Tag: Pokémon

Pokémon Shield Playthrough Notes IV

You know the drill, more thoughts on Pokémon: Shield Version. I’ve now beaten gyms 5 and 6, and am hanging out in the neighbourhood of the snowbound city of Circhester. Cir- how do you pronounce that? Sir-chester, Kir-chester, Chir-chester? Just… however you think it’s pronounced, assume that I’m pronouncing it wrong.

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A Pokémon Trainer is You! X: A Huge Nerd is You!

Last time, on A Pokémon Trainer Is You:

What do you do on route 22?
– Train with Nancy, the Negator.
– Perform an ecological survey.

Once Nancy is recovered from her battle, you decide to do an hour or so of basic training – exercises, attack drills, dodging Scallion’s Vine Whip attacks, that sort of thing.  Everything you’ve seen from Nancy so far suggests that she’s a very gentle and mild-mannered Pokémon, but she takes battle and training very seriously, and celebrates her successes with gusto.  You suppose that shouldn’t be surprising, for a Pokémon who approached and challenged a human trainer.  It’ll take time for her to reach her full potential, obviously, but you can see some improvement even in the short time you have to spend.  Once Nancy starts to tire of training, you take another look at the relatively meagre information your Pokédex has on Minun.  The key words and phrases all seem to be about teamwork.  In their native Hoenn, Minun often live closely with a sister species, Plusle, each amplifying the other’s electrical powers, but they can apparently team up with just about any Pokémon, given time to establish a bond.  The Pokédex is considerably less clear about how a trainer might go about doing this, or exactly what advantages might accrue from it.  One thing is clear, though – Minun love to cheer for their friends in battles.  You try this out, getting Scallion to perform a couple of quick, very basic training exercises, and find that he is inexplicably faster and more accurate with Nancy’s active encouragement.  Hmm.

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Team Rainbow Rocket

Official art of Team Rainbow Rocket’s castle.

…well, I…

…I mean, do I really need to-?

…then again, “Team Rocket is gay now” is pretty compelling

(what am I saying, “now”? look at Jessie and James; they were always gay)

all right, let’s try for a shorter one

In the aftermath of the resolution of the main plot in Ultra Sun and Moon, Team Rocket appears out of nowhere and takes over first Festival Plaza and then the entire Aether Paradise, renovating Lusamine’s mansion with a new menacing black-and-red colour scheme.  Only they aren’t Team Rocket anymore – they’ve rebranded, are now Team Rainbow Rocket, and are accompanied by a rogue’s gallery of villains from all the previous Pokémon games.  And they’ve got plans.  Apparently.  I know a lot of my readers haven’t actually played Ultra SMoon (which… well, fair enough; they’re not a big step up over Sun and Moon) so let’s begin with a summary of what exactly happens.

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Ash=Cash to GameFreak asks:

Did your favorite Pokemon make it into SwSh, or did it get snapped in the purge of Dexit?

Don’t know. I gather all of this has been leaked now, but I haven’t looked at any of it, and I don’t plan to. Last I checked, there was no official evidence that mine was in there, and I don’t think it’s particularly a must-include one.

If you want to check it for yourself, my favourite Pokémon is Vileplume.

State of the Blog: October

uggggggggggghhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh

hello

This month didn’t exactly go according to plan, because I lost most of a week to illness (I’m fine now, don’t worry; I had a bad fever for a while and spent a lot of time hobbling between my couch and my bed, calling down dire imprecations upon the eternal forces of disease that assail the mortal form) and then had to catch up on real-world work. Which, well, people seem to like it when I talk about my research, so – I’ve been hanging out a lot in the X-ray lab at my university’s geology department, preparing the ancient glass samples I brought back from Caesarea Maritima over the summer for chemical analysis. Each piece gets ground up in an agate ball mill to create a fine powder, I wear a sort of gas mask thing so I don’t get silicosis from breathing in glass dust for hours, then we mix a tiny bit of powder from each sample with a lithium borate flux and melt it down so it turns back into glass, but now it’s a nice neat disc of glass with no air bubbles. Also all the discs are a sort of faint brownish colour, whereas most of the glass I started with is blue-green; I think that’s probably the result of iron in the glass being oxidised from Fe (II) to Fe (III) in the fusion process. Then we zap those discs with X-rays, 10 at a time, each batch for one day, and the pattern of absorption and re-emission of the different wavelengths shows the elemental composition of the sample. Very exciting in principle; some of the thrill gets taken out a bit by the fact that it takes weeks. I’m interested mainly to see whether these window glass samples I’ve taken are different in composition from what’s typical for Roman vessel glass, and also whether there’s any clear variation over the lifetime of the site.

So that’s what I’m doing.

Anyway, I wanted to have an article on Team Rainbow Rocket done by now, and it isn’t, but I am working on it and it should be good to go in another couple of days. We’re running out of time before Sword and Shield come out, and I have preordered one so I will be starting the game pretty much immediately, which I have never actually done before (honestly I think the whole idea of needing to have the game on launch day is a bit weird, but I suppose as someone who produces #content on the #internet I should keep up to date). I’ll try to get something else out between now and then, probably on the Alolan forms, and then once I start the games I’ll produce some kind of “first impressions” series along the lines of what I did for Alpha Sapphire. And… oh god… then the Pokémon reviews will start. And then they will continue until I die. And then once my remaining mortal servants have succeeded in reanimating my shattered body and conjuring my soul back from beyond the veil, maybe we can get on with literally anything else.

Things I have done this month include rambling about Socrates, talking about Galarian Ponyta and Fairy-type life force, rating the moons of the solar system according to rigorous scientific standards, writing two articles for PokéJungle, trying to explain Mimikyu, and continuing my… interactive fan-fic(?) “A Pokémon Trainer Is You!“. Some upcoming questions from readers include: what I would be doing if I weren’t a classicist, how I decide between Pokémon game versions, and what are some of the weirdest of Pokémon’s worldbuilding inconsistencies.

As always, thank you to my Patreon donors whose generosity pays the upkeep of this site, and whose dark will animates the mystic artifices that sustain my wretched material form: Don’t Call Me Bradley, James Crooks, hugh_donnetono, Esserise and Hamish Fyfe. The fact that anyone is willing to donate anything at all as thanks for my ridiculous work is a continuing source of joy and spiritual fulfilment, so thank you! If anyone else out there thinks that my brand of nonsense is deserving of a little monthly tip, please consider taking a look at my Patreon page.

I think that’s everything! The tension is building! Excitement is in the air! The doom of worlds approaches day by day! Help!

A Pokémon Trainer is You! VIII: Seriously, kid, you should know his name by now

Last time, on A Pokémon Trainer Is You:

What do you say to Whatshisname?
– Ask about the health of his Pokémon.

You’re honestly not sure how trainer etiquette is supposed to go in these situations, but it seems to you like the polite thing here is to ask the other guy about how his Pokémon is doing.

“Uh…”  He blinks, fumbling for a second.  “Squirtle’s doing great.  Uh, aren’t you, buddy?”  He glances down at Squirtle, who is poking around some brush with Scallion.  Squirtle looks back up at him and replies with an affirmative-sounding squeaky grunt.  “You know a bunch of nerd stuff, right?  Think you’d be able to tell if a Pokémon was sick or hurt?”  You do, of course, know a spectacular amount of dumb nerd $#!t, but most of it isn’t directly related to Pokémon health.  You can certainly observe a Pokémon’s behaviour and take note of even fairly subtle changes, and it does occur to you that Squirtle seems to have a little more spring in its step, so you tell Prussian(?) as much.  They’ve only been together a day and a half, but some Pokémon seem to become more lively just from being in the company of humans; it’s a phenomenon that Professor Oak has always been fascinated by.

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Jim the Editor asks:

What do you think of the Halloween-themed pokemon go designs?

So Jim and I talked about these for a while, and… well, I actually hadn’t given them much thought at all, previously. Hallowe’en is much less of a big deal in New Zealand than it is in the US, and is almost exclusively an event for, like, preteens. Hallowe’en fancy dress parties aren’t really a thing, or at least weren’t for my age group. Jim had a thought, though, which is that these are… well, obviously they’re cute costumes, but also weirdly insensitive, in a way? I mean… Pikachu. You’re dressing up as a Pokémon that knows its true appearance is horrifying and wants to look like you because it’s desperate to be loved. That is in bad taste, Pikachu. You can take that costume off and everyone will still love you. If Mimikyu takes its costume off, everyone will be dead. And you, Charmander – Cubone wear those skulls to mourn their dead mothers, and you’re wearing it because it’s fun to look spooky, you insensitive little $#!t. Squirtle… y’know, I don’t know if this is as bad, but Squirtle, you are dressing up as a Pokémon whose existence is torture and whose own physical form is a constant sorrowful reminder of its own lost life. I just feel like a Yamask might find that offensive, y’know? Bulbasaur… Bulbasaur, you can keep being Shedinja, you’re fine. Shedinja doesn’t give a fµ¢£. I mean, you do also have objectively the $#!ttiest costume but I don’t think you’re doing something actively harmful.