the only valid kind of parasocial relationship is that of an autistic person’s simmering rage towards a popular youtube theorist who is constantly wrong about their special interest all the time
this isn’t about matpat because 90% of people already know and assume that matpat is wrong about everything. imagine. if you will. being an autistic person obsessed with a game series since 2008. with a bunch of small localized matpats on youtube whose ill-informed word is treated as Canon Lore Gospel despite being easily disproven within the games themselves. purely hypothetical not speaking from experience or anything
I realize it’s just because they’re trying to introduce the audience to the concept of Pokemon and everything but nothing will ever be funnier to me than prof oak being like “these are creatures called Pokemon, they live in all sorts of environments!” like imagine if you met a biology professor and they were like ‘I’ve been studying these intriguing creatures called “animals’
I maintain that Pokemon starts to make a lot more sense when you stop thinking of the Professors as biologists and start thinking of them as children’s science communicators, which, in a world where children as young as 10 are expected to make their way in a world populated by superpowered fauna almost entirely alone, stands as an important and laudable career. “There are 150 animals” becomes the in-universe equivalent of “There are three states of matter.” There’s too much information in this field to dump on a grade-schooler all at once, so Professor Oak is here to mete out animal facts as they become relevant in an easy-to-understand way.
That being said, I would love to see what kind of shit the real Pokemon biologists are on. I’m just imagining some disheveled, overcaffienated researcher writing a grant proposal for their study on why certain wingull seem to evolve into pelipper faster when they hatched in the winter or something. There’s bird shit on their glasses. They haven’t left the lighthouse in months. This is their life’s work. Ash Ketchum doesn’t need to know about real Pokémon biology.
I never get tired of the thing where fantasy books name something by just calling it a word but capitalising it. Like oh shit, that person is a Wielder. The supernatural ability to see beyond matter called the Sight. Forces of Light and Darkness. The prohibited art of Knowing. A place simply known as The Blight. Awesome and horrible forces. The Force. You know something’s getting bat shit wild when Fantasy Capitalisation comes into the picture. As in capitalising the letters, not the unholy act of seizing fantasy itself in order to churn profit off of it.
That is the work of evil creatures, like The Mouse.
