Much like a lot of Gen X, some of the older Millennials in my life (particularly the white working professionals) are parroting the age old mantra of “I don’t care about passing my skills on to the younger generations or helping those in need, no one ever helped me in my life.”. My response is always “That’s not a good thing!” because I never know what to say. Debate is not my strength.
My working class grandparents were never like this. They lived through the great depression and two wars and never wanted anyone to suffer as much as they did. I miss them and their kindness dearly. It’s only from boomers and younger that I’ve seen this attitude. Capitalism is crushing our instincts as a social species. If we can’t stand on the shoulders of giants… well then we will stop advancing as a species. We will stagnate and go extinct because the challenges we face now need all of us. It goes against everything that is human to be this alienated and antagonistic to one another. Particularly frightening is the hatred and contempt modern society has towards children.
This is not going to end well.
I appreciate all the people here, whether you’re 20 or 60, for not becoming the thing that hurt you. We need people with a soul more than ever.
I catch myself doing that too. At least I look at it from a media criticism lens, but I don’t want to ruin someone’s time with Pokémon, the Princess Peach game, or the new Zelda because of conversations I want to have about feminism or turning media into slop.
But I do feel bad that younger generations are being fed slop.
Small rant on Pokémon:
spoiler
I feel like the capital G Gamers want to have an M-rated edgy Pokémon, for example,where they can have a waifu or whatever, while I just want gamefreak to talk to 10 year olds like they’re smart enough to handle topics like bullying in school if they’re going to prominently feature that as part of the plot.
It feels insulting to younger generations that such potential storytelling is missed because the reality is that such writing would offend the sensibilities of those G Gamers. They don’t want to talk about animal liberation or systems of power or the myriad things that could be portrayed in a game like Pokémon. They just want their nostalgia slop without politics and that comes at the expense of children.
I remember playing the early games and despite the lack of polish, but the stories got simpler with time with a few exceptions.
But companies like gamefreak go where the money is and that’s the status quo.
I’m happy kids can enjoy what they can, and such conversations should be directed at adults and the companies themselves, but I definitely dislike this trend of taking joy from children to heal one’s own childhood wounds.
Pokemon was never meant to be edgelord shit. It was always about having fun learning about creatures. It can be enjoyed by all ages without forgetting that it’s also for kids.
Until Diamond and Pearl made everything kind of stupid the games were very much about environmentalism and had a lot of hints about animal liberation, too (somewhat ironically – I try to keep in mind it is still a video game, after all). The arcs of Mewtwo, Rocket, and Cinnabar are genuinely compelling existential narratives that are only ever hinted at and briefly expanded in the first movie. You do not see stuff like this at all with this franchise, anymore.
For Ruby and Sapphire specifically, this is one of my absolute favorite videos analyzing the historical context around the games’ development and what they try to say with their themes. 100% worth a watch if you enjoy the old Pokemon games like me.
https://youtu.be/Ze8uhmeFt7A
Sonic the Hedgehog used to have an environmental component too.
Good vid. I played ruby as a kid and yeah those themes went way over my head
I played Black on an emulator for the first time recently and holy shit it must have been made by the Japanese State Department or something lmao a tour de force of propaganda
It has been a long time since I played it, and I don’t think I finished it. What was propaganda to you? I don’t think I ever got that impression, but I may just not remember it.
The bad guys want to liberate Pokémon from being captive battle slaves, and you and the coalition of good guys are trying to stop it. And of course they make the bad guys out to be doing it because they actually just want power and to steal everyone’s Pokémon for themselves lol. Some of the lines in there are golden, things like “We’re going to liberate all Pokémon! And I’m gonna start by stealing yours because I want to!!”
Ohh, yeah I do remember that now. Team plasma was it? Really fucking sucked I agree. ever since galactic I feel this way about enemy Pokémon groups…they’re either not grounded at all in any sort of relatable way (galactic, plasma, flare), they’re just a worse rocket (aether), or they’re not even a syndicate at all and just hooligans (skull, yell, star). At least that last group can be interesting, but they’re so mired in the ungrounded nonsense now that I just don’t care.
I found a YouTube link in your comment. Here are links to the same video on alternative frontends that protect your privacy:
PalWorld offered the edgy and the deliberately horny “Pal” too.
That really is too bad because even the first game had some pretty fascinating hints of a wider potential story to tell, including talk of a great war before the game started that involved Pokemon.
I have my doubts those wounds are actually healing as much as being further irritated to make particularly fashionable scars. “Fallout Equestria” comes to mind. Fucking garbage, but it’s heresy to say so among some people.
That’s some beautiful language there- “particularly fashionable scars.”
I do wonder about the nature of some toxic fandoms. Are they not aware that their behaviour harms the overall fandom? Or are they so committed to self-satisfaction that they don’t care? Or do they see themselves as an isolated outcrop, that their actions shouldn’t affect the whole community?
WRT Pokemon, how much of the franchise’s Flanderization was actual response to objections of touchy content, and how much is due to risk-averse people being handed a huge money printer, fueled by parents who are easily mobilized against “problematic” content. It’s interesting that they never tried to manufacture a Palworld-style product themselves-- a deliberately independent universe where they don’t need to worry about keeping it rated “E for Everyone”, but using their proven engines and mechanics.
From what I’ve seen, experienced, and even dared to ask about, some people are very uncomfortable with their own enjoyment of things perceived to be “for kids,” and instead of just letting the proverbial inner child out to play and just accepting that it isn’t a “grown-ass adult (usually man but not always)” thing to do but it’s fine to do it anyway, they instead feel the urge to make it adult in the laziest way they know how: smearing it with cynical amounts of blood, gore, death, and SV.
Remember the Reddit-popularized fad of “what if wholesome family-friendly thing… but grimdark and edgy?” Maybe it hasn’t gone fully away, but that was how a lot of emotionally constipated people tried to reach out to something they’d like if only they could get over their hangups about it being “not mature” or the like. The irony being that a lot of that cheap “maturity” seemed more like adolescent sensationalism and angst than an actual adult take on the material.
I think it’s very possible to have an adult-friendly take on a originally-kid-intended setting and characters. Some of the very best kids shows and movies already do that by facing subjects like change, illness, death, and the like. I even saw a Charlie Brown special that was about a new girl in town that had lost her hair because she had cancer.
That’s probably why I’ve always hated Gambo; its original marketing pitch was smug assholery about how “this is for grown-ups” and “isn’t cookie cutter sunshine and rainbows” because it was like a sloppier Tolkien with a lot of blood, gore, shit, and SV in place of a satisfying throughline, or meaningful ending for that matter.
Pokemen had started with adult-friendly concepts and ideas in the subtext while not wallowing in them. I wish that stayed.