#baezil writes

[andalitebonsai]

Marco and ants

Thinking about how Marco has this Thing with social insects, how he hates them the most of all the group, and trying to puzzle out why they scare him more than the others. Cuz it’s like... he says it’s loss of control/loss of self, but that seems weird, right? That’s sort of a looming anxiety for all of them, that’s what yeerks do, and Marco doesn’t seem more scared of the yeerks than the others.

But Marco “clear bright line” is able to do what he does by keeping an emotional distance from almost every area of his life; his ability to maintain ironic detachment is a crucial element of #35. We see him easily joke about everything, it’s his whole deal; he’s only really sincere about his family.

And Marco always mentions how social insects make you lose control specifically in the context of serving the hive. From #40:

Honeybees,  like  ants,  are social  insects. Just not to the same extent as ants. But they function as part of a greater whole. Not individuals.  Machinelike  in their  dedication  to  the survival of the colony.  Devoted one hundred and fifty percent to the hive.

Social insects absolutely do not allow distance from your goal. It’s not just the loss of control, it’s that the loss of control is mandatory, all-in, 150% devotion and dedication, no ironic detachment possible. The loss of self, for Marco, is that barrier he’s always building between his actions and his feelings.

And Marco’s absolute worst moments during the war (at least up through #41) are all times when his family (the one thing he cares about with absolute sincerity) is affected by/sacrificed for the cause. Choosing to push Eva off that cliff, letting her stay infested, even letting Peter marry Nora or just learning that the yeerks were responsible for his mother’s disappearance-- these were all moments when Marco worked for the greater good but really struggled to insert distance between his actual feelings and the cause because it came for the ONE thing he sincerely cares about. The only way he’s able to keep going is by doubling down on that ironic detachment. Social insects take that away, and I wonder if that alone is enough to give him the screaming horrors.

[pokecology]

head canon: the igglybuff line as terrestrial cephalopods

So, it’s been a while, but I hard headcanon a handful of pokemon as terrestrial cephalopods. I’ve done some posts in the past about mimikyu, jinx, and tangela and their cephalopod characteristics and other artists have done some amazing artistic interpretations of unlikely pokemon like slugma/magcargo. 

But today I discovered this beautiful, weird  banded piglet squid (Helicocranchia pfefferi):

 Peeps, this looks like igglybuff!

Sort of. First, a few pfefferi facts: 

They have tentacles above their eyes and two small, paddle-y fins at the end of their mantle. They can make their eyes glow. They have ammonium ions in their blood that helps keep them buoyant. As they mature they lose their glassy translucence and become a pinkish red. 

What really reminded me of igglybuff seeing the photos of H. pfefferi was it’s little tangle of tentacles above its eyes. Then there were the forward-facing eyes on the glassy juvenile. Those tentacles, the big round eyes, the little foot-like fins (see last photo below), its roundular buoyancy-- how could I not think of this cutie? 

And, yeah, this is totally a headcanon, but when I try to think of realistic interpretations and taxonomies for the igglybuff line, I’ve always had a hard time. They’re so simple, almost featureless. Even the features they do have are weird-- a little spiral (hair? colouring?), the lumpy head extrusions, bonelessly flopping feet and fingerless arms. Sure, it’s a cartoon, but it exists in the same world as far more anatomically detailed, “textured” ‘mon like, say, inkay or . And unlike other baby pokemon, igglybuff doesn’t really become more complex as it evolves-- wigglytuff is very basic in terms of design and anatomy elements. 

But if we imagine that, like tangela and jinx, igglybuff and its evolved forms are cephalopods adapted for a terrestrial environment, the external simplicity make sense. The smooth, balloon-like mantle of H. pfefferi accounts for the skin; the line’s buoyant movements fit well with an aquatic animal’s movements; igglybuff’s squiggle could be a tentacle or maybe a vestigial siphon; the lumpen appendages on the head are modified or tightly curled tentacles; the featureless limbs are fins or, in the case of jigglypuff and wigglytuff’s ears, modified tentacles. Obviously it’s not perfect, but I like it. 

[lisjonok]

You did Basil, what about Baezil? How about the whole Chiss name?

Okay, let’s see: Zib’aezi’lux

Z: How do they sleep?In a t-shirt and comfy pyjama pants. So far he’s only slept in less when he was on Tatooine. Baezil usually sleeps on his side – left side preferable. Likely falls asleep pretty often, hugging or being hugged by his husband.

I: On a scale of 1 to 10, how much do they love themselves? Maybe a 6/10. I used to be much lower but he’s slowly getting there.

B: Do they have any allergies?Nope.

A: What are/were this character’s best subjects in school?Mathematics and chemistry. He was actually pretty bad with the more creative subjects such as writing or visual arts.

E: How are they with children?Baezil loves kids so much. Kids make him happy and they make him want kids. Or more kids in the near future. (Don’t worry, they’ll stop at two)

L: What is their favourite board game?If there were a botany-themed trivia game thing…he’d be all over it.

U: What’s their voice like?Like this! And this!

X: What’s their most petty little secret?Baezil’s sort of a pacifist (??) but he quietly likes seeing his husband punch out bad guys. Is that…right?

Edit I forgot the U somehow!

[octopocalyptic]

Petromages

More of my solarpunk magic nonsense, this time about petroleum-based magic.

I’m going to tag these as “island herbal,” because that’s the name of the doodlebook/zine that prompted all of this.

Petromagick is one of the newest disciplines of magical praxis. Really coming into coherence in the first half of the 20th century, petromages work primarily with synthetic channelers—usually plastic wands or staves. Historically, petromages worked to locate and exploit petroleum deposits, an extremely technical (and often dangerous) form of magical engineering.

 More recently, petromages have split into two camps and the more traditional magical engineers working (employed, as a rule, by oil companies) are countered by mages specializing in protest or performance magicks. Protest mages use petromagicks to draw attention to destructive aspects of the fossil fuel economy.

 Most petromagic is said to have an indescribably iridescent quality. Some mages have said it’s like a synethetic taste, a sort of “rainbow adrenaline” in the back of their throat. Petromages use this tendency toward iridescence to perform searingly vivid visual magic, often used to draw attention to protest demonstrations. One of the earliest and most memorable visual protests took place in Edmonton, Alberta, in April of 1993, when a group of unidentified petromages halted late evening traffic along Whyte Ave with a display that stretched for about a kilometer. It was an arcing, shifting light show visible even from the north side of the city, and although no damage or injuries were reported conservative politicians played on the sensational quality of the protest to pass legislation criminalizing unlicensed petromagic by the end of 1994.

 As might be expected, petroleum and synthetic channelers lend themselves best to powerful flame channeling. Petromagical flame channeling draws energy from the caster quickly and, if not performed carefully, it can overwhelm a caster to potentially fatal effect. However, petromages can actually perform very delicate transformation magic as well as long-term and temporally complex enchantment. This is because petroleum is produced by a complex and eons-long interaction of various entities, and petrol-based materials hold the memory of patient, slow transformations. This slower, more delicate magic is more difficult to work, but petromages who have developed the skill swear by it. For varying reasons, many “divested” petromages—those who have refused or left the employ of oil companies— see their work as being ideological in nature, whether because it is explicitly protesting petrocultures or because their methods draw attention to the volatile and transformative nature of petroleum.

[andalitebonsai]

Andalite memorials

OKAY, prompted by Mertil mistaking a disused rail yard for an earth human graveyard, I’ve done a speculative doodle of an Andalite memorial structure. This is entirely based on vibes and the fact that an overgrown rail yard resembles what Mertil would recognize as a place of the dead.

- I don’t think the body and the memory of the deceased would be closely connected. Dying in battle is a Whole Thing with them, but battles don’t take place on the Andalite homeworld, and often the manner of death (Dracon beam, ship decompression/explosion) doesn’t leave a body behind. At some point in their history they were prey animals; culturally, I think they’re used to not having a body around after death. Even just going off what we see in canon, I think Andalites would value memory of names and deeds independently of the location of a body.

-  I’m imagining parks of memorial structures, grouped by family/nearby community or by military service; maybe you can memorialize someone at multiple structures (eg, Elfangor would be honored at a family memorial and official military parks). Multiple paths would run through memorial parks. Visiting a memorial structure would be a ritual, and maybe the route you take through the park would vary based on who you were memorializing and how? Maybe there are pools a patch of a specific type of grass only eaten as part of the memorial ritual. (Something bitter or maybe something especially nourishing?)

- The structures themselves are a core of sci-fi concrete mounded over with earth; grasses and other significant plants are planted on these mounds. They have no interior; instead, there are nooks with a holo-projecter displaying images of the deceased and a readout/engraving with the names of who should be memorialized, to be expanded as the generations pass. If neglected, I imagine that the projectors would eventually run down and go dark, and the list of names fade.

- In theory they’re tended by the families and comrades, or by dedicated gardeners in an official military park. However, if someone is disgraced or a family neglects the memory of their deceased, the structures become overgrown and can eventually be entirely consumed. I imagine that whole parks are sometimes forgotten for various reasons-- a small family or community dies out, e.g., or an entire family is disgraced and no one tends the structures anymore. 

The real snag with this speculation is that Gafinilan specifically says that Mertil thinks he’s in a “graveyard,” which usually means there are bodies buried there. I don’t know what Andalites would do with bodies-- they value their physique so highly that I think there’re arguments for preservation of the corpse, but they also have intense ties to their planet, so I’m torn. Do they preserve the body as much as possible? Do they prefer the memory of the deceased as young and strong and cremate or just bury in the earth without preservation, circle of life style? (That’d give memorial grasses that are eaten a new significance, which I kind of like.) Maybe early “memorial structures” were initially berms formed by accumulated burials over generations?

[pokecology]

workplace pokemon?

 So I’ve been in the middle of a kind of massive life shift, transitioning from being a grad student to working an office job. One of the first things I did when I got the office job was get a few plants (clado algae, a Tillandsia ionatha) for my open cubicle workspace. I’d love a planted nano aquarium, but that seems like a stretch because of desk space, maintenance, and also because I’m not sure it would fly with the supervisors. 

 As I am wont to do, I started thinking about workplace pokemon. Do you think professional office spaces would limit what pokemon were allowed? Would office workers naturally have smaller, more docile pokemon to accommodate their lifestyle? Desktop bellsprout bred to grow to around 6″ max, maybe, or tiny tangela? Would workspaces limit pokemon by type (grass type produce less/different forms of waste, e.g., and so are acceptable), or would office spaces in the pokeverse be made to accommodate all types? Would there be an office daycare or a special courtyard park for lunch break exercise?  

[lisjonok]

I haven't seen Baezil with his son Tarragon in a while. Did something happen? Are you going to draw them again soon?

I don’t write/play with Tarragon’s player since January, so Tarragon being Baezil’s adopted son is redacted.

For now, there’s just a vague NPC in place of that because that storyline was not only very instrumental in Baezil’s character development, but a great and unique relationship in and of itself.

I don’t have any specific plans right now, though, but Tarragon has nothing to do with Baezil anymore.

[lisjonok]

Hm, do one for Basil and Baezil; it'd be neat to see the similarities and differences!

Ooh, sure!

Baezil

Full Name: Zib'aezi'luxGender and Sexuality: Male, gayPronouns: He/HimEthnicity/Species: ChissBirthplace and Birthdate: Csilla, 26 BTC (?) and the SW equivalent to September 12Guilty Pleasures: Oonberry pie. Mysteries and crime thriller novels.Phobias: No phobias, but large insects and spiders make him a little nervousWhat They Would Be Famous For: His work in medicinal botany within the science community, and his detective novels outside of thatWhat They Would Get Arrested For: TrespassingOC You Ship Them With: @calleo‘s ThistlesOC Most Likely To Murder Them: No-one I can think ofFavorite Movie/Book Genre: Detective and mystery. Although film-wise, he prefers to just watch documentaries on flowers and plantsLeast Favorite Movie/Book Cliche: Whenever a movie uses scientific terminology incorrectly or just makes something up. It drives him up the wallsTalents and/or Powers: He’s a book author, so there’s a talentWhy Someone Might Love Them: He’s kind and patientWhy Someone Might Hate Them: He occasionally can get argumentative if he thinks something’s done “wrong” just because it’s not done in his way. He’s also a bit racist about non-Chiss although he tries to keep that to himselfHow They Change: Baezil was extremely reserved and excessively shy and went about isolating himself most of the time, and depressed. Now he’s, although still reserved, a lot more comfortable with conversation and is confident in himself. Also, out of the closet, married, and happyWhy You Love Them: Baezil is enjoyable to play and write because he’s pretty even in his moods and tones. He doesn’t jump all over the place and wear me out. He can be extremely calm, as well as enthusiastic and energetic,  but nearly always positive.

Sweet Basil Leaf

Full Name: Brenhinllys (he never goes by that)Gender and Sexuality: Male, gayPronouns: He/HimEthnicity/Species: SylvariBirthplace and Birthdate: Astorea (?), he awoke almost a minute before Thistle in the same pod and so counts as Cycle of Night, he was born in the autumn seasonGuilty Pleasures: Adopting all of the saplings, children, and baby animals that he comes across Cooking (too much)Phobias: None, he’s okay with large insects here, tooWhat They Would Be Famous For: Being a dad to everyone. Maybe his research for the Priory (whatever that may be!)What They Would Get Arrested For: …TrespassingOC You Ship Them With: @calleo‘s Cynareae “Thistle”OC Most Likely To Murder Them: No-one??Favorite Movie/Book Genre: History, mysteries, romanceLeast Favorite Movie/Book Cliche: He doesn’t always get comedies, I supposeTalents and/or Powers: He’s a ranger and druid in this one, so he can do some magicWhy Someone Might Love Them: He’s kind and patientWhy Someone Might Hate Them: He doesn’t understand non-Sylvari super well and might occasionally say something rude although he’s truly just curiousHow They Change: IDK, he’s brand newWhy You Love Them: He’s Baezil as a plant but more of… how Baezil wishes he was and with the enthusiasm that he has on expeditions

[lisjonok]

4 for the beloved Baezil!!! :>

4: How do you get into your OC’s mindset to write for them? How do you find the muse for them?

Calmness, I think. I enjoy RPing Baezil because he's relatively calm and very even in temperament. If he gets angered, he's still usually pretty low-key about it, or at least can chill back down again quickly.

And TBH I think about Spock and McCoy when RPing him, in which both work depending on the scenario.

[pokecology]

Fall Fae 4: swirlix and slurpuff

It’s Halloween! The best day of the year! It’s all downhill from here until next October. Live it up while it lasts! 

 Fittingly, the last fairy-type post is about candy puppies! Ever wondered why swirlix/slurpuff are dogs and also they’re candy and also they’re fairies? I have, and cuz I’m a nerd I did research to find out how all these design elements connect. thoughts under the cut!

Let’s start with their dog-like design. 

-- Fairy dogs are most often large hounds. The cu sith (pron. coo shee) of the the Scottish Highlands, one of the most frequently encountered examples of fairy dogs, is usually “dark green in colour” with “a long tail coiled up on its back, or plaited in a flat plait” (Briggs 83). Many other fairy hounds are spectral and terrifying—  the headless,  ravening yeth hounds or the haunting harbingers of doom like the trash or the padfoot. But there are vague mentions in folk lore of unnamed fairy dogs that sound more like our little pokepups. After addressing the more well known fairy dogs, many texts remark something to the effect of, “other fairy dogs are generally white with red ears” (Briggs 82). White with red ears is a fairy colouring found across species, including small, white/red eared canine messengers that announce the arrival of their fae masters. (Shoutout to @ponies-and-pokemon​ for mentioning the white/red ears fact yesterday. This post has been written since August, but it was nice to know that there are people out there who’ll know if a fairy animal shows up.)

This is our best bet, aesthetically, for connecting our fairy puppies to fairy lore. And, sure, swirlix and slurpuff are white with pink ears, so maybe it’s a stretch; but I like to think that just as these fairy puppies are smaller and gentler than the rough and fearsome hounds of fairy lore, their colouring is correspondingly softer and less aggressive.

- Food is always important in fairy stories. Eating fairy food is risky, and when swirlix uses its sticky, thread-like excretions to entrap enemies, it’s possibly a reference to the recurring trope of mortals eating fae food and becoming trapped in their realm.

- Slurpuff’s cake-like appearance calls to mind a fairy cake that shows up in British/Irish stories. In the most common version, a farmer on his way to the fields hears disembodied weeping and stumbles upon a broken ped, or child’s shovel, which he fixes before going on to work. Returning home at the end of the day he passes by the spot once more and discovers “a fine new-baked cake” (Briggs 43) where the shovel once was. Against a friend’s warning the farmer eats the cake, pronounces it pretty good, and continues on his way without incident. The story is an exception to the rule that fairy food = disaster.

 If swirlix’s entangling fairy floss threads represent the danger of fairy food, then maybe slurpuff is about cooperation and co-existence. It’s also interesting that just as the fairy cake was given as part of a transaction, slurpuff is only obtainable through a trade-- there are few things fairies like more than a good and fair trade.

- I like that this line is a reversal of the usual evolutionary development where something cute/harmless becomes something fierce or mighty. Just as swirlix and slurpuff represent a gentler kind of fairy canine, this evolutionary line may reference less dangerous fairy lore as it progresses— not unlike the way that more fearsome, utilitarian dog breeds were selectively bred into smaller, gentler lap dogs, or even the way fairy tales and beliefs become tamer and less horrifying over time. 

- The way swirlix and slurpuff are inspired by light, insubstantial foods may also reference the way that food offerings left for fairies at the end of the day were thought to be drained of nutrients in the morning. These offerings were “said to have no real substance left in it… fairies extract the spiritual essence from food offered to them, leaving behind the grosser elements” (Wentz 44). That is, the food is nutritionally null and insubstantial, not unlike refined sugary foods like meringue and cotton candy.

- There may be something that connects the food and canine elements. Slurpuff’s meringue-like design elements calls to mind the meringues made in the Loire region of France, which are sometimes called pets (French colloquialism for fart, for some reason?). The Loire region is the inspiration Kalos Rt. 7, and the Loire’s Chateau d’Azay le Rideau is the inspiration and real-world twin of Kalos’ Battle Chateau. 

Rt. 7 is also the only area where you can find wild swirlix. The coincidence of pet meringues and swirlix the wee meringue puppy appearing in the same place just can’t be ignored, and I have to believe the designers were aware of les pets when they designed swirlix/slurpuff. (And as long as we’re making purely speculative leaps, I enjoy the coincidence of the multi-lingual pun on the word pet and the fairy cake given in exchange for a repaired ped.)

References

Briggs, Catherine Mary. An Encyclopedia of Fairies: Hobgoblings, Bronwies, Bogies, and other Supernature Creatures. Pantheon, 1976.

Evans-Wentz, W. Y. The Fairy-faith in Celtic Countries. Oxford UP, 1911. 

Sherman, Josepha. Storytelling: an Encyclopedia of Mythology and Folklore. Taylor and Francis, 2008

Varner, Gary R. Creatures in the Mist: Little People, Wild Men and Spirit Beings Around the World: a study in comparative Mythology. Algora, 2007

[pokecology]

Fall Fae 1: spritzee and aromatisse

It’s Halloween weekend! The best time of the entire year, the most eerie and unsettling season, the time when the walls between this world and the unseen are thinnest. Halloween is time not just about “evil spirits” but about fae in particular; and what better time to talk about fairy types?

 Fairy lore is filled with some truly horrible happenings; most of the Fair Folk are really, really dangerous! So why all the bows and prettiness for our fairy type pokémon? This is the first of a few posts where I talk about how the design elements of fairy type reference strange, unsettling, or overlooked lore that puts the designs of my favourite type in a new light. 

Today: spritzee and aromatisse!

Spritzee and aromatisse’s designs are pretty straightforward, and most people know how they reference images of plague doctors. In pre-modern medicine one significant theory of disease transmission was that illness spread through miasma— that is, bad air. Today we know that smells and germs are carried by the air, separate from the oxygen we breathe, but miasmic theory held that heavy humidity and bad smells indicated that air had been corrupted to its very essence. This theory informed practices of disease prevention; possibly as early as the 1300s, European doctors tending to plague victims would wear a beak-like mask (along with a full body suit, gloves, and boots). The “nose” of this mask was lined with aromatic herbs; by infusing the air with healthful essences, these herbs were meant to purify the air of its miasmatic corruption.

Spritzee and aromatisse, then, reference not only fancy perfumes but also much darker imagery of those risking their lives to treat very sick, very contagious patients. Fairy types are often associated with good health and purification, and this would be a sufficient, if straightforward, reason for spritzee’s fairy typing. But Aromatisse’s ballroom dancer design elements, especially, adds some complexity and darkness that I haven’t seen anyone discuss in depth. In early modern Europe, plague doctor masks became culturally iconic in both Italian theater and  Venitian Carnival/masquerade. Aromatisse’s exaggerated eyelashes and plague doctor nose are references to carnival masquerades— i.e., costumed dances. This connection really connects the plague doctor mask to the typing because courtly dances are straight out of fairy lore. 

European fairies are constantly associated with dancing. Nineteenth century folklorist Wirt Sikes writes that, like their European counterparts, Welsh fairies “are most often dancing together when seen. They seek to entice mortals to dance with them, and when anyone is drawn to do so, it is more than probable he will no return to his friends for a long time” (70). Fairies were thought to be from a place of boundless wealth and prosperity and longevity, so it makes sense that they have an enduring passion for dance, a favourite pastime of the beautiful and wealthy; but part of fairy strangeness is the way their love of leisure and mischief can become dangerous to mortals. 

So many fairy folk tales are focused on either avoiding fairies or, failing that, how to be polite enough to escape harm. Mortals unlucky enough to fall in with a dancing troupe of fairies were particularly unlucky; according to Sikes, “In the great majority of these stories [of escape from fairy dances] the hero dies immediately after his release from the thralldom of the fairies—in some cases with a suddenness and a completeness of obliteration as appalling as dramatic” (72). He offers one example of a man who is drawn into a fairy dance and kept there, continually dancing, for years. At long last he is noticed by a passerby who interrupts the dance. As soon as the dance stops the man “instantly crumbled away” (Sikes 72). 

But not all dancing deaths were so sudden— there are folktales of people who are stolen away nightly to dance with the fair folk and who grow so exhausted that they waste away over time. These nightly abductions were sometimes associated with tuberculosis, a disease that (in the 19th century, at least) slowly and progressively weakens the afflicted. One author even says that it was sometimes thought to be a kind of “fairy vampirism” (Silver 169). (A really great example of this trope in contemporary fiction is the novel and the adaptation of Jonathan Strange and Mr. Norell.)

Spritzee and aromatisse, then, evoke contradictory imagery. One the one hand, you have the reference to plague doctors— creepy, maybe, but ultimately helpful, courageous, benevolent, a purifying force. But that same imagery has a flip-side, a reference to fairy balls that are dangerous, alien, and associated with illness. The fact that both spritzee and aromatisse reference plague masks (conventionally creepy and unsettling) while also being feminine and pretty (pink, long lashes, graceful movements)  is a fitting contradiction. Like the fae folk, they make the unsettling and dangerous seem attractive. They walk that line separating blessing and curse, sickness and health, horror and beauty. They are, like all fairies, in-between.

References: 

Sikes, Wirt.  British goblins : Welsh folk-lore, fairy mythology, legends and traditions. London: Low, Marston, Searle, & Rivington, 1880. 

Silver, Carol G.  Strange and Secret Peoples: Fairies and Victorian Consciousness. Oxford UP, 1999

[pokecology]

Let’s talk about a post that I hate

So you know that post that’s been going around that’s like, “Ugh those theories that catching pokemon is wrong keep your edgy shit away from my franchise?” (Most recently seen on my dash here.)

I hate that post. Sort of lengthy reasons why under the cut.

First off, I don’t believe that there is sucha thing as overthinking a piece of media, and I’ve blogged about the first half of the Indigo League anime at length, so I may be biased. That said, I hate that the post so definitively dismisses this interpretation as valid and ignores the fact that the treatment of pokemon is an open question. (I find it... amusing that it also suggests that the interpretation that all pokemon live to beat the crap out of each other isn’t itself kind of edgy and ott.) The OS anime itself constantly invites us to question and thoughtfully consider the failures and possibilities of how humans live with pokemon. That’s Ash’s whole deal-- he’s the one willing to ask questions, try things that no one else will for fear of being stupid. 

More specifically, the post is bad at supporting its own claims. Let’s get into some things it... selectively overlooks.

1) Its evidence is based on uncritically accepting what human characters say. Sure, Pokeverse culture is really big on the idea that Pokemon want to be caught; sure the pokedex says that spearow is “jealous” of trained pokemon. But, like, we can all agree that in our world humans construct narratives, stories about the world, that shape what they see as real and justify and enable exploitative behaviour, right? (E.g.-- people saying cows/chickens are dumb as a way to suggest that they deserve/don’t mind horrifying treatment in factory farms.) Of course a field guide given to new trainer is going to interpret pokemon behaviour in a way that encourages him to catch and train rather than fight for pokemon rights. Like, they wouldn’t have given him the radical environmentalist ‘dex!  

And, as the anime makes clear, there is a HUGE merchandising/sports industry that relies on the belief that catching and battling is unproblematic.

2) The post is selective in its evidence. There anime, especially, shows us evidence that there are at the very least exceptions to the idea that every pokemon wants to be a trained pokemon. First, that same spearow that the pokedex claims is “jealous” only attacks Ash because Ash hit it with a fucking rock. He literally, physically attacked it, and it retaliates in self defense, mobbing him and Pikachu not unlike crows who recognize and untrustworthy intruder. Mobbing is an aggressive, self-defensive move that indicates a lack of trust, a fear of Ash because of his earlier violence. The ‘Dex’s explanation is, even in world, fishy as hell and ultimately doesn’t make sense with what actually happens. (Why mob a trainer you’re trying to impress?)

Second, the oddish in “Bulbasaur and the Secret Village” shows us that there are ‘mon who simply do not want to be caught, and shows us that trainers (in this case, Misty) rarely notice or care. After all, if you believe every pokemon is willing and available, consent to capture isn’t something you even consider.

3) Butterfree (as well as many of Ash’s other pokemon across the years) shows us that sometimes pokemon have desires that conflict with and outweigh their supposed desire to be a “bloodknight”/gladiator-- i.e., normal species behaviours. The hate Ash so often gets for releasing his pokemon when they want to leave shows how few trainers probably understand or pay attention to these desires. (There is a butterfree release festival, but it’s a voluntary and species-specific event-- trainers can and do choose to keep their butterfree in captivity.)

4) Goodra in XY shows us how complex pokemons’ social lives are. Goodra eventually returns to the swamp because it wants to protect its friends, to keep them safe, and again, Ash lets it stay there. After all, Ash only encounters because it was dramatically separated from its home in the first place. 

Ash is, I think, the exception in his haphazard, contingent style of training. I say the exception because Ash’s thing is that he’s unconventional and understands his team in a way that is surprisingly deep and unique. Ash’s willingness to let his pokemon live their lives on their own terms is one of the clearest ways he shows his extraordinary abilities to care about and listen to his ‘mon. The point of all of this is that many trainers may not have listened to their pokemon’s desires or considered releasing a team member they’d spent so long training.

So. I personally like to think of the pokeverse as a place where humans and ‘mon share some supernatural bond that draws them to each other- I’ve blogged about that here. But this recent “lols stop ur edginess” post just straight up ignores evidence. It’s not only unfair to those thinking critically about the series; it’s also against the series’ constant urging to make better worlds by remaining open remain open to questions, possibilities, and new kinds of thought. 

[andalitebonsai]

Musings on everyone’s fav. cannibal yeerk

So the other night I listened to the latest @thehindsightanimorphspodcast​ ep, which was about Book d was thinking about  Book 16: The Warning. Since then I’ve been thinking about how Evil Twin! Esplin can consume yeerk yogurt while in a host and somehow benefit from it. The hosts were wondering why no yeerk scientists had devised this method. What if the benefit is only possible because of the way a human host body metabolizes yeerk bodies? I’m not sure where the prominent yeerk scientists are located, but many or most of them are probably in nonhuman hosts since humans are relatively new and probably aren’t sent off-planet in large numbers. 

 The only reason I bring this up is because Animorphs as a series is so invested in concepts of consumption-- a few examples being Visser 3 chewing Elfangor to death, the recurring difficulty of morph-hunger, the acquisition of DNA (which our heroes often compare to predatation as a way to justify the necessity and “naturalness” of using nonhuman bodies), and so on. 

And if a human host’s actual eating of yeerk paste is a necessary part of the process it would really underline the idea of how bodies are confused. The process already requires that a human host be effectively butchered so that Twin! Esplin can get at those tasty yeerk bits. If another human then has to eat and metabolize that yeerk liverwurst it adds layers of cannibalism and body confusion in there that would really make this book so much more grisly and disturbing and, just maybe, make it feel less like a one-off just because consumption and body confusion are so integral to the series’ overall aesthetic. 

The necessity of a human host to this cannibalizing process would really undermin the yeerk’s discourse of infestation (i.e., that yeerk bodies are inferior and unfair and hosts are a necessary and natural if a yeerk to fulfill their full potential). If humans in particular are necessary to the process, a human host would be the only thing in the galaxy that could’ve allowed Twin! Esplin to be so horribly depraved.

[pokecology]

Why I am excited at the thought of a gym-free Alolak

Below the cut I talk about narrative vs. procedural arguments, why the Pokemon series is self-contradictory, and why SuMo might be offer the most interesting gameplay yet in terms of its concepts. First, though, just know I love all the games and that I would never spend  this many words critiquing something I didn’t love.

With all the speculation about the trial captains/kahunas vs. gym leaders, I’m in the camp that’s excited about shaking up the system. I would actually love it if we didn’t have gym leaders, because I think that a different system, and some different kinds of gameplay, would do more than just change our play experience. It would give Pokémon SM a unique argument.

 The pokémon games—all games, in fact—make an argument. Gameplay requirements are claims about the world in the same way as a novel’s plot. When playing the game requires you to act out a certain way (or set of ways) of relating to the world of the game, it’s called a procedural argument. One of the best procedural arguments in a game is Undertale’s. E.g., when you kill early enemies because that’s what’s “normal” in games (and also what’s easier), only to discover your choices affected how the game’s NPCs treat you, that’s a procedural argument about how preconceptions can dull empathy and critical thinking, about how sometimes violence is easier, about how the world is sometimes even structured to encourage violence and how compassion and mercy are sometimes difficult.

Often a game’s narrative, its story, supports and clarifies the claims made by the game’s mechanics (i.e., gives the shooting urgency, emotional weight, and justification). The Pokémon games, though, are odd because they consistently make one narrative argument and another, contradictory procedural argument.

The narrative argument, mostly communicated through NPC dialogue, is that emotional bonds with pokémon are more important than strength, that emotional bonds are, in fact, strength. Valuing your friendships with your pokémon, valuing their individuality, is supposedly what makes you, the player, strong—enemies and friends alike often tell you that the reason you win is because of your special bond with your team. You’re told to love all pokémon despite their appearance or abilities, and (in later games) that there are many ways to live with pokémon, all of which are valid. The games’ narrative arguments are about how accepting and loving radical differences makes the world a better, kinder, stronger place.

The procedural argument of the games, though, doesn’t match up with what the characters tell you at all. The procedural argument is that strength matters and aggression (even ritualized aggression) is the primary way to solve problems/succeed. This sounds harsh, but battling is the only way to clear the game. It’s the main mechanic—sure, contests are a thing, but they’re sidelined, unnecessary, and often a lot easier. Even exploring is limited by how good at fighting you are— beating gyms earns access to moves needed to physically enter certain spaces of the game.  

Winning battles means training for strength, which usually means more battling. Value their individuality all you want, but sometimes your team needs to be at least ten levels stronger to clear the Elite Four. When those ten levels are an excruciating trudge back and forth at the entrance of a Victory Road cave you aren’t thinking about friendships, you’re thinking about stats and exp. points.

Then there’s competitive battling, which forces you to spend a lot of time thinking about stats and IVs. Competitive play makes hundreds of pokémon effectively “useless,” forcing players to build a team based less of favs. and more on metagame. A cottonee will never be competive; a cherrim would have a hard time clearing the main game. And it’s hard to play like there are no weak/strong pokémon when competitive play dictates who can be on your team or forces you to breed boxes gibles hoping for juuuust the right combination of IVs/nature/personality. Those extra gibles get released/wondertraded, because they really aren’t “useful;” they are, in effect, thrown away.

Similarly, for all the NPCs’ talk about respecting the environment and living peacefully alongside nonhumans, the gameplay gives you neither a reason to consider your actions’ effects on the environment nor consequences for not doing so. Nonhumans becomes resources to be managed or exploited, become capital—they earn you money, prestige, access, success. You might love them, but in the end winning means treating them like tools.

The latest gens have changed things a bit. I love pokémonamie because it’s something cute and silly and relational and nonessential that can affect the main mechanics of battling and evolution. Amie, though, doesn’t really change the underlying procedural.

Why the recent SuMo speculation has me excited

 There’s speculation that Alola doesn’t have gym battles, and instead has trials that involve navigating environment, finding objects, and solving problems by considering the radically different bilities of various pokémon. If this is true, the game might make a very different  procedural argument than gens 1-6. Of course there’ll still be battles—battling, after all, is one way you show off the coordination/bond with your pokémon. But if you clear the game in part by knowing/caring about the actual environment of alola, the actual space of the in-game world, then Sun and Moon will be the games that come closest to aligning the narrative and procedural arguments. And I know environment always kind of matters, just for actually moving around. But what if, in place of a gym battle, you had to really think hard about a certain environment? What if some of those battles were replaced with/augmented with some mandatory time spent exploring and thinking about Alola and its inhabitants?

If they were, the procedural argument would be that battles are important, but first you have to get to know and care about the communities and environments in which they take place. Sun and Moon already seem to be treating space and place differently. Alola has radiant evolution, for example—species we know have adapted and changed types accordingly in response to environmental differences. Of the few handfuls of pokémon we know about, several have ‘dex entries that are about that pokémon’s ecological role/history. Alola as a place, as a set of biomes/ecological communities, seems to be getting a lot of attention—more attention, so far, than whatever challenge we’re meant to face.

And, personally, as someone who loves the series but finds the dissonance of two competing, contradictory arguments to be disappointing, who sees so much of what the games could be, this is exciting.  

[pokecology]

Lately I’ve been playing Pokemon Conquest, and I really love the game. The gameplay is fairly limited for the sheer amount of post-game content it offers, but I find that it’s fun to keep returning to it after long breaks. 

But you know what is some kind of bullshit? How all the female characters’ post-game stories are about fighting each other to win the title of most beautiful female warlord. Like... really? Really? 

 I played through Oichi’s story and it just happened that several of the female warlords had dragon pokemon. It was super badass and really fun and in the last battle Oichi and Gotoku and Kai stormed Avia with dragons and flame and it was awesome. I was thinking about the amount of post game content and what that might mean for the in-game lore, and also thinking about the sexist framing of the female chars’ stories, so I wrote a small ficlet thingy. ” It’s overwrought and melodramatic and it was lots of fun to write, and I’m just sharing it here because... why not?

Gotoku’s Histories 

I am one of the last alive who saw what those histories call the Days of Unification, and they’ve begun to write the histories. What those histories fail to tell in any detail is what the war did to The Peacemaker. The histories tell us he withdrew to seek enlightenment. He withdrew because he was afraid of what he’d become. They may call him Peacemaker, but his war did not bring peace. His war brought chaos, as he knew it would. Chaos enough to confuse and slow Nobunaga’s armies. And after Nobunaga bent the knee, after The Peacemaker had swept through the Kingdoms, what was left were broken fragments, and the petty jealous squabbles of displaced nobles the war had turned into rogues, pilgrims, and wayward warriors.

The Peacemaker did not withdraw to seek enlightenment. The Peacemaker withdrew because he could not bear to watch what he had done to the world to save it. They seek to make the Peacemaker a god, and this will soon become heresy in the annals of history. So. Let it become heresy. I will be dead, and I must speak even if my writings are burned. In the end the Peacemaker doubted everything he had done and spent his aging years trying to hold in the torn pieces of himself, with no strength left to spare to hold together the pieces of the world he’d left in pieces behind him.

 And these new histories do more than erase; they lie. They tell us she is called Oichi, The Rose of Ransei because of her beauty, that she won her titles in some women’s squabble—The Bloom of the Rose, they call it, saying it was a contest to prove who was the most graceful woman in the seven kingdoms. Yet it was I, Gotoku, Oichi’s Thorn, who stood by her at the Battle of the Last Leaves where her titles were won, and I say, lies. The writers of these histories did not see her hold the bridge at Avia so that we could cross and make our attack on the citadel. They did not see her ride on the back of Sachi, Oichi’s Thunder, the dragonite of Aurora, and with her hold back the massed armies of the heights. They did not see Kai, The Fire of Summer hold Oichi’s flank against the massed armies of the heights. They did not see me take the citadel and drive the household retainers to the very portico.

The writers of these histories do not mention that when we fought we were no longer young. The War of the Rose began when we were all past forty. The histories wish to paint us as beautiful ladies engaged in decorous quarrels borne of gentle boredom. And again I say, lies. They paint Oichi as a girl, demure, blushing, an Oichi I had almost forgotten ever existed; but I tell you that by the time she began the War of the Rose her face was deeply lined and stern, her back was as straight as steel, and after the Peacemaker left she bowed to no man again. She never lost her patience, but she had long since lost her hesitation.

Oichi did not go to war to prove her beauty, she went to war because the lower kingdoms yet again threatened to fall apart. Because when the Peacemaker abandoned Ransei he abandoned her as well and left her without protection and she became her own strength, fiercer even than her brother—although none see this because, unlike her brother, Oichi had the wisdom, the restraint, the kindness to hold her fierceness in check. Oichi went to war because when men break, it is the women they abandon who must remain strong, or else lose everything.

 All this I remember so well that I can still see it. I saw Sachi and Oichi stand on the bridge and saw the sun shine from Oichi’s sword so that the enemy was blinded and fell back. I felt the ground shake and heard the cliff’s echo with Sachi’s fury, and it hurt me like an arrow wound to leave them there when Oichi commanded me to take the citadel. I felt the heat of Kai’s flames protecting our backs as we took the lower hills. And it was I, riding Squall’s Fury, who took the heights, blackened the pillars of the citadel at Avia and destroyed the centuries-old Doors of the Clouds and destroyed the Hall of Silk. I never learned Oichi’s restraint, nor her kindness.

 My writings will be dismissed as nostalgic ramblings. I am a woman, who could never attain the lofty perspective one requires to truly analyze a conflict. And I am one hundred and twenty years old, and my age will count against me. And yet these words are worth writing, and the truth worth the telling, if only for my own conscience.

I write this in my own hand to tell you— we did not go to war for pleasure. We went to war because the world was in pieces, because we were desperate to hold together what little we still had, and because in the world the Peacemaker left behind war was the only way left to us.

[andalitebonsai]

Notes, book 10: The Android

This one had me thinking a lot about Marco’s issues. Basically, he’s kind of scary in a way that makes his more aggressive “jokes” even less funny and more troubling than I already found them. 

Marco has some issues

I wish I could explain why I kept on with  the hunt. Sometimes the animal brain takes over for a while… But that’s not what was happening to me. I wasn’t overwhelmed. I was just into it. … Why had I gotten so into the hunt? Why hadn’t I resisted the urge? I flashed on the rage I’d felt when I talked to Tom. Was that it? … The incredible, insane rush of the chase was over. Now the spider was just at ool I was using. (73)

- First, what does “flashed on” mean, exactly? Does that mean to intentionally try to re-feel or reproduce the emotion? Or does it mean to be suddenly reminded of it, like, “flashed back to”?

- Again, as I noted in a previous post, Marco tends to react to stress with rage, sometimes uncontrollable. It’s different, somewhat, from Rachel’s aggression, which is often about specifically resisting or reaction to obstruction. Marco takes other issues and fears and irritations and channels them into aggression at an often-unrelated source.

- Note, too, the way he perceives his morphs— as tools. The bodies he uses are things to him.

- I also want to point out here something that I’ve noticed only recently (as I read through book 28), and that’s the way Marco is fixated and focuses a lot of his descriptions (humorous and otherwise) through concepts of sanity. He’s often incredibly ableist, which I get is a product of the time but is also  a product of the way Marco talks a lot about things being “insane” or “crazy” or [your fav. synonym here]. I’m not sure what to do with this except to also point out that Marco here begins to doubt his own “grip.” Marco’s probably preoccupied with instability and mental unreliability because of his own self-doubts?

<Man, you two are ugly at this scale,> Rachel said. <Jeez, I don’t ever need to see another spider my own size again.> 

<We’re ugly? You want to know what you look like right now? You look like dinner,> I said, laughing evilly. <Juicy cockroach. This spider morph is hungry, and you look tasty.>  

<Marco, get a grip,> Jake said patiently. (129)

- Here the joke is, I guess, that Marco, as a spider, could kill and eat Rachel if he wanted to? But coming so soon after he used the spider body as a tool to act on his anger by hunting this seems to be… unsettling. Idk, I have alarm bells, especially in light of the way that 1) Marcos’ always picking at Rachel, often with regards to her body (cf. the “too tall” comment in book 9 which, while not aggressive, is focused on her body in a way not dissimilar to his focus here— e.g., “you look like dinner,” “you look tasty”),  and 2) the way he reacts to girls who bother him (cf. using a morph to harass Darlene in Megamorphs 1).

This book doesn’t make me like Marco as a person any more than I did, but it does make me like him as a character because we see more of his own complexity and doubts. Marco’s really, really annoying from another person’s perspective; when it’s his p.o.v., we get to actually see some of the darkness that alternately combats and drives his sort-of-humour.

Misc.

I tried to form a mental picture of my own real self. A mental picture of a human named Marco. But it was all confused. My mind was dying, and as it sank it called up a thousand images. Images of wolves and giant ants and gorillas. Images of all the animals I had been, all the minds I had lived in. 

I couldn’t grab that human image and hold onto it. (80)

- Marco’s experience here is the first, and maybe strongest, example of morph dysphoria. Again, see above.

“And of course, humans were just hairy apes when the Pemalites first visited Earth. The Pemalites wer enot interested in conquest, or in interfering in the lives of other planets. . . they had been a fully evolved race for so long that all the harsher instincts were gone from then. They had no evil in their hearts.” (102)

- Okay, first, there is no such thing as “fully evolved.” Evolution doesn’t have a goal or a pinnacle-- you can’t max out at lvl. 100-- and apes, e.g., are not “lower rungs” on some “evolutionary ladder” when compared to humans.  Most recently evolved =/=  most morally complex. This is just straight up bad Darwinism, and this kind of shoddy evolved= better thought has driven racist eugenics, genocide, and violent imperialism. I guess Erek may just be slavishly devoted to the memory of the Pemalites at the cost of scientific and discursive accuracy?

- Erek’s equation of “fully evolved” = “morally perfect” says some deeply fascinating and, personally, gross things about animality. In my notes on book 9 I noted that the squad keeps drawing a sharp line between “animals” and “humans.” Humans are outside the order, and when Cassie starts to see humans being placed  back in the paradigm of competition (the yeerks being theri predators) she spins out into moral nihilism. Once humans lose their place at the top of the moral-evolutionary pyramid, Cassie loses all hope, all ethical orientation. When humans become animals, the paradigm shift destroys her soul— until the end, when they decide that humans occupy a liminal space between animal and not-animal. Erek’s construction of “more evolved = morally better” reinforces this concept, that animality is amoral at best and violent at worst, but animals can somehow evolve past/beyond animality and become Pemalite-esque, somehow shedding baser instincts and becoming naturally peaceful and good. The fact that this discourse of animality is present in Cassie’s books and from Erek, a third party not-pov character, makes me think it’s coming from the authors more than the characters. We’ll see if anyone ever calls out this troubling shitty Darwinism later, but I kind of doubt it? (ETA: I just finished book 28 and Ax kind of does.)

- I’m not sure what to make of the fact that we get a glimpse of a completely non-violent race in the same book Marco is so consumed by desire for violence. Is it just for contrast? Is it to show that a better way is possible, but only if you don’t have free will? Is Marco in danger of being unable to restrain himself from violence just as thoroughly  as the Chee are unable to commit it?

“Fight or die,” I agreed. “And you want proof? Look at the Pemalites. They didn’t fight, they died. All gone. . . . That worked out real well for them. And even that’s better off than we’ll be if we lose to the Yeerks.” “Law of the jungle,” Rachel said. “You eat or you get eaten.” <Maybe so,> Tobias said, speaking up for the first time. <But still, wouldn’t it be nice if that wasn’t the law?> (121).

- Gee, Tobias was arguing pretty hard in favour of “survival of the fittest” as a moral justification back in book 9 when he wanted to argue with Cassie, but now he’s saying he wishes there were another way? It’s almost like people like to argue with Cassie for no reason except that they want to dismiss what she cares about! Sorry. I’m still salty about the way Cassie gets treated, and the fact that when it’s convenient for them characters spew devil’s advocate nonsense to discount her ethical concerns. (Later they start needlessly calling her out for being inconsistent/hypocritical. I’ll be tying in all caps a lot, probably.)