lunerblade1996 replied to your post “disnerdpoketrainer replied to your post “pokespe xy took a hot mess...”
actually i would consider it as development. the reason for sapphires change was her desire to stand on equal ground with ruby forsaking such girlish qualities in the process (however not knowing that he changed as well). now that they have met again and grew closer affections rise and sapphire now chooses to outwardly express such girlish qualities accepting them more now. however she still prefers strength over girlishness but she does not deny it now either.
I wouldn’t call it development, because like...development is when characters make progress on some internal conflict. Sapphire’s RS -> ORAS change was just...change. She was 12. Now she’s 15. People change really really fucking rapidly until...fuck, they never stop, really? But it’s super rapid through your teens.
And I don’t think the ways in which she changed were ones that had to do with “girlishness” etc. Most of Sapphire’s RS -> ORAS growth as a person, as I see it, is just the emotional evening out that tends to happen as you move out of your preteens and realize that growling at and biting people is not as cool and interesting as you thought it was. ORAS Sapphire is still loud and brash and confident and secure in herself, all the same underpinnings of her personality that were there before, just expressed in a more mature way.
When I was 12, I took what characters did to be the core of who they were, so 12-year-old me would definitely have gotten upset about Sapphire getting into completely average human emotional entanglements instead of doubling down on the Tarzan stuff.
As far as the “girlishness” thing for Sapphire goes...I think it’s easy to reduce her issues to that, because there’s definitely gender role commentary embedded in RS/ORAS, but there was always more to it than that and as of ORAS especially I don’t think that even factors into her personality or behavior. She is who she is and she is comfortable being that person, and I don’t think Sapphire is the kind of person who is capable of forcing herself to do things she doesn’t genuinely enjoy in the long term. (Or of forcing herself to not do things she does enjoy.) So, like, I don’t think there’s a conflict there anymore for her to have character development over. Her development in ORAS wasn’t about how she treats herself, it was one of those growing-up things where you realize that other people are fucking weird sometimes and you have to start figuring out how you’re going to deal with and relate to them.