Whatever else we do, I think
[ ] Enlist the Forest's Aid. A nest of Pidgeys won you the fight against Rojo, and there are far more fearsome beasts than Pidgeys in the Forest's depths. Lead them to something that can put them down and out.
Is an important one to pick. Not out of practicality, but because of the
statement it makes.
Fundamentally, this?
"I can make you stronger," Wenge says. "Smarter. More successful. You're undisciplined and erratic as you are. You lack focus. You lack understanding. Do you even realise that your campaign is harming your own forest? With the weaker trainers fleeing from you, the paths through Viridian are closing up. Soon there will be no transit through the woods at all, outside the largest, most well-used routes."
He pauses again, and as his slow turn takes him past your direction, you can see condescension on his face.
"Do you think that will have positive impacts on your home? With no humans to control the Bug population, to keep powerful wild Pokemon pacified, to counterbalance the invasive species here? Do you even realise how many of your own neighbours use our trails to get from place to place? I know you do. You've stayed close to the trainer routes your whole life. How often do you go into the wilder parts of the forest? How safe do you feel when you do?
This is probably the most important point Wenge has made. Wenge is making the argument that we
need humans around to keep the forest 'tame', and that keeping the forest tame and therefore available to humans is a
good thing. It's an assumption behind all the worst impulses of trainers, an aspect of them that's motivated our opposition pretty much since the start; this blithe assumption that humans have a
right to encroach on wild lands and 'improve' them according to their own idea of what counts as 'improvement'. That humans are entitled to venture into our forest, capture the wildlife and take them away for their duels and competitions, and that this is to be regarded as fine and good and the way things should be, because such a life is
better than living our own way in the wild because... Well, because they think it is.
That needs to be refuted, and I think that enlisting the forest's more fearsome denizens is the most straightforward way to do that, and say: No. The forest doesn't need to be tamed. It doesn't need your influence. You don't have a right to it. It's not yours. It's
ours. It's our home. It has its dangers, yes, and they're
our dangers. We choose the wild, because the wild might not be safe, but you know what? We're not safe either, and that's just the way we like it.
