
Honestly, I don't understand how doing whatever she can to help out to a great extent still makes her too standard to be higher than that or Pure Good.
Greetings, everyone. I have returned for another proposal, but it's a reproposal. I will be doing Lillie again since I noticed a lot of issues with her removal proposal which led me to believe that she was rejected for the wrong reasons and a lot of them are the ones that I do not recall her having at all, lack substance, and a lot of vital information that got her approved in the first place has been left out (sorry to the user who made the removal if I sound harsh). I originally proposed her back in 2020, and I will admit that while I did have the basic understanding of what makes a PG, it was before the admirable standards have changed which would lead to a misunderstanding with Lillie. I still think her status holds up, but the way I wrote it then, I should have worded it better back then. I strongly believe that her rejection was completely unfair, and I should have brought this up in the removal, but here I am about to bring up points here. Which is why I am going to address what made her admirable in her own right.
Thanks Emeraldblade95 for granting me permission to reevaluate her. So, let's get this started.
What is the Works?[]
Pokémon Sun and Moon and Pokémon Ultra Sun and Ultra Moon are a pair of Gen VII games that introduce the use of Z-Crystals to power up a Pokémon's move corresponding to the move's type to become a Z-Move and it is the first time the player is not restricted by a grid and later installments follow with this. It also marks the first time where the rival chooses a starter Pokémon that is weaker than the player rather than the other way around like it usually is, and it doesn't have gyms to complete this time, just island challenges that Trainers go through before fighting the Kahuna of the four islands: Melemele, Akala, Ula'Ula, and Poni, and you don't fight a Champion, instead you become a Champion, but you must defend your title against random challengers. Additionally, Sun and Ultra sun follow the same day and night cycle as the Nintendo 3DS's internal clock which would make it daytime, but Moon and Ultra Moon is inverted by twelve hours, meaning if it is 7:00 a.m. on the 3DS, it would be 7:00 p.m. in-game which would make it fittingly nighttime. This randomly reminds me of this video, ha ha!
The game takes place in the Alola region, obviously based off Hawaii, where the protagonist Elio or Selene depending on whom the player chooses, moves to this region from Kanto three months after Lillie and Nebby escaped a building and went into hiding where she became Professor Kukui's assistant. They meet with a boy named Hau who is passionate with food and Pokémon battles. The player follows Lillie to the bridge as she tries to cross a worn-out suspension bridge to visit Tapu Koko. A Cosmog named Nebby breaks out of her duffel bag and is attacked by Spearow. Afraid to do anything to help, she turns to the player for help, and they will defend Nebby from the flock until the the protected Pokémon lets out an explosion that destroys the bridge and causes them to fall nearly to their deaths, only to be rescued by Tapu Koko, who leaves behind a Sparkling Stone that would become a Z-Ring in Sun and Moon, or Z-Power Ring in Ultra Sun and Ultra Moon. From there, the player is allowed to choose one of three Pokémon of their choice: Rowlet, Litten, and Popplio. Whatever the player chooses, Hau will choose a Pokémon that is weaker than the player's and the usual gig of doing major challenges, fighting a villainous organization, and make their way to the Hall of Fame by beating the Elite Four and defend the title of Champion.
Who is She? What Has She Done?[]
Lillie is one of the major characters of Pokémon Sun, Moon, and the Ultra series. She is a young girl who lives in Aether Paradise with her father Mohn, her mother Lusamine who is the President of this foundation, and Gladion. During her childhood, Lillie was dancing in the rain and Lusamine would also join her which would result in them catching colds shortly after leading to them sleeping in the bed together, a memory which Lillie still dearly holds onto. It wasn't until tragedy struck when Mohn disappeared through an Ultra Wormhole after an encounter with the Ultra Beasts which aggrieved the family leaving a negative impact on them as they began to grow distant from each other and these scenarios differ between the paired games:
In Sun and Moon, Lusamine was desperate in searching for her lost husband to which her research on the Ultra Beasts, led her to become exposed to Nihilego's neurotoxins, which drastically changed her personality from a caring and attentive mother who wants to keep the family together to an obsessive psychotic madwoman who only cares about being with Nihilego with a disregard for the safety of the public. She has since been mistreating her children, making them dress a certain way against their will as well as using verbal abuse upon them, and performed harmful experiments on Pokémon, even permanently freezing some of them in her secret chamber and have become affiliated with Team Skull, a delinquent gang known for hurting Pokémon and harassing weaker Trainers and non-Trainers, led by Guzma. Gladion would steal Type: Null from one of the labs and run away and becomes a member of Team Skull, which angered Lusamine greatly. Lillie only had Wicke as the only known mother-figure to her. A few years later, when Lusamine intended to make Cosmog open an Ultra Wormhole by forcing it go through extreme stress which is required to achieve this effect, Lillie steals Cosmog, which she names Nebby, and she escapes with it in tow and was nearly caught by the staff before Nebby teleports them away. The two of them were beached on the shores of Melemele Island where they are found by Professor Burnet and Kukui, which she becomes the latter's assistant.
Three months pass since her escape and the player moves into Alola and meets with Hau who quickly befriends them. Soon, the player sees Lillie crossing the plank bridge and Nebby hops out and is attacked by Spearow. She turns to the player for help and despite not having any Pokémon, the player still defends it until Nebby destroys the bridge which has them falling towards the river, only for Tapu Koko to save them. It leaves behind the Sparkling Stone which Lillie hands to the player as a reward. The player chooses their first Pokémon as does Hau, it really depends on what the players choose. After that, the journey goes as expected, complete the island challenges where a Totem Pokémon awaits them at the end where they are awarded the Z-Crystals, though there are some optional ones that need to be found through different circumstances. After all the island challenges, they compete with the Island Kahuna, who has a similar function as a Gym Leader and when they triumph over them, they move to the next island and along the way they fight Team Skull, a delinquent gang who is out looking for trouble through hurting Pokémon and picking on weaker Trainers and non-Trainers, and they have some hilarious dance moves when they're idle and Lillie deliberately gets herself lost in order to avoid being found by them. As the story progresses, the mystery behind Lillie begins to unravel and Nebby often has a tendency to hop out of her bag and get lost somewhere which Lillie is afraid to get to it when there is an area that she deems dangerous. Keep in mind that she isn't a Trainer, and she uses Repels and stronger variants of them to keep wild Pokémon away from her when she has to go through tall grass or caves and at certain points, she heals the player's Pokémon to get them back on or keep them on their feet. Eventually, when Akala is completed, they are offered a tour at Aether Paradise, which Lillie instantly refuses and insists that she would rather watch Hau battle despite her distaste for them and would eventually meet with them again on Ula'Ula Island.
Later, she is confronted by one of the Team Skull Grunts when they saw something suspicious in her bag only for the player to protect her which she awards them with Love Balls which she admits that it was an impulse buy. However, a child's Pokémon Yungoos was stolen by Team Skull and was held at Po Town where their HQ is located. But after they returned, Lillie and Nebby were kidnapped by Plumeria, a Team Skull Admin and brought to Aether Paradise as Gladion suspects. Upon arrival, the staff become hostile towards the protagonist and their allies, and they fight their way through them, including the branch chief Faba. The only staff member that is friendly towards them is Wicke who shares information on the Ultra Beasts, Type: Null, and Nebby and tells them that Lillie is with Lusamine. Upon arrival at Lusamine's room, Lillie and Lusamine are having a conflict and is revealed to be mother and daughter and Gladion also being an immediate member of the family as well. Lusamine coldly talks down to Lillie as she takes Nebby to her trophy room where she abuses Nebby's power against her daughter's pleas not to as Nebby would likely die. This creates an Ultra Wormhole that summons Nihilego, which also results in the Ultra Beasts invading Alola, and the player battles her, though Lusamine and Guzma retreat into the Ultra Wormhole, leaving Nebby, who evolved into Cosmoem, behind. Lillie then goes through a change as she realizes that she thought she didn't like Pokémon battles, but it was really abuse against them and they decide to spend the night with Lillie wanting to sleep in her mother's bed one last time.
The following day, Lillie changed her clothes which she calls her Z-Powered form and Gladion gives her the Moon Flute in Sun/Sun Flute in Moon where they set off to Poni Island where they would search for her flute's opposite counterpart. While there, they head to Exeggutor Island where the other flute was and when it starts to rain, Lillie becomes nostalgic about it through a very special memory she cherished with her mother before everything went south. After gaining the flute, they would go through the Poni Canyon where Plumeria is worried for Guzma's safety before giving the player the Poisonium Z-Crystal while counting on them to bring him back. Lillie states that no matter how fall Lusamine has fallen, she is still her mother, and she is determined to save her from herself even if she doesn't want it. Lillie tests her courage to overcome her fear of heights before they eventually would reach the Altar of the Sunne/Altar of the Moone where they would play the flutes at the same time (During the day for Sun or during the night for Moon) which would create an entrance to Ultra Space. Nebby escapes from her bag and gets into the surging energy which results in it evolving into Solgaleo/Lunala, which Lillie never suspected that she was caring for a Legendary Pokémon the entire time and tells it to take them into Ultra Space (which is actually called Ultra Deep Sea, btw).
Upon arrival, Lillie and the player meet with Guzma, who was petrified by the experience with falling under the control of Nihilego when he tried to catch one for himself and warns them that Lusamine is too far gone at this rate, which doesn't faze Lillie as they continue forward where Lusamine appears to them with Lillie trying to convince her to return home. Lusamine is really mad upon seeing them, especially Lillie, whom she disowns as she no longer saw her beautiful due to her assumed defiance, which pushes Lillie to her breaking point and lectures her mother that she and Nebby are living things with a free will, not some inanimate object for her to use or throw away. Lusamine then merges with Nihilego which results in a battle against her. After she is defeated for the last time, Lusamine-Nihilego attempts to kill them, before Lillie calls for Solgaleo/Lunala to strike back at her which separates them. Before she slips into a coma, Lusamine asks how Lillie became beautiful, and everyone was warped out of Ultra Deep Sea when it became unstable with multiple Nihilego surrounding them. Poni's Kahuna Hapu offers to bring Lusamine back to Aether Paradise to rest. Lillie allows the player to capture Nebby when she convinced it that it will have more adventures with the player as she isn't a trainer anyway, and after it is captured, she tells it to not try to escape its Poké Ball before leaving for Aether Paradise, which leaves the player to take on the Pokémon League.
After the player becomes the Champion and defends their title, they have a festival to celebrate the occasion. Lillie joins the protagonist and states that her mother wanted to join them, but she couldn't because of her condition, and she decides to take the player from the festival to cross the brand-new bridge to reach Tapu Koko's alter to be congratulated by this entity, which brings the player to a battle with it. Whether the player captures or defeats it, the player and Lillie return to the festival and Lillie is about to tell them what she is going to do, but she decides to keep it to herself for the sake of letting the protagonist enjoying the rest of the festival. The following day, Lillie is getting prepared to set sail for Kanto to help Lusamine recover fully upon learning that a man named Bill had been through a similar experience and believes that he is the person to turn to and for herself to become a Trainer, so she can become stronger. She leaves them a gift for both the protagonist and Hau before she takes her leave.
In Ultra Sun and Ultra Moon, the backstory and the main story itself is similar but has notable differences: After Mohn disappears, Lusamine is distraught and does research on the Ultra Beasts in hopes of uncovering any clues on her husband's whereabouts, but she would later meet with the Ultra Recon Squad who came from another dimension to warn about Necrozma. Because she was not affected by any neurotoxins to speak of, Lusamine remains a decent person and is instead depicted as a well-intentioned extremist who genuinely wanted to stop Necrozma's looming threat to the world, but even then, she still slips into poor decision making and is willing to harm Pokémon, which also caused Gladion and later Lillie to escape with the Pokémon.
The story remains largely the same, but it soon splits even more when Lillie and Nebby are taken to Aether Paradise with the protagonist, Gladion, and Hau pursuing them and fighting off the A.P. staff as they learn more of their motives. When they reach the small building, Lillie and Lusamine are having a confrontation, with Lusamine being disappointed by her daughter's actions of swiping Nebby from under her nose. Regardless, Lusamine abuses Nebby's power to open the Ultra Wormhole in her trophy room and invites Guzma to join her to stop Necrozma, despite being told that she isn't prepared to battle the currently dangerous Pokémon. After they vanish, Lillie checks on Nebby, who evolved into Cosmoem. The Ultra Recon Squad are clearly not happy with Lusamine's recent actions and that things won't going as expected, but Lillie again goes through a turning point in her character arc and a change in appearance before they head into Poni Island to retrieve the flute opposite to what Lillie owns, again it depends on what the version is being played. The player earns the trust of the Ultra Recon Squad during their journey through the canyons. Eventually, as they open the Altar of the Sunne/Moone, Nebby gets into the energy field and evolves into Solgaleo/Lunala. Just as they are about to enter the Ultra Wormhole to pursue them, Lusamine and Guzma are suddenly ejected from it as the Aether President warns them to run away, calling Necrozma a monster, and Lusamine isn't exaggerating when she says that. Nebby gets into a battle with Necrozma who emerged from the wormhole but is quickly defeated and forcibly merged with it to become Dusk Mane Necrozma/Dawn Wings Necrozma and deprive the Alola region of its natural light. The Ultra Recon Squad has it out for Lusamine for her violating their trust while they count on the protagonist to take care of the fused Necrozma in their homeworld, Ultra Megalopolis. At the top of the tower, Necrozma assumes a draconic form called Ultra Necrozma, regardless of version, though the player ultimately defeats it, separating it from Solgaleo/Lunala which left it seriously weakened, which both Lusamine and Lillie reconcile as they bring it back to Aether Paradise to help improve its condition. The player complete one last trail before battling the Elite Four and become the Champion to which they head to the Iki Town Festival to celebrate the occasion, while Gladion leaves for Kanto/Johto as Lusamine waves goodbye to him on the port. If you think this story is over, don't bet on it, because there is a postgame episode that takes place.
The player and Hau help the Ultra Recon Squad capture one of the Ultra Beasts, Blacephalon/Stakataka on Poni Island, and also helps Sophocles defeat the members of then later comes the RR Episode where Lusamine, Wicke, and Faba, who suspiciously walks away as the other two are giving the news before chaos breaks out. Not long after, Lillie heads to the player's house and invites her on the mission to save the Aether Foundation and her mother from a very shady team, who happens to be Team Rainbow Rocket, (or I would like to call Team Rocket 2.0.) the much more competent and dangerous organization than the one in Gen I. How? Their higher-ups consist of villainous leaders from previous generations, Team Magma's Maxie and Team Aqua's Archie from Gen III, Team Galactic's Cyrus from Gen IV, Team Plasma's Ghetsis from Gen V, and Team Flare's Lysandre from Gen VI, each came from an alternate universe where their plans were successful with the main man himself being Giovanni himself. Lillie also takes part in the battle by taking on one of the grunts and battling Faba and a random Aether Paradise Employee, but as soon as they get inside, Lillie becomes stressed out to which she couldn't battle anymore and instead takes on the role of a healer like she normally does since there are no Pokémon Centers around while the protagonist goes to four locations to defeat Maxie, Archie, Cyrus, and Lysandre be, Ghetsis came to battle the player when they return to the lobby, but when he is defeated, he takes Lillie hostage and threatens her life if the player doesn't surrender, only for Colress to act by sending him and the other team leaders back to their own universe before they head into the trophy room where they find a passed out Lusamine with Giovanni, who plans on forming an army of Ultra Beasts with the use of the Aether Foundation's available resources before battling the player, though the latter managed to defeat him, which he gracefully accepts and disappears which allowed the mansion and the Aether Foundation to be restored to the way they were. Lillie is about to tell Lusamine about Faba's treachery, but he attempts to deny his actions, which the way he tries to explain it all, make him more of a liability which Lusamine saw through it anyway, and has him demoted to intern as punishment while Giovanni leaves Alola behind as everything returns to normal.
Mitigating Factors[]
NOTE: This section is actually self-copied from my original proposal for Lillie a few years ago, so basically, I self-attributed.
Not that I can think of, but from what I remember, Lillie had stolen Nebby from the Aether Paradise Labs and was teleported away during the prologue, and she does show herself to be just a little bit cowardly, as she couldn't defend herself or Nebby, however, she does happen to acknowledge her flaws and express remorse for it. So, to rise above who she previously was after her mother vanishes, she uses them to become a better person. She reached her breaking point when she yells at her mother for the way she treats her and the Pokémon who resided at the foundation, which may seem disrespectful, but this was completely understandable, as Lusamine had been (because of Nihilego's toxins) abusive towards her and Gladion since her father disappeared and her anger was ultimately provoked when Lusamine disowns her. Her theft of Nebby was justified, since she knew very well how dangerous the Ultra Beasts are, and how much Nebby would suffer from being forced to open the Wormholes, and considering that several Wormholes were opened by Lusamine, which the Ultra Beasts invade Alola. This was all on the account that her father was previously dragged through it (later revealed that he used the uninhabited islands to establish Poké Pelago).
Admirable Standards[]
Here are some of the major factors that got her rejected to begin with that really need to be debunked.
- Yes, the Pokémon standards are generally pretty high, but the problem is that she has been literally compared to the main protagonists and the rivals both in Generation VII and back and forward. Look, these protagonists are actual Trainers who are fully capable of taming even the most powerful Legendary Pokémon in the series, and they are literal world-savers, which are heroic counterparts of the evil world-destroyers. Lillie on the other hand doesn't have that same capability as they do, and she is a normal major supporting NPC who isn't a trainer for a huge chunk of the stories. Now, it made perfect sense for Red and Leaf to be removed since they actually have the same resources as the other protagonists in the later titles and they only amount to stopping a generic evil organization, and not doing much else in their appearances in later installments, while the others dealt with organizations that have more dangerous ambitions from using Legendary Pokémon to either warp reality or wipe out all life. But when that is applied to Lillie, it really hampers the competition by a mile, she doesn't compare to the protagonists, nor does she compared to the rivals either, and no, she does not have the resources of a traditional rival last I checked; the game never treated her like one and being a rival is not her purpose, plus that title goes to Hau who is the actual rival in these games. Even after Lillie becomes a Pokémon Trainer, she still doesn't compare to them, because they are fully experienced by the end to which the protagonists become Champions, while she is just getting started and learning the ropes, which is unlikely to change anything. These protagonists and rivals aren't just the more, if not most powerful, trainers, but the strongest characters period. That said, the comparison between them and Lillie is not even remotely close to being fair. There are comparable non-Trainer assistants of professors, the characters that do share similar resources to Lillie, that don't do very much compared to her, and the professors themselves don't get much action either.
- The argument 'she has several Pokémon on her despite not being a trainer' not only doesn't make sense when you think about it, it is straight up untrue. The only Pokémon Lillie has for the majority of the narrative was Cosmog (Nebby) and there's no evidence that implies that she has other Pokémon on her before her resolve and the only time we see her having other Pokémon is in the Ultra series post-game (plus a Cosmog only knows Splash in the earliest level, which is known to not do anything to boost or lower stats or attack its opponent). If she did have several Pokémon, how come we don't see them onscreen? And why don't the Trainer NPCs bother to stop and get her into an unwanted battle like they do with the protagonists? That just doesn't add up, let that sink in. Plus, character-wise she was established as a someone who doesn't like Pokémon battles, due to Pokémon getting hurt, and prefers to avoid doing them and she goes through a character arc that led her to appreciate battles more over the course of the story to which she desires to become a Trainer herself to become stronger as a result of the protagonist's influence. Expecting her to just suddenly go into battle while her arc is ongoing would not only go against her initial character, but it would have caused great harm to her character development as well.
Now let's bring up what Lillie herself does in both paired games. Even when Lillie is mostly a non-action NPC, her living in Aether Paradise for most of her life does help her to see what is happening behind the scenes when Lusamine and her staff (minus Wicke) were mistreating Pokémon and subjecting them to unethical experiments after an encounter with the Ultra Beasts and Nebby is capable of opening Ultra Wormholes when it is subjected to extreme stress. In Sun and Moon, her mother was planning to use Nebby to open the wormhole so she can live among the Nihilego at the expense of human property, numerous innocent people being endangered or possibly dying to the Ultra Beasts. Lillie was fully aware of what that will bring, so she stole Nebby early on in the game to protect it and prevent all that from happening and wanted to bring it back home safely and spends her time seeking help from the Tapu Pokémon, which was unknowingly vital to the protagonist also getting involved in the affairs sometime after they move to Alola. In the Ultra series where her mother wanted to open the Ultra Wormhole to stop Necrozma while assisting the Ultra Recon Squad, Lillie knew that she was going into extreme and dangerous lengths to accomplish her goals, which actually does end in unintentional disasters breaking out as a result of her carelessness, and consistently avoids Team Skull since they are affiliated with Aether Paradise. That was the reason with her protecting Nebby; if she hadn't done that, her mother would have had the Ultra Beasts unleashed very early on and it would have made the protagonists and their mother unwilling to move there in the first place because by then Alola would have been overwhelmed by the extra-terrestrial life-forms over the course of three months, so Lillie should be credit for it. On top of that, when things got really dire when Team Skull found out that she has Nebby, she is willing to go with them to Aether Paradise, so she and Nebby won't be separated, so that is actually a passer. Next, Lillie has plenty of good childhood memories of her having a better relationship with her mother before her father went missing and the Ultra Beasts appeared, and was willing to search for her mother and bring her back, even if it was that messed up and she is shown to be a pacifist and she does try to reason with her mother on what she was doing was wrong, even if her mother was too stubborn to listen to her to which it gets on Lillie's last nerve briefly. And then there is the Ultra series RR Episode where she played her first active role in helping the player save the reformed Aether Paradise from Team Rainbow Rocket, which the elites composed of the team leaders from previous games especially the ones the PG protagonists fought, so this does make up for her lacking a role in defeating Necrozma in the main story, I know Lillie doesn't actually fight them and ends up acting as a Pokémon healer, but she was quickly overwhelmed at what she was dealing with, and she isn't used to it yet and has a role in liberating Aether Paradise from Team Rainbow Rocket's control. She quickly exposes Faba's conspiracy to her mother which Faba did try to deny which failed miserably resulting in him getting demoted to intern. It does say a lot about Lillie, and it shows that she is a pacifistic and compassionate young lady who will go all out to help others, even if they are harsh towards her and she doesn't hold a grudge against them and if she has to, she can take on an active role to go the extra mile.
Final Verdict[]
At this point, Lillie should have a good chance at making a comeback to PG. To those that might not agree, I assure you that I will respect your opinions and please make sure that any downvotes you give are fair and actually comparative and are not based on the arguments that I have just gunned down, this way, when she does get rejected in this proposal, at least she will rejected for better reasons. Too standard she is not; Lillie is admirable on her own terms. But nonetheless, I will leave the decisions up to you. Have a nice day!