Mark Major

Arceus was the first pokemon game I played, and I did not know how good I had it being able to evolve all of my pokemon without having to trade any of them.

I haven't played enough previous titles to know if there's any existing lore about cell phones in the Pokeverse, but I want to know how Lumiose city is 'finding' enough Rotom to make every phone a Rotom phone.

"Trying to find a bench" is definitely a mood in this game.

I feel like that term gets slapped on everything that isn't 100% on rails.

malware!! I forgot about that word! good time to resurface

I think I just have to come right out and admit that I don't at all understand the sickos meme.

I disagree that fallback/ideal is a strong connotation for it. To make it more general it's uncommon/common or unexpected/expected. Common or expected doesn't imply ideal, as there might be other factors that determine why besides "most desirable".

I'm not a shipper but I've realized that the one thing that can get me to ship two characters beyond or against what's in canon is if the ship name is an amazing pun.

I think that's exactly what I did, if I'm remembering the books correctly.

Just reiterating my promise to cancel my subscription next season if Crunchyroll doesn't turn this around completely.

For gamers who aren't in game dev, you should know that we are in one of the worst periods in game dev history in terms of industry stability and the reason you're not seeing that play out through products is because the average development window of games is 3-7 years so it hasn't reached you yet.

Just makes me think about all the anime I watch where the translators use "aunt" and "uncle" for Japanese words that are much less strict in their meaning. I don't know how applicable that is here but it's what I would think of first before anything like "he lied!"

It's interesting (if counterintuitive) that "we can't disprove this statement, so its true" is the qualifier rather than "we can't prove this statement, so it's false".

One of the most important jobs of a designer is understanding that there are some things that everyone says they want, but then absolutely hate if they get it

Yes, and I'd like to propose the corollary that you become a 'professional' for any of those things (and anything else not mentioned) the moment someone pays you for that work.

That or, just to be snarky, it finally shows up in the last five seconds of the intro.

Okay, took another pass. Added “hands” and “feet”, printed the black with filament instead of coloring the eyes and mouth, reshaped the arms to hold better and for proportions. Little passenger feels good and done 👍🏼

I've had coffee that tasted like ass and I've had coffee that definitely did not taste like ass. I still don't drink it though because that's way more caffeine than my system can deal with.

One of the central themes of the series is her coming to terms with her new identity. It's why I love it so much. As much as I like isekai I'm always a little bit bothered by how most protagonists *very* quickly accept their new life and never think about their past.

Fluffy Paradise comes to mind as an example of where it bothered me. I think the problem is when it feels like the childish behavior is the author saying "look at how adorable they are now!" instead of "this is the consequence of hormonal development and relaxed social expectations".

Writers in the US, the UK, Japan, and everywhere else in the world, I beg you: many many people in this current age need stories that say it's possible for a villain to be defeated and stay defeated. Please stop loving your villains more than your heroes.

I'd also like to know about the 4th game and whether they learned from 3's mistakes. The 3rd game was "fun" in that the gameplay was basically the same, but man the writing tanked so hard, it was awful. Doesn't give me much hope for 4.

A little bit of a Frieren spoiler for anyone who hasn't watched the series:

I still think the Frieren-copy should have been defeated by them hauling a mimic down and shoving it through the door.

I think anyone suggesting that one thing is the best thing for everyone period is very silly. "How to make recommendations for people entering genre fiction" should always start at "ask them questions about what they like" so recommendations can be tailored to the individual.

In an ideal world even names wouldn't be gendered.

The main character of "May I Ask for One Final Thing?" looks incredibly happy, visually surrounded by pink sparkles and roses, as she says "Self-serving, greedy nobles are the most satisfying to punch!"

This really is going to be the catharsis series of 2025.

This Monster Wants to Eat Me, strangely, gives me hope that it might be the rare anime to treat depression and suicide ideation in a healthy way rather than just including it because the author romanticizes angst.

The perfect adventure is one conceived, developed, and entirely in service to a pun at the end.

I also like the subtle differences it gets from not being "professionally written otome game world", but rather something she just wrote self-indulgently in middle and high school.

As someone who worked on various Nicalis releases, I made it a point to respond with "Huzzah!" to any positive news mentioned in the work chat, just as a silly form of protest.