The Scarlet and Violet Subtle Shinies page has been updated with more difficult-to-identify shinies in the new Blueberry Pokédex (plus Finneon/Lumineon, brought to you by me genuinely nearly overlooking the shiny one I caught yesterday when I thought it was just the sunset lighting). I also decided to add some headings to make it easier to find just the ones added in a certain DLC.

Some of yesterday's updates also didn't actually get pushed to the live site; they're there now, whoops. The capture mechanics page also now covers the Catching Charm (as well as there being a box for it in the calculator), and I've been fixing some more errors in the Gen II Locations.

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I have now finished playing through the main story of the Indigo Disk DLC, so I've made the basic Indigo Disk updates: the Favorite Pokémon Picker, list generator, Gen IX Capture Calculator, Number Game, Hangman, evolution list, stat stages and status ailments should all now be up-to-date according to the DLC content. Subtle shinies should be coming tomorrow or in the next few days.

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Another kind of random little update: I happened to look at the Site History page and realize it was pretty out of date, so I went and updated it with some newer notable events, hit milestones, and a bit more about the evolution of the styles since 2005.

Additionally, I've fixed some more small encounter errors in the Gen II Locations, again with thanks to Altissimo, and added a couple of subtle shinies.

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Something of a random little update today. First, with thanks to Altissimo, I've corrected a couple of things in the Gen II Locations (Crystal's Route 3 encounters had Raticate instead of Sandshrew) and Gen IV Locations (a previously unknown encounter set was actually the list for Mt. Moon Square during the Monday Clefairy event) - remember I appreciate all bug reports.

Second, I got an e-mail from a fan of the Number Game who suggested a mode where you can use it like flashcards, where instead of having to type in the Pokémon's name you just picture it in your head and then flip the card over to see if you got it right. That sounded reasonable and kind of fun and I'm always energized by people being enthusiastic about some of the more random things I've made, so I whipped that up and also gave the Number Game page a little bit of a makeover - the instructions are now collapsible, and the number and Pokémon visually shows up on a little 'card' that's a bit more aesthetically pleasing. Let me know what you think.

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Pretty awesome, I think:
In the States you could drink.
Happy birthday, dear website!
Year's gone by in a blink.

Happy birthday to The Cave of Dragonflies, which is twenty-one years old today! They grow up so fast, sniff.

For the occasion, I've revisited one of the site's most popular pages, the Favorite Pokémon Picker, for a couple of interesting new features.

First, less a new feature and more a little tweak. A picker 'round' is one cycle through all of the non-eliminated Pokémon: as you go, in each round you will eliminate some portion of the Pokémon while the ones you picked or passed on move on to the next round. If the number of Pokémon in a round was not divisible by the chosen batch size, the picker would previously shunt any leftovers automatically to the beginning of the next round. This was a sensible thing to do and all and it worked fine, but it did make the round boundaries a lot blurrier than they could have been and muddle the logic of it a little, and for the other updates I was doing here, it was just better if the round boundaries were very clear - so now, the picker will always cycle through every remaining Pokémon each round, trying to keep the batches roughly evenly sized.

Second, clicking the "Not seeing one of your favorite Pokémon? Click here to check what happened to it" link will now offer to 'rescue' that Pokémon if you eliminated it by mistake. Previously, you would have to keep picking until whichever Pokémon you accidentally picked over it made it onto the favorite list, then finally pick the lost Pokémon and then rearrange it on the favorite list from there, but this could understandably be tedious or infeasible. With the rescue feature, you can simply undo the Pokémon's elimination after the fact, no questions asked - it'll go straight onto the internal list of Pokémon you picked this round and then appear normally once the next round starts. This should be helpful for those mistaken eliminations we've all bumped into from time to time.

Lastly, and most interestingly, I have added split mode, an optional special picker mode that you can use for the first picker round specifically. In split mode, instead of picking some of the Pokémon you like best from each individual batch, you should pick every Pokémon that you like across the full round (it will automatically switch back to the familiar 'classic mode' at the end of the first round). The Pokémon that you don't pick, including those you pass on, will all be marked as eliminated by all of the ones you did pick. In practice, this means that you won't see any of the Pokémon you didn't pick again until such a time as you have added all of the ones that you did pick in the first round to your favorite list.

The main motivation for this new mode is that probably the most common complaint I get about the picker is that people get pretty disgruntled about having random Pokémon they don't care about crop up again after they either pass on them (in which case they'll all move on to next round, as the picker page explains under the "How It Works" heading) or pick something else over them (in which case they will reappear when the Pokémon you picked over them are all on the favorite list). This is and always has been the picker working correctly and as intended - the algorithm is driven by gaining information via which Pokémon eliminate which, so you're not meant to just pass on every batch that doesn't have any Pokémon you particularly like, and if we ever eliminated a Pokémon forever without bringing it back when its eliminators have made it onto the list, the algorithm would no longer be sound and your list would end up partially decided by the random chance of which Pokémon were matched against which when. But clearly it was a recurring source of frustration for users who are just using the picker and don't have this whole elegant algorithmic model in their heads, which is entirely fair.

So while the various simplistic just-eliminate-forever approaches would not have worked, the other day I thought of one that does, namely split mode - which is effectively equivalent to if you started by picking from a single enormous batch containing every Pokémon in the running. By picking just the Pokémon you like in some sense and marking every other as eliminated by all of them, you can cleanly narrow down the Pokémon you will be picking between without worrying about any of the other ones returning - unless, of course, you end up using the picker for so long that you add all the ones you liked to your favorites, in which case we'll simply bring back all the rest at once.

There is a certain danger of inaccuracy with the split mode approach: it's likely that as you go on, especially if you pick between a lot of Pokémon, your bar for what Pokémon you like enough to pick will shift a bit from batch to batch, so that you end up for instance picking a Pokémon in the twentieth batch that you don't really like as much as a Pokémon you didn't pick from the second batch. In the classic mode that's fine and doesn't matter and will not affect your final results, but in split mode it will matter and fuzz things a bit. But that's something that will only really start to matter at the margins - so as long as the total number of Pokémon you pick across the first round is comfortably bigger than the number of Pokémon you end up picking onto your favorite list, you should still end up with an accurate list if you make consistent picks from there. And of course, you can always reorder your favorites after the fact or rescue some Pokémon you realize you shouldn't have eliminated!

All in all, if you either enter the picker page with no saved state (or an untouched state) or reset the picker, you will now be offered the chance to start with a split mode round or to proceed in the usual classic mode. I hope you enjoy the new mode (and the rescue feature), and please do let me know through any of the usual means if you have any problems or issues with it (as with any significant programming change, it's possible I introduced some bugs here).

There exists the possibility of allowing you to toggle split mode on whenever you want and keep it on instead of it applying to the first round only; I ended up not making that an option because it's not nearly as useful after the first round and once you're using it for smaller rounds it's just going to create compounded inaccuracies and make it all too easy for users to shoot themselves in the foot, but if it turns out people really want it I did account for the possibility in the design of things.

See you for the twenty-second year of The Cave of Dragonflies' existence! And I swear I will finish that roulette page.

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The Subtle Shinies page for Scarlet and Violet has now been updated with subtle shinies added in The Teal Mask, as well as a couple others from a visitor pointer. Let me know if there are any I overlooked that are super obnoxious to identify in-game!

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I have been persistently stuck in a quagmire of one million other things to do, but I've now finally added Teal Mask data throughout the site - this includes the Gen IX capture calculator, Favorite Pokémon Picker, evolution list, status ailments, stat stages, Pokémon List Generator, Number Game and Hangman - as well as updating most Pokémon images displayed on the site to use the Pokémon Home artwork, which I hadn't actually done yet since Home compatibility was added to Scarlet and Violet.

Also, the Hisuian Pokédex wasn't an option in the Pokémon List Generator before; now it is, along with the Kitakami Pokédex.

I will probably also update the Subtle Shinies page soon, and then hopefully I can get to actually wrapping up that R/S/E roulette analysis that I've been 85% done with for several months now.

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I am somehow still not quite done with my roulette mechanics writeup because I have had a million other things taking up my time and my brain decided to involve multiple calculators and in-browser emulation of the roulette physics, but in the meantime, I've redrawn the cover for my fanfic Butterfree, to a version that I think is significantly better than the original one (from three years ago). It also helps that it actually has the fic's title on it, making it finally consistent with the other covers on the fanfiction page.

Roulette really really should be coming soon, though, honest.

Also, the other day someone asked me if I could add two more possible types to the Moveset coverage mode in the Interactive Type Chart, so that's now available too, if you wanted it!

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Roulette mechanics are still being worked on, but in the meantime, I've put up a new short Morphic extra, Dave and Jean Discuss Swearing. Contains strong language and some talk of bullying and discrimination.

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Yesterday's update was obviously a joke; I hope you all got some amusement out of it. The Favorite Pokémon Picker is now back to normal, and I've written up this year's joke on the April Fools' Day joke archive.

Hope you've all had a fun day filled with amusing hijinks!

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I have added a new, groundbreaking fan theory concerning Walking Wake and the mysterious drawing from the Scarlet Book. I'm sure you will all find it extremely illuminating.

And finally, I have made some important quality improvements to the Favorite Pokémon Picker. Let me know which Lechonk is your favorite.

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Somehow I simply forgot about adding Walking Wake and Iron Leaves to the Favorite Pokémon Picker. They have been added now and are available for selection if you have Gen IX selected.

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I've finished updating various other pages around the site to include Scarlet and Violet stuff - this includes the Battling Basics, Battle Mechanics, Status Ailments and Stat Stages, none of which I had actually properly updated for Sword and Shield either when they came out. Relatedly, I have begun to regret my choices in creating several different pages with comprehensive lists of everything relevant to X, which thereby obligate me to update them with the ever-growing list of things that might be relevant to X every time a new game comes out, long past the point the lists have grown to be so long most people's eyes probably glaze over, and with the inevitability that at some point I'll miss some information that ought to be updated there. But I also hate the idea of just removing some nicely compiled information just because it's tedious to keep it up-to-date, so for now, at least, these lists are still there, and should now hopefully be up-to-date. As always, let me know if you spot any errors or ommissions in all this.

Anyway, now that that's done, time for me to get properly sunk back into the R/S/E roulette minigame.

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Happy Pokémon Day! I've now put up a page on subtle shinies in Scarlet and Violet - a page that I immediately found myself wanting as I played the game with a constant sense of paranoia that maybe some of the Pokémon I was walking past were shiny and I just couldn't tell. It's a list of shinies in the Paldea Pokédex, found in the wild, that are relatively similar to their regular versions, in a way where you might see them in passing or in unusual lighting and simply not notice it's not the usual color.

Since the page is made on the basis of me just looking at pictures of the normal and shiny versions side by side out of context (I am not the sort of person who would ever even dream of trying to have a living shiny dex), I'm sure you all might have some feedback on Pokémon I've missed that are actually pretty fiendish, or Pokémon I didn't put on the "Most Subtle" list that are actually subtler than some that I did - by all means bring on that feedback and let me know.

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Gen IX updates are here, finally! First, the new content: capture mechanics and a catch rate calculator for Scarlet and Violet.

I've also updated the Interactive Type Chart, Pokémon List Generator, Fun Facts, Evolution List, Hangman and Number Game to include the Pokémon from Legends: Arceus and Scarlet and Violet. There are some odds and ends here and there that should also be updated but I believe that covers the main things that glaringly needed it.

As always, please let me know if anything's weird or off or missing!

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S/V content is coming, but in the meantime, I have put up a new fanfic - Go, a one-shot about what if Pokémon Go in its early days became real. Technically it was written for a contest in 2016, but I never put it up here because I didn't like it enough; now I've edited it to be reasonably happy with it, so here it is.

Alongside this, I decided to spruce up the fanfiction section a little bit. Lately I've been drawing cover art for my fanfics, so I figured I may as well include that there with them - and because Morphic and its seven billion extras was dominating the vertical space on that page a bit, I decided to give it its own page (and, while I was at it, mention there how old it is and that I'm working on a rewrite). Hopefully this makes it all a bit nicer to look at!

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A little late for my usual New Year's update because I've been abroad! I hope you're all having a good 2023 so far.

I'm planning some more S/V content, but I've got various other things I need to get into first, so please bear with me for a little while. In the meantime, I'd like to extend my usual New Year's Thanks to:

• ...all of my lovely internet friends, you all know who you are <3
• ...but an extra special one to Jackie, Chibi and elyvorg, who I got to see in person this year and have some great times with
• ...Negrek and the Thousand Roads fanfic community, my primary home on the internet these days
• ...Tetra, for running the Adventure Quest RP in which I had a lot of fun writing some May
• ...Latios of the newly-resurrected Shining Misdreavus, for reviving an old community and good nostalgic discussions
• ...Quiara, who was persistent enough to prod me again after three years into doing some fascinating research on the R/S/E roulette minigame (coming to a Cave of Dragonflies near you)
• ...my husband Shadey, for continuing to be quality husband
• ...our cat Birta, for continuing to be quality cat
• ...my parents, who are good
• ...everyone still frequenting and creating old-school websites in this day and age
• ...everyone who has read my fanfics
• ...my ever-gracious patrons

Happy new year, and I'll see you next update!

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