Author: pokemaniacchris

X Nuzlocke, episode 12: The Devil I Know

Lumiose City

Lavoisier: [on holo-caster] I’m telling you, your human’s famous!  I keep seeing his picture around the city!  I tried to show the Professor but he just kinda shook his head and made a clicking noise.
Ruby: What are you wittering about?  What on earth would this idiot be famous for?
Daku: Certainly not his understanding of team composition or moveset structure…
Spruce: Maybe it’s for his cooking?  That’s pretty good.
Fisher: Indeed; it will almost be a shame to have to return to the stolid fare of the temple kitchens when my travels with this group are done.
Ruby: …well, all right, I admit he’s not useless, but a cinnamon Poké-puff is hardly grounds for serious publicity.
Lavoisier: I think you’re just jealous that your human is more well-known than you are.
Ruby: Wh-!?  You-!  I am known and feared throughout the land as the mightiest sorceress who ever lived!  He is a half-witted, defenceless newborn whose presence is somehow required to keep me from being considered “a menace to society” or “an unstable maniac” or “oh god please stop setting fire to things”!
Lavoisier: Well, he’s the one with his face on posters saying “WANTED” all over Lumiose City.
Ruby: …what did you just say?
Lavoisier: The posters.  They have the human word “WANTED” on them.  Like, they want him around.  They miss him!
???: CITIZENS ENTERING LUMIOSE CITY LIMITS.  HALT AND IDENTIFY.
Ruby: …$#!t.  Uh, I’ll call you back, Lavoisier.  MINIONS!  Hide the human!
Martial: Hide him?  How?
Ruby: I don’t know!  Dig a hole, or put a paper bag over his head or something!
Magneton: HALT AND IDENTIFY.
Fisher: I can call upon the shadows of the Dome to conceal him!
Ruby: Which one is the Dome?  Is that the evil one?
Fisher: Actually, my lady, I have come to believe that is a matter of great theological nuance, and-
Ruby: Oh, shut up; you’ll probably just suck out his soul and turn him into a vegetable.
Magneton: REPEAT: CITIZENS ENTERING LUMIOSE CITY LIMITS.  HALT AND IDENTIFY.
Ruby: Spruce!  Sit on his head!
Spruce: What?
Ruby: Sit.  On.  His.  Head!
Chris: What the-!?  Hey; easy there, Spruce, what are you-?
Ruby: Cover his face with your wings!
Chris: -mrfllmmrrrmmrfff!
Ruby: …good enough!
Magneton: CITIZENS, IDENTIFY.  YOU HAVE THIRTY SECONDS TO COMPLY OR THIS UNIT WILL BE AUTHORISED TO EMPLOY COERCIVE MEASURES.
Ruby: Right!  You!  Who are you to make such demands, and what do you want of me and my minions?
Magneton: I-DEN-TI-FY.
Ruby: I am Ruby the Delphox, fiery jewel among Pokémon, sorceress supreme!  Perhaps you’ve heard of me?
Magneton: ERROR 48.  YOUR STRING “fiery jewel among Pokémon, sorceress supreme” COULD NOT BE FOUND.  IDENTIFY.
Daku: Is it your normal practice to question all who enter your city, good sir?  I have not been here in some time, but I recall nothing of the sort on my last visit.
Ruby: [muttering] Oh, sure, the robot gets a ‘good sir’…
Magneton: ERROR 63.  PROCEDURAL RESOLUTION COULD NOT BE READ.  RESTARTING PROCESS 3-B-RED LOCKDOWN.  BZZT.  CITIZENS ENTERING LUMIOSE CITY LIMITS.  HALT AND IDENTIFY.
Amaldos: If a man sits in a room with a dictionary that allows him to speak perfect Chinese and a vial of poisonous gas that will kill him if a sensor detects radiation, would a computer be able to distinguish him from a dead cat?
Magneton: BZZT.  ERROR 102.  CANNOT RESOLVE SYNTAX.  BLEEEEEP-WEEP-BEEP.  ERROR 81.  EXISTENTIAL QUANDARY DETECTED.  REROUTING THROUGH HINDBRAIN.
Amaldos: A hole in your bag will lighten your load.  A hole in your mind may do the same.
Magneton: ERROR 0.  ERROR NOT FOUND.  Bzzzzzzzt-PING-FFFZZZZZZL [starts smoking].
Spruce: Uh… I… think you broke him.
???: Larry!
Ruby: Oh good; more new friends…
Heliolisk: Larry!  What on earth-? [To Ruby] I’m sorry about this.
Magneton: ERROR.  ERROR.  ERROR.
Heliolisk: You’re fine, Larry.  Execute routine Clemont-Phi-Thirteen.
Magneton: EXECUTING.  BZZT-whistle-DING!
Heliolisk: Feeling better?
Magneton: AFFIRMATIVE.  REQUEST STATUS.
Heliolisk: I’m good too, Larry; thanks.  Why don’t you just wait here for a bit while I help these citizens, and then we’ll take you over to Magenta Plaza to supervise some of the rewiring?
Magneton: ACKNOWLEDGED.
Spruce: …is he always like this?
Heliolisk: Yeah, he’s been a bit out of sorts ever since he died and we put his brain in an old Magneton chassis.
Spruce: Oh, yeah, I guess that would- wait what?
Heliolisk: Sort an experiment on our human’s part.  He used to be an Ampharos.  Hmm.  What… what sort of Pokémon are you, exactly?
Chris: Mrrffllmfff!
Spruce: Uh… I’m a… Facebird.
Heliolisk: A… Facebird.
Fisher: An extremely rare Humanshape species from the far distant land of Orre!
Heliolisk: I…see.  Right.  Well, again, I’m sorry about the business with Larry.  We wouldn’t normally have controls like this, you see; it’s just that, with the recent trouble at the power plant, a good part of the city had to be locked down for a while, just to keep order.  And then when the plant came back online yesterday there was a huge surge that knocked out several critical substations… It’s been a mess.  We’re trying to keep a close watch on everyone entering and leaving the city, just for security reasons.
Daku: Sensibly enough.  You serve your duty well, Heliolisk.
Heliolisk: …I should hope so.  Now, I’ll just need to get your names, and then you can go on through.
Ruby: Very well, peasant.  I am Ruby the Delphox, fiery jewel among Pokémon, sorceress supreme!  Perhaps you’ve heard of me?
Heliolisk: …yes.  Yes I have. [to Magneton] Larry, initiate routine Clemont-Alpha-Zero.
Magneton: EXECUTING.  BREEEEEEEEEEP!  RED ALERT!  BREEEEEEEEEP!  ALL AVAILABLE UNITS TO NORTHWEST GATE!  EMERGENCY LOCKDOWN IN EFFECT!  BREEEEEEEEEEP!  RED ALERT!
Daku: What is this!?  Stand down at once; I demand to speak to your commander!
Heliolisk: I am the high commander of Lumiose City’s Pokémon defenders, and all of you are under arrest on suspicion of involvement in multiple recent catastrophes, including the sabotage of the Lumiose Power Plant!  Now, are you going to come quietly, or do we have to make this ugly?
Spruce: Well, um-
Martial: If legitimate civic authorities wish to detain us, we have no choice but to-
Ruby: BA-HAHAHAHAHAHA!  Perhaps I didn’t make myself clear, lizard!  You are speaking to the sorceress supreme!  Prepare to feel the wrath of my awesome magical power!
Daku: For once, we are in agreement!  I will not be imprisoned by some barely-UU petty officer!
Heliolisk: Oh goody.  Larry!  Combat pattern Clemont-Omega-Two!  Let’s smoke these terrorists!

Continue reading “X Nuzlocke, episode 12: The Devil I Know” →

vikingboybilly asks:

I’m starting to think Eevee might be based on the common ancestor of dogs, cats, weasels, foxes, otters, etc. Sound cool? Maybe the bunny ears symbolizes it’s evolutionary leap from herbivore into a predator.

Well, the basal Carnivora probably looked something like this – much more distinctly cat-like than Eevee and probably tree-dwelling – so I think it’s highly unlikely Game Freak specifically had something like that in mind.  I think conceptually they may have had ideas like common ancestors and adaptive radiation in mind – they did call her “the Evolution Pokémon,” after all.  But we already knew that.

Anonymous asks:

Attack and Sp Attack are not great stats. A special attacker doesn’t use physical attacks, so why do they need any points in Attack? Mixed attackers are generally less efficient at doing their job without speed or bulk to protect them. Do you think there could be more added to these stats to make them more useful so that a Pokemon like Absol and Cacturne don’t have massive dead weight stats that they aren’t using.

Hrrrmm.  Well, I do see your point.  Mixed attackers have kinda been on a downward slide for the last couple of generations thanks to the gradually increasing options for getting overwhelming power in a single attack stat (particularly now that we have mega evolution).  Flexibility is great, but that’s what your teammates are for.  And because Game Freak seem to use a Pokémon’s base stat total as a rough guide for how powerful they want it to be, a Pokémon like, for instance, Arbok is wasting a limited number of notional ‘points’ by having 65 base special attack instead of 15; Arbok isn’t going to use special attacks anyway.  The trouble is that this is, in theory, a way of helping Pokémon who, like Absol, have moderate scores in attack stats that they will never use… but what could you possibly add to special attack that wouldn’t be just as helpful to Alakazam?  My instinct here is that, whatever you try, odds are good you’ll wind up with exactly the same situation as we have now – strongly preferring one stat is still better, just for slightly different reasons.  You probably wind up nerfing all defensive Pokémon, but I don’t think this is your intent.  The best I can come up with to address this would be such a radical change I’m not even sure I’d want to do it – namely, replace the strict division of physical and special with a spectrum, so that you can have 100% special attacks like Psychic at one end, 100% physical attacks like Close Combat at the other, and a bunch of mixed ones like Thunderpunch being 40% special or Flare Blitz being 20% special.  Like I said though, that changes the game so radically as to make it unrecognisable.

I think it’s also worth noting that, if you’re not in a competitive online setting – that is, if you’re just playing through your game, and not paying all that much attention to EV training – then the flexibility of mixed physical/special sets is a significantly bigger deal.  Sometimes the difference between a Pokémon who flat out cannot do something and a Pokémon who is merely not very good at it can be much greater than it is on the competitive scene.