Tag: me

Okay, now, what is your least favourite Pokemon from each generation? (Apologies if you’re getting sick of this favourite/least favourite nonsense.)

Hrm.  Tricky.

1. I think I’m probably going to go with Pinsir, although he might be less ‘least favourite’ and more ‘most forgettable,’ partly because Heracross exists.

2. Snubbull.  I never quite ‘got’ the whole “pink fairy bulldog" thing.

3. Nosepass.  Yes, I know it’s based on a moai statue.  Yes, I know that’s exactly the kind of cultural allusion I normally like.  Whatever you wish to point out to me in Nosepass’s defence, YES, I KNOW!  No, I still think the idea of a Pokemon that uses its enormous magnetic nose to keep itself pointed north is dumb.

4. Probopass.  I hated Nosepass so much, and then they went and evolved him, made his nose bigger, gave him a moustache, and attached three ‘mini-noses’ to him, thus winning him the dubious honour of being the stupidest Pokémon of the generation for two generations running, something I hadn’t even thought possible.

5. Garbodor.  I don’t particularly want to open the whole argument again, so I’ll just give you the link.

I recall your blog post on the Pokémon Power Bracket finals in which your friend Jim incapacitated you somehow and wrote your own entry for you. As mildly amusing as that debacle was, could you maybe convince him to get a Tumblr account so that he can post his incoherent ramblings without interrupting your much better-articulated and marginally more coherent ramblings? Really, we’ll check it out.

Eheh.  He says “I am insulted and yet at the same time, thanks…?“

The thing with Rayquaza and Mew was really a one-off thing, since I’d long since run out of stuff to say about either of them over the course of that series of entries.  I don’t think he’d have much interest in doing anything regularly.  Jim is actually a lot more coherent and insightful in person (many of the ideas I discuss here are originally his, believe it or not, filtering in through our proofreading process) and a brilliant historian – he just doesn’t take this nonsense half as seriously as I do, hence the… interesting tone of the entry in question.

Have you ever done a Nuzlocke run of a game? If so, what was your experience? (And if not, any particular reason why?)

Several times.  I’m extremely bad at it.  My Pokémon get slaughtered left, right and centre.  I always write little obituaries for them, though, to show that I care.  "R.I.P. Dorothy, the bold Raticate, swallowed by a Gyarados aged 23 levels.  She died as she lived – ripping apart another Pokémon’s throat from the inside.“  "R.I.P. Altheia, the serious Illumise.  Exploded in a tragic Metronome accident, aged 28 levels.”  "R.I.P. Tom, the modest Poochyena, misjudged the strength of a Meditite’s Bide, aged 15 levels.  A service will be held once sufficient remains have been scraped off the walls.“

Maybe I should do one sometime in the next few weeks and post updates on the Twitter.  Goodness knows I don’t use it for anything else.

What is your day-job?

I’m an academic!  I study and teach ancient Greek and Roman history, language, and archaeology. I’ll be starting my MA later this year.  Basically, this involves making a lot of fuss over details no-one else has ever noticed, drawing conclusions based on cripplingly limited information, and inflicting my views on students who couldn’t care less.

In other words, exactly what I do on this blog!

CHRIS who did you kill for this url

The man who owned it before I did was a profoundly disturbed fellow who used to travel the world with a pointed stick, jabbing people without provocation (hence “poke maniacal”), and post images of his conquests.  He asked me for the time one day while I was in a hurry, so I slew him in single combat using his own pointed stick, stole his wallet, clothes, and identity, sold his children into slavery in a Vietnamese sweatshop, and gave him a Viking funeral.

One could argue that I overreacted but it is a very nice URL.