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Hard Enough - Pokemon SI

Voted best in category in the Users' Choice awards.
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xbox432 said:
Yeah, she cray cray. Is this why Flint was freaking out? He new she wasn't okay and was worried she might... break even more? Something tells me her going around and hitting Aqua all on her own probably isn't doing her mind any good.
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Flint did comment he was more worried about other people getting hurt rather than Lola herself getting hurt.

strictpig said:
It also looks like Lola has lost her sense of time, so to her she went out for the weekend and has never noticed that the weekend has lasted for 10 years, so I am having a very hard time thinking she is a horrible parent since she needs professional help.
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I've had a bit of trouble trying to eloquently communicate my stance on this and I've rewritten my response several times but I'll give it a go. (Also wanted to add that this topic is a little personal and that is part of my stance for my viewpoint on this matter. Apologies if I came off as insensitive towards mental illness.)

Lola is not at all healthy mentally right now and that is a horrible thing, this gets rid of some of the responsibility for the pain she caused to her family but it doesn't change the fact that she still did it.

Yes she needs help but she should've sought that help a lot earlier such as after the War finished, before she and Flint had kids, and during in between anytime between when she had Brock and before she left.

I previously held a negative opinion of Lola for never coming back to see her family or even check up if they're okay. I no longer hold that opinion of her since she isn't even lucid enough to notice the passage of time properly.

I do hope that she gets help eventually since mental illness is a horrible thing.

LiamOfOrmonde said:
Okay, hear me out. I know it will sound bad, but just hear me out.
…
Brock should become a Mob Boss! If there's a criminal power vacuum he should pretend to become a criminal mastermind by kinda actually being a criminal. Then as a pseudo Giovanni he feeds all the criminal nastiness to Lance and turns the profits from established criminal networks to bettering Indigo as a whole. No one can know he's the 'Boss' of course. Only people are in the 'know' should know. A charade. The whole thing will be a charade!
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That's kinda what Giovani did though, well until Team Rocket crossed the line and the League ate them
 
ArcanaVitae said:
That's kinda what Giovani did though, well until Team Rocket crossed the line and the League ate them
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Nah, Giovanni was a corrupt sleaze all the way back in the war era. People mentioned how when he was a logistics officer people who did him favours got more supplies and people who didn't were left out to dry.

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I wonder how our favourite trio of idiots are going to take recent events? They held real loyalty to Giovanni and Team Rocket, but after the hostile takeover and rebrand neither of those are a thing anymore. How likely is it that they'll just quietly try to pretend they never were in TR in the first place?

Then again, The Artist Formerly Known As Madame Bossue probably managed to take Gio's files with her. If she did, she'll know about Gio's "top undercover agents" and will probably bring them back in, and if she treats them like Domino treated them in the movie they might very well be key to the final takedown of Rocket.
 
I wonder if having strong but untrained aura is having harmful effects on the parents. We know that Brock has had some mental issues from aura and he is well aware of it. His parents having strong water and stone auras without any real control of them could be doing them some harm.
 
So, Surge lost a Battle, but will he lose his Gym? He had a debt to Giovanni. It was called in. But will he lose everything? Brock was talking to him, Sabrina may back him up?
 
ArcanaVitae said:
Yes she needs help but she should've sought that help a lot earlier such as after the War finished, before she and Flint had kids, and during in between anytime between when she had Brock and before she left.
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I would like to point out that she may have gotten the help that was needed and was getting but then suffered a relapsed. We just don't know what was her treatment plan before she left.

I have family friends, various family members, and myself that have a variety of mental disorders, and I have seen some go decades without a problem to them suffer a major relapse and undo all that work. Mental disorders are not something that can just go away after your treatment has finished.

So yeah Lola could have been doing so much better, and was mentally healthy enough to have serious commitments like having kids, but then she had that relapse and now she is not healthy enough to have kids.

And I really REALLY doubt Brock actually saw most of what was going on as I doubt that Lola and Flint wanted their kids to worry about it and to just focus on being kids. Leave the grown up stuff to the grown ups.
 
TerraBull said:
So, Surge lost a Battle, but will he lose his Gym? He had a debt to Giovanni. It was called in. But will he lose everything? Brock was talking to him, Sabrina may back him up?
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Since the League didn't seize his gym I think Surge's predicament is still up in the air. With the loss of the two heaviest hitters and a minor one, I'm hoping the League Will be willing to let him have a stay of execution to prove himself. His record is squeaky clean despite how brash he is, so if he's lucky he'll just have an appointed minder for awhile.

And looking at the the cantankerous old folks I can only say this; Admit you're a thruple and move on!
 
So Kanto has two major gyms closed and another one under audit, it also has a minor gym closed as well.
Johto lost Goldenrod current leader in the sweep and two minor gyms as well.

So Indigo as a whole has two big gyms closed, two big gyms under audit and three small ones closed right?
 
I do wonder what those lawyers have pulled to stop Surge immediately losing his gym despite being a traitor.

And it seems Agatha and Koga's concerns about who will fill Giovanni's void were well founded, though with Mewtwo they really had no choice.
 
Pi In The Sky said:
I feel like these three were their generations Ash, Misty, and Brock.
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Hm, considering Pryce was on the opposing end of a war until Oak reconciled things, I don't think things were that casual enough for Pryce to be compared to Brock. I think the better comparison is if Ash befriended one of the more sympathetic antagonists from the movies, by like the magician from the Jirachi movie.
 
That's about as sympathetic a take on Lola as I think can be managed. It helps to justify Flint's behavior more as well to have her that messed up too. Instead of trying to drag a partying runaway home for his own sake, abandoning his children in the meantime, we can see he was trying to find a mentally broken wreck before she could hurt herself.

ArcanaVitae said:
That's kinda what Giovani did though, well until Team Rocket crossed the line and the League ate them
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Giovanni had the right idea. Like gravity the need for every Region to have a Team will always assert itself. If you need to have crime it may as well be organized and not an apocalypse cult. He just didn't realize you didn't actually need to be a criminal, as N proves just being a disruptive enough activist or vigilante group will do.

Therefore I propose Brock founds Team Child Protective Services to abduct abused or neglected children and take them to orphanages managed by Team members. As long as he cackles maniacally while doing it and loses dramatically to the ten year old that will eventually come for him I think that could buy the Region another generation of peace.
 
SirKaid said:
Nah, Giovanni was a corrupt sleaze all the way back in the war era. People mentioned how when he was a logistics officer people who did him favours got more supplies and people who didn't were left out to dry.

---

I wonder how our favourite trio of idiots are going to take recent events? They held real loyalty to Giovanni and Team Rocket, but after the hostile takeover and rebrand neither of those are a thing anymore. How likely is it that they'll just quietly try to pretend they never were in TR in the first place?

Then again, The Artist Formerly Known As Madame Bossue probably managed to take Gio's files with her. If she did, she'll know about Gio's "top undercover agents" and will probably bring them back in, and if she treats them like Domino treated them in the movie they might very well be key to the final takedown of Rocket.
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JevvyPython said:
Giovanni had the right idea. Like gravity the need for every Region to have a Team will always assert itself. If you need to have crime it may as well be organized and not an apocalypse cult. He just didn't realize you didn't actually need to be a criminal, as N proves just being a disruptive enough activist or vigilante group will do.

Therefore I propose Brock founds Team Child Protective Services to abduct abused or neglected children and take them to orphanages managed by Team members. As long as he cackles maniacally while doing it and loses dramatically to the ten year old that will eventually come for him I think that could buy the Region another generation of peace.
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Teams are pretty much inevitable due to either how the setting works or just the nature of Pokemon. Giovanni was pretty much tolerated as the immoral corrupt criminal because he was Kanto's monster. Team Rocket International is going to be an entirely different beast.

strictpig said:
I would like to point out that she may have gotten the help that was needed and was getting but then suffered a relapsed. We just don't know what was her treatment plan before she left.

I have family friends, various family members, and myself that have a variety of mental disorders, and I have seen some go decades without a problem to them suffer a major relapse and undo all that work. Mental disorders are not something that can just go away after your treatment has finished.

So yeah Lola could have been doing so much better, and was mentally healthy enough to have serious commitments like having kids, but then she had that relapse and now she is not healthy enough to have kids.

And I really REALLY doubt Brock actually saw most of what was going on as I doubt that Lola and Flint wanted their kids to worry about it and to just focus on being kids. Leave the grown up stuff to the grown ups.
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That's a very good point it's also possible that having too many kids was a factor as well. Like they just ended up having so many kids is stressed her out too much which lead to a relapse.

The point about Brock not knowing everything is a good one, because he just recently learned about Lola's everything and there's also the fact that he was kinda distant from his parents as a kid. We don't know for certain whether or not Lola looked for or received any help for her issues or even her mindset before she left.
 
readerdreamer said:
I think it was obviously Lola from the context?
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Agreed. She's a powerful female water type trainer who's a war veteran and is messing about in Team Aqua's territory, the odds it isn't her are slim at best.

On the note of Lola herself I must urge people to remember that Kanto is basically the Pokemon world's Japan for many reasons and the Japanese don't like talking about mental health stuff. Their traditional policy is essentially to ignore it in the hopes it goes away. In this case Lola was probably okay enough at first that with her reputation people were willing to overlook her quirks but now we see that she's fallen well off the deep end. Once Brock finds out about her and her condition he WILL punt her into therapy as soon as he can find a qualified therapist (maybe Sabrina can help a little but I doubt she's a substitute for a properly trained and licensed therapist) since his previous life was Western who recognize that Mental health is just as important as Physical health. Heck, with seeing just how bad Lola is Brock might even be able to convince (or trick) Flint into therapy alongside Lola.
 
Also keeping in mind a powerful aura adept suffering PTSD would be rather challenging to contain if she starts lashing out.
 
ArcanaVitae said:
Teams are pretty much inevitable due to either how the setting works or just the nature of Pokemon. Giovanni was pretty much tolerated as the immoral corrupt criminal because he was Kanto's monster. Team Rocket International is going to be an entirely different beast.
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He was also tolerated because of his service in the war up until he went too far and became both a huge net negative and probably worse than the other region's teams will be especially since it's worth pointing out the ones focused on specific Legendaries by definition are focused on their own regions. Under these argument you could maybe wave off the attempt to swipe Tide as him being a retired member of Brock's team, placing an agent in Brock's gym, monitoring Surge's gym, the cheating with Will and the silver incident as being in Johto.

However, Tide was also at a special facility trying to restore the region's Lapras population and was vital to it being able to defend itself and their main stud, the agent they sent to Brock's gym had ties to Magma so they clearly weren't doing their `job` well and the silver incident was bound to draw Brock and Sabrina in along with deliberately annoying the Moltres doing huge damage and risking it moving onto Kanto.

Then there are the further bits to it such as the direct atk on Brock's gym, outright murder attempt on him, the pretty significant trading with Galactic given they had a Torterra and Gible and them going for the master ball after Mewtwo's creation and the Moltres incident. All in all Giovanni's arguments don't hold water because of this and the team under him was already growing into the same type of monster if not already there.
 
Also noting that while criminal activity is inevitable, the government's position is always twofold:
1) Enforce well enough that there is an actual RISK in being a criminal(whereas Rocket clearly doesn't think theres any risk, and until recently this was nearly true for their executives)
2) Govern well enough that people have legal and permissable avenues to do what they want and change things without having to do so by illegal means.

So whether Teams are inevitable or not, as the face of the government the Gyms absolutely should be encouraging civil activism and hammering the shit down on any kind of criminal activity, but especially organized ones.
 
veekie said:
Also noting that while criminal activity is inevitable, the government's position is always twofold:
1) Enforce well enough that there is an actual RISK in being a criminal(whereas Rocket clearly doesn't think theres any risk, and until recently this was nearly true for their executives)
2) Govern well enough that people have legal and permissable avenues to do what they want and change things without having to do so by illegal means.

So whether Teams are inevitable or not, as the face of the government the Gyms absolutely should be encouraging civil activism and hammering the shit down on any kind of criminal activity, but especially organized ones.
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Criminal activity is indeed almost inevitable as frankly, people will be people. Some will want something another has but don't want to pay/work for it while others will want something that is banned whether it be banned for good reason or bad. I most definitely don't support the former while I'm not touching the latter, AT ALL. Please, everyone, DO NOT derail the thread over that, we could be here until 2124 arguing about that so DON'T BOTHER, thank you :D .
 
Generational Trauma, the pokemon world is thy name.

We've already seen glimpses of it, of the older generation refusing to talk of the war, to almost fully disassociate themselves from it. But I think this chapter has been a further look in to the full, masks-off level of sheer generational trauma that's been leaking back in to society of the form of the Teams.

Sure, untrained subconscious aura usage plays a part in exacerbating the issue. Those who tap in to it more likely to survive and ascend in to positions of power, while simultaneously nudging them to be ever more unhinged and succumb to their elements. But it never truly explained the sheer insanity of the Teams, and how prolific that insanity was. Such that cults were more prolific than criminals.

This isn't just an aspect of the fiction. This is the 1000 yards stare of the WW1 veterans. The combatants of the internecine conflicts of the middle east. Except their trauma coming paired with power. This is the fallout of a war so severe, countries haven't been able to reestablish contacts with each other decades down the line. With entire generations refusing to even acknowledge their history. With the Monsters of the War still walking amongst them, still operating in their cells, feeling like the war just never really ended.

Even Oak's circle, who came off the most well put together here. Except for Blaine and his atrocities, of which Team Rocket is merely the means. And Agatha and her own Team in the form of the Guardians, always ready to step in and supplant the government, the gyms, the levers of power, with her own shadow cabal. Whatever it takes for her region to stay in a position of power, the moment she thinks the Champion and Region is moving in the wrong direction. Because emotionally speaking, the war never really ended did it. And that's the well adjusted lot, with actual training to blunt any Type channeling.

The Teams aren't just something that happens in pokemon. They're the artifacts of the War. Trainers, Soldiers, and Villains conscripted in to the War, who gained sufficient personal power and connections that their governments had to accommodate for their existence in the aftermath. That or distance themselves entirely. Who brought the War and its trauma with them. Who then had to make sense of, and justify, the trauma that had put them (and probably the institute behind them) in to positions of power.
 
AiSard said:
Generational Trauma, the pokemon world is thy name.
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If anything, the sheer historical revisionism is their attempts to reduce the trauma that the most immediate generation has to face. People say to study history or find yourself repeating it, but the sheer scale of death tolls seemingly involved in the previous war already tells enough that if everyone hadn't agreed to keep the past war on the downlow as much as possible, then it would've been the ball and chain attached to the legs of the next generation for the rest of their lives.

After all, think about it. If every kid on their journey can only see the aftermath of the war around them in their travels as opposed to the wonders of the Pokemon world, would they be able to grow as happily and openly as they would've otherwise? Imagine if Brock had to grow up constantly looking behind his shoulder during his Journey in Johto, constantly wondering and worrying that someone Lola or Flint fought in the war might aim for his life. Imagine if kids still saw Gym Leaders as military powers as opposed to milestones. It's only these efforts that let people walk by the Burned Tower and think that the fire was mysterious and legendary as opposed to an act of terrorism by a famous Kanto Gym Leader and scientist.

Frankly, it's commendable that Kanto and Johto are really trying to move on from the horrors of war so quickly. Sure, there are still a few that remain stuck in that era like Giovanni it seems, but no matter how I look at it, it's amazing that people respect the secrecy so much. These are hundreds, thousands, tens of thousands of traumatized people all agreeing to keep the next generation from being involved in the most traumatic years of their lives. A few Teams trying to ruin it for everyone does not make that any less of an amazing feat.
 
AiSard said:
This is the fallout of a war so severe, countries haven't been able to reestablish contacts with each other decades down the line.
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Eh from some of the descriptions that have been in the story it seems more like that the war ended with the legendaries stepping in and shifting around the regions so it isn't something as simple as say agatha breaking out old maps to find out where Sinnoh is relative to them but a matter of having to send out scouts into the wild land or ocean to stumble on them.
 
famfrit said:
Eh from some of the descriptions that have been in the story it seems more like that the war ended with the legendaries stepping in and shifting around the regions so it isn't something as simple as say agatha breaking out old maps to find out where Sinnoh is relative to them but a matter of having to send out scouts into the wild land or ocean to stumble on them.
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Eh, not quite. Unless you're talking Primal Groudon level or higher the Legendaries can't actually shift around the location of the countries so the older generations do actually know where the other regions are relative to them. The problem is that when the Legendaries rather forcibly put an end to the fighting by going on rampages through the border areas where the fighting was fiercest they not only killed a hell of a lot of people but I'm presuming that they fucked up the local Geography sufficiently that it was decidedly unsafe to try and get through for long enough that many powerful Pokemon (themselves leftovers from the war) were able to move in to make a bad situation worse.

In order to create a route between two regions you would first need to be a pretty powerful trainer with just the right blend of crazy to attempt it. Then you would have to carefully probe in the general direction you want to go while both mapping the terrain as best you can and keeping a very keen eye out for signs of powerful wild Pokemon. Even the slightest slip up could get you killed unless you're really lucky.

While some might think that Airplanes would be good as they can travel far higher than any Pokemon save a very few, primarily certain Legendaries, they aren't of use for exploring as they require the appropriate infrastructure at both ends. Trying to cross the ocean might be even worse due to the ever shifting nature of it.
 
Forger1985 said:
Eh, not quite. Unless you're talking Primal Groudon level or higher the Legendaries can't actually shift around the location of the countries so the older generations do actually know where the other regions are relative to them. The problem is that when the Legendaries rather forcibly put an end to the fighting by going on rampages through the border areas where the fighting was fiercest they not only killed a hell of a lot of people but I'm presuming that they fucked up the local Geography sufficiently that it was decidedly unsafe to try and get through for long enough that many powerful Pokemon (themselves leftovers from the war) were able to move in to make a bad situation worse.
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Wasn't that the express purpose of Regigas?

Though you don't need to drag continents around much if the ocean currents between them changed dramatically and air travel is limited - helicopters have limited range, and planes need a landing/refueling site if they aren't just flying a third of their full range and turning back even without pokemon hazards.
 
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