Librus

a consistent angle I see taken on pokemon is 'wow, this world is fucked up, the teenagers have access to powerful tools' or 'kids can roam around on their own' or 'man, it's like cock fighting,' and all of that stuff only makes sense if you pretend the world doesn't work the way it demonstrates itself as working.

Like, pokemon are sentient. We know this. Pokemon express sentience and agency and they can visibly, tangibly, absolutely ignore their trainers. It's a recurrent point in every game that they won't just do any old things for you, or to one another. We know pokemon are choosing to get into fights, for example.

We know healthcare for pokemon is widespread. We know food is freely available. We know that pokemon can make lodgings and we know they can shelter people and we know they can influence the weather.

Pokemon is a universe where things are pretty okay and things get bad because of a small number of assholes operating under some degree of secrecy. People who want to criticise this world do it with the toolset of 'well, what if the kid is a shitty asshole with an abusive mindset' because we live in world where kids, given power, sometimes do terrible things, and that's usually tied to things like 'kids don't have support and love around them.'

My favourite example of 'the pokemon world is a nicer place' is when Team Skull take over a poke centre to charge people for health care, they charge you 100 pokebucks. About the cost of a can of soda from a vending machine. Like these people have enclosured an essential service, and their profit margin on this thing is... 'buy me a soda.' They don't conceive of immense wealth or gouging prices and they're criminals doing this.

I really want to go on a huge tangent about this, because it's something I care passionately about, but I've been very low on Motivation for weeks, so this is going to be a bit of just a Thought Dump:

I get that some communities love to give stories Dark Undertones, and while some "kiddy" franchises do execute that very well (see: Kirby), Pokemon fully understands the context of its universe and the people within it, and realizes that the only way it can exist as it does is if the world is an almost-not-quite Utopia.

Hey all. So I know I don't really showcase my artwork (or many of my creations, really (yet)) here, but recently, I achieved something pretty sizable. Over this and last year, I've been working away at my college thesis: a major art project to be installed at a public gallery showing, which was just yesterday.

I'm... really, really proud of what I've made, and maybe some of you would like to see what it entails! But since image embedding is still a little weird here, I've made a thread on Mastodon, complete with alt text and transcriptions, showcasing everything that it involved, as well as my feelings on the whole accomplishment! (Even if it wasn't that popular with everyone.)

Here's the full thread on Mastodon!

But wait, before you click a link to lands unknown, leaping before you look - maybe you're curious as to what lies in there? Aside from a rare and coveted selfie from yours truly, of course.

Well, there's worldbuilding, cool monochromatic robots, uniform colors, and lots of lore. The robots are particularly cool, and I've done my best to make each synthetic individual diverse in body and ability, and discuss to great lengths their role in the mysterious machine society in which they reside.

And what society is that? Why, the machine empire of The Hex, of course! The Hex and I have had a LONG, ancient history - they're arguably the first collection of Things I ever drew as a child. I was worldbuilding even back then, and the little hobby project has since expanded into this enormous, all-spanning... thing of indescribable size that I dream of bringing to full fruition someday. I'm not 100% sure what form that dream will actually take, but I wanted my Thesis to involve taking all these old sketches and doodles, and refining them into something "final", with all the skills I have gained thus far.

If you enjoy what you see past the link, please share it with your friends, or anyone you know that you think would enjoy a glimpse at this world I've created, and worked really hard over the past two-ish years to bring together so others could admire it at last.

I'm so happy that I've managed to come this far. I honestly didn't know if I'd even be around at this point, but... here I am. Thank you all so much, friends and strangers alike, for your support and kindness. Every ounce of it means so, so very much to me. 💙

Maybe...

Just maybe...

I should use this place as a public not-exactly-microfiction hub...