May I ask how you craft your pokedex entries? Some of the facts are not found in the canon so I was wondering what your process is like. I’m really loving your blog! It’s SO enjoyable to browse through every bit, everything is wonderfully structured and I love your sense of humor and writing style! This blog is currently getting me through a tough time haha. I really appreciate it. Thank you!

{Hey there! Sorry for taking so long! But oi, hope things are going better for you. D: If not, hang in there!

To answer your question, the dex entries usually start with me reading up on the day’s subject(s) through Bulbapedia. Sometimes, something in the biology section catches my eye, if not the actual, canon ‘dex entries or the trivia. I don’t spend too long on this step, and my focus is usually on finding something that strikes me as interesting or funny. I also always make sure to hit up the Origin section to get a sense of what each Pokémon was based on. Sometimes, the best content can be gleaned from the Pokémon’s “source material,” rather than the Pokémon itself.

After that, it’s to Google or to Wikipedia (sometimes to both) to do some extra research on the subject if I need it. Or putting it another way, after doing the above, I usually have a vague idea of what I want to write about, so I pull up Google and/or Wikipedia to develop it further. So if I want to write about Celesteela setting everything around it on fire because that’s what you do when you fire off (no pun intended) a rocket in a forest, I’d look up how hot a forest fire burns and what temperature steel melts. Or if I wanted to make a joke about Politoed and French cuisine (because for reasons I’m not gonna disclose, I already knew frog legs are a French delicacy), I’d look up a few recipes … while also perhaps the actual effects of licking frogs and toads (because for other reasons I’m not gonna disclose, I knew that was a thing too).

Of course, I also admit that some facts are just pulled straight out of thin air. The one about Clefairy having soft fur, for example. That was just something I thought would be hilarious to add to Bill’s entire Clefairy experience. Likewise, I have no idea whether or not Hitmonchan actually will respond to “Eye of the Tiger,” but if I can find a way to make pop culture references to 70s movies that were overdone in the 90s and already dated by the early 00s, I most certainly will.

Either way, once the idea feels solid enough, either through research or my own questionable sense of humor, I put pen to paper, write it out, dose it heavily with Bill’s usual dry sarcasm, hit submit, edit the thing like crap before anyone reblogs, and then, finally, leave it alone and hope to all the gods that it’s as funny as I thought it was at the time.

For those wondering, writing the ask responses operates via the same process, only it’s less jokey (for the most part) and more “I did not know you could Google pet care tips for this, but here we are.”

But! Thanks so much for reading, anonymous, and once again, hope things get better for you if they haven’t yet! :D}