Bulbagarden Forums - Blogs - Shinneth

New Diamond & Pearl anime headcanons, courtesy of Trifecta!

Shinneth — Fri, 10 May 2013 01:20:30 GMT

So I know it's... closing in on two years since my last update for Travels of the Trifecta! but I swear it's not dead, really it's not! Over the past week or so I've suddenly got jolted into making quite a bit of progress on chapter 19 (wonder if it has anything to do with seeing Paul in the new Best Wishes ED...?). I came across an unexpected bit where I had to expand on some canon from the Diamond & Pearl anime the other day ago, so I got sidetracked and now I'm sharing it with you because... haha, it's proof that the fic still lives...?

So, Barry's Sinnoh badges. As we all know, three of his eight are completely made up by the anime, and he had that red one as early on as his debut. I unexpectedly ended up writing a scene where Barry lists off his earned badges by name and what Gym Leader he won them from, meaning I had to make up some names for these badges! By chapter 19 I figure Barry at least has 4 badges, so I gave him one of the other anime-original badges, but I figured I might as well give them all proper names, Gym Leader owner names, specialty type, and what city they hail from. All the cities are made up by me, I discerned types by eliminating the already-existing types of gyms in Sinnoh and then sorta color-coded as closely as I could, then tried to make puns/obscure references for Gym Leader names. A lot of this is largely inconsequential since at best they'll only be namedropped by Barry and nothing more in the fic, but it's funny stupid shit I thought I'd share, so I'll list to you what I came up with!

Flare Badge

Won from Amber (♀), a Fire-type specialist from Domino City.

Breeze Badge

Won from Aquila (♂), a Flying-type specialist from Empyrean City.

Virus Badge

Won from Mako (♂), a Poison-type specialist from Cronobane City.

You know what's even more geeky? I made up names for every Gen I - IV Gym Leader and Frontier Brain (except the Sinnoh/Johto branch; in Trifecta that's canonly a recent establishment) that likely would have preceded the younger Gym Leaders of the present, as the purpose of this was to determine what Gym Leaders Reggie battled against when he was starting out as a trainer, which according to Trifecta canon, is around ~8 years ago. What the hey, I'll share those too. None of the badges changed.

It's just boring text so I'll at least put that under a spoiler cut. :P

GYM LEADERS REGGIE FACED

SINNOH (8 years before DP)
Age:10

Oreburgh City Gym: Byron (transferred to Canalave Gym later, succeeded by Roark)

Eterna City Gym: Woodrow (original; contains "wood", succeeded by Gardenia)

Hearthome City Gym: Fester (original; based on character from The Addams Family, succeeded by Fantina)

Veilstone City Gym: Chico (original; contains "chi": the vital life force in the body supposedly regulated by acupuncture; succeeded by Maylene)

Pastoria City Gym: Crasher Wake (unchanged)

Canalave City Gym: Stella (original; similar to "steel", succeeded by Byron)

Snowpoint City Gym: Hale (original; sounds like "hail", succeeded by Candice)

Sunyshore City Gym: Shakira (original; similar to "shock", succeeded by Volkner)

HOENN (7 years before DP)
Age:11

Rustboro City Gym: Rochelle (original; means "little rock", succeeded by Roxanne)

Dewford Town Gym: Duana (original; sounds like "duel", succeeded by Brawly)

Mauville City Gym: Wattson (unchanged)

Lavaridge Town Gym: Mura Moore (Flannery's grandfather, succeeded by Flannery)

Petalburg City Gym: Norman (unchanged)

Fortree City Gym: Winona (unchanged)

Mossdeep City Gym: Carrie (original; from the movie Carrie, succeeded by Tate & Liza)

Sootopolis City Gym: Juan (succeeded by Wallace; later resumed the position after Wallace became Champion)

JOHTO (6 years before DP)
Age:12

Violet City Gym: Falkner (unchanged)

Azalea Town Gym: Beatrice (original; sounds like "bee", succeeded by Bugsy)

Goldenrod City Gym: Avery (original; sounds like "average", succeeded by Whitney)

Ecruteak City Gym: Morty (unchanged)

Cianwood City Gym: Chuck (unchanged)

Olivine City Gym: Damascus (original; from "damascus steel", succeeded by Jasmine)

Mahogany Town Gym: Pryce (unchanged)

Blackthorn City Gym: Clair (unchanged)

KANTO (5 years before DP)
Age:13

Pewter City Gym: Flint (succeeded by Brock, then Forrest)

Cerulean City Gym: Wade (original; Misty's father, succeeded by Daisy/Lily/Violet, then Misty)

Vermilion City Gym: Lt. Surge (unchanged)

Celadon City Gym: Erika (unchanged)

Fuchsia City Gym: Koga (unchanged)

Saffron City Gym: Sabrina (unchanged)

Cinnabar Island Gym: Blaine (unchanged)

Viridian City Gym: Giovanni (succeeded temporarily by Agatha)

KANTO BATTLE FRONTIER (4 years before DP)
Age:14

Battle Factory: Factory Head Noland (unchanged)

Battle Arena: Arena Tycoon Gus (original; sounds like "Guts", succeeded by Greta)

Battle Dome: Dome Ace Tucker (unchanged)

Battle Pike: Pike Queen Lucy (unchanged)

Battle Palace: Palace Maven Spenser (unchanged)

Battle Tower: Salon Maiden Abigail (original; sounds like "Ability", succeeded by Anabel)

Battle Pyramid: Pyramid King Brandon (unchanged)

That's all the nonsense I have to offer today!

I am such a hopeless masochist.

Shinneth — Sat, 16 Feb 2013 19:04:34 GMT

Re-watching a certain famous Let's Play with some new companion commentary alongside it has made me realize something.

Me watching Best Wishes is like Pokecapn playing Sonic the Hedgehog 2006.

Seriously, if I weren't living in a condo surrounded by people who'd get on my case for it (and living with my mom too, I guess), I would probably be screaming "MURDER!" and "MOTHER OF SHIT!" and of course, a cluster of "FUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUCK" bombs every time I watched the Black & White anime series. Watching how they make this story is as frustrating as Pokecapn fighting with the controls of the game to try and not have Sonic die to a glitch or being hung up on the stage's geometry, or THE CAMERA. The stories and characters are all relatively terrible in both mediums.

But before you tell me to stop whining and stop watching the show... remember that Pokecapn stuck through to the bitter end. The price he paid for it was the sacrifice of his sanity, and I'm pretty sure I lost my sanity years ago. What do I have to lose. I have to see how this trainwreck ends.

Place bets on the odds of me breaking into a song in monotone in between my posts when Best Wishes reaches the homestretch. I think it'll take a song more powerful than Rocket Man to end the nightmare once and for all. Under Pressure, maybe? ... Though Crazy by Seal more accurately describes my situation.

Maybe I'll break into Medibot's mantra of "JUNK. JUNK. JUNK. J U N K, JUNK!!!". All I know is that when I'm in a bad mood or feeling particularly miserable, it takes the suffering of others to make me feel better. That way I can remind myself that it can always be worse.

That way I won't have a Tourettes-esque impulse to insert a random "MOTHERFUCKER!" in my posts where I almost seem semi-serious.

Wait, that makes me a sado-masochist, doesn't it?

Art Dump that came from Art Constipation

Shinneth — Mon, 23 Jul 2012 00:14:34 GMT

Finally decided to get off my ass and scan some things I've been doing. Most relate to the Trifecta fic (particularly its 25 Years Later Epilogue that is eons away from being written), but there's some other bizarre anime-related things in there. I'm not nearly as talented as, say, Piggy (still ♥ youuu), even if these were colored yet, but some of us just aren't cut out to be good artists... even if I have been drawing since I was 3 years old. ;_;

Barry & Bianca 25 years after the main story

Granted in the fic, the characters DO age (meaning Ash isn't fucking 10 in Trifecta - he is in fact 13/14), so that makes a lot of people here pushing 40. Barry and Bianca marry after it took me ages to think of who Barry would actually want to marry besides Paul. Obvious choice: the girl who looks a lot like him. :P And in some ways acts similarly to him, too. I like to imagine that even though they love each other, Barry STILL fags on about Paul like a schoolboy crush even as an adult with kids, which annoys Bianca. XD Barry takes Palmer's place as head of the Battle Frontier Sinnoh Chapter after Palmer retires. The ugly crap on Barry's trench coat is supposed to be all 7 Kanto BF Symbols and all 5 Sinnoh BF Symbols decorated in a tacky fashion. :P Also, the squiggly lines on Barry is not me - my scanner has been doing this for a while now, and is the primary reason why I have to vector a lot of my shit these days. I may have to look into getting the other one hooked up or getting a new one.

I haven't decided on Bianca's occupation yet, but she kinda dresses like a President's First Lady, doesn't she? ^^; Interesting coincidence: I drew this picture a mere few days before Bianca's BW2 design was leaked. Hee.

Barry & Bianca's kids - Dwight and Gwen

I'm very bummed out because this picture was the victim of water damage, as you can see. T_T That's going to be so annoying to edit and vector out, especially because I think this picture turned out better than most of the others I'll be posting here. The gimmick to this was to basically make fun of Digimon 02's ending, where most of the main cast had kids that looked and acted EXACTLY LIKE THEM. And since Bianca and Barry already look a lot alike, I thought it would be fitting to have them represent that mockery. :P

Dawn and Conway 25 years after the main story

Yeeeeeah, HeatTagshipping prevails! >:| Dawn grows up to be a fashion model, while Conway becomes the #1 assistant to Professor Rowan, soon to take his place as the Pokemon Prof. as you can imagine Rowan is quite the geezer by this point in time, and very likely is getting Alzheimer's. Conway is really more like Rowan's bitch at this stage, being subject to getting beaten over the head by Rowan's cane and having to listen to the cantankerous old cook's rantings. Also worthy of note is that Conway (who lives in Veilstone City in Trifecta) actually moved to Twinleaf Town after marrying Dawn, wanting to get as far away from his family as possible, and it's likely that the two live next door to Johanna. Another interesting thing to note is that Conway's family has this genetic curse - EVERY member in his family wears glasses; both immediate and extended relatives (which counts Saturn - Conway's cousin in this fic - who wears contacts and did wear glasses prior to being recruited into Team Galactic). Conway hoped that this curse would finally be broken with his and Dawn's children. And did such a miracle happen?

Dawn & Conway's Daughter: Soleil ~ Version 1 & Version 2

Of course it did! This story has a happy ending for most parties, considering how depressing it is for the majority of the time. :P Soliel's name took forever to pick out. I wanted an S-name that would relate to the meaning of Dawn/Hikari's name, and boy it wasn't easy finding one that wasn't totally weird. Her prototype name was actually Sunny, but you'll see how abysmal her Version 0 design was later on. :P Soleil and her brother Simon are fraternal twins. Soleil, while having a sense of style, decided to choose the path of the rugged battler as Pokemon trainer. Her necklace is hooked to the miniaturized Pokeball that contains her starter, so she could have easy access to it whenever she needs its help. I have not yet decided what her starter would be, but it probably is not Piplup. Soleil is also very courageous and not at all hesitant to face things most people would find scary. She probably has a ridiculous, paralyzing fear that she keeps well-hidden or something, I dunno.

Dawn & Conway's Son: Simon ~ Version 1 (?)

Simon, on the other hand, was easy to name, as I wanted to name him after my favorite Alvin & The Chipmunks character. ♥ He has not been easy to design, however. I can't decide if his costume is acceptably ridiculous or far too ridiculous. Must be all the Kung-Fu Jesus Final Fantasy XIII-2 LP videos I've been watching, because I keep thinking Noel Kreiss when it comes to designing Simon. O_o As his twin sister chose the battling path, Simon chooses to be a Coordinator, so that means he's gotta have a metro outfit of some sort. It seems to be missing something, but I dunno... Simon is very very timid, and easy to startle. Soleil would make a better creeper than him, easily. :P But Simon's also very cautious and plans out everything before making a move. He's probably the type who is too down on himself to try and make friends because he's convinced himself that people will find him too weird or something. Like Soleil, he keeps the Pokeball containing his starter in a handy position so he can make use of it in a tight situation (dunno what his starter would be either).

Prototype Trifecta Offspring Designs

This was drawn YEARS ago. The first time "Sunny" and Simon were drawn (somehow I still kind of like how his hair is done there), in addition to three of Reggie and Maylene's kids who've yet to get proper designs. Some of them will be overhauled for sure, but I think Maggie's a keeper and I definitely want at least one of Reggie's kids to take after his uncle more than his dad. XD That way Reggie can deal with the stress of a REAL son that acts like his lil' bro that he tried to be a parent to for so many years. Yeah, Reggie's the kind of guy who wants LOTS of kids. Like, tons of them. And Maylene is surprisingly compliant with this! This means she gets pregnant very often, of course, but whenever she is and it's considered to be unsafe for her to continue her Gym Leader duties until she's off maternal leave, Reggie fills in for her as Veilstone City's Gym Leader. :D That way, his raw battling talent will not have gone completely to waste!

Reggie, Roark, and Paul

Another incredibly old doodle that I believe was drawn the same night as the previous one. In the fic, Reggie and Roark are childhood friends, primarily because their dads are also childhood friends and still hung out together a lot in their adulthood before Brandon became a Frontier Brain. This would have been before Paul had to deal with certain traumatic events that made him an even bigger asshole than he was already, but as you can see, as a kid he did have his moments of sweetness. ♥ In the present day, Paul is clearly embarrassed to have had anything to do with those two mooks even though one of those mooks is his brother. :P

That's all for now. Maybe I'll show off my embarrassing Winx pictures another time.

Am I an INCREDIBLY PRETTY GIRL!?

Shinneth — Wed, 20 Jun 2012 15:26:45 GMT

If I wasn't so lazy, I'd actually be tempted to rename myself (even though I'm not a mod or admin) after one of the Gym Leaders like so many users are doing right now.

Mainly because my real name is also shared with a Gym Leader. It would be the best twist. :P

Gym Leader Whitney.

That's right.

Don't I feel proud of myself!

Total DRAMA Wiki, so aptly named.

Shinneth — Sun, 27 May 2012 00:59:10 GMT

For years, I was almost universally loved on the Total Drama Wiki and considered a legend there. I was a member since 2008, briefly an administrator, now a bureaucrat. I'll likely stay one since the only way to get rid of that position is for me to step down myself, but after the events that transpired today, I think I'm going to stay one if only out of spite. Even if they somehow manage to get some mega higher-up from Wikia to take me off, I don't care. Today most of them proved to be nothing more than overly-righteous elitists that vomit out shallow assumptions and gross overstatements.

I've been exhausted enough just trying to hold a civil conversation with those people earlier today (one person continuously insulted me while I just tried to explain my case and asked for said person to stop, only for them to accuse me of "fighting") to go into details, but they sure have a lot of nerve to accuse me of caring more about my status rather than the wiki itself. Finding out the main offender of the people who antagonized me was a 13 year-old girl explained a lot. Sorry, kid, I guess I can't expect you to understand the demands of a full-time job that constantly wears you down and a number of other projects to make time for that came well before the wiki ever did, huh?

Can't believe I wasted my time trying to appeal to those people. Then again, until now they'd been pretty awesome to me for the most part. It's scary how quickly people can turn on you like that. It makes me even more thankful that my Trifecta readers have been so supporting of me even though my laziness and real-life issues has caused them to wait so much.

Since b-crats can't be demoted unless said b-crat does so voluntarily, I think I'll stay that way if only to spite them. Even if they can get someone from Wikia to intervene, I don't really give a fuck.

It's one less thing weighed down on me, at least. All things considered, I am still proud of the wiki for the amazing amount of progress that was made since its humble beginnings and I was happy to be part of it while I was enjoying it, but nothing good is meant to last forever, I suppose. I wish it could've been on better terms, but when people who BARELY know me make such horrible claims about who I am as a person, I know that's a sign to get the fuck out of there.

Sure, I could have handled my minor breakdown on the wiki blog better, but I don't think anything I said there warranted the treatment I received at the IRC chat.

For the record, this doesn't involve anybody from here, so hopefully that's all I need to say about that. :P

I'm thinking of making another post soon about some in-game Pokemon teams I've been playing around with. Might get around to that in the next two days.

That's a lot of Liking

Shinneth — Wed, 16 May 2012 18:23:42 GMT

So I've got over 1,000 Likes for my various posts around here. Neat.

I guess it's a trivial thing to take pride in, but there's little else I have to feel proud of. Once upon a time I wished there was also a Dislike function, but I figured that would backfire on me so hard and within a week's time I'd end up with twice the amount of Dislikes. :P

I have a week's vacation coming up starting next week, which I really really need. I haven't had a proper vacation since I started my first full-time job over 2 years ago, and by now I'm really worn down and generally depressed. I'd love to be able to work on the fic during my break and hopefully finish that chapter since it's been ten months since the last update. Gah.

I've been doodling some Trifecta-related stuff lately. Might show it off once I get home, but it's all related to the epilogue era of the story that's way way way beyond where I'm at now. But it's a 25 Years Later sort of thing, so it includes adult versions (however badly I can draw adults anyway) so far of Conway, Dawn, Barry, and Bianca. Also their kids.

I finally decided that Barry would eventually marry Bianca, yes. :P And even though he'll marry her and have 2 kids (that look EXACTLY LIKE THEIR PARENTS because it's a Digimon 02 gag), Barry still fags about Paul to the point that it annoys his wife. ♥ I finished drawing the adult Bianca shortly before the official art of BW2 Bianca came out, funny that.

I finished drawing Barry and Bianca's kids, Dwight and Gwen. I just finished drawing Conway and Dawn's daughter Soleil... now I need to finalize a design for her twin brother, Simon. :P After that, maybe an adult Paul (who will surely look like Brandon) and he won't be having any kids. Or a wife. ~~Just a secret celebrity lover.~~ He'll be an uncle to many many kids of Reggie's, though. Gotta finalize those; I designed them years ago. As well as adult Reggie who'd be much more handsome than my drawing talent could give him credit for, and perpetually pregnant Maylene. o_o

Whatever it takes to keep the fic going, I guess!

Oh yeah, and Best Wishes 2. That sure is a thing.

One crazy thought I had today while wondering how BW/BW2 would stretch out all the way until it's time for a Gen VI series (because a world tournament can't last more than a couple of months, surely).

Black and White have a running theme of alternate dimensions/timelines depending on what version you buy, right?

What if the Best Wishes we know ends well before the Gen VI games come out, and the successor series is Best Wishes... the other version? Or as I call it, "the Best Wishes that doesn't suck ass".

Hey, at least then both Victini movies could be canon? XD (though ideally my Not-Sucky BW would have some major differences in the main cast...)

The Free-For-All

Shinneth — Tue, 20 Mar 2012 19:13:31 GMT

This here is the post where you can tell me exactly what you think of me. Because I sure don't have a clue.

Normally I avoid this kind of thing because my paranoia and desire for individuality overrides anything large groups of people do... but today I'm exhausted and overworked and mentally scrambled from physical exertion. So I'm sure I'll live to regret this later, but whatever.

No need to hold back on any harsh blunt remarks. Let your love/hatred/neutrality run wild and free.

Maybe I'll even reply and return the favor.

Enticing, ain't it.

So many birthday acknowledgments!

Shinneth — Thu, 12 Jan 2012 05:14:04 GMT

I wanted to thank everybody who wished me a happy birthday here today. I think about 19 of you guys did that? O_o The sentiments are mega-appreciated; I just didn't think that so many people would be acknowledging my birthday here. Especially since I forget birthdays for everyone else here all the time. XD I totally don't deserve it.

Yesterday, I had a sonigram/ultrasound done. Not for reasons you might think at first because I've never been sexually active, but I've long suspected that I may have endometriosis. Look it up if you wish, but basically it's an issue with your reproductive organs that can make your menstrual cycles pure hell. And mine are definitely pure hell. My aunt has endometriosis and only one ovary; she's practically infertile. There's a greater chance of having endometriosis if it's in your family.

For the most part, things looked good, but the gynecologist told me that I did have an ovarian cyst. He called it a "hormonal cyst" but said there's really no formal term for it. It wasn't necessarily a serious deal, but the cyst is likely the cause for why I have such devastating periods and up to 2 weeks of serious emotionally unstable PMS. So whenever I'm being a REALLY huge asshole or extremely negative around these parts, odds are that's me PMSing. I've got a wide variety of PMS symptoms and while it usually involves irrational anger, I'm also prone to extreme depression and can cry at the turn of a dime, or become ravenously hungry, or sleep for 10-14 hours straight. It's a major challenge to suppress these extreme feelings where I work; even the slightest inconvenience caused by a coworker can piss me off for the rest of the day. Seeing as I'm trying my best to maintain a good impression so I can keep this job through the remainder of my probationary period (ending April 26th), keeping my PMS under control is very important but also nearly impossible to do so completely. It's no good to let it all out at home, since my mom and I have a tendency to sync up a lot and we'll usually end up yelling at each other like maniacs.

And that is why you'll see a lot of negativity from me here. Once I'm PMSing, I'll come off far more bitchy than I mean to be, and as I said, symptoms can differ every cycle. So this time it's a mix of anger, depression, ravenous hunger, and being extremely self-defensive.

The reason I'm bringing this up is because I'll soon be trying my first official means of suppressing my crazed hormones: the pill. My mom's been doing everything in her power to not get me on birth control because A) I'm not sexually active, B) It only made HER symptoms worse, so there's a good chance it'll worsen things for me as well, and C) She's heard a story of someone whose daughter died outright from only taking a single pill. She wasn't a smoker, but she had died from blood clotting issues. A fairly rare case, as far as I'm told, but naturally once a mother hears that something like that is even remotely possible, she'll do what she can to protect me from it.

But now we're in a position where the gynecologist is very insistent that I give it a try. He says if it does actually worsen my symptoms or flat-out not work at all, then odds are I do have endometriosis. If it does work, then I'll finally have my solution... hopefully. I have to take it the Sunday after my period starts. So hopefully it starts, like, SOON and not on fucking Monday or something. I've been cramping all day, actually, so it can't be too far away.

Hopefully the pill won't intensify the hormones or anything, or else I'm going to be reeeeeally messed up in all areas of my life.

Uh, with all that said, thanks again for all the happy birthday wishes! :') Not that being 26 is anything to really celebrate, right?

Cover your eyes! I'm going to complain!

Shinneth — Sat, 07 Jan 2012 20:03:49 GMT

Yeah, I'm gonna bitch about the BW anime that I love to hate. If you're thinking of telling me to stop watching it or calling me a terrible insatiable anime fan, don't. Just don't. I do what I want; I don't need anyone's rude "advice" and if this kind of thing annoys you, just ignore it and go about your day, please. Bitching about bitching is just hypocritical and counter-productive, not to mention a total downer. So just don't do it.

For the record, spoilers don't really bother me. Pokemon anime especially has made a habit out of spoiling captures/evolutions for years now. I seriously think the last surprising capture for the main cast was Ash catching Gligar in DP the same episode Paul caught Gliscor. So needless to say I've gotten used to the anime spoiling things to hell and back with their OPs/EDs, though it's funny because I remember when they put effort into updating the OPs/EDs (usually) whenever the main cast Pokemon evolved or were recruited in most of DP's OPs and EDs. Apparently the animators got tired of being efficient like that.

What miffs me, naturally, is the evolutions/captures themselves. Well, sunglasses Krokorok doens't bug me too much because unlike most BW Pokemon, it actually has an interesting personality that carries over, but why exactly would they have this thing stalk Ash since the third episode, then suddenly disappear (despite it supposed to appear in the shelved Plasma episodes, that still would've been a loooong time ago) for almost a damn year, THEN appear again out of nowhere and finally get captured over 60 episodes in where Ash has a surplus of Pokemon already, and said surplus isn't being handled very well. Maybe it would be better if Ash actually dumped a few of his reserves that don't do anything, but that's obviously not gonna happen.

Anyway, it looks like the BW anime is establishing a new trend/rule. First they decide to shit all over the concept of type logic and make Ash suddenly have an irrational hatred for it, even though that's not consistent with his character from past series. They make sure 90% of the time that if Ash goes with a type advantage, he will lose the battle, which just makes common sense look bad; encouraging Ash to take the retard approach to every battle he takes part in. With all his experience from previous series, this is just... well, out of character, you know?

Second, they show that every rival has a variable to determine whether or not they're a viable threat to Ash's chances in the League. The more boring, bland, forced, and uninteresting the rival is, the bigger threat they are. And that's why Trip is the main rival, while the rivals with the most potential (Bianca and Burgundy imo) are the ones with the most horrendous track records, not even getting the dignity of a single on-screen win in battle. Even Barry had some individual genuine wins under his belt shown now and then; this right here is just unacceptable. Characters like Bianca and Burgundy are loaded with personality, likable and relate-able traits... yet they are seemingly doomed to be nothing more than comic relief punching bags. They are at least trying to adapt Bianca's backstory with her dad, but that too just made Bianca out to be a helplessly incompetent trainer when you know she's capable of so much more than that (I still think she would've fared better if she took Iris' place). Characters like Luke and Stephan are in the so-so area, where they aren't completely dull, but not fully well-handled characters that you want to take an interest in - at least not in-depth. They're the only ones besides Trip who show signs of competence, but in the long run they're just not very important, but at least they're not in a hopeless state of misused comic relief (Stephan's name gag notwithstanding) like poor Bianca and Burgundy are.

And Georgia? She's a wild card. On her own with Iris, she was just a bland jerk, and her first win over Iris wasn't really something to write home about. The rivalry itself isn't very engaging imo, and Georgia just works better with characters that aren't Iris. The Don Battle arc was a rare opportunity for Georgia to shine, but what are the odds that Georgia will get to show up with all those people again before the Unova League? If she does return, it'll likely be her alone, and it'll be the same old blah conflict with Iris, the latter of whom will probably wipe the floor with her now that her Pokemon are virtually problem-free and send poor Georgia down the road to deteriorating credibility that Ursula walked down forcibly before her.

tl;dr: the rivals we're supposed to care about and are considered the biggest challenge for Ash to face are underwhelming and dull, while the cool, well-written rivals seem to be on a downward spiral for no reason, unless they do something to spice up Bianca's story fast.

Now, the new trend that BW has instilled upon us! It's sorta already been in place, but since the new BW ending was shown, it just solidifies this trend and seems to be the crappy logical progress we're stuck with.

To review: the ending spoiled that Cilan's Dwebble will evolve to Crustle. This, I actually don't mind. So let's move on.

The ending also spoiled Ash capturing Krokorok, which is probably the least-offensive spoiler change of Ash's team. It's just that this needless delay in its capture shows how incompetent the writers for BW really are. There was honestly no need to hold it off this long. And with Ash loaded up with too many Pokemon already, there's reasonable cause for concern that Krokorok will fade into the background and never be used much beyond its reappearance... since, y'know, the exact same thing happened to Tranquill, Roggenrola/Boldore, and Swadloon. That brings me to my next point~!

Tranquill and Swadloon, two Pokemon who seriously rarely do shit on the show if they even show up at all are due for their final stages of evolution relatively soon. Neither the bird nor the bug have done jack shit since they evolved, so why are they doing this? A last-ditch effort to make them more than a waste of Ash's Pokeball slots? It just doesn't make sense. Ash hardly uses him, and Boldore falls into the same category here. Prior to the Clay gym battle and the genie 2-parter, Roggenrola has barely been used at all. There's nothing canonly stating it's a significantly powerful Roggenrola or anything. I have a feeling it's going to be shunned after being the fall man for one of the upcoming episodes. Besides that, through my observations, I realized Ash tends to be terrible with tanks and other bulky Pokemon. Snorlax is the only one Ash really knows how to use. Instead of learning how to adapt his strategy to accommodate for the bulk and lack of speed these Pokemon have, he'd rather cheat the system by mitigating the speed issue by forcing them to learn ridiculous moves like Rock Climb for Grotle/Torterra. That's why I oppose Ash getting this Rock-type beast of a Pokemon in the first place. I hate its anus design, I feel no desire to like it, and Ash is just going to misuse the hell out of it anyway. He'll make his tanks glass rockets like the rest of his team and assume that will solve the "problem".

Of the three starters, Tepig stands out the least. Its backstory, what little there is of it, is shamelessly rehashed from Ash's previous Fire-type starters and they do nothing with it. I can't get a grasp of its personality and its track record sucks terribly. For all the training episodes that showed Oshawott and Snivy training intensively (what few training episodes BW gives us, anyway), shouldn't it be time for them to evolve? Snivy was already quite capable as a battler before she met Ash; she should be evolving by now, especially since Trip evolved his Snivy to Servine ages ago and the last thing I want to see is a running theme of Ash determined to win with his weak-ass base form Pokemon against a properly-trained team from a guy much less experienced than Ash. I thought the concept of Oshawott getting more spotlight than it needed was for getting it to evolve and grant Ash his first fully-evolved Water-type starter, which is a concept I like. But if they give Oshawott the full Piplup treatment, that's going to ruin everything. And since this series loves to shamelessly copy Kanto, I wouldn't be surprised if Snivy's too stubborn and proud to evolve (which contradicts her personality because she's pretty serious about becoming stronger - which evolving DOES for you) just like Bulbasaur. And I won't be surprised if Pignite suddenly develops an attitude problem. Sigh.

Point is, Tepig was the starter that needed an evolution the least at this point. We're over halfway through the main journey now, so what are they waiting for? What will this accomplish? And Bianca already has a Pignite of her own, so why throw another one into the mix? It's just like how there was no reason for Kenny to evolve his Prinplup to Empoleon since Barry already covered that appearance long ago.

So the new running trend/unspoken rule of the BW series is: the less you do on-screen and the more boring and uncompelling you are as a Pokemon, odds are you will evolve before anyone else. Because why the fuck not. An evolution isn't going to suddenly make them awesome unless they put real effort into the event (you know they won't). But PLEASE, writers, don't make Oshawott the next Piplup. Ash needs a Samurott like crazy - stop holding out by giving him crap to compensate!

I feel a bit bad for Scraggy, since all this wild shit will probably cut into its screentime and it's the only Pokemon other than Snivy that I actually really enjoy in this series. But that's the nature of the beast.

I'm sure there will be rebuttals about how these trends/unspoken rules are just fan-made fabrications and I'm a loon for saying all this, but shut up. Please shut up. I know a pattern when I see one. We know BW likes to drive their running trends and gags straight into the ground until you can't stand them anymore. Remember the Don Battle; I know what I'm talking about.

Well, no spoilers for Iris' team at least, though that is underwhelming because Axew may as well become a Haxorus at any time if it's already learning moves it shouldn't be learning until it becomes a Haxorus. Keeping Axew accomplishes nothing except more shameless marketing towards the babbys. Not to mention Iris' Pokemon are all pretty much wrapped up. Axew evolving just seems like even less of a hurdle because it's learning attacks that only its final form would normally learn. We know it WANTS to evolve, at least, but I just don't trust the writers to pace this right. I can accept waiting until the end of the series before Iris gets herself a Haxorus (sorta like how May got Blaziken towards the end of AG), but not Fraxure. And her being a Dragon Master just seems so out-of-place when she usually accomplishes shit without her single Dragon-type and otherwise just doesn't participate at all. But it's not like the writers are ever gonna point this out again since Iris is just a hop, skip and a jump away from attaining true enlightenment as a Dragon Master.

I can see where people are coming from with the "oh she's fresh and a nice change from the clueless newbies we had before", but much like how Dawn and Zoey's friendly rivalry looked good on paper but wasn't executed well enough to be interesting, they're really not doing much with Iris' role and most of the time she doesn't come off as much of a team player.

Besides that, this is an ongoing journey anime. Time keeps slipping, into the future. The whole premise of this anime is for kids to go on a journey, learn valuable lessons along the way, and face themselves for their inherent flaws. It's nice to see people other than Ash grow and flourish over time; makes it much easier to get into their characters. Someone who's apparently taken care of all that development and shit years ago before she was even legal to become a trainer is not a compelling character. Unlike Misty, Dawn, and May, their roles were clear in that Misty coached Ash while Ash molded and influenced the minds of May and Dawn with his experience... and despite the occasional spat here and there, they felt like real friends. I don't feel that with Iris; not even a year into the series... that's a bad sign.

For the record, my dislike of Iris (and to a lesser degree Misty... and also the BW anime in general) is a feeling I express solely to speak my mind and defend my justifications for how I feel. I speak for my own behalf and no one else's (unless I'm outright stating that I agree with them), and I am determined to show my disdain for Iris is not some phase of blind rage, there's no Freudian element because the absence of previous female main characters has nothing to do with how I feel about Iris. I've been fine with every cast change that's happened until now (well, partially - I'd love Iris to be out of there, but Cilan and Ash can stay). I'm not out to "brainwash" anybody with propaganda or lies, and I never once felt inclined to attack people who opposed my opinion. I'm not out to fuck with the heads of people I don't know; that's just stupid.

I'm just me, stating my overly-lengthy thoughts whenever I feel it's appropriate to do so.

Some don't seem to be aware of the concept of therapeutic ways of venting. My real life's no picnic, and sometimes I want to explode at somebody to get it off my chest. But that would be bad; I don't like putting real-life people through that. So when I vent here, I feel better and there's no risk (or shoudn't be) to vent to my heart's content. Fictional characters are not real, this entire series is fiction, so ragging on it is completely harmless. I feel a lot better once I've gotten it off my chest.

That's why it bugs me to get people lambasting me simply for speaking my mind bluntly. I'm not out to get anyone here; I just want the comfort of being able to speak my mind without being assailed by a billion subjective rebuttals. I'd really even like to be able to state a certain name in passing without triggering massive rebuttals for a mere side-comment/joke.

Honestly, if anyone wanted to debate with me in a civil manner, I'd be all for it. But all I usually get are slanderous insults and a complaint about my complaining. Because we all know how useful those are. But... dammit, I've got a right to complain. I've got a right to do whatever the hell I want without being whined at for how horribly "negative" I am.

But that's life. Negativity is everywhere. You either roll with it or ignore it; not attempt to take it down completely. That's what fan clubs are for; pure positiveness and nothing but love-love-love. If that's not enough, learn to take the negativity in stride and focus on what you want to say rather than focus on sabotaging someone else that you may not like.

This isn't directed to anyone in particular because I've had too many people to count attacking me to varying degrees. I tried being funny with my last blog post, which I suspect nobody read in full, and opted to bitch at me instead. Just... negative comments, everywhere, and comments of people telling me what to do. I don't appreciate that.

This dragged out longer than I wanted it to be, but I sincerely want a fun time when I do my silly complaining. I've been portrayed as being way more serious than I actually am; that's not cool. I just want some fun with roasting the series for once, y'know?

Man, I hope I don't get in trouble for this. I've got no intention of starting shit; I just really felt the need to speak my mind. I hope that's understood...?

The moral of the story is that the BW series is still terrible. But terrible enough for me to watch like a trainwreck, and there are a few rare, odd things that prevent me from completely hating the series.

That's how I roll.

My present to everyone: an altered theory.

Shinneth — Sat, 24 Dec 2011 17:52:28 GMT

A while back when the Clay gym battle episode was announced (as well as Roggenrola's evolution), I had to rant about this on my plurk account. The result? A very plausible way to explain why the Black & White anime series is fucked up.

Call this a variation of the Coma Theory, hereby dubbed the Dream World Theory. Hear it out as I copy-paste the enlightening discussion!

≈║Shinneth║≈
ROGGENROLA'S the next one to evolve?! Are you fucking with me, anime?!

≈║Shinneth║≈
Ash hasn't even used that waste of space in a battle yet!

SHOUNEN HERO
Wasn't this obvious?

≈║Shinneth║≈
fffffffff

≈║Shinneth║≈
I guess it's obvious by BW writers' bullshit logic.

≈║Shinneth║≈
Given that they ALREADY DID THIS for Ash's Swadloon.

≈║Shinneth║≈
Evolving in gym battles for both, no less.

SHOUNEN HERO
The anime exists to piss you off, Shin

≈║Shinneth║≈
It really does.

≈║Shinneth║≈
Except now it's pissing EVERYONE off.

≈║Shinneth║≈
Oh, and Roggenrola will learn a brand new move as Boldore...

≈║Shinneth║≈
Wait for it...

≈║Shinneth║≈
ROCK SMASH

»KP«
oh lol, bw anime...

≈║Shinneth║≈
Oh, and naturally, Ash gets a Boldore while fighting CLAY.

≈║Shinneth║≈
GEE IT'S NOT LIKE ASH HAS EVER INTENTIONALLY PUT HIMSELF AT A DISADVANTAGE BEFORE IN THIS SERIES

Penix Wright
To be fair, when he doesn't, his Pokemon get their asses handed to them for no good reason

Penix Wright
I'm still headscratching over Panpour taking out Pikachu

»KP«
didn't he do that because Paul would do it?

≈║Shinneth║≈
No, Ash does this in BW because Ash is retarded in BW just like everything else is in BW.

≈║Shinneth║≈
And there must be backwards type logic in Unova.

≈║Shinneth║≈
Because usually when Ash DOES has an advantage, like Ran said, he loses.

Penix Wright
Perhaps Ash has gained meta-knowledge

≈║Shinneth║≈
Ignoring type logic is the new "Don't evolve your Pokemon! It's BAD!" of the anime.

Penix Wright
He sacrificed most of his experience for the knowledge that the underdog will always win

≈║Shinneth║≈
I want to punch the little fucker.

Penix Wright
and so now he intentionally puts his pokemon at a disadvantage because that's how this anime works

≈║Shinneth║≈
I want to punch the meta right out of him.

≈║Shinneth║≈
fffffffgghhh I SWEAR THE ANIME DIDN'T WORK LIKE THIS PRIOR TO BW

≈║Shinneth║≈
The only real time Ash gave type logic the middle finger in DP was against Candice. But that was lulzy.

≈║Shinneth║≈
Plus his Gliscor had fire and bug moves to balance shit out.

≈║Shinneth║≈
His BW team is crap and most of their movesets are crap, too.

Penix Wright
it's equivalent exchange

Penix Wright
learn how unova works

Penix Wright
forget how to catch pokemon

≈║Shinneth║≈
You're right!

≈║Shinneth║≈
Unova works on CRAP.

≈║Shinneth║≈
God, now I just feel enlightened as shit.

lawyero'clock
gawd even I don't have a good defense for it

lawyero'clock
I STILL LOVE ASH but the writing in unova has been pretty questionable

≈║Shinneth║≈
Which really is saying something.

SHOUNEN HERO
I stand by my theory

lawyero'clock
unless it's sfor a derp episode e-ea

SHOUNEN HERO
BW is Ash's coma dream.

SHOUNEN HERO
Not the rest of the series.

SHOUNEN HERO
Just Unova.

≈║Shinneth║≈
I like Kyo's theory.

≈║Shinneth║≈
It helps me cope.

lawyero'clock
sob

≈║Shinneth║≈
Only a coma could imagine hair like Iris'.

lawyero'clock
fjkadlf

SHOUNEN HERO
And he's reimagining his Kanto journey as Unova.

≈║Shinneth║≈
And only a coma could imagine every single thing Cilan says.

SHOUNEN HERO
That's why Iris is a bad Misty ripoff, Cilan is gay Brock, and Trip is Gary in Paul's body.

lawyero'clock
fjkdagjdfkghaha

Penix Wright
and why he's still ten.

SHOUNEN HERO
Yep.

SHOUNEN HERO
And why Pikachu sucks so bad.]

SHOUNEN HERO
ASH DIDN'T EVEN BOTHER TO SUPERCHARGE PIKACHU IN HIS DREAM

lawyero'clock
the only thing standing out about that is pikachu is so pissed off this season

Penix Wright
Though why would Team Rocket go from incompetent but hilarious to boring but somewhere in the general ballpark of competent...

lawyero'clock
like everytime something messes up pikachu's been like ARE YOU FREAKING KIDDING ME

lawyero'clock
ASH STOP SMILING THIS IS RIDICULOUS 8|

Penix Wright
maybe it's like inception or something. team rocket has invaded ash's coma dreams.

SHOUNEN HERO
Pikachu has also invaded Ash's coma dream, though

≈║Shinneth║≈
This gives a whole new meaning to the term "Comashipping".

SHOUNEN HERO
And that is why it's so annoyed.

SHOUNEN HERO
ASH WAKE THE FUCK UP STOP BEING HAPPY HERE STOPSUCKING

≈║Shinneth║≈
Oh god.

≈║Shinneth║≈
There's a Dream World in Gen V. It all makes sense.

lawyero'clock
HAHA

SHOUNEN HERO
yep

≈║Shinneth║≈
I have to... document this or something.

≈║Shinneth║≈
TO RETAIN MY SANITY.

Penix Wright
i hate the coma theory when applied to most of the anime but here it's just fantastic

lawyero'clock
hahaha yes ditto

≈║Shinneth║≈
Yes, I will make an exception to the coma theory for this one series.

lawyero'clock
man the first half of b/w could be excused with lol ash is just excited, he'll wise up!

lawyero'clock
but he's still...not

≈║Shinneth║≈
It is literally the only explanation that isn't BULLSHIT.

lawyero'clock
i-i know they have to reboot him every time but this has been EXTREME

lawyero'clock
even hoenn wasn't this bad, gosh

≈║Shinneth║≈
They don't always STATE HIS AGE in his reboots, either.

≈║Shinneth║≈
But in BW, nope. They just had to say "HURPADERP HE'S TEN".

lawyero'clock
i will IGNORE THE AGE STATEMENT TO ETERNITY o9"

lawyero'clock
i'm one of the folks that don't really care how old ash is

lawyero'clock
but that was just too far

≈║Shinneth║≈
So there is like literally no moment of BW that didn't piss me off.

≈║Shinneth║≈
Because the age thing happened within the first MINUTE.

lawyero'clock
YES it was so unnecessary

≈║Shinneth║≈
So that forever soured my sentiments on the series once I heard that.

lawyero'clock
especially given the game PCs are OLDER THAN THAT

lawyero'clock
who were they trying to prove themselves to e-ea

≈║Shinneth║≈
Really. They intentionally aged the PCs, and by this point logically Ash should be 15.

≈║Shinneth║≈
IT FITS SO WELL.

SHOUNEN HERO
I shall dub this theory, the Dream World Theory

≈║Shinneth║≈
DREAM WORLD THEORY it is!

≈║Shinneth║≈
Fuck, I need to share this on Bulbagarden and help all my poor other coping friends.

Penix Wright
Well I think the Pokemon anime's audience in Japan is primarily young kids.

≈║Shinneth║≈
And I gotta visitor so I'll BRB

Penix Wright
So I guess they may have thought that their target demographic wouldn't be able to identify with him if he was actually a teenager...?

≈║Shinneth║≈
Except tons of shounen series age their protagonist.

SHOUNEN HERO
I mean, yeah, Ash always has his share of incompetent moments in the various seasons.

≈║Shinneth║≈
And nothing changes.

SHOUNEN HERO
He's a moron, he's allowed.

SHOUNEN HERO
But it's just ridiculous in BW

SHOUNEN HERO
It's like he's going out of his way to be stupid.

lawyero'clock
Fisticuffs: yeah, I get that, but I meant that they didn't have to mention his age at all :|a he very obviously looks kid like

lawyero'clock
I ADMIRE HIS CHARACTER DESIGN in the sense that you could pass him off as an 8-10 year old or a preteen/fifteen year old :|a

SHOUNEN HERO
All the other seasons were at least fairly consistent with each other in terms of his intelligence, with him slowly wising up as time went

SHOUNEN HERO
on.

SHOUNEN HERO
But now he's even dumber than he was in Kanto.

SHOUNEN HERO
I guess his subconscious is where all his stupid goes after he starts becoming more intelligent.

SHOUNEN HERO
So it shows full-force in BW, which is obviously a dream

Penix Wright
This makes sense!

SHOUNEN HERO
I HAVE SOLVED THE BEST WISHES ANIME

lawyero'clock
cryyyy

lawyero'clock
m-maybe next year they will turn a new leaf

lawyero'clock
(also am nearly sick to death of the b/w opening 8|;; cute gimmick the first couple times but NO MORE CGI)

SHOUNEN HERO
AUGH THE OPENING

SHOUNEN HERO
I didn't even like it the first time.

lawyero'clock
The ending theme was cool but NOPE CAN'T HAVE NOTHING DECENT IN POKEMON

lawyero'clock
now that awful rap thing ugggh

SHOUNEN HERO
....oh god the Unova Pokérap.

SHOUNEN HERO
That thing is an abomination

lawyero'clock
a part of me hopes the quality is going down just because they're scrambling around trying to figure out if they're going to

lawyero'clock
introduce team plasma or not 8(

SHOUNEN HERO
Well, they were supposed to, but... That episode never aired.

lawyero'clock
yeah...I'm starting to think they're making team rocket do all the things they were gonna have team plasma do :/a

lawyero'clock
(I AM IN THE MINORITY HERE but new team rocket is so boring to me orz orz Meowth is okay, but why can't they be competent

lawyero'clock
AND entertaining? they've done it in the past, gosh.)

Penix Wright
minority? i think that's the majority opinion in this plurk

lawyero'clock
..........ilu guys '-'

lawyero'clock
on a couple forums i always see people giving praise to srs team rocket

lawyero'clock
and all happy that their comedic days are overrrr

SHOUNEN HERO
Well they're killjoys and obviously didn't like Team Rocket.

SHOUNEN HERO
And anyone who didn't love Jessie James and Meowth is dead to me.

Penix Wright
yep.

≈║Shinneth║≈
I also dislike the boring pretending-to-be-competent TR.

≈║Shinneth║≈
The only good thing coming out of this is the Meowth thing, but that doesn't get to last.

≈║Shinneth║≈
But it's like, I loved TR but there were episodes at times where their intrusion could kill an episode's flow and whatnot.

≈║Shinneth║≈
But DP fixed that!

≈║Shinneth║≈
TR was still there usually, but they'd provide aside commentary instead of doing their usual thing.

≈║Shinneth║≈
And that was great.

≈║Shinneth║≈
And Jessie was being treated like a real threat to Contests in DP. ;_; But she didn't go out with a bang like she deserved.

≈║Shinneth║≈
I'm thinking the writers must be in a coma themselves.

Penix Wright
yeah from what i heard of dp tr was handled perfectly there

≈║Shinneth║≈
They even brought back Jessiebelle in DP.

≈║Shinneth║≈
You can't go wrong with that.

≈║Shinneth║≈
One funny thing I remember is that TR actually had a couple of REALLY good ideas for twerp-foiling in DP.

≈║Shinneth║≈
And they were always James' ideas.

Penix Wright
it's like in dp they figured out the perfect way to appeal to both the little kids and the older fans

Penix Wright
...and then in bw they decided to push the envelope and fuck everything up

≈║Shinneth║≈
Which insinuated that James would probably be a better leader than Jessie except for the fact that he's such a bottomer.

≈║Shinneth║≈
That is exactly what they did, Ran.

Penix Wright
that or they started listening to the people who whine about how there are more than 151 pokemon and want it to be season one again.

≈║Shinneth║≈
They do make a lot of unnecessary parallels to Kanto in BW.

≈║Shinneth║≈
The first few episodes are just painfully obvious Kanto reduxes, only worse.

≈║Shinneth║≈
Since then they just lay on very thick references for no good reasons.

≈║Shinneth║≈
BW is very strictly Gen V-only with the wildlife except Pikachu, which is pretty analogous to the days where there were only 151 Pokemon. XD

Penix Wright
hahaha, yeah

≈║Shinneth║≈
Of course, this makes Iris' Dragon Master goal really boring because there are only THREE non-legendary Dragon-types out there.

Penix Wright
i mean i thought it was pretty cool in the games because it evoked the old games

≈║Shinneth║≈
Yeah, it works for the games just fine.

Penix Wright
while keeping the improvements that the new games made in terms of story and such

≈║Shinneth║≈
Yeah. Some people think the anime would be a lot better if they just intro'd Team Plasma and N already.

≈║Shinneth║≈
But... I really don't trust them to handle the villains right.

Penix Wright
but with bw anime it feels more like it's backpedaled to first season without sticking to what they learned from the newer gens

≈║Shinneth║≈
Cilan, Iris, and Bianca really aren't much like their game counterparts at all.

≈║Shinneth║≈
So I have a feeling they'd especially fuck N up.

≈║Shinneth║≈
And hey, Kanto series took a lot of creative liberties with the game characters too! What a coincidence.

≈║Shinneth║≈
But yeah, from Kanto to Sinnoh there was a logical progression with the writing quality.

≈║Shinneth║≈
They'd fix what didn't work, experiment with new things and improve on them over time, etc.

≈║Shinneth║≈
They'd put more effort in character development over passing time. And they just don't do any of that in BW at all.

Penix Wright
Yeah, exactly

≈║Shinneth║≈
The writing staff hasn't changed. That's the real big mystery here.

≈║Shinneth║≈
My theory is that they're on an extended vacation and fanfic-writing interns are really writing these episodes.

≈║Shinneth║≈
But they get paid under the table so the real writers still get credited.

Penix Wright
Well, sometimes it just happens with long-running series.

Penix Wright
I know it definitely happened with Bleach.

≈║Shinneth║≈
Yeah, honestly I don't blame the writers of Pokemon for going insane.

We totally figured this series out.

In case I didn't make it obvious enough yet, this post was made to poke fun at BW, not getting all serious with meaningless complaining and bitching.

So keep the serious negative remarks and suggestions that I stop watching the show to yourself, please.

Shin used ROSE-TINTED NOSTALGIA GLASSES! But it failed!

Shinneth — Wed, 30 Nov 2011 00:31:24 GMT

So I just watched Viva Las Lapras! on Boomerang. It reminded me of something that greatly annoyed me about the 4Kids dub... besides the obvious things that annoyed me about the 4Kids dub.

You know how some people think the "Let's go!" that's inserted at the end of battle commands now and then in the TCPi dub is super-annoying? I think that's overblown. It's slightly grating for me, but it feels natural enough and it's just a matter of matching lip flaps anyway, so it doesn't really bug me that much.

After seeing various Kanto/Orange Islands/Johto episodes, I realize there's a trend in their dialog that REALLY bugs the hell out of me:

Using the word "attack" for nearly every single move used by a Pokemon. If it's a traditional battle, I'll hear a "Squirtle/Staryu, use your Water Gun Attack!" every other line. Just in this episode, when the group of Lapras used Mist to evade Ash & Co., I heard Tracey say "That was a Mist attack!"

... Uh, it's a stretch to call it an "attack" if it doesn't actually hurt you.

My memory of the entire series of old times is fuzzy because I'm 25 and virtually senile, but I think it's safe to say they abuse that "attack" phrase for their lip flap solution. And it sounds absolutely ridiculous to hear ", use your attack!" over and over and over.

At least with the "let's go!" thing, it wasn't used EVERY OTHER LINE. They had variations, and honestly, "let's go!" feels like a more natural thing to say. Is it overused? Sure. But it isn't the ONLY lip flap solution TCPi has; I'd know, as I've written out full scripts for quite a few of their DP episodes before.

It literally feels like "Use your _____ attack!" is used every other line in a battle or used in situations where it can't really be called an "attack". It sounds so stilted and distracting. I'm honestly glad they changed that. Can you really keep a straight face if BW Ash always said "Snivy, use your Attract attack!"?

So... stupid.

In closing, screw y'all, "let's go!" is A-OK to me if it means we don't have to hear "attack" tacked on at the end of every move. So... there.

3 years, 18 chapters! That rounds out well, right?

Shinneth — Wed, 02 Nov 2011 15:52:50 GMT

Travels of the Trifecta! is officially three years old as of today. That's right. 3 years ago, I was sparked with sudden inspiration to make an at-the-time one-shot of Paul based shortly after an episode that had just aired back then in Japan; DP100 aka Aiding the Enemy! aka the episode where Ash's Turtwig evolved to Grotle and forever went downhill in usefulness.

That episode moved me to create this giant monster of a fic. 18 chapters, reaching dangerously close to .5 million words in length total, and is still going. Admittedly I've lost a good deal of my writing mojo lately and I've just felt really worn out for the longest time. Chapter 19 has some progress, but it's only 8 pages/4600 words long right now. I've got all the events of the fic plotted out so I know what needs to be done... I'm just not in sync with my creative vibes right now. I've been so pissed off over how much the Black & White anime sucks lately to focus properly on the fic (and I only let myself get PO'ed over BW because it's a therapeutic sort of thing so I don't end up getting angry at real life people and treat them like shit instead of treating fictional characters like shit like I normally do), but using it to highlight just how bad DP's successor is serves as some nice incentive to keep on truckin' no matter how exhausted I am.

I've gotten a few VMs lately with people telling me they've been reading Trifecta, which really makes my day. :D The truth is that relative to the fic's size, it's not very popular here at all. Infrequent updates, INSANELY long chapters, being animeverse related and not featuring Ash in some love shape with the main girls, being a Paul fic but not an Ikarishipping fic, limited function OCs, and me just not promoting the fic enough beyond my sig makes the fic relatively obscure on this forum. A lot of that is my fault, and I'm not seeking pity or free publicity of course... it just kinda stinks to be in that kinda position, but finding happiness just by simply knowing people are in fact reading the fic can really make my day and I thank you all for that. ♥

I'm not sure when the 19th chapter will get finished, but I'm not about to let the fic die, so it'll come when it's good and ready! So long as Paul and Conway are bromance high-touching in my avatar over here, this fic's spirit will prevail!

A Plurk appeared! And it's wild!

Shinneth — Mon, 10 Oct 2011 00:27:29 GMT

In case it wasn't obvious from the lack of new posts since last November, I don't really use my personal LJ anymore. I don't use LJ in general besides for RPing purposes anyway, so I altered my sig to get rid of that link and add the plurk link, which I've recently established.

Just in case no one pays attention to the sig and has a plurk of their own and might be interested in befriending me there, I'm just making it known here just in case. In retrospect I dunno WHY you'd want to befriend the likes of me, but some of you might have morbid curiosities, I dunno.

It's always nice to have a place to vent and share weird shit we find, right?

Whatever; it's THE_Shinneth for those who care. No one cares. I'm just killing time here or something.

I loved that jab at lengthy transformation sequences in Voltron Force last night.

Shinneth — Fri, 22 Jul 2011 16:15:51 GMT

It's so nice to have Trifecta 18 done, you have no idea. Now I'll get to write some really fun things whenever I get to starting chapter 19, which shouldn't be long from now. First I just have to vent out all my negativity so I don't drive myself insane from bottling all up inside.

Also, since when was the word "Mary Sue" treated like it's up in the leagues of racist slurs around here? Oh, right. Because it's been associated with Iris, and apparently you're a horrible person if you have even the slightest negative connotation about Iris as a character, her development, or the writers who are behind the handling of her character.

But because two wrongs totally make a right, it's perfectly justified to drag Cilan's name through the mud and call him a Gary Stu because that's nothing at all like the double standards that have been needlessly bitched about due to the heinous crime of anyone doing anything less than loving and worshipping the almighty Iris.

I have zero sympathy for anyone who whines about how sick they are of Iris "being called a Mary Sue", even though she hasn't outright been labeled one and it's merely observed that the writers are inadvertently making her take on more Sue traits as time goes by, so much to the point that it's a cause for concern. Guess what! There is a difference, but this wouldn't be the first time wild conclusions were jumped to because of hasty assumptions.

The reason I don't feel sorry for anyone who's upset by associating Iris with the word? I've experienced the same kind of scenario with my own favorite character. Someone on LJ called him a Villain Sue and made all sorts of erroneous accusations to justify their dislike of the character. And mind you, this was a Big Name Fan doing this, meaning the influence could easily spread these misconceptions across the fandom and make a fine mess of things. But did I jump in, call out this person for their lies, organize a character defense crusade and force that person to change their mind? No. I did not. I never once interacted with that person. All I did was show the entry to my friends during a Skype call, we all made fun of her perceptions contained entirely within the call, and that was it. I got over it and I moved on.

Is it because I didn't like that character enough to defend him? No. It's because I didn't feel the need to start a conflict based entirely on their opinion of a fictional character, however warped it was.They weren't attacking real-life fans of the character, they weren't invading fan clubs or harrassing people who thought differently, and though this person had to have been heavily misinformed for the exaggerated accusations, I felt no need to enlighten that person. That person's extremely negative view on that character had no bearing whatsoever on how much I enjoyed the character, and so any action I could've made to "right" this "wrong" wouldn't have been worth the time or effort. I've seen similar sentiments here on the forums as well, but again, I've done no crusading to prove them wrong and change their minds. It's easier to ignore such sentiments than you might think.

This is why I roll my eyes at this "situation" with Iris. Mountains are being made of molehills, all because it seems no one but a select few are willing to agree to disagree and leave it at that. Since I've found multiple sources of me and some of my friends being slandered (both here and elsewhere) solely for not liking Iris - claiming we're in cahoots to get a rise out of Iris fans by relentlessly trolling them and dissing Iris for the hell of it - I'd say I have far more reason to be pissed off about this scenario than anyone who's just sick of seeing the word "Mary Sue" sprinkled about in the forums.

Is it that hard to believe that I genuinely really don't like a character and want to speak my mind with no ulterior motive whatsoever? I honestly couldn't care less who agrees or disagrees with me, and I have better things to do with my time than be a manipulative asshole towards people I don't even know. I initially had very high hopes for Iris; I'll admit rising my expectations was my own fault since I ended up being far more disappointed than I would've been had I not hyped up the prospects for the upcoming series. But that still doesn't excuse what I honestly feel is very poor writing, and it's not just with Iris. There's dozens of aspects of BW I dislike and am annoyed by, but since Iris is a main character, it's significantly harder to ignore whenever they screw up with her. I've watched and analyzed plenty of episodes, and I don't think it's a coincidence that in the episodes of BW I actually like, Iris is pretty much always the sole low point of these episodes due to various reasons.

There are perfectly good reasons why Iris is under suspicion of becoming some form of a Sue down the road. Anyone who bothers to research TV Tropes can see there are many different variations of Mary Sues. Yes, the essence of the original Mary Sue usually aren't seen beyond horrible fanfics, but there are valid points out here that I think justify the belief that Iris is starting to cross into that territory (once again: this is not to say she is a full-blown Mary Sue). A lot of people didn't like how the ongoing Excadrill "subplot" (can you call it an ongoing subplot when it existed for all of two episodes?) was handled, and I think one would be hard-pressed to argue that Emolga suddenly becoming obedient and battle-ready out of the blue with no explanation whatsoever was a good move. How is it that Iris' problems with her Pokemon are getting resolved with little to no struggle on Iris' end, with no revelations of how her flaws may be holding back her true potential (y'know, how it works for everyone else in this series), and rather that the Pokemon is the solely the one at fault (despite what was said in DP about how a Pokemon's shortcomings are the fault of the trainer). Iris already knows all there is to know about being a Dragon Master and can do what Dragon Masters do, and since her Pokemon can better themselves through the magic of plot convenience that requires no visual effort of Iris, y'know, training these Pokemon, there's got to be a point where you stop and realize "Okay, is it me or is Iris getting by way too easily?"

She gives Ash a hard time for absolutely no reason and gets away with it, she's needlessly overly-critical towards others and no one tells her to shut her face, she's always got something negative to say whenever something amusing or entertaining is going on (hence the Debbie Downer monicker), so from my perspective and from others, Iris just brings everything down to a depressing halt. I feel no real trio vibe between her, Ash, and Cilan.

Yet I do feel a trio vibe with Ash, Cilan, and... Bianca. I finally realized that I'd probably enjoy this show a lot better if Bianca was the token girl and Iris, with some retooling, became a rival. Because when it comes down to it, even though the writers obviously want us to feel for Iris (otherwise we wouldn't have seen her cry bitch tears in BW036) even though I honestly have trouble connecting with her. I can't sympathize with her, I can't understand her attitude or motives, and the story has given me no reason to want her to succeed in her goal. Bianca, on the other hand, I can connect with. She has an engaging plot in the game that seems to be set to be adapted into the anime, and I have to say a ditzy girl striving to become a trainer to prove her discouraging and overprotective dad wrong is a much more heartfelt story than watching the journey of a young girl prodigy who doesn't act like one half the time who possesses this self-righteous superiority complex and deflection issues, whose catchphrase only serves to put down others and reflect on her own immaturity that the series so far is ignoring in favor of glorifying her inherent abilities, strive to become a Dragon Master even though she already knows everything she needs in order to become one and all she really has left is to wait for her weak-ass or ornery Pokemon to catch up with her.

I gotta say, that's not really a thrilling story. Hell, Brock was rarely thrilling but his aspirations had more spirit and emotional appeal than this.

Actually, if I weren't so certain I'd get eaten alive here by doing so, I'd love to have a topic about the prospects of a "What If?" scenario where Bianca is the token girl of BW instead of Iris and how the series would go about that way. And before anyone brings this up, her trainer status could always change early on into another path (similar to May), since Bianca in the games was always unsure about whether or not she'd be fit to be a trainer and ultimately ended up taking on a more supportive role, which she could do in the anime as well. That way, we won't have to deal with repeat Gym battles. And hell, if she were part of the main cast, Ash wouldn't have needed to catch that personality-deprived Tepig and might've caught something more worthwhile in its place.

Really, it's a fascinating idea and I'd love to discuss it, but I'm sure it would be interpreted as "more Iris-hating" which is apparently a crime here now.

Anyway, I'll stop here. I'm sure this will brew a fine shitstorm; that's what I get for speaking my mind. How dare I, right?

Totally writing this in advance

Shinneth — Thu, 07 Jul 2011 18:58:26 GMT

For anyone who still remembers or cares: Trifecta 18 is nearing completion. It's been over six months since the last update, which can be attributed to A) Me getting Pokemon White, B) Me not realizing that April is the busiest month of the year for the IRS, so work kicked my ass and every day since then I've been coming home far too exhausted to do much of anything, C) Getting my ass kicked again with work this month since we're closing international cases again, which sent us from getting very little work to drowning in it, and D) Goddamn adaptation chapters. I'm so glad this is the last one for a while. Since I have to adapt two episodes into one chapter unlike the previous ones, and since I've been too braindead to do the fic at home for months now, I had to find videos of both episodes, torrent them until they were done, then find another program to change their file format so they'd go on my iPod which would allow me to write out the scipt for both episodes at work, and then actually write both scripts before getting to progress with the chapter itself.

And I have to tell you, writing transcripts for these episodes is not that fun. I could've maybe cheesed it if I had a version of the eps with closed captioning (since I'm a moron and didn't realize until recently that I've got DVR), but those can be unreliable at times. Plus, I still have to detail the unspoken actions myself so I know how to interpret each scene as I adapt it; where word emphasis goes, certain emotions being conveyed, and anything that leaves an opening for me to expand on the scenes since I really don't think it's really "my" writing if the chapter was nothing but strictly the episode scenes and dialog. Plus that's a bad thing to give your readers after making them wait this long.

Fun fact: even with my sometimes-unnecessary detailing of certain actions, all of my transcripts have hovered around the vicinty of 16-17 pages/5k words. It makes sense that the lengths are sorta uniform in that they all have a 22-minute timeframe to cover, but I just thought that was kinda interesting. Good thing it's easy for me to stretch out the length of these scripts to just a hair under ten times the original length. Well, it's not quite that long yet. Right now I'm at 35,070 words (56 pages) and I usually don't try to gage my progress by percentage, but I've just reached the point where Chimchar evolves to Monferno in the fic. I'd say that puts the chapter in general at about 85% - 90% completion. I'm obviously going to add original shit after the battle ends, hence the lack of approximate estimation. I'm not sure if it'll beat Chapter 17's monster length yet, but it may. That still won't really forgive the half-year wait, but this is still not too unusual for how often I used to update before this fic started. The first seven chapters were pretty fast-paced (but also a lot shorter), but after the self-enforced hiatus while waiting for DP128 to air in Japan, it's been a pretty steady pace of 1 1/2 to 3 months per chapter. Once Chapter 18's done and sent out, I definitely plan to get back on that tighter schedule, which should be much easier now that I don't have to jump through hoops before eveng getting to write the damn fic... at least I won't until chapter 24. I think I am planning to adapt some of the episode where Saturn and Charon and Looker are out and about, but not the whole thing. And that's much less daunting than what I've been having to do since Chapter 15 (barring 17 since it was my break). I don't plan on taking a lengthy break after I'm done with the chapter either, contrary to how I do when I usually finish chapters. The heavy canon content will prevent me from addressing any other ongoing plots in the story this time around, which means no Barry or Conway, sadly. But they'll make a stunning comeback next chapter, and after that we'll finally have the Paul and Conway bromance back in action for the rest of the story. I've really liked writing for Barry and Conway and the fact that I don't get to do that for this chapter is agitating, hence my lack of desire to take too long before starting chapter 19.

Despite the very long delay, my passion for the fic hasn't waned. Real life's just really been a downer for me lately and it's still been a struggle adapting to life with a full-time job. Well, for the most part I'm used to it - it's just the strain of going a long time with no vacation save for our federal holidays (just had one this week, for example - but I'm not getting another one until Labor Day). During my two-year probationary period, I'm taking as little time off work as I possibly can to better my chances of really making this job permanent. Save for a few doctor appointments, I've been doing very well and I've already accumulated over 100 hours of annual leave, so if we ever end up in a furlough situation next month like I've been hearing, I'll basically have myself a free vacation. :D But in all seriousness, over a year of full-time work (my first full-time job, no less, after 3 jobless years) with no vacation is going to wear me down and damage my productivity. But, delays due to real life wearing me down is much better than having a delay due to my lack of passion for the story. Rest assured I still love my story for what it's become; it's one of the few things I've got in my life now that really make me happy. There are just times where I can't get myself to write, and I'm not sure if I'd call it writer's block since I've got this fic almost completely planned out for all plots, subplots, et cetera up to chapter 37... but I never want to force myself to write. That's where the quality drops and I'll start making some really nasty mistakes. This here is why I never write on a set schedule; my stories get done when they're done and that's all there is to it.

If I could get myself to write at home again, that would speed things up considerably, but as I've said, not much can be helped with me coming home mentally and physically exhausted, and on several occasions I've passed out in the evenings. The fact that I really suck at multitasking works against me, too. But I thought it'd be appropriate to address this since it's been so long and I'm probably not gonna take up a lot of space giving excuses in my author's notes when I post the FFN version of the chapter and just link to here instead.

Today's Thursday, and for the record I have been following the new Voltron Force series on Nicktoons. Since I'm an old fuddy-duddy, I was an avid watcher of the original Voltron: Defender of the Universe series and yes I know it's a pretty butchered version of the anime by the name of GoLion. Even with the edits I always thought Sven was dead before they showed the English-exclusive episodes. I actually like the three new characters and I enjoy the mystery focus on Vince since he isn't the "main" of the new characters. Especially since he can, y'know, alter Voltron's form. I was in genuine shock last week to see Lance's lion be the head of Voltron, and I have a feeling Hunk's gonna be the head for this week's episode.

I like Larmina (her personality is actually a lot like I wish how Iris could be), though I am confused about the "Allura's niece" part. I don't recall Allura having any actual siblings in the original show... there was Princess Romelle, who was her cousin, but if Larmina is Romelle's daughter then she'd be Allura's second cousin, not niece. I wonder if they'll explain that. Either way, like I said, she pulls off the snobby l33t archetype much better than Iris ever could, and so far I don't see any real Sue-isms in her. Since she's been raised on Arus unlike the two guys and probably had a lot of training from Allura, it makes sense that she'd be a step ahead of her junior crew. I really like Allura herself in this series; while I liked her okay in the original series, it was pretty grating how pretty much everyone in her life except her teammates would give her a hard time about her royal duties and deter her from being a member of the Voltron force. Lotor's fixation on her always really creeped me out (it's even worse in the GoLion version since it's a confirmed Oedipus Complex), Lotor himself always seemed like a huge whiner in the original series... he seems almost comical for the new series, which works just fine for me. For the first few episodes I wondered if the Lotor-Allura fixation would even exist since he never addressed her until last week's episode, but it is a pretty important detail to maintain and so far they're handling it pretty well, so I'm okay with that. I do like the addition of a human enemy who's trying to wipe Voltron out using the power of political correctness, too. It's been a few years since I saw any episodes of the original series, so I don't remember Lance being so laid-back and overtly flirty like he is now, but from the Wikipedia page it says Lance did possess those traits. Either way, I do like the new Lance. Hunk and Keith haven't had all that much limelight, but they seem pretty much the same as the original counterparts so far, so that's cool. Pidge was my favorite character in the original series, and he's likable enough in the new series, though he's like Keith and Hunk in that he doesn't have that much limelight yet. At least he's got a much less weird voice now. XD

And today has been another grueling 8 hours of work, plus the time of the month conveniently arrived in the middle of the day. And here I wanted to get some more writing doooone... ugh...

Definitely this month, it'll be done. Promise.