My favorite pokemon

So it's pokemon profile picture month on facebook, and in celebration of that, I decided to write about my all-time favorite pokemon. I was always a gameboy fan (as opposed to the anime or trading cards), and my first game was Silver Version, so I consider myself a second-generation person. Well, I did kind of collect the cards, but more because they were pretty. I distinctly remember trading a level hundred Rhyhorn (or Rhydon, whatever the evolved form was) for a level seventy Rapidash, because rapidash was this beautiful fire unicorn, whereas rhydon/horn was this ugly grey thing.  Also, I was disappointed in both the game and the cards that pikachu was actually a terrible pokemon (unless you're playing Super Smash Bros, in which Pikachu is quite excellent). Also, I would like to remind people reading this that I am a very cool person, despite being a huge pokemon nerd.

My number one favorite is a second-gen legendary ice type-- Suicune! She's pretty. And not very good, as far as legendary types go, but still. It's Suicune. How could you not like her? (she just seems like a girl pokemon, so I refer to her as "she") Traditionally, I'm not a huge fan of ice types, mostly because they're never very good, the exception being the half-ice pokemon, like Dewgong (half water), Jynx (half psychic), Articuno (half flying), etc. Suicune is probably the only pure ice type that I would ever actually keep and use in battle. Like I said, she's not great as far as legendary pokemon go, but as far as all the other normal ones, she's wonderful.

The rest aren't in any particular order, so here we go: 

First-gen ghost type-- I actually prefer haunter to gengar, probably just because you can't evolve him without trading him, so I never actually had a gengar and I just ended up getting used to haunter. I loved the dream eater attack! And night shade was always fun at lower levels. The part poison side was kind of a downer when fighting psychic gyms (ghosts are supposed to be good against psychic!), but the Gastly/Haunter/Gengar trio always made up for it by never being affected by normal or ground type moves. 

Ditto! I love ditto! He's cute, versatile, and awesome! (a first-gen normal type that can change his appearance to any other form, including other pokemon whose movesets he duplicates) I've actually never had the patience to train one, because it's difficult to use a ditto unless you are fighting a battle in which you are a higher level than the opponent, and I never trained my pokemon to very high levels; I tended to use the type advantage system more (elite four? I would beat them with a party at level forty or forty five, just rotating who was first at every battle). Still, one day I'll train one!

Caterpie-- I'm  not usually into bug types, but I like it that he evolves into a part-bug, part-psychic bug-type (after getting through the annoying metapod stage), and I like caterpie over butterfree just because he's a cute green caterpillar. I don't like Beedrill/Weedle because he's part poison, and I think I like poison even less then I like bug type. A very useless type.

Finally, here is one of the only third-gen pokemon that I think are really great: the fighting/psychic/dark wolf Lucario. He's in SSB Brawl and he looks cool and he has a great moveset, and he's just awesome. What else do you need? (I can never remember whether the other half of him is psychic or dark, but both types of moves show up on his learnset, as well as lots of steel! Very useful.)

Well, that's not ALL of my favorites, but just the ones off the top of my head. I'm also a pretty big Articuno fan (did anyone else notice that the three first-gen legendary birds were named ArticUNO, ZapDOS, and MolTRES?), and I like the second-gen Ferligator (evolved from the starter Totodile-- here is an awesome picture to the right), and Arcanine. And Venonat. Fun fact about Venonat: he was originally going to evolve into Butterfree, while Metapod was going to evolve into Venomoth. It makes sense if you look at the pictures (below):

                                      


You can see Venonat's eyes and pincers and hands in Butterfree , while Venomoth's eyes and head kind of reflect what Metapod may have originally evolved into. It's even apparent in their types; Butterfree and Venonat are both psychic/bug, while Venomoth is just bug and (I think) flying. Not sure why this didn't happen, but I'm always happy that Butterfree is a twice-evolved pokemon. I always sort of feel like that makes them more powerful than the once-evolved ones. Even if you are a bug type.

Well, I think I'm pokemon'd out. Just kidding, that's impossible. All of you pokemon generation people, don't forget to change your profile picture!! Happy pokemon month! 

(oh, and isn't there some holiday that happens in December? Happy December holiday month, too!)