Greetings. I'm Erinys, and I'm relatively new to Pokémon, only getting into it for the last three years. Part of the reason is that I'm a bit older (will be 43 later this year), so I was already in high school when Pokémon had its explosion here in the States and didn't find myself drawn to it. I had always been into Japanese video games, but I never got into anime (everyone here in the States called it "Japanimation" back then) or manga. I eventually came around to those art forms in the 2010s, and then I decided to take the plunge on Pokémon a couple years ago. I recently published a fan site called Viridian Forties.
I'm a university professor, and I run a research station in a small rural city in the American South. My Ph.D. is in anthropology, but I specialize in archeology and history. I therefore particularly love the idea of outlets like Johto Times seeking to document Pokémon fan culture while people still remember it.
Surfing retro web sites and using forums is pretty nostalgic for me. I first got on the internet around 1996, and I was a big user of Beseen chat rooms when they first became a thing. I made many GeoCities web sites as well as pages on Tripod and Angelfire, which I recently read closed for good. I also used ICQ pretty early on, which was the forebear of chat programs like AIM. I was a heavy user of the Tolkien Online forums back in the late 1990s and early 2000s, obsessively posting there virtually every minute when I wasn't working.
Back to Pokémon, my favorite type is grass, and my favorite Pokémon is Chikorita. In addition to playing the video games I have also started getting into the anime. I've watched all of Horizons that is available in English on Netflix, and I plan to go back and watch all the older anime in the near future. I also collect the TCG, but I do not actually play (I just like pretty cards). I have a big binder where I am filling out the entire National Pokédex (I'm at 921 of 1,025 currently), and I have another binder where I place cards of all the Pokémon I've used on my teams in each video game along with the associated trainer card if available.
I play Pokémon GO daily, and I made a community group on Niantic's Campfire app for the area where I live. I was on the very last step of becoming an official community ambassador last spring when they put the program on hold due staff turnover. I had already had my background check completed, so I'm hoping to be one of the first batch to get through in the next month or so when they get it moving again.
I have many hobbies aside from Pokémon, including collecting vintage computers. I have a "luggable" Kaypro 2X that I inherited from a retired colleague, and I also have an Apple Enhanced //e that was similarly abandoned by a retired historian at the university where I teach. I am looking to reacquire and build computers that I had growing up including a Laser Turbo XT-2 and a Power Macintosh 6500 (the computer on which I first surfed the web).
Nice to meet you all.
-E
