Tag: pokemon

In which we finish a project

On By Luther M. SilerIn life3 Comments

The boy’s room is done! All we need to do now is get all of his shit out of my room and my office and put it back in his! And that’s his problem! Hooray!

The final project was to get the curtains up; I’m going to be honest: I was scared of this, as getting things that require drilling multiple holes and using drywall anchors straight, level, and even is not something that I’ve ever been very good at. I’m not gonna promise that this is contractor-quality measurement but neither of us can see anything wrong looking at it and frankly that’s all I care about.

The other corner, with a couple more of the trees. We bought him a new bed– I managed to destroy his old bed frame, don’t ask– but it won’t be here until September so for now the box springs and mattress are just on the floor.

CONTROVERSIAL DECISION: we decided to leave his door and the closet door alone. While neither of us liked the yellow in the room, with everything repainted I actually like how they look, and since they would have been a pain in the ass to paint anyway we decided to stick with the original color. I don’t love how it looks next to the white furniture but whatever.

We need to get him another lamp today, because the room is a bit darker than it used to be, but that’s the last touch.

EDIT: I have been informed there has been a decor change since I’ve started typing this.

Each of the six trees now contains a Porkachorp. I feel very bad for this one, who only wants the little birdie to be his friend:

As it works out, this is the one you’re looking straight at if you’re standing in the doorway of his room looking from the hallway, so I can look forward to this haunting me for the rest of the time I live in this house.

(Also, my wife and I have both noticed that our cameras are having a hell of a time with the green color; the best look at what it actually looks like is the brighter corner of green in the top picture. If the room is dark, the darker leaves go blue, which is *fascinating*.)

In which I gain a level in Nerd Dad

On By Luther M. SilerIn Geek, Parenting8 Comments

The boy, who remember is eight and was never provided with a sibling, is forever crafting games that he wants his mother and I to play with him. They are damn near always some sort of Pokémon pastiche of one kind or another; “We create characters, and assign them powers, and then we battle!” only battle basically means that all of the moves he’s made up for his characters destroy all of our characters automatically. He, uh, hasn’t quite mastered the concept of game balance just yet.

“We should really get you into Dungeons and Dragons,” I said to him the other day, not expecting anything to come of what I meant as an idle comment.

Yeah, that backfired. He’s been talking about it for a solid week, and I’ve been kind of tossing around ideas for quickie adventures I might be able to run for him and my wife, and then I happened to be at Target tonight, as one does, and came across the D&D Essentials Kit, which frankly has far too much crap in it for just $24.99. There’s a rulebook (not really necessary, as I have the 5E hardcovers,) the adventure itself, some dice, a bunch of character sheets on nice paper (nonetheless, easily photocopied for backups,) a DM screen, and a bunch of little cards for status reminders and quests and magical items and other shit like this. An early look through the adventure reveals that what it actually is is a bunch of mini-quests set in the same area, so it’s going to be possible to do a bunch of shorter sessions that will be better suited to the attention span of an eight-year-old than the marathon gaming sessions I remember from high school and college.

I’m actually looking forward to this. I kind of feel bad not buying it from The Griffon, but that’s the nature of impulse buys, and I’m sure it’s gonna trigger spending a crapton of money on other stuff, and also holy crap have the nerds won the universe. You can get D&D stuff at Target. That’s kind of mind-blowing.

Snow day Saturday

On By Luther M. SilerIn Uncategorized4 Comments

Not a whole lot to talk about today, unless y’all want to get into the absolute wonder that yesterday’s politics news was– Roger Stone getting arrested, then the air traffic controllers shutting down the Eastern Seaboard and LaGuardia Airport and the shutdown being done only a few hours later was a thing of wonder and a testament to 1) Nancy Pelosi holding the Democrats together and 2) the power of unions. ‘Twas awesome.

Today has mostly been a day for burrowing into blankets and avoiding the cold; we spent a pleasant 45 minutes or so checking out a relatively new local independent bookstore but other than that didn’t really go outside, and the three of us have basically been trading off the TV for Pokémon and Dark Souls since then. I’ve been doing this thing on Saturdays for several weeks now where I get up, have a large cup of coffee, and read in my recliner for a couple of hours. I’m rereading Yoon Ha Lee’s Machineries of Empire trilogy, or at least the first two books, in preparation for finishing the trilogy with Book 3, which I expect to be amazing.

Speaking of amazing books, you may want to check out The Tiger’s Daughter by K. Arsenault Rivera. There’s very likely to be a full review but I want to wait a couple of days for … reasons. In the meantime, it’s the first shortlist-for-the-top-10 new book I’ve read in 2019.

What are you doing to keep the cold away this weekend?

Okay that’s enough thank you

On By Luther M. SilerIn idiocy1 Comment

I ride around on a giant stone serpent I have named Tiny Snek now. I have played approximately five hundred hours of Pokemon Let’s Go: Pikachu since yesterday’s post, which does not count the twelve thousand hours my son has put into the game, and as of this exact moment I have not yet Caught Them All. I have Caught perhaps A Third Of Them, and I think perhaps I have played just a little too much Pokémon this weekend. I mean, my eyes are bleeding. That’s not normal, right? I don’t remember what my life was like before we bought this game but I don’t think eye-bleeding was ever really a prominent part of it.

This game has dick jokes in it, by the way. They are at least moderately subtle most of the time, but Jesus Christ the Boulder gym, the first one? Everything in there was a horrifying sex joke that my seven-year-old, currently perched on the arm of the recliner I’m writing this in and reading over my shoulder, did not understand. Also, all of the human character models, even the male ones, have at least a-cup breasts, which I’m really confused about. About half the time I can’t tell if I’m supposed to be talking to a male or female character until they give me a name. These are not things I was expecting to be thinking about while playing this.

Tomorrow is Martin Luther King Day, so the boy and I have the day off and my wife has to go to work. I may have to accidentally break the TV at seven in the morning to save my sanity. Pray for me.

In which I relive someone else’s childhood

On By Luther M. SilerIn Parenting3 Comments

I’ve said this before, on more than one occasion: forget about what year you were born; the clearest delineating line between those of us commonly assigned Generation X and the Millennials is the answer to the question Did Pokémon play any role in your childhood? If no: Gen X. If yes: Millennial. Now, that falls apart when talking to people younger than the Millennials, but it’s a pretty damn good rule of thumb for the “currently middle-aged or approaching same” generations.

If you are seven, Pokémon has a good chance of being your life, especially if you are a seven-year-old boy. Which my son is. He has hundreds of Pokémon cards (he has never actually played the game, at least not correctly) a wide variety of Pokémon-themed clothing, Pokémon stuffed animals, Pokémon pajamas, books, you name it.

I don’t know shit about this stuff. I am 42. I think in a lot of ways I have more in common with Millennials than my own generation (I have never really identified with Gen X; if pushed, I’ll claim the Star Wars or Oregon Trail generations) but I am totally in the cold on this Pokémon thing. I think it started hitting when I was in high school, too old to notice it, but I’m not really sure. My younger brother was never into it either so I missed it by a good several years.

Point is, we bought Pokémon Let’s Go: Pikachu for the Switch yesterday and the whole goddamn family has been playing the game all day today. It was my idea; I am bound and determined to understand something about this weird-ass bullshit and if a roleplaying game can’t pull me into Pokémon on at least a superficial level then nothing can. I gotta say, other than the standard garbage control scheme that comes with every single Switch game (motion controls can die in a fire; I don’t ever want them again in anything I play, ever again) it’s actually a pretty good time; the boy was ecstatic about it, and the Switch has owned the TV all day. Under ordinary circumstances I might look askance upon the idea of literally spending the entire day playing video games; it’s snowy as hell outside and a three-day weekend and right now Daddy don’t care. I’m gonna find out what the fuck a Machamp is this weekend if it kills me, and I swear to God I just looked over and told him to go find some “ground types” to fight in a “gym” so he can earn a “badge.” I think I might have even used the terms correctly.

So, yeah. Weather outside is frightful and all that. What are y’all doing?

Creepy Children’s Programming Reviews: POKEMON

On By Luther M. SilerIn Parenting, Television2 Comments

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You may have heard of this show.

My son has, in the last few months, become entirely obsessed with… whatever the fuck these things are.  They come in types, apparently, Water and Fighting and Nonsense and Flatulent and Clown and probably a few others I’m unaware of.  And they live in little plastic balls, except for the little yellow one, who won’t go in the ball.  And they only come out of the ball when it’s time to fight each other, which they are willing to do at any time and for any reason.

Except, see, they don’t know how to fight.  They have no fucking idea how to fight even though fighting is literally the only thing they’re for, or at least it’s the only thing they’re for once they go in the ball.  The ones out of the balls seem to live perfectly normal wildlifey sort of lives.  So they need people to tell them how to fight.  All of their moves have names and they have “trainers” who tell them, step-by-step, how to fight each other. Picture somebody outside a boxing ring hollering at a boxer to “Use Jab!” and “Duck!” and “Use Roundhouse!” or “Use Spousal Abuse!” and you have the basic idea.

The main character is a homeless orphan named Ash.  His last name is Ketchum, because his job is to catch all of the Pokémon– to catch ’em— and this show is nothing if not fucking subtle.  He only has one set of clothes and his electric rat lives on his shoulder.  He literally wanders around in the woods with his friends and looks for other electro-rats and fire-bears and flatulence-sloths and such and he finds them and he makes them fight his electro-rat or whatever and then if he beats them he gets to stuff them into a ball and keep them.

I think.  It’s hard to pay attention to if you’re grown.

Then there’s these assholes:

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These are… the bad guys, I think?  They seem to really want the electro-rat.  So maybe they want to steal him, or something, or maybe they just want a different electro-rat to go with their weird horn-cat thing they have, I don’t know.  But here’s the thing: there are eleventy fifteen thousand different versions of Pokémon.  There’s Pokemon XY and Pokemon Black and Pokemon Silver and a bunch of movies named after individual Pokébeasts and all sorts of shit.  And I’m pretty sure these three are in every one?

And every time they show up on screen they introduce themselves with the same rhyme.  

I’m pretty sure that this is actually supposed to be happening in the real world.  Not, like, in their heads or some shit like that.

Try and imagine knowing these people, and every time you see them they have to introduce themselves with this stupid fucking rhyme.  Each and every single time.

These may be the most annoying people in the history of television, and we live in a world with Super Why.

In which I am SuperDad

On By Luther M. SilerIn Geek, Parenting3 Comments

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Tonight I bought the boy a Pokémon sourcebook and a bunch of cards in a tin on the way home from work, then once I got home I put together my new Raspberry Pi and downloaded a bunch of Nintendo games onto it.  And the original Atari 2600 version of PITFALL!, which was mostly for my mother.

I thought it was going to be a pain in the ass, honestly, but the whole thing worked like a charm.  There’s a weird audio issue where it won’t keep a consistent sound level, but I suspect I can suss out what’s causing that given some time and adding new games to the system has turned out to be damned easy.

He went from deliriously happy to be playing Mario to nearly throwing his first controller within five minutes, so I figure I’m doing something right.

What games from the Super Nintendo and original PlayStation era should I be downloading?  I missed those the first time around; my parents wouldn’t buy me either of them.  🙂