Jacen's Rants
From Discord - The Raildex Watch Order Rant
May 20, 2025
An excerpt from Discord discussing the optimal order to watch the Raildex anime.
Read more...The Penske Rant - 2025 Indy 500 Edition
May 19, 2025
Qualifying for the 2025 Indy 500 was incredible. We had Colton Herta's remarkable recovery after a crash during his qualifying attempt, Marcus Armstrong's own recovery in last chance qualifying after a Saturday practice crash, the climactic shootout between Dale Coyne Racing teammates Rinus VeeKay and Jacob Abel for the 33rd and final spot in the race, and Prema Racing's miraculous pole position thanks to rookie driver Robert Shwartzman.
Unfortunately, I don't get to talk about any of that.
Read more...Why Can't We Pay Fanwork Creators?
May 18, 2025
I've always wanted to be a writer. My mother was a journalism major, so I've been exposed to writing my entire life. I filled notebooks with my own stories and, eventually, my own fanfiction once I got into Star Wars and Pokémon. While I don't think my dream of being a writer is truly attainable for me, writing stuff on my website is about as close as I'm going to get.
All that preamble to say, I have a lot of respect for writers. This brings me to a question I've had for a while: why are people so terrified at the idea of giving money to fanfiction authors?
Read more...Destined Rivals Prerelease Recap
May 17, 2025
I attended a prerelease event for the upcoming Destined Rivals set in the Pokémon TCG. This was my second time attending any kind of live Pokémon event. Let's go over what I pulled and what I built.
Read more...IT Pro Tip - Practice Effective Communication
May 13, 2025
In my bio on Discord, I have links to No Hello and Don't Ask To Ask. Unfortunately, I can't do the same on Teams, so I have to deal with lots of inefficient text communication at work. Let's go over exactly why these pet peeves irk me so much.
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The Rui Kamishiro Rant Redux
May 12, 2025
Back when I did my initial Rui rant, there was a detail that I wanted to include, but I chose to leave out. Now that I have more of the story, I feel I can revisit it.
Read more...People Can Tell When You Use AI
May 10, 2025
To be clear, I'm not anti-AI. I think it has legitimate use cases, and I think those use cases will continue to grow as the technology improves. Even if I didn't think that, I can tell that the genie is out of the bottle, and no amount of wishing or complaining is going to get it back in.
Read more...Project Sekai Orientation Headcanons
May 9, 2025
I don't know why this is something that's been on my mind, but I've been thinking about my headcanons for the orientations and identities of the various characters in the Project Sekai franchise. Here's a quick overview of my thoughts and why I think that way.
Read more...OCs Beyond Fanworks
May 6, 2025
A friend recently shared a post discussing OCs. Related to it, I've always found the term "OC" to be a bit confusing outside the context of fanworks.
Read more...IT Pro Tip - Start At Layer Zero
April 25, 2025
This is a story I've told before, but I think it fits well with my IT Pro Tip series. It's pretty short, so I figured it worked better as a rant than a full blog post.
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