Zero's Wall of Ramblings

My workplace is hosting a charity bakesale in a few days, and all staff are being 'encouraged' to bake something as opposed to buying shop bought stuff. Which is good! I'm honestly down for an event like this. But, why not after payday when I can afford to buy the ingredients? I'm going to have to borrow money from family, just so we can raise money for charity. And my boss wonders why we buy shop made cakes. :/ Gonna make dairy and gluten free cakes though as I doubt many other staff will considering only one of them is lactose intolerant. But I know a lot of customers buy from our vegan section at work, so I'm going to try to appeal to them. Make sure everyone can enjoy a sweet treat, you know? And maybe some cheeky chocolate cookies to boot. Ooh, or shortbread! That's easy to make! :D Haha, a 8hr shift tomorrow before I do a butt ton of baking. Hopefully we'll raise a good amount!

So uh, I had two days off after my short shift today. I'd planned to spend some time with my dad since I've not seen him for ages but then my boss called and said someone had called in sick and was wondering if I could do over time. I'm so bad at saying no. So I agreed to work an extra 17 hours over the two days. The fact I had plans with my dad just completely left my mind and didn't occur to me until after I'd hung up. The money is nice and all but I'm someone who appreciates days off just as much but I can't bring myself to say no most of the time, we're that short staffed that other employees often get called in on their holidays. It's a bit pathetic really, even more so because my boss doesn't actually get to decide who he hires until applicants have been screened by the big bosses. So from like, 9 applicants, all could be rejected without him even meeting any of them. Unless you're willing to sell your soul to the store, you're not getting the job. I swear it's a requirement to be available 24/7. So, how am I supposed to say no? :/

Melan bait drawings are popular aren't they? Going to be hunting these guys for a while as I collect gems. So I figured, why not? :D I like to see them as one big family. The Deerling with the torn flower being the 'grown up' of the group. But that's just my take. I wonder what other users will think when they stumble across it.

When you sell off just your evolution items and make around 1.7+ mil from hoard numbers of 80 odd. Just wow. Had no idea how much I'd been sitting on. Welp, time to spend it all on the UB quest!

~Clearing up all personal ramblings in my journal that are more mental health rants. I don't want people stumbling on this journal and worrying. If you're that curious you can always read the post history. :D~

So my brother just gave me a laptop stand with 3 little fans installed. He'd been given it by my dad to stop his computer overheating but he's given to me because mine is prone to it. Just a result of a broken laptop having to be fixed with substituted parts. Hopefully this'll add to the life of my laptop though. I wouldn't be surprised if it overheats because the fan inside doesn't work properly (being a substitution). It's a good little laptop too. I've had it for at least 4/5 years now and I'm on it constantly. Back when I was unemployed I was on it for at least 9hrs daily (unhealthy, I know) but that's been 9hrs a week for three or so years and only near the end of 2018 has it finally started showing its old age and damage from its scars. I'm going to miss this laptop when it finally gives in but I just want it to hold out long enough for me to buy a proper desktop computer, it should only take a few months of saving. Maybe around September? Fingers crossed it'll last until then. On a completely unrelated note. Bandicoon is really fun to draw. :D

~Clearing up all personal ramblings in my journal that are more mental health rants. I don't want people stumbling on this journal and worrying. If you're that curious you can always read the post history. :D~

So without spoiling anything as per site rules, is it bad that nothing has really excited me when it comes to Pokemon Sword and Shield? Like it looks pretty but substance wise, is it going to have much postgame content? Pokemon games have never been too crazy with their stories. While a lot of fun happens in between, it's still about becoming champion and defeating the bad guys. So what will this game have in terms of post game? More battling? I suppose I've just be spoiled by older games? The Game Corner of each game when gambling what still ok alone was cool but Hoenn had contests and the Battle Tower, the Johto remakes had the Pokeathlon, Sinnoh had contests, the Underground, Amity Square and a small island to explore post game, alongside their own battle resort and you even got your own villa to buy items for. Then B/W2 came along and gave you contests to participate in, movies to star in and then watch afterwards, medals to collect like achievements, the battle trams, the PWT and more. And that's not mentioning the Legendary Pokemon you could find hiding in all of the games. But the 3D titles have really lacked much postgame outside of battles. Even though Sun/Moon had some story after the becoming champion, it was still just battles. Once you'd done that... then what? Even Legendaries outside of the mascots are just handed to you on a silver platter through DLC, or are made super easy to catch in the game. In B/W2 not every activity needed you to battle. Join Avenue was about owning a shop that would be frequented by people you'd interacted with through wireless communications/online. Even the movies were scripted fights, you just had to figure out what would work. It wasn't about winning the battle (sometimes losing was a requirement!) but about using moves that applied to the genre you were filming and it was a lot of fun to then watch these stories unfold. In Sun/Moon there was the battle tree or Wormholes and Shiny hunting. :/ Everyone in the Discord server seems ecstatic about the game. Maybe it's just me? I did enjoy Let's Go Pikachu more than I thought I would but even then the game was still lacking post game content... The new Pokemon are cool though and the region being based on my country is awesome. And another thing! It's retailing at $59.99. But they're releasing a version with both games for... $119.99! (It won't actually let me check preorders on the UK site yet.) So basically the same price it'd cost for buying both games separately, yay! I mean no, no, don't even consider adding a small discount for people buying the same game twice. That'd be absurd, how could you make a profit doing that?! It's not like these games are going to be obsessively played by the Youtube community or anything... I mean, throw in an artbook or something at least to make that double pack more worthwhile, sheesh.

Music is a wonderful thing, isn't it? I was just listening to a pop-rock song with such empowering lyrics, singing about seizing the moment and not being afraid. I've been hesitating about where to go next in life but I've decided. I'm gonna do it. I'm going to leave home and live in the city. I'm going to try to get into college to study game design. I don't care how many times I have to apply. I don't care how demanding the course will be, or how unforgiving student life and a part time job will be. And when I succeed in getting in, I know it'll be scary but I know I can do it. If I don't take this chance, I'll never get a chance to even try and achieve my dreams. And you know what? I'm excited for this new step. I'm not going to be stuck in a retail for the rest of my life. I'm going to become someone who works on games, I just need to find where I shine the most!

Man the situation with Sword and Shield has really rubbed me the wrong way. It screams lazy for such a massive IP to be cutting content. The game has supposedly been in development since X and Y was released. There's so many games in the industry that feel lazy these days. I could look past Gamefreak doing it because leaving some features in specific games gave you a reason to return to them. Like HG/SS having Pokemon following you, with that only recently coming back in LGP/LGE. But cutting out Pokemon completely, not letting them be transferred? I can't justify it, it's alienating fans of more obscure Pokemon. They're cutting out a core feature of the series, they're removing their IP's namesake! Now spin off's I understand and take no issue with. PMD is a fantastic series that, until the last game, only had a limited amount of Pokemon in the game. But the thing is, I don't want every single Pokemon available in the overworld. I just want them programed in so that if I wanted to transfer a Pokemon from my 3DS, I could. I found Super Mystery Dungeon was bogged down by having all the Pokemon, no partner Pokemon felt special. Getting Vulpix felt pointless when missions later I unlocked Ninetales with no effort whatsoever. I could still evolve Vulpix but, what's the point? BUT I knew if I wanted, say my own PMD team from my comic, I could because every Pokemon up to Kalos exists. Something I mentioned when discussing this topic on Discord was that cutting out this content doesn't solve their problem. They said they have too many Pokemon to balance properly. (Ignoring that they're likely bringing over OP fan favourites, which doesn't suggest a pursuit to balance without nerfing said favourites) But if they decide in a future game to bring in Pokemon they excluded first time around... then they're going to have to make a new battle system anyway right? But if they took the next few months to introduce Pokemon in waves and have players playtest these Pokemon for them... then they'd have a working system ready for the next set of games. Animal Crossing has been delayed because they want to take the time to make it the best it can be, so fans can enjoy it for years to come and the fans are actually ok with that. I'm pretty sure Game Freak could do the same, release a new wave of older Pokemon every few months and give players a reason to jump back in. Oddly enough, like most online services do these days... because the system works. Anyway I just wanted to post this and get it out of my system. Because no matter how I slice it, I don't like nor can I ignore what they're doing like I used to do with the 3DS titles. Man I've missed having my journal. I don't like bothering people with my opinions. I only hope my negative ramblings haven't annoyed those I spoke to on Discord.