#still not used for semi realistic art with this kind of angle and environment | Explore Tumblr Posts and Blogs

avoutput · 4 years

Text

Gaps Between Worlds || Pokeballs

The world of Pokemon is a vast and endless… wasteland. The world of Pokemon is haunted, but not scary haunted, more like “Are You Afraid Of The Dark?”. It has the flavor of a nice medium spice curry. Before the game was released, for a year, a whole generation was treated to the cartoon before school started. I was in middle school when the craze took to the little kiddy kindling, and it became a wildfire. Today, I am almost 34, and in the 20+ years, full grown-ass adults have been dissecting a universe built for kids by some other adults who had to balance marketability with art. If you mix all of those things together, you get a wild storm of interesting ideas. Some of these ideas are hidden by clever creators, others are unintended realizations brought on by mixing the real world, with all of its consequences, and this newly fresh, mostern-ridden world. Hamburgers exist, cow pokemon exist, all of our friends are pokemon, all animals are pokemon, hamburgers exist. Hamburgers exist. But the concept that really caught me for as long as I can remember was “What is it like inside a Pokeball?”

In my little child-brain, now fully formed as a semi alcohol dependent adult brain, I remember two major pokeball theories, both of which are mainstays in the community. Realistically, in the sphere of science fiction, there really are only two theories that bubble to the top. First, the Stasis Theory. Pokemon inside their Pokeballs experience nothing. They become pure light energy, and simply bounce around as particles, never aging, never thinking, never living. Second, we have the Paradise Theory. Inside their Pokeballs, they are hooked up like the matrix, and they live in their ideal environments based on their needs, either constructed by their own mind or programmed and based on their poke-type. Ghost types would live in creepy mansions and fire types live near volcanoes, but it would be created by programming in the ball, or based on the subconscious of the Pokemon. Both of these have very clear upsides, but they also have equally clear downsides, which is exactly what we are going to explore!

Before we get to the theories, a few things. My knowledge with the Pokemon series basically ends after the 2nd generation. Without straying too far from the subject, I stopped being interested in the series because it became more important to the creators to add more monsters instead of diving deeper into the lore of the world or the existing creatures themselves, with a few exceptions. Please take that into account going forward. I actually have casually watched a few of the newer episodes and movies and it seems like nothing has changed really, so I suspect I am not as far behind as I think. Also, before we get to the theories, both rely on one major item. The Pokeball! It’s clearly a smart device. Once it hits its target, it appears to know whether the item is a Pokemon or not. It only opens up if it hits a Pokemon. Hitting a human or a rock or anything else, and it stays as a ball. Once the ball is open, the Pokemon transforms into light, and during the show when the angle is right, you can see inside the ball is a series of mirrors along the walls. The Pokeball itself doesn’t seem to have an origin story that I am aware of, but it clearly had tons of development time and money, the greatest minds on our planet would kill for this tech, so one can only imagine the horrors that occurred after this technology was created, but that is for another post.

First, the Stasis Theory. The Pokeball is clearly high-tech, we put that forward, but one thing to think about is that the Pokemon themselves appear to be turned into light. I like to imagine this method as being similar to teleportation. In Star Trek and myriads of other sci-fi, teleportation is considered instantaneous. The moment we are broken down and rebuilt at our location feels instantaneous to us. That is essentially the same experience for the Pokemon. It bounces around as light, and feeling or sensing nothing. Now, the upside of this is that they don’t have to expend energy moving from place to place, consuming their trainers resources, or weather the elements. Now, all of these are more of upsides for the trainer than the Pokemon, unless you’re like Psyduck, and you suffer headaches constantly, this technology is somewhat bleak. And this is how we bleed into the downsides.

The one that always sticks out to me is that, unless you have a benevolent trainer, committing to being a Poke-partner means you might end up waking up in battle after battle. A soldier of fortune. You technically need to be fed as well, but if you are in stasis, you only need to be fed every 8 hours or so of actual time spent outside the Pokeball. A frugal trainer would pay attention to this, monitoring how much time each Poke-pal spent outside of their Pokeball. They technically don’t even need to eat to regain their strength. Specifically, they don’t even need to leave their Pokeball to get healed at a Pokecenter. Battle after battle, they might not eat for days, months, or years if they are used sparingly. Pokeballs can even be digitized. Think about all those Poke-bros you leave in your computer storage. Beyond that, you can alter their memory so that they are reassigned a new master they instantly obey, granted they are “experienced” enough. I feel like I could go on forever, but I want to talk about my favorite downside in this vein. Allow me to extend this concept a bit, maybe to a dark conclusion.

You are on a ferry ship between islands, alone, and anonymous. No one notices you. It’s the last voyage of the night, foggy, dark, and a bit chilly, the deck covered in a light, icy snow. Leaning on the rails, you lose your balance because your sea legs aren’t developed yet. You are also 12, because it's Pokemon. Your body slips into the icy drink without a sound. The shock of the cold causes you to pass out almost instantly and you drown. Along your belt, 8 Pokemon nestled in their Pokeballs. One hundred years pass. It’s summer time and a lone diver exploring the warm waters finds the belt of a young man with a series of Pokeballs attached. On shore, you open each ball, each time a Pokemon emerges, healthy, clear eyed, but confused. Where is their master? Pokemon are smart, so after some pantomime and simple explanation between the humans and Pokemon, you all realize that it's been a 100 years, and its possible the owner is dead. After reporting it to the authorities, they are able to identify the boy using a 100 year old new story. While Pokemon are strong enough to fight one another, the PTSD suffered from the loss of their trainer and the time that elapsed destroys them.

When you think about it, the upside of this bleak story is huge for the Pokemon. You can live, preserved forever inside the Pokeball. Now, to argue with myself a bit, Pokemon do seem to be aware inside their Pokeball. They seem to be able to understand their surroundings and can even hear conversations they aren’t technically present for. There are many instances of the Pokemon leaving their Pokeball of their own volition, so it’s likely this story wouldn’t have happened. One of the trainer’s ‘mon would have popped out of its super prison to help its trainer. And while this doesn’t completely refute the stasis theory, it gives the Pokemon way more cognitive power and agency inside their prison orb than I initially implied.

This is where our next theory comes into play, the Paradise Theory. As a kid, I often thought this was the less likely, but much more widely supported idea. There are two branches to this theory, one in which the Pokemon inside the ball is miniaturized and the ball works as a kind of Star Trek holodeck, and the other is the Pokemon is in a state of semi-sleep, hooked into a virtual representation of the world that best suits them. In either case, this would seem to be the ideal state of being for them. Their world is shaped to their liking, so if you are a Snorlax and you need a fat snack and soft sack to sleep on, the Pokeball manifests it. I always imagined in either case, because of their apparent awareness of the outside world, that of the two theories, the miniaturized one was at play. They remain fully conscious, and up in the sky or somewhere in their spherical prison there would be this floating screen of what is going on outside… like an omniscient camera, equipped with a mic. Again, this was kind of my childlike wonder at play, not really concerning myself with the intricacies of how this would actually work, but it also doesn’t seem like the creators gave it much thought either. Pokeball tech is the major gap in this world.

As for the downsides of this method, the only real standout is their consciousness. In the Stasis Theory, the moment they enter the ball is also the moment they leave. In this version, they remain aware of the time and the outside. So if they haven’t eaten in two days or been outside to hit the Poke-toilet, they can really feel it. Still, in this version, it does appear as though they can leave at will. Also, in the show, it often shows that they appear to get kibble at every meal that the humans eat, which brings up its own set of questions, but that’s for another time. In the drowned trainer scenario, or maybe one who is stuck under an avalanche, imagine you are a Pokemon not equipped to deal with the terrain, like a charizard in water, you are not only aware of how screwed you are, but you have to choose to either end your life by leaving the Pokeball or wait until you starve to death. I suppose it ultimately depends on how smart and perceptive a Pokemon breed actually is that really determines the merits and downsides of this theory. Take a moment to imagine a really social Pokemon, like a Pidgey or Pikachu. Does the Pokeball conjure fake friends for you? Are the Pokeballs interconnected, so that you can mind meld with your trainer’s other captives? Do certain Pokemon end up becoming attached to the fake friends inside the ball rather than worry about the outside world? Can a Pokeball become addictive?

To spare my little psyche the pain of having to empathize with Pokemon I left in their balls for too long, or maybe stored away somewhere so that I can “catch ‘em all”, I chose to imagine the Stasis Theory when I played the game. The one thing this game really dodged was imparting the idea of the empathy and responsibility of actually raising 150+ living, thinking creatures. I think this might also just align with the nature of young humans, but still, the creators really shirked there responsibility on this aspect. The game’s and animation’s inhabitants espouse constantly their belief in Poke-rights, but at the same time ignore the subject of pitting them against each other as a negative. Most Pokemon are intellectually somewhere between cat and monkey. Other’s appear to have just as much going on as humans. While Ash never imagines catching every Pokemon, the game sets you on this collectible path. Using my own childhood as an example, human children don’t appear to naturally think out the various real world equivalents to their in-game mantras. They see the Pokemon as theirs to do with as they please. Give a stupid name. Trade with other kids. Collectable bits of data. This was not my cup of tea as a kid. I much preferred the animated universe of Pokemon to the game for this very reason. Sure you can play it anyway you want, which I often did, never expanding my roster beyond 8 at a certain point, but this was also a very impractical way to play, which hurt my more logical side. Just to live with myself, I created a method of play that worked for me. Somewhere between the Stasis Theory and Paradise Theory. I just told myself my Poke-pals loved their home and me. So… I caught. Them. ALL. But in doing so, did I condemn my allies to flashes of life between battling and dinner? Did I render them in a paradise of their own making? Are these creatures really so docile after being beaten by another of their ilk so that I can force them to be my friend? Best not to dwell on it. Pika-pika.

#Articles #Pokemon #Gaps Between Worlds #Pokeballs #Ash Ketchum #Mysty #Brock #Pikachu #Charizard #Gameboy #GameFreak #Pokemon Company #Red #Blue #Satoshi

0 notes