Anonymous asks:

Can you PLEASE talk about why Pokemon aren’t slaves? I’m tired of that being thrown at Pokemon as an insult.

You probably want to start here – my “Ethics of Pokémon Training” is by a fair margin the most popular thing I’ve ever written. I essentially try to argue here that the act of catching a Pokémon represents a sort of ritualised contract that is made between a Pokémon and a trainer, and that this contract can be broken by either party. You can also read this, where I compare Pokémon to professional gladiators and Greek teachers and doctors under the Roman Empire, who were technically slaves but in some cases got a pretty good deal out of it. See also here, here and here.

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Anonymous asks:

Also, Drayden IS pretty hot

Eh. I mean, sure, I can see it, but he’s not really my type. Too gruff and beardy. And how old do you think he is? Dude’s been kicking around since before Pokéballs were a thing, supposedly. He’s gotta be pushing 80, at least.

Anonymous asks:

What’d you think of Homestuck’s ending?

I liked it. I know a lot of people were disappointed, and thought it left too many loose ends, which I think is sort of fine, in a way, because so much of Homestuck’s aesthetic is “random $#!t happening for no reason,” and there are times when it explicitly calls itself out for that. We see enough of the happy ending stuff to fill in the blanks, I think. Although I will grant you I’m still not entirely sure what Vriska did to destroy Lord English.

Cheshs asks:

You have no idea how excited I am for your opinions on S/M. The story was phenomenal, I loved the characters, all the new Pokemon, plot twists I didn’t expect … I genuinely and eagerly await your thoughts when you get the game! I just beat the main story with 58 hours clocked in.

An anonymous user also says, on a similar note:
“i’m genuinely excited for you to start gen VII because the new features remind me a ton of your “if I were in charge” series”

Well, colour me intrigued! I thought generation VI was very well-done all around, and I approved heartily of a number of its new features, which addressed a number of the same things that “If I Were In Charge” was supposed to; I’m excited to see how VII might build on that design philosophy. I’m scheduled to crawl out from under my spoiler-proof rock and begin my journey in Alola this Sunday (the 11th), so you can expect my initial ramblings either that day or the next.

Anonymous:

How do you think Pokemon breed?

…hoooooo boy.

So I wrote this thing about it once upon a time, and I think the big takeaway from it should be not so much anything I actually said, but that we know so little, and what we do know makes such little sense, that you can pretty much say just about anything and have it be on some level justifiable. Game Freak has always been quite insistent in telling us that there’s an awful lot about Pokémon reproduction that no-one knows at all. Back in the original Gold and Silver, a Pokémon egg was supposedly a major discovery because before then, no-one actually knew for sure that Pokémon hatched from eggs, which sort of makes you wonder how Pokémon ranchers and the like ever managed to do their jobs. Then in X and Y, sensing that we foolishly thought we knew what we were talking about, Game Freak decided to remind us that we don’t know a damn thing by telling us that Pokémon eggs aren’t really eggs. At this point you could tell me that Pokémon come from spontaneous generation and I wouldn’t quite be willing to rule it out (I mean, I’m also on the record as suggesting – only half-jokingly – that Pokémon originally evolved from rocks, so it’s not like I’ve got a whole lot of credibility to protect here).

Anonymous asks:

What are your thoughts on a potential Diamond and Pearl remake?

Eh. On the one hand, I sort of think there are better things Game Freak’s designers could spend their time on – the original Diamond and Pearl are basically fine, I feel. They hold up a lot better than the original Ruby and Sapphire did, anyway. On the other, I suppose I wouldn’t exactly be averse to seeing the writers tackle the cosmic Pokémon of generation IV again, take a fresh look at them, maybe play around a bit more with their roles in the Pokémon universe, and try to do something interesting with the way myths and legends work in shaping our understanding of their world. I guess that means I’m basically neutral on the idea.

Anonymous asks:

Now that Gen VI is over, which, in your opinion, has been the weakest/worst generation of the main series games so far? (Not counting VII) Conversely, which generation do you think was the best?

I’m not sure I do have an opinion on that. Like, obviously they’ve been improving over the course of the franchise’s lifetime, but just as obviously I’ll be lynched if I say that I and II were clearly the worst. Also they’re not uniformly better and worse at everything they do. Like, V in my opinion has the best story, but I was never wild about its Pokémon designs, IV made some really important changes to the game mechanics but does some kinda screwy things with the world-building, and III was basically decent all around but nothing really sticks out about it for me other than its unique musical style. It’s sort of difficult to say “right, this one was overall the best,” because how on earth do you compare things like that? VI was just pretty solid all around, I suppose, and I liked aspects of its general design philosophy, which makes me optimistic for when I check out VII.