"Jolteon's Agility Through Every Chapter" ft. The Prancing Ponyta | TRAINER'S EYE #198 -

PrancingPonyta 0:00

Hi, my name is Laura B., AKA The Prancing Ponyta, and this is my Pokemon story

David Hernandez 0:44

welcome to As The Pokeball Turns, where every trainer has a story. I'm David Hernandez, and I'm joined by the Prancing Ponyta, AKA Laura. Laura, welcome to As The Pokeball Turns. How are you today?

PrancingPonyta 0:57

Hey, great. Thanks for having me. Glad to be here

David Hernandez 1:00

Absolutely. And we were going over some things, and you mentioned how, your name had an interesting story, and I kinda wanna start there. It's called The Prancing Ponyta, and I gotta ask, A, why Ponyta, and B, what exactly made this particular Ponyta start prancing?

PrancingPonyta 1:14

So, to kind of give you a little backstory, we'll, we'll go all the way back to where this started, which was the, infamous 24-hour live stream of Glimwood Tangle when they were getting ready to release Sword and Shield. at the time, I was a welder, so I was actually at work during the entire live stream, and not getting very much work done at all that day because I was constantly stopping to look at my screen on my phone and see what was coming up in Glimwood Tangle. A lot of people had highly suspected, by midstream that it was a new form of Ponyta, and I was glued to this live stream. I was in love with this concept that Pokemon had done to release a new Pokemon and reveal it to us, and that streamlined into what became my streaming channel. I decided to call it The Prancing Ponyta after, like, the Prancing Pony from Lord of the Rings. So it became known as The Prancing Ponyta. My logo looks very similar to the Prancing Ponyta sign from The Lord of the Rings. I had that specially designed by the guy who had actually done the very first concept of the Prancing Ponyta sign, where he had used a Kanto Ponyta. I had sought that artist out and asked him to redraw it for me as a Galarian Ponyta, so that was done specifically for me by the original artist. And that was going to be the name of my channel, was The Prancing Ponyta, and I kind of had it in my mindset that I was going to do this in a similar manner to the way Andrew Mahone had done his streams, where he always introduced himself as, "I'm Andrew Mahone, with Tricky Gym at Full Grip Games," and that was kind of always my thing, where I was like, "All right, I will be Laura B. from The Prancing Ponyta." And I was going to recruit other people who were also knowledgeable in Pokemon to also be a part of The Prancing Ponyta and share their expertise, because I'm more of a, at the time, was more of a TCG specialist, and I wanted to bring people in who knew more about Go and who knew more about VGC that could talk about it and post content with me about it, and we could collaborate together. And it just kind of never really took off that way. It just kind of became a solo project for me to do it on my own. And then at some point We got Pokemon Unite, and I went headfirst into Pokemon Unite, and that was pretty much all I streamed all the time, and I became pretty well known in the Pokemon Unite community. I was working events as a judge, and a lot of people kind of knew me by my channel, The Prancing Ponyta. That was my name on Twitch, it was my name on YouTube. Everybody who saw me at events saw me with a Galarian Ponyta on my shoulder. It was kind of my identifying moniker. and the ironic thing about all of that is that Ponyta did not actually start out as my favorite Pokemon. It, and it's really up there as a very close tie for first. It's definitely second. I live in Texas, and for a number of years I was a pretty big, equestrian competitor as well, so I rode in rodeos, I did barrel racing, I did play day events, and I did, showing for the Arabian horse clubs. So I did a lot of work with horses. I also trained and rode horses for Texas, the musical drama. So I did a lot of work with horses, so kind of having a horse as my, my personal brand and being associated with Ponyta was not really outside of the ordinary for me. it all kind of flowed together where it all just kind of naturally seemed to come together off of the back of that one live stream where I decided this is going to be my brand, and it all just kind of evolved from there, to use Pokemon terminology.

David Hernandez 4:59

Fair enough, but I mean, but here's the question, so what is your favorite Pokemon if it's not Ponyta?

PrancingPonyta 5:03

it's actually Jolteon

David Hernandez 5:05

Really? Why Jolteon? What makes Jolteon above Ponyta?

PrancingPonyta 5:08

So that comes into my very first encounter with Pokemon actually. obviously Pokemon Red and Blue released in the US in late September of '98. at that time, my parents were actually going through a divorce. I was 11 years old. My dad had primary custody of me, so I was living with him, and he was dating other women, and one of the women he dated had a little boy who was younger than me. I think he was about eight years old and he had a Game Boy and he had a copy of Pokemon, I think it was Pokemon Red. I had never played Pokemon before. Obviously it was still pretty new at this time, and, I had a Game Boy, but I had mostly played things like Tetris or Mario or Kirby. Those were my games that I played on my old gray brick Game Boy. And this little boy handed me his Game Boy and he just said, "Hey, here, do you wanna try?" And I was like, "Okay, sure. I have no idea what I'm doing, but I'll, play it." And he was in Celadon City, and I'm just walking around as this character, going into buildings, talking to people, and at some point I ended up at the very top of Celadon City, where I received an Eevee. I started to play the game a little bit more, going through my inventory, and I found something called a Thunder Stone, and I was like, "Oh, that sounds really cool. What can I do with this Thunder Stone?" And I clicked on it, and it could be used on my new Eevee, and I was like, "Oh, well let me do that and see what happens." And so Eevee evolves into Jolteon, and I was like, "Oh, this is a really cool looking Pokemon." You know, he's kind of like a spiky dog, you know? In my head, I was like, "He's like a spiky fox. He's really cool looking." And I'm still going through the inventory at the time. for anybody who ever played the old school Pokemon knows that your bag was just one slot. You didn't have a bag with a pocket for TMs, a pocket for key- you know, things like that. It was all your stuff was in one section.

David Hernandez 6:55

Ooh,

PrancingPonyta 6:56

So I'm just scr- That's true. Yeah, right? And so I'm just scrolling through the bag and I come across TM25, which is Thunderbolt, and I was like, "Ooh, that sounds cool. It kind of sounds like my Thunder Stone, right?" And I click on it, and it turns out my Jolteon can learn Thunderbolt. And I was like, "Well, absolutely I'm gonna do that." So I'm walking around Celadon City some more, and I find my way into Celadon Gym, and I, of course, didn't know anything about typing, type advantage, things like that. This is a grass gym, but I am just dying to use my Jolteon. And every battle against all of the Pokemon in there, I'm just spamming Jolteon's Thunderbolt and being told it's not very effective against all of these grass type Pokemon, but I'm getting one-hit KOs. And I'm like, "Well, for it not being very effective, I'm doing very well." So I proceeded to just, stomp my way through Erika's gym with what at the time was a level 25 Jolteon with Thunderbolt. And that was kind of my first memory of Pokemon and that was really my, my first Pokemon was really Jolteon in that manner. You know, it was Eevee, but within minutes it was Jolteon. and over the years I've kind of associated Jolteon with all of the things that I love in real life as well. one of my favorite episodes of the anime it's a partial Jolteon episode. It's, from the Orange Islands. It was called Get Along Little Pokemon, and it was an episode where, Ash, Misty, and Tracy come across a Pokemon herder who has a herd of Magnemite. And to herd the Magnemite, he uses a Jolteon. And I was like, Jolteon is a herd dog; it makes so much sense. it made so much sense to me. And, and from, like, that moment on, I just kind of associated Jolteon with being, like, an Australian shepherd, which is my favorite, dog. I've pretty much had an Australian shepherd every chance I could. and in my mind, me owning an Australian shepherd is, like, the closest I'll ever get to owning a Jolteon. They're very similar. They're very agile. they're built, you know, very similarly with the big ears, and Jolteon being the only Eevee evolution that doesn't have, like, a big fluffy tail or really any kind of tail. It's just got spikes. It's a, it's kind of the Pokemon version of a wiggle butt.

David Hernandez 9:08

Yeah.

PrancingPonyta 9:09

So, so Jolteon has kind of been ingrained in me, for, 28 years now. my very first real Pokemon memory is around that Jolteon and playing that game in the backseat of my dad's car with his girlfriend's son, and, you know, my first experience with Pokemon. A lot of people's first experience with Pokemon was getting a game, putting it in their Game Boy, firing it up, and seeing Professor Oak or seeing the opening scene for the first time. And I was in a unique situation where that wasn't my first experience with Pokemon. And, I think a lot of people can't say that

David Hernandez 9:44

I think you definitely have the most unique story I've come across. I'm sure it's probably more common than I've obviously interviewed, but just having the connection with, your dad, your dad's primarily custodial for you. You're going probably back and forth between your dad and mom is what I would assume. But then also the fact that you encounter Pokemon through his girlfriend's son is kinda just such a unique experience. did it kinda help build a bond while your dad was kinda dating? 'Cause it's kinda hard as a kid to be attached. Did that kinda help you a bit to kinda have him almost like a brother in a way?

PrancingPonyta 10:12

in a weird way, yes. I was fairly attached to that family in particular mostly because I wasn't really back and forth between my dad and my mom at some point. And my dad, was doing his best to maintain the visage of the favorite parent so that I always wanted to be at his house. I had an older sister who had moved out of the house when she was 16, and she is nine years older than me, so I was very young when she moved out of the house. So I never really had, a sibling. So when my dad dated other women who had children, it was kind of like me getting that sibling experience that I never really had. and it was kinda nice, and especially when, I was being exposed to other children who had other experiences and saw other things and did other things that I had maybe not necessarily ever done before because I'm not gonna say I was sheltered. I was definitely not sheltered. I was, I was a child growing up in the '90s in the city of Brooklyn, New York. So we were that generation, that Hey Arnold generation that, came home when the streetlights went on. You know, we didn't have cell phones. we used payphones if we needed to check in with our parents, if you were one of those kids that were lucky enough to have a beeper or a pager and they got ahold of you that way. we rode our bikes or rollerblades for miles away from our homes to parks. this was back before the world was really this strange, scary, dangerous place that parents worried about their kids being abducted all the time.

David Hernandez 11:38

Right

PrancingPonyta 11:38

out with our friends going to the park and running through sprinklers and drinking from the garden hose and j-

David Hernandez 11:45

Yeah

PrancingPonyta 11:45

off the swings and seeing who could jump the furthest and playing, tag, freeze tag or whatever we were doing. We, we had a lot of that, outdoor connection and personal connection with other people 'cause there wasn't a whole lot of, technology back then. I'm kind of that age group that bridged technology. So growing up at that point there wasn't a whole lot. like I said, I was the brick Game Boy generation. Prior to that I had played, an NES, I had a Super Nintendo, I had a Sega Genesis. and really nobody in my family, my dad didn't have experience with those kinds of things. He was the, the Atari, Pac-Man arcade machine generation. So when we went out places, we would go bowling, and I would spend my time in the arcade playing pinball machines and arcade machines while he was bowling with his friends 'cause I was a terrible bowler as a kid. So that was where I preferred to be was playing the video games where, where other kids were And, and that was kind of the childhood experience I had that led into making the friends and being exposed to other kids and learning about Pokemon and, new things like that.

David Hernandez 12:51

Do you remember what generation of Pokemon did stick to you after Gen 1? Did you keep going to like Johto, Hoenn? Like how far did this go along for you?

PrancingPonyta 12:58

I, it definitely continued forever. I immediately went, yeah, for every generation.

David Hernandez 13:04

That's

PrancingPonyta 13:04

said, it came out, Red and Blue released, in late September of '98,

David Hernandez 13:09

Mm-hmm.

PrancingPonyta 13:10

by Christmas that year, I, I wanna say it actually was Christmas, I had received my own copy of Pokemon Blue for Christmas from my dad, which started me playing that. And then, you know, a couple years later when, Gold and Silver came out, I vividly remember receiving a copy of Pokemon Silver, and I was playing it on an airplane while my dad and I were flying to a family reunion out in Arizona, and I was enamored by the day/night process in Johto, so it was, it definitely went from... It really was. So I, I definitely went from Kanto to Johto, and those are gonna be the two that stick in my mind a lot. and real quick, just to backtrack a little bit on, my Kanto Johto stuff if anybody out there listening to this remembers me from, like, middle school, I was bullied a lot in middle school for anything and everything you could think of, from the way I dressed, the way my hair was, to playing Pokemon. And one of the things that happened to me a lot as a result of that bullying was that my Game Boy got stolen a lot, and my game got stolen a lot. S- so there was, at least two or three times that I can remember of having my Game Boy in my backpack with my Pokemon game in it, and at first it was, Red and Blue was what I was going through, and then it was Gold and Silver at some point, and getting a Game Boy Color. And I was of that age group that walked to school, so I would play my Game Boy walking to school, and then even when I started riding the bus, I would play my Game Boy on the bus. So that was something that happened to me pretty frequently. So if anybody, out there ever comes across this podcast and you were one of those people that stole from me, just know that you didn't ruin my childhood. My dad made sure of that. My dad made sure I always had a copy of Pokemon, and I'm sorry that whatever you were going through led you to feel like you had to steal from me and bully from me, but you didn't change me. You didn't affect who I am today. I still love Pokemon, and Pokemon has literally taken me around the world, and I have met some of the most amazing people. So not one second do I regret continuing with Pokemon my entire life and, and doing all the things I've done with Pokemon.

David Hernandez 15:24

I mean, just when you were mentioning the bullying going on in school, you got the bullying going on at school, you got your dad and the relationship that's going on there at home. Was Pokemon kind of an escape for you at that age? 'Cause it just seems like your worlds were kind of uncertain at that time period

PrancingPonyta 15:37

I do feel like it was, I'm not gonna say an escape because I still, was into the real world.

David Hernandez 15:42

Sure

PrancingPonyta 15:42

I spent a lot of time in my bedroom just playing with toy horses and playing Game Boy. I would lay in my bed and play my Game Boy until my batteries died sometimes and, watch Hey Arnold and Rugrats. I, I watched a lot of Nickelodeon growing up and I was of that generation where we went outside and played until the streetlights came on, but obviously, my parents were going through kind of a messy divorce, so there was a lot of times where we were going to court. So my dad was having to drive to court, so I would sit in the car, and I would play Pokemon on the Game Boy. We would sit in the courtroom, and I would be playing Pokemon, the long drives back. There was a lot of times where he was like, "Hey, your mom is coming for visitation, so don't wander off. Stay here at the house." And I would sit at the house, and I would play, and I would wait for her, and, there was a lot of times she didn't show up. So there was a lot of playing Pokemon in between all of the things that were happening in life for me at the time. and there was a lot of playing Pokemon, on the school bus and walking to school. And I would say Pokemon was an escape, but Pokemon was also what got me out into the world and helped me meet people and make friends because I was not as outgoing as a child as I am now. I was pretty shy. So a lot of people actually approached me when they saw that I was playing a Game Boy, and they would ask me what I was playing, and it was, "Oh, I'm playing Pokemon." Oh, which version are you playing?" "Oh, I'm playing Blue." "Oh, hey, you have exclusives that I can't get in my game. Do you wanna trade?" "Absolutely." You know, and that was kinda how it would go.

David Hernandez 17:11

Basically, Pokemon it sound like was an icebreaker and it allowed y'all to, allowed you to kind of connect because like you said, you weren't as outgoing. So it bridged that gap that you otherwise would have had, it sounds like.

PrancingPonyta 17:20

Yeah, it definitely helped with that. And then, we went from the video game in late '98 to the TCG releasing in early '99, and I pretty much immediately was like, "I want these cards." And so my dad, wanting to maintain the, the favorite parent would start buying me cards. He would buy me packs, and I would be opening packs. And then people at school would see me with the cards, and That started a whole nother round of bullying, and it also started a whole nother round of thievery, where I actually remember very vividly one time, I had a deck that I had put together, a grass deck, and I was showing somebody my grass deck and just thumbing through the cards. And somebody leaned over from behind me and snatched a handful of cards right out of my hand. I actually turned around and chased after that person and tackled them to get my cards back.

David Hernandez 18:13

'Cause that's what I always worried about too growing up, 'cause I would hold my cards, and you don't know how, I guess, anxious it makes you when somebody's over your shoulder and they grab it. Now, granted, you were fast enough to catch them. I was too slow. I was too fat. So I, I'm

PrancingPonyta 18:25

I think, I don't think it was that I was fast. I think I just reacted fast enough to be able to grab them

David Hernandez 18:30

Okay

PrancingPonyta 18:31

to get my cards back, and I realized that they just had a handful of grass energy, so I just kinda let it go

David Hernandez 18:36

Oh, okay at least they didn't take nothing, I guess, too valuable. But still, it's like it's your own cards, too. That's the worst part

PrancingPonyta 18:42

Yeah, and especially since the way they just grabbed them and ran off. Like, if they'd had a base set Venusaur in their hand fumbled up like that, could you imagine how heartbreaking that is would've been?

David Hernandez 18:51

story would be a much more darker turn right now, I'm sure, if it was a Venusaur.

PrancingPonyta 18:56

But of course back then we didn't know value of cards. I mean, even our parents, nobody knew really, there was people who speculated what the cards would be worth, but to us as kids, we were just playing with them. We were playing the card game, and I'm sure not all of us were playing it correctly. but I was fortunate enough that I was interested enough in this that my dad found places where I could go and play and connect with other kids who were playing with the cards, and I was able to learn properly from, some people who were older than me, some league leaders. I remember early games in Toys R Us, when Toys R Us did the original Wizards of the Coast Pokemon League, and we all had the books, and you would get your stamps, and you would get your promo cards when you reached a certain amount of stamps. And then you would get a gym badge pin when you reached a certain amount of stamps. And, that was kind of how cards and league started for me. and then evolving from Toys R Us growing up and going to my first adult card shop, where I was unfortunately exposed to the demons of Magic: The Gathering, who did try to sway me away from Pokemon. they almost succeeded. They had some cool cards. The game was fun, but my love of Pokemon was just, too much. I did not wanna stray away from the Pokemon card game. and, and I actually very much remember that conversation with my dad in his Jeep, as he was driving me home one time after being at that card shop and I was talk... I don't remember what specifically I was talking about, if I was talking about the cards or something else I had seen, and I just remember him giving me kind of a look and going, "I hope you're not getting weird on me." and I don't think a parent realizes how saying something like that could potentially be so damaging to a child, especially so young and, when that's really your only parental influence in your life. But, unfortunate for my dad, I did end up being the weird one. not nearly as weird as, he thinks my sister ended up being. so I think he's glad that of the two weirdos, he ended up with the less weird child. So that kinda worked out for him, I guess.

David Hernandez 20:54

I would say, I mean, that's kinda the barrier we faced growing up, because I remember for me, my mom was the quote-unquote popular kid growing up, so she expected me to kinda be the popular guy. I was nothing but that. I was a geek through and out. I loved Pokemon, I loved Mario, I loved Nintendo. And I remember this one thing, I'll never forget it. I wanted to be a chef and I wanted to cook, and she said, Son, they're gonna think you're a gay or a sissy." And I'm just like, "I just wanna cook." but that's the barrier, though, especially for me, I'm come from more of Hispanic culture, which it's more traditional for the woman to cook and the guy to be served, but, whatever have you. But I wanted to cook, but that's kinda the barriers we faced when it came to both, whether it be cooking and even now Pokemon. Some of our parents, even despite how understanding they were, they still viewed it as kinda odd, if that makes sense

PrancingPonyta 21:40

Oh yeah, absolutely. I mean, I, you talk about your Hispanic culture. my mother was Puerto Rican, so there's a little bit of Hispanic there in my genetics as well. And my father, is Italian, and we had a very strong Italian family, you know, very big, ties to certain groups that were prominent in New York at the time. I probably shouldn't say more than that, for anybody who's seen...

David Hernandez 22:05

if you know kind of

PrancingPonyta 22:06

Y- yeah, I didn't know who you were with. And if you get that, that's all you need. so it was, it was kind of the family that I grew up with, and, I remember having the, the very large family get-togethers at my grandparents' house or at my uncle's house at our old houses. a lot of these houses that don't even exist anymore because these corporations came in and they paid millions of dollars for these properties so that they could bulldoze them and put up malls, and Walmarts, and things in, old New York, in the old Bronx area. And I just remember having these families together, and I, I don't know what kind of person my dad was necessarily as a teenager. I'm sure a lot of his old photos portray him as being one of those cool kids with his, denim jacket, smoking a cigarette at 16. just being one of those rebellious kids. he had two brothers. He had, an older sister. So we had that big Italian family on his side, whereas I didn't really know a whole lot about like my mom's side of the family. They were a little bit more spread out, and my grandparents on her side of the family were, already gone by the time I was old enough to remember. But I remember just being in that family, and they were very like a tough image kind of family. so I don't think that I was exactly living up to what they assumed my image should be, whereas, like you said in, in a Hispanic family the woman typically cooks and serves. in an Italian family, the matrons are kind of, not necessarily the head of the household, but they are the head of the household on the underground that they always still had control over what the men did. you didn't upset your mother. you respected your mother. You respected the women of your family. But the women still held a very traditional role as being the caretakers, and of course, that generation was a whole different time period where Dad went to work and Mom stayed home and raised five kids. And that's not a generation that, you know, or a time that we live in anymore unfortunately. people can't afford to live like that anymore, but, somehow we can all still afford to spend hundreds of dollars on Pokemon cards, so

David Hernandez 24:05

Priorities is what they call it, I think, it, our generation does.

PrancingPonyta 24:09

Absolutely. And, and I'm one of those few of that generation who, made it into my 30s. I am a childless adult. So my husband and I have no kids, so we have a little bit of expendable income. And, we are fortunate in that we own our home with no mortgage payments, and we own our vehicles with no vehicle payments. So there's not a lot of people our age or even at all, like in this day and age that can say they have that. So One of the things that we love together is Pokemon. he loves to rip packs. He loves to, kind of help out with the league and teach the kids that come to the league and, watch over them. He's got 12 or 13 nieces and nephews. So

David Hernandez 24:52

Wow. You almost as much as I do

PrancingPonyta 24:54

they, I mean, they have a big family.

David Hernandez 24:57

Mm-hmm.

PrancingPonyta 24:57

so it's, kind of like they leaned into being my family now. Obviously, I married into this family 10 years ago. they took me in pretty much immediately. It was immediately Aunt Laura, and I love those kids a lot, and some of them are into Pokemon. I've actually taken a couple of them to some events, to some regional events and played some games with them and let them open packs and things. So you know, it's, it being something my husband and I can share together. he of course has his things that he loves. He's very into football. he's also very into vintage video games. things from like the NES era, the Super Nintendo era. he's really into those. He likes also the PlayStation era, PlayStation 2 era. So he collects a lot of those. So that kind of leaned into Pokemon as well because we made an effort to collect all of the Pokemon games. we officially own all of them. Not all of them are complete in box, but we are working on that next, as kind of our, next project is to make sure we have all Pokemon games complete in box. we're working on collecting like the spinoff games, like all of the Mystery Dungeons. so you know, that's, that's things we do together is opening cards, and we play together. we have a close group of friends that play when new video games come out. You know, Pokemon's really good about releasing dual copies, like Scarlet and Violet. So I played Scarlet, he played Violet, and we do a lot of stuff like that together side by side, and it really lent itself to us being a good strong couple with a strong relationship even though we don't have kids, and are very unlikely to have kids. We have talked about adopting like older kids that tend to not be wanted by most people. one of those things where we both work and now we both also work Pokemon events. he is the owner for our, our local league, and he does most of the organizing. I help plan events, but mostly because I like to play. he does a lot of the organizing and judging, and then I'm like, I stay out of it so that he can just do his job, and then I can play. And sometimes we'll trade off, and I'll do the organizing and judging so that he can play, 'cause he really enjoys pre-releases. That's like his favorite format. and of course, when we go to other leagues in the area, he gets to play. He doesn't have to worry about judging or organizing or anything. and I'm typically the one in charge of all the cards, and I have a system for sorting and organizing them. So he plays a lot on live, and he'll find a deck he likes, and then he sends me the list, and he goes, "Build this for me." And I go, "You got it." And I have him a deck built and sleeved by the end of the day.

David Hernandez 27:22

You touched on something important because like you said, when you're already 30. most people are starting to have kids or have kids. And there's that pressure sometimes to feel like you should become a parent or try to have kids. you know, I've ran into the same thing because I was wondering like, "Do I wanna be a dad? Do I not wanna be?" Eventually I decided that it wasn't for me. I went to get my, snip-snip going, for those who know, who know, and I decided not to have that. But just because you decide not to have kids, and what I love about y'all is you can actually still give back to people, to the younger generation, like Y'all go and teach kids how to play Pokemon. For me, I like going around to libraries giving wristbands all day. So Just because you don't have kids, and I think the way both you and even me, I do it, we kinda show ways to where There's still a way we can still be a part of a kid's life without actually having kids, and I think I applaud y'all for the way y'all are doing that. It's such a great way to do it

PrancingPonyta 28:12

Yeah, and I, I love being an influence without necessarily being a parent. And also not having kids lets us be the favorite aunt and uncle to all of the nieces and nephews because we're the aunt and uncle that show up with the movies and the snacks and the video games, My husband will sit, when we go to his brother's place, the kids just cannot wait to play video games with Uncle Jordan, and that's one of the things they always request. or they can't wait to sit down and play games with us. we have nieces and nephews who are really super into Harry Potter, so something they like to do is we'll have little Harry Potter movie nights where we make them butterbeers. and again, I've tried to teach a lot of them, Pokemon. Sometimes I'll save a booster box of cards and I'll bring it over, and we'll open it all together. And, I'll do things like that. I'll send them Pokemon games or something like that. he's got some older nieces like we have them in all different age groups. they run from teenagers, in fact I think his oldest now is just, his oldest nephew is turning, I say his oldest, he's my nephew too, is turning 18. my oldest niece on my side of the family, I only have one, and she is 20, and actually she just gave birth to a boy, so I actually am a great aunt. I have a great nephew. so that's kind of the oldest in our family, and they're not nerds at all. They're very much into a whole different culture of things, so I'm probably never going to get a chance to influence them or any of their kids. But, but I did get lucky that at least one of my brothers-in-law, he's a nerd, and they were very eager when, oh, a couple years ago we had a regional in San Antonio and I was like, "Hey, we're gonna be in San Antonio for this regional. We'd love to catch up with y'all, go have dinner, come visit for a little bit, and if y'all are interested in coming to this regional I'll get you guys some spectator passes. We'll get you guys in. You can check it out." And they were super excited to do it. they only have one little girl. They brought her. She fell in love with, of all of the Pokemon she could fall in love with Tandemaus. And now every time I see something with Tandemaus I associate that with my niece Kara, and I'm like, "I gotta get Kara this Tandemaus thing," because that's her favorite Pokemon. And it's crazy that I can forget these kids' birthdays and I can forget their allergies, but once I know what their favorite Pokemon is I will never forget that.

David Hernandez 30:32

Aw. Are y'all taking applications? 'Cause my aunt and uncle are Garbadors. I'd be happy to be a nephew for y'all. I- just let me know where I need to sign, where I need to submit the application to. I wouldn't mind.

PrancingPonyta 30:41

love that your favorite Pokemon is Garbodor because there, there is that saying-

David Hernandez 30:46

it, mine's not actually Garbodor. I'm saying

PrancingPonyta 30:48

that would be great if it really was. But, you know, something that I've heard forever, long before the 30th anniversary, is that every Pokemon is somebody's favorite. I remember 10 or 15 years ago, a story somebody told online about a woman running around at an event trying to find an Onix plushy because Onix was her daughter's favorite Pokemon.

David Hernandez 31:09

Yeah

PrancingPonyta 31:10

it's just crazy to think that, maybe here in the States, we're not really fans of the Pokemon Bruxish, but other places love that Pokemon. And you saw it at Worlds, where they had the booth where everybody would go stick a pin in what their favorite Pokemon was. And I think by the end of the event, every Pokemon had at least one pin in it And it was just something you see that there are over 1,000 Pokemon now, and every single one of those is a favorite to somebody else. And as new kids join the Pokemon community and they become part of a new generation, and, Sword and Shield was somebody's first Pokemon game. Scarlet and Violet was somebody's first Pokemon game. So they're gonna be a little bit more attached to the Pokemon from that generation, and they're going to probably have a favorite from that generation until maybe they decide to branch out and play older games, and then maybe they find a, a Pokemon from an older game they like, and maybe that becomes a new favorite. But they're still always gonna have a connection. that, that trainer whose first journey was in Scarlet and Violet, who started with Sprigatito, and Sprigatito is their favorite Pokemon, they're never gonna go back and look at Fennekin quite the same way that they look at Sprigatito. even though they're both cute and amazing starter Pokemon. It, it's just not gonna be the same, and that's where the everybody-has-a-favorite-Pokemon comes from, And everybody has that unique experience, and that's why I love what you do here, collecting everybody's stories, because everybody has a different experience and a different story, just like we all have a different favorite Pokemon. And, you jokingly said that Garbodor was your favorite, and it's not a Pokemon that you would think a lot of people would have as a favorite, but it's somebody's favorite Pokemon out there. anybody who played Legends ZA probably saw the Pokemon Trubbish in a new way, because there was a video that went viral of, Trubbish just kind of sitting on top of the trash cans and looking all sad. And then when you hold up a Pokeball at it like you're gonna catch it, it gets really excited all of a sudden, like somebody wants it. And the little character traits like that, that they've added to Pokemon video games and to the anime over the years can kind of endear you to a Pokemon that you never really looked at like that before. like, the anime did that to me with the Pokemon Magnemite. whereas I, I liked Magnemite before because of that episode in the Orange Islands where Jolteon was hurting Magnemite, but Magnemite didn't really Like, even though number six was the Magnemite who was, like, the main character in that episode, who evolved into Magneton, spoiler alert, for anybody who hasn't seen that we got introduced to this Magnemite in the very last season, which, was it Pokemon Adventures? It was the one with Ash and Goh. and it was the, the Pokemon that belonged to the scientist. It was the Magnemite that was named Francois, I believe it was and how he had this connection to a specific lamp, and they gave this Pokemon personality through this story, And there's just Pokemon that maybe you didn't necessarily see as being a cute Pokemon or as an endearing Pokemon, and then you watch an episode of the anime, or you catch a little detail of that Pokemon in a video game that you never noticed before, and now all of a sudden that Pokemon stands out to you a little bit differently. And, that's definitely happened to me with some other Pokemon as well, where I'm like, "Okay, well, I didn't really think about that Pokemon that way before, but now it kind of stands out in my head." whereas I absolutely used to love the Pokemon Dragapult, because in my head, Dragapult was like an axolotl, and I love axolotls. I have two axolotls. One of them's named Mudkip, and one of them's named Wooper. And I was planning on getting another one, and I was gonna name it, like, either Dreepy or Drakloak or Dragapult. And then we have this absolutely overwhelming deck in the TCG that is a Dragapult deck, and I'm like, "It feels so bad to love Dragapult right now because of that deck And I promise I'm not a Dragapult player

David Hernandez 34:58

I think for me, one Pokemon that comes to mind like that is Magneton, actually, believe it or not. So before Magneton, I didn't care for it too much. I played through Red and Blue, Yellow, saw it from the engineers or, yeah, engineers primarily. I was like, "Eh, it's a Pokemon. Sure." And that's kinda how it stayed. Even when it got Magnezone, I really just didn't pay much attention to it. It wasn't until Pokemon Go, and it was the early parts of it back when the old Gym system was around, and Magneton was actually one of the best Pokemon to face against Vaporeon, and I had to use Magneton a lot. And slowly, 'cause I had to use it more and more, I kind of had more appreciation for it. And then I went back to my old cards, looked at the base set and the fossil Magneton, as well as the Team Rocket one, and saw the designs, and I'm like, "I think I like this Pokemon more than I thought I did." And it kinda gave me a reason to kinda go back and kinda find a new love for a Pokemon that I would overlook. and then also Searching Sparks, when they released that promo Magneton,

PrancingPonyta 35:51

Yes

David Hernandez 35:53

for me. I'm like, "Magneton's kinda cool in a way." Still don't care for Magnezone, but I love Magneton, and

PrancingPonyta 35:59

I

David Hernandez 35:59

the

PrancingPonyta 35:59

agree.

David Hernandez 36:01

and that's kinda the way, though, Pokemon can kinda reintroduce Pokemon from back then. They kinda give you a different experience, even from ones that maybe you've constantly overlooked before, kinda what you were talking about

PrancingPonyta 36:10

Yeah, so like, like you said, the card game, sometimes you're ripping open a pack and a card art stands out to you for a Pokemon that maybe you never really thought about before, but this art is, beautiful, or you like the artist, or just they did something different to give the Pokemon a little bit more personality. And that's gonna make that Pokemon stand out to you, even if it's a Pokemon maybe you never noticed before. Or even if it's a deck that you're building and playing with that maybe you hadn't thought you would be playing before, and now because you're playing this deck with these Pokemon in it, so spoiler alert, I've been playing Slowking a lot. I actually won, a recent tri-city tournament. I got first place in two out of the three tournaments, and then I got fourth place in the third tournament, and overall I ended up having enough points to be the tri-city champion. And I did it all with Slowking, with the same Slowking deck. I didn't change a single card in it after I won the first tournament. I was like, "All right, well, let me run that back," and then by the third tournament a new set was out and I was like, "Oh, I don't really wanna change any of the cards in my deck, and I kinda feel like I just wanna run through this whole tournament with the same deck." And I could have done better, but by the second tournament people had wised up to my shenanigans. By the third tournament they had definitely wised up to my shenanigans, and there was definitely a Shaymin in every deck, and there was a lot more single prize decks out there for me to contend with. but just playing the Slowbro deck, in my mind always remember Slowbro from Pokemon: The Movie 2000, and it was, one of the times that a Pokemon could talk, and we didn't really have an explanation for why this Pokemon could talk. we know Meowth can talk. We know why Meowth can talk, for anybody who knows Meowth's backstory or ever saw that episode in the anime. Other than that, we've had, Mewtwo who could talk because he was a psychic Pokemon using,

David Hernandez 37:57

Psychic

PrancingPonyta 37:57

was telepathically talking, yeah. Lugia,

David Hernandez 38:01

Yeah

PrancingPonyta 38:02

Entei was able to talk because it was a dream Pokemon, but Slowking in the Pokemon Movie 2000 was a Pokemon who was moving his mouth and speaking out of his mouth. He wasn't talking to you telepathically in any way. He wasn't really anything special that we ever got a backstory about. So that's what I always thought about when I thought of Slowking. So playing this deck with a Slowking, it was just kind of bringing back those memories of the Pokemon: The Movie 2000. And then I'm throwing a lot of these other Pokemon in the deck that Slowking kind of uses their abilities for. And I'm not terribly caught up in the anime right now. I was a little bit behind because I'm one of those people who just pays for Netflix when there's something I wanna binge watch, and then I cancel it again

David Hernandez 38:46

Amen.

PrancingPonyta 38:48

so I haven't re-upped it yet to catch up on the newest season of the Pokemon Horizons anime, but I know a lot of crazy things happened where I left off, I guess it was like a year ago, 'cause I think I'm two seasons behind now, was when the captain he'd fallen off of the airship. So That's kind of where I left off. I'm not gonna say too much from there because I don't know anything that happened after that, and I don't know how many people are also caught up. And I've really gotta binge watch that and get caught back up. But There was a lot of Pokemon from Scarlet and Violet that got introduced to us there, but there's still a lot of Pokemon that I haven't seen in the anime, and the video game hasn't given them a lot of personality. Whereas, like, in, Legends ZA and even in Legends Arceus, where we had, like, this open world type concept, we got to see Pokemon kind of out in the wild walking around and having a personality. and and I guess really our first experience with that was probably, I would almost say in Let's Go Pikachu and Eevee was where we really got to see Pokemon in the Overworld, but they didn't really have too much personality. And then we got Sword and Shield where we saw Pokemon in the wild zones. I wouldn't say wild zones, like wild areas.

David Hernandez 39:56

is, yeah,

PrancingPonyta 39:57

Yeah, I say wild zones thinking about ZA. and even in the wild area, they didn't really have a lot of personality. They were just kind of static moving back and forth. And then we got games like Legends Arceus and Legends ZA, where they really did give those Pokemon personalities, that Pokemon traveled in herds, or we would see them sleeping, and we would see how they interacted with other Pokemon around them, especially in ZA. and, and Pokemon's really just kind of taken off from there in showcasing characteristics of their Pokemon outside of the anime. Whereas some of the Pokemon... Like, we know a lot about Meowth. But the Meowth that we all have experience with is like the Team Rocket Meowth. And something that will bug me forever to this day is that Pokemon decided to make all Meowths in every iteration of Meowth in artwork stand on two legs, and we all know, those of us who are old school know that that's not how it's supposed to be. So I'm still bugged by that 'cause now every iteration of Meowth artwork in a TCG card, he's, like, standing on two legs. Or every time you see him in the video game, he's standing on two legs, and we're like, "That's not all Meowths. That's not how it's supposed to be." And I kind of miss the days of Meowth running around on four legs. So I'm dying to see how we kind of, if maybe they go back to that one day. they did the same thing with Purrloin, where I think they were trying to make Purrloin like the new Meowth, and Purrloin originally was a Pokemon that walked on four legs. and every time you saw it in a video game, it was, like, sitting or walking on four legs, and then now days it stands on two legs. And every time you see it, it's walking on two legs, and I'm like, "That's, that bothers me a lot. Don't do that."

David Hernandez 41:30

Mm-hmm. It still bugs me to this day, 'cause, I played Black and White and Black and White 2, and it's on four legs, and I think they finally switch it in, Sun and Moon primarily. I think X and Y still had it on four legs if I remember correctly. But Sun and Moon's what I remember where they had it standing on two, and I'm like, "What the heck? Why is it standing on its hind legs?" It's so weird.

PrancingPonyta 41:47

Right

David Hernandez 41:48

it's just n- it's like if you saw Bulbasaur that way. We're all used to seeing Bulbasaur on four legs, and I still can't get my head around it even all these years later. It's just so weird

PrancingPonyta 41:56

Yeah. And, and it's like with Pikachu, we're used to seeing Pikachu walk on two legs or four legs,

David Hernandez 42:01

Right

PrancingPonyta 42:02

with it either way. We've gotten used to that over the years. But there's certain Pokemon that we have associated with a certain image, and so when you play the card game or you play the video game, and now all of a sudden that Pokemon doesn't match that image anymore, it's a little bit jarring sometimes, and it's not the same association you've had. So, like, every time, I play Meowth EX, which is, like, a super popular card, it's in almost every deck, I just see this Meowth in my head as the Team Rocket Meowth because that's all Meowths are standing on two legs now, but that's really only the, exclusive to Meowth from Team Rocket that we all know of. and then I see other Pokemon in the card game that we don't really have a lot of imagery for, we don't really have a lot of animation for, Pokemon like Fezandipiti, which is another card that pretty much every deck has a Fezandipiti EX in it, and we don't really have a lot to go on. As far as I know, we haven't seen Fezandipiti in the anime. Maybe we have in the two seasons that I'm behind, and I don't know anything about it, and it has personality. So I can't go on that. But we don't have Fezandipiti in Legends ZA, so we don't see personality on that Pokemon necessarily. And there's just so many Pokemon, I get that it's hard for them to constantly bring Pokemon in and program them and showcase them in a way that I'm sure they would like. So I know they've said that every single Pokemon won't be in every future game now, and a lot of people were upset by that. But I think by limiting it, they are allowing other Pokemon to really shine now. they can bring other Pokemon out, like they did with Trubbish in ZA, and they can give more personality to some of those Pokemon that maybe got overlooked, or we had associated a different image with that Pokemon now. And I think it's just gonna travel across all games, because there's a lot of people out there who play the TCG, but they also play the video game. They just play it casually 'cause they wanna play it for the story. Or there's a lot of people out there who play the video game, and maybe they also play Pokemon Go on the side, so that they can catch Pokemon in Go to transfer over to the video game for them to use. And I think everybody kind of at least dual games if they don't dabble in all of them, and I'm one of those people who has to constantly be doing three things at one time. So I play everything Pokemon. I've played Pokemon Go. I've played all of the video games. I've played all of the side games. I've played, all of the Rescue Team, all of the Mystery Dungeon games, Pokemon Ranger, Pokemon Pinball, and I don't know if anybody remembers Pokemon Quest. That was an amazing game. They need to bring it back

David Hernandez 44:37

They do

PrancingPonyta 44:38

I was so excited when they brought Snap back. When we got Pokemon Snap 2, psh, mind blown. I was in bed watching that and I woke my husband up. I was like, "Jordan, wake up. Wake up. We're getting another Pokemon Snap."

David Hernandez 44:50

well, I was gonna say Pokemon Snap's probably the closest we've gotten to, remember how you mentioned earlier, getting more personality and behavior? Those games are really the closest we see Pokemon kinda get behavior within the video games outside of the standard other ones, Like, to

PrancingPonyta 45:03

Absolutely

David Hernandez 45:04

it. Pokemon Let's Go, the only thing I remember is they kinda, they kinda more built on the biology. Like, you saw Venusaur hopping, you saw Charizard flying and stuff like that. But personality wise, Pokemon Snap's easy one that gives it to you

PrancingPonyta 45:15

Yeah, absolutely. And it was really one of the places where you got to see Pokemon interacting with other Pokemon, not just Pokemon of the same kind

David Hernandez 45:22

Now, you have a large experience with TCG. You started back in the day when you first started collecting cards, and you're still involved with it now. What is it that you enjoy about the TCG so much that kept you engaged all this time?

PrancingPonyta 45:34

Oh my goodness. well

David Hernandez 45:36

I know. Simple answer, right?

PrancingPonyta 45:37

I, you would think so, right? I, I think part of it starts from me, originally being really into art as a kid and kind of wanting to be an artist when I got older. I always thought the art was beautiful on the cards. And, just like a lot of girls, there was a lot of cards where I was like, "Oh, this is a really cute Pokemon. I really like it." and it started off from a collecting point of view, and then started into just the game being fun and something fun to do with my friends. And then just, collector brain, I guess, kicking in where goblin brain kicked in with collector brain, where I was like, "Oh, I must have all of the shiny things." So going to leagues, I wanted to get all of the shiny promo cards. I wanted to get all of the shiny badges. And then playing the video games just kind of seemed to branch into playing the card game for me. So I was playing the video game, and then the card game was kind of that way for me to play Pokemon in real life with real people through the card game, going to leagues and playing against other people. It was, like, really Pokemon battling for me then. 'Cause we didn't do a whole lot of link battles with other people back then,

David Hernandez 46:37

Yeah

PrancingPonyta 46:38

at least not where I lived and the people I grew up with. We didn't really battle each other. We mostly played the card game or just played the video game for fun. and then, kind of as I was older and in high school, there was still a lot of playing the video game, not so much the card game. I was still buying packs and opening them and collecting cards and building decks. and I was playing TCG online before that got shut down. And there really wasn't a lot of activity for card games in my area. I lived someplace very rural where I ended up, moving. So right around the end of high school, and then into my, my 20s was kind of where I, I really leaned into a lot of, rodeo and equestrian hobbies. And then I did manage to find that niche group of people. a card shop opened up where I was living, and I was able to kind of find people through the grapevine. Ironically, the grapevine at that time was me working at a store, and then somebody who was working at the lube center working on cars that was adjacent to the store that would come in and get drinks all the time. Him and I started dating, and then he had roommates, and I met his roommates, and his roommates were into Pokemon. So it, it's amazing how it just kind of found me again. and it, it's not like I was really gone from it. I just wasn't playing the card game. I was still buying the video games, with my adult money from my adult job and playing those on my own. I'd buy packs of cards and open them too, as I saw them in the stores. And that kind of got me back into being with other people who played Pokemon in the real world. And then the card shop opened, and we were able to start gathering and doing it together. and it's been, 15 years, and I still play Pokemon with all of those same people. we still gather at a different card shop now and play together. and some of those are some of the closest friends I have in my life. One of them, she is expecting her first children. She is expecting twins. So it's just crazy that, yeah, and it's just crazy that... And, and actually that was how she announced her pregnancy was, with a Pokemon card that she had made, and it was, "Prepare for trouble, make it double," was her theme.

David Hernandez 48:44

awesome.

PrancingPonyta 48:45

And it was really great, and I loved it. And we were... it's just one of those things where I've known her for so long at this point, she's such a close friend, and now I'm getting to see her start her family, and she's going to raise the next generation of nerds. And, her and her husband unfortunately compromised on a Star Wars theme for the baby's room. I, I'm, I'm okay with that. Star Wars is fine. I was just thinking that I was really sure they were gonna go into a Pokemon theme and they didn't. But, she was really the, the other person who kind of was a professor for a league and, took me to, she took me to my first pre-release as an adult. 'cause I had never done pre-release events prior to going with her. I don't even remember what set it was. Breakthrough maybe. It was a while ago. And, and then, I met my husband 10 years ago, and our first Pokemon thing that we did together was a pre-release, for Team Up.

David Hernandez 49:33

Oh,

PrancingPonyta 49:33

and I think that's why pre-release and, that sealed format's kind of always stuck with both of us. And ever since Team Up, I've made an effort to collect all of the promo cards, from every pre-release since then as kind of marks the thing, that we do together. and it just has completely encompassed me ever, ever since,

David Hernandez 49:50

it's so cool to see how Pokemon's kind of infused with your life away. You spend time with your husband playing it. You've met your friends through it. It just shows how important Pokemon can be to some people, and I love how you've branched off into all these different things. And I feel the same struggle. Like, as much as I play Pokemon Go, 'cause it's, it's the easiest way for me to play since I'm at work and I'm, I'm on the go, obviously, that's why I play it a lot more, I do like, I wish I could dive into the TCG. I wish I could dive into Pokemon Unite. I wish I could dive into the video games more, but it's like I only have so much time. That's gotta be a struggle sometimes for you as well since you love all facets it seems like

PrancingPonyta 50:22

Sometimes it is, especially when I was streaming more often. I've kind of taken a break from streaming for the past almost year. and I'll get into that in, in a moment. But, just as a side note, you can play Pokemon Unite on your mobile device. So since you're already playing Pokemon Go, you can just download Unite and play that. And that is not a sponsored ad in any way, shape, or form. Totally not.

David Hernandez 50:41

Totally not sponsored.

PrancingPonyta 50:43

It's totally not. I'm actually... I, I'm not even working Unite events anymore. so my mom unfortunately passed away a year ago in November. I was actually at LAIC at the time. I was working the event for Pokemon Unite, as I was at the event, she went into ICU, and I actually spoke to her. Well, I couldn't speak on the phone because I was in another country, and I didn't have phone service, but I, I had data, so I was texting her, and my last communication with her was actually sending her a picture of some gardenias that were growing wild outside of the convention center because gardenias were my grandmother's favorite flower. So every time I see them, I would send a picture of them to my mom and, tell her, "Hey, look, Grandma's favorite flower." and they were just... They were so beautiful. There were so many of them, and I sent her that photo outside the convention center and, and her response was just, "Wow." And that was the last correspondence I had with her. And then a couple of days later, as I was getting ready to leave Brazil My sister was messaging me. She was like, "Hey, is there any way you can get to Florida? Mom's in ICU." And I was like, "As soon as my plane lands in the US, I will immediately get on another plane to Florida. I will divert if I have to." by the time I had landed back in the US, I didn't have phone service for the entire, like, nine or 10-hour flight, that I was flying from Brazil back to the States. By the time my plane had landed, we already had a palliative care doctor that was trying to talk to my sister and myself about my mom's condition. My mom had been heavily sedated. She wasn't able to talk anymore. We weren't even sure if she was aware we were there. My sister was already in Florida with her at that time in the ICU. We were trying to make plans, for surgery, for recovery, for her therapy or whatever she was gonna need. We were making plans where she would be there for a month, and then I would be there for a month. We were trying to do all of these things. and I mean, this was a week before Thanksgiving. It was actually only a couple days before Thanksgiving because I believe LAIC at that time was a week before Thanksgiving. So I basically landed back in Texas, had Thanksgiving with my husband and my father, and then, like, the very next day I flew to Florida and I stayed in Florida for almost a month, with my mom. She passed a few days later, and we were left with her house. It, it was all very sudden and unexpected. she was fine one minute and then gone. And, this is really the first time I'm able to actually even talk about it. I haven't talked about it to a lot of people. Like, there's a few people I've mentioned it to, but I haven't really talked publicly about it. so it was, it was a very jarring experience for myself and for my sister, and we were overwhelmed with a lot of things that we suddenly had to take care of, and we were kind of stuck in Florida at my mom's house taking care of her estate and her things and trying to pack things up and get her house ready to sell and get rid of all of her things. My stepfather had passed away two years prior. So, she was still suffering from that and dealing with that, so we still had a lot of his things that were there to deal with as well. So it was a lot for us. So I pretty much stopped streaming right before we went to LAIC. I had pretty much stopped playing Unite for a little bit because I was getting ready to go work the event, and then I came back and had all of that to deal with, and I dealt with that for months. and my mother had left us, a trust fund, and I was able to access some of the money from that trust fund, and I used it to build, my first custom computer. And I was like, "This is gonna be my streaming computer. It's gonna be my streaming setup." And I built this beautiful, wonderful computer that I've pretty much always wanted. It's, like, my dream build. it took me months to build it. And I've hardly even used it to stream or do anything with because every time I sit down at it, I just think about my mom, and it took me a while to kind of get past that. and then sometime past that, my husband and I decided that we just didn't have enough room in our house and in our game room, and we were thinking about moving, and we'd been looking at houses, and we started packing things, and then they were talking about building a data center right near where we are, and we were like, "Well, we don't know if we want to live near a data center." So there was a lot of things happening all at once that kind of stopped me from streaming and stopped me from playing Unite and playing the TCG and had me really distracted with real life. But I was still kind of there doing things. I just obviously wasn't as focused on it, so I wasn't as good at it because I wasn't practicing anymore. And then we eventually made the decision to stay put, just invest money in fixing up our house. I actually built an addition onto the house that we now call my studio. It's still a work in progress, but there have been some pictures posted on my Facebook and on Twitter. Really the big thing that showed that a lot of people were interested in was I bought one of the Pokemon pinball machines, and that's out there in my studio And that has had us distracted for the last few days because it just got installed a few days ago So every time I go out there to try to do some work and bring things out there and decorate and get things set up, I just have to stop and play the pinball machine for a little bit. And then, we scheduled this interview, so I didn't wanna tear my computer down and bring it out there until I finished doing this, 'cause I was like, "Oh, I don't wanna mess with my computer setup and screw something up before I get it into the new studio, so let me just leave the computer where it is." so you know, there's just kind of a lot of things that have had us distracted, especially me, that have kept me away from playing Pokemon Unite, that have kept me away from streaming. So I really haven't been, I haven't had as big of a presence in the community. But I was still going and working events. I was still going competing. my husband and I went to EUIC and we played the TCG, and it was really our first time going to an international event outside of the US, 'cause we have gone to NAIC quite a few times to play and to work, 'cause he also works Pokemon events. And it was our first time going to an international outside of the country that we didn't have to work. So we actually had more free time to actually kind of see the country and see things, whereas when we go and work Pokemon events, we're really locked down to working that event. You have long days usually, especially when you're on that Unite team. You start earlier than every other team, and you're usually there later than every other team until it gets to championship Sunday, when you're usually the first team done and then you have to run side events until who knows how long So, when you work those events, they really have you locked down and focused. By the time you're done, you're exhausted, unless you're really, really young and you have all the stamina in the world like I used to when I was in my early 20s and I could work all day and then go out and party all night. I can't do that anymore So at the end of a long day of working and being on my feet and talking to people and tutoring people and working with, competitors and, having to maintain, impartialness as a judge, and the things that I've seen backstage, the emotions I've seen, I'm a very empathetic person, and I can't help but feel some of that. especially at this last Worlds where very shortly prior to Worlds they announced that this was going to be the last world championships for Pokemon Unite, that it was going to move to just TPC region, and it was going to be taken over by Japan, and they were going to run the Aeos Crown, and that was going to be the cumulative tournament for Pokemon Unite. There was not gonna be Unite at LAIC or EUIC or NAIC anymore. No more Pokemon Unite at Worlds. it was very emotional for a lot of us. I'm sure the people who were a part of the Pokken community could probably relate because Pokken was another game that was part of the championship series that eventually got retired. I have been a part of the Pokemon Unite community since inception. I remember the very first Pokemon Unite trailer that we ever got on a Pokemon Direct and how excited I was for this game that looked like the closest thing we were going to get to real Pokemon battles from an anime perspective. And I showed this to everybody, and I was like, "I cannot wait for this game. I'm so excited for this." It was really my first MOBA, and when they did the Japanese beta, I created a Japanese account on my Switch just so I could play the beta, and I played it from start to finish, until they shut the beta down. And then I was, among the people who played it nonstop from the beginning, from the entire five-year run that we've been going. So to take a break from it for as long as I did and to come back to it again recently, even after the announcements that it was, no longer part of the championship series, from the TPCI region, it was kind of refreshing to me 'cause I do love the game and I enjoy it, and they did announce that Jolteon was gonna be a playable character coming, So of course I was like, "Yeah, now I have to definitely start playing Unite again so that I can play Jolteon and be good at Jolteon," 'cause, spoiler alert, I am a terrible Galarian Rapidash player in Pokemon Unite. I wanted so bad to be a good player at Galarian Rapidash, and I think everybody kind of expected it of me. And when people see me on stream, I've done a few tournaments, they expect me to play Galarian Rapidash and be good at it, and I'm not. And I'm so sorry everybody to let you all down. I'm not. But

David Hernandez 59:33

I guess for those curious, who, what are you good at, if that's, it's not

PrancingPonyta 59:35

I'm really good at Cinderace. Cinderace was kind of my, my starter Pokemon where I, I actually started with Absol. Absol was, like, my main in the beginning. and then I l- leaned into Cinderace. I really loved the Pirate Holowear, and that kind of became my main. I'm actually, not high up on the leaderboard, but I am numbered on the leaderboard as, like, a top 1,000 Cinderace player. that's how many games I have in. I have a gold ribbon with Cinderace. It's, it's definitely my favorite, and everybody out there is silently judging me right now for playing an attacker. For playing an auto attacker where all I have to do is push A. And I'm like, "No, there is so much more to this." I am a Blaze Kick Cinderace. You have to kite carefully. There is strategy to this, I promise you, and I used to be a Pyro Ball Cinderace prior to falling in love with the Blaze Kick build. so Cinderace would be my main Pokemon. and in commemoration of this being the last Worlds for Unite and Cinderace kind of being my main, I actually had a Cinderace tattoo done just before Worlds, with Cinderace in his pirate Halloween. So, if anybody ever sees me at an event, feel free to track me down and ask me to show it to you. It's on my leg, so it's not any place I can't show you. and you know what? Unite has just been my whole world for five years, and having it no longer be a part of events, I was in a very unique position that even though I was a competitive player for TCG, and I was working local events, and I was doing, all of these things in my local community as a judge, as an organizer, and I was very involved, and I've been involved for years, for decades, when I was applying for events, I really wasn't getting accepted to work regional events. but the first ever event I actually worked was NAIC. that was actually my first event where I worked as a professor. Whereas most people come in and they start working a regional first before they get accepted to an IC. And I was in a very unique position that I was prominent enough in the Unite community. I knew enough about the game. I knew casters. I knew, people who were working grassroots tournaments. I had done some casting myself. I had helped out with some grassroots tournaments. I had competed. I was streaming it all the time. I had enough of this background in the Unite that when I applied for NAIC I was selected to be one of the first official professors for the Unite team, and we only had three professors who were working the main event at that time. At the time, Esports Engine was kind of the primary people running Pokemon Unite. So it was myself, it was another professor named Daniel, and another professor named Jordy, and we were the three kind of real first professors that got in. Jordy was really the first one who kind of had a head start at this. He had started working it, I believe, in Yokohama, where he had helped out, after He'd finished up, I think he was working TCG, and then he went and helped Unite. and then they kind of phased out Esports Engine and started letting professors really just take over running Unite, and that was when Gaming Gen kind of came in. And Gaming Gen really provided just the tech and the tech support, whereas the professors still did the majority of the work. So we went from a team of, like, three to a team of almost two dozen at one point when we were having, like, our largest team. And this last LAIC that I worked, last November, the professor team had actually been in charge of completely building everything. They provided us the monitors, the switches, all of the equipment, and we built everything from the ground up. and luckily, I know how very specific all of my leads were, so I was able to build things to their specifications and show other people, like, "Hey, I know this is how they're going to want it, so try to do it like this." luckily, it worked out really well, 'cause anybody who remembers LAIC a couple years ago could probably remember what a disaster the stream was. I promise you that had nothing to do with us. It was just some bad equipment. They finally figured it out, and then day two the stream was great.

David Hernandez 1:03:22

I mean, you said so much because, you were chosen to be part of the leadership for Unite even before you got the chance to do regionals. That must've been pretty humbling just to be in that position. Did you kinda feel honored that, oh, you got to bypass in a way?

PrancingPonyta 1:03:34

I, I don't, I feel honored, yes, but also I felt like there was a lot more pressure on me because, and, and I didn't talk about it a lot because I felt like I didn't wanna seem like I was trying to brag or seem like I was above anybody in that sense, because I was aware of the unique position I was in. And because of that position and that opportunity I had been given, when I showed up to that first event, I worked my butt off. I told my husband, I said, "I'm going to show everybody that I deserve to be here, and that I want to be here, and that I want to do this, and that how much I love this game and how badly I wanna be a part of this." And I guess I did something right because I came off of that N- NAIC with an invite to work Worlds in Honolulu, and that was my first ever Worlds. And it was, I worked in the play lab, so I didn't work main event. so you know, I just kinda started to set goals for myself, and I was just so honored to even be chosen to work Worlds, and it was my first Worlds, and I only had one other event under my belt. But I guess I had done something right enough to prove that I knew how to do this job, and I could do it, that they put me, on that crew in Worlds in Honolulu in the play lab and, that was such a different experience. play lab was so different back then than it is nowadays, and especially for Unite, whereas Unite and play lab, I don't even know if they're gonna continue that. In the play lab, they kind of have a, a kiosk with the tablets, whereas back then we had very tiny little cramped stations with monitors and switches, and you were playing three V three On the Switch in these little quarters, and it was very hot, and we were surrounded by glass, and it was like a little greenhouse. But I loved that experience. I left with no voice because I had talked all weekend and tutored people through playing Unite. But that crew and I, we had so much fun. So I went from working with a team with two other guys on main event at NAIC to working with a team of, like, eight people. And, I was meeting new people who also loved Unite, and I was making friends, I was at this point now I'd traveled to Honolulu, some place I've never been before because of Pokemon, because of Unite. And the Pokemon company has made an effort to take really good care of its staff. they pay for us to travel. They pay for our hotels. They try to put us in a good, comfortable hotel. obviously, I had to pay for my husband's ticket. They weren't paying for him to fly.

David Hernandez 1:06:00

Of course.

PrancingPonyta 1:06:01

he's not working, but he was able to stay in the hotel with me. he had to go find his own food, whereas, they catered food for us. and Pokemon Company does really try to take care of their staff and show us how much they appreciate us being there. And things have changed for professors so much over the years, whereas before it used to be just a walk-on role. You would just show up to an event and go, "Hey, I'm here. What can I do to help?" And then they started doing applications, and then it was still just a volunteer position where you paid for your own travel, you paid for your own hotel, you paid for your own food, and you were lucky if you walked away with, like, a promo card or a booster box. And now they give the staff play mats that say staff. They give you cards with a staff stamp. You get booster boxes. pretty much every event in the US now, you actually get paid an hourly wage. there's a lot of events now where they will comp your hotel, or they'll give you a travel stipend. So, like, I know everybody thinks it's all about the perks, but it is so much work, and you really are held to a higher standard than everybody else around you. Because not only are you expected to know the game and the rules and be impartial, not show favoritism, which for me, honestly, has been one of the hardest things because I enjoy people, and I wanna talk to everybody, and I wanna be friendly with everybody. And when I was working Unite and I was seeing the same teams or even, not even the same teams, the same players, 'cause the players would bounce around to different teams, and you get familiar with everybody, and these are people that I watch their streams, and you can't be friends with them at the event. You can be friends with them, but you still have to be impartial. There's always that little part of me that wants to give everybody leniency and cut some slack, but you still have to uphold the rules of the rule book the way it's intended. And I can give my husband credit, 'cause he's a lot better about that, especially in the TCG where even when I'm playing and he has to come make a ruling at my table that I'm at, he's like, You screwed up, and you should know better. So I'm not gonna sh- you don't get any mercy from me."

David Hernandez 1:08:03

I think it also just shows how important it is to understand the Pokemon brand, because it's easy to kinda just say, "Oh, I'm officially sponsored by Pokemon," take it to your head. like you said, there's a lot of weight that comes to it. There's a lot of pressure that comes with that branding on you, whether you are a judge, whether you're a content creator, whatever have you. If you are a part of Pokemon in some capacity, you're gonna feel it, and I think people kinda don't realize that. To me, I consider it-- They used to call it, back when I was in college, they called it a fishbowl, where people kinda watched what you did, whether good and bad, and I think that's kind of what I kinda see from y'all to where, yes, you were invested into these people. You know them, 'cause, you're part of the community. How could you not know them? That's why you're there. But at the same time, you represent Pokemon, and you've gotta call it fair, 'cause otherwise, Pokemon's gonna face the heat, not

PrancingPonyta 1:08:52

Yeah Absolutely. I mean, I don't know how many times I saw a competitor have a rough run. and I've actually seen competitors crying, just break down crying backstage. And the compassionate person in me wants to put my arm around you and give you a hug. But the judge in me knows I can't do that, and I have to just give you your space and give you time and be empathetic as best as I can from a judge standpoint. and if I was out on the floor and that was something that was happening out on the floor, and it was a table of two people playing TCG, and I've actually had that in, happen before as a TCG judge, where there's two players and time is called, and they've, they're at the end of turns and they still don't have a winner, and it, and it's like, We have to move this along now, guys." And you can see it's very emotional, and it's very difficult for these two players because it's like, do we take this tie, or does one of them give the win to the other one so the other one can move on? And you can see it on the players. and the best I can do is, is pressure them. Like, "Hey guys, we really need to keep this moving. We really need to, we need to have an answer. We, I need you guys to, to give me a winner here. We need to have an answer." and you see the emotions. And you have to do your best to kind of separate yourself from that. and I remember that LA IC a couple years ago where I was a stage judge, and we had all of those technical issues, and it wasn't anything the players had done wrong. It wasn't anything that the staff had really done wrong, especially the judges who were there for Pokemon. And we were facing so much heat. We were facing so much scrutiny. even the casters, who had absolutely nothing to do with any of this and were just trying to fill time on the screen, were getting faced with hate and scrutiny. my husband was not with me at LA IC at the time, but he was watching on Twitch, and he was watching on YouTube. And he was the one who was actually reporting a lot of these comments that people were making, about the players and the judges and the staff and the casters. And, and then he would text me, and, I would look at my phone, and I would say something to production like, "Hey, is anybody watching this? Because this is, this is getting unruly, and maybe people need to be timed out." it was the most stressful event for me, and I'll never forget it because of how stressful it was. Because I was there alone. I was in a foreign country. I didn't speak the native language. almost all of the staff were speaking in Spanish, or Portuguese, because that's their native language, and it's faster and easier for them to talk in that language than it is for them to try and talk in English so I can understand them. So I, understand a little bit, and I would be able to stand back and catch some of it and kind of understand what's going on, but they would talk to each other, and then they would have to translate to me what needs to be done. And luckily, by the end of the event, I'd already picked it up and knew what needed to be done. But I was there alone. I didn't have my husband. I didn't have my service dog with me because I had never been- traveled, to a foreign country with my service dog, so I left him home. I really did feel very alone in this foreign country, off of the most stressful event I'd ever had, where we had all these tech issues, where we had players who were frustrated, and they were taking out those frustrations on everybody around them. And I was frustrated for these players who had traveled to this country to play this game, and we were having all these difficulties making it hard for them to play. And I remember just going back to my hotel room that night and calling my husband and crying because I was just so exhausted. I'd had a 13-hour day on my feet of doing everything, 'cause we show up long before the doors open, and we do network testing. And then we're there after everybody leaves usually, cleaning up, having a breakdown meeting, whatever we all need to talk about, and then we're there again early the next morning. So, a lot of us are running on very limited sleep, especially if you're like me and you get up early to do your hair and your makeup.

David Hernandez 1:12:32

Mm-hmm.

PrancingPonyta 1:12:33

So I just remember that being one of the most difficult and stressful events, so having a much easier day two, It made me feel a lot better about going back to that event. And it, and it's a very difficult event. And, a lot of people always joke that LAIC is kind of the red-headed stepchild of the ICs. the way the country does things is a lot different. People, don't get paid, the way they get paid for, like, NAIC or EUIC or even Worlds. the compensation package is a little different. We get Brazilian Portuguese booster boxes, which, aren't worth as much. So professors who sell their kits, generally aren't making as much money. at the time last year when my husband and I both had actually got accepted to work LAIC, we went, taking time off from our regular jobs. So a lot of people are like, "Oh, you have to take time off from your regular job, so you lose money, 'cause you're not working your regular job. and you're using up your vacation time, you're using your paid days off." And one of the main reasons my husband and I were actually taking that cut from our main jobs to go work LAIC was just so we could sell our compensation kits, because we knew we would make more money selling our compensation kits together than we would staying home and working. and at the time, I had a cat who needed a very expensive surgery. It was gonna be like a $900 surgery. I was actually getting a lot of scrutiny from people who were like, "Well, how can you afford to go on this trip but you can't afford to have this surgery for your cat?" And I was like, "You don't understand. This is a work trip, and I'm going on this trip to afford this surgery for this cat." And that was what we did, was we went, we sold pretty much everything we'd gotten from the event, and we came back. Luckily, the surgery ended up not being as big of a deal, and it didn't cost nearly that much, so it was a huge sigh of relief, but I was coming back to my mom in hospice. So it was still a lot going on for us at that time. events are very stressful, and it's not always about the compensation. I get a fulfillment and a high off of actually doing the work and being that influence on people, especially in side events. I love people who maybe have their first experience with that game in side events. people who come over and they're like, "Oh, I've never played Unite before." I remember very specifically one event that stands out to me, Worlds last year There was a little boy who it was his first time playing Unite with other people in person, and his dad was standing next to me on the sidelines watching him, and he was on a team, with some other players, some, some kind of more experienced players. And you could tell his first game he was a little bit shy, but he started warming up. He started making calls, and then he started trash-talking, and it was just, it was the cutest thing. And you could see this dad just beaming at his child's experience with Unite and how excited he was for his kid. And, and I remember that experience, and I remember this kid leaving there with his two out of three wins with his team and how good the rest... Like, all of these adults who were on this team with this kid treated him like he was an equal and helped him through this. and it really was like a, it was almost like a team-building exercise, and it really just goes to show what a community Unite is and how much everybody comes together. and shout-out to Bridget, because Bridget, I remember, was actually on that team with that boy at that time, and she was one of the ones who was really a big influence in helping him through that. So shout-out Bridget, if you ever hear this

David Hernandez 1:15:42

And the last question I want to ask to put a bow on the Unite section of your interview, with Unite exiting the world championship, what do you think you're gonna miss most from it not being part of it now?

PrancingPonyta 1:15:53

I think I'm definitely going to miss a lot of the competitors because a lot of the people who were on staff working Unite are going to continue to work Pokemon events in other areas. But a lot of the competitors, because I was a judge and I was impartial, I never really developed a personal relationship with them. we're not friends on Facebook. I maybe follow them on Twitter, but, like, we don't talk in the DMs, we don't talk in the Discord, and events was really the only time I saw them. And there's a lot of those people who now that there's no Unite at these big events, they're not going to continue on with another game, and they're just not going to come back. Or they will continue on with Unite, for as long as Unite is a thing that they can keep playing, but I won't get to see them at events because there won't be any more events that we, cross paths at. obviously they've announced the Aeos Crown for late March, being the finals in Japan next year, and we're already making plans to try to go and spectate that, just to be there. Because, there's always the worry that when a game like this is cut off, it's we're gonna see end of service. if this is the end of the life of Unite, I would like to be there for this tournament, and I, and I just kinda wanna be there to see another big tournament in Japan, 'cause Japan really does go all out for Unite. It's huge over there. I really think that'll be the thing I miss the most, is seeing the competitors, that I've grown really attached to just seeing their faces and knowing who they are, and they're... watching them play on stage and on a, a competitive circuit like that. I won't get to experience that with them in person anymore

David Hernandez 1:17:24

So we left off with the Pokemon games back in Johto, and I wanted to ask, like, do you have a pick or set of games just with the main series games that you enjoyed the most, like region-wise?

PrancingPonyta 1:17:33

that's kinda hard to say. I really did enjoy Black and White because I feel like that touched on, the city and it was a little nostalgic for me from my time growing up in New York. But X and Y was also another region that I really enjoyed kind of getting that first 3D experience on the DS. it also still made me a little bit more nostalgic for that sprite style that we had on the DS or on all the handheld versions prior to that.

David Hernandez 1:17:59

Yeah

PrancingPonyta 1:17:59

and every time we get a wonderful remake, and I have to emphasize wonderful remake because Brilliant Diamond and Shining Pearl, Br- Brilliant Diamond and Shining Pearl were not wonderful remakes.

David Hernandez 1:18:11

not it apparently for you.

PrancingPonyta 1:18:12

Not for me, no. But HeartGold and SoulSilver were amazing. And getting to revisit Johto through HeartGold and SoulSilver was wonderful. and then when we got the Switch and I was able to have the game in my hand in those kinds of graphics, I really, to this day, still speak very highly of Let's Go Pikachu and Eevee and how beautiful those games were, and what a wonderful way to revisit Kanto those games were. they really gave us something unique that nothing else gave us. I wasn't a big fan of the, the wild encounter being very Pokemon Go style, but I kind of get what Pokemon was doing trying to endear themselves to a more casual crowd. and there was a lot less battling. But being able to see Pokemon in the overworld, being able to see shiny Pokemon in the overworld for the first time. Like, you could just be standing in a field and all of a sudden a shiny Rapidash would pop up out of the grass and run around on the screen, and you had to encounter it before it disappeared. shiny hunting in that game was amazing. And then, of course, I still have some of my roots and my love in the Galar region. I know a lot of people gave Galar so much crap. They gave that game probably more crap than it deserves. But in a way, playing through Scarlet and Violet, playing through Legends ZA, even playing through Legends Arceus, which I loved Legends Arceus. That was a beautiful game that was so much fun, and I'm dying to go back to it. But like you said, so many games, so little time. My husband and I actually talked fondly about Galar and how we are a little bit nostalgic for Sword and Shield, 'cause that was really the first game that we played together. Like, we, when we got together, Sun and Moon was kind of the thing, and I bought Ultra Sun, Ultra Moon for us to play together, but he never really got into it. So when we got the Switch, we really played through Galar together for the first time with Sword and Shield, and it was also the first game we played together with our friends, with our communal friend group. So that's kind of something that makes it a little nostalgic for us there. So there's a lot about Galar that's kind of nostalgic for me too. So obviously some regions stand out more than others. but I think every region was beautiful in the way it was crafted. I think Hoenn was a beautiful region. Sinnoh, another beautiful region. I mean, every- everything has been done with a wonderful theme, a wonderful cast of Pokemon. Obviously there's some that, maybe just like you said, stick out a little bit more than others and there are just so many games and so little time and I would, I would love to maybe one day do like a whole long year-long stream where I just play every game sequentially starting from Red and work my way up to S- Scarlet and Violet, and just go all the way through. That, that would be a lot of fun to me. But there's so many side games. There's so many Mystery Dungeon games, That's another game series that I really did love. I loved Snap, but I really did love Mystery Dungeon and, and the way that that game was just so different for Pokemon at the time. I really wish they would bring back Quest, 'cause I love tactic style games like that. So give us Quest, and as far as games that aren't around anymore, I, I never really got into Pokken, so I can't say Pokken was something. I wanted to get into Pokken because to me that was like real time battling as close as we were gonna get to battles the way they portrayed them in the anime, until we had Unite. And there's been so many Pokemon games over the years that have kind of come and gone, and I wanna say, oh, I, I kept saying, I realize I've been saying Pokemon Quest and I meant to say Conquest. Pokemon Quest is the other game that is fun that we never saw here in the US as many, expansions as other countries have seen. And another game that comes to mind is Pokemon Duel. That was actually a game my husband and I played a lot when we first met, when we were first dating, and he was working nights, and I would stay up late, and we would play Duel on our phones together. and that was just one of the, and that game being gone, being discontinued because it was a mobile game and they can just cut it off at any time, is, is just one of those things I'm like, "Man, I, I'm nostalgic for that. I miss that." And there's still so many games that I'm like, how did this outlive Duel,

David Hernandez 1:22:17

Dang

PrancingPonyta 1:22:17

Shuffle, I know people love their puzzle games. Cafe Remix, Magikarp Jump. I don't even know what else is still on mobile right now. Masters.

David Hernandez 1:22:28

We just haven't got

PrancingPonyta 1:22:28

Yeah.

David Hernandez 1:22:29

years.

PrancingPonyta 1:22:30

So there's so many games that you can still play on your phone. Even Go being, being around for 10 years is crazy. There's people who really didn't think it was gonna last that long.

David Hernandez 1:22:41

Right

PrancingPonyta 1:22:41

but man, I miss Pokemon Duel, and I hope everybody else out there, who has ever played it sentiments that

David Hernandez 1:22:47

I will say the one game, I know it's never gonna happen, but one I've always hoped that would come back would be Pokemon Puzzle League. I really kind of enjoyed the puzzle. I know we're talking about puzzles, but I just kinda enjoyed that little verses and it kinda confused the Pokemon with the anime. I don't know, I just enjoyed it. I always

PrancingPonyta 1:23:02

I was just gonna say in a way they brought back Pokemon Pinball, they just gave us a real pinball machine

David Hernandez 1:23:06

Hey, there you go. Maybe we'll get a real Pokemon Puzzle League where I have to drop bricks down. I mean, I'd be down for that.

PrancingPonyta 1:23:13

I mean, you never know. I think it would be a really cool thing where if they gave us, a Pokemon game kind of like WarioWare, where they just gave us a Pokemon game with a whole bunch of just mini-games, and they used all the mini-games from, like, N64 games

David Hernandez 1:23:24

That's what I'm saying. With, with what they made with the Pokemon Stadium, Pokemon Stadium 2, I'm surprised they haven't made a Wario Wire type of Pokemon game where they have all different mini-games. That would be such a cool way to do it

PrancingPonyta 1:23:34

I agree. Yeah, that would be, that would be amazing. just a full mini-game setup, But there's so many puzzle games out there, and Puzzle League, Trozei, that, those were all pretty good puzzle games, and I think they're better than Shuffle

David Hernandez 1:23:48

I never got into Shuffle, so I can't really say, but

PrancingPonyta 1:23:50

I really tried. I really did. I wanted to like Shuffle. I have every Pokemon game that you could possibly get downloaded on my phone, but most of them I don't play anymore. They just sit there and they look like cool icons on my phone

David Hernandez 1:24:00

Well, Prancing Ponyta, I, I wanna finish on a fun question to finish off this interview. Thank you for being an awesome guest. Thank you for sharing your story. It's been great.

PrancingPonyta 1:24:07

Thanks for having me.

David Hernandez 1:24:09

and here's the question. It's gonna be a fun one. If somebody was gonna challenge you to a Pokemon battle, what six Pokemon would you bring to the battle?

PrancingPonyta 1:24:15

Uh, Magikarps. All Magikarp. No, I'm just kidding. That is, that's actually a joke I make pretty regularly, where somebody's always like, "What, what's something ridiculous you would do to really annoy somebody else?" And I'm like, "Oh, I would challenge them to a Pokemon battle and I would use a team of all six Magikarps."

David Hernandez 1:24:33

And the Magikarp, and then the Magikarp going, "When I evolve, I'm gonna kick your you know what."

PrancingPonyta 1:24:38

Yeah. So that's actually a running joke. actually, this is, this is something that recently I struggled with, was building my dream team of six from all generations. So a while back, not even a while back, it was maybe like a month ago, maybe a little longer than that, there was a really big AI frenzy that was going on online where people were doing, themselves on the cover of a magazine with like Champion Trainer and their team of six, or their, their ace Pokemon or whatever it was they were doing. And it was driving me crazy because I hate AI art along with many other people, and I'm a real fan of supporting real artists. And I have a wonderful artist who has done almost all of my artwork, a guy completely separate from the one who designed my, my logo, who designed my Prancing Ponyta logo. this artist, shout out to him, his name is, Old Trainer Gustavo or Gustavo Old Trainer. You can find him on Instagram, and I think you can find him on Etsy as well. And he is the one I've had do all of my artwork for like my banners and my profile pictures and things like that. And he does the old school Ken Sugimori style art, and that was one of the reasons I picked him was it's, it's a beautiful art style. It's very nostalgic to me. It's classic. and I'm old, and it's a throwback for me. So having somebody do that artwork for me, the first thing I had him draw was me on a Ponyta on a Galarian Ponyta with a Jolteon in the saddle with me. It was very Western. It was very classic. And those are, two of the Pokemon. Every- obviously everybody associates me with Galarian Ponyta, and not a lot of people know that Jolteon's actually my favorite Pokemon, so Jolteon kind of makes its way into all of my artwork. So the first piece he did for me was that. It was based on an old Western photo that's a very classic photo of a cowboy, on a horse, and he's got his dog in the saddle with him. And then the second picture I had him do for me was actually a photo of myself and my husband, and I had it printed as a play mat, and it's us, riding Kanto Ponytas. And he actually did two variations of this for me, where one of them is a shiny Ponyta. and we're on two Ponytas with ropes, and we're kind of herding, this stampede of Tauroses with a Jolteon in the back kind of being the herd dog. and it was another artwork that had been in my mind for a while, and I finally had him do it. And then the third piece I had him do, I kind of wanted to counteract all of the AI art we were seeing with these magazine covers out there, and I reached out to him and I was like, "Hey, I'm sure you're familiar with this trend. I would like you to do a piece of art for me in this style, but I want it old school so that it looks like the old Pokemon Power magazines." I don't know if you remember those So I was like, "I kinda wanna do it like that," where obviously the old Pokemon Power magazines use the Ken Sugimori art styles, but, make it look like a magazine for almost modern day, where it has me on there with my team of six, and it says something like, "Champion trainer exclusive interview," blah, blah, blah. anything else that looks like a cool headline that you could think of. And he was like, "Oh my God, I love this idea. Yes, let's do this. Who do you want your six Pokemon to be?" And I knew who I wanted two of my Pokemon to be, but after that, I kind of was like, "Oh my gosh, who would my team be?" So of course, the first two Pokemon were gonna be Jolteon, and it was gonna be Galarian Rapidash. But then I kinda waffled a little bit, and I was like, "Would it be Galarian Rapidash, or would it be Kanto Rapidash?" And I was like, "No, it kinda needs to be Galarian Rapidash," because I evolved from Galarian Ponyta, and that's kind of my, my symbol, my moniker, That's what people know me as. So I was like, "So it has to be Galarian Rapidash." So then competitive brain is like, "Well, this needs to be a well-rounded team." there's a lot of people out there who are obviously grass trainers, and they're gonna run with all grass Pokemon, but I've already got two different Pokemon. I was like, "But at the same time, I kinda feel like I should run with a theme here, But I wanna make sure it's all Pokemon that I really like." So I spent, like, a week on this,

David Hernandez 1:28:31

Oh,

PrancingPonyta 1:28:32

down all the different Pokemon that I liked or that I'd ever used and that I had come attached to from one game or n- or another, and then separating them by their types, separating them by if they were starter Pokemon, things like that, 'cause I was like, "Oh, I don't feel like I should have, more than one starter Pokemon on my team. That, that feels a little unbalanced. I'm not Ash. I don't h- magically get every starter Pokemon somehow." So it just led into this whole rabbit hole of things, of research. Not, not necessarily research, but of just a thought process of putting things together and trying to make the Pokemon come together and make sense. And I finally, I came up with the five definitive ones, and then my last one was really difficult. So we had Jolteon. We had Galarian Rapidash. I felt like the next Pokemon that made sense was to put Tauros on my team. Tauros had already appeared in one of my pieces of artwork. But then I thought to myself, "Do I want this to be Kanto Tauros, who is a normal type?" Or do I wanna pick one of the new Paldean Tauroses? And the new Paldean Tauroses obviously have different typings. They're fighting, but they could be straight fighting, they could be fighting fire, fighting water. So I was like, "All right, I need to think on this for a minute and come back to that, but I think it'll probably be one of those Tauroses." So I was like, "Let me kind of work on the rest of the team and see where I come out from there." So then I decided that Cinderace needed to be on my team because Cinderace was my main Pokemon in Unite. I was pretty well known for that at that point. And I was like, "All right, if Cinderace will be my fire Pokemon, and it'll be my starter Pokemon," and it kind of makes sense because it's almost like Galar was my starting region, which Galar was, where my whole streaming and my moniker and everything kinda got started. So I was like, "All right, it makes sense to have Cinderace," which that knocks off the fire fighting version of Paldean Tauros. So I decided to go with just the regular Paldean Tauros, who was just straight fighting style, by the way. so then we came into what is gonna be the next Pokemon. Well, to round out this team, I thought, "Well, I need a grass type or a ghost type." And I really wanted to put, like, an axolotl Pokemon on my team, and I was leaning towards it being Dragapult at first to have a ghost type and a dragon type on there. But in my mind, I was like, "Oh, it kind of feels like too many Galar Pokemon. That's three Galar Pokemon on a team." and in a way it still made sense, but I was trying to spread things out over the generations. I was kind of going back to what my character designs had been in all of my previous artworks, and he'd always drawn me as kind of a Western style, jeans, boots, cowboy hat, which not a lot of people have seen me in real life with a cowboy hat on, but I rock a cowboy hat.

David Hernandez 1:31:14

Oh, yeah

PrancingPonyta 1:31:15

and I kinda thought, "Well, you know who is a surprising Pokemon that I like, and a lot of people kind of overlook it, and gave this Pokemon a lot of crap, was Brambleghast

David Hernandez 1:31:27

Oh, yes. I love that

PrancingPonyta 1:31:29

The tumbleweed Pokemon and I was like, that's very fitting for Texas and for the theme that I'm going with here. So I was like, I kind of feel like it's a ghost Pokemon, it's a grass Pokemon. I think this is a great Pokemon for my team. It fits the theme. It's got the type. It's a new Pokemon from Paldea and I have two Paldea Pokemon. I have two Galarian Pokemon. I have a Kanto Pokemon and I was like, all right, so I need to branch out here. And I really wanted to pick a Pokemon from Johto, but I just couldn't quite land on the right Pokemon and I was like, I really need something to finish this out. I was leaning towards a water type. I was like, oh, well, I really would love to have like Mudkip, have s- but I'm not a big fan of Swampert. I love Mudkip, but not Swampert. Same thing with Wooper. I love Wooper, but not really, Clods- so I was like, Galarian Clodsire or, or Paldean Clodsire maybe, and I was like, no, then I'm going back into I have three Paldean Pokemon. so the last two Pokemon I had settled on were either going to be Scolipede or Dragalge. And I really love seahorses and like leafy sea dragons, weedy sea dragons, and I was like, oh, it's a horse, kind of makes sense with the Western theme, but at the same time, it's a seahorse, so it doesn't.

David Hernandez 1:32:40

Right

PrancingPonyta 1:32:40

I was waffling back and forth on that one, and I really wasn't sure where I wanted to go, and I finally decided, on Scolipede. And Scolipede had actually ended up being one of my main Pokemon in my playthrough of Legends ZA. and he actually, I don't know, he, he looked really cool in ZA. I almost felt like he looked cute. it endeared me in that game. in my mind, Scolipede made sense as well because something we encounter a lot out here where I live are giant desert centipedes. And as much as I don't like to encounter them in the wild in real life I don't really have a problem with Scolipede. And I thought he was... And in a, another way, a little history for people who don't know Scolipede is kind of based on a Centaurian warrior, which is why he stands on four legs and he kind of has like almost a centaur build to him. so he's kind of horse-like. There's people who akin him to being horse-like in that sense, in his build. So the final six team that I decided on was Jolteon, Galarian Rapidash, Paldean Tauros, the fighting type, Cinderace, Brambleghast, and actually my Brambleghast is a shiny Brambleghast. I thought I should have one shiny Pokemon on my team, and I thought shiny Brambleghast was inconspicuous enough 'cause it only barely looks different, and Scolipede. It was really hard picking that sixth one

David Hernandez 1:34:00

I'll be honest, it's refreshing to see somebody have to put so much thought into their favorite Pokemon, 'cause I had to do the same thing. I haven't done it since, I think, before Sword and Shield. It's been a while. But what I did, I listed out the Pokemon that immediately caught my attention from each generation, and then I just did a tournament to see which one would win the most. And then the playoffs would be basically my favorite team, and that's kinda how I decided it. So I'm kind of... I'm glad I'm not the only one who struggles trying to figure out their favorite Pokemon, 'cause it's a tough task sometimes

PrancingPonyta 1:34:27

It really is, and I had s- like a two-page long list, and of course a lot of Pokemon overlap in type. like Meowscarada was on that list. Meowscarada's both grass and dark, so you know, I'm just going through this list and it's almost like I'm playing MASH and crossing things off as I'm going through it

David Hernandez 1:34:42

Yes, yes, yes. for me, I think the issue was I had either too many water types or too many, I think, I think it was steel types. One or the other. It was one or, water or steel, and I was like, "I don't wanna have too much of the other," 'cause, ah, there's just so much Pokemon to choose from

PrancingPonyta 1:34:58

I definitely feel like I ended up with a lot of fire type Pokemon and ghost type Pokemon, and even a few dragons. And for my team to not end up with a dragon Pokemon, for me to love dragons as much as I do is a little crazy, and I'm sure I would probably redo my team at a t- another time. and that's why Dragalge was kind of there on the back burner as, like, that, that seventh Pokemon. Everybody always talks about, like, what's the 51st card in your deck? Well, Dragalge is the seventh Pokemon on my team. and obviously no other electric Pokemon was gonna shine over Jolteon, even though there are other electric Pokemon that I love. I'm a big fan of Galvantula. In real life, I actually love tarantulas. If I see a tarantula out in the wild, I stop and pick it up. I'm the person that everybody calls when there's a tarantula on their front step, 'cause they're like, "Hey, can you come and remove this for me?" N- not even two weeks ago, a friend of mine was like, "Hey, a snake crawled up under my car. What do I do?" And I was like, "I'll be there in five minutes

David Hernandez 1:35:51

Now, do you have issues trying to figure out these Pokemon, or do you go through the same thought process that we just did? Let me know by tagging me on As The Pokeball Turns on any social medias. But for now, thank you for listening to As The Pokeball Turns, where every trainer has a story. If the episode resonated with you, share the episode with a fellow trainer and follow the podcast for more voices, more journeys, and more memories. I'm David Hernandez, and remember, your next Pokemon adventure begins here!