Dhelmise

Some Pokémon are just… weird. And frankly I kind of have a soft spot for them. Heatmor? Someone jammed a blast furnace through an anteater and thought it would make a cool Pokémon; I love it. Spoink? It’s a spring-loaded pig’s head that can’t ever stop moving or its heart will explode. Perfection. Gligar? I… I mean, I’m gonna be honest; it’s been eighteen years and I still don’t know what Gligar is, but clearly he’s great. Probopass? I… well, …okay, I draw the line at Probopass because that moustache is clearly just a crime against all that is natural; I have limits. But the point is that quirkiness is appealing to me. So, presented with a Pokémon who is apparently an undead clump of seaweed wrapped around a rusty ship’s wheel and anchor that it uses to hunt whales… well, colour me confused but intrigued.

Continue reading →

Pokémottos #781

Sid-cada asks:

Occasionally, once in a few generations, Game Freak will take the time to go back to the older Pokémon’s Pokédex entries and take the time to update and add new information to them, rather than recycle the same facts. My question is, do you think that it is worthwhile? How much effort do you think it takes to add new facts to an older Pokémon? Would that time have been better spent on refining the newer things? Or are the new Pokédex entries really not that important and noticeable?

I like it a lot, mostly because one or two Pokédex entries aren’t really enough to cover all the angles on what might make a Pokémon interesting or fully develop the concept. The fact that Pokédex completion, as of generation VII, is now decoupled from any one save file (Pokébank can now display all possible Pokédex information of all the Pokémon you’ve captured on any of the games you own) I think helps to put all of this stuff front-and-centre a bit more, and emphasise the accumulation of information across multiple generations. A lot of this stuff really helps to fill out the world and give us a sense of its ecology and culture – especially in Sun and Moon, where many old Pokémon (even those without Alolan forms) have Pokédex entries that describe how they live in Alola or relate to Alolan Pokémon, in keeping with generation VII’s greater focus on world-building and developing the character of the region itself. I’ve been thinking about doing a sort of “Pokédex appreciation” series – trawling the Pokédex for interesting bits of trivia we’ve learned about Pokémon over the years, because frankly I do regularly learn new things about old Pokémon that surprise and delight me. Would that appeal to anyone?

Supman asks:

Hey pm! Ive been lurking here simce you denied or granted rights to exsist to pokemon, and i was wondering if you ever reviewed the secondary forms of zekrom and reshiram, when they are combined with kyurem?

Never did, and… I think probably won’t, though I’m not quite prepared to rule out a meandering series on legendary Pokémon generally. There are some assorted thoughts on Reshiram, Zekrom and their relationship with Kyurem that you can find here:
https://pokemaniacal.com/2013/12/19/hi-i-was-thinking-about-reshiram-and-zekrom-it/
https://pokemaniacal.com/2018/07/09/squidward-tentacles-asks-2/
https://pokemaniacal.com/2019/01/05/hyper-beam-asks/

Squidward Tentacles asks:

RandomAccess asks:

So, how about that Detective Pikachu trailer?

(Yes, this is how far behind I am; I’M WORKING ON IT)

(I’M FINE)

Well, mostly I’m just really excited that this is apparently a Pokémon movie that is going to try to be a decent movie in its own right, something that can be enjoyed by people who aren’t already die-hard Pokémon fans and isn’t just product placement for the latest event-exclusive legendary Pokémon (which, let’s be honest, is what a lot of Pokémon movies set in the world of the anime tend to devolve into). Ryan Reynolds’ performance as Pikachu seems promising too; he may not be Danny DeVito, but he’s got a nice balance of heartfelt and snarky that I think should serve the premise of the film well. I like that, although the most prominently-featured Pokémon are first-generation classics (presumably to draw the nostalgia crowd), there are a few newer Pokémon as well, apparently focusing on the ones who are already big cross-media stars like Greninja.

Jim the Editor is not a fan of the fuzzy, vaguely felt look of the Pokémon in the trailer, and I have to admit some of them are a bit disconcerting. It’s difficult to put creatures designed for anime into a live action movie, and some level of dissonance is almost unavoidable – I suspect there’s an argument that it’s a bad idea even to try. On the other hand, there’s still a prejudice against animation in the West that makes it hard for people to take an animated movie seriously or put much effort into it unless it’s pitched mainly at young children, so that may be a necessary sacrifice. I think we’ll get used to it, though, especially if this isn’t Pokémon’s last foray into live-action.

Also no-one in the trailer can pronounce “Pokémon” (learn to e-acute, people!) but that’s kinda par for the course for English-speakers.

Smugleaf asks:

I love Serperior. Do you have any idea for a Mega evolution or regional form for Serperior? Maybe make him Grass/Poison

Well I’m not exactly sitting on one that I’ve been saving for a special occasion or anything like that, but let’s give it ago…

I suspect we’re not likely ever to see regional forms of starter Pokémon, but on the assumption that we might, well, I think there could be interesting ground for a Kalosian form of Serperior. Serperior is supposed to have a royalty aesthetic, and we know from interviews that elements of his design are based on French nobility and the symbol of the fleur-de-lis. A Kalosian Serperior might have the blue and gold colours of the Bourbon dynasty, some kind of crown-like head crest, maybe a more ornate tail… it might be interesting if this version of Serperior had a focus on physical attacks and particularly on blade-like moves like Night Slash and Sacred Sword. Typing could be Grass/Fighting, Grass/Steel, even Grass/Fairy, perhaps with a signature move to match (there’s nothing clearly wrong with Grass/Poison for a variant of Serperior, but we do have rather a lot of those already). Contrary might be replaced with something like Defiant or Justified that provides a situational attack bonus. And of course these Serperior would have been favoured partners of the Kalosian royalty in ancient times.

The Twitter’s Back

So, Jim the Editor has reminded me that I have a Twitter account, @pokemaniacal, which I was sort of hoping he would never do because I’m very bad at Twitter and I hate it. I tried to actually tweet things for a few months back in 2012, then gave up and just set it to tweet links whenever I posted something to Tumblr, and even that apparently stopped in early 2016 (presumably because Tumblr broke something, #fucktumblr). But I’m gonna give it another go, since I’m in a sort of rebranding phase with the new website and the Patreon page and everything, and maybe I can #engage my #followers by joining the #conversation (#hashtag #pleasekillme). So if you want to get notifications when I post something, or just hear whatever dumb brainfarts I decide to post there, go check it out.

Albert pokeEinstein asks:

Please build a world of alternative physics to run the Pokemon world on!

No.

…do… do I have to say more…?

…fine.

If I were supposed to completely rebuild Pokémon from the ground up, creating a coherent magic/“physics” system would be high on my list, because frankly I would like it if there were some underlying logic to the way the special powers of different Pokémon interact with each other and the world, and we didn’t have to have conversations like this. But to do a halfway decent job at something like that, well, for one thing we’re talking weeks of work, so unless Game Freak has decided to hire me for the purpose, I can’t be bothered; and for another, it would require trampling all over vast swathes of Pokémon’s existing lore that was created without an overarching behind-the-scenes rulebook.

And… well, frankly, if Pokémon made sense, you wouldn’t need me anymore, would you?

Patreon launch!

I have a Patreon page now! So… that’s a thing!

Patreon, for those who aren’t familiar with it, is a platform that allows creative types (writers, artists, Youtubers, whatever) to accept regular donations from fans who think their work is worthy of financial support and want it to continue. In return, most people offer perks to their donors, usually in the form of public acknowledgements and shoutouts, or “backstage access” to some element of the creative process – I have plans for both of these, and you can see details on the page itself. A lot of Youtubers survive off Patreon money, especially since the “adpocalypse” that made it much harder to live on ad revenue alone without sacrificing creative freedom. I use Patreon to support a bunch of plucky Texan kids who make sketch comedy, because THAT IS WHAT I BELIEVE THE WORLD NEEDS RIGHT NOW, DAMN IT

For the moment this is very much a “give me a small tip if you think my work deserves it” thing – I’m not looking to make a living here (or at least, not yet?). Even if only five people give me $1/month each, well, that’s enough to pay WordPress for hosting the blog and being marginally less terrible than Tumblr. If we get to $10/month, I can upgrade to WordPress Premium, or even WordPress Business at $30/month, and get some meaningful customisation (why is CSS editing a premium feature? It’s not that complex!). Beyond that… well, beyond that I haven’t really figured it out yet, but if I’m going to discuss and review the next generation of Pokémon games then at some point I’ll need to buy a Nintendo Switch, and any contributions towards that, even if they don’t cover the full cost, will make the next year of my life a lot easier.

My continued work on this blog is not in any way contingent on getting Patreon money – I’ve been doing this for almost eight years with no financial incentives, and I am damn well going to continue lurching onward into Pokémon’s nightmarish dark future for as long as it takes to heal the insanity that these games have wrought upon my fractured soul (which might as well be forever). But it would certainly be nice to get something back; maybe knowing that I’m receiving support from readers will even make me more honest about posting regularly. And if this goes really well, who knows? Maybe I don’t want to be an academic forever. Maybe a humble(…ish) Pokémon blog is worth trying to build into something bigger. But we’ll burn that bridge when we come to it.

[Asks: Asks: Asks: Asks:] asks:

How do you feel about the lack of single type Flying pokemon? I’ve always felt it was odd that there is only one pure Flying type.

I tend to think Game Freak’s notion of what the Flying type actually is has changed quite a bit since generation I, perhaps to the extent that no one has ever quite known what it’s supposed to be. All the generation I Flying-type attacks are bird-themed – Wing Attack, Drill Peck, Sky Attack (in Japanese, Goddo Bādo, a transliteration of the English “God Bird”) – which makes sense, since we have reason to suspect, on the basis of MissingNo and other bits of stray game data from Red and Blue, that it was originally called the “Bird type.” This, of course, is why Flying is strong against Bug. Gust was a Normal-type attack originally, and Whirlwind still is.

Continue reading →