Ancient Greek verbs, just like ancient Greek nouns, have multiple different forms.  This will all be familiar to you if you’ve studied just about any European language (even English has vestiges of this system, although they’re much reduced for most verbs).  There are six forms, first person singular (I do), second person singular (you do), third person singular (he/she/it does), first person plural (we do), second person plural (y’all do – Greek, like just about every language on the planet except for English, makes a distinction between one ‘you’ and many ‘you’s), and third person plural (they do).  For most English verbs, of course, only one of these forms varies at all – the third person singular, which typically has an -s on the end.  In Greek though (as well as Latin, French, German, Spanish, Italian, Portuguese, etc) the six forms are markedly different.  Here are the forms of the Greek verb λυω – to loosen, release, or free:

λυω – first person singular; I free
λυεις – second person singular; you free
λυει – third person singular; he/she/it frees
λυομεν – first person plural; we free
λυετε – second person plural; y’all free
λυουσι(ν) – third person plural; they free

N.B. The (ν) on the end of the third person plural form means that this form will end with a ν if the next word begins with a vowel, but will leave the ν off if the next word ends in a consonant – exactly like a(n) in English.

These endings can be transferred to any regular verb – so the word for ‘stop,’ παυω (where the English word ‘pause’ comes from) will be παυει if you’re saying “he stops” or “the farmer stops” or whatever, and παυουσι if you’re saying something like "they stop" or “the farmers stop."  Because Greek has all of these forms, which are for the most part very easily distinguished, there are a lot of words which will often be left out of a Greek sentence.  For example, Greek does have a word for "I” – ἐγω, whence the English ‘ego’ – but very rarely uses it, since a reader or listener can always tell from the -ω ending of the verb that the subject of a sentence is “I.”

It becomes rather more complicated if the ‘stem’ of the verb (the unchanging part) ends in a vowel.  The vowels ε, α, and ο at the end of a verb’s stem will merge into the vowels of the suffix, changing the spelling and pronunciation.

ε is the weakest of those sounds, and is normally ‘swallowed up’ entirely by the sound of the verb ending, but does alter the first person plural and second person plural.  The verb φιλεω, to love, for instance, goes like this:

φιλω – I love
φιλεις – you love
φιλει – he/she/it loves
φιλουμεν – we love – note the ου sound, where λυω just had an ο sound
φιλειτε – y’all love – again, note the ει where λυω had an ε
φιλουσι(ν) – they love

Verbs with stems ending in α, such as ὁραω, to see, go like this:

ὁρω – I see
ὁρᾳς – you see – note the iota subscript beneath the alpha, which is a ‘remnant,’ if you like, of the iota in the standard ending
ὁρᾳ – he/she/it sees – again with an iota subscript
ὁρωμεν – we see
ὁρατε – y’all see
ὁρωσι(ν) – they see

Finally, verbs with stems ending in ο, such as δηλοω, to show or reveal (there are very few of these), go like this:

δηλω – I show
δηλοις – you show
δηλοι – he/she/it shows
δηλουμεν – we show
δηλουτε – y’all show
δηλουσι(ν) – they show

Note that verbs like this will be listed in a dictionary as φιλεω, ὁραω, δηλοω, etc, with the end vowel present, even though none of these forms actually exist in practice because all three vowels get swallowed up completely by the omega of the first person singular ending (well… unless you’re speaking Ionic, but let’s not go there).

All of this covers present active indicative verbs.  Present is a tense, of course, active is what we call a ‘voice,’ and indicative is what we call a ‘mood.’

You’re probably used to thinking that there are three tenses, right?  Past, present, and future?  Well, not exactly.  Greek has six tenses – and before you protest that that’s way too complicated, English actually has twelve; it’s just that we normally don’t consciously think of them in that way.  The English tenses are present, present perfect, past, past perfect, future, and future perfect, each of which comes in ‘simple’ and ‘continuous’ flavours – ‘I see’ and ‘I am seeing,’ for instance, are actually different tenses; one is present simple and the other is present continuous.  “I will see” and “I will have seen,” likewise, are two different things – one is future simple, and the other is future perfect simple.  The Greek tenses are present, future, imperfect (roughly equivalent to our past continuous tense – “I was seeing”), perfect (this is closest in meaning to our present perfect – “I have seen”), pluperfect (our past perfect, “I had seen”), and aorist.  The aorist is the “timeless” tense (the term comes from a Greek word meaning “without boundaries”).  It’s the closest thing Greek has to a simple past, which is what it most often means, but in many contexts it can in fact be used to express present or even future action.  It’s also the tense used for statements of universal truth (which in English we would normally put into the simple present).  The aorist tense is, hands down, the hardest thing about learning Greek; it is an utter bastard, and it is probably the most common tense in the language (more common, I suspect, than the present) so there’s no way you can avoid the damn thing.

Greek is packed full of verbs that have irregular ways of getting into the different tenses, but the more sensible ones look like this:

Future: add a sigma to the end of the stem, then use present tense endings: λυσω, λυσεις, λυσει, etc.

Imperfect: add an epsilon to the beginning of the stem, then use a new set of endings: ἐλυον, ἐλυες, ἐλυε(ν), ἐλυομεν, ἐλυετε, ἐλυον (notice similarities with corresponding present endings, and also that first person singular and third person plural are identical).

Perfect: repeat the first consonant, with an epsilon after it, and use another set of endings: λελυκα, λελυκας, λελυκε(ν), λελυκαμεν, λελυκατε, λελυκαν.

Pluperfect: add an epsilon to the beginning of the perfect stem, then use yet another set of endings (mostly similar to the perfect endings, with epsilons instead of alphas): ἐλελυκε, ἐλελυκες, ἐλελυκε(ν), ἐλελυκεμεν, ἐλελυκετε, ἐλελυκεσαν.

Aorist: add an epsilon to the beginning of the stem and a sigma to the end of the stem, then use more new endings: ἐλυσα, ἐλυσας, ἐλυσε(ν), ἐλυσαμεν, ἐλυσατε, ἐλυσαν.  Or, alternatively… well, there are four kinds of aorist in Greek.  I call them nice aorists (follow the nice rule that λυω follows), weird aorists (change the stem a little bit, in a more or less random fashion, then use the imperfect endings – μανθανω becomes ἐμαθον, πασχω becomes ἐπαθον, etc), dumb aorists (change the stem to something completely unrelated, just to fuck with you – τρεχω becomes ἐδραμον, ὁραω becomes εἰδον, etc), and retarded aorists (just give up and reduce the stem to one letter, then use whatever the hell endings you feel like – βαινω becomes ἐβην, γιγνωσκω becomes ἐγνων, etc).

You can see why the aorist tense is the trickiest part of this language.

Anyway.  Voices.

You’ve all met voices before – English has two of them, active and passive.  This is the distinction between “I see” and “I am seen."  Easy, right?  How complicated can this possibly get?  Active.  Passive.  Done.

Well, the thing is, Greek has both of those things, but it also has something better: the ‘middle’ voice.  This does not exist in English (in fact, I don’t know of any other languages that have a middle voice – Latin seems to have had it at one point, but has lost it almost completely by the classical period), and as a result it is rather difficult to explain succinctly.  It’s best to think of it has having three different flavours of meaning.  Where the active is "I see” and the passive is “I am seen,” the middle is something like “I see myself” or “I see for my own benefit” or “I cause to be seen."  Middle verbs are a remnant of an ancestral Proto-Indo-European system whereby verbs, instead of being either active or passive, were instead ‘inward’ or ‘outward,’ if you will – one for actions which primarily affected oneself, the other for actions which primarily affected other things or people.  For some verbs, you can easily see how this makes sense – for instance, the verb ἐγειρω means ‘to wake up,’ and its active form refers to waking someone else, while its middle form refers to just waking up in the morning.  Others… not so much.  Greek has two common verbs for wanting or being willing – ἐθελω and βουλομαι.  The former is normally active, the latter is always middle.  No clue why.

Middles, of course, have their own sets of endings in all the different tenses.  Here are just the present indicative ones:

λυομαι
λυει (note that this looks just like the third person singular of the active form of the verb), alternatively sometimes λυῃ (note the iota subscript)
λυεται
λυομεθα
λυεσθε
λυονται

Finally, there’s moods.  Whenever you make a simple statement, you are using an ‘indicative’ verb – a verb that ‘indicates’ the truth of something, if you like.  There are four others you need to know.  One is the imperative, the mood of command – whenever you tell someone to do something, you are using an imperative.  The imperative forms of λυω are λυε (singular) and λυετε (plural – the plural imperative ending is always the same as the second person plural indicative ending, for every verb in Greek).  The next mood is the infinitive.  This is the form we mark with "to” in English – “to run,” “to see,” “to speak,” etc.  It’s used a lot less in Greek than in English, because we tend to use infinitives to indicate purpose (“I went to London to see the Queen”), which Greek doesn’t, but it gets used for things like “I want to see” and “I seem to see.”  The infinitive form of λυω is λυειν.  Next is the subjunctive, the mood of possibility.  Subjunctives indicate stuff that ‘might,’ ‘could’ or ‘would’ happen, among other things.  Subjunctive endings normally lengthen their vowel sound, like so: λυω, λυῃς, λυῃ, λυωμεν, λυητε, λυωσι.  Finally, you have optatives, which theoretically express wishes and desires, although in Greek the boundaries between situations that use subjunctives and situations that use optatives can become a little blurry at times.  Present active optatives are characterised by an ‘oi’ sound in their endings: λυοιμι, λυοις, λυοι, λυοιμεν, λυοιτε, λυοιεν.

Now, here’s where it gets worse.

Every verb has a mood, a voice, and a tense – so all of those have to be multiplied together.  Six basic forms, times three moods (indicative, subjunctive and optative), plus one infinitive and two imperatives, times three voices, times six tenses makes 378 different forms for each Greek verb (of course, some verbs don’t have active forms, and the perfect and pluperfect tenses are both very rare, but still) and that’s not even counting the schizophrenic ones like λεγω that have more than one aorist stem (in this case, a nice aorist – ἐλεξα – and a far more common dumb aorist – εἰπον).  If it’s a nice verb like λυω or παυω, you can work out all of those forms from scratch using simple rules.  If it’s a verb like ὁραω that does something crazy and unexpected in just about every tense (future ὀψομαι, aorist εἰδον, perfect οἰδα, pluperfect… hell, who am I kidding? I have no idea what the pluperfect of ὁραω is) then you’re in trouble.  And then, of course, you have the verbs that just plain hate you, like εἰμι, the verb ‘to be,’ which is spectacularly irregular in just about every language in history (look at English: I am, you are, he/she/it is, I was, you were, I have been, to be – what the hell?).  And don’t even get me started on the aorist passive.

Then, of course, once you successfully learn all of that, you discover that some authors (Homer, I’m looking at you) will blithely ignore rules, use all manner of obscure variant forms, add or drop syllables on a whim, and just generally make things up in order to have the words fit their poetic meter more effectively.  And then you’re trekking through Aristophanes when you discover that the great man has decided to string four or five words together, in the style of modern German, to create a great superword like ἀρχαιομελισιδωνοφρυνιχηρατα, which takes up a whole line of iambic trimeter on its own and reduces the less able among us to fits of terror…

It’s enough to make one give up and stick to Latin.

So, the thing about ancient Greek is that it expresses relationships between words in a fundamentally different way to English.  If you’ve ever studied Latin you can probably skip most of this.

In English, we might say, for instance,

“The farmer looks at the house.”

And that would be fine.  There is a house, there is also a farmer, and he is looking at it.  All is right with the world.  But we could also rearrange the words, and say,

“The house looks at the farmer.”

What?  There’s still a house, and there’s still a farmer, but now it is looking at him? Where does that start to work out?  It gets even worse if we say,

“Looks at the farmer the house.”

What does that even mean?  At least the last one was a proper sentence; it was bizarre and unsettling, but it did say something.  This is just gibberish.

Now let’s do this with the same sentence in Greek.

“ὁ αὐτουργος τον οἰκον βλεπει."  The farmer looks at the house.  Fine.

"τον οἰκον ὁ αὐτουργος βλεπει."  This still means "the farmer looks at the house.”

“βλεπει τον οἰκον ὁ αὐτουργος."  Still means the same thing.

"ὁ τον βλεπει οἰκον αὐτουργος.” This one would sound really weird and people would probably look at you funny if you said it outside of poetry, but it still means “the farmer looks at the house.”

So how the hell do we say “the house looks at the farmer?” Assuming we ever want to, for whatever reason.

Like this:

“ὁ οἰκος τον αὐτουργον βλεπει."  Can you see what the difference is between this and the second sentence?  Look back and figure it out.  I’ll wait.

…

So, you’ve worked it out?  The ends of the words have changed – in the second sentence, the word for "farmer” ended with -ος (αὐτουργος) and the word for “house” ended with -ον (οἰκον).  In the last sentence, those endings are reversed – the words became αὐτουργον and οἰκος.  The order of the words has no signficance here, as it does in English.  The different forms – what we call the inflection of the words – conveys that information instead.

In English, a simple sentence normally begins with its ‘subject,’ which is the technical term for the person or thing performing the action (or existing in the state) described by the sentence.  Now, when you use the word ‘subject’ in a non-technical context, you might mean what the sentence is ‘about’ – if you see a sentence like “he sees the house,” you might think that sentence is ‘about’ the house, but that doesn’t make the house the ‘subject’ of the sentence in grammatical terms.  The subject of that sentence is ‘he,’ because ‘he’ is the one doing the seeing, whereas the house is being seen.  The person or thing on the receiving end of an action – ‘the house’ here – is called the ‘object,’ and in an English sentence the object normally comes after the verb.  We determine which noun is the subject and which is the object based on where the words appear in the sentence.  Ancient Greek does not work this way.

Nouns in Greek have five different forms called ‘cases,’ all of which have fancy names.  We’ve just met two of them – the nominative and the accusative.  When a noun is the subject of a sentence, it will appear in its nominative form, like ὁ αὐτουργος or ὁ οἰκος (this is the form that will be listed in a dictionary if you look the word up).  When a noun is the object of a sentence it will appear in its accusative form, like τον αὐτουργον or τον οἰκον.  You can tell from the words themselves which one is the subject and which one is the object.

The other cases get brought in for more complicated sentences.  One is called the genitive, and it is used to show possession or origin – if I want to say, for instance, "the slave sees the farmer’s house,“ the word for farmer appears in its genitive form, to show that the farmer is the person to whom the house belongs, and that looks like this: "ὁ δουλος τον του αὐτουργου οἰκον βλεπει.” See how the word for farmer has changed again?  The other commonly used case is called the dative, and it denotes what we call the ‘indirect object’ of a sentence.  Some verbs naturally have two different objects – ‘give,’ for instance; think “he gives the farmer the rock."  The subject of that sentence is ‘he’ – the one doing the giving – but what’s the object here?  Is it ‘the farmer’ or ‘the rock’?  Well, the rock is the thing being given, so it’s the regular sort of ‘object’ which goes into the accusative form.  The person (or thing) to whom something is given, shown, or told, or for whose benefit something is done, is the ‘indirect object’ – not actually on the receiving end of the verb as such, but still somehow impacted by it – and this is what the dative form is for.  The sentence we end up with is "τῳ αὐτουργῳ τον λιθον διδωσι."  There’s the word for farmer again, in another form.  The last case is called the vocative, and it’s not really very important, partly because it doesn’t come up as often as the others, partly because it’s very easy to recognise when it does.  The vocative is the form used in direct speech for addressing a person – so if you’re talking to a farmer, he is "ὠ αὐτουργε."  It’ll normally be obvious from context that a word is vocative, so you don’t really need to devote a whole lot of effort to learning the vocative forms of words.

These forms still exist in modern Greek, but have become less and less important over the last couple of centuries as people rely more on word order to convey grammatical information, in the English fashion.  You don’t really need to know them to make yourself understood (…more or less) when speaking modern Greek, and they’ll probably drop out of the language completely, given time.  The same thing is starting to happen in German, and actually happened to English as well at a much earlier stage of its development – we retained our cases only for some of our pronouns.  ‘I,’ for instance, is nominative, while ‘me’ is accusative/dative and ‘my’ is genitive.  Similarly, ‘who’ is nominative, ‘whom’ is accusative/dative and ‘whose’ is genitive – and now you know when it is and is not correct to use ‘whom’ ("I saw the farmer who gave me the rock” – ‘who’ is the subject of ‘gave’ – versus “I saw the man whom Achilles killed” – ‘whom’ is the object of ‘killed’).

All of these cases have separate forms for singular and plural as well – if you’re talking about multiple farmers, they could be οἱ αὐτουργοι (nominative – subject), τους αὐτουργους (accusative – object), των αὐτουργων (genitive – possessor) or τοις αὐτουργοις (dative – indirect object).  To make matters worse, there are three different families of nouns in ancient Greek, known as ‘declensions’ – and each declension has its own set of case endings, as well as a few clusters of weird variations – but I’ve probably terrorised you all enough for one day.

Okay, so, the first thing that always trips everyone up is the alphabet but DON’T PANIC; it’s actually not that different from the Roman alphabet (which is what English uses) – it’s sort of halfway between Roman and Cyrillic.  It was adapted from the alphabet which was used by Phoenician traders who visited Greece around 700 BC, maybe a little earlier, and is therefore a cousin of the Hebrew alphabet.  The Greeks reworked it quite a bit, though – the Phoenician alphabet had no vowels (the Greek alphabet was the first in the region to make that particular innovation) so they took some of the less important consonants and used them as vowels instead (for instance, aleph, the Phoenician equivalent to alpha, originally made a strange sort of choking noise that I’ve never quite been able to do).  Anyway, here we go…

Α α – Alpha.  You all know this one; it’s an “ah” sound, and can be either long – like in “Gengar” – or short – like in “Gyarados.”

Β β – Beta.  That’s right; it’s a “b” sound – but be careful because in modern Greek it makes a “v” sound and is pronounced “veeta" (that sound doesn’t exist in ancient Greek).

Γ γ – Gamma.  A "g” sound.  A double gamma – γγ – makes an “ng” sound, like in “Chingling."  Something similar happens with γκ, γξ and γχ; the gamma makes an "n” or “ng” sort of sound (as in, say, Shinx).

Δ δ – Delta.  The Greek “d."  The English word "delta” – meaning the area where a river forks just as it meets the sea, creating a whole lot of little islands – comes from the shape of a capital delta – Δ.

Ε ε – Epsilon.  A short “e,” like the sound in “Tangela” or “Shellder."  To be distingushed from eta, which I’ll come to in a bit.

Ζ ζ – Zeta.  This is not quite a "z” sound – it’s an “sd” or “zd" sound, like in "Misdreavus,” which means that the king of the Greek gods, Zeus, is actually pronounced something like “Zdyoos” in ancient Greek.

Η η – Eta.  This is the long “e," and in English we often use an "a” to make this sound; it’s the sound that you find in, say, “Wailmer,” “Banette,” or “Rayquaza."  Yes, the capital looks exactly like an H, but don’t let that fool you – there’s actually no letter in ancient Greek that makes the "h” sound.  More on that later.

Θ θ – Theta.  A “th” sound, but be careful; it’s not the soft “th” we have in English, it’s a hard sound like in “Hoothoot."  Beware modern Greek once again, where θ makes the soft English "th,” δ makes this hard “th” (and is known as “thelta”), and, having exhausted all the other letters, the Greeks are forced to use ντ to make a “d” sound.

Ι ι – Iota.  An “i” sound, which like α can be short – as in “Hitmonchan” – or long, which is a sound often made by “ee” in English – as in “Hitmonlee."  It’s the origin of the English phrase "it doesn’t matter one iota” – a story I’ll tell you some other time.

Κ κ – Kappa.  Exactly what it says on the tin.

Λ λ – Lambda. The “l” sound.  You might have seen this symbol on pictures of Greek hoplite shields.  As a matter of tradition, all Spartans had the same shield device: Λ, the first letter of Λακεδαιμων, which is the Spartans’ word for themselves.  So, yeah, while other Greeks have pictures of gorgons or thunderbolts or whatever, the Spartans go into battle waving a big capital L.  Now that’s confidence.

Μ μ – Mu.  The “m” sound (shockingly enough.)  This is the funny little symbol that appears in μm (micrometres), μg (micrograms) and so on.

N ν – Nu.  Yes, it’s an “n” but the little one looks like a “v.”  No, I don’t care.

Ξ ξ – Xi.  An “x” sound.  A lowercase xi is just about the fiddliest god-damn letter in the whole language and you would best avoid them.

Ο ο – Omikron.  A short “o,” like the sound in “Rhydon” or “Onix.” The name of this letter, omikron, literally means “the little o” – ο μικρον (think “micro” in English).

Π π – Pi.  You recognise this from your maths class, right?  I hope so, anyway.  Pi is a “p” sound (though it’s worth noting that the name of the letter, “pi,” is actually pronounced the same way as the English equivalent – “pee” – not “pie” as it’s usually pronounced in maths and physics).

Ρ ρ – Rho.  Yes, I know it looks like a p, but it’s actually an “r” sound – or, more accurately, an “rh” sound, since Greek r’s are always rolled and have a bit of breath behind them.

Σ σ ς – Sigma.  An “s” sound.  There are two variants to the lower-case sigma – the second one, ς, is used only at the end of a word, while the first is used everywhere else.

Τ τ – Tau.  It looks like a “t.”  It is a “t.” Praise the gods.

Υ υ – Upsilon.  This is the Greek “u,” and the sound it makes is a bit tricky to get right because it’s not exactly like an English u – it’s almost more like an “ew” sound, a little like the sound on the end of “Pachirisu” but not quite.  Best not to worry too much about it.

Φ φ – Phi.  This is the origin of the English “ph,” but like θ it’s not quite the same as our equivalent – it’s a harder sound.  No-one’s going to call you out if you just pronounce it like an “f,” though.

Χ χ – Chi.  This is NOT a “ch” sound.  Get that notion OUT of your head. That sound – the sound in, say, “Pikachu” – does not exist in Greek.  Chi is best pronounced as a sort of hacking noise in the back of your throat, but if you can’t manage that you should go with the hard “kh” sound in “Chimecho” or “Archeops.”  Incidentally, this letter is the reason why calling the abbreviation “Xmas” an “attack on Christmas,” as people sometimes do, is horrifyingly ignorant and fundamentally absurd – X has been used for more than a thousand years as an abbreviation for the Greek word Χριστος – Christ.

Ψ ψ – Psi.  This is probably the least-used letter in the whole alphabet, and makes a “ps” sound, like at the end of “Kabutops” and “Dusclops.”

Ω ω – Omega.  This is the twin to omikron, the “big O” (ω μεγα).  It makes a long “oh” sound, as in “Electrode” or “Tauros.”

There are also some combinations of vowels that are important to know:

αυ – this makes an “ow” sound, like in “Drowzee” or “Meowth.”

οι – this makes an “oy” sound, like in “Baltoy” or “Cloyster.”

αι – this makes the sound we think of in English as a long i, the sound in “Scyther” or “Mr. Mime.”

ει – this makes a long “e” sound which, to my ears, is indistinguishable from the sound of an eta, but supposedly there is a subtle difference.

ευ – this makes a “yu” sound like the sound in “Kyurem” or “Staryu.”

ηυ – this makes a weird sort of “eouw” sound that I don’t think we have in English, or in Pokémon for that matter.  It doesn’t turn up very often, so feel free to disregard it.

Next thing is accent marks.

Greek has three types of accent marks – the acute ά, the grave ὰ, and the circumflex ᾶ, and most words will have one of them somewhere.  However, accent in ancient Greek does not work the same way as it does in most European languages (or, for that matter, in modern Greek) – most European languages have a stress accent, meaning that we place heavier emphasis on one syllable in each word.  Ancient Greek, like Chinese, has a pitch accent – the speaker’s pitch rises and falls as he or she speaks.  The acute accent indicates a rising pitch, the grave a falling pitch, and the circumflex a brief rise followed immediately by a fall.  There are very few people who can speak Greek like this today; it has a beautiful melodic quality to it, as though the speaker is singing.  I can manage a few lines, given time to practice them beforehand.  You can probably ignore the accent marks without feeling too guilty about it (honestly, I never learned where the accents go on most words).

What you cannot ignore is breathing marks.  I mentioned earlier that Greek has no letter for the “h” sound.  Instead, any word that begins with a vowel will have a little apostrophe-like mark over the first letter (or the second letter, if the word begins with one of those double-letter sounds I listed above).  It looks like this: ἀ or ἁ, αἰ or αἱ.  If the mark curves inward, like ἀ, it’s a ‘smooth’ breathing, and the word does not begin with an h sound.  If it curves outward, like ἁ, it’s a ‘rough’ breathing, and the word does begin with an h sound.  Breathings only appear on words that begin with vowels – an ancient Greek word never has an h sound in the middle.  A word that begins with a rho – there are very few – will always have a rough breathing, like this ῥ, because the letter rho is always pronounced with some breath behind it.

The other little thing that pops up from time to time in Greek spelling is the iota subscript.  Alpha, eta and omega will occasionally have a little iota hanging out underneath, like this ᾳ, ῃ, ῳ.  This may have had a subtle impact on the pronunciation, we’re not sure, but you can probably just pronounce these as regular alphas, etas and omegas – just pay attention to them when reading and writing, because words and forms that have them are very easy to identify.  If a word is spelled with an iota subscript, it means that the word used to have an iota in it, in an older form of the language – or possibly in one of the other dialects. We normally teach and learn Attic Greek, the dialect spoken in and around Athens, but there were a number of other dialects used in other regions of Greece, such as Doric (the Spartan dialect), Ionic (the dialect spoken along the coast of Turkey) and Arcado-Cypriot (the dialect spoken in the two far-separated regions of Cyprus and Arcadia – based purely on its distribution, Arcado-Cypriot is probably the most similar to the ‘ancestral’ Greek from which all the dialects evolved). Attic is actually one of the most bizarre and demented dialects of the lot, but since the Athenians were the most prolific writers, most of the examples of written Greek that survive are in Attic, so we just have to deal with it.

More to follow.

Yeah, I’m going to keep doing this, mostly because it’s fun and it doesn’t take a lot out of me, which is sort of what I need at the moment since I have two weeks to research and write two essays, one on the meaning of imperium in archaic Rome, the other on the only female poet in classical Latin literature, as well as mark a few dozen undergrad Greek history essays.  I’m working on an article on the ethics of Pokémon training, but it’s a very tricky and nuanced subject (or at least, it will be once I’m through with it) and I don’t have a whole lot of time for it.

So in the meantime, you get Animorphs aliens converted into Pokémon.  Why not?

Taxxons and the Living Hive

The Taxxons are a remarkably unfortunate race.  They resemble gigantic burrowing centipedes, and are afflicted with an insatiable hunger that drives most of them to the brink of insanity unless they eat constantly.  Taxxons will feast involuntarily on any injured creature nearby, including other Taxxons, and have even been known to start eating themselves.  When the Taxxons first encountered the Yeerk Empire, they willingly became slaves of the Yeerks in exchange for the promise of a stable food supply.  Most Yeerk parasites are even capable of controlling the Taxxon hunger… some of the time.  In the Yeerk Empire, Taxxons are normally technicians, engineers and pilots because of their multiple appendages and excellent reflexes.  On their homeworld, they are controlled by a being known as the Living Hive, described as a glowing red mountain of flesh hidden deep underground, which seems to embody the collective intelligence of their race.

I’m going to stat the Living Hive as a Vespiquen-style evolution to the Taxxons: only the females evolve, and only one in every eight are female (that still sounds like an awful lot of Hives, so let’s claim that they evolve at a fairly high level – say 50).

Type: Bug/Ground
 Bug for obvious reasons, Ground because they’re burrowers by nature and spend most of their lives in underground colonies.

Ability: Gluttony or Compoundeyes (Dream World) for the Taxxons; Pressure or Unnerve (Dream World) for the Living Hive
The Taxxons’ abilities don’t require much explanation; Pressure and Unnerve for the Living Hive because Vespiquen has them, which seemed like a reasonable precedent and, well, based on its one appearance in the series, being in the presence of the Living Hive is pretty damn unnerving!

Stat Spread: 50 HP, 89 Attack, 40 Defence, 30 Special Attack, 40 Special Defence, 101 Speed (Taxxons)
130 HP, 54 Attack, 78 Defence, 90 Special Attack, 92 Special Defence, 30 Speed (the Living Hive)
Although they’re the same species, theoretically, the Hives are completely different to the Taxxons, and that’s reflected here.  Taxxons are better at certain things, but overall the Hive is far more powerful.

Notable Moves: Well, on the one hand, I have to be careful what I give the Taxxons, because any attacks they have will automatically be available to the Living Hive as well.  On the other hand, because their attack stats basically flip around, I can at least be guaranteed that if I give the Taxxons attacks like Bug Bite and Dig (for obvious reasons), Earthquake and X-Scissor (just to be nice to them) or Crunch and Slam (for a bit of variety) the Hive will be rubbish at using them anyway.  We can probably also get away with giving them some junk like Gastro Acid, Sand Attack, String Shot and Lick – and, of course, Stockpile and Swallow are practically a given (but not Spit Up, because once a Taxxon eats something, it damn well stays eaten).
The Living Hive will also gain access to Bug Buzz, Earth Power and Psychic for nuking stuff, Calm Mind for being better at nuking stuff, and Vespiquen’s Attack Order, Defend Order and Heal Order techniques for bringing its Taxxon horde to bear on the enemy.  I want this thing to use a lot of support moves, so Hypnosis, Safeguard, Disable, and maybe Spikes and Toxic Spikes are on the cards too.

Chee

Generally allies of the protagonists, the Chee are a race of pacifistic doglike androids who have been hidden on Earth for thousands of years, quietly helping humanity to advance.  They were created by an ancient, now-extinct species called the Pemalites, and subsequently fused the souls of the Pemalites with Earth wolves in order to create domestic dogs (this is the in-universe reason dogs are so friendly and loyal).  The Chee have advanced holographic technology that makes them the ultimate spies, and allows them to cover for the kids at home when they go off on extended missions.  Physically, they’re also incredibly powerful.  However, their programming utterly forbids them from harming living beings – or even, in some cases, from allowing living beings to be harmed.  Since the Yeerks are, in fact, living beings, this sometimes limits the amount of help the Chee are able to give.

Type: Steel
Androids.  Duh.

Ability: Illusion
To simulate their holographic projections, I’m giving the Chee the Illusion ability used by Zorua and Zoroark – they can take on the appearance (but not the powers) of any Pokémon on their own team.  Pretty nifty for confusing people.

Stat Spread: 90 HP, 5 Attack, 138 Defence, 5 Special Attack, 122 Special Defence, 79 Speed
The Chee are the next best thing to indestructible, but they do not hurt things, ever.

Notable Moves: Since they’re pacifists, the only damaging techniques I’m prepared to give the Chee are Counter and Mirror Coat (like Wobuffet, except that they’re missing several of the features that make Wobuffet so good at using those moves).  However, they have zillions of support moves.  The most important things I want them to have access to are Iron Defense and Protect (self-explanatory), Refresh and Recover (since they can repair themselves), Reflect, Safeguard, Light Screen and Heal Pulse (fits with their flavour), Thunder Wave and Imprison (I can see them disabling enemies to capture them without hurting them), Trick Room, Magic Coat, Magnet Rise and Gravity (they’re super-advanced robot aliens, why the hell not?).  To be honest, I’m not totally sure how useful these guys are likely to be, because their only concrete offensive option is Thunder Wave.  They’re probably just going to wind up providing openings for opposing Pokémon to buff themselves (still, that does kinda fit with the way the books present them…).  I guess I could let them have Encore to keep them from being set-up bait, or maybe Calm Mind and Baton Pass, so at least it’d be dangerous to leave them to their own devices for too long.

Leerans

The Leerans are one of the other races the Yeerks are attempting to conquer during the early part of the series.  A froglike aquatic species from a distant world, the Leerans possess formidable psychic powers and can effortlessly read the mind of anyone who comes within a few metres of them.  Naturally, if the Yeerks manage to conquer them and Leeran hosts become widely available, everyone is in a lot of trouble.

Type: Water/Psychic
Aquatic aliens with advanced psychic abilities.  Next, please!

Ability: Telepathy, Forewarn, or Regenerator (Dream World)
Leerans are telepathic mind-readers who can regenerate lost or damaged limbs and organs.  Fairly straightforward, really.

Stat Spread: 102 HP, 65 Attack, 64 Defence, 115 Special Attack, 79 Special Defence, 71 Speed
Leerans are a little slow and clumsy, but they’re tougher than they look and are probably the most highly psychic species in the series. 

Notable Moves: Generic Water- and Psychic-type attacks, to start with.  Wrap, Tickle, and later Wring Out, for the tentacles.  Mind Reader and Detect, because duh, and similarly Miracle Eye, because why the hell not?  Recover because it makes sense, and Calm Mind to go with it and make ‘em big and tanky.  I’m tempted to give them a bunch of support moves as well, like Confuse Ray, Charm, Encore, Disable, Reflect, and Light Screen, as well as a few more special attacks that are vaguely thematically appropriate, mainly Focus Blast and Ice Beam.  Basically I’m aiming for these guys to be bulky special tanks.

Helmacrons

Oh, the Helmacrons… the Helmacrons are a diminutive race of megalomaniacal insectoids.  Although their average battlecruiser is the size of a child’s toy, the Helmacrons are determined to conquer the galaxy, remaining convinced that they are its rightful rulers.  During their appearances in the series, they manage to adapt the kids’ morphing technology into a shrink ray of some description, to allow them to fight other races on a level footing (for this reason, I’m going to assume when statting them out that the Helmacrons are dealing with opponents of their own size; doing otherwise would be too much of a headache).  They are a matriarchal race, with stunted, weak and subservient males and loud, aggressive and utterly insane females (the Animorphs manage to start the Helmacron equivalent to the suffrage movement after their first encounter with them, which leads, naturally, to zany antics).  Among their… interesting… customs is their practice of ceremonially killing any Helmacron chosen for a leadership position, on the grounds that a dead leader cannot make any mistakes.

Type: Bug
Y’know, because they’re insects.  I considered Bug/Psychic, since they’re telepathic and seem to have some sort of hive mind thing going on, but telepathy isn’t exactly rare in the Animorphs universe and the hive mind is sort of covered by the Bug element anyway, so I’ll just go with Bug to avoid splashing Psychic all over the place too much.

Ability: Fungible
Adam suggested this ability to represent the curious hive mind ability of the Helmacrons; they don’t exactly act as one the way hive mind species typically do in science fiction, but their minds, thoughts, personalities and experiences are uploaded into a sort of collective instantaneously upon death, making it impossible to truly kill a Helmacron.  This ability effectively allows Helmacrons to Baton Pass for free upon being knocked out – any and all boosts (and penalties) on a Helmacron are sent along to the next Pokémon you call out in its place.  This is easily the most useful thing about them, and is probably a reason to use them on its own.

Stat Spread: 65 HP, 86 Attack, 54 Defense, 61 Special Attack, 54 Special Defence,  90 Speed
Helmacrons are strong and fast, considering their minuscule size, but tend to have something of a kamikaze mentality and attack with little regard for their own safety.

Notable Moves: Bug Bite for those nasty mandibles, and U-Turn so they can have a Bug attack that’s actually useful (no, switching out with U-Turn doesn’t activate their ability; that’d just be asking for trouble).  Taunt, Torment, Pursuit, Night Slash and Knock Off because they’re jerks.  Assist because it fits in with the whole ‘fungible’ thing, because the world needs more Assist insanity, and because the Helmacrons are just the people to bring it on.  Double Edge and Flail for their self-destructive tendencies.  It probably won’t hurt to give them some weird stuff like Triple Kick, Superpower, Aerial Ace, and Acrobatics too, just for a bit of variety.  Now… let’s give them some nasty boosts to pass with that ability of theirs.  Growth and Minimise can represent their shrink ray technology, and Nasty Plot is sort of a given because they’re crazed megalomaniacs.  Agility seems like a good fit too, since they’re an extremely frenetic bunch.  Basically, their job is to go in, hit things, cause frustration, hopefully find a moment to boost up, and then die, sending those buffs to something less dumb in the process.

Well, that’s it for me – for now, anyway.  Maybe I should post a small extract from my dissertation, just to prove that I am actually doing legit work during this blog’s hiatus… then again, it’d be pretty dull stuff to anyone without a specific interest in what I’m studying, so maybe not.

If you’re the same age as me, or a bit younger, you might remember the Animorphs series.  It’s about a group of Californian kids who turn into animals to fight an invasion of alien brain-slugs.  It… look, it makes sense in context, okay?  Anyway, I follow this one blog, Cinnamon Bunzuh, where two charmingly crazy people named Adam and Ifi review books from this extremely prolific series (and, in Ifi’s case, write truly absurd fanfiction about it), and, as a result of a recent conversation in the comments, I am now going to stat up the alien races of the Animorphs universe as Pokémon.

Why?  Because I feel like it, damnit.

Andalites

The inventors of the technology that allows the kids to morph into animals, the Andalites are an advanced race of militaristic but highly spiritual centaur-like aliens who basically see it as their responsibility to police the regions of space surrounding their territory and generally stick their noses in other people’s business.  They are extremely aloof and typically disdainful of less advanced species.  Andalites have no mouths.  They eat by crushing grass and absorbing it through their hooves, and communicate by telepathy.  One of the Animorphs, Ax, is an Andalite cadet stranded on Earth.

Type: Fighting/Psychic.
I was originally going to call them pure Fighting-types, because of their obsession with honour and because they don’t have the advanced telekinetic powers that normally characterise Psychic-type Pokémon, but Adam has pointed out that they do have a wider range of psychic abilities than I realised (hey, gimme a break; it’s been a while since I read these books!) so Fighting/Psychic it is.

Ability: Telepathy, Justified or Defiant (Dream World)
No-brainers, really. 

Stat Spread: 79 HP, 106 Attack, 70 Defense, 65 Special Attack, 93 Special Defense, 112 Speed
Andalites are not physically tough, but they’re lethally quick with those scorpion-esque tail blades.

Notable Moves: Slash, for obvious reasons.  The high-level ones can have Sacred Sword because, let’s face it, that makes way more sense for Andalites than it does for Cobalion et al. Gotta give them Taunt and Swagger, because that’s just what they’re like, as well as Fake Out and Knock Off to represent their above average finesse.  Tail Whip, Swords Dance and Double Kick are all thematically appropriate, and maybe Agility, Psycho Cut and Iron Tail too.  Stone Edge, because every halfway competent physical sweeper gets Stone Edge.  We can probably justify a fair few weird Psychic-type utility moves like Telekinesis, Reflect, Imprison, Guard Split, and Gravity.  And, of course, Transform is a given, but since this is a technological ability I’d require them to obtain it from a move tutor or something.  Basically, I envision these guys working in a similar manner to Mienshao: fast, powerful physical attackers who also have a toolkit of tricky support moves.

Yeerks

The Yeerks are the primary antagonists of the series.  In their natural state, they are small water-dwelling slugs who communicate using sonar blips and can’t do much of anything.  Unfortunately for the rest of the galaxy, however, Yeerks are parasites capable of entering other creatures’ brains through the ear canal and taking complete control of their bodies.  Much of the series focuses on fighting off their stealth invasion of Earth, which is an incredibly rich prize for them because of its massive population of potential hosts.

Type: Bug/Dark.
Bug for being slugs, Dark for its general connotations of malice and deception.  I flirted with Water/Dark, but since they don’t really have any abilities related to water, I figured it wasn’t important.

Ability: Parasite
Okay, we’re going to have to make something up here in order for these guys to work right, and it makes sense for that something to be an ability, which works thusly: when a Yeerk is hit by an attack that requires contact, it will (assuming it survives – be sure to pack a Focus Sash) slither into the Pokémon that delivered that attack and take control.  The opposing Pokémon leaves its owner’s team and replaces the Yeerk on the other side of the field.  The host’s nature, IVs, and effort points are overwritten by the Yeerk’s own, but its base stats, level and moveset are unchanged.  In a link or wi-fi battle, the host Pokémon is returned at the end of the match; in a battle with an AI trainer, you get to keep the host until it is knocked out, at which point the Yeerk slithers out, the host escapes, and you need to find another one.

(I’m not sure how useful this would actually be in practice; it could use some tinkering)

Stat Spread: 35 HP, 25 Attack, 40 Defense, 20 Special Attack, 50 Special Defense, 20 Speed
Unhosted Yeerks are incredibly vulnerable and basically useless.

Notable Moves: Very few.  Supersonic and Water Pulse seem necessary for thematic reasons, Taunt, Torment and Snatch would probably be appropriate, and it seems only fair to give them some STAB moves, so Leech Life and Payback will do.  As I said, though, they’re not much use without host bodies.

Hork-Bajir

The Hork-Bajir are the slave-soldiers of the Yeerk Empire.  Pretty much their entire population is infested by Yeerks, who use their vicious arm blades to slice up their opposition in close-combat.  What the Animorphs don’t realise until some time into the series is that Hork-Bajir in their natural state are incredibly peaceful, if dim-witted, herbivores.  Their culture didn’t even have a concept of aggression until they were conquered by the Yeerks (at which point the Andalites released a crazy sci-fi face-melting virus on their planet to keep the Yeerks from getting them all).  Those terrifying blades?  Those are for stripping the bark off the massive, kilometer-high trees that dominate their homeworld.

Type: Grass/Fighting.
I was initially resistant to making these guys Fighting-types, because of my personal interpretation that Fighting as an element is more about honour, pride, and fighting for a purpose than just having ludicrous abs, but then, if Heracross can be an exception, so can these guys (in terms of personality, they’re actually pretty similar).

Ability: Leaf Guard, Unaware or Forewarn (Dream World)
Leaf Guard to reflect their natural advantage in forest terrain, Unaware for their characteristic obliviousness and ability to keep fighting against overwhelming odds. Forewarn as the Dream World ability is meant to represent the Seers, one-in-a-billion prodigies with genius-level intelligence and a gift for strategy.

Stat Spread: 90 HP, 130 Attack, 100 Defense, 40 Special Attack, 65 Special Defense, 81 Speed
Physically tough, but rather dim and much slower than an Andalite, Hork-Bajir are basically brutes in combat.

Notable Moves: Swords Dance, since the Hork-Bajir are, as Ifi likes to say, made of knives.  Slash, Night Slash and Leaf Blade are likewise to be assumed.  Needle Arm is only appropriate if you squint at it a bit, but would make a good low-level alternative to Leaf Blade.  Close Combat makes a lot of sense, and I could probably get away with dumping a bunch of other typical Fighting attacks like Hammer Arm, Submission, Superpower and Reversal on them.  Bulk Up, Scary Face and Endure are probably suitable, Rock Climb would reflect their normal lifestyle, we should be able to get away with Earthquake and Stone Edge, and let’s slap on Guillotine just for the hell of it.  Amnesia because their minds are pretty empty anyway.  Their stat spread is making them look like tanks, so I want to give them Slack Off for healing, since it fits with their natural, indolent lifestyle.

Phew.

It’s getting late, so that’s enough for now.  I might do some more of these if people respond positively to this lot.

This is a response to this blog entry by a correspondent of mine, Andrew, who reviews movies on YouTube.  The question at hand: what is art?  I won’t summarise the whole thing – you can read it for yourselves; it’s not long – but I do want to respond to his conclusion because I think that the question is inherently fascinating, and that the way you answer it probably says a lot about you as a person.  And, naturally, I’ll talk about Pokémon for a little bit at the end, because I can turn absolutely anything into a conversation about Pokémon.  Just watch me.

There are a lot of things in the world which we call ‘art’ – painting, sculpture, jewellery, architecture, landscaping, et cetera; Andrew mentioned martial arts, which shows just how broad a word it is in modern usage.  The Latin word ars, which is where our word ‘art’ comes from, just means ‘skill’ (according to Lewis & Short’s lexicon, it can refer to “any physical or mental ability, so far as it is practically exhibited,” which gives you some idea of where the incredible range of meaning it has in English comes from).  There are plenty of skills we wouldn’t think of as art, though: I possess a number of skills relating to the correct use of lab equipment, which I learned in the course of studying for my chemistry degree, but I don’t think anyone would say that this makes me an ‘artist.’  Many other skills would be considered art if honed to a more ‘refined’ state: the ability to speak English does not constitute art, but people might take your claims seriously if you can write a particularly captivating piece of English prose, or give an especially stirring speech.  Andrew suggests that an artist is anyone with a new and revolutionary point to what they’re doing, anyone who feels that they can change the way their skill is viewed and practiced; moreover, he suggests that technical skill doesn’t actually make a person an artist unless they also possess this drive to contribute something.

It’s a perfectly reasonable way of looking at the issue, and I fundamentally disagree with it because that’s just how crazy the question is at its most basic level.

I think it’s generally assumed that art is about creativity.  People might argue for hours about what is and isn’t art, and what characteristics make a good artist, and whether you can become an artist or have to be born one, and so on and so forth, but one thing that you can probably say without fear of contradiction is that art demands creativity, that artists are people who do things that are new, innovative and different, which is part of what Andrew is getting at in his article.  I’m going to argue that while, yes, artists are often creative people, creativity and originality actually aren’t central or even necessary to art.

No, I will not write a sane article for once.  That’s just not how I roll.

Like so much else I believe, this comes back – in part, anyway – to Latin and Greek.  In the Western world we tend to think of ourselves as the inheritors of the Greeks and Romans, but in some ways our conception of ‘art’ is quite different to theirs, and the difference, I think, is summed up by the Latin word imitatio.  Imitatio is, of course, where our word ‘imitation’ comes from, and it describes the literary practice of borrowing ideas, figures of speech, and expressions from earlier authors and improving on them.  For instance, in the final book of the Aeneid (the great national epic of Rome), Virgil compares the Italian prince Turnus to a proud lion who commits to battle only after being wounded by a hunter’s spear, because that’s exactly the same simile Homer used to describe Achilles in the twentieth book of the Iliad.  It’s not that he thinks he can get away with it because people won’t know the Iliad; he assumes that people will know the earlier poem and wants them to have Achilles and Hector in mind when they think of Turnus and Aeneas.  He leaves out the last line, “whether he slay some man or himself be slain,” but anyone who gets the reference will be thinking it.  He also adds a little detail – the hunters in Virgil’s simile are Carthaginians, which makes readers recall Aeneas’ disastrous romance with the Carthaginian queen, Dido, earlier in the poem.  The basic idea is straight from Homer, but Virgil plays with it to reward readers who know the original and to show how clever he is.  To jump to a totally different art form, no one really ‘does’ completely original scenes in Greek vase painting.  They think about all the pots they’ve ever seen that depicted the same story, or a similar one, and generally show all the same characters in the same positions with the same iconography (how would people recognise the scene if you changed everything?) but they’ll change a little bit here and there, maybe add some neat new details, to play with the conventions and show off their technical skill.  Scenes that are legitimately new are extremely rare.  This is what classicists mean by ‘working in a tradition’ – everyone is consciously thinking about the other artists who have done the same thing in the past, and deliberately responding to those previous versions.

The practical upshot of all this is that Greek and Roman art does not place much emphasis on ‘originality.’  They don’t look for new ideas, because they believe that all the best ideas have been used already; instead they look for cleverer ways of using old ideas.  This is not to say that they aren’t creative, it’s that doing something new isn’t the point.  The point is to appreciate and respond to older art and demonstrate how well you understand it.  Anyway, I didn’t bring this up just to bore you all to tears by talking about classics (that is merely an incidental bonus).  I brought this up because I think it’s still relevant to the way people deal with art now.  No-one creates art in a vacuum.  All art is influenced by what we’ve seen in the past; it’s really not easy to find an example of art that isn’t either imitating or consciously refuting what exists already.  If you’re painting, for instance, even your choice of a particular style is going to be influenced by the works you’ve seen in that style and, based on that, what you think its strengths are.  You’re also going to be aware that there are things people paint, like faces, and landscapes, and still-lifes, and what-have-you, and even if you don’t pick one of those, you’ll probably paint something you can actually see, or something you can imagine as similar to what you can see.  You’ve never seen a dragon, for instance, but you’ve probably seen things with scales, things with horns, things with leathery wings, and so on, and you know what all of those are supposed to look like.  If – to jump, again, to a completely different art form – you’re writing a story, you probably aren’t going to say “I want to be original, so I won’t have a hero, or a villain, or a romance, or a mystery; those things have been done.”  You might try to write a villain who’s different to every other villain before him, but as you do so, you’ll be aware of those other villains and challenging your readers to compare them with yours.  This is not a bad thing; even originality is only original when viewed against its predecessors.  No-one creates art without some kind of model.  The trick is in how you choose and combine your models, and the technical skill involved in splicing together the existing ideas.

The point I am by degrees trying to construct here is that art is not actually about creation at all.  Art is about perception.  Art is the process by which we identify what makes something interesting, poignant or beautiful, and exalt it – and, naturally, that process involves the audience too, who will be participating in that art to a greater or lesser degree.  When you decide to paint something no-one else has ever painted before, you are recognising it as a subject worthy of appreciation.  When you decide to write a character with a personality no-one has ever written about before, you are recognising that as an aspect of humanity worthy of exploration.  When you create one piece of art that, in some way, recalls another, you are identifying what makes that original piece worth noticing, playing with it, and showing your audience how it can be used.  In some cases, the conclusions you draw will be totally bizarre and most right-minded people will have absolutely no idea what you’re on about, which I think is what happens a lot with ‘modern art,’ like Kazimir Malevitch’s Black Square.  It’s… well, a black square.  When Malevitch painted a black square, painters had for decades been breaking down paintings into more and more basic components, through pointillism and impressionism to cubism and the like; taken in that context, the black square is a response to all that earlier work, saying “okay guys, that’s it; we’re done.”  No-one listened, of course.  Another example of ‘modern art,’ one which Andrew brought up in his entry, is this unmade bed. Not a painting of an unmade bed, you understand, the actual unmade bed.  The ‘art,’ obviously, is not in creating the unmade bed; any university student can do that.  The ‘art’ is in the artist’s perception of what the bed can be taken to mean – an insight into the life of the person who slept in it – and her deliberate choice to share that perception with the world.

(Personally I still think it’s a bit weird, though.)

All of this, of course, is the ultimate vindication of fan art and fan fiction as art that participates in and celebrates existing art (I mean, when it gets right down to it, Virgil’s Aeneid is a Homer fanfic – possibly the greatest fanfic of all time), which if I’m not mistaken will be of great relevance to a lot of my regular readers.  Pokémon fan art and fan fiction explain, emphasise, develop and share your own experience of the Pokémon universe.  They show what you think is important, and why, and they respond to the world we’ve been given, and I think that in itself makes them inherently interesting (yes, even the really bad stuff, provided you can actually stomach it).  The wonderful thing about all this is that we’re all fascinated and enthralled by different things.  You might love a Pokémon that I can’t stand; maybe that’s because we’re focussing on different aspects of the design?  Maybe something in its physical form or its abilities reminded you of some other creature, or person, or place, or time, and you’ve always connected the two in your mind.  If you happen to have a talent for drawing or writing, you can bring out those aspects that are so important to your perception and share them with others – and that makes all Pokémon more awesome for everyone.

As for me?  Well, this blog is all about my experience and my interpretation of Pokémon.  My perception highlights ethics, philosophy, culture and history, and those are the things I think about constantly as I play the games or watch the show.  I’m here to share that perception with you, as I do when I talk about mad things like what Pokémon gender really means, or whether the ethics of Pokémon training present a viable moral framework.  Does that make me an artist?  I guess if I accept my own arguments, it must do.

Discuss.