vikingboybilly asks:

I really really want your opinion of Undertale. Is it the antithesis of pokémon? Forcing pokémon into the subject matter will make you obligated to write about it.

Oh, FINE, but only because Undertale deserves to be talked about.

Note: if you haven’t played this game, then 1) you should seriously consider it because it is fantastic; in my opinion it pushes the current boundaries of what video games as a medium can accomplish, and it does that in maybe 6 hours of play time and with a $US 10 price tag, and 2) avoid spoilers like the plague; I mean it.  As a corollary to 2), I’ll speak here in only the vaguest and most circumspect terms possible.

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Anonymous asks:

Would you ever consider dong reviews for Mega Evolutions like you did with the new Pokemon from Unoba and Kalos

Eh.  To be honest with you I’m not really interested in individual Mega Evolutions, because I tend to be most interested in the way Pokémon fit into the world/environment/society/etc as species, and in the case of Mega Evolved Pokémon, much of the point is that they resolutely just don’t.  As a general concept I think it’s worth rambling about at length – and I have – but at the moment something like that is not really on my radar at all.

vikingboybilly asks:

Why are non-sexual relationships named after Plato?

It comes from a bit in Plato’s Symposium where he has Socrates talk about there being two different kinds of love, one that stems from admiration of the body and leads the lover to loads and loads of awesome sex, and one that stems from admiration of the mind and leads the lover to self-improvement and contemplation of the divine (and of course because Plato is a philosopher he thinks the second kind is obviously superior).  It’s actually sort of a misnomer, though, because the way Plato describes the second kind of love, it’s not sexual, but it kind of is romantic, and really a lot more specific than what we tend to mean when we talk about “Platonic love” in modern English.

Anonymous asks:

It’s been implied in certain Pokedex entries that only a select few Pokemon are actually capable of understanding human speech. If this is true, how is it that all Pokemon are able to understand the commands for each their attacks right after being captured, with no training whatsoever?

Difficult to explain, but I suspect they understand the intent behind words, as expressed through a combination of tone and body language, to a degree that is unusual for humans.  They may not know, right off the bat, exactly what words mean, but they can tell instinctively whether the tone of a command is aggressive, or cautious, or desperate, and they can tell the difference between being told to use a regular technique and being told to do the most powerful, dramatic attack in their arsenal.  The first couple of battles will often be rocky; that’s part of what characters in the anime mean when they talk about having to learn to work in unison with your Pokémon, and it’s part of why empathy is so often stressed as a vital quality for a Pokémon trainer.  You don’t see this in the games, of course, but, well, would you like to?  It would just be a pain.

viridian kingof kanto asks:

In XY the Gym Leaders and Elite Four all held titles of nobility which increased (the Champion as Grand Duchess and GLs as Marques). But you yourself are also able to climb the social ladder and gain titles. What do you think that meansforthesociety?

Well… to be perfectly honest I think it means that the noble titles are really not very important in modern Kalos.  They’re an anachronistic remnant of what I think may once have been a Pokémon-training aristocracy that ruled Kalos in a period when not everyone could train and battle with Pokémon, probably before the invention of mass-produced Pokéballs.  At one point, membership in the nobility made it possible for people to become trainers.  Today, anyone can be a trainer, and being good at it can get you into the nobility – but since it’s no longer exclusive, the nobility can’t really act as a cohesive group with distinct goals and values anymore.  Its political power has been supplanted by modern democracies, and its central position in the institution of Pokémon training has been supplanted by the Pokémon League.  All that’s left is ceremonial.