It’s long been known that people eat Pokémon idk why everyone is so shocked every time it comes up.
Slowpoke tail is a delicacy. Far’fetchd almost went extinct from over hunting. Professor Oak jokes about eating Ash and Gary’s Krabbys. Barraskewa is “surprisingly tasty”. Etc.
And that's not even getting into the horrifying things pokemon do to their prey.
love a good bite of factory farmed mr mime :vegan-tofu:
There was some post not too far back where Pokemon as food came up and it's been hinted at in Pokedex entries or shown in the cartoon where the characters are stuck on a desert island and fantasize about Magikarp sushi and Kingler claws were shown in soup. Far'fetched has a Pokedex entry that states it almost went extinct from over-hunting, and that people cook them with the big leeks they hold.
Farfetchd's design is based on the idiom " a duck carrying leeks," which basically means "an unexpected convenience." It's a moron that makes itself incredibly easy to cook and eat.
Pokemon has actually been a decades-long vegan op. :hail-seitan:
I mean it is named after a Spanish roast pig dish, so yeah
What always confuses me is why people who aren't vegan are shocked at the concept of people eating Pokémon.
probably because pokemon are explicitly depicted as being more intelligent than existing animals
before anyone @s me about how smart pigs and shit are, I already know, but in general pokemon are depicted as much more intelligent than that so it's more comparable to saying "yeah our society eats dolphins all day"
Some of them are dumbasses but I think I get the point that they're more human-like (they often have anthropomorphic traits) than real animals. Well, except for like, Muk, Xurkitree, etc. but I don't think this conversation includes those lol.
yeah I mean there's your slowpokes and stuff but in the anime and stuff you can clearly see Pikachu/etc are generally as intelligent as the child protagonists
Because they're cute and people don't like the idea of eating cute things
All farm animals are pretty high on the cuteness scale imo.
I don't particularly like animals, and tend to think farm animals are gross (and :im-vegan: regardless )
Pokemon are cute like mascots, or emojis. Thinking about eating them makes me think about eating like funkopops or something. I struggle to even think of them as made of meat.
My dad used to have a small herd of goats. They're probably a little too clever for their own good but are fairly endearing.
But some carnists will readily admit cows and pigs are cute and still eat them
Different types of cuteness
A Pokemon is designed to be considered the ultimate companion for a person, as they say "Every Pokemon is someone's favorite" and the idea of eating that hits a nerve
Farm animals are taught to us to be sources of food, so even if they're cute, they're still seen as a food source first and foremost
That's a good point. People have an aversion to eating dogs for the same reason - if your culture hasn't gotten you used to the idea of seeing an animal as food, your empathy will naturally kick in at the thought of killing and eating it.
Are they really different types of cuteness? Maybe cows and pigs aren't as cute as Pikachu, but rabbits exist... Not to mention Farfetch'd is pretty much just a duck, and the article is about Lechonk which isn't much cuter than a real pig beyond perhaps the name. And then there's the fact that many real animals killed for food are babies which tend to be viewed as more cute. I just don't really get it.
And a lot of people have favorite animals too, but you'd be hard-pressed to find an animal nobody has eaten - and not rarely, some of these animals can be regularly eaten by humans without significant outrage from people who love those animals (rabbits, horses).
(I'm operating under the assumption that we're not discussing the merits of veganism but simply whether or not it should be surprising that people view animals and Pokémon differently - I don't think cuteness or indoctrination are relevant factors when it comes to justifying animal exploitation but they can explain mindsets for sure)
Many people simply hold contradictory positions on things for no other reason than "I've never really thought about them". Chuds will fly a thin blue line flag in one hand and a Gadsen in the other and either don't care or legitimately don't see the contradiction. Many people can also think that cows are intelligent, cute, and also food
You can see a good example of this in play when it comes to veal
Lot of people who eat beef would never touch veal because it's cruel and inhumane to eat the young calf
Completely bypassing the fact that the steers that are killed for beef aren't that much older and definitely not treated much better
I think that's because the steer could be treated better, and sometimes is. The veal is inherently wrong by most standards.
Sure. It's pretty common. Still worth pointing out the contradictions, sometimes that's all it takes for people to want to go vegan. Well that or they will go the opposite direction - "if Pokémon can be eaten, that means real animals can be eaten - there's no longer any contradiction, yay".
That's what I thought when I was a kid. We had a rabbit at home, but I would occasionally eat rabbit too... Faced with this apparent contradiction and forced to resolve it, I decided that if I could eat cows, I could also eat rabbits... I guess it's the much easier solution.
Cows and pigs definitely have personalities. I agree that Pokémon express emotions in a more human-like way, but if you consider that cats and dogs have personalities, so do cows and pigs. They've just been commodified to an extreme degree. The only difference between cats/dogs and animals farmed in the West is just cultural habits. u/ssjmarx put it well: "People have an aversion to eating dogs for the same reason - if your culture hasn’t gotten you used to the idea of seeing an animal as food, your empathy will naturally kick in at the thought of killing and eating it."
I don't use "it" to describe animals mostly for this exact reason.
Farm animals sometimes have names - some dairy capitalists even enjoy telling you which specific named cows were exploited for your milk. But I suppose this is a pretty standard marketing thing - corporations love to simultaneously humanize animals and bring attention to the fact that they're exploited.
Only in the sense that forcing these animals to spend their whole lives in a slaughterhouse does not exactly foster a wild and colorful personality. I can assure you cows and pigs have personalities, like, scientifically speaking.
because there's little real distinction between a pile of garbage, a cow, a boy, the ocean, and god in the pokemon universe. They all have roughly the same intelligence, might have psychic powers other other magical abilities, and apparently eat each other. Pigs can't learn to talk and it's weird to eat parrots and ravens. chimps and monkeys are pretty smart and act like us and it's frowned upon usually to eat them. It's considered odd to keep cows or pigs as pets for the most part. but what makes one pokemon dinner and the other your best friend? This gets weirder when you think about if some pokemon could consent to sex. Meowth can talk and is just as smart as a human, I'm not saying it wouldn't be weird but he could consent. Psychic types are also smart and can read minds, apparently they can still be eaten. don't get me wrong, i can see the IRL distinctions being arbitrary too, but at least I can point them out and they kinda make sense.
Well, I'm vegan, so I don't think the distinctions make a lot of sense.
Fair, but my overall point is there's some kind of distinction you can see. They aren't uniformly applied and might all be pointless or arbitrary, but they exist. There's no distinction between a flower that reads your mind and a dairy cow in pokemon
Are chocobos eaten in any of the Final Fantasy games? :thinking-about-it:
I'm imagining KFC buckets the size of an oil drum
I've always imagined that Chocobos, based on their fighting ability and having enough strength to bear a rider, are like velociraptors underneath their cure feathery exterior. Probably way too lean and tough to eat.
just gotta braise it right, make yourself some osso chocobuco
People do chow down on horses, ostriches and kangaroos which are also ridden, made to work or are similarly shaped though. Even the other remaining group of archosaurs outside of birds, the crocodilians, are farmed for meat
They would slaughter the chocobos before they reached full maturity or else the meat would be too stringy.
If one Pokémon is food then they are all food. I demand the right to eat Mr. Mime.
I am going to pretend those are "soy protein lunch slices"
With its cloven hooves and ability Cud Chew, I do believe Farigiraf is the first explicitly kosher animal in the series.
A highly popular property is founded on the ideal of forcing animals to pit fight, just like animal abuser and NFL quarterback Micheal Vick, but that's no problem. Eating them? ZOMG that's where we draw the line! Not with a blood sport for entertainment!
The pokemon world being vegan would solve so many of its problems.
