the-thirteenth-prime

[the-thirteenth-prime]

I refuse to believe these are real. On April 1st they’re gonna go “SIKE” and give us the real and better looking merch

[the-thirteenth-prime]

i'm sorry, but i truly cannot understand the simping over the new leon statue from pokemon center like it isn't one of the ugliest figures i've ever seen, good god. man's eyes are too big and close together, his face is smushed, and he has nasolabial folds the size of the grand canyon. he looks like the meguca version of leon. becum champien

[the-thirteenth-prime]

Chapter 8: In which Raihan and Leon join Opal and Aria for tea on the ravaged pitch of Hammerlocke Stadium, Raihan finds out a bit more about the mess he's getting himself into, and Opal gives her final verdict. At least it seems to be positive.

[the-thirteenth-prime]

Chapter 7: In which Raihan buys clothing and breakfast for his new boyfriend, Leon tries to figure out both nicknames and healthy boundaries, and Opal causes problems on purpose.

[the-thirteenth-prime]

Chapter 7: In which Raihan buys clothing and breakfast for his new boyfriend, Leon tries to figure out both nicknames and healthy boundaries, and Opal causes problems on purpose.

[the-thirteenth-prime]

Honestly, the spoilers from the final chapter of the Villain Arc have made me very, very glad I made the decision to delete the game, because we're just continually rewarding shitty behavior in PMEx world. Like. Wow.

[the-thirteenth-prime]

It's so wild to me that so many people HC Leon and Hop as not having had a close relationship when multiple forms of canon (the game AND PokeAni) have literally said that Leon practically raised Hop. Despite there being three adults in the house that can do it. And Leon being a child when Hop was born. And away from home a majority of the time.

You know--healthy family dynamics and all of that. (coughtheirmotheristrashcough)

The point is that Leon managed to raise his brother from kilometers away, and you cannot convince me that he didn't have Hop shipped out to wherever he was based in Galar during the summer months to stay with him. He absolutely tried to call Hop every night and would video chat with him to help him with his homework. Sometimes he even had Hop come stay with him during holidays because their mother is trash. He did his best to make it to Hop's plays and school events and would send Sonia and Professor Magnolia when he couldn't make it himself. If he couldn't see Hop for his birthday, he would express ship a gift and have Sonia deliver it, along with a box of cookies.

Is it right? No. Healthy? Also no. But I have to say that Hop turned out pretty damn well for being raised by someone who was barely able to come home and also only 10 years older than him. Leon really does not get enough credit and that's depressing to me.

[the-thirteenth-prime]

...you know what? No, I'm not done with ranting about the Galar Villain Arc yet, because it was even stupider when I tried to play it.

I will admit; I skimmed a lot of the story because I just couldn't stand it. However, if there is an actual, decent good explanation for why Leon is dressed as the chairman when he's not the chairman yet and why Gloria's hanging out in her challenger uniform, please. Enlighten me. Like Gloria I can get maybe, but Leon??? Why the fuck is he dressed like that when he's not chairman????? When he's still champion??? Did Raihan see Leon admiring the suit in a store window and bought it for him??? Is Leon LARPing???

Why doesn't Looker just fucking arrest Rose for working with international terrorists? Why doesn't Lear just kick his lame ass off the island??? Why is everyone acting like a megalomaniacal asshole who will literally abuse children and sacrifice who knows how many lives to ward off an energy crisis a thousand years in the future doesn't deserve anything less than being chucked back in the ocean with a life raft? I don't fucking even.

Why is Leon even letting the children near Rose on a constant basis when his whole motivation in SWSH was to keep them away from Rose and his designs???????

ARREST HIM ARREST HIM ARREST HIM ARREST HIM OH MY GOD

Okay, this isn't even me with shipping goggles on, but we gotta talk about Raihan. Canonically, Raihan has witnessed untold destruction on his city and gym caused by Rose, and his rival and friend nearly died trying to stop him. In PMEx canon, Raihan is so protective of Leon that he literally flung himself between Leon and the apocalypse monster to protect him. So why the fuck is he just??? Hanging out in the background idly wondering about what Rose is up to??????? Why isn't he with Leon in the tournament against the man that tried to end the world and ruin their lives????????? The man that release the apocalypse demon that Raihan all but tried to fight with a butter knife to keep Leon safe????? I'm just????

WHY ARE SONIA AND NESSA JUST HANGING BACK AND LETTING THE KIDS AND LEON TAKE CARE OF THINGS WHEN ONE, LEON IS THEIR BEST FRIEND AND THEY KNOW HOW BADLY HE WAS HURT BY ROSE, AND TWO, WHEN THEY (SONIA AT LEAST) ALSO SPENT ALL OF SWSH PROTECTING THE KIDS?????

Lear could literally just kick Rose off the goddamn island, this is so fucking stupid. This shouldn't be Leon's mess to clean up. Rose has hurt Leon enough. He's still hurting his own Leon. Looker and Lear should be fucking doing something.

[the-thirteenth-prime]

Reblogging for the next day crowd.

In which Raihan and Leon confide in each other about their pasts as they sprint into an unknown future. They also make out in a hotel room.

[the-thirteenth-prime]

In which Pokemon Masters Ex jumps the Galarian shark.

Is it stupid to be disappointed in a gatcha game? Yeah. Am I really disappointed in the Galar arc now that both parts have been posted on Youtube? Absolutely.

(spoilers for unreleased content under the cut)

Look, I get that DeNA were in a pickle when they had to bring Rose into the Villain Arc, because homeboy's in jail probably forever for being willing to commit genocide over a power crisis a thousand years in the future. So the only other reasonable option (other than breaking him out of jail) was to have another Rose from an alternative universe come in. However, in doing so, they wrote themselves into a corner they really couldn't get out of.

Let me explain.

First off, for those of you wanting Rose to be confronted by literally anyone about his abuse of Leon and Bede and his willingly sacrificing Leon to Eternatus: I am really sorry to disappoint you, but it doesn't happen. Not only does no one really bring it up, but Bede isn't even in either part of the Villain Arc. And before anyone says it's stupid to expect a gatcha game to handle (child) abuse: they did it with N. They blatantly did it with N and Ghestis. They CAN do it. For whatever reason, however, they just...chose not to with Rose. Even if they didn't want to get into the Leon weeds, Bede is literally right there in the game, but he doesn't even get a name drop. It's fucking ridiculous.

However, I can see why--even if they wanted to bring it up--they couldn't really do it, because the only ending they could write with the scenario they established was a milquetoast 'reconciliation' with Rose. Bringing up what 'canon' Rose did to Leon and Bede would utterly tank this, because this is a version of Rose from the past, meaning that he is still actively abusing Leon and Bede in his own world. Bringing up the big A would inevitably lead to questions about the OTHER Bede and Leon back in Rose's home timeline/universe. As much as I hate it, I can see why the writers of a gatcha game wouldn't want to open this can of worms.

At the same time, they could have just...broken Rose out of jail to take revenge on Leon for leading Galar into destruction or whatever.

Not only that, but it's canon (see PokeAni) that Rose has been grooming Leon from childhood to defeat Eternatus. Meaning that Eternatus is still chilling in its egg in the power plant in Rose's home universe. Are we...not going to warn the other Leon and Raihan about what's going on in the Hammerlocke Power Plant, or at least mention possibly warning them???

I just. It's disappointing, because DeNA showed they weren't afraid to discuss child abuse when it came to N and Ghestis, but they completely dropped the ball with the Galar Arc, even though there are many reasons why they did so. What smarts the most, though, is that these poor writing decisions lead to an entire arc of Leon trying to placate his abuser and groomer into not starting the apocalypse or creating a civil war on Pasio pretty, pretty please.

The fact that the arc ends with Rose leading an exhibition match with Leon and Gloria knowing what Rose fucking did to Leon?? What he's still doing to his own Leon???? And he's probably going to be working together with Rose in future events??? His abuser and the man who tried to kill him???

As dramatic as it sounds, Leon deserved better. Bede deserved better. Galar deserved better.

[the-thirteenth-prime]

In which Raihan and Leon confide in each other about their pasts as they sprint into an unknown future. They also make out in a hotel room.

[the-thirteenth-prime]

Reblogging for the weekend crowd.

Chapter 5: In which Raihan watches Leon's match against Sonia in the Challenger Cup while waiting for said new rival/boyfriend to show up for their date. Once Leon arrives, the two have a talk about the speed of their relationship progression, and they decide to barrel ahead anyway. Patience has never been one of their virtues.

[the-thirteenth-prime]

Chapter 5: In which Raihan watches Leon's match against Sonia in the Challenger Cup while waiting for said new rival/boyfriend to show up for their date. Once Leon arrives, the two have a talk about the speed of their relationship progression, and they decide to barrel ahead anyway. Patience has never been one of their virtues.

[the-thirteenth-prime]

Legend has it that if you’re standing in front of your mirror and make a totally super funny and not a tired, fetishizing, and low-key racist joke about how Leon’s sygna suit makes him look like a sex worker (stripper, hooker, whore, etc.), Raihan will phase into existence and punch you in the face.

[the-thirteenth-prime]

Hey! I'm opening a Ko-Fi goal again, so i can finally get out of the hellhole that is Venezuela right now. My commissions are open, but d*nations are also a huge help.

From the goal:

Life in Venezuela is pretty much impossible right now. As a disabled person, even more so. Moving to Argentina, where my father and older brother already are, would allow me to live more comfortably while i work to move my mother and little brother there as well. I hate leave my lil bro behind, this is the only way i can help ensure a proper life for us all

Ideally i would meet this goal between the end of october and the beginning of november, which is a pretty tight deadline!

While i had a lot of success last year, i was ultimately unable to move due to other circumstances. However, this time i'm aiming to go on ahead without my mom and lil bro, because it's just not feasible right now. Plus, they'll have an easier time of it here without having to pay for my many meds lol

[the-thirteenth-prime]

A slightly unhinged ramble-rant on Chairman Rose and how people are missing the entire point of SWSH.

Like, I keep seeing it pop up--like a fucking rank smell you only detect if you’re in a certain place when the wind is blowing in the certain direction--but man does it not bewilder me. Like, these guys who post tags like ‘Chairman Rose is a bad guy but is not a BAD guy’ or ‘I kind of agreed with Chairman Rose’ are just. Are you high?? Did you entirely miss the point of his character?? Did you completely miss the main plot of SWSH?

I’m going to be talking about some heavy shit (including non-sexual child grooming and non-sexual child predation), so I’m gonna put the rest under a read more, let me just say that the theme of SWSH is the relationship between adults and children on their Pokemon journeys, the responsibilities adults have towards children, and what happens when that relationship is abused.

First off, before I get some know-it-all coming at me about how there’s no evidence that Rose is a child predator or a groomer, let me just say there is. Is he a Chris Hansen ‘take a seat for me’ groomer?? No, he’s not, because child grooming is not purely a sexual thing.

Per a very informative article:

“Grooming can be sexual, romantic, financial or for criminal or terrorism purposes, and can target both children and adults. The common aspect is that a perpetrator manipulates a victim by building trust and rapport. The key to grooming is a power dynamic within the relationship: age, gender, physical strength, economic status or another factor.”

Now, with that out of the way, I’m not going to go into shit that’s super obvious to anyone with eyes, but Rose is a serial child groomer. Like, his most obvious victim is Leon, and it’s really wild that people can’t see it?? Like, Leon obviously comes from a fucked-up home situation with a mother who’s absent and neglectful at best (and the people who don’t seem to realize this REALLY confuse me). Like, he has canonically raised his little brother in a house with three adults that could have done the job for him, and the anime literally stated that he was so busy raising Hop and taking care of household chores that he could barely interact with other kids. He was endorsed by Chairman Rose at an age that is implied to be at least two years younger than the average Gym Challenger, and--per the sub of the PokeAni--Rose literally raised him from the moment he became Champion.

(Where was Leon and Hop’s mother during this, you ask? Obviously being terrible at home, since despite Leon being run ragged for all of his life and rarely being home, he still somehow raised his little brother. Let that sink in.)

So Leon has spent his entire life being moulded into Rose’s delusion of the Hero of Galar for the sole purpose of sacrificing himself to defeat Eternatus to stave off an energy crisis that will happen in a millennium and probably would be averted with solar power. THE SUB IN THE POKEANI LITEARLLY HAS ROSE TELLING LEON THAT HE HAS GROOMED HIM FOR THE EXACT PURPOSE OF TAMING ETERNATUS. I’M NOT MAKING THIS UP. I WILL PROVIDE SCREENSHOTS IF ASKED.

Does he know Leon may likely fucking die in the attempt? He sure does, because he’s already started to work on grooming Leon’s replacements! In the game, Bede is a trainer who came from a neglectful home situation who was noticed by the Chairman and given his endorsement for the Gym Challenge wait hold on that sounds really familiar.

Really, REALLY familiar.

Rose’s ploy with taking away Bede’s gym challenger endorsement after Bede literally did what he asked him to was a clear manipulation tactic, and if it hadn’t been for Opal intervening (and she ABSOLUTELY has Rose’s number and you can’t convince me otherwise), the tactic likely would have worked, because Bede would have done anything to get his endorsement back.

(Also Oleana is absolutely the fall girl set up to look like an obstructive villain while Rose can maintain his veneer of innocence. That’s a topic for another day tho.)

AND THEN. in the anime, he flat out tries to do this with Ash. AND IN THE GAME, HE TRIES TO DO THIS WITH THE MC, LIKE BEDE IS HIS PLAN B AND THE PC IS HIS PLAN C. However, the only child Rose has regular chances to interact with who DOES NOT get the manipulation treatment is Hop. Correct me if I’m wrong, but the Chairman always tries to pull shit with you when Hop isn’t around, and the two times he DOES interact with Hop are at the very end of the game where Leon’s been forced into trying to stop the apocalypse and after the Opening Ceremony.

What’s different about the Opening Ceremony, though? LEON IS STANDING RIGHT OVER ROSE’S SHOULDER SMILING STEPFORDLY. Which brings me to my next point: why Rose pulls his end game bullshit.

Leon is now in his early 20s, so he has obviously started to ask for his own agency and say no to things. He has also obviously realized that he does NOT want Rose around his brother, which is why he is fucking looming over Rose’s shoulder when he meets Hop and why Rose almost seems to deliberately avoid Hop for the rest of the game. Rose knows that if he so much as messes with Hop, Leon is going to absolutely turn on him, and he’s already become obstinate enough to be a problem. Rose is losing control of Leon, which is why he’s grooming his potential replacements.

It’s also why Rose LITERALLY HOLDS LEON HOSTAGE IN A TOWER. Like, I am amazed that people haven’t seemed to realize that Hop and the MC were ABSOLUTELY rescuing Leon from a hostage situation. Leon had been on top of the tower with Rose for HOURS at that point, and given Oleana’s personal fucking army and how much Leon clearly did not want to be up there, it’s obvious that there wasn’t a way he could easily extricate himself from the situation. What you do hear from his meeting with Rose sounds a lot like a guy trying to say no while also trying to de-escalate a volatile situation: almost like a victim to their abuser oh wait.

(Oleana also says that the reason she wants to defeat you and Hop is to break Leon’s spirit so he won’t have the strength to say no to the Chairman anymore. Like, that’s literally in game. It’s dialogue.)

So yeah. You’re rescuing a prince from a tower who’s being held hostage by an evil king trying to use the prince’s special power for nefarious purposes. This game is full of fairy tale metaphors. Like, a ton.

When you and Hop show up, you basically force Rose to let Leon go so as to not look like a complete fucking monster or cause a scandal, and Leon basically very politely tells Rose to ‘fuck off’ when he leaves.

So Rose--this narcissistic, megalomaniacal child groomer, who’s basically been shut down by the lynch pin of his plan--does the absolute most rational thing and RELEASES THE APOCALYPSE DEMON OUT OF SPITE. He literally says on a screen in front of Galar that oh no, his releasing Eternatus and causing the Second Darkest Day is actually all LEON’S fault for being so unreasonable and unrealistic. It’s manipulation. It’s emotional abuse. It’s Rose punishing his victim for saying no. It’s Rose throwing a tantrum because Leon told him to wait another week before doing something about something that would happen in a millennium.

Bede made a fool of Rose doing exactly what Rose and Oleana wanted him to do, so he punished him. Leon said no, so he punished him, and punished all of Galar while he was at it. He’s not doing shit for the good of Galar. He’s doing it for himself.

See, the game’s story exists to debate the relationship between adults and children in the Pokemon world. For generation after generation of games, children as young as ten have gone out in the big wide world with nothing but their starter and a Pokedex, and the adults they have met have never had any poor intentions towards them specifically. Yes, there’s all the evil teams and blah blah blah, but they weren’t targeting you, the child MC. You were just caught up in their messes. SWSH is the first game to show that no, there are adults who will try to take advantage of you because you are a child, and there are good adults who will try to protect you.

Opal protects Bede. Leon protects you and Hop. Leon has obviously gotten old enough to realize that what Rose did to him was wrong, and he tries so fucking hard through the whole game to protect you and his little brother from his boss’s machinations and all the bad shit happening in the world. I know people bitch about being ‘railroaded’ and not allowed to participate in the ‘plot’ until the end, but that’s the point. The good adults are trying to protect the children from the bad adults trying to harm them, and the children intervene only when the adults die trying to save them. Children should be allowed to adventures and have fun, but they should also be protected and shielded from shit that can harm them and shit they’re not old enough to understand, and this game--for better or for worse--is trying to strike that balance.

One last, very important thing. Leon’s life had been micromanaged and controlled from the moment he became Champion by Chairman Rose. He had to become all things to Galar--its fucking policeman, it’s regional hero, it’s unbeatable symbol of perfection, it’s hero, and--almost--its messiah--and when the MC becomes a Champion? He doesn’t hesitate to become Chairman, and he tells you--the new Champion--that your job is to explore and have fun. He doesn’t ask you to do sponsorship deals. He lets you do matches and tournaments at your own leisure. He calls you politely to ask if you want to do the Galarian Star Tournament. He doesn’t even know your PHONE NUMBER and I think about that a lot.

The game is about the responsibilities adults have towards children. It’s about how you don’t have to be the main character to be the hero. It’s about how you can’t and shouldn’t do everything alone. It’s about how child predation and abuse don’t have to be obvious or ‘traditional’ to be real and a threat. Finally, as Leon demonstrates so poignantly, it’s about breaking the cycle of abuse.

And THAT’S why SWSH is one of the best stories--if not THE best--that the Pokegames have ever told, regardless of its faults and the National Dex and a berry tree looking a little weird.

[the-thirteenth-prime]

Leon Mishra, the eighteen-year-old Champion of Galar, had never intended on falling in love. Not only was his engaging in PDA banned by contract (which had been unacceptable to everyone who had tried), but Leon had been convinced that romantic love was impossible for someone like him. It wasn't compatible with his brain. He was too oblivious, too naive, and too focused on this three core priorities (his little brother, Pokemon, and his job) to have any mental energy left for such superfluous things. He himself wasn't easy to love by any definition of the word. It was fine. He'd been fine.

Yet one fateful encounter with a stranger on a train--one moment of selfish weakness--had changed everything, and Leon found himself preparing for his first ever date with the future gym leader of Hammerlocke. Leon needed to tell someone about everything that had happened over the past twelve hours, and who better than Professor Magnolia, the only true parental figure he'd ever known?

(Takes place between chapters 4 and 5 of oh, my blood once was my own, but can be read cold with an open mind.)