Hi, guys! As you've seen, I have writing commissions currently OPEN. I currently really need the money as some situations have been happening in my life 🥲 I'm willing to write most anything so just shoot me a message here or send me a mail at [email protected] 📧

If you could share this it would mean the world to me, thank you💚 Also putting my ko-fi here just in case too!

neocities guide - why you should build your own html website

do you miss the charm of the 90s/00s web where sites had actual personality instead of the same minimalistic theme? are you feeling drained by social media and the constant corporate monopoly of your data and time? do you want to be excited about the internet again? try neocities!!

what is neocities?

neocities is a free hosting website that lets you build your own html website from scratch, with total creative control. in their own words: "we are tired of living in an online world where people are isolated from each other on boring, generic social networks that don't let us truly express ourselves. it's time we took back our personalities from these sterilized, lifeless, monetized, data mined, monitored addiction machines and let our creativity flourish again."

why should I make my own website?

web3 has been overtaken by capitalism & conformity. websites that once were meant to be fun online social spaces now exist solely to steal your data and sell you things. it sucks!! building a personal site is a great way to express yourself and take control of your online experience.

what would I even put on a website?

the best part about making your own site is that you can do literally whatever the hell you want! focus on a specific subject or make it a wild collection of all your interests. share your art! make a shrine for one of your interests! post a picture of every bird you see when you step outside! make a collection of your favorite blinkies! the world is your oyster !! here are some cool example sites to inspire you: recently updated neocities sites | it can be fun to just look through these and browse people's content! space bar | local interstellar dive bar creature feature | halloween & monsters big gulp supreme peanutbuttaz | personal site dragodiluna linwood | personal site patho grove | personal site

getting started: neocities/html guide

sound interesting? here are some guides to help you get started, especially if you aren't familiar with html/css sadgrl.online webmastery | a fantastic resource for getting started with html & web revival. also has a layout builder that you can use to start with in case starting from scratch is too intimidating web design in 4 minutes | good for learning coding basics w3schools | html tutorials templaterr | demo & html for basic web elements eggramen test pages | css page templates to get started with sadgrl background tiles | bg tiles rivendell background tiles | more free bg tiles

fun stuff to add to your site

want your site to be cool? here's some fun stuff that i've found blinkies-cafe | fantastic blinkie maker! (run by @transbro & @graphics-cafe) gificities | internet archive of 90s/00s web gifs internet bumper stickers | web bumper stickers momg | gif gallery 99 gif shop | 3d gifs 123 guestbook | add a guestbook for people to leave messages cbox | add a live chat box moon phases | track the phases of the moon gifypet | a little clickable page pet adopt a shroom | mushroom page pet tamaNOTchi | virtual pet crossword puzzle | daily crossword imood | track your mood neko | cute cat that chases your mouse pollcode | custom poll maker website hit counter | track how many visitors you have

web revival manifestos & communities

also, there's actually a pretty cool community of people out there who want to bring joy back to the web! melonland project | web project/community celebrating individual & joyful online experiences. Also has an online forum melonland intro to web revival | what is web revival? melonking manifesto | status cafe | share your current status nightfall city | online community onio.cafe | leave a message and enjoy the ambiance sadgrl internet manifesto | yesterweb internet manifesto | sadly defunct, still a great resource reclaiming online social spaces | great manifesto on cultivating your online experience

in conclusion

i want everyone to make a neocities site because it's fun af and i love seeing everyone's weird personal sites that they made outside of the control of capitalism :) say hi to me on neocities

So yesterday I said I had ✨opinions✨ on the DLC and today I have come to the conclusion that as per usual, I will not chill until I dumped them somewhere lmao. It's mainly focused on what I've seen people say about Carmine and Kieran online, be it on tumblr or other websites.

Teal Mask Spoilers under the cut :3

I have no idea if I used the under the cut feature even right lmao I've kinda always just been a douche and ignored it when talking about spoilers as I've realised gfjdjrc

Ok anyway so. I think what personally bothered me the most is a lot of people saying "they just have a perfectly fine siblings relationship, nothing unhealthy to see here" and "Kieran is a coldass douchebag who view others as objects and only cares about strength". Both statements I strrroooongly disagree with.

First about his and Carmine's relationship, since it plays into the other thing. It seems that their parents aren't around, though it's unknown why. The grandparents are apparently pretty lackluster in taking over their job and because of that, it seems that Carmine has taken it on herself to take somewhat of guardian role for Kieran. Which is a role she's visibly overwhelmed by, which makes sense, because that's not a role you should have to take when you yourself are maybe like 17/18 lol. You can see that she absolutely does care for and wants the best for him, but at the same time she can't wrap her head around his actions and how he's feeling. So a lot of the things she does she does out of good intentions (for example telling the player for him that he's interested in them because she says he couldn't ever ask on his own, or the whole lying thing where she believes not telling him you guys met Ogrepon prevents him from feeling left out), without understanding that they have quite literally the opposite effect (Kieran feeling like he's unable to do anything on his own BECAUSE she does everything for him, and of course him feeling left out BECAUSE you and her keep meeting Ogrepon a secret). On top of that she clearly has issues keeping her own emotions down, so instead of reacting calmly she'd yell at him whenever he does or says something she doesn't like. And whether you want to see that certain one-liner as her implying she does also hit him when she's not "being nice" or not, she seems unaware of what effect these reactions have on her brother. I do think the implication might very well be on purpose, but it's just not as obviously stated as it could be because this is still a Pokémon game and we don't gotta be too in your face about child abuse in a game that like 8 year olds play lol.

Anyway, aside from him thinking he can't make decisions on his own and stuff, there's a lot of ways this treatment shows in Kieran. Notice how while Carmine is pretty open about showing her anger, he keeps trying to repress his own until later in the story where he's starting to be unable to do so? You can see that when you battle him the first couple times and he loses, the light in his eyes leaves briefly (yknow, the anime thing they both do where that shows them being angry/frustrated) before he grabs his head and just says aw man or something. And when she outs him on his crush or whatever on you, he also looks angry like that, but she immediately shuts him down like usual. I'm pretty sure that's a learned behaviour on his part, aka "when I get openly angry or sad my sis will yell at and/or hit me so I have to keep it down". That's why he always switches the topic, runs off or just goes quiet when he pisses her off or he thinks he pisses her or someone else off. It's optional dialogue so idk how many people have seen it, but Carmine confirms that at the festival, though she again misunderstands why he does it.

Have a high quality photo of what I mea-

So yeah, in short, in regards to their relationship, I think it's clear that it's pretty dysfunctional. For some reason Carmine's stuck with taking a caretaker role she cannot possibly fill given her own issues and age. As a result, she takes it out on her little brother who in turn has to suffer the double bagage of lack of parents and dealing with his older sister's moods. And with next to no social contacts outside of her, he's stuck in that situation and he's got no one to help him learn how to deal with this in a healthier way (same with Carmine really). All he knows that if he was "stronger", he could deal with this better. Like that cool ogre from the folktale that does not care what people think of it and keeps fighting for its right to be respected regardless. Stronger being a very arbitrary word here, as the only specific goal he mentions (in the beginning) is able to stand up against his sister.

Now onto the whole "Kieran sees Ogrepon, the player, probably everyone but him, as an object" thing which... yeah no, he's not a sociopath kcngjtc

More precisely, the player character comes in as this cool person who has no trouble beating his sister in a battle. They don't seem to have all that much trouble socialising either. Good thing he doesn't know all the kewl stuff we did at Area Zero and all or he'd lose it completely. I think a big bonus is also that we're not from his town, so we don't have any bias against his ogre idol. So like, he's head over heels for us, he actually gets to hang out with us and warms up as we realise we're interested in his stories and all and wow. He's found an actual real friend omg. He might not be 100% aware of that, but that's all he really wanted. He wanted to befriend the ogre because it sounded like it would be someone to understand him. And now there's suddenly this super nice person who's taking that role.

But then suddenly, that person hangs out with his meanie sister and stops interacting with him almost entirely. I have a feeling that Carmine hanging out with people he'd want to befriend and them making fun of him is just a thing that happened before and that's why he jumps to that conclusion right away. Keep in mind, the reason Carmine came to us in the first place is literally to make fun of his lack of skills at the mini game lol.

So yeah, the reason Kieran is so massively pissed off is because he does view the player character as a human being, and one he really really liked and put up the courage to open up to, yet from his POV we shamelessly take advantage of that and leave him alone again to hang out with his sis instead. Would probably come off to him like you just pretended to be his friend because you had to and now you're hanging out with the cooler kids and giggle about how silly he looked when, idk, he asked to have a sandwich with you lol. Of course this is not what the player intended (or is meant to intend) and I too felt physical pain when the game gave me no option but to lie xD but I'm pretty sure you guys making up and giving each other another chance is what's gonna happen in Indigo Disk.

For Ogrepon, instead of as an object, I think he just keeps seeing the ogre from the story in her. You gotta remember that he never gets to properly interact with her, he doesn't even refer to her by her actual name like Carmine does once she learns it. He doesn't understand that, ironically just like him, what she really wants is just acceptance and a friend. He thinks that the reason she's distrusting of him is not because she has trust issues and needs to warm up first just like him, but because he isn't as strong as you are, the one she does trust much easier. He's so convinced that nothing in his life will change for the better until he's "stronger" that... presumably the Dokutaro thing somewhere during the mid point starts influencing him. Not like, straight up possession, but more it taking advantage of his instability and promising to give him the strength he wants if he does what it wants. Just like the dex entries of the loyal three says what happened to them. So Dokutaro moreso takes the role of some guy who's a really bad influence and convinces you to do things that will harm both you and others with some sneaky lil psychological tricks. Because I mean, self-sabotaging is something Kieran literally does around the time he presumably comes in contact with Dokutaro. He completely stops trying to talk to you, he boxes the furret he apparently raised from an egg, he doesn't come along to help beat the loyal three to get the masks. I wonder tbh, if Dokutaro was influencing him, if it didn't lead him away from helping with that on purpose, since it originally made the loyal three steal the masks in the first place. I guess that would also explain why he would have been fine with Ogrepon just going back to the cave so he could get the masks back later. And while there definitely is the whole jealousy aspect, I think it's also Dokutaro leading him into actions he wouldn't normally do to get the masks. Because if he gets the masks it'll give him what he wants or whatever. I think without the Dokutaro influence, honestly, he'd probably just have locked himself up in his room for the rest of the story after you lying and sobbed into his Furret pal's fur lmao.

Soo yeah, I think that's about it. They both have quite some issues and continue the trend of ScaVio characters that really need a therapist lol. I like Kieran especially though, he's really adorable despite having his own set of flaws of course. So I do hope the next part will take his (and Carmine's) story into a satisfying direction. And I better get to give him a hug because he needs one smh. Maybe Arven can make him some top tier candy apples. Oh oh yeah, noticed btw that he adds Dipplin to his team after he gave us a candy apple at the festival and told us there's a mon that looks like one? Pokémon likes to do storytelling via the team, so maybe the Dippling reminds him of our broship 😔😔

I played the dlc and while I have ✨opinions✨ on some takes I've seen online, today is not the day. Instead-

Kity

His headband made me think of cat ears because I'm just like that and I couldn't possibly ignore it I'm so sorry

Oh no I've been kinda inactive here lately fhdge currently working on a fancomic that I plan to not upload here until I got the cover and hosting website for it done. So because I was so busy with it (currently on page 27), I barely drew any other arts. But! I met up with some friends this weekend (@catra-kiit and @scoutofmanymarshes to be precise) and I decided to gift them drawings of Gou with a Pokémon that each of them love tehe :3

Hello hello, I wanted to open these for a while now and finally did so! Since this is the first time I am doing this, I will not take too many requests for now, but feel free to just dm me and I'll tell you if and when I can do it :)

I don’t have any context other than I think I’m really funny

I love Pawmi

You know, this one particular phrase from Gou in episode 133 bothered me when I first watched the ep and it still bothers me a lot, even though I think I know why it's there now:

Hi hello I'm back with a textwall about Gou lmao. So yeah, what bothered me about this line in particular was that it came pretty much out of nowhere. Even worse, his character arc throughout the whole show had been him learning to let others in and letting them help him instead of going on ego trips all the time. So for 100+ episodes we have this slow and imo great build up to Gou learning exactly that. To communicate with his Pokémon and people, to work together with them instead of denying help because he had always been on his own when younger. Then suddenly this sentence is meant to be a new and important realisation of his and leads to a sudden 180 arc in the last few episodes of him lamenting being too reliant on Satoshi and others in general. And that's why he has to travel on his own now. You know, if there had been clear build up to that, I wouldn't have minded that conclusion at all. People first being reluctant to trust anyone and then clinging too much to someone to a point where they're scared of doing anything if they're not around is a very real thing and a nice idea for a character arc. But the issue here is that the "too dependent" sentiment suddenly happened in the last four episode of the series, with no signs whatsoever beforehand that he was over relying on his Pokémon or Satoshi. Quite the opposite, he's always been perfectly fine with doing things on his own. It's noticeable that he was still worried about having to work with others without Satoshi around, but the entire Project Mew arc took care of that. As for the Pokémon, he's often taken the role of the person the Pokémon rely on too, an obvious example being Grookey. The very episode he says this and its follow up even focus on Grookey taking the role of the protector instead of the protected for once. Also whenever Gou does rely on his Pokémon, it's in situations where he obviously would have to, unless he thinks he's a prick for having his physically stronger Cinderace battle a Pokémon instead of him himself throwing fists with idk, Mewtwo lol.

So even though him saying he's spooked of travelling alone and being too scared to tell Satoshi directly while Satoshi comforts him is a cute scene in the end, it is also a decision on Gou's end that didn't have any build up. Him saying in the episode prior that he chose this because he'd rely on Satoshi too much didn't have any build up.

Anipoke is no stranger to throwing in jarring decisions at the end to justify the existence of the next series, Game Shark user Tobias from DPP being probably the most obvious and famous example of that. But, correct me if I'm mistaken, it's never harmed an individual character's writing that much. Heck, it's never harmed a relationship between two characters as much. Satoshi and Gou had been built up as these best friends 5ever who slowly become closer and closer throughout the series. Gou says in the second to last episode that he thinks Satoshi would totally just tell him to go for it, to do the solo journey if he feels like it. It's exactly what he said too, so Gou certainly understands his buddy by now. However, this scene would have been the perfect opportunity to have Satoshi be called out on his niceness there, because sure he's a nice and supportive dude. But we know that he enjoys hanging out with Gou. We know that he misses him when he's not around. Heck, we see in the last episode, when they seperate, that he's not exactly happy to part ways with his friend. He completely puts Gou's sudden desire to travel by himself over his own desire to keep being around his friend. As if there's some outside force that forces them to separate against their will. As if they didn't have a choice but to go separate ways because what they wanted to do was impossible with the other around. But in the epilogue (and MPM) they literally do the same things they did together the 100+ episodes prior, so there clearly was no narrative reason for this.

So with all that said. Sorry for the longass text lol, I was thinking about just throwing this into my Satogou essay, but I don't think it really fits there so here we go. SO WITH ALL THAT SAID I think MPM's existence, the way the series goes, the knowledge of what the last episode seems to be about, the knowledge of the change of executive producer between JN and MPM and Yuyama's Animedia interview about MPM, I think the reason for the sudden change in character makes sense. Hear out my super kewl theory

The Yuyama interview makes it sound quite clear that MPM wasn't exactly planned ahead, unlike decisions like Satoshi winning the PWC and making way for a new series this year. It feels oddly disconnected from the series, because even though Satoshi uses old Pokémon and briefly travels with Misty and Brock again, the places they visit are deliberately nameless. And the episodes themselves, while conceptually just like any other "helping Pokémon of the day" episode prior, have little connection to stuff that happened in the actual show outside of small references like Rattata or Beedrill. While we still have to see the conclusion to the Latias plot, it feels more like a spontaneous idea to connect these 10 episodes until the last one than anything.

Oh also a relevant tidbit of information is that Yuyama equated the title of Pokémon Master to a rainbow, e.g. something you're fascinated by and try to reach without ever being actually able to. Might explain JN's heavy usage of rainbows, at least to some extend.

In conclusion, I think what has happened is that JN was written with it being Satoshi's last series in mind. And Gou has been written as the ideal counterpart to him, basically. He's essentially the Lugia to Satoshi's Ho-oh if you wanna, hence both of these mons appearing in the last JN ep. So from his conception, Gou was never meant to go separate ways with Satoshi. But then they realised they have three whole months to fill until the new series is able to premiere. And the idea of MPM was basically born, Misty and Brock as a no brainer nostalgia bait (as per Yuyama's words, the decision to have them be the companions for MPM was so certain he doesn't even remember how they got to the conclusion), episodes that fill the void until the new show etc. Of course to recreate the og trio, they'd have to get rid of anyone but Satoshi from the previous show. How do you get rid of a character that has been established as basically having no reason to leave the other main character and who's relationship with said character had been highlighted so much in both the show and promotional material? You just make up a reason lmao.

And yeah, I mean, as I said, Anipoke is no stranger to sudden decisions like that. Shudo, the chief director from OS to Johto said how he wanted to give the show a proper ending and wasn't able to because the show had to go on. The DPP series was clearly written to build up to Satoshi winning the league (and him potentially getting replaced entirely, since Gen 5 was initially meant to be a fresh new start to the franchise). XY also very clearly was building him up to win the league. Each time it was stuff that happened in the last few episodes that certainly didn't look like they were anywhere near planned ahead. And I am almost 100% certain the same happened in JN with Gou and the sudden change of heart in these last few episodes.

Had to write all this because not only did the decision itself bother me of course (don't get me wrong, I am genuinely looking forward to the new series and MPM had its neat moments so far, but the way JN, Satoshi's series and Gou ended was a wholeass mess imo) but other I've kinda been frustrated about how many people went "hahah told yall so Gou would leave XD GOne" (that pun IS funny tho). Like, no you guys, a broken clock is also right twice a day yada yada. I highly doubt yall saw MPM coming. I high doubt yall expected Satoshi's story to end. I highly doubt you could have been able to tell me what reasoning they'd come up with to have Gou and Satoshi separate. You guys' reasoning had always just been "because they always did it (except for the times they didn't)". Because the thing is, I had written them all up at some point, but all the arguments for Gou staying were based on what the series itself presented and relied 1) on Satoshi staying and 2) the producers of the show not changing their mind last moment to justify the existence of the next series. I'm gonna go ahead and assume the executive producer of JN (Tomiyasu) saw more importance in Gou and Satoshi's relationship and Gou's importance as a character, given that he's probably partially responsible for it being a thing in the first place, than the executive producer of MPM (Yuyama), who has worked on the series as it started and notably would rather stick to the traditions of the show instead of trying out new things. That's why JN's ending feels so out of nowhere and that's probably also why MPM feels so disconnected from the rest of the series, almost more like a spin-off. While Tomiyasu is much more keen on bringing new ideas and concepts into the series. You can see that, as once he started having a bigger influence on the series with Sun and Moon, there's notable changes in setting, writing of characters etc.

Now this was a really long rant fr lol oops. Uhhh... Gou best boi, I am glad the Satogou fandom is still alive and kicking, stay gold, Satogou Day is in two days and I completely forgot about it tho oops

And a disaster for the discussion of non-anime TV shows in fandom.

"Cool-down episodes" aren't filler.

Goumi! It was only a matter of time until I went "why not both in one?" when thinking about my fav character and my new fav Pokémon hehe

This one pillow I bought looked kinda boring, so of course I HAD to draw Gou on it. Tfw your character has zero merch despite being from the highest grossing franchise in the world (which gets most of its income from merch). Tho tbf each piece of merch feels a lot more precious when you made it yourself or paid a small creator for it so I kinda like that. :3

Also sharing the little sketch that I made for the design because it looks a lot less uh. Clunky? Than the finished thing hcjgch

The origin story of this is that I saw @catra-kiit say what his catchphrase is in Dutch ("De toekomst ligt aan mijn voeten!") and I noticed that voeten likely has the same word origin as the German word Pfoten, which means paws. Because lots of Dutch and German words share the same origin. So with my Nyabby Gou bias, I had to visualize that of course :3

"The Great Tumblr Bug Race", 2023 (Colorized)

For anyone curious about an update, I am indeed still working on this satogou essay I showed the first five pages of. It's currently at 27 pages / 32 episodes (and I let docs count, 16k words lol), so it'll definitely still take a while. I do wanna post it all at once when it's done, so idk. At this pace, expect it sometime in February maybe? Also thanks so much for all the supportive feedback! It's super motivating and gets me all the more pumped to actually pull this through and finish it! Ah and yeah dw, I do still eat and sleep :'D

I do wanna at least show something if I'm already doing an update tho, so I chose two random excerpts. One explaining a joke from punmaster Gou and another that's me randomly psychoanalysing him lol.

(I added alt text to the first image, but the second one's text is too long txhfgf sorry :c)

Yup! The paint job was done with acrylics. And thank you! ;w;

Oh never shared here, but I made this clay figure of Nyabby Gou a while ago. There's certainly room for improvement, poor dude got a few cracks here and there lol but I love him anyway :3

Oh never shared here, but I made this clay figure of Nyabby Gou a while ago. There's certainly room for improvement, poor dude got a few cracks here and there lol but I love him anyway :3