>>58265202>>58265242I wouldn't say I intended for Serena to be his sole emotional support, just the main one, or at least, one of them. Ash would still have some of his Pokémon to help him (even with the drama I mentioned in
>>58263569), the Alola friends, and depending on whether I roll with the amnesiac friend subplot, Dawn would also be there. Can't blame you for interpreting the idea like that though, since I barely talked about his other friends, that and I have to rethink what I'll do with Brock after reading opinions here.
As for the misery porn thing, it's not intentional, or at least, not fully. Maybe it's my /co/ influence acting, but I've witnessed that a lot of characters are challenged in very personal and dare I say, harsh ways; and I think Ash needs some of that in order to properly reflect on what a Master is. Maybe not to the point of breaking, but I do believe that addressing the flaws in Ash's dreams is necessary.
And now that I'm here, have some more plot points I forgot to bring up yesterday:
>Ash's emotional state is so obvious that even Paul thinks he needs help>Imp is a Pokémon, it's part of the charm, that Ash's main villain here is a Pokémon, because she'd go against everything he represents>I've had this idea, but I'm not sure it'd be too cynical: for Imp to be basically responsible for every time Ash lost a league (she gets her kicks out of making him feel miserable), and she only gave up before because his happy nature became too hard to break until Face hit him in the jaw>to couple that, she pretty much created Tobias as an "ultimate weapon" to break Ash, but since Tobias showed respect to Ash, Imp decided to lock him up in her world as a punishment for his failure>I'm also entertaining the idea of exploring Ash's views on romance, but in the sense that he isn't sure if he'll ever understand them properly (not wishing to favour or shit on any ship, just a psyche thing) 