- Pronouns
- He/Him
No, that was meant totally sincerely. You totally can write Jacinto with hangups over an absent, overworked father, but we have enough family drama as-is I think it's funnier if his home life was totally fine.
Trails of Tera Steel (Kiseki-inspired Pokemon Academy Quest)
- Thread starter ArvisPresley
- Start date
No, that was meant totally sincerely. You totally can write Jacinto with hangups over an absent, overworked father, but we have enough family drama as-is I think it's funnier if his home life was totally fine.
- Location
- England, unfortunately.
- Pronouns
- She/They
Hard to say. To my knowledge canon Nemona just… doesn't really recognise danger? Like, at all? I think I remember seeing that her team have basically stopped her from walking off cliffs absentmindedly before, or something to that effect.
However… mulched corpses are kinda hard to ignore.
Personally I'm worried about how she's going to keep up with powers scaling. I suspect that the answer is she's going to be fighting surge long before we get a shot.
I mean, I thought it was already implied he had hangups?
Then again, having that be semi retconned or actually just be grousing would help to sideline him so we can stop increasing the cast size. Just kinda… push him to one side and ignore him for the rest of the quest.
StattStatt
Supplier of suspenders for your disbelief
- Location
- On one of your shoulders
- Pronouns
- He/Him
You have no idea how I've yearned for this chapter, and it was well worth the wait. Wooo boy, what an update.
Oh, and no small amounts of traumatic backstory hints during those visions. Someone get these kids some hot cocoa and comfort hugs ASAP, especially after a day like this.
This someone makes me more scared than the idea of the class facing another Shadow in the future. Unless he uses a Shadow on us with would just be the best (read: worst) of both worlds.
General thoughts about the battle though is that it was, simply put, absolutely great. Felt like everyone really pulled their weight and did their part as much as they could. And that strong beginning with everyone working together to both attack and restrain Vigoroth, and the resuting chaos when he and all hell broke lose such a great truimph to plummeting "oh shit" feeling (I dunno how else to describe it). So incredibly proud of our lil' team and the rest of the class for managing to pull through as well as they did.
Heavily implying that Surge has been dealing with Shadows for a while now, or at least since his and Leaf's last meeting. Which is concerning to say the least. :|
Someone or maybe more have mentioned Mariana's extreme empathy before, is that maybe coming into play here? Because even if those visions or whatever they were might happen for whoever activates their ARCUS is normal, I somehow doubt other people are supposed to be able to be affected by them.
Oh, and no small amounts of traumatic backstory hints during those visions. Someone get these kids some hot cocoa and comfort hugs ASAP, especially after a day like this.
Okay, this one made me actually tear up a bit. God damn it, poor Lokix, man.
Hmmm, well this can only lead to good things. Totally doesn't mean he's gonna show up again to attack the class and get a rise out of Leaf, definitely not.
This someone makes me more scared than the idea of the class facing another Shadow in the future. Unless he uses a Shadow on us with would just be the best (read: worst) of both worlds.
General thoughts about the battle though is that it was, simply put, absolutely great. Felt like everyone really pulled their weight and did their part as much as they could. And that strong beginning with everyone working together to both attack and restrain Vigoroth, and the resuting chaos when he and all hell broke lose such a great truimph to plummeting "oh shit" feeling (I dunno how else to describe it). So incredibly proud of our lil' team and the rest of the class for managing to pull through as well as they did.
Toaster cult
I Am An Imaginary Living Body
- Location
- Tokyo
- Pronouns
- She/Her
Jacinto hears everybody elses backstories and sighs before going and getting his dad a #1 father mug, Winning by default Larry
- Location
- England, unfortunately.
- Pronouns
- She/They
- Pronouns
- She/Her
Hard to say.
The whole point of the ARCUS is to connect multiple people on a sensory level so that they can battle together with a higher cohesion. But the Original Trails ARCUS never gave anyone flashbacks of each others memories, and never with someone who didn't have an ARCUS themselves.
The second part of that problem can easily be handwaved by going "it's not like our Pokémon have an ARCUS in their hands and we can still link with them" so accidentally linking with the Vigoroth is plausible. But the flashback part technically has no basis. However: It is fun, so fuck it we ball. (Also the "Sharing" experience of the Tera Steel ARCUS Link is much deeper then a Trails ARCUS Link so bleed through, especially in an emotional situation like this, probably isn't that unlikely regardless aha.)
- Location
- Plato's Cave
Sird is from the Adventures manga, where she's a Rocket Admin during the FRLG arc, working for Giovanni while he's playing the roulette of acquiring Deoxys to both find his son (Silver) and fight Red again. She was present at the very end of the RS arc, where she retrieved the fragments of the Red and Blue Orbs, which would be used by Giovanni to artificially induce Deoxys' climate-based form changes.
At the end of FRLG she uses an unknown pokemon (later revealed to be a Darkrai) to turn the Gen 1 protags and also Silver to stone (was trying to do something to Deoxys, but the protags body-blocked). She also gave Archie, leader of Team Aqua, a magic armor/sword set that sorta turns him into an undead knight, leading to him being the villain of the Emerald arc. Well, she offered it to both Archie and Maxie, who were stuck in a dimensional bubble, on the condition that the survivor could have it and escape death. Archie killed Maxie, so he got it. Notably references the Veilstone Myth about a man with a sword while gifting it.
After all this shit it's revealed that she was actually a Team Galactic plant the entire time, and takes part in the Spear Pillar battle. It's known that she released her Darkrai by the Platinum arc, but she ultimately evades capture and vanishes.
So yeah purely off of the Pokemon side she's a pretty damn concerning individual. Definitely worrisome wherever she is.
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- Pronouns
- They/Them
I love Ruby. I'm so happy we picked her up
Is this a typo or did Leaf get Mismagius from Surge? Wouldn't be shocking if she did I suppose.
- Location
- Australia
Nemona is all about Pokemon battling but whatever this was, and "an impromptu amateur vivisection attempt" appears to cover the scenario well, it was not battling. I think Nemona will be glad she didn't have to stare this down.
- Location
- England
Mariana is going to protect every child in Paldea if she has to.
Even Poppy. No, there's nothing Mariana could protect her from which any single one of her Pokémon would not obliterate. But damnit Mary's trying anyway.
Continually thankful that Mr. Bonding is not canon here. It is not now, and will never be, Bonding Time. We can sleep in peace. Enter hotel rooms without fear.
Emerald arc was real fuckin' weird. Have to respect the Adventures writers just going "And this villains has a magical suit of armour that stops time and a sword that reflects attacks, both given to him by a mysterious lady after he fought another guy to the death in a dimensional bubble. Yes, this is still a Pokémon story. Why do you ask?"
Yeah. Battling is a sport. There weren't any sports going on here.
I doubt your average fan of fencing would be very enthusiastic to see someone get skewered on a longsword.
I think Nemona, much like many real life martial artists or competition shooters who love their craft, would have a special kind of hatred for those who genuinely use the art she loves for evil.
- Pronouns
- She/Her
Typo. Fixed nowI love Ruby. I'm so happy we picked her up
Is this a typo or did Leaf get Mismagius from Surge? Wouldn't be shocking if she did I suppose.
- Pronouns
- She/They
That reminds me: everyone thank Renne. Good cat. Best friend.
I mean tbh Umineko is like 60% memes by volume.
Anyway LunaticPanda already did these, and I'm gonna do them longer-form later, but I have to talk about the ARCUS flashbacks.
First of all,
Combat Links are definitely from the Trails side of the equation, but to my recollection, Erebonia's ARCUS units never caused this level of memory-sharing. You need romantically-coded hangouts under the stars for that kind of thing. The obvious pull for "who's that Pokémon" is a Rotom - ghost-types connect to emotional energy, and Rotoms inhabiting electronic devices is the Pokéworld answer for the do-everything smartphone that has an app for everything (although you did need a separate Tera Orb in S/V for the Terastalizing part). But it could be something else, perhaps a Psychic or Fairy type. I wouldn't put any of this heart plot bullshit past an Unown, for example, but I don't really have any evidence for their presence either. In my opinion, it's almost certainly not a Porygon, or at least not an unevolved one, since those are the expected phone operating system in this version of the world.
As for the flashbacks:
Theodora. We know she's based on Porto Marinada+Noblesse Oblige, and that she's the child of the Duke of Medali...the man who rules occupied Porto Marinada as a military governor. The bastard scion of a foreign noble house, exiled and adopted, only for her scum biodad to invade and "reclaim" her from her happy existence.
Also I like how Theodora and Manuel both existing means that 2 out of 3 Great Houses are relying on technical legitimized bastards as heirs now. Average feudal aristocracy hours, especially in an Erebonia clone.
Elise. And Rean. "Forgot her first friend" is a new plot point here (possibly inspired by an optional bond event between Rean and Alisa, though, when they realized they'd met briefly as kids and forgotten the incident), but is almost assuredly tied in to Theodora's fixation on her. "Forgot her first name"...Elise (and Rean) don't know where they come from. They're just foundlings, repressing most of their pre-adoption life out of trauma, and Elise not remembering her birth mother is...sad, but expected.
And if her heart's not in there, I wonder what is.
Ostia, presumably a penniless orphan starving in the street, is given a helping hand by the worst person possible.
Every single time.
Every single time.
It's a man with glasses.
Mariana, protecting someone I pray to Aidios is Tamara and not a secret dead younger sibling. The Mightyenas...why were they there? What kind of wild Pokémon attacks a whole ass village of nomad humans? What was going on here?
Lokix. Not Vigoroth, unless someone got a pronoun wrong somewhere, but Lokix. He's just as involved in this battle as we are, even if he was late arriving.
Jacinto's hit us with "Dad doesn't have time for me and everyone expects me to live up to him as an incredible battler" a couple of times now. It's not acute trauma in the same way that Mariana's is, but it's still pretty clearly affecting him mentally. I think the latter part is going to be the deeper one, though - imagine the inferiority complex, especially with Manuel provoking it all the time.
This is a Trails crossover. The cast size will continue increasing until morale improves.
So thank you for this, the manga is a big blind spot for me but it's filled with such absolutely wild stuff I need to sit down and read it.
Also...Sird is faking a Kalos accent now, and is a serial Evil Team double agent.
There's an Evil Team in Kalos who canonically took Manga Team Rocket's trick of infiltrating the Pokémon League and in fact has a member on the Elite Four (who somehow stays on the Elite Four).
Sird's probably on Team Flare and I will be very surprised if she's not going by "Malva" now.
- Location
- over there
ah darn, you got that post out while I was typing one that was pretty much the same thing
I'll just draw some attention to this paragraph then, since it gives us a bit of information about the antagonists
the first bit draws a parallel to S from ToCS 1, a member of the church who left and joined the Imperial Liberation Front, a terrorist group that served as the main antagonists of the game, which others have already pointed out.
The last part implies some more interesting things imo.
The first possibility, and one I think is less likely, is that the antagonists here are Team Galactic, who Sird was actually working for while at Rocket in the manga.
The other line of thinking is based on the fact that Sird's been working for the antagonists here for roughly 30/20 years (based on when RBY/FRLG occurred in the timeline, and 30 seems more likely if surge was a gym leader at the time). While it's possible that their current employers are the equivalents to the ILF/ their Noble alliance backers (they both fit for S and V of the ILF) the timeframe makes me think its more likely they're working directly for the setting's Ouroboros equivalent while helping the ILF/Nobles.
I guess there's also a possibility that Galactic is the Ouroboros equivalent, but that doesn't really feel likely to me.
- Location
- Florida
Truly are Surge's priorities in order.
Now that is clever.
- Location
- England, unfortunately.
- Pronouns
- She/They
thing is, she's quickly going to become very good at dealing with this stuff as we encounter it, and at a certain point, she's going to HAVE to get involved, or at least be strongly pressured. Having a team of pokemon that are going to be growing at a rate that means they'll be Champion Rank at the end of the year means that we don't really have a good reason to NOT chuck her at these kinds of problems. I'm sure that she'll increasingly get the Leaf Treatment, but she's going to need to get used to violence.
Honestly, could lead to some interesting character shakeup. I really want to see Nemona pushed out of her comfort zone in a big way, because otherwise I feel her character in a quest like this writes itself out - There's no great conflict to her character that doesn't resolve near automatically as soon as Juliana enters the picture, at which point she's obsessed with her new
Honestl I have little issue with this, but we've had people bringing it up as a concern since it also means Pokemon cast members need to be thought of.
So I think we need to do at least a little soft pruning, here and there/
Mightyena are dark type. Possible influence from one of the Ruin legendaries?
I dunno, it probably isn't, but it's a shot in the dark.
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KnownParadox
Not a sphere
- Location
- Canada
Could explain why Jenkins is so gung-ho about keeping them sealed, although the evil demon god thing provides its own reasoning.
- Pronouns
- They/Them
Surge is already on that. 😬
StattStatt
Supplier of suspenders for your disbelief
- Location
- On one of your shoulders
- Pronouns
- He/Him
Surge, revving up his battery/pokemon-powered chainsaw, grinning widely, sparks flying off of the saw casting ominous shadows on his face: "Okay kids, time for some gardening!"
- Location
- Plato's Cave
I would say the only other major thing that's shown up that occurs to me is all of Leaf's backstory, even if that's somewhat different than what clearly went on here. In the manga she and Silver were kidnapped by Pryce, without Giovanni or the main Rocket organization seeming to be involved, since Pryce's takeover of it during the GSC arc involved mind-controlling masks and Giovanni would have never consented to his son being taken like that. Since it appears that here Leaf was trained by the main Rocket organization here, given her relationship with Surge, I'm not sure how to square Silver with that, barring significant alterations to the relationship between him and his father in both directions.
Snooze you lose buddy.
EDIT:
I'd like to point out that how Sird got into the bubble is never explained, nor is why she has magic armor or what the point of gifting it even was, it's just a completely weird thing.
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- Pronouns
- She/They
Hm...assuming he's the same age as Gold, this version of Silver would have been 11 years old when Giovanni bailed after RBY (making him roughly the same age as Leaf, Red, and Blue, so that's probably intentional). That's young enough, and enough of a time gap for Pryce (or any of Archer's remnant clique in Johto) to order the rest of the gang to go Child Soldier Indoctrination on the Boss's kid against what would have been Giovanni's wishes. The specific events definitely don't match up to the manga, but the vibe definitely does.
I mean I also think Manga Surge reformed by the time any of the post-RBY arcs happened and that sure as hell didn't happen here.
- Pronouns
- Ze/Hir
i think my favorite bit of characterization in this update is Surge apparently naming all of his Pokemon literally just numbers
- Pronouns
- She/They
You know what I'm revising my theory a bit based on all this information.
Regardless of if she's an XY character or not, she's definitely Campanella.
- Location
- England
Now that you mention it...
"A six-pointed star with a hexagon in the middle" and hexagons with elemental symbols in the middle are definitely things I've seen before...
(Just in case the picture isn't showing, it's just Stellar Form Terapagos.)
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