#also side note i realized that i've been pronouncing amarillo wrong my whole life and i feel very embarrassed. ALSO i learned today

[infizero]

pokespe reread: yellow chapter - closing thoughts! 🟡

that's the end of yellow and gen 1 as a whole!! before i (very excitedly) move onto GSC, here's my closing thoughts ft. me talking way too long about blue for some reason

(before we start i want to reiterate that i use they/them for yellow. i just cant use anything else sorry. i also use "yellow" and "amarillo" interchangeably 👍)

ok, i wanna start by talking about yellow's personality bcuz MAN! i am so glad i reread this chapter in particular bcuz i really forgot so much. as a child i 100% woobified yellow very badly and basically any trait of theirs that wasnt "sweet nice pokemon-loving healer" got destroyed in the process

there's so much else to them!! they're headstrong, they're brave, they're determined.... and while inexperienced, they're literally stated to have power on the same level at red's at certain points!!! amarillo is not just a little cinnamon roll or whatever, and i really appreciate being able to remember that via this reread.

i also really love their pacifist streak! i like how they're kind and prefer not to fight not out of naivety or stupidity or cowardice, but as a conscious decision that they make because that is what they want to do. and i think that's really admirable! sticking to ur principles while being informed and everything. and it def leads to a lot of interesting situations where they're able to win without actually attacking, which is cool to see

ok you know me. ive gotta talk about yellow's gender.

i love yellow bcuz they're one of those characters where everyone has different interpretations of them gender-wise but we all sort of agree that they are not cis LOL. those kinds of characters are fun to me

i def can read yellow in different ways, but i personally see them as an afab non-binary person. (tho i dont think they would've had the words for it until later) that's just how they read to me. and im definitely even more attached to this hc now that i myself am trans LOL (not that i wasnt before. you know how it is)

anyways, when it comes to what's actually in the text, i actually like how yellow's gender was handled! i really like the fact that as a reader you go through almost the ENTIRE ARC thinking they're a boy before it's finally revealed. i think that's definitely preferable in this situation to the audience knowing from the start.

not only does it come as a surprise (i mean. if it's your first time reading obviously lol) but it sort of asks you as a reader to inspect your own perceptions of characters when it comes to their gender, esp probably when this came out. how does your perception of amarillo change once you find out they're actually a girl? should it change? idk i just find that interesting

i also do appreciate that yellow's abilities and personality (at least for this arc) dont change between before and after the reveal. like thats a low bar lol, but i appreciate that they're still shown to be strong in their ways once you know they're a girl, and they also still act the same. again low bar but it would've been easy to treat yellow more like A Girl afterwards so im glad that doesnt happen.

(im a little wary for the future since yamamoto definitely draws yellow more overtly feminine-looking than mato, but lets hope that stays about the same. ok?)

^ while im mentioning that btw. i fucking loveeee how mato draws yellow so much. they're so perfectly androgynous looking it makes me happy :) and again that doesnt change at all after the reveal so yayyyyyyy

but anyways. i also rlly like blaine's reaction to finding out in particular. he asks about it, a little bewildered, and when they request that he not ask about it right now, he obliges and does not bring it up for the rest of the arc! and doesnt treat them any differently! its fucking awesome i love blaine so fucking much guys

amarillo's gender in general was a lot less of a big deal than i remembered/expected it to be? like it really does not matter in the grand scheme of things and i think thats pretty cool ^_^

on the subject of that scene though...

bro im sorry this is not the reaction of a cis girl who's only been caught pretending to a boy 😭 the "dont ask right now" thing i could understand, but this line??? this feels wayyyyy more personal. fym you feel naked without that hat? the hat that hides your ponytail and girlness?? you feel exposed and bad without hiding the fact that you're female? interesting.

like to me. yellow might've had some preexisting feelings, but blue telling them to pretend to be a boy (i'll get to that later) and getting to go around like that was their trans awakening for sure.

but what i find interesting is that despite blue saying that, yellow doesn't... actually ever introduce themself as a boy? like literally not a single time. they hide their ponytail and dont correct people when they refer to them as such (although now that i think about it i actually cant recall if anyone actually calls them a boy or uses he/him for them in their presence, but it probably happens) but never do they actually call THEMSELF a boy or anything like that

like despite blue's instructions, yellow doesn't really pretend to be a boy so much as just go around with their ponytail hidden and have everyone just assume they're a boy. which i find interesting, and its why i so strongly see yellow not as transmasc but as non-binary. they're a "girl" but everyone assumes they're a boy, but yellow themself doesnt ever comment on the matter. truly goals oh my god if i could go around and just have everyone think im a boy even if its technically more complicated than that my life would be blessed. anyway

that's the sort of subtextual reason as to why i view yellow as non-binary, but in terms of my actual hc, this experience is their awakening not because of them getting to be a boy, but rather them getting to not be a girl. and i think once they get to live like that for a little bit that's def what leads them to think about it more and eventually figure all that out :)

ANYWAYS. getting back to the actual text. i wanna quickly talk about the other characters bcuz i really like how everyone was incorporated into this arc

i thought this arc did a great job handling all of the different characters. i like how each of them gets a chance to shine without it feeling too crowded, and it's really cool seeing what everyone's been up to in the 2 years since RGB.

obviously you've got blue leading yellow, green training them, and the whole thing with red (which i'll get to in a little bit), but also the gym leaders (both good and bad), bill, blaine and mewtwo... they all felt important in their own way. no one felt glossed over or anything.

that little peak we get of green's childhood + him teaching that little boy was cool :D i love green so much.

i particularly liked seeing blaine and mewtwo's bond after 2 years of them healing and training together, and the twist of giovanni being the one to let red out of the ice genuinely had me shocked, i did NOT remember that. him showing up at the end to save yellow (and using the same move red beat him with!!!!) was a really cool moment that had me freaking out

the elite four were also really fun (and very intimidating) villains! i like how they each had their own point of intrigue, they never felt like just one unit without their own personalities. lorelei is the one who froze red, bruno was being manipulated, agatha mostly sticks to the shadows but has her past with professor oak, and of course everything with lance. their goal is insane but they really do feel like actual threats so it never feels ridiculous

speaking of lance, he is the PERFECT foil/antagonist for yellow. having them both be from the viridian forest, both with the power to read pokemon's minds and heal them, but with vastly different outlooks on the relationship between people and pokemon is just suchhh a good dynamic

amarillo uses their power for good to help both people and pokemon, while lance uses that same power in pursuit of helping pokemon but via a plan that would've surely only ended up hurting both..... very very good...

i like how the story does sympathize with lance's cause and points out that YES, humanity has problems, and their actions and pollution and everything have hurt many pokemon. but that's not a reason to wipe out ALL humans; it's instead something to try and improve so that both people and pokemon's lives can be improved and they can live in harmony. lance's motivations are noble but obviously the way that he goes about it (attempted global genocide) is uh. not

i also like how its shown near the end that lance's efforts won't just hurt pokemon if he gets his way, but are actively hurting HIS OWN right now. his dragonite was suffering in silence in pursuit of his goal, and thats not to mention all of the trainers opposing him's pokemon who could've gotten seriously injured battling with him. and of course that's not even getting into the fact he FOR SURE killed at least a FEW people in the midst of destroying an entire city. and partially destroying several other cities. noble cause, but bad actions in pursuit of that cause. i always find that kind of thing interesting

rq before i talk about red and yknow. the main plot. i wanna circle back and go on a small tangent about blue because she makes me insane and even though i already said some of this in the tags of a previous post i need to get it out here

this line made me spiral into my years-long sadness about blue and the loss of her childhood and i just. need to talk about it. going ahead and giving the disclaimer that a lot of this stuff was definitely not meant to be that serious (because this story is written by a man who was definitely not thinking about the implications of stuff like this) but the way that it ties into blue's larger backstory makes me want to grab someone by the shirt and shake them violently

blue saying "until you can use the fact that you're a 'woman' as a weapon" is soooooo fucking sad dude. blue is a girl who has been using flirting and her position as a "woman" in the world to her advantage since AT LEAST 11 years old in RGB. literally in order to survive on the street

we can assume (and hope) that nothing bad ever happened to her, thank goodness, but that's still a very dangerous position for a little girl to be putting herself in. and it's always been really sad to me that she's had to learn how to weaponize being a girl from such a young age.

how did she learn that? somehow blue had to learn that she could get her way by flirting with men and making herself look and act as appealing as possible and i really dont want to think about a little blue out on the streets learning to play into the desires of men to survive, something she should NOT have to be dealing with that young. she should be getting to play!! to discover who she is!!

and this is AFTER already getting kidnapped, groomed into being a perfect trainer, and having to basically raise a kid only a few years younger than her in the midst of all that trauma. unintentionally or not, blue is literally like a personification of what it's like to grow up as a girl and how awful it can be and it makes me SO fucking sad.

blue had to grow up far too soon and i feel like this can even be seen in her want to get her own pokedex in RGB. she has had such a hard life and she's only 11 fucking years old (at the time). she's either had to play mother or be an object of desire to make ends meet, OF COURSE her deepest wish and motivation would be just to go on her own pokemon journey like other kids her age!!

so while again i could just chalk up blue telling yellow this to "a man wrote this and it wasnt meant to be that deep", i do genuinely believe blue WOULD say this. because this is what she's had to do to survive and she thinks it's fucking normal!!!

OK. ANYWAYS. SORRY. this chapter is not about blue i just had to rant for a second bcuz she makes me so sad and im not normal about her. let's move on and wrap this up lol

red's disappearance is such a fantastic event to base the story around. i totally forgot that we see him in the very beginning, but i like that all we get is him getting the battle invite, and then it cuts to oak and misty discussing how he's gone missing. (for whatever reason i thought that he was missing for way longer than a month? i guess my child brain just exaggerated that lol)

i feel like not seeing red at all before he goes missing could've been interesting? but i think getting that small glimpse at the beginning is good for reestablishing his character, especially since you've gotta account for people who are just now tuning in.

but anyways, the mystery of what happened to red is really well done. i like how it's really unclear what happened for a long time and even after getting hints like learning he was frozen by the elite four, it's still unclear exactly how he got out, where he went afterwards, why they froze him, etc.

you don't even SEE him in action besides the opening for quite a while, which i reallyyy like. all the information is coming from people OTHER than red, which gives him a really interesting, vaguely "haunting the narrative" type role in the arc as a whole. esp since the protagonist this time is yellow, someone who's only met red once or twice briefly when they were younger and therefore doesn't really know him.

the scene where we finally get to see red and bruno's battle is sooo impactful too. you watch as it starts off normal, as red is able to overcome challenges over and over again like normal, and then in an instant it all goes wrong...

watching red accept that he's not gonna be able to get out of this one by himself and sending pika away to get help.... his sad little smile before he falls..... him struggling on the ground, realizing that it'd be basically impossible for pika to be able to properly communicate with anyone, before he finally succumbs to the ice....

it really does hurt, ESPECIALLY considering his previous role as hero. he always manages to win in the end, but not this time. and his last thoughts before getting frozen are literally him starting to think that it might be hopeless. and reminder that he's literallyyyyy 13 during all of this. lorddddd

LAST THING I WANT TO MENTION

this arc does a reallyyy good job at subtly setting up for GSC. like throughout the arc, blue mentions how she's still working on trying to figure out who kidnapped her as a child; it never becomes relevant during yellow's plot but it keeps it in the back of your mind.

and then of course you get silver's cameo midway through + the direct tease for GSC with him showing up at the end and everything. obviously a very minor part of the chapter overall but it does a great job at keeping this plotline fresh in your mind so that it can be really delved into later. very awesome

AND SPEAKING OF GSC. I HAVE FINALLY FINISHED THIS FUCKING POST oh my god its like 3am. i really did not mean to write this much but i just love pokespe so much and i have thoughts. ok?

ANYWAYS. it's officially time for GSC babey. i was thinking of maybe splitting gold & silver and crystal into two separate arcs? i know they're technically the same arc but this is also the longest arc in the whole series so maybe that would be good.....?

although then "gold & silver" would only be those first two volumes, and i also dont remember if those leave off on a good point.... idk i'll probably just put them all together. "gold & silver reread" and "crystal reread" just look better than "gsc reread" ....... T_T

oh well i'll figure it out tomorrow when i continue onward. it's finally time for SILVER BABEYYYYYYYYYY (and gold and crystal i love them all dearly. but i do have a favorite)