I'm Ruki. Welcome to Rukinations.
I'm an avid gamer that mostly plays RPGs and board games with an interest in math and statistics. I've been playing RPGs in general as long as I can remember and started playing Pokémon competitively in Sword & Shield. I also like game theory and strategy in general, as well as an interest in note taking and stationery. Rukinations is where I store my thoughts and recollections on games and study alike.
I started Rukinations first to be an archive of my notes. The name "Rukinations" is a portmanteau of "Ruki" and "Ruminations" (meaning "deep thoughts on a topic"). One of the first notes I recompiled into HTML and uploaded was the Shiny Event Distribution, a guide to which Pokémon have had a Shiny Gift event at some point and when those events took place. Soon, I began uploading team breakdowns and recaps from Pokémon Legends: Z–A Ranked Seasons, where I began experimenting with how HTML and CSS can personalize a team sheet and the rumination experience.
The first Pokémon game I remember playing was a copy of Pokémon LeafGreen I bought in high school. I don't remember exactly when, I believe Base Sun & Moon were coming out soon but weren't out yet. I don't remember much of this first playthrough, but I do remember picking Bulbasaur as my starter for this runthrough.
Naturally, my first "new" Pokémon Game was a copy of Sun, I think a month before Ultra Sun & Moon were announced. I bought it with my Nintendo 2DS (my first in the DS line) and rushed to start the playthrough on the drive home. Popplio was my starter this run, and an easy MVP throughout the region. Probably. It's been ten years since these games came out, my brain might be fudging some of the details here.
I'm not quite sure what my favorite Pokémon would be. I'm one of those annoying people who don't like comparing things with too many variables. Common Pokémon that come up for me are Raichu, Venusaur, Urshifu, Victini, and Armarouge.
Regretfully, I did not get a chance to try out competitive Pokémon during my time in Sun & Moon. The downside to no one in your area playing and online competitions still being in their infancy at the time.
My first foray into competitive Pokémon took place during Sword & Shield. The earliest team I remember using was a standard Sun G-Max Venusaur team. It worked as well as Sun Venusaur normally works, though I could never break through to Master Ball with it.
Over the course of this game, I experimented with many different team comps and types. G-Max Coalossal was probably the most "successful" of the teams I played around with, though everyone played with that core. Metagross will always find its niche worth building around, no matter which gimmick a season is built around. The team I probably had the most fun playing during this era, though, would probably be Justified teams in tandem with Dynamax doubling the number of hits you can take to boost your own Attack (if only I learned faster that Terrakion was better than Cobalion; at least I knew Cobalion was better than Lucario).
When Pokémon Legends: Z–A was announced and we saw a new style of competitive Pokémon, I wasn't quite sure what to think at first. But when I finally got to play around in ranked matches, I grew to love the real-time four player system. I quickly grew much better than I expected in Z–A and by the third season reached a win rate I considered to be "great," even with early Z–A's hacker problem. This gave me the opportunity to play around with weird Pokémon combinations I would never be able to play around with in a normal Pokémon playthrough or a regular VGC match, such as Melmetal and Keldeo, and still do fairly well (my Melmetal team, which didn't run any Mega Evolutions, won 65.38% that season; the Keldeo team won 58.33% of the time).
My first shiny Pokémon (not counting events) was an accidental encounter in Sword & Shield. I knew what shiny Pokémon were, but at the time I was just trying to complete the Pokédex to get the charm in the first place. I certainly was not expecting to find a Shiny Vanillite South of Circhester.
I've completed many different types of shiny hunts over the years since: Standard Wild Encounters, Masuda Methood Breeding, RNG Manipulation, Sandwich Hunting, and SOS Chain Hunting, just to name a few. I've successfully shiny hunted in every generation so far except for Generations One, Two, and Five. I don't have exact numbers off hand, but I estimate that I have about 60–70% of the entire National Dex, including expanded forms and counting impossible Shiny Pokémon against me.
The best place to contact me would either be through Twitter @RukiWasHere (I will not call it a letter) or Reddit under u/RukiWasHere. Any "official" social media pages can be seen on the sidebar to the right.
I do not currently accept correspondence by e-mail.