The Unaliving Of Pokemon Babysitter (And Random Thoughts)

I think that my greatest regret with this visual novel is the meta stuff. I hate it so much now that it makes me not want to work on it anymore because I know it’s there, and I dislike it a lot. The Pet Foxes addition to the story actually came from playing Pokemon: Radical Red (I think it was, anyway) and I got to the part where you battle the developer who plays with a joke team of 5 Shedinjas and one Hippowdon which functionally means that unless you’re prepared to sabotage the gimmick with Rain Dance or something the battle is impossible to lose as a joke.

It made me think about meta stuff being prevalent in so many Pokemon fan projects. If you’re playing through this visual novel and involved in the Pokemon community you’ve probably seen many projects featuring the creator inserting themselves into their own work in some way. The reason why I believe it’s so common to see meta commentary in things like Pokemon fan projects is due to insecurity. Basically, Pokemon is a franchise meant for children, so if you’re not a children you might feel the need to hide your insecurity about liking Pokemon at 20 through either self-deprecating humor, or by overcompensating by making liking Pokemon a societal issue by saying “SOCIETY as a whole needs to be comfortable with 20-year-olds liking Pokemon.”

It’s why you see in Marvel movies and modern Disney movies that the writers don’t want to take things seriously, so you see an abundance of meta humor, self-deprecation, and a desire to tackle serious subject matter like racism, sexism, feminism, homelessness, police brutality, and various other societal ills of the world.

This is something that I see brought up on EFAP a lot where they listen to a Marvel fan explain the flaws of the MCU, but they often avoid saying “The movies are not written well,” or brush off contradictions within the films. I feel like something the EFAP crew might not understand is that if you’re a 20-year-old fan of Disney projects you might be insecure about liking Disney projects. Your friends, family, and the people around you who you respect and care about will tell you things like “They’re just stupid superhero movies. Don’t take them too seriously,” and you internalise those things. For example, my sister is actually regularly mocked by my mom for liking Spider-Man. So, in order to continue to enjoy Disney movies as an adult you need to build up a certain mindset, which involves thinking “These movies are stupid, they only exist to entertain me,” which is why you constantly hear people who like the MCU say things like “They’re not the best movies, but they’re fun,” or “Yeah, this is stupid, but every superhero movie is stupid,” or even “We all know that the MCU has always been average, and even bad, but we still like the movies because they’re just fun.”

What I’m basically saying is that with childish franchises like Marvel movies, Pokemon games, My Little Pony cartoons, and CW shows the fan base tends to be divided into two camps, which are the people obsessed with showcasing their maturity by pointing out the flaws in the franchises, and the people who like the franchises for reasons other than them personally enjoying the offerings in the franchise like being involved in the community surrounding the franchise. People who simply enjoy the entries in the franchise on their own either don’t tend to get involved with the fandom, or get involved on a very shallow level. For me, with Marvel movies, I fall into the latter category of fan because, while I wish that I could talk to people about Creepshow (which  genuinely enjoy a lot) I like going to see Marvel movies like Guardians Of The Galaxy Volume 3 mainly because it gives me something to talk about with people rather than it being a good or bad movie, with it being a good movie being more of a bonus to the experience rather than the point of the experience, if that makes sense. I literally don’t care if a Marvel movie is bad as long as I can talk about it with someone afterwards.

I think that’s why modern Disney movies in big franchises are written the way they are. If you’re in a position to be hired by Disney as a writer and/or director for a Marvel movie, especially one that has a budget of $200 million, you likely are in a position where you might be a professional well into adulthood who has far out-grown childish franchises like Marvel or Pixar movies so you’re likely to refuse the job, or accept the job thinking that the fans will like anything you produce because they aren’t smart enough to notice flaws like how Ant-Man’s powers seem to function differently in every movie he’s been in, or they'll like the project in spite of the flaws.

It’s actually something of a pet peeve of mine when I see people say things in defence of Marvel movies where they say things like “I enjoy Marvel movies and I hate the grifters on Youtube who nitpick everything and can’t have a good time with a fun movie,” because it comes across less like they actually enjoy Marvel movies and more like they’re trying to get an easy moral victory over someone far more successful than them by claiming that by being quiet and being easily amused makes them morally superior to the people critical of Marvel, which kinda makes it seem like perhaps the person had friends and family that would make them feel bad if they had a different opinion on something and they internalised those feelings. So, in their minds the way to make friends and not anger Daddy is to shut up and say “Yep, you’re totally right,” or "It doesn't matter, let's not talk about it anymore," and they have complicated feelings about someone earning actual money, friends, and respect by saying “Yeah, that new Marvel movie was shit and here’s why,” which makes them feel jealous and insecure because that’s the person they want to be, the kind that can actually have conversations with their friends and family where they have disagreements without the risk of facing consequences for their opinion.

To put it another way, imagine if McDonald’s was earning a lot of money year after year and had a large number of people online talking about how great McDonald’s is and there was a community of people making lengthy videos about how bad the food served at McDonald’s is. Then, when McDonald’s is making less money and the common sentiment seems to be that people don’t like McDonald’s as much as they used to people are going to look at pretty much every possible reason from the advertising used to how the restaurants look to the people being hired to work at the restaurants before they even consider the quality of the food being the issue, because even people who claim to enjoy McDonald’s burgers will admit that the quality of the food served was always bad but they still enjoyed them for reasons other than the quality of the food. So, in the minds of Disney fans, the films have been bad for years but they still enjoy them for reasons unrelated to the quality of the writing, so they just never consider the quality of the writing to be a reason why anyone would dislike a Marvel movie, it has to be the quality of the VFX, the stars hired to play the roles, the marketing for the movie, and pretty much anything else except the quality and consistency of the writing.

With Pokemon fan games I feel like the intention behind them isn’t often cynical because there’s often little-to-no wider audience for that kind of content, but there is a niche audience that is always searching for Pokemon content that is able to connect strongly with fan-made Pokemon content because the assets available are designed specifically to appeal to a wide audience, and when it’s paired with writing that can connect with young adults in a meaningful way due to being written by a young adult writing what they want to see, it can be a potent combination that I am genuinely surprised that influencers don’t generally cover in a meaningful way. It’s a problem that I have with Youtubers in general where I feel like they’re overpaid for what they do, which is pretty easy to misinterpret so I’ll just go on a quick tangent to explain what I mean.

I don’t make any money from my visual novels and I am motivated entirely by the views and comments that I receive, which means that not getting comments and views severely demotivates me. You can see smaller Youtubers who aren’t making much money, or any money, posting a video every day, or even multiple videos a day, who are motivated by the same reason. However, money motivates people in different ways because likes/comments are free, money is money, and when your career is based on convincing your fans to give you money, working with sponsors, and dealing with Youtube ad revenue, things work differently. It’s a big part of the reason why Youtubers are ‘quitting’ by putting in less effort, or no effort, into their main content and instead focusing on commentary content and reaction content, because their motivation isn’t entirely to entertain their audience and read the comments they leave and watch their numbers go up, they want to sit down for an hour talking about something, hand the footage to their editor, and collect an easy $1000/day.

In the past when Youtubers made their money off of views and ad revenue instead of sponsorships and donations, you would see Youtubers that covered specific niches like Pokemon look for weird fanfictions, creepypastas, and bizarre fan art to make videos about. I believe that this is because if you’re contractually obligated to put out one video a day, or even one video a week, or if the way to earn a living on Youtube is to put out as much content as possible you would absolutely need to look at some pretty obscure topics rather than just milking the main part of the franchise dry. But, if you can get away with only producing one video a month to satisfy your Patrons, or 2 videos a month to fulfill your sponsorship deal, your content becomes less risky and is released less often, which is depressing to see as a creator of visual novels and as a fan of Youtubers. I don’t like the idea that everyone else has to lower their standards for the content they expect from online influencers because the online influencers don’t want to work as hard anymore to produce their content. However, this perspective is mainly due to me being a fan of radio show hosts and podcasts hosted by pretty old cranky men who have the perspective of “I’m grateful to do this every day because if I didn’t I’d probably just sit in my chair watching tv all day, hoping my family and friends will want to spend time with me, and occasionally getting food,” so seeing a 30-year-old guy saying “Yeah… this whole Youtube thing is hard and time-consuming and I want to wind things down and enjoy life,” makes me think “I bet this guy is gonna be one of those cranky radio show hosts when he’s 50,” or whatever the equivalent would be.

It’s actually why I’ve become about as much of a fan of short-form content on Youtube as I can be for 1-minute videos. There aren’t sponsorships or ads, to my knowledge, so the motivation behind posting them is to get views, comments, likes, and subscribers. Posting one a day encourages Youtubers to experiment with more obscure topics, and not having to worry about sponsors means that the content can be more risque. It’s just a shame that it seems like a common thing for larger channels to do is to post clips from streams and longer videos to the shorts page. It’s just kinda disenfranchising to see Youtubers seemingly putting less and less effort into their own content as the editors take on more work to carry entire communities on their backs. As much crap as That Guy With The Glasses got, in hindsight it’s pretty clear that a number of those influencers needed a boss to essentially tell them “SHUT THE FUCK UP, MAKE YOUR VIDEO ON THE LATEST MY LITTLE PONY EPISODE, OR FIND A DIFFERENT JOB,” every once in a while.

I see a lot of posts lately about how Youtube used to be so much better in the early days when people were just posting stuff for fun. I don’t think that a lot of people understand that a lot of those Youtubers were trying to get contracts from websites and companies like That Guy With The Glasses, ScrewAttack, Destructoid, The Escapist, and Machinima or already were contracted by those companies to produce videos. The idealised Youtube of the past never really existed, what changed wasn’t that Youtube influencers got more greedy, it was that you were made aware that your favorite Youtuber is mainly motivated by money. It’s sort of like how you could have a brother with a severe drinking problem that you never noticed and when you discover the extent of his alcoholism you think about the days when you and him would drink a couple of beers together at home before his drinking became a serious problem, without knowing that he was already drinking heavily at that point, he just wasn’t so open about it. Or, to put it another way, the day that The Completionist's charity became an issue was the day that Karl Jobst and Mutahar told you that it was an issue after 9 nine years of it being perfectly fine.

Imagine being the kind of person who loves Youtube videos due to their perception that the person who made the video you enjoyed must have enjoyed making it for you, only to learn later that the person was actually miserable, or even just experiencing discomfort, while making it. Most people would at least feel bad about that and I feel like those negative feelings people would have about being told “I don’t like making Youtube videos due to X reason,” would be responded to with a number of people trying to ensure that you’re as comfortable as possible so that you can enjoy making videos so that they can enjoy watching those videos guilt-free. 

Honestly, it is depressing how complicated entertaining people has become on the internet due to the two-sided parasocial relationships people develop with their audience. It makes me yearn for the days of the older internet where instead of having multiple podcasts, managing multiple social media accounts with revenue options, and having multiple responsibilities related to being famous on social media people would just spend a few hours a day making a video, posting that video, then doing something else with their day, and taking Friday and Saturday off to do fun stuff with friends and family. Why is there this all-or-nothing approach with social media celebrities where social media dominates their life to such a degree that if they can’t commit to spending their entire day on social media they don’t go on social media at all and need to announce their ‘retirement’? It's like how that Dumb Phone trend existed, and possibly still exists, because people felt the need to get a fancy new phone that can't access social media sites rather than turning off their notifications and not using those sites.

Anyways, the point of the Eterna stuff in Pokemon Babysitter and the Pet Foxes meta stuff is mainly to satirise meta content in Pokemon fan games. The idea is that in-universe a group of Ditto are so enthralled with Pet Foxes that they bring in Pet Foxes into the world of Pokemon Babysitter, which is essentially what I did by creating a world using my specific style and populated in with Pokemon, while Mewtwo craps on it because that’s what meta humor tends to be, an insecure writer (me) putting up defences like self-deprecation to protect themselves from criticism that could hurt their feelings if they were completely sincere.

That’s why Mewtwo stops making ‘Eterna’ feel bad when Gallade stands up for him against Mewtwo. That’s the fantasy that I think creatives have when they put their work out to the public to hear their opinions, that all of the doubts and baggage they bring into their creative work will be worth it if just one person defends them from the haters, which also works for fans that want to be the one defending their favourite creator and then kissing them. However, something forgotten in that kind of relationship is that for it to exist we need internet influencers to be haters (or, heels, if you're a wrestling fan), and they don’t want to be that because, like Mewtwo, they get nothing from it aside from personal satisfaction. Mewtwo is disliked by his wife, his son leaves him for someone kinder, and he doesn’t make an appearance again after he is ‘defeated’. No one wants to be the bad guy, but in entertainment a bad guy needs to exist, and in an online influencer landscape which values the perception of authenticity, relatability, and intimacy with Twitch streams and commentary videos, being a hater is just not worth the reward, which has resulted in a poorer culture overall because it means that the ‘haters’ are generally just legitimately nasty people instead of people who can freely criticise others with well-thought-out criticisms, and then walk away from whatever pushback they receive.

That was my intention with the Pet Foxes stuff, at least, but looking back I don’t think that I succeeded in my goal and it’s been a pretty sore spot for me for a while. When I read through Pokemon Babysitter I see a mess with the potential to have been something pretty special and cool if I had taken it more seriously that was sabotaged due to my selfish insistence of stuffing it with meta crap due to my mental instability and insecurities, much like the modern-era of the MCU. I kinda hate it now, and it frustrates and confuses me to see people like it because I just don’t like it very much at all. But, probably the worst part is that I haven’t really gotten anything from the success of Pokemon Babysitter. I haven’t been asked about it by Pokemon Youtubers, asked to go onto a podcast to talk about it, I barely receive comments on it (though, I do appreciate the comments that I receive, to the point where I get overly enthusiastic in my responses), I’m definitely not making money off of it, so the main thing that I get from it is seeing numbers go up higher and higher, which is pretty depressing at a certain point because it means that the difference between getting 20k views and 30k views is so small that there might as well not even be a difference at all, and if I can make a statement like that it makes me wonder how I was able to get into this position in the first place.

So, those are my assorted thoughts that are related to this update. I hope that you enjoy it.