Negrek

Oh... just read your visitor message. Yeah, I wasn't paying attention while buying Pokémon and didn't see where I have to choose the genders...
Anyways, if you can, it'd be nice for some of my Pokémon to be female. I'm gonna go run a random number and see who gets what based on gender probabilities. And maybe Furfrou will be different; I only made her a girl because I didn't have any.
Here's who I'd like you to change based on RNG:
Shinx: Female
Poochyena: Female
Seedot: Female
Taillow: Female
Sorry if this is too long or something. Thanks!

Aw, thanks! I hope I can get my regular reffings up to scratch soon, but realistically it's going to take a while... I keep looking at the stuff I was writing 2-3 years ago and being like "argh, what if I hadn't stopped?".

No problem, happy holidays and thank you too for the items! At the very least Wimp Out'll probably force any potential opponents to think more carefully about their attacks once it gets closer to activating, which is pretty interesting.

I did!! Thank you so much, I very much appreciate it. It will certainly help, given that barely any of my Pokémon are evolved.

ASB idea! Some people have a lot of pokemon that they maybe don't want. What if there was an event where people could release their pokemon into like a safari zone type of thing, and then other people can re-catch that pokemon with an extra experience point, since they've been released into the wild and had to fend for themselves kind of thing? Not sure what the mechanics would be of transferring pokemon/fair entrance fees to catch a pokemon/etc, but I mentioned it to Eifie and she suggested I mention it to you :D Something to incentivize taking an unused pokemon off of one person's hand instead of buying a new one!

Yeees! I've had a couple battles where I attempted to legitimately use Sticky Barb, but it doesn't seem to have done anything particularly interesting... I guess in part because apparently the ref just forgot about it in the latter battle.

Ahhh thank you for Venus!! :D I shall take good care of her, and woah that is a cool name for a Litwick :D Hope your holidays and travels have been great!!

thank you for the swablu! happy holidays :D

Thanks!

got it

Cool, thanks!

Well, backlog-wise I finally finished the set of three Fire Emblem games I've been dragging my feet on for over a year asdfghjkl, and I've got Ultra Moon going properly now. Other than that the only thing I'm working on is finally finishing a super old Sonic game for the GameCube, haha. Nothing terribly exciting at the moment, although I'm probably gonna head for Phoenix Wright: Spirit of Justice after UM and Sonic are sorted! And then... so many... other... things...

Hm, hack or fangame recs... haven't really done much with those recently, so there's not much I can recommend from personal experience. The last fangame I played (aside from a really tiny game jam entry that was cute but not really worth reccing) was Uranium, which I'm sure you're already done with as well. The last hack I played was the translation patch for Pokémon Altair, a couple years ago at this point. Story's a bit dull because it's a very obvious "sequel" to/reskin of Emerald; it's got a bunch of fakemon in it of wildly varying quality (but the good ones are really good); it requires a ton of grinding after a while—based on some offhand comments I've heard it is/was fairly common for Japanese hacks to go the "grinding = fun and challenging difficulty" route—and I eventually got sick of it at the end of Victory Road. I would've kept going if I could've cheated myself some rare candies, but finding cheat codes for Japanese Emerald proved surprisingly difficult, so I gave up. The annoying bit is that they actually added a massive, completely custom postgame area that seems to have a lot of fun stuff to do, and also you can buy rare candies there? But I'm like, my guy, that doesn't help me when I'm not feeling like ~grinding forever~ now. Oh, well.

I dunno, give it a try and see if you like it, if you haven't already? You've probably heard of it before anyway, now that I think about it, haha. The gym battles are at least challenging strategy-wise as well, so they might be enjoyable if you've got the patience to level up or actually find an appropriate cheat. There's also the full English-language port of the sequel, Pokémon Vega, which I haven't tried yet. On the one hand that one's supposed to be even more grindy, but on the other it's got a fully custom region and plot this time and also since it's on an English FR base it will probably be easier to get a bunch of rare candies for when I get frustrated, haha.

Oh, I haven't tried this one yet either but Pokémon Gaia is supposed to be a really good hack, so maybe that? IIRC it's not complete but it goes up to six badges or something like that.

Like I said, not much to rec on the fangame front since I've been busy with the backlog, but there are always plenty of demos and a few complete games on the Relic Castle forums (including lots of jam games from their summer jam earlier this year), so you could probably have a poke around there and see if anything strikes your fancy. I know one pretty-much-complete game did come out recently (Gem Stone, I think?), although I think that was some kind of experiment to see if the creator could make a quick but full-length game by himself using bits and bobs from a larger game of his, so I dunno how interesting it'll actually be, haha.

And thanks for the invite, but I'm still not really feeling up to ASBing at the moment. It sounds like it should be fun, though, so hopefully that battle will fill out soon!

Awesome. Should I then fix the 17% to 18%? Sorry for asking so many dumb questions; wanna get this right. :P

So I was checking my calcs and, as you pointed out, something's odd. I was doing them by hand instead of referencing the db since the guide mentions they're sometimes off.

The energy for Zap Cannon was definitely a misstep on my part- I forgot to add 1% because of the 100% paralysis rate. I can't seem to find how I got 17%. My best guess (since it was a while ago) was that I hit the wrong key and it stayed that way. By breaking the calcs down from now on, though, it won't happen again.

Hey, just to say I haven't forgotten about ref test calculations; i'm just in finals and haven't been able to get around to it.

I know, I know; I've been pretty busy all week, and every time I'd think about doing it it would have already been too late... but anyways, they're finally up. Thank you so much for your patience!

Ahhh thanks so much for the sleepy dragon compliment :D I drew him while at my friend's place (I tend to wake up before my hosts do, so I needed something to fill the time :P)

I definitely feel like I'm doing the thing that those self-help articles tell you not to do: I've been saying things like, "after I get a job, THEN I'll focus on my art, THEN I'll be more active in ASB, THEN I'll start working again on my story," which is super dangerous because I'm sure once I start working, I'll still have a million excuses ("after I finish moving in, after I meet people, blah blah blah"), but I feel like this is a pretty good reason haha. As much as I'm looking forward to doing all these things, I feel like I can't settle until I've got something stable, even if I know it's temporary. I do feel like I'm wasting my time a little bit, in that when I'm employed again, I'm going to wish I spent more time working on art, travel, etc... but, that's not a long-term solution for me, so I think this is probably all for the best, hopefully? :D

So I was applying for technical writer positions for a while, and I recently waffled back to applying for engineering jobs - probably mainly because I got rejected for one writer job that was like, "we like you, but hired someone with more experience" so maybe it's a good idea to get another engineering job, and work on writing during it if I want to take that path? You're right - there's got to be good engineering jobs that have good work cultures!

Ooh bioinformatics sounds really cool! I think it's becoming so normal, too, to switch jobs every few years - the "work at your first job for 40 years, then retire" days just definitely seem to be gone. Honestly I feel like your year of travel will be a huge selling point in your job search - not only is that crazy awesome and fun to talk about, but that takes a lot of maturity and responsibility and research and whatnot (it's also not like you're just going to all the touristy places - you're on like a Real Sample Pack of the World kind of adventure!) - and I feel like the fact that you've been able to keep up with all the ASB writing along the way really says something too!

All of those job ideas sound like great ones, I think, especially since you can justify how they're related to your degree/your interests/your skills. I feel like it might be tricky to get a foot in the door for something different than what your degree is in/what your resume says, but from what I hear, it's just a matter of how you frame yourself! Like if your cover letter really shows why you're applying to a particular job, that seems like a huge selling point no matter what brought you to that point. World traveler and diversity of interests play very well together :D Also ooo a portfolio! That's an excellent idea - I should really start something like that.

Haha that is quite the job description! I'll let you know if I find anything :P Honestly, I hope someday we can create our own jobs - compared to most of the working world, I have little job experience, but I also feel like I want to just do my own thing someday and be my own boss.

That's great that you've got an eye on a company already too! I feel like "I'm willing to cut my travel short to join your team" would be a great pitch in a job application or something haha. Good luck, Negrek!! You've totally got this!!

Also where are you now? Any new exciting stories? :D

Also somehow I never got added to the ASB ref list :') would you be able to add me the next time you're updating that list, please? :D

Oh, that? That is kinda-sorta a hook, yeah, but more something for me to have in my back pocket later than anything I'm actively planning on working on right now. I have no idea what's actually going on wherever that guy is from! I dunno, it just didn't really feel right to end it on something too mundane, but that may have backfired if it seemed too immediately interesting, whoops. No, the larger adventure I worked on is set in the normal, canon-adjacent Pokémon world. Most of my other current ideas are either like that or more PMD-esque. It might be a while before I get back to Arilterra!

Yeah, it did, heh, and it was originally supposed to be a one-shot, although the change is less because the story "grew" or "grew on me" and more because it was always this amount of content and I'm kind of terrible at estimating length, apparently. Haven't worked on the glitch one-shot recently, no, although I would like to clean that up at some point when my interest in it returns.

Aw, that's too bad about the 3DS. Hopefully it's something that can be solved by replacing the charger or something rather than replacing the system itself or sending it to Nintendo for their expensive repairs. Play anything good on the emulators, at least?

I don't have a Switch yet, no, but I'm working on it. As it happens I do already have the Wii U version of BotW, though! Which I kind of regret now that I'm planning on getting a Switch, but whatever, I guess. (Although I hear the Wii U version runs a little more smoothly; that may be different now that the Switch has had a few firmware updates, and it's not like the Switch version was reported to be unplayable or anything, so Iiiiiii dunno!) I did play a little bit and it's been pretty impressive, but since it's both new AND long I'm prioritizing older and/or shorter stuff first, haha. I'd like to be able to take my time with it and enjoy it rather than feeling like I need to get it out of the way!

Ooh, Thailand! Definitely sounds exciting. Since you're going to be there for a while, what sorts of things are you planning on seeing? And were you already planning on being in Hawai'i in March, or are you just going to coordinate that later if it turns out your family can make it?

Thanks! Glad to hear you enjoyed the "adventure", such as it was. The bigger text adventure is actually entirely unrelated, though! It technically is "playable" and even "completable" right now, but like in an I-hesitate-to-even-call-it-alpha state held together by duct tape and naivete, so it'll be a good while before that sees the light of day.

As for Holding Out, aha, I wouldn't quite say it's all written out yet. Still have to finish the last few chapters/scenes/idk what they are of the rewrite to get it all in one place/make sure that cut character is properly excised, and then there are the many bits that explain what happens in writing that's only barely above bullet points in readability that need full fleshing out. But it is at least finally coming together into something that might actually go somewhere, someday, maybe. We'll see!

Ahaha, kind of, although thankfully the number's gone down a bit now that the birthday rush and NaNo are over. Right now I'm hoping I can focus on taking it easy and making it through a few more video games before the year is out, that and real life stuff job search holiday-related screaming etc., and then hopefully be able to part out whatever I decide my next tasks are a little more manageably. Deciding to take on NaNo the day it started was a terrible decision. Also a great decision considering what I got worked out, but an objectively terrible decision. Ah, well! I'll figure it out.

(And also I just noticed the new little giratina head logo thing I made for AO isn't positioned properly on my laptop's monitor. Oops. Gonna have to look into that later.)

What about you? Where are you right now? Where are you going to end up spending the holidays—will you be making it back home in time for that and then heading out again, or staying with other family, or laughing at all the shmucks stuck with the cold weather while you're in Hawai'i, or...?

Oh also I gave you admin powers in the db, the admin UI is pretty lacking but you'll be able to mark people as refs now, among other things.