countmohawk

[countmohawk]

National November Writing Month 2018 - Commentary 13

Writer’s block happens to everyone. It’s a natural part of writing. As far as I can tell, writer’s block is what happens either when the ideas you’re stringing together don’t quite connect together all the way or when you can’t figure out how to progress your story past its current point.

Dealing with the block can be frustrating, of course. When you’ve got this beautiful story idea in your head, but the mechanism in your head that translates it into words is malfunctioning, it’s enough to drive anyone a little crazy.

Of course, sometimes the best solution is to step away from your immediate problem and think about something else for a while. You know how you find stuff you lost when you’re not looking for it? Beating writer’s block can be like that too. And the feeling of satisfaction I get when that happens is sublime.

[countmohawk]

There are a lot of stories on the Internet about people who get discouraged about praying to God, because they never hear any answers to their prayers.

What do you call it, however, when you don’t pray to God, but you stumble across Him anyway?

[countmohawk]

National November Writing Month 2018 - Commentary 04

If you’re looking for commentary 03, you might want to reference my previous post instead, in which my computer died. I am glad to say I have put it back together - for now, at least (knock on wood). All in all, it could have been much worse than it was. I’ll have to keep my previous laptop around as a just in case precaution for a while yet, though.

Nonetheless, more words were written today, and more will follow! Just gotta avoid falling asleep at the wheel, so to speak!

[countmohawk]

My computer quit on me :(

When technology works, it’s good. But when it doesn’t, it’s baaaaad.

I bought a new laptop some 4 months ago, specifically the HP OMEN 17″. It worked great for the entire time I had it. And then today, I put the computer to sleep at 3, but when I woke it up at 8 I found it had somehow crashed so badly that the Automatic Repair process would not work, and I could not roll the changes back or otherwise get any of the built-in repair options to work. So any new files I made in the last 4 months are gone. HUGE bummer.

I did, however, manage to save my Writing folder to a thumbdrive using the Command Prompt, so any stories I updated shall remain that way. And I still have my old laptop with all of the original files on it, so all I really lose is two days worth of time to reinstall all my programs. Nonetheless, I feel extremely put out that my computer went from functional to dead in less than an hour with no warning. Hopefully this won’t happen again in the future, or I’m going to have to take some additional steps.

[countmohawk]

National November Writing Month 2018 - Commentary 02

Some days are better for writing than others. Today, for example, is a pretty bad day for writing. I got up at 7:20, went to work from 9 through 5:45, then played Magic from 7:30 to 10:30, finally returning home at around quarter of 12. That’s a long time to be up and about! And of course when I did get home, all i really wanted to do was sit down on my recliner and do what I do best (i.e. nothing).

This is still OK, though. Sometimes doing nothing is the most productive use of your time. The human body is explicitly designed to need to waste time doing nothing every so often, a phenomenon most of us experience as “sleeping”. Other forms of rest are also valuable, including napping, yoga, watching TV, or playing video games.

I’ll be going to bed in less than two hours, and odds are I’ll wake up later in the morning than most people think is reasonable. But before that, I’ll probably feel inspired enough to put down a few words for my fanfic. I managed to get 10 words onto my phone in between round of Magic, after all. While that may not sound like a lot, it’s actually very valuable because it provides me with a hook I can use to pick up the story where I left off, rather than try to invent something whole cloth, which takes longer.

Good night Tumblers!

[countmohawk]

National November Writing Month 2018 - Commentary 01

Anyone who has ever participated in the writing event ‘NaNoWriMo’ is probably familiar with the lofty goal the association sets: to write 50,000 words in the span of a single month. Broken down into more bite-sized chunks, that’s 1,667 words a day - or perhaps more realistically, 2,000 words a day, with 5 “bad-weather bunk days”, so to speak.

50,000 words is a lot of words. Not everyone who undertakes that goal succeeds. In fact, I’d bet even money that a lot of people don’t even make it past 10,000 words. I’d have to put myself in that latter category - I believe I got to about 6,000 the one year I actually counted them.

That said, in writing, to set a goal and then fall short is not a sign of failure. Any writing you do is a mark of success, because it means that you successfully converted an idea in your head into words on a page (or on a computer screen). And as long as you write, you can call yourself a writer - whether you write 500 words or 50,000.

For myself, I won’t be aiming for 50,000 this year. It’s just not going to happen - there’s only so many hours in the day, no matter how late I stay awake instead of sleeping like a normal person. But I do have plenty of unfinished works lying around that could use my attention:

A oneshot fanfic I started that’s already passed 3,000 words and shows no sign of slowing down

Four different original works in various states of incompletion (ranging between 4,500 words and 21,000 words)

At least 15 hours of YouTube video game footage that needs to be processed and spliced together

Writing the next chapters of “AlterQuest”, an extended-length set of alternative Quests for the 30-year-old board game Hero Quest by Miton Bradley

I certainly won’t be able to complete all of these works in one month. However, I will still feel satisfied with myself if I as little as advance some of them by a chapter or two.

That’s all for tonight!

-Mohawk-

[countmohawk]

The washout effect added on to this panel of GIFs works really well with this scene. Lapis herself being the only thing in color is all sorts of thematic.

♪ I thought I’d stay a while I tried to learn to smile So many colors I had never even known ♪

[countmohawk]

Pokemon Sun Postgame Recollections *7

The last Ultra Beast is in captivity. Alola is at peace.

...Not quite, actually - there’s a little bit more to do before we close the final chapter of this sidequest.

Wicke is still in Secret Lab B in the far basements of Aether Paradise. I guess this is the safest and most secure room to discuss classified Interpol missions.

It was... certainly more difficult than usual, given the relative strength of the Ultra Beasts, but not impossibly so. Having a large supply of Beast Balls was also very helpful. Hopefully you won’t be wanting these back, because I don’t intend to relinquish the approximately 3 dozen balls I have left.

Yeah, you better not forget Looker! It’s due to him that Anabel is even alive right now, despite his lack of any partner Pokemon to help him out.

Speaking of, the man is late for our meeting. I wonder if he got caught up in a line at a restaurant while trying to schedule our feast?

Oh, come on! We’d just finished with the mission; did more Ultra Beasts show up or something?!

Well, that would certainly be an interesting phenomenon. But the more important question is, is it an Ultra Beast? Wicke says it’s not, and although taking Interpol at their word is perhaps not such a good idea anymore, given their penchant for withholding information, if they say it’s not a problem, then we don’t have to worry about it.

And now for the good news: with the Ultra Beast conservation project completed, Anabel and Looker get to take a proper vacation! And to be frank, there’s probably nowhere better to vacation than Alola in the Pokemon world.

This marks the end of our meeting as well. Anabel leaves first, since she has a meeting with Nanu scheduled. Hopefully she’s going down with the intention of learning more about the shady Interpol dealings he and Looker told me about, because otherwise she may end up paying for her ignorance one day.

And that’s the last we see of Anabel - the only other way to see her in vanilla Sun is to randomly encounter her in the Battle Tree, which is something I won’t be going over in this series.

Looker hangs around a little longer; it seems that he believes that hard work should be well-rewarded, so he arranged for a little stipend to be given to us from Interpol:

Oh SNAP!

Well, that should take care of anything I need to buy for the foreseeable future! Thanks, Looker!

Looker does indeed take up residence in the Melemele motel. Amusingly, his dialog options are the same as they were during the UB conservation project missions. If you ask him about the “Ultra Beast” he saw most recently, however, he just laughs and writes of his vision of the shiny black refractor as his overactive imagination.

Now, I don’t know how you would know where to go to actually find it, but it is possible to hunt down the object of Looker’s imagination. To find it, you have to go to the Farthest Hollow of Ten Carat Hill, and wander around in the tall grass there for a while. Use a Repel to drive away the weak indigenous Pokemon, and you’ll find this guy!

Necrozma is Lv75, the highest-leveled wild Pokemon you can find in the game. Although Looker may have confused Necrozma for an Ultra Beast, this Pokemon is in fact just a regular Legendary, and thus Beast Balls are extremely bad when used against him. He has a Psychic-type Hyper Beam as one of his moves, so it may help to bring a Dark-type if you plan to catch it normally. Otherwise, this is probably the best candidate for the Master Ball in this game, since there aren’t any “runners” in this generation you’d otherwise want to save it for.

After catching Necrozma, you can bring its Pokedex data to Looker to show him that the thing he saw really does exist, and you’ll be rewarded with a little bit more dialog.

Unintentional foreshadowing! In vanilla Sun, Necrozma is just a random legend you can catch, which is “reminiscent of the Ultra Beasts” without itself being one. But in Ultra Sun, it gets a major story upgrade to being basically a god of Light. “Remarkable” is thus a horrendous understatement!

One thing I do wonder is whether or not the Necrozma we find just waking up in Ten Carat Hill is supposed to be the same character as the Necrozma that the UR Squad imprisoned in Megalo Tower. The Ultra Sun Necrozma was apparently capable of switching back and forth between Alola’s world and the world of Ultra Megalpolis, and did so regularly until the Megalopolitans broke him with their greedy experiments, whereas vanilla Sun Necrozma was apparently just asleep for a long time and apparently didn’t need to be confined anywhere. Maybe in vanilla Sun, Necrozma, while unable to take its Ultra form, nonetheless did not suffer from a maddening hunger for Light due to sleeping in the tropical paradise of Alola, whereas it had already consumed the light of Ultra Megalopolis and was basically catatonic rather than merely asleep.

We won’t get any further answers on these mysteries from vanilla Sun, though - we’ve cleared the postgame proper! Next time, we begin Ultra Sun’s postgame and prepare to segue into the Rainbow Rocket takeover!

[countmohawk]

Pokemon Sun Postgame Recollections *6

The endgame approaches for the Ultra Beast conservation project...

After catching four Kartanas in the previous episode, Nanu stopped by to update us on the history of Interpol’s interactions with the Ultra Beasts in the past. We didn’t quite get to the end of the story before Anabel got back to the motel, though.

Humorously, our final meetup location for this project, since Poni Island doesn’t have any motels, is at the floating restaurant on the west side of the Seafolk Village. Looks like Looker will finally get his long-delayed feast after all!

That’s a relief to hear! We already know that Anabel is so tired that she feels a need to hide it, so if she goes somewhere where the Ultra Beast isn’t, then we won’t have to worry about it eating her.

And the other shoe finally drops. So Interpol agent Anabel is a Faller, a human from another world.

Actually, this isn’t the first time Pokemon has touched upon the idea of other worlds. I believe there was some discussion of them during parts of XY and ORAS, particularly during the Delta Episode of the latter games, during which the governing bodies decide that the correct approach to dealing with an approaching Meteor of Destruction is to warp it into another world. I also remember that there was some discussion about XY being a sort of ‘soft reboot’, with the events of the previous three generations taking place in a different dimension. The breakpoint between regular RSE and ORAS, as I recall, was that Mega Evolution was discovered in ORAS-land but not in vanilla RSE.

Anabel being a Faller does kinda tie into the above theories, though:

One of the few things Anabel remembered, albeit only vaguely and not in so many words, was that she used to be Salon Maiden of the Hoenn Battle Tower. No such position exists in the ORAS tower, which points to her ‘home’ dimension being that of original Emerald.

(Another brief aside: Looker’s postgame cameo in ORAS is basically limited to you finding him washed up on a beach, also amnesic. Does that mean he too is a Faller???) (if so that explains why the pairing Looker x Anabel is called “Fallershipping”)

Of course, Anabel having been found unconscious raises a whole bunch of other questions. Does prolonged exposure to Ultra Wormhole energy have a debilitating effect on humans who fall into the cracks between dimensions? Remember, we are also technically a Faller by dint of having visited Ultra Space briefly - yet we still have all our memories. Was it that we didn’t spend long enough in the other world, the fact we had Nebby to protect us, or something else that makes our situation different from Anabel?

As we learned in the previous episode, Interpol apparently takes the “resources” in “human resources” pretty seriously when it comes to their use of Fallers in their ranks. Nanu clearly has not gotten over the loss of his former partner. Nor has Looker, for that matter, but the two of them deal with their loss very differently. Nanu basically just gave up and retired, whereas Looker threw himself into his work with reckless abandon.

It is strange that Anabel was promoted up in the ranks of Interpol so quickly, though. Usually the more senior members get first shot at promotions. Thus, either Interpol thinks Looker is still incompetent, or they had another reason to pull Anabel up - in this case, because they wanted to make sure Anabel had the rank necessary to justify sending her on this mission.

But if Anabel volunteered for this role, as Looker tells us, what does that mean?

Ultra Beasts and Fallers... Both come from other worlds by chance, rather than by choice.

Oh, right, this. Ultra Beasts confuse the residual radiation carried by Fallers by the radiation emitted by proper Ultra Wormholes, so they are both drawn to and incensed by them.

Looker must have done some research prior to taking on the Ultra Beast mission - probably enough to know about Anabel’s backstory, but not enough to figure out all the ins and outs of what it meant. Nonetheless, it was enough for him to know that two people (one Trainer and one without a team) would be insufficient manpower to deal with the Ultra Beasts. And who better than the Champion, the strongest Trainer in Alola (who coincidentally also happens to be a second Faller) to join their team?

With the whole story out in the open, there’s just one small matter left to take care of before we take on the last Ultra Beast: a battle with Nanu, ostensibly to make the passing of the torch official.

I had Silvally set to Fairy-type before this battle, so it was absolutely no trouble to sweep Nanu’s team.

Our win gets a rare smile from Nanu, who then leaves to go secure the actual perimeter of the last Ultra Beast’s hidey-hole.

Anyway, enough gabbling on about the past - we have a job to do! Namely, we need to go catch UB-05 Glutton, also known as Guzzlord.

Resolution Cave is a place we have not yet been to. It’s a cave in the heart of Poni Island, in a part of the island you can’t go to before becoming Champion. So if you jump into the UB conservation project right away without going there yourself first, you’ll have to battle your way through a number of Trainers before you get to Guzzlord’s room. I’d already taken care of that stuff, though, which gave me access to a more convenient Fly point than the entrance to Vast Poni Canyon - specifically, it’s possible to Fly to the entrance of Poni Grove.

Guzzlord will only show up in the bottom-most floor of Resolution Cave:

Guzzlord is Lv70, another 5 levels over the rest of the Ultra Beasts we’ve been fighting. Fortunately, his major stat is HP, which means that although he can take hits quite well, he doesn’t hit nearly as hard, even with a +2 Attack aura. That said, it took me two tries to catch him, because I accidentally one-shotted him with Fairy!Silvally’s Multi-Attack on the first try.

With Guzzlord captured, we can return to the restaurant we were using as a base. Anabel, thankfully, seems to be in better spirits - perhaps Looker’s bit of misdirection was sufficient to let her recover some of her strength. The two don’t discuss that particular tactic, however - at least, not in front of me, anyway.

Although, if you read into this line and Anabel’s previous one, you might get the impression that Anabel is trying to obliquely thank Looker for his actions, without coming out and saying that she wasn’t up to the last task at the end.

Oops! I completely forgot that Wicke was in on this project too, despite being told after every step that we could talk to her to learn more about the Ultra Beasts we’d captured to date. I guess we’d better go down to her lab and properly thank her for her role in all of this.

But that can wait until the next episode, which will be the final in the vanilla Sun postgame series!

[countmohawk]

Pokemon Sun Postgame Recollections *5

Fourth mission for the Ultra Beast conservation project!

The motel complex on Ula’ula is just east of Tapu Village. Both Looker and Anabel are there ahead of me this time. This is really just a formality at this point, though - Nanu basically already told us what we needed to know back on Akala.

Unfortunately, Anabel is already tired out, and we haven’t even started the mission yet! Despite her condition, however, she insists on doing her part herself.

This would probably be more meaningful as a gesture of trust if we didn’t know that Looker had no Pokemon of his own. That said, I’ve always imagined that humans in the Pokemon world are more durable than the ones in the real world, due to having evolved alongside what is now over 800 species of magical creatures. So I suppose that, in a pinch, Looker could pull off a Big Damn Heroes moment if he really needed to - although, since we’re dealing with Ultra Beasts, he’d probably either suffer some serious injuries or be outright killed himself.

Looker gets less loquacious when he’s thinking about Anabel, doesn’t he? Clearly they have, at the very least, a decent working relationship - although I wouldn’t be surprised if some people shipped them.

This set of Ultra Beasts, incidentally, would be particularly dangerous for a human to combat, due to being almost entirely sharp edges. And there’s four of them!

You may remember that Xurkitree, the previous Ultra Beast, had no problem wasting my team with its extremely high Special Attack. This one, Kartana (codenamed “Blade”) is even stronger than that on the physical side - and there’s no type with a convenient immunity to its Grass-type STAB attacks! (with one exception: Sap Sipper Goodra/Drampa)

Despite the difficulty, however, I did manage to catch all four Kartanas. Thus, we return to base!

Only one? Well, that’s good news. We could even tag-team it if we wanted to - although I suspect we’re probably not going to do that.

Surprisingly, Anabel seems much more chipper than she was following the previous three engagements. Looker’s not buying it, though.

It’s funny how we’re more concerned about Looker’s state of mind when he’s acting serious than when he’s acting silly. It’s fairly obvious to me that the cause of Looker’s attitude has something to do with Nanu’s appearance and Anabel’s fatigue. Anabel, however, comes to the wrong conclusion; namely, that Looker is pining for the feast he insisted on setting for us after each of the previous missions.

And to throw his boss further off course, Looker hams it up for all he’s worth!

As soon as she’s gone, Looker dispenses with the pretext and comes out with the cause of his concerns:

But that’s not the half of it:

First of all, Nanu, haven’t you ever heard of knocking?!

Secondly, that’s some pretty heavy backstory! Even the music gets all sorrowful, playing a rather depressing variant of Looker’s usual theme. So Looker and Nanu were two members of an originally three-person team, and a single moment of hesitation got their third member killed off? That certainly explains his obvious concern for Anabel’s welfare. Not only is he part of another threesome on a dangerous mission, but he’s even less able to defend his peers than before (presumably he had, at the very least, his Croagunk from Platinum back then).

I bag on Looker all the time for being a “bumbling” Interpol agent, particularly as he exists in the previous generations, but all things considered, he probably acts this way to avoid dwelling on his past mistakes.

“Those who have passed through an Ultra Wormhole”... Hmmmm. It seems that the cracks between dimensions irradiate a form of energy, which causes those who enter them to themselves become beacons emitting the same sort of energy. Thus, the Ultra Beasts can’t tell the difference, and get excited when they encounter such a person, only for their excitement to give way to confusion at best, or, more dangerously, rage.

Although, it may well also be that the higher-ups in Interpol deliberately under-informed their group on the nature of their mission. Looker’s been on the force for 10+ years now and he’s only coming to this conclusion now? That points to a connection only being made with the addition of new information.

Incidentally, Interpol has a name for people who pass through the Ultra Wormholes: “Fallers”. And, due to my brief misadventure in Ultra Space during the main story of Vanilla Sun, apparently I qualify as one now. I wouldn’t have claimed to be a Faller myself, however, as while I may have passed through a Wormhole, I came out the same side I’d gone in - mostly due to Nebby’s help.

Unfortunately, Anabel gets back to our motel before we can finish our discussion. The rest will come in the next part.

[countmohawk]

Pokemon Sun Postgame Recollections *4

Back to Akala Island we go to find the next Ultra Beasts!

This time, when we get to the motel room, Looker is there waiting for us, while Anabel is already out doing her thing. However, he’s not alone in the room:

That’s Mina, the trial captain of Poni Island without a trial! It seems that she’s our latest informant. Much like Nanu, she was sent by the powers that be because she had nothing better to do. Which begs the question, what does Mina do in this universe? Presumably she’s been getting a pass due to her Trial being under construction and/or there being no Kahuna on Poni for a while, but those things can’t go on forever!

Anyway, one thing Mina does do is battle- and, this being the postgame, her team is a fair bit stronger than the one she used during her trial in Ultra Sun.

That said, I’d be lying if I said my team had any real difficulty against her. Mina leaves after her defeat, and Looker gets situated to share the latest information about the next Ultra Beast, Xurkitree, this one codenamed “Lighting”.

Translation: Bring Ground-types!

Actually, this is bad advice, as Xurkitree learns Grass-type moves by level-up, chief among them Power Whip, which the wild ones I have to fight actually know. And while the Beast’s physical attack is much lower than its Special attack, Power Whip does have 120 power and thus will still hit very hard. I ended up going with a Dragon-type Silvally to counter both the STAB Electric attacks and the danger of getting Power Whipped.

That said, maybe I should have brought a Ground-type anyway, because +2 Discharge off of that 173 base almost completely wiped out my team despite the resistances! (The ideal counter is something like Flygon, which is a Ground-type with a secondary typing resistant to Grass. Despite being an avid Flygon aficionado, however, this tactic did not occur to me during the event.)

Two catches later, I report back to base:

Looks like once again, Anabel had a rough time of her part of the job. This seems to upset Looker more than it does Anabel, although she might just be putting up a front. Looker could definitely stand to use a better metaphor, though - when I think of images involving “Machamp” and “stamina”, the end results are usually kinda disturbing!

The obvious question this statement raises is “do they do that with everyone or just you?” Because if it’s just you, we might have a legitimate problem on our hands, in that your efforts to keep the Ultra Beasts from going HAM on the towns may actually be counterproductive. Then again, if we gave Anabel some of the Beast Balls, we could take advantage of the situation - going by Safari Zone logic, pissed-off Pokemon are easier to catch. And even if they aren’t, a well-timed Ball throw could buy her a few seconds to catch her breath, since presumably escaping the ball won’t be instantaneous, even for an Ultra Beast.

Uh, this isn’t a good time, Nanu.

Really, “100kr” was his code name? Good grief! For all his idiosyncrasies, I’ve never thought of Looker as the kind of guy who would stoop to leet-speak. Maybe he was different 10 years ago when he first started?

Anyway, Nanu doesn’t make house calls for the fun of it; obviously he brought more information on another Ultra Beast. That was quick; Looker didn’t even have time to shout “It’s a disaster!” in another language this time.

Ula’ula this time. We’ll be making our way over there shortly.

Looker doesn’t say anything about his relationship with Nanu here. But perhaps when we get to Ula’ula, he’ll feel more like talking. After all, it is now abundantly clear that they were, at the very least, coworkers in the employ of Interpol.

All that can wait for next time, though!

[countmohawk]

Pokemon Sun Postgame Recollections *3

The Ultra Beast conservation is officially underway. Let’s step it up to the next level, shall we?

After catching the Nihilego floating around in Wela Park, Anabel called us down to Melemele Island for the next assignment.

Inside their Melemele motel room, Anabel stands waiting for us; Looker is apparently off doing the recon work at the moment. Anabel doesn’t feel right having Looker “do all the work”, given his track record as an Interpol agent - as well she shouldn’t! Looker has, at the very least, been personally involved in the takedown of the infrastructure of both Team Galactic and Team Plasma, plus some shenanigans in Lumiose City I’m less familiar with.

That said, it turns out we’re actually waiting on someone else to show up:

And that someone turns out to be Nanu, kahuna of Ula’ula Island!

Nanu tries to play off his involvement in the Ultra Beast caper as just another moment in a string of inconveniences created by his choice of profession, but he lets slip some information that indicates he’s more involved in it than it first appears.

Nanu, everyone wants to hear about that! And somehow, I get the feeling that we’ll be finding out more about him later.

The information he brought with him, however, is quite useful: namely, that the next Ultra Beast on our checklist is UB-02 Absorption. Moreover, instead of the single specimen we found of Nihilego, there are two UB-02s running around Melemele.

And there’s Looker right on cue with yet another way to say “It’s a disaster!” in another language. Conveniently, the information he found corroborates with the tip we just got from Nanu, which means we now have enough info to go after the Ultra Beasts and catch them.

Looker makes an attempt at entering the field himself, but Anabel won’t have any of it. I imagine we’re meant to assume, based on her conversation with us right before Nanu showed up, that she’s trying to keep Looker from working himself too hard. That said, didn’t he used to have a Croagunk? I distinctly remember him using it for a couple of things during Platinum at the very least. Unfortunately, I also have a vague recollection of him mentioning having lost his partner Pokémon; perhaps he mentioned it during the XY postgame?

Of course, with no Pokémon, Looker can hardly be expected to fend off a rampaging Ultra Beast, if one should stumble across his path, so he does eventually agree that playing the role of backup is all he can do. Anabel and I, by contrast, each have close to a full team of Pokémon capable of, at the very least, holding off an Ultra Beast for a while.

With Anabel gone and Looker situated, it’s time for me to get to work. The Ultra Beasts can be found in Melemele Meadow, so that’s where I’m headed.

It doesn’t take too long to get one to pop up:

This guy looks more than a little intimidating!

More to the point, it’s also level 65 - a full 10 levels over the Lv55 Nihilego we found previously. The first one I found got a +2 Attack aura, while the second had a +2 Defense aura - I imagine the difference was based on how their stats were rolled, rather than having been programmed that way. I managed to catch the first one right away, but had to retreat for a healing before engaging the second, as it managed to KO three of my fighting team members, plus the Synchronize Espeon I led with.

Incidentally, my Type: Null evolved into Silvally just before this battle. I set it to Flying type to resist both of Buzzwole’s types - but unfortunately, with enough Beast Boosts, the ++Attack one still managed to one-shot it. It did better against the one with the Defense aura, however, managing to avoid being 2-shotted with plenty of health to spare.

Back at the motel, Anabel apparently had a rougher time of it than I did. I suppose that makes some sense; she’s defending a specific spot, so she can’t run off the a Pokemon Center to get a healing if one of the Ultra Beasts roughs up her team, since it could easily come back and start terrorizing the people while she’s indisposed. Still, one would think she could catch a break after I caught the first Buzzwole, since then there would be only one left.

Thankfully, Looker had enough time to look into the restaurants on Melemele, so perhaps we’ll have a chance to recuperate over a delicious meal.

While he’s out getting a reservation, Anabel reminisces a little bit on Looker and Nanu. While we’ve already heard about Looker’s history, we learn here that Nanu was also an Interpol member once upon a time - and not just a member, but an elite at that!

Unfortunately, Looker comes back with more bad news:

And back to Akala Island we must go!

[countmohawk]

Pokemon Sun Postgame Recollections *2

The stage has been set and the exposition has been exposited. Now we begin the Ultra Beast conservation project in earnest!

With the Beast Balls from Wicke in hand, we can return to Interpol’s motel room to begin the mission proper. Anabel arrives ahead of us, with Looker showing up shortly afterwards.

And what an arrival it is! Looker, you are too excitable. That said, he brings important news: the first of the Ultra Beasts, another Nihilego (or Symbiont, as the government knows it) has been spotted!

This being a Pokemon game, we get to approach the Nihilego ourselves, rather than leave it to Anabel to subdue. After all, how else would we be able to catch one?

Anabel goes off to protect the “populated areas”, but so far as I am aware, she doesn’t show up anywhere on the overworld, so the exact location of the place she’s guarding is not known. Given Akala’s size and the possible locations of Nihilego, however, it’s probably Heahea City.

Looker, on the other hand, gets stuck with backup duty. In practical terms, this means we can ask him for some additional information about the mission. If we ask about the Ultra Beast, he’ll give us a brief summary of it, and the locations where it can be found.

We can also ask about the Beast Balls. I think Wicke had enough to say about them when she was first giving them to us. That said, if you somehow run out during the mission (either because you have terrible luck with Nihilego or you throw them at other, non-Ultra Beast Pokemon), I believe Looker will give you a couple more.

I should say one more thing about Beast Balls: while they are supremely effective at catching Ultra Beasts (a 5x catch rate!), they are terrible at catching regular Pokemon, only 10% as effective as even the standard Poke Ball. On a related note, no type of Poke Ball other than the Beast Ball (and the Master Ball) is more effective than the standard type when thrown at an Ultra Beast. Thus, using Beast Balls on a regular Pokemon, or other Ball types on an Ultra Beast, is something that players only do for style points.

I managed to track down my Nihilego at Wela Volcano Park after about five minutes of walking back and forth in the grass waiting for it to appear. In retrospect, I probably should have used a Repel to speed up the process.

Nihilego is not too hard a catch at Lv55, since its aura is +2 Defense and its ability raises its Sp. Def, which means it can’t do too much damage and it’s not easy to accidentally KO.

Once I caught the beast, the next step was to report back to Looker.

Incidentally, Looker can tell if you try to lie to him about having caught Nihilego before actually doing so. I wonder how he knows, though; is it because he has Anabel on speed-dial to confirm it, or is he just really good at cold reading? (It’s probably not hard to read an 11-year-old, though)

So we all regroup back at the motel, and celebrations ensue. It turns out Looker has a thing for local restaurants. Anabel chides him for indulging on the job, but I can’t really fault him - there’s only so much work you can do while you’re “on-call” without actually going into the field.

You know, Anabel, I’m OK with you going the extra mile and talking to the government and all that on my behalf, but I’d like to point out that I don’t need any special permissions to catch any other Pokemon, even legendary ones, so I’m not sure why the government would care about this one. I get that Ultra Beasts are not necessarily Pokemon, but since we’ve gone as far as catching them in balls the distinction between them is getting more and more moot.

(To be fair, the choice as laid out by Anabel in-game is between “leave UB with trainer” and “take UB to secret science labs where it will never see the light of day”, which is about as no-brainer a choice as it sounds. I doubt if she had to twist even a finger to win this one)

And because Looker is nothing if not eccentric, his outburst of disaster is in a different language each time. Kudos for being a polyglot, I suppose.

Boy, wouldn’t it suck if you got to the motel and they were fresh out of vacancies? Good thing that doesn’t actually happen. To Melemele we go!

[countmohawk]

Pokemon Sun Postgame Recollections *1

In Ultra Sun, we’d just been crowned Champion of the Alolan Pokemon League after dealing with the combined threats of Team Skull, the Aether Foundation and Necrozma.

But what if events had played out a little differently?

Even after having put the games down for about a month, this line still makes me feel a little sad.

Of course, Lillie hasn’t died or anything tragic like that. Rather, in a world where the UR Squad never crossed over into Alola, Lusamine’s obsession with her Ultra Wormhole research eventually led to an unhealthy relationship with Nihilego, culminating in her fusing with one and subsequently falling into a coma when the merger was forcibly broken apart by Nebby. Lillie then decided to take her mother to Kanto in the hopes of finding a cure for the remaining damage from the experience, while simultaneously looking to start her life as a Trainer in a new place.

Anyway, enough about Lillie for now, we have a postgame to cover!

After becoming Champion, we find ourselves back at our house, as per usual for Pokemon games. Opening the door, we are greeted by a strange man, telling us to come to the motel on Akala Island on Route 8. The summons are dubious, but in the end , curiosity wins out over caution, and we enter what was formerly Gladion’s pad!

Well, hello there, Looker! I should have known it would be you.

For those uninitiated into the background lore of some of the more recent titles, the man on the right is Looker, and he’s basically the series’ go-to field agent whenever GameFreak needs to insert a government presence into their games. For example, in Platinum, his debut game, he followed the exploits of Team Galactic, remaining one step behind the team throughout most of the story but eventually catching up to the last remaining Commander at Stark Mountain and taking him off to prison. Pokemon Black and White saw him in a similar role, where after the final confrontation with N, he enlisted the player to help him arrest the rest of the Seven Sages. ...And so on.

This time around, however, Looker appears not to be acting alone. Who’s the lady in black standing next to him, then?

Ah, Looker’s boss, I presume.

To shorten a somewhat lengthy story, Looker and Anabel explain that when Lusamine forced Cosmog!Nebby to open an Ultra Wormhole, a whole bunch of other portals opened up, through which several other Ultra Beasts entered into our world. As Ultra Beasts are potentially very dangerous creatures, it falls on the pair of them to keep the populace safe while learning more about the beasts, if possible.

Thus, the obvious question:

Of course I said yes. It wouldn’t be much of a postgame if I had refused, now would it?

Anabel is delighted to have us aboard, but due to the nature of the job, she requests a battle first, to make sure it won’t be too much for us to handle.

Now, normally I would say something like “and then I proceeded to sweep her team 6-0″ or something, but I should point out something about the level progression here. In vanilla Sun, Kukui, the last fight after the Elite Four, uses a team at roughly level 57. Anabel’s team, by contrast, is in the low 60s - so if you jump straight into this fight directly after becoming Champion, you might have a bit of a hard time. My team was around level 55 after becoming Champion, so before starting the fight, I flew over to Poni Island for an impromptu grinding session, pushing most of my team into the low 60s myself.

With the initiation formally completed, Looker directs us to head for the secret labs at the bottom of Aether Paradise, to meet a contact there for additional information. Obviously this is Wicke, since she’s the highest-ranking member of Aether who isn’t either evil or in a coma.

Before we move on to our government work, however, Wicke offers us something halfway between an apology and an explanation for Lillie’s sudden departure. I’ve written pretty thoroughly about what I think of the ending of Lillie’s arc in vanilla Sun elsewhere, so I’ll leave this topic alone for now.

After Wicke finishes her talk, we can approach her in Secret Lab B.

Since normal Poke Balls have a hard time identifying Ultra Beasts as catchable lifeforms, Lusamine commissioned a new model which would be more suited for use on them. This makes sense, I suppose; the line between Pokemon and Ultra Beast is blurry at best - alien geometries and all that. The Beast Ball’s design, if you look at it in the menu, is very much inspired by the appearance of both the Ultra Wormhole (the blue square patterns) and Cosmog/Cosmoem (the gold bands encircling it).

Our business with Wicke concluded, we have one more stop to make in Aether Paradise before returning to Anabel and Looker’s motel room. Gladion is loitering around in the conservatory, in the same part of the room where we first encountered Nihilego:

In Ultra Sun, we already know about how Professor Mohn disappeared into an Ultra Wormhole and how his disappearance destabilized Lusamine. However, it takes until now for vanilla!Gladion to open up about his disappeared dad. I do like that despite his gruff demeanor, he apparently trusts us enough to tell us basically everything he knows about his family drama.

Oh yeah, and he entrusts us with one more thing, too:

Gladion mentioned there were three Type: Null made in total. One of these, obviously, is his partner Null, now a Silvally. Of the two that remain, he allows us to take one, along with literally a “whole stack” of memory drives to change its type once it evolves.

From Gladion, this is basically the highest of praise. This is also our last interaction with the guy in the game, aside from Title Defense fights at the Elite Four, so it’s fitting that there should be no loose ends between us and him at the end of it.

I may not have mentioned it before, probably because Lillie tends to take front stage whenever the Aether family’s drama gets any screentime, but Gladion gets a surprising amount of character development, all things considered. He doesn’t change in the same way that Lillie changes, per se, but as we learn more about his motivations throughout the game, the initial impression we get of him as a complete edgelord ends up almost turned on its head, while the man himself learns how to defrost around others. He’s still an edgelord, mind you - just not as big of one as it appears.

Because Type: Null was designed to be able to fight the Ultra Beasts as a “beast killer”, I thought it would be appropriate to add it to my team. It’s only Lv40 when we receive it, however, so before we return to the Interpol hut, we have a little bit of training to do to get him caught up and evolved.

Our first stop is actually the GameFreak building in Heahea City on Akala, which I completely missed on my playthrough and had to be told where it was on an online guide. After becoming Champion, we can fight Morimoto, one of the GameFreak employees, once per day.

Morimoto’s team isn’t quite as hard as Anabel’s, but their levels are about the same, so you can’t just walk in and expect a free win. Nonetheless, I did beat him, and in addition to the EXP and money, I was rewarded with the Oval Charm, which increases the likelihood of finding an Egg at the Pokemon Nursery.

The other thing we do is head towards Poni Plains, which was blocked off by an old man but is now accessible due to our Championship status. Just before we can approach him, however, who but Dexio and Sina show up for one more go-around.

I don’t think they ever found whatever it was they were looking for. That said, it’s very convenient that they should bump into me one more time before they leave. That way they can give us a Key Stone and enable Mega Evolution - not that I have any eligible ‘Mons. Still, it’s the thought that counts.

Next time, the hunt for the Ultra Beasts commences in earnest!

[countmohawk]

Ultra Sun Recollections 23

The Elite Four...

As seems to be the new tradition, fighting the Elite Four can be done in any order. Kukui watches us from the middle of the main hall as we pick our choices. He does not act as a healing point, however - any between-battle healing you need has to be taken care of with your own stockpile of items. I brought 25 Revives to complement my stash of Sitrus Berries, and used a mix of Hyper and Max Potions as my just-in-case in-battle healing supplies.

I chose to start with the leftmost door. In vanilla Sun, this would have led to a rematch with Kahuna Hala. Instead, we get this guy:

I’d say that’s a little more fitting! Molayne was basically just Sophocles’ gaming buddy, so getting a promotion to Elite Four is quite the step up.

As usual, I left out the actual fights against the Elite Four. You’re not missing much, though - the other three combatants, Olivia, Acerola and Kahili, are the same as in vanilla Sun.

And then we get to the summit...

Before I go into the Champion battle itself, I should mention one thing briefly: During my tour of Alola for Mina’s trial, I bumped into Hau repeatedly, who I guess was also on a training montage. Gladion mentioned having fought him as well. Clearly, the guy’s been leveling himself up for something - and now, at the literal last minute, we get to find out why:

I believe this last fight ended 4-0 or 5-0, so clearly Hau’s training wasn’t enough to become Champion himself. That said, when a man gives his all against you and still comes up second-best, you have to give him the respect his effort deserves.

...

That said, we did just become the Champion, thus officially ending the main game story of Pokemon Ultra Sun! Huzzah!

There’s a few last things to mention during the credits scenes. First, we don’t have to worry about trying to catch Tapu Koko during the end credits this time - we’ve already more or less visited his shrine with Lillie to pay our respects, or at least the bridge outside of it, anyway.

Similarly, Lillie doesn’t leave on a boat to Kanto this time. Presumably, since Lusamine doesn’t actually need any sort of medical assistance this time around, she feels more comfortable staying in Alola. To be frank, I always thought that was a flimsy excuse to send her away anyway though, so you won’t hear any complaints from me about that!

Instead, it’s Gladion who leaves the country! I guess his pursuit of strength couldn’t be fulfilled in Alola, so he chartered the next ship outta dodge to sip quietly out into the night. At least Lusamine was awake enough to wave goodbye from the port before the ship had properly set sail! (And again we don’t see her eyes. I suspect there’s a reason for that!)

The credits themselves are much better as well. Instead of waiting for you to complete 10 minutes of dialogue plus a Legendary Pokemon battle, they start the credit roll immediately and intersperse the post-Champion-battle scenes in-between. This gives a much better ‘flow’, so I’m not left waiting for the credits to end to turn my game off.

Anyway, that’s been the main game of Pokemon Ultra Sun! We’ll be doing the post-game as well, so the series isn’t over yet, but before we do, I’ll be taking a look at a different postgame, where events happened differently... in other words, “Vanilla Sun Recollections”!

[countmohawk]

Ultra Sun Recollections 22

This entry has been forthcoming for some time, but I got smote with the plague (read: a common cold), which set me behind for a while.

Now that I feel well again, though, it’s time to continue my Recollections - Victory Road awaits!

Victory Road has been expanded a little bit from how it was in vanilla Sun. There’s more rooms now, and the path winds around the mountain cliffside a little more before going inside it.

Also, about halfway through the dungeon, we find this room:

Surprise, it’s Necrozma! Having run completely out of light energy, the legend appears to have crash-landed in this crater and is basically completely unable to move.

I, of course, walked straight past Necrozma on my first trip up Lanakila. I don’t have a Synchronize user on my main team, let alone one with the right nature, so I’m not about to turn around and go back for one before I clear out the rest of the Trainers!

After Victory Road was complete, however, I returned to this spot and checked on how Necrozma was doing personally:

As I recall, the Sparkling Stones from which Alolans make their Z-Rings came from Ultra Necrozma before it was broken - thus it makes sense that Z power can be used to revitalize Necrozma now.

By the way, I used my Master Ball here. I could have gone for a Premier Ball catch, but it’s not like I need to save the Master Ball for anything, since there’s no runners in this gen. Plus, purple and black go pretty well together.

After catching Necrozma, Bill Nye shows up one more time to share with us the fruits of the research the UR Squad asked him to work on. Originally they wanted a device to control Necrozma directly, but I guess Colress found that design a bit too simple and instead made a remote that makes fusion between Necrozma and Nebby possible.

Nice callback to Black 2 / White 2 there.

Before we leave this crater, let me just take a moment to address the subject of the Necrozma alternate forms for a minute. On the one hand, GameFreak wants the players to be able to use them, so of course there has to be a means to access them in-game. On the other hand, I don’t like how the requirement to use the Necrozma fusions, and especially Ultra Necrozma, is to use a Solgaleo/Lunala as a battery. Like, didn’t we go through the entire storyline thus far to avoid exactly this fate for Nebby? (And never mind that you get another Cosmog in the postgame; that one’s needed to trade for the other legend.)

Anyway, we make it to the top of the mountain, and who else should be there waiting for us but Shiron, the Vulpix we helped out on Route 8 a long time ago? (Squee!)

Thanks for the encouragement, Shiron!

And speaking of encouragement, we’ve got one last scene before entering the Pokemon League itself:

I wonder if this scene plays if you try to enter the League without having your starter in your party. Does the game even allow it? (it probably does; GameFreak doesn’t railroad players that badly)

Nonetheless, it’s still a very cool Book Ends moment to properly set the mood for the Elite Four. And with no remaining unfinished business, that’s exactly what we’re gonna do next time!

[countmohawk]

Ultra Sun Recollections 21

With the eight trials completed, it’s time to ascend the mountain.

...Almost. There’s a couple loose ends to wrap up first.

The first and most obvious of the loose ends is that I completely skipped over the Hapu grand trial. Instead of fighting her at the entrance of the Vast Poni Canyon, we take the fight to the grotto on Exeggutor Island where the Sun Flute sat before we took it for ourselves. Given that Exeggutor Island was apparently a trial site itself some time ago, this is a fitting location for the battle.

With Poni’s grand trial complete, next we return to Tapu Village. The construction workers at the base of Mt. Lanakila are gone, so we can take the lift up. But first, we have to fight Gladion, who rides down on the lift to meet us!

His Type: Null has evolved into Silvally, which is basically just Type: Null sans mask, with higher Speed and the ability to change its type by equipping various Memory items. Silvally’s type is always the one with a type advantage over your starter among the Grass/Fire/Water trio. This doesn’t make him any harder to beat, though!

After Gladion goes down, he shares two things with us. The first is his smile:

And the second is information:

Last time we saw Lillie, she was headed to Aether Paradise to help take care of Nebby. If she’s left the Paradise, then that means Solgaleo must be feeling better now. To Mahalo Trail!

Bye Gladion! We’ll see you again someday, I’m sure.

At Mahalo Trail, we see that Lillie has brought Nebby back to the Plank Bridge outside the Ruins of Conflict, the place we first met the both of them. As it turns out, she came here to say goodbye to her companion:

Lillie spent some time thinking about Necrozma, the broken god of light, and about Nebby, who as a Solgaleo is itself a being of light. The conclusion she came to was that if Solgaleo and Necrozma stay together, then the residual light from Nebby will keep Necrozma from going mad with hunger.

I’m actually not sold on the idea that Nebby’s fate should be to act as a living battery for another legend’s sake. It feels a little like they grafted Necrozma onto as many parts of the story as possible, but they rushed the process and left a number of inconsistencies lying around.

That said, at least Lillie has a better reason for having us catch Solgaleo this time around than in vanilla Sun, where she just sort of gives up on the whole idea due to “not being a Trainer”. Here it feels more like we’re being entrusted with care of Nebby - as though to say Lillie isn’t ready to be Nebby’s Trainer, but hopes to eventually grow into that capability.

And of course, I still can’t give it any other nickname.

...

...There’s something I should be saying here, I’m sure, but I can’t for the life of me figure out what. (Stupid feels...)