Anonymous asks:

You mentioned most members of the Marill line technically being transgender. If Pokémon could be transgender, how would this work with your ideas on Pokémon gender?

Disclaimer first of all that my ideas on Pokémon gender are totally bat$#!t and probably bear little resemblance to anything Game Freak’s designers have ever thought in the privacy of their own brains…

…and secondary disclaimer that since the last time I babbled about Azurill, someone has pointed out to me that Game Freak actually did remove/fix(?) the gender thing in generation VI…

…and tertiary disclaimer that I’m cis and have no close friends who are trans (or… I don’t think I do…), so I kinda don’t really know what I’m talking about here…

…but my understanding is that transgender is basically when your biological sex doesn’t match up with your psychology or the social role you’re comfortable with, and in a world where gender works the way I outlined in that article, this… well, wouldn’t happen. What little sex differentiation Pokémon exhibit is directly tied to their psychology, so by definition they’re all cisgender. Which means that if you believe my rambling nonsense, what Azurill is doing is something quite different, where her gender identity actually changes (the point of trans being that your gender identity was the same all along and everything else about you is catching up, so to speak – which is how you’d interpret Azurill if we do think Pokémon have biological sex differentiation), for which I think the term is genderfluid but I’m not really sure?

I’m just confusing myself now so I’ll shut up before I offend anyone I haven’t already.

RandomAccess asks:

So. Today on E3 2015 they announced that there’s gonna be a Final Fantasy VII remake. If you’ve seen the trailer, what are your thoughts on it?

[N.B. Yes, this is how long it takes me to answer questions sometimes. If I’m honest, this isn’t even unusual. Regular readers may wish to begin embedding references to current events in their questions in order to keep me honest.]

Well, aside from that once dalliance with Final Fantasy VII two years ago, I’m not really an aficionado of the series, and I don’t exactly have strong opinions about it. Besides which, the trailer basically consists of “we’re remaking Final Fantasy VII; look how pretty our graphics engine is,” so there’s not really anything I can think of to say about it, even if it were particularly close to my heart. I suppose the one point that really comes to mind for me is that it’s going to be difficult for them to do a strong portrayal of Aeris’ death, because much of its force in the original came from being violently unexpected, and a big chunk of their market for this game will be people who’ve played the original. They’re going to have to think long and hard about that one. Beyond that… le shrug.

However, Jim the Editor, who grew up with Final Fantasy VII, would like to add, and here I quote: “ZOMGIAMSOFUKKKINEXCITEDTHEYBETTERNOTFUKKTHISUP.”

Anonymous asks:

have you ever seen the cartoon uncle grandpa? if so, what do you think about it?

…should I have?

…

…okay I Googled it and now I am very very afraid

VikingBoyBilly asks:

Why can’t persian relearn Pay Day after it’s evolved? Why does drowzee/hypno have Assist as an egg move? (the japanese name for the move is a cat-related idiom, isn’t it?)

1) I suppose because Pay Day is so closely associated in the designers’ minds with Meowth’s habit of collecting coins and other shiny objects (which Persian doesn’t share), and also with the basis of Meowth’s design in those little waving cat statuettes you see in Japanese shops sometimes (again, a feature Persian doesn’t share), which are supposed to bring luck and prosperity. Discounting the existence of a first-generation TM, it’s actually one of the most exclusive moves in the game – the only other Pokémon who can learn it is Purrloin (and even then only as an egg move, which means that she can’t relearn it either, whether before or after evolving [EDIT: WRONG; as of X and Y you actually can re-learn egg moves]). Contrasting that with Game Freak’s willingness to splash around other things that were originally signature moves, like Leaf Blade and Waterfall, it seems like Pay Day’s ability to generate wealth must be specific to the design of Meowth and Meowth alone. Apparently this is really important to them.

2) They’re hardly the only non-cat Pokémon who learn it that way – so do Sneasel, Chimchar, Sentret, and Spinda. To me it makes perfect sense that a manipulative Pokémon like Drowzee would be able to learn a skill that makes use of allies’ powers in place of his own.

Anonymous asks:

Any thoughts on why Meowstic-M and Meowstic-F are considered the same Pokemon while Nidoran-M and Nidoran-F are not?

I think really it’s just a matter of the games’ history. In Red and Blue, gender was something that was unique to Nidoran, so having separate “species” was the only way they could do that. They could have retconned that, of course – reassigned the Pokédex numbers so that male and female Nidoran were formally the same species – but then there would technically be only 149 first-generation Pokémon, not 150, and something tells me that the idea of reducing the official number of Pokémon species would make Game Freak very uneasy. If you want an in-universe answer… well, it seems like they do consider them the same Pokémon. I mean, they’re both called “Nidoran.” Possibly the Pokédex separates them because they have different evolutionary paths, which Meowstic doesn’t.

Anonymous asks:

Does it bug you when people associate anime only elements (like Pokemon speak or the player characters being ten) with the games/manga?

In a word, no. The way I see it, the games don’t do a huge amount of world-building. They’re getting better, of course, but it’s still not a task to which their format is terribly well-suited. The anime is just better at that. Obviously different writers are responsible for the two, but they ostensibly have in mind versions of the same world, and every detail is a useful one. And there’s room to fudge things too – like, maybe there isn’t a strict age limit of 10 years that applies everywhere, but pretty clearly the point is that kids can become Pokémon trainers at a fairly young age, though not without some restrictions or oversight. If something directly contradicts, sure, that’s something you have to resolve, one way or another, but there’s lots of ways you can do that, depending on exactly what the problem is. I have very little patience for the word “canon,” or any argument that surrounds it.

Anonymous asks:

Why do Vanillite and Swirlix get bashed and raged at for being based off of food, but Exeggcute is given a free pass? Is it just because Exeggcute is from first gen?

Well, I think if you spend more than about two seconds considering it, you can come up with more convincing reasons. Like, I suspect people who dislike Swirlix and Vanillite are likely to be more turned off by them on the grounds that eggs are things that exist in nature, while ice cream and candyfloss are not. A sunny-side up Pokémon would probably suffer similar bad press (we’ll also gloss over the fact that in-universe sources actually describe Exeggcute clusters as being more like seeds than eggs anyway). Then there’s the fact that Exeggcute is actually interesting and quirky – they have the thing where they’re multiple bodies in a psychic link, and they evolve in a really weird direction, becoming a goddamn walking coconut tree. Vanillite… is an ice cream, has ice powers, and becomes a bigger ice cream. Personally I have no problem with Vanillite being a food Pokémon; I have a problem with the fact that Vanillite is just bloody dull. Swirlix less so; I’m okay with Swirlix, although I kinda think more could have been done with that idea. Exeggcute and Exeggutor are just a lot more interesting than both, I think (also, you have to admit, their English names are badass).

Anonymous asks:

Do you think fairies do a good job at balancing dragons? And in a semi related question, do you think fairies are overpowered?

Gnyyyerrgh. If anything I think they’re a bit much; Dragon is actually kind of a bad type now, just in and of itself, since its main advantage was always that it was so difficult to block. Particular Dragon-types are still really, really good, obviously, but mainly ones like Garchomp and Dragonite who are really, really good pretty much regardless of what you do to the type. On the other hand, most Dragon-types are quite powerful on their own merits. The weakest ones were Druddigon and Altaria, and Altaria now has a kick-ass Mega form, and Druddigon… well, Druddigon sucks, but there’s sort of not much you can do about that anyway. So basically it just winds up making life seem very unfair for Flygon, Tyrantrum and Noivern. It could be worse.

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