#thenorthernphoenix

[elbdot]

Just out of curiosity, how come El has two Leafeons? I know one of them is a Shiny, I just want to know why she also has a regular one.

Are you kidding me, I just joked about this two days ago on twitter, why do I get this question so often??? 😂

[formderptron]

Well dude, you did it. You're all finished. You've paused like no one has ever paused before and gave us an incredible amount of derpy Voltron screenshots to brighten our day from every episode of the series. How do you feel now that you're all done?

It's a huge sense of relief and accomplishment to make it here. 5 posts a day for 3 years wasn't exactly easy but I still made it to the other side in one piece. The pressing deadline of the queue being gone is a huge weight off my shoulders.

I'm working on a more detailed post about the future for this blog at the moment so keep an eye out for that later today everyone.

[shinonart]

It's been an absolute joy watching you draw and reimagine the new Pokemon coming out for Legends Arceus. They all look fantastic! Are you going to draw Kleavor next, or maybe the new Hisuian Zorua and Zoroark?

Thank you! It's been so much fun drawing them, glad to hear you like them too! I would like to do those three as well when I have time. I think I will start with Zorua and Zoroark!

[faelapis]

What did you think of Lapis's character development? It's clear she's a better person by the end of the show, but we also never see her apologize for everything she did. We also never see her reconcile with Peridot (as we know, their relationship before Future was quite toxic), but in Future, it appears they are friends again, but perhaps not as close as before as they don't seem to interact that much.

hot take: i don’t want her to apologize for everything in some grand gesture. that’s something i’m actually fairly consistently against with pretty much every single character in SU. that’s neither what they need nor what defines development in this world - and yes, there is some specificity to this world. lapis is not the type to do that, nor can i think of a character who would ask for it. it’s so individualizing lol and so against how gemkind generally thinks. 

like... what matters to me is ultimately framing. framing gives you cues about how to feel about the characters. the framing as of lapis’ last focus episode is that she’s a work in progress who can still be cruel, but she’s trying to be better than that. to me, that’s exactly what it needs to be. i love “why so blue?” for that reason, the other lapises also recontextualizing how she’s neither the nicest person nor who she used to be. 

this kind of “x needs a big apology scene” discourse always bothers me. maybe because i’m just... not big on spoken apologies in general, it reads to me like a mild kind of individualized punitive focus in which, in some form, saying “this one person is bad / they need to be Accountable (tm)” is the most important thing rather than what the character would do or what would actually help.

as for peridot, i think the muted resolution is fine. i like the implication that they’re still friends, but not dependant or using the other as a crutch. they’re not “hero/victim” friends anymore. the fallout made them both SEE what that did to them... but i can’t see a version of events where peridot becomes really punitive about this and wants lapis to be “accountable”, nor can i see one where lapis lays herself flat and becomes a groveling dog.

if you over-moralize that kind of shaming on an individual level, you also lose a lot, which i feel... “apology stans”(?) miss. the grander message in SU is about a chain of event outside any one individual’s fault. it’s not as easy as pointing the finger and then the bad guy either apologizes or perishes... hence i often roll my eyes at “they need to face consequences!1!!” framing. you can’t do that when it’s everyone. in cases when characters do apologize in SU, it’s got a much less moralizing frame: it has to do with how the characters themselves view their own self-worth in relation to others. 

SU is not “this is YOUR fault.” SU is “this is our mess to fix together.” 

[sunny-speaker]

I don't think animus magic is gone permanently, honestly. From what I recall, Jerboa cast the spell on LIVING animus dragons. She even words it this way. That technically means that not only can a new animus dragon be born in the future, this animus dragon should be able to use their magic. But until then, animus magic will be completely absent from the series, aside from the enchantments already cast.

Huh, ok cool. I guess I missed that part. I’ve gotten like 3 different comments about this so I guess it’s true lol. I May Be Stupid but my ocs are saved

[antialiasis]

Hello. Do you still answer questions about Pokemon? Because I wanted to get your opinion on why newer Pokemon games don't seem to be as beloved as the older ones. I'm not just talking about Sword and Shield, but also Sun and Moon and X and Y. Everyone seems to agree that the first five gens were amazing, but the last three gens seem to frustrate a lot of people. It's a bit confusing to me because I enjoy the new games as well as the old ones, and I can't see what the problem is.

Well, I think there are multiple things at work here.

I love all the main series games, but I do think that the last few generations have suffered a bit for the shortened release cycle, combined with the fact that it simply takes more time and labor by its very nature to make 3D, especially high-definition 3D, look good than a 2D handheld game. The scope of the games has simply grown massively, and I think it’s visible in the recent games that Game Freak have not had quite enough time to deal with that within their release deadlines. Sword and Shield in particular bring a lot of cool things to the table, but I think there are clear signs they were rushed and not fully polished before release - the way that the second half of the story feels noticeably more bare and less fleshed out than the first, for instance. Whether because of that or a deliberate shift because kids have shorter attention spans these days, there’s tended to be less postgame content in the recent generations. And of course, there’s Dexit, which I continue to think was an understandable decision to make but still one that I wasn’t thrilled with. So there are definitely legitimate reasons to criticize the later games - which doesn’t mean people shouldn’t enjoy them anyway, or that it’s not reasonable if they don’t bother you personally. (A lot of people have been clamoring for another Battle Frontier for years, for instance, while I never had all that much fun with the Battle Frontier back in Emerald and don’t care at all - I still respect that it’s something other people really want, and that it’s legitimate for them to want it, because people want different things out of games.)

On the other hand there is also a consistent long-running pattern within the fandom of complaining about the most recent couple of generations while upholding the one currently dominating the overall fandom nostalgia as perfect and the height of the series. I remember liking Gen I over Gen II, and then Gen I over Gen III, and then how opinions started to shift during Gen III to say that G/S/C were the best games, and how Gen IV came out and people were clamoring for G/S/C remakes, and then the Hoenn nostalgia following that, and how people called Gen IV the worst ever until one day it was the best ever, and now people are holding up Gen V. That doesn’t mean people don’t legitimately believe what they’re saying, or that individual people are blindly changing their opinions in accordance with the current trends, only that the loudest, prevailing fandom discourse at any given time reliably goes in these waves and has done since the beginning. Every generation has its flaws and good points, but what parts are generally emphasized in the fandom shifts over time. In the future we’re going to be seeing more people talking about what they enjoyed about these games - that’s just how it goes. (I can’t wait for Gen VII nostalgia - I loved Sun and Moon so much and I think they had the best story of all the games.)

[wingsofmemes]

I've noticed that you tag a lot of your posts with "something broken". What does that mean?

It’s a tag for broken anatomy. Sometimes I wonder if I ever should had added it in the first place, given the... specific features of this... style...

[snapbacksteven]

The finale was incredible, but how do you feel about where the show left off Jasper? She's living in Little Homeschool now, so it's kind of guaranteed she'll learn and grow as a person. But we might never get to see that. Her character arc was basically left unfinished by the end of the show, and I know some people are kind of bummed about that, even if the show left her in a hopeful place. How do you feel about it?

I mean, I’m not a big Jasper fan or anything, but the whole “getting corrupted and being bubbled in season 3 aaaaall the way until the end of the main series” thing still leaves a bad taste in my mouth. So I knew she wouldn’t get any substantial growth time in SUF. That being said, she did get more than I expected!

But yeah, it does suck that – throughout all of SU and SUF – we didn’t really … see Jasper all that much, if you think about it. She definitely could’ve done with some more screentime.