2016 Accountability Post

So, another year come and gone. In wider world news, not a particularly good year considering. Close to home in my own little world bubble, things look much better. But, the new year is a good time for reflection, and I did have some goals for last year, so let’s see how I got on with those.

Reading

Reading Resolution #1 – Read a book a week, or rather 52 in a year. How far did I get? 11/52.

Reading Resolution #2 – A 12 item reading challenge. Of the 11 books I did read, I hit four of the challenges I would say. After deciding that one book can only count for one challenge. (If you’re interested, the four I managed were: A book published this year; A book I can finish in a day; A book chosen by my BFF; and A book I’ve read once before)

Yeah, I realise that it’s not many considering what I set out to do. Honestly, it sort of all came to a stop pretty early on in the year. I set out to do the Reading Ahead Challenge (rainbow style), but only got about halfway through the green book before things petered out and I never finished that book, let alone the challenges I had set myself.

Why? Busy year. I’ve got a job, a masters, a social/gaming life, but most of all, I think I didn’t read so much because I was concentrating on writing. Quite a lot actually. Which leads on to the other resolution/challenge I was trying to accomplish in 2016.

Writing

I joined a 365K club, which meant writing 1,000 words every day, or rather 365,000 in the year. How did I end up doing on that? 356,000 words.

Yeah, I know. Considering how little away from the goal I was, and the fact that I didn’t actually do much writing over the Christmas break, it is a tiny bit disappointing. Entirely my own fault, but, actually, I did learn a lot from doing it.

I managed to write every day from January 1st to June 4th. June 5th was the first day I didn’t write a word, and that’s pretty good going. But as you can see from the summary, I was a bit up and down after April (and April was largely boosted by taking part in the A to Z challenge). NaNoWriMo in November also helped, but about halfway through the year I sort of lost the steam a little bit.

Half of the point of the challenge is to write every day, and I’ve sort of learnt, that although I write a lot more now than I did at the start of the year, it’s not always writing itself that I do. I mean, of course that’s the aim, but I often do a lot of re-reading, thinking up new plots, re-imagining chapters and sections, and of course editing. All of which I think are part of the writing process, but don’t exactly lend themselves to a word count. (For instance, right now I’m trying to work out whether an alternate idea I had for Archmage is better than the one I’ve got currently. Major edits are so much fun to play around with, this one could change the entire third part/book.)

I’m also bad at habit forming. I wrote every day for 5 months, yet come the end of the year, I certainly think about my writing everyday. Opening up the document and putting the words down? Not so much. Especially when most of my free time is being devoted to the master’s degree, and that’s a heck of a lot of work.

But, focusing on writing so much was fun. And I certainly have a lot more words now that I did at the start of the year. It was good, even if it was challenging. But I have learnt a bit more about myself, and how I write, and that’s very useful information I can use going forward.

2017

So, what challenges am I doing this year? None. I’m not promising to read a certain amount of books, or write a certain amount each day. I am officially divesting myself of any and all obligations/challenges.

Why? The masters degree. This year I have to do a dissertation. We’ve already started thinking about it (and the initial proposal is due in the next couple of weeks) so there’s already a fair amount of internal screaming going on. That is only going to get more stressful, and since I want to do well in the degree, I’m prioritising that over everything else this year.

I would like to read more than I did last year, and I certainly plan to keep on writing, if not daily then certainly multiple times a week. What I’m not doing is setting any goals to do with those hobbies, because then I won’t feel obligated to spend time on them when I should be doing my masters work (if I end up doing them instead of the masters work then that’s procrastination and is an entirely different problem).

Hopefully by cooling off everything else, all the stress that comes from the masters will be somewhat balanced out, and I can look forward to a really free end of the year, since I hand in my dissertation in September, get the results back in October, just in time for NaNoWriMo in November! I’ll probably have calmed down by then. Maybe.

So that’s my 2017 – the year of the degree. I hope that whatever you are planning for the next year is off to a good start. Mine could be better, I managed to leave the book I need to read round a friend’s house!

 

November Conclusion

First of all, apologies for not posting during the entire month. The reason is pretty obvious – I was putting all of my creative energy into finishing NaNoWriMo. And when I wasn’t doing that, I was either doing my masters, trying to keep up with work/social life, and getting ill. Fantastic time to get ill really (but I have medicine from my wonderful doctor now so it should start getting better).

First of all, the big news. I won – I wrote 50,000 words in the month. Yay!

However, this year was really difficult. As you can see, for most of the month I was actually behind where I should have been, and although I caught up at the end, it was difficult to get the words down on the page. Also, the novel I said I was going to write – The Blood Within? That’s didn’t really happen. I got about 10K down on it, and then it just stalled. I couldn’t seem to get it out of my head and onto the page.

So I swapped projects, choosing something which I knew I could get out of my head and write down. It’s probably never going to see the light of day, but it got me writing.

This was actually the first year where I doubted that I could make the 50K. Giving that I’ve been overachieving for a few years now, that was a pretty scary thought. But, I have to remember, that I was doing a lot this year. And actually, managing the 50,000 words alongside everything else that I was doing? Not a bad feat.

So how is the other stuff doing? Well we’ve started the dissertation preparation module in my master’s course, which has me internally screaming every time I have to think about it, but I do think I have an idea for what I want to do, which is a really good start. And I’m mostly on top of that work, which is good.

Work is…well, at least it’s nearly Christmas.

Social life is good, and the tabletop games I’m playing in continue to be excellent. Actually, I’ve been invited to play in a new one that’ll be starting up next year and i’m super excited for that.

The LIFE BOSS hit pretty hard this month. That’s been on and off terrible, but I am getting it sorted out, slowly, but getting there. Stress is a big thing for me at the moment, but I plan on spending December taking things a little easier, and the 365K club comes to a close at the end of the year, so that’s another thing I can take off my plate. That’s actually going pretty well, and I’m sure you’ll hear about that before the end of the year.

So yeah, November was hard, but I am glad that I did it, and I’m super glad that it’s over. December is going to be getting things back on track, back on a steady progress level, rather than the frantic pace it’s been for November. And next year in November, I’ll have finished my degree, so there’ll be more time and brain space for writing epic amounts in a month.

I hope that if you did NaNoWriMo, that the month was rewarding for you, whether you hit the goal or not.

NaNoWriMo 2016 Novel

Okay, so after that marathon post, whittling it down to six, asking everyone I knew for their opinions, getting it down to three, and then spending an inordinate amount of time deliberating over the choice until I realised I’d spent two hours researching one thing on the internet for one of the books and decided that was a level of involvement that meant I should probably write it, I have finally decided which book I shall be writing for NaNoWriMo!

The Blood Within

Dhamphir’s are bad. Everyone know this. What no one can remember is why.

In the centuries since the vampire’s wiped out their half blood cousins, all of the supernatural creatures that roam the earth and the realms beyond have forgotten about them. Even the long lived vampires, the ones who could make them, the ones who killed them, they’ve lost the knowledge to the passage of time.

So when a new Dhampir is born, no one’s quite sure what to do. The most obvious answer is to kill it, but that seems like a waste. Vampires get their powers from the blood of the humans, so what about the blood of a half human, half vampire? Well, that must be a potent thing indeed.

Locked away and raised in isolation, waiting for the time without knowing when, the young Dhamphir has no idea about the herself, her powers, or the outside world. But the outside world knows about her, and it’s grown tired of the millennium long reign of the vampires. Maybe, just maybe, if they can fake her death and pull off a rescue, then they can give her a chance to grow up, a chance to grow into whatever it was that the vampires feared so much.

Of course, there was a time when everyone feared them, and for good reason. They just can’t remember why.

If you don’t recognise that title as being from the master list, that’s because it was called ‘Ghost’ down there. But since Ghost is the nickname of the main character and the book doesn’t actually involve ghosts at all, I thought it needed a change. That’s what I spent two hours on – trying to find an alternative name for the novel. And given I spent that much time finding the new title, I figured that’s probably involved enough to spend the month writing the novel.

And I have so many ideas about it. It’s going to be a huge melting pot of every supernatural creature I can think of, so I get to go make huge long lists of all of those and what powers they might have, because it’s very relevant to the plot. The main character is also going to be interesting to write for reasons I don’t quite want to say because it gives away a lot. Either way, it’s going to be a lot of fun.

And of course the other novels don’t go away just because I’m not writing them. Heck, if I get bored of The Blood Within, or even finish it, then I might explore writing another project. I hope to do much the same as I did last year, giving a weekly update of my progress on the novel and not entirely abandon this blog during November, so I’ll let you know how things are going.

NaNoWriMo 2016 Preparation

October is here! And what does that mean? Countdown to NaNoWriMo!

I mean, there are obviously things going on in October, but for the moment, at least for today, I am concentrating on National Novel Writing Month and the preparation work that comes with it.

So far I’ve logged onto the website, spruced up my author profile, made two different word count spreadsheets, posted on the forums and donated, getting my usual halo around my profile. At least one of the reasons I keep that particular profile picture is because the halo looks really good on it. Also adorable Toothless.

What I haven’t done, which is probably an important part of the process, is choose which novel I am going to write this year.

I’m a classic NaNoer (at least i am this year) so I pick a new novel and write a first draft during this month. That, and having a break from my older projects might help me to go back to them later. Theoretically. But unlike other years, I’ve been thinking a lot about editing and polishing up those older novels I’ve already written, so as of yet, none of the new ideas have jumped out at me.

Novels I currently have on the go: Archmage, Eidetic, Mechanic Awakening, Quiet Poison, Black Dawn.

Black Dawn’s a bit of weird one. I did technically write it for my first ever NaNoWriMo. But that was six years ago now, and it’s terrible, so it’s being restarted. And I’ve not quite gotten around to restarting it properly. I’ve got the first, like, three pages? Okay, the first 5K. So, I’m not sure how much that counts as a current project. However, I know that I have worked on it before, and I kind of want to do something fresh. I think if nothing else gets chosen, I’ll fall back on this, but I would like to do something completely new.

Looking at my writing page, it says I have the current ideas:

• Court of Ice
• Supernatural
• Fading Shifts
• Chaos Mage
• Shadow Rock
• Blank Charm
• DNA Key
• Crossing Realms

In the solid ideas categories are Court of Ice, DNA Key. Slightly less solid would be Fading Shifts, Shadow rock, Blank Charm and Crossing Realms. Supernatural is…complicated and I can’t actually remember what Chaos Mage is, so I’d have to find my notes…okay, so it’s that, but that’s like three lines and not enough to go on. So the first six might be potential ideas.

Having found my master ideas list, there’s a few on there – Pirate, Traitor, Thief of Memories, Fallen Fae, Blood Mage, a dragon idea or two. Blimey, even more in my google docs folder – Firebird, Of Those in Shadow, Ghost, that other project I don’t even have a name for yet. So more potential ideas.

Of course, having an abundance of ideas can be only slightly less complicated than having no ideas at all. Okay, so, I’m going to write out all these ideas, and see which ones I like, and which ones I don’t. Get ready, this is a long list.

Court of Ice – Magic has been outlawed, but when  pressure rises in the south with the threat of a revival of the old ways, Adriana, lady in waiting to the princess, has some choices to make. High politics and intrigue, slight game of throne feel with more magic.

Fading Shifts – Out of all of there races, shapeshifters are the most rare, having been declining in numbers for centuries. But now, the other races are starting to feel the same effects, and are finally taking an interest. But considering there are only three shifters still left, can they find out what’s going on before the race goes completely extinct?

Shadow Rock – Ashley is the heir to the Throne of Darkness, something that hasn’t been up for grabs in four generations. With people trying to take it for themselves from all direction, from murder to marriage, she runs away from it, all the way to America to do what she wants to do. But is it far enough?

Blank Charm – It was only a little something she picked up from a curiosity shop on holiday, but ever since she found that bracelet, strange things keep happening to her, and these people won’t stop following her, but she has no idea if their friend or foe, or even human. As if Kelly didn’t have enough shit to deal with right now.

DNA Key – In the future, everything is controlled by DNA, food allowances, leisure entitlements, even access into buildings. Kaeleigh’s father, an genius scientist, created a master key – something that will allow anyone to get into anywhere, get anything they want. But he’s just been murdered, and now the attention’s on her – does she have the key to finding the key?

Crossing Realms – You might think that the multiverse would be filled with thousands upon thousands of realms, all just overlapping each other, not quite touching. But no, there’s five. Just five, and they’re meant to be quite spread out. So when they edges of the realms start touching, it’s quite a shock, and quite the disturbance to reality as it’s known. Five people, a champion from each of the realms, have a chance to fix what it is that’s going wrong. But there are only five of them, and it’s quite a big task.

Pirate – Meg turned her back on her family and friends ten years ago, but now they need her and her power. The only thing is, she gave up her power when she left, and really doesn’t want to see anyone from her old life

Traitor – Tess has been labelled as a traitor to the crown, why? Because she’s the same as the king – an ancient born again. She and He don’t want anything to do with each other, but the souls that reside inside them want different things, pushing and pulling against each other, whether they want to or not.

Thief of Memories – After losing everything, including her memories, Lara stole everything that she could, including a heart she probably shouldn’t have.

Fallen Fae – Falen doesn’t mind human as much as other Fae, but her refusal to bow completely to the traditions of the court get her banished, and now she has to turn to people that although she doesn’t mind, she doesn’t fully understand or trust.

Blood Mage – Francesca is the daughter of the most powerful blood mage ever, and almost as powerful a blood mage in her own right. The problem is, she’s a rebellious, attention-seeking teen, and does the one thing that she knows will annoy her father more than anything – join up with the army trying to take him down.

Unbounded – A very typical novel where dragon riders ride dragons in protection of the realm. Except one dragon hatches without bonding to a rider, from there’s it’s an uphill struggle to survive, and prove that dragons aren’t just beasts of burdens for the humans to control.

Firebird – An ancient cycle of death, rebirth, a family of hunter fighting agaisnt the forces of darkness. Unfortunately, their souls don’t get to pass on to the afterlife when they die, and the current family is very tired of hearing so many voices all the time. But there might be a chance, to break the cycle forever, with the power of the youngest of the line – the power of wind and flame, the power of the phoenix, the power over rebirth.

Of Those in Shadow – There are acceptable magics, and then there are those that are not. That is the proper way of things, and every person of an educated nature knows this. But Hailey’s spent her entire life being proper, and it always end up with her being overshadowed by her twin Harper. So maybe, just maybe, she can find something that she’s better at, something that she can do that her twin can’t. Even if it isn’t proper, and even if the consequences could get her killed, or worse.

Ghost – Dhampir’s are bad, the older they get, the worse it is. Although no one, not even the long lived vampires, can remember precisely why. So when a Dhampir is born, she’s sequestered away, brought up in isolation, ready for the day when the reigning family can kill her and reabsorb the power back into the line. Except, with help from those disillusioned with the royals, she fakes her death an escapes. Maybe, away from them, the world can find out why exactly the dhampir’s are considered so horrific. If it doesn’t backfire on them first that is…

AS YET UNTITLED – In this world, everyone had that one special creature waiting for them, that one special bond that you search for. And once you’ve found it, that when the adventure really begins. Abigail hasn’t yet found her special bond, but she doesn’t want to let that stop her adventure, and joins up with a group of other teenagers who have recently found their own bonded. In between escapades and travelling, it starts to look like things might not be as they appear on the surface – what is it that Abby is hiding so desperately from the rest of them?

As of yet, writing those out, none of them have yet jumped out at me. There’s a few I think that would be more suitable to write than others, but no decisions as of yet. I think I might sit and stew on it for a while. Worst comes to the worst, I can be a geek and roll a d20 to see which one I write!

Yearly Challenges

So, generally this year I am undertaking two challenges. And now that it’s coming up to halfway through the year, or at least, it will be after this month, I thought I’d take a moment to see where I am with those.

Reading Challenge

The challenge – Read a book a week aka read 52 books in the year.

The last time I updated you on this progress was early March. Since then, there has been barely and reading done. So, this is going worse than poorly. I have read six books this year, and I should be on twenty two. That’s sixteen books difference, which is a lot.

So what’s going wrong? Time mostly. I seem to have a heck of a lot going on, between work, masters, writing, and social/gaming schedules, making time for reading is hard, especially when I do have downtime, I prioritise other things. Like a nap (because anaemia means I want to nap all the time) or writing, and reading is an effort to accomplish some of the time.

So, am I giving up? Of course not. What I plan to do is to read some graphic novels I’ve got on the side, because those take less time than a pure words novel, and hopefully if I just get a couple more books added onto the challenge, then I’ll start picking it up again. It’s not like I don’t have books to read, just haven’t been finding the time.

Writing Challenge

The challenge – Write 1,000 a day aka write 365,000 words in the year.

This is going better. January, February and March were basically on track. April was an immense month of epic words. May…not so good. I wrote about half of what I should have been, only 16,600 words. However, because of all the words I wrote in April, this does mean that overall for the year I’m at 168,000 words and I should be at 157,000. So in the grand scheme of things, I am ahead, however, the last month I only hit 1,000 words on five days, in the first half of the month.

So what went wrong? Scening. In one of the games that I am playing, my character has started a relationship with another character, and we are emailing each other in a back and forth to scene out their dates. It’s awesome, I’m loving it BUT it doesn’t count towards my word count total for the year, because it’s just for the two of it, and it’s connected to a game rather than writing. Which is a shame, because between the two of us, the scenes came to 133,000 words in the month. Yeah, we wrote a lot.

Hence, that’s taken up a lot of my time and energy. I wouldn’t have changed it, because it made me very happy and was awesome character development, however, this month we plan to be a little more relaxed about it, and I’ll be looking at my time management a little more, trying to find the delicate balance between everything I want to do.

It also helps that I have rediscovered enthusiasm for a couple of stories, it does come and go. I backed a kickstarter that will print custom text on a scarf for you (up to 40,000 words) so I’m going to be finished up a short version of Quiet Poison and get that printed up, so I’ve got to write a few more scenes, then tidy it up and send it off. Hopefully, if I get everything back on track, I can do that by the end of the month.

So the general gist of the last couple of months is keep going, don’t give up even if you fall off the rails a little bit. So I hope to come back to you all in another month or so with better reports. That, and I will be examining what I post on this blog and trying to come up with a semi-regular schedule, because I should be posting here more. Hope your projects are going well!

A to Z Reflection 2016 – Pokemon

Third year, complete! I kind of feel like a bit of an old hand at this, except for the mild panic I felt some days as I was like “Ah, haven’t done my post yet, need to do the letter for today!” which I have to admit happened on more than one day. But, I didn’t miss a day. And for some that doesn’t write or schedule their posts in advance, I’m doing them all on the day, that’s not bad going.

What do I love about this challenge? Meeting other bloggers mostly, going over, seeing what they’re up to, having them come visit me. I do have to admit that unfortunately I didn’t have as much time as I wanted to during the month, and I wasn’t checking other blogs as much as I should have been. So I’m probably going to be using the reflections list on the A to Z website to go out and find those others blogs, and keep visiting people even after April. Because blogs are an all year round thing, not just for April.

I should also mention, I had a wonderful thing going on with a writing group I’m part of. We had this mega thread for all of those participating in the A to Z challenge, and me and another writer would have this friendly competition to see who could post first each day! I got quite a few of them, but it was just this fun little interaction between us, and it really made my days good, especially since it would mean that I would try and write the posts earlier in the days, just to try and ‘win’ that letter.

Honestly, there aren’t many things that I don’t like about this competition. Sure, it’s a strain to try and keep up when you’re writing your posts on the day, and I don’t have a lot of free time all the time for things, but I love the challenge so much that it makes up for that, and I really like being able to stand back at the end of the month and say “I’ve completed this.” It is a challenge, and I like completing challenges.

My theme for the year – Pokemon. So many people seemed to click with it, and I was so happy to have people just dropping by, either with their own memories, or the fact that their children had played it, it was awesome to see. And it was really awesome for me to write as well. Sure, had to fudge some of the letters, but when don’t you? Although I was surprised that K turned out to be one of the harder letters this time round. And I’ve been playing a fair bit of Pokemon since I started these posts. That, and more information about Pokemon Sun and Moon has been released, I’m so excited!

So, in summary, I love my theme for this year, I really had fun engaging with people, I am going to continue to find new blogs after I make this post because there are tons of awesome blogs out there to be found, and I am totally signing up again next year!

Z – Zoroark: Master of Illusions

A high level of nostalgia means that this year my chosen theme for the 2016 A to Z challenge is Pokemon. Whether you yourself have a similar level of sentimentality or you’ve never really gotten into it, I hope that you enjoy this month of posts as I indulge myself.

Zoroark: Master of Illusions is the 13th Pokemon Movie, and for the last letter of the month, that is my topic – Pokemon Movies. Yes! Got through the alphabet!

A Pokemon movie is a feature length film, typically 90 minutes or more, which will generally feature Ash and his friends from the current anime series, and a legendary or rare Pokemon. There are also a number of shorts that focus on Pikachu and the adventures that he gets up to without Ash around, and they tend to be super cute Pokemon centred adventures. These are often shown before the movie.

Typically there is one film released every year, usually in July, and by this point, this means that has been at least one film every year since 1998. Which means that there are 19 movies in the running total ‘main’ series as it were:

• Pokemon: The First Movie – Mewtwo Strikes Back
• Pokemon The Movie 2000 – The Power of One
• Pokemon 3: The Movie – Spell of the Unown: Entei
• Pokemon 4ever – Celebi: Voice of the Forest
• Pokemon Heroes: Latios and Latias
• Pokemon: Jirachi: Wish Maker
• Pokemon: Destiny Deoxys
• Pokemon: Lucario and the Mystery of Mew
• Pokemon Ranger and the Temple of the Sea
• Pokemon: The Rise of Darkrai
• Pokemon: Giratine and the Sky Warrior
• Pokemon: Arceus and the Jewel of Life
• Pokemon – Zoroark: Master of Illusions
• Pokemon the Movie: White – Victini and Zekrom / Black – Victini and Reshiram
• Pokemon the Movie: Kyurem vs The Sword of Justice
• Pokemon the Movie: Genesect and The Legend Awakened
• Pokemon the Movie: Diancie and the Cocoon of Destruction
• Pokemon the Movie: Hoopa and the Clash of Ages
• M19 – Coming later this year

Typically, because they have more time, they can explore different and deeper topics then the ones they touch on in the anime, and usually it involves the battle between greedy people who want to use Pokemon for evil and their own gain, and people who are friends to Pokemon, such as Ash and his friends.

Outside of Japan, we haven’t had them released in the cinema’s since the early movie, but they are always released in Japan and they tend to do quite well over there. In the UK and United States, we tend to get them shown on cartoon channels and we can always buy them on DVD.

As well as movies, there have been four specials. These weren’t released in cinema’s, but they are a lot longer than the normal half hour episode of the anime, so they get their own special little category. Interestingly, only the two prefaced with ‘Pokemon:’ contain Ash and his friends, the other focus on different trainers. Origins tells the stories of Red and Green, the trainers from the original Red and Green games/anime/books.

• Pokemon: Mewtwo Returns
• The Legend of Thunder!
• Pokemon: The Mastermind of Mirage Pokemon
• Pokemon Origins

Basically, there are a lot of movies and move length features, and they are an excellent showcase of Pokemon, the trainers, the world, and those things that cartoons like to try and teach kids about. I just like seeing the legendary Pokemon getting up to hi-jinx. Mew & Mewtwo are my favourites, and turn up in more than one movie much to my delight.

 

Pokemon of the Day

Z is for Zekrom

Zekrom is a duel Dragon/Electric type Pokemon, is the game mascot of Pokemon White, and along with Reshiram and Kyurem is a member of the Tao legendary trio from the Unova region. This black bipedal Pokemon resembles a dragon or dinosaur, looking almost like it is covered in modern armour. It’s large, conical, spiked tail has been likened to an electricity generator, as it produce lightning for attacks and emits an anti-gravity field, allowing Zekrom to fly. It can cause thunderstorms and will generate them and then hide in the thunderclouds.

There are actually a surprising amount of Pokemon that begin with the letter Z, far more than X or Y, but I went with one of the legendaries because A) it’s a dragon, and B) I rather enjoy the black-white combination and that they swapped the colours of so you get the Black Legendary in White and the White Legendary in Black. That, and it ties in nicely to the theme of the day, because in the movies, they did something slightly odd. They released two movies, one featuring Zekrom, and one featuring Reshiram. The plot was the same, but the Pokemon got swapped over, and you could choose which movie to watch, which was pretty awesome.

 

Y – Yellow

A high level of nostalgia means that this year my chosen theme for the 2016 A to Z challenge is Pokemon. Whether you yourself have a similar level of sentimentality or you’ve never really gotten into it, I hope that you enjoy this month of posts as I indulge myself.

Pokemon Yellow was the special edition of the game in the first series of games. In the UK, this took the form of Red, Blue & Yellow, released as a trio of game, with Charizard, Blastoise, and of course Pikachu as the mascots.

You pretty much know this already, because it’s been almost impossible to talk about the various aspects of the Pokemon world without relating them to the games. But I am going to run through the games that have been out, because there have been a lot of them. Main generations games, that I have been familiarising you with are:

• Generation 1
  • Pokemon Red
  • Pokemon Blue (In Japan it was Green version)
  • Pokemon Yellow
• Generation 2
  • Pokemon Gold
  • Pokemon Silver
  • Pokemon Crystal
• Generation 3
  • Pokemon Ruby
  • Pokemon Sapphire
  • Pokemon Emerald
  • Pokemon Fire Red (Remake of Red)
  • Pokemon Leaf Green (Remake of Blue/Green)
• Generation 4
  • Pokemon Diamond
  • Pokemon Pearl
  • Pokemon Platinum
  • Pokemon Heart Gold (Remake of Silver)
  • Pokemon Soul Silver (Remake of Gold)
• Generation 5
  • Pokemon Black
  • Pokemon White
  • Pokemon Black 2
  • Pokemon White 2
• Generation 6
  • Pokemon X
  • Pokemon Y
  • Pokemon Omega Ruby (Remake of Ruby)
  • Pokemon Alpha Sapphire (Remake of Sapphire)
• Generation 7 – Coming late 2016
  • Pokemon Sun
  • Pokemon Moon

 

Of course, those are simply the main series of DS games (okay, so actually they started on the gameboy, then gameboy colour, then gameboy advanced, then DS, and now 3DS. It’s been going for a long time, there have been a fair few upgrades in technology since the start). There are actually quite a number of other Pokemon games out there, which I would like to give you a brief introduction to:

Pokemon Stadium & Pokemon Stadium 2 – These were on the N64, yeah, quite old, but I remember playing the original one a lot. Sure, there was an arena for Pokemon battles, but there were also cups to compete in, the Elite four to take on, you could import your Pokemon from Red/Blue/Yellow to fight, you could get rare Pokemon to export back into your game, you could fight Mewtwo after you did a bunch of other things. But mainly I remember the mini games. Themed around different Pokemon, I had huge fun with Lickitung’s all you could eat game, hoop-la with Ekans and Diglett, and Run Rattata Run! Massively fun, fairly simple games, which I could and did sink hours into.

Pokemon Snap – I can complete this game in six hours. How do I know this? Because I played it a heck of a lot, even during university, and I timed myself. It’s a Pokemon game where you play a photographer. you have to go around various Pokemon environments, take photos of Pokemon, sometimes trigger special events, and then Professor Oak will evaluate your photos and give you points for them. I was insanely fond of this game. And I am pretty sure that somewhere I still have the cartridge. At the end of the game you unlock a level with Mew in it, and it’s ridiculously hard to photograph, but it’s so pretty when you do!

Pokemon Colosseum – This was sort of like a cross between the Stadium style of battling, and the RPG of the games. You’re a trainer, there is a plot line (a fairly good one from what I recall) revolving around stopping the resident villainous team from stealing Pokemon’s hearts and minds. And them as well probably. It was an interesting game, because the battling style was a fair bit different (probably because it was on the gamecube) but also because you started with a pair of levelled Pokemon – Umbreon and Espeon! Can you see why I might have liked this game a lot? Pokemon XD was a follow up game which was very similar to this, which I never did get around to playing.

Pokemon Mystery Dungeon Series – Yeah, I can actually count this one as a series, because there are currently seven or so games that are called Mystery Dungeon. I just picked up the latest one Pokemon Super Mystery Dungeon. The basic premise is that you yourself are a Pokemon, and you go an join up with the explorers guild. You then explore various dungeons, fighting Pokemon in a special system, recruiting more Pokemon, and finding treasure. They are super cool, playing as a Pokemon is awesome, and there’s a surprising amount of plot packed in there as well. I’m rather looking forward to playing this next one.

Pokewalker – A pedometer crossed with a simple Pokemon catching game. Walk around in real life, and you will walk around in the tiny little screen, and then you have a chance to find and catch wild Pokemon. Mainly I mention this because also coming out later this year is Pokemon Go! which is going to be a augmented reality game through your phone. Using the GPS software in your phone, run around the real world, and in the game, you will be running around tall grass trying to catch Pokemon. I am looking forward to it far more than I should, and I am very much going to be running all over town trying to catch Pokemon!

Of course, these are just the games that I choose to mention specifically. Pokemon has been around for a long time, and there are loads more games. The Ranger series, computerised versions of the cards games, puzzle games, pinball games, Pokemon Dash, which was this fun little racing game. However, this post is already running long, so I’ll leave you to explore extra titles as you want to 😛

 

Pokemon of the Day

Y is for Yveltal

Is a large Pokemon that contains both avian an draconic traits. It has a dark body, wings, and a bright red underside with branching black markings. It has five claws on each appendage, a beak like snout, and a large ruff around it’s neck. When the appensages are fully extended, the shape resembles the letter Y. It’s the counterpart legendary Pokemon to Xerneas, and has the power to absorb life energy. When it reaches the end of its lifespan, it will steal all the life energy of the living things around it and then transform into a cocoon to sleep for a millenia.

Again, since we’re fairly near those awkward, end of the alphabets letters, there isn’t much choice for Pokemon of the days, but I thought since we’d had Xerneas yesteday, it made sense to have Yveltal today as the other half of that equation. That, and he looks badass, Dark/Flying is a cool type combination, and he can sleep for 1,000 years, which is something I wish I could do sometimes.

X – XP

A high level of nostalgia means that this year my chosen theme for the 2016 A to Z challenge is Pokemon. Whether you yourself have a similar level of sentimentality or you’ve never really gotten into it, I hope that you enjoy this month of posts as I indulge myself.

XP! Or experience (possible even experience points) if you want to use the full word, but considering I need to hit all the letters, I don’t!

XP is very important in Pokemon. It’s how Pokemon get more powerful, causing them to level up, and levelling up can cause such things as evolution and learning new moves. How do you get XP? Mostly, it’s battling your Pokemon agaisnt another Pokemon, whether a trainer or wild. As long as your Pokemon does not faint, then it will gain XP, and there will generally be a little bar at the bottom that fills up, so you can tell how far it is until your Pokemon will hit that next level.

There are a whole bunch of complicated equations that determine how much XP a Pokemon will gain when it wins a battle. It depends on your level, the opponents level, and some items can effect this.

Levelling is effected by the experience group that the Pokemon falls into, of which there are six in the current generations: Slow, Medium Slow, Medium Fast, Fast, Erratic and Fluctuating. This basically describes how much XP a Pokemon needs to gain it’s next level. I won’t go too much into it, because it gets very maths based, and although I like maths and graphs, I know that a fair few people don’t 😛

The maximum level a Pokemon can achieve is level 100, after which point they just stop gaining XP. Personally, I don’t think I’ve ever gotten that high, because it takes a heck of a lot of work. The highest I ever got was high 80s, I think, and that was my Pikachu in Pokemon Yellow, because I used it for everything.

The last thing to mention is XP sharing. If you start the fight with one Pokemon, and then swap out halfway through, then as long niether of those Pokemon faint, they will split the XP of the fight between them. It’s a good way to fast level up slightly lower level Pokemon on your team, and I do it all the time. It gets a lot easier when you pick up an item called XP Share, which you give to a Pokemon to hold, and any battle that you fight, they will get a fraction of the XP from it. And the best part about this item, it that it doesn’t take any XP away from the Pokemon that actually does the fighting. I always look forward to getting it in the games.

 

Pokemon of the Day

X is for Xerneas

A blue and black stage-like Pokemon, it has eight sets of antlers, four extending from each side of its head. In active mode, these horns are pale gold in colour and the tips is adorned with a glowing colour, changing for each set of horns (orange, red, purple and blue). In neutral mode, the horns are a pale blue, matching the colour of it’s upper body. It has x shaped pupils, and markings on it’s bodys, along with it’s horns, form a large x shape. Xerneas is a legendary Pokemon which is said to have the power to share eternal life, denoted by the horns on its head shining in seven colours rather than four. At the end of its lifetime, it releases all of its life energy into all living things around it, transforms into a tree, and then sleeps for 1,000 years. It also has the power to create trees and forests, making it a very benevolent and powerful force for nature.

So there are only two Pokemon that begin with X – Xerneas and Xatu. But I’m actually impressed that there are Pokemon that begin with every letter of the alphabet, even if there’s only a couple. So, today, you get my pick of the two X’s, which is Xerneas, the mascot of Pokemon X, and one of three legendaries in generation 6. It’s kind of cool, it actually resembles the letter X, and it’s got this awesome forest god things going on. I didn’t use it much, but I like the fluff from it.

W – Walkthroughs

A high level of nostalgia means that this year my chosen theme for the 2016 A to Z challenge is Pokemon. Whether you yourself have a similar level of sentimentality or you’ve never really gotten into it, I hope that you enjoy this month of posts as I indulge myself.

Walkthroughs, sometimes called strategy guides, are used to help players get through games, giving them hints as to what to do next, what they can expect to find in certain places, and just basically providing a map to how to play the game. You can find them in print, or online, because every thing can be online these days, and actually, quite often, the print version are produced by the people who produce the game (often marked as ‘Official’ guides).

Does Pokemon have walkthroughs? Of course it does. And actually, I mostly choose the title today, so that I can show you one of my prized possessions – a walkthrough guide to Red, Blue, but mostly, Yellow:

This is more me showing off a cool thing and finding something for an awkward letter in the process 😛

 

Pokemon of the Day

W is for Wooper

Wooper is a duel Water/Ground type Pokemon that has a blue body, short legs, a tail, and frongs coming out from either side of it’s head. Male Woopers have a lot more branches in these gills than females do so it is easy to tell them apart. Wooper is a fairly dull-witted and slow Pokemon, possibly due to it living in cold water for most of its life. It will partially bury itself in mud at the bottom of a pond, lake or river when it sleeps and if it does come out onto land it will only do so on cold days, most in the evening, and searches for food along the banks. Whilst on land it coats its body in a slimy film to keep it moisturised, and this causes a shooting pain if touched with a bare hand.

Mostly I like Wooper because it’s modelled after axolotl, which are these super cool amphibian salamanders, which has those really cool gills on the side of their head. That, and this Pokemon closely resembles me of a morning. Completely derpy (my best friend calls me a derpy turtle, so, you know, derpy axolotl isn’t a millions miles off :P)