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i love totodile. if i ever embarked on a pokemon journey at the humble age of 10 as per pokemon adventure lore, totodile would 100% be right by my side - snapping around my heels with its adorable sharp teeth and doing a jig. the totodile zone on this site is an homage to how much i adore totodile and its evolutions... i just LOVE it!

once laverath, syklemos and stormspike were safely in pokemon home, they had officially evaded getting trapped in an old generation (as per pokemon bank's services supposedly ending at some point). i was partially expecting their journey to be a huge rush, but it ended up being fine, as i still had time before an official date was even given for pokebank's closure. i entertained the thought of more early generation ribbon masters, and my thoughts immediately settled on stormspike's younger sibling: a totodile.

i was in a bit of a tricky position with this 'dile, however. i wanted it to be a shiny one, but... how would i go about getting one? in gen 3, i had a few options. the first was shiny hunting it via eggs (likely via rng manipulation, just like how i got reides). the second option was completing the mt battle challenge in pokemon xd and shiny hunting the reward totodile that you get at the end of it (rnging it if the process felt like it was too much on top of the looming ribbon master challenge, lol). but the third option was so interesting that i couldn't possibly resist it.

in pokemon ruby, sapphire and emerald, you can actually get a johto starter pokemon from professor birch as a reward for completing your hoenn pokedex. i was deeply into pokemon emerald at the time, because, frankly, it's one of the best pokemon games ever. with access to ruby and sapphire, i realised i could potentially trade over all the pokemon i needed, and that i could get my ribbon master totodile from birch himself. due to emerald's rng issues, soft reset hunting for a shiny totodile would sadly be out of the question for me... but i wasn't too torn up about it, as i knew my copy of emerald and had tons of practice with rng manipulating static targets. (for the purposes of getting my shiny totodile, i'd even go on to rng hunt for all of the legendaries... but that's another story altogether, haha!)

what then began was a big project to complete the hoenn pokedex. i used my childhood copy of sapphire and finally started up a file of ruby (with the goal of catching a zangoose in it... haha. i ended up getting very attached to that team though, so it was obviously super worth it. i even found a totally random shiny zigzagoon while playing!). i spent a huge chunk of summer 2025 working on this dex, journeying all over hoenn and battling gabby and ty countless times in order to get the experience to level up a bunch of pokemon. during this time, i also caught jude the snubbull - a cherished snubbull who would go on to accompany my totodile on their ribbon mastery journey.

after hours upon hours of time spent playing emerald, i eventually managed to complete the hoenn pokedex. i even got a certificate for my trouble!

after that, i picked up the whole reason for my hoenn dex adventure. saving before picking up the pokeball with totodile in it, i whipped out eontimer and managed to get an adorable little shiny totodile after a measly FIVE attempts. i had never completed the hoenn pokedex before, and birch's dialogue made me really, really emotional.

i named this adorable little totodile 'gelato,' after the dessert as well as the gelato shirt from animal crossing for the gamecube. it was the first shirt i walked off the train with in acgc, and i ended up keeping it with my character for that reason. to this day, i still have that gelato shirt - it's even visible in the acgc section of my animal crossing shrine. it might sound strange, but i really associate it with my childhood, and i thought it'd make for a perfect nickname for my favourite starter pokemon. with gelato named and safely in my party, so began another ribbon master journey.

taking on the ribbon master challenge with a totodile and a snubbull was a daunting challenge, but i embraced it - ruined battle tower streaks and all. gelato and jude are the best of friends, and i am so proud of them for their ribbon master journey.

gelato's title is the tried and true.