Author: pokemaniacchris

Anonymous asks:

Which major character from the pokemon anime would you like to have on a team with you in a double battle? Who do you think they would use and what team would you have to complement theirs?

Hmm.  Tough one.  I’m tempted to say Ash, purely because I think having more Pokémon in play multiplies the amount of completely insane bull$#!t he can pull off – see his battle against Tate and Liza in Mossdeep City (if you know what I’m talking about, great, if not… well, I don’t want to spoil the surprise).  Ash thinks ‘creatively,’ and that can be a huge asset in a double battle.  Ash’s Pikachu has shown in the past that he works really well with mobile Flying-types who have the physical strength to carry him, so maybe something like Noivern?  Both of them can lay down some serious hurt from a distance, and they’re both used to a very fast-paced combat style.  Assuming we both have two Pokémon… well, Ash has a lot to choose from but when the chips are down he’ll very often call in a favour from Charizard.  Charizard is something of a one-Pokémon show, and he’ll work best with someone who is very clearly there to help amplify his own magnificence, so I’d go with a tough supporter like Bronzong (who has the added advantage of being weak to an element that Charizard can easily tank against) – just hang back, use stuff like Light Screen and Confuse Ray to protect Charizard, and watch the fireworks.

Anonymous asks:

Will you ever continue your Pokemon anime reviews? I find your speculation on the anime universe to be very interesting, and it’s actually what drew me to your blog in the first place. It’s a shame to stop without even completing the Indigo League.

Y’know you have actually commented on this at just the right moment, because I totally want that to be the next thing that I do (alternating with the ongoing Nuzlocke story).  I always meant to go back to those because I honestly think they are some of the best stuff I’ve written; I just never got around to it somehow.  But yeah, this is absolutely going to happen.

Let Me Tell You About 300

I’m a TA for a first year Greek history class this semester, and a little while ago we had our students write some short essays comparing the movie 300 to a historical account of the battle of Thermopylae – namely, book 7 of Herodotus’ Histories.  Now, I personally think that calling 300 a good movie is something of a stretch, but it’s definitely an interesting movie, in terms of its relationship with the historical sources it draws upon.  When the subject of comparing the two comes up, what you normally get – and what the vast majority of our students gave us – is a list of places where the movie does something that isn’t attested in the sources, followed by a vague judgement about whether it comes “close enough” to be considered “historically accurate.”  And I think this is sort of missing the point, because I seriously doubt historical accuracy was 300’s top priority, and I seriously doubt that people went to see 300 because they thought it would be historically accurate.  There’s enough in that film for you to see that its creators (including the author of the original graphic novel) have obviously read ancient sources for Thermopylae and the Spartans (well, English translations of them, anyway) – quite closely, in fact; loads of the movie’s best lines are actually quotations from Herodotus and Plutarch.  If they had wanted to correct any of the “inaccuracies” my students identified, they almost certainly could have.  So let’s talk about why they didn’t.

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