About

Hello! Welcome to LocalFool’s Pokemon fan page: Viridian Forest!

The name comes from the birthplace of one of my favorite Pokémon characters: Amarillo del Bosque Verde AKA Yellow from Pokemon Special, the manga tie-in by Hidenori Kusaka, Mato, and Satoshi Yamamoto. That’s also the character you can see up there in the header!

Speaking of the header, I should get some crediting out of the way first. The watercolor splash in the header was made by starline on Freepik, the art of Yellow on the banner is from a cover of the manga, the pixel art of the Kanto Pokemon Special characters and home Pikachu button are by MewHeart in 2002, and, of course, Pokémon itself is owned by The Pokémon Company.

I got into Pokémon when I was around 8 years old through the manga. I started with Yellow’s chapter for some reason.

I still enjoy Pokémon [even if I haven’t really touched any of their mainline games recently because of The Issues] and I probably will for forever, haha!

Thanks for checking out my little corner of Pokémon love! I hope you have a good time here. Click on the tabs at the top to see more!

Pokemon Special

AKA: Pokesoup

There’s many different Pokemon manga, but the main one is Pokemon Special (or Pokemon Adventure in the west)! The manga is mostly based on the games, although it tends to bend every rule in the book for the sake of the story / coolness and oftentimes has it’s own unique take on the game’s plot.

Another thing that sets it apart is that it tends to give unique personalities and goals to the main characters (or Dexholders), instead of having them be an “everyman child” like the games. Additionally, up until D/P/P, many of the main characters interacted or had storylines involving past Dexholders, which is something that’s not often done in the games.

If you enjoy Pokemon, or even just stories centering around kids / young teens going on fantastical adventures, please consider picking up this series! It’s a joy to read!

Dexholders:

My favorite dexholder is, quite obviously, Yellow! I adore her so much! I’ve mentioned before that her arc was the first one I read of the series, but that’s only a small part in why I love her!

Mainly, her personality is just so appealing to me! She’s very kind and has a very pacifist and naive way of looking at things, and she tries her best to uphold her beliefs. She treats Pokemon very kindly, too, and her powers definitely filled some sort of wish fulfillment for me as a kid haha!

Her being disguising as a boy and later stating that she “feels naked” without the disguise and keeping her gender a secret past when the guise was needed definitely spoke to me as a kid. I had a lot of thoughts on trying to fit in with what was expected out of my gender as a tween and teen. It was really nice for me to see a character able to transcend those borders, in a way.

In my current eyes, she is very much a baby butch and I love her for that. <3

Another favorite of mine from this series is Dia!!!

Beloved Dia… I really enjoy his relaxed and easy going personality. I also adore that it’s quite obvious that the writer felt bad for not giving him any particular “special thing” (like Pearl’s ability to tell what move pokemon will use in advance and Lady’s whole thing that’s driving the plot) and as a result of that gave him a legendary and then very convincingly fake killed him off. It’s great, love that for him!

Rip

That whole conversation with Cyrus in the Distortion World about comedy tropes was also great, haha!

I love a lot of the other characters too, but these two are my absolute favorites!

(The stamps were made by me.
you're free to use them, no credit required!)

As far as shipping goes, JadeShipping ( Yellow x Green(f) ) has my entire heart! I just think their dynamic is really interesting, with Green being a person who’s not above (and in fact seems to enjoy) fighting dirty and playing tricks while Yellow is a very earnest and straightforward person. Despite this they both have soft sides and I think they’re super cute together!

EntourageShipping (Diamond x Pearl x Platinum) is also a favorite of mine. Platonic, romanic, or some mix of the two! I just think the three of them are just that connected to the hip at this point haha!

SpecialShipping (Red x Yellow), SweetheartShipping (Crystal x Yellow), OriginalShipping (Red x Blue Oak ), ConclusionShipping (Red x Misty x Yellow), WakeMeUpShipping (Sapphire x Yellow), MangaPokeShipping (Red x Misty), PreciousMetalShipping (Gold x Silver), and AbsurdistShipping (Diamond x Pearl) are other ships I have soft spots for! I am, very self evidently, a very flexible multi-shipper, so I’m always willing to give new ships and dynamics a go. XD

Speaking of shipping names, I used to have to scour the net to find a particular ship name. Apparently enough people found that to be a problem with pokemon shipping names that Neverending Romance, a big old list for pokeships, was created and then reinstated 2 times!

It Documents great ships such as SpecialHatShipping (Red's hat x Yellow's straw hat)...! XD But seriously, super helpful list, thank you everyone who contributed to it! :D It currently resides on the bulbagarden’s forum, which you can find here! Ship away!

Games

Games, both mainline and spin offs

The games are the main selling point of the Pokemon franchise and the medium it started in back in 1996! Typically, these days, there’s a new game every 3 or so years, although in 2023 Game freak, the company that makes Pokemon games, said that they’ll be trying to lengthen the time the games stay in development and to slow down the tight release schedule. Something I think was a long time coming with the switch to 3D. A lot less graphics are able to be reused, after all! The change in art styles to be more detailed doesn’t help either!

(As a bonus, it also means the manga has more time to “catch up” to where the games are at too!)

There’s two different types of games that Pokemon has: Main games, which have the typical Pokemon trainer adventure story, and spin-offs, which can be pretty much anything. This section will be over both!

Pokemon Omega Ruby was my first mainline game, and I had a lot of fun with it! Zinnia is my favorite character from there and I’ve cosplayed as her a couple of times. (Let me tell you, that cape is so fun to walk around in!!)

Photo from Bulbapedia. I mean, just look at her!

Before that I played a bit of Pokemon Ranch on the Wii. Very cute and fun game, I enjoyed messing around with it and checking in on it often! I still think the sort of low poly style the pokemon had in that game is adorable and the general concept is quite fun.

You may be wondering why on earth I haven’t played Pokemon Black/White/B2/W2 since those are very popular games and were released between Ranch and ORAS… the answer is I wasn’t paying attention to the games at all at the time (too distracted with the manga!) and by the time I had a friend of mine pestering me to get the other version of that gen (so we could trade version locked ‘mons) it was at a $40 resale price.

“40 dollars?!?” my naive younger self said, “I can get a game for my 3DS at 20 a pop. No way am I paying that much for a DS game!”

Pokemon Black and White (and B2/W2) easily go for $100 these days. Sigh.

One day I’ll try my hand at them…. Just not any time soon! XD

I’ve taken quite a break from the mainline series after Moon. The formula was just getting stale to me and the stories weren’t interesting enough to keep me there. I did enjoy how much they shook it up with the 7th gen! What with the ride-pokemon and (slightly) different gyms (in all but name) and the guest appearance by Red and Blue has my heart (“They’re all grown up now! Whaa~!” <-- like so.)... but not enough to get SWSH.

(Speaking of, man, I can't believe it’s already gen 9!!! That’s ridiculous. Next you're going to tell me they retired Ash.)

The move to 3d is also… Well I can’t comment much since all my experiences are in 3D, but I do like the pixel art of the older gen a lot more.

More onto spin offs, I was really excited for Pokemon Go! Like, 3 years before release excited and I have proof in some silly doodles I made while waiting for it. I played it for a while (across 2 accounts because I forgot the password for the 1st one XD) but after a year or two I haven’t really touched it! Just not enough there at first to keep me, I guess.

Plus, I don’t really like looking at my phone when I’m out and about. Wargh. >_>

It’s fun though! Don’t let my rambling discourage you from giving it a go, if it sounds up your alley you’ll probably like it! And I’ll satiate your curiosity, I was on team Instinct.

Let’s see, what else… Other than some of the 3DS freebies, I’ve played Pokemon Super Mystery Dungeon as well! I know it has a bit of a reputation of not being as good as the previous entries in the Mystery Dungeon spin-off line, but I’ve enjoyed it! The level scaling SUCKS so much, I will say. I found it incredibly hard to keep the PC and partner pokemon at a high enough level to tackle dungeons, which sucks since it’s mandatory for plot-dungeons. Sigh… but I liked the story! I really love the idea of a person transported to a pokemon-only world and I can see why that’s been such a loved plotline for a lot of PMD comics! (I need to read more of those, if you have recommendations I’d love to hear it!)

In my original save I played a Riolu named Talu and my partner was a Torchic named Fiona. I got up to the epilogue, at which point I was… very stuck difficulty level wise, so I started over. So I’m technically currently in my second playthrough of it (with the same characters + names)... but I got stuck again on a plot-dungeon and I haven’t touched it in several years. XD

Maybe one day I’ll get through it, or restart it again and try to buy more powerful moves or something. Maybe my future self will learn I’ve somehow been playing in a way that’s equivalent to shooting myself in the foot. Maybe not. Who knows. I’ve had fun with it though! I enjoyed the storyline a bunch!

OH, I almost forgot! I told myself I wasn’t going to buy any more pokemon games until they’ve figured out the whole buggy release date nonsense they had going on, but… like many others… I was bewitched by the angst of a sad old train man… and got Legends Arceus anyways… and it SHOWS that the only reason I got it was to play around and see that one character because I haven’t touched it since starting the questline for Avalugg. (Well, it was mostly because I didn’t want to grind levels because my team was severely underleveled and what do you mean you can see a common thread in my grumbling?!?) I WILL finish it one day I swear I spent real money on that thing I will complete it! Just, you know, maybe later. (After I finish Cyber Sleuth!! XD)

…

Hmm, even though I tend to call myself a “pokemon fan,” I’m actually super-duper casual as a game-fan. I guess I just enjoy the manga more. (If you can’t tell from how many times I’ve brought up “stories” and “plot lines” in here XD)

(I do like monster catching games in general, though, don’t get me wrong! I’ve played a handful of non-pokemon ones (Yo-kai-watch 1/2, Digimon Cyber Sleuth and Digimon Survive, mainly) and had a lot of fun with those too! Still a casual, but a casual enjoying themselves, I guess!)

Anime-verse

The Pokemon Anime has been around from 1997 to present times. It used to be dubbed by 4Kids until 2006. These days transferring the anime to the west is done in part by The Pokémon Company International, Viz Media (the same folks that do the manga in most western spheres), and Netflix.

Originally, most of the shows and movies followed a character named Ash Ketchum (Satoshi/サトシ in japan) who was loosely based off the player character Red from the original games. This was true until the 2023 series Pokémon Horizons, in which Ash is no longer the main character and won’t be going forward.

Like many people, I grew up on Indigo League, the original anime series. I can’t claim to have ever watched the entirety of it, but I sure have seen a good chunk of it! I enjoyed the more rough around the edges characters and general shenaniganry of the series. I was also an avid Poke-Movie watcher! (As you can probably tell from the list up above XD)

My favorite movie from this franchise is Pokemon Ranger: Temple of the Sea!! I cannot tell you how many times I’ve seen it!

I’m not sure what it is about it exactly… the nautical themes and good tensions, maybe? I just know that I enjoy it a ton! So much I actually own the manga made for it! (Which is saying a bit, since at the time I was a bit of a Pokespe purist.)

It’s a little bit silly because I actually haven’t seen much of Pokemon Advance, which is the seasons that May and Max are from.

The only series I can say to have watched in its entirety is Pokemon Best Wishes, the series for Pokemon Black and White. (Best Wishes, BW, Black and White, do you get it? I thought that was pretty clever of them at the time!) I enjoyed it, although it’s been so long that I can’t tell you much about it other than I’m pretty sure they’ve changed a bunch about N and his backstory…? Maybe…?

After that I watched a bit of XY, enough that “The future is now, thanks to science!” is still something that comes to mind every now and then, but I never kept up with it enough to finish it. I enjoyed the slightly more serious tone of it, which looking back makes a lot of sense if they wanted to keep some heaviness to the “Life and Death” themes. Not to say that they were completely lacking in levity though!

I don’t really keep up with the Pokeani at all these days, other than catching the occasional movie and than keeping my ear on the ground for news of new seasons. But I’ve really enjoyed my time with it!

Adoptables / Free to Use:

You're free to use all the items in this section, which were made by me. No credit required but it is very much appreciated!

Stamps:

Avatars/Icons:

These are 100x100. The borders are from Minttea.

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Quizes:

What kind of Rocketshipper are you?
The test was made by Eevee

(^ This quiz gets it! XD)

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Adoptables Collection/ Web Items:

Items found across the web, click on them and they'll take you to where I got them!

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Bingo:

Back before Scarlet and Violet came out, I made a prediction bingo board for myself! There's a blank one as well if you'd like to use it.

(I also never checked anything off because I ended up not buying the games... XD) (Also "region locked" should be "version locked")