While going through my drafts looking for things to add to my queue, I found this, which I’d apparently written but never posted. I feels like now is the appropriate time to do so.
I had a thought, and I am probably not the first person to notice this so please pardon me if someone else has mentioned this first BUT I am excited and want to talk about this.
So Umbreon’s markings look like a solar eclipse, right? And this makes sense, because the “umbra” is the darkest part of a shadow, and specifically during a solar eclipse, it’s the darkest part of the moon’s shadow, where the total eclipse is visible from.
What I didn’t realize until just now is that Espeon has this connection too! During a lunar eclipse, the moon doesn’t disappear. Instead, due to interference from the Earth’s atmosphere, it turns red, like the gem on Espeon’s forehead!
Okay but if I’m gonna reblog this I need to tell you guys the story of this legendary pachirisu
So in the competitive Pokemon scene, there’s what’s called a ‘metagame’, which is what’s generally used and what is/isn’t allowed in competitive battling. Certain pokemon are banned from the ‘meta’ because of being too powerful. Others aren’t generally used because there are better alternatives, or they’re simply too weak. People base their entire strategies around the expectation that they’ll be facing certain pokemon, and attempt to counter them with certain pokemon.
But the problem with this meta is, during the 2014 World Championships, there were a small number of pokemon choices that everybody had. Gardevoir, Kangeskhan, Salamence, Tyranitar, Talonflame, Garchomp… the same pokemon coming up again and again. Things weren’t really all that interesting.
And then came the Double Battle World Championship. And this guy.
Park Se Jun. One of the best players in the world. He used a Pachirisu with Nuzzle (a move with 100% paralysis chance), Super Fang (cuts target’s HP in half) and Follow Me (a move that redirects attacks AWAY from allied pokemon), and equipped with a recently-buffed Sitrus Berry. And he turned the metagame on its head, because nobody in the championships had prepared for anything outside their incredibly restrictive expectations.
Their strategies and planning were completely tripped up by an electric squirrel. Battling his Pachirisu in incredibly tight synergy with the rest of his team, Park Se Jun swept the finals and became World Champion of 2014 Doubles.
And that is the story of the #BASED GOD PACHIRISU.
there’s more to it than this; it’s not just that people weren’t prepared for things they weren’t expecting, it’s that pachirisu’s stats were perfectly suited for countering major players in the meta. it’s special defense in particular, because in combination with sitrus berry its SpD (in combination with the SpA reduction on draco meteor) allowed it to survive two choice specs draco meteors from salamence in a row, something few pokemon could do. so what really happened was Park Se Jun was analyzing the meta on a level far above the rest of the field, considering pokemon others weren’t even looking at to find counters for the most common and powerful pokemon
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