We Are All Pokemon Trainers Discussion

So have we decided re: the Hisui Dex? We kinda just dropped the conversation.

RE: Hisui Dex

Seconded. I kind of need to find out what our verdict is so I can tie up loose ends for now and have my plans ready in a few months.

On activity

Much like Silence, I am lacking in a lot of motivation to post as of late, and for all practical purposes I have been on an informal hiatus on the RP save for a few interactions with others that I decided to spag for convenience. Although I have made plans and will be posting D!posts for these future activities, they will be slated for a much later part of the year. Effective April 2 Manila Time, I will be going on a formal hiatus from the RP with a minimum date of return some time in June or July 2022. I will still remain as part of the Spectra Castle Discord, and will likely explain the details there.

Events in my country have been quite stressful over the past few months and it's caused my emotional state to roller coaster. Unfortunately, because events can cause my anxiety to suddenly flare up, I cannot promise anyone responsive game play that won't leave anyone hanging.

The soonest everything will start settling down is around May. Most of that time I anticipate will be spent processing what happened, especially if the outcome is not at all favorable. By around June, I would've accepted the outcome and begin the process of adjusting to whatever happens, and by then I will be in a better condition to RP once more. Roleplaying might be a good way to keep my mind off things momentarily.

This RP has been a big part of my life for the past 4 years and I am privileged to have known and interacted with you through the colorful cast of characters I've introduced. I look forward to joining you again in the craziness.

I still think "keep them vaguely in the past until we get an idea of how new games will incorporate them" is the best option.

Our only two canon sources so far both tell us they're from the distant past, with Hisuian Voltorb being brought to the present via spacetime shenanigans in GO, and an anime special featuring a painting of a few of them as ancient Pokémon in an exhibit on Sinnoh history.

My vote goes to:

- move and item based evos are lost by rare and forgotten means but the means can be rediscovered individually

- Evos like the Starters, where there's nothing different except where they evolve, are probably not possible in the modern day

- Hisui Growlithe, Voltorb, Qwilfish, and Sneasel are probably nearly extinct, but probably got dropped into the present by spacetime distortions and/or other Weird Circumstances

- Zorua is a ghost, as ghosts tend to be

- Generally don't like any of them being completely extinct in the wild

Edited by BittersweetNSour on Mar 29th 2022 at 9:13:06 AM

I lean "probably not COMPLETELY extinct and probably obtainable by SOME means in the modern day, timespace rifts or otherwise, but finer details should stay vague until Gen 9 or something clarifies them"

I basically agree with Bitty here except for that second bullet which I think there should be SOME loophole for

Edited by Umbramatic on Mar 29th 2022 at 12:58:38 PM

My thoughts on the subject remain about the same as when I posted almost a month ago, relict populations in the most remote and inaccessible portions of Sinnoh (And maybe some breeding programs) and timespace rift weirdness otherwise, but anyway:

Hisuian Starter Evos

I feel that for Oshawott and Rowlet we at least have the advantage of no one as far as I can remember fully evolving one within Sinnoh so it would probably be simple enough to say if you have a Dewott or Dartrix in Sinnoh it'll probably evolve into the Hisuian form more often than not but Cyndaquil's a bit more complicated since they're fully catchable in Sinnoh within the Grand Underground.

One thing we might be able to do is that since we're told it's the energy of Mt. Coronet in particular that determines the evolution method, we can just say in order to get a Hisuian Typhlosion you need to have your Quilava evolve in certain portions of the mountain if there's no weird timespace stuff going on at the moment.

Edited by rmctagg09 on Mar 29th 2022 at 6:32:31 AM

Adding onto that, what if the parts of the mountain that had that energy are rarer than they were all that time ago? Where you now have to deliberately search it out and most don't view it as worth the effort?

I was personally leaning "go to a remote part of Sinnoh where it's similar to like it was with Hisui" but I'd be cool with having the evos be associated with Specifically Mt. Coronet

So, if I wanted to kill off Vana by having her succumb to the ill effects brought about by the School's genetic modifications, would that be okay? This would be permadeath.

Works for me :o

It should suit the School narrative, I have no problems with it.

On one hand it makes sense given the Lore, on the other I'd miss Vana and on my end I've actively abstained from doing that to any of my schoolkids despite the lore, so... I'm not opposed as long it'd have to make narrative sense, and not just be gratuitous because "the lore says this is a thing that happens frequently so I Can"

No issues here!

Given the whole narrative of the School, I'm...kind of impressed, actually, well done

Yeah I have to agree with Umbra in that I'm not sure about how I feel about actually going through with that.

EDIT: To go into longform about it:

• While on one hand on a personal level it would serve as more motivation for RP!Tagg's sideplot to fashion a cure for the maladies common to Schoolkids that he's promised Chiyo and Mason if he was to learn about it (Depending on how soon this would happen), on the other it doesn't feel to me that it serves Vana's character arc as I've observed it thus far to have her die in that fashion, at least in any permanent sense.
• Which gets to the second point. As our rules state, meaningful drama is the key, and if Vana dying is what you want to do, what purpose will it serve?

Edited by rmctagg09 on Apr 2nd 2022 at 4:50:35 AM

Maybe to start with, she could start showing the signs of that condition starting to take effect? It's hard to just come up with a narrative reason for a character to die, but knowing the threat of death is looming can drastically affect a character's actions and narrative themes, and a meaningful arc can grow out of that, even if the final result does come out to be death. That also gives time to get feedback before the deed is done.

Okay so to explain my thought process a bit more deeply:

Vana's arc is about accepting that she has worth as a living being, or even thinking of herself as fully human, since her status as a schoolkid and artificial nature led to her othering herself her whole life.

I always kind of had the idea from the start that Vana's story was a tragedy, and that by nature of the things she'd endured in her early years she could never really be the person she wishes she could be. The tragedy of her life is that by the time she learns the lesson that she is worthy of loving and being loved, it's too late for her - ironically her artificial status means that she can't live the life she wanted, though while she thought it was by the very nature of being artificial and the philosophical nature of that, the reality is that her creation was imperfect.

The purpose for her death I suppose is several things. First, it's the idea that sometimes things that are good die, and there's nothing that can really be done about it. Second, with Vana learning that she will die a while before she does, it allows her to explore the concept of morality and how that relates to being alive. Third, on a wider storytelling level it makes the school more hateable as antagonists since this was their fault.

I hope this makes sense, I'm not so good at explaining my thought process behind writing decisions.

Mkay, not sure if I'll explain this properly but... from what I've seen, I have little indication that you wouldn't be able to write a story of someone learning that they have a terminal illness and coming to grips with their own mortality. As well, that is something that has been handled in WAAPT before. Admittedly I'm not sure if I have much place to say this but I guess my main concern with this kind of thing is more... the presence of character death as a concept in WAAPT. Ultimately this setting is determined by what the people writing in it want to write, but personally one of the things I'm fond of about WAAPT is that it's a low death setting. I'm sure you'll feel differently about addressing death but admittedly while this probably Wouldn't cause much of a shift in overall tone and it's not like new stuff is happening, this is the first time I remember people reacting to it with character death being like something they wanna do next and... yeah, I guess this is a concept I'd prefer to be kept few and far between? I guess I'm also saying this because you're doing this after fake killing off your PC which makes me... idk, this is probably mostly a creative differences thing. I guess I'm also the kind of person who prefers mortality in stories being handled like "the dying person making peace with the fact it's gonna happen and people learn to accept it." And honestly stuff is messy and this is me more saying "I want to make happy endings even when sad things happen" but yeah.

Ultimately, if you do go that route, you're free to do that as a writer, I guess I'm more saying "this kind of stuff getting more Common if people want to write similar stuff would be a shift in tone in WAAPT I'm not sure if I'd feel comfy with but I'm also not sure I could do much about it."

Only other thing is more... I dunno, I guess I don't see the third point as much. Maybe it's just my outlook but with "the school created a terminally ill person", the bad stuff is more "they created life and didn't care for it like they should" rather than whether the person dies of it or not. It feels more like "yeah, that's a thing that could reasonably happen" than anything.

That's kinda my greater concern too, that if more folks start doing the same thing, whether tastefully done or not, then WAAPT stops being a Dramedy and just straight drama, and what were once our darker arcs just becomes the normal tone.

I don't think that's necessarily gonna happen, but I'd rather we keep that in mind, since the consequences of us not being careful are a lot bigger than say, basically everyone making School OCs.

Yeah I agree with Crow and Tagg on basically everything they said. It's doable, and it's not like we're afraid you won't handle it respectfully, but you'd hav e to be careful regardless, including being careful of setting precedents that really, really should not be set.

I for one would not like this to balloon into mass schoolkid deaths or everyone being obligated to kill off their schoolkid characters to fit a "narrative" - I was honestly not even a fan of the whole "schoolkids have a high rate of genetic terminal illness" thing in the first place because I'm always anxious it will come to that. Hopefully that's just my anxiety conspiracy brain talking though.

Edited by Umbramatic on Apr 2nd 2022 at 8:58:03 AM

I think that is assuming the worst a bit, yeah. I doubt that major character permadeath is going to ever be the norm, primarily because the permanence itself so rarely works for a long-form RP of this in the first place, and we even bring back villains we supposedly kill off sometimes. I really don't think we'll get anything near what the AU was, and even if the School arc dips into Orre territory, I don't think it can suddenly become the standard, just another heavy dip in a naturally oscillating tone (that might just seem more prominent because the rp has massively slowed down).

All this to say, I think things will turn out all right :P

Bitty: I will say yeah i do see your point, and that's something I do appreciate you saying.

I know that I personally don't plan to make a habit of this. I obviously can't speak for other people, but I've been here for a while now and I haven't seen much, if any, of people killing off their characters, so I don't necessarily think that's something people are likely to start doing. This just might be a me thing.

On a very tonally different but still School-related note:

Turkey Terror

It's been a while coming partially because I'm STILL NOT DONE with Pokemon Legends Arceus- But I believe at this point I am ready for Pavo to begin their rampage. I just need volunteers to be Amokitized (For what that is, you get infected by a weird psychic feather thus summoning a monstrous Pokemon tied to you called a Sentimon, that Pavo uses for various nefarious deeds.) Depending on number of volunteers at once I might set up a queue for future incidents.

If you want to volunteer, just ask here. If you have any questions (I feel like I am not explaining this well enough) also ask here!

I'll have Xaster Amokitized. Surprise me on the theme

I'll throw Daisuke (Evelyn's father) at this. I wonder how his Sentimonster will manifest...