muftiday replied to your post: I’ve been working my way through Ultra Moon and...
im pretty sure the game implies the pokemon are frozen alive?? thats how i always interpreted it, like being forced to forever be between life and death staring at this mad woman who obsesses over you, and i always imagined the pc was a place like its implied a pokeball is? if a pokeball has a comfortable environment for a pokemon to chill in the pc should too, and they have the company of the other pokemon right? especially with the poke pelago
I suppose at that point the ethics depend on if the frozen pokemon are conscious or not - if they are lucid, then it’s absolutely a hellish experience. If the crystal prisons function on modified pokeball technology where the pokemon are just on display but unable to move then yeah, it’s pretty horrific. From what I remember, her pikachu had closed eyed/seemed to be peaceful to me? But that doesn’t really mean anything. We frankly don’t know enough about them so interpretations depend on what side of Lusamine Discourse you fall on.
In terms of if pokeballs/PCs are a place - I think prior to SM it was only addressed in the anime/manga? All of Ash’s pokemon are kept on Oak’s ranch, and in the manga pokeballs are less a “place” as much as an easy way to transport your pets. In the games I believe the official line is that capturing a pokemon in a pokeball converts the animal into data that can be reconstituted at will, and the process of capture actively brainwashes/rewrites the pokemon’s behavior patterns to be obedient to their master. Which sounds really fucked up, but it’s just instant domestication. That’s why pokemon are loyal/follow your orders as soon as you catch them. I think SM was the first situation where your pokemon actually lived somewhere in-game? Prior to the Pelago, they’re just stored as data, which is why Lusamine makes a big deal out of trainers keeping collections, etc. I think it comes down to what you consider “canon” out of the games/anime/manga. (Note: my memory is garbage and I may have missed something in the other games, especially bc I pretty much skipped BW/BW2.)