#It kind of looks like a pokemon evolution series

[hoenn-pride]

Man do you ever just think about how.... hardenshipping was ALWAYS going to be the natural conclusion of the game from the moment they sat down and decided that the gimmick of the region was going to have two warring teams.

Like hardenshipping has some sort of pre-baked, innate canonicity with the way that Pokemon games always resolve themselves. Especially as it pertains to the way the Hoenn region was designed.

What I mean by this is,

In Pokemon, the lesson is always "working together makes us stronger." It is always about the power of friendship, it is always about found families, it is always about settling differences with love etc etc etc. Except. This is on STEROIDS in the Hoenn region because this is a theme and a message that was deliberately sought out when they designed the game.

The Hoenn region is a region of duality. It is all about opposites and counterbalance. The names of the cities are mostly two words put together as opposed to color names in the past. Team Aqua and Team Magma. Groudon and Kyogre. Plusle and Minun. Latios and Latias. Solrock and Lunatone. Zangoose and Seviper. Volbeat and Illumise. How Wurmple can evolve into either Silcoon or Cascoon. How Clamperl can evolve into either Huntail or Gorebyss, making both of those sets of Pokemon counterparts to one another.

The REGION itself is split almost evenly in physical makeup between land and water. Which is what made it seem like there was a shit ton of water because there was. There has never been as much water in a Pokemon game as there was in Hoenn, and it was because they were physically trying to balance the water and the land. There's a giant uninhabitable volcano in the center of the region perfectly counterbalanced on the map by a giant, habitable crater in the center of the ocean. Complements and counterparts color the entire region, often quite literally in red and blue. Like almost anywhere you look in Hoenn, it is ideologically (and sometimes physically) symmetrical in design.

The name of the region comes from love and relationships, for god's sake.

And so then you have the Hoenn region, named after a word that literally means love and relationships, being themed around this very concept, in a game series that ALREADY focuses on those things. As like. The core component of the franchise.

So the Hoenn region has "the power of love and friendship" on fucking STEROIDS.

And they DOUBLE and TRIPLE down on this metaphor that they already did not need to double and triple down on in the remakes with the inclusion of the "Hoenn Rangers Coexistence Force," whose sole existence seems only to be to call out Archie and Maxie specifically, as they are about promoting the peaceful coexistence of people, nature, and pokemon. Blatant passive-aggressive reference to Archie and Maxie, who are locked in some sort of odd, eco-ideological warfare with each other playing out over the large-scale arena of the entire fucking region.

And the fact that they canon used to be on a team together and clearly split due to their differences (you know. Like how a lot of these region's Pokemon have split evolutions and counterparts etc etc etc).

The Hoenn region is rife with all this fucking duality.

And so, naturally, the Pokemon plot does what Pokemon plots do, and uses like a 12 year old child to tell our bad guys that the power of love and friendship is actually all they need.

And for the most part, in most games, that would be where it would end. The villain and the evil team fades off into obscurity, after they learned their lesson.

Except, Archie and Maxie don't have that option. Because they have each other.

Team Rocket, while still technically present, disappears from the game after you beat them. Cyrus disappears. Ghetsis disappears. Colress just fucking hangs out with you, kind of. Lysander disappears. Lusamine disappears. I don't fucking know what Rose does but god in hell I'm sure he doesn't contribute anything meaningful. Turo and Sada go off to a different fucking reality altogether.

All of the other villains disappear because they have learned their lesson. What are they going to do? Be besties with the player in the post game? Colress is the only one who gets remotely close to this, and he's locked on a little ship in one area once you beat the game. These individual leaders rightfully learn their lesson, rightfully go off on their own to reflect and grow or go to prison or die, and we just assume that because we beat them, that's the end. There is nothing more for them to resolve, because they have resolved their conflict with us.

But not Archie and Maxie. Because Archie and Maxie's main point of conflict was not with you. It was with each other.

ALL of the other villains have NO ONE to amend with once you finish the main line story of the game, because they have already ended the conflict with you. Therefore, in all other iterations of them that exist (for example, in Masters) they can just be "Ho ho ho I am GenericEvilTeamLeader" who did a bad thing.

But not Archie and Maxie. Because Archie and Maxie were depicted having their main conflict with each other, and not you, any piece of media that wishes to depict them post-events of their games (aka, post their lessons-learned) MUST depict them together. In order to demonstrate that they have taken this lesson about the "true power of friendship" to heart, we must see them putting that into practice.

And due to the nature of Hoenn being about coexistence, natural complements, and duality, Archie and Maxie must then conclude to work together and harmonize with one another just as their opposing elements do, just as the entire rest of their fucking region does. They are the living embodiments of the inner conflict, the duality and complement and turmoil and harmony that the entire region of Hoenn was built upon.

And THIS is why, to this day, in the year of our good Groudon 2023, we are STILL getting new content of them being so close to one another. Why Pokemon Masters has just basically become Hardenshipping Truthers DLC. Because now, in order to demonstrate that Archie and Maxie have taken some semblance of their lesson to heart, they must be depicted working together. As they were always created to do.

Archie and Maxie were created to be at war with one another, but this was because they were also created to learn the lesson that they must work with one another, because that is the lesson of Hoenn, and that is the lesson of Pokemon as a whole.

So from the very moment the devs sat down and said "we are going to make two warring teams," Archie and Maxie's destinies were invariably linked together, and basically hardenshipping content was always going to be the natural conclusion of that.

They really invented gay people with this one. I just..,,

*slaps Hoenn region* this bad boy can fit so much fucking symbolism in it

#hardenshipping #thank you for coming to my fucking ted talk #magma leader maxie #aqua leader archie #pokemon oras #pokemon masters ex #rse #pokemon rse #pokemas #thank you for attending hardenshipping university

[constellationcore]

Lost Spirit ADAM wants to BATTLE!

Battle isn’t really the word, it’s more “show you the horrors”

Adam is the dark-type specialist, who you fight twice along the BPS story route! Once as a BPS Admin and again in a double battle under the battle class Lost Spirit! What an edgelord.

Team info under the cut!

Adam’s ace is a Zangoose! I love it’s cute but aggressive design, and it’s natural rivalry with snakes works with the biblical angle of the series. The biblical theming is stronger in Adam’s team than the others, which took some research on my end lol. He also uses a staraptor, as starlies signal new beginnings and innocence (apparently lol). He caught it on his first BPS mission! Also in the biblical thread is Flapple, an apple wyrm that I think looks like a snake! Snakes, apples, you get it. Evie has the partner evolution, appletun! They raised them both from applins, such fun couple activities.

Now for more pokemon symbology, absol is the disaster pokemon, said to bring ruin wherever it goes (though in reality it desperately tries to tell others of their prophetic visions). Zoroark is a shape shifting trickster Pokémon, capable of replicating the shape of humans and Pokémon alike. Sableye doesn’t have as much meaning, I think the eyes and general gremliny structure reminded me a lot of Catalyst!Adam. This one kind of skittish, and Adam probably caught it while sitting in an abandoned house somewhere.

#constellationcore #pokedela catalogue #the mandela catalogue #mandela catalogue au #adam murray #Flapple #zoroark #absol #Zangoose #staraptor #sableye

[bethanythebogwitch]

I talked before about fish Pokemon and that was great, but it's not the only mon series I like. So fuck it, fish Digimon time. This will definitely be less analytical and more me gushing about Digimon I like because I may be a bit out of it right now. Also sorry if I missed any.

Starting at rookie/child level we only have one fish but why would we need more when we have Swimmon?

Loot at it, it's amazing! It's some some sort of tropical fish, obviously, but with some embellishments, like the beak full of teeth. I love how colorful and pointy it is. It works great as a rookie for so many aquatic lines. I think some great lines for it would be Swimmon -> Coelamon -> Piranimon -> MetalPiranhimon or Swimmon -> Tobiumon -> DIvemon -> Surfimon. Speaking of which...

I'm going over champion/adult Digimon together and starting with Coelamon.

It's a coelacanth! Coelacanths are amazing as some of the last lobe-finned fish. In this case, the lobes have been exaggerated into proper limbs, like how lobe-finned fish are the ancestors of tetrapods through intermediate limbed fish stages like tiktaalik. Its armor might also be based on placoderms, extinct fish with bony armor.

We have surprisingly few shark Digimon, but one we do have is Tobiumon, and it's amazing.

A shark with arms that can fly with its fins is such a Digimon concept that all it needs are some guns to be peak Digimon. It even has a remora missile launcher on its chest!

The armor Digimon give us several fish, and while I don't think any of them particularly work as armor evolutions, they're fine as Digimon on their own. And before anyone mentions it, Tylomon is a tylosaurus, not a fish. The first is Manbomon, and while it's a terrible armor evolution for Patamon, A mola mola wearing boxing gloves is such a goofy concept I can't help but love it.

Next is Seahomon, which is pretty obviously a seahorse, but its snout is a trumpet and it has a cape that turns into wings I guess? I dunno, it's a pretty weird one.

My favorite of the three is Mantaraymon. Despite the name, it doesn't have a manta ray's face, instead having a rostrum like a shovelnose ray or even maybe a dolphin. I do like how they used Patamon's ears as the cephalic fins.

Mantaraymon also has a more mechanical X-antibody variant that gives it kind of a stealth fighter vibe. I kind of like it more than the original Mantaraymon, which is saying something since I usually don't like X-antibody Digimon.

Moving onto the ultimate/perfect level we have a new mon from China, Huankunmon.

I love this design so much. Its based on the peng, a mythical creature that can turn from a bird to a fish. Fittingly, Huankunmon's line goes from a bird (Xiquemon) and goes to a bird/fish/dragon hybrid (Xiangpengmon). It'a also based on a flying fish since it can fly with a swimming motion. And it can turn invisible. There's nothing not to love about it.

Next is Piranimon, and look at this absolute beast

Some might call it overdesigned, but I absolutely love it. I particularly dig the tail being a fish hook covered in barbed wire. Its based on a red-bellied piranha, but the pop-culture version where they're bloodthirsty monsters that attack everything they see. Real piranhas are not like that. The helmet it wears may also be based on placoderms, some of which only had the bone armor on the front of their bodies.

Finally at this level, we have Divemon.

I'm not as big of a fan of this as I am of the other two, but I do like the Polynesian-style tattoos it has. Its a combination hammerhead shark and professional swimmer.

Maxing out at the mega/ultimate level we have MetalPiranimon.

While I appreciate any fish megas, I think this is a step down from Piranhimon. It's just a red-bellied piranha with a big metal head dragging around a counterweight. I'm not saying its bad, I'm just saying that Piranhimon is better. Fun fact, Metalpiranhimon came first. Piranhimon was designed because someone thought it was weird that there's a MetalPiranhimon but no regular Piranhimon. There are a few examples of that in Digimon, like SkullBaluchimon coming before Baluchimon.

Next is Regalecusmon, which might be stretching the definition of fish a bit, but it does have an oarfish for a head.

I really like this design, especially it using Zudomon's horn as a sword and what looks like Ebidramon's claw as a shield. I think it would make a great villain for an aquatic episode or storyline of a show. Maybe like a more modern version of MetalSeadramon from Adventure.

Finally, we have Surfimon.

It's a mechanical shark man riding a rocket-powered hammerhead shark surfboard with a buzzsaw on the front. We have reached peak Digimon, people. And even better, it was created by a fan as part of a contest. Frankly, it's a shame that it hasn't gotten any appearances in the anime or games. I don't get why some fan-made Digimon can go onto have major appearances like Dobermon, Cyberdramon, and SoundBirdmon while others get ignored. A lot of them don't even have art. I'd be pretty bummed if I was a kid who won a contest to have my design become official and then it was never used. I think Surfimon should get an anime appearance and the English dub should make it talk like a Californian surfer dude.

#fishblr #digimon #fish #I'm such a nerd #coelamon #tobiumon #manbomon #mantaraymon #seahomon #piranimon #divemon #huankunmon #metalpiranimon #regalucusmon #surfimon #shark #coelacanth #manta ray #seahorse #sunfish #mola mola #piranha #oarfish #hammerhead shark

[otakween]

Digimon Tamers: Brave Tamer - Final Thoughts

Phew! If you're wondering why I've been quiet for a bit, it's because this game took me 3 weeks to beat. It was kind of grueling at times. It definitely assumes that you played the previous 3 (or 4 if Anode and Cathode count for 2) games and does NOT baby you at the start. It definitely wasn't my favorite game in the series, but the fact that it did away with the terrible old Jogress system earned it a lot of points in my book. There are still some Wonderswan games to play, but I think that's really it for Ryo games! Thank goodness :)

Notes:

Major downgrade from D1 Tamers visually! D1 was so colorful and exploring the world was actually interesting. Brave Tamer follows the Digimon World 2 strat of making every single dungeon pretty much identical and the hub world is bland as heck as well. You don't even need to travel to get to the dungeons you just walk up to the same hole every time. Lame.

Thank God this game lets digimon level up and evolve normally. It basically follows the Pokemon style of evolution. In previous games there were bullshit level caps unless you jogressed a zillion times. This game still has that dumb mechanic where your digimon devolves into a baby. I get that that happens in the show, but it felt pretty silly in the game. They get back to normal pretty quickly after a few battles.

Digimon recruitment is limited to borrowing digimon from digidestined from the various anime series. What an awkward concept. Ryo comes out of nowhere to save the day and then each partner digimon is like "See ya partner, I'm ditching you for Ryo!" I'm just imagining the characters that are left partner-less facing certain doom after Ryo leaves lol. Maybe it's one of those situations where they're only gone for a few minutes due to dimension hopping.

The card slash system (based on the Tamers universe of course) was interesting, but kind of annoying to figure out. After I got a handful of strong cards I couldn't be arsed to keep trying new jogress combos.

Speaking of taking the lazy route, I didn't use the majority of the digimon I recruited once LOL. It's more efficient to just stick with the same digimon for the whole game unless you want to spend a lot of time grinding, so that's what I did. I ended up with only mega-level digimon at the end which is frustrating because MegaloGrowmon and Taomon were at level 30! (They upgrade to mega at 31).

The bosses were strangely easy in this game (except for one that took me like 5 tries). What made it hard were the frickin' labyrinthine dungeons (the last one is TIMED! Evil). I have a terrible sense of direction IRL and in video games so the dungeons in this game were torture for me. You have to traverse up to 5 floors and sometimes there are so many dead ends and roadblocks that it takes what feels like an eternity. Also, there are random battles every 2 seconds that increase the suffering. In the later game I planned my route ahead of time by figuring out where the boss was on YouTube and mapping backwards from there. Here's a screenshot of me and my map in MS Paint:

(By the way, I always play Wonderswan games in windowed mode or else they look wonky. This time, that really came in handy).

I had to use multiple guides to figure out some of this game because the most popular walkthrough wasn't very good. It barely gives you any instructions on getting through dungeons, which was what I really needed.

Most scandalous part of this game was when Millenniummon called Ryo his lover (koibito)? Whaaaaa...?

I didn't realize that this game is a prequel to Tamers so I kinda did things out of order, whoops! I didn't realize that Cyberdramon was supposed to be the outcome of a Monodramon/Millenniummon jogress. Makes me want to rewatch some bits of the anime...

There was so much dramatic build up for the final battle and then it was so easy? I didn't even need to use the 10 low-level healing items I stocked up on. Oh well, guess I was well prepared.

Of course there's a post-game where you can scan all the digimon you missed, but that just seems silly. They're not partners in this game, they're cards. If I can't a raise a digimon I don't really see the appeal in collecting them all. (I mean I guess I wouldn't see the appeal in raising them all either, but the cards seem like even more of a waste of time).

The Wonderswan games have always been my fave digimon games but this one felt simultaneously half-assed and overly complicated. I'd give it like a 5 or 6 out of 10. Let's call it a 5.5.

#Digimon Tamers: Brave Tamer #wonderswan #oswan #digimon #Ryo Akiyama #Digimon Tamers

[nonovyabuisness]

Life series X Pokemon :

Each lifers will have one ‘fully’ evolved pokemon that I believe suits them in all of the life series ( series such as X life or New life will not be included).

[Some members may have shinies ✨]

The members are listed in alphabetical order.

Bdubs: ✨ Scrafty

- Both enjoy fighting and look like they get beaten up often even if no fights happened that day.

- It’s a shiny because Shiny Scrafty’s green clothes (?) is reminiscent of Bdubs’ moss cape skin.

BigB: Breloom

- A kind being that should not be taken lightly.

- Also Breloom’s spores can paralyze or poison opponents, just like BigB paralyzed Grian with his gaslighting and can easily poison others by lying.

Cleo: Delphox

- Arson fox that is super effective against Etho’s pokemon and BigB’s.

-Also a reference to Witchcraft!SMP where she was one of the finalists. Plus Orange hair so Orange pokemon.

Etho: Bisharp

- Etho reminds me so much of the Shadow Triad so I decided to give him their titular Pokemon.

- I considered Greninja but as a redstoner, Etho might not appreciate the water.

- Plus it’s funny when the two scary looking beings are actually the most easily frightened.

- Fun fact, Bisharp hasn’t battled in so long that its blades have almost become dull (both are washed up /j).

Geminitay: Bewear

- In Limited Life she acts like a mama bear towards Scar.

- Is overall very friendly but is a menace (especially towards Etho).

- Now that she’s in Secret Life, Bewear works well with the cherry blossom and band theme she has going on.

- Plus, just like Bewear accidentally harms others by trying to show affection, Gem hurts herself and her allies by creating other alliances that don’t last.

Grian: Archeops

- Pesky bird.

- I put Toucannon at first and almost put Honchkrow but both look too serious to be associated with Grian.

- So goofy prehistoric parrot that is easily demotivated (defeatist ability) for the button man.

Impulse: Ampharos

- The yellow color scheme as well as the fact that Impulse is generally more on the kind, gentle side but is also able to hold his own.

Jimmy: Kilowatrel

- Canary in a coal mine.

- Kilowatrel is one of the best yellow bird Pokemon that isn’t too mocking ( Yellow Oricorio) or too serious ( Pidgeoto/Blaziken/ shiny Sirfetch’d).

- The pre-evolution looks a bit silly tho.

Joel: ✨Turtonator

- An explosive fella.

- Also a Pokemon that serve as a reminder that most of Joel’s trap/plan either don’t work or backfire on him or his allies.

- Shiny Turtonator because the shiny colors match Joel’s Green and yellow color scheme.

Lizzie: Togekiss

- Avoids conflict and is generally content with roaming around, peacefully picking flowers. Head in the clouds.

- But remains a strong and smart opponent that shouldn’t be underestimated.

*Volo and Cynthia war flashbacks *

Martyn: Trevenant

- A fierce and loyal protector of his home but still remains a solitary being.

- Trevenant’s ability to blend in with the surrounding trees in forest and gather information by communicating with the forest, is a nod to Martyn’s ability to sneak around undetected gathering valuable intel.

Mumbo: Sableye

- Hermit hiding away in the shadows (bunker) and using (end) crystals to attack.

Pearl: ✨ Absol

- Wherever they go, disaster soon follows. Seeing them is a warning to all.

- Shiny Absol because the colors matches with the ‘Scarlet Pearl’ skin.

Rendog: Sirfetch’d

- A king and a knight, unwilling to let go of their flair for the dramatics even after their kingdom as fallen. I thought of Kingambit or Aegislash but both are too serious and only fit 3rd Life Ren. Sirfetch’d is regal yet remains goofy like Ren.

Scar: Liepard

- Shady business man and his cat jellie. Both mischievous and not against stealing.

- Also it would be funny to picture all the Jellie interruptions as just him talking to his very real Pokemon partner.

- Jellie would definitely try to eat Grian’s Archeops.

Scott: ✨ Gallade

- Always honorable and upholding their end of the deal. But aren’t against using force to achieve what they want.

- Shiny so that the colors match ( also provides a good contrast to Pearl’s shiny Absol).

Skizzleman: Braviary

- A brave being that leads the team.

- All of Braviary’s dex entry mentions it battling for its friend even if it’s injured.

- The pokemon White dex entry mentions that the more scars a Braviary has, the more respect he’s has from his peers. Skizzleman’s skin has scars on its arms.

- Also Skizz is often represented with angel wings so why not give him a bird.

- I don’t know if it should be a shiny or not however.

Tango: Rapidash

- A being with a unruly temper that does not take kindly to betrayal or competition.

- Could have helped with the whole Torchy task.

- Tango is often represented with hair that lights on fire when upset, just like Rapidash’s mane burns hotter when upset or fighting.

#pokemon #life series #all lifers #scott smajor #geminitay #ethoslab #impulse #zombie cleo #bdubs #bigbst4tz2 #grian #jimmy solidarity #joel smallishbeans #lizzie ldshadowlady #martyn itlw #mumbo jumbo #pearlescentmoon #rendog #goodtimeswithscar #skizzleman #tangotek #I don’t know how to properly explain my choices #last life #limited life #3rd life #double life #Etho and bisharp being traumatized by Gem and her beware #Etho looks like the long lost brother of the shadow triad #secret life #update

[microwave-core]

Listen, I hate to cringepost on main, but I really want to talk about the XY rivals because they have SO much potential and I love them and I will not rest until I spread my obsessive thoughts with others so I'm gonna talk about how I would change this stupid friend group.

Just to set a standard, I'm gonna write this with the female protag in mind because I always pick her but also so I don't have to constantly bounce between saying Calem (or Serena if you pick the male protag) because that would gonna get annoying real quick. So assume whenever I say Calem you could switch in Serena.

SO. Starting off, I think the core of the rivalship should be between the protag, Calem, and Shaunna, reminiscent of the BW rivals. Calem, in general, is fine. He's the rival who wants to become the champion and is the strongest in the group, other then the protag. Personally, I would probably change his team comp a bit to reflect this, but that would be for a separate post. I do think he could use a bit more pizazz, though, because as is he's a little bland. Also, give him his hat back. He looks so naked and cursed without it.

Then there's Shaunna, aka the original gay bitch. Shaunna doesn't care about becoming champion or fighting gym leaders, instead opting to get stronger at her own pace while focusing on the cute little side activities, and it's all good and fun for awhile, but she starts to get more insecure as things start getting real with Team Flare. She starts feeling like she's fallen far behind everyone else in terms of strength and like she can't really do anything to help in a dire situation, despite actually being helpful in her own way (getting the grunt blocking the entrance of the pokeball factory to move, bringing in a machine from Clemont to get further in Team Flare's base, etc). This isn't really any different from how she already is, but I think there could be a heavier emphasis on her feeling insecure about this, but also give her the change to gradually overcome that insecurity. Also, bring back contests, because she's clearly made for them and it could be, like, her main thing she gets really good at.

Then there's Trevor and Tierno, and I think they should be more like friends rather then rivals. Have them be assistants for Sycamore or something (since Trevor really cares about the pokedex and Tierno brings you your starter). Let them be rivals towards each other rather than rivals with the protag. Let them kiss, I don't fucking care. This is the gay friend group featuring Calem as the one straight friend, and it's perfect.

I really like the idea of Trevor, since he cares about completing the pokedex, which makes him a stand out from other rivals in the series. I'm pretty sure whenever you compare dexs in game he always loses, though, which I think is lame. Let him have a certain amount of pokemon he's caught instead and make it an actual comparison. You could do some fun stuff with him, too, like have him tell the player about rare pokemon in an area or strange evolution methods to help fill in their pokedex, since he has pokemon like that on his team (orange Florges which only has a 1% encounter rate in flowers and Goodra who needs to evolve in the rain).

Tierno is another example of why contests should be brought back, because he's, like, a performer. Again, let him be more of a friend then a rival, who's just here to hang out and have fun. Actually, I think he could be kind of like a foil to Shaunna, in that he cares about the cute little side actives while getting stronger at his own pace rather then collecting gym badges, but have him embrace that. Have him be the one to help Shaunna overcome her own insecurities, and then THEY can become contest rivals. And if the player did high ranking contests, they could face off against them. It would be cute damnit, let me have this.

#pokemon #pokemon xy #i stopped to write this mid-day in stardew i was overcome by something to write this out #i love shaunna and her stupid ass hair #they are a friend group #like... they have so much potential #idk i just post my internal monologue sometimes #cringeposting on main? on MY blog? #it's more likely then you think #still don't know when to use then or than #i'm a great writer #incoming tag hell #pokemon shaunna #pokemon calem #pokemon serena #pokemon tierno #pokemon trevor

[fioras-resolve]

So I've been thinking about translating Pokemon to Toki Pona, and the general linguistic nature of the games.

Like, Pokemon X and Y are very strange to tokiponize, even just down to the titles. Because like, those letters are not part of the Toki Pona alphabet. Yet, the letters are core to its box legendaries, Yveltal literally looks like a red Y, and has Y in its name. How do you translate this? Well, you look up the origin of the name and find an article stating they were named after the x and y-axis. It seems weird at first, but it's fully consistent with the legendaries. Xerneas is a soweli, who travels horizontally, while Yveltal is a waso, who travels vertically. Even the akesi Zygarde, representing the z-axis, moves vertically. I think it's fair to say poka and sewi, aside and up, should be the new titles for Pokemon X and Y, maybe sinpin for front instead of poka, but I'm not sure about the legendaries.

As for other Pokemon, well, I'm actually willing to transliterate in certain cases. This one other post I found has Pikachu as "sowelo", roughly translating to "yellow creature." This is like, fair as a choice, but the name Pikachu is a very iconic one, and if somebody were actually playing a tokiponized Pokemon game, they would instantly recognize this yellow creature. Pikasu just seems like the natural fit, considering it hasn't been localized into anything else. Plus, it lets you set up Pikasuli (suli meaning big) as the name for Raichu. But then we get into much thornier territory when we ask that about literally any Pokemon that isn't Pikachu. There are many other Pokemon that have preserved their original name across localizations. Like, all of the various Pika-clones to show up throughout the series, like Pachirisu and Togedemaru, kept their Japanese name in an attempt to capture the same Pikachu spark. Should they have their names tokiponized as Pasilisu and Toketemalu?

I guess this brings us into a deeper question of the distinction between a Pokemon name being the name of an animal, like a pigeon or a mouse, versus the name of a character/mythological figure, like a Phoenix, Tsuchinoko, or Bigfoot. For example, the legendary Lugia is called that in all languages, but its counterpart Ho-oh is named differently in Korean and Chinese to match those cultures' mythological birds. The Treasures of Ruin have Chinese names (despite them being different in both pronunciation and order across different localizations) and the fact the names are in Chinese and they're part of a quartet indicates legendary status. Except in China, where it doesn't, so they added 古, meaning ancient, to the start of each name. So the question for a Tokiponist is, how do you convey a Pokemon's legendary status through naming structure alone? I genuinely don't know, but I have a few ideas. Perhaps adding suli meaning important or majuna meaning ancient (I know majuna isn't in the original Toki Pona book, but it is in the official dictionary) could convey that status handily. Let me know what you think.

Lastly, wordplay! This is a kind of fun with language that should be preserved. Of course I'm going to translate Ekans as Iseka, the word for reptile backwards. Of course Girafarig is gonna be Nenanen, the palindromic version of nena meaning bump, and its evolution Farigiraf as Anenena. You've gotta be able to preserve the silliness too. Anyway I'm bad at coming up with normal creature names so that's gonna be it for me

#Pokemon #Toki Pona

[sincerely-sofie]

Sorry if this has no relation with your pmd series ( that I find very cool btw !!! You put so much passion onto your writing/art it's inspirational,, ) but out of curiosity have you ever designed a fakemon ?

Thanks for your kind words, and no worries! My inbox is open to all kinds of asks :>

I have oodles of fakemon concepts written down because I like to daydream about making my own game that’s similar to pokemon. However, I haven’t ever drawn many of them— it was in the last few of months that I actually drew some pen sketches of a few ideas!

Some notes on a few of these first-pass designs:

Waterprowl (the honchkrow-lookalike heron in the upper right) would be a water/dark-type that hunts by using its wings to make shadows over water to conceal their presence, like real herons do. It has three evolutionary stages— it starts out as a generic chick fakemon that wears part of its eggshell on its head as a hat and is a reference to “bad eggs”, then a fledgling crow-looking fakemon that sneaks around in the shadows and pulls other fakemons’ tails.

Munchbowl (the trick-or-treat pail thing that’s running in the upper middle) is a cauldron steel-type that changes its secondary typing based on what the last berry it consumed was. It doesn’t evolve.

Stitchcraft (the patchwork witchy gremlin in the lower middle) would be a fairy-type that uses a needle with thread looped through it as a wand to cast spells that allow it to control the fabric of the universe.

Bomboardier (the cartoon bomb pig with an eyepatch) is my baby and I love its little curly fuse tail.

I’ve also got a lot of other concepts that I haven’t drawn yet, with some of my favorites being:

An ice-type lion with a snowflake for a mane.

A line of three ducklings that are always squabbling about who gets to be the leader and evolves into a three-headed goose hydra called “dukduktruce” akin to dodrio.

A sea slug that evolves into a sea butterfly.

A living geode that is shy and appears to be only a rock before it opens up more as it evolves with various levels of high friendship and becomes extremely loyal to those who saw its inner beauty before it flaunted all its stunning crystals.

A decks of cards that has an ability that randomly changes its form and appearance to a different face card when it enters battle.

A wriggly baby bug based on a mosquito nymph that has a gender-split evolution into aggressive, high attack stat females and docile, high speed stat males.

A ghost/grass-type pair of fakemon akin illumise and volbeat called Booquet and Corpsage.

A creepy ghost-type that communicates via charades called Phantomime.

#stuff by sofie #fakemon #fakemon art #fakemon ideas #sofie answers asks

[talenlee]

The Gliscor In A Coal Mine

Gunna talk about Smogon here. Oh, you don’t know Smogon?

Weeeeell, deep breath.

Smogon is a Pokemon fangame played with the basic components of the videogame series Pokemon, which is itself, made by Game Freak and distributed by Nintendo, which you’ll probably recognise as one of the largest privately held companies in the world. Smogon, by contrast, are a forum and some emulators and a surprisingly dense little bubble of Youtube content.

‘Smogon’ in this context refers to a bunch of related games, that form a single fandom game, a folk game. They have, in the terminology I’m fond of using, made a game out of another game, which is a super cool practice I actively encourage. It’s how we get great things like, for example, the entire Legacy subgenre of games, from its dizzying heights of Pandemic Legacy Season 1 to the shocking lows of Pandemic Legacy Any Other Seasons. I like Smogon as a thing to observe through some sort of astrolabe or other technical device. I have no particular interest in engaging with the game itself, as they play it.

I don’t want to get into a play space with these people.

Not because they’re bad or anything, though they are overwhelmingly split between the still-thinks-he’s-on-4chan shithead vs autistic trans girl social binary of internet niches and you’re never sure what side that coin is landing on when you flip it. I don’t want to partake of Smogon because the game they’re playing looks unpleasant to me to play, and because part of Being Into Smogon means looking around at the game Smogon has made and thinking: Yeah, this works. This is a good system.

The current news out of Smogon, such as it is, is that in their OU format (short for ‘overused’), just banned the Pokemon Gliscor. Gliscor is redacted information that doesn’t matter, because you don’t need to know what Gliscor is to come to understand the problem that Gliscor highlights, and the lesson you can learn about making games and control over those games.

Smogon’s banning policy reflects a truth I espouse as a game designer: Players are great at identifying problems and terrible at solving them.

Pokemon as it’s balanced and released and supported and played by GameFreak is, competitively balanced for 2v2, 4-of-6 teams, with information openly available to players through previews. This has some odd knock-on effects, like poor Zoroark kinda got pooched when they make this information public, but whatever, there are more Pokemon than that that aren’t really for playing. This is a kind of game I think of as a ‘pool game’ – the game is built ostensibly around a pool of potential pieces, and you choose which pieces you use and how. Magic: The Gathering is a pool game, Pokemon is a pool game, and even games like Dominion are pool games, because the game pieces that are in the game at the start of each contest are determined by choices outside the game.

In the official tournament context, when it comes to limiting access to Pokemon, there are ‘mythical’ pokemon where you can only have one (or two, depending on the regulation) from that category on your team. The game is broadly speaking open, where almost anything in that pool is available for use. Now, it’s hard to dig into this for hard numbers, because the pool has a lot of stuff in it that isn’t really expected to be played competitively. There are Pokemon who exist for, most likely, their place in a single-player RPG experience, like most first and second form evolutions, and some that exist as more world content. Think Unown and male Combee. Of the pool available, that means you’re looking a pool of, like, around 1,021 Pokemon, you can’t act as if all of those are going to find a place in a competitive head-to-head environment.

The stat site Pikalytics gives us numbers of about 310 Pokemon that showed up at all, and in that space, 37 Pokemon were not allowed. Some of them weren’t allowed because there’s no way to access them, but Game Freak get to make those choices and Smogon doesn’t. Now, that 310 number is a really broad net, and it’s just the stats from one tournament with over 700 players. In that space, two or three people bringing along something for a laff are going to make it show up. And if we say, limit ourselves to anything that had at least 5 people bring it (so, a representation of .71%), that gives us a list of 75 Pokemon that showed up in the tournament. And the stats aren’t telling the whole story just like that — after all, two of the most common Pokemon, Iron Hands and Flutter Mane, were played on 50% of teams.

That’s the metagame for an official tournament, broadly speaking; the full pool is somewhere around 310 Pokemon, but the core of the pool is much smaller. And importantly, when I say there are ’37 Pokemon that were not allowed,’ these are Pokemon who are very specifically set aside by the game experience and with related traits indicating that they are not for typical tournament play. You never could play with them in this format, they are not appearing and disappearing based on feedback.

Smogon doesn’t have tournament-to-tournament kind of environment like this; they instead have a tiered tournament system which cares about usage and then cultivates that usage. What his means is that the Pokemon are divided into groupings described by, well, how often they’re used. That means the main, core space, at least according to the Smogon people I spoke to about it, is ‘OU,’ for Overused. Overused is a 1v1 format. At the moment, there are 31 Pokemon legal in Overused. You can use Pokemon from a lower tier in this tier, but it generally works out badly, because those Pokemon are not strong enough for this tier. There are 19 other Pokemon that were in this tier, but have been banned out of it, sent ‘up’ a tier to the category of ‘Ubers’ for being, well, too good. Ubers, for context, has about sixty two Pokemon in it.

That is, Smogon centralises its design space around 31 Pokemon, and only after kicking 19 of them out.

In the announcement banning Gliscor from their format, there were people calling for bans to Sneasler, Samurott-Hisui and Gholdengo. That would bring it up to 22/29, which feels unpleasantly close to half the format being banned. Even at 19/31, that’s essentially 2/5th of the format banned. And when you dig into this situation, you wind up chasing details that can’t address the whole problem:

Gliscor was too powerful at setting hazards and being hard to kill.”

“Well, why was it hard to kill?”

“Because it could heal from lots of small hits.”

“Well why not hit it very hard with a big hit, since it has a 4x weakness?”

“Well nothing in the tier can hit it hard enough.”

“Well, why don’t you bring up something from a lower tier that could do that?”

“Well nothing in that tier is good enough.”

“Well why aren’t there good ice types in this tier?”

“Well we banned the one that hits really hard.”

“Why did you do that?”

“It was too good at hitting things very hard.

And like, this whole conversation is is continuing to diagnose problem after problem after problem, but never finding anything that solves those problems. Because Gliscor being banned resulted in people talking about how now, there were more problems that had to be fixed.

A lot of this is the peculiarities of what Smogon does and doesn’t allow. For example, hazards are so important because everything in Smogon is expected to swap out constantly, and hazards make that hard to endure over time, meaning that hazards pull the game towards an end state. This swapping out constantly makes some statuses pointless (like confuse) and a lot of setup moves pointless too. It means that multiple sequences of turns can happen where players don’t attack one another because they’re just swapping back and forth to jockey into position. There are whole move types that are banned (baton pass and evasion boosters), because if you didn’t, people would use them. They had to institute a 1,000 turn timer on games because some tournament games ran that far without anyone actually winning the game.

What if those 19 Pokemon were just left as it is? You got rid of the Evasion rules and the banned moves and just let the game settle, as it is, on what people can do, in that space, and see how it works. I’m told it becomes a pretty simple game where everyone does the same thing of trying to get an angry fish into play with baton pass and kill your opponent. This is apparently a bad thing, where by banning a bunch of strategies the format is instead facing a situation where the’re almost halfway through banning the entire tier, to try and capture a way the game ‘should’ be. It seems to me the point of a usage-based tiering system means that if one tier sucks, everyone leaves that tier and recognises that the Pokemon in that space push a style most of the people there don’t like, and instead they go on to play in other tiers, like Underused. The best stuff gets pressurised out of it, pushed up and out into that rarified atmosphere by the math and social pressure of the natural churn of the system, right?

Right?

But they don’t.

They want to play OU.

And they want OU to be the ‘main’ format.

There are two competing challenges here, for me. The first is that Smogon can’t actually add anything to the game. They see their place as having to exclude things. I get this problem, kinda because ostensibly, they want their version of the game to be a thing you can play ‘on hardware’ rather than through their emulator. This ‘on hardware’ play therefore can’t actually add anything or overlay new rules, like, for example, adjusting the stats of Pokemon, or instituting score-based team building or even elimination drafts. And you don’t get to go ‘hey, that’s really obnoxious or hard to do,’ because Smogon’s ruleset is not easily processed or parsed, and it is not welcoming.

The second thing is that Smogon’s process for changing the game is their idea of democratic. It’s voted on by experts who can identify the problems and supposedly make good choices going forward. This means these people need to be socially active and engaged in the forum place and capable of earning respect within the competitive and social environment that represents which, let me tell you, that’s a worrying place.

And the thing is, this is all being done with an assumption that they’re trying to carve away what’s ‘wrong’ with the format to find the right version of it. On the one hand, yeah, that’s cool, they’re making a game out of another game. On the other hand…

Says who?

They use terms like ‘noncompetitive’ and ‘unskilled’ to refer to when a strategy can present a player with an abrupt choice and if they choose wrong they’re at a disadvantage, as if games with sharp swings aren’t competitive games that require skill. The language has the familiar structure of designers discussing problems with games but without the fundamental idea of being able to actually change it. Much like Smash players who try to remove variance from a game built around it, Smogon is trying to take something designed to get out of hand with crits and failure chances and make it fit something else.

Famously, new ideas and new mechanics get introduced and Smogon tries to route around them, to preserve the way things were in earlier generations rather than adjust to what the new generation is doing. Back in Generation 8 of Pokemon, Smogon just straight up banned Dynamax entirely; a mechanic that meant any pokemon could have a big bulky tank mode for a short period of time and punch through protects. That meant they played the entire format without access to a mechanic the main game was balanced around. Anyone who played Smogon exclusively through all the years of Generation 8 is someone who has no idea what a core mechanic of that game does to the game based on their play experience.

When Gliscor went, in that same announcement, people were bringing up, again, that they need to ban Terastallize, for the whole duration of the generation. Because the current format and game’s defining special rule is something they want to ignore, which just further builds on the idea that they don’t want Scarlet Violet OU. They don’t want the Pokemon that would bubble to the top of those usage stats so they could select where else they’d rather play. The only tool is shrinking the game… and it just so happens that it means that each generation kind of slowly but surely winds up looking a lot like the previous ones. They don’t want this ‘Pokemon’ game interfering with their game. And they don’t want to take measures to address these problems,because whatever they’re aiming at, it has to be socially agreed upon, voted upon, enforced by bans only, and only validated by vibes.

It’s all said with the selfseriousness of people sitting on the sofa glaring at the TV that they know what the game ‘should’ be and not considering what the game is. Which is fair! They’re making up their own game out of this other game, after all, and that game could kick ass! It doesn’t look like it, it looks like a rat’s nest of rules corner cases, with a stone-faced defensiveness that suggests newcomers have to Get Good and Do The Readings, and if you’re not involved, you should not dare comment on their game. Any opinion about their game must show due deference, even if it’s just recognising that it exists. An absence of praise is a presence of violence.

It’s very funny when they complain about Gamefreak’s decisions, mind you. Gamefreak’s game is one of the most successful multimedia franchises in the world and Smogon is a forum for a few hundred very sweaty dorks. Like, yeah, I don’t think Gamefreak are thinking about you when they make their choices about how to continue ongoing engagement with their multinational game empire. Which isn’t to say their game is better, the game you play is the game you want to play, but acting as if ‘Gamefreak doesn’t know what they’re doing’ – they do. They aren’t caring about you and the way you play the game, and haven’t for like… fifteen years? Your game isn’t unbalanced because Gamefreak are stupid, your game is unbalanced because you’re playing in the space Gamefreak is explicitly not balancing.

But okay, let’s look at what I said up top: Players are great at identifying problems and terrible at solving them.

These players are able to identify the problems they’re having. They don’t want to play doubles, and the singles game is balanced around a kind of play they don’t like. And when you’re dealing with playtesting of your own game, you need to be able to listen to this kind of thing and accept it as entirely neutral and entirely correct feedback. Players might lie to you about how they feel but you should always trust it anyway. They have identified a problem.

As it stands, right now, Smogon’s only tool they consider acceptable for changing this game is to take things away from it, and for the process of doing those changes being entirely social, and ostensibly democratic, with a real ‘well, if you didn’t vote, you don’t matter’ kind of approach to that.

And this is what you get.

Gliscor was used in somewhere between five and one teams in the Pikalytics, by the way.

Check it out on PRESS.exe to see it with images and links!

#pokemon #smogon #Games

[pokesmashorpokepass]

Gen V, Complete!

Hooray! We've taken, shall we say, a full smash census of the Unova Region's most smashable Pokemon!

As such, let us proceed with the customary look at this generations...

Sultans of Smash!

(Which, as I'm sure y'all are aware of by now, is just a fancy way of saying they got more "Smash" than "Pass" votes.)

So let's not delay further, how about we see what Gen V has to offer? Our Smashables are (under the Read More because oh man, as per usual, this gonna take a while):

1. Oh hey, looks like we're back to starting with the Grass Starter! But really, I shouldn't be too surprised, since said Grass Starter is the imposing yet regal Serperior! At 72.9% Smashable we're starting Unova off strong with a Pokemon of such noble bearing we can't help but stand at attention in the face of such a glare.

2. And next on the list, we have our Fire Starter, Emboar! With plenty to love, a charming hot-bloodedness, and a warmth both physical and emotional, it's easy to see how they earned that 68.9% Smash rating!

3. Samurai have always had a certain romance about them, not to dissimilar to the romances of European knights. And with our Water Starter, Samurott, we can see this romance (or at least a kind of romance) is alive and well! Whether it's Unovan Samurott's resemblance to a more standard samurai (and 60.1% Smash rating) or the more black knight/ronin-esque Hisuian variant (and said variant's 70.9% rating), it's clear many will be romantically interested in this samurai.

4. Seems Weavile isn't the only thief to take hearts, because we have the very literal cat burglar Liepard sneaking their way into the Sultans of Smash! As that 64.2% Smash rating demonstrates, this cat has more than just razor sharp claws in their arsenal of tools.

5. Like a bolt from the blue, it's time for the Reaper Rev- Wait, wrong series. But, incorrect references aside, our next entry does make their way onto the list from out of the blue! Zebstrika, everyone's favorite zapping zebra, has charged their way onto the list with a 55.4% Smash rating!

6. Our next entrant, I dunno what I can say about them, other than the fact that I really had to force myself to put in that "I dunno" part in the beginning there because in nearly every language, their name is a pun that means being unsure if you know the answer to a question! As you can probably guess from that, it's Audino! Not hard to see how they got here, they're cute! They're lovable! They help at Pokemon Centers! They have a 56.5% Smash rating! And, they have a Mega Evolution with a strong 67.7% rating! What can I say, everyone loves the healer! (Well the reasonable people do.)

7. You guys have a thing for parental figures, don't y'all? Why do I ask? Because next on the list we have Leavanny, the Nurturing Pokemon! With a 71.2% Smash rating, I reiterate on my point that y'all seem to have a thing for more parent-like Pokemon. Although... I suppose, considering Leavanny's habit of making plants into wearable accessories and clothes, Leavanny has the benefit of being the most likely Pokemon to make you a flower crown! And I gotta admit, hard not to appreciate a gesture like that.

8. This next one, some of y'all seemed surprised about! But me? I saw them coming a mile away, I have seen my fair share of people gushing about this Pokemon! Who is it? Why, it's none other than Scolipede! Just shy of the 70% mark with a still-majorly-impressive 69.9% Smash rating, looks like this massive bug's cool looks have attracted more than you'd think!

9. Nobility takes many forms, as seen by our next Sultan's two forms! But no matter what form Lilligant takes, her elegance and grace are evident! Whether it's the more princess like Unovan Lilligant (67.7% Smash rating) or the more sporty and athletic Hisuian Lilligant (68.7% Smash rating), the beauty of this noble flower cannot be denied.

10. Oh hey, a middle evolution! Haven't seen one of these in a while! All said though I am not surprised. Have you ever heard the expression "Girls want bad boys"? Because even though not all of y'all are women and not all Krokoroks are dudes, I think that same principal still applies! If nothing else, that 52.4% Smash rating seems to indicate something!

11. But obviously, the badder the dude, the more people want them. This is definitely real science, look we have Krookodile to prove it! They're basically the baddest crocodile ever, and they've got a solid 64.8% Smash rating to back up the conclusion!

12. When exploring the Relic Castle, one must beware any sarcophagus they see, for it may actually be a Cofagrifus! At least, I say beware, but judging by that 55.5% Smash rating, I suspect many of y'all would respond to my warning with a hearty "Don't threaten me with a good time!" And to each their own, but I'd just like to say maybe catch them first so the smashing can be done much more safely?

13. This next Pokemon may be a master of illusions, but you know what isn't illusory? Everyone's love for them! That's right, it's the Pokemon I personally was most looking forward to, Zoroark! And Oh Boy, they pulled Some Numbers, both Unovan and Hisuian alike. Coming in at a whopping 84.5% Smash and an equally impressive 84.2% Smash respectively, I'm glad to report that these two have dethroned previous record holder Hisuian Typhlosion within the vaunted ranks of the Gods of Smash! And yes, I'm counting them together as co-holders of the record. The percentages are so close I'm convinced the difference in numbers is pretty much just because they got different numbers of votes. Yes, it seems Zoroark's popularity from back when Gen V was young never really waned.

14. Anyways, coming down from the high of our new Gods of Smash, we find ourselves in the presence of the lovely Cinccino and her classy feather boa-esque fur! Coming in at a 51.5% Smash rating, seems this chinchilla cleans up quite nicely.

15. So many people love goth fashion, which is understandable as that shit rules. So it's probably no surprise that Gothitelle, who may as well be called the Goth Pokemon, managed to get a 61.9% Smash rating! They don't seem surprised either, they probably foresaw it with their powers...

16. I'm gonna be honest, I've genuinely got nothing for this one, they came out of left field for me. Reuniclus and their 50.9% Smash rating! I mean, considering they're a kind of slime creature maybe I shouldn't be too surprised (I've seen some very risque slime people art), and yet somehow I am.

17. People do love a majestic stag. Their great antlers, their graceful form and movements, some even consider them an embodiment of nature itself. So it's kinda fitting on multiple ends that our next Sultan is Sawsbuck, the embodiment of the seasons! Pulling a 56.3% rating in Spring Form, a 53.7% rating in Summer Form, a 60.3% rating in Autumn Form, and a 63.2% rating in Winter Form, Sawsbuck has something for any enjoyer of any season (Especially the colder season fans it seems).

18. On next Sultan, I must say there's a lot to appreciate. Their Typing paired with Levitate, their sucker-shaped mouth having many applications for smashing, the electricity for those of y'all into that, they have it all. Yes, it's true, Eelektross has made it into the Sultans of Smash with a 51.9% Smash rating! I'd call it shocking, but the only thing shocking here is their type. It's a shame Eelektross doesn't have any bioluminescence though, imagine the pun! (If they lit up they'd be a Lamprey! *Ba-Dum-Tss*)

19. Swinging onto the list with all the subtlety of a battleaxe, it's Haxorus! Packing some very nice armor, a head like a fine axe, and a 59.6% Smash rating, this dragon warrior is primed for more than battle!

20. When they say everybody was kung-fu fighting, what they don't tell you is everybody was doing it in hopes of impressing this next Sultan of Smash. Mienshao, the next entry on our list, showcases the power and skill of a martial artist to great effect, earning themselves a 70.5% Smash rating! By the way, did you know smashing is actually a decent form of exercise? So you know, you could call it "Training" and technically not be incorrect!

21. It's official: You dig Giant Robots, I dig Giant Robots, We dig Giant Robots! How do I know? Because of this next Pokemon, Golurk! But with Golurk being that big it's only fair their heart is sized to match. And at a 51.3% Smash rating, it's clear this Golurk isn't just for show.

22. Everybody crazy about a Sharp Dressed Man, so of course it stands to reason that Bisharp would make the list! Ranking at a 53.6% Smash rating, it’s obvious Bisharp is the Sharpest Dressed Pokemon of all.

23. Normally, with this Pokemon, there's a certain image that comes with saying they eat everything. But for many of y'all, I think Hydreigon's gonna be doing a different kind of eating. But hey, three mouths! That 61.5% Smash rating agrees with me there.

24. This next one, holy shit I actually had to keep checking over the poll period because this is the closest to a tie we've had since Persian! But it seems the sun has finally risen on this one's victory... Wait, that's not the sun, it's said victor, Volcarona! Coming in with a 50.2% Smash rating! Their smashability shines as brightly as they do, it seems.

25. With steely gaze, a heart of justice, and several literary references to The Three Musketeers, We move on to our first Gen V Legendary, Cobalion! Achieving a 50.4% Smash rating, Cobalion surely has some of the romance of the Original Three Musketeers in them.

26. But if you know The Three Musketeers, you likely know Athos (whom Cobalion is the closest equivalent to) was never the lady killer of the group. Who was, the uninitiated among you may ask? Well, that would be Aramis, whom Virizion stands in for! And indeed, Virizion seems to have definitely inherited the casanova trait from their literary inspiration, if that impressive 62% Smash rating is any indication!

27. And with this next one, the truth is obvious: Reshiram is Smashable! 69.9% Smashable, to be precise! But it's no surprise, this white dragon has much to offer, such as luxurious fur and a willingness to stand by their partner! Also this official trading card that gives them Bishōnen vibes.

28. But we can't have just Reshiram, we need to have their counterpart so as to maintain an ideal balance! Thankfully, we do! Zekrom has also made the list with a fine 68.4% Smash rating! Thus we do have both Yin and Yang here in the Sultans.

29. Did you know there's a term for a void of sorts relating to yin and yang? It's wuji, an absence of either element. And boy howdy do we have a Pokemon for that in Kyurem! That said, Kyurem is another case of "Only the Alternate Forms make it in". White Kyurem gets in with a 56.3% Smash rating, and Black Kyurem gets in with a 52.7% Smash rating. Still, it's good to know there's at least one form of Kyurem that won't leave you with a void in your heart.

30. And last but certainly not least, we have the final Sultan of Smash in Gen V, Meloetta the Mythical Muse! She dances! She Sings! She achieves a 66% Smash rating in Aria Forme and a 61.3% Smash rating in Pirouette Forme! She does it all for the joy of the people. Though we do still have one question regarding Meloetta... Will they ever bring back the mentions of her supposed red shoes she was mentioned to have lost in Gen V? We may never know...

And so, it is time to close the book on the Gen V Who's Who of Smashing. Having brought ourselves to an impressive total of 118 Sultans of Smash, I must say to keep a close eye on this blog, because Gen VI's list will hit sooner than you think!

#pokemon #pokémon #smash or pass #summary #The Pokemon Sultans of Smash

[princess-of-the-corner]

Okay fuck it. The Discord has helped me make a new AU.

BNHA!Pokemon but this time it's Mystery Dungeon! So they're actual Pokemon instead of just trainers with Pokemon.

It actually works really well because like. Heroes = Explorers. Hero Agencies = Guilds. So on and so forth. UA is basically a training Guild for new Explorers to learn the ropes.

Uh. So who is what Pokemon? Fuck we're gonna get complicated.

One thing of note is that all the kids are first stage Evolutions because ya know. Baby. They're probably going to evolve over the course of the series but I'll list where they start

Izuku - combining the original pokemon au's thing of Izuku not realizing what Legendaries are and the monster au's Changeling thing. Izuku is a Mew that thinks he's a Shaymin. Kind of a 'Mewthree' actually? Long story we'll come back to it.

Katsuki - Riolu (it evolves with FRIENDSHIP just fuckin kill me!)

Ochako - Cleffa! Cute round pink motherfucker from space!

Kirishima - Sandshrew (technically ground not rock but I have a reason and it's a VIBE)

Kaminari - Pichu(BABY PLEASE)

Jiro - Noibat

Tsu - Froakie

Aoyama - Staryu

Fumikage - Murkrow

Hagakure - Kecleon

Sero - Spinark

Ojiro - Aipom

Sato - Milcrey (but like. Big.)

Momo - Eevee(unsure on later Eeveelution)

Himiko - Zorua

Mei - Tinkaton

Tetsutetsu - Alolan Sandshrew(matches with Kiri because siblings but steel type!)

Monoma - Smeargle

All Might - Palafin (Come on it's PERFECT)

Recovery Girl - Blissey

Present Mic - Chatot (LOOK I CAN'T NOT)

Nezu - Ironically, he's the random Human who got yeeted into this mess

Midnight - Slazzle

Cemetoss - Conkeldurr

Power Loader - Exadrill

-

Before we circle back to Izuku's nonsense let's talk about the Todoroki Family!

Enji is an Incineroar! Rei is an Alolan Ninetails!

Toya is a Kantonian Ninetails but he got the Alolan's Snow Cloak ability.

Natsuo is the opposite, being Alolan but with Flash Fire.

Fuyumi is full Alola

Shoto is still a chimera so both Kanto and Alola.

-

Now we circle back to Izuku's fuckery!

So like. We're kinda rolling with the fact that the Mystery Dungeon games happen post-Human Apocalypse? (possibly using the events of Detective Pikachu as how that happened?)

Which leads to having AfO being a very old and VERY pissed off Mewtwo.

Part of what he was doing was kind of a cycle of bullshit that involved trying to recreate himself/recreate the original Mew. Which resulted in Izuku being made.

Izuku is unaware of this, as he escaped pretty soon after waking up(probs teleported his ass out lmao). He's lost and confused and his instincts have him use Transform to turn into the nearest other Pokemon, which happens to be Inko who is a Shaymin. Inko thinks she just happened across an abandoned hatchling and goes 'well my baby now!'.

There really isn't a direct translation for being Quirkless with Izuku. I think the best thing would be that since he's not actually a Shaymin and isn't aware he can use transform, Gracidea Flowers have no affect on him. So he gets a bit othered for being a little fucky in that regard. But it's not quite the same.

#bnha mystery dungeon au

[typescrambledex]

What is your favorite of the new pokemon?

I waited until I beat the game to answer this since I hadn't completed it yet, but now that I have (Obviously, spoilers under the readmore)

I can't 100% pick a favorite so you're just getting a list of ones I feel stand out.

>Skeledirge, Fuecoco's final evo, is pretty solid.

>Dudunsparce is perfect. It's exactly what I wanted a Dunsparce evolution to be.

>Nymble and Lokix, Lokix especially, might be my top favorite of the gen. I've waited so long for a grasshopper Pokemon and it delivers.

>Greavard and Houndstone. I was so afraid Greavard's evolution was gonna pull of Boltund and lose all of its interesting features but little did I know it would get GNARLIER it's so cool.

>Farigiraf, mostly appreciating that it's not the predictable "Tail-head gets bigger" kind of evo.

>Revavroom is funny and neat, I mostly just wish they gave it a more interesting body than just "car-shaped stone".

>Cetitan really harkens back to Pokemon's early days of "Make up a creature vaguely based on a real-life animal" in a way I really like.

>Glimmet and Glimmora are other contenders for my #1 fave this gen. Their designs are interesting in how inorganic they are, in the sense that they really look like sentient minerals. But also looking a bit like sea-floor life is such a neat idea for a cave-dwelling creature.

>Brambleghast is another Pokemon that's based on something I've wanted in Pokemon for so long, as a tumbleweed. And it doing its best jack-o-lantern impression is wonderful.

>Slither Wing, Volcarona's prehistoric ancestor, is a cool take on Volcarona and it's super neato that we get a flightless moth Pokemon. (Those are actually a thing!)

>Wo-Chien has got to be one of the coolest Legendaries to date.

>Tinkaton is simple, but it's hard to go wrong with "Girl with giant weapon."

>Ceruledge is entirely too extra. It's like a Mega Man Zero boss or Net Navi or Black Ace from Star Force 3 escaped Capcom HQ and snuck into a Pokemon game. And I love every second of it.

>Another contender for #1 is the convergent critter for Tentacool/Tentacruel, Toedscool and Toedscruel. Like, a woodear fungus with long, noodly legs built like Tentacool/Tentacruel has got to be one of the more absurd concepts in the series. Helped all the more when its design also calls Japanese Octopi-Aliens to mind.

Damn good gen.

#Asks #Not Art #Pokemon Spoilers #Scarlet and Violet Spoilers #Pokemon Scarlet and Violet

[bootstrapparadoxed]

creative works & links

AO3 - Ko-Fi - YouTube - Patreon

Video Essays

"Science Has an Accountability Problem | Dumpster Fire Data"

Do you know how many researchers anonymously admit to fabricating data? The answer is not a number of individuals, it is a percentage. As scientists, we like to believe that we are the pinnacle of accuracy, honesty, and accountability. In reality, we are no different from any other human, just as capable of making mistakes. And it’s time to fully admit to that. Welcome to Dumpster Fire Data, a series in which I analyze the hell out of crumbling institutions.

“Representation DIY: What Headcanons Can Teach You About Autism”

On why representation of minority groups in fiction has such a powerful influence, why I prefer headcanon autistic characters over canon examples, and how headcanon discussions can improve the public dialogue and be an additional push for better diverse media.

“Night in the Woods: Cosmic Horror and Optimistic Nihilism”

An exploration of themes and narrative threads of “Night in the Woods” through the eyes of an exhausted Gen Z anarchist. On the terrifying world that young adults of today were born into and how it affected us, the two ways in which NiTW explores cosmic horror, why humans always look for stories, patterns, and meaning, and whether you can be sane and happy without meaning altogether. 

“Disability and Capitalism” 2-parter

A deep dive into the intertwined history of ableism and the capitalist economy, starting from the dawn of humanity and ending with a hopeful look into the future. Featuring a shitton of citations/research and generously sprinkled with science fiction.

“Squid Game and the Gamefication of Capitalism”

"Squid Game" is a South Korean survival drama that explores themes of class disparity and inequality with a Hunger Games-esque, thrilling plotline. Is the reality show / video game aesthetic of Squid Game just another compelling visual element, or an additional metaphor?

"Is Phylogenetics a Proper Science?"

Birds are dinosaurs, whales are cousins of cows, and fishes do not exist – these are the kind of things you learn in phylogenetics lectures as a biology undergrad. I have compartmentalized this knowledge in my head for years without giving it a second thought. Then, I fell down a rabbit whole of weird philosophy of science papers, and it broke my brain a little.

"Pokemon Evolutions Are Real... Kind Of"

More people have probably heard the word "evolution" in a pokemon game than in a high school biology class. And they aren't even actually evolving, they're going through metamorphosis. Probably. Well…

Published Fiction

Short Story: "Satisfied", cyberpunk horror, in HyphenPunk Magazine Issue 7

Selected Fanfiction

One Septendecillion Brass Doorknobs: AO3 - Royalroad - Rebloggable Link

Dirk Gently’s Holistic Detective Agency S3 as a full novel length (82k words) fic written in my best attempt at the style of Douglas Adams

where fire and ice collide: AO3 

30k long/novella length doctor who and good omens crossover with Tenth and Rose and all the GO characters; mostly focused on the mystery/adventure plotline but it also has tenrose and ineffable husbands tones in the mix

when it’s time: AO3

good omens 20k ineffible husbands slowburn. you know the cold open of E3? it’s 20k more of it. with mutual pining and angst and an eventual happy ending

#video essay #youtube essay #writeblr #bookblr #fanfiction

[bethanythebogwitch]

Welcome to the final instalment of my series where I discuss the origins of every fish Pokemon. Today I’ll be covering gen IX. For previous generations see here: gens I-II, gens III-IV, gens V-VI, and gens VII-VIII.

People criticize Paldea for having too many birds and dogs, but I haven’t seen people talking about how many fish it has. I bring this up because Paldea has a lot of new fish. Only Hoenn introduced more fish lines. The first Paldean fish is the Wiglett line, which is also the only new multi-stage line. In this case, the species name helpfully tells us what it’s based on: garden eels. These eels are famous for poking their heads out of the sediment while keeping most of their bodies in an underground burrow. Because they typically live in large colonies and look a bit like grass, a group of eels can look a lot like a patch of plants, hence the name. Garden eels are very shy and will retract into their burrows at any sign of danger. This behavior is shared with Wiglett, which will retract if it sees the player coming, forcing you to sneak attack it to battle.

(image: garden eels looking adorable)

Wugtrio follows the garden eel origin, but also incorporates some moray eel inspiration. Both Morays and Wugtrio lurk in holes in rocks and grab passing prey, dragging them in. The fact that both Pokémon are slimy enough to get the Gooey ability is likely a reference to hagfish. These jawless fish are famous for their defense tactic where they secrete large amounts of slime when threatened.

(image: somebody playing with hagfish slime)

Finally, Wugtrio’s red coloration may draw from the giant tube worms found around hydrothermal vents.

(image: giant tube chilling on a hydrothermal vent. Except not chilling because it's really hot there)

As one of the two convergent pokemon lines, the Wiglett line is an example of convergent evolution. This is when distinct groups of organisms evolve similar adaptations in response to similar selective pressures. A classic example of this is the flap of skin used for gliding known as a patagium that has evolved independently in flying squirrels (rodents), gliding possums (marsupials) and colugos (primate relatives). All three groups evolved the patagium to beter move between trees in their arboreal environments. In the case of Wiglett’s similarity to Diglett, the dex entries and official website helpfully tell us that the two species evolves similar body plans because they are both dedicated burrowers.

(image: a diagram showing an example of convergent evolution in sugar gliders and flying squirrels)

Veluza is based on hakes, specifically merluccid hakes. These are predatory fish in the same family as cod and haddock who are known for being indiscriminate predators of smaller fish. Fittingly, Veluza is pretty aggressive, chasing down the player whenever they get near one. Hake are pretty economically important in Spain, Paldea’s main real-world basis. The Spanish love their hake. Not only do more than half the hake sales in Europe go to Spain, Spain is also the world’s largest consumer of the fish.

(image, a silver hake)

Veluza having a prominent dorsal fin and what seems to be an anal fin followed by smaller triangular finlets reminds me pretty heavily of tuna, who are also very fast predators.

(image: a tuna's tail, showing the finlets)

Veluza also almost looks kind of mechanical, which makes me wonder if there’s some inspiration coming from torpedoes or submarines. Veluza’s habit of removing parts of its own flesh is an example of autotomy. This is when an animal will remove parts of its own body and is the basis for the pokemon move autotomize (which Veluza doesn’t get for whatever reason). Autotomy is mostly used for defense while Veluza uses it to increase its speed and offenses. In my very quick search I was unable to find any examples of fish that use autotomy, but the fact that the move that represents this in Veluza is called Fillet Away and the dex mentions how the shed flesh tastes, it’s pretty clearly another reference to how much the Spanish eat hake. In this case, it’s a fish that fillets itself for you.

I’m going to talk about Dondozo and Tatsugiri together as while they’re different lines, they’re linked to each other. Dondozo is a giant catfish, specifically a wels catfish, the largest freshwater fish in Europe. While not native to the Iberian peninsula, the species has been introduced there. Dondozo’s diet including bird Pokémon is a reference to how wels catfish will beach themselves to try to catch and eat birds.

(image: an absolute unit wels catfish with human for scale)

Something I can’t understate is that Dondozo is big. At a height (presumable length in this case) of 39’04”, Dondozo is the second largest non-legendary in the franchise and 3rd largest overall after Eternatus and Wailord. That’s whale shark sizes and dwarfs the beluga sturgeon. The largest freshwater fish in the world. The two largest non-legendary Pokémon being aquatic is true to real life, where animals in the water can get much bigger than animals on land. Nothing as big as a blue whale can exist on land because without the support that water gives, the animal’s own weight would crush it. This is why beaching is usually a death sentence for large whales. Of course it would be remiss of me to not mention that both Tatsugiri and Dondozo have a sushi theme. Dondozo is based on a sushi chef. It’s head frills look like the traditional sushi chef headband and its tongue looks like a sushi geta, the wooden bench sushi is commonly served on. The sushi theme is more prevalent with Tatsugiri, which looks like a piece of hand-shaped sushi.

(image: sushi nigiri)

The different forms and colors of Tatsugiri make different individuals look like different dishes. The different colors may reference koi, which could also explain its dragon typing. Koi, and carp in general, are often associated with dragons. Tatsugiri can use its fins like limbs and survive out of water, possibly referencing fish like lungfish and mudskippers, who can live out of the water. Dondozo and Tatsugiri have a mutualistic relationship, a type of symbiosis where both parties benefit. Tatsugiri is the brains to Dondozo’s brawn, giving instructions to the larger fish and acting as bait to lure in prey. This is a form of aggressive mimicry. Tatsugiri is stated to dwell in Dondozo’s mouth. This could reference two things. The first is mouth brooding, where a parent fish will keep its offspring inside its mouth to protect them. The second is cleaner fish, who can safely go into the mouth of larger predatory fish because of a mutualistic relationship with them.

(image: a mouth-brooding fish)

The final fish Pokémon so far and the only legendary fish is Chi-Yu. This adorable little malevolent monstrosity is based on a goldfish, or rather fire in the shape of a goldfish. Like the other Treasures of Ruin, its true body is the actual treasure, magatama beads in this case, while the rest of the body is gathered from the environment to support the treasure. Chi-Yu being born from envy and the jade beads being in place of the eyes makes it a very literal green-eyed monster. Chi-Yu and the Treasures of Ruin in general are based on the Four Perils, malevolent beings from Chinese mythology. The Treasures don’t map exactly to the Perils and the connection is stronger in some than others. For example, Ting-Lu is based on the Taotie, which is usually depicted on cauldrons, and it has a massive cauldron on its head. Chi-Yu is probably based on the Hundun, a faceless creature with 6 legs. Chi-Yu doesn’t have a proper face, just beads where eyes should be, and it has 6 fins on each side of its body. The Hundun also has wings and fins are kind of like wings I guess? Not related to Pokémon, but the Hundun appears in the Iron Widow, which is a book you absolutely should read.

(image: a depiction of a Hundun)

And with that, this series comes to a close, at least until we get Gen X. I may do something similar with other Pokémon based on aquatic creatures, but I haven’t decided yet. I may also discuss some of my own fakemon if anyone is interested.

#fish #fishblr #biology #zoology #animals #pokemon #pokemon biology #pokemon lore

[adobe-outdesign]

Bc I was just discussing this line w a friend and we strongly disagreed: thoughts on the remoraid line?

Remoraid is named after a remora, as emphasized by the name and its connection with Mantine... though oddly enough, it lacks the remora's iconic sucker fins. This is particularly strange considering that such fins would tie it into Octillery more (as octopuseseses also have suckers).

Regardless, Remoraid is fine, albeit a bit bland. The color is pleasant and there's nothing wrong with it objectively (though the "humped" back is a little strange), but there's not that much to make it stand out. This is likely because this is what the beta looked like:

That's right: Pokemon Gun(TM) edition was once real. The gun thing is still kind of in the final design—the stripes are the barrel grooves, the bottom fins are the trigger, etc.—but it's very subtle, to the point where you might not pick up on it at all unless its specifically pointed out.

There are elements of the final design that I think are better than the beta: the back fins look considerably more natural and make more sense for a living creature, for example. But at the end of the day, the theme isn't strong enough to make it stand out. Even just making it grey, keeping the mouth open, and giving it one bottom fin would've helped it read better without being as obvious with it. I get that they didn't want to have a gun in a children's game, but then why keep it in at all?

A lot of people think that Octillery is too "random" to work as an evolution, which is once again a side effect of the beta theming being lost. The original line was supposed to go gun -> tank:

And just like Remoraid, I feel like the loss of the theme leaves a fairly bland Pokemon behind. There's really not much that makes Octillery stand out compared to other cartoon Japanese octopuseseses; even Remoraid at least had a few small elements going for it.

I've heard some say that Remoraid to Octillery "doesn't make sense", which personally, I don't get; Pokemon is a series wherein a chick becomes a Man at the end of its line. There is a bit of a disconnect here, but that's just because of the lost theme and the two not having many visual connections to each other. If they were the same color, Remoraid had a rounder mouth shape to matter match Octillery's, and Octillery had stripes like Remoraid, they would fit together just fine. As is, the only real connection is the line on the face (though side note: I do like how it curls up into the eyelid a lot).

What I think this line could really use is a regional. While giving Remoraid a different regional evo is the obvious pick, even just giving the line a new theme and tweaking the designs in the process could help with coherency and memorability a lot. The final 'mons are so plain that you can take them in basically any direction and have it work perfectly. Give me like, a parasitic Remoraid that attaches to Mantine and then evolves into Octillery to wrap its tentacles around it for an easy meal or something.

Overall, neither Remoraid or Octillery have bad designs, but they both feel underwhelming due to the original themes from the beta being removed. There's a ton of potential with these two, so I hope GameFreak takes some time to revisit them in the future.

#remoraid #octillery #pokemon #pokemon reviews

[shoppncarticles]

The Minccino Family

So coming down from that high for a little, we’ve got the Normal-type Minccino. Eh, it’s fine as far as cutesy Normal types go. I’m sure someone’s happy to have a little chinchilla critter in the game, and I do enjoy its big ears and fluffy tail. Amusingly, Minccino is said to have an obsession with keeping things clean and hating filth. In the original Gen 5 games, it’s actually found in the exact same areas as Trubbish, making me wonder if the two have some sort of natural rivalry.

Minccino also, in an admittedly minor way, seems to parallel Pikachu somewhat, like Marill. It vaguely resembles Pikachu in silhouette, is based on another cute and popular rodent, and evolves with use of a special stone. It was also used frequently in marketing, even being guaranteed to be the first Pokemon you’ll see once you start your save file. Apparently, Minccino was actually designed as a parallel to Gen 1’s Clefairy rather than Pikachu, but that itself is kind of funny if you remember that Clefairy was originally supposed to be the series’ mascot rather than Pikachu.

Cinccino, Minccino’s evolution, is much like Clefable in that it’s just an evolution that looks like a bigger Minccino. I like the white bundles of fur it has, and how it looks like it’s got a fancy, thick scarf as well. That’s cute enough.

Score: 3/5

Cute

[Gen 5 Archive]

#pokemon #pokemon review #minccino #cinccino