All right, let's try this again.

A while back, I drew a Pokémon webcomic where I played through two Pokémon games (Blue Version and Silver Version) and riffed on lines of dialogue that caught my eye. (Which is basically what I do when I play video games anyway.) The result was an unhinged, tongue-in-cheek journey through an odd world of insane professors, utterly incompetent criminal organizations, unnecessarily detailed environments, and the side effects of using too many Repels. I'd previously hosted it on a webcomic hosting site, but that site went belly-up some years ago, so I thought I'd bring the comic back online here so more people can enjoy it. I think it's hilarious.

I'll be putting the comics up on the blog sequentially, so first up, here's the title page! It's called "Trainer Wants to Battle" because so much of the dialogue in Pokémon games comes from the things Trainers say to you before and after you battle them.

 Also, the past few weeks have been a learning experience for me. I was experiencing severe social media burnout, feeling like all my attempts to post and network and build friendships on social media were somehow making me feel even less connected, more isolated, and like I just couldn't get people adequately interested in my work (or indeed me) no matter how hard I tried. 

(Read on for self-reflection that has absolutely nothing to do with Pokémon webcomics.)

Literary thoughts

 You'll have to pardon the lack of new (old?) content. I've been dealing with a lot, my creative well seems to have run dry in this summer heat, and I've been taking some time off to take care of myself because I am very bad at resting. As much as I'd love to just be able to go nonstop and be ultra-productive all the time and write fifty novels a year... humans don't work like that.

One of the things I've been doing while resting is reading (not research papers, surprisingly). There's something emotionally, mentally, and spiritually healing about the power of a story to temporarily take you to a different world, to dredge up fond feelings and nostalgic memories, to allow you to be right there looking over the characters' shoulders, sympathizing with their struggles and celebrating their successes. I've been reading a series of books set in the 1940's that I remember from when I was a kid, and it's been giving me those warm cozy nostalgia vibes. Okay, I'm not quite that old, but it reminds me of my grandparents' neighborhood, of simpler and quieter times, much like the effect of a Norman Rockwell painting.

Anyhow, I guess the whole business has got me thinking about some questionable literary advice I've heard over the years, which then of course makes me want to vent about it on my blog where I'm not actually directly debating with anyone. (I hate arguing. It's so pointless and never gets either party what they want and all you end up with is hurt feelings. I think it's much more sensible to just present your opinion and leave it for people to think about.)

One last old Neopian Times comic. I'm pretty proud of that background actually. (Although, yikes with the composition. Rule of thirds, anyone?)

 If only stat training worked this way. On the website, raising a Neopet's stats is an arduous, expensive, time-walled process, which makes me wonder how the people on the Battledome high score list ever got there. Sometimes, upon completion of training, a pet gets a random super bonus and gets extra points added to the stat they were training. But only sometimes. Much to Hyren's chagrin.

You might also notice that I hand-drew and lettered the speech bubbles in this comic, as opposed to previous comics where I used the text tool and Manga Studio's speech bubble generation tool. The latter, while handy, was also a bit limiting. These days, I prefer to hand-draw speech bubbles because it gives me much greater flexibility, and I feel that it's more aesthetically cohesive than canned ellipses* and dry computer-generated text.

*Man, "Canned Ellipses" would be such an awesome band name. I feel like that's what Johannes Kepler would have named a rock band.

This is the last "Hyren goes unhinged during the Altador Cup" comic, I promise.

 I don't know what more to say about this comic than that I just really enjoy Hyren taking himself very seriously when no one else does. And his face in the last panel just gets me every time.

Looking at this comic now, I realize I spelled "favourite" wrong! For shame! (As Neopets was founded by two Brits, the franchise uses British English and all Neopian Times submissions are required to do the same. Not sure how this one slipped past the radar. Whoops.)

(And yes, that is why all of my Neopets fanfiction uses British English, if you were confused about that.)

 So on the website, when you "read" a book to one of your Neopets (i.e. basically use a book item on them), they say something cute like "Wow, this is one of my favourites!" The lines are randomly pulled from a prewritten list, which was a fun programming trick back in the 90's, but it also results in Neopets sometimes saying things not really in line with their personalities*. 

*On-site, Neopets don't really have personalities; they're essentially just a graphic and some stats, and a large part of the appeal of the website for creative types such as myself is the fun of coming up with personalities and backstories and psychological issues for each of one's pets.

In this old Neopian Times comic, I feel like I kind of like the art more than the joke, but eh. So in the Yooyuball game you can play on the site, there's an ice debuff that temporarily freezes the opposing team, and I guess I just got to thinking about how that would work in-universe. Except this only works for teams with Bori players.

(For those not in the know about Neopets lore, the Bori anciently magically froze themselves as a defensive measure against the Bringer of Night, an ambiguously malevolent demigod.)

I'm not really sure why I ended up drawing so many Altador Cup-related comics. Either the event just sparked a lot of ideas for me, or maybe I just didn't have much else going on at the time.

 

Another old Neopian Times comic. This isn't really franchise-based humor as much as it is an example of my pets' odd family dynamic. Hyren's usually a pretty chill guy, but there are two things that can instantly make him go aggro: his family being in trouble, and someone badmouthing his favorite sports team. Including members of his family.

There is a bit of an inside joke here; Kreludor has historically not been the highest-ranking team in the Altador Cup (although they did win the Cup at least once, as far as I can tell), but Hyren consistently roots for them every year. He doesn't care whether they win or lose--he's just happy to support a space-based team that's not Virtupets-affiliated. And what Team Kreludor lacks in talent and payroll, they more than make up for in heart and not having cheaters or Elon Hughlis on the team.

 I just love Hyren's expressions in this one. Drawing unhinged Hyren brings joy to my soul. He's fun to write as pretty much the cantankerous middle-aged dad of the household.

(Granted, after the events of a fic that I never submitted to the Times but will post here eventually, Hyren would no longer have ethical qualms about Team Virtupets, but he would still object to them on the grounds that they just win too often and that's boring.)