I’d like to ask for your advice. I have a very frail, sickly son, who just became 12 years old. He can’t go outside much and gets sick quite easily. My husband and I decided to catch a Pokémon for him, and he said he preferred an ice type. The only ice types near our home are Vanillite and Cubchoo. Which one would you recommend we’d catch? Because of our son’s weak constitution, we’d prefer a Pokémon that doesn’t require a lot of exercise to keep them happy and healthy.

This is a bit of a tough decision, admittedly, but it hinges on whether or not your son would like a pokémon capable of evolution.

You see, if we’re only considering base evolutions, vanillite is actually the harder of the two to care for. While it doesn’t need much in terms of basic care (it only needs water and food and is perfectly content staying indoors, playing easier games with its owners), it does require cold at all times. This means an air conditioned room in your home all year round, as well as enough space in a freezer for it to rest if it gets sick. Technically, it can survive at warmer temperatures, but you may find that it will be a bit more lethargic than how it was when you caught it.

Conversely, cubchoo doesn’t necessarily require cold; it simply prefers it. If trained properly, cubchoo can survive at pretty much any temperature short of tropical or desert heat. However, it’s a far more active pokémon than vanillite and requires daily exercise and training. On the other hand, a daily walk or an easy game of fetch may be enough for some cubchoo, but this only means you’ll need to be careful when selecting your catch. The cubchoo you give your son must be of a calmer nature, or you’ll find that it will need a more active lifestyle than what your son may be able to provide.

Conversely, if your son evolves his pokémon, then the advantages will be flipped, so to speak. As a vanillite progresses up its evolution chain, its ice powers will grow stronger and stronger. In turn, this means it will gain the ability to adjust the temperature immediately surrounding it to its own liking, which will make keeping one indoors a much easier task. (As a side note, yes, some vanilluxe gain the ability Snow Warning as a result of its strengthening powers. Many believe this to mean that it will always be hailing whenever one is present, but this is only true on the battlefield. Otherwise, a tame vanilluxe with the Snow Warning ability will just be keenly capable of producing that cold aura.) Meanwhile, its needs, including its activity requirements, will likely stay roughly the same, and it’s likewise a very easygoing and caring pokémon.

On the other hand, beartic are notoriously more difficult to care for. It is, after all, a giant bear with ice powers, and as such, its appetite will grow considerably, its space requirements will increase, and, most importantly, it will require more vigorous exercise than before. (Again, it’s possible to have a more sedentary lifestyle with a beartic, but it’s not particularly healthy.) Likewise, remember that beartic are apex predators, and they need to be trained behaviorally as well. Otherwise, their tempers, which they are also notorious for, can be quite dangerous to anyone around their trainers.

So ultimately, it comes down to this: if your son has no intent of evolving his pokémon, consider a cubchoo. Catch a docile one and give it an everstone, and your son will have a partner who will be fairly easy to care for.

If, however, he would prefer to let his partner evolve, catch a vanillite. Just be sure you have enough room in your freezer for it, or help your son train it until it’s ready to evolve. Either way, over the long term, vanillite’s evolutions are excellent indoor companions.

Best of luck!

What are your thoughts on the bond phenomenon and the legends that surround it, do you think any pokemon might be able to achieve this level?

It’s certainly a fascinating subject, one I hope to someday have a chance to study closely myself.

Before my editor or perhaps some of my wittier readers can get a word in edgewise, allow me to answer your second question: I believe so. While it’s true that the only known examples of the bond phenomenon in action involve a greninja, there really isn’t anything to the process that should limit it to just that species—or, at least, nothing to my knowledge. Likewise, the requirements we do know about are fantastically vague: bond phenomenon, according to old Kalosean texts (and arguably the known examples themselves) only requires a uniquely powerful level of trust between a trainer and a pokémon, although supposedly it helps to have a pokémon with unique special talents hidden deep within them. Of course, as with all texts, what those talents are has never really been made clear, and the only modern-day research we have on the process (from one Professor Augustine Sycamore) has not yet uncovered what that means.

Quite honestly, though, I prefer to believe it means any pokémon can have the potential to achieve such a transformation. Or, rather, that bond phenomenon is not limited to species but rather to the individual pokémon and trainer themselves. A special trainer would be able to draw out the latent talents of any pokémon, and thus, so long as you have that bond between them, it’s possible that a transformation could happen with any species, from greninja to rattata.

Hey there, Bill! I’m an artist, along with my partner, Smeargle. We usually end up painting together, but for my birthday, a friend got me some paints that weren’t Pokemon-safe by mistake, and I made sure to keep them separate from the ones Smeargle usually uses, but when I went to check on them, it seems my partner got to them before I did. I don’t believe he ingested any, but what safety measures should I take to make sure he’ll be fine?

First, stay calm and clean as much of the paint off your smeargle as possible. He may not like a bath, but you’ll need to make sure he doesn’t accidentally lick any of it off. You can encourage him to produce new pigments from his tail with a healthy diet later.

As you’re cleaning him, check around the mouth again, just to be sure he hasn’t eaten any. If you don’t see anything, you’re likely fine; unlike many other dog pokémon, smeargle are more interested in using paint than eating it outright.

Still, keep an eye on him for the next few hours. If he begins vomiting or displaying any other sign of digestive upset, take him to the pokémon center immediately or call your region’s pokémon poison control hotline—preferably the former, as a trained Nurse Joy will be able to handle his recovery from there.

Best of luck!

I recently caught a combee and her ability is honey gather, its creating an awful lot of honey though, I have more jars than I know what to do with, I don’t know if this is in your area of expertise but got any recipes I can use to help me and my pokemon use some of it? Also, is it okay to feed her honey back to her?

In reverse order, it is absolutely all right to feed a combee its own honey! The truth of the matter is honey is combee food, simply in a form that can be stored for long periods of time. (Some combee even store honey within their bodies during the winter.)

As for recipes … I fully admit that cooking is not at all my area of expertise. I’m actually (and unfortunately) quite useless in the kitchen. I can say, however, two things:

1. Tea with a couple teaspoons of honey alongside honey on toast is an absolutely divine breakfast.

2. Cooking is more Lanette’s expertise, so for the rest of this post, I’ll defer to her.

LH: 
Honey is a really versatile ingredient, actually, and can be a decent substitute for granulated sugar in practically every dessert recipe. You just have to remember the four basic rules if you choose to do this:

1. For every cup of sugar your recipe calls for, only use a half cup of honey. (Maybe a little bit more, if you prefer something sweeter, with a more pronounced honey taste.)

2. On the subject of taste, add a quarter to a half teaspoon of baking soda. This will help cut the natural acidity of the honey and bring out the sweetness.

3. Remember that honey is, well, a liquid. So you need to reduce all of your other liquids (or add more flour) to balance it out and get the right consistency. This typically means for every cup of sugar the recipe calls for, reduce liquids by a quarter cup or, if it’s a recipe that doesn’t call for many liquid ingredients, add two tablespoons of flour.

4. Reduce your oven’s heat. Honey browns anything it’s put in, so cooking at a lower temperature will help keep the end product from browning too much.

Of course, these are all just hard rules for making baked desserts or breads. If you’re not baking a pastry or bread, then honey can be even more versatile. You can, for example, mix honey with a few spices and coat chicken with it for an excellent baked chicken. Likewise, a few tablespoons of honey on fresh fruit with cream can either be a great breakfast or a great recipe for a smoothie. Be creative and don’t be afraid to experiment.

If you’re interested, though, here’s one of my favorite recipes:

Leppa Berry Flaugnarde

Ingredients
* 3 large eggs
* ½ cup milk
* ¼ cup honey
* 2 tablespoons unsalted butter, melted
* dash vanilla extract
* dash salt
* ½ cup flour
* 2 cups leppa berries (de-stemmed, washed, and dried)
* Cinnamon (optional)

Note: If you don’t have access to leppa berries, two or three large apples—peeled, cored, and cut into chunks—will also do. I would recommend something sweet but tart, such as honeycrisp.

Steps

1. Preheat oven to 325 degrees F (about 162 degrees C). Grease a pie tin or a cast-iron skillet and set aside. (You can use either of these things, but I like how traditional a cast-iron skillet is.)

2. Whisk the eggs until they’re just foamy. Add in milk, honey, butter, vanilla, and salt, and mix until they’re incorporated. Gradually add flour until you’ve created a smooth batter.

3. Pour half the batter into your pie tin or skillet. Spread leppa berries (or apple chunks) across the batter, then carefully add the remaining batter without shifting the fruit around. Sprinkle cinnamon on top to taste.
Helpful tip: A ladle may help you add the remaining batter without going too quickly to disrupt your fruit.

4. Bake for 40 minutes or until the center is set.

Hello Bill, my name is Blossom the Alakazam and my trainer has been feeling down lately. I was wondering if there is anything I could do to help her. We’re all worried and want to help, but I had decided it was best to seek advice first. Thank you for your time.

Speaking from experience, sometimes, the best thing a pokémon can do is simply show their trainers that they’re there and that they acknowledge their trainer’s existence. Even simply being in the same room as your trainer can go quite a long way (although physical signs of affection certainly don’t hurt). If you’d like to be more active, sometimes, small things can go a long way too. For example, if you or your teammates are capable of doing small tasks around your home (cleaning or cooking are the foremost things), this may cheer your trainer up a bit—or at least help her relax and let her know that there are others who quite literally care for her.

Another important thing to know is that humans aren’t often as open about what’s on their minds as pokémon are. It may take time before your trainer is ready to talk about what’s troubling her or even to express the exact emotion she’s feeling. Be patient with her and let her express herself in her own way. If she shares with you, all you have to do is listen.

Best of luck, Blossom! May your trainer feel better soon!

Yeah uh, my Slowpoke kind of got buried alive a few times. he got better though and now he’s too big for my Espeon to bury him quickly. I am still very, very confused. Bill, bill pls,

I would attach an image of the timestamp for this message, but I think we all know by now that this was sent in June. —LH

Thanks, Lanette. —Bill

When it comes to why your espeon has been doing this, it could have been for any number of reasons, actually. It may have been because your espeon was jealous of another psychic-type (which is a bit more likely, considering the fact that an espeon’s evolution is reliant on the strength of your bond with an eevee). It could have been from a dispute over food, toys, or any number of other things. It could even have been for your slowpoke’s benefit, as the misguided equivalent of “throwing a blanket over your sleeping friend,” as it were.

Or your espeon was simply bored.

Either way, it’s important to pay attention to potential triggers and your pokémon’s mood whenever they do something you can’t quite explain. There’s a reason for everything; you simply need to observe them to understand what that could be.

But in any case, it’s excellent to hear that your espeon has stopped this behavior on its own! Presumably, anyway.

celestialily replied to your post “Favourite character from ‘The Rangers: Z war’? Steel man and…”

Wasn’t it black liepard? considering liepards were actually based on panthers XD

{Not anymore!

Edit: No, really, this was actually a conscious decision because 1) luxray are cooler, which is an opinion that may or may not be influenced by my Nuzlocking attempts, and 2) I wasn’t sure how okay naming the Black Panther expy after liepard would be for various reasons. So … luxray.

Although part of me now regrets not naming him after incineroar. I mean, realtalk.}