Pokemon SoulSilver Part 24: A dance with death, I taste the victory

[kjorteo]

In this update:

* More treatises on the music!
* Two more badges!
* A fantastic showing for the original party and even the second-stringers!
* Surprisingly tiny routes!
* WFGR does not condone or endorse bullying but we are not sure how else to describe what happened here, honestly!
* Erika confirmed bottom!
* Oops that last quip was maybe a bit dirty. Speaking of which, how about we wrap this up with a whole big speech on why WFGR still has the mature content flag set even though we are like the tamest thing?

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Some notable clips and highlights from this session:
A grueling journey
So Granbulls can just Limit Break apparently
Nice try, but not this time!
Oh, right, forgot about that
Just two besties with their beasties (thanks to SeireaSong for this clip)
absolute domination (thanks to SeireaSong for this clip)

Comments

[penguinmayhem]

wait what there was another pokemon stream hang on i dont remember that aaaaaaa how did i miss this

[kjorteo]

I typically announce the Pokemon streams redundantly in several locations (like, on Mastadon, in various relevant Discords, and in our Telegram feed, etc.) but I'm a bit scatterbrained and sometimes I remember to announce in like five of the usual places and forget the sixth. Depending on how you usually hear of them, I probably just forgot to mention it in that one particular place that time, in which case I am a dummy and please accept my sincere apologies.

... But that's why we have VODs and stuff at least..?

[penguinmayhem]

I think it might have showed up behind your mastodon posts for the previous segments and I didn't read it correctly and just didn't notice.

When I'm done laughing my absolute ass all the way off to Xyzzy's clusterfuck kanto experience I will be catching up on this ASAP so I apologize in advance for spamming your comment notifications again

[kjorteo]

You don't have to apologize for that any more than--and for the exact same reason as--we have to apologize for dropping a new video on you: are you kidding come on this is the highlight of my day I was looking forward to this aaa.

[penguinmayhem]

I just want to geek out about the game's encounter design for a bit because I noticed things while watching this back and I think it's neat.

Erika's team is some fairly good shit, four fairly average mons with almost no physical coverage and quite a few weaknesses, but they all rely on Jumpluff getting off a Sunny Day + Leech Seed setup to boost their speed and surviveability, Tangela has insurance against Bug and Flying, and Bellossom is a complete troll with a Sitrus Berry and Sunny Day boosted Synthesis can let her just recover all her HP every turn. Though if you bring a fast fire type to this fight literally all she has to stop you is Ancient Power. _{also Erika ffs just call your girlfriend please getting random women to bully you is kinda weird}

Misty pulls it off much better, though. Her team seems purpose built to trip you up if you're not paying attention, luring you to jump to conclusions countering Golduck and Quagsire just to set you up for Lapras to beat you the fuck up. And then there's the absolute nightmare that is Starmie, who could have all sorts of shit. Does it have Thunder? Swift? Psychic? Surf? They also cover pretty much all the bases from the physical bulky Quagsire and Lapras to suddenly stupidly fast Starmie spamming special attacks and dishing out confusion. Golduck can Disable an easy Sweep and the rest of the team keeps you on the back foot, switching out constantly to keep up with her shit rather than taking the offensive.

Every time the game does this I love it. It's like you can see the game design trying to teach you how to anticipate and plan ahead, and how thinking you've got the upper hand can sometimes leave you open to unexpected twists.

If my calculations are correct, out of your entire lineup there's actually Cassandra who isn't weak to anything Starmie could throw at it and can hit for super-effective damage in return. But I'm not sure if I trust an Absol to deal with a fast as fuck confusion-spamming Starmie that knows Recover.

[kjorteo]

Even when that random trainer on the cape threw out a Vaporeon, I immediately got flashbacks of the Kimono Girls Aurora Beaming poor Empress and looked at Nimbly in the lead and was like ahahaha nope nice try but not falling for THAT shit again, and SURE ENOUGH.

(It was a nice try, though. Well played. Just. You know. We learned from last time.)

Erika's Bellossom sounds like an absolute monster of a troll build when you describe it like that, but it turns out that when you bring a Scizor with a Technician-boosted Bug Bite, it just eats her entire team's lunch, literally (mmm, free Sitrus Berry to heal off the Sunnybeam combo that Omnihunter completely no-sold anyway.) I know that OHKO sweeping entire gym leader teams with our quite franky OP mons is nothing new (hi Badgertwo, Rock Biter, Priscilla) but something about the Bug Bite berry theft elevates the experience into feeling like downright "give me your lunch money, nerd" levels of bullying. (But at least Erika is into that, I guess?)

I will agree and give full credit to Misty's team, though. She had about as good switch-forcing balance as it's possible to have while still being a thematic single-type trainer, without just cheating and adding some completely unrelated mons to your team (hi Karen.) I knew that Quagsire just completely walls anyone who thinks "lol I'll just go in with an Electric type and sweep everything" because Crasher Wake pulled that exact trick in our Diamond run; he just hadn't counted on my strategy actually being "lol I'll just go in with a Grass type and sweep everything" because Torterra is the best starter. Misty actually does have an answer to that angle, though; she doesn't even need a surprise "wait why does this pure Water type know Ice moves" Aurora Beam Vaporeon; she just goes all in with a goddamn Lapras. And the Starmie... yeah, that could have just about anything.

As for Cassandra vs. Starmie... hmm. If you mean "trust an Absol to deal with a fast as fuck Confusion[move]-spamming Starmie that knows Recover," Dark is completely immune to Psychic-type moves (and Confusion[move] is not that much of a threat at this stage of the game anyway since it's just Psychic[move] we have at home.) If you meant "trust an Absol to deal with a fast as fuck confusion[status effect]-spamming Starmie that knows Recover" like with Confuse Ray or something, then yeah, that could have been an issue.

[penguinmayhem]

Yeah not just Ghost typed Confuse Ray, it also has Water Pulse which, as you saw, can also confuse AND hit Absol's not-exactly-stellar defenses while doing it. Bringing an Absol against a Starmie is basically betting on being able to dodge its traps and OHKO it before it gets you stuck wasting turns with status effects and whittles you down anyway.

But Erika's extremely specific weakness to Scizor in particular almost feels intentional. You bring in a fire type, Tangela trips you up with Ancient Power. But if you went and caught the crown jewel Scyther out of the bug catching contest and evolved it, congratulations, you found the one weapon that Erika's entire team seems almost intentionally set up to lose to. If she had a single fire move anywhere it'd be an expert level trap.

[kjorteo]

And it has to be Scizor, in particular. As Flare pointed out in stream, even an unevolved Scyther would have been rocked (ahem) by AncientPower.

That said, that is why we were a bit concerned when not just her but her whole gym seemed to have Sunny Day builds ("are they pacoing Flamethrower or something? That would be... bad....") until we realized oh they're just Sunnybeaming and that's actually a quad resistance for Omnihunter, so like, lol.

[penguinmayhem]

^{sorry but I just couldn't resist}

Erika confirmed bottom

Is this still a surprise in 2022? She's dating a goddamn psychic dominatrix?

[kjorteo]

... She is?

Not that we don't eagerly and wholeheartedly support this ship, mind you, but we just weren't familiar with it. Either we're way out of the loop on where it came from (must have been one of the movies or anime or something we didn't see) or, if it was covered in Red or Silver, then it was a long time ago and we forgot.

[penguinmayhem]

Okay joking aside you know now I'm genuinely curious where this ship came from because I remember it being basically ubiquitous in the fandom back in the day but now I basically can't find much evidence of it and now I feel like my own brain is gaslighting me this is weird?

Come on pokemon you usually have much better documentation of obtuse shipping nonsense than this where's the wiki page about my pet ship

[kjorteo]

In the absolute worst case, "because Penguin Mandela Effected it into being so" is more than enough justification to support this pairing in our eyes. Because now that you mention it it sounds adorable and like, literally why not?

But there's probably something out there somewhere, even if it was like an AGNPH in-joke from back when AGNPH was an actual newsgroup (hence the name.)

[penguinmayhem]

Gosh now you're making me nostalgic for a pokemon themed porn site. Where the heck did all the fanfic go anyway do all the kids just post on tumblr or what?

[kjorteo]

Well the drawings are on Fur Affinity, e621, etc. obviously. The lemons fanfic? Uh... hmm. AO3, probably? Or like FA again, maybe. Maybe SoFurry or something.

And this is the part where I awkwardly admit that some of the original like, actually-posted-in-the-newsgroup-back-in-the-day fics, I saved them back then and I still have them locally to this day because of course I do, my sona is literally a packrat. It's far from a complete collection, though; just a couple here and there that struck me as appealing and worth saving. Which means that time Dragonite crotched himself in a tragic skateboarding accident and Nurse Joy made it all better with special ointment and a handy will always be canon to me, damn it

Edit: Hi everyone in the future who sees this comment thread; this is why we keep the Mature Content flag on even when we're streaming Bob Ross-level wholesomeness.

[xyzzysqrl]

I really look forward to introducing you someday perhaps to the many ships supported by the Pokemon movies, like Ash/Latias, or Ash/Sam, or Ash/Shoulder Tackle, or Mewtwo/The Realization of Loving Self Esteem And Possibly Gender Therapy, or The Audience/That Dragon Battle Orgy From The Hoopa Movie, or--

*led offscreen, still babbling*

[penguinmayhem]

That One Villain/Hyper Beam

[xyzzysqrl]

god damn iron mask and his nipple balls

[kjorteo]

I can't tell if nipple balls are the hot new Corruption of Champions fetish, the weirdest way to catch Pokemon ever, or both.

[kjorteo]

Excuse you, Lance isn't a villain per se and that guy technically was running a fake storefront cover operation for Team Rocket, though I agree that was the most Jack Bauer-esque move you'll likely see outside the edgy fangames like Insurgence or Reborn or whatnot.