It's been a while since I drew the members of Clan Excelsior and I was having so much fun that I just had to do more!

Saskia is another of the founding members of the clan and its leader (because I wanted to break from the FFTA tradition of the main character arbitrarily being the clan leader). She's a taciturn, aloof, pragmatic viera markswoman who is a terror on the battlefield with her stealth, speed, and arsenal of arrows tipped with quick-acting poison. However, she is also a loyal and caring ally who is pretty much the mom friend of the clan.

She and Coele have a sisterly bond, as Coele was the first person to befriend her when Saskia was living in hiding in the woods. Saskia used to belong to a wealthy, prestigious, and totally corrupt clan who framed her for a crime when Saskia tried to expose them, so the viera escaped far to the south and became a forest hermit for over a decade--until she met Coele and started to come out of her shell. During the first fic, Clan Excelsior has an unexpected run-in with Saskia's former clan and they become tangled up in another of the clan's nefarious schemes--which actually turns out to be the perfect opportunity to bring them to justice, clear Saskia's name, and score a new airship.

Why is this woman giving you the TM for Self-Destruct at the worst possible time?! Lady, do you want to be saved or not?!

 I was sitting around and doodling last night, and I ended up drawing one of the characters from a series of Final Fantasy Tactics A2: Grimoire of the Rift fanfics I wrote during and after college. I loved the original Final Fantasy Tactics Advance and played it to death*, so when they released a sequel, I was over the moon. When I learned that the world of FFTA2 is actually the same as that of Final Fantasy XII, it drove me to research the overall lore of Ivalice and I ended up incorporating a sizeable amount of FFXII stuff into the fics (not the least because Basch fon Ronsenburg is best pony and that's why he makes a lot of cameos), so they're sorta a little bit FFXII fics too? But I haven't bothered to keep up on any new Ivalice-related stuff so you won't see any of that in the fics. It's complicated arrrgggh.

 The presence of warp panels in the Silph Co. office building strikes me as strange. It's a really confusing and inconvenient way to get around. Hmmm, it's almost like the building was designed to be a challenging video game environment instead of a functional workplace. :)

 This one is based on a true story!

On my very first playthrough of Pokémon Blue (no comment on how long ago that was), I got to Silph Co. and got the Card Key, and couldn't for the life of me figure out how to use it to open the doors. I tried pressing A to one side of the doors (where one would expect a lock to be), using the Card Key straight from the inventory, and consulting the Nintendo Player's Guide which just had very vague wording like "Now that you have the Card Key, you can open all those doors! Okay so anyway..." I must have struggled for about half an hour. (This was back in the day before reliable online walkthroughs, to say nothing of YouTube playthrough videos.)

Finally, in desperation, I went to my mom (who is not the least bit interested in video games) and asked her to just try something, anything. I handed her the Game Boy, she just started pressing random buttons, and in a matter of moments figured out that you're supposed to press A while standing in front of the locked doors.

Sometimes all it takes is a fresh pair of eyes. Thanks, Mom!

 I do love me some irony.

 Throwback to when limited programming space meant that sometimes signs in the overworld had very vague wording.

 I dunno, maybe we should take Team Rocket at their word? Why do we always have to assume they're up to something nefarious? Way to be judgy.

 Super amazing wonderful exciting news!

After much good-natured pestering from my paleo buddies Ashley Hall and MaggieJo Widdicombe, I've launched a store to sell my illustrations on t-shirts and stickers and whatnot!

I'm so excited to be able to share my illustrations in a new way for people to enjoy (also it makes me a little extra money which is nice), especially since sometimes it can be hard to find good (and scientifically accurate) paleo merch of stuff besides T. rex and Velociraptor.

There's not much up there right now, but I will work on getting more designs up. For now I'll concentrate on shirts and stickers, but I'm always open to suggestions, and if there's anything else you want to see - another type of merchandise, a different shirt color, or even a whole new illustration - please don't hesitate to get in touch with me and let me know! 

 This comic was written back in the day when some people actually still used paper planners. I feel so old.

Also, you may notice that events are scooting along and I barely drew any comics in places like Celadon Gym and Pokémon Tower. That's because Trainer Wants to Battle! really focuses more on riffing on NPC dialogue than on trying to tell a cohesive story. There are about a million Pokémon webcomics detailing a Trainer's journey through a region, and I wanted to do something different. At any rate, if you're a Pokémon fan, you likely already know how the whole Kanto thing goes; I don't have to spell it out for you. By freeing itself of conventional narrative trappings, TWTB focuses more on the people of Kanto just being unhinged, and perhaps allows us to laugh at ourselves and gain insights into our own psyches.

When I wrote these comics, I literally played through the games and wrote down pieces of dialogue that I felt I could make good comics out of. That meant a lot of dialogue got skipped, but one of the cardinal rules of humor is that forced humor is never funny. I would much rather TWTB be the sort of comic where every strip is funny than fuss over narrative completeness. (At any rate, I think it sort of makes things even more unhinged than if I'd tried harder to make sure the overall plot made sense. At the end of the day, it's just about the player character trying to make their way through a world of weirdos.)

 Silly Channelers, getting their horror subgenres mixed up.

 Being a Gym Leader who's a narcoleptic comes with its own set of challenges. (I guess maybe it's better than getting hay fever from all those Grass-types.)

 Yeah, sorry, Giovanni, I'm not at all impressed with your underlings. (It doesn't help that they were using stuff like Rattata and Zubat. See, this is what happens when you sell all the strong Pokémon and make your grunts scrape the bottom of the barrel. Giovanni needs to hire a logistics manager. Like I said before, though, criminals are stupid.)

 I was re-reading Tolkien (as one must regularly), and one of the things that strikes me about the man's writing is how much he puts into his descriptions of not only landscape and geography, but the details of just being outside--the color of the sky at a given time of day, how the wind smells, the sounds trees make. The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings were obviously written by someone who loved nature and thought it worth writing about on its own accord, not just as the backdrop for a fantasy adventure. That richness of detail is what really helps bring Middle-earth to life in the imagination--it's not just a place where things happen, but a place that is wonderful and beautiful in itself, a world where you would want to be even if nothing particularly exciting was happening.

The way Tolkien describes the Shire is utterly charming, a loving homage to a rural England of yesteryear, and it serves as a really effective happy place when life gets stressful. I just wanted to doodle Bag End I guess.

 I always thought it was really odd that somehow, just you defeating this guy in a Pokemon battle causes him to drop an extremely important security item that's crucial to navigating the complex, and ultimately leads to Red ousting Team Rocket from Celadon City.

But, y'know, video game logic: if there's an objective to be met, the only way you're getting there is by doing more of what you've been doing the entire game.

Or maybe this guy just hates his job so much that he actually wants Red to go defeat Giovanni.

 I love Carnotaurus, so of course I had to make fun of it. T. rex is notorious for its proportionally small arms, but they look absolutely massive next to abelisaur arms, which were... basically just stumps with fingers. Seriously. 

(It kinda makes them even cuter, though.)

 Yeah, it's not like there were half a dozen people in the Game Corner tipping me off about checking a poster on the back wall.

On a somewhat related note, I'm reaching the end of Pokémon Legends: Z-A (the base game, not the DLC, which I will get ASAP), and I like it more and more on a story level the more I progress. At the beginning of the game, characters and events around Lumiose felt kind of disjointed, but when you reach the higher ranks, they start to gel into a cohesive whole, the significance of reaching rank A in the Z-A Royale makes sense (although I kinda wish AZ would have explained it to me earlier), and the plotline does a lot to follow up on the events of Pokémon XY in ways that are really satisfying for people who have played those games. 

 Every time I play a Pokémon game and see a Masquerain, this pops into my head, so I thought I might as well draw it.

 And that's how you defeat a Team Rocket Grunt.

 Fun fact: The rugose bony structures on the noses of Pachyrhinosaurus are called bosses.

Fun(?) fact: I have a ridiculous sense of humor and this is why I can't be a serious paleoartist.

Fun fact: I want this on a t-shirt.

 It's so shady that this guy in Celadon realizes how stupid gambling is, so he divests himself of his Coin Case by giving it to a random child. That's definitely sending some questionable messages.

 My buddy and accomplice in space humor Chris Lintott is Gresham Professor of Astronomy, and his running joke throughout his lectures is trying to start fights with the audience about whether or not Pluto is a planet (although I did once call him out on it during the Q&A and made him answer for his shenanigans in front of everyone, because that's what friends do). (For the record, he and I both believe that Pluto is awesome no matter what the IAU decides to call it.) So I just couldn't resist doodling New Horizons having this same debate with Pluto itself.

The irony, of course, is that New Horizons was a flyby mission, so it won't get to talk to Pluto later. Or ever.

 If you're a criminal organization, it's just a really bad idea to establish a prominent business right in the middle of town with the name of your organization in the name of the business.

Wait, new fan theory: the police are corrupt and actually letting Team Rocket do whatever they want, and Red is a lone vigilante trying to bring justice to a lawless Kanto.

They already used that idea for Pokémon Colosseum, though.

 Fight the system! Are we gonna let the Man bring us down, or are we gonna get our rover back?!

... I'm glad Chris Lintott enjoys my bonkers sense of humor.

 Poké Dolls are perfect items for escaping from both wild Pokémon and enraged significant others.

 There are some Pokémon that make socializing a little more difficult when you've got them in tow.

Also, I had a lot of fun making that Koffing extra derpy. He's just living his best life as an animated floating toxic gas mine.

 Finishing up Pokémon Legends: Z-A, and I feel like the story gets a lot better as you get further in the game (and Naveen is still kind of obnoxious, but huge props to the writers for having his dynamic with the player character develop realistically). Although it started a little slow and clunky on the story side of things, Legends: Z-A is a super fun game that makes some sleek improvements on the formula introduced with Legends: Arceus, and I kind of just want Legends to be the actual core series from now on (especially after Scarlet and Violet were so underwhelming).

Aaaaaaanyway. Every time a Pokémon uses Struggle Bug, this is all I can think of. I kinda want a t-shirt of this now. We all have days like this, feeling like a level 2 early-route Pokémon whom people won't stop throwing Poké Balls at.

 Probably a bad idea to let the player character know you're the guy responsible for coding the universe.

And of course this comic references the oh-so-handy Missingno.-related glitches in Gen I. I know glitch exploitation in video games is a controversial issue, but I personally don't see anything wrong with it as long as you're not using it to gain an unfair competitive advantage. For example, once you max out effort values, there's no real difference between a Pokémon you trained to level 100, a Pokémon you got to level 100 via Rare Candies and EXP Candies you found naturally in the game, and a Pokémon you got to level 100 via Rare Candies and EXP Candies you obtained through glitches. 

Using glitches or cheat codes to give a Pokémon an impossible moveset or unobtainably high stats, and then using that Pokémon in a tournament, would definitely be cheating and there's never an excuse for that. But if you're just casually battling with your friends, and you tell them how you got your impossible Pokémon so they can do it too, that's a completely different context where everybody benefits. (When my niece played Pokémon Red, I told her about the Missingno. glitches and it was driving her crazy having to wait to reach Cinnabar Island to use them. Why is life so hard.)

On the other hand, I was never fond of devices like the GameShark that allowed you to essentially modify a game's code freely to do whatever you wanted the game to do. That kind of thing pretty much destroys the entire purpose of playing a video game and robs players of the satisfaction of working hard for anything. If you input the right codes, sure you can make a save file where Red starts off in Pallet Town with 6 level 100 Mewtwo, a full Pokédex, and all 8 Gym Badges... but what's the point? Bragging rights? (Pro tip for 10-year-old boys: it's not very impressive if you brag about achievements you didn't actually earn.) Reinforcing the illusion that if you throw enough money at anything you can achieve it with minimal effort but still gain the benefits attained from working for it? (If you think that, you're going to get a rude awakening when adulthood hits.)

I mean, yeah, stuff like the GameShark can be an entertaining diversion if you've played a video game to death and now just want to mess with the code, but I'm not on board with the idea of using cheat devices as a shortcut to achieving something that's supposed to take time and effort. It benefits no one, least of all the person using the cheat device and sinking further into the depths of being an obnoxiously entitled human being whom nobody wants to be around.

... Whoa, that was a bit of a rant. I'm getting cantankerous in my old age, I guess.

 Congratulations to China on a phenomenally successful first Mars mission! I look forward to the day when we can all explore the cosmos together as a human family and stop pretending it's still the Cold War.

 The development team inserting themselves into the game and making meta remarks is a cute idea that would definitely lead to an existential crisis for a player character.

Sat and doodled for a bit last night! Nothing like chilling to classical music and just drawing whatever comes to mind.

Expression studies for Saturos. Although he can come off as imposing, once you get to know him he's actually kind of a goof. He's a real foodie and a voracious eater (although I imagine reality-bending magic does require a lot of energy). When the situation commands it, though, he is capable of becoming a demonic creature roiling with unleashed power--but he actually really hates doing this because he's worried it scares people. The only time he's had to let out the full capacity of his power was when he fought the Erdunn (but back then, nobody was really around to see it). (He actually only gets into one fight in the plot of Ravenscrag, but he was intentionally holding back because he didn't want to hurt Tam.)

 And a concept doodle for a novel I've been brainstorming for and would like to get around to writing soon. Valdovas is a millennia-old dragon from Eastern Europe who is arrogant, aloof, and disdainful toward humans--but that changes when he is forced to accept help from a family living on the American frontier, and he grows to realize that not all humans are enemies, and that some of them need his help, too.

Valdovas was inspired by Smaug and Tolkien's treatment of dragons in general--I love the man's writing, but his dragons are always irredeemably evil spawn of darkness. I've loved dragons since I was a kid, and I feel like they deserve better than that. I also haven't written a novel with dragons since Voyage of the Kaus Media, so we're way overdue for more dragons. <3

Not sure I did the best job rendering it yesterday, but Valdovas has black iridescent scales. He also breathes poison. He's a zmey from Slavic folklore (but a one-headed variety, because multiple-headed dragons means more characters to juggle).