Anonymous asks:

Wow, really loving all your articles and posts! That’s awesome that you like the Grass type; they don’t get enough love. But I gotta know: what’s your opinion on the Ground type in general? For the longest time it’s been my favorite (but that might be nostalgia talking since I used to love Sandshrew when I was 8). Now that I’ve looked over some of your posts about Pokemon designs….I do notice Ground has a lot of rather generic looking desert animals with no particular extraordinary powers, lol

Ground… Ground is sort of odd because, aside from Normal, it’s the element with the fewest proper defining characteristics. Many of them are either subterranean or desert creatures – and let us note that these are two extremely different things, and that there is really no reason to clump them together while separating Rock. This seems to be the deal for most Ground-type attacks, but not all Ground Pokémon are anything like this. What, for instance, makes Marowak a Ground-type? What makes Garchomp a Ground-type, other than having the Sand Veil ability (which is shared by Cacturne)? What makes Nidoking and Nidoqueen Ground-types? You mention Sandshrew, and I think perhaps it is worth noting that, as of his introduction in Red and Blue, Sandshrew never actually learned any Ground attacks on his own – Sand Attack being considered a Normal-type attack at the time, which really makes you wonder why they labelled Sandshrew a Ground-type in the first place. In Gold and Silver, of course, Sand Attack became Ground-type, but the newly introduced Sandstorm was a Rock-type attack, and has been ever since. The first Sand Stream Pokémon, Tyranitar, was a Rock-type also. Sort of makes you wonder why other sand Pokémon, and the sand-based attacks introduced in Ruby and Sapphire, didn’t follow suit. The only thing I can think of that they all have in common is that they live on the ground, and even that goes out the window when you encounter bloody Gligar and his nonsensical Ground/Flying type. It might be instructive, furthermore, to question why Kangaskhan, Dunsparce and Stoutland, to name a few, are not Ground-types.

I’m honestly not sure Ground really needs to be a type at all. It has very little in the way of thematic unity or purpose, and if I had been doing this ten years ago I might have suggested eliminating it entirely and splitting all of its belongings between Rock and Normal (although this would happen at the price of making Normal even larger and more nebulous than it is already). You asked for my opinion on the Ground type, and I suppose I’ve given it… I don’t really ‘get’ it. This is not to say that individual Ground-type Pokémon are poorly designed; some of them are, of course, but others are amazing. It’s just that the type as a whole is such a vague and, frankly, poorly thought-out idea that they don’t really have anything in common as a group. Is it really necessary to have two ‘miscellaneous’ types?

How do you feel about pokemon forms? Like Shellos and Grastrodon. Do you think more pokemon should have various forms? I had this really cool idea of having Nidorans family come as possible ice/poison types if you found them in the north where they could’ve adapted to cold… and they’d be white with purple/blue points

I think they’re underused. Pokémon is very good at celebrating the dramatic variety of life, and how vastly different one animal can be from anything else around it, but I think it could do more to look at the little differences, things like subspecies and regional variations. I don’t think I’d really want to do things like make a whole bunch of different-typed variations of existing Pokémon; honestly part of me thinks it might be better to keep most form differences as a flavour thing (like Sawsbuck or Gastrodon, in contrast to Wormadam or Rotom) – and just let people have a bit of choice in their Pokémon that doesn’t have strategic ramifications for once. I’d also like more use of gender differences, which reflects the often dramatic instances of sexual dimorphism we see in the real world. Black and White have leaned towards having very few Pokémon with this kind of variation, but putting a lot into each one (Jellicent and Unfezant) – those are great, but I think it would be nice to have more, maybe with some minor differences in their skillsets (think Nidoking and Nidoqueen).

I’d like to draw attention also to Boltbeam’s Jaclant and Vegghoul, two fan-made Pokémon that make nice use of this kind of low-key variation.

I noticed what you thought of Krabby and Sandshrew, finding them kind of boring, so I wanted to ask about this topic… Take Dewgong for example, its an incredibly simple design but I really love it because its sleek and beautiful. I find myself liking Pokemon like that (Vulpix, Rapidash, Venemoth, Gengar…). More recent Pokemon seem to have overly bright colors and contrasts and cluttered patterns that aren’t terrible, just not as appealing to me. What do you take from that in your opinion?

I have mixed feelings about this. I actually prefer the more complex designs that tend to prevail in the later generations, but there’s definitely something to be said for simplicity. It’s not just the art that bugs me about Krabby and Sandshrew, though – pretty much everything noteworthy about Krabby and Kingler’s abilities and behaviour is true of fiddler crabs as well. Sandshrew and Sandslash are at least changed a little, because the animals they’re based on, pangolins, aren’t desert creatures, but they have a very generic set of “desert creature” traits. Honestly I think that in some ways real pangolins are more interesting. You can’t really make a complaint like that about Vulpix or Gengar. Rapidash, Venomoth and Dewgong are sort of borderline cases (although, as a question of personal taste, I do have a soft spot for Venomoth and Dewgong).

Short answer: the art is only part of the question for me.

What’s your view on human-shape pokemon? I’ve always found the Mr. Mimes and Sawks of this world kind of odd, because they awkwardly are made to look human-but-not-quite. There’s always been a lot of lambasting of Jynx and Mime from the beginning, but Gamefreak seem happy to churn out a new human every generation (see Hitmons, Ralts line and Gothitelle). Why would it be beneficial for a pokemon to look like a person? And if they’re psychically/mentally superior why haven’t they taken over?

Well, Jynx gets flak because someone pointed out that she resembles an actor in blackface, and could therefore be interpreted as a racist caricature (personally I don’t think this is what they intended at all, but they could have been a little more careful with what they were doing), not necessarily because of the humanoid thing. I think there is a degree of ‘uncanny valley’ in it, but then, people love Gardevoir (personally I think Gardevoir looks markedly less human than Jynx or Gothitelle, but whatever). Personally, I get annoyed when they build Pokémon around elements of contemporary culture, like Gothitelle and Scrafty, because I think the ones that work with traditional culture and mythology are just more interesting and can also work more effectively with the idea of the massive cultural debt humans have to Pokémon in this universe, but I suppose maybe that’s just my personal taste.

I actually think “why would it be beneficial for a Pokemon to look like a person?” is a backwards way of looking at it, because the Pokémon may well have come first. And we have that in the real world, actually; humans are just one of four surviving genera of great ape (the others being chimpanzees, gorillas and orangutans), all of which bear marked physical similarities to us. In this case, it’s because we share a common ancestor with them – is this true in the Pokémon world too? Are humans related to Pokémon of the humanshape group? Possibly; who knows? And as for why they haven’t taken over – well, this applies equally to all Pokémon, and it links in with one of the most important questions of the setting: there are clearly a lot of things Pokémon do better than humans, so what is there that humans do better than Pokémon? Personally I think the answer is related to creativity and leadership, but that’s a tricky one indeed. You also have to question what is meant by “taking over” in this context – humans have a civilisation characterised by agriculture, industrialisation, art, education, and so on… but I have to wonder whether Pokémon would necessarily view any of these things as benchmarks of success. If they simply didn’t want any of that, would that be enough to ‘prevent’ them from ‘taking over’?

What are your thoughts on a Pokemon based off the Glaucus Atlanticus Sea Slug? Sure we have an over abundance of water types, but not enough slugs (Only the Slugma and Shellos family :I) but I think it would be a very interesting species to base a Pokemon on.

I sort of feel that it would be stepping on Shellos and Gastrodon’s toes a little bit, since they already did the ‘sea slug’ thing. They didn’t really emphasise the sheer variety or the otherworldly beauty that sea slugs and nudibranchs can have, this is true… but if that’s all we’d have in mind, I actually think it would make more sense just to create additional forms for Shellos and Gastrodon. It’s established that there’s regional variation in their shapes and colours, but so far we only know what they look like in Eastern and Western Sinnoh; there’s plenty of scope for more.

Basically, what I’m saying is that I’m only happy with it if there’s more to the design than “it’s pretty.” I suppose maybe if you focused on that weird ability it has to absorb and concentrate poison…

so someone already asked if there was a pokemon from the kanto region that you denied the right to exist and you said no or not really my question what is the worst kanto pokemon not one that doesn’t deserve to exist just one that strikes you as lame

For the benefit of other readers, this is in reference to this question:
http://pokemaniacal.tumblr.com/post/37543714121/im-probably-a-generic-question-asker-seeing-as-my

I should probably clarify what I said on that topic, since I am a little worried you have gotten the wrong idea. I don’t think the Kanto Pokémon are in any sense superior to those of later generations. I certainly don’t think that all of them are well designed. Indeed, I think several of them are in many ways quite poor. However, for a variety of reasons, I don’t think you can necessarily judge them according to the same standard as the later additions, which makes them very difficult for me to deal with.

Anyway, since you asked…

I have an exceedingly low opinion of Krabby and Kingler. So, these Pokémon are crabs? Great; what do they do? "Crab things.“ Um… anything else? "No. Why would they need to do anything else?” Sandshrew and Sandslash, likewise, have always struck me as rather bland. I suppose I would be remiss if I did not bring up Fearow, Pidgeot and their associated spawn, because although they have the advantage of being the first in the interminable lineage of generic bird Pokémon and therefore have a better claim to legitimacy than any of the rest, they’re still simply not that interesting when you compare them to the likes of Dodrio and Farfetch’d. Raticate is perhaps worth consideration as possibly the only Pokémon in existence with absolutely no supernatural powers whatsoever; he’s just a really big rat.

The other annoying thing Red and Blue did was take some of the most obscure Pokémon in the game, the species you could only get one of, or only a few with great difficulty, and decide that they would be, absolutely without question, not worth it. Farfetch’d is one (also a cool design cursed to have no useful skills at all), Lickitung another, Porygon probably the worst of all.

I could go on, but I’ve probably pissed off enough people already.

Are there any pokemon from the original Unova project that you would now change rescind your final verdict on, whether pass or fail?

Probably several… there are quite a few that I was indecisive about the first time, you see. For most of them, there are good points and bad points – I believe I even had one or two positive things to say about Emolga. I think you can probably tell by reading the entries which ones I was sure about and which ones I could have gone either way on, but… hmm…

I may have been too soft on Liepard, Haxorus, Cinccino, Stoutland and maybe Emboar.

Conversely, I may have been too hard on Druddigon, Krookodile, Musharna, Stunfisk and the Musketeer quartet.

And then there’s Garbodor, whom I still haven’t changed my mind about, though I grudgingly concede that he may not have deserved quite the level of vitriol I hurled at him in ‘11 (dear gods, I can’t say ‘last year’ anymore when talking about my Unova reviews…).

I almost think it may have been a mistake to use the ‘final verdict’ structure, since it detracts attention a little from the fact that, again, there are good points and bad points (well, for most of them anyway). Heatmor, for instance, has a wonderfully mad design, but happens to be terrible at fighting. Conversely, I’m not going to deny that Conkeldurr is strong, but I still don’t think we needed Conkeldurr and Machamp, and I remain convinced that the clown nose thing is appallingly stupid. It also fails to highlight just how much worse, say, Maractus is than Klinklang or Cryogonal. If I review every Pokémon in X and Y (do I have a choice?) I might choose a somewhat different format.

Do you think that the X and Y legendaries could be based off on Norse Mythology? Look at the deer lookalike, the eagle lookalike, for the two realms. The third realm the underworld is a snake. MAybe Z = serpentine?

I feel I should make a general statement that my answer to any question of this kind about X and Y is going to be along the lines of “eh, whatever.”

I guess Yveltal, with the initial vocalic Y, does kinda sound like it could be Germanic or Nordic, but Xerneas doesn’t – I mean, I don’t really know anything about that language family but I’m not sure they even have an X sound, let alone words with an initial X. Honestly it feels like a Greek name to me. Also I just don’t think Yveltal looks like an eagle. Something in the shape of the head, and the feathery collar, just screams ‘vulture’ to me.

EDIT: Another reader adds the following:

“There aren’t two realms in Norse mythology what? There is an eagle on the world tree, but there were actually four deer and also a dragon and a raven. It’s likely not Norse-related just because there’s a deer and an eagle.”

I think the first person was referring to the old division of the universe into heaven, earth and the underworld, which is common across many cultures, although from what I recall of Norse mythology, they actually had *several* realms, including two heavens, at least two underworlds, and possibly more than one earth… although I’m very much a Greco-Roman fellow and it has been a long time since I read anything on the subject.

Also I’m sure I remember something about a squirrel that used to carry insults up and down the World Tree between the eagle and Nidhogg…

Do you think there’s some sort of in-joke with Froakie in X and Y? What I’m getting at is, Froakie is a frog, and the new region seems to be mostly based around Paris, France. And there’s a certain delicacy in France that Froakie just happens to be related to. You see where I’m getting with this? |3 So yeah, do you think that was intentional? (It’d be especially hilarious if Froakie’s later evolutions just happened to be chef themed. XD)

Well, not really, no.

I mean, don’t get me wrong; it’s far from impossible. I just think that the announcement of a new generation of Pokémon is invariably accompanied by an absurd amount of speculation based on remarkably little evidence, and I prefer to stay out of it. I suppose it would certainly be amusing. I think the French themselves find being called ‘frogs’ offensive (understandably enough) so they might have to be careful how they spin something like that. Also we don’t want to be tempting kids to eat their starters because that’s just bad for business.

What do you think of the new designs about X and Ys new starters? I know you’re still early in on BW2. I’ve heard some interesting from other about the starter’s evolutions. For example I heard that Chespin is based off of a mole and a knight. That’d make for an interesting type combo (I’m thinking Grass/Steel or Fighting).

It’s sort of too early to tell. The designs look a little bit generic, but that’s how they tend to start off; I’d really need to hear how they evolve.

The whole chestnut thing they seem to have going with Chespin is amusing enough. I’d like to know where you heard this about a mole and a knight? If you look at Chespin’s various names in other languages, it seems like they’re working off a hedgehog, not a mole (reasonably enough, since we already have mole Pokémon but not hedgehog Pokémon) but a knight is certainly possible.

EDIT: I stand corrected: Shaymin. Still, I think we can all agree that nobody cares about Land Shaymin.

Fennekin… well, my biggest worry with Fennekin is that she’s going to be Vulpix. There’s plenty of room in the design for her not to be Vulpix if they choose to take it in another direction, but the fact that she uses what seems to be a Psychic attack in the trailer makes me… uneasy.

People are making all kinds of predictions about Froakie, and saying he’s obviously going to go into Water/Flying because of the white parts on his body that look like fluffy clouds, and while that could potentially be interesting, I think the white is just as likely to represent foam, so… *shrug*

The bottom line, for me, is that people all over the internet are going to be wildly guessing at what these three are going to turn into. By sheer dumb luck, some of them are going to be right, but they don’t know, and neither do I, and I don’t much care to join in.