Tuesday, March 19, 2024

Rethinking Pokémon-People Relations

I've written up quite a bit in the past about the envisioned relationships between people and Pokémon species, and this post is another one in that series. Specifically, this one deals with (re)considering those relationships, in light of some happenings in the real world that involve animals and people, which would stand in for Pokémon and people. It's a bit of a significant matter as far as the happenings go, and that means exploring the essence of those happenings for the relationships of concern.

Somewhere a bit removed from my local area, a tiger that menaced people was captured - only this one is actually a recapture, due to the tiger having been rehabilitated previously. This also meant that the tiger necessarily had human contact at that time. Then, there had been stories of other wild animals coming into human contact and being changed by that human contact, becoming no longer suited for the wild. There is as well the observation that even for something like cats, the feral ones behave remarkably differently than the domestic ones, and there is a change in behavior going from the former to the latter. All this could potentially apply for the Pokémon analogues of the respective species.

The "rethinking" part lies in the consideration that Pokémon as they are have some different behaviors. Some of them are more receptive to human contact and thus have a certain "sentience" about them that makes them less "animal" and more "humane", even when they are in a wild state. Others, meanwhile, still remain "animal", sometimes with human presence and/or connection. It stands to reason, then, that the relations between people and Pokémon could be thought of as having a dual state of being carried over sentience and wildness characteristics - the trick being to recognize when either are present.

Whatever the case, the relations between people and Pokémon remain complex, as for their real animal counterparts, mostly due to their envisioned nature. Yet with all the things that they are capable of and their coexistence with people, the relations can still be explored to some extent and can even be rethought based on observations as above. It's just a natural part of things existing with people, for which Pokémon is on multiple levels.

Four years ago: No Sight, No Mind
Six years ago: PokéTerminology
Seven years ago: Cosplay Hair

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