Overthinking the Pokémon setting to extrapolate out worldbuilding ideas and headcanons about cultural dynamics and Legendary Pokémon.
Ask me anything, especially about Lake Guardians!
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Jason Todd coming back from the dead may not actually be [entirely] a secret (if still not widely publicized), nor something that the public may consider outlandish.
Consider how much nonsense the broader public knows about in-universe, between time-travelers/interdimensional travelers/the supernatural/the various crises/etc. 'An alternate dimensional version of Superman got upset and punched reality hard enough to cause universal anomalies throughout the multiverse' could very well be an accepted part of the publicly known historical record. "Bruce Wayne's adopted son came back to life after the [Infinite Crisis's] 'Great Reality Punch' a few years ago? So what? A bunch of geography seemed to have been rearranged by that. There's probably other people we don't know about because they aren't rich enough."
antisemites are obsessed with the concept of jews taking revenge for what has been done to us. firstly:
there have never been enough jews in the history of the world, there are not enough resources, there is not enough time for it to be even remotely possible that we do unto you what you have done to us
secondly:
and what if we did? would it not by your own estimation be justified?
thirdly:
this only comes to your mind because if this happened to YOU, then YOU would want to take exact revenge. we aren’t like you. we want to live. all we have ever wanted is to live and be free to determine our own futures. we want independence, self-determination, and peace.
we are not like you. and even if we took revenge in some impossibly small and limited capacity, it would never be enough. i don’t know that enough suffering has ever existed for you to be punished for what you’ve done to us.
Tzeentch is arguably constitutionally incapable of not backstabbing everyone including itself and its servants
Via Ahriman, Tzeentch is directly at war with Cegorach and the clowns.
As 'fellow' Forces of Chaos, Tzeentch and Slaanesh are co-belligerents in the clowns' war against Chaos.
After Cegorach steals a Solitaire's soul from Slaanesh, it has to sneak away/escape somehow
Now suppose, hypothetically, Cegorach were to decide to use the Realm of Tzeentch as part of its escape route. Tzeentch would ultimately have two choices:
Kill/capture/corrupt Cegorach. This is front-stabbing one's enemy.
Let Cegorach get away. This is backstabbing both Slaanesh (the co-belligerent who owns the stolen soul) and Ahriman (a favorite champion whose goal (which possibly requires entrance to Black Library) Tzeentch permanently holds just out of reach).
All I'm saying is, Cegorach has probably used this route more than once, with Tzeentch only ever offering token resistance.
Everything I learn about Jewish history opens up at least a dozen more things I never knew.
This one just about kneecapped me, though.
For context: I'm researching a list of every pogrom and massacre and anti-Jewish riot in the past 200 years.
It's already just annual mass murders peppered with, "At the time, this country had limited Jews to only 6 years of school, and school exams were purposely held on Shabbat, and also they were just getting beat up in the streets all the time?"
And yet, one bullet point still managed to jump out and sucker-punch me a lil bit.
Those examples I just gave were ALL from Syria.
Now, first of all: In 1947, Syria had a 2,500-year-old Jewish community.
Aleppo. Tragic images of wounded children and bombed houses come to mind. After over 6 years of a brutal Syrian civil war, it is hard to ima
This painting of Moses parting the Red Sea is from the Dura-Europos synagogue in Syria that was in use about 1,800 years ago.
Then the United Nations voted to create Israel and Palestine. And Aleppo rioted against its own Jews.
Rioters killed at least 75 Jews; set ten synagogues, five Jewish schools, a Jewish orphanage, a Jewish youth club, several Jewish shops, and 150 Jewish homes ablaze, destroying them. Thousands of Jews illegally fled Syria, including half of those living in Aleppo.
The Aleppo Codex, also called the Crown of Aleppo, disappeared for a decade. It was the earliest known Hebrew manuscript comprising the full text of the Torah. And, as the Israel Museum puts it, it was also "the most authoritative, accurate, and sacred source document, both for the biblical text and for its vocalization, cantillation and Masorah (literally, 'transmission' of the Bible, the oral and written tradition by which the Holy Scriptures have been preserved and passed on from generation to generation).... It was probably the manuscript used by Maimonides when he set down the exact rules for writing scrolls of the Torah."
When it resurfaced, 40% of its pages were missing.
But that's nothing.
You see, Arab Palestine was plagued by a godawful fascist the Brits had installed as a leader in 1921 -- before anyone knew what a Nazi war criminal was, much less that this guy would become one.
His name was Amin al-Husseini. And instead of having Palestine declare independence alongside Israel in 1948, he got all the surrounding countries to invade en masse and try to destroy it. To reclaim the land for the Arab world. Including Syria.
Syria was not a hard sell. It was voluntarily harboring a major Nazi war criminal: SS captain Alois Brunner, who rounded up and deported the Jews of occupied Austria, Greece, Macedonia, France, and Slovakia.
The fugitive found a safe haven among Arab nationalists and then went on to share torture methods that last to this day
In fact, Syria was SO on board with al-Husseini's plan that it ALSO introduced a whole bunch of new laws for Syrian Jews!
It stripped them of Syrian citizenship. It shut down Jewish schools. They couldn't have driver's licenses. Or passports. Or buy real estate.
In 1949, it seized Jewish bank accounts. The following year, it banned them from working in agriculture too.
They had to be inside by 10 pm. They couldn't work in public service, in public institutions or in banks. People who worked in the government/military were forbidden from buying anything in Jewish shops.
And Jews were very much forbidden to leave Syria.
They could travel for business or health... if they received permission from the Mukhabarat (secret police), left family members behind to essentially serve as hostages, and left a deposit of $6,000 with the government.
Many people managed to flee the country anyway.
If your kids managed to flee, the Mukhabarat would torture you, and possibly imprison you for several years. Some people died from torture long before it got to that point.
The 5,000 Jews left in the country couldn’t get out,
even with passports, and needed written permission just to travel from city to
city.
There were repeated instances of Jews getting caught escaping the country and being not only murdered, but dismembered.
(In 1958, when Egypt and Syria briefly joined forces, the curfew became even worse. Now it was at 7 pm. And the Mukhabarat would arrest and torture any Jews who didn't make it home.)
You might wonder why Syria kept them there if it hated them so much. The answer is twofold.
First, along with the rest of the Arab League, it had invaded Israel in an attempt to reclaim the land for the Arab world, and failed. It didn't want its Jews to go strengthen Israel.
And second: for a while, it was more profitable to keep them there and exploit them.
In 1953, and again in 1958, Syria temporarily allowed Jews to emigrate.
But only as long as they handed over all their property to the Syrian government first.
(See?)
All of this mirrored not only what other Arab countries were doing, but much of what the Nazis had done in the 1930s. They stripped Jews of their citizenship, their businesses, their jobs, their bank accounts, and forced them to leave their money and property for the Nazi government if they managed to flee.
In 1964, Jews were prohibited from going further than 3 km (less than 2 miles) from their homes without getting special permits from the Mukhabarat.
In 1973, Jews were forbidden to own radios or telephones, or to maintain postal contact with outside world.
Plus, there was constant intense violence against them.
One Syrian Jew described going to the funeral for a neighbor who had been shot, point-blank, by a random Arab man who just knocked on his door and immediately killed him. (And also described having been aggressively questioned by secret police at that same funeral.)
There were many, many murders of Jews which went unremarked and uninvestigated.
The history of Jews in the majority-Kurdish city of Qamishli in northeast Syria is less ancient than in other Kurdish regions across the Mid
But what got me was one last twist.
When Jews died, their property was confiscated by the Syrian government. If their heirs could afford to lease their homes from the government, they were allowed to.
If they couldn't, the property was handed over to the Palestinian refugees in Syria.
So just to summarize:
The Syrian government, along with every other surrounding country (plus Iraq) invaded Israel to reclaim the land for the Arab world. It failed.
It took revenge on the Syrian Jews, who by definition weren't in Israel.
The Syrian government targeted a Jewish population that had been there for at least 2,500 years.
There was widespread, extremely violent antisemitism. Intense restrictions on who could buy from Jewish shops. On what jobs Jews could have.
Jews were demonized. Deliberately forced into poverty and out of their family homes. They were isolated from the world. They were killed for everything from leaving the country to answering the door.
And once they left their homes, left the country, or were killed, it gave their homes to Palestinian refugees.
There were as many as 35,000 Jews in Syria and Lebanon in 1928 - almost entirely in Syria. The population dropped rapidly when the persecution started: by 1957 there were 5,400. In 1989, only 4,000 were left: 90% had fled. Today, there are somewhere between 4 and 100, depending on whose guess you go with.
Syria has successfully ethnically cleansed over 99% of its Jews.
But here's the thing about that plot twist.
At most, 75,000 of the Palestinian refugees went to Syria. The numbers are impossible to fully track; there's great research about how many people left, but not so much on where they each ended up. It could have been significantly lower.
In fact - setting aside, for the moment, the fact that at least four other countries had invaded with it, and at least - hang on, let me count -
at least 10 other countries Acting Like This who hadn't even been involved in the 1948 war -
Basically, Syria started a war to yeet the Jews that displaced hundreds of thousands of Palestinians. And then it turned around and yeeted and attacked its own Jews, confiscated their homes, and gave those to Palestinians.
You can kind of see this as compensation. Maybe. If you squint real hard, tilt your head 39 degrees to the right, and see the presence of Jews as the sole actual problem here.
This is why the social media version of this history is such a successful mindfuck.
It's so far off from the truth, and leaves out such an incredible amount of what happened, that it's almost impossible to counter.
People confidently claim that the Zionists invaded in 1948; that the Zionists attacked in 1948; or that Britain gave Jews the land as some kind of pity gift for the Holocaust.
Nobody has any idea that Britain watched every other country on earth agree that the Jews were about to get killed off if someone didn't take in Jewish refugees - someone else, not any of them - and then turned around and effectively banned Jewish immigration to Palestine in 1939. That it even made boats full of Holocaust refugees turn around and go back to Europe. That sometimes, it just unloaded them and put everyone in its own detention camps.
That if it had followed the League of Nations Mandate for this little chunk of former Ottoman Empire land, and encouraged Jewish immigration, it could have taken in all the 6,000,000 Jews who were instead slaughtered.
Yes, fine, that would have quadrupled the population of the entire country, caused immediate food rationing and massive refugee camps, and terminally pissed off Amin al-Husseini, but it would also have saved six million lives.
Nobody knows, somehow, that Palestine was supposed to be, mandated to be, a place where both Arabs and Jews lived in equality and shared in governing. Or that (if you prefer a two-state solution) it was supposed to be partitioned into Israel and Palestine in 1947. After al-Husseini attacked enough people that Britain gave up on the Mandate.
Nobody knows or wants to believe that no, there wasn't a good fucking reason for all these countries to invade. That THIS was where colonialism and imperialism came in.
When 1,300 years of empire ends, and people who have been marginalized under it get rights, there is an inevitable backlash.
The backlash uncoiled for thirty years while the people in power fought to keep all of the power they'd had. And then, like a whip, it snapped.
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When electrical power lines were first introduced to Melemele Island, and Tapu Koko figured out what they were, it was violently offended: A wild force of nature, its own wild force of nature, was being tamed and forced into an orderly(!) predictable(!!) system.
And then it learned how dangerous the cables were to interact with, and just how easily the cables could be snapped. Those used to climbing anything and everything and the flying things that used to land on any overhang, could no longer do so without care. An unexpected falling live-wire (brought down by strong weather, falling objects like trees, or stray (or not so stray…) Attacks) could come down on anyone below at any moment. Fallen live wires were sources of power to nearby Electric type (and fire type?) Pokémon, and a hazard to everyone else (except for ground type Pokémon, who now have new potential ambush spots to keep Electric (and Fire?) type Pokémon on their own toes…). Those whom would want to rely on them have a new thing to resource to be prepared for the sudden absence of. And then there’s the evolutionary arms race to protect the overhead power lines! In some ways, this new source of electricity forces everyone to be more actively wary of the world around them than thunderstorms ever did.
Needless to say, Tapu Koko is now very much supportive of spreading overhead power lines across its entire island. ...This does not mean it won’t still attack a line, or pole, on a momentary whim, however.
#I don't think I've seen a characterization of mew as... apathetic? it's an intriguing interpretation of it I like it #the serene acceptance that it did its job; it birthed something grander than itself. the offspring needs nothing more from it. #what is mewtwo's success to mew here? what is that? it is 'evolution endgoal' but now what #does mew care about its emotional state? does it Understand? is this mew old as they are sometimes described as being #disconnected from how other pokemon think and feel? #the raw vulnerability of 'I think I needed you regardless' and callousness of mew's reply wounds me
(via @pangolin-404)
Hiii I'm eating your tags <333 also, have this from about 6 hours ago
Where last we saw Mewtwo, on Cero Island in a sanctuary of pokémon he rescued, he probably had an off-screen temporary field-lab in imitation of the one on Mt Quena. "Temporary" and "field" still of course mean that he's got advanced medical tech, supercomputers (possibly with untraceable internet access*?), etc that he either assembled in a cave from whatever scraps and local supplies he has on hand (plus possibly some amount of reality warping to conjure things up?), and which he can easily disassemble or teleport with the sanctuary.
(Bulbapedia notes that the rescued pokemon are "a reference to the kinds of animals used in cloning research in the real world". Assuming they've also been rescued from sterile genetics labs, the equipment probably looks organic enough (as in M1) to not scare them)
*possibly having started privately communicating with N?
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Musings about how to depict Mewtwo in Pokémon Journeys era-stories
(slightly reworked from an old SB post back when the news first broke that Masachika Ichimura would reprise his as Mewtwo role for an episode of Pokémon: Journeys - and which could now be applied for fanfics instead)
Mewtwo should be portrayed as the frankensteinian supergenius superscientist existential philosopher that happens to be a (superpowerful, if not the most powerful) pokemon, rather than a superpowerful pokémon that happens to be smart if that detail is currently relevant. In my mind, every time he appears there should be some big idea to expose kids to - which the story (and he himself) is engaged with.
Any raid battle against him should last a minute with the conclusion 'no, fuck you. Mewtwo cannot simply be caught let alone beaten (see: Gary's battle). That you're still present and alive is simply because Mewtwo doesn't want to teleport you away and forget he exists/turn back time so you haven't met him/make your head asplode. No, the rest of this episode is about [dealing with] social anxiety or it being okay to be different and/or some philosophical debate.' And any subsequent guest appearance at the lab when he might decide to show up has him engaged in conversation with someone (be it philosophy with Ash and Goh, or science with one of the researchers, or what have you) and eating standing at the table rather than being like Mr Mime and sitting on the floor with the other pokémon like a pet. And have things get to the point that the viewer has to be reminded 'ohhhyeeeaaaahhhh, he's also one of the most powerful pokémon in the world.' Whatever the current problem that's going on while he's around that needs to be brute forced is fixed. Now moving on to the more cerebral problem of the special episode that can't be solved by snapping Mewtwo his fingers....
(This isn't to complain about what Mewtwo was doing in the actual episode, mind - though one does have to assume that he was holding back during the battle for Ash's sake. I just remembered the post and figured that the musings may give people ideas)
TLDR: The Tree of Beginning only hosts select species of pokémon. Mew teleporting Pikachu and Meowth to the tree was a poorly communicated attempt at rewarding them for their behavior on New Island.
(Continued from here)
Without loss of generality, it is safe to assume that there’s probably many other species of Pokémon inhabiting The Tree beyond those we see on screen.
As headcanoned in the previous post:
The tree is supposed to be, essentially, a sanctuary and time-capsule for Pokémon species to continue to survive even after they go extinct outside.
The species brought into the tree were initially brought in before they went extinct outside, rather than after.
From point 2, this would indicate that, given the presence of anorith, the tree is probably around three-ish hundred million years old (postdating the existence of trees, but early enough for trilobites to still be around). The tree is probably old. Even if we relax the constraint of point 2 somewhat and invoke time travel to import some species that couldn’t otherwise appear there[1], this place may very well have been around for more than one geological era.
It isn’t unreasonable to assume that the canon prehistoric Pokémon (be they fossil pokemon like kabuto or Aurorus, or ancient power pokémon like tangrowth or relicanth) had other contemporary prehistoric Pokémon species which we’ll never see - possibly orders of magnitude more of the latter at any given point in prehistory than the former.
But, The Tree clearly has finite space. Consider how many different Pokémon species (treating different stages as the same species) must have been around over the millions of years, and all those that ever will be. Now multiply that by the number of individuals would be needed to maintain a sustainable population. There can’t be enough room for everyone. The only way to avoid running out of room, short of cycling old species out for new ones, is to be selective about which species are granted immortality: For all eternity, Mew - to whom mortal pokémon are presumably its beloved creations / descendants / friends/art projects(?[3]) / etc - must occasionally play rounds of what is essentially an interspecies doomsday-vault variation of Sophie’s choice.
Which species (and which members of the species) will be brought to The Tree, and which to allow to go extinct. Which will be preserved and which can go at their timely end. Which can perish by dehydration and which by drowning. Which by heat and which by cold. Which by starvation and which by suffocation. Which by predation and which by out-competition. [4]
Generally, those picked are Mew’s long time favorites; ones regarded as biological masterpieces; the species it eventually concludes that it can’t bear to live without. But sufficiently meaningful acts by individual members of a species, if witnessed by Mew, can also be enough to convince it to keep the species around.
For instance, the Pikachu and Meowth on New Island were the only ones to not engage in the mass Original-vs-Clone struggle battle which turned out to be a foolish idea in hindsight[3]. In M08, Mew impulsively took the opportunity when encountering them [5] to bring them to the tree in order to live in paradise and become the first members of their respective starting colonies. Letting them know what was going on was an after-playtime-Mew’s problem. (The fact that this is kidnapping and its new mayfly friends(?) may not (initially?[6]) actually want to be here (and other mayflies may come looking for them) clearly didn’t occur to Mew yet).
-----
[1] The IRL species Anorith actually most resembles, Anomalocaris, went extinct at latest over 140 million years before trees evolved (~480-470MYA vs ~350-300MYA)
[2] In the original Japanese version, everyone fighting without using moves was Mew’s idea. It just thought the originals would win that fight.
[3] For a framing of Mew in a headspace wherein Pokémon species are likened to artwork, see my parable "Mew: The Kid with the Crayons"
[4] Obviously this doesn’t map entirely to the above, but it could help as a starting point if you want to try to put your headspace in The Judge’s POV when reciting Unetanah Tokef on Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur. (The plan for chapter 8 of my dormant Lament of the Elder Kitten fic has been to dwell on this as one of the chapter's two big ideas)
[5] Or perhaps just pokemon of the same species that closely resembled them? Given how old Mew probably is (assuming only one exists), for all it knows, the ones on New Island could have died of old age in the brief period while it wasn’t paying attention, and these are their distant descendants.
[6] e.g. “well obviously they’re acting shocked. That’s what happens when one who can’t teleport is teleported by another being. One’s mind needs to adjust to the change in environment (sensory inputs, scenery, climate, etc). That’s fine: the shock wears off very quickly, only about a few barely noticeable lunar or solar revolutions in the most extreme case. Basically a blink of an eye."
Mew: The Kid with the Crayon.
A Parable about Mew's perspective of Deep Time
[AN: The following was written back in 2018, where it was posted on SB. I had started brainstorming a Mew POV character piece, set immediately after the original Japanese version of M1, and this was intended to elaborate upon how I imagined Mew's headspace would develop up until the fic would start - just in case the actual fic didn't get finished. I post this here for your consideration]
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You are a kid named Myuu. You've just started kindergarten/camp/etc, and life is wonderful. The teacher/counselor/etc assigns everyone a role. And you get what's obviously the best one: you're the kid with the crayons - if anyone needs something drawn, you're the one that gets to do it. The days go by and you have fun playing with others and drawing whatever comes to mind, and life is wonderful.
A few times, kids who'd finished their appointed roles leave the class. That won't happen to you of course, you're Myuu - The Kid With The Crayons - and you'll always have something to do. So you continue playing and drawing, and sometimes your drawings come to life, meaning you have new friends to play with. Which means that life is wonderful. Then two kids who've completed their tasks get in a huge fight and so get kicked out (or put in time-out, not that it makes a difference to you), and you begin to worry: will you ever have to leave too? Of course not, you reassure yourself: new drawings will always be needed. That settled you put the worry out of your mind and go back to your wonderful life. Some of your friends point out that things must change over time. That's silly of course, life is wonderful the way it is.
One day, you find yourself running out of room. The suggested solution is to use white out and draw over your old artwork. But you love all your artwork, and can't stand the idea of destroying it. So you arrange for a special cubby to put your old stuff. You'll have to go there every so often to make sure it stays, and make other compromises, but it's a solution. Now you, Myuu: The Kid With The Crayons, will never run out of space for artwork. Life is wonderful.
It quickly becomes obvious that even this solution won't let you keep everything: There's finite space, and you don't want to run out of room there and be forced to choose between what you've preserved. Instead, you'll have to be selective from now on about which artwork is precious enough to add to the cubby, and not keep anything else. Everything else, every cherished work of art you can't keep will have to be thrown away or drawn over. But if you're diligent enough, if you can save up the money, if the other kids are willing to help, you may be able to assemble and reserve more cubbies. The same rules will apply to those as to this one, but that's fine. Great even: it's something to look forward to! You'll have multiple spots with artwork to return to and reminisce at. Really! Life is wonderful.
A long time passes. Sure, some other kids who've completed their roles decide to go sleep, but you still have lots of friends to play with and things to draw. And occasionally you get new classmates. new kids. Friends, though not as close as your earliest ones. One day the teacher introduces some new kids - 'humans' - who he's really excited about - and, along with some of the smarter kids, thinks they will one day be able to run the entire classroom. Not that they'll ever replace anyone, of course - that's just silly. Especially not The Kid With The Crayons. But they can be adorable and smart and creative - so they give you or inspire you with ideas for new art. Things you'd never thought of in a bajillion years. So life is wonderful. Sometimes, though, the humans will bring in or make their own crude crayons and draw things themselves. But that's your job, so you get the teacher to intervene, or stop them yourself. Your position secured (until the humans forget again), life is wonderful again.
(It's taken a while, but you finally have the resources and promises to begin working on the second cubby. It will take a while more before you can finish. Until then, you will continue to have to choose.)
More and more of your oldest closest friends finish their jobs and stop showing up. Most of them, by now, actually. A lot of the newer kids find tasks to start up where others have left off, and they're friendly, but it isn't the same. Friends are friends though, so life is wonderful.
One day, the teacher doesn't show up. And he isn't there the next day or the day after that. And so on. You don't know when or if he'll come back. Things become somewhat chaotic then (not that you mind, so long as you can continue playing and coloring) until - as teacher and some others predicted - the humans start running things. Was that why teacher left? because he wasn't needed anymore? No, you're told: He had gotten hurt or something (you never really bothered to learn the details), and has to take some time off. That resolved, you continue to have fun. Why shouldn't you? Life is wonderful after all. Slowly though, the humans forget some of the rules teacher set up about drawing (they weren't here when they were announced, after all), and once more one tries something. And you stop them yourself. But its harder this time. No matter. they stop taking your role, and that's all that matters. Slowly they get stronger and more numerous. So you get shy around most of them. That doesn't mean there aren't kids to play with. It just means that lots of kids don't know where the new drawings are coming from, that's all. And play and draw you do, because life is wonderful for The Kid With The Crayons.
Today, you came in to find that some of the humans created a drawing that came to life of you but off. And not!you has decided that the only way of proving that he's a real boy is by be better than you and those humans who drew him. You approach him to find that he has made for himself crayons of his own -and he's copied some of your drawings exactly (which shouldn't be possible. no one is as good as you). So, forcing the humans to watch, he challenges you to a fight - part physical part draw-off. Of course you agree: no one can out-fight or out-draw you - you're The Kid With The Crayons. Each and every drawing is found to be identical; physically the two of you are a mirror match. And then of the spectators decides that if you keep at it your crayons will become dull or you'll run out of paper, only to get hurt. That wasn't supposed to happen. Good thing you know how to make boo-boos feel better. Then you and not!you look at each other, and conclude that this fight was silly. He doesn't need to beat you to prove he's real, and you should treat him like any other new kid.
As you show him somewhere to put his drawings (your in progress Second Cubby, which is close enough to being complete for his more limited purposes), a thought occurs to you. He's just like you. All of kindergarten you've defined yourself as Myuu: The Kid With the Crayons. But he's Myuu too: also the kid with the crayons. So who are you really? What other role do you have? And if you don't have a role of your own anymore (because Not!Myuu can draw too), does that mean you're unneeded- that you have to leave? And if you leave, what happens to the cubby with the old drawings? You don't want to go. "Life is wonderful" you remember telling yourself, but why?
--
AN: The idea sort of being that even In the area of existential angst, Myuu and Myuutsuu are reflections of one another. I have spent the past 8 years bashing my head against the wall trying to finish my Mew POV character exploration fic, "Lament of the Elder Kitten", set immediately after the original Japanese version of the first movie. I know how everything after the middle of the next chapter goes (everything gets resolved in the end with Mew learning the same lesson that Mewtwo does in Mewtwo Returns), but the beginning and middle have been fighting me (and thus ADHD has decided to refuse to let me focus on it) since 2021. Hopefully this will get enough attention that my brain will be willing to cooperate. (and if I can finish that, a cleaned up and reworked version of this as a coda to Lament, where Prof Cerise asks Mew (having been befriended by Goh and brought to Cerise's lab to show him) something along the lines of 'what is it like being Mew' and experiences a sort of spirit quest 'here is what it feels like to be Mew, forever' (with a less childish tone, and among other things, the classmates replaced with cohort of academic colleagues/collaborators, and the cycle of speciation and extinction more emphasized with 'drawings' replaced with 'Magnum Opus publications which are also Chloe')
The thing about ADHD is that the "lack of reward chemicals in your brain" doesn't just mean that you don't want to do any tasks that don't feel particularly yummy :(, it means that your brain will look at chores and tasks that need to be done like "doing this would be painful and tedious for absolutely nothing to gain from it, Do Not Do That." The same thing that your brain tells you about everything else that would feel really bad and hurt the entire time that you're dying. The part of your brain that stops you from doing the thing is the same part that keeps you from shoving your arm into a wood chipper.
With unmedicated, unmanaged ADHD, "I have to do this assignment or I fail and my life will be ruined and I die" feels like a SAW trap, every single time.
This is why looking at the high rates of burnout experienced by ADHDers only through the lens of chemical imbalances in the brain is a mistake.
ADHDers are more prone to burnout because we are taught from a very early age to ignore literally every single limit our own bodies try to set.
If you've been taught that you have to consistently put your arm in the wood chipper in order to survive, chances are you will keep trying to put your arm in the wood chipper even when there is no arm left.
Their campsite sat near the forest edge, beside a small lake. It is a vision of tranquility. Peaceful. Serene. Quiet.
"ASH!?"
"SCOR!?"
"ASH!?"
Gou and Scorbunny circled past the lake a fifth time. his traveling companion had vanished an hour ago. He couldn't have gotten that lost, could he? But there weren't any tracks he could see. No. There! Into the lake! Oh no oh no oh no. What if he fell in and drowned? He'd have to call a ranger or something or ... And he could couldn't see Ash's body in the water. Was he eaten by water Pokémon? Oh MAN! What was he going to tell Ash's mom?
'...He's gone. I let him drown! I'm sorry I'm sorry I'm-'
And then the he noticed it. Nearby, calm water begin to ripple and swirl. What?
The disturbance changed further: As the disturbed water spun faster, it began to abnormally darken, taking on a purplish-hue. The diameter of the region rapidly expanded, and the accelerating swirl became a whirlpool. Except, it seemed almost that it wasn't the water that was moving, but the reflection on the surface. The mouth of the whirlpool widened into a hole some fifteen feet across. This wasn't a hole in the water: it was a hͬ̂̾̃ͤ̆o̷̾͐͒ͣ̈́l̨̗͔̞̼͂͊ͭ̒e͕̤̫̖͖ in the world.
Out of the hͬ̂̾̃ͤ̆o̷̾͐͒ͣ̈́l̨̗͔̞̼͂͊ͭ̒e͕̤̫̖͖ flew a massive striped wyrm. Its head alone -including its crown/horns/mandibles(?) - was about as large as he was tall. And upon the back of the wyrm (which began to glow and change into a hexapedal winged dragon) were Ash and Pikachu. The duo jumped onto shore and turned to face the horrifying house-sized creature (A Pokémon?). And it was horrifying. it looked wrong - almost ghostly - the shadows it made too dark, and almost gaseous. The light reflected in such a way that - if not for the surroundings - he wouldn't be able to tell how close it really was.
"Haha! Thanks Giratina! I guess I owe you one."
"Pika!"
The huge dragon - Giratina it must be called - c̷̤̭͆̉̍̉͗ȟ̝̻̣̲͌i͍ͥ͌͛́r̈̌̊ͭ͒҉̫p̨̮̠ͫ̀̚e̪͙̥͙̗͈̥ͧ̂ͭͤ̽͐ͨ͞d̝̠̪̙͉̩̅ͥ/̛͍͔̳̔r̲̫̤͚̜ͥ̑̾ͧ̾o̵͖̮ͨ̈̍͆̚a̱̙̹ͨ̃r̖͖̤̭̺ͣ͛͒ͬͣ͘ẻ̛͉͔̥̺̤͂ͥ͌ͯd̬̞̖̖̭̒ back at him. Chirped!
Then Ash turned to notice Gou.
"Hey Gou! I want ya to meet Giratina."
'...'
"Giratina, this is Gou."
Giratina turned towards the boy and nodded. It nodded at him! Then it turned towards the lake and r̴̹ͥͩͩ̀̆o̻͙͔̩ͨ̒͗̌ȧ̻͕̲͒̋͆͝r̊̑ͣ̓̓̐ḙ̈́̓͌d̲̰̲͔͈̱͚͑͑̆ again, creating a new p̧̞̰̳̭̍̀́͘͘ȏ̴̯̲͍̒̉̑̈́̏ȑ̷̡̭̖̳̰̻͆͊t͔͍̳̩͔̻͗̏̃͝ä͍͔̖̣̲́̏͊̂̉l̴͕͍͐͌̉́͂͆̚.
"I guess was nice seeing ya again. "
"Pikachu!"
The Dragon c̷̤̭͆̉̍̉͗ȟ̝̻̣̲͌i͍ͥ͌͛́r̈̌̊ͭ͒҉̫p̨̮̠ͫ̀̚e̪͙̥͙̗͈̥ͧ̂ͭͤ̽͐ͨ͞d̝̠̪̙͉̩̅ͥ/̛͍͔̳̔r̲̫̤͚̜ͥ̑̾ͧ̾o̵͖̮ͨ̈̍͆̚a̱̙̹ͨ̃r̖͖̤̭̺ͣ͛͒ͬͣ͘ẻ̛͉͔̥̺̤͂ͥ͌ͯd̬̞̖̖̭̒ then flew into the p̛̟̳͚̺͍͙̿͌̚ó̴̰̩̣͕̒͆̃ͅr̬̮͈̖͕̀͌͘̚͝t̷͍̞͎̍́̃͊̊̑a̮̯͕̍́̑̃͆̍̚ļ̹̻͎̣͍̟̿̂̒ leaving them alone.
The veteran looked at Gou sheepishly. "Sorry if I worried you. I kind of fell in to a Reverse World portal, and we needed to find our way back. ...It was great seeing Giratina again though. Wasn't it, buddy?"
"Pika!"
"Oh hey! look! its a family of butterfree!"
At which point the trainer started running to get a better look.
Gou simply stared at him. Then at the lake the presumably powerful Pokémon just departed into. Then back at Ash.
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Dooku’s characterization is infamously inconsistent. The biggest example of this inconsistency is his space racism. The only times his inner monologue shows him to be a space racist (the RotS novel) are during the battle of Coruscant while he's in the same room as Mr Corruptive Space Devil/Wizard at the final stage of 13+ years of increasing dependence on the dark side. We don't even see this space racism (at least where Yoda is concerned) in his Yoda:Dark Rendezvous inner monologues a few months earlier.
What’s going on here? And how do you even go from ‘Yoda’s Padawan’ (and Y:DR’s ‘Yoda’s former Padawan turned-Sith who still has fond memories of his teacher’) to ‘human supremacist who ensured that aliens would be the major powers within the Confederacy in order to villainize non-humans within the Republic [human] citizenry’s collective consciousness and plans on enslaving all aliens under the Galactic Empire when the Confederacy has outlived its usefulness’?
It can be helpful to compare to the other big disagreement in characterization: His inner monologue in the Novelization asserts that his idealism and integrity was always a carefully curated act. His inner monologues and internal depictions in other works set earlier in his life (Yoda:Dark Rendezvous for example) don’t agree. Sure, we can resolve this by concluding that one of the works must be wrong/noncanon (or that the different works occupy mutually exclusive sub-canons). But then, there’s another option.
Remember: the Dark Side/Psychic Space Meth is mentally corrupting, as it involves enabling/focusing on/stewing in one's inner darkness/worst instincts/selfishness at the expense of everything else. By the time of RotS, it’s likely that he’s internally rewritten his own history to reject the idea that he’d ever been anything other than a psychopath putting on an act. The same is true, I suspect, for his xenophobia.
I doubt he was a human supremacist space racist before Palpatine (and Damask?) began corrupting his arrogance, desire to reform civilization, and distain for pervasive societal corruption into a desire to replace the republic with an autocracy in his (and his good pals') image. It may not even have been the case when Dooku started building/co-opting the separatist movement in ~32BBY: An argument can be made that Dark Side (and Palpatine's) influence caused him to mentally conflate different self-justifications for his assigned role in the Grand Plan until he forgot why he started.
We know that when he co-opted the burgeoning separatist movement to use as controlled opposition:
1. he specifically brought in organizations he disliked (and worse, their disgusting droid armies) and wanted to have purged. The corrupt and decadent republic (and powerless Jedi Order) wasn't willing to do so otherwise, but this should change if brought into a bloody war with them.
2, many of these corrupt organizations had prominent alien representation and demographics. Also, droids and cyborgs.
3. Due to extant political issues ([mostly human] Core vs [less human] Rim, some human speciesism), the planets which had already been entertaining the idea of seceding had significant non-human populations.
4 The Core worlds make up a majority of the republic population, and their populations are themselves plurality (if not majority) human. Due to the extant political realities, this means that the non-seceding side has a much smaller percentage of noticeable nonhumans and much larger percentage of noticeable humans comparatively.
5. He understood the grand plan to be one where Galactic Civilization would be cleansed of corruption in the fires of galactic war, with the controlled opposition intended to lose, and the Republic replaced with a New Order answering to the Sith. You know, a New Order in his (and Palpatine’s) image, operating according to Dooku’s (and Palpatine’s) ideals. Where the Jedi Order will no longer be shackled to the narcissistic Senate.
6. He’s been assured that at the end he’ll be allowed to return to the Corusca system, drop his saber, and rely on someone younger to dirty their hands in his stead.
7 All he needs to do to is embrace and build up his hatred for those he despises and then he will have the power to achieve his goal. Everyone will be safer and better off in the end. Qui-Gon’s death will not be for nothing.
8. Treachery is the way of the Sith. Yes, I’m betraying the trust of the separatist movement by turning it into a controlled opposition intended to lose, but it’s all for the greater good. Break a fews eggs and such. It’s not my fault that they are naive and foolish enough to trust others.
Well obviously *I’m* not going to be purged along with the controlled opposition (by point 6, I’m promised a nice and comfortable retirement). I’m actually part of the in-group. A respectable aristocrat. The new Empire will be partly made in my image. Well, mine and my new Master’s. An autocratic police state genuinely willing and capable of cracking down on those disgusting lesser beings. /I’m/ not a ‘lesser being’. I am (like my Master) an exemplar of what a citizen of the new order should be. I’m nothing like the disgusting rabble of this new confederacy. I hate them. Hate. Hate. They’re unlike me. Unlike the ideal trustworthy citizen promoted by Palpatine’s new COMPOR. They’re … They’re sub-human. That’s right. Compare the demographics of the Confederate senate - or those wastes of matter in the Executive Council - to those like us. The people who will inherit the galaxy. I remember now. Yes. That’s why I brought them into this controlled opposition: Because they’re non-human. Obviously. Soon the time will come when I can distance myself from these aliens. No Gunray, no Tambor… I look forward to enslaving or purging all of those freaks.
My headcanon is that Ash, Dawn, and Brock catch their respective lake spirits, later on in life.
Mesprit likes to be around Dawn's uninhibited and plentiful emotions and they gossip together and indulge in fine things, like food, spacare, etc.
Uxie hangs around Brock and helps him when he's struggling with his medical work, which he initially feels guilty about; like it's a crutch and he's not really doing his job. Olivia takes time to assure him that, as the current Chosen for Tapu Lele, being actively aided by the divine is a blessing that he should accept and be grateful for.
Azelf just likes Ash. They like feeding off the misadventures he gets into, and is basically just an adrenaline junkie. They're the devil on his shoulder for bad ideas. If they ever fuck up though and Ash gets seriously hurt, they endow him with enough willpower and a lil' stardust to come back to the living side. But hopefully that just doesn't happen and they have a good time. Also, they're pretty emotionally repressed and kiiinda distrustful of humans after the Cyrus incident, so Ash helps peel that back. They get fickle and confused when he shows genuine compassion and concern and try to cover it up with affectionate banter and more thrill seeking.
izzy806
dailybridgerton
