#like exTREME spoilers if u havent gotten to the way home yet do not pass go

[raredrop]

i want to express my thoughts on the professor(s)

gonna split this into two (or three bc i do wanna talk about the ai) chunks bc they remind me of two other characters from previous games

first half: the villain’s motive

every pokemon villain (or the closest thing they might have to one considering a lot of them arent....evil per say) has a motive, a reason, a plot, a plan, whatever potato patato 

the professor wanted to bring prehistoric (sada) or futuristic (turo) pokemon to live side the present pokemon with the time machine they worked on with the AI professor but that would prove to completely ruin the ecosystem and who knows what else if they had gotten out (and like one DID get out already, donphan)

the professor hand waves it off as part of nature, and for this i wanna say the professor kinda....in a way reminds me of colress from bw2 in that his whole thing was that it was less he was evil and more that he was just doing things bc it allowed him to do science (not to mention he got to more or less repent for this)

does this make them evil for it? mmmmmmmmmmm???? i wouldnt put him on the same level as most of the other ones (like giovanni or ghetsis, or even the gen 3 team even if in oras they wised up at the end)

i need like a scale of morally grey-ness to see where that goes bc....

there’s the whole PPP that protects the time machine, i mean why go through such measures to set up something that would attack people (i get it was probably bc of everything that happened leading to the professors death) but come on man....

AND the second chunk: arven.

arven arven arven, much like lillie, n, silver, and others before him....arven was neglected by his parent (considering either his mom or dad depending on what version ur playing, walked right on out....which is currently speculated to be the other professor...specially since he looks like both of them) and had to raise himself

hes traumatized for years, he has a jealousy and hatred for the box legendary (until you help him warm up to it) his only close friend is his pokemon who got hurt in the very place his parent is stuck in

and on top of that he doesn’t even get proper closure with his “remaining” parent bc they died (turo means future and sada means past which means THEYRE NOT PRESENT AAAAAAAAA)

but there is the AI.......

my final section: the AI professor

i do wish we had gotten to hear more about the AI, if pokemon did more flashbacks, or maybe a journal from their POV (since theres journals on the way down from the og professor)

It’s very interesting how despite they are more or less a perfect recreation of the professor....they developed on their own after the fact to want to go against the professor’s dream, that it no longer wanted to do what it was even built to do

and while the ai professor does say that the original professor did care about arven....its hard for me to really accept that....but i do think if the ai was allowed to be free maybe they could have cared for him on their own

(which is a whole nother can of worms to think about)

so do i think the professor is evil, i dunno, do i think their neglectful of things outside of their research and dreams and UH ALSO THEIR SON? very much yes

do i think the professor is well written for the role theyre supposed to fill??? i also dont really know? i think the overall story is one of the best but we dont get a lot of time with the professor (both human and ai) until the very end

and my like ideal of a well written pokemon villain (at least in the main games i dont even wanna talk about pmd whogh) is ghetsis....holy heck i still think hes like the worst guy ever (specially since after gen 6 villains got more not completely evil, and even then i think lys was pretty weak. but even then i think some are just written worse than others even if they arent fully evil COUGH ROSE COUGH)

so i dunno, if theres dlc and we learn anything more maybe i’ll have more thoughts, maybe they wont even cover anything else about the professor...maybe i’ll have to wait for something like animation or something to have more info (assuming they dont do to him whatever the heck they did to lusamine in the anime....i didnt even watch the anime and from what i know it was....weird)

and as a final note i hope this doesnt sound like im excusing the professor for what they did, no matter how evil their plan was i dont think it excuses the FACT THEYRE A PIECE OF TRASH PARENT AND ARVEN I AM YOUR PARENTS NOW