After careful deliberation, I’ve decided to make everything more confusing by using the same titling scheme as Act’s posts. This time I’ve taken a break from playing video games to rec some webcomics instead.
Author Archives: St. Elmo's Fire
The Other Pokeauthors, Part 18
“your second point is a 20 year old discussion amongst Pokémon fans I won’t have again, I am one of the people who capitalized the name of the Pokémon as that’s what the games do. I just draw the line at all caps like the game. Also I find it odd that English is the odd language out on putting caps on most nouns anyway.”
[25] The Other Pokereviews, Part 18
The Other Pokeauthors, Part 17
Varied responses today.
[25] The Other Pokereviews, Part 17
The Other Pokeauthors, Part 16
In which I am told at length why joking about a gardevoir’s breasts was vitally important to the plot.
[25] The Other Pokereviews, Part 16
The Other Pokeauthors, Part 15
Lots of “it’s just a hobby!” excuses today. Also, a misunderstanding of scientific categorization.
[25] The Other Pokereviews, Part 15
Actually found a good one today! The others are still pretty boring.
A SYOC Horrorshow
So I submitted Havan to one SYOC story that had already filled up the main hero slots due to getting posted on a forum before the story actually aired. There were a bunch of consolation prize gym leader and elite four slots, except, weirdly, the gym leaders’ types, progression, and badges were already fixed in exacting detail.
Soma Spirits and the Golden Mean Fallacy
Soma Spirits is a neat little RPG about philosophy and choices you should check out. The premise is that, after the world erupted into war, the gods split the world into two spiritual planes: the World of Joy, where everyone is always happy, and the World of Sorrow, which lacks the unchecked emotion that led to the war. This worked pretty well for a while, but now the worlds are becoming unstable and There Can Be Only One. Each god obviously wants their own world to dominate, and you are led through five scenarios where you must solve a dilemma by either curbing unbridled joy or alleviating sorrow. Generally, this comes down to a choice between personal happiness and societal responsibility. I am all about that stuff.
Unfortunately, the conclusion leaves a lot to be desired. The warning signs become obvious the moment you learn there is a true ending. Though the game’s description claims that “you may find that the choices made in Soma Spirits are not so black and white. Every major choice made will have some impact on the story, and there are rarely any ‘correct’ solutions”, there is objectively one correct choice: make a perfectly even number of Joy and Sorrow decisions to create a fully balanced world. Deviate from this at all, and the game makes sure to inform you that you are crazy, stupid, and/or evil. As much as the game loves to tout that every individual decision has logical merit, it doesn’t extend the same tolerance to aggregate decisions.
The Other Pokeauthors, Part 14
“Also, given that it is a time travel story, past and present tense get kind of messed up, so you could argue that it’s intentional.”
[25] The Other Pokereviews, Part 14
The Other Pokeauthors, Part 13
“So as soon as an animal starts talking, it is considered slavery?”