callbacks | 4 ∅ [Video]

[The video starts on an unsure-looking Kirlia. He starts to edge away, but Dave--apparently behind the camera--speaks.]

Naw, go ahead, dude. C'mon. Don't be shy.

[The Kirlia sighs, extremely put upon, and then ballet-toes back into place. There's a Dawn Stone on the floor nearby; the Kirlia bends primly at the waist to pick it up, and:

Presto.

Wart the Gallade examines his arm-blades for a moment, then shoots Dave a look as if to say, "If we're quite done now." Dave chuckles quietly.]

Yeah, yeah, thanks for humoring me, bro. The moment has been secured for posterity. Duty discharged. [The relief on the Gallade's face is palpable before Dave turns the camera towards his own movie star mug. Hello, Johto.]

So, hey. I get that baby's first evolution is probably ancient headwear for most of you, but he's the first guy I got all the way to his final form. That's worth some kind of jokey home video.

[Yeah, because he's obviously being ironic about this. He's not Proud Dadding all over his starter, no sirree.]

Anyway, I've been hearing about a bunch of different evolutionary paths our Poképals can take, and, I dunno. I'm curious, I guess. If you ever made a choice like that, what made you pick one way or the other?

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[Dave switches back to audio, too, for symmetry's sake, and not because Asher is a derp who keeps forgetting this thread is audio every other tag.]

Some of them are pretty wild, huh. Have you seen the cubist banana turtle?

[IT IS OKAY Nagi needed to see the ghost sword. It needed to happen.

...also, uh.]

...remind me which Pokemon that is, again?

Hang on, someone sent me a picture.

[After a minute or two, a picture file gets sent along.

Boop.]

Feast your eye sockets on that incredible piece of shit. I need one.

[Ah.]

It is...something, alright. I can't say I've ever heard that name for it before.

There's like seven thousand of these things and I've only been here two months, I can't memorize all their names.

I only knew the first 150 when I arrived, so I can understand the feeling, at least.

I didn't have Nintendos when I was growing up, so I don't even know that. I knew...the electric bunny thing? And the dragon. I know there's a dragon.

[...]

Pikachu? And...Charizard, I'm assuming?

Yeah, probably. I mean, they all came out when I was, like, two, and my steel trap of a memory bank hadn't exactly completely developed by then.

Well, the games hadn't been out for very long back home. There was Blue, Red, and Yellow, and that was it. Two-thirds of the Pokemon here didn't even exist yet.

So you're from...the late nineties?

I am, yes.

[...Technology advanced so fast, Dave.]

Was people's color coordination really that bad?

[Having lived with someone who takes full advantage of awful 90s fashion...]

It appears so. Apparently fashion has changed to a degree, not that I've payed much attention to it either way.

And boy bands. Boy bands were real?

Define 'real'. Real in the sense that they existed, or real in the sense that they didn't all look like they came out of the same cookie cutter molds?

Real in the sense that they were physical entities that you could touch and not the fevered hallucination of a mass of sexually frustrated tweeny girls.

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