jeff ruberg

indianapolis fine dining:

waffle house ★★★★★
white castle ☆☆☆☆☆
steak ‘n shake ★★★★★

Part of me worries because I’m not really familiar with anything else he’s done series composition for (www.animenewsnetwork.com/encyclopedia...), but also Savers/Data Squad is probably my favorite Digimon series so this gives me lots of hope

Digimon Beatbreak main PV

I’m so sorry. It’ll never feel like enough time, but I hope you get to savor and enjoy every minute of it.

I’m so sorry for your loss. it’s been 2 weeks since my cat passed, and it’s been so much more overwhelming than I ever imagined it could be. that sounds like a really effective outlet, I’m glad to hear it’s been helping!

i admire that final fantasy x's first hour is more or less a what if scenario of "what would happen if we isekaid lebron"

are you fucking kidding me. the lens flares in DK Bananza are in the shape of a bunch of bananas

(getting flashbacks to the wave of maliciously uninformed discourse when a fanartist made a stink after intentionally disregarding the norms of avoiding unlicensed fanart specifically in the *dealer* hall and made it seem like they were in artist alley)

also, the specific situation that set this off is such a silly nothingburger — of course a convention with heavy industry presence should err on the side of not approving panels that upset industry sponsors. just because it has no place at an industry con doesn’t mean it has no place at ANY con

condemning either as the *only* cause really misses the point I think. jp pubs would still pursue ai loc as a dirt cheap revenue source even if scanlation didn’t exist. and expect-everything-for-free culture would still push some licensors to cut all costs even if jp pubs weren’t hypnotized by ai

of course there’s lots of nuance to the specific situation that set this off, but in terms of broad ideas my only take is that Japanese publishers and race-to-the-bottom expect-everything-for-free scanlation culture are *both* guilty of pushing us towards a future of shitty, slop AI localization

there’s a new round of manga piracy discourse, and the new take this time seems to be that tension between official industry folks and scanlators is silly when they both face the same existential threat of being replaced by AI localization. 🤔

I've realized recently that my love of HGTV stems from the same core storytelling principles as any shonen battle series. a beautiful, affordable house with a pool and a gorgeous lake in walking distance? that’s a Chosen One narrative.

all the love for donkey kong bananza better result in adding dk64 to the nso catalog

logically, I understand that the human mind vastly underestimates its capacity for healing from grief. I always hope that hearing that reassures people that things inevitably WILL get better. but also part of being human is thinking “is this the one exception, the one time it will never heal?”

first piece of media I try to load up to take my mind off of grief (I can’t fall asleep) is metroid prime. realized I’m in the section where you revisit the space station from the opening sequence, but crashed and underwater. couldn’t have said it better myself, samus.

in 2018, I was blown away when a local lab tech analyzing one of Pixel’s blood samples was a Podigious listener who recognized his name just from his occasional interruptions of the podcast. the thought that Pixel had his own fans around the world will always mean so much to me.

early this morning we said goodbye to Pixel. he was only 13, but he’d been battling cancer and its effects for a while. I included a photo of him in his favorite spot, burrowed deep under some blankets. he was the cutest, sweetest cat I’ve ever seen. so thankful for all the years we got with him.

fun anecdote about FFT’s character select UI: the first battle where you get to select characters is supposed to be very easy, but when my friend and I played it together we didn’t notice the L1/R1 indicators, so we thought it was a grueling solo battle until we looked up an FAQ 😆

It's got enough room for me & the whole squad ⚔️

people born after The WB turned into CW are old enough to vote

it was reviewed pretty well at the time though! I think the difficulty/annoyance is part of it, but I think the main factor is just getting overshadowed by the original

“accusing… as being” rip, me

I feel like we’re not that far off from people associating complete sentences with genAI and accusing anyone who can form a coherent thought that wouldn’t get underlines in Word 2003 as being an LLM

so bizarre that metroid prime 2 had tons of hype and a very positive reception at the time, but as more and more time passes people just think of it like a direct-to-dvd sequel

a Rubik’s cube arranged so that the panels say “Saturday JUL 5”

i’ve entered my novelty cube era

laptop sleeve

Pixel sleeping on laptop sleeve, 3 years pre-pee

kind of sad that I have to throw out the super basic, minimalistic laptop sleeve that I’ve used for 14 (!) years— mainly because it’s always been one of Pixel’s favorite places to sit.

but, then again, I only have to throw it out because he peed on it 😆

photo of a small Crazy Bones collection

in my head i just thought these were some 90s fad like Crazy Bones

gonggi

thank you, squid game s2, for making me realize that my neighborhood growing up had such a large korean population that what I grew up thinking of as jacks was actually gonggi

Josie and the Pussycats kind of did predict modern influencer culture, to a degree lol