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j_m_lee

B

Blivsey

DATA_ERROR
The j_m_lee Trainer Blog


I'm trying something new on the fanfiction front, something that probably hasn't been done before here, and I don't know if it's been tried anywhere: A fictional weblog depicting the life of a trainer. Updated sporadically, this is very much an experiment both for myself and for new forms of fan media in general, so feel free to leave any comments, particularly considering your thoughts on the medium and how it's being handled.

Also, I encourage you to make comments on the journal entries on the site, but try to stay within the "fourth wall" (i.e. maintain Jim's illusion that he lives in the real world.) Any post at the actual blog acknowledging this as fiction will be erased, but it would be nice for him to have commentors. A good example is here.


In order to (somewhat) coincide with the rules, I'll be reposting the blog here in clumps of three-week blocks, acting as "chapters" of sorts. The journal itself is updated in real-time, however, so feel free to check that as often as you like (no guaranteed update schedule, though, folks.)



LINKS TO 3-WEEK COLLECTIONS (POSTS)

Weeks 1-3
Weeks 4-6
Weeks 7-9
Weeks 10-12
Weeks 13-15






Weeks 1-3



Test: 01 May 2009 @ 04:20 pm

Hello? Is this thing on?



Intro: 01 May 2009 @ 04:46 pm
Location: Home

Alright, here we go.

For those of you who don't already know me personally (very few, knowing who will probably read this), my name's James Michael Lee. I would prefer to be called Jim. I'm from Eterna City in Sinnoh, I'm 17, I'm (admittedly) a nerd, and I have one older sister and both parents.

I'm just finishing up my last year of proper general education, meaning that I'll finally be let out on a Trainer's journey. (For the unaware, my parents insisted that I finish standard schooling before they'd let me out on the Gym Challenge. Understandable, but still annoying.) I intend to take my leave with a friend of mine who's been put in the same situation. Known abound as Steve Schager:

(Image Link)

Usually he has greenish eyes, though. He must have been momentarily possessed or something, or I haven't been paying attention lately. Huh. Obviously, if you want a photo reference, that's me in the User Pic.

Can't leave 'till we're scheduled an appointment with Prof. Rowan, though. Should be late May or early June. Until then, whoever thinks they want to read this can listen to me prattle on about preparations, planning, etc.



Serious Business: 03 May 2009 @ 09:01 pm
Location: Home

Guess it's official now. Steve and I got the confirmation letter back today that we're registered as a Trainers' party now. They sent us our ID cards and everything. I'm an actual, real trainer.

Since I don't think I've explained this to many people, I've kind of wanted to be a Trainer since I was five or something. I mean, come on, who hasn't? I vaguely even remember trying to get Wally, Dad's old Grovyle, to battle for me (three guesses how well that turned out...). But now, it's actually more about me wanting the experience than wanting to be a celebrity trainer. Not that I would mind being famous for it, but I kind of just want to see the world, and being a Trainer is probably the best way to do it. Besides, it's a good way to be pretty self-sustaining for a year. I can live off of a Trainer's allowance, I think.

We're set for a meeting with Prof. Rowan on June 2nd. I think we're lucky that way; since Rowan got old and retired, he's been personally seeing new trainers off again. Now I just have to make it through the last couple of weeks of school. Then we're free to go...



Coursework: 07 May 2009 @ 09:42 pm
Location: Home

Hey, I got a reply. Somebody is reading this! Albeit someone I don't think that I know... (if you think I do, drop a name) And you asked about school.

Actually, that's kinda the reason that I've only posted a couple times this week. I've got a fair bit of studying and projects for the end of the year. If you'll allow me to list:


Physics: Major test coming up, covers all the course material for the whole year. Trust me, Pokémon attacks throw a major wrench in the works. Luckily I remember most of the stuff really well, and I've got all the formulas written down.
Pokémon speech: Really need to brush up on this. Forgot a lot of terminology from first semester.
Psychology: Eight-page paper due next week on whether Pokémon should be given human rights or not. Final grade and all that.
Calculus: Boring as ever, Semester test next week.
Pokémon Societies: Pretty safe here, but there's still the tests.
Battle Mechanics: Getting kinda rusty on the simulator; some attacks and abilities are still throwing me for a loop.
English Lit. and Comp.: Took the final today. Nothing else for that class (phew).
Tech. App.: I've never had a problem with this, shouldn't need to worry about studying too bad.


At least I don't have to deal with History classes anymore. Thank God I'm done next Friday.



Paper: Conquered: 09 May 2009 @ 01:22 pm
Location: Home


Alright, I finished that Psych paper and sent it to the teacher for proofreading. Feeling pretty good about it. Besides that, studies are on track, and I think I'll pass these tests just fine.

Steve and his mom are taking me out to gather our traveling supplies in a bit. His mother used to be a pretty good Trainer, so she knows what we'll want/need for this, down to the exact type of camp chair. Hopefully most of the equipment I have in the garage is usable. They only give us so much money to start out with....




Supply Run: 09 May 2009 @ 10:02 pm
Location: Home

Well, we're pretty much set now. Steve's mom had a lot of old Trainer's gear lying around, so I'm being allowed to borrow whatever was left over after Steve had his pick. Besides that, most of my stuff was fine to use, anyway, so we didn't have to actually buy a lot of stuff, just healing and capture items, mostly. I still had to get my own Pokédex, but at least I found a pretty sleek model on sale. It's the MP-X37 for those of you that care. Full 3-D models of the Pokémon and everything. After that, it was just minimal stuff. Speaking of minimal, she even had a couple of those capsules that work like Pokéballs, but with items instead of Pokémon (I forget what the device is called...)

THANK YOU, MRS. SCHAGER.

Totally set now. Just gotta finish those tests and wait for June to roll around.



Ugh: 14 May 2009 @ 05:46 pm
Location: Home

Somewhat-sorry for the lack of post, but I've kinda been occupied with finals.

Think I did pretty well on the tests, Mr. Clem said he liked my Psychology paper, and all I have left is Societies for tomorrow. Then I'm done with standard schooling for good. ABOUT BLOODY TIME.

I'll get on and rant about something to fill this space tomorrow. Right now my computer-time is seriously cut (my parents are restricting me to one hour a day until finals are done). TTFN.



YESYESYESYESYES: 15 May 2009 @ 03:51 pm
Location: Home

Phew. Finished my last test (actually not difficult) and now I'm out and finished. Not going back to that school again for at least the rest of the summer if I can help it. (might visit in the future). Graduation ceremony proper on Tuesday (5:30 at the Carson Center), but for now, REST.

I know I promised rantage. I'll give it tomorrow. just a little burned out now.


Of Starters: 16 May 2009 @ 10:07 pm
Location: Home

Whoa.

So, at least twelve relatives showed up today to visit for graduation, most of them from outside of Eterna. Needless to say, we're packed, and guests kinda took preference over this, which I hope you all can relate to. They're a lot of fun, though, so it's entirely worth the trouble.

But, I promised you a chat on something, and here it is:

I've had it decided for quite a while what starter Pokémon I want to get from Prof. Rowan. I'm kinda set on a Piplup. The way I see it, it's probably the best strategical option, as Empoleon's partly a Steel-type, and that walls out a lot of attacks, especially ones that would cripple a Torterra or Infernape. Besides that, the Piplup family looks cool in all of its evolutions in my opinion (whereas the Chimchar family looks ugly to me and the Turtwig family is just... eh.) There are a lot of little reasons, too (such as their tendancy to be low-maintenance and self-supporting and Piplup being considered very cute by ladies), but those are the main ones.

Steve says that he's holding out for a Chimchar. Apparently the hot-blooded, head-on attack style appeals to him. I suppose it's got its merits, but it's just not my cup a' tea, you know?



HAHAHA: 19 May 2009 @ 02:30 pm
Location: Home

So i woke up at about nine this morning, went out to Sherman's for breakfast and then made it to graduation practice, and I didn't have to go to school afterwards.

This makes me very happy.

But yeah, the ceremony is tonight, and then Eterna City West High School is no longer my problem. About bloody time.



Huh.: 20 May 2009 @ 09:29 am
Location: Home

Well, lookit that. Somehow I got a diploma since yesterday morning. Guess school isn't my problem anymore.

House's empty now, too. I guess whatever all those weird relative-types were waiting on already came, so they must have left.

Wonder what happened last night....
​
 
Last edited:
Reply from PKMN_MSTR_19: hahah, you late start nerd! U ain't gonna stand a chance 'gainst awesome trainers who started at the rigt time! leik me!


reply from Ysavvryl: Oh can it. I swear, that guy trolls anybody. Congrats on getting your license and diploma, and good luck on the road. It's nice to see someone thinking of strategy when choosing thier starter than just going with the cool one, or whatever.



....hehe, anyhow, I like the idea, but thought that any internet journal gets some jerk reply, so why not this one? Hope you don't mind (and you could even borrow PKMN_MSTR_19 if you like!). But you've got a 'friend' mispelled as 'Fried' in there. I doubt Steve is actually fried.
 
I've been following this blog for a fair bit of time, actually, and I have to say I'm impressed. I like the idea of a trainer's online journal (I won't call it a blog, sounds ugly); it's an innovative and clever little idea. What I like about it, though, is that it's told in a realistic, believable way with a distinctive style, and considering how people love online journals, could generate quite the following.

Certainly, I'm going to be following this. For some reason, I can't really think of any distinctive criticisms; it's all nicely assembled together, but I suppose if there would be a criticism, it would be based on the subject matter and the entries. The overall quality level would change depending on the quality of the entries. Also, this is to the best of my knowledge a new approach, so will probably have its own flaws.

Either way, best of luck in writing.
 
Thanks for the comments so far. Typo fixed, as well, though the real-life Steve has been fried on one occasion. That's slightly irrelevant, though.

Actually, I should be more clear on what I meant by in-character comments. An example of what I meant is here.


I'll try to work on consistency, Doc, thanks. People tend to have their own swings in writing mood, though, and I'm no exception, so that might come through. Then again, that could add to the effect. Like you said, this is going to have its own quirks and falls, but again, this is kind of an experiment, so... we'll see how it runs.
 
Reply from SonnetMaster93: You have me intrigued, JML. For once on these godforsaken blogs, there are no spelling/grammar errors I can see... and I have some pretty sharp eyes. Whereas it seems a little short for 3 weeks' worth of entries, I'll be following your exploits. My best wishes on your journey.

- SonnetMaster93

Reply from Son_of_Shadows: Ignore the above poster, he's a ***. Trolling is fun lolzorz!
 
UPDATE INSIDE


pokemon special: Go ahead and make comments, so long as the fourth wall stays intact. Also, the replies on the actual blog are being made by people other than me, of their own will. It's pretty neat, actually.

Son of Shadows: Again, someone misses the point of in-character "replying". Check the first post.



Weeks 4-6



Outing: 22 May 2009 @ 11:08 am
Location: Home

Steve just called; we're going out to lunch in a bit and we're going to use some of the battle simulators at the school for a while (they're free to use by students at any time, I think we still qualify). I haven't used them in a while, and the machines make all the battles pretty linear, so I doubt I'll do well. Eh. It's good practice, at any rate.



Practice: 22 May 2009 @ 09:16 pm
Location: Home

Well, out of what must have been twenty battles, I think I won... five?

The problem with that is that the simulators work more like a calculator, showing the likely outcomes. They can't really emulate living creatures or do much to incorporate human strategies or intuitive tactics. That might help my case a bit. Doesn't change the fact that I still need to practice more, though.



Drought: 29 May 2009 @ 09:23 am
Location: Home

Sorry about the lack of posting, just... not a lot has been going on lately. Mostly hanging around with friends for the last chance I'll get in quite a while.

Most of the supplies are packed for when we leave on Monday. Umm.... oh, yeah, today's my last day making sandwiches at the Hungry Heracross, so stop by if you want... if anyone's listening.



Last Night in Town: 31 May 2009 @ 12:37 pm
Location: Home

Last day in town for me... tomorrow we leave for Sandgem. We'll probably be back within a month or so, but we've still got to hit all the big local spots one last time today.

And yes, I said "a couple months." I know that most people on their journeys nowadays take the trains or a car from town to town to train. But since it's within our ability, Steve and I decided to to hoof it, the old-fashioned way. Not just for the experience, but because that way you get more time to train and capture wild Pokémon. I think it's better that way.



We're Here: 01 June 2009 @ 09:50 pm
Location: Sandgem Town

We left home this morning by train, and got off in Sandgem about mid-afternoon. Checked into the hotel (can't use the Centers without actually having Pokémon, apparently), saw the (very few) sights besides the Lab, and hit the beach. Great day for it, too.

Well, this is the point of no return. We get our starter Pokémon tomorrow, and after that the journey's on. Is it possible to be giddy-exited and nervous-exited at the same time?



First Pokémon!: 02 June 2009 @ 04:08 pm
Location: Sandgem Town

YEAH!

We hit the lab about ten o'clock this morning, about the same time as another girl about our age, maybe a year younger. Named Shelby Lewis, just moved from Mahogany Town in Johto, very friendly. One of the assistants gave us a tour, and after I got done ogling the equipment (and it's some nice stuff, too), we met with Professor Rowan himself. We got vouchers for 60% off our first Pokédexes (standard issue now, apparently) and he let us pick out our first Pokémon.

Steve went straight for a Chimchar that had been trying to have a staring contest with him for about five minutes. They seem to be cut from the same cloth, and they're already clicking. Steve nicknamed him "Alpha." Apparently Shelby had a Totodile shipped in from Professor Elm that she picked out beforehand.

I played with all the Piplup for a while, but one of them seemed to be really attached to me. She insisted on hugging and nuzzling my leg until I picked her up, at which point she curled up against my chest. It was too adorable. Needless to say, I ended up taking her with me. I ran a bunch of nicknames by her, but she doesn't seem to like them. I guess I'll just be calling her "Piplup" for now.

We asked Shelby if she wanted to join us, but she said she already had pen pals over here that she had arranged to travel with, and they aren't leaving for another couple of days. We'll probably run into them again somewhere, though. Steve managed to get her number, too, the sly dog.

After that, we hit the store in town to get our Dexes. There are some nice models out there now. We could both afford some pretty slick models with very thorough entries. They even show off 3-D animations of the Pokémon and most of their attacks! Very nice. Now that we have our Pokémon, we get Trainers' discounts at shops and we can stay in the Pokémon Centers' quarters overnight (limited space and availability, but low-cost). We're still in the hotel for tonight, though.


Great day so far. Piplup is tugging at my pants leg right now, so I'm going to go play with her some more (I think they let Pokémon out at the beach). I'll put up something about what I want for an overall team later. Leaving north tomorrow, only twenty-four miles to Jubilife. Shouldn't take too long.



Day One: 03 June 2009 @ 09:21 pm
Location: Route 202

Long day. Almost forgot to post something.

Well, we left Sandgem about ten o'clock, which was a poor choice. We made it about eight miles, but we had to stop because it was getting hot out and we were getting to tired to keep going for such a long time. We should probably be more exercised for this, but we still need to leave early in the mornings to avoid the heat of the day. Anyway, we made camp around two. Found a nice little spot just a couple hundred feet off the dirt trail. We went out and trained against some of the wild Pokémon afterwards, so we're off to a decent start. An upstart little Shinx got the better of River, though. Even after a potion, she's still a little sore.

By the way, that's Piplup's new name, is River. I was mentioning the nearby creek to Steve as being a "river," and Piplup said something to the effect of "That's it!" (I don't know for sure, she's young, so her speech patterns aren't fully developed yet, and I'm not always right) So, she's River now. Funny, she picked out a water-themed name, though I can't imagine Piplup or its evolutions living in a river...



Another Day: 04 June 2009 @ 09:53 pm
Location: Route 202

Another nine miles down. Made decent distance today, stopped and camped while it was still cool, then did another round of training. Luckily, we both know how to cook, so the food has turned out really well so far. River and Alpha seem to prefer the Pokémon kibble, though, which is just fine, I suppose.

Oh, yeah, Steve and I had a battle with each other today. We only have the one Pokémon each so far (none of our captures have succeeded before running off yet), so it was kind of one-sided. Alpha went down after two or three Bubble attacks. I would have felt bad about it, but Steve was the one who raised the challenge in the first place, so...


Should reach Jubilife tomorrow.



First Stop: 05 June 2009 @ 08:30 pm
Location: Jubilife City

Steve managed to catch a male Nidoran this morning! It always struck me as odd that male Nidoran are pink and females are blue, rather than the other way around, but whatever. He was really excited about the idea of being trained, too, so we welcomed "Gamma" to the team and hit Jubilife.

And damn, this place is big.

The last time I went to Jubilife was when I was probably seven, and saw a bit of it from the train, but I forgot just how massive this place is. All of the buildings are at least three stories tall, and most are about five. Lots of businesses headquartered here, I guess.

There's a trading post and a park near the Center, and since we don't really want to trade Pokémon at this point, we just took our Pokémon out to the park to play. They all seemed to enjoy it. Alpha was having fun climbing over everything, Gamma seemed to just like running around, and River was having fun in the pond with the other Pokémon like you wouldn't believe.

This is our first night staying in the Pokémon Centers, too. The rooms are pretty small, with just a bunk bed, a dresser and a sink pretty much, and there's a set of public showers, but that's about it as far as the lodging hall goes. No breakfast (though they have discount cupons for some nearby restaurants), it's kinda crowded, and if you check in after six they start to run out of rooms, but it's a really cheap option for trainers, and it beats sleeping outside at the moment (rain tonight, possibly tomorrow), so I'm perfectly fine with it.

Unfortunately, there's not a Gym or anything else that we're really interested in here, so we'll be heading out again tomorrow.



Past the Gate: 07 June 2009 @ 09:10 pm
Location: Oreburgh City

Sorry I didn't post yesterday, but it was pouring literally all day, so our tents got put up wet and I didn't want to risk taking my laptop out of its storage capsule.

Anyway, we slept in a bit on Sunday, so we didn't leave until nine, and then we didn't cover a lot of distance in the rain, so we only make it six miles before giving up, only halfway to Oreburgh Gate from Jubilife. We spent the rest of the day trying (with marginal success) to stay dry inside the tents. Not a fun day.

Today was better. We hit Oreburgh Gate at about a quarter to eleven, did a little training, and had lunch. I managed to catch a Pineco, too! But I took Pineco out after we visited the center, and he said that he wasn't interested in battling at all, he just wanted to stay in a tree and not be bothered. I sent a mail to Prof. Rowan. Hopefully Rowan can find him a good place at his acreage near the lab.

Anyway, it took a long time to get through Oreburgh Gate. Not just that the cave is almost two miles long itself, but it's net terribly easy to get through. The cavern's spacious enough to walk in comfortably, it's just easy to get off the right track in caves, and we forgot a map, so we ended up taking a couple of wrong turns. I snagged a Geodude, though, and he helped us find the way out. After we made it to Oreburgh (about seven, seven-thirty), he said that he wouldn't mind being trained, so I guess I've got a Geodude for my team! He doesn't want a nickname, so just Geodude it is.

So we're in Oreburgh now. We'll hit the town tomorrow and see about the Gym here.



Coal?: 08 June 2009 @ 06:40 pm
Location: Oreburgh City

So, we looked at most of the town though the web and brochures, and... it's not too terribly interesting. There's a big museum, but it's entirely dedicated to coal. There's a mine to explore, but again, coal. Not to offend anybody that lives here, but I just don't see how coal is that fascinating. Maybe I'm just not one for earth science. Meh.

Anyway, we hit Roark's gym today (looks like an extention of the mine inside, and Roark's obviously a miner). The gym trainers weren't too bad, just some interns with Geodude. Our Pokémon put them aside without too much trouble. I wasn't allowed to watch Steve's match because I was a challenger, too, but from what he says Chimchar didn't do him much good, and only wore Roark's Geodude out a little. Fortunately, Gamma knows Double Kick, so he handled Geodude and Cranidos completely. As for my battle, I started with River, and she took out his Geodude brilliantly with some Bubble attacks, and nearly wiped out his Cranidos the same way, too. Cranidos managed to get a good, strong Headbutt in, and the Piplup line really can't take physical damage well. Geodude went out to fight against Cranidos next, and it basically boiled down to a wrestling match, tackle versus headbutt. Geodude managed to evade one of his moves fast enough to trick him into hitting the wall. After that, Cranidos was a bit too dizzy to fight back properly, and Geodude had no trouble finishing the match. I am now the proud owner of a shiny Coal Badge. (Is there anything in this city not focused on the coal?)

Oh, yeah, and I got a mail back from Rowan, and he'll always take more Pokémon in for study. Beats leaving them in storage. I asked Pineco about whether he wanted to go back to his natural home, but he said he didn't care, and this is more convenient for everyone (Rowan gets his observations, he gets back to a tree faster, etc.), so that's how it is.

Might stick around in Jubilife for a day when we get back. I heard from a trainer at the Center that there's a few places to check out there that we missed.



Retracing Steps: 09 June 2009 @ 08:36 pm
Location: Route 203

Back though Oreburgh Gate this morning. Didn't take quite as long, but we still only made a couple miles on the other side, so a lot of tomorrow will be spent just on travel.

Did a little snooping around the route again, more training and all that. Steve caught a Spinarak, but the little one doesn't know if she wants to battle. Apparently she's too young do have ever been in a proper one. So we're gonna let her out for a bit of training tomorrow and see how it goes.

Y'know, we've moved pretty fast so far. One week and I already have my first badge behind me. Maybe we'll be back in Eterna before we thought we would.



Back in Jubilife: 10 June 2009 @ 08:10 pm
Location: Jubilife City

Spinarak trained for a bit and decided that she'd like to come with Steve and get stronger. So now, Steve has a new team member in Chi the Spinarak. Good for him.

Not much else to report for today. I dug up some info. on the places that trainer in Oreburgh mentioned, and I'll be darned, but we missed them entirely on the first run. Now I feel stupid. From now on I ask around about sightseeing whenever we stop in a town. Don't wanna miss something like a Global Record Hall or anything.


Oh, and to my reader from PokéTech, Steve says that he liked that game, actually. Admittedly not his favorite, but he thinks it's solid. After all, a mute ex-SilphCo. scientist running around after an appocalypse swinging a crowbar at mutated humans and Pokémon can't be that bad, right?



Jubilife Revisited: 11 June 2009 @ 08:57 pm
Location: Jubilife City

So, we checked out the trading post today. I kinda forgot that they replaced it with the "Global Terminal". We spent most of the morning checking out records of old battles and other things like that. After lunch, we took a look at the Hall of Fame, which had a listing of all the League Champions of every league, every tournament year (electronic, of course. BIG list.) as well as Elite Four members, notable Pokémon researchers, and other big names in Pokémon (like Bill Miller and Kurt Franz). It was pretty cool. So HOW did we miss this before? Crazy.

We also hit the TV station. Apparently they have a lot of user-made content that they keep up there, so we contributed a bit to the Photo Gallery and such, gave a quick interview. It'd be cool if we ended up on TV or radio something, but I can do without.

Also, apparently The Pokétch Company offers Pokétch devices at their HQ at a direct-from-factory price, which is really cool. They're apparently a family-operated business, so their policies are really customer-friendly. Steve and I had enough money stocked up to take advantage of it, they've got some really darned cool models there. I've got one with a full-on LCD display, GPS/mapping device and a whole slew of other ones (for about 3000 Yen!). On the other hand, to afford this, lunch is going to have to be instant noodles for a while. Eh, we'll manage just fine.


We ran into Shelby in the park, too. She introduced us to her friends, Amy and Rachel. Shelby wanted to challenge Steve, but after he showed off his Coal Badge and strutted around a bit, she withdrew the offer. Either she knew the badge meant he was a bit too strong for her at the moment, or Steve drove her away with his "victory dance." Ugh.

And... that was our day. Let the Pokémon out to play, unwound for the evening... now bedtime.



_________________​


As per usual, any comments, criticisms or general thoughts are always welcome.
 
That was a great read! I loved your style of story telling.
One question though - you are constantly referring to pokemon being able to talk to their trainer, like pineco expressing that it does not care where it is living; how is it happening?
Can't wait for the next post.
 
@shac: Be assured that all of the Pokémon are still speaking in their native languages. But one of the courses that Jim took in school (which is required up to a certain level) is how to interpret Pokémon Speech in human terms, so he can translate what they're saying to a degree. I think that I already implied it here:

Blivsey said:
Coursework: 07 May 2009 @ 09:42 pm
Location: Home

[CUT] And you asked about school.

Actually, that's kinda the reason that I've only posted a couple times this week. I've got a fair bit of studying and projects for the end of the year. If you'll allow me to list:


Physics: Major test coming up, covers all the course material for the whole year. Trust me, Pokémon attacks throw a major wrench in the works. Luckily I remember most of the stuff really well, and I've got all the formulas written down.
Pokémon speech: Really need to brush up on this. Forgot a lot of terminology from first semester.
[CUT]​
Click to expand...


And here:

​
Blivsey said:
Day One: 03 June 2009 @ 09:21 pm
Location: Route 202

[CUT] and Piplup said something to the effect of "That's it!" (I don't know for sure, she's young, so her speech patterns aren't fully developed yet, and I'm not always right) [CUT]
Click to expand...

It would be assumed that all other characters involved in the story will have the ability to interpret Pokémon speech, as well, unless otherwise noted.
 
I actually really like this. Its simple yes, and lacks description, but I thoroughly enjoy the first person narration and the idea of this. My only two critiques would be the fact that you are moving a tad too fast, and that maybe you should upgrade your description of battle scenes. (Hard to do in a blog-fiction, but at least make an attempt.)

Keep it up, I'll be reading. :]
 
Already working on those two suggestions, Manaphyman. Thanks for the input, I'm not too good at self-correcting.


Gah, missed the update at the start of the month. Of course, I recommend that you follow the blog itself in real-time for the best effect, anyway (links in sig and at the top of the page). Here's your update:



Weeks 7-9



Living in a Cave: 12 June 2009 @ 07:48 pm
Location: Route 204/Ravaged Path

We had breakfast with Shelby's company this morning, and then parted. They went west, we went north toward Floaroma.

We just made it to the cave this morning before a real downpour started. We were able to get through Ravaged Path with no problem, but the rain still hasn't let up, so we gave up and we'll be camping out here for the night. Steve got a Zubat, but he says he doesn't know if he wants to battle with it or anything. Guess Rowan's gonna have another one of those flying around.



Flowers flowers turbines flowers: 14 June 2009 @ 07:26 pm
Location: Floaroma Town

So, do you all remember how Oreburgh City is fanatical about coal? Floaroma Town: same problem, but with flowers. Practically half the city is one big flower field (as opposed to half of Oreburgh being a big mining op).

We took some time to rest here a bit, all of us, since we got in really late last night. Not much to do here, though, so we headed out of town. First thing we saw were WIND TURBINES. I can't tell you readers how much I love wind turbines. Naturally-generated energy, wonderfully engineered, and fascinating to watch (in my opinion). So I talked Steve into stopping by the Valley Windworks for the tour. I found it very interesting, but he was bored out of his mind, I could tell. That and we had to give up another day on the road for it, hence why we're still in Floaroma.

He found a couple trainers staying in the city to give him matches, though, so he was content enough. First was a one-on-one with a girl with a Roselia. Obviously, Steve used Alpha (Chimchar) due to type advantage, and got in a strong ember right off the bat. The Roselia was fast, though, and laid down some poison stings on Alpha right after that. Alpha hung in there and won, but Roselia sure put up a good fight.

Later on, he dragged me into a two-on-two match, us against a travelling couple (one guy, one girl). The girl had a Mime Jr. and the guy had a Croagunk, so Steve used Gamma (Nidoran) and I took out Geodude. Between us, we knocked out the Mime Jr. pretty quickly with physical attacks, but it managed to get a few defending moves surrounding Croagunk first. Croagunk's Mud-Slap took out Gamma in only a couple of hits (super-effectiveness and all that), but Geodude pulled off an excellent Magnitude that downed it. Good couple of matches, today.

Oh, and the Zubat decided on joining Steve, but it doesn't want to battle much, if at all. I think that Steve's planning on sending it back at the first opportunity he gets, especially since he hasn't given Zubat a nickname....



'nother Day: 15 June 2009 @ 09:39 pm
Location: Route 205

Left Floaroma this morning, headed toward Valley Windworks, then north past the river and on for quite a while. Steve wouldn't let me oogle the wind turbines again...

Didn't catch anything today, just travel and training against the wild Pokémon and each other for a while. We made almost ten miles, but Route 205 is long and uphill. It'll be another several days before we even reach Eterna Forest, and going through that should take a couple of days in itself. Besides that, we're thinking of stopping by Feugo Ironworks, too, since some wild Fire-types and Steel-types tend to congregate there. So the next city (home) is probably a week away.



Treking North: 16 June 2009 @ 09:44 pm
Location: Route 205

Another ways forward today, putting us maybe within range of the entrance to Eterna Forest for tomorrow. It'll be a long day, though, so depending on wether we feel up to it we'll have to split the hike into two days.

Chi has gotten good enough at battling wild Pokémon, and she managed to trap a couple of Oddish and a Teddiursa with its webs. Steve and I caught an Oddish each (Steve's sending his back to Rowan's, and I'm thinking of using mine at some point for its powder abilities), and Steve took the Teddirusa (named it Xu, so I guess it's part of the regular team rotation now).

I'm going to take a stroll later tonight. I might catch some nocturnal Pokémon that way.



Not There Yet: 17 June 2009 @ 08:03 pm
Location: Route 205

We both accidentally slept in today, so we didn't make it far enough in the morning to reach the entrance to Eterna Forest. We'll reach that tomorrow, then visit the Feugo Ironworks tomorrow. On the other hand, my half of the sleeping in was due to catching a Hoothoot last night.

On the other hand, we did meet another trainer on the road today (called himself Jon) who challenged me to a match, a series of 3 one-on-one battles. First was River against a Grotle, so she didn't stand a lot of chance there. She did try, but that Grotle was packing a strong Razor Leaf, and River was at a disadvantage. Geodude took on his Beautifly, which was pretty one-sided before Beautifly paralyzed him. Geodude still won with a good few Rock Throws, it just took a lot longer. And finally I put the new Hoothoot up against his Psyduck. There was no clear type advantage there, but Hoothoot pulled off an excellent Hypnosis early on, giving her a strong headstart. After that, Psyduck only had time to Water Gun her once before going down.


So I won, but barely. We need to keep up our training.



Made It: 18 June 2009 @ 10:02 pm
Location: Route 205

Hit a HUGE storm this morning about 8:00. We had to find a covered spot under a rock ledge just to keep ourselves dry while we waited it out, and even that didn't work for us. That storm was nasty, and it lasted a good hour and a half. Hail, rain falling sideways, the whole nine yards. It finally slowed down eventually, and we made it to our camp at the Eterna Forest entrance and stopped.

We're definitely going to Feugo Ironworks tomorrow for a tour and a catching spree, but for today, we just collapsed. We tried training for about half an hour, but gave up. Ugh, time for sleep.



Catching Spree: 19 June 2009 @ 09:46 pm
Location: Route 205

Haha, YES.

All in all, we caught a lot of Pokémon today with good potential. I've got a Slugma that I think I'm going to use regularly. He liked the name Gabriel, so that's his name now. I also caught a a Houndour and a Marnemite, which may come in useful later, but Houndour dowsn't seem to want to do battling full-time and Magnemite is pretty indifferent. Magnemite's on the team for now, though.

Steve went overboard capturing Pokémon around Feugo; he caught a Nosepass, a Magmar, an Aron, a Torkoal, a Growlithe and a Skarmory. He only named the Aron (Epsilon) and Magmar (Rho), but he might end up using some of the others, too.

We took the tour of the actual Feugo Ironworks, too. It was pretty cool, actually, and they let us do some ironworking while we were there.

Tomorrow, Eterna Forest.



Turnaround: 20 June 2009 @ 09:44 pm
Location: Eterna Forest

Okay, so we got completely lost today. I'll admit that. We had plenty of shade from the trees to cover us, so we could be out and walking for longer today, but we ended up taking the wrong trail and ended up at Moss Rock instead of heading northeast toward Eterna City. By the time we got back on the right trail, we didn't make it very far through the forest before we had to stop for the day. All of the undergrowth here makes it hard to move quickly, too. We might be stuck in this forest for another couple of days...



More Woods: 21 June 2009 @ 10:06 pm
Location: Eterna Forest

Got about halfway from where we were this morning to the exit. Nobody ever tells you how hard it is to move through some of these forests and mountains and caves, anyway. Even the paths themselves are hard to walk on. On the other hand, there's plenty of good wild Pokémon to train against in here.

Which reminds me, I found a Tropius today that came out and challenged me. I beat her and caught her, and now she really wants to be trained. A Tropius will definitely come in handy down the line!

Not coming across any other trainers here, though. They must have all found alternate paths or something.



Out of the Forest: 22 June 2009 @ 09:15 pm
Location: Eterna Forest

We made it through and out of Eterna Forest, so now we're on a path that we recognize to get to home. We've seen the old, abandoned mansion out here a bunch of times already, but we're going to stop by tonight to see if we can find and catch some ghost Pokémon. After all, it's just a short day's hike from here to Eterna by our speed.

Speaking of our speed, that's kinda bothering me. We haven't been winning our battles with stray travellers by much, if at all, by using our best Pokémon against what for all we know were caught earlier that day, and the only reason why we won at Oreburgh Gym is because we had Pokémon with the type advantage, and I've been hearing that Roark is a "warm-up" gym. Maybe I'm paranoid, but I've heard that most groups take a lot longer to travel around than we do, and use more of the day for training. By comparison, we hike until the early afternoon and only spend a little over an hour total acutally training per day. We might be needing to slow down... but depending on how the battles against Gardenia go, that might not actually be as much as an issue as I'm thinking it is.



Home: 23 June 2009 @ 06:31 pm
Location: Eterna City

We made it back home today, and kinda surprised our parents that way. Apparently I was right in my assumption yesterday. We'll see how that holds up tomorrow, but I do have a bad feeling about tomorrow. For now, we're going back around the city. Three weeks may not seem like a while, but I guess I subconsciously missed this place.

Oh, yeah, and we went around to the old mansion yesterday night. I caught a Shuppet and Steve caught a Duskull. They might be useful from time to time, but for now, we both sent them to Rowan.



Defeat: 24 June 2009 @ 07:09 pm
Location: Eterna City

Yeah... we lost, big time. We didn't even make it to Gardenia.

I used my new Slugma and Tropius in a two-on-two battle against the first Gym trainer here, but even with the type advantage, she put me down HARD. Her Shroomish and Oddish didn't look like much, but they put my Pokémon completely out of commission with their sleeping powders right off the bat. They barely even got a chance to fight back, they could only sit there and get pummeled by physical attacks. I definitely need to go back and train.

Steve didn't do much better. Alpha (Chimchar) fought and lost against a Gym trainer's Lotad because of all of its water attacks. He just can't take a Water Gun head-on. Chi (Spinarak) managed to get him with her Bug Bite, but lost badly to the Exeggcute that he sent out next. Psychic-type attacks don't agree with her very well, so you can imagine how that turned out.

So, we're going to train in the surrounding area for a while, because the way we are now, we're definitely not going to be able to reach Gardenia, let alone beat her.



TRAIN TRAIN: 25 June 2009 @ 08:27 pm
Location: Eterna City

We went our east of town this morning and looked around the area for other trainers to battle. We ended up fighting a lot of people and a lot of the wild Pokémon, as well. We kept this up all day, and we only just got back. Since so many battles went on today, I'm not going to detail each one, but rather general notes:

- River is getting much stronger, but needs experience on how to swim properly, as she hasn't fought directly in water much and was put at a disadvantage by that against a Tentacool today.
- Geodude is physically improving a lot, but hasn't learned many specialized moves, mainly just physical tackles and the like.
- Slugma is very slow and tends to take quite a few hits while getting his own attacks in. Since neither Slugma or Magcargo are naturally able to outspeed anything, defenses needs to be an area of concern.
- Tropius is generally inexperienced, and just needs a lot of straight-up training.
- Hoothoot isn't showing much of a drive for battling. I asked him about it, and he's thinking that he might want to go off on his own. I'll talk to him again tomorrow....

And, in general, they just need to hone their skills some more.

As for Steve, Alpha (Chimchar) is still a powerhouse and Gamma (NidoranM) is on his way, but Steve himself needs to learn how to deal with technical maneuvers (as do I). Chi (Spinarak) is physically frail, so Steve and her are working to get around that. Rho (Magmar) is apparently not listening to him at the moment, so he's going to try and work things out with him over time. Epsilon (Aron) doesn't have a lot of skill yet, so he just needs training.


Hopefully we'll make some good progress tomorrow, too.



Again with the Training: 26 June 2009 @ 07:52 pm
Location: Eterna City

Fight-o!

Everybody's improving fairly nicely, both in general and in the areas that they need improving on.

Hoothoot got let out inside the house for the talk on whether or not he wanted training, and before I could even talk to him, Mom got all over him. She took to him really fast, and he doesn't exactly mind her, either, so... I'm going to be letting him stay here, just like Jessica did with her Shuckle for a while. Problem solved.


Steve and I had a three-on-three practice battle today with the Pokémon that we're using against Gardenia. He started out with Gamma (Nidoran) against my Slugma. It was a pretty even match, but Slugma got a headstart by loosing a few ranged Ember attacks while Gamma was still charging. Once the distance was closed, Gamma followed up with a volley of strong Double Kicks, and since he moves much faster than Slugma, he was attacking much more frequently. I think that Gamma got a nasty burn, though, because his attacks were visibly strained and he seemed to get hurt more easily. Slugma ended up pulling out of that one, but he was really beat, so I recalled him and sent out Tropius. Steve sent out Alpha (Chimchar) next, and he was beating up on Tropius quite a bit with Ember, though Tropius sure was trying. His Gust attacks knocked Alpha back and away a couple of times, but Alpha kept on coming. And then, in the middle of the battle, Alpha evolved! Luckily for me, that meant that he gained a weakness to flying attacks that put Tropius at an advantage, but the evolution will no doubt help him in the future. With some more wind power, Tropius toppled Alpha, though he had taken a hit or two himself. Finally, he called in Rho (Magmar), who took down Tropius no problem with a strong Fire Spin. But when I sent out River (my only other option for a third Pokémon against Gardenia is Geodude, and that's out of the question), Rho just puffed up smoke and walked away. Steve still need to teach him obedience, apparently.

Steve says that he's going to focus on Rho tomorrow and see if he can't get him to play a team role. I myself am going to be training a lot harder specifically with Slugma, Tropius and maybe River to prepare them for Eterna Gym. I think we're going to make another attempt on Sunday. Let's see how that goes....



Again Train: 27 June 2009 @ 09:59 pm
Location: Eterna City

Nothing really to mention for today, it was just a lot of continued general training (strength, dexterity, quick thinking, etc.), but concentrated on the Pokémon that we're using tomorrow.

Rho is, of course, still ignoring Steve as much as possible. Understandable, since Magmar are strong Pokémon, we only have Coalbadges to show for our skill, and fire-type Pokémon in general tend to disobey trainers of low skill. Steve's pride isn't taking it well right now, but he's revised his attack team to be Gamma (Nidoran), Alpha (Monferno) and Chi (Spinarak). I hope it works for him...



Oh, Yeah!: 28 June 2009 @ 09:12 pm
Location: Eterna City

Woo! We both won our challenges!

So, I took Slugma and Tropius up in a double battle against the same opening pair as before today. When they started out with their "powder" moves, I thought quick enough to have Tropius use Gust and send them right back! Admittedly, they resisted their own powders, but it still gave me a good shot at them, enough to hit them with a strong volley of Ember and Gust, which they didn't recover from enough to put up much of a fight after that. After that was a one-on-one trainer who sent out a Paras first (which Slugma had beaten literally with one fire attack, it was ridiculous), followed by a Sunflora, which set up a nice strategy with Sunny Day followed by Solarbeam. It worked, too, and Slugma took a heavy hit, but his training paid off. He bore the attack and hit the Sunflora with a powered-up Ember, burning it and winning the match right there.

Finally, I fought Gardenia. She used a Turtwig first, and I started off with Tropius. I had Tropius blow it away with some Gust attacks, but it hardened its defenses first and managed to get in a couple of good tackles before going down. Unfortunately, it didn't stand much of a chance to begin with. Next was a Cherrim, who used Sunny Day to boost itself, but Tropius' Clorophyll gave ner a speed boost to match. Again, I had Tropius use a volley of Gust attacks, but her wings started to tire out, so she had to slow down near the end. Gardenia's Cherrim didn't seem to have any effective moves from the start, but then surprised me when Tropius started letting up by throwing out a Leech Seed. The battle was starting to get drawn-out from there, and the Leech Seed was really hurting her, so I eventually had to call Tropius back in favor of Slugma. Sunny Day was still active, so his fire-based Ember took it down in a flash. Gardenia's last Pokémon was a Roserade, and I'll say that it moved quick. It hit with a strong Poison Sting right off the bat, which I saw made Slugma nauseous. Slugma countered with Ember and gave it a nasty burn, and continued to drive Roserade back with it, but he nearly collapsed before he could finish Roserade off, and I had to call him back. My last thought was River, so I sent her out. She was smart enough to be very evasive from the start, but still took a hit from a Magical Leaf attack before getting close enough to hit with Peck. That was all it took, though; after that, Roserade gave in and I had won.

River was dancing around after the victory, too. Then... she evolved. She turned into a Prinplup! I was so happy for her. She has noticeably more self-confidence already; she was standing tall today and gave me a full high-five. It's kind of wierd, though, that those aren't things that River would have done as a Piplup. So I guess what they say about evolution having an effect on a Pokémon's personality is true.

Steve went in twenty minutes after me, so I didn't get to see his matches, but from what I hear, he won handily even without using Rho (Magmar). I did see that Gamma evolved into a Nidorino, though. Good for him, we've had a good couple of evolutions recently. Steve showed his badge to Rho, but he still wasn't impressed. Guess this'll be going on for a while....


Our folks want us to stick around for one more day, but after that, we have to get going, and at a slower pace this time. I don't want to show up at a gym undertrained again...



Slow Day: 29 June 2009 @ 09:09 pm
Location: Eterna City

Nothing much to do today. Steve got dragged into catching up and other varied family activities, or so I hear.

I personally took a day off and let my Pokémon out around the house, except Slugma, for obvious reasons, who I took out to play on a blacktop near what's left of my old elementary school. Old thing got torn down years ago... and Tropius wouldn't fit in the house, so she got to hang out in the back yard. But Geodude and River got out in the house, so that's something. River was still acting like a typical eight-year-old "cool kid," but Geodude was very polite for a Geodude that was wild only a few weeks ago. Hoothoot's already helping Mom out with cooking and the garden and all of that, which it's nice for her to have, I suppose, since Jessica took her Shuckle back when she moved out... we'll have to pay her a visit when we reach Veilstone.



Back on the Trail: 30 June 2009 @ 10:34 pm
Location: Route 206

So, we only went about four and a half miles today, compared to the usual seven that we averaged before Eterna, and spent the rest of the day seriously training. We're forcing ourselves to slow down to avoid repeating our floundering at Eterna Gym. Only time will tell if this will pay off.

Wayward Cave is on this route, so we're going to check it out when we get there.



Eh: 01 July 2009 @ 10:06 pm
Location: Route 206

Another pretty average day today. Little bit of morning hiking, training through the afternoon, and chilling out in camp after dusk. We'll be square close enough to an entrance of Wayward Cave tomorrow (the northernmost entrance caved in a while back, I think), so we'll have to check that out.



_________________​



Remember, I thrive on comments and helpful criticisms, so feel free to fire away as long as it's civilized.
 
The only thing that irritated me a bit was the fact that you were catching pokemon all the time. It's like you have aimed for 'gotta catch 'em all' theme! That's also fine, but do explain how the capture went.

This is still one of the most enjoyable reading for me in this section! Cheers!
 
I want to begin with a quick experiment: I want you to imagine that you are in this character's universe and you have stumbled upon his blog. Would you read it? Would it be interesting beyond simply offering someone else's experience of a Pokemon journey? Why do we as a society read blogs? What is important about what they do for the spread of information digitally?

Heady stuff. I'm sorry. :)

I just wanted to point out my main problem with this piece-- yes, putting your character's story in this format is a brave and unique method of delivery. I'm actually very happy to see people try out new formats in a forum full of the same stagnant formulas. The problem seems to be a misunderstanding of the format of the "weblog," as you guys like to call it (I guess I prefer the shortened term because it seems to have been widely accepted... but okay xD). I would like to believe that the blog has come to be known as a vehicle for discussion, for the proliferation of information, for the analysis of not only events but emotions... not just as a vessel to deliver your journey fic.

Looking past the blog trappings, you're telling a simple story that has been seen here before. Your character travels, trains, captures, and nicknames. He rarely seems to feel any emotion or interact much with his friend-- surely the story's progress would take a hit if that was discussed, right? You can easily explain this away by pointing at your choice of format, but do most blogs today consist of a rote description of the day's antics? Or do they question them, analyze them, or offer them up as topics for discussion?

I commend you for doing something new. Really, I don't want to come off as a negative Nelly completely. :) It's a wonder to see anyone here trying something new. I just wanted to warn you that beyond your choice of format, there is not much of a compelling story. In fact, if this was told in a traditional prose style I would have no interest in your character or his journey. I suppose that if the format is your Trojan horse to get people like me to read your stuff, then mission accomplished! xD

Good job being unique. But reconsider your story: How does one get the content to match the execution? Stories rely on emotional attachment to truly grip the reader. I'd love to see you bring the story beyond the realm of journey fic and into the same world your format is. Just like the blog, the fanfic has evolved, too :)

~quack
 
Alright, here I am for an actual review.

I enjoyed the lastest..."chapter"/update or whatever you want to call it, but I think the above poster seems to be on the right track. You need to find some way to invoke emotions and an actual plot into the updates. I would also suggest you go into more detail, some update are painfully short. (I get that its a blog, but its also a fanfiction. You need to work on making it a hybrid of sorts.)

So I would work on details and maybe another plot to go along with the journey fic one, like some action or excitement. Maybe about Galactic, or something completely new, the choice is yours. I saw you get a bit better at description but you still need to work on that too. You need to show me the Pokemon, the surroundings, and such, not just tell me about them, catch my drift?

I too was put off by the captures. Well, not really, it just seemed like they captured every day or so. If you want to do that, fine, but can you please make character bios detailing what Pokemon they each have? And maybe get a chapter list going? You should work on the outlook of your first post, make it more organized and such. Readers will take note.

Well thats it. Lots of intresting progression, and I am loving the blog idea. Just work on what we said, and this could become quite the popular fic...
 
I snuck in a mention of the capture complaints. I had noticed this, too, around the end of their Eterna Forest visit. So I wrote it in that they themselves realized that their captures weren't doing much for them, so they decided to quit throwing Pokéballs at every other thing they saw. It's a bit of a patch job, but there's not much else I can do from my current position besides editing the actual posts, which I would prefer not to do on principle.

I've also seen the point in that there hasn't been a lot of character interaction up to this point, so I've started steering toward more of that. Of course, I've now written myself into a place where I have to juggle six characters, but I'm having the two main groups of them split off from one another again soon, anyway. I don't like making excuses, but it is kind of hard to get specific without it sounding awkward. I'll try and do what I can, though.

Also, there was going to be Galactic involvement at some point, and it has struck. But the intention was not to introduce them until a bit of the way in (which is why they hadn't been written in yet), and Jim and company won't be too directly involved with them, anyway. There's another direction completely in which I would like to take this bit of fiction, but you won't see it for another several months. For this I apologize, but in this medium, I can only move so fast.

Speaking of plot, the way in which I'm writing this provides a huge obstruction in possible plot directions. By nature, the characters can't personally be privy to anything of plot significance that can't be revealed to the general public, since if they were, Jim wouldn't be able to post it online, and thus the readers would have no way of being informed. This throws out several potential plot "threads" on its own. This is why this is, again, a bit of an experiment.

Unfortunately, Manaphyman, I don't know that there is a good way to organize something like this. I've added links to the individual posts containing the three-week collections "Chapters," and there's multiple ways to navigate the archive on the main site, but there's not much more that can be done, I'm afraid.

Anyway, I'm a bit behind, so feel free to have a double-dose of chapterage today. But, as always, I recommend that you be watching the actual journal rather than waiting on me to update here.




Weeks 10-12



Worst Tourist Attraction EVER: 05 July 2009 @ 10:22 pm
Location: Route 206

So, we had a black spot for a while. We got more than a little lost in Wayward Cave, and believe it or not, we were wandering in there for a couple of days. I swear, everything looks exactly the same; you have no sense of direction in there. And, worse yet, there's no way to get contact with the outside, though phones or anything. No way to get maps or directions out. It wasn't until yesterday when we found a pair of Bronzor that knew the general way back to the open. Even then, they weren't precisely sure, either, and it was hard to move around in the cave, so we couldn't get around very fast. We just kind of collapsed when we got out of Wayward Cave about noon, and I only just remembered to let people know that we're alive about half an hour ago.



Hmm: 06 July 2009 @ 10:05 pm
Location: Route 206

Another day, another couple of miles and some more training down. It's good to be out in the open again, I think the Pokémon are enjoying it a lot, too.

We talked with Shelby again, but over the phone this time. She's at the Valley Windworks now; she, Rachel and Amy got their first badges all right and have been keeping up with their training a lot better than we had, it sounds like. Maybe we'll see them again when we have to start running back and forth across Sinnoh for our last three badges. I still don't get why the League arranges it so that the last three badges in order of difficulty are at three different corners of the region and make you cross the entire landscape over again to reach them. But we'll deal with that when the time comes.

For now, on to Hearthome!



Onward: 07 July 2009 @ 09:30 pm
Location: Route 206

Another day traveling south.

We came across a pair of trainers heading in the other direction by the names of Charles and Collin. They took us up in a two-on-two battle, and we gratefully accepted. I used Geodude and Steve used Epsilon (Aron). We... didn't collaborate beforehand. Luckily, Charles had a Kricketune and Collin was using a Kirlia, so we were actually at a bit of an advantage (everyone sent their Pokémon out at the same time, so it was pretty much a blind pot). Geodude and Epsilon focused their Rock Throw and Metal Claw attacks on Kricketune first, which crippled it early on and knocked it out. But we didn't keep a close enough eye on the Kirlia; it came up behind Geodude and hit it with a powerful Psychic attack (I don't know which, I think Collin was communicating with it mentally) and almost put it down right there. Geodude tried to swing around and hit it with a Headbutt, but Kirlia kinda just threw it to the side with its Psychic power and left it there. Epsilon resisted Psychic moves enough to get in close, but Kirlia used Double Team before he could get a hit in. From there, it just kept multiplying with Double Team again and again. Kirlia was picking Aron off little by little with Psychic moves, but Epsilon managed to hit the real Kirlia just when it looked like it was finished.

Again, a close match. We need to train better, especially since I was out of about half of the battle.



...: 08 July 2009 @ 09:26 pm
Location: Route 206

Just another day, really. We're getting close to the point where Route 206 hits Oreburgh and turns east, but we're definitely not stopping in Oreburgh again. Not much to do there and it's a ridiculous climb back up to where we need to be going.

Almost caught a Golbat just a while ago, but it got away. It's screeching left me with a nasty headache. Annoying critters...



Eastward: 09 July 2009 @ 09:18 pm
Location: Route 206

We're camped only a few miles north of the turn to go east. We made it down here pretty fast ignoring the Wayward Cave issue, but all of that was traveling downhill. From here we're going on flat land, so we're going to slow down quite a bit. Mt. Coronet will take some time to get through, too. It'll take us a while to reach Hearthome.



Going...: 11 July 2009 @ 10:04 pm
Location: Route 207

Still traveling east. The usual training is going along just fine, everyone's steadily getting better. The Pokémon are enjoying themselves when we let them out of their Pokéballs so much that we're letting them travel with us all the time. Unfortunately, this means that we've suddenly became a walking mob, but whatever. It works.

River is still isn't acting anything like she did as a Piplup. I think I remember something about personality changes being a part of evolution, but I thought that they were fairly minor...



New Party Member: 12 July 2009 @ 09:32 pm
Location: Route 207

Still a few days out from even reaching Mt. Coronet. There was a heavy rain this morning, so that slowed us down some and we're a bit behind that, even. Oh, well. More training time to get in.

We met another trainer heading the same way as us during training this afternoon by the name of Jenna Corey. Since we're all heading toward Hearthome, anyway, she's joining us at least until we get there, maybe longer.. She's nice enough, but a bit hot-tempered. She and Steve are already clashing, but in a friendly way. I mean constant competition, even over dinner (they had an impromptu contest to see who could sustain a belch the longest, of all things... (Jenna won easily)). Steve wanted a battle with her, too, but she wants to wait until tomorrow for some reason. Huh. We'll see how that turns out tomorrow.



Jenna: 13 July 2009 @ 10:27 pm
Location: Route 207

Fairly average process today. Jenna had a battle with Steve. She sent out an Arbok that she called "Jaffar" against Steve's Epsilon (Aron). At first, I thought that she was pretty much done from the start, since Epsilon is immune to poison. She had him use Glare right off the start to paralyze Epsilon, though, and it just went downhill from there. After just one Fire Fang, Aron was obviously hurting and just about crushed. Jaffar has really powerful jaws, apparently. Epsilon tried to retaliate with Iron Defense and a Metal Claw, but Jaffar kept the pressure on and easily outlasted him. Jenna and Jaffar look ruthlessly strong...

Jenna claims that Jaffar came from her yard, when her mom caught him rooting through a garden, but she took him in and trained him, and used him in place of a starter. In any case, Jaffar is crazy-strong. Jenna's pretty cool, herself, though. She's way into action-adventure movies and comics, as well as a lot of sci-fi stuff, so that gives us plenty of common ground.



Camped: 16 July 2009 @ 10:34 pm
Location: Route 207

We're camped in front of Mt. Coronet. It'll take a couple of days to actually get through to the other side, so we'll be on a forced blackout for a while.

Training is coming along nicely, as always. Slugma's been improving a lot, particularly. Oddly enough, I haven't seen any of Jenna's Pokémon besides Jaffar. Oh, and remind me not to annoy her, particularly before she has her morning coffee. That girl will bite your head off...



Space: 21 July 2009 @ 08:25 pm
Location: Route 209

Jeez.

okay, as a reference to anybody out there: you do not want to be cooped up in a cave with two people for most of a week. if this were a sitcom, it would inevitably cause funny situations. In real life, it's just awkward and leads to mass annoyance. Steve was getting really impatient after about a day and a half, so we let him take the lead. He set a ridiculous pace that Jenna was able to keep up with, but I was struggling. Remember that most caves intended for trainer use aren't of a consistent width; they get to be ten feet wide and eight feet tall in some places, while other spots give you about the same movement range that a broom cupboard does. Doesn't help that Mt. Coronet has a lot of switchbacks and branched paths in it, making the map ridiculously hard to follow, especially only by the fire-light Alpha (Monferno) could give us. Jenna got really frustrated with the navigation, Steve couldn't stand the speed we were going at, and between them I couldn't do anything to calm them down, never mind the fact that neither of these facts could be avoided.

About Sunday, this reached a fever pitch and Steve blew up in my face when I was trying to get him to chill out about it. Jenna yelled something to him about calming down (using a few choice words) and, long story short, they ended up battling in a grudge match. Jaffar against Gamma (Nidorino), and neither of them were yelling anything beyond "get him!" strategy-wise. I... just sat this one out. Best not to get in the way, you know? Eventually they came to their senses about it and stopped the fight, but they were both cranky for the rest of the day.

Everyone's feeling much better since we got out in the opening this morning, though, and we're just camped outside the mountain cave entrance. Not a lot of training went on in there, but we can make up for that later. For now, it feels amazing to just relax in an open area where we can see the sky; you non-trainers probably have no idea.

Now for a game of cards. Here's to hoping that Geodude doesn't try to cheat again.



Peaceful: 22 July 2009 @ 08:20 pm
Location: Route 209

Ha, I was right. A bit of fresh air is just what everyone needed.

We encountered a lot of Pokémon on our way down the mountain toward Hearthome today, and even went fishing in the river under one of the waterfalls. We didn't really catch anything for battling, though. We kinda had a discussion this morning and realized that we couldn't remember what all we had caught. Looking back, I think that we've been catching more than we need. Sure, they help the Professors' studies, but they have enough, already, and I think that we ought to leave Pokémon that we're not really going to battle with in the wild, let them live where they are. Interestingly, we also learned from this conversation that Jenna doesn't really have any trained Pokémon other than Jaffar. We tried to explain that this will set her back later on, but she isn't really concerned with it; she claims that she's only going with us to Pastoria, anyway, though she says she'll get a Badge from Hearthome Gym while we're in the area.

Anyway, Steve remembered reading somewhere that meditating under a waterfall helps train their endurance and focus, among other things, so we had them do that for a while. It worked on most of them, but Geodude, Slugma, Alpha (Monferno) and Epsilon (Aron) all couldn't really take it and had to opt out. They all went lifting and throwing boulers around, instead. While they were out, I saw Geodude accidentally hit Slugma with a boulder. It was, of course, an accident, but Geodude called Slugma out on being a crybaby because of it. I had to call River over and get them both to chill out with a quick spash of water.

Pokémon can be so hard to manage sometimes... In the end, I think it'll be worth it, though. At least I hope so.



HOT: 23 July 2009 @ 10:11 pm
Location: Route 209

Gah. Web says that the temp. here today was 37C (98F for those of you in Hoenn), but it definitely felt more like 43. Ugh. Must be because we spent most of last week stuck in a cave and yesterday was shady. I'm afraid that River got a bit overworked on cooling us down with her water, but I figure that it makes good training, and she didn't seem to mind. Real trooper, that one. I kinda miss her cute, naiive Piplup personality. Eh, it couldn't last, anyway. Oddly enough, Steve's Pokémon didn't really change personality when they evolved...

On a similar note, I think that Geodude is close to evolving. He's getting tired more easily lately, which is supposed to be a sign that they're storing more energy and evolution is coming up. I'm sure it'll come when he's ready, anyway.

Back on the weather subject, though, we had a nice excuse to go play in the river running down the side of the mountain, us and all of the Pokémon that can stand water. It felt really refreshing... then Steve started seeing how far he could get away with spashing water all over everyone. He got about around to Tropius, then she blew him backwards with a Gust most of the way back to shore and he hit his head on a rock. Musta hurt, but he was laughing about it, and it was pretty slapstick-funny. Eventually he got back up and started throwing water in faces. Naturally, he and Jenna turned it into a competition again... eventually, other Pokémon got caught in it, the thing snowballed... and long story short, we had a small-scale water war going on about two-thirds of the way down Mt. Coronet. I know that it's not as exciting or dangerous as a battle, but I think that everybody needed it almost more than training; it was straight-up fun.

Oh, and Jenna looks really nice in a swimsuit. (What? I'm a guy, I noticed.)
 
[DOUBLE POSTED DUE TO LENGTH]





Weeks 13-15



Foot of the Mt.?: 24 July 2009 @ 09:34 pm
Location: Route 209

Why do they call it the foot of the mountain, anyway? I get that it's at the bottom, but it doesn't really resemble feet at all, more like the hem of a skirt. That's just splitting hairs, though.

Anyway, I got my chance for a battle against Jenna today. Geodude seemed raring for battle when we were walking this morning, so I let him out for a shot at Jaffar (Arbok). Jaffar started with Glare, but Geodude avoided it by going into a Rollout before it could connect properly. He hit a couple of times and was starting to do quite a bit of damage, but then Jaffar spat a Mud Bomb at Geodude, which threw his roll off and he ended up crashing into a tree. He got up just in time to jump over Jaffar's follow-up Ice Fang, meaning that Jaffar ended up hitting the tree headfirst, too. Geodude caught him with a weak Magnitude, but Jaffar kept coming with the Ice Fangs, which Geodude barely dodged until he got bitten on the arm. His arm was almost immediately frosted over, disabling it, and we thought that he was done. Then a boulder came down the mountain and rolled over Jaffar's tail (body?). I think that Geodude must have loosened it with his Magnitude earlier. Either way, Geodude used this lapse to swing his iced-over arm at Jaffar's face, which must have stuck pretty hard. Jaffar wasn't nearly done, though, and came right around with a Crunch that got Geodude entirely caught in Jaffar's mouth. But before he could do enough damage to faint him, Geodude EVOLVED. Right there, in Jaffar's mouth. Of course, Jaffar was forced to spit him out, and Geodude turned into a Graveller. Then, while he was still flexing and showing off his new form... Jaffar hit him full in the face with a Mud Bomb, and he fainted. Guess Graveller's still got the "I am the man" attitude, but a lot more of it now.

Steve found a good hiker to battle against today, too. Name of Curtis, I think. Big guy, bald, short grey beard. I missed some of it because I had to tend to Slugma when he came back from the forest's edge with a bunch of Combee stings, but for the most part it was a pretty unfair fight, Gamma (Nidorino) against a Wingull. Curtis had Wingull fly clear out of Gamma's reach and rain him with Water Guns. He tried hitting back with Poison Sting, but Nidorino is much better at close-range, physical combat than distanced fights, so Wingull was hitting harder and more often. It really was pretty boring to watch, because it was basically Wingull taking pot-shots at Gamma, who was trying to hit Wingull with Poison Stings (the only real ranged attack it knows, I think) and missing most of the time. Steve eventually gave up and sulked around the camp for another hour before he made himself a cup of tea and went back to talking with Jenna and me. I think that he's going to start training his Pokémon to be able to fight from a distance now. I think that I should do the same, though I don't thiink that any of my Pokémon have a real problem with that, except maybe Graveller. I really ought to remember Curtis' strategy in that battle, too. It may come in handy for Tropius or another flyer sometime.



Right-o.: 25 July 2009 @ 10:34 pm
Location: Route 209

More walking and training today... nothing quite as exciting as in the past few days.

I will say, though, that Steve claims to have fought a particular Taillow with "glowy red eyes" and really strong attacks that he couldn't catch. Heh, a more likely story is that he just ran up against a Ninjask or something that beat Alpha (Monferno) up really bad and he wasted about seven Pokéballs on and he just won't admit it. Then again, maybe he's right. People have been known to exploit Pokémon and technology in sadistic ways before with similar results, like when the Cipher uprising in Orre happened about twelve years ago. We'll stay on our guard, just in case, but I still hope that it was just a Ninjask.



Free Ride: 27 July 2009 @ 08:04 pm
Location: Hearthome City

Woo! So we got near city limits today, and a berry farmer decided to let us ride in the back of her truck all the way to the Pokémon Center. It was only a couple of kilometers, so we weren't missing out on a ton of training or anything there. Well, that and before I could think much on a decision myself, Jenna and Steve had already thanked her and were sitting in the truck bed. Turns out that she was going there, anyway, and she likes giving trainers rides into the city whenever she has to go. Calls herself Lisa Morgan. Says she was a trainer in the past, and knows how the trail gets really dull after you've walked on it for about five days. What she's saying is true (Mt. Coronet kinda bored that into my head), but most of the time I find the scenery nice enough. Steve gets real impatient, though, and jenna seems to tend that way, too. Looks like I'm the level-headed guy in the group... Then again, being a trainer does require a certain level of hot-bloodedness. I just don't have it to the degree that they do.

Anyway, it was really nice to ride into town for a change. Driving by the country is really relaxing, actually. We got into the city early and went strolling. Our Pokémon really enjoyed Amity Park. Aparently they had a rule up until a few years ago that only certain Pokémon could be let in, but they dropped that due to complaints. They had stuff for everyone, too. Slugma and Golem had fun playing around in the big stone houses they have up there, Tropius found some really nice perches and various trees to sniff around, River was playing in the fountain and the lake, Alpha (Monferno) and Jaffar found a jungle gym to swing around on... we all got to relax and play a while. Nice break from all that boring repetition that is training. After all, they don't have fun like this breaking rocks or swimming upstream all day.

We saw a contest in the afternoon, too. I don't remember who all the human entrants were, but I remember that there was a Slowking, a Flaafy, an Azumarill and a Butterfree. It was kinda funny to watch them all try to dance, especially since that's definitely not what any of those have the proper body form to do. There were some really tasteful dress-up rounds, though. For example, a Slowking in a blue-and-gold vest with a traditional turban. I just really liked that motif. Then there was Azumarill, wearing a human swimsuit for the laughs. The trainer even played the whole thing seriously, which made it that much more hillarious. That image will stay in my mind all week. For the actual appeal round, Slowking made some really impressive water-sculptures with its Psychic ability. The Butterfree used a sparkly and sweet-smelling sensory appeal (very nice, Jenna was particularly enthralled) and the Flaafy put on a sort of light show that was cool at first, but ended up really hurting my eyes. The Azumarill combined a Rollout and various water attacks for some nice acrobatics. My personal favorite was the Slowking, but in the end, the Azumarill won by a smidge. Oh, well.

Fantina's not going to be at the Gym tomorrow or Wednesday, oddly enough, and we just missed hitting the Gym before it closed for the night. She's actually preparing her piece for the "Grand Summer Festival" that they put on every year. Steve's come down to see it before and highly recommends it, though I've never been there, and I don't know that Jenna has, either. Actually, I think that's why there were a lot of the It's starting on Thursday, so we're going to hang around until then. I don't know about staying around a whole week for it to get over so that we can have a Gym battle, but we'll pass back through here, eventually, anwyay, so we've decided to stick around for a day or two of the Festival and then head off toward Veilstone.



Downtown: 28 July 2009 @ 10:43 pm
Location: Hearthome City

...yeah, we didn't end up doing much today. We hit a lot of town yesterday, so there's not much left that we're particularly interested in. We spent some of the afternoon in the park, but we did most of the tourist-y things already. There's a massive cathedral on the west side of town that I went out to see, just because I'm really impressed by the architecture and design of the building, but otherwise we idled around town and challenged a few gym trainers just for the experience, though we can't get a badge out of it yet.

Jenna and Steve had a double battle against a pair of trainers, and I squared off against another one at the same time. Big guy, looked like a bodybuilder, had light blue hair long enough to pull back into a 'tail. I had Slugma fight his Misdreavus. He started out by using a Confuse Ray to mess with Slugma's head, then Screeching a few times to put its defenses under. Slugma pulled through with some good Embers that seriously disrupted Misdreavus, but with perpetual confusion and lowered defenses, he just couldn't take a repeated beating through all of the Shadow Balls and Psybeams that it was taking, and Slugma had to get called back. I sent Tropius out next, and a Razor Leaf backed up by a Gust attack (one of my better attack combinations) put it down quick, especially since the Misdreavus was already weakened quite a bit. He sent a Ghastly out against her next and started with a Hypnosis before i could even give an order. luckily, Tropius resisted it the first time around and we got in a Growth. She almost hit the cieling using it before Ghastly finally put her to sleep.Tropius took a Night Shade or two before she was startled back up, but when she was back up, she whipped up a nasty Gust to put Ghastly in its place. He pulled a trick, though - Destiny Bond. As soon as Ghastly was K.O.'d, Tropius kinda just lost energy and collapsed. So it was technically a draw, but I'll count it as a win, anyway. I'll have to remember to take those Ghosts down before they can pull of Destiny Bonds when I come back here for my Badge...



Chillin': 29 July 2009 @ 10:08 pm
Location: Hearthome City

Again, nothing much to write about. We did more training against wild Pokémon and some against trainers around town today and then went to the park again, but nothing interesting enough to write about here really happened.

The Grand Summer Festival opens tomorrow, though. Hope it's worth waiting around for. It looks like it, at least: there are tons of carnival rides already set up, and I can see more than one circus-sized tent as well an arena for show battles. There's probably tons of stuff you can't see from far off, too. We'll just have to wait a bit longer...



FESTIVAL!: 30 July 2009 @ 10:45 pm
Location: Hearthome City

WOW. Steve was right, this was worth sticking around for.

First of all, let me note below that anything (besides the vendors, obviously, and a couple of carnival-style games) was pretty much free. You buy a wristband at the entrance for about 500 yen, and you're in all day. Free admittance to the Ferris wheel, stadium, thrill rides and exhibitions. That's pretty cool in my book.

Anyway, there were a lot of exhibitions running here and there, running contests for whoever could bring in the most abnormally-sized Pokémon. So far I remember seeing an Azumarill that almost came up to my shoulders and a Chatot almost the size of a Pidgeotto, among others. There were other contests for well-groomed Pokémon and such, but those were slightly less impressive than the obnoxious-sized ones. Someone had a really nice-looking Ursaring, though, I'll give them that.

There were a bunch of amusement park type rides, too, like an interesting physics-based one that used centifugal force to keep the occupants stuck against a wall while the floor dropped out beneath us. Crazy, and it didn't even work on Pokémon power. The big thing, though, was the Ferris wheel. I swear, you can see almost to Solaceon from up there. I'm pretty sure that I saw the Lost Tower, at least. When Steve and Jenna got off, though (they were in the same cart on the way up), they were giggling uncontrollably and wouldn't tell me what was up. It was a bit uncomfortable, to be honest, as knowing Steve as well as I do leads to some awkward assumptions.

After that, we stuck around the vendor area for a while. There were some neat local crafts and a full-on farmer's market (some guy with an Aipom wouldn't leave me alone about "natural remedies"), and the usual booths with cotton candy and fried dumplings and all of that, but nothing outside of the ordinary. Jenna tried to talk us into getting her a wooden Tyranitar figure, but we proudly resisted. Then she put on a sad face and Steve buckled. *sigh...*

Hearthome knows how to set on an excellent fireworks display, too: it was probably one of the best I've ever seen. Lasted almost half an hour, and it was dazzling throughout almost the whole thing, and never dropped below great.


The events honoring traditions are tomorrow, so we'll see that, but we're going to have to leave come Saturday. Spent enough time here as it is.



Culture Day: 31 July 2009 @ 11:16 pm
Location: Hearthome City

Here's a rundown for anybody who's never been to one of these things:


Three parades happen throughout the day: one in the morning, one in the early afternoon, and one starting at dusk. The one in the morning is more like regular commercial parades, with floats and giant balloons and mass advertising, nothing that hasn't been seen before, honestly. The one in the afternoon involves a lot of performers; there were some good marching bands and singing/dancing performances, as well as jugglers, appeals like in Pokémon contests (I'm sure that I saw the Slowking from earlier this week) and a whole bunch of other moving shows. The one in the evening was comprised mostly of the Pokémon themselves, and apparently anybody could join, so we let ours in on the parade. The few people out in that one were in traditional Pokémon costumes including a giant Gyarados puppet that required a dozen people to run.

We also saw a show battle in the stadium in the afternoon. I think that the competitors were Greta of the Hoenn Battle Frontier and some Gym Leader from an island region that I wasn't familiar with. Greta was using and Umbreon against the foreign Gym Leader's Metang. I thought that it would be a quick battle, but every Shadow Ball that Umbreon threw was shot down by an equal Psywave from the Metang. Umbreon kept coming with Faint Attacks, but more often than not the Metang would just turn around and Meteor Mash it straight into the ground. Umbreon was a tough one, though, and it came back with Agility and Confuse Ray. Metang's focus was so tight that it was hardly affected, though, and it shot a Hyper Beam through to Umbreon to nearly cinch the match... but Umbreon's Focus Band kept it in the battle long enough to put Metang out for the count. Both were terribly powerful... Umbreon was going blow-for-blow with the Metang, and I could see the barrier that the Mr. Mime had set between the audience and the battle was strained. Seriously, this just goes to show how much further we have to go in training to be on a level with the League par.

There was a lot of focus on the Pokémon shrine out just to the east of town (not many people even notice it), including storytelling by the shrine maidens who were all in old-style garb. It was pretty intersting, actually. They have a tradition on this day of pinning wishes written on slips of paper to long wooden poles arranged outside the shrine. Supposedly, Jirachi visits the area when it wakes and grants the wishes that have been posted. I personally don't believe in any of this (I'll just say that I believe in a more humanlike God and leave it there), but I did it anyway, since I was there. Jenna was taking it dead serious, though. Must be part of her religion...

Again, the fireworks were amazing, though I think the first night might have been a little better.



Under Attack: 01 August 2009 @ 08:27 pm
Location: Hearthome City

Ugh... what a day.

For those of you that haven't seen it on the news yet for some reason or another, the festival was attacked this morning. We didn't find out until we were at the edge of town and some guy that looked like he just came from a sci-fi convention attacked us out of nowhere. He practically ran us over with a Donphan that had glowing red eyes and was a total brute. Steve said that it looked just like the Taillow he claimed about last week. Apparently he was telling the truth... Anyway, Steve stepped up and asked what was going on, but the guy would only attack us, so he sent out Alpha (Monferno) to stop him. Alpha tried to hold a Rollout attack back by grabbing it and forcing it to a stop, but it just got run over instead, and subsequently was stomped flat. before Steve could recall him, some crazy-fast Primeape came in and attached a black device that looked kind of like a bug to the back of Alpha's neck, and it latched on and stuck something in Alpha's neck. Steve couldn't recall it then, and Alpha started to attack us! Steve had no control. I tried using Slugma to fight back, since I can't imagine whatever those devices were affecting a Pokémon without a proper neck or nervous system, but Alpha just knocked it out using some punches that I'd never seen from it. Those devices must have made it stronger or something, because it knocked Slugma out in one blow! Like I thought, when the Primeape did its hit-and-run with the device, it (luckily) didn't do anything to Slugma and I was able to call it back. Steve and I collaborated and tried using Graveller and Epsilon (Aron) at once, but while they were holding Alpha off, they got stuck with the same devices. They dug their way into Epsilon and Graveller's bodies and eventually took them over, too...

From there, we just had to run for it. Graveller and Aron were the only ones left that might have resisted the device, and since we didn't think that they were going to do much better against Alpha, our only option left was escape... it was horrible. When we passed by the festival grounds on our way back to the city, we saw that the same thing was happening there, but en masse. Trainers left and right losing their Pokémon, with few exceptions. It was crazy, they had the whole place surrounded... there was nothing to be done. Even with that many trainers at the festival, there were almost as many of the goons in the sci-fi uniforms, and it looked like they were gaining numbers, fast. We were in no position to help, either...

Then we saw a flash near the back of the park. We learned later this afternoon that that was Lucian of the Elite Four, using his Alakazam to teleport himself and the rest of the Elite Four of Sinnoh into the park after getting a distress signal. Apparently they fought their way through the park, even overpowering whoever it was attacking the festival. Between the four of them, they must have even overpowered all of those controlled and powered-up Pokémon. I wish I could have seen it; their Pokémon must be at almost the peak of training. No wonder they're called the Elite...

Anyway, while that was going on, we managed to get to the police. They were kinda bogged down, but they recorded our case along with all of the others going around and told us to stay in the area until they could tell us more about the situation. We learned about the Elite Four from the chatter in the station, but other than that, we had to wait around all afternoon and worry about our Pokémon. We still haven't heard any news. Steve's taking it really hard, too; they took his first Pokémon and another strong teammate from him. Jenna and I have been trying to help reassure him, but it's not working so well. We ended up sitting in the park and not talking for most of the afternoon.

We're just waiting for news now, though not much has come. I've heard rumors that it was Galactic, and they sure match the description, but we'll still have to hear the official word. I just hope that our Pokémon got found, but ours was an outside attack, so there's kinda low chances of that....



Galactica: 02 August 2009 @ 10:04 pm
Location: Hearthome City

So, the news came early this morning. Sure enough, yesterday's attack was Galactic's work. Apparently they didn't really completely abandon the criminal aspect of their operations when they went to "full-time energy development" about a decade back, they were just a lot more discreet about it.

It was a lot of the waiting game again today, and it's really getting to Steve. None of our Pokémon have turned up on the "recovered" list, and those that have are being detained to try and figure out what the devices that Galactic was using are exactly designed to do, how they work and all that. It doesn't look like he'll bee seeing either of his Pokémon back anytime soon, and Graveller's in the same position... I'm worried myself, Steve's bordering on an outburst an Jenna's just trying to keep him mediated... but it isn't working well. I think he's about ready to run off and hunt that Galactic goon down himself. I wouldn't mind joining him, for that matter, but that's probably not the best course of action.

All of the Pokémon aren't doing much better. Jaffar's fairly indifferent, but the others are taking the loss pretty rough. Tropius and River (Prinplup) miss having Graveller around already, and Chi (Spinarak) is in a quiet, contained panic right now with Steve in no mood to comfort her. I think that Slugma's right up in the same stress level as him, though. I explained that there wasn't much he could have done, but Slugma insists that it's his fault for not being able to bring the Galactic worker down when he could. Nobody's really in the best of spirits right now...

On a side note, the festival is still going on. Some people think that it should be shut down for the year out of respect, and I think that they're right, honestly. You've got to give the festival organizers credit for sticking to it, though...



Little Progress: 03 August 2009 @ 10:49 pm
Location: Hearthome City

Our attacker got tracked down this morning. He's with Galactic, all right. Name of Michael Corey. Unfortunately, when they caught him, he only had his Donphan and Alpha (Steve's Chimchar) with him. He's really grateful that Alpha's safe, but the authorities need to hold Alpha for a day before they can let him go. Just the fact that he's okay is enough for Steve at the moment, though.

Graveller and Epsilon (Steve's Aron) were gone, though. He claims that he lost the Aron somewhere in the woods, but Graveller got sent to "Base," wherever that is. Interrogation hasn't really gotten them far; apparently, there's such a vague chain of command that they haven't tracked down any Galactics that know where the base is; they just all get sent messages. They're having trouble using any Galactic devices to find the source of transmission, though. The old building they used a decade ago in Veilstone got checked, and corporates are being interrogated there, but they haven't gotten anywhere on that lead, either. So Alpha's safe, but Graveller can't be found right now and Epsilon is running wild in the woods...

We're going out with a police search party tomorrow to search for Epsilon. With any luck, we'll find him, but there's a lot of ground to cover....



Searching...: 04 August 2009 @ 10:14 pm
Location: Hearthome City

No luck with the search party today. With ourselves and two officers, we actually found someone else's Dugong in a lake and being very territorial, which Tropius was able to knock out with Razor Leaf fairly easily so that the officers could bring it back, but Epsilon (Aron) wasn't found. We're going to keep searching until he is, though.

Alpha (Monferno) got released today, and Steve was ecstatic; there was no hiding it. I'm happy for him. With any luck, he'll have Epsilon back before long, too. Unfortunately, I don't know if I can say the same thing about Graveller...

Oh! We saw an old friend at the festival today, Josh O'Malley. He went to elementary school with us, but left town when he was twelve to be a trainer and we hadn't seen him since. Turns out the guy found a job his groove in Pokémon breeding and lives up in Pastoria now as an apprentice to a breeder at a ranch there. He's changed a lot, too; it was only by luck that I recognized him. It was nice catching up with Josh, at least.



Searching...: 05 August 2009 @ 09:41 pm
Location: Hearthome City

Steve was really tired today while we were out helping to search the forest... later we found out that he had been out on his own, searching the forest all night. We've got him stuck in bed now and I'm making sure that he stays there (even while I'm typing this, I have to watch him) while Jenna's out helping to look for Epsilon (Aron). Obviously we haven't found him yet, but I'm hoping that we will soon, for Steve's sake. Having his first Pokémon back has helped, but he's still missing Epsilon.

I don't suppose that I'm doing much better, actually. I hate not knowing where Graveller is, and the rest of my Pokémon are missing him badly, but the thing is that we can't do anything about it. The only thing that we can do is wait for information on where he is. Few people would know how frustrating that is. Graveller was a really good partner, and now he's gone and nobody know where he is beyond "in Galactic hands." I feel helpless about this. I don't know if Steve is getting it worse, though. He's in a position to find Epsilon, and he's been trying hard over the past could of days, but he's failed. That makes it worse. Jenna offered to take him out to the festival (last day) to calm his nerves, but he didn't want to go. I think what he really needs now is rest, which is why we're keeping him here....


Oh, on the note of news, they finally got some mid-ranked Galactics to talk. They gave the location of a location that the higher-ups were using several months ago, but it turns out that they move around often, so we just have to keep our fingers crossed. Obviously, they didn't reveal the exact location, but if the Galactic admins heard the news, they'll be gone by the raid tonight. *sigh*

They finally got a proper engineering crew to crack the metal bugs that were enraging the Pokémon, too. Turns out that they latch onto a Pokémon's nervous system and send electrical impulses to the brain as a sort of "mind control." Further, they send signals to the Pokémon's muscles, energy sacs, producers of adrenaline, etc. to make them work harder, thus making the Pokémon much stronger and faster (though this would have negative long-term effects). From one of the captive grunts' equipment they found a corresponding transmitter, too. The idea that they've worked out behind it is that each grunt has a supply of the mind-control devices that link to their transmission signal, making the affected Pokémon loyal to them. That sounds about right given what we saw, actually. Knowing they have a weapon like that is a bit unsettling, though.



Found: 06 August 2009 @ 08:38 pm
Location: Hearthome City

A group of trainers in the woods found Epsilon (Aron) while we were out with the officials on the morning search. Steve is almost back to his normal hardheaded jokester self, but the official word is that Epsilon has to be detained for a while while they take care of medical stuff on him. It'll be quite a bit longer than Alpha (Monferno) took in their infirmaries, since the control device had to bury itself into Epsilon's thick iron skull.

Ugh, we've spent too long here. Lucky enough, though, the gym is open, so we can hit that before we leave.



Radio Silence: 11 August 2009 @ 10:27 pm
Location: Route 209


Well, well, if this isn't interesting. You may have noticed that I haven't posted anything since last Thursday. Well, ever since then, my laptop hasn't been working, either, hence a distinct inability to update anything here. The main issue was that I would get to various points in doing things on it, then the screen would go staticy and it would shut itself off. I'm giving an update now, so obviously it works again. At first I thought that the laptop was having technical issues, but I any attempts to solve that, both through the interface and examining the hardware, did no good.

Late afternoon today, the cause came to me and was staring me in the face. No, it wasn't just glaringly obvious. The problem was physically, literally staring right at my gorramn face. Turns out that a Rotom had fancied hiding itself in my computer for most of the past week and playing tricks on me. We ended up calling in to the Gym to see if they had lost a Rotom recently, and as it is, they had. I was going to make a trip back to return it, but Fantina said to keep it. Turns out that one of the Junior trainers had been generally running the Rotom too hard, and it didn't like that at all, so it got away and started pranking me, instead. Fantina thinks that her giving Rotom away will serve as a lesson to the poor kid trainer, but she wants to give it back when she sees improvement in the boy. Smart lady. So for now, I guess that I have a Rotom on my team. Yay? (It's staying inside its Pokéball at all times now.)

So, recap of the past week: Epsilon (Aron) was released from the police infirmary, which made Steve very happy. The first thing that he did in celebration of his team being back together was take Epsilon, Alpha (Monferno) and Chi (Spinarak) up to the gym. Of course, Alpha and Epsilon didn't have much of a problem with that, and Chi was happy to just go along with it. I don't remember much of the details, but he had a long and drawn-out battle with Fantina, and he eventually won (not by much, but he won) by using Chi's poison to wear her ghosts down and Epsilon to drag the battle out with its high defense so that the poison could do its full work. I worked my way through the gym, too, and Tropius and Slugma each managed to knock out one of Fantina's Pokémon on their own (Mismagius and Duskull, respectively, I think). I remember that Mismagius used Double Team a lot to slip Tropius up, but he pulled through and used Magical Leaf, which I'd never seen him do before. He must be getting a lot tougher. Slugma luckily burned Duskull early in the match, so that gave him an advantage and he was able to outlast Duskull that way. The last set was River against her Drifblim, though. Drifblim was by far her strongest Pokémon, and River was feeling particularly overconfident, using a lot of charges that could (and did) backfire for her, which I didn't order for. This was mostly just a slip of her judgement, but it was a fatal one, and Drifblim knocked her out cold. She's been having quite a few obedience problems lately. Why did evolution change her so much?

Due to the loss, we've decided to come back through here later so that I could get a second shot at the Gym. We asked Jenna if she was going to go at the gym, but she claims that she doesn't really want to do the whole gym challenge. Apparently training's not necessarily high on her list of things to do, she's just travelling with us until we reach her place in Veilstone City.

Anyway, after that, we left town on Saturday and started heading west. Along the way, we managed to run into Shelby's camp. Looks like she, Rachel and Aimee (apparently I misspelled it earlier) passed through Hearthome already. Since we're all heading in the same direction, we've joined up with them for the time being. While Steve and Jenna have been crazily-competitive, so is Shelby, but on a smaller scale. She's been up and duking it out with them some of the time, but at other points has just been happy to sit down with her Pokémon (Croconaw, Sableye and Cacturne, so I saw) and talk around the fire with the rest of us.Speaking of that, I remembered that I'm not the most subdued person on the planet: it just looks that way next to Steve and Jenna. Anyway, Aimee was only a couple of years younger than us and was very quiet. She's really clever, and talked about strategy that I barely kept up with (I'm a tech/book-smart guy, not really a tactician) when she did pipe in when we were swapping battle stories. Her little sister, Rachel (just barely trainer age), was typically excitable and was really showing off her two badges. Apparently they didn't take a shot at Fantina yet, and they're saving her for the next visit.

The rest of the time up 'till now (besides the Rotom incident) was pretty usual of our travel so far: wake up, travel about five miles, then alternate training and downtime for the rest of the day. Same stuff, but in a bigger group. We battled against Shelby, Aimee and Rachel a few times each, but I'm not going to detail it much. Rachel was basically a straightforward hitter with a Turtwig, Nincada and an Eevee. Basically just used their strongest damaging attacks constantly. Bit annoying, but beatable. Aimee used her Delcatty and Prinplup to their fullest, though, and tended to have our Pokémon all sorts of paralyzed, attracted and stuck in whirlpools while her Pokémon used things like Iron Defense and Double Team to make herself really hard to fight. She's deceptively tough for her quiet demeanor... Shelby tends to battle a lot like me (we both tend to use strong attacks and try to give them different, advantageous uses). She and I are pretty even.

Gah, it's high time that I slept. That's enough for now, anyway.



Well, Well...: 12 August 2009 @ 10:13 pm
Location: Route 209

We passed the "Hallowed Tower" today. It's an old landmark shrine-tower that was deserted quite a while ago and crumbled down to a hole in the ground for the basement and some walls surrounding it, with some carvings in the stone around it. Looks more like an oversized well than anything else, if you ask me. Supposedly it's haunted, too, but I haven't seen anything some out of it so far, and it doesn't look like we will, either. Shelby's Sableye (John) didn't find sniff out any other ghosts, at least.

The official results came back from last week's raid, too. Looks like the bigwigs had already moved out. They left a bunch of Pokémon behind, but Graveller wasn't one of them. I hope they find him soon. They say they've got a new lead, at least....



Courage?: 13 August 2009 @ 08:13 pm
Location: Route 209

After traveling a bit farther north today (only a couple of miles outside Solaceon), we reached Lost Tower. It's a mass-graveyard for Pokémon, basically, though why it's contained in a tower is beyond me. Seems like Pokémon ought to be buried in the ground. Besides, do they just keep the bodies in the floor or something? ...never mind, I don't want to think about that.

Anyway, Jenna and Steve got talking, and a challenge arose as to which one of them would "prove their bravery" by going to the top of the tower at night. After that, Shelby agreed, thinking that it was a good idea for all of us, and for our Pokémon, as a test of nerves. I didn't have much of a problem with it, either, but Aimee and Rachel probably won't do very well. They seemed terrified, but they want to do it, too, for some odd reason, probably just so they don't feel left out. Jenna's made it so that we have to go in one-by-one, with only one Pokémon out with us at the time, and that Pokémon has to be chosen by everyone else. Right now, Steve already went up in the tower with Chi. Aimee's in there now with her Delcatty, but she's taken quite a while. Hope she'll be all right... Anyway, it looks like the general consensus it to choose the least-brave member on the team that's going up the tower. Right now, I think that Slugma's the most timid; River's pretty fearless lately, and Tropius will more than stand up for herself.

I'll have to write about this when I'm done. Right now, I can only sit around the fire, drink my tea and wait. We already trained enough against each other today, anyway.
 
I've read this before, but I didn't get a chance to reply to it...

Well, this really is a neat idea! I like the concept of a trainer blogging about his life. It's a good break from the regular fics I see around here, and so far you've done pretty well. But I have to disagree about what people said about a plot. When someone blogs about his life, their lives don't have to be action-packed adventure stories to be interesting to tell about. You just have to tell an average story in an interesting way.

The only complaint I have is that the grammar is perfect. This may seem strange at first, but I'll explain:

Jim is writing a blog, which is obviously on the computer. Now, nobody can have 100% grammar perfection all the time. If Jim is excited, he'll type fast, therefore will be vulnerable to more mistakes. If he's relaxed then he'll type slow, and pay attention to his grammar more. Get what I mean? If he says he's excited in a blog entry, try to show it in his typing. Since this is not an average fic, but a blog that someone types on the Internet, you could have him use smilies to emplasize his feelings.

Well, I hope I helped. I'll definitely be looking forward to more!
 
I agree with Mrs. Lovett. I love the concept of a trainer blogging about their adventure. Definitely unique and different from the usual fan fictions.
Mrs. Lovett said:
The only complaint I have is that the grammar is perfect. This may seem strange at first, but I'll explain:

Jim is writing a blog, which is obviously on the computer. Now, nobody can have 100% grammar perfection all the time. If Jim is excited, he'll type fast, therefore will be vulnerable to more mistakes. If he's relaxed then he'll type slow, and pay attention to his grammar more. Get what I mean? If he says he's excited in a blog entry, try to show it in his typing. Since this is not an average fic, but a blog that someone types on the Internet, you could have him use smilies to emplasize his feelings.
Click to expand...
Took the words out of my mouth; well, almost.

It's definitely something you should try. I know, it seems awkward that we're suggesting you type a bit sloppier since most people are pressuring to avoid it.
 
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