The Fan-Art of World-Building: Coviello's Alien Pokemon Creature Art

Golduck

Thanks to the relatively recent emergence of Pokemon Go over the summer, the Pokemon franchise is enjoying a resurgence of popularity across generations. And adults are finding themselves involved in, and obsessing over, a rather childish activity: the acquisition, evolution and competition of strange creatures through their mobile phone. For those fascinated with Pokemon since their youth, some of the appeal of the game certainly lies in its aura of nostalgia. While engaged in the game, mature players are immersed into the memories of their youth as the Pokemon from that time are transplanted onto the world around them. For some the nostalgic pleasure of Pokemon in adulthood may be unproblematic while for others it cannot go without critical examination or rationalization.

In a previous post I explored the strategy of rationalization I refer to as the aesthetic rationalization of Pokemon. This specifically only applies to the rationalization of the representation (specifically the style of the representation) of Pokemon themselves and not any gaming activity involving said Pokemon. Such rationalized representations offer a mature alternative to the cartoonish depiction of Pokemon, thereby elevating them above being an interest acceptable only for the childish. If Pokemon appear more mature, then they are appropriate for a more mature audience. Such an approach presupposes that Pokemon can be considered in abstraction from their cartoon representations, and that said representations are just that: mere representations, not the Pokemon themselves.  

Ludicolo

The challenge of reimagining Pokemon in this way is to ensure that there is enough similarity between the cartoon and realistic depiction of the Pokemon so that they are identified with the same fantastical creature, while simultaneously providing enough flexibility in the image that it does not remain restricted by childish features. The balance between these two requirements entails distinguishing between the essential and contingent features of the Pokemon. The essential aspect of the Pokemon must remain consistent across aesthetic styles to ensure that the two images can be recognized as representing the same Pokemon while the contingent features can be adjusted across styles to better approximate a sense of realism without compromising the identity of the Pokemon.  

In my previous post focusing on realistic Pokemon artist RJPalmer, I distinguished two general styles of the aesthetic rationalization strategy which I referred to as natural reduction and alien extrapolation. Natural reduction entails the representation of a Pokemon according to familiar naturalistic and scientific forms of animal life. If a Pokemon is not easily identifiable according to these criteria, then the artist reduces its form to a more recognizable category. As the naturalistic science of biology does not entertain types of animals which are psychic, plant, rock, steel, ghost, fairy or dragon, Pokemon of these types are reimagined according to more familiar animal forms and categorization. For example, the Pokemon Magnemite is a steel Pokemon and has been variously reimagined as a form of insect or crustacean by artists of the natural reduction approach as there is no real-world equivalent to a steel-based organism. The essential aspect of natural reduction Pokemon art is the form of the Pokemon, not its function, but even then scientific knowledge and categorization takes priority in mediating that form. The more exotic a Pokemon’s appearance or abilities are, the less recognizable it may become from its original incarnation and the more divergent its reimagined appearances may become. If a Pokemon has no close real-world animal equivalent then it is up to the artist to determine the best analog for it, opening up the possibility of artists having radically different interpretations from one another.

The aesthetic approach of alien extrapolation, in contrast, prioritizes the function of a Pokemon over its recognizable form. Each Pokemon has a variety of special abilities, most of which defy biological, let alone naturalistic, logic. This proves difficult when rationalizing through natural reduction as it more often than not requires that their nature appearance and abilities be rendered more mundane so as it fit more comfortably within the categories of our current scientific consensus of the world. The alien extrapolation approach makes no such sacrifices and does not compromise with established categories of biology. If a Pokemon has capabilities which appear to contradict the limitations of their physiology or physics, then the artist imagines ingenious ways in which they appear more plausible if not possible. As the name implies, Pokemon art under this approach often retains an alien appearance but this is not necessarily consistent with the original form of the Pokemon. The form of the Pokemon is dictated by what the Pokemon can do and if its biology is considered inconsistent with its type and corresponding abilities, then it often takes on a radically different appearance. Natural reduction Pokemon art may appear different from its original material, but it is always familiar to its audience. Alien extrapolation often appears utterly alien to its audience, both from the original Pokemon and any recognizable biological category of animal.

Pikachu

The artist who most approximates my conception of the alien extrapolation approach to Pokemon fan-art is Vincent Coviello, otherwise known by his Deviant Art profile as Vincent-Covielloart (the artist responsible to my blog’s beautiful background art). I have already done one blog post on hisalien religion art series, so it is no wonder that his approach to Pokemon would take on an equally alien aesthetic (he has even described them as "xeno-Pokemon"). Coviello is more comfortable deviating from the original form of the Pokemon than Palmer is and is also less forthcoming in providing textual foundations to justify his reinterpretations. But when he does, Coviello usually has a plausible scientific-sounding rationalization for why the features were adjusted. For example, his Pikachu is hardly recognizable as such with its fleshy, furless form. But Coviello justifies this on the basis that furred body would be a disaster for an organism that discharges electricity which a fleshy body may be better adapted to absorb and release electrical energy. Coviello is an artist less devoted to the art of realistic Pokemon interpretations that Palmer, and while his gallery is certainly more limited, it is no less appealing aesthetically and conceptually. Please check it out. I have included below some of my personal favorites in addition to the examples embedded above.

Togetic and Togepi

Chimecho

Jigglypuff and Drilfoons

Chansey

Wobbuffet and Wynaut

Diglett

Abercrombie's Shattered Sea Trilogy Shatters Genres

            I recently completed my reading of Joe Abercrombie’s young adult “fantasy” trilogy The Shattered Sea comprising Half a King, Half the World and Half a War and as with all of his writing, I was thoroughly entertained. But it was the faux-fantasy setting which interested me the most conceptually. Which is ironic since Abercrombie has never been one of speculative fiction’s most interesting world-builders. The trilogy appears to be set within a typical pseudo-medieval world, albeit one with a cultural aesthetic reminiscent of the Vikings and Norse mythology. But through subtle allusions over the course of the series it becomes apparent that the narrative is neither set in an alternative world, nor a properly medieval one. It is in fact set in a post-apocalyptic future of our world where society has regressed to a medieval level of technological development and political ideology following what appears to be a global nuclear cataclysm. Judging by the map of The Shattered Sea, it appears that it is set around the Baltic Sea, particularly in Sweden. This makes the world closer to Mad Max than A Song of Ice and Fire despite appearing the share a stronger affinity towards the genre tropes of the latter.

            The post-apocalyptic nature of the world is never made explicit because the historical perspective of the characters is so distorted. The ruins of our present (or near-future-equivalent) civilization are known to belong to “elves” while guns and radiation are feared as magical phenomenon rather than recognized as technological and natural in kind. And though there is mention of unrecognizable territories such as Gettland, Vansterland and Throvenland, they are simply the new names assigned to territories of a post-apocalyptic Scandinavia rather than independent nations within another world. It is only through the description of the elves, their ruins and “magic” that the reader is able to incrementally recognize that they are mundane artifacts of our future’s mythologized past rather than a fantastical world utterly divorced from our own history. Hence the quotes around my label of the trilogy as fantasy fiction. Despite talk of apparently non-human elves, their forbidden magic and a dead God, the world is thoroughly naturalistic even if the continuity between the future and our present is occluded by the ignorance of the characters.

           

            Stories which are structured around the “feudal future”, “days of future past” or “magic from technology” tropes are fascinating to me because they have the potential to complicate the most fundamental distinction between fantasy and science fiction narratives: historical continuity. Science fiction presupposes its imagined futures (or alternative pasts and presents) as a historical possibility. These visions of the future are mediated by projected scientific discovery and technological ingenuity, hence the genre being science fiction. In contrast, the worlds of the fantasy genre represent a discontinuity with historic possibility, recognizing that such worlds are impossible for the reader to actualize. The paradoxical appeal of the fantasy genre is to take these impossibilities seriously, to explore a world that not only may never come to be real, but never could be real. Fantasy fiction doesn’t lack a sense of history itself (epic fantasies such as A Song of Ice and Fire and The Malazan Book of the Fallen have immensely complicated histories to their worlds), but rather disregards the possibility of actualizing its world over the course of our own history whereas science fiction takes seriously its potential self-actualization.   

The aforementioned tropes are a translation from the genres of fantasy to science fiction by way of projected superstition its demystification over the course of the narrative. The cataclysm of a global nuclear apocalypse in The Shattered Sea series divorces the world-text from the genre of science fiction and reframes the narrative in the recognizable tropes of the fantasy fiction genre. The event of a nuclear apocalypse erases the continuity between the reader in the present and the characters in the future; the world is described unrecognizably to the reader not merely because war and nuclear fallout has reformed the world to a dramatic extent but also because the collapse of civilization has deprived the characters of a modern ideology and vocabulary that the reader would recognize. Characters conceptualize their world in categories reminiscent of a more primitive and fantastical imagination and so the reader is misled along with them into understanding their world to be another world entirely: one governed by magic, elves and gods. Readers accept these elements uncritically at first as indicative of a fantasy world but as the narrative progresses these elements become recognizably more mundane and less mystical. Once it is recognized that the elf ruins refer to the concrete skeletons of modern cities, and elf magic refers to gun-powder weaponry, one is inclined to immediately re-imagine the story as post-apocalyptic science fiction rather than post-apocalyptic fantasy fiction.

            Yet this reversal is not necessary warranted by the world-text itself. There is no explicit identification between the world of the Shattered Seas and our own world that world necessitate re-imagining the series according to the conventions of science fiction as opposed to fantasy fiction. Although the translation of fantasy fiction into science fiction necessarily involves demystification (to the extent that spiritual and magical phenomenon belong to the former and not the latter), demystification itself does not require genre re-identification. It is perfectly consistent to deconstruct superstition from within the fantasy genre itself while consistently identifying with the genre. Magical abilities and supernatural deities are not essential to the fantasy genre; historical discontinuity, the impossibility that divorces the world-text of the fantasy novel from our own world, is what defines the genre. Magic and gods are the most explicit and familiar mediators of this discontinuity but they are not the only techniques. Describing the world as populated with alien ethnicities and animals, bounded by unrecognizable political boundaries and allegiances, and grounded by a history estranged from our own is also sufficient. A Song of Ice and Fire would still belong to the fantasy genre if the White Walkers never came out of the North, dragons never returned from extinction and R’hllor never granted a magical ability because the world-text of that series involves peoples, nations and historical events with no recognizable relation to our own world. It is a world of impossibility, of fantasy.   

What is relevant is whether the world-text in its totality can be identified as continuous with a point in our history or not and by what means this continuity is established. The recognition that the elves of The Shattered Sea are mere humans and magic as mundane modern technology may demystify the world from magical (high) fantasy to mundane (low) fantasy but it doesn’t require us to totally re-categorize it as science fiction from fantasy fiction. The inclusion of modern gun-powder technology in a fantasy narrative is no less disruptive than the inclusion of medieval weaponry and armor would be to a fantasy world. Both are technological artifacts of history and the fantasy genre is not restricted to any historical period since the inherent logic of the genre is anachronistic and distinct from the history of our own world. Fantasy worlds follow their own historical logic of development (or lack-there-of as is the case in the trope of “medieval stasis”) and it could be perfectly natural for a fantasy world to feature medieval and modern technology alongside one another. As it just so happens, this is the case with the world of The Shattered Sea: the majority of weaponry is at a medieval level of development but elf magic weapons (guns) provide immense power to those who can monopolize possession of them. The anachronistic juxtaposition of medieval and modern technologies and lack of an historical awareness (beside a supernatural and superficial remembrance of the collapse of civilization) reflect fantasy fiction’s disengagement with maintaining historical continuing between the reader and the world-text itself.     

            If the distinction between genres depends upon historical continuity or lack thereof, then whether a text is identified as science or fantasy fiction depends upon the narrator of the text having a historical self-awareness relative to that of its reader. The narrator must recognize their self as rooted in the history of the reader’s world if the reader is to recognize the text as the projected future of science fiction rather than the imagined impossible world of fantasy. Lacking any such historical self-understanding deprives the reader of identifying a shared historical connection between their world and the speculative world of the text and therefore the text is more akin to the impossible worlds of fantasy. If science fiction constructs its worlds by projecting the marvelous potential of science and technology through history as a bridge between our world and the future of the world-text, then apocalyptic fiction is the inversion of this. Apocalyptic fiction deconstructs such worlds by projecting the massively disruptive and destructive power of science and technology to retroactively erase history. The apocalypse opens up a space of interpretation for the reader amidst the destabilized boundary between science fiction and fantasy fiction. The apocalypse that occurred in the past of Abercrombie’s series didn’t just shatter the foundation of the world, it shattered the possibility of definitively recognizing that world as our own and as a distinct genre.

            Abercrombie’s series appears to encompass a transition from fantasy to science fiction genres but it is actually more subversive than that. What Abercrombie’s writing has accomplished, whether he intended or even realized it or not, is a subversion of the distinction between fantasy and science fiction itself. This is ironically the complete opposite effect of a surface reading of his world-text. When it becomes apparent to the reader that the elves are merely human and that the breaking of the world was merely nuclear disaster rather than apocalyptic punishment, this does not mean that the world-text transitions genres from fantasy to science fiction. It is a transition from high magical to low technological fantasy, it is an invitation to question and reimagine the conventions of the fantasy genre itself. Why can’t elves just be humans? Why can’t there be nuclear war, concrete architecture, and gunpowder weaponry in a fantasy world? I am more comfortable interpreting Abercrombie’s writing according to the genre of fantasy fiction rather than science fiction because the narrator and characters of his world-text do not understand their world in a way compatible with our own understanding. The apocalypse erased the past of their world and with it the necessary scientific ideology that would ground it as a projected continuation of our own world history.
            

            But simply identifying it with the fantasy genre is inadequate to address the unique indeterminacy inherent in his world-building (or apocalyptic un-building). If fantasy fiction is the speculation fiction genre of the impossible then Abercrombie’s series is fantasy in the ironic sense that it is impossible to say whether it is fantasy or science fiction. It is both, it is neither, it is up to the reader. Determining the genre of his world-text is an act of archaeology, digging through the apocalyptic ruins of his world-text for relics that would allow one to reconstruct the past and thereby recognize its genre. The Shattered Sea trilogy is post-apocalyptic fiction that is post-fantasy, post-genre. It is a work of young adult speculative fiction which asks its readers to mature along with its characters, to grow out of an adolescent understanding of binary genre conventions into the adult complexity of infinite possibilities and impossibilities, and mediate the path between the two for themselves.

Note: the above artwork is the property of Marko Djurdjevic for the tabletop RPG Degensis which I found to be both beautiful on its own and useful in conceptualizing some the world of the Shattered Sea