In your comic, do some pokemon (or people) feel uncomfortable eating other pokemon products? I know actually eating pokemon is something the official setting dances around a bit. Pokemon seem to be a lot more intelligent than animals so it's a little strange seeing them eat something like ducklett balut, to me.
Love your art, thank you.
I had plans to draw a mini-comic exposition thing in response to this but the backlog is kicking my ass so, pure text it is
As bold as it'd be to just brush it off as 'in a world where the baseline intelligence level of Everything is that of a small child, sapience would be considered less of important of a reason not to eat a living, thinking being'...
(and also grass types exists, so where they draw the line between animal and plant would be different from real life, but we're getting off-topic)
It would be more fun to consider a more realistic approach! Yeah, eating pokemon is arbitrarily controversial! Because humans are so unique (read: lonely) as a species, our pack-bonding tendencies are jacked the hell up, and anything that pings as "too human" is often off the menu
MEW - The preoccupation with the wellbeing of children is also very human. A dead Ducklett is a dead Ducklett, the only difference it makes is this one did not produce young.
VANILLA - (cringing) I suppose boiling to death as an embryo is not the worst way to go out, but surely we can do better?
KALEIDO - ...I get weird looks when Clarinet doesn't act like a human. He's just humanoid, people are stupid.
Of course, cultural norms and logical reasoning can override this reaction. For the most part, people just mentally categorize all pokemon into 1) pets/friends, whose purpose is to be Friends 2) food, whose purpose is Becoming Food 3) wild pokemon, which can fall into either categories, but mostly should be left alone
SCITA - Too many Bug-types fall in the third category, despite the World Pokemon League's effort to educate the kids :((
(the contents of each categories depends on the person)
For pokemon, the exact rules vary from person to person, and from group to group. Diet, species sentiment, personal relationships, politics if you're in a densely populated enough area, ect ect plays into this calculation.
RIBOMBEE - For some, even the "only kill for food, don't kill for sport" rule is optional! This happens a lot among the [types that are some shade of pink/purple/indigo]
ZIGZAGOON - For the purpose of avoiding conflict, we would sort this out when we form a [party]*
* [party]: group of around 6 pokemon in a mutualistic relationship. It's possible that humans later adopt this pre-existing structure. Their involvement provides resource security and social glue that strengthens the [party].
ZIGZAGOON - Technically I can eat Trubbish here, and I have eaten some, but I got better food and it's literally nice.
TRUBBISH - In theory anyone can befriend anyone, but friendships across the [nemesis] line is rare...
Poisonous gas leaks out of it when it breathes. [Alolan] Muk that catch a whiff of that stench will come drooling. - Trubbish UltraSun Pokedex entry
