I wanna be the very best - Like no one ever was - To catch them is my real test - To train them is my cause - I will travel across the land - Searching far and wide - Teach Pokémon to understand - The power that's inside (Pokémon - Gotta catch 'em all) It's you and me - I know it's my destiny (Pokémon) Oh, you're my best friend - In a world we must defend (Pokémon - Gotta catch 'em all) A heart so true - Our courage will pull us through - You teach me and I'll teach you (Ooh, ooh) Pokémon! (Gotta catch 'em all) - Gotta catch 'em all

MALLOY'S POKÉMON WEB SHRINE

I LOVE POKÉMON !!!

Pokémon is a Japanese media franchise that began with the video game series in 1996 with the release of Pocket Monsters Red and Pocket Monsters Green in Japan—released internationally as Pokémon Red and Blue. Since then, it has grown into possibly the largest media franchise in the world, now comprising of an animated series, a trading card game, and many spin-off games. The series centers around the variety of creatures called Pokémon and their world, which in most common iterations is co-inhabited by humans who catch, train, battle and form bonds with them.

Though I do have memories of watching some of the anime as a kid, the one person I have to thank for properly getting me into Pokémon is my third grade teacher, who was the coolest guy in the world for multiple reasons, the most relevant being that he taught us multiplication with Pokémon cards. From there, I found Pokémon YouTube, and I got a Nintendo 3DS and Pokémon Moon for my 9th birthday the following year. This began my years-long love for this huge franchise of whimsical pocket monsters. I've never considered it much of a "fandom" for me as I don't participate in typical fandom/community activities for it, so it doesn't count as my oldest fandom, but it is my oldest interest ! It seems like my Pokémon interest rises and falls with time but never has it completely disappeared. I'm not a gamer, and I haven't even played that many of them since my family are just generally not video game people, but Pokémon will always be My video games. I don't watch much anime at all, but I watched almost every single episode of the Kalos and Alola animes as a kid and I hold them very close to my heart. I suppose it's a comfort franchise I find myself falling back to again and again.

One thing about Pokémon is that it's a thirty year old franchise with so much content to consume. All this information and history about three decades worth of games makes my brain, which absorbs information very easily, quite happy. It seems like I always have a Pokémon video playing in the background as I go about my business on my laptop, so there's a lot of it stored in my mind, I'd assume way more than what one may expect from someone who's only played three generations. My current record for the Type Them All Quiz, the quiz in which you name every single Pokémon (1025 as of August 2025), is : 1009 without turning on shadows (after turning on shadows, I can easily figure out and finish the rest).

see featured interest entry

Favourite Pokémon : Gengar (Jenjar, if you're cultured)
Favourite Type : Ghost
Favourite Starter : Litten
Favourite Games : Sun & Moon (insert the meme of "what your favourite games say about you ! if you love [x generation] : you were born in [y year]")
Favourite Shiny : Mareep ! (my first ever full odds shiny, found in Violet)
Favourite NPCs : Lillie, Hau, Gladion, Nemona, Penny, Arven, Rika, Roark

POKÉMON AND ME

Pokémon being not one of the main things I talk about, it's easy to forget just how much about my life was influenced by it.

Pokémon was actually the beginning of my journey with HTML and webmastering. When I was nine, while watching all that Pokémon YouTube, I found the Favorite Pokémon Picker from Pokémon fansite The Cave of Dragonflies. I was immediately enamoured with this site, and I’d spend hours reading through this one person’s creations and guides and opinions and games. (The Marquee of Doom holds a special place in my heart : I finished it at least once and can be found on the leaderboard, though I’m not sure what name I submitted. Maybe Alex J?)

When I found their entire section on webmastering and running personal websites, including an HTML and CSS guide, I knew that I, too, needed to make a Pokémon fansite. I coded in Notepad on my family’s old computer and wrote about my Pokémon original characters, all stuff that is tragically probably now lost to time. All that I have left that I remember from that project is this Scratch game I made and embedded into the page (don’t even get me STARTED on my history with scratch.mit.edu) where you can talk to one of my OCs, Dean the Litten. I never did publish anything, because I was nine and a little clueless, but that small foundation of knowledge in HTML was what I built upon when getting back into webmastering years later. This is like a full circle moment for me : a whole webpage dedicated to this everlasting interest published a whole decade afterwards. It’s kind of beautiful if you think about it.

My Archive of Our Own username, thejokerghost, comes from Pokémon. For a long time, my favourite type has been the Ghost type, Ghost-type Pokémon often being characterized as playful, mischievous, pranksters, etc. I always liked that aspect, hence : joker ghost. This became my default username for everything for years, and though most uses are now defunct and my new online identity centers around a Fall Out Boy reference instead, I still have a handful of things including my AO3 handle with the name. Which is crazy. I’ve never posted Pokémon fic on AO3.

Even if I don’t always consider Pokémon to be one of my main fandoms, it is the first domino that led me to fandom, which is another reason I’ll always be grateful to it. You see, I truly got into fandom through Tumblr, and I got a Tumblr account to follow a Harry Potter blog which I found on Pinterest, and I got a Pinterest account because of… Shedinja. I remember looking up “Pokémon memes” and just scrolling through Google images, because I was nine like where else was I supposed to go. At some point, I saw one that was apparently very interesting and/or funny about Shedinja, an interesting Pokémon who only has one (1) HP and therefore can be knocked out in only one hit, but it also has the Wonder Guard ability, which means it can only be affected by super effective moves and indirect damage. It’s not the easiest Pokémon to use, but it’s a super cool concept and fun to figure out.

I ended up losing track of the image and not being able to find it again. I searched specifically for Shedinja memes but alas, nothing. I then remembered that this specific image had come from Pinterest, so I tried searching there, which I couldn’t do efficiently without an account, so I made one. I never did end up finding it, but what I did find was that while making your account, Pinterest asks you about your interests, allowing you to select categories that get more and more specific… including like half a dozen Harry Potter categories. So I was thrust headfirst into fandom culture on Pinterest, which would eventually lead to my entire existence online in fandom communities, and it was all because of this silly ghost bug. Everyone say thank you, Shedinja.