Category: Blog-Related Questions

Anonymous asks:

i just found your blog and you seem to have a lot of cool ideas! have you ever considered making a rom hack/fangame/whatever? or, alternately, how would you feel if someone else wanted to put some of your concepts into their own thing? not me (i can’t stick to things long enough for making a game to be reasonable lol) but like as a general thought

Ohhhhhh hell no.  I mean, not that there’s not something tempting in the notion, but I do not have the time, relevant skills, or organisational capacity to even think about attempting something like that.  On the other hand, if anyone who did have those things wanted to take inspiration from my ideas (whether that’s game mechanics, worldbuilding, or plot and story) I’d be flattered – it’d be nice to hear about it.

Anonymous asks:

You once wrote about what moves can tell us about Pokémon design. Do you think you could write a similar article on what Abilities can tell us about Pokémon design? I’m particularly intrigued by Abilities that play on particular types: Prankster not affecting Dark-types, Rattled triggering off the types Psychic is weak to, Ghost-types being immune to Magnet Pull/Arena Trap/Shadow Tag, Justified being triggered by Dark moves, etc. IMO those Abilities help define certain types.

Hmm.  Yeah, that might be worth doing.  I’ll keep it in mind.  Probably after reviewing the generation VII Pokémon.

Nakedviolentedpenguin asks:

we have to wait a long time for Ultra Beast reviews, so i want to know some of your thoughts (maybe “review snippets” about Pheromosa, Kartana, Nihilego and Celesteela. (Dont care about the rest, but if you will…)

I don’t really want to comment on them individually before I’ve thought it through properly; you’ll just have to wait, I’m afraid (and I really haven’t properly examined them; off the top of my head I don’t even know what type Kartana is).  On the Ultra Beasts generally… well, aesthetically they definitely succeed at being “alien” and making you wonder “wait, are these even Pokémon?  What else could they be?”  I’m a little sceptical of the Beast Boost ability; it’s certainly strong, but I think I would have preferred abilities that differentiated them a little more.  Obviously it functions differently for different Beasts because it boosts different stats, but because it works as a momentum-building ability, that kinda just serves to make it much better for the aggressive ones who want to be sweeping (e.g. Pheromosa) than for the defensive ones who want to be tanking (e.g. Guzzlord).

Anonymous asks:

You play Magikarp Jump yet? If so, do you have any comments or opinions about it. (For me the art and the concept of the game are really cute, but gameplay can get a bit repitive)

I haven’t, and I know I probably should but I’ve got a trip coming up and stuff to organise and I really just want to get on with writing about Sun and Moon, so honestly I’m probably not going to any time soon.

Anonymous asks:

Are you gonna continue your X Nuzlocke at any point? I enjoyed it immensely and hope it’s simply on hiatus… Not trying to pressure you, though!

I’m not sure… I would like to, but I also feel like probably, for most of my readers, it’s relatively less important than most of the other things I could be writing.  Like, it strikes me as a bad idea to finish the Nuzlocke at the expense of delaying my reviews of the 7th generation Pokémon by another couple of months.  And now OH CHRIST ANOTHER ONE ALREADY!?  WHY IS THERE ALWAYS ANOTHER ONE!?  And should I finish the Nuzlocke instead of writing about that?  That doesn’t sound right.  The problem is there’s always going to be something else that has a higher priority, but I don’t want to just leave it unfinished (and Jim the Editor keeps nagging me to get back to work on it as well).  So I don’t know; what do people think?

(If you have no idea what we’re talking about, you can start here)

Anonymous asks:

Whoa! Your layout changed! :O Now the questions and main posts are all on the same page; convenient! And I’m liking the ‘Current Project’ section there. Niiiiiice!

I’m glad you like it.  This blog’s format is kind of a complicated long-running battle between me and Tumblr, waged via my incredibly haphazard grasp of how html works, compounded by Tumblr’s philosophy that we should all do everything through the dashboard and that there’s absolutely no reason to make old posts easy to find or search.  To be perfectly honest, we’re lucky you can still see the main page at all after I’ve spent an hour mucking around in there.

Anonymous asks:

I was reading you latest sm update and when you were talking about how the gods are twerps it reminded me of (i’m so sorry) how umm.. certain kinds of people tend to look at native/pacific islander religions and traditions as silly and superstitious (this isnt a judgement call I SWEAR)

Don’t apologise; I invoked the trope myself in an earlier chapter:

“I mean, I want to get rid of Alola’s whacko bird cults and volcano rituals and freaky voodoo $#!t as much as anyone.  You could at least cut out the human sacrifices.”  Kukui goes stony-faced at that.
“How did you know about-?”
“Didn’t.  I was totally going off random guesswork and thinly-veiled racism.  Until now.  Seriously, dude!?”

The point of the “thinly-veiled racism” line is that (in-character) I just assumed the Alolans practised human sacrifice because they seemed to me like the sort of people who would.

The line you’re talking about is something different, though – the point of that comment was that it was supposed to come from the perspective of someone who actually has dealt with gods before (Giratina, Arceus, etc, whom we have met in previous games)… and has not been impressed.

Vikingboybilly asks:

Are you out on a dig again?

Actually, I hit crunch time on submitting a proposal for my PhD thesis topic.  But I survived that, my topic was approved (I’m going to be researching the role of window glass in the evolution and social meaning of Roman architecture), and my students in the Roman Civilisation class mostly did pretty well too.  I’m going back to New Zealand for a bit in late June, then from there to Athens in late August for a year-long intensive study program.  It’s… pretty full-on, from what I’ve heard, but since I’ll be staying at a cushy research institute, my internet access will be much better than when I head out to the middle of nowhere for an archaeological dig, so it’s hard to say how often or how long I’ll vanish.