saul

(opening up last.fm) With You in My Head (feat. The Black Angels) - UNKLE Chapstick - COIN (been learning this one on guitar because it's fun) Boundaries - Poppy Daniels

I would love to see some physical variations/traits unique to each Pokémon you encounter or catch. Maybe sometimes their hair grows in a certain way (like Ritchie's Pikachu), or its stripes are in a different pattern, etc. Something to make each Pokémon you catch feel unique and special. The berry idea to customize your Pokémon could totally build on this! If you want to change something about them, you still have the option to do so.

I pretty much always carry a Game Boy and iPod with me. I've been doing that for about seven years now. (My favorite was when I attended a book conference several years ago in NYC. I was playing Pokémon Yellow as I was standing in lines waiting to meet authors. Three people came up to me—they had brought their own Game Boys and were all playing Pokémon too!) I also had a Creative Zen mp3 player that I loved. It was the credit card sized model. Looking back on it, not the best mp3 player in the world but I loved how sleek it was and spent hours customizing the wallpaper. Also loved my Palm Pilot lol. I wanted to write stories in the car on that thing but spent most of my time playing games, drawing pictures, and trying to upload as many movies as possible on it because I dreamed of a day when I could have access to my favorite movies on a pocketable device. Oekaki boards. Does Twitter count? 100% this. MSN Messenger came to mind for me too haha. Even AIM was fun, but never as sleek looking as MSN.

Unfortunately I don't think I have much of these anymore but the ones that stick out the most from my childhood are: This Pikachu plush that I carried everywhere until the yellow started fading and the whites of its eyes disappeared, making it look like a demon. (I know I still have this one but no idea where it is) This big headed Munchlax doll that my mom bought me at a touring Pokémon event. Also know I kept this one, but no idea where haha. The iconic electric Pokédex toy. I remember this being so important to me. Maybe I'm remembering this wrong but I feel like there was an Eon Ticket event — you had to go to Toys "R" Us? — I could be off. But there was some kind of Gen 3 event at Toys "R" Us. Either way, we were like the last ones in line and the dudes running the thing gave us a box of leftover posable Pokémon figures that they had been giving away for free. I remember they were made of soft plastic and were lightweight and hollow inside. We had a Mewtwo and I think Latios, Latias, and some others I can't remember. I Googled but am not seeing any pics. I've enjoyed going back through the memories of old merch via your newsletter!

I miss those days too! Life seemed so much simpler back then haha. As far as the news publishing industry goes, my biggest gripe is the way they gave their power over to these large tech companies: They built business models around how well their content performed on Facebook. Then Facebook comes in after 2016 and obliterates the news feed algorithm, which is what they all depended on. A lot of companies went under. They put all their resources into a basket they couldn't control. We're seeing this again with Google. Everyone went all in on SEO because it was a quick easy way to get hits and views. Now AI summaries are decimating traffic and once again you're seeing many publications suffer for it. I get frustrated when I see news outlets making deals with OpenAI, allowing them to train their models off their content. imo they're once again putting trust into a big tech company that's going to turn around and decimate them in several years. (How long until OpenAI uses that content to build their own news product?) What makes me excited are the number of independent outlets that are popping up like 404 Media, or even more niche ones like The Mountain Gazette. I'd love to see smaller, niche communities make a comeback — spaces that emphasize connection rather than follows and likes. Basically what the internet was pre-2010 haha. That's why I'm excited to see MMC come back!

I’ve been playing Blue lately! For all the years I’ve played Pokémon I’ve never actually completed a Pokédex, so I’ve set out to complete my Pokédex in Pokémon Red. I’ve gotten as far as I can in Red and now need to beat Blue to catch the remaining ones. I’m at about ~125/151 right now.

These are incredible! I especially love Slowpoke. It has so much personality!

I agree — the atmosphere around Johto is gorgeous! I still love the way it looks when playing Pokémon Gold/Silver/Crystal and I love how much HeartGold/SoulSilver added to it. Legends Arceus was the most fun I've had playing a new Pokémon game in years. It felt fresh but also familiar. I loved little touches like being stealthy to not scare Pokémon away — interacting with them in new ways before being able to catch them. Scarlet and Violet brought some of those conventions over but not all of them, and it didn't feel as charming (still had fun playing it though).

I just realized MMC is back! I was one of the admins of the original MMC 20(?!) years ago, so it was a pleasant surprise when I stumbled on the site this morning. Some things about me: My first game was Pokémon Yellow Version and I was obsessed. When I was a kid I ran a small site called Pokémon Sky which was a great creative outlet for me. It was never huge but I learned so much about web content and development. MMC was a big part of my life back then. I didn't realize it, but that was going to shape the rest of my life haha. In my teens, I became more involved in the entertainment industry as a whole and started contributing to some fandom-centric outlets like MuggleNet. A lot of the friends I made there went on to found a site called Hypable which was a pretty big fandom destination for years. In college I founded a news organization that covered the young adult publishing industry. I did that for a decade — producing podcasts, covering news, attending publishing events and book cons, interviewing authors and working with the major publishing houses. I "retired" from book journalism two years ago. I write books and am nearing completion on a sci-fi/fantasy novel I've been hacking away at for 9 years (re-wrote it three times and am on the sixth draft). Hoping to finish it up this summer. Continued playing Pokémon throughout it all. :) Pokémon Favorites: Pokémon HeartGold Johto's my favorite, probably for nostalgic reasons Legends Arceus is my favorite of the newer games Can never decide between Umbreon, Cyndaquil and Snorlax Always back and forth between Mew and Celebi as my favorite mythical can you tell i'm partial to the earlier generations? lol but in reality there's a lot to like about the newer games These days I'm working in the news publishing industry and am frustrated by the decisions publishers have made during the last couple of decades. Like it's already been suggested here, everyone gave all their power to platforms like Facebook, Twitter and Google. Now content creators are paying the price for it as algorithms are manipulated and these companies cannibalize content by feeding it to AI and spitting it out in automated summaries. I've thought a lot about the old MMC during the last few years. I've missed those days. I feel like we content creators became so obsessed with growing traffic and making our sites as big as can be and we lost community and fostering positive connections in the process. I'm more nostalgic than ever for smaller communities. World domination sucks, friends are better. Ok, I'm off my soap box. 😅 Excited to see what comes of this and get to know you all!