Anonymous asks:

Considering Blaziken and especially Infernape, I feel Emboar got the short end of the stick in terms of Fire/Fighting starters… How would you redesign Emboar to make him more interesting? Change his typing? Stats? Movepool? Ability? What about his general design aesthetic? I personally would make him a pure Fire type, since the only pure Fire type fully evolved starter so far is Typhlosion… It would make sense among his own trio with Serperior and Samurott being single typed, too!

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criduchat92 asks:

Hi Chris! Just like you like the Pokemaniacs, my favourites are the Hex Maniacs and Channelers. While randomly surfing Bulbapedia, I found references of two Hex Maniacs who look at the player and say, ” oh you are not the one” Do you have any head-canons on what they are referring to?

Well, I didn’t before, but since you ask, I suspect they’ve probably been told by their ghost friends to expect someone who will change their lives, in some vaguely horoscope-esque fashion – you know, “you will meet a tall, dark, handsome stranger who will sweep you off your feet,” that sort of thing.

I mean, either that or they’re just saying confusing things to spook you.

Anonymous asks:

Slowbro or Slowking?

Probably Slowbro.  I like the notion of what they were doing with Slowking design-wise, but I think it needed more to make it mechanically distinct, because the differences in their skill-sets are extremely subtle, and to be honest I’m not sure what else could have been done, using generation II mechanics, to differentiate them, other than maybe push more extreme differences in stats.  Slowking winds up feeling a bit superfluous, which is a shame because turning Slowpoke’s evolution literally on its head was a cool starting point.

Anonymous asks:

why do bugs resist fighting? i mean, they’re fragile af and powerful fists should crush them. i just noticed this when my butterfree singlehandedly effed the saffron dojo up, quadresist and all.

Not sure, but I think it’s probably something similar to the logic of Bug being strong against Dark – in Japanese popular culture, insect-themed heroes are very common, so it makes perfect sense for Bug-types to be strong against the “evil” type.  In the same way, Fighting and Bug are both “heroic” types, but in very different ways and with different fighting styles, so they’re not very good at attacking each other.  But that’s mostly a guess.

Anonymous asks:

Im going to try “your” crema di limoncello, seems to be good (im not the guy who asked that). Please make a quick review about feebas and Milotic, they are also some of my favorite pokemon. And im having so much fun reading your Moon chapters! So funny. Love your “impressions” of the new stuff, I also tried to play it avoiding the most spoilers possible; and your “flirting” with the hard grunt…

You probably want to follow some variation on these instructions.  Also, it’s very important to boil the milk; that stops it from curdling (and don’t worry about the milk going off – there’s enough alcohol in this stuff to kill most bacteria, so it keeps basically forever if you chill it).

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ill337erate asks:

I’m so happy you’re writing up your Moon playthrough!! Your posts already made me laugh out loud a few times and, as always, you make make thorough observations & bring up interesting points. Side note, did you notice Rotom call Ilima a dreamboat? Anyway, I wanted to let you know that different forms of the same species get their own dex entries in Sun and Moon. I strongly suggest looking at them all at some point! Several shed a new light on some of the pre-existing Pokémon forms.

I did notice, and he is.  And that’s good to know; I’ll look out for it.  I think maybe when this playthrough is over I want to do a sort of Alola Pokédex appreciation post, because some of this stuff is gold (and possibly dethrones the original Ruby and Sapphire in my personal rankings for best-written Pokédex).

Anonymous asks:

After reading and writing so much about Pokémon, are there any traditional Japanese folktales or myths you find particularly interesting? Would love to know what a classicist like yourself think about Japanese folklore! 🙂

Honestly for me the takeaway from it all has been that I clearly don’t know enough about Japanese folklore to talk about it properly – mostly I just know the bits that have Pokémon based on them.  If anyone would like to recommend some introductory books…?

nasat asks:

A few days ago I finally evolved a Gloom into Vileplume on Pokémon Go. I can’t help but wonder if you’ve acquired one yet, and how the “catching them all” is going on that front?

I kinda fell out of the habit of doing anything with it regularly.  There was a period of a couple of weeks back in October when one particular patch was incompatible with my phone for some reason, and I couldn’t play.  By the time it was fixed I’d sort of lost interest.