One lunatic's love-hate relationship with the Pokémon franchise, and his addled musings on its rights, wrongs, ins and outs. Come one, come all, and indulge my delusions of grandeur as I inflict my opinions on anyone within shouting distance.
A few days ago I finally evolved a Gloom into Vileplume on Pokémon Go. I can’t help but wonder if you’ve acquired one yet, and how the “catching them all” is going on that front?
I kinda fell out of the habit of doing anything with it regularly. There was a period of a couple of weeks back in October when one particular patch was incompatible with my phone for some reason, and I couldn’t play. By the time it was fixed I’d sort of lost interest.
Continue reading “Anonymous asks:”As you’ve often mentioned, a predominant theme of Pokemon is that humans and Pokemon both prosper by working together and treating each other with respect and friendship. It’s not only the ethos of most inhabitants of the world, but built into the metaphysics of the game itself (friendship evolution, etc). Why is it that (most of) the evil teams seem so convinced that it’s better to treat mons like tools or slaves instead, when their ideology is demonstrably wrong? Obviously, it shows that the evil people are, in fact, evil, but Team Rocket, who cares solely about money, should at least be able to crunch the numbers and see which technique is more profitable in the long run. Plus, who’s on the buying end of these smuggling rings? Do you think something else is going on? Either something implied or an unintentional interpretation?
Hey, what are youre thoughts on the gym leaders? I always have fun thinking what they could do in Pokemon society
Well, there seem to be basically three things Gym Leaders do in a community: they test and certify trainers wanting to challenge the Pokémon League, they provide instruction and a learning environment to junior trainers, and they solve people’s Pokémon-related problems. Most of them – with some notable exceptions, particularly in Kanto – are pillars of the community, well-known and generally trusted. The last few generations, particularly V and what I’ve seen so far of VII (if we say that the Captains are basically equivalent to Gym Leaders), have been making a very deliberate effort to show that most Gym Leaders also have “day jobs” in addition to their Pokémon-related responsibilities – Cilan and his brothers run a restaurant, Clay is a mining tycoon, Viola is a photographer, Clemont is an electrical engineer, Ilima is a painter, etc. So it might well be that, in some regions at least, Gym Leaders actually work as volunteers. These are people who just care so much about Pokémon training that they will devote a significant portion of their own free time to running what is basically an entire sports facility (or, in Alola, administering trials) so that members of the community can learn more about it. Which I think is pretty neat.
Have you ever read “Children of the Lamp”? I’m really, REALLY new to pokemon, so perhaps there’s something in the anime that I’ve missed, rendering this impossible, but I’ve always thought the inside of pokeballs similar to the inside of the lamps in those series; larger on the inside, with the pokemon having the ability to modify the inside to their liking. Pokemon go in, see it’s comfortable, and like the trainer’s willingness to accommodate them, and end up appreciating the trainer a lot more
I’m afraid I’m not familiar with that series. It’s sort of fine in theory, but official sources are always very cagey with how Pokémon experience the inside of a Pokéball. The image below, with Iris’ Dragonite, is the closest thing I’m aware of to an actual depiction of what it’s like (though note that, if it looks grumpy, that’s not necessarily because of conditions inside the Pokéball – “grumpy” is this particular Dragonite’s baseline). I think originally Pokéballs were imagined to store Pokémon as data in a similar way to the PC network, but then the anime did things that made it clear they were still aware while inside, and could leave at will. Probably several people at Game Freak have thought something along the lines of what you’re talking about at one time or another, but I’m not sure anyone has ever gone through to see whether it’s consistent with how Pokéballs are portrayed and how they work throughout the series.
There doesn’t seem to be a whole lot to see in Heahea City. Part of the town is blocked off by some douchebag with a perfectionist Stoutland that won’t move until it’s sniffed literally every square centimetre of the main road, and most of the buildings I can access are standard services: there’s a Pokémon Centre, and a clothing shop, and a tourist bureau like the one in Hau’oli City. Hau just wants to find somewhere that sells malasadas, but Lillie, for her part, has more interesting ambitions: she wants to take Nebby to Akala Island’s guardian ruins, the home of the island’s patron god-Pokémon, Tapu Lele, and she’s hoping that I’ll accompany them when the time comes. For Nebby’s sake, I make a noncommittal “mrrmmhmm” noise and wiggle my head in a way that could plausibly be interpreted as either a nod “yes” or a shake “no.”
Continue reading “Pokémon Moon, Episode 5: In Which I Agree To Help Resurrect An Ancient God”Once he and Captain Ilima have finished explaining Z-moves to me, Professor Kukui suddenly remembers that he has an urgent task that cannot possibly wait: he’s lost Lillie. Somehow. I’m still not 100% certain that Lillie isn’t a terrorist, so in the interests of making sure someone is watching her, I agree to help look for her in the northern part of Melemele Island. This area, route 3, is cordoned off by barricades. Not for any particular reason, mind you. Someone appears to have decided that the Pokémon beyond are too strong for civilians to tangle with unless they have an escort – a certified trainer who has completed the island’s trials. Which… sort of raises the question of how Lillie got through, since she not only hasn’t completed any trials but insists that she’s not actually a trainer at all (which I’m pretty sure is not true; I’m not sure of the legal status of their relationship but for all practical purposes she certainly seems to be Nebby’s trainer). Evidence that she has secret and subversive abilities continues to mount. In any case, at Ilima’s command, the barricades open for me, and I am given access to the northern coastal road.
Continue reading “Pokémon Moon, Episode 4: In Which I Learn, Rapidly And Under Duress, To Ride A Bull”Continue reading “RandomAccess asks:”I thought about Pokémon ethics and something occurred to me, Pokémon are dangerous. Of course humans use devices to contain them, it’s the one way we can survive in that hostile world, where there are creatures that can destroy you mind, body, and even soul. The fact that they become tame after capture despite obviously still having free will is incredibly lucky on our part, and shows it’s mutually beneficial, because if they wanted to, they’d destroy us and be rid of us, and we couldn’t stop it
What do you think is the logic behind Zubat’s Poison typing?
Well, for one thing, Game Freak seem to have disliked the idea of pure Flying-types up until generation V, when we got Tornadus, and it’s not really clear what else Zubat could possibly have been (no Dark type when he was introduced). For another, vampire bats are technically venomous by some definitions, since their saliva has special properties that inhibit clotting and increase blood flow to the area of a bite.
What is your favorite alcoholic beverage?
Crema di limoncello. It’s an Italian liqueur made from grain alcohol, milk, sugar and lemon peel, traditionally served chilled after meals as a digestive. The best comes from the Amalfi Coast, but I also make my own by soaking lemon peel in vodka for a month or two.
Huh, for some reason I thought you were playing Sun, but since the normal trial featured rattatah instead of yungoos, I imagine you’re actually playing Moon. How do you feel about the inverted clock feature?
Well, those entries are titled “Pokémon Moon: Episode 1, 2, 3, etc”…
Anyway. It actually took me a little while to figure out what was going on, because at the moment I’m in New Zealand for Christmas with my family, but my DS was still set to US eastern time, so in practice the game was… I think six hours behind the actual time of day? Which is sort of how the game justifies it, of course – Alola is so far away from everything that it’s in a different time zone, and Professor Kukui actually asks you if you’re feeling any jet lag following your arrival from Kanto. Anyway. It seems perfectly harmless, and a nice way of emphasising what I assume will be a prominent day/night theme in the games (Yungoos’ Pokédex entry specifically talks about how it’s very active during the day and promptly collapses from exhaustion at dusk, so it makes a sensible opposite to the nocturnal Alolan Dark Rattata). Depending on your typical play schedule it might become inconvenient, but that’s true of the basic day/night system as well, and you can circumvent it easily enough by just lying to your DS about what time it is, if you really need to.
Pokémaniacal 