#refuses to give any concrete example lmao he just thinks it’s an issue in general everywhere right now

[srvphm]

I’m kind of worried about how my father is turning increasingly right wing and conservative

[sage-nebula]

hey so i saw someone vaguely translate the argument between lillie and lusamine in today's ep and apparently it amounted to lillie being mad that lusamine evolved her clefairy without her consent and lusamine's answer amounting to "well technically it was my clefairy that i gave to you and also your reason for not evolving it was stupid" and? is it wrong for me to hope that pokeani will give us like (cont.)

more of this? like. lusamine being overly smotherly and lowkey selfish and overbearing and those aspects of her get more and more pronounced as an early warning sign that she’s not the ally the other characters think she is? like it’s pokeani there’s so many things that could go wrong here but the fact that this argument was bad enough that even sato and kukui notice that lillie is NOT here for her mom’s shit and that sumo-ani has been p. good with developing relationships make me hope.

Well, first of all, if that’s the same clefable that Lusamine has in the games, then it can go get fucked, tbh, because that clefable gave me the hardest time in the final battle. Not because it kept killing* my pokémon, but because it wouldn’t fucking die, none of my attacks did significant damage to it, and it kept healing itself and it was just The Worst™. So honestly, Lillie, you dodged a bullet there, because that clefable is a fucking bastard.

(*No, I do not nuzlocke. This is just an expression, not meant to be taken seriously.)

On a more serious note (because yes, the above is supposed to be a joke, please don’t take it too seriously, anyone), hmm … honestly, I don’t know!

It’s hard to judge because the PokéAni is inconsistent across the sagas in many ways. There are some constants that we can always count on: Ash will always leave all of his pokémon sans Pikachu behind when he goes to a new region, he will never win a game League, and he will always have at least one (1) of the new region starters as a mainstay on his team, so as to promote the new generation to kids. But aside from constants like that, the PokéAni tends to change its narrative style each season (and Ash along with it, but this post really isn’t about him). For instance, the first two seasons ever produced—and the first season itself in particular—are markedly different in tone from everything that followed, even when compared to the Johto seasons of the OS. The Johto seasons were more formulaic; they’re chock full of episodes that are very same-y and that you can skip right on over without losing anything of value. Meanwhile, the Kanto season was really treated as an adventure; it was less about showing Ash going through the game journey, and more about showing him on a journey, period, even when it included messier aspects like the kids being lost for two weeks on the way to Vermilion City, and being completely caked in dirt by the time they finally arrived, longing for baths and laundromats. Similarly, the Kalos saga is markedly different in tone from the Alola saga. The Kalos saga took itself more seriously, and so while there still were moments of comedy and some typical anime expressions here or there, by and large it was more … I don’t want to say realistic, because it still is a modern fantasy anime, but you had a lot less exaggeration in terms of animation style. By contrast, the Alola anime doesn’t seem to take itself nearly as seriously (at least right now), and the animation is a lot more exaggerated and over the top. Compare, for instance, animation sequences of the twerps falling asleep thanks to Jigglypuff’s song in the OS to the same situation in SM. Yeah, a lot of it is due to the fact that their animation budget is much higher now, and the technology they have to work with is much better et cetera, but a lot of it also has to do with a tonal and style shift.

So with all of that said, it’s really hard to predict what this saga will do, because we can’t exactly use previous sagas as a concrete frame of reference. We can try to make guesses … but it’s hard, because each saga is so distinct, they all have different things they were trying to accomplish. Just because one saga might have followed through doesn’t mean that this one will, and vice versa. And even though it’s been about a year so far, I feel that the Alola anime is still a bit too young to make a call, especially since …

Well. We all remember what happened in Kalos, don’t we?

Lysandre was a realistic depiction of an abuser. The emotional abuse he layered on Alan, and the way that he lied to, manipulated, and used him like a tool is blatantly obvious, despite the cordial way he behaved around everyone else. As a result, and speaking as someone with C-PTSD from abuse myself, the C-PTSD that Alan has is also very obvious, and is also a realistic portrayal. Lysandre was an abuser, Alan was his victim, and this is obvious to everyone except those who purposefully refuse to see it so they can have an excuse to keep trashing all over Alan the way they do. 

And for the most part, PokéAni handled this well! Like, I was legitimately impressed with how well they handled it! Again, Alan’s C-PTSD was extremely well portrayed. His severe depression was extremely well portrayed. In XYZ044, we see that this has (more than understandably) hit such a critical mass that Ash essentially talked him down from suicide in their garden discussion, even if the actual word was never spoken. (Like, has Ash ever looked that anxious when asking someone to promise him to battle again in the future? I don’t think so. Let’s be real, like pretty much everything else in their relationship, it really was not about the battle.) And yet, despite all of that being done so well, despite it being portrayed so well … the PokéAni writers decided “fuck this lmao” and ruined it in all the episodes that followed by sweeping Alan’s issues completely under the rug, disrespecting his boundaries and wishes once again in a way that actually triggered me in XYZ045, and sending him off on a journey again in the last episode of the saga. They were doing so well, XYZ044 was actually a perfect conclusion for him, and then they … ruined it all at the last second, as they are wont to do. 

So I mean, if we follow that as an example, then it’s perfectly possible that they could continue doing a great job with Lusamine, that they could really show how she is inarguably an abusive parent, how she doesn���t care about Lillie’s wishes or boundaries … and then ruin it all at the last second by “redeeming” her and having everyone decide that she’s not really abusive after all. Or maybe they won’t continue doing a great job, and her following appearances will be disappointing because they’ll pull an OS and forget that they were supposed to be keeping up with this subplot. (I mean, this isn’t really a subplot and so I doubt that will happen, but to be honest, any one of the subplots in the OS could have been a main plot, and they chose not to do that, so like …) It’s really hard to say. The PokéAni writers proved with Misty’s and Brock’s cameos that they can do anything at this point. Almost everything is fair game. (Almost. Ash is still never going to win a game League. People need to just give up on that dream.)

That said, I’d say that if you’re enjoying it now, then enjoy it now! Enjoy it while you can, for as long as you can (and hopefully forever). At this point, like I said, anything can happen. I don’t think it’s wrong to hope for just about anything at this point. (Again, just about. No League wins, no eleventh birthdays, et cetera.) So keep watching and keep enjoying; might as well make the most of it while it lasts. :)

(On that note, “technically it’s my clefairy that I gave to you” fjdksjdf fucking yikes. Bullshit like this is why I adamantly maintain that Lusamine is the most realistic depiction of an abusive parent the series has had to date. Ghetsis is cartoonish compared to Lusamine—a caricature. Aside from the fact that Lusamine’s “you betrayed me when all I ever did was give you love” line in the games pretty much mirrors the last conversation I ever had with my biological mother, my biological mother used to hold Shiloh like that over my head all the time. She hated the fact that Shiloh and I were so close, so she used to threaten to get rid of her, telling me that she was going to all the time so that I’d step in line and behave, justifying it by saying that she was the one who gave Shiloh to me, so she could do whatever she wanted insofar as keeping her at the house or not. Of course, she was also fond of the “I brought you into this world, so I can take you out of it” line, but tbh my own life has never mattered as much to me, so that never scared me as much as threats to Shiloh did. So yeah, Lusamine telling Lillie that the clefairy was actually hers, legally, is just … yiiiiikes. There are so, so many ways in which Lusamine is written as a realistic abusive parent. It’s what hands down makes her one of the utmost, absolutely most vile villains the series has had yet.)