The original trade I was going for on the GTS was giving a Staryu to receive a Castform. Then, after looking at the Poke Classic Network's GTS page, I noticed a trade for giving a Shuckle to receive whatever a Chatot is. I got the Shuckle, went to trade it, and, again, didn't realize that I can only look up Pokemon that are marked as "seen" in the Pokedex. I did some research and it looks like it's possible to spot and catch one of these in SoulSilver, but only on Thursdays for some reason. Today is not Thursday.
Link to the Poke Classic Network GTS Page
Anyway, after editing the save just enough to get Chatot marked in the Pokedex, I went back to the GTS and was able to successfully complete the trade, making this my first GTS trade since 2010 (maybe). The few times I used the GTS was in Pokemon Home for my Sword copy. Wanting to avoid the issue with save editing I ran into last time, I loaded in and saved a bunch before doing anything. I never got the "Saving a lot of data" message instead of the standard save message. I guess that issue really was tied to modifying the contents of the boxes.
I sent Bean off with a piece of mail. It wasn't something I ever had a reason to use before, but with the ability to actually trade Pokemon around, I can also send what I can only think to call "Pokemail". Now that I've thought of it, I am shocked that they didn't call it that. The preformatting of the mail is something I find to be an interesting challenge. With just a small assortment of pre-determine phrases that lets me choose one or two words to fill in blanks from a list, of which only three can be conveyed in a letter, what would I like to convey to the recipient and how best would I convey it within the limits of the medium?
I sent some letters to Aar while we were doing trades, but those were more hastily-composed shitposts than an actual communication of something. For whoever was going to be receiving Bean, I wanted to convey a greeting, a tidbit about me, the fact that I was glad to be trading with someone using the GTS (as I hadn't done that in this game before), my hope that they enjoyed receiving and reading the letter, and to end on some kind of farewell. A tall order for just three lines of Pokemail. So what did I end up with?
Below is the message. Capitalized words are where blanks had to be filled:
Glad to meet you! I love TOGETIC!
The way I feel now is EXCITED!
MAIL was fun, wasn't it?
The first line took care of the greeting and tidbit nicely. Number two is a bit of a stretch, as it voices excitement without an explanation of what the excitement is for. This relies on the context of this being a GTS traded Pokemon in a game from 14 years ago to get it the rest of the way there. Third line is pulling double duty as the farewell and the hoping they enjoyed the letter, and while it's not great, I think it gets the job done. While it's restrictive, a major benefit of having the mail use predetermined values like this is that translating it to a different language has already been done by the people responsible for translating the game. Even though my message was put together in English, the recipient will have all of the values I chose displayed in their Japanese equivalents.
The magnet train cutscene was actually pretty neat. However, I'm pretty sure I'll stick to taking my connecting flights to Victory Road to travel between Kanto and Johto.
