#pla analysis

[nemesis-is-my-middle-name]

ZA in general has had some wild Lore Drops. Not just in the Museum (though that is pretty big), but in general.

Here's some of the more interesting Lore we got from the game:

-The Ingo and Volo stuff. -Some interesting details about the members of Team Galaxy, the members of the Clans, and average life in Hisui (most of which I sadly cannot remember off the top of my head). -Each one of the Pokémon hieroglyphs in Legends: Arceus is part of an alphabet that can actually be deciphered and read if you know what each symbol/word means (and how their meaning changes when paired with other symbols). -Galar and Kalos had a similar relationship to England and France (which is the least shocking Lore reveal, but at least we have confirmation of that theory). -The Legends Arceus protagonist's fate is unknown, but they probably returned, since Laventon's Pokédex was found a few years before Z-A in a shack somewhere in Sinnoh. -AZ bore witness to the Darkest Day. (As in, he probably traveled Galar and personally witnessed it.) There's no confirmation that his actions actually caused the Darkest Day, but he was there to see it happen. -Zygarde has some kind of connection to Necrozma. (Probably just from absorbing some of its energy while in Alola and thus getting a heck of a lot stronger-but even then, Holy Shit, what a reveal.)

ohhhh nooooo if this has lore about average life in hisui i may have to actually play it... my detailssss...

[nemesis-is-my-middle-name]

i know i've posted abt this before also but i did not have screenshots to demonstrate just HOW gently passive aggressive ingo is to volo when they talk. i have no idea if they intended it this way but he sounds so "sadly my strict standard of conduct will not let me tell you to fuck off for asking weirdly personal questions just so you can share your theories but with the subtext toolkit available to me i am VERY much shooing you out of the way so i can get back to what i was actually trying to do."

[nemesis-is-my-middle-name]

I don’t know why but I suddenly can’t stop thinking about Irida and Her choices in Ounce of Prevention. Feel free to just ignore this if you’re still planning to update it someday, absolutely no pressure, but I’m just so curious as to where her arc would have taken her.

Thanks for infecting my brain btw, genuinely.

OH YEAH OK THIS IS FUN! uh. i don't wanna say i'm Not gonna update oop ever again but we are firmly in the malev mines rn and all my writing energy is going to other projects, lol. and yeah regardless of whether i do go back to it or not, it would probably still be fun to yap rn about the stuff i had plotted out!!

(contd. PLA character rambing + OOP spoilers(???) under the cut)

so irida's arc is, probably obviously, kind of inextricably tied up with adaman's. they both develop as mirrors of each other. like, they do not get along as people because they have been arguing nonstop for years, BUT, by the same token, they have been fighting for years & so know each other really well, on a surface "i can predict your next words with almost perfect accuracy" way. and the rift crisis in OOP is, even moreso than in canon, the impetus for them to finally work out their differences and bond and etc.

and in irida's case this means, like. she is someone who is and has been under enormous pressure to Be A Good Leader. not just for her people, but for The Pearl Clan as an entity, as a body of tradition and faith. she has to do everything right, make all the right calls, be wise and just and worthy of sinnoh's faith in her. as a consequence she second-guesses herself constantly, and tends to fall back on the guidance of those she views as more experienced than herself... whiiiich is what led directly to her agreeing to imprison ingo. rip. so her arc is abt her recognizing that actually, she can't be a perfect leader all on her own, that trying to force herself into this individualism just leads to her unconsciously trusting the wrong people and getting others hurt.

and like i said, this whole coming to terms with her flaws happens parallel to adaman's own arc, bc they were going to be traveling around together for the next solid chunk of the fic (i decided to split all the PLA fetchquests between parties, so adaman and irida were going to be plate collecting.) which also means that she's forced to recognize that while adaman is very bad at holding to formality and tradition, and weak on the spiritual side of leadership, he is legitimately very good at managing his people. (likewise, adaman has to recognize that despite irida's youth and lack of confidence, her knowledge of hisui and the clans is deep & she's good at managing that side of things.)

the ultimate resolution of this in the very sketchy outline i have that far was that it comes to light that the clans were formerly one single entity that underwent a fracturing in the last rift crisis, and after all the Character Growth™ (on the part of the leaders and also just sort of everyone in hisui generally), they decide to reunify the clans bc they've realized they are much better leaders as a pair than they are apart. BUT like i said that was a very sketchy outline so it could have changed along the way, who knows !

[nemesis-is-my-middle-name]

it's actually kinda funny how the balance of nobles getting frenzied is already a little pearl clan heavy just by virtue of there being an uneven number, but then they also have a ride noble get pseudo-frenzied and rather than it being a diamond clan noble to even things out, it's ursaluna, who's also pearl. that's 4/5 pearl nobles who get some version of frenzied compared to only 2/5 for diamond. almighty sinnoh really said fuck these guys specifically. also a real "sneasler wins by doing nothing" sort of situation here

[nemesis-is-my-middle-name]

also re: ingo being The most powerful warden, like, thinking about it. to start with, just in terms of numbers, does anyone besides the protag ever match him? nobody among the wardens can even beat his initial fight number of 3, let alone the full team of the training grounds fights.

hang on i just double checked and yeah. even among the galaxy team members, the max anyone there reaches is 5—the protag counterpart and kamado in postgame fights, and then also beni and zisu in the highest-tier path of tenacity battles. everyone else has 4 or fewer. the only person in hisui who matches ingo for numbers is fucking volo, the final story battle, the last time you ever fight him.

and then you've got levels. on account of the variant horde-type battles the clans use, all the "accessory" pokemon there tend to be significantly weaker than their main. now in the final-stage, people do sometimes break past the max level of 77 w/ 5 efforts in ingo's tougher team—the clan leader's main eeveelution are at 75 and will have effort 7, as will zisu and kamado's teams in the galaxy team path of tencity. kamado makes it to 79 and is, as far as i can tell, the only person to beat that lvl 77 number. so there do exist battles that are tougher than ingo's—though i think it's probably worth keep in mind that in-universe, this is you fighting these guys for the like 5th+ time while they've been aggressively training to beat you. ingo will break out his "tougher" team the like, 3rd time you fight him.

BUT WAIT!! THERE'S MORE!!

ingo doesn't participate in path of tenacity battles with his clan, but his 3 regular battle teams (normal, tougher, and alphas) are not the only ways you can fight him! that's right i'm talking about the PATH OF SOLITUDE. if you fight ingo in path of solitude with certain nobles, starters, and also "baby" or very weak pokemon because fuck you i guess, he will break out pokemon in the range of 80-84. i am fairly certain this is the highest level of any pokemon battle you can have in this game. please look at this fucking matchup:

oh you want to path of solitude with your cute little bnuuy?? lol. lmao. dusknoir also knows a recovery move fwiw. and has completely maxed efforts. in case you weren't having a bad enough time already.

but wait!! we're not done!!

ok so ingo doesn't use that variant horde battle format that the rest of the clans use, right? excepting the alpha battle. well that's not quite true. if you do path of solitude with any of the pla box legendaries—i.e. palkia, dialga, giratina, arceus—he'll also use 3 at once against you in that battle, each one being either a hisui or a modern sinnoh (if it's giratina) starter line. with palkia and dialga, these guys are lvl 50 each. for giratina they're 60.

would you like to guess what he uses to fight you if you're using arceus?

level fucking 87. all at the same time. with max evs. they also have ideal natures for their attacks, y'know, just. in case you were wondering. in case you thought he was going to show you any kind of mercy whatsoever.

i can only assume this is his way of venting some frustration about the whole spacetime kidnapping thing.

[nemesis-is-my-middle-name]

off topic but i think one of the reasons that (ok i only have like 2 people's testimony to base this off of but i think it is true) ingo vibe checks as a cool guy is he's like, the only warden who has no Task for you to do before he’ll actually help you progress the main quest. he doesn't have any problems morally or religiously with frenzy quelling. he is not lying about the state of the region. he does not make you play hide and seek or catch a bandit gang or climb a giant pillar of ice. he's just like "sure, i'll help" and then does it. the task is "follow me through this cave, no there's nothing for you to do in here it's just dark and i don't want you to get lost" and then battle him i guess but that was a really short thing and mostly an aside for fun. he can also do this because melli is doing double duty being the obstacle for both of them as the world's most difficult warden

[nemesis-is-my-middle-name]

this is completely unrelated but i also really think that the formulation of the nobles in hisui is tipping its hand towards there having actually been two heroes of legend, not one, as part of the whole diamond/pearl symmetry/two sinnohs thing.

bc it's kind of weird, right, that they befriended ten pokemon to be the original nobles? when canonically, the max you can have on your team is 6. however, consider dividing the legend of the hero between two—now they each have 5 pokemon, which fits neatly into the 6-mon team, and, as a bonus, leaves a single spot open for palkia/dialga.

[nemesis-is-my-middle-name]

I Love the idea that the Pearl Clan just sort of adores Ingo at this point. Yeah yeah suspicious of strangers and all that, but to them Ingo isn't a stranger anymore, he's one of them. The Pearl Clan probably showed him off as their new Warden very smugly. "Oh, you have Wardens that have, like, one pokemon to their name? Well our new Warden is so fucking good with these monstrously powerful beasts that he has six, and they're all perfectly behaved and fully evolved. Our Warden is way cooler and more powerful than all of yours combined, so take that, losers. Oh and, by the way? Yeah, Almighty Sinnoh gave him to us, so clearly we have the real god. Sucks to suck."

It definitely helps that Ingo is a very nice, polite man who just wants to be helpful, in a place where help is sorely needed. His team was likely also very helpful, in terms of gathering stuff. I mean, they have their kids out there gathering stuff, and it's hard to the point of weariness; there's no way he wouldn't try to use all the tools he has to do some of the harder stuff. That must mean a lot to people who have so little and are struggling to survive that much. They showed him kindness, or at least decency, by letting him stay at first despite the fact that it very clearly would have been a strain on their limited resources, and he repaid that tenfold, not even out of obligation or because he felt he owed them but just because he's a good person who genuinely wants to help. He stopped being a stranger when he put so much work into helping them survive, despite the danger to himself and the fact he really didn't have to. And now he's the Warden to their resident supermodel, so he's kind of a local celebrity. (Perhaps in the back of his mind he's like, 'hmm, this feels familiar? But as usual, it feels hollow, like I'm missing the most important part.')

YEAH!!! ingo truly had 0 ulterior motives. he wasn't even in it to like, repay them, or get them to like him more, he was very obviously and very genuinely just like. determined to improve everyone's lives. and +++ this if you also think he was like, the first person in A While to be able to talk lady sneasler into Doing Her Job. especially b/c of the other thing i was saying abt how difficult it is to get in and out of the icelands without her help. AND +++this if you also think that right now, specifically is a very difficult time for the pearl clan, which i do. an npc in jubilife has a line about the protag like “You fall right out of nowhere and start setting things right when they’re falling apart… You’re like the hero in some sort of play!” but that really is what ingo did huh.

anyway i already said this but now i cannot stop thinking abt the idea that ingo trains misc. pokemon specifically to drop them off at the pearl clan settlement so they can help out. they can never predict what it's gonna be either. sometimes it's a gligar. sometimes it's one of lady sneasler's kits that had to be hand raised and now doesn't want to leave by itself. sometimes it's an ALPHA ELECTABUZZ. his current goal is to get them some more fire types or fire move users, so they have more than just irida's flareon and whenever palina comes up and brings growlithe, but it's so hard to find ones that can tolerate the cold well.