[my miltanks bring several existential thoughts to the yard and they’re like, “moooooooo”] asks:

it’s pride month and we’re all stuck inside so i was wondering which place in the pokémon world would throw the baller-est pride parade?

yeah this is how long my question queue typically is these days; don’t ask me anything that’s specific to the time you’re asking it unless you’re okay with a margin of error of, like, a month

But yeah, um… I dunno, what’s the campiest city in the Pokémon world?  Saffron City and Goldenrod City are way too straight and business-y, likewise Wyndon in Galar; Ecruteak City’s probably too conservative; you’d want to get out to, like… Celadon or Olivine.  Mauville City’s glitzy and glamorous; Slateport and Lilycove have robust Pokémon Contest traditions, and you just know all the top competitors in those are queens; same goes for Hearthome City in Sinnoh (also… Fantina).  Sootopolis City and Castelia City have the campiest gym leaders – I mean… you could almost decide this with a lip-sync battle between Burgh and Wallace.  Spikemuth is probably a strong dark horse contender, ‘cause they know what it’s like to be oppressed and even the straights would be allies (less so Po Town in Alola, ‘cause Team Skull are still kinda working through their toxic masculinity baggage; Marnie wouldn’t put up with that $#!t).  Lumiose City has the highest concentration of coffee shops in the known universe, which is a very important resource, as well as the best clothes, makeup, etc.  Hau‘oli City is probably a good bet for similar reasons; it’s modern, it’s trendy, also their Captain is Ilima and just look at him; if that boy’s completely straight then I’m a shiny Wobbuffet.  The biggest regular pride parade in the real world is the São Paulo one, but there’s no Brazilian Pokémon region (yet?) and New York is also really big because of Stonewall, which is a point in favour of Castelia City.

Listen, I think there’s a lot of strong contenders here and honestly I don’t feel confident making a call.  We can turn this over to discussion in the comments; I just think the most important thing is for us not to lose sight of the fact that all the major characters in Pokémon are some flavour of queer, except for a few of the villains and, like, maybe Brock.  I don’t make the rules; I just enforce them.

Ghetsis

Ghetsis’ original design from Black and White.

The Dark Council has convened, and by the will of my mysterious Patrons, my fate is ordained: we’re talking about Ghetsis, the villain of Pokémon: Black and White.  Black and White have always been games that I have very mixed feelings about, for all sorts of reasons, and Ghetsis and his role in the story are inextricable from those feelings.  I love the story of Black and White and their sequels; taken together I still think they have the best plot a core Pokémon game has yet produced (although more recent games have different strengths of their own).  I also think they’re deeply flawed and could easily have been so much more.  Ghetsis is a fantastic character – but he and his relationship with the games’ anti-hero (anti-villain?), N, are at the heart of what holds Black and White back.  I’ve talked about Team Plasma, N and Ghetsis before in places, but that was ages ago and some of that old stuff is a little patchy, so this has been a long time coming.  Let’s talk about what makes Ghetsis arguably the most evil character in Pokémon’s history and how he shapes the story of these now-classic entries in the series.

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Some notes on Ghetsis’ design, and the colour indigo

I’m just finishing up a character study of Ghetsis, the villain of Pokémon: Black and White, at the behest of my shadowy masters on the Dark Council. I have some thoughts on his character design, which I didn’t want to put into the main piece because the visual design of the human characters isn’t really something I’m normally interested in and it wasn’t especially relevant to the thesis of the article, but I also don’t want to not post it at all because I think I might have noticed something new here. So… here’s… that!

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Not Final Fantasy Friday

Tomorrow morning I am not streaming Final Fantasy X with Jim the Editor, because he is on holiday in Wales and I will be busy performing a dangerous ritual to wrest vast amounts of spiritual power from the land itself at tremendous risk to my life and sanity making toast. But if watching us play a classic game and listening to our opinions on its gameplay, characters, themes, world, story, etc sounds like something you might enjoy, this might be a good time to catch up with the story so far, which you can do here!

Ace Trainer Fox asks:

How would you feel if game freak made a region based on Mexico or Spain, it has many of the same points as India for a candidate, a rich cultural history, interesting landscapes, heck, you could even have some really cool regional forms, like a water grass type maractus based on cacti that store water, or a chatot evolution based on a macaw, or even a fairy type happy phantump & trevenant based around a pokemon themed festival similar to the day of the dead. Sorry, I went off on a but of a tangeant there, but something like that would be rather interesting, just some food for thought.

Yeah!

Uh

I don’t know; I feel like I should have something to add to this but… um… well, yeah, there’s all kinds of cool things you could do with a Mexican region.  I’m a history and archaeology guy so obviously the first thing that occurs to me is that it would be cool to have some Aztec-, Toltec- and Olmec-inspired stuff; maybe a Nosepass regional form (or a totally new Pokémon) using the Olmec heads from La Venta, or an Aztec “jaguar warrior” Pokémon, or a legendary “feathered serpent” (or even just a resplendent quetzal Pokémon).  Modern Mexico would have a lot of cool natural and cultural inspirations for Pokémon too.

Ace Trainer Fox asks:

If you had to make a pokemon team for each of the original digidestined: Tai, Matt, T.K., Izzy, Mimi, Joe, Sora, and Koiri(using the dub names here, also can’t spell Koiri’s, Kairi’s? name) what pokemon would you pick for each that shows off their individual personalities and abilities?

[This question actually landed in my inbox before I started that series doing this same thing for Fire Emblem: Three Houses. I just have a huge queue of questions and this particular one took a while to answer; it’s a total coincidence that it’s kind of on-theme.]

Hmmmm… let me see… we’ve got to get Pokémon that at least vaguely resemble their Digimon partners and their powers, and we’ve also got to get Pokémon that can stand for the virtues of their Crests, as well as for notable traits of their personalities.

Tai:

I think Tai mainly uses Fire-types like Agumon and Greymon; obviously he needs a Charizard, and I think Arcanine is a good match for his Crest of Courage.  He has a somewhat reckless and impulsive nature, so I think we should add something like Primeape.  I feel like we should include something for SkullGreymon – Houndoom, maybe?  Tai and Sora play soccer together and I think they both have Cinderace that they got at the same time.  Nidoking kinda straddles his transition from risk-taking idiot to actual leader, and is another dinosaur-like Pokémon.

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Pokémon Trainers of Fire Emblem: Three Houses (Part 3: Golden Deer)

(Part 1 and Part 2)

The third of this game’s titular “three houses” are the Golden Deer, students from the Leicester Alliance, which is a federation of nobles who rejected the monarchical traditions of both of the continent’s other nations and formed a new country in the east. They’re slightly more egalitarian, so this house has more low-born students than the others.

Claude von Riegan

  • Future Grand Duke of the Fantasy Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth
    • my real-world analogies in this series are extremely loose but, y’know what, I stand by this one
  • Apparently didn’t even know he was a noble until a couple of years ago because his mother decided, quite early on in her life, “fµ¢£ this $#!t; I’m out”
  • Extremely pretty, master of sass
    • Canonically straight, which is some serious bull$#!t
    • I mean, look at him
  • Slytherin AF; has about a dozen zany schemes going at any given time and brews experimental poisons as a hobby
  • Gets on Edelgard and Dimitri’s nerves a lot, but I think secretly they love him
  • Addresses Byleth as “Teach,” which is not as endearing as he thinks it is
  • He is perfect and I love him

Favoured types: Dark, Poison, Flying
Claude is good at (among other things) trickery, poisons and aerial combat.

Disfavoured types: Fighting, Ground, Fairy
Claude will never fight fair if he can help it, and doesn’t like Pokémon who are either too reliant on brute strength or bound by conventional ideas of nobility.

Partner: Naganadel
Claude’s “default” progression makes him a wyvern rider, which Naganadel plays into quite well; being an “outsider” is an important theme of his story, so having an Ultra Beast as a partner rather than a traditional legendary Pokémon seems fitting; and Claude loves Naganadel’s repertoire of poisons.

Other Pokémon: Zoroark, Muk (Alolan), Vivillon, Salazzle, Aerodactyl

Muk and Salazzle provide raw materials for Claude’s poison experiments (I’d specifically like him to have a shiny Salazzle because he gets an albino wyvern later, and shiny Salazzle is white).  Vivillon fits his ambition to break down barriers between peoples of different regions.  Zoroark is an excellent zany scheme enabler.  Aerodactyl is just a great wyvern-ish Pokémon to have with you in the air.

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Ty asks:

So there’s a Pokemon fan game that I’ve been enjoying for quite a while now called Pokemon Rejuvenation, and while they stay pretty true to the original Pokemon games, they also have added new things on top of the old system like more complex field effects, Gym Leaders with exclusive, signature moves, and a hard level cap where your Pokemon stop getting EXP at a certain point until you get your next badge.

One of these things I’d love to hear your opinion on, which is Pokemon Crests. Crests are inspired by items like Marowak’s Thick Club and Farfetch’d’s Stick. Pokemon Crests can be held by specific Pokemon to give them advantages to help make weaker Pokemon stronger. Here are some examples that were added: [cutting this for space and moving it to the end]

There are several more Crests, but you get the picture. What are your thoughts on this concept, how you like it in comparison to other ways of strengthening weaker Pokemon that we’ve seen, and how reasonable do you think this solution is?

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