Twitch Plays Pokémon (TPP) is a series of social experiments in which commands representing buttons on an original Nintendo DS (up, down, left, right, A, B, X, Y, L, R, start, and select) and touchscreen coordinates are entered into a chat on Twitch, and then translated into a game of Pokémon via an IRC bot. In short, hundreds of people are fighting over a controller. Throughout its life, Twitch Plays Pokémon has spawned hilarious characters, memorable moments, and even a few religions.
Twitch Plays Pokémon Randomized Black 2 is the fifth run of Season 8 and the tenth randomized run overall, running from July 12th, 2021 to July 29th, 2021. It served as a direct sequel to the previous randomized run, Twitch Plays Pokémon Randomized Black. It retained the same randomized moves properties (aka typing, power and PP) as its predecessor, while Pokémon locations, movesets, abilities, evolutions, and Trainer classes were all shuffled once more. The ability to move around the camera was also brought back, along with every battle being made into a Double Battle, this time with battles against Gym Leaders becoming Triple Battles and ones against the Elite 4 being made into Rotation Battles on top of that.
As the run directly followed Randomized Black, the game frequently made references to previous Host ♂♂♂' throughout the journey of the newest Host W ☹☹'', a result of the Memory Link feature of Black 2. This culminated in a battle between the two, as the former turned out to be the Pokémon Champion during the latter's initial attempt at beating the Pokémon League, before being relegated to an Elite 4 member for the rematch alongside three other familiar characters.
This run quickly became infamous for being massively plagued by releases; over thirty Pokémon were released on the second day alone, and players quickly got used to seeing the party completely change from one day to the next due to the previous one getting released, sometimes even several times a day. This had a notable influence on the lore of the run itself, which often portrays W ☹☹'' either as a murder-happy lunatic or a genocidal sociopath as a result.
See also here
for the archived status of the run.
Twitch Plays Pokémon Randomized Black 2 contains examples of:
- Ax-Crazy: Applies to the group of players who pushed for the constant and numerous releases of this run, and by extension to many of the depictions of the run's Host.
- Break the Cutie: This happened regarding the in-lore interpretations of W ☹☹'', whose most prominent portrayals went from being either a recluse weeb or a rebellious anti-goth to an actual sociopathic mass-murderer. Just compare this early depiction of her to this later one by the same artist.Witte: It just happened one day. I have always felt lonely, but one day people... no longer felt real.
- Event-Obscuring Camera: The free camera cheat that allowed players to freely switch between a "third-person" view (Select+ A + L), a 45° angle view (Select+ A + R), and a top-down view (Select+ A + B) returned from the previous run, although this time it was disabled on several occasions to facilitate navigation.
- Final Boss: The final opponent of the run, Sabrina Iris, had a team that was not randomized nor taken from a previous run, but instead composed entirely of overly powerful Olympus Mons: Tornadus (Therian Form), Deoxys (Attack Form), Thundurus (Therian form), Suicune, Landorus (Therian form), and Jirachi. Due to Chalenge Mode being active, their levels ranged from 99 to 104.
- Gender Bender: Although a regular occurrence due to randomized evolution, as Pokémon may end up changing gender when evolving into another species with a different gender ratio, a particularly notable example was the Nidoran♂ that W ☹☹'' chose as her starter, which evolved into a Nidorina.
- Hopeless Boss Fight: W ☹☹'' chose a Nidoran♂ with a full moveset of Poison-type moves as her starter, which made the first rival battle impossible to win as her opponent's starter was an Aron, which as a Steel-type was immune to Poison-type moves.
- Loophole Abuse: Due to an oversight in the randomizer's settings, it was found that Relic Silver was sold in Opelucid City mart, and later Relic Gold in Accumula Town. Because these items were never intended to be purchasable, their price was set at 0P; however, the billionaire maniac in Undella Town will pay 5,000P and 10,000P respectively for these items, basically turning these items into a infinite source of free money.
- Mirror Boss: During the rematch against the Elite 4, Caitlin was replaced by W ☹☹'' herself, using her team from the first Hall of Fame of the run, although all of them obviously had their levels massively boosted in order to match her current team.
- Previous Player-Character Cameo:
- The Pokémon Champion during the initial Pokémon League challenge was a Double Battle against ♂♂♂' from Randomized Black, using her team from her own initial Hall of Fame.
- The Elite 4 during the Pokémon League rematch was composed of a Double Battle against ♂♂♂' from Randomized Black (this time using her rematch team), a Simple battle against AAAALK' from Randomized White 2, a Simple Battle against ♀♀R from Gauntlet Black 2, and a Double Battle against W ☹☹'' herself (using her initial Hall of Fame team).
- Running Gag: Following up on the running gag of Trainers getting frequently randomized into N during the previous run, this time Marlon was particularly favored by the randomizer. As a reference to how Trainers randomized into N got the N in their name capitalized (ChereN, CilaN), he was often referred to as "MarloN" by viewers.
- The Unpronounceable: The Host for this run was named W ☹☹'', with popular interpretation including "Weeb", "Webby", or "Witte".
- Villain Protagonist: W ☹☹'' is typically portrayed as some flavor of this. More charitable interpretations have Witte being broken by the cruel actions of the Voices while they were possessing her body, while others have Witte as being a homicidal monster from the outset.
