in which Meg is a big nerd
The storm is supposed to blow itself out tonight, but today since Cecil was home and I was sort of freaking out at the prospect of driving to work and back, he offered to drive. He's having his knee Done tomorrow, so if he wants to drive, today was the last day he can for about a month. (Oh god this is going to be worse than keeping Oliver quiet and amused after stitches. I wonder if I got a Brain Games cart if it would keep him from going crazy. Of course if I got a Brain Games cart I think Mom would never let me have my DS back, ever again. -- The DS is now Hizuki, although it might be Hikari. The original Hizuki -- my GBA-SP -- is now awaiting a new life with someone's kid. Don't let me forget to find his case.)
Please keep in mind that Cecil thinks that driving slow is for when you're driving a big rig up the side of a mountain on a road which most closely resembles a streambed.
I was like, I will be over here running through the inevitable stupid warp-panel dungeon in Pokemon and not looking at the speedometer, your job is not to crash my car. It was just barely less scary than driving myself, and considerably faster. I had us leave at 1230 because, hey, I take London Rd at forty miles an hour in weather like this, doesn't everybody! WRONG. I got to work, looking like I'd seen my own death, at like, 1320.
We lost power at eh about 2100 yesterday? well, we lost it around 1700 and then got it again, and then after I was really smug about having bought a paraffin lamp and actually ended up using the damn DS as a flashlight, it came on and then went out again. (After I had blown out most of the candles on account of being a lump under the covers.) According to Mom it didn't come back until like 1530 today.
...okay, I have seriously got to stop thinking in nursing time TAT -- the Pokemon clock runs in 24hr mode and between that and work I can't think in AM and PM right now.
Anyway, ripped through a couple of Gyms and worked on the Pink Sweater of Doom for a bit. I am within two inches of being done with the body! This is the part where I make an exciting discovery about how it's never going to fit me and kill myself. Death now would probably be preferable to 13 inches worth of hood, sleeves and buttonbands, but it's so cold right now that I'm kind of motivated to work on it. Then the other day I ripped out Tari's tam, cursing bitterly, and am re-casting on with a multiple of twelve and prayers to be delivered from goddamn floats that are too tight despite what I thought was constant vilgilance.
Difficulty not v high in Diamond: I haven't lost a single battle despite carefully spending all my money before Gym battles (you lose half of your money if you lose a fight, and I'd be like, SHIT, I have 20000PokeYen! I should spend this before I lose it!) and underleveled Pokemon. I'm averaging 3-5 levels lower than the things I'm fighting and either I've finally gotten really good about fighting with types or they seriously dumbed it down -- even the inevitable stupid warp-panel dungeon is like, almost bearable. Ruby/Sapphire's made me want to swim to Japan and strangle the developers. Come to think of it, the aggravating Ice-type Gym didn't make me curse more than two or three times. It was actually kind of an easy puzzle. Tedious, but easy. WEIRD.
The Ice-type Gym was only mildly irritating because of course Water can use Ice moves and so Sho the Ponyta (Fire-type) was always suddenly staring down a Floatzel or similar and good luck with that. Nino the Raichu came in BIG HANDY. Although some genius said to themselves, what really needs to happen is an Ice/Grass-type, which is just one big IT'S SUPER EFFECTIVE! to a Fire type. (Sho and Nino are the only two Arashi ones right now, still looking for the other three. There's a Venus-flytrap one I need to catch for Aiba, and Ohno is just a matter of finding a Water type I really like. Jun I'm still scratching my head over. I think Espeon is still the best bet. But only if I have to tediously raise his affection stat through expensive foods and massages.) The other one that I've been using heavily is Stella the ...random bird type? It's like a Pidgy but it's a different name. Anyway, I didn't catch one for a long time and it turns out they have super high Attack stats and Team Galactic has a tendency to be heavy on Fighting and Bug types. It's like swatting flies with a nuclear warhead, so so awesome.
I need to level a Ground-type up for the last Gym, as I have a sneaking feeling that it's going to be Electric-based. I have a fossil Pokemon (I named it Ingrid♥ - am trying to think who else I could name things after. Because of course one needs to find exactly the right Pokemon to name after someone. This game is severely lacking in purple and green Pokemon) but it apparently is not a pure Ground type. Then on to the Elite Four!
Some thoughts -- compared to the other versions, this one is much more heavily biased toward co-operation and skills building than the others have been. Usually in the other versions the Gym leaders would say things like CURSES I AM WEAK WEEEEEEEEEAAAAAK WEAK YOU HAVE DEFEATED ME TAKE THE DAMN BADGE and vow to become stronger, in this version they're saying things like You deserve this Badge and comment on the bonds between me and my Pokeymans. Which makes me think that the theory I was working on that the Gym leaders have like, skill sets for you to defeat and don't actually use, say, level 8 Onixes all the time is probably correct. I picture Roark hanging out with his dad and busting out the lvl100 Sandslash or something. (I also picture the inevitable yaoi fic with Roark and his dad, and die a little inside.)
Rival still gay, although for reasons best known to themselves they have basically divided the Rival role between Lucas/Dawn (the other gender of the main character .... it makes sense, I promise) and your childhood friend. Your childhood friend (Paul in Diamond and Dias in Pearl) is a big dork who rushes off and wants to be the strongest. Lucas/Dawn is um. I haven't battled them yet that I can remember, although I think you fight with them as a team a few times. They're not very interested in the whole Gym thing. V v unusual.
Haven't started doing Contests yet although they've really added a lot of stuff to them. The Contests are now in three parts and include a dance-off, which I am failing heavily at in practice sessions, and your Mum apparently is a big name there.
I was all. Adfkla;kldfsa. I mean. POKEMON DANCE-OFFS. Seriously.
Oh yes and the Annoying Berry Related Activity (ha! ABRA! everything is Pokeymans around here) besides going around and tenderly watering your tiny plantations of the damn things -- but this time there's a thing where you can keep TRACK of your tiny Berry plantations! -- involves skittering the stylus frantically around the the touchscreen and probably ruining it as you stir muffin batter to make Poffins. Poffin-making can suck it. At least until I can find someone to help me stir the damn Poffins, because one-person ABRA-ing is pretty much useless. If I go to Kurumi-con this year I can just see myself with a sign up saying POKEYMANS POFFINS LETS MAKE TOGETHER!! and waiting for victims.
But the best part of the game so far is the underground thing. They brought back the Secret Bases (Meg glees, since she loved the Secret Bases in Ruby/Sapphire and only wished they did more than just store crap) and there's an entire network of caves and tunnels under the entire region, where if you actually happen to have other Pokeymans playing friends with Diamond/Pearl, you can play Capture the Flag with their bases.
And also, she says seriously, also, there is a mining game. MEG Love MINING MINIGAME. It's worse than the Chocobo Forest thing in FF9. YOU CAN DIG SHIT UP FOR HOURS ON END♥♥♥.
Huh. Wonder how many of you are now tragically enlightened over the depths of my nerd. I always want to write long fics about Main Character (named Rina in my games) and her team of overpowered Pokemon futzing around doing nothing in particular, and I always reluctantly conclude they're probably better off in my imagination.
Next up I either need to get FF12:RW (although that would involve finishing up FF12 -- not that never finishing the first game stopped me with Chain of Memories ...it took me so long to finish the first KH game. I may have actually beaten KH2 first) or ...I dunno. I'm thinking FFIV:DS (REVENGE OF THE CRAZY MOON BROTHERS) will be fun when it comes out. I don't care if they changed the story. There was no story to change in the first place, and I want to see Kain looking superhot and angsty.
Please keep in mind that Cecil thinks that driving slow is for when you're driving a big rig up the side of a mountain on a road which most closely resembles a streambed.
I was like, I will be over here running through the inevitable stupid warp-panel dungeon in Pokemon and not looking at the speedometer, your job is not to crash my car. It was just barely less scary than driving myself, and considerably faster. I had us leave at 1230 because, hey, I take London Rd at forty miles an hour in weather like this, doesn't everybody! WRONG. I got to work, looking like I'd seen my own death, at like, 1320.
We lost power at eh about 2100 yesterday? well, we lost it around 1700 and then got it again, and then after I was really smug about having bought a paraffin lamp and actually ended up using the damn DS as a flashlight, it came on and then went out again. (After I had blown out most of the candles on account of being a lump under the covers.) According to Mom it didn't come back until like 1530 today.
...okay, I have seriously got to stop thinking in nursing time TAT -- the Pokemon clock runs in 24hr mode and between that and work I can't think in AM and PM right now.
Anyway, ripped through a couple of Gyms and worked on the Pink Sweater of Doom for a bit. I am within two inches of being done with the body! This is the part where I make an exciting discovery about how it's never going to fit me and kill myself. Death now would probably be preferable to 13 inches worth of hood, sleeves and buttonbands, but it's so cold right now that I'm kind of motivated to work on it. Then the other day I ripped out Tari's tam, cursing bitterly, and am re-casting on with a multiple of twelve and prayers to be delivered from goddamn floats that are too tight despite what I thought was constant vilgilance.
Difficulty not v high in Diamond: I haven't lost a single battle despite carefully spending all my money before Gym battles (you lose half of your money if you lose a fight, and I'd be like, SHIT, I have 20000PokeYen! I should spend this before I lose it!) and underleveled Pokemon. I'm averaging 3-5 levels lower than the things I'm fighting and either I've finally gotten really good about fighting with types or they seriously dumbed it down -- even the inevitable stupid warp-panel dungeon is like, almost bearable. Ruby/Sapphire's made me want to swim to Japan and strangle the developers. Come to think of it, the aggravating Ice-type Gym didn't make me curse more than two or three times. It was actually kind of an easy puzzle. Tedious, but easy. WEIRD.
The Ice-type Gym was only mildly irritating because of course Water can use Ice moves and so Sho the Ponyta (Fire-type) was always suddenly staring down a Floatzel or similar and good luck with that. Nino the Raichu came in BIG HANDY. Although some genius said to themselves, what really needs to happen is an Ice/Grass-type, which is just one big IT'S SUPER EFFECTIVE! to a Fire type. (Sho and Nino are the only two Arashi ones right now, still looking for the other three. There's a Venus-flytrap one I need to catch for Aiba, and Ohno is just a matter of finding a Water type I really like. Jun I'm still scratching my head over. I think Espeon is still the best bet. But only if I have to tediously raise his affection stat through expensive foods and massages.) The other one that I've been using heavily is Stella the ...random bird type? It's like a Pidgy but it's a different name. Anyway, I didn't catch one for a long time and it turns out they have super high Attack stats and Team Galactic has a tendency to be heavy on Fighting and Bug types. It's like swatting flies with a nuclear warhead, so so awesome.
I need to level a Ground-type up for the last Gym, as I have a sneaking feeling that it's going to be Electric-based. I have a fossil Pokemon (I named it Ingrid♥ - am trying to think who else I could name things after. Because of course one needs to find exactly the right Pokemon to name after someone. This game is severely lacking in purple and green Pokemon) but it apparently is not a pure Ground type. Then on to the Elite Four!
Some thoughts -- compared to the other versions, this one is much more heavily biased toward co-operation and skills building than the others have been. Usually in the other versions the Gym leaders would say things like CURSES I AM WEAK WEEEEEEEEEAAAAAK WEAK YOU HAVE DEFEATED ME TAKE THE DAMN BADGE and vow to become stronger, in this version they're saying things like You deserve this Badge and comment on the bonds between me and my Pokeymans. Which makes me think that the theory I was working on that the Gym leaders have like, skill sets for you to defeat and don't actually use, say, level 8 Onixes all the time is probably correct. I picture Roark hanging out with his dad and busting out the lvl100 Sandslash or something. (I also picture the inevitable yaoi fic with Roark and his dad, and die a little inside.)
Rival still gay, although for reasons best known to themselves they have basically divided the Rival role between Lucas/Dawn (the other gender of the main character .... it makes sense, I promise) and your childhood friend. Your childhood friend (Paul in Diamond and Dias in Pearl) is a big dork who rushes off and wants to be the strongest. Lucas/Dawn is um. I haven't battled them yet that I can remember, although I think you fight with them as a team a few times. They're not very interested in the whole Gym thing. V v unusual.
Haven't started doing Contests yet although they've really added a lot of stuff to them. The Contests are now in three parts and include a dance-off, which I am failing heavily at in practice sessions, and your Mum apparently is a big name there.
I was all. Adfkla;kldfsa. I mean. POKEMON DANCE-OFFS. Seriously.
Oh yes and the Annoying Berry Related Activity (ha! ABRA! everything is Pokeymans around here) besides going around and tenderly watering your tiny plantations of the damn things -- but this time there's a thing where you can keep TRACK of your tiny Berry plantations! -- involves skittering the stylus frantically around the the touchscreen and probably ruining it as you stir muffin batter to make Poffins. Poffin-making can suck it. At least until I can find someone to help me stir the damn Poffins, because one-person ABRA-ing is pretty much useless. If I go to Kurumi-con this year I can just see myself with a sign up saying POKEYMANS POFFINS LETS MAKE TOGETHER!! and waiting for victims.
But the best part of the game so far is the underground thing. They brought back the Secret Bases (Meg glees, since she loved the Secret Bases in Ruby/Sapphire and only wished they did more than just store crap) and there's an entire network of caves and tunnels under the entire region, where if you actually happen to have other Pokeymans playing friends with Diamond/Pearl, you can play Capture the Flag with their bases.
And also, she says seriously, also, there is a mining game. MEG Love MINING MINIGAME. It's worse than the Chocobo Forest thing in FF9. YOU CAN DIG SHIT UP FOR HOURS ON END♥♥♥.
Huh. Wonder how many of you are now tragically enlightened over the depths of my nerd. I always want to write long fics about Main Character (named Rina in my games) and her team of overpowered Pokemon futzing around doing nothing in particular, and I always reluctantly conclude they're probably better off in my imagination.
Next up I either need to get FF12:RW (although that would involve finishing up FF12 -- not that never finishing the first game stopped me with Chain of Memories ...it took me so long to finish the first KH game. I may have actually beaten KH2 first) or ...I dunno. I'm thinking FFIV:DS (REVENGE OF THE CRAZY MOON BROTHERS) will be fun when it comes out. I don't care if they changed the story. There was no story to change in the first place, and I want to see Kain looking superhot and angsty.