Tag: about the author

I know it isn’t AMA month anymore, but since you guys already answered which villain team you would join if you had to, would you both be willing to answer which of those teams you most disagree with?

BILL
Without a doubt, Team Rocket. While many of the other organizations at least feign having benevolent intentions (except Team Skull, I suppose, but I question whether or not they count), Team Rocket is very explicit in its goals. Those goals, of course, are the usage of pokémon as tools to further their attempts at power and money. I suppose at the very least, they’re honest about what they want, but that still doesn’t change the fact that they only see living, breathing, thinking creatures as objects to be used for their own selfish wants. It’s quite disgusting, honestly.

On that note, I’d also like to mention Team Plasma as well, which did more or less the same, except it disguised it as a bid for pokémon rights and welfare. The only reason why I don’t think Team Plasma is as disgusting as Team Rocket is because at the very least, some of their followers genuinely do care passionately about the well-being of the pokémon they actually are trying to rescue. It’s just that their reasoning is a bit misguided.

LH
While Bill has a point concerning both Rocket and Plasma, my vote would be with Teams Aqua and Magma. Rocket is simply corrupt, and Plasma is either corrupt or misguided in a comparatively benign way, depending on whom you ask. Aqua and Magma, meanwhile, take their stupidity to a whole new level. Honestly, both of their leaders are fantastic minds, yet neither of them thought for an iota of a second that maybe their plans to “expand the earth” or “increase the oceans” by raising one of the Ancient Ones was, perhaps, a bad idea? Why is it that the younger and more academically brilliant a man is, the more inclined he is to break the world for “the betterment of humanity and all pokémon”?

…I’ll just be over here. —Bill

Do people from different regions have different accents? What do they sound like?

Speaking from experience, yes, we do indeed, anonymous. I must admit it’s rather difficult to describe because there are so many possible accents in the world. Some regions even have multiple possible accents, depending on which part you’re talking about. For example, people from Goldenrod City don’t actually sound like people from Ecruteak City, and even fellow Kinjin may sound different, depending on which district you come from. As an example within an example, both Bebe and I are from the same city, but she comes from the newer Northeast Side, which is close enough to Violet City to experience a sort of blending of the two populations. By contrast, I come from a far older neighborhood in the southwest, which itself has a unique accent due to the high number of rather ambitious immigrants, many of whom have given Goldenrod its reputation as a melting pot and center of art, business, and modern culture. Consequently, my accent is commonly thought to be the typical Goldenrod accent, whereas Bebe’s is far lighter and more mixed with a Violet City accent.

Ultimately, the divisions of accents depends completely on regional and personal history as well as general culture. Specifically, although we all speak the same language, one of the reasons we all have different accents due to the fact that prior to the introduction of Common, our languages were extremely varied. English sounds different from Japanese, after all, so when both speakers made the transition to Common, one could still tell what a person’s original language had been. Additionally, accents can vary from people to people, even if the native language had been the same. For example, Kinjin once spoke Japanese, as did many other people in the Kanto and Johto areas, but they emphasize their vowels, leading to longer, softer-sounding words. This lines up with Goldenrod’s history as a center of commerce: it’s easier to do business if you speak slowly and soften your voice, as you come off as more personable than the stiff and quick-speaking people of Kanto. And of course, there is also the fact that Goldenrod was a major entry point for immigrants, which in turn contributes to how different it sounds compared to the dialects of Kanto and the rest of Johto (what with assimilation and all).

Of course, this overly simplifies linguistics, but these tend to be the primary reasons why we still have accents despite, well, the fact that the majority of us speak the same language.

As for what we sound like specifically, that I can’t answer because it would take far too long to detail every single accent possible. I suppose I can describe my own accent in comparison to my colleagues’ and leave it at that. In which case, yes, I speak a bit slower than the others, and my voice largely comes from the back of the throat, rather than the palate or the front. As a result, my vowels tend to sound longer, and it’s been noted that I have “trouble” pronouncing H and R and that any word wherein R is the predominant sound becomes muddled (although quite honestly, all of you should be able to figure out what I’m talking about from context).

Well, to be fair, you were talking about a charizard’s breath that one time. —LH

Why would I be talking about how far it breathes?! —Bill

Why is pikachu classified as a mouse pokemon as opposed to rabbit with those ears? And why is RATtata a mouse pokemon too?? Who decides these names and why wouldn’t I be surprised if it was you?

When it comes to pikachu, actually, it does strongly resemble a mouse in both aesthetics (past its long ears) and behavior, especially when it comes to its habit of burrowing into walls and biting into the wires inside. Likewise, pikachu generally move about much like mice by scurrying instead of hopping, and they organize themselves into mouse-like nests instead of rabbit-like warrens. In every way, pikachu actually is a mouse-like pokémon; it’s just that its ears have evolved to be a bit longer due to their secondary function of detecting electricity in the air in conjunction with their tails.

As for rattata, that … is actually an excellent question, as they very clearly rats instead of mice. It could very well have to do with the larger raticate’s tendency to battle its own preevolution with incredible viciousness, much like how their mammalian counterparts often hunt and consume mice.

Either way, I assure you, highly qualified pokémonologists are responsible for giving each pokémon their names and official designations, and in any case, I was only responsible for dratini … which I named when I was eight. Just in case you were thinking of judging me for giving dratini a name that amounts to “mini dragon.”

Hey Bill, I was wondering if you would do dex entries of the PC Developers? You should probably not do your own entry since biases might occur.

Seeing as many of the other developers are close friends of mine with whom I speak on a near-daily basis, I feel like this could become a terrible idea very quickly. However, many of the other developers have also consented and submitted encouragement for me to do this, and my editor kindly pointed out that the threat of physical harm or public embarrassment did not stop me from doing an entry on one of the Elite Four rosters. So for those reasons, I present to you my fellow developers.

Lanette
The Technical Expert
Type: Normal
Region: Hoenn
Entry: A brilliant graphics designer, mechanical engineer, digital physicist, computer technician, pokémon biologist, and all-around genius. There is absolutely nothing funny whatsoever about her, and the author does not say this because he knows she has full access to his administration panel. Also, the author would like to go on to state that she is quite possibly the rock that holds all of us together and that this statement is being made of his own free will.

Brigette
The Kind-Hearted Administrator
Type: Normal/Fairy
Region: Bank
Entry: The older sister of Lanette and administrator of the Pokémon Bank. Although actually rather quiet and reserved in real life, Brigette enjoys immense popularity on the internet, where she’s known for two things. First, she’s popular among collectors for her penchant for giving away rare and valuable pokémon (even legendaries, much to both the author’s confusion and his chagrin). Second, she’s popular among those attracted to female-identifying people, due to her rather physically attractive appearance (much to both her and the editor’s chagrin).

Celio
The Star Student
Type: Grass
Region: Sevii Islands
Entry: A brilliant rising computer technician responsible for the network machine that links Kanto’s storage system to Hoenn’s. In addition to being brilliant, Celio is also sweet but rather easily excitable and eager to please. Strangely, both the excitability and the eagerness to please are, apparently, traits Celio only displays around the author. While the author’s theorizes this is because Celio is also the president of his fan club, the Sinnohan administrator had once tried to explain that it’s because Celio “is thirsty” and “wishes to deposit a palkia in the storage system” and “for Mesprit’s sake, Bill, wants to jump you” … whatever those mean.

Bebe
The World’s Greatest Party Girl
Type: Fighting/Normal
Region: Sinnoh
Entry: To understand the personality and entire character of the Sinnohan administrator, one only needs to be aware of the fact that the author did not give her the title “world’s greatest party girl”; that was entirely the subject’s own creation.

Amanita
The Adorable Administrator
Type: Psychic/Normal
Region: Unova
Entry: Amanita is the fully capable, extremely creative, and fantastically shrewd eight-year-old administrator of the Unovan storage system. Of course, it should be noted that because many of her fellow administrators were themselves former child prodigies, few of them take into account her age when dealing with her … except when her older sister and research partner, Professor Plutea Fennel, is within earshot and fully capable of reprimanding us severely for inadvertently teaching Amanita about adult subjects such as sex, drugs, or how to hot wire a car.

Cassius
The Lovable Ruffian
Type: Ghost/Grass
Region: Kalos
Entry: As the Kalosean administrator and a punk rocker with a slightly checkered past, Cassius is, as this social media platform would put it, someone who “looks like he could kill you but is actually a cinnamon roll.” Easily swayed by eight-year-old system administrators from Unova.

Molayne
The Battle-Ready Administrator
Type: Steel
Region: Alola
Entry: Due to unusual circumstances regarding the tapu, Molayne is the newly appointed administrator of the Alolan storage system, despite being a strong enough trainer to become a kahuna. Although the responsibilities of a storage system administrator should keep him busy, Molayne nonetheless still finds time to exercise his skills as a trainer by routinely taking on Alola’s first champion and maintaining his level 100 warlock in the MMORPG Realm of Rivalries. The author is both impressed and a little annoyed that he can do this.

What would you be like if you were a video game boss? #AMA to Bill and Lanette. And the Mun if they would like to answer as well.

BILL
I must admit I don’t play video games that have bosses all that often. If I play video games at all—which I must also admit is rarely—it’s often creative or simulator games like Cavecraft. So I don’t entirely know what kinds of video game bosses there are besides the sort that just fire projectiles at you or something of the sort. Granted, Cavecraft has a dragon, but you don’t have to fight it at all, so I don’t think it would count.

LH
A queen. You know those bosses that always have legions of mobs surrounding them? That would be me. I would also be the MMO-style boss who enjoys inflicting unique status effects and uses one-hit kills. I would, in other words, be a final boss.

{THE MUN
The cracky one in a random dungeon in the middle of your quest. You know the one. The one you have to defeat by using the power of interpretive dance to make me surrender? That one.}

#AMA for Bill, Lanette, and the Mun. If you absolutely had to join one of the “regional criminal teams” which one would you join and why?

BILL
Likely none of them, to be honest. I would quite honestly prefer to die than be involved in that sort of thing.

However, if I absolutely must, I suppose Team Aqua is benign enough. Or, at least, it’s as benign as one can be when summoning a legendary that can, in turn, summon relentless rain to drown the world. Their goals were noble, at the very least.

LH
Personally, I would side with Team Flare. While, yes, they nearly destroyed the world, on the other hand, it would be a prime opportunity to work with the Eliseo Lysandre, head of Lysandre Labs. Not only would it be enlightening to work alongside one of the most brilliant minds in pokémon technology (or … another one, for a change), but it would also be nice to see what our competition is doing for once.

{THE MUN
Probably Team Skull, just because unlike most teams, Skull is open about the fact that they are meme-filled trash.}

#AMA Bill, Lanette (or any other devs who want to answer). What would your plan of action be if you found yourself abducted by an alien spacecraft? Happy holidays!

Happy holidays to you as well, anonymous!

BILL
Make friends with them, naturally. Imagine what we can learn from such a highly advanced race! We’d have knowledge of technology and worlds beyond our own star! So many opportunities to understand the very nature of our universe would open up instantly!

LH
Steal a piece of their technology, sabotage their transporter to transport me only, and beam myself back to Earth. Also naturally.

BEBE
Yeah, pretty much the same.

CASSIUS
That would be all of us, yeah. Except Bill.

AMANITA
I’d take a fuzzy alien pet if they have one and I knew it was benign, but then I’d run away to Earth.

BRIGETTE
Basically, what we’re all saying is that Bill’s the only one with weak enough self-preservation instincts to stay on board.

ALL, EXCEPT BILL
Basically.