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Lumilite's Avalanche

hanecco

Hoppip Appreciator
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So, this is where I'll be writing random stuff about my life, opinions, and so on. I've actually tried using a blog for that in the past, but I always keep forgetting to update it. Hopefully I won't forget this one, since I come on here pretty often. The name of the blog is a play on my username - a very obvious play, haha.

A bit about me
  • I'd like to become a translator one day. I'm bilingual, and also learning Japanese in my spare time.
  • I like anime, but I haven't watched any for quite a while. Incidentally, I overall dislike the anime community. I might write about that.
  • I used to be pretty good at writing, but since I stopped many years ago, I've lost that ability. I'd like to regain it some day.
===

#1: My end-of-year exams are coming up...

So, in the school system where I live, we apply to universities using our predicted grades. The grades are predicted by our teachers based of our end of year exams. We study these courses for two years, and I'm in the first year, so these exams are the first of a set of two that will determine my forsaken fate. :0

The exams begin the moment we return from the Easter holidays, which I'm currently on. I've got one week left. And I haven't done a lot of studying, despite averaging around a B and wanting to get As. So I'm essentially dooming myself to fail these exams - fail, as in not get an A, instead of a real fail. The school I'm in is so competitive, and it makes me feel stupid sometimes, despite everyone going out of their way to tell me that a B or C is good, too. The truth is, at this school, it's not.

I also really dislike going to school in general. For some reason the head of my year is always chasing me down about the most inconsequential of things (You forgot your badge today! Better tell the head of your year about it, even though it's not going to kill anybody!) and continuously telling me to "play by the rules." I just nod my head and smile. I don't have the courage to tell them that I just don't see the rules as a high priority, and the ones I do break don't carry large consequences - according to me anyway. You can already tell they love me.

There are people who are much, much worse than me at following rules - why pick on me, then? Is it just because I lie through my teeth to them, say what they want to hear, and look meek and gentle? I feel like just dropping the whole thing and leaving sometimes - not that my parents would let me, and there are benefits to staying in school which I don't want to miss out on. Also, I just remembered I didn't go to some dumb event they set up in the holidays. I genuinely forgot about it. They're going to kill me for that.

I've seen advice on the internet which tells me that those who don't play by the rules are lazy, or stupid, that if I can't handle school rules, how am I going to get a job? That's why I'm going to make an effort to become a freelancer, and work on my own terms. I don't think I can spend the rest of my life juggling constraints that I feel are pointless. I have up until the end of my university bachelor's degree to get myself off the ground in that regard, and I think that with that goal, it's completely achievable.

Woah... I just split out a whole load of my life there, despite telling myself that I would keep this blog as little-detailed as possible. Oh well. ^^
 
#2
I'm going to die.
Not literally, of course. :confused: But it's been a week, and I still haven't studied, reviewed, or revised anything I need to.
This means that I'm going to get a very low grade (think Ds and Es) on my exams, my parents are going to be angry, my teachers are going to be disappointed (they've done a lot to try to help me over the past semester), and my friends are probably going to be at a loss on how to react. Despite predicting all that, I still can't bring myself to do any work.

Part of it is because I'm just so bad at all of my subjects. I will definitely put in work over the holidays, but there is no way I could catch up on a whole year's worth of Maths in two weeks without ignoring my other two subjects. I've tried to go over important topics like trigonometry and integration, but I got stuck on the simplest things even after watching videos on YouTube and KhanAcademy. I don't know how to, or whether, I should tell my teachers that I've given up on these exams.

All the "study strategies" I've tried have made me tired, and maybe even burnt out. If someone tells me that I need to "use flashcards! make a timetable!" I'll struggle not to explode. For all you tired students out there, I've recently found this website (- Smart Student Secrets) which seems to be good, and I'll try to take its philosophy to study Maths over the summer.

Right now, I'm going to try to damage control my grades on Computer Science, the first non-maths exam I have coming up. But I only have two days to do that. Who knows how it will go...? (I do, it's not going to go well.)

After my exams are over, and my parents have cooled down, this blog will probably cheer up considerably. :lapras:
 
#3 Done my Computer Science and first Maths Exam.

(I have two Maths exams.)

I've pretty much resigned myself to the fact that my grades will not be good. In the end, I only revised on the last two days before the exams, and didn't do very much after my CompSci one because I felt like there wasn't much point.

There were a few things I was happy about though. In Maths, I was able to complete the question on differentiation from first principles, even though they gave us a binomial raised to a large power to expand - something like (3x+2)^4. I don't think there were many other people able to do that. The exam also showed me exactly where I was struggling since it covered the whole syllabus, which was something that was surprisingly hard to pinpoint beforehand, so now I'll actually know what to study in the holidays.

Computer Science was OK. I realised that I didn't remember any of the algorithms and got them confused with each other. Other parts were alright. My teacher put in a spoof question ("The pen is mightier than the sword, discuss with reference to Computer Science"), which I ended up not answering because I ran out of time.

Now I have Philosophy coming up along with my second Maths exam. Yay! I have a lot of reading to do for Philosophy.

---

Today I stumbled across the opening of Elfen Lied, Lilium. I watched it sometime around 2013 or 14, and it made me nostalgic for the anime of the 2000s, which is essentially what I grew up with and pulled me into anime. While the style that's used is a little deformed anatomically, similar to stuff like Neon Genesis Evangelion, it also has a certain charm to it because it doesn't feel as surgically clean as today's. Badly drawn, but a lot of heart.

Lilium is stuck in my head right now, actually. I think it's cool that for an anime so violent, it's a very calm, serene opening, with the animation referencing the works of Gustav Klimt (a painter, I'm not too familar with them, but it's nice for an anime to reference classical art). Not to mention it's in Latin - who would have expected a Latin opera opening?

Os iusti meditabitur, sapientiam, et lingua eius... (something something) Beatus vir qui suffert tentationem...

It has an opera/church like feel to it, and the verses are in fact lines from the Bible spliced together. I think that it shows the feeling of wanting acceptance very well.
 
#4 Wooooohhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh my exams are over! FREEDOM

Awesome. Now, I can spend time playing the gen 4 and 5 games, learning more Japanese, and so on.

Recently I decided I want to start my own Pokemon fansite. Once it's done, I'll put it in my signature around here. I'm planning to have:
  • A few HTML5/Javascript games
  • Random opinion articles - what I think about the series and so on
  • Reviews and playthroughs of the games + my fanfiction, if it ever gets finished. :p
I was staying up all night yesterday, with my mind racing with ideas for it. I'm probably going to call it "Milokaross Lake", after my favourite Pokemon, Milotic.

Talking about that, when I was younger, I used go on a fansite called Eonlight Valley, run by a person called kronakitty. It was really fun, and I wish it hadn't gone offline at the end of 2012...
 
Aw, thank you. I'm planning to put it on a free host, and then upgrade it if it gets more popular. I'm still very new to the whole making your own website thing, though, so I don't know if free hosts only allow a tiny number of visitors at once and I'll have to upgrade very quickly.

I decided not to choose a blog because making your own code gives you a lot more flexibility with the kind of content you can post, and as you mentioned, it might not support games. Blogs, especially the sites which give you a template that you can customise a bit, specialise in articles and a simple menu/content/header format. I have tried out using Wordpress, but I found it difficult to edit the appearance/layout to my liking and quickly got annoyed. I guess it's kind of weird to complain that it's complicated when your alternative is to literally code the entire thing yourself, but the good thing is that I enjoy programming. :D At this point I think it's unlikely that I'll use a blog, since I've already coded out the main parts of the website and I'm not convinced I can replicate it in Wordpress or Blogpsot.
 
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#5 Back to School Tomorrow

Yeah, I'm going back to school tomorrow. I don't feel particularly great about that, especially because my teachers will most likely accost me the moment I walk in for the fact that I left most of the second Maths paper blank. Unhand me, you-! Well, it will be better for me if I don't feel sorry for myself and think about my situation too much.

I promised I wouldn't write about school and exams for once, so let's look at other stuff that's happened recently.

Detective Pikachu
I went to watch this film along with my brother, his friends, and my sister. I really enjoyed it, and it surprised me with a few twists I genuinely didn't see coming thanks to the clever presentation of the antagonist's lines, which i think is one of the film's biggest strengths. The plot was a little hard to follow at times in terms of the deductive leaps made by Tim, and the start was slow and somewhat disjointed, however. I really liked the CG Pokemon in the film, too, and had fun spotting all the different species visible on screen in Ryme City.

I'll edit this post into a proper review later.
 
I changed my name.

Alright... you're not getting a Detective Pikachu review until much later, but let's just look at how my day's been.

The Good
  • I completed the story section of my Pokemon XY review. This is a big achievement for me since that thing has been through three or four drafts. The Detective Pikachu review isn't going to be started until I'm done with the XY review. These are both going to be posted on my soon to be website.
  • Speaking of which, I got TextWrangler so that I can start editing HTML/CSS files easily. I cleaned up the CSS and put it all into one file.
  • I've come up with how I want to write my fanfiction story, which is a very loose novelisation of my game playthrough. I'm looking forward to writing it! I also got a vague idea for what I could write for an (again, very loose) XY novelisation.
  • The deadline for the Analysis part of my Computer Science coursework has been extended, so now I only need to submit it by Wednesday.
The Bad
  • My parents dragged me over the coals about my end-of-year grades. It was less bad than I thought it would be, although there was plenty of the nitpicking I expected.
  • They also demanded to look through my laptop, and there was a tense moment when my dad opened some (SFW, I'm not into the NSFW stuff) manga, since he really hates it. We've gotten into a lot of arguments over the simple fact that I like Japanese media.
  • I'm pretty sure my wrists are hurting because of the amount of typing I've been doing lately, haha.
For those interested, I'm including the review of the story of XY below. A few changes might be made after this is posted, so while this is very similar to the final version, it wouldn't be the final version itself. Characters (talking about the rivals, important NPCs, etc) will be the next section I review; I'm still not sure if I should include it into the story. Feel free to review my review!

When I think of XY's story, I think of unfulfilled potential. The XY games introduce two major new things to the Pokemon world: the concept of Mega Evolution and the new region of Kalos, which is …very obviously based on the real-world France, but has some interesting history. Sadly, neither of these are explained or expanded on, which is sad because the game does give attention to them, so you would think that they'd be more fleshed-out than they are.

Let's start off with Mega Evolution. Sycamore, the game's professor, researches Mega Evolution, and tells you that Camphrier Town and Shalour City should both be places which hold information about it. Of course, this means that you go down there to research it for him. Camphrier and its surroundings tell us absolutely nothing about Mega Evolution - in fact, the owner of the castle there doesn't even know what it is, which is played as a joke, so the next chance to learn about Mega Evolution's in-universe explanation is Shalour City.

Along the way you meet Korrina, who is actually the gym leader of Shalour City and also has something to do with the Tower of Mastery; an ancient tower in Shalour which supposedly holds the secrets to Mega Evolution. She gets some short dialogue with you before you defeat her at her gym, at which point it is suddenly revealed that she is the Successor to the Tower of Mastery. No extra information is given to explain the role of Successor. It's clearly linked to the history of Mega Evolution, but we are never given any hints as to why it's so important. Of course, that's linked to whatever the Tower of Mastery's purpose is. To celebrate Mega Evolution? Teach others about it? Protect people using the power of Mega Evolution? Korrina and the events at the Tower of Mastery do not tell us anything new about Mega Evolution except gameplay information needed to use it, such as that it's temporary and we need a Key Stone and Mega Stone to activate it. In fact, Korrina's grandfather tells us that we really don't know much else about Mega Evolution, which seems strange when there is a whole tower dedicated to it and its history.

That wasn't the only reason I found the Tower of Mastery underwhelming - for one, we didn't even have to battle our way up it to reach Korrina and earn ourselves Mega Evolution, which only added to how empty its significance felt. However, I think it was a huge missed opportunity, especially when the history of Kalos and the existence of Mega Evolution are so closely linked, as revealed in Omega Ruby and Alpha Sapphire. It would have added much more context to the main plot of the game, too, which involves the evil Team Flare finding and using the same weapon as in the legend of the war which started Mega Evolution.

AZ is a character who we can say links together Kalos's history with Mega Evolution and the game's main plot about Team Flare. AZ was a foil to Lysandre's principles, since he opposes Lysandre's use of the ancient weapon, and is actually its original creator and user. Sadly, we only see him two or three times before the story's climax, usually only for a few short seconds. This is, yet again, a big lost opportunity to give both AZ and Lysandre some more development and really deepen the discussion of the ethical issues surrounding Flare's goals. As it stands, it doesn't make a lot of sense for them not to interact before the final scenes of the game. I suppose this was done to make Flare's goals and AZ seem more mysterious, but there's much better ways to do it than just not give out any information about them at all.

The first time AZ and Lysandre are seen on screen together is when AZ is found locked up in an underground cell in Team Flare's hideout, with Lysandre standing outside and speaking to him. This gives AZ a chance to tell us his backstory, which isn't the shock it was meant to be because we literally knew nothing about him before. If he is who he says he is, why haven't we seen Lysandre and AZ speaking before? Lysandre has a vested interest in asking AZ about the details of the weapon, and AZ has a vested interest in persuading Lysandre not to use it. It's a perfect source of conflict that could have been really interesting if the game had set it up better, but sadly it's drowned out by the player's campaign against Flare, which is given much more attention in the game. Why didn't AZ make his reason to stop Lysandre more well-known - something which is possible without divulging his entire backstory in one go? Why didn't AZ appear and speak more often to the player, who keeps fighting Team Flare? (Because the game wanted to make him seem mysterious…) How does Lysandre even know about AZ, and when did he find out who he was? Many of these questions only need a simple answer, maybe one or two scenes, which makes it even more disappointing.

Team Flare as a whole is also presented in a suboptimal way. I think they were trying to throw us a curveball by pretending that Flare wasn't a threat, then surprising us by telling us all that they really were trying to kill us all along. While it's not a bad idea, it wasn't executed properly. Each element of it clashes with the other - the wacky grunts who keep making cringey fashion jokes; the dramatic, flashy admins who slowly reveal Flare's goals to us; and finally Lysandre, the thoughtful leader who has an admirable goal to be achieved in an unethical way. The thing is that Flare's grunts and admins are so crazy and so often treated as a joke that when they reveal their rather messed up goals, which literally involves killing off all people and Pokemon on the planet, it's hard to take them seriously. This problem also affected Lysandre - the game shows him and his goals in a much more serious (and sympathetic) light than the rest of his team to the point where there is a disconnect between them, a rift which isn't bridged properly in the game. As a result, the reveal of Team Flare's true nature as a dark, serious, genuine threat during the end of the game much more jarring and disjointed than a satisfying twist where the clues were there all along.

Did I enjoy playing XY? Yes, I did, but it was often in spite of the story rather than because of it. I often felt disappointed with the lack of history behind locations in the game. Something I've always enjoyed in Pokemon is finding out all kinds of random facts about things from random NPCs, but there was very little of this in Kalos even when I searched for it. And, as I've written above, the story itself wasn't the best.

It might come across as a little critical, but I don't have a high opinion of XY's story, to be honest.

EDIT: Just reread my review, and yep, definitely going to need to add some stuff in.
 
#6 Back to School Tomorrow, Again
(It was a nice half term while it lasted...)


So, I haven't made a secret of it. I hate going to school. Here is a nice long rant about it, in a spoiler because honestly who else wants to read it.

I don't have many friends there. It's just so stressful and my lunchtimes are spent sitting in the middle of a crowded, loud common room where everyone looks down on me. Since my last set of public exams two years ago, I've become more and more convinced that everyone around me hates me secretly. At my old school, people treated me as a laughing stock, a scapegoat, making fun of me while telling me that I shouldn't be upset because what they're saying is "just a joke!". I've slowly started avoiding other people and begun losing confidence in what I say, even after moving to a new school. And now I just want to leave schools altogether. Maybe it's my fault for being so weak that I'm in this position. Never mind. I'm going to take this situation and change it for myself.

I'd prefer self-studying my subjects from home to taking classes, although a few of my subjects require me to have coursework marked by a teacher alongside taking an exam. Self-studying would mean that I'd have to choose subjects which don't involve coursework. Currently, one of my subjects - Computer Science - does. I'm not sure what I would switch to, although I would really like to take Japanese since it's something I'm learning anyway. Maths and Philosophy don't have coursework, although Philosophy is a rare subject that not all exam centres offer... and I'm not sure if my school would still let me take the exams using their facilities if I leave them... I still have up until the end of Year 12 to decide if I'll leave, but there's just so many factors. Finding exam centres that offer the subjects I want, what subject I would take instead of CS, and how I would teach myself things. School just isn't working for me right now.

My parents would be angry, especially if I dropped CS, but whatever. I don't think I can continue this anymore. If there is a way for me to do CS without coursework, or if I find a centre willing to mark the coursework for me, then I won't drop it for something else.

Maybe I'm just too dramatic. But no matter how much I try to tell myself I'm fine, somewhere inside a part of me protests that I'm not. What is a "victim"? Who is a "bully"? Am I both of them?

Yesterday, I managed to complete a few designs for my website and coded the default one out.I also started looking into hosting.
My XY review is currently being edited further. I'm not sure how in-depth I should make it, since many of the reviews of other sites are pretty general and don't have separate sections for things like story/gameplay/etc. It was originally going to be a very in-depth review of the story but I'd also like to make it about gameplay and how much I enjoyed it.

I also came up with more ideas for fanfiction/fan comic. This one is about a Gardevoir called Mystic who is training to be a Pokemon doctor in Mossdeep, and it's pretty light hearted. Mystic is strong-willed, proud, and won't hesitate to call you 'fool' if you do something remotely human-like. "We Psychics are not like you humans, fool!"
 
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#7 Long time, no see. It's been a while.

Considering how much I wrote about my school life, maybe I should give everyone an update on that. I eventually told my head of year about my troubles, and they immediately allowed me to switch to a different, less stressful timetable. I'm taking another year to complete my course, which lets me recap all the stuff I missed out on the first time, and I'm seeing the school counsellor, who I get along with really well.

My fansite's still in the works, this time under the name "Mirage Island", which is unlikely to change. Reading my old post about "Milokaross Lake" brought back a lot of memories, haha! I've slowly been gathering content for it in the form of articles, translations, and miscellaneous creative things. I dug up the quiz script I made a while back, because is it really a fansite if you've got no personality quizzes? I've got no idea when it will come online, though. Part of the reason it's taken so long is because I've been trying to decide how to program my site, and I've been toying around with a few different solutions so far.

#7.5 Today,
I got myself something from the Japanese Pokemon Center: a folder emblazoned with a coat of arms featuring Ghetsis. I decided to buy the folder because one of my Paypal offers covered the entire cost for it, and I really need some folders right now. I've been eyeing several other Pokemon Center folders, but I'm not sure if they're worth the relatively high price, even if the art is nice.

What's more interesting is that I recently returned from a family trip to India. What that means is lots of time on the plane, and lots of time to watch films! I saw Jojo Rabbit, which I liked, but the one which stuck with me the most was The Secret Life of Walter Mitty. The main character is a chronic daydreamer, and has a habit of zoning out halfway through conversations. I really liked the way it was filmed; reminds me of a quote from an animator saying that they wanted their stories to "push reality, not represent it". It lurches between reality and Walter's imagination by creatively twisting the events of reality until they can no longer be real. (I know that makes no sense, but that's how I'd describe it.)
 
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