X Nuzlocke, episode 4: A Lot to Swallow

Route 5

Ruby: I’m telling you, I was fine.  There was just… a little more magical energy in the Charizardite than I anticipated.  I would have brought the explosions under control sooner or later.
Spruce: And when you say “under control”…
Ruby: I mean they would have been happening in a direction of my choosing.  Broadly speaking.
Fisher: I really must advise more caution, my lady.  A stone of fiery power, leading a young fox Pokémon down the path of temptation… that is a pattern the followers of the Blessed Helix know all too well.  I fear the hand of the Dome is at work in this matter.
Melissa: But we all need to get stronger and learn new ways to use our powers for the greater good!  The risks don’t matter!
Ruby: Please don’t tell me my only sensible minion is the over-excitable insect in fanatical service to an all-devouring hive mind.
Luna: Not at all.  I think you were doing a splendid job just as you were.  The smell of the humans’ flesh as it was atomised in your cerulean holocaust was nothing short of exhilarating.
Ruby: …somehow your approval is not as reassuring as I had hoped it would be, cat.
Spruce: Um… not that I don’t love hearing about Luna’s favourite smells or anything, but there’s a human just… standing in the road up there…
Boy: You there… stop…
Ruby: Who commands us so, insolent child?  Do you know to whom you speak?
Boy: No life… no voice… not without… the master…
Ruby: Hmm.  Vacant expression.  Limited vocabulary and poor sentence structure.  Glassy eyes.  Slow, laboured speech.  It’s remarkable; he’s almost exactly like ours.
Boy: Lie down… lie down and die…
Ruby: You know, in some respects this might even be an improvement.
Melissa: His thoughts smell… weird.  I can’t quite put my needle on it… It’s sort of like the parasites I stole from that wicked Vivillon we fought, how they don’t have any minds of their own.
Ruby: Mmm.  Probably because he’s being psychically dominated by the Kadabra that Lavoisier asked us to despatch.
Spruce: What?  He’s here!?
Ruby: Almost certainly. [Shouting] Come out of hiding, coward!  You are challenged to a duel of sorcery!
Kadabra: [Teleports into view] Ha-HA!  Sorcery-games, I’ve gotten so bored of, little-foxy!  Don’t we rather fancy instead a trifling little game of riddles?  Riddle me this, foxy: what walks on three legs in the evening, has a bed but never sleeps, makes some men blind but helps others to see, and is like a raven and a writing-desk?
Ruby: …you- I don’t- what?
Kadabra: You!  CONFUSION!
Ruby: That doesn’t even make s-aaaaaaaauuuughh!  Ooof!
Fisher: Treachery!  Villain, I shall smite you as the Voices will it!  FOR THE HELIX!
Kadabra: Your ancient fossil god has no power over me, little-shouty-duck-thing – for watch, and be amazed, as I bend the very nature of reality itself, and… THIS SPOON!
Fisher: …I beg your pardon?  The spoon bends, but- is it a metaphor for something?  Do you imply that I too, a faithful servant of the one true god, am like putty in your telekinetic ‘hands’?
Kadabra: CONFUSION!
Fisher: Aaaaaarrrrghh- oof!  Oh, alas, I am undone!  Bird Jesus, I implore you, send your divine wind to uplift the wings of your blessed child!
Ruby: …he means you, Spruce.
Spruce: I know, I know!  Face me, villain!
Kadabra: You have no hope!  BEHOLD, THE SPOON!
Spruce: Um… there… there is no spoon; you’re not actually holding anything.
Kadabra: CONFUSION!
Spruce: I don’t- you’re not even using an attack; you’re just yelling “Confusion!”
Ruby: It’s your Keen Eyes, you idiot; you can see through the illusions he’s creating with his Kinesis technique!  Hurry up and get him before he uses a real Psychic attack!
Spruce: Wow; neat!  Uh… hey, you!  It’s time you paid for your, uh-
Ruby: Oh, for- work on your combat banter later!  Just hit him!
Spruce: Oh!  Right!  QUICK ATTACK!
Kadabra: [thud]
Spruce: …did… did I… is he dead?
Luna: Hmm… let me see… [CRACK] He is now.
Spruce: …
Luna: What?

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I have a question relating to ancient Greece. Do you know when the city of Athens was first called “Athens” in recorded history? And was the name always recognized as being from the goddess Athena, or did her invention come later? It will help me greatly in inspiration for my stories.

Kind of a tricky question.  If memory serves, Homer refers to the city of Athens by name in the Catalogue of Ships, and you can argue ad nauseam about the actual age of Homer in general or that passage in particular, but it’s certainly one of the oldest things in Greek literature.  In any case I’d be happy to accept that the names of both the city and the goddess go back to the beginning of the ‘historical’ period.

Before that… well, there was almost certainly a Mycenaean citadel on the Acropolis in the Late Bronze Age, and people have drawn a connection here with the various jumbled stories about Erechtheus, the mythical king of Athens, living in Athena’s temple (the Mycenaeans didn’t have temples, as far as we can tell; religious and political authority were probably united under one roof).  We don’t know what the Mycenaean city was called, though.  I would bet good money it was something like the Classical “Athenai” because place names tend to be conservative, but we have no Linear B from Athens, so it’s not really possible to be airtight on that.  One of the Knossos tablets does mention something called a-ta-na po-ti-ni-ja, and po-ti-ni-ja is a title commonly given to goddesses (the later Greek equivalent is potnia, which is one of the things Homer calls Athena), so possibly the reference is to a goddess called “Mistress Atana,” and just conceivably it might indicate that Athena is ultimately an aspect of the Minoan “great goddess” (and here much is made of the fact that snakes are sacred to Athena).  The trouble is, these texts don’t actually tell us anything about the gods they mention; they’re just lists of the resources allocated to festivals and sacrifices and such, for accounting purposes.  So we know that Athena probably exists and is worshipped in the Bronze Age in one form or another, but we don’t know whether she was anything like the Classical goddess, and we have no idea what, if any, connection she has to the city of Athens.

So yeah.

I read over a bit of your “If I was in charge”, and have you ever considered joining up with some spriters and coders to make it a reality? I mean, there are projects dedicated to creating new Pokemon fan games, and hacks besides, and couldn’t the people who make those be just as willing to make something spectacular?

Eh… not that it isn’t a nice thought, but… too much work.  Far too much work.  I can barely keep up with my regular writing at the moment.

Wo haben Sie Deutsch gelernt? Sind Sie je in Deutschland? Was ist Ihre Lieblingsdeutschpokemonname?

Eh… ich spreche nicht so gut, aber ich muss für mein Promotionsstudium manchmal Deutsch lesen (mit einem Wörterbuch), weil viele wichtige Archäologen in Deutsch schreiben und veröffentlichen.  Ich bin noch nie nach Deutschland gegangen, aber ich würde gerne!

Soweit, mein Lieblingsdeutschpokemonname ist Schluppuck!  Es ist so wunderbar onomatopoetisch!

What is the likelihood that we’ll ever get a Grey version? Also, what if it took place in the past, perhaps during the Reshiram/Zekrom split or the Kalos/Unova war?

Well, the likelihood, I would estimate, is “close to zero.”  They’re done with that generation; they’ve moved on; they’re doing other things now.  Unless the remake train keeps steaming on to the point that we actually get remakes of Black and White, I doubt it’ll ever happen.  Setting it in the mythical past would be cool, but the trouble is that it does sort of lock certain things in – like, we know that Reshiram and Zekrom destroyed Unovan civilisation the last time they fought.  It happened; the player can’t win and the story can’t have a happy ending.  Unless of course they’re willing to pull some kind of alternate universe situation, of the sort implied by Delta Episode, where this hypothetical Grey version is actually a prequel to a completely different version of the Black and White universe that we’ve never seen.  That would be kinda weird.

Was Kalos at war with Unova?  I always got the impression it was a civil war; I don’t think Unova is ever mentioned in connection with that conflict.

So, now that we have had mega evolution for a while, do you think you could make some mega-evolution designs for some of the pokemon on your ‘worst pokemon’ list?

Eh.  To be honest, designing mega evolutions for things is not something that I find all that interesting.  And I actually did sketch out concepts for evolutions for most of those Pokémon, so, like… it would kind of serve exactly the same purpose as what I did with them in the first place.

Mewtwo has less defense than Mew. That’s kinda weird, isn’t it?

No.

What, you want more?

Fine.  What do we know about Mewtwo? He was created in a lab by manipulating Mew’s DNA to create the ‘most powerful Pokémon in the world.’  Now, to me it seems likely that what they were primarily aiming for was pure offensive might, so perhaps they were willing to sacrifice a little of Mew’s resilience (and it’s not a huge sacrifice; Mewtwo’s physical defence is still pretty good) for larger gains in psychic power.  More to the point, Mewtwo’s origin story is essentially a somewhat ham-fisted fable about the dangers of ‘playing god’ with genetics; to me it makes perfect sense that the resulting creation might have some flaws that would not have been apparent in advance.