playing favorites
I've been thinking long and hard about it, and after much consideration and careful rumination, I'd have to say that my favorite character from Pokémon's Generation V is Bianca.
I would bombard you with pictures of Bianca being her lovable self, but I don't have very many. I need to remedy this.
Oddly enough, I was sure that I wouldn't like Bianca ( Read more... )
I would bombard you with pictures of Bianca being her lovable self, but I don't have very many. I need to remedy this.
Oddly enough, I was sure that I wouldn't like Bianca ( Read more... )
N is bit like mangaverse Kaworu Nagisa [Eva] to me. He didn't know anything about humans, but he's still pretty smart and can figure things out. And this is what Yin Yang is about: there is black in white and white in black and that's how one is a complete, balanced being. N started completely in one side but learned to integrate a bit of the other side to balance himself. At the end he flies away to learn more. This interest in self-search looks pretty good to me. Between travel to find self and travel because one does not want to stay, I find the first to be more positive to character development. At first he was like a pet bird rather than human (if one wants to make a raptor a pet, one can raise it as a child and never stops doing so, so it will never leave and be as tame as a domesticated animal; but once it realises that it's an adult, it becomes a real raptor and refuses to treated as a mere pet/plaything and wants independence) and at the end when he flies away he was free at last. Remember when you first meet him, he talked really fast because he didn't know the right pace? Near the end his speech speed slowed down relatively to just somewhat fast. That's improvement. He was learning social skills.
Bianca. Early in the story, if she wins, she says "Wha... I got so absorbed in having my Pokémon use moves, I won before even realizing..." She was facinated by them from the start. She also liked to have many pokemon, as she was the one who wanted to do the pokemon catching competition between the 3 and those quotes
if player has 1 Pokémon: "What? What? What? You only have
?! If you don't catch any Pokémon, won't
get lonely?"
if player has more than 2 Pokémon: "Wow, ?! That's awesome! Are you excited to have that many Pokémon with you?"
You can see her preferences already. She weren't into pokemon battles, she was into the pokemon themselves, that was why she was losing to you two: she was more interested in seeing her pokemon perform than winning battles. Cheren wanted to win and you, well, the protagonist must win to advance. So on the surface she was unsure what to do with her pokemon, but she already had what she liked about them. Becoming a pokemon research means that she gets both (many pokemon and many moves), which was why she decided on it. She knew what she liked, she just needed to pin point it to a viable job. Cheren, on the other hand, who "knew" he wanted to win and become the champion, was the one who really didn't know what he liked since he aimed at a "job" first without asking himself what he liked. As the journey progressed he realised this and decided to search more.
Ghetsis... He's the mostly believable, realistic villain so far. And as a trainer he was strong, so he wasn't just trying to win by bringing down others, he was making himself strong at the same time! That's a villain with common sense here.
Is it just me or you seem to be biased with female important characters and big bads? I mean, Leaf, Bianca, Giovanni, Ghetsis... Is there a pattern here?
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And sorry for the markup error. Can you still see the raw content?
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I don't know if it was just me, but Cheren seemed kind of flat to me. I agree with you on the fact that he is the most studious of the rivals and that, at his core, Cheren sees Hilbert/Hilda and Bianca as best friends more than rivals, but the slight variation of how his "self-esteem as a trainer" issues came up (and the fact that he had them at all) makes him more similar to his predecessors than you'd think.
Green always had a bone to pick with Red/Leaf so that he could "prove" himself to his grandfather. Why else would he challenge you right in front of Oak? Silver has all his daddy issues to deal with, which makes him project this false sense of power and control. In the end he's just a lost kid, and his interactions with Gold/Kris/Lyra bring his insecurities to the forefront. As for Wally, he has his illness to deal with, and despite the fact that he works so hard to meet May/Brendan on equal footing, he falls short. And Barry wants to live up to his father's example and do it quickly, so he also has something to prove.
I think Cheren follows the same path, but he just zig-zags through it. While his predecessors started their journeys with something to prove and gradually learned how to accept themselves and their shortcomings, Cheren started out very confident about his abilities. Like you said, it's fair to say that Cheren has done more studying about pokémon than Hilbert/Hilda and Bianca combined, so he sees his friends more as friends and not rivals. I don't think that Cheren was projecting a false sense of superiority like some of the other rivals; I think it was a real sense of superiority. Battling in your room? Oh, that's so easy for me, I won't even wreck it. It's not a mocking feeling of superiority, but the fact that he's better prepared than his friends makes him think that he's certainly more skilled and prepared than they are.
But when you defeat him, he realizes that he's not as skilled as he thought. He starts out as this guiding figure who wants to teach his friends and guide them through their journeys (i.e his explaining of things, giving you items here and there), but promptly learns that you're better than him. And the thing is he doesn't know why. He studied whereas you didn't as much (or at all), he works just as hard as you, he has the same amount of gym badges and pokémon and that should put you two on equal footing, at least. It just doesn't. If you've noticed, each time you battle Cheren and beat him he gets more and more doubtful of his abilities, openly questioning why he can't win. It's not that he wants to beat you down to feel better about himself - I think he sees the "rivalry" more as a friendly competition than Green or Silver did - but that, at a certain point (probably right before he meets Alder), he's so lost and disillusioned with himself that him beating you is the only easy way out. He's not aggressive or resentful of you like Green was in his flippant/condescending way or Silver was directly, but Wally and Barry weren't angry either when May/Brendan and Dawn/Lucas defeated them.
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At the same time, the games knock the opposite extreme as well. Bianca is so caught up in her pokémon that she's absent-minded and, by her own admission, doesn't realize what she's doing during battles. While Cheren is so strategy-focused it keeps him from being "the best," Bianca is too emotional and nonstrategic to be a great pokémon trainer. Black and White is literally about extremes. Being too logical like Cheren leaves you unfulfilled. Being too emotional like Bianca leaves you similarly unfulfilled, but in a different manner. Being too passionate and idealistic like N leads you to do things without looking at the details of the "big picture." Being too ambitious like Ghetsis leaves you unloved and reviled. Hilbert/Hilda represents the golden mean. He's (because I believe Hilbert is the Hero in my headcanon) emotional enough to form an attachment with his pokémon that brings out their inner strengths and logical enough to be able to lead them to victory. He's passionate enough to fight a large organization and ambitious enough to summon a dragon of legends to stop N from separating pokémon and humans. At the same time, he's modest enough to let Cheren have his time in the sun. While previous Champions are all about the PC (Lance in Gen II/IV, Stephen in Gen III, and Cynthia in Gen IV come to mind), Alder is all about Cheren and helping him grow. There's really no "special bond" between Alder and Hilbert. There's respect there, but that's about it. It's probably because Alder's a teacher, and Cheren was more in need of his time and help than Hilbert, who's just naturally balanced...
I agree about N. I think it's a synthesis of what I described and what you just did. I really think that N puts off this "creepy" vibe (talking to pokémon, fiddling with his rubix cube, making grand sweeping gestures and talking too fast), but that is diminished as he journeys through Unova and challenges Hilbert. I think that despite the fact that he sees trainers as his enemy (hence why I think he treats most humans very coldly at first), his experiences with Hilbert, who is a "good" trainer whose pokémon love him, spark a change of heart. At the same time, I think it's unfair to say that N is too cold. He's naïve, so he's going to want to try and convince everyone he meets that his way is the right way. How much of this is tempered by Ghetsis' role as the orator and his exposure to abused pokémon and how much this hardened him toward humans is left unclear, but it's pretty clear that he really wants Hilbert to understand his thinking, hence why he constantly shows up around him and even supports him, to a certain extent, in becoming the opposing Hero.
I also love what you just said about Bianca. That's just being added to my headcanon, as I never really thought of it that way.
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At the same time, Ghetsis is a straight up megalomaniac, and many people even think he's evil because of it. Fanon tends to give the other "big bads" the benefit of the doubt - Giovanni's connection to Silver humanizes him, Cyrus's genocidal mission is justified as "he's misunderstood" or "he has a tragic past," and Archie and Maxie have been reduced to sex objects (primarily in regards to each other) so they're not taken seriously. But Ghetsis is evil. So many fanfics characterize him as pure evil - the fanon interpretation of Ghetsis has raped just about everyone, tries to ruin everyone's happiness after the games, and abused N as a boy. How much of this is due to the fact that N x Hilda is currently the OTP of many fans is questionable, but I have to say that the games don't give us much to work with. He's doing everything out of selfish motivations and doesn't seem to give two shits about anyone but himself. In this I don't think he's as authentic as say, Cyrus. Cyrus, at least, had (implied) reasons as to why he's so bent on destroying the world. Ghetsis just does it because he thinks he's better than everyone else, and while there are certainly people like that in this world, there's usually a reason why they're so narcissistic (assuming they're not psychopathic).
Anyway... sorry for the long comment. Discussion helps me develop my headcanon about the characters, so I'm grateful for it! I hope it does the same for you.
And in regards to the pattern... I've liked antagonists since the first time I watched Star Wars Episode IV: A New Hope and saw Darth Vader for the first time... so I tend to like them. The only exceptions are Maxie and Archie, who are more fanatical than anything else, so I think their whole premise was silly. As for the female protags... kind of? I like all the PCs - male and female - though I tend to like the rivals better.
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And when Cheren was questioning why he couldn't win, he was really questioning it. Unlike the previous who thought it was bad luck or something, Cheren tried to find out why and still is searching (hope the third one can give him a final goal... I wonder if it'll be Gray or Transparent?) The items indecision thing was normal. I think it was reflecting the behavior of the player: many players do ask which item to give, so it showed that Cheren is a trainer like us, like any other in that respect. And since many NPCs often do such musing, seeing it in Cheren really did blur the line between us, rivals, the NPCs. And yin yang is about mixing to reach balance. It's true that one thing about Black and White is about the extremes, but it's also about the middle grounds... that are invisible or at least less visible.
Hilbert and Hilda's original name Touya and Touko meant "transparent" ("transparent night" and "transparent child" respectively). They weren't affected by the black-and-white vision. That was why many protested at the name change, they fell out from the themed names combo. The HGSS Ethan and Lyra, despite being pretty uninteresting names, at least kept the theme going (they were all music themed, Hibiki was echo, Kotone was lute sound, Soul was playing an music instrument... eh? it sounds like a menage a trois) its source GSC was minerai themed, FRLG kept the colour themes from RGBY, Hoenn didn't have a visible theme (there was one, but it was so hair-pulling that I forgot) and Sinnoh was... There was no kanji for the rival name, so I'm not sure if "Jun" means "precise", "pure", "going well" or anything, but the first one that pops out when pressing space (to shift hiragana into kanji) was "going well" and the protagonists were light-themed, I guess their names were meant to be parts of wards against evil/charms that bring good luck and it was the most gods/evils themed region.
Oops, I went into the names themes instead. Hilbert/Hilda. He/she didn't do the summoning, the dragon summoned itself. He/she did seek the quest item, but the dragon chose him/her and without that part it still wouldn't have worked. Hilbert/da isn't the golden mean, he/she is an agent, a mediator, an intercessor. He/she is a window to look into the other side of the world, be that black or white and bring them together.
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Ghetsis is pretty realistic in his ambition and did think of the big picture. He was "loved" of sort via the proxy of N. He just ruined it himself by speaking the truth before everyone. It was a rather human mistake, I mean, he did just see his life-long plan going down the drain.
I think a major problem with fans are that they/we are trying to fit a concept into our head instead of actually seeing what it is. I personally don't buy the "tragic past" part unless there was an active training like what Green was put through in your fic there. Silver had a crap past in PokeSpe, but he grew up into a fine young man. Archie and Maxie been reduced into what? Ok, there was this one tumblr Fuck Yeah list for that, but I've never seen them as sex objects and think of such idea makes me want to puke a bit. I don't see Ghetsis as pure evil, he's more like a Neutral Evil (no rules to stick to and whatever works). And he had a perfect reason to feel superior: for many years his plan for world domination was going smoothly. That was a really gargantuan all-or-nothing plan. It was coming near to fruition, so of course he was barely able to hold the joy and was megalomaniac. And look at his damned dragon pokemon, it was 99.9% perfect in stats and everything. Even without Team Plasma he can use it to dethrone a Champion if he wants. Then he saw his perfect plan that took years of planning and careful execution fall into the drain because of one meddling kid, of course he went mad and forgot himself. It was his fucking life-long magnum opus. Having that plan made him feel at the top of the world even if it wasn't realised yet and then... His rage speech made fans think he was pure evil, but really, even if he had once cared about N as a father, at the time he won't be able to show it since he was in the I-blame-everyone mode. I don't think he had abused N in any direct way because he needed N's trust, so he must behave like a trustworthy person. Imagine holding that image for like 10 years. Can you pretend to be someone else for that long? It'd drive a normal person crazy. So to me Ghetsis was a normal (I call it normal because, hello all the famous emperor-conquerors of the real life) ambitious guy who wanted to be at the absolute top of the world. He wasn't delusional about it like Cyrus. Ghetsis really tried his best to manipulate every variable. He just didn't see the protagonist coming and can you blame him? He's only human.
But if anything, Pokemon was always about the illusion of opposition, duality and middle ground. Fire-like passion against grass-like life force, but actually the same energies in a person. Golden heart and shining spirit of silver (notice that how a silver that was left alone grows black with rust and needs to be polished in order to shine? doesn't that sound like Silver? and gold and crystal don't rust, so no need to polish the protagonists). Ruby and Sapphire refer to land-forming lava and the sea and Emerald is the sky that covers both. Diamond and Pearl are both jewels to be put on a crown (for male and female respectively, usually only one is put on a crown because if both are used one will outshine the other) and Platinum can be the material for the crown and itself a precious metal (and all of them are shades of white). Black and White look like opposition at first, but they are implied to be one and we'll need the third one.
Crap, now I'm late for school.
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I think I wasn't very clear about Ghetsis. What I was trying to say was that we are not sure if Ghetsis is that evil. His speech with N before we battle him and the contrast with how he behaved in the rest of the game made him look like a really evil villain, but my parents said really harsh things to me too, so Ghetsis's heartless speech only appeared like angry speech to me. And child-as-investment look normal to me. So the world-domination plan aside, Ghetsis looks rather normal to me and not prone to "abuse". There's the thing about building the castle killed many Pokemon, but Chinese and Russian Emperors made humans built things and die in them, so... Ghetsis really didn't out-evil anyone on the same scale as him. He is still evil, just not as much as people make him to be. Of course, he also isn't as good as some other people make him to be. I'm just saying that we don't know if Ghetsis is planning to make N take over once he dies of old age or something. And once he do become the world's overlord, what is he going to do? How will he maintain that power? Will he be a tyrant that's actually not so bad, a terrible ruler that kills all people with pokemon or...? We just don't have enough information. Maybe he'll just ragequit because it's not as good as he thought it would be.
Cyrus actually went to the distortion world, Maxie and Archie summoned the legendary beasts (and gave the orbs back themselves), Giovanni's Team Rocket was already in power when we came by, disbanded it after a bet with Red and tried to join his old friends but failed. Ghetsis... We never got to see what kind of person he'll truly be once his plan is carried out. It was aborted mid-sequence. Sure, the ideal/truth dragon was summoned, but that was nowhere near the end yet. All others managed to go at least to the penultimate stage, but Ghetsis' stopped at "N gets the legendary dragon. N beats the Champion. N raises the castle. (Next step, use it to gain more followers. Next next step, convince them to give up their pokemon for good because the king has spoken. Next step, introduce the new government. Next step...)" There was much more to do after that and it was aborted there, near the end but far enough from the first steps to make all the 10+ wasted years feel like a [insert painful feeling here].
Ok, to the school now. Don't feel like skipping it.
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I must admit that I never really gave the PCs' names that much thought. I mean, I always knew that they were meant to bring about opposing forces and their synthesis, but everything you just explained really made my appreciation for the series increase all the more.
When I'm in a particularly dark mood, I tend to feel more bad for the rivals than usual. They're crafted to be sympathetic characters, and I think it's heavily implied that if it weren't for the PC, they would be the ones in the spotlight. This is done most strikingly with Green, who you literally dethrone as Champion (it's subverted with Silver though, who would have gone down the wrong path had it not been for the PC forcing him to reevaluate his attitude). I think my main issue with Cheren, at least relative to the other rivals, is that he's not as sympathetic because he's so strong and different. Green, Silver, Wally, and even Barry, to a certain extent (when you subscribe to the "Palmer-is-too-busy-to-have-as-close-a-relationship-as-they-could" theory), really lend themselves to sympathy from the audience, but Cheren's lack of any inkling of "tragic backstory" negate that for me. It's incredibly stupid of me, so I'm trying to find the nuances about him that I like. I'm just used to liking the rivals immediately, so this is a bit different for me. The first thing I've found I like about him is the amount of development he undergoes, but I also like that he faces his shortcomings head on (unlike Green and Silver who, like you very aptly said, always avoid responsibility for their losses).
I'd never really thought of the held item conversation with Cheren as a way of humanizing him. While I definitely see how it does that, I still think it's also indicative of his preoccupation with the mechanical aspects of pokémon battling. One thing I will say is that the characters of this generation were definitely some of the best developed and unique - so the possibility of using Cheren's comments on held items, a primarily human aspect of competitive battling, really strikes me as brilliant.
Do you prefer calling them Hilbert/Hilda or Touya/Touko? I have a preference for the original names from the Japanese release, and that preference only seemed more justified when you mentioned the transparency thing. That being said, I'm pretty sure they're going to go down the "Gray" route, especially in the translated releases. I guess it can be said that pure white light and unfettered darkness are equally as blinding - it's gray, the medium, that allows for sight.
I tend to prescribe to the idea that Touya and Touko represent the golden mean over the transparency, but I think those views can be reconciled, as transparency is a midpoint between "too obfuscated" and "without substance." Speaking on a metaphorical sense, air is transparent but it has no substance (air is matter, but it's not exactly "tangible" in purely human terms). At the same time, a brick wall has substance but you can't see through it. Glass, on the other hand, is both clear enough to see through and yet substantive enough to be solid. It's a bit of a convoluted explanation, but I think that it applies, especially when applying the adjective to a human being. Touya/Touko have a clear view of the world that is unaffected by the extremes of black and white ("the truth" - arguably), but they have enough substance to process and act on what they believe is right ("their ideals").
On the other hand, the fact remains that these are just video games and Touya and Touka are the avatars. It could just mean that it is by playing as them the player gets an unbiased view at Unova as they are "transparent?"
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I really dislike the term "evil..." In fact, I think I may have been unclear about Ghetsis myself.
I don't feel like he's "evil," and I agree that he's more of a middle ground. The fact is that I don't believe that people want to take over the world for no reason. Let's revisit an example you brought up earlier - Hitler. This is all circumstantial, as it very well could have been that Hitler really was a self-interested bastard that led Germany and its citizens into ruin because he wanted to benefit from it as long as he could regardless of the fact that its devastation.
In fact, I tend to think that way about people like Hitler and Stalin. Hitler's (stated, at least) reasoning for the atrocities he committed was making Germany great again. He wanted to bring glory to his people and his nation. His methods were - there's really no word to describe them, but he had a way of justifying it to himself. I really don't believe that people "embrace evil." They have their justifications for engaging in things that are morally wrong, thus suggesting that they do this to circumvent feeling guilty or being stopped by people who are in check of their morals.
I find it hard to believe that Ghetsis would want to take over the world just because he thinks he's the best human around. Maybe it's just that compulsion of mine again, but I truly believe that he had to have a better reason for his decades-long mission (and even longer, if you subscribe to the theory that N was born for the express purpose of bringing Ghetsis's goals to fruition). If it was just because he thought himself to be the perfect human being, than that would suggest he's delusional. I'm currently developing my Ghetsis headcanon on a kink meme fill I'm writing, and I'm leaning toward a mental condition. That's the only way I can justify his grand mission and the extreme measures he took to bring it about, at least.
Agree 100% about Ghetsis's behavior toward N being normal and the last outburst being made out of freaking out/anger at his plans failing. I don't think he abused him at all, and I tend to see child-investment as understandable as well, and while Ghetsis takes it to a new extreme, I can still see his reasoning. Whether or not he loves N is a different story, not to mention that if he had brought his plans to fruition and succeeded in taking single-handed control of the world, there would come a time where N would become an obstacle. Either N would figure out Ghetsis was lying all along or Ghetsis would refuse to give up his pokémon when N asked him to. What Ghetsis would have done at that point is - in my opinion - the true testament to what exactly he feels for his alleged son. N's and Ghetsis's agendas only overlap so much...
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(And lol about the Johto OT3 ménage-à-trois comment. My Kanto OT3 love aside, I believe that the Johto OT3 is the one that's more likely to engage in a polyamorous relationship.)
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Oh no, I did say that Ghetsis was evil. But he was a Neutral Evil. Most people, upon hearing the word "evil", thinks of Chaotic Evil first (Joker from Batman, that guy from Clockwork Orange, etc.) and then maybe Lawful Evil (Darth Vader, the rhinoceros-like aliens from Doctor Who, etc.). Neutral Evil is somewhat forgotten because there's not much special about it, it's very flexible and it's not very extreme.
I don't understand why you cannot believe someone can just want to take over the world. And it's not always about thinking one's the best human around. There's actually nothing to do with it. Granted, they are not two mutually exclusive traits, but they are not inclusive either. Someone who is not a megalomaniac can still want to take over the world and vice versa. Maybe I have Chaotic tendencies, but if one day I wake up and feels like taking over the world I would find it normal. I just won't carry it out because I don't think I can do it. I can still go play Civilizations to feel like a conqueror without dealing with real people or I might be too lazy to do even that. And I'm definitely not a megalomaniac as I tend to have self-esteem issues and fear for my future because there's nothing that I'm particularly good at and I'm painfully aware of it.
While many disorders can induce manic stages, they are often not that long and there will be a side effect of having bad judgements. And I mean bad judgements. Like suddenly buying aquaria and fish by truckload, suddenly want to shag as many women as possible and try to carry it out, do social inacceptable things without guilt or anything and etc. etc. (Those were not personal experiences, I read them from a psychology textbook.) Because Ghetsis had such a good control over himself until that one scene, I think he's a normal human with great patience and great ambition. We don't know if he thinks he's a perfect human being yet because there's enough info, but even if he thinks he is I think he's kind of justified as, like I said, his plan for world domination was running smoothly. That kind of thing can boost one's ego beyond measure. That's the kind of ego that kills people. Like how N's mind didn't grow in EQ because of lack of human contact, Ghetsis probably didn't have enough reality checks for his ego and capacities from the lack of failures. He was the Man behind Man of a rather large organisation with an impressive castle and imminent world domination, what kind of man in the same state of power can not lose the gasp of his own limits? A saint or an idiot.
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About the Gray being the medium of Black and White thing, I find it to be a western view. In the yin yang concept there is no room for gray. Because when you break it down, grey is but a mix of black and white, not a pure "substance". But there is Mu, the nothingness.
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I was saying how even though 'Pokemon Gray' is copyrighted it feels weird to shove a western concept into an eastern one, but we'll have to wait.
I tried to say that I'm glad that for once my rivals (Cheren and Bianca) do not have tragic past and chronic issues.
There was a really long paragraph here that I don't remember what it was about.
Here I was nitpicking on how you said Silver changed thanks to the protagonist, but I thought while he/she did take part it was multifactorial and the main catalyst was Lance, not the main character as in battles with the protag Silver was denying, but when he saw Lance he really started to ask himself if love wasn't the true way to go after all. It was probably because Lance, being a Champion and all, was strong and thus got Silver's attention (remember how he was stalking Lance at one point) and maybe because he's so strong and had red hair Silver saw him as a surrogate parent. And maybe Lance was Silver's real father
Then I agreed with the Johto OT3 and commented on how Hibiki and Lyra were so emotionally close they were like twins without being biologically related and how a menage-a-trois would be like between two persons but one person with one body and the other with two heterogendered bodies.
Here was my opinion on Hibiki mustn't have the same personality as Gold as PokeSpe flips their personalities all the time (chatty Green become cold and speak little, the near-mute Red very noisy, Silver no longer has the arrogant sociopathic phase, somewhat proper Haruka becomes a wild child in Sapphire, etc.)
And here was how I remembered the names of the Hoenn trio. Haruka can be read as spring flower, Yuuki sounds like snow (winter) and Mitsuru can be growing vines, invoking summer. At the same time Haruka can mean far away, Yuuki means brave and Mitsuru is beautiful crane (the waterfowl). So it could be season themed or travel themed (The Courageous Beautiful Bird flies Far Away/The courage to fly [far] away.)
I'm going to sleep now. So frustrating today.
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