[Personality] The Starter Pokemon Personality Profile

Which type of wrong are YOU?

Hey everybody,

Happy New Years from the whole person here at the K.Q.! Wishing all of my subscribers and all the other, less discerning people a wonderful year filled with joy and plenty. For many, New Years is a time of reflection, and more importantly, a time to think about the choices you’ll make next year. That’s why this post is all about the first important choice many of us Millenials made: our starter Pokemon. That’s all the work I’m willing to do today to tie current events into the post. My buddy Keenan got some Pokemon statues for Christmas and I love Pokemon and today we’re gonna talk about Pokemon goddamnit.

Now, when I was a child, I played Pokemon Blue on the Game Boy and later on the Game Boy Color. I also preferred Pepsi to Coke and liked Cartoon Network bettern than Nickelodeon. I’m hoping these facts establish some ethos for those who are my age and cause anyone younger to flood the comments section with “unc” jokes, thus driving engagement. My point is, when I was starting out, there were three starting Pokemon: Bulbasaur, Charmander, and Squirtle. For the sake of today’s post, I’m including Pikachu from Pokemon Yellow, which just barely beats the childhood nostalgia buzzer. I know there have been countless generations of Pokemon since then and dozens of new starting lineups, but just let us have this, ok, younger people? When we were kids they said forty is the new twenty but now that we’re nearing forty people act like you’re led to the pulping factory after twenty six so we never really got to have our fun. Now that I’ve gotten all the generational tension out in the open (a must for a Pokemon post), let’s talk about the four starting Pokemon and what they say about you as a person.*

1. Bulbasaur

People who picked Bulbasaur are typically calm, pragmatic, and progress-oriented. When faced with difficult decisions, they tend to make the best one every time, no problem. A Bulbasaur pick reflects the kind of stoic, philosopher’s soul that can never escape the chiseled marble from which it howls, entombed by a jealous God. You’re probably the best-looking person in your friend group, and you totally have all the best cars and tech gadgets and every girl you had a crush on in high school fought over whether they could take you to the prom and there’s no way you ever once got a nosebleed so bad on a date you had to run away because you thought you might have to go to the hospital. Everything has worked out and will continue to work out great for you.

2. Charmander

People who picked Charmander like it a little rough. You like it rough, don’t you? You don’t want to glide past the first couple of gyms, you want to level up a Caterpie just to progress the game and actually fight all those fucking Zubat in Mt. Moon. I can’t promise life will be kind to you, but then again you don’t want it to be. Fans of the show know that Charmander was the starter that evolved too fast for Ash to keep up with and wouldn’t take any commands. That’s because those who choose Charmander have a simple philosophy: live fast, die if you think you can make it happen, pussy. Whatever, psycho, just keep your fire attacks off of my precious grass type pokemon.

3. Squirtle

Squirtle fans are much like the water their Pokemon inexplicably spews: cool, mercurial, given to a flow state. Some gaming nerds years ago announced that Squirtle was the best statistical starter, but Squirtle mains didn’t care: they already knew that, they just didn’t care whether you did or not. They’re like the Dean Martin to the Charmander main’s Frank Sinatra: sure, they’ll never be as flashy, but they’re better precisely because they don’t need to be. And having a starter that can learn Surf is pretty tight.

4. Pikachu

You can always tell a Pikachu main because they’re in blurry news footage, breaching the capitol on January 6th. People who played Pokemon Yellow and continued to like Pikachu are responsible for the 2008 housing crisis, the second, third, and fourth waves of the opiod epidemic and keeping the for-profit prison industry afloat. I didn’t get further than the second gym with Pikachu on my ass I before started rooting for the Spearow in that episode where they completely fuck Pikachu’s shit up.

Anyway folks, whatever Pokemon you chose as a child, I hope that the choice was informed by love, hope, and joy, the same things that I hope inform every choice you make in the coming year. Let’s stay strong in 2025. Our courage will pull us through.

*This will not be not unbiased, as this is not a journalistic Quarterly.