Pokemon Go's Ingress Plus Event Has Me Thinking Too Hard About Dead Mothers
Baby mine, don't you cry.
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It's easy to think of Ingress as "that one AR game Niantic built Pokémon Go on top of," but Ingress has a dedicated player base that's separate from the territorial struggles between Pokémon Go's virtual trainers.
In fact, Ingress just received a big update and is now referred to as "Ingress Prime. The celebration is spilling over into Ingress' cousin game, Pokémon Go. For a limited time, Pokémon Go boasts a much higher encounter rate for Cubones and Ponytas in addition to an elevated chance of finding Shiny Ponytas and Shiny Cubones.
What do fire ponies and sad dinosaur babies have to do with Ingress? Well, Shiny Ponyta boasts a flaming blue mane, and Shiny Cubone carries a green hue. The rival factions in Ingress are green ("The Enlightened," a group that wants to evolve humanity using the "Exotic Matter" found in Ingress' story), and blue ("The Resistance," a group that fights forces bent on enslaving humanity through the use of Exotic Matter).
Ingress' story seems fun and interesting; I have a couple of friends who are really into the game. I have a lot more friends who are into Pokémon Go, however, and I don't really have the time and inclination to keep an eye on two AR games about capturing territory. I already pour a lot of effort into keeping that filthy Team Instinct out of my neighborhood. Congratulations, Ingress, but I'm all about Shiny-hunting in Pokémon Go!
There's just one problem. Currently, when I open Pokémon Go, I'm greeted by a tangle of Cubones swarming around my ankles. We're all aware of Cubone's sad back story by now, right? We know the business about the little fellow wearing the skull of its dead mother? Its constant weeping that sometimes attracts predators? The permanent tear-stains that color its bone-mask because most of its young life has been spent bawling up at the moon in utter lonesomeness?
So when I open Pokémon Go, I see—well, let's just say that's a lot of orphans to observe in one spot.
Now, there's an infinite number of Cubones rustling around in the underbrush of most Pokémon games, which means there's an infinite supply of dead Cubone mothers piled up somewhere. But when you open Pokémon Go and see four or five Cubones hanging out in front of your building, the gravity of their orphan status hits you hard. You automatically think, "Oh you poor dears, you've gone for months without knowing your mother's loving touch." Then you take it upon yourself to become the Pokémon world's equivalent of William of Perth, the patron saint of adopted children. "You get a PokéBall. And you get a PokéBall. Shh, it's cold and rainy outside. Be warm, dry, and loved."
("Say, are any of you Shinies? No? Not one…?")
Tragically, I was soon forced to start mulching my darling Cubones for Candy because space is limited in Pokémon Go, and I'm too cheap to pay for an upgrade. I keep two around, though, to remind me of how fleeting and fragile our bonds with our parents are. Or something.
I haven't received a single Shiny out of this darn Ingress cross-over event, by the way. Maybe you'll have better luck. Try reading our Pokémon Go guides, especially our guides on how to catch Shiny Cubone and Shiny Ponyta. These guides will instill you with magic Pokémon-catching powers that were denied to me when I partook of the forbidden Rare Candy cloning trick in Gen One.