One of my biggest interests is Pokemon and has been for quite some time. It started during the pokemon craze of the 90's, stopped somewhere around the time Misty got togepi, and started right back up again in the late 2000's and has been a strong interest since.
Here's some of my actual pokemon I hold near and dear to my heart.
Backstory
Back in the late 90's, when Pokemon first exploded into popularity, I was a fan of the TV show and collecting cards. I was a child at the time with no Gameboy, so I never got to play the games. (I actually thought the games came out after the show and the cards because of how popular those two things were!) But I would watch the show every day after school, and would get pokemon cards as gifts. Along with random merch. I had a Pokemon puzzle, a pikachu stapler, and a couple of pencil toppers. There was other random stuff, but I can't remember what.
When the pokemon craze died down so did my own interest. I thought pokemon was out of my life for good. Until the end of 2008. I had a DS Lite. My best friend at the time also had a DS Lite. She used to play the pokemon games in her childhood. So of course, she got Pokemon Diamond. And kept recommending the game. We were both in college, and I was at risk of failing my math class. (I'm terrible at math.) The score I'd get on my final would affect the difference between me passing and failing. Well, I passed! And as a reward to myself, I walked down to Gamestop and bought my own copy of Pokemon Diamond. I spent most of my winter break playing the game. And loved it! Eventually I beat it, though still played around post-game from time to time.
It might have been that summer, or the summer after that, when I got bored and decided to catch every pokemon possible to catch in Diamond. I didn't have wifi back then. I had to go on my computer, look up what I needed and where to find it, and write it down on a piece of paper to reference back to. It wasn't a project I was taking seriously though. Just a way to kill time during the summer.
I eventually met my boyfriend who eventually gifted me Heartgold. I tried catching all the pokemon in that game too. And then I finally got wireless internet! So I could actually trade on the GTS. But back then, you could only trade pokemon you had already "seen" in your pokedex. Which sucked. But then my boyfriend got me Black one Christmas. And it had this feature called "GTS Negotiations." You would get paired up with a random person. You'd show each other pokemon you wanted to trade for, and tap on emoticons to signify if you want it or not. Iirc, one emoticon was a heart, one was a happy face, and one was a frowny face. It was a huge improvement over the GTS at the time, but there was no way to ask the person if they had something you needed. You had to just, sit there and hope they'd show you what you needed. Then spam the fuck out of the heart notification if they did. I spent so much time connecting and disconnecting with people. But eventually, I got the rest of what I needed- except for event legendaries!
And then Pokemon X and Y came out. Followed by Sun and Moon. Followed by Sword and Shield. I continued catching every new pokemon in those games. Thus, I continued having caught "all of them except for some event legendaries." Bit by bit, past event legendaries came back for the usual limited time. And then, it was down to just Manaphy, Jirachi, and Zarude. My boyfriend bought me Pokemon Ranger for my birthday. In the end game, you are able to do a mission to get a Manaphy egg which you can hatch and transfer to Diamond and/or Heartgold. I don't remember the details of it, just that I finally had Manaphy! A year or so later, Brilliant Diamond came out and if you have a save file of Sword/Shield, an NPC will give you a Jirachi. So I got one! Then, it was just Zarude.
I was in a venting mood one day. Kept complaining about everything there was to complain about until I was out of things to complain about. So I racked my brain for more things to complain about. One of those being the existence of event pokemon and how there needs to be another zarude event so I can finally have every pokemon already! My boyfriend decided to google zarude events and found out there was currently an event ticket to buy in Pokemon Go that will allow you to catch zarude. The planets had aligned, and I had more than enough Google Play store credits to cover the cost of the event ticket- credits that were going to expire in less than a month. So I got the ticket, did a bunch of bullshit in Pokemon Go, and finally caught zarude. On my birthday at that!
Here it is, my completed collection.
I also have some pokemon figurines and plushies. Below is a picture of them all!
Favorite Pokemon
When I was first obsessed with pokemon in the 90's, my favorites were a tie between Arcanine and Ninetails. I actually had a holographic Ninetails card that I considered a prized possession. Still have it! For the longest time, they were my favorites until I stumbled upon a mightyena in Diamond. I thought it was the coolest-looking thing ever. And to this day, mightyena is my favorite. I stumbled upon an absol in Diamond too and also thought it was cool af. So absol became, like, a second favorite. Discovered houndoom later on somewhere and also thought it was the coolest thing. Called it my third. Everything I love after that is in no particular order. But they include liepard, gogoat, lycanroc (midday form), milotic, mew, mabostiff, sneasel, and stunky. My favorite legendary trio is Entei, Suicune, and Raikou. I struggle with choosing a favorite eeveelution. It's always a toss-up between leafeon, glaceon, and espeon. But probably leafeon.
Games I've played
You can hover over the images for commentary!
My favorite of all of them is Legends Arceus. I love open world games, and my favorite part of pokemon is collecting them all. So of course, this one would be my favorite. I used to consider Heartgold a favorite, but the games have had so many quality of life features since then, that it's hard to go back. Black is a favorite, but even that's hard to go back to. I loved gen 6 though. And Pokemon Scarlet is one of my favorites too, despite its flaws. Gen 7 is my least favorite. The constant cut scenes ruined the gameplay for me. And then there was Ultra Sun/Moon which I passed on because of it. Which turned out being bad, because there were legendaries introduced in it that I missed out on catching. But that's okay because I was able to get them in the Sword DLC.
Graphics
I've collected stamps and blinkies, below! (Though they can also be found in my graphics tab.) You can also see a series of pokemon icons I made here.
