I'M CAPTAIN KIRK

of course he's talking about romanian peasants
there's also some cute romanticisation of 'g*psies' but thankfully not as much as i'd initially feared

having finished it, it's got some interesting stories but i definitely would have preferred it with less of the author's... author in it. Like there's nothing wrong with imitating gothic lit, some of the writing in this was very evocative, but it gets a bit wearing when you're clearly imagining yourself as the protagonist of this particular gothic journey. I don't care how frightened you were by the big scary castles, dude, i really don't.

He remains a good photographer though.

 

though really the book is called 'the journal of a ghosthunter' so i probably should have expected something like this

 

[looks at the pokemon i need to talk about] oh yeah
...
anyway i'm going to talk about prof. gingko

 

oh big same word hat mood
i still ahve prompt ficlets i own hanging out half finished but all my brain wants to do is go tearing off into New Ideas

 

-As it turns out, Jessie's Wobbuffet in the anime is rather unusual for the species. Most of the time, Wobbuffet prefer not to get involved with a) a lot of light and b) a lot of things that can startle them. As it says in the pokedex, mostly they live quietly in caves. As a matter of fact, their eyes open in the pitch dark- but this is very rare to see, as the moment any light comes their way they scrunch them mostly closed in that expression they've become known for.
-Their eyes are in fact pretty much evolved to see best in absolute pitch blackness, so they're usually found deep enough into caves that the only illumination is maybe some glowy moss or something. They can still see in daylight but not nearly as well, which makes things likely to startle them, which they don't much appreciate. Wobbuffet who spend a lot of time on the surface, or who are born there, show a much stronger tendency to use their psychic abilities to navigate and understand the world than their other senses.
-There are unfortunate cases of people who are familiar with wobbuffet bred on the surface going out and catching their own cave-dwelling wild one and being confused when it doesn't adapt well or quickly to living in bright light. It is generally encouraged these days that people do not catch wobbuffet who live in caves, as surface-bred wobbuffet are not in particularly short supply- and if for some reason someone is determined to catch a wild one of their own, wild individuals who have decided for whatever reason to live on the surface themselves pop up often enough that said determined person could probably locate one, especially if they're willing to travel a bit.
-Despite the pokedex being correct in saying they never attack first, they are in fact ambush hunters. They stand very still in absolute darkness waiting for other pokemon who can't spot them to bump into them and be stunned by the sudden rebuff, and then they swallow them. They use their psychic abilities not only to provide themselves a shield but to muffle their scent and their body heat, making them extremely hard to locate by senses other than sight (they are bright blue, after all). It has also been observed to confuse sonar, making zubat and swoobat a good chunk of a wild wobbuffet's diet. This is why it's not a good idea to startle them- their immediate reflex is the 'pounce and swallow whole'.
-A wobbuffet's stomach acid is capable of digesting most matter, meaning they don't have to regurgitate bones or hair after eating, and they are technically omnivorous although wild inviduals only tend to go in search of non-pokemon foodstuffs in times of shortage. It is still recommended that trained wobbuffet be fed a primarily carnivorous diet, and many wobbuffet trainers find their pokemon greatly enjoy having their food thrown at them in order to 'pounce' on it.
-The 'lipstick' marking on a female wobbuffet is actually because the females take on most of the responsibility of feeding the young. They feed baby Wynaut much like birds, by regurgitating partly-digested food, and the lipstick mark helps the infants locate the mother's mouth and therefore where the next meal will be coming from. The mother Wobbuffet actively cares for her clutch (of up to five, usually, though more have been occasionally reported) and the hatchlings and feeds them in this manner right up until they evolve, though more mature Wynaut are capable of hunting down small game and non-mobile foodstuffs for themselves (Wynaut are officially classified as 'baby Pokemon', that is, Pokemon who in their basic evolution are not sexually mature and cannot breed, and often require care up until they evolve).
-Apart from these family groups, wobbuffet are not hugely social among themselves, and tend to stake out a small territory and 'mark' it with their psychic abilities. As they spend a lot of their time standing still, these territories often aren't huge, but they are fiercely defended nonetheless. Fights between wobbuffet rarely become actually physical, and appear to mostly involve the two combatants staring fixedly at each other and ignoring everything else until one or both of them starves to death. As they have slow metabolisms and can survive quite a long time without food, this often takes a while. If it does somehow become physical, usually because one was careless enough to physically bump into the other, the fights generally consist of each wobbuffet bouncing and being bounced off shields until one is battered into enough objects to retreat, be seriously injured, or fall off a cliff.
-Despite not being the most obvious pet, and naturally spending a lot of time doing not very much, wobbuffet are popular among humans. They are sturdy (both because of their psychic shielding and because they are naturally firm and flexible in texture throughout their whole bodies), good-natured, funny to look at, and a wobbuffet who knows how to use their psy to compensate for their eyesight and avoid shocks is an excellent companion for children- provided the children know not to touch the tail, of course.
-The tail is something of a mystery. How independent it is of the wobbuffet as a whole is not yet known, as it is hard to get data since the wobbuffet are so very protective of them. The best theory currently is that the tails are the source of their psychic power, which would then make protecting them a priority as the psy is essential to the wobbuffet's survival. Some theorise that the tail evolved to be semi-autonomous in order to protect itself better; others theorise that it is perhaps a being of its own, and lives symbiotically with the wobbuffet.

 

Please understand that i am imagining a wobbuffet 'pouncing' as them just stretching themselves up and engulfing the other pokemon while their feet remain firmly on the ground

schlormph

 

EXCELLENT, this is the quality Wobbuffet content I crave! Thank you so much!

 

....wobuffets are the slimes from darkest dungeon?

 

Professor Wei Gingko, born in Turffield, Galar (great-grandparents having emigrated from whatever it is poke-China is called). Grew up fascinated by all the stone circles and geoglyphs in the area, constantly digging up the garden and, as she grew older, less permitted places in search of History. Befriended a Stonjourner at the age of seven, much to her parents' mild dismay (it bedded down in her father's prized flowerbed). 'Arrested' at age eleven for trespassing on the big famous Turffield geoglyph in the stubborn belief that she could archaeology it properly; became kind of a pet of the local archaeology and history society when she kept doing that, and they decided it was better to teach her than repeatedly have to shoo her off the thing. Took to this absurdly well. Went to university to study archaeology; graduated with a First, immediately went to do a master's in specifically Pokemon Archaeology, then took one of the doctorate courses that lead to an official Professorship. Was required to do public-facing work at a recognised pokemon laboratory or similar organisation as part of this, leading to her joining a small but well-established little sanctuary near Hammerlocke that mainly took in pokemon seized from unsuitable trainers. Remained there as Assistant Professor after she graduated while considering what to do next. Around that time, Cara Liss started up her activities and suddenly there was an influx of weird restored fossil pokes to the sanctuary. Gingko's boss went to her like 'can you deal with these??' and Gingko a) explained to him the difference between archaeology and palaeontology, and b) promptly went back to university for a master's in fossil pokemon care. Shortly afterwards, her boss retires and Gingko becomes the boss of the sanctuary, which has since expanded and now takes in pokemon seized from illegal smuggling operations and the like, plus running educational schemes on fossil pokemon care and rehoming pokemon to suitable trainers. Gingko is now a recognised expert in specifically mismatched Galarian fossil pokemon care, and on the Hunt for Cara Liss.
She still goes on archaeological digs and writes papers about them though. She's one of those annoying people who is constantly on the go and isn't really happy unless she has Something To Do. She has also had the control of the Sanctuary's social media accounts taken off her because she keeps getting into fights on the internet, so she contents herself with using her own personal accounts to get into arguments on poke-twitter instead.
She trusts her own instincts and knowledge inherently, to the extent of taking a strong 'i recognise the council has made a decision, but' stance on anything she is technically supposed to do or follow but disapproves of. To her credit, she usually does try to prove why she's right, and will reluctantly accept it if she isn't.
Strongly believes in the strength of human-pokemon relations throughout history and will go on a rant about historical proof that societies who cared about all pokemon, even the weak and 'useless', did better than those who didn't. Still has a fascination for historical use of pokemon in wars, because it's kind of cool and interesting. Willing to give almost anyone a second chance, but almost nobody ever gets a third.

 

Things That Are In My Version Of Stow-On-Side That Aren't Whatever This Bullshit Is:

-proper british market stalls (do you know how dumb it would be to put everything on the ground in this climate?)
-proper Tudor style half-timbering and overhanging upper storeys
-house walls made of flints
-old dry stone walls
-sunken lanes
-cute little cottages with thatched roofs
-NO BALCONIES
-i know it's meant to be a desert but there is no part of Britain that is anything resembling a desert. You know what it should be instead? Moorland with granite outcroppings

 

all those stories that are like 'look how horrible and traumatising actually being sucked into a fantasy world would be' make me kind of go

those are all the things i was looking for when i devoured western isekai novels in my teens. i wanted to be fundamentally changed into someone stronger and better who understood how things worked, and if i never fitted in when i came back, well, i never fitted in anyway so no fucking loss. I think I grasped that the sort of people I would want to be friends with would find someone who was changed in that way to be interesting (i missed that the right sort of people would find me interesting regardless, but hey). I also never really understood why people would want to go back. I mean I did, since at that age I was extremely needy and clingy to my mother and found a lot of things incredibly scary, but also I didn't.

I also wanted in some way to be traumatised. The version of me I imagined coming back from this fantasy land was always a war queen, a warrior, with an eyepatch and a cool sword. Of course thirteen-year-old me didn't truly understand how horrible it would be to be in the middle of a medieval-esque battle, but she did understand (not consciously, but unconsciously for sure) that people took that kind of trauma more seriously than they took the trauma of a small child whom nobody knew was autistic. Maybe if I looked like that, people would help me. And if they didn't, maybe I'd be strong enough not to care, or not to need the help.

I don't quite know what the authors of those stories are aiming for. I assume most of them are people who read a lot of those stories as kids too, and are now bringing their adult perspective to a narrative in which literal children go through really quite awful events in most cases. But I don't usually engage with media by getting Doylist about it; I'm a watsonian, I like to work within the confines of the story's conventions and tropes. I don't have much trouble suspending disbelief most of the time (except, of course, about silly small details that have no reason to be wrong beyond 'author didn't do two seconds of research'. But you know how it is). So I'm not really the target audience. And they faintly upset me sometimes when I stumble across them, because it almost seems like, once again, my small self is not being taken seriously. Is being told she doesn't know what's good for her. Is being told she can't have what she wants. Is being told that, again and again, reality is going to stand in the way of any goals or plans she might dare to hold.

She knows. I know. We fucking know, okay?

 

was blogwalking again and ended up months back in someone's blog reading a post where people were giving opinions on a new saints row game, which they were fairly unanimous in saying looked Bad
and the thing is they were giving criticisms that sounded highly legit from my perspective of never having played a saints row game (i own a couple but they're in my stack of Games I Haven't Got Around To Actually Doing Anything With Yet) but in the process expressed negative opinions of 1) a game I love and 2) a game people i respect love
so i'm here like. but what is the truth?

 

paddy has never given me his backstory and i've only just realised because he's got a fair amount going with his current self.

so i'm here like.
paddy: i'm a general practitioner who spends his off days hooking up with randos and drinking too much in bars; i like sex, i'm aromantic, i'm commitment-phobic (unrelated), i habitually crossdress but am a cis man, and i'm missing an arm.
me: okay but how did you get to be this way
paddy: I HAVE ALWAYS BEEN THIS WAY I SPRANG INTO EXISTENCE AT THE AGE OF FORTY FIVE
me: ..okay i know that technically you did, being a fictional character, but-

 

paddy: oh and i might quite like tits but cannot be hacked to do anything about it except wear false ones every so often
me: that's not helpful

 

Winnessed because while I fully get the feeling your descriptions there are delighting me.

 

i am pretty sure that his commitment phobia is the result of some kind of family imploding messily. probably not his birth one.

feel like the rough edges of the thing is like: his bio family was the sort of abusive that looks like fun from the outside- lots of parties, he didn't have any rules or have to do any chores, he was always given whatever he wanted, he was allowed to drink and smoke even as a youngster- but it came at the price of, y'know, emotional and physical neglect. The only person who actually looked after him as a kid and teenager was... his neighbour, a foul-mouthed older woman who was absolutely doing sex work out of her house but would also like, cook him meals, and help him fix things that broke in his house, and play videogames with him and encourage his interests. He got the idea of being a doctor pretty young, and when he told his family they were like 'well that's an awful lot of work' and stuff like that, and when he told his neighbour she was like 'hell yeah you fuckin show them how clever you are kid' so he started working towards it seriously both to please her and to spite his parents. He was popular at school because he both knows how to talk to people and also could get alcohol without even needing to fuck around with fake IDs, though he absolutely did have and use a few of those, but although he had a posse of Youths who hung around with him he didn't really consider them per se friends, especially since he knew he couldn't tell them about his ambitions. His teachers found him annoying as fuck because his behaviour was goddamn terrible but his grades were always fantastic- which he explained to his gang of friends as him cheating, so they didn't think he was a nerd (spoiler: he's a nerd). Once it got to the point of him going to college, he faced something of a dilemma: his parents could absolutely pay for it, but he didn't really want to be beholden to them. His neighbour offered to put him in touch with some old friends of hers in the city he wanted to go to college in, and suggested he could live with them for very minimal rent and work his way through instead. He jumped at this chance, ditched his school 'friends' and his parents, and moved right in with the friend, who basically was the head of a little community of weirdos who lived in a house one step up from a squat. Paddy found this fucking great, though, because for the first time he was surrounded by people who not only encouraged the weirder parts of him- this is where he took up crossdressing, got half his piercings, realised he loved hooking up with randos etc etc- but were also all fucking in on his medical ambitions and encouraged and supported him wholeheartedly and without pressure or shame. He absolutely wore himself to the bone during this period studying, working, and making time to party too, but he also had the time of his goddamn life and regarded the little community as his family. He managed to get through his undergrad and into med school proper during this time, but once he was there things started going downhill. Stuff was getting tangled in his family- some of the members had got themselves mixed up with gangs and the nastier kind of drug dealer and so on, and tensions were rising. A few people left, and were replaced by worse people whom he liked and trusted less, and some of the ones who stayed were changing in ways he didn't like, and he was sure getting a lot of practice when it came to overdoses and drug withdrawal and other such exciting things. Stuff lurched on in this vein until he was on the verge of starting his residency, when it all came to a head when the guy he'd considered his closest friend turned out to have got in deep with a gang who showed up looking for him one day. The guy promptly threw paddy to the wolves by acting like he didn't know what was going on and getting paddy to answer the door for him. The gang grabbed Paddy and went looking for his friend, but didn't find him, he having climbed out the window while paddy was distracting them; at this point the gang started to try and force paddy to tell them where he was, including straight-up dousing his left arm in alcohol and setting it on fire. Paddy refused to say anything, but it didn't escape his notice that not one of the people he'd thought were his family tried to help him until the gang had decided he wasn't worth it and left. He didn't exactly blame them, but it still hurt. While he was in hospital after this, his friend showed up, and paddy extracted the truth from him- that he'd been lying about where he was going and what he was doing for months, that he'd actually crossed the gang in a way he knew would rile them up, and that he was pretty sure they would torture anyone they caught. This betrayal really did hurt, and damaged paddy deeply.
His arm ended up having to be amputated because the burns were severe and got infected; as soon as he was discharged from hospital he moved cities, used a rather edited and carefully spun version of this terrible sob story[tm] to gain a residency in another hospital, and threw himself even more deeply into his studies and his work. He became a GP/FP because he figured it would allow him access to a lot of people who might not otherwise get the care they deserved, is a stubborn old fucking sod about treating people right, and has never let himself have a family since.
In slutty ihop au he moved to a tiny town in the midwest after he treated someone who, in the eyes of someone unpleasant and powerful, did not deserve to be treated; after his patients started getting threatened on their way to the surgery, he decided it was time to go somewhere nobody would look for a guy so plainly adapted to city living- a bitty town in the middle of fuck-off nowhere!
Luckily for him he's plenty personable enough that the residents overlook his Peculiarities in favour of the fact that he's a very competent medical professional and also will Fite insurance companies.

 

...my oc brain be like: here is the bare bones of his backstory [spiels out the entire thing at length and in detail]

 

I love Paddy omg

 

paddy's a winner.
in this original universe he lost his arm in a gas explosion trying to help victims of while slightly drunk, and promptly grafted the arm of one of the dudes who died onto his own shoulder (scifi setting).
he did offer it back later but the family said he could keep it which was nice of them.

in mundane aus he just has a prosthetic arm; probably one of the fancier ones that can do relatively delicate manipulation like pulling zippers and suchlike. it's one of the few things he spent his doctor money on other than partying =P

 

paddy :handshake: felix
having shit arms that act up in incliment weather