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I never realised how perfectly his face says "oh bugger" in that scene either. It's great. Not sure if that's just excellent screenshot timing on your part either, or the game actually did it intentionally and I just missed it.
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Dec 22, 2020 15:57
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Yup. Just a calm, resting expression betraying no unusual malice or distress, and then... "This has all gone to poo poo." Next update's gonna be fun.
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Dec 22, 2020 22:07
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Update 46: Grown Tremendously Chairman Rose's Plan - Pokémon Sword and Shield OST   Fair warning, Gloria, he’s actually a nutter. Oh good. Gloria! YOU will understand what I’ve done! Tell me, do you remember the conversation we had a year or two ago in Hammerlocke? I mean, I do, but it was in July – Shut up. You asked me if we’d run out of Galar particles that someday. And you were right! In fact, I’ve had to discreetly switch most of our mining operations over to other materials just to keep it quiet. Oh, the particles themselves are chugging along just fine, but there just aren’t any more to find. By the end of this month we’ll have to start slowing expansion; by the end of this year, we’ll have run out entirely. Can you imagine how the investors would respond? Did you put the entire region at risk to keep your shareholders happy? No, I did it to keep the economy from collapsing, you little poo poo! Every market projection, every development plan, every retirement fund, all down the shitter the moment Galar’s most important industry bottoms out. So imagine what happens when we find a literal dragon sleeping at the bottom of the deepest Galar particle vein we’ve ever located. We thought, “no way in hell has no one in the region ever seen what is clearly a Legendary Pokémon”. Do you know what we did next? I’m still marveling at how you literally dug too greedily and too deep. Shut up! We followed the vein all the way up to the Bath in Circhester, made the connection, and commissioned Magnolia’s favorite lab assistant to follow up on it!… Oh no  . We never briefed Sonia in full, of course – we gave her just enough information to go off to get her started. And she was hardly the only researcher we had. We call it the Darkest Day Entity, but one of ours in Wyndon uncovered its Old Unovan name: Eternatus. Rather poetic, don’t you think? We kept digging. We did scans, physical exams, everything we could think of without waking it up – and it turns out, part Poison and part Dragon. Exposure to low heat and exposure to pressure keep it dormant, and with the batteries and equipment you see around you, we could simulate the appropriate sensory input right here in this tower! So you stored a mysterious and possibly dangerous Legendary in a historic building in one of the biggest cities in Galar? Shut. Up. As it was, dear Eternatus didn’t take kindly to being prodded in his sleep. Maybe it might have in the past, but, well, it was waking up. And every time it stirred, all across the region, Galar radiation spiked. We could soothe it during these episodes with crystallized Galar particles… Bede did good work there. Shame about what happened to him. But it just wasn’t enough. If we could just wake it up safely, we could milk it for Galar particles indefinitely. Eternatus has circadian rhythms, just like all of us. Its last a few months, and we were forced to choose between waking it now, before the equipment was fully tested, or wake it months from now, once the energy crunch and runaway emergence events had gotten underway. That’s what all of this is! All this equipment was designed to keep it both awake and docile, all this planning, all this money – and it wasn’t Goddamn enough. Our equipment wasn’t fine-tuned enough. Too little heat, too little pressure… ……We were storing it in the former containment cell behind me when it broke free, and off it went… And for all that, it worked anyway. Or rather, Leon did. No doubt he’s already worn it down at the top of the Tower. The longer he can delay it, the more Galar particles our equipment can harvest out of the air around it – and when he captures it? We can do the same again. And again. And again. No energy shortages. No deprivation.… So can we go see Leon now? No. Could’ve told you. I’ve had too much go off the rails today. Too many other variables gone wrong. Millions in damaged equipment alone. What happens if you interrupt him? Distract him? Worse, if you catch it and refuse to let us use it? No. You will stay here until Leon catches Eternatus or it destroys the Tower with us in it. But I –    Battle! (Macro Cosmos Rose) - Pokémon Sword and Shield OST     I haven’t showed this much on screen, but outside of Oleana, almost every Macro Cosmos trainer has used Steel-types, notable for their skyhigh defense and constellation of resistances (including Electric). As such, the leader of Macro Cosmos uses ONLY Steel-types. His issue is? Every single one of his Pokémon is either weak or double-weak to Fire. And it’s not like his team his particularly impressive in and of itself, to be honest. Plus, Gloria really isn’t in the mood to dance around the point anymore. For all the fanfare, this is not challenging fight.   Especially not with Bruce around. The closest thing he has to a threat is his signature Pokémon, the same Copperajah Bede stole earlier. Instead of just taking it down with Bruce like the others, I switch out Briggs for a quick photo op.            This move damages any Pokémon that switch in, too. Unfortunately, it isn’t enough.     Are… You’re letting us go? Just like that? I can hardly stop you now, can I? At this point it’s been long enough that our batteries must nearly all be full, and they weren’t built with the possibility of overloading in mind. That was on the docket for three weeks from now. Funny, isn’t it? It looks like Leon may not be enough to defeat Eternatus, after all. I may have been wrong in that too.… Go on ahead. Either Leon, the police, or the agents of heaven will find me down here when it’s all over. There’s nowhere else I have to be.… Even in the rush to get this game finished, they took the time to set up a view so vivid you can feel the heat off the electric coils.  About as ready as I’ll ever be for this, mate.…  Battle! (Eternatus) ~ Phase 1 - Pokémon Sword and Shield OST       Thanks, Hop. And you, Gloria. You two really have grown tremendously! But I think it’s a bit late. Every time I knock it out, it wakes back up and more Pokémon Dynamax, and every time I try to catch it, it just breaks free. I’m down to my last ball. Look.        So, uh, that’s a pretty space-age-looking Pokémon. Anyway, I’m gonna just have L337 pound it with a Draco Meteor –     L337 goes down in one hit. I’d forgotten just how tough it was. Its attacks are enormously powerful Dragon-type moves – it knocks out Briggs despite the type disadvantage, too, before Mr. Blobby takes it out with Psychic.   … …wait for it –        Pokémon Ruby was the second game I played in Gen 3; I went with Sapphire at first because I like the color blue. If Team Rocket in Gens 1 and 2 were the Mafia, Teams Magma and Aqua were halfway between cultists and ecoterrorists: they wanted to revive ancient deities to reshape the face of the earth in profoundly stupid ways. In Sapphire, Team Aqua revived a God of Water to raise the oceans above the land, and while it was running free, the weather system, which otherwise vary from place to place, was stuck in rainstorm everywhere. In Ruby, Team Magma planned to dry out the oceans so that land would reign everywhere. The endless rainstorms were impressive and not a little alarming, certainly. But there was a grinding, gray-brown desperation to the landscape in Ruby’s endgame that just wasn’t present in its sibling game. Even if all the land in the world vanished underwater, there’d still be life swimming in the oceans. But almost by definition, if there was no water in the world, there would be no life at all. It felt like the earth was dying in a vivid, insidious way I’ve never encountered in another Pokémon game, including this one.     But this comes pretty close. And after all, what would a JRPG be if one of its most important bosses didn’t have multiple stages  ? Battle! (Eternatus) ~ Phase 2 - Pokémon Sword and Shield OST     Through this whole fight we can see impressions of other locations in Galar flashing by in the background; without even focusing on it I caught Ballonlea, Wyndon, and the Diglett statue by Stow-on-Side. Fortunately for us, Hop jumps in to help, and apparently our team is completely healed? Don’t question it, we don’t have the time.   And yet every time we try to do anything, Eternatus sits around storing its energy and prevents us from moving…   Just… raise it up?                      S-stop! It’s… Loud. Speak… Somehow else, please.… (Is this acceptable?) Yes, thanks. Zacian, you can talk Uh… (My brother can speak to your friend in his head, and I in yours.) Okay. Okay. Then what should I do?   Battle! (Eternatus) ~ Phase 3 - Pokémon Sword and Shield OST Another strong recommend track – instead of an evolution of the last theme, it’s a remix several other standout tracks. Remember how you have four Pokémon working together against Pokémon in Dens? Welcome to the equivalent  . That doesn’t make this fight trivial, necessarily; it did down L337 in one hit. But…       …With a little assistance, it goes down easier than most high-level den battles. After a couple rounds, adorably enough, Hop’s Dubwool gets in the final hit with a Double-Edge that does as much damage to it as to Eternatus.   Wait – Zamazenta, can you link me to Eternatus like I’m linked to you? (Yes, but that is highly unwise –) Then do it! Trust me! You want Zamazenta to do WHAT –           
Falconier111 fucked around with this message at 15:19 on Feb 1, 2021 |
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Dec 23, 2020 04:58
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Balls.  I had to, OK? OK, jokes aside, that was an impressive fight. I know there's a lot of cut content in this game, or, y'know. Space for it, but... they didn't skimp on this, at least.
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Dec 23, 2020 05:43
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Five headed space skeleton dragon! And Rose's plan wasn't completely stupid. The part where he had Leon, the champion deal with Eternatus wasn't a bad idea. Its just he didn't know that it is one of the most powerful pokemon in history. Seriously, its has the highest stats of any pokemon ever, its just you are fighting it four on one and two of them do extra damage against it.
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Dec 23, 2020 06:16
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Falconier111 posted:Pokémon Ruby was the second game I played in Gen 3; I went with Sapphire at first because I like the color blue. If Team Rocket in Gens 1 and 2 were the Mafia, Teams Magma and Aqua were halfway between cultists and ecoterrorists: they wanted to revive ancient deities to reshape the face of the earth in profoundly stupid ways. In Sapphire, Team Aqua revived a God of Water to raise the oceans above the land, and while it was running free, the weather system, which otherwise vary from place to place, was stuck in rainstorm everywhere. BTW, I forgot to mention this in my last post, but the remake's graphics really helped hammer the point in when I played OmegaRuby. In Ruby, certain routes of the game are brighter due to the intense sunlight, but in OmegaRuby... well, you know that the end of the world is at hand when the camera pans up and you see that the sky is literally on fire.
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Dec 23, 2020 07:39
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Rose is almost redeemed by his acceptance, honestly. He's not protesting or blaming anyone else or trying to run. His attitude is very much 'oh. Wow. I really hosed up here. Okay, I'm just going to wait quietly for the authorities now, I'm sorry, I thought this would help.' The parallels with Hoenn are pretty blatant, obviously, but Aqua and Magma still try to play blame hot potato to some extent. And not realising that a new pokemon is stronger than you planned for is a lot more plausible than not realising that getting rid of either the ocean or the land is a really loving bad idea you morons. Shame that there's no actual justice system in the Pokemon world and any and all criminals can walk away free if they just pinky promise not to do it again, but still. I do like what they tried to do with Rose. It just needed another couple of story beats to really make more sense of it. But he's clearly not a villain in the traditional sense, and I appreciate that it's something different.
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Dec 23, 2020 10:16
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Oh, actually, two quick things: 1) what should I name it? 2) I just opened this page again and it took several seconds for all the images to load in. So many images... I upload them in batches of no more than 9 labeled “shield [update number] [alphabetical name of batch] [picture number]. I think the farthest I’ve ever gotten before this was J4. That last image? Motherfucking O9. Over 120... Falconier111 fucked around with this message at 14:50 on Dec 23, 2020 |
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Dec 23, 2020 14:47
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One subtle thing I like here is that if you look at Rose's steel types, they're all pretty well-suited to fighting a poison/dragon type in theory (steel is immune to poison and resists dragon), so it looks like he did try to come prepared... and it could have worked, except Eternatus knows Flamethrower and can easily overwhelm his entire team with it. Also, I love his battle music even though it feels kind of off for a Pokemon game... and also, the ominous Latin chanting doesn't really seem to me suited to the kind of character Rose is. That said, what they're actually chanting is "Rosa seda credo" which I'm not entirely sure how to translate (I've seen people say it's supposed to be "the rose's thorny creed" but I'm not sure where they're getting thorny from and I think something like "the rose's calm dedication" might be closer? but I don't really know Latin)... except I and a lot of people tend to misinterpret this as English and hear "Go, Rose, save everyone!". As for Eternatus itself, I like a lot of what they tried to do here, although Leon ends up looking like a useless idiot for only having one poke ball (I appreciate that you fixed this), and it annoys me a bit that despite being impressively cinematic most of the fight is nothing more than an interactive cutscene. I'm pretty sure that you can't lose no matter what you do, wolfy friends will take it down before the player's team is at any real risk.
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Dec 23, 2020 15:19
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Falconier111 posted:Oh, actually, two quick things: I named mine Yamato, simply because the Dynamax Cannon reminded me of the Wave Motion Gun.
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Dec 23, 2020 15:22
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I'm cashing in any  post credit I may have left and campaigning to name the dragon Y Ddraig Goch.
Black Robe fucked around with this message at 16:20 on Dec 23, 2020 |
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Dec 23, 2020 15:41
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Black Robe posted:I'm cashing in any Seconding this.
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Dec 23, 2020 15:59
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Black Robe posted:I'm cashing in any There we are. And that reminds me: this is your last opportunity for posting if you want to be immortalized in the archive.E: \/\/\/\/\/\/ I’m glad somebody noticed that 
Falconier111 fucked around with this message at 17:06 on Dec 23, 2020 |
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Dec 23, 2020 16:00
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You put it in a normal Poke Ball. That's just insulting. Not even gonna use a cool ball you spent money on, you probably found that one under a tree somewhere, it's fine, get in there ya wee shite.
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Dec 23, 2020 16:41
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Worth noting; that Eternatus Phase 3 track? It cues up the moment the scene switches back to Eternatus after Zacian and Zamazenta wake up and depart from the Slumbering Weald. That whole sequence is my favorite moment in any Pokemon game. Big colossal monster with power so overwhelming that you and your friend who are facing down what seems like the end of the world can do nothing. And suddenly, the mysterious creatures you met in the mysterious forest shoot through the sky, landing smack dab between you and the monster - and the artifacts you found float out of your hands to power up these two ragged-looking legends into regal champions of legend. And then, for the first time in the series, you face a plot-battle with AI-controlled legendaries fighting as your allies. Worth noting, Zacian and Zamazenta spend the first turn using Howl (which affects all allies) and... I think Light Screen? I remember getting mad because Zamazenta beat me to it and wasted my turn :P And then they start unloading with Behemoth Blade and Behemoth Bash, attacks which are tailor-made for taking out Dynamaxed Pokemon. Literally, the moves double in base power when used against a Dynamaxed target. Worth noting, "Eternamax" Eternatus here is something that will never, ever be usable by players if Nintendo has any say in it. Until now, the Pokemon with the single highest base-stat total of all time has been Mega Rayquaza and the Mega Mewtwos with 780. Eternamax Eternatus has 1125. To hammer home how epic the moment is, allow me to post a video of the event, with a timestamp to where the music starts (this is literally just the first video I found that has it): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KqlmsxfJGRk&t=349s
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Dec 23, 2020 17:06
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Explopyro posted:
Oh no you can def lose, source: my nuzlocke where through a dumb choice (don't use earthquake with a thick club boosted marowak) i KO'd Zacian. -and everyone else in that battle fainted to eternatus. including my team in short order once eternatus took out my marowak.
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Dec 23, 2020 18:44
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Update 47: Thank You For The Greatest Battle I’ve Ever Had     Well-thought and well-fought, child. This will not be the last we meet.   … Wyndon - Pokémon Sword and Shield OST    Other Person: He awoke Eternatus and nearly caused a catastrophe for the entire region! You reap what you sow, I say.  Good morning, mate. I’d return the greeting, but now that Lee’s no longer in hospital and I can start focusing again, I need to go over what happened with you and Eternatus again, because I remember what you said yesterday when you visited and what you said overtaxed, but I need to doublecheck that those weren’t all hallucinations. Did you really connect your brain to Eternatus? No, we’re calling it Y Draig Goch now, Marnie named it. You showed it to Marnie?! It’s just a big, odd-looking Pokémon, all right? And I like to think it’s autistic, too. That was the least coherent part of the whole deal. I mean, that’s not actually true, but – look. Let’s go over this in full. When Rose was ranting, my attention drifted a bit when I heard the thing about pressure and temperature and thought, “that sounds a lot like what it’s like when I go through sensory overload”. So when we stared it down, I thought to meself, “Gloria, you’d be panicking and lashing out in the situation, too”. When Zamazenta linked us, I… It’s hard to describe. I just kind of pushed good thoughts and tried to comfort it when it was in the Pokéball. When it realized the ball was adjusting to its preferred environment, as they do, it stopped trying to fight its way free and settled down. I think we understood each other in that moment – we had that in common, even if, you know, we did not both actually have Autism Spectrum Disorder. And you said you are STILL connected? Aye. I mean, really, it’s just a big Pokémon. It’s a really, really OLD Pokémon, yeah, but it’s as far as I can tell it’s never been awake and not suffering before, so it’s still kind of fumbling around and looking to me like I’m its mother. God, that is weird. I know, right? It’s just so GRATEFUL, though. I can’t really talk to it in abstract concepts – it’s not that smart – but we can share feelings and impressions now. And, I’ve been coaching it on how to function outside of a Pokéball, and now that it can run around outside, it’s started trying to fight for me and do stuff with me! I introduced it to Marnie yesterday and it started playing with her and Jekyll. It was so happy I legitimately started crying. Hell, it knows I’m talking about it now and it just perked up in its Pokéball.… Lee’s going to want to see it when you fight him, you know. Oh, I’m going to be breaking Goch out in the fight, don’t you worry  . But really, is Leon SURE he’s up for it? He just spent a few days in hospital, for God’s sake. He’s got the doctors’ approval, he’s up and ready. He’ll be fine, and even if he wasn’t, there’s no way he’d miss it. Speaking of which… I know the fight’s not until this evening, but are you ready? Honestly? Yeah. I just did the impossible, mate. Not only did I defeat a Legendary Pokémon that’s laid waste to the region multiple times, but I befriended it and now it’s looking forward to fighting with me in the final match. I’m ALREADY going down in history. Before you, might I add  . Maybe, but I’m going to write papers on your relationship and found entire new fields of Pokémon biology, so there  . Anyway, yeah I’m ready. I think I’m to spend the day socializing with my Pokémon and picking up a new outfit for the final. I guess I’ll see you there. Godspeed, mate.…  Goch, by the way, actually is worth including in your team. As has been mentioned elsewhere, that special form we fought on Hammerlocke Tower was a special form called Eternamax, and now that we actually have it, that form is off-limits and we can’t even Dynamax it at all. However, its signature move, Dynamax Cannon, is very powerful by default and also does double damage to Dynamaxed Pokémon, making it the single best source of damage to Dynamaxed Pokémon in the game.  Combine that with its high Speed and HP and you have a monster tailor-made to handle creatures in Dens or the end of boss battles. I know many good Pokémon players consider it bad form to include Legendaries in their team because they’re so OP, but I never claimed to be a good player.  Plus, you can hang out with it in your camp, give it food, and play with it. I’m not sure if the Affection system works with it, since I tried to grinding Affection for a bit and didn’t see any signs of change there. But it’s still amusing to see Eternatus chasing a toy Pokéball around. Who’s a good ancient abomination implied to be an alien from outer space? It’s YOU!  I could spend plenty of time bumming around the map, but there’s only really one thing to do. I only take the time to update my league card. I know it’s a bit drab, but it resembles the outfit Gloria wore at the start of her journey and she feels a little nostalgic. So anyway, let’s get this show on the road.       Before we begin, I’d like to make a note here: this is the only fight in the game so far where I’ll be going up against a team with a higher average level that me; I don’t have the patience to grind them all the way up and I’ve used up all of my experience candies.      I’ve never seen a crowd this wild! Everyone knows what you did for us this week, Gloria… They know you’re the one who caught Eternatus and saved the future of the Galar region. A real hero, who battled alongside the Legendary Pokémon, Zacian and Zamazenta... I couldn’t have dreamed of a better challenger to help increase my winning streak! Oh... And you’ve even added Eternatus to your party. The greatest challenger along with the most powerful Pokémon—is that it? Now you’re really getting me excited! Now that I’ve seen just what kind of strength you possess as the greatest of challengers... crushing you into the dirt will show everyone just how strong their Champion truly is! Come on, Gloria! Let’s make this a final match that’ll go down in Galar’s history!  No! A match that’ll change Galar forever!      Battle! (Champion) - Pokémon Sword and Shield OST   Motherfucker throws FAST. He threw his cape off and his Aegislash out so quickly this was the only shot I could get.  Worth noting: he only talks about Eternatus if you actually have him in your party. Also worth noting: he pats his cheeks just before the fight, just like Hop did earlier. I can’t afford to hold back now, especially since I plan on making some deeply questionable decisions later in order to show certain things off – I mean, he’s the only Trainer we’ve faced so far that’s actually had six Pokémon.  Like brother, like other brother. We already start suffering in the first part of the match; Mr. Blobby nearly goes down against his Aegislash. Same with Goch and Dragapult, though less so (even though it also obliterates his Haxorus in one hit). Leon’s party varies depending on what your starter was; Mr. Rime, for instance, only shows up if you took Scorbunny. We have no time for mercy or holding back; Bruce puts it down as fast as possible.  In past games, your rival always took whatever starter your starter was weak to. In this generation, Leon picks up the slack; Inteleon is the final evolution of Sobble. To counter it, I bring out none other than Chairman, boosted with experience candies and evolved with a Shiny Stone. Its Giga Drain proves wildly effective.     I just made a deliberately sub-optimal decision here. I’ve managed to scrape by so far without losing any Pokémon, so I have a little leeway to show some things off. The first thing?              This move does significant damage to all enemy Pokémon that aren’t Fire-types every turn for four turns. It’s a terrifying from a terrifying Pokémon, indeed. So how do I respond?   Lindworm takes a shitload of damage from Max Rockfall and goes down to G-Max Wildfire’s effect at the end of the turn. I toss Tiddles out next, only to find that Charizard knows Max Overgrowth, which nearly kills it. Then its Gigantamax wears off.  There’s a quirk in how AI Pokémon fight; they will almost always use moves with a Type advantage, even when using a suboptimal move is a better idea. I’ve heard of Pokémon using, say, one of the many Psychic-type stat-boosting moves over and over again when facing a Fighting-type Pokémon because that’s the only move they have with a Type advantage even though it doesn’t do any damage. Here, though? I wagered that Grass-type move was Solar Beam, which takes a turn to charge. Charizard is faster than Tiddles and could take it out in one hit with pretty much any other move. But Tiddles is doubly weak to Grass. So Charizard spent that first move charging it up and then got KO’d by Max Geyser, securing me the match and the game. The Galar Region's New Champion - Pokémon Sword and Shield OST            With Rose in prison and Oleana indisposed, MC is in chaos – and I’m the next in line to take it over right now. Can I count on your help as Champion? Aye!         
Falconier111 fucked around with this message at 15:15 on Feb 2, 2021 |
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Dec 23, 2020 20:51
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This isn't quite the end of the LP; we still have a bit more commentary, content, and followup to get through. But with this, the LP proper is over.
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Dec 23, 2020 20:52
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 It's been great, nice one.(also to my eternal shame I spelled Y Ddraig Goch wrong earlier... it has two Ds)
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Dec 23, 2020 22:40
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I can appreciate the Splash. Can you imagine the commentators? "Wait, did she just use...?!"
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Dec 23, 2020 23:00
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Black Robe posted:
Yeah, I noticed . But Y Ddraig Goch has 13 characters, so I ended up  ing and using the previous spelling.Incidentally, my new LP's first couple posts just went up. I won't start updating until after I finish here, but right now you can get in on the ground floor.
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Dec 24, 2020 00:24
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It's been a fun ride, and I enjoyed it all the way! I'm looking forward to the follow up, when it comes. Thanks!
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Dec 24, 2020 00:38
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Quackles posted:I can appreciate the Splash. Can you imagine the commentators? I enjoy imagining the announcers in Gym Leader battles. "And starting off his fight against Melony, it looks like Challenger Dareon is leading with Appletun! That's a bold move, let's see if it- BY ARCEUS! I SWEAR, HE IS BROKEN IN HALF!" And thanks to a chain of Inteleon-G, Venusaur-G, and Centiskorch-G I used for Stow-On-Side, Ballonlea, and Circhester, fans would probably be wondering just how many Gigantamax mons I have and what the next one I pull out will be. The answer is: enough for a full team, and Urshifu. Isle of Armor is pretty good.
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Dec 24, 2020 06:54
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Update 48: Post-Credits Scene Budew Drop Inn - Pokémon Sword and Shield OST      So many people were out there cheerin’ for me! It made me really happy. I wanna give ’em a proper smile... Th-this is too embarrassin’… Marnie! Marnie, stop.  Okay. Marnie, what’s wrong?… My whole time out on the pitch, an’ when you were fightin’ Leon… I realized I was just sittin’ there lookin’ like a fish. I wanna be able to show everybody when I’m excited, but when I’m not payin' attention my face just goes  again. And I can’t believe I forgot to lock the door before I started practicin’ smilin’ Look, it’s lack of social display, I’ve been there. Would you like me to come in and show you a few drills I learned as a kid?… Okay. C’mon in. Jekyll, scooch over. Thanks, love  . So, let’s start with……
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Dec 24, 2020 18:00
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Update 49: Compare and Contrast Follow Me - Pokémon Sword and Shield OST As should be obvious by now, I extensively revised Shield’s story, especially when it comes to character motivations. This update will explore many of the biggest decisions I made and elements I changed. It should be pretty obvious that Gloria is almost entirely an original character. As you’d expect from a silent protagonist, <player_name> is a lot more passive than Gloria ever was, and they tend to be acted upon by the plot instead of making major decisions themselves. The nasty habit the game has of only ever giving you dialogue options that mean the same thing (“I’m excited” versus “Let’s go!”) just makes them even blander. I ended up retooling her into an actual character, and one active enough to drive the plot on her own instead of passively agreeing with everyone else around her. It should also be pretty obvious that she’s a thinly veiled self-insert .I changed Hop more than any other character. In the original, he’s such a dead ringer for somebody with ADHD that it put me on lookout for other neurodiverse characters; he’s impulsive, distractible, prone to focusing intensely on whatever he’s currently paying attention to, etc., etc. A lot of people find him annoying in large part (though not necessarily entirely) because of this behavior, but for me, it’s somewhere between endearing and uncomfortably familiar. Unfortunately, as I developed the Hop-Gloria relationship, Gloria ended up stealing a lot of those traits and leaving him as a sarcastic counterweight to her impulsivity, leaving him at odds with his Canon version. I do like this version better, though. He also took the loss to Bede a lot harder in Canon, spending the middle part of the game bouncing from team gimmick to team gimmick to try and repair his fragile confidence before you finally smack him down at the end. When I’m either reading up on historical figures or playing video games, I like to play a game I call “spot the aut”: I look for people/characters who display behavior consistent with ASD outside of familiar contexts. Historical figures I’ve spotted include Napoleon, St. Thomas Aquinas, and Ulysses S Grant (the latter so strongly I ended up basically writing my thesis statement on it); in video games, I’d point to Eizen in Tales of Berseria and Yukiko Amagi and Yusuke Kitagawa from Persona 4 and 5, respectively. Marnie struck me as a mild positive, between her lack of social display (she rarely shows maybe 3 facial expressions in the whole game), general awkwardness, and seeming isolation from others (do we ever meet anyone aside from <player_name> we can fairly call her friend?). Most of her characterization here comes from me taking that and running with it. Canonically, she is also the single flimsiest tsundere I’ve ever seen in fiction. Her occasional “it’s not like I’m doing this to help you or anything” moments mesh badly enough with her character that they seem artificial (in universe) without being so dissonant they break immersion. I can’t tell if the writers were trying for that effect or not. But then, those moments read like she was haphazardly remembering social roles she thought she had to fill and scrambling to fill them at the last minute, and honestly that strikes pretty close to home, just sealing the deal. As far as the relationship goes, I think of Marnie and Gloria as basically the same person raised in very different circumstances, both with love and support but love and support of very different flavors. I find their interplay interesting. I honestly don’t think I handled the relationship very well; it needed more development and screen time, but Marnie barely gets any screen time anyway and for some reason I find writing for both her and Spikemuth hellishly difficult. The reason the time between posts doubled in Spikemuth was because I needed that extra time just to pull things together, and I still ended up strained. But it is what it is, and even though I completely cut the tsundere because it just didn’t fit, I think she ended up reasonably close to her Canon self. You want to know something a little embarrassing? Do you know the single biggest reason why I put Gloria and Marnie together? While there is some debate over whether Spikemuth is supposed to represent Liverpool or Wales, I personally lean more heavily towards Liverpool. But in this LP I made it Wales, and made Marnie get together with the pseudo-Scottish Gloria, because I wanted two Celts to date . Though I had him mellowing out a lot, Bede remains an abrasive prick all the way through the endgame in Canon, just gaining a lot of perspective and becoming less self-destructive. His relationship with Rose was also even more ambiguous. Despite Rose having sponsored him for the Cup, he needs Oleana to remind him who Bede is almost every time they meet. It’s a little bit  , so I ended up excising it. He’s also implied to be Unovan through some background details, so I made that explicit just because. But of all the rivals, he changed the least. While she ultimately may not be that different from her Canon self, Sonia went through multiple rounds of revision as I started planning the LP. She was my least favorite character; she really did come across as someone who just wasn’t very intelligent treated as a brilliant scientist because her grandma had the same reputation. At one point I was even planning to somehow make her a villain. Ultimately, I removed a lot of her more  lines and bumped her IQ by 40 points, and that was the bulk of it. The biggest changes I made will never show up; I ended up completely rewriting her backstory into a complicated tale in its own right, one that will never see the light of day.But seriously, Sonia, why do you keep pointing to the statue in the Budew Drop Inn as evidence there was only one hero? It’s a piece of commercial statuary, why are you treating it as equal to primary sources? I played Leon as a sort of friendly, capable authority figure, but canonically he’s kind of a space cadet who claims to be perceptive and then misses obvious things. I ended up just dropping the whole “constantly gets lost” deal, for instance. Instead, I realigned his personality on the perceptiveness everyone accuses him of having that he never shows; the rest of him is roughly Canonical.  Nessa got hit by several stray swings when I was beating Sonia with the backstory stick. It MIGHT come up in the next LP.  Even more of a troll than in Canon. Pretty much everything she told Bede in Hammerlocke is something that I made up from whole cloth. She doesn’t show up at the Finals for some reason, so I went ahead and used the opportunity to have her screw with Bede just a little bit more  . He’s not at all manipulative in Canon, nor did he have anything to do with Team Yell (I think). He also serves as a contrast to Nessa in Sonia's story, but I'm not sure I'll ever be able to bring that in. That aside, there will be a lot more to say about him next go.  One of my least favorite tropes in fiction is when a woman in a leadership position turns out to be driven mostly by her crush on her male superior and falls apart the moment he leaves. That’s almost the entirety of Oleana’s characterization in the game, to the point that it implies she views Bede as a competitor for his affections and sabotages him, setting him up for his breakdown at Stow-on-Side. As such, I tried to add some pathos and texture to her character by hinting at an almost fraternal relationship with Bede and using that as a major motivation. I don’t think anyone picked up on us (not that I blame them, I didn’t emphasize it), so I’ll brag about it now; that moment where Oleana is going  in the background when Gloria calls Leon? She’s furious about what Rose did to Bede, that’s why she’s ranting.We will also see her later on. In the original, Rose’s plan is pure, solidified  . He believes Galar will run out of energy in about 1000 years, so he rushes into releasing Eternatus because he cannot bear to wait a few days and pays the price. “The future cannot wait another day” indeed. To be honest, I don’t fully understand his plan, despite having poured over the script dump to try and figure out how to rewrite it: I say that not because it’s complex or that I think I’m missing elements, but because it’s just that nonsensical. Aside from that, the game portrays him much more positively than I did, even though I made up the vast majority of the positive things I attributed to his name. I tried to make him come across as both more unhinged and rational than his Canon self.Zamazenta is not capable of speech in Pokémon Shield. In the original, the game implies their actions were either covered up by humans afterwards or just forgotten over time. Being a historian, I felt the game both over- and underestimated us, so I ended up completely redrawing their past to target the discipline’s current greatest weakness: we are very highly siloed. Members of different disciplines don’t talk to each other nearly enough. We’ve rehauled the profession to value outsider voices who have something revolutionary to say, and my education focused heavily on the concept of silences – what information is and isn’t stored is determined by the priorities and biases of the people who initially managed it. It’s a huge part of why history books traditionally only talk about white men (earlier historians mostly only wrote about other white men and as such the majority of materials we have discuss them only, making them look more important than they were through pure quantity of sources). I mean, the issue is obviously more complicated than just that, but it’s a big problem when trying to find useful information. Punching through silences is an important part of being a modern historian, especially because by definition they’re very difficult to spot and usually hide vital information. In my take on the legends, it’s a mixture of silences and siloing that prevented anyone from connecting the dots; past archivists took a look at material that described heroic Pokémon and supernatural disasters, decided those were ridiculous without further investigation, and filed it all away. Later historians were aware of the legends in an abstract manner, but they were only aware of in the context of whichever fields they studied and lacked the ability to reach across subfields and realize something was missing. In this, Gloria and Sonia served a similar role to Janet Stephens, a professional hairdresser from New York who started reading up on ancient Roman hairstyles. A lot of hairstyles represented in Roman statuary before she entered the field were thought to be either fanciful or just wigs; archaeologists believed they lack the equipment necessary to style hair like that at the time. She did some serious digging, realized scholars had mistranslated a common Latin word because of their lack of familiarity with hairstyling tools, recreating the hairstyles using only her own experience, research, and reconstructed period-accurate tools, and presented her work to the academic community. She is still considered one of the world’s leading experts on Roman hair. Also I made it so that the Pokémon could talk. Falconier111 fucked around with this message at 16:50 on Feb 4, 2021 |
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Dec 24, 2020 19:39
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yeah, Rose is just completely nonsensical I remember hitting that part in Sword of explaining his reasoning, and it made zero goddamn sense for him insisting he has to do it now, especially as it really does come out of nowhere.
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Dec 24, 2020 21:12
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Rose gets one single badly-drawn "you tried" star for being long-thinking and proactive. Solving an energy crisis that will happen that far in the future is admirable, considering most people don't want to take care of crises that look like they might hit in their lifetimes. But by its very definition, you've got time. You can spend a few months on safety measures, you boob. e: I sort of read the whole Oleana/Bede/Rose situation as Oleana doing most of the heavy lifting, finding this impressionable orphan and gaslighting him into thinking the Chairman cared for him, slipping a Challenger endorsement into the stacks of papers for Rose to sign, urging Bede to collect Wishing Stars to help Rose's plan to ????. Admittedly that view fell apart in the endgame, but every view fell apart in the endgame because Rose's plan is just that out of left field. Dareon fucked around with this message at 23:02 on Dec 24, 2020 |
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Dec 24, 2020 22:58
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Update 50: Denouement Staff Roll - Pokémon Sword and Shield OST This part of Gloria’s story has come to a close. Her story as a whole, however, has not. Sometime in the next few months, once I’ve finished my next LP, we will return to follow Gloria through her further adventures across Galar to save it from a half-forgotten menace and to the Isle of Armor and the Crown Tundra. Until then, a few key statistics:
E: psyche lol. I decided to continue the LP in this thread! Falconier111 fucked around with this message at 21:11 on Jan 2, 2021 |
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Dec 25, 2020 00:19
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PS how do i contact the lp archive guy
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Dec 25, 2020 00:21
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Thank you - that was really well done! Do you have any advice for writing narrative LPs, in general? Also, instructions to contact Baldurk are here. He's also got instructions for preparing your LP for archival here.
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Dec 25, 2020 01:20
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Good LP, definitely an interesting way of doing it. Sure, you kinda blew past the endgame with overpowered monsters but you have to really try not to when you can't turn the drat Exp Share off and it wasn't the point of the LP anyway. And I guess it's good the game's plot is vague and pretty mediocre enough that you had a lot of leeway with it. I will bat for Rose in that this is at least a competent climate change analogue, but saying something vague enough like 1000 years doesn't help because by then it should be pretty easy to solve... right? Think about how different life was like in 1020, drat Saxons were wallowing in the mud eating grass. Er, I assume. However, the main thing I get from Rose enacting his plan now is that it wasn't really because he wanted to save the region, but because HE wanted everyone to know he saved the region. We see bits of this in Hulbury where he's pretty desperate for recognition and for people to like him, much to Oleana's annoyance since he has a million other things to do. But it could be analogous to using technology and trying to solve problems before you know the risks. It doesn't matter that there's 1000 years, Rose has the means to solve this crisis and dammit he's going to do it NOW, because why wouldn't you? We can't sit around twiddling our thumbs, we need to take action, no matter the risks. It seems Rose wants to solve this problem now because he wants to and it would make him a hero and he doesn't really see any downsides, so why the gently caress not. And then he gets slapped in the face of reality and it all comes crashing down and he realises what a loving idiot he's been. At least that's what I can try and gleam from it, the game doesn't really give much of anything to support it and it's mainly a byproduct of releasing a new game pretty much every year. They just don't have time to expand on what they want, and that's a shame. But they sell 18 million copies, so I guess it doesn't really matter, the fanbase doesn't give a drat either way!
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Dec 25, 2020 02:58
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Falconier111 posted:
You're very welcome, glad I could help you show off a great game.
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Dec 25, 2020 08:07
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Crosspeice posted:Good LP, definitely an interesting way of doing it. Sure, you kinda blew past the endgame with overpowered monsters but you have to really try not to when you can't turn the drat Exp Share off and it wasn't the point of the LP anyway. And I guess it's good the game's plot is vague and pretty mediocre enough that you had a lot of leeway with it. Thanks, mate. I appreciate the feedback and I gotta acknowledge how I borrowed the idea of putting Trainer parties at the start of battles from you. I can't honestly offer an opinion on the dev cycle other than pointing out how inhuman crunch time is – I mean, we just saw what it did to Cyberpunk 2077. But… I can't bring myself to hate SwSh because I really do like it. It's a deeply flawed game, sure, but I found it so compelling I ended up writing what is essentially a novel length work of fanfiction about it .Also, the Saxons were NOT wallowing in the mud eating grass, sir <  >. They were in fact so civilized they wrote down enough dick jokes that somebody wrote an entire loving Masters thesis on it and uploaded it to the Internet.Quackles posted:Thank you - that was really well done! Do you have any advice for writing narrative LPs, in general? I've been considering how to respond to this for a while, and I have two big points I think about :
. Just, you know, do something you care about, whether it's positive or negative. Also, if you want to use head shots for characters, you should probably keep them 50 x 50 pixels.
Falconier111 fucked around with this message at 00:08 on Dec 26, 2020 |
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Dec 25, 2020 22:50
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Falconier111 posted:Famously, the sainted Terry Pratchett wrote a couple pages a day every day and got something like 30 novels published in his lifetime. Closer to 70 actually. 41 in the Discworld series alone. Realistically I doubt any other human being will ever match him. gnu terry pratchett
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Dec 25, 2020 23:03
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Black Robe posted:Closer to 70 actually. 41 in the Discworld series alone. Realistically I doubt any other human being will ever match him. Alan Dean Foster would like a word.
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Dec 26, 2020 01:03
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We got a fan swing jazz arrangement of Marnie's theme slightly too late to put in the LP. Good writing though!
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Dec 26, 2020 06:58
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This has been a very enjoyable read of an LP, thank you for your efforts. It may not mean much in the grand scheme if things, but I'd like to note on a personal level that this LP was the one that finally pulled me out of the lurker corner of this forum. Also... Explopyro posted:As for Eternatus itself... The scripted nature of this fight is to the point that, despite how much they play up the capture sequence, catching Eternatus is a 100% chance. It's the reason mine is in a Beast Ball of all things.
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Dec 26, 2020 09:59
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NyoroEevee posted:This has been a very enjoyable read of an LP, thank you for your efforts. It may not mean much in the grand scheme if things, but I'd like to note on a personal level that this LP was the one that finally pulled me out of the lurker corner of this forum. That's actually a bit of an honor; it's always good to keep the chain of inspiration going and draw more people into posting in this web 1.0 forum of ours. And yes, that is why I caught it in a dirt-standard Pokéball that I picked up under a bridge somewhere in the Wild Area. AweStriker posted:We got a fan swing jazz arrangement of Marnie's theme slightly too late to put in the LP. A: thank you and B: guess who gets to make the last round of edits to the OP before it goes live
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Dec 26, 2020 16:20
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Christmas has come and gone, and my offspring bought the Animal Crossing Switch for themself, and regifted me their origial Switch, along with a copy of Pokémon Sword. So, I want to say thanks again for this LP. It's gonna make my playthrough of Sword just a little more interesting, as I'll be thinking of this LP and the lore you created as I play. 
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Dec 26, 2020 21:33
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Kheldarn posted:Christmas has come and gone, and my offspring bought the Animal Crossing Switch for themself, and regifted me their origial Switch, along with a copy of Pokémon Sword. I’m honored! So honored, in fact, that I’ll impart a bit of lore to you that never made it in to the LP: After the Kingdom of Sied collapsed its inhabitants streamed into neighboring lands in search of shelter. One large group, including the bulk of Grenestowe’s former population, entered the Glimwood Tangle only to run into the forces of the lords to the north who actually owned the forest. The refugees and lords fought for years before Alfred the Unifier swept in, maneuvered both sides to the bargaining table, and offered them a deal; both sides would swear fealty to him, and in return he’d build them a prosperous town big enough for them to share on a site geographically closer to what used to be Sied (allowing the refugees to move in more easily) and located near the source of a major river that flowed to the north (allowing the lords easy access). Both sides pointed to the fact that that site was just more impenetrable forest and moved to end negotiations. Then Alfred laid down a challenge: if he could build the entire town by sunrise of the next day, they would have to swear fealty to him and move in. Incredulous, they agreed, and swore oaths to abide by the agreement. So he went to work. He levied every human and Pokémon in his entourage and put them all to work, whether raising buildings from the earth, building a channel to the river, or, most importantly, burning back the forest. The representatives of both sides arrived the next morning to find a small city he’d built overnight, complete with buildings, defense, and enough virgin farmland to support those residents they couldn’t feed through trade. The refugees and lords’ men kept their promise and moved in, and their descendants have lived there ever since. Of course, reality wasn’t quite as rosy; the buildings were just slabs of rock and earth raised by Ground-type moves and soon collapsed, while the forest eventually overgrew the farmland and the town itself. But the fact remains: King Alfred really did build a town in a day, and they have extensive documentary evidence to prove it. To this day, the town’s inhabitants call it Ballonlea, a name which (very roughly) translates from Old English as “forest clearing made through burning”. Thank you for giving me the opportunity to post that
Falconier111 fucked around with this message at 00:34 on Dec 27, 2020 |
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Dec 26, 2020 22:36
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