Wednesday, June 29, 2011

Pokemon In Unreality

One thing that's always bugged me about Pokemon is the trainer's inability to catch a fainted Pokemon. I mean, is it that hard to hit an object that isn't moving? Why do you even have to throw the Pokeball? Just run up to the creature and touch the damn thing is it that hard oh that's right you're TEN.

I've probably brought this up before, but Pokemon trainers go out into the wild at ten. Why? Why would you ever do such a thing, especially when half the things out there could eat you in one go? And how the hell are there space stations when people can't get further than their first few years of education before going out to traipse in the wild?

Okay, anyways, back to the fainted Pokemon. They might as well be dead, really.

Have you noticed that when a Pokemon in your party faints, no amount of walking around will do it any good? It will stay fainted for fucking forever. There's another word for that. Dead.

But then again, who knows? There might be some nurse-type whose sole job is to go around picking up fainted Pokemon, and bringing them back to the Pokecenters for revival. Not really easy, I'd imagine. Onyx are damn big, and so are most other Pokemon. And it's not like you can put them in a Pokeball for easy storage, because they're fainted and the world is stupid that way.

I'm really surprised that you don't find more of these fainted Pokemon about, either. The first town you're in never has a Pokecenter, so the route by it must be riddled with Rattata and Pidgey...

Just for shits and giggles, I did the math on this. Given that all Pokemon trainers live in the same world, only counting people, and given that the average trainer faints, say, 10 Rattata and 10 Pidgey before they move onto the next area...

Well, first, how many Pokemon trainers are there? You get one save per game, and not counting illegitimate copies of Pokemon, and using this source...


28 million from Pokemon R/G/B/Y
12 million from Pokemon FR/LG

That's 40 million trainers who walked through that first route in Kanto.

Or 400 million fainted Pidgey, and 400 million fainted Rattata.
Both Pidgey and Rattata are one foot high; let's assume the fainted body of each takes up half a cubic foot of space, and that they can be stacked.

400 million cubic feet filled with "fainted" Pidgey and Rattata.
Here's a picture of Route 1. There's about 1512 blocks there (28 x 54ish), and since one person takes up one block, we can assume that each represents about 10 feet by 10 feet of space, because otherwise your house is ridiculously small. So a block is 100 square feet, or 1000 cubic feet.

1.512 million cubic feet of space on Route 1.
That's just a little less than 400 million.

Even if we assume that you have 1000 feet of space above which can be inhabited by Pokemon, it's not enough. You'd need to stack Pokemon far into the atmosphere to find room.

Where do all the Pokemon go?


Afterword: There are so many places I could have put pictures, but for my lack of artistic skill. =( I'll have to acquire some soon.

Saturday, June 25, 2011

Back, Ready to Write

Summer's begun, school's over.

I can finally write more =D

Anyways, I went to the beach today, and came up with this semi-functional analogy for life.

Life is like a beach. As you pass through, you leave your own impressions upon the vast expanse of the beach. At first, you say, "Hey! I'm making huge impressions! My footprints are unique, look at the pretty lines I'm leaving!", and you continue on your merry way, merrily throwing sand around, trekking up a large dune, pausing to throw out a loose cigarette butt, and then throwing more sand about until...

Until you realize how large the beach is. And how insignificant your footsteps are. And how many people have already walked by - and you've just lumped them into one big bunch of "beachprints". Your eyes have glazed over them, and you've even trampled over some footsteps. Oops.

Once your initial embarrassment has been overcome - not only about the erased footsteps, but all those poor people before you who are just "part of the beach" - you begin to panic. YOU are just part of the beach. YOUR footsteps will be in turn glazed over, and trampled over with new steps as well. Do you really have any significance? After all, the beach is a rather large place. In fact, you couldn't possibly traverse the entire thing in this outing.

What if you could come back? What if you could fill the ENTIRE beach with your footsteps? Surely then you wouldn't be overlooked? No, that's simply impossible. The waves will erase some, and the wind will take care of the rest. Not to mention the hordes of people coming Sunday.

Then you realize. That bathhouse you passed before. That bench you paused to rest on. Those handily placed stones that make a great campfire area. The small pit inexplicably sitting in the middle of the beach. Those certainly weren't overlooked. There is something you can do to leave an impression upon the beach (but it will certainly require work).

And on the other hand, it's not bad at all just to stroll on the beach. After all, up until the embarrassment and panic, it was a pretty pleasurable day. Would it really be so bad just to lay back on the sand and enjoy yourself?

Probably not, unless a crab decides to make your ear its next home.