[POKEMON SUN/MOON SPOILERS BELOW]
It might be strange to say that a franchise has kept me alive. It makes me look like a sad otaku basement dweller. Like a hopeless weaboo with nothing but my nerd fanboying.

But I think back to 2005 when my friend left a copy of FireRed at my house, that one master ball I carelessly threw at persian, which prompted me to first join pkmn.net IRC in 2006...

And from that day onwards, I shared my first tears at the ending of Mystery Dungeon Blue, first played a game competitively on a lunch table with an incomplete deck of trading cards, first jumped on the Lucario hype as I was introduced to the furry fandom, first questioned my understanding of spirituality when I geeked over alternate forms of legendaries with Origin Giratina... and today, ten years after my introduction into the pokemon fandom, while discussing the manga that is getting me through my many years of PTSD, waiting for the next episode of Pokemon Generations to bring me closer to a world I almost felt was long dead... the latest trailer for Sun and Moon comes out and is linked to the pokespe discord chat.

And in a world where pokemon looked like it was just going to become the next phone-swipe dying trend of YOLO memes... seeing those two faces again, the revamp of the trainer and rival who started it all for me... breaks me out of the depression I've felt all week to give me a little bit more hope in the franchise that has kept me alive for over 20 years.

GameFreak... thank you.

~BlackStatic/Dissonant Rhapsody/Ayla the Raichu