Author: pokemaniacchris

Anonymous asks:

I had an argument with a friend way back when Pokemon first came out. He thought I was wrong when I referred to Pokemon like Vileplume and Venusaur as ‘Grass-Type’ because he thought the type was called ‘Leaf-Type.’ Someone confirmed I was right and that was the end of that. But that’s something that stuck with me. Wouldn’t ‘Leaf-Type’ make a little more sense? Or even better, calling it ‘Wood-Type?’

I think “Plant-type” would have made the most sense, really.  A lot of the languages that the games are translated into go that way, actually – Type Plante in French, Typ Pflanze in German, Tipo Planta in Spanish.  The Japanese 草 or くさ (kusa) really does seem to literally mean “grass” though, as far as I can tell, and Grass is what it’s been for twenty years now, so I doubt they’re ever likely to change it at this point.

thephilosophicalsheep asks:

About the evolutionary stone thing, wouldn’t it make sense that pokemon were once able to naturally evolve into their “stone evolutions” simply because the world was brimming with primal energy?

Not quite sure which “evolutionary stone thing” we’re talking about, but it makes sense given some of the things that I like to believe, namely:

1) In the “Primal Age” described by Zinnia in Alpha Sapphire and Omega Ruby, the boundless life energy that allowed Groudon and Kyogre to achieve their Primal forms may have had similar effects for other Pokémon, and this may be where Mega Evolution and perhaps the giant Pokémon in The Ancient Puzzle of Pokémopolis come from.

2) Evolved forms that require evolutionary stones are vestigial, having disappeared from the natural world because they are no longer suited to changing environmental conditions – there could be a whole lot of species-specific explanations for this, or you could just attribute all of them to the waning life energy of the world after the end of the Primal Age.

It also fits rather nicely with the fact that, so far anyway, there are no Mega evolutions of Pokémon that have evolved using stones (except Gallade, but he needed one for symmetry).  This could still change in the future; I don’t think we have good reason to believe it’s a Rule, but as long as it stays true, I think we’re allowed to suspect that the two phenomena may be similar in other ways too.

The thing is, I don’t really have proof for either 1) or 2); 1) is just part of a lot of mad speculation I came up with while playing Alpha Sapphire for the first time as a result of being convinced that all our information was coming from incomplete and biased sources, while 2) is a consequence of trying to view Pokémon evolution in the light of how evolution works in the real world, which is dangerous territory at the best of times.  So I would like it if things worked that way, but I’m nervous about coming out and saying “yes, this is how it works.”  If that makes sense.

Godzillakiryu91 asks:

I don’t know if anyone’s asked you this, but how do you think the Dragon Type works, and why does it have the weaknesses it does?

Ehhhhhh… well, the thing is, I used to go by the description given by one of the trainers in the Blackthorn City Gym way back in Gold and Silver (‘cause, y’know, you’d expect Dragon Pokémon trainers to have some idea how Dragon-types work), and what they said was that Dragon Pokémon are “Pokémon that overflow with life energy,” or something like that.  Dratini’s assorted Pokédex entries have some similar lines.  So if you’re okay with some abstract “life force” being a real thing in the Pokémon world (which seems more or less fine), then we could understand Dragon-types as Pokémon who have access to a sort of internal “wellspring” of that power, granting them perks like long life and rapid healing.  This sort of fits generally with the holy status of dragons in East Asian mythology, the large number of legendary Dragon Pokémon with load-bearing positions in the Pokémon world’s cosmology, and whatever the hell the Dragon Force in the Victini and Reshiram/Zekrom movie is supposed to be.  Dragon-types’ attacks are strong against each other because Dragon attacks are among the only things that can directly attack that energy source and overwhelm it.  Steel-types resist Dragon attacks because, being partly mechanical, they are less reliant on life force than most other living things.  Ice attacks… honestly I’m unclear on this, but in the real world a lot of processes that are essential to life are slowed down by cold, so maybe in the Pokémon world life force itself can be slowed and congested by extreme cold?

The reason this suddenly becomes more complicated is that, as of X and Y, we now have Fairy-types, and Xerneas gives us fairly concrete reason to believe that it’s Fairy Pokémon who are most closely associated with life force, not Dragon Pokémon.  And you can maybe make some vague hand-wavey suggestions that get around that, like saying that Fairy Pokémon can manipulate and master life force while Dragon Pokémon can only tap into it by instinct, so that Fairy-types can block Dragon attacks effortlessly while also damaging the Dragons’ connection to the source of their power.  When I start to do that, though, I become worried that I’m just defending my own existing ideas rather than looking for the best possible explanation, and it also seems like Game Freak’s own ideas about what the Dragon type is have evolved since Gold and Silver – I mean, it’s hard to imagine Druddigon as holy, or having a special connection to some abstract life force.  So I don’t quite know.