As part of my general efforts at improving myself and my life, I’ve started waking myself up at 6am again (something that I stopped doing a couple months into the pandemic) and immediately getting out of bed so I can exercise. Even with the extra hour I’m spending on working out, this has meant that I’m now at work by 8:30 every day, thirty to ninety minutes earlier that I was previously. Even though I’m only getting up an extra hour earlier. After all, if I get out of bed and start working out right away, that means I’m not spending thirty to ninety minutes of every morning laying in my bed, browsing twitter or reading comics on my phone. Or, you know, wallowing in depression as I struggle with motivating myself to get out of bed and actually do stuff with my day.
Continue readingMonth: February 2022
Adaptation Versus Adoption Across TTRPG Genres
I had the idea for a superhero themed D&D game. The idea originated in an idea on how I could adapt the Monk class and the various subclasses, but many of the various other classes and abilities could be represented as super powers if you give them the right flavor. I’ve been stewing over it in my mind for a while, mostly just as a fun thing to think about when I’m not doing anything else, but I haven’t done any concrete work to develop the idea beyond the conceptual stage. See, as someone who is tangential to many circles on Twitter, I usually get a pretty good grasp of the drama that has taken center-stage at any given moment without getting embroiled in it myself. One of the big, long-running pieces of drama is that games other than D&D exist but the popularity of D&D tends to eclipse them in such a way that, when people want to play non-fantasy games, they tend to work on adapting D&D rather than finding a game that was explicitly made for the type of genre they want to play.
Continue readingI Miss Having An Infinite Backpack In Pokémon Legends: Arceus
I’ve been steadily working my way through Pokémon Legends: Arceus. Perhaps a bit slowly, given that I’m trying to avoid spend all of my free time doing just this one thing, but I can feel myself slowly making my way forward. At about a week in (I missed most of the first weekend thanks to being sick and wrote this a week ahead of it posting), I’ve got 8 stars, a fourth area unlocked, three fully complete Pokédex entries, and 95% seen-to-“complete” Pokédex ratio, and a party of level 60 Pokémon. I still have a great deal of content left to work through, between the plot and the Pokédex entries since there are a large number of rare Pokémon I’ve only gotten to Research level 10 because I’ve gotten a wide array of the easy-to-get research tasks. This isn’t a problem, though, because I’m still having fun, which is all that really matters.
Continue readingOut, Damned Spotify!
After a few years of being a subscriber to Spotify, I’ve decided to cancel my subscription. Beyond the general controversy of the day, Spotify’s decision to publish and promote a pretty terrible person despite their purpoted misinformation rules, they’ve never been terribly good to musicians. I’ve been vaguely aware that streaming via Spotify was never a lucrative deal for most of the musicians, which is why I’ve always made efforts to use Spotify only as a vehicle for finding and easily accessing music while supporting the artist more directly through other platforms, but the whole Joe Rogan controversy has brought a lot of other problems with Spotify into the limelight and I can no longer give them money without betraying my conscience.
Continue readingTalking “Post-Pandemic” Sounds The Same As “If I Won The Lottery”
I was talking to one of my friends about how he is hoping that his daughter will be able to start getting vaccinated soon. There was a bunch of discussion about how the vaccination effort is proceeding, discussion of how US government is failing its people, and how life changes when you can dial the pandemic anxiety down a bit after everyone around you is fully vaccinated. Not that you should throw aside all precautionary measures and join the growing throng of people pretending there isn’t a pandemic, but just that you can accept a small increase in risks taken because you’ve had a corresponding decrease in risk of severity. He talked about going out to restuarants again, safely as can be of course, and it got me thinking about what it would be like to be able to just go out to dinner again.
Continue readingReturning To My Old Haunt In Animal Crossing: New Horizons
I have begun a slow return to playing Animal Crossing: New Horizons. I played it pretty heavily for most of 2020, kinda hit a wall of boredom in 2021, and have only played intermittently since then. The exact moment I knew I needed a break from the game was when I realized I wasn’t going to keep up my dailies because it meant I’d have to get up and change the cartridges in my Switch. That, plus my dislike for anything that makes me feel like I am obligated to play a game every day or else play at a disadvantage. I know it’s not a big deal to miss a day here or there in ACNH, which is why it lasted as long as it did, but eventually I felt tired of playing the game just to dig up a few fossils, pick some weeds, water some flowers, and talk to my island neighbors at least once.
Continue readingI Finally Figured Out My Biggest Issue With The Nintendo Switch
As much as I enjoy playing various games on the Switch in handheld mode, since it means I’m not chained to my couch and a particular sitting orientation, I’ve always struggled with how I can’t do that with any kind of action game. When it comes to any of those types of games, I quickly grow frustrated and annoyed. The reasons vary, but the result is always the same. I’m worse at any kind of game that requires precision or quick responses when I’m playing it on the Switch in handheld mode. After dealing with this for almost five years, I finally figured out why when I went to play Pokémon Legends: Arceus in handheld mode.
Continue readingA Bright Spot In A Cold Winter
Today (day of writing this) was a wonderful, warm day. By which I mean the temperature hit the 40s in the sun and I celebrated by going for two walks, both of which eschewed my heavy coat and hat. I even rolled my sleeves up to maximize my total amount of exposed skin so I can get the most benefit from the sun as possible. I know this warmth is short-lived because the temperature is already beginning a slow decline towards the single digits (which it should hit by tomorrow), but it gives me hope that things are improving. Or at least that the winter is turning away from frigid cold and back toward moderately freezing.
Continue readingThe Pokémon Anime Is Not As Repetitive As I Thought
I read an article a while back about the way that shows are produced and written for a weekly release (the traditional method) and a full-season release (new to streaming platforms). The article didn’t make claims about quality or superiority, it just clarified why some seasons are longer than others, why some shows have more episodes, and how the pacing, plotting, and character development can change between the two forms. The crux of it was that, by being able to drop an entire season at once, a show wouldn’t need to remind its viewers of important information as frequently as a weekly show would. Because it was meant to be consumed quickly, it could skip over a lot of the “last time on” type information and the “I’m going to remind you of this thing we encountered five episodes ago because it’s actually been four months for us.” Stories take longer to tell if you have to tell them in pieces and can’t reference the old information, or you have to tell stories without as many elements that are reliant on past information. It’s not better or worse, just different.
Continue readingOn A Mission From (Poké) God
Pokémon Legends: Arceus has been a blast. I may be a bit biased since all I really want out of a Pokémon game is the opportunity to catch more Pokémon and explore a newish world, but this game definitely delivers both of those things and more. The game’s basic plot is that you’ve fallen through a warp in space and time to the Hisui region, a place that would eventually become known as Sinnoh (where the Diamond and Pearl games take place), and are charged by Pokémon God with discovering all of the Pokémon in the region. You’re set up with an exploratory team meant to research the local Pokémon and protect the people who wish to live in the region from the aggressive local Pokémon, and you prove yourself as not only capable but highly skilled to the locals who treat the idea of encountering wild Pokémon with trepidation and fear.
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