Future – Pinkie's Paradise

Pinkie’s 500th Post: Reflections and Ideas

Hurray! Dear Reader welcome to my 500th post! While I missed the mark of 500 posts on Paradise , I was in time to do something about me reaching 500 posts. So today we will do the obligatory Reflections as well as discussing content for the future, you know the road to 1000. So what was it like making 500 posts?! Take a look with me! During these 500 posts! I laughed, I cried, I learned and I adapted and this is a little journal on how!

What Have I Learned

Cute Kawaii Face Pink PS4 Controller Skin

Let’s first take a look at the growth I made! As a writer, I do not personally feel I have grown all that much! I still make silly mistakes, I still am long winded but I am also still me! Throughout almost two years of blogging now I do think I for the most part always kept track of me.. all posts feel like me! I can recognise myself in my earliest writing , the middle and the end. Even though I changed content a lot in these 500 posts, there is a certain level of me in all of them that makes me feel at least a little accomplished. I also learned that maybe that very almost indescribable thing that is the “me” that is in that post is what keeps people around. I can change up my content a lot but people will still be there. Except for gaming posts around older games, those really usually bomb! I might need to delve deeper into Gaming WordPress to grow further.

I tried many approaches to things , but I also learned that blogging in a way can be a bit addicting. I wanted to put a post out every day, I wanted to do two every day even.. but I realised with how long my average post is.. that is not something I can maintain. I spend so much effort to get posts done.. just to break even at the end of a day. One post goes in, one post goes out! I need to be blogging every day, need to be edditing every day and need to be able to consume content every day as well! I discovered I struggle with episodic reviews, they are easy enough to produce but they hardly give me any gratification. An episode summary feels redundant because people who read these things often seen the same anime, yet you can also not got without the summary so half my post already feels redundant. It will also kinda force you to find negatives about an episode and it made me feel whiney and unhappy! So after a massive burnout.. I decided to end them. I needed to be happy!

My current schedule of blogging every other day already works a lot better for me! I am creating a post every day still, sometimes more, but this time around I actually plus on blogs. I write two.. one goes out, one is still in cue. This is much more managable with my health. If I have a bad day.. I can now accept I have a bad day and just don’t produce. I can go spend a day with my friends or family without feeling obligated to blog, I feel a lot more free. I could also write shorter posts and write several a day… but that’s not me! I need to think more and correct myself more!

That’s not my style.. while I may repeat myself a lot now and talk about random stuff in the middle.. what I write comes from the heart.. it feels to me more as if I am talking to you.. and I rather have that than styling out a post! I read a lot of how to blog guides, and a lot of tips to be regular and consistent to be neutral and all of that, but to me that may work to get you an audience.. but that might not work for you as a blogger. I love you all, but I learned that audience is secondary to yourself having fun. You can’t write if you hate doing it! Sometimes that means letting your audience down…or not growing as fast as you could. So be it! I am sorry, but as a hobby blogger your first responsibility is to you and your hobby!

My Highlights

Now I love all my posts and never will favourite any of them, as the others may cry so I won’t be going over my favourite posts! Yet while creating this blog and while doing things I have come to experience a few highlights. The first one is minor but I just had so much fun! It was while I was creating my post for OWLS-Minicon , my post about all the convention plushie dealers around the world. While that post tanked hard and not many people cared about my passion for plushies it was a great experience to get to learn some new people. To get that feeling that I can do at least a very little something back for those people who provide us with these amazing dealers rooms!

Even if we don’t buy their plushies,their games or whatever, think how your dealer room would look without them. Empty.. not fun, even if you don’t buy their goods you still like browsing the stall! Some of the interactions I had with those people were fun and super grateful! Not a people may have read the post or they disliked it just.. but to me I felt closer to the geek community then I had in a long while! I may have not been able to bestow people that convention feel.. but I sure got it!

I Love My Staff This Much Mug Friend Colleague Office Employee Secret Santa Birthday Gift Christmas Novelty Humour Funny: Amazon.co.uk: Kitchen & Home

Another Highlight was my decision to look for Blog STAFF! It has offered me a nice platform of great people to interact with, with the coming of Periwinkle the STAFF chat has really livened up! I love geeking out over things, and even some of the random discussions we have! I am so happy to have these people in my life! As well as the awesome blogger crowd visiting me of course.. but with the STAFF it is just something special you know! A long time ago I worked on a blog with friends and I loved that feeling, and that feeling is beginning to return a bit now! Paradise is growing and I really love it.

Yet another highlight I had , and this may sound silly is being included in K’s ,Which Blogger are You test. It wasn’t exactly that I was included that made me happy, it was the fat that I answered my questions very genuinely and it spit me out! I have a lot of fun making my images, dong the whole paradise thing and trying to have this “brand” as it were. I wasn’t sure if it worked. I hide a lot of fun details in a lot of my images, or go to some weird effort to make an egg reflect in the water.. just because I want to give it a try… I never really get reactions to this.. but the test showed, it got noticed. I try provide content that is off the beaten path.. and oftenly those post perform badly in terms of likes,,but this test showed me it was noticed

As the scatterbained loon that I am I often interacting less with people than I would like, I read your blog on my phone, then go to grab a cupcake, I like your post as I enjoy my cupcake.. but then I see on my pc on twitter that another person also made a new post! I go read it and forget the like button! I oftenly type comments to people and as I search for a strong joke to end on I end up petting my Pikachu in Pokémon Camp and it shows me an apple and I forget to enter my comment or sometimes I get to anxious to reply. I feel like a horrible person a lot of the itme because of it.. increasing that anxiety… yet by being included in the test.. I got a feeling, okay so perhaps I am not as much as an outsider as my mind makes me out to be.. perhaps i do belong here! I may be weird and distant..but I am approachable.. and that really made me smile! Irina’s attempt to explain me trough anime characters was another one of those things.. and it even gave me an idea for my next restyle. When she called me the sports team mom, with a hint of ojou-sama

My Lows

Watamote–Anime Early Impressions – FunBlog

Today we will celebrate so we will not stand still with my lows a lot, but I made a few discoveries about blogging and content creation in general that made me feel a bit…disappointed. A big thing was a realisation I made. While I really do love anime I don’t enjoy it in the frequencies that most others here do. I watch anime once or twice a week and I am content with that. Not always that long either. I am not sure if that is enough, I don’t feel alien to the world of anime but I can not really shake that “fifth” wheel feeling. I am not being subjected to active gatekeeping, but when I walk into a discussion I do feel I am in over my head. I do not feel I have much to contribute. I always end up freezing up and just letting others have their fun discussion without bothering them with more basic shows!

It is a feeling I have come to learn to accept , the eternal Kohai but it is a feeling I did not expect when I began. Anime is great and the anime community is fantastic but I never expected it to be this “overwhelming”. It’s all about the anime. In a way I’d say the community is a bit more nerdy than geeky. With which I mean: At a convention you talk to strangers and they ask you , how is your bubble tea, where did you get that figurine or if you vaguely know them, how are you. I will always have an answer.

The Online-Anime-Community is more “ Have you seen Astra yet?” “Someone did a Gatekeeper Tweet” , “Miss Kobayashi 2 trailer looks shit”. These discussions can be fun, but I always wonder.. does my voice in this really matter?! Meanwhile, compare that to the question “How is your Bubbletea?” I know my answer is going to be relevant. This is not a flaw about the anime community, just a misconception I had. I have had a rough time coming to terms with that. I have since made friends I talk personal with like Summer and Mallow, but also many others, but with that voice that tells me I am not good enough, or watch to basic anime it has been a bit of a struggle. The demon on my shoulder never fully goes away and keeps telling me, people will abandon me because I don’t watch anime daily!

Another lowpoint I have had with blogging is WordPress itself, it has given me more trouble recently! Just when I get into a rhythm they change it up and put something that was never an effort before, behind an extra set of clicks or scrolls. I had my favourite types of blocks with one click away and now I constantly have to search the block I am looking for. Recolouring things can be a hassle because with a new update I can’t drag and drop because now you just have to click! I learned so many hex codes just to avoid this problem! WordPress still is a great tool, but at times it feels so clunky! As if I am dragging through mud! It’s worth it.. but I don’t have that much energy to give. So if I need to give extra energy things grow skewed quite fast. It’s a shame that I have to design my blog keeping things in mind such as “It’s not worth it to recolour that thing, cause that glitches out half the time” or “better not add in that type of images as I will have to rescale it twice to make it fit”. The fact that I have to click a random button before I can activate my WordPress Bell is another thing. I often find myself thinking.. I’ll do it later than, I can’t be bothered with the hassle right now!

Self-esteem Archives | Documentation Wizard, LLC

WordPress Reader is another thing I have come to dislike! It is an easy way to check out other blogs fast, but it has also become an issue. To my knowledge it doesn’t show YouTube feeds. I recently tried to do YouTube but paused it because my health got in the way! I will now come back to it with an easier to handle model and a bit more flavour. Regardless, Reader doesn’t show my posts as pretty as I want them to be, my videos don’t show up, my images can look a bit more yankee, and the themes I work so hard on are not displayed. It’s as if people see you trough a broken mirror. Sure it’s you but a lot of effort you made to put on make-up is kinda lost. They just “recognise” you. It also results in a lot of ghost liking, which once again feeds that stupid demon.

My Future

Despite the whole Reader thing, I am planning to do a new Restyle really soon! This current style has been here for almost a year now! Minus a month or so, some minor changes took place, but this will be a big one! New theme new icons, new Pinkie! Manager Pinkie will soon be upgraded by a ruler of Paradise with a new flavour. The VTuber theme will still be going but the moth will be replaced by something new! Something a bit quirkier and something that is a HECK of a lot easier to build a VTuber model around.

Something more unique as well. MothTubers are almost all lewdTubers , there is a group of them.. but all of them are pretty non seiso! Which made me feel alien AGAIN! Besides that it was such a hassle to deal with those wings! It always looked fabricated to me as well. So when I went to have her commissioned instead.. I had change of heart and went for a theme that is much more in line with me rather than be a metaphor! I can flavour it a bit more as well. The restyle will arrive later this week.

I stopped doing episodic content because with my health that has been the hardest to keep up! That requires a schedule and I do not want that anymore. It gives me stress and on a mental level forces me to do content and currently I can not work under those circumstances. So no more episodic reviews, and less reviews in general. Rather than reviews, I’ll do rants or raves! Me being super positive, absolutely loving something, or me just having fun burning things down to the ground! (Think AVGN style) It won’t be subtle.. but it will be a lot more fun to do. I am also trying to the same with something that utterly confuses or baffles me.

Now I know something isn’t 100% good or 100% bad or 100% weird and that’s also not what I am trying to achieve with these newer formats. I really hope there is someone that loves what I hate, and I am pretty sure there is someone who hates what I love and that to a certain extent they will have a point. However I feel we have become a bit too afraid to give our unbridled opinions. It’s time to either praise something, or burn it to the ground! The latter usually in a so bad that it’s good spirit though.. or at least so bad that it’s interesting. It will be a bit wacky.. but it will be fun!

Speaking of wacky , that will be much more a theme going forward. While as a Moth Pinkie , before my second major burnout in a while I tried a more journalling type of approach to things, that doesn’t work for me. I do a journal with my Blogging Bestie, Summer now! Gaming in step by step content didn’t work for me though! I felt I either had to slow down my gaming, rush it or struggled with screenshots. It also made me serialise everything and I can’t do that.. my health is to fickle!

Wacky Waving Inflatable Arm-Flailing Tubeman (Family Guy) | Reaction GIFs

So instead you’ll see me tackle wacky games, anime or movies while also doing wackier things myself with my content in the form of stranger lists, more odd tags and of course more random content. I already did another Never Have I ever, with random prompts, post (for the near future) I also made a weird new tag, which probably not a lot of people will be interested in joining..but that’s not what it is about.. it is about me doing quirky things in familiar settings. A lot of it will be “fan stuff. Things like “If I made a Super Mario Movie” or how will this Anime couple look 20 years later. Stuff like if Kamina and LeLouche played a game of YuGiOh.. which one would win. I will also just watch weird stuff and tell you how I feel.. Movies like Swiss Army Man, or me Playing a Cho Aniki game!

The STAFF will of course continue to do their down thing, but by growing bolder and bolder in my content I hope to inspire them step out of the box as well! The box is an illusion.. inside the box you can be both dead or alive.. and while we don’t know if you are alive or dead inside your box.. you are both.. therefore you are dead in the box per definition!.. I guess not if it’s a translucent box or an oxygenated box but either way… don’t be shrödingers cat! Step outside your box! There you can be alive for sure! And that will be a theme clear on Paradise. Also I plan to use a bit more pink after the restyle! Just so you know! Yay! Onto 500 more pink posts! Then I will treat everyone to Pink cake!

<spoiler alert> the cake is a lie <end of spoiler>

Happy 500th to me! And thank you guys for coming along in the journey!

Happy Halloween: Pinkie Closes off Halloween Month!

With the weekend coming up and the upcoming weekend I am once again busy moving so I guess this is a wrap up post for Halloween Month! What have we seen, what have we done and what is next?! And of course this post is mostly to wish everyone who celebrates it a Happy Halloween!

What has Pinkie done?!

Let’s begin with a little look at what we have done! The past month everything I did was a bit in the theme of spookiness! We watched weird Horror movies, we played a bunch of scary games and Watched trough the first half of Yamishibai! I had one more movie and Season the anime planned but the fatigue of moving really got to me! I just wanted to move into a big blanket and stare at the tv a bit for the past two weeks after I was done with all my tasks. Forgive me! Post-wise I have done a few interesting things this month and to some stuff you really reacted well! I will highlight a few! Note that I do not think these are the best! I do not prefer any of my posts over others, that would make other posts cry! I simply highlight a few posts based on my favourite “events”. Click on a cauldron to revisit a post you might have missed.

Halloween-month Started with a personal account of some ghost stories I experienced first hand! It got the most posts this month and had a nice number of audience participation! A really nice post to do and thanks everyone for the support! Another Geeky Lifestyle tag post I really liked was this month’s gadget post. Still I am very happy with the love on the spooky stories post!

This month’s anime tag introduced me to the series Yami Shibai which had its ups and downs but the first season is something I can definitely recommend.

I only wrote one fiction this month which was Halloween in Paradise! A small story set in the fictional universe of Paradise Island where the manager has a small horror adventure! It was great fun making images for that post!

Video games I played plenty! I played some classics like Castlevania IV which is always a pleasure to playthrough! My favourite playthrough thought was Call of Cthulhu, Pinkie loves herself some cosmic horror! Plus a game based on a famous tabletop roleplaying game it was bound to sit well with me.

Movie wise you voted for me to watch some weird movies and I really do think I delivered. Rubber, Hausu and Killer Condom all were quite bonkers but only one post features the entire movie for you to watch! Killer Condom is definitely the best weird horror movie I watched this month!

Finally Pokémon! I did a fair bit of Pokémon this month but the post that got the best response by far was me designing my own Pokémon based on the Dark Universe film monsters. I got so much comments on that post! It was truly amazing and it will definitely bring it back in the future!

What has the Staff done?

Kuro wrote another zinger of a horror story about a village plagued by a very mysterious and powerful evil! If you haven’t checked it out you definitely should!

Sunny did a post about a very fun board game that is like a tavern brawl between D&D like characters! I read it and I certainly want the game after reading! So if you play board games you should super check this one out.

Indigo is sitting on a few big projects so in the upcoming months I am sure we can see a story about his O.C. He also had some ideas of posting in the Warhammer universe! So that could be very cool as well! He did some amazing prepwork and sometimes that is the most important work. Also he kept the resort pretty safe!

What have we seen?

I will be honest! This month I have been short on time so I have not visiit as many blogs as I would like! I tried a few routes which it took very well.. it seems to get a bit lost with the tiles in the middle. There are a few things I would like to highlight though! Click on the pictures to link to the post!

First of all GeekGirlJoy finished a project this month that I am pretty sure I inspired her to do in my quest for the truest pink! So I have been a muse and I inspired something that completely goes above my comprehension of coding but I have used it to find the analogue colour of my avatar and some design elements! Which resulted in a slight shift in colours. The pink on my site used to be #ff87ED and it changed to #ff89CD which is a lot closer to my avatar! Great job joy! I am happy I could be a muse!

Scott from mechanical Anime reviews started this amazing project where he interviews content creators across the net using his reach to shout out there people and unify the community! That is pretty amazing and I really commend him for that! I have seen others do something similar but Scott REALLY makes it about the other content crreator and not so much about himself. An effort I can very much appreciate.

**I could not find a real** ***featured image.. so this is how I imagine Scott Imagined this!***

Of course Senpai made a great post as well.. but when does she not! For Halloween she discussed Urban Legends in Japan and while I was to tired to comment something insightful when I read it it left a great impression on me! If you haven’t checked it out you should!

Blogging Bestie Summer found a great place to watch old horror movies and in this Halloween month I think that is a pretty amazing discovery, love your classics! So yeah a great homage to movies that should get some tribute in this month!

Naja is a great writer and possibly an even better devourer of Otome games! As my most recent Bubble post I made already showed , monsters and be very sexy! Now she makes a much better case of this then I ever could and it even includes Lesbian Vampires… I like those the best! … Now that sounds much lewder than it is..at least in my case. Great post to check out!

What is next!

So what can you expect in the coming month?! Well I will probably take a week’s vacation from blogging after this post goes live, to settle in in my new house a bit , explore the neighbourhood, show my friends the new place and get a bit of rest in my system. After that November I will return to the usual island content! Watch some movies, play some games watch some anime and what not!

What most likely WILL change is the Saturday Morning Anime Adventure, those reviews I will probably spread across the week. Short write up reviews alongside the regular content! Instead of the entire anime post on Sunday, I instead will use the Sunday to recap the week!
It will include a personal life update, a summary of all my posts by genre, Staff posts highlighted and a shout out to al Kofi Supporters of the week . I will most likely also highlight some content of other blogs as well but I haven’t fully made up my mind yet on how to shape it. I think by doing the episodic content this way I put the pressure of content creation a bit for myself and I still get to let people get a nice summary post if that is the format they prefer.. they just need to click once or twice now. Something very close to this post.. with less future stuff!

November will be a bit lighter and looser in content because besides my moving ,there is also my birthday, plus a lot of social and bureaucratic stuff that needs to be done surrounding my move. Within the restrictions of the current society of course! However starting in December I will introduce official theme months for the blog. This can be anything from Retro to Sci-Fi and from Horror (Like this month) to “Pirates” . Staff posts are exempt from the theme but as for me I discovered that writing in a theme , like last month has given me so much joy that I will do it on a regular basis. Whether I will do it every other month, monthly or quarterly remains to be seen but it’s in the works!

Other than that I will see what time brings us and teaches us! For now I will enjoy settling in my new home and taking a short break! Maybe you don’t even notice and content picks up again right after this weekend ( In which for sure I will have no content because I have to throw out the final stuff out of my old apartment then) I do think I will be gone for a week or so though but no promises! I will see you all very soon! Happy Halloween!
Love, Hugs and Kisses

Pinkie!

The Road to Year 2! What’s next for Pinkie’s Paradise? (Anniversary Day 6)

Hey Island Guests! Over the past few days celebrating this blog’s anniversary we have delved a lot into the past year of this blog! Yet I would also like to stand still on what is next! What about the future that is what today’s blog is about!

So let us begin with what is not changing! I really like the direction I am headed in as per May of this year! I found me, more than I ever did. A me that really enjoys to write what she writes and embraces her being different as a boon rather than something I have to polish out or something that costs me viewers. In the past I told people how I felt I did not fully belong in “Camp Lita” “Camp Jon” or heck not even fully in “Camp Irina” I felt accepted sure.. but always as a bit of a trader in the community.. a traveler passing through while also stopping in the other camps. A bit of a rogue that is to much of a gamer to be “just” an anime-blogger or to much of a weeb to “just” blog about games. I realised I in fact might be neither. I tell you about me. Gamers are not selected on what’s trendy or whats hot , they are selected on what I ‘d like to experience! On what I would like to play. The same goes for anime! I watch a random anime a month not because it’s cute for the blog but because I like that random element in my life. I tell you about my experiences with said random experience.
My life experiences just happen to include a lot of games and anime. So I am a bit of an odd duck! Luckily I like ducks! So now I’ll just quack to my own beat!

I decided to lean into me more rather than steer away from it for more views sake because this is what makes me happy! I can finally give that devil on my shoulder that constantly tells me people don’t like me a rest because I shifted perspective. Me as a rookie blogger dreamed about the ‘fame’ , what if this opens up doors for me, what is this leads me to find a complete community, is was a way for me to be remembered. I’ve always been fragile health wise and I have health issues that make my future look less certain than your average human being. I have no idea how long I can last and by leaving my mark here I would at least accomplish something.. so that fame got a bit of a false value. As my blog began to grow, and it grew rapidly, so came delusions joining that desire. I was like Charlie from Charlie and The Chocolate Factory or at least I thought I was ..hoping for that golden Ticket in my candybar. That this would be my miracle. Yet I realised I wasn’t Charlie at all! I was just one of those other kids! Not the ones that find a ticket.. no one of those kids who bought 295 chocolate bars but never found my golden ticket! There might not even be one! Yet fairly recently I began to realise how much I like chocolate. I might still “Just” be at home, but seeing how that other thing ended for most.. this might just be as good!

Aside from wanting to be remembered, I also have a desire to be me… like the purest form of me and I realised i had been on a journey to fit in again but that made me unhappy in the past. I was at my happiest when I was me and this blog should and will reflect that. Yes I will write weird stories in rhyme about an egg friend even though we are all mature sensible people here who see that’s nonsense. Yes I will write about movies nobody will watch (currently watching all video game movies) because I thought it would be a fun process. I will keep writing about Pokémon Fan Games even though most of my followers don’t care about pokémon that much. I played it and I want to share that experience! Plenty of the posts I personally resonate with are some of the quirkier ones. I really loved the idea of The Totally Tomodachi Award I started somewhere in June. Yet people really did not care for it. It was to weird of a tag but rather than be upset at the poor reception, I saw it as .. I payed tribute to a few bloggers I loved and that’s what I set out out to do. It’s fine I am doing me and you can do you. No obligations! I got confused that to belong we all had to do the same tags, we all had to constantly interact.. but no, WordPress is a much more subtle community that is about support and sharing. It’s about interacting despite our differences , It’s about having a safe haven where you can be yourself and that means we can support content even if we don’t like it persé. The internet warped that for me for a bit.. but now we got a course and Paradise will walk to the beat of it’s own drum!

So now that we have established what will be the same, we got a good idea about the direction I want to take! Year 1 was the year about trying to be a Pokémon Blog, A Game Blog or an Anime Blog.. I am not sure I am any, yet Paradise is also all. A geek blog is perhaps the best way to describe it, where geeks, both writing and reading can be themselves. It’s about doing what you want to do and finding happiness in things like games, anime or even writing and sharing that joy with the world.

In terms of content , at least on my end there will only be minimals changes because I am happy with what I am doing. Let’s go over my categories though and start with Pinkie’s fiction My What If Raditz Turned Good story will most like be shelved after we went through the Frieza Arc. My story has a nice ending point there as my tale is already very focussed on that story line. My little Isekai story will go on for a while though. It’s certainly not the most popular thing on my blog but I just have a ton of fun writing it. It’s fun ‘hiding’ OWLS or others in the story and building my own little mirror world. In terms of Pinkie’s fiction though I do expect a decrease in stuff like Pinkie Get’s anime Powers and increases in stories like Tamago Tomodachi. Little brainfart stories! The former requires a fair amount of research to do, I wont stop doing them but I will write them a bit.. whenever! If I happy to stumble on more info on a fandom and I like it.. i might make a power post on it. Pinkie’s Who Would Win will be sparse as well.. while the concept of non volatile confrontations between characters is fun it is very much centered around playing Non-Volatile games.. like board games or party video games. I love doing those and I will probably continue to do those in the future but the problem is…. in Corona times I don’t actually play a lot of these types of games! So I have little to work with here! I am working on a solution though!

Movies will not change for a good while. I still have about 38 video game movies to go through before we move onto the next project. However I decided to include more real life experiences so whenever I actually go see a movie, which again still is rare now those might be posted between the video game movies with a maximum of one a week! Who knows I might just make more than 1 post per day..but that might be somewhat ambitious. It will continue as is with some flexibility! My game reviews I am still figuring out. I want to at least offer one Pokémon game per month, no matter if it is an official one or a a fan one. Other than that.. mostly a mix of horror, weird and retro games! I will try to keep them balanced..but hey if I want to play two horror games in a row that is what will appear. I also want to talk about other aspects of gaming every now and again.

Geeky Life-Style and Pokémon Topics will mostly stay the same, though I will share a few of my personal experiences with you as well! Next week wednesday you will get a report of my trip to the Zoo! Of course with a bit of a geeky twist. It’s easy to let our mindset be caught in a bit of a bad place, certainly in the current times but by sharing my fun activities with you I at least make sure that I can keep sharing my hearts concerns with you if needed..but balancing it out with some fun and positivity as well! The random topic generator might become more of a staple, though I might actually use Twitter and Kofi more in creating some of these posts as well. I want to dive a tiny bit deeper inside that rabbit hole! Randomness has a big importance to me and it will become a bit of an element on this blog. My typing top 5 will last for 6 more weeks and then we will move on to our next subject. Maybe if I am ambitious I will try to explore the entire Pokédex with you.. though not in a weekly format. I’d like to add some diversity, how I do not know yet.

On saturday I usually discuss anime now, or tell an anime story, post a single series review watch a random anime etc. While I do like these posts they give me a lot of stress as it is by far the most difficult slot to come up with a topic for. The only thing I experience writers block with.. so instead I think Saturdays will be a complete random thing.. depending on whatever experience I have ready (though I am gonna keep in the random anime generator because I love doing that) I think it will still have a bias to anime but who knows. It will always be something off series though.. so never will there be a video game movie in there nor will there be a pokémon typing list. It’s my wildcard that I try to make anime but I am going easier on myself to diverge! Stress reduction and all! It can be anything.. it most likely will be anime!

Pinkie’s Saturday Anime Adventure which releases on Sunday will continue to go on! I love doing this sooo much! With Hikaru no go going on for 65 episodes still before I finish the first series I can tell I will still be doing it by the time of my next anniversary! For those who haven’t noticed.. for the past three installments i have been entering real life updates in there near the end as well so you always have an idea where my head is at, since these posts are the only ones I do not write ahead of times those are up to date as well!

So do I plan to stay the same with only some content switches?! No! I am slowly beginning to look for co-writes for this blog. Like people who like to post something once a week or once every now and again but really do not want to keep up their own website! A buddy or buddies or sorts. As long as people don’t start posting how dumb I am or opposite articles , which is my term for me writing stuff like “Oh My Arceus Tengen Toppa is so amazing” and them writing “Oh My God Tengen Toppa is so friggin Lame” I am not a harsh blog-owner, but yeah I think that would be very neat.Work In progress though! In essence a long term project as well! I already had some people show interest so I am actually working on a recruitment message and details as you read this!

I might also do a blog tour, when I just joined Scott’s Space is the Place tour really impressed me and I thought.. that’s something I’d like to to one day. So one day I will. This again isn’t a short term project as I have no idea on it yet.. just aspirations. I might also take up one of these random 30 days challenges somewhere along the line. It’s not like I’d need the content ideas , I might do them on top of my normal stuff! Above and beyond! Or I might do a Twitter version of these! Collabs are more in the work! One is being discussed slowly but it will get there! Anxiety and that demon prevent me from asking people for collabs though..like I am sure that little demon would really hurt me and drive me mad if someone told me they did not have the time or did not want to do a collab at this time. I might just have to grow so big that people want to collab with me! Wishes are there, aspirations are there.. but that little demon is also there. I plan to starve that little demon a bit more before I take on anything overly ambitious that could lead to rejection. I also need ideas! Though I have a few ideas! They are weird though! Like watching Dünyayı Kurtaran Adam better known as Turkish Star Wars with somebody without subtitles. I would also love to watch Gakkou Gurashi!/School Live With someone who hasn’t seen it yet nor knows what it is. I just made those up though so there is still some other ideas in my brain! Including completely in text and trust based Batsu games but I am not sure who’d I’d trust with that!

Finally I plan to do another giveaway! That will be tomorrow! It will be a game again because I haven’t found a place yet where they give plushies by code! I am really excited about tomorrow’s giveaway! It’s a bit of a bigger gift then Ducktales but a bit less of a personal gift! Pretty luxurious though! So make sure to check back! And heck you do not even need Steam to play this one! Exciting right?! Stay tuned!

Pinkie Plays On the Internet: Random Topic Generator

Hello Island Guests! I felt like doing something a bit odd today. Perhaps I am running a fever, perhaps I am slipping into a insanity but I wanted to talk about stuff I would normally never talk about.. as well as find a way to keep myself entertained! So i found a random topic generator and as a blog I will adres some topics it spouts at me! Onto the first topic!

Topic: Where is the most beautiful place you have been?

Hmmm well I have been to lots of places that have been beautiful to me for lots of different reasons. If we have to do the generic general aesthetic concept of beauty I would have to say it’s a tie between the wooded areas near Alanya Turkey or the city of Porto. The turkish forests I visited during a Jeep Safari thing while traveling there with friends. We were invited in a classic turkish home in the middle of the wilderness and it was quite a sight to behold. Yet.. I would not want to live there ..so I’d have to say the city of Porto takes the win in the end. It’s such a pretty city so few from above. It is a very layed city with all sorts of plateaus and coloured houses, almost as if a child builds with legos.. there is colour everywhere.

There are so many beautiful spots in this city like the mozaic train station, the port and of course the famous bookstore the Livraria Lello. This bookstore is an important inspiration for Hogwarts and it doesn’t take a lot of imagination to see the similarities. It’s the prettiest store I have ever seen and truly seems magical. If only I could read portuguese I would have bought a book.. but things there are a bit pricey. A bought a super pretty pink bottle of water though, which was the most beautiful throw away bottle of water I have ever seen. I might even still have that around somewhere. If you ever find yourself in Porto definitely visit this bookstore.. and of course visit the boulevard and the major bridge as well. Don’t go in heels though or Porto will kill you.

Topic: What is the Most Frustrating App You ever Tried

Hmmm this is a hard one, I don’t play a lot on my phone, I guess for me the most frustrating one would be Pokémon Masters. You see… I happen to like Pokémon but because of in game purchases this game was not allowed to release her in the Netherlands.. So I installed it through a work around. At first the game was a bit sparse, while I enjoyed it very much I felt so much iconic stuff was missing. Also the one weakness mechanic while understandable felt super counter intuitive for what I have known for most my life now .That’s when I learned about events.. all those super iconic trainers are available on alternating banners.. event banners. So my issue got fixed or so I thought.

It would soon turn out that for every event I would need to update my game, and my work around for installation of Masters could not allow updates. Which basically meant each update I had to uninstall wait a few days for the updated file to be presented for me to install on a website I trusted.. grind out the event with a few days less and NOT pull any of the major event characters. I never got one of the major pulls. Since I am not allowed to play this officially I was afraid to put money in it as well so that was no option .. and the way to gather actually currency is just way to slow, given the time I have available for such a thing. It was a lot of work to get nothing over and over again.. until eventually I stopped updating, moving on.

Topic: What is the least favorite job you ever had?

There are actually two jobs that come to mind. First was pressing buttons in a bread factory. They were implementing a new production line and I had to press buttons at a certain interval to make the machine learn. Yet the machine broke that so many times I had to do something else like working the oven. Pinkie is not heatproof. Even though I said I could not take it they made me do it until I fainted.. they brought me back and I was feeling miserable and they made me work there for another two hours. People who worked three years with each other didn’t even know from each other they were married so it wasn’t very sociable either. It was horrible and I felt sick constantly due to the smells and the heat.

Another job I had was with a company that important american goods and sold them to a us europeans. Stuff like special cans of Monster Energie, Twinkies, snickers. I had to put some orders in boxes, put a label on them and make sure they were safe for shipping. I got a bunch of papers i could shred to make fillings and all in all, it seemed like a fairly nice job with low pressure, I could easily keep up. However things began seeming off when the supervisor who would judge if I did a proper job or not went on vacation during almost the entirety for my evaluation period.

I discovered that the papers I shredded was our invoices.. the pieces of paper that said how much we paid for stuff. I noticed people ordering a single can of monster energy drink shipping it to finland or sweden for over 3x times what the can itself cost. Maybe someone collected the cans? When the same address ordered a box of twinkies for 7x more delivery cost than the costs of goods however I began to have serious doubts. I would get the day off for the weirdest reason like.. “we have a party tonight and we want to sleep in, let’s just skip a day” I presented this to my mediator who immediately pulled me out after that.

Topic: If you could learn the answer of one question about your future which would it be?

When will I die? It would suck to know that I am about to die, but since I am sick I think that oftenly enough. Think about all the insurance money I could save and not having to worry about my own sickness and whether or not it will kill me. If the answer would be tomorrow or something close by I would be super upset but hey at least I can now do things I was afraid to. I can eat Fugu without worrying if I will die or not, I could even walk everywhere in the world without having to worry.. to much. While I do not think I would be happier, I think it is a matter of problem substitution , I would at least have a bit more money!

Topic: What is the craziest, most outrageous thing you want to achieve?

I am not that outrages in my plans at least something that I am actively pursuing. Winning the lottery seems like one of those but that is such a boring answer. I do believe that I have enough bad luck to compensate though so I am an active believer that I can have that turn around magic moment, where suddenly I can break free of my monetary and entropic chains and live without a limit. I keep playing in lotteries because it is something I very much belief in. Magic is possible and due to my health issues I am a bit stuck right now so in magic I must belief.

Achieving magic might be another thing I try to achieve.. I do feel there is more to this world than we can see, I saw ghosts in the past, I felt as if I could do more with my mind. It feels as if something is locked away and discovering what lies deep inside me can be that outrageous think that Pinkie strives for. I can read people very well and I do not know why. I have these intuitions and this feeling that is more than what I currently can define and I wish to discover what else is out there. I just know there is more.

Topic: Where is the worst place you have been stuck for a long time

Okay, this is not a really fun story, but at least you all might get a laugh out of it. I told you all in some of those tag posts that I can get stupidly unlucky and that I was left in a forest once. Well that second statement was not fully correct it happened twice, though the second time was way more mean spirited. We had a school camp and we had a game where we would play drug runners. Having to run from some parents trying to capture us we had to outsmart them and score as much as we could. If you got caught wearing drugs the parent could tie you to a tree for 5 minutes or so as a time out. … now you can already probably see where this is going.

When my time was just about to be up a boy ran by.. drawing the parent guarding me away for a bit… a shout from that boy could be heard as the boy twisted his ankle maybe even broke it so was thought at the time. The parent went along with him.. forgetting me. The game wrapped up and a few boys were tasked to check if everyone is complete. The boy who found me was someone who bullied me in the past and just grinned and left me. The boy who was injured was a friend of mine so for a bit it was believed that I went along with them. It wasn’t until after the parent returned with the boy from the hospital they noticed I wasn’t there.

The girls whom I shared a room with did not really mention anything either, to this day I do not know if this was out of disliking me or because they thought I went to the hospital with my friend.. they claim the latter but timewise it doesn’t fully check out. I got freed after being tied to that tree for about two hours maybe even more. This was before cellphones as well so I could not text.. I left camp the next day as it was ruined for me. The boy who left me got expelled from camp so that was a bit awkward.

Final Topic: Do you have any siblings?

Yes Pinkie has a little sister, we aren’t particularly close but when we do see each other we can be really similar. While she isn’t a geek we have the same comedic timing, we laugh at the same sort of things and we just can agree on so many things. It’s really nice, she has a very calming presence on my mind as well. Normally I am trying to come off more sociable or more normal than I am but around her I really am me. In the past we could not have been more different she wanted attention, I wanted less, she would rather smack someone I would rather flee, I was not good at fleeing so I often got smacked.

Even though we have little contact , the talks we do have are always nice.. as of late. We had a bit of a troubled past which is mostly due to her former partner who wronged our family and I could forgive for what they made me go trough. That is water under the bridge now.. but now that I think about that.. the partner caused me to be stuck in a place as well.. but I kinda really liked it there so unlike the tree i guess it wouldn’t count. Me and my sister are doing great now and I am happy to have her in my life.

Now this concludes my first Random Topic Generator post, it was actually kind of fun! I might do it again if inspiration fails me! Want to try it out for yourself? This is the random topic generator I used this time! I only skipped two questions it gave me, one was very similar to the travel one and one topic I recently talked about. Hope to see you next time!

XO
Pinkie

A BIT of History (Episode 0) : What is Pinkie doing now?

One of the hardest things to do as a blogger is come up with a nice topic to blog about. At least to me. I do not like doing episodic reviews as I want this blog to be all about positivity. Love (in the non lewd way) is the theme of my blog. In an attempt to structure my writing a bit I am trying to make “columns” or series in my categories to give me some focus on what to do. For example I love Pinkie is looking for a Waifu (new installment coming as soon as i finish Aoi Hana) as it fits the theme of love very well. The temtem journals fit what I love well so that one works as well. While I love catchable creature games there is another category of games I love. Retro Games! I love traveling to the past to relive memories…..hmmmm that gives me an idea.

Back in time …...BUT TWICE!

Since the dawn of time man has dreamed of going back in time! When we play retro games we travel back in time. Maybe to the zero’s maybe to the nineties heck we might even go back to the eighties. I prefer not to go much further than that though. Atari had a LOT of LEWD games and since I am going to ask you on suggestions on what to play.. I prefer to exclude those as much as I possibly can! One of the most infamous ones fits the secondary theme for example. Because going back to the past has been done before! James Rolfe better known as the Angry Video Game Nerd, is one of my biggest inspirations to do my thingies online! He is the one that is gonna take you back to the past. To play some shitty games that suck ass. I am gonna take you back to the past. Then I take you back to the past. Woooo Timeception!

**(I kind of wanted to edit unicorn parts to my brain but I stopped myself)**

How do we do this you might ask? Well it’s very simple! I will play and review retro games set in different times. For example I’ll start with some prehistoric themed games on the SNES then I will most likely take you back to ancient greece on the NES and than back to the SNES to duke it out with some ancient romans. While not everything is set in (the) stone (age) yet…HA FUNNY JOKE, it seems like a nice way to play the type of games that I love in a structured way offering me a steady amount of content for you guys! Plus I am actually talking about things I love so yay that’s what this blog is all about!

(***I am not good at pixel art so if anyone wants to make a 16 bit pinkie! )***

Pinkie who?

Now I know what you are thinking! You can’t just do that much timeception. Going back while taking us back to the past! That is waaaay to dangerous! But do not worry my friends I have invented something fictional that is totally gonna help me out! It’s a time machine that helps me turn myself into two dimensions..or the third if I ever need to..but in a rather low polygon count. As long as I don’t go over 64 bits in during these travels I shall be fine and this machine helps me do it. I call it the Time and Limited Dimensions in Games device… or TALDIG for short. and I made it look like a crane game! Why? Well no one plays with an empty crane game plus in 2d games those usually where non interactable background objects so it will be safe! It’s not like I’ll find a police box or phone booth anymore… this one is just a bit harder to board. Luckily there is plenty of room for all my Plushies on the inside

(***Totally Orginal THINGY Don’t steal!)***

A brave time time explore like needs a weapon as well. Since I am Timely Bored of going through the hoops that is capturing retro footage in the classic way. So yes I will be able to use the powers of my Sonic Savestate if needed. However that does not mean these games are not otherwise available to me, so make no assumptions my friends! It just allows us to play some fun hacks as well! Of course I will also try to play as fair as possible. However to make sure I can progress enough for a review I will occasionally use my trustworthy device. Now a lot of these games have multiplayer modes. Unfortunately my companion drew the short straw when testing the less successful prototype of the TALDIG (I cheated) and kind of got lost in time and games. So if you ever encounter a pink arcade cabinet with a purple girl in yelling for help… let me know! Or if you want or be a companion check my about or contact page!… Displacement in time, loss of dimension and death in a game at own risk. Until this situation has been resolved I shall not test multiplayer modes and describe everything from a single player stance.

Looking Forward to go backward when going backward.

So how will our travel schedule look like? Well you have a say in it but the first three destinations in our journey HAVE been decided already. We will start in a time where there where no land creatures yet just to be propelled into the dinosaur age. We shall do this with E.V.O. The Search for Eden on SNES. After we evolved our fish into a strong dinosaur we shall move onto the dawn of man! Flintstones the treasure of Sierra Madrock was a game I loved to rent over and over again as a kid! With hard work I managed to get to the last world just to have to return it right before finishing. Can I complete it this time around? Using my trustworthy sonic tool .. odds are YES! Who knows! Then we move on to a game I have been literally clubbed on the head for! Joe and Mac! Also on SNES. After that one has been done I am still undecided though we may play Turtles in time which does have a prehistoric level or we may leave the SNES behind for a while as we move on to ages where people began to melt stuff.

***(I did not evolve gils fast enough)***

Altered Beast on Sega Genesis has ancient greek themes and so does Battle for Olympus on NES. I also plan to revisit some of the Asterix games I used to play as a kid. For those who don’t know who Asterix the Gaul is, he is a punchy sort of nordic looking guy that is the titular character of a popular french comic here. Or at least he used to be. Not sure how well he fairs nowadays. Super Ghost and Ghouls can represent the medieval age but I of course will be playing Knights of the Round as well. However time does not have to be a fully linear path, we can bounce around a bit. Every game that has a year in it, like street fighter 2010 and even….. Ho…. ugh… Hong …. I can’t …. .. but I must! Even Hong Kong 97 would be a suggestable stop. That being said..sport games are excluded from the suggestions because of this namesake. Unless it’s stuff Like the Spirit of Speed 1937 (which is a history based racing game) or any future based ones. Yet stuff like Hong Kong 97 or Egypt 1157 AV are still far away into the future.

Rules of Time Time Travel

Now I usually do not get a lot of suggestions and I feel like i might be older than a lot of you, I honestly do not know your ages guys. I estimate my average reader to be like 24 maybe? So to encourage interaction and suggestions, save for the three set in stone. Those being E.V.O , Flintstones Treasure of Sierra Madrock and Joe and Mac, anyone making a suggestion in the comments while have their channel shouted out in the post you suggested. Regardless if I would have come up with it myself. So yay! Free promotion! That’s some love right there! Of course I can not complete every single suggestion, the more recent your request the lower the chance that I will be able to play it (unless it’s for pc for obvious reasons)

***(Yes this is an actual …sort of.. game)***

I will always write something nice about the games so if you feel like challenging me by suggestion a badly rated one, you are very welcome. Games about time travel are always valid regardless their setting, however I plan to do Chrono Trigger as the end of the series or least of a season if I start doing those. Games set in multiple time periods like Turtles in Time or Day Dreamin Davey are always fine and you can suggest them whenever we are in time. Please do not make me play Bill and Ted’s excellent adventure though! I will play it if suggested but I might not have much nice things to say about that one. Games years are allowed unless they are sports games nor will I for example review the Anno series in one go! Separate entries are still allowed. A game has to be at least 10 years old for you to suggest. Otherwise I am not taking you back to the past twice. Games set in the future are still perfectly okay.. I am perfectly content with taking you back to the past to take you back to the future.

***(I just told him I liked Ceasar Salad!! Waaaah!)***

So that is a lot of rules but you can forget them and just shout a game, I mean I invented the TALDIG , I am a mastermind , I can weave your game in my story somehow but it would be fun if we follow the rules just a bit at least. Now since I stopped doing my greetings cards at the end of each both I will leave you with some closing words. You just read a post in the present about a future where I take you back to the past to play games that take you back to the past. However in the future of that future I may take you back to the past to play a game that takes you to the future or the present even. Of course by the time that you are reading that post, that present may already be the past!

(The Soundtrack of Adventures.. I do not kwow who this Dr is…but he stole my tune!)

It’s time to D-D-D-Duel already? OWLS Tour: Visions

Welcome my sweet island guests. It’s time for me to spread my wings again and take you on a little flight tour. It’s gonna be a hoot! That’s right it’s another OWLS Tour. By now you have read the prompt plenty of times in other OWLS post plus it feels really wrong to wish you a happy new year this late in the year. I always wish you a happy life and happy days. Prompt or no prompt though in the month January we talk about visions. How is the future depicted in our favorite anime, manga, movie? How do we see ourselves in the future?

This is what the Otaku Warriors of Liberty and Self Respect discussed this month. To read more about them click on the cute owls cocktail! To me the future can be uncertain and waiting for it can feel keep quite bad . Perhaps something you really want is locked behind “the future”. In the future people might be more accepting of who you are. In the future I might get healthier. When we envision the future it always seems very far away. We might not live to see those moments we envision. It might be not for us. Yet one anime we all know is kind of becoming living proof that sometimes the future isn’t as far off as it may seem and it shows us we might have a big role to play in realising it.

Pegasus Wings

When we first saw Yu-Gi-Oh appear in the early zero’s we never would have believed that we could ever play Yu-Gi-Oh like in that show Plenty of us thought ‘wouldn’t it be cool if one day we could duel like that?’ A lot of people still think do. What plenty of people do not realise is that that future is basically already here. I shall highlight a few technologies that we deemed impossible or stuff in the far far future but that is here already.I would like to begin where it all began. The Duelist Kingdom.

Yes I know there is a season zero but that is something I choose to omit. When Maximillion Pegasus created the Duel Monsters card game it wasn’t much more than the tradable card game we see played in our own world championships. Just some guys playing cards. To earn more money… and to gain all the millenium items in an evil plot … he had to make it a bit more spectacular. So the big holographic machines in the first season came to be. Back in 2001 this seemed like some star wars level of sci fi. Yet in 2017 a group of geeks like us . but waaaay smarter than me personally, managed to created some very impressive hologram table that basically puts Pegasus ones to shame.In fact one bigwig of Namco was so impressed that he joined the team to ready it for gaming purposes mostly for the arcade.Dragon Ball Heroes shows us we can already make cards interact with arcade cabinets very well. So already what seemed like it would be ages away is right around the corner.

The theme of future being closer than we might think is present throughout the series as well. Virtually every Yu-gi-oh character grows up way faster, after an unforseen event . Yu-gi learns from a maturer version of himself, only to find out he surpasses him way faster than he would have thought. Yuki/Jaden has to merge with Yubel which makes him a much more mature character. Yusei had to grow up fast to survive in Satellite and we see Yuma grow from a bumbling fool into a hero that saves the world mere days after disovering Astral. Yusaku lives roughly 10 years into our future, showing us that the noble creators have seen how close we are of having his world in reality. Yet also he was captured and shaped into a grown up faster than would have been normal. Yuya is the one I missed out on but he lost his father and had to step up….sooner than expected. Sometimes the future is closer than you think, for good OR for bad.

When we talk about the future we tend to envision it at a fixed point in time. We imagine where we will be in 10 years, we don’t imagine where we will be when we have a lucky windfall. Yet progress is like a snowball. The further it goes the larger it gets the faster it moves. This means that the future is often not 10 years away but only a series of discoveries. A chain of events once set in motion becoming a fast moving force. Whether you are waiting for your favorite trading card game to become reality or the acceptance of your subgroup becoming widespread. we do not need years..we need events and people starting the motions. While it may seem like a waiting game, in our own way we are the architects to the future.

Kaiba is real

Why are WE the architects of the future? Who is WE anyway? Well with we in this case I mean us geeks. I think geeks have a significant impact on the future. Wether we just buy 7 versions of Skyrim and support Todd coming up with new ways to play it, or if we actively imagine the idea of a star wars droid coming to live. All of us geeks do something on a nearly daily basis that is an absolute requirement to make the future happen faster. That key elements all geeks have in common is that we prefer to enter fantasy worlds on a daily basis. As such our imagination is significant larger than that of those who, let’s saysit in the gym everyday and binge Just Tattoo of Us. While normies contribute in their own way , I think in shaping the future we take a more crucial role. They however serve as the control that keeps us in check. To realise the future I think we need 3 sorts of people. We need a Yugi Muto, we need a Maximillion Pegasus and we need a Seto Kaiba.

(“***Where’s Yugi Boy in this picture?” “Pinkie was to lazy to edit him in he is right below”)***

For this comparison let’s take Battle City Dueling as their future becoming real. Yugi serves the role as the believer of an idea, the one who fantasises, the “nerd” if you will. Yugi is like us. This is shown throughout the show as well, Yugi is being picked on, a telltale sign of being geeky unfortunately, or at the very least how we are depicted. Yet the spiky haired protagonist is also the one who believes in his cards. He sees them as his friends.He trusts them. Talks to them. Like I talk to my pokémon! In fact basically the entire world they live in is geeky. People would rather watch these complex duels than people trying to take a ball across a field.

Every single duelist practicing their pro sport has some sort of geeky hobby or connection. Weevil collects bugs, rex collects fossils and is into archeology and stuff. Bones is crazy about zombies. Even the Bear Grylls of their world Mako Tsunami is heavily into the children’s card game. Every single duelist who has a connection to their deck is a geek in one shape way or form. Duelist Kingdom even shows this in Yugi’s style of thinking when he destroys the moon. That’s some video game logic style thinking right there. Troughout the entire world everyone is in love with the cards in their deck and has a connection to the fantastical creatures.. Let’s compare this one with star wars fan and also the writers who come up with the story
Then there is Joey and Tristan.,, not sure where they fit. .

(
***Joey is a weird duelist, his deck is basicly gambling and stuff he took from other players…..I guess he is ad D&D geek***)

Next we need the realist. Someone who sees these people’s needs and gives them what they want….sort off. The people that give us the semblance of an idea we try to achieve. Pegasus fills this role in the yu-gi-oh world. He creates a card game that pleases everyone. From a Chad that uses his machine cards to power trip. to a woman who lives out her sexual fantasies through her harpy cards. From the boy pretending to be an Esper to a tomb keeper of ancient egypt. No matter who you are, there is always a deck for you. You will have to spend a fortune on packs though. Pegasus showed that people that play this sport, want to live their fantasy and that there in fact is profit and glory to be had in making these fantasies as real as possible.

In the real world the game companies fill this function. With current technologies they want to provide something for people either to make a point or to gain a few bucks. The toy companies selling you a fake lightsaber so you can pretend to be a Jedi would also be in here. In a way even the OWLS are part of this category of people. We see xenophobia, alienation, exclusion towards people who don’t have to be shunned or degraded in any way. We see a world where we unite trough our fandoms and with what means we have right now we try to get the message out. Our blogs are the toys we can pretend with that the world is already a great place, we can offer an escape from the harsh reality that we aren’t there yet..
Even though Pegasus could not make his world’s shared fantasy fully real, nor can we reshape the world simply trough blogs and youtube, we inspire the risk taker, the visionaries, to go above and beyond.

**(Such a fitting card.. either we crash and burn .. or we jump to the future!**)

Kaiba is the final person we need to bring the future alive. We need a dreamer to come up with an idea, a realist to show this idea is not just a whim and a visionary to actually bring the future alive. Usually the visionary is at least in some shape way or form part of the dreamers as well. Most visionaries are at least somewhat geeky. Like Kaiba they have a love for that idea of the future as well. Kaiba is crazy enough to build a dueling system that works everywhere just because he is in love with the game so much he wants to be able to play it anywhere. Well that and to proof that he is the true king of games.

He loves his cards so much that he builds jet’s shaped like his favorite cards. He hosts tournaments so people can see other people duel and he even pays for a school that inspires people to choose a profession in the world of duel monsters. He doesn’t even own Industrial Illusion’s which make the cards. He just sells the hardware. Yet Kaiba Corp did not start out making what is effectively that world’s most popular console. It started as a weapons company led by his adoptive father. It took courage, bravery and a belief in a different future to make Battle City happen. He also had to scheme his father out of his market shares to make it possible.

Our world has exactly that same type of visionairs. Maybe they are not as edgy as the rival of Yugi but who knows. Elon Musk might have long white trench coats with studs all across in his wardrobe. I bet he’d love to shape his drilling machines like his favorite kaiju or pokémon..with some luck he might one day even make a Gurren. He might conference call with other car CEO’s when he works for Tesla and be like “I am gonna destroy you Audi’ and then people finally will realise I am the king of cars. I can totally see him making a jet for himself shaped like a dragon as well…or something else he really likes. Back to my point, we have visionaries, Elon Musk is our Kaiba and we have other people like him. These people will take huge risks to bring the future of tomorrow into today but nearly all these visionaries are rather unpredictable so again.. the future may be just around the corner.

***(Elon summons Blue Eyes without tribute because.. screw the rules… he has money)***

Get your game on

Yu-gi-oh to me is a great metaphor for how close the future is. Plenty of season show us how the past, present and sometimes future are interwoven. We create our own future! Like how Atem was able to stop Zork. He was able to summon the egyptian gods because he had learned their names in the the future. So by simply imagining things we take huge steps in making them become real. For many transgender, the progress of physically becoming yourself might seem painstakingly slow and far away in the future but by simply knowing you signed up you already give of a signal to the world. I am ready! I need this. Doctors and Visionaries will see this and see more and more people desire to be their true self. This will allow our world’s Kaibas to invent new techniques, better techniques and allows our Maximillions (the plural thing on a surname and Pegasus is kinda tricky) to get who process more streamlined. Dare to take that step even if it seems to take ages! People get information and inspiration from your courage.

The same can be said for tolerance towards whatever niche you may belong to. Show that desire, show the wish and even if it is not you if plenty people wish together some visionary WILL stand up and bring the future sooner than you might expect. Yet be wary, do not splinter yourself off to much. Our voices must be heard and for that we must join together. Do not demand rights for you! Inspire courage towards your niche, towards your desire and do not fight alone. Do not ask for a pink lightsaber that hums like the darksaber, while a regular lightsaber hasn’t even been invented yet. In Yu-gi-oh you will have to optimise your hand, you can not go for an Exodia Strategy if you don’t have enough card drawing power. Win some games first to get the proper cards and THEN go for the endgame. We can skim of years but not ages. If we ask for to much our visionary will not arrived and the future will just stay the future.

***(The future is within our reach, the future of the futre is never in reach)***

Let’s compare two Yu-gi-oh seasons that are very close to each other for example. Yu-gi-oh 5d’s and Yu-gi-oh Zexal. Say we wish one of them should become real, we still have to wish Zexal becomes real first, no matter how much we would like to play a children’s card game on motorcycles. Yuma’s duel disk comes with special glasses that show him the holograms. Basically Yuma’s Yu-Gi-Oh already exists in the form of augmented reality. The graphics aren’t good enough and the computers are just not strong enough to create the full effect. However this is a matter of years. In fact if we look back at that VR-Table I posted above.. it’s possible now most likely.. just not economically viable. We just need the tiniest push and we are in the realm of Zexal (minus the magic eyes and weird energy sources). Yu-gi-oh can happen now! Yet we can’t really expect the technology to be fitted in vehicles yet, let alone to gain a city that will reroute all traffic because people are playing a card game (okay the worldbuilding of 5d’s might be somewhat bad).

The future seems far away at times but it is our imagination what draws it in closer. Our imagination drives others, or even ourselves to invent stuff like it. A lot of Star Trek things, people would never expect to be real yet most off the ‘secondary’ technology has become real. We have view screens, we have virtual reality close to their holodeck, we can 3d print objects, we can communicate like them etc. With Yu-Gi-Oh we already can duel in virtual reality like Playmaker does in Vrains, although we REALLY need to debug it still. In fairness those who made it didn’t make it officially so there is that..It’s kind of a mod-like thing so imagine what an official product could do. We can kinda duel like Yuma in augmented reality as well. Sure there is no duel disk yet that shoots computer driven hologram-projecting robot, so there is still some way to go but that is a rather negative angle. The vision is becoming more and more real. Things do actually change! We are improving, we are ready to duel! However ..like in any dystopian sci-fi vision of the future we also always want to much.

When envisioning the future it’s never bad to think big, to look very far ahead but is also not very satisfying. I could look at at those augmented reality games held at the world championships of yu-gi-oh and go like…. NOPE that is not the future yet. Yet when it will finally arrive I will be surprised and ill prepared. I haven’t build a cool deck yet.. because that other stuff wasn’t worth it. I could also nod and smile as we move in the right direction. Start buying my Yu-gi-oh cards, because I know that it will come soon. I could have fun with the yanky vr simulations or the wooden augmented reality knowing I helped it grow.

I could focus on the intollerance I encounter, when flirting with other girls or when I say I do not want childeren or that I consider myself somewhat asexual and be like “jeez the future isn’t here yet I still feel unaccepted because there are still ignorant people.” Yet I could also feel happy because of the positive reactions I do get, the positive reaction Nikkietutorials shows the world is becoming more and more tolerant. The latter is such more pleasant to do. While I DO look towards my desired future at the horizon, I also embrace everything that passes by. That way the future is not just a vision. It will be a journey!

Other OWL Posts (Click to visit to them)

Healing from the past – Megan – Nerd Rambles

Spiderverse – Matt- Matt in the Hat

Idolmaster Side M – Takuto – Takuto’s Anime Café

Visions of a Brighter Future – Aria – The Animanga Spellbook

Vision for a Better Tommorow- Naja- Blerdy Otome

The Vision of Escaflowne – Fred- Au Natural

BTS Music – Crimson – Cute Boys Central

Akira- Dale – That Baka Blog

Vision of Slice of Life Anime – Scott – Mechanical Anime Reviews
(article goes live on 29/01 Until then click here!)

Star Trek The Nex Generation – Matt – Matt Doyle Media
(article goes live on 31/01 Untill then click here)

The Alola League Champion: Ash Ketchum

Jason Paige has gone silent, disbelief, joy and an occasional tear. It has been over twenty years but now it has finally happened….Ash Ketchum has won a Pokémon League. The never aging boy is the first champion of Alola. He is the very best.. like in Alola no one ever was.

The Big Trophy

Before episode 139 of Pokémon sun and Moon was aired we already saw images of Ash holding a trophy being leaked. People saw the colour and how it resembled a winners trophy of other leagues and began to speculate. Could they really spoil this, is this a hoax? Could Gladion be knocked down with Ash catching the trophy for him? We were prepared for all sorts of scenario after the famous episode title change back in 2016. However since the Pokémon Sword and Shield anime series would just be called Pokémon and the way the narrator thanked Ash in episode 138 like this would be his last Hurrah people began to suspect that this very well may be it. Ash might hold the trophy he actually earned.

Now for those with a good memory , this is not the actual first time Ash has won a Pokémon League persé. There are those who claim he has won the Orange conference and while this may be true, that league is not officially recognised in anything else than the anime. In anime terms the Orange Island Arc was by all intents and purposes filler. Throughout the series it’s barely referenced nor did it really impact Ash as a person. He never felt like the very best.. because he really wasn’t . While still an impressive feat I like to compare it to any other tournament form.. while the Pokémon League can be considered nationals.. or even the world championships of pokémon the Orange League never was much more than winning at regionals. The small trophy he got reflected this, it never gave him much fulfillment anyway. So yes ladies and gentlemen this is the first thing Ash has won a majorly important one. Finally.

A Journey completed

After the completely unjustifiable loss at the Kalos League my hope for the anime dwindled and rightfully so. Sun and Moon as an anime could not keep up with the amazingness of X&Y. While the artstyle is something you can grow into it did feel like the ultimate insult to see Ash be reduce from someone imposing to someone that looks like he’s animated on a tight time and money budget someone that is truly young. Ash returning to trainer school made me drop the anime for quite a while. When they reached the rename part .. and I found out they turned Lusamine in the good and loving mother she was depicted as in the show I cringed a bit more. The show had really lost it’s magic for me. Ash had journeyed for too long. Yet in retrospect we saw a lot of closure from classic storylines in this series, in retrospect giving it a final quality. We saw Brock finally get a girlfriend, we saw Misty grow into a much more potent young trainer and more recently we saw lilly conquer her fears and see Gladion use his father’s Pokémon. Even season one’s Jigglypuff returned.. it finally sang it’s song from start to finish with Komala staying ‘awake’ through it all in the end seeing jigglypuff being knocked out and it’s face doodled at.. with it’s own little journey completed.

Team Rocket getting the short and of the stick once more (for now). With Ash now finally winning a tournament one could wonder is this season where the narrator will finally say.. the end? My hope goes out to a positive answer to this question. Though Sun and Moon finally made me drop the series for most of its runtime , I on occasion still followed the adventures of my main man but it began to feel thin. Like Bilbo Baggins once described ‘Like butter that has been spread out over too much bread. We needed to see this yet at same time.. we are kinda done with Ash. One way or the other a journey has ended.

The Road ahead is empty

Now that we are getting close to seeing the Sword and Shield anime we can wonder what lies ahead. If they continue with current Ash not much. I wanted to see him become the champion and now that I did I can wholeheartedly say I am done with the character. Yet also for Ash himself there would not be that much more to achieve. One could make the argument that since the Alola league is the first of its kind it isn’t as official or prestigious as the indigo league or since Galar is a bit sports focussed that will be a more professional league so that there is still ways for Ash to grow. While I am willing to accept those ideas as somewhat valid it would remove any tension arc from the stories. For a new journey to be meaningful it would mean Ash HAS to win the more prestigious league as well or he will in fact move backwards. Which means that narratively speaking Ash is a dead end.

Letting him win in Galar is the only justified arc he could still go through but because it’s the only option it’s not really an aspect that needs to be explored. Ash as if might not have reached his zenith yet..which on it’s own is debatable but we now all know he will get there. THIS Ash is used up. There is no interesting story to tell with their side characters either, the only one who might have an arc still would be Serena and her arc really needs Ash to age to be completed. So it indeed would seem that the anime has nowhere to go. Like I said before though.. the new series will not carry a subtitle.. at least not in japan where it will just be called Pocket Monsters. In movie terms reusing the original titles usually means one thing and one thing alone. Reboot.

Who’s that Protagonist?

Now a reboot could be done in many ways. We could see Ash age to a grown up competing in the more professional Galar league after a few years of rest. Being mature now Ash could be involved in some themes he did not really have to deal with before. Romance could become a real thing of his journey but also his battle style would have to change to a more serious more clear cut and direct battler.While not the most compelling narrative option , i’d say this is their only option to keep current Ash and give him some room to develop. His championship could become secondary to his coming to age story. Yet going this route will be one of many pitfalls that would mean excluding some game features or even characters he can encounter. The game would have to be represented significantly less. With the job system though it could still work to some extent.

The most popular protagonist theory however is an Ash Reset. we simply get a new Ash Ketchum, mostly likely one living in Galar starting his journey with a Pikachu much like old Ash did. Other reboot theories consist using the Ash from the “I choose you Pikachu movie” timeline. In this timeline he never traveled with Brock and Misty and Kanto already knew the Legendary Dogs and even Alolan Pokemon, so it’s almost like.. what if Ash was born 20 years later. While this could work I think it would result in a lot of people resisting, with all the hate Pokémon is getting for Sword and Shield already it seems like a very dumb choice to make. Though one that is quite marketable if they manage to pull it off. The anime has always been about Ash and Pikachu and if Detective Conan can stay fresh for decenia Ash should be able to do so too. The community needs to keep an open mind for that though and I am not sure if this is the proper day and age for that. It’s so easy to hate.

So the best option would be to have a new protagonist. While rude mouth brittish avatar girl seems like a good pick I personally would really like if the story is focussed about on Marnie. Marnie is one of the rivals in the game and the one who is idolised by the evil team Yell. It could be very interesting to tell a narrative from a more edgy main character who combats her inner darkness and her desire to win rather than ignorance. The way she would deal with her fans trying to give her unfair advantages would also be a very fresh narrative. Marnie could deal with the pressure of being seen as the best opposed to being a nobody everyone suddenly starts looking up too. Marnie has a less linear narrative, where Ash journey is just to overcome an obstacle Marnie’s journey would be one of black or white choices. Her fans count on her so will she push her Morpeko to claim victory despite the cost to her pokémon or will she spare her pokémon but anger her fans and team Yell? It could push Pokémon as a series more into animé territory and less into serial cartoons. I would not mind potty mouth british avatar meme girl as a protagonist either if they make her a bit smarter than Ash.

Please Don’t

Now what do I really hope we won’t see? Two things.. a continuation of Ash as is will make me not even pick up the series at all his journey is complete, I am so done with him. The second one is a bit more sensitive. The second character I would not like to see as a main character is Hop. Hop is the little brother of the pokémon league champion and your only rival of a different skin colour. Now I have no problem in creating more diversity in ethnicity in main characters , I love Miles Morales and the new Miss Marvel. Hop however would be to much like Ash. Their personalities would not differ enough. Had Hau been the protagonist of Sun and Moon after Ash won Kalos, i’d be be perfectly fine with it.. because Hau is more carefree than Ash he is extreme, his carefree nature could be something he needs to work on in order to become a great. Hop however seems to have the Ash mentality.. he likes to win but he also seems a bit of an airhead with a good heart.

Miles Morales is very different from Peter Parker so regardless of heritage he adds something new. While I respect that for some people it is important to find more representation I am simply judging this from a narrative standpoint. Hop is an Ash Clone.. just like Trace from let’s go Eevee kinda is. Pokémon needs something new.. something fresh from a narrative stance. Hop would not offer that. I also would not want Serena to become the main character, her goals would have to be changed to much. Even though she is a fan favorite with a story still to complete they would need a very strange narrative to shoehorn her in. Letting her compete to grow seems like something she would not do. The only fitting narrative I could find fitting if Ash goes missing and rumors say he went to Galar .. and she starts to compete to face him at the pokéleague.. but this would weigh the story down a lot.

With the Alola trophy in Ash hands the future of the pokémon anime is insecure. This can be the fresh breath of air the series so desperately needs or the nail to the coffin for many viewers. Unlike Ash I still have some hopes and dreams and my biggest right now is a female protagonist.. or at least no Ash or Ash clone.

Question to my readers:

What would you like to see in the future of the Pokémon Anime?

So that concludes my feelings about Ash winning a pokémon league.. I am so happy it is finally over , but it can get worse for here as well. Once again in my choices I do not mean to upset anyone these are simply my views based on available assets and looking to what I find lacking in the series and what would make it thrive and what would stagnate it.
Ash has died 9 times before becoming the pokémon league champion, I just hope that when he dies next time it’s not because using him again killed the franchise.

The Pinkest Poké Blogger is Blasting off again
XO
Pinkie