Pokemon: So close...

Let me start off by saying I enjoyed Black and White. The characters and plot were the perfect reconstruction for the series, quelling all concerns people have of potential controversies that emerge in their world (Parents letting children run off, battling indoors, mistreatment of pokemon, ambitions of trainers). The pokemon were more enjoyable than I assumed, the animation worked for me, the theme is strong and shown well in the geography and pokemon, and Black's design is my personal favourite for a male character.

There are a few issues I have, but if I wasn't complaining then I wouldn't be here.

The big one I have is the legendary trio. As a concept, they're awesome. A reflection of each other, formed from one creature and broken apart when the owners started fighting. One hero chose truth, while the other chose ideals, and the creatures reflect these, while Kyurem is the remnants of the original.

The types and movesets work well in this concept too. Attacks that work specifically against the other, with their types themselves being different forms of energy, which Kyurem lacks (hence Ice).

But their classifications... No, I'm sorry, but it's only logical to give them to the other one.

When one represents burning ideals and the other represents shocking truth, you don't make the truth one fire and the ideals one lightning. You just don't! Reshiram has a smoother design, as you'd intend everything to be ideally. Zekrom's body and name are both rather harsh sounding, as the truth can be.

Then there's the refusal to call one of them canon. Even having two movies just so that both games are shown equally! We like to know some concrete canon, which is why the third game in the series has always done so well. The conflicting events of two games makes sense when they're gently merged in the third, as with Emerald and Platinum.

But instead, you add on another two games that follow the events of either game. Do I have to get white2 so the events of white are maintained? Why not just have one canon and make a sequel to that so everybody's on the same page?

The worst thing about this is N changes in the two versions. In one, he seeks Zekrom and in the other, he seeks Reshiram. Given his personality, he should seek Reshiram, but that only happens in White. And he seeks two different things in the two games (truth and ideals), which changes his opinion on what he does!

And lastly, Mandibuzz and Vullaby can't be even seen on White. This is an issue.

But other than that, good games : )

Posers and Geeks

Geeks have become cool. Well, I say that but actually we've always been cool. Never changed.

What I should say is the rest of society has recently realised how cool we are, given Harry Potter, Hunger Games, Avengers and the new heights of the console industry. This should be good, because we're super badass and bitches better recognise.

However, with every trend comes one downfall... Posers.

Those sheeple who don't actually care for the culture or have any of the actual intellect that you'd associate with the trend, but just want to be cool. When the trend is the Kardashians, hating the middle-east or being hipster, low intellect isn't too damaging to the image they create.

Geeks are not Kardashians, and we tend to have a rather strong knowledge and are very defensive about geek life. We will gallantly defend the English language and its many regulations against all those who spell it "Nurds". We will take the highest offence to someone who doesn't know the mastery that is Joss Whedon. We will facepalm to the point where all out hands reach the same point in the middle of the atlantic ocean after flying through out heads and give a collective high five of "you're a moron" if you wonder what E3 is.

And every last poser who puts on a pair of glasses frames, takes pictures of themselves, watches the Avengers movie and posts to facebook "I'm such a geek <3" is dragging our good name through the dirt!

You cannot call yourself a geek because you enjoy something popular. That's not how it works. You have to live that fandom. You have to frequently visit one of their fansites and read up on all background information and sequels, should any exist. I wont accept anyone claiming to be a nerd/geek around the time a good and slightly geeky thing comes to public eye until they have proven it to me.

How do you do that? State something that no average airheaded poser would know. Quote firefly, show me your replica lightsaber hilt, correct my pokemon knowledge. Generally do something where some normal person would look at you with a blank look and say "Wow, you are such a geek!" If that person has fake nails, then it doesn't count.

Also, wearing glasses doesn't make you a nerd. Knowing the diameter of the frames does.

You'd probably also own a micrometer. That definitely makes you a nerd.

A rather vague rant

My girlfriend (same one, long ass story) pointed out I did two Pokemon blogs in a row, even if the spacing of the row was massive. Therefore, I shall NOT do a Pokemon blog this time. This time, I shall merely rant due to the complainy mood I find myself in.

So, as several people know and even more could guess, I occasionally find myself doing... What's the word? I'll go with stuff. I do stuff.

Now, I'm a laid back person. I don't let the stuff get me down, so I do vital stuff and fun stuff so it doesn't pile up and nothing bad happens. While important stuff happens and people say I need to prepare for this stuff, I just make sure I know stuff and do the stuff as it happens, preventing me from becoming too stressed. It's worked out well for me so far.

This time of year, organic things do important stuff so they can do more fulfilling stuff at a different time. There's no problem here. The problem is there's suddenly an overflow of stuff where there previously wasn't any flow at all!!!

At a certain recurring classification of time, I have the bare minimum of stuff to do. I can do two shorter periods of time, then return to the location I class as my residence until the next time stuff occurs. Usually, I do more stuff after this so I feel productive before returning the the residence of mine.

I can no longer follow this schedule, however. Certain other stuff, while still practical, has turned up at an inopportune time-slot forcing me to remain in the location where stuff happens if I wish to stay ahead in some stuff and attend at all for the other stuff.

This would be fine, except this time-slot was planned by others as a time for preparing for the aforementioned important stuff. I know this is important, but if I understand the stuff, can't I simply do other stuff? I have more than one kind of stuff, and I need to cater to them all!

And the indignation I receive for being unavailable for your stuff due to other people's stuff doesn't help.

I know your stuff is still important, but if i'm going to be even half way competent at your stuff, there's other stuff I need to do as well, so don't feel offended if I'm not giving 20% of the 12% available time to your stuff. I have a girlfriend.

...Sorry, did I have a point going off that? Writing it made me think of my girlfriend and I got distracted...

/rant

Wow... I just started to think of her and suddenly I remembered that I will be fine and everything's alright. If she's with me, nothing's wrong and I can't get mad.

So if you think I'm wasting my time and should be revising 25/3GAJILLION!!! (a lot more than 24/7) then you can stuff yourself. I've got more important things to think about.

A request for Pokemon

A few things to point out. Yes, I know it's been months since the last update, but who really gives a nelson? (I don't know any Nelsons in my life, nor feel for a fictional nelson for that to have any real meaning. Substitute as you like) This is a request for the Anime, as the games are fine. Keep doing what you're doing, Gamefreak.

Pokemon as an Anime is interesting, as it's lasted for so long with some lovable characters and classic lines everyone can recite (team rocket's motto, the theme song, etc.) Over time, it has had some less than favourable moments (Tracy, Max, Tracy, the voice-changing, some inaccuracies in type recognition, Tracy, TRACY) but has remained a rather decent thing.

But there is something I strongly recommend. You can keep the anime going with its basic premise, but I have one thing I would like that might end up renewing the series indefinitely.

Let Ash leave the show.



Yeah. That's it. It's one of the few things that would be better without the main character, Twilight being another (different reason, though).

Ash is a monument to the original series and is such a staple you can't really remove him without losing the fanbase you started with. But changing everything else makes you lose the starter fanbase too, so why keep him around? We've grown to see him become an icon, but just keeping him there for the sheer fact there's a number of people that grew up with him is a little useless if we never see any resolution.

This is why I hate soap operas. You want to keep things going, but to do that, you must keep any resolution from emerging. But if the feature of Pokemon is the world and all the amazing creatures in it, why not switch the focus?

I think the Unova region should finish everything off. Ash competes in the Unova league, officially stating himself to be, say, sixteen? During these episodes, show a simple character, a boy of age ten, watching the matches in awe and finding a stray pokemon, which the boy treats with respect.

Over the episodes, you also see a culmination of Team Plasma's plan and the revelation that Ghetsis has made deals with Giovanni to have his goons treat pokemon horrendously on display in the contest so people will be more ready to give their own pokemon up, as Plasma recommends. Ghetsis and Giovanni, the only ones with any pokemon at all, then rule the world together.

Meanwhile, N convinces the team rocket trio we all love to help stop this madness, won over by the fact the talking Meowth is their friend and ally, and would be abused in their plan. They help out and get out of the business entirely, settling for honest retail instead.

Ash, in a bout of heroism, helps defend the stray pokemon, and the boy, from team rocket attacks. Over the course of some impressive action, he aids the defeat of Rocket and Plasma so well the boy vows to become a great trainer, like him.

A very loyal plasma and rocket duo decide to avenge their fallen factions, especially since they were beaten by a stray pokemon and a young boy (guess who). You'd probably need villains following the new hero, and here they are.

Ash gets dubbed honorary champion as reward for saving the day, and is happy with his victory here. Thus concluding his story arc and setting up a new main character with a new story arc.

This is how I would progress the series. You have the new main character with a similar but refreshed goal, a potential for new enemies and a much needed resolution for the hero we've been following.

This is just a recommendation, but the fanbase you're pandering to with the maintenance of Ash's story would SERIOUSLY enjoy some resolution there. Do with it as you like, but find SOME way of giving the story some resolution so we're not just waiting until bored.

If you REALLY want to bring in the old fans, have cameos in a few episodes. I only watch the few episodes where something unusual happens, or a game character appears and I wanna see their portrayal. This would interest me.

Kanto really went weird

Okay, so big issue I realised with pokemon generation two. Love the games, mind you, but i'm looking up the changes in the region between games, which is just three years, and there's a lot. Understandably, cause they're fitting two regions into one game, which is a luxury to player nostalgia in itself, but you can't fit it all into a GBC cartridge.

The first generation was good, and had a lot of places for the intrepid explorer to explore, as most explorers do. There was a cruise ship, a graveyard tower, a burned down lab, a cave with powerful creatures every turn, a forest, a museum, a safari park, a zoo, eight gyms, a mountain with fossils in, a whole bunch of secret mafia hideouts, a cycling road and a cave with digletts.

That's a lot of stuff.

For generation two, they made sure to not waste a ruddy thing. Everything in Jhoto had a point, and there wasn't much of a point to Kanto beyond the gym rebattles, the small team rocket story and the lead up to battle Red.

So they trimmed the fat. They worked out loads of reasons why they cut out most of kanto, keeping it as minimal as they could.

The S.S.Anne made sense to be gone, since it's a once off cruise ship. They have another more frequent ferry, so all's well that ends well.

Then there's silph co, which has tightened security and has a broken lift, so nobody can get in, no matter what. Seriously, you can have a pass from the queen, you're not getting into the upper level of Silph. This might lower the tourism, but oh well.

Moving south, we have another tourism hit. The whole zoo and safari zone has just got up and gone. Yup. For some reason, the warden went on a trip, and took EVERY ANIMAL HE HAD UNDER HIS CARE WITH HIM. Not just leave it with his helper, no! Lets just evacuate the place.

They rectified it in generation four, putting in the pal park and moving the safari zone to the west of jhoto. Where nobody can get to it. And the zoo isn't even set up. Face it, the warden messed up a bit.

Then even further south, the island town of Cinnibar has exploded. Yeah, the only thing is a presumably new pokemon centre and the main guy who now lives in a tiny cave on an island to use as a gym for challengers. He lives in a cave. And i don't recall any other people in all of Kanto or Jhoto referring to escaping Cinnibar. As they likely would. Only one guy got away.

Generation four made this less horrific to think of and had a whole bunch of gym trainers escape too, but still, ouch.

The viridian forest was lessened to a small maze. It was cut down. For convenience sake. Shame, really. Shows how little the world cares.

The museum, a place of enlightenment the world needs, is under maintenance. Yep, they shut that too. Tourism can't really handle it right now, huh?

Mount moon has crumbled under rock slides. I reckon it's because of humans disturbing the place trying to find fossils for show, but they say they stopped mining ages ago and couldn't be the cause. Some pokemon escaped and continue their natural ways, but people just use this to make money.

Speaking of just making money pokemon tower. A pokemon resting place, yeah, basically a graveyard, now serves the purpose of making radio shows. You just know the DJ is haunted by undetectable Ghastleys and one peeved Marrowak. Imagine how that happened:
"Hey, wanna honour the dead?"
"No, I wanna hear the Archers. Just put them in that old guy's small house. He won't mind!"

The power plant is up and running, which is great. It does lead to crime and vandalism like that in the tunnels under Saffron, however, due to people from other countries trying to serve dead organisations. Only a slight draw-back, but it does make a difference when the whole of the region becomes reliant on the power plant for ALL their power.

There's a cave to the north of cerulean which is dangerous. Very powerful pokemon dwell there. This is bad for most, but good for the local common job of pokemon training, since they can catch and battle some really tough enemies. But, sadly the place got blocked off before generation two.

There's also some minor changes in leadership of local gyms, but nothing bad.

Seriously, tell me Kanto has had a good three years. Tell me.

Boo

Are you scared?

Eh, doesn't matter. Halloween is upon us, and I have so little to talk about, I figure it's worth my time to just talk about the blindingly obvious subject of All Hallow's Eve. Halloween to those not in the know.

So, randomly, someone decided to dress up scary on October 31st. Then this spread, with people basically threatening others to give them an offering to not play a trick on them. People then decided that they should dress up, but skip the house to house scrounging for sugary substances and just party. Honestly, the history of this day is unknown to me, so I'm going to spend about 5 lines reading wikipedia.





There.

Ok, apparently, it's just a festival of the dead that got mixed with a festival of gathering, and then a sweet merchant decided to make some traditions. It may have been a day originally to help the souls of lost ones pass on, but then someone threw in a werewolf and everything got a bit messed up.

Change of pace. I'll tell the random blog reader of a scary new creature I want to become the new vampire, except not over-saturated. It's called Lacerta Aranea.

Powerful and carnivorous, and yet so gentle. When it first came around, weeks after the meteor stuck the earth, it started to scavenge. It feasted on the meat, and then laid it's eggs. The eggs are opportunistic, instinctively knowing when to awaken. But sometimes, they make mistakes.

The Lacerta Aranea, or Lacanea, will occasionally be born at the completely wrong time. But they can't just starve themselves, can they? That wouldn't be an effective creature. They have their own methods of catching their food, but they are just so gentle. They are the definition of "You have to be cruel to be kind". They lay traps in obscure places in the world where an occasional human would travel and lose themselves, such as crevices and ridges. If one accidentally fell, you would land in their web and you would be their food.

But they won't kill you. And they won't eat you alive.

You will die from the poison in his web. Then they will eat you.

It may save your life from your own foolish accident, and you may live longer than you would otherwise. Escape won't save you. Everyone who touches his web is his food, and there is no antidote aside from being him. Once you die, he will hunt his food. He is drawn to it. He can smell his poison from across even the stars.

He is not a monster. He is not stupid. He is not unreasonable. He is just starving, and is designed to crave whoever has touched his poison. Don't try to save the corpse, cause nothing can stop him. Just... don't touch the web.

It's a work in progress, but I think the concept is solid.

Cosplay part 2

In my last post (I made it a few seconds ago, but having two posts makes it look like I'm doing more for the blog. I'm not, it's the same content, but I'm sort of carrying the whole ruddy team. I checked, and it's six months since turnip or angel updated.

Cosplay trickery!!!

So, a costume is something that isn't you and isn't ordinary. Often a part of popular culture, but there's a lot of popular culture so you can slip behind the lines.

First of all, you can take the HIPSTER route.
Popular culture is so enormous that nobody can know it all. Just dress as anything snappy and seemingly fictitious. Rip a t-shirt and draw on blood-splatters. Carry a fake sword and fake specs while hiding your face in the shade of a low hanging hat. No top, but a pair of gloves. Everyone will assume you to be cosplaying something obscure and just assume they don't get the reference. If someone decides they just must know and asks you, just say some generic title (I'll come up with a blog for tat later, but stuff like 'Darker Chair') and claim it to be new and upstarting.

Alternatively, there's the EXCUSE route.
From the man who brought you such funny but utterly bullsh*t excuses like "My homework from last week is apparently a cannibal", we bring you "I'm wearing a Ninja costume. I'm not dressed as a ninja, my costume's just really stealthy." Nobody will care, and they may think less of you, but your friends will stop pestering you. Well done "Undercover ____"

Here's one I'd wanna do. It's the CREATOR's way out.
If I become famous enough, but not known for my face, I can make a simple to make and relatively awesome character outfit. Then simply dress as that. Or, conversely, dress as something cool and slightly abnormal, and then write it into the show and re-wear your outfit. It's basically cheating in real life, but you can always say he's an actual character.