Tag: about the editor

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

Lanette! I was wondering, what’s your favorite contest category?

It’s a tie between tough and cute, actually! I’ve always loved watching cute contests, even now, as an adult. Who can say no to a parade of adorable pokémon, right? Every single cute contest is just a whole hoard of cute pokémon like skitty or clefairy doing their absolute best to show off through tricks and a lot of pink, and who can say no to any of that? Imagine a solid afternoon of nothing but cat videos, and you’ll have a cute contest.

As for tough contests, that comes more from my background as a coordinator. I have a lot of fond memories preparing for those because they’re not just a bunch of musclebound pokémon flexing for the judges, contrary to popular belief. No, there’s a certain level of creativity and skill to it: you need to know how to use the stage, your pokémon’s strength, and your entire arsenal of moves in the perfect combination to show off your pokémon’s physical abilities. What that means varies from pokémon to pokémon too. While some may excel in showing off fighting techniques and breaking entire slabs of concrete with precision strikes, others may be better suited to lifting boulders and tossing them across the stage with ease. You needed to incorporate everything into your contest strategy, and once you get on stage and face opponents who also have come armed with brilliant contest strategies … let’s just say it’s like being in a well-choreographed kung-fu movie. (Of course, kung-fu movies aren’t really my favorites, and I can’t say I enjoy watching a tough contest as much as I enjoy participating in one, but at least being in them was a lot of fun.)

In case anyone’s wondering, I can also answer what my least favorite contest is: smart. You may think that’s odd, given that I’m, well, of a certain subculture that enjoys things generally associated with intellectuals, but really, proving that your pokémon is smart is neither fun to do nor exciting to watch. What’s more, the participants in such contests can be … more than a little obnoxious, especially the male coordinators towards female competitors. I’m sorry, gentlemen, but I know what I’m talking about when it comes to pokémon. And anyway, I only have enough room in my life for one passionate and intelligent gentleman who won’t shut up if you paid him once you got him started, and I make an exception with him because he also respects me, treats me like an equal, and hits my soft spot for cute things by having the innocence and enthusiasm of an overexcited eevee.

Well, I hope to meet this gentleman someday. —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.

ooooooo, sounds like Lanette might have a bit of a crush on a Certain Someone

Mirroring that other ask about Steven, to be fair, most people have a crush on that Certain Someone. Or most of us in the administrator circle, as well as half if not all his fans. It’s almost like a rite of passage at this point. At some point, you have a crush on our not-so-fearless leader, and you either get over it and realize he’s just really effortlessly charismatic, or you never really do.

Luckily, either way, he seems completely uninterested in even dealing with that sort of thing, so it’s pretty easy to operate around him without making things awkward. Unless you’re … like someone else who shall remain nameless but is very obvious about his ongoing crush.

As for me, maybe I’m in that group. But mostly, I just think it’s cute that this Certain Someone can make mistakes now and then, because it’s a nice reminder that he’s just as human as the rest of us, and fairies are a nice reminder of that.

Mind telling us about your coordinator days? What made you want to become a coordinator, how u started and such? ^^ thanks!

Well, I always thought it would be fun to be a coordinator. In Hoenn, or at least when I was younger, you would always see contests broadcasted practically every week. Watching all of that artistry in motion made me fall in love with pokémon in the first place—the choreography, the creativity, and everything else are just magical when you put them together.

So when I turned ten, I left my hometown (Lilycove City, for those curious) with my mudkip to travel across Hoenn and put together a contest team. As you probably already know, there are two types of contest circuits: themed and general. I wanted to take on both, but knowing how challenging the themed circuit is, I was careful to catch and raise one pokémon for each theme. (My swampert is the tough specialist, medicham the smart specialist, manectric the cool, glalie the beauty, and clefairy had been for cute contests.)

From then onward, I think my journey was pretty ordinary, to be honest. I traveled on my own, but I made a lot of friends along the way who taught me plenty about contests, including everything there is to know about berries, pokéblocks, and even poffins. As for the contests themselves, they were a struggle to get used to, certainly, because appeals are like battling but with more fireworks. Still, I got the hang of it pretty quickly, and after my third or fourth loss, I was able to earn my first ribbon—in a beauty contest with my then-snorunt, actually. Once I got the ball rolling, so to speak, I was able to earn ribbons for each of the themed contests right up to the master rank. It was the general circuit I never completed, and even then, it’s less because I lost and wasn’t able to enter the Grand Festival and more because I had burnt myself out on contests altogether. Eventually, I just sort of quit, one ribbon short of the five I needed to compete in the Grand Festival.

By then, Brigette was tired of gyms too, so we met up and decided to leave Hoenn to—not to put it dramatically or anything—find ourselves somewhere else. That’s how we wound up in Kanto, registered for classes with Professor Oak at Celadon University. And you probably know the rest.