# Hongye’s Journal A record of events in [][@:Hongye94]’s pokémon journey. : [2023-08-28]{as=time}[^time] Big chain of events culminated in the start of several new journeys today. To summarize :— - A while back, a new girl (Gloria) moved into Postwick and hit it off with Hop, who is about her age. Leon caught wind of this and decided to gift them both pokémon, out of the hope, as Sonia would have it, that having a rival would encourage Hop to get more serious about pokémon training. - Day 2 of them both having pokémon, the youngsters run off into the Slumbering Weald (!!) to rescue a Wooloo and give everyone a fright. They go on and on about seeing a mysterious pokémon there, which gets Leon and Sonia interested for their own reasons—Sonia’s are academic; I can’t claim to know Leon’s but evidently he has been pestering her about legendary super‐strong pokémon for some time. - After getting Pokédexes and meeting with Professor Magnolia, Hop and Gloria manage to pressure Leon into endorsing them for the Gym Challenge. The professor evidently twists this to somehow pressure Sonia into setting off too. Not really sure what she’s hoping to accomplish, but I think she misses being on the road and Professor Magnolia knows it. In any case, I accompanied her to the station to see her off. (Would have gone with her if she’d asked.) - A train (from the Isle of Armor connexion) pulled in just after Sonia’s departed, carrying a rogue Slowpoke. Bit uncertain how it managed getting off the island, as that part of the journey is usually managed by flying taxi. Everybody just kind of hung around the station unsure of what to do until I offered to catch it. Oddly, there was another guy there who seemed totally enamoured with the pokémon, but he didn’t make any claims on it; performance anxiety maybe, wot with all the watching eyes. So the end result is that I have a Slowpoke to take care of now. Honestly, my plan is just to head to the Isle of Armor and release it back into the wild; I don’t have any need for another pokémon but mainland Galar is clearly not its correct habitat. I might see if Professor Magnolia has any tasks I can do there as well—not exactly looking forward to spending the next few months in Wedgehurst while everybody else is off having adventures. : [2023-08-30]{as=time} There were still a few pokémon local to the Wedgehurst area that I hadn’t yet made a pokédex record for, so I decided to try to find them before setting out. Purrloin wasn’t too hard to find, but Hoothoot sure is rare! To give a sense for how long it took, several of the bug pokémon I had under observation had already evolved by the time I found one. It was several trips to the Pokémon Centre because my party just kept getting worn out! On a more positive note, while hunting through the tall grasses of Route 2 I managed to befriend an incredibly shy Yamper—it fetches my pokéballs for me when I miss. I named it Ballecherche, which is a pun on the Kalosian _aller chercher une balle_{as=i lang=fr}, meaning “to fetch a ball”. : [2023-08-31]{as=time} I finally made it to the Isle of Armor! Bit of a strange sequence of events upon my arrival :— - In the station there was a guy evidently looking to join the dojo on the island—except he’s averse to weirdos and there’s one hanging around outside. I immediately don’t think he’s dojo material, and weirdo evidently agrees, as he mistakes me for the new member and pays the other guy no mind. - Weirdo (Avery) turns out to be the same guy who was super into the Slowpoke back at the station—turns out he already is training one, which explains why he didn’t catch it back then. I find this out because he challenges me to a battle—he doesn’t seem to remember me from the station. I’m not big on battling, but I want to get a sense of his strength, and it turns out he is pretty green. - After we win the battle, Sobble evolves into Drizzile, and it seems pretty interested in the idea of dojo training. The guy whose place I stole seems fine with it—he evidently has second thoughts about training on a remote island with the likes of Avery. I don’t get it—the guy’s bark is waaaayy worse than his bite. - The dojo accepts me as a new member even thô I’m _not_ who they were expecting. We’re immediately set on a task of chasing down some quick Slowpoke, which my experience running down pokémon for the lab evidently prepared me well for. Then we’re given another task of mushroom foraging, and the dojo instructor evidently likes me because he tells me just where to find them. It’s mushroom soup for dinner. In all this I forgot to release the Slowpoke, although I suppose there’s no rush. As a reward for the first trial I was offered the opportunity to raise a Squirtle or Bulbasaur—it’s not often you find those in Galar and these have the Gigantamax factor. I agreed and went with Bulbasaur. : [2023-09-01]{as=time} As Avery and I performed the best in the dojo trials, we’ve been asked to compete for the top spot in a pokémon battle at the end of the month. I’ve never had difficulty taking on Avery before, but I admit that battling isn’t my strong suit. In the meantime I’ve been familiarizing myself with the local ecology and running down Diglett which have escaped a trainer from Alola. Bulbasaur evolved into Ivysaur after not much time together, but Venusaur is likely still a ways out. I’ve decided to keep Slowpoke in my party for now. I may still release it after my battle with Avery, but for the time being a larger party is better, and we’ve developed at least a little rapport. [^time]: ::: thread - The dates here are “real‐world” dates not “in‐universe” dates, which is more useful for following along in real time but less useful for roleplaying purposes. Do we have a preference? [][@:Lady]{.sig} - My preference would be for “real-world” or both. Or at least to having some clear marker of different updates. Just a HR between updates would also work fine. btw do you have thoughts on how (if) you would like other peeps to comment on the events? iiii fiured this would be okay in this case given your asking a question hehe [][@:Rinna]{.sig} - Yeah I definitely agree and think the only advantage to in‐universe dates is if other people were also R·P·ing and wanted to like, co·ordinate timeline. And it’s more that like, “canonically” (wiki page forthcoming eventually) _Sword & Shield_{as=cite} take place in like, Summer 2019 and not late summer or early fall in 2023. Commenting on the events is fine! Just be sure to like, make it clear that it is a comment (sign it, ⁊·c) so that it doesn’t get confusing to read. I think there’s a feature request for using lists as threading? but even without additional styling I think adding a bulleted list of signed comments after each update could work. For in‐character R·P stuff we could also add like a `Hongye94/Talk` page or whatever, i suppose. [][@:Lady]{.sig} - Threading support has now been added! [][@:Lady]{.sig} :::