Exasperated Espurr

excuse me >:( down here >:(

Happy Umi No Hi (Sea Day) 🏝️ The Japanese calendar actually has a few nature-themed holidays - Greenery Day, Sea Day, Mountain Day, & of course Water Day aka Vaporeon Day! 🩵

& me being me, well. “Let’s have a little beach picnic in the living room, because I can.” 😂 Just got a beach towel, a snack plate, a beachy book, & a beach ambience on the TV.

This is actually one of my favorite cookbooks: Beach House Baking by Lei Shishak. She includes a nice little entry about a beach somewhere in the world or a nice personal story about herself for each recipe ^_^

I’d sometimes just read those & her journey to the beach herself as a baker, & dream of those beaches. 💭

My favorite recipes are her blueberry scones, coconut apricot crisp cookies , apple cider donuts (I add an apple cider glaze, too!), & blueberry lavender pie. 🥧🫐

Still need to make these sunburst cookies - Sora thinks so, too ☀️

P.s.-- good lyric choice on that most recent Leaf post

Thanks! The secret is to worldbuild like you're 1v1-ing Ryoko Kui with full intention of winning (only do this if you're fine with losing because you won't win) (yet. She's human and so am I.) So everything's analogous to an existing irl thing, low on the jargon and technobabble, and high on the physicality

As for what goes on in the Plateau, meetings and paperwork, mostly. Here's a list of projects they're working on in the background of mentor AU, with commentary:

Viridian Gym audit (So far, nothing shows Giovanni has been laundering money through the Gym. But of course no one would believe that. - Lance)

Reviewing regional official battle results from last quarter to set Gym difficulty guidelines for next quarter (Once again the new batch outperforms the last, very good. Keep this up and we might even fill the missing Elite Four spot before I turn ghost. - Agatha)

About five different topics that media wants the Champion(s) quote on (Which is to say they want the League's opinion, not mine or yours, Blue. It's not as deceiving as it sounds, here, let's go over the talking points together. - Lance)

Champion debut party for Red and Blue (Just act cute and shy and they'll direct their questions at the nearest adult you glue yourself to. - Leaf)

Call for bids on the Plateau's LVL balancer upgrade (Our current one can only bump it up and down within 5 Levels. - Bruno)

Securing funding for a Grass-type safety education program (Time to go verbally fistfight the Rangers rep for government money again, yay. - Lorelei)

The giant inter-agency investigation into Team Rocket that the clans refuse to let Interpol offer their "expertise" on (Prideful little fools... - Agatha) (Would that it's only a Pokemon problem. I don't have the leverage or time to protest this. - Lance)

Exhibition matches scheduling for next League season (This would have taken 5 minutes if we don't have to manage all the personal dramas involved. - Lorelei)

Yeah they're too young. Lance gets to stay Champion as long as 1) there's no Champion title holder aged 18 and above who wants to replace him 2) he still fulfills the tasks laid out by the job, which includes mentoring anyone who wins the title and agrees to a mentorship.

your recent post made me think of something "Keep this up and we might even fill the missing Elite Four spot before I turn ghost. - Agatha" what exactly happened with that fourth elite four slot? Right now there's only three (Lorelei, Bruno, and Agatha), plus the champion. It's called the Elite Four, so... why's there only three right now? Was somebody once there, and then left, and now the team's scrambling to find somebody else? If so, who?

Yeah there's an Elite Four missing and Lance's running solo with no mention of a former Champion in the picture and the League's reputation is thin enough that he can't afford any drastic measures or look flawed in any way and Giovanni gets to dip from his Gym for ages without repercussions and especially the Johto Gym Leaders seem less dedicated to the job, what's with all the side quests they have you do

Ah no, that panel implies those clans and the Family First policies is why there's no social support for kids like them. The government can't interfere if the family is abusive (Leaf) or neglectful (Blue), and they can't develop anything handling special needs kids (Red)

(as a trans man i love seeing seahorse dad rep so much!! <3)

Nope, they're just randos from Pallet Town, the ones from the game that are from a clan are just Brock and Bruno (rock) (practically disowned), Koga and Janine (poison), my oc Pidge and Falkner (flying), Lance and Clair (dragon), Misty and Lorelei (water) (though Lorelei is so far removed that she might as well be unaffiliated)

Enabling me...

Lance, as the Champion, has a strict policy of not bringing clan business into League business. It's caused him some trouble with Misty (her Gym is very beautiful. It's also way outside the League's budget and he'd rather the clans not straight up own League facilities). Clair is not a Gym Leader yet but she's gonna be absolute hell to him when she is.

The potential nepotism cases of Janine and Falkner he's having Bruno keep an eye on, Falkner more so because Pidge is a close friend who helped raised him (hence Lance's Flying-type preference) and while he can trust Pidge to do a good job with his son, he's aware he himself is somewhat compromised. He chooses Bruno because unlike Lorelei who's only distantly related, Bruno has the necessary background knowledge of clan politics and is more experienced with kids, what's with his endless parade of cousins and siblings and niblings.

Lorelei herself is busy doing some long-distance hovering over Misty. Lance would like to stress that he didn't ask her to do this.

The various minor clan members serving as trainers, instructors, assistants, ect in various Gyms are the Gym Leaders' business, he doesn't have time or want to micromanage all that

Koga still owes him one for covering his absence when he was pregnant with Janine a few years ago. Lance wasn't even old enough to be Champion back then, but they have better rapport than the non-member former Champion so it ended up being his job. Somehow nothing blew up in their faces and they went back to polite professionalism