#the solution imo would have been to change the motivation behind her family moving away so that it's outside her parents' control too

[agalychnisspranneusroseus]

Imagine you're Mr. Wu and your weird gay daughter runs away in tears after destroying some unespecified object while yelling about you ruining her life. Because you told her you'd be moving to another state. This is the last time you see your daughter in half a year, and when she comes back, she comes back... wrong. She's wearing a light leather armor, a fur-lined cape, and a green flower crown. She has two long scars, one alongside her spine and the other along her chest, the tissue around them covered in burn scars. Doctors say she shouldn't have survived. Doctors say she didn't. Yet she's right here, in front of you, hospital gown clinging to her small, fragile, trembling frame. She fidgets with her hands. Getting her to stay still has always been difficult, but now it seems impossible. She won't let go of her phone. She's always texting her two friends. When you take it away, she gets anxious. You always knew those damn phones cause kids to act weird, but your kid having a panic attack seems too extreme, even for her. Then again, she's always been odd. Nowadays, she wakes up crying and screaming almost every night, and you realize she's been stealing her phone from your bedside drawer every night to text her friends, returning it before you wake up. You catch her once and decide to give her that damn phone back. It's the only thing that calms her down, as if she were a baby with a pacifier. She spends her last weeks in LA clinging to her friends, having sleepovers and playing her weird board games with them. Everytime they drop her back at her house, there's an excessive amount of hugs and tears. But the moments when they call her, or when she leaves to meet with them, or when they show up at their door to pick her up... those are the only moments in which you see her happy. One of her friends, the rude and disobedient one, came back with a big scar on her face. She's been acting a lot nicer, though. The other one too. She acts a great deal more adult now. You doesn't know what happened or where your daughter went. She won't tell you. But you can tell this friendship is the only thing keeping her afloat right now. Maybe you know, deep down, that no one else would understand.

And then you decide to move anyway because fuck her amirite

[aspoonofsugar]

I was thinking about AOT and the first chapter: Eren was crying, probably about what he experienced or will experience before the story ends and the memories will be stored in the attacking titan. That's how Kruger knew about saving Armin and Mikasa before it even happened. However in Eren's dream there is also a moment with possibly Mikasa saying "see you later Eren". I know people disagree on which Eren it's about (Kruger or Jaeger) but actually I was thinking that since (1/2)

it’s the only memory he gets from that dream, maybe it’s a sign that eremika is really going to be plot relevant. Why would he remember Mikasa in particular (and not Armin for example), assuming these memories were really about him and Mikasa? I’m so sorry if this doesn’t make a lot of sense, I love your snk posts so I wanted your opinion. Have a great weekend!

Hello anon! I am happy you enjoy my posts! And don’t worry, your ask makes sense, but since my answer is gonna be pretty long I’ll break it into two parts:

1) Firstly I will address the scene you mentioned and some theories about it.

2) Then I will talk a little bit of Eremika.

1) I agree with you that this scene

and this scene

are both linked to a common plot point which has to do with some worldbuilding elements like the paths among Eldians, the origin of the Founding Titan, the Attack Titan and the truth about Ymir. Until these details remain unknown it is difficult to come up with a perfect explanation for these panels.

You mentioned two theories in your ask:

a) The girl Eren sees in the beginning is Mikasa.

In this case Eren is definately seeing his future and probably him separating from Mikasa since the girl’s words sound like a goodbye. If it’s so then we are inside a time paradox. I have seen people reading the time paradox as a negative loop i.e. a situation where our characters keep struggling, but are never able to overcome tragedy and so Eren keeps living again and again the same experiences in the hope of finally breaking the cycle. People who believe in this theory seem to think that we will either get a bad ending (so the end will be like the beginning with Eren waking up under the tree and the story starting once again without a solution) or, alternatively, we may have an ending where the cycle is finally broken and our characters are finally free to go on and to create a new world.

I would like to propose an alternative (definately crack) theory: the time paradox may actually be a “virtuous” loop i.e. the events we assisted, despite their violence and sadness, are actually necessary to arrive to a positive ending and Eren’s final decision will be to actually accept everything that happened to him and to “send his will back in time” to influence the past events and to be sure that everything goes as it is supposed to go (i.e. as we have seen in the series). Basically I am proposing a time paradox like the one we get in the third book of Harry Potter where the characters going back in time and interfering with the past don’t actually change it, but are used to explain details the protagonists saw the first time and couldn’t understand (like the person saving Harry from the Dementors who turned out to be Harry himself).

Thematically it would be interesting for Eren’s character because he, despite fighting for freedom, is a character who has been enslaved since when his father gave him the titan power. He didn’t choose to become the Attack Titan, so in a sense he has been negated freedom since the very beginning because he isn’t given the chance to personally make that very first choice which kicked off the whole plot. For him to eventually accept what happened and to influence past events so that things go exactly as they went in order to ensure a positive outcome would be a nice touch imo. It would make the whole story a consequence of Eren’s choice and he would regain the agency Grisha took away from him back then.

b) The girl Eren sees is actually a girl important for Eren Kruger.

This theory has its own good points. First of all it’s obvious that Isayama wants us to associate Eren to Kruger:

The fact that Eren used the name Kruger as his alias in Marley and their two designs as children being similar, not to count them having the same name, are all details meant to draw the reader’s attention to the connection between these two characters. If so then we can assume that this connection will be important both thematically (meaning that Eren and Kruger will be characters made to compare and contrast each other) and plot-wise. If their link is relevant plot-wise then it may not be too far-fetched to imagine that, because of some unknown worldbuilding elements (aka Eldian paths or something), the two of them share a special mental connection. This unique mental connection may explain why Kruger mentioned Mikasa and Armin despite not knowing them and why Eren got to see one of Kruger’s memories despite having still to receive the Attack Titan.

Even if this theory were correct, though, this wouldn’t change the fact that the scene Eren saw may be relevant to Eremika:

After all it’s Eren himself who associates the girl to Mikasa and this means that, in the case the girl is someone important to Eren Kruger, their relationship will most likely foil Eremika and this girl may become a parallel to Mikasa like Kruger is to Eren.

In short there is no doubt that the scene in chapter one will be, one way or another, relevant to Eremika and that Eren and Mikasa’s relationship will be (and already is) relevant for the story.

Now I’ll try to answer the second part of your ask.

2) I think that the most interesting thing of Eremika as a ship is that it has been set up to be solved only when Mikasa is able to make herself independent from Eren instead than when the two characters come together:

It’s interesting that we get to see this scene from Mikasa’s POV because we can contrast it with the dream Eren had. At the beginning of the series we have Mikasa looking at Eren with adoration and at the same time we have Eren having a vision of a girl he associates with Mikasa saying goodbye to him. It may very well have been an effective representation of Mikasa’s arc in a nutshell: the very beginning against the very end.

The root of Mikasa’s character is that she is a child who lost her family and who is terrified from the prospective of losing it again and to remain alone:

When she sees both her parents die she doesn’t even have the instinct to run for her life and lets herself get caught without opposing resistance because she has no idea how to live without her family. Then Eren comes into the scene and Mikasa clings to him:

Mikasa’s clinging to Eren becomes even worse after she loses her adoptive family. Let’s also notice that for her to help Eren out was also Carla’s last wish:

It is because of all these circumstances that we see her doing things like this in the beginning:

However, the narrative keeps challenging her on this aspect to the point that I wouldn’t be surprised if, by rereading Mikasa’s arc at the end of the series, it would turn out that the whole story was preparing her to say goodbye to Eren (and possibly to Armin):

After all Mikasa has been now tricked twice into thinking that she was losing a member of the costitutive group representative of her happy childhood. To me these two occurrences seemed rehearsals to what will be Mikasa’s final trial. Moreover, she is even told that both Armin and Eren won’t live long:

It’s as if the narrative is warning her that she has to move on and to become more independent because one’s life isn’t reduced to the family nucleus one is born in, but a person can forge new relationships and find warmth and happiness even outside it.

In short Mikasa’s story starts with her being totally unable to face a traumatic loss and it is possible that it will end with her having become strong enough to actually let go. It would be a beautiful way to end her arc imo because it would tie it back to her original trauma (her family being killed) and would solve it together with her relationship with Eren who firstly taught her that she could keep on living even without her loved ones.

What about Eren?

It seems to me that Eren is ironically doing to his friends what Mikasa did to him in the beginning:

Mikasa in the beginning was constantly trying to protect Eren to the point of objectifying him to an extent and of trying to control him. Now, in the last chapter we have seen how protecting the people he cares about is still a pretty strong motivation of Eren’s character:

However, he is doing it by dismissing their opinions and their feelings and by isolating himself in the process:

It’s interesting that we see Eren in front of a mirror this chapter because the place each one of EMA is at tells us something about their current state of mind.

So we have Armin in front of an enemy trying to communicate without receiving any answer exactly like any chance of dialogue with Marley has now been lost:

Then we have Mikasa who is at Sasha’s grave, but isn’t actually looking at it (she is behind the grave and not in front of it) as if she couldn’t force herself to truly face the consequences of what Eren did:

She touches her scarf instead and repeats Eren’s mantra despite Sasha’s death basically proving it wrong. They won. Sasha still died.

Finally we have Eren alone, in front of a mirror:

He isn’t seeing neither his enemies (like Armin) nor his comrades (like Mikasa), but is seeing only himself. Again, I don’t mean that he doesn’t care about others, he does, but he has assumed a self-centred prospective: he wants to protect his friends and family and will fight against whoever wants to hurt them disreguarding both who they are and what his loved ones think about the matter.

Back in Trost Mikasa was so desperate to protect Eren that she would have disreguarded her duty as a soldier in order to keep him safe and would have indirectly sacrificed others’ lives she could have saved with her strength for this reason.

In that situation it was Eren himself who woke Mikasa up and urged her to do the right thing. Now I think Eren needs a headbutt as well and it might be Mikasa the one to deliver it (since I think Armin will leave the other two). However, she will be able to do so only if she is ready to actually enter into an open conflict with Eren.

I don’t know if I was of any help! Thank you for the ask and sorry I took a while to answer it! And have a great week!

[sage-nebula]

If you could rewrite Pokemon Sun/Moon with things like better character development and more depth to the Aether Foundation, how would you do it? :D

I mean, these games were such a ridiculous disappointment (especially with regards to the Aether Foundation) that we could be here all day, but …

Let’s get started.

General:

Let the Island Challenge actually be a fucking challenge. I love the concept behind it, and how similar it sounded to the Orange Islands in the anime, and I love the idea of having that instead of the standard Gym challenge, particularly since it allowed Alola to be run under a religious oligarchy rather than the typical League system (even if Kukui staged a political revolution, but more on that in a second). However, the actual Island Challenge itself was pathetic. There was hardly any exploration, the challenges themselves were like teeny-tiny minigames … and considering how interesting or challenging they could have been, it made the entire thing feel boring, particularly since the “totem battle” at the end is basically just a Gym Leader battle, albeit against “wild” pokémon. It’s a cool concept that Game Freak didn’t bother to flesh out at all.So instead, I’d want the Island Challenges to actually be detailed and fleshed out. Give us temples or caves to fully explore. Give us actually challenging puzzles to complete. Make it a blend between Pokémon and The Legend of Zelda. And don’t just have us do a totem battle for every single one, or at least—perhaps there’s a way to pacify the totem pokémon without battling. Maybe you can battle, but you can also find alternative solutions with your team, thereby strengthening the message of unity between person and pokémon and also giving players various different ways to complete their Island Challenge—a way to make it unique to each person. At the very least, don’t just have us go through pretty much empty locations (like Kiawe’s mountain—there was practically nothing there, just a boring hike to the top and then a ridiculously easy “game” before the totem battle) until we hit the end goal. Give us more lore, exploration, and challenge instead of wasting a perfectly good concept.

GIVE. US. BACK. THE. BIKE. Or at the very least do away with the fugly outfit and godawful Ride music. And for that matter, let us use our own pokémon for the Ride feature. I should not have to call upon a charizard when I have a charizard in my party. That’s asinine. 

Similarly, MAKE ALOLA BIGGER, and make it so that we can surf between the islands. Alola feels tiny. Having a tiny region isn’t necessarily new—some of the other regions aren’t that big, tbh—but it feels very compact because you just insta-travel between the islands, rather than being able to surf the distance as you could in, say, Hoenn. Additionally, some of the islands are mini, sometimes only having one city or town. I get that Alola is based on the State of Hawaii, but there were certain design choices that limited exploration that make it seem infinitely smaller, which is a disappointment. Make Alola bigger, or at the very least let it breathe.

Stop having everyone fawn over and worship the player character. It felt so unnatural and got to the point where I wanted to punt all of the other characters into the ocean. The player character—or player, I guess—does not need to be worshiped and have their shoes licked for being “OMGOSH SO AMAZING BEST TRAINER EVAR!!1!!!1!!” by the other characters. I hate that. Let the other characters be incredible, too. Let them recognize their own strengths and talents. Shine some light on them, rather than on this rando child who spontaneously moved to this region and yet is somehow the savior they were all waiting for. I just … hated that, so much. It felt like even more fawning and salivating over how awesome the player is than usual, and it really rubbed me the wrong way.

Put so much more focus on Kukui’s honest-to-Arceus political revolution. Kukui overturned the religious oligarchy that had governed Alola for ages and turned it into a League system because … well, because he felt like it, I guess, and yet this not only goes smoothly, but basically no attention is called for it whatsoever. Now, I know that Nintendo did this because they still wanted to give the player a chance to be the Champion and have an actual throne to sit on while the rest of the characters at the game salivate at their feet (sigh), but that doesn’t change the fact that this should have been met with a lot of resistance and upheaval and should have been a very solid B Plot (if they weren’t going to make it the actual plot), particularly since the end result was an eleven-year-old child who had just moved there and knew nothing of the history or populace suddenly being placed in charge. Like, you would think Hala would take serious issue with Kukui being an upstart and calling for a revolution, but no, he was fine with it because … just because. We don’t know, because Hala didn’t get to actually do much in the main story despite being hyped up as an important character. But as far as we know, everyone was perfectly fine with Kukui’s massive political revolution, and the ramifications this would have on Alola (both domestically and internationally in fields like general politics, finance, et cetera) were completely ignored.So let’s explore that at least a bit. Even if Kukui is still ultimately successful, perhaps show him meeting resistance from people like Hala, and gaining support from people like Nanu (since Nanu doesn’t want to be a Kahuna anymore lol), and people like Olivia being torn. Show the effect this has on the kids, where perhaps Hau ends up coming into conflict with Hala because Hala is against Kukui’s revolution, while Hau thinks it could be interesting and fun, and so they encounter some family strife there as Hau tries to find his own way in contrast to what his grandfather wants for him. Show this coming up again and again, and explore Kukui’s motivations for it more deeply. Why does he want a revolution so bad? Is it really that he wants Alola to have a stronger presence internationally? Does he have personal stakes in that? Will Alola have a stronger presence internationally if they switch to a League system? And so on and so forth. And since he’s the one leading the revolution, make him the Champion, versus the eleven-year-old who literally just moved here and knows fuck all about Alola. Honestly, please give Kukui some semblance of intelligence and let his revolution actually be treated with some degree of gravitas, as it should be. (Alternatively, if Game Freak is incapable of doing this, remove this subplot and let Alolan government stand. We don’t need to be the Champion. It’s not that big of a deal after six bloody generations of letting us do just that.)

On that note, Professor Burnet needs to play a bigger role in the Aether plot. While Kukui is spearheading his revolution, Burnet is studying wormholes and Ultra Space and, as such, should have played a bigger role in the main plot, going up against Lusamine (or at least assisting the kids in doing so) in the process. That she was all but ignored in favor of Kukui, whose research and ultimate goals had absolutely nothing to do with the Aether Foundation, was a huge mistake and (imo) just one of the MANY ways in which Gen VII treated its female characters horribly.So let her be more involved. Actually show her relationship with Lillie, rather than just telling us about it in a couple lines of dialogue. Let her continuously run experiments on the wormholes and dig deeper into what the Aether Foundation is doing. Show her her science contrasts with that of Lusamine’s, in addition to how her parenting contrasts with that of Lusamine’s. Let her show up at various times throughout the plot, including when Aether Paradise is stormed, because this is her field of expertise and, as such, she is damn knowledgeable about it. Let Burnet be the one to point Lillie and the others to the pedestals where they can get the flutes, and let her be the one to direct them when it comes time to play. Basically, actually utilize this wonderful character that was created, instead of ignoring her because she’s not the “main professor” (or more accurately, because she’s female, because apparently this series can’t give us a female professor without upstaging her with either her father (Cedric Juniper) or her husband (Kukui), regardless of how little sense that upstaging makes).

Make the RotomDex optional. This speaks for itself. The RotomDex was obnoxious, and is quite possibly one of the worst companion characters I’ve ever seen in a video game (far worse than Navi, for instance). I hate it. 

Don’t make Team Skull bad guys at all. The idea of having them appear to be criminals (or at the worst being punks) but actually having some heroic moments near the end was one that was kicked around a lot, and was also one that was shamefully wasted by making them cardboard caricatures of villains instead. Instead, it’d be much better if they were instead representative of the terrible CPS system / justice system in Alola (at one point a cop NPC mentions there being no crime despite crime being everywhere, showing how useless the police in Alola are), which could potentially be fuel for why people like Kukui and Nanu want a revolution, thus tying into that B Plot. It would also drive home a message about appearances being deceiving to have Team Skull actually be decent people despite being forced to sometimes steal food because they have none, whereas the Aether Foundation looks pristine but clearly isn’t. It’d certainly be more meaningful than the “they’re comic relief but also still Bad Guys™” message we were given instead.On that note, LET PLUMERIA PLAY AN ACTUAL ROLE, GOD DAMN IT, particularly with regards to Guzma teaming up with Lusamine (if he still acts as her grunt), and Plumeria being the one to confront him over it. If Plumeria is the aneki of Team Skull, let her act like it, and let us see her acting like it. I would have her stepping up and taking charge, the one truly in charge of Team Skull (and even Guzma tbh) because she has her shit together. I would also expand and build upon her relationship with Gladion, with whom she actually does have a good relationship with, so that he, too, had some support outside of Null / Silvally. But more on that in a second.

Give Hau actual depth. The most we get out of him is that he has an inferiority complex, is a bit of a stepford smiler, and dislikes how much of a bully Gladion is to him (and thus dislikes Gladion—and yes, he did dislike him, complete with an D8 reaction whenever Gladion showed up, and their “reconciliation” was rushed af, so I don’t count it).  That’s not really enough, and Hau deserved better. If Kukui’s revolution B Plot was given more focus, inserting that conflict between Hala and Hau mentioned before could spur Hau to really find himself and his own motivations other than what was expected of him + his “having fun” excuse. He could also have his relationship with Lillie explored more, particularly since they were friends before the player character showed up and stole everything, meaning that he should have been more prominent as a support figure for her rather than being shoved to the side so that the player could do it instead (again, rather inexplicably). And as a final idea, perhaps he could be manipulated by Lusamine (whom he seemed to like in the games) into working for her, possibly even for Lillie’s sake (potentially) because he wants to help Lillie reconcile with her mother, + believes Lusamine is doing the right thing, + is potentially even trying to escape the brewing conflict between Kukui and Hala and figures that since the Aether Foundation is removed from it, joining up with them is a safe way to go. He doesn’t know that Lusamine is evil af, of course, and so he (rather like Alan in the anime) is completely manipulated into thinking he’s doing good—but that could spur his development along even more and make him a much more prominent and important character, which would be awesome considering the fact that he was another under-utilized character who, again, deserved better. There’s no reason why he can’t be involved in the plot from multiple angles so that he can exist as more than a simple rival, and I think that would be a good way do it.

Aether Foundation + Aether Twins:

LET. THE AETHER. FOUNDATION. BE. SCIENTIFIC. And I don’t mean general zoological science, but I mean, very specifically, that I want them to be drenched in alchemy and science of that nature. It doesn’t have to be historical, realistic alchemy; in fact, making it strictly realistic would be boring, which is the reason why stories such as Fullmetal Alchemist go the “magical alchemy” route. Nonetheless, I want that. I want the basis of the Aether Foundation to be scientific and alchemical. I want the reason for their existence to be based in the alchemy plot that makes up the A Plot, because these games have been heading toward alchemy for several generations now and it would have made so much sense to have that payoff be here. I want to see experiments, I want to see talk of theories and hypotheses, I want tests, I want—I want the Aether Foundation to resemble Aperture Science Laboratories in a lot of ways, basically.

On that note, the “conservation” needs to be a farce. None of this “well, most of them were good, but it’s just the neurotoxins that made them bad!” bullshit. The conservation needs to be nothing more than a facade in order to gain them funding from the government + good press. Additionally, the pokémon that they “save” could be used in experiments (such as the chimera creation experiments that created the likes of Type: Null) behind the scenes. Essentially, just as Team Skull should have been good with bad publicity, the Aether Foundation needs to be bad with good publicity. LET THEM BE EVIL, particularly since I love the visual contrast between how pure and clean they look, but how corrupt and vile they are beneath the surface. Love that so much.And note, too, that it isn’t necessarily that every single grunt knows the full scope of Lusamine’s plans and is on board with them. Perhaps some of them are in it for personal gain, perhaps some of them are in it because they’re interested in studying science, perhaps they put up with parts that creep them out because they feel the benefits outweigh the cons, et cetera. Not every unnamed Aether employee needs to be evil, they can all have their own motivations for going along with the plan + might only know bits and pieces, but by and large the Aether Foundation should have been our large villainous organization for this game, rather than the half-assed nonsense we were given. And on top of being villainous and corrupt, they should have also been massively scientific, in terms of actually carrying out experiments that we see and using conservation as an excuse / way to get test subjects. Don’t make them charitable; make them corrupt. Go big or go home.

LET WICKE ALSO BE EVIL. My god, Wicke had all the personality of a wet piece of cardboard, and it’s bullshit that she was relegated to just being a motherly piece of cardboard while Faba actually got to be the villain he always wanted to be. Wicke, as I characterize her, would know pretty much everything of what Lusamine is up to, and would be in support of it both because it aligns with her personal beliefs and because she loves and is deeply devoted to Lusamine (what type of love that is would be up for interpretation by the player, but in any case, Lusamine doesn’t return it, she just takes advantage). Wicke wouldn’t truly care for the twins, but would instead be the type to guilt trip them for not also being loyal to Lusamine + hurting Wicke in the process by running away and whatnot. She has that simpering, faux honey approach, similar to Umbridge. She’s allowed to be competent, strong, and every bit a member of the villain triad as Faba and Lusamine.

On that note, let Faba be more of an actual scientist. Let’s see what contributions he has made to the Aether Foundation other than his ego. Maybe he was the one who made the chimeras. If so, great! Let’s see that. Let’s see why Lusamine bothers to keep him around. Let’s see more of a conflict between him and Wicke that isn’t so much that he puts her down and she cowers, but more that she looks down on the fact that he’s here mostly for his own self-interest (+ interest in science + Lusamine lets him do what he wants) and less because of loyalty to Lusamine, whereas he thinks that her loyalty to Lusamine (/ her reasons for that loyalty) are pathetic and that the only thing that matters is, well, science. Like, he’s loyal to Lusamine, but he’s loyal because she’s giving him the opportunity to do / get what he wants, rather than because of personal feelings for her. He thinks he’s using Lusamine. He’s not aware that the situation is actually the other way around. Let’s see that, let’s explore it, and let’s explore how his hubris is in direct contradiction to the principles behind the Philosopher’s Stone and, more importantly, the lion that devours the sun, according to alchemical writings from our own world, long in the past.

LET THE TWINS HAVE AN ACTUAL RELATIONSHIP. My god, one of the things that bothered me the most was the fact that Lillie and Gladion barely interacted, on top of how under-utilized Gladion was and how Lillie seemed, in so many places, to exist only as a way to further boost up the player and make them feel special rather than getting to explore her story for her own sake. (Right down to giving Nebby to the player, ugh.) To begin with, I want to know more about their past at Aether Paradise. What happened the night Gladion left? Why did he leave without Lillie? I’d like to think there was a fight or disagreement there—that Lillie wanted to stay because she was insistent that perhaps they could change Lusamine’s mind, or that combating her plan would be easier from Aether Paradise, or (far more likely) that it was their duty to stay, that they were family and thus it was wrong to leave. Gladion disagreed, and so he left, leaving Lillie behind when she refused to come with him. This creates tension between them in the main plot, because Gladion resents Lillie for seemingly choosing their mother over him, whereas Lillie resents Gladion for leaving as he did, even though she herself leaves later in order to save Nebby.But over the course of the game, they encounter each other again and again, and slowly their relationship mends. Gladion appreciates that Lillie is now willing to rebel against their mother, while Lillie learns to admit that her brother had good reasons when he left two years prior (even if his method of leaving still chafes with her), and she respects how he has managed to survive on his own (well, with Null). They meet again and again, come to understandings, and ultimately reform the bond of best friendship they had prior to Gladion’s departure in order to stand against their mother TOGETHER in the climax. (So if there are two flutes to be played, the player is standing off to the side watching while the twins play the flutes in restored harmony.) On top of all of this, I would want to modify Lillie’s personality so that she’s more than just the demure, shy, moe girl who worships the player. Gladion shows the C-PTSD he has from years of child abuse by being harsh, closed-off, and cold. While Lillie doesn’t have to be exactly like him and while everyone is different, I feel that Lillie just being ~omg shy~ as a result of her abuse is not only playing into the Good Victim / Bad Victim dichotomy (with Gladion being the Bad Victim), but was also done just to make her someone the player would want to protect at the expense of making her a well-rounded character with a believable personality. So I would want to modify Lillie so that she’s also stand-offish and cold in various ways; where she, like Gladion, feels that she has a unique view of the situation because of her background, where she’s incredibly studious and smart even if she doesn’t battle, where she’s unwilling to open up to others without the others putting in serious effort (such as Hau potentially, pre-game), where she “defrosts” just as much as Gladion does, because girls can be cold and hard as well and she should be no exception, regardless of how feminine she is. Lastly, both of the kids should have been adopted by Kukui and Burnet at the end of the game. I won’t budge on this.

LET LUSAMINE BE THE VILLAINOUS SCIENTIST QUEEN SHE WAS ALWAYS MEANT TO BE. Lusamine’s canonical role / personality is perhaps one of the biggest letdowns the Pokémon franchise has ever bestowed upon me and I’m never going to be over it. Whether she’s actually an Ultra Beast herself or not (and I’m still disappointed that the Ultra Beasts didn’t get to be shapeshifters), she still should have been the mastermind behind everything, the one in control, and the one perfectly aware of everything she was doing, as well as the one wanting to do it because of her own grand plans, rather than just being ~*~manipulated by neurotoxins~*~ and ~*~in need of redemption~*~. So to that end?Lusamine is the actual founder of the Aether Foundation, versus it being founded by her father or grandfather or whatever that NPC said, because I’m sick of this series having women simply inherit positions from male relatives or else be overshadowed by them. Lusamine founded the Aether Foundation as a scientific organization to promote her own ambitions and goals while using pokémon conservation as a convenient cover (as well as a means to get government funding if need-be). She’s the president and founder both, and everyone respects her for it.To that end, Lusamine is blindingly intelligent. Not only does she have a wealth of scientific knowledge across various fields (alchemy is obviously her forte, but she’s also incredibly knowledgeable about chemistry, physics / astrophysics, and various other fields), but she’s also quite knowledgeable in terms of history, various fields of mathematics, and other areas of study. She is very much a Ravenclaw in that she loves learning and studying, but also views the universe in terms of the ultimate question True or Not. She is very interested in the (or at least a, but in her mind she is always right, so the) universal Truth, and seeks to not only claim knowledge of the Truth for herself, but also to grasp it in her hand show the rest of the world / universe that she has it. Right or Wrong doesn’t matter to Lusamine, because both of those things are subjective. True or Not is what matters, more than anything else. She is very, very Ravenclaw. So Lusamine is the Big Bad. I have actual motivations and goals for her in my AU fic, To Devour the Sun, and I won’t get into those here—but if Game Freak didn’t want to make her actually an Ultra Beast, they would change anyway. Instead, we could say that perhaps Lusamine was furthering her alchemical ventures in an effort to grasp the Universal Truth™, much as alchemists of the past were always searching for that very same thing (in a fashion), usually by means of the Philosopher’s Stone. In the context of Pokémon, Lusamine could not only be searching to harness the power of Solgaleo (or Lunala ig, but Solgaleo makes far more sense) for this endeavor, but could also be trying to rip open the Gates between Worlds in order to obtain the Truth (much like Father in FMA:B!). This could potentially put the entire world at risk, particularly since Lusamine wouldn’t exactly care who or what needs to be sacrificed in order to make her dreams reality. To that end, no, she doesn’t care about her children; in her mind, they would be additional pawns that could be used in order to accomplish her goals, and if they disobey then they are cruelly punished—but otherwise, she doesn’t (and has never) care(d) about being a family with them. Mohn isn’t really important, either; he has no bearings on Lusamine’s motivations or desires. If anything, he doesn’t even need to be in the game, at least not as the twins’ father. It’s not like he adds to the plot, and it wouldn’t be the first time kids didn’t have present fathers in this series. (Additionally, if the Johto Rival’s mother is never identified, I don’t see why the twins’ father needs to be.)So yes, Lusamine is frighteningly intelligent, calculating, savvy (she doesn’t take gambles or risks if they can be avoided, generally—once she has everything in place, she won’t risk it for a lesser payoff than she’s planning for), extremely manipulative, and ruthless … with a spiteful or sadistic sense of humor at times (in terms of causing emotional pain, rather like GLaDOS). She uses whatever and whoever she needs to in order to achieve her ends, and while I’m aware that sounds Slytherin, remember, Lusamine does not have precious / important people, does not care about those close to her, and is concerned with the question of True or Not, which is all very not Slytherin and also very Ravenclaw. (And yes, while her actual goals are different in To Devour the Sun, this is the characterization I’m using there, too. She, like Sycamore, is a Ravenclaw. She just also happens to be a very terrible person on top of it. She foils him, in other words, in a variety of ways, on top of having some surface resemblance to Lysandre.)Let her be the true, unapologetic villain she deserved to be. Let her be in command the way she was supposed to be. Lusamine was done a massive injustice in canon and I’ll never be over it. (Oh, and as a final note? She either dies or goes to prison in the end. No exceptions.)

Of course, I’d still love it if the Aether fam were Ultra Beasts as well (and that Ultra Beasts could have human forms), but if Game Freak didn’t want to go that route in canon, then the above is fine as well.

This is all I’ve got for right now. Completely rewriting the plot would take more time (and would likely largely ignore the player, but tbh that’s probably for the best, because the fact that Lillie’s most important was relationship was with the player instead of her brother will never cease to make me salty af), but these are the base ideas I have that would have made me more happy than the disappointing, flat mess we were given. Here’s hoping USUM can improve things, but unless the plot is radically changed, I highly doubt it will.