Was wondering, if one where to fined or catch an undiscovered Pokemon. What usually happens? And would we get to keep it.

Well, that’s typically up to you. While the pokédex network will automatically register that you’ve encountered an unidentified pokémon if you try to scan it with your own, you technically don’t have to do anything. However, the Pokémon Symposium thoroughly encourages you to contact your nearest pokémon professor so they may do a few initial observations or instruct you on how to take notes yourself. This can be as simple as a five-minute videophone call to whomever gave you your current pokédex.

Otherwise, under most circumstances, you would get to keep it. Really, the only times you wouldn’t is if it posed a very clear threat to you somehow (which is extremely rare but still a possibility outlined in the Symposium guidelines for discovery procedures) or if it was a legendary (at which point you may be asked politely but firmly to put it back where you found it, depending on the professor).

Hey Bill, I need advice. I’ve had this really turbulent relationship with Pokemon and training them. I was going through one of those phases where I questioned if it was really right to capture and train Pokemon at all. I gave up my whole team, including a Munna I had raised since birth. It was a scary time for me. I was wondering if there are any Pokemon that would be great for former trainers wishing to get back into the swing of things. Preferably something local, you know how Unova can be.

Ah yes. You must be referring to the Plasma Incident. I have more than a few choice words about Team Plasma, but unfortunately, as that would be a rather strong tangent, I’ll simply say that it’s a shame to hear from another victim of their rather unique grip on pokémon welfare. That is to say, I’m terribly sorry to hear that this happened to you, anonymous.

That having been said, as odd as it may seem to be, have you considered another munna? While another one may be no decent replacement for the one you once had, you’re already very familiar with caring for one, and thus, bonding with another one may be easier than you might think.

However, if the thought of raising another munna is too painful for you (which would be understandable), Unova is home to a fantastic wealth of pokémon that are easy to care for and fully capable of helping you heal. For example, audino are very perceptive to a trainer’s needs, both physically and emotionally, and they’re surprisingly resilient and versatile on the battlefield. They’re also fantastically abundant across Unova, so finding one may be a fairly simple matter for you. (You may even be able to adopt a retired nurse audino or an audino that didn’t quite make it through its medical certification. These audino may be the best for you, as they’re trained to be calm and comforting in most situations.)

Alternatively, common pokémon—such as lillipup, pidove, and purrloin—are fantastically loyal pokémon that typically evolve into capable battlers later on (although liepard is admittedly not as strong as other choices, and purrloin is often mischievous and a challenge), as are the starter lines (which are often difficult but not entirely impossible to obtain). Other pokémon that simultaneously make for wonderful companions and perfect partners for former trainers include the gothita and solosis lines (as their psychic abilities make it easier for some trainers to bond with them), as well as golett (both fantastically loyal and easy to train), pawniard (same), minccino (popular domestic pokémon), emolga (same as minccino), and axew (none of the above, but the challenge in both taming and training axew may bring out the best in both you and it while helping you to heal from releasing your munna).

In all, I would highly recommend a pokémon you’re most likely to bond with. What you need right now is to heal and to be reassured—even if you’re consciously certain—that raising pokémon is perfectly ethical. So I would strongly suggest trying to raise a munna, but if not, go for something that’s guaranteed to adapt well to training in the first place. (Unless you really do want to try training an axew. Again, the challenge is often worth it.)

Best of luck!

Hey bill sick with the flu wish me luck, anyway bill i was wondering what happens to a pokemon if their ball is destroyed, either while theyre inside and while theyre outside. Do you happen to know?

First, best of luck and plenty of rest, anonymous. I hope you get well soon!

To answer your question, it may be a comfort to know that inside every poké ball in existence, even traditional ones made by Johtonian artisans, there is a failsafe system. If a poké ball loses functionality (by breaking, by losing power, or so on), the failsafe will immediately nullify the capture matrix and release the pokémon the ball is synced to. In laymen’s terms, that means that a pokémon will be released if its poké ball is too damaged to work. Furthermore, let’s say the poké ball is outright crushed with a pokémon inside. If this happens, the same thing occurs: the capture matrix (which you might see as a flash of red or white light) will be negated, and the pokémon it’s containing will be released.

Incidentally, when I say “released,” I mean “the pokémon will need to be captured again.” Without a poké ball, neither the storage system nor the league’s database cannot keep track of your pokémon, so for all intents and purposes (i.e., legally speaking), the pokémon that had been inside that poké ball is no longer considered to be officially yours. Granted, pokémon that have bonded with you will very likely still be loyal to you regardless of whether or not they have a poké ball, but it’s nonetheless a good idea to keep this in mind, should you find yourself with a broken poké ball and an unruly tyranitar you were in the middle of training.

How does Skitty use Assist? How does it work?

I’d answer “quite well,” but there’s a part one to this ask, and my editor has preemptively sent me a very stern warning punctuated with a screenshot from the latest episode of Binaclebob Trapezoidpants.

That said, the short answer is that it’s very similar to Metronome (whose mechanics I’ve talked about here: http://bills-pokedex.tumblr.com/post/167427470140/how-do-moves-like-metronome-work), just on a limited basis. That is, whereas Metronome may call upon any move in existence, Assist only calls upon moves known by the members of a single party, including the user themselves and party members that have yet to be born (i.e., eggs). How it does this is a bit of a mystery in the pokémon research community, although there are theories, two of which are strongly related to the theories behind Metronome.

The first theory is that all moves are hard-coded into every pokémon’s DNA (as every pokémon is the descendant of Mew, which supposedly could learn a wide variety of moves); it’s just that most techniques have been blocked off by eons of evolution and the development of physical blocks. However, as with Metronome, Assist allows a user to temporarily overcome these blocks and call upon moves that would otherwise be inaccessible to them. The difference is that while Metronome requires no examples to use, according to this theory, Assist actually calls upon memories of the user’s teammates either using these moves or educating the user about how they’re performed. In other words, the skitty (or other Assist user) watches the move being used and emulates it later through Assist. Unfortunately, the problem with this theory is that Assist can also call upon the moves of unborn teammates or moves that a teammate hasn’t yet had the opportunity to use in the first place, but in terms of practicality, this theory makes a bit of sense.

Personally, though, I prefer the second theory, which is that the user themselves don’t call upon the technique Assist emulates but rather the move itself does. However, unlike Metronome, Assist operates on the bonds between the user and their teammates (including the bonds a skitty or what-have-you has with an egg) in order to detect aural potential and project a randomly chosen move. In other words, I feel that there’s a deep connection between a pokémon’s abilities and its life force, that Assist uses a pokémon’s feelings towards others to reach out and detect abilities as encoded in their life force, and finally that Assist uses this information to temporarily bestow upon a user the ability to use one of their close friends’ powers.

In other words, a lot of it is magic, but it’s an explainable magic.

How does one become a gym leader or elite four member and what sort of duties do these positions involve aside from battling?

When it comes to gym leaders, the process usually begins with a recommendation from either a current gym leader/Elite Four member or a high-ranking member of the Pokémon Association (the international governing body that oversees the leagues—and yes, the champion is typically one of these members by default). Why a candidate might receive a recommendation tends to vary pretty wildly. Some gym leaders elect their own kin (such as in the cases of Lavaridge, Violet, and Fuchsia), while others choose trainers who impress them (as in the case of Petalburg or Lumiose). In rare cases, the Association recommends winners of local tournaments (Viridian, Veilstone) or unofficial gym leaders who defeat local gym leaders (Saffron).

Regardless of the reason, once elected, the candidate is then subjected to a test administrated by Association officials in the form of a battle. Should the candidate pass (i.e., win), they’re given official gym status and placement in their regional league. (Side note: There are many, many unofficial gyms out there. Anyone can open a place, call it a gym, and make a badge to go with it, but non-sanctioned gyms don’t count towards league requirements and often don’t follow league rules. It’s therefore not a good idea to challenge these gyms.)

Once sanctioned, a gym leader may serve a number of functions in their community, depending on that community’s needs and the gym leader’s abilities. Many gym leaders serve as teachers and offer classes on pokémon care, battling, or related local customs to local trainers and trainers-to-be. Others support their town or city’s law enforcement and/or public safety offices, and most gym leaders serve key roles in their area’s tournaments and festivals. Ultimately, all gym leaders are public figures and role models, and as such, they are, in general, expected to act on their best behaviors to serve as examples to their communities.

Of course, this is in addition to other, personal duties. Many gym leaders hold second jobs, not so much because the Association doesn’t pay them enough—believe me, the majority of them get paid more than I do as an Association member—but more because it’s something to do when they’re not maintaining a gym. The Unovan gym leaders, for example, consist of a fine artist, a museum curator, three restaurateurs, a teacher, a pilot, a model, and the owner of Unova’s largest construction company. For another example, one Kantonian gym leader runs a perfume company, two others are researchers, one is in medical school, one is still technically active in the American military, and the Cerulean Sisters apparently fancy themselves as “water ballet performers” … not that I have anything to say about that last one. The point here is that although a gym leader’s primary duties consist of maintaining a gym, battling, and serving in their community, this isn’t as hefty a list of tasks as one would think, and gym leaders are free to do whatever they wish in their spare time (within reason, given the aforementioned note about being a public figure).

The Elite Four is very similar to the above, but the requirements, both in becoming one and in performing as one, are more. For starters, it’s not possible to be recommended by a gym leader for a position in the Elite Four; candidates can only be chosen and recommended by high-ranking members of the Pokémon Association or Symposium. (To give you an idea of how high we’re talking about, I can’t recommend someone for membership into the Elite Four, but Steven Stone or Professor Kukui can.) The exam that follows is often harder than the one administered to gym leaders, and it often consists of battling four of the region’s topmost trainers (that is, the current Elite Four in most cases). And finally, while gym leaders are expected to serve their specific communities, the Elite Four is expected to serve their entire region. This means that if, for example, a threat to the entire region surfaces (to the scale of the Hoenn Incident a few years back), usually, the Elite Four is called into action to help the regional government with defense. Usually, anyway. As in, we don’t normally send single preteens out to battle the forces of nature, but for whatever reason, that’s been a trend as of late, which means the Elite Four has been called upon fewer and fewer times.

Besides that, Elite Four members are often asked to engage in regional events (such as the exhibition matches that typically take place before championship tournaments such as the Silver or Lumiose Conferences), teach new trainers whenever possible, and generally maintain their reputations as upstanding members of society. It’s just that as highly public figures, maintaining a certain public image is even more important to the Elite Four than it is to gym leaders, and oftentimes, it’s actually easier to be kicked out of the Elite Four due to violating the Association’s standards of conduct than it is to be kicked off the badge circuit. (I realize that sounds rather ghastly, but it’s important to keep in mind that the Elite Four are also the faces of their respective league. Any misconduct from them is a direct reflection on their region as a whole. It’s politics, in other words, only the leagues tend to take things a bit more seriously than actual politicians.)

Of course, as with gym leaders, the Elite Four (and champion, for that matter) can also opt to take second jobs, especially since they’re often called into action fewer times than gym leaders are. For example, it’s completely possible for Siebold of Kalos to run more than one high-ranked restaurant in Lumiose or Diantha to star in at least one feature film a year because, well, aside from the occasional challenger to the Elite Four gauntlet, the Kalos League rarely requires the services of its Elite Four.

In short, if you’re considering joining either group, anonymous, best of luck, but consider beginning with the gym circuit first. Impressing a gym leader enough to get a recommendation is far easier than impressing an Association member.

I run a ranch in Sinnoh where I care for everyone’s pokémon, but over the past few years it seems like fewer and fewer people are coming back to claim them. Some people have as many as 1500 pokémon here! It’s troublesome, and I don’t know what to do. And when someone does come back, a lot of the pokémon consider the ranch home now, and have trouble adjusting to their trainers. What sort of advice would you have that I can pass on to them?

To clarify, anonymous, are you a temporary ranch or a storage ranch? If you’re a temporary ranch (that is, a facility designed to care for pokémon on a short-term basis), it’s unfortunate that this is a thing that could happen, but it’s best to keep in mind that you’re only meant to be a temporary care facility. That having been said, it may be a good idea to create and enforce a time limit—say, thirty days maximum stay, for example. Gently notify or remind clients of this time period when they drop off pokémon, and include it in any paperwork they may sign. This may push them to come back for their pokémon in a timely manner, but for those who don’t, consider partnering with a shelter in order to rehome pokémon with foster trainers.

Additionally, it may be a good idea to remind clients approaching that time limit that a pokémon receives no better care from anyone but their trainer. That is, while you can provide care and shelter for them, only their trainers have bonded with them enough to know their specific long-term needs. Hence, it’s better and more humane for the pokémon to be back with their trainers, rather than permanently in your care.

If, however, you’re meant to be a storage ranch—that is, a facility designed to be the designated “home base” for trainers—as unfortunate as this may be, pokémon may be better off in your care, as part of a trainer’s job is to travel the world and bond with pokémon in regions that may not have access to the Bank yet. Be patient, though, anonymous, and consider taking fewer clients. It may be heartbreaking to see a pokémon spend time with you for months or years at a time, but what you’re really doing is giving a trainer’s team a home until the trainer returns from their journey, in much the same way that the storage system gives pokémon a home when a trainer reaches their six-pokémon limit.

i’ve decided to train my dear sylveon and minccino to become cute contest masters! do you have any tips, such as what kinds of berries make the most effective sweet poffins and pink pokeblocks, special training techniques for cute contests, places where i can find high-quality cute contest costumes? thank you so much!!

….

Lanette! Help!

LH: Honestly, Bill it wouldn’t kill you to learn a little more about training besides care and mechanics.

But fine.

Anonymous, to answer your questions in order:

The best pokéblocks are made with high-quality sweet berries, such as watmel, custap, and liechi. These berries may also carry other qualities (such as spicy, in liechi’s case), but don’t worry. So long as it’s also strongly sweet, they’ll still be effective.
Unlike poffins (see below), you must use high-quality sweet berries. Most of a pokéblock’s quality depends on the sweetness of the original fruits used, so although high-quality sweet berries are expensive and difficult to import, they’re worth it if you can get your hands on them.
Of course, a little-known secret to making pokéblocks: you can used store-bought or canned berries, and the result will be the same. These may be easier to obtain than fresh.
Poffins, meanwhile, can be made with the same berries, but because a poffin’s quality relies a little more on technique than specific flavor, you can get away with substituting lower-quality and thus easier-to-obtain-or-grow berries such as mago or magost. Just be extra careful in stirring and cooking; you’ll need near-perfect technique if you’re going to get a poffin made with a lower quality berry to taste like one made with a higher quality berry.
Cute contests, like beauty and cool contests, rely almost entirely on appearance (as awkward as that is to say out loud). So it’s important to focus on perfecting cute moves, such as Attract, Draining Kiss, or Tickle. That means not only getting their basic execution down but also training your pokémon to use them as cutely as possible. Emphasize body language as much as raw technique, in other words. (A secret: I’ve always found that watching romantic comedies with my pokémon and having them emulate some of the “techniques” their characters use heighten the effectiveness of our performances, but be as creative as you’d like!)
Despite being home to performances and not contests, the best accessories and costumes are actually found in the boutiques of Lumiose City. Many of these have online stores that will ship to pokémon centers around the world, and contrary to popular belief, the prices are fairly reasonable. So as much of a hassle as that sounds, it’s actually a pretty viable option, especially if you’re looking for something cute but elegant. Otherwise, if you’re participating in the Hoenn contest circuit, go to Lilycove Department Store for cheap but high-quality items. Coordinators of the Sinnoh contest circuit swear by the indie shops of Hearthome City.

Hope this helps, anonymous! Good luck!

So, is the use of pokéballs ethical?

LH: You’ll have to excuse my partner. As administrators for and co-creators of the pokémon storage system, we both get this question a lot. Below is the standard response Bill typically offers … when he’s not exasperated, anyway:

Q. Are poké balls ethical?

A. Yes. Given that pokémon typically give their consent through battle before capture—as the poké ball’s safety mechanism will engage and release a pokémon that isn’t willing to be caught, and the act of battling is our way of gaining a baseline level of respect with a wild pokémon—it’s quite impossible to force a pokémon to join one’s team.

Furthermore, continued use of a poké ball is oftentimes necessary. Within its ball, a pokémon enters a semi-suspended state: they don’t need food, water, space, sleep, or thorough enrichment, and their health is by and large preserved in the same state it had been shortly before entering its ball, with the exception of poisoning, which continues to leech health from a pokémon’s data state and should thus be treated. In other words, a poké ball allows for not only compact travel but also the utmost safety, as once recalled, a pokémon is sheltered from the hazards of the outside world. Trainers often use this feature to draw their partners out of dangerous situations—or, at least, they’re encouraged to do so. Likewise, the recall feature allows trainers to withdraw their pokémon if said pokémon themselves present dangerous situations, such as in this case of rampaging pokémon, fire-types in flammable environments, and so forth.

As with all technology, there are unethical ways to use poké balls, and I can’t rightly claim that no one has ever figured out what those ways are. However, the technology itself is not only safe but also improves the lives of both trainers and their pokémon by offering portable shelter and easy transportation for each of a trainer’s team members. The fact that the poké ball also serves as concrete proof of a bond between trainer and pokémon is just an added bonus.

Hey there! Me and my grovyle love to travel all over the world, and lately we’ve been thinking about adding another pokemon to our team. Any recommendations?

That depends on your needs within your family, anonymous. Obviously, you’ll want something that can travel, so I wouldn’t recommend wailord, snorlax, ferrothorn, or the like. Also, it may be advisable to avoid pokémon that are commonly barred from either travel centers or entire regions, such as most noxious poison-types (standard muk, weezing, etc.) or members of the voltorb line. Some regions also bar common spore- or seed-producing pokémon, such as parasect, to avoid the accidental introduction of invasive plant species.

Beyond that, the sky really is the limit for you (forgive the possible pun). Ask your grovyle if it has any preferences, and if not, consider catching local pokémon in the regions you travel to or finding a pokémon you would most like to travel with yourself. The former option is honestly the one I recommend the most. Going out and catching pokémon from regions you visit encourages you to explore each region and befriend a wide variety of pokémon. This in turn will naturally broaden your horizons more than restricting yourself to two partners from a region you know.

Best of luck, and safe travels, anonymous!

I have heard of some trainers fighting alongside their pokemon, or even developing abilities akin to what pokemon can do themselves (such as trainers with psychic abilities or the ability to commune with pokemon). Do you think this is due to some evolutionary connection between pokemon and humans, or a result of our centuries old cohabitation?

That depends on the ability, anonymous. In the case of unusual feats of a physical nature, some of these cases were simply a matter of individual training. For example, trainers who work alongside fighting-types such as machamp or infernape sometimes grow stronger or more agile than humans who don’t, simply because of the nature of their training. On the other hand, those that suddenly develop special abilities—such as, for example, the people who gain mild psychic abilities or heightened intuition from years of training with psychic-types—are less understood or explainable. The going theory is that our bonds with pokémon become so strong that they unlock hidden potential within every human. That is to say, every human may be psychic; it’s just that we can’t access those abilities until we bond with pokémon.

Which leads me to those, like Sabrina and aura users, who were born with that potential already unlocked. Where did that potential come from? Where did we as a species come from, and what are we if we’re members of the animal kingdom but possess such strong links to pokémon? Those are some of the greatest mysteries of our world, the kind that every researcher wishes to answer.

Personally, I believe that the potential we all have is indeed the vestiges of our heritage—though not necessarily that we were ourselves pokémon once. (I’m open to that theory, but we’re too genetically different. That’s why humans belong to an entirely different taxonomic kingdom from pokémon.) What I mean to say is it may be an evolutionary adaptation that’s meant to better equip us for life in cohabitation with pokémon. After all, no animal lives closer to pokémon than the human race, and I mean no arrogance or speciesism by saying that. It’s simple fact: whereas it’s true that all other animals share habitats with pokémon (sometimes even working together to survive), humanity’s relationship with pokémon runs deeper, to the point where we often form lifelong partnerships akin to the bonds human best friends share with each other. (I know that some pet animal owners will take exception to this comment, but I mean to say that tamed pokémon are seen as very nearly equal to their human partners.)

So because of this relationship to pokémon, our species has gradually evolved to keep up with them, so to speak. We’ve evolved to become adaptable and easily changed, with vast reservoirs of potential within every one of us, just waiting to be unlocked to match the partners we choose. That, in my opinion, is part of what makes humans so fascinating.