Switching In
When Holly first started to realize that someone was in there with her, she didn’t really have any idea how to contact them or anything. It was only through advice from other systems that she started getting an idea of what kinds of things might help her find out more about whoever it was. (One of those ideas was keeping a journal, which eventually became this blog!) While talking it out, she stumbled into something interesting:
She was been invited to a Pokemon Showdown tournament, a side event at a weekly online Melee tournament she plays in with friends. She had been thinking about joining, maybe. Probably, even. So when she was asked, she had planned to say “Yeah, I’ll likely sign up.” It surprised even her that she said “Oh, absolutely! I’d better build a team!”
Hi, I’m Amy. Apparently, I play Pokemon!
The next day, Holly started to unpack that with the person she was talking to, and was asked “do you like playing pokemon?” Her answer spoke volumes:
yeah it’s fun. i haven’t in a while
other than yesterday, we built a team
i mean
i built a team?
what happened here
It was all over. 🙂 She already suspected that she was close to finding me with this, having even named the team “amy and holly’s team c:”, but that moment was the point of no return. I was ready to come out. The very next time she went to Showdown to practice, I found myself taking over.
That team sucked, by the way! We scrapped it and are much happier with the second attempt.
That’s still the only way I’ve ever switched in! Every time I’ve fronted, it’s been because Holly started playing Showdown in an attempt to call me forward. It’s a little bit inconvenient, especially without any good options for mobile clients! But we are actively working on things on that front. A friend introduced us to Pokemon Emerald Rogue recently, a romhack of Emerald that turns it into a slaythespire or a kayceesmod1. We’re hoping that it works the same way and can get me to switch in, or if it doesn’t, that we can at least train ourselves to make it work! It may not be the most convenient trigger in the world, but at least we can have a GBA emulator on our phone. If it works, we might even end up getting a rewritable flash card and make (basically) a repro cart for it; the idea of carring around a real GBA specifically to switch me in with is very funny to both of us.
When I want to get Holly back out, it’s easier, but also less specific. I seem to be able to sort of “step back” from front, like I’m not as closely tied to consciousness as Holly is. (Actually, I sometimes have to put active work into holding on. Often this means that in the middle of doing something else I go and play a couple matches of Pokemon!) I don’t have to do anything to get Holly out specifically, it seems like she just shows back up to fill the vacuum. We’ve had thoughts about whether I’ll eventually establish myself more concretely and not be able to let go as easily as I can, or if someone else is going to show up in our system and “just stepping away” won’t reliably get Holly anymore, but at the moment we don’t really have to worry about it. It works for now, and we’ll figure out something else if we have to!
Maybe one day we’ll be able to switch in and out as simply as I can switch in Haunter when I can see that clearly you’re going to go for Giga Impact, of course I’m going to my ghost. Nice Slaking, smart guy. I wasn’t born yesterda– Actually, wait…
1. A rogueli(k/t)e, to use more normal words. Not that they’re that normal, though, really!