Hey guys, did you all ever read this thread and think, "Hey man, people be trollin'"?
I've seen the conspiracies surrounding pokemon broadcast on three-minute network news channel specials with more coherency. And I think most people are over the whole pocket-DEMONsters thing by now.
I started playing the card game as soon as it arrived in the US (still have some of the 1st editions from that original set around somewhere). I'd played the nintendo game, and I was really good at the card game. It was a fun way to interact with other kids my age while I was home schooled.
I joined a pokemon forum, and we were mostly just kids from all across the US who liked pokemon. I soon became the moderator of the PokeGym's fiction forum. Yeah, that's right, I wrote fanfic. I went under the handle tia3, because I had enough sense not to use my real name at 14. Unfortunately, three years later, one day the forum was there, and the next, everything was gone. All our stories, lost forever. Then, WOTC (i think) picked up the PokeGym, but they didn't reinstate our leadership or our fiction forum.
And if that didn't mess me up, make me possessed, or imbue me with demonic powers, I don't think anything would.
Oh, and a PS: My story was about a boy named Greg who wanted more than anything to train pokemon, but his ailing father needed help at the pokemart. After saving a helpless ratatta, one day, his parents decide it's time to send him off with his new friend. Greg has a particular skill with his pokemon, an empathy for them, and is doing just fine until Officer Jenny comes to Boulder City right after his first badge win and rushes him home moments too late to see his father one last time.
It was totally not demonic.