Andraste

1. I will never underestimate Wigglytuff again. I had a deal with myself that I would keep whatever hatched out of the Odd Egg in my team (because I couldn't decide what else to pick) and was slightly disappointed when it was Igglybuff. But it turns out that its evolved forms have an amazing movepool, even if their sub-par defences make them less durable than that HP stat would suggest. It turns out having a Wigglytuff with Ice Punch is very useful if you want to fight Dragons.

2. Speaking of which: Lance is a scrub and the worst League Champion in the whole series. (I didn't realise that playing SoulSilver because I'd never played a Pokemon game before.) I have no idea why Gamefreak made him the Champion in the first place. Was he really popular after his Elite Four appearance in Red and Blue or something? In any case, anyone who has that many illegal Dragonite in his team and spams Hyper Beam that much deserves to be stomped into the ground by a ten-year-old. At least Red is one of the best battles in the whole series, which sort of makes up for it.

(I'm not saying Hyper Beam doesn't have a valuable place in the game. It's just that place is on the Pokemon of nine-year-olds who don't know any better yet and haven't realised that giving up your next turn is almost always a bad idea. Oh, and it's good on Mega Pidgeot! But even then I'd be damn careful choosing it over Hurricane or Fire Blast during a match.)

3. Crystal is very satisfying in terms of scope and gameplay, but I think the story is the weakest of all the games I've played. (Again, something I didn't notice about SoulSilver because it was all new to me.) I'm glad they realised they couldn't keep bringing back Team Rocket and needed to keep invented more evil teams. There is just no reason for them to be in this game other than the player needing someone bad to fight. (I mean, Team Skull don't know what they're doing either, but at least they're hilarious.)

4. The people who say that Pokemon games have become easier are both right and wrong depending on how you look at it. On the one hand, a lot of the grindier elements have been toned way down in subsequent entires, and you get a lot more opportunities to change you mind about things. I am glad we're no longer in the era of TMs you could only use once. The more recent games also expect you to keep fewer things in your head or a game guide. On the other, the core of the game has actually become more complicated over time, with elements like Abilities and Natures and Mega-Evolution and Z-Moves to consider, not to mention just hundreds and hundreds more Pokemon and moves to consider. Honestly, though, anyone who thinks the games are too easy now should either battle other players or go to the Battle Tree. Those things have definitely not become any easier. (I know because an Araquanid stalled my perfectly trained team to death today.)

5. It turns out that the perfect thing to put on the TV while doing boring things in a Pokemon game ... is Pokemon. Yes, I'm embarrassed it took me ten games to figure this out, too. I made it through the whole of the Indigo League! It's been literally decades since I saw any of it, so it was fun revisiting and actually watching every episode and in order. (And I do mean every episode. It's OK, I did not look at the seizure-inducing part, because I bet it's also migraine-inducing and who needs that? Poor Porygon, doomed to never appear in anything again even though it has nothing to do with the flashing lights.)

Anyway, I got my Bold Marvelscale Lugia imported into the Pokebank after less than fifty hours invested, so I'd say that it was worth it.

Holy crap, I just hatched a shiny Weedle! I have been trying since last October, on and off. Sometimes it felt like my hobby wasn’t so much playing Pokémon as fruitless Weedle farming. She is, for the the record, Weedle #2002. (Yes, I was using the Masuda method. My previous shiny hunt record was 728. Maybe I did something to anger Arceus.)

The worst part is that actively dislike Weedles and had to stare at literally thousands of them. The best part is that SHINY BEEDRILL IS MINE. Well, she will be when I evolve her tomorrow, anyway. Then I just need to EV train her, stuff her full of rare candy, teach her a couple of tutor moves and finally import her to Sun. Then I can put my X and Sapphire cartridges away for good! Maybe I’ll get around to finishing my next shiny breeding project before the end of November.

... right after I release another thousand Weedles into the endless void.

(I am crossposting this from Tumblr, because anyone who cares about this probably reading there not here, but I know I am going to want to be able to check the details myself some day and Tumblr is awful about letting you look up old posts. Anyway, carry on.)

It's been a big E3 for me so far on two very different fronts: Dragon Age and Pokemon. (And suddenly I'm wondering what a fusion between those universes would look like. Morrigan would have a team full of Dark types. And Flemeth would have all those ridiculously OP Dragons. I wonder if Anders would join Team Plasma?)

The big news about Dragon Age is that it's being held over until northern autumn 2014. I'm torn between thinking this is a good thing for the game overall and wailing and rending my garments. HOW CAN I WAIT ANOTHER YEAR AND A HALF? Especially when the trailer looks like this? And that's all in-engine footage, not CGI. At least I know when I'll be replacing my ageing PC - some time between when the optimum specs for this are released and launch day.

( Minor spoilers at best, and only for the trailer. )

As for Pokemon, I'd started to think the rumours of a new type were true a few weeks ago, when it became increasingly apparent that they were holding off on revealing Sylveon's typing for a reason. And now we know! THERE ARE ACTUALFAX FAIRY POKEMON! Take that, OP Dragons. (Merrill would have some Fairy types in her team, for sure. Especially if Fairy/Dark is a thing that exists.)

I'll be interested to see how many old Pokemon they change in the switchover - we already know that Marill, Jigglypuff and Gardevoir are becoming part-Fairy, and I'd lay money on the Clefairy line as well. (It's in the name, after all.) Marill was an unusual choice, although it is in the Fairy egg group. The only one I really hope they'll change is Togekiss - Normal/Flying is a boring type for such an odd-looking critter, and I think Fairy/Flying would suit it much better.

As you are probably already aware if you care about video games and don't live in a cave on Mars, there is a new generation of Pokemon games coming out in October. As you are probably not aware unless you regularly hang out at my house, I keep an old tea tin full of spare change by my bed that I take to the bank every few months. On Friday, I was pleasantly startled to find that I had somehow accumulated $298. That's more than twice as much as usual.

The relationship between these two things is that the second has allowed me to buy a Nintendo 3DS XL so I can experience the first when it arrives! The battery on my DS Lite has been getting very unreliable lately, which isn't that surprising since I've had it since 2009 and have used it heavily. My new toy is blue. I was also able to buy Red Dwarf X on DVD, and I still have $20 left over that I think I'm going to spend on a Bilbo Baggins action figure.

I am ridiculously excited about Gen VI, even by my standards of getting ridiculously excited about Pokemon. I have already chosen Fennekin in my heart. (As as the rest of the internet, apparently. Less than twenty-four hours after the reveal, he had more than two hundred works on DeviantArt. Now it's almost three thousand.) I also really like Xerneas, so I guess I'm getting Pokemon X instead of Y.

This also means that I have two consoles that can take Gen V games, so I can transfer all of my Pokemon over to White 2 without bothering lokisrose.

Thing that amuses me far too much: realising that, entirely by accident, I have made my core Pokemon team into a classic Five Man Band. My current SoulSilver crew consists of ...

- The Hero, my Feraligatr. The centre of the group, has been with me since he was just a Level 5 starter Pokemon and I was a total noob.

- The Lancer, my Ampharos. She's the opposite of my Feraligatr in every way, right down to her contrasting bright yellow colour.

- The Smart Guy, my Noctowl. Relies on tricky psychic attacks and high defence in battle, and he even wears the Wise Glasses.

- The Big Guy, my Snorlax. A big fluffy teddy bear, his main tactics are eating and sleeping during battle.

- The Chick, my Ninetales, but she's definitely a subversion of the Black Magician Girl variety. She's feminine and fragile, but she will also confuse you and set your hair on fire.

And because there are six spots in a Pokemon team, I also have ...

- The Cute Bruiser, my Sandslash. She is the smallest Pokemon on the squad, she is adorable, and she gets STAB for Earthquake. You are so dead.