[video / action for the parking lot of the violet city dedenny's]

[meteorman]

[At a little past three in the morning a video shows up on the 'gear. Ford has been something of a cryptid as of late -- more than he usually is -- and this picture just hammers that home. He's standing in what looks like... the parking lot of a Dedenny's? The lighting isn't great considering he's outside at night, which really adds to the ambience. The light from the sign glints off his glasses. He looks a little manic, but what's new?]

Come to -- what's the phrase-- come to the Violet City Dedenny's if you want an asskicking.

[Look at him, learning memes that are simultaneously from his future and also extremely out of date.]

I'm turning seventy-four in one week. I want to start celebrating early.

[There's a momentary pause.]

I should clarify I am referring to a Pokémon battle. If you were to physically fight me it wouldn't be very fair to you.

I am also open to verbal debate if you don't feel like coming all the way to Violet at three in the morning. I've noticed there isn't egalitarian appreciation of Pokémon and I won't stand for it. Every Pokémon is cute, not only your standard Eevee or Cleffa.

[He lifts up a fat little Pyukumuku. It extends its 'hand' and bops him gently on the face, skewing his glasses.]

You look at Eviscerator and tell her she isn't adorable.

Comments

[fingersandteeth]

We're still fairly early in the process? We know where we want to have it, which is in Lavender Town most likely, if they'll let us, and we've settled on a sort of dual gym, where the matches are different depending on which one of us they pick, but similarly themed around the idea of blind battling, where you can't actually see what your Pokemon is doing and you have to trust your other senses to tell you—or work out the battle plan before you go in and trust your team to stick with it.

But we'd do it in different ways. With Thace's matches, I think he wants to have the challengers in another room than the arena and have some kind of communication relay between them and their Pokemon—with mine they'd still be there in the arena with their team, but we'd find a way to either psychically remove their sight temporarily or just have them blindfolded.

And, you know, I was thinking on having challengers navigate their way to the arena without the use of their sight as well. But it's still in the planning stages.

[meteorman]

I like that. Thematically cohesive without being overly-complicated.

What steps would you put in place to discourage cheating via psychic types? They offer a more direct line of communication that may result in an unfair advantage.

[fingersandteeth]

I mean, I'm of two minds regarding that. On one hand, shouldn't we reward our challengers for thinking outside the box? On the other hand, it'd be a pain in the ass if people didn't learn the lessons of trust and pre-strategizing we're trying to teach them.

Then again, I do enjoy my ghost types and my occasional dark type. Maybe I should just tailor my teams towards being a pain for people with psychic pokemon.