One lunatic's love-hate relationship with the Pokémon franchise, and his addled musings on its rights, wrongs, ins and outs. Come one, come all, and indulge my delusions of grandeur as I inflict my opinions on anyone within shouting distance.
Let’s move; we’ve got gyms to steal and titans to eat, or something.
Apparently we can chat with the various Academy teachers outside of class to learn more about them and get closer to them.
Ms. Raifort, the history teacher, responds in a weirdly sinister way to learning that I’m interested in the past, and I just want to say pre-emptively that if she’s going to try to recruit me to a cult, I am absolutely all in.
Continue reading “Pokémon Spain Version: About 700 nm”As promised, here’s all additional the Pokémon I’ve met in Paldea since my first post about Scarlet.
So, it’s sort of a grasshopper. Have we got a grasshopper already? I don’t think we do. That’s rather nice. It feels… kind of weirdly smooth and shiny, even in comparison to other Pokémon, almost like it’s made out of moulded plastic; I think the contrast of the metallic blue and off-white adds to that. Not sure whether that’s going anywhere.
Continue reading “Pokémon Spain Version: Pokédex Roundup”
Artazon seems nice. “Picturesque,” I think is the word. Flowers, a windmill, pretty little houses, sunflowers, and lots of weird sculptures created by the town’s gym leader, Brassius.
A tragedy in two parts.
Continue reading “Pokémon Spain Version: Even More Red”I went to school and now I have a bunch of characters and plot stuff to talk about – first among them, this chick.
Nemona introduces her simply as “La Primera” – “The First” – which is the kind of nickname you get when you’re so badass that no-one has to ask “the first what?” because everyone knows the answer is “the first and bestest Pokémon trainer in the region.” My impression is that La Primera is what we would be calling “the Champion” in any other Pokémon game – that is, the “final boss” of the gym challenge – but that’s not what she’s called here, because “Champion” means something different in Paldea. It’s not a position occupied by one trainer at a time, it’s a rank that many trainers can attain. Nemona is a Champion of Paldea, one of a few, and hopes that we can join her at that level, which means collecting gym badges and passing a Big Final Test. La Primera, presumably, is the one who administers that test.
Continue reading “Pokémon Spain Version: Redness Intensifies”It is on, as the saying goes, in a manner not dissimilar to classic 1981 Nintendo arcade game Donkey Kong
Here be spoil- oh, who am I kidding, you all played this game weeks ago; you don’t give a $#!t
Continue reading “Pokémon Spain Version: The Red One”I know it has been over 5 years since you’ve worked on Memoirs, would you ever plan on writing something like that again? I loved it so much, and wanted to know if you had any more work to read, or perhaps something to look forward to in the future.
Memoirs? I don’t… remember ever working on anything like that…? What was I even writing 5 years ago…? Stuff about Sun and Moon, about Alola and gen VII? Doesn’t feel that long ago, oddly enough. You don’t mean my book of weird poetry about Greece, do you? I only released that in 2020 and it’s not really a memoir, but it’s kind of the closest thing I can think of. I suppose the answer in that case would be that I don’t have anything in the pipes at the moment, but easily might in the future. Or… do you mean, like, the first-person narrative style of my Moon playthrough? In which case, again, I suppose I’m not really thinking about doing anything similar in the short term (certainly not for when I play Scarlet, because I do like the writing I did on Moon, but wasn’t really fond of how it dragged out my experience of that game), but I also do kind of have the seeds of ideas for something in a similar style, maybe?
Or… maybe it’s an autocorrect for mottos, which is, like… genuinely something I’m officially still planning to do for gen VIII but haven’t made time for. Because I am a lazy bastard.
Um. I’m… glad you liked whatever it is I wrote, but I’m afraid I’m honestly not sure what you’re talking about.
Do you think it’s awesome that Landorus-Therian is the best Pokemon in standard competitive singles? I do.
I mean, broadly, no, not really; as a top-level design and worldbuilding principle I would prefer for most legendary Pokémon not to be usable at all under normal circumstances, and I would also, as a separate issue, like for them not to dominate the competitive game. But this is a very “old man yells at cloud” opinion that you shouldn’t concern yourself with too much.
My life is conspicuously failing to make sense right now, so let’s talk about what I’ve been doing to stave off the encroaching despair marshalled against me by the tendrils of the Endless Void: creating abominations against nature and the divine with a Pokémon fusion generator.
I think there are a lot of people out there who still only know about Alex Onsager’s original Pokémon Fusion Generator that became mega-popular back in 2013, the one you can still find at https://pokemon.alexonsager.net/, which takes the face and colour palette of one first-generation Pokémon and slaps it on the body of another. If that’s you, then boy howdy, do I have news for you: for there is another. The Japeal Pokémon Fusion Generator 2 (which is not affiliated with the original generator or its creator, as far as I know) is much more powerful. It can work with every Pokémon up to Eternatus, thanks to community-made sprites for the Pokémon from the 3D generations (the new Crown Tundra Pokémon are also in there, but paywalled, as are regional variants and most other alternate forms; the handful of Hisui-exclusive Pokémon are still missing entirely). It does its face splices, in my opinion, a little more elegantly than the original, and can splice some other body parts as well, like feet, wings and tails. It generates a hybrid cry for your creation. You can also customise the colour palette of your abominations to some extent, and even play dress-up with them, using a set of props drawn partly from the generation IV-V contest/musical dress-up minigames and partly from conveniently modular chunks of some popular Pokémon (like Haunter’s floating hands or Bulbasaur’s bulb). It is among the most highly sophisticated tools humanity has yet developed for spitting in the face of God.
Just look at this. How and why did I even make this? It is an affront to all that is good and pure. I’m going to put a little hat on it.
Continue reading “Conjuring Abominations for Fun and Profit“I’ve got a Kantonian Gyarados pointed at your head and I compel you to make a regional form of Gyarados that’s a Dragon-type, with a capital D. I permit any historical, cultural, or mythological influences you want to pull from, and you may add a secondary type if you so choose, but it has to be Dragon. My Gyarados is locked and loaded, and your head is looking mighty Hyper Beamable. You have 72 hours. Good luck.
well
well what region, that-?
I mean if it’s just a Gyarados that’s from anywhere that’s not Kanto–
look, people ask me from time to time what I would do with a Pokémon region based on New Zealand, and I never really want to get into it, for all sorts of reasons not worth talking about here, but if that region were to exist and if someone else were to tell me I needed to make a regional form of Gyarados from some fµ¢£ing place and it doesn’t matter where… well, obviously it’s going to be a taniwha. Taniwha (the “wh” makes an f sound; TUH-nee-fuh) are serpentine water dragons, creatures of deep lakes, watery caves, river rapids and stormy seas. They are the distant cousins of the shapeshifting mo‘o of Hawai‘i, who are possibly one of the influences behind Salazzle. Taniwha are powerful, dangerous and fickle, with some of the European dragons’ tendency to abduct beautiful young women. On the other hand, some of them are friendly to humanity and can be appeased with gifts, chants and songs. They create and guard harbours, straits and waterways, and watch over those who show them the proper respect. When the ancestors of the Māori people first came to New Zealand, some of their canoes were guided across the ocean by ancient taniwha. A Pokémon based on a taniwha would have all of Gyarados’s renowned potential for destruction, especially if offended or treated disrespectfully, but could also be a benevolent guardian. You go to it with gifts, and not only does it not murder you, maybe it gives you its blessing for the next time you’re out on a boat. I think Pokémon trainers are supposed to be responsible for exactly this kind of give-and-take personal relationship with the embodied forces of nature that also exists in traditional Japanese spiritualism.
Any updates on the advanced kingslocke rules?
Well, I was going to finish that test run of Heart Gold before publishing them, and I didn’t mean to have a very long break before starting the Kanto section of the game, but then I got COVID, and then my laptop broke down and I had to send it away to be fixed, and both of those things set me back on finishing my PhD thesis which is now very much in full crunch time, and will be for at least the next six weeks (by the way, and this isn’t related to what you’re asking and I’ve said it before, but it bears repeating for anyone else who might be paying attention, I am absolutely not going to touch Scarlet/Violet until mid-December at the very earliest). So… maybe I need to accept that I’m never actually going to finish that run, just make what revisions I can on the basis of what we saw in the first half, and publish what comes out of that. Hmm.
Pokémaniacal 