PokéBattles: Sandy Version

General thoughts

I wrote all of Shadow's battles for Blood and Shadows, except for the Shadowstein trilogy, while finishing off and editing Narrator Is Missing, and it just was happenstance of scheduling that Shadows and Dark Creatures was scheduled for the 30th of September. And knowing that, well, I couldn't resist concluding it with a (very loose) pastiche of Frankenstein as a three part October special rather than the three ghost stories I did on a whim for Halloween 2022. Had Sandy's scheduling worked out differently, Shadow would have likely gone down a path of conquest instead of becoming a father in a... Riff of Frankenstein, predominantly based on how that story gets told and retold in pop culture, starring Sonic characters in a format based on the battle narration of Pokémon because... Obviously.

I did have to reference Battle 44 a few times to make sure I kept the way I punctuated Beth's lines consistent with Phantump's lines because apparently, this incarnation of Sandy has an unofficial style guide for 'dead kids who aren't within the land of the dead'. Sandy is my comedic writing~

The original plan was that Shadow would successfully catch a couple of Dark types including actually getting an Umbreon rather than Bloodeon, challenge Sabrina for the status of Saffron's official gym, and wind up causing absolute chaos in Saffron because there are now three gyms competing for official gym status and they're in a type triangle with each other. That... Went sideways. Hard. Although it was still what I was expecting to happen right up until Bloodeon turned Elgyem into a thrall, at which point... Well... Yeah.

I wasn't planning on killing Maria when I introduced her in Narrator Is Missing. Shadow rescueing her felt like it was the knife being twisted into his heart well enough. But I think that became inevitable in my head as soon as Elgyem happened.

The first segment of Shadowstein Part 1 was originally written with Shadow as the player before I realized it would make more sense with Tails as the player despite the hell it'd do to the formatting of Sandy Dex since that led to Shadow temporarily having a trainer as a Pokemon who has a trainer as a Pokemon, and when I made my CSS able to handle putting Sandy Dex entries inside of Sandy Dex entries it lets me nest indefinitely, but... It can definitely get silly with how thin it can wind up being.

At this point, I probably should explain how I decide who gets Sandy Dex entries and who doesn't since there is a system to it. If someone is the Player, they get a Sandy Dex entry. If someone who isn't a Player has Pokémon, they get a Sandy Dex entry. I keep track of the appearances and records of every entity to appear in Sandy, because due to this anyone could theoretically get a Sandy Dex entry at any point, so that saves me backfilling appearances and records when that happens. Anything that dies, whether it would qualify for a Sandy Dex entry or not, gets a Requiem entry. I also have a way I work out if someone won, drew, or lost, but a lot of the time that's more gut than system. In a nutshell - Entities that run away, get caught, faint, die, are out of usable Pokémon, or are declared to have lost/their opponent is declared to have won by the Narrator lose the battle they're in. Entities that cause someone to lose win the battle they're in provided they don't go on to lose later in the battle. Entities that appear and do neither of those things get a draw. Entities only win, lose or draw if they're not currently the Pokémon of another entity.

Meanwhile, Solveig and Joanne's rescue, if we can call it that, of Red went a lot faster than I was anticipating it going until I started writing it and realized what pacing would make sense there. It wasn't until I'd started writing it that I realized exactly what it was Red was trapped in beyond, as per my notes 'the world's worst escape room,' and how it fit in with my planned future arcs. I had the opportunity to parody Hellraiser with this. I had the opportunity to parody the film franchise Cube. I wound up doing... This... Instead.

Notes on selected battles

Battle 66 is a fairly straightforward bit of aftermath for Narrator is Missing, and very deliberately alternates between Narrated text and more traditional prose since there were enough segments of that to be able to do that without forcing anything.

Battles 67-68 very deliberately set up the Jim and Ben dynamic, because... I kind of dumped a young child in the wilderness with nothing but a rodent for company, I kind of felt the need to address that sooner rather than later.

On Battle 68 specifically, I think I wrote the ghost subgame after being reminded that we used to play that a ton on IRC in the PokéBattles community, with implementations being baked into at least one of the community bots that we had in the channel.

Battle 69 follows up with Red's situation a little, while Joanne and Solveig start their quest to rescue him - I'm not sure when I decided to have Red aware of voices outside of the folded net (i.e. a cube) he was trapped in, but I really like that final prose segment.

I think Battle 70 mostly exists because once I realized where the Blood and Shadows plotline was going, I knew I needed to use Lass Maria a lot. Beyond that, I enjoyed the Navy Gate pun, but also 'sleeping like a Snorlax' being impenetrable without waking them rather than a heavy sleeper. Incidentally, and I'm asking this here because I have nothing specific to say about Battle 72, why is the Dark Chao Garden in SA2/B clearly hell? Complete with what is clearly a lake of blood? Why is that a thing in the Sonic franchise?

I think Battle 71 was written before I knew I was ending Blood and Shadows with a Frankenstein riff involving Bobby's death, so I think this was intended as just more Narrator is Missing follow up. But it was written after I knew Maria was going to die, so might have also been snuck in there to try and hide the significance of giving Maria a battle.

With Battle 74 I wasn't intending on making Farmer Joe a former pirate when I started writing Fishy Farming, but when I started to write him I was aiming for a West Country dialect, got something closer to Pirate instead, and just kind of ran with it. Right from introducing X-Wing as Solveig's Pokémon, I had intended to at some point have it evolve into a Swordfish (the next fish up is a Jellyfish, and larger fish are equivalent to smaller fish on a 9x9 Sudoku grid)

What Joe was going to say before is that Matey likely comes from Matelotage, and further editorializing is a practice that according to some historians was a sort of pirate same gender marriage or domestic partnership, though was certainly an agreement to share incomes, inherit property, and act in each other's interests. And while platonic vs is debated, I choose to interpret it in that way (...Particularly given how... Extremely bad... Historians have historically been at recognizing non-heterosexuality in historical figures)

Battle 75 mostly exists because I was spending a lot of time in the Depths in Tears of the Kingdom when I wrote it, and that is all I have to say about the matter.

Battle 77 is the battle that changed the course of this arc, all because of a few very silly jokes that built on top of each other into '...Oh. I'm going there rather than where I thought I was going? OK then.'

Battles 78-79 were the first battles I wrote of this set of battles, writing them pretty much immediately following writing Battle 61 as a direct follow up to that, which was written long before I'd started writing Narrator is Missing in earnest.

I really enjoy the direct interaction between people in an environment written in the PokéBattles format and people in an environment written in prose in Battle 80.

Interlude 1 was originally going to be at the end of Battle 80, but I decided I preferred the more optimistic note Battle 80 ended on without it.

I wasn't expecting the Red Weed to be anything but a throwaway gag in 77 before writing Battle 82, but the Martian War Machine felt like a fun thing to build up to as soon as I'd written it into existence here as a throwaway gag.

Battle 83 felt like a necessary battle to write, to pay off Catherine feeling the need to spend time apart at the end of Narrator is Missing, and coming up with different dating disasters and working it into the PokéBattles format was... Challenging to write.

Battle 84 and 85 were written after I knew the shape of Shadowstein, and had written some of it. They exist because I knew I needed to reintroduce Bobby, since he was going to be getting killed in Shadowstein, and Jean, since she was going to slap some sense into Shadow as part of Shadowstein - I think I was part way through writing Shadowstein Part 2 when I wrote them, not having written any of Jean's segments in that but having written Bobby's death scene.

It was also fun to write Mail Carrier Sam again, still getting attacked by dogs thanks to the Narrator, but now in Johto rather than Kanto.

Battle 86 was an interesting one to write, knowing it was the last time I was going to be writing Maria before the Battle in which she died, and going through the Classic Sandy battles for new Vault commentary, I'm amused that the concept at the start of the Battle, someone giving the Narrator silent treatment to get their way, is something I used over two decades ago. I like to think this implementation is stronger, however, and I do enjoy that it leads to battling an abstract element of spelling.

When I wrote Battle 87, I wasn't sure what Shadow was going to do next until I noticed the date it was being published. Additionally, it was originally going to end with a Youngster Ben and Jim prose segment, as I'd used in a lot of Shadow Battles during this arc up until this point, but decided the tone wasn't quite right for the end of this Battle, particularly with it leading straight into the Shadowstein three parter. That segment is being uploaded at the same time as this commentary, as Interlude 2

Battles 88-90 were written not exactly together but certainly conceived of at the same time. Battle 88 was very quick and easy to write, as were Bobby and Maria's segments of 89, and then I needed to do a lot of juggling to get the rest of 89 and 90 to actually work in a way that felt like they flowed organically to me.