The difference is Pokemon makes it clear that the Pokemon enjoy battling and do it voluntarily
Are these the same people who accept JK Rowling's "the house elves are slaves but they like it so it's cool and even the idea of emancipation is a joke" with no further introspection?
"The slaves got free housing and learned important job skills!"
Taking my Charmander down to the Pokemon center to get electroshock treatment for her drapetomania and then trauma-bonding afterwards with pokemon treats that are basically like heroin
You would think, but in the lore Pokemon do just casually form fight clubs and have small wars. In addition, something about teaming up with humans allows them to unlock power boosts or just having access to a coach. Granted, the levels of intelligence and similarity to human psychology can vary from Mon to Mon. One example is that Basculin in the lore is basically just a violent trout, making it less of a moral concern to many in-universe gourmands. Meanwhile other Pokemon like Alakazam or Orangaru is effectively a human with magic powers.
I think the difference is this, JK wanted to write a serious, complex fantasy world that touched on actual real world issues like fascism and racism, but sucked shit at world building and kept dropping random crap in there that she then later had to scramble to justify. Examples being easily accessible time travel, and institutionalized chattel slavery. A more clever fantasy author could have dreamt up a race of fey creatures who enjoyed doing favors for humans in exchange for little gifts or something, but then greedy humans abused the relationship, and while these fey beings still wanted to be helpful to humans they objected to the ones who grossly exploited their natural kindness. But JK ain't smart enough for that, she just put a fully sentient, basically the same mentally as a human, slave character, who is explicitly called a slave, in her story to make a villain seem more evil and then didn't want to deal with the implications world-building wise.
Pokémon was just like "hey a game where you collect cute little monsters and have them do little battles would be fun". Then people tried to write serious stories in the setting and people realized that any real world allegory of this were kinda fucked. Buy Pokémon has never had very robust or serious world building, and is the work of a variety of authors, not the sole vision of one writer. It's in sort, kind of a mess, so trying to do a serious breakdown of it is a bit of a folly, since it's design is resistant to that sort of thing, it's a silly world designed to sell fun toys and games. We can do these little nerdy deep dives for shits and giggles but we're not really deconstructing anything serious.
I'm sure the godly and legendary creatures I keep in a capsule in a bank are feeling good about it. Oh you're the god of space? Enjoy the luxury ball it's the only thing you'll ever see again
That always bugged me with the Pokémon defense. "Oh, but they like that im the master and tell them to do things. We're all friends, just a big family!" Is the exact argument you would use if you were subjugating others but didn't want to feel bad about it.
"Hey, you better shut up! You're giving away our entire anti-unionization playbook!"The comment I replied to was talking about the subjugation part.
Yeah, which it is a fair criticism of using animals for labor, but again most people don't do that
But pets are still absolutely subjugated. They are literally owned by humans, are not free and have no agency over their own lives.
The point is that everyone here going "huh this is just what they said about slaves" are completely ignoring that we have pets, which we love a lot (at least i know i love my dog very much) but they are nevertheless subjugated and treated as lesser. Our dog is not allowed on the couch. Sure, I don't make my dog fight other dogs, but I am still denying her her freedom and she is my legal property. She would not survive in the wild and she loves me a lot as well, but is that not what they said about slaves? Either way, she is not given the choice. What are the ethics of this relationship?
Pokemon is a nonsensical setting that can't decide whether its creatures are more like animals or whether they are sapient, but I think comparing Pokemon to pets is much more appropriate than comparing them to human servants like the house elves from Harry Potter.
Either way, you do not have to hand it to Palworld, it's obnoxious, Happy Tree Friends-esque edgelord shit.
Edit: To clarify: I'm not saying "Keeping pets is ethically good and therefore Pokemon is ethically good". I think you could argue both, the point is that we shouldn't pretend like we treat all living things as equal and that, if you assume subjugation to be mistreatment, it is still very evidently possible to sincerely love something you're subjugating and treating as lesser. Morality and emotions are complicated and don't make sense a lot of the time.
She would not survive in the wild and she loves me a lot as well, but is that not what they said about slaves?
The difference is that they were wrong about the slaves, because we didn’t have giant bricks of steel flying around that are just a little too tall to see them (and also slaves are also human beings and functionally identical in all capabilities to their masters$
Exactly. Humans are the same as other humans. Animals aren't.
Do you get what I mean?
No, because Pokémon are consistently set up to have MORE capabilities than human beings and I don’t even think they would die if they were hit by a meteor (knocked out instead)
Why should animals be forced to live within your limits though, even if you treat them 'well'? You're trapping them in homes or even cages, they have basically no agency.
Because if they get outside they’ll get killed by a car and/or fuck up the environment
Pets SHOULDN’T exist, but that isn’t fixable by having individuals throw “their” animals outside, it doesn’t fix anything and causes more suffering
So I’m not “against pets” any more than someone is “against food” because they got it from a capitalist grocery store
Oh I'm not saying pets should all be euthanized immediately or anything, just that the pet and pet-breeding industry should be phased out with the goal of animals existing almost solely in the wild in the future.
Dogs have co-evolved to live and cooperate with humans for 40,000 years. Hanging out with us all the time is their natural environment, it is their "wilderness". Though i should also point out that you're committing the naturalistic fallacy, ie what is natural (malnutrition, mange, horrible parasite load, being killed by predators, dying due to untreated illness and injurt, being mauled by other dogs, freezing to death, bad water, scavenging carcasses, etc) is good. The concepts of "nature" and "wilderness" are also problematic; for one, dogs and cats are not wild animals. They arr domesticated. They have coevolved with humans to live in human environments under human care.
"Wild" is a problematic concept at best. Wilderness" as popularly conceived of in the west is mostly a racist construction that serves to erase the presence and history of indigenous people. There is not and never has been a "wild" separate from the human domain. We"ve been everywhere on earth for tens of thousands of years. Much of the face of the earth has been influenced and often heavily influenced by human habitation.
Dogs don't share some abstracted notion of freedom and independence with settler brained american libertarians. They're dogs. They want to hang out with humans who treat them well. That's their whole thing. They're fully, completely domesticated, which i suspect many "having pets is immoral" people don't fully comprehend. Frankly I think it's a misapprehension of city people who haven't really spent much time in truly wild places where the wildlife has not acclimated to human presence the way it has in most of America and Europe.
Regardless, this abstract, idealistic notion that dogs "lack agency" is not materialist. It's also not a very strong argument from an idealistic perspective. Most of the time, being domesticated rather than wild animals, feral dogs suffer even shorter, more violent, more miserable lives than wild animals that are at least adapted to their environments. This is because they are dependent on cooperation with humans for their wellbeing. Domestication has made them more playful, less aggressive, much less shy and suspicious and cautious, much more social, given them the nearly unique abilitiy to recognize human gestures and body language, and so forth. Contrast this with wolves, which are genetically speaking a very similar species, and the massive differences in behavior, physical structure, and psychology are stark and impossible to explain away.
Dogs cannot survive and thrive without us (and I'd argue humans are equally lost and miserable without dogs). They have no place in the world except alongside humans. Whatever assertion you're making, what you're defacto asking for is the destruction of the entire species because their mere existence doesn't conform to your idealist notions of agency and independence.
if your ideology is making bait you should shut the fuck up
On one hand, I agree, on the other hand, I think forcing people to live without a cat is some kind of war crime
You're advocating for the eradication of birds and small mammals currently.
outdoor cats live miserable lives. if you love something you don't damn it to a short life of brutality and disease
I mean this doesn’t make it not a war crime, regardless of if it’s the right thing to do
but again most people don't do that
Billions of people across the world use animals for labor, before the Industrial Revolution most people did. In much of the underdeveloped world you often have to use animal labor to survive. And often people who exploit animal labor feel genuine affection for the animals, plenty of people who use dogs for more utilitarian means still love them, plenty of farmers care for the donkey that hauls their produce to market.
that would be a completely ridiculous struggle session to have, no one is against banning pets, unless you're a bastard landlord or have justifiable reasons due to allergies (but even then its usually 'keep them out of this area' not 'ban people from having animal friends')
so hexbear will stay free of such things
I love how you said this but now someone is in fact unironically arguing it.
Never underestimate Hexbear again.
hexbear is both the best and dumbest place on the whole internet
We co-evolved with dogs over the course of 40,000 years. in so far as the temr "natural" means anything, it is natural for dogs and humans to live together in close cooperation. there's a theory going that humans and dogs (and domesticated agricultural plants) co-domesticated each other and that our close relationship with dogs (and wheat) is why humans seem to share many traits found in domesticated animals but not wild animals.
Malazan plays with this idea by claiming giant fantasy dogs that work for the god of death protected early humans and we kinda evolved as a result. or something like that, its been years.
annnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnd blocked you've gotten weirder
As a massive Pokemon fan, Pokemon's lore is just straight unhinged. They even say Pokemon used to live as equals to humans, and some would even have romantic involvement with humans. And GF expect me to believe that they want to be in the ball?
I IMPLORE you all to read this https://hexbear.net/post/763625, diegetic essentialism is a waste of time and infantilizes you. Please, stop it.
Ok that was great. I love when someone puts an inexplicable feeling into concrete terms. Once with this DE stuff and twice with the the banger within a banger when op calls to stop calling everything fascism. Thanks 🙏
40k has a lot in its favor to cause that thought to come into being and result in an essay like that. Namely the chuds who take the propaganda from their guys at face value. They are frustrating to say the least.
Without reading (I am a staunch antiintellectual, yuck), is diegetic essentialism the boiling down of a text into strictly what happens within the text and ignoring the fact that it’s humans who consume the text and that that process can create meaning beyond that of the literal text?
It's ok if you're just having fun, but we are so far past that point.
From the linked thread
I’ve read this. It really does not work in this context. Nobody is defending or genuinely attacking Pokémon due to its incidental inclusion of cockfighting. What we are doing is defending Palworld, because it’s implicitly referencing this sort of fucked up aspect of Pokémon when you think of it too much, as a shitpost.
Not to mention the fact that there is genuine cultural analysis to be made about the fact that we just... have games about collecting sentient creatures and putting them into tiny spaces and don't comment about it at all.
Ok, I mostly agree with you, but people have been pointing out Pokemon makes animals fight since day one. (Parents also called it satanic lol)
The main series pokemon games have a move called Frustration which increases damage the less friendship the user has with their pokemon.
Why does this move exist in a game about friendship and loving the creatures you capture against their will?
This problem could just be solved by making pokemon not real creatures in the world but just spirits. Unfortunately, it seems that pokemon society is not vegan so it's also canon that people just eat pokemon.
One game's villain has a pokemon that uses a maximum-damage Frustration. Friendship's default value isn't zero, meaning gamefreak has gone out of their way to say "this guy canonically abuses his pokemon"
Unfortunately, it seems that pokemon society is not vegan so it's also canon that people just eat pokemon.
It's way funnier than that. The Pokémon company has anthropomorphized Pokémon so much that they feel icky about killing them. But they also have chronic carnism brain. The result? They've recently designed a Pokémon with a limb that falls off so humans can harvest their meat without feeling bad. There's a scene in one of the shows where a character straight up drinks Shuckle juice from its orifices. Actually, that carnist design goes back a couple decades. People will literally come up with the most ridiculous explanations in their FANTASY world instead of just making it vegan.
Shuckles ferment berries in their shell it's not carnism but it is assault and robbery
I'm just lumping in using other creatures' bodies for food under carnism.
There's a scene in one of the shows where a character straight up drinks Shuckle juice from its orifices.
https://nitter.net/drifloonitic/status/1731546596503175664 yum
closest thing IRL would be drinking straight from a cow's udder
In that game the frustration move is bc the badguys did some evil techno-magic to the mons that makes them angry and aggressive, and if you treat the shadow pokemon well it will "open their hearts" and they'll lose the frustration move. It exists bc the bad guys hurt the pokemon's feelings to weaponize their alienation.
And making them spirits isn't any better. Kami aren't any less individuals with feelings than animals or pocket monsters.
I'm gonna brutalize one Pokemon for every dumbass comment in this thread. Sorry comrades but I've already stomped a Maushold to death and that's basically 4 pokemon in 1
also the whole debate over this shit is basically a veiled form of the vegan struggle session so lets just stop pretending we're concerned for the rights of pixels in the shape of an orange dragon
chill out, people want to have fake monsters fight each other
chill out, people want to have fake monsters fight each other
thats the point they're making yeah (the person replying in the post, not OP)
SMT negotiations are by far my favorite monster-collecting methods. Just equal parts philosophy, flirtation, and gibberish as they vibe check you.
It's frustrating that it can be totally random at times, but that's also what makes it so good
Pokemon is cockfighting, Mario massacres Goombas and turns by the hundreds in any given game and we know from Paper Mario they're fully sentient and about equal to human intelligence, the star fox team are a PMC, Samus has blown up 3 planets, maybe more ans wiped out 2 species, sorta 3 if you count Evil Beak or whatever from Dread, he was likely the last Chozo. None of this shit really makes any sense and it's pretty senseless to go thst deep into it. Especially if you're being serious.
Meanwhile the chad
saves animals and the environment from the capitalist, imperialist Eggman by destroying polluting robotsDiegetic essentialism 101, it leads people to ask deeply unserious and frankly stupid questions like: "is superman actually a socialist?". Like, no , unless superman is written as such, he's not. These fantasy worlds you escape into? Theyre written a certain way by its authors, and no amount of nerd slapfighting online will change that, please stop wasting your time.
Counterpoint: “Superman: The Red Son” is the only canon Superman comic book, all the other ones are fake alternate universe propaganda
My favorite part about the movie was when he was mad about stalin having gulags and stalin was like "sometimes you gotta do a little authority" and superman was like "no dad" and totally proved him wrong by murdering him with a laser like immediately
Mario has a heart attack whenever he just bumps into one on the street because he's racist and can't stand the idea of touching minorities.
What a weird game, the more I see of it the more baffled I am.
Hot take: game is fun, not great but it's early acess so it could get better
Honestly feels more like the Pokémon anime than the games in many ways but in a good way, little things like letting out my fire pal as a light source while mining at night feels better than anything gamefreak has done in the last 20 years
Honestly feels more like the Pokémon anime than the games in many ways
Honestly, this is why I think all the complaints about it being edgy and stuff are overblown.
As easy as it is to call Palworld "pokemon with guns", it's really just pokemon. JUST pokemon. It's Pokemon as a 3d openworld adventure game, instead of abstracting through turn orders and menus. It's pokemon where you can do all the things implied or outright stated in the official games. It's not pokemon with guns, it's pokemon that lets you use the guns.
If they do it well they could end up making the best pokemon game in terms of immersion, they've just stopped saying that being the main character makes what you do inherently good.
And this is why Digimon was always the proletarian choice!
...
I'm sorry, I'll see myself out ...
fool the correct choice has been and always will be BEYBLADE
Never really tried the games but the Digimon anime was objectively better than the Pokémon anime and I will fight anyone who says otherwise
PoKeMoN iS aBoUt CoCk FiGhTiNg is baby's first edgy media interpretation. There are multiple storylines over the decades of the franchises existence that deal with Pokemon not wanting to fight and they all conclude with the message that you shouldn't force them to fight - and in the games it's stated that when they "attack" you, it's because they want to test you to see if you're good enough to be their trainer.
"The author wrote the text so the victims are happy with their lot, so criticism of their treatment is invalid" is also an immature media interpretation, and worth about as much as "All characters depicted in this work are 18 or older even if stated otherwise".
As I've mentioned elsewhere in this thread, the house elves in Harry Potter are explicitly written as content with enslavement, but everybody sees that as transparently problematic. What's the difference?
It's fine to like pokemon (I liked/still kinda like it) but that doesn't mean I'm blind to the iffy nature of the premise
Criticizing the game for eight year olds where your giant bee monster fights someone's rock-dragon-snake like it has any bearing on actual animal abuse is silly to the point of absurdity. We"re straying in denouncing chess as classist because you're expected to sacrifice the pawns territory.
We"re straying in denouncing chess as classist because you're expected to sacrifice the pawns territory.
dont speak that evil into this forum
The house elves are born into it, in the Pokemon canon some Pokemon explicitly choose to fight while many others choose to remain in nature, or choose to do any one of the countless other things Pokemon have been shown to do besides battling. That's a pretty significant difference.
I like Mass Effect even though I have moral objections to fucking aliens.
What is your moral objection to fucking a sapient being capable of consenting to sex?
Yeah, maybe if there was a communication barrier I could get it but Mass Effect (presumably) has bullshit scifi communication tech
No real objection. It was meant to be sarcasm but upon re-reading the post I've realized it actually sounds pretty bad and not so different from a reactionary take. I am sorry about that.
Maybe they just have a moral objection to aliens, and the word "fucking" was an emphatic marker
god I miss @UlyssesT@hexbear.net. using diagetic explanations to justify morally questionable shit is just plain fucked.
Look, if it were actual dogs or roosters fighting then you would be right, but we're talking about magical sprites that breathe fire and create snowstorms here. It's far enough removed from reality that I think the argument that it's fucked up is just incorrect on its face.
man, if you want to play the games, just play them. no one is stopping you. just don't defend cockfighting with "but the author said it's fine and the animals love it"
Technically pokemon is about Japense kids catching goliath beetles and making them fight, which afaik mostly involves them flipping each other over.
Like this is what inspired pokemon. Japanese kids catch beetles and make them fight. There's no "the curtains are blue" here. It's a pastime to catch beetles, carry them around in little containers, and have them fight each other.
The small bugs, birds, and mammals that I obliterate with my god-dragons after I stomp through their homes are just testing me and are actually having a really good time!
They just faint! It says so in the text at the bottom.
I do agree that it is babby's first edgy media interpretation, but it's not wrong either.
What happens to mons who faint in the wild? Aren't exactly any Pokemon Centers out in the tall grass.
idk, you're just some kid how the fuck are you going to diagnose whether caterpie is still breathing
Actually, Pokémon is about cock fighting. The original sprites even had whips. The problem is, it became so popular that they started writing actual storylines, so they had to come up with bullshit to cover for this completely unserious world they've built.
The origins of the concept of Pokemon is bug collecting actually.
Pokémon is about cockfighting, animal abuse, loving your pets, and bug catching. We are all correct.
source for this? as far as I can tell, they changed it in Beta so that it was more of a pet and pet owner dynamic, but this was before anything was actually released and the only sprites left with whips were a handful of NPC trainers, who also got phased out eventually
I’m pretty sure the Pokémon died in the comics but that also may have been a meme idk
Nah, the comics can actually get pretty dark. People die, Pokes die, etc..
Yeah I still remember that time in the manga when a scyther chopped an arbok's head clean off, that shit was fucked up
Oh okay so it wasn’t a meme that’s exactly what I was talking about. Fuckin rip
Honestly one of the first things that came to my mind. Good on B&W for showing that the neurodivergent have what it takes to psionically connect with animals and lead terrorist organizations.
Imagining them doing a canonization of the Jesus story but with Pokémon a la Moses in beyblades lol
Can't forget Lavender Town, a town pretty much dedicated to mourning dead Pokemon.
