#proto beasts

I decided I wanted to do something for SV’s third anniversary but I’ve run out of motivation to draw (turns out you get burnt out of drawing if you force yourself to post at least one drawing per month for 2 and a half years before giving up due to the burnout) and wasn’t happy with the laziness of just placing their images and the shiny versions on a Procreate project with a red to purple gradient and a red and purple luminescent heart over the top so I opted for some memes only I then proceeded to (despite having saved loads and even uploaded five to Procreate to start work on them) only do two so here are an aquarium alignment chart (the chart was quite small so I had to scale it up only that meant one of the tiers was almost illegible so I wrote the words from that tier over the top of the original words (it says exactly the same thing apart from me accidentally correcting the spelling of exhibits) just to make it legible) and the 5 kids 3 chairs meme with the Ruinous Quartet, Proto Beasts and Neo Swords. There are things I could say about the chair chart but I’m tired and I want to watch House. I guess I’ll say that Ting-Lu, Fire and Boulder being shrunk more than the others even though Wake, Leaves and Crown didn’t need to be shrunk that much isn’t a hate crime towards the least popular members of their respective groups, I just couldn’t fit them in when they were the same size as the others. It does come off as a bit weird though

Meme templates:

Wo-Chien and Leaves because not the bugs! Also there are some jokes to be made about Wo-Chien being made of leaves and Leaves having “Leaves” in its name

Chien-Pao and Boulder because they are speed (I still love the thought of the two of them joining the F-Zero Grand Prix and having a heated rivalry where if they’re somehow good enough to beat Falcon and win the Grand Prix they can’t go a single interview question without bringing up the “fact” that they’re better than the other one or talking about how they’ll drill their victory in to the other also the two of them fight during a race)

Fire and Crown because it’s always them. After my post earlier today I now headcanon these two have never ever agreed on a Splatfest, even ones like Time Travel vs Teleportation where it seems like they could very easily agree (Crown chooses Teleportation because Psychic)

Ting-Lu and Bolt because aggression maybe? Idk

It also tries almost as hard as Café does to promote Z-A so some bonus Xerneas and Yveltal

And once again this game really loves Terapagos (can’t blame it. Definitely one of the best Box Legendaries alongside Lunala/Dawn Wings Necrozma and Miraidon)

And then a random Gallade and Hatterene because why not

Wo-Chien panics trying to water the tree after accidentally wilting it (bonus points if it was a fake tree and it still somehow managed to wilt it)

Chien-Pao cuts the tree in half (possibly) by mistake and doesn’t try to fix it

Ting-Lu probably just decorates it with vessels idk

Chi-Yu exclusively puts decorations with occult symbols on the tree

Wake tries to decorate it with ribbons but ends up tangled in the ribbons

Leaves successfully decorates it with ribbons. Leaves’s tree is a real Christmas tree

Fire sets the tree on fire while listening to Fairytale of New York (I had to mention that song at some point) and gets pissed off if anyone tries to censor the f slur by making obnoxious noises over it even though it too is kinda offended at its usage in the song

Boulder puts heavy metal merch on the tree and has a radio nearby somehow playing Jingle Bells Batman Smells (every single version ever including the very dark broken skiis version that went around my primary school) on repeat

Bolt doesn’t touch the tree it just goes to sleep nearby and refuses to participate

I feel like the “whole trios as one fighter” option kinda means it’ll be harder for certain stuff to be done for them, especially given not only are the terms “Proto Beasts” and “Neo Swords” fully fanmade but the trios don’t actually have official names anyway. The closest thing we have to actual terms I guess is just “Paradox Pokémon based on/resembling the Legendary Beasts/Swords of Justice” and that’s a bit of a mouthful. Luckily my ideas for their alt costumes still work quite well even if there is only one Pokémon per fighter for the two of them (the alt ideas I had were well obviously their default appearances just maybe slightly fluffier/more metallic than SV (if the latter’s even possible. SV is very good at making metallic Pokémon look metallic), a three-way colour swap, the other three-way colour swap, shinies, shinies colour-swapped, shinies colour-swapped again, modern-day counterparts’ colour schemes (I think the Neo Swords can keep the black parts of their eyes though), red, orange and gold/purple, blue and silver). From a meta perspective this would be the best option bc then everyone in Smash gets to meet all of the Proto Beasts and Neo Swords. From a different meta perspective it would be the hardest to program in and also name and from an in-universe perspective they’re individually only outclassed by Mewtwo out of the Pokémon in terms of strength and only Red and Leaf’s Pokémon get to team up out of the Pokémon and they can’t all be on the platform at the same time so it’s kinda unrealistic (as if the whole idea of two kinda neglected trios being among the first choices for Pokémon when Meowscarada, Eevee, the Fire Knights, Iron Valiant and any Pokémon that just got a Mega especially Zeraora are right there wasn’t unrealistic enough)

For Wake and Leaves, I’d like to believe their special treatment due to the Scarlet Suicune and Violet Virizion alliteration has the potential to mean at least for crossover appearances they’d be the ones to be prioritised (clearly outside crossover appearances that’s not the case bc Wake is actually the worst treated by TPC out of the Proto Beasts and the only Proto Beast to be treated worst than its Violet counterpart which is strange because they also always seem to like promoting Suicune the best of the Legendary Beasts. Maybe they just don’t like the idea of their favourites being “replaced” but then that doesn’t explain why Fire gets treated better than Bolt or why Boulder is treated so badly). The only thing is I kinda feel like the other three options subvert the much-hated “anime swordfighter” trope much better. Leaves only really subverts it because it’s a robotic quadrupedal deer whereas putting them all together as a trio means they’re three in one rather than one in one, Crown is a special fighter so gets to bring magic beams to the battle fired from its horns instead of just using its swords as swords and Boulder is the only Neo Sword that probably wouldn’t be considered the robotic quadruped animal equivalent of a twink

Fire and Crown are just satisfying as a duo to me and it feels like they get paired up unusually frequently (admittedly half of those are things that are more personal to me, like me getting their tins but still not having Boulder or Bolt’s tins or how Apple and Passionfruit seem very interested in Blueberry and Cherry respectively while Orange and Lemon seem to third wheel a lot more and both of those examples now that I think about it seem to be less about how it’s always Fire and Crown and more about how it’s never lupus Boulder and Bolt. There’s also the fact that I headcanon the two of them are the closest to their Paradox sets’ stereotypes plus the two of them have the closest colour schemes of their respective trios to their versions’ theme colours even though I tend to treat red as Bolt’s theme colour and apple green as Fire’s theme colour and Violet isn’t as obsessed with blue as Scarlet is with whichever out of red and orange isn’t its main theme colour (I guess orange))

It won’t be Boulder and Bolt, I just put them there for completionist’s sake. I don’t even think the two of them are that satisfying as a duo. Orange and yellow are just too close to each other as colours (which apparently doesn’t stop me from pairing Wake and Leaves up despite blue and green also being next to each other on a colour wheel but hey edit: somehow forgot about the colours I consider to be my top 2 favourite Pokémon’s theme colours purple and pink also being next to each other on the colour wheel). They do both have the most powerful-feeling signature moves though (at least when Thunderclap is actually allowed to attack) so that’s something even though Mighty Cleave has a high chance of being weaker than Psyblade (Leaves has 10 points more in Attack than Boulder does so it will default to being the stronger move when taking Attack stats into account, Boulder has 4 points higher in Speed than Attack so it’s slightly more likely to have its Speed boosted with Quark Drive than Attack while Leaves’s highest stat is its Attack so it’s more likely to get an Attack boost, Psyblade is boosted by Electric Terrain whereas Mighty Cleave isn’t. Mighty Cleave is however 15 points higher in base power than Psyblade) but who likes the fat robot amiright (sarcasm. I love it)