Hey, Gamers! For this post, we will be talking about the ending of the Starfall Street from Pokémon Scarlet and Violet. It is one of the three story paths you can take in the lasted instalment of the Pokémon series, and it was actually the last one I finished. If you haven’t finished it, please don’t read this post because it will contain big spoilers for the ENDING of the path.
EXTRA WARNING: END GAME SPOILERS AHEAD.
So, for those who don’t want to play Pokémon but still want to read this post… I recommend you play Pokémon, it’s great. But seriously, I’m going to explain the early game stuff regardless because I don’t want to immediately throw big spoilers in your face.
Starfall Street involves Team Star, who is the ‘evil’ team of the game. You get introduced to them very early on, as you approach the school. Some Team Star grunts are bothering a girl with an Eevee backpack. She’s called Penny, and she is seen throughout this story. When you get introduced to the other storylines of the game, you get a call from someone called Cassiopeia, who needs your help to take down the 5 Team Star bases. They are run by Mela, Giacomo, Eri, Ortega and Atticus. They are the bosses, and if they are taken down, then Team Star will be taken down. Each time you take a base down, Cassiopeia gives you LP points and Penny shows up to give you materials to craft new TMs. At the end of the story, you find out that Cassiopeia is actually the leader of Team Star, and you have to go to battle them. Cassiopeia asked you for help because they saw that Team Star had gone too far and the original intent of the group was lost to them.
So, Penny is Cassiopeia and I called it from the start. Not to be that guy, but I knew it from the first phone call. But that’s not what this post was about, I just wanted to gloat a little. This post is about how this story broke me. Also, a fun fact that Joshua wanted me to add is that Cassiopeia is a real-life constellation whose five brightest stars are named Schedar, Caph, Navi, Ruchbah and Segin, which are also the names of the five squads that make up Team Star, which is awesome foreshadowing, though perhaps a big on the nose for whoever actually knew about the Cassiopeia constellation.
You need to know one main thing about this story so that when I explain what exactly broke me, it makes sense. Team Star was created by kids who were bullied. Now, dear reader, I hear you ask how a group of bullied kids could possibly be considered the ‘evil team’, and part of me still asks that question to myself to this day, but the short answer is that they took it too far. The original intention of Team Star was to stand up to their bullies with a unified front. When this happened, the bullies – as they usually do – played the victim and dropped out of school. As Team Star grew in numbers, the new members seemed to have lost the true intentions behind the group. They became the bullies. The original members – the bosses – didn’t seem to have any part in this. It seemed to me that it was more the bosses were busy with their own thing. They had a lot of people under their command and they couldn’t keep track of all of them. The bosses of Team Star also unofficially dropped out of school, likely because they were holding themselves responsible for Team Star and seemed to have a lot of work on their hands. At the heart of this story, you have kids who were bullied severely, who were then vilified when they made some friends and stood their ground. That’s heart-breaking in itself, really.
As a kid, I was bullied severely. I loved learning, but I would fake being sick just so I didn’t have to deal with the isolation and torment. But it’s not the story itself that made me cry. I actually feel it was a well written story that commented on how when bullied kids actually stick up for themselves, they become the bad guys. It’s something that happens in almost every situation, but it’s not portrayed much in media, and if it is, I feel like it goes too far or is done poorly.
What broke me was Director Clavell. At the end of the story, he apologises to the bosses of Team Star (including Penny). He wasn’t even in charge when the bullying and the creation of Team Star happened, but he apologised anyway. He took responsibility because he’s an adult in a position to help them and he should have found a better way to help them. They weren’t attending school, but they were still enrolled at the academy, so Director Clavell threatened expulsion if they failed to start attending classes again and worked with you to take down Team Star because he wanted them back in school. He wasn’t thinking about what support he might need to give them. Just a mere apology is what broke me, because adults in these positions don’t do that. They repeatedly avoid all responsibility, blame it on kids being kids, they do whatever they can to not be held responsible. Director Clavell wasn’t responsible, he wasn’t even working at the school when this happened, but he accepted responsibility anyway. He knew that these kids needed someone that they could rely on, someone to protect them and stop what happened from happening again, and he’s not only up for the challenge but is actively volunteering himself for it. He takes responsibility on behalf of the academy (that he hasn’t been in charge of for long but clearly feels pride towards), he makes things right again.
It’s so simple, yet it rarely happens in real life. Even in media, you just see the bullied kid getting some kind of revenge and that’s it. Adults avoid responsibility by forcing it on the children, but in cases where children are the ones responsible for the pain caused, there needs to be an adult to take that responsibility as well because they should have done better. I was bullied in several different schools, across several different years. I was even at schools that were deemed ‘good’. Not one single adult took responsibility for what happened to me, even when it turned physical. The only apology I received regarding my bullying was from my parents because they had to send me to school even though they knew this was happening. I’m trying desperately not to make this post too in detail about my bullying and my trauma from it, but it got bad and there should have been someone held responsible. At the very least, the school should have taken responsibility.
I think a part of growing up and being an adult is realising how awful adults were when you were a child. Each day, I work on myself to make sure I will never be in the situation where I hide away from responsibility when a kid is in pain. I want to be the one to step in, because I know that there’s so many instances in my life where a stranger could have changed it just by stepping in. This story hit me so hard because I didn’t realise that I’ve been waiting my whole life for someone to apologise for what happened to me. It quite literally took my breath away. It’s exactly what I needed to heal, just to see an adult – even a fictional one – take responsibility and apologise for this. It broke me, but it healed me more than I ever thought it could.
So, that’s it for this post, Gamers. It’s a lot heavier than I intended. I fully planned on this being a “lol this made me cry”, half joking post but at the end of the day, this is actually pretty serious and deserves to be talked about as such. Is there a story from a game that’s helped you heal from your childhood? Do you have any thoughts on this story? Let me know in the comments. Don’t forget to ‘like’ this post if you liked it and hit the follow button for more content from me. Also, my partner and I stream on Twitch (@2nerds_1game) if you want to check us out! See you next post, Gamers!
Eleanor Rees Gaming 