Category: Reader Questions

Phi8 asks:

If you had the chance, would you rearrange the National Dex? And how? I’m also talking the possibility of merging spiecies like the Nidorans or Illumise/Volbeat, that kind of stuff.

Well… yes and no?  By which I mean the National Pokédex doesn’t remotely resemble how I would structure the Pokédex if I were starting from scratch (I think I would arrange Pokémon by habitat, similarly to what you can do with the Fire Red and Leaf Green Pokédex, or perhaps by egg group), but seeing as we have the damn thing as a known and established entity, I don’t think that getting rid of it or changing it would serve any particular purpose.

Rockcutter64 asks:

If you could give any three pokémon mega evolutions, which would you choose?

I suppose ones who need it.  The main benefit to mega evolution is the huge pile of stat bonuses that gets heaped on top of you, so ideally you want to be giving them to a Pokémon who a) mainly suffers from a low base stat total, and b) is an unlikely candidate to ever receive a conventional evolution.  So, for instance, Klinklang is a poor choice because Klinklang’s problem is having a minuscule skill set, not lacking the raw power to use that skill set, while Dunsparce is a poor choice because, as a one-stage Pokémon with lower base stats than Sneasel, Gligar and Tangela, there is still plenty of room to just evolve him.  There are better answers than mega evolution to their problems.  

So which ones do I think would be the best choices…?  Hmm… Scanning down the list of Pokémon in the same general area as Beedrill (the Pokémon with the lowest base stat total to be given a mega evolution so far)… well, I think Ledian, with her interesting and diverse offence/support movepool and total lack of the kind of power necessary to back it up, is a natural choice; Bibarel has a unique type combination and interesting abilities, but they just don’t compensate for the fact that Bibarel sucks all around; and… let’s say Delcatty; Delcatty has a ridiculous movepool that she’s incapable of using, and we have a built-in excuse to rework Normalise into something actually decent while we’re there.   I’m also going to break all of my rules and offer Plusle and Minun, because there you could do something interesting with their teamwork theme by allowing them both to mega evolve off of a single mega stone if you use them together in a double battle (I mean, let’s be honest, they’ll probably still suck but at least it’s interesting).

randomaccessmain asks:

In the Japanese version of Pokemon Diamond, Pearl, and Platinum, there’s a story that references that at one point in history, humans and Pokemon used to intermarry. And, well, we know what usually happens after marriage. Though given the fable-like nature of the Canalave stories, this probably doesn’t mean anything in terms of the game’s canon history, but it is something to think about.

It certainly is something to think about.  I think it would be extremely generous to regard these things as being remotely historical without some sort of corroboration (legends about, say, Dialga and Palkia we are compelled to give more credence because of our firsthand exposure to the power of those Pokémon; there’s nothing comparable for this story).  We are, after all, talking about what an ancient civilisation believed had happened in their ancient past, so that’s two levels of “ancient past” removed there.  Myths of humans marrying animals exist in the real world too and we don’t believe that that means it ever happened.  Practically every civilisation has myths of a primordial age when the “rules” were different in some way.  I think the existence of those myths says something about the people who told the stories (as all myth does), and the vagueness and offhandedness of what we’re told makes it difficult to say much of that kind.  However, I suspect what we’re looking at is an ancient culture that was built (much as the Pokémon world’s modern civilisation is, perhaps more so) around partnership between humans and Pokémon, and had a vested interest in portraying that partnership as equal, regardless of whether that was actually the case.

Anonymous asks:

The thing about the pika-clones is that Gamefreak has stopped trying to use them to recapture pikachu’s popularity and seems to now be making them just for the sake of tradition, just like the generic birds and rodents. But at least diggersby and talonflame have had multi-dimensional designs, cool new elements, and awesome hidden abilities to make up for their low stats. So if Gen 7 has a new electric rodent, do you think gamefreak could do the same and make it actually interesting and useful?

Okay well first of all I don’t think VII having a new Electric rodent is an “if.”  And certainly they could, and I hope they will.  I agree that Diggersby and Talonflame (and I suppose to a lesser extent even Vivillon, I will grudgingly admit) prove that there’s scope for cleverness even within the “templates.”  Emolga, I thought, was a good start, though Dedenne was a rather depressing return to form.  And I suppose one could argue that Se Jun Park’s famously creative use of Pachirisu in the 2014 world championship gives them some justification for continuing to include Pokémon that demand a very… unconventional strategic approach, though not much (I believe we are still waiting on such championship-level breakthroughs for Farfetch’d, Delibird, Kricketune, Phione, Girafarig… you know, I’m just not going to list them).  They may by this point actually regard competitive uselessness as an essential part of the template.  So of course they could; that doesn’t mean they will.

thephilosophicalsheep asks:

All right; so in gen 6, gamefreak made obscure competitive phenomena like EVs and egg moves more accessible to younger players with additions such as super training and the DexNav. Now what I want them to do is encourage their use by allowing NPCs the same benefits. Rarely in the pokemon games do you even see in-game trainers using ITEMS. That needs to change. I want to see Sun and Moon trainers with EV-trained, egg-moved, battle-equipped mons. That’ll better prepare kids for competitive, no?

Mmm… well, sort of?  I mean, we already have that in, for example, the Battle Maison; facilities like that have used all of those things for ages.  And to be honest I’m kind of happy with that, as a step up in difficulty from what we see during the story portion of the games.  I don’t want to throw all of this $#!t at you from the start; that’s just bloody overwhelming.  And I think the increase in transparency that comes from Super Training is much more important to introducing the EV system than having NPCs with EV-trained Pokémon would be; you can’t see EVs in battle, so ultimately that just winds up as being “everything is now harder for reasons you don’t fully understand; hahahahaha!”  The other thing there is that EV spreads for competitive movesets are often based on calculations around which Pokémon you can take down in X number of hits and which Pokémon can take you down in X number of hits, all assuming equal level and heavily informed by the current metagame, and that’s just not something that’s ever going to have any place in single player.

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vikingboybilly asks:

How come some plants are pokémon, but most are not? Humans are the only known non-pokémon animal in existence (besides pokédex mentions of Indian elephants and stuff), so is there some kind of bias because the world’s environment and obstacles isn’t made out of meat?

I think probably because if all plants are Pokémon too then you begin to run dangerously short of things that are okay to eat.  Game Freak seems to be very uncomfortable with the idea that humans eat Pokémon, at least in the present day – hell, in recent years they even seem to have become uncomfortable with the idea that wild Pokémon eat each other.  When you ask them about it, they make reference to the huge variety of wondrous fruits and vegetables that exist in the Pokémon world.  I suspect if all the plants become sentient too then they run out of wriggle room.

Anonymous asks:

what do you think about sexualization of pokemon species. Some historical antecedents?

I’m afraid I don’t really know what you mean by “historical antecedents” in this context… do you mean like bestiality in mythology?  I’m not by any means well-informed about world mythology generally; I would only consider myself an expert on Greco-Roman myth, and I think what’s going on there is a very different sort of phenomenon.  When Pokémon are portrayed in a sexualised manner in fan art and the like, that tends to involve accentuating their human-like traits, particularly feminine ones.  The most important cases in Greek mythology involve a male god in the form of an animal (or in the case of Pasiphaë a male animal and a human woman under the power of a god), and make no effort to humanise the animal form in any way.  I think the point there is probably something about humans being at the mercy of nature and the divine, ’cause sex is almost always about dominance in Greek culture, and the exemption of deities from human rules and social norms.  

A different sort of case again, where a non-human thing does have its human traits emphasised and sexualised, would be creatures like mermaids, and in folklore those tend to be seen as devilish temptresses who are out to kill men, like rusalkas in Slavic myth, so those are about the dangers of temptation and, essentially, a fear of female sexuality.  With Pokémon the human is imagined as being emphatically in charge, and the Pokémon are probably in a position where they will habitually seek their trainers’ approval… which makes the whole thing a bit icky the way I see it, in the same way as sexual relationships with children (particularly between teachers and students) are icky.  

Anonymous asks:

What would you do to fix darmanitan’s zen mode ability in a way that’s thematically appropriate?

Hmm. Well, the problems with Zen Mode as I see it are:

1) you’re forced to train one Pokémon to fill two roles, and wind up splitting EVs, nature and move sets so you get this messy hybrid (I think Game Freak did anticipate this and tried to deal with it by giving the two forms extremely high base stats in the areas they specialise in – the problem is you’re better off just piling EVs and a nature bonus on top of the high stats enjoyed by the basic form and pushing his attack into the goddamn stratosphere), and 2) Zen Darmanitan is a tank who inherently starts with less than 50% health, which compromises his usefulness. Well, and 3) the alternative, Sheer Force, is such a hugely powerful ability for a Pokémon with a stat spread as extremely specialised towards physical damage as Darmanitan’s, but there’s not much we can do about that.

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