#and this country is very very VERY a goddamn death cult in general actually

[sword-and-lance]

iiiii apologize if I'm A Bit Weird for a bit

there's a bunch of rage caged in my head and unfortunately it's started to bend the fucking bars

[cellarspider]

Thanks to my rambling this weekend, I am overflowing with love for an MMO that hasn’t been in development since 2012, because goddamn the worldbuilding for the setting of City of Heroes and City of Villains was just superb.

Do you want an MMO that begins as a pastiche of superhero comics that lovingly, cheekily engages with its source material, building up a cohesive world where the fantastical stuff feels unexpectedly real and grounded in the society, more so than most of the comics it's inspired by? Do you want that, and then to watch it slowly, gently tip its backstory into existential, cosmic horror via genre critique?

I'm in no way kidding! More below the cut.

Well, part one of more, because there's a lot to unpack here.

A lot of new superhero continuities these days treats its central premise as an anomaly. For the most popular example, the MCU treats public knowledge of superheroes as something that started with Captain America in WWII. Before his exploits, the fantastical aspects of the setting were forgotten about and hidden from the world. The DCEU begins similarly with Wonder Woman in WWI, a member of a mythic society forgotten by time.

At first, Earth in City of Heroes seemed to go with a very similar premise, though it predates any of those movies: Superpowers were unknown to the general public until the early 1930s, when some people suddenly began gaining incredible new abilities, and mythical critters not seen since ancient times made themselves known.

But that’s just the basic sales pitch. As you dug into the setting and City of Villains expanded the lore, perspective shifted into something entertainingly stranger.

Everyone knew about Nemesis, the clockwork robot-making mastermind who'd terrorized Paragon City from the early 1930s, just when superheroes were first appearing on the scene. Turns out he was an immortal Prussian nobleman born who first went on an automaton-backed crime spree in 1820s, seemingly died when the British Navy bombarded his headquarters in Malta, then reappeared in the 1860s to supply the Confederate Army with mechanical cavalry until General Sherman shelled his mountaintop base on his march to North Carolina. Nobody was ever able to replicate what the did, and with his (apparent) death, he was no longer relevant after 1865. As of the 1930s, anyone who wasn’t a history buff had forgotten about him.

And sure, everyone knew there was an underground city of evil wizards, dead for long eons until they rose again to take human sacrifices from the surface world of Rhode Island (I’m still not over that). But actually, they were active in London during the Victorian mysticism craze, then moved their operations back to their homeland of subeterranean Rhode Island with the outbreak of World War I. They made the news across the continent. They got outlawed in multiple countries. They were a big deal, until the war took the attention off of them.

Hell, one of the people who fought all these weirdos was a random teenager who'd just... always been able to teleport and turn invisible, even prior to the '30s. He wasn't even a main character or anything! His parents knew, and tried to convince him to go get training. Teleportation training. Like y'do, with your socially awkward, teleporting kid.

This setting never actually had a mundane world that was unaware of the fantastical. The fantastical was normal. The arrival of superpowers in 1930 wasn’t a hard fork between history as we know it and theirs, or a reveal of some secret world that rational minds had long denied. It was just a dramatic escalation of what had already been happening, that everyone knew about. Armies of the 1800s had to develop anti-robot tactics. Alastair Crowley publicly dissed an actual wizard cult because they were dangerous competition. Parents worried over the mental health of their superpowered teens. That was normal.

The sheer numbers of fantastical events that started happening after 1930 were not normal. Or at least, not at first. People slowly adjusted over decades, as more and more young people grew up in a world that had always been that way.  

What nobody realized at that point was how the new normal bordered on a state of cosmic horror.

And that’s where the setting really starts interrogating its inspirations.

[pomegranate-salad]

Pom’s Summer reads (as she was stuck in the hospital)

Hey guys ! Sorry I haven’t been around in a while. The reason is… I was back in the psych ward. Mental health is no fun. But this time around, I was so bored out of my mind that I actually took a look at the scarcely furnished, yet surprisingly eclectic hospital library. Which consisted of two shelves of donated books in various states of decay. But since beggars can’t be choosers, I went and started reading randomly selected books from this motley collection. And I thought it would be fun to make a reading list out of it to share my findings. I have terrible ideas.

 So, here’s what I read over the last two weeks :

- Mythologies by Roland Barthes

Genre : Essay – Philosophy

Length : average

Available in English : partially

 I had only read excerpts of this staple of cultural criticism before, so I thought it was high time I read the whole thing. This takes a look to the making of modern myths from a Marxist perspective, finding meaning in items as deceptively trivial as laundry detergent and haircuts in movies. This book consists of a first part made of a series of small commentaries, and a second part that takes a deeper look into the mechanisms and power of myth making. Some of the essays of the first part are not included in the English version of this book, presumably because the references studied were too “French” to speak to foreign readers. The references as a whole have aged (I had to google quite a few things, even as a French reader) but it speaks to the quality of the commentary that the thoughts expressed in this book are still relevant to our modern culture. You can probably find one of its most famous bits online, an essay about wrestling and the theatrical culture it illustrates.

This is an important and interesting book, but one that’s maybe a bit arid to read cover to cover : I found picking it up at intervals to read one essay or two was the best way to enjoy this book. You can of course also check out Barthes’ highly influential essay on the Death of the Author, but I also enjoyed his lesser-known essay The pleasure of the Text and his collection of Critical essays.

 - The Sand Child by Tahar Ben Jelloun

Genre : Novel

Length : average

Available in English : Yes

Content warning : explicit sexual content

 This was a weird, weird but pretty amazing one. Assuredly the best surprise of the lot. This starts off as a straightforward tale of a girl raised as a boy by a traditionalist father in modern Morocco as told by a storyteller on a marketplace, but it quickly devolves into several levels of metatextuality and dreamlike elements until story, characters and storyteller are interweaved into a reflexion about the nature of stories itself.

Aptly enough, this reminded most of Sandman, but also of Akira Kurosawa’s Rashomon, both excellent things of which to remind someone. This is also the rare reflexion on gender roles and identity within the context of Islamic culture. But most of all, this is all written with a unique style, as if the author was drunk on language ; it’s a bit hard to get into, but it’s also captivating at the same time. Of all the books in this list, this is the one I would reread again and again just to try and understand all its levels. If you like this kind of surreal literature, definitely check this one out.

  - Oyster by John Biguenet

Genre : Novel

Length : average to long

Content warning : mild violence

 This was a frustrating one. It’s not a great book, yet it could have been one. This is yet another story of rivalry, secrets and revenge between two poor white families, this time living from oyster farming in Louisiana in the late fifties. The plot is fairly standard, and narrated in such a way that it constantly gets in the way of its dramatic potential. The writing is I think the problem here, especially around dialogue and plot progression, making the whole thing feel flat. Which is a shame because when the book lingers on details of the life of poor oyster farmers, it can be remarkably evocative.

This is the kind of book I want to put in a shaker and shake to put each element back where it belongs. I’m not difficult when it comes to Southern Gothic : I will basically read anything as long as it reminds me even a little bit of William Faulkner and Tennessee Williams. So it was frustrating to see this one being able to conjure its own atmosphere while not sticking the landing with its story. If you know of any good modern Southern Gothic novels, please send them my way, I’m hungry.

  - The ghost in the Noonday sun by Sid Fleischman

Genre : Novel

Length : short

 I have no idea how much of a staple of children’s literature this book is, so maybe all of you are already familiar with it. Personally, I hadn’t read it in quite a while since the version we have at home is now missing some key pages. But if by chance you haven’t read this, please go invest an hour of your life into reading this funny, witty and earnest pirate story about a teenager who gets kidnapped by a superstitious pirate who believes he’s able to see ghosts in order to locate the treasure of his old captain who was buried with it.

In a just world, there’d be a cult movie based on this book instead of one of dubious quality staring an erratic Peter Sellers. This is children’s literature of the best kind : one that takes its audience seriously, is able to create an atmosphere and is still a fun to reread as an adult. This was kind of super-nostalgic to me to pick this one, but I couldn’t resist.

  - The Awkward Squad by Sophie Hénaff (and its sequel Stick together)

Genre : Novel – Crime

Length : average

Available in English : Yes

 I had to have read at least one crime novel in this lot, but in the end I only read two, since the other options were Mary Higgins Clark books and since I have a grandmother, I had already read those. It’s a shame that French crime novels don’t have as much of an international reputation as Scandinavian or American ones, since we do have an interesting tradition of our own : books mainly based on ensemble casts of motley characters, with a poetic streak and a sensitivity to absurdism. The premise of this series is that in order to get better statistics, the new policer commissioner has decided to regroup all undesirable police officers they can’t fire in one single squad, and make sure this lame duck unit doesn’t attract any attention. But some people from this unit have of course decided otherwise.

These books held pretty well as far as crime novels go, they are a lot of fun at times and read easily. The character work and dialogue are definitely this series’ best asset, as it is the case with many French crime books. If you want the best the genre has to offer, check out my all-time favourite, the Adamsberg series from author Fred Vargas, in order : The Chalk Circle Man, Seeking whom he may devour, Have mercy on us all, and Wash this Blood clean from my Hand.

  - The Three-Arched Bridge by Ismail Kadaré

Genre : Novel

Length : short

Available in English : Yes

 This was hardly a surprise that I loved this one : I’ve been a fan of Kadaré for a while. This is yet another of his books that explores the frontiers of reality and legend, superstition and magic within a fascinating historical context. Here, his subject is the building of a bridge in Albania toward the end of the 14th century, as the Turkish invasion is looming. The narrator, a monk, relates both political and mundane events surrounding the isolated region, as increasingly troubling phenomenon surround the construction site, announcing the troubled future of the country.

I do love my historical/supernatural novels, and Kadaré is a master of the genre. This reads easily while making a lasting impression and leaving you hungry for more. If you do, I can’t recommend enough checking out more of Kadaré’s work, his classic The General of the Dead Army, and my personal favourites The Pyramid and The Ghost Rider.

 - The Pursuit of Happiness by Douglas Kennedy

Genre : Novel

Length : long

 I picked this one deep in my “I’m fucking sick of reading, but there’s still nothing else to do” phase, since I needed something that would be easy to read and at least somewhat good, and old Douglas did not disappoint : this book might be almost 800 pages long, it reads in a dedicated handful of hours. This is primarily the story of two women, one who just lost her mother and the other who appears in her life after the funeral, apparently knowing a lot about her family, to give her a manuscript retracing her story. The portrayal of the main characters is realistic, both are flawed individuals with distinct stories and personalities, so cheers to that.

This is the kind of familial saga-that’s-also-a-reflexion-on-destiny-and-the-American-dream you never get tired of until you do. Don’t let my snide deter you though : this is a very good book, maybe just not singular enough for its genre. If you’re looking for something more particular, you can of course check out Steinbeck’s East of Eden, the metric by which all American familial sagas are judged, and Roth’s American Pastoral, which contrary to what you may have heard, is a weird goddamn book.

 - Allah is not obliged by Ahmadou Kourouma

Genre : Novel

Length : average

Available in English : Yes

Content warning : extremely disturbing and graphic description of atrocities in wartime

 A first-person description of tribal wars in Liberia and Sierra Leone during the nineties from the point of view of a fictitious child soldier. It doesn’t pretend to stick by its premise though, and dives into detailed record of the political climate, all while taking us through the daily horrors of life in war-torn countries. The extremely down-to-earth and downright crude descriptions are interweaved with magic realism rooted in West African voodoo and culture.

This one was one of my favourites, despite the writing and narrative bordering on gimmicky at times ; especially at the end, where the story seems to have exhausted itself and seems more interested in recounting the political history of the region. The subject in and of itself is fascinating (and this is a great read if you’re not familiar with it) but sorts of impinges on the main storyline and the development of its characters.

Despite its flaws, I can only recommend this book, especially if you’re looking to delve into West African literature as this makes for a good introduction to the genre. Be aware however that this book is extremely hard to stomach and triggering in about every way possible. If you do like it, I recommend checking out my favourite book by this author, Waiting for the Wild Beasts to vote.

 - Hymns of Hate by Dorothy Parker

Genre : Poetry

Length : short

 I have a complicated relationship with poetry : as in, I am fond of it and some poetry books have come to mean a lot in my life, yet for some reason I never seem to be in the mood for picking one. So the reason this chapbook got picked is probably that your brain functions differently when the world around you is an ocean of noise and agitation due to a little event called the World Cup. Yes, even at the hospital, the French victory was dutifully celebrated, so this was the best time to isolate yourself with some earplugs and a poetry book.

Dorothy Parker is an acerbic poetess from the twenties who takes a comical and critical look at society, which leads to what I’d call comedy roast as poetry. It’s not the most moving kind of poetry, but it will make you laugh and reflect on yourself a bit, as I can guarantee you’ll recognize yourself in at least some of the vivid portraits this book draws. Of course, since I read it in French, it probably lost a lot of its musicality, which is the eternal dilemma when it comes to poetry : would I rather have something be lost in translation, or in reading in your non-native language ?

This kind of impertinent poetry, even if it doesn’t get as much press as big romantic oeuvres, is still a breath of fresh air that puts a smile on your face while still giving you an insight into the author’s personality. The only poet I can think of that produced the same effect on me is Jacques Prévert. I highly recommend checking out his two chapbooks Paroles and Stories.

- Six characters in search of an author by Luigi Pirandello

Genre : Play

Length : short

Available in English : Yes

 So before you say anything, I didn’t know he was a fascist before I picked this one. But you do now, so feel free not to read this one as a matter of principle. That being said, this is a very good play. This is the kind of hyper-conceptual play that interrogates the relationship between characters, writer and comedians. The story is exactly what it says in the title : six characters imagined by an author but who never got their play written tumble into a theatre as actors are repeating a play and ask them to write their play.

This play has stage directions for days and is a little bit hard to get a sense of when you read it instead of seeing it, yet once you get how the whole thing works, the ideas expressed are extremely interesting. This reminded me of Ionesco’s works, particularly The bald Soprano and the criminally underrated The Chairs. The theme of characters escaping the grasp of their authors can also be found in Paul Auster’s Man in the Dark which, while by no means one of the author’s best works, is still a fun and meditative read so don’t hesitate to check it out.

  - What money can’t buy, the moral limits of markets by Michael J. Sandel

Genre : Essay – Economy

Length : average

 I picked this one primarily because it was the only one in English, and also because I like to periodically remind myself why I left business school. I ended up having a good time reading it, because it’s more about thinking the market than explaining it. This book discusses the things that money can buy today – cutting in line, naming rights, stakes on someone’s life – and whether we should be alarmed of this growing market mentality. In the true tradition of English essays, this book makes its thesis clear at the beginning and then reiterates its point through examples. This is completely different from the French tradition of essays, which starts at the observable phenomenon and then takes us to its core thesis through organic reasoning. This means that past the introduction, you’ll know what this book is trying to prove, and the rest of the book is more about illustrating the demonstration. However, each set of examples come with their own ethical and practical problems, and you end up being more conflicted than you originally thought. A fiery onslaught against capitalism it is not, but this has the advantage of considering market mentality from the inside and then wondering how it looks from the outside. If nothing else, it should give you a good set of arguments to shut up libertarians and their ilk.

  So that’s all I have today. Do tell me if you want me to make more reading lists like this !

[purplesurveys]

287

What is your favourite dinosaur? I don’t have one. I was never into dinosaurs; although it is pretty fascinating how a huge bunch of kids today know so much about dinosaurs? When did it start happening??? Why??? How??? How can you tell apart a stegosaurus and a tyrannosaurus and a diplodocus and a spinosaurus at just 3 years old??? Would you rather live with wolves or tigers? I don’t know but I have the feeling tigers are less likely to eat humans so I guess them? Correct me if I’m wrong though. Have you ever forgotten what a certain kind of pain felt like? For sure. I’ve only experienced death of a close one once. I don’t know if I want to go through that again. It was a different kind of pain and it didn’t tighten my chest or anything; it was just numbness, persistent denial, and the hard acceptance that I’m simply to move on and all the dead get left behind. The world won’t stop for my passed grandfather. That was the hardest pill to swallow and only after accepting that did the pain come. It was bad and I barely remember anything from those 2-3 weeks. Do you prefer water from the tap or bottled water? Bottled. You can’t actually drink tap water here. That concept would be so foreign if ever brought up. Do you actually use any of the shampoo hotels provide? Yes. My family goes to a lot so it’s nice to experiment and have variety hahaha.

What do you remember the most about your childhood? The trauma. Do you feel as if someone has robbed something from you? Yeah, my wallet from high school that should have stayed on the seat where I last left it .It wasn’t in the lost-and-found bins, not with the janitors, not with my teachers, not in the admin’s office where some of the lost stuff go. My only hunch left was that someone stole it and I will never understand why someone saw it fit to steal a wallet with just an Instax photo of me and Gab, and my fucking retainers. Have you ever stared at the sky and wondered if it was all worth it? Yup. On one of my worse days several months ago I literally took a photo of the sky and posted it on Twitter and my caption was along the lines of is this even worth it. Kinda dramatic but I was in such a bad place and was just asking the skies to take me. Would you rather have a pet dinosaur or have mythical creatures be real? I guess have the dinosaur, if it were (not forcibly) tame. What age did you get your first hair cut? I’m guessing I was 3, because I have photos when I was 2 and had a ponytail and suddenly my hair is up to my ears at 3. Do you have a favourite toy from childhood still? No, I think my mom threw all of mine out when we moved. The only toys in this house now are Joaquin’s, since he was still a toddler when we moved here and so all his toys (and the newer ones) came along. What are your thoughts on the end of the world? The pessimist, suicidal me wants it to happen. Otherwise not so concerned as it won’t happen for another several billion years. Which sports do you enjoy watching? Pro wrestling, even though it’s half-theater. Tennis is also fun to watch. I play table tennis but don’t really watch it as a sport. Would you ever have a breed of dog that is considered aggressive? Absolutely. Break the stereotypes, people. Have you ever made bread? I don’t think so. Maybe in one of our home economics sessions in grade school since I remember using yeast, but my memory for that period is very fuzzy. Would your childhood self be disappointed? No, actually they’d be quite surprised I’m still sticking around. 12 year old me thought I would be gone in five years. Do you think in the future you'll have done yourself proud? If I just make it to the future I think that’s enough to make younger me proud. Did you read The Great Gatsby before seeing the movie? I haven’t even done either. What do you feel about movies made from books? Not the right person to ask as I'm generally not a fan of book-to-movie adaptations. I think the only exception is if they’re old hahaha e.g. A Clockwork Orange, Carrie, Misery, Breakfast at Tiffany’s, etc. I would include The Shining here but I know Stephen King was dismayed at how Kubrick portrayed his book. Has anything ever fallen asleep on you? Dogs. Do you have to use the bathroom? I did right before this survey. Is the above question too invasive? No, surveys have asked more intrusive ones. What do you feel about surgeries? Do they worry you? I hate them. They worry me, they scare me, I hate needles, I hate the possibility of waking up in the middle of surgery. Do you have a tumblr? You tell me, Sherlock. Would you rather have an open book shelf or one with doors? One with doors so like a library? Hahahahaha no, I’d rather show off the books. Although in this case it would be Gabie’s books, since she has way more books than I do.   Do you need a large or small place to live comfortably? Large. I love a minimalistic home. Would you ever consider moving to another country? Absolutely. My lifestyle and who I am is everything frowned upon by Catholics in the Philippines. As a person in a same-sex relationship (who wants to get married and have a family) and atheist in a predominantly Catholic country, all I’m asking is ostracism for life and they are more than ready to give that to me. Have you ever dropped everything and reevaluated? Sure. Do you play Minecraft? if so, feelings about servers? No. I have no clue what you’re talking about. Do you long for easier times? Don’t we all? Do you believe that life gets easier or we just get stronger? Stronger, more like more numb. Does it weird you out to think that humans are just more advanced animals? Not really. Do you ever wonder why religion came about? Lmao yes all the goddamn time, although I am talking as someone who was treated badly by their birth religion and thus is questioning it for life. I would never question or invalidate anyone and their religion. Would you ever consider shaving your head? I’ve thought about it, but I don’t think I would ever seriously consider it. Would you rather belong to a cult or a religion you feel is wrong? Uh. Freedom? Have you ever considered murder? Just for our current president sometimes but idk. Kill a man or a woman? Can I live worry-free instead? Would you like to live in a realm where the zombie apocalypse is possible? I mean, sounds cool but preferably nah? I’m okay with our zombie-less reality. Are you afraid of any animals? Reason? Yup, cockroaches are fucking ugly. Our old house had flying cockroaches all throughout my childhood which is why I hate them to no end now. Someone knocks on your door three times right now, do you answer? Yeah, it’s probably my dad. Do you read creepypastas? No, they aren’t intriguing to me. Can you sleep afterwards? I just woke up, so no I can’t do that.

[wobblyfet]

The Definitive Ranking of Villainous Pokémon Teams

With USUM just coming out and Team Rainbow Rocket being a thing, I thought I’d dig up a ranking I started a while ago!

7. Team Flare

Look, those outfits are snazzy. There’s no denying that. But… who the hell are these people? What’s their goal as a team of villains?

I mean, Lysandre talks about creating a more beautiful world because he thinks humanity is dumb. The qualifiers for what a more beautiful world exactly are is never made particularly clear, just that this involves the purging of everyone not in Team Flare. He gets a bit of backstory about having a genuine savior complex turned into radical disillusionment, but it doesn’t really cover how murky his goals are here. Like, what exactly is he objecting to about the ugliness of the world? Does he want to wipe out much of the world’s ecosystem with the laser beam of doom in their headquarters or just people? How does that work? And what is Team Flare?

I’m not sure at all what the organization of the rest of this team is. The grunt dialogue suggests getting in is quite expensive, and some of them seem pretty caught up in this whole beautiful world business. There’s suggestion Flare membership is kind of an issue of status. Much of both Lysandre’s and general dialogue about it do sort of resemble the dialogue from real world radical organizations, but the problem here is that radical ideologies tend to have a deeper surface rationale than what Team Flare’s deal is. They care about class elitism while also wanting to destroy what makes the world economy, and I don’t really know why these people would be more invested in genocide than, say, aggressively running a fashion line or a country club.

The problem for me probably boils down to how little depth this team is given. The grunts are just sort of there, admins are indistinguishable, and nobody has really any characterization except Lysandre and Malva, and even that’s pretty murky. Because of that, they fall flat as antagonists.

One thing I did like about them as villains: how Lysandre uses the Holo-Caster to spread his message. Having him pop up between videochatting your friends to monologue about purity and cleansing was genuinely disquieting. In this day and age, abruptly revealing that this world’s equivalent of a smartphone is actually a vehicle for ideological evil is intimidating and relevant.

Though, I gotta say, a Pokémon game is really not the place for Holocaust puns. Boo on that.

 6. Team Aqua

These guys are the only ones to seriously rival Team Flare’s stupidity. To begin with, looking at the original games, the whole hook of “More water! Yay environments for Water Pokémon!” is really bizarre in the context of a villainous team on Hoenn. Hoenn is a goddamn island, and at that one that is already thoroughly integrated with the sea. Why there would be enough radical water lovers in this area to warrant any a whole group obsessed with expansionism is kind of beyond me.

I do like that how the remakes broadened both Aqua and Magma’s motives, but… remixed Team Aqua is still incredibly dumb. They’re a radical group in defense of wronged Pokémon, which is cool, but the answer is to destroy the world and restore it to another primordial state? What? I’m no expert in environmental science but I’m pretty sure something like that would, like, definitely wipe out most Pokémon, including the ones that live in the sea. A questionable goal for a group purportedly all about saving wronged Pokémon.

And what’s the long-term plan here for the rest of the group? Is this destruction of the world like a death pact for the members or what?

Archie is entertaining, but let’s be real, he’s also pretty lame. Going so far as to recruit a potentially suicidal eco-terrorist cult only to chicken out when a big whale starts to make it rain is kind of pathetic.

Things that win Team Aqua villain points: fleshed out and entertaining characters in Archie, Shelly, and Matt. Also, pirates are cool.

 5. Team Galactic

I feel like Team Galactic started the trend in Pokémon games of there being apocalyptic stakes with the villains. A good Pokémon villainous team doesn’t really need to be world-destroying to work well as bad guys, as I’ll elaborate on below. That said, I would still put a big gap between Galactic and the bottom two teams, and I do generally like these guys.

Cyrus wants to create a new universe without pesky things like spirit or feelings. This makes enough sense for a villainous team in the context of Sinnoh, where a person can capture deities of space and time in Pokéballs. And I also quite like how the game contextualizes Cyrus as a villain of emotional abuse in his childhood- not to say this excuses him, but it adds a nice bit of depth.

Like the last two villainous teams, I have some questions about how exactly Cyrus’s goals translate to an ideology for an entire team of mooks, or, more importantly, how such a wet blanket of a leader convinced a legion of followers to run around Sinnoh in those embarrassing spacesuits. It’s never made super clear what the rest of Team Galactic is hoping to get out of the deal, but unlike Team Flare or Team Aqua, it’s easier to headcanon a large group of people being enticed by holding positions of power in a new world where, without any spirit, people and Pokémon might easily function as slaves.

Another thing I like: Cyrus’s eventual fate in the distortion world. No redemption, no dramatic downfall scene, just him eerily ranting about his ambitions as he wanders off into the netherworld. It’s creepy and sad, and fitting ending to his saga.

Overall, I don’t have strong feelings one way or the other about Team Galactic. It’s satisfactorily developed but comparatively not as interesting as other bad guys in this franchise.

Those team spacesuits, though. There’s no explanation for that.

 4. Team Magma

Look, this team suffers from a lot of the issues that their counterparts do. Namely, the way Maxie and his team just kind of fuck off very quickly after awakening Groudon. It’s sort of ridiculous to go so far to advance your villainous team only to give up so quickly. But, other than that, Team Magma is so much better.

To be fair, in the original Gen III games, their motives are pretty thin. However, for the same reasons Team Aqua doesn’t make much sense, Team Magma does. Hoenn is a tropical island in the middle of the sea that demands travelling through the sea and jungle to get anywhere. Hell, I spend enough time facing Wingulls and Tentacools on water routes and I’m ready to sign up. Or take a Team Magma pamphlet, at least.

I kid, but that’s mostly why I like Magma’s expanded motives in the remakes so much. In a world that’s obsessed with accommodating Pokémon and keeping balance with the environment, a reactionary group obsessed with human expansionism makes for realistic bad guys. And expanding land for development at the cost of the ecosystem is exactly what a group like that in Hoenn would focus on. To be clear, none of this is to say that Team Magma is condonable, or that Pokémon’s pro-environmentalist message is somehow a bad thing- it’s just that in this context, Team Magma would be one of the most plausible villainous organizations to come up.

I also quite like Team Magma’s characters. Maxie is a cool customer and exactly the type of smug asshole you’d expect to present an environmentally-unfriendly development plan at the corporate meeting, and Tabitha and Courtney are quite amusing. Updated Courtney in particular is weirdly charming, and I kind of hope we see more of her. And even though I just whined about how easily Maxie turns around and changes his mind, I don’t really think a redemptive ending for them is necessarily a bad thing. Isn’t an ending like that what most of us are trying to get from the Maxies of the real world driving our planet to ruin?

Anyways, if Magma started looking into building eco-friendly bridges across those damn water routes, I’d totally take a pamphlet. Just saying.

 3. Team Rocket/Neo Team Rocket

Team Rocket! The OG villainous team! And easily still the most iconic, over twenty years later now. They invented the Pokémon villainous team, and they surely deserve some props for that. That’s the whole reason Giovanni’s coming back as the leader of the super-villains, right? (I have some qualms about this, but more on that later)

Nostalgic factors aside, I think Team Rocket works quite well as an antagonistic force. I just praised Team Magma for being possibly the most realistic villainous team in the Pokémon world, but I really think that dubious honor should go to Rocket. These guys don’t want to end the world or build a new universe or anything like that; they see simple profit in Pokémon and are totally willing to go after that, whatever the cost. And with that, they’re able to function on a large scale and do terrible things.

Even without threatening the Pokémon world with apocalyptic aims, for my money they’re still demonstrably scarier than any other evil team in the series. Yes, Team Rocket will actually murder that Cubone’s mother, and they will mutilate those Slowpokes for profit, and they will mess up Magikarps with freaky radio wave experiments. For that reason, Rocket plots are more memorable than like anything else in the series.

And, like any evil organization worth its butter, they won’t fucking die. They’ll be reorganizing and spreading their tendrils to the underbelly of Johto and the Sevii Islands and now Alola. It’s totally plausible to me that a mafia with an eye for exploitative profit would have more lasting power than any of those other cults and become the villains of the Pokémon world.

They’re only at #3, though, and that’s because of one thing: Giovanni makes very little sense as a big bad boss.

I mean, he’s the shadowy kingpin of Kanto’s criminal underworld, and a gym leader? Isn’t a gym leader’s entire job to be a public official/stepping stone for up and coming trainers in the league? I’ve seen the meme of the one dude in Viridian City musing on the mystery of the gym leader while standing right next a sign that says “GYM LEADER: GIOVANNI”, but really, that’s actually, that’s a really strange problem for the team.

Because really, why would Giovanni think it’s a good idea to run a criminal syndicate from inside an establishment that literally asks for kids to come in and beat him, and then when it happens, be all like “Welp, that’s it for my criminal empire. Time to fuck off to the mountains.” It’s easily the most inexplicable downfall in the series.

I’m not sure why Neo Team Rocket in Johto wanted this guy back so desperately. And I know he’s leading Team Rainbow Rocket because he’s the most iconic legacy villain and all, but let’s be real, all those leaders probably could’ve picked someone more competent to be the evil superboss.

 2. Team Plasma/Neo Team Plasma

If I were in the Pokémon world and didn’t have the luxury of a video game screen’s distance, I would probably have some serious moral qualms about the whole catching, training, and battling system. I mean, like, PETA’s response to the Pokémon franchise is over the top and unintentionally funny, but the ethics of how you train Pokémon the only way the games let you is a fair thing to consider. Would the Pokémon world be better off without gyms and Pokéballs, really?

That’s the main reason I like Team Plasma. Their premise is more ideologically compelling than any of the other teams. Because, really, in the first four generations there’s a lot talked up about bonding between Pokémon and trainers and how the two built up the world through cooperation, but there’s really not much to indicate that this exchange is demonstrably preferable to Pokémon whose best interests might not, you know, involve forcible abductions and battling until passing out. Having a villainous team like Team Plasma let the franchise address this question in a thoughtful way, and I dig it.

It also let the Team Plasma grunts be some of the most gloriously awful hypocrites in the franchise. I still remember how absolutely infuriating it was to have all these twerps show up and obstruct me with Pokémon battles while getting all self-righteous about how battling this way was wrong, and how much I hated them all even though they had a valid point. I dig that too. A mix like that can be an ideal recipe for a good antagonist.

What really sells me on Team Plasma, though, is the family drama backing it all. N is great every time he shows up, with all his cryptic dialogue and struggles to do right by the creatures he loves. Pokémon never really had an anti-villain before and he was perfect for games as much about moral ambiguity and balance as Black and White were. Having someone intimately connected to Pokémon and their needs (I remember the chills I got when you first go in his room and see all the scratched-up toys) makes him ideal to communicate the message that good trainer-Pokémon relationships are a healthy reciprocal exchange where a trainer ideally pays attention to the needs of their Pokémon. It’s a nice message.

N adding moral ambiguity to the game is great, but the drop of Ghetsis as the true mastermind is a good one too. The extent of Ghetsis’s manipulation of N was damn chilling, and silly robe or not, adding the personal touch cements him as one of the most solidly awful main bad guys in the series. Child abuse is sort of a running theme in this franchise, and I oddly appreciate much of the way it’s featured- I mean, I don’t like it, but it’s a literary appreciation. In the case of Black and White, framing an ethical struggle of how to do right by your Pokémon against someone brutally exploiting that struggle for the sake of a power grab was effective.

(as an aside, I didn’t much care for the reveal that N wasn’t Ghetsis’s biological son. I feel like the game sort of treated the reveal as a “Guess what? Ghetsis wasn’t your legitimate father all along!” which isn’t great, since whether or not a child has blood relationship to their caretaker doesn’t actually have any bearing on said caretaker’s impact and moral responsibility as a guardian, and pretending otherwise reinforces a harmful message that adoptive parents aren’t somehow “real” parents. Not super important but it’s just a little thing that bothers me)

Team Plasma’s second appearance is honestly less memorable to me than the first, but I dig the whole team evolution and split between Ghetsis’s power grabby followers and N’s good-hearted followers. It gives the saga of Team Plasma a legacy development we’ve really only seen otherwise with Neo Team Rocket in Johto, albeit with a more epic bent.

The big unanswered questions- how the hell did Team Plasma end up a weird religious monarchy? (And who the hell are Anthea and Concordia?) I feel like demanding more practical details of the running of all these evil organizations than a game for children is realistically going to give us is a running theme in this ranking, but I care about these things, dammit.

 1. Team Skull/Aether Foundation

When I first made this ranking about a year ago, I gave first place to the Sun and Moon antagonists then too, but I wondered if it was recency bias speaking. But after a year of being less wrapped up in Gen VII than I was then, I can look back and say that these guys are the definitive #1 villainous Pokémon team. I make this announcement seriously and with perfect objectivity on the matter. No questioning or dissenting opinions will be tolerated in this house, silly nit.

I kid, of course. This is just an opinion-based list I wrote for my own amusement. But that said, I do think the antagonists this game gave us are easily a cut above everyone else on this list, just with what speaks to me.

Team Skull, to begin with, is everything. Everything from their designs to their dialogue to the way Alola treats them like a giant joke really feels like these guys were crafted with a lot of affection for them. They’re perfect for the Gen VII games because, like much else, it’s goofy and self-aware and just plain fun. I’ve seen footage of the grunt reacting in horror over you getting to say you don’t remember who they are several times now and it’s still hilarious.

But also like much of Gen VII in general, it swings back around with a surprising amount of depth. The more time you spend talking with grunts, you get more and more of the sense of a lost and displaced group of people turning with their comrades on a society that doesn’t have a place for them. A lot of this is framed around the failure in the Island Challenge, but really, it’s not hard to read more into all the possible reasons the Skull kids could have turned to crime than that, right? (and even if you just leave it at that, I do sort of wonder sometimes about how much value the Pokémon world puts on someone’s strength as a trainer. It seems like it might be a somewhat limiting way to run things, to say the least, but that’s a discussion for another day)

Anyways, Team Skull resonates with me for the same reasons that Magma and Rocket do- it’s a not inaccurate depiction of what kind of evil organizations would appear in a world that resembles our own. What many of the Skullsters describe reflects real life gang psychology remarkably well. The world doesn’t want you, because the normal standards (the Island Challenge) are too high, perhaps on top of not having food or money or being shut out socially for any number of bullshit reasons. But the gang has your back, and it’s gonna provide AND stand with you against the world. Hence the perpetuation of crime culture even when “better” life choices are there, and the emphasis on belonging and group loyalty. The way the story frames Team Skull along those lines gives you another totally plausible villainous group, but unlike Rocket or Magma, it does it in a way that frequently plays on your empathy.

Don’t get me wrong here, I definitely do not mean to paint Team Skull as a bunch of poor lil’ woobies who turned to crime because they had no agency to be better people. They’re still the villains here, after all. We see plenty in game of all the ways they’re earnestly terrible to Alolans, from generally being obnoxious punkasses who get in your way to vandalizing to stealing children’s pets to taking over Po Town. As funny as it is, I’m not totally sure why the denizens of Alola are as unconcerned with Team Skull as they are; taking over an entire goddamn town is nothing to sneeze at.

It’s just… surprisingly nuanced, is all. Team Skull can be a bunch of weenies, genuinely threatening, and have a kind of a tragic reality underneath it all at the same time. Walking through the barricaded ruins of Po Town, across all the belligerent patrollers or members just sitting in the rain, is eerie for more reasons than one.

Boss Guzma encapsulates all of it pretty well. He’ll gloriously ham things up every time he’s on screen, and he’ll bully anyone in his way, but the game also gives him some backstory and, eventually, room to express his standards and prove that he’s really not beyond redemption here. Because getting caught up in Lusamine’s sinister plots really always came down to wanting personal validation and what’s best for his Skull kids, more than a core desire to watch the world burn from Ultra Space. (I might just be a sucker for the Even Evil Has Standards trope, but even so)

I also love the moment where Plumeria decides to help you. It’s not a moment of redemption in the sense that she’s seen the light and decided to stop being a punk. Her MO doesn’t ever change at all; she fights you because she wants to protect her kids, and she comes to your side because she wants to protect her kids.

I love everything about Team Skull, but they’re only half the equation. Sun and Moon also gave us the Aether Foundation. Hoo boy.

Lusamine is my favorite main antagonist in the series. For my money, she’s easily the scariest. And not just because she fucking froze her favorite Pokémon in ice to admire them at her leisure forever. I mean holy fuck what was that and was anyone expecting a scene that horrifying in a game like this. But anyways… (shudders)

Lusamine is intimidating first because of the way she wraps herself in a veneer of civility and benevolence. I mean, it’s true that she gives off creepy vibes from the introduction, just like Lysandre, but the difference lies in just how much the Aether Foundation embodies the qualities of Pokémon Good Guys we know so well at this point. They want to protect the ecosystem and, for Lusamine, it comes from a place of love. But it takes a while to figure out just how messed up that understanding of love is.

Lusamine’s love bubble is about what she can control, and when what she loves deviates from her expectations, she reacts with physical and emotional violence. Because underneath it all, she’s an astonishingly selfish person who puts her loved ones in danger by association. She treats her love for vulnerable parties as a tactic to mold them into whatever she wants, even to horrifying ends (permafreezing Pokémon who probably loved and trusted their trainer), and treats love as a commodity that can be withheld as a punishment and an excuse for doing whatever she wants in retribution. She can take advantage of Team Skull, and more horrifically, Nebby and her children, and eventually end up at critical self-indulgence in Ultra Space because all the world has failed to meet her impossible standards for love and therefore deserves to be razed by her deadly interdimensional pet jellyfish.

I mentioned in the last entry how child abuse is something of a running theme in the Pokémon franchise, and Lusamine brings the most intimate and thoughtful depiction of it yet. It winds up with Gladion lost and caught up with criminals he doesn’t even like associating with and turns cold. Lillie ends up working very hard, by way of new positive social bonds, to overcome the complexes association with her mother forced into her. In the end, both get to symbolically save themselves and stand up to Lusamine’s abuse. It touched me in a place I would have never expected a series like Pokémon to reach.

Lusamine is the fucking worst, but… I appreciated how the games even gave her backstory and space for empathy, too. The lady had a hard deal herself, and after losing your partner that way, it’s understandable that someone would end up obsessed with control and selective about love. She’s still terrible, mind you, but it’s worth seeing where something like that is coming from. And also, I really appreciated that even when her kids are breaking free and standing up, how they still sort of love each other. I loved Lillie’s monologue on Exeggutor Island about how her mother wasn’t all bad all the time, and they have good memories. It’s a realistic outcome for abuse victims to think that way, really. Lusamine’s concept of love is horrifying and unconstructive, and the fact Lillie loves her isn’t going to stop her from resisting her mother’s mind games, and the mere existence of familial love between them isn’t going to come close to fixing just how much in the wrong Lusamine is, but it’s there. It’s more unexpected thoughtfulness it would have been easy not to include, and I’m very glad it’s there.

I also love how Lusamine, like N, addresses in a meta sense some of the moral quandaries the format of Pokémon lends itself to. Because yeah, realistically, the average player is going to be kind of similar to Lusamine- we see Pokémon as ideally under our control and as decorative collectibles to be frozen in the game file indefinitely when we don’t need them anymore. And just like Lusamine, our reaction to seeing a brand new interdimensional jellyfish of doom (or the like) is going to be “I’ve got to get that.” The value of an antagonist like Lusamine is to show how this way of playing Pokémon absolutely cannot be extended to your living, real life relationships.

If I have one criticism of the Skull/Aether coalition as bad guys, it’s probably that the rest of the Aether Foundation is rather opaque. One minute they’ll be serving the wholesome environmentalist mission, and the next they’ll be attacking you with evil grins under Lusamine’s orders. Exactly how much the members knew about and were chill with Lusamine’s secret agendas or how this was dealt with after her downfall was never something that was really addressed.

(Also, screw Wicke. That woman was clearly aware of both how Lusamine was abusing her kids and the shady things the foundation was up to, and why it was wrong, but she still supported it all by working as an Aether executive. I would have hoped you’d get to kick her oily butt like you do with Faba to teach her a lesson about passive complacency in evil activities, or at least see her get a verbal slap on the wrist, but apparently not)

Overall, though, I have a hard time nitpicking when the good parts are so thoughtful and meaningful to me. It’s with this that I’m proud to declare these the top baddies! Woo!

Anyways, that’s it for the definitive ranking! I had fun with this. Will Rainbow Rocket be more or less the sum of its parts? I can’t wait to find out!