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... )
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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