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Pokemon-- imaginary monsters or bits of data?

I guess I am more on the Imaginary monsters bench.
Anyone that has played against me on shoddy knows that I use some weird pokes. My 2 favorite pokemon are Azumarill and Butterfree and 95% of my teams use at least one of them. I also like Electabuzz and when I found out that it could evolve I was hesitant to go through with it. My Electabuzz was the first poke that I breed for the perfect nature and nearly perfect IV's and it had been with me for hundreds of hours. In the end I didnt evolve it. Yeah, Electvice has a cooler ability as is a better poke in pretty much everyway, but Electabuzz is just cooler in my book.

However, in shoddy I have to find something to convince myself that my favorite pokemon warrant a spot on my team. I use butterfree because it has the most accurate sleep move outside of breloom and can change the weather. Something that no other poke can claim. I use Azumarill b/c CB Aqua Jet is beastly. Hell, my most recent team has a Trapnich because I think Dugtrio looks retarded and I needed a trapper. When I needed to convince myself that it was better then duggy I found that Trapnich has 100 ATK while Dugtrio has 80 and that it is the 2nd slowest pokemon which makes it a beast in trick room. So, to take advantage of that I made a whole trick room team.

Sure, it would have been easier to stick Dugtrio on one of my other teams then to make an entirely new one utilizing trapnich, but thats the fun of pokemon right?
 
Again I'd point out that I never apply this mindset as to what pokemon I will choose for battle. I will always choose the best pokemon to win, and make the best moves and decisions to win. Just because I see it as a pokemon battle and not as number manipulation doesn't mean my motivations are any less competitive.

I only bring this up in considering the wider concept of what we want the metagame to reflect and what options we want to be available--

A concept that, one has to admit, is pretty damn vague now on smogon.

We're constantly arguing about what the goals of tiering is-- making the most pokemon viable, making a balanced game, fighting centralization, etc., and no one is agreeing on the value of any of those motivations either.

Why? Because none of those reasons has any more inherent value than something as subjective as what I posted here in this thread.
 
I still have my first ever pokemon I got in the advance generation, My swampert off of Ruby. I actually every pokemon that I really used in ruby and saphire, the only one I don't have with me Is my old Pelliper :( He was such a cool Pelliper, he knew shock wave. I was amazed at that. But yeah, I keep all my old storyline pokemon, even the ones from Colosseum.

My friend is also like this, but even more attatched to his pokemon. He hatched a shiny Brave Blaziken, which despite having crud IV's and a somewhat hindering nature, he still uses it all the time. It's on every team he's ever had, and he will sacrifice anything to keep his Blaziken alive. I'm pretty sure he even gave it return once just to symbolise how much his Blaziken likes him :P
 
This is mixed for me. On Shoddy Battle, I try and incorporate my favorites, and usually the ones that are UU are still usable(Nidoqueen, Steelix), but if they don't perform I am willing to switch them out for a better pokemon. In the pokemon games however, I would never go out and catch a Garchomp, I would usually just stick to my Torterra or even a Luxray, who is cool but absolute shit competitively.
 
lol, i do think of Garchomp as a giant Dragon-Shark with godly powers that can rip other pokemon to pieces. That's why it's GARchomp, it's so freaking GAR!
And besides, the cool pokemon IMO are the pokemon with the GOOD data, like Garchomp and Salamence, and not like freaking Luvdisk (though Farfetch'd is freaking awsome)
 
Ejuck said:
He was such a cool Pelliper, he knew shock wave.
Click to expand...
I agree; I had a Surf/Fly/Ice Beam/Shock Wave Pelipper in Sapphire. Oh, those were fun days...


On topic, I think of Pokémon as more of imaginary monsters. I got into competitive battling not that long ago, and I have barely ever played Shoddy.
 
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