
Yeah, I had to post this here. Bub has had it pre-ordered since I could make the pre-order, too. Good times!
the blog of a disabled mother who likes to game, and "get in the pit"

Yeah, I had to post this here. Bub has had it pre-ordered since I could make the pre-order, too. Good times!
I was going to get the MMO of choice that I wanted to begin playing with Bub, but then I found out that you could pre-order Pokemon Scarlet and Pokemon Violet from Amazon, so I went ahead and got one kid each game. Whenever they come, they come. It’s also a lot better than getting them from Wal-mart, because when I tried to get my oldest son Pokemon Diamond from there, you all know how that went, right? It was literally stolen by someone before it could be loaded onto the Hewitt truck to be delivered to my house, and when I asked FedEx about it, the response was to put fraudulent notations on tracking stating that it had been delivered to my house when it had not… you know, when it didn’t take them three days to “figure out” that it had been stolen, first telling me that it had been loaded onto the delivery truck and simply not delivered, then telling me that it hadn’t even been loaded onto the delivery truck to begin with (so that tracking notation had also been a lie). Although I know that I can’t completely avoid FedEx, my goal is to use them for as little as humanly possible because so many of my packages from them come late when they pass through Hewitt, and any time I try to ask their customer service anything about them nothing gets answered to satisfaction. At least Wal-mart promptly refunded me when this actually happened, though.
It’s better than the $53 that the “chief ombudsman” of the state child support office stole from my youngest son’s January payment forcing the case to stay open when multiple good cause waivers had already been sought out and approved for it. I wasn’t supposed to be told that these waivers were still on the case when Stephanie Neely continued to “insist” that it had to stay open, which endangered Bub and me, and when a customer care representative accidentally told me, she told them to tell me that all subsequent communication about closing Bub’s child support case out again had to go to her — no, it does not. And I made that pristinely clear to all involved state agencies. That was why I reported the entire child support office to the National Child Support Agency, which as soon as I let HHSC and the state child support office know yielded quick results, and why I lodged a formal employee complaint against you. According to LinkedIn you have a $90,000 salary and have been working there since before I graduated from high school. Learn to manage your money better and stop attempting to skim off the top of child support cases that aren’t even supposed to be in enforcement to begin with. Maybe also consider getting another job where you don’t endanger children because you want a new purse or another pair of shoes. That would really be nice.
Soon enough, Bub will get the psychiatric evaluation that is required to start the behavioral therapy that he was referred to. This just appears to be something that his insurance, and most insurances, require. Whatever they can get from him that they can use in this therapy to help him better manage his emotions, learn to convey overwhelming ones to caregivers so that they can get him help, and start to recognize (and act on) the beginnings of meltdowns so that he remains safe and those around him remain safe, I am all for. These were the reasons that he was referred for behavioral therapy anyway, although they are also things that I would really like him to work on as well. It’s just a matter of finding days that are available for the behavioral health… team, I guess, taking those, and then utilizing them, which I have done. We’re waiting on appointments to come.
In the interim, I got Shin Megami Tensei V to play with Bub, and he hugged the game for an entire hour.
Somebody’s going to be happy, as he always is, when we find and are capable of summoning Jack Frost…

The very first game that Bub and I played from start to finish was Namco’s Tales of Phantasia on the Gameboy Advance. I fondly remember bringing that thing — the Gameboy Advance, even in this era (Bub was born in 2010) — to both amuse him with it and to play an enjoyable game with him sans the ratio at which monsters attack you in the wild. I don’t think he minded that. He was probably a year or two old when we started this, because I was bound and determined to finish the game once and for all, and who better to do it with than the child of mine whose interest was peaked by things exactly like this? It was a win-win…
I also remember having to ask who was a boyfriend at the time for help with the plot as it related to acquiring a hidden character and then a skill that the final boss was weak against, but I also fondly remember curb-stomping the final boss straight into the ground with the Power of Bub™. Bub watched me defeat Dhaos, and Bub watched the ending. Defeating the big bad did not seem to bother him. It never does.
In our spare time, we’ve been participating in Max Raids in Pokemon: Sword with the AI filling the spots for the other three characters until I completely get the hang of it. I’ve been doing pretty well so far, but I haven’t caught all of the legendary Pokemon on my first attempt due to the AI — if, between you and the other three “party members”, you faint four times, you get kicked out of the Max Raid. Generally it’s not me fainting during the final battle when you’re actually up against the legendary Pokemon. I’ve also found that switching out frequently before the legendary Pokemon really helps unless you’re switching to a type that it’s super effective against, because then you start the battle with full HP (and you can’t count on someone having a Pokemon that has Life Dew… now if you’re the person whose Pokemon has Life Dew, spam that mother fucker, seriously, your team members will undoubtedly need it and they will thank you for it later).
I still kind of wish you could use your own Pokemon in this, but catching new ones through it is fun.
Also, the remake of Diablo II is soon to come out and I am excited. I can never remember the name of it unless I Google it, but I grew up on the game and have a lot of fond memories of the game in general.
True to my promise, Bub and I have been playing Pokemon: Sword… and we’ve completed the game insofar as we are the Champion, so we’re playing through post-game content and also playing through the DLC that I got both boys for their games (Sword and Shield respectively). I’m still looking for the Alolan version of Vulpix and the Galarian (Galan? Galarian?) version of Ponyta for purely personal reasons, and I’m trying to pick up some legendaries that Bub might like through things like Max Raids and just going through the DLC.
I like this game a lot more than some of the more recent Pokemon games that have come out, especially because it has an abundance of post-game content that you can take advantage of, and the online play makes it even more appealing. The only downside is the fact that you have to pay for a Nintendo subscription to be able to play online, but as I’ve waxed in the past, a Nintendo subscription is a lot more affordable than paying for online play through Microsoft or Sony. I suppose that I will hold those views for the long haul unless Nintendo drastically changes their prices and makes me eat dirt. We have awhile added onto our subscription for a reason, and this is a lot of the reason. I love doing Surprise Trades on this game when Bub has gone to sleep and picking up Pokemon that he will like when I show him the next morning.
Also… coming back to say that apparently it is Galar Ponyta, not Galan. I tried. I honestly did.
