XieRH said:
Well... when the guys raging about the "friend" in Cofagrigus are tired of beating that dead horse, they'll move on to the "bra" in braviary
Who's "raging," and how could the topic be a "dead horse" when the list has been out for all of three days, and there's hardly been all that much discussion on the topic?
I understand that you don't want people to rant uncontrollably, and without reason--it doesn't help the level of discourse here, and it makes the board feel overly antagonistic, or simply heated if folks aren't careful with their words.
At the same time, though, I don't see the problem with folks actually debating the merits of a name choice, especially if one chooses to do so respectfully, and with an actual argument.
And not to beat the dead horse, but, since you continued the discussion...
XieRH said:
I don't even think pokemon naming will serve to catalyse the process because if they already knew what "friend" means, it wouldn't change anything, and if they didn't... well the pokemon's name isn't going to end up teaching them what it means.
I see your "kids will be kids" point here absolutely, and I agree--it's not like children are all that innocent to begin with, and it's not like they'll be "discovering" anything from the game. That being said, though, this is still about what a company has chosen to do; not whether or not some children do or do not have prior knowledge of the word "friend," but that a company has chosen to include a slur in the name of a character who is part of a series of characters whose names always are based around puns, most of which are made by breaking down those names into their constitutive terms and syllables.
To introduce another hypothetical, I'm guessing that most fifth graders also know about the f-word, but I don't see TPCi putting that in the names of any Pokemon anytime soon for the same reason, even if it were spelled differently, such as without a "c," or with a "ph" instead of an "f" (assuming they didn't HAVE to use an "f" in order to keep the name under the ten character limit
).
Like I said in my first post on the topic, this isn't a big deal. At all. However, given snafu's in the past, this just doesn't seem like the best idea to me for reasons stated before. It's not the end of the world, and it's not indicative of anything else about this generation (or any other), it's just simply not the best choice.