#I love putting a little realism in my pokemon worldbuilding

[cochineal-leviat]

I was just thinking about this, but in the Pokemon world, do you think there are zoo's?

This popped into my head because I was writing about foster care for Pokemon, but what would the point of Pokemon zoos be when you can own a dragon-type pet? Do you need a special licence for owning aggressive Pokemon? What are the laws around owning Pokemon in the Pokemon world? Are trainers exempt from an exotic pet-keeping licence? What are the exact recuperations if one of your Pokemon causes damages in both public and private settings? Is there insurance protecting against these possibilities?

Okay, but back to the first idea: zoos. Does the Pokemon world need them? Their whole point is to see animals you would never see in everyday life and to educate the public about them. That is why they are still allowed to operate today irl even though the origins of zoos started to gawk at foreign animals for the rich.

After all, if anyone can raise whatever Pokemon they want, as long as they take proper care of it, what is the point of a zoo? I suppose it could be used as a sanctuary for Pokemon that cannot return to their native regions. Since the modern Pokemon world is so Pokemon-friendly, I can see the governments of the areas only allowing these zoos to exist as long as they follow the rules to protect their denizens. You do not want a Gyarados to escape and make a lake close to civilisation its home.

I just think zoos wouldn't be as popular in the Pokemon world as they are in ours. With the Aether foundation from the Sun and Moon and Ultra games, there was an emphasis on rehabilitating Pokemon before it was revealed they were evil. I believe genuine work was done there since we have a character like Wicke who disagreed with Lusamine and took full responsibility for Aether Foundation's corruption. Still, with the experiments with Type: Null, it is hard to say how much of it was done to keep up good appearances. (honestly, the existence of Type: Null and its design is pretty horrifying if you delve deeper into it. I remember playing Moon and being hit by Fridge Horror while exploring the lower labs of the foundation. Say whatever you want about Pokemon, but their subtle sense of horror keeps me going).

However, there would be large support to help domesticated and wild Pokemon to find a home again. I can easily imagine a human making it their life's goal to rehabilitate Pokemon and help them find a new trainer. Since domesticated animals cannot return to the wild. Maybe Pokemon can since most are caught and have lived in the wild before. But there are plenty of animals in our world that cannot go back to the wild because of an injury or because they have gotten used to human contact. It is difficult, to say the least.

But what happens to released Pokemon that come from breeders? I am guilty of this as I used to shiny hunt the Musada Method (Gen 7 was the perfect gen to this with the Hot Springs. My favourite shiny Egg was an accidental use of this as I used to breed Dratini's to trade over the GTS, so I filled my Pokedex without needing a copy of Sun or a second 3DS). If you put even an ounce of realism into this mechanic, that means the breeding pool of that particular species is in danger if they are released in bulk. And that is not to mention if breeding a Pokemon with a Ditto has lasting side effects for that Pokemon's lineage. I imagine that if it is harmful in the Pokemon world, several laws would be laid out to prevent inbreeding in the wild and domestically. (Ugh, I got reminded of puppy mills)

To produce milk, meat, and other Pokemon (animal) products, there has to be a big industry for that too in the Pokemon world. It has to be done on such a large scale, too, since the Pokemon world doesn't consist of just the four regions of Kanto, Jhoto, Hoenn and Sinnoh anymore. They are more like countries now than the definition of a region.

Pokemon contests, especially, must be heavily regulated since they are essentially Pokemon-focused beauty pageants. I wonder if Pokemon contests are considered controversial, like irl beauty pageants. (BTW, I love Pokemon contests from DPP; I am not dissing them. This is just a thought exercise)

Idk, my brain kinda went on a tangent. All of these ideas would be fun to explore in my writing. If anyone wants to add to this, go ahead. I am curious what people think of this.

[zsweber-studios]

The Era of Mediocrity

2019 was a really big year for me. It was the year that I really started taking care of myself and began moving towards a more mentally healthy situation. I started going out to events more often, filling my life with fun memories and awesome situations, got a good plan for the next few years of my life, and all in all truly grew as a person in a way that I hadn’t for a long time.

However...2019 was also the year that I realized that we are living in the Era of Mediocrity, at least when it comes to big budget companies that control most of the entertainment we consume. This is directed at the Walt Disney Company and the Pokemon Company, mainly, but on a more personal level I was made aware of this through RWBY.

RWBY opened my eyes to the fact that a lot of the entertainment I’d come to love over the past few years has become...less than stellar than how it once was. Between Volume 6 and now Volume 7, I have seen a terrible shift in the way the writing is handled. The plots don’t make sense, the characters no longer feel real, and the whole narrative of each Volume seems to bend to the whim of the protagonists, promoting their actions as good and justified when they are anything but.

In spite of that, I can’t say that RWBY is a bad show, because it’s not. The animation is stunning--for something that started out with such stilted and jarring animation for anything that wasn’t a fight scene, this series has grown beautifully, as have how the voice actors in showing their skills and getting into the characters. It’s showing us a wider world, and seeing that worldbuilding is wonderful to me, a writer and worldbuilder.

However, it all hinges on expectations. After Volume 3, we were promised--in less words than actions, perhaps--that the show would get more serious, that it would treat the story with as much realism as it could while abiding by the fantasy. And yet, the writing in the recent Volumes has fallen short numerous times. Too many things happen in ways that don’t feel real, that don’t feel right, and it took me out of the show so much, that I dropped it.

But RWBY’s not the main reason for my frustration--it’s merely the tip of the iceberg. The true frustrations I have are with Disney and Pokemon.

This year saw the end of two incredible franchises under Disney’s wings--with Endgame finishing off the massive three-phase mission for the MCU, and Rise of Skywalker finishing off the new Star Wars trilogy. Now, I had no expectations that Rise of Skywalker would be a good movie. While I don’t hate the Last Jedi, it made it clear to me that the series was held together by pipe-cleaners and Elmers glue.

However, what I was frustrated with was Endgame. I was actually very excited to see this movie--I had loved Infinity War, and still do. It was one of the best movies to come out in 2018, honestly. However, the movie that followed was a poorly written fanfiction disguised as a Marvel movie. The characters were given unfulfilling storylines, treated like cardboard cutouts thrown into situations that didn’t make sense, and given direction that did not give them room to grow.

I mean, we all know about the wedding/funeral situation by now, right?

In spite of that...like with RWBY, I can’t say it was a bad movie. It just failed to be a good one in so many ways. The writing fell flat, the direction was terrible, but the fight scenes? The Avengers Assemble and final battle alone are some of my favorite movie moments of the series, and they just barely manage to save this movie from being a bad movie, to just a mediocre movie.

Along with Endgame, Disney released a few other movies as well--however, both of them were live-action remakes. Now, I will give credit where credit is due, and say that the live-action Aladdin does stand out from the original a bit--it adds to the story and gives it a new flavor that is nice...but it’s not great. It’s a good movie, but not one that I’ve felt inclined to return to--not even for any specific scene, like with Endgame’s Avengers Assemble.

On the other hand, though, we have the live-action Lion King. A movie that is almost frame-for-frame the exact same movie as the original 1994 Lion King movie. There are a few scenes here and there that were added in, but they weren’t necessary, and they didn’t add anything of substance to the story. It was, essentially, just a high-definition version of the Lion King, and with the expressions and actions, not a good one.

It finally sank in, for me, with Pokemon Sword and Shield, and especially with the new DLCs coming out this year. We had revealed to us that a Dex cut was coming and that only some of the old Pokemon would be returning to the new game. And yet, with the new DLCs, almost all of the old Pokemon will become available in the new games--but for an extra thirty dollars.

That was when I realized that the big companies have figured out that they don’t need to try anymore to make money.

Let me take you back in time, if I could, to 2004 and Pokemon FireRed and LeafGreen. FireRed was my first Pokemon game, and I loved it. I still do, I still play with my old Gameboy from time to time. But, the important thing here is that these games came with a nice little feature that was a series of islands you could explore to, travel to, that were exciting and new. It’s an area that hasn’t shown up in any game since--the Sevii Islands.

The Pokemon SW//SH DLC coming out this year feels like that--it feels like the Sevii Islands from FR//LG, or the Battle Frontier from DPP. Its an area where you can get access to more and new Pokemon, maybe even legendaries, and face new and exciting adventures and challenges. However, the DLC costs extra, and doesn’t come with the base game.

They can call it a DLC all they want, but the truth is obvious--this is the rest of the game, the Battle Frontier, the Sevii Islands, that in previous games would’ve been baked into the game itself, but is now being sold for half of the main game’s total. This is the rest of the game, because they know they can give us something mediocre to keep us satisfied, and milk us for more money to give us the rest of the game.

Disney knows they’ll still make ridiculous money from their movies, so why bother making something original or new? Why give a series a satisfying ending, when you can just slap something quickly together and throw it out, and still make ridiculous money off of it? Why bother putting in the time, effort, and resources to make a full and incredible game, when you can just hold back and suck your players dry for more.

The point I’m trying to make is that the titans of the entertainment business are growing old, Disney especially. They’ve lost focus, and are now focused only on making money, and no longer on making art--or, at the very least, providing a service.

So where does that leave us? Well, the other name I’d give this is the Era of Indie. Small creators, small groups of people, are where I’ve found most of my enjoyment and entertainment for the past two years now. The Adventure Zone is a podcast that has better writing, character growth, and humor than any of the other shows I’ve already listed. Epithet Erased is a webseries that might not have the most eye-catching animation, but its concept, writing, and humor are wonderful and zany. Hollow Knight is a surprisingly dark game that costs a fraction of what SW//SH cost, and yet it is my favorite game on the Switch to date. And once Silksong comes out, I’m going to be going crazy for that, too.

And these are only the ones I, myself love--there are many others out there, too. The big names are letting us down, but that means that the young, the new, and the small can have a chance to grow. And, while I might not know exactly what will happen in the next ten years, I can say this.

I’m excited to see where the Era of Indie truly takes us next.