened champagne and a grin grew on his features just as before.

“Well. You haven’t even begun to do everything, so why don’t we open that bottle and get started on that? Let’s pregame that wine tasting, yeah?”

The champagne didn’t sound so bad at the prospect of sharing it with someone.

“I suppose we could do that.”

You grabbed the bucket and glasses for your company, and sat on the bed alongside him. He offered to open the bottle for you, and poured your glasses accordingly before raising a toast.

“Cheers–”

You snorted.

“To what, exactly?”

He smiled.

“To you bravely avoiding having an ugly last name. I read that robe. Sheesh, sweetheart. You dodged a bullet.”

You laughed again, clanking your glass with his and taking a sip. He mirrored your movement before speaking again, swirling the bubbly in his glass with a triumphant return of his bravado.

“Just so you know, my last name is pretty good. I think you’d prefer having that one instead.”

“Oh?” you nearly coughed at his boldness, “and what name is that?”

He sipped again.

“Oak.”

You felt yourself freeze in position, eyes wide with disbelief at first, but a nervous laugh emanating from your lips interrupted your fright-or-flight reaction.

“I–what?”

You scoffed, taking a generous gulp of the wine before ensuring you heard correctly.

“I’m sorry. Did you say–Oak. Like, like the professor?” you pried, voice raising, “That’s a coincidence, right?”

He smiled wider, sipping again as now you were the nervous mess in his trap. You hoped it was a coincidence. You hoped you hadn’t laid yourself emotionally bare to one of the greatest Pokémon-handling bloodlines to ever exist on the face of the earth. Suddenly, his familiarity in appearance sat like a dense rock at the pit of your stomach.

You almost didn’t want him to answer. But answer, he did.

“Professor? You don't mean Gramps, do ya?” he answered casually.

“No way.”

You set your glass down on the floor to bury your face in your hands. You didn’t want to be right.

“Oh my god. You’re Blue Oak.”

“At your service, sweetheart.”

You could only admonish yourself for not recognizing him sooner. Even people who didn’t engage with any battle knowledge had some idea of who the Oak family were, as Professor Oak was one of the most prestigious researchers of Pokémon in the world. His work is quoted and used as gospel concerning all Pokémon matters, and the reputation of his grandson–though not as monumental–was still not unheard of. He surely traveled to your region to engage in high-tier battling, and upon looking at his face, you swore you’d seen it on a promotional commercial or sponsor banner before.

Humiliating. You had one of the strongest Pokémon trainers in the world in your sad, hollow, Honeymoon Bungalow.

You were drinking with him. You drank and blatantly flirted with the Blue Oak for hours.

“I’m so sorry, I didn’t even realize–”

Blue waved his hand in a dismissive manner, pursing his lip.

“Nah, don’t even worry about it. It’s honestly better this way. I like a good ego stroke, but I don’t want my reputation doin’ my work for me.”

“But I totally just–” you rocked your head back with exasperation, “–god, I just sucked you into my pity party. Do you even have time for this?”

“Hey, it was me who said I had all day, remember? And that’s still true. And y’know what else is still true? The day is young, and we still have more to drink,” he encouraged, topping off his own glass, “after all. You didn’t suck me into a pity party. You full-on seduced me back at the pool. I can truthfully inform you that I was a very happy camper walking back here with you, sweetheart. Fuck, you laying down in that swimsuit? Worked wonders.”

You picked up your glass, a bashful warmth spread across your face at his comment.

“Sorry about that bait-and-switch, regardless. Still feeling seduced?”

“Still seduced? I’m sitting here offering you my last name. The Oak bloodline doesn’t make itself, y’know. It takes two to tango.”

You modestly laughed behind your glass, crawling closer to him on your bed.

“I dunno if I’m in the right state of mind to think about taking another name, let alone continuing such a prestigious bloodline.”

Yet…

“But… maybe I could entertain giving you a chance.”

Judging by the way his brows suddenly raised, the offer of a challenge left him more than enticed. He took a sip of his wine before placing his glass on the floor beside the bed.

“A chance is all I need.”

Focused brown eyes looked you up and down.

“But more than a chance, do I get to have a name? Can I call you anything other than sweetheart? Or beautiful?”

You looked him over with uninhibited interest–black button-up partially open and suggestive to a lean body underneath, alongside sleek green swim bottoms that looked so easy to remove. Certainly in no ensemble as compromising as yours, but one all the more inviting to a lonely bachelorette. With that, you pulled out your phone, opened your alarm app, and adjusted certain parameters accordingly.

He sat up, his face now inches from yours–his voice curious and low.

“Baby, you ignoring me?”

“Oh no,” you answered, “I’m just setting up the rules for that chance you need.”

Blue laughed.

“Is that so? I like a good challenge. I’m not the kinda guy that backs down easily.”

“Oh yeah?”

“Mhmm,” he equivocated, leaning closer, “Didn’t I tell you? I get what I want.”

You smirked, holding the alarm app in his face as he inched in on you, causing him to jolt back in surprise.

“Now what’s this?” Blue asked. You grinned, pointing at the time you allotted him.

“Five minutes.”

He raised a brow.

“I mean, I see that, but what’s it for?”

You set the phone beside you, leaning back onto your hands.

“Here’s your chance, Blue, but I have conditions. I work hard, but I’m not really one to waste time–god forbid I end up in another Honeymoon Bungalow all by myself–”

You smiled.

“So I want to make sure you won’t waste my time. Make me finish in five minutes.”

Blue’s eyebrows shot to his hairline.

“Finish? You mean finish-finish? In f–five minutes?”

“You can do it, can’t you?”

Quickly, he threw his sunglasses on the floor, nearly tripping over his own words.

“W-well yeah, but if this is a challenge, what exactly are the winning conditions? Can I place them?”

You cocked your head to the side, meditating on entertaining his idea.

“And what, pray tell, would your winning conditions be?”

“That’s easy,” Blue said, “I get to know your name, then I want you to go through all your original Honeymoon reservations, but with moi as your plus one.”

Blue gave you a wink.

“Consider it a Mrs. Oak trial run. Yeah! That’s what I want. I win, I get your first name, and we treat this Honeymoon like it’s ours. Whether you want to renew after these two weeks you’re here in Alola–I’ll leave that up to you.”

He was talking a serious game for his challenge, and a rather big commitment. You were a bit beside yourself with the flattery, though you wouldn’t let it show.

Not unless he won, at least. And five minutes wasn’t a lot of time for your ambitious company.

“Fine,” you relented, “but you only get five minutes. You’re putting a lot on three-hundred seconds.”

“How many times I gotta say it? I get what I want.”

Your eyes met his–the same brown eyes so focused on you that they carried a gravity you couldn’t pull yourself away from. You felt it then; his desire to get what he wants, to achieve, to make things happen–his depths of drive, ambition, lust laid so naked before you with just a look. You saw so quickly how he lived up to the big shoes he had to fill. It was just in his nature.

If he wanted you, no matter how guarded you were, he’d make you his. You saw that promise in his eyes.

“Ready?” was all you could muster, finger on the start button of your app. He crawled to meet you, only inches away.

“I am. Are you, sweetheart?”

You felt something–a festering heat in response to his question, though you thought that in itself was a head start of sorts.

He was growing on you a bit though. You figured just this once you’d let him have it.

“3, 2, 1,” you counted down, then pressed the button.

You didn’t have a second to speak before his lips crashed with yours, selfishly drinking in your taste as he crawled over you. His kisses were delectable with champagne but sloppy–arousingly so with each wet pop he gave your lips. Blue kissed you so aggressively you could have guessed he was a man starved and you were the only meal in miles.

His worship of your now drooling mouth moved from your lips down the side of your face, and he nestled in a sweet spot between your neck and your ear to mark a rapacious, painful bite–a good measure of his stake to claim. His mouth was overwhelming enough to distract you from his hands making good, greedy home on your flesh. He was wedged deep between your legs, enough to press you already into the mattress, and more than enough to grow a hot coil deep in your core. Your arms wrapped around his shoulders to keep him hard at work, and work he fucking did.

A final pornographic, saliva-filled pop from your skin marked the end of him doing work on your jaw and neck, and he offered a lust-drunken grin to you.

“Wish you could see yourself right now. I wanna eat you up all day.”

You could only roll your eyes as he went back to his ‘challenge,’ now putting eager concentration on your heavy, pillowy breasts. He took no time in pulling them from behind the tight fabric of your bikini top, and fondled them with enthusiastic hunger. His calloused thumbs ran over your quickly hardening nipples.

“Fuck,” he mumbled under his breath, “five minutes is fucking cruel when you’re this gorgeous, sweetheart.”

Before any words could leave your mouth, he gently pushed you further down into the mattress. His hands went back to claiming greedy handfuls of your flesh in each palm. Each handful wasn’t enough–even bending down to fill his salivating mouth with your breasts and moaning into your skin wasn’t enough for him, knowing he’d have to part ways with his veneration of each part of you so soon. It ached for you too. For your heart and for an increasingly aching part between your legs–with each suck on the tips of your breasts came a sinful noise from the back of your throat; he laid love to your body already like no man before.

And time wasn’t up yet.

Blue pulled away again, hands clawing and desperate to push your legs back and apart even further, letting out a pathetic moan at seeing you so undone and bunched up beneath him. His left hand pressed against your entrance as only the skimpy swimsuit fabric of your bottoms remained. A damp, impatient stain made itself known to his fingertips as he felt the outline of your inviting lips. You could feel your pussy burn with emptiness at each prod he made.

“Dunno if I can stop after five minutes, baby–” he warned, voice raw and gravely, pulling your bottoms to the side, “–you’re really lookin’ like you can help me out with the Oak bloodline–”

He slid a finger in, watching your face beautifully contort with each stroke, and he slid a second one in with even faster tempo. You could feel your chest tighten–something was beginning to build. Your body’s coil was red-hot and he was tightening it so right inside of you–Blue sank further.

“Good girl, feels so good, doesn’t it, pretty girl?” he cooed, his other hand letting go of groping your thighs and focusing on building you up even faster. First, his middle finger gently prodded at the hood of your clit to test your sensitivity, but hearing you mewl so deliciously, so loud, and all for his greedy ears alone. Blue forwent using his fingers and sucked on your bud himself, giving it the same sloppy worship he laid for your breasts just a minute ago. You tasted divine. With each noise you let out at every notch of your build up, Blue responded just as passionately with an aroused moan of his own, grinding his strained erection in his trunks against the mattress.

Suddenly, you felt that coil snap, and pulses of heat, nerves, and relief shuddered through you as he continued working out each wave out of your body. You couldn’t hear yourself, Blue, anything in the room, or feel anything other than white-hot bliss for full seconds before collapsing back into the slew of pillows on the bed.

Then, you came back to earth, realizing Blue was hovering above you with dilated eyes, drool on his lips, and warmth in his smile.

“Mrs. Oak, you made quite the mess,” he quipped, holding your phone screen up to you. Your vision returned to focus as you saw the time on your phone.

4:58. 4:59. 5:00.

The alarm sang its little song as it vibrated in Blue’s hand, and you groggily took it from him, still dizzy from the most intense and attentive foreplay you had in years. More than your ex-fiancé ever gave you. All under five minutes.

Blue really did see his challenge through.

Gladly defeated, you gave him a dreamy smile, tossing your phone aside.

“Okay, Mr. Oak, you win, that was–”

You truly didn’t have words as you shook your head in the mess of pillows. He softly chuckled, crawling over you to give you another kiss where words should have been. It was far gentler than before, a kiss laced with romance suited for the bungalow you stayed in. His body now rested against yours fully, really feeling each curve and every soft inch of you.

And you could feel the curve and inches of something else.

“I’m wonderin’ now if you could help me with something,” he whispered, pulling away with a glint in his eye. You raised a brow.

“Yes?”

“First, I need your name.”

Ah, as part of your promise, you remembered. Gingerly, running your fingers through his hair, you entrusted him with your name in the form of whispering it in his ear. He faced you, eyes revitalized aside from his lust-drunkenness with something else.

“Now that suits you,” he complimented, planting another kiss on you, “And I think it goes really good with ‘Oak’ if you ask me.”

You laughed, letting him continue his much slower-paced bout of hickey-making on your skin–you ran your fingers through his hair again.

“Ah–you think so?”

“I know so.”

You felt his hands on your chest again, though this time his grip was soft and intentional with your precious body.

“Now I can really get to love down my wife properly,” he mused.

“You’re very committed to this husband-wife bit.”

“If everything goes right, it won’t be a bit forever,” Blue retorted, giving you another kiss, “but yes. I intend to ride this bit out all the way.”

Subtle.

His second round of foreplay was magical compared to his rather rushed and explosive first round. Granted, you did finish as wagered, but the fact he wound you up so quickly and intensely already left your head spinning with love exhaustion. This more attentive and careful affection he gave–particularly to your breasts, stomach, and thighs, left you so weak and pliable under his magic thumbs and hot mouth. Every handful he fondled of you wasn’t enough for him–as if he had an insatiable hunger to constantly consume and enmesh himself with you. By the time he was down to your thighs, your aching pussy was already so wet again for him to fill. He watched you squirm. He watched you gorgeously writhe under each bite and kiss of your decadent thighs he took until he was finally ready to oblige your begging.

“Blue–please, please–” you felt yourself beg as he grinded himself against you, “‘M sorry, it hurts, I just need you–”

“So gorgeous, begging for me like this,” Blue sang, using one hand to hold your thigh back and the other to palm his erection in his shorts, “You want me to fill up your pretty pussy, Mrs. Oak?”

He was pushing it–the roleplaying of the husband and wife bit, but he won those conditions–and you were desperate in this state. Desperate and dizzy enough to even reach for your lips yourself and shamelessly spread them.

“Yes, honey, could you please–?”

That was enough for him to snap. Blue shuffled out of his trunks the quickest he could and nearly ripped off his black shirt to unveil the rest of him. You shamelessly ogled the man before you with an approving mewl from your lips. He was awfully cute, every bit of him, and as your eyes moved down, you felt another part of you burn with approval. He wasn’t of pornographic girth nor length, but it was more than enough for you. Every inch of him had your heart rate accelerating in unmitigated arousal.

He noticed your staring as he crawled back to you, lining himself up with your pussy. A hazy grin curled on his features at the sight of you so plump and folded open under him, at the sight of you ogling him so eagerly–he couldn’t hide his own arousal.

“Like this cock, sweetheart?”

Blue’s voice was a musical mix of teasing and something else– something coarse and primal. You nodded, whining with each time his head prodded your entrance and teased you.

“Aw, don’t worry baby, it’s all yours now–I–”

He slid himself in, slowly, being as aware as he could with stretching you out–but you could sense his hunger. You could feel each inch fill you so fulfillingly–how full and how relieving it was that he fit inside you so perfectly–and the noise you let out at him bottoming out was nothing less than wanton. Blue grunted in return.

You felt him begin to move, his arms holding your legs above your head–and hell, even with his slow movements, you could feel him in every single part of you. However, When you felt his pace quicken and his hitched breaths become incomprehensible, musical groans was when you could really begin to see stars. The way he filled you again and again burned so good, and with him leaning down for his lips to make home on your own again you may have forgotten why you were so heartbroken and guarded when you met him hours ago.

He shifted himself, now adjusting so he could watch you move under him as he could no longer stop himself from keeping an excruciating pace. His eyes were lidded but unblinking on you. Not a single second was spent not watching how your body writhing so gorgeous under him and his greedy lovemaking.

“Fuck–look at my pretty wife taking cock so good,” he cooed again, his firm grip moving to the fleshiest part of your thigh, “you were made for me, weren’t you pretty girl?”

The words were dizzying in the formerly loveless bungalow–you could only let out a weak moan as he fucked you harder.

“Yeah, yeah you were–shit, shit–’just wanna knock up my yummy fuckin’ wife so bad–”

The weight of the words hadn’t hit you quite yet, at least, not in reality’s terms. But with the way he spoke and felt you–the way he fit inside you and loved you so deeply, something about the concept drove you to tighten up around him. You reached for your breast with one hand and your clit with the other to further coil that tight sensation building up again in your core, and he grinned again.

“Oh? My missus likes the sound o’ that, does she?”

You could feel him press harder against you, his eyes now wide with manic lust.

“Mrs. Oak wants a baby, doesn’t she? Aw, don’t worry, pretty girl–I’d love to–fuck–help with that–you just lay back and play with those pretty tits for me–f–yeah–like that, so good–”

His other hand swatted yours away from your clit so he could play with it himself. You gasped at the firm contact on your sensitive, burning nerves but hell if it didn’t give you a rush. Your core tightened faster and faster at his increasing speed and merciless pace inside of you.

Then release–blinding and intense, but even more satisfying than before–you felt yourself finish with a flush of overwhelming heat overtake your entire body and exiting right where his fingers stroked you out to completion.

“Shit,” he moaned, “You fucking squirted for me? Fuck–” he praised, clenching his other hand’s grip around your thigh. Returning back to earth, you could feel his pace jutting as he felt himself coming to a finish. In your dreamy, pleased state, you felt yourself reach up for him.

“Blue–” you cooed, voice both lilted and coarse, “kiss me.”

You didn’t have to tell him twice.

He leaned down to crash his lips against your own, and slowly rocked into you as you felt a sudden jolt and rush of liquid, sticky warmth inside you where there wasn’t before. You couldn’t care in the moment. You just wanted to be consumed by him and his hunger. Greedy hands and lips made you his in that bed, and made your body their home. Blue could hardly pull himself away from kissing you–let alone pull himself out after countless minutes of being connected to every perfect bit of you.

It was you who stopped first.

“Did that help?” you asked, a coy smile on your face. Blue rested only inches from your face, and gave a kiss to your forehead.

“It did. I’d consider you a cure-all for all my problems at this rate.”

“You’re very sweet.”

“Like a good husband.”

You felt yourself softly smile with a roll of your eyes.

“You really are insistent on milking out that part of the deal.”

“I’m insistent on not only that, but making it stick. Layin’ down with you has made me certain that I’d probably send my Arcanine after anyone alive that intends to fuck you the way I just did.”

You threw a pillow at him with a wider grin on your face.

“You don’t need to be so insane! We just met!”

“Yes I do, what’s mine is mine and mine alone. Now let me help you clean up by running the water in that unused jacuzzi. We have a couple’s bath set we need to see through using.”

The rest of the afternoon faded into the evening—hazy and blurry with recovering soreness and lazing about in a bathtub with someone you met that day. It was odd. It was wonderful. It was sudden and explosive chemistry you hadn’t felt in years. A part of you felt a little scared of how strong the two of you fit so well together considering your recent disappointment, or that you would wake up tomorrow and Blue Oak would treat you as just a stranger, and you were stupid for even thinking that any of this was in earnest.

Worries aside, the evening transition into the night was relaxing. The two of you opted to enjoy dinner at the inclusive steakhouse with your first reservation of the stay, so he momentarily left to allow you and himself to get ready (though he kept giving you, his precious ‘wife,’ too many kisses goodbye.) Your surprise increased tenfold when you opened your bungalow door an hour and a half later as agreed to him dressed in all black, a dashing sleek outfit–and donning two suitcases with him. He looked equally surprised to see you in your finest wear, a dress that was the perfect mix of summery and elegant–it made for a cheeky mix, and your make-up completely done.

“Wow…” he marveled, standing up straight to align with you. You coughed out a nervous laugh.

“Yeah, you too,” you said. Blue gestured to his suitcases behind him.

“Does this get to be part of the deal, or am I doing too much?”

You laughed, though you couldn’t shake that a part of you was a little wary. Even with the hours before in mind, it was still difficult to digest his potent interest. You folded your arms.

“Let’s see how this dinner goes. For now, you can leave them inside.”

He raised a brow.

“Are there guidelines to this win condition, or am I just gonna have to hope I give you the best first date of all time?”

The both of you shared a soft chuckle, perhaps airing out nerves from both of your spirits.

“If it’s any consolation, I want you to do well,” you admitted. Blue rolled his bags in but paused mid-step at your reassurance. He turned back.

“It’s more consolation than you think.”

You locked the door behind you as your date walked you to dinner.

It only took minutes upon arrival that you found yourself sheepishly covering your face when Blue had a rather entertaining argument with the restaurant manager about how the last name reserved was wrong, everything should have been under “Oak,” and he expected a full refund to your card for everything paid so far. Being a powerful and reputable trainer, and now your ‘husband,’ the manager found his argument very convincing. The two of you sat down together, being presented with a glorious vintage of a reserve cabernet sauvignon for your dinner. And the instant the two of you sat down, his second test began.

“I can’t get over it. You’re just beautiful,” he started, slapping his menu down without even beginning to peruse the options, “I don’t wanna minimize anything–and shut me up if I am–”

“Oh? Shutting you up was an option?”

Blue chortled.

“Ha-ha. Funny.”

He pulled his chair up closer and observed you closely.

“I’m just blown away you were left the day before your wedding. I’m sorry to bring up something so painful but–I dunno. I just met you today and I’m near-convinced I’m in love.”

“I’m–very flattered, Blue, really–” you exhaled, reaching for your glass of wine, “but it was my fault too.”

You felt your eyes focus on the wine in your glass.

“I was kidding myself for a long time. He honestly never liked me that much, and I think he felt too afraid to say anything for a long time. And looking back? I don’t think I wanted to see it.”

Warm contact met the top of your hand.

“Well. He’s fucking stupid. I don’t get why if you don’t like something, you can’t just hit the bricks.”

“Yeah,” you nodded, “It would’ve saved me a lot of time, but. But what about you? I know I was giving you a hard time earlier, but–how are you single?”

“How do you mean? You sounded quite curious–” he teased, “I’m gonna take that as a good sign.”

“Don’t flatter yourself too hard. I’m not going off of your reputation here.”

“Ooh, so sassy for a good girl that just begged for me hours ago.”

You urgently looked around the restaurant to ensure nobody heard that; it was enough to get an amused chuckle out of him.

“Blue–!”

“Okay, okay, no dirty talk in public, noted,” he said, taking a sip of his wine, “but to answer your question, I’ve just been… busy? I guess? Honestly, I haven’t looked. Ever.”

“You’ve… never… dated?”

It was him who was embarrassed all of a sudden.

“I guess not. I’ve had a few hookups but nothing worth remembering. Nobody I wanted to introduce to my friends, my Pokémon, the Kanto League–hell, and after that gauntlet, there’s good ol’ Gramps and Daisy. Nothing seemed worth getting a name out of or a second text or anything. And I was busy, so I was cool with it.”

You were scared to ask, but the chaos of the day made you loose-lipped.

“Is that where we’re going to fall?”

“It’s certainly where I don’t want you to be,” he softened his voice, “this is a romantic dinner where we’re getting to know each other. Frankly, whether you want to confront this or not, we’re on a date. Though most people prefer to help embolden bloodlines after the date, not before–”

“Such a tease,” you rolled your eyes. He grinned.

“Yeah, I don’t really have an off button. But it’s that kinda nature that got me where I am.”

“Sounds like a straightforward philosophy.”

“It’s never let me down yet–I just always have an instinct to the things I want–like a gear just kicks in. Dunno. Maybe I have a special kind of intuition–maybe if I were a Pokémon, I’d be a Psychic type.”

You coyly swirled your glass in your hand.

“Okay, Mr. Oak, then what about me? What kind of Pokémon do you think I would be?”

It was clear to see that the question deeply amused him by the way his features curled into a wide smile–the same lopsided one you first saw by the pool deck when he was first barraging you with his romantic appetite. It was a cheeky, cocky look that suited him–raised eyebrow and all. You didn’t like how much it was growing on you.

“Well at first thinking, I woulda said Dark type,” he began, running his finger thoughtfully around the base of his glass as he spoke, “You’re a minxy, delicious, evil seductress that I seemed to have no effect on when I first bothered you earlier. That’s assuming I’m still a Psychic type, by the way. Which I think I still am. Because the moment I saw you I got that gear-kick feeling. And so far, my instinct’s been treating me real good. Oh–but not as good as you, Beautiful.”

Another eye roll, but a flush of warmth joined your cheeks mid-smile.

“Then spending time with you… I’m going to go with Fire. Not just because you’re smokin’ hot, even though you are–”

“Flattered.”

“But Fire is a really beautiful thing. It’s powerful. My Arcanine is one of the strongest on my team, and I’ve seen the destruction fire can make. But–people only think about how hot and powerful Fire is, and forget all the other stuff. Fire is hot, yeah, but it also provides warmth. Fire is powerful, but it’s also beautiful. People like, gather around Fire–we literally watch it to relax. When Fire is loved and handled the way it deserves, it’s one of the best types out there. One of the best facets of our Earth, actually.”

He pointed a finger at you.

“And I know all about that–I’m the keeper of the Earth badge. But I stand by what I said. You’re gorgeous and comforting–familiar, even. You’re both hot and warm. You’re powerful but safe. You exist amid these things that most people think couldn’t actually coexist, but…”

Blue raised his hands defensively.

“But that’s just my speculation and observation. It does have merit though, as I am always right about everything ever.”

Your ex never spoke about you so intently in the years that you knew him. Nobody ever, no hookup nor talking stage nor serious relationship made you feel remotely as seen as Blue did in under ten hours. Were you especially close to Fire types? Surely you would be now.

“Blue… thank you.”

It was your turn to put your hand on his.

“You answered and then some. I feel really spoiled, honestly.”

“Yeah? Well get used to it.”

Clinking glasses at the table was perfect at the moment, forgetting about yesterday and tomorrow and all their worries were possible just for the night with him to keep you company. Even being his bargain-won pretend wife didn’t feel so pretend when he continuously offered you to try every food he had, even holding the fork for you. It didn’t feel so pretend when he loudly declared excitement at the waiters bringing you both your romantic, honeymoon dessert. It didn’t feel so pretend when other families or couples would congratulate the two of you, and he puffed out his chest to thank them in full stride. And it certainly didn’t feel so pretend when you went to your bungalow together to make sleepy love for one final time, pass out in each other’s arms, and wake to the other’s smile in the morning.

⋆ ᴇᴘɪʟᴏɢᴜᴇ⋆

“You usin’ this chair?”

Your moment of meditative enjoyment of a sunny Alola day was rudely interrupted by a silhouette blocking your view of the sun. You adjusted your sunglasses on the bridge of your nose to gather any more information about the silhouette in question. Tall-ish. Male. Great–your first full day back at the Hano Grand Resort after three years and your precious sun time was being interrupted by some guy.

You were a professional at dealing with such types.

“Take it,” you instructed, waving your hand for him to get on with it. You could see him cock his head to the side.

“Take it? What if I wanted to sit here?”

“I mean, I can’t make you not sit there.”

The man sat down to your left, and you immediately shifted your attention away just to be blatant with your disinterest. A scoffing sound could be heard from him.

“Wow, single women have no idea what they want, do they?”

You let out an unamused cackle in return.

“The hell is that supposed to mean?”

“If you wanted to leave, you would, right? But instead you’re giving me this weird hard-to-get attitude. I mean, I’m kinda into it, you bein’ so sexy n’ all.”

Sneering, you turned to glare the man down.

“I’m not staying here for you. I was already here, and I’m waiting for my drink.”

“But nobody special is bringing it out to you?”

“Leave me alone,” you demanded, going back to looking away, “fucking weirdo.”

“Excuse me b–”

“Do we have a problem?” a third voice intervened, one mischievous and familiar–comforting in its willingness to stir up some attitude, “It looks like you’re bothering this young lady.”

“I’m just making conversation–”

“Ah-ah-ah–” the familiar voice scolded, “not with her, you aren’t. You can go make conversation with anyone else, alright? She doesn’t wanna talk to you.”

You heard your tropical cocktail glass be gently set to the small table to your right, as your drink was lovingly brought to you. The unwanted company quickly jumped from his chair to escalate the situation.

“Who the hell do you think you are to tell me what to do?”

“I’m Blue Oak, asshole–” your husband boasted, getting in the man’s face, “And that woman you’re messing with is my wife. If she doesn’t wanna talk to you, I’m gonna make damn sure you don’t get the time of day.”

Seeing that your beloved loved confrontation and challenge as he always did, you decided to be the voice of reason where he failed. It never hurt to pull him away with an irresistible offer.

You stood up, playing the hardest you could into your coyest self.

“Baby, why don’t we just go rent a cabana? I’d rather spend some private time with you on our Honeymoon.”

You could hear your husband smirk at the other man before wrapping an arm around you and starting to walk away.

“You’re right, sweetheart. Let’s go ahead and do that. I can think of a whole ton of stuff I’d like to take care of privately.”

You felt him openly kiss into your neck–that sweet spot you loved so much before his voice cried out to the unwanted company again.

“Smell ya later–asshole!”

He chuckled back into your skin as you walked completely out of the man’s sight, and you laughed in return.

“You don’t have to be so insane for me, Blue. We’re married for real this time.”

“All the more reason to be,” he explained, “What’s mine is mine is all mine, and fuck sharing with anybody else.”

The two of you paused mid step outside a cabana, and he smiled warmly just for you.

“Especially now that I truly have what I want. For real this time.”

“Does it make a difference?” you asked, running your hands up his shirt, leaning in for a kiss, “I was always yours.”

“It does to me, Mrs. Oak.”

The instant your lips met, your husband coaxed you inside the cabana to enjoy the rest of your honeymoon away from the world.

⋆ ʜᴏɴᴇʏᴍᴏᴏɴ ʙʟᴜᴇꜱ: ᴇɴᴅ ⋆

A/N: Thank you all for reading this far! I hope you enjoyed. Gun to my head I could not tell you why I was able to write this of all things in two days. I have so many other long-form drafts started and saved for other characters and fandoms, but for some reason I had a primal itch to write about Blue? It was fun! Blue (or his anime counterpart, Gary) was one of my first fictional crushes ever—so this felt a little cathartic. Let me know if you’d like to see this archived on ao3 as well!

Thank you again!