Tag: about the author

F. someone with good taste

This too.

Hey! I have a lot of good qualities! —Bill

Yes. You’re funny, charming, sensitive, passionate, adorable, conscious of personal hygiene … and completely oblivious to your personal safety, social convention, and the embarrassingly obvious hints people drop that they’re interested in you. —LH

… Just adorable? —Bill

Does this mean you have a cruuuuuuuuuush, Lanette?

This is Bill we’re talking about, anonymous. If you don’t have a crush on him, you’re either:

A. A system admin who has already been through The Phase.

B. From Kanto or Johto but decidedly not attracted to men or the sort of people who are really into steampunk cosplay.

C. Related to Bill.

D. Not from Kanto or Johto and also not well-versed in news related to tech, science, or pokémon.

E. The girl who works at that one flower shop in North Goldenrod.

Oh, that last one hurts. —Bill

Why don’t some people nickname their Pokemon? It’s so weird to just call it by its species, yknow? It just feels like.. the trainers aren’t emotionally invested in their team if they don’t even name em… just very impersonal I guess. It’s like calling all your friends “Human!” Do you guys have any idea why someone would abstain from Ni? Oh, And do you guys use nicknames?

You’re actually one of two possible camps on the matter, believe it or not. The other side of the coin is that some people feel it’s not right to force a name on a possibly sentient creature, particularly one that the pokémon themselves didn’t help decide on. It would be very much akin to giving a human an unflattering nickname.

Either that, or they simply aren’t creative enough to give their pokémon names. That would be the third camp, but believe me when I say that this group is far smaller than one would think.

As for myself, I’m more of the second camp (the one that doesn’t believe in forcing names onto sentient creatures), but when I started my journey right up until my career as a researcher took off, I always offered names to my team. Some, like my various eevee, didn’t really take to any of them. Others, like my core team that had remained with me all these years, had. For example, my kadabra is very fond of his name, Foxglove (or Fox, for short). My venusaur is named Lucky after a very long story, my clefairy is Primrose (or Prim), and I’m also occasionally helped by a porygon-z named Beatrix. On the other hand, my farfetch’d absolutely refuses to respond to anything but Farfetch’d, and any attempt at an offer for otherwise would typically be met with a near-swordfight.

As for Lanette … I’ll let her speak for herself, actually.

LH: Well, I was part of the second camp too when I started out, but Bill convinced me that offering names to pokémon was a good idea. It helped that it was such a cute method. Of my personal pokémon, though, only my swampert really wanted one; the others didn’t really show any interest in getting named whatsoever. In any case, my swampert’s name is Cetus, after the constellation.

Oh, and then there’s the porygon I work with as part of the storage system. I don’t really consider her mine, though, so I haven’t really thought of a name for her. Yet, anyway.

Any video games you really like to play, Bill?

Bill: Admittedly, unlike Molayne, I haven’t quite figured out how to balance work and gaming—which is to say, after work, social media, and basic self care, I don’t really have much time to play video games.

Still, I find sim games like Groundcraft (both alone and with others) and Minior Valley very soothing, as is Pokémon Crossing. I also like a few MMO and co-op games like Battlecraft (which is how Lanette and I met Molayne, actually) and Overheat, but only if Lanette and/or Molayne are also playing. I’m the one who usually mains healers, incidentally, largely because Molayne plays tanks, Sophocles (who is always online alongside Molayne) is very fond of rogues and stealth-based characters, and Lanette plays anything that can kill an entire map full of enemies the fastest. Sometimes Bebe joins us so we can have parties of five; she and Molayne take turns tanking.

I also occasionally play Don’t Faint with Bebe, but I’ve been barred from ever using the one character who starts off with a lighter because I “wouldn’t take the game seriously.”

Meaning I might have burned down the forest we set up camp in.

Repeatedly.