Pokemon Bat

This is an idea for a Pokemon Rom Hack.  I’d like it to be a Third Generation Romhack (Mainly LeafGreen) in-spite of the fact that one 4th generation Pokemon gets name dropped.  I can't make it myself so I encourage someone else to elaborate on the basic ideas I'm laying out here.

The region is called Gotham

You play as Bruce Wayne, a ten year old.  It is the two year anniversary of your Parents being gunned down in front of you by Pokemon thieves.  After having a nightmare about it you run into the woods behind your house and fall into a cave where you befriend a Zubat, and decide to go off on a Pokemon journey with the Zubat as your starter.  Your Butler Alfred Pennyworth will function as both Bill and Oak, managing all the PC stuff for you.  And Jim Gordon will play the role of Looker.

The rival character is Selina Kyle, who’s starter Pokemon is a Meowth.

The evil team in this one is more like Team Rocket, being mainly interested in money as opposed to later Teams that are basically cults.  It is called Team Umbrella, and it’s leader is known as The Empoleon of Crime.  His real identity is Oswald Cobblepot, a trainer of Bird Pokemon who runs a Pokestop called the Iceberg Lounge, that among other things houses the Ice Type gym.  He won’t actually have an Empoleon on him though, this game’s roster should be limited to Pokemon you can use in FireRed/LeafGreen.  He is particularly obsessed with the Bird Type Legendary Pokemon, which includes the Kanto Trio and Ho-Oh (and Maybe Lugia).  Selina gets caught up in that storyline because of her interest in the Catlike Legendary Beasts whoa re tied to Ho-Oh.

The Gym Leader of the IceBerg Lounge gym is Victor Fries.

The other 7 Gym leaders include, Drury Walker, the Bug Type Gym leader, Lester Buchinsky, the Electric Type Gym leader and Joe Rigger, the Fire Type Gym Leader.  I like including the three filler bosses of the Batman 89 NES game in any Batman video game ideas I come up with.

Pamela Isley, the Grass/Poison Type Gym Leader.

Jonathan Crane, the Ghost Type Gym Leader.

Jervis Tetch, the Psychic Type Gym Leader.

Natalia Mitternacht, Dark Type Gym Leader.

The Elite Four will be League of Assassins Members, Bane (Fighting type), Onyx (Rock Type) Bronze Tiger (Steel Type), and Lady Shiva (Dragon Type).

And the Champion will be Ra’s Al Ghul. Who’s Pokemon team will actually be the Legendary Beasts, Lugia, Celebi and Mew who he mentions was his starter centuries ago.  I feel like that fits his Eco Terrorist agenda.  What I'm doing with Ra's here is the most unprecedented in Canon Pokemon, having any NPC use Legenderies.  (Though in Stadium a Rocket Grunt has a Moltress).  Ra's Immortality is why I feel it works.  It's sometimes implied that Mew is something that wasn't so rare in the distant past.  I thought about referencing that immortality gimmick with an all Fossil Pokemon team, but decided that'd be more Vandal Savage, plus Fossils are all part Rock so don't have enough type variety for a Champion.  The Johto Legendries have been the most strongly tied to the franchise's environmentalist themes so I see them fitting Ra's the best.  Plus in this version of the Universe these characters are not necessarily Evil.

[Update 2024: I've changed my mind and decided Ra's team should be the fully evolved Johto Starters, Tyranatar and the Johto Eveelutions.]

There will be an Unnown cave in the game where they are being researched by an Edward Nygma who trains them exclusively, you can battle him but it’s not required. 

It’s companion Game is Pokemon Cat, where everything is basically the same except you play as Selina and Bruce is the Rival.  And a different Origin story, someone else will have to write that.  And Holly Robinson (your friend with benefits) will replace Alfred.

I made a conscience decision not to shoehorn in every Batman villain, Black Mask, Two-Face, Deadshot, are all ones that wouldn’t work in this premise.

And that goes double for The Joker.  There are many great Batman stories with no Joker in them.  So given the Joker overload of the Arkham Games I figured a video game Batman universe that opts out of forcing in The Joker would be nice.

Those left out can also be viewed as being saved for a possible Sequel.  I was limiting this to the Pokemon available in the Advanced Generation games which are what I’m most Nostalgic for. 

It would be easier to come up with a Two-Face story-line in the Black and White Generation where the core Legendary Pokemon are Yin-Yang themed which makes them a fitting target for Two-Face.  Other Pokemon that tend to come in duality themed pairs include Plusle and Minun (the first Pika clones), and Espeon and Umbreon the second Gen Eveelutions who are thematically day and night, (that factors into why they’re used in Pokemon Colosseum).  He could also be someone who only fights in double battles.

Hell, thematically the Sun and Moon generation fits my Bat & Cat contrast better with the Mascot Legendaries being a Solar Lion and a Lunar Bat.

A Joker based Pokemon trainer would likely have a pair of Poochyena/Mightyena as homages to The Joker’s Hyenas, and maybe he'd have a Mr.Mime or Mime Jr.

September Anime Update Week 2

Episode 31 of Hugtto!PreCure was an upgrade episode, but I still don’t have much to say about it.

Steins;Gate 0 episode 19 was very good, I think this quasi sequel may indeed prove to be worth it.

With episode 7 of Overlord III it looks like they’re finally trying to make up for lost time in actually making our villain protagonists look villainous.  Not exactly what I was in the mood for right now.

Episode 10 of Happy Sugar Life was a pretty revealing episode.

The 4th episode of Attack on Titan season 3 was interesting.

Revue Starlight had a good start, but it’s been slowly losing me.  It’s visual Aesthetic shows that this is being made by a protege of Ikuhara, but they don’t have Ikuhara’s true talent.  I was watching episode 10 on my Laptop with earphones in while my brother was watching a friggin lifetime movie on TV, and the lifetime movie was managing to distract me from my trippy Yuri Anime.

After watching episode 8 of Ragnarok, I’d have to say my enthusiasm for that show is waning a bit as well.

I can’t believe I’m saying this, but I think I’m getting bored of Hugtto!PreCure.  For the first the half of 2018 it was phenomenal, looking to be a 10 out of 10 show.  But the last few weeks have like it’s entered stall mode, and now episode 32 felt like a chore to finish.

Basically the Summer season is looking pretty weak now, with the only one keeping me particularly engaged is the carry over form last season, and even that is inferior to the show it’s a spin off of.

It may be over a week before I post the next update.

My Life as a Shipper

I’m not sure I can accurately name this post since it’s not an attempt to comprehensively go over every ship I’ve ever shipped.  I just wanna share some things.  And this won’t exactly be chronological either.  Some of this reminiscing is about Fan Fiction I did read, but plenty is also more about stuff I imagined, that I would have written myself if I wasn’t so lazy.

It may surprise my followers (if any exist) to learn that my earliest ships were all Het, I’ve been a Yuri shipper for a long time now, but not quite from the start.  And to a certain extent I’ve never abandoned my Het shipping, I am still ultimately a Cis-Het Male after all.

Early on I did a lot of imagining myself into shows having storylines with the female characters I was attracted to.

My first real ship was shipping Dawn and Spike from Buffy The Vampire Slayer.  It’s weird looking back on that now since it’s not the kind of thing I’m likely to ship today at all.  But I have fond memories of exploring now long dead Dawn themed fan fiction sites, where I mostly got into stories about this ship but did read others.  And for context you should know I’m exactly the same age as Michelle Trachtenberg, so I wasn’t seeing Dawn as the little girl of the show, she was rather the only character I could come close to seeing myself in.  But I shipped her with Spike not because I had any attraction to James Marsters but because she canonically had a crush on Spike and so I wanted her to get what she wanted, and they did have chemistry.

The early Het Ships I shipped that I still care about are the Zelda ones interestingly enough.  I was a big Link and Malon shipper, which included Link/Marin and Link/Romani and also Link/Cremia.  I read an old Zelda Universe article called The Girl with the Red Hair: Malon + Link, which I really liked, and it still exists.
https://zeldauniverse.net/2010/11/28/the-girl-with-the-red-hair/
I think that’s a reposting however, because it’s dated to 2010 and I’m confident I’d read this before Twilight Princess came out.  Because as we were learning more about it I felt like it was confirming the theory of that article, TP Link must descend from the Hero of Time and Malon.  YouTube videos about Malon theorizing seem to be when on her as a love interest mostly just indirectly repeating that article but then adding the TP element.

The Fan Fiction I was into back then, on both the Dawn subject and the Zelda subject, included a lot of angst.  I was into scenarios about triangles and jealousy and unrequited love.  Some of them even got pretty Dark.  I think I would have become a Non-Monogamous shipper sooner if I’d simply learned of that being an option sooner.  But make no mistake, my current desire for everyone being happy in the end stories doesn’t mean I don’t see the appeal of angsty triangle melodrama.  A number of Dawn fics were between seasons 5 and 6 or between episodes of season 6.  I was also interested in the idea of stories about a post Majora’s Mask Link having his dark side drawn out by the Fierce Deity Mask.

It’s hard to say where my Femslash interest truly began.  When I was into Dawn fics I read some Femslash ones about her, some with Buffy, some with Faith, possibly one with Tara.  But they weren’t what I actively shipped.

Noir was my introduction to Yuri.  I first stumbled upon that show by surfing my family's On Demand service and seeing it on Anime Network On Demand, where episode 9, the second part of a two parter, was the earliest episode currently up.  Watching that episode was the first time I ever saw 2D Girls Kiss.  And as I continued the show I got really into Chloe and her unrequited feelings for Kirika.  However it took awhile strangely for me to realize Kirika and Mireille were also canon, I still had some heteronormativity to get over.  I remember that the first time I saw the word Yuri was on Noir’s IMDB forum, someone had posted a thread called “Noir Yuri Pics” or something and I originally assumed it must mean something more specific then just lesbian.

Around then was also when I started actually reading DC Comics, and Stephanie Brown became my favorite Comic Book character, and it didn’t take long for me to start shipping her with Cassandra Cain.  But another niche Het Ship I supported was Tim Drake and Darla Aquista.  I also like Linkara supported the controversial Donna Troy and Terry Long relationship.  There was an old fansite I really liked that is now gone called Donna Troy Woman and Hero.

I’ve also engaged in some Pokemon shipping over the years.  More so game characters though, filling in the blank slate that is Leaf.  Anime wise that I like May and Dawn way more than Misty makes me pretty controversial.  My imagination always treated Lass as a single character rather than a class, a Fille Fatale who flirts with both Red and Leaf.  Basically there were little if any existing fanfics I found to serve my tastes there.  I did enjoy a series on FanFiction.Net about Leaf and Dawn.

I was also someone who’s interest in the Twilight ignited Vampire craze lead me to research the Pre-Dracula stuff, which lead to me reading and really liking Carmilla.  Because of Paul Feval that Vampire interest lead into and overlapped with my French Pulp Fiction interest which allowed me to learn about Eugenie Danglars and Louise d’Armilly.

The Vampire craze also lead me to The Vampire Diaries, where I found another of my top Het Ships, Jeremy and Anna, played by Stephen R McQueen and Malese Jow.  That ship was prominent in my early Tumblr activity.

Then came the era of Pretty Little Liars being my favorite TV show, I became a strong Sparia shipper and looked into other ships as well.

Back to Zelda.  Prior to Skyward Sword I quite liked how Nintendo was mostly avoiding making Link and Zelda a couple.  But then Hyrule Warriors comes along implying they’re always destined to fall in love and I was quite annoyed.  So I’ve always had hostility towards Link/Zelda shipping.  However the Skyward Sword Prequel Manga included in the Hyrule Historia (which I saw glimpses of before I properly got to read it) kinda won me over on it.  Though that’s technically Link and Hylia.

Zelda is one franchise where my Het Shipping is still strong.  But I have became a supporter of Zelda Femslash.  For both Skyward Sword and Hyrule Warriors I like to ship Zelda with Impa, and for Twilight Princess I like Zelda/Midna, and I see Ashe as a Lesbian on principle.  I also now support the theory that Cremia actually had feelings for Anju in Majora’s Mask.

I developed an interest in various Tolkien and Silmarillion related Femslash ships.  Like Nienor Niniel and Nellas, as well as viewing Nessa, Haleth and Tar-Telperien as Lesbians.

I started a Final Fantasy Femslash tumblr that I’ve mostly let die since my interests there are limited.  I ultimately view Terra Branford as Asexual and yet I still crave material about her and Celes.  I also strongly support Agrias and Ovelia from Final Fantasy Tactics.

Since getting much more actively into Anime starting in 2014 there are a lot of ships I’ve become supporters of, from Magical Girls to Cute Girls Doing Cute Things to the better Harems, and the occasional specifically Yuri show/OVA.  But I’ve supported some Het stuff too and even learned to appreciate Yaoi and Otokonoko.  But strangely nothing I’ve found in the last year and a half has really compelled me the way my old ships did.  Though perhaps they just need time, again I haven’t been rewatching stuff as much as I used to.

However recently learning about SaGa Frontier thanks to Yahweasel has made me a supporter of the Femslash potential it provides.

I just watched Pokemon Generations

I was someone who was a little disappointed by Pokemon Origins, so I didn't even take much notice of this project originally.  But I happened to be interested in revisiting Pokemon the last couple days and saw this could be view legally for free on YouTube.
https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLQWzKIaERirwv9M89dxN3bNLY0PyuChOU

And I really enjoyed it, it was surprisingly good, in fact I'll even call it great.  And it looks much better then Sun and Moon.  I hope they do something similar again.

The premise is a series of Anime shorts in a Universe separate from the Main Anime and more similar to the Games.  And they focus on other characters rather then being from the player characters' POVs, though some of them do cameo.

My only complaint is all of the Cameos from player characters were male.  With Origins I accepted it'd focus on Red the original protagonist but was still annoyed that Leaf couldn't even cameo, here the focus was supposed to be on different characters.  It's even implied Red's two episodes are in separate continuities due to the Starter Pokemon featured, so there is no reason one of them couldn't be Leaf instead.  For the generations where the female Player character got to be an Ash companion in the main Anime I would concede it's fair to give the Male ones their time in the sun here.  But Gold and Crystal had analogues in the main Anime via the Legend of Thunder special, so the fair option should have been using Lyra here.

Unlike Origins this project wasn't afraid to make some decisions that homaged the Main Anime.  Origins made a point to downplay Pikachu which the first episode of Generations sought to rectify.  The second episode implies Kanto region police use Growlith/Arcanine.  Rayquaza and Deoxys have a battle with each other like the 7th movie. Then there was the spotlight put on Iris in scene that belonged to the Player character in the Games.

I have never seen much of the Best Wishes era of the Anime, so I can't say much to compare that and this Iris characterization wise.  But Generations is arguably being made for an older Age demographic which shows in how this Iris does look sexier.

When X and Y first dropped I remember there being a fan theory that their Evil Team were like Nazis or Neo-Nazis, partly because of how Kalos was based on France.  So today watching this Anime made in late 2016 and early 2017 I couldn't help thinking "are they Trumping up Lysander?"  But then the DC Nerd in me realized this Lysander both looks a lot like Alexander Luthor Jr, and is kind of doing the same stuff.  Which reminds me how back in 2006 when I had a chip on my shoulder towards a certain film I kept pointing to Giovanni as a model for how to do a CEO Luthor right, now for a second Time Nintendo has done Luthor better then the WB can.  And that reminds me how the CEO Luthor was kind of based on 80s Trump and how he became President in 2000.  It's a weird world we live in.

Anyway I hope Nintendo decided to make more projects like this.  I have no interest in the main Anime for Sun and Moon, but I'd be intrigued to see a Generations style glimpse at the world of the newest games.

And maybe they could even consider making similar things for other Nintendo properties.  I mean how the player characters are handled here shows you could make Zelda shorts that keep Link silent and avoid mentioning him by name.

The First Week of September Anime Update

Steins;Gate 0 episode 18 was a very intense episode, I’m unsure exactly what happened at the end.

Episode 6 of Overlord III was okay.

I couldn’t get far into episode 7 of How NOT to Summon a Demon Lord, so I’ve decided to drop it for now.  Mother’s Basement decided call this a good show and Ragnarock bad, in some ways yes narrativly speaking Ragnarock does more of what annoys me.  But it’s this show that has the over exaggerated Ecchi I simply hate.

Shera I would enjoy a lot more if her character design was like Deedlit from Record of Lodoss War.  Deedlit’s character design is the main reason I keep trying to give that old fantasy Anime a shot, but it’s story keeps failing to engage me.  Yet I got idiots telling me how annoyed I am by these ridiculous mounds of gelatin must mean I don’t like breasts, but I am a Makoto Kino fan, and back when I was more a Western Comic Book Nerd I fapped to Power Girl plenty.  Yes, you read that right, in Ecchi Anime there are breasts so ridiculous I’m now thinking of Power Girl's as plausible and realistic in comparison. 

With Rem I feel like it doesn’t match her character how much skin she’s showing, she gives off a much more modest vibe, so how she’s dressing just feels inconsistent.

Happy Sugar Life episode 9 was gut wrenching.

Revue Starlight episode 9 was good.  It’s weird how they introduced the time loop twist as this big thing in episode 7 but them seem to have pretty quickly resolved that aspect of the plot.

Episode 9 of Ragnarok had me thinking of The Ten Commandments.  This show continues to amaze me.

With Episode 3 of Season 3 of Attack On Titan the story is finally getting interesting.

I want a return of the Bright Theatrical Historical/Biblical Epic

In the vain of DeMille's The Ten Commandments and Ben-Hur and Quo Vadis and yes even the oft maligned Cleopatra staring Elizabeth Taylor.

I even love some of the lower budget examples of this genre, like The Robe and Demetrius and The Gladiators, or Solomon and Sheba, or really obscure ones like The Story of Ruth, The Prodigal and The Silver Chalice.  Also Richard Burton's Alexander The Great and The 300 Spartans.  Not to mention the related Sword & Sandal aka Peplum films made in Italy in the 50s and 60s.

There are still movies being made about History and The Bible, but everyone wants to make them Gritty and "Realistic" now, or occasionally a weird 300 approach, likewise with stuff based on Greek Mythology or Arthurian Legend (and yes I consider Wonder Woman part of this).  I guess they think audiences can't take that older approach seriously anymore, and yet with the Comic Book Superhero genre at least some are learning that the dark and gritty approach has a limited appeal and audiences do love bright colorful fun films as shown by the praise of Guardians of The Galaxy and how 2008's Speed Racer has been vindicated.

I don't exactly want new films to look indistinguishable from how they did back then, the technological advancements of the industry should be taken advantage of.  I'm fine with using CGI for the crowds so we no longer need to pay for a literal "cast of thousands".  And I like that now we can do more justice to the actual battles then they ever did.

What I want to see is a similar spirit or tone.  The SciFi Dune miniserieses and the Star Wars films show that that older theatrical style of acting can still be enjoyed by audiences, in fact the Thor movies have also been similar in that regard, influencing parts of the Avengers films.

In fact The Lord of The Rings films are comparable to what a modern version of this genre might look like, though I'd prefer a brighter color pallet.  Just avoid the pitfalls of The Hobbit films (though I still enjoy plenty of stuff in those).

But what really makes those old Epics not comparable to modern Blockbusters is their length.  Superhero films and Star Wars films are generally 2 or 2 and a half hours, with occasionally a cut approaching 3 hours getting a DVD release later.  It takes a Tolkien adaptation to warrant getting a 3 hour theatrical release.  It took the insane business The Dark Knight did to allow Nolan to get 2 hours and 40 minutes for Rises.

Well here's the thing, the cheaper end of those above films didn't have as long of a length.  The super long ones were typically like that because they were kind of trying to chronicle someone's entire life.  So as much as I personally want more 3 hour theatrical films, this genre can be recreated without needing to go that far.  But those examples I called cheaper are also generally lesser known, so some probably don't realize it's possible to make a film like this with a shorter run time.

The thing about my calling them "cheaper" is I'm pretty sure that, adjusted for inflation, modern Hollywood can recreate the spectacle of the biggest ones with the budget of the smaller ones.

My LOTR comparison might be an argument against them working shorter.  But you see sometimes I feel the individual discs of the Extended Editions work as stand alone films, especially FOTR, that could have easily just been two movies.  Some have said they'd have preferred the LOTR been 6 movies equating to the six books Tolkien wrote them as.  That would be more viable today then it was back then as it's almost a Cinematic Universe in reverse, the second movie is the only one with all the Fellowship together.

Basically they work shorter if you try to cover less in one movie.  Shakespeare's Anthony and Cleopatra covers less then the second half of what the Burton and Taylor Cleopatra film covered, and Charlton Heston made a movie for it that was five minutes shorter then The Dark Knight Rises.  Even a The Ten Commandments remake could work split into two films, or a trilogy with the third covering the wandering stuff DeMille's film didn't.  But suppose for the sake of creativity you want to cover subject matter old Hollywood didn't.  A Maccabees film wouldn't need to be too long if you stopped at the first Hanukkah.  There are a lot of potential interesting film ideas that haven't really been tapped yet.

Basically just find a visionary director who really likes and appreciates those old films and I'm confident they can find a way to re-imagine the basic appeal for modern audiences.  Maybe Spielberg or Colin Trevorrow would be interested since there are aspects of their appeal in both Jurassic Park and Jurassic World (I still haven't gotten to see Fallen Kingdom yet) perhaps more so the latter, Spielberg also likes to go the gritty route sometimes so he'd be a risk.  George Lucas could be perfect since his appreciation of these old school films are where Star Wars and Indiana Jones came from, one of the reasons I love The Prequels is because they remind me of these films a lot, I already talked about that in relation to Ben-Hur.

September Begins

There is no guarantee I’ll bother to comment on every Hugtto!PreCure episode from this point on.  Episode 29 was okay filler.

Steins;Gate 0 episode 17 was quite a ride.

Overlord III episode 5 was a nice fun episode.

How NOT to Summon A Demon Lord episode 6 was okay.  I may wind up dropping this show, it’s not bad but I can only take so much Ecchi.

Episode 9 of Food/Stay Night dropped, and it was a fun episode.  But I can’t help but notice that Caster/Medea is perhaps the most changed character in these Parody AUs, she’s much more submissive than the awesome Witch we originally got.

Episode 8 of Revue Starlight was very good.  I’m still apprehensive about the time loop plot twist, but this episode was quite good.

Episode 8 of Happy Sugar Life was great, the show is really getting interesting now.

Episode 6 of Ragnarock was partly a Hot Spring episode and then some other filler. 

I watched Sword Art Online Alternative and may decide to make a post on it, or maybe not, the short versions is I liked it.