Welcome to the Cave of Dragonflies guestbook.
Rude, offensive or otherwise inappropriate messages, including drama, controversy or other topics that might make others uncomfortable, will be deleted on sight. Repeat troublemakers will be banned altogether. Please keep any websites entered into the website field reasonably family-friendly. You can use BBCode (forum code) to format your messages.
Giving an e-mail address is optional; if it is given, you will be notified by e-mail if I respond to your post. If you fill in a website (this should be your own website, blog or social media profile), it will be linked publicly on your post.
- [b]Bold[/b]
- [i]Italic[/i]
- [u]Underlined[/u]
- [s]Strikethrough[/s]
- [url=http://www.dragonflycave.com]Link[/url]
- [spoiler]Spoiler[/spoiler]
Now begins the grind to catch a Regice in Emerald Seaglass with perfect IVs.
1.5% chance with a Dive Ball 🤫🧏♂️
Since this post is titled as "Religious Objections" rather than "American Christian Objections" I think it would be appropriate to also list objections from other cultures and religions.
Reading it I also noticed how far culture and religion actually overlaps.
Therefore here are a few examples of other cultures and religions:
In Islam, there are many groups who consider Pokemon haram, for much of the same reason as american christians do. However, it is even more pronounced there, because there in general any activity that distracts you from god is makruh (discouraged). Music being a prominent example that is explicitly discouraged.
However, the concept of gambling itself is outlawed, including luck based card games (Pokemon cards fall squarely under this) or dice as the originally established examples. Because Pokemon very much hails from gacha games put into a video game, there is a significant argument to be made that the prophet directly forbids the games and many islamic cultures do so.
This specifically makes the phrase "don't let them ruin something that genuinely makes you happy" irrelevant because in the islamic view, the teachings are supposed to put you onto the path directly to god rather than make you stray towards other paths which may make you happy but are not what was intended for you. Most sins start because they make the person happy, that is the entire basis of these teachings have a purpose in the first place. It is similar for the bible.
For another culture (where I would argue that a new kind of religion is forming that is controlled by the ruling party), china also bans or banned certain aspects of Pokemon, most notably Pokemon cards under youth gambling laws.
As a european myself I also want to note a significant divergence between european christianity and american christianity. American christianity to my understanding is overwhelmingly shaped by the reformation that was in full swing during the initial settlement period. Luther and the reformation during that time was in my view actually trying to bring practical christian life a lot more closer to the bible in contrast to the more material focus that was practiced before. While in europe, this synergized with old christianity (which in reality never really took on that many christian traditions and remained culturally very pagan, which was fueled more again by the renaissance and post-enlightenment nationalism) and led to a sharp decline in practiced christianity overall that still continues to this day.
In america this did not happen because the base of people was almost exclusively following the new faith. This means american christianity is actually much closer to the bible and to islam than to modern european christianity.
While in europe the shift was gradual, I think america is only currently "catching up" in this distancing from the church with the post-1980 generations, very similar to islamic countries with their respective arabic springs.
However, I want to also stress that I think it is really not just about "religion" at all but instead because of a complex web of cultural traditions, of course influenced by religion but not only, so I want to specifically address this point:
"It saddens me greatly to see these sorts of people force their beliefs upon their children or other relatives, but that will always happen for as long as society accepts and condones it."
There is nothing special about this. Almost 100% of people do this in some way or another, this practice is inherently human and even required to establish communities and societies. Humans always had the need to debate and agree on certain values to uphold societal cohesion and bonds with each other. Of course because everyone believes they are inherently correct they will try to spread their views to those closest to them. This then forms a cell of belief that can debate with other cells to shift greater social agreement.
Especially in america, but in the entire west, this understanding has lately in fact broken down with cohesion dropping drastically and polarization happening. For america it is D or R, in europe socialist democracy or nationalist populism, when was the last time you saw someone cast another person out of their life because they had differing beliefs?
I would say this entire practice of casting another out and forcing beliefs is not just a religious thing, and especially not a pre-1980 thing, it has been ramping up even more since the times of the "video games are the devil" debates, in fact this looks like innocent childplay compared to the current trajectory.
I think the Pokemon debates are a good lesson on precisely what one should not do, about the societal issues of polarization and that maybe we should just approach each other with communality, to show that no matter what one may believe in, everyone else is still human, a child, a parent, a friend, a neighbor. Let them enjoy Pokemon, let them enjoy their beliefs. And in return, they will become more open themselves over time, just like how Pokemon could not be stopped by american christian objections.
I'm from August 29 and i got Infernape, which is nice since i like the Chimchar line
i love this website!
The fact that cheating is technically something programed into RSE is very funny to me.
I love this website
I've just been doing that, actually! Making some updates to the Number Game generally, should be updated later today.
Hey me again lol
Wondering if there's a way to like make it so it will accept Flabebe without typing it with the accents?
Pokemon 669
It has been added.
My birthday is day of sunflora, reign of shaymin… Sunflora isn't my favorite, but I like Shaymin a lot, so i'll take it!!!
Thanks for this!
"Also I came out as trans a few years ago, I use she/her now :D"
thanks for sharing. ttd xoxo
You may not have been the person to catapult the Mew trick into prominence, but you were the person who made me aware of it – when you posted it on the Mew's Hangout forums. Surely that counts for something.
Good catch, looks like Sirfetch'd was coded in with a curly apostrophe instead of a straight one like you'd generally type on a normal keyboard. I've fixed it now.
love the game, but No matter how I type Sirfetch'd, I'm told it's wrong.
865
Of course! The menus aren't going anywhere. One of the many, many reasons the modern web is often so annoying is that where old-school websites have permanent content organized in a way that facilitates easily finding your way to a specific thing and getting an at-a-glance overview of what content exists on the site, modern websites tend to consist of ephemeral one-and-done articles organized only by date and maybe tags or keywords if you're lucky, and discovering a given piece of content is generally only done through a search engine or happening to stumble upon a link to it from a different page, and finding your way back to something you read a while back involves crossing your fingers that you can find it through the search function. I hate this about it! Making related pages the only way to navigate the site would be the kind of nightmare I would only maybe consider doing as a gag for April 1st.
But the menu has literally a couple hundred links on it, and realistically I cannot expect some random first-time visitor who got linked to an article on their phone to painstakingly open multiple levels of submenus reading through all of those couple hundred links to see if there's anything else on this site they might like to check out - not only because a lot of people aren't used to navigating websites that way in 2025, but also because it's legitimately just a whole lot of links to go through, for anyone. A first-time visitor is probably not instantly that invested. The menu is there for people who want to find a specific thing or get a full overview of what's on the site; the related links are to give a bit more of a taste to people who just stumbled upon a page and don't yet know they might want to read more.
I've personally always liked menus like the ones you have on your site. It's an easy and convenient way to browse all the content the site has to offer under neat little categories.
I can respect your decision for featured articles and maybe I'll enjoy using it myself, but I hope you'll still keep the menus around for those of us (even if just a few) who enjoy it.
Happy twenty three years! It's wild to think the pixel art on this very site helped me find you [unintelligible] years ago, and how much has happened since! I love this idea of a curated feature section (I'd expect no less) and I already know what pages I want to check the recommends for!
Tell that to the many people who have in fact found the Secret Link!
I Tried, There is no Link
Makuta XarathCommenting on: Gen III/IV Catch Rate Calculator
ButterfreeAdminWebsite: The Cave of DragonfliesCommenting on: The Number GameIn response to: post by Here_Furret
ButterfreeAdminWebsite: The Cave of DragonfliesCommenting on: Espeon and UmbreonIn response to: post by Laura
ButterfreeAdminWebsite: The Cave of DragonfliesCommenting on: The Number GameIn response to: post by here_furret
ButterfreeAdminWebsite: The Cave of DragonfliesCommenting on: 11-02-25In response to: post by ValBones
ButterfreeAdminWebsite: The Cave of DragonfliesCommenting on: The Secret LinkIn response to: post by Ghazt The Mew