Sylveon

Well, this puts me in a rather awkward position.

Sylveon.
Sylveon.

See, my perspective on new evolutions of Eevee is pretty much diametrically opposite to the perspective of, as far as I can tell, the entirety of the rest of the Pokémon community – to whit, I don’t actually think we need any more.  I like Eevee as much as the next guy, but her individual evolutions are not, in and of themselves, terribly interesting – in fact the recipe seems to be “Eevee + generic powers of type x” – they’re interesting by virtue of their common lineage, and that point was quite satisfactorily made long ago.  Continuing to add more is just labouring it, I feel; I’ve never been able to think of Leafeon and Glaceon as anything other than Pokédex filler.  So, while everyone else was ecstatic with the revelation of generation VI’s new Fairy-type Eevee and then bitterly disappointed that it wasn’t accompanied by a Dragon-type one, I’m sitting here wondering what the hell is so great about the one we did get.  Right… now that I’ve made the majority of my reading audience utterly furious with me, let’s see whether I can redeem myself…

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So I was exploring the internet when I saw this. Pokémon : A Study In Stockholm Syndrome. Which was written by Tim Hitpas. Do you believe he is valid in his reasoning? Do you believe he ignores some important concepts? Do you believe he has some right concept? Maybe you can write a critique on it as a big topic like you did for the Peta thing.

It’s sort of nothing we haven’t talked about before.  Honestly, this kind of piece annoys me a little bit – pointing out that Pokémon can be read as apologetic of animal abuse isn’t at all original or even particularly clever, and I honestly don’t think it deserves a great deal of attention.  It only becomes interesting if you use it to tell a story, and in that respect the way this article is written really confuses me – it seems pretty clear when he talks about Pikachu in Yellow that he’s discussing Pokémon from an out-of-universe perspective, but much of the rest of it, particularly that very last paragraph, is more in the style of a political pamphlet written from the perspective of a character in the Pokémon world.  I’m left wondering what the point is.

I think what really jumps out at me is that he gives the FBI estimate for the number of hostages who develop Stockholm Syndrome, which is 8%, then doesn’t really explain the fact that, by all accounts, the figure for Pokémon seems more like 90%, if not higher.  I think there’s sort of a vague allusion in that paragraph to the idea that humans in the Pokémon world are just very good at it, but I feel like 8% is just not a high enough success rate to allow the phenomenon to explain what we actually see (and, in fact, since Stockholm Syndrome seems to have something to do with developing empathy for one’s captor, I’d expect it to have, if anything, an even lower rate of incidence for cross-species interactions).  Reliance on Stockholm Syndrome as we understand it should make training completely unviable for the majority of Pokémon.  I’m pretty sure that’s not all that’s going on.

Ok I know this isn’t pokemon related, so you don’t have to answer it. Were you impressed with kreia from Star Wars knights of the old republic 2?

I have just convinced Jim the Editor to play this game, so I will avoid going into detail lest I give things away, but Kreia is one of my favourite characters from any video game ever.  I mean, in a number of ways she’s kind of a bad person, but her personality and beliefs are very interesting, particularly in the context of everything else that’s going on in the Star Wars universe, she’s the mouthpiece for some of the game’s cleverest ideas, and she’s a compelling (not to mention pretty badass) female character who isn’t defined by her relationships with male characters (the Exile being canonically female).  What more can you want?

Would you ever consider an article on how experience works? I’ve personally found it a bit wonky; I mean, it’s entirely possible to gain massive increases in strength- even potentially changing their entire body- just by defeating the same few Pokemon over and over again. Thoughts?

I don’t know if I want to do a whole thing on it, just because it’s not really a question about Pokémon at all – similar or identical systems are extremely common in RPGs and even appear in other genres.  It’s just one of the basic commonplaces of reducing combat to an abstraction that can be portrayed by a video game (some games actually do try to explain experience points in a way that makes sense in the context of the story, like the Star Wars RPG Knights of the Old Republic II, but it’s often more trouble than it’s worth for the writers).  The word “experience” seems to demonstrate that the basic assumption behind it is pretty simple: the more you do something – such as fighting – the better you get at it.  I think it’s highly unlikely that all the growth we associate with levelling is related to the Pokémon getting physically stronger, tougher or faster, although some of it probably is.  They’re learning to apply their strength more effectively, endure pain with greater focus, and move more precisely with better reaction times.  These are all things people can do too.

Evolution’s the weird part, and I’ve always thought that the way the anime portrays it is our best hope for making sense of that; it regularly seems to be a result of diffusing psychological blocks of one sort or another, of strong desire or desperation to overcome a specific obstacle, or of achieving some new sense of self-awareness (my further thoughts on this in some of my anime commentaries, particularly to The Problem With Paras).  Fighting often means using their powers often, and using their powers often means Pokémon better appreciate their applications and limits, and become more in touch with the forces that allow them to function.  I don’t believe we’re supposed to be able to figure out exactly how it works, particularly not biologically – I’m pretty sure on some level it’s basically magic – but I think we’re meant to see evolution as part of a Pokémon’s realisation of its potential, and battles and experience as one of the fastest ways to understand that potential.

I’m sure you have been asked about it before, but I’d love to see a list similar to “Top Ten Worst Pokemon Ever” in which you give your opinion of the best Pokemon ever, whether it be based upon flavor or actual battle usefulness (or both) is up to you. Presumably it would discount legendaries, because a top 10 best list of all legendaries would just be boring, especially if you’re basing this upon power alone… Anyways, just some food for thought when you’re coming up with future topic ideas.

I think I probably have been asked this before, but I don’t remember exactly.  The main reasons I’ve never tried to do it are because I don’t think I’d be able to narrow it down to ten, and even if I did, I don’t think I’d be able to put them in order.  I mean, really, choose a single “best Pokémon ever”?  Even my “worst Pokémon ever” was kind of a fake-out because I honestly do like a lot of things about the Unown; I just hate the way the games handle them.  The fact is, as much as I bitch about it, Pokémon has a lot more good designs than bad ones, and it helps that I was able to select my top ten worst ones from the relatively small subset of those who are also terrible at everything.  The other thing is that while I’m very sure that the weakest Pokémon contribute little to gameplay, I kind of believe that the very strongest ones are not necessarily a positive influence either – I love Kyogre as a Pokémon, but I would never have let players anywhere near something so powerful.  Even nerfing Drizzle only stops him from totally dominating all the other legendary Pokémon.  I’m not sure where I would draw my line, though – is it my contention that Blaziken is ‘good’?  What about Lucario, or Garchomp?  I’m not sure what the ideal balance point is.