#i actually have a full team of shiny moths in game (the others are a volcarona masquerain venomoth and frosmoth)

[w1f1n1ghtm4r3]

moths in love

[feralphoenix]

HOWMST BELL THE CAT? - A treatise on one aspect of how the Pale King sealed the Radiance

sup hollow knight fandom, i��m back with the picante takes again after having Noticed A Thing.

as with my previous essays i’ll put this guy up on dreamwidth later for accessibility purposes, since my layout text may be too small for high-res pc users. i will attach that in a reblog at a later point.

CONTENT WARNINGS FOR TONIGHT’S PROGRAM: This essay discusses canon-typical body horror and bodily boundary violations, with some side mentions of colonialism.

all game screencaps are mine. the screencap of the wiki is from the “developer notes” (style guide) section of the “cut content” page.

ALSO: if youre from a christian cultural upbringing (whether currently practicing, agnostic/secular, or atheist now), understand that some of what i’m discussing here may challenge you. if thinking thru the implications of this particular part of hollow knight worldbuilding/lore is distressing for you, PLEASE only approach this essay when youre in a safe mindset & open to listening, and ask the help of a therapist or anti-racism teacher/mentor to help you process your thoughts & feelings. just like keep in mind that youre listening to an ethnoreligiously marginalized person and please be respectful here or wherever else youre discussing this dang essay, ty

HOWMST BELL THE CAT? - A treatise on one aspect of how the Pale King sealed the Radiance

We understand more or less how the Pale King’s plan was supposed to work. Stuff Radiance into a no-thoughts-head-empty and silent Pure Vessel to trap, isolate, and silence her, both putting an end to the Infection and killing her for good. Stick that vessel in the Black Egg, which harnesses Void BS to both keep the vessel alive indefinitely and to cover Hallownest (and its neighbors) in a time-defying stasis so that the Pale King could successfully hoard his favorite shiny FOREVER, threatened by nothing. Then put a seal on the Black Egg to prevent anyone from getting inside and harming said vessel while it’s strung up and helpless. And THEN, put protective seals on the anchors (the Dreamers) to the Black Egg seal to protect them from any external harm: The stasis means the Dreamers won't die of old age or starvation.

All in all, a pretty foolproof plan!

...except that the Dreamers are still vulnerable to having their minds breached with the moths’ magic... and the Pale King failed to take into account that his Pure Vessel was a person actually and the amount of toxic stress his training/upbringing put on them made them REALLY POORLY SUITED FOR THEIR JOB... and also that killing 99% of his million children and turning the Abyss into a landfill for baby corpses would take enough of an emotional toll on his wife and #1 enabler the White Lady that she would walk out on him, ensuring he’d only ever have one shot at this whole deal...

Basically it’s the sort of plan that an emotionally constipated, low-empathy sort of guy who pours all his points into INT and has a big fat zero for WIS might think is foolproof. It has big holes in it that the Pale King did not consider to be big holes until he got owned by the various consequences of his actions and fell down said big holes, making the shocked pikachu face all the while. Rip in die, my guy.

Anyway, there’s a lot of incidental information scattered about the game that gives us more insight into the stages of TPK’s plan. Looking at Monomon’s notes in the Archive suggests that she was probably involved in designing the Black Egg; the hidden room in the Weavers’ den points to their being the ones to blueprint the Dreamer seal; the White Palace’s hidden rooms reveal both TPK’s morbid fascination with the Void and his mea culpa wrt his motives and the Path of Pain is certainly suggestive of a lot of things. The White Lady tells us straight out that she walked out on the Pale King because she wanted no part in a second vessel batch, but how TPK didn’t handle that is only revealed via map design and some incidental dialogue from the Old Stag.

This stuff presents us with, if not a full picture, then at least a decent connect-the-dots of certain aspects of crater politics and Pale Court drama at the time, and how exactly TPK’s plan came together.

But there is still one glaring question that these cookie crumbs do not provide us an answer to:

Who shall bell the cat?

How did TPK et al manage to stuff Radiance into Hollow in the first place?

This is the subject of a lot of memes and jokes within the fandom because it's so absurd. Radiance fuckin hates that dude! She’s probably gonna be pretty wary of him considering how he stole her people in the first place! And considering the anti-colonialism slant of the writing - beyond the general sympathetic view Team Cherry gives of each indigenous bug society, Seer makes it very clear that Radiance has very good reason to take violent action against Hallownest - the answer is probably not something like “she’s just that stupid” or “she rolled a crit fail”.

Well... I have an idea of how TPK managed to get Radiance in there. It raises about as many questions as it answers, mind, but it may be someplace to start.

[desc: the hollow knight's entry in the hunter’s journal. top text/ghost’s comment reads: “Fully grown Vessel, carrying the plague’s heart within its body.” bottom text/hunter’s comment says: “The old King of Hallownest... he must have been desperate to save his crumbling little world. The sacrifices he imposed on others... all for nothing.”]

Here we have Hollow’s bestiary entry. Most of what we’re concerned with here is the top text, which says the seal has literally trapped Radiance inside their body. (First of all, ew, TPK.)

We already knew Radiance is literally actually inside Hollow, though: The Infection is leaking out of their body, and to get to fight Radiance, Ghost has to go traipsing into their sibling’s mind. So what’s significant about that here?

[desc: screencap of the outside of the black egg temple, post-infected crossroads. there are large infection blobs in the foreground and background, connected to each other by veins that come from inside the temple.]

The infection blobs are weird and get weirder if you kill enough Lightseeds for the Hunter to tell you their origin story, i.e. that the literal actual sun has been having a very long bad day and cried a lot, and some of the liquid coalesced into living flesh, and some of that living flesh took on a mind of its own to become Lightseeds. (Hollow Knight is a WILD place.)

Lightseeds are Radiance’s accidental children and share a lot of her traits: They are harmless creatures that try to avoid conflict if possible but if pushed will get creative and find ways to fight regardless of their physical limitations. (For the Lightseeds this involves hiding inside Broken Vessel’s corpse and puppeting it around to try to stab you.) They even have her same distinctive yell. And according to the Hunter, they’re born from the infection blobs. These enemies only ever appear in the Ancient Basin, which both Radiance and the Void have ransacked, and in the Infected Crossroads.

The infection blobs are connected to and sort of a weird extension of Radiance because the Infection itself is sort of a weird extension of Radiance. In the game’s internal style guide Team Cherry explains that the Infection started as an accident, not her original intention but what happened when Hallownest tried to block her out.

[desc: screencap from the wiki of style notes attached to seer that describe a sketch of radiance’s finalized backstory. text reads: “The moth tribe were (perhaps) descended from Radiance. However, the King convinced them somehow to seal Radiance away. I guess so he could rule Hallownest with his singular vision, as a god/monarch with no other gods. The moths sealed Radiance away by forgetting about her. Hallownest was born and flourished. However, the memory of Radiance lingered (eg [sic] the statue at hallownest’s crown) and soon she began to reappear in dreams and starting [sic] exerting influence. The King and the bugs of Hallownest resisted this memory/power and it started to manifest as the Infection. Thus the first attempt to seal Radiance failed, and the King had to try another method - the Vessel.” emphasis mine.]

Some fans have posited the blobs as deposits of pupa juice, but given Team Cherry's description of the Infection’s origins I don’t know how likely that is. Since the Void also sticks its squamous tentacles into things via veiny looking things and the Nightmare’s Heart has similar veiny nonsense in the Nightmare Realm, I wonder if it isn’t just a Meddly God Shit thing in general.

Whatever the case, the blobs are very much connected to/a part of Radiance.

And when you’re hanging around them, you will notice two things: They pulse like they’re part of a circulatory system, and you can hear Radiance's heartbeat emanating from them.

[desc: screencap of the game’s title screen with the infected menu theme in use: a glowing orange ball at the center of a lot of black tendony webbing.]

Let’s also think of the Infected menu theme, which you unlock after getting either of the endings where Ghost takes over from Hollow and absorbs Radiance out of them. Ghost is infected and then sealed inside the Black Egg in Hollow's place. It’s suggested by the animation’s staging that Radiance briefly struggles to get out of Ghost after absorbed but is ultimately stuck in them, at which point the seal is reestablished.

If you haven’t used the Infected menu theme yourself, the... interesting thing about it is that it moves organically. The light ball expands and contracts - y’know, sort of like a living organ - and so does the black webby stuff around it.

Also, Radiance’s heartbeat is included in the theme's ambiance.

[desc: hollow’s bestiary entry again]

To cut to the chase, this part of Hollow’s bestiary entry that says “the plague’s heart”? I don’t think that’s just Ghost/Team Cherry being poetic. I think there’s a good chance it’s LITERAL.

I think TPK is the sort of person who could cram a native woman’s literal living beating heart inside his own child’s body so they can use it as... say, a focus to absorb and trap her mind/spirit inside their body, too. Mr. No Cost Too Great is capable of a lot in the name of keeping other people’s claws off his Big Shiny kingdom. This is kind of his whole brand.

But also, like, yuck.

This fits the worldbuilding too; generally speaking Hollow Knight is Body Horror City. Also there’s the case of Grimm: While he and Radiance are loose counterparts at best with WILDLY disparate outlooks and ethoses, his existence serves as precedent that a Higher Being’s heart specifically can be separate from the rest of them.

As I said before, though, this DOES raise as many questions as it answers. If this is another piece in the puzzle of how TPK belled the cat, we’re now left wondering how he got Radiance’s heart to use as Hollow's focus to begin with.

We know he has access to the Dream Realm because that’s ultimately where he hid when Hollow’s seal failed, but who did he send to do the stealing and how did they get away with it? (TPK certainly wouldn’t have gone; his own life’s the one cost too great for him to willingly pay.) Was Radiance’s heart separate from her like the Nightmare’s Heart, or was it a part of her body? (I think the latter is more likely just from her personality; Grimm’s hidden heart makes sense because of how he keeps even his own servants at arm’s length emotionally, whereas Radiance is all heart all the time. I think this makes more sense with their equal opposites schtick too. But this would make for a WAY riskier mission.)

I can imagine all kinds of possibilities. None of them are definitive, but the thing they have in common is that they are all Awful... and how on-brand that is for Hollow Knight as a whole is, maybe, the most persuasive argument for It’s Literally Actually Her Real Physical Heart there could be.

[pinpuku]

team request for @L0N3LYSTAR 

request info under “keep reading”

My name is Kathryn, I’m a Libra, and my MBTI is INTP! I really like a lot of different animals so it’s hard to really pick a favorite!!! I especially love octopuses (but not a fan of octillery imo >,>), dogs, cats, birds, pretty much any animal that can be a pet LOL!!! Birds, rodents, and reptiles included! I like the look of bugs like beetles, butterflies, and moths, and spiders but am kinda scared of them in real life. I’m RLY afraid of the ocean and lakes and rivers bc of the critters lurking in there… but i like alligators and crocodiles in any other environment. Same for sharks/stingrays/other scary animals. My favorite colors are yellow, pink, and black. I really like grunge/punk/quirky fashion. My hobbies are art (drawing, painting, sculpting, u name it I’ve done it haha), playing video games (especially Nintendo games I love Pokémon!), and watching tv/movies if that counts as a hobby! I like dark tv shows and LOVE superhero movies/tv. I used to really be into anime but I don’t watch it nowadays save for a few select shows. I’m always looking out for new shows to watch bc I usually dive headfirst into a show and watch the whole thing within a few days! I’m a computer science major in college rn and I hope to be a game designer someday!!! I’d also love to live in a big city like New York where there’s a lot happening and everything is within a walking distance. I live in FL rn which I HATE! Too hot man!! I have ADHD so I tend to hyper focus on topics of interest and I love researching things so I tend to gather an encyclopedic amount of knowledge on certain topics and can be happy just thinking and learning about that one thing all day. This is both a gift and a curse because on one hand I tend to become an expert on the topic of choice very quickly but on the other hand this often keeps me from focusing on what I really need to be thinking about >,>… I’m also impatient and often interrupt ppl and whenever I convince someone to watch this awesome show that I’m obsessed with currently I talk through the show giving background info even tho I try not to now LOL!! I’m also VERY forgetful and disorganized and have terrible time management skills.. which makes me nervous a lot when I feel like I’m forgetting a bunch of stuff I love debates and am pretty persuasive when I feel strongly about the issue! I also have a pretty good sense of humor and love making people laugh!! I spend a lot of time thinking about how I interact with people and how they interact with me, so I try to be as thoughtful as possible without sacrificing my feelings on an issue, so I have trouble with saying what people want to hear and appeasing people who are upset with me. I also tend to brood over small interactions that just didn’t sit well with me until they build up and I get super emotional over it. I also get defensive quickly and have a hard time taking criticism OTL but I’m working on it!! I take things personally and over analyze a lot RIP! My friends surprisingly consider me very reliable and trustworthy bc I try my best to appear calm even when I’m stressed/generally a mess on the inside and I try to offer objective, well-reasoned advice to friends when they ask for it.

This one was actually pretty hard for me! I eventually settled on this team, though. To be honest, I didn’t really decide one which pokemon would be your partner! It could go many ways. 

♡ Jangmo-o (shiny) is a Pokemon I think actually contrasts with your personality quite a bit, but also has some similarities. Jangmo-o is focused, grounded, hardworking, humble, patient, just, reliable, & has talent in its resiliency & follow-through. A lot of ISTJ energy, I guess? Dealing with its personality will be easy, since Jangmo-o has a valiant & “good” temperament, but will also challenge you to use some of your skills in different ways, like your focus & hardworking nature being challenged by ADHD naturally etc... so maybe you two could help eachother, even though you’re worlds apart otherwise! Jangmo-o functions on a very physical & sensible wavelength, and your more cerebral & non-serious approach can make your relationship dynamic & interesting. 

♡ Skitty is a Pokemon loved by most! It has an adorable personality & is known to be a great pet pokemon. It can be a challenge to earn its full trust, but since this pokemon is not very aggressive, this more so means ignoring you & doing its own thing at first. Once trust is earned, this Pokemon fully lives up to its cuddly & sweet image. Even its worst traits can be seen as charming! This Pokemon is popular for city-living. 

♡ Sandile is a Pokemon known for its mischievous tendencies, especially in the wild. It’s a popular partner pokemon for punks & edgier trainers, like most dark types Although it’s a dark type pokemon, this is pretty much the only “troublesome” trait it has. It is protective & caring with its loved ones. Many people find it amusing how this evolutionary line looks like they’re wearing cool sunglasses, too! It is a desert Pokemon. Although you might not like heat very much, this Pokemon will do well anywhere it can sunbath & warm up. A nice sunlamp should do if natural sunlight/warmth isn’t available, since it is pretty small. You sound like you’re into hobbies etc.. so a few Pokemon to have as pleasant challenges & pets seem appropriate.

♡ Pichu & Joltik were quick choices! I thought small & cute electric types fit your personality very well! Pichu is playful & upbeat. It naturally suits a forest or city environment. However, until it evolves it will have trouble storing electricity. It might give out shocks if it is surprised etc.. but that’s why I thought Joltik would be a good buddy! Joltik can’t produce or generate its own electricity, so it likes to obtain it through other means. It is very, very small, so it usually latches onto larger Pokemon for their static electricity. But Joltik would probably be good to have around for the random jolts Pichu might accidentally unleash! Being one of the more cute arachnid-bug-types, this can help you handle your fear of bugs/spiders, since you also seem interested! 

♡ Sharpedo (shiny, mega evolution capable) is my last choice. You seem to be oddly interested in the same things that make you a little bit scared or uncomfortable. Having Sharpedo by your side will arguably make you & your buddy the scariest thing around in theory! Pretty much no other creature would want to mess with you. This might make your main fear of large bodies of water a little bit more manageable with time. Sharpedo is a pack pokemon, so while it can be terrifying in the wild or from an outside perspective, if it’s raised from a young age as a Carvanha, it will see you & your team/loved ones as its “pack”. 

I hope you like your team! Other choices were shiny smeargle, porygon, inkay, & totodile. While you are an INTP who’s into computers, cities, art etc.. I went for a more atypical route with your team. I thought a more quirky & odd personality would suit a pokemon team that is the same. xx

[megareviews]

Spring 2019 First Impressions

The Spring list is late as usual (is it usual if it’s only the second instance?), but at least I’m closer to the beginning than last year. I’ve reached 50% completion on the doing this for an entire year consistently, so nice.

Aikatsu Friends!: Kagayaki no Jewel (Aikatsu Friends!: Jewel of Radiance): Aikatsu is relatively low on my priority list of magical girl megaseries.

Bakugan Battle Planet: This show actually premiered last semester, but in English, and this season is when the Japanese dub started. Either way it’s somewhere deep in the Bakugan series, which is based off of what are probably my least played children’s toys.

BAKUMATSU Crisis: Second season of an otome game adaption that looked okay when I started it, but I still haven’t watched past the first episode.

Bokutachi wa Benkyou ga Dekinai (Bokuben / We Never Learn): The main show that I know the source material of, and it is just about meeting my expectations. An average guy who has to study rigorously to maintain his average grades is put in charge of tutoring the two smartest people in his school. This might not make sense until it’s explained that he has to tutor them in their worst subjects, because those subjects are the ones they want to major in for college. It’s a nice theme of working hard for what you enjoy situated in a rom-com with some haremy aspects and an unusually high density of goofy faces, so watch it if you like those aspects.

Bungou Stray Dogs 3: I still need to see what they did with HP Lovecraft in season 2

Carole & Tuesday: What happens when a runaway rich girl and a poor orphan girl meet up on Mars? They form a band of course. A tale of two lonely souls finding each other and become a little less lonely in a big world, making music together. It looks great and it sounds amazing, so this is definitely a priority watch.

Chou Kadou Girl 1/6 (Amazing Stranger): Imagine Buzz Lightyear from the original Toy Story except in a 20 -something guy’s house and then failing the don’t move when humans are around rule almost immediately. That’s what this show is.

Cinderella Girls Gekijou CLIMAX SEASON (Cinderella Girls Theater CLIMAX SEASON): For somebody who doesn’t watch idol shows, the theater shorts are pretty fun, though I’m not nearly caught up in this one to say how this season is going.

Diamond no Ace Act II: Oh boy there’s so much baseball this season and a lot of it is sequels.

Fairy Gone: There’s a lot of things going on in this show but I think I can simplify it to military use of fairies to give soldiers super powers. The protagonist has been taking jobs as a mercenary to find her sister who was split from her after their village was burnt down. Then at an auction that she works as a guard, things start going wrong and the thief who appears is none other than that sister. The first episode ends with the end of a three way fight between security and the girls, so I’m not sure where the show’s going at all. Maybe if the show didn’t flash back to the protagonist’s village burning down three times, there would be a little more time to give direction.

Fruits Basket (2019): I never know how to deal with reboots for shows that I can remember, but haven’t seen the original. I know there’s people who turn into animals and a “do the carpets match the drapes” joke, and that’s about it from the 2001 anime.

Gunjou no Magmel (Magmel of the Blue Sea): After a new continent appears in the world, explorers flock to it, not always as prepared as they should be for venturing into the unknown. The main character works at a company to rescue explorers from mishaps along with a few others. The worldbuilding is interesting and the main character’s black lightning is pretty cool looking, but his attitude and decision making abilities kinda put me off for now. That and the comprehensibility of the subtitles I was watching fell off a cliff halfway through the episode.

Hachigatsu no Cinderella Nine (Cinderella Nine in August): So far it looks like a pretty standard club building show based around women’s baseball. It looks nice and we have 4 club members as of the first episode, so they should make it to at least full team of nine pretty quickly. It looks nice outside of an odd montage near the end of the episode when the club plays a game with some local kids, and the character designs are a bit more memorable than the usual baseball cast. I appreciate the fact that they’re playing hardball, but I’m not the type of person to watch anything sports ever.

Hangyaku-sei Million Arthur 2 (Operation Han-Gyaku-Sei Million Arthur): All I know about this show is that there’s a bunch of characters named Arthur and that it’s a sequel.

Hitoribocchi no Marumaru Seikatsu (Hitori Bocchi's ○○ Lifestyle): When one of the most socially anxious kids in elementary school gets separated by her only friend when they go to different middle schools, her friend gives her a quest: to become friends with everybody in her new class. She’s got a real go-getter attitude, but from feeling physical pain from trying to talk to a stranger to fainting when somebody actually responds to her, she’s got a rough path ahead of her. It’s a really fun show that gets you rooting for the main character in her attempts of communicating with others in a normal manner.

Isekai Quartet: Four of the biggest isekai series in one short mash-up is a recipe for confusion. Especially since they’re all put together in a school setting where no fighting is allowed, even if there are holy gods and undead abominations in the same class. Anything can happen with all these people taken from their original normal lives, tossed into various fantasy worlds, and then slam dunked back into a relatively normal setting.

Jimoto ga Japan (I’m From Japan): I cannot find a trace of the anime anywhere online and I am glad of this having read the manga. It is just a really dumb comedy about Japanese prefectures that I struggled to read a few chapters of before giving up.

Joushikausei: A silent anime, as in there’s no spoken words, about a few high school girls. It’s an interesting concept, but I found it a bit uncomfortable to watch, mostly due to the whimpering and other nonverbal noises the girls were making.

Kedama no Gonjirou (Gonjiro the Yarn Ball): A children’s show that hasn’t been licensed and no group is fansubbing it, how unusual… It actually looks interesting though so I might search for the raws to check it out.

Kenja no Mago (The Magi’s Grandson): A child raised by a powerful wizard in the country reaches an age where he can move out to the city and attend a magical high school. Unfortunately for him, his parental figures only taught him combat and magic, so he doesn’t really know how to sustain himself in the reals world. It is a decent concept but there’s a 50/50 chance of any scene looking nice or looking awful, and the scene transitions all look like they were made in Powerpoint.

Kimetsu no Yaiba (Demon Slaying Blade): A happy family of coal sellers is destroyed in a night when a demon strikes. The eldest son was out due to a combination of work and a blizzard, and when he returns he finds all but one of his family members completely cold and covered in blood. This last member is rushed down the mountainside for medical aid, only to turn into a demon on the way down. A meeting with a demon slayer turns tricky as he tries to protect his demonized sister who’s fighting between killing instincts and her love of her brother. The opening promises some beautiful animations and the overall show isn’t slacking either, so overall it’s a very promising show.

KING OF PRISM -Shiny Seven Stars-: It’s the TV version of a boy band movie tetralogy which is also a sequel I think?

Kiratto Pri☆chan Season 2: A sequel to a idol anime that I reviewed last year. I think this is one of the first times a sequel has shown up that I also reviewed the first season of, though unfortunately it was for  a show that I didn’t watch fully.

Kono Oto Tomare! (Stop this Sound!): One more club building show for this season, this one about a Japanese instrument called a koto. After all the upperclassmen of the club graduated in the previous year, only the main character is left in the club, and needs more members before the club gets closed, the usual. The first new member is a seemingly delinquent 1st year who is surprisingly diligent. There wasn’t too much interesting or unique other than the topic of the club, so music fans might find this more watchable than I.

Kono Yo no Hate de Koi wo Utau Shoujo YU-NO (YU-NO: A Girl Who Chants Love at the Bound of this World): The first episode for this kind of front-loaded introducing characters and pulled out its premise of parallel dimensions and a device to navigate them towards the end, which means I’d probably have to watch another episode to figure out how I feel about it. It’s nice to not have a giant exposition dump take up the first episode of a show, especially since it will have two cours to tell a story, but I didn’t feel any particular gravitation towards the characters by this point, so I won’t be prioritizing any follow-up on it.

Mayonaka no Occult Koumuin (Midnight Occult Civil Servants): With a job at a place called the Nocturnal Community Relations Division, the first thought of the type of people dealt with is most likely not going to be fairies. Our main character is taken from a world of the ordinary to being able to see and talk to the supernatural creatures that live locally, called Anothers. His co-workers are equipped with magically enchanted police tape and other trinkets to help solve issues that occasionally arise between Anothers. I like the modern fantasy setting, and the fairly low level fights with the supernatural so far, so there’s promise in where the show goes.

Midara na Ao-chan wa Benkyou ga Dekinai (Ao Can’t Study): While the name Ao is usually blue, or sometimes even moth, in this case, it stands for Adult Only, the 18+ rating in Japan. This is due to her father’s profession, an erotic writer, and surprisingly, the main character hates her father for naming her that and spends her entire life studying to get into a college far enough away from him. This is thwarted by a guy confessing to her and filling her mind with romance and lewder thoughts, with the help of her father. I hate this as a concept and don’t watch this.

Mix: A semi-sequel baseball anime. I say semi, because from what I’ve gathered it is recommended but not necessary to watch the original first.

Nande Koko ni Sensei ga!? (Why is my Teacher Here!?): It’s about a male student and his teacher, ending up in awkward situations together, like being trapped together in a men’s bathroom stall. A show of pure fanservice through and through, so there’s not much else to say.

Namu Amida Butsu!: Rendai Utena: What started out as an action about cleansing impurities from the world gives us a quick bait ‘n switch to a slice of life about gods bumbling about in the human world attempting to be competent humans. I found it irritating to watch, and it was very clearly based off of a gacha game, which do not have a good track record of making good shows.

Nobunaga-sensei no Osanazuma (Nobunaga’s Young Bride): A modern age middle school teacher way down the ancestral tree of Oda Nobunaga meets the bride of the man himself, who traveled to the present from the day of the original Nobunaga’s death. She’s no older than when she left her original time, which leaves her at 14 years old, with no knowledge of modern day Japan so she’s stuck with the main character’s family and decides to be the new Nobunaga’s bride anyways, which… is weird.

One Punch Man 2: A big sequel of the season, and one where people have been waiting with wary anticipation due to the change in animation studio and director. It definitely looks a lot stiffer than the first season, for action and non-fight scenes, but the story is a bit more interesting in my opinion, as the show starts working on fleshing out other heroes and why they fight.

RobiHachi: the first episode of this really is a springboard for setting up what the plot and cast will be, just about starting right at the very end.  We’ve got an ultra gullible man in debt, a genius teen with no sense of purpose, a robot rabbit helper, and their spaceship that blares its own theme song when it transforms into a mech. They set off to find a legendary planet that grants happiness after a couple of hijinks on their starting planet. It’s a very busy show, both visually and plot wise, but still an enjoyable experience if you can keep up.

Sarazanmai: 50% connecting with other people through oversharing with them, 50% kappas stealing souls from other people’s butts. It’s hard to describe the show but I’m having a good time, and the art is gorgeous, and special care is taken with little details in the show. I’d say watch the first episode definitely, and then decide whether or not to follow up on the rest of the show.

Senryuu Shoujo (Senryuu Girl): The focus of the show is on the Japanese poetry type of Senryuu, mostly because the main character can only communicate with others through writing these poems. Thankfully, she’s got some good friends and is in her school’s Literature Club, so she has plenty of practice and is around people who appreciate her work.

Sewayaki Kitsune no Senko-san (Meddlesome Fox Senko): The fox gods of the world have a duty to protect humans, and are becoming more proactive in seeking out humans with negative emotions before those emotions go out of control. In comes the male lead of the show, an overworked businessman who has basically just been going through the motions of life by this point. One of the fox gods appears in his house, doing the cooking, cleaning, and other tasks to help relieve the main guy’s stress. It’s comfy and there’s some funny moments, but I feel like the show would be better off as a more episodic show featuring various humans rather than just the one that it looks like the show will focus on. I’m also worried about the romance genre tag that the show has.

Shingeki no Kyojin 3 Part 2 (Attack on Titan 3 Part 2): I’m still on episode 5 of the original series, with no particular motivation to make it any further. More people die in bloody explosions probably.

Shoumetsu Toshi (Lost City): As the title of the show would imply there is a city that has been lost to humanity, as in, it just disappeared one day. The main female character is the only one who survived the city disappearing, and is targeted by a mysterious group due to that, and she tries to return to where the lost city used to be due to a message by her father who went missing with the city. In addition there was a monk with super powers who was standing on a motorcycle’s handlebars facing off against the main girl who could summon her Lost bodyguard with a bunch of guns but that was kinda just thrown in at the end.

Strike Witches 501 Butai Hasshin Shimasu! (Strike Witches 501st Join Fighter Wing Takes Off!): Oh god it’s been so long since I’ve consumed Strike Witches content. This is a slice of life spin off of the original series, so the context is recommended, but not necessary. The animation is also very much on the rough side for a ten minute long short. 

Yatogame-chan Kansatsu Nikki (Yatogame’s Observation Diary): After briefly being disappointed in the lack of heavy Nagoya dialects encountered in Nagoya, the main character runs into a classmate who happens to have one. In addition, all of her favorite foods and animals are popular or famous in Nagoya, so he sticks around with her for meeting his ideals of what a Nagoyan should be. They then travel the city as part of the photography club to see all the sights of the city.

Youkai Watch!: Despite what it looks like from the title, this is pretty deep in a line of sequels of Youkai Watch.

[galacticbugman]

My Favorite Insects

Well howdy ya’ll Galactic Bug Man here with another blog post. Sorry this is long over due I have been busy with school and I have had some family issues that needed to be resolved this last few months but I am back with another blog post and just in time for the start of *drum roll* *fanfare* INSECT SEASON! or just spring. 

So In my last post that was back in November I said that I would talk about what are my favorite insects. For the record some people may tell you that you can only have one or two favorites of everything. Well for me that has always been hard for me. Anything that interests me automatically becomes an obsession with me. With the autism it is kind of hard to ignore things that have a profound interest with me. Some people just have one favorite or each category. As for my goofy/nerdy self I have many favorites on many levels. For me I don’t just have one favorite science fiction TV Show or movie, same goes for Cartoons, comedies, food...eh you get the picture. Anyway I don’t just have a single favorite family of animals or just one favorite species for each. 

In my line of a hobby it is the thrill of the search and an encounter goes. For me favorites come in many forms and have different lifestyles, and sometimes the story that will form when I find an organism helps make an organism my favorite. So there are many things that add up to make an organism a favorite. For me it is all of these put together. Even though I am a storyteller of sorts and love to share experiences I have had finding certain species. So now let us go into some of  my favorites from the world of insects. Even though I am a birder too think I am just going to leave this post strictly for the insects. Just FYI I am expanding my blog to more than just insects. In the future I will be talking about birds, mammals, and all things natural. So with that said let us dive in to Insect family #1... 

Beetles have become a growing obsession for me in the last few years. Back when I was in the Future Farmers of America I participated in an entomology contest once in the spring of 2011 then I did another one in spring of 2012.It was like a UIL contest of sorts but it was an FFA governed contest. We had to study a list of 125 or 150 insects I can’t really remember the amount we had to ID but it was a lot. The Texas Ironclad Beetle was one of the many on the list. (the picture was a photo I took of one during the 2017 iNaturalist City Nature Challenge of that same species.) The FFA contest really opened my eyes to loving the insect world. I became quite interested in the lives of insects and the ways they work. Butterflies had always been a favorite subject of mine ever since I was in grade school. My late grandmother (who passed away back in August of last year) got me butterflies and we had a garden at the house we moved from back in April for a long time. Most insects didn’t really appeal to me until my time with the Martin High School FFA. Me and the teams I had both years won first prize at the contests so that is how my love for loving insects a lot more than I did started to grow. Beetles started to grow on me. There have been many species that I have seen in the last few years that I wouldn’t believe existed. Some are just so amazing to watch and to photograph. 

 A growing favorite group of mine would have to be the Tiger Beetles. They are some of the prettiest and most vibrant colored of the beetles. This one was found at Thora Hart Park a few blocks from where I live now. We moved back in April of last year. This was found on one of our getting ready to move days. This guy is called a Chartreuse Tiger Beetle. It is a really shiny one. I found this one on one of the sand paths out there in the back forty of the park. It is small but the number of Tigers is amazing. There are a lot of deep sands out there and on any given hot and sunny day they will be out. Tiger Beetles are known for being fast throughout their lives. They have good eyesight even when they are larva which is kind of interesting for an insect. They are also predatory their whole lives. With a sharp pair of scissor-like mandibles and a tiger like attitude they are a fascinating beetle to observe. Both fast runners and fast fliers they one of an insect’s worst nightmares. This one was really cool. I saw this flash of green and blue. Then it landed in front of me and then I saw a flash of red. These guys are actually yellow on their wing covers; but when the sun hits them just right they shine a bright reddish orange color. That is what makes them really appealing to me. We all like shiny things don’t we? Shiny rocks, Pokemon, silver, gold. You name it people love shiny objects. For me shiny beetles are no different. 

Another one of my favorites is this one called the Carolina Tiger Beetle. This one was one cool Tiger Beetle. I was out at a park called Parr Park in Grapevine Texas. There was a bunch of these guys running about the light traps we were using during one of our field investigations which was a Moth Night. A moth night or mothing event is where you set out lights with different wave lengths and purposely attract insects to photograph and document them. I have been on several in the last couple of years and they are loads of fun. They are cool because you don’t always get to see the creatures of the nocturnal world that often if you are a day person. Me I am more of an afternoon and night person. I have never been much of a morning person.That doesn’t mean I won’t get up early some days and go early morning birding or something like that. I do that sort of thing all the time but the night time when it is really muggy and sticky outside the bugs just come from out of the wood work. I don’t suggest doing those kinds of events if you don’t like bugs touching you or if you have a fear of insects because they will get into you mouth and your hair. Anyway getting back on track. I had my flashlight on and I was just looking down to see what I could find. I saw a couple of purple streaks running around at the base of our sheets that the bugs would cling to while we took photos. These guys really catch your eye and the refection from a headlamp or a flashlight is amazing when the light bounces off these guys. It is amazing how shiny they are. That is why I love these guys because one they are appealing by vibrancy in color and by their amazing patterns and shades. They are amazing little creatures. They are tiny and you can easily miss them. That is why you will not have tour guide going to have a tour guide with a group of people looking for these guys. They are too small and will flee in an instant. Still going out by yourself will be your best bet on seeing these guys. 

Another one of my favorite beetles is this kind. This one is known by only a scientific name. It is called Zygogramma Heterothecae. It is a mouth full I know. This photo was taken at Tarrant County College’s South Campus where I go to school. I found this guy on one of my study breaks. On most study breaks I either go to the school’s game room and hang out with the other nerds or I go out and see what insects I can find so I can upload them to iNaturalist. This guy was at one of the best places to look for insects on campus (the library). This guy was the first one I have seen. Just look at those markings; it almost looks like a tribal painting or something from a tropical land. It is amazing how these guys look. I posted it to the iNaturalist website and turns out it had never been found in the Metroplex before so I got to expand its range just a little bit. That is another factor that makes an insect my favorite for its rarity or if it is a new one for a new range of territory. I have expanded ranges for a lot of insects on iNaturalist in the three years I have been using it. It is not that I am a big shot or anything it is just that I like to take pictures of everything from common insects and birds to the really hard to see ones. It is often the small things that are the least observed. I don’t know just how many species in total I have expanded for but I have also found several firsts for many parks around the area. One of my friends tries to give me the big head and calls me a rockstar. The truth is I am no rockstar or super naturalist I am just doing what a citizen scientist does take photos and send them on the database website and let nature take its course. I mean it is cool that I have found a lot of species that are rare and maybe out of place but I am not one who likes to take credit; I am the kind of person that likes to give credit when it is due. I have always been modest in this case. But yes finding rare things like this adds to the value. 

Sometimes a bug just has to look like a spaceship or an visitor from another world to get my vote. Many insects I encounter remind me of things from Star Trek, Star Wars, Doctor Who, Battlestar Galactica (1978 version with the Ovion Bug People) among other science fiction movies and TV shows. This guy Delphinia Picta or Picture Winged Fly is a wild looking one. It almost reminds me of the Bounty Hunter Greedo that worked for Jabba the Hutt that Han Solo blew away with his laser pistol in Star Wars IV A New Hope. It has a head that looks just like Greedo’s face minus the green with the bumpy texture and the funny looking ears. This guy is just bizarre looking all together. It looks like a starship with a Greedo head. so that is kind of fun and adds to the favorites if they remind you of fun things like that. Many insects in my mind always look like a sci-fi or horror movie monster from the 1930s- 1960s with the B horror classics. That is just it with being a nerd you see things like that out in nature and as a huge nerd of science fiction and stuff like that I have a lot of fun with it. I seriously can’t be out with a group on a BioBlitz see a bug and shoot off my mouth with some kind of silly science fiction reference. Thankfully I am with people that get it so I am safe but yes it is true that I can’t go a day without referencing a TV show, movie, or book. I am just that kind of guy even when it comes to nature. I surprised no one has gotten sick of me yet in my naturalist group. Lets look at another insect that looks like an alien shall we. 

This guy is called the Wheel Bug. Named after its weird Buzz Saw like blade on his midsection. I am surprised that when they made the Starship Troopers series they didn’t make a bug that looked like this monster. This guy is a true monster. I It conjurers up a lot of science fiction nightmares just by looking at it but man I live for this kind of stuff. I love weird looking bugs. The weirder the creature the more blown my mind is. Sometimes the things with a face only a mother could love are the best things to look at. This guy you do not want to pick up just FYI. It can bite and it bites hard. I have never been bitten but good golly I know people that have been bitten and they say it is a feeling you don’t want to have. It may not kill you but it can leave one nasty mark. This guy is a member of the Assassin Bug group and it is one of the largest. Most assassins don’t get this big but these guys are over an inch long in some cases. They are a true monster but heck just as long as you keep your distance they can’t hurt you. So that is one factor for me I guess. Some animals like elephants may remind you of Dumbo or a baby deer may remind you of Bambi. However if you are into bugs and a pop culture nerd you will probably be seeing some Close Encounters business. Just saying I have been on the sci-fi bandwagon all my life and let me tell you some insects get even stranger and bring even more science fiction stuff to the table. 

Some times it just has to have a fun name to say and since we just went down a path of sci-fi reference I think this one would be great to talk about. This little butterfly is known as a Phaon Crescent. I think that name sounds so much like a ship name (just the Phaon part). This guy is a very pretty butterfly that looks very much like a starburst or a disco ball. It is a very interesting butterfly and is just as small as its sister species called the Pearl Crescent which we get here in Texas too. These are not as common for me on a more personal note but they do happen quite frequently. Both are really pretty but this one gets bonus points for having such a cool name. 

Sometimes to be a favorite they have to look weird before you can figure them out and know what they are doing. As in this case for this little Yellow-collared Slug Moth. You see that arched thing? that is its butt. I am just going to say this now like I have said so many times I am glad I don’t have to put my face near my butt for protection. This moth is in its defensive position. I was in a group doing another event out at Parr Park and I was coming back with a few other and I spotted him on a garbage can and we couldn’t figure out what he was or what exactly he was doing. So yes sometimes the oddest bits of behavior help with the humor of a potential favorite observation.This guy was just doing what he does best when not looking for food or a mate. 1. he had chosen a good hiding spot that matched his color. 2. he was just in the defense position so that way nothing serious would happen to him if he was attacked. 3. It just looked funny to us. We all gave it crazy bewildered looks trying to make heads or tails out of it. Turns out many moths do the same thing like the Eggplant Leaf-roller Moth and others. So sometimes the things we don’t understand may seem like a good laugh and that could add to a fond memory. 

So that is it some of my favorite insect moments frozen in time. I have tons more favorites but it is kind of hard to cram them all into a single blog post when you have over 5,000 observations and over 1,370 species on your life list. That is kind of hard to pick and choose all of your favorites. I would like to hear what your favorite animals are and how you pick and choose your favorites. So until we meet again readers stay tuned for more from me Galactic Bug Man. I will see you on the trail. See you soon! gotta run. 

[grafai-ai]

*Cracks knuckles*

With the giga leak it was shown a lot of pokemon lines were condensed (I.E. Squirtle and Wartortle were the same line, Blastoise was from another line). The long standing theory of Venonat evolving into Butterfree wasn't one of those things. BUT here's my batshit take: Venonat is actually a puss catapillar and that's why it turns into a moth. It's other two legs are hidden under its fluff.

Anyone who stuck around after the original fall of Team Plasma are dumbasses and are pretty much a good allegory for PEŢA themselves. Either way, Coreless is kind of not all there anyway considering how he acts in Sun and Moon. Also personally, I still don't think Unova is the entire United States. It's just New York and New Jersey with unique biomes.

To me XY were transitional games. It was a new thing they were trying out...but because of that they put most of the effort into the graphics. But yeah. There's some redeeming mini-moments like the accidentally gay dialog, being able to nickname your character, and the post game. But Kalos as a whole...could have been better. It just seemed like it was missing a lot of stuff they wanted to put it.

Bots as in Wondertrade bots or like bot bots? If it's the former, they need to stop. I'm tired of getting 70 shiny legendaries in apricorn balls holding a master ball with the name hackeymon[dot]csx. Still not above taking the master balls before releasing them though.

Personally I liked the ultra beasts. It was a nice twist on referencing invasive species by making them literal invaders from another dimension. Now if only they'd do more with the concept. Like have a full Legends game set in the alternate dimension instead of leaving it in USUM.

I like Galar for its attention to detail instead of just making Great Britain this fairytale storybook land full of royalty and wizards. But at the same time, despite caring for the franchise, I'm also too old for the dex and graphics discourse ™️ because I understand how games work under TPCi's weird reverse hostage situation. Now Kalos on the other hand...that place was baaaaad and underrealized. I can only hope it's able to be visited in Scarlet and Violet so it can be redeemed.

I'm not going to argue about BDSP being bad. But at the same time it feels almost like Legends was going to be the remake but it shifted into something else after a while so they made a more faithful one and kind of failed at it by making it too faithful and not adding Platinum stuff in there.

I know it's inevitable at this point. But we really need less bipedal cats.

I am opening this post to the public. Please reblog or reply with your most batshit opinions. Thank you

[photos-from-alola]

My Favourite Pokémon of each type - Generation V - 9/16

Links to other parts

1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5 | 6 | 7 | 8 | 9 | 10 | 11 | 12 | 13 | 14 | 15 | 16

Gen 5! It gets a lot of hate and from what I see people think they went for quantity over quality for this gen...yet this gen actually has nearly half of my overall favourites of each type. I think they took a lot of risks with this gen for designs but honestly? Nearly all of them work out! I do also think it helped with this gen that for the first two BW games only Pokémon from this gen appeared pre-E4. I’d someday like to see something like that happen again.

Normal - Audino: A very nice normal type. I grew more attached to one when I accidentally ran into a patch of grass while hatching eggs and found a shiny one when BW had just released! Both their shiny and mega are absolutely adorable and something I want to try using in a doubles team, maybe for an all-fairy team.

Fire - Volcarona: My favourite fire type overall! I’ve used...three(?) Volcarona (with my most recent being shiny for Ultra) and I’ve loved using them all. Always my go-to flame body egg hatcher. I love moths a lot and Volcarona really feels like a big reward for leveling up Larvesta so far. 💖

Water - Jellicent: Hard choice as I think I love Jellicent equally to Frillish, though I prefer the designs of male Frillish and female Jellicent...? Still, a beautiful Pokémon and very interesting type combination with good lore. Using one competitively is pretty fun as well as they’re pretty tanky!

Grass - Servine: I usually dislike the middle-evolutions of the starter families but Servine is one of those few exceptions and also the one I love the most! It’s hard to come up with an actual reason other than really liking the design a lot but oh well.

Electric - Eelektross: Eel lamprey leech thing...nice 👌👀 Used one during ORAS and...while he wasn’t as good as I was hoping he was still great and I still love this big eel friend even though 3d games decided to change their size to full length rather than standing height so he’s tiny now and it’s thanks to this bond that he takes this place  Special mention to Joltik/Galvantula - I actually have never used one but I if I ever do I’m pretty sure they would take this place.

Ice - Kyurem: I loved that we finally got an ice/dragon type Pokémon in gen 5 and really like the direction they took with it Kyurem being a cold empty husk. Their fusions are great and overall would probably be one of the scarier legendaries to encounter.

Fighting - Scrafty: Scrafty has a special spot in my heart and is my favourite fighting type overall. Was my main Pokémon during my BW playthrough and was great even when I used him to battle against friends. I love them and look forward to when I decide to use one during a playthrough again. 💛

Poison - Scolipede: Scolipede...speedy big bug friend. One of my favourite shinies. Also amongst my top bug types! While I do have a shiny random encounter one, I do want to use one properly sometime.

Ground - Golurk: Never used one yet but this is a great Pokémon and amazing shiny. I must say Krookodile is probably something that I would say switches with Golurk occasionally for this spot...I guess it depends on my mood? Haven’t use one of them yet so until I do...who knows.

[nuzblog]

Sunday, October 22nd, 2017

Hello there. My name is Sterling, which you may very well know already. I could bore you with details about me but I'd really prefer not to.

On this day (which is yesterday at the time of writing), I began my third consecutive attempt to do a Nuzlocke Run of Pokemon Blue. I intend to play through every generation of Pokemon in chronological order, using original versions (so no remakes; for the original two generations I will be using the virtual console, and for the latter five I will be playing the original cartridges.) I further intend to begin documenting this quest using this site as a sort of diary, which will be updated whenever the game I am nuzlocking is played, which will probably be daily for a while, but then I might get a Switch, or Ultra Sun/Ultra Moon might come out, and it might become less than daily.

To start out with, let's quickly go over a few things in terms of background.

The Pokemon series started with the release of Pokemon Red and Pokemon Green in Japan, on February 27, 1996, 19 months before I was born. The games were RPGs based on the childhood play of creator Satoshi Tajiri, who as a young boy in Machida, Japan, would collect beetles and have them fight other kids' captured insects. With 151 unique creatures to collect, trade, battle and love, from typical adorable cats and dogs to awe inspiring kaiju, to creepy-cute moths and bees and strange animated plant monsters, and things even weirder than that, the franchise had something for everyone. It made a huge splash in Japan, and when it was rereleased in the United States, it was accompanied by an animated show aimed at children and a trading card game, all of which connected like a plug into the outlets in the minds of children all over the world. It became a global phenomenon practically overnight, with scores of magical monsters becoming household names, and the concepts becoming core for game design. The series is still going, and while nothing since the first generation has become quite so culturally pervasive, the franchise is a well known and renowned one all the same. Every few years new games come along, with a new setting, a new story, and a set of new Pokemon hovering around 100. In seven "generations" (Red/Green/Blue/Yellow, Gold/Silver/Crystal, Ruby/Sapphire/Emerald, Diamond/Pearl/Platinum, Black/White/Black 2/White 2, X/Y, Sun/Moon/Ultra Sun/Ultra Moon), the number 151 has become 804 (and counting, since Ultra Sun and Ultra Moon aren't out yet and may very well have a few new Pokemon.)

You probably know most of that already, but it is important to lay this kind of groundwork so that nobody is confused.

A Nuzlocke Challenge is a specific sort of self-imposed challenge that some players of Pokemon games use to combat the game's otherwise relatively low difficulty outside of PvP. It gets its name from a webcomic that originally simply called the challenge "Pokemon Hard Mode", but featured a Nuzleaf who was named after John Locke from LOST, who became a memetic character inside and outside of the comic, and the challenge is now named for that Nuzleaf. (If you're unfamiliar, Nuzleaf is a grass type Pokemon from Ruby/Sapphire/Emerald, that looks kind of like Pinocchio and evolves from an acorn and into a tengu. LOST was a bad show by the guy who for some reason got put in charge of both Star Trek AND Star Wars afterwards.)

The original Nuzlocke Challenge used the following rules:

1. You may only capture the first Pokemeon you see in each area. 2. Any Pokemon that faints is permanently dead, and can never be used again.

Later players of Nuzlockes have modified and expanded those rules, and today, many rulesets exist. Some mitigate the difficulty of these two rules, some make it harder, and some merely add a new spin to things. But in order to be a Nuzlocke Challenge, these two rules are the bare minimum.

Now that I've given you that background, I'd like to go ahead and list out my own ruleset, which I will be using not just for my playthrough of Blue, but also for all consecutive playthroughs, with the potential for minor tweaks and edits inbetween games and also early on into this first playthrough.

1. I may only capture the first Pokemon I see in each area. 1a. No Ball Clause - No wild encounters count until I have access to Pokeballs. 1b. Duplicate Clause - If the first encounter in an area is a Pokemon I have already caught, and they have not died (even if they have evolved), that encounter can be ignored in favor of the next one. This can be repeated until a unique Pokemon is found. 1c. Shiny Clause - A shiny Pokemon can be caught at any time, if one is encountered in the wild, unless the encounter is scripted. 2. A Pokemon that faints in battle is permanently dead, and can never be used again. A Pokemon that faints outside of battle, such as by poisoning, can be restored to life at a Pokemon Center. 2a. If I ever white out, and my whole team is fainted, it does not matter if I have living Pokemon in the box; my player character is considered dead, and the run has failed. 3. When an important trainer battle occurs, such as one with the rival, a gym leader battle, a battle against an admin of the villainous team, or another battle against an important NPC such as an elite four member or the champion, my party must have exactly as many Pokemon in it as theirs does. 3a. 6 Pokemon team for the Elite Four and Champion challenge at the end. 4. Each Pokemon Center provides only one opportunity for me to heal my Pokemon. When I finish an important battle, I have another chance to heal at the nearest Pokemon Center. I can hold onto this second heal, but I cannot accumulate a third. 4a. Healing outside of Pokemon Centers is infinite, including at home or in strangers' beds. 4b. Struggle Clause - If I run out of PP on all damaging attacks, I am allowed to heal at the nearest Pokemon Center if, and only if, all of my Pokemon are already at full HP.

Those are the major, overarching rules. Other notes include that I will be determining starter randomly when my character has the option unless I have tried and failed with two of them and have not yet tried the third, and that every Pokemon will be nicknamed. A Pokemon nickname cannot be reused for the same species if that Pokemon dies, and a trainer nickname cannot be reused if that trainer dies. (If, on the other hand, I complete Blue with a Pidgey on my team, and I am named John and my Pidgey is named Butts, I can use the name John for my player and the name Butts for a Pidgey I catch in future games, until they die.)

Got all that? Good. Now we can begin.

Well. Actually, first I'm gonna run through what happened on my first two attempts lightning fast.

First attempt - Player name was Red. Bulbasaur, named Metreedon, was my starter. Caught a Rattata, named it Mickey; it died. Caught a Nidoran (Female), named her Lexi. Caught a second Rattata, named it Minnie, it also died. Reached Level 8 with Metreedon and Lexi, and then fought the second rival battle. Was sorely beaten by Blue's Pidgey.

Second attempt - Player name was Satoshi. Charmander, named Sally, was my starter. Caught a Rattata, named it Remy. Caught a Pidgey, named it... I can't actually recall. Progressed all the way to Mt. Moon, beating Brock along the way. Was done in by the first encounter with a Team Rocket Grunt in Mt. Moon, and his illegally evolved Level 16 Raticate.

NOW we can begin!!

(A note: between that writing above and this writing below, I slept and then woke up and then went to work and then worked and then went home. I did not play any Pokemon Blue on the 23rd, but I will today, the 24th. Probably.)

I began my Pokemon journey, naming my character "Gary" and my rival "Ash", at the suggestion of the game. I can't help but feel as though Red being the far and above more popular version was an intentional move on Game Freak's part, given that these names are reversed both in Pokemon Red, and in the English translation of the anime. (I have not played the Japanese versions, but it is my understanding that a similar switch happens with the names Satoshi and Shigeru.) The Blue/Red suggestion switch is a little less notable, since that's a simple matter of the game you're playing. That said, while some of the names have turned out a little cringey ("Hilbert" and "Hilda" in particular), I think the "canon names" changing from depending on your game version to depending on your character's gender starting in the third generation was a good move.

Moving on, I go through the typical motions; I grab my Potion from the PC, I walk into the left-hand square of grass north of Pallet Town, get stopped by Oak and brought to the lab. There, I pick my starter, who, given that I've already rolled a Bulbasaur (using a random number generator) and a Charmander (using a physical six-sided die), I decide to be Squirtle. I name my Squirtle "Shelley", since gender doesn't exist yet and I can do whatever I like. (Not that gender ever really exists.) Squirtle is my favorite of the three starters in this generation, with Wartortle being my preference of the family, so I'm excited to use Shelley. This, of course, counts as my Pokemon for Pallet Town.

My rival battle in the lab is the most clutch it's been, for some reason, which is odd given that I'm now armed with the most useful statistic-affecting move alloted to the starting movesets of the three starters in this game, Tail Whip. I am reduced to one health, very nearly a game-ender, so I use my potion on the chance that my foe will use Tackle instead of Growl (Bulbasaur is faster than Squirtle here.) I win the battle with full health, but one less Potion, which are at a dreadful premium until Pewter City.

I journey north to Viridian, taking the opportunity to grind in the grass a bit. I get the potion from the advertiser, the parcel from the mart, and then head back south, delivering it to Oak. I now have a PokeDex, but more importantly, since I'm definitely not filling that out, the PokeMart in Viridian will now sell me some PokeBalls.  I head North yet again, purchase five, and head south, catching a Rattata in Route 1 along the way. I name my Rattata Lemmy. I could talk about what made me use that name, but I think I will leave that a mystery. The first person to correctly guess what my name scheme is for this run through (before it ends) will get... a Pokemon from the run traded to them in Sun or Moon? Hidden Abilities, yo.

I left off the game grinding back and forth in Route 1, taking maximum advantage of the unlimited healing that my mother provides. This is not a privilege I'll have forever (although I will probably have it back when I get Fly?), especially since, as I recall, there is a temporary point of no return on the other side of Mt. Moon, which, even if Mt. Moon weren't inhospitable to those who are already desperately in need of healing, would make it impossible to take advantage of my mother's generosity.

Current team is Shelley the Squirtle, Level 8, from Pallet Town; and Lemmy the Rattata, Level 6, from Route 1.

Riveting, I know.

See y'all for the next entry.