Stuff From My Childhood

Pokémon
Furby
POGs
ATC
Spice Girls
Aaah! Real Monsters
Rugrats
Doug
Eiffel 65
Animaniacs
Pinky and the Brain
Weird Al
Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles
Bop It
Skip It
Beanie Babies
*NSYNC
Backstreet Boys
Britney Spears
Christina Aguilera
Zelda: Ocarina of Time and Majora’s Mask
Dragonball Z
Tenchi Muyo!
Toonami
States
Silent Ball
Four Corners
Freeze Tag
Power Rangers
Brass Button Bears
Tech Decks
Yo-yos
Gameboy Pocket, Camera, and Printer
Tamagotchi, Giga Pets, and virtual pets
Star Wars prequels
9/11/2001
Human genome
Puff the Magic Dragon
Gullah Gullah Island
Allegra’s Window
Eureka’s Castle
Blue’s Clues
Invasion of Iraq 2003
Invasion of Afghanistan 2001
Pres. Clinton’s impeachment trials
Chevron cars
Lincoln Logs
Columbine

Update (my ff.net profile)

August 11, 2009

I haven't updated my profile in quite a while so here goes.

Storywise I am currently working on two crossovers. One is Tenchi Muyo and Dragonball Z (Legend of the Triad 3) while the other is Tenchi Universe and Dragonball Z (yes, there is a difference). The second one I haven't started to post because I want to finish it before I do in an attempt to be more consistent with updates in case it garners any fans. The other story, A Hero's Sojourn, is something I am working on finishing this summer. I wrote it in 2001 when I was only 15, and I am trying to type it up from the written version now that I am older and a better writer (hopefully). It's part of a much larger series that I am going to try and slowly revise and type up. If you can believe it, it's loosely related to GS Distress and GS Distress II, two Pokemon fics I have up. I don't know if I will ever redo those two, but there is a third I haven't posted here on ff.net yet so I might do that one. Then it gets fun and becomes another crossover, this time Pokemon and Zelda: Ocarina of Time. All of these were written when I was in eighth grade (hence the lack of quality in structure, grammar, etc). The plots are good, though, I promise.

So why have I decided to go back and bother with old stories? Mostly it is because I never finish anything I start. The last year or so has made me want to finish things. Something made me realize that, wow, we don't have time in this world. So I'll be working on all of that plus going to school (possibly finally transferring to a university if they accept me), and working part time at a grocery store.

Artwise, I don't draw much anymore because it just doesn't interest me. I take pictures mostly of animals and nature when the opportunity arises. I will try and touch up old stuff and at least make face portraits of my OCs, but that's about it.

Speaking of OCs, below I will link to some pics on my DA of some of my characters.

Pokemon and Education

Just a quick little thought...

When I was younger, I used to wonder why the trainers in Pokemon that were still kids didn't seem to attend school. I read one story where an author explained this away in an interesting manner, but I was just thinking myself. Education is something we here in the "first world" consider to be important and necessary. Pokemon doesn't even take place in this same world (possibly a variation of it since real world places are mentioned both in original Japanese and in the dub). So why would they necessarily think that our brand of eduction is important since Pokemon seem to be such a huge fixture in that world? They wouldn't necessarily, and there's nothing wrong with it.

Just the thoughts of someone studying anthropology and learning to appreciate other cultures, I guess.

Why You Should Capitalize the Names of Pokémon

Pokémon is the term used to describe a type of organism like plant or animal. Following this logic, you would not need to capitalize it when using it in that way. However, the individual names of pokémon should always be capitalized. Why? Because they are all different species of pokémon, and you capitalize species names, scientific or layman's. You would capitalize Growlithe the same way you would German Shepard.

To borrow from Wikipedia: "Proper nouns (also called proper names) are nouns representing unique entities (such as London, Jupiter, or Toyota), as distinguished from common nouns which describe a class of entities (such as city, planet, person or car)." As each species of pokémon is a unique entity belonging to a larger group, it should be capitalized.

In the end, who cares anyway??

Explanations for GS Distress series

The GS Ball was originally supposed to have Celebi inside , creating a story arc in the Johto journeys series. Then they abandoned the plotline in favor of giving Celebi a full movie; in GS Distress, Ash finds that Mew is inside (against canon but unknown at the time and oh well anyway). Jessie’s mother Miyamoto was searching for Mew at the time of her disappearance. She was also a high ranking Team Rocket member when she disappeared, searching on the orders of Giovanni’s mother Madame Boss, who she was close with. Let’s say she was able to capture Mew in a ball, and that ball went on to be lost. Eventually it was found and assumed to be ancient as no one had knowledge of Team Rocket’s plans and exploits let alone any of their technological breakthroughs. Professor Ivy and her team of triplets are tasked with opening it. When they cannot figure it out, they tell Professor Oak. Ash and gang then head to retrieve it. Brock stays behind, and Tracey joins the gang. In the anime, the ball is forgotten when it is left with another professor who specializes in Pokéballs.

In our story, it is not forgotten. This ball contains the Mew caught by Jessie’s mom Miyamoto. There is a flashback scene where she asks Mew to help her during an avalanche, but Mew presumably does not when it vanishes. That Mew, though, did come back to help her and wasn’t really disappearing to leave, just to get closer to her. The Andes are an unforgiving environment to those not prepared so Miyamoto would have had a hard time here even after escaping the snow downpour. Somehow she is able to make friends with Mew, which is how she is easily able to capture it. This was not how poor Mew wanted things to go down, and it is forever branded with the memory of a friend’s betrayal. Ash accidentally releases Mew in GS Distress. Mew sees memories of Miyamoto when he looks at Jessie, which is why he sends them blasting off. This catches Giovanni’s attention when Ash is interviewed on TV, and he departs for Pallet Town. When he comes to investigate himself, he finds out the truth about Ash being his son. He and Delia used to date and were quite serious, but then she left him for reasons unknown to him at the time. The girl Liz acts on her own behalf until Gio figures a way to use her to trap his son and rightful heir to Team Rocket. During his time there, Ash (Max) also is recognized as the boss’s adopted son. Jessie, James, and Meowth do not see him until much later on so they do not connect the dots about him being the twerp until Ash is 16. Liz was also brainwashed and brought back into the fold. Her original intention was to get close to Ash, which is foiled by his friendship with Misty. Though the two trainers are young, the feelings and potential future relationship make any other girl’s chances with Ash unlikely. When she figures this out, she wants revenge for what happened to her father, who was developing the technology that led to the creation of the GS Ball. Giovanni had him killed, and she was left all alone. When Liz meets Mew, the psychic cat senses her pain and bonds with her, which is why he attacks the others so readily, especially since Ash is connected to the organization that led to him being betrayed and his entrapment. Mew is eventually subdued and put back into the GS Ball, which is kept by Giovanni.

So the question remains: how did Delia, Ash’s mom, come to know Giovanni? The answer is kind of a simple one in the way that girl meets bad boy and falls for him when she knows she shouldn’t. He was born the son of the leader of Team Rocket. He was always destined to lead the criminal organization, even though his relationship to his mother was strained at the least. He had no choice in what he was to become. When he was still an elite, he led many missions and was very successful. On one of these missions, he ran into one Delia Ketchum, who was currently a student of Professor Oak. His team had set up an operation to capture Pokémon in Viridian Forest, the place where Delia was conducting research. The team was to lure trainers into traps and steal their Pokémon. As a researcher, Delia didn’t really catch Pokémon, but like her son would someday be, she had a knack with them in gaining their trust, especially if she helped them when they needed it. Unfortunately, being young and still learning, Delia would become a victim of this trap. Unlike previous trainers, she was set on making sure the Pokémon they were stealing was safe so she climbed out of the hole she had fallen into, something no one else had done up to this point. Giovanni recognized this resolve, especially when she landed him in a flying tackle. Even when they tried to leave her behind, she followed the group until Giovanni couldn’t ignore her presence anymore, especially since his mother would be irritated with him if he allowed a stalker to breach headquarters. Instead, he offered her a chance to join the gang, which would allow her to ensure the Pokémon was safe. He also knew, due to her own outburst, that she was a student of the great Samuel Oak, which he figured would be useful. She agreed reluctantly, and thus began their courtship. She was gone for eight months, thought to be missing thanks to Team Rocket and not her own accord. During this time, she and Giovanni spent time together, enough for them to both develop feelings for the other.

At the end of the eight months, she ran away and left him without a word or explanation. Though hurt, he let her leave since he was recently put in charge of Team Rocket thanks to his mom, who was retiring. She went back to Pallet Town to Professor Oak, who let her stay with him for a bit because of her predicament. There was not a chance she was going to let her child grow up in Team Rocket, and she finally realized that there was nothing that would get Giovanni to abandon his plans, even the prospect of a family. Giovanni is never made aware of his child with her until much later on. Samuel helped Delia set up a life in Pallet where she could raise Ash, and the two got closer. Later on there is even the possibility of the two being romantically involved because of how much he cared about her and Ash and how he was there for so much.

The Power of One

The first time I ever saw Pokemon 2000: The Power of One I was only 14.My mom dropped me off with two of my friends and brother. Initially it was another film where we got free cards with an admission ticket and it was Pokemon. The hopeless romantic I am saw and loved the Ash/Misty moments scattered through the whole thing, and I really wanted to see it again both because of that and because I wanted to recreate the fun of hanging out with my friends. We never did see it again in theaters. Maybe a week later we all got caught for sneaking out of the house. It was supposed to be our last time, and I was feeling so invincible. But then we saw his mom’s car. It was a collective ‘oh shit’ moment. He got sent off to New York for three weeks, taking the soundtrack for this movie with him. I found out from Jeanine a week after it happened. I confessed to my mom in Denny’s while we were on vacation in New Mexico, and I was pretty much off the hook. I tell you, that three weeks without him was hell. He wrote, and I wrote. I saved the letters. He had loads of fun, and I was alright. Life was life for the rest of the summer. Then when he came back he had gifts…but I digress (I still have that Bubbles keychain he bought me as well as the pictures he drew and sent).

Rewatching the movie brings back all of that as well as what the movie really means. Some guy disrupts the balance, and all hell breaks loose. It’s commentary on us humans. The Pokemon are all in tune with nature like our animals. They know when something is really wrong and want to fix it. The moral of that movie is that we humans have to live in harmony with nature and with Pokemon (animals). In the real world there is no chosen one who can fix everything by collecting treasures from three islands. The Deep Water Horizon that was leaking uncontrolled into the Gulf of Mexico for the last two and a half months is proof enough. We all need to be a part of the solution, whatever that is.

Still, I would gladly be that chosen one as naïve as that sounds.

Ash and his father

In the series, rarely do any of the characters, main or secondary, have both parents explained. I’m not sure of what happened later on in the show, but the only ones who had an explanation for both were Brock and May and Max. Back when Pokemon was still climbing its way to the top, there was a live musical special that introduced the idea of Ash’s mom Delia dating the leader of Team Rocket, Giovanni. My friend and I chose to run with that, making Ash’s father secretly Giovanni. We were not the only ones to think this way as evidenced by the stories I have found online, but our take is important to our stories.

The third movie established Delia as a former student of Professor Samuel Oak, and the live special (though not canon with the anime) established that she and Gio used to date. In the past, while she was a student, she got caught up with the mafia-like organization of Team Rocket. It is canon that Giovanni’s mother ran Team Rocket (Madame Boss) and that Jessie’s mother, Miyamoto, vanished while on a mission for her. He simply took over because he really had no choice thanks to his upbringing. Somehow he and Delia met and dated. At first she denied that the organization was as evil as it was, but when she finally allowed herself to see the truth, she was already in too deep. Giovanni was not a physically abusive person towards her or his Pokemon really (maybe emotionally but not hitting). It got to a point where she could not take that life anymore, so she ran away from him and that life. What she doesn’t tell him when she does (because she is unaware herself) is that she is carrying their child. She goes back to Pallet, to her teacher and mentor and stays in that town, where she opens a restaurant and raises her son Ash. This is why Oak is always around and is close to Delia.

When Ash is ten, he sets out on his own journey. Along the way he meets many friends, most importantly Misty. Our series splits off at the end of the Orange Island saga when he returns home to Pallet. His life changes after this, and when he is 16, after a 5 year absence, he destroys Team Rocket as it is known, destroying what his (unknown) father worked so hard to maintain. By this time he has found out that Ash is his son and plans to destroy the boy despite this. Then he is approached by a man named Neo who claims that if Ash is put under the right conditions and grows up, he will build an even more evil empire than his father. He will be unbeatable due to his pure skill and the fact he has his love and friends close by his side. Giovanni works with Neo, which ends up with Ash, Misty, and Tracey in Hyrule on a whole new adventure. Giovanni goes along because he is convinced that Ash will turn to the dark side some time during his journey, which never happens.