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darkxthedragonknight

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  1. darkxthedragonknight
    Chapter 28 is now up! Check it out here!
  2. darkxthedragonknight
    Chapter 27 is now up! Check it out here!
  3. darkxthedragonknight
    Chapter 26 is now up! Check it out here!
  4. darkxthedragonknight
    Chapter 25, featuring the battle for the fourth Gym Badge, is now up! Check it out here!
  5. darkxthedragonknight
    So, let's take this from the top- even if it's a little bit late. Hello! I am DarkX the Dragon Knight- or simply X for short- a recent college graduate, official woman in STEM, and gamer of over 15 years (maybe closer to 16 years by now). And yes, that does include Pokémon- in fact, my love of Pokémon dates back to my early childhood, as early as my exposure to video games as a whole. If I love something enough, I start to engage in its fan content, and I've engaged in Pokémon fan works a fair amount over the years. This, as you can imagine, culminated in me learning about this website's namesake, Pokémon Reborn. And in fact, just a few months ago I decided to not only play the game for myself, but to go even further and record/post my playthrough in the form of a screenshot Let's Play over on Tumblr. This is why I eventually wound up finding out about these forums and joining, though not until towards the end of April (for reference, I started my screenshot Let's Play back in October). To be honest, I didn't know this topic existed until...just today; it's been a long time since I was on a dedicated forum website, it was a little overwhelming and I had few ideas of what to do or where to start, I was just playing it by ear. But despite my anxiety, I still figured doing some cross-posting between platforms wouldn't hurt- after all, there might be some more people actually interested in reading about my playthrough. Of course, the actual first post of mine on this site does a better job explaining things, so I'd recommend giving that a look if you're interested. Granted, I'm no competitive player, far from it- I'm a casual player, and happily so. My main exposure to the competitive side of Pokémon comes from randomized Showdown battles and various YouTube videos about the topic. Sure, I think I'm fine enough at strategizing- I enjoy mystery games like Ace Attorney and strategy RPGs like Fire Emblem, but Pokémon is a whole other ballpark, especially with the kind of wacky luck I have a lot of the time. But my real aim in playing Reborn isn't just because I love Pokémon- I love games with proper stories in general. RPGs happen to be among my favorite genre of video games (if not my absolute favorite), and that's because they tend to be pretty good with providing amazing stories that make me feel so many things, and that's doubly so if they manage to integrate the gameplay with that story. I think it's that love of storytelling that led me to pick up writing as a side hobby of sorts, and I've even written several pieces of fanfiction for other fandoms over the years (although I've only ever completed two projects, and one of those was a remake). I love Pokémon, and I enjoy a majority of the stories the games tell, but even I can't deny there's potential for stories set in its world to go further, dig deeper. Fan games, I feel, can live up to that potential, not held back in the way actual companies are, allowed to tell stories that touch on more mature and darker topics (not to say darker stories are inherently better than primarily light-hearted ones, I wasn't joking when I said I still enjoy a majority of Pokémon's stories, including the mainline ones). I'm not sure yet if Reborn will scratch that itch, but I'm enjoying it enough so far to indulge in thinking up ideas for fanfiction elements and making my player avatar into a separate protagonist and character, so I think that says a lot about my investment. So, a Pokémon fan who has played casually for a vast majority of her life deciding to play a fan game that is well-known for its difficulty and complex gameplay additions- what could possibly go wrong? :D
  6. darkxthedragonknight

    So, ever since I started posting on this site more frequently with my screenshot playthrough, I’ve started perusing some of the other topics around here (very light perusing, I should add, I am still trying to remain as blind as I can while playing through this game). And from what I’ve come across, it turns out playthroughs like mine, where people implement their own story elements to create basically fanfiction, aren’t uncommon. Granted, the big difference is I discuss the fanfiction elements that I come up with as I go (in a way, the custom narrative ideas are secondary to my own personal reactions), whereas others skip the middleman and just write the stories- but like, I can respect that, I’ve written other fanfiction myself, I understand the grind.

     

    The point is, in coming to this realization, I’ve decided to do a bit more regarding my own protagonist, Xera Borchardt. Namely: give her a unique design! I made some pixel artwork, which I inserted in the spoiler box below- an in-battle sprite, an overworld sprite (including one with her partner Pokemon, Riptide the Feraligatr), and even a challenge sprite. Admittedly, I made these sprites for the fun of it, I’m not planning on adding them into the actual game files to replace any current in-game assets or anything (less because I don’t want to, more so because I’m paranoid I’ll break something in the game’s code if I change something as significant as that- it sounds like a weird fear, but trust me, I have…prior experiences). 

     

    Spoiler

    Spr_xera.png.7cb87e21672aac1cb0562cfe4813835e.pngXeraChallenge-3.png.a438c66c811d180a93bb273b874b0c74.pngXeraandRip.gif.e6096c8c672a4faf4dac99ccbb9877c3.gifXeraWalkAnimated.gif.07f3e39356d15e5b85ce7864a58ad17f.gif

     

    Here are a few notes I’d like to remark on, as a way of explaining my thought process when coming up with the design:

    • I really like the side, over-the-shoulder ponytail my current game avatar has (the sixth option, canonically Decibel, for reference), so I wanted to utilize that in some way.
    • Something I noticed with Xera’s choice for starter (Totodile) is that, when combined with the rivals’ starters (Litten, Rowlet, Nidoran ♂), they correspond to the four colors of Reborn- blue, red, green, and purple. So, I wanted to make blue a significant part of Xera’s design; figured the best places to do that would be in the jacket (primarily dark blue with brighter blue accents) and the eye color.
    • The bottom of Xera’s jacket is all frayed and torn up because I wanted a- reference? connection?- to the train bombing in the game’s opening. I thought it would be a neat detail if some of Xera’s jacket got burned in the explosion (and since she’s poor, she hasn’t been able to go buy a new one), but I didn’t wanna make the damage too extensive. After all, the opening implies the protagonist’s injuries from the explosion were minor save for getting knocked out, so further damage to the jacket would be kinda pushing it.
    • I wanted to make Xera’s hairstyle more on the unkempt/spiky/wild side, to connect with aspects of the personality I’ve been going with for her, like aggression and rebelliousness. As for its bluish-green color…well, obviously I wanted something to go with the blues of her jacket, but honestly I just wanted a character with greenish hair. I don’t have enough characters with greenish hair.
    • As stated, some aspects of Xera’s personality are aggression and determination (for better or worse), which I wanted to reflect in the pose and facial expression in her challenge sprite. However, there’s also a level of seriousness and coldness there- which is more at the forefront with her in-battle sprite. Her back to the opponent but turning to glare at them over her shoulder, the one hand in her pocket, generally appearing closed-off to other people…y’know, something like body language. Symbolism!

     

  7. darkxthedragonknight
    Chapter 24 is now up! Check it out here!
  8. darkxthedragonknight
    Chapter 23 is now up! Check it out here!
  9. darkxthedragonknight
    Chapter 22 is now up! Check it out here!
  10. darkxthedragonknight
    Hello to anyone who might come across this post! I'm DarkX the Dragon Knight (or just X), and I haven't been on this site for too long- just shy of a month, specifically. I haven't done much of anything with this account in the past, but recently, I've been looking to change that. See, ever since October, I have been posting installments of a screenshot Let's Play of Pokémon Reborn on my Tumblr blog; with me having gotten the third Gym Badge in the latest "chapter," I've decided now would be a good time to post stuff regarding that playthrough on here as well. After all, this site has all kinds of Reborn players like myself, so I'm sure at least some of you might be interested in seeing the writings of a casual Pokémon player trying her best to blindly play through a challenging fangame like this one. Of course, there's other stuff to this playthrough as well. It's largely my thoughts and reactions as I go through Reborn for the first time, yes, but it's also me developing my player avatar (who I named Xera Borchardt) into something more of an actual OC. It's not exactly fanfiction (I have an AO3 account for that), more so just me thinking about stuff and coming up with ideas as I go, but it's still become a significant aspect of this playthrough, so I need to mention it. Also, there are memes- lots of memes. Below are the links to the already-posted chapters, which is sure to be updated as the playthrough progresses. There's also a link to the introduction post going into more detail about myself as a Pokémon fan and why I decided to do a screenshot Let's Play at all. Also, this goes without saying, but just to be sure- since this is a blind playthrough, please refrain from replying with anything related to spoilers or implied spoilers; spoilers related to stuff I've already played through and seen are fine, though. With that out of the way- happy reading, and here's to more installments in the future! Enjoy! Updated for: Chapter 51 Number of Badges Obtained: 8 BOOK 1 BOOK 2 BOOK 3
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