Voltorb: The Horrors of Frank-ricorns

Trainer Joey is minding his own business on Route 10, beating up Pidgeys with his (inexplicably) Level 17 Caterpie, singing the praises to everyone he meets about his Rattata (totally in the top percent of all Rattatas, OMG) and the wonders of shorts, when he sees something shiny in the grass.
“Hark!” he thinks. “A Poké Ball! I shall use it to catch a friend for my Rattata!”
He stoops to pick it up, and the next thing he knows… well, is actually nothing, because of the permanent burns and cellular damage, most likely to his heart and brain, the two organs most devastated by foreign electricity.

Trainer Joey
1998-2012
“He loved his shorts”

That’s right, folks: that was no Poké Ball, that was a Voltorb, and poor Joey is the victim of an uncaring corporation’s wanton tampering with the balance of nature.

Wait, what?

The Critter

(Red/Blue Dex): Usually found in power plants. Easily mistaken for a Poké Ball, it has zapped many people.

(Ruby Dex): Voltorb was first sighted at a company that manufactures Poké Balls. The link between that sighting and the fact that this Pokémon looks very similar to a Poké Ball remains a mystery.

According to Bulbapedia, Silph Co and the Devon Corporation are the world’s leading manufacturers of  Poké Balls, and from the descriptions it can be inferred the Silph designed the first mass-produced Poké Balls, and Devon has created further variations on the line (kind of like PCs and Macs). With that information, we’re going to focus on Silph Co as the creator of this trainer-nixing monstrosity.

YES, YOU, YOU MONSTERS.

The History
The first Voltorbs appeared around the same time that Poké Balls started being mass-produced. That means we should probably take a look at the history of Poké Balls; maybe it will give us a few clues.

The first functional Poké Balls were made of Apricorns, a practice that went on for hundreds of years. Apricorns are a special fruit that is native to the Johto region, differing from Berries in that an Apricorn's outer skin is far too tough for it to be eaten by a Pokémon. According to Bulbapedia, anywhere between 700 and 400 years before the events of the games, Apricorn Specialists were hollowing the things out and turning them into Pokémon capturing devices.

And they came in so many pretty colors.

Fast forward to, say, 50 years ago (Professor Oak is one of the oldest characters in the games, aside from maybe that old guy in Viridian City who teaches you how to catch Weedles, and we’ll assume he used them when he was young) when the fledgling Silph Co sees that there might be a market in mass-producing affordable Pokémon Containment Devices. Who wants to wait for each one to be crafted individually? It’s the same mindset that gave us McDonalds and Wal-Mart, eventually annihilating the Mom & Pop stores up and down Main Streets across America. But where to start?

They’d look at what’s being done already, and see how they could improve on it. The first problem would be acquiring the raw materials: Apricorns. Unfortunately, Apricorn trees are notoriously fragile, allowing only one to be collected a day lest the tree die. You could try and have a whole bunch of trees, but trees take up a lot of space, and the return on that space is only a single Apricorn a day. That’s just a bad investment. If only there was a way to breed hardier trees that could grow Apricorns faster… I know! We’ll fiddle with their genetics!

What could possibly go wrong?

Oh, I don’t know, perhaps you’ll EMBUE THE TREES WITH CONCIOUSNESS AND AN INSATIABLE HUNGER FOR ELECTRICITY!

You COULD have made trees that grew hundreds of these, but nooooo.

Perhaps they injected it with Pokémon DNA just to see what would happen. It’s a heckuva leap, I know, but if Hollywood has taught me anything, it’s that when man starts messing around with stuff that nature’s spent millions of years perfecting, we’re pretty much engineering our own destruction.

They went in a different direction eventually, giving the world purely mechanical Poké Balls. Of course, as per usual when massive fortunes are on the line, this mishap was swept under the rug, but instead of destroying all the samples, somebody decided they’d keep one. “It’s kind of cute,” they might have thought, or maybe “I must study this phenomenon FOR SCIENCE!”

BWAHAHAHA!

It escaped. As with every living thing, it needed energy, but photosynthesis just doesn’t cut it for something that isn’t stuck in one place. If only there was some source of energy in massive quantitie- what’s that? A power plant?

You can’t tell me that doesn’t look delicious.

The rest is history. In my mind, they’re still a form of flora, growing on trees but capable of moving around on their own to find good places to grow.

As far as man-made genetic monstrosities go, Voltorb is no Mewtwo, but Mewtwo can at least be reasoned with: Voltorb is just a hungry animal, and like all hungry animals, it will lash out at anything that bothers it, including poor little kids that love Rattatas and shorts, and the likelihood of any confrontation ending well is slim to none.

Though, on the upside, you might get this really awesome scar.

Mr. Mime: Behind the Makeup

In an attempt to face that which terrifies me the most, I’ve decided to focus this article on Mr. Mime and it’s prevolution, Mime Jr. Stand kindly by my side, dear reader, and perhaps we can make our way through this nightmare sandwich together. That, or we’ll both be driven mad; either way, at least we’ll have company.

The Mimes:
Evolution is the Universe's biggest crapshoot. It takes millennia for a creature to grow and develop and become the things we see every day... but the Mime family throws this supposition in the face of everything we think we know about evolution. Look at them: they're clowns. How does something come about naturally that looks like an artificial idea that has been created (in the grand scheme of the history of the Universe) relatively recently?

Let's try and figure that out. But first, a little exposition...

The History:
Miming is acting out a story through body motions without use of speech. The performance of pantomime originates at its earliest in Ancient Greece, with the name being taken from a single masked dancer called the “Pantomimus” (plural “pantomimi”, given here for no reason other than that the word makes me laugh). The earliest recorded evidence we have of mimes comes from the play Seven Against Thebes by the Greek playwright Aeschylus, who is known (suitably, I think) as the Father of Tragedy.

Because NOTHING about this is anything but tragic. 

The Creature:

Mime Jr.
(Pearl Dex): It likes places where people gather. It mimics foes to confuse them, then makes its getaway.
(Platinum Dex): It mimics the expressions and motions of those it sees to understand the feelings of others.

Mr. Mime
(Ruby/Sapphire Dex): Mr. Mime is a master of pantomime. Its gestures and motions convince watchers that something unseeable actually exists. Once it is believed, it will exist as if it were a real thing. 

The Mimes resemble human beings, but only just: two arms, two legs, and a face that contains the bare minimum of features necessary to still be considered as such. Moreso, they not only resembles a human, but a very particular kind of human: a clown. In fact, it wouldn't be incorrect to say that Mr. Mime resembles more of the idea of a clown than a real, human clown. (This is important.)

Mime Jr. is an expert at mimicry, a necessity if it wants to make it to maturity, since a Mime Jr. can only evolve into a Mr. Mime if it knows the move “Mimic”. In game, this just means that you have a Mime Jr. forever, but the real-life connotations imply that those who are not adept at mimicry will not survive. (Also important.)

Mr. Mime is able to emit force fields from its hands, and even create illusions that become reality if people begin to believe they exist. (Super, crazy important.)

The Breakdown:
The Mimes are Psychic type Pokémon: they are creatures of the mind. They can create illusions that only require belief to become reality. They are excellent mimics, and they enjoy being around people.

The Theory:
The Mimes are not flesh and blood creatures, or if they are now, they did not begin their existence that way. Thousands of years ago, they were simply formless psychic energy, drawn to, and perhaps fed by, the most prevalent source of psychic energy on the planet: human beings.

Then, one of them saw a play.

Probably somewhere like this

Something about the notion of the suspension of disbelief that is necessary to enjoy a play (Example: "Yes, I know that the actor playing Peter Pan is a girl, and Tinkerbell is just a candle; now shut up and watch the show.") drew the formless pre-Mimes.

"If they can believe in these people in makeup, what will stop them from believing in us?" might have thought one of the cleverer pre-Mimes. And so, it created an illusion. It might not have worked at first, requiring multiple tries in different forms with several different people, but eventually, one of them mimicked something just right when they landed on a form that someone believed in... and the rest is history.

They probably didn't look like they do now: the white-face-and-funny-hair clown image is fairly recent. Perhaps 2,000 years ago they resembled members of the Greek Chorus; then perhaps court jesters, or harlequins.

Nothing wrong with that. Not at all.



You can almost feel for these guys right around now, can't you? They just wanted to exist. As someone currently in the act of existing, I've got to admit it's a pretty good time. I can't really blame them. But there's one more thing that the Pokedex says that you should probably know about before you go believing in Mr. Mimes all willy-nilly:

Mr. Mime
(LeafGreen Dex): If interrupted while it is miming, it will suddenly DoubleSlap the offender with its broad hands. 

It could just be that these guys are really in to performing, and consider it rude when people come along and interrupt them. But we've already established that they probably need belief to exists (maybe it's like, I don't know, a FOOD SOURCE), and people are more likely to suspend disbelieve during a performance. If you interrupt the believing, they get violent. In fact, there's a 12.5% chance that they'll DoubleSlap you five times.

My point is, that they're getting to like existing so much that they'll get violent if anyone gets in the way of that goal. What happens when we don't want to believe anymore? Are the Mr. Mimes of the world going to unite, go all Catholic School and beat the belief back in to us?

And here's another scary thought: what happens when a Mr. Mime learns to believe in itself? Will they even need us anymore?

So there you have it, Dear Reader: that smiling exterior hides a dark, chewy center that will do anything to survive, and whose food source comes out of your head. Perhaps these are just the paranoid ramblings of someone with too much time on his hands... but perhaps they aren't so paranoid, and now you know to be on the lookout. And as the man said, Dear Reader: knowing is half the battle.

Bulbasaur: I got your back

Bulba-, Ivy-, and Venusaur introduced a generation to the world of Pokémon, so as the song says, “Let’s start at the very beginning, a very good place to start.”
The Pokédex entry in the Red and Blue versions has this to say on the subject of

Bulbasaur:
(Red Dex) A strange seed was planted on its back at birth. The plant sprouts and grows with this Pokémon.

So the 'Saurs aren’t really a single creature, but two creatures living in tandem. According to Bulbapedia, it’s the creature’s mother that initially plants the seed on its back. There are two ways to view this phenomenon: symbiosis and parasitism.

The Background
Symbiosis is close and often long-term interaction between different biological species, whereas parasitism is a type of symbiotic relationship between organisms of different species where one organism (the parasite) benefits at the expense of the other (the host). (Wikipedia)

While there are some fungal and flatworm parasites that are known to affect the minds of their hosts, causing them to act in ways that injure or kill the host for the betterment of the parasite (for example the Euhaplorchis californiensis, which travels to the brain of the Californian killifish and makes it 30-times as likely to be eaten, so the parasite can lay eggs in the stomach of the bird that ate it), the relationship between the animal- and plant-parts of the Saur-family don’t exactly fit this bill, so we’ll stick with symbiosis.

One of the more famous examples of mutually-beneficial symbiosis occurs between the clown fish and the sea anemone: the clownfish feeds on small invertebrates which otherwise potentially could harm the sea anemone, and the clownfish’s poop provides nutrients to the sea anemone. The clownfish is additionally protected from predators by the anemone's stinging cells, to which it is immune.

So, now that all the technical garbage is out of the way, let’s break these concepts down for the "too long; didn't read" crowd:

Symbiosis: everybody’s happy
Parasitism: somebody always gets hurt

The Partnership
In Pokédex entries of Bulbasaur’s evolutions, we learn more about the relationship between these two organisms:

Ivysaur (Gold Version): Exposure to sunlight adds to its strength. Sunlight also makes the bud on its back grow larger.

Venusaur (Silver Version): It is able to convert sunlight into energy. As a result, it is more
powerful in the summertime.

So the Saurs can absorb energy from the sun through the plant on their back. In hard times, this can probably mean the difference between life and death, but what does the plant get out of this arrangement?

Plants need more than sunlight to survive: they also need water and nutrients, and it can be assumed that they can get these from the Saur. They also have the opportunity to travel, increasing their reproductive range exponentially.

Plus, you know it's time to leave the neighborhood

when the trees take to thievin'.

The Breakdown:
The plant benefits because it’s attached to something that will actively seek out water and nutrients for it instead of just sitting around waiting for something to die at its roots, and because the nature of living creatures is to wander, it has a large territory in which to spread its genetics.

The animal benefits by gaining the ability to absorb energy from the most powerful source available: the Sun. Also, most of their most powerful offensive capabilities (Solarbeam, Leech Seed, all the various powders it has access to) come from the plant. In defending each other, they help insure both of their continued existences.

I got your back, bro!
 

The History
What kind of environment could foster such a uniquely beneficial, and perfectly balanced, partnership between plant and animal? Let’s hop in the way-back machine and check out a theory:

Living in close proximity to each other were a type of reptile/amphibian, and a type of flowering plant. One day, the plant releases a batch of seeds into the air, as usual. Nothing odd about this: they’ve probably done the same thing for millions of years without incident.

Same old, same old.
(Also, I am aware that this isn't actually a dinosaur, but it IS adorable.)

Except this time, a seed lands on the back of one of the rep-phibians. It’s probably a little moist back there, and the critter is just minding its own business and enjoying the sun. The seed gets stuck, finds some delicious dead skin cells and thirst quenching water, and takes root in the craggy back of this unsuspecting animal.

What follows was probably immensely painful for the creature. This makes me think that the first Bulbasaur was probably a female: everyone keeps telling me that girls are better with pain, and if you’ve ever seen any movie dealing with pregnancy ever, you’re probably more likely to believe it. As the plant begins to take root, the creature’s pain threshold would have to be astronomical, lest it would have died a long, lingering death and we would probably have only had an original 147 Pokémon (Mew doesn’t count because I never got one, and I’m the only person who matters here, so there).

But it didn’t die. BulbEve survived, and probably had some little Bulbabies of her own, and while she was looking out for them, the plant probably released some seeds, which took hold on the Bulbabies. Thus began a cycle.

Over the millennia, some fine tuning probably took place: continuing generations of Bulbabies were probably born with higher and higher pain tolerances, or their nervous systems got really good at putting out some totally far-out drugs to combat the unpleasantness.

 Another earmark in this story would have been the first time that a root hit the creature’s spinal cord. The creature, by this time, probably wouldn’t have noticed it… until it got scared. The ensuing rush of adrenaline and fight-or-flight hormones could have caused a chemical reaction within the plant, and guided by the signals shooting through the creature’s spinal cord, creating the first consciously directed Vine Whip, or Razor Leaf, or Solarbeam.

Again, this is only a theory: correct speculation is made all the more difficult when its subject is only a collection 1’s and 0’s inside a child’s game-a-jig, but it’s a theory that lets my over-active imagination sleep at night… unlike creatures like Jynx and Mr. Mime, which persist in haunting my nightmares.

On that happy note, I leave you, dear readers. Do you have a suggestion? Is there some Pokémon out there that you’d like me to throw my brain at for a bit and try to explain? If so, leave a comment and I’ll see what I can do.