love yourself first.
Dawn drums the base of her pen against her lip. She'd been sketching some new dress patterns for her Pokémon and herself — was matchy-matchy-matchy too many matchies? — when her attention span stretched too wide and snapped, leaving her with a scattering of boys. On the page in front of her is a list of a dozen boys; she looks down at her handiwork with a slanted smile.
Ash Ketchum. With respect and grace, Dawn crosses the name out with a quick swish of the pen. Girl plus boy plus traveling equals relationship? What? C'mon. She doesn't think so, or else there would be far too many new trainers in this world and not enough training. Besides, she has it on very good faith that Ash actually does have his heart set elsewhere. Back home, that is. Dawn only met Misty once, but man, that girl was a powerhouse and a half.
Barry from Twinleaf. Dawn snorts and crosses him off too. The kid could barely take time out of his schedule to eat, never mind participate in a genuine human relationship! His Empoleon has better people-skills than he does. Dawn is cheery, yeah, but not that nuts.
Paul. Oh, yikes, yikes, yikes. That guy is hot. Indubitably. There are a couple pages strewn through this handy little sketchbook proving just that. But someone must have traded his soul for it, because she's never met anybody more spiteful. Opposites attract? Yeah, okay. For Magnemite, maybe.
Drew. Ooh, good job, May. He's cute too. Mostly. But as much as he makes a great mentor — or at least, he did the one time she and May had met up and he had basically emerged from the bushes with a rose and a Roselia and the worst pick-up lines she'd ever heard — that's all she's ever seen in him.
Kenny! Oh, dear, why did she write that name down; why is she doing this to herself; why, why, why? That poor dearheart probably still has a crush on Dawn, though she did her best to walk the line between breaking his heart by leading him on and breaking his heart by shutting him down. Honestly, they'd half-drowned each other in the sandbox way too many times in their shared childhood for her to see him as approaching anything boyfriendy. She would eat him up; she could light his hair on fire in revenge for the DD thing and he'd probably thank her. Which would be nice until the rest of him caught fire, too.
Lucas, the professor's assistance, is like seven years older than her. Alas. She crosses him off.
Gary Oak, grandson of Kanto's most famous professor. Can she admire his work but not him? Definitely. She remembers crushing on him hard through the television screen in her youth, though meeting him in person had kind of burst that Bubblebeam.
And, lastly...
Conway? Dawn makes a face, trying not to throw up all over her sketchbook. As it is, she's probably going to have to burn this page. Freak. Stalker. She crosses his name off. Then she scribbles over the line for good measure. And then one more time. And again. That should be enough.
Sighing, Dawn closes her book and puts the pen down with a click. The life of an independent young woman needs no man, but it's not like she has a lot of options thereabouts.