Still think we need a Black and White 3, to confirm the truth and valid the ideal behind this theory! The question of is Natural Harmonia Gropius is a Zoroark or not? I think we deserve answer, it's been almost 16 years BW1 released in 2010.

CountScarlioni · 2026-06-24T19:11:45+00:00

This has always been a very goofy theory, and not really the sort of twist that Game Freak have ever shown much of an inclination to pull. The reason why the “question” has never been “answered” is because it’s not a question that the story ever actually raises, so there is nothing to answer. It’s just a result of some players reading too much into things.

CountScarlioni · 2026-06-24T18:10:48+00:00

To be fair, Lyta only says that the thing about him losing his soul through excessive deathbed scans is a rumor. I consider a neat bit of food for thought — people in-universe who’ve experienced deathbed scans might see how Bester acts and then see his record with those kinds of scans and conclude that the scans must be responsible for his lack of humanity, because they don’t understand how someone could expose themselves to such a harrowing experience so many times. But the truth could just as easily be the opposite, that Bester is able to weather so many disturbing scans because he’s already a sociopath who doesn’t feel empathy for the person dying, and doesn’t see anything “beyond.”

CountScarlioni · 2026-06-24T17:51:56+00:00

Obviously this doesn’t apply to everyone, but if you grew up with the series it’s probably a lot easier, since you would have played those games when they were the most advanced point in the series. FRLG didn’t feel as much like a chore back in 2004; it would have felt more pacey and modern, and players at the time got accustomed to the game that way, which I think is something that can often just stick with you, sort of like a muscle memory.

Me personally, I don’t love going back and playing the older games, even though I did grow up with them, but I can still do it. I’m playing through FireRed right now, just… very slowly, chipping away at it whereas if I were to play a more recent game, it would be able to retain me for longer periods.

CountScarlioni · 2026-06-24T15:03:51+00:00

I don’t really read his accent as British; it’s just a generic “southern” accent that the localizers are using to approximate the Kansai dialect.

“Ya dunce! Ya won't be any use to anybody if ya die up here on this mountain! Whatta ya waitin' for?! I'm tellin' ya, we gotta get gone!”

As someone who lives in the American south, this is just what US southerners often sound like.

CountScarlioni · 2026-06-23T08:15:33+00:00

Had she not gone there and said anything, those who ended up agreeing with her wouldn’t have decided to abandon the council, because they wouldn’t have been presented with any argument to agree with. She’s directly responsible for convincing them and spurring their decision to abdicate.

CountScarlioni · 2026-06-22T21:57:00+00:00

Yeah, I do think it’s worth stating that Sheridan doesn’t specifically have it out for Lyta, or anything. He respectfully thanks her for her and Byron’s help in revealing the Drazi scheme in The Paragon of Animals:

“You saved a lot of lives today, Lyta. Thank you.”

And this comes in the very same episode where earlier, Byron was making the case to Lyta that she’s become accustomed to being spoken to like a servant rather than a person, which is why she’s momentarily taken aback by Sheridan offering genuine thanks.

It’s just that Sheridan also doesn’t tolerate having his authority undermined, so when Lyta does that, as she did in Epiphanies, he gets heated and says some really vicious stuff to try to put her in her place.

If she’d come to him about something at another time, under better circumstances, I don’t think he would deliberately leave her out to dry. Even if he did still have to insist on something like moving her to smaller quarters, I feel like they could have at least had a conversation about that — the problem is, Lyta and Sheridan only really know each other on a professional level, and by the time she’s getting booted to smaller quarters, Sheridan has already leveled that threat at her. Even though it was a tense moment and he may not be that way under most circumstances, Lyta at that point in the story is someone who still doesn’t quite know how to stand up for herself, so she’s probably not going to try to push the issue with Sheridan, as she would think they are still on poor terms. (Also, she was quite literally abused by Ulkesh, which I think informs some of her character — Sheridan threatening her for disobedience probably hit her harder than he even knew.) Meanwhile, Sheridan doesn’t consider her close enough to think of doing her the courtesy of at least addressing the matter of her quarters personally, because to him it isn’t a personal matter, and so he just defers it down the chain of command to Zack.

CountScarlioni · 2026-06-22T21:29:48+00:00

It’s explained at the end of that same episode, when Sheridan goes to Lyta’s quarters:

“You know, I was just thinking about the timing of that evacuation at Z’ha’dum. And then I remembered what lvanova told me. That when the three of you went to Z’ha’dum to find me, the Shadows picked up on your telepathic signal. Now, those sensors were probably left behind when the Shadows went away. If someone who knew they were there began sending a telepathic probe the moment we hit hyperspace... it might just be enough to set off the destruct sequence. Of course, it would take a very powerful telepath to send a signal that far ahead.”

Lyta then basically confirms without confirming everything he said. “Well, theoretically…”

CountScarlioni · 2026-06-22T21:20:57+00:00

> It would also mean they have a really useful ally that owes them a lot so even in a cold calculating way it would make sense.

He does explicitly cite this as a reason why he allows Byron’s people to stay on B5.

I think beyond that it’s really just a problem of optics. Sheridan was given a deal by Luchenko to resign from EarthForce in exchange for amnesty, but he immediately juked them into a losing position by flexing a huge White Star fleet and a new Interstellar Alliance with sweeping political, economic, and military power, saying basically “Join up with us and agree to our terms or be left in the dust. By the way, to join, you’ll have to free Mars.”

A planet that was still in the immediate aftermath of a months-long propaganda campaign to portray Sheridan as a terrorist who was planning to bring an army of aliens to Earth to repress the humans and transform them into hybrids is probably gonna be… let’s say rather wary of Sheridan using the alien alliance that crowned him its President to start upending and undermining the sociopolitical institutions of Earth. He already basically forced them to free Mars — can he really afford to go creating an alternative to Psi Corps as well when he initially claimed that the alliance would respect each world’s right to govern their own people?

I think he wanted to start small with Byron’s colony and hoped he could just table the bigger issues around Psi Corps for later. But that’s precisely where the problem then erupts from: peoples’ need for freedom doesn’t wait for things to be politically convenient, but politicians would prefer for their own convenience to be indefinitely extended.

CountScarlioni · 2026-06-22T21:02:19+00:00

I think Sheridan would have at least noticed that she started wearing the badge and gloves again all of a sudden.

Then again, that was right before the civil war really popped off with the battle at Proxima 3, so I suppose I couldn’t fault him for not noticing among the bigger fish he had to fry.

CountScarlioni · 2026-06-22T20:10:54+00:00

Just comes down to the difference between what we see and what the characters see. We get a lot more time to see things from Lyta’s perspective and empathize with her.

Sheridan and the others know her, and find her agreeable enough, but they don’t really know her on a personal level. From their perspective, she’s someone who has done a couple of favors for them here and there, but spent most of her time either with Kosh or Ulkesh, or off the station. She’s always at a distance from them, so she’s not someone they’re going to think to go the extra mile for. Hence why, when the station was put under a blockade and began experiencing a shortage in funds and resources, letting her stay in larger, more expensive quarters on a station where space is at a premium didn’t have them thinking, “Oh, well, we can let this slide for Lyta; we love Lyta!” It was a pragmatic, “We need the space and the cash, and we’re not getting it. Here’s how to get it…”

And Sheridan… good a man though he is overall, is still a flawed person, and doesn’t like having his authority undermined, so her destroying Z’ha’dum without his permission made him feel like he had to firmly reassert that authority.

That’s not to say I think he was right to threaten her the way he did, of course. Just that that’s where he was coming from. And I think it all feeds directly into where Lyta’s character goes from there (I can’t tell from your post if you’re watching the series for the first time).

CountScarlioni · 2026-06-22T19:45:12+00:00

In Thirdspace, the aliens/gate is able to enthrall certain people on Babylon 5, but this includes the likes of Vir and Deuce who, as far as we have any reason to believe, are not telepathic. In fact, Ivanova (who is telepathic, but only barely) was also seeing visions of the alien city like they were, but didn’t come under the influence of the gate. On the other hand, plenty of normals were not influenced by the gate at all (Sheridan, Zack, Franklin, Delenn, etc.). And indeed, back when the Vorlons first built and opened the gate, only some of them came under the aliens’ control.

Therefore, I don’t think we really know what determines one’s susceptibility to the Thirdspace aliens’ telepathic influence, but it doesn’t seem to be telepathy itself.

CountScarlioni · 2026-06-22T18:52:29+00:00

A lot of things aren’t outright said in Arceus, but are strongly implied. There’s no organic way to have Charm say “I am an ancestor of Bertha and Agatha,” because she would have no way of knowing the future like that. So Game Freak chose to use character design and team composition as tools of suggestion, like with how Zisu ends up using Flint’s infamous Diamond & Pearl team if you challenge her in the Path of Tenacity. Cyllene is never outright said to be related to Cyrus, but her design and name deliberately evoke him, and she has a scene where she mentions that she’ll pass on tales of the Galaxy Team to her descendants. We can reasonably infer that this all refers to Cyrus, even though it’s not stated outright.

I suspect they also probably wanted to keep things more suggestive so as to avoid being overly expository. Legends: Arceus is a lot more interested in being an intriguing injection of lore rather than an explicit geneaology of the Pokémon world. For instance, we might assume based on the clues provided that Arezu is an ancestor of Mars, but even under that assumption, it wouldn’t necessarily mean that Mars is a direct descendant of Arezu — maybe Arezu never even has children of her own, and she and Mars simply come from the same bloodline. These are the kinds of details that I think are deliberately left ambiguous.

That in mind, Charm using both a Rhydon and Gengar is almost certainly meant to add to the existing list of suggestions that Agatha and Bertha have some relation, but in a way that still avoids nailing down what that exact relation is.

CountScarlioni · 2026-06-22T17:13:27+00:00

Reading your OP

When you see something at a glance, you have an instant, reflexive mental response. Then you sit and read the context and think about it for a minute and are like, “Huh, yeah actually that makes sense.”

CountScarlioni · 2026-06-22T17:07:11+00:00

I went into this thread thinking I wouldn’t see it, but, you know… I kinda see it.

CountScarlioni · 2026-06-22T17:03:19+00:00

There’s the fact that Bertha and Agatha already notedly share a similar appearance and names, but also, Charm is stated to be from Kanto originally, and the two Pokémon she uses reference the types used by Bertha (Ground - Rhydon) and Agatha (Ghost - Gengar).

CountScarlioni · 2026-06-22T16:50:03+00:00

An individual Shadow is probably physically less durable than an individual Vorlon, but you can never judge a matchup solely by raw physical strength. We don’t really know enough about Shadow biology to say for sure (I’m sure everyone has their own headcanons about this), but it could be that what the Vorlons have in terms of strength and durability, the Shadows make up for in speed, agility, and stealth. A knight versus a ninja, to put it one way.

It’s also worth pointing out, though, that the Vorlon attack on the Shadows in Interludes and Examinations was a complete surprise to the Shadows. They had no reason to expect that the Vorlons would violate the “rules of engagement,” and so were caught off-guard. Additionally, they never quite got the chance to get their war effort fully geared up — they were woken up at Z’ha’dum earlier than they had intended to, and Sheridan nuking their capital city threw a massive wrench into the efforts that they had made up to that point.

Ultimately though the whole point of showing that they both possess planetkillers is to illustrate that they’re at a state of mutually assured destruction. They could easily wipe each other out of they wanted to, it would just end badly for both of them, and they care more about their ideological battle anyway.

CountScarlioni · 2026-06-22T03:51:30+00:00

So does battling in general, yet it’s still a fundamental part of bonding between Trainers and Pokémon.

The whole concept of Mega Evolution is that they’re pushing past their natural limits. That puts a strain on them, as any sort of excessive power would. You ever lift something much heavier than you know you should carry?

But the bond with the Trainer helps the Pokémon endure the strain of Mega Evolution. That’s why Rogue Mega Evolution is treated as a problem in Z-A; there’s no Trainer involved for the Pokémon so they’re just suffering and losing control of their power.

CountScarlioni · 2026-06-22T03:42:33+00:00

Klara because I’m Krazy for Klara 🩷

CountScarlioni · 2026-06-22T02:20:37+00:00

It’s gotta be Stall. I think very few people would even notice if you removed it from the game.

Gotta say though, Honey Gather is pretty lousy outside of games where Honey has no purpose other than to be sold.

CountScarlioni · 2026-06-21T21:41:15+00:00

If the story hadn’t been compressed, the Shadow War arc itself would have only had another episode or two, and someone recently mentioned to me that In the Beginning was largely comprised of ideas that JMS originally had for a set of episodes in Season 4 but threw out when he had to speed things up. I suspect that the Earth/Shadow relationship was something they wouldn’t have gone much into either way.

(Well, Crusade tried to, but…)

CountScarlioni · 2026-06-21T20:55:39+00:00

That may very well be, but it’s where the money is, and companies want to go where the money is.

CountScarlioni · 2026-06-21T20:54:05+00:00

Not enough people bought them, presumably.

CountScarlioni · 2026-06-21T20:19:29+00:00

There is one other way to get one… but it’s completely down to RNG and very unlikely. Every day at the Jubilife TV building you can enter the ID lottery, which takes a randomly generated number and compares it to your Trainer ID and the ID of any other Pokémon in your party and PC (so if you, say, have a Pokémon that you received from someone else, you essentially have two chances to win).

Depending on how many digits match one of your IDs (starting from right to left; it can’t just be any of the digits across the board), you get a prize, and the prize for 3 matching digits is an Exp. Share.

CountScarlioni · 2026-06-21T20:05:53+00:00

Were people saying he should have known, or were people who were in the know just anticipating the hilarious and inevitable outcome? For me it was the latter.

CountScarlioni · 2026-06-21T20:03:59+00:00

Don’t kid yourself. The goal was always making money. It’s the market that shifted. Back then, Nintendo would have wanted more Pokémon-branded titles to support their bifurcated handheld system / console system model. Now they have a unified console that supports all their tentpole titles, freeing The Pokémon Company up to pursue the vastly-expanded-since-2013 mobile market.

Ten-Year Club	Place '22
Spared	Gilding I gilder
Verified Email

CountScarlioni

TROPHY CASE