I'M CAPTAIN KIRK

This Is My Four Hundreth Post

 

That Was Not My Four Hundreth Post, Technically who's counting

 

anyway, thoughts:
i downloaded the sunmoon demo to see if you could still get ash-greninja and you can indeed, i test-transferred him to Sun and it worked
so should I maybe transfer him to Moon and have him as that character's 'starter' or should i wait for when i get a copy of Ultrasunmoon

 

to watch the mega evolution miniseries with alain and mairin or not to watch
i'm just not sure i'm that interested in following someone who isn't ash
probably because Brain Hate Change but still
i guess i'll see how reluctant i am to move on to sunmoon now i'm nearly done with xy

 

also assess how much i can deal with alain's bizarre poofy scarf that he must literally have wires in so it constantly sticks out behind him
if that sounds dramatic and billowy it's not
it looks like this

as a piece of clothing, it's right up there with tidus' shorts from ffx on the I Am Developing A Personal Vendetta Against This Apparel Item stakes

 

maybe he's just wearing a tube worm of some kind

 

anyway i think i'm too tired to watch ash gets his shit kicked in reprise the 234576543234567th tonight

i wonder if they'll ever let him actually win a league. maybe in the very last series, which will presumably air in the year 4368.

he got to the finals in kalos though i think that's further than he's got since whatever baby tournament the orange islands thing was. he won that. pepperidge farm remembers

 

ah so it's a fully fledged League in the orange islands it's just kind of a weird one and you only need to beat four gym leaders and then a Supreme Gym Leader who costs 75p more

also there's no actual tournament bit so i guess what we can divine from this is that Ash sucks balls at tournaments.

 

i say that, he hasn't got lower than top 8 since kanto
unova was a bit of a step back, top 8 instead of top 4, but he made up for it by getting top 2 in Kalos, presumably to indicate that the crisis of a few episodes back Contributed To His Development, or maybe just because Sawyer was the only one other than Alain who had a chance of beating him and Sawyer wasn't Mysterious And Troubled enough

 

i still have some shrugs/doubts about the full series but the finale of the XY team flare plot- [chef kiss] perfect, some full-on overblown action movie shit, emotions flying all over the place, melodrama, explosions, beautiful, couldn't have asked for more.

 

a lot of the menacingness of using crobat as a villain pokemon disappears when you know it evolves through the happiness meter

 

also it
frustrates me that the happiness meter and the pokeamie/pokerefresh hearts are completely unrelated
it's kind of disheartening to be told by the local Happiness Measurement NPC that you and your pokemon have 'a long way to go' wrt happiness/bond when you've been petting the shit out of them and feeding them snacks by the bucketful and they have five happy little hearts staring you in the face

 

there are so many special episodes that i was unaware of or only passingly aware of
what do you mean there's an episode where clemont and bonnie hang out with cilan
when i've finished the series proper i'll go back and fill in all my gaps

 

most of the XY series: proceeds as normal for a pokemon series, entertaining but not particularly special in the grand scheme of things
last chunk of the third & final season: RIPS OUT YOUR HEART, STAMPS ON IT, KICKS IT OFF A CLIFF, slaps a sticker over the sucking chest wound reading 'I <3 Kalos', leaves

 

i mean given that it's a kid's show and also something I, a wilting flower of a media consumer, can happily coexist with, it's not actually that potent, but y'know
it's a step above most of what pokemon's done since the mewtwo movies

 

also, c'mon, a pokemon episode where there's a girl who got turned to stone and she doesn't get turned back and live happily ever after? that's hardcore, for pokemon

 

oh good i had a whole Thing about my omega ruby pc and his relationship with his dad typed out here and then my pc plays silly buggers and it's gone
grumble

 

the short version minus the rambling where i figured out exactly which flavour of my brain issues i'll be projecting onto this defenseless player character:

Dennis' gym leader father Norman is not abusive, but he is kind of stern and a little distant and emphasises Hard Work As The Only Real Way To Success, and from this Dennis' wee baby brain has spun an issue with failure as a route to Disappointing Dad, and he sometimes has trouble knowing when to kick back and have fun, or not feeling guilty for doing so.
I don't want to give him the genuinely crippling, really miserable versions of these issues because that's not fun in the Pokemon world, Home Of Fun, and also, again, I don't think his parents are outright abusive- his mother certainly wouldn't punish him for failing or enjoying himself, and Norman would just tell him to work harder so he can succeed next time. They would both be very upset to know they contributed to him feeling bad.
Also he's ten, and I'm not playing him as Older or Older Than He Seems this time. He's just ten, and he wants to be like his dad, and he wants his dad to be impressed with him, and he's got the kind of brain that can spin that into an Anxiety without trying too hard.
He probably near had a panic attack after actually beating his dad in a gym battle, because what the fuck, this isn't the status quo, he went in expecting to lose and keep his dad as this unattainable figure of admiration, but then he got caught up in things and started battling seriously and before he knew it he'd won and what is this, his dad can lose?
This is probably something Wally had to deal with, since they went off together immediately after the battle in a cutscene, but honestly I think if anyone can understand flipping out over something other people think is stupid, it's Wally. I definitely ship them, in a cute baby ten-year-old first crush way. Possibly by the time they get to Mauville after that, they've been- gasp- holding hands.

 

actually i wonder if doing all this when he's ten is going to cause him to have an explosion of teenage rebellion later on down the line and take all his pokemon and run away to the mountains somewhere to sulk because he's sick of having even more expectations put on him and being the hero and the good guy and the nice, responsible one all the time.

 

this is in contrast to hibiscus, who is already having a fit of teenage shittiness and doing all the game stuff helps him to learn to get the fuck over it, and also himself.