Paul Varley

I dunno, seems like that would be pretty easy to mock up in an image editor, maybe with some help from a spreadsheet...

The dude gave the EU a 7/10. That's pretty good and honestly a fair review.

"Dude, where's my dude?"

Advertisers go "this pizza *doesn't have* an edge!" or "we stuffed the crust full of stuff" and I always go "but why?"

The funny part is, I've pretty much always said since they started becoming a thing that LLMs are basically Wheatley: that is, surprisingly impressive at behaving like a human. But still a moron.

I think it's what Gaslighter came with - I got them out of a raid. Unfortunately they were very high level and spent a lot of time on the bench waiting for the others to catch up with them.

I think Grass made sense to me as it paired nicely with Energy Ball and worked to counter Fire weaknesses.

really want to use a traded pokemon (look I was still new to this whole thing back in X with Thumper) and I had my heart set on Falinks anyway (I like mons that are just a bunch of silly lil guys). But at least I got to commemorate Bois a bit with DA BOYZ.

And there we go!

DA BOYZ is a pretty simple nickname in some ways but the direct inspiration was from Bois, the Heracross you get traded in an early tutorial sidequest. Yes I know it's almost certainly meant to be pronounced "bwah" but that didn't stop me giggling and yelling DA BOYZ for a while. Buuuut I didn't

around it I borrowed some inspiration from my long time internet handle Paul.Power, and yeah, there we go.

And finally...

I had recently watched Jon Bois' seminal series on the history of the telegraph network (through the lens of the TV show Home Improvement). Finally, the dot came about because the censor did not like "Lady Kelvin" (consider the last two letters of Lady and first two of Kelvin. Yeah...) so to get

Lady.Kelvin's gonna take some explanation that may require multiple skeets. First, the "Lady" part is a reference to what Chorocojo called the player character in his Platinum LP (a team which also featured a Froslass called Nevica). Kelvin then fell into place as a reference to Lord Kelvin because

Plasma's pink and blue shiny colouration made me think of, well, plasma balls, especially when mega-evolved. Yes she's the guaranteed shiny from that one sidequest. Yes I bent my "no repeats" rule for this. Deal with it.

Sapphire is both because she's blue and, well, she's an alpha. In the best traditions of "this is my Dustox, Springfield", I give you, "this is my Alpha, Sapph-" *gets dragged offstage by a cane hook*

Mozilla Jr. is another member in my line of repeatedly calling Fennekins and Vulpix-Ks "Mozilla" (because they're fire foxes, you see). The original Mozilla was the starter I dropped from my team back in X. I hope this makes up for it...

Nickname explainer thread (again!)

Sage was me going "well he's plant but he's male, what do I go with here". The initial idea was Herb, but it felt a bit too silly somehow. Sage seemed more respectful.

A spreadsheet commemorating all of my Pokémon teams that have made it to the Hall of Fame. The latest addition: Legends Z-A Trainer: Paul(a) Sage, Meganium (Mega), Grass (Mega-evolving to Grass/Fairy) Mozilla Jr., Delphox (Mega), Fire/Psychic Sapphire, Gyarados (Mega) (Alpha), Water/Flying (Mega-evolving to Water/Dark) Plasma, Ampharos (Mega) (Shiny), Electric (Mega-evolving to Electric/Dragon) Lady.Kelvin, Froslass (Mega), Ice/Ghost DA BOYZ, Falinks (Mega), Fighting

And following this up with credits on Legends Z-A, which was a Christmas present!

This is not a drill. I mean, cows haven't invented drills yet. But it is a cow tool.

Hell, my chem lab at FE college still had blackboards, probably because my chemistry teachers loved to use chunky chalk.

First time I've heard of overhead projectors being called ELMO, but that's probably an American thing.

It does feel like we're more ready to just chuck obsolete tech these days. My chemistry lab at school still had some old BBC Micros lying around. We never used them, but they were there.

I mean, you say that but I honestly found them fascinating.

Not that we got to use actual Beebs much (they mostly just sat unused on the side of the chemistry lab) but we ran plenty of Beeb programs (mostly the SMILE maths games) on its successor the Archimedes.

Not even mentioning the third definition of Something Awful denizen, there...

Bread: lots of different good options, I think my very favourite is Lidl thick cut seeded bloomers.

Spread: Philadelphia light

Cheese: mostly going with Pilgrim's Choice extra mature at the moment.

Ham: honey roast.

Lettuce: Morrions Sweet Gem.

Walnuts (Lidl does the best nuts that I know of)

I've never really understood Starbucks, though I will concede that this comes from the perspective of someone who doesn't like coffee.

Like whenever I've ordered tea from them it always comes in a takeaway cup, at least with Costa if you want to sit in they'll give you a little teapot and the like.

Pterry's view was very much "if someone asks me to recommend a book for their X year old kid, I will recommned them something written for X+2 year olds"

2015 Ashes series was particularly funny for this in that one of the two scored a century in every match, and whenever they did, their team won.

Honestly no. The first time I saw SC2K was when one of Dad's coworkers helped me build a little city, then he saved and went "oh by the way you can do THIS" and I burst out crying at the suffering of all the little computer people. I still don't really understand the mindset.

With Lord Rust, Jellicent's general aristocratic demeanour meant I clearly had to go for someone with a title, and my brain kinda went to Discworld. Lord Rust in Discworld is a pillock of course, but it seemed an appropriate name for a creature of the sea anyway.

Spiky Ken is another reference to Chorocojo's Black LP, when he brought in his Ferrothorn Barbie as a cameo for beating the dragon gym. But of course, the one I've caught is male, so he's Ken. But Ken on its own would be too boring, so I gave the nickname a nickname. So he's Spiky Ken!

SoulSister comes from me going "well, the sandile line look like they're always wearing sunglasses, right? So they're the Blues Brothers. But the one I've caught is female. Hmm. HMMM."

Lack of a space because of the ten character limit in the pre-Gen 6-games.

Zsarina is a reference to the aforementioned Chorocojo's Zsa Zsa from his Black Let's Play, which is my favourite LP of his and probably my favourite Pokémon LP overall.