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The other day, I contacted Rosario over Skype to talk to him about something. It concerned our RP, and therefore, our game. There were some things I needed to know, that would impact the storyline and character interactions. When he was barely paying attention, I got onto Discord to get some faster replies from him.

Seems my friend was more interested in playing me on Pokémon Showdown. I really wanted to talk about this RP stuff, but he just wouldn't stop bugging me with Pokémon Showdown. I reluctantly got on there, entered my name as "Majestic Kyo" again, and hoped that this wouldn't take too long. We did a battle with random Pokémon on both sides.

Needless to say, I lost. Rosario took the time to gloat about his triumph, but I just told him I wanted to talk to him about something. I wanted to stop playing, so he wouldn't be distracted as we talked. And he agreed to stop playing, as soon as I could beat him in this game. I feared this would take all day, but I accepted the challenge nevertheless.

It took a couple of tries or so, but I did beat him, a lot sooner than expected. But when he had to keep up his end of the deal, he started complaining about his team. He acted like that match shouldn't count, as one of his Pokémon was an Unown, and all his others were, quote, "crappy". I pointed it out to him that I also had an Unown on my team, but I still won. Rosario was a stubborn loser, though, and kept telling me to accept a rematch.

I held on his offer, calling him out for being a dishonest negotiator. The only parameters to our agreement was that we would stop when I won. No rules were made about which specific Pokémon teams "counted". His attempts to renegotiate were far too late in the development in our deal.

Of course, then I really hammered it in that I wanted to talk about our RP, and wanted to stop playing, so he wouldn't be distracted. He just told me that we could talk as we played. I ended up agreeing to it, saying that next time I won, he wasn't going to blame his team, and ask for another rematch.

Over our next battle, I talked to him, and he only got distracted once. I called it out, and told him to "focus". And he smart-assedly responded that he was, "focusing to the game".

I soon won again, and we continued our talk without distractions, as promised. That's why instead of being another "Pokefail" entry, I think this one might be a "Pokewin". Anyone else think so?

Here are some interesting notes about our battles. Our Pokémon were randomized, of course, but for some reason, I always had lots of legendaries on my team. Rosario was always so bewildered by the number of them in each battle. Though that never stopped him from winning, most of the time.

He also had the bad habit of blurting out, or at least heavily hinting at, his strategies. Mainly, this happened when it came to withdrawing his current Pokémon. I used this to my advantage when it happened, using perfectly timed moves. I also called him out for giving away what he's going to do. Though, he eventually used that trick against me. When he blurted out another strategy, I adapted to it, and fell into a trap. I'm impressed he could fake me out like that.

All that aside, we talked about our RP, and some things concerning the Rosario character. I said that I wanted Rosario to disguise himself as a human when hanging around Kyo in public. It was already established in the first story that he could retract his horns, wings, and tail. So I wanted to use that here. Rosario agreed to have this happen.

Of course, like the free market, every character acts with their own self-interest. What motivation would Rosario have to keep people from knowing he's a demon? He wouldn't agree to the disguise just because Kyo told him to. My justification is that demons are afraid of priests, who have the power to kill them with exorcism. If the public found Rosario, then he is as good as exorcized. Therefore, he disguises himself to be around Kyo.

Rosario didn't like that idea, though. He wanted his character to be immune to holiness. I questioned this idea. How in the world is a demon, an unholy presence cast away by God, immune to holiness? It should be their greatest weakness. I also mentioned that Rosario himself wanted to start our story over, because he made his character too overpowered. If holiness is not his weakness, what is?

I mentioned another weakness given to Rosario during our RP. He said that his character fell into a coma and lost more memories, because he ate the food in Kyo's fridge. So, obviously, human food was a weakness for him. But Rosario denied this, even though the text in our story heavily implied, all but told, that the human food was responsible for this. I even told him to dig out the Google Doc we RPed on, to prove it. He was too lazy to, but it's there to contradict him later.

So with that retcon established, what was the new weakness he now always had? Rosario's answer was poison. He then started to obnoxiously sing bits of some "poison" song. I thought, at first, that he wasn't taking anything seriously, as we were playing Pokémon Showdown at the moment. But he was serious. Of all things, Rosario's weakness was going to be poison.

I questioned him about this. And he said it was "cool". I told him that it was not cool. Rosario is a very cool character, and needs something less random and mundane than poison. It's not even comedically random or mundane. Poison doesn't even make sense as a demon's weakness.

The other two weaknesses were much better. Holiness as a weakness was cool, and made the most sense. Human food, though a bit mundane, made sense as well, as demons would realistically have a different digestive system than humans.

I dropped the poison topic for now, as nothing was going to change his mind, nor make him stop singing, "poison" in that annoying tone. So, I still needed a reason for Rosario to agree to disguising himself as a human. If he wasn't scared of being exorcized by priests, what motivates him? Rosario said that his character is scared of being raped by priests. Apparently, all priests want to stick d***o crucifixes up the bottom of demons. I wasn't going to budge much on this. If this is what makes Rosario scared of priests, and disguise himself as a human, so be it. We can probably play this fear for comedy anyway.

As a side note, Kyo's parents, who we agreed live in the apartment next door, know of Rosario in human mode. They believe him to be Kyo's girlfriend, even though Kyo always denies it.

But with that established, Rosario still wanted to use poison as his character's weakness. I asked him to justify it, and he said to "imagine our story as an RPG". Even after entertaining the thought, it still made no sense. Even in RPGs, holy attacks, not poison, would still be a weakness to demonic forces, right?

So then, he got out a list of stats from Dark Souls, and wanted me to decide Kyo's stats. I briefly played along, but I did not know what most of these did. He gave me a link to a Dark Souls wiki page, so I could read about these on my own. But I didn't have time to look through 20 articles going into detail about a game I've never played, nor care to play. And Rosario was too lazy to just gimme a short, verbal answer.

Well, at least I got something out of this chat. It could've been worse. Though I may have to live with Rosario's weakness being poison for God-knows-why. His input still matters, but I guess this is just what happens when I work with amateurs. I'll continue to play the story with him, and make our game, even if I don't like every creative decision. But until then...

Be Right Back, World!