Category: Reader Questions

Anonymous asks:

How do you think Team Aqua/Team Magma, as environmentalists/ecoterrorists, would react to Oreburgh City and its reliance on coal?

Well, are they environmentalists, though?  Team Magma in Omega Ruby seem very much not to be; Maxie is a proponent of human progress at all costs.  I don’t think he would be bothered by it in the slightest, and might even own shares in the bloody coal plant.  Team Aqua is a different story, because they do have a kind of cultish devotion to the primordial purity of nature, but they also have a rather obsessive focus on the ocean, not the land or atmosphere, so while I suspect they’d be bothered by coal plants, it might not be high on their list of priorities.

The Philosophical Sheep asks:

I was kind of disappointed with the plot of Sun and Moon. The whole “Aether is working with Team Skull” twist didn’t feel like something the writers had fully thought through, and thus it raised many more questions than it answered. I would have preferred if instead Team Skull had aided the player, Hau and Gladion when they invaded Aether Paradise, and in doing so learned what true strength meant and also redeemed themselves in the eyes of everyone else.

Mmm.  I thought the whole denouement felt a bit… rushed, I suppose?  Given the opportunity, I might have asked for… well, essentially something like what I tried to do with “Grunt B” in my playthrough write-up, that is, seeing Team Skull member question Guzma’s leadership (and sanity…), ultimately stepping in to help the player save Guzma from himself and taking an active role in the final mission to Ultra Space, perhaps along with members of the Aether Foundation.

Anonymous asks:

So according to Bulbapedia, Blaziken may have various cultural allusions, ranging from the bird-headed sun deities Horus and Ra from Egyptian mythology, to the phoenix, to fire-breathing chickens and bird-headed humanoids of Japanese folklore. Do you think there’s any credibility to this? Personally I think Horus/Ra might be reaching but they might be on to something with the basan/karura.

Well, I’m super vague on some of those things, but I don’t think Blaziken needs to be all of them.  I think if there’s a fire chicken in Japanese folklore, and if we know that cockfighting is a real thing that makes the additional Fighting type appropriate, well, you’ve sort of got the whole design there; there’s not really any more mystery to what Blaziken is and does that we need to find explanations for.  Like, you can say “well, on top of all that it’s similar to Horus” but I think if the designers meant it, there would be some more specific call-out for us to pick up.

Anonymous asks:

In generations one/five/six/seven you were just kind of given your starter to go an a journey. In two you were originally loaned your starter to do a short errand before it was permanently given to you (the best introduction to starters, imo). And in three/four you took a starter from a bag to defend someone (the professor/yourself and your rival respectively). How would you do it? How’d you frame being given your starter Pokemon?

I’ve always had rather a fondness for IV, which I think is the most involved version.  It feels like it adds something to the relationship between you and your starter, to have you owe your Pokémon something like this, and for your partnership to begin with sheer chance (and the characterisation of the rival character Barry, through these events and your subsequent interaction with Professor Rowan, was interesting). Continue reading “Anonymous asks:” →

Anonymous asks:

Are you a superhero fan at all? Comics, movies, TV series, cartoons, games, anything?

Not particularly.  I’ve watched a fair bit of Arrow and The Flash, and some movies here and there (I really enjoyed Guardians of the Galaxy, which… I don’t know, is that still a “superhero” movie because it’s Marvel, or is it sci-fi?  What are the boundaries there?) but I don’t go out of my way to engage with superhero stuff, and I wouldn’t have called myself a fan of the genre broadly.

Anonymous asks:

Someone commented on the weirdness of Burn Up on one of your posts. I think High Horsepower is more of a missed potential here. The attack animation uses the shape of a horseshoe so it’s implied to be a horse kick, right? That’s such a wonderful excuse to give it to Rapidash and Zebstrika! Those two could really use a good physical Ground move, and if Game Freak aren’t going to give them Earthquake then why not High Horsepower, right? (Girafarig should get it too, if only because it suits him).

Yeah, that would make a lot of sense, actually.  Plenty of room for a move tutor in Ultra Sun and Ultra Moon, or just outright giving the move to other horselike Pokémon in generation VIII, in case you’re listening, Game Freak!  Signature moves are great and all, and there’s something to be said for keeping them exclusive, but we’re not just handing it out so they can have a nice Ground attack; the point of High Horsepower is to say “this Pokémon is particularly horsey and has a nasty backwards kick,” so if there are other Pokémon this applies to, go ahead.

Anonymous asks:

You’ve been asked about the Pokémon that you think should be retyped. What about Pokémon that should be re….Abilitied? (???) Gens VI and especially VII have been switching up a lot of old Pokémon’s Abilities, so this seems a more feasible change to happen rather than retyping, no? So, with our hopes up, which Pokémon would YOU like to have one (or both) of their Abilities changed, and to what?

Well, honestly the possibility that leaps most immediately to mind for me is the one that’s probably least likely to happen – namely, giving all the starter Pokémon different abilities.  I understand as a design choice why we have Overgrow, Blaze and Torrent, because they’re abilities that, as a new player, you don’t have to think about very hard, if at all.  But gods they’re boring.  In the same vein, a lot of legendary Pokémon, particularly from the earlier generations, just have Pressure as a kind of default ability, which is actually really weird because, despite being an okay fit thematically, Pressure is a super-niche ability to actually use; most Pokémon don’t get very much out of having it.