Happy 2019 to all of you! I'm sorry for how quiet the site has been; I haven't been able to do as much work on it lately as I'd have liked. But my revamped tenth movie review really is nearly done and should be coming in the next few days, and I'm also going to be posting a review/ramble about Let's Go soon-ish. Here's to more content in the coming year!

Keeping the New Year's Thanks relatively brief this year:

• To all of my friends, for all the good times, laughs, conversations and emotional support this year. I love you all more than you know.
• To Shadey, for five years of marriage and twelve years of sharing our lives together. I'm so happy about every one of those years and I'm so proud of you for all the badass math you do and you're very cuddliest husband, no one can compare.
• To my parents, for their unending support, being generally good people, and all the many long talks. Mom, I'm incredibly proud of you and can only admire your strength and persistence in the face of the level of crap you've had to endure this year. I love and support you, always.
• To everyone who followed The Quest for the Legends to its end this summer. Special thanks to those of you who'd been following it for more than a decade - you don't know how much it means to me that you stuck with this silly story that you grew up with along with me. Also particular thanks to those people who took part in making the e-card for me; I was incredibly touched by your words and images and efforts, and I'll always treasure it.
• To the loyal visitors of this website, still hanging on in this age of the death of the fansite. I'm not going anywhere regardless of the size of my audience, but it's always a bonus to not be shouting into the void.
• To Team Spaceworld, who analyzed the 1997 Pokémon Gold and Silver demo, providing the fandom with an absolute treasure trove of lost tidbits and bizarre abandoned Pokémon designs, and the anonymous person who provided them with the ROM to do it.
• To Birta, who is the loveliest cat.

Thank you all for 2018, and see you again soon!

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Guess you've turned sixteen,
so you're no longer green.
Happy birthday, dear website!
On towards seventeen.

Another year, another birthday for The Cave of Dragonflies. And this one's a little special, because with this birthday, TCoD becomes the longest-running project of my life: my fanfic, The Quest for the Legends, was always a few months older, but I completed it on its sixteenth birthday earlier this year, so now TCoD is overtaking it - and there's no end in sight! I will be doing this until I'm old and gray.

For the occasion, I made another new style, Butterfree style. It's actually a revival of a style I started making a decade ago (oh my god, I'm old), but never finished. I've always been pretty fond of three-column layouts; it's become a rarity these days to see sites with hundreds of pages like this one, but while I think the dropdown menus I made for Modern style and then Voice of the Forest style came out nice, I've never really thought they were the best way to make this number of pages accessible. Back in April when I made Old-School style as a joke, I realized I kind of wanted to make an actual, non-jokey three-column layout that'd be properly compatible with mobile devices, so I took the opportunity now. The style is pretty minimalistic, but it'll gracefully convert the menus into drop-downs on smaller screens, and it's even got somewhat better mobile support than Voice of the Forest and Modern, since the ultra-compact mobile menu will actually expand submenus (if there aren't any huge bugs with it, though, I'll likely backport that to the others).

Since I like it and it's better on mobile in a couple of ways than Voice of the Forest (the abovementioned nicer menus, plus it uses fewer/smaller images), it's now the default, but I imagine many of you probably still prefer Voice of the Forest, which is fine - you can switch your style back to it here if you haven't set a style cookie.

Lastly, in case any of you missed it, I've put up a generic version of the Favorite Pokémon Picker on GitHub that anyone should be able to use to make their own pickers. Thanks to how long I spent on that, I actually had to put this style together in an evening, so please let me know if anything's weird; I may tweak it later.

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Jeez, this took a while. Finally (finally) the generic Favorite Pokémon Picker code is now available on GitHub with some instructions and documentation to enable you to create your own favorite pickers for anything you want. It should be possible for you to make a basic picker even without knowing any programming whatsoever, and if you know some HTML and just a smidge of JavaScript you should be able to get pretty far on that too.

There are things I've already realized I really need to do differently/better to make it nicer, but it has been long enough. Please go nuts making your own pickers!

Additionally, the actual Favorite Pokémon Picker is now running on the generic version. It still works the same way as before (hopefully), but as always, if anything's weird, please let me know.

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Thanks to a very nice user who sent me a confused e-mail, I've now fixed a bug in the Scale Quiz script that could lead to incorrect results depending on your result cutoffs. (Please blame JavaScript for sorting arrays of numbers lexicographically unless you specify a comparison function.)

I'm still working on tweaking and documenting the generic Favorite Pokémon Picker, but getting there. Soon you'll all be able to make your own pickers for anything you like, and I will be obsolete.

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This site has supported HTTPS since November 2016, but I've now made the full switch to redirecting all traffic to HTTPS. I never did that originally because this site doesn't have logins or anything, but various arguments have now convinced me it should still always use HTTPS. So now, cancerous ISPs or hotel Wi-Fis can no longer inject ads or malware into the site when you view it through their network (I'm sure browsing Pokémon websites is what you do on every hotel Wi-Fi). Let me know if you have any issues with the new configuration.

I'm currently working on making a generic version of the Favorite Pokémon Picker that can be used and customized by anyone to make pickers for your favorite non-Pokémon things. Stay tuned.

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Apologies for the lengthy silence! I spent most of June finishing the final chapter of the fanfic I've been writing since I was twelve years old, and have since been drowning in graduation parties, birthdays and a silly incident where the site's Twitter account was locked for a couple of weeks because, as so often, I was trying to be cute by setting its birthday to the website's birthday.

Either way, the updated ninth movie review is finally up! Now with screenshots, better writing that makes more sense, and a somewhat fairer assessment.

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So tomorrow, the new GDPR privacy regulation takes effect in the European Economic Area. This is a very good thing and I'm thrilled about it, but it does appear that thanks to how Google Analytics works (persistent individual cookie identifiers that Google also uses for ad targeting etc.), it is probably about to become illegal unless you make the user explicitly consent to having their data collected.

For most websites, this is going to mean they add an annoying popup asking you to agree to your data being shared with Google. I think this is silly and annoying, and that absolutely nobody in the world has any reason to go out of their way to agree to let Google know they visited this Pokémon website. All I've ever used Google Analytics for is satisfying my personal curiosity about some statistics and aggregates, which would become sort of pointless when only people who can be bothered to agree to a ridiculous popup are included in the aggregate data anyway. So instead, I've just ditched Google Analytics. Maybe I'll find some kind of server-side analytics solution that does not have any weird privacy implications to satisfy my thirst for statistics later.

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This morning I got some automated server error e-mails about Magikarp: the Gathering, involving a chance that visiting the "save point" while not actually playing the game would break the page. I have now fixed this, and while fixing it I got a bit carried away and made several other tweaks to the game: some minor text/instruction changes, the notice telling you when you're playing the game and how much time you have left is now a bit fancier and nicer-looking, and the bits where Butterfree talks to you are now, in Modern and Voice of the Forest (Celebi) style, formatted to look kind of like speech bubbles. (They're a bit nicer in the other styles too, but I don't quite have the patience to implement the speech bubble thing for each one individually right now, besides that it wouldn't work quite right anyway in the old browsers most of those styles were designed to work in, so this'll have to do.)

The new ninth movie review should be actually coming soon; I've just somehow managed to have all my free time evaporate lately.

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Annnnd we're back. Hope you all enjoyed this year's April Fools' Day joke - if you missed it, it was this style, inspired by what the site looked like nearly fifteen years ago, shortly after I changed its name from Butterfree's Pokémon Site to The Cave of Dragonflies. I've added my usual postmortem to the April Fools' Day joke archive.

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All right, I've made yet another new style for the site, which you should be looking at right now! I really like this one; something about it speaks to something deep in me. Tell me what you think!

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Thanks to a video by Crystal_ bringing it to my attention, I've added a section (it's near the bottom, titled "Also, One More Thing") to my R/B/Y stat modification page. It's pretty obscure, but a fascinating little bit of more bugginess, which has also been implemented into the calculator at the bottom for your fiddling pleasure.

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It seems that when I rewrote the Favorite Pokémon Picker a while back, I actually managed to resurrect that one pesky bug I was battling with for ages a couple of years ago (literally two years minus a day ago, actually) - the window of time where it could be triggered was much smaller, so I only just a couple of days ago got an error report about it again, but it was there. Like before, if you double-clicked the Pick button, it could cause the Pokémon you selected to be picked over both this batch and the next, and if you did it on the last pick of a round, it'd mean the Pokémon from the second batch would continue to be regarded as eliminated by that Pokémon even after it was added to Found Favorites, meaning they'd never get shuffled back into play.

Since the new picker is more robust and performs rigorous error-checking on the state when loading it, simply refreshing the page would fix it, so it's unlikely you've been affected and if you were it'll be fixed next time you use the picker, but nonetheless, apologies for letting this slip by twice. It's now been fixed, really.

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I've finally remembered to update the Battle Mechanics, Status Ailments and Stat Stages sections with (hopefully) all relevant seventh-generation info. Please let me know if I missed anything or made a mistake somewhere; this was a lot of info to sort through and I was admittedly half-asleep when doing some of it.

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I finally got a good chance to look into that report I got quite a while back about Nest Balls failing on supposedly guaranteed captures in US/UM. To make a long story short, it turns out SciresM was wrong about Nest Balls having been boosted in Sun and Moon; they're actually exactly the same as they were in Gen VI. Trinket has verified the other ball bonus changes SciresM reported for S/M were correct, though, so that looks like the only error. I've updated my capture mechanics page and calculator accordingly (and also added info on the Roto Catch bonus, which I'd forgotten to add; it's identical to a max O-Power). Additionally, originally I'd missed the fact the Nest Ball immediately returns a bonus of 1 if the Pokémon is level 30+, both in Gen VI and VII - the formula as written would have had a level 30 Pokémon get a 1.1 multiplier, but it's actually just 1 - a very small difference affecting only the tiniest minority of cases, but I'm still annoyed at myself for not getting that right. That's also been fixed now.

Apologies for any inconvenience caused, and in the future I will try harder to verify these sorts of changes.

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As I was talking about last time, updates are now shown on the update comment pages as well, as you can see if you click the "View comments" link on this post. This involved some nice restructuring of how updates work on the server side that also means I do significantly less manual work when updating while still getting exactly the same result, which is definitely a plus!

I also upgraded some libraries, so if something just broke, that might be why. I will probably get an automatic e-mail about it and fix it shortly.

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The guestbook has always been a separate page in a separate layout of its own, but this was for historical reasons - back in the day when I made it, I wasn't great at programming, didn't really understand C# and had a very hard time adding substantial code to the main site framework, so the guestbook was a whole separate entity written in JScript, and including the site includes wasn't possible without serious restructuring.

However, since I rewrote the entire site in Python, it's been just another page on the site, and there's been no real need for it to be this way anymore - I kept it the way it was mainly because I was focusing on getting everything ported over. After I made the new Voice of the Forest style and had to throw together the similar-but-slightly-different guestbook version of the CSS at the last minute, though, I realized I wanted to just bring it into the layout proper already.

I've done this now, alongside editing the header for update comment pages to more sensibly refer to it as update comments, and the rules when commenting on updates to elide the bits that apply more to the guestbook itself. The guestbook still contains all update comments, but the update comment pages aren't complicated by referring to them as part of the guestbook.

I miiight later restructure how updates work a bit so that update comment pages can also show the update itself, which would be nice.

No real content updates here, sorry - but I have been fixing a bunch of random bugs around the site recently that weren't worth mentioning on their own, since I've now set it up to automatically e-mail me tracebacks on server errors. Still working on revising my ninth movie review, and a different thing that I might go ahead and finish sometime soon, maybe.

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I have finally finished revamping my review of Lucario and the Mystery of Mew. It's very, very long and has a lot of screenshots squeezed in because this is the best Pokémon movie and it deserves it, damn it.

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Happy 2018, everyone! 2017 was a bit of a rough year, but let's all do our best to make this one better.

A couple of actual updates, alongside some minor typo-corrections: first, I managed to forget about updating the code that deals with stat changes between games in the catch rate calculators when I updated the Pokémon data with US/UM, so that's now fixed and the changed Ultra Beast catch rates between Sun and Moon and US/UM now work correctly. Secondly, the evolution list has been updated to reflect how Pokémon that evolve in the presence of a strong magnetic field can do so at Blush Mountain in US/UM.

And then, of course, I'd just like to make my annual new year's thanks, as usual. For 2017, I would like to thank...

• Shadey, who is the exact perfect temperature to be warming my feet right now simply by existing.
• The TelecoD&D crew, who are all lovely and have made this game excellent so far. I can't wait for more.
• Negrek, for visiting, Groundhog Day, Montreal, Salvage and associated extras, a lot of fanfic reviews, an excellent mafia game, and a lot of great conversations.
• Psychic and Teagan, for hosting us in Montreal, being lovely and supportive, and a lot of excellent Pokémon baked goods.
• elyvorg, for also hosting me, the Expo, visiting yet again, the week of Digimon, Final Fantasy XV, some lovely art, and generally being excellent.
• Dannichu, for hosting me, Pride, waffles at the steampunk café, and a lovely time at the Expo.
• Murkrow, for finally managing to meet up with us at the Expo and some good talks.
• Chibi Pika, for The Legendarian Chronicles, tearing my heart out, hilarious ficiversary art and more, some good conversations, and generally being an awesome human being.
• opaltiger, for being generally great and supportive, mutual beta-reading, Steven Universe discussion, and other good talks.
• Trinket, for continuing to rip game stuff for me where my expertise ends.
• Umbramatic, for talks, support, gifts, silliness, and just being a friend.
• Espeon, for talks and all the great drawing suggestions that I still haven't done and need to.
• Isaac, for some great conversations on Facebook.
• The Telecodders, for great chats all year long.
• My parents, for being good people that I love having in my life, something I only get more grateful for as I get older.
• Habitica, for still being what keeps me making steady progress on all the far too many things I try to juggle in my life.
• Tim Minchin and Danny Rubin, for Groundhog Day the musical, which is so good I wrote 8000 words about it on my Tumblr and went to New York to see it.
• Everyone still reading TQftL, for holding on for so long. The end is near!
• TCoD visitors, especially those who've sent me error reports, Favorite Pokémon Picker suggestions, and other comments.
• Lukka, who was the best dog in the world.

Hope you all have a good 2018.

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