[Discussion] "I Wanna Be a Master Chef, Like No One Ever Was": for those jobs that *aren't* about Pokémon

[Venia Silente]

As the good song says, to cook them is my real test, to bake them is my cause.

And let's be real, *someone*'s gotta have that goal, or have to serve that goal, in a Trainerverse setting. Sure, most of every child gets to go out to the wilderness and explore the world with a fluffy elemental dingo at the age of 10 on government dime, a small portion of them are going to attend regular Gym circuits at age 14, and by age 18 an even smaller proportion are going to be at the stage of training where they'll be good enough to have to seriously consider if to either specialize in riding Revavroom and maybe a monotype specialization, or getting a driver's license and maybe specializing in ambulance or truck driving.

You'd be correct in noticing the two latter options are not much, if at all, related to Pokémon. That's life for "everyone else" once adulthood comes. There's so much to do in a human-centric society, even if that centrism is somewhat shared. Someone's gotta bake the cakes, someone's gotta farm the wheat for the cakes, someone's gotta plan out wifi coverage across town, someone's gotta build the arenas, someone's gotta report on wrong weather because some silly spammed Rain Dance outside, someone's gotta defend VC startups from Team Rocket acquisitions in court.


And that someone is them you, my dear fellow writer. You who write Trainerverse settings, have the background mission of making the lives of these workers make sense ('cause fiction!). So, how do you go about it? For example, how do people in your worlds work up to studies or jobs for things that aren't about Pokémon? How many years? Parallel Pokémon instruction or not? Does eg.: Law or Med school function like in our verse? How many people do you think make up your world's adult, performance level lawyers, nurses, engineers compared to eg.: performance level trainers? When you want to create a character (likely an NPC I guess) who is a space race scientist or a forensic science consultant working for the police, in a world that has Pokémon in it, how do you do it? What things change, what stays the same?

I'm leaving these here for discussion then. And remember: if you want to be a master chef, knowing your Berries might still be of some use.

 

[gimmepie]

It's not the most exciting answer, but usually these things function pretty much the same as they do in our world. When I write Pokemon stuff, I tend to do so with a slightly more realistic lens. Obviously, a lot of ordinary jobs now have to account for the existence of magical elemental dingoes but the basic idea of education and training isn't so different typically.

 

[Venia Silente]

An interesting related question is if the medical health field for humans benefits from the apparent capabilities there are for Pokémon. In the games Pokémon can be healed in a machine from anything that could be reasonably parsed as "severe injury" in a few seconds. Even the anime doesn't give any Pokémon any sort of "extended stay" for any kind of injury: Keldeo in M15 stays in a hospital apparently less than 12 hours despite its horn having been severed and apparently not giving the adequate Keldeo Horn as a carve reward... Oh and insert manga meme about bisected Arbok.

But... could the medical field apply any of this to humans? Studying technique or technology so that people can , basically, insta-heal from a severe burn, stomach poisoning or perhaps even from COVID, or how about let's regrow severed limbs? Or is this insta-heal a "I'm a Pokémon I don't have to explain sh~t" thing? Because that would play a very serious number on the way medical sciences are learned, not to mention on stuff like pensions, disability, labour hazard theory and law, and a number of worldbuilding elements.

 

[Bay]

Like GP, for the most part people with other careers will function the same more or less like the people in our world. Depending on the career/job, Pokemon helping out is an added bonus. Probably will account some extra training when handling Pokemon, but otherwise I don't see too much drastic changes to be made.

As for the follow up question over medicine, I think it's a case by case basis but serious illness/diseases/injuries the instant heal stuff probably won't work that way and need to be taken care of the proper way.