#the nemesis answers

[nemesis-is-my-middle-name]

So I was just watching someone run through PLA and I noticed something. Laventon says the village has only been around 2 years. In OOP, ingos been there literally twice the amount of time as these guys!!!! The “outsiders” hypocrisy has it’s more obvious points but like come on kamado and Beni wtf. You’re not old enough to even be trying to run a HOA on hisui, telling the clans their oversized bidoof aren’t on the approved list of decorations.

LMFAO the phrasing on this is killing me

yeah the age of jubilife is one of those things that i feel like i have to retcon to some degree, bc the idea that a structure like galaxy hall went up two years after the first group landed is. ridiculous. i mean even more ridiculous than the existence of galaxy hall to start with. REGARDLESS THOUGH i do think ingo still predates them by a fairly decent length of time which, YEAH, they really do not have any leg to stand on complaining about outsiders or trying to decide how to do things whkwjhwjk. not that that's stopping them!!

#the nemesis speaks #the nemesis answers #trudivination #jailbirds au #this isn't to mention the fact that since ingo DID arrive before them #his acceptance into the clan and eventually as warden very likely had a foot-in-the-door effect for the galaxy team later #just proving that ppl from outside the clan COULD potentially be helpful and respectful #which made a lot of pearl more open to the galaxy team's request for land bc well maybe they'll be like him? #since galaxy relies entirely on the clans for permission to remain in hisui this is fairly majorly important #like. just to add that to the list of ''ppl who maybe would not be here if it weren't for ingo'' #uh. sorry i got distracted what were we saying

[nemesis-is-my-middle-name]

Ive actually seen someone say that the new game is most likely based on the real historical event of the renovation of paris, which happened in the 1850s. It seems weird with the holographic stuff, but on the other hand the trailer does show like. Architect plans. So ig we'll see wether it really is in the future or not

see that does sound reasonable & in line with my original instincts, but I’m hesitant to fully commit to it bc last time someone said “oh yeah this is 19c-ish” the game came out and it was set in fucking. mostly-forgotten legends when most of the region’s historical structures didn’t even Exist yet. on the other hand. i would love for it to be set a little bit later than the 50s even bc a pokemon version of the art revolution happening in Paris around that time would actually be so fun

#the nemesis speaks #the nemesis answers #jidem

[nemesis-is-my-middle-name]

Well about the perception of Volo vs Kamado thing, and why more people don’t hate Volo, I have my own reflections (pretty privilege is absolutely a factor tho let’s be real 😂)

Everyone growing up has at least one story of an adult being super unfair to you, even though you were doing everything right. Their own biases and experiences could be understood later once you were older and calmer reflecting back on the incident, like a teacher who snapped at you maybe had a super long day of wrangling hundreds of children. But we never forget how it feels in that moment to have those who should be guiding us be unfair and seemingly unreasonable. So naturally that’s gonna hurt when you get kamado being paranoid.

Volo on the other hand is just absolutely delightful I’m sorry maybe if Kamado put on a silly outfit and hair for his boss battle instead of plate mail he’d have more art. Like you said Volos betrayal is one and done really, he acts like a theater kid and then dips. You have to keep seeing kamado being in charge in the game after his blunders for a while which can rub people the wrong way. (Also this is maybe just me but I never trusted Volo just like I never trusted Cynthia as a kid, and finding out he was evil was a great moment of vindication I CANT be the only one who experienced this)

TLDR we see unfairness way more than we see someone betray us while making their hair like a god horse

well, you heard them, kamado. time to go get the jester outfit. cmon chop chop it's to redeem your image

yeah, the point abt getting burned by adults in authority is also very fair. most of us were not scarred for life by theater kid antics lol. the other thing abt it is that often those same adults never really face any consequences. you were always just expected to move on, suck it up etc. cause that's life as a kid right. sometimes ppl will use their power over you just to flex their limited authority, or to vent whatever's going on in their home life, and this doesn't really stop when you grow up it's just that when you're a kid basically every adult has that authority position. so it's just expected that there's nothing you can do. i mean unless you decide to be the karmic force of justice in your own life by being the most stubborn bitch of a child to walk the earth. not that i would know anything about that cough

uh anyway. the thing is the thing btwn you and kamado isn't about about child vs adult. you're more or less considered an adult yourself by jubilife, albeit a rather young and more importantly low ranking one. like we've said (a million times already lol) kamado's not doing it just to grasp at a sense of control, he's reacting to what he perceives as a very real threat to his village (and also because the writers clocked him in the face with the idiot ball for plot advancement reasons lbr).

and the thing is kamado DOES, kind of, face consequences and own up to his mistakes by the end of the game. also after the red sky event he's like, REALLY nice to you lol. not just briefly either! imo you can tell that he sincerely respects you and regrets his actions in the red sky. go look at his late game quotes-

"Perhaps you are a divine being yourself, sent to bring us gifts from above... "I know I've no right to say this... But we are truly fortunate to have been able to count you among the Survey Corps' ranks. If you had not joined us, we would have fallen on Mount Coronet. We would have lost our home. We would have lost our future." "I'm grateful to you for showing me what a heartening presence Pokémon can be. We must spar again sometime!" "<player>, forgive me for taking so much of your time [telling you about the Galaxy name.] Please accept this as a sort of apology."

like he's trying to make up for the way they were treated earlier and give them the proper treatment they're owed for all their help.

idk i don't have a good way to conclude this i guess. i just think he's a cool character

#the nemesis speaks #the nemesis answers #trudivination #pla analysis #i should really be tagging these kamado posts #but with what ugh #kamado apologist hours #that's what i tagged a previous one with i think. sure good nuff #i say the idiot ball thing bc like #kamado's PERCEPTION was semi reasonable but his ACTIONS kind of weren't #but it's also kind of unreasonable for such a seemingly competent person to get that straw-graspy that fast #like they purely did his character dirty bc it was the easiest way to get you to follow volo to cogita's house #imo at least. you (general you) may disagree. there's space to make an argument there

[nemesis-is-my-middle-name]

And when they're so unnaturally perfect at beating the monstrously powerful nobles, well, is it any wonder that Kamado starts to look at them and question? With every passing noble, with every report of how bizarrely easy the protag defeated them, it looks more and more suspicious. They're supposedly 15, and yet they breeze through fights with some of the most powerful Pokémon in Hisui? That's weird, especially in top of all their other weirdness. It's unnatural. It looks like they're cheating, like they know the secret code to beating these things... or maybe like they're the ones controlling it, so of course nothing ever hits them. He wants the frenzies quelled so he keeps sending them, but he doesn't trust them and when the red sky comes, he knows the protag is capable of dangerous, impossible things. Even when he attempts to apologize, in the back of his mind he feels the hair raising, insidious fear linger. That kid's not right. It probably isn't even a kid. And now he knows it can even control gods.

Oh god, that's horrifying. The idea that whenever they get just a bit too hurt than they think the Galaxy Team will allow, they just give up and let whatever it is kill them. Or if it's from fall damage and they break a leg, they hobble to the nearest aggressive Pokémon, gritting their teeth through the agony because they know it'll all be over soon. That's just. Wow. How messed up is their sense of self-preservation by the time they get to Ingo, if for months they've made the choice to die over things that wouldn't kill them, because until that point they didn't think it affected anyone but them and dying was faster and less painful than waiting to heal? How do you even begin to explain that to the person whose life you're ruining every time you do that?

And even if they did manage to tell him, or warn him, you're right that he's not just going to be okay with them dying over and over, for any reason. I think the only two options at that point are let Ingo help them fight the rest of the nobles and later the frenzied god, or hope that he becomes too dissociated to do much of anything and try to get it over quick. Yeah this kid has maybe permanently fucked him up, but there's no way he's just going to let them keep doing it alone, and if they try to sneak out to do it alone they better hope they get a great run on the first attempt because he's gonna notice the day resetting.

For bonus fridge horror from the protag, if you combine the two time loop ideas, at some point after they get home they learn that it wasn't just Ingo they were taking for a ride over and over, Emmet was getting yanked back too. In Emmet's case, on one hand it's a relief to know that it wasn't because his brother was dying twenty times in a row at multiple points over the past however long, but on the other, it's not a comfort at all to know it was instead a child who was dying that whole time

re: technically-unnecessary deaths, also on my mind: aren't there some things in the main story of pla that could theoretically be avoided, or done better, if you had the power of foresight and the ability to actually effect change? like growlithe's kidnapping, it works out fine in the end, but if the protag doesn't know that, just knows that palina's distraught and these bandits have some unspecified nefarious scheme involving the pup... what's the better way, chasing after them to firespit island and maybe being too late to stop whatever's going to happen... or excusing yourself for a moment, throwing yourself at the nearest alpha, and coming back prepared to stop it ever happening in the first place? or arezu's hiding lilligant's frenzy, trying to do everything herself and getting hurt for it. hell, even before you properly start the noble questline, there's all those people who get mortally wounded and possibly die trying to fight kleavor. if only protag could make it there before they do, that would be so many people saved. and if they're better, if they're faster, they could make it to the mirelands before ursaluna even gets pseudo-frenzied by lilligant. how perfect is good enough? when can they decide to settle for it?

...but of course, the more they use that knowledge, these things they shouldn't be able to know, the more suspicious kamado gets. the more suspicious everyone gets, really. sure, they saved the day and all, but how did they even know the day needed saving? suddenly kamado's claims that they're somehow linked to or causing the rift don't seem nearly so far-fetched, because if they weren't causing it, how could they predict it with such ease? it's a pretty delicate balancing act they've gotta do. not to mention that if it is only the single day they can reset over, there are gonna be some things that they can't go back and fix because it happened too long ago. which with the rest of everything, i feel would just add to their guilt and their determination to make every day count, make it perfect. i can imagine a really fucked up scenario of them essentially arguing/bargaining with ingo to be allowed to die, because no really, this time is important enough. this time i really do need to try again.

and also, how bad would it fuck you up mentally if not only did you have to die over and over and over—but you were also conditioning yourself that pain means death, always. that it doesn't matter if you escape with your life—all that means is you have to finish the job by yourself. would they stop fearing any kind of injury? or do they become incredibly phobic of it? or does it vary depending on the day. or on the scenario. they go into noble fights expecting to die, but are reflexively terrified of banal survey work because worse than dying, what if something breaks their leg but doesn't kill them? they tell ingo they're used to it. never mind that's not always true. it should be. it's only their fault it isn't-

and then if emmet's also experiencing this?? and also has NO explanation as to why?? and at least i imagine with ingo his day-to-day is already repetitive enough that he can sometimes just not look at the date and pretend everything's proceeding normally (not that ingo's situation is actually any better, it just sucks differently and is easier to dissociate your way through.) with emmet there's really no way for him to not be conscious of the fact that he's done fifty goddamn tuesdays in a row. boss emmet has suddenly become really inconsistent about showing up to work, which is very unusual, and everyone figures it's bc of ingo disappearing, but actually it's bc this is July 18th #108 (protag was fighting lilligant and she was really hard) and he has no way of knowing whether there's gonna be a #109 or not, and he's so fucking sick of fixing the same three problems over and over so he is Taking The Day Off. bye. by the way the fault you're running into is with the battery, and you should put two extra people on red line because there's going to be a bigger than anticipated crowd. ok, bye, he's going to chargestone cave to scream now.

#the nemesis speaks #the nemesis answers #anonymous #pokefic pitch #timeloop protag

[nemesis-is-my-middle-name]

One of the strangest takes I've seen is that Ingo and Emmet would somehow not know anything about pokemon from regions outside of Unova, even pre-pla amnesia. Like they're battle facility heads, they must get a huge variety showing up all the time, from tourists if nothing else. But even outside of that they just don't seem like the type of guys who would be so... insular, with their knowledge. Just because they only have Unovan pokemon on their bw/bw2 teams doesn't mean they aren't familiar with others. Like I said, weird take that I've somehow seen a number of times lately from different sources and I'm not entirely sure why

you see an ask open with "one of the strangest takes i've seen" and you know it's gonna be a wild ride. anyways EH??

i mean... the one angle i kind of understand it from is maybe, not wanting to make them OP? ingo in particular, i do kind of see the impulse to nerf his encyclopedic pokemon knowledge bc it does make him very uh. idk how to term it exactly. nobody else in hisui can do that and it gives him a wild advantage over everyone else in battle. which is how it should be! but i think this stems from a wider issue of fandom being unwilling to make their characters like... too skilled at anything? maybe this is a thing i am imagining, but i do feel like it's a recurring thing that people shy away from just having their favs BE impressive and respect-worthy in their fields. like they're overcorrecting from having people complain about mary sue-ness or something.

regardless tho this is a dumbass take!! like, are they probably more familiar with the intricacies and mannerisms and needs of the pokemon they handle regularly, like their teams or their depot agents' teams? yeah. they probably couldn't tell you the specific dietary and social needs of a tinkatink off the top of their heads. but like. there are people In The Real World who have an encyclopedic knowledge of every pokemon's types and at least a general expectation of their stats and dex entries. it's not even a difficult thing to acquire you've just gotta be a nerd about it for long enough. and these guys Live in pokemon land and yeah, WOULD have actual practical experience from battling tourists and anyone who had pokemon from elsewhere in the world.

besides, this is not just a job but a PASSION to them. they run the battle subway! they adore pokemon and battling! you think in at least some of their off time they're not, like, watching gym match recordings? reading up on the current move meta & new developments? fucking, swapping stories with the facility heads of other regions?? fuckouttahere. you underestimate the power of a special interest.

but yeah tho, the thing i said before, that would be my observer's take on it. fandom just has this weird aversion towards making their characters too powerful/skilled/etc at anything. it's dumb. there is, and i say this as a deeply ace person, nothing sexier than watching someone be really really good at the thing they are good at. COMPETENCY PLEASE.

#the nemesis speaks #the nemesis answers #anonymous #pla analysis #i spose i would appreciate second takes on this #like is this just a me thing? am i the only one who feels like this is a trend? #or even is this a more widely discussed thing/someone has a better guess as to where it started #i DO feel like there was pushback against it (OP characters) a while ago that has sort of lingered in an unfortunate way #like... yes. let them fail. but also let them succeed...?

[nemesis-is-my-middle-name]

It has been such an interesting ride seeing different people's INTENSE emotions toward Volo and Kamado both good and bad. It shocked me so much how many opinions people had about them. When I'm playing an rp game I'm always kind of a go with the flow person who only really cares about npcs after all is said and done(with rare exceptions) because my brain can't balance story and "the grind" at the same time and MAN was I grinding. The story analysis is always a separate ordeal with me upon a replay or me watching someone I know play through it. So if you want the pov of a main character who literally could not read the room or intentions(false or otherwise) that's me.

So my first playthrough perceptions of Kamado and Volo were "Big boss who gives my boss big progression missions to give me so I can go to new areas" and "wait who are you? Bro, why are you even here? Stop following me. I literally don't care!... Who are you again?" respectively.

And when shit hit the fan my response to Kamado was "Ok? It will suck to not be able to change my hair, but I literally have only been in my room like once to change my eye color. :/ So your loss I guess."

With Volo it was like "oh it's this guy again. *reads name I forgot* Volo, my dude, why are you like everywhere? I don't want to buy your shit." Then he proceeds to kick my ass. That got my attention at least. <- person who didn't play gen 4 and didn't know Cynthia outside of art.

qkjqhq ok it is very funny to imagine a protag who was VERY deep into the arceus-mission grind-out-these-quests (since the quest system is like. literally in-game on your arc phone) and did not even register anything else going on. ok yeah sure whatever kamado can you stop talking uhh (squints) vo.. volo? what do you need. something something plate? hang on let me check to see if my god phone approves of- oh look beep beep a quest objective. yeah sure i can do that let's get a move on

anyway i think we are sort of polar opposites in this regard bc i. can't NOT think abt my protag and the story while playing any game. i'm the rp build person it's my one weakness. in my first (fully blind) pla runthrough i picked up the baneful fox mask and decided i was playing a straight-up zorua who managed to con their way into jubilife by pretending to be a very weird child (love ya wish <3) and then got VERY attached to everyone including kamado during the course of the story. second and third (current) runs were just akari and rei the default protags. i guess this maybe isn't that surprising considering i also just admitted to trying to keep my protag on a decent sleep schedule. it's called immersion

#the nemesis speaks #the nemesis answers #dargonics #wish was so desperate for kamado's approval & also prone to hiding behind him when unfamiliar ppl showed up (pack leader!) #anyway what i'm also thinking abt is trying to feed this poor child. in rp. obviously they won't let me actually eat #but there's food items i could make and then give to my pokemon or throw out #but like kid you can't just eat some potato mochi once every three days and call it good!! not with all that work you're doing!! #IMMERSIVE GAMEPLAY #wish protag

[nemesis-is-my-middle-name]

I Love the idea that the Pearl Clan just sort of adores Ingo at this point. Yeah yeah suspicious of strangers and all that, but to them Ingo isn't a stranger anymore, he's one of them. The Pearl Clan probably showed him off as their new Warden very smugly. "Oh, you have Wardens that have, like, one pokemon to their name? Well our new Warden is so fucking good with these monstrously powerful beasts that he has six, and they're all perfectly behaved and fully evolved. Our Warden is way cooler and more powerful than all of yours combined, so take that, losers. Oh and, by the way? Yeah, Almighty Sinnoh gave him to us, so clearly we have the real god. Sucks to suck."

It definitely helps that Ingo is a very nice, polite man who just wants to be helpful, in a place where help is sorely needed. His team was likely also very helpful, in terms of gathering stuff. I mean, they have their kids out there gathering stuff, and it's hard to the point of weariness; there's no way he wouldn't try to use all the tools he has to do some of the harder stuff. That must mean a lot to people who have so little and are struggling to survive that much. They showed him kindness, or at least decency, by letting him stay at first despite the fact that it very clearly would have been a strain on their limited resources, and he repaid that tenfold, not even out of obligation or because he felt he owed them but just because he's a good person who genuinely wants to help. He stopped being a stranger when he put so much work into helping them survive, despite the danger to himself and the fact he really didn't have to. And now he's the Warden to their resident supermodel, so he's kind of a local celebrity. (Perhaps in the back of his mind he's like, 'hmm, this feels familiar? But as usual, it feels hollow, like I'm missing the most important part.')

YEAH!!! ingo truly had 0 ulterior motives. he wasn't even in it to like, repay them, or get them to like him more, he was very obviously and very genuinely just like. determined to improve everyone's lives. and +++ this if you also think he was like, the first person in A While to be able to talk lady sneasler into Doing Her Job. especially b/c of the other thing i was saying abt how difficult it is to get in and out of the icelands without her help. AND +++this if you also think that right now, specifically is a very difficult time for the pearl clan, which i do. an npc in jubilife has a line about the protag like “You fall right out of nowhere and start setting things right when they’re falling apart… You’re like the hero in some sort of play!” but that really is what ingo did huh.

anyway i already said this but now i cannot stop thinking abt the idea that ingo trains misc. pokemon specifically to drop them off at the pearl clan settlement so they can help out. they can never predict what it's gonna be either. sometimes it's a gligar. sometimes it's one of lady sneasler's kits that had to be hand raised and now doesn't want to leave by itself. sometimes it's an ALPHA ELECTABUZZ. his current goal is to get them some more fire types or fire move users, so they have more than just irida's flareon and whenever palina comes up and brings growlithe, but it's so hard to find ones that can tolerate the cold well.

#the nemesis speaks #the nemesis answers #anonymous #pla analysis #? #the electabuzz was probably for settlement defense since allegedly they're normally reliant on avalugg who's pretty sedentary #related to the idea that ingo has a lot more like. befriended pokes from doing warden duties. his in game team are just his closest partner #see also: the alphas he fights you with #which are probably not ''alphas'' in the sense of frenzied but probably ARE ex-alphas loyal bc of the curing #tbf he is used to a team of 11...

[nemesis-is-my-middle-name]

One of the things I find most tragic about oop is the loss of Ingo and Irida's relationship. She clearly really likes and respects him, she values his advice and took his lessons to heart, she valued him as a friend and a mentor. But she was talked into making a very stupid decision that she regrets deeply, and that she is trying very hard not to regret, because she doesn't want to admit to herself that she betrayed someone who trusted her. I think it's easy to believe that she's a bad person for her disastrous choice, but she's also very young, and personally I think it's actually worse that she's not a bad person with malicious or apathetic intent, because it's very human that a moment of weakness, an older adult taking advantage of her insecurities and fear, was all it took to hurt someone she cares about and ruin their entire relationship. It's so scary how easy it is for people to believe conspiracy theories, when the person telling it is so confident and tells it in a way that seems rational and compelling. And it does often hurt irl relationships. So it's all just very sad to me. Ingo doesn't begrudge her yet, and Irida hasn't admitted just how badly she messed up, but slowly they seem to both be getting there. And once they do, even if they rebuild what they lost, it's going to haunt her forever.

<33333 YEAH YEAH YEAH!!

genuinely what i wanna get across with oop is that yeah, irida fucked up, but that was a position she never should have been in in the first place. several different characters can point out that irida has a habit of falling back on other peoples' judgement when she's unsure of herself, without really trying to make a decision on her own—which is really not something you can blame her for! because she is barely not a child and has been thrust into this extremely daunting position of leadership, of course she looks to any guidance she can find that she thinks she can justify taking. the problem is the fact that those people aren't leading, and aren't the ones taking responsibility—she is. and then on top of that, with kamado, it was not only him but also calaba—these two people she saw as much more experienced and capable than herself, both in agreement about this decision. really, of course she fell for it. of course she believed kamado when he sounded so certain.

i guess it's also worth saying that all of this is absolutely something that ingo is very aware of. not the exact circumstances of her conversation w/ kamado, but her general capabilities and shortcomings as a leader. so he's probably going to have a difficult time really blaming entirely and only her for it, since like... people could have seen this coming. it wouldn't be fair to her to hold her responsible for all the ways other people have failed her over the years.

...of course, also, right now neither of them know what the real stakes of that decision were. finding out the end of what kamado was planning re: the prisoners might change ingo's mood just a little bit

#the nemesis speaks #the nemesis answers #anonymous #jailbirds au #WAH THIS MADE ME SO HAPPY... YEAH YOU GET THEM YEAH

[nemesis-is-my-middle-name]

re: beni making more than just the mochi at the wallflower - where is he even GETTING all these potatoes? they haven't even built a field yet and when they do they're growing apricorns for me (don't judge. I like me my feather balls, have negative aiming skills, and got bored of throwing pokemon at trees like two areas in :p)

maybe that npc who says he gathers his own ingredients was speaking very literally. maybe that one old man is hauling back metric tons of sootfoot roots THROUGH the highlands fieldlands and back to jubilife all by himself with uh. ninja powers.

fr though it's just not. a sustainable model for feeding all these ppl. the AMOUNT you would need to drag back every day! or the trading you'd need to do constantly for it. no wonder beni's always trying to buy them off you constantly like "oh nooo i hope i have enough for tonight" bro just LEARN A SECOND RECIPE. they can't be living like this. there are so many fieldlands native berries. mushrooms. honey. assorted veggies and herbs. various edible-looking pokemon assuming there is a single person in jubilife capable of facing down against the fearsome magikarp in a battle. fucking RICE?? the cake lure bases are right there. you help invent two new recipes as part of sidequests and NEITHER ONE involves potatoes. eat some goddamn pickles why don't you.

#the nemesis speaks #the nemesis answers #answrs #pla analysis #like sootfoot roots aren't THE most expensive ingredient but they are. not the most cost effective either. #cake lure bases are a third of the cost and serve the same function of being easy carbs #most of the other lure ingredients are cheaper too. mushrooms? beans? #ok comedic delivery of righteous but pointless anger over

[nemesis-is-my-middle-name]

As a subway boss, his charisma stats are stacked. His posture is stooped but he acts with such an air of easy, subconscious confidence that ppl are like 'oh well I guess he's supposed to be here after all'. Plus he's very polite. He is that one meme of "no pets! Well okay, I will allow him because he looks very polite."

THIS IS WHAT I'M SAYIIIIIING!! you get iiiiit!! actually ive been rotating this a bunch in the background lol. bc it Really Is that like. it's not just that he's nice, though that helps a lot—he's a subway boss!! he is very well accustomed to like, handling people, in a variety of situations. from guiding/ordering people who are under his command, to calmly and professionally talking down/reasoning with/reassuring/etc people who he has very little to do with outside of the fact that they're a passenger on the train and are being loud and disruptive/having a really bad day/poorly controlling their pokemon/etc. it's His Job.

and while it might be slightly undercut in hisui by sort of (waves hand generally) all of the rift bullshit fucking with his head and making him generally less sure of himself, it IS a thing that i think still comes through without him even really realizing it's happening.

#the nemesis speaks #the nemesis answers #anonymous #pla analysis #this is part of why i think sheperd joy is such a good last name for him and emmet tbh #like i do think he steps very easily into a sort of. leadership/guidance role. if that's a void that needs filling #he's not the sort of person who DESIRES authority it's just a skill he happens to have grinded to p high levels via subway boss practice #this is something that came across more in earlier drafts of oop ch10 i think #but there he's like. even though. and partially BECAUSE he's not actually like really present #he's also fully not even trying to rein in the Listen Up Here's What We're Doing mode #even akari notes that he can get people to fucking JUMP when he says to #anyway. probably enough rambling. you get the picture. #we were talking abt ingo but i think emmet also has essentially this skill just. a very different brand of it #this probably doesn't need too much explaining to yall i mean youve seen it #you wanna talk about easy confidence well there you go

[nemesis-is-my-middle-name]

The discussion about the mistrust of the player character in PLA had me thinking a bit about this whole "outsider to the outsiders" thing going on.

While the player character is very innocent and not deserving of the shunning, I think people tend to interpret the betrayal as a sign that the village(of outsiders) doesn't like outsiders at all which is obviously not the case. They are literal refugees, traders, farmers, academics, etc from all around and they are very much trying to reach out and incorporate the clans into their relations. So that's not why they turn on you.

It's more of your standard rumor mill witch trial born from you falling from the sky(where the spooky rift is!) in a big showy spectacle. Then having strange clothes and an almost inhuman ease with pokemon that even the experts who have been training and studying with them cannot fathom. Now these new problems have started and the magical sky person is the only one who can fix it! Witchcraft!

YES EXACTLY!!! oooooh this ask made me so excited when i saw it in my inbox you have no idea. like, an argument can be made that the clans are isolationist, especially wrt each other (and early dialogue abt mai also suggests that jubilife and the clans are also still relatively remote but that's off topic), but by nature jubilife can't be the same way. kamado even self-describes the galaxy team as a "group of outsiders" in hisui. a security corps guard jokingly refers to them as the "Ragtag Expedition Team." so to say that they're fearful of strangers, or don't easily accept them, is clearly wrong.

not only that, but there's a list of galaxy team principles framed in the player's house, and one of them is "Those who are weaker must be helped." so like, while kamado & other people in the team tend to be rather harsh about everyone paying their due, it's really not a matter of like, disliking new people in the team, y'know? it's more about the fact that survival in hisui is difficult, and they're constantly fighting an uphill battle to sustain everyone, so there really is basically no wiggle room for anyone to not contribute whatever they're able to, which is something that's reiterated over and over in the early game. (also there's like, a considerable amount of old/older people in the village, which to my understanding is fairly unusual for this kind of project since it demands so much physical labor under trying conditions, so presumably that also contributes to the sense that everyone's jumping on this strong able-bodied young person. and also i'm curious about the reasons behind that demographic being so well-represented. this is me getting sidetracked that's just a thing i've been wondering about.)

anyway yeah. the reason ppl are distrustful of you is that you FELL OUT OF THE SKY. you have no past but some ambiguous link to the crack in reality which people already see as some kind of bad omen or worse. and then you're like, instantly all buddy-buddy with these creatures that most people not in the survey or security corps are scared shitless of, to the point of being terrified to leave the safety of the village for fear of encountering any. like that's the other thing to me is that your talent with pokemon isn't just seen as weird, to people already scared of them it would probably be actively really intimidating. especially since you don't have the credentials of prior training, like zisu and the rest of the security/survey corps do! they're just taking it on faith that you do know what you're doing. even if you're very nice and helpful, the more fearful jubilife people would probably see you as a passive threat to the village on account of all those weapons of mass destruction you're casually carrying around in your back pocket that may or may not even be under your proper control.

& then like you said, the rumor mill has its way with you, compounded by the situation with the nobles, and by the red sky event, i mean, i don't think most of the village hates you. not after you've done so many fetch quests for all of them whwjkwhk. it's just that they're quietly sort of afraid of you, which is not at all an emotion negated by how helpful you've been. and that's why you get kicked out.

#the nemesis speaks #the nemesis answers #dargonics #pla analysis #oof sorry this one got really long #you just uh. yeah. yeah!! you get it!! #like again it's not that ppl don't LIKE the protag. i think ppl like you (or if not that at least what you do for jubilife) #they just also think you're intimidating and a little scary. y'know bc of the sky hole and the weird pokemon soul bond and all. #and THAT is why kamado kicks you out and it's ultimately only the survey/security corps that give you real help #(bc they know you well enough by that point not to fall for the rumors/hearsay abt you) #kamado apologist hours

[nemesis-is-my-middle-name]

You know how you hc that the twins battle each other all the time, and thus are basically their hardest opponents? That post you made about Ingo's brutal Path of Solitude made me desperately want Ingo and Emmet challenging each other to various versions, sometimes with Ingo having the upperhand like in the game, sometimes with Emmet making Ingo use a wurmple against a staraptor. And sometimes, for fun, they even make it a double battle. They make the most buff pokemon in existence and everyone is sufficiently terrified

they so would frfrfr. wait this reminds me i had two sort of mutually exclusive path of solitude points i wanted to make in the same post i'm just gonna do it here hang on

1) ingo was really like, here's a new style of battle challenge i'm introducing that's literally not done anywhere else even in the future, i invented it myself. the challenge is you have one single pokemon and you have to face a very difficult opponent and you're not allowed any other help than what you go in with and you're all alone forever. this is based on absolutely nothing at all and was inspired by nothing. i am fine.

2) path of solitude is really like turbo single battles honestly like of course the guy who is The Single Battles One came up with this. what do you think emmet would have done if he was here instead. would he be like ok pick a pokemon and i'm giving you an entirely random partner. no planning beforehand gotta figure it out when you open the pokeball and we start the battle. dwi.

#the nemesis speaks #the nemesis answers #anonymous #pla analysis #i do have Feelings about path of solitude though if i think abt it too much #like i said it in that first point but i said it goofy but i do really mean it. #even the name is kind of insane. Path of Solitude. cmon. #he got the chance to make up a battle challenge and he said let's make it about being alone by yourself with nobody around to help #but also. i think it is also partially about him dialing up the unique single battle challenge up to 11 #since he does see singles as a unique challenge. like the default battle style is multis. obvi. his preference for singles is like a choice #he likes the difficulty of negotiating a potentially very adverse battle situation with only the limited toolset of a single partner #and path of solitude is that But More #like i said kind of mutually exclusive but i mean them both simultaneously ok. #anyway. yeah. #ACTUALLY can you imagine ingo introducing emmet to the concept and he describes it and emmet's like yeah this seems fun #like it's a big investment in misc pokemon opponents but it's a cool challenge #so like what strength level were you thinking- #and ingo's like oh idk maybe like 80 #and emmet's like okay. hm. maybe we dial it back just a tiiiiny bit

[nemesis-is-my-middle-name]

Y'know, I really like that Akari in oop is mostly a researcher and just kind of mid at battling. It's refreshing! And it makes a lot of sense if we consider that arceus prob just wanted the pokedex to begin with, and didn't realize there'd be a crisis that she needed to deal with. Even with its ability to yoink her from the future, I still think that if it had known its chosen human was going to immediately be met with frenzied nobles that it'd have warned her about that rather than just saying it wanted a catalog of its creations. Forewarned is forearmed after all. It's always just seemed out of place for it to not say anything about the impending fights for their life if it knew. So Akari being a very average, albeit modern pokemon trainer whose interests lie elsewhere is pretty neat! I also think it'd be kind of funny if arceus just kind of picked her at random. It knew it wanted from the future + interested in pokemon research and spun the lotto wheel. Didn't specify when in the future, didn't specify age, didn't specify battling experience, just got her mostly by chance. I think that since palkia and dialga are specifically in charge of space and time that they're able to be precise, while arceus only has a broad, but narrow reach. It can do stuff to manipulate time and space, but not very well. Anyway, got a little lost in the weeds there, but yeah I like that she's just Some Kid. It's a good contrast to Rei, who starts off being pretty garbage at battling, and Ingo and Emmet who are Very, Very Good at what they do. These kids need protection, and luckily they have some adults who are willing and able to provide it. I'm counting Cyllene and Laventon in that too, even though their ability to help is far more limited.

thank you!!!! yeah i think the kids being actually invested in dex work is really good and i wanna do more of it because. i like it. because the unown report in hgss was one of my fav things like ever. cause i think it's cute if it isn't just A Task to them, bc the game really gives that feeling, yanno? the protagonist IS actively updating their dex over time, recording things they catch, i think they really are interested in the research! plus it's fun if they're excited about it right alongside laventon. whole surveyfam gathered around the wallflower table having a heated debate about whether the spacetime distortion sneasel evolution should be called a regional sneasler variant or if it's different enough to be its own thing.

anyway. yeah this is a thing that i think is gonna be a fun challenge for oop in the future, is like, power scaling for all the different groups floating around. bc like. you have such a MASSIVE range in skill levels between them. where on the one side you've got people who are barely aware of battling as a concept, and then you've got people who only recently started practicing it, and then you've got akari, with this modern knowledge about it but not really a ton of time investment, and then over on the other side of the scale are these two pros. and even if people are at the same aggregate power level they're not necessarily good at the same things? like, i would place irida and rei to be roughly the same skill level at battling, but the key difference is a bunch of rei's knowledge is being pulled from his survey work and knowing a lot about the pokemon he's facing. whereas irida does not have nearly as many of them memorized, because why would she? that's not really a thing she's ever needed to know? but what she does have is ingo's training, which she applies in a more general way with strategies that don't depend as strictly on type matchups or special abilities, like turning powder snow into visual cover.

anyway point being it's gonna be kind of tough to make challenges that actually feel challenging for all these different groups, lol. like, something that is an intimidating but doable task for the miss fortunes is barely even enrichment for ingo and emmet. conversely, something that could challenge those two with their whole team plus tagalongs should rightly curbstomp any of the other smaller groups. this was sort of an angle when i was still trying to figure out how to write the vespiquen fight actionwise. asking "ok, how would you do this fight if you were perfect at it?" and then following that up with "what parts of that plan can't irida do, and what can she do instead?"

[ ftr the answer is bait out power gem -> leafeon mimic -> shotgun it while glaceon runs circles around it to hold its attention. once you've got that 4x effective move in your pocket you clean up much easier. but irida didn't know leafeon had mimic, and also doesn't know that power gem is so effective on vespiquen, a pokemon she's barely had contact with before now, and has a hard time splitting her attention between two different battle partners to the degree required to have one of them just monkeying around being distracting without it getting ko'd. so scaling those things back gets you a mimicked air slash and glaceon playing offense alongside leafeon. ]

...i'm just rambling now whoops. ANYWAY UH. what was the original topic. yeah i really like my akari too!! she's just very curious and loves pokemon a whole lot and really likes being helpful, but isn't necessarily so into battling specifically. that's more of an incidental "way to bond with my partners" than anything. so you get someone with a ton of knowledge but not a ton of experience in applying it, yanno? there's obviously more here abt battling conceptually and the vast array of interactions one can have with it, but, y'know. this is already really long. uh. thanks!

#the nemesis speaks #the nemesis answers #anonymous #jailbirds au #waaaah why is it mondaaayyy orz i want to goof off and finish this data collection in pla so i can Use It

[nemesis-is-my-middle-name]

That'd actually be really cool if the trains worked by recognizing the lowest leveled pokemon on the field and everyone else being forced to play down to it. It'd definitely be hard to get very far though, because sure a beginner can hop on the train, but even if their opponents handicapped themselves by using some of their least powerful moves like ember and did whatever it is Ingo did to manipulate EV levels, a low level pidove isn't likely to last very long against a chandelure.

Probably a good way for kids to get some experience without having to brave the wilds though, even if I'm not sure newbies would have the training to conduct their pokemon as if they were all the same level. Singles would be bad enough if the person has an unevenly trained team, doubles would be even worse, and multis would be a nightmare to fight beginners on. I imagine people from out of Unova who are coming to the subway expecting what they normally get at a battle facility might be kinda pissed about it too, but maybe that just makes the super lines really, really, really intense.

wellll you also gotta remember here that this battle subway is run by people who decided to make a litwick and a fucking tynamo their starters. who, in terms of a gym challenge and assuming they were roughly matching levels and not doing a fuckton of grinding, would have been working with first evos until the like, second to last gym. so they might have a liiitle bit of a skewed idea of how well a first evo can perform against a fully evolved opponent.

this isn’t how it works in game really but i think it would also be fun if they tried to match experience levels (in terms of exp and also like, literal training experience) against each other. so it would actually be fairly unlikely that a preschooler with their pidove went up against a veteran trainer first thing, unless the preschooler happened to be rocking a max ev trained level 60+ team somehow. that way even if the newer trainers won't make it all the way to the bosses, they can still feel like they have a solid chance at making headway (and maybe verrrry slowly building up some bp to eventually buy fun things with, which i imagine is also a draw for casual trainers riding the battle lines after school/on off days/etc.)

i do also love the idea of people from other regions getting real culture shock from the battle subway tho. what's with this CROWD? what do you mean ANYONE can just WALK IN HERE? some of them are pleasantly surprised by the wider variety of opponents, others are uhh... more elitist about it

#the nemesis speaks #the nemesis answers #anonymous #pla analysis

[nemesis-is-my-middle-name]

Emmet’s voice was still quiet, and had almost no tone, and yet it was somehow venomous.

“That is not fair.”

Me: “awwww emmet’s protective of Akari too!”

five days later

Me: “…oh shit he’s not referring to Akari is he”

i don't know what you could possibly be referring to, everything ingo said just there is entirely about akari and has no relevance at all to anything else that's ever happened in hisui, certainly not to anyone else at this camp, definitely not to anyone currently in the conversation. ha ha.

#the nemesis speaks #the nemesis answers #anonymous #jailbirds au #:) ! #so much easier to care about *other* people isn't it

[nemesis-is-my-middle-name]

putting Adaman bring Dialgas poor little meow meow. Do you think that him being a nonmage is the reason he was chosen? We ARE going to face Giritina whom I remember being a being that neutralized magic? Maybe its because Adaman can help do something about that. Idk. But Dialga can see the past present and future so He was chosen for a reason.

ooooh yeah yeah that's possible!!

or, or, the cause and effect is the other way round. it's not that adaman was chosen to face giratina because of the lack of magic—adaman lacks magic because he faced giratina, and something happened in that confrontation, and because he's also dialga's acolyte, it had ripple effects forwards and back through time, leaving him with this permanent magic deadness for what's seemed for years to be no reason whatsoever.

which naturally implies that in the final confrontation something's gonna happen to him. probably not, like, something permanent, like dying, but Something. or maybe, because of timestream fuckery, rather than the fight with giratina being the moment where he loses his magic, he's finally properly caught up to the incident and that's the moment where he gains it. if that makes any sense.

#the nemesis speaks #the nemesis answers #anonymous #ley lines au