canisaries
still occasionally here
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There appeared to be no full thread for this, only fragments of conversations in the chat or cliche threads, so I decided I may as well make one myself.
So, today I started wondering about the extremely vaguely defined ruling religion of Kanto in my TPP works (no, not Helixism, the fossil religions are pretty underground pun unintended in my interpretation) and how I could actually develop it beyond characters just saying 'oh my Gods' instead of 'oh my God' when I eventually need to tackle it. The original reason I made that change was that a singular god would automatically make people think of the Abrahamic God, which would raise a lot of questions about the implication of Abrahamic religions existing in the Pokémon world.
Now, of course there's no reason the Pokémon world couldn't have its own monotheistic religion (or polytheistic with one deity above all others) that avoided referring to the main deity by their real name (if there even is one), but it is true that monotheistic religions in our world are rather rare while polytheistic, animistic or even atheistic religions have multiple well known examples in the Western readers' consciousness. As a result, "God" gives the reader a certain image while "Gods" doesn't have a single equivalent system to confuse it with. However, if an author wants to go down this path anyway, it's perfectly acceptable - they should just be aware of how their presentation appears.
What about the "canonical God of Pokémon" Arceus, then? As discussed in the threads I mentioned, a quick solution to questions of religion in the Pokémon world that's utilized by a number of fanfic writers is simply to use Arceus as a stand-in for the Christian God while avoiding or handwaving the further questions this raises. I'm only really annoyed by this when the phrase "oh my Arceus" rears its ugly head as I think it simply sounds clunky and fails to bring over the time-tested ease of saying OMG which I imagine is the reason so many people outside the religion still use the phrase.
A point that's also been brought up a lot is that Arceus is near invisible in the official media. No one outside Sinnoh seems to care about this literal god Pokémon, and the situation inside Sinnoh isn't that much different. Due to this, a fanfic can ignore the idea of Arceus completely without losing believability. It might raise some eyebrows to have legendaries proven to work as gods while excluding Arceus, but creative freedom goes a long way anyway.
Back to general religions: it should be noted that, naturally, a religion existing in a story doesn't mean it has to be true in-universe. This means multiple religions can exist and, in a realistic case, probably should exist unless one religion has been spread so successfully for everyone to convert (or all non-believers having been killed). On the other hand, gods or other spiritual beings being real doesn't mean people have to know about them or believe in their powers. In an age where empirical science is blooming, skepticism is inevitable. However, I would find an interpretation where no one believed in anything supernatural highly unlikely - not just because the canon mentions lots of different cultural beliefs regarding Pokémon, but because religion is a very prominent element in the history of human culture and society. Perhaps at some point there could only be skeptics alive in the world, but no religion ever having existed sounds impossible.
With all that out of the way, I'd like to share some ideas I had for that majority religion I mentioned at the start of the post. I don't want to make this all about me, though, so I'll put it in spoilers. Whoever's interested can read it and hopefully give me some feedback or pointers, but that's in no way required to participate in this thread. For all the rest of you, go ahead and share your own thoughts and solutions. As this subject can be controversial for some, let's try to keep it civil and respectful. Thanks!
EDIT: The ideas turned out longer than I expected, so I put them in a separate post instead of fitting them in this one. Click here for the link, or just scroll a bit down.
So, today I started wondering about the extremely vaguely defined ruling religion of Kanto in my TPP works (no, not Helixism, the fossil religions are pretty underground pun unintended in my interpretation) and how I could actually develop it beyond characters just saying 'oh my Gods' instead of 'oh my God' when I eventually need to tackle it. The original reason I made that change was that a singular god would automatically make people think of the Abrahamic God, which would raise a lot of questions about the implication of Abrahamic religions existing in the Pokémon world.
Now, of course there's no reason the Pokémon world couldn't have its own monotheistic religion (or polytheistic with one deity above all others) that avoided referring to the main deity by their real name (if there even is one), but it is true that monotheistic religions in our world are rather rare while polytheistic, animistic or even atheistic religions have multiple well known examples in the Western readers' consciousness. As a result, "God" gives the reader a certain image while "Gods" doesn't have a single equivalent system to confuse it with. However, if an author wants to go down this path anyway, it's perfectly acceptable - they should just be aware of how their presentation appears.
What about the "canonical God of Pokémon" Arceus, then? As discussed in the threads I mentioned, a quick solution to questions of religion in the Pokémon world that's utilized by a number of fanfic writers is simply to use Arceus as a stand-in for the Christian God while avoiding or handwaving the further questions this raises. I'm only really annoyed by this when the phrase "oh my Arceus" rears its ugly head as I think it simply sounds clunky and fails to bring over the time-tested ease of saying OMG which I imagine is the reason so many people outside the religion still use the phrase.
A point that's also been brought up a lot is that Arceus is near invisible in the official media. No one outside Sinnoh seems to care about this literal god Pokémon, and the situation inside Sinnoh isn't that much different. Due to this, a fanfic can ignore the idea of Arceus completely without losing believability. It might raise some eyebrows to have legendaries proven to work as gods while excluding Arceus, but creative freedom goes a long way anyway.
Back to general religions: it should be noted that, naturally, a religion existing in a story doesn't mean it has to be true in-universe. This means multiple religions can exist and, in a realistic case, probably should exist unless one religion has been spread so successfully for everyone to convert (or all non-believers having been killed). On the other hand, gods or other spiritual beings being real doesn't mean people have to know about them or believe in their powers. In an age where empirical science is blooming, skepticism is inevitable. However, I would find an interpretation where no one believed in anything supernatural highly unlikely - not just because the canon mentions lots of different cultural beliefs regarding Pokémon, but because religion is a very prominent element in the history of human culture and society. Perhaps at some point there could only be skeptics alive in the world, but no religion ever having existed sounds impossible.
With all that out of the way, I'd like to share some ideas I had for that majority religion I mentioned at the start of the post. I don't want to make this all about me, though, so I'll put it in spoilers. Whoever's interested can read it and hopefully give me some feedback or pointers, but that's in no way required to participate in this thread. For all the rest of you, go ahead and share your own thoughts and solutions. As this subject can be controversial for some, let's try to keep it civil and respectful. Thanks!
EDIT: The ideas turned out longer than I expected, so I put them in a separate post instead of fitting them in this one. Click here for the link, or just scroll a bit down.
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