The 5,000-Reset Shiny Turtwig

Shiny hunting is not a casual hobby. In Pokemon Brilliant Diamond, I set my sights on a shiny Turtwig, which meant picking it as my starter, checking whether it sparkled, and if it didn't, soft-resetting the game and doing the whole thing over again. And again. And again.

I kept a rough count as the resets climbed into the thousands. Somewhere past four thousand I stopped letting myself think about the odds and just treated it as the routine: start the game, check Turtwig, reset, repeat. By the time I hit somewhere around 5,000 resets, the process had turned almost meditative - less about the Pokemon itself and more about proving to myself I could see it through.

When the shiny sparkle finally showed up, it didn't feel like luck. It felt like it was owed to me.