I love good guys

"Tell us about 3 creative/fannish resources, spaces, or communities you use or enjoy."

Tip-top canon resources:

• Bulbapedia, "the community-driven Pokémon encyclopedia," is the highest-quality public wiki I've ever seen. It reports and tracks every bit of canon across the entire sprawling IP. ♥


• Now available only via the Wayback Machine, the old dungeonsanddragonscartoon.com fansite is still the very best D&DC resource, "from the Alicorn river to the hills of Zorm." Forever respect and gratitude to its fan creator!


• It's super ugly and advertisement-ridden now, but it's as accurate and comprehensive as ever: Portal: Battlestar Galactica (TOS). I depend on its Colonial vocabulary lists.

My 2020 hlh_shortcuts contribution was, obviously, "The Power That’s Inside (We All Live in a Pokémon World)" (7K words, PG, gen) (Duncan, Methos, Joe, Giovanni, Emolga, Charmander).

My recipient's sign-up included “crack taken seriously” and the “reality of being immortal,” and allowed “most stuff” for crossovers. I agonized over what direction to take (as usual, but more) and consulted celli on the nature of the crack-fic genre and this idea. I almost instead went for a Very Serious concept about Joe and all the institutional betrayals he's suffered. (I can do "taken seriously." It's whether I can do "crack" that's in question.) Instead, we start with Methos as a PokéTuber a la TrainerTips, and then it gets even stranger.

I lucked out. My recipient knows and likes main-series Pokémon through her daughter. Whew!

I regret that I ended up with all the women characters off-screen. Angie, Anne, Mary, Amanda, and Jessie all had scenes in my head that ended up as Duncan telling the key takeaway, rather than me showing the encounter. And I see now how I could have done better by digging into Duncan's motivations and memories more, and more frankly (as nudged by leela_cat's perceptive beta).

But when the story rolls into crack-ness, I think it works.

Hey, fellow Pokemon Go players! In case you haven't heard, the bonus PvP rewards have already started for February's Community Day this weekend. Don't miss out!

All weekend long, starting today, we can get 5 rewards per day from battling the NPC team leaders (instead of the usual 1), and we can get another 5 rewards per day from battling real fellow trainers (instead of the usual 3). The guaranteed Sinnoh Stones are tomorrow (Saturday) only (in parts of the world where this Community Day is Saturday), but even they will be throughout the day, midnight to midnight, not only during the 3-hour Community Day window.

Also, if you haven't heard, stat buffs are coming! Suddenly, Ancient Power on a Mamoswine looks much, much sweeter than it did a few days ago. I have an appointment that's going to make me miss half of Community Day, and, despite wanting a shiny watermelon Swinub of my own -- and all the boosted stardust! -- I was very blase about missing out ... until the stat buffs were announced. Poor timing for me! Ah, well. I do have several saved-up Swinub from the ice event to evolve (without events, ice types are vanishingly rare here).

Have fun!

One of the big questions around the Pokémon GO community lately is whether Individual Values (IVs) matter in player-versus-player (PvP) battles. It depends. How're we defining "matter"? :-D

We can play the game wholly, successfully, and with tremendous fun without ever knowing what IVs are! This is more true than ever since super-effectiveness got boosted a few months ago. So, no: IVs don't matter. If you don't care to, don't worry about them! Just pick the best CP, type, and moves you have for the job at hand, whether raids, gyms, or PvP.

However, if fussing with IVs makes you happy — hello! — there's plenty to dig into.

For raiding and gym sweeping, it's been the same for a long time: (1) IVs really come into play only if we're maxing out a pokémon. Seriously. When we are maxing out, then (2) higher is better, and (3) attack is more important than stamina (HP), which is more important than defense. End of story. (Hard-core raiders will point out that 15 attack / 10 defense / 15 stamina — or even 15/0/15! — is actually better for dealing damage in a raid or gym sweep than 15/15/15, because of how energy-gain works in gyms, but that increment won't register unless we're trying to beat a best time or raid with the fewest possible players.)

For PvP in Master League (unlimited CP), pretty much the same applies! We want to max out our best IV individual pokémon in the best species. The difference is that defense isn't a value to sneeze at in PvP. (Energy gain in PvP differs from that in gyms, among other things.) So definitely pick that elusive "hundo" (15/15/15) over an attack specialist (15/10/15), if you're so lucky as to have both. Basically: we'll use the same pokémon for raiding, gym sweeping, and Master League PvP.

For PvP in the Ultra League (max CP 2,500) and Great League (max CP 1,500), our goals change. The CP caps are everything! It's Price is Right rules. We want the highest level — level, not necessarily CP, though both together is ideal — that we can get without going over the CP cap. Since the CP rework, attack stats boost CP significantly more than stamina (HP) or defense stats do. So not only could a pokemon with generally poor IVs potentially get closer to a league's CP cap than one with great IVs, one with specifically lousy attack stats will probably get closer than one with awesome attack stats.

Probably? Yes, probably! It varies not only by pokemon species but by each specific possible combination of IVs. Yay!

I admire, but don't personally play at, that ultimate level of calculation. I still personally pick better IV pokemon when powering them toward the caps. Mainly, this is because I worry I'll accidentally power them up one turn too many and then need them to be able to make their way in Ultra League or even Master League. (This has already happened once. ~grin~) However, I did try to trade my worst IV Cresselia for someone else's worst, hoping that the IVs would plunge in the re-roll and she'd slide in just under the 1,500 CP cap for Great League. (It didn't work. ~wry~)

You know that my favorite PokéTuber is Trainer Tips Nick. He focuses on Pokémon Go gameplay. He used to specialize in analyzing the game itself and explaining how to play it better; this year, he's shifted toward documenting communities of play. Some episodes are better than others, of course, but overall, his channel is amazing. If you're returning to the game after a hiatus, try starting with his "What's new in Pokemon Go 2018?" episode.

I've been meaning to introduce you to my rising second-favorite PokéTuber, Bird Keeper Toby. He's a pokémon theorist, seeking to scientifically(ish) rationalize "the pokémon world" — what you and I would call "pokémon canon," across all the games, anime, and movies. He's recently been working through an amazing "Ultimate Pokemon Evolution Tree" series, which I've found tremendously fun.

Other PokéTubers I'd recommend include Mystic7 for sheer fun enthusiasm (but don't play like him; he never picks super-effective attackers), and ProdigiesNation, especially for his "Is it worth powering up?" series, where he uses PokéBattler and does the math for us.

And of course some leading female PokéTubers: Pokémon Master Holly, Zoë Two Dots, Sparkie Joy, Candy Evie.