Anonymous asks:

So I have this like, intense desire for there to be a poison/fairy type pokemon, since it’d be a good type combo and they’re my favorite types. But since fairy types are generally based off of mythical creatures/folk tales, I’m unsure of what the design could be. Also, fairy and poison types have clashing aesthetics, with fairies being cute and poisons being grotesque. Hopefully if they do make one it isn’t disgusting looking; as shallow as it is, I can’t stand ugly pokemon (weezing). Thoughts?

I think Fairy/Poison could be really interesting! Poison-types aren’t always grotesque (witness, for instance, Roserade, Nidoqueen, Seviper), and Fairy-types aren’t always cute (Granbull, Mawile), so I’m sure there’s room to meet in the middle on that one. And there’s plenty of room for poison in fairytale – what about the poisoned apple that the evil queen gives to Snow White? Or the association between fairies and poisonous mushrooms? I think a Fairy/Poison-type that acted as a sort of fungal counterpart to Flabébé, Floette and Florges would be really neat – a fairy whose body is covered in growths of mushrooms and toadstools, that contributes to the balance of nature by advancing decay. Or maybe a witch-like Pokémon that brews potions, some of them miraculous cures, others deadly toxins.

vikingboybilly asks:

Do you think the pseudo-legendaries could be nerfed? I think it’s weird that dragonite’s BST is higher than the legendary birds.

I think it’s very unlikely. Game Freak almost never directly nerfs Pokémon, and the base stat totals of those particular classes of Pokémon have been regularised for so long that it’s pretty obvious they don’t think it’s weird.

Anonymous asks:

If you had to make a team of pokemon that best represents your personality, what pokemon would be on it and why?

Well, I asked Jim the Editor, who as my best friend has an informed but more impartial perspective on the matter, and he came up with the following:

Growlithe, because I’m loyal to my friends and quite stubborn, but my “bark is worse than [my] bite,”
Kangaskhan, because I’m caring and nurturing,
Gogoat, because I’m empathetic and, again, stubborn,
Omastar, because I’m bad at dealing with change,
Farfetch’d, because I’m clearly horribly ill-equipped for life, but somehow manage to stumble through by blind luck,
and Unown, because I’m obsessed with dead languages and obscure knowledge, and also because “from the outside [I] seem mysterious and interesting but once you get to know [me] [I’m] simple, boring and don’t do much ;-)”.

Anonymous asks:

very important question: if you had to fistfight one of the middle stages of any of the starter pokemon, which one do you think you could beat and why?

Well, out of the ones that have fists, I would probably pick Braixen ‘cause no way does she have the upper body strength to throw a decent punch.

Anonymous asks:

Do you like Cherrim?

Eh. Ambivalent. Cherrim shares Sunflora’s main flaw – namely, that she’s a Grass Pokémon whose most interesting characteristic (her love of and dependence on sunlight) is shared by… well, all Grass Pokémon. Now, in Cherrim’s case, Game Freak gave her a transformation gimmick so that her sun theme would actually matter and so that her dependence on sunlight would be more dramatic than that of other Grass-types, which is great. The trouble is that, because of that amazing Flower Gift ability, they felt they needed to smack her with a rare double dose of Grass Pokémon Don’t Get Nice Things in order to make absolutely sure she wouldn’t somehow be overpowered, and as a result Cherrim is beyond terrible (of course, Flower Gift applies to her partners as well, so I imagine in doubles and triples you must be able to make something out of her, with appropriate team composition). But I applaud the concept. Cherrim is basically Sunflora done right, if you ask me.

Anonymous asks:

Hi just curious, why did you decide to put Vileplume and Bellossom into different houses? And what does it mean for Oddish and Gloom to belong to two houses? (Disclaimer: I don’t watch GoT)

As for what it means, probably nothing. I guess just some Oddish are born into “House Vileplume” and some into “House Bellossom.” As to why I gave them two different sets of house words… well, I’m not 100% consistent on how I deal with split evolutions. Vileplume and Bellossom are separate because the most compelling mottos I could come up with were ones that emphasised the day/night contrast between the two. Some other split evolutions are going to get a single shared motto because I felt their most important traits applied to both of them. Nidoqueen and Nidoking technically aren’t a split evolution, but again, they share the motto “By Our Royal Blood” because the most important thing about them is their emphasis on family, which only makes sense when they’re together. Eevee, when we get to her, has her own house and motto because she is special.

VikingBoyBilly asks:

What do you think of the new formes of Zygarde that were revealed? They turned him into Cell from DBZ.

Oddly enough, Dragon Ball Z’s Cell is not what leaps out at me, though I certainly wouldn’t want to rule him out as a possible influence. Conceptually, the way Zygarde’s forms are described – scattered cells that operate independently, gaining full power when they reunite – that reminds me, more than anything else, of Jenova from Final Fantasy VII. The black and green colour scheme, the notion of many individual units working as one under a single intelligence, along with Zygarde’s existing designation as the Order Pokémon… well, that, bizarrely enough, calls to my mind Star Trek’s Borg Collective. The red and blue elements of Zygarde’s “perfect” form hint at Yveltal and Xerneas being somehow absorbed (or assimilated? :-p) into it – which sounds like Cell, I admit, but is already something that exists in Pokémon, in the person of Kyurem’s augmented forms. In any case… all this possibly has interesting symbolic resonance with Zygarde’s presumed role as guardian of Kalos’ ecosystem, in that Zygarde is itself, apparently, a self-contained ecosystem of sorts, a whole that is greater than the sum of its parts. A strikingly appropriate theme for the “Order Pokémon,” I think.

Also, I feel compelled to note that Bulbapedia seems to have decided that Zygarde’s dog and humanoid forms are based (in line with the Norse mythology theme that someone decreed back when X and Y were released) on Jormungandr’s siblings, Fenrir and Hel, respectively. Hel, the goddess of the underworld, who was a beautiful woman above the waist and a rotting corpse below. I mean, okay, maybe this is what they’re referencing, but if so, they’re doing it badly. It’s a stretch, for me. Presumably if Zygarde’s “10%” form were a goat, people would be saying it was based on Tanngniost and Tanngrisnir; if it were a horse, people would point at Sleipnir; if it were a boar, people would point to Gullinbursti. I have little patience for that whole conceptual house of cards.