Lady, EVOLVED 
pokémon
after decades of girls who are like “i like cute pokémon! but i don’t care about battles… what about pokémon contests?!” i don’t think casuals understand what an immense apology tour the pokémon company made by giving us nemona
pokémon
“actually girls who are into battling are way more hardcore. we’ve been giving you boy rivals so far because you weren’t ready for it”
pokémon
@Lady Peppermint, they had girl rivals already in gen 3. but only the boys got to face them. (admittedly they didn't have many more in later gens, gen 5 as one of three rivals, gen 6 as 1 (2 for the boys) of four rivals)
pokémon
@alyssa the thing is,
• in gen 3, the true rival is wally; may actually fills the “professor’s assistant” role; in the anime she strives to be a contest coordinator
• same story in gen 4 with dawn
• in gen 5, likewise, bianca becomes juniper’s assistant and doesn’t match cheren or n in battling prowess
• i don’t remember shauna that well there were too many rivals in that game. serena again tries to do contests
• arguably marnie in gen 8 is a proper female rival though, even if she shares the spotlight a bit with bede
pokémon
@Lady ah, fair. i never actually finished 4,5,6 and forgot that wally was more of the end rival
pokémon
@alyssa there are plenty of other strong female trainers in the games so this isn’t as big of a complaint as it sounds, but it’s been a trope especially in the anime for a long time (partially reinforced by ash being the battle guy) so it's nice to see them breaking away from it in recent generations
pokémon
@alyssa like they did give us cynthia in gen 4 and diantha in gen 6 who are canonically some of the strongest trainers in the pokémon universe
pokémon
@Lady if they had done this from the start i probably would have stuck with pokémon