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!

Welcome back!

I think like you when it comes to forums and communities. May this and other forums be successful and not global ‘community’ molochs.

Johto is wonderful. I think it's not just nostalgia, but a brilliant atmosphere. Possibly the best of the Pokemon regions.

I haven't played Legends Arceus yet. What did you like about it?

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).

Fact. HG/SS are great, at the same time G/S/C continue to be mega playable. HG/SS bring additions to the originals, but the original games still have that GameBoy Color vibe (nostalgia? simplicity?) and I still consider them probably the best games in the whole series.

I haven't played anything on Switch yet. Now I'm thinking of getting a Switch 2. Let's hope it has backwards compatibility, because Legends Arceus interests me.

Saul!! So happy to see you joined — miss you and your website! Makes me so nostalgic to think about our little group of webmasters. I should really try to find Sarah from TPC :)

Would be super curious to hear your thoughts on what is wrong in the publishing industry if you care to share!

On 4/5/2025 at 4:55 PM, pokejungle said:

Saul!! So happy to see you joined — miss you and your website! Makes me so nostalgic to think about our little group of webmasters. I should really try to find Sarah from TPC :)

Would be super curious to hear your thoughts on what is wrong in the publishing industry if you care to share!

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!

Welcome to the community once again @saul and thank you for the support you gave the original community back in the day.