#i managed to write this entire thing up without mentioning popplio even once are you proud of me

[moonscape]

Sending my evil influence to give you the floor to say why you hate USUM

okay so i do want to give a disclaimer that i haven't beaten either sm or usum since they released. i feel like my memory on them is still good enough to say my piece but just keep in mind that i may be wrong about some details and i can own up to that if i am.

since we're talking about sm and usum cw for parental abuse towards children

okay i will say upfront that i do think in terms of gameplay i fully admit that usum is superior. a lot of the stuff it added doesn't really apply to me (i only use pokemon that were introduced in that generation so usum's expanded pokedex is for the most part meaningless to me, and it kinda annoyed me how i was forced to play mantine surf to get to akala when i just wanted to get there immediately). the options are still nice to have, they just didn't add much to my personal experience, which is why i'm mostly coming at this from a story perspective. the ultra wormhole stuff was fucking awesome though i loved that.

so: sm. while i wouldn't say its depiction of abuse was perfect (lusamine was forgiven way too easily imo) i still appreciate the way it came at it. the nihilego poison was a reason behind lusamine's actions, but it didn't excuse them. lillie still got to give her amazing speech to her mother about how children aren't just dolls and gladion is a little more on the fence about it iirc, so there were at least still some repercussions for lusamine in that regard. it's a story that hit very hard at the time of release because while my mom isn't abusive, our relationship was very rocky when i was 16, so sm was very cathartic for me. i'd imagine it'd still resonate deeply with me to this day if i were to replay it even though our relationship has improved since then.

so the tldr of that is that sm had a slightly flawed but still brilliant portrayal of familial abuse that blended in very well with the overall theme of different family dynamics (also shown through guzma/team skull in general, hau and his grandfather, etc.)

so usum just completely shat all over that with how they handled the aether family.

it's like genuinely pretty offensive to me with how lusamine's abuse was portrayed here. she's not under any sort of influence because of nihilego here, she's just naturally very nasty and cruel to her children. lillie doesn't get to give her her speech and gladion literally says something along the lines of "she's not so bad because she's our mother." LIKE WHAT!!!!!! you take away the understandable (but not justifiable) reasoning as to why she was cruel in sm so that she's just always horrible and then take away the few repercussions she faces to have her be excused entirely??? this just feels like abuse apologism. it leaves such an icky taste in my mouth. and derailing into the anime for a quick second here, that also had a weird portrayal of lusamine too. i wouldn't say it was as bad as it is in usum, since it did ultimately stick closer to sm, but it was just sort of weird with them making lusamine's main issue be that she's just sort of overbearing and making faba into the real villain (who also gets let off with a slap on the wrist despite being responsible for the trauma lillie held on to for years).

like that's the main reason why i can't go back to usum over sm. i just feel gross playing it.

and to be fair, this game did do guzma and hau better in terms of writing, but why did it have to portray the aether family in that way as well. i don't even really remember what they did with hau aside from making him the final battle (and tbh i felt like kukui was still a better final boss. i like hau, but the "rival as a champion" thing was done much more effectively in the kanto games imo.)

also rainbow rocket was dumb and cringe and i never even bothered finishing it. to this day (aside from bdsp because i didn't play that) it's the only postgame pokemon story i haven't beaten. i tolerated fucking sordward and sheilbert but not this. also i heard that ghetsis physically shoves lillie to the ground in his section and i genuinely need him to die for it. and worst of all they took hot archie away from us 😔

like i won't deny that usum added a lot of neat features and sidequests that made alola feel more alive (and i already loved alola in sm) but i cannot for the life of me get past how gross the story makes me feel.