>Hello!

Hey there :)

>In the Wikipedia article it says that Pokethulhu is a parody of the
>Pokemon Jr. Adventure Game (and of Coc, of course).[...]

I think it's fair as a one-line description. There's more to it, obviously
(everything I do is basically a thousand in-jokes compressed into some other
shape) but Pokéthulhu does pause to specifically nod to Pokémon jr in writing
style, specifically in the form of direct-address used in the chargen section
("Will you be as good as Randy?" etc.). Of the list of things Pokéthulhu nods
to, those are probably the two most worth listing in classic Hollywood "It's X
meets Y" blurb fashion.

>[...] did the PJAG ever gain enough notoriety to be a target of a
>parody?

Not on its own, no. But as the only official Pokémon RPG (and as an interesting
little game in its own right), it was a part of the Pokémon phenomena that
deserved a friendly textual hug.

>To my knowledge it was stillborn, which is a shame, come to
>think of it, because it could have drawn in a whole new generation of
>RPG custom^H^H^H^H^H^H^H players.

Plus, it was spiffy and well-meaning.

>But mainly, I've always thought Pokethulhu to be a parody of the whole
>Pokemon shebang, Gameboy, TV series, TCG, what-have-you, (and of CoC,
>of course --- no, wait, of everything Lovecraftian really, but CoC
>embraces everything Lovecraftian after all).

It is, absolutely, all those things. That's the joke-in-front-of-the-joke ;)
When Phil and Russell went to John Kovalic and asked for a pikathulhu drawing,
what they had in mind was a general parody of the Pokemon marketing phenomenon
geeked-out through a Lovecraft filter. Of course, plans do change ... the
original idea was a small blitz of mini-items by different people (including a
card game based in a very different kind of setting, where the Pokéthulhu were
full-sized city-stomping monsters). As it happened, only my RPG actually
materialized, along with John's illustrations and things based on those (like
the T-Shirts and minis). And of course, I went into designing my part of the
"blitz" with something else motivating my pencil ...

>So what is Pokethulhu a parody of?

The joke-behind-the-joke is, as those in the know already know, _neither_
Lovecraft nor Pokémon ;)

*Shhhhh*



|| S. John Ross
|| Husband · Cook · Writer
|| In That Order
|| http://www.io.com/~sjohn