Hope you've all been having fun playing Scarlet and Violet. I did a mostly-blind playthrough myself which I had a lot of fun with, but now that I have finished that, I could get to work on adding some Gen IX content - starting, by popular demand, with the Favorite Pokémon Picker, because man, you all really wanted Gen IX in the Favorite Pokémon Picker.

As usual, let me know if anything's weird or off. Right now, since the S/V Pokémon haven't been added to Pokémon Home, they're using temporary images extracted from screenshots shared by Anubis, which do unfortunately stick out a bit, but they will be replaced once Home is updated.

I've marked Pokémon that show up only in the Area Zero endgame sequence, plus the sealed legendaries, as spoilers for now, which I hope is a reasonable balance. Happy picking!

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Two decades of you
and we're nowhere near through.
Happy birthday, dear website!
Still so much to do.

The Cave of Dragonflies is twenty years old today! That's a hell of a milestone and I'm very proud of it.

For the occasion, I of course did something no one asked for. It has been bothering me for years now that the site had two sets of styles - the new ones, built with modern technologies and mobile compatibility and so on, and the old ones, which were kludgy on phones, sported absurdly tiny font sizes and barely-existent spacing, and were often only updated to support new features as an afterthought. One possible way to deal with this would have been to remove them, but I never like the idea of removing anything, they were a source of more variety in presentation, and also... they were just kind of nostalgic for me, and probably other people who used to visit the site back in the day when they were kids, too.

So, twentieth anniversary? Good time for nostalgia. I have now remade all the old styles. I did this very conservatively this time around - adding mobile compatibility, increasing the impossibly small font size (every time I looked at the old styles it was somehow even smaller than I remembered it), having some semblance of spacing, some other small tweaks, but carefully keeping the original aesthetic of each intact, as charmingly dated as they are. The goal I had in mind was, basically, that if you visited this site in 2007 and used a style, you should be able to switch to the new version of it now and think, "Wow, it's just like I remember it!" (It isn't, the font sizes were truly made for ants, but the overall effect should be identical.)

I think it went pretty well, but let me know if you bump into any oddities in any of the old-new styles.

As a bonus, I also made an attempt to make the menus slightly less janky on mobile. It's still kind of janky, but I truly hate working around mobile quirks and this was about as much of it as I could take.

Happy birthday to a beautiful relic of the old internet! There's more content I'm hoping to get to soon (PLA catch mechanics/calculator would be good to get up before Scarlet and Violet come out), but this is the silly little anniversary update I wanted and I'm very happy about getting it done.

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I've made some revisions to my 2009 one-shot horror fanfic, Curse. If you read the old version, it's still the same story, but I've made some adjustments to hopefully improve how it comes across. Let me know how you feel about it.

I also updated the server the other day and had to reinstall various things, incidentally - please let me know if anything's off or not working.

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I've made a couple more minor updates to the Gen VIII capture mechanics and calculator, primarily to add BD/SP information (it's basically the same mechanics) but also fixing a couple of tiny bugs/inaccuracies (X values greater than equal to 255 but less than 256 were not being properly treated as guaranteed captures, and a potential rounding error was not being replicated fully in the calculator).

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I've updated the Gen VIII capture mechanics and calculator in accordance with the actual raid multipliers as recently uncovered by Anubis. The most noteworthy thing about this: non-event Gigantamax raids for non-hosts get obscure random-looking difficulty modifiers that appear to be decided based on each Pokémon's catch rate such that they all end up effectively having a catch rate of just over 3 (i.e. a little more than a legendary). My mind is blown.

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I've made a few little improvements to the Favorite Pokémon Picker:

• First, I fixed a bug reported the other day where the form type settings weren't loaded correctly when continuing from a saved state, resulting in all form types getting selected even if you originally had selected only some of them.
• Secondly, I've updated the images used for the Pokémon Legends: Arceus Pokémon to the Home sprites, for consistency with other Pokémon. Using the game's native sprites for them was always intended to be temporary until they were implemented into Home.
• Thirdly, I've tweaked the animation on the progress bar to be a little more pleasing - there's now a bit of a satisfying throb as you reach 100% and find a favorite, and the favorite visually appears after the progress bar animation has played, instead of the somewhat awkward way it was before where you'd see the favorite appear before the progress bar filled.
• Finally, behind the scenes I've moved the actual Pokémon data for the picker into a single data file which is now used as a source of truth both for the picker itself and for the shareable favorite list pages. This should prevent the recurring issue where regularly it would turn out some Pokémon didn't work right on the shareable list after I'd added it to the picker itself.

Happy picking!

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Chibi Pika told me the other day that it was a shame I'd removed the old R/B/Y capture charts from my R/B/Y capture mechanics page, because they'd been really good for the intuitive understanding of Great Balls vs. Ultra Balls. I told them I'd removed the charts and instead put equivalent charts on the capture RNG mechanics page when that was created, because the original charts turned out to be misleading - the RNG significantly alters the result from the ideal depicted in those charts.

But then I figured it really was a shame that visualization was no longer there on the main mechanics page. Although in order to be actually accurate it would have to include data accounting for RNG skew, those charts didn't require any technical understanding of the RNG. I couldn't quite usefully use them as a vehicle to explain the mechanics without confusing people... but I could just add them as a cool visualization thing, right?

So: now there's a little visualization section on the R/B/Y capture mechanics page, which allows you to generate charts of how your chances will change as you lower HP for the different balls for a given Pokémon and status. I at least think it's pretty fun! Please do try entering a legendary and look at the absolutely baffling actual Ultra Ball curve.

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I have now updated all of my catch rate calculators with a new Pokémon dropdown component that's hopefully nicer to use - autocomplete box you can type in, cute little sprite, less clunky on mobile, etc. Please do let me know if you have any issues with it.

Additionally, I did some style tweaks - in particular, the menu is now a bit more obvious on mobile (had someone come to the site and just not see it).

While I'm here, I'd also like to give a shoutout to the ongoing Catch-A-Million charity marathon for St. Baldrick's Foundation - streamers and Twitch Plays Pokémon are making a valiant effort to capture a million Pokémon and raise money for childhood cancer research. Contribute and donate if you can!

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With apologies for being a little late, I have put up a blurb about Sutoraiku Legends in the April Fools' Day joke archive. Hope you all enjoyed the game! I may make an update to it making it more streamlined to play and adding a bit to it, but I know better than to promise it soon; I have a lot of things on my plate including a lot of things I should do for this site.

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Hope you have all been enjoying Pokémon Legends: Arceus! Inspired by this grand, fresh take on the Pokémon series, I have written an ambitious sequel to my 2020 visual novel Sutoraiku High, known as Sutoraiku Legends. Like its inspiration, it features more action, noticeably inflated life-and-death stakes, and being isekaied to the Hisui region to calm the noble Kleavor.

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The new Pokémon and forms added in Pokémon Legends: Arceus have now been added to the Favorite Pokémon Picker. They are listed as a separate "generation", turned off by default for returning users, and on top of that Pokémon that were not officially revealed prior to the game's release are marked as spoilers, which should make everyone safe from inadvertently seeing new Pokémon they didn't want to see. The Interactive Type Chart also now lists new type combinations from the game as existing.

As always, let me know if there are any bugs or inconsistencies with how the Pokémon are classified or other strangeness!

Additionally, I have updated a couple of questions on the Steel Quiz that hadn't been updated for Gen VIII yet, after someone reported it. When I get the chance I should go over the other quizzes for outdatedness too, but right now I have other stuff to get to, so this'll do for now.

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What a year, huh? All sense of time has become muddled in this pandemic. I hope you all and your loved ones are safe and comfortable and things will look up in the new year.

I also have an actual update for you: my 2012 fanfic short story Butterfree has finally been updated with extensive revisions, after I've been kicking around changes to it for more than a year. It's still basically the same story, and you will recognize a lot of it if you read it before, but it's been fleshed out considerably, and the ending in particular is a bit different in tone.

It's also, of course, time for my traditional New Year's Thanks. Have these gotten redundant over the years as the important people in my life tend to be largely the same from year to year? Is it maybe even a little weird when I don't use the site updates as pretty much a personal blog the way I did back in 2004? A little, but shush, it's tradition you guys.

For 2021, I would like to thank...

• elyvorg, for endless Skype chats, giving the Thousand Roads community a chance, continuing commentary on fiction, and Foregone Conclusion, which may be eleven years old but I still love it just as much.
• Jackie and Chibi, who I will meet this year if it's the last thing I do, for all the great times, talks, voice chats, roleplaying, and friendship in general.
• Cupcakedex, who's been through so much this year and come out on the other side still making adorable Pokémon food creations and hosting streams I wish I could watch more often.
• Negrek, for good talks, excellent goofy RP interactions, continuing to make Thousand Roads a lovely fanfic community, and writing Salvage.
• Everyone who helped test game mechanics with me this year.
• Telecod, for being lovely and interesting and all in all an essential part of my day.
• My patrons, for enduring support through a strange time. (I remind you all who have pledged to a request tier to message me your requests if you want them!)
• Namohysip, for hosting the Blacklight Eternal RP, and everyone who played it, for some of the most fun I've had.
• My husband Shadey, whom I have adored for fifteen years now and only love more as time goes by.
• My cool parents, who've both had pretty cool accomplishments this year even if they should remain anonymous. Proud of you.
• Our cat Birta, who recently had to endure weeks in a cone of shame.
• Everyone who still regularly visits this website, now in the age of nobody regularly visiting websites anymore. I will be doing this forever but it's always nice when somebody's there to witness it.

Here's to 2022, when this website will turn twenty years old! Hope to be able to do more updates this year.

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