what to do when your chicken evolves into a manbird
the appalling trend of weirdly humanoid pokemon
i think it would be so alarming if my pet suddenly became as tall as a man.
some might say, well, pokemon aren’t pets, they’re your partners, which i guess is true because i’d never force momo to fight other animals for a myriad of reasons namely 1) she has the combat ability of a worm and 2) it’s “animal abuse”. in the pokemon world it is apparently not animal abuse to make them beat each other up which implies that either they don’t have rights, or they actually enjoy battling. i think the official stance might be that they crave battle, which is also pretty alarming because living in a world full of creatures that can call down lightning bolts, cause earthquakes, and are apparently very aggressive does not bode well.
ethical concerns about fight rings aside, i also think it’s very alarming how they evolve. some evolutions make sense, ok. an eevee goes from a little brown foxdog guy to an elemental foxdog guy. sure. i’ll take that. give it the darwin seal of approval. spearow evolves from a bird into a bigger bird. excellent.
but then you have torchic to blaziken, and i love that little fire chicken but the thought of going from cuddling a cute small bird to hanging out with a 2m tall birdman. manbird. how does one handle that shift? what if blaziken remembers when i squeezed its tubby little bird body and called it stinky boy and one day, i wake up and see a big chicken man looming over me, with a far too intelligent look in its eye?
torchic: cute lil fire bird. i’d probably let him sleep on my pillow.
blaziken: THAT IS A MAN.
why does he have a waist. why does he have hands. why did they make him 2m tall/ 6ft3. do you know who’s 2m tall? no one. no one needs to be that tall, let alone a bird. former bird. i don’t think he can be classified as a bird anymore. i went out and adopted a chicken and now, i’m living with a man.
official blaziken height from bulbapedia.com
imagine this: you’re a wee 10 year old setting out on your pokemon journey. you worry about your single mother (pokemon trainers never have dads) left alone at home with no companions, but it’s all right, she says. she’s got a pokemon friend now. she went out and adopted a torchic. aw, what a cute little guy, you say. sounds like you’ll have a great time together. she names him Nugget.
“take care of my mum, ok, Nug?” you say.
the torchic looks up at you and squawks, not a thought behind those round beady eyes. you’ve seen him dig for worms in the garden. Nugget isn’t capable of taking care of himself, let alone a human, but it’s ok. people say that to animals all the time, but they don’t actually expect a dog to care for anything.
you set off to go tour the continent and beat up other children.
it’s a year or two, and you’re the pokemon league champion. you’re all of twelve years old now and you decide that it’s time to come home at last. retirement sounds good in your old age.
you fly home on the back of your Altaria, admiring how small your hometown looks from above. as she descends, you allow the wave of nostalgia to wash over you.
you get to your house, and everything looks just the same. you open the front door and call out, “ma! i’m home!”
from the living room, your mother says, “come on in, honey! we’ve been waiting for you.”
Blaziken sits on the couch with his arm wrapped around your mother as they watch TV.
“hey kid. i took care of your mother, just like you asked,” Nugget says, with a smile.