Tag: QandA

“Ancient Aliens” is a thing. On a scale from one to ten, how much does it offend you?

Okay, well, we’re gonna have to set some points of reference here first, like on our scale of 1 to 10, 1 would be something like someone farts at an inappropriate moment and 10 is a dude doing the Nazi salute in a KKK robe and waving a ‘god hates fags’ sign as he hurls incendiary bombs at a school for disabled children run by blind elderly nuns… so, I don’t know, I guess like a 4?  Honestly, I don’t really take my discipline seriously enough to be all that bent out of shape by people spouting that kind of drivel about it, nor do I take Ancient Aliens seriously enough to regard it as actually threatening.  Having said that, though, the thinking that goes into conspiracy theories of that stripe is certainly rather distressing.  Somehow, incredibly, it manages to both over-glorify the ancient past and belittle it at the same time.  On the one hand, it’s like the Pyramids are too grand and wonderful for us to possibly accept the idea that maybe they were built by people dealing with the same questions we’re still asking today – how to think about death, how to preserve our memories of great people, how to build bigger and better than ever before – no; anything so superlative must have been accomplished with a great, world-spanning agenda in mind that we can barely grasp in hindsight. But on the other hand, it’s like there’s no way those primitive, barbaric ancient Egyptians could possibly have done anything so amazing on their own; people are just too stupid to make such great leaps in engineering without someone incredibly brilliant to teach them.  Someone with spaceships.  I mean, seriously.

I’ve been trying to think of ways to make ice types more viable, since I’ve always loved ice types but never used them due to their glaring weaknesses, and I’ve been thinking about what resistances/immunities they could be given in future gens to make them better. I’ve been thinking resistances to water, bug, grass, flying, (possibly) fairy and (possibly) normal. Thoughts?

Resistance to Water I can get behind; ice is water, it makes as much sense for Ice-types to resist Water attacks as the reverse.  Resistances to Bug and Grass kind of make sense, but those are already among the weakest attack types in the game, as is Normal, and I think getting Ice’s extra resistances from there would cause as many problems as it would solve, if not more.  Fairy is really strong as it stands, and I have no problem with taking them down a peg or two, but I’m not really sure of the thematic logic behind letting Ice resist Fairy – I’d much rather give Grass, Bug or even Normal a Fairy resistance.  Resistance to Flying is legit; Flying attacks are seeing a lot of use at the moment and it’s consistent with Ice attacks being strong against Flying Pokémon (not 100% sure why that is, exactly, but we can run with it).  Honestly I don’t think more than that is necessary.  Three resistances (Ice, Flying, Water) isn’t a lot, but it’s not far behind what most other types get, and it keeps Ice as an element that’s relatively weak defensively but makes up for it on offence.  I’d be happy with that.

What thing or things make Pokémon Pokémon? Like, what core traits/trait sets this particular franchise apart, and if they changed it, it would simply not be Pokémon?

Well, I suppose the cop-out answer would be ‘the Pokémon’… but I’m not even sure *that’s* true; I’ve more than once contemplated the idea of a Pokémon fan-fic without any Pokémon in it.

I’ll just let you all muse on that one for a minute.

Seriously, though, I’m really not sure you can pin that down to anything.  For me, the core themes of the games are the joy of discovery and the importance of living in harmony with nature.  You could write a Pokémon story that isn’t about those things at all, though (I mean, people have), and I suspect that as long as it had the creatures in it, people would still accept it as ‘Pokémon.’  For a moment there I thought about saying ‘well, partnership between the creatures and humans has to be important,’ but then again, Mystery Dungeon.  You can say ‘friendship has to be a central theme,’ and I think that’s probably true, but it’s also far from unique.  It’s sort of a whole mess of things, and you can go without any one or two of them.

Is it weird that reading about your issues with Pokemon/human relationships has actually made me more interested in exploring such a relationship between one of my OCs and one of her Pokemon? Because now I want to write a short fic in which the inherent inequality is discussed to some extent. But there are also other factors-they’re both young and a bit ignorant, the Pokemon is especially subservient due to reasons, but there’s also a part in their story where he becomes human temporarily.

…

…excuse me; let me just write this one down on my list of accomplishments that I will never, ever put on my CV.

“Inspired… Pokémon fan-fic… about… bestiality.”

Right.  Anyway.

If you’re asking for advice, I… guess my position is, as it has always been, do what you want if you can tell a good story; I mean, if you’re interested in grappling with the morality of a romantic relationship with that kind of inherent inequality in a fantasy setting, well, it’s not like it can possibly hurt anyone.  Just… and don’t take this the wrong way, but… please, please don’t drag me into this.

So I read your June 13, White 2 Epilogue where Zinzolin converses with the main character on human stagnation and pokeballs with N. How much do you agree or disagree with it? (Yes I know you wrote it)

I did write it, and it is supposed to be a point of view that’s plausible and persuasive as well as appropriate to how I think the game characterises Zinzolin – but that’s a perfectly legitimate question, and no, I don’t agree with him.  I think that all human achievement is ultimately built on cooperation, and in the context of the Pokémon universe I think that humans’ capacity for teamwork, leadership and empathy is kind of their ‘thing,’ their ‘special power,’ if you like.  Those are the skills they should be honing and using.  That’s not to say the system necessarily works, of course, or that humans by and large are going about it the right way or relating to Pokémon in an appropriate manner.  But I don’t think separation, on the model of what anyone in Team Plasma was thinking, is the answer.

would it bother you too terribly if i made a list of all region’s pokemon with links to your entries for easier navigation? i’m ocd like that and thought i’ll make it for my own enjoyment (?) but sharing is caring and all that

If you like, I guess?  There is actually a search bar at the bottom of the main page that you can use to find entries on specific Pokémon; I’m not very fond of it because it’s a bit useless and seems to only search for stuff in the tags of a post, not in the text itself, but for this purpose it works just fine.