If you were a Pokémon Professor, what would be your field of research, and where would you set up your lab? And most importantly: how much would you pay your interns?

Without a doubt, my field would be the history of Pokémon training. Pokémon Professors tend to be portrayed as specialists in the hard sciences, with the lab coats and such, but I think there’s room for some more tweed-wearing humanities (Pokémonities?) people in there. As for location… well, there are a lot of places I could potentially set up shop, but I think on balance I’d want to be in Johto; it’s one of the quieter, less densely populated regions, which tends to bode well for archaeological research. It’s also the only region we’ve seen to which apricorns are endemic, and the only one where they are still used to make Pokéballs, which has always made me suspect that Pokéballs were invented in Johto – kind of an important development.

Interns don’t get paid! Jeez, do I look like I’m made of grant money!? Seriously, though, if I were offered a position with “intern” in the title, I wouldn’t necessarily expect any money at all; often you’re just in it for the work experience. And I would exploit them for all they were worth!

The Liberator of Men

I get the call as I stand outside the Anistar Gym. It’s time for the main event.

Lysandre has sent out a broadcast to all the trainers of Kalos via their Holo-Casters: as leader of Team Flare (Gasp! Can it be true? He seemed so nice!), he is putting into motion their plan to create a beautiful new world at last. This plan involves the annihilation of Kalos’ entire population in a conflagration of epic proportions from which only Team Flare will be spared. Well, that… is a bit more extreme than I thought he would be aiming for, I admit; I was anticipating something of a more ambiguous John-Keats-Ode-on-a-Grecian-Urn-perfection-through-stasis kind of deal but hey, it wouldn’t be a Pokémon plot if we didn’t have to prevent the apocalypse, right? Okay; let’s get this show on the road, people! To Paris!

Luckily, Lysandre is the least subtle person in the world and is putting his plan into motion from the laboratory which shares his name, beneath the café in Lumiose City which also shares his name. The wait staff at the café are members of Team Flare, and try to stop me from entering, which goes about as well as might be expected.

“Oh no! He’ll find out the password to the hidden door in this café is ‘open sesame’!”

…okay, well, I was going to torture it out of you but I guess this works too. Y’know, as long as we’re all disappointing me today. I enter Lysandre Labs through the secret door, and Lysandre himself appears. That’s… refreshingly direct. Lysandre explains that he once wanted to save everyone, but is no longer concerned with that – the world has only so much in the way of resources and space, and too many people are too willing to squander it, so he’s just going to wipe out everyone who isn’t in his club. He still seems open to the possibility of my joining him, but I shake my head and sigh that he just doesn’t get what I’m all about. Lysandre challenges me, opening with a Mienfoo who loses to Odysseus, but not before delivering a pretty brutal Hi Jump Kick which leaves him wide open to Lysandre’s next and strongest Pokémon, a powerful Gyarados. Gyarados locks itself into Outrage while finishing my Clawitzer, giving me the opportunity to send in Orion to weather its attacks, take advantage of its confusion to grab a Calm Mind boost, Digivolve and blow away Lysandre’s remaining Pokémon – a Murkrow and a Pyroar (the first male Pyroar I’ve seen – and a very impressive one it is too; it matches his hair very nicely). Far from being upset, Lysandre is delighted at my skill and invites me to invade his lab, challenge his scientists for possession of an elevator key, and join him below in the basement to stop him if I can. If nothing else, he’s certainly one of the most polite villains I’ve ever met.

Lysandre Labs is a very traditional Team Rocket-esque warp panel maze. Here I meet all four of the Team Flare scientists. Aliana just seems excited to battle me again. Celosia and Bryony (are these two, like, a thing? I feel like these two are girlfriends or something) have apparently forgotten me but are nice enough to explain after being defeated that the menhirs of Geosenge Town are the graves of Pokémon whose life force fuelled the ultimate weapon the last time it was used, three thousand years ago (what did I tell you? Ritual!), and will fuel it again today. Mable, finally, claims that since both my Digivice and Lysandre’s ultimate weapon maximise a Pokémon’s power, we really want the same thing. Well, not exactly; I feel there are certain important differences, like how the ultimate weapon destroys all civilisation while my Digivice makes Pokémon go pink and sparkly… which makes me feel rather inferior, when you put it that way. I take out my frustrations on Mable, who coughs up the elevator key when defeated. I also run into Left and Right, doing their superhero thing, and apparently searching for a mysterious tall man, also sought by Team Flare for purposes unknown. They are doing this on the instructions of Professor Sycamore, who is trying to stop Lysandre using his “network of acquaintances.” Professor Sycamore… who is one of Lysandre’s closest friends. Ouch. I wonder how he’s taking all of this. As I muse on this, I stumble upon what appears to be Lysandre’s research library. Well, I am kinda busy… but on the other hand, books and backstory… The ultimate weapon, as we know, was created three thousand years ago by a Kalosian king. This king, I learn here, was named AZ (yes, with a capital Z), who was “both the beginning and the end,” and united Kalos with his futuristic technology. The famous war was between AZ and his brother (Lysandre’s ancestor, if memory serves), who wanted to conquer Kalos, and resulted in the death of AZ’s Pokémon partner, which sent him into a deep depression and caused him to use the ultimate weapon to end the war. AZ’s brother changed his mind about his conquest after seeing the devastation this caused, and buried the weapon, while AZ himself disappeared, taking the device’s key with him. The texts describing the weapon conclude: “that is something to be used by sophisticated powers, not by humans. Human beings must create a world where such a weapon is unnecessary…” Indeed, Lysandre’s own notes on the subject decide that “this is something best not left to man… I must use a tool of higher power.” He’s got quite an ego on him, acknowledging the significance of the powers he’s tampering with but doing it anyway. Do I detect just a hint of a messiah complex here?

Back at the elevator, I descend to the next floor, where I find Lysandre standing in front of a prison cell. Inside is… the old guy! The one from outside Lumiose City, who was looking for the ‘flower Pokémon’! I had totally forgotten about him! Only the… thing from around his neck is missing… the… thing that looked kind of like a… key…

…uh-oh.

Lysandre confirms that this is, indeed, AZ (well, Lysandre only says that he has the same name as the ancient king, but let’s face it, it would hardly be the weirdest thing that’s happened this week if it were really the same guy). He tells his story, accompanied by a series of colour images. Apparently the ultimate weapon wasn’t originally a weapon at all – it was a resurrection machine, created to bring back AZ’s partner, a shiny Floette like mine, but whose flower was a unique black tulip (ah… “the flower Pokémon that was given eternal life”…). It succeeded, at the cost of the lives of hundreds of other Pokémon, and AZ’s rage subsequently made him twist it into a weapon that slaughtered countless more. His partner, saddened by his actions, abandoned him – and he’s been looking for her ever since, the weapon’s power having rendered them both immortal. Well, there you go. Trying to cheat death does not end well; just ask Orpheus, or Gilgamesh. Lysandre doesn’t seem interested in taking AZ’s advice to leave the weapon buried, but has an intriguing suggestion: he’ll leave it up to me whether the weapon is used or not. My interest piqued, I follow him to the next floor of the building, where a fifth and final scientist, a rotund red-haired man in goggles named Xerosic, who seems to have wanted a mohawk but had difficulty committing, is waiting for us. Lysandre explains his terms: beat Xerosic, who wants a battle to test my skill, and I can decide what happens next. He then leaves me in the scientist’s capable hands. Xerosic is stronger than the other scientists, but his Crobat and Malamar still fail to defeat Odysseus and Pytho, so he gleefully explains the game: I can press either the red button or the blue button. One will activate the ultimate weapon, and the other will shut it down.

But this is so simple! All I have to do is divine from what I know of Xerosic – is he the sort of person who would have the ultimate weapon be triggered by the blue button or by the red one? Now, a clever man would have the blue button trigger the weapon, because he would know that only a great fool would press the big red button. I’m not a great fool, so I clearly cannot press the blue button. But after all I’ve done to thwart Team Flare he must have known I’m not a great fool – he would have counted on it, so I clearly cannot press the red button. But then again, blue is the colour of sadness and sorrow, the sorrow that would be brought by the activation of the weapon, so I clearly cannot choose the blue button – and he must have suspected I would have known this, so I clearly cannot press the red button either! I’ve defeated Team Flare’s minions and his own Pokémon, so Xerosic knows I am exceptionally powerful, and he could have set the red one to trigger the weapon, trusting in my overconfidence to make me push the big red button, so I clearly cannot press this one. But he is also a genius scientist, which means he must have studied, and in studying he must have learned that red is a colour of warning which my instincts would lead me to avoid, and connected the weapon instead to the blue button, so I clearly cannot press that one either! Xerosic just smiles serenely at me as I explain all of this, like he thinks he’s keeping his secrets, but he’s given everything away; I know which button activates the weapon! He’s fallen victim to one of the classic blunders! The most famous is “never get involved in a land war in Ransei,” but only slightly less well known is this: “never go in against a Pokémaniac when the fate of the world is on the line!” I stride confidently up to the blue button- and spin around suddenly, pointing towards the stairs behind Xerosic.
“Good lord!” I exclaim, “is that a shiny Chansey?” He turns and squints in the direction of the stairs, as I dash quickly to the other side of the room, smack the red button with the palm of my hand, and run back to the blue button before he can see me. Xerosic turns around again and smiles.
“You guessed wrong.” I throw back my head and cackle gleefully.
“You only think I guessed wrong! I ran across and pressed the other button while your back was turned, you fool!”
“No,” Xerosic says, “no, you actually did guess wrong. Just look. The poisonous flower has bloomed!” He points at a big monitor hanging on the wall, where the ultimate weapon, an enormous crystal flower, is emerging from the ground beneath Geosenge Town and beginning to gather its dread energies.

…whoops.

Slowly turning back to Xerosic, I smile sweetly at him and ask “Best of three?”

Ridiculous quote log:

“The warp panels transport both happiness and sadness in equal measure.”
I guess that’s true – happiness for me; sadness for you.

Regarding the notion that humans could only have evolved BECAUSE the dinosaurs became extinct: How come non-avian dinosaur-like Pokemon (e.g. Meganium, Tropius) still exist at the same time as modern mammalian Pokemon? Would there have been any way that mammalian Pokemon managed to occupy the large-animal niches even with the presence of dinosaurian Pokemon (or vice versa)?

This is sort of getting close to trying to construct an evolutionary history of the Pokémon world, which is something I said I would never try to do because trying to work that $#!t out in the real world where we have thousands of prehistoric species to compare is complicated enough (did you know that the closest living relative of the elephant is a small hamster-like creature called a hyrax?), and I am not an evolutionary biologist. But hey, what the hell?

It’s entirely possible that the whole thing is just convergent evolution – that is to say, Meganium and Tropius, despite their common appearance, are actually no more closely related to Aurorus than they are to Pikachu; they just happen to have adapted in similar ways to similar stimuli. If you believe that Pokémon type is a reliable indicator of evolutionary lineage (which I don’t, but just for the sake of argument) then this makes a great deal of sense, because the modern sauropod Pokémon are Grass-types, while Aurorus is an Ice-type. I’m not totally sold on this because I’m not sure I can think of any real-world examples of convergent evolution that are so striking, but it’s possible that the internal biology of these species is radically different and they just happen to look similar…

Anyway. There’s no reason, ultimately, why large reptiles necessarily have to precede large mammals and die out before mammals can become dominant. There’s nothing that makes one inherently superior to the other, which is the thing people tend to forget about evolution; it’s not about general superiority, it’s about suitability to particular conditions. Things just happened to turn out that way in our world, because there was a meteor, and lots of pain, and I think the phrase “global firestorms” has been thrown about, which is never a fun time, and as a result all the largest animals died out very suddenly and all their niches became open all at once, which is a recipe for major adaptive radiation on the part of the smaller animals. People weren’t totally sure for a while what caused the KT extinction but I think most paeleontologists tend to agree now that the ten-kilometre-wide hunk of flaming rock certainly didn’t help. It’s possible that the Pokémon world just didn’t experience KT, or didn’t react to it in the same way. If we believe the events of the first Mystery Dungeon games, Rayquaza (who may well be immortal) has both the power and the inclination to prevent apocalyptic meteor strikes, and while I tend to take Mystery Dungeon with a grain of salt it is worth remembering that there are, and probably always have been, godlike powers at work in the Pokémon world. I would hypothesise that in some parts of the world the ‘saurian’ Pokémon lineages died out in a much more peaceful and gradual fashion (which let’s face it, many dinosaur lineages were beginning to do in the real world anyway, long before KT) and were replaced by large mammalian Pokémon, while in other areas they continued to flourish, adapt and evolve, creating two or more radically different ecological spheres, which were only recently brought together again by humans in a sort of Columbian Exchange-type fashion. Think Australia, but with surviving dinosaurs instead of marsupials. I’d say that’s my best guess.

Now that you made it that far, I can ask. What do you think of the NPC in X/Y who says that Pokemon eggs aren’t really eggs but more like cradles? I wonder how that would work exactly.

The problem is that I have no idea what he means. When he says they “aren’t really eggs,” presumably he is contrasting them to something else which he does consider an egg, but whether or not other egg-laying creatures even exist in the Pokémon world is something of a point of contention. That being the case, the only thing I can think of that could be considered an egg by whatever definition he’s using is a human egg – which is so completely and obviously different that the statement is just totally banal. What’s more, describing an egg as being “like a cradle” would be a perfectly straightforward metaphor anyway, so it’s hard to see why being “like a cradle” should somehow disqualify them from being eggs… unless he’s saying that they are “like cradles” in the sense that they are artificially constructed and have viviparous infants deposited in them after birth, but that seems just too weird to contemplate…

Cold Darkness of the Cosmos

Before entering Dendemille Town, I turn south for a look at the route leading back towards Lumiose City. This whole north-eastern area seems to be in a state of perpetual autumn, in contrast to the permanent summer of the rest of Kalos, and has inhabitants to match; in addition to several of the same Pokémon as I found on the last route, I find Foonguss and two new Ghost/Grass Pokémon: Phantump, a dark wisp inhabiting a tree stump, and Pumpkaboo, the floating pumpkin I encountered in Lumiose City. Seeing two new Pokémon with the same previously unseen type combination in the same area initially makes me think that they probably influence each other’s evolution in some way, like Shelmet and Accelgor, but I am informed that this is not the case – they just evolve when traded. Doing so results in Trevenant, an utterly terrifying undead tree with a single glowing red eye and six splayed insect-like legs, and Gourgeist, a jack-o’-lantern with some kind of vaguely-feminine looking eel-like head and a pair of pink things that could easily be hair, arms, tentacles, or all three. This adorably creepy little specimen “enwraps its prey in its hairlike arms [and] sings joyfully as it observes the suffering of its prey.” So… that’s fun. The route’s only other notable feature is a network of jetties built out over a lake to maximise the area available for fishing; here I am given a Super Rod, but come across nothing of particular interest in testing it out. Satisfied that this route has nothing more for me at the moment, I return north.

If Dendemille Town’s surroundings are trapped in autumn, the town itself is locked in an eternal winter. Snow falls on hardy evergreens as stubborn farmers try to coax life from frozen soil. The town’s most prominent feature is a huge windmill surrounded by some kind of massive fortification wall, so presumably they do manage to produce something here (not much point in a windmill without grain). Shortly after entering the town, I am met by Professor Sycamore, with Right in tow (Left, presumably, is off fighting crime). Sycamore rambles incoherently about journeys and cafés for a while, before slipping into a brief eulogy of Kalos’ amazing legendary Pokémon, Xerneas, who “resembles the letter X.” No-one knows anything concrete about Xerneas, but Right promises to do some research. They both leave, giving me the chance to check out more of Dendemille Town and find what is perhaps its most important feature from my perspective: the home of the move deleter and move relearner. At last, I can experience the true glory of Clawitzer’s movepool – Mega Launcher-boosted Dark Pulse, Dragon Pulse and Aura Sphere. I only have three Heart Scales and I want to teach Dragon Pulse to my Lucario as well, so I greedily snatch up Dark Pulse and Aura Sphere and move on. Dendemille Town doesn’t appear to have a Pokémon Gym, but the next route is impassable: nothing but huge drifts of snow all around. The inhabitants inform me that there is normally a Mamoswine who carries travellers through the snow, but this Mamoswine is currently “distracted by something” in the Frost Cavern north of Dendemille Town, so I suppose there’s nothing for it but to go and find the damn thing myself… and maybe pick up some nifty new Ice Pokémon in the process.

It doesn’t take long for me to find Mamoswine, in the company of a boy whom I assume is its trainer, in the stark snowbound mountains north of town. Apparently Mamoswine is worried about something going on in the cavern, but either can’t or won’t do anything about it. Trevor, who wants to investigate species distribution in the Frost Cavern, volunteers to look into it, but my confidence in Trevor’s abilities has never been high, so I head into the cave along with him to find out what’s wrong. The Frost Cavern is giving me flashbacks to the Ice Path of Gold and Silver, with all its ‘icy floor’ puzzles and, of course, its Ice-type fauna – Beartic, Cryogonal, Piloswine, Jynx, and a weird little pyramid-shaped Ice Pokémon called a Bergmite, a sort of physical tank whose main strength appears to be “being a block of ice.” The fact that X and Y allow diagonal movement becomes quite important here, because it means you can slide diagonally across the ice floors – I think there’s only one part of the area that actually requires this, but I must have stared at the screen for about ten minutes before I thought of trying it (so much for my vaunted lateral thinking skills…). In the depths of the cave, I locate the problem: surprise, surprise; it’s Team Flare. A pair of grunts and a blue-haired woman wearing a visor, presumably another scientist, are tormenting a huge Abomasnow, apparently to test the limits of its power before they capture it. Trevor arrives and orders them to stop, which they predictably ignore. The scientist, Mable, explains that they’re collecting Pokémon and energy for their dastardly plans, which apparently involve destroying everyone who isn’t part of their group. She has only one Pokémon, a powerful Houndoom, which I dispatch with my Clawitzer. Defeated, she and her grunts flee. Trevor departs in relief, and I turn to go as well – but feel a tap on my shoulder. Well, I say a ‘tap,’ it’s more of a heavy, blunt ‘thunk,’ but a tap seems to have been the intention. It’s Abomasnow, who wants to thank me with a gift: a green-and-white Abomasite orb. Mega Abomasnow, huh? Could this be what uplifts Hail to equal status with the other major weather effects? Eh, probably not, but we’ll see.

Mamoswine is now back on duty. According to his trainer, Mamoswine first came to Dendemille town when he was gravely injured and rescued by an Abomasnow. It was probably the same one, and Mamoswine was likely refusing to work because he was worried about his friend. D’aww… you know, there is something incredibly endearing about inter-species friendships. Anyway, with Mamoswine back, I have my ride through the snow to Anistar City. Mamoswine is capable of ploughing through drifts of snow that cover him almost completely, and even smashing submerged boulders. I feel a sudden pang of regret for never having trained one of these things. A few more Ice Pokémon – Delibird, Sneasel, and Snover (better evolve him later to check out Abomasnow’s mega form…) appear on the way, but I reach Anistar City without much more excitement, and receive a call from Serena challenging me to a battle by the Pokémon Gym. The bitter cold softens a little as I reach Anistar City and look around. Left shows up to inform me that Right has learned of a person in this city who is an expert in the lore of Kalos’ legendary Pokémon, and that it would be a good idea for me to find him. Of course, cities in the Pokémon world being what they are, this doesn’t take long. I learn that Xerneas appeared in Kalos 800 years ago, bringing energy and vitality to the entire region. Supposedly, it lives for a thousand years and releases all of its remaining power at the end of its life to enrich everything around it. Another story relates that 3000 years ago, another Pokémon which might have been Xerneas saved many people and Pokémon from a terrible war, before turning into a dried-up tree, which is still hidden somewhere in Kalos. Hmm. I’ve heard about this war; I think this is the same terrible war Lysandre’s ancestor was supposedly involved with – the one that still scars the history of Kalos even today…

Anistar City has one major attraction: the Anistar Sundial. Not really a ‘sundial’ at all in the traditional sense of the word, this is a massive and exquisitely cut translucent pink crystal which (I think) tells the time by refracting sunlight onto a series of concentric golden rings. According to the locals, no-one is sure how the thing was made, since it’s thousands of years old and even modern technology couldn’t cut such an enormous crystal so perfectly. The whole set-up is on a platform which juts out over… the… sea…

…wait…

I pull out my town map. Anistar City, which is surrounded on three sides by water, is nowhere near the ocean.

There’s something very strange about this city, and it makes me uneasy. I’m heading for the Gym. I deal quickly with Serena, who has added a Jolteon to her team and become much more powerful since our last fight, but is still lagging behind (and seems to be developing self-esteem issues), and enter the building. It’s… empty. It’s just a perfectly normal room, with a couple of sidetables, a fireplace, and two windows with long purple curtains. In the centre is a large rug with a design of stars and circles. No trainers. No Gym Leader. I slowly walk forward, looking around, and step onto the circular pattern on the rug… and the world explodes. I give a started yelp as the room around me dissolves into nothing, and I find myself in space. Walkways of light criss-cross in a three-layered sphere, with stars and comets flying past in the background. One of the Psychic Pokémon trainers here tells me “don’t be distracted by your surroundings.” “EASY FOR YOU TO SAY,” I screech back. Not a moment too soon, I come to the centre of the sphere, where the Gym Leader, Olympia, is waiting. Olympia is a strange, distant woman who wears a white cloak with a night sky pattern in its lining (or… it could be lined with the actual night sky, for all I know…), who speaks as though her mind is in a dream… but is perfectly wakeful while battling. Her Sigilyph, protecting itself with Reflect and scoring a few opportune flinches with Air Slash, deals pretty heavy damage to my Malamar, Photia, before going down, leaving Olympia’s second Pokémon, a powerful Slowking, to finish her off. I send in Orion the Lucario to start blasting away with Dragon Pulse, but Slowking boosts up with Calm Mind and blows away Orion’s mind with Psychic. Finally, I bring out the big guns: Odysseus the Clawitzer. Dark Pulse breaks through even Slowking’s boosted special defence. Olympia’s final Pokemon, disappointingly, is a Meowstic; a high-level one, to be sure, but not nearly as powerful as a Sigilyph or a Slowking, and Odysseus makes short work of it. Olympia rewards me with a Calm Mind TM, a golden badge in the shape of a curling wisp of smoke rising from a violet pearl (the Psychic Badge – awesome name there; really inventive, Olympia), and a prophecy: “Power that grants life awakens – voices of woe. That is your future." She then waves her hand and teleports me back to the entrance of the Gym. I find myself back in the plain room. I’m honestly not sure the Anistar Gym, its trainers, or Olympia even exist at all; my Pokémon and I may have hallucinated the entire experience… but the Psychic Badge is still in my hand, and that’s all I need.

Ridiculous quote log:

“Windmills rotate just like the wheels of destiny! So Rotation Battles are like windmills! Ah… I mean destiny!
You know what else rotates like the wheels of destiny? You, strapped to a windmill.

“I hope I still have Pokémon when I grow up. ‘Cause when I have kids, I want to trade Pokémon with them.”
That is some nice marketing there, Nintendo. Real subtle. There are now, of course, people who picked up Pokémon as children or teenagers and are now having kids of their own…

Hi, I was thinking about Reshiram and Zekrom. It took me several minutes to remember which one stood for truth and which for ideals, does this happen to you? Do you think it’s a design flaw and how would you fix it?

I thought about this quite a bit when I was writing about Black and White, and when I reviewed the Victini movie. In both the games and the movie, Reshiram and Zekrom are basically interchangeable, as are their values. This is necessary so that the same story can be told whichever one N partners with, and is made possible largely because the writers seem to have a very loose interpretation of what ‘truth’ is. I think this is the real problem, rather than anything in their physical designs; both Reshiram’s ‘truth’ and Zekrom’s ‘ideals’ basically boil down to “the way you believe in your heart the world should be,” so there’s nothing to distinguish them conceptually. Zekrom stands for ideals and Reshiram stands for truth, but ultimately both of them admire and reward the same things in their human partners: the desire for change, and the will to pursue it. Honestly, I don’t think they’re forces of ‘truth’ and ‘ideals’ at all; I think they personify conflict itself in a way so abstract and primal that our pathetic little human minds just give up and start arbitrarily assigning them to pairs of opposites like light and dark, male and female, or passion and serenity, in an effort to explain their nature in terms we can understand. Since playing the sequels I’ve actually come to think that the fuzziness of their boundaries is intentional; you can see this, for instance, when you meet Drayden in the sequels and he talks about how, in spite of their long-standing and bitter opposition, Reshiram and Zekrom aren’t even all that different, and don’t really need to be enemies at all. I think the fact that you have difficulty remembering which is which is sort of the point; the whole thing, I suspect, is supposed to be an allegory for the wastefulness of conflict.

All that said, I don’t really like the way Reshiram and Zekrom were handled. If I had been running Black and White, I probably would have demanded significantly more divergence between the two games in the way the story unfolded, to give room for Reshiram and Zekrom to look for and cultivate different qualities in their chosen heroes – Reshiram respects intelligence, discipline, pragmatism and an analytical worldview, while Zekrom respects confidence, passion, determination and an idealistic worldview. N could actually fit either of these – he can earn Zekrom’s trust through his desire to change the world for the better and his dedication to his cause, while he can command Reshiram’s respect through his undeniable brilliance and his ability to view the world with mathematical objectivity. I think I would probably work this by playing up different aspects of N’s personality on the different games, to make it more obvious how he fits each dragon. Then, starting from the point when the player obtains the Light Stone or Dark Stone (which I might put earlier in the game), Reshiram/Zekrom will begin sending the player visions or dreams that require difficult moral choices (“who do you save and why?”-type dilemmas with no ‘right’ option, both choices leading to a different explanation from the dragon about why you suck), basically with the intention of moulding you into a hero who suits their preferences.

Ok, so this is a question about the in-game level progression. Let’s consider White for example. You start off in Nuvema town, encountering pokemon around level 5, and finally end up in Lacunosa town, surrounded by Pokemon of levels upto 60! The inhabitants of these end game towns must live in constant mortal peril, and their kids probably have no chance of becoming trainers! My question is whether you can think of any way of logically reconciling this level gap? – Adi

Hrm… I’ve thought about this before and failed to come up with any satisfactory answer. This isn’t a problem specific to Pokémon, of course – almost any combat-centred RPG has to introduce progressively more difficult opponents in order to keep the game interesting, and while most players are willing to suspend disbelief for something so clearly necessary to the functioning of the game, it’s still nice to have an explanation. However, this is easier for some games to produce than others, simply depending on the nature of the story being told and the world in which it takes place, and Pokémon definitely has more to justify than most.

I think the most obvious possibility is that you encounter more powerful Pokémon later in the game because stronger Pokémon become willing to challenge you as you get stronger (so we imagine that the strange level distributions are actually an illusion of sorts) but that doesn’t explain why you still find weak Pokémon when you go back to earlier areas. The weird thing is, NPCs in the games actually do acknowledge this pattern sometimes – for instance, if you try to head east from Santalune City towards Snowbelle City right at the beginning of the game, you’re stopped near the entrance to Victory Road and told that you aren’t ready for the kind of opponents you’ll find that way. It seems, at least at times, like the inhabitants of this world are well aware that some parts of their regions are much more dangerous than others for no readily obvious reason. I think what this has to suggest is that the skewed level distributions we see are very real, and that they can deal with it. Pokémon are not, in any real sense, in conflict with humanity as a group, so I doubt that towns in even the most high-level areas are in constant or unmanageable danger – you’d want to be careful walking around outside town without protection, obviously, but we’ve always received the same warnings about even the most benevolent areas at the beginning of each game. As for new trainers, it seems likely to me that a trainer’s career can start in a number of ways, and that in places with tougher wild Pokémon it’s more common to practice with and then inherit a fairly powerful starter a little later in life rather than be given a low-level one right off the bat (think about it – the trainer classes that represent prepubescent children like Youngsters, Lasses and Bug Catchers tend to hang out in the earlier areas of the game; trainers in higher-levelled areas tend to be older as well as stronger). Basically, their surroundings do present difficulties for Pokémon training as a career and an institution, but they manage to get around it. None of this, unfortunately, explains why some areas have higher-level Pokémon in the first place…

Favourite X and Y Pokemon so far? Also, be patient with Skrelp… He evolves very late; I believe level 49?

Hmm… that’s a tough one. I think at the moment it might be Inkay, for having such an offbeat fighting style and being so ridiculously cute, as well as daring to be a sea creature that isn’t a Water-type. I also have a major soft spot for Amaura and Aurorus, for reasons of dinosaurs, and I kinda like Goomy for being such a weird Dragon-type, but I’m waiting for the final evolution to make up my mind about that.

Fairy Tale

Laverre City, which is probably Amiens, is a town out of a storybook. All quaint wooden cottages, surrounded by gargantuan fly amanita mushrooms and fields of pink flowers, clustered around a huge, ancient broadleaf tree, into which the town’s clock tower and Pokémon Gym are built. Only two signs of encroaching modernity disrupt the picturesque scene: a modern Pokémon Centre with all the standard amenities, and an imposing industrial complex on the town’s northern outskirts: the factory that produces the entire Kalos region’s Pokéballs. After a brief tour of Laverre City to give the inhabitants the opportunity to offer tribute to their new ruler (which yields another Mega Stone: Gengarite!) I go to inspect the Pokéball factory… and find its entrance guarded by a Team Flare grunt. Despite my finest quips and most withering taunts, he refuses to budge, or even to engage me in battle. Curses; how am I supposed to dispense vigilante justice effectively if I can’t actually attack people? I decide to go with my usual standby in these situations and take out my frustrations on the Gym.

I’m… not exactly sure what I was expecting from the Laverre Gym, but certainly not this. The Gym seems to be, quite simply, someone’s house: an extremely lavish home, with work rooms, a kitchen, a bathroom, and a bedroom – all connected not by doors but by an old-school network of warp panels. Some of the rooms are filled with sewing paraphernalia and supplies, and I quickly learn from the trainers that the Gym Leader, whose name is Valerie, is a clothing designer. Strange that her extravagant creations don’t seem to be available in Laverre’s clothing store – I guess she works strictly for a higher class of clientele. Laverre City’s Gym specialises, of course, in Fairy Pokémon, and they have a few new ones for me to meet: Slurpuff and Aromatisse, the evolved forms of Swirlix and Spritzee (whom I obtain for myself shortly afterwards by trading with Adam), and a key ring Pokémon called Klefki, who is a Fairy/Steel dual-type, and turns up on the next route for me to catch – I may as well talk about all these now. Slurpuff is a remarkably silly-looking bipedal meringue with a supernaturally acute sense of smell; as little as I was expecting from Swirlix’s evolution, I actually find myself somewhat disappointed that Slurpuff isn’t more colourful – the pastel pinks are a bit boring, and I rather think that if you’re going to make a candy Pokémon anyway you should really push the boat out with it. Aromatisse is… on some level a little disturbing. I feel like Big Bird’s French cousin is trying to seduce me. That is all. Klefki is, I suppose, a neat little concept; he doesn’t seem to evolve, since he’s immediately followed in the Pokédex by Murkrow, but he does have Prankster, and just being a Steel-type is generally a plus, even if they’re not as powerful as they used to be. I suppose he’ll live and die on his support movepool.

Once I’ve dealt with all of these, I manage to stumble through all the warp panels and reach Valerie’s room on the top floor of the Gym. Valerie herself wears an extravagant winged costume, because she’s always wanted to be a Pokémon, and uses a lot of wind and flight imagery in her speech. No word on whether the costume actually allows her to fly, but I suppose she should be allowed to indulge her fantasies. Some of Valerie’s Gym trainers have been acting snooty about their Fairy-types’ vaunted immunity to Dragon attacks, so I decide to teach Valerie a lesson by opening with Pytho the Sliggoo against her Mawile, who doesn’t actually seem to have any Fairy attacks and consequently turns out to be easy prey. Her next Pokémon, a Mr. Mime, proves much more irritating – Pytho actually does fairly well here, but Valerie keeps healing the damn thing, so I eventually have to switch her out and send in Odysseus. By this time Mr. Mime has taken a pretty heavy accuracy penalty from Pytho’s Muddy Water attack and is in no shape to keep fighting for long, so he goes down quickly. Finally, out comes Valerie’s signature Pokémon – a Sylveon, who knocks out poor Odysseus with a powerful Fairy attack called Dazzling Gleam. Enough is enough, I decide, and throw in Ilex, who puts Sylveon to sleep, boosts up with Growth, and flattens her with Petal Dance. In defeat, Valerie lapses into a sort of introspective trance, handing over with little comment the Fairy Badge (seriously? It’s the first Fairy-type Gym in the history of the game and Fairy Badge was the best you could come up with?), a sliver of translucent pink agate in a gilded frame shaped like a pair of fairy wings with a brilliant opal in the centre, along with a TM whose contents she has forgotten (it turns out, upon inspection, to be Dazzling Gleam, which no-one in my party can learn). She starts murmuring to herself about her connection with her Pokémon, so I leave her to it and go to check out the Pokéball factory again.

It seems my rivals have had the same idea. Shauna and Trevor have been refused entry to the factory and are fleeing from the incensed Team Flare guard, while Tierno is running around like a headless chicken, as he is wont to do – but the door us now unattended, so Serena suggests we take the opportunity to break in. At first I was rather excited to be seeing the inside of a Pokéball factory – I hoped I might learn something about how Pokéballs function, or at least get a bit of ethical philosophy fodder, but in that respect it’s a bit of a bust really. All I see are conveyor belts leading to and from parts unknown. I do manage to elicit a plaintive “if Pokéballs are stolen by Team Flare, we can’t become friends with Pokémon…” from one of the captive workers, which is an interesting sentiment (considering that Pokéballs are pretty modern things and people have been working with Pokémon for millennia), but hardly a novel one. Quickly growing bored, Serena and I plough through the Team Flare grunts and confront their admin, a woman this time, though wearing a similar horrendous outfit to her male counterpart, in the president’s office. I have Odysseus stomp her two Pokémon, a Scraggy and a Houndoom, as quickly as possible. With the admin are two other women who claim, like Aliana, to be scientists – one, Bryony, has bright green hair and wears green glasses with some sort of digital HUD, while the other, Celosia, has purple hair and a heavy visor like Aliana’s, though a little sleeker (interesting that there seems to be an alphabet motif going on with their names here – not unlike the names of the games themselves). Again like Aliana, they appear to be both the brains and the brawn of the operation, and I’m not entirely sure whether they rank higher or lower than the admin they accompany. The scientists summon a Manectric and a Liepard, which Serena and I face with my Malamar, Photia, and her Meowstic. Liepard is initially a danger to Meowstic, but once both of them have been confused with Swagger, things quickly become fairly simple. Celosia, Bryony and the admin give up and flee with their underlings, and the grateful president gives me and Serena a big nugget and a Master Ball each. A news report on the Holo Caster soon confirms that Team Flare’s actions are unlikely to disrupt supplies of Pokéballs to the Kalos region. Wait- this thing gets the news? What is it actually even for?

That seems to be all there is to Laverre City for now, so I pack up and move on towards the next city, Dendemille Town. Along the way I pick up Klefki, whom I’ve already talked about, Watchog, Mightyena, Pawniard, Murkrow, Lombre, Floatzel, Basculin and Poliwhirl, learn a dangerous forbidden roller skating trick from an elderly gentleman who leads an underground street gang in a burned out hotel (you know, a usual day), grab a Litwick, an Electrode and a Magneton… and receive another Holo Caster message from Lysandre, who wants to shoot the breeze about Mega Evolution. Lysandre says that, according to Professor Sycamore’s research, Mega Evolution is a massive release of hidden energy, and wonders “do all people and Pokémon have such potential, or is it hidden only within a chosen few?” Wait- people? Is… is he suggesting that if I find a lump of, like, Humanite and give my Digivice to Pan, I’ll turn into a wizard or something? Because I could work with that.

In other news, I am going home for Christmas – and since I live about as far from home as I can get while still being on the same planet, this means spending most of a day on a plane. This will probably delay my progress a bit. Just so you know.

Ridiculous quote log:

“A Dusk Ball makes every battle sunny! Don’t you agree?
Um… no?

“Pokéballs are round! The world is also round!”
Are you suggesting some sort of connection here?
“Win or lose, Pokéballs remain round!”
Yours won’t for long if you keep yakking.

On Being Followed

You know, in the old days, having “followers” was a big deal. It meant someone was willing to pick up all their stuff and literally follow you around, listening to your wisdom and carrying out your whims. There was also the other kind of follower, which was the kind of person who followed you from a distance while wearing concealing robes, blending into crowds and ducking out of sight every time you turned around – but you often didn’t know about those until it was too late. If you had the good kind, it meant you’d really made it (come to think of it, if you had the bad kind it often meant you’d made it as well, but not always for the reasons you might have hoped). Today any old schmuck can get a dozen of the things. You need to have a few more than that before you can claim to have done anything interesting.

Tumblr tells me I now have three hundred followers. I have successfully conned three hundred people into listening to my awful bulls#!t on a semi-regular basis! I am genuinely surprised to learn that there are that many people in the world. That is probably more people than I would be able to feed if you all came to my apartment (please don’t do that as I doubt you would fit and also I don’t own a couch). And that’s just the people with Tumblr accounts – the vast majority of the questions I receive are anonymous, so it’s possible there are a lot more of you; I don’t really know. I mean, I’m pretty sure I’m not very influential in the grand scheme of things but considering that I originally started this blog basically for the amusement of my friends, many of whom don’t even play Pokémon, I think that’s pretty good, don’t you?

I am certain that if my mentors in the classics department were aware of my double life, they would immediately kick me out and ship me back to New Zealand for the audacity of drawing self-worth from anything other than research. However, I had an odd realisation the other day: that the questions I answer for my readers are far more numerous and often more difficult than the ones I answer for my students. I think I may actually be making a greater contribution to society by nattering about Pokémon on the internet than I am as a PhD candidate (being an academic, of course, is not a real job – it’s a demanding hobby which you sometimes get paid for). So, you know, I think I’m going to keep doing it. After all, three hundred people on the internet can’t be wrong!