#potionomics quinn

[voltnez]

[ripowal]

Quinn's Pokémon Team

Morgrem

Morgrem is the "Devious Pokémon." Dark/Fairy, gangly, with a bang covering one eye like a moody scene kid who never grew out of it. The design is inspired by goths, emos, and the Redcap, a murderous goblin from English folklore. It's kind of Quinn's whole first impression, lol. The Violet pokedex entry says "Morgrem prefers dirty tactics, like ambushing, because it doesn't have confidence in its brawn," and that's Quinn's approach: pranks and misdirection over direct confrontation, with Sylvia deployed as their muscle when things might get physical. The ability Prankster gives priority to status moves, which is Quinn's haggling philosophy made mechanical; their entire card set is built around cards like Plant the Seed, Fuel to the Fire, and Compound Interest, and their entire social life is built around an ongoing prank war with Salt and Pepper and, initially, trying to slowly prank Sylvia into questioning her sanity.

Gulpin

"Virtually all of Gulpin's body is its stomach," and Quinn do be a-gulpin. They eat any ingredient you hand them, and their custom order list is a progression of increasingly dangerous consumption: antivenom so they can eat poisonous things, ice tonics for brain freeze from too many frozen desserts, and finally radiation tonics for ingredients "that happen to have been marinating in radiation for a few years. Bottoms up?" The ability Liquid Ooze damages anyone who tries to drain Gulpin's HP, which is Quinn's prickliness in mechanical form: try to extract emotional energy before they're ready and it costs you. ("Boxer, please see her out.") The hidden ability Gluttony aligns with Quinn's general attitude around food, like at the ice cream shop: "I'm just going to get one of everything." Or the fact that they've eaten so many free chocolate samples they've been banned from four different chocolatiers.

Murkrow

Murkrow's design is explicitly based on witchcraft imagery. The feather crest resembles a pointed hat, the beak a hooked nose, and the tail the bristles of a broom. Its silhouette IS Quinn hovering above Rafta on their broomstick. The behavioral match locks it in: Murkrow "loses the attacker by leading it down dark mountain trails, and sometimes it does this to travelers as a mean-spirited prank." Quinn's pranks lead people astray in their own heads, e.g. moving a garden gnome one inch per day until the owner's sanity erodes. The hidden ability Prankster appears here for the second time on Quinn's team after Morgrem, which is thematic reinforcement that Quinn's entire identity is built around acting first with non-damaging disruption.

Foongus

Foongus is a mimic pokemon that disguises itself as a poke ball to lure people in, then blasts them with poisonous spores. Quinn's beloved pet Boxer is a mimic, making Foongus one of the pokemon equivalents of his species. The Scarlet pokedex entry deepens the connection to Quinn even further: "the spores released from this pokemon's hands are highly poisonous, but when thoroughly dried, the spores can be used as stomach medicine." Poisonous in raw form, medicinal when properly processed—that's Quinn's entire ingredient business. Selling dangerous monster parts and strange foodstuffs that become safe and useful once a skilled potion-maker transforms them.

Scovillain

Scovillain is a Grass/Fire type—a literal spicy pepper that's also on fire—and it bridges both halves of Quinn's heritage: the agricultural family business and the arson. Quinn's parents grew "jalapeno grigio grapes for this awful spicy wine," and when Quinn escaped, they torched the vineyard… and later set fires at the Heroes' Guild as well. The two-headed design intentionally evokes the theatrical comedy and tragedy masks, with the green and red heads representing Thalia and Melpomene respectively. Quinn lives between those two masks as well; their pranks are hilarious, but their backstory is harrowing.

Espeon

Espeon has a red gem embedded in its forehead that glows when it channels psychic energy and darkens when exhausted, which is a visual 1:1 with Quinn's crystal ball. Both are using environmental data in their psionics: Espeon predicts by "reading air currents," while Quinn describes their clairvoyance as telemetry that relies on associations between items, places, and people. Also, Espeon is a cat-like pokemon, which is Quinn's emotional register: aloof, misanthropic, but secretly cuddly when they trust you.

On their terms.

Shop Pet: Gimmighoul (Bonus)

Sylvia has her Owl, and Quinn has their Boxer. Gimmighoul is a ghost born inside a treasure chest. They can't very well NOT have a Gimmighoul, considering it's Boxer and commerce rolled into one!

Lots of fun pokemon in Quinn's back pocket! #potionomics pokemon teams for everybody else.

[ripowal]

Imo Quinn and Finn are not "friends." They are tactical allies with a shared enemy list and that's a completely different thing (both insist, lol).

It starts with Salt and Pepper. Quinn's hovering on their broomstick, Finn's picking fish heads out of his hair, and the entire alliance forms in about three sentences.

"Fish heads again?"

"Yep."

"They shot a cannonball at me yesterday."

Just two cynical professionals coming to an understanding over plotting their revenge—and their ironclad loyalty to Sylvia.

Sylvia asks if they're working together and they both deny it immediately and in unison, which really undermines the denial.

[voltnez]

Arts I commissioned from @ttoruach3 (telegram, link below)

памело

[ripowal]

A Quinn question I cannot stop turning over

Okay so I've been thinking about how Quinn's powers work mechanically vs how the game frames their arc, and I'm hoping someone more Quinn-versed than me has a reading that makes this click, because I keep getting stuck and this has been bugging me for a while (aka about 1.5 years).

So I entreat the Quinn lovers to help me understand!

The Solid Pitch

Quinn's whole shop runs on a very specific promise. The moment they pitch Sylvia on the ingredient-feeding mechanic, they say:

"My clairvoyance lets me hone in on specific ingredients. Meaning, if you give me something good… I'll be able to find more of it. And then I can start offering that ingredient for sale in my shop. You miss out on the instant gratification. But you get guaranteed access to the ingredient in the future."

That's a confident sales offer: a guaranteed restock, no hedging.

The Sudden Mystery

But in the Rank 4 scene, Quinn eats squid vine in front of Sylvia and says:

"I'm curious what sort of vision it might give me."

If the power is "eat object, see origin, source more of object"—which is the explicit pitch—then the vision squid vine gives them is not a mystery. It's the whole job. They should know exactly what kind of vision it'll be: something that helps them locate more squid vine. That's the whole service they told Sylvia they offer.

And then the vision happens, and it's a woman tending a garden. And Quinn's response is to dismiss it: "Nothing worth seeing." "This was a waste of time." So… the vision doesn't help them source more squid vine?

The Late Revelation

Then at Rank 10, there's the culmination of their emotional arc:

"'Clairvoyance' is sort of a catch-all term. It covers a range of abilities. I'm thinking my deal is, more accurately, telemetry. It relies on associations between an item and a place… or person… I eat squid vine, I see the merperson who harvested it."

The core of the scene is Quinn figuring out how their abilities work. They propose telemetry as a theory, then they test it on grapes from their parents' vineyard.

And it's a well-constructed scene! It's the payoff for Sylvia spending weeks chip, chip, chipping away at Quinn's acerbic exterior, weathering all the threats and stalker jokes and "ugh, fine, you can stick around" energy. Her patience and kindness finally earn her a seat at the actual emotional core of someone who works very hard to keep people out.

Where I Get Stuck

But I keep tripping on the epistemology. Because Quinn has been running a business on the principle that eating an object shows them its origin. That IS telemetry. That IS the associative principle. There isn't a hidden layer underneath it that "telemetry" reveals. So how is Quinn meaningfully discovering something they've been commercially exploiting since before Sylvia showed up?

It just doesn't make sense to me that a person who doesn't know how their powers work would tell you "if you let me eat that ingredient I'll find more for you", nor that a person who sets up their business around "if you let me eat that ingredient I'll find more for you" doesn't know how their powers work.

Where I've Landed (Unsatisfyingly)

My best guesses at this point involve it being a disconnect/seam between the writing and gameplay:

1) The game needs the mechanic to be legible from day one (because you're feeding Quinn ingredients constantly as a core loop) and the character arc needs a revelation at the high ranks (because that's how relationship arcs work), and those two requirements are pulling in opposite directions. So the game just asks you to hold them both at once.

2) Quinn's visions are unreliable but the game doesn't want the player to feed Quinn an ingredient and have a risk you can't buy it from them the next day, so mechanically the game guarantees you an ingredient restock while narratively the visions are spotty. Except Quinn doesn't say they're spotty until later, which means Quinn's intro is meta that supersedes the story and, again, the game just asks you to hold them both at once.

But I don't want that to be the answer! I want there to be a reading that makes all three scenes work simultaneously and I just haven't found it. So:

Halp!

Does anyone have a take that resolves this? Am I missing something in the dialogue that bridges the gap? I'd genuinely love to be wrong about this because I'd rather it all cohere than not.

(And if the answer is "yeah it's a limitation of the game vs narrative"… fine, I guess I can live with that. But I want to make sure I'm not missing something first.)

[voltnez]

Artist: @dust_ramz (telegram, link below) Thanks for such great art! This commission was drawn for me last summer uwu

Шоу закрывается

Айй извиняюсь за небольшой неактив, я сейчас жестко работаю и на подработке и с коммишами, но вот пока наконец доделал один из заказов!! Ско

[voltnez]

Artist: @dilarok (telegram, link below)

I didn't like my Quinn drawings, so I just commissioned artists and over time I've accumulated quite a lot of art. And I decided to gradually share them here uwu

𝔇𝔦𝔩𝔞𝔯𝔬𝔨 🌙

[voltnez]

Nothing will stop me from drawing my favorite character every day x3

I've been trying to draw Quinn for a while now. My first attempts were over a year ago. Eventually, I spent several months practicing drawing every day to improve my skills, and now I like the results better. They were just waiting for me to come back to them and draw them well! х3

I've recently started redrawing their emotions from the game to better understand them uwu