#yeah i knew the tmm one would be the top post | Explore Tumblr posts and blogs

warlordess · 8 years ago

Text

insight into misty’s anger problem

IF you can call it an anger problem.

This is less of a headcanon and more of a thought I’ve been mulling for ages and ages. But yes, either way, it’s still long and rambly. Lol. Saddle up, kids, this post is gonna go on forever.

Misty was not very close with her sisters before leaving home. We see this in The Water Flowers of Cerulean City and The Misty Mermaid and even a bit in Gotta Catch Ya Later, as well as in flashbacks from Princess Vs Princess and Cerulean Blues, but yeah. It wasn’t like it was abuse or neglect or anything but... there was a bridge, a gap, a wall, that had clearly been placed there.

[read more]

In the flashback during PVP, we see Daisy, Lily, and Violet all sitting together, happily snacking and enjoying each others’ company. They’re a group, a unit, they’re equals. Whereas Misty is sitting alone with a troubled expression on her face, watching them in the background. She thinks she’s different because they don’t seem to want to include her in their company, and because she never gets anything new, only the stuff they don’t want anymore. This is how she sees herself compared to her sisters, and it’s clearly not a positive conclusion.

When we’re introduced to her sisters in TWFoCC, one of the first things that happens is she’s called a runt and mocked for returning before she could become a great water-type trainer like she said she was gonna do when she left home preceding canon. To some, this seems like silly sibling rivalry/banter, but let’s also remember that the sensational sisters comment among each other while Ash and Misty battle that, because they received all the good looks in the family, Misty was lucky to receive some talent in another area. While the “runt” line would have been used to benefit the banter between older and younger siblings, the line about her not being as pretty as them (clearly a trait they take seriously) was said in private between them, which makes me think they don’t have much faith in or likeness for their little sister. Again, perhaps this is simply an age gap thing, but it all contributes to who Misty is as a character.

In TMM, Misty is basically manipulated by Daisy’s tearful expression into helping out with her sisters’ side business, underwater ballet. Now, of course, Misty would never leave her sisters hanging, they’re family, but she was clearly uncomfortable with hopping in that costume and taking the lead role. Why not have her narrate instead? At the end of the episode, it’s even stated that the sensational sisters would just alternate the mermaid princess role between them at that point, so why had they needed Misty the first time around anyway? This is just fishy behavior, and a family dynamic that could also contribute to Misty’s perception of the world/how to interact with others.

In another flashback in CB, we see that infant!Misty has wandered away from the family while they’re out. She ends up getting so far as to crawl right into a sleeping Gyarados’ mouth. When she is forcibly and abruptly expelled/spit back out onto the ground, naturally, she starts crying in fear. Her sisters - apparently her guardians in this scene, though I like to think that their parents were merely running the gym that day and had let the four sisters go to the beach, rather than them already being MIA so soon after Misty’s birth - practically mock her, an infant, over her tears and fright after such an experience. At the least, they’re not the slightest bit comforting, leaving her on the ground to cry while they all stand above her. (I say this not knowing if the flashback is actually Misty’s or just a retelling that she’s taken as gospel over the years, because how could Misty remember so far back into her life? But the canon, despite it being a flashback, treats it as fact, so I will as well.)

And in GCYL, after fussing at Misty for being MIA for so long, they basically demand that she return home and hang up before she can say anything back to them. Now I am not saying that Daisy, Lily, and Violet shouldn’t be allowed to leave the gym and do their own thing; I mean, Misty got her chance to do it the whole time she was with Ash and Brock/Tracey, so why not? But this method of forcing their given responsibility on her and then abandoning their post before she even returns is reflective of the same selfish, disrespectful, and distant behavior we’ve seen of them throughout canon. They’re basically asking for a favor - especially considering they didn’t give Misty much opportunity to be of help around the gym anytime previous - and then getting the heck out of dodge without even a thought towards her feelings or opinion.

So now you’re wondering why I brought all this up, and I’ve mentioned it already, but I’ll do so again; there is a very likely reason as to why Misty seems so angry/aggressive in the early OS canon.

Based on the conversation in TWFoCC, I’m guessing that she was not allowed any power/responsibility in running the gym before she met Ash. Perhaps she was mad that her sisters prioritized ballet over being gym leaders, perhaps she was mad that they were giving out badges for free whenever they didn’t feel like or didn’t have Pokemon to battle with, but why would she leave the gym, her home, and the one place she knows she can get massive training for the one Pokemon type that she loves more than any other in the world... unless there was no part for her to play there? The fact that Misty was hiding her familial ties to the Cerulean Gym from Ash and Brock, the fact that she was clearly embarrassed when they mentioned their suspicions, that fact that she was so prickly around her sisters upon making her presence known after she showed up at the gym when Ash went to challenge the trainer there... coupled by her sisters immediate mocking and belittling and distancing themselves from her while remaining so closely grouped together (again; a unit, while she’s the outcast)... This all leads me to think she felt she had no choice but to run away from home, threatening/screeching that she’ll be a water-type master before she ever returns. (Whoops, thanks for ruining that plan, Ash!)

On top of this, when your whole family is a tightly knit unit and there’s a lot of difference/distance between you and them, you realize how small and insignificant your voice/opinion is. It felt like every scene including them all was a rematch of Misty versus her older sisters. That’s one against three, quite the unfair odds. In an environment like that, she would most likely feel that the only way to be heard is by screaming as much as she could. Speaking normally, even if firm or angry, didn’t seem to do the trick, so the only other thing a child knows how to do is be louder.

But when we’re introduced to her in canon, we don’t know anything about her family dynamic yet. That’s fair, I grant you. At this point, it might seem like her behavior around Ash is unwarrantingly aggravated or violently loud. But we have to consider her sisters - the relationship she shared with the three most present people in her life before she and Ash met on the outskirts of Pallet Town - in order to understand her.

And, honestly, it’s not just her family. I mean, this kid she ultimately had to save from an untimely doom is carrying a clearly assaulted Pokemon he has no idea how to help. In Misty’s eyes, this kid is the abuser. Nevertheless, she offers him assistance and then he steals her personal property. On top of that, who-knows-how-much-later, she finds that property totaled and crispy and abandoned after a stray electric attack.

I’m just saying; for a ten year old with her noted family/personal history who has just barely been introduced to a possibly abusive Pokemon trainer that she knows nothing else about besides the fact that he ran off with her means of transportation and then destroyed it and left the remains behind without another thought, her reaction is pretty much average. She’s ten years old. Things are pretty black and white for her here. I would personally say that it’s May and Dawn who have the strangely underwhelming reactions to the untimely end of their bikes; though, to be fair, they still didn’t meet Ash under the same suspicious circumstances that Misty did. They knew more about him and Pikachu and could understand it was an honest mistake. Misty wouldn’t have known any of this based on how the canon played out.

So she shows up at the Viridian PokeCenter and makes her attack, but as soon as she hears Ash’s concern for Pikachu in his voice, sees it in his slumped posture and facial expression, she immediately lightens up. She is getting her first taste of the kind of kid that Ash Ketchum is, and she’s reacting in kind to it. Let’s also not forget how quick she was to defend Ash and the unconscious Pikachu when Team Rocket attacked, despite still being a stranger.

Later on, in the Viridian Forest, she follows him, claiming its over the bike, when it’s already in part due to her curiosity over the side of him she saw in the PokeCenter. By the end of the episode, she’s expressing fondness over him, someone so unlike her sisters, who has a heart full of love and trust for Pokemon. Someone like her, who wants Pokemon by her side all the time.

And yet, yeah, in between these tender moments, Misty slaps Ash and yells at him over his mistake of sending a bug-type Pokemon against a flying-type. Oh, wait, that’s not what happened. She got angry at him because he was acting like hot stuff while he made such a grievous error, and if he hadn’t been looking to show off, maybe Caterpie wouldn’t have nearly died for the sake of his ego.

There are plenty of instances where Misty yells at Ash. I’m not denying it. But these instances are generally during times when his head is bloated and he thinks he’s king of the world. And, on top of that, we’re still talking about a girl who’s probably felt for the longest time that the only way she’s going to be heard in the end is by screaming everything she feels needs being said at the top of her lungs.

Take a second to compare Misty’s home life/family ties with any other canon character - especially the other female companions. May? A complete family unit, decked with supportive parents and annoying younger brother. Yes, she and Max don’t get along but she’s the one in control most of the time because she’s older. Dawn? Only has her mother but she’s very supportive of her daughter’s goals and opinions. Every other companion has a much more balanced home life compared to her, even Brock, who basically had to parent ten younger siblings for years while their mom and dad were MIA. The only two characters who might be under the same emotional duress as her are Max and Bonnie. Clemont is clearly kind and loving towards his little sister so she has no need to express herself the way Misty has grown to do over the years. In comparison to that, Max - who has the closest of any dynamic to Misty with his older sister, May - is the one character we see discussing with Misty in canon about his own insecurities about that dynamic. Max is the one character who relates most to Misty and the canon proves that he feels the same way Misty did (only not as badly, imo) before she met Ash and spent time away from that dynamic that caused her such frustration, loneliness, etc.

Also as a comparison, let’s consider Misty’s instinctive behavior upon meeting a new person (any character of the day, for instance). Should the introduction go right (as in, no destruction of personal property, no attacks to her character), she’s completely chill, compassionate, kind. We even see her relating strongly and doing her best to comfort/assist some people if she sees pieces of her own inferiority complex in them. Sakura, youngest sibling of the kimono girl clan, from Johto and Mikey, youngest sibling of the Eevee/evolution stone family, from Kanto.

Misty is not just some indiscriminately angry girl, obstinate and violent towards everyone in the world. But for those who attack the things/people she cares about, for those who wrong her, for those she sees a likeness to her sisters in, her defense mechanism kicks in and she treats them the way she’s been taught to treat/react to them.

And if Misty surely thought her loud mouth was necessary at the start of canon, then it would also explain why we saw less and less of it as the series wore on. Because Misty was growing further and further away from only having the dynamic with her sisters as a source for how to interact with people. As she got to know Ash, Brock, Tracey, all the people she happened to meet while away from the gym, she softened up considerably. She realized she didn’t constantly have to be loud and angry to be heard. She had a place where she was an equal.

Which is why I often defend Ash and Misty’s relationship as something so mutual, stating that they grew together. Because it was traveling first and foremost with Ash that led her to see she could grow beyond that lonely little girl with the inferiority complex who never got a say back home. What they had was the process of meeting, getting to know each other, being forced to acknowledge and confront each others’ flaws (which were definitely referred to as flaws in the canon when it was necessary to improve upon them, and were lessened into quirks the longer they were together), starting to care about each other, becoming best friends (with a hint of something more), and then saying their goodbyes, in so deep with each other that the writing literally had to take half an episode to expand purely upon how what they were to each other was so important.

I’m going to close this post down by explaining why I’ve offered this headcanon/opinion/insight into Misty’s abusive behavior (I can’t believe people are calling it/her that). I am in no way excusing Misty’s anger... but I am explaining why she may have felt it was necessary to behave the way she did around Ash during their early travels together. (And I’d also like to add that, while harsh, her voice/opinion was often enough used as a catalyst to improve upon Ash’s character development. So the narrative defends her temper a lot, or else writes it off as comedy, which means we shouldn’t be taking it so seriously anyway.)

So yeah, this is why I call Misty my kindred spirit. This is why I love this ship. This is why the Misty is so annoying/mean/abusive towards Ash argument holds no water to me. It’s ridiculous trash. And now I’ve put into writing why that is.

#pokemon #character analysis #misty #kasumi #pocket monsters #ash ketchum #pokeshipping

222 notes · View notes