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.
In a Pokémon fanfic I’m writing, my main character’s dad is a gardener/florist, and I’ve just decided to give him a Vileplume and name him Chris in your honor. He’s not a maniac, though. Is that cool with you?
This is thoroughly acceptable to me, provided he also bakes cakes.
Bulbasaur is slightly curious, no? Why do you think the devs decided to give a starting Pokemon a dual type? It risked confusing new players, and there’s nothing about the design that particularly screams “Poison-type” anyway.
Ehhhh I don’t know about that. Poison has no interactions with Fire and Water, so it doesn’t mess with the basic starter trio at all, which is how they teach type interactions, and new players will meet dual-type Pokémon on literally the first route anyway (Pidgey is Normal/Flying). It’s true that Bulbasaur doesn’t really need to be Poison-type, and I’m tempted to put that down to Game Freak not having finished figuring out what Grass-types actually were yet. Continue reading “Anonymous asks:”
If the Pokemon universe had an all out war between regions, which region(s) do you think will survive and which would fall? I’m not really talking about nuclear bombs and guns and stuff like that but the species of Pokemon in that region and how well they do against other Pokemon from other regions, the competency of the gym leaders, elite four, and champion, etc.
The thing about Pokémon trainers is they make terrible soldiers. They all have wildly different capabilities, so it’s difficult to assign them tactical and operational roles. They’re competitive and a lot of them have huge egos, so they tend to have poor discipline and unit cohesion. Their individual battle styles and the different powers of their Pokémon will often work at cross-purposes if they haven’t been training together extensively. Continue reading “Anonymous asks:”
I’ve got a challenge for you, if you have the time! Your hatred for Nosepass and Probopass is legendary around these parts of Tumblr (by which I mean your blog). How then would you ‘fix’ them to make them more interesting to you? So a challenge along the lines of your suggested improvements for the Top Ten Worst Pokémon! (don’t worry, we’ll do good ol’ Garbodor another day)
ohhhhhhhhhh goddddddddd
whyyyyyyyy
Okay, well… part of the problem is, the most interesting thing about Nosepass and Probopass is probably their link to the cardinal directions, but that link goes through the dumbest thing about Nosepass and Probopass – their giant red magnetic noses. Also, it’s just bizarre to have a Pokémon that can only ever face directly north (how do they even fight like that?), and I kind of want some excuse to give them multiple faces, so that they “face” both north and south, or in all four cardinal directions, but then doing that would force us to abandon the cool moai inspiration. Continue reading “Anonymous asks:”
I have a little personal conjecture about how Incineroar was designed.
Game Freak deeply, sincerely, earnestly didn’t mean to make a fourth Fire/Fighting starter Pokémon. They were just going to sit down and come up with some unique, entertaining and vaguely Hawaiian-inspired Fire-type. But then Incineroar just rose up, unbidden, out of the primal mists of Game Freak’s collective id, embedded himself in their tortured psyches, and refused to leave. Aware that they were making another Fire/Fighting starter Pokémon, but horrified by their inability to stop, they desperately called on Yveltal for help, and the vicious and cunning death god answered their prayers by corrupting Incineroar into a brutal Dark-type.
I mean, obviously some of that is speculative, but I think the general outline is close. Continue reading “Litten, Torracat and Incineroar”
Now that you’re done with your play through, mind sharing your thoughts and theories on Anabel? I’m not asking for a formal review on her or anything as I know you have a lot of other things planned, but outside of the Epilogue bit you wrote, do you have anything to say on her appearance? Why they chose her, what it all means? It was a really unexpected appearance!
Anabel… I think she’s there at least partly because she isn’t in Alpha Sapphire and Omega Ruby, and they wanted to do something with her. She’s sort of the unofficial leader of the Frontier Brains in Emerald, and does seem to have an affinity for legendary Pokémon, using more of them in the Battle Frontier than any of her colleagues except for Brandon. They might also have felt it was important to include characters from Hoenn who could act as assurance that Mega Evolution isn’t gone for good (Anabel can use Mega Alakazam, Mega Lucario or Mega Latios in the Battle Tree). She seems like she may be a Psychic-type specialist, so she sort of makes sense for the vaguely X-Files/Men In Black-ish Ultra Beast incursion plotline. Could also be that the game designers have big plans for her in Ultra Sun and Ultra Moon.
how broken would a grass/dragon mega serperior w contrary and draco meteor be?
Hmm. Well, Serperior is pretty good now with just Contrary, Leaf Storm, and basically no other special movepool to speak of, and Grass has terrible type coverage. The only other point of comparison is Malamar’s Superpower, which is a lot weaker for several reasons. I don’t know if it’d quite be broken broken because un-STABed Draco Meteor isn’t going to be that much better than Leaf Storm a lot of the time, but it’d definitely be top tier.
EDIT: Derp, misread the question. Eh, a Grass/Dragon mega evolution would be strong, but I don’t think *that* much more ridiculous than a bunch of other mega evolutions, and you get eaten alive by Ice Shard. Also, would Serperior actually be able to learn Draco Meteor anyway? Only Dragon-types can use the move tutor, and Ampharos can’t, despite having a Dragon-type mega evolution.
It would be nice if Swift Swim activated when fighting on watery terrain.
That would certainly make sense.
House Incineroar: Crush, Burn and Destroy
Bloody hell, if I don’t hurry this up they’re going to announce another damn generation before I’m done with this one; we’re already expecting whatever this bull$#!t is supposed to be and I’ve got eighty whole Pokémon to evaluate in the next couple of months, as well as talking about Team Skull and the Aether Foundation, and Hau, and maybe Lillie too, and whoever I decide counts as the Champion, not to mention answering the neverending tide of ridiculous banal questions that keep pouring out of my goddamn inbox (obviously, gentle reader, I’m not talking about any questions you might have submitted, which are of course consistently insightful and thought provoking; it’s all those other bastards that are the problem).
I’M FINE
Let’s talk about Rowlet. Continue reading “Rowlet, Dartrix and Decidueye”
Pokémaniacal 