Been playing Pokemon HeartGold on and off. Did some training on my pokemon and then finally laid the smackdown on the Team Rocket leader.

Made my way across the Ice Path into Blackthorn, challenged Claire's trainers in the gym. Did some more training, then went back and took Claire on.

What a blast. Beat her on the first try -- that certainly didn't happen back in Generation 2. Appears her Kingdra swapped out Surf for Hydro Pump (which, thank the Random Number God, missed like 4 of 5 times), but it still went down to the wire: My starter (a Lv.38 Typhlosion at this point) versus hers. Flame Wheel and Lava Plume being no good against a Water+Dragon type, so all I have left is Swift. Which is fortunate because Kingdra starts alternating between Smokescreen and Hyper Beam, leaving me just enough time to heal up then hit her a few times.

And then there's the added event where the five Kimono Girls that have up to this point been wandering around challenge you all at once with their Eeveelutions. Wow, are they much tougher now than in Generation 2. Five battles in a row with no respite between them whatsoever....

And then the battle against Lv.45 Ho-oh, required before you can proceed to Victory Road. I almost had him the first three times -- first time he ran out of moves and Struggled to death, second time he beat me, third time I fled ... fourth time was a charm. Noctowl kept putting him to sleep with Hypnosis (with a few Max Revives to keep him fighting), I must've thrown 20 Ultra Balls, 5 Dusk Balls and 5 Timer Balls at him ... caught him with my very last Timer Ball. I was afraid he was going to run out of moves again and KO himself with Struggle, but he's caught now. That makes three legendaries and I still have the Master Ball ready and waiting.

I made it through three of the Elite Four with my team, still passing around the Exp.Share to train up my mainstays ... Lanturn is slow but his Water+Electric combination is awesome.

I've been shuffling ideas around for a certain Pokemon based story in my head. Now while I won't spoil any details of what the story's about, there are a few things I have been thinking of where I need to deviate from the Pokemon canon.

The first of them is giving all Legendary pokemon genders.

Blasphemy! Legendaries are not breedable, and they don't have genders ... right? Well, not exactly. Remember that the games categorize them as "gender unknown" (not "genderless"), and many GU pokemon can in fact be bred in captivity -- you just need a Ditto to (ahem) do it.

And we already know that, well, pokemon have to poop sometimes (this is explicitly what the Goldenrod Flower Shop in HG/SS makes its "Fertilizers" from), so since this is already canon, it's not much of a stretch to presume that if Legendaries can have genders then they can also be capable of mating.

But breeding Legendaries comes with its own special rules:

1 - Legendaries will not mate with other Legendaries. Perhaps they technically can, but simply refuse to do it. (At least in captivity.)

2 - Like Ditto, breeding a Legendary will always result in offspring of their partner's species, regardless of who is the male and female. If you paired a female Raikou with a male Luxray, you wouldn't get a baby Raikou, but a baby Shinx instead.

3 - All other standard breeding rules still apply. The above baby Shinx, for example, could still inherit moves from its Luxray father. But if you paired, say, a male Entei with a female Arcanine, the baby Growlithe could inherit moves from the Entei father regardless of Entei being a legendary.


My story idea requires that one pokemon is "the son of a Legendary", as that becomes an important plot point.

There will be other differences, like some caveats regarding how Poke balls work. For example, you can't store one a pokeball inside another, especially if either one actively houses a pokemon. And a pokemon that is released back into the wild after being once caught can be made immune to any further catching attempts (even a Master Ball). I'm not spoiling the reasons why, but it too becomes an important plot point. (Twice.)

And one final difference (for now, at least) is some discrimination regarding how pokemon were bred: "Purebreds" whose parents belong to the same evolutionary line, "halfbreeds" from parents of mixed species, and an especial hatred for any "bastard" bred from a Ditto.

What do you think?

It's an odd question, I know, but which one?

I'm talking about paper orientation, a.k.a. "Landscape" or "Portrait".

Because I've occasionally thought about working on some kind of comic, but once I pick an aspect ratio I more or less need to stick with it.

Just voicing some annoyance with the disproportionate popularity of photo memes this week.

Apparently. They didn't make any announcements about it or anything, but yes, FA has its search feature back :)

...the official nickname of FA's new server.

Anyway, so FA was down for a month and me? ME? Nah, strangely I haven't been able to finish much in the way of new drawings lately. Nevertheless, there are one or two things I can upload shortly....

FINALLY! Somebody on FA staff finally added a 'Gryphon' option to the Species listbox.

Only catch is, the category's currently about empty. I've sorted a few of my pics into it, however that's only about 3 or 4 total, and there's thousands more gryphon artwork out there across FA.

Got gryphon artwork? Sort it into the new category while it's still fresh!

I occasionally like perusing art for TF (transformation or metamorphosis themed) material. Granted, that sounds normal enough, right? But here's the dark and stormy part:

I hate TF material.

I'm still a bit of a Transformers fan, I love shapeshifting robots (including the 2007 film) and some shapeshifting in general, but (and this is the secret)....

The hatred is a childhood scar.

And those scars never really heal.

Damn you, Willow.

Staff member over on Fanart, established on dA, new here... so at what point do I begin uploading my stuff?

I certainly use my dA account for the most submissions, whereas I do actual work on Fanart (as a staff member)...

But here, I'm new and wondering where to start.

I'm kinda thinking 2004, because that's where I drew my first veritable 'furry' (or 'anthro', as some of you prefer), and that's what FA was built around . . . right?

If there are no other ideas, then there's only one thing left to do:

I wanna make some kind of watermark to stamp on my pieces. The text sig is fine, but I want to try making something a little more snazzy.

So I guess it's time to fire up the Inkscape!

. . . After dinner. And bed. And being up early tomorrow for work. And tomorrow's work.

Bah, there I go again. I can't seem to make any time for art these days like I should be....