aka...seesaw duo!

i got pokemon sword for my birthday back in 2020 despite not planning to pick up the game at first since i wasn't as hugely into pokemon as i used to be at the time, and who would've known that it would've resulted in me ultimately becoming more interested in my lifelong special interest than ever, and that it would've brought me to having actual ultimate favourite pokemon characters.

though, i didn't immediately think much of them. i didn't have the visceral hatred that a lot of people have for whatever reason, i was just sorta neutral on them. it wasn't until the 30th of september 2020 that i really became a fan of them. and even then, while i was still a huge fan of them, and credit this date as my anniversary with the twins, it wasn't until november 2021 that i became fixated on them again and have not stopped being fixated on them since. my friends are probably so tired of hearing about them at this point please send help.

but regardless of how embarrassed i feel talking about them constantly to my friends the way i do, these characters really mean a lot to me. and for this reason, i decided to create this page dedicated to them, and how happy they make me.

sordward and shielbert are twin brothers who appear in and act as the antagonists of the postgame segment of sword and shield! their plotline is spurred on by recent events and specifically sonia's book. in a way they act as foils to sonia, her exact opposite. sonia uncovered the truth of the past and is embracing that truth for the future, these two are stuck in the past of the lies that were spread somewhere along their lineage. they feel wronged by sonia specifically, after all she was the one who compiled all of this into essentially what can act as a callout on their ancestors for lying about what happened. it's clear they take this personally even if sonia wasn't acting out of malice. i hope you get the gist from this their relationship to sonia is INTEGRAL to them as characters. you cannot remove them as characters from her it just doesn't work

by the end of the postgame they do see the error of their ways thanks to the protagonist saving them from yknow getting mauled to death by a giant dog. i have a lot to say about their change in attitude and how they start treating the protagonist as above them rather than equal and their lack of being able to see anyone really as equal to them, it's always above them or below them. but that aside after the postgame we next see them in the galarian star tournament and i think their inclusion there is super duper interesting! we get to see more of the differences in their personalities that there's kinda crumbs of but the tournament really elaborates on. shielbert seems a bit more easy to get along with than sordward does. shielbert has quite a few positive interactions with others while sordward's are all mostly negative. interestingly though, when partnering with bede shielbert somewhat insults him by calling him "bed-headed", while admittedly i'm biased because of the french version where he calls her a damsel in distress and says he'll save her, to me it did seem like that interaction is generally on the kinder side of sordward's other interactions. interesting contrast where shielbert seems to get along better with his opponents but not with who he's partnered with vs sordward being rude to most of his opponents but being on the kinder side to who he's partnered up with. though to some extent maybe it is the autism but i've never been able to tell if shielbert is intentionally insulting bede or if he's just kinda dumb. maybe both. it's funnier to assume it was intentional however.

well, for one, they're my favourite characters in the entire pokemon franchise. they're the subject of most of my artwork and my occasional pieces of writing, and also part of the reason i wanted to start working on my website again to begin with. they're a huge part of my life, no matter how silly it may seem to other people. i concern myself a lot over how people perceive how attached i am to them, and the feeling that people are probably making fun of me behind my back for even liking them to begin with, but it's something i'm truly working hard to get over, because that shouldn't matter to me. they make me happy, and that's all that matters, it's nobody elses business.

i've been very open about how i selfship and how sordward x sonia is like kinda a selfship thing for me...it's hard to explain how i feel about shielbert, because i would say i view shielbert romantically but to a lesser extent? but that's also not to say that i don't like shielbert as much because i do. i've started actually doing more stuff with a self insert for myself named paisley, though to some extent i do kinda still prefer sordward/sonia and shielbert/sonia because of their interesting relationship in canon and the way these two revolve around her as a character. and i don't mean this to like put down how they're written as characters, i actually think the way they're written around sonia is so interesting thematically and is one of my fav aspects of them.