Ah, the Disney animated sequel. The attempt by the company to squeeze every penny possible from the beloved characters they created. Over the past decade or so, it seems Disney has created even more of these suckers than before, with mixed results. Most are pretty mediocre, but palatable and range usually follow in these three categories: the pilot, the edit-undo and the cutting room floor story. A pilot is usually some rather meaningless event which brings together all the favorite characters from the original movie, where one character usually tells three independent stories throughout the span of the movie. I call it this because these sequels usually are 3 episodes of a television show slammed together to make a movie. These movies are like 'Tarzan and Jane' and 'Hercules: Zero to Hero'. Edit-undos are plots that basically unravel everything that happened in the first movie. In Little Mermaid Ariel goes from the sea to the land, in Little Mermaid II Melody goes from land to sea. Or in Lady and the Tramp II Tramp goes from a stray to a pet, and Scamp goes from a pet to a stray. The cutting room floor story is usually called 'fill-in-the-blank' II and not actually a sequel, but is really an event that theoretically happened during the first movie, but isn't actually mentioned in the movie. This category is the one that's been popping up the most with stories like Tarzan II and Fox and the Hound II. However, while none of the sequels have ever been on par with the original movie, Disney has actually produced some genuinely good sequels amongst the 'meh' stories, and these are the ones I think are best.

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Apparently they are going to start producing Digimon Toys again.

"LOS ANGELES—Firefly Brand Management has been named licensing agent in North America for the animated television franchise Digimon, producer Toei Animation said today.

Firefly will be responsible for merchandise licensing sales for the first five seasons of the series, a long-running hit in Japan that briefly flowered in the U.S. during the early 2000s."

Read the Full Article Here

One thing I disagree with is the 'brief flowering' of the series in the US. In all fairness, the first 3 seasons were pretty popular and the 4th was watched, it was Japan that waited like 5 years before adding a fifth season.

BTW, I know they released the first 4 seasons of Digimon on DVD, but are those still available of have they stopped producing them? I've seen season 5 in Walmart, but on Amazon the earlier seasons are pretty pricey, as that happens when DVDs go out of printing.

Since getting the game I have gotten my first badge and have captured/evolved about 30 pokemon. I've been playing mostly at night which kind of screws me over as I have a Budew and am trying to have it evolve. That's not going to be happening anytime soon it would appear...

I'm once again annoyed by the fact that there are dozens of towns in Sinnoh but only 8 gyms. This really irked me in Sapphire/Ruby as Gold/Silver had 16 gyms to go to, meaning there was much more to do within the game's goals. The first few towns have next to nothing to do there, but after the first gym more stuff comes up. Other than that fact I am really enjoying the game, if for only two reasons. In this generation of the game they finally had the good sense to bring in my favorite 1st gen pokemon as well as my favorite 2nd gen: Ponyta and Houndour. I don't need to explain why they were always my favorites, except that I always liked them and was immensely annoyed when neither was in Ruby/Sapphire. I also like the idea that they brought time change back into the game. Finding different Pokemon during the Morning, Day and Night was always a lot of fun for me.

One thing I really do love is everything to do with the international/wifi aspect. I haven't traded or chatted with anyone yet (not far enough into the game to do that without seeming like a n00b) but I have been playing a lot in the underground.

There's a big trend I'm noticing on the internet, whether on technology blogs, art sites or fandom specific sites: infighting between fans. The terms 'fantard' 'fanboy' 'fangirl', 'weeaboo' thrown around, making fun of fans for the series they like, the couples they like, saying that real gamers don't play certain games, that code monkeys are cooler than otaku and I have one thing to say to this.

JUST STOP

People, you're geeks. To paraphrase the Grim Adventures of Billy and Mandy: accept it, embrace it and make it you're own. If you play more than 7 hours of video games a week, know the difference between Uke and Seme, can quote even one line of YGO the Abridged Series, know who Pedobear is or keep any comic in 'mint condition', you are a geek. And to non-geeks you will be seen like this:

It doesn't matter how good your hygiene is, it doesn't matter how much money you make, or how much your geekiness takes a back seat to responsible actions like paying bills or going to school on time as soon as you open you mouth and admit you've ever waited in a line overnight for any book/game/movie, people will immediately know you're a geek and will see you as such. When you make a joke about how stupid twitards are, most people won't even know what the hell you're talking about. Complain that some girl somewhere wrote a slash fanfic about Spiderman and Wolverine, and people will look at you as the lunatic. So stop pretending there is some kind of hierarchy in geekdom, because there isn't.

So stop calling people 'fantards' or weeaboos. Complain about people's behavior, but not about their likes/dislikes. You may feel superior to someone because they like Naruto, but someone else will feel superior to you because 'they don't waste their time and money on stupid geeky things'.

So get over yourself.

If you're wondering why I haven't posted a new gamer diary in a while it's because of 3 reasons.

1. I've been busy. Between updating two comics, having 3 classes and an internship I just wasn't finding the time

2. The old DVD player I was using to port out my PS2, VHS, and working DVD player conked out on me, and it is really inconvenient to switch out the cords all the time (as my tv only has 1 aux thing and it's at the back)

3. My dog Sergeant died. Sergeant had sort of a weird relationship with my video games. Despite the fact I'd never harmed him when playing, and yelled at him even without playing, he became terrified to be around me whenever I played a game. So whenever I flipped on my DS or my pS2 he would always run out of the room. Me playing a game without him running away was something I wasn't ready for.

But it's kind of appropriate that the game I come back to after losing him is from the series that got me into gaming in the first place.

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