Anonymous asks:

Hey apparently I can’t post links here so if you click on the reddit page for Pokémon conspiracies, there’s a great read called “Pokémon Cults, Infinite Energy, and how it shaped the Pokémon world”. There’s part one and two. I hope you enjoy the read!

(oh god there’s been a third part in the time since you sent this question in; that one deals with Ultra Sun and Ultra Moon, which I haven’t played yet, so I’ll stay away from that for now)

Part 1 : Part 2 : Part 3

I feel like this is going to be one of those things where a detailed response/discussion would take me hours, so let’s… try and just see what I think of the main points, shall we?

I like the idea of Team Plasma being Knights Templar, because that fits nicely with the zeal-before-reason associations that the Templar order has in a lot of pop culture (the Chi-Rho is more of a generically Christian symbol than a Templar one, but that’s still a good call).  I’m pretty sceptical of a lot of the suggested connections between the ancient Unovan and Kalosian conflicts, though (this thing is a Fleur-de-Lis?  Really?  And… the town maps kind of look similar if you squint at them a bit?), and I’m not sure either conflict is made more interesting if we read them as being the same.  I think I’m pretty much on board with Alpha Sapphire/Omega Ruby’s “Infinite Energy” or “Azoth” or whatever being the same as the light of evolution that Team Galactic tries to harness (although, from what I remember, that plot thread… kinda went nowhere in Diamond/Pearl, which I thought was a shame); it’s all one term or another for some sort of Pokémon “life force” that makes their powers work, or something.  The idea that AZ and his brother must have been part of the cult of Arceus because there are Plates in the Abyssal Ruins is… getting too tenuous for my liking again (incidentally I’m kinda surprised that there’s no discussion here of the text of the Plates themselves).  I like the extra layer that the alchemy imagery adds to all these different events, but I sort of think it’s almost more interesting if we take the Unovan and Kalosian evidence as representing separate groups of people independently stumbling upon the same set of universal principles that govern life force in the Pokémon universe.  In the last paragraph or so of part 1 I’m just having trouble keeping track of what this person thinks now.

Part 2 opens with this stuff about writing systems and how the 1500-year-old Alph script isn’t actually the oldest, and… I feel like there’s two potential explanations for this: 1) whoever wrote the stuff on the Pokémon website never had all that clear an idea of the major dates in the Pokémon world’s history in the first place, or it could even be taken from notes or official sources that date to the era of the original Gold/Silver/Crystal; 2) in-universe, scholars probably don’t know about the Abyssal Ruins script (not many people have been down there) and either don’t know about the Hoennese Braille script or don’t yet recognise it as a script (patterns of dots might be misinterpreted as decoration).  I really like the idea that the “thousand arms of Arceus” are a metaphor for the Unown; the Kabbalah stuff is getting a bit wacky again but I’m prepared to entertain that notion.  The Sea Mauville stuff… okay there is definitely something super shady going on at Sea Mauville and I am definitely very uncomfortable with how quickly Mr. Stone breezes through the fact that all his company’s technology is powered by the life force of Pokémon (because… what!?), but… why do we need Stern to have been given the Bells by a relative of Bill???  If Bill is trying to protect this energy from misuse, then why do he and all his colleagues work with these people?

I AM SO CONFUSED