#zed talking

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thank you to @smkittykat for offering these as part of the FE Rally for Gaza i enjoy it immensely

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gonna do this i think

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booted up f-zero 99 to pass a few minutes earlier today, got shown a ??? course and pulled this off somehow

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The distinction between ribbons and marks is obnoxiously non-existent

I think I've invested enough time into this to warrant a rant/tangent so uhh here we go

So we're all on the same page, since Ruby and Sapphire you've been able to collect ribbons on Pokemon. These are effectively an achivement list for that specific Pokemon, being awarded for beating champions, winning contests, just talking to someone on the right day of the week, so on and so forth. They also carry over between generations.

In Sword/Shield and Scarlet/Violet, you can also assign a ribbon you have to give your Pokemon a little title when they're sent out into battle. Nice touch for personalisation, makes it feel a little bit more worth seeking these out. Good addition.

Also in the above two games, wild Pokemon you encounter could additionally have Marks. These occupy the Ribbon screen and also provide titles, but unlike Ribbons, aren't available unless the Pokemon you catch just happens to have it already.

Marks, as such, tend to reflect a few things. The time of day the Pokemon was caught, a personality trait the Pokemon purportedly has, there's one that's just for the sake of being rare.

These are, overall, also a nice addition. An additional factor of rarity for hunting, giving you more customisation with titles, and so on. Considering the link between Bank and Home grows closer to severing each passing day, having these customisation options to compensate the eventual loss of past ribbons is at least an alternative.

So, ostensibly, a Ribbon signifies what a Pokemon has done, and a Mark signifies something closer to what a Pokemon is. Easy, understandable, comprehensible.

Or so you would think.

Scarlet/Violet introduced the Partner Mark, Itemfinder Mark and Gourmand Mark. Respectively, you get these a percentage of the time for friendship and walking, picking up items with your Pokemon and eating food.

You might notice the significant element that these are Marks you are meritocratically achieving. Literally only their second appearance in the series and the seeming point has already been entirely missed. A % of the time, at that, you can eat many things and still not roll that 1/33.

Another one worth mentioning is the Jumbo and Mini Marks. These are obtainable from a size checker if your Pokemon is as big or as small as possible for their species, rather than just being natively marked. This can also create a "double marked" instance, where a Pokemon that rolled an otherwise Mark also qualifies for the size Mark.

Like, alright, maybe a minor thing, but if I have to do something for these Marks, why are they not Ribbons instead? It's not even like S/V entirely foregoes them, they added the Paldea Champion Ribbon and also had the Effort, Best Friend and Master Rank Ribbons return from prior games.

Then I dwelled on it some more.

So, one detail I neglected to mention until now is event exclusive ribbons. The most frequent of these is the Classic Ribbon, if you've ever picked up an event Pokemon in person or online, it's probably got this ribbon more likely than not. There are a small handful of others like this as well.

As you might infer, these Ribbons are more a signifier of "hey, I got this event Pokemon"... something the Pokemon is.

And, think back to Pokemon Colosseum and XD. An exclusive ribbon to Shadow Pokemon in these games is the National Ribbon, one that is obtained for purifying the Shadow Pokemon and unobtainable other ways. Signifying that this was a Shadow Pokemon, something most Pokemon aren't.

Yeah, these pre-date Marks, but it's not like the event exclusive Ribbons have left even with their introduction. Granted, I guess you could say there's Marks like this like the Mightiest Mark.

Anyway also I can't even complain much about having to roll odds to get a Mark because one Ribbon in the game's code left unobtainable is the Once-in-a-Lifetime Ribbon, where you would have had a 1/100 chance to get it on a Pokemon sent over Wonder Surprise Trade.

Thankful they didn't throw in this one with this requirement, imagine having to put all that work into John Gible only to have to send it out to god knows who and never seeing it again. Sure, you could probably arrange an in-person thing with two local players, but dear god the price for screwing that up is high. Besides the point.

Also I don't know how to categorise this one but the Partner Ribbon was also added alongside the Partner Mark in S/V and is only available on a number of in-game trade Pokemon or on certain event distribution Pokemon. The entire purpose is displaying that this particular Sprigatito was Liko's or this particular Incineroar was Wolfe Glick's.

Anyway all this is to say is that the terminology difference is meaningless and is perhaps one of the greatest testaments to Pokemon's frustratingly inconsistent and incomprehensible design decisions imagine having all of 0 obtainable ribbons in gen 5 but still having event ribbons stapled to Pokemon that got handed outduring that generation.

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Congrats on winning the Emblemcon FE Kahoot (apparently, again) lol

Yes, the panellist that was doing it returned this year and I was able to get a first place a second time after also doing so last year. Thank you

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need to fill time so i'm gonna do a 15 questions thing I've had in another tab for a while that I saw a bit ago for just such an occasion. feel free to also do these if you want

Are you named after anyone? - My middle name is a great grandparents' but otherwise no.

Last time you cried? - don't remember it's not frequent

Do you have kids? - no and honestly not planning on it unless someone special enough convinces me it'd be a good idea. I don't know if I have the patience and I'd rather not be a parent than a bad one.

What sports did you/have you played? - I did football (soccer for americans) in primary school for a bit and these days I resoundingly do not care for it. Swimming's fun but it's a struggle to get anywhere where I can do it

Do you use sarcasm? - no never why would I (yes)

First thing you notice about people? - not really sure. Probably jewellery.

Eye colour? - Brown

Scary movies or happy endings? - probably the latter it's only certain types of horror I can really handle. Also this is a false dichotomy

Any talents? - people seem to think i'm good at writing ig, otherwise not sure

Where were you born? - the midlands of the UK never go there

Hobbies? - rn it's mostly video games and writing, also yugioh though I haven't played in a few months

Have any pets? - none that are directly mine just family pets my mother has, which rn is some number of cats and technically rescue pigeons

Height? - roughly average for my part of the world

Favourite school subject? - generally humanities subjects, my degree is in psychology and my otherwise best subject was history

Dream job? - Good question tbh still working that out. A lot of what I enjoy doing I think doing for a living would somewhat kill the fun of and I couldn't stand doing anything too corporate. I like the idea of teaching but idk if I could handle younger kids nor do I really want to work towards qualifications needed for higher education. Guess i'll see

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trying to fill time rn so uhh sure current probable top 10 pokemon in no particular order

Umbreon and Vaporeon

eevee is an easy pokemon to like and of its evolutions i've grown most attached to these two. expect a lot of water types. umbreon mostly permeated itself into my brain chemistry after a run of white 2 and then annoying friends with its durability in some casual battles.

Scizor

it was mostly gen 6 where i realised scizor was cool as hell when I was trying to work out a mega slot to use. even without it it's still great. my favourite bulky u-turn user

Ivysaur

this was very close to being bulbasaur but ivysaur is just peak mid-stage evolution for like basically all the starters. otherwise idk plant frog thing kinda just works, some amount of bias from having some bulbasaur type merch early on account of my mother.

Feraligatr

this could also have just as easily been totodile tbh. this is what pmd2 assigned me back then and also was my starter of choice in soulsilver, it's stuck since.

Magneton

could also have just been magnezone very easily but something about the just Three Dudes(tm) look is kinda compelling when it's magnemite. maybe my favourite electric type.

Suicune

favourite legendary hands down suicune just works. maybe some water type bias here as well. walking wake gets a pass too

Weezing

idk why i like thing so much just one day it made sense. galarian form is also cool

Polteageist

i initially skipped on gen 8 but saw this and then was happy it was in gen 9, this is a targeted one at me

Ceruledge

is it tryhard edgy, yes, but also it looks like it crawled out of a mega man spinoff and i am entirely about it

i will proceed to be discontent with this list 10 seconds after posting

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preordering P3R meant it came with a free download for the P4 music set and ordinarily I just expect like, the main battle themes but this is reasonably expansive

shout out to being able to set the fog as the normal battle theme very funny