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it seems there's not a lot of threads, if any, for character discussion and i Really Like discussing characters and i am sure many people on here do also. so yeah! go absolutely ham talking about characters you think about a lot, and give thoughts on other people's thoughts! you don't have to spoiler btw i'm just doing it because i have like 4 different characters i wanna talk about right now and if i can get the words out i will be writing out a LOT about them, as in like several paragraphs. if you're not sure where to start, here's a few prompts on things to talk about! you don't have to touch on these ofc, they're just potential starting points
fun fact, i wrote literally all four of these out of order. wrote lusamine first, then lillie, then faba, and then lastly gladion.
- what's your favorite/least favorite thing about them and why?
- if they have multiple versions (for instance say a character appears both in the games and pokespe), which one is your favorite? why?
- is there anything about them you think could have been done better?
- do you have any headcanons about them? what are they?
OUGHHUHUHUH LILLIE... she has been rotating in my mind nonstop literally ever since i watched the sun/moon anime ngl. i think at some point i could genuinely point to some things that are like "oh yeah she is ABSOLUTELY autistic coded" but i kind of. forgot what they were but that won't stop me from going "yeah she's autistic" tbh. i cannot say why exactly it is i latched onto her so hard but i sure did!!
i think in general like. MASSIVE somewhat ominous energy coming off her i think idk how to describe it but like. ok you know the old covers for the first warrior cats arc? those phenomenal little paintings that i honestly feel like i'd see in my grandma's house or something like that? it's a bit like that, and also if you've ever heard the album lookaftering the overall sound of it also has her vibes if that makes sense, even if the lyrics don't match up (aside from brother that one kind of checks out actually). like... idk man it's that serene yet haunting feel, i remember ghost girls used to be a common point of discussion in the pokemon fandom and i think lillie is the true ghost girl of gen 7 if that makes sense. human equivalent of when cats get startled and do the thing where their fur stands on end also. does that make sense i hope it makes sense it is weirdly hard explaining my thoughts on lillie.
honestly, like, when it comes to the animeverse... she deserved better. she deserved SO much better. probably the most fucked up thing about that whole arc imo is the fact that not much really came out of it. sure, lillie got over her fear of touching pokemon, but that very much didn't require.. all of that to happen. people didn't find out about what was happening at aether. faba practically got away with it, although a demotion absolutely would suck for a guy like him, but i'll talk about him later. but like. yeah man the fact that lillie just had to accept that things weren't going to change, that she never really got the chance to fight back, the fact that the only option was to forgive and forget.. it hurts a lot, hell maybe that's part of the reason i latched onto her so hard. that's probably the best place to end this one before things get too personal, probably. but yes, the way i see it the way things went in the anime almost feels like a bad ending in a way, and hopefully reading my thoughts on gladion and lusamine that picture will start to come together.
i think in general like. MASSIVE somewhat ominous energy coming off her i think idk how to describe it but like. ok you know the old covers for the first warrior cats arc? those phenomenal little paintings that i honestly feel like i'd see in my grandma's house or something like that? it's a bit like that, and also if you've ever heard the album lookaftering the overall sound of it also has her vibes if that makes sense, even if the lyrics don't match up (aside from brother that one kind of checks out actually). like... idk man it's that serene yet haunting feel, i remember ghost girls used to be a common point of discussion in the pokemon fandom and i think lillie is the true ghost girl of gen 7 if that makes sense. human equivalent of when cats get startled and do the thing where their fur stands on end also. does that make sense i hope it makes sense it is weirdly hard explaining my thoughts on lillie.
honestly, like, when it comes to the animeverse... she deserved better. she deserved SO much better. probably the most fucked up thing about that whole arc imo is the fact that not much really came out of it. sure, lillie got over her fear of touching pokemon, but that very much didn't require.. all of that to happen. people didn't find out about what was happening at aether. faba practically got away with it, although a demotion absolutely would suck for a guy like him, but i'll talk about him later. but like. yeah man the fact that lillie just had to accept that things weren't going to change, that she never really got the chance to fight back, the fact that the only option was to forgive and forget.. it hurts a lot, hell maybe that's part of the reason i latched onto her so hard. that's probably the best place to end this one before things get too personal, probably. but yes, the way i see it the way things went in the anime almost feels like a bad ending in a way, and hopefully reading my thoughts on gladion and lusamine that picture will start to come together.
ALRIGHT SO. LAST ONE I'M WRITING! WE'RE ALMOST DONE WITH THIS TITAN OF A THREAD-STARTER! upon thinking. hm i might not have nearly as much to say on gladion as the other 3 characters here but whatever! whatever! i'm so close i can do this AHEM. honestly i do not know what it is that made me latch onto gladion it just kind of Happened at some point and i'm not quite sure when, late 2021 if my memory serves correct. i'll start simple here, i think a pretty common misunderstanding i see about gladion is just boiling him down to "haha emo" which like. ok i will admit "go cry emo boy" is always super funny to me but like.. come on after literally everything he's been through it's like.. GEE. I WONDER IF THERE IS A DEEPER REASONING FOR HIM BEING LIKE THAT! but also sometimes it's like i see people go "haha this guy listens to my chemical romance" and i'm like no this is the kind of guy to be like "oh yeah i listen to pretty niche genres" and then tell you about scunchwave or sewer pop or some shit like that and i mean that in a good way. so like yeah varying levels of seriousness on my end i guess
also like.. the weird thing is like, i'm not a huge fan of any of the variations of him? original sun/moon games probably did him the best i just don't really vibe with it too much for whatever reason, obviously animeverse is what initially got hyperfixated on so i'm obviously gonna think about it way more but also i feel like he still lost a lot as a result of the choice to redeem lusamine, and i remember there's one line where lillie mentions he left like half a year ago which makes his entire deal outright baffling, and then pokespe is like. i go "yeah my faves should get to commit crimes" and i guess the monkey's paw curled on this one because now we have "gladion beats the shit out of someone but it's not like faba or lusamine it's just kiawe who absolutely did not deserve that" and also a line to rival james' infamous "let's send those whining women back to the dark age" and i'm just. not like this man granted i never read All of sun/moon pokespe because in general it just felt painfully gritty and boring BUT!!! we are talking about gladion here ahem ahem.
anyway so i mentioned that the way things went in the animeverse almost feels like a bad ending for gladion, and i'll admit that moreso applies to gladion. probably the most immediately Off thing i feel is seeing him actively work with aether during the necrozma arc. sure, the original sun/moon games had the whole thing of him taking over as aether president (which is an entire other can of worms but for now i'll just say yeah that was kind of fucked to say the least), but seeing him act under the orders of the people he tried so hard to escape from, when i first thought about it in hindsight all i could think is that it all just feels horribly, horribly wrong. really, thinking on it this kind of applies to lillie too, but it definitely feels more blatantly off with gladion considering he seems like the last person who'd willingly ally with aether.
also like.. the weird thing is like, i'm not a huge fan of any of the variations of him? original sun/moon games probably did him the best i just don't really vibe with it too much for whatever reason, obviously animeverse is what initially got hyperfixated on so i'm obviously gonna think about it way more but also i feel like he still lost a lot as a result of the choice to redeem lusamine, and i remember there's one line where lillie mentions he left like half a year ago which makes his entire deal outright baffling, and then pokespe is like. i go "yeah my faves should get to commit crimes" and i guess the monkey's paw curled on this one because now we have "gladion beats the shit out of someone but it's not like faba or lusamine it's just kiawe who absolutely did not deserve that" and also a line to rival james' infamous "let's send those whining women back to the dark age" and i'm just. not like this man granted i never read All of sun/moon pokespe because in general it just felt painfully gritty and boring BUT!!! we are talking about gladion here ahem ahem.
anyway so i mentioned that the way things went in the animeverse almost feels like a bad ending for gladion, and i'll admit that moreso applies to gladion. probably the most immediately Off thing i feel is seeing him actively work with aether during the necrozma arc. sure, the original sun/moon games had the whole thing of him taking over as aether president (which is an entire other can of worms but for now i'll just say yeah that was kind of fucked to say the least), but seeing him act under the orders of the people he tried so hard to escape from, when i first thought about it in hindsight all i could think is that it all just feels horribly, horribly wrong. really, thinking on it this kind of applies to lillie too, but it definitely feels more blatantly off with gladion considering he seems like the last person who'd willingly ally with aether.
I'M FINALLY DOING IT HUH. I'M FINALLY TALKING ABOUT FABA. okay so as is probably obvious. this man fills me with an incomprehensible amount of rage. so half slamming my fists on my nonexistent desk half genuine character discussion! i feel like talking about the actually (hopefully) comprehensible stuff first though because i do genuinely have some thoughts on this guy that aren't just biting and killing!
i think at the core of this guy is someone who, above all else, strives for power over others. his obsession with status, of being so close to the top of aether, it all comes down to people working under him. really, that obsession with status ends up being what fuels a lot of his actions i feel like. it's always about either getting higher or making sure he doesn't lose that status, and as we've seen he will stop at nothing to do either of those, and this applies to all canons, although the original sun/moon doesn't really show it much. siding with rainbow rocket, making sure nobody ever found out about that incident with nihilego, fueling lusamine's obsession with ultra beasts to get her out of the picture, all of it was for status.
in addition, while faba's consistent attitude of "fuck them kids" is easy to mistake for just "look at this grumpy old guy" and hell, honestly that might have been the intention, i feel like it actually ends up being a neat little example of a concept i feel is core to the series, that experience of being a kid and seeing adults look down upon you and how in the pokemon world you can finally prove yourself to be just as capable. and i think that's why he hates kids so much, because they don't respect his authority. sure with some aether employee, it's pretty easy to threaten them considering their jobs are at stake, but what the hell do you do when some kid with a swellow or a torracat or even a simple butterfree shows up? whether you're a kid or an adult, everyone's equal in a pokemon battle, that's how it works in the pokemon world.
i'll cap this one off with a quote from a.. let's just say unlikely source that just kind of gives faba vibes: "...and then you finally get to decide who lives and dies! It's the day that no one will ssee what's behind your curtain in the back office, where that disgusting metallic smell always erodes from, eroding, eroding your entire office." (typo is part of the quote don't worry about it)
now. with all that said. this motherfucker ABSOLUTELY does nfts lmao
i think at the core of this guy is someone who, above all else, strives for power over others. his obsession with status, of being so close to the top of aether, it all comes down to people working under him. really, that obsession with status ends up being what fuels a lot of his actions i feel like. it's always about either getting higher or making sure he doesn't lose that status, and as we've seen he will stop at nothing to do either of those, and this applies to all canons, although the original sun/moon doesn't really show it much. siding with rainbow rocket, making sure nobody ever found out about that incident with nihilego, fueling lusamine's obsession with ultra beasts to get her out of the picture, all of it was for status.
in addition, while faba's consistent attitude of "fuck them kids" is easy to mistake for just "look at this grumpy old guy" and hell, honestly that might have been the intention, i feel like it actually ends up being a neat little example of a concept i feel is core to the series, that experience of being a kid and seeing adults look down upon you and how in the pokemon world you can finally prove yourself to be just as capable. and i think that's why he hates kids so much, because they don't respect his authority. sure with some aether employee, it's pretty easy to threaten them considering their jobs are at stake, but what the hell do you do when some kid with a swellow or a torracat or even a simple butterfree shows up? whether you're a kid or an adult, everyone's equal in a pokemon battle, that's how it works in the pokemon world.
i'll cap this one off with a quote from a.. let's just say unlikely source that just kind of gives faba vibes: "...and then you finally get to decide who lives and dies! It's the day that no one will ssee what's behind your curtain in the back office, where that disgusting metallic smell always erodes from, eroding, eroding your entire office." (typo is part of the quote don't worry about it)
now. with all that said. this motherfucker ABSOLUTELY does nfts lmao
otherwise known as quite possibly the most ?????-ly handled characters in the series! god uh i think most of us can agree her character was a trainwreck but it's a trainwreck that i've ended up finding really interesting. i think i've actually talked about my thoughts on animeverse lusamine before, lemme quote that actually
of course, i do think there was potential with lusamine! the anime absolutely could've succeeded in making her a bad person without being quite as dark as the games, having a much more mundane kind of terrible absolutely could have worked! the manga (and anime) could have had both her and faba as villains! i'm honestly not even sure what exactly happened, if there were enough people stanning lusamine for tpc to go back on all of this i certainly never heard about those people.
to end this, a more positive thing to talk about and what i mean when i say i do find her character kind of interesting: so there's this little itch.io horror game called lethargy hill, right? i heard about it from this one video essay about it and 3 other games it was released alongside for halloween, and since it's very much something you can get the full experience out of by watching it on youtube, i went and checked it out. if you're interested, be warned there's a bunch of somewhat gorey descriptions and also sudden loud noises a bit before 12 minutes in, but anyway let me get to actually talking about this.
lethargy hill, more specifically the character only referred to once as "the matriarch", gives me a lot of lusamine vibes. the story revolves around this character deciding they want company, and so they build a family out of whatever materials are nearby. a husband to "shuffle around those hallways at nights, making sure doors were kept locked, scraping his feet along the carpet and sobbing gently into the silence", a sister who would "shriek and make her life worse, press her face against the windows and fill the rooms with jealous looks", and a son and daughter who would either "love each other and hate her, or love her and hate each other", both of those options the matriarch is fine with. normal family things yaknow. but anyway, once it's all complete, she quickly grows tired of this family she's created. the husband roams the house, doing the same motions over and over again, but i find what happens with the other three particularly interesting.
the sister begins to assert herself, not content to simply observe and hate from afar, but more importantly, she and the daughter actually find happiness, as the game says, "they had so much in common, after all - they were both made of dead things, they were both locked out." the matriarch despises this. “You’re supposed to make my daughter hate me,” she thought, “but instead you’ve made her love you, and that’s a whole different story.” but there's still her son, right? the "only one that truly loved her, that did anything right". but, being made of blood, he was fragile, and constantly losing a bit of himself. he wouldn't last for long. and so the matriarch kills all of them, one by one, leaving her alone again, alone and unable to do anything but wait for someone to come.
now, i know that just seemed like a plot summary, but i swear it's important. it does parallel the aether family a bit, doesn't it? it's not one-to-one of course, notably with the absence of any parallel to the sister, but at the very least the vibes are similar, if that makes sense. the way this family was brought down simply for not being what they were supposed to be, the way the daughter and sister were not allowed to be happy, the way the son was killed before he could become "ruined". i think the following quote puts it best, hopefully.
"She hated her family. They weren’t what she wanted."
of course, this is not all i have to say about her! for as much shit as i give animeverse lusamine.... dear god pokespe somehow managed to do even worse. because with the animeverse, you can tell they were TRYING to make lusamine a good person, as i said i'm probably just taking some of her actions far too personally. but pokespe... they showed how horrible of a person lusamine was and then they decided to go "no, she was FINE actually it was all this other guy's fault!!" and as you can tell i very much do think faba is a terrible person pokespe included but the way they just completely dropped the ball with lusamine is just... bizarre. they were doing so well and then it just fell apart right then and there.
of course, i do think there was potential with lusamine! the anime absolutely could've succeeded in making her a bad person without being quite as dark as the games, having a much more mundane kind of terrible absolutely could have worked! the manga (and anime) could have had both her and faba as villains! i'm honestly not even sure what exactly happened, if there were enough people stanning lusamine for tpc to go back on all of this i certainly never heard about those people.
to end this, a more positive thing to talk about and what i mean when i say i do find her character kind of interesting: so there's this little itch.io horror game called lethargy hill, right? i heard about it from this one video essay about it and 3 other games it was released alongside for halloween, and since it's very much something you can get the full experience out of by watching it on youtube, i went and checked it out. if you're interested, be warned there's a bunch of somewhat gorey descriptions and also sudden loud noises a bit before 12 minutes in, but anyway let me get to actually talking about this.
lethargy hill, more specifically the character only referred to once as "the matriarch", gives me a lot of lusamine vibes. the story revolves around this character deciding they want company, and so they build a family out of whatever materials are nearby. a husband to "shuffle around those hallways at nights, making sure doors were kept locked, scraping his feet along the carpet and sobbing gently into the silence", a sister who would "shriek and make her life worse, press her face against the windows and fill the rooms with jealous looks", and a son and daughter who would either "love each other and hate her, or love her and hate each other", both of those options the matriarch is fine with. normal family things yaknow. but anyway, once it's all complete, she quickly grows tired of this family she's created. the husband roams the house, doing the same motions over and over again, but i find what happens with the other three particularly interesting.
the sister begins to assert herself, not content to simply observe and hate from afar, but more importantly, she and the daughter actually find happiness, as the game says, "they had so much in common, after all - they were both made of dead things, they were both locked out." the matriarch despises this. “You’re supposed to make my daughter hate me,” she thought, “but instead you’ve made her love you, and that’s a whole different story.” but there's still her son, right? the "only one that truly loved her, that did anything right". but, being made of blood, he was fragile, and constantly losing a bit of himself. he wouldn't last for long. and so the matriarch kills all of them, one by one, leaving her alone again, alone and unable to do anything but wait for someone to come.
now, i know that just seemed like a plot summary, but i swear it's important. it does parallel the aether family a bit, doesn't it? it's not one-to-one of course, notably with the absence of any parallel to the sister, but at the very least the vibes are similar, if that makes sense. the way this family was brought down simply for not being what they were supposed to be, the way the daughter and sister were not allowed to be happy, the way the son was killed before he could become "ruined". i think the following quote puts it best, hopefully.
"She hated her family. They weren’t what she wanted."
fun fact, i wrote literally all four of these out of order. wrote lusamine first, then lillie, then faba, and then lastly gladion.
