#but this fandom does have a tendency to treat darker skinned characters . . . badly

[sage-nebula]

Just wanna say, I love your tags sm on my post!!! I find it so fun to pull comparisons with both zinnia and volo because they have like. A similar character skeleton. Or whatever that means. They're so different yet their relation to their respective deity definitely feels, as u said, 2 sides of the same coin.

And 100% agree with the last comment- I only started thinking about their similarities when I realized how much of the fandom dislikes zinnia and how much of the fandom likes volo qq

Ahh thank you so much!! I'm so sorry I'm responding to this so late, I am just awful about actually sitting down at a computer lately unless it's for work . . . and my work network doesn't allow me to access tumblr because I'm employed by haters 😔 but I'm glad you appreciated the tags! I remember I was actually a bit hesitant about leaving them because I didn't know if they would be Too Much or not, so I'm glad that wasn't the case, haha.

And yeah, Zinnia and Volo definitely foil each other in many ways. What's really interesting about it as well is that, unlike Volo, Zinnia was actually rebuffed by her deity to her face, when it came to a destiny she was literally raised for, which we know since her flashbacks in her Evolutions episode show that she was training to catch Rayquaza as part of her Lorekeeper destiny since she was a young child:

She could arguably be a little older in that second flashback, but not by much. So Zinnia was raised to be the Lorekeeper since her childhood. Her life's purpose was not only know and be able to pass on the history of her people, but also to be able to mega evolve Rayquaza and, together with it, destroy the meteor that would threaten the planet. She knew that doing this would likely result in her death (indicated at multiple points in her dialogue), but she was so devoted to doing it that she went through it anyway. And she managed part of it; she did manage to summon Rayquaza.

And then . . . Rayquaza rejected her. To her face. In favor of some random (by comparison) kid.

By all accounts, Zinnia had every right to be furious. Her deity has rejected her in favor of some rando when Zinnia devoted her entire life (and was willing to sacrifice her life) to it. But is she furious? Does she take it out on May? No. We know that she's lowkey suicidal (some of her dialogue suggests she's almost hoping she'll die in the effort to stop the meteor so that she can be reunited with the original Aster in the afterlife), but she still takes it in stride because the most important thing is that the meteor is stopped. So she helps the rando as much as she can, and then leaves to figure out what she can do with this life she didn't expect to have.

Then, on the opposite end, there's Volo. Volo, as far as we know, was never raised with any special destiny in mind. To be fair, we really don't know anything about Volo's backstory except that it's heavily implied he's a descendant of the Celestica people. But that's it. We're never told that he had a destiny to fulfill alongside Arceus. Instead, Volo himself decided that he was going to summon and meet Arceus, and Volo himself decided he was going to summon and meet Arceus wholly for his own reasons, and Volo himself never actually came face to face with Arceus, and took that as a rejection, and then tried to murder the random kid Arceus chose over it, as if it's that random kid's fault.

It really is the complete opposite in every way. Zinnia had every reason to believe that Rayquaza would agree to work with her, yet when it refused, she took it in stride and did what she could to help. Volo had no reason to believe that Arceus would want to work with him, and when it refused, he absolutely lost his shit and tried to murder a child. There's a reason why Zinnia got closure by forming a sync pair with Rayquaza in Pokemon Masters and why I'm pretty damn sure Volo is not going to get the same treatment with Arceus, lmao.

And don't get me wrong, I love both characters. Personally, I hope Volo never gets better. Don't get me wrong, if his motivation is supposed to be that he wants to make a world where his people and culture were never lost and where Hisui was never colonized, then I do think that's a sympathetic motivation, and certainly I came away from PLA thinking that Kamado was more despicable than Volo, mostly because the game treated Kamado like a sympathetic, misunderstood man despite his blatant bigotry toward the DP clans. But Volo is at his best when he is absolutely off his shits and I want him to stay that way. Like the fact that he actually tried to murder the player is iconic. Love that energy for him. Keep it coming.

But that doesn't change the fact that, yeah, he is off his shits. And any sympathetic motivations we can give him are headcanon because Game Freak didn't feel the need to elaborate. And more importantly (and to the point of your second paragraph), yeah, it really gets me that people are constantly vilifying Zinnia (including downright calling her a villain) for trying to save two worlds and ultimately bowing out gracefully when her destiny was stolen from her, yet fawn all over Volo or Lusamine. I'm sure the fact that Zinnia is a darker skinned woman (as opposed to the the blonde hair and pale skin of the others) has nothing to do with it. [/heavy sarcasm]

Anyway, this is a very long (and late) reply. I'm a very verbose person, haha. But thanks again, especially for giving me the chance to talk more about this; I appreciate it! 💜

[pharahsgf]

"I blame the [Korrasami] fandom for being so Like That" could you maybe explain this? Sorry if I'm bothering you but I thought the Korrasami fandom was really mild, so I don't really understand

(re: my tags on this post)

well it is a relatively mild fandom in terms of drama! but i feel like (fanon) korrasami has the same problem as any other ship w a lighter skinned and a darker skinned character, ie that the lighter one is treated as smart, sexy and in control while the darker one is either a bumbling oaf who does nothing but Be Attracted To Them or is made into an overly masculine, dominant aggressor who plays bodyguard to their smol dainty bf/gf.

a few examples of popular ships where this happens are klance, pharmercy, r76, mchanzo, and stormpilot, and i often see other people complain about this happening to ships from fandoms i’m not in (malec from shadowhunters and the main girls from motor crush apparently have this issue, as does Every Fucking Steven Universe Ship Involving Pearl).

i’m vastly less interested in basically all of these ships because of how like.. persistent this trend is, and also because i usually like the darker skinned one better and it hurts to see them disrespected and portrayed in such an unflattering manner in what usually amounts to like 50% of their fanon content.

with korrasami i’m a bit more lenient because 1) it’s a really fucking good (canon!) ship and 2) asami is legitimately canonically portrayed as very feminine and intelligent… but it still hurts to see korra dismissed as not having deeper emotions or as being stupid. i’ve never really been able to enjoy most of the korrasami fic and comics i saw because of how little of them did korra justice.

uhh i’m also a bit hmm at the tendency to instantly dismiss any post-book 4 criticism as korrasami hate or just homophobic nitpicking (as if saying korra’s ptsd was portrayed kinda badly is a dig at korrasami somehow…?) but i think that’s more of a general tumblr thing of people thinking that some piece of media having issues means they aren’t allowed to like it anymore or whatever.

[punjab-official]

edit because I accidentally posted while tagging: wait my comments could have been just a reblog lol; oh well, this write-up is so good it deserves the extra notes

Just wanna say, I love your tags sm on my post!!! I find it so fun to pull comparisons with both zinnia and volo because they have like. A similar character skeleton. Or whatever that means. They're so different yet their relation to their respective deity definitely feels, as u said, 2 sides of the same coin.

And 100% agree with the last comment- I only started thinking about their similarities when I realized how much of the fandom dislikes zinnia and how much of the fandom likes volo qq

Ahh thank you so much!! I'm so sorry I'm responding to this so late, I am just awful about actually sitting down at a computer lately unless it's for work . . . and my work network doesn't allow me to access tumblr because I'm employed by haters 😔 but I'm glad you appreciated the tags! I remember I was actually a bit hesitant about leaving them because I didn't know if they would be Too Much or not, so I'm glad that wasn't the case, haha.

And yeah, Zinnia and Volo definitely foil each other in many ways. What's really interesting about it as well is that, unlike Volo, Zinnia was actually rebuffed by her deity to her face, when it came to a destiny she was literally raised for, which we know since her flashbacks in her Evolutions episode show that she was training to catch Rayquaza as part of her Lorekeeper destiny since she was a young child:

She could arguably be a little older in that second flashback, but not by much. So Zinnia was raised to be the Lorekeeper since her childhood. Her life's purpose was not only know and be able to pass on the history of her people, but also to be able to mega evolve Rayquaza and, together with it, destroy the meteor that would threaten the planet. She knew that doing this would likely result in her death (indicated at multiple points in her dialogue), but she was so devoted to doing it that she went through it anyway. And she managed part of it; she did manage to summon Rayquaza.

And then . . . Rayquaza rejected her. To her face. In favor of some random (by comparison) kid.

By all accounts, Zinnia had every right to be furious. Her deity has rejected her in favor of some rando when Zinnia devoted her entire life (and was willing to sacrifice her life) to it. But is she furious? Does she take it out on May? No. We know that she's lowkey suicidal (some of her dialogue suggests she's almost hoping she'll die in the effort to stop the meteor so that she can be reunited with the original Aster in the afterlife), but she still takes it in stride because the most important thing is that the meteor is stopped. So she helps the rando as much as she can, and then leaves to figure out what she can do with this life she didn't expect to have.

Then, on the opposite end, there's Volo. Volo, as far as we know, was never raised with any special destiny in mind. To be fair, we really don't know anything about Volo's backstory except that it's heavily implied he's a descendant of the Celestica people. But that's it. We're never told that he had a destiny to fulfill alongside Arceus. Instead, Volo himself decided that he was going to summon and meet Arceus, and Volo himself decided he was going to summon and meet Arceus wholly for his own reasons, and Volo himself never actually came face to face with Arceus, and took that as a rejection, and then tried to murder the random kid Arceus chose over it, as if it's that random kid's fault.

It really is the complete opposite in every way. Zinnia had every reason to believe that Rayquaza would agree to work with her, yet when it refused, she took it in stride and did what she could to help. Volo had no reason to believe that Arceus would want to work with him, and when it refused, he absolutely lost his shit and tried to murder a child. There's a reason why Zinnia got closure by forming a sync pair with Rayquaza in Pokemon Masters and why I'm pretty damn sure Volo is not going to get the same treatment with Arceus, lmao.

And don't get me wrong, I love both characters. Personally, I hope Volo never gets better. Don't get me wrong, if his motivation is supposed to be that he wants to make a world where his people and culture were never lost and where Hisui was never colonized, then I do think that's a sympathetic motivation, and certainly I came away from PLA thinking that Kamado was more despicable than Volo, mostly because the game treated Kamado like a sympathetic, misunderstood man despite his blatant bigotry toward the DP clans. But Volo is at his best when he is absolutely off his shits and I want him to stay that way. Like the fact that he actually tried to murder the player is iconic. Love that energy for him. Keep it coming.

But that doesn't change the fact that, yeah, he is off his shits. And any sympathetic motivations we can give him are headcanon because Game Freak didn't feel the need to elaborate. And more importantly (and to the point of your second paragraph), yeah, it really gets me that people are constantly vilifying Zinnia (including downright calling her a villain) for trying to save two worlds and ultimately bowing out gracefully when her destiny was stolen from her, yet fawn all over Volo or Lusamine. I'm sure the fact that Zinnia is a darker skinned woman (as opposed to the the blonde hair and pale skin of the others) has nothing to do with it. [/heavy sarcasm]

Anyway, this is a very long (and late) reply. I'm a very verbose person, haha. But thanks again, especially for giving me the chance to talk more about this; I appreciate it! 💜