Tag: QandA

Whoa, was that your first troll? Congratulations! You’re not a proper Tumblrite until you’ve had a random anonymous troll. If they come by again, post a video of someone laughing hysterically. That usually deters them, or at very least makes them do something very entertaining. :D

My first was actually almost three years ago now.  I don’t seem to get very many; I think I’m just too verbose for people to easily get a good idea of what would bother me.

Oh! Also. I hope you continue to be pleased with May. As a rival/companion she is a much fuller and Warmer character (IMO) and while she does go on a bit, she is much more human in this, and it made me so freaking happy.

So do I.  More thoughts undoubtedly to follow, since I’m supposed to be writing a series of character studies on all the rivals at the moment (well, ‘supposed to be,’ I’m actually being lazy and typing up a series of meandering conversations between me and my best friend/editor, but y’know, life).  May/Brendan and Wally are going to come at the end.

I read a Kotaku article called Why I was Pokemon’s Greatest Villain., it had to do with Black and White Pokémon plot. Read it before? Whatcha think Mr. Alien? (PS. I found the correct title)

Oh, here it is.

Pretty much, yeah.  Black and White were really interesting, for exactly these reasons (although I do want to notice in passing that “at that point—the point where you can truly communicate with them—they are no longer intelligent pets; they are people” is very quietly sneaking in a proposition that in the real world would be an extremely controversial one, because there are animals that we can truly communicate with, and whether they should legally be considered people or have the same rights as humans is in question, so you can’t just say that as though it’s obviously true), and at the same time somewhat disappointing, again for exactly these reasons.  It’s fun, and interesting, to read Black and White with N as the hero and the player as the villain.  It’s just kind of a let-down when you get to the part where N only believes the things he does because he was deliberately surrounded by Pokémon who’d had terrible experiences with humanity, and about half of Team Plasma had little or no philosophical commitment to his beliefs anyway.

I don’t think I quite agree with the starkness of the division – i.e. Black and White were awesome, Black and White 2 were a total disappointment.  I do think Black and White were better than the sequels on the whole, but there’s a limit to how far you can push the points this article is making.  It was never realistic to imagine that the games could possibly end with all Pokémon being released, because that would be the end of Pokémon as we know it, and that is just way too frightening a prospect for Game Freak to contemplate (which gives the whole thing an interesting metafictional twist to it; the people writing the story have to be on the side of the enslavers, because that’s what their own livelihood is based on).  The problems of Black and White 2 start with the way Ghetsis and N are portrayed in Black and White, and at the same time the sequels present ideas that have merit as well – they give us the benevolent half of Team Plasma, now under the leadership of Rood, and they end with N continuing to envision Pokémon liberation, but seeing it in a new light (he now wants humans and Pokémon to be equal, but not separate as he initially hoped, and he seems to think that Pokéballs are somehow the root of the problem).  I think when you read the two together, the message they’re trying to push is that Pokémon training is basically a good thing, but is also extremely prone to abuse because of the way it’s practiced in the modern world.

I think levitation should be a separate property of a pokemon instead of an ability. In theory, there would be an icon on the pokemon’s stat screen of a cloud or something to show you it’s hovering by default. Game Freak have already done this by making charizard x usable in sky battles. Magnezone and Bronzong would be awesome because they’ll have fireproof and magnet pull while being immune to earthquake and Flygon could keep arena trap!

Hrrm.  It makes sense, of course, but it does also mean we’re giving those Pokémon ‘something for nothing,’ so to speak – they don’t gain any of the weaknesses associated with the Flying type, and they don’t have to give over their ability slot for it.  A niggling little part of my mind keeps saying “wait, that’s not fair; nothing else in the game works like that,” and that part of my mind wants Levitate to have some disadvantage associated with it, if we have it work like this – like maybe Levitating Pokémon are immune to Ground attacks, but also gain a weakness to Flying attacks, to illustrate that true Flying Pokémon are naturally more comfortable in the air than they are.  I think I’d be okay with that.