I don't get Blue. He talks a tough game and then sends out a Pokémon whose only move is Teleport. It's like he's not even trying to become Champion.

 Seeing as it's Thanksgiving and all, and birds are dinosaurs are birds, I thought I'd give you your daily dose of nightmare fuel. I have such a weird sense of humor.

But really, one of my paleoart soapboxes is that, while I love fluffy dinos as much as the next avant-garde paleo geek, extant birds actually have a wide range of feathering schemes, and some of them just have weird bald heads and that's okay. I enjoy playing around with saurian integument and trying to see how speculative I can get.

Fun fact: Those fleshy ridges on a turkey's neck are called caruncles. Turkeys can flush blood to their caruncles and make them turn redder, and it's thought that they may aid in helping turkeys recognize individuals based on differing caruncle patterns. 

Just remember, guys, nothing makes the ladies flock to you like bright red wrinkly skin, a large wad of flesh dangling from your nose, and emitting low-pitched noises from that air sac in your chest.

... In all honesty that's probably not the weirdest thing a guy has ever done to attract a girl.

 After that previous comic, my readers felt sorry for the Slowbro too, so I drew this. I like to think Lass took a remedial course on Pokémon husbandry and now they're getting along just swell.

 After I originally posted this one ages ago, one reader came up with a fan theory that Professor Oak overused Repels, went insane, died, and then came back as some sort of malevolent revenant who gives Pokedexes to unsuspecting beginner Trainers.

Naturally, I took that idea and ran with it, which explains a lot of Oak's characterization in Book 2.

I guess I came up with this one because this guy's explanation of Repel reminded me of a medication ad.

 I always felt bad for that poor Slowbro getting yelled at by its trainer in Cerulean City. Slowbro may be dopey, but they have feelings too!

 When you tell me someone will do whatever it takes for something, I just start to worry.

Also, I had fun drawing the Shady Docks. Sounds like a nice part of town.

Also, I've finally gotten around to starting Pokemon Legends: Z-A and oh man I'm having so much fun. New stuff might be kind of scarce because right now I just want to spend all my free time roaming around Lumiose City and pretending to be noncompetitive but then owning at the Z-A Royale. I do have another revised Neopets story at the editor's, though, and I will start posting chapters on this blog once she's done taking a look at it.

 I don't understand how anyone can say this when Pokémon trainers basically get to make a career out of goofing off with monsters. Sounds like most kids' dream job.

Funnily enough, in Pokémon Sun and Moon, there's a group of older, retired trainers who imply that they didn't make enough money off of being a trainer to earn a living, and had to go into other lines of work. And yet you can still make limitless tons of money winning battles and selling valuable items you find on your journey. Maybe those guys just weren't trying hard enough?

... One thing that I like about video games versus the real world is that in the former, you're always compensated fairly for overachieving. Anyone else go around collecting all the resources in Breath of the Wild and Tears of the Kingdom? No? I may need to rethink my life.

Also, this makes me think about video game design in general and how sometimes I see games where the dev team put so much focus on things like incredible next-gen hyperrealistic graphics, super-advanced AI, and ridiculously detailed programming, that they forgot to actually make the game fun. Like, my definition of a good video game is something you can sit down with for a few hours to unwind at the end of the day, and come away feeling satisfied and refreshed and entertained. Things like graphics and tech specs should take a back seat (or at least the passenger seat) to an enjoyable experience. And that's why I'm such a big Pokémon fan--because the games are just plain good old-fashioned fun.

 I've had this idea on my mind for a long time, and finally was able to get around to rendering it. Whenever I see one of those "SHARE THE ROAD" signs, I just keep wanting it to say this because I have a really odd sense of humor.

Now I just want to do an entire series of Middle-earth road signs. "WATCH FOR FIGHTING ROCKS", maybe? "YIELD TO FELLOWSHIPS"? "DO NOT PICK UP GOLLUMS"?

 Those sly Rockets. Also don't invite them to Scrabble night. They have a surprisingly broad vocabulary.

(Yes, I know there are no female Team Rocket members in Gen I. While I tried to stay faithful to extant character designs when portraying actual in-game dialogue, I played around with character design a bit more if I had to make up my own characters for a scene. I guess my headcanon is that female Rockets have always existed, it's just that none of them appeared in Kanto in Gen I for some reason.*)

*Although, in Let's Go Pikachu and Eevee, there are quite a few female Team Rocket members, which sort of retcons their male-only population in Red/Blue.**

**I omitted Yellow because Jessie appears in that game, so it is not technically devoid of female Rockets. But at this point I've just become too pedantic. As my sister says, it's not that deep.

 I mean, they're a criminal organization and all, but that doesn't mean you can just jump to conclusions every time a crime happens.

 The constellation Triangulum has always incited me to rage confused me. It's arguably the second lamest of the constellations (only losing to its 16th-century Southern Hemisphere cousin, Triangulum Australe, which is even worse because it's a totally unoriginal knockoff of something that was already totally unoriginal).

So I was really surprised to find out that Triangulum actually dates back to ancient Greece. The Greeks were usually so much more creative than that. Triangulum doesn't even have a story or a myth behind it, it's just... always been a triangle.

Naturally, that meant I had to make up a myth for it. I guess I felt sorry for it.

 Oh, the Team Rocket Grunts. They had some of the most fun dialogue to work off of. I enjoyed portraying them as completely incompetent in so many ways, because let's face it, in real life criminals are pretty dumb. (And let's not forget the Team Rocket trio in the anime, who even after 25 years never figured out that trying to capture Pikachu was a complete waste of their time.)

I just like how this totally random Grunt in Mt. Moon thinks he's cool enough that he can complain to the higher-ups that a 10-year-old beat him in a Pokémon battle, and they'll blacklist the kid instead of firing him for being totally useless.

 I guess this pun only works if you have an Electric-type in your party. Which I did, so I could make the joke.

 Sometimes the stuff NPCs say can be so vague that it's left open to interpretation. Lass's line in the first panel is what she actually says after your battle with her. And that's all she says. So maybe she's talking about losing the battle. Or maybe she's talking about her contact lens falling out in a dark cave. But I'm already off to battle the next trainer, bye!

... I'm not sure why I'm so mean to Lass in these comics.

 Wait, I think maybe he meant useful in Pokémon battles. (In which case actually Zubat is pretty awful because Bite is a Normal-type move in Gen I, and Leech Life does next to nothing, and the fact that it's effective against Psychic-types is totally cancelled out by the fact that Zubat is part Poison-type, and basically just wait until Gen II rolls around with Crobat.)

If you're getting tired of all these old Pokémon comics, well, no one's forcing you to read this blog. I've been dealing with some health issues lately and haven't had a lot of time or energy or ability for new creative stuff. For the time being I need to rest and recuperate and fail at cooking Indian cuisine and try desperately to get around to playing Pokemon Legends: Z-A because those early-purchase bonuses are vital to my survival

Also I hope you caught that Zubat is wearing glasses even though it doesn't have eyes.

 I'm going through Mt. Moon and just thinking to myself, what are all these kids doing hanging out in a labyrinthine, Pokémon-infested cavern complex? Is spelunking the hot new after-school activity in Kanto?

And then there's Lass, whose "friends" told her to wait for them in the middle of a cave under a mountain and then went to the arcade.

 Maybe that's not really something you should be bragging about, Shorts Boy Youngster.

 It's an easy transition, really. Shorts to pants might be a little harder.

Fun fact: In the original Japanese games, Youngsters are called Shorts Boys. That explains why so many of them have a shorts obsession in their dialogue.

 Ever stop to think about how, no matter what time it is, every time you access a PC to get your Pokedex evaluated by Professor Oak, he answers right away?

It's almost like he just hovers in front of his computer at all hours waiting for trainers to email him.

Or like it's just a video game that I'm not supposed to think about as hard as I do.

 This guy's such a con artist, he's not even selling you an actual Magikarp. Just some weird yellow fish that probably doesn't do anything interesting.

In all honesty, the games make the whole buy-a-Magikarp thing out to be a big scam, but it's a great way to get a Gyarados early on, before you can get the Old Rod. So in actuality, it's a big strategic advantage pretending to be a scam pretending to be an advantage. Wrap your head around that.

 Again, the whole "taking in-game dialogue in an unexpected direction" thing.

Dude never specifically says what Team Rocket is in the news for, so I just came to logical conclusions.

 We're just having all sorts of fun at Museum of the Rockies's Virtual Fossil Fridays! Join us if you can--it's free and great for all ages! It is primarily aimed at kids, but I know I'm not the only adult in attendance. Hosts Ashley and MaggieJo are wonderful people, and overall it's just a chill paleo happy place to be on Friday mornings.

Last week, MaggieJo gave a great presentation on animals that are associated with Halloween (and why they are totally awesome and not spooky), and as she was talking about ravens, I just kept thinking it would be really cool if large theropods like tyrannosaurs had feathery "manes" like ravens do. Fossil skin impressions have shown they generally were not extensively feathered (with some exceptions like Yutyrannus, which lived in colder climates), but large theropods could still have had some feathers for display purposes.

Also, I fully support fluffy dinosaurs. Anybody who thinks things with feathers aren't scary has never dealt with an angry goose.

 When you live in a world where any inanimate object could potentially be a Pokémon, you probably start just seeing Pokémon everywhere.

 What are we on, like Route 3, and you finally realize this, Bug Catcher?

I just think it's kinda funny that this one says this, after previous Bug Catchers kept going on about wanting to find stronger Pokémon instead of training the ones they already have.

But also when you explain the joke, it stops being funny.

 I mean, he says that, but then Bug Catchers in Gen I just kinda use the same species over and over. It's almost like there were only a handful of Bug-type Pokémon back then.

 I just really wanted to draw Red being a derpnugget. Lass says that in the game, so this is obviously the sort of facial expression she was talking about.

Also, I hope nobody minds too much that I haven't posted much besides these comics lately. I've had a lot going on and haven't really had the inclination for drawing or writing, and when you try to force creativity, the results suffer. I've been taking some time to take care of myself, enjoy my family, go on brisk autumn strolls, and still try to get through this other game I've been playing so I can finally start Pokémon Legends: Z-A which sounds amazing from the reviews and I'm so excited to dive back into Kalos aaaaaahhhhhh

Hope everybody has a good November!