#this was originally supposed to be game bw related because I remember more of that but I think what the cold can represent i

[lyricalchrysanthemum]

Cryophobia | Drabble

Cheren does not like the cold. It’s uncomfortable, it’s annoying, it causes every bone in your body to shake, it numbs you until it hurts, and makes no discretion between who deserves to live and die.

If there’s one thing he’s known from stories: you cannot show weakness to the cold, or else it will exploit you until your last chilled breath. Whether it take away your food, your movement, your power, it will find the one weakness in your defense and make you regret defying it. And every time Cheren wakes up to snow outside his house, shoveling it, watching Black and Bianca play among it, feeling it nip at his nose, he can only recall the stories that haunt his brain. Stories of people slowly falling victim to the unfeeling, wrathful claws of the cold no matter how hard they fight.

So when he and Black approach the cold storage, he can only shiver (in the warmth of summer), at the thought of even setting foot in there. He wouldn’t be stranded, the exit was there, but what if he got locked in alone, no one to help, and forced to fend for his measily life against Kyurem, who breathes down his neck at least three months a year already.

He hates that he can liken his pokemon journey to it too. Around half of it, at the very least, with no memory of it, just a singular feeling. Uncomfortable, desolate, numb, cold. With ice burning at his mind, his blood hunting for warmth and evading his brain. Like a tree in a blizzard with no leaves nor pine on its branches. Not a singular memory outside of this emotion. In fact, one of the few things he last recalls is the literal, death calling, chill.

He felt nothing but an empty snow storm in his body for so long, knowing nothing else but it. Only for it to clear, and for him to see the forest he was a part of was missing one less tree. A tree who seemed to have leaves no matter how much the storm raged.

Apparently people thought he was cold too. Unfeeling to those around him, acting horrible to his partners who were meant to support him. He surely wishes he could remember it, but for now he can only sit at his bed side and weakly ask Snivy once again for forgiveness. Only to get a reassuring pat and cry of affirmation. He wonders what he did to deserve such wonderful partners.

Ice types are strong against grass types, after all.

Maybe he had a weakness, he got exploited, just as the literal thing he hates exploits all. One that took his power, his agency. A cold so freezing it was what spread the type he knows the longest. One that frostbit his fingers, his legs, his mind, until he couldn’t move at all.

The cold that, while doesn’t take everyone, was the one that took him.

He doesn’t know what he fears more now. The one that looks over everything, the one he knows best of all, or the one killed only him.

It bothers Cheren.

[lollitree]

Your tags under the pokemon poll are SO TRUEE and it hurts how many people dont understand that

I grew up in the change from pixel art to 3D and have nostalgia for bw, xy AND sm. So i think because of that, I can see the good and bad in all the games but don't feel like any of them 'peaked''. They're all different games, so they are really hard to compare.

On a related note tho, its so sad to see so many fans praise one of my childhood games and not the others. And like, I get it because gen 5 is more similar to what they grew up with.....but every time I say I love xy, sm and even swsh i get told they are terrible and usually imply that I shouldnt like them :/

That only happens online, though......irl all the fans ive met, no matter their ages, just say something like 'i didnt like it, but i'm glad you did!'. Growing up in irl fan spaces and having to move online during corona was AN EXPERIENCE omg

Yeah! It's super interesting how much we are affected by nostaglia.

There's usually a pattern you can notice with this stuff too. There are two lines that go up as time goes on. The one everyone talks about as being great and the newer one people hate on, usually to do with nostalgia of the now older original audience of the game.

My full reply got long so putting it under a read more skfjsh

My first Pokemon game was Colosseum, so gen 2/3 pokemon and gen 3 sound effects are pretty nostalgic to me.

Then I grew up mostly playing Diamond/Platinum/PMD2/Ranger2. I LOVED Team Galactic. I restarted the games so many times just so I could play through the story again with Cyrus and the Galactic Grunt theme. (I have also played through pmd2 many many times). I remember in my early teens seeing people on the internet hating on DPPt a lot and it making me sad. I recall someone saying that the gen 4 Pokemon sucked and I remember thinking "aw I guess they're right, some of these pokemon are really boring or annoying" and then I learned later that the pokemon I was thinking of were all gen 1 pokemon sdfkjsh

Gen 5 was hated when it first came out because it wasn't very fun for new players. I bet it also didn't help that the advertising for B2W2 was pretty poor and also came out after the 3DS did. I didn't even know it was a sequel until years later. That's why they went in the complete opposite direction for gen 6, and added gimmicks!

I have heard multiple people call the designs from gen 5 horrible over the years (And they're all wrong). Those comments are nowhere NEAR as frequent now, but they almost always come from people with nostalgia for the ones they grew up with.

I was 13 when BW first came out. I think I've only beaten it once, MAYBE twice. I'm not entirely sure why, because I was still replaying DPPt a lot. I would guess it's because the game is super linear in terms of gameplay and every playthrough will start exactly the same. You don't really get to make decisions on your team and how you play until later. Kid me loved the beginning of the main pokemon games the most because they were the most fun bits to play usually. So I suppose when you've already played it once, the beginning becomes quite boring.

And to compare. I did not like XY when it first came out. I was 16 and very against change and also my fav types at the time were dark and dragon so fairy type was the worst thing ever. I said previously that I really liked Team Galactic, so Team Flare was just a bootleg version of them to me. BUT I did immediately replay the game when I finished it. The character customisation plus the huge dex gives the game a lot of replayability. Because while I didn't like a lot about the game it was still fun to play, and it was the first time online was really accessible to me. I went back to 2013/2014 on my blog and there's SO much positivity about the game it's amazing! Over time people only remembered the bad parts and started hating it. I bet there'll be an influx of nostalgia for it before long. We can even see it in the hope people have for SV having Kalos DLC.

I need to replay sun/moon or play USUM because in my brain currently it sucks. But I'm very aware that that's because I only played it once, it's been years, and I played it when I started to grow out of Pokemon. So I'm excited to play it again now that I can appreciate it better. (Also the Sun/Moon anime is my fav so I have a lot of love for the characters now)

And finally, I loved SWSH! I didn't finish it the first time I tried to play it. Mostly because I spent HOURS trying to get a shiny hatenna before doing the fire gym skdfjhs. But then I SPED through the game with a bug type only run before Legends came out and I really enjoyed the story! One of those things that's more enjoyable if you're only focused on enjoying the story (and playing the game through with a joltik as the lead and trying to make sure they stay strong enough to beat the game with pfft) Also Leon was the first ever Champion I actually thought was cool and enjoyed seeing while playing the game (as ridiculous as his outfit is)

If I were to logically plot out the best for me based on how nostalgia works and taking into consideration that public opinion ABSOLUTELY influences me. I would have said BW was the best and XY(or SM) was the downfall, even though I had way more fun playing XY than BW as a kid