Yes, my mind has allowed me to resist no more: I've finally been dragged into the mass of chaos that is competitive Pokemon battling. On second, that description is not right, for it involves much strategy and prediction. For many years I have been content to simply play the Pokemon games the way a normal player would play through the stroyline at my leisure, with nary a thought about Evs, or IVs, or any technical term, beat the Elite 4, complete all sidequests, and then let the games collect dust.

But the magical being known as the internet had other plans for me. It started lightly, with only the occasional visit to GameFaqs, but then it pulled me deeper and deeper, and soon I was looking at guides for entire games, somthing I would never have even dreamed of before. And with this came my discovery of the world of competitive battling. All these terms: IVs, EVs, OU, UU, Wall, Sweeper, Egg Move, Egg Group; they all became burned into memory forever.

My competitive battling adventure started out small, with only the occasional visits to Smogon for movesets to use in the Battle Frontier in Emerald. But now this adventure, this dynasty, seems to have reached its Golden Age, for I finally caved in and downloaded Shoddy Battle. Perhaps this will quench my thirst for a while perhaps not.