Hello again. Have a new and improved genetics theory.

Why redo that theory? Well. First off, in a couple of places the implications it had were simply wrong. The old explanation of Azurill and Marill's different sex ratios would have meant that they were completely independent: some male Azurill would turn into female Marill, which is not the case. And, in a really silly oversight, it implied that the ability to use particular egg moves was passed straight down the male line - rather than being a product of the father's species combined with the offspring's, as it should have been. (It also didn't explain at all why only moves the father actually knows are passed down, rather than simply any moves the father can learn.)

Secondly, some parts of it were kind of generally dodgy and had been bugging me for a bit. Like the fact that, despite there being no logical reason this should be the case, a sex strand originating from the paternal genome dictates that the Pokémon should be male, and one from the maternal genome dictates that it should be female. And the fact that it would have implied IV inheritance ought to be uneven. And the fact that, despite there being no crossover between genes in the maternal and paternal genomes of any Pokémon, somehow they were supposed to stay compatible and consistent enough to produce perfectly equivalent sex strands.

So yeah. The new theory is more complicated, but also makes more sense and benefits from the fact I know more about genetics than I did when I made up the original. I'm going to add a bit to the fan theory guide, hopefully tomorrow, using the new genetics theory as an example to illustrate the process, but right now I'm tired and should go to bed.

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Sorry for the lack of updates recently. My laptop went weird again, and then there were tests and the holidays.

At least I've now finished a page I've been working on for a while, mostly to get into words the ways that so many Pokémon theories irk me: Making Fan Theories. I'll probably tinker with it a bit more - I'm thinking about adding a more concrete example - but at least it lays out some useful basic principles as it is.

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So yes, I did go and add a couple of charts to the R/B/Y capture algorithm page, basically showing how the effectiveness rate of each type of Pokéball changes as you lower a Pokémon's HP, as that's the most interesting thing to make charts of. There is one in the real-world examples section for low catch rates (Mewtwo) and one in the section for high catch rates (Nidoran).

UPDATE EDIT: I made the lines on the graphs correspond to the colors of their respective balls. Because I shouldn't be working right now or anything.

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Somebody pointed out an off-by-one error on my R/B/Y capture algorithm page (a less than should have been a less than or equal to, and as a result C in the probability formula should have been C + 1), so I went through it all again fixing that and updating the various calculations as well as the catch rate calculator accordingly. The real-world significance of this is basically that Pokémon with low catch rates are a little easier to catch under all circumstances than the page originally stated.

I'm thinking about updating that section to have graphs to illustrate some of the calculations in the mathy bit. Odds are nobody cares, but I do.

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You are now just one year
from a ten-year career.
Happy birthday, dear website!
You'll make it; don't fear.

Or, to put it in terms that don't include stilted poetry, The Cave of Dragonflies is nine years old today. Today was also, by a beautiful coincidence, the day I finally got my laptop back. So here's the new fake Pokémon guide, finally. It is about five gazillion times more helpful than the old one, largely because it is now actually centered around giving advice instead of making a couple of tips and then padding itself out with stat and move tables for eleven silly fakes. Despite this, I know that there will probably be people who will insist that they want to read the old one, so yes, fine, it's still around.

In addition to this, as I had mentioned, I rewrote the Kinds of Content section. The biggest change is that there are now six types of content rather than five; I decided (after my little ramble about reviews in Sections that Suck) that actually entertaining content deserves to be considered a content type of its own instead of lumping it in with interesting content. It is also just more detailed, goes more thoroughly into the pros and cons of each content type (including being less dismissive of journalistic content and less worshipping the ground interesting content walks on) and sounds less like an advertisement.

Hope that constitutes an adequate birthday update. Now to get to some of the other stuff I've been meaning to do for ages.

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My laptop is still in repairs. Apparently, despite that the keyboard was just about the only thing that was still working just fine, the keyboard was somehow the cause of all the problems and they had to order a new keyboard from abroad which is taking a while to arrive. I did, however, get to come in and copy some files off the hard drive yesterday, so at least I now have my work on the fake Pokémon guide so far.

Anyway, I more-or-less-entirely rewrote my affiliation requirements. I sort of meant for them to end up shorter, but they ended up mostly the same length, just tackling things a bit differently and hopefully illuminating better the three main reasons I cite when I reject affiliation requests and how to avoid them. The way it used to be, it kind of jumped back and forth naming individual things on websites that bug me, which had rather too much overlap with the website tips; now it tries to group things together and talk more about how everything has to do with affiliation in particular.

For the fourth time, I'm going to be attending the London MCM Expo with some of my UK-based friends. If you are too and would potentially like to say hi, you can drop me a line. I'm heading off tomorrow, so don't expect anything to be happening until the end of October. More stuff will be coming when I get back from England.

UPDATE EDIT: I rewrote my thought on the Mew trick, because something about it had been bugging me for a long, long time and the work I've been doing for the new Kinds of Content section led me to fully realize what it was. Now it actually has a point, instead of just being an anecdote for the sake of an anecdote. Fancy that.

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It's amazing how motivating it is to not be able to work on the site. I'm going through affiliation requests, halfway through rewriting my affiliation requirements, preparing a new article and a rewrite of the Five Kinds of Content, and bursting with an uncontrollable longing to work on other stuff that I can't because my laptop is still being repaired.

But right now I'm home for a bit, so I used the opportunity to fix a couple of things that were reported the other day: what should have been Unown F in the Zodiac images was showing up as Unown A, and the third-generation Deoxys forms were being wonky in the sprite generator since I'd somehow forgotten to make the script account for the fact there was only one form per version at the time.

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For the benefit of those who don't follow my Twitter, I thought I should explain here that the other day my laptop started acting up just when I was going to finish the new fake Pokémon guide. It's currently being repaired, which could take about a week; don't expect anything of substance to get done in the meanwhile, as trying to access the site files from Shadey's place without my laptop would be a bother (I'm currently updating from home, but I'm barely ever home) and instead I've just been spending my time rewatching Boston Legal and reading Penn and Teller books. Maybe I can go through some affiliation requests on Shadey's laptop.

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If anyone ever doubted that I would write Morphic extras about Dave and Mia watching paint dry, well, I did.

I think I will never actually be able to top this one.

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And the Morphic extra I promised, "Dave and Mia Discuss Hotdogs", is up. As I said in my last update, the fake Pokémon guide is progressing very nicely and will probably be up reasonably soon.

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Just popping in for the month of August to say I'm not dead and two things should be coming Very Soon™: a new longer-than-usual Morphic extra (it's seven pages so far and just past the 'climax', so expect it sometime in the next few days once I've gotten it to end and given it some polishing), and the new fake Pokémon guide (I've just finished the portion about moves, which has been holding me back a bit since I like to work on this on the bus to and from university/work where I don't have internet, and for that bit I needed to look up a bunch of examples).

Also sorry for all the affiliation requests that have gone unanswered for a while. Last time I was working on them I got distracted adding to Sections that Suck and I never picked up on it afterwards, but I'll try to get to it soon.

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I went and put a few thieves up on the Wall of Shame, since I've been really lazy with it for ages, the people who took the time to report thieves really deserved not to have their efforts just ignored, and I figured it looked a bit silly just there being empty anyway.

The new fake Pokémon guide is in progress; it might be finished by now if not for the fact I got roped into doing an example review exchange at the Serebii.net forums and I never seem to be able to anticipate in advance just how long and detailed my fanfiction reviews can get. So basically I'm going to be spending a few more ages finishing that before I can get back to the guide, but I really do fully expect to finish it within some reasonable amount of time.

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Added those B/W Changes and tweaked some of the Sections that Suck entry I added yesterday to make my point better. And here is a sneak preview of the new fake Pokémon guide that I said I was going to make in 2009, which I am actually making now damn it. Unfortunately, however, I have decided to disregard the Site Poll on the matter since the fact I have absolutely no longing to create sprites and updated movesets for that silly Malkee line is the main reason I put off rewriting the guide in 2009, and we all know where that led me. Sorry, but the Malkee line is officially going obsolete. I may recycle them in some form at some point in time, but if so then only with heavy modifications.

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I've added a new type of section to Sections that Suck, "My Opinions, Let Me Show You Them". I can't believe I didn't put that there before.

I'm also in the process of going through ancient affiliation requests (sorry for how long it's taken, everyone) and spent a little while today tweaking and updating stuff in a few sections, but nothing particularly noteworthy. There are some B/W Changes submissions I haven't had time to actually put up, but I'll try to get around to that tomorrow.

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Right. Sorry for how relatively long this took, but the B/W Changes section is up now. As always, contact me if you remember something I forgot.

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The fifth-generation capture mechanics page is up. Half of me can't believe the crazy numbers that come out of it, but the key observation - that three random numbers are being generated and compared to Y instead of four - seems pretty solid from my testing, so.

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I've revamped the Status Ailments page, both including fifth-generation information (which I had somehow forgotten to do until now), correcting some stuff and changing the setup a little. A breakdown of the fifth-generation capture formula (which is completely different from the fourth-generation one) and the B/W changes I keep talking about are in the works and will hopefully actually be done soon, since I'm going to be home for the next week.

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And there is yet another Morphic extra, "Dave and Mia Discuss Relationships". Because I just can't leave the two of them alone, damn it.

In the hope of motivating me to actually write it, I will note that a B/W Changes section will hopefully be coming soon. I've compiled a nice long list of points to put in it; I just haven't written the actual text. And I've yet to decide completely how to organize it.

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As some of you had started to suspect, yes, that Morphic sequel was also a joke. I'm afraid I haven't actually started the real Morphic sequel, so unfortunately this was not a prelude to giving you that, unlike last year's joke. But hey, you got two joke chapters out of it!

You shouldn't really feel too stupid if you thought the second one was real, because unlike both Espeon's version and the fake chapter 53 of The Quest for the Legends, this was actually meant to fool people; the characters were in character, after all, and on the whole the plot was very, very me. I'm sorry to those who actually honestly liked it and are disappointed that it wasn't real, but really, nothing good would have come out of it.

I also wrote up a little 'making-of' for this year's April Fools' joke as a whole, explaining how this whole idea came about and why there were two fake chapters.

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Just kidding (about this). I'd never let somebody else write my fics. :P I have too much fun writing them myself.

So here's the real chapter one of the Morphic sequel. Enjoy!

UPDATE EDIT: I made a new splash. It is spectacularly uninteresting, but a new splash nonetheless.

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As many of you may know, Morphic was finished at the end of last year, and I mentioned at the end of the final chapter that I was planning a sequel.

However, I have concluded after much agonizing that I simply do not have the time to write this sequel, much as I would like to. Updates to The Quest for the Legends have been exceptionally slow lately, and I decided in the end that with the pressure of my studies and my job, I only really had free time to spare to write one fanfic.

Do not give up hope, however, for I have left the long-awaited sequel to Morphic in the capable hands of my friend Espeon, who has now written the first chapter. Seeing the results, I feel assured that he will do my plans for it the best possible justice.

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The fifth-generation Zodiac is now up in its full glory, images and all. I like it much better than the fourth-generation one, personally, since the system is a great deal less awkward and I got rid of the festivals so that every Pokémon (or, well, every Pokémon that has ever been a final evolution) has exactly one day again. Whoo. Well, except legendaries with statistically different forms get one day per form.

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So I finished the B/W Zodiac! Except then I realize as I'm trying to update with it that to actually compile any changes to something like the Zodiac, I need an ancient version of Visual Studio, which I don't have anymore after that hard drive failure on my desktop computer. In my attempt to update it anyway, I broke everything, hence why the site has been down all day. Score.

I'm working on hacking something together so that things start mostly working again, but currently the Zodiac doesn't work at all, fourth- or fifth-generation, and neither does the hit counter (hence the lazy hard-coded "4000000" I put there as a placeholder). Meanwhile, if you want to see your Pokémon in the new fifth-generation Zodiac, look here.

UPDATE EDIT: Got the hit counter's display part working again. Let's see if I can make it increment on the front page.

UPDATE EDIT (2): Okay, that's working.

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The B/W back sprite packages now actually contain the back sprites and not the front sprites again. Oops.

If you haven't been intently watching the guestbook, I should probably also note that I fixed several issues with the new sprite generator, including another bunch of Platinum sprites that were missing, broken images for Pokémon that have gender differences only visible from the front (or back) in some games, and a typo resulting in Deerling and Sawsbuck's Summer form being labeled as "Sumer". Also, for the benefit of those who don't have B/W yet, I edited the guestbook's spam verification to let you switch to a different Pokémon if you have no idea what this one is called; provided you have Javascript enabled, it gives you a link you can click on that switches to a different Pokémon.

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Me, actually making the sprite generator update I promised to make? No way! :o

But yes. The new sprite generator looks and feels more or less like the Platinum and HG/SS ones, but has the sprites from every game in it - including all the previous generations - and also includes back sprites and Crystal/Emerald animations. I discovered and fixed a few weird bugs like fifty Pokémon's Platinum sprites that didn't exist for some reason, but there could well be more such bugs, so if you find any, tell me.

With this new sprite generator, it should finally be really easy to add a new game's sprites to it, so hopefully I won't procrastinate with updating it for future releases.

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Since my Black has apparently arrived at the post office, I figured I should probably get some basic fifth-gen stuff done before retrieving the mother of all distractions. Sprite compilations for Black and White are now up, the B/W Pokémon have been added to the Hangman, the Number Game and the spam verification for the guestbook, and a new, universal sprite generator that includes the fifth generation is being worked on.

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So since the English B/W ROM has been leaked and (to nobody's surprise) the previously leaked English names turned out to be correct, I've updated the evolution list with the new ones, added the fifth-generation Pokémon to Gotta Spell 'Em All, and updated a couple of references to fifth-generation Pokémon in the Fun Facts. I'll be updating various sections of the site in accordance with the fifth generation as soon as possible.

UPDATE EDIT: The Pokémon List Generator now has the fifth-generation Pokémon. Let me know if there are any bugs with it; I went and tweaked how it works internally a little and it may potentially result in some unexpected behaviour.

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I have put up a long, mathy analysis of the R/B/Y capture algorithm, which works completely differently from the newer games and packs a number of surprises, such as Great Balls being better than Ultra Balls against non-statused Pokémon especially with high catch rates. The Cave of Dragonflies: telling you all you believed in your childhood was a lie fifteen years too late since 2002.

Seriously, though, it's awesome. If you can't stomach the math, just read the plain English summary. Then read the math anyway because it's awesome. Oh, and there's a catch rate calculator that tells you how many times the ball is going to wobble.

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Aaaand the fourth Morphic extra, "Chapter 9.5", is up. I would say I'm probably done writing these now, except I want to do one from Mia's POV at some point. Hm.

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Sadly or not-so-sadly, I've concluded that I've pretty much lost all interest in news coverage and public speculation (as has probably been obvious for a while), so I figured I might as well just put the Cave of Speculative Theories out of its misery already. It's gone from the menu. Sorry. If you find any references to it that I missed, by all means tell me.

Okay, so. I am not good at keeping myself motivated in secret. HERE ARE THINGS I AM GOING TO DO, and now that I've said it I'll hopefully actually do it:

• Do the thirteenth movie review. Already watched it once, but haven't gotten around to the second viewing or the actual reviewing.
• Review Pokémon Ranger: Guardian Signs. I finished the game ages ago but have been too lazy to actually get on with the review. I know mostly what I'm going to say in it, so it's just a matter of organizing my thoughts and writing them down.
• Make a page explaining the R/B/Y capture algorithm, which is really, really interesting if you're a geek like me.
• Finish the fifth-generation Zodiac. The leaked English names are probably real, so I'll be fine using them as placeholders while putting it together, at the very least.
• Start making the B/W Changes page. While I won't actually finish it until the games are out in English, there are a bunch of things I can already put on there and I should write them down before I forget.

I'm also in the process of writing yet another Morphic extra about Dave and Mia discussing stuff, but that doesn't need to be on the list because that's the one thing I don't need to prod myself into writing. (I meant it when I said that I could spend the rest of my life just writing about the two of them talking.)

Incidentally, my computer is okay (the hard drive that got fried had nothing important on it), but I'll have to reinstall Photoshop before I can make the crossword solution image and all that.

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Hi, elyvorg! Happy birthday. :D This installment of the silly Morphic extra series, Dave and Mia Discuss Horror, is dedicated to you. Hope it amuses you.

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Once again, I've added the latest officially revealed English B/W names to the evolution list. Also figured I might as well only include the Pokédex numbers for the ones listing Japanese names, since otherwise it's inconsistent with all the other generations.

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Dave and Mia Discuss Politics. Yeeeeah. I need to stop writing these.

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So opaltiger was bored and made me a new crossword. Enjoy puzzling out his clues this time.

The last crossword seems to have been relatively difficult, what with having only eleven entrants get more than half of the words right despite it having been going on for more than a full year, but congratulations to opaltiger, Spikefish and RiverShock for winning first, second and third place. Unfortunately, however, I am unable to make award images (or, in fact, show the solution image; there is a clue explanation, though) because my home computer is borked at the moment; one of the hard drives seems to be dead and we're having difficulties getting it to even recognize the net card after a fresh Windows install. Thus, though the hard drive that has stuff like my Photoshop files for things like the crosswords and awards seems to be okay, I can't actually access it at the moment. We're working on it.

In any case, I decided it was getting kind of silly to keep pretending this crossword is in any sense monthly by now, so I formally renamed it to 'Irregular Crossword'.

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So I went a little crazy and wrote an extremely stupid Morphic extra (scroll down past the chapter list). The fact it's called 'Dave and Mia Discuss Sex' should give a hint as to why I'm not sure I should even be putting it here, but whatever. (Oh, don't worry. It's not graphic.) Just read the explanation.

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I just realized (with opaltiger's help) that I forgot my traditional New Year's Thanks, so since in my update-dating system it is totally still New Year's Day (by which I mean that when I woke up this morning it was New Year's Day and who cares if it's past midnight now!), I will now do that. I would like to thank the following people for having been generally awesome in 2010:

• opaltiger! I have had boundless fun with you this year, and the next is shaping up to be even better (WE ARE GOING TO SEE ROGER WATERS' THE WALL LIVE IN LONDON IN MAY :DDDD). Thanks for the Expo, all the mafia both online and in real life, and the Christmas card, and the tickets, and have I mentioned I generally love you?
• Dannichu! Thanks enormously for having me over for Expo weekend, playing mafia, watching Astrópía and nearly stealing my sleeping bag. It was absolutely unforgettable. <3 I look forward to seeing you again in May!
• elyvooorg! It was awesome meeting you in person at last. Thanks for writing Lost Evolution, all the chats, the input on my fics and putting up with my constant nagging about your NaNo. I'll stop it when you start posting it. :3 (Also, I resolve to watch Doctor Who at some point this year.)
• Espeon! You aren't as terrible as you always seem to think you are, really! I'm glad you found us at the Expo. See you in May, hopefully!
• Cirrus! We didn't exactly talk, but meeting you was pretty great as well. Hope you come to the May Expo, too.
• Psychic! Okay, so we didn't get to meet, but we can do that this year or next or something. Skyping with you and sharing TMI has been great!
• Negrek! Your critiques of the first chapters of Morphic were invaluable and will be even more so now that I turn to rewriting the whole thing. Thanks for bothering. I won't be so presumptuous as to ask you to do more of it, but I would love you forever if you happened to do it anyway. Also, you are generally great and Clouded Sky is brain-breaking.
• Shadey! Sorry you're not higher on the list, but my love for you is so blatant it doesn't really need to be said. Just in case, though: I love you, you big cuddly thing you, even when you spend way too much time playing World of Warcraft and are extraordinarily silly.
• #truth! You may have made me stay up ungodly long while I was supposed to be studying for tests, but it was awesome, damn it.
• Dad! You're an all-around awesome guy and I'd trust you to write a whole constitution any day. Rock on.
• All of you who continued to buy B/W through my links! You got me White and I've loved every minute of it. Hope you loved it, too.
• Everybody who's been reading and reviewing my fanfics, especially those who've stuck with Morphic from the beginning. You make me feel like I'm doing something worthwhile.
• Everyone who continues to visit this site as I laze around and fail to update. I hope to remain worthy of your loyalty in 2011.
• Game Freak, for making these games that continue to inspire me and making Black and White even better than I'd dared to hope. I will remain a loyal customer for years to come. Unless you go and make the battle system real-time.
• opaltiger again, for reminding me I needed to do this. I knew there was something I'd forgotten.

So happy 2011, everyone. Let's see if I can't go watch the thirteenth movie now in preparation for a review.

Oh, and if you didn't see it yesterday, the final chapter of Morphic is up.

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