INTERLUDE - FORUMS V
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General → Politics
Topic: Timeline of Events during the Darkest Day
Original Poster: Ethan_Rose (Verified Trainer)
Date: January 30th 20XX
Yesterday, the entirety of Solaceon went to shit and I was there to see it.
A lot of trainers are out there giving first-hand accounts, but all of their stories are embellished bullshit that's there to make themselves look good. None of them fought the actual bad guys out there. The vast majority of these people speaking to the media stayed holed up inside of a Pokemon Center the entire time this went on, or they tried to run away by getting to the edge of the barrier. I was different. I stayed outside and observed the chaos in full display. I never felt as calm as I did in those few hours, and it allowed me to write down everything that went down so that we try to figure out what the hell happened, since the League decided to keep the entire world in the dark, as they usually do.
2:43 pm: Solaceon is plunged in darkness. This is when everything started, and from what I observed, the entire thing originated from the Hunters' mansion. Them being in on it is obvious, because the League is throwing them under the bus and destroying their business. I mean sure, they were linked with Team Galactic et cetera et cetera, but I seriously doubt they'd have anything this powerful. There have been a few theories about this being a psyop or an inside job, but I'll gloss over those for now. I am here to document, not make opinions.
2:48 pm: The Nurses in the different Pokemon Centers start organizing and placing people back inside of their rooms to try to prevent a mass panic. At the time, they probably didn't know about the numbing effects that the darkness had, so it was the most sensible course of action. They wanted to wait for League Trainers to take control. It would take three hours for them to arrive and five for them to fully resolve the situation and bring back a sense of order to Solaceon.
3:00 pm: Here's when things get interesting. I was outside when I saw a particular group of people get taken by the shadows. Grace Pastel, Cecilia Obel and the usual clique, except that Maeve Chang and Mira Compton somehow joined them this time? And Chase Karlson was nowhere to be seen as well. Either way, they were absorbed into the fucking floor, and I thought they died right then and there. Of course, you know that isn't true, so I ask the question: where the hell where they taken? I'll let you be the judge of that.
3:34 pm: First instances of looting appear in Solaceon. It's slow at first, but multiple people— trainers and civilians alike— start breaking into stores and stealing everything. Trainers went for things like TMs, vitamins, Hyper Potions or Ultra Balls while civvies went for appliances like television and fucking washing machines. I'm not joking, I saw a man carrying a washing machine out there.
3:46 pm: With looting came the first instances of violence, mostly between trainers fighting over the limited supply of items. Solaceon's a small town, and their stores aren't stock full of everything like Jubilife or Sunyshore. Pokemon hesitated at first, but by 4:30, it was full pandemonium in the streets. Anyone not in a Center wasn't safe, and the Nurse Joys somehow kept things under control, Arceus bless their fucking souls.
5:23 pm: Big time jump, but nothing noticeable happened until then. It was just more fights, more violence and more looting. I can't exactly confirm because I'm not expert, but the darkness around us was starting to grow weaker by the minute. It wasn't as deep, there was a little bit of light breaking through the sky, and peoples' condition stopped getting worse. It didn't get better, but it didn't regress either. Strangely enough, the darkness around the mansion seemed to strengthen. I couldn't say for sure, but the spire grew thicker somehow? It was weird.
5:32 pm: Denzel Williams spotted walking back to one of the Pokemon Centers and is barely conscious. This is important because he apparently asked other trainers for something, but he was too out of it to form full sentences. It is believe he was concussed. People have guessed that he meant the Hunters and that they somehow teleported him to their mansion to kill him, but that wouldn't make any sense. How the hell would he have survived if they tried to gang up on him and kill him if they had something capable of shrouding all of Solaceon? That's the type of thing you hear Legendaries are capable of! He would have croaked for sure.
Now I realize that I'm getting biased. Moving on.
5:39 pm: First League Forces break through from the inside thanks to Aaron sensing a weakness in the wall. Cynthia not seen, but it is understood that she immediately flew to the mansion on Garchomp's back to face whatever the hell caused this. Aaron followed on his Flygon, and they were accompanied by six veteran League Trainers. They were too fast for me to identify any of them.
5:46 pm: Darkness starts to unravel. It is assumed that Cynthia and Aaron killed whatever caused it, but it leaves just as fast as it came. Emotions rush back inside of us, and people start realizing how badly they fucked up these last three hours.
5:50 pm: Grace Pastel teleported back to the Pokemon Center. Visibly shaken and crying. Wounded waist.
6:00 pm: Cynthia announces 7:00 pm curfew. No one allowed out on the streets in an hour, and League Trainers start rounding up people and sending them home. Flint, Lucian and Bertha spotted around this time, which makes it the first time in exactly 343 years that all Elite Four members are out of the Lily of the Valley Island at the same time. From our understanding, Bertha Teleported back rather quickly though, so it only lasted for a few minutes.
6:36 pm: Last of Grace Pastel's group brought back at the Center (Cecilia Obel and Justin Gardner). The former's leg is horribly mangled, but the bandages hide what kind of wound it was, and she screamed in anguish the entire way into her room. The latter seems completely unmoved, which is unusual. Even the most stoic of trainers were at least affected by how fucked up the situation was and how they were basically a completely different person for a few hours.
7:00 pm: Curfew implemented. League has a firm hand over the town.
7:35 pm-7:59 pm: Mayor Cameron Owen sacked along with the entire City Council. Chief of Police Deborah Landry sacked. City Treasurer Lily Nicholson sacked. City Clerk Thiago Joyner sacked. Their entire offices are also sacked. The official narrative is that they resigned for 'health' or 'family' reasons, or because of the shame they felt for being unable to be of any help during the crisis, but they were obviously all fired, and that's not even me being biased.
8:56 pm: All positions of power in the city replaced with League-appointed employees. No new elections announced or planned.
10:01 pm: Flint spotted Teleporting back to the League. Only Aaron, Lucian and Cynthia remain.
It is now the next morning. There is something bigger at play here, but I will let you theorize for yourselves. I'm just an aspiring reporter, and I only tell the facts.
►RRNotaire
I'll eat my hat if the mods leave this up. We all know they're on the League's payroll and that the government has been shutting this kind of talk down ASAP.
►Kyle_Thornton (Verified Trainer)
I'm glad you made it out alright. I'm in Hearthome and I left Solaceon as soon as I was eliminated from the tournament. Crazy to think that I could have been there during the darkest day, but I guess I got lucky to be placed against Grace Pastel in the first round. I don't know that many theories, but I do think that there's more to this that meets the eye.
►Eve_Clements (Verified Trainer)
You forgot to mention the fact that Mira Compton, Grace Pastel and Cecilia Obel just got accepted into the LTIP. The first time that first years with four badges get into the program. Something happened for sure. I think that them fighting off all of the Hunters is a crazy idea, but those three in particular must have done something to impress the League. There's no other reason for them to make that much of a jump in their career. The Internship Program basically means you're guaranteed a job by the end of the year!
►Hiiiiipowa
Chiming in before thread gets locked.
This is obviously a lot bigger than they want us to think, otherwise there'd be no need to assemble the entire Elite Four. I'm thinking that a Legendary was the cause of all of this. I mean, there's the birds in Kanto, right? Also that weirdo Mewtwo thing that's tooootally been destroyed by Lance and not hidden somewhere. Then Lugia, Ho-Oh and the Legendary beasts in Johto, so why not?
►Jamie_Brown (Verified Trainer)
Because then the entire city would be destroyed or thousands would be dead. There's no way the League is standing up to anything Legendary. Also, dark type Legendaries don't exist.
►Valery_Graham (Verified Trainer)
There might be one, you don't know shit. Also, I'm 90% sure that a Champion would be able to deal with a Legendary Bird's avatar, just not the full concept itself, so Cynthia could probably deal with whatever the hell was in there. The problem with that theory is that according to that timeline, the battle was extremely short. Not even ten minutes, in fact, so it doesn't line up. I get that we're suspicious, but this? A normal Pokemon did this.
►Hiiiiipowa
Whatever. It's not like you know any better than we do. Also Jamie_Brown stop speaking like you know jack shit about Legendaries.
This story has been stolen from Royal Road. If you read it on Amazon, please report it
►Frankie_Hines (Verified Trainer) (MESSAGE REMOVED BY THE MODERATORS AFTER 2.4 SECONDS)
Obel's group fighting is guaranteed because some of them were wounded. You don't get wounded without fighting.
On another topic, the Hunters conspired with Team Galactic, but the majority of them are still there. Only the ones at the head of the family like Roland are suspiciously gone. The guy came out of nowhere during one of the tours they were running with a fuckin Shiftry, and I've been starting to wonder if that's not the thing that caused this. I thought that they called Roland 'Elder', but I think they were actually looking at the damn Pokemon.
It'd make a whole lot of sense, and it fits in my head, although I've never heard of a Shiftry being that powerful, but that's maybe no one's used them to their full potential yet. I know Sidney in Hoenn owns one, so I know what I'll be doing this afternoon.
-THREAD LOCKED-
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General → Politics
Topic: What nobody is talking about (the economy, stupid)
Original Poster: Hyperballad
Date: January 31st 20XX
First of all before I begin, there seriously needs to be an economics board. I'm tired of everything being relegated to politics when it's not exactly politics. This is why everyone's moved on to social media, but somehow trainers still hang onto this antiquated form of communication. You don't see coordinators use forums, they've all moved on to modern social media.
Anyway.
The Hunters are gone. Big deal. Most people think this is a good thing because of their evil rigging/Team Galactic links being exposed, but I'll talk about the negatives here. Solaceon is a small, insignificant town with an economy smaller than Floaroma's, but the little money they make— or made, as you'll come to see, came from two things. Agriculture (food exports that consisted of mostly Wheat) and Pokemon Breeding/Caretaking. I have a bibliography for all of this at the bottom of the post, by the way. The former accounts for 56% of Solaceon's revenue, and the latter for exactly 0%. Now here's when things get funky.
Being a corporation in everything but in name, the Hunters took all of the profits from wherever they sold Pokemon. People always hyper focus on the rich trainers that they sell to (see Louis Bianchi's Vulpix), but the vast majority of Pokemon they breed go to the government, either to gyms or to the League itself. Sure, they hogged some of the money for themselves, but they actually reinvested the large majority of it into Solaceon largely through the form of donations to the city government. if we account for these donations, then Pokemon breeding/caretaking actually accounts for 64% of Solaceon's income. Now, I hear you smartasses already saying that 56% and 64% add up to more than 100%, but that's because the Hunters' donations were not counted in the city's annual revenue. This is what we call 'off-budget funds'. If we take the Hunters' money into account, then agriculture actually shrinks all the way down to a meager 21% of Solaceon's revenue. There was a reason people referred to them as an institution in Solaceon. They held a fucking iron grip over the city's neck.
Now you may be asking two things.
1) Who the hell thought that it was a good idea to run a town solely off the back of one weirdo creepy cult corporation?
2) What the hell is Solaceon going to do now that they've just lost 64% of their revenue overnight?
I don't have an answer for the first question, but I do have an answer for the second. Drastic budget cuts to public services and discretionary spending like schools, infrastructure, road maintenance, public parks, non-Pokemon Center healthcare, and social services. A budgetary crisis that the new City Treasurer will have to somehow solve, and that's not even counting the insane amount of repairs that the city will have to go through because of the effect this darkness bullshit had on people. And last but not least, what happens when a city goes to complete shit? Both people and businesses pack up their bags and get the fuck out.
Solaceon isn't exactly known for its businesses, but the few that are there will go bankrupt or have to close down their locations. Your old mom and pop's restaurant? Gone. No one has the fucking money to spend on that shit anymore. A grocery store that was somehow still standing the test of time against the big chains? Gone. Gift shop? Gone.
All. Gone. This city is a fucking dead man walking.
Younger people will move to Hearthome or Veilstone because of the lack of opportunities and the population will fall off a cliff. It'll be like a snowball effect that can't be stopped once it gets too large.
The League has yet to announce any plans to save the sinking ship, but I assume that they'll do something. The only question that remains is if it fucking works.
-Hyperballad
►Oslo_Walter (Verified Trainer)
Interesting analysis. I definitely underestimated how large the Hunters were in Solaceon, and the fact that they don't have anything else to generate revenue is worrying. I have a cousin that lives there whose house was robbed during the Darkest Day and he's considering moving. His insurance provider doesn't cover a lot of what was stolen and it would take months to process everything. He's moving in with us in Sunyshore and I don't think he's coming back.
►EsteyyaPip
LETS FUCKING GOOOOO OUR RESIDENT ECONOMIST IS BACK! I hope the new job in Jubilife is treating you well, my brother.
Regarding the town being screwed, what do you think about subsidies? It'd be expensive as hell to cover 64% of their revenue (probably going to end up losing more money because of the ripple effect), but it'd stem the bleeding at least, no?
►Hyperballad
Oh, it'll stem the bleeding, and I'm sure that it's one of the first things Lucian came up with during whatever meetings were held. The problem is that subsidies won't be enough.
Like you said, there will be a spillover effect and Solaceon will end up losing a lot more income than I outlined in my post. If I had to estimate, I'd put the number at around 70%. Even with subsidies, you just don't recover from that.
I hate the concept of subsidies in general, but you know me, I'm a neolib. You've got a teach a man to fish instead of giving him a fish every day, right? You've got to get Solaceon back on its feet, and subsidies won't do that. They need to find a new source of revenue and concrete new policies need to be put in place before people start to leave. Solaceon's bottleneck is their relatively tiny workforce, but if that workforce starts to pack their bags, there won't be any money made.
The League has to convince the working population of Solaceon to stick around for the long haul and start working again.
Sorry about your cousin, by the way. And the job's going fantastic! I'll DM you the details.
-Hyperballad
►MaxRichter
I mean, I agree with all of this, but I'm not as pessimistic as you are. Lucian is there, and his Alakazam will probably help run things. I'm not one of the people fooling themselves into thinking that the newly appointed Treasurer is totally independent and not just a sock puppet for the League lmao.
►Hyperballad
You're right that Alakazam will most likely be running the show for a few months at least, but from the way I'm looking at things, it's looking nigh unsalvageable. You can stem the bleeding, but it seems to me like Solaceon will never be as prosperous as it used to be. It's a shame too, with all the potential it had with expansion into route 210. When I was in college, I looked at proposals to expand the city all the way to the Café Cabin. That means that it would have been the third largest city in Sinnoh after Jubilife and Sunyshore.
That's why directivism is bad, folks. The Hunters were at the reign of the economy, and they only served themselves. Why do you think Kanto and Johto's economies still lag behind Unova and Galar? A lower GDP growth year after year, a lower HDI rating, lower per capita income? Because they're still stuck in this command economy, central planning bullshit while the other two have embraced modernity. Cynthia's gone a step back with nationalizing the Bianchi Conglomerate, or at least she should have sold it back to another company by now, but I won't get into it here.
-Hyperballad
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General → Politics
Topic: Maylene Press Conference
Original Poster: Naomi_Tillings (Verified Trainer)
Date: January 31st 20XX
The events in Solaceon have overshadowed a lot of what has been happening in Veilstone. People interested will know that Maylene gave a press conference earlier this morning (alone, for a change! No handlers from the League were with her today, surprisingly) regarding the rumors that have spread about some Team Galactic base in the city. The rumor's spread so quickly that people actually believe that this is their main base of operations or that there are actually multiple bases in the city.
Of course, Maylene went with the usual politician speak, which I do admit is weird as hell coming from a fifteen year old. I'm used to only old people speaking like that and that's some serious cognitive dissonance and it hurts my brain very very much.
And it also hurts my heart to see her forced to say this.
Anyway, long story short, she kept saying not to panic, that they were looking into it, and that these rumors were baseless. Whatever, same dish, different cook, we're all used to that shit at this point. The League is only honest with us when it wants to be, and it makes me want to move to Unova. As soon as I get the money, I'm out of here and signing up for their Circuit.
Back to Veilstone! Here's where things get weird.
There has been this constant narrative in the media about a crime wave happening there for the last few months. It's Sinnoh's most crime-ridden city (even more than Jubilife), but they've never gone this hard with the narrative. So I decided to do some digging and I compared this year's crime statistic with last year's.
Crime went down. All types of crime that the media would be interested in anyway (violent crime or drug-related crimes). White collar crime actually went slightly up.
I'm thinking there's a bit of a distraction operation going on here. Is the media colluding with the League to make us focus on anything other than Team Galactic? That would certainly be a first, but it's possible. Are the statistic altered? It is on the government website after all, so it could mean that the government is lying, but the media is picking up on the heightened crime. To do this though, they'd need the civilian government and Veilstone's police department to be in on it. Again, possible.
What I'm trying to say is that in every scenario my mind finds, the League is lying in some way, and they're lying to cover up something related to Team Galactic's presence in Veilstone. I'm 100% sure of it, but let me know what you think.
►Megumi_Ishitani (Verified Trainer)
Stop throwing shade at Maylene. She's obviously been thrown into this, and it's hard being a gym leader that young in these troubled times. First people complain that she's not independent enough, but then when she tries to be, you still complain. I bet people like you are the reason she's been looking so sad lately.
►TOHO
I mean, there's been some noise about Team Galactic sightings, but nothing concrete yet. The League are watching Veilstone like hawks. They've been on the backfoot the entire year after they stole all of the League's information. They've literally had zero wins. Their organization had basically been wiped out from western Sinnoh with relative ease, so why would they struggle finding a base in Veilstone? It only takes one member captured that gets their memory extracted for the location, and it's over. The League busts in and either they escape or fight. Both outcomes lead to their loss. They've shown time and time again that they can't take the League in a straight fight.
►Naomi_Tillings (Verified Trainer)
Sorry Megumi_Ishitani, I just don't feel like playing nice with a tool of the state while she's helping to erode our freedoms in real time. Oooooh, it must be sooooo hard for her. Cry me a fucking river. She's the one that chose to become a gym leader. Nobody forced her fucking hand, and I don't see her speaking out against the very real threat of Sinnoh sliding back into a dictatorship. Did you know that trainers from Kanto and Johto needed official approval from the League to leave their region permanently? Did you know that the media speaking out against the government too harshly there is a criminal offense? Do you want us to get back to that level of tyranny?
The world is a dark place, and there are only a few beacons of freedom for us to take refuge in. I thought Sinnoh was one of them, but it looks like it's not.
►Megumi_Ishitani (Verified Trainer)
I'm too tired to argue online with a stranger. Have a good one.
►Imperium101
They might have been wiped out in the west, but that doesn't mean they're inactive. There was that attempt on Roark's life two weeks ago.
►ZzZaVier
You're right to be scared, but you have to remember these are extraordinary times we live in.
Regarding your Team Galactic theory, I have to agree that it is fishy, but I can't imagine either of your explanations being correct. Either way, it's only a matter of time before the powder keg blows up, and everybody knows it. If you live in Veilstone, I think Sunyshore is very nice this time of year. You can even walk there without Pokemon.