When I got back into Yu-Gi-Oh through Duel Links, I developed a habit of mentally counting how much excessive damage I was doing to my opponents at the end of each duel. If, for example, my monster finished the duel with a direct attack, and its Attack Points were equal to my opponents remaining Life Points, I would call that zero excess (or 0 XS). If my opponent had a measly 100 Life Points left and I took them out with a direct attack with my 4000 Attack monster (I know that's overkill, but it totally happened), I saw it as winning with 3900 XS Points.

So then I asked myself: could this be a new mechanic somehow? Obviously, these XS Points are determined at the end of the Duel when the outcome is decided and nothing more can happen. So this hypothetical mechanic would have to apply to something outside of the Duel.

That's when I thought about tournaments, specifically the tried-and-true bracket system that randomly pairs up participants in a series of elimination rounds. One of the biggest flaws with this system is that the winner is partially determined by luck and doesn't entirely measure a duelist's skills against all the participants. One person could be so immensely skilled that anyone paired up against them will get eliminated no matter what they do. That doesn't necessarily mean that the loser was a terrible duelist, but one would never know based on how quickly the prodigy took them out. Then there's all the behind-the-scenes shenanigans (i.e. cheating, melodrama, last minute emergencies, world threatening crises, waking up late) that can get a duelist eliminated without really measuring their skills. The final winner could be some jabroni who wouldn't have even gotten close if they actually had to duel someone with actual skill.

XS Tournament Format

The rules are simple: at the end of each Duel, the winner is assigned XS Points based on how much damage they dealt to their opponent minus that opponent's remaining Life Points, whether it was done through Battle or Effect damage. Then, after all participants had a chance to Duel each other, each participant's XS Points are tallied up, and the Duelist with the most cumulative XS Points wins the whole tournament.

In this format, the mentality changes from simply "winning a duel" to "winning while doing as much excessive damage as possible." Technically, you could still just win with zero XS points, as that would deny any XS points to your opponent. But then you have to keep yours and your opponent's overall tallies in mind and decide whether or not to risk it by waiting for another turn to win with XS points, which would allow your opponent an opportunity to take the victory.

This also means that the final outcome can change after every duel. One participant could lose all but the very last duel, but that last duel could earn them such a huge amount of XS Points that they end up winning the whole tournament. Conversely, someone who was consistently winning but only garnered small amounts of XS Points per duel could still lose the whole thing.

Advantages

A format like this would allow for a smaller number of participants. A group of three minimum would be enough, so you could just host an XS Tournament with your friends on the spot without having to look for extra people. An extra person could hop in at any moment, or a participant could leave at a moment's notice, and the tallied scores would remain unaffected.

In an anime tournament arc, this would relieve the need to invent fodder characters just to fill in a bunch of empty slots and minimize filler duels. And while the behind-the-scenes shenanigans I mentioned earlier are still at play in a more formal setting, this avoids default victories since neither duelist can get any XS points without a completed duel.

Disadvantages

Admittedly, this format would become more cumbersome the more participants there are. The bracket system has an elimination rule so that tournament arcs don't go on for too long by showing off every combination of duelists. Just to give you an idea:

2 duelists=1 duel (no tournament needed)

3 duelists=3 duels (tournament?)

4 duelists=6 duels (comparable to a regular tournament)

5 duelists=10 duels

6 duelists=15 duels

7 duelists=21 duels

I could go on, but at this point we're clearly past the point of arc fatigue.

Current Events

Scarlet and Violet are about the take on Eri and Ortega, respectively, the last two Team Star bosses before Penny, who has just revealed herself to the leader of the rebellious Team Star grunts (buncha failures!). This will mark the end of the second story path from the games.

Honestly, I don't see them taking on the rest of the gyms, since every Paldean gym leader has already appeared in the arc and the focus seems to be shifting to the Ruinous Quartet. I'm very curious to see how they'll handle this, as the Ruinous Quartet don't have any plot relevance in the games, making them a major wild card. Could Raifort be an actual villain? That would be fun to see.

In the past three generation's main arcs (X&Y, SMUSUM, and SwSh), the male protagonists does something selfish (in varying degrees) that causes the plot to halt its original resolution so that more story can happen. As such, I can see the spoiled rich boy being the reason why the Ruinous Quartet go on a rampage. He's already pulled out several stakes, and Scarlet looks about ready to inflate that number.

For this reason, going to Area Zero might serve as the arc's grand finale, having both the AI Professor battle and the Terapagos battle occur at the same time. Scarlet would most likely obtain the vicious Koraidon here. Arven's story won't be much different from the games, but I do wonder if Sada will make an appearance. Depending on which version you play, the other professor is implied to have left the main professor once their ambition got out of hand.

DLC Implementation

With 33 chapters in the arc so far, and still a year and a half before Winds & Waves release, we can safely assume the manga duo will be able to incorporate the S&V DLC content without making it feel rushed like they did with the SwSh DLC. Though to be fair, as most arcs covering main generation games are roughly 40 chapters long, we may see some condensing just to save time on exposition.

For this reason, I could see the Teal Mask being covered in a flashback, revealing new insights into Scarlet's past and how they shape the person Kieran becomes in the present. This would allow the story to jump right into Blueberry Academy and the content of the Indigo Disk.

Not to say we won't visit Kitakami at all. Our heroes may take a detour there and discover that Pecharunt and the Loyal Three have taken over. This could serve as Kieran's chance for redemption and becoming a hero.

Legends: Z-A Inclusions

This part assumes that there won't be a dedicated Legends: Z-A arc, which is most likely the case since non-primary duo games have been getting passed over since gen seven.

As some Paldean Pokémon now have their own Mega Evolutions, it's not unreasonable to expect some of them to appear in this arc. Geeta's Glimmora and Arven's Scovillain are prime candidates, and Scarlet has two options with her newly evolved Raichu.

More importantly, though, would this just be a passive inclusion, or would they commit to showing off as many of the new Megas as possible? In the case of the latter, would it be a reach to expect to see the six new starter Megas with their respective Dex Holders?

Why Not Sinnoh?

Speaking of reaching, while this is highly unlikely to happen, it would be a dream come true if the Sinnoh trio showed up in this arc. Not only would this (kinda) make up for skipping BDSP and Legends: Arceus, but it could also tie in to several story elements in the current arc.

Yamamoto himself revealed, at the start of the S&V arc's development, that Scarlet's eyes were made in the likeness of PokeSpe-Jupiter's eyes. Could she be the daughter of the former Team Galactic commander? And could Cyrus be the father? The arc has revealed that Scarlet doesn't exist on any records, which would make sense if she was the offspring of two wanted fugitives.

Platina's inclusion works for two big reasons: she has two Pokemon capable of Mega Evolution (Lopunny and Froslass), and she comes from the same social class as Violet. The best person to set the Prince of Speed straight is someone who also started out as a sheltered rich kid, who broke out of her shell as she gained experience in the real world, and who went on to surpass her own expectations.

Sometimes I wonder if the birthdays were selected at random, because the longer you think about them, the stranger they seem, especially with regards to the timeline, the stories, and to the characters in general.

Just a few examples:

-Silver and Blue were both born late in the calendar year (December and November, respectively), yet they're supposed to be the same age as their respective peers. That must mean that their respective debut stories must also be toward the end of the calendar year, right? Everyone just happens to be wearing shorts in late autumn/early winter? Especially egregious is Silver's birthday being on Christmas Eve, which implies that the whole GSC arc must take place in the one week gap between Christmas and New Years.

-Yellow's birthday is in early March. And since the FRLG arc takes place six months after the end of the R&S arc (late September), then the FRLG arc must take place in late March, and Yellow must be 15. But no, she's 14 because the arc actually takes place in February, which is five months later instead of six.

-Ruby, along with Sapphire, arrived at the Hoenn Battle Frontier shortly after his 12th birthday in July. No one mentions if they celebrated this before their mission.

-Platina's 12th birthday occurred when the Sinnoh Trio split up to reach the three Lakes. Interesting how a spoiled rich girl got her ass kicked by Jupiter and watched Uxie get abducted, all without even once complaining about not receiving any presents.

-X was born in November, and the events of his debut arc take place three months before Y's third semester (in early January), which sets the arc in October. So did he turn 13 after the climax of his story? Is he actually a calendar year older than Y, whose birthday is in February?

-Sun is 11 during his debut arc, which begins in March and ends in September due to a six month mid-story timeskip. Sun's birthday is in August, though, so wouldn't he be 12 by the time he gets out of Ultra Space?

-Moon, for that matter, must be a calendar year younger than Sun. Her birthday is New Years Day, and she's 11 at the start of the S&M arc, which is in March.

I know I do, too. But I'm curious to know what exactly y'all want to see from a Pokéspe adaptation of the Let's Go!, BDSP, and Legends games. For example, is there a character you want to see return? Is there an unresolved plot thread you wanna see finished? Or is it all just completion anxiety?

This is an old topic on this subreddit, and I just wanna gauge what the big motives are.

Seeing as we're unlikely to get manga adaptations for any of the skipped games, I figured I'd share some of my ideas for what a hypothetical Let's Go! chapter could've been like. I want to approach this from the perspective of writing this chapter at the time the games released and with only the knowledge known at the time, so don't expect any content past SwSh.

Timeline Placement

This is a good place to start because, believe it or not, it's actually easier than you might think. That's thanks to Mina showing up in the Let's Go! games, making it clear that this arc would take place before the S&M arc. She's about 13-15 years old in these games, and Trial Captains are supposed to vacate their positions when they turn 20. Assuming she's at the extreme ends of that age range in both stories (13 in Let's Go! and 19 in S&M), this gives us a maximum possible gap of six years. Then we have Sun, who's originally from Kanto before moving to Alola and staying there for five years, which will be our minimum gap.

Funny enough, the Sinnoh arcs fall into this time range, and Moon is implied to be Platina's younger sister. Wonder what could've been done with that?

Connecting to Other Games

Another consideration is how this arc would've connected to the gen seven narrative. Kusaka usually tries to make each generation feel like a singular story, which is why the HGSS and ORAS arcs read like prequels to the DPPt and X&Y arcs, respectively. They usually incorporate the leftover mythicals of that generation (sorry Volcanion), and in gen seven, we have Marshadow, Zeraora, and, of course, Meltan and Melmetal. Those last two were introduced in these games, so we obviously can't "go" without them.

Speaking of which, we can't forget that these games were designed specifically to merge the GO player base with the mainline one. This would allow for Pokémon GO characters like Professor Willow and the three Team leaders to partake in this story. Maybe even Team GO Rocket, too. But we do have to draw the line at some point (let's say anything introduced past 2020) because the arc would have to end eventually, so characters like Mateo and Rhi wouldn't make the cut.

And since the Let's Go! games are dual remakes of Pokémon Yellow version, Yellow would finally make her glorious return. She could be a mentor to the new protagonists, whatever their names end up being (god forbid we have another Lack-Two and Whi-Two situation). Would her seniors make a return here, too? They could, but I think it would be better for Yellow's character development if she has a chance to tackle the plot of this arc without their help. They could at least appear at the end of the story (in their gen seven outfits, naturally) just to give their congratulations. Their best excuse would be that they were busy working on the Battle Tree in Alola and couldn't get back to Kanto in time.

We can also look forward and make allusions to Galar, which would've been unveiled and released while this arc would've still been running. In the Galar games, you can obtain a Pikachu, Eevee, and Meowth with the Gigantamax Factor if you have a save file for the Let's Go! games. Maybe in the climax of this hypothetical story, the partner Pikachu and Eevee are revealed to have this trait, and they use these gigantic forms to defeat a Gigantamax Melmetal. Jessie and James have a Meowth, so throw that in there, too.

Returning Characters

I already mentioned Yellow, but what about other returning Kanto characters? Gym leaders, Elite Four, Prof. Oak, etc. Well, as remake arcs tend to be short (roughly 20-ish chapters), it wouldn't be possible to include them all, or at least not for a long stretch of the story. It would all depend on whatever role they're able to serve in the story.

For example, Blaine and Mewtwo could team up again in this arc, and then we might learn not only how Mewtwo learned to Mega Evolve, but also how it ended up getting two forms. Or Lt. Surge, who gives the player his autograph, which can then be seen in the Alola player's bedroom. Might Sun have received one, too? Lance might have a chance to patch things up with Yellow and fully redeem himself, or at least earn back his Champion position.

There are a few villains worth catching up on. Archer was in the Let's Go! games, but he disavowed Giovanni as his leader in the HGSS arc. Maybe he was taken to the same dungeon where he locked up Carr, who had also disavowed Giovanni. If so, the two of them could somehow break out and team up to overthrow their former evil idol. They could be direct rivals to Jessie and James (who were also in the Let's Go! games), who could be assigned to find and recapture the two former Rockets, leading to some hilarious shenanigans.

Closing Points

I won't get into the actual story idea because that requires deciding on specific characters for Chase and Elaine, which is usually decided by Kusaka and Yamamoto's whims, and not on any in-game lore. This is just the conceptual skeleton (the writing strategy, if you will) of a hypothetical story that will most probably never happen, and the story itself is best left to interpretation.

Anyway, what do you guys think?