#gaming #gaming/pokemon sourced from: [[@Pokémon Is All About Reading - The Paris Review]] # Writing About Competitive Pokemon is Just Like Any Other Kind Sports Writing Read an article about Competitive VGC Pokemon in the Paris Review > Pokémon is all about reading. Hard and soft. Soft, like how I can assume the way my opponent’s Iron Hands, a FIGHTING type, is trained based on trends in the meta game, whereby Pikalytics.com discloses player data amalgamated from prior battles. Most people plug this Pokémon into a hard-hitting tank slot: high HIT POINTS and ATTACK, made to live through anything and crush enemy morale thereafter; it’s what they’re good at, these hands. And as they say in *The Players Club*, you gotta use what you got to get what you want. And everybody wanna be the very best, of course, like no one ever was: picture Ash Ketchum listenin to Drake, confused, yet falling so deeply in love. But I respect my opponent’s awareness here. I change Tyranitar’s type to FLYING. Typical move, and my opponent could read me reading them and react to this and I could read their reaction and so forth in an endless chain of telekinetic tug-of-war. But he does not. Tyranitar resists the punch, and together, with the help of this ghost dog, Greavard, who burns Iron Hands—now at less than half-full health from Tyranitar’s foot in that ass—we carve a path toward victory. > - Joseph Earl Thomas, [[@Pokémon Is All About Reading - The Paris Review]] If competitive Pokemon ain't a sport, well it sure can read like one. I know that from years of playing the game, I can describe Pokémon a lot like how I can describe action in tennis. It's a back and forth, a mental chess match. It's compelling. I've read "war Stories" on Smogon that aren't that much different than this. It's all about writing about big matches or extreme players, for example. In thye presented passage, Thomas talks about a single turn of a VGC match in the same way Foster Wallace might describe a tennis rally. ## Related Thought: - I played in a lot of competitive mons matches for most of my youth, this was my other sport, as it were. Runs really parallel to tennis for me, since like POkemon and competitive Pokemon, [[My Love for Tennis Came From Mario Tennis Power Tour]]: playing a game and then choosing to make it more competitive. - When I did competitive mons during the [[Pokemon Omega Ruby]] and [[Pokemon Alpha Sapphire]] days, I could only dream of articles getting feature like this. Then again that was 10 years ago now... - I should talk more about Competitive Pokemon in here in some capacity.