Welcome to the Cave of Dragonflies guestbook.
Bleh, that post I made earlier makes no sense now that I reread it. BASICALLY: Yeah, I'm not really into epigenetics, but I thought I knew enough for the very vague description I was going to put there to make sense without specifically looking into the particular mechanisms that would be at work, which I guess it didn't. Also part of what I wrote in the explanation in the fan theory guide was really weirdly worded and implied the actual sequence of the paternal genome was changed, which probably didn't help.
The earlier guestbook post sounds like I'm defending this theory on the basis that theories don't need to make sense to someone with a more intimate understanding of the field; that was meant to be a response to the final "does it matter if someone well-versed in a subject will recognize a theory as nonsensical" question, not the comments about my theory in particular. If, indeed, Pokémon inheritance can make perfect sense with normal Earth genetics, then my theory is very silly and obviously way overcomplicating things, and I'm very intrigued because genetics fascinate me and I've never heard of anything like that in real life. So if you were to throw some examples my way I'd be overjoyed.
Hope that made somewhat more sense.
Ultimately, since there is no actual reality to be discovered behind how governments/Pokéballs/genetics/etc. work in the Pokémon world (i.e. the creators almost certainly didn't have some specific educated idea in mind), and these are sufficiently complex things that any explanation posed will be pretty wildly speculative, I don't think it's especially productive to look for the explanation, or generally anything other than "well this is how *I* think it would work". When you get to that level, the best a theory can do is fit with what we observe, and there's no guarantee any possible theory could fit with what we observe while at the same time making perfect scientific (or economic, etc.) sense. It becomes a matter of trying to turn Pokémon's fantasy world into science fiction, essentially. Of course one theory can be simpler and more plausible than another, and most theories can definitely be improved by someone who knows more, but I can't help feeling just about any theory explaining the more fantastic elements of something like Pokémon is bound to be unconvincing to someone very intimately familiar with the real-world science at hand.
Or, while more research is always better than less, it strikes me as pretty futile to strive to make fan theories about something like Pokémon satisfy people with a greater education in the relevant academic fields. Because it wasn't created to make scientific sense in the first place, there's only so far anyone is likely to go in making sense of it after the fact.
All that said, I'm very interested if there are actually organisms where something like Pokémon's inheritance system actually exists. Are there examples of something like that large-scale inheritance-only-through-the-female-line in nature?
I tried to be vague on things like the mechanism by which genes are 'activated' or 'marked' as moves are learned, both because I'm not intimately familiar with epigenetics personally and because it struck me as unimportant precisely how it happens, so specifying it would just needlessly complicate an already pretty overcomplicated theory (I also didn't want to specify whether Pokémon's genetic material is DNA or something else, so talking about mechanisms specific to Earth cell chemistry would have been odd). But my admittedly cursory understanding of epigenetics was that the epigenetic processes that would be involved here could more or less be described as 'marking' particular genes, and that's also how I understand the Wikipedia article you linked. If I'm way off on that count, or if my wording is completely absurd given a more extensive knowledge of the subject, please correct me.
I find it kind of hard to keep track of the guide without pictures, especially the step-by-step explanation of how germline cells are formed.
It's kind of hard to talk about what would be plausible or implausible about this system of inheritance without getting down to "well this is how *I* think it would work," and there are plenty of real-life organisms with systems of inheritance that get roughly this crazy. At the same time, though, there are ways similar problems have already been solved by organisms that live here on earth, so your system ends up looking pretty strange and complex by comparison. Chromatin remodeling would be a plausible explanation for the way that moves are inherited (does your system account for the fact that level-up moves can also be inherited, but only if *both* parents know them?), for example. I dunno, I don't really want to be like "go out and do a ton of research on high-level topics for your pokémon fantheories," but it would really make what you came up with ring more true, I think.
Perhaps that would be something to address in your fan theories guide? It's fun to speculate about things like how the government of the pokémon world might operate or the technology behind pokéballs, but unless you happen to know a lot about government or theoretical physics/engineering you're probably going to come up with something that would look pretty strange, if not outright wrong, to someone well-versed in those areas. Or would you say that's not important?
'Penn & Teller, because I just love them, damn it.'
:D
Oh Butterfree. Also, I'd like to thanks you. You're awesome, and this site keeps me going.
I am proud. Very proud. More than you know.
TVTropes Mafia come baaaack ;-;
Happy almost ten years, anyway.
Just testing to see if I made some idiotic oversight in the comment system.
I think they don't fix likely mistakes like this in order to maintain consistency, to be honest. Probably the same reason as why they take pains to introduce new evolution methods when they introduce new evolutions.
(Incidentally, I now have a male Azumarill that was born a female Azurill myself, so I can personally confirm that it happens.)
Azuril's gender is probably like Nidorina and Nidoqueen's ability to breed. It's probably a mistake, and the developers totally coulda fixed it… But, like, they didn't. And nobody knows why.
Fixed.
I've heard that before, that the female-to-male Azurill was a mistake, but I never really bought it. If it was a mistake, it would've been fixed in later generations, but it still hasn't been.
It could be argued, of course, that it may have been intentional, and the developers decided to make it official, and this is of course possible (and is most likely the case, as there seems to be no reason to choose ahead of time to make the sex ratio of Azurill different).
"dictats that it should be female"
You forgot an "e" in "dictates."
You may have been sleepy when you typed that, but as a perfectionist, I think you would appreciate having that error pointed out for you.
It's not "official canon" in the sense that it's likely some kind of a mistake, but the fact is it does happen. A Pokémon's sex is determined by a number between 0 and 255 that's derived from its personality value (and is therefore static throughout the Pokémon's life); depending on its species' sex ratio, there is a certain cutoff point such that any Pokémon whose sex value is lower than the cutoff point is female and Pokémon whose sex value is greater than or equal to the cutoff point are male. Because Azurill has a 75% female sex ratio while Marill and Azumarill are 50% female, the cutoff point is different, meaning any sex value in between the two cutoff points will result in a female Azurill but a male Marill/Azumarill.
Is it canon that Azurill sometimes switch sexes upon evolution…? I can't find anything that says they do officially, only things that seem to be people just plain guessing.
If you have the time, could you make sprite packages for the backsprites of Pokemon? I know that's not really in high demand, and that you're busy, but it's just a suggestion.
When I've thought of a new poll I want answered. Might change it later, actually.
When will there be a new poll?
Oh, yeah, it's not meant to be taken seriously at all. I never intended it to be serious. I understand what you mean though, and I'm glad I could help you out with writing down your thoughts.
Yes, if you found evidence suggesting it was not a coincidence that the technically-666th Pokémon is Joltik, then you'd have a meta theory that Joltik was consciously created to correspond to that number. But it would be a very weak one, to be honest, unless there is something really mind-blowingly Satanic about Joltik that I haven't noticed. You started from the wrong end; instead of looking for possible explanations for something odd about Joltik and figuring out something that seemed to make sense, you first made your not very meaningful observation that it's technically the 666th Pokémon and are now reaching for something about Joltik that you can explain with it in order to be able to claim that it is meaningful. 666 just isn't a meaningful number in Japan, and even if it were it's highly unlikely the creators would choose to make their 666th set of stats special rather than making the 666th Pokémon in the National Pokédex special as all those other fans are assuming. You could make a crack theory out of it, but something that could be taken seriously? Not really.
So it's more like a fact that you have to search for. But if it was added to in a way that went into detail as to WHY it's not just a coincidence that Joltik was placed there in the Unova Dex, then THAT would make it a theory and not just something left to your imagination to elaborate on. Right?
That's a whole different sense of "explain", one that's simply interchangeable with "say". Theories are about the "You've got some explaining to do" kind of explaining: reasons, justifications and clarifications for something that is already there.
Your theory isn't an explanation of something that is already there. You're just making an observation that Joltik is technically the 666th Pokémon if you count forms. You're not, say, asking a question about why Joltik was designed the way it is and introducing this observation to answer it, or exploring some particular possible reason Joltik is the technically-666th Pokémon; you're just making an observation. That's not a theory, any more than "Voltorb is Pokémon #100 in the National Pokédex" or "Pidgey has wings" is a theory. They're simple facts.
A theory is a model, a set of assumptions about what you can't see that explains consistently why you observe what you observe and not something else. Your theory doesn't answer any why question, because it isn't a theory; it's just a dangling simple fact. Sure, it's a simple fact most people haven't thought about, but it doesn't become a theory unless it answers a sensible why question about the existing canon.
(This discussion is actually helping me put more of my thoughts on fan theories into words, so thanks?)
