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youngbloodinitiative · 5 years

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A-Z: Bettina Fung

The A-Z Series continues. Meet the artists part of Young Blood Initiative, the ‘A-Z series’ will give our readers to get to know a bit about the artists and their inspirations. Kicking off the A-Z Series with London-based artist, Bettina Fung!

A for…. Animation

I love animation, my degree was in animation. The thread (not that there needs to be one) throughout my artistic practice from the beginning till now is movement, which is pretty integral in animation, but it is the thought that animation is playing with frame that really opened my mind and to different ways of creating.

B for….Bucher Heidi

I first saw Heidi Bucher’s work I first saw Heidi Bucher’s work in Nottingham Contemporary (UK) and it was her process of creating these plastic skins of rooms that I was captivated by. She would first carefully apply gauze and liquid latex on the space (usually in old buildings), caressing the walls or floors by hand with the liquid latex and just before it dries hard she would peel these skins off these rooms and resulted in these ghostly skins that captured impressions and residue of the space and makes me think about memories and the thought of what the rooms had experience and seen in the past.

Here is a video of her in action:

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C for… Collectivity

I am interested in how we can survive and thrive together collectively, instead of being in competition with each other.

D for… Drawing

E for… Empathy F for… the Funkadelic’s Maggot Brain G for… Gysin Brion Brion Gysin (1916-1986) had many innovative ideas and clearly contributed to the 20th century avant-garde. He was a multifaceted artist who inspired many from the Beat Generation and mostly known for his association with William S Burroughs. His paintings and calligraphic abstractions that drew from Japanese and Arabic scripts are captivating and gorgeous, but they are not merely decorative or Orientalist, in these works Gysin treated written words as the abstract language of painting and attempted to fuse writing and painting into a single complex system of mark-making. He connected the notion of a grid to Kabbalistic magic, and other forms of storage and representation of knowledge such as the punch-card arrays of early computers. He pioneered the cut-up technique, which Burroughs took up on and the concept of permutated poems. On top of that, he co-invented the Dream Machine, a drug-free trance-inducing device constructed from a light source inside a perforated cylinder rotating on a turntable.Here is a video of him doing his thing:

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H for…Hsieh Tehching 謝德慶 “Doing art, doing life, is also doing time” and Hsieh is someone who is really good at passing time. I was inspired by the determination that was required in his yearlong performances and his work taught me how art could be a way to understand life.

Here is a video of a talk he did in 2018:

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I for… Ink I am a fan of tattoos and the art of tattooing and am interested in its history and its different meanings and rituals. I am fascinated by drawing on the body and how it distorts lines. When I grow up I want to be a tattooist. I also think it is a great way of collecting artworks. Having said all that, I actually still don’t have a tattoo yet due to overthinking and I feel that I cannot learn this art form (and I don’t know who is willing to teach me) until I have tattoos. One of the tattooists I admire is Shige (picture above) from Yellow Blaze in Osaka, whom I have seen work live. His tattoos are lively and captivating.

J for… Jam Sessions I enjoy drawing as if I am improvising with an instrument, playing lines instead of notes. I have a strong relationship with music and have jammed with musicians in the past, where I drew as they improvise with me.

K for… Kungfu I practice martial arts and am learning tai chi quan, praying mantis and xin yi lui he quan.

L for… Lorde Audre From “Your silence cannot protect you” to “The master’s tools will never dismantle the master’s house”, Lorde’s writing is empowering. M for… Mongolian throat singing It is pretty awesome when you can produce multiple pitches simultaneously.

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N for… Noodles I love eating noodles. Laksa (a spicy noodle soup from Southeast Asia) is not just a favourite but has an interesting origin. Stemming from the Peranakan culture it is the embodiment of cultural exchanges. Its name is also interesting. Recently I learnt that the word laksa has a Persian origin, where lakhsha meaning “slippery” in old Persian, was apparently also used to describe noodles. There is a theory that suggests that noodles is a Persian invention and it would appear that there are many noodle type dishes across the Middle East, Central Asia and Europe, all with names that sound very similar to lakhsha, for example the Russian lapsha, the Jewish lokshen, the Afghan lakhchak, the Lithunian Lakštiniai and the Ukrainian lokshina.

O for… Occult – the hidden things, mysterious things, things that are not on the surface, invisible but could be felt.

P for… Professors like Ien Ang, who is a professor in cultural studies. Her work in identity politics, migration, ethnicity and nationalism helped me think a lot about my identity and being in-between two cultures, born in one and grew up in another.

Q for…Queens of the Stone Age R for…Riot Grrrl S for… Silence “There is no such thing as silence” as John Cage pointed out, but if we don’t take it so literally, there are many ways to think of silence. From the awkward tension between people when there is nothing to say to a way to resist manically talking at each other, silence welcomes listening, creates space of stillness that allows us to reconnect to ourselves. Silence can be calming, a sanctuary. However it can also be heavy, harming us in situations where we remain silent and not speak our minds. T for… Tentacularity In Donna Harraway’s words: “The tentacular are not disembodied figures; they are cnidarians, spiders, fingery beings like humans and raccoons, squid, jellyfish, neural extravaganzas, fibrous entities, flagellated beings, myofibril braids, matted and felted microbial and fungal tangles, probing creepers, swelling roots, reaching and climbing tendrilled ones. The tentacular are also nets and networks, it critters, in and out of clouds. Tentacularity is about life lived along lines — and such a wealth of lines — not at points, not in spheres. “The inhabitants of the world, creatures of all kinds, human and non-human, are wayfarers”; generations are like “a series of interlaced trails.”(From: https://www.e-flux.com/journal/75/67125/tentacular-thinking-anthropocene-capitalocene-chthulucene/ )I really like that she mentioned lines and like the imagery she created, human and non-human crossing paths and coexisting together. U for… Uncertainty Learning to make friends with uncertainty is important. V for… Violet As to “The violets in the mountains have broken the rocks.” by Tennessee Williams in “Camino Real”, this line is also on his gravestone. It was my friend who told me this quote and it stayed with me. I like how something deemed as delicate has the power to break through these hard and cold rocks. This phrase reminds me of patience and compassion over stubbornness and cold heartedness. X for… Xbox One For relaxing times! I do enjoy playing video games, particularly independent ones. I am really excited by the massive scope games have for storytelling. Y for…Yang Edward 楊德昌 I am a big fan of his work, particularly the epic almost 4hours long A Brighter Summer Day.

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Z for… Zine-making It is a pretty fun way to play, collaborate, to express, experiment and communicate with each other.

To find out more about Bettina, check out her website here.

#a-z #YBI

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kaijuzilla · 6 years

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MOD Review: Monster Hunter World

(As a joke I see “Ocean Man” as a slideshow of the hunters and huntresses hunting all monsters like the Spongebob movie credit. Which tbh it sounds so fitting for this game lol.)

(!!!WARNING!!! This contain spoilers and language for readers and younger age. If you want avoid spoilers or you already seen it on YouTube then go ahead.)

What can I say about this game...When it was first announce I got little down since it coming to the PS4 because I don’t have one nor a Xbox One but when my brother bought the game later years which is on Steam I was so excited all my downs for the game are gone. I was not liking the monsters designs when first seeing them and now I love the designs like dam! And when seeing and hearing the voice acting I actually like the English more than the Japanese dub. Also TBH I don’t see why Handler get some hate or annoying? I find her kind of helpful in the game like yes some I know what effects does but I never know what dragon blight does and when she tells me I now know. But now let me talk about the main story of the game or other word the campaign.

People from the Guild are requesting hunters everywhere to come and help them on the mysterious elder dragon migration to the new world. (Also Ace from 4 Ultimate is there.) Past games I play always as a male character but this time for first time I play as a girl (I just like bad ass women and armor designs). You’re trip has gone crazy when Zorah Magdros who is a gamera looking elder dragon who also come to migrate and cause disturbance to the ecosystems and your boat too as you try to get to Astera with the Handler. So it’s up to you (hunters or huntresses) to find out why Zorah Magdros is doing here and help set the ecosystem natures in balance along with doing quest and helping the people with research and gardening along with other stuff as you follow it’s trails and fight each areas top apex predators. Later on you find out the Zorah is going to a place not to migrate but to die which can lead to a huge explosion to every area of the new world so now you must stop it from getting to the place by using the dragonator. But the new mysterious elder dragon Nergigante is trying to stop the plan like the first time you try to stop Zorah.

Now you stop Zorah getting to it’s place now you must go and find Nergigante who turns out to be a monster that eats elder dragons. So you go stop Nergigante and then suddenly more elder dragons came along with the world eating Deviljho...

After you take care the elder dragon the Handler made a great question on why the elder dragons along with Zorah Magdros come here? The answer was finally reveal since the final boss is a giant glowing blue baby of death! Not even Fat Bastard would eat this baby!

This fight was scary from video I watch but going at it solo and with good armor all max before the hunt was kind of went ok? Like for it’s sacry size and big hit attacks which can get you to half health bar kind of went ok. I have to learn my surroundings which then I got it alright.

Now finally you finally defeat the biggest threat to the new world who the baby is now name Xeno’Jiiva. You’re a free hunter who now can hunt and study along capturing monsters with no threats at all...except the Corn Grenade Seregios and Deviljho coming in and disturb the hunt.

The game is breath taking. Previous monster hunter games when you just go in you see a monster and they just attack you then you attack back. But this game it’s actually different and it has done very well. The monsters well some don’t just like see you and just go in like “YOU PICK THE WRONG HOUSE FOOL!” some are actually just gentle creatures which you can just walk with and you learn to like and love them more. I even walk with Vaal Hazak which became my most favorite elder dragon in the game and from the type of monster it’s actually a gentle giant. The game makes you think that in past games that seeing theses creatures in their habitats and you’re just some hunter who comes in and kill them makes you think that you’re a monster the whole time...

Also what I think the best part of the game is the pet systems. Which is just you go to expedition use capture net on small critters and put them in your room which they became your pet which is really cool and cute. But other than that the Turf Wars are just so cool to watch monsters fight each other which is like watching your imagination come to life in a video game.

The tracking system is probably best thing in the game cause I’m actually getting tired of paintballs and later game you don’t get them in high and g rank in previous games. The tracking system is where you try to find the monster tracks and if you get enough the scoutflies will lead you a trail which leads you to the monster. They also help that if red there’s dangers and if blue it’s either a threat or elder dragon tracks which helps you before fighting Xeno. It also helps out as a area item location showing the side of the screen what sin the area or what monster shiny drops easily.

Now the characters of the games are actually good. I began to like the Handler who she’s the nerdy girl who like food and helps you on your hunts and travels giving like information and help you cook food in your quest (WHICH THAT IS ONE THING THAT MADE THINGS SO HELPFUL! THEY FINALLY FIX IT YES!!!!!!!!!! AND ARMOR WEAPON CHANGE DURING QUEST O MY GAAAAAAAAAAAA!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!) The commander who doesn’t know where his Dragonator is which is funny. some other interesting ones but one my favorite is the Gordan Ramsey Palico like really you can see him with Gordan Ramsey voice or personality do you?

The armor and weapons are good as they show the skill tree of what will come next if you upgrade your weapons and armor skills are also good too which you can make really good armor sets. If you want to be like a head on partbreaker I would recommend a Bazelgeuse and Deviljho armors together it’s really good together. But the best armor part is always the Wiggler head which I love it alot. Those coat mantles are also good which each one has good ability but once use need recharge which can be stressful but later on you’ll get use to it and know when best time to use it.

The Areas in the game are really beautiful. I think the most iconic one I would definitely look around is the Rotten Vale cause that’s where which I know everyone knows who play the game is actually the elder dragon serpent Dalamadur from $ Ultimate. Just seeing it’s size makes me think like this is an adult or elder age of the beast and it’s just so amazing seeing it here in the new world. Ancient Forest is very jungle and I like it. The desert area is interesting having a small jungle and also a watering hole area. Elders Recess is where the best boi is. The coral highland is really great and there’s WIGGLERS EVERYWHERE!!! I AM ONE WITH THE WIGGLERS NOW!!!

And now the bad stuff in the game. I would say the bounties are kind of not understand bale like it wants you to hunt a type of high rank monster but when I did the monster doesn’t count for the bounty. I would say the Handler is annoying like all fans saying but I kind of find her helpful from time to time. Also the tempered monsters are like DAM they are hard I haven’t got to temper Kirin yet (NCH Production thanks for warning and guide) But going against 2 Bazelgeuze is the most difficult thing I’ve done alone. I did call for help but none respond and some just die so fast that I was really worried! Also the other part is the call for help. I call help alot and no people came to help out. And most time when all going alright with the players online it just suddenly get disconnected leaving me alone and that was so scary. Also finally the most disturbing part is those FUCKING GAJALAKAS!!! I DIDN’T DO ANYTHING TO YOU THE RATHALOS HIT YOU WHAT DID I DO!?!?! They will bother your carving and do some damage with their throwing knifes but they do help with the monsters your hunter by paralyzing or put them to sleep.

The controls are very simple just like the 4 Ultimate controls but the side triggers have new stuff like the Slingers. Which I like the slingers it’s a good side weapon like a mini bowgun with a grappling hook making you spiderman to the Monster Hunter. Makes mounting monsters more good as you jump on either the back, head, or tail which make getting those parts of the body (easy advice to carve fast jut crouch down and carve it’s good).

Also interesting part of the game is that if you go to the Elders Recess you will find the Bonfire from the Dark Souls game which is an interesting Easter Egg. Also I get that Chameleos isn’t in the game but he’s actually watching you this whole time because he’s camouflage in the environment. Trust me if you look carefully you’ll notice it’s eyes moving and the shape as the body looks wavy in World which I think I saw it in the forest. And I really can’t wait when Final Fantasy crossover comes to the PC so I can hunt that Giant Kulu Ya Ku! Along side with the Kulve Taroth.

This has to be one of my favorite Monster Hunter Game of all. They got everything perfect and weapons new controls are still same like the 3Ds which I’m glad that still says. I thin the best part still is like following monsters daily life which makes it like you’re doing some animal documentary. I’m giving this a....

8.5/10 Monster Gems!

If you’re wondering what armor I use from start? I will say later on I been using the Bone armor the whole first quest till high rank I change to Wiggler than to the combination of Earplug Bazelguse and Partbreaker Deviljho Armors with Duel Blades the whole time. like I never expected using Duel Blades would make me go so far and so fast hunting monster fast and capturing them easily. Except the Kushala Dora that one is difficult than I remember. And yes hunting Deviljho and Bazelguse I was terrifying at first.

If there’s one or two more monsters I wish join the new world it would be the flagship monsters from every game.

#Monster Hunter #monster hunter world #mod review #capcom #advice

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junyuyangsbloggerapp-blog · 6 years

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My Life and Pokemon

The long road to my current obsession.

I live my life as a slave to Pokefanaticism. Just when I think I am free—that the lore of Pokemon will no longer excite me—there will be some other aspect of the franchise that will draw me in. I suppose it’s not too unlikely--this franchise has multiple manga storylines, an anime, many movies, and way too game continuities to keep track of. And yet again, for the fourth time, I am drawn in.

Both of these are Pokemon. Semantically, they are the same type.

A rundown for those who may not have heard of or seen this franchise: Pokemon centers around these creatures called Pokemon. We’re not quite sure if they’re animals, plants, or household objects, because they are all of the above and also dragons.

But we know is that they are all birds, because they all hatch from eggs.

Even the Ice Cream Pokemon.

Humans and Pokemon have a mostly mutualistic relationship, where they feed and help each other. Humans can catch and train Pokemon to battle each other, a process which is said to help both the human and their Pokemon. The storylines focus on different aspects to varying degrees, thus appealing to more people. It’s very common to find fans who have only played a specific series of the games, or only read the anime, or only played the card game.

My run-in with Pokemon first began in 2006 when I was eight and saw people playing with Pokemon cards. They all seemed like cool and well-adjusted people, so I thought, “Hey, if I play Pokemon, maybe I’ll become cool and well-adjusted too!” I bought some Pokemon cards because they were cute. I still flip through them sometimes.

Little me then set my eyes on the Pokemon games themselves. I really wanted to play Pokemon Emerald, which came out in 2005. It was hot off the griddle and looked absolutely packed with content. (It was. I still assert that it was one of the pinnacles of Pokemon main game development, even if I’ll have to fight one-hundred-and-one people who will try to convince me that ORAS is a better game. Literally, in order to beat some of the optional Emerald endgame content, you had to do calculations and strategize.)

There was only one problem.

My parents don’t believe in American food, Chipotle, Costco cakes, chicken tenders, or video games. They thought the latter would completely derail my life and firmly refused to get any consoles for me.

And so I learned to settle at a young age.

I settled for the anime. You know, the one about Ash, the annoying, forever-ten-years-old kid with the z’s on his face who refuses to evolve his Pikachu because merchandising and publicity said so.

You might have heard bits of the age-long discussions “Who the heck is his dad?” (because only his mother has ever been revealed, and we don’t think his father died in the War) and “Why is he still ten?” He’s been ten for nearly twenty years now.

That was a ridiculously childish show, where every episode had the same exact plot except the bad guys got increasingly better at crossdressing. Even 8-year old me could plainly see this and rant about it. The anime is pretty much responsible for many people delegating the entire Pokemon franchise to the “kids only” section of their heads, even though there are many parts of Pokemon that are...not so child-friendly. For instance, in the manga, there’s a scene where the villains kill the protagonist’s father and then decide to burn him so he can’t be revived.

But what the anime did right, and what no other branch of Pokemon has quite successfully captured. is the magic and spontaneity of battle and the vibrance of the Pokemon themselves. Sure, the anime characters are almost all some variation of “good-hearted and way too cheerful”, but they still had heartwarming and unique interactions with their Pokemon. The lack of human focus also allowed for entire episodes based on specific Pokemon and Pokemon families. And they would often showcase rather esoteric Pokemon too, which is great, because when you have hundreds of critters and your franchise only wants to promote the ones everyone already knows about, everyone else tends to slip through the cracks. People will wax lyrical about how Pokemon Adventures (the most well-known manga) brought forth increasingly complex, dark, and trashy plots, but it never really allowed you to observe the cute critters and watch battle mechanics because you would be too focused on whether or not the main character’s really annoying love interest was going to die.

Perhaps some of the introduced plot twists in the anime were rather...lame. Ash gets a badge at some point by accidentally triggering the sprinklers in a Rock type gym. Rock-type Pokemon are weak to water, and so he won. Regardless, that was pretty funny and shows how Pokemon actually interact with their world outside of battle (which may or may not be really violent dog-fighting, depending on who you ask). I quickly became entranced by the cute little mons dancing around, showing off their quirks and abilities, although the formulaic plot and pattern of the episodes easily bored me. You can only watch “Team Rocket shows up, tries to steal Pikachu, and then are lambasted into space” so many times.

Then, in 9th grade, I learned that instead of watching a bunch of too-peppy ten year olds duke it out, I too could take part in this violence. At that time, I was taking Fundamentals of Programming. The class itself was okay, but we were also learning Alice.

Thanks, Carnegie Mellon.

I mean, it wasn’t a bad programming language. It’s drag and drop, and most of the graphics have mansions in the Uncanny Valley, but it is far superior to Scratch. You could make some pretty sophisticated animations and games.

There is only so long you can gaze into the empty eyes of Alice Liddell.

And so we discovered the joys of Pokemon Showdown, a website where you could battle real life people. There are various tiers of battling you can partake in--each tier has its own unique limits on which Pokemon you can use--and the one we always battled in was “Random Battle”, where you and your opponent are both given a completely random, computer-assembled team. It was easy and quick, since we didn’t have to think about team-building (which takes literally eons) at all.

My peers and I became very involved in this. I remember battling out of boredom one day, picking the one-time username of “Grack 331” because Mr. Grack taught Fundamentals of Programming in Room 331. Out of the blue, my opponent messaged me: “Do you go to Troy High School?”

Turned out he was very bored in Robotics class and also indulging in the pleasures of virtual dog-fighting. (Although Generation VI asserts that this helps build a mutualistic bond between you and your Pokemon that will allow them to strip themselves of all humanity and inhibitions. This sounds like BS, but it does sort of hold up--Pokemon with human trainers are able to reach new levels of power. Given that some of Pokemon got the short end of the power stick, that’s pretty important.)

In this era, I became entranced with the complexity of battle mechanics. I learned about movesets, stats, and breeding. All were important considerations in selecting and creating powerful Pokemon who could counter almost everything thrown at them. In Pokemon, there is a concept of weaknesses and strengths. Think of it as a very complex 18-way game of rock-paper-scissors, except you could be rock and paper (and maybe have some scissors DNA lurking in there somewhere), and even if you were only rock, you could probably learn paper-like moves if your father was a piece of paper. Almost every Pokemon, regardless of strength, could be honed into a fine weapon capable of sweeping any opponent. (Well, except for Sunkern.) It was simply intriguing to see the way people play movesets and team compositions to their team advantage. I watched as very savvy battlers set up the field so that a pathetically weak pokemon could overpower opponents of huge power.

I think what ultimately stopped me from getting too into competitive Pokemon battling was the community. Interspersed between all the nice people, you had the hardcore fellows who believed in might over all else and delighted in tearing down others. They’re the kind of people who would go and curse you out if they didn’t like the way you battled, even if they literally didn’t know you at all. My high school was already toxic enough--I really didn’t need more toxicity in my life. And so the second phase of my Pokefanaticism waned.

The next era came in the summer after 12th grade. Like everyone else, I started playing the darn new-fangled Pokemon Go (PoGo), where Pokemon appear as you walk around. You then throw balls at them and try to walk around more so that you could “catch them all”. I didn’t expect to like PoGo, because it looked like it would lack many of the features which drew me to Pokemon. There was no battling mechanic at all, no real human-Pokemon interactions, and the Pokemon themselves did not do much except engage in very basic battles and roar at you when you tapped them.

In here lay the ingenuity.

The game is so simple that there is literally nothing to distract you from ogling the cute mons. There are some noticeable patterns like “Water Pokemon tend to appear near rivers” and “Ultra Balls are more likely to capture Pokemon than normal PokeBalls”, but you really don’t need to understand very much to enjoy PoGo. Just look at the extremely simple catching mechanic, where you toss balls at Pokemon until one sticks. In the main console games, you have to think about weaknesses, properly trapping Pokemon so that they don’t run, inflicting status conditions like poison and paralysis, and picking the most optimal ball from an assortment of over 20 PokeBall varieties. (Things have gotten better, but PoGo is definitely a “appeal to as many people as possible” sort of game. Though it’s expanded its roster, it still focuses overwhelmingly on Kantan Pokemon and events, even though the last Kanto games Fire Red and Leaf Green came out in 2004. After all, when most older people think of Pokemon, they think of the Pokemon they grew up with, even though a lot of those critters had very clear design issues. These Pokemon happened to be Kantan Pokemon, Generation I.)

Thus, Pokemon Go lured in players who otherwise would have never touched Pokemon. The most hardcore players I’ve met understand all the in and outs of PoGo, but very little about the lore behind it. Heck, I met someone who had no idea that Mega Evolution is a thing, even though it is such a huge part of the games and advertising.

There’s nothing wrong with being a casual player, because I’m a casual fan for many franchises and I can still get a lot of enjoyment out of them. The problem (and why a lot of people are getting increasingly irked by Pokemon’s reattempts at mainstream approval) is when your games get dumbed down and gimmick-fied to appeal to more people. Take, for instance, the recent Pokemon Let’s Go! Series. It’s cute and all, sure. Many fans, me included, would rather see all that effort geared towards Sinnoh (Generation IV) remakes. Sinnoh is a grand region with so much lore and possibly the best Champion of all time. And yet, what do we get? We get another return to the most hackneyed region, because it’s the one everyone grew up with and remembers.

I digress.

No matter how I feel, I inevitably fell. PoGo preyed on me where it mattered. It fed on my love for cute things and targeted my tendency to hoard things. Just look at my nail polish collection.

And before I knew it, I was taking extra long laps around MIT just to get more mileage and losing weight. Sometime in my sophomore year, I discovered the MIT PoGo community. This broadened my horizons. I could now engage in “raids”, where you take down an extra powerful opponent with your “friends”. Just two months ago, I was carefully planning my day so that I could go to important raids. I remember getting my timeslot for an exclusive raid and realizing that it conflicted with a presentation I had to give. So like a normal person, I hunted down one of my friends who was free, carefully arranged teams, and gave my PoGo community the details of his appearance so that they could find him if necessary.

So what snapped me out of my PoGo craze?

I rediscovered the complexity which had drawn me to the franchise in the first place. It all began a week before my second 7.05 exam, when I decided to check out the web series Pokemon Generations (again). It is a 18-episode official webseries, where each episode is five minutes or shorter. Apparently, they couldn’t afford to pay for longer episodes. Unlike the anime I described above, it stuck closely with the game continuity and was definitely darker and grittier without becoming edgy. The animation was also very sharp (whether or not it’s “beautiful” is hotly debated) and detailed.

I’m not sure why I decided to rewatch a series, however short, during this time. Maybe it was to actually view it; the first time around, my involvement dropped drastically after Episode 5. This iteration, I began watching with more attention to detail. In Episode 8, which is an episode that explores, “What if Team Aqua, the evil team that aspires to become global warming and raise sea levels, actually succeeds?” I noticed that someone refer to one of my favorite villains, Shelly, and she looked...very different.

I expected the one on the left; I got the one on the right.

At first, I thought, “Maybe there is another Shelly,” even though Pokemon takes great pains to not repeat names. A few moments of googling told me, nope, same character. As you can see, Shelly used to be a fiery redhead. This was extremely distinctive, because everyone else on her team was either bald, brunette, or lighter brunette. I loved her when I saw her in the anime, because she was literally the only person during that arc finale who was competent. Her redesign (right above) was also pretty snazzy, but it’s also fairly jarring for someone who wasn’t expecting it.

In my googling, I discovered two things. The first thing was that many of the older Pokemon games got remade, where the plot was rewritten, the regional fauna elaborated upon, and the characters redrawn. The second was that despite these clear differences, and the fact that there are so many main console Pokemon games, all of them (yes, even the originals and the remakes) are supposed to fit into the same continuity.

Here, my foot fell into a rabbit hole. When my friend gave me a copy of the game Pokemon Soul Silver, my entire body sunk in.

See, all this time, I had never really gotten up to date on the progression of the pokemon universe. We have 7 generations so far—each generation bringing forth a new region and new pokemon—and I had never really learned about anything after Generation IV. Being extremely young back in the day, I learned about the individual regions but never stuck around long enough to learn about their remakes. A lot of game developments also happened in the meantime, and it turned out that the Pokemon universe actually was a collection of Pokemon universes, where each continuity differed by maybe just a few details that eventually became huge life-changing inventions/events. Formerly, we assumed each game was somewhat standalone.

You might have noticed that so far, I haven’t really talked a lot about the humans of the Pokemon world, because I didn’t put too much attention into them. They’re fairly flat battling fodder in the original.

But with the remakes, due to changes in creative direction, a lot of the humans in the games got more characterization. It was not a lot, just enough for you to feel the presence of a personality growing in there somewhere. And with the realization that their world(s) were so delicate and easily-disturbed came the potential for character development and interactions.

Immediately, I immediately became intrigued by how all my favorite characters back in the day had changed. Some are not too drastic—Clair from Gold, Silver, and Crystal was a...witch that starts with a b back then, and Clair from Heart Gold and Soul Silver (the remakes) is still that. Others are sweeping. Courtney from Ruby, Sapphire, and Emerald turned from a somewhat sly but also underutilized admin into a mentally unhinged and eccentric scientist who may or may not secretly have psychic powers that allow her to see the results of her actions. (Not that it stops her in pursuing her dangerous goals. Some contest that her visions of the world’s destruction might not actually be visions, but rather, disturbed fantasies. People are weird.)

And here I discovered a perplexing paradox.

I am very character and worldbuilding focused. If I were given a choice between a hardcore plot and really good character interactions, I will always take the latter. The fandoms which have jumped out to me are all fandoms with well-developed characters, even if the plot is weak. My Little Pony, for instance, is very slice-of-life, and many of its attempts to a plot are cliched and clumsy. However, the characters undergo a lot of individual growth and have extremely nuanced interactions that allow me to overlook plot issues.

The Pokemon games have neither a complex plot nor an intense character focus. (Really, the anime doesn’t either. Hence I stopped watching it.) The plot is quite literally: you, as a ten year old (somewhat older in subsequent games), venture out into the world and battle people. Along the way, you get called along to save the world since child endangerment isn’t a thing in this universe. After you defeat the Champion, the strongest trainer in the land, you can catch all the Pokemon that exist in your region. This is a very simple plot. Yes, there’s a lot to catch, and a lot of content and wade through. It still doesn’t change the fact that the trainers are basically fodder for you and that the entire setup is made to appeal to kids. What sort of parent would let their ten year old child wander out into a wilderness where there are threatening creatures in the fucking tall grass? There are so many, many other questions.

Look at this cutie, who you might encounter on your journey. Except its Pokedex entry reads: “It is whispered that any child who mistakes Drifloon for a balloon and holds on to it could wind up missing.” -Pokemon Heart Gold/Soul Silver

And then one day, as I was playing Soul Silver and trying to decide how some of these characters even functioned, it hit me why I kept coming back to this franchise.

In order for this very simple and formulaic plot to work, the world in which it takes place must be very complex. At the least, it needs to be radically different from ours. The process of understanding this foreign world and how they have adapted is what makes Pokemon so appealing.

Let’s start with an aspect of the Pokemon games that is mildly well-known: the extreme youth of the main character, especially when compared with what you can do. You’re in the early years of your adolescence, and yet you can summon gods while priests and lorekeepers trained to deal with them can’t (ORAS). Sure, this is all the result of a game mechanic that’s supposed to entice younger kids. Real Pokemon training would probably be very dangerous and arduous, because Pokemon are basically dangerous weapons that could kill you. No one wants to play a game about what is basically dog-training but where the dogs are also nukes.

But if the Pokemon world were real, training would be very dangerous and require lots of patience. And most certainly, no one would send out their ten year old into the wild. One can dismiss all of this, rewrite canon for their purposes, or comb through the dialogue and events and develop a reasonable society in which things like this can become accepted.

And so my current obsession is constructing a reasonable and nuanced headcanon where characters are distinct and multidimensional. This is twofold. It is always mind-broadening to see how other people have interpreted the context clues and gotten creative, in the form of fan art, headcanons, and fanfiction.

There is a special whimsy about the Pokemon world which makes it especially appealing despite all the plot voids which exist in it. It is a world of really weird people and really strange life motivations. You have the mishmash of multiple tropes, Chosen Ones who are passed over for you despite being more magical and gifted than you’ll ever be and a lot of heartwarming goodness where you would expect none. People take baths with their venomous Tentacruel, they get their dreams ruined, they drop their balls…what more could you want?

Thanks for letting me know?

I imagine in a few months, my Pokefanaticism will wane once more. But soon, as more content and more oddities are added, it will flare up again and again. Generation VIII is coming out in late 2018, after all.

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