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Welcome to the Cave of Dragonflies guestbook.

Off-topic discussion is allowed, but spam is not; please make sure all your messages are of substantial meaning that at least somebody would be interested in reading and responding to. That being said, obviously I appreciate comments relating to The Cave of Dragonflies, whether they are error reports, questions, suggestions or whatever else you might want to get across.

Responding to post

Butterfree
Admin

You're really desperate to be uncovering some kind of a grand conspiracy.



The fact is that most people are good people and most things people do are done in good faith. People love to attribute things other people do that they don't like to those people's fundamentally bad nature; it's a known psychological principle called the fundamental attribution error. But in reality, they usually believe they're doing the right thing, just as much as you believe you're doing the right thing.



My mods are not bad people. Can they make poor decisions, act rashly, take out a bad mood on innocent members? Of course. That happens to everyone. People have bad days. People misunderstand things. People just plain make poor judgements sometimes. But they are not systematically evil or oppressive. I've made poor judgements, too. Yeah, I let Furret in after he'd abused far too many chances. Why? Because I liked him, I knew he could be a perfectly nice member when he put his mind to it, and I really wanted to believe he was sincere when he said this time he wasn't going to end up making trouble. Naïve? Sure. Poor judgement. Yeah, probably. Corrupt? Really?



I don't know where you're getting the idea that the members in general feel the mods in general are abusive. I received complaints about one mod a while ago (and subsequently tried to keep an eye on them), and one member left the other day because she thought a mod's post in a debate was rude towards her (which it wasn't to any particular degree; somewhat condescending and irritating in tone, perhaps, but not inflammatory and clearly less so than many other debating posts), but that's it. And seeing as you've given ample evidence for the fact you haven't even been a member of the forums in years, I can't help feeling generally skeptical that you actually have any idea what is going on at the forums right now; I suspect you're just basing this on some nebulous feeling that if you haven't been on a forum in some time, everything must still be the same as when you left. Things change. People change, especially teenagers. And people generally just aren't evil and out to get you.



Incidentally, the name Helen has no significance to me and has just been making you sound silly; if this is yet another thing that has something to do with something that happened in 2005, I've forgotten and whatever it is you're trying to do with it isn't working. And as far as I can remember, Nidokingu left on his own. My memory may be fuzzy on it because he left at least twice; the first time he definitely just deleted his account and then whined about getting re-admined when he came back. Maybe I did de-admin him when we broke up, what with having only admined him in the first place because he insisted he had some God-given right to be an admin because he was my boyfriend. I don't remember, I don't really want to remember because that was a pretty screwed-up time in my life, and it doesn't matter because like I said, there is no reason members should care if I de-admin somebody - even less reason than to care whether I admin somebody.



Also, I don't have a "modding system". Yet again, you keep acting like I have some special, unusual "system" in place for modding people, when I just don't. Some years ago we modded upstanding regulars as a kind of prize for being upstanding regulars even though we didn't really need mods, but again, that was years ago and since then about three people have been modded.



As for the limiting freedom of speech thing: First of all, you can't see infractions, so you have no basis for claiming X got an infraction but Y didn't. And second of all, we make a distinction between attacking a person and attacking an argument, which may be what's confusing you - "That statement is stupid" is not equal to "You're stupid". If you have actual specific examples where a mod clearly flames a member, point it out; don't just stand there going "this happens all the time, really!" with nothing to back it up. Maybe something really did slip under the radar and I'd be glad to hear about it.

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. 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; however, messages obviously posted solely as a pretext for advertising, or advertising shady or inappropriate websites, will be deleted.

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Messages

My own messages will be signed as Butterfree, with the Admin label below my name. If someone signs as Butterfree without that label, it's probably not me.

Butterfree
Admin
In response to: post by Kevin

This was an interesting bug to look into. Turns out technically my data was correct: Ison Island B3F does define the swarm slots as Onix and Graveler, not Steelix and Graveler. This is pretty obviously simply a copy-paste error from Iron Island B2F (left and right), which both have Onix and Graveler in the first two slots, but if there were a swarm there, it looks like it would indeed replace Steelix with Onix. But since Iron Island B3F is not in the list of locations that can have swarms, the swarm entries are in practice just dummies, and it's confusing to indicate it has swarms, so I've removed the swarm entry. Thanks for reporting it!

♥ Melcharge ♥
Commenting on: The Secret Link

I found the secret link back when I was a kid, maybe twenty years or so ago. On accident. Obviously I won't spoil it, but it was a surprise!

zeviox
In response to: post by Butterfree

I see what you mean now that I’ve reread the article more carefully. I think that while I was reading this (which was at 1:00 am, mind you, so not this is an excuse, but I was a little tired and not reading too thoroughly) I was just looking at what you wrote and misinterpreted as condescending.
Sometimes you did somewhat emphasize that younger kids are clumsier and haven’t fully developed the ability to be aware of how much their words make sense to other people (e.g. “they would have excitedly posted it online, in their clumsy way”), but now that I’ve read your explanation and reread that part of the essay, I can understand why you did that.
So, I see what you mean now, and althoughhh I’m not going to fully blame getting easily provoked by something silly on the fact I was reading this at one in the morning…. Well, ya know. Sleep deprivation does wonders to the mind.
Anyway, thanks for explaining it, and if you don’t think it’s necessary to change anything, don’t feel like you have to.

Butterfree
Admin
In response to: post by zeviox

Hi!

I'm sorry parts of the article rubbed you the wrong way. I don't think kids are inherently dumb or ignorant, and I think you've misread some of what I said to take that away from it. As seen from the intro and epilogue here, I vividly remember being twelve years old, and at that time I was out here making my own website and being frustrated about other websites with false information. I wasn't dumb or ignorant, and I don't think other kids are, either - but I was twelve, and as an adult you're always going to look back at some things you did or wrote when you were twelve and think they were clumsy, misguided or a bit silly, one way or another. That's natural and it doesn't mean twelve-year-olds are dumb - it just means that with a couple more decades of practice and experience and personal growth you would definitely do and say things a bit differently. (For example, today I think listing off how I "hate" websites that do this and that was a bit unnecessarily rude and combative towards the other kids who owned these other websites, and that I could have explained each item better and more constructively - that's what I mean when I say it was clumsy and very twelve-year-old.)

Please also note that when I talk about the hallmarks of being written by kids, I'm not talking about teens your age, who are obviously perfectly capable of being organized and articulate - TheScythe's account, which I named as the more mature contrast to those older descriptions, was written when she was twelve! I'm talking about younger kids there, and there really are developmental reasons young kids tend to not explain things super well - being able to think from the perspective of another person, anticipate what might trip them up in an explanation, and then adjust the explanation accordingly to be clear and easy to follow is pretty complex, and kids develop that ability slowly over time and with experience. That's, again, perfectly normal and it doesn't mean kids are dumb or can't think intelligent thoughts - it's a specific skill that is learned and refined during childhood.

Adults can definitely also be inarticulate or poor spellers or be bad at explaining, and I don't think I implied otherwise - but it would be silly to say there's no such thing as reading a message posted online and getting the sense that it was written by a kid, which is the sense that I get here (and again, I'm talking younger kid here). Obviously merely getting that sense isn't proof that it couldn't have been an adult - but this is being discussed specifically in the context of whether it's likely the Mew trick was first spread by not just any kind of adult, but by a programmer who had read and understood the game code. Programming as a discipline is all about the ability to think in an organized manner, write out clear and unambiguous instructions, and communicate precisely about things - it's at least very difficult to imagine an adult professional programmer writing these posts. Combine this with the fact this was 2003, when the vast, vast majority of Pokémon players were younger, and I think the obvious, natural conclusion here is that these were probably kids, no? And there's no shame in that - in fact, I specifically think it's cool that it was probably kids who first discovered and spread this! Kids are smart, and that's why a good chunk of the article is dedicated to arguing why it's perfectly possible that they could have not only stumbled upon this trick independently but also then replicated it to work out the steps and then been the first ones to write it up.

What those younger kids probably couldn't do, on the other hand, is understand how the trick worked. That's also perfectly natural and does not mean they were dumb: they just obviously would not have known much about the inner workings of the game or what was actually going on, and they would naturally have mostly stuck with what they knew worked, there in the early days.

I don't think I wrote anything here that would imply adults couldn't have accidentally stumbled upon the glitch and not thought twice about it, which they obviously could have; I talk about kids doing that simply because it was mostly kids playing these games at that time! I'm specifically contrasting the possibility that these millions of kids discovered the trick all on their own against the idea that the trick must have somehow originated from an adult with an understanding of the game code - and the side I'm taking is that the kids totally could have found it all on their own, and that the evidence suggests that is what happened. The intent of the article is to celebrate those kids, and to highlight how there were kids who had found out how to get Mew for real while every Pokémon-playing adult (and even other cynical kids like me who'd been burned by so many fake cheats) would've dismissed it as total nonsense.

Obviously some of the phrasing here struck you as condescending, though, and I'm not dismissing that. I definitely don't want kids or teens reading to feel talked down to here, even if the article will necessarily have to discuss why I think it looks like the trick was found by kids. I'll see about how I can tweak it. I'm sorry it came off so wrong for you!

zeviox

Ok… first off, this glitch is crazy and cool to know about, so thanks for making this article thing to let more people know about it.
But can i just say somehing? This is very unrelated to the mew glitch, but I really hate how you kept saying things along the lines of "kids with no capacity for awareness" or "clumsy kids", and acting like kids are just stupid little clueless idiots who can barely think intelligent thoughts. You kept saying things that made it sound like you think kids could never possibly figure something out on their own, which I really hate. And also, when you were talking about how grammatically incorrect and childish-sounding one of the original mew glitch posts was, you automatically assumed a child had made the post. You do realize that MANY adults or young adults often are gramatically incorrect when posting online and may sound a bit childish? You do realize that MANY adults might accidentally stumble across this glitch and not think twice about what's behind it? As a 13 y/o "child" who does NOT have the IQ of a rock, I found all of this very insulting and rude. Not all - no, MOST kids aren't dumb and ignorant, you know, and it's very rude for you to say things that make it sound like we all are.
Adults can overlook things, too. Adults can be ignorant. Adults can sound childish online, because that's just how they type.
Who knows, maybe it was all kids who discovered the glitch and made the posts. But I still just hate how you're making us sound stupid and beneath you.
I'm sorry, i didn't mean to rant, and this is very irrelevant to the mew thing, but while reading this I was just getting very pissed and needed to say something.

Kevin

The List Generator doesn't include Z-A's Lumiose or Hyperspace Dexes as order options.

Mim

What a great website, its great to see amazing websites are still around!!!

Zeviox

this whole idea is incredibly cool! its amazing that you thought of all this!

Kevin

The Gen IV locations page for Iron Island (B3F) incorrectly says that the 20% Steelix slot turns into Onix during a swarm in Platinum.

Chimera
Website: Chimera.pet

I've always wanted to know more about this mechanic, as I carry mine around with me daily… it always seemed like random luck. Thank you so much!

Ben

Cool site, helped me know how many balls to purchase.

Green-Boy4

This calculator is cool!

spidrenam
Commenting on: Fun Facts

what a cool website, thank you for hosting it <:) i hope 2027 is kind to you and your family

Elbub

I've finally got around to using my Pokéwalker in the last month or so, and through trial and error it looks like I had mostly figured out the correct course of action, but it's superb that you've created this guide, and I can check back here if I get a little confused. Thank you very much!

B34nspr0ut
In response to: post by King Bakune

i like this comment for one reason mainly:
you're not JUST saying its good or bad.
you're giving EVIDENCE!

tokidokilover

Mines pretty cool, i like venonat and tapu lele

Noah S
Website: Noah S Art
Commenting on: The Style Switcher

Thank you for giving a way to keep using the shiny Umbreon style! It was always my favorite.

cadrega

religious fanatics are the worst. my condolences to people who have religious fanatics as their parents…

Cheesemunk615

Trying to catch Shadow Electabuzz in a Luxury Ball, calc says 62.424% with para. wish me luck

Shenili
Commenting on: /fan-fiction/curse/

Wandered here from your other amazing pages and really loved what I found! I usually prefer when Pokemon don't talk but your story really used it well. The ending is gonna stick with me definitely.

Page last modified November 20 2025 at 17:02 UTC