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how has the pokemon fandom done your faves?

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there's been this post going around on tumblr recently about the worst fanon takes you've seen for a character, and since 1 i like ranting about things and hearing people rant about things and 2 i am slightly curious about how the pokemon fandom is on the twitter side of things, i'd like to bring that question to here! how have your favorite characters been treated by the fandom? have people completely screwed them up, or are the takes surprisingly not bad? do people even talk about them? here's my thoughts on how a couple of my faves have been treated

-ok putting my. admittedly fucking batshit view of lillie aside i swear i always see her made out to be like, "the responsible one" or something and like.. come on. she has SO MUCH weirdgirl swag i think and also after her entire arc and like an entire game of seeing her how the hell do you think THAT'S the best option for her character WHY would you reduce her to something so boring

-that said. gladion got it so much worse dudeee. for the love of god just let him be genuinely angry without constantly emphasizing "oh but he's soft deep down uwu" like maybe it's just me but. fandoms cannot get "edgy" characters right dude holy shit. i swear characters don't have to give up any sharp edges persay to be happy you people are just too obsessed with your soft uwu found family gays or whatever to let characters just.. not be that. or maybe that's just the tumblr side of things. hell if i know.
 
(I greatly dislike Iris but that's because she annoys me and reminds me of kids I knew in school and for the most part anything that reminds me of that time period in my life I am going to hate it excessively. Plus both her designs upset me greatly. Especially her hair. Her hair is too big. Big hair is horrible why gods no how does her hair exist that big she totally just has a giant balloon in there with her hair glued around it or something to get that shape.)

My favorites tend to be male characters so.

I literally cannot look up fanart of them since I am not into guyXguy pairings (or really any art of a pairing that's not just friends/cute fluff since I'm ace).

Me: I think I'll look up [CHARACTER] on tumblr.

Tumblr: OOPS ALL YAOI! :D

Me: oh, right that's why I don't look for fanart anymore. Ha ha.
 
I really dislike it when the fandom mixes up Blue/Gary and Gary. I actually like Gary a lot (he's one of my favorite anime characters) but he's essentially a different character from game!Blue (same with Pokespe!Blue). But people tend to mix game!Blue and Gary a lot starting just from the name to overexaggerating how mean Blue is to the player (Gary was far pettier and a lot of Blue's dialogue does contain actual helpful information instead of just pure snark).

And of course the whole 5 minutes champion thing. Like I get it's a joke but realistically for him to have become champion, it make at news for Oak to travel (since fast travel only exist as player convenience and not real world transportation) and for Red/Leaf to get the surprise it would've been at least a 24 hour period before he was dethroned (no more than a week thought).
 
Friendly notice
Hey everyone,

Just a gentle, preemptive reminder to please stay mindful of others when posting in this thread!
While everyone is welcome to express how they feel about the reception of their favorite characters, remember that this is subjective and everyone is entitled to their own interpretations as well. We're all fans here, so going forward please continue to keep things chill! ^^
 
silver gets. some of the love he deserves. i dont think there's much i hate about FANON silver, but i do have issues with how some of the FANBASE treats him

when people misinterpret him it's either "yes i love silver because hes a dick! give us more asshole rivals!" or "no i hate silver because hes mean and i dont like mean people :mad:"

both are pretty poor reasons to like or dislike him imo

you shouldnt like him because he treats the mc poorly, and theres a lot more to him than just "jerk rival." if you cant like him just because of his attitude, then fine, but he's a terrific character and you're gonna miss the nuances of him if you will only focus on that

hes not the awesome twat rival that the pokemon NEEDS to SAVE it from the HORRORS OF THE NEW GENS, nor is he some irredeemable devil-spawn villain. hes a kid, a fairly young one at that, who was abandoned by his mob boss father and meant to live on the street. hes been conditioned to think that strength is the only measure of value, and to be loved and appreciated or even just liked he must become strong. that's why he does a lot of ridiculous and morally-defunct things in the story - he's trying to become strong so someone will care about him. the game never said it outright, but he craves validation. he comes from a cutthroat family, why wouldnt he go to extremes to fulfill his goal? his goal of just finding happiness for once in his life.
his bitter attitude is all he's ever known. he hasnt had a proper childhood. he probably has to steal things just to SURVIVE. hes obviously flawed. hes obnoxious to the player and goes out of his way to harass them, because he sees them as a threat. he wants, no, NEEDS to be the strongest, because how else can he be loved? how else can he love himself? because to this kid, raised for the first few years of his life by a neglectful father with an extremely warped worldview, nothing else matters, just strength. if he cannot be strong, then he is worthless.

when you praise silver just because he's rude and abrasive, it's harmful. this is how we get characters like melli, who are combative and cruel to the player for no reason (sorry melli fans!). there's so much more to him than his personality. and when you bash silver for the same reason, that's harmful too. if it's the only reason you don't like him (i'm talking about "oh silver is such an ass i hate him" versus "i know silver has been through a lot but he still did bad shit and thats not ok"), congrats, you missed the entire point of his character.

sorry i ended up talking so much!! i just have... strong feelings on him that i really needed to get out of my system! i love silver and he means a LOT to me ><
 
i thought this was gonna be about your fave POKEMON and i was gonna be like, yeah i hear people say krookodile is super popular but i've seen like 4 other people who like it syo maybe i'm just surrounding myself with people with bad taste. but this is about characters syo uh. People don't even talk about the ones I like 90% of the time
 
im not a fan of how giovanni (in the games) is kinda mischaracterised by the fandom as a one note child abuser or like some uber-megalomaniac who wants to take over the world (i blame the games for that tho ngl, poor gio, not even gamefreak knows what to do with him) and on the opposite side i dislike how some fanon shows gio as being a despondant sadboy after the events of the kanto games and like making him too soft ig? i just feel like some people just swing too far in like a pendulum having him as either an irredeemable monster or as an overly sympathetic woobie (and dont even get me started on the tohjo falls theory) when hes neither.

in the og games at least hes a guy that likes money and influence and unfortunately pokemon trafficking and gambling makes big bucks, its just business. and when he loses, he cuts his losses and moves on (at least before they retconned that in the remakes). and yeah he does leave silver in the celebi event which is objectively a scummy thing to do regardless of intent, but theres never been any canon proof (that i know of) of gio abusing silver before he left. tldr i just think gameverse gio is a lot more simple (yet somehow more complicated ig) than he is portrayed in fanon.

anyways i hope this is legible, im definitely normal about this guy
 
in the og games at least hes a guy that likes money and influence and unfortunately pokemon trafficking and gambling makes big bucks, its just business. and when he loses, he cuts his losses and moves on (at least before they retconned that in the remakes). and yeah he does leave silver in the celebi event which is objectively a scummy thing to do regardless of intent, but theres never been any canon proof (that i know of) of gio abusing silver before he left. tldr i just think gameverse gio is a lot more simple (yet somehow more complicated ig) than he is portrayed in fanon.
hi im the Silver Lover Number One (who also thinks gio is a pretty cool character btw) and i want to chime in bc thats always what happens when people mention silver lmao
teeeechnically nothing explicitly states or anything that giovanni did abuse silver, but i think where that narrative comes from is the idea that if gio truly loved silver/really was a good father before the celebi thing he wouldnt have been willing to abandon him over that, so one can extrapolate that gio probably was a pretty bad dad in the first place.
not to mention silvers mindset seems to come from giovannis own obsession with strength and power? to me (lore fanatic who spends too much time reading into everything bc pkmn special interest woo) silver is so overly occupied with becoming strong bc giovanni prolly drilled it in his head ever since he was young that strength is the no.1 indicator of a person's worth and success (in fact, thats why giovanni abandoned silver in the first place, bc he felt the need to become stronger after his defeat by red) and therefore if you cannot be strong you may as well be worthless. silver as far as we know has no mother that had a role in his upbringing and has a father who is, for all intents and purposes, neglectful, and he's probably in liiike his early teens im guessing?? (in the games) which r fairly formative years, and at that point he was just straight up dumped by his dad. so naturally he feels the desire to be cared for and seen as worthy of love by someone, so he goes to extreme lengths (stealing, stealing, viewing pokemon as objects to further his personal goals which was almost definitely ALSO taught to him by giovanni, more stealing) in order to become what his idea of "strong" is so someone will care for him. bc from silver himself's perspective, nobody DOES care for him the way he is, further lending to the notion that giovanni's parenting skills. well. left something to be desired
so. personally i think gio kinda was abusive in the neglectful sense as lore points to it + it explains a LOTTT about why silver is the way he is... in terms of physical/verbal abuse nothing necessarily suggests that was the case but nothing really says that WASNT the case either and thus thats kinda up to player interpretation... sorry for going off lol i promise im not trying to argue or anything, i myself am an abuse survivor (physical + verbal) and i very much see my younger self in silver so i care probably too much abt this topic and i wanted to share my opinions on it :bulbaWave: i agree gio does get mischaracterized by fanon a lot (oh and the anime. the anime somehow did him even worse)
 
no need to apologise! you make a pretty good point ngl, i never really thought of it that way so it nice seeing other perspectives :) and yeah i agree poor silver and gio tend to get pretty badly mischaracterised, like ive even seen some people call silver a downright villain (yes i really saw this take before) and theres like no consideration of his circumstances. ik he was a jerk to the protag/other characters but theres no way hes as bad as ppl like ghetsis, lysandre or gio.

as an aside silver is also one of my favourite characters! its nice seeing other silver enjoyers in the world:bulbaLove:
 
no need to apologise! you make a pretty good point ngl, i never really thought of it that way so it nice seeing other perspectives :) and yeah i agree poor silver and gio tend to get pretty badly mischaracterised, like ive even seen some people call silver a downright villain (yes i really saw this take before) and theres like no consideration of his circumstances. ik he was a jerk to the protag/other characters but theres no way hes as bad as ppl like ghetsis, lysandre or gio.
aaaaa its so upsetting seeing people say things abt silver like he's a villain or even just inherently a bad person when hes really just a misguided kid ><;
and yesss!!! silver gang!! :ayeaye:
 
People's views of Cyrus come from the anime, which is far and away the worst and shallowest version of him.

They don't even know who Mitsumi is so I guess she's not really mischaracterized but at what cost?
 
Hola! I'm super flattered that I'm your favorite... but if you don't mind me asking, what are you referring to as "the kinda stuff you had to put up with"?
the unfunny yandere jokes that almost everyone seems to think are hilarious, but are actually just a result of being completely media illiterate and unable to understand characters with more than a single personality trait.
 
the unfunny yandere jokes that almost everyone seems to think are hilarious, but are actually just a result of being completely media illiterate and unable to understand characters with more than a single personality trait.
Ay ay ay, people can't really be making fun of me like that... I'm, everyone I've met so far seems so nice!
 
I try to not let fandom interpretations of character affect how I view the character. Like, yeah, sometimes I get a headcanon or two from a friend, but we're all different in our interpretations! As long as it's not, like, bigotry or harassment, it's super cool.

I guess the one thing that does bug me on a personal level is that Wallace and Steven tend to be more popular as characters than Winona. It's more of an inconvenience than anything, though, in a "will this person know Wallace and Steven but not Winona". (Unless it's, like, someone hating her because "she gets in the way of our ship" or some other misogynist talking points that have sadly appeared across fandoms, but that's pretty rare in places like forums).
 
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