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Nice Things Probably

@unholy-egg / unholy-egg.tumblr.com

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username is bad i just want my mutuals to recognise me still
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direhuman

me explaining to the other trainers that apricorns are unknown outside of Johto because of deliberate suppression by the Silph and Devon corporations to present artificial pokeballs as the only means of capturing pokemon and establish regional monopolies after they eliminate renewable sources

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itsbenedict

eternalfarnham replied to your post

you’re in the pocket of Big Ball, I see

there’s no pocket for me to BE in, there’s no LOBBYING involved, there’s no SUPPRESSION campaign because you don’t need one! traditional methods suppress themselves when you make modern pokéballs available. you might as well start accusing AT&T of deliberately suppressing the noble traditional art form of the goddamn semaphore.

not to mention OP demonstrates a total lack of understanding of the market realities of the pokéball industry- Silph and Devon are not monopolies, if they weren’t in constant competition their magic monster domination spheres wouldn’t cost two bucks a pop. the ball spec is a public standard, and Bill Masaki’s storage system based on that standard is an open-source project. they’re only the two largest players because they’re able to leverage economies of scale. you still get smaller operations like the Laverre City Poké Ball Factory, with better regional supply chains and local brand recognition, making room for themselves in the market. 

sm FUCKING h at y’all granola-crunching conspiracy theorists. you probably also believe Super Potions cause autism.

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justisdevan

Ok, but it is a shame that artisanal balls are basically off the market now. Like, you have to ride the monorail and hike through a half dozen routes just to find someone willing to sell you a Fast Ball. Believe me, when your boss at the power plant needs five Electrodes by Tuesday you are not going to want to make the trip to Alola; you’re going to head on down to the Mart and get some Ultra Balls, which will do the trick but aren’t well tailored to the job.

I’m with you that modern catching techniques are better, not to mention more humane, but there genuinely is a loss from more niche balls becoming harder to find. Maybe someday the long slowpoketail of consumer demand will be met, but I wouldn’t hold my breath for that Shellder.

look y’all are missing the point. mass production of silph balls crowding out traditional apricorn craftsmanship is, if anything, more a side effect of the real problem: that capture artifacts are too easy to get your hands on these days. $2 basic balls are a problem. before modern ball tech you had to go to an artisan, yes, but part of their job was to care about who had the power to recruit pokémon from the wild, as a backstop against another Knight of Veilstone coming along. there was a time when you’d never lay a hand on a ball yourself until it was clear you respected pokémon, whether tame or in the wild. but now, a “pokémon journey” is open to practically every teenager, even if they’ve got not interest in treating their team with trust and love.

the worldwide rise in the last century of organized crime and apocalyptic cults who use pokémon as their muscle is a direct result of capture artifacts becoming a mass produced market commodity rather than a mechanism for preserving the sacred trust between humans and the wilderness. it’s a miracle that the powder keg hasn’t already gone off by now.

Oh that is rank historical revisionism - what, do you think artisans’ definitions of “respect” were constructed in a vacuum? We already had rhetoric as far back as the warring states period in Ransei about how only the soldierly classes, overwhelmingly descendants of nobility and taught from birth, had the intangible qualities necessary to “bond” with Pokémon. And when we start seeing apricorn balls develop in Johto, which borders Kanto - Kanto, where we know there’s been extensive cultural cross-contamination with Auroran and Dragnoran expeditions - surprise, suddenly only a small population has the intangible qualities necessary to use them, too.

That notion was, and remains, a tool to limit general access to Pokémon in the interest of maintaining class disparities. I mean, have we already forgotten the Aether Foundation’s pseudo-conservationist nonsense? Their attempt to manipulate natural resources and establish a power base in Alola, while they were modernizing and taking their place on the world stage, was founded on this exact rhetoric of “rescuing” Pokémon from local disenfranchised populations, as if taking Pokémon away from places like Po Town would improve things instead of increasing competition between trainers and decreasing safety.

Do you want more disillusioned kids joining gangs? Because that’s how you get Teams!

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sindri42

Artisanal balls and anyone who supports them are tools of the aristocracy to suppress the common folk. In the days when a ball could only be made by hand by an expert, only the wealthiest could afford pokemon, and as a result anyone not born into the “elites” was forced to be subservient to their “betters” for protection.

The release of the $2 pokeball meant that the balance of power shifted to the common citizens. If any child can wield the power of a god, the military and the government and the wealthiest businessmen have no power over them.

More than that, instead of power being determined by the wealth to acquire pokemon, power comes exclusively from the dedication, effort, and empathy required to train them to high levels and to maintain their loyalty. If a person simply buys their pokemon, then those pokemon will either stay at low levels forever, or refuse to obey the human because there is no respect between them; the most powerful people in the world are those who caught a critter at level 2-5 and then devoted their life to raising it into a world power.

And as a beautiful side benefit of this, standard of living has increased across the board. Since every household has at least one minor pokemon in the family and there are increasing numbers of professional, working pokemon joining cities and other civilized areas and working to improve them, every aspect of economy and industry has been enhanced by their supernatural capabilities. Electricity is generated cleanly and in abundance for everybody. Pollution is cleaned up almost completely and instantly. The production of farms, mines, and workshops is multiplied, even as safety standards improve. Yes, every few years another potential apocalypse comes about and needs to be prevented by a couple of brave teenagers, but outside of those incidents the world is damn close to utopia.

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6qubed

…that was all fascinating to read and I would like to see more like it, please

for instance; what the hell is in lemonade that makes it a more powerful healing alternative to regular potions

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suinicide

Opium

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lemondorp

See, unlike in the real world, the Pokémon world has yet to ban cocaine in drinks.

this website is INCREDIBLE

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kurgy

miku expo 2024 is the dashcon of vocaloid concerts. the projectors were replaced with LEDs and organizers told no one, still charged ppl for the projectors. someone stole the Miku canada cut out. vocaloid producers are really mad that attendees are mad that they got scammed because nothing comes before Product. the event banned glowsticks and upcharged the sale of their own, under the excuse that average glowsticks would interfere with the projectors, that the organizers knew they did not have. someone pissed on the floor. car crash outside the venue in san jose

containment breach

Some further points I'd like to add on, as a Vocaloid fan myself:

  • MikuExpo has been going on for years and this is the first time it's been so. ummmmmmm
  • "The Miku Canada cutout", from what I understand, belonged to a fan vendor. Said fan vendor got harassed by venue staff for selling "unlicensed" merch, even though this has always been a thing because Hatsune Miku is a goddamn musical instrument whose clout only exists through virtue of fans making things and it would be absolutely counterproductive to tell fans not to make things. ?????? I believe the cutout was eventually returned but like. holy shit man
  • The hologram technology normally used for Vocaloid concerts is not actually particularly complicated. In a nutshell, it's more or less just a projector combined with a piece of glass or a scrim, similar to pepper's ghost. I used to do this in my family's computer room as a kid by turning the lights off, loading up MikuMikuDance with a black background and setting the monitor to full brightness opposite a glass window. The fact that they replaced this easily achieved effect with an LCD screen is genuinely baffling??
  • People are talking about getting together a class-action lawsuit against Crunchyroll
  • The MikuExpo twitter has been ignoring every controversy and continuing as normal posting about "doors are open for such-and-such venue!" "Don't forget to get your MikuExpo 2024 merch!" while getting flooded with comments just going ADDRESS THE DAMN LCD SCREEN like literally people just want them to fucking communicate and they are. not
  • Miku is set to appear at Coachella and no one knows how the fuck that's gonna go
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nobody warns you this but addiction happens without you noticing and one of the first things that it attacks is your ability to care. if you find yourself using recreational drugs every day, stop and take one day a week sober. if you struggle with this or if you don't see the point of the exercise, you are likely already addicted and you need help.

nobody ever taught me the warning signs for drug addiction, only that "it costs lots of money and destroys your life!!!1" which is not helpful if you can't recognize a developing addiction in yourself.

so here's some things to watch out for with recreational drug use:

  • planning your day around drugs e.g "i'll give myself an extra half hour before heading out so i can get high first"
  • rapidly switching emotions around drugs. you love them but you hate that you love them so much. you hate the way you feel on them but you hate being sober. feeling guilty after using even when you didn't give a crap beforehand.
  • caring less about spending money. if you are budgeting for drugs like they are food, you are likely prioritizing them more than is healthy.
  • getting high to do household chores and other unpleasant things because it would suck less and be more bearable on drugs
  • feeling anxious or restless while sober, not knowing what to do with oneself, feeling lost or ungrounded.
  • thinking about doing drugs constantly even while sober. maybe it's the first thing you think of when you wake up. maybe when you're bored or otherwise have free time, drugs are one of the first things you can think of to occupy yourself with.
  • going to work or school while under the influence, especially if it happens regularly and if you're seeing your performance suffer as a result.
  • the idea of taking a 'tolerance break' sounds good to you until it's actually break time, at which point you can come up with 20 very reasonable sounding points to explain why it wouldn't benefit you actually and you should just keep doing drugs regardless.
  • even if you succeed at quitting the drug, you keep your dealer's number on your phone "just in case"
  • you pretend to be sober when you aren't. you worry about other people noticing how much time you spend high. you make efforts to hide your drug use or minimize how much other people think you're using. you're scared of other people's judgement if they were to find out.
  • you have mood swings laced with self-hatred, regret, financial worries, and guilt. these mood swings are then very quickly wiped away by feelings of "but it doesn't matter, i can do what i want, and clearly i'm doing just fine while using drugs frequently". news flash, if you are rapidly switching between feeling numb-ok and hating yourself more than anything because of your drug use, you are mentally ill.

yes this applies to weed. weed is a drug and you can get addicted to it like any other substance. addiction is not the same as physical dependence; it is psychological and it can happen to anyone. you are not immune to addiction.

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