So, how Dawn’s contest arc would go if Ursula wasn’t there?
Originally this post was going to about Zoey and Ursula’s relationship, both in the show and metafictionally. But I figured it needed to be bigger. We previously discussed extensively how Sinnoh constests would go if Ursula wasn’t there in relation to Dawn’s character growth, and general assumption was negative. But there is something to discuss how it would improve other characters.
*First of would be the character that inspired this post, Zoey. One of the weirder metanarrative non-sequiturs of DP was Zoey’s parallels with Lila being switched out in favour of establishing more parallels between Johanna. There are two major reasons for this change. First reason is of course Ursula herself, who is explicitly designed to be direct parallel with Lila. Second reason is of course, Zoey shifted from a goal for Dawn to beat at the end of the series to a more aspirational goal.
Obviously, if Ursula doesn’t exist, then Zoey would remain as Lila’s successor, despite having no real direct relation to her. This would both mean:
**Zoey would have to adapt some of Lila’s contesting elements, like performing alongside her Pokémon, instead of deliberately choosing the sidelines.
**Remain more abrasive as she was in the earlier series. Especially develop her aversion towards League tourneys and why it would be actually good idea to Dawn to do both or not.
**And of course, eventually lose to Dawn, which would either require a Solidad-esque character to be introduced at the last time, or have Dawn actually win, while Ash loses the League. The latter option is not feasible thanks to Pearlshipping marketing, so hello Dawn contest rival no 6.5?
*Second change would be of course Kenny. With no Ursula around, the whole Diamond Dandruff stuff would have to revolve around him. We don’t exactly need him to have a Plusle or Minun, as their backstory will switched for a different noodle incident. In fact, we don’t even need to know what caused the Dee Dee nickname. It can remain as a secret like Iris’ biological parents.
However, we would still need to resolve their conflict. If we are going to keep his GF loss to parallel with Gary in Kanto and Barry in DP, then we would need a mid-game ending for Dawn and Kenny’s rivalry. This would also allow us to keep Kenny within GF after his loss to have more direct parallel with Barry, or write a better conclusion for him, since Dawn and Kenny would respect each other as coordinators as first and foremost.
*Third change would be Jessie: Despite making it to Sinnoh GF, Jessie contributes less to Dawn’s character arc than she did with May. To correct that, with no Ursula around, instead of focusing on the underdeveloped rivalry between Jessie and Ursula, we can further develop Dawn’s rivalry with Jessie. We can have one of Dawn’s victories or losses be against Jessie, which would then lead to a full episode battle in GF.
There isn’t much else to say really. Of course, Jessie won’t adapt Ursula’s strategy in Dawn’s second contest against Kenny with no Ursula, and she won’t get the cool “Candy Onee-sama” nickname, but she would get one or two more episodes that focus on her instead of those, which would be potentially more important.
*Fourth change would be Princess Salvia and Togekiss: With no Ursula around, there would be no coordinator for Salvia’s contest style to reference to. She would keep her choker in casual outfit since that is an old movie reference, but without Ursula there isn’t much of a point for Salvia to exist the way she exists now. Either her contest style and Pokémon would something else (something closer to Jessie or maybe even Nando maybe), or she would exist under different circumstances.
*And who would be Dawn’s fourth/fifth rival would be?: General assumption back in the forums was that if Ursula didn’t exist, Conway would have been the Barry analogue (as the late-game rival). While this would be extremely cool, there are few issues with this:
**Conway being Dawn’s rival pre-League would mean two of Ash’s League rivals are actually coordinators and League participants. Not only would this mean lots of recycling of characters, it would mean Zoey’s ideology of “Only one you must choose” is fundamentally wrong.
But we can’t have Dawn’s primary rival and mentor to fundamentally wrong, so we would need to handicap Conway to save Zoey, or actually accept this fact.
**Conway wouldn’t have much time to get all the ribbons both in-universe and out-universe. So he would somehow magically turn out to be legit good coordinator in the last half of the series, or we would have handicap him somehow.
First way to do so by not having him make it to the GF, but we need a rival for GF regardless. Which means we would reintroduce one of the older one-off coordinators to be a punching bag for Dawn, like Kyle, Rebecca or Mario.
Second way to would be by making him the Nando of the group. Since Jessie already covers for Conway himself (the dark horse that does surprisingly well), Conway could be niche entry opponent like Nando was. In this way, he would manage to get in GF and pass Appeals Round, but lose early on.
Of course, having Conway as the final new rival would require both an introduction (since under this structure it cannot happen during the camp mini-arc, as that precedes both Barry and Ursula’s introductions) and definite, but probably crappy appeals style (Conway already has an established battling style, so we can keep it for the contests). However, this would have an inverse-Ursula situation, as Dawn would have to use the timer and points to defeat Conway, not physically beat him. Otherwise, he would not be a serious League rival for Ash.
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Addendums:
*There isn’t much of a way keep Nando as a rival for Dawn rather than Zoey, since Nando becoming Zoey’s rival was established fairly early on. Undoing would be both difficult and unrelated to Ursula’s existence or non-existence.
*Dawn’s victories pre-Ursula won’t be retroactively be undone with Ursula’s non-existence. Only their contexts will change.
***Without Ursula, Dawn’s victory Kenny would remain their rivalry’s establishing moment, but it would remain mostly for Piplup proving its strength against evolution. Kenny would need a proper loss against Dawn either before or during GF to cap their rivalry.
***May would still lose to Dawn to hammer in Zoey’s point. But since Ursula wouldn’t exist in this scenario, Wallace Cup victory would be point for the idea that a Coordinator should not also do the League, with May being the more conventional trainer losing to Dawn, even if it is intentional on May’s part.
***Even without Ursula, Lila would both still exist and be important, albeit for Zoey as she was originally intended to be in this new scenario, as a narrative counterpart.
***Even without Ursula, we would need to fourth/fifth rival for Dawn to match Barry. If it isn’t Conway, it would have to be another character.
***Even without Ursula, Dawn would require a Solidad analogue to lose to win against Zoey. So you would still need Dawn to either lose against Zoey (somehow), or have her lose against someone else, because Nando won’t be an option.
***I may or may not do a “if x rival didn’t exist” for Dawn’s other rivals and other rivals in general. We already discussed about Kenny not existing, but we haven’t talked much about a scenario where Zoey didn’t exist. In the latter, most of us in Bulbagarden Forums thought Ursula or Conway would be the main rival, but there would be much more after effects if Zoey didn’t exist that might require its own post.
