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Rebekah Valentine

@duckvalentine.bsky.social

25K followers 1.3K following 8.4K posts

Multi-award-winning senior reporter at IGN, proudly @ignunion.bsky.social. kansas city kansas city. She/her. Exuberant, always. [email protected], Signal: duckvalentine.25

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Rebekah Valentine @duckvalentine.bsky.social · Jan 6

please read the words i wrote in my post before replying to it. thank you.

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Rebekah Valentine @duckvalentine.bsky.social · 13h

wow

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Rebekah Valentine @duckvalentine.bsky.social · 13h

do you think someone still makes and sells old-school book satchels so i don't have to have a big purse

Rebekah Valentine @duckvalentine.bsky.social · 13h

like, no ethical consumption, etc etc, but the level of actually evil bullshit i'm being asked to accept to just access basic stuff is overwhelming

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Rebekah Valentine @duckvalentine.bsky.social · 13h

www.bbc.com/future/artic...

YouTube secretly used AI to edit people's videos. The results could bend reality

YouTube made AI enhancements to videos without telling users or asking permission. As AI quietly mediates our world, what happens to our shared connections with real life?

www.bbc.com

Rebekah Valentine @duckvalentine.bsky.social · 13h

www.bbc.com/future/artic...

YouTube secretly used AI to edit people's videos. The results could bend reality

YouTube made AI enhancements to videos without telling users or asking permission. As AI quietly mediates our world, what happens to our shared connections with real life?

www.bbc.com

Rebekah Valentine @duckvalentine.bsky.social · 13h

between this and the ICE ads on Spotify, YouTube randomly doing AI edits of creator's videos without their consent, and the U.S. government taking over TikTok, I think I'll just get really into collecting music on CDs and start bringing books with me everywhere again.

demon grrl 😈🏳️‍⚧️ @demongrrl.gay · 4d

seriously

for fucks sake

cancel your spotify subscription

@PopBase on Twitter "Spotify teams up with ChatGPT to offer personalized recommendations."

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Reposted by Rebekah Valentine

count pilnokula @pilnok.dad · May 11

x-ray skeleton with a red blob in its skull
"oof ouchie, too much strawberry jam"

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Reposted by Rebekah Valentine

Tom Marks @tomrmarks.bsky.social · 17h

My policy has always been that I would rather take the time to make a better review that doesn't burn out my writers than rush to hit an arbitrary marketing beat a publisher didn't actually give us enough time to meet.

In that context, it's not a hard decision.

Rebekah Valentine @duckvalentine.bsky.social · 20h

i remember crunching to review BotW and the Switch 1 in a week and a half and I was so miserable coming out of that period. Never again. Grateful to @tomrmarks.bsky.social and IGN for being supportive of this, and to @ignunion.bsky.social for the backup in taking back the overtime I did work.

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Rebekah Valentine @duckvalentine.bsky.social · 17h

thinking about the emotional hit in deltarune ch 4 when the first chord of "the place where it rained" played

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Reposted by Rebekah Valentine

IGN @ign.com · 20h

Pokémon Legends: Z-A had a short review period and a strict embargo, so while we're not quite ready to put a final score on it, what we've played so far is already real good.

Our review:

Pokémon Legends: Z-A Review in Progress

bit.ly

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Rebekah Valentine @duckvalentine.bsky.social · 19h

In my defense, one of the shinies I caught I spotted from a long distance (its color is VERY vibrant) and the other one I caught right in the middle of being attacked by an Alpha Pokemon while I was at a low level, so I was panicking a bit.

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Rebekah Valentine @duckvalentine.bsky.social · 19h

I actually just saw another reviewer say the shiny sound is back, so I'm just inattentive I guess :P

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Rebekah Valentine @duckvalentine.bsky.social · 19h

yes*

*unless the thing you liked about them was the turn-based battles, which are gone entirely, or that the world was big and had tons of space to explore. I think Z-A is better for being in a smaller geographical area that's much denser, but you may not agree

Rebekah Valentine @duckvalentine.bsky.social · 19h

nah

Rebekah Valentine @duckvalentine.bsky.social · 19h

Awwww. I'll have it with me for the drive this weekend too!

Rebekah Valentine @duckvalentine.bsky.social · 20h

yeah! sorry, my post above was referring to ZA. there's a story-mandated shiny, and then I've caught three others besides.

I'm not 100% on if the sound is there, I haven't heard it if so but I'm not listening for it, but they do sparkle consistently when they appear, which helps spot them!

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Reposted by Rebekah Valentine

Imran Khan @imrankhan.bsky.social · 20h

One fun thing is this is the rare time of year where we're both reviewing different games right next to each other so every like six hours one of us takes off our headphones and goes "So how's your thing going?" and we talk through our thoughts for a few minutes.

Rebekah Valentine @duckvalentine.bsky.social · 20h

guys i have amazing news about the new pokemon game: i think it's pretty good

www.ign.com/articles/pok...

Pokémon Legends: Z-A Review in Progress - IGN

Is Pokémon back, flabay-bee?

www.ign.com

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Rebekah Valentine @duckvalentine.bsky.social · 20h

i adored it and gave it a perfect score and also i did not pick it up again for almost a year. like i physically could not stomach more of it.

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Rebekah Valentine @duckvalentine.bsky.social · 20h

there are a few of these situations in Z-A too, though not quite as bad, I did have to edit a Pokemon I mentioned casually in the review out last minute cuz it was embargoed, despite it being 1) very common 2) very boring 3) a Pokemon we've already confirmed the final evolution of is in the game

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Rebekah Valentine @duckvalentine.bsky.social · 20h

my favorite example of this is that we couldn't say Paras was in Arceus. dude, that little fucker was everywhere, and he would CHASE you. impossible to avoid him getting footage in areas where he spawned, which meant massive zones of the game were just not recordable.

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Rebekah Valentine @duckvalentine.bsky.social · 20h

ugh, yeah. a big problem we have with their restrictions on these recent games is that they ban us from saying certain very common Pokemon are in them, and it's little guys who could wander across the screen in the distance at literally any second

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Rebekah Valentine @duckvalentine.bsky.social · 20h

i've caught three shinies so far (four if you count the story-mandated shiny, similar to the Ponyta sidequest in Arceus)

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Rebekah Valentine @duckvalentine.bsky.social · 20h

(I did not crunch on BotW for IGN, tbc)

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Rebekah Valentine @duckvalentine.bsky.social · 20h

it DOES! i'd argue catching em all is actually sort of more of a secondary sidequest that barely gets talked about????

Rebekah Valentine @duckvalentine.bsky.social · 20h

I FORGOT I MADE THAT PLAYLIST. yeah I genuinely dug that game! I wish they'd make more art academy!