#why i'm playing path of radiance right now anyway which is 1/4th 'smash bros' and 3/4ths 'i had compulsion cast on me in a dream'

[wardencommanderrodimiss]

So, playing Path of Radiance today, and being introduced to Soren, I had some bizarre personal revelation, and I invite you all to join me down memory lane on a very long, elaborate tale.

I know halfway through this you’re going to have forgotten where we started and be like “Roddy stop talking about your neurotic childhood playing Pokemon, what the fuck does this have to do with the character Soren from Fire Emblem: Path of Radiance, the ninth installment in the Fire Emblem series--” and I promise you it all comes full circle in the end. 

So to start, check out my Rayquaza from Ruby, the first Pokemon game I ever played, and his nickname.

I have a Rayquaza named Sorenn. (Second “N” added by me to avoid copyright claims or commit tax fraud, or actually just to pretend I was original because I was a kid at the time.)

I love him. He’s one of my handful Ruby babies, from a game where I only used and got attached to a few Pokemon, but man did I get attached once I did. He’s the only one of them with a nickname, and he’s had it since I caught him.

So, the name “Soren”, where was I borrowing that from? Good question. As a kid, I read the book series Guardians of Ga’hoole, which is about warrior owls, and the main character is named Soren. ...but my Sorenn is not named after that character, not directly, not by me. The first of those books came out in 2003, but I didn’t start reading them until probably 2007 or so.

I think...most likely, my Sorenn is named after Soren from Path of Radiance, a game which I of course literally just started playing today. And I think it’s likely, but I can’t know for sure. Yeah, I really don’t know what my own Rayquaza is named after, but it could be for a character from a game I never played. This seems on brand - the fact that it’s bizarre, convoluted, and a long explanation that gets weirdly personal right out the gate.

I was a neurotic kid when I was young and it came to Pokemon. I had a very “if I die in the game I die in real life” kind of attitude and I would...basically have anxiety attacks at the thought of losing a battle in the game. The thought of having a Pokemon faint instilled me with terror - whiting out would be unthinkable. I wish I was making a joke or exaggerating, but I still have clear, distinct memories of the sobbing mess that the rival battle at Nugget Bridge/Cerulean City left me. I don’t know why I became this way, or what made me stop, because I did, but my playthroughs of Ruby and FireRed were marked by this sheer panic at the thought of making a mistake. It took me years to get through FireRed because I was paralyzed by terror.

My childhood neuroses are yes, somehow relevant to the nickname of one of my Pokemon, because my inability to play the game own my own is where the two other people involved in my story come in - my brother, and a kid he knew who we’ll call J. J was the only person we knew (other than our cousins who live 7+ hours away by car) at the time who played Pokemon. He was a bully to my brother, too, and eventually my brother managed to cut ties with him and find better friends, but at the time, Bro would go over to his house to play Pokemon, and sometimes I would come along. 

J had many more games than we did, Pokemon and otherwise - he had a GameCube and Pokemon Colosseum, too. He played a lot, and restarted a lot, and didn’t really have too many sentimental attachments to his Pokemon, so he gave a lot of them away and never asked for them back. I still have tons of them in FireRed, and one in Ruby. (My Umbreon, the one that kickstarted my love for Umbreon, the spiritual predecessor to Tubbo, is his. He gave me it for the Mossdeep City Gym, because it was a double battle and literally my only good Pokemon, the only thing I had that was above level 30, was my Blaziken. He tried to take Umbreon back once and I cried. I still have it.)

I was terrified of the Elite Four in Ruby, even though I had a level 93 Blaziken and could’ve won only using it, but there was obviously nothing rational about anything I did with that game at the time. And Blaziken and my new Groudon were the only Pokemon I had that were vaguely good. So I borrowed two of my brother’s better Pokemon - his Swellow and Kyogre - and one of J’s, not counting the earlier Umbreon - his Rayquaza.

Note the one “N” and the different trainer ID number.

The other thing to know about how I played Ruby and FireRed was that I was a copycat. I wasn’t confident in my own decisions - I guess you can already tell that from everything I’ve already said. It was terror the whole way through. I was a weird, weird kid. But I copied so many of the decisions that my brother made - started with a Torchic because he did. Started with a Squirtle because he did, and chose the Helix Fossil in Mt Moon because he did. (Even though what I really wanted was a Charizard, and when I got one from J, who I still have, my Blastoise became a benchwarmer. Did I start with Mudkip in Emerald because my brother did or because I liked it better than Treecko? I don’t know.)

I copied nicknames, too, and gave them to some same Pokemon. Some from my brother.....and one from J. I just threw an extra “N” on there. That’s my Sorenn. I named him after someone else’s Soren the Rayquaza, and I don’t know who that Soren was named for.

I remember, though, J had a Tyranitar named Dante. It stuck with me because I’d never seen a Tyranitar before, nor heard the name Dante before. J played a lot of video games besides Pokemon, and I imagine his Dante was probably named after that one Video Game Man Protagonist named Dante, and not the Italian Bible fanfiction poet named Dante. I mention this to establish a vague possible precedent for J naming his Pokemon after other video game characters. 

A few years later, I started reading the Guardians of Ga’hoole books, with their protagonist named Soren, which was a name I’d never heard before besides J’s Rayquaza, and I think I thought “huh, maybe J read these books too? Maybe that’s it?”

But it feels more likely, with all I knew of J at the time, that his Soren was named after Fire Emblem’s Soren. He had a GameCube, after all, and played a lot of games. (Bro and I were Pokemon-and-Kirby-only people, at the time.)

The question is really if the timeline adds up, and I can offer you a solid maybe. Here’s some release dates.

Pokemon Ruby - March 2003

Guardians of Ga’hoole (book series) - June 2003 (first book published)

Pokemon Colosseum - March 2004

Pokemon FireRed - September 2004

Path of Radiance - October 2005

I know my brother and I didn’t play Ruby and Sapphire on release, but I don’t know how long after it was. And I don’t know how long it took me to get to the point when I was willing to take on the Elite Four. It would have had to have been at least the end of 2005 if my Soren namesake theory is correct. Going off of my age then, I think it’s likely that it was at least last quarter 2005 - I don’t think I started playing Pokemon much younger than that. And Colosseum was out by then, so J definitely had a GameCube by then. I included FireRed on my timeline even though I don’t know how long after its release I got it - it was Christmas, but I don’t know what year. And I don’t know if I was finished playing Ruby by the time I got FireRed.

But...this was over a decade ago, and it was my mother buying us those games, and Bro and I weren’t aware of new releases to want to get them, and maybe it’s just the haze of memory talking but I feel like games did have longer lifecycles back then? Maybe I was just a kid and couldn’t know otherwise. I only owned like five GBA games by the time the DS released. 

I could easily have just been playing Ruby at the end of 2005. J could’ve played Path of Radiance by then, and named his Rayquaza after a character from it. I think that’s probably the most likely scenario. It makes sense for all the pieces I have, and who I knew J to be. And maybe I’m just stretching to fit what I think, but hey, Soren’s a wind magic character, and FE wind magic is green, and Rayquaza is a green flying-type....

In conclusion, a game that I just started playing turned into a nostalgia bomb of the weirdest kid, and not for the “Ike is in Smash Bros and that’s a game I’ve played thousands of hours of” reason that I figured this game could nostalgia bomb me with.

And I grew up from being a weird kid to a weird adult, and that has me feeling rather fond of Soren Fire Emblem even though I just met him and he’s also kind of a jerk. He makes me think fondly on one of my most beloved Pokemon, who he may or may not be the namesake of.