Tag: QandA

Who is your favourite historical Greek or Roman figure?

I actually have this really embarrassing historian-crush on Periander, the second tyrant of Corinth, mostly because I don’t think he was nearly as bad as most of the ancient sources say he was, and was actually a legitimately effective ruler who happened to have a lot of anti-aristocratic policies – history is written by the victors, but not if the defeated are the only ones who know how to write (also, the word ‘tyrant’ itself starts to become a strongly negative term in later Greek literature, and remains so to this day – it was probably a fairly neutral world in Periander’s time).

If you could redo the type system, what changes, if any, would you make?

Well, in terms of rebalancing, not much, at the moment.  I still haven’t digested the impact of the changes Game Freak made in X and Y, so I don’t know what needs changing.

If we’re talking about sweeping thematic changes… well, there would probably be two or three fewer types, one way or another.  I’d either eliminate Ground or merge it with Rock, call it Earth or something, because really earthquakes have everything to do with rocks and not much to do with soil, and no-one seems to know whether sand powers fall under Ground or Rock, and honestly it all seems a bit arbitrary at times.  Maybe shuffle some of them over into Fighting instead while we’re at it.  I don’t much like the idea of Normal as a ‘miscellaneous’ type, either, and I sort of think that with Fairy in the mix now you could probably do without it; just toss everything into Dark, Fighting, Ground (or Earth or whatever we’re calling it now) or Fairy.   All the birds can be straight Flying, Kangaskhan can be Earth/Fighting, Porygon can be Steel/Fairy, Exploud might have to be Earth/Fairy or something, and Kecleon can be whatever he damn well pleases; you get the idea.  Sort some of the Normal attacks into types, and declare anything left over ‘typeless’ – resisted by nothing, strong against nothing, and no-one gets STAB on them.

Do you like other video games? If so do you have any interest in particular studio or company? For example since you are a pokemaniac Game Freak or Nintendo may come into the picture.

Link to an older question and answer because I am lazy: http://pokemaniacal.tumblr.com/post/69464174209/first-off-thank-you-for-the-amazing-content-ive

I’ve never actually been a big Nintendo person outside of Pokémon (and as for Game Freak, I think they’ve made… like, two non-Pokémon titles, neither of which were released outside of Japan?).  Used to play the original Mario game with a friend on his big clunky boxy Gameboy as a kid.  That was pretty legit.

What new type combination do you most want to see in the inevitable next generation of Pokemon?

Hmm.  Well, I’ve always wished there were a Grass/Dragon Pokémon, double-weakness to Ice be damned (hey, Dragonite and Salamence can live with it), just because I love Grass-types.  Not sure where I would go with this; one thought I had just as I was writing this is that you could combine the whole ‘hoarding’ thing that Western dragons have with the idea of a seed bank – so you have a great big Dragon Pokémon whose life’s work is to collect seeds of different rare plants.  Because he stores them all over his body, random flowers and vines and things tend to burst out from little cracks between his scales.  Maybe give him a spore-breath attack that does damage and has a chance to cause paralysis, sleep or poison.

In relation to the last question I asked you: Are there any dinosaurs or other prehistoric fauna you’d like to see as Pokemon in the future?

Have actually been asked this same question before but there’s no harm in thinking of some more…

My favourite dinosaur as a kid was Parasaurolophus (not exactly a traditional choice, I know, but to each his own), but I’m not immediately sure what you could do with her.  Parasaurolophus’ schtick is her long hollow crest, the function of which is a recurring topic of debate among palaeontologists, though it seems likely that it had something to do with communication, since the cavities in the horn are connected to the dinosaur’s nasal passages and could have produced a sonorous booming call at will.  Sonic powers aren’t exactly unique in Pokémon, though.  Maybe instead you could run with one of the more famous of the older, discredited hypotheses – that the crest was a snorkel – and make it amphibious or aquatic, but not actually a Water-type?  Sort of a Grass/Ground (or maybe just Ground with Water Absorb or something) swampy kind of creature, that submerges itself for hours at a time to hide from predators.

I leave you with a quote from the Wikipedia page on Parasaurolophus:
“One unusual suggestion, made by creationist Duane Gish, is that the crest housed chemical glands that allowed it to throw jets of chemical "fire” at enemies, similar to the modern-day bombardier beetle,“ so in fairness we can probably give the damn thing whatever powers we like.

See also this glorious image from one of Gish’s books directed at a younger audience.  I especially love the way the other dinosaur flails helplessly.

What do you major in and any interest in careers so far?

I’m a postgraduate student in classical studies (i.e. Greek and Roman things), specialising in archaeology – so, basically, the point of that would be to become an archaeologist, ideally with a lecturing position at a university (preferably an English-speaking one).  Jobs like that are in short supply relative to the number of applicants, though.  I might end up as a contract archaeologist, or doing something completely different – a lot of humanities PhDs wind up dying in a gutter because they can’t contemplate the idea of leaving academia, but if you can get over yourself long enough to apply for something else, there are actually a fair few jobs where a degree like that looks pretty impressive – high school teachers get a much higher starting salary if they come to the job with a PhD, for instance (and since I have a science degree as well there are probably several subjects I could teach at a high school level).

I don’t intend to say I know the process of creating new Pokemon goes in the company, but for the sake of argument lets say that the illustrators design their Pokemon family and hand it to the series’ overseer or project leader… Now lets say in a parallel universe, you were the overseer but your views on the Pokemon world are identical to how they are now… In all honesty, are there Gen 1 Pokemon that when brought to you, you would tell the illustrators to change it or scrap it?

Eh… that’s complicated.  A couple of people have asked me similar questions before, and my usual position is as follows: on the one hand, I certainly do think that a number of first-generation Pokémon are, shall we say, not great.  Many of them are quite straightforward adaptations of comparatively unremarkable real animals; I’ve never thought much, for instance, of Rattata and Raticate, Spearow and Fearow, Sandshrew and Sandslash, Krabby and Kingler, Goldeen and Seaking, or Seel and Dewgong (although personally I have an unaccountable soft spot for the last two).  On the other hand, I also maintain that the first-generation Pokémon can’t necessarily be judged by the same standard as their successors, because they were created in a vacuum, as it were, by a comparatively much less experienced design team.  Context matters, and the circumstances and aims of the project would have been very different.  So… I am divided on this question.

Will you be doing what you did for Black and White and determining which Pokemon should exist or not? Because that was a great series and I’d like you to revisit something like that for this generation.

I think I’m supposed to.  Like, I think a lot of people expect me to – doing this for Black and White was the reason I started this blog in the first place, after all, back on Blogspot three years ago.

After I finish the playthrough of X and Y, I want to do a few general entries on stuff like mechanical changes and the introduction of the Fairy-type (probably also a character analysis of whoever the Champion is, to go with that other old series – of course, that would make Iris the only Champion I haven’t done, which would be annoying; maybe I should do an entry for her as well), and I need to do a review of Origins as well, which I think will probably take about two entries.  After that, I suppose reviewing all of the new sixth-generation Pokémon will be a good chunk of the rest of my year.  I’m not sure I want to keep the old “I hereby affirm/deny this Pokémon’s right to exist” catchphrase, because I worry that it tends to detract from the fact that, for almost all Pokémon I review, I have both good and bad things to say about them, but I’ll need to think about that some more.

I’m sorry to ask when you said you were busy, but please take your time. What do you think of Pokemon contests? I, personally, am an avid fan of Contests, and was quite disappointed when Game Freak decided to trash the whole idea after the fourth generation…

Don’t be sorry; I live for you (you, plural – not you personally; don’t take this the wrong way, since I’m sure you’re a lovely person, but we haven’t met or even battled yet and how are you supposed to win over my heart if you haven’t won over my trusty team of sla- er, Pokémon friends?).

Anyway.

The thing about contests is that they’re a side show.  They make for a neat mini-game, and they’re a cool way for Pokémon who aren’t so good at battles to take the spotlight (of course, Pokémon who are also good at battles can kick ass and take names in contests as well, but at least the playing field is more level).  They also emphasise one of the points that the franchise likes to make but spends little time on – partnerships between people and Pokémon take many and diverse forms.  The trouble is that the game doesn’t really give you any reason to take part in contests.  There’s no story, and there are no rewards (no, ribbons are not a reward).  Give contests a storyline, so that I have a reason to care about making my Pokémon pretty, and I’ll jump right back in!  Otherwise… meh?