The Essence of Pokemon: Pokemon Games And What I Associate Them With

pokemon blue

i was in the car driving through some farmlands in the hills and mountains. we passed by a rickety old barn my dad had pointed out previously on the trip. my sister and i were in the back seat of the diplomat, playing pokemon together on a shared file. i opened the game and found myself in a new location - a rocky cave. she had played previously, so i asked my sister, "hey, where are we?" and she replied "mount moon" and i replied "how do i get out?" and she replied "i dunno".

i later asked this same question to the schoolmate in my third grade class who had given me the game for 5 dollars. i said, "timmy, how do you get out of mount moon?" and he replied "i dunno."

pokemon crystal

i was given crystal during some christmas. at some point, my sister confronted me, saying that i had been borrowing an acquaintance's copy of crystal. i was absolutely perplexed because this was quite proveably not the case - vivian had her own copy, but ours had a save file named after me or my sister. and yet, she would not let it go, saying that our friend was really upset about it and that i should just let it go already. i decided to be my usual people-pleasing self, but i still felt a grudge about it, because i know it was my copy, but i didn't want to risk my sister hitting me in the head again as she often did when she was annoyed with me.

pokemon ruby

sometime when our mom was having another hospital stay, our dad bought us ruby and emerald to keep us occupied. we played it a lot together. i remember us calling an opposing treecko "fugly" as a combination of 'freaking' and 'ugly', and our dad having to intervene to say that it meant "fucking ugly". i asked him where it came from, and he replied with an old tv show.

another time, we were laying in bed.my sister and i shared a bedroom for much of our childhood, paired beds in the dark of night. we would often talk to each other from bed, keeping us up at least 30 minutes past our usual bedtime. in this moment, i hear my sister whispering to me.

"[name]," she said, "are you playing pokemon right now?"

"no," i replied, truthfully; i was trying to sleep, and i didn't want to get in trouble for being awake at this hour.

"oh," came her meek reply. "i thought i heard the battle music."

some time passed, and i turned in bed, and asked the same. "are you playing pokemon right now?"

"no," she replied.

"okay," i said, "i also thought i heard the battle music."

pokemon firered

we have family in san francisco - an uncle and aunt who worked at, or currently may still work at, a scientology museum. we were driving across the golden gate bridge to visit. i remember my sister taking a photo of some empty fields that i added the contemporarily popular "horrifying graystripe" to, subtitled we found graystripe in a hopeless place". it got moderately popular at 3.8k notes at the time i write this.

more relevant, i remember my sister and i using the firered and leafgreen union room to chat with each other over text. i still think it's such a novel experience. i used to hope that someone driving nearby would also be in the union room to chat with us.

pokemon pearl

this was the first pokemon game i was actively following online. ever since i was a tapeworm age of 6 years old, i would go online with my family's dial-up internet and gateway 2000 win98 pc and search serebii.net for ages. i was obsessed with piplup - named "pochama" in japan, before it was brought overseas - and i fixated on its design and how to draw it from memory.

during the same trip i wrote about under firered, i was playing pearl. diamond and pearl were just released around that time, and i was, of course, insatiable. i got a piplup doll, which had a built-in speaker, and a little piplup toy which acted like an RC car.

i remember standing in some store on the boardwalk with my uncle, aunt, and sister, and i heard "we're in heaven", which i recognized instantly from an ash x hikari AMV which i was totally bonkers about. i wanted to stand there and dance and sing quietly to it - or maybe not quietly, considering my age and how intensely emotional it was making me - and got dragged out of the store crying halfway through the song.

i remember breeding my empoleon starter and naming his seventh child "kassi". i don't remember what my empoleon's name was, truth be told, but i think the fact that i remember his seventh daughter and none of the other eggs i hatched is really funny. i am always putting women before men #feminism #lesbian

there weren't really any good places to sleep at my aunt and uncle's apartment. i remember laying on the futon they had and it was uncomfortable but i had my piplup so it was OK. i was really happy about the piplup.

i seem to remember playing nintendogs on the way home from that trip as well. this specific trip was very much of that era...