Anonymous asks:

What’s your favorite Legendary Pokémon, and why? We all know it’s not Rayquaza (because of Emerald) or Arceus (because of The Jewel of Life), but which one’s your favorite (or favorites, in the case of duos or trios)?

That’s a hard one… You’re right that it’s not Arceus because Jewel of Life can rot in hell, and also because the whole “god Pokémon” thing just does stuff to the setting that I don’t really like, and which I’m not convinced anyone ever thought through. It’s also not Rayquaza, although I actually feel that Alpha Sapphire and Omega Ruby quite satisfactorily redeem the mess that was made of Rayquaza’s involvement in Emerald (though Deoxys is just a total Giant Space Flea from Nowhere). I like the designs of Articuno, Zapdos, and Moltres, but I’m less keen on the fact that (in the games at least) they have nothing to do with anything. Similarly, I’m fond of Cobalion, Virizion and Terrakion’s backstory, which I think is really interesting, but I was incredibly underwhelmed by how little they had to do with the story of Black and White, considering how directly invested they are in the ideological conflict behind the plot. You know, all things considered, I actually might go with Xerneas and Yveltal as joint winners; the designs are really evocative, they enabled an interesting story with some cool themes in X and Y, and the way they’re described hits a good spot on the “cosmic power” scale, where you can appreciate that these things might have region-wide significance, but they don’t necessarily place the power to unmake the universe in the hands of a ten-year-old trainer the way Dialga and Palkia do.

ThatsWhatEllieSaid asks:

How do you think the government functions in the pokemon universe? I don’t think there’s ever been any reference to any higher powers in either the games or the anime.

Well, Ash and his friends do occasionally encounter local government, in the form of the mayors of a few of the towns they visit. The mayor of Trovitopolis, in the Orange Islands, is preoccupied with reelection when they meet him in The Mystery Menace, which implies that this particular city’s government is democratic, and in the absence of any further information I would assume that this is true across the board. To be honest, I think this is one case where, if they don’t tell us anything, it’s probably because they just assume it works the same way as it does in the real world.

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Anonymous asks:

You mentioned most members of the Marill line technically being transgender. If Pokémon could be transgender, how would this work with your ideas on Pokémon gender?

Disclaimer first of all that my ideas on Pokémon gender are totally bat$#!t and probably bear little resemblance to anything Game Freak’s designers have ever thought in the privacy of their own brains…

…and secondary disclaimer that since the last time I babbled about Azurill, someone has pointed out to me that Game Freak actually did remove/fix(?) the gender thing in generation VI…

…and tertiary disclaimer that I’m cis and have no close friends who are trans (or… I don’t think I do…), so I kinda don’t really know what I’m talking about here…

…but my understanding is that transgender is basically when your biological sex doesn’t match up with your psychology or the social role you’re comfortable with, and in a world where gender works the way I outlined in that article, this… well, wouldn’t happen. What little sex differentiation Pokémon exhibit is directly tied to their psychology, so by definition they’re all cisgender. Which means that if you believe my rambling nonsense, what Azurill is doing is something quite different, where her gender identity actually changes (the point of trans being that your gender identity was the same all along and everything else about you is catching up, so to speak – which is how you’d interpret Azurill if we do think Pokémon have biological sex differentiation), for which I think the term is genderfluid but I’m not really sure?

I’m just confusing myself now so I’ll shut up before I offend anyone I haven’t already.

Anonymous asks:

Does it bug you when people associate anime only elements (like Pokemon speak or the player characters being ten) with the games/manga?

In a word, no. The way I see it, the games don’t do a huge amount of world-building. They’re getting better, of course, but it’s still not a task to which their format is terribly well-suited. The anime is just better at that. Obviously different writers are responsible for the two, but they ostensibly have in mind versions of the same world, and every detail is a useful one. And there’s room to fudge things too – like, maybe there isn’t a strict age limit of 10 years that applies everywhere, but pretty clearly the point is that kids can become Pokémon trainers at a fairly young age, though not without some restrictions or oversight. If something directly contradicts, sure, that’s something you have to resolve, one way or another, but there’s lots of ways you can do that, depending on exactly what the problem is. I have very little patience for the word “canon,” or any argument that surrounds it.

Anonymous asks:

Just how big is the Pokemon world, anyway? How long would it take to cross a region on foot?

Well if we assume one space in the game is about 1m by 1m which is probably pretty close then Viridian City is not much bigger than 1600 square metres which is, like, smaller than my university campus, so, like, you could probably walk a whole region in less than a day. Ash is just f&%^ing lazy

GrayGryphon asks:

What would you think of someone starting a Pokemon Tabletop RP using concepts from your “If I Was In Charge” series?

Hmm. Well, I mostly intended that stuff to apply to the core series, and I’m not really sure how it would work if you turned it to a different mechanical framework, but if you think there’s something you can get out of it, please, go ahead! I’d be flattered, in fact – let me know how it goes!

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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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?