#the elite 4 system just seems like complete rubbish honestly

[ask-professor-laurel]

You’ve mentioned Team Rocket before, but what are your thoughts on some of the other criminal organizations and teams around? Does Galar have any, or is it just Team Yell bothering Gym Challengers specifically.

Frankly I can't stand any of them. I'm gonna exclude Team Skull and Team Yell from that, because they're more... nuisances, really, than anything, and Team Yell hasn't really been around since the end of the last Gym Challenge. Team Skull doesn't seem to really be doing much besides causing a hassle for some trainers, but they're pretty chill, as far as I've been told.

I really do just personally hate Team Rocket, which I think I'm very fair to do. I think Kanto and Johto need to get it together and stop sitting back and letting trainers deal with them- seriously, between their Elite 4 system and their champions, they shouldn't be letting regular trainers deal with these very dangerous people. Someone's going to get themselves killed when they run into a grunt or an admin who actually knows what they're doing and isn't a low-level grunt. Speaking from experience.

Team Aqua and Team Magma, I'll admit, sent me into hysterics when I read about their whole thing. It happened when I was quite a bit younger, so I don't remember the broadcasts and such, but reading about it after? I cannot begin to describe how stupid they were. Legendaries shouldn't be bothered for many reasons, especially legendaries as powerful as Groudon, Kyogre, and Rayquaza, so I don't know what they were thinking going after them. Pure arrogance, really, thinking anyone could control a legendary. As if Kyogre wouldn't eat them all without noticing. I think it's hilarious they've all but disbanded.

Team Galactic presents much more of a threat and I hear they're still crawling around Sinnoh, even without their leader. Cyrus? I think? His admins are probably still around. Anyways, they literally wanted to destroy the entire world, and had access to the perfect legendaries to do so. The fact that they're still around makes me nervous, in all honesty, because Sinnoh is host to... a lot of legendaries. With a lot of power. If they get close like that again, I just hope they don't rely on trainers to take care of it. Sinnoh has the same problem as Kanto and Johto; leave it to the trainers to do it, even though their champion is RIGHT THERE.

Team Plasma. I mean, they seem to be doing fine now, what's left of them anyways. Hard not to hear about that one when, what was it, didn't an entire castle just emerge from the ground? I don't know what's up with Unova but they're another region with a surplus of regional legendaries who can cause a lot of very real problems if taken under the wrong hands. I hope they don't start crawling out of the woodwork again, they're like Team Galactic to me. They make me nervous.

I know Kalos' presented a big threat but I'll be real, they were very... forgettable. They didn't really get anywhere, if I remember right. I mean, sure, Xerneas and Yveltal are terrifying forces of nature, but they didn't get too far with trying to get their hands on them.

Team Skull are just a nuisance. They're more funny than they are a threat, really, and their leader reigns them in when they're being too much. They've done a good job of sweeping it under the rug, but that Aether Foundation was definitely up to no good, and personally I think they had a lot more involvement with those Ultra Beasts showing up than they want to admit. Haven't been able to actually look into it, it's all covered up behind so many classified stickers and passwords that it's about impossible to get to from the outside.

Team Yell are hilarious. I'll say it; I thought they were hilarious whenever I ran into them, though I'm sure the Gym challengers hated their guts. I would've hated them when I was doing my own Gym Challenge, to be fair, but as someone on the outside? Hilarious. I hope they keep doing it. As for Macro Cosmos, I don't really consider them evil, it was really just Rose and Oleana doing wildly unethical things. Can't stand either of them, but with Rose it's a bit more personal.

I don't know what other regions are doing, but they really need to get it together. I think the Elite 4 and champion system they have just don't work- the Elite 4 is clearly just four of the strongest trainers they can find, across the region, and the champion is just the "strongest" trainer in the region. The champion also doesn't do much in those regions besides battle, same with the Elite 4. Here, being champion is a much more political position, with a lot of responsibility attached. When things go wrong, it's the champion's responsibility to step up. It's why we have long-reigning champions and why the tournament itself is so hard- you really have to prove your strength. Though I wish they'd stop letting kids compete- a 10 year old has no business being champion.

We have a much more effective method than a lot of other regions. And we've proven it- Team Rocket hasn't tried to come back for years after Leon scared the living daylights out of all of them. Rose is in jail, he would've been arrested even if he hadn't turned himself in. We crack down harder on bad people here, and there's a lot more involvement than just... regular trainers. I personally get involved in plenty of cases, everything from people trying to make their own bad guy teams, to shitty trainers who abuse their Pokemon. Honestly, other regions could learn a lot from how we handle things here. There's more to being a champion than keeping your title, and run of the mill trainers aren't an effective substitute for actual justice.

This got long, sorry, I just have a lot of opinions on these teams and organizations and how there's a lot of failings in how they've been dealt with.