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hamofjustice · 5 months

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y'know, it's funny, from replaying pokemon scarlet / violet basegame, i'm pretty sure if you're not internet poisoned, then one of the most memorable things about nemona could be that she only battles you half or less of the times that she checks in to help you because she wants it to be perfect and fair for you and really doesn't want to annoy you, to the point it almost seems like she's making excuses NOT to battle you, not that she's a wild dog that's stalking you and will not leave you alone. one of her earliest character establishing moments is looking directly into the camera with puppy dog eyes and apologizing profusely for wanting a rematch because she had fun

she's in the gyms because she's also doing the gyms! she gets really embarrassed that it looks like she's following you around and decides not to battle you to prove she's not! if she is, she's probably following you because geeta asked her to, and clavell literally said she should take you under her wing! she usually gives you advance warning that she's going to be taking you on soon!

in particular, once you're out of the tutorial she talks to and helps you without battling you for the first three badges of her own questline

it's always, like, clavell and geeta being like 'smh get a load of this girl, she needs to back off, who does she think she is, gary oak?' with their body language. the "oops, nemona didn't realize that cutscene didn't heal you" thing the game keeps doing feels kinda forced.

maybe it's just pokemon writing being what it is (i really don't know why they act like she'd use her champion team against your starter, she just picked a starter, what are you talking about. make her look overeager in a way that makes sense with her character or anyone over the age of 5 please) but the way nemona actually is not matching the way everyone talks about her seems to be a thing in universe and out, and i want to remember this rather than fall into a telephone game of what the plot actually was

if anything, I wish she was less afraid to annoy the player, and more present in the game! y'know, appearing in the sidelines during gym battles with the rest of the crowd rather than the text simply saying she was, for example

idk, I wonder if things would be different if the most vocal pokemon "fans" didn't hate characters interacting with them. maybe I want a brock and misty with me the whole game. maybe biri biri and after the rain are the experience I want

acting like the character who puts our enjoyment above her own and is afraid to annoy us still annoyed us is how we get a DLC that never mentions her or the other main characters of the story in 9 months of promotional materials and, maybe someday, a gen 10 with no friends at all.

#pokemon sv #nemona #pokemon #pokemon scarlet and violet #pokemon scarvio #nemona pokemon #nemonaposting #sorry for editing this ten times while it got its first reblog

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hamofjustice · 9 months

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nemona feels like an obscure blorbo instead of the main rival character from the latest pokemon game because to get to her really good content from people who really get it, you first have to wade through the ocean of yandere pervert obsessive stalker annoying punchable bimbo amazon goddess interpretations of...

... a neurodivergent and possibly disabled high schooler who's desperately trying to make any friends or get any support from her rich neglectful family - while everyone in her school is jealous of their own imagined version of a privileged asshole version of her they made up - who deeply and platonically loves and supports the one new kid who agreed to take the time to get to know and respect her and her special interest without having to hold back her true self

unlike her, it's not great!

kinda feels like she has the same problem in our world that she does in hers.

#(except much hornier)#i hate to say it but i think her skin color has something to do with it #nemona pokemon #nemona #pokemon sv #pokemon scarvio #pokemon scarlet and violet #pokemon #nemonaposting #dog girl and goku memes are fine i guess #i legitimately cannot google her without a video of someone being cruel to her on purpose and making her visibly sad coming up #i don't think people like that really browse these tags but i hope they're not the reason she was not in the dlc footage at all #and thus may never get more screen time to actually be her best friend's 'rival for life' as promised before the 3 year cycle marches on #you know the dlc about nemona's best friend and 'greatest treasure' transferring to a school about the hardcore battles she's dying without #potentially abandoning her and sending her back to almost square one on having a reason to enjoy life #don't get me started yelling about that again #also i didn't mean platonically in a don't ship them kind of way you should absolutely do that if it lines up with your interpretations #i usually do in fact #just trying to emphasize the contrast between canon and fanart here #opinions of her already start off so low faith just because she's from the 10 fps pokemon game and i'll be real i wish she wasn't #i wish she and her friends were somewhere i could trust that they would be treated respectfully by their copyright holders

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hamofjustice · 2 months

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pokemon masters ex photo mode is pretty good, part 2

#pokemon #pokemon sv #penny pokemon #nemona pokemon #nemona #ghetsis pokemon #ghetsis #wally pokemon #archie pokemon #maxie pokemon #hilda pokemon #hugh pokemon #nemonaposting #pennyposting

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hamofjustice · 9 months

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youtube

nemona's sync pair story in pokemon masters ex can be viewed anytime as soon as you recruit her, and in just a couple minutes of dialogue we scarlet/violet story analyzers get some great subtext-made-text and new subtext:

confirmation of one instance of nemona working herself really hard for the sake of others and seeing anything less as a display of her own weakness and letting them down (even if the others are her pokemon in this case). it's something that i thought always seemed likely to be a theme with her if we knew more about her, with stuff like her mostly un-commented-on arm brace / compression glove and perfectly clean room nearly devoid of personality outside of her meticulous schedule and displays of her achievements, and what that implied about her relationship with her family, teachers, and idol

recontextualization of why she wears sporty athletic wear and runs around everywhere, even though she's a straight-A nerd who has to take a break every 50 feet when she initially takes you to school and is still winded enough to be worthy of comment from arven by the time you're running around in area zero

the fact that penny, the otaku shut-in, did not get called out like this means either she performed exactly as arven expected her to based on how she looked, or that nemona was doing the worst out of all of the group and might actually have some kind of chronic condition / disability like some fans theorize. nemona's stamina now being revealed to be a long standing insecurity of hers despite shrugging it off with a joke in area zero implies the latter to me

if she shrugged off a long standing insecurity with a joke, that could potentially say a lot about any other things she didn't want to make a big deal about that fans are a little suspicious of, like saying her parents were "hands-off in a good way" with her while her sister got all the attention, which i definitely think was an deflective understatement or simply not realizing there's a problem

and if her low stamina and "bad throwing" are in fact due to some kind of condition and mostly out of her control, that also makes her calling herself weak that much more tragically unfair to herself. someone hug this kid please

i trust these folks to write a compelling nemona if they were given the chance to, not just a fun and cute one. they get it.

her 15 minute storyline from her debut event is mostly just good fun with her meeting a bunch of people and almost winning a big tournament with her new friends hilda and bede. it also, however, touches upon how sad she is that people mostly get jealous of her rather than feel inspired by her (which she actually comes up with a motivational speech to try and combat this time, with hilda's help). it even has her tell blue and bede that florian/juliana back home is "a precious treasure" to her, which made me melt into boiling taffy.

now i'm looking forward to whatever else they come up with when nemona's more plot-driving friends arrive. despite how cheesy and hit-or-miss pokemon masters tends to be, they're treating scarlet/violet with respect so far. it's canon to me. i kinda need that right now when we're not sure what the friend trio are gonna get in the DLC of the actual game.

#nemona pokemon #pokemon sv #pokemon scarvio #pokemas spoilers #nemona #pokemon scarlet and violet #pokemon masters #pokemas #nemonaposting #there is a big sense of relief knowing that the deeper subtext to her simple text is not just in my head and people in charge see it #like i have won the battle that i was in and now i can just chill #just like in-universe people need to know nemona is struggling to be able to really appreciate her fully and not just on a surface level #if it was immediately obvious from the get go i'd probably be significantly less invested #note: this is a datamine she's not actually out until the pokemon presents on the 8th if you're reading this before then lol #the 8th will probably also be the last chance to show us nemona arven and penny in the DLC trailers if they're going to

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hamofjustice · 6 days

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masters photo mode is pretty good part 3

#pokemon masters #penny pokemon #nemona pokemon #nemopen #nemona #pokemon sv #pokemon #nemonaposting #pennyposting #geeta pokemon #clay pokemon #kahili pokemon

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hamofjustice · 5 months

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After thinking about it more on Twitter I've decided to expand one of my personal, mostly story and postgame focused, Indigo Disk Bingo Cards (the positive one) to 7x7, featuring more QoL features, more stuff to do, fluffy flavor additions, basegame character moments, subtextual/headcanon stuff, etc. that don't seem like they're too obviously guaranteed to happen. Not gonna see much lore or worldbuilding or new character stuff here though, I'll let them do whatever they're doing with that

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hamofjustice · 8 months

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Hey it's the guy from that other rant about how Nemona, Arven, and Penny are getting ignored for no reason by DLC advertising in a game that's supposed to be about forming treasured unbreakable bonds with well-written sad kids who desperately needed friends and are presented as sort of Strength, Courage and Wisdom Trio by the ending, back with a new post now that one of the DLCs is out and haha I bet you know what I have to say don't you

What was the point of excluding Nemona, Arven, and Penny from The Teal Mask if there are three unnamed and generic-modeled but consistently written student NPCs present anyway, and the content is level 60-75, so you're clearly not intended to do it without finishing the game*? Not only do they not see you off or gain any new dialogue when you get home, they aren't mentioned or alluded to in any way shape or form. They're still statues standing in their rooms with one line of dialogue, the one thing I wanted DLC and updates to change the most. They never notice you left the country for a week.

* UPDATE: Apparently the DLC has level scaling even though the base game didn't, and it is accessible with 0 badges, and that is why there are no references to the preexisting story - it might not have happened yet. Fascinating. I guess that part holds less weight then and this whole post is a little less necessary. I'll leave the rest of the post unedited but it really did seem like this was designed as postgame content only regardless of when it becomes available. Guess not! So I guess, instead, the story got shot in the foot a little bit by the decision to make it available to new players instead of for no reason. I think they should have let it be postgame content, but, I'm a little less worried now. This makes sense within those rules. I guess.

Fanart like this is now coming out and getting tons of likes asking why this happened after six months of countless pieces of cute fanart like this all turned out to be for nothing.

As people are already realizing, it would have been really fun and logical for two of the three who don't really get along with each other yet (which is any combination of them, really, that's part of the fun, and part of why their stories should continue) to be forced to team up into an odd couple, while the third gets to know Carmine and perhaps build a rivalry with her. Wouldn't it be fun to see them talking about their own adventures they were going on, and how they were starting to get along, even if it was happening offscreen? (Because this DLC is focused on introducing new characters to set up for later and that's fine) Wouldn't it be smart to set up the group dynamic for Indigo Disc in advance as preparation for a return to Area Zero and that whole professor-haunted main plotline with a larger cast?

It's just giving me even more apparently-not-unfounded paranoia that yeah, we've never been shown the friend trio in new footage in a DLC trailer because not just Penny but somehow even Arven and Nemona are going to be completely irrelevant to a DLC about finding closure on Area Zero's story and going to a school all about top-level battling. Why else would they go this far out of their way to avoid including them as characters? This is like... active sabotage of their own story at this point.

... Could they really just not be bothered to model three characters in jinbei, and repeatedly shot in the foot their best story yet and all the setup they did for continuing it... over that? That'd be stupid, right? Unfortunately, I don't have the confidence in the company to put anything past them right now.

I just don't know how The Indigo Disc is going to carry the weight of everything they've set up expectations for it to do, unless it's like three times bigger than this little teaser of a DLC in terms of actual story and postgame battles, and most importantly to me, the postgame hanging-out that they very suspiciously also won't show the original friend trio for that we were promised by the story almost a year ago as a happy ending, that we haven't actually gotten to participate in on-screen at all, outside of the Ace Academy Tournament (whose music is perfect for that happy victory lap feeling by the way).

I'm afraid now more than ever that all of my happy thoughts about how this generation and these precious characters should be wrapped up and what should be in The Indigo Disc aren't going to happen, and... it'll just go unceremoniously into the trash can with the other generations after a few more months of trailers probably making it clear that despite all the sappy memories with your original group and the girl who calls the player character her treasure and her rival for life, the game is about Carmine and Kieran now instead of them joining the group, and it will be remembered as the half assed cash grab game and not the one with a big heart and deep character writing hidden in it, if they care THIS aggressively, out-of-their-way little about the reason the game has heart. Not that I don't like these new newcomers too, but. There was a different way to go about this.

Pokemon Masters and Pokemon Special and stuff will try their best to compensate and do the characters justice, but they're just fanfic writers like us except with a budget. The anime writers are forced to make the story about other characters, as if Nemona, Arven, and Penny's stories were something shameful or inappropriate they need to paint over, and not the saving grace for what was otherwise an embarrassing corporate product with good people stuck working on it.

It would have been so easy to integrate the three of them into this DLC, and it would've made the next DLC better to have done so. Literally just replace some character models and rewrite some dialogue. The Paldea students don't have festival outfits anyway afaik. We're talking romhack-level difficulty of implementation here. Come the hell on.

Between the contents of this first part of the DLC and how they've been advertising it so far, I cannot make myself believe Nemona, Arven, and Penny will be in the rest of generation 9. I don't want to get hurt by my expectations. I feel like they've been purposefully excluded, like TPC thinks there's something wrong with them.

... Anyone else feeling this?

#pokemon sv #pokemon scarlet and violet #the teal mask #the indigo disk #pokemon scarvio #no billy and o'nare don't count as a nemona mention they say repeatedly they run paldea realty and not the rotom phone company for a reason #that being said i stayed up way too late making absolutely sure they weren't her parents like everyone assumed #despite being white #nemonaposting #pennyposting #arvenposting

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hamofjustice · 5 months

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if i see nemona say "mi tesoro" in the indigo disk i'm putting my controller down and making multiple pointing and yelling and crying memes out of the screenshot before i continue

#pokemon sv #pokemon #the indigo disk #nemona #julinemo #(implied)#nemonaposting

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hamofjustice · 6 months

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Do you have a screencap of when Nemona says she relished every moment of the protag being there because. I need that

It's after your first win at the Academy Ace Tournament!

Nemona, you gotta stop saying sappy stuff like this in public

I'll throw in a bonus:

Where, after badge 8, Geeta tells us that Nemona being this excitable isn't normal, we've just never seen what she's like when we're not around

#admittedly i forgot the requested line was this far separate from her main dorm room convo #i don't know if that bonus bit is something the anime adaptations noticed #pokemon sv #pokemon #nemonaposting #nemona

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hamofjustice · 10 months

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I don't want to just painstakingly copypaste my triple-layered self-QRT thread about it on Twitter and any other ones floating around but

I am very emotionally invested in seeing Penny, Arven, and (personally) especially Nemona again in the Scarlet/Violet DLC, after GF followed up the best 3 hours of Pokemon game story ever by having to abruptly cut it off the second these lonely kids finish opening up to you and say you can hang out with them anytime. Which you never do. It was some pretty painful whiplash, and I was sure the main point of the DLC was to relieve that, especially when their arcs don't seem quite complete yet. Very clever, evil marketing! But uh... well... about that...

It is very worrying that aside from a little "the story so far" montage, they have not been seen or mentioned in promotional material/footage whatsoever. Y'know, DLC for the game that's about how the real treasure was the friends you found along the way (literally, in Nemona's case), and even if your family and support systems fail you, you still have each other? Written from the heart by someone who said Arven's story is inspired by their own life? With the sappy Ed Sheeran song about reaching out for connection with others, that also seems to be named after Team Star? The game where one of the features the devs seemed most proud of was going on adventures and into boss fights with 3 of your friends? The game that ended with a fully functional and quite immersive bonding adventure with these characters you'd gotten to know and care about, that basically everyone thought was the best part of the game by a mile, and were left wishing the whole game was like that?

Yeah, I (and everyone else) have been driving around alone in that game for 8 months ever since finishing that story. 8 months of minor updates with a ton of the beloved characters functionally or literally gone, while we go around doing online stuff with nothing else to do in the world, with a single player postgame more barren than we had on Game Boy Color (thank god for mints and bottle caps though). I'm left just... wanting to go back to the way things were before I beat the game. Not to be overly dramatic, but this world I supposedly saved feels like one I failed to save. And I'm getting really frustrated. (The framerate hasn't gotten any better, either, but this isn't about that.)

It's like Game Freak (or whoever forced this thing out a year early, or both) never expected you to boot the game up again once you got bored of the Ace Academy Tournament, which the game acts like is the entire total of what you could want from being friends and "rivals for life" with your squad (I mean I'm the sicko that loves Tera Raids, so I'm not that bored, but still). It makes a bunch of implications that your adventure is just beginning, and then it totally just... isn't. Why is the E4 building closed? Why do you only rematch the gyms once? And most of all, for me personally: Why did we get access to our friends' rooms if there's nothing to do or talk about there? (Besides look for character study clues, which they have lots of)

All they could come up with when asked to write a newsletter email about what you can still do in S/V and why you should still be playing it was Raids. That was it. Remember when you had an endless challenge in the Tower/Maison that you could optionally take on with a bunch of story characters as your partners instead of alone, that motivated you to keep getting stronger bit by bit? Remember rematching gym leaders multiple times and watching their teams grow and evolve each time? Yeah, there's none of that here, because that would take more than a week to implement. If you want friends and you want battles, you'll have to do it yourself online now. They're not allocating any budget for that.

Your rival for life, who's so excited you're on her level now, who seems to have the passion and skill to be the your Battle Tower gameplay loop by herself if she wanted to, who battles you for hours offscreen with multiple teams, whose whole character arc is that she finally has someone she can do this with... is fully static, with one kinda mediocre team that never grows or changes. She can't keep up with you and doesn't know what items or EVs are. You have to get lucky to even see her at all. She is no more your rival than your Home Ec teacher is (no offense Saguaro, you're cool too). I think it's really, really sad.

I'm left nostalgic and pining to go back, having to cope through fanfic because my character can't spend the day with - or even so much as take a new trainer card photo with - the girl who said they might be her greatest treasure, without resetting my save, because she and the others are standing somewhere that the camera and internet features are both disabled.

Like, legitimately, I want to keep being friends with these kids the way we were before, and have the ability to do post-game stuff with them, like being able to go out and adventure together whenever in some basic, non-story capacity, or just, I don't know, maybe give them more than one line of dialogue in their rooms? I don't want a new region or new characters. Not yet, anyway.

I thought I was preordering the continuation of their story and rewarding the company for making me care about Pokemon so much again.

But, uh... I'm really worried that the people who own these characters do not care. And as I said on the trailer's comments before they turned them off (lol), I'll be pissed enough to not buy any more games if I'm right, and we're forced to abandon these poor kids. At the very least, it's some pretty garbage marketing to leave the possibility of that up in the air. If nothing else, that is a frustration that I'm going to keep talking about for a while, even if it ends up being fine.

I thought it was impossible, and I was being silly. Why not have our friends in cute new outfits as promo art when the DLC was first announced, and all they had was promo art? Seems like an easy slam dunk. Oh, they didn't yet? Well, I'm sure it'll happen eventually.

And then they weren't in the trailer either, months later. Are they trying to sell us on it or not?

The whole reason I want the DLCs. Still not a single word acknowledging them, just that little opening montage. Still no hints of how the DLCs have anything to do with Area Zero's ongoing story, either. How is a sea turtle linked with a landlocked crater?

So like... At this point I have to assume both DLCs start with you making your friends cry as they're left alone again, arbitrarily excluded from events they're more than qualified to be invited to, to make room for some new dweebs we don't need, who won't be given nearly enough time to be as compelling as Nemona, Arven, and Penny were, because that makes the trailer look more like a new game, and that's the only way they know how to advertise. More. New. Buy. Consume. Throw away. Buy. Consume. Throw away. I should assume this so that whatever we get can't be worse.

But they're probably not (self-aware enough / allowed / both) to write that. Your lonely / orphaned / anime-binging friends might just cheer you on for getting to go do something cool like being forced to train a new legendary because the story said so, then go back to being statues with as much relevance to your life as an NPC in a third story apartment that tells you what a hold item is.

Can't I just live in Paldea with my friends, in the version of the game we would have gotten if it was finished, instead of being pulled into these adventures for the sake of looking good in a trailer? (which it doesn't btw lol) It's not an unrealistic thing to want when that's what it briefly was, and I was so excited that it would keep being that I've been thinking about it this entire time.

...

I hope I'm wrong about all this, and next year I can look back on this post, happy that the DLC did actually allow us to continue to take care of these characters, conclude Area Zero's mysteries in a satisfying way, fix up some technical issues, let us relive some things that are currently once-only (including letting us see that photo album our character made but we had to screenshot ourselves), and make it fun to keep playing for years afterward, and let that be the model for games going forward, but uh...

They really are not showing me anything I care about in the game I desperately want to care about, that I saw - and wanted to defend - the heart in, despite the circumstances it was produced under, and that really worries and frustrates me. The surprisingly many great things about this game got my hopes up for an awesome postgame full of warm fuzzy feelings and cool things to do 8 months ago that just didn't deliver, and now, I'm not sure if they'll even let me pay for one, at this rate, because they're not advertising one.

Just throw us a scrap. If whoever's in charge here stops caring about this story, I won't care about the next one.

Anyone else feeling this?

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hamofjustice · 5 months

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who's ready for the indigo disk, a $35 DLC required to finish the story the $60 base game of pokemon scarlet and violet started because corporate rushed it out too early, to not be allowed to acknowledge any of nemona arven and penny's virtues, deeper problems, and motivations, if not just outright contradict or mock them

who's ready to never have nemona hit level 100 or use EVs/held items, never make food with arven, never... uh... do anything fun with penny, never adventure with them again once the new story's over despite it being a coded and previously used feature in the game that introduced the union circle, never get to call anyone on the phone we supposedly have their numbers registered on, never get to do emotes together with anyone but other players, and never get to say what or who our own treasure was when nemona's was us

who's ready for the story to not acknowledge that ditching our friends but especially nemona to transfer schools to another country in pursuit of New Content, right after she basically opened up to us about her secretly being a horribly lonely neurodivergent disabled kid trying to fight her "gifted" label and we promised to be with her forever, would be extremely traumatizing

who's ready to still not have a real postgame without crowdsourcing it from other players with the internet connectivity that they're going to take offline a few years later

for my health, i must be prepared for all of these things rather than writing a big fluffy post getting my hopes up about how they're going to utilize some of the realest characters in pokemon (though i can do that too if you want)

especially when the company seems too afraid, secretive, or unprepared to advertise the damn thing and haven't shown or mentioned those three main plot driving characters again in the entire 9 months from DLC announcement to release as if they simply won't be in it at all (which is stupid, of course they will)

i just wanna see the rest of the beautiful story they were trying to tell before three year cycle hell made a bit of a mess of it and the cast suddenly vanished or became statues when we were just about to hang out and live happily ever after. i would've really appreciated the anime actually being about them, too (horizons isn't even really about Paldea lmao)

#pokemon sv #pokemon #the indigo disk #nemona #trainer arven #trainer penny #arven pokemon #penny pokemon #nemonaposting #arvenposting #pennyposting #should i like tag this as negativity or something idk #we got about two weeks to go and like. idk man. this could leave me so happy or so disappointed and they're afraid to tell me which #and either way they've been so half-assed and unprofessional about it that i'm probably waiting a long time to get gen 10 if i ever do #like. waiting for someone to actually tell me it's good first rather than getting invested when i have no idea if it's worth it #i love these kids so much i wish the company did too #anyway i hope i'll be forced to delete this post later

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hamofjustice · 7 months

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y'know, sometimes I focus a lot on the implications of Juliana/Florian maybe possibly being Nemona's official Greatest Treasure for the semester but not fully confirmed as such, or the undertones of her wanting them to promise to be "rivals for life," when I rant er I mean discuss how it'd be really messed up if she got left behind when they transferred to Blueberry Academy in The Indigo Disc

but I can't believe "I've relished every day since you moved here" is an actual unedited line she says. I just assumed I had embellished that one in my head. nope. there's no way to misread that, no embellishment needed, she just says it! and then gets kind of embarrassed about it and she says she's gonna blush when they say either variation of "you too"

not to be like "there is no platonic explanation for this," because there totally is, but if she's going to be shipped with anyone I think it's really hard to justify it being with anyone else as long as the player character is in the picture

#pokemon sv #pokemon #nemonaposting #nemona #julinemo #especially when let's be real she spent half of her time with the other teen characters arguing and being rejected insulted and ignored #to really hammer home the idea that florian/juliana are special to her for fully accepting her as she is not just for being strong #being a rival and true equal to her that she doesn't need to hold back against is just a metaphor for letting her unmask around them #yeah the rough start does make her eventually becoming friends with Arven and Penny despite still bickering fun and interesting #and it'd be cool if the friend she had such a strong bond with was an actual character with a story who made more of their own decisions #but one of the decisions they do make on their own that you can't go against is that they like her from start to finish so yeah #this game's writing is not groundbreaking but it does reward paying attention while being main series pokemon and i'm proud of em for that #and inspired by how much better it still could be #can i just go into hibernation until the DLC is finished #also for those unfamiliar this is pokemon writing so holding hands is like being married

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hamofjustice · 1 month

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Okay, so, I said I was working on Pokemon Scarlet / Violet fanfic and that's still kiiiinda true? But for the most part the past few months I've instead been working on...

HamOfJustice's League Club Expansion Pack

... which is a text-file-based imaginary mod of the game (but a blueprint for a real one if someone is able to make it, I guess) that massively expands the DLC postgame to include like a hundred things for characters to talk about, adds new friendship storylines, expands their team rosters and battle AIs, and lets them follow you anywhere in the world, making it not really a League Club thing at all except in spirit.

I'm aiming to do the following:

1. Give the players the living-happily-ever-after postgame that they deserve, and that Pokemon SV basegame really seemed like it was leading up to after Area Zero and all those friendship strengthening storylines

2. Prove I know this gamedev thing isn't easy and do all the work myself to see how viable it really could've been for SV and Pokemon games in general to have more meat on its bones, inspired by what we did get from it so far. I'm not asking for much of anything that requires new models, code, or animations, just text, menus, and repurposed features. Even the AI is pseudocoded by myself

3. Live up to the characters' potential more and leave less up to speculation and fanfic to really explore, explain, heal, capitalize on, and have fun with (okay, this is basically fanfic formatted as a fake datamine, but still) while still being consistent with the tone of the game and leaving plenty of subtext and small details to have fun discussing with other readers rather than stating everything outright

Basically, I wanted this so bad I just did it myself instead of complaining some more, and I want everyone who feels the same way to get to have that experience through me. I've been steadily working on this thing for months (the scope got a little out of hand as you can imagine) and I'm pretty close to releasing Nemona's files, which are the parts I'm most passionate about, but I'm hoping to keep at it after that if I can (Nemona, Penny, Arven, and maybe Kieran and Carmine, at least)

Reviews from people who've seen early previews of my project on Twitter or in DMs:

"You legitimately know more about [Nemona and Penny] than Game Freak, there's really no question about that at this point"

"OH MY GOD IM OBSESSED WITH THIS. it amazes me all the time how your characterisation and voice is PERFECT"

"Holy shit this is so cute... This dialogue is stellar"

"Oh wait this is ur fanmade dialogue? DAMN I THOUGHT IT WAS REAL"

"Goddamn, you went HARD. Congrats on writing more and better story in one day than was put into the DLC"

"AKJCJAJFHQBXBXB nemonas dialogue is so perfect like its EXACTLY her 😭😭😭😭 so is everyone's like Penny's too??? you must be some kind of secret game freak writer…. THIS IS AMAZING 💓💓💓💓💓💓"

There's a big ol' batch of old and new samples I've picked out for you today under the cut if you wanna look. Either way, expect the Nemona part of the actual project to be posted for real soon-ish and her friends one at a time after that, once I get past a bit of writer's block on one part and stop trying to make the angsty cathartic bits perfect

#pokemon #pokemon sv #pokemon scarlet and violet #nemona #hamofjustice league club expansion pack #hamfiction #nemonaposting #there's still going to be actual hamfiction maybe but it's lower priority when people are so excited about this

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hamofjustice · 7 months

Text

very slight teal mask and indigo disc story spoilers (the kind that'll probably help decide if you want them or not instead of ruin it for you, probably?) and very long commentary about it. mostly about how they've chosen to advertise it

gonna hit you with my longest run-on sentence yet, here we go.

the fact that we had to datamine the teal mask, a DLC whose only returning character is jacq and does not add a line to or scene of anyone else (well, mentions of heath and clavell, i guess?) due to being available to do at any badge count, the fact that we had to dig and pry in unintended ways, just to finally prove that our implied greatest treasures nemona arven and penny would at least be available to hang out with in the indigo disc...

with no new images footage or mentions of the friend trio of in any of the six months since the DLCs were announced, and ten months after these kids opened their hearts and dorm rooms to us, saying we could hang out any time from now on, and turned out to be statues with one line of dialogue after we had already gone on an adventure with them following us around, helping us in battle, and getting to know each other as we walked, and our rival promised to keep up with our strength forever, then never got any stronger...

and now, in the narrative's timeline, we run off to another country to transfer away from our rival for life's school to one she would fit into perfectly the MOMENT she opens up to us about her problems and how she's so much happier now that we're the first person she can actually connect with and be herself around, and shows clear signs of worry that you're going to leave if she doesn't make you promise not to...

and also shortly after Arven became effectively a high school orphan, who's still treated as kind of a butt monkey dumbass for some reason, when he was putting everything he had into researching how to save his dog, his only dependable family, instead of going to class (i guess he's not telling anybody what he's going through, as usual with these kids)...

because TPC did not think these characters being present in the second DLC in any form and not actually having their newfound, hard-earned sense of belonging ruined by the basic premise of said transfer-student DLC was worth advertising at any point, and only showed off gym leaders Katy and Kofu... and that was only if you even bothered to look at the website to notice the feature at all, because hanging out with, battling, and trading with all of the past characters who aren't present in Paldea anymore is now actually a feature, but wasn't in the trailer...

is fucking mind boggling to me.

why is it a secret that they're in the DLC. why would they not just. tell people that as soon as they revealed the DLC. why is it still supposed to be a secret now, half a year later. why weren't they in the first half. why did they not think we'd be worried that they aren't in the second half.

silly me, why would you want to advertise giving people more of the story and main plot-driving characters, the main thing people defend the rushed game for, or that they might get some resolution, or reassure them that the vaguely happy ending to their sad stories isn't going to be ruined like they've implied it will be? that'd be silly. the only way anyone is going to find that out is through hacking

but at least we were finally able to pry that basic fucking information out of them against their will, the only thing I wanted to know about the DLC before I'd buy it, because they left in placeholder stubs for it by accident. oops. wouldn't want to tell people who were on the fence about getting the DLC this information on purpose or anything. need to keep it a secret

we were able to confirm through our own digging that nemona (and many others) are at least allowed to hang out with us, but the thing that would make both her as a character and me as a Pokemon player happier than we've ever been is if she actually got to enroll with us. why wouldn't she go, right? what do a school and society that don't respect her and an empty home where her parents should be have to offer, compared to living her dream with her favorite person, surrounded by people just like her? who can stop a champion from going wherever she wants? but for that to be the case, one of the "club rooms" we found references to would have to be hers. only us kieran and carmine clearly have what are marked as dorm room objects.

i'm glad we're getting what we're getting, but it's still no guarantee that nemona arven and penny will continue to be important to the story that they were the driving forces of, or get the true resolutions and healthier happy endings that they deserve, or that our "true equal" will ever be any stronger or more important to our character than our home ec teacher, or that they'll ever actually get to be a friend group on screen without life or death situations or harrowing grief being involved

oops! accidentally wrote decent character arcs and relationships in a pokemon game! they're going to spend time together in the postgame! abort abort abort quick shove them off into different countries before they hug

okay that's just me being cynical, they will almost certainly be important to the story, but... TPC has the power to make me not cynical and they keep choosing not to do that. but they do keep making really sappy recap videos using previous cutscene footage, like this attachment and uncertainty is something they're milking on purpose

maybe stringing people along with how much they miss the funny, cute, loving, strong characters, or are worried about these three lonely and isolated kids dealing with parental neglect, ptsd and self loathing, autism and motor impairments, identity issues, and more, whose problems are clearly not resolved yet if they can be at all, will... help sell more plushies and gacha pulls, and get people consuming more spinoffs, or something? idk, maybe

love to stop and helplessly gaze upon penny's depression pile every day before i go do tera raids / link battles with strangers (i don't actually do this but i might if poke portal worked indoors)

that all being said! it's pretty damn cool that hanging out with NPCs in a meaningful way and staging selfies with them and stuff is actually a game feature at all. that much is reassuring. it's a step in the right direction considering 90% of pokemon gameplay for a lot of people takes place after the credits roll and everyone normally despawns or becomes a one liner / repeating boss fight statue, or maybe if you're lucky a Multi Battle partner. it was just implied this game would be different, is all. i just don't know why they've chosen to string their audience along this way. wanting to have friends shouldn't throw up a $35 tollgate right as you go to talk to them that takes a year to open, and over six months to find out if it'll kill them when it opens.

i'd like to see pokemon postgame feel more like an animal crossing life sim type game in the future, personally, and this feature is a step toward that. i'd love if it one of your rewards for completing indigo disc was being able to take anyone you like as a follower as you go about your business and have them get on miraidon/koraidon with you as needed so your movement isn't impeded by it, even if there was no dialogue for it or anything. it's 2023, i shouldn't have to imagine something happening in a video game, or have to fill in my own fanfic to make a story satisfying, it should just be happening, on the screen. dammit. having a follower that goes with you everywhere even if you drive or have a following pokemon already was a feature in teal mask, so why not utilize it permanently?

(is the obvious player arven nemona penny 4v1 battle being saved for the final boss or something, is that why tera raids with them aren't a thing you can just do normally?)

Long story short: The basic transfer-student premise of The Indigo Disc implies that we ruin Nemona's happy ending and rub the one she really wants in her face to go enjoy it with Carmine instead for being more marketable, and I don't think they're even aware of why that would be a problem. Why have we not been reassured to the contrary in the last 6 months? I think a lot of us are waiting for this DLC anxiously instead of eagerly, especially after the first half.

#pokemon sv #pokemon #pokemon scarlet and violet #pokemon scarvio #nemona #trainer nemona #arven #trainer arven #penny pokemon #trainer penny #nemonaposting #arvenposting #pennyposting #the teal mask #the indigo disk

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