Anxious Moron

got thrown into a pmd sky obsession with a vengeance oops

[seidrcat]

AO3 fics with PMD pairings, ranked by amount of fics (taken by going to the Pokémon Mystery Dungeon: Explorers of Time & Darkness & Sky tag and going to the filter relarionships tag):

1. Partner/Player with 76 fics, to absolutely noboy's surprise. PMD is a fandom filled with OCs that tend to follow the hero-partner dynamic of the games, and these OCs tend to also date.

2. Grovyle/Player with 34 fics. That's right, Grovyle's most popular ship is neither Dusknoir nor Celebi but a self-insert/OC. And for those who think Duskvyle is still too popular...

3. Celebi/Grovyle with 17 fics - yes, you read that right, Celebi/Grovyle outnumbers Dusknoir/Grovyle. So much for Dusknoir/Grovyle being 'overwhelmingly popular' and 'taking away all the attention from Celebi'. (BTW, did you know Celebi/Grovyle isn't actually canon, either? Her interest in him certainly is, but at no point does Celebi confess to Grovyle, not even when they're about to be erased from existence, which you would expect to be the one time Celebi would gather her courage to confess. It's not that she confessed at some point before the story, either, since she clearly (and unconvincingly) denies having romantic feelings for Grovyle when you talk to her at Dusk Forest. On Grovyle's side, any comments he makes or feelings he shows for Celebi fit a platonic explanation easily as well as a romantic one, if not more so. Plus, Super shows Celebi still in the pining stage and Grovyle completely oblivious to her romantic feelings for him with no signs of this dynamic changing at any point. Just something to consider for the 'DuSkVyLe IsN't CaNoN' crowd.)

4. Grovyle/Dusknoir with 16 fics. Admittedly this is a narrow margin, but again, given the outcries by a vocal minority that Duskvyle is 'too popular', you'd expect the pairing to be, you know... actually popular for both characters, not third place behind Hero/Grovyle and Celebi/Grovyle (the ship the complainers typically complain is 'less' popular than Dusknoir/Grovyle).

5. Chatot/Wigglytuff with 11 fics. Here we see the impact of story relevance on pairings - when you ask about gay pairings in PMD, Duskvyle and Chatot/Wigglytuff (no, that's not canon either, but neither is any fan content that does any more or less than just copy any actual canon content) come to mind, but since Dusknoir and Grovyle are more relevant to the story, people fixate on them more often. Plus, the guild characters don't have a lot of depth in general, whereas the future and protagonist characters get SE5 and OC-fication, respectively.

6. Celebi/Grovyle/Dusknoir with 8 fics. Polyamory win or loss? Given how underutilised NPC characters are in general, I'd consider it a win!

7. No romantic relationships and Dusknoir/OC with 7 fics. This is where the filter section's list of relationships ends, so I won't be looking any further. There's not much to say here, either, except it probably says something that no romantic relationships is a tag as popular as an actual relationship tag.

Oh, and since I'm at it, some total numbers:

Fics shipping Partner: 76

This is probably because Partner isn't treated as the outright self-insert that is Player, so anyone who ships what is basically an OC with personality quirks with another character is going to use Player instead.

Fics shipping Player: 110

Self-insert. 'nough said.

Fics shipping Grovyle: 75

He's the tragically misunderstood twist hero who doesn't act very emotional and has a friend who is romantically interested in him, plus an intense relationship with his greatest foe. Not very surprising, either.

Fics shipping Celebi: 25

It's as sad as it is unsurprising - 2010s Pokémon was highly misogynistic, and as we all well know, the majority of fanfic is going to be about the characters with depth and/or interesting roles. Frankly, the fact that there is a canonically, non-OC-fied female character in this list could be considered a surprise on its own. That all her listed ships involve guys isn't surprising, though as with any ship I'd rather judge by the quality of the writing than by any inclusion/empowerment message checkboxes. A fic can have tons of female characters and still be highly misogynistic in its treatment of them; on the other hand, a fic can consist of a girl dating two guys and still be very respectful and progressive. In Celebi's case in particular, you also have to consider - again, the source material itself is misogynistic, and so anyone writing her is going to have to put in extra effort to characterise her beyond her writing, and the original writing will still be noticeable if you so much as try to stick to her canon character, which at its surface level is a mix of 'plot device' and 'brooding anti-hero's love interest' (again, I don't see those future trio ship complainers tackling the part where she was written to be a glorified side character in love with Grovyle and how any fic trying to seriously characterise her has to deal with that mess somehow - I have, however, frequently seen posts by a frequent Duskvyle & future trio poster criticising the game's treatment of Celebi).

Fics shipping Dusknoir: 31

That place 7 with the /OC ship comes in handy here, allowing Dusknoir to beat at least one of his former adversaries. I genuinely don't know where the OC fics came from, but good for whoever wrote those. This also implies that Dusknoir himself is only slightly more popular as a ship character than Celebi, and it's only because some people wrote him dating an OC. Without those fics, he'd be behind Celebi by one, just like in the list above. Again, the claims of Duskvyle or Dusknoir himself being popular are wildly exaggerated.

Fics shipping Chatot OR Wigglytuff: 11

They have it even worse than Celebi because neither of them has a strong or particularly notable relationship to Grovyle or Player.

Fics shipping No romantic relationships: 7

It says a lot about the state of shipping in the PMD fandom that this tag made it into a list about relationships at all...

Oh, and since I got curious, here's the same stats but taken from the Pokémon Mystery Dungeon tag:

1. Partner/Player with 152 fics. Again, not a surprise, it's the Conan/Kaito of PMD.

2. Celebi/Grovyle with 27 fics. Oh gee, it's you again? Seriously, you'd think if Duskvyle was so popular it'd visibly outweigh Celevyle in fanfic, but twice now it's been the opposite. (Spoiler: Dusknoir doesn't even show up here, that's how comparatively Not Popular Duskvyle is.)

3. Grovyle/Player with 22 fics. Huh, this one lost some of its popularity. Must be because we're in the general PMD tag now.

4. No romantic relationships with 21 fics. HOW??? DID A TAG ABOUT THERE BEING NO ROMANCE? MAKE IT INTO THE FILTER LIST FOR RELATIONSHIP TAGS???

5. OC female/OC male, TIED WITH OC/ OC with 19 fics. You think there's any actual non-Player non-Partner OCs in that tag? (Statistically speaking there probably is, but I'm assuming a majority is still Player/Partner.)

The only character who is properly labelled as having more than one ship is Grovyle, who gets a total of 49 fics. Less than in the Explorers tag, because, again, Duskvyle didn't even make it into the relationship tag filter list, because guess what, it's not actually popular.

...sorry. I know the odds that anyone who actually thinks this way about Dusknoir/Grovyle is going to read this are abnormally slim, but it just baffles me how these people complain about an apparent abundance of Duskvyle that I just can't find any evidence of. On tumblr, too, most of the duskvyle tag posts come from Scribz, and on the MD Reddit it barely exists at all (again, outside of reblogs of Scribz' posts, which are even rarer on Reddit - I think you can count them on one or two five-fingered hands), which just emphasises how actually rare it is. Even funnier are the people who complain about that and Celebi/Grovyle/Dusknoir because 'it's misogynistic', only to then turn around and ship Celebi/Grovyle without giving Celebi any more character than the actual game did, so they're not exactly making the misogyny situation any better. But I digress.

Obviously there's some limitations since I only looked at relationship tags that showed up in AO3's filter list for the PMD tags. Additionally, at least for the general PMD tag, there were several ambiguous OC ships 'clogging up' the space where canon-character-ships could have gone in addition to friendship tags which I didn't count since my focus here is the romantic relationships. I also didn't go through any other PMD tags since I'm most familiar with and able to provide commentary for the Explorers characters.

There's nothing left I haven't said already - Player/Partner is a juggernaut of a ship aided by how easily OC-fied both characters are and the fact that they're always going to receive the most focus from the games, so the players will pay the most attention to these two as well. By comparison, anyone else is pathetically unpopular - the next most popular ships don't come anywhere near Player/Partner. Grovyle is an appealing anti-hero-like character in a well- and fondly-remembered story, plus he's one of very few PMD characters who's both plot-relevant and given a female love interest (even if no confession ever happens, so we can only assume Celebi is still tsundere-pining after him). And of course, Explorers is still the most popular PMD game, so all (well, both) NPC characters in the general tag are from that game.

[scribz-ag24]

i drew this for a collab, but since it won't come out for a while i'll post it here. people are sleeping on wigglytuff x grovyle btw and i won't elaborate on that.

[scribz-ag24]

the way grovyle drastically changes his attitude towards dusknoir the SECOND he does one good selfless thing for him is driving me insane

like okay why dont you drop your heroic, selfless, universal speech of "it's the right thing to do. it's what everyone who isnt rotten would do. this world is dead anyways" and instead open up about your emotions and confess that you want to leave a mark on this world, and how that is what keeps you unafraid of death. What if instead of telling dusknoir to give up and die you address him with full honesty, on the same level. What if doing that saves the bloody world.

oh and sure why dont you seamlessly start working alongside him instead of bantering and blaming each other for failing to coordinate, and while you're at it you can stop keeping your thoughts to yourself and start talking to him. surely there's no reason you drop the internal monologue right after he helps you, nevermind that you've hidden your impatience and anxiousness from the second dusknoir joined you in the adventure.

also the cutscene if you fail the mamoswine battle. in general. "y-you helped..." "if we had run any slower we would have been hurt." Ok.

[scribz-ag24]

Dialga's new agent

[seidrcat]

There's something in how Dusknoir himself seems to be the biggest danger to his plans. He outs his relationship with Grovyle at Fogbound Lake (after saving the hero team from Grovyle no less, when letting them die to him would have been far more beneficial to his plans). He spends the time after that explaining himself and getting the town's assistance in luring Grovyle to Crystal Lake early, sure, but he could've just kept mum and yoinked Grovyle from prison in secret later (or killed him then and there and made it look like an accident, I dunno). Whether he intended to execute everyone at the stockades or the plan was always to let them escape so they'd lead him to Celebi is debatable, but then when he has everyone at his and Dialga's mercy, he gloats about Grovyle nearly killing his former human partner (which he himself stopped, but everybody is understandably too distracted by the big news to point that out) and the holder of the Relic Fragment gathers their resolve and whips up a plan to escape. Next, Dusknoir lies in wait at the Hidden Land, where it's his own massive Shadow Ball struck back by the hero team that deals the blow that knocks him out. He's still exhausted by it afterwards to the point he can't fight back Grovyle's push into the Dimensional Hole. His plan in the special episode is by far the most effective, as he comes to within an inch of success, but he laid the foundation for its failure as far back as his first attempt to ask Grovyle about his motivations at the start of the special episode: the answer he got didn't satisfy him, so he tried again after the battle against Mamoswine and Glalie, getting Grovyle's speech about living on in others' memories and the seed of doubt planted in his mind, which enables Grovyle to sway him while his soul is melting in Icicle Forest. Basically what I'm trying to say is any fanwork where Dusknoir enacts a Plan should also portray him as the single biggest threat to it, ted talk over

[seidrcat]

Headcanon that Dusknoir yoinked the partner because he learned in the future that they have the Relic Fragment, which they may or may not have brought to Temporal Tower in the original timeline but then failed to save the world because they didn't have the Time Gears. With the changes made by Grovyle and the human, there was a chance the partner realised what the Relic Fragment was for AND that they needed the Time Gears, so Dusknoir grabbed them to prevent them from doing any of that by killing them.

[seidrcat]

I wonder sometimes how much Dusknoir really researched about the past. Like, in the original timeline, the partner never had us, so did they work up the courage to join the guild eventually? If at all? How did Dusknoir react when he reached Treasure Town and realised that Grovyle and the human's presence somehow caused the partner to join the guild early and with a companion? That their Relic Fragment wasn't stolen? What if the whole reason Dusknoir stuck around instead of continuing to travel is because we'd changed the timeline in Treasure Town and he was trying to investigate how that happened?

[seidrcat]

It's ridiculously easy to remove Celebi from the Explorers plot.

"But she's needed to open the Passage of Time!" Nope. (I don't even recall if that's true in canon or not, but let's just assume it is since it makes enough sense.)

Make an item, let's call it a pink bracelet. Have it be able to open the Passage of Time. Give it to Grovyle (or the human-turned-Pokémon if you're feeling dramatic). He can now open the Passage of Time on his own.

"But how do they get away from Dusknoir and Dialga without Celebi?" Slightly more difficult, but still not hard (it's not hard if I can cook it up in less than 5 minutes).

Have the partner Pokémon come up with the plan all on their own. Maybe the bracelet can also do the smaller time jumps. Maybe there's a slightly different green bracelet that does the time jumps. Or you can just do another escape à la Luminous Orb + Dig, though you'd lose out on Dialga shattering the screen with Roar of Time. Point is, I've cooked up three different ways to work around Celebi not being there in maybe a minute and that usually means the existing way isn't that essential.

"But her capture motivates Grovyle to go to Frozen Island in Special Episode 5!" Lol. Lmao, even.

Keep the plot the same up until Temporal Tower. Say that Dialga went to Dusk Forest to investigate/study the Passage of Time. Have the captured Sableye at Deep Dusk Forest say that they located another pink bracelet on Frozen Island. Replace Celebi-captured-by-Spiritomb with Dialga holding a pink bracelet (if it's real or fake is up to you, though a fake would work better to illustrate that it was just an excuse to lure Grovyle into Icicle Forest). Weep as the rest of the special episode plays out the exact same except maybe a longer goodbye scene between Grovyle and Dusknoir since Celebi isn't around to get the last of Grovyle's attention.

That's how essential the Time Travel Pokémon is in the game about time travel. Not at fucking all.

[seidrcat]

(In resonse to a discord convo about Grovyle being treated like a sort of bogeyman)

It speaks of the culture Grass Continent has at the time. The original reason for the Time Gears being in the places they are isn't clarified. I like to think those areas were always temporally unstable (especially the Three Lakes - if they're anything like the Sinnoh Lakes, they lead to pocket dimensions which sounds like a mess for Dialga and Palkia to manage), so when the Time Gears were scattered, they were placed in those specific areas to stabilise them. And people got so fixated on the Time Gears stabilising local time that they forgot all about their *other* function as failsaves should anything ever happen to Temporal Tower. so the myth of the Time Gears shifted to 'they must never be removed'. It's spelled out by the partner in the main game and Team AWD and Charm in SE4 that even the worst people would never touch a Time Gear for fear of the consequences for time.

In the eyes of those people, Grovyle did the unthinkable. It surprises me that I don't remember anyone else in the town freaking out over the first theft aside from when we're told about it by Chatot since it seems like, say, the Vatican being blown up. Nobody would ever consider the idea seriously, so it happening would be a serious blow to anyone's worldview. perhaps nobody quite believed it was happening until Uxie's Time Gear got stolen and it as well as the guild confirmed that Fogbound Lake used to have a Time Gear and it really is gone now. That's when the plot really gets going, so I assume that's when people realised it was really happening. Someone was really stealing the Time Gears. Simply from a cultural standpoint, Grovyle was never going to manage that without facing serious suspicion from the inhabitants of the past world. What he ended up doing united everyone against him in a (dare I say desperate) bid to stop him before *something* bad happens, even though nobody knows what 'something bad' even is.

And that's what Dusknoir ends up capitalising on. He's read books. He's studied the past extensively. He knows how these people think, what motivates them and scares them. So he takes the truth and embellishes it just a little bit, swaps a detail here and there and gives the world exactly what it needs: a reason for Grovyle to be stealing the Time Gears. And it's a selfish, criminally motivated reason, because of course nobody would ever steal the *Time Gears* for a good reason, right? Just look how important they are to keep time functioning! Look how taking them away freezes time in the area, potentially trapping hundreds of Pokémon forever! There couldn't possibly be a good reason for anyone to take them away.

Dusknoir confirms all their worst fears and cements Grovyle as a criminal who wants nothing less than the end of the world, all for the sake of escaping justice for the crimes he has committed before. He turns him from a phantom menace that may or may not exist into the face of evil that could end the world at any moment. And it works perfectly, because he knows the culture he is interacting with and uses its greatest fears to his own advantage. You could say he games the system.

[seidrcat]

what zhe fuck happened to the reblog button

[mourreon]

ok can we all start calling Celenoir (celebi x dusknoir) 'Dark Times Shipping' or something because dark....and time.....and a Dark Time is a period of difficulty and that's what they're going through in the Dark Future.....ok thanks

[runerar]

some bonus, extra things about chapter 2's ending leading into chapter 3 that make it more obvious in hindsight that kris is working for/with the knight, and also... um. something else. about tenna. and kris. and the knight.

so.

not ONLY. does kris plug in the tv some time between chapter 1 and chapter 2.

and not ONLY does kris crack open the door for the knight to come into the dark world.

kris ALSO. switches the tv on before making their dark world. AND. perhaps. maybe takes a second to talk to it.

now get this

tenna says: "When the KNIGHT appeared... the ROARING KNIGHT. And I was told that if I keep you three busy, I can have ALL the people watch me that I want."

tenna says, in the backstage s-rank minigame round 3: "oh, KRIS, i didn't see you there! i did what you said! i kept our deal! you won't unplug me again, right?"

does... does this mean that like.

is tenna just straight up calling kris the knight?

like obviously i don't believe that means kris IS the knight, because this is pretty likely answered one of a few ways

1) kris would have to deliver the message no matter what, wouldn't they? given the timeframe of the everything, so;

1a) kris tells tenna to tell susie/ralsei that the knight made this deal with him, but when they're "alone" "backstage" then it doesn't matter if tenna says it was a deal he made with kris

1b) kris tells tenna this is a deal FROM THE KNIGHT and they are just a messenger, but backstage, nervous, tenna calls it the deal he made with kris

2) aka "i'm thinking too hard about this"; actually i suppose the timeframe isn't anything because kris does make the fountain and hten go back to sleep, so like, the knight could very well have entered the dark world while kris was sleeping and made that deal with tenna.

but still. why, the uh. why tenna talking to kris about a deal they made. huh?

2a) i suppose the backstage minigame tenna isn't necessarily the real tenna, anyway... ramb is pretty clear that no one else is playing hte game with kris, so this could be just... something in the backstage game's... code....???

2b) tenna is referring to a different deal????

of course every time i think "i'm thinking too hard about this" about deltarune i remember all the stuff that was packed into undertale and i go, well, now hang on. toby fox is DEFINITELY capable of some shit. so the chances i am thinking TOO hard about this are slim - the chances that i don't have all the info yet are MUCH much higher

3) SECRET OPTION PET THEORY IN WHICH THE KNIGHT IS DESS + KRIS' ORIGINAL SOUL AND SO TO TENNA IT'S THE SAME THING/??? (I AM RAPIDLY DRAGGED OFFSTAGE)

either way: hey that's interesting, isn't it

-

(credit where credit is due: i first noticed this + took all the screenshots from this video, which is mostly about something else.)

[hellotherediesel]

i've got literally nothing and i'm gonna try to fight the knight wish me luck

[sidfox]

Another round of "has this been done yet?"

[li-binauje-artisse]

Gentle reminder, there is a difference between "popular theory/fanon" and "confirmed canon"

"So since it's basically canon that Dess is the Knight, i think that...." Nope! It's very much, extremely, turbo NOT confirmed canon. Even if i like the theory and fanart/fanfics playing with it.

(Remember, we were led to believe it was Kris, pre chapter 3. And we're still unsure of what their exact involvement means in that mess! The mystery is still whole.)

Also worth for any theory /personal interpretation tbh, even if we can gather stuff to back it up. Kris loosing a hand, anything about the prophecy, whatever item Ralsei is based on....

Many interpretations / theories make some sense. But "confirmed canon" is a strong word! Use it wisely, traveler....

[sugarcube589]

Lesbian Pose

I NEEDED to draw some of the knights sprites, they’re literally serving in every one.

this was great because not only did it pull me out of my art block, but I also got to practice my ink skills

[seidrcat]

Kris: it is pride month, Knight! you know what that means!

The Roaring Knight: What. do you want me to like. Beat your group up in a gay way.

(cue sloppy polycule)