u/Lethean616

Happened across this during my morning walk. This is my ticket out of here.

Every September, when the leaves start turning orange and brown, the days start getting shorter, and the weather gloomier, I get the overwhelming urge to listen to this album. I was 17 when it came out and my mental health wasn't great at the time, mixed with some typical teenage heartache woes, and I'd never before heard anything so sombre. It released at the right time and resonated so hard with me, and it's still (arguably) my favourite HIM album to date.

I'd love to do a higher-quality and full cover of this someday, but for now I just wanted to share a snippet of my favourite HIM song close to the anniversary of its release - Sleepwalking Past Hope 🖤

"My Hell begins from the tenth, and descends to the circle six hundred three-score and six

And from there I crawl, beneath Lucifer's claws, just for one last kiss.."

Also I just realised that my ex from 20 years ago never gave back my copy of GL666 and Unseasy Listening Vol 2, do you think they'll mind me asking now? 😂

If anybody knows what to do with the key(s), let me know please

So I didn't begin this quest with the intention of collecting every ribbon, but it sorta evolved into it as it went. I have all of the original hardware and games necessary but for convienience I'm emulating on my Retroid Pocket 5 (and collecting Retroachievements too).

It all started when Champions released and I battled somebody whose pokemon had a bunch of interesting titles, and I thought it would be cool to replay older games and pick up some rarer titles to show off in Champions. I also wanted to give certain games that I hadn't clicked with back in the day another go (mainly Black/White and Sun/Moon), and then I got thinking about how it would be cool to re-experience as many games as possible with some of my all-time favourite pokemon. While reading up on titles I came across this community and felt inspired to start my own ribbon master- so I present to you, Morgul the Quilava! (I did initially name it Ephelúath but it didn't feel right, so I renamed before transferring out).

I started with Colosseum in early May but I purposefully didn't capture Quilava until the 2nd time, as I needed to complete the story mode before I could trade over a Luxury Ball for it. I tried to avoid levelling it up because a) it needed to not exceed 50 for the Emerald Battle Tower ribbon, and b) because I want to evolve it into Hisuan Typhlosion when it eventually makes its way into Legends: Arceus. This meant I was kinda tackling Mt Battle with one less useable pokemon, but most of the battles in story mode version weren't challenging. With the National and Earth ribbons obtained I transferred Morgul and a few others over to Emerald. While in Colosseum I also got lucky with a shiny Metagross! I left a few strong pokemon in Colosseum to finish all of the post-game battles and get 100% achievements.

After a few gym badges I could use Quilava in battles, but I kept it under 50 until I had the lv50 Battle Tower ribbon. I hunted down a Feebas to add Milotic to my team (much easier these days with the tile calculator tools online). Growing and blending berries to max out contest stats was a drag, but eventually I picked up all of the contest ribbons for Morgul (mainly spammed the Rest/Snore/Sleep Talk combo) and also picked up some of ribbons for my Milotic and Metagross. I spent quite a lot of time resetting for the coolest legendary, shiny Rayquaza (I got through 3 seasons of Game of Thrones while playing at 5x speed..) and named it Ancalagon after a dragon from Tolkien's legendarium. As with Colosseum I've left a few strong pokemon in Emerald to wrap up all the Battle Frontier achievements over time.

I've not long started Platinum, which feels almost like a new adventure as I haven't played it since I was in high school nearly 20 years ago. I'd been feeling quite bored with the official games for a while, but chasing down ribbons and achievements is adding a lot more fun to it all!

Thanks for reading my wall of text, and stay tuned for more updates in this very long journey :)

My first Solar and first Evertune :) so far I'm impressed! The neck is a little different to the super thin and flat Ibanez RGs I usually play but I don't dislike it, and the stock pickups are better than I anticipated. I was ready to throw a pair of Fluences in it (I've never liked any stock Ibanez pickups) but I might hold off for a while.

I'm also quite surprised by how easy the Evertune system and zones are to get used to, people online seem to like making out that it's really complex for some reason.

Overall I'm happy with this, it ticks a lot of boxes that I feel Ibanez aren't catering to at the moment.

For those outside of the UK- yes. We have gone completely mad.

We went for a mix of blues and purples underneath, and then used greens/yellows/black for a cool "prism" effect on top