Category: Pokémon Biology Questions

Godzillakiryu91 asks:

I don’t know if anyone’s asked you this, but how do you think the Dragon Type works, and why does it have the weaknesses it does?

Ehhhhhh… well, the thing is, I used to go by the description given by one of the trainers in the Blackthorn City Gym way back in Gold and Silver (‘cause, y’know, you’d expect Dragon Pokémon trainers to have some idea how Dragon-types work), and what they said was that Dragon Pokémon are “Pokémon that overflow with life energy,” or something like that.  Dratini’s assorted Pokédex entries have some similar lines.  So if you’re okay with some abstract “life force” being a real thing in the Pokémon world (which seems more or less fine), then we could understand Dragon-types as Pokémon who have access to a sort of internal “wellspring” of that power, granting them perks like long life and rapid healing.  This sort of fits generally with the holy status of dragons in East Asian mythology, the large number of legendary Dragon Pokémon with load-bearing positions in the Pokémon world’s cosmology, and whatever the hell the Dragon Force in the Victini and Reshiram/Zekrom movie is supposed to be.  Dragon-types’ attacks are strong against each other because Dragon attacks are among the only things that can directly attack that energy source and overwhelm it.  Steel-types resist Dragon attacks because, being partly mechanical, they are less reliant on life force than most other living things.  Ice attacks… honestly I’m unclear on this, but in the real world a lot of processes that are essential to life are slowed down by cold, so maybe in the Pokémon world life force itself can be slowed and congested by extreme cold?

The reason this suddenly becomes more complicated is that, as of X and Y, we now have Fairy-types, and Xerneas gives us fairly concrete reason to believe that it’s Fairy Pokémon who are most closely associated with life force, not Dragon Pokémon.  And you can maybe make some vague hand-wavey suggestions that get around that, like saying that Fairy Pokémon can manipulate and master life force while Dragon Pokémon can only tap into it by instinct, so that Fairy-types can block Dragon attacks effortlessly while also damaging the Dragons’ connection to the source of their power.  When I start to do that, though, I become worried that I’m just defending my own existing ideas rather than looking for the best possible explanation, and it also seems like Game Freak’s own ideas about what the Dragon type is have evolved since Gold and Silver – I mean, it’s hard to imagine Druddigon as holy, or having a special connection to some abstract life force.  So I don’t quite know.

batabid asks:

Could you talk a bit about Evolutionary Stones, particularly the more mysterious ones like the Dawn Stone (maybe relating it to your Pokémon Gender/Breeding theory?) and why the Nidos evolve with the Moon Stone

You know, I think I’ve been asked this before, ages ago; hold on a bit…

Yes, here it is; the second half of this question.

…wait, hang on.

That was YOU!  YOU’VE asked me this before!

Ah, whatever; it was nearly four years ago, I’m sure I have different and even more wildly speculative things to say about it now.

Continue reading “batabid asks:” →

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.  

vikingboybilly asks:

Do you find it odd that Carnivine, a venus flytrap, is poorly matched against bug type pokemon? What would you do to fix that (besides ignoring it)?

Hmm.  It hadn’t occurred to me, but yes, that is unfortunate.  Well, I’ve talked before about improving Carnivine by changing its type to Grass/Poison, among other things, which would help, but looking at it from this particular perspective… at the moment Carnivine has an ability, Levitate, which is great but actually not particularly helpful to a Grass-type.  You could replace that with a unique ability – “Flytrap,” “Flycatcher,” something like that – which absorbs Bug attacks for healing (in the manner of Water Absorb) or an attack boost (in the manner of Sap Sipper).  I think that would get the point across nicely.

Anonymous asks:

How do you think a Cherubi would feel if you fed it a cherry?

Unclear.  On the one hand it seems likely that the resemblance between the two is mostly superficial, but on the other hand, do they know that?  I would think they’d be pretty creeped out… but then, there are parts of the world where people eat monkeys.  Possibly a Cherubi would just feel insulted that we even thought it was similar enough to a cherry to be worth the comparison.

vikingboybilly asks:

So… ghost types. It’s pretty well implied that ghost pokémon are spirits of the deceased, but you can breed them… and hatch ghost pokémon from eggs. Does something have to die somewhere for the egg to be laid? Or do they just… procreate new spirits, who may eventually incarnate a living being? (you can breed yamask, btw) Shedinja is handled well; it’s a shed skin with sentience. Froslass, though… fact: Gengar is white on the original red/blue box art.

…is it?  I mean, very clearly they have an affinity for death, the dead, and places of spiritual power, but if anything I’d say that they are implied to be very much not what everyone thinks they are.  

Continue reading “vikingboybilly asks:” →

Anonymous asks:

On your entry about Goodra you got a comment from someone who (rather crudely) claimed that male Goodra were worthless. I first looked at this comment and thought it was rather stupid… but it isn’t. A female doesn’t need a male of the same species to reproduce. In Goodra’s case any Dragon egg group Pokemon will work. Surely this puts the species with a larger percentage of females at a massive advantage? And for that matter how do you think male species like Tauros can exist at all?

Just so that no one is in any danger of taking it seriously, I will quote here the comment that we are currently referring to:
“Goodra is a girl. She cannot be male.It’s nice to see you agree. There’s a place called 4chan who is in denial about it. They constantly say that Goodra can be male, but it’s obvious she can’t. As for me, I’ll keep reminding them that she is indeed of the female gender only. I hate male Goodra to the point where I spam on 4chan about how horrible it is. I hate it with a fiery passion that nobody could ever match. As for the female, It’s just that in reverse. I love her with an angelic passion that nobody could ever match. Nobody likes male ones. They’re treated like pigs because that’s really what they are. Whatever you do, never refer to Goodra with anything other than female pronouns. OP, you focused very heavily on using femnouns and I salute you for it.”

…quite.

Continue reading “Anonymous asks:” →