Finishing up Pokémon Legends: Z-A, and I feel like the story gets a lot better as you get further in the game (and Naveen is still kind of obnoxious, but huge props to the writers for having his dynamic with the player character develop realistically). Although it started a little slow and clunky on the story side of things, Legends: Z-A is a super fun game that makes some sleek improvements on the formula introduced with Legends: Arceus, and I kind of just want Legends to be the actual core series from now on (especially after Scarlet and Violet were so underwhelming).

Aaaaaaanyway. Every time a Pokémon uses Struggle Bug, this is all I can think of. I kinda want a t-shirt of this now. We all have days like this, feeling like a level 2 early-route Pokémon whom people won't stop throwing Poké Balls at.

 Probably a bad idea to let the player character know you're the guy responsible for coding the universe.

And of course this comic references the oh-so-handy Missingno.-related glitches in Gen I. I know glitch exploitation in video games is a controversial issue, but I personally don't see anything wrong with it as long as you're not using it to gain an unfair competitive advantage. For example, once you max out effort values, there's no real difference between a Pokémon you trained to level 100, a Pokémon you got to level 100 via Rare Candies and EXP Candies you found naturally in the game, and a Pokémon you got to level 100 via Rare Candies and EXP Candies you obtained through glitches. 

Using glitches or cheats to give a Pokémon an impossible moveset or unobtainably high stats, and then using that Pokémon in a tournament, would definitely be cheating and there's never an excuse for that. But if you're just battling with your friends, and you tell them how you got your impossible Pokémon so they can do it too, that's a completely different context where everybody benefits. (When my niece played Pokémon Red, I told her about the Missingno. glitches and it was driving her crazy having to wait to reach Cinnabar Island to use them. Why is life so hard.)

On the other hand, I was never fond of devices like the GameShark that allowed you to essentially modify a game's code freely to do whatever you wanted the game to do. That kind of thing pretty much destroys the entire purpose of playing a video game and robs players of the satisfaction of working hard for anything. If you input the right codes, sure you can make a save file where Red starts off in Pallet Town with 6 level 100 Mewtwo, a full Pokédex, and all 8 Gym Badges... but what's the point? Bragging rights? (Pro tip to 10-year-old boys, it's not very impressive if you brag about achievements you didn't actually earn.) Reinforcing the idea that if you throw enough money at anything you can achieve it with minimal effort but still gain the benefits attained from working for it? (If you think that, you're going to get a rude awakening when adulthood hits.)

I mean, yeah, stuff like the GameShark can be an entertaining diversion if you've played a video game to death and just want to mess with the code, but I'm not on board with the idea of using cheat devices as a shortcut to achieving something that's supposed to take time and effort. It benefits no one, least of all the person using the cheat device and sinking further into the depths of being an obnoxiously entitled human being whom nobody wants to be around.

... Whoa, that was a bit of a rant. I'm getting cantankerous in my old age, I guess.

 Congratulations to China on a phenomenally successful first Mars mission! I look forward to the day when we can all explore the cosmos together as a human family and stop pretending it's still the Cold War.

 The development team inserting themselves into the game and making meta remarks is a cute idea that would definitely lead to an existential crisis for a player character.

Sat and doodled for a bit last night! Nothing like chilling to classical music and just drawing whatever comes to mind.

Expression studies for Saturos. Although he can come off as imposing, once you get to know him he's actually kind of a goof. He's a real foodie and a voracious eater (although I imagine reality-bending magic does require a lot of energy). When the situation commands it, though, he is capable of becoming a demonic creature roiling with unleashed power--but he actually really hates doing this because he's worried it scares people. The only time he's had to let out the full capacity of his power was when he fought the Erdunn (but back then, nobody was really around to see it). (He actually only gets into one fight in the plot of Ravenscrag, but he was intentionally holding back because he didn't want to hurt Tam.)

 And a concept doodle for a novel I've been brainstorming for and would like to get around to writing soon. Valdovas is a millennia-old dragon from Eastern Europe who is arrogant, aloof, and disdainful toward humans--but that changes when he is forced to accept help from a family living on the American frontier, and he grows to realize that not all humans are enemies, and that some of them need his help, too.

Valdovas was inspired by Smaug and Tolkien's treatment of dragons in general--I love the man's writing, but his dragons are always irredeemably evil spawn of darkness. I've loved dragons since I was a kid, and I feel like they deserve better than that. I also haven't written a novel with dragons since Voyage of the Kaus Media, so we're way overdue for more dragons. <3

Not sure I did the best job rendering it yesterday, but Valdovas has black iridescent scales. He also breathes poison. He's a zmey from Slavic folklore (but a one-headed variety, because multiple-headed dragons means more characters to juggle).

Well, what else would you do with a bike on Cycling Road?

(cue catchy bicycle theme)

 I was listening to a podcast where the hosts were discussing the possibility of pink dinosaurs, and I got to thinking about how a dinosaur could be pink. Modern dinosaurs (birds) that are predominantly pink, such as flamingoes and roseate spoonbills, get their coloration from ingesting foods rich in carotenoids, usually arthropods in aquatic environments. That made me think of Deinocheirus, which is from a swampy, tropical environment and looks adapted for a bit of aquatic feeding. So naturally I put two and two together and concluded it would be great if Deinocheirus was pink. It's already such a bizarre dinosaur that you might as well make it pink on top of everything else it's got going on.

I specifically based this guy's coloration on the roseate spoonbill, one of my favorite birds because of how so very weird it is. <3