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I'm really excited for Platinum, but wonder if I'll be able to play it through the same way I did the first time. I was a teenager who had played through Gen 3 as a kid, and was disdainful of Gen 4 and also "kid's games." But I got curious and ended up emulating Platinum on my laptop. I was surprised by how fun it was, how much I liked the new pokes, and how much I liked the characters.
But I was an angsty teenager, and therefore imagined my own subtextual plot to the game. I played as Dawn, and saw her as stoic and cynical, getting dragged around by her energetic friends to stop team Galactic. That she really didn't care about, or want to be, a hero. She sympathized with Cyrus, and at several points "lets team Galactic get away."
I imagined an entire taboo sexual tension between them, in which he underestimates her and she dominates him with her stoic face. In the end, Cyrus invites her to join him in his new world; she rejects him because he got too attached to her.
Everyone else, including Cynthia, maintains this facade of Dawn "being the hero." As they grow older she gets together with Barry because she finds him cute, stupid, and easily manipulated.
