.
I've been reading bawww threads on /vp/ lately. I'm not sure why I thought this was a good idea, but...it's reminded me of a lot of Poke-bros and toys from the past. Brace for bawww and d'awww. Probably mostly boring, but it's stuff I've been thinking about a lot lately.
- When Pokemon hadn't quite gotten off the ground in the US, at the end of my elementary school days, my now-boyfriend had an early copy of one of the games (can't recall whether it was Red or Blue). A small group of us (who are all still friends today, though we've drifted to various places) would gather around and take turns playing. The owner of the game had been having trouble finding an Arbok. It was my turn to play when I ran into one, so I resolved to catch it. It took a while, but I finally caught it. He told me I was good luck, and said he'd ask me next time he had a Pokemon he couldn't find. From that point on, I decided that Arbok was my lucky Pokemon. I discovered to my amusement later on that my Chinese Zodiac symbol was a Snake. Arbok remains to this day one of the few Pokemon that I can draw without a reference. It's just that special to me.
- On my first playthrough of Blue, I had a Vaporeon named Sally. For some reason, I decided that it was female. I soloed the Elite Four with her. When G/S/C came out, I wanted to transfer her over...but then I realized that "she" would probably be a "he" if I did. I think she was still on my Blue cartridge when the save battery died. If I'd known it was possible to replace them, I would have kept it. But I didn't.
- The only Gen I game I still have my original copy of is also the first one I ever got: my Yellow with the Special Pikachu Edition Gameboy Color. I suspect that the reason for this is that I lost it in the back of a couch for three years. I kid you not. Three years, INSIDE the back of a couch, between the attached cushions and the back of the sofa. I have no idea how it managed to get there, and the only reason it was found was because my grandmother had to remove the cushion and fix a hole.
- I went to NYC in 2002. It was rainy and depressing the whole time. The various memorials, cards, and fake flowers were still gathering mold along the gates of the church next to Ground Zero. The day before we actually went to visit, my grandfather took me to Pokemon Center. I bought a tiny Mewtwo figure and a cloth handkerchief/bandana/thing that was green and had Magikarps on it. I kept Mewtwo in my pocket the whole trip, and when I got too sad, to took him out and thought to him. At night, I sat in the window of our hotel room and played Crystal with Mewtwo on my lap. I'm not sure where he is anymore, but that little figure kept me company when I was a little girl stuck in a dark, rainy, sad city.
- The Magikarp cloth, however, is in a drawer of my nightstand at my parents' house. I brought it with me my first year of college. It got something spilled on it, and I didn't trust myself not to do so again, so I left it home after that.
- I have two tiny little figures that have been with me since I bought them years ago: Sandslash and Sandshrew. Sandshrew is in a box in our storage building, but Sandslash has come to college with me every year. This is the first semester he hasn't been sitting on my windowsill, because one of my cousins moved him and he wasn't in the right place when I was packing up.
- When I went to college, my mother persuaded me to finally get rid of the old Winnie the Pooh comforter I had been using for the past several years (it was warm and comfy and I saw no need to spend money on something else). What she couldn't persuade me to throw away was my Charmander pillow. It was a huge thing, the size of a real pillow, but the shape of a particularly flat Charmander (tail and all). I slept with it as my pillow for something like five years. It was my friend. I have pictures of it holding my Playstation 2 controller, terrorizing my action figures, and smothering my smaller stuffed animals. When we moved, it got shoved into a bag with my other stuffed animals. I'm not sure which closet he's in now, but if I knew he'd be on my bed in an instant, even at college.
- I just finished a re-play of Ruby. I went through most of the game with only six Pokemon, picking up only Gelato the Wynaut and Revenant the Groudon aside from my team of Heinreich the Swampert, Helene the Linoone, Corinne the Swellow, Cheri the Aron, Reverb the Exploud, and Siren the Mawile. I didn't want 75% of Heinreich's moveset to be HMs, so I decided to catch another Water Pokemon to get me up the waterfalls and to the League. Enter Fluke the Magikarp, named dually for the tailfin of a whale and the accidental advantage (as he was six levels higher than Cheri when I caught him, so poor Cheri was boxed). I slapped an Exp Share on him and fought my way towards Evergrande, and along the way he evolved. Fluke the Gyarados sat in the last spot of my party (sans Exp Share at this point, as I was more focused on getting Reverb to evolve).
When I went to battle the Elite Four with my pitifully underleveled team (lvl 33-42 on everyone except Heinreich, who was lvl 53 before I went in), 63 Revives, 47 Full Restores, 19 Hyper Potions, and various other HP/PP/Status-restoring items, I fully expected to be completely steamrolled. By the time I reached Drake, Fluke had saved my team three times. Somehow, even at level 35, he was able to resist KO for three to four turns. The first was always the use of a Revive, but the others were all-out attack. Fluke became my Ace-In-The-Hole. When something wasn't going my way, I sent out Fluke and the tide of battle always turned. Fluke saved me again in the fourth battle. I healed up and went to face the Champion, fully ready to use Fluke. I didn't need to, though. He'd already turned the odds in my favor. Heinreich (and Siren the one time I had to pull Heinreich to heal) steamrolled the final battle, and suddenly we were Champions.
As the credits rolled, I thought about how pets sometimes live up to their names. Maybe Pokemon can too, even though they're just pixels and data. Fluke certainly lived up to his name, and once I catch a few buffer Pokemon, he's being migrated to my Diamond (the place where my Ruby bros go when it's time to start over).
Fluke
-noun
1. an accidental advantage; stroke of good luck: He got the job by a fluke.
2. an accident or chance happening.
3. an accidentally successful stroke, as in billiards.
- When Pokemon hadn't quite gotten off the ground in the US, at the end of my elementary school days, my now-boyfriend had an early copy of one of the games (can't recall whether it was Red or Blue). A small group of us (who are all still friends today, though we've drifted to various places) would gather around and take turns playing. The owner of the game had been having trouble finding an Arbok. It was my turn to play when I ran into one, so I resolved to catch it. It took a while, but I finally caught it. He told me I was good luck, and said he'd ask me next time he had a Pokemon he couldn't find. From that point on, I decided that Arbok was my lucky Pokemon. I discovered to my amusement later on that my Chinese Zodiac symbol was a Snake. Arbok remains to this day one of the few Pokemon that I can draw without a reference. It's just that special to me.
- On my first playthrough of Blue, I had a Vaporeon named Sally. For some reason, I decided that it was female. I soloed the Elite Four with her. When G/S/C came out, I wanted to transfer her over...but then I realized that "she" would probably be a "he" if I did. I think she was still on my Blue cartridge when the save battery died. If I'd known it was possible to replace them, I would have kept it. But I didn't.
- The only Gen I game I still have my original copy of is also the first one I ever got: my Yellow with the Special Pikachu Edition Gameboy Color. I suspect that the reason for this is that I lost it in the back of a couch for three years. I kid you not. Three years, INSIDE the back of a couch, between the attached cushions and the back of the sofa. I have no idea how it managed to get there, and the only reason it was found was because my grandmother had to remove the cushion and fix a hole.
- I went to NYC in 2002. It was rainy and depressing the whole time. The various memorials, cards, and fake flowers were still gathering mold along the gates of the church next to Ground Zero. The day before we actually went to visit, my grandfather took me to Pokemon Center. I bought a tiny Mewtwo figure and a cloth handkerchief/bandana/thing that was green and had Magikarps on it. I kept Mewtwo in my pocket the whole trip, and when I got too sad, to took him out and thought to him. At night, I sat in the window of our hotel room and played Crystal with Mewtwo on my lap. I'm not sure where he is anymore, but that little figure kept me company when I was a little girl stuck in a dark, rainy, sad city.
- The Magikarp cloth, however, is in a drawer of my nightstand at my parents' house. I brought it with me my first year of college. It got something spilled on it, and I didn't trust myself not to do so again, so I left it home after that.
- I have two tiny little figures that have been with me since I bought them years ago: Sandslash and Sandshrew. Sandshrew is in a box in our storage building, but Sandslash has come to college with me every year. This is the first semester he hasn't been sitting on my windowsill, because one of my cousins moved him and he wasn't in the right place when I was packing up.
- When I went to college, my mother persuaded me to finally get rid of the old Winnie the Pooh comforter I had been using for the past several years (it was warm and comfy and I saw no need to spend money on something else). What she couldn't persuade me to throw away was my Charmander pillow. It was a huge thing, the size of a real pillow, but the shape of a particularly flat Charmander (tail and all). I slept with it as my pillow for something like five years. It was my friend. I have pictures of it holding my Playstation 2 controller, terrorizing my action figures, and smothering my smaller stuffed animals. When we moved, it got shoved into a bag with my other stuffed animals. I'm not sure which closet he's in now, but if I knew he'd be on my bed in an instant, even at college.
- I just finished a re-play of Ruby. I went through most of the game with only six Pokemon, picking up only Gelato the Wynaut and Revenant the Groudon aside from my team of Heinreich the Swampert, Helene the Linoone, Corinne the Swellow, Cheri the Aron, Reverb the Exploud, and Siren the Mawile. I didn't want 75% of Heinreich's moveset to be HMs, so I decided to catch another Water Pokemon to get me up the waterfalls and to the League. Enter Fluke the Magikarp, named dually for the tailfin of a whale and the accidental advantage (as he was six levels higher than Cheri when I caught him, so poor Cheri was boxed). I slapped an Exp Share on him and fought my way towards Evergrande, and along the way he evolved. Fluke the Gyarados sat in the last spot of my party (sans Exp Share at this point, as I was more focused on getting Reverb to evolve).
When I went to battle the Elite Four with my pitifully underleveled team (lvl 33-42 on everyone except Heinreich, who was lvl 53 before I went in), 63 Revives, 47 Full Restores, 19 Hyper Potions, and various other HP/PP/Status-restoring items, I fully expected to be completely steamrolled. By the time I reached Drake, Fluke had saved my team three times. Somehow, even at level 35, he was able to resist KO for three to four turns. The first was always the use of a Revive, but the others were all-out attack. Fluke became my Ace-In-The-Hole. When something wasn't going my way, I sent out Fluke and the tide of battle always turned. Fluke saved me again in the fourth battle. I healed up and went to face the Champion, fully ready to use Fluke. I didn't need to, though. He'd already turned the odds in my favor. Heinreich (and Siren the one time I had to pull Heinreich to heal) steamrolled the final battle, and suddenly we were Champions.
As the credits rolled, I thought about how pets sometimes live up to their names. Maybe Pokemon can too, even though they're just pixels and data. Fluke certainly lived up to his name, and once I catch a few buffer Pokemon, he's being migrated to my Diamond (the place where my Ruby bros go when it's time to start over).
Fluke
-noun
1. an accidental advantage; stroke of good luck: He got the job by a fluke.
2. an accident or chance happening.
3. an accidentally successful stroke, as in billiards.