#pokémon self-inserts are something that can truly be so special

[farbeagle]

Now that my longest-ever fanfic is done and posted, I realized I needed to do one more thing to truly purge it from my system: Make a "meet the OCs" post!

Honestly do not care if anyone reads this, I just need it out of my brain

Let's meet those OCs!

Before we begin: I must admit to being generally anti-OC in my reading and writing. It's not personal, it's just that I came to read about a certain set of characters and their relationships with each other, not some strange character I've never heard of before. However, I feel like readers can tell when something is half-hearted, so I tried my best to use the OCs unapologetically and to not brush over them in the narration.

Let's begin

Jayce & Janiyah (he/him & she/her)

Janiyah is the older sister, slightly younger than Hassel. I felt bad for not giving her more of a personality, but her whole deal is kind of that she diminishes herself in service of the clan. She's supposed to represent Hassel's "bad ending," so to speak.

Jayce and Janiyah are both Blasian, or the Pokémon equivalent, and I based Jayce's personality in particular on the "Vancouver Asian" archetype— in love with the city, always getting bubble tea, avid mallwalker.

Most Picrew are not super compatible with wacky Pokémon character design, but I pictured them both wearing brighter colors and bolder patterns— Janiyah in particular wears a lot of orange and red.

NOTE: I got extremely lost in the "let characters of color have brown eyes, dammit" sauce and kind of forgot that making every single dark-skinned character have dark hair and dark eyes in a world where odd-colored eyes and hair are totally normal might circle back around to having weird implications. Fanfic is not representation, but I just wanted to point out that I knowwww I know okay I know.

Asahi (they/them)

Asahi is the most "nothing" of my OCs; essentially a lazy self-insert to imply more life in the Arts District. They were originally called "Ace," which is a placeholder name I use online, and they look almost exactly like me at age 19 or so. I changed their name because I decided having a character named "Jayce" and a character named "Ace" was unbearably Dr Seuss for a serious fic. Them saying "aces" to Hassel is a shoutout to their original name.

Brenna (she/her/any)

For having such a simple design, it was really hard to find a Picrew that captured the entirety of her essence. She has true brown hair and yellow eyes, for reference.

I made a separate post about her that you might be able to dig up, but the essentials are thus: she's a big ol' powerdyke, she LOVES clowning, and she absolutely despises Geeta

NOTE: Brenna's feelings are not a secret commentary on my own feelings for Geeta. I ADORE her. We shall have a summer wedding.

Joel (he/they)

I also couldn't find a satisfactory Picrew for Joel. He's a bit older than this image would imply and he ONLY ever wears his conductor's cap.

I did my best as an allistic to write him as autistic. He's an electrician and his special interest is model trains (stereotypical, yes, but that's actually the result of me projecting my own love of model trains onto him! I fucking love model trains).

Taiho (he/him)

Taiho is a young sumo instructor from Kanto. I didn't spend any more time on him than the others, but his lore just popped into my head, so he has slightly more backstory.

Taiho's dream was always to open his own sumo school and bring the art to as many people as possible. Geeta knew him previously and, when she became Champion, recruited him with the promise of helping secure a grant to open up a sumo school in Paldea.

Lennon (she/her)

Don't let the Picrews fool you, Lennon was a silver-haired anime girl from day one. Picture it in a gradient from silver to black, the silver gradually overtaking the tips as she got older.

Lennon is another placeholder name I use online. Tbh she and Brenna are tied for my favorite OCs.

Stan (any pronouns)

Stan is That Cool Librarian. We all know one. That's all I got.

NOTE: You may have noticed a discrepancy in the pronouns listed vs the pronouns used in the fic and I'm gonna be sooo honest with you: a bitch was just tired. My first pronouns struggle was trying to figure out if I should use "he" or "it" on Gyarados and by the time I got that worked out I was simply done. So everyone gets one unambiguous pronoun and that's IT.

I'm TIRED.

#bark bark