hoennian asks:

uh oh so [SWSH spoilers fwiw)

galarian ponyta just got Officially Announced and it’s described as having been “exposed to the overflowing life energy of the forest over many generations, and this is why their appearance became unique in this region”
buuuuuut

it’s a psychic type

does this do anything to or for your Fairy-is-life-energy theories? or does it still also just kinda feed into “typing is nonsense”?

While we’re here, this will also serve as my answer to the question from another reader who gives their name simply as “Getting Shield!!!”:

Galarian Ponyta, thoughts?

So… I think it’s fine. Unicorns are an emblem of Scotland, so it certainly fits Galar as a Pokémon inspired by the culture and history of Great Britain. It’s quite pretty. It’s a point in favour of a prediction made by my esteemed PokéJungle colleague Jon that suggests we can guess which Pokémon are getting Galarian forms on the basis of new egg moves given out in Ultra Sun and Moon, so that’s quite nice if you’re interested in the prediction game. Psychic is a weird type to choose, in my opinion, for something as obviously “fairytale” as a unicorn – back in the X and Y era, Jim the Editor and I actually thought it was a bit weird that the base Kantonian Ponyta and Rapidash hadn’t been promoted to Fire/Fairy, because it would have made perfect sense and produced an interesting unique dual-type. But that brings us to…

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Herald of Opera asks:

It just occurred to me… with a name like “Great Thinker” and our primary source being the Atlantis guy talking him up, how sure are we that Socrates actually existed?

So… we’re pretty sure he existed, because Plato is our main source but not the only one who talks about him. After his death, we also have philosophical texts written about him by Xenophon, another of his students. More importantly, while he was alive and long before Plato started writing philosophy (possibly even before Plato was born), Socrates was parodied by Aristophanes in his comedy, the Clouds, so it’s pretty definite that he wasn’t just completely made up in hindsight by Plato. There are comments in some of Plato’s dialogues suggesting that he was trying to undo the play’s effect on Socrates’ reputation. Also, although the events of the dialogues are fictionalised (with the exception of the Apology and maybe parts of the Phaedo), almost all the characters in them are real people, attested in other historical texts like Thucydides’ Peloponnesian War or Xenophon’s Hellenica, whose positions in the philosophical debates reflect their real reputations and life stories. It would be… weird, put it that way, for Plato to construct such an elaborate fiction of a guy who never existed, tie it into the lives of so many other people, many of whom were Plato’s own friends, acquaintances and relatives (several of them dead by the time Plato started writing, most of them not peacefully), and give him a backstory deeply woven into the traumatic events of the Peloponnesian War. If nothing else, I suspect it would have been in very bad taste.

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Grass monkey, that funky monkey, GRASS MONKEY! asks:

What are your thoughts on Chespin, you have said you always go with the grass type, but were you happily surprised, or sadly disappointed of the spiky grass rat?

Pretty much this: https://pokemaniacal.com/2014/03/28/chespin-quilladin-and-chesnaught/. It’s not my favourite Grass-type starter (that’s probably Turtwig, followed closely by Bulbasaur), but I like it well enough. I haven’t really thought about it in any depth beyond what I said in that original review.

Elchar asks:

How can the economy of the Pokémon world even keep itself stable when domestic cats can just produce money out of thin air? The coins that Pay Day creates have real value. You pick them up in the game and you use them as regular money. I can’t be the only one who would, upon manifesting myself in the Pokémon world, quickly set up a Meowth farm and made them use Pay Day all day. Preferably somewhere close to the Pokémon center for that delicious free PP refillment.

Simple answer: it can’t. If any trainer with a Meowth can access an unlimited supply of money, then money can’t have a stable value. It doesn’t make sense.

If it doesn’t make sense, then we have misunderstood something or made a bad assumption (…or the worldbuilding is just fragile enough that we’ve broken it, but let’s make that our explanation of last resort). Either they can’t actually produce money out of thin air, or the coins don’t actually have value, or perhaps their capacity to produce money is not unlimited and has already been “priced into” the economic systems of regions where they are native.

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hugh_donnetono asks:

So how much of the mythological capabilities of a given legendary Pokémon DO we actually believe in, anyway? (If you can’t get into that question there, get into it here! I’m curious!)

ohhhhhhhh boy

so… what I was alluding to there is that I would eventually like to do a series on legendary Pokémon, where I look at everything we know about each of them (core games, TV show, movies, even spinoff games and the TCG) and decide “well, what actually are this Pokémon’s powers and how does it fit into the world?” And in particular, I would like to take seriously the idea that characters in the games and anime don’t know the truth either. Because I’m not convinced Arceus created the universe, and I’m not convinced Kyogre created the oceans, and I’m not convinced Yveltal can destroy all life on earth, and I’m certainly not convinced that Mew is the ancestor of all Pokémon. As far as I’m concerned, all we know is that there are people who, rightly or wrongly, believe those things. But there isn’t a simple answer to this question, because… well, that word “given” is important. The answer’s not the same for all of them, because we don’t have the same information about all of them. And I don’t even mean, like, some of them have appeared in a larger number of movies or episodes of the TV show; I mean in-universe the sources and reliability of the information are not the same. Like, in Arceus and the Jewel of Life, the unreliability of history and legend is a theme of the story; in my opinion, that movie kind of invites us to disbelieve stuff the characters tell us about Arceus, in a way that isn’t really the case for, say, Manaphy’s role in Pokémon Ranger and the Temple of the Sea, which seems pretty clear-cut (although the nature of the titular Temple is less so). You kinda have to look at everything we know about each one – or at least each duo/trio/quartet. And the truth is, I don’t know when I’m going to be able to do that properly. My schtick is the Pokémon reviews and, wouldn’t you know it, there’s gonna be a whole bunch of them that need doing in about two months, and I feel like more people care about those. You can see why I might be interested in maybe coming up with a shorter format for them.

N asks:

Who would win between a billion Pokémon and all lions? My moneys on the lions.

…I- you…

…it-

…hmm

Is… is this an accidental reversal of the “billion lions vs. all the Pokémon” meme that’s been going round, or an intentional one?

‘cause, as stated, that’s an extremely bad bet; those lions are, like, super dead.

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James Crooks [Patreon cultist] asks:

Sirfetch’d. Reaction?

It is a very stabby duck.

Yeah, I don’t know… I think it was very unlikely that any hypothetical Farfetch’d evolution could possibly stick the landing, given how long it’s been anticipated, but this is not bad. Farfetch’d’s “leek” is actually a spring onion, which is a more common vegetable in East Asian cuisine, whereas Sirfetch’d seems to have an actual leek, which is a nice touch, given that leeks are an emblem of Wales. The “shield” also seems to be made of leek leaves, and that’s quite nice. If Sirfetch’d is supposed to be based on any specific type of wild duck native to Britain, then I can’t find it (though I’m admittedly no birdwatcher). Ducks live on lakes, and I remember some minor legend from Britain about some local folk hero who received a magic sword from a lake, but as connections go this one’s a bit of a stretch for me. Besides, Sirfetch’d’s leek is more like a lance than a sword, and it seems to wield it like a lance in its animations. A lance is a bit of a rubbish weapon if you aren’t mounted, but it’s a Farfetch’d evolution, so I suppose we can’t make life too easy for it. The fact that Sirfetch’d is apparently exclusive to Sword version makes me wonder if there could possibly be a split evolution, with the other form being exclusive to Shield version (à la Lycanroc); otherwise, there’s a good chance its counterpart is some other older-generation Pokémon, probably single-stage until now, with an evolution unique to Galar. Unclear to me why Sirfetch’d isn’t a Flying-type, but then, I have a fairly long history of thinking that the Flying type makes no damn sense anyway.

Patch asks:

From now on you’ll have to sustain yourself on one type of Pokemon treat, e.g. beans, blocks, curry. Which one do you pick, and why?

Hmmmm… surely it’s gotta be the curry, right? Like, just nutrition-wise, I don’t know if anything else would have everything your body needed. Maybe the beans, but there’s only so much you can do with beans. Man cannot live on beans alone. Even rainbow sparkle beans. On the basis of what we’ve seen so far of Sword and Shield‘s curries, it seems like you can put a lot of different meats, spices and vegetables in there (including beans!). Now, unlimited Poképuffs in all the different flavours for the rest of my life? Sure, that sounds great. (Incidentally, one of these days I gotta try to make Poképuffs and write up a recipe) But Poképuffs and no other food for the rest of my life? You’d get to feeling pretty gross within a couple of days, I think, to say nothing of the iron deficiency that would set in after a few weeks.

jeffthelinguist asks:

So, as an archaeologist, can you answer the age old question of how much time needs to pass before grave robbing becomes archaeology? What’s the appropriate time period for looting the dead to become acceptable?

I’m assuming you’ve seen the screenshot of an archaeologist commenting, in answer to this question, that this is actually a super awkward and uncomfortable question? I’m fortunate enough to work in an area where it doesn’t really come up much – we’re all pretty sure that two thousand years is comfortably in the safe zone. Even then, though… it would be a mistake to think that archaeology can be a pure science, that our study of the past can remain detached from the present. It’s all grave robbing, in a way. The only difference is in how pure your motives are… which is a matter of perspective.

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