Gohkedex

I guess it's about time I set up a proper description. Not a minor, currently watching through the Pokémon anime, uh. Multishipper. I'm much more active on discord, I check Tumblr pretty sparingly. Asks are always open for anyone! Although I doubt there's much I can say of interest. She/Her!

[gokedex]

Shigegou week day 7. I hereby curse you with this bullshit. You can remove the curse EXCLUSIVELY by dancing very aggressively to Abba, and I mean VERY AGGRESSIVELY.

[gokedex]

Shigegou week day 5 ig </3

[gokedex]

Shigegou week day 3!

[gokedex]

Shigegou week!! Day 2!!!! It's kind of done!!! I need sleep!!

[gokedex]

Happy shigegou week to all the freaks out there fr

Also this

[rinawoohoo]

Imy shigegou

[kohakhearts]

entanglement 2: electric boogaloo is NOT a “goh never met ash” story, it’s a “goh never joined project mew” story and actually, on a deeper level than that, a “goh never heard horace’s side of the story and made up with him” story

obviously, not meeting ash also had all of the above effects on him. HOWEVER ☝️ in this iteration he never gets to reframe any of his other relationships, which ultimately results in him being unable to cope with ash eventually leaving him. they would stay friends - but they wouldn’t be close, because after that initial separation, goh would do everything to convince himself he never needed ash anyway

what do i, the author, achieve by Making Him Worse in this flavour? well. this can’t be entanglement 2: electric boogaloo if gary isn’t there for goh to cry all over. so that

but wait, how does he meet gary if he never joined project mew!

well. goh can still ATTEMPT project mew. but because he never has a justification to move beyond the idea that the issue isn’t him, but is everyone Else, and that maybe ash is just Built Different, i don’t think he would stick with it and/or i don’t think he would make the chaser cut. the latter thing would be more devastating to him so i’d probably do that. tbh.

so anyway i actually think this could make him worse than just straight-up not meeting ash. and entanglement goh already sucks but he’s like, you know, very bottled up about it. in this same-au-slightly-to-the-left, he’d be a lot more volatile (yes yes chapter 1 entanglement goh still yells at his coworkers but like, hes not a freak about it, he just wants them to mind their own business. here he’d be a lot more overtly aggressive, i think)

ok so like. what IS the au, you’re wondering. and you know what? so am i. this is where i admit that i have had a time loop au in my brain for literal years and no grasp on how to write it because thematically, every idea i have just kind of sucks. there are two main paths though:

the gary pov, in which he gets time looped specifically because something happens to goh and he has to “save” him - this is because gary is the homura to goh’s madoka and i will actually die on that hill (gary is also the homura to ash’s madoka, so it’s not even a ship thing, gary’s just deeply homura-coded To Me. something about the character who drives the protagonist from behind the scenes, without the protagonist necessarily realizing it to begin with) so i think it’s a compelling narrative. also this is my goh grows up to become a suicidal Freak agenda. honestly i cannot bring myself to write this because as much as i enjoy blorbo cathartically killing himself in theory, and LOVE to read it, and love to WRITE it, it is too embarrassing for me to share it. however let it be known i think a lot about the implications of goh killing himself and gary feeling SO guilty about it that he ends up trapped in a time loop just to save him (the reason this is thematically Messy though is because i think it’s not a strong message if he DOES succeed in saving him, but it’s unfortunately a really weak narrative if goh dies anyway, and also just bleak and hopeless. and i love a tragedy as much as the next guy but that is simply too much. sorry)

the goh pov, in which he has to relive a set period over and over again in order to realize that the only way he can change an outcome (which obviously can’t be him killing himself because that wouldn’t work well as a story. SAD. but could still be him dying or close to dying) is by allowing himself to reach out for help/accept help from others. but even when he realizes that on the surface, the continued acceptance of it would be hard for him, hence the continuation of the loop even after he begrudgingly admits to letting someone (ok, well, who am i kidding. gary) help him. however, this is just kind of boring. and i’m admittedly more interested in the gary pov. because i’ve seen ENOUGH of goh’s internal strife. now i want to see it externally.

so anyway, all that to say. i am so Fucked because this idea haunts me but every possible variation is just a) too cringe (me writing about blorbo killing himself 100 times? acceptable at age 15. humiliating at age 25), b) thematically kind of problematic (it’s up to someone else to save a person who is so far down the path of their misery they refuse to look back and see that anyone is even capable of caring for them? I DONT BELIEVE THIS. THIS IS ACTIVELY WORKING AGAINST MY WORLDVIEW), or c) kind of just not an interesting story (which i guess, the point of a time loop is that it’s repetitive but i don’t want to write something like that. i want the repetition to be a vehicle for something else and not just repetition for the sake of repetition)

potentially easy solution to all this is to run the first idea with ash instead of gary, because even if i don’t necessarily Like what the message of such a narrative is, that dynamic actually is closely aligned with their canon dynamic. ash reaches out to goh! thats their whole Schtick!

but why the FUCK would i commit to writing a fic like this if it’s not going to be about my number 1 guys. which like, dont get my wrong. love the ship. love ash. but i already have a multiple chapter project thats all about their dynamic (progeny) and it’s kind of a similar flavour anyway because progeny!goh is more mentally ill than any of us is equipped to deal with, tbh. but ash can fix him. and also make him worse but mostly he can fix him. PLUS. AGAIN. whats the point if its not my guys #myguys. i love the idea of ash being a major point of contact for gary who is trying to save goh from himself because he really truly believes he Can Fix Him (ACTUALLY. he doesnt believe this but he feels determined to fix him anyway, because a) he is gay and b) [insert long essay about narrative foils here]). the gary angst here is obviously like. its right there man. oh wow the orphan character realizes that someone he cares about dying before he has a chance to express how important they are to him in any meaningful way is actually terrible and awful and he cant cope with it. wow Gary Oak And The Themes Of Unyielding Grief. but then we have the issue of like, ok thats kind of an obvious lesson and he’d surely figure that out WELL before goh kills himself 100 times. so for the drama his honesty would end up being an ineffective intervention. and now we’re back at “so the theme is i think someone else is responsible for Fixing the suicidal guy.” well thats just great. (sarcastic. obviously.)

so anyway yeah all that to say. i WAS feeling brave and started drafting the gary pov take but then i kept getting stopped by the ok so what is this story saying. and am i really okay with it saying that. and once again i am firmly back at the drawing board, feeling like an insane person. ugh

[kohakhearts]

@gokedex answering in a reblog because i admittedly have a lot of thoughts about this and have struggled to come up with what feels like the “right” answer for whatever story it is i actually want to tell here, haha. would love to hear your thoughts on any of this!!

when i first conceived of the idea, it had actually been a desire to write something involving hoopa more than a time loop thing specifically. hoopa’s ability to just, yoink things out of alternate dimensions has a lot of potential for chaos - and the possibility of it sending someone to another dimension and (likely not for any malicious reason, tbh) trapping them there was a fun idea. i think from there a time loop situation isn’t really implausible, but it would be more of a “millions of repeating fractured universes” thing - i.e. where if, say, goh is getting sent to an alternate universe slightly different from this one, the same kinds of things keep happening over and over but it’s just different enough in each new iteration for him to struggle to rectify the Problems. gary would be a piece of him actually solving the issue and then of course he would have to grapple with the fact that HIS gary wasn’t actually there for any of it - but now he has this deep bond with gary and they don’t exactly have the best relationship. so he has to use his newfound ability to Take The Leap and reach out to gary himself

that was the original idea, which tbh i scrapped early on specifically because it was like…ok, this is just entanglement again, haha. and i was still writing entanglement at the time i was thinking it up, so that was not very interesting to me. it is slightly more interesting now, but i can’t figure out a motive hoopa would have for this beyond mischief, so idk

the other idea, which some friends thought of for me, was to use celebi. this is where the horace backstory would feel really relevant - that maybe, many years down the line, gary and goh end up caught in a timeloop together because they happen to be in ilex forest at the same time and goh finally does find horace’s letter. but at this point it hasn’t been like, 3 years - it’s been like 15. he’d be really upset and then, idk, do something drastic about it, and gary feels guilty because maybe he some could have prevented this. so celebi reacts to this event that takes place at its shrine by looping them in that day over and over until gary finds a way to help goh realize that he can still move forward and change even if he can’t necessarily go back and fix that part of it: symbolically, i like the idea of using celebi because every time we see it in the anime it’s got some connection to an adult character’s child self, so it’s symbolically a good pick. but the story feels weak to me like this and i can’t imagine how the characters would even end up in this situation, let alone why gary would feel strongly enough about goh’s response here (since for all their parallel experiences, the experience of BEING abandoned isn’t really one gary knows. he is the one to historically have left others behind, haha) to want to help him

then of course, well. it’s a time thing, so there’s always the dialga and/or palkia path. but i don’t really know what would look like, beyond maybe gary actively seeking dialga out to try to get it to reverse time for him so he can go back and help goh. this is just madoka magica though, if, like, kyubey is just mental illness and not a stand-in fo any kind of deep social or genre commentary, lmao. but again, gary being the homura to goh’s madoka is good, 10/10 dynamic. i originally said that like 3 years ago when filling out a random shipping chart and tbh i’ll stand by that evaluation, haha

so yeah, there are many options with their own sets of pros/cons here. i really don’t know what would work best!! or what would be most enjoyable for me to write, for that matter!

[gokedex]

I have no writing skills whatsoever, so I can't really say anything from a perspective outside of being insane about the guys, but personally, I'd read the hell out of any of these concepts. Entanglement but slightly different? Sounds like a whole feast if that's what you wanted to write. The guys being stuck in a situation together and being forced to bond is great. No notes.

But the time loop being something Gary actively seeks out would add a whole new world of HURT. Goh would have so much to be mad about (the self-sacrifice of Gary getting himself trapped in a loop just to save him? Freedom of choice being taken away? Being forced to relive a presumably awful day? Who knows. All of the above.) Plus, it being Gary's decision instead of something forced onto him would definitely help keep the concept of NEEDING to fix someone else away. Wether or not that would actually work out or just subvert too much focus onto shigegou, I don't know.

I'm kind of biased to the Hoopa option as well because Hoopa is so??? The guy ever. I love that guy. I wanna see more of that guy.

[kohakhearts]

GET IN FUJOS WE’RE PLAYING HOMODACHI LIFE

[kohakhearts]

MY YAOI #MYYAOI

[kohakhearts]

[pose reference is by phodon, i thought it was cute hehe]

goh has no idea he's looking at him like that because he's too busy fantasizing about punching him in the face. this IS the dynamic of all time

[rinawoohoo]

poorly drawn and colored shigegou🤓

[zefirart]

Happy birthday Rafal! 🍭

[gokedex]

What waking up today has felt like

[chromaji]

dear god he HIT THE FELL SLAYSTONE BUTTON

[elysianstars]

@weisscreamcake So I have additional thoughts on whether their memories (and crucially, Rafal's portrayal) of Nil are even accurate, and now I've been activated to elaborate!

The general assumption is that while Rafal is pretending to be Nil, he's doing a pretty good job. But...what if he's actually not? What if his impression of Nil was seriously off, and that's why not only Nel, but even Sombron could figure out he was an impostor?

They knew each other as children for what, a few months at the most? It's unclear how long Nil was away from Nel, and keeping company with Rafal instead, because the only time it's talked about is at the end of the Fell Xenologue, which was focused on emotional drama rather than laying out a neatly ordered history. I imagine that the more time passed after Nil's death, the more Rafal's act could have strayed from accuracy, until it became almost a caricature. Somebody Nel would want to protect. Somebody people would trust. Somebody better than me.

Rafal claims that he and Nil had a lot in common, but when he's in that persona, he acts completely different from his real self. So where's the common ground? Did it get lost somewhere?

There’s a single brief glimpse of what Rafal might have once been like, in the flashback where he learns to awaken Emblems. He’s smiling in a way that looks unguarded and enthusiastic, completely free of menace. He’s talking excitedly to himself, about how he wants to show Nel what he can do, right away. It’s similar to how you’d think Nil would behave, but although he’s taken on the ‘Nil’ act at this point, he’s not actually performing it to anyone. He thinks he’s alone, and doesn’t realise Sombron is watching from the shadows.

Then Sombron speaks up, and Rafal’s manner changes. And then Sombron curses the dragonstone. It’s the last moment anyone sees Rafal as what might have been his authentic self, for a thousand years. When he next fights his way to the surface, it’s to demand that he be killed and put out of his misery, because he can’t bear what he’s become.

Maybe he and Nil were originally alike, both honest and kind-hearted, but Rafal ended up scarred and poisoned beyond recognition. OR maybe he and Nil were alike because they both got frustrated easily, both had a mean sense of humour, both ran away from conversations that bothered them, both lied about stupid things. But Rafal's memories smoothed over that, and because they were bad traits, they became his traits exclusively, not Nil's. His version of Nil became friendly and encouraging, less mischievous and more of a peacekeeper. Because that's what a good person is supposed to behave like, and Nil was good and sweet and loved (whereas Rafal, by his own judgement, is bad and awful and unlovable).

Imagine Nel, watching these adjustments happen to ‘Nil’ over the years, hoping that her strange new brother was finally feeling comfortable enough to show pieces of his true self around her. When in fact the opposite was happening.

Imagine spending a thousand years convinced that the only way to be accepted, even superficially, was to be as unlike yourself as you possibly could.

[aroejumping]

warm family

[chaosisinsane]

I was thinking about how the both of these two have white hair, pink-ish eye colour and, last but not least, they love SWEETS!!!

today I showed them to my sister and she thought they were actually siblings

enough talking, enjoy SWEETS and TEA

[blossyossyossy]

I should not be allowed to have free time