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Hard Enough - Pokemon SI

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Valmond said:
How do you prepare against stupid rules, blatant cheating being allowed, and the author wanting to fuck you over?
You can never prepare for everything, and Brock spent months preparing for this fight, only for the author, who is effectively an omnipotent god of the story, deciding to go "nope".
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He did spend time preparing, but it was time where he was massively overcommitted and having to deal with all breeds of nonsense. Then, a week before showtime, a bunch of his A-listers get benched because someone decided to piss off the mightiest fire chicken.

At the end of it, Brock had a team one third full of his elite "rookies" in Gawain and Jormungander, one third full of pokemon he works with significantly less in Tide and Shrek, and finally Titan and Knight, his actual elite mainstays. Meanwhile, Will got to bring his fully rested fully tuned team of 6(7?).

Brock managing to salvage a draw from this fairly disasterous battle with a desperation move of all things(he had no clue Shrek could use Darkest Lariat) is pretty spectacular in and of itself.

Discounting the cheating from the other side, Brock was more than a little sloppy with this one. Thinking back on the fight, nearly every exchange was a pyrrhic victory. I can barely remember what Knight contributed during the battle, and he is one of Brock's mainstays. I think that says quite a bit about how wrong everything went.
 
CeBrudras said:
Other subject, why did Alakazam go from 'Still able to Focus Blast the ground' to no longer being part of the battle? It was never properly knocked out.
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If I recall correctly, Alakazam had already been recalled once before, so when Will pulled him back from the fight with Jorm (not liking whatever Brock was cooking with the rock binding on Alakazam's leg), he could no longer use him again. (That's the League limit for these sorts of matches, right?)
 
I like the draw. It puts the potential for more politics meddling to the forefront, especialy if Mayor Jonathan feels like Will didn't quite achieve enough in the match to help his attempt at a promotion.

One of the more blatant 'cheats' that I notice is just how absurdly fast each Recover was pulled off and how much it seemingly managed to heal up his pokemon. Jorm managed to Rest underground and Sleep Talk, but still only managed to tank a few direct hits before going down after. Will's Alakazam on the other hand seemingly lasted longer than the Tanks in Brock's team.
 
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Ultra Sonic 007 said:
imagine any League officials watching are going to have to consider the impact of such moves going forward in terms of medical stops, but what would the solution be? Let the opponent freely set up the same move (like Trick Room) again (which not only resets the timer for how long the move lasts, but also would result in additional energy to be used to set it back up, which has the chance of irritating both trainers involved in this hypothetical scenario)? Remove the time limit between switching Pokemon for medical stops only (because then you have to worry about those who might object to a Chansey 'sandbagging' for time to get a Pokemon off the field, which might result in complaints, and hence more paperwork)? Allow the use of Teleporting Pokemon to get them immediately off the field to a Chansey (but training Pokemon to accurately use Teleport in such varied scenarios is time-intensive, and probably more expensive than just having a Chansey).
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Eliminate the time limit in case of malfunctioning pokeballs to get rid of the advantage such tactic would give and thus eliminate the reason it was employed. Trick room would not be an issue if the pokeball had not broken after all.
 
Bakkasama said:
Eliminate the time limit in case of malfunctioning pokeballs to get rid of the advantage such tactic would give and thus eliminate the reason it was employed. Trick room would not be an issue if the pokeball had not broken after all.
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I suddenly had a vision of Will getting a sponsorship with Silph Co.

"New and improved Pokeballs! Tough enough to withstand even the meanest looks!"

And he ends the commercial spot with a wink, just to be smug. :V
 
He lost because the plot demanded a new rival. Last second change to a draw lessened the negative impact. Still bad fight. Brock is not some stupid native NPC that regularly lose to 10yo children. I expected him to be better.
 
Just a random thought.
What kind of anti cheating measures are in place?
Are there any?
If yes, how did Will avoid them?
And if no, why?
 
CeBrudras said:
Future Sight also seems like a great cheating move since the cause-and-effect of that move is barely a thing anyway. A hidden pokemon using the move in sync with who is on-stage should be difficult to detect. Or if the timing is too hard you could train your on-stage pokemon to go for Calm Mind instead whenever you shout Future Sight. I haven't noticed oddities around the move within this battle, though.
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Depends how you define oddities really but there were at least 3 times I can think of with making Gawain stumble and the new ones with Shrek getting hit right before the finisher and Jorm that Will got very lucky with the timings of them with Will notably being unsettled because of how it saved him from being screwed.

The latter one is also suspicious because it was the injured and battered Jynx that also suspiciously managed to lift Shrek when she was on the ropes and the chain goes it's ordered, protect weakens so Brock orders Rock Throw which Jynx used psychic to grab and throw back before it hit and was strong enough to hammer Jorm into the ground along hard enough to finish him off. With the very short gap, the theories about Will or a 7th pokemon doing moves and the number of times it happened I'd suggest it's possible Will isn't using Future Sight at all and one of the externals is using something like Psychic also that there may be something like helping hand occurring.

Valmond said:
He can get better, sure, but at his level any improvements are going to be incremental at best, unless we go with a Xianxia approach of making every new region even more powerful, which would be silly.
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Pokemon is just kind of like that though especially if you consider the legendaries. Kanto has essentially the weakest set with only really Mewtwo being standout largely due to the 2 Mega forms and ability to self mega which the in story would probably doesn't have yet. Johto isn't too far above it but everything else has heavy power creep.

Hoenn has the weather trio and their advanced forms along with Deoxys; Sinnoh has the Origin trio, Cynthia, Arceus and Darkrai; Unova has the tao trio and frankly given recent trends and the lore that Kyurem is the left over husk from the og Hero's split which is why Black and White Kyurem are possible I'm expecting whatever Unova game that comes out soon will have all three recombine; Kalos has the most megas and Zygarde; Alola has it's various legendaries especially Nekrozma, Bewear, Z moves and Ultra Beasts especially Guzzlord; Galar has dynamax and Eternius in general and I haven't looked into gen 9 yet but I've heard stories.

Valmond said:
Just a random thought.
What kind of anti cheating measures are in place?
Are there any?
If yes, how did Will avoid them?
And if no, why?
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Seems to broadly be there are some dark emitters but beyond that you need to make a claim as Will did over the stealth rocks but it has the problem of penalties if they are wrong and the delays allowing things like the future sight to land.
 
famfrit said:
Seems to broadly be there are some dark emitters but beyond that you need to make a claim as Will did over the stealth rocks but it has the problem of penalties if they are wrong and the delays allowing things like the future sight to land.
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That seems like a terrible setup, especially so in a world with telepathic/telekinetic and/or invisible pokemon.
Because i doubt Will was the first person to try to cheat using a psychic pokemon.
 
Imrix said:
So far I think my main takeaway is Will deserved to win that, and the hate he gets in-universe is just kinda weird.
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That does bring up a good question; most of the reader distaste for Will is tied to his shady shenanigans with Mayor Jonathan (which includes the police station incident with Forrest), and the fact he's been using other Ace Trainers as proxies to scope out Brock's team (not illegal per se, but one that some might argue goes against the spirit of Pokemon battling).

How many people in the actual audience in-universe — outside of Brock's social circles, that is — are aware of any of this?

But to be fair, it may just be as simple as Will playing up the 'heel' personality in a battle occurring in Brock's home turf: the crowd is already predisposed to rooting for Brock, so Will acting like a heel in any capacity is all they need to curse him out.

/source
//any interaction with passionate fans of an American sports franchise
 
hainbane said:
He lost because the plot demanded a new rival. Last second change to a draw lessened the negative impact. Still bad fight. Brock is not some stupid native NPC that regularly lose to 10yo children. I expected him to be better.
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Brock literally loses to children every day. That's his job.
Imrix said:
So far I think my main takeaway is Will deserved to win that, and the hate he gets in-universe is just kinda weird.
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Indeed. I get that much of his tactics seem underhanded but if Ace battles are considered the pinnacle of a professional sport then Brock should have been more than experienced with people pushing the boundaries to eke out a win. In real life sport I dislike diving in professional football but there's a reason strikers go down easy in the penalty box, there are reason teams that are winning drag out play and cricket bowlers used to scuff the ball etc. In universe I imagine there are a lot of people who respect Brock for his fair play and dislike Will for his tactics but nonetheless shrug and admit it's part of the sport at that high a level. Outright cheating might be another story but nothing thus far has be "proven" except in the minds of the audience.

I was fully expecting Will to win, to be honest.
 
Ultra Sonic 007 said:
and the fact he's been using other Ace Trainers as proxies to scope out Brock's team (not illegal per se, but one that some might argue goes against the spirit of Pokemon battling).
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I mean to be honest that's part of what I'm talking about - that was a smart ploy that made me root for Will, and the disgust it's viewed with just strikes me as weird. That is, it's framed as a scummy trick that puts Will's 'mons in harms way but like... they're pokemon on a gym circuit? Getting in fights is their day-to-day? It's not as if Will was loaning his 'mons out to incompetent hacks who'd get them hurt unnecessarily.

Like, Brock is a gym leader. His job is to assess whether incoming trainers are learning the lessons and are up to snuff to continue on to the next leg of their journey. Will is a trainer who's visibly studying battle tactics and matchups and researching a significant opponent. Speaking as a former teacher this is uh... this is an A+ student? Full marks, well done with your extra credit, have a gold star.
 
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GiantMonkeyMan said:
Indeed. I get that much of his tactics seem underhanded but if Ace battles are considered the pinnacle of a professional sport then Brock should have been more than experienced with people pushing the boundaries to eke out a win.
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This has actually been brought up before in the context of Brock's prior battles against other Ace Trainers; he's openly disclosed not being that focused on his Ace ranking, which resulted in those who have challenged him before being those who were not in the highest echelons of the Ace circuit (as in those whose rank is such that they wouldn't risk a loss to someone who could defeat the Champion, and because Brock's own Ace ranking wasn't high enough such that victory would grant them enough of a benefit to outweigh the risk), but were still high enough such that they could give him a run for his money as far as they could in terms of fair battling.

Now that Will has successfully gotten a draw out of Brock in a high stakes battle, I think we might see some Ace Trainers in the Kanto Top 20 actually put in a challenge request for Brock, just because they sense there's now a more than decent chance that they'll be able to beat a Champion-caliber team with high-level Ace tactics (at the same level of what Will did, albeit different depending on what their type specialty is).

/I forget offhand who the prior highest ranking Ace Trainer was that challenged Brock
//but I don't think their rank was any higher than 40
 
Hmm, I wonder if Sabrina and Co.'s investigative sweep found anything? Or if looking for interference is what kept Will's cheating to a minimum?

And I'm curious how the other Gym Leaders will deal with Will's challenge now that they are somewhat forewarned of his shenanigans?

famfrit said:
Sinnoh has the Origin trio, Cynthia, Arceus and Darkrai
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famfrit said:
Bewear
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Okay, you got a chuckle out of me for including Cynthia in a lineup of Legendaries, but Bewear? I don't think that one quite fits...
 
NewWillinium said:
So how do we think Will was cheating here?

Could he use his own psychic abilities to replicate psychic pokemon moves?
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Brock did almost cry foul when Will's eyes were glowing as he ordered Jynx to use psychic at the end of the match. I think Will might be stacking psychic moves of his own on his pokemon's psychic type attacks so that an opponent would be hit by two moves at once. An outside observer would think that it was just one strong psychic move from the pokemon.
 
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xbox432 said:
Okay, you got a chuckle out of me for including Cynthia in a lineup of Legendaries, but Bewear? I don't think that one quite fits...
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I was listing general power creep things which is why things like Ultra Beasts, Z moves and Dynamax were there. For Bewear have you seen the anime the one there in gen 7 has a ton of crazy feats including running on water. When Pheromosa showed up as well it was crazy fast and went around stealing Z crystals from all the trainers and no-one could keep up but when it offended Bewear, Bewear went head to head with it and didn't just match it in a blurring flurry on blows but won.

If that isn't enough there's the thing with the Guzzlord. The first one that appeared showed they were crazy strong with Pikachu and a Zeraora which is a Mythical were struggling to do anything to. At the end 4 of them show up and were also really strong one for example needed all 4 Kahunas to hold off but Bewear was able to do by itself and only ended up on the backfoot when it started targeting it's kid Stuffal and Bewear had to take a ton of blows by using it's body as a shield and even then didn't go down.

It is really no exaggeration to say Bewear is up there as a contender for the spot of the strongest pokemon in the gen 7 anime with Nekrozma and Guzzlord as the only real competition.
 
Viva01 said:
I instead sat against it, feeling old in a way I hadn't for years. Not since that punk kid came in and challenged me with extremely powerful pokemon. I'd lost my starting Onix that day. I rubbed my face and sighed.
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Uncertain if this has been talked about before, but dang. Will might've really mashed Brock's buttons by delaying medical treatment.
 
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NewWillinium said:
So how do we think Will was cheating here?
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One of the prevaling theories was that he had a second Xatu, which he actually has in his canon Elite 4 roster, and has been doing assorted things to help Will's pokemon like levitate to make them lighter and enhancing tricks/attacks. As for how he got it in it is considered to have happened when Will asked to have the psychic dampeners turned off so he could teleport in, letting his Xatu just pop in without needing to be in a ball.

I'm hoping Sabrina actually shows what she found last chapter, because there was a whole lot of open possibilities last chapter that weren't really followed up on just to make this whole thing run its course when I'd rather we just be done with Will. Unfortunately that isn't the case, but hopefully the payoff for keeping this pest around will be worth it.
 
I found that mostly unsatisfying, and rather disappointing.

The cliffhangers of the arc were not quite the worst I've ever read, but still a very long way from being actively good.

The draw was a good choice, but took to long coming to feel worth the time investment, and too long/too many installments to play out. The breaks between chapters felt quite arbitrary and ultimately I think were detrimental. The whole thing was emotionally riling for the purpose of... not actually delivering on anything that I found emotionally substantial...?

The setups did not manifest. The foreshadowing didn't. The build up had no payoff. And now, we're faced with the prospect of having to wait (potentially more months IRL?) for a delivery of what was felt to be set up to happen here?

... Yeeeah. Not feeling that. Not looking forward to reading it, and mildly considering just... not bothering.

Will has kinda thoroughly poisoned the narrative/emotional well, at least for me.
 
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My opinion of the fight is that Will has just completely self-destructed his career. The main overarching reason is that he was in effect using a strategy of profound weakness. He didn't have the balls, the skill or the Pokemon to actually take on Brock in anything resembling a fair fight so he had to use every dirty trick and rules lawyering he could come up with in order to scrape a draw against Brock who wasn't even using some of his strongest Pokemon. An Elite Four member has to be powerful, has to be seen as powerful and as a very public figure has to at least look as if he respects the rules. With this fight he's proven the opposite, that he's not actually powerful and that he holds no respect for the rules. After this if he were to even suggest going for the Elite Four spot like he's been hinting then Lance will laugh in his face and tell him to F off.
 
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