How to make Pokemon better

So I was just thinking about how the Pokemon games could be better. They won't ever change because as is they make a shit ton of money, but we've all thought about how they could be better.

The first thing they need to drop is encouraging to catch them all. Only a few crazies do that and it just creates a lot of aggravation for the rest of us. It doesn't help that there are now ten billion different pokemon, or that about three dozen a game are duplicates of pokemon from previous games. Every game has a new rodent pokemon and a new bird pokemon and a new pair of completely useless bug pokemon. We don't need new pokemon like that. Make new cool pokemon, but once again, not epic pokemon. We don't need the new Zapdos.

While we are on this topic lets add that you can't capture unique or mythological pokemon. No capturing Mew, MewTwo, Zapdos, Moltres, etc. How do you prevent this? Don't have them show up. People talk about them but you never see them. For one I expect that people would murder you if you tried to used ones of those pokemon in battle since they are considered to be gods in the pokemon world. Secondly, they wouldn't be trainable. Normal pokemon are the same intelligence as humans, Myth pokemon are smarter and nothing you say to them is going to get them to battle for you.

Next I want to change moves. I want more then four of them. I think we can all agree on this. Also in wild pokemon battles I want to be able to use as many pokemon at a time as I want. I also want to be attacked by herds/flocks of pokemon at once. I can't imagine that pikachus are going to just attack you one at a time, if they do they deserve to be used as biological batteries. And aren't there also Plusun and Minum (Yes I know I misspelled it) who are pokemon that have moves that only work with the other one nearby? Why would they ever attack without their friend?

Now to some story stuff. Age up the characters to fifteen. I keep thinking that their supposed to get their pokemon license at age ten and not leave their homes on their own until they are older. This is a Japanese thing that you see a lot of in their literature, little kids doing things that adults would fail at.  Don't make the Gyms the main point of the story. Give the option of joining team rocket. Create training methods that are effected by type and personaty. Give us the option of beating our pokemon when they misbehave. I'd also like to order my pokemon to attack trainers. Officer Jenny finds out you get in trouble and you can't in Gym battles but so what?

Okay, maybe we are asking for more then a gameboy can handle. We have no choice but to move to a full console device. The Wii, I guess, since Nintendo makes Pokemon games. Of course it would make an interesting MMORPG, with all my adjustments which would require a real computer and might make Nintendo cry.

Of course this is only a handful of things they could do to make it better. I could go into detail but I'm bored with this now, so I won't.

Thinking bigger

I'm reading an article about someone starting a comic book shop after they created a convention in Florida. Yeah, it makes total sense and is not at all confusing.

The article is saying how the number of comic book shops has dropped in recent years comparing it to Borders closing. I have several problems with this.

Start with Borders. I never cared for their selection. Most people that like bookstores don't like major chains and if they go to a chain they want it to have the book they are looking for. I prefer Barnes & Noble, they just feel nicer. It might help that most BNs have a coffee shop built in and some of the ones near me have a permanent speaker/book signing area. They come off as more of a community gathering area then Borders did. Borders is just a large store that sold books.

Another thing with Borders. I went to our local Borders yesterday to get some clearance books. Everything was 30% off, except for Romance, which was 40% off. They were so overstocked with Romance it wasn't even funny. They had extra sections of Romance set up and had it spilling into other sections. That is why they are going out of business, they don't have books people want to read. I also looked over at the Young Adult section to see what they had left. It was three ten foot long shelves. Harry Potter books go in that section and I think they didn't have room for them. Young Adult is not a small area of book sales, it's very popular. For one I see a lot of people writing it for Nanowrimo.

Don't worry about faux Twilight novels though, they were safely in the Romance section.

Now the comic books shops. I didn't grow up with them. Any of them. The closest was forty-five minutes away in a direction I rarely went (or an hour and a half the other direction). Yes, traditional book stores are now carrying some comic books, but they didn't when I was little, and the chance that they had something that would interest me was incredibly rare. No one I knew in high school was particularly interested in comic books because of this, which is a shame.

What do comic book shops need to do? They need to be more then just a specialized book store. They need to be a community center. When I finally did get out to the one forty-five minutes away I was astounded by the place. For one it was huge, the size of a big box bookstore, but half of it was tables. To place games on. Dungeons and Dragons, Magic the Gathering, Apples to Apples, Solitaire, Chess, GURPS. This are things that require people to come to you, it makes it a community meeting place. Added benefit that they will probably purchase extra cards or dice or expansion packs while they are in the store, which means more money. And when I say they had table I mean twenty tables that could sit eight. They knew they were the only thing for miles and they were prepared for it.

And it works in a bad economy too! They might not buy as much but they will still be there to see the merchandise. They might buy less expensive things but at least you have them in the store.

And I'm not the only one with the community center idea. Libraries are trying to switch from a loan books business plan to a help people with simple tasks.

I suck at closing arguments.

Stuff, stuff, and more stuff

Huh, what happened to the last month? That was officially the first month I did not post a single blog for. Scary, though I'm not sure it's scary because I didn't post or because it's been nearly two, no three years? Of course I haven't written very much this year so far. I just checked and realized that I'll be posting a  200% increase today versus the rest of the year also known as January.

So what am I doing?

I am still unemployed. I am staying with a friend for a while. I'm planning on writing two scripts this month before I write my Screnzy script in April. Oh, by the way I'm a Municipal Liaison for Screnzy now. Basically I'm a local volunteer that tries to make the madness of Screnzy a little less so for the rest of the participants.

I've been doing 750words.com which is probably the time I would be writing for this blog. I am sick of it because the timing that is kind of interesting for the purpose of discovering how fast you write begins to get annoying as you get into the seventy day streak. Yesterday I used Ispum Lorem so that I could use the time to work on my scripts. A big difficulty with the site that some of us have noticed is that there is another step to writing call revision and editing. I might not be writing something new but I don't need to be if I am still working on a writing project. Because of that I'm probably going to quit the site before the end of the month, once I have reached one hundred days and have the phoenix badge. Cause phoenixes are cool.

Well that is about all that has been happening to me recently. Hopefully I will post again soon.

Film Review: Twilight

Yeah. I watched Twilight.

I'm going to start off by saying that Twilight was not the worse film I have ever seen. If ranked against all the movies I have watched it would be solidly in the middle and it definitely could have been a better movie. Some of the flaws are similar to ones you see in the Harry Potter movies, not enough happening as action.

There are some very good parts in the movie, the problem is that they are surrounded by terrible parts. The beginning is slow and boring, the dialogue is maddening and there is just something seriously wrong with Bella. I think she's clinically depressive. The only time we see her have any personality is when she interacts with Edward and she has no reason to want to be dead, at least no reason I could see from watching the movie. It's not like she's dying from cancer or something, she's just a whiny bitch.

I actually kept thinking about the article from Cracked I read recently that revealed the original screenplay written for Paramount for Twilight. Two words, Vampire Commandos. Take everything about the Twilight vampires and make them commandos. They would be pretty cool, particularly if you change 'sparkles in sunlight' to 'blinds those foolish enough to look directly at them'. We can all dream about what could have been.

What I think was the worst part of the Twilight movie was actually the story is good. How it is told not so much, but the basic story is good. I suppose the one thing we can learn from Twilight is that all a book really needs is a good plot and then people will read it.
-X

That's kind of embaressing

And by 'that' I mean when you look at your blog and realize that you haven't updated it in a month. Nearly a month. Close enough to a month.

In this past month I have been doing 750words.com and am on a 44 day streak. That's a lot of days. I can't believe I've done it, that I was able to think of things to write or that they made sense. As it is I haven't written today and after that one terrifying attempt to blog via that site I am not trying again. Of course today I could write that much without difficulty because it's been so long since my last post.

I started to edit my Nanowrimo 2010. It's hard work and I am often bored of it. Instead I showed my Script Frenzy 2010 to my writing group and got feedback on it. They like it. They say it's marketable. It's so close to salable that I can taste it. I should be working on it more, but as usual I am distracted.

On a similar note Screnzy is rolling around again in April and I am going to be writing the sequel to my first. I always hate the people that talk about writing a sequel before they finish the first, or sell the first, or have actually contemplated the first. They do that on the forums. It's almost as annoying as complaining about not having an idea two months before the event. Now I am one of those people.

I still don't have a job. I am staying with a friend for free, which is nice but I do want to be able to at least assist with some bills after a while. I don't like taking charity. Honestly I am surprised that I am able to be her comfortably as I am.

The only thing I really need to do still is I have to lose some weight. I want to fit back into my clothes and I want to look better, but as happens when I get busy I don't pay attention to Calorie-count. Putting that website on my radar always seems to make me feel like I have too much time that could be spent elsewhere.

Anyway. I just read two books at a rapid pace and am playing a video game I shouldn't have bought and barely runs on my laptop.

In the next day or so I will be updating my GOALS because I realize I haven't. I messed with the numbers the other day but they need a post to go with them.
-X