>>56109514>I think since she goes against the grain so hard people don't know how to really approach her as a topicThing is, I could understand if she just rubbed people the wrong way (fans being annoyed by a character who annoys the player in-game is a reasonable reaction).The problem is when people treat it like bad writing or she's somehow a bad character when the game never treats her behavior like it's ok or even normal. If the game forced you to apologize to her, or even redo the battle and letting her win, then the hate she gets would be justified, But the game never portrays her in the right for doing that. Even the tone of a the gym trainer who tells you to talk to Whitney again comes across as less "how dare you make make her cry" and more "lol she's always like this. just bare with us, you'll get your badge". Heck, before you fight Whitney, she even says that she "just got into battling not too long ago", is it really shocking that a new gym leader would act slightly unprofessionally. (again she shouldn't act that way, but again sometimes people do stupid shit)
Admittedly, most people complaining about Whtiney are just playing into the joke "lol she didn't give me the badge what the hell haha", but there's a weirdly high amount of pokemonfans who seem to take personal offense at a joke that wasn't even at the expense of the player, and last less than a minute. The term "media literacy" thrown around alot, but this seems to be a genuine case of people lacking.
