d_s_t_e's Wattpad Reviews

PC Zero Continued: Megan

* Once again, spoilers everywhere

Megan is an orphaned Cyndaquil with an unusual physiology. Unlike most Cyndaquils, she has eyes that can open, and she also has the useful skills of being able to produce and swallow fire without the use of bestia.

She grew up next door to Crystal, who is her only friend. Her biggest enemy is the Ribombee who (allegedly) killed her parents.

Her Motivation

It's not difficult to see that Megan's motivations stem from the tragic events of her past. As a child, she witnessed the murder of her parents at the hands of a Ribombee. She tried to battle in order to save them, but she failed. She stayed next to their bodies until Suzie found her, nearly starving to death in the process. Suzie saved her, but refused to adopt her. Instead, Megan ended up in the house next door to the Kangaskhan's huge adoptive family, forced to care for herself and wonder why. Years later, she thinks she knows the answer:

"'Because I'm a freak! I have eyes! I'm fat, and I can use fire moves without bestia. That's all there is to it!' she shouted. 'Everyone treats me like the crap I am with no remorse. That's why I hate Crystal so much. She doesn't realise just how lucky she is." – Episode 11: Beauty and the Bandits

We readers don't know why Suzie didn't adopt Megan, but we can guess that it had something to do with the fact that Megan wasn't like all the other children she was caring for. The irony is that Megan thought she was a freak compared to them when truly they were all stolen experiments of Panzer – dead children brought back to life, mainly of them hopelessly stunted as a result. Megan doesn't know any of this. All she knows is that she was rejected, not just by Suzie but by every Pokémon in the entire village except for Crystal, and she blames it all on her perceived flaws and the Ribombee who killed her parents.

As a result, she does her best to hide her oddities, constantly trains in order to grow stronger, and obsesses about the day that she will take her revenge. So is that what she wants most? Revenge? It would certainly seem so, but I'm going to make an argument for a deeper, hidden motivation (hopefully it's not just wishful thinking on my part). I think that Megan really wants is to be at peace again. She thinks that killing her parents' murder will bring her the resolution she's craving, that proving her strength by killing him now will make up for her failure to defeat him as a child. She thinks that punishing another Pokémon will fix all of the problems that he caused.

Her Character Arc

As I've mentioned previously, the unfortunate thing about Megan is that we don't understand her until chapter 11. Up until that point, we see that she gets angry at Crystal, is fiercely competitive, and has some obvious self esteem issues, but we have no idea why. Before this, we've gotten a small hint that Megan wants to "find you know who... and get revenge for what they did to me", which seems to be an attempt on the part of the author to keep things a secret from the reader for a big reveal to happen later. This is the only thing that makes sense because Crystal already knows the entire story. There is no reason for her to be secretive around Crystal and even less reason for Crystal to not talk about it in her first person narration.

The problem with this is that Crystal ends up giving away that secret in a single sentence of dialogue that makes the entire thing seem very cut and dry, something that certainly could have been revealed at the beginning for all the effect that waiting has had. We get a bit more information from Megan later on, in the section that I quoted above, which gives more insight into her thoughts and feelings, but, again, it would be much more effective if the reader could have known this sooner.

By the time we finally know what Megan is after, we know almost everything else about her, and we've probably come up with our own reasons for why she acts the way she does, possibly quite uncharitable ones. Even after we know the truth, it isn't reinforced very much because, again, we are in Crystal's perspective.