Hello everyone,

So you may have noticed that things have been pretty quiet on my end lately, not just in terms of content updates on this website, but also from me in general – my appearances in Pokémon World Online have been minimal and sporadic, and I’ve hardly used my Mastodon account at all. And I think it’s time I came clean to you as to why.

For several months now, I’ve been struggling to figure out just what it is that Mallow the Garbodor is all about – what is my character, what is my goal, and what do I hope to achieve? This has actually been a chronic issue for much of the time I’ve been writing, acting and commissioning art for myself, and stems from one simple truth:

I never really intended for Mallow to become the major personality he’s become.

When I first came up with Mallow, back in 2019, it was actually just intended as a joke. I wanted to create a name and personality that would make people go, “Who the heck created THAT?!?” – and, to be fair, it seemed to work for a brief moment. One of my earliest memories from my time at Pokémon World Online was someone who saw me in-game for the first time literally PMing me the word “fun” out of the blue, in a tone that suggested disgust. And when I later posted in the forum (under my original username of TheStinkiestGarbodor and in the broken, disjointed English everyone quickly figured out was deliberately faked xD), I was even accused of being a fetishist with a thing for garbage. However, it quickly turned out these early reactions were more outliers than an actual reflection of the majority view of my character. In fact, over the next few months, I gained a reputation as one of PWO’s ‘quirky characters’, and it soon became clear my presence there is actually something many people find one of PWO’s charms.

Because of this, the character I created as a joke slowly started to develop into an actual persona, gaining his unique appearance and traits and becoming known as the stinky, toxic, yet ultimately super-friendly and fun-loving misfit who just wants to be loved. In a way, I feel like creating this character gave me the freedom to explore a side of myself I didn’t know I had – childish, puerile, yet good-humoured and inoffensive.

Over time, though, I decided that simply being ‘The Stinkiest Garbodor’ was too plain. Being “stinky and gross” is a joke you can only take so far, and it’s led me to try to ‘reinvent’ myself many times. Renaming myself ‘Mallow’ was a first step in this regard, as it made it clear stink isn’t my entire persona. Comics like Proud to be Mallow! allowed me to develop my backstory and establish my personality as someone who welcomes everyone from all walks of life.

Despite this, one thing I’ve never been able to do is create an actual story for myself. Most of my comics and writings have been one-off, disjointed tales which usually revolve around birthday antics or silly jokes. The one ongoing story I do have on my website, The Story of Team Poisoned Rose, is mostly improvised on the spot, with me writing my own story and lore around the many odd drawings and concepts of CaptianNerfGunz2019, using ideas from my long-defunct PWO Guild and loose, disjointed ideas I come up with for possible characters and basically trying to weave a coherent narriative out of random parts. This has resulted in a not-really-canon, constantly-evolving story involving myself and my friend Jinji which imagines us both as leaders of a pollution-themed guild that is dubiously moral – but truthfully, the two of us as “leaders” was never something we actually planned for our characters at all.

This realisation – that I’ve mostly let other people write my character for me because I don’t have a clear idea for myself – has been weighing on my mind heavily of late. And I’ve decided the best thing to do is to stop, take a step back, and cut myself off from everything while I try to come up with a plan.

The TL;DR is this: I’ve decided I’m going to take a break, compose my thoughts, and try to figure out just what I actually want Mallow the Garbodor to be. While I do this, I have decided I’m going to disconnect as much as I can. I might still make occasional social media posts, and there is a small bit of the Poisoned Rose story I’m working on which I still intend to complete despite what I said earlier about its lack of canon. I’ll also happily accept any fanart or gifts I receive during my indefinite break and might do a sporadic site update to show them off. But I won’t push myself to do anything until I feel ready to commit to a plan.

Until then, as I often like to say…

Stay stinky!