Tag: Human Characters

How do you think you gain the title ‘professor’ in the pokemon world?

Well, if it’s anything like the US, show up.

(At home – and, from what I can gather, most other places in the world – being called ‘Professor’ means you’ve really made it; a university department might only have one or two full Professors, whereas here just about any old schmuck put in charge of a classroom seems to get called ‘Professor,’ even adjuncts living below the poverty line – I’m not sure you even need a PhD)

Seriously, though, in the real world there’s no particular qualification you need to gain the title ‘Professor’ – it’s more like a job description than, say ‘Doctor’ (which implies a specific high-level academic or medical qualification).  It probably means something like ‘senior/chief researcher’ and indicates that the person in question runs his or her own lab, or occupies an important government-appointed scientific position.  Some of them may be appointed by the Pokémon League, depending on how much you think that organisation is in charge of.

Of course, it goes without saying that your surname has to be the name of a tree (although you can just get it legally changed for this purpose).

Who is your favourite random NPC in pokemon?

Okay, by “random NPC” I am understanding you to mean excluding Professors, rivals, Gym Leaders, villain bosses, Champions, Elite Four members, and other similar recurring character archetypes?  Um… I’ve never really given it a great deal of thought but I guess there are a few I have fond memories of…

The Super Nerd from Mount Moon.  He had his priorities straight – live in the dark, hoarding the calcified remains of extinct animals and responding with violence to anyone who tries to take them.  Or the Aroma Lady outside Mauville City in Ruby and Sapphire who can inexplicably walk up ledges.  Or the old guy with the Weedle in Viridian City who tries to teach you how to catch Pokémon but fails miserably!  Man, good times… And who could forget Youngster Joey with his top percentage Rattata?

Also, I don’t know whether he counts as “random” but I have a certain fondness for Zinzolin in Black and White 2, purely because his motivation in those games is totally at right angles to what everyone else in the plot is concerned with, but still actually kind of interesting (he wants to separate Pokémon from people just to see what will happen, in a kind of twisted social experiment).

If you were a Pokémon Professor, what would be your field of research, and where would you set up your lab? And most importantly: how much would you pay your interns?

Without a doubt, my field would be the history of Pokémon training.  Pokémon Professors tend to be portrayed as specialists in the hard sciences, with the lab coats and such, but I think there’s room for some more tweed-wearing humanities (Pokémonities?) people in there.  As for location… well, there are a lot of places I could potentially set up shop, but I think on balance I’d want to be in Johto; it’s one of the quieter, less densely populated regions, which tends to bode well for archaeological research.  It’s also the only region we’ve seen to which apricorns are endemic, and the only one where they are still used to make Pokéballs, which has always made me suspect that Pokéballs were invented in Johto – kind of an important development.

Interns don’t get paid!  Jeez, do I look like I’m made of grant money!?  Seriously, though, if I were offered a position with “intern” in the title, I wouldn’t necessarily expect any money at all; often you’re just in it for the work experience.  And I would exploit them for all they were worth!

Aaaah yes, I can finally ask you! Have you seen the ghost girl in Lumiose? And the Mamoswine being photographed? Also, are you planning on watching the XY anime? It’s only about 10 episodes in at the moment and there are subs available. Earlier this year I tried watching the entire anime and I got to episode 300 or so before I gave up, it just wasn’t that interesting… but I’m totally hooked with this new one! I don’t know how much of it has to do with it not being a poor dub though.

Oh, right.  I did see both of those, but I forgot to comment on them.  I’m not sure I understand the logic behind choosing a Mamoswine as the spokesperson (…spokespokémon?) for a cosmetics company, but hey, if it sells, why not?  And the weird ghost chick… yeah, I have no idea what that’s about.  I sort of figured that maybe if you came back later, after filling some requirement, she’d do something else?  I don’t know.  Creepy as f#@$ though.

I’ll probably watch the X and Y series at some point, but I don’t really like watching the anime subtitled, personally.

If at some point in the past humans and pokemon were not considered separate beings, which essentially makes humans just another pokemon, what types would you say they’re classified as. To me, it could be either normal, fighting, or even psychic if certain claims about the abilities humans possess within the pokemon universe are to be believed. What other pokemon-esque abilities would you say humans possess or at least used to possess?

I’m not sure; I guess I would say that we’re really Normal-types with the ability to learn a few Fighting and Psychic techniques if we work really hard at it (because even the greatest human psychics and martial artists are pretty weak compared to actual Fighting and Psychic Pokémon).  I think the way Koga and other ninja characters are portrayed might suggest that they base their techniques of a variety of Pokémon attacks – Toxic being the big one, which could even be a human technique adapted to use by Pokémon rather than the other way around (which is why all Pokémon can use it).  As Normal-types go, though, we’re pretty boring.  Of course, everything is relative… Fire-, Rock- and Ground-type would probably be astonished by our ability to withstand water!

I think it’s important to bear in mind that humans don’t exhibit many traits which are present in all (or almost all) Pokémon uniformly – Pokéballs don’t work on us, we can’t use TMs, we don’t lay eggs – that last one in particular seems kind of a big deal to me.  The other question that occurs to me is whether Pokémon and humans were ever actually as close as they were in the myths, because the idea of similar closeness between humans and animals isn’t all that unusual in real-word mythology; plenty of cultures have a concept of a mythic age before the rules of the cosmos had been fully set, and you do get animals acting like humans and humans acting like animals in those stories, but I’m pretty sure it didn’t really happen.  There seems to be a big cultural drive in the Pokémon world to portray humans and Pokémon as being basically the same thing, but that doesn’t necessarily make it so…

Which rival is your favourite, and why?

Hmm.

I’m going to have to go with Silver.  Silver starts off just as amazingly dickish as Blue ever was, if not more so, but he has this wonderful arc of growth and development where he learns to care for his Pokémon and work with them in a beautiful union of friendship – and the thing that I find truly wonderful about all this is that, in the end, he’s still a dick.  Learning to love his Pokémon doesn’t magically change the fact that he is gruff, withdrawn, condescending and just all-around unlikable, which makes that positive shift feel so much more realistic, and emphasises that Silver, like everyone, has both good and bad in him.

Suppose you went over to the dark side because they had cookies. You have your choice to join whichever evil Team you like. Which would it be, and why?

Hmm.  Well, Team Plasma are kind of Ghetsis’ silly brainwashed minions, Teams Aqua and Magma are almost entirely built around a stunning failure to appreciate the basic principles of ecology, and Team Galactic go a little too far for my tastes with their plan to, y’know, destroy the universe, so I suppose I’m going to have to stick to the basics and go with Team Rocket.  They have a sensible goal (money and power, in whatever quantities are achievable), they have no deluded master scheme that would threaten to derail their other plans and/or wipe out modern civilisation, they have a sensible command structure and effective recruiting strategies, and although they lack Team Galactic’s technological supremacy, they’ve still shown they can pull out some fairly impressive scientific expertise when the need arises.  Besides, none of the other teams have an awesome motto.

I love how you describe Black and White 2s’ protagonist designs. I cannot stand these, and this is the first pokemon game where both the main characters look terrible to me. Do you have a favorite “protagonist” of any of the pokemon games (including X and Y). Mine’s the X and Y girl, as she looks like she actually has a personality other than being ambiguously heroic

Oh, I don’t think I’d go so far as to call them terrible.  They look a little bit ridiculous, but I think one of the things you just have to accept about this universe is that anyone even slightly important is going to look ridiculous (to a degree that, broadly speaking, increases through generations).  The player characters generally haven’t done that as much, but really, Brendan’s hair… hat… er… whichever it is…

Personally?  I’ve always had kind of a soft spot for Ethan (the male GSC/HGSS player character) although I agree with you regarding the new female character; she does has a certain je ne sais quoi.

I am a fairly new reader, so sorry if you’ve already said something about this, but WHY is that every archeologist in the games (with the exception of Cynthia, she is awesome) a crazed looter. Is there something wrong with their system or collage classes, or what? Cofragius makes it a little better, but not enough.

Oh, it’s not Pokémon’s fault.  It’s just what people expect archaeologists to be.  Personally I blame Indiana Jones and Lara Croft. There is a wonderful piece of writing that’s been floating around for a few years, purporting to be a letter of rejection for Indiana Jones’ application for tenure at Marshall College.

Yes, here it is: http://www.mcsweeneys.net/articles/back-from-yet-another-globetrotting-adventure-indiana-jones-checks-his-mail-and-discovers-that-his-bid-for-tenure-has-been-denied

It’s always an eye-opener when you have to explain to people what archaeologists actually do.  Sensible characters like Cynthia and Lenora are a step in the right direction (although I must say, Cynthia’s outfit would not last long on a dig site).