Once again Bug Catcher completely misses the point. It's called Pokémon training for a reason, kid. Nobody's going to come up and hand you a Mewtwo.

Unless you're my niece, in which case I give her rare Pokémon all the time. #hypocrisy

 As the game points out, light-years are a unit of distance, not time. So are parsecs.

Or maybe you're AU from facing Brock?

 I imagine there's stuff in the Pokémon world that people there just take for granted most of the time. Like evolutionary stones. And sentient garbage bags. And impassable ledges.

 There's the right stuff, and then there's Charmander. #sickburn #TeamSquirtle

 If you stop to think about it, it is kinda remarkable that this 10-year-old Pokémon-training newbie somehow manages to defeat every top trainer in a region, most of whom are veteran adults, and become Total Champion of Everything within what seems like a very short timespan.

Gotta love video game wish fulfillment.

I have to give props to the very first season of the anime; despite its overall weirdness, it was actually very realistic in showing Ash not only not winning his first ever Pokémon League competition, but not even placing very high. That's life, kid.

 A running theme in this comic is taking in-game dialogue (in this case, the first line of this comic) in an unexpected direction. Kinda puts a new spin on the conversations you engage in on your Pokémon journey.

 Oh, Bug Catchers.

I characterize them in this comic kind of like the 6-year-old kid down the street who loves Pokémon but can't grasp the mechanics of the games, and keeps pestering you to tell him how to catch a level 100 Charizard in Viridian Forest.

 I highly doubt it's just coincidence that Blue happens to come strolling along right when Red wanders onto Route 22.

Also, I feel like Blue is just about the ultimate in hypocrisy and double standards; he's perfectly content to criticize Red all day long, but proves himself inferior to Red at every turn, and he basically uses his trash talk to try to disguise that fact.

It's kinda nice that later games in the series made the rival characters less ascerbic.

Also, I am so psyched to play Legends: Z-A, but I'm still trying to finish another game I've been playing over the past few months, and I'm dying trying to stay as far away from Pokémon-related things as possible so as to avoid spoilers. #gamerproblems

 I feel like anyone who insists it was sheer random chance that your Pikachu totally wrecked his Pidgey either doesn't understand Pokémon battles at all or is really, really in denial.

 Yes, I'm sure that particular nickname took a considerable amount of time and effort.

I like giving my Pokémon really nerdy nicknames that usually have to do with science. One of my favorites was in Pokémon Sword, when I named my Arctovish "Ariston", which was the nickname of a notable specimen of Leedsichthys discovered in England in 2001 which was named after a European washing machine model.

Yep, that's how I roll. (dons nerd glasses)*

*I always wear nerd glasses anyway because I'm nearsighted. So just imagine me taking my glasses off, but then putting them back on, real slow and cool-like.

 I just think it's really weird how the guy who teaches you how to catch Pokémon does his little tutorial right in the middle of Viridian City. You know, where there are no wild Pokémon. And how you can repeat the tutorial as often as you want, but it's the same Weedle every time. I feel like this guy's hobby is crafting pretend capture tutorials.

Later games actually have the capture tutorial happen out in tall grass, so it makes more sense.

I had a lot of fun just making him look so ridiculously excited about that "wild" Weedle.

 I get excited by weird things such as Mondays, cottage cheese, and making flowcharts.

In the astronomy community, I hear a lot of stories of laypeople seeing something in the night sky, not knowing what it is, and immediately jumping to the conclusion that it's aliens. Thing is, it's never aliens (as my longsuffering astro buddy Chris Lintott continually reminds us). And there's a lot of other stuff you need to rule out before you can start to think it might be aliens.

Which is why I made this handy flowchart to help you identify what you saw in the night sky! While it may never be aliens, there are a lot of fascinating objects to see in the heavens. Go out and learn more about the stars!

Sad but true story: In 1994, a large earthquake in Los Angeles in the wee hours of the morning left large parts of the city without power. Police and fire stations received frantic phone calls from people claiming that something strange was happening to the sky and wondering if the earthquake caused it.

They were seeing the Milky Way for the first time because of the greatly reduced light pollution.

Let's not have a repeat of this.

As an aside, I grew up in Los Angeles and remember that earthquake quite well. 0/10, would not recommend.

 Let's be real, Oak just really wants to chill at the lab and make other people run his errands.

 Just how old is Professor Oak? His age is never stated in the games. In the fourth movie, which takes place during the Johto saga of the anime, he's 50, and his anime design is nearly identical to his game artwork, so what if we assume he's meant to be 50 in the games as well? Except Gen I takes place two years before Gen II, so Oak would have been 48 in Gen I. (That means he would have been 38 when Blue was born????) 

I think what the games are trying to tell us is that 48 is far too old to be doing anything meaningful with your life anymore, so just go live in a nursing home and save the adventures for the tweens.

 It's always bothered me that Oak's last Pokemon, the one you and your rival didn't pick, just sits on his desk for the rest of the game. Forever. Sad and alone (or possibly in big trouble). And also kinda taunting you about the fact that you'll have to trade with another real live human being if you ever want the other two starters.

 Oh, the earliest generations of Pokémon games, when just one pixelated person could somehow conveniently block an entire road and keep you from progressing.

And there's nothing you can do about it.

 My 7-year-old niece was having a rough day, so I drew this to cheer her up. I feel like her cat Fred would totally be a Litten.

I popped over to the Idaho Museum of Natural History yesterday and did a quick marker sketch. I told you I have a weird obsession with skulls. I wanted to try something a little different from my usual life reconstructions and just kinda meditate on how beautiful bones are. And I don't mean that in a macabre way; living things are such incredible constructions where every part is perfectly tuned to support an organism's role in its ecosystem. I just can't help but appreciate such marvelous engineering.

This is Stegoceras, an adorable little basal pachycephalosaur from the early Late Cretaceous. I didn't realize before now that pachys have a lot of interesting textures on their skull, including lots of rugosity around the snout and front of the cranium with a comparatively smooth dome. They must have looked magnificent in life.

(Also, there are two completely different types of dinosaur named Stegoceras and Stegosaurus, and I need to have a stern chat with whoever's responsible for that.)*

*That's not currently possible considering Stegoceras was described in 1902, and Stegosaurus in 1877. Maybe in the next life.

 Ever notice the weird lack of accommodations for humans in the Pokémon world? (In the games, at least; the anime shows that Pokémon Centers also serve as hotels for trainers.) Pokémon Red/Blue was a pretty innovative RPG in that nothing ever changed the condition of the actual player character; the only well-being you needed to worry about was that of your Pokémon.

And then that changed in Pokémon Legends: Arceus when I fell off a cliff and blacked out and lost half my stuff.

 

Ah, ledges. Such an integral part of the Pokémon universe, and definitely not just a convenient way to gate player progress.

This is just the beginning of the running gag of the NPCs being morons with a strange lack of awareness of the world around them.

 During the most recent Virtual Fossil Friday, we somehow got on the subject of Lisa Frank while doodling ichthyosaurs, and, uh, this happened. You're welcome.

I have to admit it was kind of fun blatantly disregarding realistic coloration.

 I'm aware that I'm the only one who thinks these comics are funny. Good thing this is my blog and I can post whatever I want.

As a kid, I didn't really think twice about the idea of Pokémon battles, but as an adult it does seem like a bit of a questionable practice. Like, you receive this weak, young creature who relies on you for its well-being, and the first thing you do is walk out into the wilderness, aggravate some wild creatures into hostility, and literally throw your creature at them and command it to fight?

I think later entries in the core series do a reasonable job of explaining that Pokémon actually enjoy battling and it's an activity that strengthens the bond between Pokémon and trainers. It's probably also a good way to let a Pokémon blow off steam and channel any natural aggressive tendencies in a healthy and productive manner.

But the way Oak explains it in Gen I is kinda sketch.

 One last character design, for Yonwin! He was so fun to write in Earthkeepers and I think he probably had the most compelling character arc. After (spoilers) helping save the world and becoming the second-youngest Graling in history to earn a warrior's title, Yon has grown from a shy, insecure teen hiding in the shadow of his famous aunt, to a confident warrior, now quite famous in his own right, and secure in the fact that he loves both combat and technology. The Apparats made him a fancy high-tech spear and shield, but I imagine when Yonwin competes with other Gralings, he uses old-fashioned equipment to keep things fair.

It's not really mentioned clearly in the books, but Graling warriors train to specialize in two weapons, generally a long-range and short-range, respectively. This gives them more versatility on the battlefield, and also ensures they can keep fighting if something happens to one of their weapons. Fraa's weapons of choice are a long knife and a throwing club.

Gralings sound like terribly violent creatures, but they're physically hardier than humans and can take quite a licking with no lasting repercussions. That may be part of why they find combat fun, and make a point of organizing battles that are inversely proportional in scale to how serious the issue is that the battle will decide.

 I just had so much fun creating a design for Miette for the novel I've been brainstorming that I wanted to create a design for Kieri too. A few years have passed since the events of Earthkeepers, and Kieri has been keeping busy acting as a political liaison between the Apparats and the surface and sky nations--a job she finds she likes because it's basically just about making friends, which is something that comes naturally to her. As a young adult, she's mellowed out a little bit since her rambunctious youth... but she's still Kieri. And she loves having powered armor that allows her to fly.

I'm pretty sure Miette, Kieri, Yonwin, and Zuben will be main characters in this book, since they were just so fun to write in Earthkeepers, and play so well off each other. (I love writing Fraa too, but a larger cast gets hard to juggle, so I think she'll sit this adventure out.) I have no plans for writing further about Rohui or Wilder, who were supposed to be the two main characters of Skydwellers, but honestly turned out extremely dull. You can definitely tell by the end of that book that I was having more fun writing Miette, Kieri, and Fraa. 

Perhaps it's not surprising, considering Skydwellers was my first novel, and when I was writing the first draft, my focus was more "high-concept science fiction with a suitably professional air of emotional detachment" and not "I want to enjoy writing this". There's a lesson in there, I think.

 A bit more playing with markers. This time around I wanted to challenge myself to only use marker and no colored pencil. It was a little tough because I don't have nearly as many marker colors as pencil colors, but I think I made it work. Also, Prismacolor's brush tip markers are a pretty good substitute for Copic. Unfortunately I only have a handful of brush tip colors. I'll need to fix that when the budget allows.

As far as the subject--I've been tossing around ideas for another book in the Azhnarroth series, about Miette, Kieri, Yonwin, and Zuben having adventures in space. In Earthkeepers, I teased the mysterious disappearance of the Flammarion Commonwealth eight thousand years ago... now it's time to solve that mystery. And of course black holes will be involved.

As Miette, Kieri, and Yonwin were named stewards of Great Engine at the end of Earthkeepers, I thought that by a few years later they'd look the part. I imagine the Apparats probably made them some nifty powered armor.