Tag: our world

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.

How far down are Dragonite on the furries list? I’d think dragons would be pretty popular in general.

Well, according to my friend, dragonite is among the most popular “scalies” in the community. People identify most with dragonite’s “classic” look, not to mention its muscular yet cute appearance.

(Of course, my friend identifies more with dragonite’s typical disposition, the general dragon aesthetic, and the folklore surrounding it.)

You know, you can just say that’s you, Bill… —LH

bill, is there a fandom schism between pokemon furries and animal furries or do they somehow get along

Well, I heard from a friend that for the most part, they get along just fine, but there are very small circles of both sides that consider their style of “furry” to be “authentic furry.” Which my friend thinks is rather silly because ultimately, furries are already judged so harshly by the rest of the internet that it just doesn’t make sense to judge each other more, and in any case, if one is having fun and not harming anyone (actively or passively), then what does it matter if one identifies as a dragonite while the other identifies as a house cat?

Bill … would this friend of yours be H.N. Eon, the dragonite? —LH

No. —Bill

And is that last part referring to anon hate H.N. Eon got on his secret furry sideblog? —LH

No. —Bill

Do Ghost-type Pokemon like Halloween as much as humans do or is the correlation just because we consider them ghost-like

They do enjoy it, but not for the reason one might think. While they vaguely have a concept of Halloween, they don’t actually fully understand it now. They know, at least, that humans honor(ed) their dead on this day, and the gastly line (especially haunter and gengar) seem to know that long ago, humans once worshipped them on this day. They also know that humans enjoy being scared right around this time and that if they do so, they’ll earn free candy.

But mostly, they know that Halloween is that day when humans hang up fake ghost-type decorations, and they find this incredibly entertaining.

Messaging you from the hospital. Last night a robber entered in my house, and I put my phantump in her pokeball in order to not get hurt. Still, that criminal broke the pokeball while she was inside. What happens if a pokeball is broken? Please tell me she’s alright

Don’t worry—the safety mechanism will release a pokémon if its ball is too damaged for use, even if she’s still inside. Considering the fact that phantump is a ghost, yours likely slipped away unnoticed, which means she’s likely in hiding.

Now, keep in mind that when I say released, I mean you will need to catch her again. If you bonded with her, this shouldn’t be a problem, and she may still be nearby (if she hadn’t followed you to the hospital). However, if you hadn’t bonded … I’m sorry, dear reader.

In any case, get well soon!

So, if you look at it from more of a chemistry point of view, ‘cold’ isn’t really a thing. There is only a lack of heat. Temperature is all about measuring heat. I wonder what this could mean for ice types and their use of cold? Do they take heat away from their environment for their attacks?

Not so much for their attacks as it is just to exist. This would be why many ice-types, particularly those that have the ability Snow Warning, seem to emit auras of cold around themselves as well. A constant barrage of heat, such as from fire, can therefore easily overwhelm an ice-type because it’s difficult to process that much energy at once.

(Also, I stand corrected by my last post. Only fire is this sort of a problem for ice-types. Steel and rock fall under the same category as fighting.)

Why are Ice and Water so different elementally speaking when regular ice is just frozen water?

Put it this way: Calling it the ice-type is admittedly a bit of a misnomer. While, yes, most of its associated moves use literal ice, the element’s core actually centers around cold. As such, most of the other elements are reacting to ice’s need or use of cold temperatures, rather than its need or use of frozen water. The only exception to this is the fighting-type, which doubles in strength against ice-types because it’s reacting to the physical fragility of ice against a good whack.

My machop seems interested in tattoos… Is it illegal to get a pokemon a tattoo? What happenes to the tattoo when he evolves??

If it’s a pokémon with a reasonable enough level of intelligence to consent to being tattooed, it’s actually fine, believe it or not. (Unfortunately, this means you can’t tattoo a slowpoke.)

As for your question concerning what happens, because it’s a permanent change to your machop’s body, it will actually shift to an analogous spot post-evolution. For example, if you tattooed a machop’s bicep, the tattoo will remain on its bicep when it evolves to a machoke. Keep in mind, though, that the tattoo might warp as your pokémon’s size shifts. This might not be a problem for a single tattoo that won’t suffer from a little stretching, but a sleeve tattoo on a machop might be an entirely different story.

Are there different types of paralysis? For example, if my Pokemon got hit with a Stun Spore versus a Thunder Wave. Since they’re completely different types of moves, does it also affect my Pokemon differently other than being paralyzed?

Yes, actually. Although all moves that cause paralysis affect your maneuverability one way or another, how it happens depends entirely on the nature of the move involved. For example, a physical strike (Body Slam, Force Palm, and so on) is less about paralysis and more about either stunning (in the case of Force Palm) or, well, spraining (in the case of Body Slam). While a pokémon affected by these moves can still battle and move about, it just hurts to do so. In their cases, paralyze heal works by easing the pain enough to restore their ability to freely move (in the cases of Body Slam, Bounce, and other full-body moves) or by simply snapping them out of being stunned (in the case of Force Palm).

Then you have non-contact paralysis, such as Glare, Lick, or technically Psycho Shift. In the case of Glare, the target is far too intimidated to move for the most part, and paralysis medications work by essentially lighting a fire within them (slightly literally in the case of cheri berry, given its spiciness), thereby granting the afflicted pokémon enough courage to finish the battle. Lick and Psycho Shift, meanwhile, are supernatural in nature. Psycho Shift causes its victims to think they’re afflicted with paralysis while supernaturally curing the user of its own, while Lick locks a victim into ectoplasm-induced chills. For the former, paralysis medications work the same way as it would with Glare, while for the latter, it works by dispelling a ghost’s supernatural hold on its victim. 

Finally, Stun Spore and all electrical-moves (including Freeze Shock and the electrical component of Tri Attack) are far more dangerous than the above. When it comes to electrical attacks, those target the interactions between a pokémon’s nervous and muscular systems, which in turn cause the status condition’s signature involuntary spasms and seizes. (This is because the interactions between these two systems are founded in electrical pulses: the natural electricity found in everyone’s nervous system is balanced just so, with a specific pattern. An electric shock can change the pattern of these pulses, which can cause a muscle to “think” it’s received a signal from the nervous system to seize when it shouldn’t.) It should be noted that in high doses, this can also affect the heart, triggering arrhythmia or even cardiac arrest, and thus, it’s absolutely imperative to take caution when training electric-types … and, well, teach your electric-types how to minimize the risk of accidentally doing permanent damage to a pokémon.

By contrast, Stun Spore is actually a poisonous spore spore. When inhaled or swallowed, which typically happens when a victim is doused in it, it triggers a reaction that causes a victim’s muscles to seize up, much like in electrical paralysis. (It can also cause a nasty skin rash, but that’s neither here nor there.) In fact, in high enough doses, it can paralyze the respiratory system and essentially prevent you from breathing. On the positive side, a Stun Spore-induced death is actually far easier to prevent than electric attacks, not only because the wind often spreads the attack thin (which also explains why it’s not always a reliable means of paralysis) but also because in order to produce the doses needed to kill someone, a pokémon would have to consciously do it. Pokémon that have Stun Spore in their arsenal can easily be trained to hold back on their spore production, and trainers themselves can take note to not “spam” this move. It’s also somewhat easier to treat, as Stun Spore paralysis responds well to paralyze heal, and it’s just a matter of getting your pokémon to a center and administering a general antivenom. By contrast, an overdose of electrical paralysis may require additional therapy to heal. Still, yes, whereas electric attacks run a risk of killing a pokémon rather quickly (it only takes a high enough shock to send a victim into cardiac arrest), death by Stun Spore is notoriously slow and painful.

Or in short, the answer to your question is … yes. Yes, there are different types of paralysis, and some are both more fascinating and more nightmarish than others.