Category: Blog-Related Questions

Two Curious Fans ask:

I know it has been over 5 years since you’ve worked on Memoirs, would you ever plan on writing something like that again? I loved it so much, and wanted to know if you had any more work to read, or perhaps something to look forward to in the future.

Memoirs? I don’t… remember ever working on anything like that…? What was I even writing 5 years ago…? Stuff about Sun and Moon, about Alola and gen VII? Doesn’t feel that long ago, oddly enough. You don’t mean my book of weird poetry about Greece, do you? I only released that in 2020 and it’s not really a memoir, but it’s kind of the closest thing I can think of. I suppose the answer in that case would be that I don’t have anything in the pipes at the moment, but easily might in the future. Or… do you mean, like, the first-person narrative style of my Moon playthrough? In which case, again, I suppose I’m not really thinking about doing anything similar in the short term (certainly not for when I play Scarlet, because I do like the writing I did on Moon, but wasn’t really fond of how it dragged out my experience of that game), but I also do kind of have the seeds of ideas for something in a similar style, maybe?

Or… maybe it’s an autocorrect for mottos, which is, like… genuinely something I’m officially still planning to do for gen VIII but haven’t made time for. Because I am a lazy bastard.

Um. I’m… glad you liked whatever it is I wrote, but I’m afraid I’m honestly not sure what you’re talking about.

Lupina Howls asks:

Any updates on the advanced kingslocke rules?

Well, I was going to finish that test run of Heart Gold before publishing them, and I didn’t mean to have a very long break before starting the Kanto section of the game, but then I got COVID, and then my laptop broke down and I had to send it away to be fixed, and both of those things set me back on finishing my PhD thesis which is now very much in full crunch time, and will be for at least the next six weeks (by the way, and this isn’t related to what you’re asking and I’ve said it before, but it bears repeating for anyone else who might be paying attention, I am absolutely not going to touch Scarlet/Violet until mid-December at the very earliest).  So… maybe I need to accept that I’m never actually going to finish that run, just make what revisions I can on the basis of what we saw in the first half, and publish what comes out of that.  Hmm.

sweetpie asks:

is A Pokemon Trainer Is You continuing? It is/was a really cool series and I’m glad it gave some more unpopular species like Wurmple and Minun love. I also really liked the ecology parts.

Ye-ess???  I mean, I hope so?  I mean, I agree with you, I like those things too; it’s just a bigger and longer commitment than ever I intended for it to be (and, honestly, less silly than I thought it would be), and right now I can’t handle updating it regularly, and the premise doesn’t really work if it’s not regular.  I may need to re-evaluate how it works, what kind of choices it presents, which bits get the most detail… Part of me says reboot it in a new form, part of me doesn’t want to lose what we’ve seen so far; on the other hand it’s sort of… so stretched-out at this point that I could hardly expect anyone new to go back and read the whole thing.  I think it’s worth the effort it’d take to pick it back up again, just… not right now.

P.S. Apologies (to you and everyone else in the queue) for being slow at the moment; on top of my usual bull$#!t, I am currently afflicted with the Dreaded Rona.  I hope to destroy it in a blasphemous ceremony and absorb its power, but failing that, of course, I expect all loyal readers to contribute what they can to my resurrection (the necessary components of the contingency ritual are hidden throughout my recent writing; remember: the serpent shall feast at dusk).

K asks:

Is your Legends Arceus playthrough dead? Are you planning on doing reviews for the Galarian pokemon/the Hisuian variants?

Now, I know you’ve asked me two very specific things here, but they kinda touch on some bigger issues of What I Do And Why that I probably should talk about, so – and this, K, is not a reflection on you at all, this is not your fault – instead I’m going to drink heavily and shout at you.

(also the context of everything else that follows is that I have a few months left to finish my PhD thesis or die trying, so I’m trying to avoid committing to anything big at all until next year; I am not going to touch Scarlet/Violet at all until mid-December at the very earliest, no, I’m serious, K, I mean it; it’s okay not to play things on launch day, for goodness’ sake, it’s fine, calm your tits, K)

Continue reading “K asks:” →

Chronos asks:

So, do you have any thoughts on some of the more “loose” interpretations of moves in the new Pokemon Unite? For example Defense Curl, Hex and the three different Surfs?

I haven’t actually looked at Unite.  I don’t really enjoy MOBAs as a genre; I kinda find the design of character abilities interesting from an abstract perspective and I can see why people like them, but the fast-paced team combat just doesn’t play to the things I enjoy about games or have any aptitude with.  So, yeah, I haven’t looked at it.  I was thinking maybe I should, specifically so I can talk about this kind of thing with reference to the portrayals of specific Pokémon across different media, but I doubt I’m going to get really into it.

The other thing on my mind at the moment is that I’m hearing Pokémon Unite is extremely microtransaction-heavy, even more so than Pokémon Go or anything else in the franchise.  Which… well, given that Pokémon (even though it now has a lot of adult fans) has always consciously marketed itself as being for preteen children and still makes a lot of major decisions from that perspective… seems a little bit on the evil side, and maybe represents something that I shouldn’t be giving oxygen to?  I dunno; I am willing to be guided by my readers on this.

Seronimo asks:

Have you ever considered starting a discord chat for this blog? I feel like your blog attracts a very specific type of Pokemon fan, and we constantly flood your inbox with thoughts of our own since we have nowhere else to share ’em. Maybe you could herd us into a groupchat so we could bounce our absurd ideas off of each other, instead of making you respond to each one yourself?

Well, I have considered it.  I don’t regularly use Discord and I’m honestly not sure I really “get” it, and by setting up something like that I’d kinda be taking some responsibility for moderating it and being a regular presence there, which… as a long-term commitment I’m honestly not wild about.  On the other hand, there are a lot of things people seem to want to say to/about me for which the question-and-answer inbox is simply not a useful or effective outlet.  So I guess I’m not really against it, just unsure whether/how it would work.

Patchface asks:

Who would win in a fight to the death, all the Gen 5 Pokemon you allowed to live, or all the Gen 5 Pokemon you condemned to die?

Well, in general one of the criteria I used for letting them live or die was whether they were actually any good, so… well, the ones who lived get most of the legendaries, all three starters, Hydreigon, Excadrill and Volcarona… and the ones who died get, like… fµ¢£in’… Watchog and Emolga and $#!t.  I mean, it’s not all bad, they get Bisharp, and Bisharp is legitimately a lot better now than it was in generation V, but still… I dunno if I see it working for them.

Larry asks:

How much of the way our experience with “a pokémon trainer is you!” was based on the background we picked for our character? Obviously, there were the story beats with us doing ranger/biologist work besides training.

But I’m assuming that our capacity to find Pokémon that you usually only see in Kanto under special conditions (The Hoenn Radio In Soulsilver) is because our scientist background lets us examine the environment better? And our compassion is the reason we’ve had your first non-misanthrope character. I assume even if we weren’t a big battling fan we’d still know most, if not all, type matchups though? (The games and the anime pretending 10-year olds wouldn’t know that ground is immune to electric is just… the worst worldbuilding I’ve seen.. ever? )

Uh, but tangent aside- I meant to ask you about what you would do with each specialty! “Swords” seemed weird as fuck and I’m confused, but I’m pretty interested in Athlete- would that let us basically be our own HM pokémon?

[Before saying anything else: I do want to bring this back, but things are… well, crazy right now, as I think most people have probably noticed.  When I do, it will probably be a two-week schedule rather than every week, because that was taking too much time away from articles.]

[…what is my life]

But yeah, the point of that “choose your background” question was basically to decide what kind of story this was going to be, what aspects of the Pokémon world we were going to focus on.  Part of that is just dictating the kinds of details I emphasise and explore in the narration, but the character’s skills also determine some of the options I offer when we have a choice to make.  I didn’t have everything planned out, but for every “special skill” I had some idea of a few things that it would let us do to take the story of Pokémon: Red and Blue off the rails, and a few ways that our character would react differently to the events of the story.  The point is that the things we do to influence the world in significant ways should mainly come from those “special skills.”

Continue reading “Larry asks:” →

Anonymous asks:

Hey, longtime fan, do you think you would ever do another speed nuzlocke like you did for fire red a few years ago?

That was… sort of a unique situation.  Jim the Editor and I normally live on different continents, but for New Year’s Eve at the end of 2017 we were together, with no other company, in a Scottish winter with not a lot else to do.  So, precisely like that, no, absolutely not, or at least not in the next few years.  But I won’t rule out doing some lowish effort write-ups of Pokémon playthroughs in the nearer future. Which, uh… knowing me, will transition seamlessly into high effort write-ups that I can’t possibly finish. Che será, será.

Vox asks:

Could you link the start of the X nuzlocke? I found you via tv tropes…

You found me via… what, seriously?

Well, this should give you what you need: https://pokemaniacal.com/tag/x-nuzlocke/?order=asc.  I should warn you, though, that I never finished that story and currently don’t intend to, so you should be prepared for disappointment.  I don’t think the TvTropes page has been updated in several years, and even then it kinda gave disproportionate prominence to a project that was never really my main “thing.”  I… could update it myself, but, well… it just seems kind of crass, doesn’t it?  Editing one’s own TvTropes page?