(Before you read this, if you don't know what a portmanteau is, it's a word made up of a combination of other words. The word "smog," for instance, is a portmanteau of "smoke" and "fog." I'm going to use this word a lot in this post, so bear with me.)
I'm very curious as to why all of the major decks, over the years, have always been portmanteaus of the Pokémon names. Blasticune. Ludicargo. Mario. Infernacatty. Why is this? Surely there are many other options to name a deck. Is it some sort of tradition that archetypes get this sort of name? Is it the best way to describe a deck to other experienced players using the least amount of syllables? Is it a derivative of a lack of linguistic creativity, which is reasonable given that playing the TCG is a left-brained activity? Is it not their official name at all and just jargon (in the anthropological sense)? Or is it something that I haven't thought of?
I'm not necessarily angry nor frustrated at the portmanteaus. It just strikes me as odd that giving decks portmanteaus for names is so very common, considering that Pokémon names are already portmanteaus to begin with. When I see the World Championship decks sold at places like Target, the names the winners give their decks are rarely portmanteaus.
(I tried to think of as recent an example I could, but unfortunately, the total absence of all things Pokémon and the nearly total absence of all things Nintendo at my university has cut me off from the TCG since the first Diamond/Pearl set. I've only attended prereleases and bought several trading figures for the artwork.)
I'm very curious as to why all of the major decks, over the years, have always been portmanteaus of the Pokémon names. Blasticune. Ludicargo. Mario. Infernacatty. Why is this? Surely there are many other options to name a deck. Is it some sort of tradition that archetypes get this sort of name? Is it the best way to describe a deck to other experienced players using the least amount of syllables? Is it a derivative of a lack of linguistic creativity, which is reasonable given that playing the TCG is a left-brained activity? Is it not their official name at all and just jargon (in the anthropological sense)? Or is it something that I haven't thought of?
I'm not necessarily angry nor frustrated at the portmanteaus. It just strikes me as odd that giving decks portmanteaus for names is so very common, considering that Pokémon names are already portmanteaus to begin with. When I see the World Championship decks sold at places like Target, the names the winners give their decks are rarely portmanteaus.
(I tried to think of as recent an example I could, but unfortunately, the total absence of all things Pokémon and the nearly total absence of all things Nintendo at my university has cut me off from the TCG since the first Diamond/Pearl set. I've only attended prereleases and bought several trading figures for the artwork.)