One day, in 2020, I replayed through Pokémon Alpha Sapphire. Going through my favorite Pokémon game again after many years was definitely a blast, but... I couldn't help but notice a thing that irritated me.

Now, don't get me wrong: I do know that one of Pokémon's main themes is how kids absolutely mog adults. Still, as I played, especially in the epilogue, I saw (at least) two characters get completely, unfairly destroyed by the protagonist... and I'm talking about the good guys! But I'll get to it slowly.

Playing RB is one hell of a simple but satisfying thing. Blue is an extremely cocky rival. He's not mean-spirited, but damn if he finds new ways to mess with you every time. "You did this? Hah! I already did this, that and that!", challenging you at inconvenient times, and generally being absolutely irritating in a way that makes you love to hate him. It all makes it SO SATISFYING to finally bring him the fuck down of his high horse once and for all in the finale.

Silver? He exchanges the 'bratty' and 'cocky' for being a brooding antagonist (oh so fitting for the time period he was written in), and I honestly found him less good of a rival, but more likable overall (his character gets perfected in the remakes, though).
But, come gen 3, we already have a rival we definitely don't want to hate-and yet, the game forces us to make them eat dirt over and over until they GIVE UP. That's... that's so sad! Brendan/May doesn't really do anything nearly as grating as what Blue did to us in the first generation. They may have a little sprinkle of cockiness to them, but they do in a way that's so inoffensive and friendly it's just... it feels wrong, so wrong. Emerald even adds a detail in route 119, when after beating Brendan/May for the umpteenth time, Scott comes and tells us he saw them RED IN THE FACE. What the hell, was that really necessary? Come on...
Skipping gen 4, where the rival relationship with Barry is actually wholesome and funny, and gen 5 in which I loved both "rivals" and their character arcs... here comes gen 6. Oh my god, Calem/Serena gets completely humiliated by us to the point in their permanent rematch, in post-game, they are genuinely depressed. Again, I felt awful. They're neither mean nor they did anything wrong, why do I have to do this?!

Then, there comes ORAS, Delta Episode in particular, cranking this up to eleven, in my opinion. While the rival is actually treated a little bit better, keeping a relevant role throughout the story even after they "give up" and even becoming a sweet budding love interest for the player character, there are some characters that really get the short end of the stick in a weird way. I'm talking about Steven and Zinnia, mostly.

The main conflict of Delta Episode is (...I admit I only got it because Kusaka explicited it in Pokéspe) technology vs tradition. We get the whole plot of the movie Armageddon transposed into the Pokémon world, with Steven (or, better, HIS FATHER, since Steven only executes his plan... much like in the manga RS arc, right?) trying to solve things through technology, some grey morality and a sprinkle of panic, while Zinnia wants to solve things following a super ancient prophecy. In the end we, the protagonist, solve it all because of course, the protagonist is the chosen one. Aren't we always the chosen ones in Pokémon games? Sure, but... never to these obnoxious levels, so far. ORAS really does this in an awful way.
We are twelve. Twelve, for fuck's sake. And yet we are capable of wearing a magma diver/diving suit, hold onto a legendary Pokémon through magma/sea currents, and defeat it in complete solitude in the depths of the cave of origin. We are the ones who manage to unleash the power of the orbs, and control primal reversion. The game never goes very in-depth on what makes one be the chosen one by the orbs, so I will just close an eye and touch the "suspension of disbelief button". When it comes to us being the chosen ones of Rayquaza, though, I do press X.

I mean, the game has established that the person who can summon Rayquaza with the seven dragon b-erm, the seven keystones (yes, the game actually makes a tongue-in-cheek reference to Dragon Ball there) is the leader of the Draconids, a person that's explicitly trained for it and has to train those who come after them, to do the deed every 1000 years and save the world. And I get that in this era, that person, Aster, has died for unclear reasons, so Zinnia steps up despite not technically being this era's chosen one. And, in fact, she isn't the chosen one; Rayquaza rejects her. All right, that's good for drama. But then, Rayquaza chooses US. With no rhyme nor reason. I get we're the main character, but at the very least justify this very seriously with lore or something, dammit! [UPDATE: I went and reread the English dialogue, conveniently compiled on Bulbapedia, and... it went as far as Zinnia telling the player character he was now THE NEW SUCCESSOR. That's good and all but how can you throw it there and then not even elaborate on what that entails for the future?]  And we, uniting Zinnia's prophecy with Devon technology (that same suit we used to go fight Kyogre/Groudon is also a space suit), go and smash the meteor ourselves, finding a pesky alien in it. Eh... I'm kind of mad at the writing, but the scene in which we go into space to do the deed is still cool as fuck, so I do give it a pass.

What comes after though is kinda sad. We did save Zinnia from her suicide mission, we did save the other dimension, we did save the world. But what follows is seeing Zinnia completely emptied of her only reason to live (fulfilling the prophecy) and going back to her village with no idea what to do with her life from now on, while Steven decides we have shown so much superiority he needs to start his life all over, abandoning his role and country, and going away to soul-search. [It's funny how blatant it is that those two characters are just two sides of the same coin, since they BOTH leave you a depressed letter and there are many moments in which Zinnia's dialogue seems to parody Steven's... but I digress.] In any case, we literally got their roles for ourselves, emptying them both of their life purpose: we are both the Hoenn Champion, and the Draconid successor, apparently.

Game Freak, literally, why? There is a limit to power fantasy. Also, I would get it if the characters who got this kind of arc were old geezers, so deeply immersed in their anachronistic and spoiled convictions they had become blind, thus showing how the new generation is much better at solving issues and finding compromises, and ready to replace the old one; but Zinnia and Steven are barely in their mid 20s. This here, is my big gripe. It's nice that they still have a whole life ahead to figure things out including their own shortcomings, but was it really necessary to show two young adults who are still actually trying to find their footing (if you're in your 20s, you know what I mean) being completely BTFO'd by a small kid? Hell, show the conflict and then make them understand their mistakes, and after that make them cooperate with the protagonist. Make the story converge into a group effort in which all the relevant characters actually work together actively and in some epic way with the main character to bring the story to a super exciting climax... NO. They had to make it exclusively the main character's exploit.

The only way I can stretch it and find it positive is by seeing both of them chained to something they actually should get rid of, and the player frees them from. It can actually make sense, but it would have required much cleaner writing on Game Freak's part.

The manga ORAS arc, despite being a clusterfuck because of how many loose ends from previous arcs it frantically ties, does a much better job with this story, so I invite you to read it if you were also left hungry by the way Delta Episode was handled (Zinnia, though, arguably has it even worse in the manga. My poor girl can't catch a break).

You're gonna ask me now: what was all this tirade for? Well. I was left with such a sour taste in my mouth by the writing, by the many hints at lore that are never truly expanded about, that my mind suddenly concocted an idea: "What if there were no prodigy kids-actually, no kids at all in this story, making it an AU take? What if the adults and young adults of this story were to solve the Hoenn crisis all on their own, making a ton of mistakes in the process, but eventually managing to stumble over the solution, albeit in a very messy way? What if I expanded on the lore creatively giving it all more of a fantasy touch?".

What followed was a neat creative exercise for my brain. On paper, the idea is actually interesting-even though I doubt it would bring anything to the table that's more satisfying than what Pokéspe itself does. The problem is, removing the kids, especially the main character, means I do have to insert a new character, because all the others seem to be stuck in a specific position by the narrative (case on point: Wallace being forced to not fight Groudon/Kyogre because tradition bars him and Sootopolitans in general from accessing the Cave of Origin). The only actual "hero" in the story would have ended up being Steven, but things can get hella boring that way, with only one character going through all the drama in the story while the rest is stuck in a supportive position. So, I created a young adult original character to take over the protagonist's role and arc, even though very differently and in a much more flawed way. Before I knew it, she had a whole big plot of her own that had nothing to do with the original story and evolved before, in parallel and after the main story.

It all snowballed, it's all in my brain. It eventually grabbed a lot from the original games, a little from the remakes, a bunch of elements from the manga. In my head it's pretty decent, not even awful.

Then... why can't I bring myself to write it? Well, it's easy.

-Yume would hate it. Even I, as a yume, would hate to read a story in which someone else's original character shines as the female deuteragonist to a very popular male character, even if I didn't put explicit romance in it you'd still feel some tension between them.

-Fujo would hate it, as there's relatively little food for them. Not none, but relatively little.

-Men wouldn't be interested in it, I believe. My writing is angsty and kind of josei-like.

Who the fuck is gonna read that shit? It even has a possibility to be something I get openly bullied about, no matter how good my intentions are. Self-inserting and all that, or ending up cranking out bad prose because of being ESL or generally not great at writing. It annoys me a lot...

I originally wanted to make it a comic, but in all honesty I don't have the skills required. I'd need a couple assistants, especially for backgrounds, or a whole Murata LOL. Also it'd take me centuries to draw it all, and I bet I wouldn't have the determination.

So yeah, take my little rant.