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arachobia · 7 years

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Pokemon Re-Typed: Bulbasaur Line

The original grass starter - Bulbasaur and its evolutions are also, like most of the Gen I grass types, half poison. Conceptually, the whole line has sort of looked a bit frog-like to me, especially those ‘ears’, the lack of a tail and Venusaur, in particular, has all these wart-like bumps.

And for their type I got...

So, I gotta be honest, before I even got to the ‘maybe I could blog this’ stage I had tried out generating a type for Bulbasaur just for fun. So I have had a bit more time to think of this then I probably will going forward.

Anyway - my initial gut thought was of succulent rock plants - succulents are a pretty common sight and topic of conversation in the Western Cape of South Africa where I live

However, I began to feel like such an addition would better benefit a Rock-type form of Bulbasaur. I drifted on to deserts, which in many Pokemon games are the main location for ground types, and thinking of plants in deserts one immediately thinks of cacti.

However, I didn’t really like this idea. Cacti still seem like more grass type than ground type to me. Even the actual cactus Pokemon, Cacnea, and Maractus are pure grass types. So I thought of the other main location in the games you find Ground type Pokemon - caves.

Plants don’t exactly thrive in caves, so I began to think about what a Bulbasaur without its bulb would look like. After all, their Pokedex entries normally make it seem like the plant is attached to Bulbasaur after it is born (I know all Pokemon are hatched from eggs in their basic or baby stage practically identical to the others of their kind, but I view that as a mechanic rather than a representation of reality). So, what if in some region a group of the Bulbasaur-line adapted to a life in caves, giving up their symbiotic relationship to plants altogether.

While I do think Bulbasaur are frog-like, the ‘saur’ part of their name and certain features also call to mind some of the so-called ‘mammal-like reptiles or ‘Therapsids’. Indeed, recently there even was a Dicynodont discovered that was named Bulbasaurus.

Having worked in the Natural history museum recently where its skull was on display, I am aware that there is some vehement denial that it was named after a cartoon monster and instead named for its bulbous nose. Still, I remain aware that there is a trilobite called Han solo and that this particular species was called Bulbasaurus phylloxyron with phylloxyron meaning ‘leaf razor‘ WHICH TOTALLY DOES NOT REMIND ME OF ANYTHING ELSE...

Anyway, why I bring this up is because certain Dicynodonts were burrowing animals. Bulbasaur and its line certainly do bear some resemblance to Dicynodonts - especially looking at Ivysaur’s projecting teeth and the beak-like shape of Bulbasaur and Ivysaurs mouth.

So, Subterranean form Bulbasaur is a pure ground type - they never bond with a plant and, lacking the defensive poisons and abilities of this plant, become timider, nocturnal creatures that hide in burrows or caves during the day, emerging at night to forage.

While I considered Bulbasaur growing large front teeth like Ivysaurs to resemble the burrowing teeth of a mole-rat...

... Ultimately I decided that subterranean form Bulbasaur is mostly unchanged. it lacks a plant on its back, having instead a flat back making its overall posture lower to the ground. Its front legs are slightly larger than a normal Bulbasaur’s, with more noticeable claws, to help it dig. Its color is duller than regular Bulbasaur - moving towards a paler skin. Its eyes are smaller as well, but to compensate its nose has become swollen like Bulbasaurus to sniff out food at night and underground.

For subterranean form Ivysaur, I thought of another Therapsid group - Gorgonopsia

Ivysaur already has those projecting teeth. Subterranean Ivysaur has longer teeth. Still pure ground type, these Ivysaur have become purely cave-dwellers. Their eyes have shrunk to almost nothingness, but their nostril bulb has become even larger. Subterranean Ivysaur, without a plant on its back, still has a flat-profile but also has longer, straighter-legs. It’s a fast hunter that chases prey through the dark caverns beneath the world in packs. Its pigment has almost entirely faded, leaving it a dull gray in color.

When subterranean Ivysaur become Venusaur, they become quite the opposite to agile hunters and become massive ambush predators - again with Venusaur being the most frog-like of the group although in this case, I’m thinking of a particular one

I imagine subterranean Venusaur being like a cave-dwelling Suriname Toad. Its eyes have completely vanished, and its head it little more than a massive mouth and nostrils. Subterranean Venusaur buries itself in the sand of the cave floor with only its swollen nostrils projecting. When it smells prey, it lunges forward suddenly and engulfs it in its huge mouth. Although definitely the largest and heaviest of its line, it would also be extremely flat to hunt this way. At this point, its pigment, like its eyes, is completely gone leaving it a ghostly white like most cave-dwellers

But, what about Mega Venusaur?

Well, Trypophobes may want to look away for this bit, but seeing as I did mostly base subterranean Venusaur off of a Suriname toad, there is a particular thing that toad is famous for besides its flatness...

Suriname toad eggs are embedded on the female’s back by the male. Over time, the eggs sink into the skin on the toad’s back - where they develop and eventually hatch as tiny toadlets. There’s a lot of videos on this if you’re curious :).

For Mega Venusaur, however, this process has nothing to do with reproduction. Rather, when exposed to its mega-stone, a part of subterranean Venusaur ‘remembers’ its ancestral practice of carrying a flower on its back. On the skin on its back erupts into hundreds of ghostly, luminescent plant tendrils - literal ‘ghosts’ of the plants that could have been

At this point, Mega Venusaur gains the Ghost type - becoming a ground/ghost Pokemon as long as it is Mega evolved.

In general, I like the idea of these alternate form megas not quite working as the mega-stone is meant to work with their ‘original’ form, but we’ll see as we go on...

I’m not too knowledgeable on balancing or changing stats and abilities in Pokemon, but to give a general idea: all the subterranean Bulbasaur forms will no longer learn grass or poison moves - instead learning ground and probably rock type moves. They would lose OVergrowth/Chlorophyll and gain something like Sand Veil. I wish Illuminate was a better ability as it would be perfect for Mega Venusaur’s ghostly plants - perhaps some version of that ability that had an effect. Stats wise, I can’t see these Pokemon being too different - perhaps physically tougher with higher ATK and DEF and lower SP. ATK and Sp. DEF and subterranean Ivysaur probably would be faster than regular Ivysaur.

Which brings us to the end of my first post in this series. I hope it was at least entertaining and, if somehow, this inspires you to try to draw what these subterranean forms would look like, I would love to see what you come up with.

Otherwise, check-in hopefully this time tomorrow and I'll move on to the next evolutionary line - Charmander's

#pokemon #bulbasaur #ivysaur #venusaur #pokemon re-typed #bulbasaurus #gorgonopsid #suriname toad #ghost flower

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e-z-like-a-sunday-morning · 7 years

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Somewhere In The Between

‘And Somewhere in the Between

There’s a Love for which we all Dream,

And Nothing and No-one can ever take that away.’

- Streetlight Manifesto

I return home from a day well spent in London, rehearsing for a recording session for my girlfriend’s EP. She will be paying me for it, which I guess means I’m technically currently a professional session musician, which I find pleasing.

On the train home the people I say hello to actually say hello back and start talking to me. One even plays my drum whilst I play guitar - both surprising and wonderful.

I splay myself down in front my television and eat a pseudo-vegan meal as I watch a 90’s kid’s cartoon called Leo the Lion on my VCR, because somehow the fifteen minutes I spent in Old Street today turned me into a card carrying Hipster. I sink down into my bed with thoughts of music and flames, both old and new, content in the fading tendrils of a day well spent.

Waking life slips away as I find myself swimming in old places and old faces. Reality starts to return to my life, as, ‘with the courage of a clown, or a cur, or a kite jerking tight at its tether’, I drift past palaces and through cheering crowds, and find myself in familiar lands, under the expectant gaze of a billion forgetful eyes.

I am back in New Orleans, in a small dive bar just off Decatur, no bigger than your living room, all dark maroons, low divans and bookshelves, full of the kind of creative service industry types that in London would be Hipsters and in New Orleans would be Gutter Punks. All blacks and browns with too much makeup and too much moustache, or perhaps I am just too naked and hairless.

I am stood by a bookshelf, sifting through the business cards of tattoo artists. Kai Kita. A great one. She did my chest and back. Oh hey Doom Puppy! I think I owe her money.

I turn to the people next to me. A handle-barred hipster and his dark haired companion, both being shown around by Meg.

Meg was an ex-prostitute who lived with Tyger and I a short while, before Tyger got shived in the kidneys for bottling a lesbian in the face, is a phrase I would never have thought I would be able to utter with honesty, had you asked me three years ago.

Meg was short, thin and ginger, with bulbous silver braces over her teeth and tattoos over every part of her body from her face to her feet. A swastika here, a middle finger, a samurai and a swearword there. All violence and vitriol, spewing forth out of an accent so thick with the tones of Boston as to be barely discernible, although I could happily listen to her high-pitched, lyrical cackle and drawl for hours, the same way one might listen to A Survivor From Warsaw, transfixed by the beautiful horror unfolding inside ones earholes.

She had apparently been involved in some kind of kidnapping plot, the details of which elude me, but which I believe may have precipitated her arrival in New Orleans.

‘Hey! You guys want a free tattoo? I owe this chick money.’

The hipsters look confusedly to their guide for guidance.

‘Naaaaahhhh. I’ve got no space left. Why don’t you get one off her?’ Meg splutters to me, all smiles.

‘Oh no, I couldn’t do that’ I splutter back, looking down at one of my tattoos – Let It Go, This Too Shall Pass - ‘I’m not sure I’m still the tattoo kind of guy.’

My three companions exchange knowing glances and smiles, and return to their reading a moment before a bell chimes to announce the beginning of the night’s entertainment. Eagerly, I take a seat on the floor by the entrance amid a packed crowd of maybe six to ten other patrons. Happily, the first act is Meg. She is doing Cabaret! I love Cabaret. She is singing a song of sexy sadness, and stalking, woefully and elegantly waving from side to side as she admits, dramatically yet unsurprisingly, that it was in fact she who snuck into my house to steal the blue cheese from my fridge, the absolute villain.

Suddenly, the music ramps up a notch. It probably changes key and becomes a tango, as everyone in the crowd that isn’t me jumps up into a synchronised dance that they have obviously rehearsed, and obviously not rehearsed enough. I find myself terrified – are they all in on it? Is this all for me? What else might these blaggards have planned? Will I ever go back to using normal words again?!?

Drinks are knocked over and vases shattered as Meg is pirouetted between her supporting cast, lifted this way and that, passed and thrown from side to side, and waved up and down like she were made from flags and string and this were Dirty Dancing.

Meg is found, splayed and drenched across the shoulders of six dancers who barely manage to keep from using her as a battering ram to accost the patrons of the bar one wall over. The music takes a darker turn, as notes of anger and frustration begin to enter. The wall she barely managed to avoid headbutting becomes, rather poetically, with hints of the afore-mentioned blue cheese, symbolic of the emotional wall of her inner spiritual life, or some-such.

She spins down onto her feet, staring at a book that she picks up and drops again, all sweat and hazy Paisley, amidst whispers from her team of dancers.

‘That went well. We didn’t even break her neck this time.’

‘She’s had it – she’s got no more in her.’

‘She’s not serious. She’d never actually do it. She’s all talk.’

‘Like he’ll ever actually notice. He’s not bright enough. Anyway he’s too lazy to actually care.’

All their words start to melt together as familiar songs start to play and old fears start to arise in me. It’s my turn to move. My solo, and I’ve failed too many of these to not notice when it’s my turn to dramatically fail at something.

A screeching of car tyres outside. Meg jerks out of her reverie, looks at me and then past me to the exit, with daggers in her eyes, and starts to sprint, in slow motion.

‘Meg, don’t do it!’ Tears well and chest clutches. Heart chokes as body scrambles over itself, clutching, clasping, for redemption and forgiveness. Not another one. Please God, not another one. This time I can be fast enough. I can be better.

His arms wrap themselves about the girls leg and cling on for dear lives, stopping her from leaving the bar, dragging her to a muddled, joyous, and rather unexpected halt. It’s a little awkward as I look up through tears and pleas to a face looking down at me with disappointment and annoyance, more than anything. at having her big moment ruined. The anger hasn’t been externalised at me yet, unfortunately.

Outside, a car drives itself into the distance as we stare at each other across the space of three thousand miles and about as many emotions. I find myself, unsure of what to do next, wanting to apologise and tell her that this doesn’t normally happen to me. To be honest, I think I’m more used to being the one crying over the mangled body in the street.

It’s funny, I never took Meg for the suicidal kind, back when I was in New Orleans. I wonder what part of me was trying to kill itself. I don’t wonder for very long, though, as that’s a story for another day and another dream, and another crowd - hopefully one exponentially smaller.

Well, the moment is somewhat ruined and we’re all a little bit of the wrong kind of soggy, as the crowd mills about despondently and Meg stomps off grumpily to the other end of the bar, through into another room.

Today though, my solo is to be an extended one it seems, as I hear music begin to mumble its way out of silence and I remember that the other room also has a road-facing-exit.

I clamber over bodies and through treacle to the other room, where I see Meg making another mad dash for an appointment with collision.

Sprinting through the watching crowd, I tackle her to the ground. Straddling her and pinning her arms, I try my hardest to not get turned on nor bitten whilst also trying to work out which is which amidst this snarling heap of hatred and limbs. I remember the sickly fascination and gleaming eyes with which Meg had described to me the traumatic experience of watching her cat get torn apart by Tyger’s massive dogs.

I don’t remember it for long though – soon all my energy is exerted trying to calm and placate this screaming ball of beautiful death. For a second I am reminded of my girlfriend, before I am bitten on the hand and reminded that such thoughts shall be the ones to kill me, in the end.

The music picks up into the jovial waltz one might find in The Sound of Music or Educating Rita, as the bar slows down and around us a brawl breaks out, tumbling bodies colliding and exploding, glass shattering and Jokers being thrown through walls and windows, as tooth digs into skin and eyes turn to red pinpricks of frustration and confusion.

I, on the other hand, am smiling quite amicably, and moving quite slowly, almost elegantly – finally, we’re in a familiar setting, in a key signature whose notes I know well. I can relax a little, as Meg loses her strength and becomes like cute putty.

I begin to sing, with the kind of voice one might use to proclaim the benefits of discovering that their testicles were situated in their ears. It’s a duet, although Meg’s part mostly consists of snarls and well timed shards of eye murder.

Imagine a hauntingly jaunty folk melody. Also imagine that it rhymes, if you will.

‘You could build an orphanage in Ghana! You could climb every building in Peru! You could show Pirates of the Caribbean to every pirate currently in the Caribbean!

‘Did you think I would leave you? From my first brick smoke stack to my last raging fire, did you think I would be the one to let you go? Surely you know me better.

You could learn every song from the 40’s. You could take flowers to the elderly, you could rob a bank, or sell cars, or save strangers, or kill time. You could learn, to move me.’

At the time I had a whole list of similar reasons to choose life, and what’s more, it actually rhymed, but as is always the way with things, I spent too long making testicle jokes and choreographing a scene from Sucker Punch to actually remember the lyrics to a song I found both hilarious and beautiful.

The music fades to a close as, outside the door, we hear a barking noise. Snapping out of our sado-masochistic stupor, we crane our heads around a door with eyebrows raised to see an adorable little sausage dog, barking at passing cars and floating on feet too fast to count. It seems to be looking for food on Decatur Street, oblivious to the inherent danger of being so cute around so many obvious psychopaths. So far most of the cars have managed to avoid hitting it, but I’ll be called Larry if I didn’t see some of those drivers trying to swerve toward the poor thing, when they thought people weren’t looking.

Meg and I untangle ourselves and crawl out onto the side walk to call to the dog and scream at the passing cars, hoping each time that the creature will survive and come towards us.

Finally, he listens, and trots towards us, eyes wide, tongue lolling, lead trailing, tail wagging.

‘Well Done! Good Boy! We’re so proud of you!’ He jumps into our arms and licks our faces as we cuddle and stroke him ecstatically. Somebody fetches some food for the poor thing, and I find myself petting him alone, lost in the moment, as Meg slinks back into darkness, the gleam of her eye leaving a trail in the shadows.

As I feed and pet the wonderful little creature I think of home, and day-life, and how I wish I had a dog, and am dragged from my reverie by the sound of screeching tyres and a sickening thud. I look up, wondering where Meg is.

I awake in my bed. It’s 4.50am, and I have work to do – after all, apparently I’m a writer of some sort, and those were some exceedingly fine lyrics, if I’ll ever actually remember them. It’s a shame about Meg, but I think she would like to hear that she’s been haunting my dreams and caressing me with her dying moments.

Begrudgingly, I clamber out of bed and begin the monumental task of finding the motivation to write something that will never be as good as Monkey and Bear by Joanna Newsom. Or Emily by Joanna Newsom. Or anything, in fact, by Joanna Newsom.

Omid Ezekiel Ramak

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