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

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.

#AMA Bill and Lanette, favourite colours? Please go into full detail. This is important.

BILL
I fluctuate between red and purple. Both have always been bold, striking colors to me, but from a scientific perspective, being on the very edges of the visible spectrum, they’re also rather fascinating.

LH
Green. No reason, really. I just like that color. Pink as well, actually, which either is why or explains how most of my favorite pokémon are that color.

#AMA for both of you. Pancakes or waffles? (The mun may answer too, whoever that may be…)

BILL
That depends. Are we referring to lactose-free pancakes and/or waffles? Because if not, then both would make me rather ill, but if we are referring to lactose-free variations, then I really have no preference. And no, colleagues, it has nothing to do with the fact that I don’t eat breakfast to begin with.

LH
Waffles. There’s something satisfying about using a waffle iron … and then topping your creation with an abundance of whipped cream and chocolate syrup.

Again, why do you like dessert for breakfast so much? —Bill

Because unlike some people, I understand that breakfast is the most important meal of the day, so you might as well make it thoroughly enjoyable. —LH

{MUN
Pancakes! :D}

trainersofhoenn:

“How long have you been working on the storage system?”

“I’ve been with it since its inception, actually, so that would be—oh—several years now. My partner, a Kantonian named Bill, and I went to Celadon University together, and one day, he shared the original prototype of the system with me. Back then, it had a text-based interface and was nearly unnavigable, and I told him that under no circumstances could he release something like that to you poor trainers. He invited me to help him develop the system further, and I gave it a proper GUI and cleaned up his code a bit. The system saw a worldwide release only a few months after that.”

“Ooh, that sounds like a lot of hard work! Can you share what challenges you faced in implementing it?”

“Well, it was hard at first to convince people to want it in the first place!”

“Whoa, really?”

“Yeah. It’s a great idea, and the general public thinks so now, of course, but how do you explain it to people who have no background in quantum mechanics, engineering, or digital physics? I can’t tell you how many times my partner and I have had to convince others that the system is perfectly safe, that Pokémon don’t feel a thing when they’re transferred, that it’s impossible to delete or modify Pokémon as they pass through the system, and so on and so forth. If you can think of a question regarding whether or not Pokémon would be harmed as they pass through the system, I’ve had to answer it at least 10 times.

“And that isn’t even getting into the financial aspect of it. I won’t go into too many details about that for fear of boring you, but let me just say that convincing people to invest in putting a PC in every Pokémon Center turned out to be far, far more complicated than figuring out a way to turn living creatures into electricity and data.”

“Huh, I didn’t know that! But hey, since we’re on the subject… I’m sure I’m not the only one wondering this, but how does it all work? You know, the process of storing Pokémon?”

“Oh, I can’t tell you all the details, partly because some of it is a trade secret and partly because the full explanation may take more time than you’d probably like. Whenever any of us—Bill, myself, or the other administrators, I mean—whenever we’re asked this, we often compare it to a telephone. Basically, a telephone works by converting the sound of your voice into electrical pulses, sending those through a wire as electricity or through the air as radio waves, and converting those pulses back into your voice on the other end. The storage system works in a similar manner. The matter converter breaks down a Poké Ball, draws it into the digital matrix, and sends it into our cloud-based system until you specify a destination whenever you withdraw a Pokémon. There’s a bit more to it than that, but then we’d have to get into the nature of Pokémon and how it’s possible for them to perceive their surroundings, even in an electro-digital state such as the one they assume inside a Poké Ball, and that gets a bit messy.”

“It all sounds so complex and fascinating. I’m sure I speak for everyone when I say that I couldn’t imagine being a trainer without the storage system! Is there anything you want to say to all the trainers out there whose lives have been made easier because of your work?”

“Much of what we do isn’t for you; it’s because of you. So the first thing I’d like to do is thank our users, not only for using the system but also for going out, exploring the world, and discovering new and exciting things. In turn, you inspire us to create and explore, and with your help, we come that much closer to understanding the Pokémon we share the world with. And with that said, second, never stop being curious. Keep exploring, and keep befriending the people and Pokémon you meet.”

Lanette’s dialogue was written by @bills-pokedex! Her blog is this awesome project where she writes Pokédex entries as the Pokémon researchers Bill and Lanette, and it also doubles as a platform for trainers to ask for advice! There was no one else I would’ve considered for writing the Lanette conversation, and after reading this, I’m sure you all see why. Be sure to check her blog out! 🙂

{Congratulations to @trainersofhoenn for two awesome years! As someone who lurks this blog like whoa, it was fun to collab with the voice behind Brendan and help celebrate a highly ambitious and creative fan project.

Also? If you’ve somehow never heard of this blog, give it a look! You know how Humans of New York is all about sharing the unique stories and struggles of the everyday human being? Trainers of Hoenn does very much the same thing, only it’s one person running it, and it’s all about Pokémon characters. You get a story on your dash every day, and each one adds depth and character to even the most ordinary-looking NPCs. It’s funny sometimes, it’s heartwarming at others, and it’s all-around fun, period.

Thanks to the blog’s mod for the collab, and congrats again for another year!}

#AMA Bill and Lanette, if you were in the Hunger Games (a fight to the death on live television, with 24 participants), what would be your strategy and how long do you think you would last?

BILL
Fight to the death?! I’d rather not, reader, but thank you.

LH
I would locate and gather as many poisonous berries as I can find, then put them in the containers given to me by sponsors and leave them all over the arena. I would use any remaining berries to taint any available food supply I can find, and I would strike up alliances, then claim the berries are perfectly edible and offer them as gifts for my new allies. If anyone is still standing after all of that, I would run them ragged through the arena and then force berries down their throats when they’re at their weakest.

Why are you so quick to answer this question? —Bill

#ama did you make up bill and lanettes last name or are they revealed somewhere

{Lanette’s is the easier one to explain here, and the answer is, yep, I made hers up! If anyone’s wondering, Lanette’s last name partly comes from her Japanese name (Mayumi, which refers to Hamilton’s spindle) and partly from this awesome systems engineer.

The history of Bill’s last name is a bit more complicated because I actually stole it from the official Pokémon website’s episode summaries back when they weren’t as well-written as they are now. Whoever wrote the summary for Bill’s episode pretty much just tried to turn his Japanese name (Masaki) into a western one, rather than use his actual localized name. I just thought at the time that it was about as close to a last name as we’re ever going to get, so I’ve been using it ever since. Long story short, I technically didn’t make it up, but it’s also less an officially given name and more of a translation error.}