YMMV / Twitch Plays Pokémon Emerald

• Alternate Character Interpretation: Already there's some for A. Either she's an average antisocial teenager or a severely psychotic murderer. Some say she's between the two, with the spirits causing most of the violence and the real A is fighting to regain control. Some interpretations have Camila, A, and Slasha being the same person with Split Personalities. Finally, another says that she was just being manipulated by the PC.
• Annoying Video Game Helper: Trying to use an item at the wrong time provokes an "advice" message from Norman (like the one from Oak in the earlier games). Due to Select spam, the Mob has gotten to hear Dad's advice a LOT.
  DAD's Advice: A, there's a time and a place for everything!
  SHUT UP DAD
• Arc Fatigue: It took the A-Team ages to progress through Mauville, as the city's architecture with frequent walls and corners made it very easy for A to get trapped.
• Awesome Art: The gorgeous visuals of Pokémon Emerald Version qualify. Around the time of 19d 17h 41m, under Democracy Mode, after setting Brick Break as the into the first slot move in Hariyama's moveset menu for strategic and practical purposes, the chat actually took the time to turn on something as minor/inconsequential (arguably) as the battle animations of the game, serving as a testament to the game's terrific graphics.
• Broken Base: Though it'll probably be settled before too long, the Alternative Character Interpretation for A are very stark. Is she just a girl? Is she an Ax-Crazy Villain Protagonist with a Bloodbath Villain Origin? Does she want to be a mighty pirate? Or is she a LARPer?
  • The latter two seem like they could go hand in hand...
  • Several fans believe that A is the one who killed the other candidates for the Emerald Trainer, while other fans point out that all the soft resets were caused by the voices, not the character, and that A was merely the only one who managed to hold on until the Admin disabled the Select command.
    • It's reached a point where A's entire personality is a base breaker. With some arguing that A is an "avatar of anarchy," others that she's an Ax-Crazy serial killer, and still others saying she suffers from Multiple Personality Disorder. And that's not getting into the factions that want to just wipe out the Day 1-3 lore and start over.
  • The new lore is very divisive among people, if Reddit is any indication. Some people believe that the whole Serial Killer made TPP too dark to be shared with their friends and family on social networks. Others say that, despise being a side lore, we are still playing Pokémon, a happy, colorful world, and some are trying to twist it to live their juvenile fantasy. Not to mention the Too Bleak, Stopped Caring brought on by having a sociopathic protagonist with none of the sympathetic traits of even AJ.
    • The most widely accepted lore as of Day 12 seems to be the police officer/vigilante theme.
  • Even before the stream started, the players were picking sides between Team Magma, Team Aqua, and Rayquaza. Now that the Magma-Aqua storyline is beginning, this is starting to reappear amid the discussions of A's personality.
  • Whether Azumarill should learn Rest. Proponents for it say it will let us heal, be easier to use than potions, and that the two-turn sleep penalty doesn't matter because M4 is strong enough to take two hits. Opponents of it say it will be used at the wrong times, turn M4 helpless, and possibly be spammed over and over. The battles to teach Rest in Democracy often came down to within a single vote of each other, with Anti-Rest barely winning.
• Difficulty Spike: Compared to the previous generation. Since Democracy was disabled, progress was much harder, making this generation closer to Red in terms of difficulty, and just like in Red the strongest member of the party was released. In addition, this generation is plagued by the curse of Double Battles. At least the PC is somewhat easier to use, and though the starter was released a mass extinction event like Bloody Sunday never occurred.
  • However, as of Day 13, Democracy Mode finally returned.
• Ending Fatigue: The streamer put a 3-day timer for the start of FireRed when A reached the Elite Four. This seemed like plenty of time; the previous games beat the final bosses in about a day and a half... Three days and almost 60 attempts later, Azumarill had long since reached level 100, but they still hadn't won. The streamer extended the timer, and the interminable grinding continued. It took almost that whole extra three days and more than 100 attempts total for A to finally win.
• Even Better Sequel: The technical changes to the stream have been very well received. The new democracy system^* Democracy is disabled until the mob is stuck in an area for a long time, at which point the streamer might reactivate it has practically removed all political unrest, and the stream interface now shows the current party at the bottom of the screen, along with their levels and health percentages, which was the new feature that the streamer promised people would like. He was right.
• Growing the Beard: The lore of the Emerald run petered out during the latter gyms, especially due to the PC scrambling the team so much, and Hoenn having little connection to the previous games. But then the introduction of the timer to beat the Elite Four changed everything. Soon the run became desperate, the team members cemented, lore started returning for the bosses and the seemingly end-of-the-world scenario, and the Mob became skilled enough to use healing items while in Anarchy. And no previous timer came this close to ending the run... twice. Rather than killing interest by the futility, the Elite Four timed runs brought intensity back to the TPP stream.
• Heartwarming in Hindsight: This comic◊ has A, after beating the Elite Four but failing to stop Bill, sacrifice her life by traveling through the portal to Randomized-Kanto, expecting that the Mob will survive the journey but she won't. As the protagonist of Fire Red was also a girl named A, it may suggest that Emerald A didn't die but either survived the journey or was reincarnated in the new world.
• Hilarious in Hindsight:
  • A the Nidoran of Twitch Plays Pokémon Red had the side nickname "A for Anarchy" thanks to being captured in Anarchy mode during the Safari Zone. A, our protagonist, is thought to be a raging Anarchist.
  • Right after Marill beat the first gym with Water Gun, her only damaging move, she forgot it to learn Rollout. At the time, this seemed like an Epic Fail: it's a gimmicky attack and isn't even Water-type. But Rollout later proved its worth by allowing Marill to roll all over numerous powerful trainers and become The Ace. She later forgot it for Bubblebeam, but relearned it from a move tutor because the mob couldn't part with her Signature Move.
  • As the clock approached midnight on the 18th day and the countdown to Twitch Plays Pokémon FireRed neared zero, some comments in the stream suggested playing the "Song of Time" to get three more days. The admin has since granted the stream three more days to complete Emerald.
• Memetic Mutation: see here.
• Replacement Scrappy: "X-Wing", the Wingull that joined the team around the time of Bird Cop's demise. Players regularly demanded that he be stuffed back in the PC, which he eventually was. The fact that he's more than ten levels below the rest of the party doesn't help, especially when they arrived at the Elite Four with him still in tow.
• The Scrappy: For a very brief period after being captured, Annie was not very well liked because the majority of the Mob would have rather had Crobat or Aggron and she had a terrible starting movepool - especially for TPP (with the legendarily bad Whirlwind and Belly Drum both present.) Many wanted to deposit her in the next Democracy period, but because of the time limit, the Mob decided to work with what they had and gave her TMs.
  • Rescued from the Scrappy Heap: And then she picked up Brick Break and gained the ability to effortlessly sweep Sidney (and later, Glacia). She quickly proved her worth and became a vital member of the A-team.
• Sequel Difficulty Spike: Whilst the mob were able to defeat the Elite Four in Red and Crystal within 24 hours each, it took them almost a week and 103 attempts this time, due to improved AI, team rosters, and team flexibility.
  • Everything about this run was harder. No individual trainer has defeated the Mob more frequently than Drake, who had a 32-24 record against A...but as you can tell from the fact that he still lost to her 24 times and he's the last member of the Elite Four, the Champion was no slouch, either—his 23 wins over A is tied for third. With Glacia in this run.^note Caitlin was 25-8 against Jimmy C in Black. And fifth place belongs to Wattson, the Mauville Gym Leader, with a 22-1 record (tied with Phoebe in Alpha Sapphire), the most of any non-Elite Four member. And speaking of Phoebe, she beat A 19 times, which is 8th-most of any trainer (as of the end of Season 3). That's five of the top eight if you're keeping track.
    • Need more evidence? Every host thus far has managed to get their first badge on Day 1 except one. ^note The Gamecube games and Sun don't have "badges" in the traditional sense, though A7 and Nigel both managed to beat the first Gym Leader equivalent by the end of Day 1. ABC defeated no "bosses" on Day 1, however, making him potentially another example. It wasn't Abe, who was slower to every other major milestone. It was A, who got her first badge at 1d 5h 42m—over a quarter of a day later than any other host. (Napoleon was the next slowest, at 23h 8m.)
• Sequelitis: This playthrough was noticeably less popular than Red and Crystal, especially by the end, because not as many people are familiar with Gen 3 compared to Gens 1 and 2. Additionally, most of the hype and novelty surrounding Twitch Plays Pokémon Red has subsided, resulting in a much lower viewcount. Some see returning to Kanto with FireRed as an attempt to Win Back the Crowd. Discussed here.
• Smurfette Breakout: Before the game's even started. Most of the mob wants a female protagonist this time around, having missed out in the previous run. May is thus the more featured in pre-game fanart than Brendan.
  • But Thou Must!: Some members of this faction came to the decision that they will have a female protagonist, one way or another. One way was called "Operation: Go Down On May" where they spammed the Down command as much as possible to ensure a girl is picked. It took six tries, but they finally managed to nab a girl for good. The hypothetical other way, well...
• That One Boss: Wattson, who stalled the mob's progress for over 30 hours; the mob challenged him dozens times in their effort to defeat him.
  • Phoebe of the Elite Four, as well. Her status moves have proven exceptionally effective at neutralizing A's team; either by grinding them down with Curse, or using Grudge to drain all their PP.
  • Drake from the Elite Four also has this role. Not a single Pokémon in A's team can take him on with confidence. All the previous three have certain factors that make them beatable, but after they have lightened A up Drake is always there to deliver a crippling blow to the A-team, softening them up decisively before the match with Wallace or defeating them outright.
• That One Level: Every. Single. Pokémon Center. From the labyrinthine structure to the all-devouring PC, the Pokémon Centers of Hoenn are even closer to domains of evil elder gods than those of previous regions.
• They Wasted a Perfectly Good Plot: Every time lore forms around the current party, the mob winds up shuffling it again. Or at least that was the case up until Day 12.
• Tough Act to Follow: One wonders how the storyline of this LP is going to measure up to the "Kill the gods" storyline of the last one. Of course, the very same could be said of Crystal in comparison to Red. YMMV on whether or not it has succeeded.
• The Woobie: Torchic was the starter people wanted least, and choosing it means Treecko will never appear. The Mob wanted to kill it when it was chosen. Its nature is Lonely. It was stuck in the PC on Day 1. Three days later it was released. Poor bird...

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