Inyssa
Bug Catcher
- Pronouns
- He/Him
Author Notes: Here I am with another fic from my AO3 account! I read a post about how funny and petty academia can be and then I read House of Leaves and then I really wanted to write about Steven, so here it is.
Synopsis:
Family is, in my works, a tool that some have claimed I don't make use of enough. It is the root of the tree, I have been told, in cadence more ornery than a simple academic debate deserves –although myself being a man of academia, I can understand how laughable that notion is– it is the soil upon which the foundation is built. And they're not wrong. When it comes to studying a person's life and the currents that shaped them into who they are today, family is a biographer's most reliable tool. Their Occam's Razor.
In my opinion, however, said razor is most often used to snip away at generalizations and stick them together in what more approximates a collage than a serious work. It's too simple to attribute it all to family, as it completely disregards the agency of the person being spoken of, who more often than not resents the notion, as Sylvia Baulge puts it in her notorious tome A Biography About Biographies, page xvii: "No one loathes the debate of nature vs. nurture more than those between the age of fifteen and twenty-five. Many times have I seen young adults physically assault those who dare claim they are nothing but a byproduct of their parents, and I am confident I will see it again"73.
Baulge's argument reveals part of the reason –not all, but enough– as to why I hesitate to overuse this tool. But like everything, it has its place, and so it must be this chapter, although that is not all this chapter will be about. It is simply the frame of reference, the walls and ceilings of this house, the nonexistent rows of the maze.
To force upon you this state of mind, which I believe is essential to understanding the core of who Steven Stone was and most likely still is, I bring forth a sample I labeled as The Littlest House74, a short video which shows a four-year old Steven and his mother Sophia enjoying a sunny afternoon on the porch of their old vacation home in Dewford75. It is one of the only glimpses us outsiders have of that idyllic past that so pointedly shaped Steven into the man he is today. The video is four minutes long, and the snippet I want to focus on is only at the very end, but the rest bears at least some importance:
The handheld camera creaks and its lens shakes as who we assume is Steven's father fiddles with it, unaware for a few seconds that he's succeeded in turning it on. A marble floor is the first thing we see, an odd choice of material for a porch. These first few frames have been given what I consider to be undeserved significance by other writers and amateurs, but I shall discuss that –and the significance of stone itself, and of the ground under Steven's feet throughout his life– more in Chapter XIV.
What matters in these first few seconds are the glimpses we catch of the family itself. There is nothing premeditated or unnatural about the scene. Sophia's first choked laugh on the cold tea she was drinking all but destroys the mere notion of this being fabricated.
"What are you doing?" the woman's voice is heard.
A grunt is heard from Joseph once he places the now working camera atop a closed book he must have been reading minutes before. The bottom of the lens catches the rest of the circular white table, then up toward Sophia reclining against her chair, glass in hand. The white railings of the porch frame her head almost perfectly in the middle of the small window it creates onto the beachhead.
Outside the frame, Steven makes a disgruntled noise as he gently hits two small objects against each other, making a hollow, wooden sound. The video does not show what these objects are.
"There. I think it's filming," says Joseph. "Hah! You wouldn't think a friend of mine developed these with how much trouble it's giving me."
Sophia looks up from the camera's lens for the first time, toward Joseph, and raises her free hand to slide a strand of hair behind her ear.
"It's not like you built it yourself. What did you want to film?"
"Figured I might as well use it since I brought it with me. It might be fun to look back on this later," he says. And though the frame doesn't show it, it's clear he's looking at Sophia as well. "And I'm itching for another cup of coffee. This little guy will show me what I missed later."
"Cof…? Joseph…" There's a pause. "You told me–"
"Decaffeinated!" Joseph says in a hurry. "You know it is, you saw me buy it on the gas station on our way here."
"…Did I? I was too busy keeping Steven from the sour candies." She looks down at the boy outside of frame. "But if you say so…"
"Hand on my heart."
"Mhm…" Sophia rests the back of her head on the chair and closes her eyes. "You're lucky it's too nice here to get up and go check."
Joseph laughs. "I am lucky. The luckiest man in the world, eh, Steven?"
Sophia answers with an exhalation, and Steven with a non-committal sound that indicates he hadn't been listening until his name was called out.
"I'll be right back," Joseph says, and walks out of the video for good.
The rest of the sequence until almost the very end is almost Renaissant in its stillness and beauty, the latter mired in the soft autumnal oranges often associated with Capeaer and Fereeirése. If there is any meta-textual significance to the calm silence mother and son share –regardless of this sequence being anything but fictional– then neither of them calls attention to it. The first disturbance to this idyllic peace comes a minute later, when Steven speaks for the first time, still pointedly past the corner of the frame.
"Mah?"
Though infinitesimally faint, hints of a south-western Hoenesse accent are present in young Steven's voice, which will be fully gone later in his life. It only makes sense, as Sophia herself was once a native of those smaller islands. Thus the southern Ma, further addled by his young vocabulary, instead of the more common Mom that children learn as one of their first words. In her article The Phonetics of the Womb, Mary Lemurea observes: "Hearing it once should tell you that the –ah sound at the end of this variation holds a hard to quantify warmth that is simply lacking in the Mom of the common parlance."76 Indeed, it is heard as a question though Steven probably doesn't intend it as such. A primal request, a verbal extending of arms from a child to his mother.
"Mh-hmm?" Sophia asks.
"When–when do we go?"
"What do you mean?"
Steven makes a sound in his throat and smacks the two wooden objects again. Sophia is patient, waiting for him to come up with the words. Word, singular.
"House."
Slowly, Sophia sets her glass on her lap, and considers this before answering.
"This is also our house."
"No."
Blunt and to the point, Steven throws away her answer, and Sophia is left silent for another moment.
"Home and house… are different. We have our house in Rustboro. This here is also our house. And they're both home."
"Hmmmh…"
Though the audio is somewhat garbled, the noise Steven makes seems to imply he's upset in some way. Sophia continues to talk.
"Home is where peace is, Steven." There's another pause, followed by another sound of discomfort from Steven. Sophia laughs. "Want some sour candies?"
Steven moves much faster than before. He stands up straight and lets the objects in his hands fall to the floor, and in response Sophia gets out of the chair and picks Steven up into her arms, leaving the frame completely empty, save for a half-finished glass of iced tea.
"First a bit of sweet so the sour doesn't give you stomach cramps. Mwwwah!" An exaggerated kiss is heard and Steven giggles uncontrollably. "There. Let's go see if dad was telling the truth or not, okay?"
Steven's giggles are the last thing we hear before the shadow of Sophia's hand passes over the frame, and it all cuts to black.
Sadly, no other glimpses have fallen into the hands of the public, so we're left with a four and a half minutes that shows so much yet not nearly enough.
Sophia is, of course, central to this snippet, both literally and figuratively. An entire chapter is dedicated to her life and her presence in Steven's life77 but it is her absence that we will only briefly discuss here. For as the date of the video shows, this takes place a mere eight months before Sophia's untimely death. Theorists, most of them surely young, have made attempts in bad faith of finding any sort of clue or foreshadowing to this event in The Littlest House, but to think in such narrow terms is insulting, even degrading in my opinion. Yes, Sophia is quite pale, and yes, her hand does shake for a frame or two when she lifts up her glass, indicating possible muscular weakness, but that is all secondary. It is beside the point.
Because, for better or for worse, what remained of Sophia surely shaped Steven more than her absence could. He was too young at the time. Only the ripples of grief coming from his father instead would ultimately shape him in the years to come, and only through proxy. Though that is not to imply that Steven did not suffer, nor love, his mother deeply. After all, it is her words in this video that seem to have built the foundation of who Steven Stone. Erected the walls around him, if you will.
Not much is known from the following years. If Joseph was in any state of mind to send young Steven to a child psychologist or therapist after Sophia's death, then they have not resurfaced in the years to come. In fact the five years following the event see a Steven that is impossible to distinguish from how he would have grown up regardless, though in this we stray dangerously close to pure speculation.
And though it is not the domain of this chapter to discuss his early years, this quote from Ferrero Montauk's brilliant article The Strata, the Mantle and Everything in Between gives us a sufficient peak into that window of time for now:
Montauk seems to be of the opinion that Sophia's death had much less of an impact on Steven's growth and behavior than what most believe, and while I'm inclined to agree, the opposite perspective bears mentioning. Guillermo Morow raises an interesting point, based on a short study Steven took part in when he was eleven, not of his own volition but as a manner of schoolwork. The following excerpt is of great significance to his argument:
Morow's comment on the study and its significance is succinctly blunt and to the point: "If you really think the mother's death didn't affect the kid much, I'd have you wonder what would've happened if he'd been presented with the sound of a heart monitor. I wager the results would've been interesting."78 And while I disagree with his outlook, I admit to some curiosity.
Lastly, before putting the topic of Sophia aside, I must at least acknowledge Jonathan Berow's musings on the relationship between Steven's love for caves and his love for his mother. "One could almost see the enclosed prison of stone as a replacement for the arms that will never hold him again." Such arguments have unfortunately become too common following the release of The Littlest House, and they reveal an old-fashioned perspective from authors who should know better. Feruvian psychology has long since been discarded by modern academia, even if stubborn authors like Berow remain too attached to it.
Moving on to Joseph, there isn't much strictly about him that hasn't been covered in Chapter IV, but it bears repeating that regardless of the chasm which grew between him and Steven as a result of the man's grief, his affability is something that hasn't changed. It seems, then, a matter of communication that kept father and son at arm's length. Of stubborn stoicism, whether from Joseph or Steven, who can say.
While Joseph has been described even by his harshest critics as "…unfortunately, just a really nice guy" and by his older sister Rixia as "…the most agreeable oaf you'll have the displeasure to meet"79, it seems his emotional availability was never matched by his understanding of Steven, eager though the man may have been to heal the rift separating them. This isn't the first time the clear awkwardness between them has been noted, and it won't be the last. Though time –only helped Steven's maturity as an adult– closed some of the scars, it is painfully clear that what's been lost will never return.
Though in no way should this be read as critical of young Steven, his reluctance to share his burdens with others is a habit that has both saved Hoenn and almost doomed him in more than one occasion.
Which is as good an excuse as any to breach the topic at the heart of this chapter, if sparingly, viewed from a specific perspective.
Duty. Responsibility. What other word has been more carelessly thrown around by those who wish to criticize Steven without truly understanding the kind of man he is? Some have been bold enough to accuse him of constantly running away. Maria del Rey, the author of Innocent, Swayed, Explorer, Champion has her own opinion on the matter: "Steven Stone often finds himself with one foot in and one out, trapped beneath the door-sill no matter where he goes." This, while true in my opinion, completely misses the point.
It cannot be emphasized enough that Steven Stone has not once hesitated to put his life on the line for the good of Hoenn, going as far as to stand alone, bloody and victorious against beings of legend who would see his home destroyed. When talking about the duty of a Champion, of Devon's heir, even of any human being, Steven has gone above and beyond, time and time again.
Yet it cannot be denied that a certain shadow stills his feet on occasion, something he fears more than losing his life. It is that, I believe, that is the cause of his meandering ways. It is loss, not of the world but of the self. Of a small part of himself, either given to him on that warm autumn day or discovered on his own years later, like a gem unearthed from stone.
In a perfect world, I believe this doubt, this anxiety, would be absent in Steven. For I am certain it was born not from his own weakness but from others' inquiries and insistence on having him lay his heart bare as they do.
Perhaps Keiler Ross' A Sonata of Blues can better illustrate the point: "Each heart has a home of its own". For Steven Stone, this home is not a physical place, it is not a person nor a goal nor an aspiration. It just happens to be wherever he finds himself as himself. Better elaborated, of course, through Keiler Ross' later expansion on that first quote: "When we say 'my heart beats for you' we don't expect the other person to demand we slice our chest open, open our ribs and show them". In the same vein, is it not unreasonable to demand complete closeness and understanding of one's being in exchange for love?
This would be less of a problem were Steven's home of the soul a house and not a maze. Houses are built to be lived in, and while the famous myth of the minotaur tells us that mazes are no different, they supposedly exist to be 'solved' as well80. Though in this case, one would go about solving the maze the same way someone would 'solve' the labyrinth of roots beneath a tree by uprooting it.
And make no mistake, both the riddle of his uncertainty and that of true self are closely linked to one another. It's simply not a riddle that's meant to be solved. At least not without Steven's consent, and so we are left with only speculations, hints dug up from around the roots, trying our best not to disturb them.
Funnily enough it's Steven's close friend and confidant Wallace who gives us a solution, nay, a perspective, into how Steven's mind parses this dilemma. The quote is taken from a radio show Wallace attended shortly after taking the mantle of Champion, and while Steven's name is never spoken by him during the interview, it's clear from the slight heat in his voice that the reporter's previous digs at his friend have been weighing heavily in his mind. Yet always tactful and understanding of the way his words can be misconstrued, he wraps his frustrations into a completely separate anecdote:
Steven Stone is one of only two Champions in recent times to have willingly step down from his post instead of surrendering it to another trainer. The controversy of this decision still chases him to this day, but I believe Wallace's statement above sums the whole thing up better than anything else could, and as such this is where this line of thinking will cease.
Again, family resurfaces. This time, an interpretation of the word unique to Steven Stone, same as with 'home'. Wallace is undoubtedly the closest person to him, the one to venture the deepest into that maze, and it is precisely because Wallace cares not for intruding, but for simply existing within it, that he's been allowed to make it so far in the first place.
The relationship between the two has been, like so many things in Steven's life, willfully misconstrued by authors and spokespeople too mired in the confines of traditional psychology and sociology. In prescriptivism and Sordellian thinking, all which tries to force a lens of 'tradition' and 'normalcy' onto that which possesses nothing of the sort. Rumors, questions and –in the worst of cases– accusations have been raised regarding the nature of their bond, but just as Steven refuses to have his true self pinned down by others' expectations, he just as expertly avoids the desperate clutches of those who cannot fathom a way of being that doesn't line up with the frames through which they see the world.
At this point, reporters and interviewers have grown tired of asking, as both men have perfected their own methods for brushing them aside. After all, they've already answered said questions once each. It is not their problem if others cannot accept their answers, nor the reality of a bond that cannot be pinned down by simple terms like 'romantic' or 'platonic'. Once again, Wallace's own words cut to the heart of the matter:
Ex-sailor, current Elite Four member and very often misquoted Drake was once recorded saying "If you don't understand the difference between house and home then I have nothing further to say to you". Drake –as well as the other three Elite Four members– are known to be very close to Steven, even following him stepping down as Champion, so it stands to reason they would understand his circumstances better than most. The Ever Grande League headquarters were, after all, Steven's house –perhaps even his home– for six long years, and those people were his family. Yet traces of it must remain within him even after leaving, such is the core of his character.
Steven Stone has the soul of a nomad, sanded down over the years by the burden of responsibility weighing on his shoulders. Yet not once did he ever let that burden change him. And as all those who knew him can testify, never did he give anything less than his all when duty came knocking at his door and the waters of catastrophe came seeping in, in this case both literally and metaphorically.
In conclusion for this chapter, I wish to highlight what might be the most formative time in Steven's life, perhaps only second to those idyllic four minutes of footage; his trainer journey. For us, a short window of time of which we know very little, but for Steven a long road which finished the job that his mother had started, and that which slipped from his father's fingers.
The polishing of the diamond in the rough that was Steven Stone, and the discovery –perhaps accidental– of what home truly meant to him.
We count with only a few testimonies from people who knew him at the time, most of them Gym leaders and other League members, all of which refuse to speak on the matter without Steven's consent.
Luckily, there is one that will serve our purposes just fine. Shelley Kraptiks, renowned archaeological journalist, had a chance meeting with a certain self-proclaimed 'relic hunter' named Dusty, who just happened to run into Steven during his trainer journey, while both of them were attempting to cross the desert north of Route 111. According to Dusty, the two encountered each other by happenstance and traveled together for almost a full hour before a sudden sandstorm forcefully separated them. Around twenty minutes later, when the storm finally dissipated, Dusty found himself before a set of old, crumbling ruins, quickly sinking into the shifting sands.
What happened after is best put by Dusty himself. The following excerpt from Kraptiks' interview with him will serve as this chapter's conclusion:
81: Kraptiks is the one at fault here. Records from his next Gym battle in Lavaridge show that he was days away from turning nineteen.82
82: We editors would like to point out that Mr. Derosa appears to be mistaken. That record was of Steven's first fight, which ended in a loss for him. He challenged the gym again a week later, after turning nineteen and having braved the desert. 83
83: [Mr. Derosa's response has been removed to conform with local and international censorship laws regarding heavy profanity in literature.]
Synopsis:
The following is Chapter IX of Montague Derosa's A Maze in Sepphirl, currently available for free on his website. For the full book, check Mr. Derosa's shop in the tabs above.
Family is, in my works, a tool that some have claimed I don't make use of enough. It is the root of the tree, I have been told, in cadence more ornery than a simple academic debate deserves –although myself being a man of academia, I can understand how laughable that notion is– it is the soil upon which the foundation is built. And they're not wrong. When it comes to studying a person's life and the currents that shaped them into who they are today, family is a biographer's most reliable tool. Their Occam's Razor.
In my opinion, however, said razor is most often used to snip away at generalizations and stick them together in what more approximates a collage than a serious work. It's too simple to attribute it all to family, as it completely disregards the agency of the person being spoken of, who more often than not resents the notion, as Sylvia Baulge puts it in her notorious tome A Biography About Biographies, page xvii: "No one loathes the debate of nature vs. nurture more than those between the age of fifteen and twenty-five. Many times have I seen young adults physically assault those who dare claim they are nothing but a byproduct of their parents, and I am confident I will see it again"73.
73: Though never outright specified in the text, later inquiries and interviews reveal that she was one of those young people.
Baulge's argument reveals part of the reason –not all, but enough– as to why I hesitate to overuse this tool. But like everything, it has its place, and so it must be this chapter, although that is not all this chapter will be about. It is simply the frame of reference, the walls and ceilings of this house, the nonexistent rows of the maze.
To force upon you this state of mind, which I believe is essential to understanding the core of who Steven Stone was and most likely still is, I bring forth a sample I labeled as The Littlest House74, a short video which shows a four-year old Steven and his mother Sophia enjoying a sunny afternoon on the porch of their old vacation home in Dewford75. It is one of the only glimpses us outsiders have of that idyllic past that so pointedly shaped Steven into the man he is today. The video is four minutes long, and the snippet I want to focus on is only at the very end, but the rest bears at least some importance:
74: The person who first acquired and distributed this video never revealed their identity, nor specified who named the tape.
75: According to a local HOA spokeswoman, this home was sold less than two years after this video was recorded.
75: According to a local HOA spokeswoman, this home was sold less than two years after this video was recorded.
The handheld camera creaks and its lens shakes as who we assume is Steven's father fiddles with it, unaware for a few seconds that he's succeeded in turning it on. A marble floor is the first thing we see, an odd choice of material for a porch. These first few frames have been given what I consider to be undeserved significance by other writers and amateurs, but I shall discuss that –and the significance of stone itself, and of the ground under Steven's feet throughout his life– more in Chapter XIV.
What matters in these first few seconds are the glimpses we catch of the family itself. There is nothing premeditated or unnatural about the scene. Sophia's first choked laugh on the cold tea she was drinking all but destroys the mere notion of this being fabricated.
"What are you doing?" the woman's voice is heard.
A grunt is heard from Joseph once he places the now working camera atop a closed book he must have been reading minutes before. The bottom of the lens catches the rest of the circular white table, then up toward Sophia reclining against her chair, glass in hand. The white railings of the porch frame her head almost perfectly in the middle of the small window it creates onto the beachhead.
Outside the frame, Steven makes a disgruntled noise as he gently hits two small objects against each other, making a hollow, wooden sound. The video does not show what these objects are.
"There. I think it's filming," says Joseph. "Hah! You wouldn't think a friend of mine developed these with how much trouble it's giving me."
Sophia looks up from the camera's lens for the first time, toward Joseph, and raises her free hand to slide a strand of hair behind her ear.
"It's not like you built it yourself. What did you want to film?"
"Figured I might as well use it since I brought it with me. It might be fun to look back on this later," he says. And though the frame doesn't show it, it's clear he's looking at Sophia as well. "And I'm itching for another cup of coffee. This little guy will show me what I missed later."
"Cof…? Joseph…" There's a pause. "You told me–"
"Decaffeinated!" Joseph says in a hurry. "You know it is, you saw me buy it on the gas station on our way here."
"…Did I? I was too busy keeping Steven from the sour candies." She looks down at the boy outside of frame. "But if you say so…"
"Hand on my heart."
"Mhm…" Sophia rests the back of her head on the chair and closes her eyes. "You're lucky it's too nice here to get up and go check."
Joseph laughs. "I am lucky. The luckiest man in the world, eh, Steven?"
Sophia answers with an exhalation, and Steven with a non-committal sound that indicates he hadn't been listening until his name was called out.
"I'll be right back," Joseph says, and walks out of the video for good.
The rest of the sequence until almost the very end is almost Renaissant in its stillness and beauty, the latter mired in the soft autumnal oranges often associated with Capeaer and Fereeirése. If there is any meta-textual significance to the calm silence mother and son share –regardless of this sequence being anything but fictional– then neither of them calls attention to it. The first disturbance to this idyllic peace comes a minute later, when Steven speaks for the first time, still pointedly past the corner of the frame.
"Mah?"
Though infinitesimally faint, hints of a south-western Hoenesse accent are present in young Steven's voice, which will be fully gone later in his life. It only makes sense, as Sophia herself was once a native of those smaller islands. Thus the southern Ma, further addled by his young vocabulary, instead of the more common Mom that children learn as one of their first words. In her article The Phonetics of the Womb, Mary Lemurea observes: "Hearing it once should tell you that the –ah sound at the end of this variation holds a hard to quantify warmth that is simply lacking in the Mom of the common parlance."76 Indeed, it is heard as a question though Steven probably doesn't intend it as such. A primal request, a verbal extending of arms from a child to his mother.
76: Other authors from the RAH (Real Academia Hoeñesa) often chide Lemurea for her fixation in trying to bridge phonetics and motherhood, but she refuses to address such accusations.
"Mh-hmm?" Sophia asks.
"When–when do we go?"
"What do you mean?"
Steven makes a sound in his throat and smacks the two wooden objects again. Sophia is patient, waiting for him to come up with the words. Word, singular.
"House."
Slowly, Sophia sets her glass on her lap, and considers this before answering.
"This is also our house."
"No."
Blunt and to the point, Steven throws away her answer, and Sophia is left silent for another moment.
"Home and house… are different. We have our house in Rustboro. This here is also our house. And they're both home."
"Hmmmh…"
Though the audio is somewhat garbled, the noise Steven makes seems to imply he's upset in some way. Sophia continues to talk.
"Home is where peace is, Steven." There's another pause, followed by another sound of discomfort from Steven. Sophia laughs. "Want some sour candies?"
Steven moves much faster than before. He stands up straight and lets the objects in his hands fall to the floor, and in response Sophia gets out of the chair and picks Steven up into her arms, leaving the frame completely empty, save for a half-finished glass of iced tea.
"First a bit of sweet so the sour doesn't give you stomach cramps. Mwwwah!" An exaggerated kiss is heard and Steven giggles uncontrollably. "There. Let's go see if dad was telling the truth or not, okay?"
Steven's giggles are the last thing we hear before the shadow of Sophia's hand passes over the frame, and it all cuts to black.
Sadly, no other glimpses have fallen into the hands of the public, so we're left with a four and a half minutes that shows so much yet not nearly enough.
Sophia is, of course, central to this snippet, both literally and figuratively. An entire chapter is dedicated to her life and her presence in Steven's life77 but it is her absence that we will only briefly discuss here. For as the date of the video shows, this takes place a mere eight months before Sophia's untimely death. Theorists, most of them surely young, have made attempts in bad faith of finding any sort of clue or foreshadowing to this event in The Littlest House, but to think in such narrow terms is insulting, even degrading in my opinion. Yes, Sophia is quite pale, and yes, her hand does shake for a frame or two when she lifts up her glass, indicating possible muscular weakness, but that is all secondary. It is beside the point.
77:See chapter XII
Because, for better or for worse, what remained of Sophia surely shaped Steven more than her absence could. He was too young at the time. Only the ripples of grief coming from his father instead would ultimately shape him in the years to come, and only through proxy. Though that is not to imply that Steven did not suffer, nor love, his mother deeply. After all, it is her words in this video that seem to have built the foundation of who Steven Stone. Erected the walls around him, if you will.
Not much is known from the following years. If Joseph was in any state of mind to send young Steven to a child psychologist or therapist after Sophia's death, then they have not resurfaced in the years to come. In fact the five years following the event see a Steven that is impossible to distinguish from how he would have grown up regardless, though in this we stray dangerously close to pure speculation.
And though it is not the domain of this chapter to discuss his early years, this quote from Ferrero Montauk's brilliant article The Strata, the Mantle and Everything in Between gives us a sufficient peak into that window of time for now:
Montauk seems to be of the opinion that Sophia's death had much less of an impact on Steven's growth and behavior than what most believe, and while I'm inclined to agree, the opposite perspective bears mentioning. Guillermo Morow raises an interesting point, based on a short study Steven took part in when he was eleven, not of his own volition but as a manner of schoolwork. The following excerpt is of great significance to his argument:
Morow's comment on the study and its significance is succinctly blunt and to the point: "If you really think the mother's death didn't affect the kid much, I'd have you wonder what would've happened if he'd been presented with the sound of a heart monitor. I wager the results would've been interesting."78 And while I disagree with his outlook, I admit to some curiosity.
78: When presented with this hypothetical scenario by a reporter who'd read Morow's article, Steven fell silent and the woman beside him, Glacia of the Elite Four, glared at the reporter chillingly enough to make him drop his microphone.
Lastly, before putting the topic of Sophia aside, I must at least acknowledge Jonathan Berow's musings on the relationship between Steven's love for caves and his love for his mother. "One could almost see the enclosed prison of stone as a replacement for the arms that will never hold him again." Such arguments have unfortunately become too common following the release of The Littlest House, and they reveal an old-fashioned perspective from authors who should know better. Feruvian psychology has long since been discarded by modern academia, even if stubborn authors like Berow remain too attached to it.
Moving on to Joseph, there isn't much strictly about him that hasn't been covered in Chapter IV, but it bears repeating that regardless of the chasm which grew between him and Steven as a result of the man's grief, his affability is something that hasn't changed. It seems, then, a matter of communication that kept father and son at arm's length. Of stubborn stoicism, whether from Joseph or Steven, who can say.
While Joseph has been described even by his harshest critics as "…unfortunately, just a really nice guy" and by his older sister Rixia as "…the most agreeable oaf you'll have the displeasure to meet"79, it seems his emotional availability was never matched by his understanding of Steven, eager though the man may have been to heal the rift separating them. This isn't the first time the clear awkwardness between them has been noted, and it won't be the last. Though time –only helped Steven's maturity as an adult– closed some of the scars, it is painfully clear that what's been lost will never return.
79: Rixia has, on multiple occasions, threatened to 'sic her rabid lawyers' (her words) onto anyone who dared use her to pry into her nephew's life.
Though in no way should this be read as critical of young Steven, his reluctance to share his burdens with others is a habit that has both saved Hoenn and almost doomed him in more than one occasion.
Which is as good an excuse as any to breach the topic at the heart of this chapter, if sparingly, viewed from a specific perspective.
Duty. Responsibility. What other word has been more carelessly thrown around by those who wish to criticize Steven without truly understanding the kind of man he is? Some have been bold enough to accuse him of constantly running away. Maria del Rey, the author of Innocent, Swayed, Explorer, Champion has her own opinion on the matter: "Steven Stone often finds himself with one foot in and one out, trapped beneath the door-sill no matter where he goes." This, while true in my opinion, completely misses the point.
It cannot be emphasized enough that Steven Stone has not once hesitated to put his life on the line for the good of Hoenn, going as far as to stand alone, bloody and victorious against beings of legend who would see his home destroyed. When talking about the duty of a Champion, of Devon's heir, even of any human being, Steven has gone above and beyond, time and time again.
Yet it cannot be denied that a certain shadow stills his feet on occasion, something he fears more than losing his life. It is that, I believe, that is the cause of his meandering ways. It is loss, not of the world but of the self. Of a small part of himself, either given to him on that warm autumn day or discovered on his own years later, like a gem unearthed from stone.
In a perfect world, I believe this doubt, this anxiety, would be absent in Steven. For I am certain it was born not from his own weakness but from others' inquiries and insistence on having him lay his heart bare as they do.
Perhaps Keiler Ross' A Sonata of Blues can better illustrate the point: "Each heart has a home of its own". For Steven Stone, this home is not a physical place, it is not a person nor a goal nor an aspiration. It just happens to be wherever he finds himself as himself. Better elaborated, of course, through Keiler Ross' later expansion on that first quote: "When we say 'my heart beats for you' we don't expect the other person to demand we slice our chest open, open our ribs and show them". In the same vein, is it not unreasonable to demand complete closeness and understanding of one's being in exchange for love?
This would be less of a problem were Steven's home of the soul a house and not a maze. Houses are built to be lived in, and while the famous myth of the minotaur tells us that mazes are no different, they supposedly exist to be 'solved' as well80. Though in this case, one would go about solving the maze the same way someone would 'solve' the labyrinth of roots beneath a tree by uprooting it.
80: The comparison between Steven and the mythical inhabitant of the labyrinth has been used multiple times, popularized by Marcy Z. Bolenod's The Twist of the Heart.
And make no mistake, both the riddle of his uncertainty and that of true self are closely linked to one another. It's simply not a riddle that's meant to be solved. At least not without Steven's consent, and so we are left with only speculations, hints dug up from around the roots, trying our best not to disturb them.
Funnily enough it's Steven's close friend and confidant Wallace who gives us a solution, nay, a perspective, into how Steven's mind parses this dilemma. The quote is taken from a radio show Wallace attended shortly after taking the mantle of Champion, and while Steven's name is never spoken by him during the interview, it's clear from the slight heat in his voice that the reporter's previous digs at his friend have been weighing heavily in his mind. Yet always tactful and understanding of the way his words can be misconstrued, he wraps his frustrations into a completely separate anecdote:
Steven Stone is one of only two Champions in recent times to have willingly step down from his post instead of surrendering it to another trainer. The controversy of this decision still chases him to this day, but I believe Wallace's statement above sums the whole thing up better than anything else could, and as such this is where this line of thinking will cease.
Again, family resurfaces. This time, an interpretation of the word unique to Steven Stone, same as with 'home'. Wallace is undoubtedly the closest person to him, the one to venture the deepest into that maze, and it is precisely because Wallace cares not for intruding, but for simply existing within it, that he's been allowed to make it so far in the first place.
The relationship between the two has been, like so many things in Steven's life, willfully misconstrued by authors and spokespeople too mired in the confines of traditional psychology and sociology. In prescriptivism and Sordellian thinking, all which tries to force a lens of 'tradition' and 'normalcy' onto that which possesses nothing of the sort. Rumors, questions and –in the worst of cases– accusations have been raised regarding the nature of their bond, but just as Steven refuses to have his true self pinned down by others' expectations, he just as expertly avoids the desperate clutches of those who cannot fathom a way of being that doesn't line up with the frames through which they see the world.
At this point, reporters and interviewers have grown tired of asking, as both men have perfected their own methods for brushing them aside. After all, they've already answered said questions once each. It is not their problem if others cannot accept their answers, nor the reality of a bond that cannot be pinned down by simple terms like 'romantic' or 'platonic'. Once again, Wallace's own words cut to the heart of the matter:
Ex-sailor, current Elite Four member and very often misquoted Drake was once recorded saying "If you don't understand the difference between house and home then I have nothing further to say to you". Drake –as well as the other three Elite Four members– are known to be very close to Steven, even following him stepping down as Champion, so it stands to reason they would understand his circumstances better than most. The Ever Grande League headquarters were, after all, Steven's house –perhaps even his home– for six long years, and those people were his family. Yet traces of it must remain within him even after leaving, such is the core of his character.
Steven Stone has the soul of a nomad, sanded down over the years by the burden of responsibility weighing on his shoulders. Yet not once did he ever let that burden change him. And as all those who knew him can testify, never did he give anything less than his all when duty came knocking at his door and the waters of catastrophe came seeping in, in this case both literally and metaphorically.
In conclusion for this chapter, I wish to highlight what might be the most formative time in Steven's life, perhaps only second to those idyllic four minutes of footage; his trainer journey. For us, a short window of time of which we know very little, but for Steven a long road which finished the job that his mother had started, and that which slipped from his father's fingers.
The polishing of the diamond in the rough that was Steven Stone, and the discovery –perhaps accidental– of what home truly meant to him.
We count with only a few testimonies from people who knew him at the time, most of them Gym leaders and other League members, all of which refuse to speak on the matter without Steven's consent.
Luckily, there is one that will serve our purposes just fine. Shelley Kraptiks, renowned archaeological journalist, had a chance meeting with a certain self-proclaimed 'relic hunter' named Dusty, who just happened to run into Steven during his trainer journey, while both of them were attempting to cross the desert north of Route 111. According to Dusty, the two encountered each other by happenstance and traveled together for almost a full hour before a sudden sandstorm forcefully separated them. Around twenty minutes later, when the storm finally dissipated, Dusty found himself before a set of old, crumbling ruins, quickly sinking into the shifting sands.
What happened after is best put by Dusty himself. The following excerpt from Kraptiks' interview with him will serve as this chapter's conclusion:
81: Kraptiks is the one at fault here. Records from his next Gym battle in Lavaridge show that he was days away from turning nineteen.82
82: We editors would like to point out that Mr. Derosa appears to be mistaken. That record was of Steven's first fight, which ended in a loss for him. He challenged the gym again a week later, after turning nineteen and having braved the desert. 83
83: [Mr. Derosa's response has been removed to conform with local and international censorship laws regarding heavy profanity in literature.]
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