Anonymous asks:

Why do some people equate Ash with Michael vick? Is it because of superficial judgment or real reasons with merit?

People keep bringing up this Michael Vick dude and I have no idea what he did (I don’t think I’ve ever actually seen anyone compare him to Ash either – just people objecting to that comparison). I understand from what readers have told me that he was in the news a lot in the United States a few years back for something to do with animal abuse, so some of the stuff in my answer to this question might be of interest to you, but I just don’t know or care enough about this guy to say anything specific about him.

GrayGryphon asks:

Do you think there should have been a Fairy-type that got Illusion as an ability? Not necessarily an existing one, just as a concept in general.

Hrm. It makes sense, don’t get me wrong – fairies go well with illusion and deception – but I think the Illusion ability is something that it’s better to keep as Zoroark’s ‘thing,’ both for Zoroark’s sake (because, to be honest, it would probably not be difficult to come up with a Pokémon who gets more out of Illusion than Zoroark does) and to avoid the chaos that would be brought about by having both of them on the same team. That’s not to say we can’t try to think of something that draws on a similar idea of deception, though… fairies from different cultures and different stories can have control over a wide variety of elemental forces, so… maybe a Fairy-type who can have several different secondary types, which the opponent can’t immediately identify. It can be (say) Fairy/Fire, Fairy/Electric, Fairy/Water or Fairy/Grass, chosen at birth, and its appearance is the same for all four (maybe including elements from all four types), which means that the opponent has to fire off one or two “test” attacks to figure out what its weaknesses and resistances are. Undecided on whether to have moves that are unique to each form or just give all four a wide range of attacks. Could go either way there.

Anonymous asks:

Did you know that Chandelure’s Hidden Ability has been changed from Shadow Tag to Infiltrator? This opens up the possibility of other Pokémon to have one (or more) of their Abilities to be changed (at least, it sets a precedent)! Any specific Pokémon in mind whose Ability/(ies) you’d like to be changed?

Well, it’s worth pointing out that there has never been a Chandelure with Shadow Tag – Dream World Litwick were never released in generation V, and to my knowledge no AI opponent ever used one either, not even Ingo and Emmet, so they’re changing something that only ever existed in unused coding and our own fevered power fantasies anyway. I doubt this is an indication that they’re willing to start mucking around with existing abilities that are actually used in practice, and I wouldn’t call it a precedent for that. (EDIT: However, the fact that Scolipede’s was changed from Quick Feet to Speed Boost absolutely is. Derp. Doesn’t really change the rest of this answer anyway, though.) For the most part, abilities I’d want to see changed are the ones that are just insultingly bad, like Run Away, Keen Eye and Illuminate, and personally I would fix those by improving the ability itself (see e.g. Lightningrod and Storm Drain), not by changing which Pokémon received it. I can’t think of any off the top of my head that I would actually want to redistribute, though there are probably at least a couple out there.

Anonymous asks:

I was just playing Pokemon X, and my Bellossom’s Sleep Powder missed four times, which got me thinking: What if a low accuracy move’s accuracy goes higher (temporarily) when it misses? For example, I use Sleep Powder once, and it misses. It’s accuracy now goes from 75 to 85 (For Ex), so that it gives me (the user) a better chance at hitting, and gives missing something of a bonus. I mean, the Pokemon (Bellossom, in this case) should get the hang of it. Missing four times is kind of ridiculous.

Would you also implement the logical corollary – that moves become less accurate after a successful hit? After all, if you manage to hit three targets in a row with Focus Blast, your opponent is surely going to get the hang of dodging the damn things. In any luck-based system, things sometimes just don’t go our way, and that would still be the case with these revisions – your Bellossom could still miss three times in a row, and although it would happen much less often, that very fact would make it even more frustrating when it did. I don’t think it’d be a harmful change, but I’m not terribly enthused about it either.

Anonymous asks:

Just rereading your comments on Farfetch’d in the “worst pokemon” category, and I thought of how gen. VI boosted him somewhat with the changes to the critical hits mechanics, which makes him one of very few pokemon who can consistently deliver 100% critical hits all the time. Sure, he’s still far from being strong in any sense of the word, but do you think that this at least gave him a niche to excel in? Or is it merely a single step in the right direction, with many more to go?

Explanation for anyone behind on this: critical hits only do x1.5 damage in X and Y, not x2, but the critical hit rate scales more rapidly with bonuses like a Scope Lens or the Super Luck ability, to the point that many combinations will actually give you a 100% critical hit rate. For most Pokémon, using Focus Energy is the way to do this, but Farfetch’d has the distinction of being able to achieve 100% right out of the box, without having to buff himself first, by using his signature item (the Stick) and sticking to moves that already score a lot of critical hits, of which he has four – Slash, Night Slash, Leaf Blade and Air Cutter (the last of which is unfortunately special and therefore doesn’t work so well with the other three). Even his other attacks will still have a 50% critical hit rate.

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Anonymous asks:

I don’t know if you have answered this before but, do you have any theory about what happens to Pokémon once their trainer die?

Hmm. Tricky.

I feel like this must have happened in the anime before, but only three examples readily come to mind, all of which are unusual cases simply because of the nature of the Pokémon involved (please share any other examples, as I’m sure there are more I’m not thinking of):

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SkarmorySilver asks:

I see you liked my pitohui Pokemon, thanks! Which leads me to this question: I remember you said you were tired of bird Pokemon (among other generic templates) being repeated with each generation. That said, if you HAD to design a “common bird” (without any cop-outs like using a previous gen bird, for example), what would be the result? Would you have picked something different from a songbird, for example?

What have we had so far?

Pidgey isn’t so much a pigeon as a composite ‘generic bird,’ [EDIT: in fact it’s more probably a cedar waxwing, a medium-sized North American songbird] similarly Spearow is a composite ‘generic raptor’ and pretty clearly not a sparrow. Aside from those, we’ve had an owl, a swallow, a starling, an actual pigeon who eventually winds up as a pheasant, and a robin who winds up as a peregrine falcon. With the exception of Hoothoot and Noctowl, all fit into the same basic battle role as fast physical attackers (with… varying degrees of success). With the exception of Fletchinder and Talonflame, all are Normal/Flying. Now, if I understand the prompt you’re giving me, the requirement here is for an early-game Pokémon based on a bird without any particularly remarkable traits, initially Normal/Flying but not necessarily all the way?

I want a frickin’ ptarmigan.

Ptarmigans, for those unfamiliar with the name, are hardy little alpine- and tundra-adapted birds related to chickens, pheasants and quails. Probably their most interesting feature is that their feet and toes are covered in feathers, unusually for birds – part of their cold adaptation. Let’s play with that and have them evolve into Ice-types with ice crystal feathers on their feet, for performing a sort of ice-kick attack parallel to Blaze Kick (I’m sure some other Pokémon would love to share it). While real ptarmigans hibernate in burrows during the winter, these guys hibernate in summer and emerge when the weather starts to cool down again. They can fly, but aren’t great at it, and don’t generally like to travel long distances that way.

Wikipedia also informs me that the rock ptarmigan is known in Japan as the raichou – thunder bird (rai being the same word that appears in, e.g., Raichu and Raikou), which is a wonderful excuse to have it randomly learn a couple of Electric attacks as it levels and confuse everyone who isn’t in on the joke.

I kinda want the final form to be called Ptarmagnicant, but I’m worried that’s too long (2 letters longer than Fletchinder, who has the longest English name of any Pokémon), and I have no ideas on the smaller forms. Suggestions?

Anonymous asks:

Which came first, the creator or the ancestor? I would appreciate your thoughts on both the question and my theory. My theory is that long before there was stardust and the like there was pure energy, this energy was concentrated on two particular points in this Dimension? These points were constantly traveling and trying to take a physical shape. Eventually the points collided and the result was dormant energy being activated and creating the foundations of what will be our world arceus and mew

Well, my position on this whole mess is tricky because I actually refuse to believe that Mew is the ancestor of all Pokémon. Scientists in the Pokémon world believe that Mew is the ancestor of all Pokémon because she has the DNA of all known Pokémon species. They are wrong, however, because that is not how genetics and evolution (of the real-world Darwinian/Mendelian kind) work. The whole point of evolution is that species change over time and acquire new traits through random mutation, some of which spread because they are useful and allow individuals which possess them to reproduce more effectively. Things change. If Mew is the common ancestor of all Pokémon and has the DNA of all modern Pokémon, then that would mean that no viable mutant traits have ever arisen in the history of Pokémon evolution, which is just nuts. A “common ancestor” of all Pokémon ought to have most of the traits shared by all Pokémon, but none of the traits that make each individual species unique. Basically I think that, in-universe, the scientists who discovered and described Mew are just completely off-base. I can’t claim to know what she really is, but I think she’s actually a living genetic library, whose power is to absorb and preserve the DNA of other species, created by Arceus with the purpose of recording the evolutionary history of all Pokémon.

So that’s why I think the whole Arceus/Mew debate is irrelevant anyway.

I think speculating on what the beginning of existence was like in the Pokémon world is likely to be even less productive than speculating on what it was like in the real world, but I will note that your version presupposes the existence of both space (“particular points,” “travelling”) and time (“constantly,” “eventually”), which is a problem because this is all happening before Dialga and Palkia, who are supposed to have been created by Arceus (if the word “before” can even be thought to have any meaning without Dialga). That, and I’m not sure what this is supposed to tell us. There was energy, and then there was Arceus. So what? What consequences does this have for the way we see Arceus, Mew, or the universe?