Author: pokemaniacchris

Anonymous asks:

I agree completely with you! Grass types pokemon have many flaws. Grass was, Is and will always be my favorite. But now for the question, Have you noticed that almos all grass starters have a more passive role than the water and fire ones? They always get a narrower offensive movepool, worse offensive stats than the other ones (Sceptile and Torterra are exceptions and maybe Chesnaught) and have a lower stat total than the other starters? (Sceptile is an exception) Do you think it will change?

Well, I don’t know if you can say “almost all” when three out of the six are exceptions, and the stat totals don’t mean a whole lot (sure, Torterra, Venusaur and Meganium have the lowest base stat totals of any starter Pokémon, but they’re only ten points below Swampert, who’s the highest – it doesn’t actually matter).  Venusaur, Serperior and Chesnaught are great Pokémon, and Grass may be the only starter type that hasn’t yet produced anything completely broken (I’m looking at you, Speed Boost Blaziken and Protean Greninja), but is that a bad thing?  I think the main problem with the Grass starters is the same as the problem with all Grass Pokémon – that Game Freak have convinced themselves that most attack types are somehow not thematically appropriate for Grass Pokémon to have (i.e. Grass Pokémon Don’t Get Nice Things), and Grass itself is one of the weakest offensive types in the game.  There’s also the broader problem that each new generation tends to give fewer tools to Pokémon with defence and support roles than to Pokémon with aggressive roles (except for II, when literally every Pokémon in the game started using Leftovers).  So no, it’s never going to change; that would be way too much effort.

Anonymous asks:

Odd question, but do you have a favorite Fakemon, or one that you’re particularly fond of? If yes, what is it and why? Also for obvious reasons you’re not allowed to answer Scribis or Krakentoa :p

Tricky… I have a kinda awkward relationship with fakemon, in that there are clearly several really good ones out there, but there are also a lot of really rather dull ones, and I get bored sifting through to find the good ones… If I had to pick a favourite it’d probably be one of the ones from the BoltBeam project, since they had a good few that I thought were quite inspired… here’s a few that I was most fond of:

Capsikid and Pepricorn for being capsicum Pokémon that aren’t just humanoid chilli peppers, and being a very nice way of fusing two elements that are difficult to combine.
Wulverize for being just really bizarre and interesting.
Arthromemnon for being a very clean, nicely done fulfilment of a fairly simple concept.
Meipale, Pailock and Bakount for having such a cool ‘backstory.’
Niftea and Porslayne for combining a lot of weird design elements very elegantly.
Renownd for making Unown less pointless.
Sarkrend and Sarkrisis for being fossil Pokémon that aren’t just “hey, look at this extinct animal.”
Meurgot and Scaravera for doing something so cool with an interesting cultural phenomenon, and just ‘getting’ the Dark type so much better than a lot of fakemon do.

And honourable mentions to Kabllama and Alpacalypse for having the most awesome names ever.

Anonymous asks:

I dunno if this has been asked, but I wondered if you think there are any parallels between a Pokemon journey and a religious pilgrimage?

Well, I suppose you do travel to a number of specific sites in order to become a better person… I don’t know if I think it’s a particularly useful metaphor for the way modern Pokémon journeys are portrayed in the games and anime, because it tends to be seen as more a “coming of age” thing than a “spiritual enlightenment” thing, so actually a better analogy might be the classic American road trip… which would make a damn good live action Pokémon movie, I think.  We could, perhaps, speculate that the modern Pokémon journey is based on some traditional activity with much greater spiritual significance – replace the gyms with monasteries, for instance (and some gyms may not have changed much since then, like Fuchsia and Ecruteak) – but that would be pure speculation.

Anonymous asks:

Theoretically speaking, what do you think Missingno would be like if it appeared in the Pokemon anime? Like, what would its origin story, nature, and powers be like to keep it as close to the game glitch as feasible?

You know how sometimes satellite TV gets all pixellated or cuts out entirely because the weather’s bad?  It would look like that.

Okay, okay, serious answer.  I think the obvious answer is that Missingno has to be an offshoot of the Porygon project, specifically of the technology that allows Porygon – a Pokémon composed entirely of data, of information – to manifest itself as a physical entity.  Missingno can similarly convert data into physical reality… but not always smoothly.  You can’t just plug in the code for the Pac-Man video game and have the character Pac-Man materialise in front of you, fully realised and functional; you need to have a program that was specifically written with this process in mind, like Porygon was.  Any other form of data that goes into Missingno results in a garbled mess of matter and energy.  What we “see” as Missingno’s body is actually Missingno’s best effort to interpret the countless radio waves and other signals that are constantly passing through it.  If you just give Missingno a real, physical object, though, it can break that object down into a workable code with which it can create copies of that object.  At some point shortly after its creation the thing crashed through a natural history museum somewhere, and as a result it “knows” how to create copies of several Pokémon fossils.  It’s also possible to coax Missingno to spit out multiple copies of any small object you want (you can’t do this to living things or most larger objects because of safety features built into the core of the original program).  Getting close enough to Missingno to do this isn’t always safe, though – if it picks up on your brain waves and tries to translate them into energy, the pseudo-physical nonsense it produces in response can often cause serious and lasting amnesia.

Anonymous asks:

How does Venonat evolve directly into Venomoth? I mean, why isn’t there some “cocoon” variant of pokémon in the middle?

I think this is the wrong question.  Lots of Pokémon go through metamorphoses just as dramatic or more so (Magikarp being perhaps the most extreme example) and don’t need the kind of intermediate form that many real-world insects require.  Why should we be surprised that Venonat works exactly like the vast majority of other Pokémon?  Surely it’s Caterpie, Weedle, Wurmple and Scatterbug that demand an explanation – why do they need transitional forms that most other Pokémon can do without?  I think it probably has to do with how quickly they evolve; they just don’t have the time to prepare for evolution to their final forms gradually the way most Pokémon do, and have to devote a whole extra form to focus on building reserves of energy.  Kricketot is sort of the exception that proves the rule – the only other Pokémon who reaches his final form at such a low level, and he does it without a dedicated cocoon phase, but the only attacking move he starts with is Bide, which is all about storing energy.