Tag: QandA

I was thinking about how many competitive battlers breed many pokemon eggs in order to get the right nature that fits the pokemon they’re trying to get. That got me to thinking, what if each pokemon could learn different moves depending on the nature they had, each with their own specialties that helps them compensate for the difficulties they’d otherwise have? I think it would be a great way to make each pokemon unique and gifted like the living creatures they’re advertised as.

Hrm.

Do you mean, like, if each nature had a list of moves that was available to all Pokémon with that nature, or if each nature had just one signature move that was only available to Pokémon with that nature, or if each possible combination of Pokémon and nature had a bonus move?  All three would be… problematic, put it that way.  The last would be awesome but would require an absolutely ridiculous investment of time on the part of the designers.  The first two could help, but I’m not sure how you’d work them.  For a lot of Pokémon it just isn’t going to make a difference.  Consider Rhyperior – Rhyperior actually has a pretty awesome special movepool already, but that doesn’t really tempt people to keep a Modest Rhyperior, or use its special attacks over its physical ones.  What could you possibly give to, say, an Adamant Alakazam that will make those extra points of attack more useful than the lost points of special attack?  And if you do find something that makes a difference, wouldn’t it be far more powerful in the hands of an Adamant Dragonite or Scizor?  On the other hand, if you’re giving your Adamant Alakazam something that makes its special attacks more useful to compensate for the penalty (and, again, I’m really not sure what this could be)… isn’t that just a roundabout way of making natures count for less?  Why not just remove natures entirely, or remove their effects on stats?

In short… I approve of the direction here, but I think it would take a truly monumental amount of work to make it produce the right sort of effect.

Have you ever watched Game Theory on YouTube? It’s a really educational and interesting series! They’ve done more episodes on Pokémon than any other video game, and their latest episode is about “How Pidgey “Proves” Darwinian Evolution”. Since we all know how much you like to rant about that (i.e. real-world evolution being a thing in Pokémon), what are your thoughts on their, well, theory? (also, they have a video on FFVII, if you’re interested, but you might wanna watch it after you finish…)

I can’t say I have seen it before, but I like it.  I’m actually not totally convinced by their arguments, but I approve of what they’re doing here, not just for being the same kind of thing as what I do, but for providing an example of “let’s look at the evidence for evolution!” for their viewers, which I can only regard as a positive thing.  Their analysis of the different types of bird Pokémon is also admirably creative and consistent.  Having said that…

I actually think it’s pretty clear from a number of Pokédex entries that Game Freak assume something like Darwinian evolution is happening in the Pokémon world – the only ones I can think of off the top of my head are the entries for Kabutops, which make statements like “It was apparently evolving from being a water dweller to living on land as evident from changes in its gills and legs,“ and ”It is thought that this Pokémon came onto land because its prey adapted to life on land.“  For that matter, the mere fact of the existence of fossil Pokémon is telling – in the 19th century, the rapid advancement of palaeontology was one of the major contributing factors to the development of evolutionary theory since, if species can become extinct, there must be some way of replacing them.

However, I don’t think that this, or any of the evidence Game Theory presents, necessarily proves Darwinian evolution – that is, descent with modification mediated by natural selection.  True, that’s one possible explanation, and I would be very surprised if natural selection had no influence on the Pokémon world, but a lot of the evidence we’ve seen could also be consistent with Lamarckian evolution.  Jean-Baptiste Lamarck, a biologist of the same era as Charles Darwin, believed that evolution was driven by the inheritance of acquired characteristics – that is, that traits an organism develops during its own lifetime can be passed to its offspring (work out, and your kids will have bigger muscles, basically).  And the thing is, we actually know that this is true for Pokémon, because they can inherit TM moves.  Again, I’m sure natural selection does play a part, but I also think there’s more to it (incidentally, even in the real world, where we’ve known that natural selection is the main driver of evolution for a long time, modern understanding of epigenetics is starting to indicate that Lamarck may actually have had a point too).

The other thing that I can’t let pass is Mew, because I actually think that the Pokédex and its in-universe authors are just plain wrong about her, for reasons that I don’t think anyone else has picked up on.  Mew is thought to be the common ancestor of all Pokémon, because she possesses the complete genetic codes of every known species (this being the reason for her supreme versatility) – but under modern evolutionary theory this is not something we should expect a common ancestor to have.  Think about it.  In the real world, evolutionary theory predicts the existence of a common ancestor of all life, way back in the Precambrian eon – an incredibly basic single-celled being that can’t even be called a ‘bacterium’ because it’s even less complex than that.  The traits on which natural selection operates are not assumed to exist from the beginning; they arise over time from random mutations.  Mew expects us to believe that not one new biological trait has ever arisen in the history of the evolution of Pokémon.  If anything, her existence is a strong argument against Darwinian evolution in the Pokémon world.

Hello, here is my 2nd question from the first one I told you about that site. A person did a nuzlocke called Pokémon Unchained. The person said this, “I read Pokémon Black/White as an allegory for antebellum US south. In a sense, a way to explore ‘How did people rationalize slavery?’ Well, in these games, they are rationalizing the enslavement and fighting of Pokémon, in a contemporary world where, at least in the US, dog fighting is illegal.” Sorry for double questions.

I don’t think there was actually a question in there, per se, but I’ll run with it anyway.

Here’s the story: http://pokemonunchained.tumblr.com/.  It sort of trails off around the Dragonspiral Tower, but it’s worth a read.

It makes me distinctly uncomfortable, which shows that it is succeeding in its aims.  One bristles at the substitution of ‘slave’ for ‘Pokémon’ and ‘master’ for ‘trainer’ – the instinct is to shout out “it’s not the same thing, damnit!”, especially for someone like me who has put so much thought into how and why it’s not the same thing – but of course impugning Pokémon is not the point; it’s a thought experiment, and one for which Pokémon is extremely well-suited.  An allegorical reading of Pokémon can give insight into the mind of an American slave owner and help understand why they felt willing to fight and die to protect a ‘way of life’ that now seems obviously corrupt and horrific to us.  To the mindset of an early 19th century white slave owner, it was all too easy to list ways in which blacks were supposedly better off in servitude to whites, which is what made the ideology so pervasive and enduring.  Morbid, perhaps, but useful.

Having said that, I feel that if one reads Pokémon the way I do, the differences are too numerous and too obvious to be worth listing.  I think it also bears pointing out that much of this narrative’s strength is drawn from the volatile and fatal nature of battle under the Nuzlocke rules (which, of course, have no counterpart in any official depiction).  It wouldn’t really have the same punch if the ‘slaves’ actually were happy and healthy, would it?  I also can’t help but wonder whether the story ends at the point it does because the author couldn’t think of a way of rewriting N’s attunement to Zekrom that fit with the slavery analogy (although perhaps I am giving her too little credit).

I have read your ethics on pokemon training and I say great work. Although I like to show you this site. It would be nice if you read 4 pages on it (last one is all jokes) and see if you have any more additional opinions of your or on theirs. It is called Ethics of Pokémon Capture and its in Pokémon Tabletop Adventures site. (Its half dead from what I see). If you choose to answer, do not be afraid to be thoroughly detailed or not. Thanks.

I believe you are referring to this forum thread? http://forums.pokemontabletop.com/topic/9803938/1/

Some interesting thoughts.  I agree with the member who weighs in on the fourth page, SeaSee, pointing out that, in fact, Pokémon in the anime (which, let’s face it, has to be the main source for this kind of background stuff, since the games just don’t care much about worldbuilding) can actually leave their Pokéballs without being called and generally seem to be at least partially aware the world around them while inside, which I think seriously challenges a lot of the assumptions that people tend to make about how this stuff works.  I think most of the other conversants here are missing that.  A lot of the time Pokémon break out of their Pokéballs for comedic effect, most notably Jessie’s Wobuffet and Misty’s Psyduck, so I can understand taking it with a grain of salt, but there are important serious examples too – the one that most readily comes to mind for me is when Ash’s Pokémon refuse to let him shiver through a blizzard alone in Snow Way Out.  I would add to this the practice of keeping Pokémon in cages, as Team Rocket often do in both the games and anime – if Pokéballs really do have the kind of power often attributed to them, it seems to me that cages are an insecure and costly waste of space.  Several of the forum members in this discussion characterise Pokémon training as slavery, but I feel it clearly involves a lot more give-and-take than that.  Then again, when the games finally did weigh in on the discussion, as another member points out, it was with the Shadow Triad’s comment in Black and White 2 that Pokémon in Pokéballs are ‘fated’ to obey, and N’s subsequent call for a world without Pokéballs (this was all after I wrote my article on the subject, of course).  I think the current position of the games, then – which may change in a few days with the release of X and Y! – is that Pokéballs are a problem, but the institution of Pokémon training itself is not.  I don’t think Pokéballs do ‘brainwash’ Pokémon in any consistent or measurable sense, and as you know from my ethics article I don’t think Pokémon can even be captured at all unless they are fundamentally accepting of the concept of partnership with humans.  However, I am coming to suspect that Pokéballs do change the symbolism of the relationship and thus damage the way both sides view it, and also give the human side a greater degree of control in terms of transport and the administration of medical care.  The invention of Pokéballs has changed the way both sides view what’s going on – and not for the better.

One more point.  Member Esprit15 noted the likelihood that different species of Pokémon likely do not view capture in precisely the same way.  This, I think, is something very important to keep in mind.  The games, the anime and the fans all have a tendency to think in terms of a simplified dichotomy between humans on one side and Pokémon on the other, because it’s easier for us to deal with the issues in those terms.  That means, however, that we are putting one species on one side of the relationship and seven hundred-odd species on the other, and stubbornly treating it as monolithic.  I’m not certain this is wise.  I do not hold with those who say that many Pokémon are of only animal intelligence and can be viewed as being in the same position as pets in the real world (I think that almost all Pokémon are of at least near-human intelligence, although the waters are muddied by the fact that there are different kinds of intelligence to consider – logical and emotional, as well as more abstract things like creativity and leadership), but I do believe that different species understand life, family, society and battle in different ways, and that the assumption that capture and training affect all of them in the same way is not necessarily a sound one.

I’ll tackle your next question later.

Hello I just found this blog and I ask this one. :) I read this fanfic called, “Almost Like Flying” by Starlingnight. It made me very sad for liking pokemon which made me think, “pokemon don’t rebel because they don’t know any better”. What do you think? :)

I’m not totally sure I understand what you’re asking, but I’ll give this a shot – I’m taking this to mean “why don’t Pokémon rebel against trainers who do bad things?”; is that about right?

I don’t think Pokémon are like most animals – their comprehension of language and abstract concepts seems quite advanced.  Most of them clearly aren’t of human intelligence, but it seems like we’re looking at something much more like a dolphin or a great ape than a lizard or a pigeon, even concerning the… shall we say ‘less gifted’ species of Pokémon out there.  Ash’s Pikachu, at any rate, clearly has at least some degree of understanding of human morality, and the other main human characters’ Pokémon in the anime generally do seem to ‘get it.’  On the other hand most species aren’t concerned with that sort of thing at all in the wild.  They’re perfectly capable of understanding conventional morality, right and wrong, and so on, but it’s just not something they care about unless they’ve specifically been taught to, because their wild communities don’t function in the same way as human societies do.  I suppose what I’m getting at is that saying “they don’t know any better” is one way you could put it, but I don’t think it really gives them enough credit.

You could take a look at these two articles if you want more on the subject:

http://pokemaniacal.tumblr.com/post/27548748071/anime-time-episode-54 

http://pokemaniacal.tumblr.com/post/34093585438/the-ethics-of-pokemon-training

Some new bits of Pokémon X and Y info got me thinking: being a self-professed dinosaur nerd, what kinds of dinosaurs and/or prehistoric animals would YOU like to see get made into Pokémon?

You know, I would really like to see some more of the weird-ass Cambrian Explosion stuff like Hallucigenia (an animal whose name means “I really gotta lay off the special mushrooms”) played with.  Or, from the Mesozoic, maybe a Spinosaurus, just because I’d be curious to see where Game Freak would take the ‘sail’ thing.  A Spinosaurus’ sail is generally thought to have something to do with regulating body temperature in a hot climate, so the simplest interpretation would be to give it fire- or sun-related powers, but you could take it in other directions too – like thinking of it as a literal sail and working with wind- and water-related abilities.

You keep mentioning that you’re into Classical mythology but don’t know much about Japanese mythology, so I was wondering if there any other mythologies you’re interested in?

Well, classics is sort of my job (or the closest thing I have to one, anyway – I’m a graduate student, but I have a fellowship, so the university pays me for it, rather than the other way round), and knowing the mythology is an important part of the background, so I’ve actually studied a lot of the major texts, like Ovid’s Metamorphoses and the Homeric epics (and, for that matter, some of the texts that are important to our understanding of ancient reception of myth, like Plato’s Republic), at an academic level.  I’m also a TA on a classical myth course at the moment.  Nothing else really comes close to that.  Having said that, when I hear a mythical story I tend to remember it; I guess I know quite a bit about Norse myth (I bought a copy of the poetic Edda the other day; it’s just a matter of finding time to read the damn thing), and probably more than most people about Maori myth (I’m guessing those stories don’t get a lot of exposure outside New Zealand).