Posts #496-500: 23 April 2000

Post #496, by Pikachu3164

"That's one big ant."
"Greetings! I am Titanicystein Mark II. You are at the first Your Sanctuary..."
[Oh, shut up and let us through.]
"How dare you! Neon Red! Neon Blue!"
"Yes master!" the little ants cried out in unison. That's when they noticed Pikachu and co. "Aha! The little rat! We're gonna fry you!"

That, for the record, is not a particularly masculine taunt to throw at somebody. Especially not an electric rat.

So, a long battle insued.Electric attacks seemed to have no effect on Titanicystein.

Which is odd, since (a) in EarthBound Thunder is equally effective against everything and (for enemies) there's no defense against it (as presumably Pikachu's thunder isn't PSI), and (b) in pretty much every other RPG ever, pretty much every mechanical enemy is weak to electrical attacks.

Neon Red would just grab Gaia Beam shots. Neon Blue could would deflect Starstorm spells back at the group...

Nathan fell to the ground. "I don't think we can beat him..."

DAMN THE TORPEDOES! ENGAGE AC GOD MODE!!

"Well, actually, I think I have found a way to defeat that oversized ant."
[Just do it. Don't explain. We're too exhausted.]
Poryhedron ran over to Titanicystein and jumped into an electrical outlet.
"Hmmm... leg caontrol, arm control, ah, yes, artificial spinal cord." Poryhedron used one of the attacks that he has on it, and Titanicystein stopped dead.

Hahahahah... geez, what a loser robot. It was so easy to stop!

[You beat him! Good going!] Pikachu turned to Neon Red and Neon Blue. [As for you two...]
"By we gotta go!" the ants ran away.

So... the ants that can catch laser beams and reflect PSI Starstorm are afraid of you now?

Pikachu climbed to the top of Giant Step, barely keeping themselves from collapsing, and absorbed the powers of Giant Step.

Typically you need one of them Sound Stone fragments to do that, but apparently 3164 is able to absorb Sanctuary powers into his body or something.

[How about we head to Pink Cloud. I feel negative energy flowing from the place.]
"You can sense negative energy?"
[I'm psychic. Hey, what happened to Matt (Psycho, I'm pretty sure this is your AC. If it isn't, tell me, okay?) and Jenny?]
"I dunno. But, I'm sure they're fine.]

So apparently Pikachu is an Electric/Psychic type now. That adds resistance to Fighting-type moves, but a weakness to Ghost-type moves.

[This message has been edited by Pikachu3164 (edited 04-23-2000).]

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Post #497, by PSIOsman

Osman stepped into Andonuts' lab. The old man was sitting at his desk, munching on several donuts.

"mff-mgh... Another one?" He asked, finishing a donut.

"What? What do you mean, 'another one?'"

"umm, nothing..."

Dr. Andonuts started edging towards the stairs, but Osman dashed towards him and held his Diamond Scimitar up to his neck.

Mugging an old man who's well known to be a good guy. You stay classy, Osman.

"Now, who was here? And where did they go?"

"P-Poo... H-h-he said he was g-g-going to Fire Spring..." stammered Andonuts.

PSIOsman's knees felt weak.

"If Poo got Fire Spring, then he must be in... Magicant! Oh, no! If he gets the power of Magicant, he'll be unstoppable! I must go over there and beat him in a duel before he can get it!"

Didn't we already go over this bulls---? Poo cannot by normal means be in Magicant, because he did not collect all eight (nine?) melodies. This should read, "If EBPoo already posted and said so for no good reason, then his AC must be in... Magicant!"

Osman ran at full speed towards Stonehenge, to tell SirMontyG, Chris, and Juliana the frightening news...

Well, first you'll have to bust Chris out of jail. Or if you were kind of hoping Juliana and Major Asshole would do that for you, you shouldn't be running quite so fast.

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Post #498, by Queen Catherine

((Thank you so much, Matt ::hugs::!! You're sweet))

This kid really has issues.

... TENDAS!
"No one here but us." I said.
Matt shook his head and closed his eyes. He then flashed them open and said. "No... I can sense some people. They were here... They're at the 8th Sanctuary place! Quick, go get the bike and we'll fly there!"

How many posters is this coming up with some throwaway line to justify using OOC knowledge IC? It's damn lazy. Please, if you ever post in IF, don't do that. You're supposed to expend some thought and some effort, and write a post describing in some detail how you were able to reason out where they were. Like in this case, simply asking the talking rock would have done just fine, in about three sentences.

"Righto!"
I ran back to the boat, grabbed the boat and shoved the boat keys in my pocket.

I forgot. Why the hell are they using a boat again?

I returned to Tenda Village and we went into the caverens. We flew on the bike in the caverens and landed in the Lost Underworld. We were headed to the place where the hot springs were located until I heard loud bangs behind me. A Wetosaur ((I think that's the name)) were chasing Matt and I on the bikes.

This is getting pretty surreal. I wonder what PP/QC ingested before he wrote this one.

"We have to fly!" Matt said and peddled faster.
"But this is only a 15 speed bike!" I said. "This bike bites!"

My bike is infinite speed. The faster I pedal, the faster it goes.

We were close to the Hot Springs as we were close to being Lunch for the Wetosaur. We then entered the cave left the Wetosaur outside.
"Yah! We did it!" I said and smiled.
"You see Jenny," Matt said, "we can do anything if we put our minds together and don't give up."
"Um Matt... what's that behind you?" I said nervously and encountered a Psychic Pyro..

A psychic what now? If you'd ever played EarthBound before, which you apparently have not, you'd know that the critter you're trying and failing to think of is called the Psychic Psycho.

You know, I very often get to wondering what percentage of SM.Netters back in 2000 were really EarthBound fans, as opposed to video game/RPG fans who wandered in (my best guess: around 50-60%). Not only that, but I also at times like these get to wondering what percentage of SM.Netters never even played EarthBound all the way through (best guess: around 20-25%).

In 2010 those numbers are much higher; I'd be surprised if half the population of the starmen.net forums now have even played EarthBound all the way through.

[This message has been edited by Queen Catherine (edited 04-23-2000).]

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Post #499, by Dr. Andonuts

"Ok," said Nathan while tapping at his palmtop. "This should take us to a place right outside Pink Cloud. But its been known to backfire." Saying this, he hit a button, and they emerged right into a battle outside Pink Cloud.

(Superspeedy/Mankey Boy, if don't want Dave and Poryhedron to come to Pink Cloud, then tell me and I'll edit this acordingly)
(Wait for icefusion or falcon to post before continueing this)

I don't even know what he bothered to post this for. Just dropping himself into the action, I guess, but if Falcon24 doesn't feel like letting him tag along, he will just take advantage of the open window Andonuts generously provided him and leave. And Poo's not even here; he's off in some kind of Magicant.

It doesn't seem like Andonuts has really been reading along, but then, I'm pretty sure almost everyone is reading only sporadically, just the posts by people directly in their own groups. You have to understand that you can post, come back a few hours later and have something like 12,000 words' worth of new posts to read, and by the time you finish reading them, there will be 3,000 more words posted. Keeping up would be extremely tedious, and that's why no one except maybe Tengu Man did.

Again: lazy. Laziness is a central theme of bad IF writers*... and unfortunately, of the last 150 posts or so of the Gathering. I have to be honest: I think it's going to be another couple hundred posts before it gets raucously entertaining again. I'm doing my best here.

* And people who are bad at pretty much any other pursuit

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Post #500, by Tengu Man/Makron

Remember how I speculated that Tengu probably spent a half hour refreshing repeatedly to make sure he logged post #200? Yeah. I'm pretty much sure that's what he's doing now. Tengu was plenty capable of stuff like this.

But seriously: We've annotated 500 posts now! Wooooo! Only about 1100 to go!

Back at Paula's house.

Hopefully not in the bedroom. You know the rules. fanfiction.net is that way. --->

"Ninth? There's a NINTH sanctuary?" Ness wasn't prepared for all the info Paula's parents had received while they were gone.

Yes, I too usually react with a fair deal of shock when confronted with 'facts' that are obviously fabricated bulls---.

Nah, really, stuff like 'the ninth sanctuary' is perfectly normal, even expected, in fanfiction (and by extension, IF). You have to do something to (a) avoid simply rehashing the original game's plot and (b) make your AC's take prominence. Not sure if I'd have gone with something as tired as 'the ninth sanctuary!!!!', but I doubt I'd have come up with anything especially fresh or original, either. Tengu is very likely the most seasoned IF writer of the bunch, and it shows.

"That's what one person said. One also took the franklin Badge. Sorry." said Paula's dad

"Not a problem. That was a spare badge." Paula replied.

"Huh?"

"I forgot to mention, Dr. Andonuts cloned the Badge twice as an experiment with cloning inimate objects. I still have the original with me. I'd better get the other one too." Paula explained, rushed upstair and coming back down with the third Franklin Badge.

Now this is also normal in IF, but I'm not giving this a free pass. This is just boring as hell. Your writing will be a lot more readable if you avoid just cloning Super Power Artifacts of Awesomeness from the original game, and find something new to do. (Not to mention avoiding AC God Mode as much as possible, and the only use of a Franklin Badge is for AC God Mode'ing.)

"Who do I give it to?" asked Paula.

"Ness, probably." Darth answered, "I needn't worry about thunder a great deal."

Remember: Tengu considers the EB characters his AC's, and mostly the other writers are too timid to challenge him over it. Timid, and/or don't find it worth their time, as they don't care that much about the EB characters anyway.

"Me fine." Mani replied.

"Go ahead... fine by me." said Jeff.

"Okay." Paula give Ness the third badge.

I can't honestly see why, if we're handing out Franklin Badges, we don't just go all the way and give everyone one. Can't hurt, right?

"Where to now?" asked Jeff.

"Your dad's lab. Maybe he can give us some info." Ness suggested.

Just kidding. I already have all the info, because I've read the previous 499 posts. How else would you think I know to go where the action is?

"Could you take us there then?" asked Jeff.

"Sure... see you later, Mr. and Mrs. Polestar."

"Good luck... again..." Paula's dad sighed.

Pretty nice touch of characterizing Paula's dad as a grumpy semi-control-freak a-hole in one word. I think the guy gets a bad rap, personally; you have to remember he was a little unstable because his daughter had just gotten kidnapped by a bunch of circus freaks when we met him in EarthBound.

Of course, given that, I imagine he probably isn't wild about her traveling around with the dude in the Darth Maul makeup.

They left the house and teleported to Dr. A's lab...

[This message has been edited by Tengu Man/Makron (edited 04-23-2000).]

For real, guys, 500 posts!!!!!