>>58608418I want to pet her...
>>58609708Sapphire is kind of a later take on the character with nature powers, she's just never connected outright to the Viridian Forest since she doesn't live in Kanto. A general nature character is a local, someone who has been deeply "rooted" to a specific piece of land long enough either literally or by heritage. So it'd be weird if nature powers were exclusive to only one random forest in Kanto now that other regions with forests exist.
Sapphire starts out as some Tarzan meme where her main gimmick is being a wild brute, gets deconstructed mostly through her relationship with Ruby and unlocks her softer side, then after years of improving her empathy by ORAS she gets the ability to hear Pokemon voices too. It's just that Sapphire's ability to do this is obviously nerfed not to contradict existing Viridian Forest lore: she needs to hold a specific rock first, the only voice she hears is Rayquaza etc.
Sapphire's arc is an inverse of Yellow's. Yellow started out an empath with the ability to hear Pokemon voices, but was a coward who needed to become brave. RS Sapphire was always brave, but her empathic side was suppressed since she thought it was girly = bad, so she had to change her mentality to grow as a person and later hear Pokemon voices too.
Unlike Yellow though Sapphire's not a full protagonist, and unlike Lance she's not a villain. Her ultimate role is being Ruby's foil and that's the filter Sapphire's nature powers are shown through. While a big motivator for Yellow to tackle her original cowardice was wanting to help Red, it was an admiration from afar, it's unclear if Red actually understands/returns the true depth of her feelings. Pre-RS Sapphire was exactly the same as Yellow, except her Red is Ruby, and Ruby actually does like Sapphire the same way (probably much more) and they end up way more personally intertwined in complicated ways over many years, both together and apart.
