If I just lay here, will you pelt me with snowballs?
I guess you didn't want her to be more aggressive? Did you want her to let him yell at her while she's trying to help?
You said Y could beat Ash's ass and Serena can't have emotions and feel frustration? Her dream ended at that moment, she no longer had Kalos Queen, nor challenges, she didn't even have obligations follow him in the league, WHAT the hell doesn't she understand? Her chance is OVER
What should she do? Hanging her head while he yells at her? While he throws all her effort in the trash because he's not dealing well with a loss? She was not submissive to him and you are acting as if she committed a crime
She was trying to bring him inside because of an approaching storm, a recommendation from Nurse Joy, it was EXTREMELY DANGEROUS as the episode itself shows
SerenaAnipoke is my protΓ©gΓ©
Okay, going to try to spell this out as well as I can.
I stated, and still stand by it, that no, Serena should have had his ass if and when Ash ever spoke to her out of line. Serena only had Kalos Queen because of Pokeani, that wasn't the only thing that she could have had or been β she could have wanted to follow Ash to the league while still pursuing something outside of Ash Ketchum.
My point is that Serena as a character was limited. The main issue I've ever seen arise around Serena is the fact that she is just a mat for Ash to walk on β she's not a stepping stone for him, or even using him as a stepping stone. She is there to push stereotypical heteronormative bullshit with her acting as a wife to him when these kids are canonically around ten years old. That's not normal. And as a prev female passing human, that's not the type of role model I want to have or that I want to show to children around me.
I want people to see Y, to see game Serena, to see a powerful female lead who doesn't need anyone to win her battles for her, who doesn't need someone to follow when she's supposedly reached her end. There's more out there β life imitates art, and in real life, your life doesn't end once one door closes β more open up. Serena had other options, had other routes to go β as seen in how she's working with Lisia in Journeys.
Don't twist my words to fit your narrative. Believe whatever you want to believe, but don't come to my page and reply to me when you so obviously didn't get anything I actually said.
I'm not distorting, I'm just taking experiences I've had with critics of Serena, her being feminine is not jest, "heteronormative" all Pokegirls have something feminine about them, Misty liking shopping, hate people who don't think she is pretty, love flowers, she wants the dolls for a childhood dream in one episode, she likes catwalks and beauty contests like we saw in Princess vs Princesses and that beach episode, She was the stereotypical star sign girl for one episode and that's okay,Shudo described this in his novel and episodes such as Rudy's (Danny I like to think he was a Pokeshipper)... she loves romance and romantic men romΓ’ntics and attentive (not rude and ignorant like Ash who talk bad about her appearance unnecessarily). Misty was like "Togepi's mother" treated him like a baby/her baby son for an entire season and no one criticizes that as "heteronormative" lol I say this as a fan of Misty, I really like her.
Also that fucking weird doctor who liking Misty and seemed interested in a ten year old girl and the old man from the beach who is pretty disgusting
""Serena's team is very cute and cute" IRIS LOVES CUTE POKEMON and MISTY TOO.
So I think the criticism is either unfounded or very much based on just lateral analysis.
Serena likes fashion (this is in all her synopses about the anime), she likes to cook, it's her wish for her friends and PokΓ©mon, she doesn't give the cookies to Ash, she gives them to everyone, she doesn't dress up or trade for Ash, she trades for herself, for her dream. She's not a stepping stone for Ash, she's herself, it sounds heteronormative, I don't like it when people talk about her like that and summarize her as Ash. Exactly the point, she's not a "perfect wife for Ash", she's herself and her own character and not only Lisia, Clemont and Bonnie also contributed to Serena's growth (ship wars or not with geeckchic, people who likes Amour (I say this as a shipper because I've seen everything in this community and they are not saints) are stupid for disregarding how MANY times Serena and Clemont care about each other) it's Clemont who cooks for the group and Serena helps (I hate how people say "finally a woman like Mallow cooking") lol
That's the thing, I defend Serena as a character above all else.
Pretty much agreed on your points (though that being said, technically, the situation regarding Princess vs. Princess was more a means to an end rather than something she actually enjoyed per-se, the beauty contest, anyway, the festival itself she definitely enjoyed, and the bit about Beauty and the Beach was a bit more... complicated [she was mostly doing it to pay off debts to that old man since they wrecked a pier with a stolen boat. Might as well add, on the subject of that Beach episode, Shudo if anything had to DOWNPLAY that bit personally since someone nearly had her doing a very risque modeling pose in the episode, which he promptly vetoed.].). Besides, I never minded Princess Peach, so it's not necessarily girly stuff that I would dislike in a female character (heck, the episode that made me EXTREMELY loyal to Misty was chock-full of girly stuff that she had very little problem participating in. If I recall correctly, a Pokemon psychology book even made clear that one of the reasons why Misty was well-regarded in the anime among fans is precisely BECAUSE she struck a good balance between girly and not girly, something that hasn't really been achieved with later girls.). And yeah, nice to see you defend Togepi and her mothering it as well, considering way too many so-called "fans" denouncing her as getting stale and losing character by becoming a mom (gee, I'd hate to think what they thought of Super Metroid or even Final Fantasy VI, especially when Pokemopolis from what they described of Togepi made it sound as though it was a Metroid). And those same fans hypocritically praise that Manaphy movie as being May's movie despite the fact that not only was she subject to the exact same "egg-holding" status they had earlier crassly mocked Misty for, but that movie if anything made MAY look extremely weak especially by the climax, to the extent of having ASH blatantly steal the spotlight, which alongside Jack Walker's negative comments of how May being a mother to Manaphy needlessly complicated his mission to return it there just spelled a lot of inherently negative aspects to motherhood. Seriously, at least Misty still managed to kick butt while raising Togepi, not to mention NEVER let Togepi be abducted without a fight or at least a pursuit. Heck, Misty was implied to at least be capable of cooking to the extent of getting them through long periods when they aren't at a Pokemon center (she had to have been the one who cooked during the time they were at Viridian Forest before meeting Brock, knowing how Ash's first day was a disaster), and that's not even getting into the Stun Sporeitis bit where she cooked Salveyo Weed to cure Ash, Tracey, and even Jessie of their eponymous illness, or that one of the Anime Cardass key arts depicted her as cooking stew during the Orange Islands (in fact, I actually was annoyed that Sick Daze, in a blatant attempt at forcing in relevancy for Brock, had her be depicted as being as hopeless at cooking as May, especially when earlier episodes and even supplementary materials indicated that, even if not quite to gourmet levels, she WAS indeed capable of cooking when the situation comes down to it. At least with May, it was firmly established that she can't cook to save her own life.).
So far as Serena is concerned, I'm not going to complain much if she's girly (had no complaints about Princess Peach, so girliness won't be that big of an issue with her). The only way I'm going to complain about how girls are depicted is if they're depicted more along the lines of the following:
Yeah, used a different image for the Love Hina one from the prior post I used that series of images in, more to make the point clearer (like I said earlier, the situation with Naru and Keitaru wasn't the first time she beat up Keitaru, or the last, nor was she the only one to do so either [if anything, it's easier to count on hand which girls DIDN'T beat him up, one of whom is seen in there]. It's certainly the only time Keitaru grew a spine though...). In fact, all those things above, especially after watching a bit of AG and DP (not much, admittedly, but still...) had me disliking May and Dawn. You can blame my mom for that, ultimately (certainly the dislike of those Fiorello Fangirls above and also the Love Hina girls, and fairly or otherwise, I saw them in May and Dawn). I guess another example would be Maron from DBZ as well (also Sex and the City, though let's just say the situation with that one was even WORSE). As far as I know, while on the girly side, at least Serena wasn't essentially depicted as an animal unlike the above images. AFAIK, anyways. Part of the reason I'm still neutral is because I haven't actually WATCHED XY yet in any capacity (the closest to watching is .GIFs), and until I actually watch enough of it to make any determination, I'm remaining neutral.
Either way, all I can say is that she certainly had a far better written start than May did.
And since the start of this series of posts was the infamous snowball scene, even if I didn't like Serena's girly depiction, I if anything would have actually sided with Serena in that situation mostly because what Ash did there actually WAS low and the story even made clear this was out of character for him (not to mention I'd realize trashing another character's goals like that, after everything they went through, and most likely not having another chance at doing so is just downright LOW). Besides, I've already seen a WAY worse situation than that from Chapter 17 of Love Hina, as you're probably already aware of, and as I've said many times, both Misty and Serena, regarding the Snowball scene and even similar scenes in Kanto treated Ash NICELY by comparison to what Naru did to Keitaru in that scene. Heck, going by what she said in the last image which was presumably BEFORE she started snowballs, even if she WAS being manipulative (as I've seen one critic describe the snowball scene as), she had darn good reason to be since it was a literal life or death situation and she was trying to save Ash's life.
Probably my only real agreement with the other user was that they could have given her another goal besides Kalos Queen (like challenging gyms, which BTW actually COULD have made Ash be a mentor figure to her as well, which we never really got since they randomly decided to have May do contests instead despite building up to her challenging gyms), or even Sky Battler like Yvonne in the manga. And to be fair, Kalos Queen IS in fact her own goal, or was at least.
Credit for the LH pic belongs here: Female Oppresion by TooneGeminiElf on DeviantArt
Why would May do Gym battles when she specifically said she had no interest in doing so? And May certainly had a better reason to start off, as she wanted to travel and see the world and didn't get into Pokemon till she saw Ash/Pikachu's bravery against Team Rocket.
Not only was May constantly shown loving and hugging all her Pokemon like @pokenoire can tell you, but May has the biggest arc of the anime for a character up to that point. In fact @pokenoire can probably tell you that May and Dawn are some of the best developed characters in the series a swell.
Ash certainly acted like a mentor to May, and only took a backseat as May began to learn more from her rivals.
Given you recently created that account, I'm definitely sure you're CyberCubed, since you are using the same arguments as him. I'll reply to both bits, then I'm blocking you.
Okay, first of all, considering that she didn't even KNOW about contests that time, she'd still need to do gyms just to be a Trainer (that's a major factor BEHIND being a trainer). Second of all, last I checked, before Ash, Misty, and Brock traveled through Mt. Moon for the first time (well, through the route Misty traveled to Cerulean City, anyways. She MIGHT have traveled through Mt. Moon to get to Pallet Town before meeting Ash when leaving Cerulean City earlier), that Seymour the Scientist guy was heavily implied in the Japanese version to have repeatedly gone through Mt. Moon for research on behalf of the Pewter Museum of Science prior to Team Rocket's usage of lights driving a Zubat swarm mad, and considering he obviously didn't have any Pokemon on him before he needed saving by them, if he could travel without Pokemon, I doubt May would have needed Pokemon just to travel the world. Third of all, Misty if anything had a WAY bigger arc than May ever did by trying to prove herself to be a skilled trainer in her own right to her sisters after being belittled, and having to really struggle with her softer side partly due to being othered by her sisters to the extent that she had an outer shell conveying toughness, which had moments of her soft inner core coming out even BEFORE Togepi drew it out further. If anything, we didn't get any truly big arcs regarding character development (not just career advancement, but ACTUAL character development) until Iris after Misty's removal. Lastly, what you described there regarding her changing her mind is actually PRECISELY why I felt Serena ultimately had a better start, ESPECIALLY considering May had already gone from Petalburg City to New Bark Town to try and get her starter, even tried to save Professor Birch before then (key words being TRIED to, before Mudkip basically splashed her face). And Dawn barely had any character development (just career advancement). At least with Serena, while it WAS indeed true that she also left the house because of Ash, you at least GOT the sense that Serena actually WAS aimless with her goals initially and that if anything Ash was more of an excuse to even have her leave the house and try and discover her own dreams (heck, she actually was taken aback when Ash, Bonnie, and Clemont specifically invited her to join).
Ash did act as a mentor when it came to catching Pokemon, true, but beyond that, once she got involved with Contests, he really didn't have much of a role of mentor by that point (since contests were clearly not his forte).
Reblogging Figgymoto due to the tags to give this caveat. Serena may not have been done total justice in the anime compared to her game or PokeSpec counterpart, but I can assure you she if anything got off easy overall regarding story/characterization. Want a good idea of how an even WORSE-written Serena in the anime would have been depicted like? Try Cecile Cosima Caminades from Metal Gear Solid: Peace Walker (basically an EXTREMELY insulting stereotype of French women):
Her debut scene to be fair wasn't that bad, but the tapes... hoo boy... let's just say she may have made Jar-Jar Binks' Jamacian ethnic complaints look tolerable by comparison. And bear in mind, Peace Walker, especially compared to the rest of the Metal Gear franchise, actually WAS geared towards kids (at least in Japan, and he also implied he wanted it to be geared for kids in America before ESRB basically said "no." and rated it T instead.). Oh, and I suggest you get eargauze while watching it, because the French accent was BAD in this (I know one French guy who watched the Drunk Cecile portion and he actually specifically stated the accent was too rough, though he did find her funny at least).
Also Maron from DBZ for a good comparison of what I'm getting at with Cecile:
Say what you will about Serena being too much of a waifu archetype regarding her interactions with Ash, at least they didn't make her into a blatant bimbo, which going by what Kojima did with Cecile in a kids game they most CERTAINLY could have done if they so wanted. To put it more directly, they could have just as easily made her into a female Brock where she flirts with every guy she sees.
