Categories > Anime/Manga > Pokemon > Ruby Thoughts
Author's note: I finally finished my ruby game today -- that's after, what, three years of playing it? Maybe I should be less obsessive about catching and raising every pokemon I meet. Anyway, I couldn't help noticing how dysfuntional the main character's family is. Especially at the end when Norman FINALLY comes home -- only to run out again. So, here is a series of three shorties (the other two will go up later today) dedicated to that messed up household. It has no plot beyond what the game gives us. This is just a character introspection piece.
Disclaimer: Nintendo owns the pokemon games. I am not Nintendo. Therefore, I do not own. Nyeh.
Warnings: This story could be taken as a parody or an angst fest. It all depends on what you bring to the table in the first place. Mild spoilers for the dialogue in the games abound. I hope no one minds. Finally, a warning to all gift giving fathers: Clocks are worse than socks.
Mother
Two years.
I haven't seen him for two years, except once on the TV. And now I've moved to this backwater just for a man I hardly know. I have a ten year old girl who just stares at me blankly when her father's name is mentioned.
"Look, isn't it nice?" I ask as she gets out of the truck. "The pokemon movers are already getting our stuff in."
"Yeah," May agrees. "I guess so. There is stuff to do around here, right?"
"Of course. I'm certain," I smile at her. "Why Professor Birch lives right next door. I think he has a son your age. But first let's check out your room. Nor - your father got you a present for your home coming."
I can tell May is excited, the way her eyes shine for a minute before suspicion clouds them was all the clue I need.
"It's not socks, is it?" she asks.
"It's a clock," I tell her.
"Oh."
"Well, go upstairs and set it," I tell her, trying to put the best face on the situation. We both walk into the house.
It smells clean, and I'll probably have a lot of time to keep it that way. May, after staring at the machoke cluttering our new living room hurries upstairs. I sit down at the kitchen table, directing the machoke where to place the china, where to put my cabinates.
They leave shortly, and I find myself staring blankly at the old TV, which is not up against the wall where I told them to put it. It's now become the center of the room. This is a strangely depressing thought.
I pick the remote out of a box and turn on the new centerpiece in the living room. It's him! His face is on the screen, almost whited out by the ancient color tubes, but he's still there. My husband. The famous normal gym leader, Norman.
He hasn't aged; not a wrinkle added, or hair missing. He still could be eighteen and under that sitrus tree, kissing a giggling, gasping girl and whispering his dreams in her ear. She believed in them whole heartedly back then.
She still does, I realize with a pang. She still believes in the burning ambition for fortune and glory - only now she understand the price. The pursuit of training must come before anyone and anything else.
All the passion he had for that girl under the tree, for the baby who was born nine months later, is still there, burning in his eyes, but now it's been redirected, hasn't it? It all goes towards his dreams.
I suppose he thinks that he can just come back, and everything will be the same. That the girl won't have grown tired of waiting for love, and that the daughter won't have grown up. That they'll both remember him.
I'll remember him. I've spent too many years remembering him to break the habit now. But May? One day he'll come home, and meet a stranger in his house, a stranger who stopped needing him to play rapidashy with her a long time ago. No, May won't need her father for anything. Even when he does become rich and famous, she'll still go her own way, not knowing or really caring about the man who abandoned her.
"May!" I call. "Come quickly, your father is on TV!"
Disclaimer: Nintendo owns the pokemon games. I am not Nintendo. Therefore, I do not own. Nyeh.
Warnings: This story could be taken as a parody or an angst fest. It all depends on what you bring to the table in the first place. Mild spoilers for the dialogue in the games abound. I hope no one minds. Finally, a warning to all gift giving fathers: Clocks are worse than socks.
Mother
Two years.
I haven't seen him for two years, except once on the TV. And now I've moved to this backwater just for a man I hardly know. I have a ten year old girl who just stares at me blankly when her father's name is mentioned.
"Look, isn't it nice?" I ask as she gets out of the truck. "The pokemon movers are already getting our stuff in."
"Yeah," May agrees. "I guess so. There is stuff to do around here, right?"
"Of course. I'm certain," I smile at her. "Why Professor Birch lives right next door. I think he has a son your age. But first let's check out your room. Nor - your father got you a present for your home coming."
I can tell May is excited, the way her eyes shine for a minute before suspicion clouds them was all the clue I need.
"It's not socks, is it?" she asks.
"It's a clock," I tell her.
"Oh."
"Well, go upstairs and set it," I tell her, trying to put the best face on the situation. We both walk into the house.
It smells clean, and I'll probably have a lot of time to keep it that way. May, after staring at the machoke cluttering our new living room hurries upstairs. I sit down at the kitchen table, directing the machoke where to place the china, where to put my cabinates.
They leave shortly, and I find myself staring blankly at the old TV, which is not up against the wall where I told them to put it. It's now become the center of the room. This is a strangely depressing thought.
I pick the remote out of a box and turn on the new centerpiece in the living room. It's him! His face is on the screen, almost whited out by the ancient color tubes, but he's still there. My husband. The famous normal gym leader, Norman.
He hasn't aged; not a wrinkle added, or hair missing. He still could be eighteen and under that sitrus tree, kissing a giggling, gasping girl and whispering his dreams in her ear. She believed in them whole heartedly back then.
She still does, I realize with a pang. She still believes in the burning ambition for fortune and glory - only now she understand the price. The pursuit of training must come before anyone and anything else.
All the passion he had for that girl under the tree, for the baby who was born nine months later, is still there, burning in his eyes, but now it's been redirected, hasn't it? It all goes towards his dreams.
I suppose he thinks that he can just come back, and everything will be the same. That the girl won't have grown tired of waiting for love, and that the daughter won't have grown up. That they'll both remember him.
I'll remember him. I've spent too many years remembering him to break the habit now. But May? One day he'll come home, and meet a stranger in his house, a stranger who stopped needing him to play rapidashy with her a long time ago. No, May won't need her father for anything. Even when he does become rich and famous, she'll still go her own way, not knowing or really caring about the man who abandoned her.
"May!" I call. "Come quickly, your father is on TV!"
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