Interlude – Forums IV

Interlude – Forums IV

INTERLUDE - FORUMS IV

Welcome to the League Circuit Forums! The best website to get any League/Circuit related news!

General → Politics

Topic: The League brings down the hammer

Original Poster: Elena_Varena (Verified Trainer)

Date: January 15th 20XX

Ladies and gentlemen, it happened.

Hundreds of people got arrested by the League today for working with Team Galactic one way or another. More than one third of the Directorate is now empty, and a bunch of higher-ups in the Bianchi Conglomerate are in jail awaiting trial, and none of them have bond! That means they’re going to be rotting in there for months.

Good riddance.

I’ve skimmed the investigation, and the level of corruption here was seriously egregious. Some of these politicians bought new houses, cars, bought their kids into universities, went on fucking vacation with blood money from Team Galactic and the Bianchis. The League was very thorough and shut up every person accusing them of abuse of power reaaaaally quickly with these. This is nothing like the National Security Emergency Act, which was morally ambiguous at best (I don’t think we’re really getting any information from all the grunts they’re extracting memories from, or Team Galactic would have been dealt with already). This was iron tight. No holes, from what I can see, and people are on the League’s side here.

Just a few months ago, people were saying that Cynthia was fucked because of Vernon Harper’s upheaval, but now he’s back in charge, and Cynthia will be able to get any bills she wants passed, starting with the nationalization of the Bianchi Conglomerate. Potions and other items should hopefully return to their normal price, and there will finally be a cap on their price.

So what are everyone’s thoughts on the situation? Personally, I support this, but I’m curious.

►Vivalajoy

I support it 100%. I don’t think people realize how close to a disaster this could have been. First, there’s the attack on Fantina, then Abel is linked with Team Galactic, then this? If the League hadn’t done anything, they would have been signaling that they were powerless.

►Impala07

I don’t know, Cynthia basically controlling the entire government (civilian and trainer) makes me anxious. All the new candidates presenting themselves for the special elections are her ardent supporters. The government doesn’t give your freedom back after taking it away.

►Kevin_Montpellier (Verified Trainer)

Now you’re just being contrarian for the sake of being contrarian. Cynthia already gave up her power once, you moron. Why wouldn’t she do it again when the threat is dealt with? Just get Team Galactic out of Sinnoh and everything can return to normal. I think the League’s been very honest with us with all the reports they released. They could have said nothing.

►Luna_Frances (Verified Trainer)

That probably would have made the protests a few months ago look like a nursery home. They couldn’t have done that, it would have destroyed their image, even if they would have been in the right.

►Impala07

Whatever you guys say. All I’m saying is that don’t come complaining when we end up in a de-facto dictatorship like Kanto and Johto where the Indigo League runs everything and the people just have to watch.

►Luna_Frances (Verified Trainer)

Okay, drama queen. We’ll see what happens. All I’m saying is that we literally have proof of all this wrongdoing and Cynthia’s proven to be reasonable.

►RumblingRun9

Let me get slightly off-topic here. Don’t you guys find it weird how Kanto and Johto hate each other and yet they’re basically run by the same League? How do they even function?

►Dimdamdam

The Elite Four and the Champion all hate each other and have a region they support. Lance and Koga favor Kanto, Will and Karen favor Johto. Bruno’s usually neutral on things. The meetings must be tense as hell, huh? It’s basically a constant political civil war, it’s a wonder how those two regions even function, but it’s the only way they found to stop wars from starting again. Better a political civil war fought with backroom deals and words than an actual hot war.

►Leonard_Morgenstern (Verified Trainer)

Personally, I won’t ever be going to Kanto or Johto, especially with how obsessed with bloodlines they are. I mean, it does mean that families can keep their supernatural abilities like Sabrina and pass them down, but I think this shit borders on eugenics.

►Elena_Varena (Verified Trainer)

You are getting off-topic indeed. If you want to talk about Kanto/Johto politics, there are other threads for that.

►Marvin_Samson (Verified Trainer)

What I’m wondering about is Harvey Bianchi’s son. He was meant to take over the business, no? Does he expect me to believe that he knew nothing about this? Maybe that’s a part of why he wasn’t that outspoken against his father when compared to Pauline King or Cecilia Obel. If he knew, then he deserves to be punished too, especially when he’s going to keep a large sum of money. Money that his dad made unethically!

►OrangeRexCounty

You’re missing the forest for the trees. Sometimes, the simplest explanation is the correct one. He was just tricked by his old man, and he was probably kept in the dark his entire life.

►Pauline_King (Verified Trainer)

Respectfully, go fuck yourself and die in a ditch. You have no idea what you’re talking about, and you should stop spreading rumors. We have enough on our plate.

►Marvin_Samson (Verified Trainer)

Okay, I’m genuinely sorry. Your friend got attacked by Abel, right? I shouldn’t have brought that stuff up. I think it’s fun to theorize, but I forget that you guys are living, breathing human beings sometimes.

——

Trainers → Events

Topic: The coming Solaceon tournament and who to watch out for

Original Poster: Goalducc42

Date: January 23rd 20XX

So my account’s blown up these past few weeks thanks to people enjoying my general analysis of promising trainers. I usually focus on Cecilia Obel (huge fan, you couldn’t tell by my profile picture), but since there’s been a lot more eyes on my stuff than I expected, I figured that I’d start tracking and analyzing other rising stars this year, and I have! Today’s post will be a bit special though, since we’ll be focusing only on the first-years, not on anyone else.

Discounting the Conference, this event’s going to be the biggest tourney of the year. It’s backed by the Solaceon Daycare and the prize pool is fucking insane. Hyper Beam?! Everyone wants to get their hands on that! There are a few people missing here that would have been on the list, but are unfortunately not participating, like Chase Karlson or Barry Lane, so don’t complain about them not being there! Anyway, I’m going to try to lay out the top contenders for the tournament, so here goes. But wait! I hear your sniveling little voices asking the question: why should you listen to me and not someone else? Well, I’ve been tracking multiple trainers for more than a decade, and I’ve had my post shouted out by none other than Candice herself! @Candicefitinurmouf is her burner account, and she accidentally leaked it a few weeks ago after forgetting to log out and complimenting herself. Anyway, she’s been under a lot of my posts, and she’s complimented me.

Like usual, I’ll be checking out their Pokemon one by one. By the way, this isn’t in any order in particular, so don’t put words in my mouth and start fighting about rankings. Also, keep in mind that the known moves list will most likely be incomplete.

Cecilia Obel

You know me, so I won’t even bother to give an excuse as to why I’m starting with Cecilia first. Despite an average showing against Fantina that made a lot of people start saying that she’s overrated, I still think that she’s a top contender. And don’t you dare call me biased.

Zweilous is still as monstrous as ever. Some people made fun of it for getting manhandled by Fantina’s Dhelmise, but you didn’t actually see how greatly it’s been improving. The main threat a trainer would have to think about when facing Zweilous is its insanely high defense, as we saw during the double battle between Cecilia and her group. It can fight for days, and its offense is no joke either. In that department, it’s not as dominant as it used to be compared to the competition, and I’ll get to that later, but you can’t ignore the fact that it can use two attacks at once, and is one of the rare Pokemon able to do so. It has the most destructive potential of all the Pokemon on this list. Dragon Pulse is its most potent attack, but it has been somewhat lacking in variety, which I think is its biggest weakness. Let’s hope Cecilia’s remedied that.

Known moves: Bite, Take Down, Dragon Breath, Dragon Pulse, Incinerate, Crunch, Hyper Voice, Stomping Tantrum, Thunder Fang

Known ability: Hustle - source: only known Zweilous ability.

Slowking is who I think is Cecilia’s strongest Pokemon by a wide margin. The sheer amount of utility it has with Psychic is invaluable in battle. It can be used defensively, offensively, or as a method to restrain opponents. Not only that, but it has excellent survivability with an already decent bulk and Slack Off. Anyone who wants to take Slowking down will need to have dark or ghost type moves, otherwise I don’t see anything getting past its defenses. If I had to find one fault, it’s that his water type moves are somewhat lacking, but focusing on improving its psychic abilities isn’t exactly a mistake, with how useful they have been in every showing so far.

Known moves: Tackle, Water Gun, Confusion, Psychic, Water Pulse, Slack Off, Disable, Zen Headbutt

Known ability: ??? - not Regenerator - source: doesn’t seem to heal when switched out

Fletchinder is still powerful, but you can definitely tell that her not evolving is starting to hold her back. She’s going to be fighting in a tournament full of fully evolved Pokemon, and despite her speed, she won’t have the firepower to compete. We directly saw this when it took her ages to take down Grace Pastel’s Tangrowth despite having the type advantage. She’s also ridiculously frail, and one or two attack is enough to break one of her wings and ground her. Now, all of this doesn’t mean that Fletchinder is useless. The tournament is held in a doubles format, so her speed can make her a formidable support Pokemon. As it stands, though, I don’t see her pulling much weight unless she evolves.

Known moves: Peck, Acrobatics, Tailwind, Quick Attack, Ember, Fire Spin, Agility

Known ability: Gale Wings - source: Incredible speeds at the start of every battle

Scyther, Cecilia’s final Pokemon was finally revealed, and I’ve gushed about it already. It’s another speedster, and it can almost rival Fletchinder when he really gets going. It has a decent amount of power behind those scythes too, but the problem is that it just doesn’t listen to what Cecilia says. It’s not like she even tries to order it beyond simple suggestions either. In a singles format, maybe Scyther would be useful, but right now, I just think that it’ll get in the way.

Known moves: Quick Attack, X-Scissor, Air Slash, Agility, Slash

Known ability: Swarm - source: seemingly grows stronger the closer it is to fainting

TLDR: Slowking and Zweilous will have to carry, because the other two aren’t good enough to win the entire tournament.

Denzel Williams

Denzel, Denzel, Denzel. What to say about him? He’s gotten a lot of fans this past month, and he’s the one with the most presence in the group. Even Grace Pastel, who’s sponsored by the Arceus damned Poketch Company, manages to keep things relatively quiet, but you hear about him everywhere you go, and he’s one of the most documented trainers on here.

Not that I’m a hater. He’s got the skill to back his fame, and I think he’s being slept on.

Magnezone is by far her strongest, and Mira managed to evolve it during her travels through Mount Coronet. Not only does it have high defenses, but its mastery of Lock-On means that it will never miss an attack unless you have a teleporter. Flash Cannon and Thunderbolt are its bread and butter. Little move variety just like Zweilous, so you have that going for you. Just blast it with fire type moves until it falls, or knock it to the ground and use a ground type move.

Known moves: Thundershock, Thunderbolt, Flash Cannon, Lock-On, Tri-Attack, Discharge

Known ability: Analytic(?) - source: is noticeably stronger when moving after its opponents

TLDR: Annoying as hell to face, lots of gimmicks with Teleportation, Curse and Lock-On. To beat her, you’ll have to fight quickly and decisively.

►Will_Bowman (Verified Trainer)

Excellent writeup, Goalducc. Seriously, it’s your best one yet. Personally, I’ll be at the tournament (second-year here), and I’d rank them like this in terms of who I’d hate to face: Mira>Grace>Denzel>Lauren>Cecilia. Mira’s got that murderous Haunter (I honestly don’t know why they’re allowing her to sign up), and fighting against that Teleporting Kadabra is just too much for me. Not only that, but her Magnezone can counter my water types. Grace just seems like annoying to fight, honestly. Completely unfun. You’ve got to completely change up your style to hope to beat her, but that means you’ll be fighting worse too. Denzel plays the long game with his battles, and I’m not that good at staying focused for long periods of time (big weakness of mine), and that Blizzard you talked about seemed vicious, especially since I’m a water specialist with some... interesting strategies. Lauren could trip me up with her custom moves, but I think I’d be able to take her, especially since I counter three members of her team. Sceptile would probably be a bitch to fight, though, but I’d deal. Cecilia, well, if you deal with Zweilous and Slowking, you’re pretty well positioned to win.

►Drew_Cartman (Verified Trainer)

I think you’re overestimating Denzel and underestimating Cecilia. I’d swap them if I were you. Sure, Denzel might last long, but he lacks the firepower to deal with the Pokemon he’ll be facing. This isn’t the little leagues anymore.

►LivingPokedex

Non battler barging in here. My dad’s a fairy type specialist that works for the League, and I can shed some light on what Sylveon is doing. Most fairies get their power from feelings and emotions. What I think is happening here is that Sylveon is believing so strongly in the fact that it has some sort of shield that it’s manifesting it into reality.

Before you panic, this has its limits. It’s not about to summon a rain of acid or whatever anytime soon. It’ll keep things small and controlled. Anyway, there is an easy way to counter this, just like how you counter all fairy types: steel and poison. Coat its body with any type of poison type attack, or hit it with a steel type move, and the armor will crumble before your very eyes faster than you can blink. If you don’t have any of those, you can only hit Sylveon enough times to chip away at it, but that’ll take time.

►Yasim_Benzema (Verified Trainer)

Arceus knows that you don’t want your battles with Denzel Williams to last long, or he’ll always win. Thanks for the tip. Also, I don’t appreciate you calling Lairon weak. I own one, it’s just that Lauren isn’t using it to its full potential.

►Patcha

I’m so proud of you Goalducc. Not because of your writeup, but because you finally stopped simping for Cecilia Obel for one Arceus damned post. Finally, people are realizing that she’s overrated. I know it must have taken a lot out of you. Your fingers were probably burning while you were typing this. It honestly brings a tear to my eye! Hope to see more good stuff from you.

►Denzel_Williams (Verified Trainer)

Interesting analysis you got there. You’ve got a knack for these, and I enjoyed reading my part. Mind if I show it to my friends? I’d like to see their reactions.

►Goalducc42

HOLY SHIT I AM NOT WORTHY! Do whatever you want, man, it’s yours! Thank you for stopping by and reading my stuff. Can you let me know what their reactions were?

►Denzel_Williams (Verified Trainer)

Gotcha! Can’t wait to see their faces when I show them this.

►Conrad_Amed (Verified Trainer)

I don’t know about you, but I don’t trust anything that the Hunter family has their hands in whatsoever.

►VivenDarris

Why are people always so fucking paranoid?

►Conrad_Amed (Verified Trainer)

Maybe because I’m a Solaceon native and that they’ve held this town back for centuries just because of their greed, you ass. We could have been just as big as Hearthome without them. I don’t trust the Hunters and I won’t be watching this. Thanks the the analysis anyway.

——

Gyms → Veilstone → Maylene

Topic: Maylene caught on hot mic

Original poster: Impala07

Date: January 18th 20XX

This is breaking news, and the media’s having a field day with it. Maylene Suzuki is well known for being a hothead, mostly due to how young she is, but this is something else. Below is a video of her criticizing her handlers from the League. If you don’t want to read my explanation and you have the attention span of a Yanmega, there’s a video at the bottom. It’s been a theory for a long time, but now we have confirmation. Maylene doesn’t actually run her gym. It’s all handled directly from agents from the League, and all she does is battle people.

Some might say that it was obvious due to her age, but the government kept denying it. Now, it’s out in the open, and it’s fucking big. This essentially means that the League was running Veilstone directly ever since Maylene ascended to the position of gym leader two and a half years ago, and people don’t take kindly to that stuff, especially since Veilstone’s civilian government’s been sidelined time and time again due to some ‘hidden’ Team Galactic base that the League’s been looking for for months. The mayor was in on it too, and he’s facing calls to resign and the city council is in open rebellion. It’s a mess up there, and I’ll eat my hat if the League puts out a statement instead of just staying radio silent. With their power play against the opposition in the Directorate and the nationalization of the Bianchi Conglomerate (new name still pending), people like me are getting a bit nervous, but I hope things will return to normal when Team Galactic is finally out of the picture.

►Landon_Pinion (Verified Trainer)

She’s a kid, dude. Relax and stop trying to use her for clout. I’m in Veilstone and like usual, the media’s trying to fan the flames. People here don’t give a fuck as long as Team Galactic is dealt with. No one is even trying to organize a protest. We’re all in a united front except ignorant people like you that keep trying to revive controversies. Honestly, I wouldn’t even be surprised if you’re a Galactic member trying to agitate us.

►Dashtwoun

Newsflash, moron, children can’t run entire cities. The League was probably just trying to keep up appearances, but it was obvious if you just used your brain for a single second. For example, why do you think the League even allows for fifteen-year-olds to potentially become the Champion? Do you think that they’d allow a kid to run the entire region and our military apparatus? Of course not. They have handlers for that shit until the kid grows up and learns the ropes. Why would it be different for the Veilstone gym?

►Kendrick_Shepherd (Verified Trainer)

Also, you’re trying to mislead people here. The League never said that Maylene ran her own gym alone, they said that she was getting help multiple times. Looking at your history, all you do is complain about the League, but never about the Directorate, and it’s also not even a year old. I honestly think you’re a spy, I’m going to report your account. Can’t have any more infiltrations. Good thing the League added a tip line for this shit.

►Impala07

So this is what it’s come to then? We’re creating such a paranoid atmosphere that anyone who doesn’t conform to the typical opinion is a member of Team Galactic? What happened to free speech? I wasn’t even that against Maylene or anything, I was just reporting on what happened.

►Freddie00Y

Nah, man. I’m reporting you too, you’re sus. Your last five posts have been complaining about the League. I’m sorry, but it’s better to be safe than sorry.

►Impala07

Fuck you. What if they show up at my house?

►Kendrick_Shepherd (Verified Trainer)

If you have nothing to hide, you have nothing to worry about.

——

General → History_Discussion

Topic: Sigilyph spotted on route 210

Original poster: Christian_Dewitte (Verified Trainer)

Date: January 20th 20XX

Hey, I know this isn’t exactly the right category for this post, but there aren’t enough categories as it is, so please spare me, moderators. Below is a picture of a Sigilyph that my buddy spotted on his way to Celestic. It’s blurry, but you can clearly tell what it is. No other Pokemon has those weird ass wings and that body shape. To be more precise, he spotted it up in the cliffs near the halfway point of the route, and it escaped into the sky before he could catch it to sell it back to the Daycare.

Now, why is this significant? Well, any trainer worth their while can tell you that Sigilyph are only found in the wild in Unova’s desert, but only history and archeology nerds like me can tell you that the presence of any Sigilyph means that an ancient city or civilization is nearby. They’re known to only patrol the streets of their destroyed/lost cities even thousands of years after the fact, and they always take the same pathing/route like an AI in a video game. Over. And. Over. So why did this one escape? Well, I don’t exactly know, but it’s bound to be interesting. I’ve contacted some of my archeology pals over in Veilstone, and they plan on making the trip over there to check it out. We could be on the verge of a discovery that redefines history as we know it! Did a group of settlers from Unova make the trek to Sinnoh and settle there? I’ll try to keep you posted!

►Worldwiser

Interesting theory, but what if that’s just some Unovan trainer’s Pokemon that was flying around? If it was a whole group, then maybe I’d be inclined to believe you, but this is circumstantial at best, and your friends are probably going to waste their time. And where would this even be hidden? You’d think the rangers would have stumbled upon it, they know every route like the back of their hands.

►Anna_Cammy (Verified Trainer)

Agree with the above statement, but there’s more. This is ancient civilization we’re talking about, right? Why would they settle down on those mountains where agriculture is impossible? At least Celestic sits on a flat plateau that goes on for miles, but the location you’re talking about makes no sense. The only way this could be possible is if this Sigilyph’s coming from a lot further than you think it is, which makes your whole expedition to route 210 moot.

►Fuu-chan

First, the rumors about fairies on route 215, now this? Kind of wack, I wonder what’s going on.

►Untitled_05

Blurry picture tbh, can’t see jack shit. Probably some clout goblin looking to get famous.

►Christian_Dewitte (Verified Trainer)

The first two of you make good points, and I’m happy this section of the forums is more active than I thought. I still think it’s too early to give up. I’m 100% sure there’s something there.

You’ll see.