Tag: QandA

Okay, now, what is your least favourite Pokemon from each generation? (Apologies if you’re getting sick of this favourite/least favourite nonsense.)

Hrm.  Tricky.

1. I think I’m probably going to go with Pinsir, although he might be less ‘least favourite’ and more ‘most forgettable,’ partly because Heracross exists.

2. Snubbull.  I never quite ‘got’ the whole “pink fairy bulldog" thing.

3. Nosepass.  Yes, I know it’s based on a moai statue.  Yes, I know that’s exactly the kind of cultural allusion I normally like.  Whatever you wish to point out to me in Nosepass’s defence, YES, I KNOW!  No, I still think the idea of a Pokemon that uses its enormous magnetic nose to keep itself pointed north is dumb.

4. Probopass.  I hated Nosepass so much, and then they went and evolved him, made his nose bigger, gave him a moustache, and attached three ‘mini-noses’ to him, thus winning him the dubious honour of being the stupidest Pokémon of the generation for two generations running, something I hadn’t even thought possible.

5. Garbodor.  I don’t particularly want to open the whole argument again, so I’ll just give you the link.

Have you seen the summary for Extremespeed Genesect: Mewtwo Awakens? I don’t think you’ll like it – I and some others didn’t.

I haven’t, and I am now far too scared to.  Are we talking about, like, a trailer, or…?

My baseline expectations for Pokémon movies are generally pretty low.  I tend to think the TV series is significantly more interesting.  I will admit, however, that I haven’t seen even half of them, so that’s a statement from partial ignorance.

I recall your blog post on the Pokémon Power Bracket finals in which your friend Jim incapacitated you somehow and wrote your own entry for you. As mildly amusing as that debacle was, could you maybe convince him to get a Tumblr account so that he can post his incoherent ramblings without interrupting your much better-articulated and marginally more coherent ramblings? Really, we’ll check it out.

Eheh.  He says “I am insulted and yet at the same time, thanks…?“

The thing with Rayquaza and Mew was really a one-off thing, since I’d long since run out of stuff to say about either of them over the course of that series of entries.  I don’t think he’d have much interest in doing anything regularly.  Jim is actually a lot more coherent and insightful in person (many of the ideas I discuss here are originally his, believe it or not, filtering in through our proofreading process) and a brilliant historian – he just doesn’t take this nonsense half as seriously as I do, hence the… interesting tone of the entry in question.

On the subject of starter Pokémon, do you think Game Freak should stick to the Grass-Fire-Water trio, or should they try out other types? You mentioned in your ‘Starter Pokémon – Final Thoughts’ that the Grass-Fire-Water thing eases new players into Pokémon’s complicated type chart, but it also potentially creates confusion regarding type reciprocity. What do you think? Also, if Game Freak changed the starter types (but still a trio), should it still be fully reciprocal like Grass-Fire-Water is?

Starter Pokémon are actually going to be the subject of one of my ‘If I Were In Charge’ entries in the next couple of weeks (specifically, on the lyric “come with me, the time is right; there’s no better team") – so if you want to know exactly what I would do with starter Pokémon in excruciating detail, well, it’s coming up!

Eradicate the ground type? Can you elaborate on that? I find it interesting. Also, bug types. Good or bad?

I refer you to this rambling nonsense.  My belief is that, if you were so inclined, it would not be at all difficult to reclassify all Ground-type Pokémon currently in existence and most of their attacks as either Normal, Rock, or possibly Fighting.  

As for Bug types… er… what about them?  Many of them are good.  Many of them are not.

You know what bothers me? Cherubi. The Cherry Pokémon. But, aren’t Cheri Berries the Pokémon world equivalent to cherries? Just like they don’t have cats, just Meowths, Skitties, etc. (Of course, Meowth’s the “Scratch Cat” Pokémon, Pikachu is an “Electric Mouse”, but in my head, “fish” is just their general therm for Pokémon with specific characteristics, and so are “cat”, “mouse” etc. Pikachu is an electric mouse, while Ratatta is a normal mouse…)

Would it help if they started calling it “the Cheri Pokémon"?

If you had to retype any Pokemon, which ones would you do and to which types? Personally, I think Nosepass and Probopass should have been Rock/Electric, Marowak to be Ground/Fighting, Serperior to be Grass/Dragon, Gyarados either pure Water or Water/Dragon, Lucario to be Psychic/Fighting, and Dunsparce to be Normal/Ground.

If I had to?  That’s an odd stipulation.  Why am I being so cruelly compelled?

There are very, very few Pokémon whose typing actually upsets me.  I’m okay with Gyarados being a Flying-type, for instance, even though Gyarados can’t fly, since Gyarados’ physical design is based on a kite, and I’m not bothered by Lucario not being a Psychic-type, since the fact that Aura Sphere is a Fighting-type move seems to signify that his aura-related abilities are just qualitatively different from what Psychic Pokémon do.  If I’m going to jump in and start retyping things… well, it really depends on what I can get away with.  I could add Dark to Raticate, Arbok, Persian, Hypno, Gothitelle and Cofagrigus, Psychic to Golduck, Steel to Electrode and Porygon, Flying to Sceptile and Rock to Conkeldurr, swap Normal for Fighting on Farfetch’d and Braviary and Flying for Water on Masquerain, quietly erase Watchog from existence while no one is looking, and finish up by eradicating the Ground type completely and dividing all of its possessions between Normal, Rock and Fighting.

Or I could play it safe and just make Charizard Dragon/Fire.  Y’know, whatevs.