DARE TO CARE

my partner was a TA for an intro-to-subject course in grad school. finals week rolls around and the students are required to submit this big module assignment they've had like a month to do for a decent chunk of their grade. if you've submitted everything, you'll see a summary screen with a star beside each module name showing it's been completed.

an hour before the assignment deadline, he receives an email from a student claiming they completed the assignment, but the system is not allowing them to submit. there's an image attached to the email. partner goes to open what he assumes is a screenshot of that summary page.

instead, he sees that the student has taken a photo of their laptop from about 2 feet away, with that page open. strange, but it wouldn't be the first time a college freshman has lacked the tech literacy to take a screenshot. he almost doesn't look twice at it, but he realizes something about it just feels a little bit...off. so he zooms in.

the student had CUT STARS OUT OF CONSTRUCTION PAPER and TAPED THEM TO THEIR LAPTOP SCREEN BESIDE EACH MODULE NAME. you could see where they actually had completed the first couple of modules, but the stars for all the subsequent ones were like, double the size of the first two and exactly as uneven/irregular as you'd expect if you were freehanding them with scissors.

And a pokémon is at their strongest by far under the command of a trusted human companion. Though the trust and rapport required means human commanders can only realistically lead a small band, that they form a kinship with in their own fashion together.

This means for a large span of history, warfare in this world was constantly accessible and was defined entirely by very personally driven small bands that unite under common causes and goals- large scale institutional military systems just don’t work.

Trainer militias define historical pokémon warfare, and given how readily accessible the means of war are and how much of a constant volatile threat pokémon themselves regularly pose, this trainer militia system would have been a hugely present element in society.

Scanning forward to the present this doesn’t look surprising. It explains why pokémon battling (warfare reduced to a respectful and recreational sparring practice) has such a huge hold on society, culture, infrastructure, and economy. It’s a war machine repurposed to peaceful ends.

League gyms are remnants of the militia structure, where a given region is likely to have had several allied but separate militias, given the provincial nature of such organizations, likely not organizing beyond the scope of a specific town. And even now those headquarters serve as training grounds and symbols of a community’s strength.

But there are OTHER things that are also evolved from the militia era. Namely clique fashion.

Militias wore uniforms, and made them distinct. But they weren't governmental bodies with their own funds and infrastructure for it, so these uniforms were less like military or police outfits and more like highly specific clothing that everyone IN that militia wore the same. Everyone wear a striped shirt with a blue scarf. Or everyone wear red and yellow coats. Et cetera. This is not obscure- villain teams emulate this same practice today for cultural legitimacy.

But during the 20th century, as trainer militias were gradually transitioning from a military force to a social group, OTHER social groups modeled their behavior and practices after the ubiquitous trainer militias. Social networks across a given region bound by particular interests or pastimes or professional sectors identified themselves as cliques, and “clique fashion” became a signifier of membership. Meaning: wear the same outfit that everyone else in your clique wears.

This is why even today you’ll see backpackers wear the same hat. Delinquents wear track suits in the same color scheme. Hex maniacs don the same gown and sweater. Rangers, anglers, breeders, fairy tale girls, mediums, super nerds, and so on.

The rigidity of clique fashion varies by region. In some regions it’s expected every day, or else you’re seen as claiming not to even BE a member of the clique. In others the clique outfit is worn on a whim, or worn periodically for reason. In some regions clique fashion has more or less fallen out of practice entirely.