04/11/21 - Choice Band Dragapult

Please drop your strats in the comments.

Image from Pokemon: Twilight Wings

Honestly, I mean, the sakuga of this series.

The family took an antigen test a couple of days ago that yielded negative results for COVID, so thoughts of death have been postponed until further notice, whether that’s appropriate or not. Additionally, I am going to refrain from tired Suez Canal incident jokes. Ivermectin propaganda aside, it has been a relatively good week of friends regressing to their most earnest selves upon the release of Fearless (Taylor’s Version), me cautiously trying out ashwagandha capsules, and Prince Philip wiping out to a playlist, with a little help from the march of time.

As far as writing goes, I used to loathe the move that writers make of providing distraction in periods of turmoil, but distraction is a love language, and I want to be honest about where my head is at.

I’ve been competitive battling on and off on Pokemon Showdown since I was a college freshman. Pokemon Showdown is an online battle simulator where literally anyone, for free, can build a team of Pokemon, start them all at level 100 by default, input their desired movesets and stat spreads, and battle other players online across a variety of tiers and formats. It’s one of those things that are too good to be true when somebody tells you about it, like free online courses on Impressionism, or edibles that don’t take you by surprise when they hit, but this shit exists, and I wish more people got on it.

My activity on the site has increased dramatically since the start of the year, shortly after Nuzlocke fatigue set in (I’ve got a HeartGold run on hold, second attempt, wiped to Lance on my first go). It’s been a joyful slog trying to keep up with the metagame’s intricacies, smuggling 5-10 minutes of playtime in microbreaks throughout the day. Here’s my team!

I, too, was surprised to learn that Clefable is an actual threat in the current metagame.

This team has seen a lot of changes over the past few months but Choice Banded Dragapult, Assault Vest Togekiss, and Rocky Helmet Ferrothorn have been the constants. Sucker Punch on Dragapult was viable for a while when Spectrier was more prominent in my preferred format, OU singles. Togekiss tends to trip players up when it comfortably switches into special attackers, plus Air Slash gets me a lot of lucky flinches. Ferrothorn’s the textbook hazard setter and pivot, also good for punishing contact physical sweepers with chip damage. I’ve been seeing hit-or-miss success with this old Polteageist strat, who’s usually unstoppable after one well-timed boost.

None of this shit is going to make sense for people who aren’t on Showdown, but this is the closest I can get to feeling like I’m on some The Queen’s Gambit shit. If you’re interested, I highly recommend this free! Online! Course! by 2016 Pokemon World Champion Wolfe Glick, which appeals to the kid inside me who wants to be a Pokemon master, and the current me who is delighted by academic webinars.

It feels good to devote lazer focus to recreation. On our last in-person date, Mags and I spent a little time on https://www.twoplayergames.org/, a repository of those old Flash games from the early aughts, where we discovered that the woman I love is a Connect4 genius. She makes Braniac plays and I am smooth-brained pleb.

Lately, my brain’s been really smooth. Hazards slide right off it. Kind of like how curvilinear roofs on Chinese houses were designed the way they are to be ghost-proof. Whether it is past lessons of therapy applied or the placebo effects of Indian ginseng root, psychic defense protocol has been working out pretty well so far. Sometimes the measures include spending time on some 32-bit ridiculousness. Hey, at least I ain’t drinkin’.

Choice Band is a held item that boosts a Pokemon’s physical attack by 50 percent, at the cost of locking it to a single move for as long as it’s on the field. It’s apparently not a popular choice of item for Dragapult—most people opt for a Choice Specs strat to utilize a moveset with greater Special Attack coverage, even though Dragapult’s Attack stat is higher. It doesn’t solve everything, but parts of a whole are just things to work around. Every now and then, with some good decisions and a bit of finesse, you can go the rest of the way with brute force. Late game sweep. Will is overrated, but sometimes it works. Onward to more distractions.

1. “Nativity” by Xandria Phillips. “to partake in a gender, to do so as a participant, and to fashion one’s self a living process of gender is like casting a net of postures, adornment objects, and grooming techniques into a future tense. where have I gone, and who have I built to take my place?”

2. Scarlett by my friends Mind Money Circuit! They cite Guthrie Govan as an influence, but you can taste the Chon.

3. Finally caught up on Jujutsu Kaisen, y’all.

4. This euphoric Caroline Polachek, Carly Rae Jepsen mashup.

5. Ratchet and Clank, remade for the PS4! Released for free as part of Playstation’s Play At Home initiative. Horizon Zero Dawn next, when that comes out for free. And then maybe after that, I’ll get Monster Hunter Rise.

6. “Any Common Desolation” by Ellen Bass, brought to you by my favorite blog.

7. “The Art of Escapism Cooking” by Mandy Lee, which I’ve yet to go through in full, but contains this metal-as-fuck opening paragraph:

   “One hazy Beijing afternoon, one no more particularly dreadful than the others, I stood behind my closed kitchen window, stone cold, as I dragged a serrated knife through the body of a sandwich. I felt the unforgiving blade lacerate the wobbly stack of steaming pastrami short ribs tucked under a runny egg fried in browned butter and mustard seeds, watching its blood-like fluid weep into a layer of charred and pickled shishito peppers on top of still-warm rye bread anointed with mustard. I exhaled, tilting my head, as a cold rush of solace eased through my veins. Through the window a neighboring building disappeared, swallowed in the thickening soot outside. I knew I was next.”

8. Rachel Nguyen’s ongoing daily vlog series up on That’s Chic. It’s been a delight watching this YouTuber of the travel and lifestyle genre reorient herself in quarantine, and come out with content that’s still as inspiring, meditative, and warm as she’s always been. The series should be close to finishing up. This has been the go-to balm, to be honest.

9. “What Makes A Woman in Women’s Sports?” from the Hormonal podcast, which investigates the problems that trans female athletes face. A great listen for anybody sick of seeing TERFs on their feed.

10. Strange cats.