This started as an attempt to drag myself out of a creative rut by going to a park and writing and accidentally turned into a few PokéBattles Battles, written in a physical notepad, which I only typed up after the 2022 revival of Sandy started in earnest. I do actually quite like the direction both of the plot threads that I had going were heading in, and there's much more consistency here than I think I ever got going in the original Sandy.
Battle 0
This was written after Battle 1, as a sort of intro. It's cute, and I do like the light humour it ends with.
Battle 1
The self awareness that comes with making myself the player in the first battle here is cute, as is going higher contrast via having the Narrator eating a Peanut and going green. In Sandy's 2022 incarnation, I was subtler with the fix - using a desaturated shade of red that has better contrast.
The jokes mostly come from the interaction between Stemi and the Narrator, and the unfairness of PokéBattles. I do enjoy the ending of Stemi evolving into SVWebmaster and not being happy about it on account that they're already writing this - Which I think reflected my opinion at the time of going to a park to write and accidentally writing a battle.
Battle 2
I had forgotten Beth was the first (non self-insert) player character in this version of Sandy when naming either Beth in the 2022 incarnation.
Nice to have a character in this that knows nothing about PokéBattles, although that's the opposite approach to the one I took with the 2022 incarnation of Sandy.
The Narrator being utterly baffled by the concept of gender is a cute touch, not sure how I feel about Beth getting one up on the Narrator in their first interchange, but the idea of the Narrator being too quick to bore to be able to deal with players refusing to do anything is a theme I continued into modern Sandy.
The Battle between Beth and Professor Oak, literally an Oak tree in this case, goes swiftly and is cute - As is the connection between neither the Narrator nor Professor Oak knowing the difference between human genders. I also like that Beth gets a Sandshrew as her starter, which somehow was a connection between the Pokémon and version name that never really cropped up in Classic Sandy, and only tangentially came up in the 2022 incarnation (via the Sand Reaper)
Battle 3
Not sure what caused me to give Dave a partner or make that partner a guy. I know I reset him to having Heavy Chunk of Metal because that's always how I think of him despite that not really being the case for a long time in Classic Sandy (Not that I looked up the continuity when writing these), though this is still going harder on the references than I tried to do in the 2022 conception.
I really like the dynamic between the Narrator and Dave in this, with Dave being very protective of Josh. and the quick setup and callback to the "If you believe that, I've got a bridge to sell you" phrase.
The typo of 'got the phrase wrong' to 'got the phrase work' is distracting, but I made a choice to not run these through spelling or grammar checking and present them as they were in my notebook. And another quick callback to a bit of prior narration rather than isolated gags which I really like about these battles.
This is where the idea of Dave having beef with SVWebmaster and wanting to get back to life to have his revenge in the 2022 incarnation of Sandy comes from, incidentally.
Battle 4
Route 8001 is a reference to Sandy being Version 80 on the old Network.
The idea that Beth is on the run for attempted murder due to the things that happened in Battle 2 is a fun setup, while I intended the mysterious voice to be revealed to be Meeman at some point.
Treating Sand and Shrew separately following a sand attack is a cute gag, somewhat reminiscent of how I would go on to handle Horace's Pokémon in the 2022 incarnation, and aside from that it's just quickfire gags that flow decently well, ending with this dialogue:
So, any thoughts?
Lots!
NARRATOR goes brood in a CORNER!
It doesn't help ANYONE!
...Great.
Which is a reference to [Spooks], of all things, and how an exchange goes in... I think episode 6 of the first season of that show.