Put Kiri's app in, and now working on Thace's gym challenges. He puts so much work and research into them hahahaha

to the point where he's tracking down move tutors, just so his team can be really ready for a thing

that's really adorable of him, though

Thace <3

and ngl, steven's did the same after he fucked up bad against jasmine

I mean he's got a bunch of Level 100s by now. he could just cream the remaining Johto gyms, but he's trying to play fair and use some of his newer Pokemon

and since he's got a fair amount saved up (because what is spending money unless he absolutely has to) TMs and move tutor moves!

Shinobu and Cassandra are similar - they want their pokemon to have as many advantages as possible, but they also want to be as fair as possible, which is why Shinobu's team's fight against Brock was less about strategy than not curb-stomping Brock's pokemon too hard (or at least doing it quickly)

Also, there is something about giving really weak pokemon really overpowered moves, which is why Shinobu's Applin (and Cassandra's Dreepy, before it evolved) both learned Draco Meteor

hahaha Draco Meteor is pretty intense

This way they can still defend themselves despite being pre-evolution

yeah, that makes sense

This is also why I have demon/persona compendiums full of low-level demons with the likes of Cocytus, Thunderbolt, Megidolaon...

hahaha well if you can do it, why not, right?

god, I just realized that every gym Steven will be doing after his update will have to be elite, because he hasn't caught very many recent Pokemon and all of his are now gonna be high level

at least he got all his johto gyms in so he can do elite gyms in Kanto

hahaha well, Thace doesn't have all the gyms in one region yet, so he's, like "I won't send anyone into a battle where they have little to no chance of winning. If necessary, I'll thrash you with my veterans so I can get enough badges to do elite teams"

he sure as hell isn't going to conscript new Pokemon into his family just to be more "fair" to gym leaders

(I should figure out if he has any new Pokemon... well, I put in for a Shiny on the 15th so he has at least one coming! I hope they haven't lost the notif for the request or anything)

Shinobu and Cassandra don't care so much about the gym leaders as the pokemon themselves

And in Shinobu's case I think he's just really bad at turning down pokemon who want to go with him

Thace is too, which is why he's at 30plus Pokemon right now. but a lot of them aren't necessarily great for the gyms he's got left to beat

I know that feeling

I feel like maybe his attitude rubbing off is why Steven hasn't caught a lot of non-quota Pokemon lately