“The Website Previously Known as Legendary Pokémon.”

Legacy, News

Legendary Pokemon: The reboot.

by Arty2

This very website started off pretty much as a child’s play. I’ve acquired numerous useful skills during these years, spent countless hours of irreplaceable time on it, and also through the microcosm it actually is, learnt a lot about life as well.

I’d like to thank the comrades and friends —past and present— whose personal work and moral support made Legendary Pokémon possible: Johnny, Eraleas, Blue, NM2, Serebii and my sister. I owe a big thanks as well, towards the community that survived in our forums. We should also thank The Pokémon Inc. for both their intellectual property and tolerance.

However, I’ve unfortunately made a mistake: I thought that I’d always be around. I’ve actually said that “I’ll never be like Pokémaster Kevin”; I’m sure few will get the reference. It appears that throughout the years, Legendary Pokémon was raised like a spoilt kind of pet, so intertwined with me that it wouldn’t survive alone. Poetic as it may sound it’s actually true, the backend is a heavily customized abandoned blog platform, coupled with hundreds of lines of undocumented Pokédex code; but I was a kid learning how to code, right? You should always facilitate contribution and open source the hell of the things you do.

Sometimes things cannot be fixed, but taking care of plants has also taught me that you should never abandon the things you love, no matter how hard it is to nurture them back to life. Therefore what Legendary Pokémon needs is a reboot, not a fix. People’s interest has swifted towards social media, The Pokémon Inc. is actually a decent news source nowadays, communities in the fandom that have overspecialized are staple and volume of information is nothing we can compete against. We don’t need to compete, we just want to complement.

I believe we need a new niche, coupled with a basic Pokédex perhaps (though that would require tons of work) and swift news reporting. That niche should be unique and quality —episodic perhacs— content: articles, guides, comic strips, fan fiction and reviews that do not reproduce existing information. More like a magazine, written by fans, for fans.

The reboot process will be long, tedious; requires a lot of work on my behalf to make this site independent. It will take months, maybe a year. Most importantly however, it requires your participation: we need your quality thoughts, your insight. In return what we all get is contentment and the feeling of belonging; c’est la vie. Fandom ethics and Intellectual Property laws dictate that we shouldn’t make profit out of it anyway.

What could you contribute? What should we do better different than the rest? What would you like in a Pokémon-related website?

Please contribute your thoughts in the related forum thread.

About the author

Arty2

Heracles is an Athens-based architect and designer.
He founded LegendaryPKMN in 2001.