I apologize in advance for all the fangirling I'm about to do.
[PT. I apologize in advance for all the fangirling I'm about to do.]
Hello! I'm an uncomprehensible and formless creature that has been caged in a human body for her sins. You may refer to me as Void and by she/her and they/them pronouns.
Non-exhaustive fandom list:
Inazuma Eleven
Inazuma Eleven GO
Pokemon Main Videogame Series
Pokemon Legends Arceus (dk if it's part of the main series or not, so I'm counting it separately)
Paper Mario Series
Mario & Luigi Series
Warrior Cats: TPB and TNP. I also like SkyClan.
Avatar The Last Airbender and The Legend of Korra.
Other fandoms will be added if my mind decides to collaborate.
I do not take part in fandom discourse of any kind. People should be free to write and draw and whatnot whatever they want in their corners of the internet.
Bigotry, be it for people's gender, sexuality, race, ethnity, religion, looks, disabilities or neurodivergences, and any other form of bigotry I may have missed, will result in an immediate block.
Sometimes I type in italics and/or bold because it helps me focus and understand what I'm writing/reading better.
I had a sudden flash of inspiration that reawakened by hyperfixation on GO Galaxy and Ixal Fleet. So, here is a post about Ixal's culture, based on little to nothing in canon. I am the theories board meme personified.
Culture is a very complex subject that would need several books, essays and charts to explain in its entirety. This post is glance at surface level, but I still hope you enjoy it.
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Magic use was casual, and people from all walks of life used it in their daily lives for many things. To hunt — since the people of Ixal have lots of meat in their ideal diet —, aid in their daily tasks, pull pranks on others and many more.
Magic was also used in the arts. Lots of paintings, songs and oral stories had a magical air to them that enhanced the experience and improved the message they wanted to share.
In the case of soccer — since Inazuma is, after all, a soccer anime —, players used magic in their hissatsus. Often, their abilities on the field were impossible to replicate by aliens.
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Ixal had massive oceans and lakes and rivers. Cities and villages were built close to or even over water surfaces, and people used to move around through canals. Some of those canals were meant for boats, while others were for people to swim in.
The vast majority of Ixal citizens learned how to swim at very young ages, since it was an essential life skill for the planet they lived in. Water and the need to swim were ever present in the daily lives of Ixal's people, and sports like syncronized swimming and water dances(?) were quite popular.
Maybe poor areas had bad building maintainance, and people and homes there were vulnerable to floods and strong currents. Aegir's family could have ended up homeless because their house was destroyed in a flood.
Storms were terrifying. They could cut the power and leave them in the dark and cold for a long time, something that could be a health hazard and possibly even deadly for a cold blooded species. The winds could uproot trees and blow the roofs of homes, and the rain could cause massive destruction due to the pressure it put on buildings and the likehood of causing a flood. On a cultural and perhaps religious level, they were associated with power, change and death.
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Hair was, for a good fraction of the planet's history, a status symbol. Taking care of long hair required time and effort, and often got in the way of manual labor. As a result, long hair became associated with the aristocracy, business owners and old money.
However, as @cervidaecorpse and I talked about in our… uh, many rambles, Ixal underwent a great social shift before its destruction. Maybe it was a quick shift, or it could have taken decades, but regardless, the quality of life of the average citizen shot up drastically. As a result of their improved collective health, long hair turned into a cultural norm, and people of high status distinguished themselves through other means.
Of course, there are exceptions to every rule. Plenty of people from Ixal had short hair for reasons unrelated to health. Just like on earth, some professions needed one to have short hair for safety reasons — to avoid contamination in lab work and food procession, for example — or because it was a cultural norm for a minority people.
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Ixal, as a planet, was isolated from the rest of the galaxy. But unlike planets like Earth, which lacked the technology necessary for space travel, it had no contact with aliens by choice.
This choice, seen as strange by the standars of many, is born from an intent to focus on their own problems and struggles. They assumed aliens had nothing to offer them, and interacting with other planets was more trouble than it was worth. Correct or not, this decision was based on a cultural understanding of international relations.
From village to planetary scale, all interactions between independent groups must be based on tolerance for the other's existence and independence. Every group manages its own affairs, and any and all political alliance must be based on mutual benefit.
This pragmatic approach is reflected on an intraplanetary scale, as well. Ixal's people lived in small, independent communities, and limited their contact with outsiders. Travel happened on few ocassions, and was usually motivated by searches for trade. Moving out happened rarely, and tended to occur because of external factors — such as a need to study far away — rather than personal choices. Even so, moving back in was quite common, once they'd reached their goals.
While not downright hostile towards outsiders — since that would compromise their desire to be left alone —, a small level of wariness was far from unexpected. Especially if the outsiders in question were aliens and didn't understand the social dynamics of Ixal's people.
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The people of Ixal usually had large families. Maybe twins and triplets were the norm, but regardless most had several siblings. They tended to be involved in raising the children of their siblings and — sometimes — cousins, as well.
Ixal's communities, as a rule, were formed by several families that lived together in the same… town? neighborhood?… and felt responsible for one another. They were similar to the small-ish town of a few thousand inhabitants where everyone knows each other. The cashier at the local market knows you by name. The local librarian is up to date on all teenage drama. Your children's teacher is your ex. Your ex's new partner used to date your second cousin. The old person next door will embarass you by sharing all embarrassing baby stories with your date. Your parent sets you on playdates with the children of their old roomate.
Helping each other out in times of struggle was the norm. Your grandma's neighbor could come to visit and give you a basket full of delicious fruit because you need to eat more but can't afford to. Your father's coworker could fix your stove or whatever for a lower price than the market standard. Your children's classmates could one day show up at your doorstep with stuff they don't use anymore that you desperately need. Those weren't favors that would have to be repaid, that was just what you did for your family/neighbors, life simply was like that.
Not all problems, however, could be fixed in this manner. The rich and powerful were still gaining wealth at the expense of others, as often happens with people in positions of power. Entire communities could end in poverty due to corruption and abuses of power, or natural disasters that destroyed their sources of income. Sometimes, their entire homes and livehoods were bought and repurposed by corrupt politicians, unethical business owners or nobles with wealth but little compassion.
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In canon, all aliens are refered to by their first names, with the sole exception of Ozrock. Ozrock is always, by everyone, adressed by his surname. This is an odd writing decision that doesn't seem to have an explanation, but I can work with it.
The people of Ixal adressed the members of their community mostly by their first names. There could have been honorifics, if Ixal's language(s) has them. If the relationship was distant, titles could be added for the sake of formality. Or, to denote personal closeness, familial titles — like "aunt/uncle" — were slapped on the adress. But, by default, first names on their own sufficed. Maybe it was also possible to refer to a respected leader by their surname, although it would have been rare.
Hence, all Ixal Fleet is on a first name basis because they consider each other part of the family, so to speak. Ozrock is adressed by his surname because they respect him as a leader, though they could also adress him by his first name in private.
Those outside the social group, on the other hand, were adressed by their surnames. Titles, or honorifics, could be added for extra formality. Sometimes, over-the-top formal adresses were used for the sake of mockery or satire. This is distrust hidden under a thin veil of politeness, and some — like Ishigashi — would wield it like a weapon, where the more polite and formal, the more they distrust and dislike a person.
There were probably linguistic nuances that add depth to this, most likely lost in translation. But I don't know enough about languages to portray this well.
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CW: discussion of cannibalism as a cultural practice and people in power being terrible. Nothing graphic.
As @cervidaecorpse said in the alien biology post, cannibalism may have been legal and socially acceptable on Ixal a long time ago. The people of Ixal kept it close to chest, and would not breathe a word of it to aliens unless asked. Not because of shame about a historical wrong, necessarily, but because they don't trust aliens will get the horror it actually was.
When we, and in-universe many aliens, think about cannibalism, the first image that comes to mind is mindless barbarism, from a still primitive society that hasn't figured out where the moral lines lie. It's what many aliens would think happened on Ixal. But that couldn't be further from the truth. An alien would call the cannibalism that occurred on Ixal barbaric. In response, Ixal's people would call it the most messured and delicate barbarism in the galaxy.
Cannibalism was a punishment. Depending on the severity of the crime (or "crime"), a limb would be cut or the criminal would be killed, but either way their flesh would be served as a meal. People in power would murder and eat the civilians that oppossed them, as a form of scaring the average person so they would comply.
The amounts of human(ish) flesh consumed would be carefully messured, and medical procedures were undertaken in order to inmunize themselves against the diseases associated with cannibalism. Sometimes, criminals' corpses would be eaten, others they would be buried in a mass grave in the middle of nowhere, so nobody was sure what happened to their friend or relative that critized a person in power too loudly or in earshot of the wrong person.
Some criminals had done heinous things. Others had acted out of desperation. Others had done nothing immoral at all. In the eyes of the powerful, this didn't matter, and all their lives had the same value — none.
If a community had been a nuisance, resources could be deliberately witholden until the complains died out. Groups of people were starved, sometimes to death, and many had to eat the corpses of their relatives in order to survive. In cases like this, cannibalism was an act of desperation and necessity.
But fear is not a reliable way to rule, and a system that needs people to bow their heads and obey a small group of political figures is intrinsically unstable. Once tyrants were overthrown, their remains would be eaten by the people they had tried to starve. If those in power, responsible for the well being of the people, refused to feed them in life, they would feed them in death.
Cannibalism as a cultural practice had ceased to exist decades — if not centuries — before Ixal Fleet was born, but the memory of it was vivid. Widespread corpse desecration and eating of human(ish) remains is not something that vanishes from collective consciousness easily. For many, it was the elephant in the room nobody talked about.
But for others, it was a weapon and a shield. The kind of thing works as a great conversation shutter because it's horrifying. The dark humor that helps cope with trauma and a terrible historical past. Common expressions and sayings came from it. The horror was near all-encompasing.
But by the time Ixal Fleet became adults, there was nobody left alive to have lived it. It was the past now. Their planet could now start to heal… right?
End of warning.
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Hi! I hope you enjoyed my silly yapping. Feedback is welcome.
Sometimes I feel like people missed the whole point of so many episodes, but especially the ep where Tenma gets his mix max, when they say Shindou should have stayed captain because he was more suited with god’s baton. Mind you he only really used it a handful of times and it was literally all about strategy. This is a SPORTS anime for KIDS. They’re trying to teach leadership and the qualities of a leader. Shindou may be smart but he doesn’t have the SOUL Tenma has. Especially for a team like raimon where they are all capable and honestly just need motivating. They miss the whole anime 😭 and what’s worse is they make ME doubt it too 😭
Agreed! But the point of it is also that it is what Raimon needed. When you compare, let's say, Endou and Tenma - they're very different characters, and very different captains. Sure, they're both optimistic and cheerful, and they're insane about soccer, but there is something so different about them. A while ago somebody posted this analysis about Endou and Tenma and I love it. To summarize, Endou has always been the team's rock; captain from the start, able to endure anything, the foundation of the team. Tenma, on the other hand, symbolizes ''wind more than solid ground'' (love that quote). People don't depend on him like they do Endou, and if Tenma is taken out of the equation the team doesn't stop functioning the way Endou's team does when he's gone.
But without Tenma, Raimon would never have rebelled, Shuu and Fei and Tsurugi never would've changed their ways, Shindou would have quit the soccer team. Tenma is the thing that moves people to change, to reach for heights they never would've imagined on their own; and that is what GO!Raimon needed. Like you said, they needed motivating.
And the way Shindou ties in here - I think he could be a good captain, for the right team. A team more in tune with one another, or at least with issues where he isn't directly emotionally involved (like when he was in charge of the Protocol Omega captains; he solved their issues pretty well imo). He's good at giving orders, he still does it a lot even when Tenma is captain, and he carries himself in such a way that people listen to him. Besides, Shindou isn't the only ''strategizing'' captain in the anime; Kidou, for one, was a good captain for Teikoku because that team is so disciplined. They were his chess pieces on the field. Though I don't think Shindou would do well as captain of a team like Teikoku either, something in between Raimon and Teikoku might work for him. A team that doesn't challenge him too much emotionally, either, and if he is put under too much stress, it goes wrong (like at the start of Season 1). And 'not challenging' just doesn't describe GO!Raimon at all.
At the risk of sounding incredibly sappy, GO!Raimon never needed someone to give them orders. They needed someone to illuminate them in what was essentially their darkest time. And, well, Tenma did do exactly that, didn't he?
Floriana, as I've mentioned before in this post, is a clever and resourceful Trainer, who has the markings of a great strategist even before character development sinks in. Multiple times, a clever strategy has turned the tides of a battle in her favor.
She thinks outside the box. Many people who speak to her about her unorthodox strategies wonder if she realizes the box exists in the first place. She works with what she has, and makes use of everything at her disposal, from moves, abilities and battle mechanics to natural skills, body build and the terrain itself.
This is an incomplete list — in achronic order — of the strategies Floriana has come up with over the course of her journey.
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Defensive uses of Protean/Libero, where moves are used not for their effectiveness against opponents, but for their types. Switching types is the whole reason the moves are used. This makes it so her Pokemon have no predictable weaknesses, as many inmunities as their movesets allow, and can resist whatever the opponent does. It compensates for the low defenses of her starters, and creates a situation where the opponent cannot rely solely on the usual moves for her starter species and has to be aware of their entire moveset.
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To counter Keen Eye — an ability that in this universe makes moves near impossible to avoid —, Floriana has her Pokemon approach their opponent to make it hit itself with its own moves. She also orders one of her Flying Pokemon to cut through Dark Pulse/Psybeam with Steel Wing.
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Aegislash changes forms at will, turning to Blade Forme to hit like a runaway train and reverting to Shield Forme via King's Shield to resist the hit and lower the opponent's attack. Floriana notices a brief opening Aegislash leaves when using King's Shield, and has her Pokemon throw a piece of wood/rock into it to stop Aegislash from transforming, so it can be attacked in its vulnerable form.
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Floriana's Lucario uses her ability to detect aura to discover the real opponent she's facing among Double Team copies. It's also used to target Pokemon who've used minimize, and to counter fast Pokemon regular sight struggles to keep up with.
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Uses magnetism to repel an Electric type opponent and stop them from approaching. In double battles, uses magnetism to lift her Pokemon off the ground and erase their vulnerability to Ground type attacks.
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No insulator is perfect, and all can turn into conductors when hit with the right voltage. Her solution to being stuck fighting an opponent with Volt Absorb/Lightning Rod with a Pokemon that relies on electricity to attack, is to throw them into the water of the field so they are soaked in a conductor, and have her Pokemon shock the opponent until the insulating layer of the ability breaks. It works.
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Double battle. In response to an opponent's Electric Terrain, Floriana has her Water type use Hydro Pump on the field to cause electrosis (separate the oxygen and hydrogen molecules of the water), then her Fire type use Flamethrower against the ground to create small scale hydrogen bombs. (Dubious scientific accuracy, but it's cool).
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Supereffective moves disolve Type Energy. So, Floriana uses X-Scissor/Night Slash/Shadow Claw to destroy Trick Room and Psychic Terrain by disolving the energy that forms them, because they are formed by Type Energy.
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Has her Pokemon dig underground and use a powerful Fire type attack to melt Toxic Spikes.
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Has her Pokemon use Hurricane to trap an opponent in its own Sand Storm, leaving them unable to move so her attacks wouldn't miss.
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Uses Brine to cover her Pokemon in salt water and reduce the impact of Electric type attacks, due to the minerals in the water being insulators.
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Uses moves that generates light — Dazzling Gleam, Flash, Solar Beam, Solar Blade… — to temporarily avoid having a shadow. This makes her Pokemon impossible to hit with Phantom Force and Spirit Shackle, and also disabled the fighting style of many Ghost types.
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Counter Shield. An anime exclusive move that attacks and defends at the same time. Floriana comes up with it, but I'm still polishing the details.
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Uses Frenzy Plant to grow a mini forest on an ice field to eliminate her opponent's advantage, and do a lot of damage as a result.
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Counters a Normal type Z move with a Ghost type one. The mutual inmunity between Ghost and Normal creates a protective layer over both Pokemon that reduces the power of the Z moves to that of a regular move.
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Dynamax energy is spent in a few ways:
Keeping the Dynamaxing/Gigantamaxing Pokemon at such a giant size. Hence, Dynamax and Gigantamax phenomena have a time limit that, once spent, will revert the Pokemon back to regular size.
In making the max moves so powerful. As a result, all dynamax have a limit of three max moves they can use. Once they've used all three, the Pokemon reverts back to normal size.
In a battle against a Dynamax user, Floriana has her weakened Pokemon attack the opponent from the side. Of course, Floriana's Pokemon loses, since they were fighting against a Pokemon with boosted stats when they were already weakened. But, when her Pokemon falls, her rival's Dynamax reverts to normal size, despite having only used to max moves and the time limit not yet being up. Floriana reveals the third way to spend Dynamax energy:
Preventing the Pokemon from collapsing over its own weight. By attacking her opponent from the side, her Pokemon made it lose balance, and Dynamax energy had to be spent on making sure they didn't fall over.
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As I've mentioned before, this is an incomplete list of the strategies Floriana comes up with over the course of the story. Unlike Floriana, I am not a strategist, so any ideas you may have are more than welcome.
They should invent a kind of burnout, where after you reach your limit of existential exhaustion for the third time, your health bar doubles and you transform into a bigger, stronger iteration of yourself. Like you're a nintendo boss in the final boss battle.
May I present you with the Dragon Fruit Flower, or as I would like to call it, the Hakuryuu flower.
These flowers are sometimes referred to as 'Moonflowers' or 'Queen of The Night' because they only bloom in the dark. They're very short-lived, lasting less than 24 hours. Once they wilt, the popular Dragon Fruit we're familiar with begins to grow at the base.
Hakuryuu blossomed into the 'Ultimate Player' under Fifth Sector's guidance -- i.e. in the darkness. He was just as brilliant as a 'Queen of The Night', ruling the depths of God Eden. But just like these brilliant flowers, which wilt so soon after blooming, Hakuryuu's reign as the ultimate player came to an end when Project Zero was suspended following their tie against Raimon.
But the story doesn't end there.
At the end of the Gryphon movie, Hakuryuu tells Tsurugi that he is going to start from the basics again. No longer the flower of God Eden, but just a regular player.
And when we see him again in Galaxy, he's grown into a powerful captain and team player, just like this beautiful flower grows into the fierce looking Dragon Fruit.
Something very important to her character is that she's lonely. She and her mother spent good part of her childhood moving from one place to another. As a result, and despite her mother's best efforts to provide her with companionship, Floriana doesn't have friends beyond her starter Pokemon.
(In the hypothetical fangame, there would be three starters to choose from: Sprigatito, Cinderace and Froakie. Them being from different regions shows how she and her mother have lived in many places.)
Outside of her mother, the only relationship she has with a human that could be considered close is with Blue. When she and her mom moved to Pallet Town in Kanto, these two developed a sense of rivalry and a desire to best the other on sight. Floriana was jealous of Blue for having a big family (at least in comparison to hers), and Blue was jealous that Floriana wasn't constantly being defined by and compared to hers. Blue was good at math and science, and Floriana was good at languages, which only vexed them both even more, because they hated feeling like they were falling behind the other in any way and in any thing. Him being the only kid her age in town only added another layer to their rivalry and jealousy of one another.
This loneliness may be one of the reasons she wants to be a Pokemon Master. Because being a Master is a vague goal, and there are many ways for being considered one, but if there is one thing it obviously requires, is training several Pokemon. And in the mind of a teenager, this obviously means getting to make lots of friends.
Likewise, it explains why she befriended Chase (male protagonist of Let's GO, repurposed for this story) so quickly, and why she rushed into a romantic relationship with him despite being unsure of her own feelings when he confesed to her.
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Her initial battle style reflects parts of her personality that need to be polished, or flaws she must overcome. Floriana isn't conscious of how the way she battles reveals her flaws, and I doubt she will ever realize it.
During the first arcs of her story, her battle style is fast. Hit first, hit hard, and be agile so no move can hit you. It reflects her impulsiveness, impatience and tendency to rush into things.
(As a nice detail, all starter Pokemon you can obtain in this hypothetical fangame are very fast and hit super hard, but are also very fragile. This not only acts as the representation of her impulsiveness out of universe, but also shows why she battles that way in-text — her starter Pokemon's strength and weaknesses have shaped the way she battles.)
It is a very effective style in the beginning. What her Pokemon lack in raw power, they have in the agility to avoid hits, the speed to get multiple good hits in a short time, and the determination to push themselves to the limit so they can improve. This, mixed with a still-unpolished skill to create good strategies, makes Floriana and her team able to get far enough in their journey to take part in the League. Something many people need multiple years to achieve, Floriana did in just one.
But all battle styles have weaknesses. Determination can only get you so far when you don't have the ability to strategize, create good synergies with your team, or trust with your Pokemon. And while a harsh defeat, her loss at her first League is the result of her shortcomings as a Trainer.
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Determination is Floriana's middle name. This girl doesn't know when to give up. Not a single defeat manages to keep her down for long. She loses her first battle against Blue? No problem! She will train hard so she wins next time. Doesn't get her first Gym badge? She'll try again tomorrow!
This drive to keep trying even when the world is set to make her fail is a core aspect of her character. Her very first appereance has her fail the exam to get her Pokemon Trainer license for the third time, and Floriana decides to study hard so she can try again. To put it simply, this story would not exist without Floriana's determination.
It's a good trait, where Pokemon battles are concerned. But the reactions of others to this drive have made her life more difficult. Her will to fight for what she wants is misunderstood as a denial of reality, and many people act condescending towards her for her supposed naivety. It intimidates others, even her friends, and makes her feel isolated.
For over a year, she stayed in a relationship that did not make her happy because she didn't want to give up on the love and friendship she shared with Chase. She tried to make it work despite their different and often incompatible goals in life, and she ended up repressing parts of her character so this romance would work. Chase asks things of her she is not comfortable with giving, but she does regardless because, no matter her doubts on the attraction she feels towards him, she loves him.
This conflict between her dream of being a Pokemon Master and her relationship with Chase makes her realize she cannot have it all. There are dreams, people and relationships she will have to give up on. There are things that, no matter how much she wants them — or thinks she wants them —, will not make her happy.
Floriana has to give up on Chase, or herself.
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She is not an academic. The theorical side of things is not something she has any interesting in. During lectures she spends half the time astral projecting out of sheer boredom, and the other half trying and failing to put the words together. Textbooks only manage to get one sentence in each paragraph into her head. Educational videos and presentations never stay in her head for long.
Despite her lack of book-smarts, however, Floriana is very clever. It's a sort of intelligence that often goes overlooked, because it's not taught in school, but it's very important — even more so for the career she's chosen.
She's a strategist, and has the markings of one since the very beginning of the story. She neutralizes a powerful and aggressive Pikachu because she notices it's going through an overload of electricity and takes advantage of it. In her first ever Gym battle, she notices the weak point of Brock's Onix, though her Pokemon are too weak to exploit it fully.
Floriana's mind functions best under pressure. She comes up with the best plans when in tense situations, and observes the Pokemon she's fighting against in search for exploitable weaknesses. Based on their posture, body language and minor details of their physical appereances, Floriana is capable of predicting the sets a Pokemon has been trained in. Beyond that, she makes connections most other Trainers wouldn't think of making. She uses and combines moves in creative ways, exploits abilities and takes advantage of a Pokemon's physical aspects, hers or the opponent's.
She is a clever and attentive girl who thinks outside the box, and this makes her unpredictable. This is a skill that makes her very dangerous in battle, because many Trainers rely on the opponent employing conventional tactics, and are at loss when the person they're facing deviates from the patterns.
(I may make a list of all the out of the box tactics Floriana uses in the future once I have more ideas.)
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Floriana wants to be everyone's friend and make people and Pokemon happy. You know the stereotype of the sweet protagonist who wants to befriend all other characters? That's her.
All her team is loved as they are, and she will not pressure them to evolve; it's their full body transformation so it should be their choice, not hers and if they say no, it's no. She doesn't care if it takes her Pokemon months, years or decades to be ready to evolve, or if they choose to never evolve.
She doesn't hide behind her team, she stands by their side in dangerous situations, such as the battles with Team Rocket. (Her Pokemon battle the grunts' and she's punching them in the background lol). She protects them when they're down, and takes care of them when they need it. She regains the loyalty of a Pokemon that's been disobeying her for months because she refuses to abandon him and takes care of him while he's badly injured.
Even for Pokemon that aren't hers, she's willing to go great lenghts to help. In her eyes, every Pokemon is friend-shaped and a creature that deserves to be cared for and respected. She will get into fights with people who don't treat their Pokemon right.
With people, she comes across as awkward but earnest. A person who genuinely wants to help, is giving her best but isn't always sure how to do so. She listens and comforts others when they need someone to lean on, even if she has no advice to give. She's very supportive of her friends chasing after their dreams, is enthusiastic about the path they're taking and asks lots of questions and does research on the topic, and is delighted with their successes.
Floriana is the kind of sweetheart that stops and takes a moment to care. She wants to know if the people around her are struggling and need help. She says it's nice to meet someone, and chances are she means it whole-heartedly.
When she's asked what she wants to do if she succeeds in her goals of becoming a Pokemon Master, helping people is the first thing that comes to mind. She thinks she can help civilians and beginner Trainers cross through the more dangerous routes inhabited by powerful and aggressive Pokemon. She considers mentoring Trainers who have just started out.
But it's not something instinctual. It doesn't come naturally to her. It's an active choice she makes over and over. It's more tied to her ethics, to what she believes is right and what people should get and be like, than an innate sense of empathy.
She may struggle to relate to the experiences of others. Maybe putting herself in someone else's shoes doesn't always come easily. Perhaps being a comforting presence tires her out. But it doesn't matter. People and Pokemon deserve a supportive friend, a fair and understanding partner, a kind neighbor, a compassionate stranger. And she refuses to let them down.
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Floriana's character arc goes full circle. If you put the Floriana of the beginning of her arc and the Floriana that has already completed it side by side, they will appear very similar.
She's compassionate, determined, hopeless with academics, and full of faith for the world and the people around her.
But if you look beyond the surface level, you'll see Floriana has changed in more ways than perhaps even she realizes.
She's cleverer, more resourceful, a brilliant strategist when she didn't know what she was doing initially. She's decisive and thinks before committing to a course of action. She knows some things have to be let go for her own wellbeing. She's confident of her place in the world, and isn't desperate to find connections with others because she's already surrounded by friends — humans and Pokemon alike.
At the end of her arc, Floriana is a person that has polished her virtues and overcome her biggest flaws. The story is about how she gets there.
She's a character I'm still polishing, one I've put lots of love into, and I really like the direction the writing has been going. I hope you like these additions to her character!
Watched a documentary about abuse and advice one guy said to give children was, "Tell them that if someone is hurting them, to tell someone - and don't just tell one person. Tell as many people as possible, and keep telling as many people as possible until the abuse stops." and i really liked that
Bc so many ppl focus on the idea of telling A Trusted Adult, but even a well-meaning individual can fuck up and let abuse fall through the cracks or not know what to do
Whereas if a child tells LOADS of adults AND other kids, there's far less opportunity for an abuser to do damage control
Consistently telling their story and spreading it around disempowers the abuser to control and coerce the flow of information, or to utilise gaps and weaknesses in systems of reporting or welfare to isolate the child
Just really good advice. Not suprised I don't hear it more often.
This is really good advice and, in the UK at least, also applies to “adults at risk” as well. It’s what I did when I had problems with my social care provider that amounted to a safeguarding concern earlier this year.
If your school safeguarding lead, youth worker, scout leader, neighbour, doctors surgery, local citizens advice office etc. all make referrals and follow up on them to make sure they’ve been received and taken seriously then it’s more likely that it will be taken seriously and that action will happen.
