Similar cases have happened in the past as well. For example, Lumineon’s Platinum entry states that it competes with Lanturn for food, but Lanturn is not part of the Sinnoh Dex. Or how Seedot enjoys startling Pidgey, despite Seedot not being in the FRLG Pokedex.
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SPOILERS! Mysteries and Conspiracies of Pokemon
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(I'm pretty sure this factoid appeared before Gen 7 in a book or something, though I might be thinking of Terrorsaur from Transformers Beast Wars)Pokemon Sun said:
Do bird Pokemon fly in single file or something?
there are birds that fly in small curves or arrow formations right? If it's fast enough and has enough air control being able to follow the gentle curve in one go isn't unreasonable.
I'd be more inclined to question the size of the birds its eating and the fact it's swallowing an entire flock in a very short time span. Pidgey sized ones perhaps?
I'd be more inclined to question the size of the birds its eating and the fact it's swallowing an entire flock in a very short time span. Pidgey sized ones perhaps?
Yung Dramps
awesome gaming
So what exactly is up with GMax distribution in Gen 8?
At first glance it seems to tie in with the whole "Game Freak is obsessed with Kanto" meme: Gen 1 forms and Gen 8 forms are all there seem to be. And yet, of course, there's the one big, utterly mystifying outlier: Garbodor.
Now, in the context of the game it serves a purpose as Oleanna's main mon, with what its meant to represent being up to interpretation. But when you take that away, why Garbodor? It's not like this is a Lucario or Greninja-tier Pokemon who despite not being Gen 1 is still iconic enough to warrant special treatment of a similar calibre to Gen 1's biggest names: Quite the opposite, we're dealing with a Pokemon that was absolutely trashed (pun totally intended) at launch for its derivative, overly simplistic design influence. It almost strikes me as a kind of meta joke, that the only Pokemon outside of the current generation and the first generation to get onto the GMax hype train is a creature with such a notoriously divisive reception. But I don't think that was the intent, at least not the primary one, which leaves the question: What was stopping anything else from Gens 2-7 from getting a GMax too?
At first glance it seems to tie in with the whole "Game Freak is obsessed with Kanto" meme: Gen 1 forms and Gen 8 forms are all there seem to be. And yet, of course, there's the one big, utterly mystifying outlier: Garbodor.
Now, in the context of the game it serves a purpose as Oleanna's main mon, with what its meant to represent being up to interpretation. But when you take that away, why Garbodor? It's not like this is a Lucario or Greninja-tier Pokemon who despite not being Gen 1 is still iconic enough to warrant special treatment of a similar calibre to Gen 1's biggest names: Quite the opposite, we're dealing with a Pokemon that was absolutely trashed (pun totally intended) at launch for its derivative, overly simplistic design influence. It almost strikes me as a kind of meta joke, that the only Pokemon outside of the current generation and the first generation to get onto the GMax hype train is a creature with such a notoriously divisive reception. But I don't think that was the intent, at least not the primary one, which leaves the question: What was stopping anything else from Gens 2-7 from getting a GMax too?
Considering Gen 8's track record for cut content, I think it's plausible that there were originally G-max forms of many more Pokemon of different generations. But as development became rushed, all but Garbodor were deemed """unnecessary""" and were scrapped, with Garbodor only being saved because it was Oleana's ace.
Related to this, I wonder if Aggron was supposed to get either a G-Max or a regional variant, but was scrapped for one reason or another
Peony's g-max ace, used in the Stars tournament, is Copperajah (& is also the one meant to be his associated Pokemon since his league cardsgo out of their way to mentoin it) but his first battle definitely positions his ace as Aggron. It's his second Pokemon and holds a sitrus berry. The Pokemon he brings in his raid assist is also Aggron.
It stands out a bit after Isle of Armor had Mustard & Honey use new g-maxes (whatever urshifu/kanto starter you didnt pick) and Klara/Avery who while they dont use a new g-max, do use the new galarian slowbro (Avery uses Slowking-G after beating crown tundra as his ace).
Likewise kind of wonder if they had more planned for Peony & her Tyrantrum at one point. For someone who is relatively prominent, and participates in raids, it's surprising we never really fight her. She even has a totally unused battle intro!
Maybe early plans had more g-maxes but they decided to tighten the belt and have Armor have g-maxes & battles as a focus while Tundra (which only has one mandatory battle and one optional battle, with the galar stars tournament being a post-post-post game) keeps focus on legends? Judging by how set things were back in June from the IoA I imagine Tundra was already wrapping up development so not a hail mary last 4 months cut at least.
e: WHILE IM AT IT it is actually really weird that Peony's Aggron has a Sitrus Berry, and only in that first fight. The only other characters in the whole game that use held items out of the battle tower are the 2 or 3 people you fight to get items (like the eviolite dottler who gives you the....eviolite)
Peony's g-max ace, used in the Stars tournament, is Copperajah (& is also the one meant to be his associated Pokemon since his league cardsgo out of their way to mentoin it) but his first battle definitely positions his ace as Aggron. It's his second Pokemon and holds a sitrus berry. The Pokemon he brings in his raid assist is also Aggron.
It stands out a bit after Isle of Armor had Mustard & Honey use new g-maxes (whatever urshifu/kanto starter you didnt pick) and Klara/Avery who while they dont use a new g-max, do use the new galarian slowbro (Avery uses Slowking-G after beating crown tundra as his ace).
Likewise kind of wonder if they had more planned for Peony & her Tyrantrum at one point. For someone who is relatively prominent, and participates in raids, it's surprising we never really fight her. She even has a totally unused battle intro!
Maybe early plans had more g-maxes but they decided to tighten the belt and have Armor have g-maxes & battles as a focus while Tundra (which only has one mandatory battle and one optional battle, with the galar stars tournament being a post-post-post game) keeps focus on legends? Judging by how set things were back in June from the IoA I imagine Tundra was already wrapping up development so not a hail mary last 4 months cut at least.
e: WHILE IM AT IT it is actually really weird that Peony's Aggron has a Sitrus Berry, and only in that first fight. The only other characters in the whole game that use held items out of the battle tower are the 2 or 3 people you fight to get items (like the eviolite dottler who gives you the....eviolite)
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Do you what region has multiple boss trainer with Sitrus berries on their Team Ace? Sinnoh I brought up G-Slowking fitting Avery better than G-Slowbro, and found out that he does have a G-Slowking as his ace in the Galarian Star Tournament. Whether this means the Slows were meant to both be in the Isle of Armor and possibly version exclusive still isn't known.
-Klara & Avery both pick up Slowking-G as their 5th pokemon in the Star tournament and their post-star dojo rematch
-Avery specifically picks it up as his ace (Klara retains Slowbro-G)
-The slowpoke line isnt even in the tundra dex
-No one in the tundra uses slowking-g or has a quest about it or anything. Contrast with Armor where Slowpoke is all over the place (the pre-release slowpoke event, the slowpoke on the beach, the dojo owns slowpoke, the slowpoke quest, avery/klara use slowpoke as their ace)
It really reads to me like Slowking-G was originally conceptualized as just being in Armor to begin with, but they held it off for......marketing, I guess??
Even the Galarica Wreath to evolve into Slowking-G uses the same Galarica Twig item as Slowbro-G! Idk why they would even leave Slowking-G out of the Isle of Armor, there are far more new pokemon in the Crown Tundra than the Isle of Armor. The Isle of Armor emphasizes the Galarian Slowpoke repeatedly, but the other evolution is missing completely. It really feels like it was designed as a Isle of Armor version exclusive that was decided against implementing it as one. There may have been more ideas to implement it into the Crown Tundra but there is really nothing to it the Crown Tundra. We get some random person in a cave, far away from any other people, making Galarica Wreaths. There's no slowpoke here, why are you doing this!
Although, they could have left it out until the Crown Tundra because Slowking-G does spells and incantations and spooke things so it made sense to release it around Halloween.
G-Max Garbodor reminds me a lot of Mega Audino, in that the distribution of Mega/G-Max recipients is heavily skewed toward Kanto, then you have the Galarian reps for G-Max and the Hoenn/general popularity reps for Megas, and then BAM random Unova mon. I wonder what prompted GameFreak to do such a thing twice.
Why is there a choice of what horse to give Calyrex? Pretty much every line of text on the matter refers to how Calyrex used to have a noble steed in the past. Just one. Is this like a rival name situation, where the player's choice retroactively decides what happened in the past, or what?
I'm usually not too interested in these kinds of discussions, but that's been changing lately, and I wanted to offer my own little conspiracy theory on something that's spanned the entire main series all the up to today.
What if... the real evil masterminds behind all of the evil organizations and terrible catastrophies (why is it saying this is a spelling error lol) that have happened throughout the Pokémon World wasn't any one specific evil team, but rather, Game Freak themselves? The people that have appeared in basically every game I'm pretty sure that rate your PokéDex. What if they were the ones behind everything we've ever known, and that the Pokémon World from an in-game character's perspective is a multifaceted simulation, designed to put its inhabitants through the same events over and over again for their own real-world gain?
The more you stop and think about it, the more it makes sense.
What if... the real evil masterminds behind all of the evil organizations and terrible catastrophies (why is it saying this is a spelling error lol) that have happened throughout the Pokémon World wasn't any one specific evil team, but rather, Game Freak themselves? The people that have appeared in basically every game I'm pretty sure that rate your PokéDex. What if they were the ones behind everything we've ever known, and that the Pokémon World from an in-game character's perspective is a multifaceted simulation, designed to put its inhabitants through the same events over and over again for their own real-world gain?
The more you stop and think about it, the more it makes sense.
Yes.
- OR they could be avatars of omniscience beings who are recording great events that happen on the Pokemon World in a celestial archive. It's not them who created the events but the event calls for them, appearing as soon as things are about to get started.
- OR maybe they do one step further, they are not only the masterminds behind the villain teams but also manipulate things so that the protagonist goes on their journey and becomes an opposing force to see which is greater: the machinations of an evil individual or the pure-hearted good of a child.
Yeah, seems pretty clear to me. All of the references are to one, specific choice but its ~Mysteriously Lost In The Time~ until you choose one and calyrex recognizes it.
I assume they did it like this because they thought it'd be funny for the king to not even remember his steed, but also because they didn't want to do VEs for the horses (for some reason).
The amount of IQ in this reply is off the freaking charts.
I would like to take the credit... but honestly those ideas are essentially what Marvel's Watchers and DC's Monitors are.
Remember how in Emerald you were asked whether the dragon witnessed in the sky was blue (Latios) or red (Latias)?
Pretty much the same thing.
Eh, yes and no.
Yes as it was a choice of what should have been a "definite" answer no matter what you picked. However with the Eon Duo it was less, let's say "reality warping", because it was not only a recent event but the report was about a Pokemon that sped by in a blur so no one got a good look at it. What most people probably saw was purple but upon further thinking may lean to either red/blue. Also note that, while Latios is primarily blue and Latias is red, each one also has a small triangle of the other's color on their chest and so there's also a possibility that feature could have stood out to enough people to color their perception. As for the player character, being a prodigy, they have a sharper eye than most trainers so probably could see through the blur a more definite color and they used that as an excuse to decide what Eon Duo you got.
However, Calyrex steed doesn't really have any of that excuse. Glastrier is a dirtless white and Spectrier is a deep black, those are two very extreme "color" differences that is odd for Calyrex to forget. Not only that, the Eon Duo were both Dragon/Psychic that were the same shape & acted similarly; the horses are different Types, had notable body differences (Glastrier is covered in ice, Spectrier has long wispy hair), and though both a malicious its in very specific ways (Glastrier is just a bully that bashed and probably froze things in its way, Spectrier wanted to be alone and did so by killing everything around it). Also, the way you "chose" the horse makes the "reality warping" even more ridiculous. Because you're not just saying "oh the horse was this color" you're going "to summon the horse we need to grow this very specific variety of carrot". Now if there was a definite answer, for the Eon Duo it wouldn't matter what color you said as you'd still encounter them in the wild. However in this case if you grew the wrong carrot that's it, you lost, Calyrex only has enough energy to make one carrot grow and who knows how long it would take for it to regain its strength to do that again if it could. That is rather a major choice which is probably why this feels a bit more ridiculous than picking the Eon Duo.
Now the obvious way around this would have been version exclusives, but GF wanted to let us pick so here's an idea how they could have made both canon. Maybe instead have the village believe there was only one steed because of the statue. But then when you meet Calyrex it explains there was actually two it would switch between as combined they had different powers. When Calyrex's power waned and its last Reign of Unity broke both escaped, but its sure at least one is still in the Tundra as it can hear it. Then, when you're about to plant the carrots, a storm of snow and mist obscures your surroundings and you hear a horse running past. The screen zooms in on your character who winces at the silhouettes and, like with the Eon Duo, you're asked what color can you see through the fog. Pick the color and that decides the horse, you then going to the right place to plant the carrots and the story goes as usual from there. It's assumed the other horse probably left the Tundra, it doesn't seem like both horses could exist in the same space without fighting over territory.
So, a while ago, I complained/brought up about the weirdness of the Hero Statue in the budew inn. It depicts one hero, despite there being two, and presents this as a mystery that is aggressively not solved or even really brought up again.
Well, on my replay for legends, despite mostly skipping through dialog I decided to keep an eye out. Maybe there was dialog I forgot or looked over, that talked more about it.
And the answer is they do bring it up more than I remembered, no they dont bring it up enough, and no they dont actually answer or really pay attention to it and i am losing my mind.
HERO QUEST:
-You find the statue in the Inn and Sonia gives you the legend about it. The day was saved by a "single young hero", with the statue meaning to depict the hero. It's always singular.
-You go into the vault at Hamemrlocke and Sonia's all yo wtf, the tapestries depict two heroes but the statue only depicted one! She (rightfully) proposes this as a question: were there one, or two?
-You uncover the statues depicting the 2 young kings and the wolves behind the fake mural that we know from the post game that the royal twins set up to hide the wolves. Sonia again poses the question: "But if that's the case, then why only the one statue".
-On the wolves side of the issue, we resolve why they aren't depicted on the statue and the tapestry as the wolves & the sword/shield being depicted as the sword & shield that the heroes used. So that's squared away.
-The Heroes Bath is the heroes bath, the people around circhester mention multiple heroes THE PLAQUE ON THE BATH IS ABOUT 2 HEROES.
-Nothing about the statue is mentioned for the rest of the game until
-The Darkest Day happens and we chat with Hop about heading to the weald. During this he mentions the statue at the inn and again states "Though it turned out to be wrong, since there were actually two heroes and all that"
-The twins constantly refer to their ancestors as the original two heroes and confirm they made the mural. The statue goes completel unmentioned
This statue is a mystery for nothing and the fact they actually bring it up at the end of the game is crazy to me in that sense. Outside of the budew inn, every single instance of the past is Two Youths. This is a known historical fact, seemingly to everyone!
can hackers please go back into gamefreak's vault and get me the original script, because I feel like the heroes plot we got was 2 separate things haphazardly thrown together with the inconsistencies not ironed out.
There's plenty of ways to headcannon around this but that doesnt stop it from being weird & in-universe public knowledge contradictory, and then the characters themselves seem totally uninterested in solving hte mystery they themselves brought up.
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There's a couple things you can ponder about Spikemuth but the one I'm going back to is....Why is Spikemuth in a giant warehouse?
At one point I thought it was just a shutter closing the door into town and that I was just misremembering it but...no, this really is an enclosed city. You can see the brick & mortar all around it, you can't fly to the city itself (jsut route 9, outside the shutter) and the insides are always dark.
From a gameplay perspective it's probably just for the Aesthetic and to give an excuse to go around and sneak in, but in universe it's ind of weird, right? It's not in a cave or anything (like Orre's underground), either.
Well, on my replay for legends, despite mostly skipping through dialog I decided to keep an eye out. Maybe there was dialog I forgot or looked over, that talked more about it.
And the answer is they do bring it up more than I remembered, no they dont bring it up enough, and no they dont actually answer or really pay attention to it and i am losing my mind.
HERO QUEST:
-You find the statue in the Inn and Sonia gives you the legend about it. The day was saved by a "single young hero", with the statue meaning to depict the hero. It's always singular.
-You go into the vault at Hamemrlocke and Sonia's all yo wtf, the tapestries depict two heroes but the statue only depicted one! She (rightfully) proposes this as a question: were there one, or two?
-You uncover the statues depicting the 2 young kings and the wolves behind the fake mural that we know from the post game that the royal twins set up to hide the wolves. Sonia again poses the question: "But if that's the case, then why only the one statue".
-On the wolves side of the issue, we resolve why they aren't depicted on the statue and the tapestry as the wolves & the sword/shield being depicted as the sword & shield that the heroes used. So that's squared away.
-The Heroes Bath is the heroes bath, the people around circhester mention multiple heroes THE PLAQUE ON THE BATH IS ABOUT 2 HEROES.
-Nothing about the statue is mentioned for the rest of the game until
-The Darkest Day happens and we chat with Hop about heading to the weald. During this he mentions the statue at the inn and again states "Though it turned out to be wrong, since there were actually two heroes and all that"
-The twins constantly refer to their ancestors as the original two heroes and confirm they made the mural. The statue goes completel unmentioned
This statue is a mystery for nothing and the fact they actually bring it up at the end of the game is crazy to me in that sense. Outside of the budew inn, every single instance of the past is Two Youths. This is a known historical fact, seemingly to everyone!
can hackers please go back into gamefreak's vault and get me the original script, because I feel like the heroes plot we got was 2 separate things haphazardly thrown together with the inconsistencies not ironed out.
There's plenty of ways to headcannon around this but that doesnt stop it from being weird & in-universe public knowledge contradictory, and then the characters themselves seem totally uninterested in solving hte mystery they themselves brought up.
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There's a couple things you can ponder about Spikemuth but the one I'm going back to is....Why is Spikemuth in a giant warehouse?
At one point I thought it was just a shutter closing the door into town and that I was just misremembering it but...no, this really is an enclosed city. You can see the brick & mortar all around it, you can't fly to the city itself (jsut route 9, outside the shutter) and the insides are always dark.
From a gameplay perspective it's probably just for the Aesthetic and to give an excuse to go around and sneak in, but in universe it's ind of weird, right? It's not in a cave or anything (like Orre's underground), either.
My only explanation as to why there was that "One Hero Statue" is possibly a plan by the twin heroes to rewrite history for the mass public by saying there was only one hero who wielded a sword & shield so that the hero wolves can rest in peace.
As for everything else, I can only imagine it comes down to no one caring enough about the exact history of the Darkest Day as it already sounds like a fairy tale so there's probably multiple versions of the legends depending on where you are. For most of Galar it's probably the "one hero" version, with only those who have access to Hammerlocke's vaults know there was two... except the amount of people who cared to see the tapestry is so little it was just never made public knowledge (not even what the vault had is really known); heck, Raihan who protects the vaults doesn't seem to care much being he has weather-based battles in front of the century old frail tapestries. Circhester would be the only one with the legend having two heroes because of the bath house, though it wouldn't be surprising to hear no other version has the heroes bathing after the battle.
Sonia is probably the first person in years who not only shown historical interest in the legend but actually went around all over to gather all legends associated with it. She's pretty much like an investigator whose interviewing suspects of an event who all tell different versions of what happen and have to piece together what actually happened and what is false memory; but hundreds of times harder as its an event that happened hundreds of years ago and dozens of legend variations.
Why was the "One Hero Statue" dropped after Stow-On-Side? Because Sonia probably concluded it was a red herring thus no need of further mention. Maybe she goes into details about it in her book, but we don't get to read that so
.We don't really know anything about Spikemuth's history. Could have been originally a shipping yard, was decommissioned, and some group later turned it into a town. No different of a backstory to Nacrene City.
Did we ever figure out what Mustard was alluding to after his final battle in Isle? He talks about getting strong so we’re ready for something when the time comes. I’ve heard people mention that it has to do with the Galar Star Tournament but that’s more of a Leon thing in Crown Tundra. Sure, Mustard participates but I don’t remember him having any dialogue confirming that this was what he was going to get ready for?
I think it really is meant to be the star tournament. Presumably Leon had already invited Mustard to it but was still setting it up.
This is more on the "development curiosity" side of conspiracy but...
I think Hop was one of the first character models they made & they didn't go back towards the end of development to touch him up as much as they should've (or, perhaps, could have. time constraints and so on).
It's been noted by like...everyone that the DLC characters are on the whole much more expressive than their base game counterparts. More expressions, cleaner transitions, more animations, smoother stuff, etc. And I definitely agree, but on my replay you can definitely see some good animationa nd expression even on random trainers, and it seems to get better as the game goes on. Milo, Nessa & Kabu have their moments but compared with Piers & Raihan generally they're a little stiffer. So by the time they reach the DLC, they're just far more experienced and willing to experiment more with the characters and cameras.
Except....Hop. Hop miiight have the worst of the bunch? Have you seen early game Hop? I suggest you go look up a battle because it's really eerie just how stiff he is compared to just about any other later character. He has a permanent : ) face in battle and it was really jarring just how little he actually emoted after coming off the DLC.
iirc Hop also just has several reused animations from Hau, which you don't really see on any other character in the game. (Incidentally I think SWSH uses far less canned animation than gen 7 did.) And also you might remember as people raising a stink over during the big heyday of SWSH pre-release.
And the thing that cinches this theory for me is....H-hop?? His League battle is far more expressive in both animation and actual facial expression than Hop usually ever is, and those were probably made at the tail end of development. It became really obvious to me when we fight him in the post game because he actualy uses his League animations but with his normal clothes rather than the really stiff animations he'd been using the entire rest of the game.
------------
Related to this, the Peony/Oleana event in Crown Tundra feels like them actively experimenting more. It's basically a comedy skit focusing on an existing model, probably the most expressive (certainly, the most memorable) character from the base game with:
-new facial expressions
-more camera angles than the usual conversation
-rapid movement between expressions
The skit otherwise kind of standouts for how it doesn't give you anything. SWSH doesn't have a lot of those (or...any?), unlike prior gens, so it stood out, as did all of Oleana's new expressions.
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I dunno I find thinking about this stuff and how it might reflect on the game's development like this interesting, and think it's probably not too far off the mark. On the whole the DLC felt like really getting their feet wet with various concepts and I think emotive trainers was at the top of their list.
I think Hop was one of the first character models they made & they didn't go back towards the end of development to touch him up as much as they should've (or, perhaps, could have. time constraints and so on).
It's been noted by like...everyone that the DLC characters are on the whole much more expressive than their base game counterparts. More expressions, cleaner transitions, more animations, smoother stuff, etc. And I definitely agree, but on my replay you can definitely see some good animationa nd expression even on random trainers, and it seems to get better as the game goes on. Milo, Nessa & Kabu have their moments but compared with Piers & Raihan generally they're a little stiffer. So by the time they reach the DLC, they're just far more experienced and willing to experiment more with the characters and cameras.
Except....Hop. Hop miiight have the worst of the bunch? Have you seen early game Hop? I suggest you go look up a battle because it's really eerie just how stiff he is compared to just about any other later character. He has a permanent : ) face in battle and it was really jarring just how little he actually emoted after coming off the DLC.
iirc Hop also just has several reused animations from Hau, which you don't really see on any other character in the game. (Incidentally I think SWSH uses far less canned animation than gen 7 did.) And also you might remember as people raising a stink over during the big heyday of SWSH pre-release.
And the thing that cinches this theory for me is....H-hop?? His League battle is far more expressive in both animation and actual facial expression than Hop usually ever is, and those were probably made at the tail end of development. It became really obvious to me when we fight him in the post game because he actualy uses his League animations but with his normal clothes rather than the really stiff animations he'd been using the entire rest of the game.
------------
Related to this, the Peony/Oleana event in Crown Tundra feels like them actively experimenting more. It's basically a comedy skit focusing on an existing model, probably the most expressive (certainly, the most memorable) character from the base game with:
-new facial expressions
-more camera angles than the usual conversation
-rapid movement between expressions
The skit otherwise kind of standouts for how it doesn't give you anything. SWSH doesn't have a lot of those (or...any?), unlike prior gens, so it stood out, as did all of Oleana's new expressions.
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I dunno I find thinking about this stuff and how it might reflect on the game's development like this interesting, and think it's probably not too far off the mark. On the whole the DLC felt like really getting their feet wet with various concepts and I think emotive trainers was at the top of their list.