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?

Anonymous asks:

If you could LIVE anywhere in the pokemon world, where would it be? For me personally, I’d live by terminus Cave in Kalos. The whole eastern part of that just seems so mysterious, as if it’s practically screaming another region to the east…

This is my most recent assessment, as of Sun and Moon – I haven’t finished playing Ultra Moon yet, so I suppose it’s remotely possible that the charms of Ultra Space will win me over if I get to see more of it, but somehow I have my doubts.  The number one spot in the whole Pokémon world for me is probably Six Island.

Anonymous asks:

Hey apparently I can’t post links here so if you click on the reddit page for Pokémon conspiracies, there’s a great read called “Pokémon Cults, Infinite Energy, and how it shaped the Pokémon world”. There’s part one and two. I hope you enjoy the read!

(oh god there’s been a third part in the time since you sent this question in; that one deals with Ultra Sun and Ultra Moon, which I haven’t played yet, so I’ll stay away from that for now)

Part 1 : Part 2 : Part 3

I feel like this is going to be one of those things where a detailed response/discussion would take me hours, so let’s… try and just see what I think of the main points, shall we? Continue reading “Anonymous asks:”

Random Access asks:

I once heard an interesting theory that all Pokémon may descend from ultrabeasts. Do you think it may have merit?

Well, I’d sort of need more than that.  Why might we think that all Pokémon are descended from Ultra Beasts?  I mean, it’s not impossible, but given that we have no idea what the Ultra Beasts’ relationship to modern Pokémon (if any) even is, that seems like the last place to start looking for the origin of all Pokémon.  What’s the reasoning?

Anonymous asks:

Is it me, or does it seem like the Kanto-Johto superregion hold a lot of influence over the rest of the Pokémon world? Like, Poké Balls started in Johto, then modernized, industrialized, and commercialized by Silph Co. in Kanto (who also made the Master Ball). The Kanto and Johto Professors created the Pokédex and discovered Pokémon Eggs, respectively. The PC system was first invented by a Johto guy who also works in Kanto. What’s going on here, from an in-universe perspective?

I’m hesitant to assign too much importance to something that has a really obvious real-world explanation – i.e. those regions were first, and in Pokémon’s early days there was no certainty that there ever would be other regions, so we find explanations for a lot of important core concepts there.  Also, like, Bill gets a lot of the credit, but every other region has a tech expert who’s supposed to have worked on the PC storage system with him.  Pokéballs… well, there are regions that still don’t use them, right?  Like Fiore, and Almia.  And Pokémon training predates Pokéballs, probably by quite a bit.  Wherever the first ones were used (which I agree is probably Johto, though I don’t think that’s ever actually been confirmed officially), the convenience of the new technology probably caused it to spread very quickly, with little deliberate drive from the creators, and the lifestyles and ways of Pokémon training associated with the technology would have spread too.  Pokémon trainers of the world might have been a much more diverse bunch before Pokéballs were introduced.

Anonymous asks:

Why is it that if I challenge a Gym Leader like Misty, who carries 2 Pokemon, that I’m allowed to use up to six against her? Surely the people that makes the rules don’t honestly believe she or any other Gym Leaders have strong enough Pokemon and strategies to contest a potential 2 vs 6, right?

I know people hate it when I do this, but my instinct here is to point to the anime and say “well, they do restrict the numbers available to the challenger; that fact just gets elided to produce a smoother gameplay experience.”  Besides, a single Pokémon can and will wreck an entire team’s $#!t if you don’t know what you’re doing (looking at you, Whitney’s Miltank and Winona’s Altaria), and the Gym Leaders are, for the most part, supposed to be testing a trainer’s basic/intermediate/advanced proficiency, not trying to block them or halt their progress.

Anonymous asks:

Do you think Poké Rides should continue to be a thing in future games and/or remakes? I personally think it would be super neat to see different Pokémon in different regions be used for the same purposes (namely, field traversal). Like in Kalos, Rhyhorn fills in the shoes of both Tauros and Mudsdale!

Sure.  I think they’re a cool little immersive feature that shows how much people depend on their Pokémon, and using different Pokémon in different regions would be a neat way of showing the uniqueness of their cultures.  What’s more, now that Game Freak seem to have finally forsworn the HM system (godawful clunky relic that it was), they probably have to keep doing it.  It doesn’t really make a lot of sense to stop at this point.

Anonymous asks:

how about an FMK but with places? let’s call this “visit, live in, nuke”? idk, i’m just making this up as i go. so, visit, live in, nuke: Verdanturf in Hoenn, Lacunosa in Unova, and Cherrygrove in Johto.

Okay, well, gonna nuke Lacunosa Town because it has a stupid name, as I’m sure you will agree after reading this paragraph taken from my old playthrough journal of White 2: Continue reading “Anonymous asks:”

Vikingboybilly asks:

The poképelago ironically seems more like slavery than when they were just left in boxes. They’re dropped off on islands where their job is to… harvest beans, farm berries, and mine for materials. That is exactly the kind of thing human slaves (and some animals, I guess) were forced to do in the real world. Oh, there’s islands for playing on obstacle courses and bathing in hot springs, but, be honest, how many of us use those more than the others?

Ehhhhh?  I mean, they don’t harvest the beans (you do), they’re not “mining” but exploring a cave system, and you don’t actually assign them to any of those three jobs, they just kinda wander in and out as they please.  I think your interpretation requires a certain level of wilful misreading.

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?

Continue reading “Anonymous asks:”