Ask Lyra

1) I watched all of the first one, but skipped to the ends of the others (because I can’t sit still long enough). They were pretty neat! I learned some interesting stuff about human politics! I had no idea the UN was such a useless piece of crap! Or that the Trilateral Committee was real, and that it’s power amounted to little more than club for a bunch of rich old ponies!

2) Ah yes. I too will go back to being a pony on Sunday.

3) Oh I got my tail hoofed over to me. I beat Unova and Kanto, and that’s it. Basically anything that involves Pokemon that are EV trained ends in me losing.

BUT! Once I get to X it’ll change because I can properly EV train my Pokemon without it taking the eleventy-billion hours I don’t have! Speaking of which, the whole reason I want Pokebank is so I can start with a select set of low level Pokemon. Other than my Mew I’m not really concerned with the higher level Pokemon I have outside of collecting.

Oh wow! A love crush! That’s incredible! I’ve never had one before. Oh wait, yes I have.

In fact, I got them all on the same day, within the same hour.

What’s wrong, spammy? Couldn’t even be asked to open a new tumblr page to spam? Lazy spammer. Lazy Lazy LAZY.

I recall a student in high school who always joked and laughed and smiled. And I mean all the time. Then toward the end of the year we had some writing assignment about a date we would always remember and had to present it to the class. Most ponies did something, you know, happy. Some of us wrote about how tragedies had affected us. He wrote about how both his parents were killed in an accident. About living with his grandparents and seeing psychologists. He was in the accident.

After his presentation, everypony started acting different around him. But he just sort of bushed it off. He was all, “That happened like a year ago. If I needed anything before it would have been too late now.”

Life is strange. How ponies can or can’t cope with things is… impossible to read. We complain about the most mundane things, but this colt lost his parents only months before the school year started. And you’d never have guess it in a million years.

1) Oh, that’s not very fun.

Ew. No. World PvP servers are absolutely awful in every game ever. I would never play on one again.

I’ve been playing on Tempest Reach, but my mains are on Celestial Hills; the RP server. You still play, right? We could play together sometime if you want!

2) Well, if you’re just looking for something to do, I spent some 20 hours fiddling either with the battle subway or trying to make a team that could win (spoilers, I evidently suck). Eventually, after talking with my online friend, I just sent myself an army of Dittos holding the TMs I needed. I don’t have whatever kind of time it would take to unlock them all normally, and with all the TMs that Pokemon can’t learn anymore in X (for whatever reason) I needed a back up.

Speaking of which, I finished with Black 2 a few days ago. So, Pokebank? You can go ahead and launch anytime now. I got a full team of level 1-10s waiting for my first run through (Miltank, Skarmory, Gible, Tynamo, and an Eevee that I plan to make a Vaporeon after it learns Baton Pass).

3) Strawberry! Hey! You’ll never believe this, but there’s been this pony walking around impersonating you for the last year or so. Pretty wild, huh?

1) Well, I heard Twilight did some calculations with the weather team and had created a pretty mild start to winter. But mare, have things ever taken a blistery turn lately.

I think you mean Join Avenue; and it’s sort of an afterthought as far as town-scaping goes. Breath of Fire 2 probably did it better. As for Poke Studios, the problem is you have to redo movies no matter what in order to unlock them all. And because you or the enemy are still subject to crits and misses, it all just becomes so random and time-consuming. Even with a guide.

Short answer: yes. I hacked myself one of every legendary from every generation minus the three birds and Mewtwo (because I’d rather catch those myself in X, if I can). Long answer: They’re all “legit” in theory, because they’re just copies of real pokemon that somepony somewhere caught or were given at an event. But until Pokebank launches there’s no way of knowing for certain that they won’t be flagged as fake somehow.

Either way I only have them for personal collection. I’d never trade them and I’d never battle in any tier of play that allows legendaries. I’d either get my flank delivered to me or be accused of cheating.

2) Yeah. I just figured that… you know… cats and dogs don’t get along.

3) If you didn’t want to superimpose then you shouldn’t have started placing pictures of your face over every portrait in the house.

And that.

Is.

Irony.

1) I remember! Wait… Oh no!

2) Strawberry, run! sexxi-bbz is an equinewolf!

3) Is that the thing were you take a knife and poke between your digits? You know, for species that have digits.

I think it’s called Bishop.

4) Fluttershy.

No, I’m not going to elaborate further.

1) I don’t remember the exact time. I want to say somewhere around 50 hours, but I spent a lot of time in the Poke Studios (which was a total waste, avoid that crap, Lemonade and Lava Cookies aren’t worth that crap) and sometimes I’d leave the game on for an hour while I look something up.

I’m currently at 80 hours. I’m at area 6 of Black Tower. All I have left to do is beat that, link with a friend that has White 2 to unlock access to the last two legendaries I’m missing, and beat Whitetail Woods.

Nice post-game in this sucker, though. About as long as the core game.

2) Never have I met a mare with such a strong desire to cringe in discomfort.

I wasn’t the one to sing that.

3) Lyra: Well?

Bon-Bon: Use your magic, you nitwit.

4) Uh… Well, I started with Gen 1. Gen 2 was alright. But I never played Gens 3 or 4. You didn’t ask, but I’ve liked Gen 5 well enough. And I’m expecting to enjoy Gen 6 as well, when I get to it.

But to me, part of my enjoyment in Pokemon is being able to use specific Pokemon that I like.

5) Lyra: Uh huh huh huh. That’d be funny if I ever got to eat any.

Bon-Bon: Work food is for work.

Well, since I don’t have any asks I’m just gonna poke-rant for a moment.

Okay, so all the Eevee-lutions have at least a relative use for their respective hidden abilities, except one.

Who thought it would be a good idea to give Jolteon Quick Feet for it’s hidden ability? Jolteon is not terribly sturdy; if it gets hit by something it doesn’t resist more than once, it’s probably already down (if it survives the first hit). For the ability to activate Jolteon has to be poison, burned, or paralyzed, the later of which it is immune to as of gen 6 (and never something you want to be regardless). Being poisoned or burned takes away critical health for an already fragile pokemon.

But even if Jolteon is burned or poisoned, what exactly is it going to do with the extra speed? It’s already in a six-way tie for 11th fastest Pokemon overall; and 4th if you don’t count mega evolutions or legendaries. So why didn’t they give it something useful like Lightning Rod or, like, anything that doesn’t involve boosting speed?

And of course I complain because the Jolteon I have has Quick Feet when I would have rather had the default Volt Absorb.

And now, a bunch of things I meant to reply to earlier but forgot.

1) One might say my Ponyville was so gentle and still that things couldn’t possibly go wrong.

I just knew I was alright the following day. To be frank, it passed through my digestive system.

2) Thank you! This is actually the first time anypony has given me a positive comment on it. I get questions about it every now and again, but never any commendations!

3) Groovy, Gnarly, Tubular, Radical. Wait, I take that last one back. Pretty sure Rainbow Dash says that too.

I want to use heavy, but I keep forgetting in the heat-of-the-moment.

4) This made me feel better at the time.Thanks!

5) We shall be resolute in our resolutions!

That we both evidently failed last year.

1) Woah woah woah. Slow down there Jane Row. I’m not that smart. Let me bust out dictionary.com.

“Well wishes, evil-doer or criminals! I am attempting to put to use wrongly the collection of formulas for the preparation of affordable articles of food. Who will join me!?”

… Are you trying to sell drugs for food?

2) Sure, Strawberry. Want to answer a question or two with me?

3) Lyra: Seems amazing? It’s definitely showing age, but that game was the hottest of the hot for its time.

Lyra: And clearly I would be the keen-eyed spotter to Bon-Bon’s quick-hooved digger.

Bon-Bon: Alright, sure.

Lyra: Really?

Bon-Bon: Lyra. Once again, I have no idea what you’re talking about. I don’t play video games.

4) I’m not sure what implications are even attempting to be made by that statement.

5) Well, you just went completely out of your way to insure no pony could do the whole “lol! you can’t read cupcakes!” joke. Spoiled sport.

No. I actively avoid anything related to it.

Well, quite a while ago I noticed a trend; a considerable drop in followers after every batch of messages I answered separately in succession. I came up with the thesis (because I’m not as dumb as everypony thinks I am) that the cause of those unfollowers wasn’t the content, but the method of its distribution.

After comparison, I found that taking a screenshot of the questions and answering them all in one text post takes up way less space on a follower’s dashboard than answering each message separately, even with the picture (the one containing the question) expanded. While I have no concurrent control group to compare my findings with, the results have been pretty groovy (though I have received one or two notable complaints, specifically regarding viewership through mobile devices).

This has all lead me to the conclusion that the majority of ponies would rather have all of their information from a single source condensed into a compact newsletter-style format that they are free to either read at their leisure in a centralized location, or bypass at once if they have more important business with which to attend.

AskLyra: Taking into account concerns you didn’t know you had, and then using them against you like a soulless machine.

Okay, so yesterday after I threw up, I most certainly was not fine.

But this time I know for absolute certain

That everything is certainly fine

Welp, I just threw up.

Feel fine now.

1) I don’t know. All those closing parenthesis are making me uncomfortable.

2) My what?

3) Lyra: Oh what the [omitted]! She gets the normal question and I get another head-canoned, meme-laden-!

Bon-Bon: I make candy! I’m a Candy Mare! You know! Who can take the sunri~se! Sprinkle it with de~w! That sort of thing!

4) Oh-Eighth Em Ess Team sounds right. Heero was kind of boring as a central focus. He wasn’t an awful character, but I’d have liked it better if any of the others had more screen time than him (preferably Duo).

I liked a lot of the old Zeon models. Zaku II, Gelgoog, Dom, Efreet. But my favorite in Wing were the OZ’s Virgos. Those things were vicious!

5) Nah.

1) Well, I’ve always liked green for what should seem like obvious reasons. My two favorite characters to play in City of Heroes were villains (Fire/Dark Brute and Electric/Force Controller), which was also known as “red-side”. And my first Pokemon game was Pokemon Blue.

2) Lyra: A full-time job. Which I think is the same as last year.

Bon-Bon: I don’t know. This heavy workload half the year is starting to wear on me. Maybe I’ll see about expanding my business a little to afford hiring an assistant.

3) It’s okay! I didn’t see it as being disrespectful or anything! It’s always nice to hear from you!

4) Bon-Bon: Why thank you for asking! Here at Sweetie Drops you can indulge yourself in all the sweetest, most delectable candies you can imagine. From the richest or creamiest chocolates, to the most mouth-watering fruit-flavors known to moral tongue! We’ve got everything from peanut brittle to real liquorice! Sugar treats! Cinnamon treats! Mint, gum, taffy, and caramel! Ingredients are hoof-picked and locally grown (when possible)!

Bon-Bon: On a budget? Not a problem! We stock all the major manufactured candy! But take just a few seconds to try a sample test and you might be surprised at how a little difference in price can equal a huge boost in flavor!

Bon-Bon: Where is this magical place you ask? Narnia? Why, just trot right up to town hall and turn to your right! We’re the first door to the left! So why shop anywhere else for your confectionery needs?

Bon-Bon: Sweetie Drops! Sweet to the last drop!