Anonymous asks:

What are your thoughts on Seadra’s extremely bizarre Pokedex entry that mentions the “presence of a gene not found in Horsea”? Other ridiculous Pokedex entries could be explained away as myths or mere exaggerations, but this one is implied to be based on actual scientific research. What do you think this could mean for Pokemon biology, and why do you think they chose Seadra out of all Pokemon to assign this piece of information to?

…huh. Y’know, I never noticed that before. That’s… odd. I think the reason the writers say this about Seadra in particular is because they want to hint at the gradual awakening of Horsea’s Dragon-type abilities as it evolves (note that this line first shows up in the second generation, when Kingdra was introduced). That doesn’t mean it makes sense, of course, but I think that’s what they’re trying to get at. They also note that this discovery quickly became “a hot topic” so they’re clearly aware that what they’re describing is an odd thing. Animals… shouldn’t gain extra genes partway through their life cycle. Bacteria can do it; a lot of bacteria have specialised enzymes that allow them to splice bits of DNA from other bacteria into their own, but animals can’t really do that because they have billions or trillions of copies of their DNA spread out over their cells. If an animal undergoes metamorphosis, all the genes that do everything the adult form needs should be there from birth; they just require particular stimuli to switch them on. Now that could be what this really means – that scientists identified a gene that wasn’t being expressed in Horsea but was in Seadra – but that doesn’t seem like it would be worthy of comment. So is it possible that something actually adds a whole bunch of extra base pairs to one of Horsea’s chromosomes when it evolves…? Hell if I know. If I had to speculate, I’d guess that there’s some symbiotic bacterium-like organism, possibly related to Pokérus (call it a midichlorian if you like), that goes through the body subtly altering the DNA of cells it encounters, and when the number of altered cells reaches a certain tipping point, the process dramatically accelerates and evolution happens. This is a total guess, based on real-world phenomena I happen to be vaguely familiar with, but if I were a Pokémon Professor I’d start with a hypothesis along those lines.

Anonymous asks:

I have to read a paper on “Celtoscepticism” for a Middle Welsh course I’m taking. Archaeology is such a bizarre discipline. How do you guys get anything done?

Well, I don’t know what Celtoscepticism is because Celtic civilisation is very much not my area, but to answer your question with another question… what on earth makes you think we get anything done?

Anonymous asks:

So I saw in one of your recent answers to a question, that you hated Dedenne, and I was just wondering why exactly you hate her? Mostly because I really like her design, and also that she is the only competitively viable Pika-Clone imo due to my Mono-Electric team, where she pulls her own weight pretty well.

Well… I didn’t use the word “hate” and I honestly don’t think I ever have with respect to Dedenne. She is in some respects more deserving of respect than her predecessors. Honestly, though, I’ve gotta say that your own endorsement of her as the only competitively viable Pikachu clone is a) not exactly saying much, and b) probably not true; if anyone’s earned that title it’s Pachirisu. Ultimately, I would have thought that the rest of the post you’re referencing would have made my problem with Dedenne perfectly obvious: it’s not even her fault, really, I just get seriously rubbed up the wrong way by “template” Pokémon, when Game Freak decides to make the same damn Pokémon again and again because it worked so well the first time. I’ve been done with the whole Pikachu clone thing as a basic idea for about three generations now, and Dedenne did nothing to change my mind. If you particularly wish to know my thoughts on her in excruciating detail, you can find them here.

The Philosophical Sheep asks:

Wouldn’t swalot be muk 2.0? And garbodor be 3.0?

Well, yes and no. Swalot’s kinda dull, don’t get me wrong, and in terms of being a Poison-type blob it’s more or less the same idea. Swalot’s schtick is different, though, in that it doesn’t have Muk’s industrial pollution theme – it’s a totally 100% natural formless blob – and instead is defined mainly by being essentially an ambulatory stomach with a face.

Anonymous asks:

Are you going to do the series where you decide whether a Pokemon is actually good or not for Alola?

Good question. I mean, I’ll do some sort of individual review for each Pokémon once I’ve played the game, definitely. I don’t know how much I want those to look like what I did for Unova and Kalos, though. I think that depends on how I react to the overall feel of the whole group of 7th generation Pokémon. Like, when I did Unova, a lot of the way I wrote those reviews was the result of my being frustrated about one particular decision and its consequences – namely, that Game Freak chose to use no pre-5th-generation Pokémon in Unova, but simultaneously undercut that decision by including so many designs that felt like one-for-one replacements for 1st-generation Pokémon (this one is here because they couldn’t have Pidgey, this one is here because they couldn’t have Geodude, this one is here because they couldn’t have Muk… etc). And that’s why I did the whole “I hereby affirm/deny this Pokémon’s right to exist” thing, of course, because I had really strongly polarised feelings about… well, really everything in Black and White, not just the Pokémon designs. I had very different feelings about Kalos; the Pokémon were… not better, Unova at its best is just as good as Kalos, but more consistent; I had trouble finding anything to seriously dislike in Kalos. Well. Except Dedenne. But f%&k Dedenne.

So yeah, we’ll see what I think of Sun and Moon as a whole and go from there. Honestly I’m even kind of toying with doing something really weird, like some sort of in-universe in-character discussion of the different Pokémon that just totally jumps off the deep end with respect to, like, being a review. But I would have to see if I can make that work, or if I even like it.

Anonymous asks:

Hopfé, the Two Brews Pokémon. Water/Fairy. The liquid inside Hopfé’s transparent body changes depending on the time of day. In the morning, it’s dark and scalding, while at night, it turns cold and effervescent. Some trainers claim to be Hopfé connoisseurs and refuse to bond with any but a very particular strain of the Pokémon.

It’s… coffee that turns into beer? Um… why?

Gotta say, though, I think this could be hilarious in a comedic or satirical take on Pokémon. Detective Pikachu played by Danny DeVito would approve.

Anonymous asks:

Maybe the “different franchises” thing was an exaggeration, but you can’t deny that overall Pokemon have gotten much less natural. Besides oddballs like Mr. Mime or Voltorb, first gen Pokemon looked like real creatures and now they’re like action figures.

I believe you’ll find I can deny anything that I think is untrue. We agree the style is different, but I would never have thought to describe it in terms of being more or less naturalistic; that varies from one design to another but I don’t think there’s an overall trend across generations. I honestly have no idea what “like action figures” even means in this context.

Anonymous asks:

How do you feel about how much more cartoon Pokemon designs have gotten lately? Most of them don’t even look like they’re from the same franchise as the original 151.

I think maybe some of your phrasing here needs dissecting – like, calling one of two groups “more cartoon” is an extremely vague way of comparing them when both of them objectively are cartoons. I would understand “more cartoonish” to mean something along the lines of… probably more zany, more “out there,” less naturalistic, and I honestly don’t think that would be a remotely fair assessment. Voltorb and Electrode, I think, are some of the most cartoonish Pokémon of any generation. But maybe we’re understanding the words differently.

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