Well, looks like Twitch finally managed to beat the Elite Four. Now that that it has ended I have two questions for you. First, how was the experience, and two, did you have any doubts they would manage to complete the game?

Are you kidding me?  I still can’t believe they got through Victory Road!  I guess that just goes to show how godlike Zapdos was in RBY – nothing really stops him but Rhydon, Golem or Onix.

I haven’t spent much time actually watching the stream, but a friend has been regularly sending me links to all the interesting nonsense that it generates in its wake.  It’s a very neat exercise in pareidolia, the human propensity for recognising patterns in randomness.  Red’s chaotic flailing and regular tragic mishaps have prompted some very creative interpretations of what’s been going on – the whole helix fossil religion, of course, but also the various ‘heresies’ of that (like dome-worship, or the alternate interpretations of Flareon), the depictions of Venomoth as an all-terrain vehicle, the way the Anarchy/Democracy system has turned into some kind of weird allegorical social commentary… it’s meaning crafted from meaninglessness, which actually says something very profound about the human condition, I think.

And now there’s a countdown to the next game.  I wonder whether the next one will be as popular.  I do hope so – but how will the mind hive find its way without the guidance of the Helix?