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2025/11/20 Just wanted to write up a thing about my experience with Pokemon, since it made such an impact on my life. When Pokemon first arrived in the USA, I really wasn't interested in it. I was in high school, and I was just starting to get into Japanese anime, but Pokemon didn't initially catch my eye. That is, until I saw a catalogue with some Pokemon toys, including one of Mew. I'm pretty sure it was one of those clear bouncy balls that had a Pokemon figure sealed inside. My mind instantly interpreted Mew as a jumping rodent, like one of my favorite animals, the kangaroo rat. That was the turning point. Mew, it was all Mew.  My old Mew collection from the 90s/early 2000s. Suddenly I wanted to know more about Pokemon. But I had a problem. Our cable service didn't get the channel that Pokemon aired on. I had looked up some Pokemon stuff online, but I made a fool of myself when I joined a #pokemon IRC channel and tried joining a trivia challenge, only to fail on the first question: What was the legendary Pokemon Ash sees in the first episode of the anime? I had never seen it, so I could not answer. (It was Ho-oh, I know this now.) This meant I had to invest in watching the show. As in, luckily the local pharmacy had some Pokemon VHS tapes for sale, though not quite so lucky for my allowence savings. I believe the tapes were only like $10 or $12.  Anyway, with the power of the VCR I finally started my own journey watching Pokemon, and I immediately fell in love with Team Rocket. My best friend at the time, KC, really loved them too. So I snatched up what Rocket merchandise I could at the time, including the Team Rocket expansion for the TCG. It's the one master set that I have, including the hidden Dark Raichu card.  At the time, I had a hobby of making my own websites on Geocities about things I liked. At first I made a section on my personal website about Mew and Mewtwo. It wasn't very good and was mostly just some cropped scans from the Pokemon Adventures comic and a bit of my own artwork.  My terrible banner for that page. But as I got more into Team Rocket, the community, and making my own OCs as a fanartist, I decided to make a more fully built website dedicated to my fan "branch" of Team Rocket: Rocketfield. This website. Archive.org has a backup of it, but it's pretty similar to what I have here. Again, I used to have more scans from official materials, but most of that's been lost, and I think the fanart is more fun.
At this time, I had found my way onto the TRHQ website and forums. I unfortunately don't remember the site itself that well. I was far more focused on the forum community. This Bulbapedia article has a pretty basic summary of what the site had. The forums though were amazing to me... They were full of so many other fans who loved Team Rocket just as much, and even more than I did! There was a forum board dedicated to Rocketshipping! There were debates over which pairings were better, discussions of Pokemon news (such as the infamous "Pikablu"), chatting about daily life, and my favorite - fan creations. Specifically fanart since drawing was my thing. People would post threads offering or requesting fanart or drawings of OCs. I made a lot of friends on the forums. It's so funny when I read that Bulbapedia article and can go "oh, I knew/know that person" at every single username listed. A lot of the artwork I have on the Requests & Gifts page are things I received from or drew for other TRHQ members. In 2003, my friend KC and I actually went to Anime Expo in Anaheim, CA, and we spent most of our time hanging out with other members from TRHQ. We shared a room with Jessami and her sister. We met up regularly with other members, including: Sad Mewtwo, Silver Vaporeon, Lady Shadowcat, TeaRoses and her daughter, Peefy, Silly XD, BabyJigglypuff... I might be forgetting someone else, but that was the main group. We would sit in a circle in the convention center lobby when we hung out (and eventually got yelled at by security), ate at a local Denny's (and got sick), met some voice actors and went to some fandom meets (most of us were also into Trigun at the time), but mostly we just had a good time chatting together. After the convention, KC, Jessami, her sister and I went to visit Disneyland as well.
 A doodle of the moment security yelled at us. That community will always remind me of happy times and more carefree days. That community changed my life. As later, one of the other fanartists contacted me on deviantART.  We are now best friends and roommates! All because we both loved a silly villain team from Pokemon. And as such I'll always hold a special place in my heart for Pokemon. As for other Pokemon things:
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